A Happy Life? For Izuku? Never.
All Midoriya Izuku had ever wanted to be was a hero.
When he turned four and got diagnosed quirkless, his perspective started to splinter.
He learned the fundamental truth of the world he lived in. Every man was not created equal. He was just a quirkless nobody in a world of quirked somebodies.
His world shattered.
In less than a year everything changed.
His dad left.
Kacchan didn’t want to be his friend.
His other friends started calling him names and shoving him around.
He watched his mother grow more and more distant by the day.
Izuku didn’t know what to do.
<>
Izuku was decidedly not having a good day.
See, When he woke up this morning he had thought it was going to be one of his okay days. One of those days where it’s not great but when almost everything in your life sucks, he’ll take whatever he can get. He had woken up and gotten himself a banana and his notebook to sit down on one of the bar stools. His mom had left the money for this month on the counter, so he was considering going to a thrift store and getting some new clothes for himself. It was the first time in a while that he felt genuine excitement to do something. His body didn’t even ache when he moved. So naturally, he left his apartment with a small smile.
He’s pretty sure that’s what jinxed it.
When he got to school there was nothing out of the usual. Sure, there were at least 7 spider lilies on his desk and mean names written on his desk, but that was his normal by now. Stuff like that quit hurting a while ago. Now it was just bothersome to clean up.
There wasn’t anyone in the classroom right now. He gathered the flowers and stuffed them in his signature yellow bag. He just sat down in his seat and let himself enjoy the quiet peace of morning.
The air had a sort of dewy feeling to it that made him sleepy. So he laid his head on his arms and let his eyes fall closed. He wasn’t actually asleep, of course. He was still mostly aware of what was going on around him. Plus, he was early to school anyway today, so there was no one really around. Who would it hurt for him to drift off just a teensy tiny bit for a few seconds?
Turns out, he was not as good at waking up as he liked to think he was. He felt a knocking on the side of his head before his right eye exploded with pain. Holding in a groan, he pulled his head from his arms and opened his eyes. He immediately shut them again after the shooting pain got ten times worse. There was snickering behind him.
‘ Great. Mya is here. Yay… ’
Izuku tried to shove the pain to the back of his mind as more people entered the classroom. He didn’t know whether or not to be grateful Mya had woken him up. On one hand, she gave him something that people refer to as a ‘suicide headache’ that would most likely last for at least an hour. On the other hand, it was better than someone who could do actual physical damage to him deciding to wake him up.
The buzz of students was actually pretty nice after a few minutes, kinda like background noise. Which was primarily because all the loud people came in last and everyone else was enjoying the morning’s quiet. He settled his head back in his arm and just listened to random classmates' conversations.
He slowly began prying open his eyes letting them adjust to the light before he had to have them open in class. It felt like he was going from having a singular dull knife stabbing his eye with a passion only Kacchan could have to two. Technically, that was better than what happened last time he opened his eyes. Then again, he was pretty sure that any imaginary Kacchans stabbing him in the eye with a dull knife was too many.
A few minutes later Kacchan walked in, yelled at him a bit, and went to his seat. The teacher walked in almost seconds after he sat down.
The lesson started then. Izuku let himself zone out since he knew about what they were talking about already. He used to not pay attention during lessons he knew nothing about, too, but after a few too many times of teachers asking sharp questions he didn’t actually know the answer to, he quit that. Those lessons were so far and inbetween, though, that it didn’t really matter.
Once he was fully zoned out of the lesson, he found a slight problem in his plan. Pain was much harder to ignore when you quit focusing on things around you. He felt himself clenching his jaw to help the pain subside to quickly learn that actually made everything even worse. Now it felt like three Kacchans. Great.
His thoughts strayed to the notebook in his bag. He could pull it out now with the teacher in the middle of his lesson, or wait until the next class. He looked over to the clock. The clock read 9:05 a.m.
‘That’s, like, what? Twenty more minutes of class? ’ Izuku thought to himself. He could do that. He just needs to think of random things for the next twenty minutes so his head doesn’t hurt as bad. He could definitely do that!
It was at that moment his head emptied of all the random facts he had saved up in his head. Wonderful.
Now all that was left to do was stare intently at his desk, and stare intently he would. There were odd little nicks and notches, seemingly from whoever sat here before him, all over it. It was a nice shade of brown, he supposed. Maybe if he said that they would get a better shade of brown? Probably not.
They would probably just sic Kacchan on him. Which, like, guys, he is perfectly good at messing up his own life, thank you very much. He didn’t need them to do his job for him.
He couldn’t tell how he felt about his teachers anymore. Of course, he didn’t like them, but they were mildly entertaining. They made him laugh sometimes when he thought about them. Mostly when he thinks about them getting mad at him for ‘breathing too quietly’ or ‘distracting other kids by being the human equivalent of a wet sock’.
For one, they would get mad at him for breathing too loud as well, so at least he was being productive in some way. Secondly, who even let them put the thing about the wet sock in there? Still on the wet sock thing, how were they just going to ignore when Tsukinama comes into the classroom on a rainy day. His skin is quite literally fabric! If anyone is a wet sock personified, it’s him. He can make that joke because he has also been bullied by said personified wet sock.
…god, his life is just getting pathetic at this point.
Izuku heard the door open. Now was his chance. He leaned to the side and partially unzipped his bag, pulling out his beloved, and oh so very missed, notebook.
He looked up just in time for the next teacher’s lesson to start. He knew enough about this one as well, so he spent his time thinking back to a hero fight he had watched the other night and writing a short analysis. After he finished that, he thought back to things that could have been improved the fight support-wise. He had spent a lot of time last year getting the basics of engineering down so he could understand what was and wasn’t possible for support items to do. He had even made a few of his ideas, even if they hadn’t gotten farther than the beta stage since he had no one but himself to test them with.
Once he finished writing all he could in his notebook, the lunch break began. He tried to gather all of his things together but the pain in his head was getting really bad and his movements became sluggish. He shot out of the classroom, hoping to the gods he hadn’t been too slow and ran for stairs. No one was in the halls yet, everyone else opting to take their time getting their stuff together.
He made it to the top of the stairs and opened the door to the roof, almost slamming it shut in his haste. He walked over to his usual spot on the roof and just kind of laid there. The silence was music to his ears and almost found himself slipping into unconsciousness. The door to the roof opened.
He looked up and paled. Kacchan and his lackeys stood in front of the door to the roof.
“Hey, Deku. You wanna play a game with us?” Izuku furiously shook his head. They started approaching. Oh, he was so screwed now. He gulped and braced himself for more pain as they got closer and closer.
By the end of lunch break Izuku was walking back to the classroom with an array of different bruises, burns, and shallow cuts. He also arrived in a much worse mood.
Ito-sensei is already in there by the time Izuku makes it back to his seat. Izuku puts his notebook on his desk, deciding to listen to the first few minutes of his lesson.
“As third year students, it’s time for you to start thinking seriously about your futures and what you want to do with your lives!” Izuku is not a fan of where this is going. “I could pass out some career aptitude tests, but why bother?” Oh, yeah, this wasn't going to end well for Izuku. “I know you all want to go into the hero track!” His teacher threw the tests in the air while cheers rang out from the students. There was also the quirk use, that was a bit out of control. He must have started mumbling because next thing he knows he feels a hand chop him hard on the head.
“Midoriya, pull yourself together. If you really want to get into U.A. you might actually have to know something.” he chides, as his hand reels back to his wrist as if it wasn't extended across the room just moments ago. Laughing and whispering filled the room for a second until someone spoke over it.
“Hey, don’t lump me in with this bunch of losers. I’m the real deal. These guys will end up lucky as side-kicks to some busted D-lister, hah.” Kacchan announces to the class. The class was not a fan, quickly filling with upset shouts and accusations.
“Ah you’ve got impressive test results, maybe you will get into U.A. high.” the teacher cut in. Izuku resisted the urge to groan and buried his face in his arms. All these quirks were making his headache worse.
“Oh, Midoriya, aren’t you trying for U.A. high, too?” Izuku winced. There it was. Jeers from his classmates filled the room so he went to correct his teacher.
“Um, actually, I’m trying for Gen. Ed or the Support course, not the hero course.” he corrected. Sure, they wouldn’t like that one much either, but it would be received better than him trying for the hero course.
“Hah! You think a quirkless Deku like you could get into any of the courses?! You’re even stupider than I thought!” Kacchan yelled, laughing as if it was the funniest joke in the world. Nevermind, Tsukinama was not the personification of a wet sock, Kacchan was.
“Okay, okay let’s get back into this lesson…” Izuku let the man’s voice fade into the background as he mentally prepared to get beat up later. Forget he said earlier, fuck the teachers. If any of them (especially Ito-sensei) were on fire, Izuku might just drink it.
He made it to the end of the day (somehow) and everyone left faster than he could. On the brightside, his headache was gone. On the flipside, he’s about to get beaten to a pulp. Everyone had left the room at this point but Kacchan and his lackeys were walking over.
Kacchan put a hand on his shoulder and started activating his quirk, “Y’know if you would just stop trying, it would be so much easier for you.” Izuku’s shoulder is starting to burn now. “Let’s both be realistic for a second, okay, Deku? You are never going to be anything in this world without a quirk.” The burn hurts more than the words could ever hurt him. The words hurt pretty bad, though.
“I-I know that, Kacchan.” He took a step back and pushed himself away until his back hit the wall. Kacchan simply laughed from above him. He crouched down and put his hand right back where it was before, activating his quirk. Yeah, that’s gonna be second-degree.
“If you really want a quirk so bad, take a swan dive off the roof and pray for a quirk in the next life.” He gave Izuku a sharp smirk and chuckled to himself. He walked over to the door before looking back at Izuku.
“Bye-bye, Deku.”
So yeah, today? Not his day. At all.
In response to the already bad day, he goes the shady, but fast, route home. He gets a bad feeling as he goes through the underpass. He turns his head to make sure he’s not about to get mugged (or at least get it over with). He looks down as the grate he’s standing on starts to shake.
He leaps forward and thanks the gods that he learned how to fall safely when he was younger due to all the bullying(and free time). His jump is amplified by a sudden push from under him. Next thing he knows, he’s crouched, staring wide eyed at the moving pile (mound?) of sludge. The sludge turns around and for a terrifying moment they’re at a standstill.
In a flash, he’s surrounded by the slime and gasping for air. He feels the slime pushing down his throat and windpipe. He’s thrown into a coughing fit that would be a lot more productive if there was oxygen for him to take in in the first place. He thinks he can hear it say something about a “meatsuit”, but he can’t focus on anything but the vile liquid pressing into his lungs and esophagus. Arms, his arms, he realizes, are around his neck in instinct to pull whatever this is from his throat. He can’t. He can’t stop hacking and honestly wishes that his body would just stop fighting. He wonders briefly if this is what drowning feels like. His ears are ringing as a faint sound comes from off to the side.
He feels a rush of air hit him ( air ) and falls to the ground. His head hits the ground and it all goes black.
<>
Izuku wakes up to a stinging cheek.
He frowns, not a hundred percent sure what happened. He rakes in a shaky breath and it all comes flooding back. It’s like he rubbed his insides down with sandpaper. It hurts so much. He looks up and makes eye contact with All Might.
“My boy! I’m glad you’re okay!” his voice booms from above, making the oncoming headache three times worse. This sucks so much. All Izuku wants to do is curl up in bed and cry. Or throw up, throwing up sounds good right now.
“All Might-” he can’t even get halfway through his sentence before he starts coughing up a storm. All Might looked a little disturbed, so Izuku did what he does when he needs to cough, quit breathing. Can’t cough if there’s nothing there to begin with.
“Do you need anything before I leave?” Izuku shakes his head wildly, desperate for him to stay, because, well, he’s kind of not doing too great right now. For some reason All Might takes that as an invitation to leave, and gets ready to take off. In a last ditch effort to get him to stay, he grabs onto his ankle and is sent shooting into the air with All Might. All Might realizes and tries to kick him off before remembering where they were and landing on a nearby roof.
“My boy! That was extremely reckless! I’m glad you are okay, but I really must–” there’s a cloud of smoke “go.''
Izuku almost screams. Where All Might once stood is a man who, quite honestly, looks like he’s got more than just one foot in the grave. So many questions ran through his head. For instance: Where was All Might? Who was this man? Why do his eyes look like that? What is going on with his hair? All equally important, of course.
The man heaves out a sigh and the itch in Izuku’s lungs lessens. With the itch gone he can finally form the question, “Wher–What happened to All Might?” His voice was raspy and held a slight wheeze, but mostly coherent.
“I am All Might. I can only hold that form for so long nowadays.” He laughs nervously and rubs at the back of his neck. He looks like a kid about to get scolded. A very bony and tall kid, but a kid nonetheless.
“What happened?” He seems to consider the question before plopping down by the edge of the roof. He pats the spot beside him and Izuku cautiously takes the spot.
All Might(Small Might?) heaves another sigh, “Heroics is a dangerous field, kid. I was injured just a few years ago and now can only hold that form for a mere three hours. You can understand my rush now, right?”
“Yes.” It’s breathy and feels like he’s gasping for air. That can’t be good, can it? His heart feels like it’s on overdrive. Small Might stands from his place on the ground and faces Izuku.
“Alas, there’s nothing to be done about it now. I hope you’ve learned your lesson about following heroes to places, kid. Just knock on the door when you want them to let you down.” He turns his back and walks through the door, leaving Izuku alone with his thoughts.
The itch to cough blossomed in his chest again, causing him to double over. He doesn’t know how long the coughing fit lasts. It feels like forever. There are tears streaming down his face by the end of it. He just gulps all the air he can down in hope that it will ward off another fit.
He feels something pulling on his shoulders. He lifts a hand to touch it and is relieved to see it’s just his backpack. He shrugs it off and puts it to the side. The cool air is soothing against his back.
He lets his head fall back onto the edge and just breathes. He isn’t sure how long he just sits there and lets himself decompress from everything that happened.
The day was slowly coming to a close. He knew that. It was getting dark. He knew that. He shouldn’t be walking around the city after dark. He knew that. But he can’t seem to force himself to move from his place lying on his back.
The longer he sits there the more the exhaustion seeps into his bones. He barely even realizes when he goes from letting his thoughts drift to sleep, the cool air acting as a blanket.
<>
Izuku stayed on that roof for a while. He’s not exactly sure how long, but judging by the fact it was almost pitch black outside, a good few hours at the least. The wind had picked up a bit, and the temperature definitely dropped. He could just barely see his little huffs of air in the cold.
The view was nice, though. The only thing keeping it not pitch black was the glow of the city below. He was close to one of the more urban parts of the city, so of course it would still be somewhat bright.
The buzz of the city below had soon become a comfort after his initial breakdown, a nice constant. The cold that pricked his skin acted as an odd sort of blanket. The concrete was cold in a different, more grounding, way. The cold had long seeped into his bones to help him breathe. Izuku had always liked the cold from what he remembers. The cold gave him a sense of peace.
His shoes sat next to him on the ledge, his socked feet swinging in the air. All he would have to do is lean forward and he could end it all. He could end it all, right now, in this state of overwhelming peace. He wouldn’t ruin his peace with his normal anxiety and doubt. He could let everything fall away around him. All the bullying and neglect and people saying he couldn’t be a hero, couldn’t be anything at all, all gone. In just seconds, he could be free.
He let out one last huff of air and leaned forward. He fell. He fell with the wind whistling around him. He fell with a smile forming on his face. Then–
Crack .
Then he felt nothing.
.
.
.
Izuku felt pain flare in his legs.
Begrudgingly, he peeled his eyes open and sat up. He blearily looked around and found that he was in an…alley. His neck flared.
He lifted an arm to press on his neck so it might stop hurting but stopped mid-way when he saw how mangled it was. His wrist was most definitely broken but the rest of his arm seemed fine. There was blood, too, he realized after a bit of delay. Not from his wrist, he didn’t think. No, it seemed like it was just hit with splatter from something else.
He felt sticky. He looked down and realized just how much blood there was on and around him.
…What happened to him?
He couldn’t remember anything happening after All Might left him on that roof. He remembered falling asleep. He remembered waking up, but–
Oh.
Oh .
He threw himself off the roof.
He shouldn’t be alive. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. That building was at least 10 stories. It’s impossible to survive a fall that far. It’s even more impossible to be moving at all after it.
A flare of pain shot up his wrist. He hissed out a curse and pulled his wrist to his chest. He lifted his other arm to check if it was okay and almost sighed in relief that it was. There was a bar-like pipe above him. He decided to try his certifiably bad luck and pull himself to his feet. His luck held, and he managed to get himself on two feet relatively easily.
Then he proceeded to almost faint. He only stayed up by holding the pipe like a lifeline. Great. He shook his head and tried to wait for his head to clear. He felt something move in his wrist, which definitely didn’t hurt as much as it should.
He snapped his attention to his wrist. It looked like it was fixing itself? The skin was moving and he swore he could feel his bones scraping together. He also swore straight up and dropped his wrist in shock. After a few minutes, it stopped. He distantly felt something click in the back of his mind. Pain flared in his neck as he looked back down at his wrist.
It looked as good as could be. Sure there were some small scrapes and bruises, but it barely even hurt. It didn’t even really hurt. It just kind of felt like pins and needles, like he fell asleep with it at a weird angle. It most definitely didn’t look like he just broke it.
That was weird. Izuku knew that was weird. But he just looked up and started stumbling away in the direction of his house. He didn’t feel in control of his body. It felt like he was watching himself just do things.
Izuku didn’t know how to feel about that. He couldn’t really think. It all just felt like static in his brain. He pushed through, though, and tried his best to analyze the situation.
He, a quirkless boy, jumped off a ten plus story building. He, a quirkless boy, woke up with few injuries. And he, a quirkless boy, just watched his body pull itself together and heal before his eyes. Objectively, he would say that was a quirk. Subjectively, he would counter it was impossible.
He was quirkless. It was something that had defined the last thirteen years of his life.
Factually speaking, a quirkless body couldn’t heal that fast, a quirkless body couldn’t pull bones back into place, a quirkless body couldn’t survive that fall. But his body had healed that fast, his body did pull his bones back into place, his body did survive that fall. So, how could he be quirkless?
And if he wasn’t quirkless, what was his quirk?
He had to have a form of a self-regeneration quirk or he would be very dead right now. Right? It had to be, at least, a little bit powerful if it brought him back from near death. But what activated it? Was it because he was near death that it had activated at all? What were the pain flares from before? Were they even significant in the first place?
These were all things he was thinking as he approached the smelly trash beach that no one liked. He scrunched up his nose at the smell but continued onto the sand.
It was kind of sad in retrospect how little the beach was cared for. The only reason the sand could even be seen in some spots is because sometimes people take stuff from it. The water looked like it would be beautiful if it weren’t for all the trash.
Someone should really clean it one day. Maybe the community would get together once it was overwhelmed. They probably wouldn’t, but it was a nice thought.
He took his phone out of his pocket. The screen was shattered but it still turned on. The time read 4:00 on his phone. Given the not complete blackness that it was outside, he was inclined to believe it. He started scrolling through his notifications. He had some messages from the pole dancing group chat about times and meet ups outside of classes. There were also quite a few Herotube notifications about new debuts and fights. He started responding to people on the hero forums, not really paying attention to his surroundings.
So it makes sense that five seconds later he eats sand.
Turns out blindly walking on a beach riddled with trash, not a good idea. Izuku rolled onto his side and sat up by the offending microwave. After inspecting it for exactly five seconds, he found himself with a couple questions.
For one, who throws a perfectly fine microwave on a beach? Did everyone just forget that donating to charities exists? Even if it truly didn’t work, why not just keep it around in case they need a projectile weapon sometime in the near future? It just seems like so much work to lug it all the way to the beach when they can just throw it in the closet like their gay sons.
Maybe he should clean the beach. Does he have time for that? It would be a cheap choice for possibly great materials. It’d be great for his engineering skills to try and fix some of the things that weren’t too banged up. He could probably donate them after that, or just pass them out. Plus, it would be good for the environment.
With that thought, Izuku hurried to stand up and walk in the general direction he’s pretty sure the building from earlier was.
Afterall, he was going to need his “useless” notebook for this (He also had school tomorrow so he needed his bag, but mostly the notebook thing).