Chapter Text
"Ah, yes, isn't Mr. Midoriya also planning to apply for Yuuei?"
The world buzzed like a hive of static hornets, noises ringing ceaselessly in Izuku Midoriya's ears. There was a dissonance between the almost ignorable noise and the flickering colors that infected his retinas. He could vaguely hear loud voices pushing through the static, juxtaposed against the snarling, glaring visage of Katsuki Bakugou. His (friend not a friend not anymore but he's too pathetic to admit it can't even admit he has no friends) classmate was screaming in his face, something coarse and derogatory, which Midoriya didn't even need audio clues to parse out.
"-eally think you could ever be a hero, you fucking Quirkless loser?!" A moment of clarity bled through, and Kacchan's bellows rang unpleasantly in his ears. Izuku remembered after a moment to meet the furious red gaze, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
"I-I... There's n-nothing wrong with trying, right?" His own voice was barely a whimper, strung out and strung up on fraying wires. He knew that he could be heard only because Kacchan willed it. He knew that his words were the wrong ones to say, because explosions crackled in his face and forced him to flinch backwards. He knew that there was no such thing as a right answer when it came to Kacchan, so there was no point in trying to conjure one.
"That's your fucking problem, Deku. You fucking whine about 'trying' and 'doing your best' but you and I both know that you're fucking worthless, with your stupid shit eating smile and your garbage fucking dreams- JUST FUCK OFF ALREADY! I'm the only one in this shitty cesspool of a school that's gonna be a pro, and don't you fucking forget it." Midoriya vaguely noted the spittle that had flecked onto his desk, before twin eruptions rattled the whole thing and sent him shrinking back into his chair.
He said something else, perhaps something agreeable, because Kacchan's face twisted in an unpleasant manner before he stalked back to his seat. The world washed back into static, and Izuku Midoriya resumed staring numbly at his desk, counting the dots of ink that made up the cover of his notebook.
An indeterminate amount of time seamlessly smoothed over him, his crowded thoughts twisting together underneath the cover of static to leave him silent and motionless. He barely succeeded in stifling his unconscious murmurs, his tongue sore from the last time he'd bitten it in an attempt to stem his idiosyncrasy. The blood on his toothbrush was worth not being mocked for thinking out loud.
Lost in thought, he didn't even realize the class had begun emptying until a pair of explosive palms cracked against his desk, violently snapping him into reality. He glanced up with widened eyes, and found a scowl so familiar that it had long been etched onto the insides of his eyelids. "K-Kacchan--"
"Shut the fuck up, Deku." It would have been a venomous hiss, if not for Bakugou's infamous lack of volume control. "And stop calling me that stupid shitty nickname! We're not fucking kids anymore, you fucking quivering idiot! But I guess you didn't get the memo, because you still fucking prance around with fucking," Kacchan's hand darted out to twist in strands of mossy green curls, yanking Midoriya's head up and dragging a pained cry out of his throat, "clips in your hair like a goddamn TODDLER! It's time for your shitty ass to grow the fuck up, DEKU. And the first step.."
Izuku gasped when the burning pressure on his scalp was relieved, slumping back into his chair only for a strangled, half formed plea to escape when those same cruel fingers snatched up his notebook. "K-Kacchan, wait!"
"..Is to give up on your STUPID SHITTY DREAMS!" Sparks burst to life in Bakugou's clenched palm, scorching the notebook in his hand until the cover was curling and the pages were smoking. Izuku stared in something like disbelief, tears welled up in his eyes and tracking down his face in ugly blobs. He was shocked into motion when Kacchan thundered over to the classroom's window, Izuku nearly falling out of his desk in a mad, uncoordinated scramble. "If you really want a quirk so bad," Bakugou snarled, something twisted and almost gleeful in his bared teeth, a vicious mockery of a grin, "then why don't you dive off the fucking roof and look for one in your next life!" With a flick of his wrist the ruined notebook plummeted out the window, landing with an audible splash in the pond beneath it. "Maybe in your next life, you'll be born as someone who isn't shitty and hopeless."
Izuku stood numbly in place, legs frozen in position to send him leaping to save his notebook. Streams of saline trickled down his face, his lips trembling and colorless. He barely reacted when Kacchan brushed past him, rocking in place when a shoulder harshly knocked him out of the way. The slam of the classroom door echoed for a moment, before it was all consumed by static.
But, in the end, it was all okay. Izuku didn't need Kacchan to believe in him. He could endure the abuse, and the mockery, and the battering of his lifelong dreams.
After all, he already knew it was better than what he deserved.
--
Izuku Midoriya had worn the title ''Quirkless' since his preschool days, when no sign of a manifesting Quirk had ever come forth. His mother had taken him to a dozen doctors that had all reached the same conclusion: despite all evidence to the contrary, Izuku Midoriya was truly without a Quirk. He had watched his mother's hopes dim until they barely flickered, until she had taken him in her arms and cried, wishing things could be different.
He too had shed tears during those tumultuous months. But they were for very different reasons. His dream to be a hero, his admiration for All Might- they had all but crumbled when, indeed, his Quirk did manifest. Young as he was, he could not truly formulate the thoughts and words so as to properly describe what his Quirk was; all he knew was that his Quirk was something so horrible, so wretched and evil, that he could never use it again.
Shaken by what he had come to think bitterly of as his 'curse', he had hidden under the guise of Quirklessness, almost relieved to be absolved of the terror that slept under his skin. He had, at some points, attempted to learn about his power. He'd tested it under cover of dark and obscurity, where he was sure nothing would be damaged by it. Unfortunately, the damage to himself was harder to avoid.
Nobody ever really questioned why he wore long sleeves and full pants year round, or why he constantly had colorful clips haphazardly stuck in his hair. It was simply chalked up to his abnormalities, filed away with his quivering grins and straying attention. He was simply the Quirkless weirdo loser, and that was easy enough to be. It was easier than acknowledging the crisscrossing latticework of scars underneath his clothing. It was easier than revealing why his presence made others uncomfortable, why everything about him felt dimmer and gloomier, a penumbra of hopelessness eclipsing the world in proximity.
It was so much easier to dismiss his gaudy, childish accessories as strangeness than a last ditch effort to keep all his color from leeching away, and tearing the barely functional smile from his face. It was easier to see Kacchan's face twisted in rage and awash with fury, than to see it pale and drawn and lined with fear.
But nothing had ever totally snuffed out the flame of his longing to help others; nothing could be more noble than saving people from harm, saving them from fear. He spent as many moments of lucidity as he could studying heroes, their Quirks and personalities and fighting styles and weaknesses and relationships with one another. He knew it would be next to impossible to be a hero without using his own power, which was why he had to know anything and everything there was that could give him even the slightest leg up.
And perhaps, if he managed to stand on his own two feet among the brilliant, shining light of heroes, it would chase away the roiling darkness that constricted him from the inside out.
--
"--ust a little more time, a few months and I can apply and I can--everything will be better, it'll be better, I won't let Kacchan ruin everything, I just have to--" Izuku's distorted thought process leaked from between his teeth, surface level thoughts surrounding him in a cloud as he attempted to work through the ones stewing deeper within. His ruined notebook was clutched in one hand, pages still damp from when he'd fished it out of the pond. It was... salvageable, he lied to himself, too weak to simply throw it away and start it from scratch.
The steady vibration of his own voice was grounding in a way that the distant sunshine and sound of cicadas never could be, which made it so much harder when he attempted to quell the nervous habit. He was quickly running out of things to cling to when his thoughts turned to static, leaving him numb and unaware of what happened around him. It was only the sound of his own voice that kept him in the moment, bouncing off the cement tunnel that surrounded him.
But then another voice joined it, one that sent an icy shiver down his spine. "Ooh, now that's a pretty handy vessel you got there, kid! Say, why don't you keep those gums flappin' and make things easier on me? I promise to make it quick!" Izuku had only a split second to look up before his entire world turned cloudy and green, a deathly chill permeating his clothes and crushing him inwards. His scream was muffled by fluids that rushed down his esophagus and through his nostrils, steadily forcing the oxygen from his thrashing body.
He was dying, he was dying he was going to die a villain had him, a villain that was choking him and he couldn't draw breath, fluids filling his lungs and everything tingled and ached, his vision darkening as panic wailed in his mind, he was going to die he was gonna DIE he had to had to had to had to-
"What the hell--" The villain's incredulous question swiftly bled into a warbling scream of agony, his liquid form vibrating wildly as the silhouette of Izuku Midoriya ballooned outwards, all humanoid features swallowed up by hard angles and bloated, twisted appendages. It thrashed and clawed apart the liquid prison encasing it, rending the villain to pieces even as he howled senselessly. Something dark was birthed in the air, a thousand screaming voices blended together into the cacophony of death. Their wailing song filled the entire tunnel, shook every molecule, permeated every crack of existence with despair and terror. The criminal had one last moment of clarity before his form exploded into steaming chunks of coagulating sludge, his eyes popping and sizzling like overcooked sausages and his brain shriveling into a smoking lump.
And Izuku Midoriya was left kneeling on the soaked concrete, his chest and abdomen heaving as he spat up mouthfuls of fluid mixed with his own bile. His hands trembled as he scraped his nails desperately against the concrete, frantic for something to pull him back into himself. His head rang like a fleet of gongs, a thousand thoughts shrieking through his head, thoughts of horror and regret and disgust and self loathing because he'd done it again, he'd hurt someone else he'd become something HORRIBLE--
"DO NOT FEAR, CITIZEN. FOR I, AM HE--" A thunderous declaration, ringing with confidence and charisma, came to a halt so abrupt that the aborted effort was left to ring off the tunnel walls. A monolithic form clad in a spandex uniform of bright, primary colors peered down the tunnel, a chiseled, grinning face quickly lining itself with concern upon spotting the splattered villain and the middle-schooler knelt among the remains. All Might swiftly compartmentalized the gruesome lumps of fried organ tissue, and directed his laser focus to the trembling youth. "Young man, fear not! You are safe now!"
Izuku's head snapped up in disbelief, wide, glassy green eyes widening painfully upon the sight of the Number One hero, in the flesh. In any other situation, his elation would have nearly torn him in half. But all he could feel was fear and panic, had he seen had All Might seen what he'd become, seen his shame his curse his sin- His brain finally caught on the words spoken to him, and he managed to gasp out a reply around the urge to continue vomiting. "I-I-I-I didn't--All Might--I-I I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm s-sorry I didn't mean to--I didn't mean to I didn't mean to I'm s-s-sorry I--"
All Might closed the distance in the blink of an eye, laying a gentle gloved hand on Midoriya's violently trembling shoulders. "Calm down, young man, it's alright. You are safe now." His mind blanked on finding more comforting words, his deeply set gaze lingering to the surely deceased remains of the villain he'd been hunting before he returned it to the hysterically sobbing boy in front of him. He settled a steady grip on the boy's shoulder, hyper aware of his swiftly dwindling time limit. "It's alright, young man, I know you must be unsettled but I promise everything is okay."
"I-I killed him," Izuku choked out, his haunted tone pulled down by a thousand barbed hooks. His voice rang weakly down the tunnel, an echo of his crushing misery, an inverse of the screaming hatred that had previously swelled within. He could not see through his veil of tears, could barely feel the grip of gloved fingers around his shoulder, kept grounded only by his broken apologies as the world was washed in static.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--"