Chapter Text
At around the same time quirks began to become commonplace, soulbonds appeared.
No one was exactly sure where these soulbonds came from. They simply began to show up, hesitantly at first, but soon enough it became more common to have a soulbond than not.
By the time Midoriya Izuku was born, the amount of soulbonds were beginning to plateau, which, lacking another explanation, most scientists took to mean that everyone who should have a soulbond was finally getting one. And people generally loved them, these external symbols of what their loved ones meant to them.
Soulmarks always took the shape of flowers, blooming beautifully across the skin of an acquaintance, someone you’d met recently but would change your life in a big way. It was a cause for excitement and celebration, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear families throwing parties for newly-found soulmates. (Some people would try to go on a date with their new soulmate, but this wasn’t really common practice, considering the rarity of romantic soulmates and the commonality of platonic ones.)
Midoriya Izuku learned about all this when he was small. He knew that the pretty flowers were on his mommy because there are people who love mommy a lot (those white lilies for daddy, those orange petunias for Auntie Mitsuki.) He once asked his mommy if she could give him flowers (apple blossoms, he'd seen them spread across Auntie Mitsuki's leg when she wore skirts) but Inko simply laughed and shook her head. Don’t be silly, sweetheart, she’d said, giving him a pat on the head. It's not very likely for people who are directly related to give each other soulmarks. Then, she bent down and gave him a boop on the nose. Besides, I don’t need flowers to know how much I love you.
That made Izuku very happy, and he felt very cheered up despite the fact that he didn’t have any soulmarks. His mom said it was rare for people his age to have soulmarks, anyways. She wasn’t expecting him to get a soulmate until he was much older.
She was wrong.
A few weeks later, when Izuku was playing with Kacchan, he felt an odd feeling wash over him. He felt a weird tingling on his chest after Kacchan playfully pushed him over, giggling all the while.
When Izuku looked down, he saw a gathering of orange flowers bloom across the left side of his chest. Meanwhile, fluffy golden flowers sprung alive upon Kacchan’s hand.
“Mommy!” Izuku yelled, running over to her. He pulled up his shirt. “Kacchan gave me flowers! I got flowers from Kacchan!”
“Oh my,” Inko said. “You have a soulmate! I’m so proud of you, baby!” She grabbed him and twirled him in the air. Auntie Mitsuki jumped up from the park bench, having been sitting nearby, looking excited beyond belief. “Hell yeah! Katsuki’s flowers are orange, just like mine! What are those, geraniums?” she asked, looking at the orange flowers on Izuku’s chest.
“They’re impatiens,” Inko said, much more well-versed in flowers than Mistsuki.
“Ha! Amazing,” Mitsuki said.
Kacchan had run over at this point too, his gaze transfixed on his hand.
“And it looks like your kiddo’s got… marigolds, right?” Mitsuki said, glancing at Katsuki’s hand. “This is amazing. I can’t believe you two got soulmarks this early.”
At that, Kacchan puffed out his chest. “Yeah! We’re great!”
Mitsuki barked a laugh.
Kacchan showed off his soulmark to the amazement of everyone else in preschool, and they treated him with even more reverence than they had when he’d initially developed his quirk. A kid with such a powerful quirk, and now such an early soulmate? He must be lucky, and loved by fate.
Izuku, on the other hand, hadn’t developed his quirk yet. Kacchan had been starting to get bored of him, leaving him behind for games in favor of his friends whose quirks could spice up their Heroes and Villains play-pretend, but now that Izuku was his soulmate Kacchan tolerated him much more than he had in a long time.
“I wanna be a hero,” Izuku said.
“Well yeah,” Kacchan said, nodding seriously. “You’re my soulmate, so you’ll have to be good! You can be my sidekick, or something.”
Izuku smiled. Kacchan never said things like that to the other kids.
He was happy. He had a soulmate, and Kacchan was his best friend.
Until, of course, Izuku was diagnosed quirkless.
When he broke the news to his class, Kacchan immediately began to avoid him. He’d tried following him around, of course, because soulmates were supposed to stick together! But Kacchan was angry, and Kacchan didn’t like him being around. A few kids had made fun of Kacchan at first (soulmates with the quirkless kid) but Kacchan had snarled at them and flashed his scary quirk until they backed off. Then, he started wearing his winter gloves at school to hide his marigold soulmark.
That stung Izuku a lot. It wasn’t the fact that he covered his soulmark that bothered him. What hurt was the idea that maybe Kacchan hid his soulmark because he disliked it or thought it was embarrassing. Something deep inside Izuku broke at the idea that Kacchan was ashamed of his soulmark. It represented their relationship, and Izuku's very soul. Was Izuku truly worth so little?
By the time middle school rolled around, Kacchan had gotten fully into the habit of always wearing gloves and long sleeves. No one asked, it was considered rude to, since it was likely he was either hiding scars or soulmarks, both of which were deeply personal and private. That didn’t stop the curiosity, but no one asked.
It had been something of an open secret in elementary school that Izuku and Kacchan were soulmates, but not at Aldera. Here in middle school, no one knew. And Kacchan was determined to keep it that way. Izuku resigned himself to it.
Izuku didn’t find any soulmates in his classmates, although school was often the time when kids made their first soulmates. For soulbonds to form, the person needed to have the potential to have a large positive impact on the other person’s life, and both people needed to have good intentions (or feel at least neutrality) towards the other person.
It was for these reasons that Izuku didn't gain another soulmate.
No one in Izuku’s middle school cared about him enough, they hated him too much. Even if Izuku loved his classmates to death, it wouldn’t matter. Soulmarks were a two-way street, and all of his classmates were too disdainful of him to form a proper soulbond.
(Not to mention all of them refused to touch him, for fear that they would end up being soulmates.)
And it was worse than that. Kacchan had liked him when they were kids, but everything changed once he was diagnosed quirkless. It made Izuku sick to think of it, but if he and Kacchan met right now, they probably wouldn’t have become soulmates. Kacchan’s intentions had soured too much, and he didn’t seem to care about Izuku.
Sometimes, the orange impatiens on his chest burned and ached. He wondered if that was just in his mind, or if the flowers could sense how far their relationship had fallen.
Izuku tolerated day after day of bullying, day after day of torment, day after day of his soulmate rejecting him. He tolerated it, and he kept on going. But today was going horribly. The teacher had told everyone that he was aiming for UA, even though he was quirkless. Kacchan had burned his notebook, and Kacchan…
“You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you… take a swan-dive off the roof, and hope for a quirk in the next life!”
Izuku felt numb.
He walked away from the situation. Idiot… if I’d actually done it he’d be charged with suicide-baiting…
Izuku would never do that, he wasn’t suicidal. But the fact that Kacchan had dared to say it to him, his soulmate…!
Kacchan doesn’t care about me, Izuku thought. It was a harsh, harsh truth, one that Izuku had been avoiding facing for his whole life. Kacchan bullied him. They were barely soulmates. Their flowers were a relic of an older time.
As Izuku bent down to pick up his notebook, which was badly waterlogged at this point, he felt a flash of dark, angry betrayal. Kacchan crossed a line Izuku had never imagined him crossing, and it settled in Izuku’s soul that he may never be able to trust Kacchan again. How could he, if Kacchan didn’t care if he was alive or dead?
Izuku felt a horrible burning in his chest. “Agh!” Izuku cried out as he fell to his knees, taken off-guard by the sudden pain. It hurt horribly, and it was coming from his skin, his-- my soulmark!?
Izuku quickly ripped his shirt up just to see his orange impatiens burning away, becoming nothing more than a black scorch. He cried out in pain and agony, horrified at what was happening to his only soulmark. The soulmark’s not graying out, Izuku thought. Normally, if one’s soulmate was dead, color would drain from the flower and it would become black-and-white. It wasn’t that. In this relationship, the flower itself was burning away. Their relationship was burning away.
Izuku had read about this in books and on websites (when he’d looked up things like what if your soulmate hates you and my soulmate hurts me on the internet) but he’d never imagined it happening to him. Soulmarks were very sturdy. They could survive fights, arguments, decades of estrangement. Most were there for life.
But if there was a deep, deep breach of trust, one that was irreversibly damaging…
Something that completely destroyed the relationship between two people who were fated to be great friends…
They could burn away.
Izuku instinctively knew that this was only in part due to Kacchan’s words. It was the years of bullying that had damaged their relationship to this extent, the suicide-baiting was just the final straw. The last step.
Izuku felt sick. He staggered to his feet, before he was suddenly swamped by some sort of green slime. “A medium-sized invisibility coat!” he heard them say. Izuku thrashed and thrashed, but he couldn’t get free. Just as his vision was going dark…
“I am here!” he heard, just before he was yanked free of the villain.
He got to meet All Might. All Might! But All Might was beginning to rush away, and Izuku needed to ask him whether or not he could be a hero.
Part of Izuku told himself not to try it. If All Might ended up being a disappointment, it would compound with the pain of his lost soulmark and he would probably fall into a very deep grief. Even if All Might said yes, I believe in you, what would have been an excellent experience would be tarnished by happening just after losing the soulmark.
But when else was he going to see All Might?!
Izuku latched onto All Might’s leg.
All Might had told him he couldn’t be a hero. Izuku had been expecting it, in the back of his mind, but he still felt crushed. He felt empty, bereft of his connection to Kacchan and hopeless without his dreams. He wandered home, wondering if he’d ever become soulmates with anyone ever again. Who would ever want to be soulmate to a quirkless Deku? The only soulmate he had rejected him so badly that their soulmark was destroyed. Even if Kacchan ended up becoming his friend again, things would never be the same. The soulmark was proof of that.
On his way back home, he heard explosions. Kacchan’s explosions. He was tempted to ignore them, but if Kacchan was using his quirk in public… something must be wrong.
Izuku turned toward the explosions and went to see what was going on.
When he saw Kacchan being attacked by the same villain who attacked him, he had to step in. Even if his ex-soulmate didn’t respect him anymore… even if their trust was broken… he never wanted Kacchan dead. Even if Kacchan didn't care about him, he still cared about Kacchan.
He ran forward, and threw his backpack at the monster.
After All Might had saved them both, Izuku began to stumble home, intent on licking his wounds. That’s when Kacchan ran up behind him. At first, Izuku expected him to make a comment about Izuku’s reckless rescue attempt, but Kacchan didn’t. He simply stared at Izuku for a few moments, face heavily conflicted, before simply saying, “What’d you do.”
“What do you mean?” Izuku said, though he knew what Kacchan was talking about. Even as they spoke, Izuku could see a minor burn poking out the edge of Kacchan’s gloves, where his marigolds had once been.
“Deku! What the hell did you do to the soulmark?!” Kacchan barked.
“I didn’t do anything,” Izuku protested.
“Well then why-- ?”
“Shut up! You’re the one that broke it!” Izuku yelled, a shred of anger escaping him.
There was a long silence between them.
“... Tch. Watch what you say, idiot,” Kacchan said, but there was little heat behind his words, and his eyes were swirling with regret and pain. “And I didn’t need your help,” Kacchan said, before he turned around and quickly walked away.
Izuku, even more tired than before, continued moving forward, only to be stopped by All Might, who proceeded to tell him that he could become a hero.
All Might says I can become a hero!
He was going to give Izuku his quirk! And with it, he could become a hero.
All Might was amazing.
Such sudden, overwhelming joy only a short time after crushing despair made Izuku’s eyes tear up (he probably would have cried anyway) and he laughed with joy. All Might reached out a hand to him, and Izuku took it to pull himself up from the ground.
That’s when he felt the feeling.
A tingling sensation, strange but warm. The last time it’d happened he’d been four, but it was something he would remember no matter what.
Izuku watched as orange-and-yellow marigolds wrapped around All Might’s upper arm like a ribbon, while he felt tingling mostly on his shoulder. Izuku pulled down the collar of his shirt just to see golden daffodils spread across the skin of his shoulder.
Daffodils. They stand for joy, strength, resilience and new beginnings.
My soulmark with Kacchan is gone, but now I have one with All Might--?!
Midoriya was in awe. And, glancing up, he saw that All Might was as well.