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Midoriya Izuku was the sort of person who loved very easily. He had it in spades and dealt it freely, passing affection and wonder and awe to those around him.
In some worlds, such as this, these things are visible, in a way.
Soulmarks aren’t like soulmates. They don’t show a romantic perfect pair in a traditional sense or show two souls fated to be entwined. They’re painted marks where skin brushes skin, where one person loves the other. Sometimes soulmarks are reciprocated, a hug resulting in twin stripes down each person’s back. A handshake with palms painted in rainbows, shoulder and cheek stained as one leans on the other.
Sometimes they aren’t, where someone’s ahead; one person feels faster feels stronger and in a friendly nudge offers some color to the other. Often, in time, that color is exchanged, where both sport splotches of hues. Sometimes the marks are never returned and instead are left to wither away.
Soulmarks show a promise of love and affection, show admiration and emotional bonds. Between family, between partners, between friends. Some people are tapestries of everyone who has ever loved them, some people spread their colors far and wide. Others are pulled in and never let contact be a risk and walk with blank skin. But few people ever have no marks at all.
Midoriya Izuku’s first mark was his mother’s. A ring on his cheek from the first kiss she laid on his cheek as he squalled as a newborn. One might have assumed Midoriya Inko might leave greens of deepest shades, but the kiss on Izuku’s newborn cheek was gold.
When Izuku was one and three quarters he reached out for his mother and left the tiniest handprint in forest green on her wrist as she reached back to him. She started to wear sleeves at three quarter lengths so she could always have it visible.
He received his father’s in a scarlet sort of color, a brush over his cheekbone. He has extended in his mother’s arms and his father reached out to touch his face. Izuku returned that with a splodgy sort of shape around Midoriya Hisashi’s calf as a little toddling child wrapped himself around his father’s leg.
The red leeched from Izuku’s skin overnight as a plane went down over the Pacific Ocean, carrying a businessman to America so he could close an important deal, and negotiate something that would allow him even more leisure time to spend at home with his wife and child. Izuku was too young to feel much of a loss but he remembered his mother’s scream when she had woken and found herself without the scarlet ringing around her hand from where a man had taken her hand and kissed the back of it on their first date. Izuku never really knew what his own red mark had looked like on his own face but he’d seen it in pictures.
As two little wriggling children, Izuku’s and Katsuki’s hands caught and painted one green and the other a fiery orange and the other a peaceful green. Their mothers found them like that, fast asleep and tiny hands still entwined.
Izuku painted those around him with a near reckless sort of abandon, leaving forest green swaths on the people near him without much regret at all. Mitsuki had a mark on her hip when Izuku once tugged on her shirt to ask a question, and Masaru’s knuckles were stained from the time he offered a young child a fist bump. The older lady who stopped by to drop off meals for Inko after the plane went down received marks on her fingers where she’d pinched Izuku’s cheeks. Friends he makes end up with green on their skin and sometimes Izuku ends up with a color or two of his own. Most people who existed near him ended up with color before Izuku learned to temper his heart.
When he grows up he learns about the marks and takes joy in the special thing he shares with his Kacchan and sometimes his best friend lets him line their hands back up and wrap their fingers so the marks perfectly align once more. Not always, but sometimes little splotches smear across his playmates’ arms and hands after playtimes, but never too deep and they don’t always stick around too long. But he has pinks and greens and blues and always his orange hand.
He gets his diagnosis and takes time to notice that people don’t exist in his space anymore, and don't live close enough to touch. No accidental markings from him, he knows to be careful, but now everyone keeps a wide berth. He’s careful not to reach out too much anymore, and hopes his caution will fix the gaps. But no one gets too close.
The tiny marks he trades with his classmates fade one by one until Izuku is left staring at Kacchan’s mark and pressing onto his palm so hard it starts to bruise, always so scared it’ll slip by a shade or weaken to a more watery color than the bold orange. He is old enough to know what they are and what they might mean and even if he isn’t sure why they’re going away he’s much too scared to lose them.
It takes a while, but he does. So slowly at first he never would have known something started until it’s a barely weak yellow halfheartedly staining his hand. He cries, but the forest green still mars Katsuki’s palm. Forest green is always on Katsuki’s palm. Katsuki covers it sometimes or snaps when he sees Izuku staring. Once he tells Izuku to take it back. It never goes away and eventually the other boy seems to stop caring. Izuku certainly never stops caring.
One day Izuku brands himself with bright and vibrant streaks of color, wielding paintbrushes and acrylics and paints to try and return the rainbows that he used to have, paints orange back across his palm and pretends like it never left, that their matching handprints are still always perfectly there. It helps until people laugh at him, when he doesn’t understand why, and he doesn’t know why his teacher scolds him so fiercely and makes him wash all the colors off his arms and hands again. Somehow it hurts more the second time, watching the orange paint flake away in the water stream, even if Izuku doesn’t know really why it left the first time, doesn’t know why he has to get rid of it a second time. He is left blank and bare skin and Izuku doesn’t know why he can’t have colors any more.
He learns more. Understands more but not enough to really grasp why.
He learns why no one comes close enough to risk sharing a mark with the quirkless. He learns to keep his arms tucked tight and shoulders curled and take up as little space as possible. He knows why they won’t come near him, but he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so unloveable, doesn’t know why he is suddenly to be avoided. He wants to be good, he wants to be loved, but no one risks getting close. Bad enough some are still marked by him, they don’t want to risk any affection for him. But he’s not sure why that would be such a bad thing.
He has his mother’s mark and he knows it is always there but he can’t see it without a mirror and sometimes it is hard to remember that he never imagined it at all. Purple forms in rings around it as Izuku applies pressure because at least if it’s sore from bruising he might recall its existence as people jeer and taunt. Maybe it’s nice to have it so visible to everyone else, like proof that someone really can love Izuku, proof that he’s capable of receiving it and that even if he has nothing else, he has that. Maybe it helps that his mother’s golden mark is on his face so no one can ignore it or miss it. But maybe it’s worse that it’s just so easy for Izuku to ignore when he can’t really stand to stare into a mirror and find blankness staring back.
Years pass and Izuku is good, only slipping up once or twice, passing green onto the boy who spoke with him and played games, only to run away laughing when they bump fists. A bet. His green fades quick. Katsuki’s is a branding iron and Izuku stares at his palm and hopes maybe he’s imagining it and the color is surely coming back.
He is good. As much as he can, he is good.
He accidentally leaves a streak of forest green on All Might’s forearm when he takes the hero’s proffered hand to pull himself up after he falls at the beach. All Might doesn’t accept his profuse apologies, but does spend too much time inspecting the color when he doesn’t think Izuku is watching. He says he doesn’t mind but Izuku notices how the hero is always too far to risk contact again.
He is careful as he can be, as admiration grows for his classmates, and he has sung this song before and danced this dance. He knows to be delicate he knows to be careful, he stays curled in on himself and he is small and takes up no space. He won’t risk making these people hate him all over again when it seems like they might be kind.
He knows he is different now, he is quirked and maybe that will change how they feel, but then again it might not and Izuku has spent most of his life being told how unfixably unlovable he is, and these sorts of lessons are more than difficult to forget.
He is good as he can be, but he slips up. His heart is a fickle thing and even if he tries to stay within himself he can’t help but feel his admiration and appreciation and respect for his classmates grow. Even if he stays contained his heart might not, and he messes up.
A flush of gratitude as a girl cheers him on and offers him a helping hand and encouragement, and her fingertips are stained when she passes something to him and their hands brush. He apologizes but she excitedly checks out the mark. Izuku later gets a flush of pink on his forearm when Uraraka gives him a friendly sock in the arm and he has to stare in the mirror to convince himself it’s real. He thanks her and she looks at him weirdly but she doesn’t leave. She laughs and wiggles fingers stained with green and offers to sit by Izuku on the bus.
The USJ and Izuku thinks he might accidentally stain Tsuyu right there and then when she listens to him and supports him. A battle, and Izuku notices the flutter of his green mark through All Might’s ripped jacket.
Katsuki’s green palm stares at Izuku as his friend gives the opening speech for the sports festival. He’s brave and strong and smart and Izuku does not regret the green on his skin but only wishes the orange could still be on his own. He doesn’t know if he deserves that, but he has his selfish wishes. Of reaching out again, but he worries he’d end up burned.
Izuku leaps through the air with his new quirk burning in his veins as he clashes with Todoroki and he looks at the boy finally looking alive, and he smiles.
When he comes to, there’s a flush of icy blue across his knuckles-and over Todoroki’s eye, painting over his scar, is a bruise of forest green. Izuku apologizes but when Todoroki looks at the mark in the mirror he smiles. It's a faint thing but Izuku doesn't think he could mistake it for anything else.
In an alley and he and Todoroki blaze as they stand up and fight for Iida. Izuku helps his friend back up to stand, grateful Iida hasn’t been killed, and he doesn’t mark him then. Iida is too covered in blood and armor and no skin touches. But later, in the hospital, when Iida’s hands are injured, Izuku carefully tucks his glasses on for him and is rewarded with a navy stain on his fingertips, while two lines of green mark when Iida’s glasses sit.
Izuku counts the marks over and over and over again. Gold and pink and icy blue and navy and there’s so many colors on his skin that he never thought could even be there. So many new people and here is the proof that they care, at least a little. More than he ever could have dreamed of. A dance of color reciprocated on his skin and Izuku wonders if someday he might not mind the colors missing.
Somewhere in another room, a boy’s hand itches and deep green pales ever so slightly.
Izuku stains Kirishima’s knuckles in a fist bump and tries not to wonder if Kirishima’s marks would be close to the red mark he lost so long ago, or even if Kirishima’s colors might be close to Katsuki’s. His hands remain unblemished and blank and Izuku stares at them and tries to decide if he hates them or not.
The general education student whose quirk is so interesting is good to talk to, even if Izuku worries the other boy doesn’t want to be around him. Shinsou keeps his collar high and sleeves neatly buttoned, but one hot day they’re talking and Shinsou has rolled up his sleeves and taken off his jacket and Izuku links their arms without thinking, telling a joke and trying to emphasize the point, but by then Shinsou’s forearm is deep green-but Izuku’s own is lavender.
Izuku leaves green handprints on Kouta’s back and leg as he catches the boy and runs for their lives as Muscular chases. The boy thanks him through thick tears and Izuku’s hands burn.
Aizawa-sensei’s hand is green when he pulls back from adjusting Izuku’s shoulder and Izuku doesn’t have time to apologize as he turns and runs for the woods, runs for Katsuki, just as he always does.
Katsuki disappears through a portal and Izuku reaches with a blank palm and watches Katsuki’s eyes narrow, watches as Katsuki’s eyes disappear. Katsuki’s reaching hand is still green and Izuku reaches desperately to grab it once more, just as they once did as children. But as always, his Kacchan slips away and Izuku is left alone. Always alone, just as always as his Kacchan leaves him.
In a hospital, Izuku agrees to reach and agrees to chase after Katsuki, as he always does, but when Kirishima grips his upper arm to thank him, crimson is left behind from where the other boy held Izuku. He doesn’t know what to think about it and so he doesn’t think about it at all. More important things to think about than Izuku. Izuku presses on his blank palm as purple forms and they run after Katsuki. Running after him, chasing, always and forever. Always for Katsuki.
Later, he’s taking off through the air and Kirishima is calling and Katsuki leaps into the air and catches Kirishima’s hands as they soar over the battlefield, and when they land Izuku can’t help but see that Kirishima’s palm is orange and Katsuki’s is a crimson red. He tries not to think about it too much.
In the hospital waiting for Katsuki to be cleared and Izuku presses fingerprints into his palm and watches as the bruises form in ugly purples and blues and pretends like that could be a mark, too. Green wars between fading and darkening on a blond haired boy’s palm as Izuku paces and his eyes burn as he desperately tries to make up his mind.
His hands burn but then there are more people walking next to him and when he reaches out he stains them, watching those four streaks of green on Yaoyorozu’s bicep after he reached out to thank her for helping him get back to Katsuki, and there’s Kaminari giving him a friendly nudge in the ribs and Kaminari’s elbow is a spotty green. Ashido is there and she passes Izuku a tissue without saying anything and when she pulls back her fingertips are stained and Izuku almost thinks his forest green looks nice with her pink.
His skin is far blanker than the people he watches around him but he has more color than he ever dreamed of having, gold covering his cheekbone, that icy blue over his knuckles, lavender spread wide across his forearm, a circle of bright pink on his arm and navy blue across the tips of his thumbs and index fingers and Izuku prays that they won’t fade from him. He knows they might but he memorized the shape of each and the exact shade, just in case he ever forgets where they were.
On a beach Izuku sees his mentor for the first time and runs to him without thinking, and he is caught up in a hug that he never expected and later when he is changing there are two bright dandelion stripes over his back and he cries when he finds them.
Time passes and he trains, and he still accidentally slips into a comfort, even though he knows he should be careful he has grown too comfortable around his classmates and especially in the new dorms in close quarters, he slips up and his classmates are marred with his green. Tsuyu helps him make dinner and Izuku isn’t looking where he’s going and their shoulders bump and she is stained green there. Tokoyami sits with him and tells Izuku about his ultimate attack ideas and Izuku shares his and when he takes Tokoyami’s notebook from him, Tokoyami has three lines down the back of his hand in green. Dark Shadow passes Izuku a glass of water and their claws take on a tint of their own.
Ojiro spars with Izuku and ends up with a stain on his tail as he demonstrates how he disarms an opponent and Izuku apologizes, but Ojiro insists he likes it. Kouda has a handprint on his shoulder from when Izuku leans around him. Sero’s elbow has a mark wrapping around it when Izuku inspects his arm and asks questions about his quirk.
He accidentally runs into Hagakure once and while he can’t see anything, later in quirk practice, when she refracts light around, the space over her hip is certainly in a green tone.
Aoyama talks with Izuku about their quirks not matching their bodies and how he understands Izuku, and when the conversation is over the blond has a green stain around his forearm. Sato makes cakes and Izuku takes a plate from him and Sato ends up with green smudges on three of his fingers. Jirou’s earjack ends up with a green stain when Izuku bumps into it as she gestures to his notebook and asks a question.
He fights Katsuki and knows how the boy stays in the air, only kicking Izuku to make contact and blasts at him, keeping a distance. The green of his palm is visible before explosions ripple out. Izuku gains nothing that night and Katsuki balls up his fists when their teacher scolds them but Izuku can still see the green there.
Time passes and then there is a little girl that Izuku catches and there is something wrong when she pulls away from him and he can’t help but think a second longer and her arms might have ended up stained.
Toogata lays a comforting hand on Izuku’s shoulder as Izuku confesses his guilt over letting little Eri run away and his palm is green when he pulls away and there is a rust red mark on Izuku’s shoulder.
Running into a raid and his teacher grabs him by the collar to pull him out of the way of danger and it is not until later that Izuku realizes there is a midnight blue stain across his collarbone, three streaks where his teacher’s fingertips graced their way across the skin. They could be bruises but they don’t hurt him.
Then there is a man he is so grateful to for finally getting a chance, a man he’s looked up to for much of his life. For a moment, his hand drops to the wound on Nighteye’s chest and his hand is deep green and Nighteye has green over his heart, but the green on Izuku’s hand is gone by the time he wakes in the hospital and he knows the man is gone. Izuku has only had the mark for a few hours but he desperately misses it when it’s gone.
The man is lowered into the ground and the colors still paint his skin and Izuku wishes he could give something more to the man than just color. That he could have explained how much this had meant to him. But the man is lowered into the ground with Toogata’s rust red and All Might’s dandelion yellow and the light blues and purples and shades of his sidekicks and so many other colors and Izuku’s little forest green handprint, hidden underneath his shirt just as the gaping hole in his torso is obscured.
There is a man so evil, a man who has taken so much from a sweet little girl who continues to steal joy from her life and has stolen her smile, a man who has destroyed so much and hurt so many and who digs his claws into the sweet little girl until she is still so scared to even disobey for a second. There is a man who has stolen the quirk of Izuku’s friend and who has killed a man Izuku looked up to and threatened everyone Izuku cares about, and Izuku paints him red, red, red.
He leapt into the air to fight Overhaul and when he landed Eri’s arms were deep green and there were lines over his chest from where she clung to him. Her quirk does not take those away, never takes them away. Bright red like those lovely eyes and he cries when he sees her smile. She asks him what those colors mean and he is so careful to explain that the green means I love you and the green means she will always be safe and warm and protected if he is there. He tells her that some people have more colors and some people have less, but no matter how many colors you have, you are wanted and you are needed and you will be loved. Colors are promises and some people might try to take them back but Izuku swears he will always keep his promise. Eri looks where Izuku’s green has covered the scars across her arms and looks where her red has painted him and swears she can keep her promises, too.
Toogata kneels beside her and brushes his rust red over her hands as he takes them gently in his own and promises that his red means protection and his red is a promise of happiness and light and laughter. He says that red means smiles and warmth and happy and red means she will always be safe in his arms. He promises that red means I love you, just the same as Izuku’s green, and that his red will never fade. Eri leaves bright red on Toogata’s face when she reaches out to touch it and Toogata thanks her for it.
They tell her that she might get more colors someday, and she will give other people colors, too. But they promise her that no matter how many colors she does or doesn’t get, she will always have theirs and their colors will always be a promise of love. That it doesn’t matter how many you have, whether it’s two or twenty-seven, she will always be loved.
Eri doesn’t quite smile at that, but her eyes are thoughtful and someday she will beam so wide the world will go blind.
And then there’s Izuku, with more colors he could have ever dreamed of, but then there are more. Little moments and brushes and slowly Izuku’s arms come alive as his classmates return the colors he passed to them so carelessly and he stares in the mirror at night when his eyes sting and stares in awe at the rainbow that weaves across his body. More colors than he ever thought possible, all for him.
The colors he gives mean I love you and the green means thank you and I appreciate you and I would die for you and I will protect you and it means don’t leave me don’t please please and thank you for not leaving me yet.
Do the colors on his skin mean I love you, too? Do they return those sentiments and do they want to love Izuku like he loves them? Could he really be so loved? The number of the colors doesn’t matter but having so many is something so unable to be unarticulated.
He spars with Katsuki once, in class, and the other boy doesn’t hold back but he doesn’t go out of his way to hurt Izuku, and Izuku doesn’t hold back either and they fight and fight until Izuku ends up slipping and messing up, ending up on his back.
Before, these sorts of practice fights with Katsuki wouldn’t end here, in the past Katsuki would yell at him to stand up and keep going, or even launch toward Izuku and continue to attack until Izuku gets back up and tries again.
But instead when Izuku catches his breath and when he looks up, Katsuki stands above him, still and contemplative. And then Katsuki reaches out, and extends a hand painted in forest green.
And Izuku takes it with a blank palm, pulling himself back up.
And it is orange that returns to his skin, and Izuku knows his colors are fickle, but he hopes this time it’s here for good.