Chapter Text
One of his teachers way back when had once told him there was no such thing as bad luck, of getting the short end of the stick. Maybe at one time, he’d bought into that. “There is no such thing as bad luck, just a bad day. It all ends eventually!” his teacher had told the class enthusiastically.
What a load of shit. All Izuku had was bad luck. And no, it never ended. It was a continuing cycle, and it had started the day he got his quirk.
Izuku opened his eyes and was unsurprised to find himself in his cell. His room , as Shigaraki called it. The teen liked to wake up with a sliver of hope on occasion. One day, maybe he’d wake up and not be held by the League.
Like he said, short stick.
He’d been there for a while—in the League’s clutches—but his journey to that point had started long before he’d unfortunately met the volatile guy who led the new villain group.
If only he’d been more careful when he was younger. If only he or his mother had known how terrible it was to be able to heal. And yeah, he knew how that sounded. He knew how terrible it was to wish he couldn’t fix what was broken. But it had only brought him more issues than it had solutions. He liked his quirk, but he recognized there were a few…downsides.
He hadn’t been shy about using his quirk when he’d first discovered it. He was noticed pretty quickly, especially when he’d been a passionate six-year-old who only wanted to prove that he was useful, shouting to the world that he would be the best healer there was. How stupid could he have been? His classmates had loved his quirk and never failed to spread the word around like candy. As a kid, he’d revelled in the attention. For one blissful time in his life, he’d been on top of the world. Untouchable with a perfect future ahead.
The Midoriyas had been so naive. They hadn’t expected the worst to come and destroy their lives. They hadn’t thought anything negative could come from a healing quirk. How could such a quirk end in bloodshed?
They had been so, so wrong.
When Izuku was seven, a group of men broke into their apartment and held them hostage. He guessed that was the right way to put it, though they hadn’t been held for long. As soon as they’d confirmed Izuku did indeed have a healing quirk, the men killed his mom and knocked him out.
To that day, he’d never forgotten the look in his mom’s eyes, the sound her body made against the floor. There were some things not even time could erase.
He didn’t know what the group of villains who had first kidnapped him were called. It didn’t really matter. Since he was seven, he had been passed around to whatever villains could get ahold of him, stealing him from each other like a game of capture the flag. News spread fast in the Underground. He’d been told the Underground was buzzing with the knowledge that a healer was out there, simply waiting for the taking. Since that knowledge was spread, Izuku was considered a hot commodity.
Each time he was kidnapped, pulled into the circle of a new villain or criminal organization, he was considered an asset. That was, after he was broken in. Once he was trained, once he learned what he could and couldn’t do, when he learned the consequences of his stubborn and insolent actions, they used him however they saw fit.
He’d fought much harder at first. When he was younger, he’d tried escaping at every chance. He’d refused to use his quirk. He would try to fight his captors. But after a while, after years and years and years, it became easier to give in almost immediately. It was easier than enduring whatever torture they wanted to put him through. After all, the end result was the same, so why not cut to the chase? Though even when he didn’t fight, a lot of them still liked to make sure he was aware of what they could do to him if he did decide to rebel.
There were some ways he managed to stay safe, or as safe as he could be. No one but him knew what his quirk truly did. He’d been smart enough to hide it, and since then, he’d continued to hide it. All the villains knew was that he could heal. All they knew was that he would become incapacitated if they pushed him to heal more than a few people at a time. They also thought his quirk relied on physical touch, as most healing quirks did. He hadn’t told them that; it was something they assumed, and he hadn’t corrected them.
The truth was his quirk was possibly one of the most powerful healing quirks in the world. Not that he really knew what healing quirks were out there—he wasn’t given any information and certainly wasn’t allowed to do any research. It was a guess, really. His quirk allowed him to heal anyone nearby without touching them. It wasn’t an instantaneous healing, though it did speed up the process extremely quickly and typically healed minor to moderate injuries in one session, as long as he was actively using his quirk. He’d played around with it a few times and knew he could control the healing speed. Not that he healed the villains quickly. It was a small action fueled by spite, but no one really knew about it but him.
His healing also didn’t take away energy from the person he was using it on, but if he healed them too quickly, it often overwhelmed their brain and they tended to pass out. However, that wasn’t to say his quirk didn’t have any side effects. It did, but it was he who paid the price. He didn’t know why, exactly, but whenever he healed someone, he experienced a sort of euphoric feeling. Probably some sort of chemical imbalance, if he were to guess. The more he used his quirk, the more that feeling grew. When he used his quirk on a few people, all he felt was…good. There wasn’t really a better way to describe it. He felt happy and at peace. However, if he pushed himself and used his quirk on more than a few people—another reason he had lied to the villains and continued to lie to them about his capabilities—it was as if he were high. It came on slowly, but it had ended up causing hallucinations, brain fog, and a frantic delirium that endangered everyone, including himself.
It had only happened a few times, mostly while he was alone and testing out the limits of his quirk in secret. During those few times, he sort of remembered what he had done, how it felt, but…there was a fogginess to the memories that he didn’t particularly like. He assumed that if he used it for too long, his quirk could potentially cause him to go insane. That was ignoring the physical side effects. Increased heart rate, hyperventilating, and an increase to his body temperature, among other things. As he had said, nothing good.
So, he lied, limiting what he was forced to do so he could stay of sound mind.
Izuku had been told what his quirk looked like by a villain years ago. While healing, he was able to see golden threads spreading out from him, almost like a spider weaving a web. What he couldn’t see were his eyes. When he activated his quirk, the same gold of the threads around him illuminated his eyes. It unnerved some people. Most, actually. As soon as he’d found that out, he’d begun using it to his advantage.
He sat up, pushing his back against the cold wall. Home sweet home. What a joke. He’d been with the League for the past six months, enough time to hate their guts. All of them, but especially Shigaraki. The ass hat only served to piss him off. The two butted heads daily. At first, Izuku had refused to heal him. That hadn’t ended well. Now, he healed him as slowly as he could, going as far as pressing his hands into whatever injury the villain had gained just to make it hurt worse. It wasn’t much, but it was all he could do.
Stretching, Izuku knew that day was going to be a rough one. He could feel the simmering anger just below the surface, waiting for something to cast out a spark and turn it into an inferno. That was another thing he’d noticed the last few years. He’d begun going through phases, like every kid turning into a teenager did. Though, his were much more volatile. His environment didn’t help. There were times he was stubborn and a royal pain in the ass, making everyone around him curse at his existence. Sometimes he couldn’t help but cry at every little inconvenience or pain. Sometimes he became despondent to the point of nearly starving himself, all because the thought of moving or having a single coherent thought was too much. Then there were times when he became angry. Not a typical anger that made someone stomp their feet and curl their fists. No, his anger was the kind that you could feel, that made the temperature in the room rise and dreaded the moment it exploded. The ones who kidnapped him had no idea which Izuku they were getting, or how long those phases lasted. He didn’t know either. Their solution was usually pain. Sometimes that snapped him out of it.
That day, he anticipated the beginnings of that kind of anger. It was its own sort of relief, though he knew clashing with Shigaraki was going to be messy. The guy couldn’t kill him, but he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him.
Along with the anger was that itching in the back of his mind, the kind that set him on edge and made his muscles tense. It didn’t happen often, but he hadn’t experienced that feeling for the past year or so. He was long overdue, in his opinion. That feeling made him want to run. It made him start planning an escape, which he would attempt to execute and likely fail. It had never ended in success, and he didn’t anticipate his next attempt to be any different.
Once, he’d managed to get out to the street. Once. He remembered it well. He also remembered waking up after a week because they’d beaten him so badly.
Eventually, a man Izuku knew as Dabi opened his door and grunted for him to follow. Izuku got to his feet slowly and walked out into the hall. “Shigaraki or the Doctor?” Izuku asked.
Dabi glanced over at him, towering over the younger teen. Izuku had experienced a growth spurt within the last year, but he wasn’t near Dabi’s height. “The Doctor.” That was it, that was all he supplied. Izuku huffed a sigh. He didn’t know why he expected Dabi to be anything but what he’d been the entire time Izuku had known him. Aloof. Disgruntled. Kind of terrible to look at.
It wasn’t anything new for him to go help the Doctor whenever there were no League members in need of healing. Izuku would rather heal them than go to the Doctor’s lab, but he didn’t have a choice in the matter.
The Doctor was a sick man. Izuku didn’t know his true name, only his alias. The Doctor. What a dumbass title. But despite that, the man was an evil genius. He made leaps and bounds in medicine and was willing to do what no one else was. Izuku wasn’t praising him, but he recognized the facts.
The nomu themselves were medical mysteries. Izuku had been by the man’s side during the first few weeks he’d been there, healing those awful creatures after whatever surgeries the Doctor performed on them. He tried to block them out of his memory. Since then, the Doctor had moved on to a different project. Sort of. Before, he’d been using the bodies and genes of several people to create nomus. Now, he wanted to take it one step further and isolate the quirk of a person and create a single body with multiple abilities. The perfect weapon.
He hadn’t succeeded in the least, but he continued to try. Izuku hated him for it.
Down they went, aiming for the basement. Dabi didn’t go into the lab, halting at the bottom of the stairs. “He’s waiting for you,” the fire user said before turning and walking away. Izuku sighed and continued his trek into the lab.
The lab always smelled of antiseptic and blood. It was a horrible mix. As Izuku walked in, he easily spotted the Doctor and his current victims. Two men. Two women. When they’d first arrived, they hadn’t had any visible signs of quirks. Now, though, they all had some sort of mutation the Doctor had forced upon them. All surgical, of course. Izuku had been there during the surgery, healing them as the man worked. The woman closest to him had lizard skin from her elbows down with larger-than-normal hands that ended in wickedly long and sharp claws. She’d had beautiful hands when Izuku first saw her.
He tried not to look at them for long. He was just as stuck as they were, even if he wasn’t strapped down to a lab table or chained to the wall.
“Ah, Izuku! Great, now we can start.” The Doctor clapped once, excitedly, and moved around the lab table with one of the men currently lying atop its sterile surface. He was thankfully unconscious, a mask pressed over his face as it fed him oxygen and kept him sedated.
That single clap set Izuku on edge. He clenched his fists and willed away the walls of rage pressing in around him. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice. He readied his tools and instructed Izuku to heal the man as he worked. “We’re moving on to stage two today. Isn’t it exciting?” the Doctor asked.
Izuku glared at him. “Oh yeah, torturing people is thrilling.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. This isn’t torture. I’m making them better. Without my help, they would be nothing but cogs in a machine until the day they died. Before, they were expendable. Now, they’re invaluable.”
He was a sick bastard and deserved to die. Izuku eyed the scalpel in his hand.
Izuku couldn’t look at the man as the Doctor began cutting into him. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and angled himself toward the other wall. It was all he could do not to run away at the sound of whatever the hell the Doctor was doing. He slowly healed the man, but not even that small rush of warmth from his quirk could still his fried nerves.
Unfortunately for everyone, Izuku was one wrong move away from snapping. With his eyes away from the table, he naturally ended up facing the other victims. The man and one of the women were unconscious from whatever the Doctor had been doing to them. But one woman was groggily awake, and of course her eyes found Izuku.
For one moment, there was a silent connection between them. Then her face changed.
“Help me, please.” Her voice was soft at first, slow and hardly audible to Izuku across the room. “Please, stop this.”
He gritted his teeth, clenching his jaw tightly. He couldn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. His lack of response only seemed to give her more energy. “You have to help us. Please! Stop him!”
There was a buzzing under his skin. The golden threads coming out of him and touching the man he was healing began to twitch. “Stop it,” he whispered under his breath. “I don’t have a choice.”
The woman sobbed miserably. Her chin hit her chest and she heaved a few more breaths before looking up at him again. Tears streamed down her face, and in that moment Izuku could tell something had changed inside of her. Something had snapped.
He knew that look. He wore it occasionally. She’d lost all hope.
“Kill us. Please. End this.” She began repeating herself, again and again until her voice was piercing. The Doctor was still working, but he was muttering about distractions. “Kill us! Please, kill me!” She was shouting now, struggling against the chains.
It was too much. The threads around him twitched angrily, jerking rapidly. It was too much. She was too loud, too aggressive. He was already on edge, but her voice, her begging , was the last straw.
“Be silent!” the Doctor shouted back, slamming his scalpel down on the tray beside him. “I’m working!”
Izuku stumbled away from the man on the table. His hands shook and his breath sawed in and out unevenly. Too much. Too much. Too much . His back hit the wall and he curled his arms around himself. “Stop it. Just shut up.” He closed his eyes and tried to take in a few calming breaths. He couldn’t let that anger out yet. He couldn’t let things spiral. He would be punished for it later. It would only end in pain.
“Kill me!”
“Shut up!” he shouted, eyes snapping open.
Just like that, the wave of rage he’d been holding back was released in an instant. It was a different feeling than when he used his quirk, though it was…nice. No, not nice. It was a relief. Like letting out a breath he’d been holding.
The Doctor was shouting at the woman, gloves bloody, but his words didn’t register in Izuku’s ears. There was a high-pitched ringing that filled his head. Izuku pushed off from the wall and moved without thinking. He grabbed the Doctor’s scalpel and surged forward. He wasn’t under the influence of his quirk, but he felt about as unstable as if he were.
The scalpel cut through the Doctor’s throat quickly. Izuku could only stare at the man as he dropped to his knees, blood spraying with every heartbeat until there was nothing left. The Doctor fell at his feet, blood spreading out in a massive puddle.
There was a golden haze in his vision, and Izuku was aware he had activated his quirk. Those golden threads spread out slowly, floating through the air. The woman went slack against the wall as soon as his quirk touched her. It took hardly a thought for her to collapse against the wall, unconscious.
Izuku didn’t know what made him move, to act in the way he did. Maybe it was the slight high he was feeling, healing everyone in the room with him in an instant. Maybe it was the years and years of wishing and hoping and praying for an escape. He didn’t know, and he likely would never know. With the scalpel still in hand, he went over to the man on the table and quickly cut his throat. The man died without knowing it.
He approached the other three against the wall. One by one, he gave them release, ending their suffering. The woman who had begged him for death was the last, and he crouched in front of her after the deed was done. The scalpel fell to the floor with a clang.
He didn’t know how long he remained crouched there, staring at the woman with wide, glowing eyes. He only looked away when he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, leading to the lab.
Time to get moving. Apparently, he was going to try and escape that day. What could he say, he liked to be spontaneous.
Shigaraki was the first to enter the lab, Dabi, Toga, and Spinner behind him. They all froze as soon as they took in the scene. As they took in Izuku. He took a moment to look down at himself, covered in blood from the Doctor. It did not look good. He was the first to act. His quirk flared. He threw out his hands and speared his quirk straight into the new arrivals.
Something he’d figured out over time was that his quirk didn’t just heal surface wounds. He was able to heal on a molecular level. Every single person had damage inside. Cells were damaged, atrophied, or dying. Every person had internal injuries that were so small they weren’t even aware of them. They weren’t fatal or a hindrance in any way, but they existed. When Izuku healed all of that quickly, it overwhelmed the person he was healing. He saved it for only the most dire circumstances because it took a major toll on him.
Shigaraki collapsed first, smashing his face against the floor. The man didn’t pass out completely, but he wasn’t able to rise. Dabi and Toga passed out behind him, dropping to the floor like bags of rocks. They were both completely unconscious. Spinner held onto consciousness the longest, though in the end, he too was unable to cope with the level of healing Izuku forced onto them.
Izuku let out a small laugh. He was doing it. He was escaping. It was hard to believe he’d made it that far, but he didn’t care to think about it too much. He practically floated across the room. Without realizing it, he’d picked up the scalpel again. “You know, I’ve wanted to kill you since the day I met you,” he said, smiling. “You’ve made my life a living hell. You and everyone like you.” Izuku shrugged. “But I don’t have everyone else. I only have you.”
Shigaraki stared up at him, having rolled over onto his back. He couldn’t manage to rise, eyes half-lidded. He was as weak as a kitten. “You wouldn’t dare. Master will—”
“Kill me? He won’t kill me. He can’t afford to kill me, not with my quirk as valuable as it is.” Another laugh. “In fact, I’m not the one who is expendable. You are .”
Shigaraki cursed at him, trying to reach out and touch him, to use his quirk and disintegrate the healer, but Izuku dodged his hand. Without warning, he drove the scalpel into Shigaraki’s chest. The villain gasped and let out a whine that had Izuku breathing out in joy. He watched the light go out of Shigaraki’s eyes.
Only when he was sure the villain was dead did he get up and stumble out of the lab and up the stairs. No one was around to stop him. Not Kirogiri. Not Master . No one. He made it to the front door of the bar and threw it open. He knew he should have felt regret for killing the Doctor’s victims. Not so much for killing The Doctor or Shigaraki. Maybe his remorse was dulled because of the effects of his quirk, but he didn’t think so. Despite that floating, foggy feeling he was enjoying, he knew killing those people had been a mercy.
It was night outside. He stood there stumped for a moment. He’d thought it was morning, but apparently not. It was cool outside, the street silent. He breathed in the fresh air, relishing in it. It had been so long since he’d been outside. His pale skin was a testament to that. Clearly it had just rained; there were puddles standing in the dips in the road and sidewalks.
“I’m…out?” he whispered to himself, disbelieving. He took hesitant steps into the street, quickly gaining speed. “I’m out. I’m out!”
He made it ten more steps before light flooded the street. He shielded his eyes and stopped. What the—
“Is that him?” a strange voice asked, echoing off the nearby buildings.
“It is.”
Izuku managed to blink away some of the spots the unexpected light had caused, though he could barely make out the silhouettes lining the street in front of him, blocking his way. One man stepped forward, and Izuku latched onto him. He wore a…bird mask? That couldn’t be right.
Izuku slumped his shoulders and ran his hands through his hair. That couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be seeing dozens of people blocking his way, blocking his one path to freedom. “No!” he shouted, swaying. “Not today!”
“Is he…okay?” someone asked. No one answered. Well, if they did, Izuku didn’t hear them.
“He’s the healer we’re here for. Secure him.”
Several people came forward. Izuku sagged where he stood. There were too many people for him to fight, to knock out with his quirk. He would go half-insane by the time they were all out. And he was so tired. So tired of constantly fighting and enduring.
It wasn’t his first kidnapping. It had happened so many times. Whatever villain group was standing there, they were not the first to seek him. Izuku looked to the sky and sighed. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
He didn’t see the man who knocked him out.