Title: Refraction
Pairing: N/A, gen.
Summary: Midoriya Izuku is fourteen and quirkless. Strange and quirkless, carrying an empty glass bottle and a set of hand-held mirrors.
He knows things. Midoriya seems to attract chaos, and he always seems to be found tangled up in some event or another.
But, the boy can see the future, so is it really any surprise?
Based on a prompt, link to it is on my ao3 page. I tweaked it a little bit to make it easier on myself, but, I honestly couldn't resist. Izuku just seemed kind of perfect for this.
Anyway, enjoy!
"Miss, there's construction work being done ahead! They've got the whole area blocked off, you can't go that way." informs a boy with curled green hair. He has a rather short stature, and coupled with an All Might shirt that's just a size too big and a bandage plastered over one cheek. The child appears rather plain and forgettable.
The woman whom the statement was directed toward blinks in confusion. "There couldn't be!" she says, "I thought they finished that up last month!"
The boy nods, looking sympathetic but ultimately resigned to the whims of the urban world. "It's construction, what can you do?"
The woman sighs, clearly irritated. "Jeez, I'll be late to work now!"
"Um, well," begins the boy, "If you turn right at the corner and go straight until you're at the next stoplight, you can circumvent the whole thing. It's not too much faster than it would be if you went straight, but it's better than nothing, right?" the child's eyes are widen, reflecting nothing but a want to help her out.
"Thank you, young man. I'll do that. You've been a great help, but I really must be off!" the woman says, grateful for the alternative route.
The green-haired child blushes bright red, smiling warmly at her, his face bright with pleasure. "A-a… it's no problem! Have a good day!" he chirps.
The woman smiles at him and walks away.
Izuku lied. There was no construction up ahead. Instead, for that woman, there was only a drunk driver and a painful end.
His smile drops, though Izuku's face still seems a bit flushed. Compliments always took him by surprise, people usually didn't take too well to his attempts to help.
He uncurls his hand, revealing a small mirror clenched in the palm of his hand. Izuku flicks the reflective object open, peering into his own solemn reflection. "I just hope it's enough." Izuku whispers, the words blown away with the wind brushing his clothes, trying to cajole him into following its lead.
Izuku sneaks a final glance back at the woman's receding form, turns around, and heads back home.
The future was never set in stone. Izuku knows this like the back of his hand and better than the heroes he so adores. He knows this better than All Might's smile or his hero merchandise.
It's not hard to see why, seeing as Izuku's been derailing fates and futures since he was seven. He's not sure if some omnipotent being will be angry at him for interfering with the so-called "natural order", but as long as Izuku can help people, he's not sure he even cares.
Izuku is five and quirkless. It's official that he has no special ability, no biological individuality to show his classmates, who've all gained their quirks by this point.
The doctor says Izuku is quirkless, and that quirkless is all Izuku will ever be.
So the images he's seeing in this glass bottle, shattered and discarded in the grass, must be something else. He doesn't recognize the person in the reflection, and a quick look at his surroundings shows no one with the face in the bottle, even though the park is where the person seems to be.
The reflected person is sitting on a park bench, feeding the local birds. They look at peace, simply enjoying the moment and the presence of the birds. One bird, a crow, is sat on the side-railing of the bench, while another sits directly on the person's lap, eating bird-feed out of their hand.
Suddenly, a figure streaks by, startling the birds into flight as it snatches the person's bag, before high-tailing it away. The person gives chase, and suddenly, Izuku is staring back into his own reflection.
The child blinks, a bit disappointed that it cut out before he could see it's conclusion, but he felt mostly confused. Izuku knew that glass reflected, it showed what looked into it, but other than Izuku, there was no one nearby.
(Izuku plays alone, now. Attempting to play with Kacchan usually only earns him violent retaliation.)
Frowning, Izuku carefully picked up the bottle shard, careful of its jagged edges. It didn't seem like it was going to reveal anything else to him, and was tempted to drop it and leave, but something stopped him.
Maybe the object was magic? Why magic would be in a broken beer bottle is lost to him, but Izuku's not magic, so what would he know. It could also be a sort of someone's quirk, but… no one was around, and Izuku didn't know exactly how long the bottle had been there, but it seemed long enough that any quirk's effect would've worn off.
Instead, impulsively, Izuku slips the shard into his pocket.
Izuku soon discards the bottle shard, because Izuku's finding that those flashes of people there-yet-not don't only appear on the shard, but on glass cups, small mirrors, and other small, reflective surfaces.
He sees these images almost everyday. There's no rhyme or reason to them, and they never appear on the same surface. Sometimes, Izuku only catches the tail end of them, and sometimes, particularly in the mornings, Izuku watches his reflection warp and change into something else.
His mother doesn't seem to see them, either, as when the reflection on her cup shifts into a ball being kicked through a window, she shows no reaction, simply lifting the glass to her lips like nothing is there.
The more Izuku learns about this phenomenon, the more quirk-like it becomes. Except, Izuku has the extra toe joint, leaving him quirkless.
So it can't be a quirk, or at least, not Izuku's quirk. But, somehow, Izuku gets the feeling that the ability is his anyway. That's why he's written it into his quirk notebook, in the place where Izuku's quirk information would have gone.
His writing is, of course, childish, and it's a bit hard to read, but he feels the need to record it, anyway. He tells no one, keeping it his own little secret.
It's a secret he keeps until it's his mother that Izuku sees in a soda glass.
He's never seen glimpses of anyone he knew before, but the image conjured is definitely his mother. She's standing at the top of a staircase, presumably the one in their apartment complex. All she does, at first, is begin to descend the stairs. It's… a whole lot of nothing.
And then it isn't, because his Mom trips and falls down those stairs, searing an image of her mangled leg into his eyes. The pain has her crying, tears dripping down her face as she grips her broken leg.
It makes Izuku cry out in shock, backing away from the glass. His hands fly to cover his eyes, as if to shield him from what he's just saw.
Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and Izuku furiously rubs at his eyes.
He… needs to tell his Mom about this. She'd know what to do. It's never shown anyone getting hurt before, only inconvenienced or living through an experience…
Izuku, shaking like a leaf, pulls himself up from his chair. "Mama!" Izuku calls, stepping out from the kitchen and into the rest of the house, fully intending to search for her.
He doesn't have to, because she appears in the doorway only a second later, "I'm coming, Izuku! Are you alright?" she says, leaning down to pat his cheeks once.
Izuku twists his hands together, looking disturbed. "I-I um. Mama, don't take the stairs! You're gonna get hurt, I've se-" a stab of pain, like a thousand needles being poked directly into his eyes, cuts Izuku's warning off.
It burns, burns in a way that Izuku can't rub away. Izuku whimpers, pressing his palms into his eyes, hoping to alleviate the pain.
It does nothing, and Izuku whimpers in pain, unable to focus on his mother's panicked questions. The fire spreads from his eyes to his head and all at once it's too much-
Izuku faints.
It took a week for his eyes to heal, for the photophobia to recede and Izuku's vision to come back. His mother had rushed him to the hospital after Izuku passed out, blubbering and in tears, begging the doctors to fix her son.
However, there was nothing to be done. There was no reason or symptoms or diagnosis they could give; the fainting spell and the photophobia afterwards had no cause, no correlation. So, the doctors simply scratched their head, bandaged Izuku's to protect them from any further damage, and sent the pair home.
Izuku didn't go back to school until his vision came back, and by then he knew not to talk to people about it, because why else would his eyes hurt like that?
His mom broke her leg that week, she took a tumble down a flight of stairs.
And Izuku had done nothing to stop it.
It wouldn't happen again, he wouldn't let it. Because Izuku knew now: those glimpses in the glass were the future. Not his future, but warnings of someone else's future.
Izuku was quirkless. Izuku was friendless and quirkless and so small. But he could see the future, even if he couldn't tell people about it.
All Might wouldn't let people get hurt if he could see the future, so Izuku could at least try, right?
Izuku grows up in a constant state of searching. His focus gradually shifts from heroism and Kacchan to 'Will I find them in time?'. He grows up with bottles in hand and a notebook in his pocket, small and compact and filled with the contents of so-and-so's prophesied future. After seeing so many different glimpses into the future, Izuku's started to write them down in hopes of remembering the most he could.
Knowing the weather of the warped reflections could be the difference between whether someone lives or dies, after all.
Izuku comes to know the city by heart, his searches taking him down sprawling alleys and helping him discover places he would've otherwise never known; learning the layout and marking the assorted shops and businesses of Mustafu into his brain in order to better understand where things might happen.
He doesn't always make it, and the bandaids and Neosporin don't always fix up an injured person. Sometimes, Izuku arrives just to see the cars collide, or a villain kill the girl he's been looking for for weeks.
Izuku is not always enough, but he tries anyway, he spends most of his time on the hunt, attempting to thwart the worst and most violent futures from occurring. It's never his future, though. Izuku cannot tell when Kacchan will want to rough him up, or when the class will be given the opportunity to mock him.
Izuku frightens his mother more often than not with how late he comes home, appearing in the doorway bruised and battered. Sometimes, he doesn't come home at all, and Izuku's mom finds him in the hospital for attempting to prevent someone or another's imminent injury.
Usually, the premonitions are limited to Izuku's local area, but rarely, Izuku peers into one of his mirrors to see events happening in dark rooms, or in places that aren't even in Japan.
For those people, there is nothing he can do - not without breaking several laws that'd only end up with him serving prison time. So, Izuku sticks to what he knows, and staunches the prickle of guilt guilt guilt that simmers under his skin.
He doesn't go to school, sometimes. What he sees is time sensitive, and how could he live with himself if someone died while Izuku just sat in class, if Izuku didn't even try?
(It'd be torrents of pain and burning eyes, only to end with mangled bodies and all his fault-)
Izuku has to try. He'll skip school, survive being bruised and injured beyond bandaids, if that's what it takes to help. To save.
Izuku has always wanted to be a hero.
It's Kacchan being shown in the bottles today. A jolt of icy terror bolts through Izuku, but his eyes stay glued to what's being displayed. (Only to him, only to him, never tell…)
In the image, faded and wavering at the edges, Izuku finds amorphous sludge. He sees writhing muck, and breathless lungs, and Kacchan.
The dread that had already taken root in his lungs turned to stone, and the sight Kacchan's desperate, teary eyes knocked the breath out of his lungs. He's in danger.
Izuku hates these prophecies. Izuku hates the ones where villains are involved. Izuku is still quirkless, despite his knowledge. He doesn't know how to fight, to hit hard and snap bones like twigs. It leaves Izuku pale and withdrawn, shaking like a leaf, and yet still willing to give it his all, anyway.
He has to attempt, to make an effort, to assuage the guilt that threatens to drown him, the weight of failure. The weight that clings to his shoulders and fills his dreams with faces of those Izuku failed. Fat, frightened tears trickle down Izuku's cheeks. The boy shudders, attempting to wrangle his breathing back under control.
"Think," Izuku hisses, commanding himself to pull it together, "I don't have time for this! What can I pull from that…?"
Izuku leans down, picking up his notebook from where it fell from slackened hands. The boy clears his throat, wipes his years on his sleeve, and flips to a fresh page. His fingers are shaking, and he's more rough with the items pages than he normally would be, but all of that takes a backseat to desperately analysing the scene for clues. When it's happening, where it's happening, how can Izuku get there?
'It's been raining recently. There were no rain puddles on the ground and the sun was out... ' he pulls out his phone, unlocking it and pulling up the weather forecast for the week.
'The rains not supposed to clear up for two days. I have at least two days. There weren't any rain puddles that I could see… it was near a residential area too, I think?'
Izuku continues his frenzied planning until he's too exhausted to do more than slip into bed, bottles and mirrors strewn on the nightstand next to his bed, promising himself to keep an eye on Bakugou for the next few days.
Izuku is good at a lot of things, but avoiding Bakugou's attention is not one of them. The other always seems to pinpoint when Izuku is around, and after that it's only a matter of time until Izuku is caught.
Izuku knows that Bakugou leaves for school at 7:45 on the dot, and so he makes sure to leave just after him, so that they aren't exactly walking together, but Bakugou still ends up in Izuku's direct line of sight.
Izuku hovers less during class, and, reluctantly disappears during lunch, off to help give a tourist directions. (The futures he sees are often bloodier and darker than they were when he was a child, and if he lets this person wander off, they will not come back.)
Kacchan hates it. Izuku's hovering, subconsciously detected it seems, ignites something twisted and gnarled and angry in Bakugou. A sort of offended rage that leaves Izuku with burns on his arms and puffy black eyes.
Izuku stays, of course, but he wishes Kacchan wasn't so violent all the time. The next two days are like this, with Izuku watching the weather and Kacchan, straining his eyes for any sign of muck and slime. Izuku is tense, like elastic pulled taut and ready to snap at the first sign of give.
"I-Izuku… are you alright? Are you feeling well?" his mother asks, hands gripping her dress in her anxiety. The question makes Izuku flinch, and looking at her worried face, at the tears that collected on the rim of her eyes, makes a lump forms in his throat.
The words, the confessions, they sit under his tongue, repressed enough to where he can keep the secret down and away, but not enough to where Izuku isn't still strangled by the guilt that claws at his throat.
Instead of dropping to his knees, instead of crying and unraveling and getting help like Izuku wants so desperately to do - can't can't can't do this alone, no more - he nods. A thin smile stretches his cracked lips, dispelling the projected concern. "Y-yeah! What makes you say that, Mom?"
"You seem… a little t-tense, Izuku. Are… are you sure you're alright?"
Izuku nods again. His lips hurt, stretched so wide. "Mhm, I'm sure."
His mother eyes him once more, part her lips to press on, but closes them again. She pursed her lips in worry, and guilt stabs at Izuku again for putting that expression on her face.
Resigned, she nods at Izuku, quietly exiting the room.
It's hot today, and the sun is out. The attack with the mud might happen today, or tomorrow, or the next sunny day.
Izuku ends up so focused on protecting Kacchan, that he misses the teachers callous, mocking words. They'd written down what high schools they were hoping to attend that day, and absentmindedly, Izuku had scribbled down U.A.
The career sheets weren't official or anything, and it would've been safer for Izuku to put down the name of some other, non-heroic high school.
Honestly, it was like Izuku threw himself into the pit of snakes. He barely has the time to defend himself and his - fragile! - dreams before his desk explodes, and Kacchan is in his face and pushing him to the floor.
He endures cutting, mocking words, spoken like noxious gas and ashes, keeps his head ducked while the class hurls their abuse, waiting for it to be over and done with.
Izuku doesn't speak as he skips into his seat, doesn't say a word.
Time passes. The bell rings, and Izuku approaches Bakugou, intent on tagging along on their way home that day. Bakugou turns on him, delighting in grinding Izuku's feelings under his heel.
"If ya wanna be a hero so bad," Bakugou laughs, holding Izuku's gaze. "just throw yourself off the roof and hope you get a quirk in the next life!"
Izuku's eyes are blown wide and there's a ringing in his ears. The lips part as if to reply, but no words escape, any expression of horror withering in his throat.
The ringing doesn't quiet until Bakugou and his buddies are long gone, leaving Izuku behind in an empty classroom. His vision is distorted from the tears, and he makes no move to wipe them away, lest his burnt hands sting.
He… should go home.
Izuku turns to pull on his backpack and trudge home, but a glint catches his eye. A mirror - one of his, obviously. It seems to have fallen out of his pocket from earlier that day, during the career assessment debacle.
"No," Izuku breathes, the realization dumped over him like a bucket of frigid water.
"Kacchan!" Izuku cries, one of his hands coming up to dip into tangled curls and tug. Izuku uses the other to swipe up his mirror and stuff it into his pocket, then to sling on his backpack. Adrenaline courses through his veins, and Izuku takes off after Bakugou.
The boy rips down the halls, nearly bashing into corners as he attempts haphazard turns through the labyrinth of a school.
His mind is a litany of please please please, let me make it, don't let it be too late please, but Izuku's not really thinking about it, just doesn't stop, never stops, even when he knocks over a cleaning cart. The boy sprints out of the courtyard, following the route Kacchan usually takes at a frenzied pace. He tears down the streets, clumsily forcing his way through the throngs of pedestrians walking the streets.
Izuku's coming up at an intersection, near a residential district. He speeds up as he spots a head of spiked blonde, just up ahead. For a moment, a rush of triumph roars through him, warming his chest and swelling with victory and dizzying relief.
It quickly ices, becoming cold lead in his veins.
From a grate, a thick, gross sludge oozes up, the form writhing and twisting. Izuku pumps his legs, urging himself to go faster-, but it's not enough. The sludge rises and rises and rises, beginning to curl like a tidal wave about to collapse in on itself. He sees large, bulbous eyes, expressing a sick sort of pleasure in this.
Bakugou is frozen in place, his back turned to the thing. The sludge laughs, it's voice goopy and distorted.
"Kacchan! No!" screams Izuku, the words tearing themselves from Izuku's throat, frightened and guttural. He leaps forward, shoving Bakugou out of the way, mocking eyes with the other teen for a singular moment.
And then, Izuku drowns.
The wave collapses, and Izuku can't see. The sludge is slick and suffocating, stinking of filth, but even as Izuku desperately claws at the liquid, trying to free himself in vain. There's slime in his nose and mouth and Izuku is choking, he can't breathe-
The thing seems to realise he doesn't have his intended victim, and spits him out. The force of it causes Izuku to limply roll across the pavement. The grit of the surface scrapes and cuts his skin, but it doesn't matter because Izuku is too busy sucking in large gulps of air.
He chokes, hacking up sludge. Izuku rolls over and vomits all over the pavement. Izuku spits, hacking and coughing and vomiting up so much filth. Eventually his coughs become a wheeze, his body rejecting every last drop of the poison that had invaded his system.
After a few long moments, Izuku gathers the courage to sneak a glance at the sludge monster.
"Damn!" the villain - monster - gurgles, "can't even use your damn corpse to hide! They'll be lookin' for ya!"
Izuku gulps, his breath quickening. The villain could kill him at any time, and Izuku was wholly at its mercy at that moment.
But Bakugou is gone, safe and away from here. He made it. So, what does it matter, really?
Izuku looks away from the sludge, accepting that his time might just be up. The reflections never warned Izuku of his future, after all. However, instead of slick muck and laughter, and Izuku's life being snuffed out, there's a loud shout, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.
He whips around, up and in the direction of what made the noise.
A hero.
Promptly, relief swamps Izuku, his arms going nearly boneless. His arms fault, but Izuku is able to regain control before his face met the pavement again.
It's a hero that Izuku doesn't know, one that's obviously new to the hero scene. He can't find it in himself to care. Instead, Izuku watches the ensuing battle with baited breath, his awe nearly palpable. She has an ice quirk, it seems, because she's firing off bolts of ice, and whenever she can get in close enough range, freezing parts of the sludge villains body.
However, for every blast of ice sent the villains way, one is broken, and anxiety pulls at his senses the longer the battle goes on. The ice hero is panting, looking more and more exhausted.
The sludge villain is smaller, which is… good probably, but Izuku's not sure the ice hero can keep the battle up long enough to disarm the villain.
She needs help. (Izuku pointedly ignores the crowd that's formed while he was being attacked) Izuku opens his mouth to pose a distraction, just enough so she can get a good shot, but the tables turn faster than Izuku can sacrifice himself.
Like a meteor touching the earth, an exuberant laugh rings out, and All Might drops from the sky. His landing causes the ground to buckle beneath him, cracking concrete and ripping up the road.
A large cloud of dust obscures his form, leaving only a silhouette. Izuku, caught in the ripples of the entrance, gasps and quickly rolls out of the way of a fissure of rock and stone.
Izuku knows from long hours of observation how volatile All Might's quirk is, how it eviscerates clouds and topples skyscrapers.
Izuku is… probably in the way. He can't look away from his idol, however, in the flesh and practically glittering to Izuku's eyes. He's about to showcase his monstrous amounts of power, and Izuku wouldn't miss it for anything.
(Except the next reflected future, of course.)
Shakily, Izuku gets to his feet, swaying like a newborn fawn, legs nearly giving out.
… Izuku's probably more injured than he thinks. 'Shock, maybe?' Izuku pauses, considering the sentiment, then dispels the thought in favor of avidly consuming the fight in front of him.
And then, suddenly, the fight is over. All Might mightily punches the slime, scattering sewage and knocking the villain out in a single hit.
The heroes have it in hand, Izuku's part in this is done. Kacchan is safe, standing only a short distance from the intersection now. Izuku's face contorts slightly at the sight of Bakugou's stormy expression, but it the expression soon eases into a wobbly grin.
The thing is defeated, and Izuku thinks it might be time to leave. The boy hikes up his drenched, foul smelling backpack, safe in the knowledge no one else was going to get hurt here.
It's child's play for Izuku to slip into the crowd, and unsteadily, Izuku goes home.
Izuku ends up in the hospital, having come down with a severe case of pneumonia that left him bedridden. It took two weeks before Izuku was healthy enough to return to school, and during those two weeks rumors flew faster than the one kid in class 3-C with wings. The school speculates that Izuku's done everything from committing suicide to being abducted by aliens, each version more and more outrageous than the last.
During this time, Bakugou is withdrawn. He speaks to no one, shoos off his usual troupe with his fists and an acerbic tongue. Then, Izuku comes back. He's the same as he always has been, timid and cowardly, with a glass bottle in one hand and hand-held mirrors in his pockets. Bakugou goes back to normal, too.
Life goes back to normal.
Normal is, as it always has been, Bakugou bullying Midoriya. So, when on the first day of Midoriya's return Bakugou begins his bullying again, his haughtiness restored, no one is surprised. In fact, the class all let out a sigh of relief, glad that the tension was broken.
The bell signalling the end of the day rings.
"Deku…" Bakugou growls, grabbing one of Midoriya's shoulders to keep him in place. "Come with me."
Midoriya has no time to reply before Bakugou drags him off, his hand pressed painfully tight on Midoriya's shoulder.
Izuku can't stop shaking, not with Kacchan's hand on his shoulder and a smile on his face, one that spoke of beatings and the strike of a viper.
Kacchan always walks one step ahead of Izuku, and this time is no different. The angry teen leads the two of them to the roof, where Kacchan releases his ironclad grip on Izuku's shoulder, shoving him forward.
Then, Kacchan finally explodes. "What the fuck did you think you were doing?! Huh, Deku?!"
Izuku takes an involuntary step back, hands spread in a placating manner. His voice wavers as he begins to stutter his defense, "K-Kacchan-"
"Stuff it! I didn't need your help! You were followin' me all week, you little creep. What was up with that, Deku?!"
Izuku stops, hands falling limply to his sides. The boy's face goes blank, and Bakugou flinches.
He hasn't seen that expression on Izuku, ever.
Izuku inhales, waits a beat, before exhaling. Bakugou is silent as Izuku repeats the action, Izuku's hand coming to grip at the clothing over his heart.
The green-haired, timid nerd, with glass on hand and bandaids in his bag, looks Bakugou dead in the eyes.
Solemnly, evenly, without inflection, Izuku speaks.
"I can't talk about it."
Originally written in may of 2018 - proceed to "Luster" for the next part, published 2/18/19