Prologue
and the stars were in his eyes
He is born with stars in his eyes.
He enters the world like everyone else; screaming. His eyes are closed, at that point; his head coated in a soft fuzz of green, and his mother smiles a tired smile and thinks, this one is perfect. I will always protect him.
The day he opens his eyes for the first time is the day of a meteor shower. They're on a hilltop beneath the velvet sky, and stars are falling all across the horizon.
A small child whoops excitedly, and his eyes flicker open just as a meteor blazes overhead.
"Oh," gasps his mother, as she looks into emerald eyes that shine like the stars above. "Oh, Izuku."
He's beautiful, she thinks. My little star.
"You'll never get into the academy," scoffs Kacchan. Kacchan is less like a star and more like an asteroid; violently burning across the sky. He never, ever stops moving.
"Yes, I will," insists Izuku. "I have to. Mom says I'm a star."
Kacchan laughs and laughs and laughs.
"Maybe that's why, then," he says. "Stars can't fly."
"They can!"
"No," says Kacchan. "Those are meteors, idiot. Real stars don't fly."
And Izuku closes his mouth, even though he knows Kacchan is wrong, because the universe is in constant motion. Their solar system is spinning and spinning around a galaxy that is itself spinning in turn. The stars are never still.
Stars fly, and one day Izuku will too.
He is watching the footage and his eyes are full of stars.
"I am here! " says Captain Yagi to a crowd of frightened victims. "Do not be afraid! "
Toshinori Yagi. The best captain to ever come out of UA Star Academy. The greatest HERO history has ever seen.
All Might. Liberator of the stars.
"Wow," says Izuku.
One day, he's going to be just like All Might. One day, he's going to be the greatest HERO.
But for now, he's just a little boy with stars in his eyes.
"I'm going to the academy," says Izuku into the mirror. "I'm going to UA."
His reflection laughs at him; small and weak and powerless. Freckles dance across his cheeks like constellations, taunting him of the things he cannot have.
"Shut up," he says to his reflection. "I'm going to do it."
Izuku is not a proper mix.
He's not pure human—almost nobody is, these days—but he may as well be, for all his alien genetics did for him.
"You're really pathetic," laughs Kacchan. "All those cool genes and all you get is weird green hair."
A fist blazing with sparks flies past Izuku's cheek. He dodges, just in time, and Kacchan walks off, laughing.
Izuku runs a hand through his curls and tries to stop the tears from falling.
He fails.
"I'm going to do it," says Izuku. "I'm going to do it."
The other children laugh, but he doesn't care.
He's going to succeed.
He's fourteen years old when he accidentally helps to stop an intergalactic criminal.
"You idiot!" chastises Officer Woods. "What were you thinking, rushing in like that? You're lucky we were in the area or you would be dead!"
Izuku bows his head and grits his teeth to keep from crying, but secretly he's proud.
He's proud because if he hadn't been there, Kacchan would have died.
It doesn't matter that the HEROs came, because they would have come too late.
He thinks Kacchan knows it too.
Across the scorched mud, Kacchan's eyes meet his, and for just a moment Izuku sees a thank you.
Izuku smiles a small smile and walks home alone.
"I think you can do it," says Toshinori Yagi, eyes blazing blue and palm outstretched. "I will train you."
Izuku clutches his chest as years of frustration come screaming out of his lungs, squeezed between his teeth like flame and fear.
Toshinori stands before him like some monumental pinnacle and the tears slide from Izuku's eyes, glistening and bright in the sunset.
Like stars, they fall to the ground.
Izuku doesn't have stars in his eyes anymore.
No—
Now, the stars live in his heart.
And he's going to use them to fly.
Ok so basically this is the prologue to my 'Starfields' series which is unfortunately formatted for ao3. Given that ffn doesn't allow the creation of series, this is going to be somewhat unwieldy, but story progresses non-linearly as a series of semi-chronological related fics. I'm going to post them all here, in this same fic, but I will put headers to signify the different fics. So don't be confused when the chapters don't link together quite as you'd expect from most stories.
Also if the header formatting turns out weird...listen, I tried, okay? FFN just hates me and the feeling is mutual.
