This is the last chapter that I am going to post for a while, as the others that come after this one are all works in progress. I might also be experiencing some burn out issues with writing MHA fanfiction and if so will need to back off for a while, preferably sooner rather than later so that it can't get bad enough to drive me off for a longer period of time. Or, it might be depression, in which case, I may either fall into it more heavily or drop off from writing for a time. Either way, I should still be able to keep up posts on AN Exploration of Questions: BNHA during this time, as I have a lot of material that is basically ready to go.
New Perspectives
Izuku considered what Todoroki had said.
As he looked at the other boy, Izuku's mind wandered to this evening. To Shinsou, who pushed Izuku away as part of his attempts to protect himself, an approach that had left him alone for who knew how long. He also recalled how Nezu had gone out of the way to gain his trust.
In a way, Izuku was kind of being like Shinsou in hiding his emotions, while Todoroki was reaching out like Nezu.
Izuku was really tired of being so alone. And even though he didn't want to put Todoroki in danger, he also didn't want to lie to him.
Izuku looked down and took a deep breath, bracing himself.
"What I'm about to say, you can't tell anyone. And I can't tell you everything right now." He didn't even know if he'd ever be able to say what he was planning to.
"Alright," Todoroki replied without hesitation.
Izuku looked at him, trying to fight back the fear clutching his heart so tight that it physically hurt. "Do you remember how you asked me about if I was All Might's son and I said that wasn't it?" The memory still caused him to blush.
Todoroki nodded.
"And how Bakugou reacted when I threw the ball on the first day."
He could see the dots starting to connect for the other.
"I haven't always had 'super strength.' I can't tell you more than that about my quirk, itself." He paused before continuing, "It may already be too much, so the less I say about it the better. If you're worried about how I might have gotten it, you can ask All Might. He knows what happened and has no problem with me having it."
"If All Might is alright with it, then I don't need to worry, do I?" Todoroki replied, and although he still looked curious, rather than try to learn more, he asked a different question. "So, that means that you have two quirks, right?" It was only because he knew the other boy that he could sense the slightest hint of hurt in it. Betrayal, because of the point he'd made about Shoto suppressing his fire.
Izuku looked over at the other boy. For a moment, he tried to consider how to continue, then he decided if he was going to go through with this part, he might as well go all the way. "Could you take off one of your shoes and socks for a moment?"
The other boy looked confused but followed through as Izuku did the same.
Izuku placed his foot on the floor and gestured for the other boy across from him to do the same.
You see how my pinky toe has a slightly deeper curve to it?" Izuku said. "And how maybe it's a little longer?"
"I…guess, maybe. It's kind of hard to tell." Todoroki said, not understanding. "I wouldn't even notice if we didn't have our feet side by side and you didn't point it out. Is it an extremely minor mutation quirk…?"
"No. It's actually the exact opposite. That's what a double-jointed pinky toe looks like compared to ones with a single joint. It's where the 'double jointer' slur comes from when some people reference quirklessness.'
Izuku saw understanding dawn on Todoroki's face. Uncomfortable with having it exposed, he pulled his sock back on and stressed his point by stating, in no uncertain terms, "I wasn't born with a quirk." He kicked off his other shoe and drew both knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them while resting his forehead on his knees and taking a deep breath. "The last time I had friends before coming here was before I was diagnosed." His breath hitched and he realized he was starting to cry. "Then…then the teacher announced it and-…and everyone left me."
"Midoriya, I…" Todoroki trailed off.
"My neighborhood is very…power oriented, I guess you could say. Schools included. No one would want to befriend someone so pathetic as me."
"You're not pathetic," Todoroki immediately argued.
"I am. If it wasn't for my quirk…"
"I'm not friends with you just because of your quirk," Todoroki declared.
At that, Izuku lifted his head to look at the other boy, suddenly furious as he said, "You'd have to know I exist to choose if you wanted to be friends with me, Todoroki. Do you really think I would be allowed to get near you if I was still Quirkless? Do you think anyone in the hero course would look at me twice?" Izuku asked bitterly. He grit his teeth before saying, "At best, Uraraka would've remembered me as the kid she stopped from falling over at the entrance exam. In your case, the most I might've been was some kid in Gen Ed whose feet you froze at the entrance in the first round of the tournament. And that's if they even let a powerless weakling into one of those classes." Izuku could barely move his jaws enough to talk toward the end, locked with angry tension as they were as the tears flowed down his cheeks.
Izuku looked up to see the other boy staring at him wide eyed and instantly felt his anger shrinking back into the darker recesses, being replaced with regret and fear. "I'm sorry," he said quickly, hoping he wasn't too late and hadn't run off the other boy. "I shouldn't have…"
Todoroki shook his head. "It's not you," he said. "It's just, I thought I'd gotten a chance to choose a life other than the one my father wanted for me when I came here. But that's not nearly as true as I thought, is it? Father knew I'd still be cut off from most of the 'riff raff' in the hero course. They're still isolating us here."
"Well yeah," Izuku said, wiping up his tears with the palms of his hands. "I mean, I don't think they mean it that way but, of course they are," he defended. He was surprised it was even a big revelation for the other boy. That much was so obvious to Izuku that he would have thought it didn't need saying. "UA only accepts the best of the best. The smartest, strongest and most influential. That means anyone else is excluded." He frowned and added, "I'm a fluke. Someone who managed to slip through a crack no one knows is there."
Well, almost no one.
"If you're a fluke, then something is very, very wrong here," Todoroki retorted. "You're one of the most heroic people I've ever met."
"You-…you really mean that?" Izuku asked, sniffling his nose.
"Of course I do," Todoroki declared vehemently before sucking in an angry breath. "I should have known that Father would never let me go unless he thought I'd be adequately cut off from most people." He looked up at Midoriya and said, "Whatever the deal is with your quirk, if it hadn't happened, I'd probably still be pushing everyone away and just using my ice alone in hopes of spiting my old man. Or maybe Moon Fish would have killed me at the camp."
Midoriya gasped, horrified by the thought. "Don't say that! I'm sure you would have figured something out…"
"You know, you didn't use your quirk once for that," Shoto pointed out.
"Just because I couldn't."
"You still did it without one," Shoto argued, "And you were really messed up, too. Once the adrenaline wore off, I've had trouble thinking if I get hurt in training sessions, yet you were several times worse off and could still come up with strategy after strategy. You don't seem to be bothered by pain at all."
"I just have a lot of practice."
Todoroki shook his head, denying Izuku's attempts to downplay his actions. "So do I and I'm sure I couldn't function like that in your place."
"It wouldn't have mattered. Without a quirk, no one would have cared about anything I could do. I would have just been a Deku." Izuku gave a joyless smile as he added, "You can get it by reading part of the Kanji for my name. It was a nice little pre-made insult just waiting to be translated."
"Then why use it as your hero name?"
"Because I want that part of my name back!" Izuku declared, tears once again flowing more freely. "They took it and made it something ugly and I don't want to see it first every time I look at my name written that way."
"Surely, there was someone who didn't see you that way."
Izuku looked down at his hands. "Not really. I-…mom always loved me and cared about me but I think even she never thought that there was any real hope for me, either. She would just never say that aloud." Even as his vision blurred, he continued, "And its not like I could say anything. At home, I didn't want to hurt Mom. At school, well; even if I wasn't scared of what my classmates would do to me, my teachers made it clear that I should keep my mouth shut and not bother them. They weren't going to let the words of a quirkless waste of space ruin anything for the children who actually had real potential."
"Sounds like there's a public school my dad might have been able to send me to without compromising his ideals, after all."
Midoriya chuckled dryly before saying, "You don't know the half of it. Where do you think Kacchan learned to use his quirk the way he does, with so much control and none of the natural hesitation that usually comes with using your quirks on other people for the first time? How do you think I came to this school without a single scar on my skin despite that?"
"Is that the 'practice' with pain that you were talking about?"
Izuku nodded. "I've been burned, bashed, cut, scratched, dropped, stabbed and dozens of other things that wouldn't have been possible without quirks. Even working with the girl who could treat the surface scars hurt."
"Surface…"
Izuku pushed the hair back from his face with one hand and with the other, pressed two fingers to the hairline and stretched about an inch's worth of skin, knowing that it revealed a series of half moon shapes where elongated fingers had dug in a little too hard from time to time while holding him still. He knew using one of his burns from Kacchan's quirk was probably not the best approach, so was careful to avoid revealing them.
Todoroki stared in horror for several seconds, long after Izuku had let his hair fall back into place.
Izuku found himself recalling some of the many times he hadn't run fast enough and the pain he'd been put through at being caught. He hadn't realized how caught up he was until he flinched back at a sudden motion, only to realized it was Todoroki reaching out, now frozen mid reach before letting his hand fall back to the bed.
"S-sorry," Izuku said, the stammer rising again as it had multiple times over the last day. "I know you'd never do that. Its just-…"
"I get it," Todoroki reassured him. "I know what it's like to have someone using their quirk on you and not being able to do anything. Of knowing no one was coming to help. And how easy it is to feel like your back there again when you think about it. At least we both know that's different now."
Izuku smiled at the other boy and nodded. Because Todoroki was still here. He knew Izuku was a fake and he still hadn't left him. "After you told me about what Endeavor did to you, I found myself thinking that we came from completely different worlds but I guess in some ways, they weren't that different at all, were they?"
"In some ways," Todoroki agreed.
For a few minutes, they just sat in silence, enjoying each other's company. Todoroki wasn't sure how long but it was enough for Izuku's tears to dry into streaks of salty residue clinging to his skin. "Th-thank you for getting me to talk to you. I really do feel better now."
Todoroki smiled at that, small but no less real for it. "I'm glad. I think this helped me, too."
Izuku smiled back and Todoroki wondered if he had ever seen the other boy doing it for himself before but didn't think so. He was glad that he was able to make it happen. Hopefully, he would be able to make it happen more often, now. Both him and the others.
"Just to let you know, one of the things I was told to do during the meeting with Mr. Aizawa and Principal Nezu was to come up with a story to explain my inexperience with my quirk. So, when I start using it, I want you to know that this is the real truth."
Shoto nodded. "And if there's anything else you ever need help with," Todoroki said, "please, don't be afraid to talk to me or the others."
Izuku nodded. "Okay." He'd try to be more open about his problems with them, although he wasn't sure if he'd be able to.
Again: Just because I write something here does not mean I agree with it. As someone who has worked with kids, I was taught that if I found out about an abusive situation, it should be reported to the proper authorities (in most educational and work environments, at least in America, there are actual protocols in place for such situations). If you are silent, nothing has a chance of changing. Unfortunately, I don't think it would feel right to either Midoriya or Todoroki to say anything to anyone else about the others situation. I think that they would see the way they are just keeping it between them as an act of trust.
There are two reasons for avoiding the full reveal, here: The first is that Aizawa just talked to Izuku the night before about the risks of telling people big secrets like OFA. It's still fresh in his mind and he doesn't want to place the other in unnecessary danger. The second reason is that I just don't think Izuku would feel ready to tell that secret, because it doesn't feel like it's just his to tell, at this point.
I was originally going to have Izuku come up with his story for his quirk here but decided to go with this instead for multiple reasons. First is that it would be nice for Izuku to have an actual friend to know what is really going on in his life and if he was going to trust anyone in class, I feel like it would be Todoroki (especially within the context of this story, where I've already set up some extra interactions between them, like the exchanging medical supplies in secret). Second, over the last set of chapters that focus on him, I realize that I've brought up both trust, the challenges of it for people in his situation and the value of offering it despite said challenges. It seems like the best opportunity, both for the story and for the state of mind Izuku would be in at the moment. I'm happy to have gone this route with it.
If you thought the toe scene seemed a bit ambiguous, where Izuku saw it looked different and Shoto didn't, that was totally on purpose. Both to stress how incredibly minor a difference it would be to the naked eye and to acknowledge the possibility that it might not even be true at all, considering certain facts that have become clear in canon. The 'Double Jointer' thing is something that I made up that I could see happening in the BNHA universe.
UA is extremely exclusive. It is open to anyone who can make the cut but the competition for that line is fierce, so only the best of the best (or kids with the connections to be recommended and bypass the competition, altogether) get in. Izuku really is an oddity among the hero students in regard to his background and although some students, like Uraraka may be aware of how far outside of normal UA is from the rest of the world (with her constant noting of UA's expensive approach to everything) in this sense, many, (like Todoroki, Yaoyorozu and Iida) won't be. I think that Izuku would be extremely aware of the situation to the point that he would feel it doesn't bear mentioning.
I have a family member who was in the military and once worked in a position where he could not talk about his assignments. I've grown up hearing stories of training exercises he did but never actual missions. I didn't even really notice until I was older but grew up to understand that I would never know everything that person did and I was fine with that. I think it's helped me be accepting of the fact that people have their own secrets that they might never talk about. I imagine that this had to be the case in the Todoroki household, too. Endeavor is a high-ranking hero who got whatever job done he needed to and I am sure that there were several cases where the HPSC needed him to keep certain aspects of his work completely secret and I think that his children would be smart enough to recognize that there are some things that he would never mention to them.
***Manga Spoiler in paragraph below, but considering it's about Dabi's identity, chances are, you already know it:***
I originally had a paragraph here that started out with : "If Dabi turns out to be Touya Todoroki," discussing how the thing that that drove him to madness and fueled his actions would probably be that he has never been able to let go of his hurt, anger and hatred at Endeavour. I think its safe to say I made a good guess. I think this is a great dynamic to compare to Shoto, who has made all his personal progress because he was able to turn his focus away from Endeavor. It's an interesting contrast; the hero who was able to release his hold on his anger at his father and the villain who couldn't let go and devoted his life to feeding that hatred.
