TRIGGER WARNINGS:

-Descriptions of scarring

-Graphic depictions of torture

-Flashback to medical torture

The more graphic stuff starts at the "Before" Please skip if you are sensitive to more violent themes. Flashback continues to the end of the chapter.

Izuku woke up slowly, dragging himself out of the warm and hazy embrace of sleep and into the harsh and unforgiving world he had grown accustomed to. This time, however, was different. Izuku had a dream last night. An actual dream, not a nightmare like usual. He dreamt that Eraserhead (his favorite hero!) had come to save him. The hero was kind and gave him a hug. He was everything that Izuku wished All Might could have been (caring, empathetic; a hero), but he quickly pushed that into the back of his mind. Thinking about All Might and the last time they met only brought up bad memories.

Sitting up in his small bed, Izuku rubbed his eyes tiredly as he glanced over to where he first saw Eraserhead in his dream. His breath hitched. He rubbed his eyes again, this time more aggressively. He must still be dreaming because the underground hero was still there. The man was sitting propped against the wall with his knees pulled close to his chest, head resting in his arms, seemingly asleep. Although, the second Izuku moved to get out of bed, the hero's eyes shot open, dark bags prominent against pale skin.

"Hey, kid. Sleep okay?"

Izuku was still processing that this was actually happening. Too shocked to speak, he nodded mutely.

"I still never got your name. I was also hoping you could explain what's going on here. It seems... it seems like you've been here for a bit."

Izuku cleared his throat nervously, looking anywhere except the man in front of him. While Eraserhead was his favorite hero, the man's sharp and searching eyes were... intimidating, to say the least.

"My... my name is Izuku Midoriya, Mr. Eraserhead sir. I'd uh... I'd prefer if you called me Izuku, though." A dark look passed over his face, passing quickly. Izuku tried to collect himself. This information was important, especially for Eraserhead. He took a deep breath, fighting off the waver in his voice. "...On February 8th, on my way to school, I was kidnapped. They took me here." As he continued, his eyes grew darker. "This is a research facility. From what I've gathered, they're researching the origin of quirks… and how to erase them- permanently. You and I were targeted specifically. It, uh, makes sense, given your quirk is Erasure."

Aizawa took a second to take all of that in. Izuku still wasn't looking at the man, eyes averted and hands fidgeting.

"Kid, last time I checked, we were halfway through June. You've been here for 5 months?"

At this, Izuku's eyes glazed over. His voice was small when he spoke next.

"I guess so."

Taking in a deep breath, Aizawa assessed the situation. It wasn't good. Thinking logically, though, some parts didn't make sense.

"I understand why they would take me, but why you? You're what, 7? 8?"

Izuku's cheeks flushed. "N-no! I'm 10!"

Aizawa eyed the crayons on the floor, surrounded by scribbled drawings. Following his eyes, Izuku was quick to clarify.

"They- they wouldn't give me actual pencils, so they gave me crayons… I, uh, analyzed everything I could and wrote it down in my own code so they wouldn't know what I was writing about," he said, cheeks still tinged pink.

Upon closer inspection, Aizawa noticed a pattern in the seemingly random squiggles, triangles, and various other shapes and forms. It was pretty impressive, for someone so young.

"Okay, so 10. Why would they kidnap a 10 year old?"

Izuku's fidgeting worsened. His eyes clouded over once more, and he opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. The silence that followed in the next minute was thick with anxiety on the boy's part. Aizawa remained quiet, waiting for Izuku to continue.

"...I'm quirkless. I'm the perfect test subject."

Aizawa inhaled sharply through his nose. He knew how quirkless people were treated, especially now that over 80% of the world had quirks- 96% in Japan specifically. A quirkless child was a rarity, and not one readily accepted by society.

Still lost in thought, Aizawa didn't notice the tears streaming down Izuku's face until the boy spoke up.

"You don't have to talk to me anymore if you don't want to. I know I'm just a useless Deku." His voice broke on the insult of a nickname and his shoulders shook as he suppressed the sobs bubbling up in his chest. He expected Eraserhead to be disgusted, to sneer or laugh at him, maybe pity him if he were lucky. He was not expecting the hero's response.

"Whoever said you were useless is a piece of shit." Aizawa's voice was stern, but not mean. It held no room for disputing.

Izuku's head shot up, face ruddy and eyes wide.

"You may be quirkless, but you seem like an incredibly intelligent and resilient human being. Quirks are nothing more than glorified superpowers. They're nice in a fight, but they mean nothing when assessing the character of a person." Aizawa maintained eye contact with Izuku during his declaration, watching as countless emotions passed through the boy's eyes: hope, joy, confusion, hesitation, sadness- and finally, determination.

Izuku was speechless. This man, his favorite hero, hadn't wavered in his kindness when everyone else in his life, even his mother, saw his quirklessness as a disease. Hell, he was diagnosed quirkless. He spoke quietly, hope sparking in his stomach along with the swarming butterflies.

"Do… do you think… someone could be a hero… without, um, without... a quirk?"

Aizawa paused. His heart hurt seeing Izuku's downcast face, his mumbled words clearly carrying weight far more important than Aizawa could know at the moment.

"I don't see why not," he started slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Quirks are tools. I practically fight quirkless, since my quirk isn't combat based. It would take a lot of extra work and resolve, but yes, you… or someone else… could become a hero without a quirk."

It was then that Izuku broke down completely. It felt like his whole world was turning upside down in this cold and dark cell. It was almost comical, given the circumstances.

Aizawa sat quietly, letting Izuku process… everything. It seemed he had a lot of pain tied to his quirklessness, understandably so. After a few minutes, Izuku managed out a quiet "thank you" between sniffles. Aizawa only nodded in acknowledgement. He really wasn't good with crying kids. Aizawa took a deep breath before starting again.

"So… what exactly have they been doing here since they took you?" Even while cringing internally at the probably insensitive phrasing, Aizawa remained as stone-faced as ever, staring at Izuku calmly as he awaited a response.

Izuku took a deep, shaky breath.

"They… they experiment on me." His voice cracked, full of emotion and pain. "At first, it was all just normal stuff. Blood tests, a physical examination, all my measurements and such. But then…" He trailed off, a dark and brooding expression appearing on his face. It was a look no child should be wearing.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

Izuku's head shot up once more, eyes wide in surprise. Eraserhead's offer seemed... sincere. A warmth bloomed in his chest, and he sat up straighter than before, shaking his head.

"No, no it's important. They… they started cutting me open… small incisions at first. They wanted to see if my body reacted differently to trauma than a quirked person's body… but they kept going." Izuku's voice shook. His small fists clenching against the blanket around his shoulders, tears returning as he unearthed memories he wished desperately to forget. "The man who does it, they call him The Doctor." Izuku shuddered. "He has a quirk that can return someone's physical body to a previous state as long as he's seen it. At least, that's what I think it is. It's... it's incredibly painful and still leaves scars. He can't use it more than 3 times a day, sometimes less depending on how different the subject is compared to their transformed state." Taking a deep breath, he removed the blanket from his shoulders.

Aizawa tried not to stare. His impassive face was broken when he saw the number of scars on the child's arms. Aizawa couldn't even think of a pro hero with that many scars. It was horrifying that a child, a child had been subjected to this. But Izuku wasn't done. He pointed to a large scar located on his right arm, one Aizawa hadn't seen in the dim light yesterday. The scar was jagged, circling around his upper forearm in a band. It was white with hints of purple, seeming to be at least 2 months old. It was the same type of scar Aizawa had seen on Izuku's knuckles. Izuku continued speaking.

"It was a-around a month and a half in when The Doctor started cutting off limbs."

Aizawa was going to be sick. He felt even worse when he picked up on how Izuku was talking about this- like it was a normal occurrence.

"From what I understand, they're trying to figure out several things by doing this. First, they want to compare physical anatomy and reactions between quirkless people and quirked people. Second, they're trying to understand how someone's quirk factor works with their biology. My body is the perfect control since I, uh, don't have a quirk. Third… they…", Izuku paused, taking a shaky breath, "They want to see if a person can forcibly gain a quirk. Either by trauma or… or by injecting serums." Izuku scrubbed his eyes, already puffy and red from crying, and seemed to calm down slightly now that he had explained his… circumstance. He was still purposefully avoiding Aizawa's eyes. He didn't think he could deal with that at the moment.

No amount of preparation could have prepared Aizawa for what Izuku had just explained to him. Here was Izuku, still a kid, a fucking kid, being tortured, torn apart and painfully forced back together again. Aizawa didn't even know where to begin. His headache was back in full swing. Helping children really was not his specialty. For the 70th time in the past two days, he wished his husband were with him.

Izuku had stopped crying at this point, now fixing his eyes on a hole in one of his blankets. He could feel himself dissociate slightly, a nice distraction from everything around him.

Aizawa let Izuku be for a minute before, hesitantly, standing up and ultimately breaking Izuku out of his stupor. Aizawa took a deep breath, and slowly made his way to where Izuku was sitting on the bed, making sure to televise his every move so as to not startle the kid. Izuku looked up, confused.

"Mr. Eraserhead?"

"You can call me Aizawa, kid. Or Shouta; whatever you're comfortable with." He stopped in front of Izuku, kneeling slightly so he could speak to the boy face to face. "Can…" Aizawa paused. This was difficult for him. "Can I give you a hug?"

Izuku's eyes widened, waiting only a second before nodding furiously and practically launching himself into the hero's outstretched arms. Aaaaaand the tears were back. Izuku soaked up every second of the warm embrace. He had been alone for so long, even before getting kidnapped. He couldn't remember the last time his mother hugged him. Actually, he couldn't remember the last positive physical contact he'd had (excluding the now two hugs from Aizawa). He buried his face into the hero's shirt, chasing the warmth it provided.

Aizawa sighed softly, reaching an arm up to once again run his hands through the problem child's hair. Whispering in a low voice, (a rare occurrence for Aizawa; usually he had a hard-ass reputation to keep up, but since no one else was around he thought he'd make an exception), the hero apologized.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that. Especially alone. But you're not alone now. I'm going to do the best I can to get us both out of here safely."

However possible, Izuku hugged his hero even harder. He had never felt so cared about, so... seen. Choked up to the point of not being able to speak, he simply nodded against Aizawa's chest.

They stayed like that for a while. It was obvious that Izuku needed the physical contact, having been deprived of it for far too long. Aizawa, well… he may have needed a hug too.

Before

Izuku was strapped to a chair in the Doctor's office. Leather bands bound his limbs to the cold metal, a band around his head for good measure. He'd been there for around 30 minutes; after being brought in and… subdued, the Doctor and his henchmen had left. The initial anxiety and adrenaline had worn off, but Izuku couldn't keep his heart from racing. The smell of antiseptic made him uneasy. Just being in the room made him uneasy. Nothing good had ever come from being in this room.

He heard slow and methodical footsteps approaching, ones he had come to associate with the Doctor. His pulse sped up. This time was different from the rest, for some reason. Normally they would strap him to the chair and inflict various wounds right away. There was no wait. But this time, anticipation hung in the air; Izuku didn't like it, he didn't like it at all.

The doors swung open, revealing the tall and gangly form of the Doctor. Short dark brown hair was slick with grease, his entire face obscured with a surgical mask and tinted goggles. All in all, a frightening sight made even more daunting by the lab coat hanging loosely around the man's frame, its edges spattered with a rust-colored substance one could only hope was ketchup (it was not ketchup). The man approached Izuku, stopping to pull equipment out of a nearby compartment. Setting various tools on a bedside cart (or chairside, in this case), he pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

Now, Izuku couldn't see what the Doctor had pulled out. But if the resounding 'thunk' as the tool was placed on the adjacent tray was any indication, it was much heavier than a simple scalpel. Izuku started pulling at the leather straps tying him down, struggling fruitlessly to gain any sort of leeway, anything that would allow him to get out. His labored breathing could be heard in the quiet room, met only with the Doctor's bone-chilling laugh.

"Now, now, my boy, you know struggling isn't going to help much. As I'm sure you've noticed by now, today we're going to be doing something... a little different."

Tears began forming in the corners of Izuku's eyes, his struggling becoming more and more desperate.

"P-please don't, I-I-I'll do an-anything P-please!" Izuku's voice broke with a sob, his body trembling against the cold metal of the chair. He tried so hard not to cry but he was so horribly scared that the tears had forced themselves out.

"My boy," the Doctor continued with a sigh, fake pity clear in his tone, "you say you'd do anything, but this would all be over if you'd simply show us the quirk you're hiding from us."

"I-I swear I'm no-not h-hiding a q-uirk I don-don't h-have one!" Izuku cried out desperately, back arching and body shaking as he tried fervently to escape from the chair, from the doctor, from everything.

The Doctor sighed again, this time much longer and more annoyed. He moved to pick something up from the side table.

"My boy… if only you'd corporate, we wouldn't have to hurt you. We tried going easy on you in hopes that it would encourage quirk activation, but it seems we were too gentle. Maybe this will help."

Izuku heard a 'click' and a high-pitched mechanical whirring sound, almost like a drill. He began thrashing around now, tears streaming down his face.

"N-NO PLEASE P-P-PLEASE DON'T-"

Izuku's pleas were ignored as the whirring sound got even louder. He felt a sudden pressure on his upper right arm, the feeling of the soft wind caused by the tool against his face. Then the tool hit his skin.

Nothing could have stopped the blood wrenching scream that was torn out of Izuku's throat. It was pain unlike anything he had ever experienced; he could feel his skin, his muscles being torn apart by whatever tool that was, cutting through sinew and flesh and God there was so much blood. Izuku's body felt hot and cold and tingly and like every nerve in his body was on fire, like his arm was being torn off because it was being torn off. Blood was spurting out of the ever-growing wound in his arm, staining Izuku's clothes red, getting in his eyes and his mouth as he was screaming, voice raw but unable to stop.

For a moment, the pain became more bearable. The Doctor had paused for whatever reason, and if Izuku could put together a coherent thought he'd realize that it was about to get much worse, but all he felt was relief because it was finally over-

The whirring sound returned, much louder than before, and Izuku howled. He could feel the machine, the saw, drilling into his arm, chipping away at his bone, the sensation of bone against metal making his teeth clench and body spasm uncontrollably, still restrained against the chair. Bile shot up Izuku's throat and out his mouth, but with his head strapped down he wasn't able to lean over so he was choking, choking on his own blood and vomit, and it was too much, 'TOO MUCH', was all Izuku could think as his mind shut down and his world turned black.

The Doctor had stopped sawing through Izuku's arm after he blacked out. When he woke up, the work continued. Izuku blacked out three more times because of the pain; each time, the Doctor stopped working, choosing to continue when Izuku was conscious. Eventually, Izuku was left with a bloody stump where his right arm once was. Once it was clear that the torture had not activated a hidden quirk, the Doctor returned Izuku's body to the state it was in before the 'procedure', and Izuku had two arms again.

A scar, and the feeling of unimaginable pain, still remained.