Last time,

Tomura Shigaraki is impressed with 'Izuku Midoriya' until the moment he sees him. Giran assures him, with a straight face, that the picture and address are legit, the results of more than a week of investigation.

The 'Hero Notebook Vol. 8' is painstakingly detailed, juvenile, and unnecessarily colored, but positively useful in a way the League of Villains desperately needs... And it's been developed by an 11-year-old boy as a hobby. Tomura's first reaction is assuming, naturally, that the boy has some type of quirk. Analysis, perhaps? He watches the goofball child looking up at him in the deserted park, innocent eyes wondering how the scarred teenager knows his name.

"Mister?" the child prompts shyly, shifting nervously in front of Tomura. The older teen knows from Giran's information that this ball of nerves is Izuku Midoriya, narrowed by the notebook's location. He's somehow the owner of the journal that has given them so much insight. Tomura pulls out the notebook and chokes back an annoyed grunt when the boy immediately perks up.

"You found my journal!" he exclaims, bashful in his joy. Tomura hates him. Hates the naivety tracing the curve of his cheek, the unhidden wonder in his jeweled eyes, and the evident pleasure in his dimples. Midoriya might be chronically shy, but he's soft in ways Tomura doesn't believe he's ever known.

Until:

"What is your quirk?" Izuku wilts under his gaze like a raisin in the sun; the change is so immediate it almost seems reflexive. As tremulous eyes stare longingly at the notebook in Tomura's hand, the younger boy bites his cheek. There's none of the sunny or wary disposition from before, only deep-rooted fear -a familiar emotion for Tomura.

"I don't have one," he admits, softly enough that Tomura doesn't catch it.

"What?"

"I don't have a quirk," the boy replies a little louder, already turning an unattractive shade of red.

"Whose notebook is this?"

"It's mine, please, please give it back. I swear it's mine."

"You're… quirkless?" Tomura asks again, the word tasting funny in his mouth as he tries to wrap his head around the idea. There's just no way.

"I'm sorry," the boy pleads, teary and begging, "I said I'm sorry, please, give it back."

For what? Tomura wonders, staring between the notebook and the child.

"Stop crying," he orders. The child looks surprised, shaking down to his bones, but he breathes in slightly, still hunched into himself, child-like in his wariness. "You wrote this?" Tomura looks to confirm, the boy starts tearing up again immediately. "I said, stop crying." Tomura snaps. "Did you?" The boy nods.

"I think you're smart," Tomura tells him. At that moment, the rising villain doesn't understand the value of a compliment to a child left behind by the world. Still, he would come to appreciate how he accidentally set Izuku into a life of crime, eventually. Maybe the child isn't as soft as he'd thought.

Katsuki is tired of fuckin Deku's stupid quirk training. The One For All wielder certainly pushes Katsuki farther than almost any other sparring partner Katsuki has had, but the compromise on their practice: that at least twice a week they'd follow a training exercise designed by Izuku, often drives Katsuki nuts. It's not that they are necessarily a waste of time; it's that they fuckin feel like a waste of time. Katsuki already knows how to do most of this shit. Izuku wants Katsuki to time and control the most useless shit. Controlled building demolition. Stupid. Classifying the danger levels of his explosions. Unnecessary, this one burns a lot and lets you fly; this one is wider. What else does he need? Etiquette is definitely the worst. Just… just why the fuck?

Every time Katsuki got fed up, Deku stands up and gives him the stupidest puppy-dog eyes in the world, which make Katsuki fuckin sick, and begs him to stay.

Kacchan, please.

If that didn't work, he'd easily do the opposite and casually remind Katsuki why he'd failed to get his provisional license.

Guess I'll keep number one, after all, Kacchan.

Katsuki knows he shouldn't be so easy to manipulate, but whatever the fuck. It is a fair deal anyway; Katsuki got to beat Deku into the ground the other 4 days a week and take out all the frustration accumulated in their more study-centered afternoons. And he was learning something, at least. Before that, Katsuki had been peripherally aware that Deku is a nerd that takes many notes and is unhealthily obsessed with heroes and quirks.

Seeing what that means in practice is a different thing altogether. A couple of weeks in, Deku brings a bright orange folder to their practice, blushing all the way. Katsuki, knowing his stupid-ass expression foretells unmitigable stupidity, is immediately irritated.

"So, Kacchan, eh." He shifts in place, almost as if regretting the course of action already. "D-don't be mad or anything but, I have… suggestions… for some of your training and w-well." Katsuki grabs the folder, surprised that it's thicker than he expected, and opens it before Deku can make this unnecessarily long. Even though he obviously brought it so that Katsuki could see it, he flinches and squeaks all the way.

He breezes through the pages and reaches a scary conclusion: the nerd knows almost as much as Katsuki about his own fucking quirk. He stares at Deku in blankness:

"What the fuck?" Deku, useless as always, dissolves into an apoplectic fit of apologies, explanations, and pleas. It's pathetic, but that's where it starts. For all that they've been superficially aware of each other, or perhaps not as superficially as Katsuki thought in Deku's case, Katsuki had never really known what Izuku was always rambling about. It… isn't a complete waste of time.

It's in one of these afternoons, wrestling on the floor, the air humid, and his back aching, that Katsuki elbows Deku in the cheek and finally subdues him after a little over half-an-hour. It's a no-quirk hand-to-hand, and he and Deku are surprisingly even. Today, though, sitting on the freckled boy's stomach, it's Katsuki's win. This moment isn't unusual. As they stop for a moment to get the heart rate down to an acceptable level, things take a strange turn.

"I wish you'd see me," Izuku tells him. He's said so once before, after their fight at Ground Beta. Katsuki didn't understand it then, and he doesn't understand it now. Usually, he'd yell at him, but he's fuckin exhausted and barely manages to grunt out a response, wiping the sweat off his brow.

"What was that, nerd?" He's distantly aware that he should move, he's straddling Deku, but his panting is too loud in his ears.

"But you can't," Deku sighs wistfully, blowing a sweat-soaked strand of green hair out of his face. "You're too hard-headed." That jolts something in Katsuki, who narrows down his eyes to look at Deku, trying to catch his eyes in his glare.

"You need another beating, Deku!?"

"You think you know everything, don't you, Kacchan?" Things are spiraling because Deku looks really fucking upset out of fuckin nowhere.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Why didn't you see me?" Deku demands again, his anger dissipating into frustrated tears, pinned down and crying as he judges Katsuki with his gaze. Katsuki is clearly not thinking right because his reaction to a crying Deku is to press his lips against his; they are chapped and pliant beneath his own. Familiar in a way they have no right to 's distantly aware that Deku has punched him in the stomach only as a theoretical understanding.

The rejection cuts right through him mercilessly. It confuses him. He doesn't like Deku, does he? He never has. Or he never thinks he has. The nerd was annoying as kids, always following after Katsuki. He was a pest in middle school, insisting Katsuki was his friend. He'd been conceited in high school, though now Katsuki has learned to tolerate him a little more. He thought Izuku was a waste of space - a waste of space that worshipped him - but a waste of space all the same… right? But the pain is stark, consuming. Maybe Katsuki had never thought he'd wanted to kiss Izuku before, but now that he wants to, and he can't, it aches inside him.

"Dek…" he begins, unsure of what he's going to say. He's unbalanced, scrambling for a wave of reflexive anger that fails to appear.

"Some wounds don't heal that easy, Kacchan," he says in chastisement. Under the tear stains, Izuku's cheek blooms with a burst of ill-colored stardust. Blood, mottles of green and purple, and sickly yellow curving from his hairline down the left side of his neck. One of his eyes swells shut. Katsuki did this? When? How? "Do you know what happened to me, Kacchan?"

Something's knocking inside his head, something Katsuki needs to remember. He tries to stand up, but suddenly, they're no longer in the practice arena, not even in UA. This is… Katsuki takes a look around, struggling to place their surroundings, but it's Deku's uniform that gives it away. He turns to where the twilight's sunlight frames him through the window of their middle school classroom.

"Do you know what happened to me, Kacchan?" Deku's face is unblemished once more; his frame looks tiny like it used to look before UA, none of the dimple-revealing smiles and broad shoulders Katsuki's become familiar with. This is back when Katsuki mocked him around for kicks. Deku smiles at him as if he's about to say a great joke, but Katsuki's eyes are glued on the maidens around his wrists. He realizes by the silence that Deku is expecting an answer.

Katsuki looks at the maidens, looks at the classroom, and tiny 14-year-old Deku. He asks before he can talk himself out of it, feeling as if he's standing on a ship, gentle rocking doing nothing to calm down his rising pulse and everything to make him nauseous.

"I took a swine-dive off the roof!"

And then, Katsuki's awake.

Katsuki rarely dreams, always worn out in between studying and training, but when he does, Izuku is heavily featured in them. Not like this, though, Katsuki doesn't dream of his guilt from Middle School: constant questioning of just how far he truly pushed Deku. Neither does he dream of the time after: of reaching the classroom every morning and having to confront that the reason Deku's seat is empty is that he's in jail. No, those kinds of thoughts are reserved for when he's awake. Katsuki's subconscious doesn't have a lot to add to what the graduating teen tells himself when awake.

Katsuki's dreams are the hideout of the Deku he thought he knew.

Heroically-driven Deku.

Sneak into the room at midnight Deku.

Writing love-letters Deku.

I love you, Kacchan Deku.

Apparently, Deku's image cannot remain unscathed, not even in Katsuki's mind. He sighs, trying to calm his stuttering lungs. The blonde needs a shower, sweat-soaked as he is in the bittersweet smell of nitroglycerin. He's slept most of the afternoon away, but there's enough time to get a shower and do the laundry. The thought makes him pause. It's a surreal experience, something they don't tell you when it comes to being a hero. This morning Katsuki was tied up in a warehouse, the pressing fear of death nipping at his ears, and after a rescue and some debriefing, Katsuki now has to worry about catching up on homework and laundry -as if he hadn't been kept in enemy hands for two days.

But what does he expect anyway? He signed up to be a hero, and this is part of the job. Katsuki's had more personal brushes with villains than most.

There was the sludge villain, which Katsuki didn't even miss a day of school for. (Where he got praised for his bravery. A dumb-ass thing to do, cause Katsuki froze from how fucking scared he was.)

There was the last time the League of Villains. (Where Katsuki remembers Deku being ready to jump through the portal, and the only rational thought he had was don't you dare.)

Now, gone by in an almost dull sojourn as if Katsuki had just picked a really shitty vacation spot. Other than that initial conversation, Katsuki was left to his own devices. Muzzled and turned into another useless object decorating the warehouse. As time passed, no questioning or death threats followed, and no matter how much of a nuisance Katsuki made himself be, they ignored him. It only served to piss him off more; his throat and shoulders are still smarting from his defiance. At the time, he'd thought they were trying to ransom him for Deku, which Katsuki knew would never be allowed.

(Now, he wishes it'd been about that and not about Deku being…)

Shower, he reminds himself, and then laundry.

There is no one Izuku adores as much as despises as Symbol of Peace, Number 1 hero, All Might. The unreachable hero was the North Stars of Izuku's dream throughout his life, the center of his universe. The concept of him brought Izuku and Kacchan together. When Izuku was defined as quirkless, All Might was both the comfort and the nightmare. The blanket Izuku hid away from reality under, but also the monster under the bed trying to eat him alive.

All Might was safety. He was revered and loved and praised.

In Izuku's life, the only person who was strong and praised was Kacchan, even if he was ill-tempered and mean. It took Izuku a very long time to understand that Kacchan isn't loved because of his flaws but rather in spite of them.

His obsession begins there.

When Izuku actually meets All Might, it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel. After traveling in darkness for years, in and out of unsavory alleys, shackling his future to people he loves that are definitely going to hurt him, Izuku sees a chance to validate what he believes deep down. That even though Izuku is the worst-type medically useless, maybe there's still hope for him. Possibly, he can be a hero and save even Tomura and Kurogiri. Maybe All Might, now that he's here, can drag Izuku out of the darkness, and Izuku can shine his own light as well.

Naturally, because such is Izuku's life, the person he looks up to the most hammers what Izuku thought was the last nail in the coffin. He leaves Izuku Midoriya behind on a roof, which is a funny coincidence if you have a dark sense of humor.

Take a swine-dive off the roof, echoes inside him, but

Your 'silly notebooks,' as you call them, are exactly what society needs, is there to greet it.

All For One's words from all those years ago have been there to greet every insult, every punch. A soft, crooning reminder that to someone, Izuku is worth something more than just an obligation. All for One is in prison now, captured just as much as Izuku. Even if he wasn't, whatever Izuku had meant to him is long gone, lost between a centuries-old confrontation. It's his words that come back to Izuku when he groggily opens his eyes to focus on the hospital's ceiling, and the person there to greet him is All Might.