A/N: [Spoiler Warning] Trigger warning is in effect for the second scene after the first break. If you have no triggers then I suggest ignoring this note because it spoilers a large chunk of this chapter. If you do have any warnings, then I will inform you that the scene depicts a character committing suicide. You can continue on from the second break.
'To trust in one person to have our best interests is a fool's gambit. To trust in individuals whose power can reshape landscapes or destroy the laws of physics is a losing battle. The law has been written by every organised society, and whilst some laws are reprehensible the people have changed them for the better. We must hold heroes to the highest standards. We must hold them to the letter of the law when they act out their duties as heroes.'
—Excerpt from 'The Laws of Heroes' by Hinata Ononoki.
He struggles to recreate the feeling of drowning and falling in shadows. That sensation of sinking to another place where monsters reside eludes Izuku. He's terrified about what might be waiting for him on the other side, but this belongs to him. This is his quirk, no matter the possible pain that awaits. One For All will come in a few months once his body is strong enough to handle it, but right here and now this belongs to him.
But no matter how hard it is to reach that other place, one thing comes easily: Izuku can feel the shadows. It gets harder to focus in class. He can tell when, and sometimes how, people are moving by the way their shadows interact. There is his teacher awkwardly stretching his hand beneath his desk and there is a classmate pulling out their phone for it drives away the shadows in the area; behind a girl flips her hair, fine and thin shadows shifting quickly, and further back someone is putting the finishes touches to a paper crane; here his own shadow becoming larger and smaller as it falls in and out of the shade of his desk.
Those are the only vividly clear ones. Most are blurry blobs, only important as they become sharply larger or smaller. And past a certain point, they become too small to feel. At noon he walks outside and feels nearly blind. The sun is directly overhead, and every shadow is tiny and basically circular.
It's evening and he is walking home that he learns there is a radius to what he can feel. One second, he might as well be on a deserted street and the next he feels Kaachan's shadow—and it should be the same as any other but to Izuku it might as well be staring at the sun—moments before he turns on to the same street as Izuku.
He tenses because it's Kaachan and his explosions are a reason to be afraid on any given day. Especially now when he's angry in a way Izuku has never seen before. This isn't the bright ember of disgruntled calm nor is it the blowtorch of very rare grief. It freezes him to the spot as Kaachan stalks towards him.
He's had another growth spurt, Deku thinks dumbly as Kacchan stares at him, glancing only once to the budding scar at his temple.
"Stay out of my fucking way," Kaachan snarls, eventually, without the usual heat or venom. His hands are balled up into fists but there isn't the slightest hint of an explosion. "Got it?"
Deku nods slowly and watches Kaachan stalk past him without another word. Izuku doesn't look back but he does sense the almost hesitant way his shadow shifts. Hesitance Is not something you associate with Kaachan.
Was that an apology? Izuku shakes his head because that's ridiculous. Kaachan's never wrong. Besides, he has nothing to apologise for.
Maybe because he ki—
Izuku walks away and decides to forget that entire encounter even happened. He's become good at it. Simple human interactions are infinitely easier to forget than nightmare creatures.
But feeling shadows isn't enough. There's more and it drives him to an almost feverish obsession with learning about it. He searches for quirks on shadows and darkness, learns about villains like Grue and Underside but their quirks are nothing like his. At least, not simply from the description given. He reads what he can about Master Railroad, little as there is on his Quirk. The man had been intensely private about his life and it shows from the absolute dearth of first-account descriptions. Even his teammates barely spoke of his Quirk. There's a single account from a civilian the man rescued: 'We travelled through the darkest abyss aboard a train to infinity' and Izuku isn't certain how much of that is accurate and how much is poetic license.
The research does give him the chance to skim over Hawkmoon's first autobiography. He doesn't have the time to read it fully, but he does appreciate the unrestrained optimism in her writing. There is something beautiful about words so bright they banished the dark.
Information is sparse, and it makes him search for progressively more obscure texts. His mother eyes him worriedly when he carries a rather controversial book published in the second Dark Age on the physiology of some of the first expressed Quirks. It was controversial mostly because the vivisections were conducted on kidnapped individuals, but Izuku has long reached a point where he must know. And he could have downloaded the online copy, and not deal with his mother's disappointed gazes, but the library copy has the author's handwritten commentary in the margins.
All he learns is that humans are fucked up and can justify anything in the name of their beliefs. A few weeks of futile research is enough for Izuku to admit defeat. He's filled up two new notebooks with information and observations of his own Quirk though he does hide them as best he can. He doesn't want to imagine what will happen if his mother or a villain finds it. Or, even worse, if Kaachan does.
He's sitting in the lounge watching a documentary on mutant quirks one evening when the thought strikes him. It's the narrator's words on how people can develop secondary mutations under specific triggers that clues him in on what he's been missing.
I died each time I went there. Logically I need to die again to get there.
He waits for the voice that's always arguing with him to say something. It stays quiet this time, making Izuku quirk a brow in shock. Then he realises he's expecting a voice in his head to argue with him. And accepts that it doesn't matter in the face of the things he's seen.
I don't want to die.
Izuku considers the thought. Finds it to be honest. Accepts what must be and stops his research.
Falling into a routine after that is easy for Izuku. He simply has no time to think of anything else. His social life, already non-existent, dies completely and Izuku misses every event he had considered attending—from the fifth reboot of Godzilla this decade or the book signing by Best Jeanist the next city over. It also doesn't help that he can't see his mother without regretting every word he said.
He loves that she doesn't push him to say anything by confronting him. He suspects though that neither one of them really knows how to deal with the rift between them. Another week of awkward silences is more than Izuku is willing to handle.
"Kaa-san," he says one evening. She looks up, startled. "I'm sorry."
His mother smiles at him and ruffles his hair. Once, Izuku might have had the energy to protest. "I know. And I'm sorry you thought I didn't believe in you."
"You just don't want me to get hurt if I fail." He leans into her touch like a child. "I promise I…"
"What is it?" she asks warily.
Izuku swallows because he doesn't want to lie to his mother for the rest of his life, not when she's been nothing but kind his entire life.
"What if I had a Quirk?" he asks uncertainly.
His mother steps back so she can meet his eyes. "You saw the scan."
Vestigial toe joint, Izuku thinks without the usual bitterness. "And its wrong in half the cases for hidden quirks," he whispers. "They need triggers to activate and can go unnoticed until late in life."
Her gaze is kind and without pity. She's thinking it over, Izuku sees, and mulling over the matter.
"Izuku, at the risk of playing into a fantasy"—and doesn't that just cut deep— "what trigger event?"
He swallows again. "T-this." He points to the scar at his right temple. "I think It might have been a head injury."
That's not what happened, the voice says and Izuku locks that voice to the deepest recesses of his mind. He had wondered where it had run off to.
She stays silent for a long time. Maybe she doesn't believe me.
His mother sits, finally. "Your father's Quirk manifested when he was twenty." Izuku perks up. "We were taking a walk and some thug—oh gosh, he was barely older than you and his hands were shaking so badly. Well, he pulls out a knife and your dad tried giving him our money, but I don't know what happened and your dad was bleeding next thing I knew. It was terrifying seeing him in pain. And then he screamed. Except all that came out was fire."
She looks both nostalgic and sad, ever so sad. "So yes, I think I can trust you're not lying to yourself."
Izuku hesitates, uncertain of how to respond to her words. There little he's learnt of his father other than that man worked abroad since he was five and went missing a few years later. Izuku can't even remember what the man looks like. And the few pictures his mother shows him might as well be those of a stranger. Sometimes he can see bits and pieces of the familial relation—the freckles he inherited from his father as well as the shape of his face and the dark undertones of his hair.
"I can feel shadows." And I come back from the dead. "It's weird. There's more, I know there is. When I… hit my head, I went somewhere s-strange."
She's worried now. "Where?"
"It was somewhere dark, and I was terrified, Kaa-san." He looks down and sees his hands are shaking, and his eyes burn with unshed tears. "There were things there with me."
Warm arms circle around his shoulders and grip him tightly. "Izuku, honey, I'm here." That reassurance grounds him. "We can go to a Quirk counsellor and help you l—"
"No," he tries to say harshly but his voice breaks and he squeaks it out instead. "I can't, I just can't. They'll take me away and lock me up and I don't want to be some e-e-experiment."
"No one's going to do that." She pulls away. Meets his eyes. Asks, "What aren't you telling me?"
Tears stream down his face and he trembles. "I died, Kaa-san. A fridge fell on me and I died." He looks away. "I saw the blood and I went to that place and there are monsters hiding there and I'm so fucking scared that I'm one and they'll lock me up and dissect me if they ever find out and—"
He doesn't feel the hands on his shoulders. Doesn't feel her shake him. But he does hear her.
"Izuku, look at me." He does. Her face is carefully blank. "Okay, no counsellors. No doctors. But you need to explain."
Izuku takes a deep breath and tells her about the beach and the fridge falling on him. He keeps out all mention of All Might. He explains the distorted version of his room and stutters when he reaches the eye because humans weren't meant to see those spectrums and his brain hurts remembering it. The whales give him pause for how do you describe the something which is dead but may never die?
Her calm façade cracks every so often. When he finishes, his mother pulls him into a comforting embrace. "And your head?"
Izuku stills. "I just fell and hit the pole. Nothing else happened."
Except for Kaach—He cuts that thought off. Locks it in the same place where he forgets that song that must never be sung.
"Izuku, I need you to be honest with me."
He shakes his head. "Please, just please trust me and don't force me to say anything," Izuku pleads. "I don't want to think about it. I c-can't."
His head hurts. Ignoring something and not remembering it are two different things. And you can't really ignore certain memories as the very act makes them more vivid. So, the more he tries to ignore the first time he went to that place the clearer the siren call of the songthatwillnotpermitlifetocontinue becomes. Just this echo of a memory splits his head with pain.
"Izuku," his mother says loudly.
It brings him back. He feels something wet on his lips and raises a hand there. His fingers come away red. His mother stands and grabs a paper towel from the counter. Izuku accepts it gratefully and presses it to his nose, letting it soak up the blood before he makes a mess everywhere.
"Thank you." He winces because the headache is getting worse. But the pain makes it easier to forget—not ignore—the song. "Can I have a cup of tea?"
His mother makes an entire pot. Izuku has to get another paper towel because the first one is soaked. They drink in silence.
"I'm scared," he admits, not meeting her eyes. "What if I'm one of those monsters?"
"You're not," his mother says fiercely.
"You can't prove that. It's like going crazy. I can't tell you definitively that I'm conscious and not trapped in some nightmare."
"Izuku, look at me. I think I would know my own son. And if you were a monster, why would you tell me the truth?"
The question shakes him to the core. So simple and yet he has no response. "Kaa-san…"
"Go to sleep, Izuku. We'll figure it out."
TDB
TDB
I don't want to die, Izuku thinks once more. But I need to know.
He sits on the edge of the tub, watching it fill with warm water. It gives him time to consider his life up until this moment and whilst he doesn't find it lacking, he does find it wanting. There hasn't been a single blazing moment other than saving Kaachan. And the only person who considers it so is Izuku.
And All Might, you fool.
He hums. Accepts that yes, his hero's acknowledgement is all he really needs. He smiles, terrified that this might be a mistake
When the tub is nearly full he picks up the needle. It's a one-time use sort of needle. You press it to the flesh and the pneumatic piston does most of the work in depositing the contents in a person. Izuku presses it to his forearm, hissing when the needle pierces his flesh. The pain disappears in moments. Local anaesthetic has many uses. This might not be one of the recommended uses.
Izuku slides into the tub and waits a few minutes for his body to match the temperature of the water. He takes a deep breath to quell the rising panic. It doesn't work. His hand trembles as he grabs the handle near him. There's nothing special about it, just a simple material meant to mimic the look and feel of wood without any of the problems.
It is, though, attached to a very sharp knife. His mother is meticulous about many things, and the sharpness of her kitchen knives is one of them. He's not sure what a blade that short is meant for other than maybe being a steak knife. Except he knows where those are and they're nowhere near this sharp.
He takes another deep breath. And then another. It takes him a moment to realise he's hyperventilating. And those are tears as well.
His hand shakes as he raises the blade. This is a stupid fucking idea, and nothing is worth knowing. His hand stills naturally. Oh fuck, I really want to know.
He brings the blade down and watches it plunge deep into his forearm. He feels nothing but horror. He pulls and flesh parts easily. Blood, vivid and red, almost seems to flood out. It stains the water and Izuku watches the water change colours. It's odd, watching the fluid keeping him alive leave like a leaky tap, drip-spurt-drip.
There's so much. At least I'll know, he thinks and wishes he has the power to smile.
It takes a few seconds for his breathing to slow, wheezing and long gasps as his weak lungs fail to oxygenate his body.
A few more seconds for him to lose the strength to keep his head raised. With his last breaths, he inhales bloody water, too weak to even choke on it.
No matter what, he thinks with the fading embers of consciousness, this will all be over.
Izuku
closes
his
eyes
and
dies.
TDB
TDB
Is this your choice, Izuku Midoriya? Is this the choice you make knowing full well the consequences? You can still refuse this future and pass on to the dark. You will die mourned by few, but this death will be final. I offer you this choice for you must know this can be an option, this time and no other. Anything is possible to you if only once.
Is that your choice, then? So be it. I accept this contract. You shall live by the grace of the abyss and by your sacrifice the abyss will live.
Death is inevitable. Entropy is the inevitable end of all things. Even gods and nightmares will die one day, long after the stars perhaps, but die they will. But you are beyond even them. Rise, Izuku Midoriya, and see your kingdom.
TDB
TDB
Izuku breathes.
It takes him a moment to understand this irrefutable fact. There is oxygen in his lungs, oxygen that permeates the blood flowing through his body. Blood he watched leave.
Izuku breathes.
He opens his eyes, not focusing on anything in particular. He inspects his remaining senses. Touch tells him he's dry and on something soft. Smell gives nothing but dust, blood, and maybe a hint of decay. Taste is blood in his mouth. Sound is the pounding of blood in his ears. Shadow tells him that the world will wait on him till he is ready.
Izuku breathes. He coughs but that turns into a chuckle that morphs into laughter tinged with hysteria.
"I'm here," he says between breaths. "I'm fucking here."
He wipes away the tears and sits up, looking around. He knows this room and will always know it. That poster of All Might will always be known to him, even if it has a rip through it. The broken PC and the marks on the wall are no more foreign to him than his room bathed in light and normality. It scares him that this is normal now even if it is strange.
He stands, avoiding that dark fluid that makes perfect geometric shapes in the corner of his vision. Izuku looks to his arm. There's a scar there, pale and silvery and jagged. Which is infinitely better than an open wound. He traces it, feeling no pain. If anything, it's still numb.
Fact: Wounds that cause death heal near instantly. He pauses and tilts his head. Assuming no time has passed.
The window is blacked out. It takes him a moment to notice it isn't painted or even the dark fluid making fourth-dimensional shapes in the corner of his vision. The darkness is not uniform. It shifts and twists this way and that but Izuku feels nothing concerning from it—an alien sort of contentment made up of amusement and something like inevitable/finally/acceptance. Izuku reaches out. His hand rests on the window latch as he considers the wisdom in this.
You just committed suicide, the voice he spends a lot of time ignoring says.
I had pretty reasonable odds of coming back, he retorts and shoves the voice down. There are more important things to worry about.
He flips the latch and slides the window open. The sudden rush of darkness doesn't come. The suffocating weight he expected is missing. The darkness simply stays there as if the window sill is an impenetrable barrier.
Cautiously, he places his hand on the shadow. It sinks in slightly. He watches the shadows dance between his fingers and the back of his hand, joyous as a puppy with a new ball. The joy is alien and mixed with predator/master/enemy/protect and safe/home/alive? Izuku jerks his hand back at that last sensation.
The shadows don't pull back, don't impede him in the slightest. They simply go back to what they were doing, dancing and forming shapes. The more Izuku doesn't stare directly at it, the more he can feel the complex shape the shadows make. There's something both wondrous and horrifying lurking in those patterns and if he could see more, feel more, he knows it would break him with its complexity.
He turns away, focuses his senses on the door instead. That feels safer in so much as he can feel nothing past it. He knows the range of his senses is about twenty metres and his room is nowhere near that large. And yet, his world is confined to the walls of his room and the patterns the shadows outside his window are making, patterns he's forgetting easier with each passing moment.
A deep breath centres him slightly. Izuku opens the door.
He expects sand and a dozen suns and rotting whales. He gets none of that. Instead, he gets concrete if concrete was a dark shade of blue. There are cracks where darkness leaks out as though the world is rejecting something so mundane as concrete. Izuku kneels and runs a finger across the blue surface, finding the ground warm and surprisingly textured. The blue flakes off easily. He looks to his finger where the blue flakes decaying rapidly.
He frowns and lays his palm on the surface. It takes him a moment to feel the flow of shadows below the ground. There's an order to the way it flows, almost like veins and yet Izuku gets the impression that the darkness could flow any direction and still be fine.
Izuku looks up. There are buildings, dozens of them. It is unfamiliar for but a moment. And then he makes out the patterns hiding there—those crystal columns are the pillars of a downtown coffee shop he likes, and the snarling fractal pattern creatures are the cartoonish puppies on the pet store a few blocks from his home. There, in the distance, is a column of absolute black. floating in the air and sucking up every drop of light from the purple sun streaking across the sky like a bullet, and Izuku knows it to be the tallest building in his city. He looks at the street again and realises with dawning horror that this is the street next to the apartment he shares with his mother.
The ground lurches before he can get a good look at anything else. It undulates, causing Izuku to lose his balance and he has the sense that he's standing on something alive in the truest sense. Everything vibrates for a moment, reminding Izuku of a person shivering from the cold. It stops, thankfully.
When he looks up again everything has changed. And still is changing.
Geometry he shouldn't be able to comprehend rises up and is replaced by patterns extending past infinity and there's a dying black hole fighting something that looks like a dragon so large it might as well be a universe unto itself and the creature that looked at him and forced Izuku to see everything flies past and pauses for a second that lasts forever to whisper a secret truth that makes Izuku's ears bleed and the longer he looks at the world the longer he understands how vast it truly is and how insignificant the human race is because how can they matter when a crystal nightmare is killing light especially if all this madness is simply a microcosm in a realm where infinity has been measured and found lacking and quantum mechanics operate on a macro scale and
Izuku
Fucking
Forgets
The world snaps back to a veneer of normality. He inhales, falling to the ground. His eyes burn, and it takes him a moment to understand they aren't literally on fire but simply bleeding. And so are his ears from the secret the creature whispered, a secret that he wants to forget but can't because it's written in his bones now.
LIFE=NULL=ENTROPY=YOU
He claws at his ears, scratching the skin there badly. But Izuku doesn't care because he isn't that, can never be that. This is worse than the songwaitingtoendthecycleoflifeandrebirth. Izuku focuses on that instead even if his heart is about to explode the longer he thinks about the song. But the song isn't about him. If anything, he's just a casual bystander and not the subject matter.
The weight of the song makes him cough blood. It is killing him, and he knows it will kill him faster and faster the longer it goes on. But he need only die a little until he can hide the secret in the deepest recesses of his mind, down past where even his instincts reside. And once he's certain his mind will unravel long before he finds the secret, Izuku locks it with the song that is killing him in the here and now.
He's lying on the ground, breathing heavily. He wipes away the blood on his eyes. Spits out the dark, congealed wad of blood in his mouth, not caring that it grows legs and runs away moments later. He scrubs away the blood from his ears and neck, wincing when he irritates one of the scratches there.
No, no, no, the voice he tries to ignore screams in agony. You left me with them, you fuck. You left me.
Izuku shrugs and ignores the voice. He knows it'll find a way back at some point, probably a lot saner than Izuku by then. For now, though, it means his mind is blessedly quiet.
This might be a good time to go home. Izuku nods and stands on wobbly legs.
He hears a skittering like sound and looks behind him. Standing between him and the doorway that will take him home is a dark mass of creatures, multi-legged, fuzzy and with fangs that remind him of a spider. And right at their head is the same wad of blood that had run away, larger and meaner looking as though it had aged a few years and been forced to survive the nightmares of this place. Held in place by a twisted carapace is a glowing orb of red. Instinct tells Izuku that is the blood the creature was born from.
And it hates Izuku. He can feel it deep within his soul that this thing hates him and will always hate its progenitor. Izuku steps back cautiously. The creatures step forward as one, their sharp-clawed appendages tearing through the concrete which leaks shadow. Another step back and they mimic his action.
The lead creature skitters forward and like a tidal wave the rest follow. Their very movements tear through the ground even as Izuku turns to run. They are fast despite their size, and the lead one is on him in moments.
Please work, he thinks, taking another step back. He can feel the shadows and whilst Izuku doesn't know all the rules of this place, he does know one fact: the shadows belong to him. So, when he calls on them they rise like lances, thousands of thin lances that eviscerate the creatures.
Izuku trembles at the fangs an inch from his face, gleaming with fluid and large enough to tear through bone. A dark lance holds the blood-spider creature in place, pierced through what might been a head in a normal creature. The hate is still there in its dozen crystal eyes but deeper down Izuku can see despair and even betrayal. He watches the creature die, slowly and crooning in pain. And when the infernal engines powering the creature fail, it dissipates to ash, leaving behind only that glowing red orb. The orb floats by its own will, defiant of gravity or any other force.
His hand reaches out, unbidden, and grasps the orb. It leaves his hand numb and tingly all at once. There is a multitude of… he doesn't want to call them souls because he refuses to equate what he has to those creatures.
They died, Izuku thinks and looks at the legion of spider-like corpses. But they're still dreaming.
It feels wrong to just throw the orb away. There are hundreds of lives begging to continue their dreams and Izuku doesn't know how to deal with it. Throwing it away is simply leaving them to die a slower death.
He puts it in his pocket and decides to forget about it.
He's become good at it.
He walks over spider corpses and puts them far from his mind. He flinches whenever a leg twitches with the hot wind carrying the scents of rotting fish and fresh blood. When one of them rises, body reconstructing as though time-reversed, and red light streaming from his pocket to it, Izuku crushes it with his foot. It makes a pitiful sound as Izuku stomps on it again and again and again and again until it goes back to its dreams.
He wipes away the blood from his mouth, wondering how it got there, and realises he's already at the door. He ignores the lightness of his pocket and the crystal shards scratching his gums. Those spider creatures are a distant memory when he steps through the door.
TDB
TDB
Water clings to him when he returns. He thrashes for a moment until he remembers where he is—submerged in a tub—and why—his forearm is still numb. He looks at the red water for a long time, thinking of nothing.
He pulls the plug and lets the water drain. Its odd seeing evidence of what he did disappear. He stands, dripping wet when the water's ankle high. Something nicks him, and he yelps, jumping out the tub. There's a tiny scratch on his ankle. He investigates the tub. Sees bits of shredded wood and metal at the drain. It reminds him of both the pole and the fridge.
Just another thing to note down.
It takes him nearly an hour to scrub every surface down. His fingers are raw and bloody by the time he's done scrubbing the blood out of his clothes. Next time don't wear clothes, he thinks. Pauses. Scrubs more vigorously at the idea that there will be a next time.
He's only just managed to shower and disinfect the scratches near his ears when his mother returns.
"Izuku, I'm home," she shouts from the doorway. She probably has groceries with her.
Izuku freezes. His mother comes back at six on weekdays. He looks at his watch. The time there reads eight o'clock.
What the fuck?
TDB
TDB
The shadows feel acuter after that. There is a level of detail that is overwhelming and sometimes he must leave class and spend time in the bathroom, breathing and not at all having a panic attack. Sometimes a student must come find him a few moments from a full-blown panic attack and bring him back to class. And sometimes he's bleeding too heavily from the nose to go back to class. He avoids questions from concerned teachers and even a trip to the school counsellor yields no answers.
When they call in his mother she simply stares them down, imperious and regal in a way only affronted parents manage, until they allow her to take him home. He cries when they get home and she hugs him tight as he tells her stories of the dreaming dead and old gods being born and abominations that keep him up at night. She simply holds him tight.
Her routines change around him. Not significantly—after the first night she checked up on him at night and found him beating off they both agreed that wouldn't work—but enough that he loves her all the more for it. She speaks to him on matters that he enjoys and grounds him during the bad times.
One night where he's too afraid to sleep from the voice screaming bloody murder in his head, she takes him out for ice-cream and a stroll through the park; and whilst the scents of grass and damp and life calm him, the spiders make him nervous and there isn't enough contrast between dark and light for shadows to really exist leaving him feeling almost blind. One weekend, when he starts to remember everything he hides deep down and the weight of it all leaves him breathless and feverish and writing higher dimensional mathematics in a language humans can't vocalise and in his own blood, she pulls him away gently and teaches him to play blackjack and how to count cards—and every technique from the simple Hi-Lo to the more complex Wong back-counting helps him forget the madness; and he doesn't mind learning more of his mother between explanations of arbitrage and matched betting; of how she met his father by conning him at a friendly game and then dazzling him with a card trick, a trick she shows him even though his hands shake too much for him to really learn it.
He starts packing her lunches and making breakfast in the morning even if it means sleeping less. Cleaning the house is mind-numbing and boring and so blessedly peaceful that he cries the first time he does it. His mother doesn't try to stop him except for days where he puts off doing homework because she won't permit his grades to drop, not when he's trying so hard to get to UA. It makes him guilty and forces him to work harder.
So, when he's training he goes there tired. He steps back from a punch form Jin Mo-Ri but fails to notice the ledge behind him. Izuku falls to the ground, hitting his head hard. He winces and blinks away stars. When he can see properly, Jin Mo-Ri is squatting beside Izuku. It takes Izuku a moment to notice he's staring at his exposed forearm. He pulls back and covers up the scar.
"I will not ask," the man says without pity or kindness. "But I do not waste time. If you do not want to get to UA, tell me, and I will leave."
His eyes widen. "Wait, no, I want to be a hero."
The man with crosses in his eyes simply blinks lazily. "Not if you die first."
I've died a lot, Izuku thinks bitterly. "I'm not trying to die," he retorts, and it is true to an extent.
Jin huffs. "The heart is weak even if flesh is strong."
Izuku squints at the man. "Coming from someone who goes around with his torso exposed." The black coat the man wears has only a single button around his collar and with the way it is cut most of his torso is exposed at any given time.
"I," he says, poking Izuku in the forearm, "have quirk the extents invulnerability to my clothes and makes them stronger than my flesh. You, little shadow, are weak and have no armour."
But they say no more of it after that. Two days a week, as he promised, Jin Mo-Ri teaches him how to fight and the rest of the time All Might trains his body. He puts on muscle rapidly, but he never becomes bulky like his hero. Instead, all the fat disappears, and it seems some days that his muscles never run out of endurance. In gym classes, he might not be able to lift as much as the other students, but he can lift much longer.
In the few minutes he has that aren't dedicated to school or training or learning about his quirk—and not going catatonic from the revelations—he takes the notebook with the sketches of his costume and modifies it. The white lines feel wrong and disingenuous to who—what—he is and he colours them black. The rabbit-like mask was something he built in homage to All Might but he wonders whether he is worthy of being the man's successor when he has monsters in his closet. He replaces the grinning teeth with a metal mouth-guard and keeps a cowl with rabbit ears, an acceptable compromise. He's not certain about the armoured vest but he remembers Jin Mo-Ri's words and decides protection can never be a bad thing.
Izuku spends one Friday evening and does absolutely nothing. He ignores his quirk by keeping everything well lit and sets his homework aside. The couch is comfy. He switches on the TV and lets the inane robot show wash over him, focusing instead on his book. His mother finds him like that, not busy or frantic or half-mad, and sits next to him. She dozes off after a few minutes. Izuku grabs a blanket and throws it over her, tucking her in gently.
His life is busy and horrifying. But Izuku wouldn't change it for a moment. It belongs to him and no one else, no matter the consequences.
A/N:
That's all from me for now. Thank you for reading this. If you enjoyed the story leave a favourite and if you have any questions just drop a review. But know all of that is unnecessary, and as always your readership is quite enough for me. Cheers.