Thank you for reading my story!
Please note this story is MA (18+) and deals with serious and dark themes including non-con/rape. Trigger warnings will be included at the beginning of each chapter.
Thank you!
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TW:/ Suicide idealization, suicidal thoughts, bullying, physical abuse, stalking, kidnapping, blood, vomit
Izuku is fourteen when he finally gives up.
No one, not even All Might believes he can be a hero. There is no sudden tilt of the world's axis, no fireworks, no applause when he finally, finally gives in. Izuku stands on the rooftop All Might left him on, watching as the world bleeds to grey.
He can't kill himself of course, although it would be so much easier. Even though everyone wants him to. Just five steps forward and then a big drop and then nothing at all. No searing burns, no jeers, no sad, pitying glances from Mom. Just nothing.
But it would ruin Kacchan if he did that today. After Kacchan told him to take a swan dive off the roof. Kacchan may be a bully but he is strong. He is young- he still has time to grow into a great Hero and save people. It would ruin his mom too, knowing that she had outlived her only son (The son she gave up everything for; the son she lost her husband to).
Izuku sits on the roof's edge, thirty stories up, and thinks for a long time.
When the sun is setting and the wind has Izuku shivering so hard he nearly slips off he stands up and turns away from the ridge.
Fate is cruel, of course. The sludge villain is there in the street, and Kacchan needs help. Izuku doesn't think before he is moving, throwing his bag, pulling at mud desperately as it slips through his fingers, and trying not to scream and sob and break. He knows how vile and dirty and disgusting it felt to have that smelly sludge stuffed down his nose and throat and suffocating and dying . He has to save Kacchan.
All Might punches and Kacchan is safe, and Izuku just wants to go home, just needs to go home before he crumbles to dust. Kacchan finds him again. Izuku flinches back from his popping palms as Kacchan screams at him about how useless he is, and Izuku can't do anything besides smile at his childhood friend. Izuku doesn't need reminding anymore.
Izuku walks home slowly, silently. Hugs his mother when she greets him at the door. He could never leave her, never hurt her like that. He was stuck in this life. He grips her soft cotton sweater and sobs into her shoulder as he tells her that he can't do this anymore. That he gives up. That he is sorry he can't be more than a worthless Deku.
Mom pets his hair and cries and apologizes and apologizes and apologizes and apologizes .
The very, very, very last fragments of Izuku's hope shatter into nothing.
She pulls him out of school the next day and for the first time in what feels like his entire life, Izuku breathes.
Izuku is sixteen when he finishes his entire high school curriculum with a 4.0 GPA.
He should have given up becoming a Hero sooner, he thinks.
Izuku had enrolled in a specialized online school for gifted students after leaving Aldera Middle School. It was great, and Izuku thrived without bubbling burns and aching bruises, and teachers with perpetual sneers impeding his progress. He loved learning! He only had to speak with his teachers when he had questions and they were always very nice and never berated or harassed him because they didn't know he was quirkless! He finished the four-year program in half the time and he relished in Mom's beaming smile and proud eyes. She took him to a fancy restaurant to celebrate after his last exam.
Things were alright. Mom couldn't afford a consistent therapist for him but he did get prescribed anxiety medication. Izuku didn't have any friends and didn't really leave the house, but he found he preferred loneliness to the constant bone-deep exhaustion of floundering to be recognized. To be loved. To be accepted. To be useful.
It was easy to distract himself. Izuku kept his head down for two years, the blazing 100 on the top of every exam proof that he is doing something right, something good, even if no one but his mom would ever know it. They had moved to a new apartment in a different district after Izuku dropped out of middle school and since then Izuku barely left his room. The only person he ever spoke to was Mom.
Izuku lays in his bed, pulling sensible white sheets to his chin. He sold his All Might merchandise a long time ago, his walls now bare and grey just like he is.
Blinking at the ceiling, Izuku thinks. He still loves Heroes; loves quirks. He still gets excited watching fights and breaking them down. In the end, All Might had been right. It took a while for Izuku to admit it, but All Might was right. Everyone was, really. Izuku couldn't be a hero . He would be a liability, a nuisance. It wasn't cruel to tell him so; it was realistic.
Izuku could still help heroes, though. Make them better and stronger so they can save more people. He decides he is going to join the General Studies course at U.A. University and study to become a Quirk Analyst. Maybe he couldn't help everyone, but he could help heroes be the best they can be! He wouldn't be a useless Deku forever.
Even though Izuku has his High School diploma, he still has to wait until he is eighteen to apply to U.A. The university does not accept minors as students and does not make exceptions. He still has two years to wait before he can apply.
His mom suggests martial arts as a time sink, surprisingly. She knows how much he loves Eraserhead (his favorite hero!) and Izuku admits it would be super cool to be able to fight like he does; functionally quirkless. It would also look great on his university application. He enrolls in an Aikido class. Then a gymnastics class as well. He will probably never use what he knows in a villain fight but he likes the feeling of getting stronger, of the sweat and ache in his limbs showing tangible progress. Showing that he was doing something good, something useful.
The other students don't like him. Izuku has gone years without talking to someone his age and doesn't seem to be able to do it right anymore. The other kids avoid him and think he is weird, but it's okay. They don't know he is quirkless, so they just ignore him. They don't hurt him.
Izuku picks up a day job working in the back of a veterinarian's clinic. He has trouble speaking with people but animals have always loved him, and he loves being around dogs and cats and hamsters and rabbits who are free with their affection even to a Deku. His job is mostly feeding the animals and cleaning cages but sometimes he helps his boss, Dr. Hoshino, with procedures for bigger animals.
Dr. Hoshino is nice enough and still hired him even after finding out he doesn't have a quirk. Dr. Hoshino's quirk is 'Calming Breath'! He can release a pheromone that reduces the stress of any creature that inhales it. It is a great quirk for working with animals and has so many uses (including keeping Izuku's hands from shaking when he has to speak with customers)! The veterinarian seemed impressed when Izuku explained that he was looking for a job until he can apply for university since he finished high school early, but Izuku doesn't know what was so great about it. Anyone would have finished early if they spent all their waking hours studying in order to avoid having a mental breakdown.
The job is alright. A bit boring. Izuku likes it. The pay isn't much but Izuku is able to afford daily Aikido and gymnastics lessons and he uses the rest to help Mom with rent and the bills. He likes being able to help her; likes being less of a burden.
If Izuku is going to be useful he can't stay in his room, after all.
He is busy now, and it feels good. He wakes up in the morning and goes to work and then goes to his classes and Mom is obviously happy to see him getting out more.
It's not enough, though. Izuku's brain starts buzzing, all of the ways he has failed, failed, failed, clawing to the front of his mind to scream at him. He needs to do more.
He starts walking around after his lessons. Mom doesn't like him staying out after midnight, so Izuku wanders aimlessly from sundown to his curfew. He still feels a nervous flutter in his chest being outside for so long, but there is nothing to worry about. No one knows him around here. Kacchan (and everyone like him) is miles away. He is nobody. No one is going to grab him and burn deep, hand-shaped scars into his shoulder, his arm, his hip.
Izuku can't really call it 'patrolling'. He's not a hero. He makes sure to walk paths that take him through unsavory parts of town and messages the Hero hotline when he spots criminal activity. He waits in the shadows until a Hero arrives and then watches the fight greedily, excitedly. Sponges in knowledge on the Hero's tactics and quirk usage. Scribbles in his notebooks obsessively until his hand cramps. The few times a situation was urgent, Izuku had been able to distract the villains, throwing rocks or yelling to stall for time until a Hero could arrive. He always gets in trouble afterwards but it still feels good to be helpful.
He is on Hero Analysis Journal #21 (he doesn't include 'for the future' anymore) and he loves opening his notebook and gushing about the latest hero fights to his mom and basking in her indulgent smiles (she rarely understands what he's talking about but likes listening to Izuku blabber anyway).
Izuku feels happy for the first time since the doctor told him he had too many joints in his toe.
It starts small.
Izuku starts feeling eyes on the back of his head, his neck prickling with goosebumps, but there is never anyone there when he turns around. The eyes never leave. Izuku feels paranoid and on edge and crazy. He figures it is an evolution of his anxiety and kicks himself for getting worse and not better even though he is trying so hard to get better.
Izuku stops sleeping. He feels eyes on him even when he's buried in blankets and hiding from the world. While he's patrolling he thinks he starts seeing a shadow out the corner of his eye and feels unhinged, constantly twitching, whipping his head around trying to catch whatever is following him. He never does.
He tries to concentrate on his notebooks and analyzing heroes, but his attention is persistently grabbed by something just outside his periphery. Izuku doesn't know what to do. He thinks he's being followed, but he has no proof. He doesn't want to tell Mom. She does enough for him as it is. They already moved once because of him.
It doesn't matter that Izuku starts finding his favorite brand of strawberry milk outside the door when he leaves for work in the morning (it is always ice cold like it was placed there just before he stepped out; Izuku always throws it out on his way to the bus stop). It doesn't matter that Izuku is uncomfortable, skin crawling with spiders knowing that he is being watched . It's not like he can do anything about it. Mom can't afford to move again. Izuku can't put that burden on her.
Izuku can't stop patrolling either. He pushes through his discomfort because what he does is important , even if his palms clam up and his stomach clenches every time he walks past a particularly dark alley and feels them. Eyes.
It's fine. He's fine.
On Izuku's seventeenth birthday, he wakes up to a towering slice of vanilla cake topped with a fat, red strawberry on a plate directly next to his bed.
Izuku stares at it, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Mom didn't leave that there. His eyes flick to his window, which is locked. They flick to his bedroom door, which is locked. They flick back to the cake, sitting innocently in the middle of the floor, heavily frosted. His favorite, just the way he likes it.
Swallowing bile, Izuku tries his best to will away a panic attack. He's frozen stiff, staring wide-eyed at the dessert as if it might blow up. Cautiously, he moves one bare foot off the bed, then the other.
Reaching a hesitant hand out to the plate, Izuku resolves to throw the cake in the trash and then wake up Mom to tell her what is going on. He can't keep it to himself if his stalker can get inside the apartment. Mom isn't safe if they can get inside the house.
With a grim nod to himself, Izuku closes his fingers around the white porcelain of the plate. Then he's falling through the floor into darkness, darkness, darkness, and landing with a jolt on his back, the wind knocked straight out of him. Izuku tries to sit up, wheezing, panicking, but something heavy cracks over the side of his head and everything goes black.
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Izuku wakes to a blinding pain in his left temple. He brings a hand to his head and hisses at the contact, trying to piece together what happened. His forehead and hair are tacky with blood. He was in his room and then…
The cake. Then…
A warp gate? That's a powerful quirk. Dangerous. Does not bode well for Izuku. Usually, warp gate users can only project a gate to an area they have already been to or at least seen. How had they gotten one into his room…
Izuku's stomach roils and he heaves, whimpering as his middle clenches painfully around nothing but burning stomach acid. How long has it been? He shouldn't be this hungry…
Groaning, Izuku tries his best to open his eyes. They feel heavy and sticky and the throbbing in his head explodes with the stimulus. Izuku's heart rate, already threatening to beat out of his chest, picks up a distressingly fast pace.
The room is dark, the only light coming from a monitor on a desk behind the bed. The narrow bed that Izuku is laying on. The computer is right there, less than 6 feet away, a way to contact someone. Izuku can't see much in the eerie blue glow but he can tell the room is dirty. It smells. Stinks like rotten food and B.O. Wrinkling his nose, Izuku tries moving his bare legs (no pants?) and cringes at the feeling of crumbs on the sheets.
Moving was a bad idea. The walls spin dangerously and Izuku falls to his side to vomit clear, acidic bile over the side of the mattress onto the floor. It burns his throat and Izuku's eyes prick with tears. He has a concussion. How is he supposed to escape a warp quirk user with a concussion?!
Izuku clenches his eyes shut, but he is still so dizzy. Nausea forces up more painful acid and Izuku starts to cry big ugly tears. All those lessons, all that effort, and he can't even get out of his captor's bed . Useless, worthless Deku .
The door creaks and Izuku's head whips around so fast he cricks his neck. Dark spots start to blot out his vision, and Izuku digs sharp nails into his palms to keep himself from passing out. He can't pass out.
Someone is there, in the doorway. Large, looming, shadowy. Izuku's chest is heaving with sobs and he can't make himself stop. Can't concentrate. He meets eyes with the stranger, manic blood-red eyes digging into his own. Izuku is distantly aware he is hyperventilating but is past the point of being able to do anything about it.
The man takes a step towards him and like always, Deku fails. He passes out.
