He's eight years old, when it starts, so of course, he is never going to be fully cognizant of it. At that age, every problem but his own is a distant folly, and nothing his mother tells him to concern himself with. Of course, she herself knows to be worried.
It is, of course, the start of the end.
The issue is the declining population of quirkless people means that there is an entirely unexpected
consequence on hospitals, of all places.
It's not very common – at least, it wasn't in the first one hundred and fifty years of quirks. Now, though, with the donations biasing quirked populations and not the opposite, the issue is becoming startlingly common.
Quirks are intrinsic to DNA. Blood donations are risky, they always have been, with the risk of passing on pathogens that the doctors hadn't known were there. Now, though, it's clear that quirks interact poorly with one another.
Quirks can be, however temporarily, absorbed by a new user from their blood. It started with a terrible, terrible accident.
A blood donor in his sixties had been donating for over a decade and had a relatively weak electricity quirk. There hadn't been a problem for years and years and years.
And then, the blood he donated was given to a woman with a pacemaker.
It was a freak accident. That's what the news said, at the time, just a freak accident. It was supposed to be rare, supposed to not happen to people, but the woman, for just a period of a few hours developed a short-term electric-type quirk.
Izuku read up on it for hours, at first, marvelling at the idea that just a blood donation might be able to grant a temporary quirk to someone. Back then, Inko had only giggled at the idea of her son's excitement.
The woman's temporary quirk short-circuited her pacemaker, killing her on the spot. Nobody ever knew it was coming.
More and more problems just like it started to crop up; a lot came from that first batch the electric- quirk user donated, starting to cause problems with medical equipment, and then extending to causing inadvertent seizures, and then more, and more.
And then it spread out of one person.
Twenty-five people were killed after a quirk user, whose quirk relied on ingesting excessive amounts of calcium, donated blood over a period of four years. The excessive calcium intake in the recipients meant they overdosed, and their kidneys ceased to function.
It's the start, Midoriya Inko sees, as her son continues to play at being a hero. It's the start of something terrible. She herself is a nurse. She herself sees the damage up close; even without the deaths, there are so, so many poor reactions to blood donations, that it's beginning to be seen as an absolute final resort to offer any sort of transfusion.
When Izuku is eleven years old, the tide towards the quirkless begins to change.
The news starts to talk about the quirkless like they are miracle workers. The news starts to plead with anybody who is quirkless to donate blood.
"You'd be saving lives," the anchors say, and Izuku's attention is caught in an instant. "You can save lives by donating blood."
"Mama," Izuku says quietly. "Can I donate blood?"
Inko swallows. "You're too young, baby," she says, voice shaky. She doesn't tell him that they
can, and will, make an exception for him regardless of how young he is.
"I want to help people," Izuku insists. "I can do that if I donate blood, right? And I'm a type-O. my
blood works with everyone, doesn't it?"
"Keep that to yourself," she says, unusually stern with him in a way he's never seen her be before. "Don't tell anyone your blood type anymore, Izuku, do you understand?"
But he doesn't. How could he?
"I can be a hero," Izuku says again, harder this time, brows furrowed. "I can help people. I can help the heroes when they get hurt. They don't need to worry about a bad reaction to a different quirk, right? Because... because mine won't react. I don't have anything to react to."
"Izuku," Inko begs him dropping to her knees and shaking him lightly. "Don't be silly. Listen to me, listen to your mother. I'm trying to protect you. You can – you can be a hero any way you like, my sweet boy, but just not like this, okay? Are you listening?"
But he isn't.
He breaks out of her grasp and swallows. "Mama..."
"Izuku," she pleads. "Izuku, listen to me. I've seen both sides of this. Please don't make me see you there, too?"
He doesn't understand. How could he? Inko has to turn a blind eye to the ghost wards she frequents. She won't be able to if it's her son behind those walls.
Izuku does not listen to her. His dream of being a hero, regardless of what sense of the word, is just too great.
The men come for her son less then twenty-four hours later, knocking insistently at the door before she's even finished making diner.
"Ma'am," the man at her door says, brandishing an ID from the local police. "Are you Midoriya Inko?"
"Why?" Inko asks, dread curling in her gut. She knows, of course, why, but what she means, is why him? Why now? It doesn't matter.
"I think you should invite us in," he says, phrased very carefully. Tears slip silently down Inko Midoriya's cheeks, and she steps aside. They head for the living room. Her son is already waiting.
"You did a good thing, son," one of them says to her boy. His smile is warbling but bright. "You're going to be a real hero for all of this."
"It's the right thing to do, sir!"
"How old are you?" a man asks. They don't introduce themselves. Inko doesn't ask them to. It would only waste their time.
"Eleven, sir," he answers, confident and sure.
The men share a look, and Inko can't watch. She knows what's going through these men's heads. How much Izuku can donate before he can't give any more. How long it will take to replenish the sources.
"And what's your blood type?"
They're filling out paperwork. Inko wants to lurch forward and rip it from his hands with her own, not even daring to touch her quirk before these men, because she can, and will, be branded a villain, or a crazy mother, for her trouble. She wants to scream a lie. She wants to tell them that it's a mistake, that she lied, that Izuku isn't quirkless, never has been, that she lets him think he is so he doesn't get any silly ideas about being a hero.
But she doesn't. "O-negative, sir."
Their attention, though it already belonged to Izuku exclusively, is heightened to the point of excitement.
"O-negative," one man repeats. She hears his greed. Izuku must not, because he nods; it's a point of pride.
"That's good, isn't it?" Izuku says, leaning forward. "It's the universal blood type, so my blood type can go to everyone. Even before, if I weren't quirkless, I could donate to anyone."
"That's right, son. That's right. You're doing good work, here. Have you packed your things?"
"Just a bag full," Izuku springs to his feet, reaching for his backpack and only faltering at the sound of Inko's sob wrenching from her chest. "It's okay, Mom! It won't take long, right? Overnight, maybe? I'll be back soon!"
The men share a look, and they are rising to their feet.
One of them clasps a hand on Izuku's shoulder, not letting Inko answer him at all as he steers her son past her in the corridor.
"You'll be handsomely paid," the second man tells her, as the first kidnaps her boy and she is powerless to stop him.
"I want my son back," Inko begs him. "Please don't do this, he's just a boy. He's just a boy." And yet, there is a spark of humanity in his gaze as he looks away, eyelids fluttering closed.
"I'm sorry," he tells her, and this, at least, is genuine. This, at least, is true. "But this is for the greater good. Your son is going to save many, many lives this way. You raised a selfless boy, and you should be proud."
"Let me be proud of him here. Let me have my boy back, I'll do anything, I'll pay any price," because she would. All she would need to do is swallow her pride and call her husband, ask for a portion of his estate, and he'd promised, all those years ago, that she was entitled to as much of it as she wanted, and if she ever wanted him to come back, she simply needed to call.
"I'm sorry," the man says, shaking his head. There is a bit of grief behind his eyes. "I really, really am. I wish there was more we could do, but... but with the state of donors as they are, until we can import more clean blood, people like your son are all we're going to have."
"Please," all she can do is beg. She will beg for the rest of her life. "You won't let me see him if you take him."
The man swallows, and he looks away, taking a shaky breath as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small business card.
"Your son is O-negative," he tells her quietly, as though he doesn't know. "That's going to elevate his status well above his quirklessness. Take my card. I'll see if there are any strings I can pull. Okay?"
It isn't a comfort.
There is no comfort, in this.
He leaves before Inko can cry and plead one final time, eyes so blurry from her tears that she can barely make out his name on the simple business card.
Detective Tsukauchi.
She wonders if anybody will ever show her son kindness ever, ever again.
Tsukauchi does keep to his word.
It takes six weeks for Inko to finally, finally be allowed onto her son's ward. The blood donor's ward.
Everything is so perfectly sterile. She's cleaned within an inch of her life just to have the right to step inside, and the woman that leads her to her son is just as surprised she's allowed in as Inko is.
"He's done well," the nurse says in an undertone. She's not a woman Inko has ever worked with. "He's donated a lot of blood."
Inko's chin warbles. She doesn't think in any more detail than that, because she's taken to her son's side, and she can't cry here.
He's pale, cold as ice, and his eyes are closed when she takes the seat at his bedside. She takes his ice-cold fingers in hers, and presses her lips to them, pleading for him to wake up, wondering what ever went wrong in the world to bring her beautiful boy here through no fault of his own.
"M... Mama?" Izuku croaks tiredly. She whips her head up, and his once dazzlingly green eyes have dulled to almost brown beneath the grey sheen. "Hi... mama..."
"Baby," she breathes, pasting on a smile and caressing his ice-cold cheeks with her fingers. "Oh, baby, how do you feel?"
His face, however weakly, screws up the slightest bit before it smooths out.
"I feel good," he tells her, and they both know it's a lie. "I'm... I'm donating so much blood, Mama..."
She doesn't look at the blood bags around the room. She doesn't look at the way they're slowly draining every droplet from his tiny little body. She doesn't think about how they aren't leaving enough for him to grow.
"I'm... a he... hero... Mama..."
"Yes," she lies, unable to stop the tears this time. "My sweet Izuku, you are, of course you are..."
He shifts on the bed slightly, letting out a slow, deep whimper.
"Mom..?"
"Yes?"
He takes a minute to say anything else. His eyes dart around the room, cold fingers tightening in her grasp.
"When... when will I be done?"
Her sob punctuates the silent ward, and she rushes to stifle it, rushes to her feet, rushes to press Izuku's face into her chest so he can at least have a hug before she has to go, before they never let her back here.
"I'll—" she starts, trying to find some complacency to feed her poor boy. "I'll s-see – see what I can do, baby, okay? I'm – I'm sure you're almost done."
He gives another deep sigh and his eyes slip closed.
"Tired, mama," he whispers, and his fingers loosen their grip as he slides back into rest.
Inko has to be dragged from her son's sleeping form, kicking, crying, screaming, and she knows that she won't ever be let back in as they wring her son for every last drop.
It's not talked about.
Inko's friends ask her where her son is. She has to tell them he's donating, and nothing more. They never quite know why that means he isn't at home, where he belongs, but they congratulate her anyway, and take turns talking about distant friends of friends of friends who've donated.
Nobody knows what the word means, anymore.
Nobody wants to know. Nobody wants to listen.
The news comes in when Izuku is thirteen years old.
Thanks to advances in the medical world combined with synthetic quirks, quirkless donors are no
longer needed exclusively to keep up with levels of supply and demand. Quirkless donors can come home.
She waits anxiously by the door when she gets the call, and she hasn't stopped crying all week. Izuku's room has remained untouched for almost two years, and she's ready for him to take it back. They kept their promise, and paid Inko handsomely for the price of her son's body, but she had no need for any of the money.
She took to putting it away in Izuku's bank account, just for him, just in case this day ever came, just in case he could ever come home to use it again.
And he did.
He's small.
Exhausted.
But he's smiling.
He looks up at Inko like she hung the moon, and he doesn't protest when she snags him in for a good, hard hug.
"My sweet boy," she cries, over and over and over again. "Oh, my sweet boy, I'm so, so glad you came home, I've waited so long—"
"It's okay, Mom," he whispers into the crook of her neck. "I'm home now. I'm... I'm going to be a hero again, you'll see. They said I can keep donating, if I want to. I just have to wait until I turn sixteen this time."
Inko's heart squeezes in her chest at the idea of her boy going out and doing this from the beginning all over again, but she says nothing, only sits him down, makes him katsudon from scratch, and holds his pale face between her hands just to admire her baby boy, and relish in the fact that she gets to do this once more.
Izuku doesn't think about his two years as a donor in very much detail.
He would much rather think about the people his blood went to, and what sort of quirks they might have, about whether or not any heroes might have used his donations.
It takes him two weeks of his mother nursing him back to as close to full health as he could get before she finally broke and re-enrolled him in school like he asked. To Aldera Junior High. He had just started when he volunteered, and now, he'll be going back.
He swallows his nerves and walks himself to school, a slight smile on his face as he traipses through familiarly unfamiliar corridors in search of his homeroom before he finally finds it.
He's the last one inside, and then the others notice him, they fall silent. Even Kacchan, too, falls utterly, entirely silent, entire face slack at the sight of him at the door
Swallowing down his nerves and the pounding of his heart, he slides into the only empty desk chair, wondering if it's stayed that way the whole two years he was gone, and keeps his head down.
Someone pokes him in the shoulder.
He flinches, a little, but glances over anyway. It's one of Kacchan's friends – the one with the long fingers, and he looks a little...
Well, bashful.
"My sister," he whispers, but the room is quieter, so everyone hears it anyway. "She was in a real bad accident couple months ago. Lost a lot of blood... they said they had o-neg on tap. Was that you?"
Izuku gives a weak, breathy laugh, and a nod. "Y-yeah, maybe? I think they said I donated a few thousand pints."
A few people break out into muttering, somewhere in front of them, excited, and Izuku drops his head down a bit further.
"No way," another kid from the front of the class says, turning to crane his long neck at Izuku. "Y'know, I heard that you guys got paid loads of money to do it."
"Oh... my mom got some money, I think? But I haven't seen any of it. I just... I just wanted to help people..."
"How many people did you donate to?" "How long did it take to donate?"
"Did it hurt?"
He's battered with question after question after question, so many that Izuku doesn't even have time to answer them all before the bell rings and they all fall silent, their homeroom teacher traipsing into class to stare them all down.
"Class," he greets. "You've all seen our new addition. Do you want to introduce yourself?"
"No need, teach," Kacchan's voice rings out, startling Izuku most of all. "We all know who Deku is, right?"
There's a chorus of agreement, and Kacchan leans back only to meet Izuku's eyes. He does something odd, a strange, half nod, before he looks away again.
Izuku lets out a deep, shaky breath, and wonders how long it'll last.
Things are perpetually very, very different. There's a gulf between them all, because Izuku is quirkless, and they used to be quite vicious about it, but now... there's some sort of respect.
Izuku knows that the quirkless have been going up in people's standings after stepping forward and supporting the medical efforts, just like he had, but he didn't think it would cause such a sharp turnaround of opinion.
Kacchan doesn't like to look at him, still, but he talks to Izuku about a lot of things, these days, and it's so, so easy to talk to him like before.
The problem arises when Izuku tells them all that he still wants to be a hero.
"But... you're quirkless," one of them says nervously. "And you've already done so much... nobody would blame you if you wanted to stop now, Mido."
"I don't want to stop," is Izuku's firm response. "I only have to stop now until I turn sixteen, and then I can start again, but I'll be able to help even more people if I become a hero."
Understanding crosses some of their features, and they look away, nervous, uncertain. "So you want to be... a..."
"A hero," Izuku repeats, as though there aren't a thousand different subdivisions of daylight and underground or even investigative or undercover. There are so many types that Izuku still goes dizzy with it, not the same feeling of his body empty and lagging, but enough to drive him forwards, nonetheless. "I'm going to be a hero."
And he will. He should be.
He wants to be a hero, and everybody things that's stupid of him, but he'll show them. He's done it once before.
Nobody needs to know about the months he spent with that same recurring nightmare of being bled dry, throat so parched he couldn't ask for them to stop.
(Nobody needs to know that wasn't actually a nightmare, either.)
It comes to a head the year before they start high school, when the teacher starts to talk about applications and all, and offhandedly mentions Izuku's intention to apply, and the others seem in disbelief about it. As though his goal was far too lofty even then.
It's Kacchan, though, who forces him to stay behind.
"For god's sake Deku," he says, and it's the first time he's looked Izuku in the eye since the day he
came back to school after two years of absence. "You've done enough. You don't need to – to fucking do this."
"Do what?" he asks, genuinely baffled, entirely uncertain. Things with Kacchan have been rocky for months, swinging between hot and cold so fast that Izuku rarely knows how to handle it. "I want to be a hero, Kacchan, just like you."
"You already did that," Kacchan snaps, making him inch back the slightest bit. "Don't you get it? You've done enough. You were enough. Just – just quit while you're ahead, before they bleed you dry, you idiot, you got it?"
Izuku licks his chapped lips and shakes his head. "No, Kacchan. I'm sorry. I want to help people. I did help people. I still can. Just because – just because they fixed the shortage doesn't mean I can't still help. Just because I don't have a quirk... that doesn't mean I can't try, right?"
Kacchan doesn't answer this time. He storms out without another word.
On the way home...
You know the story. You know the way it goes.
A quirk, and a life. He wonders if it will change anything, but it wouldn't matter anyway.
The first day of school, when Izuku launches the ball with a One for All powered finger, Kacchan launches himself at Izuku, blinded by pure, incandescent rage.
"You could have killed me," he roars, and Izuku steps back for the first time. Even Aizawa looks baffled, and the rest of the class too.
"He was in no danger of hurting anybody but himself," Aizawa says, raising an eyebrow.
"That's not what I fucking mean," and he rips off the scarf as best he can to poke Izuku hard in the chest, finding himself tripping over his own clumsy, quirkless feet. "You – you fucking – o-neg isn't—"
Izuku's eyes fly wide, and in an instant, he understands.
Kacchan never looked him in the eye.
"You – you could have fucking killed me, for lying about a fucking quirk!"
"Oh god," Izuku breathes. "Kacchan, you – you never told me—"
"What's going on here?" Aizawa interrupts them, tugging Kacchan away, and Kacchan bares his teeth.
"Go on, Deku," he spits. "Tell them."
"I didn't lie," Izuku insists, a little hysterical as he looks up at the teacher who promised to expel him a moment ago. "They – they really did think I was quirkless, it didn't hurt anybody, it would have been in the news—"
"Wait, quirkless?" someone calls from the crowd of classmates, and Izuku cringes. "What are you talking about?" Aizawa demands again. "Get on your feet."
He's swift to obey, wiping off sand and dust and grime and swallowing tears.
"I was qu-quirkless," he says, even though it's the last thing he wants to admit. Hopefully nobody starts asking questions that Izuku can't answer. "Or so we th-thought, until I suddenly got my quirk late, but – but because we thought I was quirkless, and – and I just wanted to help—"
Understanding flickers across Aizawa's face, and it hardens.
"Are you telling me," he says, quiet, dangerous. "That you were one of..."
Aizawa doesn't finish. Izuku finishes it for him, swallowing uncomfortably at the way the rest of the class stares.
"One of the volunteers, y-yeah. But – but my quirk came in even later than that, s-so it didn't hurt anybody at all!"
"That's not my problem," Aizawa says sharply. "You would have been eleven when that started."
The courtyard silences.
Izuku does nothing but shift.
"I was o-negative," he whispers, and Aizawa flinches hard. "They – they needed my blood, sensei, who – who was I to keep it? I – I was hardly using it, I was quirkless. I just wanted to help people."
"Today's quirk apprehension test is going to be postponed," Aizawa bites out. "You're all dismissed. Midoriya, go to Recovery Girl, now. I need to go have a meeting with Nezu."
And then he's gone, and the rest of the class are left to stare at Izuku like he's grown a second head. Kacchan is long gone, too.
"Midoriya..." Iida says, brows furrowing together. "You were... quirkless? And... one of the guardians?"
Izuku licks his lips. "Guardians?" he says, a little lost.
"That – that's what the hospital—" Iida looks away, choking up suddenly. "They call the quirkless
donors guardians. Were... were you..?"
"I just wanted to help. I helped a lot of people, I think. My quirk came in late... we checked with the hospitals, n-nobody ever had an adverse reaction to me. I was safe. They think because my quirk came in late it missed my blood entirely, s-so—"
And then Iida is crushing him in a hard, hard hug.
"My father," he chokes, and Izuku doesn't even need to let him finish to know what sentiment he's hugging Izuku for. "Thank you."
"It might not have been mine," he wheezes. "But... I had to help." It's what it will always, always come down to, in the end.
That Izuku has to help.
None of them really know, Izuku realises, a little later on. Especially after a meeting with All Might and Nezu and Aizawa. They don't know the full extent of what it means to be a donor. Their teachers do, and it means Izuku gets handled with kid gloves more than the others do, which he despises, but most of their classmates just think that Izuku used to walk into a hospital once or twice a week to give blood.
Izuku never really wanted to correct that assumption with the truth.
Kacchan won't look at him, won't even breathe in his direction. He doesn't know if it's anger for lying about the quirk, or because Kacchan had almost died, once, and Izuku had never even known. He'd never even known that it was his blood that had saved his friend's life.
Kacchan had almost died. Nobody ever told him. Kacchan won't tell him what happened.
They move on, as best they can. It gets slightly easier for Kacchan, Izuku thinks, when he finds out that Izuku really is quirkless. That One for All really wouldn't have transferred even if he had it at the time. It... smooths things over, just a little.
He doesn't ask about the wards.
Nobody asks about the wards.
It doesn't matter, though, that nobody asks, that nobody gets it, because –
Well.
Izuku always said he'd donate again, once he turned sixteen; he was turned away because of his quirk this time.
This time, he knows it won't matter.
Like all times before, they hadn't seen it coming. It wasn't the League of Villains, at least, which was some mild manner of comfort, but it didn't mean much when Uraraka was bleeding out in Izuku's arms, and the rest of the class could do nothing but desperately try to hold her together while trying to call for Aizawa-sensei.
"It's going to be okay," Izuku promises, pressing his forehead to hers. "It's going to be okay. It's going to be fine. You're going to be fine."
She gives a weak hiccup. Her eyes are starting to dull.
Izuku knows how she feels.
And then—
Then, he catches Kacchan's eye, and for the first time, when it comes to Izuku's condition, he looks him in the eye and nods.
"It's going to be okay," he promises, firmer than before. "Yaomomo, I need you to make a cannula, a tube, and a needle."
Momo startles, blinking her desperate tears out of her face in her confusion. "Wh—"
"She has twelve minutes before her organs will shut down like this, so you need to do it now."
He knows that. He heard them talk. The nurses, doctors, always pushing his small body as far as it
could go, noting the results, talking about his symptoms, his appearance, how delirious he got. Even though it was himself, back then, and not someone else, he recognises the signs.
Momo doesn't hesitate, after that, and passes Izuku what he asks for, tugging sanitising wipes from the minimal first aid kit they were able to scavenge from their hut.
Uraraka whimpers from the pain, and Tsuyu presses harder into her wound. Izuku is just blindingly glad that it was Kacchan who took out the villain who did this to her.
If Izuku had done it, the villain would be dead.
"She's going to bleed out," Tsuyu croaks. Izuku shakes his head, swiping the sanitising wipe over the crook of his elbow.
"She's going to be fine," he promises, hard and firm. "She will be fine."
He sticks the needle into his arm without hesitating. He's used to this feeling, so he doesn't flinch, even though everybody else recoils from the sight. He's even done it himself, sometimes. He asked the nurses to show him, and they'd been happy to, especially when he was able to save them the work, sometimes, until his fingers got too weak to try.
He slips the tube into his veins and watches the blood start to pump out of it, in tune with his own heart.
"New needle," he grunts. A new, clean one appears in his hand, and he sanitises Uraraka's elbow first before digging it inside.
"Hang on, what about—"
"He's o-negative," Kacchan says quietly. "It'll take." "But what about—"
"I was a quirkless donor," Izuku reminds them firmly, meeting Kirishima's eye as the blood slowly, slowly starts to pump into Uraraka's elbow. "My body learnt to function at twenty-percent blood capacity for two years. I may be a little rusty, but I can survive the blood loss. She can't. She's going to be fine. We just need to stop the bleeding. Todoroki, you need to cauterise her wound."
Todoroki recoils, but he doesn't argue, sinking to his feet at Tsuyu's side and gently pressing the poor girl away.
"This is going to hurt her." Todoroki whispers.
"Hold her hand with your right," Izuku instructs, taking Uraraka's right hand with his non-donating arm. "She'll be okay. We just need to stop the bleeding. You need to move fast, or she'll bleed mine too. Got it?"
"But your quirk... it could kill her." Kaminari says, shaking his head hard. "You're being irresponsible, Midoriya, this isn't – this isn't a joke—"
"It won't," Izuku swears. "My blood is clean, I promise."
But Kaminari boils with rage that he's never seen from the blond as Izuku's blood pumps slowly into Uraraka's arm. It's only Shouji who's able to hold Kaminari back.
"You don't get it!" Kaminari insists, frantic. "My – my grandpa, he was the one who started this!" Their whole class silences, all turning to gape at Kaminari as he trembles. Izuku doesn't waver,
though, meeting his eyes unfalteringly.
"He started this," Kaminari whispers. "He – he didn't know, nobody knew, but – but it killed people, Midoriya. You're going to kill her. Your quirk almost killed you, dude, just – just stop before you hurt anybody."
Izuku stands resolute. His blood is a familiar colour. He could pick out the shade from sight.
"Tell them, Kacchan," he says quietly. If they won't take Izuku's word, they'll take Kacchan at his.
"She'll be better than fine," his friend says gruffly, watching as Todoroki's palm glows red. "If you know anybody who had o-neg blood three, four, five years ago, it probably came from Deku."
"You need to be careful," Momo urges him quietly as Uraraka's face contorts, as she lets out a pained scream.
"I am careful," Izuku says softly, refusing to do anything but squeeze Uraraka's hand back. Tsuyu pets her hair out of her face. "She's going to be fine."
"There's no way of knowing how much you're giving," Momo insists. "No way of measuring."
"I've already given a third of a pint," he says. His eyes are only on Uraraka's pale face. "I told you. I was a quirkless donor. My – my whole life for – for two years was this. This is – this is what I'm good for. I know how much to give I know how much before I can't function anymore."
There isn't a breath of air that Izuku cares about that isn't from Uraraka's wheezing throat.
Izuku should have been faster. Should have been stronger. Uraraka should never have needed to take that hit for him.
But at least the stars aligned like this, because Izuku – Izuku can survive the blood loss so that she doesn't die of it.
She's going to be fine.
One for All won't pass along.
Izuku doesn't want it to, and so she's safe. Izuku is quirkless. Izuku was born for this.