Chapter 10: Ariadne's Twine
After Nedzu came to visit, Izuku refused to talk to anyone.
At first, the officers were angry. Then, they got creative. Of course, this only ended up making them angrier when Izuku continued to not speak no matter what methods they tried on him.
Now… now, he was in isolation. A plain white room. No furniture. No windows. He couldn't even really tell where the door was. They dressed him in plain white, but at least he wasn't in a straight jacket even if his hands were still cuffed in front of him. There was only one thing that wasn't white in the room besides his body and that was a solitary black camera that was constantly blinking in one of the corners.
He felt like he was going insane with only his thoughts and the vestiges to keep him company. His bones were brittle from not being able to stretch or use his quirk.
Most of all though? He was tired. He was tired of being the antagonist in everyone else's story. He was tired of being discriminated against. He was tired of making sure that everyone else was happy when he wasn't happy himself.
And because of being tired, he was determined. Determined to prove his innocence. Determined to prove that he wasn't weak. Determined to show everyone who he was underneath all of his smiles and nervousness.
When he was diagnosed quirkless, his mom apologized. Katsuki stopped being his friend. Classmates bullied him. Teachers marked down his grades. All Might told him he couldn't be a hero. Heroes yelled at him for interfering when they almost let a child die.
When he got his quirk, he went through months of hellish training, if you could even call it that. He broke his bones constantly. He was told that he wouldn't be healed anymore. He was called reckless. He was alienated. He was called a traitor. He was arrested.
So yes, Izuku was tired and he was determined.
He gazed up at the blinking light of the camera, the only way that people could see into his room, and he smiled. People could call him a traitor. They could call him a villain. But, no one except his friends knew who he was. He was strong. He was an analyzer. He could tear down Hero society if he wanted.
Izuku closed his eyes and sunk into the void where the vestiges lived. He could hear them essentially 24/7, but when he entered the void, he was able to see them. And right now they were all once again arguing for no reason.
"He trusted this child for months!"
"He gave him the quirk and demanded it back!"
"He's a good for nothing quirkist asshole!"
Izuku sighed as he walked forward and took his seat next to Yoichi. Yoichi nodded his head in greeting which Izuku returned before he looked back to the arguing vestiges. He cleared his throat and they all turned to him, quickly snapping their mouths shut. "I'm pretty sure that no one in this room supports Yagi anymore, so can you all just give it up?"
Daigoro winced. "Sorry, kid."
Izuku waved off Daigoro's apology as well as the others'. "No need to apologize, there was no harm done."
"I have an idea to get everyone's minds off topic!" Yoichi suddenly shouted.
"Please no," Second groaned, seemingly knowing what was coming.
"Please, yes," Izuku said with a smirk, mainly because he knew it would piss off Second, and apparently also Third, given the glare he was receiving.
"Ba ba da dum!" Yoichi shouted, tapping his legs in rhythm as a giant television screen appeared before them with a video queued up already.
"Oh, no," En groaned. "Not the Vines again."
"Vines?" Izuku asked, tilting his head in confusion.
"You'll see," Nana said, patting his leg as if he was going to regret his decisions.
Yoichi had the video start playing with a remote that suddenly appeared in his hand and it showed a dark room where a person walked into just before the cameraman shouted to scare him. The man in the video looked down then up before saying, "stop. I coulda dropped my croissant." This caused the cameraman to laugh before the video switched over to a different scene. There was a woman walking down a sidewalk and she said, "and they were roommates." The cameraman panned over to his own face, getting very close before he stated, "oh my god, they were roommates."
Izuku couldn't help but laugh along with Yoichi at the short videos. When the full video finally ended, he turned to the first holder of One for All. "So, what was Vine? Just a video app?"
"There's been several throughout the years, but I know you have TikTok which stuck around for much longer than anyone was expecting. Vine used to be all the rage, but it suddenly died and now all we have left of it are compilation videos, but you have to dig pretty far to find them. You essentially just made short videos, whether it was about your life or skits, you could really make anything on that app and post it publicly," Yoichi explained happily.
"Can we watch another?" Izuku asked excitedly, which earned groans from around the circle.
"Of course!" Yoichi exclaimed, equally excited. "Here, there's a couple good ones that I have saved, but you'll end up seeing several of them multiple times."
Needless to say, the vestiges spent most of Izuku's isolation watching Vine compilations, and they even filmed some TikToks even though they couldn't be posted since it was technically all just in Izuku's head.
Izuku truly had no idea how long he'd spent in isolation, but apparently the guards got bored at just watching him essentially sleep the entire time away besides the one time that they caught him staring at the camera with a smile that gave a couple of them nightmares.
A couple hours after someone had delivered food to him, which Izuku thinks might have been the 12th meal, but he wasn't really counting them, three new guards came in. They were dressed in regular officer uniforms which surprised Izuku, though he didn't let that show.
After recuffing his hands behind his back, they hoisted him up and dragged him out of the room.
"Guess they want to try new methods," En said.
"It's kinda surprising that they're going to keep going after all they've already put him through," Daigoro noted.
"He's been in isolation for several days," Second pointed out. "They'll think that he snapped or something since they don't know that he has us to keep him sane."
"But if he's snapped, or gone insane, wouldn't his answers be counted as invalid?" Nana asked.
"All they want is a confession," Third answered. "Whether it's a true confession or a deranged confession, they obviously don't care."
"Technically, even confessions born from torture can't truly be counted since one might say anything just to get the pain to stop," Yoichi added.
"Gods, why is this building such a fucking maze?" En groaned. "They take you down every twist and turn imaginable."
"Because they don't want me to know my way out if I escape," Izuku answered. "I already have a map memorized, but they don't know that nor do they need to."
"I'm just wondering how they haven't gotten someone with some sort of compulsion quirk or something to come get the confession out of you," Nana said.
"That's because I'll still be pleading not guilty," Izuku replied. "They won't try anything that will prove that their efforts are for naught, even though doing so proves it anyway."
Izuku was suddenly shoved into a chair, which pulled him out of his thoughts. One of the officers sat across from him while one stood behind him and the other stood at the door. Izuku couldn't see the one behind him, but the one at the door kept his hand on his gun as he tracked each of Izuku's movements with his eyes.
Izuku rolled his eyes at that officer which earned him a growl, but he was already facing the officer seated across from him.
"Hello, Midoriya. My name is Officer Yamamoto and I will be asking you a couple questions today," Yamamoto, the officer in front of him, introduced.
Izuku simply quirked an eyebrow at the man without responding. He understood the logic behind thinking that he might spill the beans now that he's been in isolation for so long, but nothing else they'd done had worked so far, so he also didn't understand it at all.
Yamamoto only gave him a couple seconds to sit in silence before he began speaking again. "Do you have a connection to the League of Villains?"
Izuku rolled his eyes at the man, but didn't deign to respond. Obviously he had a connection to the League, they had tried to kill and kidnap him and his class several times now.
Yamamoto again gave him less than a minute to respond before continuing. "Do you have a connection to All for One?"
Again, Izuku didn't respond.
"I think this man is trying to play smart, but is actually very dumb," Yoichi sighed. "Even All Might has a connection to All for One and they didn't arrest him."
"Have you received any quirks from All for One?"
"Does he honestly think you're going to answer any of these?" Second huffed.
"Gotta commend their persistence at least," Nana sighed.
"Are you the UA traitor?"
"Is it bad that I kinda wanna say 'yes' just to get their reactions?" Izuku asked the vestiges.
"Please don't, kid," Daigoro groaned. "You'll be in prison for life!"
"Don't worry," Izuku laughed, "I wouldn't give them the satisfaction if it killed me."
"Don't say that either," Third muttered. "You'll jinx yourself."
Izuku laughed in his head again, but unfortunately, it showed on his face as well.
"What are you laughing at? You have serious accusations placed on you," Yamamoto hissed.
"Good going kid," En snarked.
"Sorry, sorry," Izuku said, still chuckling as he watched the officer's face turn red. "You have something in your beard, sir."
"You didn't!" First cackled. "Oh my Kami, I fucking love this kid!"
"Just answer the damn questions kid," Yamamoto hissed, wiping furiously at his beard even though Izuku had been lying. "What do you think your mom thinks of your actions?" Yamamoto asked.
Izuku blinked, focusing in on the man with squinted eyes. Where was he going with this?
"Does she even know that her son is a villain?"
"Don't let him get to you," Yoichi warned. "They'll say anything at this point to get you to confess."
"You know that she hasn't tried contacting you once since we've informed her of your arrest?" Yamamoto asked, leaning forward with a pitiful look. "I imagine that she must be so disappointed and embarrassed to have such a failure of a son."
Izuku's heart squeezed in his chest. He knew that everyone saw him as a failure. He knew his mom saw him as a failure. A mistake. Whether he had a quirk or not, nothing had changed.
"If she thinks you're a failure, then she doesn't deserve you," Nana said, tears clear in her voice.
"Born quirkless, just to become a villain all to pretend that you're a normal, quirked person and not some disease," Yamamoto spat. Izuku's eyes closed, he didn't need to see the hatred in the officer's eyes, he'd seen it his whole life already. "We saw your medical history, Midoriya. We know you were born quirkless. We know that you magically manifested a quirk at 15."
Izuku's breaths shortened. He hadn't expected them to bring up his medical history, but he supposed that it was only a matter of time.
"Breathe, kid," Second warned.
"We're right here with you," Third added, both of them having softer voices than usual.
"We know the truth and some paperwork can't change that," En added.
Izuku's breaths slowly evened out, but the officer kept going, seeming pleased to be getting any sort of reaction out of him. "Do you know the statistics of children late manifesting their quirks?"
Yes, he knew them like the back of his hand. He'd spent hours upon hours researching any way in which he might manifest a quirk before All Might came into his life.
"After the age of 12, it's essentially impossible to manifest a quirk, even through trauma," Yamamoto explained unnecessarily. "At age 15, it's well below 1%."
By the age of 13, Izuku stopped dreaming of manifesting a quirk. He knew from the age of four that he wouldn't ever manifest one, but by the time that he aged past 12, he knew for certain that there was no plausible way. He knew this. These numbers had tortured his childhood.
"There is only one plausible way in which you could have manifested such a strong quirk at the age of 15," Yamamoto continued. "And that's through someone giving you a quirk."
And that's exactly what had happened. They just had the wrong guy.
"The only person registered as able to give and take quirks is All for One himself," Yamamoto said as if everyone had quirks registered in the system and every single quirk registered was explained thoroughly and properly. "Therefore, we can only assume that you gained a quirk from All for One and were drafted into his service. And this is why you sold out your classmates, your friends, your teachers."
Izuku knew he was wrong, knew he was just saying what he thought would make its way under his skin. He wouldn't let it. He tried to remind himself what he had decided after Nedzu left. He was strong. He was a hero.
"So, why don't you save everyone some unnecessary trouble and just confess to your crimes?" Yamamoto asked.
Izuku sat there, eyes closed, and mouth shut. He hadn't given in to any of their previous tactics and he won't give in to their current or future tactics. He would be resilient. He wasn't alone. He had the vestiges to keep him company. He had people on the outside planning on how to get him out. He just needed to hold out for a bit longer.
Yamamoto sighed. "Well, can't say that we didn't try the easy way." Izuku barely registered as he turned to the officer at the door. "Go get Ito."
Izuku sunk into the void once more and Yoichi already had a Vine compilation queued up and ready to play as whoever Ito was came into the room with an arrangement of tools.