Izuku is breathing hard, limbs trembling so violently that he is barely able to hold the wooden staff up. Stendhal watches him, head cocked curiously to the side and hair hanging limply over his shoulder. He hasn't broken a sweat yet, but that is to be expected.
"You're not trying," he says, not quite an accusation, but not as gentle as he had been when these lessons started a month before. Izuku does not meet his eyes.
"I don't want to learn this," Izuku tells him. It isn't quite the truth; if things were different, Izuku would have loved these lessons. He would have taken any chance he was given to learn more about how to be a hero. Instead, each lesson he is made to endure just feels empty, like a mockery of his dreams. He doesn't like it.
"You want to be a hero, don't you?"
Izuku shrugs, eyes on the floor. "I just wanna go home."
Stendhal frowns, brow creasing in thought. His nose whistles a little as he breathes deeply, settling agitation and sorting through his thoughts. Izuku inches away, chewing his bleeding bottom lip. In the time he's been here, Stendhal hasn't hurt him outside of their lessons, but he still gets nervous when the man begins to get angry. After all, he is a bad guy; he took Izuku and he still won't let him go, even if he says that it's for Izuku's own good. Stendhal watches Izuku drift further away, and he thinks.
Then, he smiles.
"If you can become good enough, then there will be nothing that can stop you from going home."
Izuku's head snaps up. For the first time in weeks, Izuku looks his captor in the face. He stares at Stendhal, wide eyes wet with tears and tiny fists trembling.
"What?" he asks, hardly believing his own ears. Stendhal's red eyes shine in the flickering lights of the gutted apartment.
"If you become strong, then I won't need to protect you anymore and you can go back to your mother. You wouldn't need to be afraid of those bullies anymore. Your mama won't ever have to worry about you again. Think of how proud she'll be, if her son can come back to her a hero."
"Really?" Izuku asks. His voice is high and startled, achingly full of emotion. "If I become a hero, I can go back to my mama?"
Stendhal nods and the boy's face lights up. It is the first smile since he had been taken. Izuku accepts the man's words as truth and holds them close to his chest, any shred of hope that he can find hoarded desperately. In his mind Stendhal's words have become a promise, something to dream about and to work towards. If he is not strong enough now to escape, then he will just have to become stronger.
Stendhal smiles at the sudden change in demeanor. His tongue is still too big for his mouth, but the expression does not disgust Izuku this time. Instead, it fascinates him.
"What's your Quirk?" The words come out before he can stop them. It has been on his mind for some time, but he has never had the courage to ask before now. Stendhal's smile doesn't drop, and he instead moves closer and kneels down to Izuku's level. Izuku doesn't notice that the action cages him in.
"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," the man says. Izuku adjusts his grip on the wooden staff, which has dropped to rest at his side. The tip drags on the ground. He chews at his lip, tasting the blood, and looks away.
"I don't know," he admits, feeling a flush of shame. He had been teased so much for not having a flashy quirk like his friends. He doesn't want to see what kind of expression Stendhal will have. "Everybody said I was Quirkless. Me and my mama were going to see a doctor about it, but…."
Stendhal huffs out a breath. Izuku flinches when the man's heavy hand comes to rest on his shoulder.
"Don't look so worried, kid. Lots of people have Quirks that they don't discover until later."
Izuku forces himself to look up, stopping just short of meeting the man's eyes. He swallows hard around the lump in his throat, tries to force back the fear and the hurt, tries to keep the wetness gathering on his eyelashes from spilling over.
"They do?" he asks.
Stendhal nods. "Yeah, they do. I didn't find out mine until I was almost in middle school."
"What is it?" Izuku asks, blinking away the tears. His mind is spinning, curious, and it works well to distract him from his own worries.
"Take a guess."
Izuku frowns, considering the man in front of him. He takes a deep breath. Then, the words begin to spill out, theories he's kept bottled up inside his own mind since the question of Stendhal's quirk had first occurred to him.
"It has something to do with your senses. Your tongue is shaped kind of funny. It's longer than most of the people's I've seen and your mouth is so big it makes the rest of your face small. I used to think that maybe your Quirk had to do with your sense of taste, but your eyes are funny too. So it makes sense that your Quirk would have something to do with your senses." He takes a deep breath, brow furrowed in thought. "But now that I'm thinking about it, a lot of people have Quirks that affect how they look but don't really have anything to do with their powers, so maybe that's not right. You're really strong and faster than anybody else I've seen. Even faster than Kacchan! You would need to have a really strong Quirk if you wanted to work as a hero or...or anything like that…."
Izuku trails off as suspicion takes root in his mind, though there are words and theories still spinning through his mind. Stendhal's smile only grows, and he tips his head back and laughs.
Edited 02/15/2021 to update Stendhal's appearance. :)