Chapter Text
Izuku’s pen hit the table with a dull thud. Pencil lead dust puffed into the air from the speed of his hand as he raised it to press under his eyes. A headache had churned under the muscles behind them for hours—like hot knives stabbing and prodding at everything he was.
His tongue was sour. His ears carried a faint ringing from the scuffle outside school—some kid picking on him, and then on his best friend. One of the few he had, at least, and Izuku had tried to handle it himself.
He recalled it vividly. The thumping of shoes on pavement. Running toward a fight he could never realistically win. It was started in a vain attempt to protect his honor, something he didn’t really have much of anymore. But then, the first swing from his friend, then the retaliatory punch.
That's when Izuku got involved, throwing a punch, getting knocked down. Getting up and trying again, scrambling away as other students shouted that teachers were coming to break it up. Dragging his best friend out of the scuffle he’d caused, smiling and saying he’d take the fall. All while trying to ignore the ache in his knuckles, each throb following him into class minutes later.
His gaze shifted from the broken skin of his knuckles to the bitten, ripped-up fingers and nails, jagged and uneven. Sometimes he wished he had a quirk that let him heal fast; sometimes he wished for any quirk at all.
But those wishes meant nothing with no shooting stars to guide them.
The worst part of being quirkless, other than the lack of something that made you unique, was always being at a disadvantage. Everyone else had something—power, fire, claws, speed. Izuku only had fists that broke and a body that couldn’t keep up. They could make him cry without even trying, and he had nothing to fight back with that could compare to a superpower.
But. The other kid had cried worse. He had made sure, because if he was going to fight with nothing, then he would not lose to someone unwilling to hurt him badly enough to make him stop. That's why his hands were a ruin of bruises and ripped skin, singing praises to agony as he kept them under the extra length of the sleeves he wore.
He rubbed another attempt at calming the ache behind his eyes, trying to ignore the other problems that screamed across his body. The ringing in his ears, the ache in his shoulder that made tears prick his eyes—those were fine. Bearable. Just a dull burn that pulsed like smoldering coals beneath the skin. Cooling, but always ready to flare hot again if he moved wrong.
He couldn’t go to the nurse for this, no matter how much he wanted to. He didn’t want to make his parents worry about him—more than they already did. They had far more important things coming up than another schoolyard quarrel. So, as All Might had shown him, he smiled. He could wait for the pain to pass, for his body to heal, so long as his parents never found out.
That smile was paper-thin, and he knew it. His cheeks ached from forcing it so often, but he kept it there anyway. If he didn’t smile, the cracks underneath might show—the heaviness in his chest, the gnawing thought that he was just making everything harder for everyone. That maybe the world would move smoother if he stopped trying so hard.
Heat flared behind his eyes from his racing thoughts, the headache, the common problem he always had to deal with. The other aches and pains were temporary; the current, daily, mind-bending agony of a flash-hot migraine was just a symptom.
Of what?
His doctor said it was because he was quirkless. His father had worried it was a tumor. His mother had cried at the thought. But the MRIs, the tests—they all came back negative. His only “medical problem” was being quirkless, so everyone blamed that.
But to him, it felt like embers were buried behind his eyes, flaring and dimming with every heartbeat. Every throb was a reminder that something inside him was broken, or worse, something waiting to break. While others chalked it up to his quirklessness, Izuku wasn’t so sure.
With a sigh, he closed his aching eyes, tucking his head within the nest of his arms. All he wanted to do was attempt to nap the final minutes of math away, to ease the ache behind his eyes. To ignore the world for just a moment.
But he was never so lucky; the bell tolled through the classroom.
Sharp, metallic, endless.
Izuku jumped, pain flaring brightly as the joyful sound grated against his skull.
For everyone else, it meant freedom, the end of math’s timeless hell. Students leapt from their chairs—some glancing at him with that mix of pity and unease, others ignoring him completely as if he were invisible.
To Izuku, the sound was different.
Not in the sense of anything concrete, but the sound of a bell had become something sinister. A sound that caused his mind to fall into a spiral he couldn’t save himself from.
To him, it was the same bell that haunted his dreams, the one that tolled over and over again behind stone walls and ash-filled skies. Like a summons. Or a judgment. Or a damnation.
An ending he couldn’t see, no matter how much he slept. A pain he couldn't quell, no matter how much he tried.
Another toll.
Another flash of pain.
All of a sudden, he was alone in the classroom, and more pain flared behind his eyes. In moments like these, he just wanted to dig the offending organs out and find what was causing this pain.
Another strike.
He pressed his head further into his arms, pressing hard at his ears to try and reduce the agony in his skull.
Every strike was a reminder that he was falling further behind, that his struggles were meaningless. That no matter how hard he tried, just noise was enough to ruin his day. That simple things like a bell were stronger than the quirkless kid.
Another ring. More pain. Sometimes, he swore they made it ring more and more just to hurt him.
Each ring reminded him he wasn’t meant to rise at all, that he was meant to stay in that chair. In sleep and stay in those suffocating dreams. That he had nothing better to do with his life, beyond suffering the agony behind his eyes, like it was his only gift from god.
Sometimes he thought it was, he was given pain instead of a quirk, and sometimes he believed that whoever he took the pain from had a quirk great enough to be worth it. He prayed that it was the case, because then the pain, the dreams that led to the migraine, the bell. It would all at least be worth it somehow.
But, sometimes, in those dreams, no matter how daunting they were and no matter how horrible he felt in the morning. They were the only time he didn’t feel the pain behind his eyes. So… maybe that was the gift he was given?
Another ring, he felt tears well up in his eyes.
At that moment, his thoughts weren’t about the piles of homework, the tests he had coming up, or the walk back to the dorm. They were darker, heavier. Abstract in a way only delirium and pain could cause.
“What if I just didn’t answer the bell one day in those dreams?
What if I stopped running to it in those dreams?”
But then, he would have no reprieve from the agony of his head. He knew that, so an even darker thought bloomed through the pain, “So… what if I stopped pretending I could keep up here in a world that was leaving me behind?”
After all, there were ways to make the pain in his head stop, and the dreams to cease their call. Many ways, all of which sounded easier than waking up each morning.
The thoughts burned in him, shameful and tempting in equal measure. He forced it down, but it lingered, like the after-echo of the toll. Like the pain in his skull.
He pushed his chair back shapely, breath struggling to enter his lungs.
He was the only quirkless one in that class.
The only quirkless in the entire school.
Likely the only quirkless within fifty miles.
U.A. had only in the last year opened their doors to the quirkless since its founding. And even then, no other student had tried.
Other than him..
He had even tried for the Hero Course.
He tried. And he had failed.
He had learned.
He had learned the hard way. A broken arm. The suffocating fear of training machines meant for heroes to be with powers. Being saved by some boy whose scream rattled the walls and earth. Put to sleep by a girl’s quirk while he panicked and sobbed in pain.
The only good thing from that attempt was that he finally got it through his head, after so many years of being told he would never achieve his goal.
He had finally given in.
Not even his best friends from junior high had defended that dream.
But, back when he was in the earliest grades, he had been told he could. By his classmates, his teachers, they all had seen no problem with a quirkless holding the goal of hero. But that was ten years ago.
And ten years ago, quirkless discrimination hadn’t even been bad enough for kids to understand it. But as the years passed, it only grew sharper, crueler, like a knife honed on repetition.
So, like a flame fading with no one left to tend it, his dream burned low, leaving only ash and cinders. With hands that barely knew other hopes, he tried to rewrite those dreams. Over the last few months of his first year at U.A., he had tried. Really tried.
He did.
But nothing felt as… irreplaceable in his chest as being a hero others could rely on. To give his parents, and—
He let out a sigh as he stood, stretching an ache in his chest away, trying to put down the bitter thoughts that had begun to plague him since he found out.
A new member of the family.
A baby.
A newborn sibling.
Just hours away today.
The thought made his stomach squeeze, a lead ball settling in the back of his throat. Uncomfortable, bitter, sick, worried… fearful. All of it at once. All of it wrong, and he knew it was, but… but he couldn't help it.
When he was told four months ago that bitterness had been rage. The same day he tried to tell them he got into U.A., his mother surprised him, interrupting in excitement to share the news of this new sibling; five months had already passed before they had told him. Though they had only found out two months in, that meant they had kept it from him for three months by then.
Maybe that's why he was bitter, angry, why his chest ached almost as much as his head.
He had done the childish thing.
He had waited a few weeks to tell them about U.A. He waited until the first week of classes, when he had already signed up for the dorms. He had forged his dad's signature, not by hand, but the night his dad had gotten drunk and watched the reruns of the U.A. sports festivals, he had managed to secure an unethical signature.
His parents only had a two-bedroom apartment. He had decided for them that they needed the space he took up for the new kid.
His mom had cried. He had forced himself not to. His jaw had ached from clenching it shut, but it was worth it to look strong, steady. He didn’t want to worry her.
That would have been bad for the baby.
The ringing had stopped, Izuku managed to zip up his bag, slipping out of the Gen-Ed class and heading in the direction of his slightly cooler, more interesting elective—the only fun class he had.
Quirk Studies, covering the hero students of 1-A and 1-B. If he wanted to rebuild his dream—or well… recreate it—then what better place to start than his only real hobby: quirk analysis.
And U.A., upon his request for a class change, had implemented a much harder, but more efficient class route to becoming a Quirk Specialist. By fast-tracking his studies, he could shave off at least a few classes from that degree.
His dad, a support tech, had been really excited for him. It was nice. He had even given Izuku a whole host of his old textbooks on the subject for his master’s.
His mom… she had cried even more than he imagined. Her words about being thankful he gave up on being a hero stung.
But he knew she only meant well.
Still, sometimes he wondered. In another world—if he had been born with a quirk—would she have supported his dream to become a hero?
Three knocks.
The door slid open, and the teacher for the Hero Class of 1-A grinned down at him.
“Midoriya! Glad you have returned, ol’ boy.” The man spoke with a voice like rustling tree leaves and thick syrup.
Izuku grimaced at the boisterous voice. Lamp Light, the hero who created light constructs from his hands, loomed in the doorway before him. Only if grinning could be associated with an eight-foot-tall, moth-like man—with black fur and a white-and-gold costume—then he was doing it right.
Izuku’s mind wandered as he stepped inside. He preferred All Might’s new Silver Age costume: a clean, balanced look that captured hope without the almost garish excess of Lamp Light’s Light the Night outfit. Sure, Izuku missed the Golden Age costume, but the Silver Age felt like an evolution. Lamp Light’s new getup, by contrast, only made Izuku squint. Bright whites, screaming yellows, and black fur—too much, all at once. Still, Lamp Light was a kind hero.
Izuku forced himself to ignore the clash of colors for the heroes' benefit.
“Good morning, Mr. Light,” he said, lowering his bag with a heavy thunk. “I finished the analysis of Shota Aizawa’s quirk, as you had asked.”
The words rolled out without spark. His old excitement—the bubbling, uncontrollable need to ramble about quirks—had been crushed under Lamp Light’s scrutiny. Every word now had to be sharp, concise. Every detail weighed. Every grade was a gamble.
Sunny disposition or not, the moth was a workaholic… probably because All Might had soared into the top charts while Lamp Light stayed stranded in the lower 100s, his mutation holding him back.
Izuku grimaced, not at Lamp Light, but at the thought. He had begun to notice cycles as he got older.
The cycle of quirkless abuse—expanding, festering, growing more cruel each year.
The cycle of mutant discrimination—different reasons, same hatred.
All because people were born different.
Marked from the start.
A fate sealed before you drew breath.
No choice.
No escape.
That thought burned in his chest, a phantom fire he swallowed down.
He slid his papers onto the desk in front of the moth and continued.
“Erasure can affect the motor skills of mutation quirks that expand past the normal range—tails, elongated limbs, multiple appendages. Like an electric shock, muscular spasms seem to be the most common. Pain, discomfort, and complete loss of motor functions are also within the usual effects.”
He looked up into the insect’s enormous eyes. The never-blinking red lights fixed on him. Watching. Weighing.
Good.
“Furthermore, when used on an Emitter or Transformation type, they completely shut down, as noted in his official quirk registry information. However, I have a solid theory on how his quirk functions mechanically.”
Izuku swallowed hard and forced a grin.
His heart was beating too fast.
“Light waves. Specifically, within the ultraviolet spectrum. But you knew that, didn’t you, sir? You can see the lightwaves produced by his eyes—the heat generated from it, however, you cannot. While his body is adapted to the heat, his tear ducts and tears are not. They create the same saline solution as everyone else. His eyedrops only help somewhat through rehydration. But he needs a much higher temperature-resistant formula. Only then will the drawback of his quirk be reduced enough for long-term use. Until then, eye damage is more than assured.”
His throat tightened as he spoke. Up until last week, he’d only ever had to read small portions aloud to the man. Now, each sentence dragged like iron chains, his voice thin under the weight of silence.
What was the point, really?
Who would ever listen to a quirkless boy’s theories? His words might have been neat, his logic airtight, his details painstakingly collected—but it didn’t matter. Not in the way quirks did. Not in the way power did. Heroes weren’t built on words; they were built on gifts he didn’t have. And without one of those gifts, his opinions were dragged through far more scrutiny.
The thought dug at him, sharp as glass. Maybe Lamp Light was only humoring him. Maybe the grade didn’t matter. Maybe he didn’t matter. His notes, his theories, all of it could be swept away with the same ease other kids had swept him aside on the playground.
And still, he kept speaking.
Because stopping—leaving the page blank, letting silence hang—would prove them right. It would prove every teacher, every doctor, every kid who called him useless correct.
So he swallowed down the doubt, the burning ache in his chest, and forced the words out steady and calm. If his voice cracked, if his hands shook, Lamp Light might notice. If he noticed, maybe he’d pity him.
And pity was worse than cruelty.
So Izuku finished the presentation the same way he always did—like a man clinging to a ledge, knowing he’d fall the moment he let go.
But he needed to get better at this. Who would listen to a quirk specialist who couldn’t even speak in front of a crowd?
Even with all his perseverance, the thoughts clung to him like smoke. It didn’t matter how many hours he spent researching, writing, refining—if his voice shook, if he stammered, no one would care. They would only see a quirkless boy pretending to matter. Pretending to belong.
He finished the analysis with a few more colorful, concise points, glancing up at the teacher every few lines as if waiting for the axe to fall. At last, the moth handed him a USB for the next assignment. Another analysis due Monday.
He could do that. He told himself he could.
With a bow and a heavy pat on the shoulder from Lamp Light, Izuku left the classroom. The weight in his chest lightened—for a moment.
If only for a little while. Like a candle sputtering in the wind, never safe from being snuffed out.
By the time he reached his small, cluttered dorm, his phone buzzed with a barrage of messages.
“It’s a girl!” The first one, from his father. Hisashi sounded ecstatic—finally, another child, and he would get to choose the H-name. He had lists upon lists saved in his phone for this very moment.
The next came moments later: “I’m thinking Hinata. Do you think Hinata is cute, Izuku? I hope she likes it when she gets older.”
Izuku let the phone slip from his hand and fell onto his bed. The frame creaked beneath his weight as he stared blankly at the ceiling.
The headache was back.
Worse than before.
It always felt worse than before.
Like his eyes had been shoved into a bonfire, left to blister and cook before being jammed back into his skull—half-charred, half-melting. His ears rang with a tolling echo, the same bell from his dreams, each peal rattling against his skull. His vision blurred with sparks of light that pulsed like burning cinders, flaring and fading at the edges of his sight.
He shouldn’t feel so… jealous.
His parents were stable now.
They had good jobs.
They had each other.
When he was born, they had only been sixteen. He was barely younger than they had been then. And still, they had chosen to keep him—to fight, to struggle, to endure—even after the word quirkless had been stamped on him like a curse.
His Aunt Mitsuki had babysat, her long-term boyfriend by her side.
They’d married.
Soon they’d have a child too.
He wondered if, had they started as young as his parents, their child might have been his friend. Would they have stayed by him even after the diagnosis? Even after the shame of being quirkless stuck like ash on his name?
He hoped so.
Hopefully, his sister would be quirkle—
Izuku bit down on his lip, hard. A metallic tang filled his mouth as blood welled across his tongue. He felt rage at himself for even considering the thought.
That was not a thought he would allow.
His parents had already endured enough for him—shielded him from the worst of the hatred, fought to keep themselves together. He would not jinx it; he would not be responsible for them suffering more, having to deal with another disappointment like him.
She'd better have a cool quirk.
There. Better. Positive.
And when she got it, he would be the one to document it. To make sure every detail was written down, safe, and certain. That she would get all the counseling, all the love for her quirk, no matter how weak or strong.
Good thoughts. Positive thoughts.
But they felt forced.
They were forced, hollow. Like kindling tossed on dying coals, the fire flared brightly for a moment—then burned out faster, leaving only smoke. The jealousy still smoldered underneath, no matter how hard he smiled through it.
The ceiling didn't care; it didn't look at his smile, searching for the secret truth of his feelings.
He felt it crack; he felt tears in his eyes.
A knock at his door broke his spiral.
Izuku sat up, sluggish, and opened the door to find the boy who had started the fight earlier that day.
Sekijiro Kan—an old friend from elementary who had moved away long ago—stood there, scratching at his chin with a shy grin.
Kan had gotten into the Hero Course. They’d even taken the written entrance exam side by side. Pure chance, Izuku thought. Nothing more. But at least it had netted him a friend again.
“I’m… sorry about earlier,” the boy started. His voice was already deep, drawn with an accent from northern Japan, where he had lived for the last few years.
Izuku flashed a grin. “It’s okay. I should have guessed you would’ve thrown the first punch anyway.”
“He was calling you useless, Izuku—”
“And? It’s not entirely incorrect, Kan, you know that. My job opportunities keep getting shorter and shorter as more requirements are written into them.” He tried to hide the bitterness behind a shrug. He rubbed the back of his neck with a forced laugh, trying to reduce the pressure his words had produced.
The gesture was practiced—casual on the surface, he hoped it worked in reducing the weight of his words. But really, it was just a way to hide the sting of saying the truth out loud.
Kan frowned. “But you’re the top-graded student of our year already. Your opportunities are far greater than you think.”
The white-haired boy pushed into the room without waiting for permission, grabbed the small TV remote, and flicked it on, side-eyeing the green-haired boy. “And anyway, I need help studying for Algebra.”
“Fine, but you have to attempt one of my Calculus questions.”
“You just want me to die.”
“Na, you’re just a scaredy cat about numbers, Kan.”
Izuku wanted to be alone; the ache behind his eyes was only growing more feral. But he could use the distraction.
Sadly, distractions don’t last forever.
By 9 P.M., when Kan—exhausted from the extra exercise classes he had to take—dragged himself off to bed in the room three doors down, Izuku was left alone with the pounding ache.
Three of them.
One in his skull.
One in his chest.
One in his soul.
Each throb echoed like a distant drum, slow and inevitable. A summons. A reminder. Something was waiting for him in the dark, patient and merciless. He named it death, and he knew one day, it would take the agony away for good.
He just had to last long enough to see it.
What was another night of that ever, never-ending beat behind his eyes? Even as it is made worse by the bitterness, the jealousy festering deep in his heart.
He knew sleep would not come today, much like death.
So he grabbed his favorite reprieve—melatonin—and shook three 10mg pills into his palm. He stared at them too long, fingers trembling as he turned the bottle over once, twice. The thought pressed in: If I took the rest, then maybe I could see the end of that dream…
The idea lingered, sour and sweet all at once. He knew melatonin likely wouldn't kill him, but a fresh bottle of two hundred 10mg pills would definitely do something.
With a dry swallow, he forced the three pills down and snapped the bottle shut.
No.
Not tonight.
If he couldn’t stay awake, he couldn’t ache. And if he could sleep, then he could dream.
Even if the dreams were horrors beyond his imagination.
Even if the dreams gnawed at him the same way the fire behind his eyes did.
Even if sometimes all he wanted was to let the bottle, and the many unused bottles of pain medication for his head, drag him into a dreamless, endless sleep.
But… he refused that thought, too.
So he let sleep take him, normal, long, nightmare-filled sleep.
And as the dreams came, the hours passed until they forced him awake, gasping, as though he had outrun a demon that would always catch him again.
A glance at his phone: five hours. Better than his usual. Worse than yesterday. Every day seemed worse than yesterday, and better than usual for his broken sleep schedule.
The dreams were always the same. Stone walls slick with damp, cold air thick with ash. Iron bars glowing faintly like cooling metal, branding his skin whenever he reached for them. Struggling, clawing, failing.
They were just like the headache.
Just the usual.
Just what he expected.
He scrolled through the rest of his father’s texts—about how cute the little girl was, about how his mom had finally relented and agreed to the name Hinata, about how excited they were for him to visit and meet her.
Soon. Maybe.
If he felt like it.
Maybe…
[Three Years Later]
Izuku bit down on his thumbnail with an audible click. The white of the nail had long been gone, so he gnawed on the jagged, close edge that would bleed if he took it just another bite too far.
The dead stare of Aizawa, the grinning look of Kan, and the sharp tang of sweat filled the space between the three boys.
Izuku had been working with them for the last few months on his final assignment for Quirk Studies. Each had been given a copy of his paper and was expected to grade him on his understanding, his comprehension, and the ideas he offered for how their quirks could be supported.
“You can deliver those, once graded, to Mr. Light at his office… thank you, Aizawa, for being my second subject for my assignment. I know you aren’t the biggest fan of doing extracurriculars outside the Hero Class work, but—”
“Yeah, yeah, you say this every time you ask to study my quirk for a test,” came the tired reply, Aizawa’s dry eyes narrowing into a glare. “You do realize I wouldn’t go along with it over and over again if it were a problem, right?”
“I… yeah, I do. But I still have to thank you!”
“Why don’t you ever thank me?” Kan cut in, glaring from the side.
“I got you through all the math classes you’ve taken, Kan. I’m pretty sure you owe me far more than just a little bit of your weekend.”
“While true, I am offended for the fun of it.”
Izuku grinned at him before grabbing his bag and slipping it onto his back.
“I won’t be here for the weekend. I’ll be at my parents’ house until Monday. So don’t burn down the dormitory.” He jabbed a finger at Kan. “Just because I won’t be here to cook doesn’t mean you can magically work the oven without being a safety hazard.”
Kan smirked and hit him lightly in the shoulder as he passed. “I can cook, you know. I just don’t like to.”
“Sure. Have a good weekend!” Izuku called after him, forcing brightness into his voice as he slipped down the hall. He could feel Aizawa’s eyes boring into his back until he turned the corner.
Excitement tangled with dread in his gut, a fire that burned both hot and cold. This would be his first time returning home since moving into the dorms in his first year. He had missed so much—the first three years of his little sister’s life, the small moments where he could have learned to be a better brother, a better son.
But staying away had been necessary.
If he’d gone back sooner, he might have said things he couldn’t take back. Things that would have hurt his parents, fractured what little balance they had fought to build.
He didn’t want that.
So he did the harder thing—he focused on school. He buried himself in the work, in the books, in the long hours. His grades kept him in line for scholarships. He even worked part-time with hero agencies through U.A., supporting real pro heroes in ways that mattered.
His future was looking bright.
But if only looking bright actually meant something. The thoughts that followed every good thought were darker than he could admit aloud: What good is a bright future, if you don’t want to live long enough to see it?
That… that was a question he kept to himself.
The smile stayed on his lips, but his chest tightened, his head thrummed with the old, burning ache. A reminder. Relief never lasted. That's why the collection of pain medication only got larger, wider.
He boarded the train after the long walk to the station and broke out his notebook. Old sketches, notes, scraps of analysis, fragments of poems—the little pieces of himself he couldn’t share with anyone else.
The newest poem stared back at him, lines scrawled in his cramped handwriting, written in the dark hours when the migraine had kept him awake the night before through the haze of melatonin delirium.
To burn brightly is to burn short.
To burn until all that’s left is ash.
Dust.
Residue of your existence.
Light, fading, receding.
To fear is to smolder.
To fear is to linger until you’re the last left.
Shivering.
A shadow of yourself.
Dark, expanding, growing.
To live is to be all these things and more.
To live is to fear, to burn, to love, to hate.
Life.
The proof of you.
Being in the light,
While being of the dark.
To be fearless is to chain the dark.
To keep the fire burning, even as it smolders.
To keep the light bright, even as it is smothered.
So let nothing stand in your way.
So let the world shake, the earth roar,
Your blood quake and shiver and cool and heat,
Your heart skipping beats, skipping breaths.
Running.
Chasing.
Chase the fire, even as it dies.
Outrun the dark, even as it waits.
Izuku stared at the words, lips pressed thin.
On the surface, it almost looked like hope. A call to endure, to burn, to keep going no matter what. Anyone else might’ve read it that way.
But he knew better. He knew what he had really written.
Every line was a plea against something he couldn’t escape—the fire fading in his chest, the dark waiting in the corners of every dream. He wondered if he really could outrun the dark, if he could chase the fire long enough…
Or if he’d only ever been writing his own eulogy.
And then, he found himself at home.
Standing in the doorway, a grin stretched across his face so tightly it hurt, his jaw aching from the effort. His mother stood there, arms trembling as though she wanted to reach for him but didn’t quite know how, and his father swept him into a hug before she could. Hisashi’s voice tumbled into his ears, rapid and relentless, words spilling out one after another.
Hinata.
Hinata.
Hinata.
Her name was all he heard, echoing over and over.
And when Izuku finally saw her, he couldn’t deny it—she was adorable. A chubby little thing with thick, straight green hair like their mother’s and sharp red eyes that mirrored their father’s. No freckles spotted her cheeks, only soft, unblemished skin. She stared at him with a toddler’s innocent curiosity, blinking up at the stranger who happened to share her last name.
Izuku’s heart clenched. A strange ache bloomed there—pride, maybe, or love—but hollowed out by something darker, heavier.
He went through the motions.
He sat beside his father, nodding absently as Hisashi pointed at the television and rambled about the hero on-screen. Izuku echoed back half-formed answers, repeating notes he had already memorized, words spoken with no weight behind them.
At dinner, he folded his hands and mumbled a prayer above his food—a habit Kan had taught him nearly two years ago, the words still foreign and awkward on his tongue. The food should have tasted like home. It had once been his favorite. Instead, every bite turned to ash the moment it touched his mouth, his tongue numb, his throat tight. He swallowed anyway, smiling when his mother looked his way, pretending it warmed him.
It didn’t.
He felt himself realising that he… he was invading their home.
The house felt smaller, yet fuller. Every wall seemed to hum with laughter, with memories he hadn’t been here to share. His mother’s stories about Hinata’s first words. His father’s exaggerated retellings of her tantrums. The small messes of toys in the corner. They filled the house, filled the silence, filled the cracks where he once belonged.
And he sat there, quiet, forcing himself into the rhythm of a family that had learned to live without him. And it was all his fault.
When night fell, he sank onto the couch, staring at the ceiling as shadows gathered. The migraine came back in full force, a hammering heat behind his eyes that made every sound distant, every light too bright. Maybe it had been there the whole time, the act he put on too good for even the pain to recognize.
It struck him with a cruel, sharp clarity.
His family was whole.
And he no longer had a place in it.
And it was only his fault as to why. Why he felt distant. Why he felt wrong.
Night settled over the house like a heavy blanket, shadows pooling in the corners. Izuku lay on the couch, hands folded across his chest, staring at the ceiling until the cracks blurred with the pulse of the headache burning behind his eyes.
At first, he wanted to hate Hinata.
He had come to, honestly, despise her existence while he had been in school. A solid chunk of his negative emotions had been forced into that thought.
He wanted to resent the way her laughter filled the home that had once been his sanctuary. But the more he listened—the tiny squeal from her room, the patter of her bare feet as she scrambled after their father’s voice—the less he could muster it.
She was innocent.
She hadn’t asked for this hate he held.
She was pure and adorable.
No—the hate belonged to him.
And he needed to direct it where it belonged.
It was his fault.
If he hadn’t been born when he was, a mistake of two kids too young and too desperate to cling to each other, his parents might have had a healthier start. A steadier life. Fewer fights. Fewer nights of muffled tears through thin apartment walls.
If he hadn’t been a burden.
If he hadn’t been quirkless.
If he hadn’t been him.
If he had been anyone else.
The heat behind his eyes flared, sharper now, until it felt as if embers were smoldering in his skull.
From down the hall, his father’s voice carried. Low, warm, patient in a way it had never been for him. Telling Hinata a story—not just any story, but one of the old ones he used to beg for as a child. The stories that had shaped his dreams of heroes.
Only now, those words belonged to her.
And the room they came from—the one that had once been his—belonged to her too.
His chest clenched. His throat closed. He rolled to his side, burying his face into the couch cushion to muffle the sound of his breathing, to block out the warmth he no longer deserved.
By the time his father’s voice faded and the house fell quiet, Izuku had already made his decision.
Once he got into college, he would never come back here. Not really. He might visit for Hinata’s birthday, every couple of years, but he couldn’t handle this. Couldn’t handle the hollow, foreign ache of wanting something he was far too old to ask for. Too… broken to ever have.
A family.
A home.
A place to belong.
He pressed his fists into his temples, willing the pain away, but it stayed. It always stayed.
The fire behind his eyes did not dim; it only grew hotter, searing pain into his brain.
At least, in two years, he would be able to do the initial quirk test; his timeline had to be perfect. Because, while he doesn't deserve it, he wanted to be the one to catalogue the first quirk born into the family.