Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Midoriya is running from villains for the third time in a week.

He sprints hard enough that he feels each impact with the ground in his knees, cursing mentally at the sounds of shouting being him. He rounds a corner at full speed, nearly hitting a wall, and leaps for an opportune fire escape ladder, catching it on the first try and scrambling up. He takes the metal stairs three at a time, heading for the roof.

In his defense, it isn’t really his fault.

“You’re gonna wish you were dead when we catch up with you, punk!” the lead villain shouts, turning into the alley. He’s still trailing fire extinguisher foam and struggling to light the wicks that protrude from his fingertips.

Midoriya cringes.

Okay, so maybe it’s a little bit his fault.

He has to use the railing of the fire escape to boost himself onto the roof, and it sends his heartbeat into his throat, but he doesn’t let himself hesitate, remembering all of Aizawa’s lessons on parkour and associated skills: the first step is to trust his body.

His feet find the roof without any particular difficulty, and he lets himself have just one moment of triumphant accomplishment before he’s booking it to jump across the narrow gap between one roof and the next.

Behind him, he can hear the villains clattering up the fire escape. They’re slower than him, but he hasn’t built up his stamina as much as he’d like, and if he’s not careful, they’ll catch up.

He crosses three more roofs before finding an open access door and bolting down the stairs inside of the building, hoping that it might be enough to throw them off of his trail entirely. He’s looking over his shoulder for any signs of pursuit when he bursts through the fire exit on the ground floor, which is why he runs smack into the man waiting there for him.

It’s one of the villains. He has the head and exoskeleton of a cockroach, and—now that Midoriya is close enough to get a better look—the same clawed feet, on a much larger scale. He could’ve been keeping up by walking on the walls of the buildings the entire time.

And he’d seen Midoriya go through the access door, and taken the opportunity to cut him off.

Midoriya tries to backpedal, but the door slams shut behind him, and he hears the lock click.

Cockroach hisses. It sounds suspiciously like laughter.

“Thought you’d get away, did you?” he says, stepping closer with a mean leer on his face. His antennae twitch and then trail down the sides of Midoriya’s face. The man laughs again when Midoriya jerks away at the touch. “You might be just a kid, but you ruined our hunt. That means we need to teach you a lesson.”

Midoriya’s pulse is rushing in his ears. He’s cursing at himself, trying frantically to think of a way out of the situation, but his phone is tucked away in his back pocket and reaching for it would alert Cockroach in an instant.

Another villain from the group runs past the alley and then backtracks, spotting the two of them. He slows to a walk, cracking his knuckles menacingly as he approaches.

Behind him, the door jerks open, and he manages to sidle a bit sideways before Cockroach moves to cut off the other end of the alley, which leaves him completely surrounded on every side by villains.

The last two members of the group, Candle-man and Rotation—the guy made of wax with candlewicks on his fingers that he can light at will (when he’s not covered in extinguishing foam), and the woman who can rotate her body parts—come through the fire exit door. Midoriya backs away from them until his back hits the wall on the other side of the alley.

“Do you regret what you did yet, kid?” Candle-man says. Midoriya had singled him out as the leader of the group when he’d first spotted them, which is why he’d targeted the man in the first place. The others don’t advance even as he does, remaining in place to keep Midoriya penned in. “You have no idea what you interrupted, do you?”

“I couldn’t let you hurt people,” Midoriya says. He’s equal parts surprised and proud when his voice comes out steady.

“We weren’t gonna kill anybody,” Cockroach hisses. He tilts his head. “Unless they got in our way.”

“You tried to set the cashier on fire,” Midoriya says.

“He wasn’t cooperating.”

Midoriya sets his jaw stubbornly. He doesn’t regret what he did. He can’t. Not when it means that the villains are here, with their attention on him instead of the store full of people.

There’d been a kid in the aisle next to him. He was huddled under his mom’s arm, big fat tears rolling down his face out of fear while she tried desperately to reassure him.

“I don’t care what you do to me,” he says. “I stopped you from hurting anyone else, and that’s what matters.”

“Tch,” Candle-man sneers. It almost reminds him of Bakugo.

He starts to reach for Midoriya’s face, and he finally manages to light the wick on his index finger. Midoriya tilts his head as far away as he can, but he’s already bracing himself for the burn.

“Those are brave words from a toothpick,” a new voice says.

The villains tense, looking around for the source of the voice. Midoriya spots him first—he’s hanging in the shadow of an air conditioning unit that protrudes from a window, using the frame as leverage. He blinks in surprise.

“This has nothing to do with you,” Candle-man says. He’s still looking around. Evidently his quirk doesn’t lend itself to better eyesight.

The man drops from the shadow and lands lightly on his feet in the middle of the alley. He straightens up and leans against the wall, pulling a knife from his belt and spinning it casually between his fingers.

“Really?” he says. “So if I leave, you aren’t planning on turning the kid into a pile of ash?”

“Not your business if we are,” Cockroach says. He folds one pair of legs across his chest. The rest of them wave in a way that he must think is threatening, but which really just makes him look like he’s at a silent rave.

“You’re villains,” the man says. The knife stops spinning, and he jabs it pointedly in their direction. “That makes it my business.”

Within seconds, the man is a blur of action. Cockroach falls first, then the villain blocking the other end of the alley. Candle-man tries to reach for Midoriya, presumably to take him as a hostage and use him as leverage, but without Cockroach blocking him, he ducks to the side, tucking and rolling as he hits the ground and coming up in a defensive crouch.

He needn’t have bothered. The last two villains are down in the space between heartbeats, and then the only people left upright in the alley are Midoriya and the man from the shadows.

Stendhal, he realizes, as the light from the street hits the man enough to silhouette his costume. One of Japan’s legendary vigilantes.

He stands up.

“Thank you,” he says.

Stendhal grunts. He wipes one of his knives on the end of his scarf.

“What you did was stupid,” he says. “But your heart was in the right place. Couldn’t let that go to waste on my watch.”

He puts the knife away and starts scaling the wall. His hands and feet find holds in the brick where Midoriya could swear there aren’t any.

After a few long seconds of hesitation, he heads out of the alley and turns around the back of the building.

Stendhal is on the roof when he swings up onto it.

“What are you doing?” he asks. “I’m not a babysitter. Go home.”

Midoriya sits down cross-legged and leans his hands on his knees.

“You’re Stendhal,” he says. “I know about you.”

“Good for you.”

“Why’d you save me?”

Stendhal turns a dead-eyed stare on him. Midoriya doesn’t waver. He doesn’t even dare to blink.

The thing is, he does know about Stendhal. And he knows that while the vigilante is quick to stop villain attacks, sometimes viciously, he rarely steps in to save a single victim, instead preferring to interfere with the largescale attacks that would result in multiple casualties.

The man shifts minutely. Then he drops to match Midoriya’s cross-legged pose, pulling one of his swords out across his lap and running his fingers along the edge.

“Heroes are fakes,” he says, almost spitting with sudden vitriol. “They’re in it for the money, the fame, the glory. They let innocents die when they know they won’t get anything out of saving them.”

Midoriya blinks. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

“What does that have to do with me?” he asks.

Stendhal tilts his head to regard him curiously.

“You stepped in when no one else did, even though you knew that it could get you killed,” he says. “You’re just a kid. And even when you were cornered, you didn’t change your mind. You were sure you’d done the right thing, just because you saved a few people who don’t even know your name from harm.”

“Of course I did the right thing,” Midoriya says. “Those people didn’t deserve to die.”

Stendhal raises an eyebrow.

“How do you know that for sure?” he asks. “Maybe one of them was a child abuser, or even a murderer. Maybe you just saved someone who pickpockets for a living, or someone who’s going to grow up to be a villain.”

Midoriya’s brow furrows. Stendhal isn’t what he was expecting. He twists his fingers into the fabric of his pants.

“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “Everyone deserves a chance to live. Everyone deserves to be saved.”

Stendhal rocks back a bit.

“Hm,” he says. “Seems you were worth saving after all.”

He stands, sheathing his sword and then stretching until his back pops audibly. He flicks a two-fingered salute in Midoriya’s direction.

“See you around, kid,” he says. “Don’t cross the line from vigilantism to villainism, or I’ll have to kill you.”

And with that, he leaps off the edge of the roof.

…………….

Midoriya is warming up for his Wednesday after school training session with Aizawa when the question slips out before he can stop it.

“What do you think of Stendhal?”

Aizawa turns to look at him. His arms are crossed over his chest, and he’s leaning against the wall while Midoriya warms up, face half-hidden in his scarf.

“Why?” he asks.

“Um,” Midoriya says. His brain screeches alarms at him. He hadn’t been planning on asking the question in the first place, so he hadn’t come up with a cover story to keep his late night escapades a secret. “Curiosity?”

Aizawa fixes him with a look that means, I know you’re lying but I’m too tired to care.

“He’s a vigilante,” he answers, a bit pointedly. “He operates outside of the law.”

Midoriya slumps a little bit in relief. He chews on his lip as he continues his routine, thoughts still nagging at him.

“Is that all?” he asks.

“That’s all that matters,” Aizawa says. Midoriya feels like he might vibrate out of his skin with frustration—he can tell that the man has more to say on the subject that he’s keeping to himself.

Aizawa sighs.

“Vigilantes have their place,” he says. “They get a bad rep with the media—and not entirely wrongfully, since what they do is illegal—but as an underground hero, I’ve worked with them a few times. You can’t always be picky about who you team up with when lives are on the line. If they don’t cross the line, and they don’t cross my path, I leave them alone. We have a mutual understanding that way.”

Midoriya turns that over in his head.

“And Stendhal?” he presses. “Have you worked with him?”

Aizawa’s mouth turns down in a flat line that’s almost an outright frown.

“Years ago,” he admits. “When he was new to the scene. But he’s different now. His methods are—harsher. And he never teams up with others.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Best guess? Someone in the past betrayed him. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes. Now, are you gonna finish warming up so we can get to work, or are you gonna keep wasting my time?”

“Sorry, sensei!”

………….

Midoriya stays up even later than usual that night researching everything he can find on Stendhal and vigilantes in general.

His own activities so far have mostly been an accident—he’d know the law for a while, that it didn’t apply to quirkless people, but he’d never seriously considered vigilantism. The law had just been another reminder of how useless everyone thought quirkless people were.

But.

According to what he can find online, Stendhal has been an active vigilante for around three years. Other than a few team-ups when he was completely new, he’s worked completely alone, and he’s been incredibly successful, considering the statistics on vigilantes and how often they end up killed or in prison within their first year of activity.

Despite being known as particularly vicious, he’s never killed any of the villains that he’s apprehended.

Midoriya thinks about how he’d nearly spit with aggression when he’d brought up heroes, but how he hadn’t been nearly as aggressive when addressing actual villains.

It should be a red flag, if anything.

But he just finds it—intriguing.

Chapter Text

The next day, Midoriya's so tired from his late night that he has to resort to stabbing himself in the leg with a pencil to stay awake in class. Not because he particularly cares about paying attention, but because he knows that if he gets caught falling asleep, he’ll get a detention for sure.

And he can’t afford to have any permanent marks on his record if he’s going to get into UA.

He’s up and out the door the second the bell rings, for once managing to beat his bullies out the door before they can corner him. He nearly runs home, not wanting to push his luck, and greets his mom quickly before closing himself into his room.

There’s homework to do. There’s other research that he could be doing about hero work and the different options that might be available to him as a quirkless hero.

But he pulls up the thread on a deep web site that logs Stendhal sightings instead, and watches every single notification long into the night.

And then he repeats it the next day, and the next.

It’s been nearly a month by the time his computer pings with an alert that Stendhal is in Musutafu again, close enough that Midoriya might just be able to catch him before he disappears again.

He’s on his feet so quickly that his chair spins, snatching his jacket from the hook on the door and then pausing, listening for any sign that his mom might still be awake.

There’s nothing. And it’s late. He isn’t stupid, he knows that she definitely has an idea that he’s been staying up odd hours, but she hasn’t said anything. So maybe she understands, at least a little bit.

He eases the window open. He doesn’t bother to look back before taking a leap of faith and catching himself on the railing of the fire escape the next building over.

………….

All in all—it actually isn’t as hard as he expects it to be to catch up with Stendhal.

“Kid,” the man says gruffly. He’s perched on the ledge of a roof, scarf blowing in the wind as he looks over the city streets. “What are you doing here?”

“Why do you hate heroes?” Midoriya asks.

Silence.

“What makes you think that I hate heroes?”

“The way that you talk about them. You weren’t nearly as angry when you were talking to the villains that you saved me from, but the second that you mentioned heroes, you looked like you were plotting murder.”

Stendhal turns to look at him.

“Smarter than you look, aren’t you?” he says.

Midoriya glares and crosses his arms indignantly.

“Look, kid,” Stendhal says. “This isn’t any of your business. Wait a few more years, go to hero school, get your license. Then maybe we can talk.”

“You didn’t get your license,” Midoriya points out. “Why do I need mine?”

“Because you could be better.”

That has him pausing.

“I’m quirkless,” he says, before he can think better of it.

Stendhal’s eyes burn into his. He doesn’t let himself look away. He doesn’t even let himself blink.

“Still think I could be a hero?” he says. It’s almost a taunt. For some reason, it’s always easier for him to be bold when he’s out at night, when the shadows are thick and deep, then it is for him during the day, when the light reveals even the most stubborn secrets. “You wouldn’t be the first to tell me no.”

He wants to hold his breath, waiting for Stendhal’s answer. He wants to duck his head and look at his feet, expecting the same answer that he’s gotten almost every other time that he’s asked that question.

But he doesn’t.

“Do you really think you can save people without a quirk?” Stendhal finally asks. His eyes are twin black holes.

“I can try,” Midoriya says. His voice is soft, this time. “And I already have. Whether I can save just one person, or a thousand, or a million—it’ll be worth it. It’ll always be worth it.”

Stendhal studies him.

“You remind me of All Might.”

Midoriya recoils like he’s been stung, grimacing before he can stop himself.

“Don’t—don’t compare me to him,” he says. “I know he’s a great hero, but—don’t. Please.”

“Hmph,” Stendhal says. “Fine. You’re a weird kid.”

Midoriya shrugs. He shoves his hands into his pockets and regards the older man.

“Do you have a nose?” he asks.

Stendhal sighs.

“I didn’t sign up for this,” he grumbles.

But he doesn’t chase Midoriya away.

…………….

Stendhal is—unnervingly similar to Eraserhead, in some ways.

In other ways, he’s jarringly different.

But they both have the same deadpan, neutral expression and a way of sighing that conveys entire paragraphs of thought.

Midoriya leaps from one roof to another to catch up with Stendhal one night and gets a glare and then gruff commentary.

“Who taught you how to land like that? You’ll end up breaking an ankle, and then what’ll you do? Because I won’t be dragging your scrawny ass to the hospital.”

And then he’d proceeded to teach Midoriya exactly how to lessen the impact of his landings so that he was less likely to injure himself.

Stendhal isn’t always in the area, but when he is, Midoriya finds him, and his efforts to shake him off and convince him to go home become more and more half-hearted as time goes on.

School is—boring. Between everything that’s happening, Midoriya can barely manage to sit through his classes. He doesn’t pay much attention to his homework, and his grades fall a bit, but none of them end up low enough to catch his mom’s attention, and his teachers and classmates are happier because the students who are gifted with powerful quirks aren’t being shown up as much by the quirkless nobody.

In his head, it’s really a win-win. It gives him more time to turn his attention to things that matter.

Like building an algorithm to help him track hero, villain, and vigilante activity.

It doesn’t initially start that way—he just wants a better way of being alerted when Stendhal is nearby. But then it snowballs, because he realizes that he could use it to track villain attacks as well as the areas that aren’t patrolled as often by heroes, and somehow it turns into a sophisticated program that he didn’t even realize he was capable of creating, almost overnight.

He starts going out with the intention of stopping villain attacks.

Before, he could convince himself that he was just being a good citizen, stepping in to save people when he was the only one around who heard they were in trouble, but now he’s seeking the villains out.

He can’t be prosecuted as a vigilante without a quirk, but that doesn’t stop what he’s doing from being vigilantism.

A lot of the time, he shadows Stendhal. The older man puts up with it, occasionally grumbling about making sure that Midoriya doesn’t get himself killed, and Midoriya notices that he spends more time in Musutafu than he ever did previously.

So somehow he ends up getting mentored by a pro hero and a vigilante at the same time.

Both of them are gruff and pretend not to care, and Midoriya understands why in both cases—it wouldn’t be good for anyone to notice that they were close to someone who was potentially vulnerable. Villains could use it against them.

And Midoriya is. Vulnerable, that is. Not as much as the typical kid, maybe, because he’s getting more and more combat experience under his belt with every night that he goes out, but enough that he doesn’t fault his mentors for pretending that they don’t even like him.

Still. Sometimes he wishes things were different.

…………..

“Why do you hate heroes?” Midoriya asks, hanging upside down from a balcony railing and looking up at Stendhal where he was balanced on top of a streetlight like a gargoyle.

“Aren’t you tired of asking that question?” Stendhal says.

Midoriya shakes his head. It makes him a bit dizzy, with all the blood rushing to his brain, but he stubbornly remains where he is.

“It bothers you,” he says. “Nothing bothers you, so it has to be important. I just want to understand why.”

“You’re turning purple,” Stendhal replies, and Midoriya reluctantly flips right side up.

He asks the same question every time he meets Stendhal. So far, he’s never gotten a straight answer. But he hasn’t gotten told not to ask, either, so he doesn’t have any plans to stop.

“There’s been weird villain activity lately,” he says conversationally, capitulating to changing the subject. “In Kamino Ward, not Musutafu.”

“Weird how?”

“It’s like—negative space,” Midoriya says. He pauses, trying to find a better way to explain himself. He’s always had trouble finding the words to describe the information that he just understands. “For years, there was consistent data of criminals and villains in that area, and now, suddenly, there’s just—nothing. Like all the villains have vanished into thin air. Even the homeless population has disappeared.”

Stendhal eyes Midoriya.

“How do you know that?” he asks. “That fancy program of yours?”

Midoriya feels his cheeks flush with embarrassment, against his best wishes.

“It isn’t fancy,” he says. “But yeah. It wouldn’t have even shown up in the system—who flags a lack of criminal activity?—but I specifically made it so that any anomalies would ping an alert.”

Stendhal taps his fingers on the hilt of one of his katanas. A tic of his that Midoriya’s noticed. He always does it when he’s thinking about something that disturbs him.

“Is that bad?” he ventures, a bit hesitant. He’s not sure that he’s often seen Stendhal with the furrow in his brow that he has now.

“Maybe,” Stendhal says. “Maybe not.” He turns his attention back on Midoriya. “Stay out of Kamino Ward in the meantime. Got it, kid? No attempts at playing spy. You don’t know what might be waiting for you.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Midoriya says.

It isn’t really a lie. It’d just occurred to him. Once or twice.

But his mom would notice if he took a trip all the way to Kamino Ward.

Stendhal studies him for a long moment.

“Why do you follow me?” he asks.

Midoriya blinks.

“Why not?” he says. “You save people. And you haven’t tried to kill me. Not yet, anyway.”

The last part is an attempt at a joke, but judging by the look on Stendhal’s face, it falls flat. He pulls one of his throwing knives from its sheath and tilts it back and forth in the light, studying the edge.

“Most vigilantes prefer to work alone,” he says. “I’m no different. And you know about me. So you know about my reputation.”

Midoriya shrugs.

“What about it?”

Stendhal hurts villains. Sometimes to a point that it’s overkill. But with the things that Midoriya has seen in just a few months of actively trying to intervene with villain attacks at night, he can’t say that he blames the man.

The child that he’d saved from being abducted still haunts his nightmares. He couldn’t have been any older than four, and the villain had his arm twisted behind his back to the point that he was crying in pain while his mother screamed his name across the street, shoving through people as she tried to find him.

No one had stopped to help her. He’d caught more than one person sending her annoyed looks, as though she was a nuisance instead of a distraught mother.

“You’re a strange kid,” Stendhal says.

Midoriya grins at him.

“That one’s getting old,” he says. “You’ve only said it, what, a thousand times by now?”

Stendhal’s expression turns—almost sad. He turns away from Midoriya, and he knows by now the signs that the man is about to leave. He doesn’t move to try and stop him. It’d be futile anyway.

“You’ve got a good heart,” he says. “But you don’t know what you’re getting into. Go home, kid. Before it’s too late.”

And with that, he disappears into the shadows.

……………

Midoriya is distracted during his training with Aizawa the next day.

After the third time that he fails to dodge an easy hit, Aizawa steps back, putting his hands in his pockets in a clear sign of a time-out.

“Okay,” he says. “This is above my paygrade, but what’s going on? You know this doesn’t work if you’re not putting in the work.”

Midoriya waves his hands frantically.

“No, no, I’m trying, I swear!” he says. “I want to be here! I’m just—a little distracted. Sorry, sensei.”

Aizawa raises an eyebrow.

“Something on your mind?” he asks.

For someone who’s pointedly pretending not to care, he can be pretty bad at it sometimes, Midoriya notes.

“It’s nothing,” he replies. He shakes his head, forcing his conversation with Stendhal to the back of his head. “Let’s keep going.”

Aizawa studies him for a moment. Then he nods, just once, and pulls his hands back out of his pockets.

Midoriya goes home that night with sore muscles and more than a few bruises, but Aizawa had patted him on the shoulder before they’d parted ways, so it’s entirely worth it.

He has people that want him to survive. He has people that want him to succeed. Even on the dark nights, that has to be enough.

It has to.

Chapter Text

“So there are rumors that Stendhal has paired up with a new vigilante,” Aizawa says casually.

Midoriya has to force himself not to freeze in the middle of his cool-down stretches.

“Really?” he asks. He struggles to keep his voice carefully level, injecting just the right amount of curiosity. “Didn’t you say that he always works alone?”

“I did,” Aizawa says. Midoriya can feel his eyes on him, but he doesn’t dare to look. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about his new partner, would you?”

“Why would I?” Midoriya says, knitting his brows together in faux confusion. “I don’t really follow news about vigilantes. Just pro heroes.”

“Hm,” Aizawa says.

He doesn’t pursue the line of questioning any further, but Midoriya can feel his eyes on him through the rest of their session. He has to carefully make sure that he doesn’t rush through packing up his gear or heading out the door, tossing his usual wave over his shoulder as he heads for the train station that’ll take him back to his apartment.

It’s only once he’s safely on the train that he lets himself slump down into a seat and groan into his hands.

Of course Aizawa had noticed. Midoriya asks about Stendhal one night, and a few weeks later there’s news that a new vigilante has joined the scene and teamed up with him?

He bites nervously at his cuticles. It’d seemed like Aizawa had bought his feigned ignorance, but the man always knew more than he let on.

Midoriya needs to work on his skills of subterfuge.

He pulls one of his ever present notebooks out of his bag and starts writing.

………………

Midoriya isn’t stupid.

So he’s fully aware that what he’s doing is an awful, terrible, horrible idea. He should listen to Stendhal and stay home. He should trust that Aizawa will prepare him for UA and the hero course, and he won’t have to experience having his dream crushed for the thousandth time.

But he tried that for the past three days, and it drove him insane.

He just never feels like he’s doing enough. And it just makes sense—the first time was an accident, but he saved Aoki. He can’t be arrested for vigilantism if he doesn’t have a quirk, so the consequences are minimal, and in the meantime he can get experience and he can save people.

Well. He could end up getting himself killed. But if he’s learned anything, it’s that saving even one person is always worth it.

Always.

He’s trying to be smart about it, at least. He’s been covering his hair and wearing a face mask when he goes out at night since he started actively seeking out villains, but not much else, since most of what he was doing was distracting them and then running away.

This time, though, he’s going a little bit farther. So he’s wearing layers, all black, and a leather jacket over a hoodie, zipped up, because it can work as light armor in a pinch.

It used to be his dad’s. It was one of the few things that he’d left behind, and it’d been hanging in the back of Midoriya’s closet for years.

It’s a little big on him. But it’ll provide an additional layer of protection if anyone comes at him with a knife.

His red shoes can’t be helped. They’re specially made for quirkless people, and getting anything custom is insanely expensive. The good news is that pretty much anyone who isn’t quirkless won’t pick up on that, and they’re normal shoes until someone gets up close anyway.

Midoriya presses his earbud more firmly into his ear. It’s a fairly cheap wireless piece, so it feels like it could fall out if he shakes his head a bit too hard, but it’s connected to his phone, safely tucked into an inner pocket of his jacket, and an automated voice reads out real-time updates provided by his villain-tracking algorithm.

There’d been several reports that people in a less profitable area of Musutafu had been getting harassed by an up-and-coming gang. Instead of protecting the citizens of their claimed area, like most of the traditional yakuza groups still did, they were exploiting everyone they could get their hands on, and the police weren’t doing anything about it because the targets so far had all been low-income, low-priority victims.

It made Midoriya mad just thinking about it, but it’d been a fact for a long time that the police were less likely to protect certain groups. He was one of them, as someone without a quirk, so it hit close to home that these people were being ignored.

They couldn’t afford a gang that would force them to pay their way. They could barely afford the bare necessities as it was, stuck in an area that most would consider slums, and yet this gang was taking advantage of the lack of eyes on them.

Midoriya blows out a breath, trying to control the sudden rush of righteous anger. He huddles deeper into the shadows, watching the rear entrance of the laundromat where the gang had supposedly set up shop.

He knows by now that there’s a basement, as well as an upper level, both of which are accessible from the rear entrance. He’d scoped out the laundromat, and there was only one set of stairs just visible in the back office, leading up.

So most of their base of operations was likely located in the basement.

“Robbery in progress at Sakai Jewelry Store,” a robotic voice says in his ear.

Midoriya hears sirens in less than a minute. He crosses his arms hard across his chest. There’d been three reports of similar crimes in his area, and it’d taken ten minutes or longer for the police to respond.

It’s no wonder that the gang is getting away with terrorizing the people around them. No one cares enough to stop them.

Midoriya’s here, though. It’s just him, and he can’t take on an entire gang by himself, but maybe he can still do something to help.

For now, though, he just watches.

…………..

For a full week, Midoriya spends the majority of his nights watching the new gang. He learns that they call themselves the Spiders—ridiculous—and that they have about twenty members, although there are only three that are especially relevant. The others are all the same type of follow-the-leader thugs.

Two of them are brothers. They both have mutant quirks—a lot of villains do, Midoriya is noticing more and more. They have similar features, with reptilian scales covering most of their body and slits for nostrils. Both have forked tongues, and they’re hard of hearing, communicating mostly through body language and crude sign.

They don’t talk to many people other than each other, so it doesn’t seem to affect them especially significantly. Midoriya has only seen one of their quirks in action—poison breath with a paralytic affect—but the other wears tinted wrap-around glasses that he recognizes as a support item, so he’d guess that it’s vision-based. Possibly paralytic as well, like his brother.

The third person seems to be the actual leader of the group. The name of the gang makes sense after the first time he sees her using her quirk.

She spawns spiders from the palms of her hands. They obey her commands, and she can generate enough to completely overwhelm multiple victims at once. Their bite isn’t fatal, but as far as Midoriya can tell, they seem to have a mild hallucinogenic affect.

The worst characteristic of Widow, though, is that she’s smart. The more Midoriya learns, the more convinced he is of that fact. She started small, and she’s slowly building her range of power, swallowing more territory at a rate that won’t generate notice until it’s too late to stop her.

She knows how to maintain control. And she knows how to maximize her influence.

Others might look at her and see a mild nuisance, someone who’s only bothering people beneath their notice, but Midoriya can see her ambition. She isn’t going to stop at the bottom. She’s going to keep going until someone stops her.

But no one else seems to care.

After a few days of watching them, he has an entire file of information on them. Their movements, their members, their typical victims. The patterns they exhibit when they target their victims. It’s more thorough than just about anything he’s ever written, and he can’t even do anything with it.

He’s thought about taking it to the police, but they’ve already shown that they aren’t overly invested in the crimes that happen in the less prosperous areas of the city. There’s no guarantee that they would actually use the information, and it’s possible that they’d be more interested in who gave it to them and how they got it.

An underground hero would be his next best choice, but they’re hard to track down, and he definitely can’t give it to Aizawa. The man is already suspicious that Midoriya might be engaging in vigilante activities; there’s almost no way he wouldn’t recognize the voice behind the notes. Midoriya doesn’t have enough experience disguising the way he writes and speaks to trust that someone who knows him wouldn’t realize that he’s the one behind it.

But the longer he tries to figure out how to help people without getting himself killed, the more people end up targeted by the gang. He can see it on their faces, as they walk home from their jobs late at night; they way they hesitate at the mouth of every alley and clutch their keys in their hands like it might save them if they show that they’re ready to try and put up a fight.

Most of the time it doesn’t. The Spiders overwhelm with numbers, not individual force.

He doesn’t know what to do. But he itches to do something. There has to be some way for him to help.

It consumes just about every waking moment. He mutters to himself as he takes notes in class, trying to figure out ways to combat the known quirks of specific gangs. It gets him in trouble a few times, but the more time that passes, the less he finds himself caring about the way he’s treated at school.

He has more important things on his mind.

The majority of the Spiders are thugs that gravitate towards power. They aren’t tied together by any sense of loyalty.

So if someone takes out the leaders…the rest will scatter without someone to follow.

But that still leaves three people with powerful quirks, and Midoriya can’t use his usual tactics in this case.

It’s stupid, to consider trying to take them out himself. But what else is he supposed to do? The police don’t seem to care, and his options are limited. Most heroes probably won’t take an anonymous tip seriously, and he’s only familiar with one vigilante.

Although he hasn’t seen Stendhal since before he started scoping out the Spiders. So maybe he doesn’t even have that.

He watches. He waits.

For the first time since he started training with Aizawa, he feels horrifically helpless.

And alone.

Chapter Text

 For a lack of any other options, Midoriya gets—involved.

Which is even more stupid than doing solo recon of a new gang, but he can’t stand by and do nothing. How is he supposed to just sit and watch while people are attacked?

At the very least, he isn’t reckless enough to interfere directly.

It starts one night when he’s patrolling the area instead of just watching the entrance of the base, and he spots a young woman walking home, clutching her bag to her chest, shoulders hunched around her ears. She flinches at every sudden noise, and she’s heading straight for one of the Spiders’ favored ambush spots.

He scrambles down the side of the building less than gracefully, landing heavily on his feet, and the sound of the impact has the woman spinning around in fright, eyes wide, raising her arms defensively in front of her. She squeaks with fear upon seeing him, and he abruptly remembers that he’s dressed head to toe in black with his face covered.

“Sorry!” he blurts, raising his hands to show that he isn’t holding anything. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What’d you mean to do, then?” she demands, still poised to strike. Her eyes dart around—checking to see if he’s the bait in a trap, maybe. “Are you following me?”

“No, no!” he says, then pauses. “Well. Not really?”

Judging by her expression, he’s only digging his hole deeper.

“I—just—” he struggles. As much as he’s been learning since he started training, his social graces have, if anything, gotten worse. “Look. There’s a group of Spiders a few streets down, gearing up to ambush whoever walks by. If you keep going this way, you’ll walk right by them.”

The woman blinks at him. She lowers her guard ever so minutely.

“How do you know that?” she asks. “And why are you telling me?”

He shrugs.

“I’m a concerned citizen?” he tries.

She snorts. Abruptly, he realizes that she’s even younger than he first thought—barely a few years older than him.

“No one around here is concerned enough to risk their own ass for someone else’s when the Spiders are involved,” she says. “Are you with them? Is this a trick?”

Midoriya starts to fidget with the strings of his hoodie, then notices what he’s doing and shoves his hands into his pockets instead.

“I know I don’t look like much,” he says. “But I just want to help.”

She regards him. After a while, she sighs and smooths her hair back with one hand, dropping the other to her side, still holding her bag.

“I’m only trying to get home,” she complains. “What am I supposed to do, check every shadow to make sure there isn’t a thug lying in wait to mug me?”

“I could show you a safe way,” Midoriya suggests. “I know where all their usual spots are, and I already checked around, so I know where they’re at tonight.”

“Everything you say makes this sound more and more like a trap.”

“Yeah. I’m kind of, maybe, really bad at this part.”

“Helping people?”

“Talking.”

She shakes her head. The corner of her mouth is curled in something that might be faint amusement. She purses her lips and stares at him for a long moment.

“Why should I believe you?” she asks.

He tilts his head, considering. Then he shrugs.

“You probably shouldn’t,” he says. “Stranger danger, or something.”

“You’re not getting any better at the whole talking thing.”

“I’m not really trying.”

He scuffs the toe of his shoe against the sidewalk. His skin feels ill-fitting and vaguely itchy, the way it often does when he talks to people.

“I really do just want to help people,” he finally says, voice soft and small. He pulls one hand out of his pocket and offers it out to her, palm up. “Trust me?”

She looks at his hand, then at him. Finally, she shrugs and reaches out to slap her hand into his.

“What the hell,” she says. “Lead on, kid. But if this does turn out to be a trap, I hope you know that the first thing I will do is turn and pepper spray you.”

“That’s fair.”

She doesn’t give him her exact address—smart—just the street name and the general area. He thinks for a moment, mentally mapping the area and where he’s noted the ambush groups for the night, and then he pulls her two streets over, and they go on a winding walk through alleys and side streets that has her looking at him with blatant suspicion more than once.

And then they emerge on her street, next to a brightly lit 24-hour convenience store, and he feels her relax.

“Guess there is still a bit of good left around here,” she says. “Thank you. Be careful, okay? You shouldn’t be interfering with the Spiders. They do awful things to the people that get in their way.”

“I know,” Midoriya says. “You’ll get home safe from here?”

She nods. She starts to turn away, but then she pauses.

“Hey,” she says. “Do you have a name?”

He blinks, a bit surprised. His pulse spikes enough that he can feel it in his throat, and he swallows nervously, trying to think of something to say.

“You can call me what you want,” he settles on.

She considers that.

“I get the need for anonymity,” she says. “That’s a bit of a dangerous thing to say, though, isn’t it, if you plan on doing this a lot? I could stick you with a name that you hate.”

He shrugs.

“The name doesn’t really matter, does it?” he asks. “I don’t need people to know who I am. I just want—”

“To help,” she finishes. “I know.”

He can feel himself blushing, and he’s grateful for the mask covering the lower half of his face.

She shakes her head at him, an odd smile on her face.

“You’re something different, kid,” she says. “But I can tell that you mean what you’re saying. So I guess I’ll see you around.”

She taps a salute to her temple, and then she turns and walks away without looking back.

Midoriya disappears back into the darkened streets.

……………

School feels…surreal.

It only takes a few weeks after the beginning of his nightly activities for it to start. Like his life at school is a dream, and everything else is reality. And then, sometimes, he can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s the other way around.

After all, a quirkless kid being trained by a pro hero sounds a lot more like a dream, doesn’t it? But when he’s at school, it’s like his body’s there, but his mind is somewhere else.

People don’t really notice. His teachers just seem satisfied that he’s keeping to himself for once, not disrupting class with constant streams of mumbling his thoughts out loud, and his bullies are just put out that he’s gotten so good at avoiding them.

He catches his mom giving him concerned looks a few times. But she’s busy, and he’s busy, and they’ve gotten all too good at avoiding things, over the years.

His mom knows that he’s bullied, but she can’t do anything about it unless he tells her. And he won’t tell her, because then she’ll try to do something about it, and with how deeply discrimination runs in the world, she could lose her career over it.

He won’t do that to her.

Between school hardly feeling real, and the blur that nights usually are, time is passing far faster than Midoriya would prefer.

Every day is another day less before the UA entrance exam. Before he has to prove, not just to Aizawa, but to everyone watching, that he isn’t just a quirkless nobody.

He feels the mounting pressure like something physical pushing down on him. Even though he’s barely sleeping as it is, he starts getting up early before school so that he can go for a run, forcing himself to work harder and harder.

None of it feels like enough.

It’s been maybe two weeks of his new routine—school, training, homework, patrol, walking people safely home past the Spiders, sleep, morning run—that he’s passing Dagobah Beach, a common fixture of his usual path.

Someone should really clean up all that trash, he thinks, and then he stops almost dead in place, blinking at himself.

How many people have thought that, he has to wonder?

He turns to look at the beach. He can’t even see the water because it’s so thoroughly covered with piles of junk and garbage.

Someone, he thinks to himself again.

He’s seen people pass right by an alley where someone is being attacked, ducking their heads like the screaming won’t be as loud that way.

Sometimes they do as much as calling the cops. Sometimes they don’t even do that.

Everyone is always hoping that someone else will be by to do the work. Whether that’s saving someone, or cleaning up trash.

Midoriya looks over the beach again.

He doesn’t even have a way to move the trash from the beach to the dump, except for his hands and his own two feet. But now that it’s in his head, he knows that it won’t leave him alone.

The light on the horizon starts to go from gray to orange, and he realizes that he’s running late. He starts jogging again, pushing his pace a bit faster, leaving Dagobah behind, but in his head, he’s already making plans.

…………….

“Izuku,” Inko says, and Midoriya spins to look at her, surprised. She’s wringing her hands together, but she doesn’t seem overly concerned about potentially making him late for school, instead biting her lip nervously as she tries to find the right words. “Did something happen?”

He blinks at her.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve hardly seen you lately,” she says. “And I know that you’re busy, with school, and your new training, but—something seems different. And you know that I worry.”

Midoriya feels a pang of guilt. He crosses the room and wraps his arms around her—realizing, as he does so, that at some point, he’s gotten taller than her.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve just been busy. That’s all it is.”

Inko sniffles and hugs him back, squeezing just the right amount so that Midoriya feels tension he didn’t even know he was carrying drain away.

“Are you sure?” she asks, voice warbling. “You know I’m here for you for anything, Izuku. Right? No matter what.”

The smile that pulls at his lips is more than slightly bitter, but his face is still hidden, tucked over her shoulder, so he doesn’t bother to hide it.

“I’m sure,” he lies. “And I know. Love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Izuku.”

They hold each other for a bit longer, and then she pulls away with another loud sniff, pulling her apron up to wipe at her eyes. She makes a shooing motion at him with her hands.

“Go on, then,” she says. “You’ll be late.”

He smiles—a big, cheesy grin this time—and she laughs. Then he turns and heads out the door, sprinting as soon as he hits the sidewalk to make it to school before the first bell.

Chapter Text

Midoriya stares up at his bedroom ceiling.

He has less than two hours before his alarm is going to go off for him to get up and go for his morning run. He was out most of the night, leading people around different Spider ambush points, and he was, as always, nursing multiple bruises and plenty of sore muscles, mostly from his afternoon training session with Aizawa.

But he can’t sleep.

He’s been working on the beach. Mostly sorting trash into different piles—he’d had to buy a pair of gloves after he’d cut himself on the rusty metal edges of someone’s discarded stove. Thankfully tetanus was a thing of the past, or he would’ve had to explain a lot more to his mother than a single band-aid.

Aizawa had strictly told him not to deviate from his training schedule, to make sure that he’s giving his body enough time to recover, but he couldn’t do that. Not when he was so far behind.

His nighttime activities had been an accident, mostly. He went out when he couldn’t sleep and his skin was itching and the walls felt like they were closing in, and then he’d jumped in to save Aoki, and after that—well. He figured he might as well spend the time that he wasn’t sleeping usefully, instead of just laying in bed.

Then came the beach.

And despite it all, he still feels like he’s not doing enough.

He has just over nine months until the UA entrance exam. Not too long ago, that would’ve felt like forever, but now it feels like hardly any time at all.

He rolls over in bed and shoves his pillow over his face. He doesn’t groan, even though he wants to, because he doesn’t want to risk waking up his mom.

His thoughts spiral out of his control. All he can think about is—Kacchan’s face, when he was being consumed by the sludge villain. Aoki’s sobs. A group of Spiders laughing at the sight of blood.

The pillow over his ears can’t drown his thoughts out. Just the sounds of the street below his window.

He’s so tired. Sleep should be as easy as climbing into bed. But he can’t help but think about all of the what ifs—what if he fails the entrance exam? What if he disappoints Aizawa, and proves that all of this training is for nothing?

What if he isn’t worth it? What if he really is as worthless as everyone’s always said?

He bites down on the inside of his cheek hard enough that he tastes blood.

Hero or not—UA or not—he’ll find a way to save people.

He has to.

…………….

The Spiders are starting to grow agitated.

They’ve noticed that people are managing to avoid their attacks, but they haven’t figured out how. More of them are sent out, and more of them return empty-handed.

Midoriya gains a reputation. He still startles people occasionally when he appears out of nowhere, but word has spread that there’s someone leading them to safety.

He holds out his hand and says, Trust me, and they do.

In between being a guide, he still saves people in other ways. Mostly, he uses the same tactics every time—interrupt, distract, run away. He’s graduated in his training with Aizawa from self defense to basic hand-to-hand, but his mentor slams him into the mat easily every time they spar.

His unprecedented luck continues to hold. He comes home occasionally with minor injuries—bruises, cuts, burns. But he’s had years of experience hiding his pain, and it doesn’t make much of a difference to his usual behavior.

At least he isn’t dealing with the compounded effects of taking on his bullies and villains at the same time. He’s been on an excellent avoidance streak at school—he thinks partially because Bakugo has been avoiding him ever since the incident with the sludge villain. Their other classmates tend to follow in Bakugo’s footsteps, so it isn’t much of a surprise.

Midoriya’s life has changed. He can’t decide, some days, if it’s changed for the better.

……………

The bright fluorescent lights of the bathroom make Midoriya’s eyes sting after spending hours straining to see in the dark. Even with streetlights, some of the alleys are so poorly lit that it’s like staring into a black hole.

He pulls the first aid kit out from under the sink. He didn’t have anything too bad to deal with tonight, but he’d taken a jump a little too quickly and ended up skidding across a rooftop. He’d scraped the first few layers of skin off of both of his arms just to stop his momentum.

The disinfectant stings, but he barely grimaces as it bubbles. Wiping out the dirt and debris is a bit more painful—but his actions are methodical. His hands don’t shake even once.

He’s used to it.

After he’s applied bandages and rolled his sleeves down to make sure they’re covered, he throws away his trash, burying it so that his mother won’t find it. He’s about to flip off the light switch and go to bed to sleep for at least a couple of hours before he has to get up for his morning run, but he turns a little too far and catches sight of his reflection in the mirror.

The bags under his eyes are so dark they look like bruises.

He didn’t realize they’d gotten that bad. He chews on his lip—no wonder his mom and Aizawa had both been suspiciously asking after him recently.

He’ll have to do something about it if he wants to keep up the ruse. Maybe concealer? He’s never used it before, but it seems simple enough.

His hair is a mess. It always is. He runs his hand over it and tugs at the ends of his curls. It’s gotten long. He can’t remember the last time that he went for a haircut. It had to have been before—everything.

He meets his reflection’s eyes.

You’re never going to be enough.

He turns the light off. For a moment, he stands there in the dark. His skin feels too small, like it’s about to split, and he has to resist the urge to scratch bloody furrows into his own body trying to make the feeling go away.

The morning is close enough. He’ll have two hours—maybe three, he hasn’t checked the time—in bed, sleeping or at least trying to. Two hours without anything to keep his mind from listing all of the reasons why he’s fooling himself and should just stop trying.

And then he’ll start the day all over again. Rinse and repeat.

He swipes his hands over his face and sighs. His breath is warm against his palms.

He used to think that the hardest part of being a hero—of saving people—was surviving the villains and the dangers of natural disasters when there was rescuing to be done.

He never thought that it would be harder to survive himself.

…………………..

“Deku,” Bakugo says, in a familiar low growl that makes Midoriya flinch.

He turns around anyway.

His childhood best friend is leaning against the wall next to the side door that Midoriya’s been using to get away at the end of the school day before anyone can catch him. His arms are in his pockets, and his shirt is already untucked, tie crooked and loosened so that it hangs away from his collar.

Bakugo’s eyes scrutinize him. Midoriya’s skin prickles, but he forces his hands to stay still instead of reaching up to scratch at his neck or arms.

“You’re different lately,” Bakugo finally says. “It’s annoying.”

Midoriya blinks. He didn’t think that Bakugo would bother to notice, or that he’d care about it if he did. Really, the main things that’s changed is that he’s learned how to stop himself from muttering out loud, which means that he can sometimes go the whole day without saying a single word.

He would’ve thought that Bakugo would be happy about that.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says.

“Tch. Don’t lie to me, Deku,” Bakugo snarls, and pushes off of the wall, taking his hands out of his pockets. Midoriya has to force himself not to turn and run—he knows that it’ll only make things worse later on, especially now that Bakugo knows about his escape route. “Something’s up with you. You’re even more useless than before.”

Midoriya pulls the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder, trying to think of anything he could possibly say to satisfy Bakugo’s questions. He can’t tell the truth—for multiple reasons, not least of which that Bakugo will definitely attack him if he learns that someone as worthless as him is getting trained by a pro hero.

“Does it matter?” he asks. He’s aiming for a neutral tone, but more exhaustion comes through than he means to. “I thought you hated me.”

Bakugo’s scowl deepens.

“You’re a worthless, quirkless Deku,” he says. “You’re not worth anyone’s time, least of all mine.”

Midoriya waits for the pain. For the tears to well up in his eyes, and the laughter that’d follow because being a crybaby just proved him right.

It doesn’t come. Instead he just feels—tired.

“Great,” he says, emotionless. “Glad we agree.”

He turns to leave. Bakugo snarls and snatches his arm in an iron grip, right over the worst of his scrapes from his fall the night before. He can’t help but wince, but Bakugo doesn’t let go, instead pulling him back around to face him.

“What’s up with you?” he demands. “You’re acting like—like—”

“Like a Deku?”

“You’re being fucking weird! It’s like you’re trying to piss me off, acting like you’re too good for everyone. You’re not good enough for anyone, and you should get that through your stupid head! Stop acting like you’re better than me!”

He shakes Midoriya aggressively to punctuate his point, and it’d be fine, but—his sleeve slips down.

Bakugo stares at the white bandages suddenly visible wrapped around Midoriya’s wrist. He doesn’t let go, and his scowl doesn’t disappear, but he goes a shade paler, and Midoriya could swear that for a moment, he sees something that almost looks like fear in his eyes.

“What’s that?” he asks. “Deku, what the fuck is that?”

Midoriya yanks his arm out of the other boy’s grip.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Bullshit, it’s fucking nothing. What did you do, Deku?”

“I said it’s nothing, Bakugo.”

Bakugo reels back as though he’s been struck. While he’s still staring at Midoriya like he’s never seen him before, he fixes his sleeve, pulling it back down to hide the bandages, and then he turns and walks away, leaving the boy who used to be his best friend behind.

Chapter Text

Aizawa slams Midoriya into the ground for the seventh time in a row.

He thinks. He’s not sure; he stopped counting after the third time that his mentor dropped him in under a minute.

Aizawa looks down at him where he’s still lying on the floor, trying to relearn how to breathe. There’s a thoughtful expression there—although no one would know it from his normal expression if they hadn’t spent a lot of time with him.

“Let’s take a break,” he says. He turns away before Midoriya can argue.

Midoriya peels himself upright and rubs his hand over his hair. He’s never been close to winning any of their spars, but he’s been doing especially poorly today, and he knows that Aizawa’s picked up on it.

Of course he has. Aizawa picks up on everything.

He makes a beeline for his bag anyway, collapsing cross-legged next to it and taking several long draws from his water bottle.

Aizawa studies him.

“So,” he says. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Midoriya grimaces.

“Nothing?” he tries.

Aizawa raises an eyebrow.

“Wanna try again?” he says.

Midoriya fidgets. He trusts Aizawa—about as much as he can trust anyone—but he doesn’t want to disappoint him. Everything going through his head…it isn’t something he feels like he can share. Not without making Aizawa wonder whether he made the right choice.

“I just haven’t been sleeping well,” he mumbles. “The entrance exam is only nine months away, and I’m so far behind. It feels like I’ll never catch up.”

There. That’s a safe thing to admit.

“Nine and a half,” Aizawa says. He ducks his head into his scarf, still scrutinizing him. “You think I’d tell you that you have a chance if I didn’t believe it?”

Midoriya shrugs.

“You found me on the ledge of a roof,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d lie to keep me off of it.”

Aizawa blinks. Just once. It’s about as much surprise as he ever shows.

“Have you been thinking that this whole time?”

Midoriya leans his head back, looking up at the ceiling of the building that they’re training in. It’s an old gym—Aizawa knows the owner, apparently. They have the whole place to themselves every weekday for an hour after Midoriya gets out of school.

“Not all of the time.”

Aizawa sits down. He copies Midoriya’s position, almost exactly the same way that he did the night that they met.

“I don’t waste time on lost causes,” he says. “I expelled an entire class once, you know that?”

It’s Midoriya’s turn to blink at him in surprise.

“I thought that was just a rumor.”

“Nezu would like everyone to believe that. He doesn’t want UA to be known for that sort of thing. But none of the students in that class understood what being a hero was really about. And none of them were willing to learn.”

He can understand that. Almost every kid claims to want to be a hero, but Midoriya has rarely met other people who actually get that being a hero isn’t just about the fame and glory.

He used to think that Bakugo was one of those people. These days…he isn’t so sure.

“So why’d you decide to train me, then?” he asks.

“Because you didn’t give up.”

Midoriya inhales. He lets his head fall back down so that he can look at Aizawa.

“I almost did.”

“And you didn’t. More than that, kid, you try. If I could get my students to put in half the effort that you do, they’d be licensed heroes by the end of their first year.”

Midoriya shakes his head.

“I’m not doing enough,” he says. “Everyone else is so far ahead—how am I ever supposed to catch up? How am I ever supposed to prove that I can be a hero without a quirk, when everyone else has quirks that they have years of experience with? I just learned basic self defense. Even if I do get into the UA hero course, how am I going to measure up with everyone else? I’ll never be as good as they are.”

“Problem child,” Aizawa grumbles.

There’s no malice in his voice, but a part of Midoriya shrinks at the nickname anyway. He rubs the hem of his t-shirt between his fingers, staring down at his lap.

“Midoriya,” Aizawa says. His tone is uncharacteristically gentle, drawing Midoriya’s eyes back to his face. “I’m not the type of person to waste time doing something that isn’t worth it.”

Midoriya flinches before he can stop himself. The words are a callback to his conversation with Bakugo, even if the message is the opposite.

Aizawa notices. Of course he does.

“There is more going on, isn’t there?” he says.

Midoriya fidgets and avoids eye contact.

“I can’t help you if you don’t let me.”

“You can’t do anything about it anyway,” Midoriya says. His tone is flat. Resigned. “My mom tried, once. She almost lost her job over it.”

“I’d like to think that I have a bit more job security as a pro hero,” Aizawa says. “Why did my words upset you?”

Midoriya huffs out a breath. He should’ve known that Aizawa wouldn’t just leave it alone. He acts stern and distant, but he cares more than he lets on.

“It just reminded me of something someone else said,” he says. “It’s nothing that I’m not used to. You don’t have to worry about it, really; it just got to me for a second. I’ll get over it.”

“What’d they say?”

Midoriya chews the inside of his cheek. The slight ache of it is grounding. He’s in uncharted territory, here—no one’s tried to dig this many answers out of him in years.

“Just the usual. That I’m useless, and a waste of space, and no one should waste their time on me, because I’m not worth it. It’s the same things they’ve been telling me ever since I didn’t get a quirk when I was 4. It shouldn’t bother me anymore, really, I’m being stupid about it—”

“Midoriya.”

He cringes. He said more than he meant to.

“Can you look at me?”

He shakes his head almost immediately. Eye contact is hard enough as it is—his skin crawls thinking about looking now, after he’s admitted out loud something that’s been his secret to keep for years.

“Okay,” Aizawa says. “That’s fine. Here, then.”

The end of his capture weapon loops loosely around Midoriya’s wrist, over the compression sleeves that are hiding his bandages from view. Midoriya latches onto it—wrapping it more tightly around his hand and tugging slightly, just enough so that he can feel it.

“You with me?” Aizawa asks.

Midoriya nods.

“Alright. I’m gonna ask you something, and I want you to answer me honestly. Don’t just say what you think I want to hear. Do you trust me?”

Midoriya opens his mouth to say yes, of course he does, and then closes it again. His brow furrows, and he pulls on the capture weapon until he can feel it digging into his skin.

Does he?

“I want to,” he finally says.

That much is true. He does want to trust Aizawa. He wants to believe him when he says that he thinks Midoriya can be a hero, quirk or not.

But he’s been failed by teachers so many times. He can’t help but think that there’s going to come a day when Aizawa wakes up and realizes that he made a mistake.

“But you don’t yet,” Aizawa says. “Do you?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to prove to you that you can trust me.”

Midoriya jolts at that, finally looking up. He doesn’t quite make eye contact, but he can see that Aizawa’s expression is entirely sincere and serious.

“You don’t have anything to prove,” he says.

Aizawa smiles, just a bit.

“Neither do you.”

Midoriya blinks.

“Oh,” he says.

Aizawa nods. He stands, reaching out a hand to help Midoriya to his feet as well, and Midoriya unwinds the capture weapon from his arm. Before he can step away, Aizawa reaches out and presses a palm to Midoriya’s shoulder.

“You’re doing more than enough, kid,” he says, his usual gruff tone back, like he has to make up for being soft. “I’ll tell you that as often as you need to hear it.”

He pulls away, and Midoriya feels the loss of the gentle touch like a physical ache.

“Now,” he says. “You feel like telling me more about the people who are abusing you?”

“It’s not abuse,” Midoriya protests. “It’s only bullying. Anyone else would be fine, I’m just too sensitive and weak—”

“You’re not,” Aizawa cuts him off. “And it is. I assume that if you’re calling it bullying, it’s mostly happening at school. Is it classmates? Teachers?”

Midoriya shakes his head, refusing to answer.

“Both, then,” Aizawa says.

“Please don’t,” Midoriya whispers. “It’ll only make it worse. It hasn’t even been that bad lately; they’re mostly ignoring me. And I’ve gotten better at avoiding them.”

Aizawa studies him.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with this, kid,” he says. “It’s no surprise that you don’t know how to trust me. The adults in your life have failed you over and over again your whole life. I don’t want to be one of them.”

“You aren’t,” Midoriya says. “If you try to do something, it’ll only make them mad. Even the teachers aren’t afraid of getting in trouble—they know that the principal is on their side, and most lawsuits about quirkless discrimination get thrown out before they’re even properly processed. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. That’ll make them pay more attention to me, and that’s not what I want.”

“You could switch schools,” Aizawa suggests.

Midoriya shakes his head.

“It’d just be the same thing with different people,” he says. “It’s not bad right now, really. And there’s less than a year before I graduate. I’ve been dealing with it this long, another few months is nothing.”

Aizawa sighs.

“I’ll stay out of it,” he says. “For now. But if it gets worse, I want you to let me know, okay, kid? I can pull strings if I have to.”

“Okay,” Midoriya agrees. Privately, he knows that he definitely won’t, unless it gets so bad that he doesn’t have any other choice. He’s already taking up enough of Aizawa’s time as it is, he doesn’t want to be even more of a burden.

They end their training session early. Aizawa sends him home with instructions to ‘have some fun’, which is about as foreign to Midoriya as trustworthy authority figures.

He doesn’t complain, though. It gives him more time to spend at Dagobah, working on cleaning up the beach.

Aizawa might say that he’s doing enough. But if he can do more—well, shouldn’t he?

UA’s school motto comes to mind.

Plus ultra.

He might be pushing his limits, but if he’s going to be the first quirkless hero, he has to take that concept and run with it. He has to go beyond in everything that he does.

No matter what it might cost him.

……………

The Spiders start breaking into smaller groups and patrolling larger areas, making Midoriya’s self-appointed job as nighttime guide significantly more difficult.

On the bright side, word seems to have spread that people should buddy up, and it’s a lot less likely for him to come across anyone trying to walk through the Spiders’ territory alone.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t still people who need help.

He lands lightly behind a group of obviously drunken teenagers. He’s been watching them stumble down the sidewalk for a little while now, hoping that they’d change direction and manage to avoid the Spiders out of sheer luck, but it didn’t happen.

One of them is obviously worse off, supported between the other two and occasionally slurring nonsense that triggers a round of laughter.

He’s not sure what sound he makes to alert them of his presence—it might not even be a sound at all. But the one on the left suddenly looks over his shoulder and then jerks in surprise hard enough that he loses his grip on his friend, who leans too hard on the other person and ends up taking them both to the ground with a yelp.

“Oh, shit,” the first guy says. He looks at his friends, then back at Midoriya, like he’s torn between helping them or trying to chase Midoriya away. Then something seems to register in his glassy eyes, and he visibly relaxes. “Oh, it’s just you. Sorry, guys. I didn’t realize it was Wisp. Thought we were being followed by a Spider.”

Midoriya’s brow furrows.

“Wisp?” he asks.

The boy blinks at him.

“You?” he says. “Or it’s what everyone’s been calling you, anyway. Y’know, like will o’ the wisps, except without the leading people to their grisly deaths.”

“Oh,” Midoriya says. He’s not sure how to feel about the name. He looks at the other two, still on the ground. The drunkest boy is giggling quietly, and the girl is staring up at the sky with a resigned look on her face. “Do you need help?”

“Right now, or in general?” the girl asks. “The answers are the same, I just like to specify.”

“Mood,” Midoriya says, without thinking about it.

Thankfully, when drunkenness is involved, most people don’t tend to notice indications that others would consider suspicious.

He offers a hand to the girl, and she takes it and lets him haul her back to her feet. Then they work together to get the other boy, still giggling, to stand up and lean on them again.

“So if you’re here, we’re probably on our way to running into some Spiders, huh?” the girl says. “I’m tempted to keep going anyway. They put my sister in the hospital a couple months ago. I owe them a visit.”

“I’d recommend maybe not making that decision while under the influence.”

“Pssh,” she says, waving a hand. “I’m practically sober.”

She fumbles a step, ankle turning as her stiletto heel wobbles underneath her, and would take them all to the ground again if Midoriya didn’t steady her.

He tilts his head at her.

“Okay,” she says. “Fair.”

“I’d rather not get dragged into a fight between you and the Spiders, either,” the boy who isn’t drunkenly singing American pop songs says. “And Kato probably hasn’t even realized that we left the club yet, so he’d just be a liability.”

“This girl is on fiiiiiiiire,” Kato sings, completely out of tune, in heavily accented English.

The girl sighs.

“Kill my dreams, would you,” she grumbles. Then she shakes her head and turns back to Midoriya. “So which way is it gonna be, Wisp?”

“Where are you headed?”

They tell him the general location, and he nods and calculates a safe route in his head. It’s longer than it should be, because of the increased patrols, but it’ll get them there.

They don’t live in a good area. It’s one of the most rundown apartment buildings, where people are always smoking on the front porch and homeless people sit in the sidewalks hoping that passersby might donate some spare change so that they can afford to eat.

It makes Midoriya’s blood boil with the injustice of it all, but he carefully pushes it down and keeps any sign of it out of his tone as he exchanges joking words with the group of older teenagers.

He wonders if they’d follow him so easily if they knew that he’s younger than them.

When they reach their building, the taller boy turns and salutes him, reminding him eerily of the first woman that he ever led home.

“Stay safe, Wisp,” he says. “We’re all counting on you.”

He watches them disappear inside.

We’re all counting on you.

He chews on the inside of his cheek hard enough that he tastes blood. Leading people safely home is all well and good—but the Spiders are only growing in number. Eventually, there won’t be a safe way to lead people home.

Midoriya has to do something to stop that from happening.

He has to go after the Spiders.

Chapter Text

The Spiders call their leader Jorogumo. Midoriya prefers his own nickname for her, but he’s noticed that the majority of villains seem to have a serious flair for the dramatic.

Midoriya has only been lucky enough to catch a proper glimpse of her once—when she’d lost her temper and unleashed her quirk where she was still visible through the window.

One of her underlings had displeased her. He hadn’t been able to do anything except watch as her spiders overwhelmed him. His screams were faint, but they still haunted Midoriya’s nightmares.

From his extensive research, he knows that her spiders have a venom that causes hallucinogenic symptoms in the victims. When she’s at the top of her game, she can generate enough of them that they’re capable of suffocating the victim as well.

Gangs like the Spiders are mostly basic thugs attracted to powerful leaders. Midoriya is fairly sure that if he takes out Jorogumo and her seconds, the rest will scatter.

But that isn’t an easy task.

Even experienced heroes hesitate before going after gangs—usually, it’s a coordinated effort between heroes and the police, after months or even years of reconnaissance and intel collection.

The Spiders won’t ping the radar of law enforcement until or unless they go after more high stakes targets, so it’d be years, most likely. People would die. They’d get hurt.

But what can he do? He’s just one person.

Midoriya scribbles notes on Jorogumo in his notebook. They’re unintelligible to anyone except him; he started encoding them when he first realized how dangerous the information in them could be in the wrong hands.

Not that he thinks anyone would really bother looking at his notebooks. But he won’t risk endangering others with his own carelessness.

“Does she have a limit?” he mutters out loud, tapping his pen on the page. She’d produced enough spiders the one time he’d witnessed her quirk in action to completely overwhelm the man she attacked—Midoriya hadn’t been able to see a single inch of his skin or clothes.

But could she attack a group the same way? How many spiders could she produce at once?

Midoriya rereads his compiled research for probably the thousandth time.

Jorogumo’s spiders, while venomous, weren’t fatal on their own. They can cause hallucinations, ataxia, tachycardia, and even seizures. But the actual deaths attributed to her quirk listed the cause as suffocation.

She’s also only ever been known to produce a swarm, rather than a few at a time. That could be for an intimidation factor, but most people are wary enough of spiders that Midoriya doubts it. Their venom likely isn’t as dangerous in small amounts.

He chews his lip.

There are ways to counteract Jorogumo’s quirk. Spiders are weak to extreme temperatures, as well as water and electricity. He can take care to cover as much of his skin as possible to limit the number of places that the spiders could bite him, and if he moves quickly enough, it’d be nearly impossible for them to swarm enough to suffocate him.

But that leaves him open to the quirks of her shadows. One which is confirmed to be paralytic, and another that has a high chance of it.

If he’s hit by either, he’s down for the count.

A proper mask can counteract the poison breath. But how does he avoid a vision-based quirk, except by staying out of sight?

He frowns to himself.

If he’s attacking alone, he already knows that he’ll have to catch them by surprise. If he takes out the one with the paralytic sight quirk first…he’ll probably be able to come up with enough precautions to avoid the quirks of the other two.

But they still have more combat ability than he does, and it’s two against one. Jorogumo is smart—he won’t be able to lead her on a wild chase through the streets like he has with so many other villains before.

The more he thinks about it, the more frustrated he gets.

If he can’t do anything about this—how is he supposed to be a hero? It’d be the same problems on a broader scale.

No one will want to work with a quirkless hero. He’ll be alone, and probably underground. He’ll only have himself to rely on.

How does he overcome his limitations?

He glares at his notebook, bouncing his leg, restless. He studies the rough sketch that he’d drawn of Jorogumo, including the gloves on her hands that were designed to leave her palms bare to direct her quirk more specifically.

Support gear.

He straightens with the realization.

Support gear. Of course. Even the best heroes had it—they almost never relied solely on their quirks. Their uniforms could even be considered support gear, since they had to be specifically designed not only to withstand but to amplify their quirks.

Midoriya doesn’t have a quirk to amplify, but technically Eraserhead’s capture gear doesn’t have anything to do with his quirk. It’s something he uses to level the playing field when his quirk isn’t enough on its own.

The next question, then—where does he get it?

He sits back in his chair, rocking it slightly back and forth as he thinks. He could build it himself, probably, the same way that he taught himself how to hack and code, but it’d take a lot of trial and error, and there weren’t a whole lot of online tutorials, since it was more financially beneficial for companies to keep it an exclusive skill.

Unbidden, Dagobah comes to mind. He’s still mostly in the sorting phase, trying to separate actual trash from the items that can be recycled, and he’s been baffled more than once at the amount of tech that’s been dumped.

A lot of it is broken or outdated, yeah, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still useful.

Maybe he can make a trade. Or, if that fails—use the discarded parts for his own experiments, until he manages to find a combination that works.

Flipping his notebook closed, he turns to his laptop.

When in doubt, research.

Lots and lots of research.

……………

Midoriya approaches the stoop nervously, struggling to balance the cardboard box on his hip so that he keeps one hand free—just in case.

The doorbell is, interestingly, shaped like the head of a dragon, complete with whiskers worked into the bronze. He presses it, and a speaker crackles to life.

“State your business,” it says robotically.

Midoriya stares.

“Uh,” he says. “I’m here to drop off parts? For um,”  he cringes, remembering the username of the person he’d been chatting with, “babymaker420?”

The dragon’s eyes flow red, and then the door swings open.

A girl his age is behind it, grinning manically. She’s wearing a pair of safety goggles that magnify her eyes so that he can see her crosshair pupils with ease.

“You’re early!” she exclaims, and then she zeroes in on the box he’s holding and flaps her hands excitedly. “Are those the parts?”

Midoriya blinks at her, utterly bewildered.

“Yeah…?”

“Great! Follow me, I’ll show you to my lab!”

She snatches his wrist, giving him little choice but to follow her. He could twist away, but his instincts aren’t screaming at him to get away, so he figures she’s about as safe as anyone, these days.

The house that she leads him through is—interesting. He counts at last three holes of varying sizes in the walls, and multiple burn marks, as well as cracks and mystery substances clinging to the ceiling.

The home of an aspiring support hero, he supposes.

She leads him through a reinforced metal door into what looks like a garage, except that every available space is taken up by inventions, some of which are sparking, glowing, or moving on their own.

“This is it!” she says, dropping his arm to spread her arms, grinning proudly. Then she whirls, shoving her face so close to his that he leans backwards at the proximity. “Now! What’d you bring me?”

“I brought everything we talked about,” Midoriya replies, and cautiously sets the box that he’s holding on a marginally clear space on one of the worktables. “Except for the sand blaster. It was a bit too big for me to take on the train.”

“And where are you getting it all from, again?” the girl says, already diving into the box, sorting through the parts that he’d brought, occasionally dropping them—a little less carefully than he might—into different piles.

“Um, there’s this beach that people have been dumping their junk on for a while,” he says. “I’m trying to clean it up.”

“Amazing! You’re trying to be a hero, then? Sounds exactly like something that a goody-two-shoes humanitarian hero would do!”

He doesn’t know whether he should feel offended by that or not. He kind of wants to be.

“What’s your name, anyway?” he asks, crossing his arms, more out of discomfort than defensiveness. She still isn’t pinging any of his danger senses, and he’s gotten pretty good at judging character over the years. “I…really don’t want to keep thinking of you as babymaker420 in my head.”

She looks up, eyes huge behind her goggles.

“I totally forgot,” she says. Her tone is still cheerful and a bit louder than most people would consider polite for casual conversation. “My moms are always telling me that I need to work on my manners. But when it comes to my babies it’s so hard to think about anything else. I’m Hatsume Mei!”

“Midoriya Izuku,” he says. “You make support gear, right?”

She beams, nodding, and seizes his arm again to lead him across the room. She picks up something that looks vaguely like a gun, except that the barrel is shaped like a trumpet with spirals carved into it.

“I made this baby last week!” she exclaims, and turns so that she’s facing away from him, towards the far wall, which Midoriya now notices is filled not only with junk pieces but also multiple types of targets.

She pulls back a lever and then hits the trigger—the contraption makes an alarming noise, somewhere in between jet engine and ominous grinding, and then fires a net that spins as it flies across the room and wraps around a circular target hanging from the ceiling.

It’s actually fairly impressive.

“What are you using as a power source?” he asks, tilting his head as he regards the net gun.

Her entire face lights up.

“Have you ever seen the old Marvel movies?” she says. “I’m Iron Man.”

“You made an arc reactor?”

She squeals excitedly, bouncing on her heels.

“Better! I made multiple arc reactors!”

He looks around her lab. It’s messy, covered in stains, and he’s pretty sure at least one of her inventions is on fire.

“Can you teach me?” he asks.

The glint in her eye turns manic. Weirdly, it doesn’t make him feel anxious.

It makes him feel excited.

“Can you bring me more parts from the beach you’re cleaning?”

“Sure, as long as you have a way to transport the bigger parts that I can’t carry by myself.”

She sticks out her hand, and he takes it. She pumps their clasped hands up and down enthusiastically exactly three times.

“Mido,” she says. “I have the feeling that this is the beginning of a beautiful partnership.”

Chapter Text

Midoriya’s schedule changes again.

In the morning, he goes for a run and spends as much time as he can at Dagobah before he has to head home to get ready for school. After school, he takes the train to the gym where he trains with Aizawa, and then he walks to Hatsume’s, where he helps her with her projects and learns in the process. And at night, he keeps up his patrols.

It’s—a lot.

But every time he finds himself starting to fall asleep in class, or when he’s so exhausted in the morning after his alarm goes off that he considers skipping his run, he reminds himself that he’s never going to be good enough to be a hero if he doesn’t give it 110%.

He catches his mom’s worried looks, and Aizawa is always studying him out of the corner of his eye anymore, and even Bakugo is staring at him whenever he thinks that Midoriya can’t see him.

They don’t ask. His mom and Aizawa try, a few times, but if there’s one skill that he’s gotten good at over the years, it’s deflecting.

For once he’s glad that he has plenty of reasonable explanations for being sleep-deprived and distracted.

Hatsume is the only one who doesn’t question it. But then, she never knew him before.

“So,” she asks, buried shoulders deep in the wiring of a new project while Midoriya stands by with a fire extinguisher, “Why’d you want to learn how to make support gear, anyway? Most heroes don’t bother.”

Hatsume makes Midoriya feel comfortable in a way that he hasn’t felt since he was friends with Bakugo before his diagnosis. Like there’s something between them that just—clicks. He wants to be honest with her.

But they’ve only known each other for a few weeks, and he ended up being so, so wrong about Bakugo.

He shrugs.

“It seems like a useful skill,” he says. “I think there are a lot of heroes that don’t utilize support gear to the extent that they could or should. Gang Orca, for example—if he dries out during a fight, that could cause major problems. Right now he carries around extra water bottles to rehydrate himself, but those are clumsy and impractical. I’m sure there’s some kind of support gear that could be designed to make sure that he doesn’t dehydrate to dangerous levels.”

Hatsume pauses and mutters something to herself that isn’t loud enough for him to hear. He recognizes the thoughtful look on her face, though, so he doesn’t let himself tense like he might if he was with someone else.

“I didn’t know that about Gang Orca,” she says. “You’re right, though. There are a lot of heroes that could significantly increase their efficiency if they used the right support gear. Most of them won’t admit it, though; they’re convinced that their quirk is enough on its own. What’s yours, by the way?”

Midoriya freezes at the question. His fingers tighten alarmingly on the fire extinguisher, and he has to force himself to relax his grip.

“My quirk?” he asks, trying to sound casual.

She nods and then swears when it makes her hit her head on one of the pipes above her.

“Yeah, your quirk,” she says out loud. “Mine’s Zoom, but you know that already. Yours is some kind of mental quirk, right? That’s why you’re looking into support gear so much? To give yourself a physical advantage?”

Midoriya bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard. He wants to cry, suddenly, for the first time since Aizawa found him on the roof.

He could lie. He knows he could. Say he has an analysis quirk, or something that she wouldn’t have any way to test, like an enhanced sense of smell or taste.

But he’s tired. And the thought of lying to Hatsume feels about as bad as the thought of having teeth pulled without anesthetic.

“Mido?” Hatsume asks. She extracts herself from the tangle of machinery, leaning back on her heels to tilt her head questioningly up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have one,” he says. His mouth is incredibly dry. The words feel like sand on his tongue. “I’m quirkless.”

She blinks.

He expects her to say or do something right away. Hatsume is very much a do now, think later, type of girl. And it usually works out for her.

But she doesn’t. Instead, she climbs slowly to her feet and wipes her hand on one of the many rags that she has scattered throughout her workshop.

“You were scared to tell me,” she observes.

He nods.

“Can I hug you?” she asks.

He stares at her.

“What?”

“Can I hug you?” she repeats. “You just—look like you could use one.”

His eyes water. He blinks rapidly, trying to stop himself from crying.

“You don’t care?” he asks. “That I’m quirkless? You’re not going to tell me that I can’t be a hero?”

“Why would I do that?” she says. She twists the rag in her hands. “I don’t—have a lot of friends. People tell me I’m too loud, or weird, and they say I make them uncomfortable. I’m not good at being a person, I guess? But you don’t care about any of that.”

She looks small in a way that he didn’t think she was capable of. Since the first day, she’s always seemed unabashedly confident and self-assured. But now, here’s her hidden insecurity—and she’s letting him see it.

“I don’t think you’re weird,” he finally says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

She laughs.

“That just means that you’re weird too,” she tells him, with a bright smile. “But I think that just means that we make good friends. Right?”

He bites his lip.

“Can I have that hug now?” he asks.

She grins, dropping the oily rag in her hand, and launches herself at him. He barely manages to keep hold of the fire extinguisher with one hand so that it doesn’t clatter to the concrete floor, and wraps his other arm around her back.

Her pink dreads smell like motor oil and apple cider vinegar.

“You really think I can be a hero?” he whispers. She tightens her grip.

“I think you’re going to be the best hero ever,” she says. “And I’m going to help.”

He smiles. For one moment, he lets himself relax. Lets himself just feel warm.

Behind Hatsume, her project sparks. There’s an ominous grinding noise, and then a flame leaps to life right where her head had been while she’d been working on it.

“Your project’s on fire,” he says.

She groans, stepping out of his arms. He makes use of the fire extinguisher in his hand, smothering the flames with foam.

Hatsume contemplates it, hands on her hips and lips pursed.

“Scientifically speaking, spontaneous combustion really shouldn’t be such a common outcome,” she says.

“Maybe it’s a secondary quirk.”

“A freak genetic mutation.”

“A curse?”

“Oooh, let’s go with that. It sounds badass.”

They look at each other.

Hatsume’s the first to laugh, but it doesn’t take long for Midoriya to follow.

……………..

The problem with being a vigilante and an aspiring hero is that Midoriya has to be especially careful to make sure that he doesn’t do anything as a vigilante that could be connected to his civilian identity.

He might not be able to be prosecuted for vigilantism, technically, but he wouldn’t put it past the hero commission to blacklist him if they learn about his activities.

So, beyond general stealth, he has to make sure that he distinguishes his fighting style as a vigilante enough from what he plans to do as a hero so that on the off chance that someone sees him in both scenarios, they won’t immediately connect the dots.

He scrubs at his face.

Hatsume had suggested tonfa recently, and was already getting to work on a prototype for him to test out so that he could decide whether or not the technique was worth pursuing.

 A blunt weapon appeals to him. There’s a likely chance that he’ll have to be more ruthless than typical heroes, since he won’t have a quirk to fall back on, but he doesn’t want to kill anyone. Knocking them unconscious has its own risks, but it’s still a better option.

Using an actual weapon as a vigilante could gain him more attention that he doesn’t want. He’s already ended up with a name, and a reputation, although luckily neither have made it into the media yet. But the most popular vigilantes, similar to the most popular heroes, have some sort of gimmick that sets them apart. They dress especially flashy—Present Mic—or they use their quirk constantly—Endeavor. Knuckleduster, the vigilante, was known both for his intimidating physical appearance, the black mask that covered the top half of his face, and his excessively violent nature.

Underground heroes like Eraserhead did the opposite, and designed their hero costumes and support gear to be as subtle as possible. Aizawa’s hero costume might make him look like a homeless man, but that meant that he could walk around at night easily without arousing suspicion. And his capture weapon, when not in use, could pass as a simple scarf.

Midoriya chews on the end of his pen.

What could he use as a weapon while he’s walking around as Wisp that won’t draw unnecessary attention?

He can’t deck himself out with knives, like Stendhal. Not only because it would definitely draw attention, but because he’d be more likely to hurt himself than anyone else, since he only knows the basics of how to use them. And it’d take a significant amount of practice before he could be precise enough with blades to use them against villains without harming them.

A baseball bat?

He glances to where he has an aluminum bat leaning in the corner of his closet. He can just barely see it from his seat at his desk.

His dad had bought it for him—years ago. Before he’d stopped calling and sending birthday cards. He apparently loved baseball, and followed the American games religiously.

It’d make a good weapon. It’s solid, but still fairly lightweight, and if he found a way to strap it to his back, it wouldn’t get in the way of his movements too much.

But it’s distinctive. Not enough to identify him, but still enough that he’d stand out.

His face scrunches. Considering how easily he’d ended up diving into vigilantism in the first place, getting anywhere with it without ending up dead or on the wrong end of a police baton was a lot harder than he’d thought it would be.

He scribbles absently in the margins of the page. Knuckleduster’s main weapons were brass knuckles—they were how he’d gotten his vigilante name. It was possible that he could work something similar into a pair of gloves to give his punches more weight.

But he still needs something that allows him to keep a little bit of distance.

His eyes go back to the baseball bat in his closet. Household items aren’t a bad idea, as long as they aren’t uncommon.

Maybe a wrench?

He blinks, sitting back.

Or a crowbar.

Both could be concealed, if necessary, and they both had enough weight to them that they could deal some damage. Wrenches were usually made of vanadium, and crowbars from carbon steel or titanium, which were both strong, fairly lightweight metals.

They wouldn’t break on him unless they were under incredibly extreme stress, and he could have both in most areas that he patrolled without warranting so much as a second glance.

An alert from his computer interrupts his train of thought.

“Hero Killer Stain Strikes Again.”

He clicks the link.

He isn’t prepared for the pictures that appear at the top of the article.

It’ll be down within the hour, most likely, but in the meantime, the article showcases the bloody dead body of a pro hero.

He swallows down his nausea and scrolls down to read.

“Pro Hero Sinkhole, rank 67, was reported DOA after police responded to a disturbance along the hero’s usual patrol route. His injuries are consistent with those previously caused by Stain, the Hero Killer, and the hero’s death has been attributed to him.”

Sinkhole. A somewhat misleading name, since his quirk had been localized terrakinesis—he could collapse the earth in a fairly small radius, and rarely deeper than six feet. He used it to trap villains, rarely fighting close quarters, and his quirk had caused a significant amount of collateral damage that he didn’t seem to care about.

Midoriya scrolls back up to the pictures.

Most likely, Sinkhole had bled out. None of his major arteries were cut, but there’s—a lot of blood. It looks like a knife had pinned him to the wall—

He stops. Blood rushes in his ears.

Hands shaking, he zooms in on the picture, forcing down the way it makes his stomach twist.

The attacker had left one of his knives. The one pinning Sinkhole in place. To anyone else, it’d just be a standard, cheap knife that could be bought through any black market in the area.

But Midoriya recognizes it. There’s a scratch on the handle—barely visible in the photo. He could be imagining it.

His gut tells him that he isn’t.

A scratch shouldn’t mean anything. It should just be a scratch. It’s a knife, and it belongs to a villain. Of course it wouldn’t be in pristine condition.

But Midoriya knows that scratch.

He’s the one who put it there.

Chapter Text

Midoriya stares up at his bedroom ceiling.

For the first time in weeks, he didn’t go out to patrol. He’d gotten an alert that Stendhal was in Musutafu, and every time that he was in the area, they ended up running into each other, one way or another.

His head is still reeling. It’s been a few days since he saw the article about the death of the pro hero Sinkhole, but it’s like he’s been walking through a fog. Every time he tries to think about it, his mind recoils like he’s about to get burned.

And that’s not far off from the truth, is it?

He’d trusted Stendhal, as far as he can trust anyone. Any adults, anyway.

He rolls over onto his side, looking at his hand on the mattress next to him, fingers loosely curled. Bars of moonlight filter through the window over his skin, highlighting his scars.

His eyes trace a silvery mark on the meaty part of his palm. Before he can force himself towards a safer topic, he’s already remembering.

Midoriya is sitting on a roof yet again—not on the edge this time, although he’s not far.

The edge of the switchblade in his hand catches the light from the street as he tosses it up, watching it spin in the air, before catching it by the handle.

“Do you even know how to use that?’

Midoriya startles, flailing backwards in mid-throw. The switchblade spins unexpectedly, and he lunges to catch it, only for the tip of the knife to slice into the side of his palm.

He swears, yanking his hand back. The switchblade clatters to the rooftop.

“Guess that answers my question,” Stendhal says. He sounds equal parts amused and exasperated.

Midoriya glares at him.

“I was doing fine until you showed up,” he says.

Stendhal straightens up and strides over to him. He grabs Midoriya’s wrist in a firm but surprisingly gentle grip, pulling his hand out to inspect it. He hums thoughtfully.

“Not too deep,” he says. He unwinds a strip from one of his armbands, cutting it with one of the many knives at his belt, and ties it in place around Midoriya’s hand. “It’ll probably scar. That’s what you get for playing with knives.”

“I wasn’t playing.”

“Yes, you were. Switchblades aren’t even meant to be thrown like that. I’m surprised you didn’t end up slicing off a finger.”

“It’s not that sharp.”

“Another mistake. Your knives should always be kept in top condition.”

Midoriya tugs his hand out of Stendhal’s, ignoring the way that part of him aches at the loss of touch that isn’t meant to cause pain, and crosses his arms.

“It’s not like I’m planning on going around and stabbing anyone,” he says. Stendhal shifts a bit strangely at that, and Midoriya realizes that he’s making it sound like he thinks using knives is villainous. “Not that knives are bad, I just—”

“My methods aren’t for everyone,” Stendhal interrupts. His eyes, the only part of his face visible behind his mask, darken, like his thoughts have gone somewhere else. “And they shouldn’t be.”

“Right. I just thought it’d be good to have, you know, just in case…and knives are good for other things too. Other than combat, I mean.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Stendhal says. “But you’re going about it the wrong way.”

Midoriya huffs out an irritated breath.

“It’s not like I can go up to someone and ask them to teach me how to use knives,” he says. “I’d be a walking red flag. And I think I’ve been figuring it out on my own pretty well.”

“If you don’t want me to teach you, you can just say so.”

Midoriya’s spine snaps straight.

“Really?” he asks. He realizes he’s leaned forward only when Stendhal presses a gentle hand to his chest to put more than a few inches of distance between them. “Sorry. But you’ll really teach me? You’re better with knives than anyone I’ve ever seen!”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Stendhal says, dryly. “Now pay attention. I’m only going to do this once.”

Midoriya inhales shakily. His hand clenches into a fist almost involuntarily.

They’d spent the night practicing, with Stendhal viciously critiquing everything from his form to the expression he made when he was concentrating.

At one point, he’d horribly misjudged a throw, and one of Stendhal’s knives had fallen into an alley from the roof where they were practicing. He’d expected it to shatter completely upon impact, but when he’d gone down to retrieve it, there was only a deep scratch in the handle of it, probably from where it’d clattered through the grate of the fire escape before falling the rest of the way to the ground.

He couldn’t see it, but he could feel Stendhal’s smile when he’d returned the knife and sheepishly apologized.

The man didn’t yell, or scold him. Just reminded him to be aware of his surroundings, always, so that he could avoid similar mistakes in the future.

That scratch was distinctive. It was as engraved in Midoriya’s memory as anything could get, because he’d been so terrified when he’d messed up, and then so relieved when there was no explosion of rage.

And it was on the handle of the knife that had dealt what was likely the killing blow to pro hero Sinkhole.

Stendhal wouldn’t let anyone steal his knives. He was too good for that.

Which meant, then, unmistakably, that Stendhal was Stain.

The Hero Killer.

Nausea twists Midoriya’s stomach violently. He throws off his covers and races for the bathroom, barely making it in time before he’s heaving.

Bile is all that comes up. He hasn’t been able to eat anything all day.

He leans back when the nausea fades enough that he doesn’t think he’s in immediate danger of retching anymore, and lets his head fall back against the wall. He pulls his knees up to his chest.

The tile floor is cool under his bare feet. He tries to focus on the sensation of it to ground himself, but it barely works.

He shouldn’t have let himself trust Stendhal.

Stain.

The man had never been kind. But he’d saved Midoriya, and he’d saved other people, and he hadn’t threatened him or tried to chase him away when he showed up to pester him with questions.

He always seemed at least a little bit relieved to see Midoriya again. Like he was glad that he hadn’t gotten himself killed.

But if he’s really Stain—and Midoriya is pretty sure that he is—then he’s credited with the deaths of a dozen pro heroes.

He’s a villain. A murderer.

And somehow, despite that…Midoriya can’t hate him.

He buries his head into his knees, squeezing his eyes shut. His throat burns, but he refuses to give into the tears threatening to fall.

He’s so tired of crying.

After a while, he straightens up. He rinses out his mouth. Brushes his teeth.

When he climbs back into his bed, the moonlight has shifted onto his pillow.

If he knows anything—he’s pretty sure that Stain won’t kill him. Somehow, for some reason, the villain has a soft spot for him.

If he’s still in Musutafu when it’s time for Midoriya to go out again…they’ll find each other. And he’ll ask outright.

It’d be safer to leave it alone. To avoid Stain, or to anonymously tell the police what he knows. That Stendhal and Stain are the same person.

But Midoriya hasn’t gotten this far by playing it safe.

And he has to know.

He has to know.

……………

Stendhal isn’t in Musutafu the next night. Midoriya waits by his laptop all night, hoping that he’ll get an alert so that he can get his answers. But there’s nothing.

He doesn’t kill any more pro heroes, either, unless the news hasn’t heard about it yet.

In place of news about the Hero Killer, there’s an article about a young woman who was killed in the Spiders’ territory. She was 23, walking home from work.

Midoriya almost throws up again. Not that there’s be anything to it—he still hasn’t been able to bring himself to eat.

Her death is on him. He should’ve been there. But instead he let his own emotions control him, and because he wasn’t there to keep her safe, the Spiders got to her.

Before, they didn’t usually kill the people that they stole from. He’d guess that the overkill this time around was because of him, too. He’s been stealing their prey out from under their noses for weeks, and all he’d done in the end was make it worse.

All he wants to do is curl back up in his bed and tell his mom that he’s sick so that he can stay home for the day.

But that’d just be letting his emotions get the best of him again, so instead he shoves his shoes on and heads out the door for his morning run.

He pushes himself even harder than usual, so that each impact of his foot on the pavement sends pain spiking all the way up into his hips. His breath lances through his lungs until he tastes blood in the back of his throat, and he still doesn’t stop.

Even now, all he’s good for is making a mess of things.

School passes in a blur. He catches Bakugo looking at him even more than usual, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He gets a text during lunch period from Aizawa that he has to cancel their training for the afternoon. Something came up with his UA students, apparently. It isn’t the first time it’s happened, but it hits Midoriya harder than it ever has before.

Bakugo tries to corner him after school, but Midoriya bats his hand off of his shoulder, ignoring the smoke curling from his charred shirt, and leaves while the other boy is still stunned that he’d ever dare to defend himself.

He goes to Hatsume’s. She’s as ecstatic to see him as always, but they’re barely an hour in when one of her moms peaks into the lab to remind her that they have dinner plans, and Midoriya has to leave so that Hatsume has time to wash the engine oil out of her hair.

Which leaves him—at Dagobah, sitting on top of an old chest freezer that smells like it was used to store rotten fish guts, flipping his switchblade in the air and watching it catch the sunlight as it spins.

Somehow, in the last three months, Midoriya has almost died, gotten his dreams crushed by the number one hero, been stopped from jumping off the roof of a building by a pro hero who agreed to train him, became the student of a prolific murderer, stood up to his childhood best friend turned bully, and befriended a genius who was possibly the only person his age in the entirety of Japan who didn’t care that he’s quirkless.

He should be grateful for the good things. He never would’ve dreamed that Eraserhead would agree to train him, or that Hatsume would want to be his friend. But he just feels—heavy.

The switchblade spins one too many times on his next throw, and he catches it by the blade. It doesn’t break skin, but the impact of it against his palm stings.

In front of him, the sun dips lower over the horizon. His mom will be waiting for him to eat dinner. If he stays too much longer, she’ll start to worry.

He slides off of the freezer and puts the switchblade back into his pocket.

He’s going to go home. He’s going to eat katsudon with his mom. And after she’s gone to sleep, he’s going to go out, and he’s going to make sure that the Spiders don’t get the chance to kill anyone else.

Or he’s going to die trying.

…………..

Midoriya expects himself to feel nervous, sitting on the roof across from Jorogumo’s base and waiting for the right opportunity. Instead, he feels calmer than he’s felt in months.

He isn’t sure if it’s the adrenaline or the imminent chance of death, but he isn’t going to complain about it as long as it keeps his hands steady.

There are flash and smoke bombs in his pockets—both easily made from over-the-counter cleaning chemicals and spare parts, Hatsume had taught him. Hopefully they’re enough to prevent the second of Jorogumo’s henchmen with the visual quirk from activating it. He has a mask on his face to filter the paralytic breath of the other villain, and zip ties to hold them before the police arrive.

A flash drive in the inner pocket of his jacket contains all the intel that he’s gathered watching the group, complete with photo evidence and identifying factors of the most prominent members, along with what he knows about their quirks.

His plan hinges entirely on catching them by surprise and taking them down quickly. If any of them manage to hit him with their quirks, especially the ones with paralytic effects, he’s almost definitely dead.

But that’ll draw attention to them, too. Aizawa, at least, he’s fairly sure, would investigate his death and make sure that those responsible are brought to justice.

He grimaces to himself. It’s probably not good that he’s already thinking about the in case of his death scenarios. But he’s always been an overthinker.

A familiar car with tinted windows pulls up. The driver steps out and opens the door for Jorogumo, who flips her dark hair over her shoulder and clicks her fingers impatiently behind her at her two shadows.

They disappear into the building. The car pulls away.

Midoriya waits for the light to filter through the singular basement window, and then longer still, waiting for them to get settled.

Then he moves.

He takes a roundabout path to get to the building instead of heading straight across, eventually landing on the roof, and then using the gutter to climb down to the window on the second floor that doesn’t latch properly.

It leads to an office, he knows. No one’s ever in it after daylight hours.

The laundromat is on the floor just underneath it. And below that—Jorogumo’s base of operations.

From what he’d been able to find of the blueprints online, there was only one staircase leading down to the lowest level. He’s going to have to be extra careful to avoid putting them on alert before he makes it to them.

The office is almost entirely dark. If he squints, he can just make out a few rows of identical cubicles, and, past that, the glowing red EXIT sign that leads to the stairs.

He steps softly on the carpeted floor, trying to minimize the sound of his footsteps. The door creaks slightly when he opens it, and he cringes and shuffles through as quickly as he can without making even more noise.

The stairs are utilitarian concrete. The kind that always echo every sound horrifically loudly.

Midoriya breathes shallowly. He tightens his grip on the handle of the switchblade in his pocket. He doesn’t have any intention to use it, but it’s become—a comfort, somehow.

Even though it keeps making him think about Stain.

He shakes his head. He has to focus.

It takes an age to descend the first flight of stairs, going as slow as he needs to in order to make sure that his footsteps don’t echo through the entire building.

The laundromat is dark and silent. Part of what had drawn his attention to it in the first place were the odd hours—most laundromats were open either 24 hours or at least late into the night, but this one closes at 10pm.

Because Jorogumo couldn’t risk patrons of the laundromat realizing what was going on underneath them.

Midoriya pauses in the office. There’s a second door in the office, and he’s assuming that it leads to the staircase that’ll take him down to the basement.

But he doesn’t cross over to it immediately.

Is he really doing this?

He can almost hear Aizawa’s voice telling him off. He’s biting off more than he can chew for sure. But who else is going to do something?

A woman has already died. He hadn’t been able to save her.

But he can make sure that it never happens again.

He closes his eyes, doing a mental count of everything he brought with him. There’s a pipe wrench hanging from his belt, pockets full of flash and smoke bombs, his switchblade. Two dozen zip ties. He’s wearing a mask that’ll filter the air, and a hat and hood to hide his hair and shadow the top half of his face. He’d gone to the trouble to duct tape his pants to his socks so that there isn’t any exposed skin where Jorogumo’s spiders can bite him, and done the same where his sleeves meet his gloves.

He’s as prepared as he possibly can be.

His hand switches from one pocket to the next, and he carefully palms a smoke bomb. Then he crosses over to the door and twists the knob.

It opens silently on well-oiled hinges. Voices filter up to him from below.

“Why hasn’t anyone been able to tell me why they haven’t been doing their jobs?” Jorogumo says. Her voice is deceptively calm. “Thousands of people live within a few blocks of this building. How is it that in the last few weeks, all but a handful of them have managed to avoid us?”

“Someone’s helping them,” a gruff voice responds. Midoriya would guess one of her shadows. Probably the one without the poison breath. “No one’s seen ‘em close enough to tell us anything, just that they exist, and they’re helping people get around us.”

“Right. So one, single, itty bitty little vigilante has managed to cripple over two dozen big, bad villains. And none of you know anything about them.”

They’re talking about him.

“They’re calling him Wisp,” a different voice says. Nervous. Midoriya pauses on the third step down, because he’s sure that it doesn’t belong to any of three villains that he’s expecting. “Because he leads them away.”

“Ridiculous name,” Jorogumo growls. “A real wisp would lead them into danger, not away from it. Is it a him, then? A man?”

“People disagree. But more of them say that it’s a man than a woman.”

“Hmph. People always expect a man before they expect a woman. It’s a mistake that a lot of people who have met me have only made once. Isn’t that right, Shima?”

“I—I’ve tried to find him, Jorogumo. It’s like he’s a ghost.”

“Ghosts don’t exist.”

“Please, I’m sorry, I—”

“Sorry isn’t good enough, Shima. Not this time.”

“No, no--!”

The air is split with screams. Midoriya leaps down the second half of the flight of stairs, stopping at the corner and peaking just enough to get more of an idea of what’s going on.

Shima is on his knees, screaming and trying to brush Jorogumo’s spiders away as they swarm over his skin, biting everywhere they can sink their fangs into. There aren’t enough of them to suffocate him—not yet.

Jorogumo is sitting in a high-backed chair with her hands palm up on her knees, smiling. Her quirk is still producing spiders, but less and less with every passing second. Her ever-present bodyguards are hovering behind her with their arms crossed.

Midoriya takes one last deep breath.

And then he hurls the smoke bomb in his hand directly in between Jorogumo and her victim.

Chapter Text

Chaos.

Shima’s screams lull as Jorogumo loses focus on her quirk. Midoriya takes advantage and throws a flash bomb, aiming directly for the man with the vision-based quirk. It goes off inches from his face, and he yells, reaching for his eyes and stumbling backwards.

Gloriously—luckily—he trips over the leg of Jorogumo’s chair, into his brother, and all three of them crash to the ground.

Spiders scatter in every direction. They don’t disappear or get reabsorbed by Jorogumo, Midoriya notes, offhandedly wondering whether she’s had an impact on local pest populations—

He shakes his head.

Focus.

Shima is whimpering, clawing at his own skin, which is covered in red welts from spider bites. Midoriya hauls him up by the arm and shoves him at the stairs, hoping that he has enough sense left through the hallucinations to get himself out.

“Mahi!” Jorogumo shouts, shoving at the two men pinning her to the floor.

There must be an order in there somewhere, because one of them frees himself—Midoriya takes a deep breath, just in case his mask isn’t as effective as it should be—and exhales, mixing clouds of red vapor with the gray smoke.

It swirls around him, but when Midoriya cautiously takes a breath, there’s no noticeable difference.

Mahi growls in irritation, stomping towards him, and Midoriya ducks under a wide swing and scrambles sideways. He reaches for his pockets, coming up with another bomb, and throws it without looking to see what it is.

Another flashbang. It gets him the distance that he needs, but that just puts him on the side of the room opposite the stairs, with three villains in between.

Jorogumo finally untangles herself and stands unsteadily, looking more disoriented than she should be from a simple fall, and Midoriya realizes when she fans at the air that the smoke must be affecting her.

None of the red vapor from Mahi’s quirk has reached her, and it’s already starting to dissipate, so he must have decent control, or it has an oddly limited range for a gas-based quirk. He won’t be lucky enough for them to take each other out.

But Midoriya wasn’t planning on that.

He tosses another smoke bomb, this one right at Jorogumo’s feet, and she yells wordlessly and sways, catching herself on the desk next to her.

“Who are you?” she demands.

Midoriya doesn’t answer.

“Itami,” Jorogumo says, kicking at the villain still on the ground. He grunts, pushing himself to his knees, hands over his eyes. “Get up.”

Mahi makes another pass for Midoriya, and he leaps out of the way again, kicking out at the man’s leg as he goes. It buckles, but he doesn’t fall.

“Itami,” Jorogumo hisses.

Midoriya’s back hits the wall. He ducks Mahi’s right hook easily, but he’s so focused on avoiding one hit that he steps straight into another, taking a fist directly to the ribs.

It knocks the breath out of him. He wheezes for a moment, and that’s all the time he has, because there’s another fist swinging right for his face.

He drops. His knees take the hit hard, stinging on the concrete floor, but he ignores it, kicking out at Mahi’s ankles as he scrambles away again, out of the corner that he’d gotten himself trapped in.

Mahi swears and reaches for him, open-handed. He just misses grabbing hold of Midoriya’s hood, and alarm bells start ringing in his head at the near miss.

Jorogumo tries to use her quirk, aiming her palm, fingers pointed down, in Midoriya’s direction, but barely a dozen spiders fall before she winces and clutches at her head. None of them make it as far as his feet.

She kicks at the man at her feet again. He bats at her foot, grunting in obvious irritation, and finally gets up, still covering his eyes, even over his tinted wraparound glasses.

“Make yourself useful,” Jorogumo snarls, snapping her fingers in his face. When that fails to do anything, she grabs hold of his wrists and rips his hands away, jabbing her fingers in Midoriya’s direction.

Itami growls, yanking himself out of her grip, and turns.

Mahi dives out of the way.

That should’ve been Midoriya’s first warning.

Itami reaches up, grabbing the strap of his glasses, and slides it over his head. His eyes are closed when they come off, squeezed shut, like the light hurts them.

He opens them—Midoriya sees a red glow the same color as Mahi’s poison breath—

And then his world lights up with pain.

He screams.

It feels like his muscles are being peeled away from his bones and replaced with liquid fire. He’s felt pain before, too much of it, but none of it comes close to Itami’s quirk. He screams until he tastes blood, chokes on it dripping down the back of his throat because he can’t close his mouth to swallow, whole body snapped straight like a string stretched too far. The only conscious thoughts he’s aware of are that he wishes they’d just kill him—wishes he was dead, because then the pain would end.

All at once, it’s over. He crumples to the floor, barely catching himself on his elbows and knees so that his face doesn’t hit concrete, and half gags, half chokes on a sob, taking the risk of pulling his mask down so that he can breathe easier.

“There,” Jorogumo says, sickly sweet. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

He spits blood onto the ground.

“That’s not very polite.”

Midoriya sits back onto his knees—the only movement he feels capable of, with his whole body shaking like he’s just run a marathon, and glares at her.

“Fuck you.”

“Temper, temper. You must be Wisp, then, I take it. I suppose it’s not such a ridiculous name, after all—little slip of a thing, aren’t you?”

He wipes his dripping nose with the back of his hand. His glove comes away red.

A glance at the other two villains, hovering behind her, reveals Mahi holding his brother by the shoulder while he stares at the ceiling, pulling his glasses back on. Before they’re in place, Midoriya realizes that his eyes are weeping blood.

Explains why he doesn’t use his quirk often. It takes a toll.

“What’s your quirk, then, little Wisp?” Jorogumo asks, taunting. “Something as useless as you seem to be, I’m sure.”

Something—snaps.

Midoriya forces himself back onto his feet and pulls his mask into place again. Jorogumo blinks at him, seemingly taken aback.

“That’s a surprise,” she says. “Do I need to have Itami use his quirk on you again? Your screams were so sweet. That’s always my favorite part, you know. The screaming.”

The stairs are too far for him to make a run for it. He doesn’t think he would, though, even if they were closer. But the moment he makes a move, they’ll be on him.

Jorogumo steps closer. When he doesn’t do anything, she takes another step, more confident, and again, until there’s barely a foot of space between them.

She reaches out and takes hold of his chin in her hand, tight enough to bruise even with his mask still in place.

“You’ve been making trouble for me,” she croons. She brings her other hand up and marches her fingers up his arm to his shoulder, where she stops and smooths her palm down.

Nausea roils in Midoriya’s stomach, but he forces it down.

“You deserve to be punished,” she says. “You know that, don’t you? That’s why you’re not even trying to fight anymore.”

He glares defiantly, but he still doesn’t move, even as his fingers twitch with the urge to take a swing.

She laughs.

“Delightful,” she says, and shoves his face back as she lets go, spinning on her heel and crossing the room back to the other two. “Itami. Do you think you have another round in you tonight?”

He waits. Her back is still turned. She’s focused on the other two, and Itami is focused on her. Mahi is the only one watching Midoriya.

In his head, he counts backwards from five. He brings a trembling hand up to his face to rub at where Jorogumo’s nails had dug in, letting his shoulders slump like he really is giving up.

Mahi looks away.

Now.

Diving into his pockets with both hands, he comes up with all of the bombs he brought with him. Mahi looks back at the movement, and shouts a warning—but too late.

Midoriya throws all of them at once.

Light. Smoke. Jorogumo shrieks, and then goes silent. Midoriya squints and crouches low to the ground where the air is a bit clearer, catching a glimpse of red vapor. Mahi must’ve lost control of his quirk.

He can just make out Jorogumo’s form on the ground, limp. Itami’s boots are visible next to her head.

Slowly, he straightens back up. He takes a cautious step, reaching for his belt.

Mahi’s face looms in the smoke, forked tongue flickering between his bared teeth, nostrils flaring as he reaches for Midoriya with both hands, trying to cage him in.

Midoriya swings with the pipe wrench in his hand.

The villain falls like a sack of bricks, and Midoriya squeezes his eyes shut and hunches over, trying not to puke.

When he’s gotten his breathing back under control, he kneels and reaches for the man’s neck to check his pulse.

It’s there. A little fast, but steady. And upon inspection, there’s hardly any blood where the wrench made contact with his temple.

He pulls out his zip ties.

Once the three of them have all been securely restrained, he stumbles for the stairs. He starts at a walk, but then moves faster and faster until he’s sprinting by the time he gets to the door, bursting out into the street and yanking his mask down around his neck to greedily suck in the fresh air.

His head spins.

Outside, the night is just as quiet and still as it was when he went into the building. Altogether, it’s only been—maybe twenty minutes.

He wipes at his nose. It hasn’t stopped bleeding.

All he wants is to sink to the ground and stay there for a while. But he needs to call in the villains to the police, and he can’t be anywhere nearby when he does that.

So he forces himself to start moving. One foot in front of the other, over and over, until he’s far enough away that he’s on the edge of the territory that the Spiders had claimed for themselves.

He drags himself over to a pay phone outside a 24-hour convenience store and dials the emergency number.

When the woman on the other end answers, he rattles off the address of the laundromat, not bothering to try and alter his voice—it’s so hoarse and cracked from his screaming that he doesn’t sound anything like himself anyway—and then hangs up.

For a moment, he stands there and stares at side of the phone booth. People have left graffiti covering nearly every inch of it. The usual lewd drawings, and K+A with a heart around it, and half a dozen phone numbers.

In the middle of it, of all things, there’s a flower.

It isn’t an especially detailed work of art, but Midoriya traces the lines of it with a trembling finger and feels a little bit of the full-body ache dull to a more manageable level.

Sirens echo in the distance. He looks up, blinks. Then he makes a beeline for the alley across the street and disappears down it until he makes it to a fire escape, which he uses to pull himself up onto the roof.

He makes it over to the ledge. And then he just—sits.

Not on the ledge. Just in front, leaning sideways against it, knees drawn up to his chest.

Everything hurts. And the adrenaline is fading fast. Maybe if he rests for a second…then he can get back up and go home.

Just for a second.

Chapter Text

“Kid. Hey, kid.”

Midoriya groans and tries to bury his face into his pillow. His cheek scrapes against gritty concrete instead.

“Kid.”

Something’s shaking his shoulder. He swats at it, grumbling, and then winces when the movement makes his nerves light up with pain.

A light smack on the side of his face has him sitting bolt upright. The world spins when he opens his eyes, but he squints until it comes back into focus.

Stendhal tilts his head questioningly, hands out in front of him.

For one, bright moment, Midoriya’s happy to see him.

And then he remembers.

“You’re not supposed to be in Musutafu,” he says. His mouth feels numb.

“And you’re probably not supposed to be passed out half dead on a roof at 4 in the morning, but here you are,” Stendhal—Stain—says. “What the hell did you get into?”

“Spiders,” Midoriya says. He blinks. It feels harder than it should to keep the thread of the conversation. He rubs at his face and winces when dried blood cracks and flakes away. “I hate Spiders.”

He looks up. Stendhal is staring at him. The hilts of his katanas peek out over the top of his shoulders. There’s a dark stain on his left arm wrap that could be blood.

It’s probably blood.

“Did you kill someone?” he asks.

“What?”

“Did you kill someone tonight? Is that why there’s blood on your arm?”

“You’re not making any sense. Do you have a concussion? Is that why you look like you tried to take on a brick wall with your face?”

Stendhal leans closer, reaching for Midoriya’s chin, and he jerks violently away, shaking his head. He stumbles onto his feet.

“Don’t,” he says. His voice shakes. “Just leave me alone.”

“Brat. I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t want your help!”

Midoriya—he doesn’t know how to explain it, except by saying that the air gets heavier. He trembles under the weight of it.

“You’d be dead a dozen times over if it wasn’t for me,” Stendhal says, in a low, gruff tone that’s nearly a growl. “Now you’re too good for me? You couldn’t have done this before I went and wasted my time?”

Midoriya’s entire body hurts. The world is spinning, and the lights in his peripheral visions are smeared streaks that make his head ache.

He should be afraid. He waits for it. For the fear to kick in, for him to stumble over rushed apologies so that he might escape Stendhal’s anger.

It doesn’t.

Instead he’s just…tired.

“You’re the Hero Killer,” he says, and Stain goes as still as if he’s been turned to stone.

Finally, he shifts. Barely a breath.

“What makes you think—”

“Don’t,” Midoriya says. “Don’t—lie to me. You used the knife that I scratched to kill the Pro Hero Sinkhole. And I’m not stupid. I’ve been tracking you, so that I could find you when I wanted to. I didn’t notice the pattern, until I went back and looked for it. Every time Stain kills—you’re there.”

Stain regards him. Midoriya knows that he’s just given the man a choice to make.

Does he let Midoriya go, even though he knows his identity?

Or does he kill him?

“You’re smarter than I gave you credit for,” Stain says, almost apologetically. “You’re a good kid. That’s why I saved you, that first time. You’d make a great hero.”

Midoriya sits back and looks up at the sky. He can make out a handful of stars. None that he recognizes. No constellations that he can trace for comfort.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asks.

He’s strangely calm about it. He thinks it’s because he already knows that he’s outmatched. If Stain decides to kill him here, now, there’s no way he’ll make it out alive.

So there’s no point, really, in being upset about it.

Stain doesn’t answer. Midoriya doesn’t look at him, but he knows the sound of a knife being pulled out of its sheathe when he hears it.

“Why do you kill them?” he asks. “The heroes.”

A pause.

“They hurt more than they help.”

“Is that true?” Midoriya asks. He tilts his head, thoughtfully, still looking determinedly up at the sky instead of at Stain. “Hero society is corrupt, I know. Villainy is a systemic problem based on oppression and inequality more than it’s based on evil, and no one’s really doing anything about it because without villains, heroes would be obsolete.”

“So you understand.”

“No.”

Stain clicks the tip of his knife against the roof impatiently. Midoriya keeps his eyes on the sky. There’s a plane going by overhead, red lights blinking.

“Most heroes—even those in it for the glory, or the money—still save people. They’re still doing good, even it’s for the wrong reason. How could killing them be the right answer? In the end, all you’re doing is hurting the people that you set out to help in the first place.”

“They didn’t listen,” Stain says. “No one will listen. The only way to make them pay attention is to take down the system that they’re so proud of, starting with the heroes that abuse it for their own selfish reasons.”

Midoriya exhales. He finally looks down.

The knife Stain is holding, surprisingly, isn’t pointed at him. Instead it’s balanced on the man’s knee, perpendicular to him.

“Sometimes,” Midoriya says, “to save people, you have to kill others. I’m not naïve enough to think that lethal force is never necessary. If a man is about to kill a child, and the only way to save that child is to kill the man, what do you do? But when the world is already such a dark place, if you’re really trying to do good, then murder is never the right answer.”

“I’m no hero,” Stain agrees. He lifts the knife until it’s vertical, tilting it so that the blade catches the light. He balances it on the tip of his finger. “I don’t claim to be. If I have to stain myself with the blood of false heroes to make them see, then I will. So that the true heroes can rise up in their place.”

“That’s not how the world works,” Midoriya says. “You’re just—killing people to make yourself feel better.”

Stain growls and lunges forward. The edge of the knife presses against Midoriya’s throat, right over his carotid artery. One move, and he bleeds out.

Midoriya doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even try to pull away. He just looks Stain coolly through the eyes of his mask.

“Does this make you feel better?” he asks. “Did teaching me make you feel better about being a murderer? Is that why you did it?”

Stain falters. It wouldn’t be noticeable to almost anyone else. But Midoriya has spent enough time with him to notice when he’s unbalanced.

Not that it happens often.

Midoriya tilts his head, heedless of the way that it makes the dagger bite into his skin.

“Kill me, then. I know your secret, don’t I? You can’t leave me alive,” he says. “So why are you hesitating?”

“It’s such a waste,” Stain says. “You’re reckless, and self-destructive—but you’re more of a hero than the symbol of peace himself. You could be great.”

Midoriya smiles. There’s nothing happy about it. He wonders if he should be worried that the bitterness he’s feeling is more about being compared to All Might than it is about the knife being held at his throat.

“Guess that’s another sin you’ll have to carry, isn’t it?” he says. “I hope it’s heavy. I hope the weight of the blood on your hands makes it hard to sleep at night.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid.”

Midoriya shrugs. He looks back up at the sky.

“I think I know more than you.”

And isn’t that a stupid thing to say?

Stain is at least twice his age, maybe three times. He wouldn’t know for sure unless he saw him without the mask.

But how long has he swallowed down his own pain so that Bakugo’s record wouldn’t be marked? So that he could still get into UA and become a hero? He could’ve reported him at any time. But he never had.

Because he knows that, someday, no matter how rough around the edges he is, Bakugo’s going to save a lot of people.

And he couldn’t put himself above them. He couldn’t put the life of one person above the lives of—hundreds. Potentially thousands.

He closes his eyes.

If death is going to come for him, he’s not so sure he wants to see it.

A minute passes. And another. The knife doesn’t move, until, all at once, it does.

When Midoriya opens his eyes, he’s alone on the roof.

…………..

Against the odds, Midoriya makes it home.

Not in time to sleep. He climbs through the window, much less gracefully than he usually does, and barely makes it to the bathroom before collapsing onto the edge of the tub.

He can’t inhale fully without sharp pain spiking through his chest. He doesn’t think he’s broken any ribs, but they’re bruised for sure, and he winces as he probes gently around the area where he’d taken Mahi’s fist.

Considering the situation that he’d gotten himself into, the fact that he really only has a bloody noise, a few bruises, and some aches and pains to show for it is fairly impressive.

Doesn’t matter much that the ‘aches and pains’ are the result of a pain-inducing quirk that made him feel like he was being burned alive from the inside out.

He cleans himself up, making sure that there aren’t any visible bruises or bandages, and then changes immediately into his running gear.

His mom is just starting to stir when he leaves again.

She’ll probably be gone by the time he gets back. She has an early shift.

He runs, taking it only marginally easy on himself, forcing his way through the fiery pain in his chest and ignoring how his muscles start to wobble alarmingly only a few minutes in.

He stops at Dagobah to watch the sunrise. There isn’t much of a dent in the junk piles, not yet, but he can navigate his way to the edge of the beach.

It’ll be breathtaking, when he’s done with it.

Midoriya closes his eyes and inhales the salty breeze coming in from the sea.

If he’s going to clear the beach, he needs to live long enough to finish the job.

Unbidden, his hand comes up to his throat where Stain had held the knife. There’s barely a pinprick there now, already scabbed over.

It’d be so easy, the next time he’s in a fight, to be a little too slow. To stay in place instead of dodging. To jump into a fight instead of running away.

He could slip away into the next room. He’s fairly sure the only one who’d actually cry over him is his mom.

Aizawa would—be upset. Probably. It’s hard to read him, sometimes.

Midoriya has fought and fought and fought, and now he’s finally getting somewhere. He’s training, he’s on track to get into the hero course, with Aizawa’s guidance.

He should just be happy. But instead it’s like all the pain of the past decade has caught up to him all at once.

His phone buzzes.

BabyMaker420: u coming over 2day? I’ve got a new baby 2 show u!!!!!!!!

Hatsume.

She’d be upset, wouldn’t she?

He sighs, scrubbing at his face.

He’s not sure he remembers ever being so tired, even though insomnia has been an ongoing problem for years.

A seagull shrieks and then lands on the patch of clear sand a few feet in front of him, rooting around in search of food before flying away again.

It’s the first seagull that he’s seen bother to land on the beach.

It almost hurts. The proof that he’s making a difference.

He texts Hatsume back a thumb’s up emoji. All he has the energy for.

She responds with a string of exclamation points, and he can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. He’s sure he’ll have several texts with a detailed description of her new invention by the time he gets to his lunch break.

He pockets his phone. He stands up.

And he keeps moving.

Chapter Text

“Midoriya,” Fukuda barks, and he jolts in place, knocking his elbow against his desk. He looks up to find his teacher glaring at him. “Am I boring you? Maybe you’ll have better luck staying awake in detention.”

“Sorry, sensei,” Midoriya says, ducking his head. “It won’t happen again.”

“It better not.”

He returns his attention to his notes—most of which aren’t about class, but Fukuda never bothers to come close to him, as though he thinks quirklessness is a contagious disease, so it doesn’t matter.

When he glances up, Bakugo is looking at him, brow furrowed.

The look on his face is one that Midoriya recognizes easily enough, but he’s never seen it on Bakugo, not directed at him, so the wave of dissonance that comes over him isn’t unexpected.

He feels dizzy. Instead of addressing it, he ducks his head again and stares down at his notebook.

Bakugo doesn’t care about him. He’s hated him ever since he was diagnosed quirkless.

So why, then, does he look worried?

He shakes his head. Fukuda is droning on about algebra. It isn’t anything that he doesn’t already know, but he directs his attention to the board at the front of the classroom anyway, keeping a pen poised over his thigh so that he can use the pain to keep himself awake if he has to.

He doesn’t look at Bakugo again.

………….

“Why are we meeting at a coffee shop?” Midoriya asks, craning his neck to look up at Aizawa as they walk through the door. It jingles merrily behind them.

“Heroics isn’t all about fighting,” Aizawa says, face half buried in his scarf. “It’s about being aware of your surroundings, and about learning to read people. You need to know how to analyze behavior just as much as you need to know how to take a punch. What do you want?”

Midoriya stutters, caught by a surprise. “Um—”

“I’m buying. I promise my bank account won’t take a hit from a coffee shop outing. Did you want something to eat?”

Suspicion starts to stir in Midoriya’s gut. He narrows his eyes at his mentor, but Aizawa only raises an eyebrow.

“Can I just have an americano?” he ventures.

“Sure, kid. Don’t tell your mother. Go pick out a place for us to sit, will you?”

And with that, he leaves Midoriya blinking in his wake to go stand in line at the counter.

Aizawa’s reasoning for being at the café is logical. It aligns with several lectures and lessons that he’s already given.

But Midoriya feels suspicious anyway. The man has been watching him like a hawk ever since he showed up bruised and battered the day after taking on the Spiders, practically asleep on his feet.

Still. Even if Aizawa has an ulterior motive, the lesson is likely real. So Midoriya busies himself with finding them a place to sit, which he knows, even if he hadn’t said so outright, is the first challenge.

There’s a corner booth, slightly raised, with a good vantage point of the door as well as the counter. After studying it for a long moment, Midoriya rejects it in favor of a corner table on the opposite wall.

He picks at a loose thread in his shorts while he waits for Aizawa to find him, absently taking note of the other customers in the shop.

Aizawa sets a to-go cup down in front of him, setting a stack of napkins in the middle of the table between them. Midoriya can see the steam coming from it, but he takes a sip anyway, ignoring the scalding heat that sears his tongue.

“So,” Aizawa says. “Why this table?”

Midoriya taps his fingers against the sleeve of his drink.

“It provides the best view of the café and its customers,” he says. “From here, we can see the door and the counter, and we won’t miss anyone coming or going.”

“The other corner table has that too,” Aizawa points out. “Most people would go for the booth, since it also helps obscure you from the view of the other customers.”

“But it draws more attention that way,” Midoriya says. “People will remember you, because it makes it more obvious that you’re up to something other than getting coffee.”

Aizawa nods. He takes a sip of his own drink.

“Good reasoning. You used logic, and you didn’t let yourself overthink the answer. If we were trying to be even more undercover, we’d avoid the tables entirely, and sit at the counter, because with our backs turned to the majority of the café, it’s only the workers who would see much of our faces.”

“Wouldn’t that increase the danger? Since you won’t be able to see who’s coming in?”

“Is sight the only sense you use to gather information?”

Midoriya tilts his head thoughtfully.

“No.”

“Exactly. Sitting at the counter puts us close enough to the door that if anyone came in with malicious intentions, we’d still be able to act quickly, without immediately drawing attention to ourselves. But since today’s exercise is about studying behavior, this table suits are purposes just fine.”

Midoriya nods, filing the information away for further thought. It’s already difficult for him to do much covert intel gathering outside of the internet or surveillance, because he sticks out like a sore thumb pretty much anywhere outside of school, especially at night.

If only he’d grow a few more inches.

Still, there are ways around that. If it becomes necessary, the information is good to know.

“Now,” Aizawa says, sitting back in his chair and crossing his ankles. He takes another sip of his coffee, eyes going half-lidded with contentment at the taste. “What do you see?”

Midoriya passes his eyes over the café without turning his head. There aren’t very many other customers, this late in the afternoon. The after-school crowd of teenagers have already mostly cleared out, along with the people who stop in on their way home from work.

“The girl at the booth by the door is most likely a college student,” he says, keeping his voice level and conversational. “She’s got a textbook open on her table, and she’s been muttering at her laptop since we got here. There’s a pin on her bag from the Hamamatsu School of Medicine, and her shoes are the kind that nurses wear.”

“Good. What’s her mental state?”

Midoriya considers.

“Stressed,” he says. “She doesn’t feel confident on what she’s working on. She keeps bouncing her leg and pausing to take sips of her coffee, which is probably cold—she makes a face every time, but she keeps drinking it anyway. Possibly she can’t justify spending more money on a new drink, so maybe her finances are tight. She’s flipped back and forth between several pages in her textbook, and then tugged at her hair or rubbed at her face like she’s confused.”

“Is she a threat?”

Midoriya glances at his mentor, a bit thrown by the question. Aizawa doesn’t offer any hints, keeping his expression perfectly neutral.

He looks back at the girl.

“No,” he says, after a moment. “She’s stressed, but none of her tics are aggressive, and the staff is familiar with her. None of them seem bothered, even though she’s obviously been here for a while, so she’s probably a regular customer, and not someone who causes trouble.”

Aizawa nods.

“Good. I agree with your analysis, but remember that no matter how nonthreatening someone may seem, anyone can become dangerous with the right motivations.”

Midoriya is already well aware of that, but he nods anyway.

“Next,” Aizawa says. “The cashier. What’s his story?”

They continue like that. Aizawa offers occasional input, but for the most part, he only nods at the end of Midoriya’s analysis and moves on to someone else.

By the time they’ve gone through everyone in the café, including the workers, Midoriya’s down to the last few sips of his americano.

“I already had an idea, but you’re a natural at behavior analysis, kid,” Aizawa says. “Any reason why that is?”

And there’s the reason for his suspicion.

Midoriya shrugs noncommittally.

“It’s like you said,” he says. “I guess it just comes naturally to me.”

Aizawa raises an eyebrow.

“Really,” he says. He straightens up in his chair, setting his empty cup on the table. “There are some people that are predisposed to analyze behavior better than the average person. But people your age with the ability honed to such a degree usually have a reason for it. They’ve developed the skill because they’ve had to.”

Midoriya doesn’t say anything. He looks down at his cup. He’s frayed the edge of the sleeve from picking at it.

“Is there a reason that you feel as though you have to constantly analyze the behavior of the people around you?”

“I’m quirkless,” Midoriya says flatly. “It’s always better to know whether or not someone’s going to be more inclined to ignore the fact that I exist or if they’re going to take issue with it.”

“So you admit to feeling unsafe.”

Midoriya shoots him a bewildered look.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Aizawa sighs.

“I need another coffee,” he mutters. “I’m not getting you any more caffeine, but do you want a hot chocolate or something?”

Midoriya almost says no, but he can tell by the look on his face that Aizawa isn’t going to let it go this time. He might as well have something to distract himself while he’s being interrogated.

“Peppermint tea?”

“Sure, kid.”

His phone buzzes while Aizawa’s at the counter.

BabyMaker420: hey r u comgn 2day? ur usually here by now

He smiles despite himself. Hatsume’s usually so engrossed in her inventions that she barely notices time passing.

Mido: sorry, raincheck? something came up.

She responds almost instantly.

BabyMaker420: np! but this weekend, right????? I’ve got sm to show u :33

Mido: sure!

“Who’s that?” Aizawa asks, returning and nodding towards Midoriya’s phone. He sets their drinks down between them.

“Just a friend,” Midoriya says. “I go over to her house after training a lot; she was asking if I was gonna make it over today.”

Aizawa raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“You could’ve told me that you had someone waiting on you,” he says. “I would’ve cut things short so that you wouldn’t miss out.”

He shrugs uncomfortably. He always feels like Aizawa is doing him a favor by taking the time to train him.

“It’s not a set thing,” he says. “Pretty much I just show up or I don’t. It works for us.”

“And her parents don’t mind?”

“I think they’re just glad that Hatsume has a friend.”

“Hm.”

They lapse into silence for a while. Midoriya waits a few minutes before taking a test sip of his tea and then taking out the teabag when he finds that it’s steeped long enough, setting it on a napkin to avoid making a puddle on the table.

“How’s school?”

Midoriya glances up, then back down. He shrugs.

“Midoriya. I can’t help you if you don’t let me.”

“You can’t help me anyway,” Midoriya says, without thinking about it, and then shoots upright, waving his hands frantically. “Not—not with this! You’re already helping me so much, too much, really, I couldn’t ask you—and even if I did, it wouldn’t do any good—”

“Problem Child,” Aizawa says, gently. “We’ve talked about this, haven’t we? I’m a pro hero. I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t sure that I could do something. So. What’s going on?”

He cringes.

“Nothing?” he tries.

Aizawa fixes him with the most unimpressed look he thinks he’s ever seen someone make. An Eraserhead special.

“You’re showing up to training with bruises. You’re dead on your feet more often than not, so you’re not getting enough sleep. Your mother has been texting to ask me if you’ve told me anything, because she’s worried about you.”

Guilt twists Midoriya’s stomach.

“I told her that I’m fine,” he mumbles.

“And she isn’t blind. Anyone who cares to look can see that you’re anything but fine, Midoriya.”

“I’m not used to people—looking.”

He bites down on his lip, hard, ducking his head. He hadn’t meant to admit that. It’s too telling.

“Your mother?”

He shrugs again. He picks up a napkin from the pile and starts methodically shredding it into a neat pile next to his tea.

“I think, before I met you, that she’d just gotten used to the fact that there wasn’t anything that she could do. She tried, y’know? She tried a lot. But we can’t afford homeschooling, or any place other than Aldera, really, and even if we could it’d probably have the same issues. No one knows what to do with the quirkless kid.”

He says the last sentence with more than a little bitterness. It’s not even what he really wants to say. But that’d just make Aizawa worry even more.

No one wants the quirkless kid.

“I don’t know why you keep bringing it up,” Midoriya continues. “We already talked about it. If you try to intervene, it’ll just make things worse in the long run. And besides, school’s not that bad right now. Mostly I’m just getting ignored.”

“You realize that’s not exactly reassuring?”

“It’s better than what happens when people pay attention to me.”

Aizawa considers him.

“It’s not just school, is it?” he asks. “Something else is going on.”

Midoriya grabs another napkin to shred into pieces.

“Right,” Aizawa says, tiredly. “I can’t make you talk to me.”

Midoriya shrugs without looking up.

“You could threaten to stop training me.”

Aizawa snags his wrist, stopping him from tearing the napkin into fifths. His grip is gentle, but firm. It reminds Midoriya—a little too much—of the night that they met.

“Midoriya, look at me,” he says. He waits until Midoriya looks up and meets his eyes. “I wouldn’t do that. Do you hear me? I want to help you. I want to know what’s going on. But I’m not going to break what little trust we have by forcing you to do something that you don’t feel comfortable doing. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I just hope that someday, you’ll trust me enough to be honest.”

Midoriya feels his eyes starting to water. He looks down again, and Aizawa lets go of his wrist, sitting back.

“I do want you to do something for me, though,” he says. “You have my phone number, right?”

Midoriya nods, even though it’s a rhetorical question. They’d texted earlier in the day so that he knew to meet on the street outside the coffee shop instead of at the gym.

“I want you to use it.”

His eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“Exactly that. I want to know that you feel comfortable texting me, calling me, whatever—when you need to. So far, you’ve only texted me once to let me know that you were going to be a few minutes late to training.”

“I don’t want to bother you,” Midoriya says.

“You aren’t bothering me, Midoriya. If it was a problem, I wouldn’t offer it. But I know that you still have some misplaced anxiety about texting a pro hero, so this is what I’d like you to do—every day, once a day, I want you to text me. It doesn’t have to be anything important, it could be about your homework, a cat you saw on your walk home, I don’t care. I want you to know that you can come to me with anything, at any time.”

Midoriya scrunches his nose.

“That seems stupid.”

“Do it for my peace of mind, kid.”

“…okay.”

Aizawa nods. He stands and gathers up Midoriya’s pile of massacred napkins before he can move to do it himself, taking them to the trash along with his empty coffee cup.

“C’mon,” he says. “I’ll walk you home.”

Midoriya doesn’t try to argue. He knows that he won’t win.

Chapter Text

Possibly the weirdest thing about finding out that a trusted mentor is actually a murderous villain, is that nothing really changes.

Maybe it would have, if the circumstances were different. But Midoriya reformats his algorithm so that he has it on his phone and between that and the fact that he’s sure Stain doesn’t want to run into him, either, they manage to avoid each other.

School doesn’t change. Besides taking a little extra care in where he patrols, his nightly activities don’t change.

He doesn’t change.

Not externally, anyway.  Or he doesn’t think that he does? He’s pretty sure that those bags under his eyes have been there for a while. All he has to prove to himself that he met Stain in the first place is the scar on his hand.

He develops a habit of running his thumb over it, again and again. Like a reminder.

The Hatsumes’ doorbell spits fire when he steps onto the welcome mat. He turns to the side and blinks at the heat of it as it passes a few inches in front of his face.

The door swings open.

“Oh, Midoriya!” Hatsume Hitomi says, visibly deflating in relief. Her clothes are as pristine as ever, the usual high-waisted loose trousers and button-down, but she’s wearing, of all things, rainboots, and the end of her French braid is singed. “I’m sorry about the doorbell. Mei got to it before we could stop her. I’ve been trying to convince her to fix it all day.”

“It’s okay,” Midoriya says, feeling awkward. He shoves his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders. He doesn’t interact with Hatsume’s parents very often. “Is she here?”

“In the lab, as always,” Hitomi says. She opens the door wider and steps aside. “Come on in. You don’t happen to have a spare pair of shoes, do you?”

“Um,” Midoriya says. “No.”

“Darn. Okay, what size are you? Kei has a few extra pairs of boots in the closet here. I think they might fit you.”

“…do I need them?”

“Not if you feel like getting your feet wet. Otherwise, I’d recommend them. Hatsume managed to set off the sprinkler system just outside her lab and it malfunctioned and flooded the entire hallway. There’s a few inches of standing water.”

Midoriya lifts his foot up and props it on his thigh so he can look at the label.

“24.”

“Oh, perfect!” Hitomi says. She snatches a pair of wading boots from the left side of the closet and offers them to Midoriya. “They’ll be a little big, but since you’re just wearing them down the hall, it should be fine.”

Midoriya exchanges his trainers for the boots and stuffs them into his bag.

“Thanks,” he says.

“No problem, hon. You know we’re always happy to see you.”

Midoriya flashes her a quick smile that seems to satisfy her, and she waves him past her, towards the hallway where Hatsume’s lab is.

It is, in fact, flooded.

He splashes through the water, wondering how Hatsume had managed to mess with the sprinklers through the reinforced door.

“Hatsume?” he calls, peeking his head around the door after opening it just a crack. He’s learned that it’s best not to assume there isn’t anything that could inflict bodily harm aimed at the doorway.

“Midoriya!” Hatsume exclaims, popping up from the opposite side of the engine block that she’s been slowly dismantling. She swipes her hands on her coveralls, leaving streaks of oil. “Did Mom give you boots?”

“She did.”

She grins. He lets himself into the room the rest of the way and firmly shuts the door behind him.

“I’ve basically been exiled to the lab,” Hatsume says. Her smile doesn’t dim in the slightest. “But I don’t think Mom’s actually all that mad. She’s hated the carpet in the hallways for years, and now she has an excuse to replace it.”

“She’s never actually that mad at you,” Midoriya points out. He’s pretty sure that Hatsume could actually bring the house down and they’d just pat her on the head and tell her that her explosions were getting really impressive. “What’s today’s project?”

Her eyes light up.

“I’ve been working on the battery today!”

She starts chattering about her progress in inventing a micro-battery that could hold power for days before needing to be recharged—something that would revolutionize the support industry, since power source is a fairly limiting factor in most cases. She’d described it as similar to the arc reactor from the old American comics, but better and much more compact.

He listens, but he pulls out his phone after a little while. He knows that Hatsume won’t take it as a slight or think that he isn’t paying attention; they both have the type of minds that usually need to focus on more than one thing to be able to focus on anything at all.

Midoriya: made it to Hatsume’s

Steve: Alright. Let me know when you’re home safe.

Midoriya smirks a bit at Aizawa’s contact name. He’d been trying to think of something innocuous in case someone ever looked over his shoulder while he’s on his phone, because he doesn’t want to risk anyone finding out that he’s being trained by a pro hero, for multiple reasons. The American name had come to mind first, and it’d stuck.

He might’ve been a bit sleep-deprived at the time. But then, when isn’t he?

“I think I need to find a more conductive material,” Hatsume says, waving her hands as she talks. “Maybe make one. There really just isn’t anything on the market right now that has the specifications I need, y’know?”

“I could talk to my mentor for you,” Midoriya says.

Suddenly her hands are on his shoulders, and her eyes are staring directly into his like she’s trying to x-ray his soul.

“Would you?” she asks. “Do you think he’d mind? Except—you said he works at UA. Do you know who else works at UA?”

“Power Loader?”

“Power Loader. The support hero! I just know he has the best materials.”

“I’ll ask,” Midoriya promises, smiling a bit in amusement. Hatsume wraps him up in a quick hug and then springs away, hopping up and down on her toes.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” she squeals, clapping her hands, and he snaps his fingers along with her until he realizes what he’s doing and clenches his hand into a fist. “Did you wanna try and talk about your support items today?”

“Could we?”

“Of course! It’s a great exercise for me. And imagine if I end up making your support items someday, when you’re the first quirkless hero! That’d be amazing PR.”

Midoriya blinks.

“Really?”

She grins at him and sits on her stool, which spins and has wheels for quick movement.

“Really,” she says. She grabs a notebook from her desk and a pencil from her hair. “Now. Last time we talked, we were thinking something along the lines of tonfa, right?”

“Right,” Midoriya says, and leans against the workbench in a spot that doesn’t look likely to end up with him racing for the fire extinguisher. “I brought it up with my mentor, and he thought it was a good idea, too. But I should probably have something for long distance, too.”

“A gun?” Hatsume suggests. “Like Snipe.”

Midoriya shakes his head, tapping his fingers together as he thinks.

“I don’t really like the idea of using a gun,” he admits. “I guess I could, if it was my only option. But I think I prefer something that leans more towards capture, and not injury.”

“You could always use tranq darts,” Hatsume says. “But I get it. Guns just—they feel weird, don’t they?”

Midoriya nods, with relief. “They just don’t fit.”

“Okay. What about—okay, so you’re familiar with the Marvel comics. What about DC? Have you read any of the Wonder Woman comics?”

“You’re thinking something like a lasso or a whip?”

“Long distance,” Hatsume says. “Or at least longer than tonfa. You’ve gotta get in pretty close to use those.”

Midoriya hums thoughtfully.

“Maybe.”

They continue that way, tossing ideas back and forth, until Hitomi pokes her head in to tell them that the sun is going to start setting soon, and Midoriya really should be making his way home.

By then, they have about a dozen solid suggestions for a long distance support item to research and pursue further. Hatsume promises to let him know if she finds anything interesting, and he promises the same in return.

He kicks at the pool in the hall on his way out, smiling a bit at the arc of water that splashes in front of him.

The boots are returned to the closet. Hitomi cheerily bids him farewell at the door, and he sets out for home, pulling his bag high on his shoulder. He sends Aizawa a quick Heading home text, hoping that sending shorter messages without any real information would assuage the man’s ‘peace of mind’, as he’d put it.

Then he pockets his phone, hikes his school bag higher on his shoulders, and begins his long walk.

In his defense—he doesn’t go looking for trouble.

This time.

He’s about three quarters of the way home, taking what’s become a usual shortcut through an alley that avoids the tunnel where he was attacked by the sludge villain, when something grabs him from behind.

They use the leverage of his bag to swing him face first into the brick wall, and then crush an arm across his shoulders to keep him there. Lower on his back, he can feel several sharp points pressing through his shirt.

He sighs. At the rate he’s going, there won’t be a single spot in Musutafu that won’t involve memories of villains.

“Where you going, kid?” the villain rasps, in a low, gravelly tone that immediately makes Midoriya wrinkle his nose in displeasure. He’s the type that attacks people because he enjoys it.

“Home,” Midoriya answers, in a monotone.

“And where’s that?”

He flicks his eyes sideways. He can’t make out any details, but he can just barely see the outline of the villain’s face in his peripheral.

“I’m not stupid.”

The villain chuckles. The sharp points against Midoriya’s lower back slowly drag up his spine and then back down again, like a twisted caress.

“Is that right?” he asks. “It doesn’t seem very smart of you, to travel alone this late in the evening, and in a place like this, too. Some people might think that you’re asking for trouble.”

Midoriya knocks his forehead against the wall in irritation.

“Are you going to kill me, or not?” he says. He feels the villain still with surprise. “Only, this part is taking too long for me, and I’d like to skip to the part where you tell me what sick thing you have planned, and then I go home feeling significantly less optimistic about the world.”

“I don’t think you realize what’s happening—”

“No, I do. You’re a psychopath, and probably a pedophile, considering that you went after me, and you like to hurt people to get your rocks off.”

The villain makes a growl low in his throat and pulls Midoriya away from the wall just to slam him back into it. When Midoriya has his breath again, he doesn’t do the smart thing and keep his mouth shut.

“I get it. You probably saw this going differently. Maybe some screaming, and then you’d threaten me to keep me quiet. I bet you’d ask me to beg for my life; you seem the type. But I’ve had a very long week, and I ran out of patience a while ago, so I’m gonna have to ask you to either get it over with and kill me quickly, or let me go.”

Midoriya knows that he isn’t going to get either. But he really doesn’t have the patience to yet another villain tell him exactly how depraved they are.

His best bet, to get out of the pin without expending an amount of energy that he doesn’t feel like using, is to make the villain angry.

Luckily for him, it works pretty well.

Unluckily, it gets him bodily picked up and thrown, and he lands hard and rolls over not only gravel, dirt, and questionable substances, but quite a bit of broken glass. It tears at the fabric of his pants over his knees and hips, and bites into the palms of his hands.

He looks up, practiced at taking a hit and getting his bearings quickly to avoid taking another one, and gets his first good look at the villain.

The man is—a giant metal porcupine.

Midoriya blinks.

“I try not to be critical of mutant quirks,” he says. “Or quirk status of any kind, really. But man, no wonder you feel the need to compensate.”

He roars wordlessly and charges, metal spikes extending further from his skin, and Midoriya rolls back onto his heels in a crouch and throws his arms defensively in front of his face in time for the metal fibers—much sharper than they look—to slash across his skin, tearing his sleeves to ribbons.

Blood blooms immediately. Midoriya darts under the man’s overextended reach and pops up on his feet behind him, ignoring the stinging pain and the feeling of the blood dripping from the tips of his fingers.

He clenches his hands into fists. It’d be better if he ran, but as much as he’s pissed off the villain, it’d be likely that he’d go and take it out on someone else.

Another kid, who probably won’t be able to defend themselves the way that Midoriya can.

“I might’ve let you go, when I was done with you,” the villain snarls, stalking towards him. “But you’re dead, now, kid. And I’m going to make it hurt.”

“Cool,” Midoriya says, doing his best to sound bored despite the adrenaline starting to buzz under his skin. “I don’t believe you. You didn’t even try to hide your face.”

He swipes at Midoriya again, and lands several cuts higher on Midoriya’s left arm even as he dodges out of the way. They aren’t as deep as the first set of cuts, but they’re just as annoying.

“Ugh,” he says, shaking his arm and watching the way the shredded fabric of his shirt sleeve hangs on by threads to the reinforced cuff. “Is there insurance for school uniforms? This is gonna be the third time that my mom’s had to replace one of my shirts this year.”

“What is wrong with you?” the villain grinds out. He seems torn between rage and bewilderment.

Midoriya considers that.

“A lot,” he says. “Probably.”

He looks at the villain, tilting his head. He doesn’t seem likely in the moment to lunge again, apparently reconsidering his target but unwilling to simply let him go.

The problem is that the man is a walking weapon. If Midoriya tries to punch him, he’ll end up slicing the skin off of his own hands. He doesn’t have the gear that he usually brings with him at night, so his options are limited.

He pauses.

His bag is still on his back.

As he lifts his hand, shifting his stance slightly to do so, the villain decides to press the perceived advantage, and Midoriya slides the strap off of his arm, sidesteps, and swings his backpack as hard as he can at the man’s skull.

He goes down like a sack of bricks.

Midoriya stares dispassionately at his back, the strap of his bag still in hand and primed for another swing, but he doesn’t so much as twitch, except for the rise and fall as he breathes.

His phone buzzes. He makes a face at the blood that he gets on his pants as he wrestles it out of his pocket, but they’re pretty much done for anyway, between the glass and the stains of questionable origin from rolling across the ground in a back alley.

Steve: You should have made it home by now.

Midoriya knows that’s Aizawa’s way of expressing concern, as well as a gentle reminder that he’d promised to text when he made it safely.

Midoriya: Sorry, ran into a villain. I’m omw again now

Seconds after he hits send, the screen flashes with an incoming call. He makes a face, but he swipes up to answer.

“Aizawa?”

“Problem Child,” the man grumbles. “What exactly do you mean, you ran into a villain?”

Midoriya blinks. For some reason, the world feels strangely vague and distant, all of a sudden.

“It’s okay, he’s unconscious now.”

“The villain.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“Where are you?”

Midoriya looks down at the ground. One of his shoes has come untied. He blinks some more.

“An alley.”

“Send me your location.”

Midoriya wiggles the foot with the untied shoe and watches his shoelaces flop from side to side. Blood drips from his hand onto the toe of it, and it barely looks out of place, even though they’re different shades of red.

“Midoriya?”

“Hey, Aizawa,” he says. “Why do so many villains have a thing for attacking kids?”

Another pause. Midoriya’s attention is drawn back to the unconscious villain. His quirk has receded a bit, but it seems as though the spikes never disappear entirely. He could almost be compared to a weirdly silvery hedgehog, if he wasn’t such a terrible person.

He still hasn’t moved. That’s probably concerning, especially if it lasts much longer. Midoriya can’t remember the statistics about head injuries and unconsciousness, for some reason. He thought that he had them memorized.

“Izuku.”

His head jerks up. He’d almost forgotten that he’s on the phone.

“Aizawa?”

“Can you send me your location?”

“Oh.” He pulls his phone away from his ear and squints at the screen, which seems oddly wavery. It takes him longer than it should, but he finally opens their chat and manages to send a pin of his location. “Can I go home now?”

“Stay there,” Aizawa orders, and Midoriya isn’t sure that he’s ever heard that tone from him before. “I’m on my way. Is the villain moving yet?”

“No,” Midoriya says. “Is that a bad thing?”

“I’m not about to complain about it. You left Hatsume’s pretty late tonight. Why’s that?”

Midoriya’s face scrunches. It seems like an odd thing to ask about, but sometimes, despite his best efforts, his teacher doesn’t make any sense to him.

“We were talking about long range weapons,” he says. His thoughts feel like they’re going about half as fast as usual. “She thinks I should use a lasso like Wonder Woman, from the old comics.”

“I know a pro hero who uses a whip in a similar way. Maybe I can convince her to give you a lesson sometime.”

Midoriya hums noncommittally. He blinks for what feels like the thousandth time. He doesn’t think that he usually notices it as much.

“Hey, kid, you still with me?”

“Where else would I be?”

“You never know, with you. How’s the villain?”

Midoriya checks. The man’s fingers are starting to twitch.

“I think he’s starting to wake up.”

“Okay. I’m almost there. Let me know as soon as he does wake up.”

Midoriya nods.

“He looks like a really shiny, bad porcupine,” he says.

He doesn’t know why he says it. It’s exactly the type of thought that he usually keeps to himself. But it just falls out of him, like he doesn’t have any control over his mouth anymore.

Distantly, he starts to suspect that maybe this attack had hit him a little harder than he’d thought.

There are sirens in the distance, drawing closer.

“Did you call the police?” he asks, brow furrowed in confusion. He’s pretty sure that Aizawa’s been on the line with him the entire time, so he wouldn’t have been able to call emergency services. But it sounds like they’re heading in his direction.

“I texted a friend at the precinct. How are you doing, kid?”

Midoriya glances down at himself. He’s barely dripping anything onto his shoes anymore.

“I think the bleeding is stopping.”

There’s a heavy beat. Somehow, even though Aizawa isn’t saying anything, it feels loud.

Over his head, there’s the slightest scuffing sound. When he looks up, it’s to the sight of Aizawa using his capture weapon to swing himself down from the roof, landing lightly on his feet in front of Midoriya.

“Midoriya,” he says. He presses a button to an earpiece that he’s wearing, and Midoriya hears the call drop. Aizawa steps forward, and he blinks at him, wondering why his expression is so close to panic.

“You’re fast,” he mumbles. Aizawa gently pulls the phone from his hand. He hadn’t realized he was still holding it to his ear.

Aizawa places a careful hand on his shoulder and gently turns him from side to side, eyes sweeping him up and down.

“Are you injured anywhere else?” he asks. “Or is it just your arms?”

Midoriya looks down at himself.

“Arms?” he guesses. He isn’t entirely sure. His knees sting a bit, but there isn’t any blood staining his pant legs, so probably they’re fine.

“I swear, kid,” Aizawa mutters. “I’m about an inch away from wrapping you in bubble wrap.”

Midoriya blinks at him.

“My mom says that.”

“I’m sure she does. Can you walk, Problem Child?”

“Yeah.”

He takes a step to test his own answer. It feels strange, like he’s not really the one controlling his body, but when Aizawa turns, hand still on his shoulder, and starts leading him towards the end of the alley, it’s easy enough to methodically follow after him.

By the time they get there, the first police car is pulling up, lights flashing. Aizawa waves them down the alley, and they make a beeline for the unconscious villain, who’s just starting to groan and moan as he regains consciousness.

Aizawa presses gently down on Midoriya’s shoulders until he sits on the curb, and then slings an arm around him, pulling him into his side. His capture weapon wraps around them both.

“Oh,” Midoriya says. He reaches a hand up to feel the material, and then quickly lowers it again when he realizes how much blood is on his skin. “I’m in shock.”

“Yes, you are. It’s not surprising, kid. You’ve been the victim of three villain attacks in as many months. The fact that you still managed to take down the villain is incredibly impressive. You should be proud of yourself.”

“I hit him with my bag,” Midoriya says. “I think my trigonometry textbook might’ve put a dent in his skull.”

Aizawa’s lips twitch strangely. Midoriya realizes that he’s fighting against a smile.

“Only you,” he says.

An ambulance pulls up. Aizawa flags down the EMTs, and he’s quickly bundled into the back, legs swinging, shock blanket draped over him.

“Some of these are going to need stitches,” the EMT inspecting the cuts on his arms says. Her hair is cobalt blue and cropped short. “I’m not qualified to do them myself. We’ll have to take him to the hospital.”

Midoriya sits straight up, shaking his head.

“No,” he says.

Aizawa settles a reassuring hand on top of his knee.

“You need to take care of yourself,” he says. “I can call your mother, have her meet us at the hospital—”

“No,” Midoriya repeats, and his breath starts coming faster. “I can’t—I can’t—”

“Okay,” Aizawa says. “Okay, kid.”

He turns to the EMT.

“I’ll take him home,” he tells her.

She raises an eyebrow. After a beat, she sighs and turns to rummage around in one of her bags, pulling out a form.

“Sign this,” she says.

He does. She takes it back from him and tucks it back away in the bag.

“Make sure he gets stitches,” she orders. Aizawa nods.

They help Midoriya jump off of the back of the ambulance, even though he doesn’t really feel like he needs it, and Aizawa turns and heads for a group of police officers, who are being split up by the detective on scene to process it.

“Tsukauchi,” Aizawa calls, and the detective turns to them. When he sees Aizawa, with Midoriya huddled under his arm, his eyebrows raise until they nearly disappear into his hairline.

Detective Tsukauchi dismisses the officers and strides to meet them.

“What can I do for you?” he asks.

“We could use a ride,” Aizawa says. “I’m taking Midoriya home.”

“Is that wise?”

“He doesn’t want to go to the hospital.”

The two of them have some sort of silent conversation that seems more like an argument, the way Aizawa’s eye starts to twitch, before Tsukauchi finally sighs and waves them after him.

“Fine,” he says. “You’re getting him the proper medical attention, I’m assuming?”

“Hizashi got his certification last year,” Aizawa answers, a bit gruffly. “I texted him. He’s on his way to the Midoriyas’ already.”

Tsukauchi’s eyebrows somehow climb even higher. His attention turns to Midoriya, and Aizawa almost immediately shifts to block his view, which makes the man’s mouth twitch with amusement.

“I’m Detective Tsukauchi,” he says. “You’re Midoriya…?”

“Izuku,” he mumbles. “Can I go home?”

Tsukauchi’s face softens.

“Of course,” he says. “Come on. They can miss me here for a few minutes.”

In the car, Midoriya lets his head fall against Aizawa’s shoulder in the backseat.

He’d be embarrassed about it, any other time. But despite the worst of the shock having faded, all it’s left is exhaustion.

His eyes squeeze shut. A tear escapes despite his best efforts and tracks its way down his cheek.

All of a sudden, he desperately wants his mom.

Aizawa, seeming to sense his sudden shift in emotion, tightens his arm around his shoulders, and it’s almost as good.

At the very least—at the very least, for once, he isn’t alone.

He isn’t alone.

Chapter Text

Inko’s eyes fill with tears as soon as she opens the door and sees him.

“Oh, Izuku,” she cries, and reaches out to pull him into her arms. Midoriya feels the last of the remaining tension drain away, and he nearly goes entirely limp against her. “You’ve got to stop doing this to me. My poor heart can’t take it.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

She shakes her head, petting his hair.

“It’s not your fault,” she says. “I just worry. You arms…?”

“I have a friend coming,” Aizawa says. His tone goes a bit rough around the edges and awkward, the way it always does when he talks to Midoriya’s mother. “He’s a licensed nurse practitioner who can do stitches and administer local anesthetic.”

“I didn’t want to go to the hospital,” Midoriya says. His voice is still muffled against her, but he doesn’t feel like pulling away.

“That’s okay,” she says, almost immediately. Her grip tightens ever so slightly, like she’s remembering, same as him, how it’d gone the last time he’d had to go to the ER for medical attention. “Let’s go inside, okay? We can’t just keep standing in the doorway.”

Midoriya grumbles. He refuses to unwrap his arms from her middle, but she takes it in stride and shuffles them sideways and then holds him tighter, guiding his steps backwards until his knees hit the couch and they can sit down together, with him practically in her lap in a way that he hasn’t let himself do in years.

“I’ve never seen him like this,” Aizawa murmurs softly.

Inko hums. “He’s mostly forced himself out of it. I think his classmates called him weak so many times that he started to believe them. But I guess today was just—his limit.”

“I can hear you,” Midoriya mumbles.

“Sorry, love,” she says immediately, going back to rubbing a soothing hand over his hair. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.”

“Hizashi shouldn’t be too much longer,” Aizawa interjects. “He’s a fast driver. Especially when kids are involved.”

“’M not a kid.”

“Izuku, you’re 13.”

“I feel too old to be a kid.”

There’s a beat. He cracks one heavy eye open to peek at his mom, and her lips are puckered like she’s bitten into a hot pepper and her eyes are welling with tears again.

“Sorry,” he says.

She shakes her head.

“No, it’s okay, sweetheart. You know how I get.”

“You’re still a kid, though, Problem Child,” Aizawa says. “When you hit your 30s—maybe then we can talk.”

Despite the fact that he wants to be indignant, mostly Midoriya feels—warm.

He thinks maybe it’s because he’s never really had people who wanted him to just be a kid. His mom, but she’s supposed to want that.

Everyone else is always telling him to grow up.

He sighs. He feels his own eyes starting to well, and buries his face harder into his mom’s shoulder.

“Izuku?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s run out of words.

She doesn’t try to force anything out of him. She’s always been—so good at that. The teachers always get mad at him when he can’t seem to make himself speak.

But she starts rubbing circles into his back and readjusts them on the couch so that she’s supporting him completely, and he lets himself cry silently into her shoulder, uncaring about the wet spot that he’s leaving on her shirt because he knows that she doesn’t care.

There’s a knock on the door. His mother shifts, but before she can even try to extract herself from Midoriya’s octopus grip, he hears Aizawa stand.

“I’ll get it,” he says. “It’s Hizashi. He just texted me.”

Midoriya realizes that he doesn’t actually have any idea who Hizashi is. He wonders if he’s a pro hero. If he’s friends with Aizawa, it seems likely. He turns his face just enough to peek.

The man behind the door has long blond hair tied back into a messy bun. He’s wearing casual clothes—jeans and a t-shirt, and a large medical bag with a shoulder strap settled against his hip.

He looks familiar, and Midoriya’s face scrunches as he tries to figure it out. It takes a few seconds longer than it might if he was firing on all cylinders, but his brow smooths out as he realizes.

It’s Present Mic, dressed down in civilian clothes. Without his signature glasses, hairdo, and leather jacket, he hardly looks like his hero persona at all.

But Midoriya stared at every available picture and video of pro heroes obsessively for most of his childhood, and he knows that he’s right.

“You’re Present Mic,” he says.

The man, for a moment, looks utterly dumbfounded. Then his face brightens with a cheesy grin.

“I think that’s the fastest anyone’s recognized me out of costume!” he says. “And you’re without a doubt the mysterious Midoriya that Shota’s been going on about for months.”

“I haven’t been going on,” Aizawa grumbles, tucking his chin into his scarf. “You’ve been going on.”

“Yes, and you’ve hardly told me anything,” Mic says. He crosses to the couch, offering his hand to Inko. “I’m Yamada Hizashi, also known as the pro hero Present Mic.”

“Oh,” Inko says, a bit startled. “Izuku’s talked about you. You’re one of his favorite heroes.”

“Am I, now?”

“Great,” Aizawa says. “Now he’ll be unbearable for months.”

Yamada swats his hand in Aizawa’s direction. Midoriya observes the easy way they move around each other, and—Aizawa looks fond.

Someone else might not notice, but Midoriya wouldn’t be very observant if he hadn’t gotten to known his mentor’s micro expressions after training with him nearly every day for three months.

There’s a necklace hanging from Yamada’s neck. It’s tucked into the collar of his shirt, but Midoriya has a sneaking suspicion that he knows what it is.

“How long have you two been married?” he asks.

Yamada sputters. Aizawa sighs.

“Who won the bet?” he asks, tilting his head at Yamada.

“Bet?” he asks, voice going high, with a bit of vibrato as his quirk starts to activate. Aizawa activates erasure, and he clears his throat before continuing at volume more tolerable for human ears. “What bet?”

“I know the staff has been betting on my student,” Aizawa says. “None of you are subtle. Who just won the bet on how long it’d take him to find out that we’re married?”

They have a stare off. Yamada deflates after it’s barely been a few seconds.

“Thirteen, I think,” he says. “They were the only one who thought it’d take him less than a week.”

Aizawa shakes his head.

“Now that we’ve gotten that over with,” he says. “Midoriya still needs stitches.”

“Right!” Yamada says, springing into action. He pulls his medical bag off of his shoulder and plunks it onto the coffee table. “Mrs. Midoriya, do you have a preference for where we do this? A bathroom would probably be easiest to clean. I’d hate to get blood on your furniture.”

Midoriya presses his face back into his mom’s shoulder. She pats him on the back reassuringly.

“Here is fine,” she says. “I know a good trick for bloodstains, anyway. Would you like a stool to sit on? I imagine you won’t be able to get quite the right angle by sitting on the couch with us. There’s a folding stool in the closet by the door.”

“That’d be great,” Yamada says. Before he can stand to retrieve it, Aizawa is already at the door, gently pushing aside the hanging coats and fishing the folding stool in question out from its shadowy corner.

“And it’s Ms. Midoriya, actually,” Inko says. “But you can call me Inko, if you’d like. Both of you. I think it’s only fair, considering how far you’ve gone out of your way to care for my son.”

“In that case, call me Hizashi.”

…………

Yamada is halfway through doing the necessary stitches on Midoriya’s left arm when Inko shifts ever so slightly, brushing his hair out of his face.

“I think he’s fallen asleep. Is that okay?” she asks.

“He could use the rest,” Yamada says. His voice has gone from its buoyant enthusiasm to a calm, serious tone that seems to draw the anxiety right out of Inko’s body. “He doesn’t need to be awake for this, as long as he doesn’t start moving around too much.”

“He’s a still sleeper,” Inko says.

Midoriya, stuck somewhere in the hazy place between asleep and awake, hears everything. He doesn’t feel particularly motivated to correct them, though, as comfortable as he is, even with the strange sensation of the stitches being threaded through his numb skin.

Inko runs her fingers slowly through his hair, the way that she used to do when he was little and having trouble falling asleep.

“I worry about him,” she murmurs. “I’d swear his quirk was attracting trouble, if I didn’t still have copies of the x-rays from the doctor who diagnosed his quirklessness.”

Yamada’s ministrations still for a moment.

“Aizawa didn’t mention that,” he says.

“It wasn’t relevant,” Aizawa says, voice a bit gruff. “Quirks are tools. They don’t make the hero.”

“I know, Shota,” Yamada says. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

There’s a beat of quiet. Yamada continues his work.

“He’s got a long road ahead of him,” Aizawa says quietly. “But he’s a good kid. And he’s going to make a great hero.”

“I don’t know if he’s told you how much that means to him,” Inko says. “He hasn’t said anything to me outright, but I know. No one’s ever believed in him the way that you have. Not even me, I’m ashamed to say.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. It’s been a while since I’ve met a kid Midoriya’s age who’s so quick to talk about how much he loves his mom.”

“I appreciate that, but it’s true. When we came back from the doctor…he asked me if he could still be a hero. I couldn’t answer him.”

“You think he still remembers that?” Yamada asks. “It was a while ago.”

“I know that he does,” Inko says. Her voice has gone sad. “I was terrified for him. The world isn’t kind to those who are quirkless.”

“It isn’t,” Aizawa says. “But he doesn’t let that stop him.”

“He’s always been so much stronger than me,” Inko says. “I have to wonder where he gets it from.”

“I don’t know about that,” Yamada says. “I haven’t known either of you for very long, but it seems to me that he takes after you quite a bit.”

“That’s kind of you to say.”

Midoriya drifts deeper after that, rousing only slightly when Yamada moves on to his other arm. He blinks sleepily up at his mom, and she smiles down at him and presses a kiss to his forehead, which is enough to reassure him that he’s in safe hands.

She’d never let anything happen to him while he’s in her arms.

………………

Later, Aizawa volunteers to carry him to bed.

“You should both get some rest,” he say. “It’s been a long day.”

“Alright,” Inko agrees. “His room is the second on the right, down the hall. I’m going to make some tea. Do the two of you have any preference? I’ve got just about everything you can imagine.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I’m making it for myself, anyway. It’s no trouble.”

“We’ll just have whatever you’re making for yourself, then,” Yamada says. “We’re not picky.”

“Ginseng?”

“Perfect.”

Midoriya isn’t asleep when Aizawa and Inko start the somewhat difficult process of maneuvering him from his sprawl across her on the couch into Aizawa’s arms, but he doesn’t particularly feel like waking up all the way and using his own two feet to go to his room, so he doesn’t.

His head ends up resting against Aizawa’s shoulder, hands curled over his chest, one arm under his knees and the other behind his shoulders.

“Second door on the right?” Aizawa confirms.

Inko must nod, because he starts on down the hall.

Midoriya cracks his eyes open after Aizawa settles him onto his mattress, pulling the blanket over him and tucking it around his shoulders. Aizawa startles a bit when he notices, then sighs.

“How long have you been awake?” he asks.

Midoriya shrugs. He doesn’t have the energy for words.

“Get some rest,” Aizawa says. He hesitates, then reaches out and ruffles Midoriya’s hair. “You did good today, kid. I’m glad you texted me.”

He leaves the door open a crack on his way out. Midoriya doesn’t mind it, because it lets the low hum of conversation filter in from the kitchen as the adults share tea, and he lets the murmur of their voices finally lull him into proper sleep.

…………….

Waking up in the middle of the night isn’t a new experience for Midoriya. Usually, he’d roll back over and count backwards in his head, or stare at the posters on the wall, or get up and work on his hero notebooks.

Or he’d go out and patrol.

But tonight his arms are aching and itchy, and Yamada and Aizawa must have left, because there’s no sound or light coming from the kitchen, and he feels small and young and tired.

He pads on bare feet down the hall. Absently, he wonders when someone had taken his shoes off, and who’d done it. Aizawa, maybe.

His mom’s door is cracked open just like his. He creaks it open, enough to see the shadowy shape of his mother lying under the covers in her bed.

“Mom?” he mumbles, hesitant. She doesn’t get enough sleep as it is, and she was already up late because of him. He’s not sure that he wants to wake her up.

But she lifts her head almost immediately.

“Izuku?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

He wraps his arms around himself.

“I can’t fall back asleep,” he says. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Her face softens. She shifts over and lifts the covers, and he slumps in relief, glad that he hadn’t had to ask. He crosses the room and crawls in next to her, and she pulls him close, tucking his head under her chin.

“I’m here,” she says. “I’ve got you.”

……………

Inko doesn’t want Midoriya to go to school the next day.

If he’s fair, he doesn’t really want to go either, but his skin is itching from the weakness that he let himself show and he doesn’t trust himself to stay home.

“It’s Friday,” he says. “There’s no point in not going. It’s just one day, and then it’s the weekend.”

“Izuku, you were attacked by a villain yesterday.”

“Yeah?”

She shakes her head at him, exasperated.

“I don’t like it,” she says, worrying at the necklace she’s wearing. “It’s twice now that you’ve gotten attacked by a villain on your way home from school.”

He shrugs.

“I think I just have bad luck,” he says. “Statistically speaking, it’s incredibly improbable that it’ll happen a third time.”

She fixes him with a look and puts her hands on her hips.

“It was ‘statistically improbable’ that you’d get attacked the second time,” she says. “I swear, Izuku, you attract trouble like a magnet.”

“Please?” he says. “If I stay home, I’ll just drive myself crazy.”

She wavers.

“Fine,” she says. “But I’m walking you there and meeting you at the end of the day to walk you home. Aizawa texted me; I know you don’t have training today. And I messaged the Hatsumes.”

“Mom.”

“I didn’t want them to worry when you didn’t show up today,” she says. “Besides, they care about you nearly as much as I do. Hitomi is already planning on taking you out to dinner with them as a family.”

Midoriya makes a face.

“They don’t have to do that.”

“Of course not. They want to. Now, do we have a deal or not?”

He sighs.

“Fine. Are you gonna walk me next week, too?”

“No.”

He’s relieved for all of half a second before she continues.

“Hizashi, Shota, and I are all going to take turns.”

“MOM.”

“Don’t look at me like that. They volunteered.”

“Since when are you on a first name basis with them?”

“Since we all bonded over how difficult it is to keep you in one piece. Did you know that Hizashi works three jobs and still managed to get his degree as a nurse practitioner?”

Midoriya rubs at his face with his hands. He can’t decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that not only have his mother and his mentor bonded, but they’ve dragged a third person into it as well.

“I’m—gonna go get ready for school.”

“Alright, honey. Make sure you don’t get your bandages wet.”

“I won’t.”

…………..

Midoriya isn’t really—present—at school.

Sure, he’s there physically, but all he can think about is how far he’d spiraled out of control the night before. No one seemed to mind, not Aizawa or his mom or Present Mic, from the little direct interaction that they had.

But his whole body is buzzing with anxiety, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’s training to be a hero; heroes can’t show weakness, and he’d sat and cried in his mom’s lap like a child for hours. And then he’d climbed into her bed like he hasn’t in years, since he learned how to stop screaming when his night terrors woke him up.

He itches at his arms through the sleeves of his uniform. There’s a layer of bandages over them, along with his shirtsleeve and the sleeve of his jacket, so he doesn’t worry overly much about potentially pulling his stitches. They’re more sore than itchy and the blunt pressure of his nails dragging across them makes them sting, but it makes him feel more grounded and less like he’s about to lose his grip on the bubble of panic that he’s been keeping at bay since he woke up.

Bakugo is watching him again, but that’s become more typical than not, so Midoriya just does his best to ignore him. It isn’t too difficult, as lost as he his in his own head.

When the bell for the end of the day finally rings, he’s one of the first out the door. He’d noticed some of his usual bullies whispering and snickering to each other in between completely unsubtle glances in his direction, and with his mom waiting to walk him home, he didn’t especially want to get caught by them.

Behind him, he hears the familiar crackle and hiss of Bakugo’s quirk, but since it isn’t directed at him, he shrugs it off.

Switching out his shoes takes longer than usual. His fingers fumble at the shoelaces, shaky from the pain in his arms, and he glances up when he finally has them tied and zeroes in on Tsubasa and Yubi, very obviously stalling through the process themselves. There’s a scorch mark on Tsubasa’s cheek, but evidently whatever he’d done to irritate Bakugo hadn’t put him off trying to corner Midoriya.

He ducks his head and quickly goes the long way around, backtracking in his street shoes with a silent apology to the janitor and ducking through the side door.

A hand reaches out and snags his collar.

Midoriya, already on high alert, strikes out on instinct, and Bakugo swears and lets go of his collar to dodge, just barely missing getting the full force of Midoriya’s panicked punch directly in the nose.

“OI, Deku, the fuck?” he growls, backing up, hands raised.

Midoriya sighs.

“I don’t have time for this today, Bakugo,” he says, hiking his bag higher on his shoulder. “My mom’s waiting for me. She’ll come looking if I’m late.”

“Auntie Inko won’t mind if you’re a few minutes behind,” Bakugo says. “Since when does she pick you up, anyway?”

“She will mind, actually. So I’m gonna go.”

He takes a step forward, and Bakugo moves to block his way. He reaches forward and snags Midoriya’s arm in his hand, lifting it and pulling at his sleeve so it reveals his bandages.

Bakugo’s face twists. He doesn’t look surprised to see the bandages, but like he was hoping that he was wrong.

He doesn’t say anything. His red eyes meet Midoriya’s, and Midoriya gazes back evenly, refusing to look down. A muscle jumps in his jaw.

“Is this why Auntie Inko’s picking you up?” he asks.

Midoriya pulls his arm out of his grip, tugging his sleeve back into place.

“I don’t know why you care,” he says. “It isn’t any of your business, anyway. Now, can you move, please?”

Bakugo snarls.

“I don’t care,” he says. “But you’re being dumb, and it’s annoying.”

Midoriya’s skin itches more and more the longer that Bakugo keeps him there. He shifts from one foot to the other, trying to keep it all pressed down.

“I don’t even talk to you anymore,” he says. “How can I possibly be annoying you?”

“The fact that you exist is annoying,” Bakugo bites out. His expression twists oddly after he says it, almost like he wants to take it back.

“Great. Thanks,” Midoriya says. His grip on the strap of his bag tightens until his knuckles turn white. He turns his head to break eye contact with Bakugo, looking past his shoulder instead. “You’ll just have to get better at ignoring me, I guess. You were doing pretty good at it up until recently.”

“Because you’re being stupid. I can’t just ignore it.”

“I don’t know what you want from me, Bakugo.”

“There,” Bakugo says. “That. What the fuck is up with that?”

Midoriya looks back at him.

“You told me often enough that you hate it when I call you Kacchan,” Midoriya says. “And that’s the sort of thing that you call your friends. You haven’t been my friend in years.”

“It never stopped you before.”

Midoriya stops. For a moment, he just—looks at his childhood friend.

He’s shuffling his feet, like he’s nervous, and his hands have moved to his pockets. He’s hunched over slightly, less in the usual impolite way and more like he feels unsure of  himself.

“Right,” he says. Some wall he’d been maintaining finally crumbles. “I don’t have the energy for whatever mental breakdown you’ve decided to have. And it’s not my problem anyway, because as you have made abundantly clear, over and over, we’re not friends.”

“I’m not the one having the mental breakdown,” Bakugo argues.

“I’m not arguing with you. Move, so I can leave.”

“No.”

Midoriya tries to push past him anyway, and Bakugo places his hands on his shoulders and shoves him back, hard. Months ago, it would’ve been enough to make him stumble over his own feet and end up in the dirt, but he hasn’t been training for nothing.

He reaches up and rubs a hand tiredly over his face.

“If this is your new way of bullying me, I can’t say I’m all that impressed.”

“I never bullied you.”

Midoriya stares at him. He raises an eyebrow.

“Really? Then what would you call it?”

“You needed someone to put you in your place,” Bakugo snarls. “You’re always acting like you’re better than everyone else, but you’re just a quirkless nobody.”

“There it is,” Midoriya says. “That one’s getting kind of old, though.”

“What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“You! You’re what’s wrong with me!”

“Then let me leave.”

“That’s not the problem here!”

“Tell me what it is, then!”

“Fucking—you know what the problem is, Deku!”

“No, I don’t, so why don’t you enlighten me, Bakugo?”

“You—you’re—you need to stop being so useless! It’s distracting. You don’t even act like you’re trying to be normal anymore!”

Something boils over.

“Because you’ve spent every day of my life for years reminding me that I’m not!” he says. “Why does it matter to you? Why do I suddenly matter to you?”

Bakugo’s eyes flicker down to Midoriya’s arms.

And it clicks.

Midoriya laughs.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asks. “Feeling guilty, are you? You think I’m like this because of what you said?”

“I don’t feel guilty,” Bakugo says. His hands are fisted at his sides now, teeth gritted. He won’t meet Midoriya’s eyes. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Do you need a reminder?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Because if you don’t remember what you said to me, I do. Word for word.”

“And I meant it—”

“’You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you—‘”

“Stop.”

“’If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life—‘”

“Deku, fucking stop!”

“’Go take a swan dive off the roof!’”

Bakugo yells, wordless, and slams Midoriya into the wall, one arm pressing painfully into his chest and the other sparking in front of his face.

He should be scared. He should be trying to get away, remembering all the techniques that he’s learned to get out of situations just like this one. But instead a deadly calm steals over him.

“Are you going to kill me, Kacchan?” he says. “It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?”

Bakugo recoils in surprise. The sparks die, but his grip doesn’t let up. Like he’s frozen in place.

“How many times have we been here before? Just like this. But you were always too weak to finish the job. Well, c’mon, Kacchan. Free shot. Why don’t you get rid of me once and for all?”

“Deku—”

“That stupid fucking name!” The rage he’s been hiding for years, swallowing down over and over and over again, burns hot and bright all at once. He shoves Bakugo so hard that he stumbles backwards and falls.

For once, Midoriya looms over him. It feels wrong—it all feels so wrong, and there’s a voice somewhere screaming at him to stop, but another part of him feels so, so good. Finally. Finally, he isn’t the weak one.

“You can stop pretending that you don’t want me dead,” he says. “I’m worthless, remember? Stupid, useless, Deku. I’m just a waste of space. I should go take a swan dive off the roof.”

Bakugo’s face is nearly bloodless. His eyes are wide with something almost like fear, and he hasn’t made any move to try and get up from the ground.

“Why won’t you do it, huh? Too good to get your hands dirty? I’ve got news for you, Bakugo. You might not have killed anyone, but your hands aren’t clean.”

Bakugo brings his hands slowly up in front of up, palms out. On anyone else, it’d look like surrender. Trying to calm him down. Look, I’m not armed, we can talk about this.

But Midoriya knows better. Bakugo’s palms are his weapons.

He steps back, far enough that he’s out of easy reach.

“I’m not stupid,” he says. “And I’m not done talking. Did you know you almost did kill me? That day, when you told me to kill myself, when we were both attacked by the sludge villain and I saved you and all anyone did was yell at me and remind me how completely worthless I am. I was gonna do it. I was right there on the ledge, and if someone hadn’t shown up and stopped me, it wouldn’t been all over. You would’ve liked that, wouldn’t you? If I’d listened to you?”

Bakugo gets to his feet. His hands are at his sides again, so Midoriya doesn’t stop him. Looking closer—he’s trembling, all over, the same way that he was in the back of the ambulance when the sludge villain almost killed him.

He’s afraid.

He’s afraid of Midoriya.

“De—Izuku,” he tries, but Midoriya shakes his head to cut him off.

“You don’t get to call me that,” he says. “We aren’t friends. You want me dead, remember? Are you gonna do it, now? Go ahead, I won’t stop you.”

“I don’t want you dead,” Bakugo says.

Midoriya snorts.

“Could’ve fooled me,” he says. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I never was going to be good enough for you, was I? You’re always going to prefer a world without me in it. I just want you to know, Bakugo—whether you’re the one to kill me or not, my blood is on your hands.”

And he walks away.

Chapter Text

Midoriya’s mom is waiting on the sidewalk in front of the school, on her tiptoes and craning her neck to watch the front doors, twisting her hands together anxiously.

“Over here, Mom,” he says, and she startles and yelps, pressing her hands to her chest.

“Izuku!” she says. “Oh, you scared me. Are you okay? School’s been out for ten minutes already.”

Midoriya grimaces.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I just got sidetracked. Sorry.”

She eyes him critically.

“There’s ash on your jacket,” she says.

He glances down at the ash in question. A quick brush of his fingers, and it crumbles off and scatters in the breeze.

She purses her lips.

“Sidetracked, is it?” she asks.

He sighs.

“Bakugo took offense to my existence in his vicinity,” he says. “Again. It’s fine.”

“Bakugo?”

There’s are at least three questions behind the single word. Midoriya doesn’t feel like answering any of them.

She brushes a hand over his hair, inspecting his face closely. He lets her, although he makes a face to know exactly how he feels about it.

“When did you stop calling him Kacchan?” she asks.

“When I realized that we weren’t friends.”

Her eyes fall to the spot on his jacket that the ash had been. A familiar expression falls over her face, and he has to hide a wince.

“Stay here,” she says. “Right here. If you manage to get kidnapped or injured in the next thirty seconds, I’m grounding you.”

“I’m not that bad,” he mumbles, but she’s already turning and striding with purpose back the way he’d come.

Because Midoriya knows his mother, he isn’t all that surprised when she reappears less than a minute later dragging a less than enthusiastic Bakugo behind her.

“Now,” she says. She doesn’t let go of Bakugo’s shoulder, despite his best efforts to shake her off, and Midoriya almost feels sympathetic. He knows exactly how iron-like his mother’s grip can get when she’s determined. “I don’t know what’s happened between you two boys, but I’m not going to let it keep happening. So we’re all going to walk home together, and Katsuki, I will be talking to Mitsuki and Masaru.”

“Auntie—”

She points a threatening finger at his face, and his mouth snaps shut with an audible click.

Midoriya watches it all dispassionately.

“You aren’t going to try and make us hold hands are something dumb like that, right?” he asks. “Because I know where you sleep.”

She smiles fondly at him, some of the steel leaving her eyes.

“Don’t be silly, that won’t solve anything,” she says. “You’re both going to hold my hands.”

Midoriya blinks. Bakugo glares at him, as though it’s at all his fault that the other boy had gone off in a rage and left evidence of his quirk use where Inko could see it.

He shrugs and takes his mom’s hand. He’s not going to be embarrassed by the fact that he has a mother who loves him.

Inko beams at him and moves her other hand from Bakugo’s shoulder to his hand. His fingers stay limp in protest, up until Inko fixes him with a look hard enough to turn a villain to stone.

“My hand’s going to get sweaty,” he grumbles.

“If you haven’t figured out how to control your quirk by now, Katsuki, you should be in quirk counseling,” Inko says. “You’re a teenage boy. Your hands are always sweaty.”

Midoriya bites his lip to hold back a laugh. He won’t say that part of him isn’t incredibly pleased by the odd twist of events.

He’d gotten to say all the things that he’s been shoving down and ignoring for years, and now he gets to watch Bakugo get taken down a notch by his mom. The only woman in the world, probably, who’s capable of cowing the great Bakugo Katsuki into submission.

Awesome.

"Izuki, I can see you smirking,” Inko says, and he immediately wipes his expression into one of wide-eyed innocence that he knows from her unimpressed look she doesn’t buy for a second. “This is your problem too. I understand your reasons, but if you’d just told me that you were having trouble with Katsuki, we could’ve done something about this ages ago.”

Midoriya shrugs.

“Can we—walk?” Bakugo asks, sounding strangled.

A group of their classmates that were known to linger after hours are starting to head in their direction. They haven’t spotted Bakugo yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

“Are you embarrassed, Katsuki?”

He doesn’t say anything, but the red flush on his face and his ducked head answer well enough for him.

“Good,” Inko says. “But you’re right, we should get going. Come on, then. Make sure we’re all looking both ways before we cross the street!”

A tiny laugh bubbles out before Midoriya can stop it. He bites down on the side of his hand so that he doesn’t lose it completely.

Bakugo glares hatefully at him, and while Inko is on her tiptoes to look over the pedestrians in front of them, watching for the light to turn on the crosswalk, Midoriya cheerfully flips him off.

“Auntie—”

“Don’t start, Katsuki.”

…………………

The Bakugo house is two doors before theirs, but Inko doesn’t stop, even when Bakugo does, which nearly takes him off of his feet.

“Hey—why aren’t we stopping?” he asks, indignantly. “Auntie, we’re passing my house.”

“I know where you live, Katsuki. I’ve been friends with your parents since before you were ever a thought in their heads.”

“Where are we going, then?”

“We’re going to deal with this,” Inko says. “I’m going to make tea, and we’re all going to sit down together and have a nice long chat.”

“I didn’t agree to this.”

“I wasn’t asking for your permission, Katsuki. We’re well passed that point. If your parents have a problem with it, they can take it up with me. But somehow I doubt that they’ll have much to say about it.”

Bakugo grumbles something under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, Auntie.”

Midoriya is charged with unlocking the door, so that Inko doesn’t have to let go of Bakugo’s hand, apparently deeming him a flight risk. Not without reason. He lets them in, and they all go about switching their shoes. Inko only lets go of Bakugo’s hand once the door is firmly shut, with her standing between it and him.

“Now,” she says, smiling brightly in a way that has Bakugo grimacing in anticipation. “Why don’t you boys settle yourselves on the couch? Opposite ends, I think.”

They obey without question. Midoriya peeks at Bakugo’s disgruntled expression where he sits with his arms crossed and his legs splayed out, and muffles a snicker in his palm.

“This is your fault,” Bakugo says, glaring at him.

“You’re the one who was dumb enough to use your quirk and leave evidence of it,” Midoriya says. “My mom saw the ash on my jacket. Unlike you, she’s not stupid. She can put two and two together.”

“She never did anything before.”

“Yeah, well. I think she’s feeling a little extra protective since I almost died for the third time in three months.”

Bakugo’s eyes shoot to him in an instant, obviously checking for any sign of a joke in his expression. When there isn’t any ‘a-ha, gotcha!’ moment forthcoming, he glances down at Midoriya’s arms.

“The old hag’s gonna kill me,” Bakugo says.

“How is Auntie Mitsuki? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

“She’s a hag,” Bakugo says. “What’s there to tell?”

He lifts his feet up, propping them on the coffee table. Midoriya opens his mouth to tell him off, but before he can, there’s a shout from the kitchen.

“Bakugo Katsuki, you get your feet off of my coffee table right now!”

Bakugo slowly lowers his feet back onto the ground. His ears are bright red with embarrassment again.

And Midoriya—well.

He has his problems with Bakugo. But he said everything that he needed to say earlier, and he doesn’t hate him.

He doesn’t think he could ever hate Bakugo.

Instead of feeling viscerally satisfied that Bakugo is finally getting scolded for being—well, Bakugo—he snorts. And then he starts laughing, hard enough that his stomach starts to ache.

When he finally manages to regain his composure, Bakugo is watching him with a strange expression. Not the usual irritation or anger, but something that Midoriya isn’t sure he recognizes.

He swipes at a tear on his cheek from his fit of laughter, and grins at his childhood friend.

“It’s almost like when we were kids, isn’t it?”

Bakugo flushes. For a moment, it looks like he’s going to take the comment as a jab, but his eyes flicker back down to Midoriya’s arms, and he closes his mouth and nods instead.

“Auntie can still see through walls,” he says. “You’re sure she doesn’t have a secondary quirk?”

“Nope,” Midoriya says, popping the p.

“I’m not convinced.”

Inko bustles into the room then, skillfully balancing three steaming mugs of tea. She settles onto the couch directly in between them and hands out the mugs, one for each of them and one for herself.

“I’m glad to see that my living room is still in one piece,” she says brightly. “It’s a good step in the right direction.”

“That we can share a couch without killing each other?” Midoriya says, with not a little bit of sarcasm. He might not hate Bakugo, but he’s not so sure he wants to sit with him and have a ‘chat’, whatever that entails.

“Hush, Izuku. I understand being sarcastic is a defense mechanism that makes you feel better when you’re anticipating emotional vulnerability, but it’s not helping.”

Midoriya looks away and takes a sip of his tea. It scalds his tongue, and he makes a face at it.

“Right. We’ll start with you, Katsuki. As I heard Izuku reminding you, I’m not stupid. It seems I’ve been—willfully ignorant, for a few years now. I believed Izuku when he told me that the two of you were still best friends, even when the evidence overwhelmingly contradicted it, because I desperately wanted it to be true. That’s my mistake, and I’ll take full responsibility for it,” she says. She pauses to take a deep breath, twisting the string of her teabag around her finger. “But there comes a point when we need to be honest with ourselves, and others. So I’m going to ask this once, Katsuki, and only once. Have you been bullying Izuku?”

Bakugo opens his mouth. His eyebrows are drawn together angrily, and Midoriya knows that he’s going to deny it. He already had, after all, when Midoriya accused him of the very same thing.

Then he closes his mouth. And, slowly, so slowly that Midoriya wonders if he’s imagining it, he nods.

“Thank you for telling me the truth,” Inko says, calmly. “Now. Izuku. Why didn’t you?”

He cringes.

“He was my friend,” he mumbles.

“And when he wasn’t?”

Midoriya stares into his teacup. There are plenty of reasons on the tip of his tongue. Only about half of them are outright lies. He sneaks a glance over at Bakugo, who’s uncharacteristically subdued, hunched in on himself in the corner of the couch.

He looks small.

If he can tell the truth, though…so can Midoriya.

“He’s going to be a great hero someday,” Midoriya says. Bakugo’s head jerks up, and he stares at him with wide eyes. “If I reported him, it’d be a permanent mark on his record, and he wouldn’t be able to get into UA.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Katsuki.”

Bakugo grits his teeth and turns away.

“Is that all, Izuku?”

“And I didn’t think it’d matter,” he says, a bit more quietly. “All the teachers practically think that Ka—that Bakugo blesses the ground he walks on. They already blatantly ignore the harassment that happens in class. Some of them even join in on it. If I tried to say anything, they’d say that I was jealous and making things up for attention.”

Inko nods. “We’ve talked about that before. Aldera is—especially discriminatory.” She sighs. “I wish I could do better for you, Izuku.”

“It’s not your fault, Mom.”

“No, but it is my job to protect you,” she says. “And it’s come to my attention that I’ve been doing a fairly terrible job of it.”

“I can protect myself.”

“Oh, Izuku,” she says, smiling sadly at him. “I know you can. But you shouldn’t have to.”

He ducks his head.

“That goes for you, too, Katsuki,” Inko says, turning to the other boy. “The staff at Aldera is doing you a disservice as well.”

His forehead crinkles.

“How? They’re always telling me how great I am and how perfect my quirk is for hero work,” he says. “And they’re always telling De—Izu—Midoriya—not…that.”

“And what do you think will happen when you go to UA?” Inko asks. “Or some other hero school? Do you think you’ll be the only student in your class with a quirk that’s ‘perfectly suited’ for hero work?”

“I—no—”

“And when you have to work for recognition, for the first time in your life, how will you cope with that?”

“I won’t have to, I’m going to be the number one hero—”

“Katsuki.”

He quiets.

“You’re a good boy,” Inko says. She switches to hold her mug with one hand so that she can settle the other on the back of Bakugo’s neck. Surprisingly, he doesn’t shake it off. “You’ve made a lot of mistakes. But Izuku has held his tongue at the expense of his own wellbeing to ensure the security of your future. I won’t ruin that, even if I’m not sure I agree with it.”

Bakugo hunches in on himself even further.

“Izuku sees something in you. He believes that you’re going to make a great hero, and I trust him. So I won’t report you. If,” she emphasizes, “you start to shape yourself up. No more bullying, whether it’s Izuku or someone else. That’s not the sort of behavior becoming of a prospective hero.”

Bakugo swallows hard and nods jerkily.

“I’m still going to talk to your parents,” she continues. “They should be aware of your behavior. I won’t be surprised if you end up grounded. But considering what the consequences could be, if Izuku wasn’t so determined to protect you, I think you’ll be getting off lightly.”

He nods again.

“Thank you, Auntie,” he says, hoarsely.

She moves her hand and pats his head affectionately.

“I have some cookies in the kitchen,” she says. “Those spicy Mexican hot chocolate cookies that you love. I think they’ll make a good note to end this on.”

She levers herself off of the couch, setting her mug on the table, and heads back into the kitchen, leaving the two of them alone again.

Bakugo turns to look at Midoriya.

“You didn’t tell her,” he says. “About what I said, I mean.”

“She’d eviscerate you,” Midoriya says. “Do you want that?”

“I’d deserve it.”

Midoriya blinks at him.

“Wow,” he says. “You really are having a mental breakdown, aren’t you?”

“Fuck off,” Bakugo says, scowling. “You’re having a mental breakdown.”

“At any given time, there is a 97% chance that I’m in the middle of an ongoing mental breakdown,” Midoriya says. “This is nothing new.”

Bakugo’s lips quirk up in a smile, almost against his will. He shakes his head and leans back into the couch cushions.

“You’re weird,” he says. He takes a sip of his tea, and Midoriya’s eyes sparkle with mischief at the opportunity.

“Mom—” he starts, and Bakugo picks up a throw pillow and hurls it at his face. He breaks off into laughter. “You’re too easy.”

“Take that back.”

“No.”

Inko comes back in then with a plate full of cookies, freshly warmed.

“I called Mitsuki,” she says, settling back into her spot on the couch. “I’m sorry to say, but you’re in for a second scolding when you get home, Katsuki.”

He scoffs.

“This was your version of a scolding? Have you heard the old hag go on when someone sets her off?”

Inko levels him with a disapproving look. He steals a cookie from the top of the pile and crunches into it, crumbs showering all over his lap. She sighs.

“I’m glad to see that you haven’t changed all that much from the little boy I remember,” she says. “Do you need a napkin?”

Bakugo looks down at the mess he’s making. He takes another enormous bite.

“No.”

Inko shakes her head.

“I was meaning to vacuum today anyway,” she says. “Cookie, Izuku?”

Midoriya takes a cookie.

He’s not sure what, exactly, he’s feeling at the moment. A lot. But, mostly, he thinks that he feels—better.

Chapter Text

Now.

Considering the events of the past week—past few days, really—Midoriya knows that he should stay home.

He hasn’t even gotten his stitches out yet.

But every night, when he tries to convince himself that he’s fine, it’s fine, he needs the rest, all he can think about is the woman who was killed by the Spiders when he’d convinced himself that he didn’t need to patrol.

Aizawa’s voice is in his head, calling him Problem Child and reminding him that he can’t save anyone if he’s not alive or physically able to do so. And Bakugo’s voice, of anyone’s, calling him a dumbass, because going out in the middle of the night to patrol and potentially face off with villains while still injured is one of the stupidest things he can possibly do.

He’s thirteen.

But.

Day three of trying to force himself to rest, his skin starts itching too much to ignore, and he finds himself climbing out of his bedroom window anyway.

He’s planning on taking it easy, at least—maybe just putting in a call to the police if he finds something going on, or patrolling to make sure that the scattered Spiders haven’t managed to recollect themselves in the absence of their leader. Over the weekend, with nothing else to keep him occupied at night, he’d managed to refurbish an old cellphone that he’d scavenged from Dagobah into an untraceable line, so he wouldn’t have to try and find a payphone if he did stumble across a villain.

Of course, it’s true what they say about best laid plans.

He’s nearing the end of his planned patrol route when he hears shouting.

At first, when he approaches the edge of the rooftop to peek into the alley—and what is it about crime always happening in dark alleys at night?—he thinks that that he’s only seeing a couple having a spat.

And, well, he’s not exactly wrong. But as goes his luck, that’s not the end of it.

“You always get to do it!” the woman is complaining. She has a cigarette that probably used to be lit in one hand, but it’s a bit worse for wear with all the arm-waving she’s doing. Bits of ash keep breaking off the end of it. “It was my idea to start this in the first place, remember? I shouldn’t have to be your stupid sidekick every time!”

“Come on, baby, don’t be like that,” the man says. “How about we do it together?”

“It’s not the same!”

“Your quirk just isn’t—”

“My quirk? This is about my quirk? No, what were you about to say? Huh? We wouldn’t be able to do this if it wasn’t for my quirk! Just because I have to use a lighter to do it, that makes it, what, less satisfying, somehow?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“DO I?”

Midoriya silently swings down onto the top level of the fire escape and sits on the railing, swinging his legs. Neither of them notice.

They’re dressed fairly normally, for a night out. The woman is wearing a sleeveless black turtleneck and cargo pants, and the man is in a baggy t-shirt and ratty jeans. One of his shoes is missing a shoelace, which can’t be comfortable, but it seems like an aesthetic choice for him.

The masks kind of give away the fact that they’re trying to commit a crime, though. Plus the barricaded door behind them.

The wind picks up, and Midoriya is hit in the face by the smell of gasoline.

Idly, he remembers Aizawa mentioning in a moment of exhaustion-induced candor that he’d been enlisted to help the police catch a team of serial arsonists.

“I’ll let you do it next time.”

“You said that last time!”

“Well, this time I mean it!”

Midoriya tilts his head.

“Are you two…arguing over who gets to set the building on fire?” he asks.

Both of them startle. The man trips over his shoelace-less shoe and catches himself on his partner’s arm, and she hisses at him and shakes him off.

“Who the hell are you?” she asks, crossing her arms defensively.

He blinks.

“Wisp, I guess.”

“Never heard of you.”

“No, wait,” the man says. “Nikki said—”

“Nikki? You’ve been talking to Nikki?”

“I just ran into her! What am I supposed to do when I see her around, ignore her?”

“Yes!”

“Sorry,” Midoriya interrupts. “You’re obviously in the middle of something here, but I really can’t let you set the building on fire. If that’s what you’re planning on doing.”

“What are you gonna do about it?” the woman asks. Her partner tries to say something, maybe about what Nikki had apparently told him about Wisp, but she aggressively waves her hand in his face and the last clinging bits of ash from her cigarette fly directly into his nose, making him sneeze. “You don’t even look tall enough to ride the rollercoasters at an amusement park.”

“Why does everyone always have to comment on my height?” Midoriya complains, even as he twists and jumps expertly from railing to railing to land lightly on the ground. “I’m gonna start feeling insecure about it.”

The woman looks down her nose at him.

“You should,” she says.

“Babe, we don’t have time for this,” the man says. “Someone’s gonna figure out that the doors are locked from the outside, the show is supposed to be over any minute now.”

“Are there people in there?” Midoriya asks, looking past them to the barricaded door. Glancing around, he realized that it’s the side door of a small live theatre. There are even a few faded posters on the walls from old shows. “Why?”

“My ex is the lead actress,” the man answers, a little awkwardly.

“She doesn’t count as people,” the woman says. “Besides, it’s not like you care about the other people. You were all for burning the theatre down with everyone inside when I brought it up.”

He shrugs.

“I mean, I mostly just go along with whatever you want.”

She whirls on him.

“And yet you can’t let me light the fire? What, you expect me to do all the planning, all the research, all the work, and then you get the gratification? I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think so, either,” Midoriya says. “But that’s just because I don’t plan on letting either of you light the fire.”

She snarls at him.

“Babe, show Wisp who he’s dealing with.”

The man takes a deep breath. Midoriya thinks that he’s preparing to start arguing again, but then he belches and spits a stream of lava that looks a lot like molten projectile vomit.

Midoriya neatly sidesteps it, making a face as it splatters to the concrete.

“That’s—kind of gross,” he says.

The door rattles suddenly as someone tries to open it. The barricade holds, even as they start banging on it from the other side.

“Now look,” the woman says. “This is your fault. If you’d just listened to me—”

Midoriya swipes her ankles out from under her, and she lands hard on her back, gasping as the breath is knocked out of her.

The man immediately turns tail and bolts for the end of the alley. Midoriya watches as his shoe slips, trips him, and sends him headlining directly into a dumpster with a loud crash.

“How haven’t you two gotten caught yet?” he asks, baffled.

The woman wheezes something that might be a curse at him. He takes advantage while she’s still disoriented and flips her over with his foot to zip tie her wrists together.

A quick check towards the dumpster reveals that the man has either given up or knocked himself unconscious. Midoriya ignores him in favor of kicking the barricade away and opening the door, nearly getting crushed as a group of people suddenly fall forward with the absence of something blocking their way.

“You good?” he asks, as they untangle themselves from each other and look around, obviously completely confused.

The man at the front of the group hesitantly nods, and Midoriya gives him a thumb’s up.

“Cool,” he says, and moves on down the alley to zip tie the man’s hands together for good measure. Then he pulls out his phone, pulls up the only contact that he has at the ready, drops a location pin, and sends a text.

Left a present for you! -Wisp 😊

He grins to himself, and then a rush of murmuring behind him reminds him that he has an audience. He turns to them and waves.

They wave hesitantly back, and Midoriya disappears from the scene of the attempted crime to the sound of sirens in the distance.

Chapter Text

Despite his hopes that it was a joke, his mother really does start taking turns with Aizawa and Mic to walk him to and from school. Aizawa has him doing non-physical training until his arms heal enough for the stitches to come out, which he can usually do from home, but his mother’s work schedule can be unpredictable, so they often see each other after school anyway.

Calling Present Mic Yamada feels weird, but Hizashi is even worse, so Midoriya concedes to it. He can’t go around calling the man Mic when they’re in public and risk outing the fact that he’s getting a hero escort.

Aizawa and Yamada both take precautions. Aizawa doesn’t have to worry as much about being recognized, so his efforts are minimal, but Yamada never so much as wears a leather jacket, and he covers his characteristic mustache with a face mask.

Neither of them seem to mind taking the time out of their busy schedules, even on the occasional morning that they have to pick him up and take him extra early so that they can still get to their classes at UA on time. Midoriya feels guilty anyway, but he tries to keep it hidden from them, since he knows it’ll only earn him an all-too-earnest discussion about his own self worth and learning to prioritize his safety.

When Inko accompanies him home, Bakugo tags along more often than not, although he usually trails ahead or behind, like he’s not so sure he’s welcome to actually walk with them.

Midoriya doesn’t mind it so much. After the talk that Inko had given him, he’s been a lot more careful to watch what he says, and even though they have a long, long way to go before the past stops hurting so much, Midoriya’s surprised that he’s actually…kind of relieved to sort of have his old friend back.

Hatsume is understanding about his protective detail, but she’s not shy to tell him that she misses him and can’t wait until he can come over again. She messages him at all hours, often about her projects, occasionally about whatever random topic happens to come to mind.

Some of the weight has been lifted off of Midoriya’s chest.

But his skin still itches.

Without his morning runs and afternoon training to burn energy, he’s even more sleepless than usual. He tries, at least; lays in bed with his eyes closed, noise-cancelling headphones on, under his weighted blanket.

But the restlessness just builds and builds and builds until he feels like he might explode. No amount of pacing in the world can shake it out of him, so he ends up out on the streets as Wisp. He attempts to minimize the trouble that he finds, but usually it finds him anyway.

It’d be fine. It’d technically be better, even—if only he could shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen.

Aizawa is the first to notice and ask him about it. They’re walking to school early, before the sun has even risen, and Midoriya keeps flinching at unexpected noises, one time so badly that he’d stumbled on a curb and had to be steadied to keep his footing.

“What is it?” Aizawa asks bluntly after that time, hand still on his shoulder.

Midoriya grimaces. He fidgets with the straps of his backpack.

“Do you ever just—get a bad feeling? Like something’s about to go wrong? Even though there’s nothing that should be making you feel that way?”

Aizawa lightly squeezes his shoulder and then lets his hand fall away. He waves for them to continue walking, putting his hands into his pockets.

“Do you know much about hypervigilance?” he asks.

Midoriya nods.

“When you’ve been in danger—especially when your life is on the line—your body doesn’t forget so easily. Lots of pro heroes experience hypervigilance. It’s a symptom of PTSD, which can be caused by traumatic events. I’m no psychiatrist, but you’ve been through a lot more than most kids your age, Midoriya. It’s no surprise that you might feel especially unsafe.”

That all makes sense. It does, but Midoriya knows hypervigilance. He’s been familiar with the feeling of being unsafe since he was diagnosed quirkless.

This feels different, somehow.

But Aizawa has enough to worry about, so Midoriya presses his lips together and nods.

“That’s probably it,” he says.

When they get to the point that Aizawa stops—within sight of the school, but only barely, so that people don’t ask the wrong sorts of questions—he pauses and reaches out to lightly ruffle Midoriya’s hair.

“You’ll be okay, kid,” he says. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but this’ll get easier.”

Midoriya summons a crooked smile for his mentor, pushing down any visible signs of his doubt and trying his best to make it seem as genuine as possible.

“Thanks, Aizawa.”

…………………

The feeling doesn’t go away. In fact, it only gets worse—every time he leaves the house, the hair on the back of his neck prickles like he’s being watched. Sometimes even when he’s in the house, in his room, his skin will go cold, and it won’t go away until he tucks himself away under his desk or in his closet.

He doesn’t tell his mom about it. It’s stupid; he hasn’t hidden in small spaces since he was a kid, when his night terrors made him feel vulnerable unless he was protected on all sides.

Plus, she’s already been hinting at therapy, and he very assuredly does not want to do that.

The second weekend after the attack, Inko takes him to meet with the Hatsumes for dinner. She makes fast friends with Hatsume’s moms, especially Hitomi, who also works in law, at the same hospital where Kei works as a surgeon.

Hatsume tackles him in a hug as soon as she sees him, and even when she lets him go she’s so excited that she can’t stop bouncing up and down, which is so contagious that he ends up rocking back and forth on his feet.

The people at the restaurant don’t seem to mind at all—Hitomi mentions that they’ve been going there for years, so Midoriya imagines they’re all just used to the Hatsume brand of chaos. Midoriya lets Hatsume link elbows with him and drag him around to show him all of her favorite spots, and then they make faces at each other through the giant fish tank until Hatsume gets the giggles so badly that she turns bright red.

It’s enough to distract him, for a while. But at the end of the night, as soon as they start on down the sidewalk, Midoriya feels it again.

He can’t help but look at the faces of every person that they pass.

Is it them? Are they the ones watching me?

None of them look familiar. He tries to convince himself that it’s all in his head—he’s just anxious, from spending so much time socializing. He’s always more hyperaware of his surroundings after running down his social battery.

But there’s a nagging voice in the back of his head that he can’t quite silence, and Midoriya wonders how much longer he has before everything goes terribly, horribly wrong.

……………….

Mic comes over to take out his stitches. It’s an even weirder sensation that getting them in the first place, but he forces himself to sit through it without complaint, since it’s really his fault that he was injured to begin with.

They end up staying for dinner. Aizawa had tagged along, of course, and when his mom hears that neither of them have eaten, she insists that they stay.

She makes katsudon. Midoriya helps her, and they all cluster in the kitchen. The adults have wine, and though Midoriya doesn’t talk much, he’s warm just listening to the chatter around him.

His protective detail comes up once they’ve all sat down at the table with their food.

“I know the two of you are both busy,” Inko says. “I appreciate all of the help that you’ve been giving Izuku. But this arrangement can’t continue indefinitely, so I’ve asked Izuku’s classmate, Katsuki, to walk with him to and from school.”

Midoriya stares at his mother as though she’s grown a second head.

“And he agreed to that?” he asks.

She cuts a look his way.

“He did,” she says. “The chances of being attacked by a villain are exponentially lower if you’re not alone, so he’s going to walk with you in the mornings and in the afternoons when you don’t have training.”

“Which we’re restarting on Monday,” Aizawa says.

Midoriya pokes at his rice. He’s glad to restart physical training again—he’s already sure that he’ll never be able to catch up—but he and Bakugo have only just managed to find a middle ground. He doesn’t know that it’s a good idea to test it so soon.

But, as always, he looks up, finding all three of them watching him expectantly, and he remembers all that they’ve done for him.

Aizawa and Mic hardly sleep as it is. And his mom has had to bring work home with her so that she could rearrange her schedule to accommodate walking him to and from school all the time.

“Okay,” he says. “But I reserve the right to punch Bakugo if he tries to start shit.”

“Language,” Aizawa says.

Inko just pats him on the arm.

“That’s the spirit, sweetie,” she says.

……………….

Midoriya drops down and plants one knee squarely in the middle of the villain’s back to pin him in place, ignoring his groan, and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

You’re getting slow! -Wisp

He grins to himself a bit as he hits send. He can easily imagine the disgruntled look on Aizawa’s face when he reads the text.

“You can let me up now,” the villain says. “Promise I’ll come quietly.”

Midoriya snorts.

“Has that ever worked before?” he asks.

“…no.”

Despite that, the villain doesn’t put up much of a struggle while Midoriya zip ties his hands behind his back. Midoriya will give it to him—at least he’s smart enough to know when he’s beaten.

Most villains can’t claim that much.

He straightens up, shaking out his shoulders, and turns to make his usual escape, but before he can, a tingle of warning trails icy fingers down his spine.

Whirling, he scans his surroundings.

There’s no one there.

He bites down on the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, tapping his fingers in an irregular rhythm on the side of his thigh. He knows he’s not imagining things.

Someone is watching him. He just can’t see them.

Then—there.

Across the street, at the end of the alley, where the streetlights don’t reach well enough to penetrate the darkness, there’s a flash of a blue glow in the darkness.

Midoriya locks eyes with them, and both of them freeze, staring each other down.

Then the blue eyes blink, and in the next second, they vanish.

Midoriya’s stomach swirls with unease. He glances back at the villain on the ground, who’s trying to wiggle away and mostly only managing to flop around like a dying fish.

He looks back at where he’d seen the eyes, and then he takes a calculated step backwards, leaving the scene in the opposite direction.

……………

Midoriya is sprawled on something in Hatsume’s lab that might have been a couch in another life, spinning a gear around his fingers. She’s sketching at her desk and rambling about string theory, which he’s only mostly following, because he’s always preferred chemistry to physics.

“Hatsume,” he says, and she stops dead in the middle of a word, focus zeroing in on him immediately.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“If I told you a secret, would you keep it?”

She blinks owlishly at him. Her eyes look especially huge behind her magnifying goggles, and he has to bite down on his tongue to hold an amused grin at bay.

“My instinctual response is yes,” she says. She taps her pencil on the edge of her desk, considering. “Morally, I should probably add something like—only if it’s not illegal or something that might cause you bodily harm. But.”

“But?”

She shrugs. “I’ve never been all that good at that sort of thing.”

“What, morals?”

“Yes.”

“Cool. Me neither.”

She grins at him, then tucks her pencil into her hair and spins in her chair to face him completely, waving her hands impatiently.

“So what’s the secret, then?” she asks.

Midoriya debates with himself.

On the one hand, if Hatsume was in on things, she could help him make the gear that he needs as Wisp. That list grows nearly every time that he goes out, and he’s struggling to keep up, since he doesn’t have a proper lab or any decent supplies except what he can scavenge from Dagobah.

On the other hand, there’s that thing called plausible deniability, and he hates to ask anyone to keep his secrets for him.

Even though he’s not technically doing anything illegal.

“Technically,” he says. “It’s not illegal.”

“Off to a great start.”

He throws the gear in his hand at her, and she ducks, laughing. It pings off of the wall and rolls underneath the engine block that Hatsume has temporarily given up on dismantling.

“I may or may not sort of be a vigilante,” he says. “Kind of.”

“I’m assuming the technically is because the law defines vigilantism as unlicensed quirk usage.”

“Exactly.”

“Right.”

“So…?”

“Am I supposed to be surprised?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never told anyone that I’m a vigilante before.”

“Fair.”

They regard each other.

Hatsume tilts her head.

“Can I help make you support gear?”

“Are you gonna tell anyone?”

“Are you gonna get yourself killed?”

“I’m not planning on it.”

“Then no.”

“Cool. I’m trying to make a mask with a voice modulator that’ll help conceal my identity, but the programming isn’t going as well as I was hoping.”

“Oh, oh, I have plans for something like that! Hang on.”

She disappears into the corner where her dented fireproof filing cabinet is, presumably to search for the plans in question, and Midoriya lets some of the tension that he’s been carrying drop away.

Someone knows.

Hatsume might not be the most responsible choice of person to share his secret with, but she’s the only one that he trusts with it.

The glowing eyes he caught watching him the other night are suddenly vivid in his mind. He chews on his lip, scratching absently at the sudden goosebumps on his arms.

It’ll have to be enough.

……………

Paranoia is a strange thing.

Midoriya isn’t unfamiliar with it. He knows what it’s like to flinch at the sound of footsteps, or shrink in on himself when someone nearby laughs just a little bit too loud. He’s scratched his skin raw when he couldn’t shake the crawling feeling that everyone was staring at him.

He’s had his share of sleepless nights. He used to sleep under his bed when he was younger and struggled with severe night terrors, when he was convinced that monsters were real; his reasoning had been that if he was under his bed, an actual monster couldn’t be.

But eventually, it starts to feel different. He jumps at sudden loud sounds, sure, but his thoughts don’t immediately start to run wild. He can overcome the initial response with logic, because he knows that not everything is out to get him.

Or at least, he could.

Aizawa is still convinced that it’s an unfortunate consequence of Midoriya’s latest—to his mentor’s knowledge, anyway—encounter with a villain.

He isn’t unsympathetic, far from it; he gives Midoriya tips in his usual gruff tone and shares occasional tidbits of his own experiences with hypervigilance and paranoia.

Aside from their first conversation on the subject, Midoriya doesn’t bring it up. If he pressed, he thinks, he wants to think, that Aizawa would believe him when he says that it’s more than—than PTSD, or something.

But it’d taken so much out of him to admit his feelings then, every time he so much as thinks about trying again, his tongue feels like it’s made of lead.

Bakugo, walking next to him, hands buried in his pockets, kicks at the sidewalk, scuffing his shoe, and Midoriya almost winces at the scraping sound of fabric on concrete.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Bakugo complains. “It’s giving me a headache.”

“I will push you into oncoming traffic.”

“No you won’t.”

“Fucking watch me.”

He shoves at Bakugo’s shoulder, and Bakugo shoves back at him, and then they’re wrestling in the middle of the sidewalk.

Neither of them put any actual effort into it. If they were fighting for real, both of them would come out of it bleeding, and they’re not willing to risk Inko’s wrath.

Midoriya ends up in a headlock. It’s loose enough that he could free himself if he bothered to try, which is a concession that he’d never expected from Bakugo.

He punches halfheartedly at Bakugo’s midsection.

“Stop bullying me,” he grumbles.

Bakugo huffs. “You started it.”

Midoriya isn’t really sure what to think of all the ways that his relationship with Bakugo has evolved in the past few weeks. They switch between vicious verbal sparring to lighthearted teasing to playful physical scuffles to tense silences to the sorts of wordless conversations that only happen after knowing someone for years.

There’s some pettiness, still. Midoriya hasn’t disabused Bakugo of the idea that the bandages on his arms are because he’s been self harming, and Bakugo occasionally ignores him for no reason at all, but they walk to school together every day, and sometimes—like today—they walk home together.

Bakugo flicks Midoriya in the middle of his forehead.

“Thinking,” he says, like a curse. “The hell are you stressing so much about?”

Midoriya sighs and shoves Bakugo’s arm off of him, straightening up and shaking his mussed hair out of his face.

“It’s nothing,” he says.

Bakugo crosses his arms.

“Bull fucking shit, it’s nothing,” he says. “Are you talking to Auntie about it, at least? Or the weird homeless guy?”

Midoriya makes a face at him.

“He’s not homeless,” he says.

“That’s not an answer.”

“I wasn’t trying to answer you; I was correcting you because you were wrong.”

Bakugo rolls his eyes. He uncrosses his arms and shoves them back into his pockets, and they start walking again.

They turn the corner onto their street, and Midoriya stiffens, looking around on instinct before his thoughts can catch up.

“What is it?” Bakugo asks.

Midoriya stares across the street. For just a moment, he thought he’d seen—but there’s nothing there.

He scratches at his arms. Bakugo reaches out and grabs his wrist to stop him, pulling his hand back down to his side.

“It’s—nothing,” he says.

Bakugo doesn’t let go of his wrist.

“It doesn’t look like it’s nothing.”

Midoriya doesn’t know what compels him to say anything other than a sarcastic insult—maybe it’s Bakugo’s hand, hot and sweaty as it always is but with not a single spark to be found. Or the way that underneath the mask of irritation, there’s clear concern in his red eyes.

“Everyone thinks that it’s—PTSD, or something,” he admits. He looks back across the street again. “But I just keep getting this feeling that someone’s watching me.”

Bakugo’s eyebrows rise. He follows Midoriya’s gaze, looking troubled, and scans the area, but of course there’s nothing.

He lets go of Midoriya’s wrist, slowly, but he steps slightly closer, until their shoulders are nearly brushing.

“You don’t think it’s—PTSD?” he asks.

Midoriya shrugs helplessly.

“It feels real,” he says. Almost insists. He realizes that he’s desperate for Bakugo to believe him. Or—for someone to believe him.

He wonders if he picked Bakugo as the person to finally say something to because it’ll hurt less if he calls him crazy.

“Guess it’s a good thing that you’re not alone, then,” Bakugo says, rolling his shoulders. He does it in the same way that he used to when he wanted to intimidate Midoriya, but Midoriya inexplicably feels himself relax a bit.

Because it isn’t directed at him.

“You believe me?” he asks.

Bakugo shrugs. “You’re not usually wrong. If you feel like someone’s watching you—someone probably is.”

Those words should be the opposite of comforting, and yet that’s exactly how Midoriya finds them.

“What happened to all those times you called me stupid?” Midoriya says, nudging him in the ribs with his elbow.

Bakugo scowls.

“I know you’re not getting the grades that you could be,” he says. “You’re not subtle. You mark answers wrong on purpose all the time. It’s irritating.”

Midoriya blinks at him. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised; Bakugo’s always been too observant for his own good.

“If I get too high of a grade, the teachers accuse me of cheating,” Midoriya says. “And I don’t want to be top of the class, anyway. That’s your spot.”

Bakugo’s scowl deepens.

“I hate you,” he grumbles.

“You wish you hated me.”

Bakugo glares at him, but he doesn’t argue.

For the first time, instead of breaking away at his house, he walks Midoriya all the way to his, even though it’s only two doors down.

He shuffles his feet on Midoriya’s front steps, staring down at his shoes and frowning so hard that Midoriya can’t help but wonder if it makes his face hurt.

“Don’t be stupid,” he finally says, with a light cuff to Midoriya’s shoulder.

Midoriya rolls his eyes.

“Go home, Bakugo.”

Chapter Text

Midoriya wakes to darkness, feeling as though he’s been turned inside out.

For a single panicked, disoriented moment, because in the age of quirks nothing is impossible, he wonders if he has been. But as more awareness returns to him in increments, he confirms to himself that he is, in fact, right side out.

He tries to think back. His whole body is sore, his skin itching and tingling like he’d brushed his fingers against a sparking wire.

There’d been—a man. He was frantically pacing back and forth on the crumbling asphalt edge of the alley between the Midoriya house and their neighbor, with a dog’s collar and leash clutched in his hand.

Looking back on it, Midoriya berates himself. It was such an obvious trap.

But the man seemed genuinely distressed. And his house was right there. He remembers weighing his options, deciding that even if the man was up to something, he’d be able to fight or yell for help long enough to get someone’s attention.

Evidently, he was wrong.

“Awake yet, sleeping beauty?”

The unfamiliar voice is low and throaty, and the sound of it has alarm clawing at his chest. Something about the tone is all wrong.

Unbidden, Midoriya thinks of a lullaby in a horror movie.

Alone, perfectly innocent. In context? Bone-chilling.

He opens his eyes.

And jerks back, smacking his head against—the wall?—in instinctual response to the face hovering inches away from his.

The woman cackles, straightening up and stepping back to put space between them. She’s wearing a dark tank top and black cargo pants, with her tied up out of her face. Her eyes are a dark orange, and what’s visible of her skin is heavily scarred, including a thick, ropy scar that cuts diagonally across her face, twisting her upper lip in a permanent smirk.

Midoriya doesn’t recognize her. His head still feels hazy, but he runs through his mental catalogue of known villains once, twice, and again, coming up empty every time.

She drags a chair over from one corner of the room, metal legs screeching across the concrete floor and making Midoriya cringe. She sits on it backwards, folding her arms over the back of it.

“You don’t look like much,” she says. “But appearances can be deceiving, can’t they? Tell me, kid, what’s your quirk? Gotta be something special, if you’re getting one on one training with a pro.”

Dread curls in Midoriya’s stomach.

They’d been so careful. They’d been so careful. And Eraserhead is an underground hero—there’s only supposed to be a handful of people, at most, who can recognize him on sight.

“Let’s see, something mental? Mind control? Emotional manipulation?” she guesses, watching Midoriya closely for any reaction. He does his best to school his expression and make sure that he doesn’t give her one, but it’s hard when he’s internally panicking, coming to terms with the situation that he’s in. “No? It’s obviously not a mutant quirk; you’re so plain-looking. Maybe an emitter type? Or some sort of augmentation?”

Midoriya looks around the room. It looks like an old-style industrial basement boiler room, inactive, most likely, since he doesn’t feel especially warm, even though several large pipes cross the wall near him.

He’s tied to a chair. His best guess is that it’s identical to the one the woman is sitting on—metal, so no breaking it.

At least two villains are involved with his kidnapping, probably three, because he doesn’t remember the man that had lured him off of the main sidewalk ever touching him or using an obvious quirk.

Although, he does remember feeling that the man was trustworthy, even though he’d never met him.

That should’ve been an immediate red flag. Midoriya never trusts anyone when he meets them for the first time.

When his eyes return to her, the woman has her chin propped in one hand, and she’s smiling at him like he’s a particularly interesting science experiment.

“It’s so cute, watching the little wheels turn in your brain,” she says. “You’re what, 11? So young. Adorable.”

He’s 13, but he’s not about to tell her that. And maybe if she thinks that he’s younger than he is, she’ll be less likely to be inclined towards getting physical with him.

“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue? Or are you always this quiet, little bunny?”

Midoriya thinks.

The woman is physically fit, though not bulky; she hasn’t bothered to hide her scars or face from view, especially her eyes, which are all factors that would serve to identify her fairly easily if any record of her existed. That could mean—three things.

One; she doesn’t care about being identified, maybe even wants the credit. This seems unlikely, considering that she’s presumably kidnapped him in order to target an underground hero that hardly anyone has ever heard of.

Two; there really is no record of her, meaning that it’d be impossible to identify her even if he had a picture. Practically impossible, but there are quirks that can erase records of people, and many of them do black market work for a price. Considering her scarred appearance, it’s also possible that she’s presumed dead, which would disqualify her from active databases.

Or three. She doesn’t plan for him to make it out of this with the ability to identify her.

“What do you want with Eraserhead?” he asks.

She grins, and spreads her hands, palms up.

“What don’t I want?” she says. She brings her hands back in to rest on the back of the chair. “He’s the reason I’m like this, you know.”

She traces the scar on her face, flicking her finger at the end with a flourish. There’s a manic gleam in her eyes.

It doesn’t make sense, though. Aizawa doesn’t use any weapons that can inflict that kind of damage—he carries two specialized utility knives, one on his belt and another in his boot, but those are for emergencies, or when he has to cut his capture weapon on the off chance it gets tangled or snagged by a villain.

“I can see your confusion,” she says. She’s still smiling. “He’s not the one who did this to me. Not directly. Stendhal did.”

Midoriya’s breath catches. He corrects it immediately, but she still notices.

“Ah, so you know him? Or you know of him, at least. He’s been getting up to some nasty things lately, or so I’ve heard. That’s no surprise to most of us on my side of things, though.”

“If Stendhal’s the one who hurt you, what does Eraserhead have to do with it?” Midoriya asks. Carefully, so carefully. He doesn’t know this villain, but he knows her type. He doesn’t know what might set her off, and he desperately doesn’t want to trigger an explosion.

“He’s always had a soft spot for vigilantes, Eraserhead,” she muses. “The night Stendhal did this to me, Eraserhead was there. I saw him, passing by. He looked right at me, where Stendhal had me pinned—and he kept going.”

“He didn’t save you,” Midoriya says.

She snarls, smacking her hands against the chair.

“I didn’t need saved,” she spits. “Stendhal needed to be stopped. He shouldn’t have had free reign to do what he did to me. He shouldn’t have free reign now. He’s worse than any of us, hero or villain—he thinks he can play both sides and get away with it.”

She takes a deep breath, and just as quickly as it’d twisted in the first place, her face settles back into a mask of calm.

“We’re not here about Stendhal, though,” she says. “We’re here about you. Little baby hero, taken under Eraserhead’s wing. Do you think he’ll come for you? Do you think he’ll notice that you’re gone? Oh, I hope so. I hope he comes crashing in here, just so that I can shatter his skull against the wall and watch the light go out in his eyes.”

Midoriya’s stomach twists.

A door crashes open and then shut.

“Hey, Blitz,” a voice calls. It’s oddly familiar. “Hijack wants to talk to you. You done terrorizing the kid yet?”

The woman that appears on the raised metal scaffolding on the opposite side of the room is wearing a mask the covers the top half of her face, shadowing her eyes, and she’s looking down at the phone in her hand, but between what he can see of her and the sound of her voice, it takes him less than a second to realize why she sounds familiar.

She was the first one that he led to safety past the Spiders.

His heart drops. His hair had been covered, and he was wearing a deep hood and a face mask, but if he could recognize her by her voice, chances are that she might recognize him by his. He bites down on the inside of his cheek.

Blitz sighs and swings her thigh over the top of the chair to stand up.

“And I was just starting to have fun,” she says. “What’s he need this time?”

The woman shrugs, flicking something out from under one of her nails with a dispassionate look on her face. “Dunno. Guess you better go and see, huh?”

She looks up for the first time, tossing her hair behind her shoulder, and freezes, staring him down.  

Midoriya wiggles against the rope tying him to the chair under her scrutiny.

Finally, she blinks. She looks at Blitz instead, where she’s leisurely crossing the room to the stairs.

“There’s a glitch in the matrix,” she says, solemnly.

Blitz rolls her eyes. “You spend too much time with your head in the internet. Have you lost it so much that you’re gonna start talking about yourself in the third person now, Glitch?”

Glitch blinks again, slowly. She looks back at Midoriya.

“No,” she says. She doesn’t say anything else, and when Blitz passes by her to the dark hallway, she turns and follows her out of the room.

Midoriya exhales.

“Fuck,” he says, voice hoarse.

The empty room doesn’t answer him.

……………….

Midoriya doesn’t understand.

The woman that he’d guided past the Spiders hadn’t seemed—villainous.

Disillusioned, maybe. Somewhat jaded. A lot of people are, these days, especially when they live in lower income areas with fewer active heroes and higher villain activity. Midoriya gets that. He feels that.

But there was no—malice. No hostility.

And yet here she is.

If she tells the others that he’s Wisp—and there’s no doubt that she knows, the way that she reacted to seeing him, although how she recognized him, he has no idea—he’s completely fucked.

He’s already pretty fucked as it is. But it’s fairly common knowledge to anyone who knows of Wisp that he partnered up with Stendhal more than once.

Blitz has a grudge against Eraserhead, sure, but she has an even bigger one against Stendhal. And while she hadn’t made a move to harm him physically, it hadn’t seemed like she wouldn’t.

He works his wrists back and forth, trying to loosen the ropes. He does it until his arms are sore and rubbed with stinging rope burn, and they don’t give even a little, and he has to give up before he ends up with blisters.

Instead, he inspects his surroundings.

From what he can tell, there aren’t any cameras. The lights that are on are bright, industrial, but they aren’t the original lights of the building, so likely they’re running electricity from some sort of generator rather than plugging into the city energy grid and drawing attention to an obviously abandoned building.

He’s been kidnapped. He’s being held for—something. Leverage, most likely, against Eraserhead. They haven’t killed him, so probably he’s not in imminent mortal danger. Which means that there’s something they want that they think they can get by using him as a bargaining chip.

Of course this happens the first day that he’d managed to convince Bakugo he’d be fine walking two houses away without an escort. No one is ever going to let him go anywhere without a chaperone ever again.

He groans and lets his head fall back on the wall behind him. He’s starting to think that his mom’s theory that he has a latent ‘trouble magnet’ quirk has merit.

The ceiling is a mess of pipes and wires and extra metal support beams. Plenty of places to hide and potentially stage an ambush against his captors, but he’d have to get out of the ropes, first.

He kicks his feet. Or, tries to. They don’t go anywhere with the rope securing his ankles to the chair legs.

The reality of it starts to kick in. He’s tied down. He’s alone. He has no idea how long he’s been gone, but it probably hasn’t been longer than a few hours. His mom had texted earlier in the day to say that she was going to be staying late at the office and likely wouldn’t be home until midnight, so chances are that no one has even realized he’s been taken yet.

He squeezes his eyes shut and forces himself to take a deep breath. The smell of the room—rust and dust and dirt—doesn’t help, but he keeps doing it anyway, because he can’t afford a panic attack. Not here. Not now.

He shoves it down. He shoves it all down, where it can’t reach him, until he feels disconnected and vaguely hazy.

When he gets out—when Aizawa figures out where he is and who took him and comes to get him. Then he’ll freak out.

But for now, he can’t let himself feel. He can’t give them anything that they can use against him.

For now, he has to survive.

Chapter Text

Sitting tied to a chair in the same position for hours is not comfortable.

Obviously Midoriya never thought that it would be. But he didn’t imagine it being this bad.

The tips of his fingers have been tingly and strange for the better part of an hour. His left foot is completely numb, his nose itches, and his butt hurts.

And no matter how much he squirms, he can’t alleviate even a single bit of the discomfort.

On top of it all, growing more and more urgent by the minute…he really, really needs to go to the bathroom.

He’s starting to wonder if the masterplan is to kidnap him and then just leave him in a warehouse for Aizawa to find like a taunt—ha ha, look what we can do—when he finally hears the sound of the door clanging.

His expectations are fairly low. Blitz is high on the list of visitors he’s expecting, mostly because she hadn’t seemed anywhere close to done with him, but instead the person who walks through the door is—Glitch.

She pauses at the top of the metal scaffolding, where she’d stopped during her first visit. Then she descends the stairs without saying a single word, finally coming to a stop a few feet in front of him and rocking on her feet, tapping her fingers uncertainly against the back of her phone, still held in one hand like a lifeline.

“I didn’t tell them,” she says suddenly. Her voice is soft, so that it doesn’t carry through the room. “About you. They only know you as the middle school kid that Eraserhead’s been training, and I had no idea that you were—you.”

Midoriya studies her.

The look on her face isn’t exactly remorse. But there’s a waver in her eyes. A hint of uncertainty.

He can work with that.

“Why?” he asks.

She blinks at him, much like she’d done when she recognized him. Her eyes are a dark green, like his, but this close he can see that there are brighter green spokes and rings like mechanized parts spinning around her pupil. He hadn’t noticed that the night they met. He’d been a little preoccupied trying to make sure that they both stayed alive.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” she asks, completely ignoring his own question.

His cheeks flush. He nods.

“Figured,” she says. “Come on, then, there’s one in the hall. If you try anything, I’m supposed to tase you.”

“Would I even get that far if I did try something?”

“No.”

She unties him from the chair, and he sighs with relief when he finally stands up, although he stumbles immediately and has to catch himself with his hands—now bound in front of him, slightly looser, so his fingertips have stopped tingling—on the arm of the chair.

“Sorry,” he says. “I can’t feel my feet.”

She rolls her eyes, but she waits with only slight impatience for him to regain enough feeling to walk without faceplanting onto the concrete floor. She doesn’t touch him when he’s ready to go; just waves for him to go ahead of her and follows close behind.

The bathroom she leads him to is about halfway down the dark hallway that leads from the metal scaffolding. He can see the door that he’s been able to hear—metal, heavily reinforced, and very likely locked from the outside.

Glitch moves around him so that she’d between him and the door, then waves towards the much more nondescript door on the left side of the hallway.

He opens it, and makes a face.

“Really?” he asks.

The bathroom could be worse.

Probably. But a janitor obviously hasn’t touched it in years, and whoever bothered to give it a cursory clean very clearly didn’t know what they were doing.

“Hijack and Blitz wanted to make you use a bucket,” Glitch tells him. “Didn’t want the risk that you might manage to wiggle away if we let you leave the room.”

“Right. This is fine.”

She huffs—something that might almost be a laugh—and waves him forward.

“The door doesn’t lock,” she says. “But you can shut it. There’s nothing in there that you could possibly use against us anyway.”

Midoriya recognizes that she’s treating him significantly better than he’d expect from most kidnappers, especially ones that know he’s a vigilante. He nods gratefully at her, and pushes the door shut behind him with his foot.

Despite her words, he gives it a quick search anyway. The only items of any use are cleaning supplies under the sink, but all of them are too bulky for him to conceal on his person. Still, he makes note of it anyway, and then he does his business and rinses his hands in the sink. Without anything to dry them, he wipes them on his pants as best as he can, and then he opens the door.

Glitch is leaning against the wall, one arm crosses over her waist with the elbow of her other arm propped on it, looking at her phone again. She raises an eyebrow at him.

“There’s running water?” he says, tone turning it into a question. With the lights obviously being rigged to run off of something other than the main power grid, he hadn’t expected any of the utilities to be functioning.

She nods, pushing off of the wall and pocketing her phone.

“The building is considered a combustion risk, so the city keeps the water turned on to make sure that the sprinklers stay operational. Otherwise, one stray spark and the whole place goes up.”

Midoriya files the information away.

“Why bother telling me?” he asks.

She shrugs.

“Not like it’ll help you,” she says. “Even if you somehow manage to narrow down where you are, you can’t do anything about it. You don’t have any way of communicating with the outside world.”

Which…is a fair point.

“You don’t seem like much of a villain,” he says, and she shoots a sharp look at him, scanning his face as though looking for any hint that his statement has ulterior motives.

It doesn’t. It’s just an honest observation.

She waves for him to walk in front of her again, and they return to the boiler room, where she gives him a water bottle that he drinks half of before she reties him to the chair. He might be imagining it, after having the chance to stretch his sore muscles, but he thinks that the ropes might not be as tight as they were before.

“I really don’t get why you’re a part of this,” he says, before she can leave. “I mean, no one’s bothered to give me a rundown of what exactly is going on, but Blitz made it pretty clear that whoever’s involved has a grudge against Eraserhead. It doesn’t seem like you have the same motive.”

She sighs.

“You’re relentless, you know that?” she says. “And you’re not making it any easier for me to hate you.”

“Oh, good. That was my goal. Being hated really puts a damper on trying to make new friends.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Why not?”

“I am literally part of a group that kidnapped you.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

“Do you have any sense of self-preservation at all?”

“You know what I spend my nights doing, so I feel like that’s a rhetorical question.”

She shakes her head and rubs at her temples. He smiles innocently at her.

“Right,” she says. “My motive? I have zero hope in the future of humanity, and Hijack pays well. That’s it.”

And, honestly—Midoriya can’t really fault her for that. They’re doing fine now, but there was a time shortly after his dad left, when he was too young for school and too young to be left on his own where his mom struggled to balance work and parenthood, and the bills didn’t stop to give her the chance to figure things out. Up until middle school, it wasn’t easy for her to make ends meet on her own.

Then she got her first big client at the firm, and the higher-ups were forced to acknowledge her skill.

Midoriya knows more than most people his age about what motivates people to become villains. Money and discrimination are the top two, and they often go hand in hand.

“Why the lack of hope in humanity?” he asks. He gets that too, but it usually takes a bit longer for misanthropy to set in and lead to a life of villainy.

“My quirk,” she says. Her tone is short and clipped, and he doesn’t say anything, because he can recognize a possible turning point when he sees one. She sighs again. “I call it ‘Dark Web.’ My mother had an honesty quirk—whenever she touched someone, they’d be compelled to spill their darkest secrets. And my father had a decryption quirk.”

She pauses, spinning her finger around one of the drawstrings of her hoodie. After a moment, she holds her hand out in front of herself, staring at her palm.

“Every time I touch a piece of tech that’s connected to the internet, I’m flooded with the worst secrets humanity has to offer. But I can’t do anything about it, because no matter how much I improve my hacking skills, the few bits of proof I can come up with are rarely taken seriously by the police. Beyond personal records—address, phone number, purchase history—they don’t consider the internet to be a credible source. So I’m stuck with all of these terrible secrets, knowing that most of the people responsible for them will never see justice.”

Midoriya has to bite down on his tongue to stop himself from spouting questions like an overflowing sink.

“Can you control it?” he asks. The one question that he can’t help. “If you want to find a secret about a specific person, can you focus it on them?”

“If it exists for me to find, I’ll find it,” she says. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’d be an awesome support hero.”

She stares at him.

He blinks. “What?”

“You’re unbelievable, kid,” she says. “I’m a villain. After this—kidnapping someone directly under the protection of a pro hero, underground or not—I’ll be considered an accomplice at best. And I’m already 20. No hero school would accept me.”

Midoriya shrugs as best he can, restrained as he is. “You’re keeping my secret. I’d keep yours.”

Her eyes study him again, for a long, long moment.

“Don’t try to empathize with Blitz,” she says abruptly. “It won’t do you any good. Don’t piss her off, either; that’d be even worse. I’ll try to convince them to keep their hands off for as long as possible. But they want information, and Blitz and Hijack don’t especially care what they have to do to get it. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” he says. His mouth tastes sour. But he forces himself to meet her eyes. “Thank you.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t. I don’t deserve it.”

And before he can even try to argue with her, she turns and leaves the room, and he’s alone all over again.

…………………..

Midoriya doesn’t know what to do with being kidnapped.

He’s pretty sure there’s probably some paragraph in a textbook somewhere that says he’s supposed to sit tight and wait for rescue, and he trusts Aizawa’s competence, but he’s never been very good at doing nothing.

Unfortunately, that’s all he can do. He’s tried the ropes, over and over, and now has abrasions on his ankles as well as his wrists to show for it. He’s guessing that the restraints were made by a quirk, because they’re significantly less forgiving than the average rope that might be found at a hardware store.

It has to be night by now. The bright fluorescent lights are messing with his internal clock, but he’s fairly sure that he’s right about that. If he’s lucky, someone has noticed that he never made it home.

The distance that he’d plunged himself into when he’d felt the first stirrings of panic is starting to fade. Being tied down aches—in more ways than just one. His chest feels like it might crack open, but he tilts his head back to lean it against the wall and stare at the ceiling.

Panicking won’t help. 

Aizawa…please.

He thinks this might be the first time that he’s hoped for someone else to come save him in years. After a while, he’d learned that hoping and being disappointed over and over again hurt more than never letting himself hope at all.

His head snaps up at the increasingly familiar sound of that all-too-distant reinforced door clanging open and shut. He watches the shadowed mouth of the doorway, and dread curls in his stomach when he sees that it isn’t Glitch.

Blitz is walking behind the shadow of a tall, muscular man. His hair is cropped short, revealing a wicked scar that curves over his left ear, but he’s dressed professionally, in sleek black dress pants and a crisp white button-down shirt.

He takes a seat on the chair that Blitz had used, after turning it around to face him properly, and clasps his hands over his stomach. Blitz hovers behind him, arms crossed and expression tight with poorly-concealed irritation.

“Hello, Midoriya Izuku,” the man says. “My name is Hijack.”

Chapter Text

Midoriya and Hijack stare each other down.

He doesn’t count, but it lasts for a good long while. Blitz is the one to break the silence first, by scoffing and muttering something under her breath that Midoriya can’t make out but which he’d guess includes a few choice curse words, judging from the sharp look it earns her from Hijack.

The spike of triumph he feels when Hijack breaks eye contact first doesn’t last for very long.

“What do you want with me?” he asks.

“Well, now,” Hijack says. He glances at Blitz again. “That’s a complicated question, isn’t it, Blitz? The short answer is that we don’t want anything with you. This whole nasty business could’ve been avoided entirely.”

“Because you’re a pussy,” Blitz says. “You threw in with the wrong pro hero, kid. Eraserhead has a lot to answer for. And since we can’t get to him—”

“What my colleague here means,” Hijack interrupts, holding up a hand to stop her from interjecting again, “is that we have a particular…interest…in your mentor. If you cooperate with us, and answer any questions that we have, there’s no reason for this to get nasty.”

Midoriya highly doubts that, but he doesn’t let himself do anything so obvious as raising an eyebrow. Instead he just looks between Hijack and Blitz, and the obvious tension between the two of them.

They’re both leaders. Midoriya doesn’t think they enjoy playing nice, even for a little bit, and they’re only doing it for the sake of their goal. They seem just as likely to stab each other in the back.

“I don’t know what I could tell you,” he says. “If you’ve been following me, you already know everything that I do.”

Hijack tilts his head.

“I don’t think that’s true,” he says. He stands, smoothing down his shirt even though there isn’t a single wrinkle in sight. “We’ll see how you feel after it’s more obvious that no one’s coming to rescue you. Eraserhead will do anything to protect his privacy. You’re just collateral damage to him. Are you listening, Midoriya Izuku? You mean nothing to him.”

Midoriya sets his jaw defiantly. Hijack sweeps his eyes over him from head to toe, nods to himself, and turns, waving for Blitz to follow.

As soon as they’re gone, Midoriya deflates. He glances down to find his hands shaking uncontrollably, and balls them into fists to try and stop such an obvious show of weakness.

It doesn’t work.

………….

They don’t come back. Eventually, the lights go out, and Midoriya has a full blown panic attack for the first time, sitting restrained in darkness so thick he can’t even see the end of his own nose.

When he gets his breathing under control again, he berates himself for it. Stupid, letting something as small as a lack of light get to him.

He’s sure they’re planning much, much worse.

Without the hum of the lights, the room is stiflingly silent, and he takes to counting backwards from a hundred, over and over again, trying to keep himself calm.

After a while, despite the dryness of his mouth and the rapid fluttering of his pulse, exhaustion sweeps over him, and he falls into a restless sleep.

He wakes what feels like every few minutes. He tries to at least keep his eyes closed; he needs to get as much rest as he possibly can to keep himself from messing up. He can’t afford to make mistakes in his current situation.

The lights turn back on. It feels early, but he has no way of knowing that for sure. Shortly after, he hears the door clanging open, and Glitch appears at the end of the hallway.

She doesn’t say anything, and neither does he. She unties him from the chair and leads him down the hallway to use the bathroom again, then resecures his legs to the chair, leaving his hands somewhat free, and hands him a bottle of water.

He’d worry about the water being drugged, but if he doesn’t drink it, dehydration will kill him in a few days.

Glitch offers him a protein meal bar after he’s downed half of the water, and he tucks the bottle between his thighs so that he can eat it.

“Hijack isn’t the one that you need to worry about,” Glitch finally says, breaking the silence.

He looks up at her, a bit surprised. He tilts his head instead of responding out loud, since he’s still chewing, and she fidgets anxiously with the ends of her sleeves.

“Blitz has a partner,” she says, then hesitates. She exhales loudly. “The two of them are—they’re sadists. They like to make people hurt. Hijack, he doesn’t have anything against violence if it accomplishes his goals, but he doesn’t enjoy it like they do.”

Midoriya nods slowly, taking in the information.

“Thank you,” he says.

She shakes her head. “Don’t. You should hate me. Why don’t you hate me?”

He shrugs. “We don’t always get to choose what we become. I understand that better than you think I do.”

“I think you’re crazy. But that might be a good thing. It means that you might stand a chance of getting out of this alive.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

Midoriya finishes his protein bar, then the rest of his water. Glitch takes the trash and then ties his arms back to the chair.

His fingers twitch and itch while she does it, but he forces himself not to fight against her or try to overpower her. It won’t do him any good—he knows that he’d be caught before he ever made it out of the building, and Glitch is the closest thing to an ally that he has in this mess.

She pauses a few steps away from him.

“They were hoping that Eraserhead would contact them last night,” she says. “If he doesn’t show up today…they’re probably going to try and force information out of you.”

Midoriya grimaces.

“Torture,” he says, flatly. “Great. Something to look forward to.”

Glitch snorts.

“Who even are you, kid?” she asks.

Midoriya doesn’t have an answer for her. She leaves without waiting for one.

……………

Glitch visits a few more times, taking him to the bathroom and giving him water. She apologetically tells him that the protein bar was all that she had permission to give him, which doesn’t surprise him all that much.

They want him alive, not strong.

By his estimate, it’s sometime in the evening when Glitch isn’t the only one who appears on top of the scaffolding.

Instead, it’s Hijack and Blitz, followed by a woman that he doesn’t recognize who seems to sync herself with every move Blitz makes—her partner, most likely, then—Glitch, and the sweaty businessman that Midoriya remembers luring him into the alley.

Hijack takes a seat in the only chair. Blitz and her partner flank him, just behind his shoulders, and Glitch and the businessman hang back, both looking pale and vaguely sick.

“Your mentor doesn’t seem to care much for you,” Hijack says in a conversational tone. “We even left him a note, so that he’d know exactly what crimes we’re planning to make him pay for. But there hasn’t been a single sign of him. How does that make you feel?”

Midoriya shrugs as best as he can. “He knows how to disappear when he needs to. If you haven’t seen him, it’s because he doesn’t want to be seen.”

Hijack’s lip curls with irritation.

“Unfortunately for you,” he says, “your mentor’s silence forces us to resort to more unsavory methods to get the information that we need.”

Midoriya’s been tense since they walked into the room, but at Hijack’s words, his muscles feel like they might snap under the pressure.

“I don’t know anything that would help you,” he tries, hoping that his desperation doesn’t leak into his voice. He isn’t afraid of a little pain—he’s long past that—but as much as he’s been through, he’s not so sure that he can withstand being tortured by sadistic villains with a score to settle.

“We’ll see,” Hijack says. He waves a hand, and Blitz steps forward, stopping only once she’s uncomfortably close to him, forcing him to crane his neck awkwardly to look up at her face.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” she says, smiling. “I don’t get to work with kids very often, you know. Your screams are always so much sweeter.”

Midoriya’s eyes flicker to the side. Glitch looks as though she might throw up, but she doesn’t avoid his eyes, and for some reason, that brings him a small measure of comfort.

He looks back up at Blitz.

“Karma will find you out,” he says. “You’ll get your reckoning, now or later. And when it comes, I hope you remember me.”

She rolls her eyes.

“What is Eraserhead’s civilian name?” she asks. She leans over him, bracing her hands on the back of the chair, her face so close that he can smell—ash, surprisingly, and something that reminds him of Hatsume’s workshop.

He takes a deep, slow breath without looking away from her.

“I don’t know,” he lies.

She tilts her head. There’s a spark of mania in her eyes, and he knows that he won’t be getting through this unscathed.

“Don’t look away,” Hijack murmurs, just loud enough that Midoriya hears him. “You need to learn what happens to those who get in our way.”

Blitz straightens up. She runs a blunt nail along the side of his jaw, and then she backhands him so hard that his vision whites out for several long seconds.

When he blinks himself back into awareness, he can feel blood trickling down the side of his face. He focuses on the ring on her hand, and knows that he’s going to have at least one new scar to add to his collection.

“I don’t have anything to tell you,” he says, tiredly.

Blitz smiles wolfishly at him.

“Then you’re about to have a very long night,” she says.

The door clangs.

Everyone turns to look. Blitz is visibly irritated by the interruption, and Hijack is the same, although he hides it slightly better. Glitch and the businessman, who’s patting at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief, both look confused.

“Blitz,” a rough voice calls. “Where’s my fucking money?”

The most scarred man that Midoriya has ever seen emerges from the hallway. The scars are the deep purple color of dead tissue, and cover a good portion of the parts of his body that are visible. The closer he gets, the worse that it looks, and Midoriya can’t help but watch him and wonder how he’d managed to survive the pain that would’ve accompanied such terrible wounds.

“Dabi,” Blitz says, distastefully. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Dabi shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and strides arrogantly across the room. Midoriya notes everything that he can, including the slight shake to his limbs and his extreme thinness, typically attributed to eating disorders or drug use. The man doesn’t seem scared despite the looks on the faces of the villains he’s come to see, and Midoriya would guess that after whatever happened in his past—is his skin stapled on?—a few villains don’t seem all that fearsome.

“Look, I followed the kid for you,” Dabi says, and oh. That makes a horrible amount of sense. Midoriya’s chest aches as he realizes that he recognizes the man’s blue eyes. “I told you where you could find him, and when, and the easiest way to lure him so that you could get him alone. You promised to pay me for my work, and I’m here to collect.”

Blitz crosses her arms.

“You shouldn’t have interrupted us,” Hijack says. “I don’t appreciate it when my work is delayed. Especially by something as mundane as greed.”

“It isn’t greed,” Dabi says. “I did my job. I’m sure you can agree that working for free doesn’t make for a very good business model, right, Hijack?”

“Blitz.”

“There’s a shipment of heroin coming in at the end of the week,” Blitz says. “You can take your pick.”

Dabi stiffens. It wouldn’t be noticeable if Midoriya wasn’t watching his body language for any minute changes.

“I don’t do that anymore,” he says.

“Really? I wouldn’t have guessed,” Blitz says. “You still look like a junkie to me.”

Dabi’s mouth twists in a silent snarl. “I was promised cash. I’m here for cash. I won’t take drugs as payment.”

“I don’t see the point of that, when you’re just going to spend the money on drugs anyway,” Blitz says. “But whatever. Fine. Roach.”

The businessman’s head snaps up. Sweat starts dripping from his face again.

“Yes?”

“Take care of Dabi, would you? Make sure that he’s compensated properly for the work that he’s done for us.”

“Of course,” Roach says, bowing. He pats at his face with his handkerchief again, and then he scurries away as quickly as he can, ushering Dabi in front of him.

For just a moment, Midoriya meets Dabi’s eyes.

He could swear that he sees a flicker of something like regret.

Chapter Text

By the time that they all leave him for the night, Midoriya’s face is black and blue. He has a split lip, and there’s dried blood crusted on the side of his face from the cut caused by Blitz’s ring.

His entire body aches. He closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing to try to keep himself steady, but he’s fairly sure that it’s been over 24 hours since he was first taken, and he knows too much about statistics to feel especially hopeful about his odds of rescue.

The lights go off, and he laughs.

It’s a deranged sound, and it somehow is both echoed and muffled by the underground boiler room that’s been repurposed as his cell, which only makes it worse.

When the hysteria leaves him, he throws his head back against the wall hard enough that it makes his skull ring with pain, but he barely even registers it.

No one is coming to save him.

He inhales sharply. The thought stings more than it should. He’s never known anything different. Except—except once. Except for the night that Aizawa had shown up just in time to talk him down from giving up.

The one time that he hadn’t asked for it because he didn’t want it.

He grits his teeth. It makes his sore jaw ache even worse, but he ignores it.

So he’s alone again. So he can’t rely on Aizawa to get him out of this—that’s nothing new. The odds might not be in his favor, but when have they ever been?

He’ll just have to save himself.

To that end—he thinks he might be able to convince Glitch to help him. She’s already sympathetic, and from the slight guilt that he’s caught from her, feels that she owes him something for the night that he’d led her safely home.

She doesn’t. But it’ll serve his purposes to let her think that she does.

The businessman they’d referred to as Roach, given how incredibly nervous he’d been both times that Midoriya’s seen him, probably isn’t helping the villains willingly. But that also means that whatever they’re holding over his head is powerful enough for them to trust him not to betray them.

He’s out. Blitz and her partner, along with Hijack, all have zero qualms about hurting him.

Dabi—it’d been hard to accurately guess his age, with all the scars, but Midoriya’s pretty sure that he’s somewhere around Glitch’s age. Early 20s, at the oldest.

And he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t feel regret.

But Midoriya doesn’t think he’s really a part of the group, and if he got his payment as promised, it’s unlikely that he’ll come back for any reason.

So his plan to escape has to hinge on gaining the trust and assistance of a woman with little to no combat experience who believes that the human race is unsalvageable.

Midoriya grinds his teeth together for a moment, then forces himself to stop. He shrugs, rolling his shoulders, trying to force the doubt down to somewhere that he can’t feel it.

He’s done more with less. He defeated a villain with a body count in the dozens—that they even know of—with a trigonometry textbook.

Remembering that villain’s extensive rap sheet has nausea curdling in his stomach, but he shakes his head and then squeezes his eyes shut against the dizziness that makes the room spin.

He’ll have to act sooner rather than later. If he waits too long, he won’t be in any shape to move, let alone escape past three A-level villains.

Judging by the frustration that Blitz hadn’t bothered to hide as the group of them left him, he has a few days at best.

At worst, if he doesn’t come up with something tomorrow, he’s going to die here.

……………..

DAY THREE

Hijack is the one to take him for his morning bathroom break and give him water and breakfast (another protein bar). He keeps a mild smile on his face the entire time while keeping up a stream of inane chatter—the weather, political news, the latest celebrity scandals. Likely this is an attempt to lull Midoriya into a false sense of security, but the smile is obviously false and it just makes Hijack look like even more of a psychopath.

He doesn’t immediately tie Midoriya to the chair again when they get back to the boiler room. Instead he gestures for him to take a seat and then does the same in the spare chair across from him.

“Loyalty is an admirable quality,” he says, after a few beats of silence. “But it becomes stupidity more often than you might think.”

“It kind of feels like you just called me stupid.”

“Not at all. Just—food for thought, young Midoriya.”

Midoriya presses his mouth into a thin line and bites down on his tongue to hold back several choice words that he’d like nothing more than to spit into the villain’s face.

“Loyalty really has nothing to do with this,” he says, as levelly as he can manage. “I can’t tell you anything that you’d care about. Unless you want to know that his usual ice cream order is matcha flavor.”

It isn’t. Midoriya doesn’t know Aizawa’s usual ice cream order. He makes a note to ask the man if he makes it out of this alive. It seems like good information to know.

Not necessarily useful. Just. Good.

Hijack’s smile twists just a bit, like he’s repressing a grimace. He folds his hands neatly in his lap and sits back, one ankle crossed over the other knee. He’s dressed down today, in a polo shirt and khakis, like he’s trying to imitate the image of a laidback dad from an American movie.

It doesn’t really work for him.

“By our estimate, you’ve been a student of Eraserhead for three months now,” he says. “As much as I’d like to believe you when you say that the most interesting thing you know about him is his ice cream order—and I really would—I just can’t quite find the truth in it.”

“You said yourself that he’s especially good at keeping his private life private,” Midoriya says. “Why is it so hard to believe that he wouldn’t share his secrets with his 13-year-old student?”

“Because he’s never taken a personal student before,” Hijack says. “Outside of the upstart hero wannabes that he teaches at UA, he has nothing to do with children unless they need saving.” 

That’s still mostly true, Midoriya thinks. Eraserhead never would have become his mentor if he hadn’t needed saving at the beginning of it all.

He shrugs. “I think he just pities me.”

Hijack’s smile turns into a hard line.

“Eraserhead doesn’t feel pity,” he says.

He gets to his feet, this time fixing the already perfect collar of his shirt instead of smoothing out imaginary wrinkles.

“For your sake, I hope that your loyalty doesn’t run that deep,” he says. “I gave you a chance to do this the easy way. Tomorrow, Blitz gets free reign.”

Midoriya bites back a hysterical laugh. He wants to make a comment about stereotypes, but instead he just meets Hijack’s gaze with a hard look of his own, jaw set with determination.

Hijack ties him back to the chair and then leaves him without another word.

…………..

Glitch comes down later. Sometime in the afternoon, if Midoriya has to guess. She unties him and takes him to the bathroom, graciously pretending that he doesn’t stumble from a rush of dizziness upon standing up, and even goes so far as to hand over a handful of antiseptic wipes for the places that his skin had split during Biltz’ first interrogation.

It’s when they’re back in the boiler room and she’s reaching for the ropes that he first tries his luck, reaching out and setting a hand lightly on her arm.

“Not—yet,” he says, pleading. “Please.”

She chews at her lip, then nods, stepping a few feet away from him and crossing her arms like she’s hugging herself.

“You should just tell them,” she says.

He shakes his head. “There’s nothing to tell.”

She fixes him with a look. It’s easy to decipher the meaning behind it. I know that you’re lying, but I won’t call you out on it, because it’ll just put both of us in more danger.

“Blitz—it’s not pretty, what she does to people,” she says. “I mean—”

She gestures vaguely at Midoriya’s face, which is no doubt bruised black and blue. He has no way of knowing for sure; the bathroom doesn’t have a mirror.

“Even if I could tell them something, I wouldn’t,” he says, a bit tiredly. “Eraserhead—he was there for me when no one else was. I won’t betray his trust.”

Glitch’s face twists. She almost looks like she’s trying not to cry.

Or maybe just trying not to feel.

“No one deserves that,” she says, and her voice is a bit hoarse. “You know that, Midoriya? I know the secrets of millions of people. Not a single one of them comes close to deserving the type of selflessness you give out as though it’s nothing.”

Midoriya doesn’t know how to respond to that. Something in his chest feels like it might crack open, and he can’t afford that, so he swallows it down and hunches into himself—a luxury he can indulge for the moment, without restraints tying him in place.

“I’m not selfless,” he says.

“You’re the closest to it that I’ve ever seen. And it’s just going to get you killed.”

Glitch’s expression goes bitter and angry, then, and she steps forward, shaking her head, to retie the ropes.

He doesn’t try to stop her again.

As she leaves, he calls out to her one last time.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he says, softly. Only just loud enough for her to hear.

She pauses, spine stiff. But she doesn’t respond, and after a moment, she continues walking, disappearing once more down the dark hall that leads out of Midoriya’s temporary cell.

He sighs to himself, and twists his neck to itch the side of his nose on his shoulder.

If Aizawa finds him after tomorrow, he doesn’t feel very confident that his mentor will be able to recognize him.

Not after Blitz has her way.

……………

DAY FOUR

Midoriya’s cheek stings as Blitz lands another hit.

“Brat,” she says, spitting it like it’s the worst sort of curse word.

He swallows back blood and grimaces at the metallic taste of it. His shoulders shift almost without his conscious input, trying to find a position that doesn’t strain them as much.

Blitz puts her hands on his arms and looms over him, so that their faces are only inches away.

“I keep telling Hijack that we should kill you and be done with it,” she says, lowly. “Leave your body in a dumpster for Eraserhead to find. He’ll have to respond if we do that, won’t he? Even if he doesn’t want to, the Hero Commission would step in. Can’t have villains thinking that they can target the people heroes care about and get away with it.”

Midoriya grits his teeth. It hurts, but it pushes away some of the haze that’s been fogging his thoughts since he woke up in the early hours of the morning, feeling lightheaded and colder than he should be, even in a basement.

“If you were going to kill me, you would’ve done it already,” he says.

She snarls in his face and pushes herself backwards, pacing in front of him. Her partner is sitting silently on the chair, steadily sharpening a curved knife. It doesn’t even seem like an intimidation tactic from her, just an idle activity.

“Hijack thinks that you’re useful,” Blitz says. “I think he’s full of shit. He just wants to use you as a hostage so that he can trade you for the location of his family—”

She cuts herself off, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

“He’s an idiot,” she says. Conversationally, she continues, “He told me that I just have to keep you alive. And able to talk, which means that I can’t cut out your tongue, unfortunately. It’d be nice not to have to hear that whiny voice of yours anymore. And the screams after are always so much more—pure.” 

Midoriya clenches his hands into fists until his knuckles turn white.

“I don’t have any information to give you,” he says, struggling to keep his voice even. “I’m just a kid; he wouldn’t tell me anything. He doesn’t trust me like that.”

Blitz scoffs.

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” she says. “A lot of people make that mistake. It’s usually the last one they ever make.”

“I don’t think that you’re stupid,” Midoriya says, monotone.

He doesn’t. He isn’t stupid. He can recognize a formidable opponent when he sees one.

Blitz paces some more. Back and forth, back and forth, to the point that he’s surprised her heavy boots aren’t wearing a track in the concrete floor.

“The police have contacted us,” she says abruptly. “Through the news. We left a message for Eraserhead, see. At the place that we took you from. But his name hasn’t been so much as mentioned. Everyone’s pretending that he has nothing to do with this.”

“That must be frustrating,” Midoriya says, trying for a diplomatic tone.

Blitz turns to look at him, the corner of her mouth quirking up into a knowing smirk. “Don’t try to sympathize with me. It won’t work.”

He shrugs. “Worth a shot.”

“I do have to admire your spirit,” she says. “I can’t say I’ve ever met a kid who didn’t wet their pants the moment I threatened them, before you.”

“Thanks,” Midoriya says, dryly.

“It won’t do you any good. Where were we? Right. What people does Eraserhead have regular contact with?”

“Other than me?”

That earns him another punch.

And so it begins again.

……………….

DAY FIVE

“I’m kind of surprised that you’re not dead yet,” Glitch says. She’s leaning against the wall, while Midoriya is soaking up every moment that he can of being allowed to stretch out in a sprawl on the concrete floor. “Blitz really isn’t known for her self control.”

“Apparently she has a vested interest in following Hijack’s orders for the time being,” Midoriya says. He stretches and groans when his back cracks in three different places. “She’s probably going to kill him when she gets what she wants, you know.”

“Oh, I know. I have a contingency plan. She might get Hijack, but she won’t get me. I know too many of her secrets.”

“As long as you’re aware.”

They lapse into silence again.

Glitch shuffles a bit closer, looking down at him where he’s stretched out as much as he can be with his wrists still bound together in front of his stomach.

“Why are you trying so hard?” she asks.

Midoriya blinks up at her. Then he looks past her, unfocusing his eyes so that the fluorescent lights streak across his field of vision like shooting stars.

“There are good people,” he says. “And they don’t deserve a world like this. I want to make it better. For them.”

Glitch inhales, then exhales. She uncrosses her arms and stuffs her hands into her pockets.

“You can’t do anything for anyone if you’re dead,” she says.

Midoriya nods. It’s all he can do. He doesn’t know how to explain the tangle of emotions going on inside of him. How Eraserhead is the first adult that he’s kind of sort of trusted in years, and he won’t return the favor by betraying him. How he won’t let himself give into villains even if it might save his life because then he feels like he might be just as bad as them.

How part of him, a whispering voice that he’s trying his best to ignore, still thinks that the best thing he can do for anyone anyway is to die.

Glitch doesn’t ask. She has to see the turmoil in his expression—but she doesn’t ask.

Midoriya summons a smile just for her. She doesn’t return it, but he doesn’t mind.

He has to appreciate the little things.

Or he’ll go crazy.

……………..

DAY SEVEN

Midoriya barely manages to keep down the protein bar that Glitch brings him. He probably wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t thrown up bile in the bathroom before she’d brought him back to the boiler room and given him food and water.

He’s not sure if it’s the lack of food or the repetitive beatings that are causing the nausea, but he isn’t much of a fan.

“Do you really still think that the heroes are going to find you?” Glitch asks. There’s no malicious intent behind the question, even though it’s incredibly similar to several things that Blitz has spit at him when he’s refused to give her any useful information for the thousandth time. “It’s been a week. Hijack’s getting restless; the only notice he’s gotten is a statement that was released by the police, and that was just a generic plea to return you safely to your family. Laid pretty heavy on the single mom and only son thing, I think trying to generate sympathy. Didn’t work.”

Midoriya rubs his right thumb repeatedly over the rope around his left wrist. Even after a week, it shows no sign of wear, with not a single frayed thread in sight. The ligature marks on his arms and ankles are the only proof he has that he’s been pulling against them.

“The police are probably operating under the assumption that you’re already dead,” Glitch continues, almost conversationally. “They haven’t asked for proof of life, and we haven’t sent them any. Not that it matters. That can be faked pretty easily these days.”

“You’re great at pep talks,” Midoriya says.

Glitch rolls her eyes. “So? What is it? Why haven’t you given up?”

And isn’t that the question.

“I never expected to be saved,” he says. “And even if I knew information that could help Blitz and Hijack kill Eraserhead—which I don’t—I have a responsibility not to share it, don’t I? If I tell them something, and they use that to take down a pro hero, then I’ve just indirectly killed dozens, if not hundreds of people, because I was responsible for the death of someone who would’ve saved them.”

Glitch stares at him.

“That’s the most twisted logic I’ve ever heard,” she says. “What kind of mental gymnastics are you doing to shovel all that blame onto yourself?”

“I know that whatever Blitz and Hijack have planned, it’s nothing good,” Midoriya says, ignoring the pointed comment. “I won’t help them do it. That’s all.”

She shakes her head at him and blows out a frustrated breath.

“You’re insane.”

He shrugs. He doesn’t argue.

Studying her face, he can see more cracks in her mask than ever. There’s guilt, remorse, and helplessness—she doesn’t feel like she has the ability to do anything for him.

But she wants to. And that’s the important part.

“What kind of warehouse is this, anyway?’ he asks. He tries to keep his tone as casual as possible, so that she can keep a sense of plausible deniability if she wants to.

“Why?”

“Curiosity. You don’t have to tell me if you can’t; I just thought I’d ask.”

He keeps his best innocent expression firmly in place. Apparently it’s not very good, because she stares pointedly up at the ceiling instead of at him while she answers.

“It’s an old metallurgy plant,” she says. “Steel production, I think.”

His heart skips a beat.

“Really?” he asks. “I’ve never actually seen the inside of a steel plant. Does it look cool?”

It has to be one of the most obvious questions that he’s ever asked, but Glitch just sighs quietly through her nose and continues to stare away from him.

“It’s mostly just a bunch of old machinery,” she says. “Furnaces, spray dryers, that sort of thing. Some of the chemicals that they use to treat the metal.”

“Kind of weird that it’s all still here.”

She shrugs. “Most of the equipment is defunct at this point, and there aren’t that many villains that are willing to take the risks that come with attempting to steal and transport 10,000 gallon storage tanks full of dangerous acids.”

“That makes sense. I guess that’s why the city still keeps the water turned on like you said, huh? It’d be dangerous if a fire started.”

Her eyes flicker towards him for half a second. There’s a dark sense of understanding there.

“Yup,” she says. She glances towards the mess of pipes that cross the walls.

Midoriya would bet that one of the valves he can see is the water shutoff.

“Huh,” he says, continuing to play the game. “I wonder why no one’s done anything about it. Seems like an accident waiting to happen.”

“It’s in a pretty remote area,” Glitch says. “I don’t think anyone cares.”

He nods, letting the conversation die. Glitch pushes off of the wall where she’d been leaning, and he gets up off of the floor without complaint so that she can retie his restraints.

Before she turns away to leave, he offers her the quickest flash of a grateful smile. She doesn’t smile back, but some of the tension visibly drops from her shoulders.

Glitch leaves him, and he’s alone in an empty room again with only his pain for company, but it’s okay.

He knows how he’s going to get himself out of this.

……………….

DAY EIGHT

“I’m impressed,” Hijack says. “You’ve lasted longer than anyone else I’ve ever…detained.”

“Kidnapped.”

“By day three, most of them are long gone.”

“Murdered.”

“And of course, I’ve gotten what I’ve wanted.”

Midoriya tilts his head. He tries to keep the insolence reigned in, but he’s in pain, he’s exhausted, he’s dehydrated, and he’s hungry. So when his mouth moves, the words that come out aren’t the words that he meant to say.

“I get it, you know.”

Hijack raises a neatly trimmed eyebrow. “Get what?”

“That inflicting pain on other people is the only thing that gets you off. I hear that it’s a pretty common problem for most psychopaths.”

Glitch, who’s been invited down for Group Intimidation Attempt #2, ducks her head away and covers her mouth.

Midoriya grins. He feels blood from his nose drip onto his teeth.

“Sorry,” he says. “Did I say something that offended you?”

Hijack snarls. He takes a step forward, raising his hand as if to hit Midoriya—not for the first time, although he doesn’t seem like much of a fan of getting his hands dirty, although he does apparently enjoy watching—and then stops, clenching his fist and visibly stifling his anger.

“Blitz,” he says, tightly. He snaps his fingers at her when she doesn’t move fast enough for him, and she snaps her teeth at him as she passes, smirking when the sound of it makes him jolt instinctively away. “You and Styx do what you need to do. I want my answers by tomorrow morning.”

“Do you want me to lie down and roll over for you, too?” Blitz asks. “I’m not your attack dog.”

She steps in close to him, placing her hand over his chest and running it suggestively downwards. He watches her impassively, a slight tic in his jaw the only sign of his irritation.

Pressing down the loose fabric of his shirt reveals the shape of what is almost definitely a concealed gun tucked between Hijack’s stomach and the waistband of his pants. She taps her finger against it, and his hand flashes out to grab her wrist.

“This isn’t how we do things,” Hijack says.

“Maybe I’m tired of doing things your way, Hijack,” Blitz croons. “Maybe I want to do them my way.”

“Didn’t I just give you permission to do exactly that? I know you’ve been holding back at my request. But I’m growing impatient. As long as you keep him alive and capable of talking, I don’t care what you do to him.”

The slow grin that spreads over Blitz’ face makes Midoriya go cold.

“Goodie,” she says. “But we’re having a talk after this, Hijack. I don’t like taking orders, and you’ve been giving me an awful lot of them.”

“Of course, Blitz. That wasn’t my intention. You know I see this as an equal partnership.”

“Mm. I’m sure that you do.”

They let go and step back at the same time. Hijack watches Blitz warily for another long moment, then takes several more steps away before turning his back to her. He waves for Glitch to follow him, and she scurries close behind without daring to give Midoriya so much as a second glance, leaving him alone with Blitz and—Styx, apparently, the mysteriously silent partner.

Their eyes turn to him.

He wiggles his fingers at them in as much of a wave as he can manage with his wrists tied to the arms of the chair.

“Have your hands gotten sore yet?” he asks, tilting his head at Blitz with an innocent smile on his face.

She smiles back at him.

It isn’t innocent at all.

Chapter Text

Bakugo is just finishing up his trigonometry homework when his phone buzzes with an incoming call.

It’s later than he’s usually awake, nearing 11pm, but he’d blown off his homework in favor of watching a new heroics documentary. Walking Midoriya home often had him feeling like he was nearly drowning in feelings of inadequacy, no matter how much he tried to talk himself out of them, and if he was ever going to keep up not only with his nerd of a childhood friend but the other future hero students, he had to do more than just show off his quirk and get good grades in school.

He blinks, rubbing tiredly at his eyes, and squints at the screen. When he sees AUNTIE as the caller ID, he swipes immediately.

“Auntie Inko?” he asks. “Is something wrong?”

Her voice shakes when she responds.

“Is Izuku with you?”

The world stops.

“Katsuki?”

He pinches the side of his thigh to break himself out of his sudden paralysis.

“Sorry, Auntie,” he says. His voice has dropped into a monotone. “Midoriya isn’t here. He isn’t home?”

“Oh,” she says, a little gasp on the edge of a sob. “Oh. I was hoping that he was with you. I had to work late tonight, but when I got home and went to check on him, he wasn’t in his room. His school bag isn’t here, and neither are his shoes.”

His stupid red shoes. Bakugo doesn’t want to believe that Midoriya never made it home, because then it’s his fault, because he’d walked Midoriya home but hadn’t gone all the way to his door, but there’s no way that Inko could miss his ridiculous red shoes.

He remembers what Midoriya had admitted a few weeks ago, his insides twisting sickeningly.

“Everyone thinks that it’s—PTSD, or something,” Midoriya admits. He looks back across the street again, the same way he’s been doing almost compulsively since they left the school. His hand moves towards his arm in an aborted motion to start scratching again. “But I just keep getting this feeling that someone’s watching me.”

“I walked him home,” Bakugo says. He doesn’t say, It’s my fault. But he might as well. “I—I didn’t walk him all the way to his door. I didn’t wait to see him go inside.”

“We—we don’t know that anything’s wrong,” Inko says. “Maybe he went for a walk. He does that, sometimes. He thinks that I don’t know, but a mother always knows. Sometimes he doesn’t sleep. And I—I thought it was doing him some good, so I didn’t say anything, but maybe I should have. But why wouldn’t his school bag be here? He always drops his school bag.”

“I don’t know,” Bakugo says. His mouth feels numb. His whole body feels numb, now that he’s drawing attention to it, and he stares at a scratch in the paint on his wall that he’d put there when he’d tried to teach himself how to throw his mom’s kitchen knives. “Auntie—”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Inko interrupts. She sounds like she’s on the verge of hyperventilating, and it doesn’t fool Bakugo at all. “I’m going to call Sh—his mentor. Someone will know where he is. I’m sure of it.”

Bakugo swallows hard. He pinches his leg again, but it doesn’t make him feel any less disconnected from his body.

“Okay, Auntie,” he says. “Could you—?”

“Yes, Katsuki, dear?”

“Um. Just. Tell me when you find him, okay?”

He can hear her smile over the phone.

“Of course, Katsuki.”

The click as she ends the call echoes in his ear. He lowers the phone slowly, setting it on his desk.

There should be—rage. Or irritation. Or, if he’s being honest with himself and what a terrible person he is, maybe even relief.

Instead there’s nothing.

His eyes focus on something on the edge of the corkboard behind his desk, where he keeps his calendar pinned, along with various reminders and a few scattered photos.

“Deku,” he says. His voice sounds strange. Like it doesn’t belong to him. “Where are you?”

The picture of the two of them doesn’t answer. He keeps staring at it anyway, almost wishing that he could go back in time to when it was taken, when they were four years old and unshaded by the injustice of the world, smiling fearless gap-toothed grins, ready to take on anything.

He wishes he could pretend to be fearless.

……………..

Inko has to pause for several too-long moments after hanging up the call with Katsuki, because her hands are shaking too much to dial Shota’s number. When she finally gets it typed in, she lifts the phone to her ear and uses her other hand to brace herself against the back of the couch, too anxious to sit down.

“Inko?” Shota asks, answering on the second ring. He doesn’t sound groggy at all, which means that he’s most likely on patrol.

“Izuku never came home after school,” she says. She closes her eyes against the wave of panic that washes over her, saying it out loud, and grips the back of the couch until her hand goes white. “He’s not with Katsuki. They walked together to Katsuki’s house, but Izuku’s school bag isn’t here. So something—something happened.”

The silence hurts.

“You’re sure he’s not with Hatsume? Or another friend?” he asks.

Inko shakes her head. “He always tells me if he’s going to Hatsume’s. And he would have dropped his school bag off here even if he did go over there. And you know he—he doesn’t really have any other friends.”

“And you don’t have any messages from him?”

“Nothing recent,” she answers. “I sent him a text during his lunch hour to remind him that I was working late today, and that there were leftovers in the fridge. That was the last I heard anything from him.”

There’s a long stretch of quiet again.

“Do you remember what he was wearing today?”

It takes a moment for the question to register. Another for her to understand the implications of it. When she does, Inko’s heart rises in her throat, and she sways on her feet.

“His school uniform,” Inko answers distantly. “They only have free dress days once a month.”

She stares without down the hall towards Izuku’s bedroom. There are framed pictures on the wall; of him and Katsuki when they were young, of him with Hisashi before the man had left, of the two of them together. She’d always tried to make sure that he never doubted that he’s loved.

“Shota,” she says, voice breaking, tears finally starting to fall despite her best efforts to keep herself together. “Where is Izuku? Where is my son?”

His voice is quiet and pained when he answers.

“I’m sorry, Inko. I don’t know.”

…………….

Tsukauchi is reading over the most recent reports of strange increases in villain activity when his cellphone rings. He answers it without checking the caller ID or glancing up from his reading.

“Tsukauchi,” he says absently, flipping to the next page.

“I need to file a missing person’s report,” a gruff, familiar voice on the other end of the line says, skipping the niceties and going straight to business, as per usual.

Getting a call from Aizawa near midnight isn’t a surprise. Tsukauchi encourages him to keep in touch and provide even the most minor updates on the cases that he’s working, and since the two of them are just about as bad as the other when it comes to keeping late hours, Aizawa doesn’t usually hesitate to call.

But Aizawa doesn’t typically handle missing person’s cases.

Tsukauchi blinks, and turns his full attention to his phone.

“You don’t usually handle that sort of thing,” he says. His questions go unspoken, but he knows that they’re perfectly clear to Aizawa.

“It’s Midoriya Izuku,” Aizawa says. He sounds like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “He never came home from school this afternoon.”

Tsukauchi remembers Midoriya. They’d only met briefly, and Aizawa had half-hidden the boy behind his own body like he was afraid of the effect that Tsukauchi’s curious gaze might have on him, but he’d still left an impression.

A kid who managed to take down a serial murderer with a trigonometry textbook isn’t exactly forgettable.

“You know we don’t usually file a report without proof of foul play until it’s been 24 hours,” Tsukauchi says.

“He might not have 24 hours, Tsukauchi.”

Tsukauchi nods to himself, just once, and stands, grabbing his coat off the back of his chair as he does so. He signals for Sansa to follow, and the officer is up and at his heels in seconds.

“Send me the Midoriyas’ address,” he says. “I’ll meet you there.”

“You don’t have to come personally,” Aizawa says. “I can handle this side of things. I just need the report filed, so that anyone who might have information knows to come forward.”

“You know two sets of eyes are always better than one,” Tsukauchi says. “And I know you won’t like me to point it out, but—you might not see as clearly in this case as you would on any other.”

No response. But his phone buzzes with a text, and when he checks, it’s a residential address in Musutafu from Aizawa.

“Thank you,” he says. “We’ll be there soon. Don’t make any impulsive decisions in the meantime, alright? If Midoriya was kidnapped, we can’t risk handling things poorly.”

“This isn’t my first missing persons case,” Aizawa says.

“It’s the first time you have a personal interest in one, though,” Tsukauchi points out. “Anyone with eyes can see that you care for the kid, Aizawa. Don’t let it cloud your judgment.”

“I’ll do my job.”

“That’s all I ask.”

……………

Aizawa Shota, as an underground hero, has seen more darkness and death in ten years than most limelight heroes with careers lasting twice as long.

Not to say that they don’t see their fair share. But Aizawa is on the streets with the worst that humanity has to offer, in the darkest hours of the night when the most depraved crimes are committed. In back alleys and ditches and gutters, he’s found victims that he was too late to save. Their faces haunt his sleep.

He’s been scared. Terrified. It comes with the territory, and it doesn’t get better when his partner is a pro hero in his own right.

But when Midoriya Inko tells him, voice shaking, that Izuku never made it home from school…Aizawa feels terror that he hasn’t known in years.

Tsukauchi had heard it, he’s sure. They’ve been friends for long enough that the slightest indication of emotion Aizawa ever gives is picked up pretty easily by the other man.

His calm had been grounding. But standing at the door to the Midoriyas’, Aizawa isn’t sure that it’s enough.

He only raises his hand to knock when he reminds himself that he isn’t the only one feeling this visceral fear.

Midoriya Inko is feeling it too. Maybe even worse.

When she opens the door, her face is blotchy and red, and there are tears on her cheeks, but she just wipes fiercely at her face with palms of her hand and waves him inside, glancing around behind him as though there might be villains lurking down the street next to the cherry trees.

“Can I make you some tea?” she asks, voice warbly. She wrings her hands together, and Aizawa can recognize that well enough, the need for action, for something to do, so he nods, and follows her to the kitchen.

“I called Detective Tsukauchi,” he says. “He’s on his way here with another officer. They’ll get all the necessary information to file a missing persons report and officially open a case.”

Inko nods, and sniffles. Her eyes well with fresh tears, but she stubbornly continues measuring tea leaves.

“Thank you,” she says. “It means a lot to me that you’re here. If this had happened a few months ago, I—I don’t want to think about how long it would’ve been before the police took me seriously.”

Aizawa has to stamp down the righteous rage that threatens to overflow at the reminder of the rampant quirkless discrimination.

“We’ll find him,” he says. He doesn’t let himself say it with anything less than complete conviction.

They will find him. Alive. He won’t allow any other outcome.

Inko’s hand trembles, and she sets the tin of tea leaves down on the counter, wrapping her arms around herself.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him,” she whispers.

If Aizawa’s honest—he doesn’t know what he would do, either.

There’s a knock on the door.

“That’ll be Tsukauchi,” Aizawa says. If his voice is a bit rough, well, no one’s going to dare to comment on it. “He’ll probably be happy to take tea too, as well as his officer, if there’s going to be enough for four.”

Inko wipes the tears away again.

“Right,” she says.

Aizawa watches her—transform. Her face is still blotchy, eyes still red and watery, and her hair is starting to come undone from its neat bun. But he’s reminded that despite what most people see when they look at Midoriya Inko, she’s singlehandedly raising a boy that he’d consider to be one of the bravest, most kind-hearted, determined people that he’s ever met.

There is steel in her spine. She wears her emotions on her sleeve, but to her, they aren’t a weakness. And even now, when most would consider her to be a vulnerable, scared single mother, there’s a fierce glint in her eyes that shows she’d go to the ends of the earth and further for her son.

It makes the crushing weight of fear on Aizawa’s shoulders a little bit lighter, seeing her bear it with such grace.

He goes to answer the door. Between him and Tsukauchi, he’s sure that they’ll at least find a lead. Some sign of where Izuku might’ve been taken, and by whom.

From there—from there, he has no idea. A clock is already counting down the seconds in the back of his head, whirling with statistics about kidnapping cases and the probability of victims being recovered alive after the first few hours have passed.

But the kid is strong, he reminds himself.

If anyone can defy the odds, it’s Midoriya Izuku.

…………….

Bakugo doesn’t even try to sleep after Auntie Inko’s call. He sits and worries his phone case between his fingers, waiting for a text or another call, something that’ll make him feel stupid for the fear twisting his stomach in knots.

Sorry to worry you, Katsuki; Izuku went for a walk after all.

He was with his mentor; he’s home now.

Someone tried to take him, but we found him and he’s gonna be okay.

His notification bar stays stubbornly empty, no matter how many times he refreshes it.

It hasn’t been long—maybe half an hour—when his curtains flicker with blue and red flashing lights, and he’s up on his feet and lunging across the room to the window so quickly that he trips over his desk chair and knocks it to the floor.

When he wrenches the curtains apart, it’s just in time to watch a police car pull up in front of the Midoriya house and turn off its lights.

His window gives him just enough of a decent view that he can see two people exit the car—both of them obviously adults. Not Midoriya.

“Deku,” he growls in an undertone. He rolls his shoulders, trying to squash the fear down until he can’t feel it anymore, but the curtains twitch, and when he glances down, his hands are shaking.

He yanks them away and stumbles back. His jaw aches from how tightly he clenches his teeth together.

A glance over his shoulder confirms that the hallway light is still off. He hasn’t woken his parents, despite the fact that he hasn’t been trying especially hard to keep quiet.

Without another moment of hesitation, he crosses back to his window and shoves it open. He climbs out and lowers himself down until he’s hanging onto the sill with his fingertips, and then drops, feeling the shock of the landing in his knees.

He shoves his hands into his pockets as he starts walking. He’s just going to check on Auntie Inko, that’s all.

And maybe see if she knows anything about Deku.

Something has him pausing at the alley. There isn’t one between the Bakugo house and their neighbors, but there’s one on the other side of them, right before the Midoriya house.

He doesn’t know why, but he turns to look down it.

The streetlights don’t reach very far into it, and he’s about to give the gut feeling up as paranoia, even though it makes his stomach twist, remembering Midoriya discounting his own anxiety. Then he shifts on his feet, and he catches a glimpse of yellow.

He doesn’t think about moving, but he blinks and suddenly he’s halfway down the alley, hand shaking as he reaches to push the branches of a battered shrub out of his way.

Deku’s backpack.

“Hey, kid, you shouldn’t be out here,” a voice says, and his back snaps straight, hands coming out in front of him, snarl already on his lips and sparks leaping from his palms.

The cat-headed police officer a few yards away raises his own hands placatingly, away from the weapons on his belt.

“I’m Officer Sansa,” he says, in a calm, even voice. “What are you doing out here so late?”

Bakugo drops his hands. There are holes singed through his tank top from his quirk, but he barely makes note of them.

“You’re here for Deku, right?” he snaps out.

The man blinks at him. “Deku?”

“Midoriya,” he says, gritting his teeth. “Izuku.”

The officer slowly lowers his hands.

“Is he a friend of yours?” he asks. A different note has crept into his calm voice, and Bakugo almost growls at him. He doesn’t need pity.

“He’s not my fucking friend,” he says. Then he closes his eyes and forces himself to inhale and count to ten, like the counselor his parents have been forcing him to see once a week taught him to do. When he opens them, Officer Sansa is still waiting patiently in the exact same place. “I found his backpack.”

That changes the look on his face. He rushes forward to Bakugo’s side, and he shies hurriedly out of the way, unwilling to even brush shoulders with the man.

“Did you touch it?” he asks urgently.

“I’m not stupid.”

“I wasn’t trying to imply that I thought you were. You’re sure this is his bag?”

“I’m sure. Only De—Midoriya has a backpack that obnoxiously yellow.”

Sansa nods absently. He tilts his head, reaching up to the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and pressing down the button.

“Tsukauchi, I think I found something. Alley south of the house. Over.”

There’s a crackle of static.

“Eraserhead and I are on our way. Over.”

Sansa nods to himself, dropping his hand. He leans down and pushes the branches out of the way to get a better look, almost exactly like Bakugo had been doing when the officer had startled him.

“No blood,” he mutters to himself, then glances sharply at Bakugo. Obviously he hadn’t intended to speak out loud. “You never did answer my question, son. What are you doing out this late?”

“Auntie Inko called me earlier to ask if I’d seen Midoriya,” he says. He shoves his hands back into his pockets. “I walked the nerd home—he should’ve been there. And then I saw the cops pull up.”

Sansa nods in an understanding if somewhat condescending way.

“I understand,” he says. “You’re worried about your—classmate?” He hesitates, clearly not wanting to provoke Bakugo by calling Midoriya his friend again. “But you really should get back home. Leave this to the professionals. You don’t want to worry your own parents, do you?”

“As if a villain could get the jump on me,” Bakugo scoffs, more out of habit than any true confidence in his abilities.

There are footsteps, and he glances towards the mouth of the alley to see two men—another officer, probably, although he’s wearing a suit, so maybe a detective, and then the homeless man that Bakugo’s caught glimpses of here and there with Midoriya.

The detective raises an eyebrow at Bakugo, and then glances at Sansa, where he’s still crouched next to the bush.

“Who’s this?” he asks.

Sansa straightens up and dusts his hands off, looking a bit sheepish.

“Ah—”

“Bakugo,” Bakugo interrupts, crossing his arms defiantly over his chest. “Where’s De—Izuku?”

The detective doesn’t show any signs of recognition, but the homeless man definitely does. He scowls, tipping his face forward so it’s half-hidden in his scarf.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

“Eraserhead,” the detective chides. “What’d you find, Sansa?”

“Actually it was Bakugo here who found it,” Sansa says. “Midoriya’s backpack. It’s just here.”

He points, and Eraserhead ducks closer to look at it. His mouth is set in a thin line when he straightens back up.

“That’s his,” he confirms. “Anything else?”

“I haven’t done a thorough search of the area yet,” Sansa says apologetically. “I thought it’d be better to have a few more pairs of eyes to work with. I’d hate to miss something important.”

Tsukauchi nods approvingly. “We’ll focus our efforts on this alley. It seems likely that this is where he was taken from. Gloves on, Sansa. Bag anything that seems like it doesn’t belong.”

Bakugo’s stomach twists, but he sets his jaw against the nausea and glances around instead, hoping to find something that’ll tell him what happened to De—Midoriya.

His eyes fall on Eraserhead instead. The man’s gaze is fixed on the opposite side of the alley, and he’s gone rigid, like he’s just seen a ghost.

Bakugo looks that way, and immediately finds what caught the man’s attention.

A message has been graffitied on the stone wall that separates the Midoriya’s house from the alley in massive black letters.

“I know who took him,” Eraserhead says, his voice gruff. Bakugo hears the barely restrained anger in his tone and allows himself a moment of vicious satisfaction, mixed with relief, at the obvious sign that this man cares about Midoriya.

“What?” Tsukauchi asks.

Eraserhead crosses the alley to the wall and the message painted there. He rubs a finger along the bottom of the last letter.

“It’s fresh paint,” he says. “A few hours old, maybe. He was probably taken after school, before he ever made it home.”

Bakugo’s shoulders bunch up by his ears.

It’d been his job to get Midoriya home safe. If he’d walked twenty feet further instead of rushing home and waving Midoriya along, this never would have happened.

“He wouldn’t have gone quietly unless he wasn’t expecting it,” Eraserhead continues grimly. “Someone probably lured him off of the main sidewalk with some sort of ruse.”

“He’s not stupid,” Bakugo says.

Eraserhead’s eyes cut sharply to him. Bakugo fights the urge to shrink away from him.

“I never said that he was,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the person that took him had help; someone with a quirk that might make Midoriya less inclined to distrust them.”

“You said that you know who took him,” Tsukauchi says. “Who?”

Eraserhead inhales sharply through his nose. He takes a step back from the wall and regards the full message again.

“Hijack,” he says. “He’s back, and he has a score to settle.”

The silence that falls is thick with tension.

Bakugo looks between the adults—Sansa, quietly searching through the scrub and brush along the side of the alley near where Midoriya’s bag was found, blue nitrile gloves on; Tsukauchi, taking pictures with his cellphone; and Eraserhead, looking at the graffiti with a thousand-yard stare.

The words don’t mean anything to him, but they obviously mean something to the other man, if the look on his face is anything to go by.

Still—they’re obviously a message, ominous in their own right. 

He reads them again, tightening his crossed arms against his stomach in the hope that it’ll make the knots go away.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE.

Chapter Text

Midoriya feels fresh blood start to drip from his nose after the third hit. He grimaces when it runs over his lips and gets into his mouth, but he can’t do anything to wipe it away with his hands tied down, and tilting his head back will just send the blood down his throat instead, which is definitely worse.

He’s dizzy. Over a week on the bare minimum of food, taking regular beatings, and he’s surprised that he’s not spending more of his time unconscious.

Blitz stalks away from him, apparently bored, and starts pacing back and forth instead, absentmindedly rubbing at her bruised knuckles.

“Hijack doesn’t seem to respect you very much,” Midoriya says.

Her cold eyes cut him a sharp glance.

“And you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “There’s little place for respect between villains. Hijack and I have similar interests—that’s enough for a temporary alliance.”

“If you say so,” Midoriya says. “But it doesn’t seem like he sees you as much of an ally. More like—what did you say earlier? An attack dog?”

She snarls at him. He’d find it ironic if he wasn’t scrambling for the right words to say to keep himself alive a little big longer.

“No one keeps me on a leash. Hijack might think that he’s above me for refusing to get his hands dirty, but he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

Midoriya studies her. She’s still pacing back and forth, restlessly, but she’s moved on to tapping her fingers against the handle of the knife sheathed to her upper thigh. If he was watching someone else, he might assume that their actions are fueled by anxiety, but he knows that Blitz isn’t the type.

It’s impatience. She’s tired of playing someone else’s game.

“Why do you need me?” he asks, tilting his head.

She stops midstride to turn and look at him with a raised eyebrow.

“I don’t,” she says.

Midoriya chews on the inside of his cheek and wonders whether he should pursue his current line of questioning. He’s curious, but Blitz is unpredictable, and if she really doesn’t think that she needs him, she could just decide to kill him and be done with it.

“So why am I here?”

She rolls her eyes. “Hijack. Who else? He’s under the impression that he needs leverage. Even that geek tech of his can’t find his family, and Eraserhead is the one who sent them into witness protection. He wants to trade. You for them.” She leans against the side of the chair where Styx is sitting, putting one arm possessively behind her. Midoriya still can’t figure out their relationship, but there’s definitely something. “Personally, I think that we should dump your body on the front steps of the nearest police station. Think that’d finally get their attention?”

Midoriya tries not to visibly tense at her words. Fails, judging by her delighted laughter.

“Unfortunately, I can’t kill you,” she continues. “Yet.”

He sighs.

“You wanna know what I think?” he says. “I think that it’s funny how much you enjoy torturing someone who can’t fight back. It’s like you know you won’t win otherwise. You think you can kill Hijack when this finally goes south? I think he’ll put a bullet between your eyes before you can even lift your hand to throw a punch. After all, he’s not shy about showing how much smarter he is than you. And what have you done this whole time? Use a tied up kid as a punching bag? I’m sure that’ll look real nice on your resume.”

The silence that falls is so quiet that all Midoriya can hear for a long moment is his own blood rushing in his ears and the buzzing of the fluorescent lights. But he doesn’t let himself regret his inflammatory words. His captors aren’t the only ones getting impatient.

Blitz wears a blank expression, but her eyes are black with rage. Midoriya meets them without flinching away, shoving his fear deep, deep down, in a tidy little box where he can’t feel it anymore.

“You’re a slow learner,” Blitz says. Her voice is low, dangerous.

She flicks her fingers at Styx, who gets up immediately, grabbing the chair by the back and dragging it over so that it’s not even a foot in front of Midoriya. She retakes her seat, so close that her knees brush his. Blitz, right next to her, reaches forward to grab a fistful of Midoriya’s hair, yanking his head up, and he sets his jaw defiantly and refuses to cry out.

Styx grabs the collar of his shirt and yanks, causing the buttons to come undone halfway down to his stomach, and pulls it wide, baring his chest and shoulders.

He feels his hands trembling, and balls them into fists, refusing to look away from Blitz even as Styx lays her hands on his shoulders.

Blitz leans in close. Her hair falls forward and tickles his cheek as she speaks directly into his ear.

“Let me teach you how to suffer.”

At first, all he can feel are Styx’s long nails digging into his skin, and her hands growing cold.

And then her hands grow colder, and colder, until he’s gritting his teeth to try to keep himself from shivering—and then, all at once, his nerves light up like they’re on fire, and he screams.

Frost and ice crackle across his skin, bitingly, burningly cold. His whole body shakes and jerks, trying to pull away, but even if the ropes weren’t securely holding him in place, Styx’s hands are like iron, locked onto him.

Blitz is laughing.

The hands finally pull away, and Midoriya slumps, trembling uncontrollably. His head spins, and nausea rises until he’s leaning over and gagging bile and blood onto the concrete floor.

He’s afraid to look down at himself, but he does anyway, and almost gags again at the sight of his skin, purple-black, turned to necrotic tissue from frostbite. The epicenter is almost entirely black, shaped like Styx’s hands, and spreads down across his chest, over his shoulders, and onto his upper back. It goes from black, to deep purple, to frost white, to an angry red.

Blitz fists her hand in his hair again, wrenching his face up to look her in the eye. She’s grinning, manic, a gleeful light in her eyes.

“How’s that, little boy?” she croons. “Your scream was so sweet.”

He’s still gasping in air, trying to catch his breath, but the wave of dark hatred that rises up inside of him renews his energy long enough for him to straighten his back and glare at her.

“It’s just another scar,” he bites out. “You’re not the first to give me one, and you won’t be the last. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Her face twists with irritation, and she yanks his head sharply, pulling on the frostbitten skin of his shoulders and forcing a choked scream through his gritted teeth.

“You really don’t know when to keep your mouth shut, do you, kid?” Blitz asks. “That’s alright. I don’t like the ones who start to blubber and beg for their lives all that much anyway. They’re weak. You, though…hmm, you make for a refreshing change. What can I take from you, then? What will make you cry and plead?”

If it was someone else under Styx’s hands, Midoriya knows that he’d break in an instant. He’d do anything to save another, no matter what it took.

But there’s no one else here. It’s just him. And they can hurt him all they want—but he’s not going to help them hurt anyone else.

He raises his head. He doesn’t look away from Blitz’s dark gaze, even though he can’t stop himself from shivering, from cold and pain, and he knows that she probably sees it as a sign of weakness.

She smiles at him.

“You want to be a hero, don’t you?” she asks. “You won’t tell us your quirk, but I know that Eraserhead’s been training you. I wonder…what will you do if we take that away from you?”

Midoriya bites down on his tongue, hard. His throat aches from screaming and holding back tears, but he refuses to let them fall.

He glances at Styx. Her hands are pressed flat against her legs, the tips of her fingers slightly pink from using her quirk.

Ice necrosis. Deep frostbite, tissue death in under a minute.

He knows the dangers of extreme temperatures. But he won’t break. Not now. Not after everything he’s been through.

“Amputation due to frostbite is a lot less common these days,” Blitz says, conversationally. “Healing quirks have nearly eradicated the risk of it entirely. But there’s no one here to help you, is there?” She leans in over him, running a finger over his damaged skin and smirking at the way his face twists with pain. “I could have Styx take your…fingers.”

She taps his balled-up fists.

“Or your hands,” she continues. “Her quirk can travel fairly far…I bet you could lose an entire leg to her frostbite.”

She steps back, tilting her head at him like he’s a science experiment.

“I think I have a better idea, though,” she says. “Most prosthetics these days have come so far, after all—you might still stand a chance, with Eraserhead sponsoring you. But no one’s quite figured out how to cure blindness, have they?”

Midoriya’s stomach twists.

“Don’t,” he says. His voice cracks.

The manic smile that spreads across her face is all teeth.

“Are you begging?” she asks. “Will you say please?”

He presses his mouth shut.

She reaches out and trails her fingers along the side of his face, clicking her tongue in disappointment. She digs one blunt nail into the soft skin just under his right eye.

“I wonder if Eraserhead will still want to teach you, once he finds out how damaged you are? And that it’s your own fault, even…do you think he’ll stick around out of guilt for a little while, or will he leave right away?”

Midoriya just looks at her. He doesn’t even glare, just—looks.

She hums thoughtfully. Then she lets her hand fall and steps back, waving to Styx.

Midoriya closes his eyes.

It doesn’t do him any good.

Chapter Text

Pain is not a stranger.

From the time that he was four years old, newly diagnosed as quirkless, Midoriya has known pain. Sparks and shoves, first; bruises and scraped knees.

But eventually it became firework explosions and punches, and he cried every time, at first, but then the stricken look on his mother’s face every day that he came home bleeding had him swallowing it down. He learned how not to wince when she squeezed his bruised ribs in a tight hug, how to treat cuts and burns to prevent infection, how to hide bandages under layers of clothing.

Midoriya knows pain. He has the scars to show for it.

But when Styx wraps one hand around the back of his head so that he can’t pull away, and places the other over his right eye, activating her quirk, he has to rewrite everything that he thought he knew.

He screams. It rips painfully out of his throat, and then dissolves into sobs and incoherent pleas.

“No,” he says, and, “Stop,” and, “Please.”

It feels like an icepick is being driven into his face; the cold of Styx’s hand sends stabbing pain directly into his eye socket and it radiates through his entire skull. He tries to turn his face, tries to move, but her other hand keeps him locked firmly in place.

And then it’s over.

He goes limp, chest heaving with sobs. He can’t bring himself to be ashamed of it.

“How about now, little hero?” Blitz asks, her voice a sickeningly sweet singsong. “Are you ready to give up?”

Midoriya can feel awareness starting to slip away from him, but he forces himself to lift his chin and open his eyes.

All he can see from his right eye is a cloudy haze.

His left is blurry with tears, but he can see the triumphant smirk on Blitz’s face just fine.

Summoning the last of his flagging energy, he twists his face into a defiant snarl.

“Fuck…you,” he grits out, and he carries the spark of satisfaction from watching the smile fall off of her face into the darkness with him.

…………..

When consciousness returns, it slams into him. He’s floating, then he’s falling, hitting the pavement like he’d belly flopped from the roof of a building as pain lights up across his entire body.

Memories return second, in the same way—they aren’t there, and then they are.

He breathes shallowly, trying not to vomit, and peels open his eyes, only for panic to race through him when all he sees is darkness.

Is he blind? Had Styx used her quirk on his other eye while he was out? His breath rattles in his chest as he starts to hyperventilate, the fear and torture catching up to him all at once, and he struggles uselessly against his restraints for the hundredth time.

Some small part of his brain, still ruled by logic and continuing to take in his surroundings, registers that he can’t hear the lights.

He heaves in a deep breath. Tears drip over his mouth, and he runs his tongue over his lips on instinct, grimacing at the taste of salt and the dried blood from his nose. He blinks rapidly, trying in vain to bring anything into sight in the pure dark of the room, and eventually slumps when it yields nothing but more pain.

The entire right side of his face hurts, bone-deep. His chest and back are sore to the point that he can’t help but flinch every time his shirt brushes against them, but he can’t feel much of anything in his shoulders. He’d guess that Styx’s ice necrosis quirk had burned deep enough to kill the nerves.

He’d consider it a small mercy, but as he continues to take stock he realizes that parts of his arms have been deadened by the damage as well, and there’s pins and needles tingling in the tips of his fingers. He tries to make a fist and manages it, although his hand shakes and his grip feels weak.

That—he can’t consider the potential consequences of that. If the damage to his nerves can’t be repaired, and he can’t even throw a punch…

He swallows hard and shakes his head even though it makes stabbing pain lance through his skull. If he falls apart now, he’s as good as dead.

He repeats that to himself a few times, counting his breaths, and then he realizes, focused on his arms as he is, that the ropes around them have loosened enough for him to pull away slightly.

They could’ve finally been loosened when he’d struggled against Styx, or maybe someone else had loosened them to prevent circulation problems in light of the extensive damage to his nerves, but either way, he might finally be able to get out of them.

He experiments, twisting and tugging in different directions. He can rotate to either side of the arms of the chair now, but when he tries to pull his hand free, the joints of his thumbs get in the way.

Midoriya closes his eyes.

If Aizawa knew where he was, he would have come for him by now. He doesn’t know much about Hijack, but the chances are that he’s pretty damn good at what he does, which means it’s incredibly unlikely that anyone will figure out where he’s being held in the next few days.

He doesn’t have that long.

Midoriya has to get out of here. Whatever it takes. The only question left, then is—right or left?

Left, he decides. He’s right-handed, so it only makes sense.

Inhaling shakily, he moves his left arm so that he has the right leverage. Then, refusing to think about it long enough to talk himself out of it, he bears down, twisting sharply with his thumb pressed against the arm of the chair so that it bend backwards, gritting his teeth.

When it finally dislocates with a horrible pop, he has to swallow down a groan. But he pushes on, wiggling until his hand finally slips under the ropes, and he nearly cries with relief when his entire arm pulls free.

He makes short work of untying the ropes on his other arm, then moves on to his legs. He has to feel his way around them to find the knots, dark as it is, but before long he’s nearly jumping onto his feet and then stumbling as a rush of dizziness overtakes him.

It’s a stark reminder of just what poor shape he’s in, but he holds still until he’s as steady as he’s going to get.

“Right,” he mutters to himself. “Now what?”

He has—half of a plan.

Maybe a third.

Blowing out a breath, he slides his feet along the floor and carefully makes his way to the wall, tentatively putting a hand against it, mindful of the pipes and gauges. He pulls up a mental map of the room—luckily, it’s fairly empty, and the majority of the appliances are located on the right side of the room, not the left. If he follows the wall, he’ll make it to the stairs.

After that—well. He’s not confident that he’ll be able to make it out of the building without running into at least one of the villains, but now that he’s not tied to a chair, he at least stands a chance of putting up a fight.

Slowly, he puts one foot in front of the other. His toes hit the far wall before his hand, and he blindly reaches out to find it so that he can follow it to the scaffolding.

And then he hears footsteps.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and hurries his steps. He almost finds the stairs with his face, but adrenaline is rushing through him again and he bounces back and then falls into a crouch, one knee braced on the ground, breathing shallowly as he tilts his head to listen.

There are hushed voices, now, too—hissed whispers too low for him to make out, but definitely in the hallway outside the room, or he wouldn’t be able to hear them.

The lights turn on.

He bites down hard on his tongue to stop himself from crying out at the sudden brightness, squeezing his eyes shut and trying not to let the colorful spots behind his eyelids make the nausea and dizziness return with a vengeance.

The door groans open. The voices cut off immediately, keeping him from identifying them, and he presses himself closer to the scaffolding, hiding in the shadow of it.

“Did you lose him?” a voice asks, lilting and amused. It’s familiar, but Midoriya can’t quite put his finger on it.

“I didn’t lose him,” and that’s Glitch, biting and harried. “For fuck’s sake. He was unconscious and half dead when I left him.”

“Right. Well, it looks like someone else sorted your problem for you, so I guess I can just go now—”

“Absolutely fucking not. There’s no way he made it out of the building; you’re staying right here and helping me find him before he gets himself killed.”

A sigh.

Midoriya blinks. He’d known that Glitch was sympathetic towards him, but it almost sounds like she was planning to rescue him.

“If Blitz finds him first, he’s as good as dead,” Glitch mutters.

“I’m surprised he’s lasted this long.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dabi.”

Dabi.

A memory of blazing blue eyes flashes in his mind. He’d thought he’d seen regret there, too, when Dabi had come to collect his price for—following him? That’d never been explicitly stated, but between the blue eyes that he saw when he was sure someone was watching him and the fact that he wasn’t surprised to see Midoriya tied to a chair in the basement…it’s the most likely explanation.

Glitch curses colorfully.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Dabi asks. He sounds amused again.

“I don’t have a mother,” Glitch snaps. “And the commentary from the peanut gallery isn’t fucking helpful. Feel free to keep your thoughts to yourself unless you have a bright idea on how to help us and the kid out of here without getting us all killed.”

Midoriya straightens up to his feet. He tilts his head back and can just make out Glitch and Dabi on the landing at the top of the stairs. Dabi is closer, leaning casually against the railing with his arms crossed, and Glitch is staring fixedly at the empty chair, one hand tugging anxiously at her hair.

Dabi sees him first.

They regard each other. Something like pain—old hurt and new, all mixed together—flashes on his face, followed by a forced neutral expression as he takes in the frostbitten scarring across Midoriya’s chest and shoulders.

“Hey, Glitch,” he says, conversationally.

“Not now, Dabi.”

“So you don’t want me to tell you that I found your lost boy? I mean, he looks a little different from the last time I saw him, but that broccoli ass hair of his is pretty unmistakable.”

Glitch whirls on a dime. Her whole body visibly slumps in relief when she spots him looking up at them.

“Midoriya,” she says. “You couldn’t wait five minutes?”

“In my experience, five minutes often means the difference between survival and dying horribly,” Midoriya says sardonically. “So, no. What is this? A rescue mission? Why is he here?”

Glitch glances at Dabi with obvious distaste.

“I couldn’t get you out myself,” she says. “I’m blackmailing him. If he doesn’t hold up his end of the deal, his darkest secrets get plastered all over the internet.”

Midoriya blinks. Blinks again.

“Cool,” he says. “And the plan is…?”

Glitch shrugs. “Don’t die?”

He considers that.

“Alright,” he says. “Good enough for me.”

He rounds the scaffolding to the stairs, making his way up. Glitch’s hand hovers uncertainly in the air between them, like she wants to touch him but is too afraid of hurting him.

“Did you have a plan?” Dabi asks, tilting his head. “Or were you just gonna make a break for it and hope that Blitz didn’t gut you like a fish?”

“Pretty much.”

“…you’ve got balls, kid. I’ll give you that.”

“Thanks. What’s your quirk?”

Dabi scowls, but he holds out his hand and it lights up with blue fire. Midoriya’s mind spins, and he scrutinizes the scarred skin that covers a considerable percentage of the young man’s body.

“You don’t have heat resistance, do you? Your own quirk burns you?”

He snuffs the fire out in a fist, scowling harder.

“That’s none of your fucking business, kid.”

Midoriya looks at Glitch.

“Don’t look at me like that; my options were limited. At least he’s not a complete scumbag.”

“He stalked me and conspired to kidnap me.”

Dabi shrugs. “Guilty.”

“If we’re going there, so did I,” Glitch says. “And he’s kept some of your secrets same as I have. That earns him some credit, right?”

“I just didn’t get paid enough to care.”

“You’re not helping, Dabi. Shut up.”

“I have so much faith in our success,” Midoriya says. “Really. It’s astounding how relieved I feel knowing that my impending escape is in your hands.”

Glitch rolls her eyes.

“Come on, then,” she says. “Hijack and Blitz are arguing again, so they’re distracted for the moment. If we’re lucky, we might be able to get out without alerting them at all.”

“I’ve never been lucky a single day in my life.”

Dabi silently stretches out his hand for a fist bump. Midoriya solemnly obliges, gently tapping their knuckles together.

The surreal nature of his situation hits him, and it takes a significant amount of energy not to break into hysterical laughter.

Instead he offers a lopsided grin to his conspirators.

“What do you say about going out with a bang?”

“Do we die in this scenario?”

“No. Probably. Maybe.”

“Encouraging. What are you thinking?”

“You said all of the machinery and equipment for metallurgy is still intact, right, Glitch?”

“I did.”

“Including spray dryers?”

“Yes?”

“Right. So those are usually fueled by coal or gasoline, which is stored away from the main floor for obvious safety reasons. I’d guess that there’s probably a storage room somewhere on this level still stocked with it.”

“Why do you know that?” Dabi asks.

“I get bored,” Midoriya says. “Coal will burn just fine, but personally I’m hoping for gasoline. If we set it up in the right spot, it’ll not only take out the warehouse, but it’ll cause pressure to build up in the tanks of—hydrochloric acid, I’m guessing? Sulfuric acid used to be more common, but it isn’t as cost-effective.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Glitch says. “I haven’t looked at the tanks close enough to read the labels.”

“Right. Which will then explode, causing the acid to decompose to form hydrogen and chlorine gas. Considering the large amount of common metals in the plant, the hydrogen gas will likely become extremely flammable as soon as it’s released, and the warehouse will go out in a massive fireball.”

Dabi and Glitch stare at him.

 “What?”

“I’m glad we’re on the same side right now,” Dabi says. “Why does an 11-year-old know how to blow up a steel production plant?”

“I’m 13.”

“My question stands.”

“I told you. I get bored.”

Glitch shakes her head.

“I’m not even surprised,” she says. “That’s probably a good idea, anyway. Decreases the chances that Hijack or Blitz will come after you again. But we need to get moving, or we’ll get caught before we’ve even gotten started.”

Midoriya nods. He stretches a hand out, bowing slightly at the waist.

“Lead the way.”

She rolls her eyes again, but pulls the door open, disappearing into the hallway. Dabi stubbornly refuses to move until Midoriya goes first, so the man brings up the rear, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with anxiety at having someone he’s not sure he can trust in his blind spot.

But in this particular instance, more danger lies ahead of him than behind. He doesn’t have much of a choice other than to trust that Glitch and Dabi won’t turn around and stab him in the back.

He’ll worry about the long-term consequences of working with them when he isn’t in immediate mortal danger anymore.

If they make it that far.

…………..

The three of them stare unblinking at the dusty room full of drums of gasoline.

“How far away can you hit something with your fire?” Midoriya asks, inclining his head questioningly at Dabi.

He lifts a hand and wavers it in the air. “Depends. Is there shit in the way?”

“Probably.”

“Maybe twenty meters.”

Midoriya hums thoughtfully, brow furrowing.

“What does the main floor look like, anyway?” he asks. “How open is it?”

“There’s a fuck ton of machinery,” Dabi says, just as Glitch opens her mouth to answer. She shoots him a dirty look.

“What he said,” she says. “There are a few different exits, although most of them are blocked off to limit potential access points for an infiltration attempt. The door that leads to the freight yard is probably our best bet.”

“How far away from the tanks is that?”

Glitch gestures vaguely, then runs her hand through her hair, making a face. After a few seconds of obvious deliberation, she pulls out her phone. As soon as she clicks it on, it looks as though the irises of her eyes start spinning in concentric circles. She swipes a few times, then turns the screen to show it to Midoriya.

“Blueprints,” she says.

He immediately crowds closer, face only inches from the screen. With one eye out of commission for the time being and the other occasionally refusing to focus—probably because of his concussion—he still finds himself squinting.

Despite his best efforts, he starts muttering to himself.

“Freight,” he starts, under his breath. “So there are the acid tanks…and the spray dryer….it’d be best to place the drum in between two of the tanks, which limits the distance that we can light it from…..maybe we could make a fuse out of something…?”

Eventually he blinks, coming out of it, and finds both Dabi and Glitch looking at him. He can’t figure out what either of their expressions mean, although Dabi’s looks somewhat similar to what he might expect from someone who just found gum on the bottom of their new shoe.

“Where are the others set up?” he asks.

Glitch points as she talks.

“This area here, they’ve got a table and chairs set up, with a few other things. Styx and Blitz are usually there, and they crash out in the open, on some sleeping bags. This office, here, on the second floor, Hijack claimed for himself. He was arguing on the main floor with Blitz when I snuck away, but he might not be now.”

Midoriya nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Dabi, do flames generated by your quirk burn at the usual rate, or is it different?”

He blinks. “Fire is fire, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Who has the fire quirk here, again?”

“Just because someone has a quirk doesn’t mean they know how to use it,” Midoriya says, a little impatiently. If some bitterness creeps into his tone, well, the others are kind enough to point it out. “Your flames were blue, earlier. Blue fire burns at a higher temperature than the red or orange flames that you usually see. Would you say that’s true for your quirk?”

“I’d say that I’m hotter than average, yeah,” Dabi replies, with a smirk. “Is that what you meant?”

Midoriya rubs at the left side of his face.

“Sure,” he says. “I think we’re going to have to make a fuse of some kind, if we want to make sure that the drum lights from a far enough distance that we won’t be caught in the initial blast. Glitch, do you know if the ropes are flammable?”

“The ropes…?” she starts, then realizes. “Oh. I think so. As far as I know, they’re quirk-created, but only to be high-strength and with less stretch. I don’t think Hijack would bother to spend the money on fireproof materials unless his person of interest had a fire quirk.”

“Right. So we can use those. If we soak them in gasoline, they’ll go up quickly enough that there’s little risk of anyone being able to put them out before they hit the drum, and we’ll be able to get out of the building before the major fireworks start.”

“Question,” Dabi says. “How are we getting the drum in question to the main floor? I might’ve referred to myself as the muscle, but I’m not pushing a 50 gallon steel drum up a flight of stairs.”

“There’s an elevator,” Glitch says. “It’s wired in to the generator with the lights. And there’s a dolly in the storage closet down the hall.”

“And getting out of the elevator without being immediately attacked by a group of villains?”

Glitch chews on her lip. “That could pose a problem.”

“From what I understood of the blueprints, we aren’t getting out of here without getting noticed,” Midoriya says. “The freight exit is across the building from the stairwell and the elevator, with a group of villains in between.”

Dabi sighs and crosses his arms.

“Great,” he says. “I love suicide missions.”

Glitch rolls her eyes. “Your quirk is good at a distance, and Styx and Blitz can only fight at close quarters. You could fry both of them before they got anywhere near you.”

Dabi considers that.

“I like that idea,” he says. “Why don’t we just do that?”

He isn’t sure what it says about his degrading moral compass, but Midoriya doesn’t feel all that bothered by Dabi’s nonchalant attitude towards murder. He shakes his head anyway.

“Styx’s quirk probably makes her difficult to burn,” he says. “And I don’t think Blitz would hesitate to use her as a human shield. Hijack has a gun, and I don’t think that your quirk can melt bullets in midair.”

“It’s as good a time as any to find out.”

“It really isn’t.”

“I, for one, think that we should definitely let Dabi try to fight a bullet with his quirk,” Glitch says. “We need a distraction anyway, right?”

Dabi hisses at her. She steps smoothly away from him without so much as blinking.

“Let me just—lay this out. Say we make a run for it. I’m running on adrenaline and spite right now and I don’t have much hope that I’d be able to stay conscious through extended close combat. Glitch, no offense, but I don’t think that you’d be able to take Styx, Blitz, or Hijack in a fight.”

She shrugs. “That’s fair.”

“Even with Dabi covering us, they’ll follow. And eventually we’ll have to stop running, and then it’ll be a fight.”

“You don’t think we’d be able to lose them?”

“I highly doubt it. They know the area better than we do. So we have to do our best to make sure that they can’t follow.”

Glitch and Dabi consider his words.

“I still think this is a stupid idea,” Dabi finally says. “Why’d you have to bring me into this, anyway, Geek?”

“It’s Glitch. And you already knew all of the relevant information. Plus I got the sense that you weren’t entirely happy leaving Midoriya to be tortured.”

Dabi snorts. “And that’s where you’re wrong. No skin off my back if the little brat bites it.”

Except that Midoriya has learned by now how to spot lies, and the indifference that Dabi forces into his tone is too polished. Too practiced.

He doesn’t call him out on it. He’d rather not have another villain on his bad side.

“Okay, I understand the why of this plan,” Glitch says, “but how are we supposed to actually pull it off? As Dabi so helpfully pointed out, there’s no way we get out of the elevator without drawing their attention.”

Midoriya smiles at her. There isn’t any humor in it, just grim satisfaction.

“I’ve got a plan for that. Would you mind if I borrowed your phone?”

………………..

The elevator door opens with a mechanical rattle, metal grinding. Midoriya steps out with a grim grin, head tilted towards Glitch’s phone in his hand, on speaker, just in time for it to click as the call goes through.

Blitz and Hijack, obviously in the middle of an argument, turn to look at him. Styx cranes her head from where she’s sitting with a beer in hand.

“110, what’s your emergency?”

“I’d like to report the location of known A Class villain Hijack,” Midoriya says.

There’s a beat of silence.

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“No,” Midoriya says. “The address is 811-2202, 495-3, Musutafu. Did you get that?”

“811-2202, 495-3, Musutafu?”

“That’s it.”

“How did you come by this information?”

“B Class villains Styx and Blitz are also at this location. Oh, and I’d recommend sending heroes who can contain explosions involving toxic chemicals.”

“Has there been an explosion?”

“Not yet,” Midoriya says, and hangs up.

Their expressions struggle between apoplectic rage and shocked astonishment.

“You son of a bitch,” Blitz breathes. “What did you do?”

“I’m just doing my job as a concerned citizen,” Midoriya says, widening his eyes innocently. He takes several steps forward, striding casually along the edge of the room, forcing them to turn their attention away from the elevator. “Sorry, did you think that I wasn’t going to find a way out eventually?”

“I’m going to tear you limb from limb,” Blitz snarls. “I knew we should’ve just killed you and been done with it.”

“No need to be rash, Blitz,” Hijack says, placing a placating hand on her shoulder.

She shrugs it off and whirls on him.

“This is your fucking fault, Hijack,” she says. “The heroes are about to come down on our heads, and this never would have happened if you weren’t such a goddamn coward.”

“Aw,” Midoriya croons, in an imitation of the way that Blitz had mocked him every time she had the chance. “Is the nasty villain scared of a few heroes?”

She bares her teeth at him and draws the knives strapped to her thighs. Hijack tries again to grab her shoulder and hold her back, but she shakes him off again, harder this time.

“You’re not stopping me this time,” she hisses at him. Her focus narrows in on Midoriya, eyes wild. “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to bleed you, and then I’m going to cut you into pieces and leave you for the rats.”

Midoriya curls his fingers at her.

“Come and get me, then,” he says, in a hard voice that he’s never heard from himself before. And then he turns and runs.

He wouldn’t need to hear the sound of her boots striking the concrete floor or her wordless scream of rage to know that she was following him.

The villains hadn’t learned anything about him except what he sounds like when he screams.

But oh, he’d learned plenty of things about them.

And one of them was that Blitz would never back down from an obvious challenge.

He darts back and forth as he runs, shoving each spike of pain somewhere far, far down, until all that he feels is a dull, distant ache. He leaps over a railing and onto a set of stairs that leads to one of the platforms running along what he’s assuming is the cooling belt. He hears Blitz leaping up—not onto the same platform, there’s too much distance between them—and ducks just in time for one of her knives to fly over his head.

It lodges directly into one of the acid tanks on the other side of the platform, and he allows himself a satisfied smile before swinging over the side of the platform and landing heavily on the ground. He darts behind the tanks, spots Dabi and Glitch crouched low, having successfully made it off of the elevator with the villains distracted, shoots them a thumb’s up, and then circles back around just in time to watch Blitz skid to a halt in front of the tank where her dagger stuck.

He smiles at her.

She snarls.

“I hope you know that you haven’t just signed your own death warrant,” she says. “Anyone you care about—anyone you’ve ever met—I’m going to track down every single one of them.”

His smile doesn’t waver.

“You think so?” he asks. “How long do you think, before the heroes get here? Average police response in this area is about ten minutes, but factoring in what I said about an explosion…I’d guess you’ve got maybe fifteen minutes, at most, before they’ve got the building surrounded.”

“Plenty of time,” Blitz growls. “You might be more of an annoyance than we expected, but you’re stupid if you think that we don’t have plans in place in case of situations just like this.”

“Just like this? So you’ve had people escape and tell the heroes where you are before, and you still let it happen again?”

She grinds her teeth. Without looking, she reaches up to grab the handle of the dagger that’d pierced the tank. Midoriya doesn’t let his expression change, even though he wants to grin with wild triumph.

Blitz yanks it out, and acid sprays.

She howls. Her knives both drop to the floor with a clatter as she stumbles backwards, clutching at her face. She rubs at her eyes, only worsening the damage, as the acid burns into her skin.

“Blitz!” Styx shouts, suddenly appearing at her side. She must’ve been shadowing the chase the entire time.

It’s the first time that Midoriya’s heard her speak—her voice sounds like she gargles with gravel, so maybe it’s not entirely by choice that she mostly remains silent.

She grabs Blitz around the shoulders as the woman continues to make garbled noises of pain, scratching bloody furrows in her skin.

“Now we match,” Midoriya says, and finally lets his mouth stretch into a dark grin. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

He’s never really liked hurting people. He’s fought more than his fair share of villains, but he’d never reveled in their pain.

This, though—the visceral satisfaction he feels at the sight of Blitz slowly sinking to her knees…it comes from a part of him that he didn’t even know existed.

“Kill him,” Blitz chokes out. “Kill him.”

Styx’s mouth presses into a thin line, but she nods and steps away, leaving Blitz to lean against a metal support.

Something cold presses against the nape of Midoriya’s neck. He’s never felt anything like it before, and yet he knows what it is.

The barrel of a gun.

Hijack.

Internally, he curses himself. He thought that the man would take the opportunity during the chaos to save his own skin, but he’d apparently underestimated how invested he is in getting what he wants.

“Why don’t we all calm down,” he says, voice smooth and mild. “It’s evident that we’ve miscalculated. We misjudged you, Midoriya. You’re quite a bit different than what I expected. But that doesn’t mean that this needs to end in any more bloodshed.”

“It doesn’t?” Styx grinds out. “He hurt Blitz.”

“An unfortunate development,” Hijack says. The three of them look at where Blitz has dissolved into a moaning mess. Even from a distance, it’s obvious that the acid has burned deeply into her skull. Patches of her hair are missing, and her hands are covered in blisters and reddened welts. Without immediate medical attention, her chances of survival are incredibly low. “But Blitz knows the risks of our lifestyle. Possibly better than most, I daresay. We shouldn’t let this setback prevent us from our ultimate goal.”

“You’re not going to kill him,” Styx says.

Midoriya feels Hijack shrug behind him.

Styx’s lip curls in disgust.

“You really are a coward,” she says. “If you won’t, I will.”

She lunges forward.

A gunshot echoes through the building. Styx crumples to the ground with a bloody wound in the middle of her forehead, eyes staring unseeing in their direction, her mouth still twisted in a snarl.

“What a waste,” Hijack says. His voice is muffled—the gun going off right next to Midoriya’s head didn’t do his ears any favors. “You’ve done more damage to my operation than anyone ever has before. I’m nearly impressed. But I’m afraid that I’ll have to cut it short here.”

“The clock’s ticking, Hijack,” Midoriya says, calmly. “What makes you think that you haven’t already lost?”

“Ah, but I have a ticket out of here,” Hijack says. He presses the gun harder into Midoriya’s neck. “You. Start walking.”

They shuffle slowly forward. Midoriya plays up his injuries, stumbling every few steps, making his breathing sound short and scared.

Right as they pass Blitz—either unconscious or dead—he stumbles again, harder this time, and falls hard onto his hands and knees.

“Get up,” Hijack orders. “I don’t have the time for your games.”

Midoriya’s entire body trembles minutely.

“Sorry,” he gasps out. “Sorry, I just—it hurts—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Hijack says, leaning down to grab Midoriya’s arm and haul him forcefully back onto his feet.

The barrel of the gun leaves Midoriya’s neck for a split second.

He curls his fingers around the hilt of Blitz’s knife and plunges it through Hijack’s foot and into the stone floor, launching himself sideways in a roll as the man screams and instinctively curls towards the source of the pain.

The stream of curses that leave the man is almost impressive.

“You’re going to regret this,” he says, through gritted teeth, clutching his ankle.

“That’s what you think,” Midoriya says. “But you’re not going to be alive to make anyone regret anything.”

He straightens up to his feet and breaks into a run towards the freight exit. He can just see Dabi standing with the end of the makeshift fuse in his hand, looking somewhere between bored and reluctantly impressed.

There’s a sound behind him, and he dodges without thinking about it, just in time for the bullet that Hijack fires at his back to graze his arm instead. He flips the man off over his shoulder and ducks around a corner, weaving through the machinery so that he’s no longer in the villain’s line of sight.

He doesn’t stop moving when he reaches Glitch and Dabi, shoving at Glitch’s shoulders.

“Go, go, go,” he chants.

Dabi activates his quirk, and the gasoline-soaked rope lights up, flames eating away at a much higher rate than Midoriya would consider typical.

The man falls into step behind them, and they crash through the door and into the freight yard.

“We’ve got maybe three minutes before the heroes and the police arrive,” Glitch says. “If we’re on the streets where they can see us, we’ll get stopped for sure.”

“Isn’t that the plan?” Dabi asks. “To get the kid to the cops?”

Glitch fixes him with a look, but Midoriya’s the one who answers.

“I’d rather not have to explain—everything,” he says. “Best if we’re not here when they arrive. Any ideas?”

There’s an ear-shattering explosion from behind them, and they all duck instinctively. When they glance back, the windows are already lit up with flames in different shades of orange, red, and blue.

“This way,” Dabi says, and sets off at a brisk run.

They follow without question, and after a few twists and turns, they come to a graffiti-covered drainage pipe entrance with a metal grate locked into place over it. Dabi grabs the padlock and gives it a twist, and it snaps open easily.

“Flood tunnels,” he explains. “No one ever bothers to check the flood tunnels.”

He ushers them inside, pulling the grate back into place and fixing the padlock. They slow to a walk, footsteps splashing quietly in the few centimeters of standing water on the bottom of the tunnel. Sounds are a bit muffled, but not enough for them to miss several more blasts following the first as the pressure builds up in the tanks of acid and makes them explode.

It’s a few minutes after that when they hear the first sirens, and by then they’ve already gone deep enough that they’re cut off from the light, using Dabi’s quirk to find their way.

“So,” Dabi says. “Now what?”

Glitch eyes Midoriya.

“A hospital?” she suggests.

He shakes his head vehemently, then sways on his feet as his dizziness comes back with a vengeance. Dabi, surprisingly, and not Glitch, steadies him with the hand not lit up with blue fire.

“You need a doctor, kid,” he says.

“You’re one to talk,” Midoriya grumbles. “I have someone I can call. I’m not going to just walk into a random hospital.”

“Why the fuck not?”

He sighs, lifting a hand to rub at his good eye.

“If either of you tell anyone this, I’ll kill you,” he mumbles.

Dabi raises a skeptical eyebrow, but Glitch elbows him in the ribs and he subsides.

“I’m quirkless,” he confesses. “If I go to a hospital alone, there’s a good chance they’ll refuse to give me medical attention.”

They stare at him.

He flaps his hand impatiently at them.

“I don’t feel like—dealing with whatever you’re thinking right now,” he says. His adrenaline is fading rapidly, and he closes his eyes, trying to summon up the energy to stay on his feet, but he’s been running on nothing for days. “I’m not going to lead the heroes directly to the two of you after you helped me escape, so just—take me somewhere that I won’t immediately get murdered and leave me with a phone, and I’ll be fine.”

“You’re stupid if you think we’re just going to leave you on some random sidewalk,” Glitch says. “Why don’t we take you home?”

He shakes his head. “There’ll be cops there for sure, if not heroes.”

“Well, I’ve done too much to keep your reckless ass alive at this point to leave you for dead,” Dabi says. “You got anywhere else you can go?”

Midoriya starts to answer in the negative, then pauses.

He considers.

“Yeah, I guess I do,” he says.

……………..

Midoriya knocks on the window, balanced precariously on the ledge, his other hand gripping the awning to stop himself from falling.

A lamp turns on, and he finds himself staring directly into Bakugo’s red eyes, wide with disbelief.

He wiggles his fingers in an awkward wave, and Bakugo shoves himself out of bed with an awkward scramble towards the window, shoving it open so roughly that it rattles alarmingly.

“De—Midoriya,” he says. His hands hover in the air between them, like he’s not sure what to do. “You—what the fuck are you doing?”

“Hi, Kacchan,” Midoriya mumbles. He sways in place. “Can I come in?”

Apparently, that’s the permission that he was looking for, because he grabs the front of Midoriya’s short and yanks him bodily into the room.

Midoriya, completely unprepared and also rapidly running out of energy, sinks to his knees on the floor beneath the window, and Bakugo follows him to the ground, still clutching his shirt. He’s holding onto consciousness by a thread.

“I thought you were dead,” Bakugo says. Midoriya notes distantly that his hands are shaking. “The cops—they’ve all been saying that you were dead.”

“Kacchan,” Midoriya slurs. “Will you call my mom?”

“Wha—of course I’ll call your mom, fucking De—Midoriya. Auntie’s been killing herself with worry over you, where do you come off, showing up out of the blue like this, huh?”

He continues swearing and ranting to himself as he reaches for his phone where it sits on his desk, only letting go of Midoriya with one hand.

Midoriya watches through half-lidded eyes as he pulls up his contacts, and waits until he sees the words ‘Auntie Inko’ on the screen. Then he lets himself slump forward, resting his forehead on Bakugo’s shoulder.

He breaks off mid-sentence and freezes in place, but he doesn’t shove him away.

“Kacchan,” he says. “Thanks.”

And then he finally lets go.

Chapter Text

Waking up is strange.

For long minutes, he’s half awake, but unable to so much as twitch his fingers, and reaching for consciousness is like walking through mud.

There’s something distinctly strange, but he doesn’t put his finger on it until his body is less heavy, and then he realizes that the strangeness is because, for the first time in months, he’s not in any pain.

His memories are never gone. He’s woken up in a panic so many times before, thinking that he’s still trapped in a nightmare, but this time, even though it’s distant at first, there’s never a moment where he thinks he’s still with the villains.

He remembers escaping. He remembers the long trek through the flood tunnels, and then ducking through side streets and narrow alleyways to get to the Bakugo house without being spotted. He remembers Dabi giving him a boost up to Kacchan’s window, at Glitch’s insistence, although with only minor grumbling, and he remembers Glitch’s promise to get in touch with him after everything has died down.

Kacchan caught him. He’d fallen forward and vaguely expected to faceplant on the floor, but instead he’d fallen against Kacchan’s shoulder, and he hadn’t been pushed away.

After that, there’s nothing. But he’s never been stupid. Now isn’t any different—he can smell antiseptic, and hear the faint hum of machinery, and the sheets over him have the tissue paper texture unique to hospitals.

His thoughts as he categorizes everything feel detached. Clinical.

He was with villains. He escaped. He’s in a hospital.

He escaped. He escaped.

He escaped.

Midoriya opens his eyes.

Or—eye. His right eye is covered with—gauze, he thinks, maybe, and he lifts a hand to feel it out, other eye staring blankly at the tiled ceiling.

Something wraps around his wrist before his hand reaches his face.

“Don’t touch it,” a gruff, achingly familiar voice says.

He twists his head—too quickly, and he can’t help a grimace when the skin on his shoulders pulls, but it’s probably a good sign, because it means that his nerves weren’t damaged beyond repair—

“Aizawa,” he says. His voice cracks.

The pro hero is sitting in a horribly uncomfortable looking chair, pulled up close to the bed. And he’s never looked well-rested, but it’s even worse than usual, like he hasn’t slept a single minute in months, and Midoriya furrows his brow and nearly asks him if he’s okay, before he realizes that he’s probably been running himself ragged ever since he went missing.

Trying to find him.

“Problem child,” Aizawa says. His tone is more emotional than Midoriya thinks that he’s ever heard it. “You have a lot of questions to answer.”

He dips his head in a nod. “That’s fair. What do you need to know?”

“They can wait for now,” Aizawa says, shaking his head.

“Oh. Are you sure?” His voice cracks again, and he winces at the dryness of his throat. He can’t remember the last time he had a drink of water.  

Aizawa regards him. He grabs a plastic cup and fills it with water from a pitcher on the side table, and lifts it to Midoriya’s mouth, though he doesn’t let go when Midoriya goes to grab it.

“I can hold it,” he says, even though his hand is already shaking with the effort of lifting it, and little sparks of pain are starting to throb across his shoulders and back.

Aizawa doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t let go, either, and Midoriya concedes defeat and lets his mentor help him drink until the cup is empty.

Neither of them talk for a few minutes. Midoriya looks around—spots a couch made up into a bed behind Aizawa, under the window, and an extra chair with a pillow smooshed against the back like someone had been sleeping in it.

His brow furrows as something occurs to him. He looks back at Aizawa.

“Where’s my mom?” he asks.

“You’ve been unconscious for almost a week,” Aizawa says. “They kept you sedated for the first few days to work on repairing the damage to your nerves, as it’s a fairly painful process, and they’ve been slowly taking you off of it. Inko hasn’t left your side even once, but Hizashi finally convinced her to let him take her home a few hours ago to shower and get some more clean clothes, as well as eat a meal that isn’t hospital food.”

“Oh.”

Aizawa sits back in his chair. There’s a small, amused smile on his face. “She did say that it wouldn’t surprise her one bit if you woke up the minute she left. Apparently you have a tendency to try and hide your pain from her. Or maybe I should say from everyone.”

Midoriya looks down at his hands. The pinky and ring finger of his right hand, he notices, are splinted and taped together.

“They’re fractured,” Aizawa says, answering his unspoken question. “You also have a fractured cheekbone, two cracked ribs, more bruised, extensive necrotic tissue damage from what appears to be an extreme cold quirk, a graze on your arm from a bullet, and a hole host of other bruises and more superficial wounds.”

He blinks slowly. It makes him even more aware of the way that his right eye is covered.

Exhaling as quietly as he can through his mouth, he gestures jerkily towards his face.

“And,” he starts, stops. “My—my eye?”

The silence stretches out. He twists and untwists the sheets in his hands.

“You almost lost it,” Aizawa finally says.

Midoriya grits his teeth so hard that it sends shooting pain through his head, and suddenly Aizawa is right there, leaning forward in front of him and wrapping a hand gently around the back of his neck, high, where Styx’s quirk hadn’t spread.

“Look at me,” he says softly.

Midoriya swallows hard, biting down on his lip, and meets Aizawa’s eyes.

“This will not stop you from becoming a hero,” Aizawa says, firmly.

Midoriya flinches. Having his worst fear spoken about out loud so clearly makes something in his chest twist, and he closes his eye for a moment to brace himself against the visceral, raw edge of it.

When he looks again, Aizawa continues.

“You might regain enough vision that with support items, you’ll get close to 20/20. It’ll never be perfect, but I think your friend Hatsume is already feverishly working on plans for you.” He pauses. Midoriya wants to ask about the might, but he waits, because he knows that Aizawa won’t lie to him. “Your doctors are confident that you won’t be totally blind in that eye. But how much you’ll recover is mostly up to chance. Even with specialty quirks…eyes are tricky. Add on that you didn’t get immediate treatment for your injury, and the odds get even more unreliable.”

Midoriya chews on the inside of his cheek. It stings, but it’s such a minor pain that it barely even registers.

“Will you still teach me? Even if it can’t be fixed with support items?”

Aizawa squeezes slightly where his hand is still resting on the back of Midoriya’s neck. He settles his other hand on the top of Midoriya’s arm, like he wants to make sure that what he’s going to say really gets through to him.

“First,” he says, “you don’t need to be fixed, because you’re not broken. And second, why would you ever think, even for a minute, that I would stop teaching you because villains hurt you trying to get to me?”

Midoriya’s hand reaches out, quicker than he thought he could move, as tired as he feels, and grabs a handful of Aizawa’s capture scarf.

“It’s not your fault,” he says.

Something in Aizawa’s face makes it hard to keep looking him in the eyes, but he sets his jaw stubbornly and refuses to look away.

“We’ll talk about that some other time, kid,” he says softly. “For now, just know that I don’t have any plans to stop teaching you. Unless you decide that you don’t want to be a hero, I’m going to be right next to you every step of the way.”

Tears well up in his eye immediately, and he lets himself fall forward until his head is tucked under Aizawa’s chin, resting against his chest.

It takes a moment, but Aizawa’s other hand wraps around his lower back, pulling him in for a proper hug, careful not to accidentally press against any of Midoriya’s dozens of bandages.

The exhaustion still weighing on him starts to drag him down again. He struggles against it for a bit, even though with Aizawa holding him he feels as safe as he thinks that he ever has.

“Tired?” Aizawa murmurs.

He nods, without moving.

“Go to sleep, Midoriya.”

“My mom—”

“Will be here when you wake up again. I promise.”

He nods again, barely the smallest movement of his head, and finally gives in.

The last thing he’s aware of is the feeling of being carefully lowered back down onto the bed by gentle hands.

……………

The next time he wakes, it takes longer. The room is dark; he can tell that much through closed eyes, and someone is running their hands soothingly over his hair.

When he manages to peel his eye open and turn his head, his mom is sitting in the chair next to him instead of Aizawa.

“My Izuku,” she says softly, smiling down at him, eyes already watering with tears. “There you are.”

The sight of the tears in her own eyes breaks something in him, and his vision goes blurry as his face crumples and he tries to launch himself into her arms.

He doesn’t quite make it—his body is still weirdly floppy and uncooperative and his arms are shaky—but she catches him carefully and pulls him the rest of the way into a hug, tangling one hand into his curly hair and wrapping the other around his waist for support.

They cry quietly into each other’s shoulders. After a while, he sniffles and turns his head enough to spot someone with familiar spiky blond hair passed out in the second chair in the corner.

He blinks.

“Kacchan’s here?” he says. His throat is dry again, and it comes out as a raspy whisper.

“Mmm,” Inko hums, pulling back slightly and following his gaze to the corner. “After he heard that you woke up when he wasn’t here, he refused to leave. You know how stubborn he can be. And after she visited earlier this week and saw you, well, Mitsuki didn’t argue all that hard with him.”

He blinks again. He doesn’t say anything else, mostly because he has no idea what to say, but Inko must see the confusion in his expression, because she smiles at him and goes on.

“He’s been here almost as much as Shota and I have,” she says. “That first night—he insisted on coming to the hospital with us, even rode in the ambulance. He stayed until he started falling asleep on his feet, and he was back first thing the next morning. He’s been here every day since, but I took him home with me earlier today to make sure that he ate something. Mitsuki says he’s been so distracted that he’s hardly been touching his dinner.”

“Oh,” he says. He studies his childhood friend.

He’s sprawled in the chair with his legs straight out, arms crossed over his chest, head lolling back against a pillow that’s been stuffed between his neck and the wall. He’s snoring softly, but despite being asleep, he has obvious dark circles under his eyes.

Inko reaches for the cup and the pitcher on the side table to pour him water, and he fumbles around until he finds the controls on the bed so that he can sit up more easily.

She has to help him drink, and he’s not really embarrassed because she’s his mom, but he’s glad that Kacchan doesn’t wake up to see it.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” she says, stroking his hair back from his face again. “It seems like you get hurt every time you’re out of my sight.”

Guilt settles in his stomach.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

She shakes her head at him, grabbing his left hand—the one without splints taped to fractured fingers—and holding it in her own.

“It’s not your fault,” she says, firmly. “You just—you’ve always been so good, Izuku. If you see something wrong, you have to step in to try and make it right. And I could never be upset with you for that, but I just wish you’d have more consideration for your own wellbeing.”

Another apology is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites down on it.

“I really didn’t go looking for it this time,” he says instead.

“I know,” she says. “Shota is still convinced that the whole thing is his fault, even though I’ve told him a hundred times that it isn’t. The only ones to blame are the villains who took you.”

“The villains wanted me to tell them about him,” he says. He picks at a stray string on the edge of the blanket on his lap. “I didn’t tell them anything, though. That’s why they were so mad.”

Inko squeezes his hand.

“You know he would have forgiven you if you did?” she says. “You’re still just a child, Izuku. It isn’t your job to protect us. It’s our job to protect you.”

He shakes his head. “But what kind of hero would I be if I’d told them what they wanted to know and he got hurt or killed because of it? It would’ve been because of me. It’d be my fault.”

“No,” Inko says, almost sharply. “It’d be their fault, Izuku. They’re the villains. They’re the ones who chose to kidnap an innocent child. Shota knew the risks when he became a pro hero, and being targeted by villains is part of that. If you’d told the villains everything that you knew, none of us would be angry with you. You’re not a hero yet. Right now—and hopefully in the future—your priority should always be your life.”

That doesn’t sit right, but Midoriya doesn’t try to argue. He’s familiar with the tone that his mom is using—he knows that he won’t win.

He lets himself relax further back against the bed, and can’t hide a slide grimace when fireworks of pain burst across his back and shoulders.

Inko notices immediately, of course.

“Are you in pain?” she asks, straightening up.

He waves his hands at her. He doesn’t want to make her worry any more than he already has.

“No—no, I swear I’m fine! I just moved too fast,” he tries, and there’s a scoff from across the room. It’s then that he realizes he hasn’t heard Kacchan’s light snoring for several minutes.

“Don’t lie to your mom, shithead,” Bakugo says, somehow managing to cross his arms even more aggressively. “You’re obviously not fine.”

He’s scowling, but something about it looks false. Midoriya can’t help but stare at him a little—because he could swear that he sees hints of concern underneath the mask of irritation.

“I should go get the nurse,” Inko says, fussing over his hair again. “They were fairly upset with Shota earlier when they heard that you’d woken up and he hadn’t told them. Will you be alright if I step out for a few minutes?”

“I’ll be okay,” he says.

She smooths his hair back and squeezes his hand one more time before climbing to her feet. She leaves the room, and Kacchan stands up once the door has swished quietly shut behind her, taking a seat in the chair that she’d left behind.

They stare at each other in silence for what’s probably barely even a minute but which feels like an eternity to Midoriya. He fidgets, waiting for Kacchan to berate him for being stupid enough to get himself kidnapped and injured, and when it doesn’t come, he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

“You can go home, you know,” he says. “I’m fine. You don’t have to stay out of obligation, or, or—whatever.”

Bakugo fixes him with a hard look.

“I was supposed to walk you home,” he says, flatly. “I didn’t. And now you’re here. You know you might be permanently blind in one eye? And they’re not sure that your nerves will completely regenerate. If I’d walked you all the way to your front door—”

“They might’ve just taken you, too,” Midoriya interrupts. “And if they didn’t, they still would have found a way to take me. It’s not your fault, Kacchan.”

Another moment filled only by a hard stare.

“You stopped calling me that,” he says, finally. “You said it was because we weren’t friends anymore. But when you showed up at my window—”

He breaks off abruptly.

“I never stopped wanting to be your friend, Kacchan,” Midoriya says, softly. “I just stopped believing that I could be. But you’ve been trying to prove me wrong for a while, now. And when I needed you, you were there. I think that’s worth more than what’s happened between us in the past.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Bakugo bites out. He’s looking at the wall behind Midoriya instead of at his face. “I was a monster to you. I told you to—”

He stops, choking on the words. Then he closes his eyes, as if bracing himself, and continues.

“I told you to kill yourself,” he says. He opens his eyes again. He still can’t look Midoriya in the face. “You should never be able to forgive me for that.”

“I know that you didn’t mean it.”

“How? I said it, didn’t I? How can you act like I didn’t? How can you act like I haven’t been treating you like absolute shit for years?”

Midoriya sighs. He tilts his head back, looking up at the ceiling. When he feels less unstable, he looks back at Bakugo, meeting red eyes that are full of guilt and regret over the usual rage.

“You’re not a monster, Kacchan. You never were,” he says.

“I was to you.”

“No. You were a bully. But not a monster. Trust me on this.” Midoriya pauses to look away, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “I know what the real monsters look like.”

Bakugo starts to say something, but the door swings open, and Inko walks back in, followed closely by a nurse in dark blue scrubs.

“Look at you!” the nurse exclaims, upon seeing him sitting up in bed. “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. My name is Emi. I’ve been taking care of you the past few days. How are you feeling?”

The nurse’s cheer is a bit overwhelming, but Midoriya forces a smile onto his face anyway.

“I’m doing pretty good, considering,” he says. “Can I go home yet?”

Emi laughs lightly.

“Eager! I like it,” she says. “But don’t get so far ahead of yourself. We want to keep you for at least a couple more days to make sure that you’re recovering properly. There are a few specialists that’ll be in and out tomorrow or the day after to check on your regenerating nerves and your eye, and if they give the all clear, maybe you’ll be home in time for the weekend.”

The weekend.

Midoriya takes a deep breath and forces a smile back onto his face.

“That’d be great,” he says softly.

He can feel Kacchan’s eyes boring into the side of his face, but he ignores him, focusing on the nurse instead, and feels satisfied when she beams at him.

“Well, we’ll do our best to get you out of here as soon as we can!” she says. “Let’s check your vitals, and then we’ll get your primary doctor in here to go over everything with you.”

She starts fussing with the machines, and Bakugo gives up the chair next to his bed without a single word of complaint so that Inko can take it back, going over to the couch instead and looking out of the window, even though it’s dark outside.

Pretending feels—wrong, suddenly.

But Midoriya has been hiding the worst of his pain for years, now.

He’s not sure that he knows how to stop.

Chapter Text

It’s a Sunday afternoon when Midoriya gets released from the hospital.

He’s still covered in bandages, and Inko is carrying a bag full of various items—more bandages, salves, and prescription medications to manage his pain as his nerves regenerate as well as prevent infection.

They get escorted by Aizawa and Yamada, both out of their usual hero costumes in casual attire, and by Bakugo, who shows up in the morning without warning and refuses to explain or leave other than a short, “I don’t trust you to make it home anymore unless I see it happen.”

The drive isn’t long, but Midoriya is exhausted by the time he’s home anyway. His mom breaks off with Yamada and Aizawa to the kitchen for tea, but he makes a beeline for his bedroom, and he’s halfway down the hall when he realizes that Bakugo is following him.

He glances questioningly over his shoulder, but Bakugo just scowls and shoves his hands harder into his pockets.

There’s nothing that he wants more than to flop dramatically onto his bed, but there’s a persistent ache throughout his entire body that he knows will turn into screaming pain if he moves the wrong way, so he lowers himself carefully down onto his stomach instead, burying his face into his pillow.

He hears Bakugo take a seat in his desk chair, and the quiet sound of it rocking back and forth, because neither of them have ever been able to sit still.

Another thing, he realizes, that hasn’t changed throughout the years.

“How bad is it?” Bakugo asks gruffly. “Really?”

Midoriya raises his head.

“You’ve seen my face,” he points out.

“More than half of your body is covered in bandages, De—Midoriya,” he says. “I heard the doctors talking about how they had to regrow your nerves. But no one will give me a straight answer.”

Midoriya sighs. “It’s not something that you need to know, Bakugo.”

Bakugo’s palms crackle, drawing his eyes immediately. He tries not to reflexively curl into himself, but judging by the look on his face and the way he balls his hands into fists and tucks them under his arms, he isn’t successful.

“It’s important,” he says quietly. “Everyone keeps saying that, that I don’t need to know, but I do.”

“And if I don’t want to tell you?”

He opens his mouth—to argue, Midoriya recognizes the look in his eyes—and then closes it. He frowns, looks down at his feet, then looks up again.

“You don’t have to,” he finally says.

Midoriya blinks.

“Did someone hit you on the head while I was gone?” he asks.

“Fuck off.”

“No, really. Have you been replaced by a clone of yourself? Are you an alien only pretending to be Bakugo? Oh, or someone with a shapeshifting quirk? Wait, wait—”

“If the next word out of your mouth has anything to do with evil twin, I’ll draw a fucking marker mustache on your limited edition golden age All Might poster.”

Midoriya narrows his eyes.

“You wouldn’t.”

Bakugo glares back. “Fucking try me.”

He huffs. “Fine. But I feel like I have a point. You just passed up a chance to argue with me. I can count the number of times that’s happened on one hand.”

“Are you being fucking serious right now?”

“Uh, yeah? It’s weird. You’re being weird.”

“You were missing.”

Midoriya tenses. Bakugo notices, because of course he does, and blows out a frustrated breath, lifting a hand to yank at his hair.

“I’m not trying to—I don’t mean—you—fuck!”

“That explains everything,” Midoriya says dryly. “Thank you so much, Kacchan.”

Bakugo aggressively jabs a finger at him.

“And that,” he says.

“That what?”

“You keep switching back and forth between calling me Kacchan and Bakugo,” he says. “And I’m the weird one?”

“I feel like this is a different subject than the one we were just on, but okay,” Midoriya says. “It’s not really a conscious thing. I think sometimes I forget that I’m still mad at you.”

There’s a beat of silence. Whatever Bakugo was expecting him to say, apparently it wasn’t that.

“I said I was sorry,” Bakugo mumbles.

“You didn’t, actually. Not that I’m surprised; I think you’re allergic to apologies.”

“Oh.”

Silence falls again. Bakugo is obviously having some internal struggle, with his face all twisted up like he just stubbed his toe on the corner of a cinder block. Midoriya watches him, and waits, because suddenly he’s lost his energy for teasing.

“I am,” Bakugo finally says. “Sorry, I mean. Especially for—what I said.”

It’s on the tip of Midoriya’s tongue to ask him to elaborate, to force him to acknowledge it out loud, but he thinks maybe that’s too much. And he doesn’t really want to think about it, anyway.

“Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“…that’s it?”

Midoriya shrugs. “Did you expect something else?”

“I—don’t know.”

“Well, that’s what you’re getting. Do you wanna go back to explaining why you’re acting like you’ve been replaced by your nicer twin, or…?”

Bakugo stands and reaches threateningly for the poster hanging over Midoriya’s bed, and he instinctively grabs the pillow next to him and hurls it, smacking Bakugo directly in the face.

“I didn’t say evil twin!”

“Fucking close enough, shithead—”

Someone clears their throat. Slowly, the two of them turn to look at the doorway, where Aizawa is standing with his eyebrows raised.

“Er,” Midoriya says. “Hi?”

“I’m not going to ask,” Aizawa says dryly. “We ordered takeout. You both need to eat. And before you ask, Bakugo, Inko told me to tell you that yes, she ordered your portion extra spicy.”

Bakugo closes his mouth.

“You have thirty seconds,” Aizawa tells them, and disappears.

They look at each other.

Then they’re both scrambling onto their feet and racing for the kitchen, with Bakugo shouting expletives behind him after Midoriya trips him to get through the doorway first.

It pulls painfully at the new scar on his face, but Midoriya smiles anyway.

He knows that everything is going to catch up to him sooner rather than later, but right now, he can still focus on the euphoric feeling of being alive.

And safe.

……………

Midoriya stares at his reflection in the mirror.

He stares for so long that his eyes stop focusing, and even then the angry scarring across his shoulders and chest is still livid and obvious.

On either side of his neck, there are noticeable, slightly darker indentations where the tissue had been too badly damaged to be completely recovered, in the perfectly captured shape of Styx’s hands.

He exhales harshly, leaning against the edge of the sink. His hair falls into his face, and he’s happy for it, happy that he doesn’t have to look at the bandage still covering his right eye and the edges of scar tissue surrounding it.

There’s a soft knock on the door.

“Izuku?” Inko calls quietly. Her voice is uncharacteristically subdued, but then, she knew that he was seeing himself without the bandages for the first time. He’d gotten glimpses, when they were changed in the hospital, but it’s not like they’d put him in front of a mirror.

Forcing himself to take a deep breath, even though his stomach is churning with nausea, he turns and opens the door.

Inko’s eyes well with tears immediately.

“Please don’t cry,” he says. “Mom, please don’t cry.”

She shakes her head, pressing her hands against her face. She’s making a valiant effort to keep her composure, but water wells up anyway.

He stares at his hand, where it’s still resting on the doorknob. There are still bruises on his knuckles, although the split skin had been healed after a few rounds with a healing quirk that specialized on superficial lacerations, leaving only tiny scars that he’d been promised would fade with time.

“I’m sorry,” Inko finally says. Her voice sounds thick, but he chances a glance up, and she’s wiping her cheeks with the palms of her hands. “I just—Izuku.”

“I know,” he says softly.

She settles a hand on his arm, in one of the few places that isn’t still a patchwork of bruises in various stages of healing.

“I should’ve done more to keep you safe,” she says. “I should’ve realized that getting special attention from a pro hero would make you a target, and—oh, sweetheart, I know it makes you happy, but I don’t know if I can stand to watch you keep doing this.”

He stiffens.

“Mom—”

“No, don’t try to argue with me right now,” she says. “I—we can talk about it later, okay, Izuku? I’m sorry for bringing it up. Let’s get you taken care of.”

He wants to argue. He wants to push back against the gentle pressure she applies to his arm to guide him back into the bathroom to sit on the ledge of the bathtub so that she can easily reach where she needs to.

But his eyes catch on his reflection again, and suddenly he remembers the feeling of Styx’s hands on him so vividly that he sways in place, almost convinced that she’s standing right next to him.

It steals his voice, and with it, whatever energy he has to argue.

So he sits down, and he lets his mother spread cream across his scars, and bruise ointment over his arms and torso, and wrap him back up in bandages until his skin is once again hidden from view under swathes of white.

And when she’s done, he quietly stands and makes his way back to his bedroom, closing the door behind him, and crawls into his bed in the dark, curling himself into as small of a ball as he can manage even when his body protests, hiding his face against his knees.

…………….

Midoriya isn’t sure where the original euphoric relief of escaping and surviving went, but after seeing his scars properly for the first time, he can’t summon a single trace of it.

Aizawa has him on strict orders not to even talk about training until after his follow-up appointment with his doctor, two weeks after his discharge from the hospital, to make sure that he’s healing as he should before he starts in on physical therapy to help along the regeneration of his nerves.

Which, despite most of the work being done in the hospital while he was unconscious, bothers him daily, often at night, sending zaps of pain up and down his arms like he’s touched an outlet with wet hands.

He spends a lot of time in bed. Inko thinks he’s sleeping, and doesn’t bother him, because he’s supposed to be resting, to allow his body to heal, but mostly he lays as still as he possibly can and stares at the posters on his wall.

Aizawa and Yamada are apparently busy with—something, because they check in only briefly every day via text or call, and when they stop by it’s for hardly more than a few minutes.

It’s not like Midoriya can really do much, so it shouldn’t bother him, but he can’t help but wonder if maybe Aizawa hadn’t been honest with him in the hospital. What’s the phrase that he’s so fond of? ‘Logical ruse’? Maybe it’d been nothing but a logical ruse, to prevent him from having a total breakdown right after he’d escaped from nearly two full weeks of captivity and torture at the hands of villains.

He wonders about Glitch, and even Dabi, and if they made it somewhere safe. He wonders what the police had found in the rubble of the warehouse. If there’d been anything left of—

The villains who hurt him are dead. He’s directly responsible for two of their deaths, and he could argue that he’s indirectly responsible for Styx, too. She wouldn’t have attacked Hijack trying to get to Midoriya if he hadn’t injured Blitz so badly, and Hijack wouldn’t have shot her.

His thoughts go around and around in circles. He lets them. He doesn’t even bother to try to tune them out; he just lets the low hum of the ceiling fan keep him company as it becomes harder and harder to feel happy that he’d survived.

When his mom brings him food, he eats. He goes to the bathroom and lets her help him change his bandages and apply the creams and ointments, and he takes the pain medication and the antibiotics to prevent infection, and lets Inko carefully cover his bandages with plastic sheeting so that she can wash his hair in the sink, since he can’t take a proper shower or bath. He answers Aizawa’s check-in texts with the buoyant optimism that’s expected of him.

Food tastes like sawdust. Having clean hair for the first time in weeks doesn’t make him feel any different. Every time he types out a message to Aizawa it feels harder and harder to lie.

It’s been—maybe a week, when Bakugo comes over for the first time since he’d insisted on being part of the entourage that had escorted Midoriya home from the hospital.

He’s in bed, same as he pretty much always is, but their apartment is small and the walls are thin. His door is still cracked open, too, from when Inko had quietly stopped in to drop lunch on his desk, and sound carries.

“Hi, Auntie,” Bakugo says, with significantly less gruffness than usual.

“You’re here to visit with Izuku, then?” Inko asks. “Oh, but I think he’s sleeping just now—”

“So?”

“Katsuki, he needs his rest—”

“S’why I gave him a week. Has he really just been fucking sleeping this whole time? I thought he’d drive himself crazy after the first day home. He was driving me fucking batshit at the hospital.”

“Well—” Inko breaks off, suddenly uncertain. Midoriya knows, then, that she hasn’t really been believing his lies. “He’s healing.”

“He can heal later. I wanna talk to him.”

“Katsuki—”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Midoriya says, from where he’s quietly crept to his bedroom door and opened it enough to step into view in the hall. “I’m awake, anyway.”

She frowns, hands fluttering in the air at her sides like she wants to start fussing over him, but she steps aside to let Bakugo properly inside, and he toes his shoes off to place on the rack before trudging towards Midoriya, his face a mask of carefully curated indifference, marred only by his ever present scowl.

“Um, Izuku, honey, since you’re awake—your bandages need to be changed before you go back to sleep. Just so that you know, after Katsuki leaves—”

“I can do it,” Bakugo interrupts.

They stare at him. He visibly fights the impulse to cross his arms and shoves his hands into his pockets instead.

“I can do it,” he repeats.

Midoriya—doesn’t have the energy to care. And even if he has doubts about Bakugo’s bedside manner, it’ll make a nice change from avoiding his mother’s tearful eyes as she fights bursting into sobs.

“Okay,” he says.

“Are you sure, Izuku?” Inko asks, twisting her hands together.

He shrugs.

“He wants to be a hero, right, Kacchan?” he says. If he wasn’t already watching him, he wouldn’t notice the flinch. “Basic first aid is required knowledge. He might as well start practicing now.”

“Well, alright. If you’re really okay with it.”

“We’re good, Mom.”

She nods, more to herself than to him, he thinks, and then spins around abruptly, hands still fluttering in the air, obviously looking for something to busy herself with as a distraction.

Midoriya looks back at Bakugo. Wordlessly, he opens the door to his bedroom wider to allow the other boy entrance.

As soon as it’s shut behind them, Bakugo turns to him.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” he asks.

“Gee, Kacchan, it sure is good to see you too,” Midoriya says. “I’ve been great, thanks for asking. Yeah, the weather we’ve been having has been pretty nice.”

“Fuck off. You know what I mean.”

Midoriya ignores him, instead going back to his bed and settling himself carefully on his back on top of his pile of blankets and pillows.

“Why are you here?” he asks.

Bakugo settles into his desk chair. His brow furrows at the untouched plate of food on the desk, but he refrains from commenting on it.

“Why do you think, De—Midoriya?”

“To make yourself feel better?”

A muscle in Bakugo’s cheek jumps as he clenches his jaw. One of his hands curls into a fist on top of his knee, and then slowly flattens back out, fingers stretching wide and digging into the denim of his jeans.

“It’d be stupid of me to come here, if that’s what I wanted,” he says, instead of yelling or arguing or hurling insults. “Looking at you makes me feel like shit.”

“Awesome. Thanks.”

Bakugo snarls, opening his mouth, most likely to scream some iteration of ‘SHITTY DEKU’, and then, instead, he looks away, closing his eyes and taking a series of controlled breaths.

“I always say the wrong thing,” he says. “Or, what I’m trying to say never comes out right, when I’m talking to you. I keep messing up.”

Midoriya props himself up on one elbow.

“Look, I know we went over this last time, but are you sure that you haven’t experienced any major head trauma recently—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Bakugo snaps. “I’m here because—because I want to be your friend.”

Of all the things that Midoriya might have expected him to say, that wasn’t a single point on the list. He doesn’t say anything, mostly because he’s stunned silent, but also because he thinks that he wants to hear where this is going, if Bakugo can manage to get any more words out through whatever internal fight he seems to be having with himself.

“I’m not here out of guilt, or some weird sense of obligation, or whatever bullshit you have in your head,” he continues. He pauses and takes a deep breath, reaching up with one hand to tug at his hair. “You were gone. And I didn’t realize until then that I actually—care about you.”

That stings, a little. And Bakugo must see it, because he shakes his head at whatever expression is on Midoriya’s face and rushes on.

“I don’t mean I didn’t care about you before. I just mean that I didn’t realize it. I didn’t want to, I think, because then I would’ve had to admit that the things I did to you were fucked up. No one deserves what I did to you, but especially not from people who care about them. I’m not asking you to forgive me, because I don’t deserve it, but I want to—be friends. If we can.”

There’s a long stretch of silence. Midoriya studies Bakugo, and Bakugo stares at his knees and picks at a frayed thread in his jeans with his fingers.

“When did you start going to therapy?” Midoriya asks, and Bakugo swears.

“I hate that you know that,” he complains. “Fucking. My parents made me start going after Auntie talked to them. And when you—” He breaks off. “I put a hole in the wall. Set off the fire alarm, too. They started making me go every day, then.”

“You’ve changed too drastically in too short a time to not be getting help from someone,” Midoriya says. “Also, you willingly started a conversation about feelings. Barring my clone theory, the only logical conclusion was therapy.”

Bakugo looks irritated by that, but he doesn’t argue.

“It’d be fucking weirder if I wasn’t different.”

“That’s fair. I can say with a fair amount of confidence that I’m definitely different after getting kidnapped and tortured.”

Bakugo stares at him. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again, wrinkling his nose with irritation at his own uncertainty.

“You didn’t say,” he finally says. “If we can try, I mean. To be friends.”

Midoriya shrugs—slowly, because doing it quickly still aggravates his nerves and pulls at the healing scar tissue.

“You can try,” he says. “I won’t stop you.”

Bakugo clenches his fist again, but he nods sharply, once.

Silence falls between them. It isn’t thick with tension or awkwardness, like it usually is. It’s just quiet.

Midoriya tilts his head back to stare up at his ceiling. He feels more awake than he has in days, which isn’t saying much, but still says something.

Maybe it says more that Kacchan is the one who finally made him feel something other than apathy or guilt.

“…did you see the new video of Best Jeanist?”

Bakugo scoffs. “Fucking of course I fucking did.”

Midoriya taps his fingers, still looking at the ceiling.

“You wanna watch it again?” he asks.

“…yeah, sure.”

Chapter Text

Midoriya stares at Bakugo.

It’s hard to meet his familiar red eyes without looking away, but for once the wall muffling his emotions works in his favor, because he can ignore the old panic trying to well up.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says, toying with the hem of his t-shirt. “I can probably do it myself by now, or I can always ask my mom—”

“I said I’d do it,” Bakugo says. He’s holding the cream for Midoriya’s frostbite scars in one hand and the bruise ointment in the other, with a grip like he’s about to use them to try and bash someone’s head in.

“You look like you’re about to puke,” Midoriya points out.

“I’m not gonna fucking puke.”

“You sure? You haven’t actually seen it, y’know. It’s not pretty.”

“Just take your fucking shirt off.”

Midoriya raises his eyebrows, and Bakugo scowls and sets the bruise ointment on the bathroom counter just to flip him off.

He almost says something, a sarcastic quip on the tip of his tongue, the exact sort of thing that he knows will steer the two of them into an argument and postpone what they’re doing for that much longer.

Instead he sighs and grabs the bottom of his shirt, peeling it over his head.

He tosses it to the side carelessly. Bakugo catches it mid-throw with a disgusted scoff and throws it in the hamper in the corner.

“Fucking heathen,” he mutters.

Midoriya ignores him in favor of finding the end of the bandages wrapped around his torso and carefully unpeeling the medical tape so that he can start unwinding them. When the first of the scars start to appear, he looks pointedly down at his hands, because he doesn’t want to see the disgust on Bakugo’s face that he’s sure he’ll find.

He balls the old bandages up and throws them into the garbage. He resists the urge to cross his arms over his chest to cover himself and sets his palms lightly on top of his knees instead.

“They look like burns,” Bakugo whispers. Midoriya nods, still not looking up.

“They are,” he says. “Frostbite burns.”

“Frostbite…?”

“One of the villains. Styx. She registered her quirks as ‘Ice Necrosis’. Her palms emitted extreme cold, and when she made direct contact and activated it, tissue death occurred at a rate of—” he breaks off. Blinks. “I don’t remember. I think I have the equation written down somewhere.”

It was one of the first things that he’d done when he’d been released from the hospital. He knew that they were all dead, but he grabbed a fresh notebook and analyzed the quirks of the villains who had taken him anyway, with as much detail as he could force himself to remember.

“Those are handprints.”

Midoriya finally looks up. Bakugo is staring at the worst of the scarring, on his shoulders, where Styx’s hands had been. His nose isn’t curled up in disgust, but Midoriya doesn’t know how to read the odd twist of his mouth or the haunted look in his eyes.

“Observant,” he says, monotone.

Bakugo shakes his head. Sets his jaw.

“The cream for those, then? And the ointment for the bruises?”

“Yeah.”

“Right. Tell me if I’m hurting you.”

“You won’t,” Midoriya says, with certainty. Bakugo doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t explain that despite the nerve regeneration operations he’d undergone in the hospital, he still can’t feel much of anything where Styx’s quirk had scarred him.

His doctors think that it’ll get better with time, but for now he can register pressure and not much else, except when his nerves zap as they remake their connections, and even then, it’s under the skin, not on the surface.

Bakugo straddles the ledge of the bathtub, and Midoriya fixes his eyes on the edge of the doorframe where some of the finish has chipped away in a shape that vaguely resembles a person’s silhouette.

He flinches when Bakugo touches him. Guilt curls in his stomach as soon as he does it, because Bakugo is just trying to help him, but he can’t quell the muscle memory of all the time that the touch of his hands has meant pain.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Don’t fucking apologize,” Bakugo says. His voice cracks.

Midoriya doesn’t flinch again. Bakugo rubs the cream into his scars with a gentleness that Midoriya wouldn’t have guessed he was capable of.

“Turn,” Bakugo murmurs, when he’s reached as much of the scarring from the side as he can, and even though Inko usually works around Midoriya instead of having him move for her, he moves without complaint, turning so that his back is facing Bakugo.

The other boy sucks in a breath.

Midoriya’s scars aren’t especially worse on his back—definitely not worse than the handprints on the top of his shoulders. So he wonders why…?

Then Bakugo’s fingers lightly touch the small of his back, just to the left of his spine, and he closes his eyes as he remembers the starburst scar there.

“That’s from my quirk,” Bakugo says, subdued.

“It is.”

The silence stretches. Bakugo finally inhales loudly and then goes back to applying the prescription cream. He quietly requests for Midoriya to turn again, and then again, so that he can get the scarring across his collarbones.

Midoriya could look over his shoulder at the bathroom wall, or up at the ceiling, or he could just close his eyes.

But he watches Bakugo’s expression instead. Watches him struggle to control it, to lock away what he’s feeling and stay neutral, or stay angry.

He finishes with the cream and screws the lid back on, setting it on the bathtub ledge in between them. His eyes fall on Midoriya’s bare arms, which bear dozens of silvery scars.

“How can you say that I’m not a monster?” he says. “You should hate me. You shouldn’t be able to even look at me.”

“I don’t blame you,” Midoriya says. “Not really. I won’t say that you didn’t hurt me, because it’d be a lie, but the teachers at Aldera are almost as bad for you as they are for me. Just in a different way.”

“What?” Bakugo blurts. “They praise the ground I walk on! They let me get away with everything! All they ever say is what a great hero I’m gonna be.”

“When was the first time that you were told that what you were doing was wrong?”

Bakugo opens his mouth. Then he closes it, eyebrows furrowing.

“It was my mom, wasn’t it?”

Slowly, he nods.

“That’s why. And because—you’re trying to be better. And I never stopped wanting to be your friend, not really.”

Bakugo frowns down at his hands. He clenches his fists, but no sparks spit from between his fingers like they usually do.

“I don’t understand you,” he says.

“I don’t understand me either.”

Bakugo huffs a laugh.

“If you ever decide you wanna take a swing at me for all the shit I did, just let me know,” he says. “I’ll give you a free shot.”

“Because you understand violence?”

“Because I understand violence.”

“Cool. I’ll keep that in mind.”

They look at each other. Midoriya cracks a smile first, and then Bakugo, after huffing and rolling his eyes. He flicks Midoriya lightly in the middle of his forehead, not hard enough for it to even sting, and gets up to grab the bruise ointment from the counter.

“So where’s this need to go?” he asks, holding it up as he settles back onto the bathroom ledge.

Midoriya shrugs, glancing down at himself. His ribs and abdomen are covered in starbursts of purple, blue, yellow, and green. His arms and legs aren’t much better. He can’t see his back—he’s sure it’s probably not as bad, just because it hadn’t been easily accessible when he was tied to a chair.

“Everywhere…?” he says.

Bakugo snorts. Then he shakes his head as he unscrews the cap of the tube.

“They should make a fucking bath bomb version of this stuff,” he says. “Just for you. I’m surprised this tube isn’t empty already.”

“…Mom had to refill the prescription at the end of last week.”

Bakugo starts slathering it onto his arms with slightly more force than is strictly necessary, although it’s still not enough to actually hurt him.

“My turn for a conspiracy theory. You can’t fucking die.”

“Well, I mean. Statistically speaking, I’m immortal.”

“Because you haven’t died yet?”

“Exactly.”

“That means fuck all, idiot.”

“How would you know? Are you the expert on immortality all of a sudden?”

“I know because you’re human, and ‘statistically speaking’, all humans fucking die.”

“You were just saying that you think I can’t die.”

“It was a joke.”

“It was a bad joke.”

“Can we be done with this conversation? Can we be fucking done?”

“Ah, Kacchan. Mad because you’re not the funny one in this friendship?”

“Fuck off.”

………………

Bakugo stays the night.

He doesn’t even ask, he just drags one of the futons out of the hallway closet along with extra blankets and pillows and sets them up next to Midoriya’s bed. Inko takes one look at his expression and just says that it’s a good thing she made enough dinner for three people.

If it was at any other time, Midoriya might feel tempted to talk to Bakugo after they turn the lights out, but instead he rolls over in bed to stare at the wall.

He waits until he hears Bakugo’s soft snores and then rolls back over, watching his ceiling fan spin in the dim light coming through the curtains from the streetlights outside.

Everything has gotten so messed up.

Aizawa gave him hope for the first time, right when he was ready to give up, and he’s tried so hard to prove that he’s worthy of that second chance, but he keeps tripping into mess after mess after mess, and everyone else always has to clean up after him.

He’s gotten an apology from Bakugo out of it, which he never in a million years thought that he’d ever get, but even though he wants it, so badly, for them to be friends again, he doesn’t know if they can be. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop flinching when Bakugo touches him, or raising his arms to protect his face when he hears explosions.

His mom hasn’t brought up hero training again since the first time. He’s tried, but she shakes her head every time and just says, “Not now.”

The thing is, he already has an idea of what she’s thinking. And he knows that it’s because she loves him, and she hates seeing him hurt, but if she tries to force him to stop trying to be a hero, it’s as good as killing him.

He just wants to save people. If he can’t do that, then—then he’s nothing.

Of course, if Aizawa does decide to stop training him, he doesn’t know how he’ll manage it, anyway. But he’d still try.

He sighs through his nose, rolling over onto his other side. Kacchan is sprawled out on his back, limbs askew, still snoring, and he almost smiles, because some things never change.

Then he looks slightly higher, and All Might’s grinning face stares at him from the poster pasted to his door.

His mouth twists.

Maybe the number one hero had been right, when he told Midoriya that a quirkless hero would be too much of a liability.

He keeps dragging other people into his problems, after all, doesn’t he? And he can’t let himself feel too bad about Glitch, or even Dabi, because at the very least he’d stopped them from digging themselves into villainy so deeply that they’d never be able to crawl their way out again.

But all the others that he’s affected…he can tell himself that Kacchan is changing for the better, and maybe that’s mostly true, but he’s seen the flash of fear in his eyes whenever he has to leave and let Midoriya out of his sight. Like he’s convinced that if he can’t see him, he’ll disappear all over again.

And Aizawa and Yamada are obviously second guessing their decisions to help him. Why else would he hardly be hearing from them?

Even Mei—he thought for sure that he’d finally made a friend who wouldn’t judge him, no matter what he got himself into. But other than Aizawa mentioning that she’d started working on a prototype for a support item to help him work around his bad eye, when he was still in the hospital, he hasn’t heard anything about her. Or from her. He tried texting her, just once, after his discharge, but it’d gone unread.

So he must be too much for her, too, after all.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He rolls over in bed again, onto his stomach, turning his face back towards the wall, and wraps his arms around his pillow, even though it pulls slightly at his scars.

His thoughts start to spiral in the direction of the villains, and the fact that he has a body count now, at 14 years old, but he tucks one hand under his chest and rubs his knuckles against his sternum until the pain chases it away.

Then he starts counting backward from 100, in English, because if he doesn’t give himself something to focus on, he knows he’ll end up somewhere that he doesn’t want to be.

The last number he remembers silently mouthing to himself is 42.

……………….

Styx is standing in front of him. The wound in her forehead is weeping blood and gore. Her hands are blue as they reach for him.

“What kind of hero kills?” she hisses. Her hands grasp his shoulders, and he feels the cold burn against his skin. “Do you see what you did? Do you see what you are?”

He tries to shake her off, but her grip is like iron. He looks past her and sees Blitz, crumpled to the floor, face eaten away by acid to reveal parts of her skull. Her eyes are bulging and swollen, staring at him, accusing.

“I didn’t kill you,” he tries to say, but his throat feels like it’s closing in on itself and he chokes on the words.

Hijack appears over her shoulder, as pristine as he was the first time that Midoriya saw him. He adjusts the cuffs of his shirt, tilting his head with a knowing smirk.

“If you did what you had to,” he says, “then why do you feel so guilty?”

Midoriya tries again to break away from them, but he can’t move. His feet are rooted to the ground like cement has been poured over him and dried thick.

“I’m just a kid,” he tries to say.

I’m just a kid, some voice inside of him cries.

“You might become a hero,” Styx says. “But we’ll know.”

His body won’t obey him. He tries to look anywhere else, but his eyes fix on the weeping wound where Hijack’s bullet had found home instead.

“You aren’t a hero,” Styx says.

“You’ll never be a hero,” Hijack adds, and suddenly they twist and swirl until Aizawa is the one standing in front of him, holding his shoulders with a grip that stings and burns.

Midoriya opens his mouth, but no words come out, just a pained sound.

“You really thought I’d train you to be a hero?” Aizawa says. “You killed three people. You conspired with known villains just to save yourself. What makes you think that you’ll ever be enough to save other people?”

Midoriya stares at his dark eyes, guilt and pain building in his gut until he feels like he might puke.

I’m sorry, he tries, but the words won’t leave him.

“You’ll never be a hero,” Aizawa says. “You’re the same as you’ve always been. Useless.”

Midoriya’s lungs burn. He’s not sure that he’s breathing. But he can’t look away from Aizawa’s dark eyes, so full of hate and disgust.

The hope that he’d dared to let himself feel shrivels in his chest. Of course he can’t be a hero. Of course he can’t be anything other than a worthless Deku.

Why did he even bother to try? He can’t change the fact that he’s quirkless. He can’t change the fact that all he can ever seem to do is make life harder for other people.

“Midoriya,” a voice says.

He knows the voice. But he can’t put a name to it, not while he’s lost in the guilt.

Did Hijack die quickly, he wonders? Or did he burn alive, every second agony?

“Wake the fuck up.”

Suddenly he’s back in the same room where he’d been held for—however long. He still hasn’t been able to work up the courage to find out how long exactly that he was gone.

He isn’t tied to a chair, this time, but he’s curled up in a corner, and all he can hear is the steady drip drip of blood and the buzzing of the lights.

“You’re not there,” the voice says. “I don’t know where the fuck you think you are, but you’re not there.”

Midoriya’s eye burns. Styx isn’t the one in front of him, but he feels the pain of her quirk all the same.

His shoulder jolts. He blinks, maybe for the first time. The room blurs. The lights turn to streaks of white, and then suddenly he’s staring up at his bedroom ceiling, and Bakugo is hovering over him.

“Kacchan,” he says.

His voice is as rough as it was after Styx used her quirk on him. Like he’s been screaming for hours.

Bakugo sits back on his heels. He’s kneeling on the bed.

“Fucking—you stopped breathing, you know that?” he says. “I thought I was watching you die.”

Midoriya swallows. He blinks again.

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” he says, and as soon as he says it, his churning stomach revolts, bile rising in his throat.

Bakugo hauls him upright, and he makes a break for his bathroom, barely managing to crash to his knees in front of the toilet before his dinner makes a reappearance, throat burning.

When he’s finished, he sits back, slumping sideways and leaning against the ledge of the bathtub where he’d sat and let Bakugo tend to his healing scars. The cool porcelain feels good against his heated skin.

“You’re not okay,” Bakugo says, and Midoriya tilts his head to look at him where he’s leaning against the counter.

“Do you enjoy stating the obvious?” Midoriya asks, because he doesn’t have the energy to filter his sarcasm.

“You’re not okay,” Bakugo repeats. “So why do you keep pretending that you are?”

Midoriya closes his eyes. Memories are waiting for him. Styx, her eyes dead and ragged flesh hanging from the hole in her head.

“I don’t know,” he whispers.

Bakugo presses a hand to the back of his neck. His skin is warm, as it always is, but for the first time, Midoriya isn’t worried that an explosion of heat and pain is going to follow the touch.

He presses his head against his arm.

“I killed them,” he says. “The villains.”

Bakugo’s grip tightens incrementally. Not enough to hurt.

“Good riddance,” he says. “They fucking deserved it.”

Midoriya looks up at him. He knows that his uncovered eye is wet with tears, and half of him expects Kacchan to make some comment about him being a crybaby, but instead he crouches on the floor next to him.

“They can’t hurt anyone else, now,” he says. “They can’t hurt you anymore.”

Midoriya inhales sharply.

Then he lets himself fall forward, until his head is pressed against Kacchan’s chest.

Bakugo doesn’t push him away.

………………

Midoriya is sitting on the couch trying to force himself to finish a bowl of cereal while Bakugo scoffs at the news on the TV when there’s forceful knocking on the door.

He twists to look towards the front door, but his mother is already there, squinting through the peephole.

She opens the door, blinking a bit with surprise.

“Mei,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

“I figured it out!” Mei says. She pushes past Inko, eyes wide and scanning the apartment until she finds Midoriya where he’s sitting on the couch. “Izuku! I figured it out!”

She takes a running start and launches herself over the back of the couch to settle next to him. Up close, he realizes that the bags under her eyes are the deepest that he’s ever seen them, and her hands are shaking like she’s just downed an entire pot of coffee.

“What did you figure out?” he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

She leans in close, grabbing onto his arm and nearly making him spill his cereal.

“Your eye,” she says. “I know how to help you! I’ve already sent the plans in to be approved and patented. You’ll be my guinea pig, sorta, but I’ve been testing it a bunch and I’m about 98% sure that it won’t blow up in your face as soon as you use it!”

Midoriya blinks at her.

“You’ve been working on it this whole time?” he says.

She nods. “As soon as Steve told me that you might not regain vision in your right eye! I know you want to be a hero more than anything, and I wasn’t about to let something as simple as that stop you! I even went ahead and added some extra features, like speech to text and a display that’ll allow you to read messages without pulling out your phone!”

Bakugo leans forward, scowling. “Who the fuck is this?”

Hatsume twists to look at him.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asks, without losing her cheerful tone.

“That’s Kacchan,” Midoriya says.

“The Kacchan?”

“That one. Yeah.”

Hatsume looks at him. Then she looks back at Bakugo.

Midoriya realizes about half a second before she moves what she’s about to do, and makes a noise of protest, but not in time to stop her from punching him directly in the nose.

Bakugo reels back, and Hatsume does the same, swearing as she cradles her hand and leans against Midoriya’s shoulder.

“Punching hurts,” she says.

“Yeah,” Midoriya says, unsure what else to say. “It does. Kacchan?”

Bakugo tilts his head back, pinching his nose. It’s bleeding slightly, but it isn’t broken.

“It’s okay,” he says, slightly nasally. “I deserved that.”

“You did,” Hatsume says. “Izuku, why is he here?”

“He apologized.”

“He did?”

“He did.”

“…I still don’t like him.”

Bakugo nods at her. “Someone shouldn’t. Midoriya is too forgiving for his own good.”

“Mei,” Inko interrupts, and they all turn to look at her where she’s standing with her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face. “Do your parents know that you’re here?”

Mei’s eyes widen with realization.

“Oops,” she says.

Inko sighs. “I’ll call them,” she says. “Izuku, you have an appointment this afternoon for another session with the doctor who has the nerve regeneration quirk, before your follow-up appointment next week. It’s at 2, so I thought we’d leave around 1:30? We’ll have to take the train.”

Midoriya sets his cereal on the side table. His bowl is still half full, but he can’t bring himself to take another bite.

“Okay, Mom,” he says.

She nods decisively, then turns and heads into the kitchen, pulling her phone from the pocket of her apron.

Midoriya leans forward to look at Bakugo. His nose is still bleeding.

“Do you want a tissue?” he asks.

“Fucking,” Bakugo says. “Yeah, I guess. Auntie’ll kill me if I get blood on the couch.”

Midoriya nods, and silently passes a tissue to Hatsume, who passes it to Bakugo.

“This is so exciting,” Hatsume says, bouncing in place. “You think Steve will let you start practicing with your new support gear soon?”

Midoriya opens his mouth to answer, but before he can say anything, Bakugo interrupts.

“Who the fuck is Steve?” he asks.

And—despite the nightmare, despite the nausea still twisting his stomach in knots, despite everything, Midoriya’s mouth twitches, and then, before he even realizes it, he’s laughing.

Chapter Text

Bakugo leaves shortly after Mei’s arrival, grumbling something about needing to check in with the old hag and scurrying out the door with barely any time for Midoriya to call goodbye after him.

He’d shared an amused look with Mei over it—they both knew that he was running from her.

“Nice right hook,” he tells her, after the door has fallen shut behind Bakugo.

She beams at him.

“He deserved it,” she says, cheerfully. “And I know that you weren’t gonna do it, so I went ahead and did it for you.”

“He did apologize.”

“It’s reparations, Zukkun.”

Midoriya blinks at her.

“Zukkun?” he repeats.

“Ohh, right, I should’ve asked if it’s okay to use your first name. But I mean, we’ve been friends for a while now, and I know your secrets, and you know my secrets, and I’ve spent the last few weeks getting really up close and personal with a 3D digital recreation of your head—”

“You’ve what?”

“—and really I just think that it’s weird we’ve gone this long without starting to use each other’s first names. It gets so confusing when my moms take us out together, since all of us are Hatsume. But now that I’m thinking about it, maybe you’re not comfortable with it and I really should’ve definitely asked, Mom is always telling me that part of the reason I have trouble making friends is because I’m too forward with people—”

Midoriya grabs her hands midair, where she’s started waving them as she talks herself into an anxious spiral. She breaks off to stare at him, wide-eyed.

“Mei,” he says. She stills, and then almost immediately starts bouncing in place with excitement. “You can call me by my first name if you want. I don’t mind. The nickname just caught me off guard a little, is all. No one’s ever given me a nickname before. Not a nice one, anyway.”

Her face twists into a frown.

“Kacchan,” she says derisively. “I should’ve punched him harder.”

He laughs, sitting back and releasing her hands. Then he remembers another part of her tirade, and turns to look at her again, brow furrowing with confusion.

“…a 3D digital recreation of my head?”

Her face lights up.

“It’s so cool,” she gushes. “As soon as Steve told me about your eye, I started asking about support gear, and bugging him about different specifications and what he thought might be helpful, since he is a pro hero, after all, and after a while he got tired of it and he gave me Power Loader’s personal phone number!”

Midoriya can’t even say that he’s surprised.

“That’s awesome, Mei,” he says. “Have you been talking to him a lot?”

“Oh, all the time! He gets kind of grumpy when I text him at 4 in the morning, but he always answers my questions and he sent me the software that helped generate your 3D head! Plus he called in a favor to have someone use their quirk to get your exact measurements and specifications so that I can make your prosthetic fit perfectly.”

He…has no idea how to feel about that.

“Did that happen while I was in the hospital?”

“Yeah! Steve almost attacked her, because he thought that she was a villain since she obviously wasn’t a nurse, but luckily Amma got there right then and cleared everything up. She would’ve been there in the first place, but she got sidetracked by the coffee maker.”

Hatsume bounces again. Midoriya notes her obviously empty pockets and lack of bag, and the way her fingers are twitching, and grabs one of his fidgets from the side table—an interlocked set of rings that form one big ring when they’re put together properly. She takes it with another bright grin, setting about solving it without even bothering to look down at her hands.

“It’s kind of weird,” Midoriya admits. “The scanning thing. She doesn’t, like…keep the scan, does she?”

“Huh? Oh, no! She can only scan one person in a 24-hour period, and it resets. But it is so cool, Zukkun; she’s like a walking MRI! She can upload the scans online using a neurolink device that she invented herself!”

“I thought the only company that’s had success with a neurolink device was that one tech company in America?”

She waves her hand dismissively.

“Kinda, but not really? It’s just not broadly known, and research grants are highly restricted, because it’s technology that could be so dangerous in the wrong hands, y’know? She had to jump through so many hoops with the commission to get her invention approved, and she’s the only one who can even use it.”

“Huh,” Midoriya says. He knows that the Hero Commission is incredibly controlling of support gear manufacturers and any other technology companies that they could feasibly claim jurisdiction over, but he hadn’t heard specifically about the neurolink device. He makes a mental note to do more research about it. “And the scan is as detailed as an MRI?”

“If anything, it’s even better. I know the exact bone density of your entire skull now, Zukkun! Did you know that it’s slightly thinner than everywhere else here?”

She taps a spot high up on his right temple, and he rubs at it thoughtfully.

“Yeah, I almost fractured my skull when I was like two—wait, her quirk shows bone density?”

“I know, right?”

Midoriya can’t help but wave his hands excitedly. All the ways a quirk like that could be applied—the possibilities are endless.

Then he pauses. He looks at Hatsume, who’s solved the puzzle ring and somehow started dismantling it altogether without breaking any of the rings, which is supposed to be impossible.

“You literally know all of my physical weaknesses,” he says.

She nods happily. He’s not sure if she doesn’t realize the weight of that, or if she just simply doesn’t care.

“Mei, you could kill me with a well-placed spoon.”

“You could kill anyone with a well-placed spoon,” Mei says. “I think a paperclip would be a better metaphor.”

“You’d be a terrifying villain.”

“Thanks! You too.”

He shakes his head, a lopsided smile tugging at his mouth, and abruptly realizes for the first time that he’s gone nearly their entire conversation without panic suddenly humming at the back of his teeth like a livewire.

“I’m really glad I met you, Mei,” he says softly.

When he glances over at her, he finds her wide eyes bright with tears, and he straightens in alarm, waving his hands.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry! Did I say something wrong?”

She launches herself into his arms before he can continue his own anxious spiral, and even though his body aches a little with the force of it and her knee accidentally drives into his stomach and knocks the breath out of him, he wraps his arms around her without hesitation.

“I’m gonna make you the best support gear ever,” she mumbles, voice muffled against his shoulder. Her hair tickles his nose. It smells the same as always—motor oil and apple cider vinegar. “So you can’t die, okay?”

His good eye wells with tears of his own.

“I’ll do my best,” he says thickly, voice hoarse. “It’s not like I’ve been trying to get myself killed.”

She laughs wetly and pulls away, wiping at her face with the backs of her hands.

“That reminds me,” she says, and rifles in the chest pocket of her overalls. She pulls out a small flat disc, no bigger than his fingertip, pinching it carefully as she grabs his hand and drops it into his palm. “I made you a panic button.”

He cradles it carefully, pulling it closer to his face to inspect it. As far as he can tell, it just looks like—a thin button, maybe, but without the holes, or like the electrodes on an ECG lead.

“It’s a button?” he asks, glancing up to see her confirmation nod.

“Pro heroes have something similar, but usually they don’t have a need for it to be majorly concealed, y’know? They can work it into a watch, or one of their support items, or even a belt buckle, if they need to. But if you’re being held hostage they tend to take away anything they think might have a tracker, so all of that would be useless. But this can be concealed in pretty much anything! It’ll even fit in the collar of a t-shirt!”

Midoriya nods distractedly, still marveling at the tiny device in his palm. It’s a matte silver, but it doesn’t catch or reflect the light, so if it was somehow exposed, it could easily go unnoticed.

“And, AND, you can even stick it to your skin! That way even if a villain decided to be really thorough and make you change clothes, you’d still be able to access it. I was thinking it’d be best behind your ear; it’d be hidden under your hair that way and only you’d know it was there! Plus it’s a spot that’s pretty easy to reach quickly, and you could play it off as an itch or something like that.”

He bites his lip to hold back the sudden tidal wave of emotion crashing through him. He’s been crying too much. He doesn’t want to do it again.

“You’re amazing, Mei,” he rasps. “How does it stick? It’s not sticking to my hand, and it didn’t stick to your fingers…”

“I am so glad that you asked,” she says. “You just place it where you want it and hold gentle pressure for ten seconds! I’ve already tested it extensively myself and you can’t even feel that it’s there. It’s waterproof, and it won’t come off unless you want it to. Same thing to do that; just hold pressure for ten seconds and it’ll come right off.”

Midoriya nods, turning the little disc between his fingers.

“And to activate it?”

“Tapping it twice in a row will immediately send alerts containing your location to Steve and…Yamada? I don’t know who that is, but Steve asked me to add him when I explained my idea to him. He also added that one police detective you told me about! Tsucky something or other.”

“Tsukauchi.”

“Yeah, him! And if you tap it three times in a row, it’ll send alerts to them as well as the nearest police station and hero agency.”

Midoriya shakes his head in wonder.

“You’re impossible, Mei,” he says, affectionate and awed.

She tilts her head at him, a small, sincere smile on her face.

“People have said that to me before, but I don’t think anyone’s ever meant it as a compliment,” she says. “It’s you, though, Zukkun. You make it feel easy to be impossible.”

He offers her the same warm smile in return. There’s more to it than what they’re saying out loud, but they don’t need to say it. They know.

“Here,” Mei says, and he realizes that she’s split his ring puzzle into two separate puzzles. “Do you mind?”

He shakes his head. “No, you’re fine. I’ve got like three more of those.”

“Cool,” she says. She demonstrates how the separate pieces can still be locked together, and then, looking as shy as he thinks that he’s ever seen her, she offers one half to him. “It’s a matching set.”

“Are you proposing to me, Mei?” Midoriya teases, even as he takes it. “We’re kind of young to be thinking about getting married.”

She flicks him in the cheek.

“You know it’s not like that,” she scolds, and he laughs.

“I know,” he says, still smiling. “But you know I had to say something, right?”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Ooh, vocab word. Very impressive.”

“Thank you. Amma’s word of the week.”

Midoriya finds that the ring fits his middle finger perfectly, and it amuses him a little to wear just the one ring on that finger.

Mei tucks hers into the pocket of her overalls, and he knows that she’ll probably hang it on a chain as a necklace. Rings and bracelets get in the way while she works.

“Thank you, Mei,” he says softly. The panic button is still held carefully in his hand, but he’s already thinking about which side it would be best to place it behind his ear, like she suggested. Even if he never uses it—he isn’t planning on getting kidnapped again, after all—he knows that it’ll not only reassure him to know that it’s there, but Mei and everyone else, as well.

“I hope you never have to use it,” Mei says, her expression suddenly solemn. “But I’ll be glad to know that you have it, if you need it.”

He nods at her understandingly. After one last wondering glance at the little button in his palm, he tucks it carefully into the small chest pocket of his shirt.

“I have an appointment later with the nerve regeneration specialist,” he says. “But…do you wanna play Mario Kart until you have to leave?”

She cracks her knuckles.

“Get ready to be annihilated,” she says.

He throws a pillow at her head, and she ducks it, laughing. It makes him smile again, and he tries not to let himself think about how the muscles in his cheeks are already starting to twitch from smiling more than they’re used to.

“Dibs on Bowser,” Mei says, and Midoriya peels himself off of the couch to turn the console on and grab the remotes.

The second one is buried at the bottom of the bin. He has to double check that it still has enough charge to be used.

But he doesn’t let such a small thing suck him into bad memories.

He has someone to use the second controller, now. He has more than one someone, although he’s not sure the living room would survive intact if he invited Kacchan to play video games with him. Maybe if they played something tame, like Minecraft.

…no, probably even then.

Still. The option is there.

He’s never had that before. And while part of him wants to retreat back into his bedroom and bury himself under the covers to escape from the onslaught of overwhelming feelings crashing through him, he doesn’t want to hide from something that he’s spent years of his life wanting.

So he’ll stay right here.

………………

Midoriya’s neurologist is Kaneko Honoka, although she’s already asked him multiple times to call her Honoka. She’s the youngest of all of the doctors that he’s seen, but she doesn’t let anyone treat her with any less respect than her coworkers, and she’s refreshingly honest with him. She doesn’t address his mother instead of him, or try to sugarcoat what she has to say, and he appreciates it, even if his sessions with her are less than pleasant.

“Izuku!” she exclaims as she enters the exam room. She pumps hand sanitizer onto her hands and rubs them vigorously together, throwing herself onto the rolling stool so that she rolls all the way over to where he’s sitting on the table, trying to resist the urge to anxiously swing his legs. She beams at him. “I know you’re probably glad to be out of the hospital, but I’ve gotta say that I have missed you. Working with you is a refreshing change from the grumpy old people I usually see.”

He smiles hesitantly. It isn’t completely false, but he’s sure that Honoka can see that he’s not very excited to be here.

He hates going to the doctor.

“Right, let’s get down to business, then,” Honoka says, grabbing his file. She flips it open and pulls a pen from the pocket of her coat. “It’s only been a week, so I’m not expecting significantly different answers from the last time we did this, but I’ve gotta ask the questions anyway. How’s the pain been, scale of 1 to 10?”

And this is the part where he’d really prefer to lie, because he’s used to brushing off everything, but he’s been scolded by Honoka herself for doing exactly that. If his nerves are going to heal as best as they can, he needs to tell the truth.

“No lower than a 2,” he admits. “Highest…maybe an 8?”

She nods, making a note.

“And how often is the pain that significant?”

“Not that often. It’s usually at night. It’ll spike, and then it’ll be okay for a bit, and then it’ll spike again. And it’ll do that for…maybe half an hour, at the longest?”

“You’ve felt growing pains before, haven’t you, kiddo? Regrowing nerves is gonna be similar, but the pain’ll probably reach higher levels.”

He nods. She’d gone over that with him before.

“How about sensations other than pain? Tingling, pins-and-needles?”

“Pretty much all the time, still,” he says. “Mostly the tingling. Pins-and-needles happens when I move in a way that stretches or pulls at the scars.”

“And we’re talking about normal twisting and turning, there, right, and not trying to train or exercise?” Honoka asks, looking sternly at him over the top of her tortoiseshell glasses.

He nods.

If he’s honest with himself, he probably would be trying to train and exercise, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s pretty sure his mom has a secondary quirk that can sense when he’s doing something he shouldn’t be.

“Okay! We’ve still been applying the cream and changing the bandages every day, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And no problems with that? No swelling, itching, heat, inflamed skin?”

“No.”

“Great!” Honoka exclaims. She marks one last thing in his file, then snaps it closed and sets it aside, tucking her pen back into her pocket. She rolls backwards on the stool over to the glove container mounted on the wall, tugging two out of it and pulling them onto her hands. “All your vitals were where they should be, but I’m gonna just do a quick exam of the area to make extra sure that there aren’t any signs of infection or other issues before we do another round with my quirk, okay? Do you want Mom to stay for this part, or would you like her to step out?”

Midoriya glances over at Inko. Her purse is balanced in her lap and her hands are folded neatly in front of it to keep it from slipping off. She smiles warmly at him, and he knows that she won’t be upset with him, no matter what he decides.

But she’s finally stopped crying every time she sees his scars, and even though he likes Honoka, he doesn’t know her. He’s not sure he’d react well to being alone with her.

Especially since her quirk does, unfortunately, hurt.

“She can stay,” he says.

Honoka nods. “Alright, then. Shirt off, and then I’ll unwrap the bandages for you and take a look. Sound good?”

He nods, and she turns away politely as he pulls his shirt over his head, even though she’s about to see his bare torso anyway. He hands his shirt to Inko, and she folds it neatly, setting it on the second chair next to her.

Honoka stands, and her hands are gentle as she expertly finds the end of the bandages and starts unraveling them, going bit by bit so that when the gauze sticks she doesn’t pull the skin.

She balls up the bandages and discards them. Midoriya looks at the abstract painting on the wall to distract himself as she checks him over, touch so soft that he barely feels it.

Eventually she nods to herself, stepping away and pulling the gloves off with a snap.

“Looking good,” she says. “No signs of infection, and it’s healing at the rate that it should be. This might even be the last time I have to use my quirk! We’ll go ahead and schedule another follow-up about a month from now, to be sure, but I’ve done just about all I can with my quirk to speed up the regeneration process, at this point. The rest of it’ll be up to you.”

She washes her hands at the sink, instead of just using the hand sanitizer this time, since she has to touch him with her bare hands to use her quirk. Inko catches his eyes pointedly, asking a silent question, but he shakes his head.

He’s pretty sure if he holds her hand while Honoka’s using her quirk on him, he might break her fingers.

Honoka comes to stand in front of him. She raises her hands up, palms out.

“You ready for this?” she asks.

He nods, and fixes his eyes at the painting on the wall behind her again.

She settles her hands over the worst of the scarring—Styx’s handprints—and he tenses automatically at the feeling of it, but he forces himself to take a deep breath through his nose, tracing the bright colors of the painting to remind himself that he isn’t back at that warehouse.

On his exhale, Honoka activates her quirk.

The pain isn’t even a quarter as bad as it was when Styx used her quirk on him, but it’s still bad, made worse by the memories that it dredges up to the surface.

He grits his teeth so hard that his jaw pops. Styx’s eyes flash in his head, the way they were the last time he saw them, blank and unseeing, and his stomach twists.

Then it’s over, and he slumps forward, resting his head in his hands.

“Ow,” he finally mumbles.

Honoka pats his arm.

“I know, kid,” she says. “You did great, though.”

The rest of the appointment is—blurry. Honoka directs a lot of what she has to say at Inko, although she doesn’t act like he isn’t still there, which he appreciates.

She applies a different cream than usual, one that smells faintly minty and cools his skin, which is slightly feverish after her quirk usage. The bandages are reapplied, and he tugs his shirt back on, and then his mom is tucking him against her and guiding him out of the room.

He lets his head fall against her shoulder, and she rubs soothing circles on his lower back. She doesn’t try to say anything.

She’s always known when he doesn’t have the energy for words.

He loses time on the way home, only checking back in when they’re at the door, and he can see the wrinkle of concern in his mom’s forehead, but he just—can’t.

He can’t pretend that he’s okay.

Instead of going to his room, he curls up on his side on the couch, tucking his arms in close to his chest. Inko smooths his hair out of his face, and disappears for a few minutes just to return with two mugs of tea, which she sets on the coffee table.

She sits down next to him and pulls his head onto her lap, burying her hand into his hair and scratching lightly at his scalp.

They don’t say anything. After a while, Inko starts humming softly, an old lullaby that she used to sing to him when he was younger.  

Midoriya falls asleep to the sound of her humming and the smell of lemon ginger tea.

Chapter Text

Midoriya dreams about Stain.

He’s perched like a gargoyle on the edge of the roof, the tails of his mask waving in the wind behind him. The moon is a sliver above his head, casting just enough light to catch on the blade of the katana he’s holding.

The crimson on it can’t be anything but blood.

“What was it that you told me?” he asks, tilting his head. His eyes are dark and predatory. “’Murder is never the right answer’?”

Midoriya remembers how it felt to sink a knife through the flesh and bone of Hijack’s foot until it met concrete.

“It wasn’t murder,” he says, and speaking is like trying to talk underwater, but he forces the words out anyway.

It wasn’t murder.

“You killed them,” Stain says, casually. He doesn’t say it like an accusation. Just a statement of fact.

Somehow that’s worse.

Midoriya can’t say what he wants to—that he just did what he had to, because otherwise they would’ve killed him—but this is a dream, and Stain seems to hear the words anyway.

“You didn’t have to kill Hijack,” he says. “You didn’t kill Styx, I’ll give you that. Her blood is on Hijack’s hands. And Blitz was blinded by her own rage. You might have orchestrated that, but you didn’t deal the killing blow.”

Hijack was going to kill him. He never would have stopped; Midoriya had seen it in his eyes whenever he refused to answer yet another question.

“But Hijack…you didn’t have to kill him. Or, if you did, you could’ve at least had the decency to make it quick. Instead you left him trapped in a building that you knew was about to burn to the ground. Do you know what a terrible death it is? Burning alive? Did you hear his screams as you made your escape?”

Suddenly the world spins, and when it rights itself, Midoriya is standing on the ledge.

His feet are bare, and the wind is ruffling his hair.

“Do you still think you can be a hero?”

And that voice—that isn’t Stain.

Dread curls in his stomach. He turns, slowly, to face the roof. He squeezes his eyes shut before he looks up from his feet, hoping that he’s wrong.

But when he opens them, Aizawa is standing there.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he says. “I thought I saw something in you.”

His dark eyes scan Midoriya from head to toe. Midoriya wants to say something, anything, but his tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth.

“I don’t see anything now,” Aizawa says, and the ledge crumbles underneath Midoriya’s feet.

He falls.

…………….

At breakfast, Inko keeps sneaking concerned glances at him when she thinks that he can’t see her as he picks at his food, eating just enough so that taking his antibiotics won’t make his stomach twist with nausea.

She doesn’t say anything, and that’s not new to him, because that’s how things have always been. Something goes wrong, or he gets hurt, and she comforts him and makes his favorite food as many times as he wants, but they don’t talk about it.

She doesn’t talk about it.

Years later, and she’s still so careful not to mention his quirklessness outright if she can avoid it.

Midoriya doesn’t think that being quirkless is something he’ll ever be able to be proud of, but it isn’t a disease or a death sentence. It just is.

He chases a few grains of rice around his bowl with his chopsticks without really making an effort to pick them up. Inko clears her throat.

“How are you feeling today, honey?” she asks.

“I’m okay,” he says automatically.

He looks up, and she’s already looking at him.

“Really,” he says.

It’s the same lie that it’s always been, but she doesn’t push any more, just nods, even though there’s the familiar wrinkle of worry in her brow that shows she doesn’t believe him. After a few more minutes of silence while she eats and he pretends to, he scrapes his chair back and takes his bowl to the sink.

“Izuku,” she calls, and he half turns on his way back to his bedroom, waiting in the doorway. “I have to go back to work today.”

He nods mechanically. He’s surprised that she’s been able to avoid going in for as long as she has. Even with the work that he knows she can do from home on her laptop, she’s never been able to go a full week without going into the office for at least a few hours, let alone nearly two.

“I’d feel better if I didn’t leave you here alone,” she says, and he knows from her tone that it’s bait she’s hoping he’ll take—that he’ll ask her to stay, or to go with her, or that he’ll summon a smile and say that he doesn’t mind staying with one of his friends.

But he doesn’t have the energy for that level of pretending, so he just waits, instead.

“The Hatsumes have said that you’re always welcome,” she says. “And I asked Mitsuki, too, and Masaru is supposed to be home with Katsuki today. The firm is being kind enough to lend me the use of one of the company cars for a while, so I can drop you off and pick you up from wherever you’d prefer.”

He fidgets with the edge of his shirt.

“I can’t just stay here?” he asks. “Aizawa only patrols at night, right? And classes at UA aren’t in session right now…”

She fixes him with a sympathetic look, and he already knows what the answer is.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she says. “I did ask, but he said that he and Hizashi are both working a case together right now.”

Of course they are.

Midoriya clenches his left hand into a fist so hard that his fingers ache, even though the fractures were healed before he left the hospital. Then he breathes out through his nose and forces himself to relax.

“Okay,” he says. “Can I go to Mei’s, then?”

“Of course. We have to leave here in—oh, about half an hour? Is that alright?”

He wants to ask why she didn’t tell him about any of this yesterday. He wants to throw a fit until she agrees to stay home from work another day. He wants to scream and cry that he isn’t okay, he hasn’t been okay, can they please stop pretending like he’ll ever be okay again?

But he doesn’t.

“It’s fine,” he says.

It’s fine.

She nods, more to herself than to him, and finally turns her attention away from him back to her phone, where she’s scrolling through the morning news.

His shoulders twinge, as though they can sense his inner turmoil. Pins and needles start to spread from the middle of his upper back, over his shoulders, down his arms, all the way to the tips of his fingers.

All he can do is crawl back into his bed and wait for it to pass.

…………………

Mei waits until her lab door has closed firmly after reassuring her Mom that they didn’t need any snacks before lunch and she’d do her best not to set anything on fire before turning to where Midoriya has made himself comfortable on the ratty couch after indiscriminately shoving scrap and junk off of it onto the floor.

“When was the last time you slept?” she asks.

He throws an arm over his face.

“Through the night? When I was sedated in the hospital, probably.”

“Medically induced comas don’t count as sleep.”

“Since when?”

“Since always?”

“Sounds fake.”

“Izukkun.”

He lifts his arm to squint at her. She has her arms crossed, and an expression on her face that might be her attempting to look stern.

“If you’re having trouble sleeping, you should tell your mom,” she says. “I’m sure you could get a prescription for something that would help.”

“Hey, Mei,” he says, faux casual. “When was the last time you slept through the night?”

She purses her lips at him, then nods and uncrosses her arms.

“That’s fair. You want an energy drink?”

“Please.”

Spending the day with Mei isn’t bad.

She shows him the model that she’d built for his support gear—the actual prototype is apparently running the gauntlet at UA, since pretty much anything vision-based runs the risk of doing more harm than good if it’s made incorrectly.

He has faith in Mei, but he’s proud to see her having the foresight to have licensed professionals approve her invention.

“I’ll do the last of the fine-tuning after your follow-up appointment, when they’ll know for sure how much your eyesight is actually gonna be impacted,” she explains, and upon seeing his expression, flops down on the couch next to him and shoves her legs into his lap. “It’s gonna be fine, y’know.”

“I don’t think Aizawa wants to train me anymore,” he says, because he’s thinking about it and Mei makes it so much harder for him to keep his thoughts to himself. He grimaces and lets his head fall against the back of the couch.

“Did he say that?”

“No. I asked him, actually, one of the first times that I woke up in the hospital, and he said the opposite; that he’d keep training me no matter what, as long as it’s still what I want.”

She squints at him.

“So why wouldn’t he?” she asks.

He shrugs. There’s a weirdly vibrant blue stain on the ceiling above his head.

“What if he was just saying that to make me feel better?” he asks. “I mean, most people probably wouldn’t crush someone’s dreams the second that they wake up in the hospital after being kidnapped and held hostage.”

Most people, he thinks, with a wry twist of a bitter smile.

“He did put me in touch with Power Loader so that I could make my baby for you,” Mei points out. “And he asked to be one of the contacts for your emergency button.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “It just feels like—he’s distancing himself. And I can’t think of why, except that he doesn’t want to train me anymore.”

Mei leans forward until her face is just a few inches away from his, and he eyes her warily, wondering why he’s suddenly on the receiving end of her single-minded focus.

“What?” he asks.

She pokes his cheek, nose crinkling, and then nods to herself and sits back again, apparently satisfied.

“Sorry, just had to check that you weren’t a bad clone of yourself or something,” she says. “My Izuku is usually smarter than that.”

Midoriya sputters, caught off guard, and uncannily reminded of the similar accusations that he’s made against Kacchan recently.

“I haven’t even seen him since I was discharged from the hospital!” he protests. “When I bother to ask, he just says that he’s busy! What does that sound like to you, except for an excuse not to see me?”

“Uh, maybe that he’s busy? He’s a pro hero, ‘Zukkun! And even if he is avoiding you, are you sure you can’t think of any other reason that he might be putting distance between the two of you?”

“Maybe he’s finally realized that I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

Mei lightly smacks the back of his head.

“No, dummy! He feels guilty! You got kidnapped by a villain that was trying to get to him! He probably thinks that he’s keeping you safe by staying away.”

Midoriya opens his mouth—then closes it.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Where’d your smarts go? Did you get hit in the head one too many times? How many fingers am I holding up?”

Midoriya shoves her hand away, smiling despite himself.

“I dunno, I did get a pretty bad case of brain freeze. Does that count as head trauma?”

Mei’s gapes at him, and then shocked laughter bursts out of her. She claps a hand over her mouth to try and muffle it, but he just shakes his head and grins at her.

When her giggles have finally tapered off, she twists so that she can pull her legs up to her chest and lean her shoulder against his, instead.

“You should probably go to therapy,” she suggests, in an incongruously cheerful tone. “I think that’s the thing that people do when they’ve been through major trauma.”

“Are you saying that you don’t appreciate my sense of humor?”

“Oh, I do, but imagine if you said that in front of your mom.”

He makes a face. Then he shrugs.

“I’m already used to not saying certain stuff in front of her, so it’s fine,” he says. “I’ll just joke with you. Humor is a coping mechanism, right?”

“I’m not a licensed therapist, but I’m pretty sure that joking about your trauma isn’t the first step towards recovering from it.”

“Fuck off.”

“Aye, aye, captain. You wanna see the jetpack I’m working on?”

“Will I have to use the fire extinguisher?”

“Probably.”

“…yeah, sure, I’m in.”

…………………….

The night before his appointment to find out how much vision he’s retained in his right eye, Midoriya doesn’t sleep.

He traces the edges of the medical tape holding the dressing in place with the tips of his fingers, over and over, and tries not to think about the look on the doctor’s face when he’d asked whether or not there was a chance that his eyesight wouldn’t be damaged at all.

“There’s a chance,” the doctor had answered, evasively, and then briskly changed the subject onto how his fractured fingers and cracked skull and ribs were healing.

Mei and Kacchan had both asked if he wanted them to go with him to his appointment. For moral support, or something.

He’d declined, because he doesn’t feel quite comfortable enough to intentionally put himself in a state of vulnerability with Kacchan, and because he feels ­too comfortable with Mei and having her there would probably end with him saying something he absolutely shouldn’t in front of his mother.

Plus, if he’s telling the truth…there’s only one person that he really wants there.

And Aizawa had already sent his apologies that he wouldn’t be able to make it to the appointment.

He’s been trying to remind himself of Mei’s reasoning—that Aizawa didn’t regret training him, that he wasn’t going to stop, that the new distance between them has everything to do with the man’s misplaced sense of guilt and nothing to do with Midoriya. But it’s so much harder not to let the dark thoughts creep in, especially when he can’t keep himself busy by going out at night or training until he’s too tired to think at all.

His phone screen lights up with a notification for a text where it’s sitting on his nightstand, plugged into the charger. He rolls over onto his side to grab it, and squints for a moment as his eyes adjust.

BabyMaker420: you’re gonna rock this, zukkun! and don’t forget that no matter what happens, I can make you smthn so that you’ll be even better than everyone else

He smiles. A glance at the time shows that it’s 4:13am, which isn’t at all surprising for Mei. She always insists that her best ideas come to her at night.

Freezerburn: thanks, mei <3

Freezerburn: WHEN DID YOU CHANGE MY CONTACT NAME

Freezerburn: MEI

BabyMaker420: <3

BabyMaker420: don’t be jelly just bc I thought of it before u

BabyMaker420: also…………not that I’m one to talk………..but shouldn’t u be sleeping

Freezerburn: figure out how to chemically recreate midnight’s quirk and my insomnia will be cured

BabyMaker420: bet

BabyMaker420: in the meantime tho maybe take sum melatonin or smthn <3 I’d offer to knock u out but I don’t think ur eggshell head can take another hit w/out breaking open

Freezerburn: wow.

Freezerburn: thnx sm

BabyMaker420: ur welcome <333

Midoriya smiles even as he clicks the power button of his phone and sets it back on his nightstand. He’s starting to wonder if Mei snuck some extra features into the panic button that he has hidden under his hair behind his left ear, since she’s gotten so good at texting him right when he’s starting to spiral.

Unfortunately, it fades quickly.

He rolls onto his back, even though it makes his scar itch, and stares at his ceiling.

In—five hours—he’ll find out if he’s blind in one eye.

He’ll find out if he still has a chance of making it into UA’s hero course.

Because who is he kidding? If he has to relearn everything that he’s already learned so far, just to accommodate the new weakness on his right side, he’ll never be ready in time for the entrance exam.

It was already a long shot, anyway.

He presses the heels of his hands against his cheekbones, trying to ground himself.

Mei’s reassured him that he’ll barely have to adjust at all, even if he hardly has any vision left. He’ll have to get special dispensation to wear his support item 24/7, but she’s already filled out most of the paperwork on his behalf, and Power Loader has promised to expedite it.

He’ll have to take it off when he sleeps. And even though it’s supposed to be waterproof, Mei told him that it’d be best if it wasn’t submerged for longer than a minute or so. Just to avoid any slim chance of it shorting out and electrocuting him, especially since it’ll be in such a vulnerable spot.

No matter how many times that he tries to reassure himself, though, his stomach still twists and turns with dread.

It’ll never be the same.

He’ll never be the same.

After a long while, he rolls over to face the wall and pulls his covers over his head.

And when the tears start to fall from his only good eye, he does what he does best—he pretends that nothing’s wrong.

………………..

It goes like this—the doctor, whose name has been repeated to him at least half a dozen times but still won’t stick in his memory through the anxiety flooding his thoughts—gently peels the dressing off of his eye. The first thing he does is check the reactions of his pupil by shining a small flashlight across his eye, without giving Midoriya any time to even try to figure out whether his vision has recovered at all. It sends a lancing pain through Midoriya’s head, but he doesn’t flinch.

The doctor frowns.

He sits back, the stool rolling back slightly, and his gloved fingers softly press at the scar tissue that spreads up over Midoriya’s forehead and down across his cheekbone.

“There’s no swelling,” he says. “And no extreme heat in the skin. That’s good.”

But there’s a furrow between his eyebrows, and Midoriya already knows that everything else the man has to say is going to be bad.

“Here,” he says, grabbing an occlude—the stupid plastic spoon used for vision tests—out of a container on the counter. “Cover your left eye with this for me? And tell me what you can see with your right.”

Midoriya takes it and obeys mechanically. He blinks rapidly at the dimness that overcomes the room with his left eye covered.

Long seconds pass. He can hear the doctor shifting in his chair; his lab coat is rustling, but no matter how much he squints and blinks, the dark, cloudy quality of his eyesight doesn’t clear, and the only visual impression he gets is of slight movement.

It isn’t total darkness. He can make out some color, too, it’s just as though he’s looking through a fogged up, darkly tinted window.

“I can’t really see anything,” he says, flatly.

“Hmm. I was afraid of that. Your pupil is cloudy, and it didn’t react as expected when I performed the light test. I’d assume that you’re experiencing dull, blurry vision, as though the lights are off, and perhaps as though you’re looking through plastic?”

He nods. He lets his hand fall.

The doctor is scribbling something in his file, lips pursed with dissatisfaction.

“We can try a round of antibiotic eyedrops,” he says. “I don’t notice any particular signs of infection, but it can’t hurt.”

“What about corrective lenses?” Inko interjects. She’s shooting concerned glances at him, but he doesn’t have the energy to even try to summon a reassuring smile for her. “Contacts, maybe.”

“I’m afraid that as it correctly stands, the damage to your son’s eye is too severe for corrective lenses. I’d like to get a retinal scan done to get a better idea of what we’re looking at, but at this point, ma’am, I’m not optimistic.”

Midoriya stares down at his hands. He clenches and unclenches his fists, watching the scars move over his knuckles.

“What about surgery? I’ve been doing research—you’ve had incredible success with corneal transplants. If the rest of his eye is still healthy, would that be an option?”

Midoriya looks up at her—not alarmed at the idea of surgery, but at the thought of how much it’d cost. He’s already been too much of a burden to her.

“Ah,” the doctor shifts uncomfortably. He slides his chair over to the counter, busying himself organizing Midoriya’s file and avoiding eye contact. He clears his throat. “Mrs. Midoriya, I’m sure you’re more than aware of the limitations of your son’s condition—”

“What condition?”

The doctor clears his throat again. “Ah. That would be—well—I’m speaking of his quirklessness.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Midoriya looks back and forth between the two of them. He can see his mother’s outrage growing in the white-knuckled grip she has on the handle of her purse.

There’s no point to it. He’d tell her, but he knows that she’d take it the wrong way. So instead he just—watches.

“The waitlist for transplant surgery is long,” he says. “I’m sure you must be aware of that. And the fact of the matter is, the chances that a quirkless individual would be approved even to be added to the waitlist is, well…so small as to be negligible. Healthy donor tissue is prioritized to go to those with quirks.”

“Discrimination is illegal in Japan,” Inko says, her tone dangerous and cold.

“It isn’t discrimination,” the doctor argues. “It’s a simple prioritization of resources. The statistics show that the quirkless are an incredibly small percentage of the population, and that number only decreases with each generation. Adding to that, the general life expectancy of the quirkless is significantly shorter than those with quirks.”

Midoriya bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard.

It doesn’t stop the room from tilting slightly, so he closes his eyes and lets the ringing in his ears take over, drowning out the conversation happening in front of him, like he isn’t even there, until it sounds like nothing at all.

His mother’s hand on his arm is what startles him out of it, and he looks up at her and sees the grim twist of her mouth and the fragile look in her eyes and knows that her argument had been unsuccessful.

“Come on, Izuku,” she says. “Let’s go home.”

He blinks. Nods. Blinks again.

When he opens his eyes, he’s in his bedroom, curled up on his side with his knees tucked up to his chest, staring at All Might’s grinning face.

His cheeks are dry. He hasn’t been crying.

Maybe he’s finally run out of tears. He wouldn’t complain—Bakugo was always right when he’d call him a crybaby.

Heroes don’t cry.

But then, he isn’t a hero, isn’t he?

His body feels too heavy to move, like he might just sink through his mattress and the floor until he’s buried under the ground in the dark.

It’s like he can feel the weight of six feet of dirt on top of him.

“The general life expectancy of the quirkless is significantly shorter than those with quirks.”

The doctor had said it so matter-of-factly. And he wasn’t wrong; Midoriya knows that. He’s known the statistics almost since the day he was diagnosed.

And he’s the one who’d tried to take a swan dive off a roof, isn’t he? Aizawa hadn’t just stumbled across him on the street one day; he’d found him on the ledge, literally, and stuck around to talk him down.

He’d said that he saw something in Midoriya. That if no one else would give him the chance that he deserved, he would.

Just words.

They were just words.

Midoriya knows empty promises. He knows what it’s like for people to say things and not mean them, and he knows the crushing disappointment of daring to believe them, only to find out the truth later.

He’d believed Aizawa. But it has to be pity, doesn’t it? And now he’s finally too much of a charity case for Aizawa to even pretend.

His wrists itch. He scratches at the scars there until they’re red and raw.

One stupid mistake—putting his trust in the wrong person—has him back at square one all over again.

The thing is, he can’t decide who that person is.

Was it just Roach? The businessman that he’d followed into the alley, even though he knew that he shouldn’t, even though he knew that he shouldn’t take the risk?

Or was it Aizawa?

His phone, next to him on the bed, lights up with a notification. He grabs it, trying to shove everything down so that he can figure out how to convince Mei that he’s fine, and excited to try out her invention, when he realizes that the text isn’t from Mei at all.

Unknown Number: check the other one

He crinkles his nose, confused.

Then he goes still.

The phone that he’d made for his time as Wisp—the one that he’d made sure was as secure as it possibly could be, so that no one would be able to trace it back to him—is hidden in one of his desk drawers, where he keeps scavenged parts and an eclectic collection of tools to fiddle with when talking with Mei has given him an idea.

Someone else might tell him that it’s a stupid hiding spot, but it blends in with all the other electrical and mechanical junk that he has, and he knows that hiding in plain sight is often the best way to hide.

He scrambles across the bed, reaching for the drawer, and yanks it open so hard that he smashes his finger and swears under his breath. He has to dig through it to find the phone, but eventually he finds it and clicks it on, waiting with his shoulders tensed so tightly that sparks of pain start to shoot down his arms.

There’s a text notification.

Unknown Number: 01000110 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110101 01110011 00101110 00100000

Binary code. He blinks at it, and then looks at the next text.

He recognizes them as GPS coordinates immediately, followed by the numbers 623. Best guess—apartment number.

It’s been a while since he bothered to learn about binary code, so it takes him a moment to translate.

Find us.

Glitch. It has to be. Who else would be able to find the number of a burner that he’s been so careful to make sure wouldn’t be connected to him? Who else would use binary code to send a message?

And the ‘us’…Dabi must still be with her. That surprises him a bit, but maybe she’d decided to use whatever she had against him to press him into giving her some extra protection.

He taps his fingers against the side of the phone. A glance at the time shows that it’s nearing midnight, and when he strains to listen, it’s quiet. No TV, no running water from the bathroom, no music from the kitchen, which would all be signs that his mom is still awake.

An itch starts to grow under his skin.

He glances at his open closet door, where he can just glimpse the box where he keeps the clothes that he wears as Wisp.

It’s chance that he looks back down at the screen of his phone in time to watch the texts vanish.

But he’d instinctually memorized the coordinates as soon as he’d seen them, and when he enters them, he realizes that the location isn’t even all that far away.

It’s a few blocks away from where he and Glitch had parted ways the night that he’d led her to safety.

A flood of other memories follows that singular recollection. The group of drunk young adults that he’d walked home, the first to call him Wisp to his face; the numerous others that he’d led to safety past the Spiders waiting to ambush him; the people that he’d saved from being burned alive bursting through the door after he’d dealt with the villains keeping them trapped; the man, Shima, who was being tortured by Jorogumo the night that he’d finally taken her down—

Maybe he isn’t a hero. But that hasn’t stopped him from saving people.

He takes a deep breath. His hand lifts and traces the edge of the scar around his eye, and he makes his decision.

Minutes later, he’s slipping out of his window, dressed from head to toe in the black clothes and leather jacket that had first made him recognizable as Wisp, and he feels stronger than he has since he woke up in the hospital.

If he can’t do anything else—if Aizawa really has decided that he isn’t worth training anymore—then he can still do this.

Maybe he’s asking for trouble, going out when he’s only just gotten the last of his bandages off, when he hasn’t even bothered to try to figure out how to adjust for his bad right eye, but when he first started going out, he wasn’t really prepared then, either.

If all that he can do is throw himself between danger and someone else—well.

Kacchan’s eyes, wide and scared and pleading, come to mind.

Sometimes, that’s enough.

Chapter Text

The reality of being blind in one eye hasn’t even started to sink in properly until Midoriya jumps across an alley, aiming for the jutting ledge of the roof of the next building, and misses completely.

He slams onto his back on the metal grate of a fire escape a floor below, and his body forgets how to breathe for what feels like entirely too long, until he finally manages a short wheeze and begins to gasp in oxygen again.

It isn’t like he expected to fall right back into his usual routine as though nothing happened. He’s already been slamming his shoulders into doorframes and stumbling over the furniture for weeks. His depth perception is shot, and he doesn’t have anyone to help him figure it out, so he’s been trying to adjust through trial and error.

He sits up. Pain crackles to life where before there’d just been shocked numbness, and he has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep a wounded noise from escaping him.

“Ow,” he mutters, when the pain dulls enough for his voice to work again. “Fuck.”

But he gets back to his feet.

He tilts his head to look up at the ledge that he’d missed. He flexes and relaxes his fingers repeatedly until some of the frustrated energy abates.

Instead of climbing up or trying to make another jump, he mutters some unflattering curses under his breath and then makes his way down the fire escape ladder. It doesn’t reach all the way to the ground, too rusted to be extended the way it’s supposed to in emergencies, which makes his mouth twist and his thoughts start spinning around how unregulated the city’s infrastructure has become in the age of quirks and heroes, especially in the lower income areas.

He stomps his feet in place a few times, scuffing his boots against the asphalt.

Focus, he chides himself, and he quickly pulls off his gloves. His face mask and hood are inconspicuous enough, but gloves might draw attention, especially late at night along with the rest of what he’s wearing.

He unzips his leather jacket and affects a slumped posture, shoving his hands into his pockets. To any onlookers, he’s just another troubled teenager sneaking out for the night.

Which he technically is, if he’s honest. It’s just that most teenagers sneak out to go to parties or graffiti billboards, and instead he’s on his way to meet with two villains that helped save his life and blow up a building.

Ex-villains? He’s a little surprised that Glitch’s message implied that Dabi is still with her. He didn’t really seem like the type to hang around for long. He was obviously doing what he needed to do to survive, just like a vast majority of the people who ended up turning to villainy, but there was something else, too, buried underneath it.

Whatever it is, he knows that Dabi’s got his own agenda. Which means that even though he played a huge part in saving Midoriya’s life, he still isn’t trustworthy.

Not that Glitch is either, really. But she’s better than Dabi, at least.

The bright lights of a 24-hour convenience store catch his eye as he turns onto a new street. The windows are plastered with advertisements for cigarettes, beer, and energy drinks.

He pauses. He’s taking a risk, walking around casually in the gear that he wears as Wisp. It’s nondescript enough that he shouldn’t be recognized, but if he can add another layer or two to make himself blend in, all the better.

The bell above the door jingles as he enters.

Behind the counter, a bored looking young woman doesn’t even bother looking up from the magazine she’s reading. Her hair is black with purple streaks, and she has at least a dozen visible piercings.

Perfect, he thinks.

She won’t even think twice about him.

He ducks into the aisles, browsing the shelves as he goes. Nothing in particular catches his eye, but he grabs a bag of hot Cheetos and then an energy drink from the cooler. He places both on the counter with the barcode facing the cashier, and once again she doesn’t even look up as she scans his purchases.

“Anything else?” she asks, sounding bored. “Cigarettes, tobacco?”

An automatic no is on the tip of his tongue, but he catches himself and thinks twice. If she’ll sell them to him, cigarettes could be a good bargaining chip if he finds anyone to talk to that might be able to tell him how things have been since his unexpected absence.

“Which cigarettes are the cheapest?” he says, trying for the same bored tone.

She glances up at him, swiping her eyes over him from head to toe. Then she sets her magazine on the counter facedown to save her place and goes to the display behind her, grabbing a blue pack of Mevius cigarettes and tossing it next to his other purchases.

“That’ll be ¥634,” she says, immediately going back to her magazine. She holds her other hand out for payment, and he drops it into her palm. She operates the register without paying any attention to it and hands him his change. “You need a bag?”

“No, thanks,” he says, grabbing the cigarettes first and shoving them deep into one of the pockets of his cargo pants. The energy drink and the Cheetos, he just holds in his hand, and after a short nod from the cashier, turns away and leaves, trying not to make a face when the bells jingle gratingly again.

Back on the sidewalk, he takes the plastic wrap off of the carton of cigarettes and taps one out into his hand. He doesn’t have a lighter, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have any intention of lighting it, but most people have a tendency to avoid eye contact with smokers, so he puts it between his lips and then repockets the box.

It sparks—something.

There’s a squirming feeling behind his ribcage, and he runs his knuckles painfully over his sternum to try and get rid of it, but it doesn’t go away.

He pulls the cigarette away from his mouth and holds it in between two fingers as he walks, looking down at it. It’s stark white in the dim light, and a half-remembered Christian proverb about temptation that he encountered online niggles at the back of his mind.

The carton is covered in warnings about the risks of smoking. He doesn’t have to pull it out to look. Warnings about lung cancer, complications leading to death, addiction, more.

He won’t. If for no other reason than that imagining his mom’s expression if she found out that he’d started smoking crushes the temptation right out of him.

But he thinks about it. What’s one more risk, really?

He wonders what the labels would be if vigilantism was plastered on an advertisement.

WARNING: May lead to permanent injury.

WARNING: Villains and heroes are both enemies.

WARNING: Death not only possible, but likely.

It’s been a while since Midoriya let himself think about the survival statistics of members of the quirkless population. The doctor had brought it back to the front of his mind, and he’s been trying his best to ignore it, but he keeps getting flashes of spider lilies on his desk at school and headlines in the news about suicide pacts.

How is he supposed to believe in his future when it seems like no one else does?

He shakes his hand aggressively at his side, then shoves it back into his pocket, glancing around to make sure that he hadn’t caught anyone’s attention. But he’s alone on the street, except for a homeless man asleep in an alcove with his hat pulled down over his eyes.

Even if his life doesn’t last long, that doesn’t make it worthless.

He can still do something with it.

His next turn takes him deeper into the poorest district of the city. He starts watching the numbers on the buildings, knowing from the directions that he’d memorized that he’s nearing the coordinates Glitch had sent him.

The apartment building, when he finally reaches it, looks lucky to be standing. The balconies have chain link barriers that are orange with rust, and the concrete walls are stained and covered in graffiti. Weeds are growing tall through cracks in the pavement.

He’s expecting the entrance to the building to be locked, like most are, and that he’ll have to buzz the intercom for Glitch to let him in, but when he gives the door a yank, it opens with a god-awful screech.

“I really hope Glitch has better security set up for her apartment,” he mutters.

The singular elevator is out of order when he passes it. Not that he’d take it if it was an option; he doesn’t like how easy it’d be for someone to back him into a corner or trap him.

A horrifying majority of the stairs are covered in some unidentifiable sticky residue that has him peeling his shoes off of them with every step he takes. The railing, when he dares to set a hand on it, moves in his grip, and he’s sure it would pull away entirely if he actually rested his weight against it.

When he makes it to Glitch’s floor and steps into the hallway, he’s hit right in the face with the smell of weed. The air is even vaguely smokey, and it gives him a better idea as to what sort of people live in a place like this, because if they were worried about being arrested or charged with illegal possession, they would’ve at least cracked a window.

The door to apartment 623 opens as soon as he steps in front of it, hand raised to knock, revealing Glitch.

“I saw you coming,” she says. She glances both ways down the hallway, then beckons him inside, closing the door behind them and sliding three deadbolts into place. “What’s with the cigarette? If you’re trying to rebel, you might want to actually light it.”

“Thanks for the tip,” he says, with no small amount of sarcasm, taking the unlit cigarette from his mouth and holding it loosely between his fingers. “Any signs that the cops have connected you to everything?”

She shrugs, turning and leading the way down the narrow hallway.

“There was one guy who stumbled across my connection to Hijack, entirely by accident, but he has a secret second family so it was pretty easy to convince him to keep his mouth shut.”

“That’s…good.”

Glitch snorts. Before she can say anything, they turn a corner and the hallway opens up into a living area. It’s dimly lit, with blackout curtains up over the windows, but there’s a massive array of computer monitors arranged on and around a desk to one side, casting a glow over the room.

In the middle of the room, Dabi is sprawled on a ragged couch that looks like it was salvaged from somebody’s junk sale. His head lolls to look at them.

“Would you look at that,” he drawls. “He lives.”

Despite his attempt to sound indifferent, his eyes catalog Midoriya from head to toe, pausing on his covered eye and the stiff way he holds his shoulders.

Then he spots the cigarette in Midoriya’s hand, and his expression lights up.

“You planning on doing anything with that, or are you just gonna hold it?” he asks. “Because it definitely shouldn’t go to waste.”

“I’ll trade it for information,” Midoriya says, with a sunny smile that he knows for a fact the majority of people find incredibly off-putting.

Glitch pats him on the shoulder.

“You learn fast,” she says. “Dabi, if you’re gonna smoke in here, make sure you crack a window, yeah? Whole building smells like stale cigarettes already but I’d rather not have an asthma attack if it’s all the same to you.”

Dabi salutes her mockingly. “Aye, aye, captain.”

“Fuck off. Don’t set my apartment on fire.”

Midoriya makes his way over to the couch, while Glitch goes to sit at her desk. Dabi doesn’t seem particularly inclined to move, so Midoriya shoves his legs out of the way to make room for him to sit and ignores the incredulous look that it earns him.

He proffers the unlit cigarette in Dabi’s direction, which seems to appease him. He takes it, starting to lift it to his mouth, and then pauses, raising an eyebrow.  

“You got any diseases I should know about?” he asks.

Midoriya doesn’t know if it’s the irritation, the sleep-deprivation, or a fresh bout of self-destruction fueled by his repressed feelings of powerlessness, but either way he finds that he doesn’t have it in him to treat the situation that he’s in with the caution that it deserves.

“Not in the formal definition of the word, no. But if you think you can catch quirklessness, I’ll have to assume that you’re a danger to yourself and others on grounds of extreme stupidity.”

Dabi’s hand lowers slightly.

“You been holding that one in for a while, there, kid?” he asks. “You oughta do something about all that rage you’re trying to pretend you don’t feel. I suggest setting shit on fire.”

“If you don’t have anything useful to say, you can stop talking,” Midoriya says.

“Ouch,” Dabi says, deadpan. He lights the cigarette and takes a deep drag. “Why are you here, anyway? You didn’t have to come. Glitch can’t even blackmail you without incriminating herself. She’s been grumbling about it for weeks while she tries to dig up some dirt.”

Midoriya tilts his head in Glitch’s direction. There’s a flush on her cheeks, but it’s more like sheepishness from being caught out than guilt.

“I like to have a safety net,” she mumbles. She waves her hand at Dabi. “You could’ve dumped the blame on the two of us and no one would’ve questioned it. But as far as I can tell, no one even knows that we were there.”

He shrugs.

“You helped me,” he says. “Why would I turn around and screw you over when the two of you are the only reason I made it out alive?”

“I dunno, kid,” Dabi interjects. “You were doing a pretty good job of getting out of there on your own.”

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. Both of you could have just looked the other way. It happens all the time. But you came back to help me, instead.”

“Under duress.”

Midoriya fixes Dabi with a pointed look.

“Sure,” he says, with a tone that says the opposite. Dabi flicks ash in his direction, but he doesn’t try to deny the accusation. “Besides, as far as villains go, it’s not like you two are the worst of the worst.”

“I’ve killed people,” Dabi says, casually. The line of tension across his shoulders belies his actual feelings, but Midoriya graciously doesn’t call him out on it.

“Right,” he says. “And? If we’re counting, I think Blitz and Hijack are both on my hands.”

“Technically, I set the fire that killed Hijack.”

“And I’m the one who made sure he couldn’t escape by pinning his foot to the concrete with a knife.”

Glitch makes a rude noise, interrupting them.

“Alright, boys, you can share the blame for that one,” she says. “And Dabi, why the fuck would you willingly offer up that information to a vigilante?”

Dabi shrugs and blows smoke at her, winking as he does so.

“We should know where we stand with each other, shouldn’t we?” he says. “And I wanted to know if a little bit of murder would scare him away. Besides, it seems like we’re going to be associating with him, and I needed to make sure that when he eventually found out that my hands have blood on them—and don’t look at me like that, Glitch, you were the one who waxed poetic about how smart shortstack is—I wouldn’t end up in a cell after all.”

“Feel better?” Midoriya asks dryly. “Don’t share the details. I don’t want to know. And I’ll probably feel obligated to stop you if I catch you in the act of adding to your body count.”

Dabi inclines his head in acknowledgement.

“What if the guy’s a dick?” he asks.

Glitch sighs.

“Depends,” Midoriya says.

The answer comes quickly. He has to pause for a moment after he says it, at the realization that he means it.

When did killing stop being black and white to him?

“So, like,” Dabi says. “Child abusers. Thoughts?”

It isn’t a random suggestion, Midoriya notes. There’s a guarded look in Dabi’s eyes that says it’s a question that has weight to it.

“Child abusers, pedophiles,” he says. “Rapists. You know how often the justice system fails to convict them? More than 50% of the time. Seems to me that if they aren’t going to get what they deserve from the government, someone else should give it to them.”

Dabi nods. It isn’t just a nod. The last of the tension finally relaxes from his shoulders, and his body language, which was forced casual, becomes genuinely casual.

It isn’t trust, exactly. Midoriya would guess that someone who’s been through as much as Dabi—not that he knows anything about it, but it isn’t like he can hide the evidence of it, written all over his skin—might not have anyone that he trusts.

But he isn’t on the defense anymore, poised to go on the offense at any moment.

It’s a start.

When he looks up, Glitch is studying him. She doesn’t look disappointed or upset with him, just—thoughtful.

“You still planning on becoming a hero?” she asks.

There are dozens of answers that he could give.

It’s been my dream since I was a kid, he could say.

Or, I’m planning on trying.

He could talk about his doubts, even with the people that he has who have promised to help him become a hero. Or he could admit that he’s not so sure he’s cut out to be a hero anymore, since he’s crossed lines that he never would have imagined he’d even go near.

“Someone needs to be there to save the people that no one else will,” he says. He lifts his hand to trace the edges of the scar covering his eye. “I don’t know if I’ll get into the hero course, but I’m going to try. And if I don’t…I’m not going to stop doing my best to save people.”

Glitch studies him a moment longer. Then she nods, and turns back to her computers.

“Had to ask,” she says. “When are you planning on starting back up as Wisp again?”

He grimaces, rubbing at his face and then dropping his hand back to his lap.

“I’ve got a friend who’s making me something to compensate for my bad eye,” he says. “So when I get that, probably, I guess.”

“How much can you see, anyway?” Dabi asks. He’s still holding the cigarette between his fingers, even though it’s burned down to the filter. “’Cause it doesn’t look like they managed to do much about it.”

“They didn’t,” Midoriya says. “I’m not completely blind, but I might as well be. Apparently it might heal enough for me to be able to register movement, but right now I can’t even do that. My depth perception is shit.”

“And you still think you’ll be able to pass the entrance exam for the hero course?” Dabi asks, sounding amused.

Midoriya flips him off.

“I think I’ll do better than you would, asshole,” he says.

Dabi raises his hands in surrender.

“I wouldn’t touch that shit if you paid me, anyway,” he says. “I like where I’m at, thanks.”

“Crashing on my couch?” Glitch asks, raising an eyebrow. “I’m gonna start asking for rent if you keep eating all my fucking snacks.”

“You’re the one who pulled me out of the gutter and forced me into a rescue mission,” Dabi says. “I’m your problem now.”

Midoriya tilts his head over the back of the couch and stares up at the water-stained ceiling. The surrealism of it all is starting to kick in, reaching through the distance that he’s been keeping between himself and his emotions to dig its claws into his thoughts.

He pulls the energy drink out of the inner pocket of his jacket that he’d stashed it in and pops the top. Then he downs half of it in one go, wrinkling his nose at the carbonation and sugary taste.

“Were you planning on getting some sleep tonight?” Dabi asks, raising an eyebrow. “Because you won’t be, now.”

Midoriya extracts the bag of hot Cheetos from his other pocket and throws them at him, hitting him directly in the face. He splutters, but then he makes a noise of delight when he sees the packaging and immediately tears the bag open.

“I love these fuckers,” he says. “Don’t bother with cigarettes next time, I’d sell my soul for a bag of these.”

“What soul?” Glitch mutters. Dabi flips her off, and she returns the gesture without even turning to look at him.

“Before the last bit of common sense that I have kicks in, how about we get to the point where you tell me why I’m actually here?” Midoriya asks. He takes another sip of his energy drink. “Because I know it wasn’t just to make nice. None of us are the type to start holding hands and singing kumbaya together.”

Dabi snorts.

“For the record, I did want to check in and make sure that you’re still alive,” Glitch says. “It would’ve been a waste if we’d gone through all that only for you to end up dead anyway.”

“Gee, thanks. I can tell you really care.”

“You’re right, though,” Glitch continues, unbothered by his sarcasm. “That isn’t the only reason that I wanted to meet with you again.”

She exchanges a look with Dabi, who sighs and puts down his Cheetos, dusting his fingers off the side of the couch and ignoring the indignant sound that it earns him from Glitch when it turns the fabric orange.

“Fucker,” she says. Then she turns her attention back to Midoriya. “Dabi and I don’t have clean hands. We’ve both done a lot of shit that we can’t take back, and we don’t regret most of it. Most people look at us and write us off as any other villain. Heroes like to spread the idea that every single villain does what they do because they like hurting people, that we do it because it’s how we get our kicks, that there’s something inherently bad in all of us, and that’s why we are what we are.

“But you—for some reason, you look past the surface. And that sounds incredibly stupid and cheesy, but in this world? That means more than you think. Just about any run of the mill hero would have used us for their own gain and then turned on us the second they had the chance, and they wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

The earlier questions they’d had for him start to make a little more sense. He’d thought his answers were obvious.

“We’ve done our best to keep shit quiet,” Dabi says. “You’ve helped, keeping us out of the police reports. But plenty of people knew that we were involved with Hijack and his group, and now that they’re dead and we’re not, they’ve got suspicions. We can’t just jump in with some other group and hope that we won’t get a knife in the back for our troubles.”

“Beyond that,” Glitch says. “Dabi and I…we’ve seen more than our far share of heroes turning the other way when it benefits them. They want the glory, the spotlight, but they don’t want to touch the ugly reality on the off chance that they might get their own hands a little dirty. And for the most part, everyone we’ve met has been on one side or the other, or they went and spoke a little too loud and got themselves killed.”

Midoriya stares at them. He has the oddest feeling that he knows where this is going, and he has no idea how to feel about it.

“You’re different,” Glitch says, firmly. “I called you here because I want to offer to help you out, as Wisp, if you’d want that. I can—point you in certain directions.”

He has to admit to himself that it’d be pretty helpful, having someone else to shoulder the burden of information gathering and surveillance. He’d be able to focus on the actual action, for the most part, instead of the nitty gritty details, which would let him save more people a lot faster.

“And Dabi?” he asks, turning to the man in question.

He shrugs.

“I have a feeling that you can help me with some goals of mine,” he says. “And I know that I can help you. Call it quid pro quo, or whatever fancy phrase the heroes use these days.”

Midoriya looks at him.

“Prove it,” he says.

Dabi grins wolfishly.

“I knew I liked you for a reason,” he says. “You want information, right? Well, how’s this—someone’s gathering goons for some big plan. And I’m talking cannon fodder, here; the kind of villains that’ll follow orders without throwing a fit and don’t have anything like a code of morals getting in the way. They’re not the smartest or the most powerful types, but there’s a lot of them.”

And that sounds—ominous.

“What for?” he asks.

Dabi shrugs, leaning back and eating another handful of Cheetos. “Nobody’s saying. And these are the types that are usually pretty loose-lipped, so whoever’s in charge must’ve scared ‘em shitless if they’re not going around blabbing to anyone who’ll listen.”

Midoriya tilts his head. He can tell there’s more, even though Dabi isn’t offering it up.

“But you have an idea, don’t you?” he says.

Dabi’s mouth twists in a smirk.

“All Might’s back in town,” he says. “And if you pay attention, it sure looks like his days are getting shorter.”

Something freezes to ice in Midoriya’s chest. He’s not sure what expression he’s wearing, but he doubts that it’s what most people would expect when he’s just been told that the Number One Hero might be in danger.

Dabi laughs.

“What do you think, kid?” he says. “Is that worth your while?”

Midoriya rolls his shoulders, trying to fend off the itch under his skin.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it is.”

Chapter Text

Midoriya is maybe halfway home when he realizes that the rooftop where he’d met Aizawa is only a few blocks away.

He stops in the middle of the sidewalk.

Everything started at that building. All Might crushed him, Aizawa picked him back up. For the first time, he learned what it was like to have someone believe in him.

Where is he now, though?

He thought that he knew what empty promises sound like, but Aizawa must be an excellent liar, because he’d believed him.

He’d believed him.

And he might as well go ahead and blame himself for that, on top of everything else, because why not? Shouldn’t he have learned better? All the times that people had pretended to like him, pretended to indulge him, pretended to be his friend.

Why couldn’t he learn better? Why did he keep letting people in?

His feet start moving without a conscious decision, towards the direction of the building.

He isn’t planning anything. He just wants to see it. To remember. It feels like so long ago, already, but it’s only been a few months.

The building is locked, of course, but climbing it is easy. He takes it slow, mindful of the fact that he can’t trust his eyes, and scrapes his fingers a few times, but finally he’s pulling himself over the edge and landing on his feet on the roof.

He doesn’t sit on the ledge. He wants to, remembering the view, how it’d felt to watch all the people walking by underneath his feet, completely oblivious that he was there, but he thinks that falling might feel a little too tempting.

So he sits a few meters away from it instead, legs tucked against his chest, chin resting on his knees.

And he’s not sure why he does it, but he pulls his phone out of his pocket and hits the call button that he’s been agonizing over for weeks.

“What is it?” Aizawa asks, picking up before the first ring has ended. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Midoriya says, automatically. Before he can bite his tongue, he says, “Do you regret it?”

A beat of silence.

“What?” Aizawa asks. “Midoriya, where are you? Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Saving me,” Midoriya says. “Do you regret it?”

The silence lasts longer this time.

“Kid,” Aizawa says. His voice is thick and rough, the way it gets when he’s trying to hide his true emotions. "No. No, of course I don’t. Why would you even ask?”

“I haven’t seen you since I came home from the hospital,” he says. “I’ve barely talked to you. I know you keep saying that you’re busy, but I know that you don’t have classes right now, and even before, when you were working on big cases, you were never too busy to talk to me. So you’re avoiding me. And—and it feels like maybe it’s because you think I’m too much trouble, after all.”

“Midoriya—”

“Mei says that you feel guilty,” he continues. “But I told you that it wasn’t your fault, and that you shouldn’t blame yourself, because I don’t blame you, so I don’t know why you’d be avoiding me if that was why. And you said that you’d still train me to be a hero when I was in the hospital, but every time I’ve tried to bring it up since then, you change the subject, or you say that it’s too soon to talk about it, and I know that probably there’s some secret rule somewhere that heroes shouldn’t give people bad news when they’re recovering from a traumatic event, or something, but I’d really rather you tell me the truth.”

More silence. Aizawa inhales, like he’s about to say something, but Midoriya beats him to it, because apparently he’s not done yet.

“Was it a logical ruse? You lied, because you didn’t want my dead body on your conscience? I thought I could tell when people were lying to me, by now, but maybe you’re just really good at it. Or maybe I wanted to believe you so bad that I tricked myself into it. But if you don’t actually think I could be a hero, and you don’t want to train me anymore, I need you to just say that, because hoping hurts, when I know that the answer should be no—”

“Izuku.”

He stops.

“I don’t regret it,” Aizawa says, firmly. “Not one single second of it. I don’t regret saving you, I don’t regret training you. The only thing I regret is that you got caught up in something that you never would’ve been involved with if it wasn’t for me. I regret that it got you hurt. But you? I don’t regret you at all.”

“Then why—”

“Your friend Hatsume is pretty smart,” Aizawa interrupts. “I thought that you’d be safer if I kept my distance. At least while you were healing.”

MIdoriya lays back against the rooftop, staring up at the sky. There are only a scattered handful of stars visible, but there are lights from passing planes and blinking satellites.

“I don’t know if I believe you,” he says, quietly.

“That’s okay, kid,” Aizawa says. “I don’t blame you. I’ll just have to prove it to you, won’t I?”

Midoriya hums noncommittally.

“Is it worth it?” he asks. “Being a hero.”

It isn’t the first time that he’s asked himself that question. But it’s the first time that he’s let himself say it out loud.

“There’s a lot of evil in this world, kid,” Aizawa admits. “You’ve already seen more than your fair share of it. And I won’t lie—there are days when it feels like you’re doing everything you can, and it’s still not enough. You feel like you could spend every day fighting, and you still won’t make a difference.”

Midoriya chews on his bottom lip. Aizawa is putting voice to feelings that he’s been trying to bury for—months. It hits harder than he thought it would.

“But then there are the days when you’re in time. When you save someone, and the look in their eyes…you know that if nothing else, you’ve made a difference to them. That makes it worth it. The ones that you save make it worth it.”

He remembers the faces of every single person that he’s helped. Some of them not very well—and some of them he remembers by their voice, or their clothes, or something else distinct about them.

But he remembers them.

“And the ones that you don’t save?” he asks.

Heavy quiet.

“You don’t forget them,” Aizawa says, softly. “You’ll always carry them with you. But you keep going, and you try harder, so that you can save the next one.”

Midoriya nods.

“Okay,” he says. “Can we start training again soon?”

Aizawa huffs a laugh.

“You’re impossible, kid,” he says. “Hizashi and I are planning to visit tomorrow. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I think at this point it’s probably better just to tell you. We’re gonna talk some things over, all of us, and part of that will be figuring out your training.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” Aizawa says. “On that note, though—I have this feeling that you’re not at home, in bed, where you should be. Mind telling me where you are?”

Midoriya opens his mouth, but then he catches movement on the edge of his peripheral vision, on his good side.

When he turns to look, he slowly closes his mouth and sits up, wrapping one arm around his knees again.

“I’ve gotta go,” he says. “But I’m safe. I promise.”

He hangs up before Aizawa can reply.

“Safe, huh?” Stain says, leaning back against the wall next to the roof access door and spinning a knife between his fingers. “That’s an interesting choice of words, when you know who I am.”

Midoriya shrugs.

“If you haven’t killed me yet, odds are you aren’t going to,” he says. “And I’d rather not tell my teacher where I am anyway, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Hmph,” Stain grumbles. He gestures towards Midoriya’s face with the knife in his hand. “What happened there?”

Midoriya studies him. He looks the same as ever—no new scars, at least nowhere visible, same ragged gear.

“Why do you care?” he asks.

The question comes out more defeated than defiant.

“You’ve been off the streets for a while,” Stain says, casually. Like it’s nothing at all to mention that he’s been keeping tabs. “Thought maybe you finally found some common sense buried in that thick skull of yours and decided to stop jumping into fights you shouldn’t be able to win. But it looks like you did the opposite.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“So are you, kid. And I asked first.”

Midoriya blows out an aggravated breath. The energy drink he’d had while he was at Glitch’s apartment has made the crawling itch worse, and he feels like he’s about to burst out of his skin.

“Someone tried to kill me,” he says, bitingly.

Stain’s eyes darken. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, Midoriya’s answer, but his reaction makes it seem like he was expecting something different.

“You?” he asks. “Or Wisp?”

“Aren’t we the same?”

“No.”

“Me,” he grits out. He twists his fingers in the fabric of his hoodie. “Why do you care?”

“Who saved you?”

And isn’t that a question.

Midoriya glares at him. He doesn’t even know why, exactly, just that he’s already on edge and this man who taught him and believed in him wasn’t just a villain but a murderer, and he should be doing the right thing and calling Aizawa and telling him everything but instead he’s sitting here having a conversation like he’s chatting with an old friend.

“I saved me.”

Quiet.

“Who?”

Stain’s voice is dangerous. There’s a threat to it, the whisper of a knife’s edge in the dark, and Midoriya’s stomach twists because even though Stain won’t tell him why, he still cares. He’s still the man who saved him from villains months ago when he bit off more than he could chew and taught him how to give himself first aid so that he wouldn’t end up bleeding out in an alley.

“It doesn’t matter,” Midoriya says, tired. “They’re dead.”

Stain grunts.

“Good,” he says, vicious. Then he softens, and Midoriya hates him for it. Hates himself for being able to recognize the incremental difference in his posture. “Can you see out of that eye?”

“No,” Midoriya says, shortly. He doesn’t feel like giving the full explanation yet again. And it’s close enough to the truth, anyway; he can’t see enough for it to make a difference.

Stain crosses the rooftop. Midoriya watches him warily, but he doesn’t try to scramble away or bolt. The exponential differences in their skill levels are still all too evident, and now he can’t even navigate his own apartment without nearly breaking his toe on a table that hasn’t moved in over a decade because with one eye out of commission everything is off.

The man drops to one knee in front of them, putting them level with each other. He’s tucked his knife away somewhere, and his hands are empty, but Midoriya flinches when he reaches for him anyway.

His grip is surprisingly gentle, when he grasps Midoriya’s chin and tilts his head to get a better look at the scar on his face.

“Frostbite,” he murmurs. “Couldn’t tell, from over there. Not a lot of villains with a powerful enough quirk to do this sort of damage.”

He meets Midoriya’s eyes. Midoriya doesn’t look away, even though it hurts, knowing everything he knows and still wanting Stain to be close. To care.

“Styx, huh? And Blitz, too, no doubt. One doesn’t go anywhere without the other,” he says. He lets go and leans back, but he doesn’t move to increase the distance between them any more than that. “You sure they’re dead?”

“Blitz got her face melted off with acid, and Styx got a bullet between the eyes,” Midoriya says. His tone is flat and harsh. “And then the building they were in was blown up. If you wanna go scrounging through the ashes for whatever might be left of their corpses, be my guest.”

Stain’s gaze sharpens.

“You were the kid,” he says. “The one in the news. They didn’t show your picture.”

At least Aizawa had managed to keep that out of the press. There was no hiding the explosion, so the police had been forced to release a statement about what had happened.

It’d been vague—a kid was held hostage, the villains responsible were dead, the kid was safely home and recovering.

But it doesn’t surprise him that Stain connected the dots.

“Word is, those villains were trying to blackmail a hero,” Stain says. “Which one? Who do I need to punish for failing to protect you?”

Midoriya moves in a flash.

“You won’t touch him,” he hisses. A bead of blood wells where the tip of the knife he’d snatched from Stain’s belt is pressed against the side of his throat.

Stain slowly raises his hands.

“He failed,” he says. “Heroes are supposed to protect. They’re supposed to save. But here you are—and what was it that you said? You saved yourself? Why did you have to, kid? Where were the heroes?”

“Where were you?”

Silence.

“I didn’t know,” Stain says, quietly. “If I’d known, kid—I would’ve torn apart the city to save you.”

Tears well in Midoriya’s eyes, but he shakes his head, furiously, trying to will them away. The hand holding the knife shakes, but Stain doesn’t flinch, even when it digs deeper.

“You shouldn’t care about me,” he says. “I’m no one. You’re a villain and a murderer who condemns both along with the heroes. And I killed them. Their blood is on my hands. I’m no better than you or the heroes you hate so much.”

Stain carefully shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “You’re better than all of us.”

Midoriya breaks. The knife falls to the rooftop with a clatter, and he falls onto his knees, pressing the backs of his hands against his face as the tears he’s been trying to hold back overwhelm him.

Stain moves. Midoriya thinks it’s to retrieve his knife and leave, but instead he leaves it where it is and wraps one arm around his back. His other hand settles on the back of Midoriya’s head, over the hood hiding his distinctive curls, and suddenly he’s sobbing in Stain’s arms, crying properly for the first time over everything that he’s lost.

Everything that he’ll never be able to have again.

“I won’t touch your pet hero,” Stain says. “I might as well fall on my own sword, for carrying the same weight of failure.”

Midoriya shakes his head. It’s all he can manage.

“You deserved to be saved. I’m—sorry—that you had to save yourself.”

“I killed them,” he cries. He doesn’t even know if the words come out understandable, between his tears, but he can’t hold them back. “I killed them, I killed them.”

Stain’s arms tighten around him.

“Don’t let this break you, kid,” he murmurs. “You survived. Keep surviving.”

Easier said than done, Midoriya wants to say.

But he doesn’t.

He lets himself be held. He lets himself be comforted by someone else with blood on their hands, even if it came about in entirely different circumstances.

The news reports have never been clear on whether or not Stain’s name was chosen by a reporter or by himself, but he thinks that he knows, now.

And he understands.

His tears dry up eventually, leaving him feeling wrung out and exhausted. He leans harder against Stain’s chest, and he doesn’t move an inch, a solid wall supporting him.

For a moment, his thoughts flash back to old memories that he didn’t realize he still had, before his father left, of a similar feeling. Then he moves one arm too far and bumps his fingers against the handle of one of the knives that Stain keeps strapped to his sides, and he’s forced to remember all over again who he is.

Who they both are.

He stiffens, pulling back. Stain lets him put distance between them, but he doesn’t move himself, still kneeling on one knee with his hands loose and open, ready to be soft again in a way they shouldn’t be capable of.

“I can’t do this,” Midoriya says. His voice is thick and raw from crying.

“I’m not stopping you, kid,” Stain replies. “I won’t stop you from walking away, either, if that’s what you really want.”

It isn’t.

“I can’t,” Midoriya says again, almost choking on the words. He scrubs at his face with his hands, wincing when he forgets about his scar. “You’re not supposed to be—like this.”

Stain sits back, bending his legs in front of him and resting his arms on his knees.

“Not supposed to be what?” he asks. “Human?”

That isn’t the word that he was looking for, but—it works. He doesn’t nod, though, just shakes his head and tries to hold back the tears that want to start falling again.

All his life, people have tried to insist that heroes and villains are black and white. Heroes are good, villains are bad. And he’s known that it’s not that simple for a long, long time, but Stain is the Hero Killer, and he’s not supposed to be able to hold a quirkless teenage boy while he cries and make him feel better. He’s not supposed to care.

“A long time ago,” Stain says, quietly, “people used to tell me that I cared too much. Not something you’d guess by looking at me, huh? But that’s why I became a vigilante, at first. Because I couldn’t just stand by seeing all the wrong happening in the world and do nothing about it.”

Midoriya wraps his arms around himself. He feels cold, and lost, and hurt for the person that Stain used to be, before he pushed it too far. Before the darkness took over.

“You’re a lot like that, I think,” Stain continues. His fingers tap on odd rhythm in the air. “But I don’t want you to be like me the way that I am now, kid. I don’t want this world to take what you are and twist it all up.” He stops for a moment, tilts his head as he meets Midoriya’s eyes. “I think you could make a difference. A real difference. And you can’t do that if you don’t survive to realize all that potential you’ve got hidden away.”

“This isn’t fair,” Midoriya says, hoarsely.

A wry smile twists Stain’s mouth.

“Life isn’t fair, kid,” he says. “We’re all just playing the cards that we’re dealt.”

Midoriya nods, numbly.

“I have to go home.”

Stain nods. He stands, exhaling loudly when his knees crack with the movement. He hesitates, then unbuckles one of the knives strapped to his side. The one that brought Midoriya back to reality, when his fingers had brushed against it. He flips it so that he’s holding it by the sheathed blade, offering it across the space between them.

“If you want to save as many people as you can, you’ve gotta save yourself first,” Stain says, gruffly. “Someone tries to kill you again—stab first, ask questions later.”

Midoriya laughs, loud and stark against the comparative silence of the night. It’s edged with hysteria, and more bitterness than humor.

But he takes the knife. Tucks it into one of the inner pockets of his jacket, where the weight settles reassuringly against his chest.

“Thanks,” he says, quietly.

Stain nods, and turns to leave. Midoriya watches him get to the very edge of the roof before the question bursts out of him before he can stop it.

“Are you going to kill another hero?”

Stain stops still. He doesn’t turn around, but Midoriya can read the tension in the line of his shoulders, and he knows that whatever kindness he brings out in the man, it hasn’t weakened his belief in his crusade.

“Not tonight, kid,” he finally says.

“And tomorrow?”

Stain half turns back.

“Don’t do this to yourself, kid,” he says. “I don’t want to lie to you. If you don’t ask, I won’t tell. And we’ll both walk away a little easier.”

Midoriya closes his eyes. He nods, mostly to himself.

When he opens them again, Stain is gone.

……………….

Midoriya opens the front door and is immediately swept into an exuberant hug by Yamada, whose eyes start watering the second they see him.

“I’m sorry!” he wails. “Shota told me that you were convinced we’d given up on you, little listener, but I promise we never would! Not even in a million years!”

Midoriya awkwardly pats the other man on the back. He’s not sure how to feel about the hug. He likes Yamada—the man makes him feel safe and puts him at ease in a way that not many people do, even as loud as he can be—but he can’t get the tension coiled in his spine to relax.

The pro hero pulls back, hands fluttering in the air. He fingerspells with his right hand, a nervous tic of his, just going through the alphabet rapid fire, over and over.

“We’ve been trying to come up with a way to make sure that you’ll be safe, but we got so buried in trying to find a solution that we neglected to take care of you when you need it the most,” Mic says. He sniffles. Aizawa pats him awkwardly on the shoulder, expression as deadpan as ever, like the waterworks are a common occurrence. “We should know better.”

“You’re here now,” Midoriya offers.

It’s the most that he can make himself say. Part of him feels like a favorite toy, cast aside and forgotten about in favor of other, shinier, newer games to play.

Mic smiles encouragingly at him and ruffles his hair.

“We are,” he says. “Can we come in, then, little listener? Are we forgiven?”

Midoriya moves out of the way so that they can cross the threshold, offering his own crooked smile back.

“Mom made cookies,” he says, shutting the door behind them and twisting the deadbolt into place like it’s second nature. He presses gently to make sure that it’s properly in place, noticing Aizawa watching him closely as he does so, and pretends that he doesn’t know exactly what the other man is thinking. “She’s been refusing to talk to me all morning because she was afraid that she’d spill whatever secret you guys are keeping before you both got here.”

Inko could keep secrets better than most, generally speaking—a skill that came in handy with her job, handling high-profile cases and clients.

But she’d never been able to keep anything from him. At least not for long.

It’d been a little funny, watching her keep turning to him to start talking only to realize, snap her mouth shut, and whirl back around.

“Ooh, are they the spicy hot chocolate cookies?” Mic asks. “I’d come here just for Inko’s cooking, let me tell you—this one here thinks that coffee is a meal.”

“It is,” Midoriya and Aizawa say at the same time. They exchange an amused glance.

Mic throws his hands up in the air.

“You’re corrupting the youth!” he exclaims, pointing an accusing finger at Aizawa, and then stomps ahead of them into the kitchen, where the warm smell of baking chocolate is wafting through the air.

Midoriya goes to follow him, but Aizawa puts out an arm to stop him before he can. When he shoots a questioning look at his mentor, his dark eyes are troubled and searching.

“Last night,” he says. “You weren’t home?”

Ah.

He doesn’t know how to explain all of his feelings without also incriminating himself—how the guilt threatens to drown him unless he’s out on the streets doing something, how he doesn’t feel any safer inside of his bedroom than outside of it anyway, how the dark quiet is more suffocating than anything else most nights—

“Sometimes,” he says slowly, “I still feel like I’m trapped. And it doesn’t stop until I get out and prove to myself that I’m not.”

Aizawa nods understanding. He lowers his arm.

“I won’t tell your mother,” he says. “For now. On one condition.”

Midoriya waits. When Aizawa isn’t forthcoming, he finally groans and gives in.

“What is it?” he asks.

“I want you to see a therapist.”

His swirling thoughts screech to a halt. He blinks.

“What?”

Aizawa sighs. He reaches up as though to run his fingers through his hair, then grimaces and apparently thinks better of it, shoving both hands into his pockets instead.

“You’ve been through a traumatic experience,” he says, tone level and reasonable. “More than one. In the past few months alone, you’ve suffered more than most adults three times your age experience in their entire lives.”

“I’m fine,” Midoriya says. The lie tastes like sawdust.

Aizawa fixes him with a look.

“There’s no shame in getting help when you need it,” Aizawa says. “I’ve been to therapy. So has Hizashi.”

Midoriya shakes his head. Every muscle in his body is tense, and his hands are balled into fists to hide the fact that they’re shaking.

He doesn’t know what bothers him about it so much. Just the idea, maybe, of sitting across from a smiling stranger who doesn’t know anything about him or what he’s gone through. Telling that same stranger about the bullying, the attacks, the kidnapping, the blood on his hands—he knows that they wouldn’t understand.

No one would.

Aizawa places a hand on his shoulder. Midoriya struggles not to flinch and avoids eye contact, looking down at the ground instead.

“In the event of an airplane crash, they always tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first. I’m sure you already know, conceptually, why that is. Could you tell me?”

Still looking down at the floor, he mumbles his response, trying to ignore the mocking voice in the back of his head calling him a sullen child.

“You have to help yourself before you can help others.”

Aizawa nods.

“Right,” he says. “Before you can save anyone else—you have to save yourself first. This is one of those times, Midoriya. I can help you find a good therapist, or you can do your own research, or I’m sure Inko has her own recommendations. Whichever you’d prefer. But you need to put your oxygen mask on before you lose the ability to breathe.”

From the look on Aizawa’s face, Midoriya knows that ‘no’ isn’t an answer that he can give.

“Fine,” he says. “But I reserve the right to stop going if I don’t like the therapist.”

“In that case, we’ll find you someone else. It can take a bit of time to find the right fit. I went through five the first time before finding a therapist that I felt comfortable with.”

Midoriya grimaces at the thought of that—going through it all over and over.

But he doesn’t try to argue. He knows that it’d be useless to try, anyway.

Before they can say anything else to each other, Mic pokes his head back out of the kitchen, eyebrows raised at them, chocolate crumbs scattered along his upper lip, stuck in his signature mustache.

“What’s taking so long?” he asks. “Get in here, both of you! There’s food to eat and news to share.”

Aizawa gives Midoriya’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before he lets go and follows Mic into the kitchen.

He lingers behind a moment, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Inhale, hold, exhale.

The tidal wave of twisted emotions trying to rise in his chest gets shoved back down, where he can keep it quiet again.

“Izuku!”

Midoriya plasters a smile onto his face.

“Coming, Mom!”

Chapter Text

Midoriya surveys the empty room.

There are marks on the walls from his posters, pinpoint holes from tacks, residue from tape. The wooden floor is scuffed from his bedframe.

In the hallway, just outside the doorway, the last box containing all of his possessions sits taped up and painstakingly labeled.

“Izuku?”

He half turns, acknowledging his mom hovering in the hall, one hand on the doorframe, but doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure what he’s feeling, but he just wants to—sit with it. For a little while.

She quietly enters the room to stand next to him, wrapping her arms around him in a side hug. He’s a little taller than her now. She can rest her head on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him quietly. “I know this isn’t easy. None of us are trying to take away your sense of comfort and stability, not when you need it so much right now. But I know you don’t feel safe here, and if I’m honest—I don’t either. Knowing that they took you when you were right there—”

She chokes on tears. Sniffles. Her arms squeeze him just a bit tighter, and he puts his hand over her arm.

After a moment, she steps away from him and wipes her eyes. She summons a smile to her face, and he’s so used to the mercurial nature of her emotions that the redness of her eyes doesn’t even look out of place in the middle of her sunny, hopeful expression.

“This is a fresh start,” she says, firmly. “One that we both need. And you know that Shota and Hizashi have gone to all sorts of lengths and pulled strings to make sure we’ll be as safe as possible.”

He did know. They’d told him, when they all sat down together with his mom’s Mexican hot chocolate cookies and some tea and they’d dropped the ‘surprise’ that what they’d been so busy with was jumping through all the hoops and cutting the red tape to get special permission for them to live in a high-security apartment complex that was usually exclusive to pro heroes, their families, and their at-risk employees.

“Hijack’s gone,” Aizawa had said, mouth a grim line. “But he managed to find out where you lived to try and use my relationship with you against me, and if he could, so can others.”

As if Midoriya hadn’t already figured that out for himself.

“Are you ready?” Inko asks, holding out her hand.

He takes one last look around the room.

They’ve never lived anywhere else. His entire childhood was here. Memories from before Kacchan’s quirk came in and his didn’t, some blurry imprints of his father, before he’d left…

But he tries to find the sense of loss where it should be, and he comes up empty. All he feels is numbness.

He turns and takes her hand, squeezing it reassuringly and offering her a crooked smile.

“Let’s go,” he says.

……………

Their new apartment building isn’t the same one that Mic and Aizawa live in, but they’re only three blocks down, which they stress multiple times as they help Midoriya and Inko load all of their worldly possessions into a borrowed truck and trailer.

After the fifth time, Midoriya desperately wants to snap a reminder that he’d been kidnapped in broad daylight in a residential neighborhood right in front of his own house and no one had seen a thing.

But he bites his tongue. None of them understand the sharp side of him; he’s not sure any of them would.

Maybe Aizawa. But he thinks, maybe, just a little, some small part of him does blame him.

Not for the kidnapping. Not for everything the villains had done to him—regularly beating the shit out of him, torturing him psychologically for leaving him in the dark and quiet for hours so that he had no idea what time it was or how to tell up from down, or even for permanently losing the sight in his left eye because of Blitz’s quirk.

Quietly, buried underneath everything else, he can’t help but wonder why Aizawa hadn’t been able to save him.

Why did he have to save himself, in the end? Why did he have to rely on villains, the ones who were supposedly responsible for all of the bad in the world, to help him get out?

Where were the heroes? Where was his hero?

But he crushes it down, far down, and flashes smiles every time they look at him, nodding along and promising that he’ll call them if he needs them.

Mostly he lets his mom do the talking. She does plenty of it for the both of them, anyway, chattering excitedly about what a nice building and nice neighborhood and nice apartment it is, thanking Mic and Aizawa profusely every other sentence for going out of the way to make sure they can live somewhere safe, and going on and on about what a good thing this fresh start will be for the both of them.

Midoriya stares out of the window for most of the drive, not registering anything that they pass with any clarity.

He wonders if Mei’s finished the escrima sticks they talked about. He wonders if Glitch has found anyone that she wants him to target during his work as Wisp yet.

“Izuku?”

He looks up. His mom is still smiling, but it’s wavering slightly, and it reminds him that the excessive cheerfulness and bright mood is for his sake.

It softens the irritation that’s been building under his skin.

“Sorry,” he says. “Guess I zoned out. What is it?”

She gestures towards the window, and he realizes that they’ve stopped moving.

Terrible situational awareness, on his part.

“We’re here,” she says. “Isn’t it nice?”

That word again.

But he summons a smile to his face, for her.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it’s nice.”

“There’s security on every inch of the building,” Mic says, proudly. “Even the windows are alarmed. The cameras are surveilled 24/7, and you have to have a key and a code to get into the residents-only areas.”

Midoriya blinks. He’d already been looking over the building and trying to figure out how he was going to scale it to make his way out for his nightly ventures.

Alarmed windows would make that a tiny bit difficult.

Inko settles an arm around his shoulders and squeezes gently.

“The only people who’ll ever be able to get into our apartment are the ones we give permission to,” she says. “We’ll be 100% safe here.”

No such thing, Midoriya thinks.

He nods. She squeezes one more time before reaching across him to open the door, and he obligingly undoes his seatbelt and climbs out, stretching a bit as he does so.

“There’s a training room on your floor, Midoriya,” Aizawa says, gruffly, as he closes the truck door behind him. He’s been even more quiet than usual, but Midoriya’s pretty sure that it has to do with a combination of lingering guilt and awkwardness following their conversation a few nights ago, which they’d never bothered to properly address. “I’ve already made sure that your code will give you access. We’ll still meet at the gym a few times a week, but for the time being we’ll be sticking to general training before we jump back into combat.”

Midoriya scowls, unable to stop himself, but he nods acquiescence anyway.

“Don’t sweat it, little listener,” Mic says, ruffling his hair affectionately. “You’ve got plenty of time. And I just know that you’ll blow us all away when the entrance exam rolls around.”

Maybe.

Probably not the way that they’re expecting, though.

The adults continue to chatter among themselves as they start unloading boxes. Inko, surprisingly, is the one who ends up claiming sole control of the dolly, after Mic manages to run over not only his own foot, but both of Aizawa’s, and Aizawa tries to go faster by rolling it up onto the curb instead of going down to the ramp, which ends with all of the boxes falling in a spectacular fashion.

Luckily, none of them were the ones with breakables.

It doesn’t take too long, between the four of them—although between him and his mom, they really don’t have a lot of stuff anyway—and before long most of the bigger items and boxes have been safely deposited in the apartment, to the point that Inko starts diving into unpacking, choosing Aizawa as her helper and leaving Midoriya with Mic to bring up the last few things.

He’s cradling a box of houseplants, standing next to Mic, who’s manning a rolling clothes rack filled with most of Inko’s court suits—expensive, dry clean only, and better off not stuffed into a box or a bag—when they encounter the first resident of the building.

The front door buzzes behind them as it’s unlocked, and Midoriya half turns out of instinct but stops himself, mostly because he doesn’t feel like socializing.

Mic, on the other hand, is nothing if not an extrovert, and he turns and grins brightly.

“Oh, hello!” he says. “Sorry, we’ve pretty much commandeered the elevator for now. There might be enough room for you to squeeze in with us!”

They clear their throat, and then cough, and out of the corner of his eye Midoriya notes concern on Mic’s face.

“Ah, my apologies,” a voice says.

Midoriya stiffens.

“Old injury acting up,” he continues. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer, unless it’d be an inconvenience…”

“Not at all!” Mic says, waving the man forward.

Midoriya slowly turns his head to look as the sound of footsteps on the tile floor grow closer, an awful thickness right in the middle of his chest.

He meets All Might’s eyes.

For a long moment, there isn’t any recognition, just puzzlement.

Midoriya sees the moment that it hits him, and he stops midstride.

“Oh,” he says.

Oh.

Mic looks between them.

“Do you two know each other?” he asks, still smiling, utterly oblivious to the tension in the air.

“We’ve met,” Midoriya says, sharply.

He turns the rest of the way around, and All Might sucks in a breath at the sight of the scarring stretching across his face, which results in a coughing fit that has him pulling out his bloodstained handkerchief.

Good, Midoriya thinks viciously. Serves him right.

“On second thought,” All Might says, avoiding Midoriya’s eyes, “I think I’ll take the stairs today. You can never get too much exercise, or so they say.”

He bolts with a speed that absolutely does not match up with his skeletal form, and the door to the stairs buzzes as it unlocks and then slams closed behind him.

Mic blinks.

“That was odd,” he says.

The elevator dings.

Midoriya digs his fingers into the sides of the box he’s carrying, trying to bury the storm of emotions brewing before it can burst out of him, and follows Mic into the elevator, trying not to twitch at the infuriating squeaking from the wheels of the rolling clothes rack.

The doors close.

“Well, he seemed nice!” Mic says. “Maybe he’ll be one of your neighbors.”

“I hope not,” Midoriya mutters, too low for him to hear. “I’d rather eat glass.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

……………

Midoriya sits on the floor of his new bedroom, looking down into one of the boxes full of his hero merchandise, stuck in place by the face of the Number One Hero, grinning at him from a poster.

He would’ve thrown it away, but his mom had insisted on helping him the day that he’d packed up all of his hero merch. She would’ve been immediately suspicious if he’d started tossing all of his All Might themed junk into a garbage bag.

On top of his bent knees, his hands ball into fists. He can’t help the little tremors going through him, remembering over and over the expression on All Might’s face when the recognition had kicked in.

There was shock. Unsurprising. Pity. Also expected; it’s all he’s been getting from anyone since he stopped covering his eye.

Then—justification.

Right before he’d ran. Midoriya knows what he saw.

Maybe some small part of the hero had felt guilty for what he’d said to him on that rooftop, but the sight of him, scarred and injured, suddenly gave him absolution.

Because it just proves that he was right, doesn’t it? The world is too dangerous for someone quirkless to be a hero.

Slowly, Midoriya forces his hands flat. Then he reaches into the box and pulls out the poster.

It used to hang in a spot of honor above his bed. One of the most prized pieces of his collection, because it was rare and he’d stood in line for hours in the middle of winter to get it.

Moving his hands to grip it from the top, grim and calm, he tears the poster in half right down the middle.

Maybe you’ve forgiven yourself, he thinks. But I won’t be forgiving or forgetting any time soon.

He shreds the poster into smaller and smaller pieces, until his lap is covered in paper confetti, and then he gathers it all up and throws it into the wastebasket that sits next to his desk.

The box gets shoved into the darkest corner of his closet.

That done, feeling strange and distant, like a balloon only just barely tethered to the ground, he turns to look at his window.

His alarmed window.

Getting out would be fine—the windows could be opened from the inside without triggering any alert, so as long as he avoided surveillance, he’d be fine.

But getting back in—well, that posed a problem.

He digs his secondary phone out of its hiding place in one of the boxes containing his school supplies, easily finding the chat he wants out of the four contacts he has saved.

Wisp: how do you disable an alarmed window on a high security building?

Glitch: inside, outside, both? motion sensors? monitored cameras?

Wisp: outside, yes but only at the main points of entrance, yes again

Glitch: give me ten minutes.

Midoriya’s mouth twists into a smile. He tucks the phone into his pocket, surveys the stacks of boxes that he has left to unpack, and shoves them into the corner, flopping into his desk chair and booting up his laptop.

Ten minutes is plenty of time to plan a new patrol route. He’ll just have to make sure that he’s extra careful getting around the elevated security of his new neighborhood.

For the first time, he’s not sure that safe is necessarily better.

After living on high alert for so long, he thought that finally being somewhere safe would let him relax. That maybe he’d be able to sleep, for once, or at least to stop constantly looking over his shoulder.

But it doesn’t feel right.

He chews on his lip, glancing over the map that he has pulled up, and stretching out his fingers, which have curled up again while he wasn’t paying attention.

Maybe safe is just a myth.

His phone buzzes.

Glitch: [window.pdf]

Glitch: step by step instructions, straight from the manufacturer

Wisp: thanks

Glitch: if you’re heading out tonight, I know someone you might like to look into

Midoriya looks up from his phone.

His new room is bare. His bed is made, his laptop is humming away on his desk, plugged into the outlet, and there’s a lamp on the corner so that he doesn’t have to bother with the main light.

But there’s nothing else. No decorations, no personalization, nothing.

It wouldn’t even pass as a guest room, really. And it definitely doesn’t pass as the room of a teenage boy.

He glances at the boxes in the corner.

Hero merch, old pictures, knickknacks. All the things that had made his old room his.

But just like the foreign sense of security, none of it feels right anymore. Like he became someone else entirely without noticing.

He taps his thumbs against the sides of his phone, looking again at the window and the rapidly darkening sky beyond it. He makes a decision.

Wisp: tell me about them.

………………

“So I’ve started a private server,” Glitch says, spinning around in her chair to face him. “As good as I am, there isn’t always a paper trail that’s easy to find online, and I want to make sure that people don’t slip through the cracks, y’know?”

It’s a good idea. Midoriya nods thoughtfully, taking another long sip of his energy drink.

Dabi snorts derisively.

“What, you think people are gonna spill their darkest secrets in an online chatroom?” he says. “You’d be better off getting into the private pages where all of the psychos share with each other.”

“I already did that,” Glitch says, sniffing. “What part of my quirk don’t you understand? Nothing on the internet is a secret. Not to me.”

Dabi shakes his head. “I still don’t think it’s gonna get you anywhere. All you’re gonna do is attract weirdos.”

“The server is invite only,” Glitch says. “And it has better security than the Commission. It’s not going to take off right away, obviously, but I’ve been putting feelers out for other like-minded people who might be able to give us information.”

Dabi turns to raise his eyebrow at Midoriya.

“What do you think, shortstop?” he asks. “You think there are enough good people out there for it to make a difference?”

Midoriya pauses.

He’s been quiet. Glitch and Dabi haven’t bothered him about it, although Dabi kept making faces at him when he didn’t respond to his taunts.

“I think there are more good people out there than we think,” he says. “I think there are people who have been trying to do good, but haven’t had the resources to do anything significant. I think there are other people who want to do good, but something about their circumstances makes it impossible, or at least incredibly difficult for them.”

Dabi’s mouth twists.

“I thought you’d finally gotten over the doe-eyed naivety,” he says. “Where are they, then? If you’re so sure that they’re out there, where have they been this whole time?”

Midoriya twists to look him directly in the eyes.

They’re like ice chips, burning cold, constantly full of rage.

But behind it—and he’s not as good at hiding it as he thinks that he is—there’s pain, and bitterness, and a hurt that he recognizes.

At some point, Dabi was someone who needed saving.

And no one came to save him.

“In the shadows,” he says, softly. “Most people don’t see them, but that doesn’t matter, because they’re not doing what they do to be recognized. They’re doing it because they genuinely want to help, and sometimes the best way to do that is one person at a time. They can’t save everyone, but no one can. So they focus on the people that they can save.”

Dabi shakes his head. “Heroes are bullshit. They hurt people more than they help them.”

Midoriya’s mouth turns down in a grimace, because he doesn’t disagree. And he can see just how easy it would be to give into the resentment and rage that he feels until the darkness overcame him entirely.

Stain started out as someone who wanted to do good.

“The answer to being hurt isn’t to cause more pain,” he says. “I won’t ever be All Might—” he spits the name with a vitriol that distinctly surprises both Glitch and Dabi, “—but for every person I save, I’m making a difference. Maybe not to the world, but to them. That’s enough for me.”

None of them speak for a while after that.

Then something pings at Glitch’s desk, and she spins to the monitor it came from and starts typing with lightning speed.

“Oh, goodie,” she mutters.

“What is it?”

“Villain sighting. Apparently Blackout’s back in town—he’s your typical psycho, but his attacks don’t usually end with a body count, at least. He does, however, like to beat people until they’re almost dead and then drop them off in high traffic areas, which, as you might imagine, tends to cause a bit of a panic.”

Dabi whistles. “I’ve heard of this guy. He’s got a pretty long rap sheet.”

Rolling his energy drink between his hands, Midoriya considers. Then he knocks back the rest of it in one go, grimacing at the way the carbonation fizzes in his nose, and stands, pulling his hood back over his hair.

“Where?” he says.

Glitch turns to blink at him, but Dabi’s the one who speaks up.

“Should you be picking fights right now, green bean?” he asks. “You’re still down an eye, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Midoriya says, dryly. “Doesn’t matter. If he’s been spotted, it won’t be long before he finds a victim. I’m not about to let that happen if I can help it.”

“Can you?”

He bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from spitting something venomous.

“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” he says instead. “Glitch. Where is he?”

“Uh,” she says, looking between him and Dabi, apparently distracted by their exchange. Then she shakes her head and turns back to the screen. “West. No, southwest. You know the outlet shopping center that just opened?”

Fantastic. He’s probably looking to do something big to announce his arrival back in town, then.

Midoriya pulls his mask up over his face and double checks that his phone is secure in the inner pocket of his jacket.

“Send me the exact location,” he says, and she nods immediately. “Dabi, you can stop acting like a helicopter parent. I know what I’m doing. And besides—I’ve got a few new tricks up my sleeves.”

He lightly grips the handle of Hatsume’s most recent baby. She’d given it to him as a surprise gift when she’d come over to the new apartment.

Dabi scowls and crosses his arms.

“Don’t come crying to me when you get your dumb ass killed, then,” he says. “And don’t expect a rescue this time, either.”

“I won’t,” Midoriya replies, smirking behind his mask. He crosses to the open window, glancing out to double check that there isn’t anyone in the alley below. “If I don’t end up murdered, I’ll text you later.”

Glitch makes a noise that sounds kind of like someone shutting a squeaky toy in a car door.

“Blackout’s quirk—” she starts, but he shakes his head to cut her off.

“I know,” he says, swinging one leg over to straddle the windowsill. “Dabi isn’t the only one who’s heard of him.”

He twists the rest of his body out of the window, bracing himself with one knee against the brick exterior and supporting the rest of his weight with his arms. He lifts one hand and offers a sarcastic salute.

Then he drops.

Chapter Text

The good thing about the part of town where Glitch lives is that all the rooftops are close enough together that it’s an easy jump between them, which means that so long as Midoriya plans to overshoot the distance, he makes it just fine.

The bad thing about it is that most of the buildings are halfway to collapsing in the next strong breeze, as evidenced by the third jump he makes where he lands directly in a crumbling patch of the roof, turning his ankle and barely managing to catch himself on his hands before he faceplants.

At least his gloves save him from skinning his hands.

His phone pings, later than expected, but when he checks it, instead of a simple location, it’s a real-time map tracking Blackout by cross-checking reported sightings with glimpses of him on city cameras.

He smiles.

“Thanks, Glitch,” he murmurs, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

He takes the next jump a little more carefully, and before long he’s close enough that he can see the lights of the shopping center from his viewpoint.

Not all of the shops are open late, but enough of them are that the place is still fairly busy. Not to mention the fact that there are two bars and a nightclub on the second floor, which always draw a crowd.

He drops down into the alley. It reeks of trash and cat urine, but he wrinkles his nose once and then blocks it out, checking Blackout’s location on his phone again.

Right in the middle of the shopping center.

He chews on his lip under his mask.

Blackout obviously wants a show. But Midoriya can’t let him have it, at least not the way that he wants, or dozens of people will get hurt.

Pulling up two of his handful of contacts, he sends a group text.

Wisp: Blackout spotted at Soma Outlet Mall, QUIET evacuation advised.

LiarLiar: You shouldn’t have this number.

RedEye: ETA 15 minutes.

LiarLiar: Eraserhead?

RedEye: Have they ever been wrong before?

LiarLiar: Heard. Sending officers now.

Midoriya smirks. There’s something incredibly satisfying about being able to pull one over on the two men, both of whom are incredible at investigation work.

He tucks his phone away again.

Then he puts his hands into his pockets and saunters out of the alley, across the street, and directly into the shopping center.

Blackout is standing exactly where the pin on the map had said he would be, in the middle of the open walkway, looking around at the people coming and going. When he turns his head to follow a group of young women, obviously intoxicated, stumbling along arm in arm in tall heels, Midoriya catches a glimpse of the wide, demented grin on his face.

Here’s where he should proceed with caution. He should take aside a security guard and warn them, or find somewhere that he can case the situation further and take note of potential exit routes.

But what security guard would believe him?

Besides. Tsukauchi said that officers were on the way, and Eraserhead won’t be far behind.

Midoriya walks right up to the man, at least two heads taller than him, and leans up on his tiptoes to tap him on the shoulder.

Blackout turns, grin fading into a puzzled smile, brows furrowing. He looks Midoriya up and down, taking in his clothes, his mask, and his hood.

“Who are you supposed to be?” he asks. “Bit early for Halloween, isn’t it?”

Midoriya takes a polite step back. He tilts his head.

“I see why you always fight in the dark, now,” he says. “You’ve really got a face only a mother could love, huh?”

The manic light disappears immediately, replaced by a dark scowl. Blackout’s hands come up in front of him, palms already swirling with shadows.

“What did you say?” he growls.

“Oh, sorry, was I not clear enough?” Midoriya says. He bounces a bit on his heels, adrenaline already sparking through him. “You look like the wrong end of a dog that’s been hit by a car.”

Blackout inhales sharply.

Then—he laughs.

“Oh, man,” he says. “I fucking love this place. Tokyo was great, don’t get me wrong, but there’s no place like home, am I right?”

He takes a step forward. Midoriya takes a step back, keeping his casual posture, tilting his head like he’s talking to a friendly acquaintance instead of a villain.

“Where else is someone going to pick a fight with me right when I’m absolutely starving for some fun?” Blackout asks. Wisps of shadow start to curl off of his arms and shoulders like black smoke. “I was planning on waiting a little longer. But I guess you’ll make for a sweet little appetizer before the main event.”

He claps his hands, and everything goes black.

Sharp screams pierce the air, but they go quiet quickly. Midoriya hopes that it means that the security guards are doing their jobs like they’re supposed to, or that Tsukauchi’s officers arrived earlier than expected.

He breathes shallowly.

“I don’t know your name,” Blackout says, conversationally. His voice comes from Midoriya’s left, and he whirls to face it immediately, arms up to guard against any potential attacks. “I haven’t seen a new face in this line of work in a while. I mean, you’re obviously not a hero, so you must be a vigilante—do you know your own statistics? Most of you don’t even last long enough to earn yourself a name.”

Midoriya inhales. Exhales. He closes his eyes—both of them are useless to him in the complete darkness that’s consumed the main plaza, anyway.

“The thing is,” Blackout continues, and his voice comes from the opposite direction, but Midoriya doesn’t spin wildly this time, taking a measure turn towards it instead, “you don’t have to have a name to die, do you?”

A whistle of disrupted air.

Midoriya ducks, kicking his leg out. He connects with something solid, hearing a curse followed by a laugh even as he scrambles away, still crouched low to the ground.

“You’re a scrappy one!” Blackout says. Midoriya can hear the grin back in his voice. “That’s good. I’ll enjoy this more.”

The next hit comes out of nowhere and catches Midoriya directly across the jaw, sending him stumbling backwards.

He bites his lip to stop himself from crying out in pain even though he knows that he’s going to have a bruise blooming there in the morning, and thanks his luck that Blackout doesn’t have the strength to crack teeth with a punch.

There’s more laughter.

“Feeling regretful yet, little vigilante?” Blackout croons mockingly. “You have to know that you’re not going to win this.”

Tilting his head, Midoriya focuses on what he can hear.

Footsteps. Not Blackout’s, they’re too far away. Measured, slow. More than one set. Tsukauchi’s officers, hopefully leading people to safety. He can’t hear heels clicking on the concrete, so maybe they were even smart enough to have clubgoers remove their shoes.

Fabric shifting.

That’s closer.

“You know what I’ve learned, fighting villains like you?” Midoriya says, immediately giving away his location—but also drawing attention to himself, and away from everyone else. “You’re all compensating for something. That comment I made earlier seemed to hit hard; are you hiding some mommy issues underneath all that posturing?”

Blackout’s fist hits him in the middle of his sternum, knocking the wind out of him. He doubles over instinctually, curling to protect himself, and tries to catch his breath without wheezing.

“You’ve got a mouth on you,” Blackout says. “If you’ve fought other villains like me—which I doubt—I’m surprised that you’ve lived long enough to tell me about it.”

As quietly as he can, Midoriya reaches into one of his pockets and grips the handle of Mei’s gift.

“I love places like this. All of these people, going about their business, completely oblivious to what’s about to happen. And oh, when they realize? Their fear tastes so sweet.”

Midoriya huffs to himself. He opens his eyes, more out of habit than anything else, but after a moment, he’s surprised to realize that he can vaguely make out shadows in what’s supposed to be complete darkness, from all of the stories that he’s heard.

He blinks. He reaches up and covers his left eye. Then he switches and covers his right.

“Lost your voice, little mouse?” Blackout mocks. “You were so bold just a few minutes ago. What happened? Cat got your tongue?”

He chuckles, and as he does, Midoriya lunges for the gradient change in the darkness that he can make out with his right eye—his bad eye—and feels the weighted baton in his hand crack solidly across Blackout’s skull.

The man makes a strangled noise of pain, stumbling back, but apparently his skull is pretty thick, because it doesn’t knock him unconscious.

Midoriya grins.

“What was that, Blackout?” he asks. “Were you saying something?”

For a moment, the only sound is Blackout’s heaving breath.

“Okay,” he says. “Playtime’s over.”

He rushes forward, and Midoriya dives to the side, avoiding the wide right swing aimed for his face. He twists and kicks out, catching Blackout in the ankle and making him stumble and swear.

When he moves quickly, it’s harder to pinpoint where he is, because there’s such a subtle difference in the depth of the shadows that Midoriya can see, but it hardly matters.

Because suddenly, the darkness isn’t as much of an enemy as he thought it was.

Blackout straightens up and breathes in loudly. His hands go out to the side ever so slightly, and the air starts swirling like black storm clouds.

There’s no wind buffeting against Midoriya or rattling the shop signs. This new trick is just as much of an illusion as everything else Blackout has up his sleeve.

But there are gaps, now, in between the swirling clouds, and he catches a glimpse of the line of police officers standing at the main entrance, all poised for a fight.

Time’s up.

Midoriya steps towards Blackout, and then flinches at the sudden light.

Blackout turns to face him. Around them, the shadows continue to spin, but it’s like they’re in the eye of a storm.

Blackout tilts his head.

“I underestimated you, I admit it,” he says. “What’s your name, little mouse? I think I deserve to know.”

“My name,” Midoriya says, taking another step forward, baton raised, “is Wisp.”

Blackout’s eyebrows raise. His lips curl in an amused grin.

“Wisp? Is that a joke about how small you are? I can’t say it’s the sort of name I would’ve picked, but it’s accurate, that’s for sure.”

Midoriya smiles grimly. It isn’t visible behind his mask, but something about his body language must portray the idea of it, because Blackout pauses.

“No,” he says. “It’s because I’m here to lead you astray.”

Blackout looks away, right in the direction of the police officers waiting to take him into custody. His face twists with rage, but before he can do anything about it, Midoriya shoots forward, baton a reassuring weight in his hand.

An arm comes up to block the hit from connecting with Blackout’s skull again, but he still grunts when it connects. He swings wide—Midoriya feels the back of his knuckles catch the fabric of his jacket as he twists out of the way.

He aims low next—he hits the side of Blackout’s leg, and his knee buckles underneath him, sending him to the ground.

Blackout looks up. Midoriya is distracted, just for a moment, by the absolute insane rage swirling there, and he’s too slow to dodge when a hand shoots out and grabs the front of his jacket, hurling him bodily to the pavement.

He rolls, curling his arms up to protect his head, and when he comes to a stop, Blackout’s back on his feet, glaring down at him.

“This isn’t fun anymore,” he says. He strides closer, and Midoriya scrambles, too slow to get back to his feet before Blackout is on him, raising his foot to stomp down on his chest.

He rolls out of the way, ending up on his stomach and pushing himself up as quickly as he can—but he has to spring backwards before he can stand back up again to avoid another kick.

His wrist twists and gives out, and he ends up on his back, looking up at Blackout’s looming form.

“There you are,” Blackout croons. His eyes are alight with manic glee. “There’s the fear I was looking for.”

Midoriya bares his teeth, even though the villain can’t see his face.

“What fear?” he grits out, and he shoots forward onto his knees, straightening up to gain just enough height and leverage to tackle Blackout around the waist, sending them both rolling across the paved walkway. His baton clatters out of his hand, but he lets it—he doesn’t need anything now except for his own two hands.

Being half blind with zero training on how to compensate for his shit depth perception means that the precise details of distance and location escape him. He might throw a punch and miss if he’s not close enough. But it’s almost impossible to miss if he expands the size of his target.

Blackout swears at him as they grapple, spitting threats between his winded breathing, but Midoriya fights like a feral alley cat, scratching and biting and moving so quickly that it’s impossible for Blackout to grab him and pin him down.

He takes hits, too. Blackout catches him across the right cheekbone with one of his fists, again in the ribs, and rolling across pavement doesn’t come without its own injuries.

But he barely feels it. Underneath him, suddenly, it isn’t just Blackout, but Hijack, Blitz, Styx.

All Might.

Blackout manages to pull his leg up between them and uses it to nail Midoriya in the stomach with his knee, finally separating them, but Midoriya bites down on the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, refusing to cry out at the bright starburst of pain in his midsection, and raises his head from his crouched position to glare.

“Blackout!”

They both startle at the sudden shout—Tsukauchi’s voice, through some sort of loudspeaker. They turn instinctually towards the noise, and Midoriya just catches a glimpse of the detective, at the front of the line of policemen, with a shadow at his shoulder that can only be Eraserhead.

“You’re surrounded. Come quietly now, and you might just avoid the high security of Tartarus.”

Blackout raises an eyebrow. He looks at Midoriya.

“They really think this is over?” he asks. “They really think I’ll give up, just like that? That just because they’ve got a line of toy soldiers in my way, I’m beaten?”

Midoriya shrugs. In his experience, a lot of heroes and police officers have a tendency to view a fight as over before it’s even close.

Villains always have tricks up their sleeves.

“Well,” Blackout says, mouth twisting into a grin again as he raises his hands. “Try catching me when none of you can see me!”

And absolute darkness bursts over the plaza again.

This time, it feels different. It’s so thick, it almost has a weight to it, and Midoriya shudders, huddling in on himself as he remembers hours spent locked in darkness.

There’s no difference to the shadows this time, no matter how hard he squints. He breathes as quietly and shallowly as he can, keeping himself from panicking with sheer willpower.

“Are you afraid of the dark, little mouse?”

Midoriya shivers again and squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t tell where Blackout’s voice is coming from. It’s like it’s all around him.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he replies quietly.

“That’s not what I asked.”

Blackout’s face looms in front of him, and he shoots to his feet and strikes out, only to stumble forward when his fist meets only air.

Laughter echoes, delirious with manic euphoria.

“I was planning a grand reentrance,” Blackout says. “Crowds of panicking people, trampling their own friends in their fear, all trying to get out of the dark. You ruined that.”

There’s a whisper of a footstep on his left, and Midoriya spins to face it, arms up.

But it’s nothing again.

“If I can’t have that, though,” Blackout continues, “I can still have you.”

The thinnest whistle of displaced air.

Midoriya reacts on pure instinct, hurling his elbow out and up, and he feels and hears the crunch as it connects with—and shatters—Blackout’s nose.

There’s no little twist of disgust in his stomach at the sensation of it. Just vicious satisfaction at the howl of pain that follows.

He presses forward, shooting his hand out blindly, and finds a handful of Blackout’s shirt. He yanks as hard as he can, pulling the villain off balance, and then twists behind him, wrapping his arm around Blackout’s neck, pressing his forearm into his throat, and jerking backwards.

They both hit the ground again, Blackout’s fingernails digging into Midoriya’s arm through his jacket as his fingers scrabble to get a grip and push him away, choking for breath through the stranglehold.

But Midoriya doesn’t give in.

Not too much, he repeats to himself, over and over. Not too much, not too much.

Blackout’s struggles start to slow, but Midoriya doesn’t let go. Doesn’t let up on the pressure even the tiniest increment.

Not too much.

Finally—finally—his hands fall away from Midoriya’s arm.

He unwraps his arms, shaking from the pure adrenaline-fueled strength he pushed into them, and shoves Blackout’s unconscious form away from him, scrambling backwards.

His lungs constrict in his chest, and it feels like he’s breathing through a straw, but he shakes his head against it and forces himself onto his feet once more.

Blackout’s quirk hasn’t stopped working despite his loss of consciousness. It’s lost some of its density, and the thick wall of darkness is starting to turn into cloudy wisps, but it hasn’t disappeared completely like he’d expect it to.

It distracts him for a moment, because the majority of emitter type quirks take conscious effort to maintain, but then the shadows start to dissipate further and it stirs him to action.

His baton is only a few feet away—he scoops it up and tucks it safely back into his pocket. That taken care of, some extra sense of security returned to him, he tries to figure out how the fuck he’s going to get himself out of the mess he’s made without earning himself a ticket for a free ride in the back of a police cruiser.

Thinking back—there were decorative columns all around the plaza leading to the second floor, and one of the restaurants had a metal trellis with climbing ivy walling in their outdoor dining area.

He runs. He shouldn’t, still mostly blind to where he’s going, but he forces a mental map of the place into clarity and trusts his body.

Some instinct stops him from slamming bodily into one of the columns that he’s looking for, but he still runs into it pretty hard, sending all of his accumulated aches and pains screaming to life as his adrenaline starts to fade.

He climbs. When he swings over the railing onto the second floor, the air is much clearer, and he ducks when he glances towards the entrance and sees Eraserhead advancing towards the edge of Blackout’s shadow storm, quirk activated.

Staying low, practically scuttling across the ground, he makes his way around the edge of the second floor until he finds the restaurant with the trellis. He climbs up the inside, wanting the extra coverage that it gives him from being spotted, and then twists himself upside down to hurl his legs up, around, and over the edge of the roof.

He has to do the crunch of hell to get himself back upright again, making the spot where Blackout had nailed him in the stomach feel like he’s swallowed molten lava, but then he’s up.

And still not in the clear.

Too close. He’s still too close.

So he starts running again, jumping across the rooftops the same way that he came, ignoring the jolt in his knees with every landing, and the farther he gets, the more his mind starts to slip—sideways.

But he doesn’t stop.

………………

There are secrets that Midoriya keeps even from himself.

Adults in his life scrutinize him closely, mumbling words and phrases like ‘trauma’ and ‘PTSD’ and talking around his past like if they don’t tiptoe they’ll say the wrong thing and he’ll suddenly snap.

As if he’s some conditioned, brainwashed super soldier like from the old American comics, and they just haven’t found the right sequence to trigger him yet.

Midoriya isn’t stupid, and he isn’t ignorant. He sees the signs, too, even if he’s tired of catching his mom looking at him when she thinks that he can’t see her as if he’s about to start screaming and crying and babbling broken nonsense any second.

Sure, he doesn’t disagree with them. What happened to him was traumatic. PTSD is fairly common in survivors of the types of events that he’s gone through.

But he’s fine.

…right?

At some point during his panicked flight from the outlet mall where he fought Blackout, he’d stopped thinking.

And he’s had trouble remembering things before, sure. Blurred impressions instead of detailed recollections, lost time gone in the blink of an eye, oversaturated memories too unreal to trust.

But when he comes back to himself huddled in the corner of the bathtub in his bathroom in the new apartment, arms wrapped around his knees, shivering in the dark behind the shower curtain, he has to fully admit to himself for the first time that—maybe he’s not fine.

Maybe he can’t do this alone.

That thought hits like a punch to the chest, adding to the aches and pains slowly springing back to life just to scream at him, and his face crumples as tears start to fall hotly down his face.

When he was 4, shortly after he’d gotten his diagnosis and Bakugo had decided that they couldn’t be friends anymore because no one should be friends with someone weak and useless, he started having night terrors.

He’d wake up screaming, more nights than he didn’t, and his mom would be there instantly, like her quirk had suddenly changed to teleportation so that she could wrap her arms around him, rub soothing circles into his back, and hush him softly as he cried great gulping sobs until he finally exhausted himself back into sleep.

They started happening less and less. He learned how to bite down on his screams, even mostly asleep. She’d still appear in his doorway, like she just knew, somehow, and she’d hold him until the fear left.

But then—he got older. And she started sleeping through his nightmares.

He doesn’t blame her. She started working more, because they needed the money when the child support checks stopped coming in, and he got better at hiding things from her because he didn’t want to add another worry line to the creases on her brow.

Shivering in the dark, though, suddenly he just wants his mom.

He can’t do this alone. He never could, but admitting it felt like admitting a weakness that he isn’t allowed to have.

Midoriya buries his face in his knees and mentally pleads, over and over, that someone will sense that he isn’t okay, and come to find him.

But no one comes.

………………..

Midoriya meets Aizawa at the gym for the first time since his kidnapping two days after risking himself getting caught in the act to make sure that the civilians would be safely evacuated during his fight with Blackout.

He arrives first, which is unusual but not unheard of, and immediately falls into the familiar pattern of the stretches that they always start with.

“You remember your warmup,” Aizawa says, coming up on his blind side, and Midoriya tenses but doesn’t flinch, because he’d heard the slight shush of the door opening and closing and then his mentor’s soft footfalls. “Good.”

“With the way you drilled them into me?” Midoriya asks, tilting his head up. “I don’t think it’d be possible for me to forget.”

Aizawa raises an eyebrow.

“That’s a nasty bruise,” he says.

Midoriya chews on the inside of his cheek and looks down, masking the motion as returning his focus to reaching for his toes, but mostly trying to hide the mottled splotches of color on the side of his jaw.

“What happened?”

Midoriya shrugs, trying to make the motion seem sheepish and not practiced.

“I had to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and I forgot that everything is arranged differently in my new room. Tripped and hit my chin on the desk.”

“Hmm.”

There are at least a thousand different ways that Midoriya could interpret that hum, but he keeps his mouth shut instead of trying to overexplain his lie. They lapse into silence while he runs through the rest of his warmup, and when he gets back onto his feet, swinging his arms at his sides, Aizawa’s expression is as neutral as always, with no hint of suspicion.

“What are we doing today?” he asks.

Aizawa scratches at the overgrown stubble on his cheek. He turns and strides away several steps, but Midoriya stays put.

If he was supposed to follow, Aizawa would’ve told him so.

“Even with a support item to correct the blindness in your right eye, there might be times that you can’t rely on it. It could be damaged during a fight, or you could be caught without it. Because of that, it’s important that you still know how to adapt to the difference in your perception of your surroundings.”

He turns suddenly, tossing something in his hand in Midoriya’s direction.

“Catch.”

Midoriya reacts to the movement instinctively, and then quietly and smoothly corrects his original ready stance, reaching out with his right hand for what he can see now is a small red ball about the size of his fist—

And he catches it.

He grins triumphantly, and when he looks up, Aizawa’s eyebrows are raised, the only outward sign that he ever gives that he’s been surprised by something.

“You’ve been practicing,” he says.

Midoriya shrugs. He tosses the ball back. “It’s not like I had much else to do. Plus I got tired of running into all the furniture.”

That earns him a slight amused smile and an approving nod.

Aizawa throws the ball again, overhand this time, and Midoriya catches it a second time. His calculated correction comes more quickly every time he does it.

“So long as you’re not overexerting yourself, I see no problem with a little practice,” Aizawa says. “Your doctor cleared you for physical training?”

Midoriya nods, even though he knows that Aizawa already knows the answer. He’d asked the doctor to write out a signed note, even, and sent a picture of it as soon as he could pull his phone out without being rude.

“You lost weight in the weeks that you were gone,” Aizawa observes.

It isn’t a leading statement, but Midoriya’s statement twists anyway.

“Villains really aren’t the type to keep their hostages at full strength,” he replies shortly. “Does that matter?”

“I’m not bringing it up without reason,” Aizawa says, voice a touch softer. “Part of your training involved building muscle mass. You spent enough time undernourished that you won’t be able to jump back into the same level that you were at, and you’ll have to build your strength and stamina back up again.”

Midoriya rolls his shoulders, as though he can physically force the memories to roll off of his back.

A flash of him curled up in the dark, crying into his knees, and then he clenches his teeth so hard that his jaw cracks audibly in his ear.

“I know,” he says. “The training room on our floor in the new building has everything I need for that; I already checked. I have even less time than I did before to make sure that I have a shot at the UA entrance exam, I can’t waste one on one training with a pro running laps.”

Aizawa crosses his arms.

“If I say you’ll be running laps, you’ll be running laps,” he says. “But you’re right, and I trust that you won’t overdo it when you’re unsupervised.”

Midoriya smiles. To Aizawa, hopefully, it’s nothing more than a sign that he’s pleased his point was acknowledged.

But really it’s amusement, because he’s pretty sure that everything about his nighttime activities counts as ‘overdoing it’.

“We’re not working on hand to hand today,” Aizawa tells him. “I’m not budging on that. You need to rebuild that lost muscle mass before we start sparring again. But we’ll work on building skills that you can incorporate into your hand to hand combat. You remember the gymnastics we talked about?”

Midoriya nods.

“Being unpredictable is one of your best assets in a fight. Certain gymnastics can give you an edge, while also helping you improve your flexibility, endurance, and overall strength. Can you tell me any pro heroes you know of that use gymnastics as part of their combat style?”

“You,” Midoriya says immediately.

Aizawa gives him a look. “Besides me, problem child.”

“Oh, right,” he says. He pauses to think. “Edgeshot.”

Aizawa nods. “Good. Ready to learn?”

Midoriya cracks his knuckles and grins.

“Ready.”

…………..

Kacchan is waiting for him outside the gym, which he reveals by stepping out of a shadowy doorway and grabbing Midoriya’s arm.

With his adrenaline still high and his systems on high alert as always, he’s got Kacchan’s wrist in a vice grip in an instant and is starting to twist his arm harshly behind his back before he realizes who he’s attacking and let’s go as though he’s been burned.

Another few seconds and he might’ve been, although Kacchan didn’t even send up a few stray sparks, oddly enough.

“Shit,” Midoriya mumbles. “Kacchan, what the fuck?”

Bakugo scowls and rubs his wrist. “Me? You, what the fuck? You just tried to dislocate my shoulder.”

Midoriya winces, because technically—yeah, that’s exactly what that move would’ve done if he’d finished it.

“What did you expect?” he demands, crossing his arms over his chest. His gym bag swings heavily against the side of his leg at the movement. “You didn’t tell me you were going to be here! How do you even know the address?”

“Auntie told me,” Kacchan says. “And I dunno, maybe I expected that I could surprise my best friend without risking getting my arm ripped off!”

All arguments stutter to silence in Midoriya’s throat. He stares at Bakugo.

“What?” Bakugo asks. “Stop looking at me like that!”

Midoriya shakes off the surprise. Literally—he shakes his head and his shoulders like a dog shaking off after a bath. Then he smiles crookedly and bumps his shoulder against Bakugo’s in silent acknowledgement. He’s fairly sure if he did anything else, it’d result in explosions and yelling.

“Sure, Kacchan,” he says easily, turning and starting to walk down the sidewalk in the direction of home. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Auntie messaged and said that the homeless guy couldn’t walk you home today because he got called in, and she got stuck in traffic on her way home from work.”

Midoriya’s face twists with displeasure.

“Think she’ll ever let me leave the apartment alone again?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t,” Bakugo mutters. “My parents aren’t half as protective as Auntie can be, and they’ve been weird about letting me go out without someone else. I only got through the door today because I told the old hag that I was on my way to make sure that you didn’t get your stupid ass kidnapped again.”

Midoriya huffs.

They fall into silence.

Midoriya thinks about Bakugo calling him his best friend. He thinks about him saying it, out loud, to his face.

He smiles.

“What?” Kacchan asks, because he’s too observant for his own good.

“Nothing,” Midoriya says. “Do you want to get boba? There’s a shop on the way.”

Bakugo eyes him suspiciously, but the allure of boba is too much for him, and he nods grudgingly.

“Yeah, we can get boba. But you’re buying.”

Midoriya rolls his eyes.

But he doesn’t stop smiling.

……………..

Midoriya hears voices as soon as he opens the apartment door, boba in hand, Bakugo on his heels. His brow furrows with confusion, because he knows that they weren’t expecting any guests today.

He turns into the living room and stops so dead in his tracks that Bakugo nearly runs into him and swears in irritation.

All Might is sitting on his couch.

In his skinny form, of course, meaning that Midoriya is the only one in the room aware of who he really is, but that doesn’t change the fuck that All Might is sitting on his fucking couch.

Drinking tea.

“There you are, Izuku!” Inko says, relief audible in her voice. She smiles warmly at him. “I’m glad Katsuki caught you before you left the gym. I know you keep reminding me that you don’t need an escort everywhere, but it makes me feel better knowing that you’re not walking home alone.”

Midoriya stares at her. His eyes flick over to All Might, who’s ducking his head like he can hide behind the fragile little teacup in his hand.

“Oh, where are my manners?” Inko realizes, and gestures in turn to All Might and Midoriya. “This is Yagi Toshinori. He’s one of our neighbors! He was just telling me about some of his work with pro heroes. Isn’t that nice?”

Midoriya counts backwards from ten in his head.

“Sure, Mom,” he says, and then he turns on his heel, nearly hitting Bakugo in the process, and walks away, making a beeline for his bedroom.

He shuts the door behind him, carefully sets his half-finished boba on the nightstand, collapses onto his bed, and screams as loud as he can into his pillow.

His door opens and then closes again.

“The fuck was that?” Bakugo asks. “I thought your nerd ass would jump at the chance to hear about some old guy’s work with pros.”

Midoriya snorts. He rolls onto his side so that he can look at his friend.

“Did I ever tell you how I met Aizawa?” he asks.

Bakugo raises an eyebrow. He swirls his drink in his hand and takes a sip.

“No,” he says. “I figured you found him in a dumpster somewhere.”

Midoriya sits up, making room on his bed, and pats the mattress next to him. He has a feeling that what he’s about to say isn’t going to go over well.

“Sit,” he says.

Surprisingly, Bakugo listens. He looks around the room as he crosses it, and his forehead wrinkles with something like confusion.

“Where’s all your shit, anyway?” he asks.

Midoriya gestures vaguely to the boxes still piled up in the corner, then turns to adjust his pillows so that he can lean comfortably against them and put a little more distance between the two of them.

“Hmph,” Bakugo says. He slurps at his boba. “Would’ve thought that your creepy fanboy All Might collection would be the first thing you unpacked.”

“All Might,” Midoriya says, enunciating every consonant, “is a fucking asshole.”

Bakugo stares at him.

Midoriya smiles. It isn’t a pleasant smile.

“Are you ready to listen?”

Bakugo sets his boba on the nightstand, next to Midoriya’s cup. He tucks his hands under pretzel-crossed legs, like he’s trying to convey that he isn’t a threat and won’t become one, no matter what Midoriya has to say.

“Tell me,” he says.

Chapter Text

Bakugo stares at him. 

Midoriya opens his mouth, but Bakugo shushes him, holding up a finger, and shakes his head, eyes closed. He takes a deep breath. 

“You’re telling me,” he says, in what is obviously a forced neutral tone, “that the fucking stick insect looking asshole in your living room—is All Might?”

Midoriya considers trying to explain further. He settles for a simple nod instead. 

“And this asshole, who is All Might, left you on a roof after trying to leave you behind without medical attention when you’d almost been killed by a villain. Then told you that your dreams were unrealistic. And left you behind. On a roof. For a second time?” 

Midoriya chews on his lip. He nods again. 

“That pretty much sums it up, yeah,” he says. 

Bakugo stares at him again. Then he stands abruptly, fingers already sparking, and starts for the door. 

The dive that Midoriya does to stop him is the opposite of graceful. One of his blankets is wrapped around his ankle, throwing him off balance, and instead of sliding in front of Bakugo to block him from the door, he ends up football tackling him to the floor.

“I’m gonna kill him!” Bakugo seethes, struggling under Midoriya’s weight. His elbow just barely misses Midoriya’s face as he flails. “Fucking get off of me; that fucker deserves to die!” 

“I thought All Might was your favorite hero,” Midoriya says, and then grunts when one of Bakugo’s knees hits him in the stomach, right where the bruise from his fight with Blackout is. “Fucking ow.” 

“If you’d get off of me and let me murder that stupid asshole—” 

“Boys?” 

They both freeze. 

“Is everything okay in there?” Inko calls, her tone colored with concern, but also an edge of warning that they both recognize all too well. 

They exchange a look. 

“We’re fine!” Midoriya calls. “Sorry, Mom.” 

“Sorry, Auntie.” 

Midoriya looks down at Bakugo again, but the murderous rage seems to have subsided, for the most part, so he doesn’t see any immediate danger in sitting back and letting him up. 

He doesn’t sit up. Instead he stares grumpily at the ceiling from the floor. 

“She doesn’t know, does she?” he asks. “Auntie.” 

Midoriya picks at the edge of one of his fingernails, glancing at the door. 

“No,” he says. “Some—some of it. But not all of it.” 

Bakugo shakes his head. 

“The fucking nerve,” he seethes. “Why is he here? Bad enough that you have to live in the same building with him, but now he’s inviting himself over to have tea with Auntie? What the fuck is wrong with him?” 

“He’s All Might,” Midoriya says, dryly. “Apparently that means that he’s above—everything. The law. Social etiquette. You know.”

Bakugo finally rolls upright. He scratches his fingers over his scalp. 

“He was supposed to be better,” he mumbles. 

And that—there’s so much more to it that he isn’t saying. But Midoriya hears it, because he knows him, and he knows everything underneath that short sentence, everything that he never would have admitted even months ago. 

He smiles crookedly. 

“Guess it’s up to us, then, huh?” he says. “We’ll have to be better.” 

Bakugo looks up at him. There’s new fire burning in his eyes when he sees the smile and the determination in Midoriya’s expression. He grins back, the familiar feral grin that bares all his teeth and has a tendency to make small children cry. 

“Fuck yeah, we will,” he says. “We’ll be the best.” 

Midoriya offers his hand, and Bakugo takes it, gripping hard. 

He can feel the years of callouses from quirk use, but for once the memories of all the times that he’d been on the receiving end of it are nothing more than a blink that’s easily brushed away. 

Kacchan’s hands won’t hurt him anymore. 

………………

The nights are the hardest. 

In the dark, Midoriya drives himself crazy wondering if he ever actually escaped at all, or if they broke something inside of him and he’s imagined everything that’s happened. 

Is this real? He asks himself, over and over. 

His thoughts just turn in darker and darker circles until he gets up and does something. He trains, he patrols, he catches petty villains to get more practice fighting without full vision in a way that doesn’t extremely aggravate the still-healing injuries he sustained taking on Blackout. 

He crawls back into his bed to catch a few hours of utterly exhausted sleep, and if he’s lucky he doesn’t dream. 

He’s never been very lucky. 

His alarm goes off at 5am sharp, and he rolls out from under the covers and goes for a jog, mapping his new neighborhood with every step that he takes. He lets his mom believe that he’s using one of the treadmills in the gym, and she doesn’t have any reason to think that it’s a lie because by the time that she’s waking up and beginning her own morning routine, he is in the gym, working to make up for the time that he lost to villains. 

He eats when he has to. He tries to clean his plate when he shares meals, because when he doesn’t, he ends up on the receiving end of concerned stares, and he can’t bear the way that the scrutiny makes his skin itch. 

Hatsume reassures him daily—sometimes more than once—that even though it’s been delayed by bureaucratic red tape, his support item should be approved and delivered safely back into her hands any day now. Aizawa offers his own support, but warns him over and over not to let himself learn to become too reliant on anything that can be destroyed or taken from him. 

And his mom…

He knows that she’s scared. He knows that the gray streaks in her hair are from years of worrying herself to tears over him, and whether or not he’d come home safely or covered in bruises and burns again. He’s pretty sure that his time spent as a hostage aged her years in the span of a few weeks. 

But she still doesn’t talk to him. She circles around ‘sensitive’ topics like he’s made of glass and she’s trying not to break him, and maybe the delicacy would be appreciated if it didn’t feel a lot more like pretending that nothing ever happened. 

He rolls over on his bed, restless. He’s already trained himself to the point that hie nearly blew his arms out, and his mom’s working from home, so he’s been keeping quiet in his room to avoid disturbing her where she’s set up with her laptop in the kitchen. 

The problem is that he can’t leave without passing right by her, unless he goes out the window, which is too risky when it’s still the middle of the day. 

He checks his phone for what has to be the thousandth time. 

Kacchan: I still say that you should let me kill him

Midoriya rolls his eyes, even though a fond smile tugs at his mouth. 

Broccoli: murder is illegal, kacchan

Kacchan: as if you’d let them catch me

Midoriya purses his lips, considering. Really, Kacchan is right—he’d do a lot to make sure that he becomes a hero. Covering up the murder of the number one hero is probably pushing the limits of his skills, though. 

Broccoli: bold of you to assume I wouldn’t turn you in 

Kacchan: SHITHEAD

He exhales sharply through his nose—the closest he really gets to a proper laugh, these days. He sets his phone down and glances at the time. 

It’s like the clock is ticking backwards, he could swear. 

There’s a soft knock on his door. 

“Izuku?” Inko calls. She opens the door and pokes her head into his room. “I just wanted to ask what you’d like for dinner? I won’t finish up in time to cook, I don’t think, so I thought we could order something. Maybe curry or ramen?” 

He summons a smile and tries to ignore how fake it feels on his face. 

“Curry sounds great, Mom,” he says. 

She nods absently, glancing around his room at the bare walls and the boxes still piled in one corner.

“You haven’t decorated much,” she says, hesitantly, like she’s afraid it veers too close to the line of Things They Don’t Talk About. “Do you want some help?” 

“No, that’s okay. I just haven’t decided where I want to put everything yet, you know. It takes planning. Mei said she’d help me with it, the next time she comes over.” 

Inko nods again. 

“I’m glad you have such a good friend,” she says. “I’ll order the curry for delivery around 6, I think. How does that sound?” 

“Sounds great, Mom.” 

She nods one more time and steps out of his room, closing the door quietly behind her. 

He exhales loudly. Tension that he didn’t realize had gathered in his shoulders drops as he does, and he rolls over to shove his face into his pillow. 

It shouldn’t be so hard just to talk to his mom. 

But it is. 

His phone buzzes. 

The second one. Not the one that he’d been using to text Kacchan. He’s been keeping it under his pillow, mostly to muffle the sound but also so that he’ll feel it go off when he’s sitting on his bed, which is where he spends most of his time when he’s not training or out as Wisp. 

Glitch: got another one for you. you gonna be out tonight?

Wisp: am I ever not?

Glitch: only when horrifically injured

Glitch: which you wouldn’t bother to tell me about, so asking is my way of making sure that you’re not on death’s door

Wisp: ha ha. I’m not that bad.

Glitch: you are. but I’m not gonna argue about it

Glitch: I’ll send you the info later

Wisp: what am I in for?

Glitch: low tier thug. more brawn than brains

Wisp: fantastic.

Glitch: think high school meathead turned villain

Wisp: FANTASTIC.

Glitch: I got the sarcasm the first time

Wisp: it deserved repeating.

He shoves the phone back under his pillow when another response isn’t forthcoming and stares up at his ceiling. 

The ceiling fan spins in lazy circles. The hum of it is soothing, as well as the gentle touch of the breeze against his skin. 

But every second that he stays still, it’s like there’s a countdown in his head getting louder and louder, on the verge of ending any moment. 

You’re running out of time, it tells him. 

He digs his nails into his arms, trying to draw himself out of the dizzying spiral that he’s starting to fall into. 

Faintly, he can hear his mom talking, either on the phone or video calling with a client or coworker. Her tone is level and friendly. 

It should be a soothing sound, but instead it just reminds him of how strained everything feels between them. Too much going left unsaid. 

And the worst part of it—he might be the only one who feels it. 

If it’s bothering anyone else, they’re not showing any signs of it. 

He sighs and digs his nails in harder, making crescent moon marks in his skin. 

He’s so tired. 

Eyes wide open, sore from training, his blood still running through him like a livewire, waiting for the moment that the danger kicks in.

He’s so tired.

……………

“I thought you said that this guy was a loner who didn’t do team-ups?” Midoriya hisses, crouched awkwardly on the corner scaffolding of a building, right above the camera that points across the street at the convenience store that a group of villains, including his target, the ‘petty thug’, are in the middle of looting. 

“Apparently with All Might in town, villains are playing by new rules,” Glitch replies over the new com in his ear. “More safety in numbers, or something.” 

“All Might never bothers with the night shift,” Midoriya says. “Do you have ID on the others yet? I’d rather not get into a brawl in the middle of the convenience store, but I will if there are lives at risk.” 

“Yeah, bad news on that. Your thug, he’s more of the threaten people type and gloat over being able to make them piss their pants without ever actually laying a hand on them, but at least two of his new buddies have murder on their rap sheet, and they like to play with their food.” 

Midoriya makes a face and then blows his breath out in a sigh. 

“Great. The other one?” 

“Still working on it. Give me another couple minutes and I should have it.” 

“The people in there might not have another couple of minutes,” he says, and straightens from his crouch, walking back a few steps before he can shimmy down a drain pipe out of view of the camera. “I’m going in.” 

“I haven’t even told you what you’re up against yet.”

“Better talk fast, then.” 

She babbles a quick rundown of their quirks in his ear while he skirts around, cutting through an alley to get to the rear access door of the store, which, luckily for him, is being propped open by a piece of cardboard to prevent it from locking–probably from a worker who’d gone out for a smoke break, or something similar, and he has no idea where they might be now, but he isn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Villain one, his original target–villain name Flex, apparently, which is so incredibly lame that Midoriya prefers Thug–has, surprise surprise, an intimidation quirk. Basically a threatening aura that makes people reluctant to fight back against him, and he’d augmented it by building muscle until he looks like a tank, so he rarely even has to bother to so much as lift a finger to commit his various petty crimes. 

Villain two, villain name Strangler–another generic and overused name, honestly, where is the originality–has whips that emerge from his wrists, which can be up to six feet in length each and that he has extremely precise control over. 

And then number three, Undertow, can generate pulses of energy that go out in a shockwave at knee height. In close quarters, it’s powerful enough to sweep people’s legs out from under them, but outside of a radius of five feet, all it can do is rattle some shelves. 

“Where are you right now, anyway?” Glitch asks, sounding exasperated. “I didn’t see you on any of the cameras.” 

“Back door was open,” Midoriya murmurs lowly back, creeping up to the corner at the end of the hall and leaning just enough to peek around. 

“You’re inside the building?!” 

“I said that I was going in.”

“You’re fucking suicidal.” 

Midoriya snorts. He peeks again. 

The next hallway leads to the back area of the store, where the coolers and freezers are, which hasn’t apparently held much interest for the villains. Strangler is sitting on top of the counter, with his whips keeping the clerk’s arms pinned to his sides. He’s wearing a horrifying smirk on his face.

Undertow is in the cosmetic aisle, grabbing lipsticks off of the shelf and trying them on, checking her reflection in the mirror, and then either nodding and pocketing them or shaking her head and tossing them onto the floor. 

Thug is leaning against the counter next to the clerk, arms crossed, while the fourth villain messes with the cash register, apparently trying to open it. 

“Anything on our last guy?” he whispers.

“Not yet,” Glitch replies. He can hear the sound of her nails clicking on her keyboard in the background. “I only got a partial of his face from the cameras; it’s not a lot to go on. Whoever he is, he has experience avoiding surveillance.” 

Midoriya nods absently, frowning to himself. 

He doesn’t like the way that Strangler is looking at the clerk. He also doesn’t like the darkening bruise on the clerk’s cheek, or how pale and shaky he is.

“I can’t keep waiting,” he says. “Tell me what you find when you find it, but I have to do something before this goes any further.” 

“Fucking–” 

He tunes it out as she continues to swear at him, and then he takes a deep breath, straightening his posture. He shoves his hands into his pockets and turns the corner, whistling a jaunty tune as he walks right into the main area of the store.

Undertow is the first one to look up and see him, making his way across the store from the back hallway, the picture of nonchalance.

She sneers, looking him up and down. 

“Who are you supposed to be, then?” she asks. “Flex, how many extras did you invite to this party? You already had one tagalong that you’re making us split everything with, now there’s another that you didn’t even tell us about?”

Flex turns. He raises his eyebrow when he sees Midoriya. 

“I didn’t invite him,” he says. “Maybe you missed someone when you did the sweep. You gonna do something about it, or you gonna keep playing dress up?” 

Undertow rolls her eyes. She returns her attention to Midoriya. 

“Come on, then,” she says. “What are you doing, walking into the middle of this like you belong here? We don’t give handouts. And we’re not looking to add any more members to our team.” 

“I’m not here for that,” Midoriya replies, tilting his head. He pulls his hands out of his pockets, stretching them over his head, and then takes up a ready stance, flicking his wrist so that his baton shoots into his hand. “I’m here for you.” 

A delighted grin spreads across Undertow’s face. She has lipstick on her teeth. 

“Oh, good,” she says. “A party crasher.” 

She interlocks her fingers, like she’s about to crack her knuckles, but when she twists them, she thrusts outward, hard, and Midoriya feels something hit him in the shins, like he’s just stumbled into a low table, and stumbles, muttering a curse. 

Some of the products on the shelves around them fall onto the ground, breaking or just making a mess, but there isn’t any other visible damage. 

Unfortunately, he’s reminded as Undertow mimics his ready stance in front of him that villains have a tendency to realize more often than heroes the truth that should be obvious: quirks aren’t everything. 

“Better hurry up,” Undertow says over her shoulder. “I doubt this one is going to be the end of unwanted company.” 

“Now that’s just rude,” Midoriya says. “You haven’t even gotten to know me yet.” 

Undertow smiles without mirth. 

“What’s taking so long, anyway?” Thug asks, at a volume that might make sense in a crowded bar but definitely doesn’t make sense in a near silent convenience store in the middle of the night. “I thought you said you knew how to do this.” 

The as of yet unidentified villain looks up only to glare. 

“Maybe if you hadn’t jumped the gun to feed your ego, the clerk wouldn’t have had time to hit the button that locks people like us out of the system,” he says. “You know, to prevent theft.” 

Thug scoffs–and looks away. He shifts a bit on his feet, and Midoriya marks it immediately, because if a man so utterly self-assured and egocentric is nervous around the mystery villain, it absolutely means that he’s someone to be wary of. 

Delightful.

“Well, hurry up,” Thug mutters. 

Undertow tilts her head. 

“You gonna make a move? Or am I gonna have to hurry this along? I’ve got places to be, you see.” 

Midoriya rocks back on his heels and relaxes out of his ready stance. 

“I don’t,” he says pleasantly. “Besides, we skipped the small talk. Nice weather out tonight, isn’t it? Hardly any pollution.” 

She leaps at him, swinging wide, and he ducks underneath her arm and spins around until he’s behind her. 

“Whoa,” he says, laughing a little. “Do you hate small talk that much? We can talk about something else.” 

“With you, shortstop?” Undertow says, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t think so. Now, hold still.” 

The fight is a blur. Some part of Midoriya checks out, and it’s a rush of muscle memory, dodge, hit, dodge, roll. Her quirk knocks one leg out from under him at one point, but he uses it to kick her own feet out, and the stilettos she’s wearing do nothing to help her regain her balance before she can fall. 

It’s only been a few minutes at the most when she backs away, lipstick smudged, hair a mess, limping because one of her heels has snapped off. 

“Scrappy little thing, aren’t you,” she says, almost purring. “Babe?” 

Midoriya makes a face, because it sounds like she’s referring to him, but then Strangler pipes up from his perch on the counter. 

“Little busy, darling,” he says. “You can’t handle one little vigilante on your own?” 

She scowls and rolls her eyes, turning around to glare at him, one hand on her hip. 

“If I didn’t need your help, I wouldn’t ask for it,” she says. “I’m sure Flex can handle babysitting for a few minutes.” 

Flex rolls his eyes, but he pushes off of the counter and grabs the clerk by the back of his shirt collar, waving at Strangler. 

“Go,” he says. “The sooner we get rid of this guy, the better. How’s that lock coming?” 

“It’d be coming faster if I didn’t keep getting interrupted.” 

Strangler’s whips retract partially into his wrists, unwinding from the store clerk in a way that almost looks like slithering snakes. 

He hops off of the counter and stalks over to stand next to Undertow, his–girlfriend? Apparently? 

The two of them exchange a look, and then the fight is on again. 

Midoriya is incredibly delighted to find that dodging Strangler’s whips is almost exactly the same as dodging Aizawa’s capture weapon, which he’s had plenty of practice with. Dodging him and Undertow at the same time is a little trickier, but fighting indoors has its advantages, and having places to dive for cover is one of them. 

The cash register chimes as the drawer slides open. 

“Got it,” the fourth villain says smugly. 

Midoriya is distracted for maybe a split second, but it’s enough for one of Strangler’s whips to catch him around the waist. 

“Shit,” he mutters, and then he’s thrown bodily into the shelving, causing several more to crash and fall in a domino effect. 

His body protests, but he forces himself up before he’s even properly gotten his breath back, rolling out of the way of another attempt by Undertow to hit him with her quirk. 

“Wrap it up!” Flex barks, shoving cash into a bag. “We’re working on a time limit here. ETA ten minutes until the cops arrive.” 

“You could help instead of yelling things we already know just because you like the sound of your own voice,” Undertow scoffs. 

She goes to use her quirk again, and Midoriya grabs the first thing he can reach from the carnage of the destroyed shelves and throws it. 

He hits her directly in the face, and she splutters and drops her hands, looking at the fallen package on the ground. 

“Did you just throw a Twinkie at me?” she asks, bewildered.

Midoriya throws another Twinkie.

She splutters with outrage, but it gives him the opening that he needs, and he vaults across the room, sliding under and around fallen shelves. Strangler tries to wrap a whip around his leg and trip him up, but he spins out of the way with practiced ease.

Thug looks up from his task at the sound of yelling, eyebrows drawn together with irritation, so focused on the money in his hands that he hadn’t bothered keeping track of the fight. 

“What?” he snaps, and Midoriya’s flying kick hits him square in the jaw. 

What’s the old saying? The bigger they are, the harder they fall?

He goes down like a sack of bricks, eyes rolling up into the back of his head. The bag in his hand hits the ground and bursts open, spilling across the tile. 

Midoriya, from his new perch on the counter, crouched on one knee, still bracing himself with one hand as he’d done to complete the kick, meets the eyes of the last villain. 

He rolls his eyes and sighs. 

“Idiot,” he says. He nudges Thug’s arm with his foot, and it flops awkwardly, complete deadweight. “No one can carry his heavy ass, either, so he’s getting arrested for sure.” 

Midoriya blinks. Not the reaction he expected. 

He meets eyes with the store clerk, who’s huddled on the ground, leaning against the shelves behind the counter. As slightly as he can without being unclear, he tilts his head towards the door, and the man nods, still pale and trembling but with his mouth pressed in a determined line. 

“What makes you think that you’re not getting arrested with him?” Midoriya asks, drawing the villain’s attention. 

The villain regards him, mouth quirked at the corner, amused.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” 

As if summoned, Midoriya’s com suddenly crackles to life in his ear. 

“Wisp, do not engage, that’s S Class villain Flatline, he can stop your heart just by looking at you if you’re within a radius of five feet, which you definitely are right now so move your stupid ass.” 

Midoriya tilts his head. 

“I know who you are,” he says. He doesn’t dare look, but out of the corner of his eye he can see the cashier shuffling as quickly and quietly as possible towards the exit. “You’re just one more person who thinks that having power gives you the right to use it to hurt people. It makes you feel strong, right? It makes you feel like you’re better than everyone else?” 

The amused quirk of his mouth is long gone, now. His face darkens with every word out of Midoriya’s mouth, but he’s stone still, like he can’t help but listen to what Midoriya has to say to him. 

“News flash: it doesn’t. You prey on the weak and innocent because you know that the second you go after someone stronger, you’ll lose, and it’ll shatter the illusion that you’re at the top, looking down on everyone. You aren’t. You’re at the bottom, looking up.” 

Several things happen. 

Someone behind him–Strangler or Undertow, he can’t tell–mutters a quiet, “Shit.” 

In his ear, Glitch whispers something that might be a torrent of curses or a prayer. 

And the cashier, taking advantage of the shellshocked villains, scrambles to his feet and sprints the last few yards to the door, making the bell above it chime wildly.

Midoriya smiles.

Flatline stares at the door, and beyond it, the rapidly disappearing form of the cashier. Slowly, he turns his head to look back at Midoriya. 

“I don’t think you do know who I am,” Flatline says. “If you did, you would’ve taken the chance to try and run right behind that other coward.” He leans forward. “And you wouldn’t be this close to me.” 

“Running doesn’t make someone a coward,” Midoriya says, a bit miffed. “But I wouldn’t bother to run from you anyway. You don’t scare me, Flatline. Not you, and not your friends.”

He straightens up, standing on top of the checkout counter and looking down at the villains. 

“The police should be here in–oh, about five minutes?” he says. “How about it, then? Do you think you can get away before they get here?” 

“It’s three of us against one of you,” Undertow scoffs, crossing her arms. “A little arrogant of you to think that you even have a chance.” 

Midoriya shrugs. 

“I’ve faced worse odds,” he says. 

Flatline’s fingers twitch, and Midoriya moves. 

He leaps from the checkout counter to the coffee bar, sending paper cups and single-serve creamers flying, and kicks off from there to land directly on top of Undertow’s shoulders. She crumbles to her knees under his weight, cursing, and Strangler shouts angrily, starting to send one of his whips to pull Midoriya off before he twists and puts Undertow in between them. 

Flatline starts to move around the counter, but Strangler throws a hand up at him. 

“Grab the cash, Flatline!” he says. “We’ll handle him. I’m not leaving here empty-handed.” 

Irritation is plain on Flatline’s face. He clearly doesn’t like taking orders. But he stops moving towards them, at least for the moment, and stands still, watching the fight. 

Undertow sends out another pulse with her quirk, trying to shake Midoriya off of her, but it’s uncontrolled compared to her earlier attempts, and trips Strangler instead, making him stumble and nearly take a header into one of the coolers.

“Watch it!” Strangler snaps.

When she tries again, Midoriya finally lets Undertow shake him off, taking several steps back to put more distance between them. He glances over at Flatline to make sure that he’s not about to join the fight, and finds him with a cold, contemplative look on his face. 

Midoriya knows then, that there’s no love lost between him and the other villains in the group. He’d suspected, based on the way they talked to each other, and Flatline’s rather lackluster reaction to Flex being knocked out, but there’s no question of it anymore. The truth is written on his face.

Which makes things just a little bit harder for him, because it means that if they get the chance, they’re likely to leave, and he’s not especially happy with the idea that some of them might get away instead of facing the justice they deserve. 

As if he senses Midoriya’s thoughts, Flatline turns to look at the door. 

There’s nothing blocking him. Strangler and Undertow are both between him and Midoriya, now, and he can’t hear any sirens in the distance heralding the imminent arrival of the police.

Strangler grabs Undertow’s arm to haul her back onto her feet, and Midoriya sprints for Flatline, intent on putting himself in the way of any escape attempts.

“I don’t think so,” Strangler snarls, and he uses the hand that isn’t occupied with Undertow to send a whip snapping after Midoriya. 

It wraps around his ankle before he can dodge, yanking his leg out from under him, and he hits the ground hard. 

“Looks like your luck is running out,” Undertow says, slightly out of breath and unsteady on her feet. She grins at him regardless, brushing stray strands of hair out of her face. 

Midoriya flips himself over onto his back, glaring. 

“Is it?” he asks. “Or is yours? Because it sure seems to me like your buddy Flatline was just about to leave you to the mercy of the cops.” 

Strangler’s whip slackens slightly. He looks over Midoriya’s head at Flatline, brows drawing together with anger. 

“Is that true?” he demands. 

Flatline shrugs. “I don’t see any reason for all of us to get arrested. Besides–I was never planning on sharing my spoils with the rest of you anyway. Money split four ways doesn’t amount to much, individually.” 

Undertow snarls. “I knew you were no good! Flex is just too stupid to see what’s right in front of his face–you’re only in this for yourself.” 

While they argue, Midoriya sets about quietly untangling his leg from the grasp of Strangler’s quirk, shuffling to the side to put himself at an angle between the three of them and the door. 

There’s the back door, of course, but even though he used it to get inside, he doubts that the three of them are aware of its existence. 

“If the cops get here while you two are busy arguing, all that any of us will get is a prison sentence! I don’t know about you, but I prefer being outside of jail.” 

The hairs on the back of Midoriya’s neck suddenly prickle, like he’s being watched, and he glances around him. 

None of the villains are looking at him, too preoccupied by their argument. He can’t see anyone else, but the camera behind the counter is still on, a blinking red light indicating that it’s actively recording. 

“Cops are delayed,” Glitch murmurs in his ear. “Truck turned over, blocking the road. They’re going around, but it’ll take almost twice as long.” 

He nods shortly in acknowledgment. He’s not stupid enough to believe that Glitch hasn’t tapped into the camera feed. 

A delay. That’s fine. He just has to keep them busy for a little longer than expected. And still somehow manage to slip away before one of the officers can try to arrest him along with them. 

And he managed to get the innocent civilian out of harm’s way. That’s the important thing. 

Really…that’s the only important thing. 

He thinks about the door at his back. He’s only a few feet away from it, now. Undertow is busy cussing Flatline out from a distance, staying out of his quirk’s range while Strangler tries in vain to facilitate some sort of collaboration. 

He could leave. The villains might get away before the police show up, but the only people left for them to harm are each other. 

And the store is a chain, owned by a billion dollar corporation that prioritizes profit over people. The money that might be taken is a drop in the bucket to them. 

But then…if they do get away, especially Flatline, he might not be there the next time to stop them from hurting someone. 

He bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard. 

Leave? Save himself, in the moment, over the dozens of lives that might be harmed in the future, if he doesn’t stay and make sure that Undertow, Flatline, and Strangler are off the street? Where did the thought even come from?

“As much as I’m loving this absolutely riveting conversation,” Flatline drawls. “At the moment, it seems, we do have a common enemy.” 

He turns to look at Midoriya. Strangler and Undertow copy him, although Undertow still looks utterly furious. 

“I don’t suppose you’d let us leave peacefully?” Strangler asks.

Some part of him wants to laugh. 

Instead, he crosses his arms. 

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Strangler mutters. He sighs. “Undertow?” 

“Fine,” she snaps. “But I’m ripping Flatline apart as soon as we get out of here.”

Strangler rolls his eyes heavenward and then shrugs awkwardly at Flatline, in a sorry-what-can-you-do sort of gesture. Flatline, for his part, doesn’t seem overly considered by the imminent threat of bodily harm. 

They all stare at each other for a long moment, waiting for someone to make the first move. Midoriya is expecting it to be Flatline, since he made the suggestion for them to fight together and he’s the only one who hasn’t tried his luck yet. 

Which is why, when Strangler snaps his whips in Midoriya’s direction, he reacts too slowly to dodge them completely, and they wrap around his left leg. 

Undertow sends out a pulse with her quirk next, while Strangler yanks back, and Midoriya ends up flat on his back, scrambling to grab onto something to stop him from being dragged across the tile and into the range of Flatline’s quirk. 

He flips himself onto his side, drawing his knees up so that he can grab at the whips tangled around his calf. He’s still being pulled, but it seems like bearing weight with his quirk is a struggle for Strangler, because his expression is a grimace of concentration, and sweat is beading on his brow. 

The other two seem content to let Strangler reel Midoriya in like a floundering fish, which seems stupid, but then, he’s already seen how terrible they are at working as a team. 

He loosens the grip of the whips enough so that he can kick his leg free, and he does so in a rolling motion that ends with him still outside of Flatline’s area of effect, back on his feet, braced in a ready stance for their next move. 

Strangler snarls in irritation. He snaps his whips out again, this time aiming higher–for his neck, Midoriya thinks, and he gets ready to dodge late enough that he won’t be able to correct his direction, unwilling to be on the receiving end of the move that he’s sure the villain named himself for. 

He doesn’t have to, though. 

Before Strangler’s whips cross even half of the distance between them, something else–something gray, narrow, and horribly, awfully familiar–wraps around them and pulls. 

“What–?” Strangler begins, and then he’s yanked off of his feet, sent crashing into one of the only shelves still upright. 

Well. One of the only shelves that was upright. 

Midoriya already knows what he’s going to find, and he has to fight against cringing as he turns to trace the end of the capture weapon to its source. 

Aizawa–no, Eraserhead– stands at the end of the aisle, having obviously snuck in through the back the same way that Midoriya did. 

“Who are you?” Undertow demands, moving sideways to block his line of sight to Strangler, who’s feebly trying to extricate himself from the mess of broken shelving and spilled convenience store snacks. 

She raises her hands and starts to push out, obviously intending to send another pulse out in the hopes of catching Eraserhead off guard, but his eyes flare red, hair floating around his head, and nothing happens. 

“What…?” she says, puzzled. She tries again, glaring at her hands like they’re the cause of the problem. Then she looks up, realization dawning in her eyes. Her face twists into a scowl. “ Eraserhead.” 

“Oh, cool,” Midoriya says, incredibly glad that his mask distorts his voice. “You’ve heard of him. You should totally give up and surrender now. Save some energy, y’know? Maybe avoid some injuries. I don’t think Strangler is coming back from that one.” 

He’s barely made it to sitting up, hunched over himself, holding his head with one hand. He’s obviously dazed, most likely concussed, and Midoriya would be surprised if he doesn’t have a cracked rib or two. 

Undertow glances behind her and seems to come to the same conclusion, mouth twisting into a sour line, like she’d just tried a Warhead for the first time.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t raise her hands and surrender. She takes several steps back, so that she’s closer to Strangler and blocking him more thoroughly from any further attack, and then she takes on a ready stance, hands raised but not balled into fists, obviously ready for the moment that Eraserhead has to blink as soon as it happens. 

“Not today,” she says. 

Eraserhead sends his capture weapon flying at her, and she spins elegantly out of the way, light on her feet, beginning a dance between the two of them as the distance slowly closes. 

Behind them, Flatline seems to realize that this is the best chance he’s going to get to slip away, and starts to slink out from behind the counter, bag in hand of whatever cash he’d managed to scrape together after it’d been scattered when Flex went down. 

Midoriya sees it. And he sees Eraserhead see it, too. 

Cold dread draws icy fingers down his spine. He has no idea if Eraserhead knows who he’s fighting–Strangler’s quirk had been obvious, but not the other two. 

Flatline is a lesser known villain. He’s not looking for the limelight, the way some villains are. Even Glitch had a hard time finding his identity. It’s all too likely that Eraserhead doesn’t know who he is, either. 

And even with his quirk, he has to be able to see someone for it to work. 

Flatline doesn’t. He just needs to be close enough. 

Before he can even think clearly about his decision, he’s vaulting over the coffee bar and disappearing into the aisles of the store after Flatline. 

They make it to the back room before Midoriya catches up–by launching himself at Flatline’s back in a flying tackle that takes them both to the ground. 

He rolls off and into a braced crouch before Flatline can even try to shake him off, and he watches warily as the man picks himself up, pushing himself up with his arms.

“You were just an annoyance at first,” he says. He spits blood–he must’ve bitten his lip or his tongue when they hit the ground. “Now, though. Now, I’m really starting to hate you.” 

Midoriya doesn’t give him any more time to recover than that, spinning and kicking one of his arms out from under him so he hits the ground again, knocking the breath out of him. 

He starts forward, planning to try and pin him down before he can get himself back up again, but Flatline rolls out of his reach and onto one knee, still breathing heavily but less worn down than Midoriya was hoping for. 

But he can’t give himself time to stop and think. He can’t give Flatline time to stop and think–and use his quirk. 

Midoriya falls back on muscle memory. Attacking has only recently become part of that, but dodging is as familiar to him as breathing air. 

It’s a blur, after that. His body moves, but he feels strangely detached from it, thinking only of how important it is to make sure that Flatline doesn’t get the chance to use his quirk against Eraserhead. 

In the end, a single sentence from Flatline is what does him in. 

He’s breathless, blood at the corner of his mouth, a bruise darkening on his cheekbone where Midoriya had caught him with a right cross, but he smiles savagely as he speaks, like he already knows exactly what effect his words will have. 

“You fight more like a villain than any hero or vigilante I’ve ever met,” he says. 

And Midoriya stumbles. 

“What?” he says. His voice cracks on the word. 

From the look on Flatline’s face, he knows that his hesitation is a mistake. 

Then the pain blossoms in his chest. 

“You fought well, I’ll admit,” Flatline says. “But I’m done playing now.” 

Midoriya’s hands scrabble uselessly against his chest, trying futilely to soothe the fire of his suddenly racing heart, making his breath come short and black spots bloom across his vision. 

“How does it feel, hmm?” Flatline asks, his tone a horrible mockery of consolation. He holds out a hand, palm up, almost like he’s inviting Midoriya to take it. “Knowing that I have your heart in my hand?” 

He opens his mouth to try and answer, but his breath is coming in short, quick gasps, and he can’t manage any words around it. 

“And if I do this…” 

He twists his hand so that his palm faces the floor, and Midoriya falls to one knee as he feels his heart suddenly go from racing to terrifyingly slow in the space of a few beats. The world spins around him, and his vision blacks out as he blinks and breathes, trying to recapture his equilibrium. 

His eyes clear, just a little. When he looks up, he finds Flatline standing over him, smiling, hand still outstretched–and reaching further. 

“I want to see your eyes,” he says. His hand grabs a fistful of the back of Midoriya’s hood, and with it, his hair. He forces Midoriya’s head back painfully, so that he’s staring right up at him. “I want to watch the light go out of them.”

Midoriya’s pulse skyrockets again. He can feel it everywhere–his head, his throat, his stomach. His chest burns with a sharp pain, like his heart is going to burst right out of his chest. 

Flatline reaches for Midoriya’s mask with his other hand. 

His fingers brush the edge of it–

And Eraserhead’s capture weapon wraps around both of his arms, yanking him harshly away from Midoriya, leaving him to fall gasping to his hands and knees. 

Flatline twists his hands around the fabric securing his arms. 

“Ah,” he says, tilting his head and still smiling that awful smile. “Looks like I’m caught after all. It was fun while it lasted, I suppose. It’s so rare that I really get the chance to play.” 

Eraserhead yanks him forward–right into a roundhouse kick that lands solidly on the side of his head, sending him crumbling to the ground like a ragdoll. 

By the time Eraserhead is turning back towards him, Midoriya is already gone, leaving only the loud sound of the metal door clanging shut as evidence that he’d been there. 

“You’re an idiot,” Glitch says in his ear, when he’s gotten a few blocks away and the sirens have finally gone silent. 

He closes his eyes, pressing his hand against his chest, where his heart is skipping a wild rhythm that has nausea churning in his stomach. 

“I know,” he whispers. 

She sighs. 

“Go home, Wisp,” she says, voice softer. “Take tomorrow night off. I’m not in this to watch you get yourself killed.” 

Before he can respond, there’s a quiet click, and the crackling sound of the earpiece goes silent. 

Getting home takes twice as long as it usually does. He has to keep taking breaks when the black spots start to creep back into his vision, gulping air like he’s been holding his breath and still never feeling like he’s getting enough oxygen. 

When he finally makes it to his window, he wants to almost cry from the relief of it as he slides it open and crawls his way into his bedroom, falling gracelessly onto his bed. 

He’s happy to just sit there and try to catch his breath, as useless as it seems, but before he can even relax fully onto his mattress, his desk lamp clicks on. 

Aizawa is sitting in his desk chair. His dark eyes are horribly knowing. 

“Care to explain, Midoriya?” he asks. “Or should I call you Wisp?”

Chapter Text

Midoriya’s mind runs rampant with possible lies. None of them are plausible, and more than that, he doesn’t think that he can bring himself to tell any of them. 

He rolls over onto his back and stares blankly at the ceiling to avoid seeing the anger and disappointment that he’s sure he’ll find on Aizawa’s face. 

“How long have you known?” he asks. 

“I didn’t, not for sure. Not until now. There’s a lesson in that–don’t confirm the truth to someone who might be trying to get you to confess to it.” 

Midoriya’s mouth twists in a bitter smile. He waves a hand at himself–his hood and mask, still on, the leather jacket and dark cargo pants that are very clearly the exact thing that he was wearing as Wisp not an hour earlier. 

“I think that the evidence in this case is pretty damning,” he says. 

Aizawa sighs. Midoriya risks a glance over and finds him tiredly scrubbing his hands over his face. 

“How long?” he asks, flatly. 

Midoriya shrugs. 

“Midoriya.” 

“I don’t know. A few months.” 

“Since before you were kidnapped?” 

MIdoriya considers lying, again. 

It doesn’t seem like there’s a point to it anymore. 

“...yeah.” 

Aizawa pinches the bridge of his nose. “Kid, why? I don’t even want to think about how many times you’ve nearly gotten yourself killed, tonight included–” 

“But I didn’t.” 

Midoriya sits up and swings his legs over the side of his bed. His boots thump solidly when they hit the floor. His chest still hurts, and it’s only getting worse as the rage that he’s been shoving down again and again and again starts to boil over. 

“I know the risks that I’m taking! I’m not stupid, and more than that, I’ve seen the other side of it! I was almost killed by villains three times when I wasn’t even picking fights as Wisp, not even including the fact that I was kidnapped. As me, Midoriya Izuku, not Wisp! What does it matter that I’m taking the fight to them, instead of letting it happen the other way around?”

Aizawa’s eyes are pained and exhausted, but he shakes his head. 

“That’s not what you’re doing, Midoriya. There might be a loophole in the law that prevents you from being prosecuted for vigilantism, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are still at least a dozen other charges that they could toss at you, and at least a few of them would stick, even with the best lawyer on your side. Most courts don’t have positive opinions on vigilantism, because statistically speaking, it’s a road that often either leads to death or villainism–” 

“You think I don’t know that?” Midoriya interrupts, nearly fuming. He digs his nails into his palms, and feels the deep sting of it even through his thick gloves. “You think I don’t know the statistics? All anyone ever throws at me is statistics! Statistically speaking, I’ll never be a hero. Statistically speaking, I won’t live to see adulthood. Statistically speaking, I’ll always be weaker than everyone else. Statistically speaking, I should be dead already.”

Aizawa’s fingers twitch, like he wants to reach out, but then he balls his hand into a fist and shakes his head again. 

“You’ve been through more than any one person should ever have to go through, let alone a child. But you are a child. I can’t let you do this to yourself.” 

He stands up. Midoriya’s heart pounds–with anger, with fear, with desperation. He can feel it rising up the back of his throat, like he’s about to spit it out into his hands. 

“Don’t– don’t,” he tries, because he has a pretty good idea about what’s going to happen next, and it’ll kill him. 

It’ll kill him. 

“I’m getting your mother,” Aizawa says. 

The ringing in his ears reaches a pitch that starts to drown out everything else. 

He shoots onto his feet, reaching out and grabbing at the first thing he can reach–Aizawa’s sleeve. 

“You can’t–you, you–please–” 

Aizawa lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he recoils like it burns. 

“I can’t keep this from her, Midoriya,” he says. “So I’m going to get your mother, and then I’m going to call Hizashi so that he can check you over and make sure you’re not about to keel over on us. And then we’re all going to have a long, long talk.” 

Midoriya shakes his head, black spots starting to cloud his vision. He can’t control his breathing anymore, and Aizawa seems to realize, because he reaches out with concern wrinkling his brow. 

But Midoriya doesn’t want his comfort, doesn’t want his help, because he’s ruining everything and people are going to die and Midoriya won’t even know their names–

He stumbles backwards, but his knees wobble under his weight, and suddenly everything that he’s been trying to keep at bay all night overwhelms him at once. 

Aizawa’s panicked eyes follow him into unconsciousness. 

……………

Midoriya fidgets with the hospital bracelet around his wrist. He spins it, then pulls it taut until the skin turns red and angry, then drags it back and forth so that the edges of it scrape satisfyingly against his arm. 

“Izuku, please stop doing that,” Inko says, sounding close to tears and utterly exhausted. 

He ignores her.

She reaches out to grab his arm, and he yanks it out of her grip, causing the tape in the crook of his elbow from where they’d drawn blood to pull painfully. 

It barely registers. 

“Izuku,” she says, voice watery, “we’re just trying to help you.”

Objectively–somewhere logical, buried underneath the pain and the exhaustion and the jaded spite that he’s learned over the years–he knows that. He knows that. 

But it doesn’t make it sting any less.

Inko’s lip trembles as she struggles to hold her tears at bay, the same way that Midoriya’s always does, and it hurts more, somehow, because this is his mom and she’s supposed to know, she’s supposed to understand, but she doesn’t. 

She doesn’t. 

Before she can make another attempt at breaking the tense silence, the curtain drawn around his bed swishes open, the same harried nurse who had been periodically checking in with them stepping through. 

“Alright, I have good news!” she says, and Midoriya almost wrinkles his nose at the faux cheer. “You’re all ready to be discharged. We just need to have your mom here sign the paperwork.” 

Inko’s brow furrows angrily, and Midoriya ducks his head further, curling into his knees and pulling the paper bracelet hard enough that it starts to cut off the circulation in his hand. 

“What do you mean, he’s ready to be discharged?” she asks, crossing her arms. “You haven’t even done any tests, except for the bloodwork, and no one told us what the results were!” 

The nurse clears her throat uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact. 

“Well, there was nothing alarming in the results of the blood test, no iron deficiency or anything of the sort, and each time we’ve checked his vitals they’ve been fine, if a little high. Since he’s remained conscious and responsive since waking up from his…episode…the doctor feels that there’s no need to investigate further. We can direct you to some resources for dealing with panic attacks in the future–”

“This wasn’t just a panic attack,” Inko argues. They’d been vague, when they’d checked in, to avoid anyone drawing the line between him and the villains that had been apprehended earlier in the night, but they’d still said that he’d been on the receiving end of a quirk that could manipulate heart rate. “You can’t be certain that there aren’t any lasting effects simply by doing blood work and listening to his heart with a stethoscope. What about an echocardiogram?” 

She clears her throat again, and grabs the chart hanging at the end of his bed. 

“Well, er, it seems that Dr. Kamei declined further testing on the grounds that–ah, judging by his responsiveness and the fact that he’s remained conscious throughout his time here, any aftereffects of the quirk used against him are minor and likely to correct themselves without interference.” 

Midoriya stares at the steadily whitening tips of his fingers. Inko reaches over without even looking at him to pull his hand away from his hospital bracelet again, and instead of immediately going back to it, he twists the thin, paper-like sheet around his fingers instead. 

“There’s no way that he can be certain of that from such little evidence,” Inko insists. “Why won’t he do more tests?” 

“Ah, Dr. Kamei feels that the evidence is sufficient enough to prevent the potential waste of hospital resources to confirm it.” 

She’s shuffling her feet awkwardly, now, and the sense of dread when the doctor had come in to take his vitals and check him over is only confirmed. 

He sneaks a glance at his mom, expecting the usual thunderous anger when confronted with discrimination that directly threatens his health and wellbeing, but instead, she just looks–defeated. 

She closes her eyes and rubs at the bridge of her nose, sighing. 

“Do you have the discharge paperwork?” she asks. 

Midoriya bites the inside of his cheek so hard that blood floods his mouth. 

The nurse busies herself handing over the appropriate paperwork and pointing out all the places that needed signatures, and Inko only briefly settles a hand on his shoulder. 

“We’ll ask Hizashi what he thinks,” she says, in a distinctly distracted and exhausted tone of voice. 

He shrugs her hand off. 

They rejoin Aizawa in the waiting room, where he’s drinking coffee from a paper cup and looking even more tired than usual. 

He raises a questioning eyebrow as he stands up. 

Inko shrugs. 

“They said that he’s fine,” she says. Her tone makes it clear that she disagrees, but that she doesn’t feel as though she can fight with them about it. 

Aizawa drains the last of his coffee and tosses the cup in a nearby garbage can. He reaches instinctively as though to place a hand around Midoriya’s shoulders, then hesitates, arm hovering, and finally lets it drop back to his side. 

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” he murmurs quietly. “If we need to, we can take him to someone who actually knows what they’re doing.” 

Inko nods, looking reassured. 

Midoriya wraps his arms around himself and stares at the ground between his shoes, watching as the tile changes colors and then turns to pavement as they step through the automatic doors and into the parking lot. 

He sits alone in the back seat of Aizawa’s car. Technically Mic’s, borrowed for the night, although it might as well be Aizawa’s too, since they share everything. 

No one says anything, and Midoriya–drifts. 

He’s somewhere far away from himself, like a bubble floating above his head, watching everything from above. 

They know. 

They know, and none of them understand, even though he thought that they would. 

He thought that he knew what it meant to feel alone. 

But this time it cuts so deep that it feels like his entire body has turned into an open wound.

……………

As soon as they get back into the apartment, Inko turns to Aizawa.

“I appreciate everything that you’ve done,” she says. “Not just tonight. But I think I need to have a private conversation with my son, now.” 

Midoriya curls into himself. He glances towards the hallway, but he knows that even if he made a break for it and locked himself into his bedroom, it’d only postpone the inevitable. 

“Are you sure?” Aizawa asks. “I know this is–difficult–and it definitely doesn’t help that everything came out this way. But maybe it would be better if I stayed.” 

“I couldn’t ask that of you,” Inko says. “You’ve done more than you needed to, already. It’s late–you have to teach in the morning.” 

Aizawa tucks his chin into his scarf. When Midoriya catches his eye, there’s something–not regret, really, but close. 

Midoriya moves away from them both and throws himself down in the corner of the couch, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. 

Whatever Aizawa is feeling about the situation, it’s too late for him to change it. 

“You had a chance to say what you needed to,” Inko continues. “Beyond that, I’m sure Izuku knows well enough by now what else you might have to say.”

She’s not wrong. Midoriya’s had a long time to consider what Aizawa would have to say if he ever found out about his nocturnal activities. 

“Alright,” Aizawa says. “I won’t intrude. We’ll have another conversation at a more reasonable hour.” 

Inko nods, trying for a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. 

“Thank you,” she says. “And tell Hizashi thanks as well.” 

Aizawa dips his head in acknowledgment. He meets Midoriya’s eyes one last time, and this time he sees what he thinks might be understanding. 

He turns away. 

Too little, too late. 

Far too little, far too late. 

The door closes quietly behind him, and Inko takes a deep, bracing breath before she turns around and makes her way over to sit in her favorite armchair, which is on the opposite side of the couch corner that Midoriya’s claimed. 

She rubs at her face. 

“Izuku,” she says. “ Why?” 

He has no idea what to say. How can he even try to put it into words, the fevered feeling of not doing enough, not being enough, that drives him out on the streets every night, looking for people to save? 

“I don’t know what you want to hear,” he says, finally. 

“The truth, Izuku!” 

It’s the first time that she’s raised her voice even incrementally in–years, maybe. 

“Did you even take a second to think about what you were doing? About what might happen? You could have been killed out there, and I would’ve been left to find your empty bed in the morning, with no idea about where you were or what stopped you from coming home!” 

He bites the inside of his cheek again. Fresh blood bursts across his tongue as the wound he’d made earlier reopens. 

“All this time, I’ve been thinking that you were safe,” Inko says, and tears start to pearl in the corners of her eyes again. “I thought that this new apartment put you as far out of harm’s way as I could take you. But you’ve been leaving every night and throwing yourself into danger, over and over.” 

It feels like he swallowed cement. He can’t unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, can’t make his voice pass the thickness in his throat. 

She stands abruptly. He watches, skin prickling with wariness and shoulders drawn up around his ears, but she just crosses over to sit next to him on the couch, reaching out to grab his hands and pull them out of his lap. 

“Look at me,” she pleads, and he tries, but the pain and hurt in her eyes has his stomach twisting until he feels like he might puke. “Izuku–what happened? I know–there was a time that you felt like you couldn’t tell me things. But I thought we were past that.”

He shakes his head–not as a response, just in an attempt to clear his head of the buzzing that’s taking up residence in his ears as his anxiety surges. 

“It’s not like that,” he tries. He shakes his head again. “It’s–I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t tell you. Because I knew that you’d make me stop.” 

“ Of course I’d make you stop!” she says, and he pulls his hands out of her grasp and twists his fingers in his shirt. She settles for placing a hand on his knee instead, yanking her other hand sharply through her hair. “You’re a child, Izuku! You’re my child! I know that you want to be a hero, but you aren’t. And you can’t become one if your recklessness gets you killed.” 

He squeezes his eyes shut. His hands ache. 

She inhales sharply, suddenly. 

“Is that what this is about?” she asks. Her voice is small. Fragile. He imagines her words like a bubble made of glass floating out of her mouth, just waiting for someone to shatter it. “Are you–I know I haven’t been the best mother to you, in so many ways, but I thought I would–”

She pauses, blinking rapidly to clear the tears welling up. 

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” 

And there it is. The million dollar question. The conclusion that he was expecting, the one that he’s sure everyone is going to come to, hearing about what he’s been doing at night. 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, Mom, that’s not what this is–” 

“So tell me what it is, then! Tell me why, Izuku? Why are you doing this?” 

It feels like his chest is about to burst with all the words tangling themselves up inside of him. How does he even start to try to explain? What can he say that might make her understand? She isn’t quirkless, and she never wanted to be a hero, anyway; she’s told him stories a hundred times about how she wanted to be a lawyer ever since she was a little girl. 

She doesn’t know. 

“It’s not enough,” he says. He pulls his knees up to his chest, shaking her hand off of his leg in the process. “It’s not enough.” 

“What’s not enough? Your training? Shota says that you’re already doing better than most of his first years–” 

“ Me!” 

He draws in several ragged breaths, the outburst feeling like he’s run a mile instead of speaking one of his most prevalent fears out loud. He buries his face in his hands. 

“I’m not enough,” he says, his voice shaky. “I don’t have a quirk, I don’t have anything special, I’m just–I’m just me. I’m just this, this, this–stupid, useless Deku, and no matter how hard I try I’ll never be able to measure up to anyone else, just because I wasn’t born with a quirk. Aizawa’s training me, and that’s fine, that’s great, but becoming a hero all hinges on me passing an entrance exam that’s meant for people with powerful quirks, and even if by some miracle I do, do  you really think that the Hero Commission would let me become a hero without a quirk?” 

Inko is silent, and so, so still. He can’t bring himself to look at whatever expression is on her face. 

“This–I can save people like this. I am saving people like this,” he says insistently. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted. This way there’s no one trying to tell me that I’m not enough, that I won’t ever be enough, it’s just villains that I can fight and people that I can save, and none of them bother to ask what my quirk is because it doesn’t matter.” 

He pauses to take a breath, lungs aching. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says again, quietly. “It’s the only time I have where it doesn’t matter.” 

They sit in the silence for a while. The clock on the wall in the entryway is the only sound, loudly ticking away every passing second. 

“Izuku,” Inko finally says. She pulls his hands away from his face, her grip gentle but firm around his wrists as she pulls him to face her. “I don’t–I can’t pretend to know what it’s like for you, to be quirkless. And I won’t try to lie to you and say that it doesn’t terrify me, every day, because you already know that; you already know how much I worry about you, how much I worry that there will be a day where you won’t come home.”

He swallows thickly. The night of his diagnosis flashes in his mind, when she’d wrapped him in her arms and cried, and he’d seen the fear on her face. 

“I know how much you want to be a hero, and I’ve seen how happy it’s made you, to train with Shota, to have someone believe in you, but…you just keep throwing yourself into danger. You’re so careless with yourself, so reckless with your life, like you don’t care about it at all. Like you don’t care about what it would do to the people who care about you if we lost you. About what it would do to me.” 

That’s not fair, he wants to say, but she continues before he can even try to defend himself. 

“This isn’t healthy,” she says. “This obsession with becoming a hero, with saving people, even at the expense of yourself. You’re fourteen, Izuku. You haven’t even graduated middle school yet.”

She pulls away, letting go of his wrists and wiping the stray tears from her face. She shakes her head, turning so that she’s no longer facing him and hunching over her knees as she plays with her necklace. 

A gold locket, shaped like a heart. It’d been a present from his dad, before he’d left. Before he’d decided that he couldn’t bear to stick around and be a father to someone like Midoriya. 

“I can’t let you do this,” she says, in a voice like cracked glass. “I love you, Izuku, but–it’s like I don’t know you anymore.”

She turns back to him, reaching out and pressing the palm of her hand against his cheek. Her thumb strokes the soft skin just under his eye. 

“My Izuku,” she murmurs, and he can’t turn away to escape the pain in her eyes. “My sweet boy. Somewhere, in all of this–you’ve become someone that I don’t know. You’re not the son I thought you were.” 

Midoriya feels something die inside of him. The last faint flicker of hope, maybe, that she would understand. 

She pulls her hand away, and he feels cold rush over him from head to toe. 

“I love you,” she says again. “I think we both need to get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.” 

She heads for her bedroom, turning off the overhead lights on her way, leaving Midoriya in the dark except for the living room lamp next to the side table. 

Her bedroom door shuts quietly behind her. 

Midoriya buries his head in his knees and cries.

Chapter Text

Make your choice. 

Aizawa rubs at his prickling eyes as though that’ll make the graffitied words burned into his irises finally go away. 

“Shota?”

Hizashi. He’s in his pajamas still, scrubbing at his face, the bags under his eyes clear without the layers of concealer that he applies before heading outside into the world. 

Guilt swirls in Aizawa’s stomach. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, but Hizashi shakes his head and crosses the kitchen, wrapping his arms around Aizawa’s shoulders, letting him bury his face into his husband’s chest. 

“If you’re going to be awake, I don’t want to leave you alone with this,” he says, and he lets go to take a seat at the table on Aizawa’s left. He gestures to the box full of files that Tsukauchi has obligingly looked the other way to allow him to take from the precinct. “What are we working on?” 

“Going through Hijack’s old cases,” Aizawa grunts monosyllabically. “Trying to see if there’s any pattern to where he holds his kidnapping victims.” 

“How did you figure out it was Hijack, again?” Hizashi asks absently, grabbing the topmost file and flipping it open. “Wasn’t he one of your first official cases as a pro hero? Not that you don’t have excellent memory, Shota, but it was a while ago.” 

“He left a message.” 

“Oh? You didn’t tell me about that.” 

Aizawa rubs at his face again. 

“What do you know about Hijack?” he asks. 

Mic sits back, looking over at him, his expression gone serious through the exhaustion. 

“It was when you and I were–avoiding each other,” he says, haltingly. “So whatever was released in the press, probably.”

“Not a lot, then,” Aizawa finishes, lips twisting into a bitter frown. “Hijack made a name for himself by kidnapping people important to his targets and leveraging their lives against whatever it was that he wanted. Money, usually. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he’d kill the person that he kidnapped, and leave their body where his target would find it to send a message. He’d record some of his stunts, both to provoke the police and provide proof of life. His whole gimmick was often summarized with his favorite phrase–‘Make your choice, or I’ll make it for you.’”

Hizashi’s nose wrinkles. He glances back down at the file in front of him with distaste.

“The kidnapping victim in this case was seven,” he says. “This guy killed children?” 

“When his targets didn’t do what he wanted? Yes.”

Hizashi’s hads flutter over the pages that he’d been halfheartedly reading during Aizawa’s explanation. He fidgets with one of his hearing aids, a show that he’s trying with all his might to keep his emotions and opinions to himself to save Aizawa’s own feelings.

“Hizashi,” he says, deadpan. “If you have something to say, come out with it.” 

Hizashi cringes. He sucks in his bottom lip, biting down on it. 

“Hijack left you that message,” he says, hesitantly. “And he sent that video to the police station–if you know for sure that he’s not the type of guy to bluff, why didn’t you respond to his message calling you out?” 

Aizawa leans back and closes his eyes. 

“I couldn’t,” he grinds out. He opens his eyes, staring at the tabletop where the wood grain spirals into a pattern reminiscent of a watchful eye. “The Commission heard that I was being blackmailed, and apparently I know too much sensitive information for comfort. They took me off the case.” 

Hizashi inhales sharply. 

“You’re off the case?” he repeats. “But don’t they realize that that’s nearly as good as handing Midoriya a death sentence?” 

Aizawa’s exhale is shaky. 

“They do,” he says. “They don’t care. Tsukauchi is still trying to keep me in the loop, as best as he can, but…this came from over his head. The best that he can do is let me have these files to conduct my own investigation, but I can’t respond openly to Hijack’s messages or show myself working the case publicly, or the Commission will do their best to make the whole thing disappear. Including Midoriya.” 

The absolute silence that settles over them makes Aizawa want to punch something. He looks instead at the digital display on the microwave, revealing the time to be just after four in the morning. 

Hizashi’s hand creeps across the tabletop until he folds his fingers around Aizawa’s. 

“We’ll find him,” he says. “I’ll help you go through all this, and we’ll find something that Tsukauchi can use, and we’ll get the little listener back to his mother safe and sound.” 

Aizawa squeezes Hizashi’s hand, and they both go back to flipping through the case files open in front of them. 

But, privately, there’s a countdown in the back of Aizawa’s head. 

He knows that Hijack isn’t known for his patience. 

Hang in there, kid, he begs. Stay alive–whatever it takes. 

…………..

Bakugo is playing the drums. 

It was something that he’d started to learn ages ago, when his quirk therapist suggested to his parents that they provide some useful outlets for the anger that was causing incidents of accidental quirk usage. 

The skill isn’t something that he usually advertises, but he’d burned a hole straight through his pillow when he’d punched it, infuriated to the breaking point that he couldn’t do anything to help the investigation into the villain that’d taken Deku. 

And it had been a villain. The Commission and the reporters were scrambling to reassure the public that this was an isolated incident; that their children weren’t in danger of being kidnapped or otherwise harmed, but Bakugo had seen that stupid pro hero’s face when he’d read the message painted in the alley. 

Martial arts mentor, his ass. He’d recognized Eraserhead as soon as he’d gotten within five feet of him. As if Midoriya hadn’t sung his praises about the underground hero to whoever would listen for longer than ten seconds when he’d first discovered him. 

MAKE YOUR CHOICE. 

Bakugo isn’t stupid. He knows that Eraserhead is being blackmailed, and Deku is the leverage. The choice is Deku’s life, or–

Or something. 

The drumstick in his right hand snaps in two, one half going flying across the room, and he stops playing with a growl and throws the remains of it onto the ground by his feet. 

Before he can start in on destroying his drumset and the room it’s in, like the boiling inadequacy under his skin has him desperately wanting to do, there’s a knock on the door.

“Katsuki?” 

His mom enters. She leans against the doorframe with her arms crossed and surveys the room, including the singed stain on the wall and the pieces of broken drumsticks littered across the carpeted floor. 

“What have you been doing in here, brat?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “The neighbors came over to complain. Apparently your playing is scaring their little purse dog.”

Bakugo sneers, but the reply on his tongue dies out before he can say it, and he pops his knuckles to avoid punching something.

Mitsuki regards him.

“They’ll find him,” she says. 

Bakugo grits his teeth so hard that his jaw pops. 

“You can’t know that,” he says. 

She shrugs. “They will. Or they won’t, and Inko will. You think a little thing like the law is about to stop her from saving her son? If they start to look like they’re giving this case anything but 110%, she’ll take it into her own hands, and I sincerely hope that the Hero Commission has a good team of lawyers on call, because she will destroy them otherwise.” 

Bakugo clenches his fists. It hurts, his fingers aching, but he can’t help it. 

Izuku is gone. And it’s his fault. 

“If I’d just walked him to his door–” 

“Don’t you dare, Katsuki,” Mitsuki interrupts, warningly. “The villain who took Izuku is the only one at fault. You’re just a kid, same as him. Do you blame him for getting himself kidnapped?”

If she’d asked even a few weeks ago, the answer probably would have been yes. 

“No,” he grits out instead. 

“Then you can’t blame yourself, either,” she says, with a finite tone, like there’s no possible argument that he could wield against her. “You had no way of knowing that he was being targeted, and you had no way of knowing that they would target him in his own neighborhood, either. Don’t use this as another excuse to push yourself away from him.” 

Bakugo opens his mouth–and then shuts it. 

He didn’t think that his parents had bothered to notice how his relationship with Izuku had changed. And then changed again. 

He didn’t think that they really bothered to know anything about his life at all. 

“Tell me if Auntie calls you,” he blurts out. “And if she tells you anything that she didn’t tell me.” 

Mitsuki smiles at him. It’s terse and definitely not the same mirthful grin that he’s usually faced with, from her, but it’s genuine all the same. 

“I will,” she says. “Could you give the drums a break, then? I’d say to hell with the neighbors, but they threatened to file a noise complaint, and I’d hate for the police to have to split their time any more than they already are.” 

Bakugo nods, and stands. When he passes through the doorway, Mitsuku reaches out to fondly ruffle his spiked hair, and he lets it happen instead of ducking away from her, like he usually does. 

Maybe he can’t do what the adults can, but he refuses to be useless. If nothing else, he’ll scan every inch of their neighborhood for clues, trying to figure out how to point the cops in the right direction. 

He won’t let them give up on Midoriya. 

Izuku hasn’t given up on him, no matter how many times he should have. 

Now it’s time to return the favor. 

……………

Inko clutches the mug in her hand so hard that the curve of the handle leaves purple marks on the back of her hand.

“Moving on from the weather, we are once again asking that anyone with information about the whereabouts of the villain Hijack, or his presumed victim, 14-year old Midoriya Izuku, to come forward. The number at the bottom of your screen is entirely anonymous, or you can call your local non-emergency line. Please help the police return Midoriya Izuku safely home to his mother.” 

She lowers her tea to her lap and exhales slowly. 

The news station goes on a commercial break.

Detective Tsukauchi had kept in contact, letting her know each development in the case, including that they’d figured out when, exactly, Hijack had escaped from prison, and that he’d likely paired up with at least two other villains in order to secure his freedom and make it possible for him to kidnap Izuku as leverage. 

Discovering that Izuku was a weak spot for Aizawa, their true target, took surveillance. And taking him, as smart as he is, and with as many precautions as they’d been taking–that was more than a one man job. 

But it’s been a week. And for the most part, all that she’s heard is that Aizawa has been taken off the case by the Hero Commission for ‘conflict of interest’, and while they know how Hijack escaped prison, they have no idea where he went afterwards. 

They have no idea where he’s keeping her son. 

Inko’s tea is cold, but she takes a sip of it anyways. 

The wall clock ticks away the seconds and minutes above the mantel. 

She stares at the framed picture on display in the middle of the coffee table. It’s of her and Izuku, on his 14th birthday, holding ice cream and grinning so wide that their eyes are barely visible. 

“The world has tried to destroy you over and over,” she murmurs to the picture. “You’ve never let it, before now.”

She stares at her son, in the picture, smiling so sunnily, as though nothing in the world is wrong, even though she knows that even on his birthday, he’d been battling problems that she didn’t know anything about. 

“Come home to me,” she whispers. “Please, Izuku, don’t make me say goodbye to you.” 

The picture doesn’t answer, of course. 

But she takes her cup of cold tea to the sink, and rinses out her mug, and goes to her room, where she changes into her pajamas and lays down in bed. 

Then, after a while, she gets back up and walks slowly down the hall to Izuku’s bedroom.

She pushes the door open slowly, like she might find him there, sitting at his desk working on homework or hero analysis, like he always is. 

The room is empty. It hurts, even though she knew that it would be. 

She curls up with her knees to her chest on her son’s bed, burying her face in his pillow and staring at the poster of All Might on the wall, where he proclaimed that ‘Everything will be okay!’ with a grin. 

It hurts more than it should. 

Ever since the fateful day that the doctor had given Izuku his quirkless diagnosis, she’s done her best to protect him. 

But the more that time has gone on, the more that Izuku has tried to protect her, the more damage that she’s done. 

And the more hurt that he’s gotten. 

She’d thought that she was doing the right thing, letting him train with Aizawa to pass the UA hero entrance exam, but he’d been distant even before getting kidnapped, and now–

Now she might not ever see her son alive again. 

She curls into herself and sobs into her hands. 

“I’m so sorry,” she cries, wrapping her arms around herself. “Please, please, come home to me, Izuku. I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you.” 

There is no answer. 

But she doesn’t leave his bed, and she doesn’t stop softly pleading–to anyone who will listen, deity or otherwise–that she’ll get the chance to protect her son properly, again. 

…………..

Aizawa is sitting in Tsukauchi’s office. 

Hizashi is next to him, reaching across the space between them to rest a reassuring hand on his arm. 

“We still don’t have any concrete ideas about where Hijack might be holding Midoriya,” Tsukauchi says, apologetically. “But we’ve started narrowing it down. You’re here–unofficially, of course–because I thought that you might provide some invaluable insight into what kind of villain we’re dealing with, here.” 

“You caught him before, didn’t you, Shota?” Hizashi says, softly, trying for an encouraging smile. “It should be even easier to catch him a second time.” 

“When I caught Hijack,” Aizawa begins, chest tight, trying to trap the words before they can be spoken, “it was because his wife came forward. She revealed his identity and his crimes to us, and begged for clemency in return for the information. She said that he had been increasingly violent towards her and their daughter, and she couldn’t keep his secrets anymore if it meant that her daughter would suffer. I got the two of them into witness protection, and with the information that she gave us, I caught Hijack in the midst of an attempted kidnapping, and with all the evidence against him, he was sentenced to life in prison.” 

Tsukauchi nods. Of course, he knows all of this, after spending days dedicating himself to reading every little piece of information on Hijack that he could get his hands on. 

“When I caught him,” Aizawa continues, hesitating, closing his eyes bracingly, “I told him that he’d made his own choice–money over family. Villainy over love. He’s trying to force me to make the same choice–Midoriya’s life, or the location of his wife and daughter.” 

“If they’re in witness protection, though, even you can’t know where they are,” Tsukauchi points out. 

“He doesn’t care,” Aizawa says flatly. “I don’t know where they are, you’re right, but he sees me as the reason that he lost his family and his business, all in one stroke. He isn’t going to take, ‘I don’t know,’ as an answer.” 

Tsukauchi scratches the edge of his jaw. 

“Where did you catch him, before?” he asks, trying to keep his tone of professionalism. “The files aren’t very clear.” 

“An abandoned factory,” Aizawa answers promptly. “But those weren’t the only kinds of places that he used, and there are hundreds of abandoned buildings in twenty square miles around where he was taken alone.” 

Tsukuachi nods, his mouth set in a grim line. 

“I know,” he says. “But we’ll start narrowing it down, one place as a time, until we find him.” 

He looks up, meeting first Hizashi’s, and then Aizawa’s, eyes. 

“I’m not going to give up on this case,” he says. “I don’t care what the Hero Commission says–this is a child’s life we’re talking about. If he’s anywhere in this country, I’ll find him.” 

“Thank you,” Hizashi says, for the both of them. 

Aizawa is too busy thinking about how, even if he is still somewhere in the country, he might not be alive to be rescued.

He remembers Hijack’s work. And he remembers hearing about the work of Styx and Blitz, the two villains that he was suspected to be allied with.

Midoriya is a strong kid. But he’s had to be too strong, so many times already. 

Aizawa squeezes Hizashi’s hand as they leave, and his husband, ever so gracious and forgiving, doesn’t ask about it. 

But he thinks about Midoriya, fourteen years old and so much more jaded than he should be, and he thinks about how, even if he makes it out of this alive, he might never be the same again. 

When he met MIdoriya, all he wanted to do was save him. 

The time that they’ve spent together since…well, it seems to prove that all he can do is put Izuku in even more danger than he’s already in.

Maybe he’s better off without him. 

…………….

Bakugo is staring at his phone again. 

Recently, he hasn’t been able to go a single day without a text from either Inko or Izuku, asking how he is or commenting something mundane about the weather or the week’s homework. 

But now, he has nothing. 

Except for a message from Spider Fingers asking if he wants to meet at the park.

He doesn’t bother to respond.

With his chats open, it’s harder to resist sending a message to Inko, asking whether there’s been any progress on Izuku’s case. 

I’m sorry, Katsuki, but the police still don’t have any solid leads.

He hasn’t been sleeping much, lately. 

Instead he spends most nights on the carpeted floor of his bedroom, trying to discover why the police are so insistent about keeping the details of the case from him, even though it’s his best friend that they’re trying to find.  

His best friend. 

Since when has Izuku been his best friend?

He squeezes his eyes shut. 

Since forever, maybe. 

He’s the one who hasn’t been a good friend. But Izuku has always been his friend, no matter how little he’s deserved it. 

Somehow–in all this time with all their teachers and every adult telling Bakugo that he’s going to be the best hero, ever–Izuku has become more of a hero than he’ll ever be. 

Bakugo sits on his floor and scrubs his hands over his hair. 

If the most that he ever does is believe that Deku will survive no matter how much the odds are stacked against him–maybe it’ll be enough to make up for the mistakes that he’s made in the past. 

He looks at the stars through his bedroom window. They’re faint, but most of them are still visible enough that he can draw the constellations with his eyes. 

The world might be against Midoriya’s survival. But that’s never stopped him before. 

Please don’t give up. Not yet. I still have to prove that I can be the hero you’ve seen in me, after all this time.

The sky remains silent. But Bakugo closes his eyes in the dark and wraps his arms around himself where he’s sitting on the floor, waiting–hoping–for an answer. 

………..

Aizawa is in bed when his phone vibrates with an incoming call, waking him from the drowsing state that has been the closest to sleep he’s been able to manage.

“What?” he asks, voice rough and cracked from exhaustion. 

“We got a call,” Tsukauchi says, oddly hesitant. “They gave us an address; supposedly the location of Hijack and the villains that we’ve believed him to be in contact with, Blitz and Styx.” 

Aizawa is awake immediately, out of bed and already pulling on pants that may or may not actually belong to him. 

“If it’s Hijack–”

“The whole place is up in flames,” Tsukauchi interrupts, voice quiet. “A unit was sent as soon as the call was placed, but the address–an abandoned steel factory–is completely engulfed.”

Aizawa’s stomach twists. He sits down, hard, on the edge of the bed, and Hizashi stirs. 

“He can’t be dead,” he says. 

“Aizawa,” Tsukauchi tries. 

“If he’s dead, Tsukauchi, it’s my fault.” 

Hizashi sits up behind him, pressing a hand against his back. 

“Don’t,” he mumbles, still half asleep. “Midoriya would never blame you.” 

Aizawa squeezes his eyes shut, then reopens them. 

“How soon will we know for sure?” he asks. 

“We have rescue heroes on scene,” Tsukauchi says. “If there’s anyone to save, we’ll save them. I promise.” 

Aizawa nods. 

“Thank you,” he says, trying for the professional tone that he usually uses when talking to Tsukauchi, or any police detectives, for that matter. 

“You don’t have to thank me,” Tsukauchi says. “I want to find him alive as much as you do.” 

The call ends. Aizawa listens to the dial tone for several seconds before finally lowering his phone from his ear. 

“They think they found Hijack’s headquarters,” he says, listlessly. 

“That’s good, then, isn’t it?” Hizashi says, trying for an optimistic tone.

“They found it because the whole place went up in flames,” Aizawa says. “They don’t know if anyone survived.” 

Hizashi sits up a bit more, eyes wide as he wakes up more fully. 

“Oh, Shota,” he breathes. “Come here.” 

It takes more than it should–but Aizawa lets himself be held by his husband. 

“If I’d never started teaching him–”

“If you hadn’t saved him when you did, then he’d be dead,” Hizashi interrupts, matter-of-factly. “I love the little listener as much as you do, but his self preservation skills aren’t the strongest. You gave him a reason to keep going.” 

Aizawa shakes his head. 

“What if I just made it worse?” he whispers. “I know Hijack–if he makes it out of this alive, Hizashi, he’ll never be the same again.” 

Hizashi shrugs. 

“But you’ll be there for him regardless, won’t you? I know you, Shota. You love him. You aren’t going to give up on him anytime soon.” 

Aizawa buries his face against his husband’s neck. 

“He doesn’t deserve this,” he whispers.

“No,” Hizashi agrees. “But you don’t deserve this, either.” 

Aizawa squeezes his eyes shut. He can only imagine what sort of pain Midoriya is being put through. But–if he survives it, if he comes out the other side still wanting to be a hero…then Aizawa will be there, ready to help him put himself back together.

Chapter Text

Bakugo’s therapist likes to tell him that he has a habit of burying his emotions under anger. 

She goes on, often, about how it stems from his fear of being perceived as vulnerable, or, fucking forbid, weak. 

He’s not about to tell her that she might be onto something, and he’s also not about to tell her that he buries everything under anger because the anger is easy. 

It’s everything else that feels impossible. 

“Katsuki,” Mitsuki had said, earlier, when he’d gone into the kitchen for a snack before going to bed and instead found his parents pale and drawn and holding the phone in the air between them. 

It was just his name. 

But Bakugo has never been stupid, and his brain took all the little fucking pieces–the phone, their expressions, his mom’s guarded, soft, scared tone–and put them together. 

He felt it before he thought it with any coherency. 

“No,” he said. He didn’t say it with the teary-eyed denial that they always show in the movies, or in a soft, horrified whisper. 

He said it angry. 

His parents exchanged a look. 

“The police called Inko,” Mitsuki said, slowly. “Someone told them where the villains were.” 

“Were,” he repeated. 

She grimaced. 

“By the time they arrived on scene, the building was up in flames.”

He could see it, in her face. She was trying to figure out how to say it, and he already knew what she was trying to say, and she knew that he knew, but neither of them could get any further than that. 

“They haven’t finished searching yet,” she said. “The fire isn’t even entirely out; apparently it was an old steel plant with a bunch of flammable chemicals. But–Katsuki…they don’t think that anyone made it out alive.”

“No,” he said again. 

“This is hard for all of us, Katsuki–”

“No,” he said. “ No. De– Izuku –isn’t dead. He isn’t dead.”

The pity on his mom’s face had made him want to punch her. 

Instead he’d spun on his heel and stormed back to his bedroom, ignoring her shouting after him and locking the door behind him. 

And now he’s–here. Staring up at his ceiling in the dark and wondering if grief is supposed to feel so much like rage. 

His dad had tried knocking on his door before his parents had both gone to bed, softly asking if he needed anything.

Normally–he might’ve let his dad in. Might have at least answered him. But they both think that Izuku is dead and he isn’t. 

He grinds his teeth and then immediately winces at the pain that goes lancing through his jaw. 

“Fuck,” he mutters hoarsely, raising his hands and pressing them against his face. 

He’s not fucking dead. 

He’s not fucking dead.