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Izuku Midoriya was a failure. Not just for the simple fact that he was quirkless, powerless in an otherwise powerful world. It was also because no matter how hard he tried, how much his body burned and his mind ached, he never succeeded. Not in improving his chances of becoming a hero. Not in ensuring his mother would stop looking at him the way she did. And certainly not in convincing other people he’d ever amount to anything.

That’s all he could think now- that he was a failure. As he clawed at seemingly nothing and prayed everything would be over soon. He wouldn’t be able to escape the clutches of what was killing him just like he could never escape what he was. He’d just be the failure that managed to get killed by a passing villain that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. He’d remain a failure even in death.

Everyone else always made it abundantly clear that he was going to die a failure. It perfectly aligned with the dark, humorless thoughts he was thinking now. He just never thought that it’d be so soon. So painful. So inescapable and cold. And he never thought he would die in some back alley, trying to avoid other people, completely alone. No hero to come save him. Nothing he could do to survive. Truly the worst kind of death he could possibly imagine for himself.

His vision was going dark, black creeping over the edges of his eyes. This was where he’d die. Despite his efforts, despite his primal fear to keep fighting, he’d die here. He’d die a failure. And he hadn’t even managed to do any sort of damage to the thing holding his body hostage.

Distantly, he wondered who might care that he was gone, who would notice. His mother would. But his mother always treated him like a piece of glass that was moments away from shattering. Like if she breathed too harshly in his direction he would blow away. As if Izuku was something that needed to be coddled under layers and layers of protection. In some ways, her actions made him feel worse than most of the things his classmates managed to conjure up.
Kac- Bakugo- and that’s who he was, even if Izuku constantly deluded himself- would notice. But he wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care if green eyes shut and never opened again. He wouldn’t care if Izuku disappeared off the face of the planet. He wouldn’t care because he never had. He’d been at the forefront of everything, the ringleader of the cycle of abuse. He hit Izuku before anyone else ever did. He drove home the importance of how useless quirkless people are. He was the one who told Izuku to throw himself off a building. He did that, before anyone else has the mind to.
He. He. He. Him

He’s all Izuku can ever think about when he closes his eyes. He misses what once was, mourns what his younger self lost. Bakugo would never be his friend again. He’d hate him like everyone else until he had no memory at all.

Izuku’s throat burned and he dully noted that he was still alive, still breathing, albeit haggardly. It was a wet sounding thing, as if he was holding water in the back of his throat. And it felt like acid was crawling down and straight into the pores of his lungs. But he was alive. And that should’ve been all that mattered. He’s just not sure how it happened, how he was in the air one moment and laying on the ground the next.

He pried his burning eyes open, blinking away the excess tears. Someone was speaking quietly to themselves. A faint shoveling sound- or maybe scraping?- could be heard over his ringing ears. His body was shaking something fierce as he forced himself to sit upright.

(In another timeline, another quiet possibility, Izuku had been ecstatic as he opened his eyes. He had seen the number one hero and nearly died again on the spot.

In another moment, Izuku Midoriya had grabbed onto the legs of that hero with numb fingers. Had held on for dear life and begged All Might to hear his pleas. And then the world had changed in a flurry, being tilted on its axis and altering the future. But this wasn’t that timeline, that moment, that possibility. Those things were far from here. They would never happen.

They were neither here nor there.)
All Might shoved a plastic bottle in his pant pocket- poorly secured, but Izuku couldn’t judge. He gave a once over of the area before finally realizing the civilian he’d saved was staring quietly at him. The two of them looked at each other in silence, deciding what exactly should be said. The number one hero seemingly came to the conclusion that he should make sure a middle schooler wasn’t completely dead. Smart. How quick witted of him. He exchanged a few pointed questions on Izuku’s well being, ones met with lackluster responses. But Izuku was fine. Mostly. The questions felt muted in his ears, far from him.
“Are you alright, young man?” The hero asked with a frighteningly unwavering smile.

“I suppose I am now,” he glanced lazily around.

All Might was already letting his mind wander, unconcerned now that the villain was gone, “Were you hurt?”

Izuku glanced down at himself, amazed at the hero’s lack of common sense. But he did look fine on the outside, in All Might’s defense. Save for a few wrinkles in his uniform, he looked untouched by injury. But still, that wasn’t shocking, considering the type of quirk the villain had. But he digresses. Perhaps there are some things he’ll never be able to understand as a quirkless person. Such as the intricacies of an injury after being suffocated by slime.

Izuku frowned slightly, barely noticeable in the darkness of the underpass, “Not enough for it to matter.”
The hero didn’t even register the meaning behind the words, just that Izuku had uttered them. He was fine. Izuku was uninjured and there was nothing more All Might thought he needed to do. To be honest, All Might wasn’t as good at this as he ought to be. As the number one hero he should be setting a better example. But then again, there weren’t any cameras around here. He didn’t have to perform and make himself out to be some sort of god.
Izuku mused that there should be more of a protocol to this kind of thing. Heroes should at least make sure that the people they save receive medical treatment. Especially so in this case, where slime had crawled down a persons throat and probably made its way into important organs. Such as the lungs. He could still feel some of the residue burrowing into the tissue there. But it hardly mattered. It didn’t hurt enough to warrant an expensive trip to the hospital. 
Maybe being a hero wasn’t as glamorous as he once believed. There was that saying, ‘never meet your hero,’ he supposed it made more sense than ever right about now. Maybe Izuku would’ve been- could’ve been- delusional and unapologetically heroic if he’d never met All Might. But it was a fleeting thought that he didn’t care to think about for very long. 
(Maybe he could’ve stayed a train chugging along the tracks, unaware of the impending impact with a wall.
If the decisions made that day were perhaps even slightly different, Izuku would’ve seen the wall give way and the tracks swerve sharply to the right. One moment- one single moment- could change the trajectory of everything. All he had to do was reach his fingers out and grasp . But that didn’t happen. Izuku never saw those tracks, never saw that wall. He just made the train reverse and take another route. The route he was on before would become dilapidated and unkept, forgotten.
But that was neither here nor there.)

His lips pressed into a thin line as All Might gave him one of those signature smiles and disappeared above the cloud line. Gone. As if nothing had ever happened in the first place. As if it were a normal day, an average occurrence for a middle schooler to choke out and lose consciousness. As if Izuku hadn’t just almost died. As if anything that happened wasn't one long, terrible nightmare.

In the mind of All might, maybe it was just a fleeting moment. A happenstance that he couldn’t quite recall ever again. He’d remember someone was there when he took down the slimy villain- if he remembered the villain at all. And he’d remember someone else happened to be there when he arrived to take him down. He just won’t remember who it was exactly, which sad face stared at him from the ground. Izuku would just be a single person in a line of the hundreds of people the hero had saved. A single person that almost amounted to nothing. A waste of thinking about for the lack of effort it took to save him.

Izuku was quite the bland looking person anyway. If he stood in a line next to everyone else in the world, your eyes would pass right over him. He doesn’t stick out in the way that Bakugo does, the way that some of the kids in his class do. He’s just a normal kid with normal features. Boring to look at from the tips of his dull green hair to this soles of his ugly red shoes. He’s simply a background character, someone you miss while watching a movie or tv show. And he’s resigned to that fate.
But Izuku can’t help but think that the universe was unkind to him. It could’ve given him something at least, anything to make him not so much of a loser. Some of the kids in his class have quirks so useless they’re basically quirkless. They can change the color of their eyes, shift the length of their hair, see better then the average person. But they look like Izuku does and they’re not particularly strong. But at least they have a quirk, they have something . Izuku was stuck with nothing despite his similarities to the useless.
Maybe that’s mean, to call other people useless. But that’s what other people always called him. So why was it bad to say the same thing back?

Words always seemed to mean less when it was him saying them. He would say something and people would laugh and ridicule, Bakugo would say the same thing and people would worship him. His teachers liked to call on him to point and laugh. His peers liked to make him feel utterly stupid. And whenever he plucked up the courage to speak up, he was swatted down with rage. Words were only heard when Izuku said them, even when someone said something much worse only a moment before him.

He pushed himself off the ground with a grunt, decidedly trying to abandon that line of thought. All it’ll do is make him tired and angry. And then his mom would notice and then he’d have to explain the burn on his shoulder and the incessant bullying. Which he’s rather not do. Especially not considering the kind of uncaring face his mother would make, nose scrunched in quiet disbelief.

She didn’t hate her son, but it was something remarkably close. That had been apparent to Izuku from the moment he’d been declared quirkless. His mother was even more distraught about it than he was. And then there was the coddling. The disgusting, annoying, condescending coddling.

(In another universe, another moment, Inko Midoriya was a good mother. A mother who didn’t quite know what to say at times- but a good mother beyond a doubt. No coddling or protection beyond the normal motherly amounts. Just a mother who loves her son more than anything, willing to stand by so he can follow his dreams. That Inko Midoriya didn’t hate that Izuku was quirkless. She just hated that he hated it. But that’s neither here nor there.)

His fingers grasped a notebook he can’t remember picking up. He stares down at it for a moment, its charred but soaking remains in his hands. It’s as sad looking as it was when Bakugo chucked it out the window. As ugly as it was when he gingerly plucked it from the koi pond. Somehow that moment feels like an eternity ago. Like it didn’t happen earlier today but years prior, when Izuku really liked heroes. He doesn’t think he does anymore. It’s like that villain stripped it all away as he pulled out of Izuku’s lungs. The slime clutched at his heart and took hold of some of the things he thought were important. He took all Izuku's dreams as he went, dragged out by All Might.

He flips the pages open as carefully as he can manage. But paper still rips, tearing apart and slopping onto the ground. Unsalvageable letters span pages so glued together it’s more of a wet brick than a book. But it had once held his dreams, however short lived and far fetched they were. So he closes the book with a sigh and shoulders his back, careful to avoid his recently acquired injury. He has Bakugo to thank for that.

The rest of the walk home is oppressively quiet. It feels like something is about to happen, or perhaps it should have. A weight settles on his shoulders and reminds him to be vigilant. That something bad always goes wrong and today will be no exception.
(The world is waiting with bated breath to turn a page. The scene is dramatic and frightening, the next page surely containing some unpleasant plot twist. For the tide to change the direction of the story, to pivot like the train tracks Izuku is supposed to be on. The page turns- a gasp, a move to try to close their eyes, only to be wrenched open- and it’s nothing. It’s boring. No plot twist, no change. Just a tense moment to one of careful leisure. Like a ball rolling and coming to a stop without any fanfare. Just a normal ball on a normal path obeying the laws of physics.)
Izuku makes it back to the more populated part of town without so much as a word from passerby. Which is strange, people always say something. He’s effectively as invisible as he proclaimed to be earlier, a small sort of victory.

The day is peaceful and beautiful. It’s getting later in the day, but the sun is still peeking over the horizon line. A soft orange is beginning to creep up the sky like a watercolor painting. Students are still hanging around various places, chatting happily with friends. There’s a cool breeze in the air and a pleasant smell wafting through Izuku’s nose. If he breathes slowly enough, it’s almost like there’s no pain in his lungs at all.

He finds the smile that inched onto his face disappearing just as quickly, a loud sound coming from the alley he’s slowly meandering by. That bad feeling he has springs back into his body like a case of a recurring illness. His brain reminds him that something bad always happens. Izuku has the worst luck on the face of the planet, and something always happens. Even when he’s let his guard down.
Green eyes peer into the darkness of the space, trying to weigh out if it’s worth it to go look. But his feet stay rooted to the concrete. Because why the hell would he walk down an alley toward a sound he heard from the dark? What is he, a white person in a horror movie? He’s not an idiot. He won’t go meddling into things he probably has no business knowing about. But the strange sound was suspiciously similar to that of a fist hitting a face. He could be wrong. He could be so so wrong.
But he could be very right.

His foot taps quietly on the hard floor as he bites his lip. To stay or to go, that is the question.

He’s so tired right now. He could- should, more like- walk right by the alley and forget he ever heard a thing. Then he could go home and sleep away the bone tiredness in him. Perhaps feel rejuvenated enough to ask his teacher to change his high school application. And then he’d move on with his life and be a boring, failure of a person. Very fitting for him. That could all happen, provided he does what he wants to and just walk away.
He’s not a hero. Even if he walked down that alley and someone was being sucker punched, it’s not like he’d be able to do anything. Aside from taking the hits himself he’d be useless. A mere ant in the face of someone with an undoubtedly strong quirk, considering their boldness. It’s not every day someone is brave enough to beat someone in broad daylight. Granted, it is in an alley, but it’s still day. Heroes could be around. It’s a bit of a risk choosing to hurt someone knowing that. And everyone knows that heroes are around.
All Might is probably still lingering. But he assumes random people wouldn’t know about that. Izuku was attacked by a villain and subsequently saved with absolutely no fanfare. He wouldn’t even make it onto the news. A blessing of course, lest his mother see and throw a fit.

If he walks down that alley now- he won’t, he keeps telling himself- what could he do to de-escalate what was happening? If it were adults they’d curse him for butting into adult business. If it were other students they’d turn on him instead. And Izuku wasn’t sure it was worth taking a hit for someone he didn’t know. He had taken enough hits today, physically and emotionally. One more hit might just knock him stone cold and into his grave.
Of course it’s not horrible to step in. He’s taken hits for people before. Izuku just isn’t sure he can take a hit for someone else today. He’s already kind of limping and broken as it is. Maybe the hitter(s?) will take pity on him if he walks up as he is. All Might hadn’t noticed, but Izuku really does look horrible. His eyes are red, much like his bruised neck. The uniform hanging limply off him is burnt, like he caught on fire. And there’s the added bonus of being smacked in the thigh with a broomstick earlier. Which always feels incredibly nice and refreshing.
Maybe the sight of a haggard teen limping down an alley will scare everyone off. Then he can go back to being a failure as he sleeps away the ache from his throat. But that’s only if he decides to journey into the darkness of the alley to see if someone’s being hurt. Thats only if he decides that it’s worth walking down there to see if he can help. Which he’s absolutely, resolutely, never going to walk there. He won’t.
He absolutely won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He…For fucks sake. Why must he do this to himself?
His legs are walking before he even registers the quiet click of his shoes on the concrete. Despite his best efforts, Izuku Midoriya can never manage to mind his own business. Even though he so desperately should get into the habit of doing so. It would certainly save him a lot of the pain he’s been through. Is going through. It’s not like anyone ever does the same for him, extends the same courtesy. They just wipe off the grime and sock him in the jaw like he didn’t just take a punch for them.
He can hear quiet whimpering, overpowered by slightly louder jeering. Exactly what they’re saying is lost on him, even as he strains his ears. But he can tell it’s nothing nice. Well, the whimpering kind of gives that away, but he catches hints of words that are a little too unkind. They sound like rusty knives dipped in poison and rakes across skin. The intent is to hurt. To smack whoever they’re insulting down and laugh as they bleed. Izuku knows that feeling all too well, even if he wished he didn’t.
He can hear better now that he’s closer. It makes his blood run cold as he tiptoes around a spilled can of soda. He cranes his neck closer, hoping that what he hears isn’t real. But it’s a fleeting wish. A desire that will never be heard by any god or fixed by any man. It’ll hang in the air unsaid- hope is a frightening thing- until he can mange to wipe the cobwebs off of it.

The voices all seem to meld together in a sick chorus of laughter and hatred. It sounds rehearsed, like their pointed remarks were practiced beforehand. Like they planned to corner their victim after school in an alleyway to say all these things. It’s horrible, and it makes Izuku’s heart hurt, but it’s not surprising. It’s never surprising.

The words smack him across the jaw and sneer at his horror.

“…dirty villain.”

“That’s why…dirty!”

“Freak.”

“You’ll never be a hero.”

“…keep dreaming.”

“Villain boy.”

“…disgusting quirk.”

“Villain.”

Close enough to see them now, he knows for certain that they’re all his age. He knew they were students, adults didn’t act like this. Adults didn’t corner people in alleys and jeer. Horrible, disgusting insults always seemed to stem from children and not their parents. Adults were mean. Adults said some things and sometimes pushed him away roughly. But adults never cornered him like this kids in his school do. Adults don’t fire off their quirk on him like children do. Students are more evil than their parents.
They don’t seem to register the sound of his approach until he sidesteps trash and knocks into someone. The taunts stop and four pairs of eyes- and that’s including the victim- turn to him. The taller boy he knocked into him looks like he’s been infected with the plague. He frowns so deeply it’s almost funny, and he wipes his sleeve off like Izuku has some disease. But he doesn’t hit him. He doesn’t even say anything. Nobody does, not for a long, tense moment.
Shit. He’s so screwed. He should’ve just walked by and went to bed like he wanted to. But he didn’t, and now he’s stuck here. This is not what he signed up for. What he expected, yes, but not what he signed up for.  He’s too tired for this.

“What the fuck do you want, loser?” The apparent germaphobe crosses his arms angrily, “Can’t you see that we’re in the middle of something?”

He sighs, a drawn out thing, “I’m just trying to get home. Can you all hurry it up and get out of the way? You’re kind of standing in the middle of an essential pathway from one street to another,” he pauses, “That’s what alleys are generally for. Did you think I was coming to bother students from another school? Just because? Why would I care what you’re doing in an alley? I walk here all the time.”
He bites back the urge to add idiot to the end of the sentence, frowning as he cuts himself off. It’s best to say a lot to annoying them, but not so much so that they’re annoyed enough to punch him. Just enough to stop their behavior and walk out of the alley with glares pointed at his back.
He’s also a huge liar, because he hasn’t walked down this alley a single time his entire life. He’s never even seen this alley. He’s walked by it about a million times so far, but he’s never walked through in the fear something like this would happen. But it’d be kind of stupid to tell these kids that when they look a hairs breath away from choking him out. Which would not feel good against his previously choked out throat.

Tense silence, then a reluctant, “Whatever, loser. We get the idea. You’re going home and we’re blocking you. Well fuck off as long as you do,” he turns to the victim, “We’re finishing this later, you ugly villain freak.”

He must be afraid that Izuku’s going to report him to someone. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so easy to make them go away. If he tried this on people he knew, from his school, it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work and he’d be left a smear of green and red on the pavement. If they knew him they’d know nobody cares what happens to the quirkless kid, even if he did snitch. So it’s sort of lucky that they didn’t know him. Lucky for him at least, not the kid being hit. It’s never lucky to be punched anywhere.

Izuku watches with a carefully blank face as the three bullies back out of the alley with something of a snarl on their faces. The bullies kid shakes behind him, no doubt as frightened as he ought to be. He’s been there. He knows what it’s like to stare down someone as they insult your very being. And he knows more than anything that whoever this kid is, whatever his quirk might be, he doesn’t deserve to be treated like a villain.
Germaphobe does the cliche move where he points at his victim then brings the finger to his throat and slashes. The universal sign for you’re dead meat.
Did he make it worse rather than better? Maybe he should’ve have stepped in at all if this was going to be the reaction. Which makes him sound like a horrible person willing to let someone be bullied, but that’s not the idea. The bullies might come back angrier than before. Angrier, and more willing to hurt. So maybe he should’ve stayed quiet and gone home like he wanted to.

(In another lifetime Izuku jumped in and saved someone else from the clutches of a real villain. In another moment, a different possibility, the train started chugging on a different track. Izuku Midoriya was a hero. One favored by All Might and loved by the masses. The Izuku of the current moment would never see that villain again, and he wouldn’t see All Might in a long time. Almost enough time to forget the man even existed in the first place. But Izuku was already riding on a train going a different direction miles from where he should’ve been. Even in that lifetime he hadn’t gotten to go home and sleep. Some things remain resolute.

But that’s neither here nor there.)

He turned to the other boy, yawning, “Listen, I don’t know you or your quirk, but hear me out for a sec,” the bullied kid tensed, worried, “Quirks don’t define what kind of person you are. You can be a hero with something people fear, or you can be a villain. You choose who you want to be, not your quirk. A quirk is merely a tool someone can use to help them achieve what they want to. You’re not inherently evil for using the quirk you were born with. People don’t have any right to say that sort of shit to you. Not when they’re the ones acting like villains, hitting and cornering you in some dirty alley.”

The boy blinks at him owlishly, purple eyes large and shocked. Izuku is surprised his eyes aren’t that wide too.

He has no idea what he’s talking about right now. Sure, he absolutely agrees with every word he’s saying, but he’s never had the guts for this before. He usually keeps his viewpoints strictly to the confines of his mind and never brings them up.  It’s very unlike him to just blurt everything out like this. To a total stranger no less, but maybe that’s why he’s not afraid to.

This guy doesn’t know him like the kids at school do. He just knows that Izuku pops up in alleys and sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong. Izuku’s certain the other boy doesn’t even believe what he’s saying, and he wouldn’t either. It’d be strange for you to be told something your entire life and then one day, some random kid comes in and says the opposite. Thats like if someone came in and said he wasn’t a useless Deku all of a sudden. Which he wouldn’t believe, because the whole world is always screaming that he is.

Or maybe it’s just because the villain earlier made him not care as much. He’s tired and annoyed and his throat burns, and he doesn’t really care what other people think right now. If he’d come across the boy yesterday he wouldn’t have said anything at all. He would’ve tried to help, and then he would’ve freaked out and mumbled before promptly sprinting away. But that’s yesterday. And yesterday seems a million miles away.

“Anyway. Just don’t let other people put a damper on your dreams. If you want to be a hero. And if you want to be a villain, I suppose they gave you a reason to,” he shrugs, not caring to see what reaction that invokes.

Izuku turns on his heels, turning back the way he came, back towards the busy street and the peaceful sky. He kicks a bottle absently and it smacks easily off the wall and clatters somewhere behind him. He doesn’t want to spare a glance back. Heaven knows what kind of face he’ll see when he turns. Anger perhaps. Maybe annoyance, or even shock. All he knows is that he’s too tired to stick around and say any more.

The other boy never calls out. And Izuku never turns around.

(The train lazily rolls past another station and someone struggles to crawl on board. But the conductor doesn’t stop the train. He doesn’t check to see if anyone’s on it, not thinking anyone ever wanted to be. So he doesn’t notice as trembling hands heave their body into one of the back cars. And he doesn’t see the way those hands start crawling ever closer to the front of the train.
He doesn’t know the impact a simple gesture can have. Because that’s neither here nor there.)Anyone on the outside looking in could see that Izuku Midoriya was positively over heroes. Shocking, considering his wide eyed yearning only a few days ago, but an undeniable fact nonetheless. He was completely over heroes. All of them. Even All Might.He took UA off the list and replaced it with a sad, bleak ‘undetermined.’ He stopped muttering during class and he stopped carrying that godawful notebook everywhere. Izuku was never late to anything anymore, he didn’t try to seek out hero fights like he used to. And when asked about what he wanted to do with his life, he shrugged. For the first time in all his life, Izuku was unsure of his future. But that was alright with him. As long as he never became a hero he could avoid people. Bakugo was silent and calm for once in his entire life. Izuku didn’t care to notice this, even as school dwindled and high school was approaching. And after the villain attack and the hassle that was a result of being called out in front of the class, his mind was occupied. He didn’t think it was important to give a shit about the guy who told him to kill himself. He was too busy trying to focus on getting into a school that would actually accept him.
Because he was still useless, quirkless, Deku. And most schools didn’t take kindly to people without a quirk. Even ones that claimed they were discrimination free and would accept anyone. Regular schools were just as biased as hero ones. It was extremely annoying trying to convince principals and teachers to just give him a shot. Because he needed a high school diploma at least, college wasn’t happening.

Somewhere in the final weeks of school, he noticed that nobody was hurting him anymore. Like, at all. Not even the teachers had the heart to tease him anymore. Bakugo would glare whenever someone would so much as begin to raise their voice at him. Which was so strange a sight Izuku almost didn’t believe it actually happened.

Middle school was over before he really had time to figure it all out. But he was lucky enough to be offered a place in a school halfway across the city. One that was willing to ‘deal’ with his lack of quirk, whatever that meant. And rudeness aside, he jumped on the offer. He’d take anywhere in the world if it meant he could stay in school. He may have been a failure in every aspect, but he didn’t want to be an idiot too.

His mother didn’t really care where he went. She never asked. So when he moved out and all she could manage was a blink, Izuku didn’t find it strange. He didn’t find it strange when she stopped picking up his calls halfway through the year. She stopped texting to make sure he was alright and she stopped sending him money. But he wasn’t shocked at any of it. He had planned for her to react like that. He knew that if he left his mother would act like he never existed. Either as a way of showing him his weakness, or trying to guilt him to come back.

But Izuku didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to go to that dumb house or see that dumb school. He didn’t want to see his mother and he didn’t want to see Bakugo. Not until he could sort his thoughts and understand who he truly hated and who he couldn’t bear to hate.

(He knew the answer to that.

Izuku Midoriya knew he could never hate the boy who he’d grown up with. It tore at his heart, jabbed at his chest, but he knew he couldn’t avoid it.

He knew he was doomed when he found himself staring at the message about UA entrance exams. He hadn’t meant to open his contacts, he especially hadn’t meant to click on the top message. Izuku hated how elated he was at the news. How happy he was that Bakugo was going to be a hero.

In another life, another moment, Izuku would’ve been a hero too. And Bakugo’s train would’ve been ride beside his on the tracks. But that is neither here nor there.)

He got a job at a local grocery store and worked long, tedious hours. He didn’t have many coworkers and the pay wasn’t incredible, but he did what he could. It was a bad part town that few people ever frequented so he got the job pretty easily. So he couldn’t complain all that much. It wasn’t horrible. It was a job that paid the bills and kept him fed.
Nobody ever questioned about his quirk status either, or why he was so young. They just looked at him for a moment and paid what they owed. Few people ever spared him a glance longer than a second. Fewer people visited the store as regulars. People didn’t come unless they had to, when there was no other possible choice. Thats how insane the crime and infrastructure was there. The store was situated in quite possibly the worst place it could be. But Izuku hadn’t been unfortunate enough to get robbed. (Yet.)
(The train chugged onward. A passenger struggled to hold on in the back, but the conductor was picking up speed.)
He stared at the approaching customer over his computer, struggling to focus on his homework. It was easy enough, Izuku was just a natural born people watcher. It made sense, he had little else to do in this ugly town. It was so dreary he barely ever saw any kids out past six. And that is early when taking into account that he’s a high schooler in a bad part of town.
The kids in his class don’t give a fuck about anything. All they do during class is vape,  complain, and loudly recount what kind of alcohol they drank the night before. It’s not annoying, but it’s weird that the teachers don’t care either. They just frown and give up. On more than one occasion they’ve walked out of the classroom mid discussion with tears in their eyes.
All his classmates do is party. He isn’t sure why they go to school at all, when they do nothing, but he doesn’t particularly care. Izuku has good grades. And he’ll get to graduate. He can’t say the same thing for literally any other person in the entirety of town. Everyone is off , ever so slightly, in their own ways. Some people are plain stupid, and other people drank so much they can’t speak right anymore.
He slips away from his math problem as the customer reaches the front desk. He tries not to make eye contact- some of the patrons get weird about that. But he does know that it’s a girl with a too wide smile and piercing eyes. Though he could see her eyes from miles back. They were about the yellow color of a school bus and seemed to glow. He tried not to shiver under her gaze, because it felt like she was boring holes into his head.
She’s buying what pretty much every other person passing through here buys. Nothing strange about the assortment of cookies and candies and sweets that might make him fall over. He pointedly doesn’t comment on the fact she’s buying syringes and knives too. Because that’s normal . Completely normal. The syringes are a common sight anyway, what with the sheer amount of drugs around here. It’s not like he’s judging her purchases- it’s just odd to buy candy and syringes at the same time. They’re usually spaced out purchases.
A heavy silence hangs over the two of them before Izuku realizes that as an employee, he’s supposed to talk to the customers. Something about keeping them coming back. He wasn’t really paying attention when his boss was talking about it. And it’s not like just talking to the people will ever make them come back. Because it doesn’t. Nobody ever comes back unless they’re bleeding out. Which, strangely, has happened twice now.

He scans a box of chocolates and dares a glance up, “Are you injecting the sugar into your veins or something?”
Shit. No Izuku. Do not start conversations with customers like that. She’ll kill you where you stand.
“That’s a funny thing to say. The syringes aren’t for me,” she cheerily replies, leaning over the counter.

Maybe she won’t kill him then. That’s a relief.
He blinks, “That’s what they’re usually for,” he hums, scanning a large bag of something , “Usually people use them for drugs or food. Odd mix there, but who am I to judge?”
Her smile falters slightly, so slightly Izuku barely misses it. But it recovers so fast it’s almost like she was never shocked at all. She watches as he scans a syringe with a grimace, and her smile grows larger than the first time. She’s practically sitting on the counter by the time Izuku gets to bagging her items.
The owner once told him that he has a strange effect on people. That his lack of thinking about what he says makes people wildly confused. But it also makes them want to talk to him more, pick apart his brain and see why he thinks the way he does. Izuku thinks that its a strange thing for a boss to tell you, but also that it can’t possibly be the. He just says things as they are. He doesn’t have to think about what he says because he doesn’t question that what he’s saying is fact.
“They’re for food. My food,” she pokes at his hand.

He drops the last item in the bag carefully, “I assumed as much. You’re not exactly the community cook.”

“You’re cute,” she giggles, sliding money closer, “You’d look cuter if you were bleeding.”

He falters at that. His eyes raise ever so slightly higher, trying to decide if she’s strange or insane. Maybe both. Or neither. Maybe she’s a serial killer and he’s one of her many victims because he made a joke about candy being drugs. Kind of a petty reason to die, but people have probably died over way less.

He reaches for the money, grazing fingers with her and imagining what the hell she means. But he finds it easier to pretend some things aren’t as strange as they sound. It’s less weird to imagine that this chick is high off her rockers and not actively trying to kill him. Because then she’s just a cute little blonde girl and not an insane, syringe wielding murderer.

He leans over the counter too, ever closer to the threat of her, “I don’t really like bleeding everywhere. It’s a mess to clean up,” his lip quirks, “Do you look pretty when you’re bleeding?”
Her eyes blow open, and he laughs, swiping the money up and shoving her receipt in her nearly overflowing bag. She didn’t make any more comments as she shuffled out of the store and out of sight. When she was out of view, Izuku breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t getting killed. Not within the confines of the store at least. She might try something after his shift is over, or maybe on another day. But at least today he shocked her enough to get her to preferably not make him bleed.
In his months of working here he’s come to the conclusion that customers will leave him alone if he just leans into their weirdness. They don’t try to fist fight him in the parking lot- which has happened about a dozen times so far- if he flirts with them. And they don’t threaten to murder him and his entire family- an occurrence that’s been brought up four separate times- if he smiles and acts like they’re sane. They never come back again, but they drop their violence to stare at him instead.

He really needs to invest in more safety precautions. This is all bringing to light how much danger he’s in just working this dumb job. Except it’s not a dumb job, he has to be here. It’s just a little concerning how many times his literal life has been threatened. That feels a little out of the ordinary for a regular, average job at the grocery store. Workers during other shifts never have complaints like his. Is if because people can look at him and just tell he’s quirkless? That’s a little unfair.

He slides back over to his computer and the ever looming math problems. For a school that barely teaches and has a pretty awful graduation rate, you think there’d be less homework. But there’s not. It feels endless, droning on boringly forever until Izuku can no longer force himself to like solving for imaginary numbers.
For fucks sake, they’re not even real numbers, they’re imaginary. Why does he have to waste an hour of his time to solve for a number that doesn’t even exist? Whoever created them just wanted to watch children suffer and cry as they crumpled over their homework. But the same thing could be said about literally any lesson he’s ever done in math. He can do it sure, but why would he want to know how to graph and find the radius of a dumb circle? Thats what his phone is for. It’s useless knowledge. Absolutely worthless.
And that’s saying a lot, conserving he’s the one who’s saying it. At least people tolerate being around them because he’ll do all the work for group projects. Math can’t do that. All his math does is cause him and his classmates irreversible pain and suffering. No joke. No exaggeration.
Okay, maybe a little exaggeration. But cut him some slack here, he’s a very tired person. Between work and classes he’s kind of swamped. He barely has any free time ever. And when he does, he sleeps for hours on end until his free time is sapped up and completely gone. He’s running on the fumes of his past at this point. It feels like he’s chasing his own tail while simultaneously running sideways up a hill.
He just has to make it to graduation. After that he can focus on just pure working. This area of town in horrible enough he never needs to move unless everything gets bulldozed and rebuilt. But nobody really cares about this area of town, not even the heroes. And you know an are is horrible when the crime is so bad even heroes avoid fighting there.

When he smacks his computer closed and flips it off, he doesn’t imagine that anyone is watching. He’s just so over his homework frying his brain cells that he doesn’t look around. Backing away- finger still raised- he goes to check the clock. Maybe his shift is almost over and he can still get some sleep before class.

But his eyes never meet the clock. They land on wild blonde hair and piercing yellow eyes. The crazy syringe chick is back, staring between him and the computer with an ever increasing smile. She’s still wearing her uniform. In her hand is a syringe filled with uncomfortably red liquid that Izuku pretends to not notice. His finger falls and he gives the greatest customer service smile he can possibly muster.

“Hello again. Was something wrong with something you bought earlier?” He slides over to the register.

He won’t even ask for the receipt. He’ll give her the money back and then he can make a break for his gorgeous bed. He can see his blue sheets in his minds eye, inviting him closer into their warm embrace.

She’s giggling as she skips over to him, “Why were you flipping your computer off? You’re funny. I came back because I wanted to show you something, but you’re so funny I almost forgot.”

“I’m glad I amuse you,” he glares at the silver computer, “I was struggling through math homework.”

This is the first time that Izuku realizes he’s totally and utterly blind, because he somehow failed to register that there’s blood all over this chick. On her clothes and her face. It’s even in her hair, like she was splattered with a firework filled with red liquid and blown up in her face. She seems entirely unphased by it all, but he can’t deny that she looks insane. She’s pretty. But insane. And those things should never coexist next to each other.

Not hear him at least. Not when he’s so close to escaping and making it home to his loving bed. His beautiful bed. He misses it so much.

“Do I look pretty?” She asks, batting her eyelashes at him.

He blinks, slowly, trying to remember their earlier conversation over the merging of them with his stupid math homework.

He smiles softly, “You look pretty. I am concerned with the amount of blood though. Are you hurt?”

He knows she isn’t. He can tell from here that the blood coating her couldn’t possibly be her own. But if he says that then she might murder him too. And then go around wearing his blood and asking people if she looks pretty. And nobody will say yes, because she looks insane. And she is insane.

She isn’t ugly. He hadn’t lied about that. He should really stop thinking about that though.

“It’s not mine,” she giggles with that impossibly wide smile, “You really think I’m pretty?”
She’s like a little kid. Maybe her quirk has something to do with blood, and that’s why she’s so obsessed with it. That would make her less frightening. Only slightly though . Not enough for the fear to quite ebb away from his hands, but just enough for him to answer honestly. She was a nice girl aside from the glaringly obvious problems. And someone had clearly been mean to her- said she was ugly. And if there was one thing Izuku was, it was an empathetic pushover. Even when he so desperately tried not to be. 
“I think you’re pretty,” then carefully, cautiously, “Did you kill someone for that blood?”

Her smile doesn’t falter. It makes him feel a little better about this, like she probably won’t kill him. He hopes so at least. It would be kind of hard on his mother if he got killed all the way out here. Then his body would have to be moved and it’d be a whole thing. And he’s sure she wouldn’t like seeing that he’d been hacked apart or made into some weird skin suit. Or whatever this chick does to get her blood.

As long as she doesn’t hurt him and she pays, Izuku couldn’t care less. Living in this part of town made him kind of numb to crime. That, and, ever since his encounter with All Might, he hasn’t particularly liked heroes.

“I didn’t kill her. That would be super mean,” she dutifully shakes her head.

How awesome.

Izuku glances at the clock, distantly noting that his shift is over. He’s free from the confines of this store and all the frightening people that manage to push their way inside. He’ll be back to his bed soon, only to wake a moment later and drag his tired body back to school. Sit through unbearable lessons and try to hear around the drinking jokes. Meander to his job and work obscenely long hours. Only for it all to start again.

Over and over and over again.

Izuku yawns again, tearing off his work uniform and tiredly regarding the girl, “That’s good then. Killing people and wandering around with their blood coating you might get you in trouble.”

She watches him carefully, eyes locked on him as he shoves the shirt in his bag. She follows him absently as he moves to shove the computer away as well. It’s only when he’s finished gathering all his things that she speaks again. How thoughtful of her. Nobody’s ever waited for him to do something before bothering him.

(The train approaches another station, barely pressing on the brakes. You wouldn’t be able to get on unless you took a running jump and dragged yourself inside. Much like the other passenger that made it, barely hanging on. The jump is hard to make and hard to keep, but it’s worth it if you manage to crawl inside. That was the kind of train that was barreling down the tracks.)

“What do you think of villainous quirks?” She blurts, biting her lip as if she hadn’t meant to ask him at all.
This feels very reminiscent of what he told that random kid a while back. Except that kid hadn’t asked and Izuku just gave him unsolicited advice. This girl is actually asking where the other boy had just been listening. There’s a difference now, his answer will matter in a way it didn’t for that boy back then. His answer now could change everything for this girl.
(Everything for a great deal of people. But Izuku doesn’t have any chance of knowing that. It is neither here nor there, what this blonde girl will become. A villain, or perhaps something else.)

He rounds the counter with his hands in his pockets, “Villainous? What the hell does that mean?”

“Quirks that are bad. They make you evil, make you feel weird and do strange things. Like a villain,” she clasps her hands together.

Izuku gets the idea that this girl doesn’t usually act like this. The insane, blood coated version is how she usually is. She’s not normally so quiet, so fidgety. Whoever this girl is, she doesn’t talk to people about her problems. Ever. This side of her is something that’s never seen the light of day. It’s luck that he’s seeing it now, perhaps because of his nonchalant attitude towards her crazy.
“I don’t think a quirk makes you evil,” he looks around the store, checking to ensure everything is fine, “You’re only evil if you make yourself out to be. Dont act on the urges that’ll drive you to do bad things. Otherwise you would be a villain. If it’s hard, you have to practice and control it. Don’t let people blame anything you do on something as silly as a quirk.”
She doesn’t reply. Izuku figured she wouldn’t, just like the bullied kid hadn’t. Just like Izuku knew that he wouldn’t, if someone had said all this to him. But it didn’t matter. The intent behind his words was there. It was palpable. Even if she said nothing now, or a week from now, she would think about what he said. And it’d eat at her until she either took it to heart or decided he was an idiot.

(The fate of her future hangs on this choice, her thoughts. But the train won’t wait for her to choose. The train will fly by and she’ll have to decide nearly instantly if she wants to jump. Otherwise she’ll never get another chance, she’ll be stuck as she is.)

He puts a light hand on her back, guiding her out the door as he locks it behind them. They stand together quietly on the dark street. Not a soul is walking by, and not a single light appears to be on. The walk home is only illuminated by a thin sliver of the moon above. It’s a good thing he still has a phone on him, ever helpful in its ability to light his way home. He can’t keep the flashlight on for very long- he might get jumped- but it is useful.

Izuku stretches, something cracking in his back, before he slings the bag lazily over his shoulder. He still avoids putting anything over the shoulder Bakugo burnt back then. It doesn’t hurt anymore, it’s just habit at this point. Nobody ever seems to notice. Not that anyone ever cares enough about him to pay attention.

He can hear the faint sound of sirens in the distance. It’s merely background noise in this place, and he cringes at the memory of it scaring him when he first got here. He’s not so easily frightened these days. He’s becoming another bored, tired face in the crowd here. He fits right in amongst everyone. His quiet resignation to the circumstances makes sure of that. Izuku is like every other person here- down to the offness everyone has.

Someone like him was only ever made to fit in. This town was a laughably perfect place for him. Even if he only saw the people pass through once in their lives, he was just like them. A cog in the machine. Someone stuck in the same pattern every day of their life until they died. Even if he didn’t party like everyone else. All of them were dirty, bored people.

He yawns, trying to stifle it with his hand, turning away from the girl, “See you around,” then for good measure, he adds, “I’m quirkless, by the way. I don’t think it matters what your quirk is. I don’t give a shit about what others say about it because I don’t really give a shit about quirks in general.”

That gets a response, and the girl gasps like she’s been backhanded across the face. But Izuku doesn’t stick around to find out if she’s mad or not. He simply takes out his phone and begins the draining walk back to his one room apartment.

She doesn’t give chase- nobody ever does. Izuku is free to pull out his phone and stare blankly at the screen. His mind supplies the knowledge in the back of his head somewhere that school started at UA too. A little later than his did, but it started and All Might works there now. As a teacher. Of heroics. The same guy who didn’t know how to follow proper protocols- he looked it up- was going to teach hero hopefuls? The future was doomed.

(The back train car is still within reach. If she runs now, she can still catch it. She’ll have to go now. Now. Otherwise nothing will change and she’ll be exactly as she was.)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Izuku knows that he’s making a horrible decision. But that’s not really a new sentiment in his life. Every waking moment feels like a mistake, down to the way he ties his shoes. He supposes that feeling of being a failure will follow him around until he dies. Or if he figures out how to ignore the pounding thoughts coursing through his head. But he’s failing at that-

Shit. He did it again.

It’s really none of his business what’s happening outside of the store right now. It’s absolutely none of his business that it looks suspiciously like a drug deal. None of his business. He’s just a cashier working the register of a run down store with a minuscule amount of customers. He makes less than minimum wage and ten times the hours as his coworkers. His shift is over. He’s allowed to meekly make his way back home. It’s not his job to stop fights. He isn’t getting paid enough for that.

Then again, they’re sort of arguing in front of the door. The door he has to pass through to get home and to his bed. All he ever wants in his boring life is to get home and sleep. He’s a teenager, for fucks sake. Probably the most tired teenager in the whole of Japan, but maybe that’s being too cocky. If he’s not the most tired, he’s certainly in the top five. Maybe top three. The kids in his school certainly get enough sleep, after all their drinking and partying.

Maybe the kids at UA aren’t sleeping that well. They probably have a lot of difficult homework. And Izuku can vaguely recall there being in break in at the school. He read it on the news when he was totally not staking. Something like that probably wears a teen out. Though Izuku would argue that a break in and homework isn’t as bad as some of the things he has to deal with on a daily basis. People have broken into the store while he’s doing homework. Several times.

But this shouldn’t be a competition. That’s rude of him. He’s only being rude because he really want to get home and take a nap, perhaps forever.
So if he goes out the front door with a huff- strategic baseball bat in hand- a little angry, you can’t blame him. He’s an underpaid employee of one of the worst establishments to ever exist. Sue him for being mad. Maybe, just maybe, he wants to get home at a decent hour tonight and take a much needed nap. Maybe he misses his bed. Maybe. Is it really so wrong for him to be annoyed? These people have the entire town to be illegal and they chose right here. Right as his shift ended. That’s seriously awful luck. 
Izuku is practically on fire by the time the loiterers turn to face him with uncaring smirks. Well, one of them is scared, but he doesn’t really care about the specifics here. And that guy deserves to be scared anyway, because he’s buying drugs in a sketchy town.

They size each other up for a tense moment. And he’s absolutely, positively, hugely sure that his ass would get whooped if he tried to fight any of these dudes. They’re all about four feet taller than him and as menacing as a rhinoceros facing off against a mouse. Which would be funny if his life weren’t on the line right now.

They don’t have any physical mutations that he can see, but from the looks on their faces they know they’re strong. And if anything is scarier than coming face to face with a rhinoceros, it’s facing against one that knows it can kill you. Just like these guys. They know they’re stronger and taller and superior in every way compared to a teenage cashier. And they’re not wrong for feeling so confident.

But Izuku Midoriya is a bundle of about 5 feet (and five inches) of pure, unbridled tiredness. He’s willing to do just about anything to get back to his bed. Even if that means facing off a group of people who might kill him on the spot. The prospect of death doesn’t scare him in the slightest. If he’s dead he won’t worry about the specifics of what happened or what he could’ve done different. Because he’ll be dead. Dead means sleep. Albeit, forever, but that admittedly sounds just as nice. So Izuku isn’t afraid to stare down the eyes of a beast if it means he’ll get to experience the pure joy of sleeping.

“What are you lot doing out here at this time of night?” He questions, masking his terror surprisingly easy.

It’s easy to talk to people that frighten you if you’re not afraid to die. What a laughably simple concept. Of course it’s one not easily exploited, nobody is stupid in the way he is right now. But being tired means that Izuku is completely calm. Which makes it so that nobody immediately knocks his teeth in, if only out of initial shock.

A man with sharp, grey looking hair finds it in himself to laugh, “What does it look like we’re doing, short stack? Why don’t you get lost and this won’t get ugly.”

How boringly villainous. It’s not even a unique line. Izuku swears he heard someone say it on the radio yesterday. The line is overused and cliche in a way that makes Izuku want to claw his own brain out of his head. Is that an exaggeration? It feels a little mean to say that words make him want to die. But it really is that bad. Seriously, half of the things people say while robbing or stealing or whatever they’re doing is so awful. He can’t handle another line of ‘put the money in the bag if you know what’s good for you.’
But whatever, he can’t make fun of those just beginning their villain journey. They’ll have time to not be so lame- provided they don’t get squashed by a hero. He’s really rooting for them, hoping that they become less of a drag so he can at least laugh before he dies.
Because that’s what a person’s priorities should be. To laugh. And if they can’t laugh, it’s so sleep.

“I’m too tired for this right now,” he rubs his eyes with the hand he’s not gripping the bat with, “You guys are doing this in front of a grocery store? Really? Cant you at least start a fight over in the alley? It’s right there.”

He points, and their gaze follows his finger- which he wasn’t expecting. He kind of thought they’d all scoff and smack the soul from his body while manically laughing about his stupidity. It’s sort of refreshing that they’re not immediately punching him. Or threatening, aside from the initial claim of things getting ugly. Maybe they’re not so villainous after all.

A sleep deprived teenager can dream.

The entire group of them, druggie, drug dealers, and Izuku himself all stare into the darkness across the street. There’s a dumpster so full of trash the contents are spilling out. It looks like the trash from the entire town was unceremoniously dumped there and left to rot. There are even rats scuttling about the area like they own it. He can smell the stench from all the way over here, and there’s an entire street between him and it.

“Actually, now that I’m looking at it, I get why you’re not doing this there,” he frowns, squinting to see if there’s anything redeeming about the alley.

Theres a cat?

Is that redeeming?

He doesn’t think a cat is really worth standing next to nuclear waste, but it could be. He wouldn’t really know much about cats and their secret powers, they’re much beyond his understanding. He’s never pet a cat before, and he’s certainly never been around one for long enough to want to brave death for them. Maybe they’re amazing and trump the sheer smell of garbage permeating the air. But he highly doubts that, seeing as the drug deal isn’t happening there despite the cat.
Why did he even bother stepping in? He should’ve just walked right by and let the drug deal happen. Then he could’ve ignored these people and gone home. And they’d all be happy with their drugs and money. But his boss would know, his brain nags. His boss seems to always know everything that happens in the store. And he’d never let Izuku live it down that drugs were sold in front his business. Even if about a million drug deals happened in this god forsaken town.
A woman with purple eyes laughs, incredulous, “What the hell are you even on about kid?”
She stares at him like he’s miraculously sprouted a third head. And with the way he can’t seem to mind his business, he feels like he’s grown a third head. He really is sleep deprived. There’s no other reason his sense of self preservation should’ve vanished. 
“I honestly don’t know. And I’m too tired to elaborate. Could you all please not do this near the store. I don’t want to explain a drug deal happening outside, during my shift, to my boss,” he says, entirely seriously.

He stares at the group tiredly, and their confused gazes stare back. The woman and the other man of the group look at grey-hair for guidance. He must be the leader of their little drug run then.

Not that Izuku cares enough to remember his face, or his voice, or even to tell anyone that this is happening. The heroes won’t care and neither will the cops. He doesn’t necessarily want the deal to stop happening, he’d just prefer they do it somewhere else. Then none of them will get hounded by Izuku’s boss. Because he guarantees that the man will be able to find the dealers too. And then they’d all be having a pissy time. So they should move along and let him do the same.
It’s better for them all to get a little bit of rest- Izuku is so very sleepy. But these days he feels like he always is. 
They have a stare down for what feels like an eternity, and Izuku can practically feel his breath getting more sluggish. He might just fall into a heap right on the floor in front of these people, that’s how tired he is right now. He really doesn’t have the time, effort, or care to be dealing with this. If only they’d all take the hint and walk about fifteen steps up the road. Because then they’d be out of sight of the literal only camera in the entire area and they could be shady. Izuku doesn’t care what they do with their time, as long as he doesn’t have to pay the price for their stupidity.

Grey eyes steps closer, to which Izuku barely reacts, “You just want us to go away then?”

He asks it as if Izuku has the heroes on speed dial and they’re on the way as they speak. But they’re not. Izuku doesn’t care enough to get anyone to come help. He doesn’t want to talk to cops or heroes or drug dealers, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He wants to go home. Desperately.

“I don’t give a shit what you guys are doing,” he sighs, exasperated but not scared, “Can you just move up the street? Please?”

Purple eyes glares at him like he’s smacked her grandmother and laughed about it, “Why should we listen to some puny store clerk? I bet your quirk is weak.”

They weren’t even talking about quirks. Why does everyone always have to bring up quirks? He gets that they live in a society comprised of quirks and heroes, but seriously? A person should be allowed to exist without ever bringing theirs up. Asking about quirks is like asking a woman their age, in his opinion. It’s not something people should be sharing so openly. Everyone should just talk to each other without caring.

They were having a normal conversation (normal for this town anyway). Quirks hadn’t been mentioned. They didn’t need to be mentioned. They were talking about drugs, not a fight.

But Izuku knows at the same time that if they knew he was quirkless, they wouldn’t be talking at all. He’d be dead on the pavement and they’d sprinkle cocaine over his body while sneering. They were only giving him the time of day- or night, it’s past midnight- because they were afraid. Izuku could have some hidden quirk up his sleeve that could render them all useless. It’s a possibility. There’s always a chance someone who looks weak isn’t, even if it’s impossible in this case.
Izuku walked up and demanded they leave with the confidence of someone with a strong quirk. They were wary that he had the strength to back up that confidence. They weren’t hearing him out, actually caring that he wanted them to piss off. All they were trying to do was see if they could take him in a fight and win. And that made Izuku so incredibly, awfully tired.
“There’s a working camera right there,” he clutches the baseball bat between his overworked hands, “If you don’t want to listen to me, move so that your little deal isn’t caught on video. Because then the cops would come and I’d have to answer questions. And I am not in the mood to be talking to some shitty cop.”

Or some shitty hero, but that was less likely. He’d never seen a hero even look in the direction of this place. It was irredeemable.

(There are some heroes willing to come to this part of town. But there are so few it’s like they don’t exist at all. If Izuku had the eyes to see when he walked home, he’d know heroes lurked just beyond the street lamps. Just out of reach of the light. Just out of reach of anyone not explicitly looking for them.

But that is neither here nor there, because Izuku won’t be looking.)

It was then that he noticed Mr. Druggie trying to sneak away from this whole ordeal. And Izuku may have been a nice person, but there was no way he was dealing with so many people on his own. That guy- someone illegally buying drugs- didn’t deserve to leave the conversation before he did. It was simply unfair considering the effort Izuku had put into this so far. He was dead on his feet and didn’t get to walk away, so that asshole didn’t get to either.
With the practiced aim of a teenager with no friends and an All Might themed dart board, he sent his baseball bat at the guy. It’s kind of awkward supplementing a dart for a bat, but the idea is generally the same. Not that anyone should ever try what he’s doing. Dart- bat- into the center of the dart board- the guys exposed back. It’s just that instead of sticking a dart into whatever material the board was, the baseball bat smacked this guy right in the spine. Like directly onto the spine. Izuku could swear he heard it crack before the dude folded over and smacked into the floor.
He had made it a few meters away. But Izuku had put a stop to his escape. And maybe his life too, seeing the way the dude didn’t even try to get up. He just laid, unmoving and whimpering, on the ground. Like Izuku used to do after particularly bad beatings. 
And then again, it was then , that the drug dealers turned to him like he was the spawn of the devil. Which in all honesty, Izuku can’t quite understand. He’s the one who just made sure their client didn’t run off to god knows where. Mr. Druggie could’ve spilled the beans to some cop. Or someone way higher up the chain of command than these random losers. Because it’s fairly obvious that they’re new to this whole selling drugs in the street thing. 
“You’re a strange kid,” purple eyes settled on, seemingly forgetting she had insulted him and his (lack of) quirk only a minute ago.

Izuku sees his chance to make a run for it without dying.

He shoulders past them, “Yeah. I get that a lot,” he glares as he picks his bat up again, “Please just move. I’m not in the mood for throwing things at people.”

Nobody moves a single inch. Not even one. Izuku has to hold back from tearing his hair out and screaming as loud as humanly possible. But he doesn’t. Because he’s a sane person who does completely sane things.

“Get lost,” he adds, mustering all his rage into the two words.

See? Sane.

This seems to be enough- for whatever reason- for the three to turn on their heels and hightail it up the road. They don’t bother checking to see if their previous client is alright. He doesn’t look alright, but they could’ve at least had the decency to care even slightly. The dude is laid flat on the floor and crying into the cement about his mother and the other side. He’s going so far as to stutter and look as if he’s about to keel over and die.

But Izuku couldn’t have hit him nearly that hard, could he? He is a weakling after all. He’s never managed to put a dent in anyone or anything his entire life. A baseball bat to the back has no way of changing that record.

Izuku doesn’t care to check on the downed guy either. Either he’ll get up on his own, or someone will come back for him later. And that’s none of his business. His job ended when he got the drug dealers to get away from the front door. And the camera, because none of them would’ve been happy if they were caught on camera.

He secretly hopes the next person in sees Mr. Druggie and has to deal with it themself. Then again, Izuku is the only one who ever has a shift alone. So nobody ever has to deal with something by themself except him.

He makes his way home, slowly, tiredly. Dragging himself along like there are ten ton weights strapped to his back. Perhaps around his ankles too. And with the recently added hours to his schedule, it feels like his back may give out. Along with his legs. And his arms, and just about every limb and muscle in his tiny self. Because he’s extremely tired. It’s a miracle he’s still functioning at all, because he’s genuinely seconds away from passing out in class. Or maybe even worse.

He feels like he thinks that a lot- that he’s tired. But he is. It’s the one completely true and certain fact of his life, that he’s exhausted beyond repair.

(So when he makes his way home on the same route as always, he doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going. He doesn’t see the things that other people might. Other, well rested, people.

His train chugs gloomily along the tracks, slow enough for something to catch up and easily crawl onboard. The conductor is nearly asleep where he’s standing. He doesn’t notice the streak of orange as it lazily strolls into the room. He doesn’t notice as it looks at him curiously from uncanny green eyes.

Izuku Midoriya doesn’t notice the cat following him home.)

“Sir, I really do apologize, but I must get-“

“Shut the fuck up. You made the mess, so you’re the one who’s cleaning it up,” he snapped.
It’s fine. Calm down Izuku. Stay sane. Be sane. It’s bad to yell at customers. It’s horrible. The boss won’t be pleased to know that he’s yelling at a loyal customer.
Loyal in the sense that this is the second time the dude has stepped foot into the store. So not a regular, but at least he had managed to come back another time. Izuku doesn’t care. He doesn’t get paid nearly enough to try to convince people to keeping buying from them. Thats why he was usually on the night shift and didn’t have to talk to too many people.

But it’s not his fault that a man made out of mist caused a fight during his shift, and therefore knocked half the store down. It’s not his fault that someone with no tangible body somehow managed to cause an absolutely insane amount of work to be carelessly knocked to the floor. Izuku’s work. Because he’s the only one who ever stocked the shelves. So forgive him for being absolutely livid.
It was just his luck that he got hours during the day- right after school, he might add- because someone else had plans. Last minute plans. Probably to go to that lame ass party that everyone has been talking about at school. And it was just his luck that it was weirdly busy that day, with nearly fifteen people in the store. They were loud and annoying and he was equally as annoyed to even be there. So he was already pissed off when the mist guy entered the store. Every clatter of an item to the ground just seemed to add to his impending rage.
The other guy had meekly started putting things back on the shelf after Izuku had whacked his face with a magazine. And even though the mist guy had no body, he seemed to be afraid of getting smacked around as well. Even if he was trying to get out of the store, he was still cautiously putting things back on their shelves. Maybe Izuku was more intimidating than he thought. Or maybe these two were just the biggest wussies in the universe.

The mist tried again, “Please, I have somewhere to be-“
“Then hurry the fuck up and put everything back exactly where they belong. It’s not my fault you two dipshits started fighting,” he snapped once more, anger evident in his tone.
The other customers warily sidestepped out of the way, and Izuku had to halt his anger in order to start checking them out. The noise that was evident ten minutes ago was sucked from the area. Everyone had terrified expressions, as if they thought the small cashier was going to smack them with a magazine and make them clean too. They flinched away from him with every move he made. Fear in their faces when he took their money, terror in their eyes as he handed them their bags. None of them were ever going to come back. Even the boss couldn’t have convinced them.

It was tense, silent. The customers fled from the store until only mist guy and the crybaby remained. Izuku stood over them, tapping his foot expectantly. They kept looking over their shoulders at him while they cleaned, horrified. Like they hadn’t expected to be here today. But when Izuku caught them staring and glared, they got right back to work like obedient servants. 
Thirty minutes into cleaning, the mist guy tried again, “Sir. Please. I understand why you must be angry, but-“
“Shut the fuck up and clean,” Izuku smiled, smacking the magazine across his hand.

He’s too tired for this.

Izuku was grateful he had the rage of a thousand suns behind him, otherwise he would’ve picked this all up himself. Or he wouldn’t have come across quite so menacingly and the two would’ve laughed at him. But he’s pissed enough to power a city.

(A train easily rolling on the tracks rolled a little too close to another. They were both sluggish and slow, but one was less willing to waver. It was a game of chicken. And before either of them could stop, one rolled right over the other.

The passengers inside didn’t even notice that there was another train. All they felt was a slight bump, a minuscule hill to be climbed. And the conductor knew he was hitting the train head on, he just didn’t know it’d disappear beneath the tracks.

He didn’t know the importance of this man. And he wouldn’t, not for a long while. But that’s neither here nor there.)

The mist guy sighed and got back to work. Crybaby was doing as his name suggested, crying, shoving bags of coffee onto the shelves without much care. All Izuku had to do to make him be more careful was throw the magazine against his hand again. Crybaby groaned and got to work placing things as they should be.
No other customers came in. He found it in himself to be fleetingly grateful for that. It meant he could go a little longer without dealing with some arrogant punk looking to buy something illegal.  At some point, Izuku left the two to their cleaning and got back to his homework. It was as boring as it always was. Just endless amounts of math questions he knew nobody else in his class was doing. Word got out that he was actually doing it and the other students were paying him to give them the answers. It was sort of a side hustle at this point. He didn’t really care that he was giving away answers, and neither did the teachers, it was just annoying. It meant people were expecting him to always be done when he walked into class. And if he wasn’t done, somebody might take their chance and shank him with their pencil. Or bludgeon him with a chair. 
He was ripped from his homework- one of the final questions, he might add- by the rising sound of voices. It seemed mist guy and crybaby were arguing over something. As they had been doing earlier, right before they started throwing punches.

God must be testing him today.

He rounded the corner to see the mist guy sending crybaby right into a shelf. It wobbled, swayed, and toppled dangerously to the floor. He could feel his sanity flying away as the shelf crashed loudly onto the floor. Things clattered to Izuku’s feet and surrounded him, and he thought he might’ve seen his patience under the rubble. The forty five minutes of work they’d put into picking up and being calm was over. It had been smacked to the ground.

The mist guy had the decency to look ashamed as he made eye contact with Izuku. As much as someone without any facial features can look ashamed anyway. He was too angry to really care. It took all he had to not launch himself at the guy and try to kill him.

God must be testing him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put these people here to make Izuku suffer.

“This is not what it appears to be-“ mist guy started, and Izuku nearly lost his shit right then.

“You shoved me into the shelf! We spent so long cleaning!” Crybaby screamed, and- who would’ve guessed?- cried.

Izuku was shaking. The entirety of the school day, homework, work, and sleepless nights hanging over him. One more word out of either of these guys and he was going to launch their souls into space. And then drag them back down to clean their mess all over again. Because this was not how he wanted to spend his day, and he was not in the mood to handle this.

Mist guy sounded annoyed, “You started it. You kept trying to argue with me.”

Stay sane. Stay sane Izuku.

“This is all your fault!” Crybaby accused, “We would have been gone already if you were putting things back right!”

“You were the one doing it wrong. I was telling you as such,” mist guy crossed his mist arms.

Sane. Be sane. Be s-

“No, it was you doing it wrong! You! And now Shigaraki is going to be mad at both of us,” crybaby cried (what a shocker).

Mist guy growled, “You should not speak his name so casually. Our mission is a-“

“If you two don’t shut the fuck up right now,” Izuku crumpled the magazine in his hand angrily, “I am going to tie your hands together and make you saw each others legs off.”

Shit. There goes his sanity.

He tried.

Neither said anything, going back to silently cleaning. Izuku barely managed to pull himself together and make his way back to the register. For his credit, he didn’t murder them. Which took a lot of control. More control than he’d ever like to admit.

He got back to his homework.
—
Another half hour and the shelves were back to their former glory. Izuku examined each and every row of items, ensuring their perfection. Mist guy and crybaby stood quietly behind him, following as he walked. They didn’t seem to be in the mood to argue with each other any more. That was good. He would’ve made good on his promise to make them kill each other. It really was that kind of day. That kind of week maybe, because it was going absolutely horribly.

The boss had seen his confrontation with the drug dealers. And he had said Izuku didn’t handle the situation the ‘standard’ way. Which should’ve been to alert the boss and stay inside the building. He’d gotten an hour long lesson- that he wasn’t being paid for- on it. By the end of it Izuku felt ready to tear someone’s head off.

He hadn’t even known there was a ‘standard’ way to deal with drug dealers. That hadn’t been in training.

And then he had woken up yesterday to find that a rock hit his window while he was sleeping. Which sucks. Because he doesn’t have the money to fix it. At least nobody had climbed the fire escape into his room and robbed him. So there’s at least a little positive in his life.
And then he found some kids beating a cat and he had to step in. Because why the fuck were they beating up a cat? That’s downright evil. Psychotic. Psychotic behavior is beating innocent cats in an alley. You have to have something wrong with your head if you want to beat an animal that can’t fight back. 
He got the cat away alive, but not after being roundhouse kicked to the face. So that was absolutely wonderful. Especially when he saw those same kids in class the next day. It gave him a small sense of joy to deny them copying his homework even when they offered a higher price.
And then , because he couldn’t catch a break, Bakugo had texted him. Again. Like he’d been trying to do for weeks. Which he pointedly ignored. 
And that was all before two idiots knocked hours of his labor onto the ground. So everything felt like it was piling up, just a big fuck you from the universe.

He let the two finally leave, if only because his shift was over and he wanted to go home and sleep. He’d already been working for hours until these guys showed up. And they caught him in an especially bad mood on an especially bad day. But at least the shelves are fine and the boss wouldn’t make him do all that clean up by himself. Everything is exactly, perfectly, as it should be. At least the idiots listened to him in that regard. He might’ve ripped their eyes from their skulls if they hadn’t.

(Kurogiri was more than an hour late when he finally went to the meeting spot. Consequently, the hero class was already done with training by the time they were leaving. Something had come up with All Might and the lesson had to be cut short when he failed to show up.

Kurogiri’s train was battered and bruised. It had been knocked so far off course that it was trailing behind Izuku’s sluggishly. Neither of them really seemed to notice the other, just that they were heading a certain direction.

The USJ attack was a failure. But that’s neither here nor there.)

bakugo

Deku

Can we talk?

I have something important to tell you. I promise it’s nothing bad. I just

fuck

i just want to talk

please

bakugo

Deku please respond to me. I just want to talk

shit. It’s about you

i just

I just want to say something

to your face

bakugo

i got into UA

i just thought… that I should tell you that

…I thought you’d be there too

i

fuck

bakugo

Deku please

just talk to me for a minute. It doesn’t have to be in person

deku

for fucks sake just talk to me

Izuku

congrats. I knew you’d get in

bakugo

deku?

thank you

..?

where’d you go? Please just listen to me for a minute

deku…?

deku?

?

??

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Izuku Midoriya would consider himself a smart person, all things considered. He was certainly book smart. His grades proved that he could think way better than a majority of the population. And he was generally able to tell what was going to happen as a result of his actions. He had sort of an uncanny ability to know how things would turn out, how they would happen. Being in a million situations of getting his ass handed to him made him acutely aware of other people’s strength. In a way, he had an amazing sense of who’d win and who’d lose in an all out fight.Which is why he’s stopped stepping in the way of things since he moved. The people here might actually kill him, leave his body crumpled in some back alley. He could act tough within the confines of where he worked, but he was entirely exposed. One wrong move and he could die. One misstep in his words, and somebody might leap over the counter and choke him to death. Izuku knew he had to be careful here.
He was the type of teenager that looked five seconds away from blowing away with the breeze. He swayed with the wind, nearly flew away as cars passed him. Nothing about him was particularly frightening or intimidating. Aside from the eye bags- which were getting more then a little concerning- he looked like an average high schooler. An incredibly weak one, but an average one nonetheless.
The point is, Izuku would lose quite possibly every fight he even tried to start. There’s no debate about that. He’s weak beyond a doubt. His heightened senses let him know that he’ll lose, no matter which opponent he faces. It becomes increasingly obvious that he’s like a quivering mouse when the customers scream at him. There’s nothing he can do but stand there and pray the conflict will resolve itself. Sure, most of the time he’s able to talk the other person down from murdering him. But that’s not a sure fire thing. Just a few days ago he had to leap over the counter and book it right out the front door.
Izuku’s only line of defense is catching people off guard, agreeing with their psychoticness or even flirting. It generally works. Mostly.

He doesn’t see how anything is going to work out for him currently. There are moments he knows no amount of words can save him. And this is one of those moments, but he’s too far in to try and run away now. Just his luck that something like this happens on his walk home from work. And it’s just his luck that he’s passing through an alley that he usually doesn’t bothering found through. It’s like the universe is laughing at him.

(The universe wants to see Izuku Midoriya a hero, despite what the boys opinion on that is.

But that is neither here nor there, a goal lost to him.)

Maybe it would’ve done something more if he’d been braver walking down the alley. He was walking slow enough a tortoise could destroy him in a race. And he was dragging his feet as if it could delay the inevitable, even when he knew nothing could. He had gotten a bad feeling about halfway down the alley and knew it was far too late to turn around. The rising smell of smoke did nothing to quell his ever growing sense of despair either.

He is doomed to always find himself stuck in horrible positions, with horrible people. That’s the life of the quirkless.
There’s nothing he can really do in this situation, for anyone involved really. He won’t be much help to the victim or much of a problem for the perpetrator. Izuku would get his face scraped off on the pavement and his flesh pulled from his body if he even tried to help. It’ll be the quickest loss in the history of losses if he steps in. The guy looks like he eats little kids for breakfast- as in he murders them, not because he’s some pedophile.He’s nearly six foot, so he towers over Izuku’s small stature, which is only the tip of the iceberg. The guy looks severely and painfully burned. It looks like his face and hands are being held together by thoughts, dreams, and a distant hope. And also an insane amount of staples that cant possibly be good for the skin. They pull at his body in a way that’s skin crawling and strangely uncomfortable. His whole body looks barely held together. Izuku would probably feel sorry for the guy if he weren’t actively burning someone alive. Which isn’t really legal, or nice. But what would he know? He's just a student.
It’s not really his business either.

But now the frightening man is staring into his soul, still holding the burning guy with one hand. The victim’s skin was peeling off in some places and his hair singed off in others. He looked like he’d been shoved in an oven and left to burn for hours. Like the old witch in that one story he used to read, the one with the candy house and the two dumb little kids. They pushed her in the oven and burned her alive at the end of the story. Anyway, the point is that it was a positively horrible sight for a teenage boy to lay eyes on after a long shift of dealing with Karens. And if Izuku weren’t surviving off of about two total hours of sleep, he might have started screaming right then.

But he couldn’t scream. He was too tired for that, too worn out from the past few months of life. The reality of the situation was that he didn’t care if he happened to die right now. He’d feel sorry for his mom, absolutely, but he’d be long dead by the time it mattered. And if this dudes fire was hot enough to melt skin, there probably wouldn’t even be a body to bury anyway.

Icy blue eyes stare at him, waiting for some kind of reaction that he feels incapable of giving.

His backpack feels heavy on his shoulder. His computer seems to taunt him, reminding him of the dozens of math problems encased within its screen. The nagging feeling that he didn’t finish it all weighs heavily on his mind, heavier than his impending death. He promised the classmate next to him that he’d finish no matter what. It’s a shame that he’ll die a liar.

A failure once again.

(The train nears an abandoned station, faltering and slamming on the brakes prematurely. The conductor doesn’t notice the sole inhabitant, the single person waiting on the bench. All he sees is the dilapidated structure and the increasing smoke. It makes him wary.

As the train begins to slow, the passengers on board are finally able to settle in their seats. And somebody lagging behind, running behind the train but not quite catching it, jumps aboard.)

Those blue eyes narrow on him, “You’re a strange kid aren’t you? Not even gonna scream?”
He stares back, trying to determine how to piss this guy off as little as possible. He’d prefer a quick death over an agonizing and slow one. And something tells Izuku that this guy has the power to choose how his victims die. So it’ll be worth while to not be his usual, smartass self. Villains aren’t usually fine with snarky jokes.
“What difference would it make if I did?” He absently asks.

Why does he always do this to himself? This is not how he should act to get people to leave him alone. It’s definitely not how he’ll prevent getting slowly burned alive. By someone who looks like he takes pleasure in watching people cry as their skin peels and gives way to bone.

So maybe Izuku isn’t as smart as he thought.

“I guess it wouldn’t make a difference,” Mr. Icy Eyes drops the victim to his feet, “Since you’re gonna die anyway, and no hero will come to save you here.”

Well, guess this is the end.

He’s about to die in some back alley on the way home from a dead end job. Seems entirely fitting considering the course of his life so far. Live terribly, be treated terribly, die terribly. It’s what some people consider the circle of life, the eventual and fitting death for someone like him. The kids back at Aldera would’ve had a hearty laugh if they could see him now. They might’ve even joined in on the fun, perhaps recorded it. At least then people might have a laugh, he might be trending for a while, albeit while dead.

Maybe he should’ve replied to Bakugo at least one more time. It could’ve brought the both of them some much needed closure.

…Why is it that not talking to Bakugo is his last thought, his only remaining regret? It makes him kind of a horrible son for not really caring about his mother before he burns to death.

At least his mother would be able to finally move on from the trauma of having birthed him. People would mention Izuku in passing, mention his quirklessness, and his mother would dab her tearful eyes sadly. And then she’d move on with her day like nothing ever happened. He’d just be the dead son of a hard working woman. The quirkless dead boy that used to live next door. The quirkless student who stupidly wanted to be a hero when he graduated middle school. The one who managed to get himself killed the second he moved away. Some villain in a back alley burnt him alive.

The heroes wouldn’t even look into his death. They probably wouldn’t even care about him, brushing his folder aside in favor of something more exciting. Everyone knew the statistics for quirkless deaths, everyone knew they never made it very far in life. He was doomed to die young the minute he was told he didn’t have a quirk. That’s just the way the world was.

He sighs, “That’s true. The heroes don’t even bother patrolling in this area. They couldn’t give less of a shit about any of us.”

A pause. No fire burns him away, the area actually feels pretty cold. Cold enough anyway. Considering there’s a dead guy who just burned to a crisp laying on the ground only feet from him. The air is still thick with smoke and the telltale sound of something sizzling- probably the skin of that guy despite already being dead. But it’s a pleasant night, all things considered. It’s good weather to die in. He’s not even sweaty at the moment. But he imagines once he starts burning that’ll change.
The thing is, why is he still not on fire?
The pause stretches on, and he’s growing more and more confused of his predicament. Is he dead? Were his nerves fried within seconds so he can no longer feel? Perhaps he died so quickly he didn’t have the chance to feel it. Mr. Icy Eyes burnt him so fast that he’s already dead and lying on the floor next to the other unfortunate victim. But if that’s the case, why can he still smell the putrid air in the alley?

Actually, all of his senses are still perfectly intact and functioning. So either death is more intricate than he initially believed, or he’s somehow not dead yet.
Izuku looks up, and the villain(?) is staring at him with an expression that’s somehow a mix of amusement and indifference. He is very obviously (and wonderfully) not burning Izuku’s face off. Which is both shocking and confusing. Why is he not burning Izuku into ash right now? He’s not exactly complaining here, it’s just strange that the murderer isn’t, you know, murdering him.
“You don’t like heroes? That’s a strange thing for someone your age to say,” the guy looks impressed, but the emotion is locked behind layers of blankness.

…Someone his age?

Does he mean that most high schoolers like heroes? It makes sense, but Izuku isn’t like most high schoolers. Well. He was a few months ago, but he’s totally different now. Especially since he lives in a place where heroes do jack shit and are never around. But it’s not like someone he just met- that knows nothing about him- would be able to tell all that just by looking at him.

Izuku frowns, “Look at where we are, what town you’re in,” he looks around, incredulous, “It’s hard to like heroes when you never see them.”

This prompts a very obvious side eye and raised brow from the villain. Is it really so hard to believe that a teenager hates heroes?

Honestly, what is there to like? Heroes all seem to do their job for the intent purpose of gaining fame. They love the media, those glaring cameras recording their supposed heroic actions. They love stories about themselves in the papers. They love people talking about them on social media and creating fandoms for them. The whole point of going on patrol and fighting villains is so that the media is able to document the entire thing. If they won’t get fame for the actions they take, the heroes don’t even bother. Sort of like All Might abandoning a teenager who clearly needs medical attention.

People around this part of town are well aware of how heroes work. It’s nearly lawless and unkempt here, void of any hero coming to save anyone. Many a classmate of Izuku’s has been mugged in the street or jumped after school. Izuku himself has been held at gun point while the store was robbed- his record of not being robbed was exceptionally short lived. More often than not, the teenagers here have no particular care for heroes.

“What a strange place. That guy,” the villain points to the dead guy, “was saying the same thing before I burned him.”

Ah. Wonderful. He’s sharing viewpoints with the guy a villain has no guilt over burning alive. That spells out such a wonderful, bright, and lively future for him.

He should deflect, deflect and move on to a nicer topic. Move on from the horribly burned victim on the ground. He needs to protect what little peace he’s still managing to hold on to in his life. Which is, admittedly, not a lot.

He shrugs, “It’s hard to find anyone who cares about heroes here. I’m not surprised someone else feels the same as me.”

“Not even All Might?” The villain persists.

Izuku can’t help the sour look that passes over his face. He doesn’t mean to show his disgust, it’s honestly an accident. But the memory of the number one hero just makes Izuku mad. It makes him relive his near death experience and the subsequent face plant of his dreams.

Sometimes, late at night, Izuku can still feel the slime creeping down his throat. It’ll keep his dreams at bay and his eyes locked open on the ceiling. Nausea will roll over him in waves and won’t go away no matter how many times he tries to swallow it down. It’s like a horrible itch in the back of his body that can’t ever be scratched. Phantom pain that can never be healed, never be fixed or made better. And he knows deep down, that all of these things- these horrid feelings- could have been prevented. All it would’ve taken was the right medical treatment at the right time.
All Might didn’t do shit for him. Not in any way that mattered.
(The train is at a complete stop, the conductor worriedly pacing the front of the train. Onboard, the passengers sit patiently. Silently. As if they already know that everything will be fine despite the trains sudden halt. Despite the strange person lazily making his way closer and closer to the front. Near to where the conductor frets over seemingly nothing and everything all at once.)

“Touched a nerve there huh?” Villain laughs at him, humor barely evident in his tone, “What’d the number one hero do to possibly upset some kid?”
If only he knew. If only anyone knew.
Izuku crosses his arms, frown deepening, “Why does it even matter? It was a while ago.”

It doesn’t feel like it was a while ago.

It feels like just yesterday a villain took hold of his body and choked him. It feels like just yesterday All Might was seconds away from not saving his life. It feels like yesterday that he was abandoned under a bridge and left to walk himself home. Only yesterday that he gave up on his dreams and ran far away from any reminder of them. Every millisecond of the day still haunts him, from Bakugo telling him to kill himself to the feeling of gravel underneath him on the ground. It definitely wasn’t a while ago in his mind.

Izuku goes back to awaiting his crispy death when the villain doesn’t offer him any sort of reply. His eyes fall to the dirty floor of the alley, scanning over the cardboard boxes and abandoned cans. He tries not to look at the way the man on the ground isn’t moving. The way he’s still steaming and a layer of smoke is collected around him. Izuku tries hard not to look at a dead man and know their fates are entirely the same.

And he tries not to look at the way the other guys chest is still rising and falling. Or the way he can see the victim still trying to grab something.

Trying.

“…did he beat on you or something?” The villain finally asks, “I mean, everyone likes All Might, even villains. We fear him sure, but it’s not like he’s the worst person ever. There are worse.”
He said that like he’s met someone worse, personally knew them even.
Izuku tears his eyes from twitching fingers, “No, he didn’t beat on me. But it’s not like he’s a perfect hero. There might be worse, but there are definitely better.”

He’s not sure what hero he’d trust, no name comes to him off the top of his head. But he’s certain there’s someone out there who would’ve cared about his wellbeing. Would’ve stuck around and made sure that he made it home safe and sound. After a needed trip to the emergency room. Some hero out there is good. Better. He just doesn’t know who.

“All Might is the number one,” the villain points out sarcastically.

“Just because something is number one in title doesn’t mean it should be. Rankings are biased,” he frowns, “I’d go so far as to say that some of the higher ranking heroes don’t even deserve their spots.”

Wow. He’s never admitted that out loud before. He knows that it’s a fact, that his statement is one of truth. But that doesn’t mean he’s ever been brave enough to voice his opinions. In a society that revolves around heroes it’s taboo to say anything against them. Talking about how much he dislikes heroes and their rankings might get him killed. Even if nobody in this town actually cares.

The villain whistles, icy eyes showing genuine emotion for the first time that day, “Wow. What a statement.”

“I’m not wrong,” Izuku straightens, sure of himself.

He’s about to die anyway. He might as well get some things off his chest, piss someone off before he goes.

“Enlighten me,” the villain smirks, “Who doesn’t deserve their ranking?”

“Endeavor,” Izuku huffs, not missing a beat.

Those blue eyes narrow as they settle on him, “Endeavor? Why is that?”

(Izuku had no way of knowing that this was the perfect name to bring up, the only one capable of saving his life. If he had chosen any other hero he would’ve most certainly died.

He had no way of knowing that this singular name would be able to change the course of the future. It would prevent events from happening, ensure certain lives would never be lost. It would knock a train clean off the tracks and send it flying onto a new route. And, most of all, it would make another person drag themself aboard Izuku’s train.

But that is neither here nor there.)
“He destroys a crap ton of infrastructure whenever he fights villains. I mean, he puts people out of business and completely devastates areas. And he doesn’t even care enough to compensate anyone for it,” he pauses, thinking, “Not to mention the amount of people he’s killed with his quirk. Innocent people that got caught in the crossfire as he was attacking a villain. And he kills the villains too sometimes, even when it’s entirely unnecessary. He’s an aggressive person who fails to work with the other heroes. I’m not sure how he made it to rank two.”
Izuku found this all out when he was researching something for school. It was for a project, something about the statistics for hero capture rates or something. He came across Endeavor and fell down a rabbit hole of terrible numbers. The man is completely horrible, and he never even has to face any consequences. He’s never even been taken to court despite the millions of dollars- maybe more- in damages.

He’s a pretty passionate person when it comes to heroes, even if his love has shifted to disdain. So he was rightfully shocked by the discovery. This is the first time he’s been able to tell someone of the number two hero without them angrily interjecting.

‘It’s just his quirk. All Might destroys just as much.’

Thats just dumb. All Might’s quirk is arguably way more destructive than Endeavor’s is. Super strength- or whatever he has- is capable of ruining things a lot more easily than fire. The difference is that the number one hero is more careful with his actions. He actually cares about the people he’s protecting and the area he’s fighting in.

‘You just prefer All Might over him.’

Wrong. He dislikes them both. But he can still admit that one is a million times better then the other.

‘Endeavor has a destructive quirk. You can’t seriously expect nothing to ever get damaged.’

Yes he can. Or he can at least expect a hero to care a little more. It’s in a heroes job description to protect as much as he can while hurting as little as possible. Endeavor just doesn’t care.

‘He’s number two for a reason.’

The point is that he shouldn’t be.

‘So what? Villains deserve it.’

Nobody deserves to be burned alive, or crushed by a falling building. Maybe murderers, but prison exists for a reason. And even then, Endeavor never manages to kill the actual bad villains, he kills the innocents and the petty thieves. Shop lifters don’t deserve to die. Neither do robbers or muggers or low level criminals. Thats an absurd thing to say and an absurd thing to defend.

Izuku is fuming by the time he chances a look at the villain. Only- to his horror- discover that the man is gone. As if he’s vanished into thin air in a layer of dust and smoke. As if he was never in a dingy alley killing someone. As if he and a teenager didn’t have a conversation over a seemingly dead body.

But he doesn’t stick around long enough to find out why his life’s been spared. Instead, he bolts out of the alley with his phone in hand and calls the police. By the time they get to the scene, Izuku is gone, the villain is nonexistent, and the victims managed to sit upright. He’s incoherent and barely alive, but the phone call saved his life. If the police would’ve arrived any later he’d have been dead in that nasty alley.

Izuku only finds out on the news later that the man is a known drug dealer. (Funny that he keeps running into them.) The police speculate that he was probably attacked because he cheated someone out of their drugs. Or money. Perhaps even both. Someone got mad and decided to enact their revenge by making sure he’d never deal again. The police kept him in custody both for his actions, and for the fact he might be targeted again.

He turns off the news before he can feel guilty about saving a bad person. But his heart supplies that he doesn’t think anyone deserves death. Just like how he defended the people Endeavor and his follows think found a fitting end.

Doing bad things doesn’t inherently make you a bad person. In all honesty though, it’s a lot more complicated than that. A person could be forced to do something, coerced into thinking it’s a good idea. They could be down on their luck and incapable of making enough money to feed themselves. They could’ve been a victim of a violent crime and killed their abuser in revenge. There are a million different reasons why people can commit a crime besides being plain evil. Of course it’s not an excuse for their actions, but an explanation. Deep down, very few people are truly horrible.

Thats why he could never hate Bakugo. Or his mother. Or anyone else who ever made him feel worthless. Because they’re all the product of a society that condones the cruel treatment of the quirkless. It’s hatred that’s been passed down from the first generation to the current one. It’ll never go away. People like him will forever be despised and tortured for something they could never control. Thats just the way it is.

So he marches forward, trying to ignore the jeers and the impending doom he knows should be coming. The ache of the numbers sitting on a screen that outline the extent of the loathing of quirkless people. The fear that he’ll end up a part of those numbers, another person lost young. Another quirkless dead.

So he goes to school. To work. To bed. To school. Work. Bed. School. Work. Bed. A repeated cycle that never seems to end.

(The train starts up again, slowly pulling away from the ruined station. But the man is no longer sitting outside on the bench. He’s settled into the back car with the other passengers, lazily leaned back.

In another moment, another possibility, Izuku and this man wouldn’t have been friends. They would’ve hated each other for simply existing on opposite sides. They’d curse each other’s wicked involvement in something much bigger than they’d ever imagined. And it’d be too late by the time they realized who each other was.

In another timeline, another moment, another possibility, Izuku Midoriya befriended a Todoroki. And he has this time too, whether he wanted to or not. It’s just a completely different Todoroki.

But that’s neither here nor there.)

“Himiko Toga,” a happy voice rings out.

Izuku glances up from the magazine he’s reading to find the source of the voice. And it’s from a very familiar face, the crazy blonde chick, as she leans over the counter. To his relief, she is completely clean of anyone’s blood and does not have any suspicious syringes on her. So she’s already off to a better start then their last meeting.

He cocks his head, “Sorry?”

“That’s my name,” she nods excitedly, “Himiko Toga.”

She looks happier than before. The touch of vulnerability and sadness that she had last time is completely gone. She appears to be back to her normal, happy self. He prefers her this way.

He taps his name tag in response, “Midoriya.”

Nobody calls him Izuku but his mother. It feels like a foreign word, something that doesn’t belong to him. He’s never been Izuku, he’s been Deku, he’s been Midoriya, he’s been Useless. But he’s never been Izuku. It’s sort of strange that something as simple as a name makes him sad. It’s his. It belongs to him and nobody else, but it’s never felt like his. It’s just a word that his mother picked that nobody else ever manages to remember.

Although that may be too dark of a thing to be thinking of right now.

“I haven’t seen you in a little while,” he continues, setting the magazine down, “I’m sorry if what I said to you last time was out of line.”

Toga smiles, tapping a finger as she somehow leans closer, “No! I was thinking about what you said and I really appreciated it. Nobody’s ever said I wasn’t villainous before.”
What an awful world to live in. People are discriminated against for no reason at all. Hated and abused and bullied for a quirk they had no way of choosing. In Izuku’s case, it’s the fact that he didn’t get a quirk to begin with. People just love making fun of others without wondering about the repercussions of doing so. And then everyone wonders why there are so many villains, when they’re part of the problem. Perhaps even the prime cause of it. Heroes will always be in business, always be fighting. There will never be a shortage of enemies. Because villains are made. Not born. Made.
“People are stupid,” he shrugs, as if it’s the simplest thing he’s ever said.

She grins. Izuku can’t help but feel happy too.

-

Toga comes back nearly every day after introducing herself. She talks to Izuku with a bright smile, sitting on the counter and swinging her legs happily. None of the other customers ever seem bothered by her, and neither does his boss. If the man is seeing her he must not care what she’s doing. Maybe it’s because she always manages to buy something or other before she skips out the door with him. Either way, Izuku finds that he enjoys her company. It’s a lot better then being alone behind a counter for hours.

She asks him a lot of questions about heroes- which he hesitantly answers. It’s not like she’s particularly interested in them, or becoming one herself, she just likes hearing what Izuku has to say. And he is very opinionated. 
Izuku likes it better when they’re talking about things besides heroes. For example, he found that the two of them are similar in the fact that they both have no idea what they’re going to do with their lives. Izuku has no plans after high school. Toga doesn’t even go to high school, even though she wears a school uniform. They’re both doomed to wither away and be forgotten forever. A morbid thought, but it makes him feel better that he’s not alone. At least one other person in the world is just like him, alone and tired of their circumstances. Toga never asks him about his quirklessness. Izuku never asks about her quirk either, even when he has an idea of what it is. It just feels fair to not comment about her when she never comments about him. They never feel the need to bring up their quirks (or lack thereof) in any of their conversations. It’s freeing, not having to worry about what someone thinks about him.
He comes to realize that Toga is probably his first real friend, even above Bakugo. She never insults him. She never gets mad when, on the rare occasion, he starts mumbling about something. She never questions why he lives there or why he works in some shitty store. She patiently listens when he goes off on tangents. She watches silently as he finishes his math homework.

Toga is the nicest person he’s ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Even so, he’s fully aware that she’s insane. The blood and syringes are proof of that. Part of him knows that he should be scared of her, perhaps alert the authorities about her behavior. But the less rational part of him supplies that Toga’s never hurt him. And until she gives him reason to doubt her, he doesn’t see why he should tell anyone. She’s just a little off. But everyone in this place is a little off. Including him. She fits right in.

Besides, after that first time, she’s never showed up bloody again. She never buys anything suspicious either. Mostly just candy and drinks. Sometimes the odd purchase of a toy, a ball she can bounce around while he works. Something to distract her when he does the most boring homework on the planet. She acts more like a little kid than she does a villain. He’s not sure how anyone could look at her and says she’s a terrible person. They’re clearly horrible judges of character.

“Do you want to be a hero Mido?” Toga asks, ripping him from his thoughts.

He nearly drops the box he’s holding in surprise.

He’d been walking around the store with her in tow, restocking an impossible amount of shelves. She’d been quiet the entire time too. Lost in thought maybe, but Izuku didn’t want to bother her. Toga was rarely ever silent when it was just the two of them. If she wasn’t talking, then he knew not to distract her. So he let her be silent as they walked up and down the aisles. It was only when he was holding the final box of items in his hands that she sprung the question.

He laughs, unsure, “Me? A hero? No.”

“Why not?” Toga frowns at him, eyeing the chips as she talks, “You’re nice enough to be a hero. And cute.”

What does being cute have to do with becoming a hero?
…?
Whatever, that’s not the point. He’s found that’s it’s best to not take some of the things Toga says to heart. She’s an odd kind of person.

“I don’t want to be a hero,” he answers blankly.
Though that should be expected when taking into account their conversations thus far. She should know how he feels about heroes. He never really has anything nice to say when they talk about them, he just tears them apart.Izuku can think of a million different things that he’s said that are a direct insult to specific heroes. He doesn’t tread carefully about the subject when he’s with Toga. He talks about how much he despises Endeavor and the fact that All Might ignores legal precautions. And he never fails to talk about how greedy heroes are for attention. Nothing about anything he ever says should have given the impression he wants to be a hero.
She swipes the bag from his hands, “You’d be a great hero, I think. Your face is all cute and trustworthy. And you’d look so pretty when you’re bleeding after a fight!”

Her priorities seemed slightly skewed there, but he could be wrong. But again, Toga is an odd person and he shouldn’t take the weird things she says to heart.

“What are you on about? I could never be a hero,” he folds the box under his arm and begins the walk back to the register.

She skips after him, still happy as ever, “Why not? Do you have a villainous quirk like me?”

“Toga, for one, I already told you there’s no such thing as a villainous quirk,” he doesn’t turn around as he makes it to the front, “Also, like I said before, I’m quirkless.”

She’s silent behind him as he busies himself with throwing the box away and putting himself back behind the counter. There’s nothing else he has to do tonight, no more painstaking chores to complete. Restocking the shelves was pretty much the only thing he had to do this shift. Which is odd in and of itself. The boss usually makes him do about a thousand things before he’s allowed to officially clock out and go home.
Izuku is the only one who ever sweeps or mops, hell, he’s the only one to ever organize anything. It’s like he’s the only employee. Whatever. He shouldn’t get too angry about it. He prefers working alone at night over the day  with annoying people. They all love making fun of him and dragging him around like he’s some puppy. And they always make him do everything anyway, sitting back and laughing at their phones as he runs the entire place.
He shakes his head to clear away the rising bile in his throat.

It’s a slow night for him, slower than most. The only person to come in so far was Toga. He’s grateful for that. It gives him a short break after months of working this stupid job and being forced to deal with so many rude comments.

“So you can’t be a hero because you’re quirkless? Is that what you’re saying?” Toga swings herself onto the counter, yellow eyes narrowing.

She’s angry, for some reason or another. He’s never seen her angry before. It felt like an emotion that was far from her, much like how her sadness was a rare thing to behold. It’s one of those things Toga probably keeps hidden and locked away in her chest in favor of her happiness. It just doesn’t make sense for her to be angry at the current moment. Izuku’s already told her about what he is, she shouldn’t be surprised. 
He sighs, hopping onto the counter as well, “Quirkless people can’t be heroes.”
They’re back to back now, and Izuku can’t see whatever face she’s making. If she’s silently agreeing or trying to find an expression that won’t hurt his feelings. But Izuku’s moved on with his life. He’s not sad about not being able to become a hero anymore. It’s not one of the things that keeps him up at night, it barely ever crosses his mind. She doesn’t have to try and make him feel better. Really, he only ever expects disappointment when he tells people what he is.

A failure.
“So you’re not going to try because you’re quirkless? Or do you really not want to be a hero?” Toga asks carefully, in a soft tone very unlike her.
He laughs, lighthearted as he honestly answers, “I don’t want to be a hero Toga. Honestly.”

She leans against him with a hum. Izuku nearly catapults off the counter and straight into the ceiling at the touch.

It’s the first time someone has touched him in a way that isn’t meant to hurt him. Just simple contact, with the intent to comfort him and not make him cry. The only one who’s ever touched him and not made his skin itch was- surprisingly- Bakugo’s mother. She was the kind of person who treated everyone entirely equally. Mitsuki didn’t care if you were quirkless or if you possessed the strongest quirk in existence. She was nice to Izuku before and after she found out about his diagnosis. He was never treated differently by her, save for the final time she hugged him.

The point is that Izuku is unused to being handled with such care. It’s shocking to him that Toga’s touch won’t tear his skin open. Her touch won’t burn his clothes and make them stick to his skin painfully. He won’t bleed because of her. She won’t point and laugh at him as he cries out. It won’t hurt when her back touches his, and it won’t hurt later on either. He’ll be able to sleep soundly.
She touched him and it doesn’t hurt. “What do you want to be Mido?” Toga continues, unaware of his inner turmoil, “Are you seriously planning to work in this dump forever? You’re way too smart to end up like that.”
He stares at his backpack, “Such is the life of the quirkless.”

She pauses, grumbling something incoherently under her breath. Izuku doesn’t have to look to know that her signature grin is absent from her face. Her confusing anger is still present, and he can’t, for the life of him, figure out why.

“I’ll try to find a better job,” he tries, “One with better pay.”

This does nothing to placate her.

“You should be able to do whatever you want to. You’re smart. And you’re cute,” she rips the chip bag open, “And you’re much nicer than most people I’ve met. They all use their quirks to hurt people.”

He doesn’t even have any quirk to hurt people with. Not that he would. And that doesn’t make him a nice person, just someone who doesn’t want to get arrested.

“Toga-“ he begins, but the door screeches open and tears his attention back to his shitty job.

The one he’ll probably be stuck in for the rest of his miserable life.

To be fair though, it’s not likely that his life will last a long time anyway. He’ll manage to die off around the same time most quirkless people do. Toga won’t have to worry about how sad his circumstances are after that. Because he’ll be dead and she won’t have to feel sorry for him. Nobody will ever feel sorry for him after he’s dead. And wouldn’t it be better that way?
Izuku glances over to the door as a scruffy looking man pushes his way inside. He’s walking as if the weight of the sun is resting on his shoulders. The way he moves is like that of a man who hasn’t slept for a month but was forced to do strenuous activity. The bags under his eyes rival Izuku’s, and his shoulders are slumped in quiet resignation. He’s wearing all black, except for the strange scarf like thing wrapping around his shoulders. His face is halfway buried in it and his face eyebrows seem to be permanently furrowed . He looks about as well rested as Izuku is. Which is both comforting and horrifying to realize.
His black eyes scan the store- including Izuku and Toga on the counter- before he drags himself down one of the aisles.

Izuku slides off the counter, “It’s not like there’s anything I have to work with. Why would I be mean if it’d only result in an ass kicking?”

Toga spins around, seemingly undeterred that the conversation was momentarily interrupted by the strange man. Her face is pulled into a frown, sadness just barely touching her yellow eyes. And the bag of chips is tightly grasped between her hands like it’ll fly away at any moment. But at least it looks like she’s not angry anymore. Which is all he ever wants, for Toga to be happy.

“I know you. You wouldn’t use your quirk to hurt anyone if you had one,” she points a finger in his face, “You’re simply incapable of being a meanie!”

At least someone has faith in him. Thats more than he can say about anyone else. Even his mother didn’t believe he’d amount to anything. That’s why she cried and apologized when he asked if he could still be a hero. That’s all Izuku needed to understand that his mother wasn’t supportively behind him like Bakugo’s parents were.

“Nobody is incapable of being mean. I’m just too tired to yell at anyone or start fights,” he yawns, internally laughing at the perfect timing of it.

She huffs, pouting at him, “No, you’re too nice. I bet you that if you slept well, you’d still be as nice as you are now.”

This is the strangest argument he’s ever had. Nobody’s ever sat in front of him and told him that he could never hope to be mean. Toga might be the only person willing to argue over the complexities of Izuku’s behavior. Most people couldn’t give less of a shit about how he views himself.

Yet another reason why Toga is the only friend he’s ever had.

“I’m only nice to you,” he snatches the chips from her hands, “You’ve never seen me outside of work.”

She lunges for the chips, “But I can tell you’re a nice person. Otherwise you would’ve ignored me. Or made fun of my quirk.”

He dances away from her hands with a frown.

He shouldn’t be considered a nice person for having basic human decency should he? All he said was that her quirk didn’t make her a villain. It’s not like he pulled her from a burning building or complimented her on the street. The two of them only met because she happened to walk into the store when she did. A true nice person would’ve interacted with Toga just because, and he’s not sure that he ever would’ve. They would’ve stayed two strangers that’d never have had the chance of meeting.

“Why would I ever make fun of someone’s quirk? I don’t have one,” he replies, sliding further backward.

Togas hand swipes at air and she gives up with a huff. But that doesn’t mean he’s managed to escape the strangest conversation he’s ever had.

Toga frowns from her seat on the counter, “Mido, you’re so weird. Normal people like being told that they’re nice.”

He laughs, “I was just trying to say that I’m not nice enough to be a hero,” he waves the bag at her, “And I don’t want to be one either, despite what you say about me.”

“The things I say about you are true though,” Toga grumbles as she crosses her arms over her chest angrily.

At least she’s being nice. She’s not mad at him, just at the way he talks about himself. Toga is the kind of person to get annoyed for you instead of with you. It’s endearing how nice she is, he’d even say that she’s kinder than him. A low bar, but one she flew over easily.

Izuku sighs, glancing around the store before looking at her again, “Fine. If it makes us stop talking about heroes. I’m super cute and nice because you say so.”

She grins at him, but he feels more mortified than anything else. Because it’s just his luck that the moment he utters the most embarrassing sentence of his life, the scruffy man sets his stuff on the counter. It’s an assortment of cat food and instant coffee, but he can hardly pay attention to the specifics.

The man, for his credit, looks entirely unbothered by everything. He spares Toga a glance as he walks up, but doesn’t particularly care about their argument. If he thinks Izuku is an idiot he certainly doesn’t make any outward sign of it. He just pulls out his phone to look at something or other while he waits for his items to be scanned. Almost as if he’s used to people saying the weirdest things around him. While a nice thought, it doesn’t make him feel better at all.

“Hello, Sir,” he clears his throat and steps closer, “I hope you found everything you were looking for.”

Toga hides her face behind her hands, the little traitor. Izuku feels his life force draining by the second as she giggles at his misfortune.

The man looks up, “Yes. Thank you,” he pauses for a moment, “You look a little young to be working this late.”

Izuku scoffs. The man raises an expectant eyebrow as he pulls out his wallet.

He looks weirdly familiar, as if Izuku should know who he is but can’t place his fingers on it. Is he a teacher?

(He would’ve been Izuku’s teacher in another life. Although, him being a teacher is not why he is recognizable. Izuku should know who he is, he was a hero nerd not so long ago.

But that’s neither here nor there.)

“I’m the only one who ever gets this shift. It’s not a big deal,” he glances up, “That’ll be 25 dollars. Would you like a bag?”

“Yeah,” the guy hands him a wad of cash, “You always work this late then?”

He's more talkative than Izuku thought he’d be.

He nods, “Yeah. I’m the only one willing to. It’s peaceful.”

He works other shifts too, when other people aren’t willing to come in. He works whenever possible though, whenever there’s an opening. Izuku loves sleep, but he loves money even more. Anything to let him keep his apartment and avoid ever moving back into his mother’s. His hatred of that home is more inspiring than any dream he may have for his future. He loves his mother, he’d just rather stay away for as long as conceivably possible.

Living by himself is so much better. No mother to hang over his head and make sure nothings going on. He can wash the dishes without a watchful eye peering over him. He can sleep without feeling his mother’s guilt. He can eat unhealthy food. He can do homework without her trying to interrupt to explain things to him. It feels like he’s had training wheels on his entire life, and moving away took them away. But in a good way.

It’s not as jarring as he imagined moving away from a parent should be. He feels it should be harder to stay away from your mother. Other kids cry when they have to leave home.

“How old are you?” The guy slips his wallet into an invisible pocket.

Izuku hands him the bag carefully, “I’m a freshman.”
Toga stills on the counter. The scruffy man frowns. What? Does he look like some old man? Did the both of them imagine that he’s way older than he actually is? That’s a little disheartening. 
To be fair, he never mentioned his age to Toga before, but it’s never come up. He doesn’t know her age either. If anything, she looks a couple years older than him. She’s well aware that he’s in high school, he’s definitely mentioned it before. He never told her specifically what grade, but he thought it was obvious.

Oh god. Does he look old?

Mr. Scruffy takes the bag as if there’s a bomb inside it, “You’re younger then I thought. The same age as my new students.”

So he is a teacher then. Izuku is really good at guessing. Maybe that’s his hidden quirk, randomly guessing things that turn out to be true. What a tantalizing thought that is.

“Yeah. We started a few weeks ago” he leans on the counter using his forearm, “The hero schools start after us I think.”
Toga takes her chance to snag the bag of chips from his hand with a triumphant smile. She darts off the counter and down one of the aisles and Izuku nearly hurdles over after her. But he remains dutiful to his job and the promise of his upcoming paycheck. He twitches but doesn’t move, a display of true self control. The man doesn’t even seem to notice anything’s happened, shifting to hold the bag closer to his body.
“Do they? I never noticed we started later than other schools,” Mr. Scruffy says, still frowning.
We? We?
This guy- this scruffy, hobo looking man- teaches at a hero school? Just who is he? Regular citizens don’t even get to set foot within the gates of that school.

He keeps calm, still glaring at the row Toga ran down, “Yeah. Someone I know goes to UA and he started like two weeks after us. But maybe my school is the odd one out.”
This is weird. It feels wrong talking to this guy, for whatever reason. But it’d be kind of rude to just kick the man out. Or sprint away to chase after his blonde menace of a friend. And not just because it’d jeopardize his money if he ran away now. He feels worried. Which is entirely too weird a feeling to ignore. It’s strange that he feels so on edge.Izuku doesn’t feel intimidated by anyone anymore, he’s stared down the barrel of a shotgun and a villain before. He’s nearly died a frightening number of times since moving here. It’s hard to be scared of normal looking people anymore. But it’s hard to be scared of anything anymore. He could probably stare at Bakugo eye to eye now, something he couldn’t accomplish before. That’s how frightening this job is. It puts him on edge- just like this man.
But it’s odd.

The man is normal looking, almost unassuming. He looks lean. Not terribly muscly and built like some of the more popular heroes. His posture is slumped, as if he’s trying to make himself look smaller than he is. And he doesn’t have any apparent quirk. He looks like a normal, middle aged man. But maybe that’s why he rubs Izuku the wrong way, the whole appearance could be a facade. Something about the way he stands- despite the slouch- makes Izuku sure that he’s strong. And the fact he teaches at a hero school just adds to the unease.

“Your friend in the hero course?” Mr. Scruffy continues calmly.

Ah. Bakugo isn’t really his friend, is he?
He smiles, straightening and cracking his back, “Yeah. He’s in the hero course. But everyone knew he would be.”It falls weirdly silent. Neither of them manages to say anything for an agonizing few seconds. They just stare at each other, expecting the other to continue the forced conversation. But neither is talking. The scruffy man seems to realize that Izuku is pretty unwilling to talk any longer, bowing his head and turning on his heel. As he leaves, Izuku launches himself over the counter in order to start chasing Toga. He doesn’t notice how the man lingers by the door for a second, chancing him one last look. But Izuku isn’t a particularly observant person, despite his intelligence.
(Bare feet hit concrete. They slap against the ground and the sound echoes around the empty alley. It’s a place so unfortunately familiar and frightening all at the same time.

Try as she might, she’s never able to reach the other end. Even when she sprints until her calves go numb and her eyes begin to tear up in pain. Not even when it feels like she’s been running for hours upon hours. The other end seems to be miles away, unreachable by her horribly short legs. She’s never managed to see what lies beyond the dark grey walls. If perhaps, someone is waiting with open arms on the other end.

Her bandages whip through the wind. They sting, fresh cuts dug into her pale skin and reminding her of her life. The life she’s unable to escape no matter how hard she tries to run away. She’s doomed to forever be strapped to that chair. Doomed to be torn apart and crudely shoved back together for eternity. Doomed to only ever experience pain. Doomed to never know what it’s like to be a child.

Doomed.

She isn’t even able to kill herself to escape. The last time she tried, they tied her down and didn’t let her move for an entire month. She was stitched back together and chained to that chair, tighter than normal. Even as she pulled at her skin in an attempt to escape, she was unable to move. When her wrists tore open against the metal she was just fixed again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Until she was too scared to fight any more.

But she’s so very tired. Of the long run down the alley. Of the never ending torture. Of life. Of everything. She just wants it all to end. She wants something to snatch her away and make her unable to feel pain ever again. Or perhaps just take her away and end her suffering for good.

Anything.

She’s desperate.

It’s getting harder to crawl out of bed in the morning. Her body is always sore. It’s always aching and throbbing and hurting. She knows it’s because she’s all wrong know, incomplete. Every time she’s put back together, it’s wrong. part of her is left on the chair, ignored in favor of keeping her from bleeding out. It hurts less every time. But at the same time, she knows it’s because there’s less of her to hurt. Less of her.

Soon she’ll just be a puppet made of porcelain and marred with a million different scars. And she’s scared. She’s so scared.

They keep telling her that no hero will ever come save her. She knows it’s true, that she’ll never escape. But she’s a young girl who desperately wants to escape the torture of her life. So in the back of her mind, she always has a small sliver of hope that everything will work out. Even when they inevitably catch her and drag her back to that chair. Even when the alley shrinks away and she tries to clutch at the light on the other end.
One day someone will reach out and grab her hand. They’ll clutch her to their chest and defend her with their life. They’ll save her from her life. They’ll make sure she’s never back in the chair, that she never bleeds again. One day she’ll be able to smile. One day she won’t be scared to wake up.
But today isn’t that day.

She doesn’t make it this time either. She never does. But she has to keep trying, keep running, until someone drags her out.)

Izuku

hi

ive been working. But I saw your messages

bakugo

deku?

thank god
you finally replied

you have a job now?

Izuku

yeah

i work at a grocery store. It helps me pay for my apartment.

how are you?

bakugo

you live alone now?

i

im fine. How are you?

Izuku

Im glad you’re doing good

i’ve been worse. Thank you for asking though

i made a new friend. You’d like her.

shes nice

reminds me of you

bakugo

good

its good you’re good.

new friend? How is she like me?

Izuku

shes blonde and crazy

bakugo

hah???

im not crazy

:(

Izuku

whatever makes you happy man

…you’re a little crazy

:)

bakugo

:(

…

:)

…are you busy this week?

Izuku

:)

i have work all week

except Saturday

why? You want to meet up?

bakugo

yeah

i want to talk to you in person

about

yknow

things…

would you meet me?

Izuku

…you’re being nicer then I remember you being

but

sure…

I’ll see you on Saturday…

bakugo

thank you

for finally replying

and for agreeing to meet me despite everything

youll see me Saturday

Izuku

ill send you my address

be nice

i dont live in a good area

bakugo

my lips are closed and silent

Izuku

they better be

or I’m blocking you with no regrets

:(

and you better tell me all about your fancy hero class

bakugo

ill tell you whatever you want to hear as long as you don’t block me

so…deal

ill see you Saturday

:)

Izuku

:)

ok

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Izuku should really stop putting himself into positions like this. It’s been proven time and time again that he’s weak, a quirkless failure that only gets in the way. He provides very little when he steps between two people in a fight. Yes, the victim manages to get away, but he is then forced to take their place. He’s only strong enough to get one person out of the confrontation and not both. Never both. Never him.
But he’s been trying to do better lately, ignore the strange desire to apparently get smacked around. Because that’s all that ever happens when he steps in. He gets smacked around. Aldera was proof that nobody cares about him, and everyone is willing to hit him when he got in the way. Including the teachers.

Izuku’s been avoiding alleys ever since his near death experience with Mr. Icy eyes. And he’s made sure to pointedly be a meek person at his job. He lets the store get robbed. He doesn’t even care when people run out the door without paying. It’s easier to let people just commit their crimes, as long as they’re not trying to actively murder him. Only when he’s about to die is when he finally speaks up- throws the aggressor off their game so he can flee. Unfortunately, this has led to him accidentally flirting with criminals. Long story short, he’s been getting a lot of flowers lately.

Which was never his intention in the moment.
The situation right now is only happening because he was chasing a cat down the street. He’d spotted it, blankly realizing that it’d been following him around for weeks. But it wouldn’t let him get closer when he tried to pet it. Or feed it. The second he tried anything, it growled and jumped out of his reach. Which he finds incredibly confusing, seeing as the thing has been following him around. Izuku should be the one growling and jumping away.
But that’s not the main issue here.

The problem arose when the cat got kicked by a particularly aggressive customer as Izuku was closing for the day. He very obviously did not allow this, whacking the guy and forcing him out of the store. Which was an extremely noble thing to do considering the obvious mutation quirk- very pointy, stabby knifes- on the guys back. If the guy were willing to kick Izuku like he did a small animal, someone might’ve died, namely him. The cat didn’t appreciate his bravery though, taking one look at him and sprinting down the street. It was ignoring a very painful looking limp as it went. Like any good person, Izuku took off down the street after it.

The cat needed help, whether it realized it did or not. It couldn’t survive here with a limp. It’d get eaten alive or bullied out of all food in the area. Thats just the way things were for weak things here, Izuku knows that better than most.

He was a very persistent person when it came to things he cared about. A very short list, but one that had cats at the very top. They weren’t like a month ago, back when he stopped that drug deal, but after taking a foot to the jaw he started caring. It’s only fair that he follow a cat down dark streets and alleys in the middle of the night. It’s only right to abandon all his morals and goals to improve to chase a cat. Any normal human would do the same. Especially on the single night without their only friend to help make sure they don’t die.

Oh yeah. He forgot to mention that Toga hadn’t showed up his entire shift, which was strange for her. Maybe she’d finally grown tired of him.

He’s not sure how long he’s been running before he was lead into another alley. He was probably miles from his work, miles from his bed. But he’d already made it this far and he wasn’t going to give up on helping now. It was a dead end alley anyway, there was nowhere else for the cat to go except back to him. He’d successfully cornered it.
Izuku barely registered that other people were already in the alley, he was too focused on his goals. So when he ran around them, through them, and dove through one of their legs, he only distantly cared. Sure he knocked that guy down, but he caught the cat. And sure, he pushed the other people into the walls, but he caught the cat. And that’s way more important. Even if the cat is actively scratching his arms and tearing the sleeves open. He understands what it’s like to feel helpless and cornered. He’s a quirkless teenager, one who’s been kicked around his entire life. He knows better than anyone else what a scrawny cat must feel like in a place like this. But he also knows that he would’ve done anything for someone to chase him down and help him. Izuku would’ve clawed and scratched and bit the hand reaching out, but he would’ve appreciated the time someone put into him.
Pain is a hard thing to deal with all alone. Everything is hard to deal with alone, even when he tried to convince himself that he was strong. That he was brave. It took Izuku all his life thus far to realize that being brave has nothing to do with not accepting someone’s help. He could be strong and sad. He could be brave and still let people help him- like Toga. Having one person in his corner made him realize how important it is to let people in. Sometimes you have to give up a little control, if it means that someone is saving you.

It was only when he stood up that he understood what he’d done, that’d he’d barged into another fight. Except he hadn’t even meant to this time. This time was a complete and total accident, not an attempt at being heroic.
One person was on their ass, staring up at Izuku like he was a mass murderer. And the other two were groaning on opposite ends of the alley walls. They were holding their stomachs with pained expressions, pulling themselves up and away from what they’d fallen onto. It was an exposed pipe- holy shit, ouch - for one of them and a perfectly sized trash can for the other. The longer he looked around, the more he realized it seemed that he had hit them on purpose. Even if it was an accident. Even if all he wanted was to catch some cat. That’s just his luck.
Thankfully, nobody was bleeding. That would’ve made the situation about ten times worse than right now. Because then he’d have to take them to the hospital and explain how this all happened. And he gathers that no good doctor worth their salt would believe him. A story of chasing a cat and accidentally knocking down three teenagers sounds completely unbelievable. Especially when taking into account that he’s a few heads shorter than the rest of them. And skinnier. And all around weaker looking. Not to mention the whole quirkless thing they’d eventually bring up.

But it was fine, because despite their moaning and groaning, the three of them were completely fine. So he wouldn’t have to explain what happened to anyone. All of them could go about their lives without ever interacting again. They might hold a grudge, but he doesn’t live near here, so he can just hide away until they forget.

“Ah, hi there,” he clears his throat, shifting awkwardly with the snarling cat in his arms, “I’m sorry about that. It really was an accident. Are the three of you alright?”

Nobody replies. Izuku gets the feeling that they don’t want to talk to him.

He glances around, trying again, “Hello? Are you guys not ok? Should I call someone to come help?”

No answer again. He frowns.

Are they sick? Did he hit them harder than he thought? He genuinely doesn’t want to call someone over to help them, but he doesn’t want to get in trouble for this. He might get fired from his job if his boss catches wind of him being arrested. And then he’d be jobless and useless.

He’d just kill himself then.

(One thing that he doesn’t take into account is that the others aren’t hurt, but scared. Izuku, a small but powerful teenager, barreled into an alley and manhandled them all out of the way. He knocked the air from their lungs and sent them flying in three separate directions with his body alone. He moved so fast none of them could even react, moving through them in the blink of an eye. And he did all of these things without the slightest help from a quirk.

Izuku Midoriya is more frightening than he gives himself credit for. People fear those with a nonchalant face and an apathetic outlook on life.

He can hold his own, keep calm, in absolutely every situation. And that is what makes him a terrifying sort of person. That’s why that villain never killed him, why the drug dealers ran. And it’s why customers listen when he tells them to not do something. Izuku holds all the mystery of a seasoned underground hero, one you don’t want to fight. He doesn’t need a quirk to be infinitely intimidating.

This is the exact opposite of the kind of personality he should’ve had, in another possible future. In another timeline Izuku was a bright person. He was a limelight hero that saved people with a genuine smile, endlessly empathetic.

But that is neither here nor there, as he’ll never be that hero.)

“Hello?” He tries, a last ditch attempt at getting an answer out of any of them.

To no one’s surprise, he again does not receive an answer. It’s like the three teenagers are frozen where they stand- and sit- unable to speak. They stare at Izuku with wide eyes and tightly locked jaws, as if afraid to say anything. The one on his ass is slowly dragging himself backward to escape the dingy alley.

Izuku looks around, taking in the sight of a familiar set of purple eyes. With a lingering frown, he realizes that he’s interrupted a rather cruel bullying session. So he doesn’t feel guilty for crashing into everyone and making them gasp in pain. Because you have to be a different kind of mean to bully someone for no reason. Especially to the extent of what he’s seeing now, the horrors laid out before him.

The kid, for his credit, isn’t crying at all. He doesn’t actually seem to be sad either. There isn’t anything to convey that he’s horrified or frightened at his predicament. He just looks absolutely pissed as he holds himself up with the wall, panting heavily. Izuku would be livid too, if he were stuck in some dark alley with random people beating him up. At night. But he doesn’t think he’d be able to hold back the wave of tears like this teen is doing.
Well, it’s more than just a beat down, it’s somehow worse. Bad enough that he himself has never experienced anything quite so awful looking. And he’s experienced just about every sort of punishment under the sun, from being drowned in a toilet to held off the side of a building. On particularly horrible days people came up with the most obscene things they could think of. Spider lilies on his desk, etched with the permanent sentiment that he should kill himself. Tacks in his shoes. Bleach poured on him while he was cleaning. Threatening him that they’d get Bakugo to light the place up if he tried to escape. Among other things.
But never in all his life has he been muzzled like a feral animal. The sight of those straps digging into the guys face makes Izuku’s skin crawl. And the way it’s cutting his cheeks, prying open gaping cuts, makes Izuku want to keel over and puke.
The guy is beat up too, ugly bruising on his face and neck, but it’s nothing compared to his face. Nothing. There’s something inherently disgusting about the intent of a muzzle. Like it’s a direct insult towards the guy, an offensive joke taken leagues too far. It’s jarringly different from them just hitting him. They chose to muzzle him and then beat him. They chose to cut his face open and clamp his mouth shut. They chose to injure him for the purpose of making sure he couldn’t speak.
Bruises heal. Bruises go away after a while and leave no trace they were there to begin with. But that muzzle won’t ever leave his face, in a way. Because those scars with mar his skin for the rest of his life, haunt his reflection in the mirror. His face will heal and the cuts will close up, but the scars will stay. Forever. And that means he’ll never be able to fully heal. Not unless he can look back at this moment and not relive it. And nobody ever absolutely moves on. They can’t. That’s human nature.

Izuku is shaking when he finally forces himself back into reality. He can’t decide if it’s out of fear or anger, perhaps a horrid mixture of both.

He drops the cat- the only reason he was here to begin with- in order to rush over to the muzzled kid. It feels like everything’s been skewed, that his priorities were jumbled around the second he entered the alleyway. Maybe even before, when he began chasing a cat down the street.

He whirls around on the guy attempting to crawl away, “Why the fuck would you do this?”

His voice comes out angry, dark, and so very unlike him. It sounds more like his mother when she’s yelling at someone. Perhaps even his father, who is only screaming in every memory he manages to conjure up in his mind. His voice was mean and scary in a way that could only ever remind him of the day his father left. When the man spat his final goodbye and slammed the door behind him, never to be seen again. It’s an uncanny similarity that makes Izuku want to scrape his mouth off.

Izuku has never been an angry person, even when he had reason to. He didn’t even know he was capable of producing such an emotion and acting upon it. He’s never raised his voice at anyone for his entire life-  even Bakugo. Which is made increasingly obvious as the horrible bullies flinch in fear as he raises his tone.
He doesn’t care to hear whatever shitty excuse the three of them can come up with. There’s nothing any of them can manage to say that will explain what they’ve done. What kind of torture and pain they’ve inflicted without bothering to comprehend the consequences. Without stopping to wonder how this would affect the kids life, and their own. Even if this kid was the epitome of evil- which Izuku highly doubts- it wouldn’t make this right . It wouldn’t make muzzling and punching a teenager in a back alley morally acceptable.
He supplies from somewhere in the very back of his mind that teenagers are stupid, and they never stop to think about much of anything. But part of him knows for certain that that’s not a good enough excuse either. People learn from the beginning of their lives that hurting other people is inexcusable. And- arguably the lesson that sticks better- you treat others how you wish to be treated. Izuku knows for a fact that nobody else here could handle being muzzled, and yet they’ve done it anyway. That goes against the very grain of basic human principles. These kids are downright evil. And stupid.

Stupidity he can excuse, not so much evilness. It’s one of those few things in the world that is irredeemable. You’re forever a bad person if you beat someone up, or if you kick a cat. If you’re talking to someone and have to hide something, you’re a bad person. End of story. Unless, of course, you’ve been forced into doing something against your will. That is the only exception to the rule. Guilt or coercion are the only things Izuku can forgive. But not things a person has done of sound mind and body. Some things never go away, even if you spend the rest of your life trying.

Nothing will ever wash away this act. Nothing will ever make any of this right, unless the victim finds it in his heart to forgive them. And even then, he hopes it haunts their dreams forever for what they’ve done here.

He turns away from wide eyes to keep himself from murdering someone. Which would look way worse than trying to explain someone bleeding to a doctor.

Izuku cuts the muzzle off with the knife he always keeps in his back pocket. He praises himself in his mind for his conscious decision to bring it with him every morning. Even though the boss always tells him that he shouldn’t have such a thing on him while he’s working. He disagrees. It’s never a bad idea to be prepared for anything- something that’s proving to be true now. If he didn’t have this knife, he’s not sure how he would’ve gotten the muzzle off.
Purple eyes stayed locked on him so intensely he almost drops the knife. They follow his every move, flicking between the offensive thing in Izuku’s hand and the greenette’s face. There’s a heavy sense of distrust in those eyes that make Izuku sweat under their gaze.
Purple eyes jerks his chin towards the bullies, “They’re gone.”

Izuku glances over his shoulder warily just in time to see the last person duck out of the alley. He has the sense to curse their entire family under his breath before focusing back on the victim again. There’s nothing more he can do in terms of immediate actions, save for leaving the kid and taking off after them. But he can’t abandon one issue to chase another.

The glaring problem of a sliced face is upon him, and he’s not sure how to help. The damage is so much worse than he initially thought.

“Pieces of shit. Fucking assholes,” he swears angrily, digging into his bag with hostility.

It’s the first time in a while he’s worn his bag on the front of himself, both straps on his shoulders. He doesn’t take as much time to dwell on this than he thinks he should. It’s a deeply rooted issue, one he’s just randomly decided to fix on a whim. But it’s less pressing of a matter than someone bleeding profusely out of their face in front of him. So he’ll gloss over it like he glosses over most everything in his life.

He pulls out a first aid kit while biting on his lip. He’s not really that good at patching other people up, he’s never had to do it before. Of course he’s wrapped his own self about a million times already. But that feels like a completely different thing, like he should take a gentler approach with this then he does himself. He doesn’t really want the guy to bolt on him before he can finish. And it’d be bad to hurt the already bleeding guy. So he can’t just roughly apply first aid like he does when it’s his own body.

Purple eyes smiles- a thing that takes Izuku by surprise, “You’re the first person to call them assholes.”
He squints. This guy is as strange as him.
…The cuts are so strange, he’s not sure how to go about with doing anything to ease the pain. He’s never really thought about the damages that a muzzle might inflict. It’s one of those things he’s never bothered to care about before, but he’s kicking himself over right about now. If he’d clicked that one link about this topic two years ago, maybe he wouldn’t be so lost right now.

“I doubt that,” he dabs at one of the cuts with gauze, “Tell me if it hurts and I’ll stop.”

The smile drops. Izuku’s not sure if it’s because he glossed over the others words so fast or because he’s hurting him. Either way, he’s not getting smacked away, so he takes the time he needs to properly handle the wound.

He wipes the blood away as carefully as he can, stepping closer to get a better look. Clearing away the blood is more difficult than he thought it’d be. And that’s taking into account his lack of experience with fixing something that isn’t himself. For one, he’s significantly shorter than the purple eyed boy, so he has to stand on his toes to reach his face. And there’s so much blood it’s eating away the gauze a little too quickly for his liking. The area is sticky too, and he’s afraid of something getting stuck. Or even the skin latching onto something and getting torn open even further.

“Do you remember me?” The boy asks softly.

He raises his eyes slowly, and the other boy is still staring.

Izuku’s hand stops, “Yeah. I remember you. You always seem to be up against a wall in an alley.”

He starts cleaning again. The other boy laughs, purple eyes finally dropping their gaze. But there’s no humor, no happiness, behind the noise. It feels hollow and cold. Just something to fill the silence. A reaction made to keep a conversation going. A placeholder. Izuku knows exactly what the laugh is- he’s done it himself a million times- he’s just not in the mood to ask about it. The kid is rightfully upset right now.

The two of them can only exist this close because they’re not asking each other pointless questions. They have a fragile calmness over them, one that’ll be broken if Izuku asks about the kids obvious problems.

“It’s not on purpose,” he sighs, “I’m just unlucky.”

Izuku frowns, “Is that so? How come I never see you fight back then?”

It’s silent again.

The skin is clear enough from the blood, so Izuku tries to figure out what to do next. All the while, those purple eyes seem to be lost in some sort of silent internal debate. They land on him again after a moment with resolve.

“I get in trouble if I fight back,” the boy says quietly.

Ah. So he’s just like Izuku then. Someone who’s been smacked around for their entire life, expected to submit to the criticism. Someone who’s tired of fighting back because nobody ever really listens. Someone who’s spent their entire life shrinking in on themselves and trying to be invisible. Someone who feels like a failure despite everything. Someone who sometimes wishes they’d been born as someone else. It’s a sad existence, to be just like him.

He sticks a bandaid over one of the larger cuts with steady hands. A heavy kind of sadness settles on his back, urging him to say something more. Do something better.

But he can’t.
Izuku is just a quirkless nobody who happens to have the worst luck on the planet. He won’t be able to fix anything for this boy. Not unless he toppled society and rebuilt it in order to eliminate discrimination. It’s impossible to live in a world where nobody gets hurt, even when you wish you could save everyone. All he can manage to provide is a little first aid in the back alley of god knows what town he’s in. Thats all someone like him can ever hope to do. It just feels wrong. Even if he’s done all he could with what he had.
He steps away from the boy, looking over his work, “I get it. But there’s someone out there who’ll be willing to listen to you. Have faith,” he zips his backpack closed, “You should get that checked out by an actual professional. I’m not very good at helping other people.”

Purple eyes look at him helplessly, almost pleading, begging him to say more. Izuku isn’t sure he knows what the other boy wants. What he thinks the other boy is expecting from this exchange. And he’s also not sure that he’ll be able to give whatever it is. He’s never been the comforting type, the sort of person who can come up with inspirational speeches on the fly. He’s a smart person, and an empathetic one, but he’s not that good at figuring out what people need to hear. He usually just says whatever comes to mind before he speedily walks away. That way, he at least has a chance to run as they mill over whatever shit he came up with.

He can comfort himself- that’s easy- but trying to do the same thing for other people isn’t so easy. Maybe he can’t quite figure out how because he’s never had any friends. There’s been nobody around him willing to listen or react to anything he says. Unless of course, they’re listening with the intent to get him in trouble. Or make fun of him. But that’s not really helpful.

“What’s your name? This is the second time you’ve helped me and I have no clue who you are,” the boy asks after a short pause.

Alright, ignoring the entirety of Izuku’s last statement then. Thats fine.

Izuku snorts, “Saved is a strong word. Both times I’ve met you were on accident.”

That may have come off as harsh, but it’s the truth. He doesn’t want anyone to be deluded into thinking he has some sort of savior complex. Or that he’s strong and helping people on purpose. Because the only reason he’s stepped in both times is because he’s been afraid of getting beat. That’s not heroic. Or kind. It’s just being scared.

“I’d still like to know your name,” purple eyes pressures, leaning forward.

He’s made up the difference between Izuku and himself easily. One inch means he could head butt Izuku into the ground, or even lurch forward and smack faces. Honestly he’s close enough to do whatever the hell he wants.

Izuku slips the backpack over his shoulder again, “Midoriya,” he bites his lip, thinking, “And yours?”

It’s polite to ask people for their name when they ask for yours right? That’s the normal thing to do, he thinks. He’s heard his mother do the same thing when she’s meeting other people. And it’s pretty common in movies too, even if movies aren’t really a depiction of real life.

“Shinsou,” he blinks slowly, “Thank you for helping me again, Midoriya.”

For some reason, Izuku feels heat creep up his face, “There’s no need to thank me. Like I said, it was an accident that I’m even here. And I didn’t help much with the cuts either. You really should go to someone with more experience patching people up.”

His hands raise in surrender, or perhaps as a barrier between Shinsou and himself. He knows that it won’t help if the boy decides he wants to hurt Izuku. Nothing will defend him from the size of the purple eyed boy, not  unless Izuku manages to slip away and start running. And even then there’s no guarantee he’ll actually make it very far before getting caught. He’s too tired to run after chasing a cat and too short to outrun someone way taller than him.

“I’d rather not go to anyone about being muzzled,” Shinsou says flatly.

Understandable. But dumb.

Izuku gives him a once over, “You go to UA right? Talk to Recovery Girl or something.”

She has such an amazing quirk. She’s a hero, but she doesn’t have to do the same kind of strenuous activity like, say, All Might does. She’s instantly important to a battle and its outcome, but she’s not directly needed in a fight. She can sit back and assess whats happening without getting murdered herself. And she’s just as heroic as everyone else in a fight.

Now that Izuku’s out of his hero phase and can look at things objectively. He’d rather take a quirk like Recovery Girl’s over anyone else’s. She has the least amount of drama surrounding her, absolutely no counts of property damage, and is well liked by the general public. She’s the kind of hero that everyone should strive to be like. A trustworthy person. Izuku would trust her, and he’s never met the woman. So Shinsou should too.

“Can you imagine how awkward it’ll be telling her how I got hurt?” Shinsou refuses again, this time with a hint of fear.
So it’s not distrust them. He just doesn’t want people to know that he’s letting himself get hurt. He’s embarrassed that he was muzzled. Izuku feels another wave of intense anger pass over him at the thought of those bullies. They’re seriously messed up in the head. Izuku crosses his arms, “It’ll be more awkward walking around with bandaids and dried blood on your face. You have to ask someone to help you.”
No answer.

Shinsou is looking at him like he wants the conversation to end, but Izuku knows better. If he doesn’t push the other to do anything, he’ll stay too afraid to go to anyone. And that could lead to serious issues for the near future. Namely, an infection. And that’s just the physical damages, not the emotional and mental repercussions of this incident. Shinsou needs to tell someone he actually knows and trusts about this. It’s not something Izuku can handle on his own. He’s not a doctor.

“Don’t go to Recovery Girl then. Go to one of the other heroes,” he pokes Shinsou’s chest, “Any of them that you think are trustworthy. Your teacher maybe?”

Shinsou frowns, “My teacher is loud and annoying. I can’t imagine him dealing with this delicately.”

Loud and annoying? What kind of heroes are like that? Actually, a lot, but which one of them teaches at UA? Was it Present Mic? That sounds right, he can distantly recall reading about the popular hero teaching there. It wasn’t for the actual hero course though, just general education.
“Adults aren’t usually delicate about anything,” Izuku takes a small step back, “You just have to find one that you trust enough to let them handle it. Some things shouldn’t be death with all pretty and proper, some things need to be solved with anger and fire. Like you being muzzled.”
Shinsou threads his hands together- a nervous tick perhaps, “I’m not sure if anyone is trustworthy.”

Holy shit. This guy is worse than him.

“There is. Like I said earlier, have faith,” he replies curtly, smacking away the blatant trust issues.

He doesn’t know how to solve problems like that, especially not when he’s messed up too. Only an incredibly amazing therapist and perhaps even new parents would be any use here. Something that Izuku thinks he needs himself.

Izuku takes another nervous step back, “Listen, Shinsou, go to someone about that or I will,” a low blow, but he’ll do what he must.

Shinsou’s lip tugs impossibly lower on his face. But he doesn’t say anything. He just keeps his glowing eyes locked on green hair. Izuku steps back again. Shinsou steps closer for the first time.

“Why do you care so much about this? We’re not friends,” He asks, carefully worded.

Izuku can’t help but laugh, “Man. You’re insane. How could I not care? I came across you bloodied and muzzled in some back alley. Only some sort of villain would just walk away.”

Shinsou reacts like he’s been violently slapped. He flinches back so hard Izuku has to look down at his hand to make sure he hasn’t accidentally lashed out. But he hasn’t, his fingers are firmly holding the straps of his bag. The other boy was just intensely surprised by the- what Izuku thought was a- common sense answer.

Shinsou is super messed up.

He should get away from this while the other boy is stunned. He’ll be too slow to react, too slow to start chasing him down. And then Izuku will be able to run all the way home and prepare for another torturously long day.

School. Work. Sleep. School. Work. Sleep. Always the same.

Shit. Shut up. He shouldn’t be thinking about that right now.

“I have to get home so that I don’t oversleep. You should get going too,” he smiles, an empty thing, “I’ll catch you around, though I hope it’s not in another situation like this.”

He doesn’t give Shinsou the time to respond, spinning on his heels and dashing out of the alley. Maybe running away like this makes him a horrible person, but he can’t afford to stick around. He’s not equipped to deal with other people in any capacity aside from work. If anything, he might say something horrible and make the entire situation worse, which is something he’d rather avoid. Or worse, if he doesn’t run away this guy will like him.

Izuku already has one friend. Toga is enough for his entire life. He doesn’t want another person hanging around and trying to convince him that he deserves at least a little happiness.

He trips, streaking down the street with the cat on his heels. It feels like a hilarious flip to the earlier situation.

(Izuku has a habit of gathering people around him that can’t help but love him. Eventually, he always manages to convince even the toughest of people that they should let their guard down. Apathetic or not, he’s been able to get people to love themselves in every life.

But that is neither here nor there.)

(Sometimes she wonders what it’s like to love and be loved in return. If it’s as magical as the stories she used to watch. If love is even half as good as she imagines it to be in her mind. But it’s one of those elusive, nearly fictitious things that she fears she’ll never be able to live through. To experience completely for herself.

She loved her mom and dad, but they didn’t feel the same about her. Dad left and never came back. Mom looked like she wanted her to disappear along with him. Maybe they’d loved her at some point, but not before she got taken away, not enough to keep her. Not enough to demand she stay as she was dragged away. But mom just stared. She stared with crossed arms and an impassive face.
She
let them take her away.

Her mom never said anything about love before either, never to her at least. She’d heard the word spoken between her mom and dad a hundred times, but never to her. Never near her. It’s like they were incapable of ever loving her, or if they did, they refused to say anything. From the moment she was born her parents wanted nothing to do with her. As if she were just some
thing
living in their house and eating at their table. A creature living in the furthest reaches of the house.

She even heard her mom crying sometimes, wishing she’d never had a daughter. Wishing she’d have come out quirkless and not the abomination that she was.

Is. The abomination that she
is.

Chisaki- the only name she can remember anymore- always tells her how useful she is. How her quirk will make the world a better place. And all she has to do is sit still and let him rip her apart over and over and over and over and over and-

She doesn’t want to be useful to him. She doesn’t want to make the world a better place. She hardly even knows what the world is like at all, there’s nothing she knows enough about to want to save. Her life has always been a maze of walls and corridors and seemingly infinite tears. Aside from the single alley she so desperately runs down, she’s never seen much of anything. Just a whole lot of boring grey, white, and blinding red.

She can name every medical tool in the room in the span of seconds. She can disassociate and force her mind to flee to some far off space. She can handle a scalpel cutting her flesh away from her body. She can deal with sitting in a blank white room for days on end with no food or water. But she can’t read. She can’t write or draw in anything but
black.
She can barely move. She can’t do all the things that other girls can. She knows she can’t. Even if Chisaki wont tell her.

But maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t feel that way if she could just step outside. Weave her fingers through grass and flowers. Skim her fingers against the shining waters of the ocean, though she’d settle for a simple pond. Lay under the shade of a tree so tall it blocks out the harsh light of the sun. Run without feeling the intense pressure to escape somewhere far away. Look up to see the blue of the sky, the billowing white clouds lazily rolling past. Eat ice cream in the park. If only-

If only she were any other kid. If only she got to be happy like everyone else was, like everyone deserves to.

She doesn’t need very long. She just needs a moment, just a second of standing under the summer sun. Just a single second. An amount of time so minuscule it’ll be like it never happened at all. As long as she got to breathe the air for a single, fleeting moment. Thats all she needed. Then she’d go back to being a good lab rat and lay on that table of her own volition. She’d let herself be torn apart until there really was nothing left of her. Then Chisaki would be happy and so would she, and maybe her mom too. All for a single moment.

All that’s needed to change the future is one lousy, measly second, after all.)

Izuku is slumped over the counter, half dead, when the door jingles its hideous tune.

He knows it has to be somewhere between two and three in the morning. He hasn’t really checked since basically nobody’s come in, but he’s certain its not four yet. Four is when his shift ends, and there’s an alarm to alert him of that on his phone. And when it goes off he’ll be able to go home and lay in his shoddy apartment. Maybe sleep for the next few centuries- if he’s lucky.

As much as he likes the seclusion of his job, he’s been about twenty times more tired lately than he usually is. Which is saying a lot, taking into consideration how tired he is all the time. Both due to the taxing demands of illegal work hours for high school students and actually trying to pass said high school. The tiredness was present before, lurking and pressuring, but now it’s somehow worse. Late hours certainly aren’t doing his complexion any favor.

Whoever came in now must be operating on the same nightmarish time schedule as himself. Long days and seemingly endless nights. The point being that they cannot possibly be a normal person in any regard. The time, for one thing, is absolutely ungodly to randomly walk into a convenience store. Not to mention the decrepit state of the town. It’s not just a place you pass by and think about going in because it looks welcoming.

There are alleys packed with trash, drug deals around every corner, and the very real chance of getting robbed. This is the kind of place where you clutch your bag closer and speedily walk away from. You get home as quickly and quietly as possible. In the first place, this isn’t the town to be out in during the night as a normal person anyway. That’s why all the people who’ve come in tonight- a selectively small number- have all been extremely shady.

But it’s not really in his job description to be judging paying customers, is it? All he has to do is stand there and smile like an idiot. Even if he’s robbed at gunpoint. Even if he’s violently threatened. Even if someone likes him right in the eye and takes something off the shelf without paying. Even if someone dies horribly in front of him. He shouldn’t react unless he wants to die, and he shouldn’t upset or fight anything with a pulse. That’s what the boss told him on the first night. And it’s something that’s kept him, pleasantly, alive.
He feels the cat jostle on his back- it’s apparently decided it likes him now- to stare at the customer. He doesn’t have the same energy as the cat to spare, remaining completely still by the register. Though he should, considering he might get a write up for not giving the customary greeting. But worse things have happened during his shift that went unnoticed. Simply because Izuku is the most insane worker. He’s the only employee who works during the night shift. And he’s the only one to actually request it over the day. The boss won’t fire him because he wants the store open for nearly the entire day. Even though barely anyone is ever buys from here.
But even if he is fired for his minor transgression, he finds it increasingly difficult to care. It’s been quite possibly the worst day of his entire life, which is a hard feat to accomplish. He’s had some absolutely shitty days in the span of fourteen years. Much more to boast about then about 90 percent of his peers, he’d gather. Like the times he’s almost killed himself, and the time he had to scrub suicide messages off his desk. Or the time he was locked in the janitors closet, or when he was drowned in the slime of some low rate villain nobody cares about.

…Anyway.

What makes this day the worst to ever happen is the vileness of it all. Like, literally vileness. Sure it hurt, but he’s been hit before. The problem was that he acted absolutely disgustingly. Not on purpose of course, some kid sucker punched him so hard in the stomach that he vomited everywhere. Over the floors, the walls, even the shoes of a lot on the innocent bystanders. He swears there were even flecks of blood that came out in the, honestly, pitiful vomit.

Seriously. He really needs to eat more. The contents of his stomach weren’t that of a normal child that has three meals a day- or two, that’s normal too. All that came out was spit, blood, and liquid. And in his own defense the puke had no foul scent to it at all. Which didn’t make it any less gross to anyone observing. In fact, it started a chain reaction of about ten other students puking too. So there’s that. He can cross that off his bingo list of weirdest things to ever take place on school grounds.

He was told that it was supposed to be some sort of sick joke, punching the little nerdy kid. Izuku was supposed to cry and then laugh along with everyone else. But here’s the thing about quirks that make you strong, you shouldn’t fucking punch people in the gut. It could actually kill them, especially if they’re unprepared, like he was. Izuku isn’t a tank. He can’t take a fist that packs the same power as a shotgun to his organs. Certainly not while he was busy reading a book when said shotgun hit him. He doubts anyone else at his dumb school could either.

It’s not his fault that a horrible punch made him vomit and collapse in the middle of the hallway. While his intention was not to ruin the good fun of a prank, the whole thing seemed a little mean spirited. Nothing about the situation was very enjoyable, but maybe that’s a biased opinion. People were laughing before his inevitable plummet straight to the floor. It had been funny for a short while. Up until everyone realized that punching someone really hard generally doesn’t yield the greatest results.

If they’d have told him about the prank he probably would’ve gone along with it anyway. And then he could’ve acted like it didn’t hurt and laugh like he was intended to. Which might’ve made all involved parties more happy.

Long story short, he got sent to the school nurse and she didn’t do jack shit for him. She said everything was fine and his reaction was entirely exaggerated. Then he got a bag of ice and a firm pat on the back. As if a little ice would do literally anything to help his likely imploded stomach. The worst part is that she did nothing to back her claims that he was fine, no tests or anything. Just assumption based on the fact that he is quirkless.

The competence of the supposed professionals at middle schools is truly astounding. It had been like this at Aldera too, a reprimand and a pack of all encompassing ice. The healer of all mortal wounds apparently. Nobody ever bothered to check if he was fine using any actual medical knowledge. But at least back then, he hadn’t had his organs aggressively shifted.

Bakugo and his lackeys never hit Izuku when they bullied him. They were more the type to belittle and degrade with their words alone, they didn’t need to use their fists. Others at Aldera were a little more physically violent than them, but never to the extent of this. But what can he expect out of a group of challenged individuals with no prospects in life?

Maybe that’s mean. Maybe that’s biased.
To make matters worse, the punch was so public that a teacher actually chastised the kid in front of everyone. This did absolutely nothing aside from making the accused puncher extremely pissed off. Which meant that Izuku got cornered after school and punched. Again. Only this time other people were hitting him too, though arguably not as hard as the shotgun blow punch from earlier that day. To his eternal and undying luck, they weren’t really aiming for his midsection. So the intense bruising around his face and arms is a result of entirely avoiding his organs being rearranged. Again.He does look like he’s been hit by several semi trucks in quick succession, only for them to double back and roll him over for a second time. Which is maybe the worst he’s ever described himself. But it could be much worse, all things considering. Its just a shame that the bandages on his face can only hide so much, and the turtle neck is incredibly suspicious. Anyone that looks at him can immediately tell that he’s been jumped. Violently. By what was obviously a large group.
On the bright side, any potential thief he’s seen today has taken one look at him and stopped in their tracks. They even ask him if he needs any help around the store. And then they pay the right amount of money and calmly walk out. As if they were never planning to rob some back alley place that nobody cares about. As if they were a regular, average citizen with no criminal records.

He looks horrible enough to convert people into upstanding citizens. How admirable of him. He should be put on the cover of some criminal rehabilitation program. After all, he has a one hundred percent success rate with turning thieves to normal men. All it took was getting absolutely steamrolled at school.

Another shitty thing about today is that Toga isn’t here, preoccupied with something or other. He doesn’t actually know. The chick texts him in strictly emojis and he’s left to interpret what the hell she means. He’s gotten better at figuring stuff out, but he’s not good at learning an entirely new language just to communicate. It just adds to her quirky charm that she’s absolutely incapable of texting coherently. He just wishes he could possibly persuade her to use human words every once in a while. Just to understand better.

The door jingles again, and he feels his sanity slip through his fingers. Two customers at the same time? What is this, a day shift? If he wanted to see more than one person at once while working, he’d have taken a different shift. A different job altogether.

Cat moves but again doesn’t get off or move a single inch on his back. This time, it graces the world with the tiniest of meows though. It’s honestly the cutest thing he’s heard in years and makes up for how shitty the past decade has been. And it’s also an incredibly rare thing to hear, Cat meowing. It’s usually as silent as Izuku is.

He’s been talking a lot more lately, being more social though. With Toga, that one villain, and Shinsou. And maybe that one hero teacher that came in once. So maybe he’s a bad comparison of silence. Since he really is working on it, if any of those people actually count as proper socialization. So maybe he’s not the best to compare to a cat. Actually, he doubts anyone should be compared to a cat.

Someone taps on the counter, “You okay kid?”

Ah. It’s that one hero teacher he was just thinking of. What a coincidence.

“Peachy,” he peels his face off the grimy surface, low enough for Cat to still perch on his back.

Look at his socialization skills right now, absolutely top notch. You’d be thinking he wasn’t friendless his entire life.

“You don’t look so peachy,” the man slides his basket closer, “What happened to you? I’ll help if I can.”

What a nice man. That’s more than anyone’s offered him for his entire life. The best he’s ever gotten from anyone before this was his mother not disowning him. So kind of an extremely low bar. One that’s been relatively hard to vault over, for some reason, but it’s been cleared now. All it took was someone having the basic human instinct to offer help to a stranger.

But it’s not like anything can be done about the situation anymore. He’s already hurt and the assailants have already gotten an earful from the teacher. Everything’s been handled as it should have been, as things have always been when it comes to him. There’s nothing more anyone can do to make anything change. Those boys got their reprimand and he got his. That’s better than Aldera, albeit barely, and he can live with that.

(Izuku Midoriya is a hypocrite.

He’s completely disregarding his conversation with Shinsou mere days ago. His mind already supplied the information that not telling an adult could be very bad. He went on an entire rant about how sometimes people just need to accept the help of other people. He knows, deep down, he has to tell. He just won’t.

How a person can be so simultaneously compassionate yet self deprecating is beyond comprehension. He should know better then anyone, better then most, that he has to talk. Otherwise he’ll stay the bullied kid the rest of his life.

But that’s neither here nor there.)

He forces himself up further, Cat easily maneuvering onto his shoulder, “I got jumped at school. I appreciate your offer, but I promise it’s alright. They got punished already.”

No they didn’t. They just got a few pointed remarks. But that’s better than usual. The teachers reacted to the situation with way more care than anyone had ever managed to before. Aside from the nurse, pretty much everyone gave at least a little bit of a shit. And that’s enough. Even if they only did so to make themselves look better.
The teachers at Aldera never cared to keep up appearances. Classmates bullied Izuku in front of everyone. They tripped him in the hallways and made fun of him during lectures, not even faltering when adults were in the same room. The teachers even joined in on the jeers when they could. All anyone ever got told was to hush in front of the principal, who didn’t care, but might’ve . Not a slap on the wrist or a call to Izuku’s mother. Just loud laughter. Because bullying the quirkless failure was something completely expected.
If he ever tried to fight back, suddenly the world was ending. He was the quirkless failure who went around bullying the entire school. He was a horribly behaved kid who couldn’t play nice with anyone. His mother had to be called and told that Izuku didn’t know how to keep his hands to himself. So he never raised his fists in retaliation, nor did he ever try to argue with the treatment he received. It was better to let people hit him and pretend it didn’t hurt. Better to get smacked down than beat to the ground. It ended quicker that way.

“Is that right? Even so, I’m still here to help if you need anything,” his dark eyes seem to look right through Izuku, straight into his soul.

Most people don’t even look directly at him. They look around him, or down at his shoes. Even his face for a quick second if he’s lucky. But most of the time people avoid looking at him at all if they can help it. As if he’s the ugliest thing on the planet, and he’s so hideous it hurts to look at his face. Maybe they think his uselessness will rub off on them if they look for too long.

Not even his mom ever really looks at him. She gives things to him, handed over with feather light fingers and a short glance. She talks to him sometimes. But she doesn’t look at him the way a mother should. He’s not even sure she knows what he actually looks like. His mother treats him like some kind of collectible piece of glass and not a person. In her mind he may not even have the shape of a human at all.

The only one who ever looks, now that he’s thinking about it, is Bakugo. The blonde always held eye contact with Izuku while talking. Granted, he was usually looking down, but at least he was looking.

Focus on the conversation with the teacher Izuku. He’s spiraling.

He smiles, the action painful around his bandages, “You really are a nice person. But I promise everything is okay. It’s all been dealt with already.”

He starts scanning the items, the man eyeing him up and down like he’s the biggest liar in the universe. Well, he is, but he didn’t think it was that obvious. Teachers usually take his word for things and just let him be. Maybe it’s because they don’t care enough to really question if what he’s saying is the truth. Maybe it’s because they’re just asking so that they can say they did. Either way, he doesn’t particularly enjoy talking about what’s on his mind.

Feelings are hard to put into a single word and explain. You can’t wrap your complex emotions into a box with a pretty bow. Inner thoughts, true feelings, are ugly and twisted and confusing. Thats why he refused therapy when his mom offered to pay for him to go.

“I’m not that nice of a person. Just used to being around teenagers,” the man grimaces, “Because I’m a teacher, not for any other reason.”

That gets a genuine laugh out of Izuku, a strangled, snorted thing. But a laugh nonetheless.

This guy and Toga are the only ones to have ever made him surprised at something.

“Don’t worry, I get it,” he scans a box of instant coffee.

Cat rubs its face on his cheek, whiskers tickling him softly.

When he chased it- he thinks it’s a her but he doesn’t want to look- down the alley it had hated him. It had clawed and scratched and fled as quickly as its broken leg could go. And after he’d set it down to help Shinsou with his injuries, it had run in the opposite direction. He thought he’d never see that tuft of orange tail ever again until it showed up a couple hours after. It was waiting outside his apartment and came with him to school, and it walked with him to work after that too. It had suddenly deemed him alright to hang around, apparently. What strange emotions for a cat, to loathe one minute and love the next. He doesn’t mind the company though.

The brief thought of Shinsou makes him curious if the boy ever talked to anyone about what happened that night. Izuku had run away before he could really ensure that the boy had gotten help. And it’s not like he’s been on a look out searching for him. He’s too lazy to walk to that part of the city on one of his days off, too tired to care enough. Somebody at his school was bound to notice eventually, even if he chose not to say anything. Izuku didn’t have to interject in a situation that would probably solve itself in a day or so.
…Shinsou goes to UA right? It wouldn’t hurt Izuku to just check if everything’s alright with him.
His hand halts before he can scan the final item- a pack of gum, “Did you say which hero school you teach at?”
Please be UA. Please, please, please , be UA.
“…UA,” the scruffy man looks at him suspiciously, “Why?”

Thank whatever god was listening to Izuku’s desperate pleas.

“Someone I met the other day goes there and I’m worried about him. He uh-“ he bites his lip, suddenly unsure.

Is it his place to talk about this with a teacher? It’s not his injury, nor is it his story, to tell. He’s not the one who was muzzled in an alley and beaten to a pulp, only to be unheroicly saved by some kid chasing a cat. That’s not something you can go to a teacher about and just bring up casually. And it’s not something you’d want a weird student whose pastime is chasing cats to bring up either.

He’s worried for Shinsou, but he can understand the lack of interest in speaking to someone about the incident. His worry shouldn’t outweigh the possibility that Shinsou will react extremely poorly to having private information talked about. Especially so if this guy is his teacher, it might make the classroom dynamic awkward.

But what if him not saying something now means that Shinsou never will? What if it eats the boy alive and he can’t stand to look at himself anymore? What if- heaven forbid- Shinsou ends up dead? If not for an infection because of his injury, then a self inflicted wound that takes his life. Then it would be Izuku’s fault, a heavy weight on his back, because he was too afraid to say something.

(Again, Izuku Midoriya is a hypocrite.)

Izuku remembers one person committing suicide back in middle school. It was a pretty girl, a quirkless reject just like him, and the two of them got along quite well. It was quiet with her, calm in a way he didn’t feel with anyone else. They started to hang out around the same time that Izuku’s bullying got worse. He was so focused on his own injuries at the time that he failed to realize that she was hurt too, maybe even worse than him. Which is why he didn’t see the signs of what was going to happen until years later.

She told him she loved him out of the blue one day, and he returned the sentiment. They hugged, and she went home. He wanted to follow her home and meet her parents. He wanted to follow her home and spend the rest of the year in her room. But instead, he turned around and went home with a smile.

He never saw her again.

He still thinks about her, about her final words. Their final moments together were that of sweetness, of love and affection, but he should’ve known better. Part of him knows that she’d still be alive if he’d done even a little more to help her. If he’d have followed her that day like he wanted to. If he weren’t so selfishly focused on how much people were hurting him when they were hurting her too. If he helped her like he helped himself. If he offered her his lunch- even when he didn’t have it.

If.

What a terrible word. Only two letters, but enough to gnaw at his mind. One thing could’ve saved her life back thing. One thing could’ve made her stay with him. One thing different and it wouldn’t be his fault she wasn’t here. It still eats away at him sometimes, on the nights he can’t think of anything else.

He can’t let the same thing that happened to her happen to Shinsou too, it might kill him. And he refuses to let someone kind die like that again.

The scruffy man clears his throat, “What’s wrong kid? You suddenly stopped talking.”

“I was just deciding whether he’d hit me if I told you what happened,” Izuku frowns, shaking the thought of his old friend far away.

It’s more than that. He always does this, thinks so hard he circles back to her.

He’d forgotten about her. Not because he didn’t care about her, but because the image of her face makes him contemplate following her into the afterlife. The memory of her smile makes him want to carve one into his own face. He tries not to remember anything about her because it tears something in his soul away. It eats at him that he was the last person to see her alive, not her parents. Not anyone else. Him. And the knowledge of that makes him want to destroy his room. Tear everything apart until he’s standing in the rubble of his life.

He has to move on from this before he bursts into tears in front of a stranger. That’d be the easily most embarrassing thing to ever happen to him.

He starts talking before the guy can question what the hell he said, “I found him in an alley the other night. He was being jumped by some group of teenage pieces of shit. He was bleeding, hurt really bad when I found him,” he pauses, nervous, “Please don’t tell him I said anything about it though.”

“What? Who?” It feels like the teacher nearly catapults out of the store to enact justice, “Nobody in my class came in with apparent injuries, but I’ll look into it when I get back to campus. None of the teachers at UA tolerate bullying in any regard. It is absolutely abhorrent behavior to hurt a mere teenage student.”

Wow. He’s motivated. Izuku seemingly asked the perfect person.

“And I promise I won’t bring you into it if you don’t want me to,” the man immediately adds, barely an afterthought.

A good teacher. That’s nice. They seem pretty rare nowadays- at least in his personal experience. It’s nice that someone is willing to fight for a student that he clearly knows nothing about. He didn’t even stop to question the validity of the claims made by some random cashier. Though it’s easier to blindly trust and rush into things sometimes. If Izuku isn’t lying, then this teacher can easily help a student. And if he is lying, it’d be incredibly easy to figure out.

His worry slips into the back of his mind, replaced by some sense of relief. He asked the right person for help with this. Thats lucky. Even so, it doesn’t keep the strange fear from creeping into his hands and clamping around his rapidly closing throat.

Izuku scans the item and throws it in the bag with a sense of panic, “I thought he was in the hero course when I came across him, but I guess I was wrong. The shitbags were saying some fucking stupid crap about his quirk making him a villain though. So I guess that means he might not have even tried for the hero course. Or that he did try and didn’t make it through the entrance exam. I heard it’s biased towards those with physical quirks. And I assume someone with a ‘villains quirk’ wouldn’t be particularly equipped for a test like that. Which is not to say that he has a villainous quirk, just that people seem to think he does. I don’t, obviously. But it feels like he believes what everyone’s telling him. He was just standing there, taking the hits and I-“

He slaps a hand over his mouth. He hasn’t done that for a long time, gone on a long winded ramble. It happens when he’s excited or nervous but he’s usually able to control it. Not today though, apparently. Maybe because he’s more invested in Shinsou’s well being than he claims to be. The uncaring, nonchalant attitude is clearly a front. It’s always a front.
The problem with Izuku is that he always cares a little too much, a little too deeply. He gets so interested in things that he nearly trips off a roof when they’re snatched from him. His fixation lasts for months- years even- until someone has to brutally remind him of his station. Kind of like the hero thing. And the whole ‘incapable of making friends at Aldera’ thing. Not to mention the whole era of middle school in which people only befriended him as a prank. Confessed as a joke. That sort of thing.
So, safe to say, he barely shows his true interests anymore. Lest someone take advantage of them to hurt him.

He backs away from the counter ever so slightly, “Ah, I’m sorry. I tend to have a bad habit of mumbling over things sometimes.”

Yeah. That’s good. Don’t specify that the mumbling is only over things that he’s personally invested in.
“That’s fine. It’s not the worst habit out there. Mumbling doesn’t particularly bother me,” the scruffy teachers face, however, looks angry, “It’s more the contents of your mumbling that are extremely concerning.”
He doesn’t care?

It feels wrong to bask in the warm feeling he gets from that for more than a second though. The issue of Shinsou is a way more pressing concern than his spiraling emotions. He can deal with the fact that not every adult on the planet is evil later. Right now, he has to inform said adult of a serious potential danger.

“That’s why I was so concerned about his wellbeing since I left him. He seemed a little too submissive of all the things being thrown at him,” he frowns, cringing at the timing, “Thirteen eighty five. Would that be cash or card?”

The teacher hands him cash, continuing with the conversation easily, “I’m growing just as concerned. Would you tell me his name, please?”

Oh.

He should’ve done that from the start. He’s a bad person.

(He’s not.)

“I’m sorry. I don’t know his last name. To be honest, I barely know him at all. I don’t even have his phone number,” then, before he can ramble on and forget, he adds, “His name is Shinsou. Purple hair and eyes. Quite tall.”

Maybe the physical description wasn’t entirely necessary, but sue him for being nervous. He’s never talked to this intimidating of a person. Never mind that, he’s never talked to any adult for this long. Most customers barely talk. And the teachers in middle and high school don’t really talk to him, they just lecture. His mom never really talks to him either. Even when he lived under the same roof at her. Not on the phone either, when she used to call.

How funny that he was awkward around his own mother at the dinner table. He must be the only teenager in the town who had no common ground with the literal woman who birthed him.

“I’ll let you know how he is,” the teacher nods curtly, swiping his bag and briskly hurrying out of the store.

A man who really cares about things is rare to find. Or maybe they’re just hard to find in Izuku’s life, where nobody bothers caring about him.

(Izuku’s front car is battered and nearly broken as it lumbers down the tracks. The passengers aboard grow more agitated by the minute, worried about the conductor. But they’re all too afraid to make their way out of their seats. Too worried that Izuku will kick them off, not having realized any of them were ever there.

A train plants itself behind his own, carefully worried and nervous. He doesn’t even register the thing in its silent nature.)

The second customer- whom he nearly forget existed- pops out of nowhere with a selection of candy. Which isn’t strange in and of itself actually. Pretty much everyone that passes through gets a basket full of strictly candy. Even though the store sells just about every item in the known universe, including clothes. The candy isn’t what surprises Izuku. Not even a tiny, minuscule bit.

It’s the dryness of the man’s face.
And look, he’s not judging here, but how did it get this bad? The guys neck is clearly bleeding and his head has the same moisture content as the Sahara desert. Whatever skin condition he has seems angry and painful in a way Izuku couldn’t even begin to imagine. Which he will absolutely not mention to the guy, because he looks about a fraction of a second away from trying to burn the place down.
But he does, not so discreetly, place a medicated lotion and chapstick into the bag along with the other items. Free of charge. This makes the man growl- for some absurdly strange reason- but he doesn’t kill Izuku where he stands, so there’s that. He just takes the bag and stomps out of the store with the anger of a toddler during a tantrum. It’s almost cute, if you ignore the fact that he’s  obviously older than Izuku. Honestly though, not the strangest person he’s ever met during this job.

He slides back onto the counter with a heavy sigh. Car curls up between his shoulder blades with a contented purr. It’s calm enough he nearly falls asleep.

Nearly.

Himi 🚩

🙏🙏

🤞😂😂😂

🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🧛🏽‍♀️🧛🏽‍♀️

🥰❤️👯‍♀️

🏪🚶🏽‍♀️🚶🏽‍♀️

👍👍
 
izuku

im going to pretend I know what any of this means

love you

hope to see you back at the store soon

i miss you :(

…and I have a cat now
 
Himi 🚩

😅😅😂😂😂

🥰🤭❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

🏪🚶🏽‍♀️🚶🏽‍♀️🚶🏽‍♀️🚶🏽‍♀️🚶🏽‍♀️👍

🐈🐈‼️‼️⁉️⁉️
 
izuku

<33

im going to assume you mean you’re coming to the store

but idk

you text…so strangely

yeah I have a cat now. But it adopted me more than I adopted it
 
Himi 🚩

car
 
izuku

yeah

girl are you ok???

I’ll see you soon. I have to go
 
Himi 🚩

👋👋

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Toga,” Izuku rounds the corner, a box of chips in hand, “I didn’t know you were coming in today.”

He pointedly ignores that she is very much not alone. He’s too focused on the fact that he hasn’t seen her for days, and now she’s back like she never left. Dropping by like it’s a normal day and not like she’s been off grid for a week.
His only interactions with her are the stream of random emojis he has to attempt to string together and understand. Her message yesterday was some of the most incomprehensible shit he’s ever seen. He has yet to decipher the hieroglyphics that they were. And he doubt he’ll ever be able to understand most of the things she texts him. He’s not that good.
She bounces up to him with the same level of joy she always has, “What do you mean Mido? I texted you yesterday that I would.”

Is she serious?

“Is that what your incoherent messages meant?” He slips around her and down another row.

She follows him with a pout, watching as he restocks the chips. She makes no move to defend herself or her strange way of communication. Her feet align with his as he walks up and down the row, entirely focused on the lamest task you could be doing in a store.

He’s had way more mundane tasks lately though. The boss must be punishing him for something or other. But for the life of him, he can’t recall what it is that he’s done to upset him. He’s been the most pristine employee ever. His track record is nearly perfect and he does ninety percent of the work here. Save for the one time he barely moved at all and laid on the counter, he’s been pretty involved. Both because he’s kind of been forced to and because he desperately needs a raise.
Like he really needs a raise.
His landlord is raising the price on his apartment by a hundred dollars. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a lot to him, considering how little money he makes. He can barely afford to pay for clothes, school, and food as it is. And- of course, just his luck- now he won’t be able to pay for anything. That hundred dollars may very well be an impending sign of him being homeless.

And nothing against homeless people, it’d just make going to school exceptionally hard. For one, the stench of him would be unbearable. And him stinking might spell an influx in the amount of people willing to punch him in the gut. Which means less people paying him to do the homework. Which means all around way less money he’s making. So. He really can’t afford to be homeless.

Maybe he should just try to get another job. It’ll be hard with his quirkless status, but he can work pretty much any hours. The teachers don’t give a shit as long as he shows up sometimes. He could work all day, run to school and get marked present, then run back to work. He’d be rolling in the money if he could manage that.

Toga grabs the box, “Mido?” She stares at him like he’s obscenely hurt, “What’s wrong with you today? Did something happen? Did someone hurt you? You do look hurt. I’ll kill someone if they-“

“No killing anyone Toga,” he snatches the box back.

She looks offended that he replies so coldly. And he feels offended for her that he talked like that. But it’s too late to tell her sorry, too late to take his words back. Some things can’t be forced out of the mind even if you want them to. They stick around for years, glued to the backs of minds to haunt their thoughts. He knows that words cut like a knife and scar just the same. People don’t just forget things.

That’s why he always seems to be stuck years in the past.

“Look,” he sighs, dropping the box, “I’m just stressed lately. Some kids at school just…they just-“

He leans against the shelf, rubbing at his tired eyes with a groan. She’s not someone he can safely tell about the issue with his classmates.

Toga is the kind of person who’d immediately try to insert herself into the issue. She’d march right into his school and demand to see his attackers. And then she’d go on a rampage of stealing and drinking their blood, or whatever it is that her quirk makes her do. She wouldn’t hesitate over anything for a single second. Just jump right into the problem and attempt to solve it by murdering students. And if she gets caught it’ll be the end of the line for her. Her final strike, maybe the one sending her straight to Tartarus.

It’s really none of his business to begin with, but he knows Toga did something bad. That’s why she hangs around this part of town despite not going to school here. And it’s why she was so weird the first time they met. Innocent people don’t behave anything like she does, aside from the obvious insanity. He knows that somewhere in her past, she killed someone and ran from it. Somewhere in her past, Toga did something so incredibly bad she had to hide herself away.

He’s not mad about it or anything. He just knows for certain that she absolutely would make do on her threats. If she says she’ll kill someone, she would. He doesn’t doubt the sincerity in her words even if she said them humorously. With Toga, he tries to pretend he doesn’t hear some of the things she says, but he knows she’s capable of a lot of things. Like murder.

Cat jumps off one of the higher shelves to land on his shoulders. He jolts in surprise at the sudden contact, catapulted from his thoughts with a gasp.

Toga blinks owlishly, “Oh. Mido, this is the cat?”

Huh. She moved on quicker than he thought she would. Not that he minds, it means he doesn’t have to finish whatever he was saying. It’s just not like her to move on like this without asking what he knows she’s curious about.

“Yeah. She keeps following me everywhere,” he kicks at the box and walks toward the counter.

Cat balances on him easily, as if he’s a stationary perch and not a literal moving human. But she always has a knack for somehow perfectly balancing on things. When she’s not standing on him, she’s roaming the store on the higher shelves. Teetering on the edges of things and jumping away just as they fall. Maybe it’s just a cat thing.

She loves his attention. Or maybe she just likes incredibly annoying him while he’s trying to work.

Toga follows him again, much like she did earlier. But she feels more careful now. More conscious of how she’s walking. How her feet are hitting the dingy floor and echoing around the empty store. As if one loud step is going to make him jump out of his skin. Or perhaps turn around and curse her out. Maybe he’ll just bolt out of the place and never come back.

He wishes she wouldn’t be so cautious. Her being like this sets him more on edge than anything she’d manage to say. Anything she’d manage to trigger by walking too loud around him. It reminds him too much of himself- too focused on acting perfect in order to avoid being slapped around. And it’s nothing like how she usually acts. She’s usually crazy, saying whatever comes to her mind the moment she thinks it. And she’s never bothered to care about how her steps sound on the ground.
It’s just not like her to be so…so considerate.
“Mido,” Toga clears her throat, pausing to presumably think over what she wants to say, “She’s cute. The cat I mean.”

That isn’t what she was originally going to say. He doesn’t have to be some behavior analyst or anything to tell, she’s just obvious. It doesn’t take a genius to register the way she so clearly pushes the words out rather than simply speaking them. Like she’s trying to ease them into a difficult conversation without being blunt. Without hurting his feelings.

Izuku thinks it’s dumb that she’s so worried about what he might think. Or how he might react. Nobody’s ever cared about his feelings before, how he’ll react to certain things. Shes allowed to say whatever she wants without him judging her. It’s not as difficult as shes making it out to be. He would never judge. Bluntness is encouraged with him, not despised.

(Izuku Midoriya is the type to overthink absolutely every single word that comes out of his mouth. He has no room to talk about this matter when he himself is incapable of talking without being worried. He spends nearly every second of the day worried about every interaction he’s ever had. If he should’ve smiled more, said something in a different tone of voice.

Again, Izuku is nothing but a hypocrite.)

He glances back at Toga with a curious smile, “I suppose. She’s a bit of a hassle though.”

It’s only a hassle having her around because it’s another mouth he has to feed. He can’t afford to pay for her food on top of his own. He’s been trying to scrounge for things in the garbage for her when she follows him home. He’s managed to feed her some rather good things lately, leftover food from recent parties. It makes him feel incredibly guilty, but there’s not much more that he can do. He doubts that a cat would eat the instant noodles that he makes himself.

Not that he would even consider offering an animal the crap he shovels into his face. He can hardly consider anything about his meals nutritious. It might be a crime to feed a cat what he eats actually.

“Cats are always good company when you’re alone,” she says carefully.

Izuku pauses.

That’s a lot deeper than the stuff Toga usually brings up. Can she look into his soul and see his underlying issues all of a sudden? How did she manage to perfectly jab at the biggest problem in his life? It’s honestly impressive, save for the fact that he’s lonely.

He has her, of course, but not all the time. And only for a few measly hours of the day. Most of the time he has to deal with being completely alone, both in the darkness of his room and the halls of his school. There’s nowhere he can go where people are looking forward to seeing him. No place he can run to and people will be waiting by the entrance with open arms.

It’s kind of sad that he desperately looks forward to the attention a cat gives him when he gets home.

He reaches for her paw with a frown, “I suppose she’s good company when I can afford it.”

When he can afford to feed both her and himself.

Otherwise, it feels unbearably lonely when he tries to share a meal with an animal he hasn’t even named. An animal who he refuses to name out of the fear it’ll eventually leave him. Walk out of his life like everyone else he’s ever given a nickname to, laughing at his naivety. Fooled for the millionth time into thinking someone actually chose to be around him of their own accord. Not just because someone slid money over, not just because they thought it’d be funny to prank the loser.

He’s a failure. Everyone is right about that. He doesn’t even have the funds to buy a bag of cat food. Something so abysmally cheap and easy to come by- he simply cannot afford.

“What do you mean?” She laughs, the bright demeanor he’s used to suddenly back, “How can a person afford good company?”

Cat’s paw smacks his finger away. He smiles faintly, pulling his hand away as gently as he offered it.

“Thats not what I meant,” he replies, sliding behind the register and leaning on the counter.

He side eyes the bystander that has yet to pick up anything in the store. The man stands there, hands in his pockets, with a condescending air of amusement on his face.

His eyes haven’t left Izuku’s form this entire time. He knows it’s not because he’s a particularly interesting person to look at. Nor is it because he has an outward appearance of a quirk. It must be due to the fact he’s definitely, absolutely met the guy somewhere before. And the guy is waiting to see if he recognizes him. Izuku has, he just doesn’t want to think about it.

Toga leans across from him, “What do you mean?”

Right. He was talking to her about Cat, wasn’t he? He should really learn to not get so distracted during conversation.

“That I’m poor,” he yawns, glaring at the older man, “Are you going to buy anything or just stare?”

Toga seems annoyed that he moved away from what they were discussing so quickly. But he doesn’t think she understands how awkward it is to talk about your financial problems with someone. It’s not exactly easy to admit that he’s drowning, barely keeping afloat, in a town that barely charges anything. He’s so poor he can’t even afford to live in the poor neighborhood. Thats incredibly embarrassing to admit to someone he cares about.

The man’s staples bend uncomfortably as his lips pull into a painful looking smile. The ugliness of it completely pulls his mind away from Toga and to the older man. Even when he tries to look away, his eyes are inexplicably pulled back. To the images he knows he’s seen. Izuku tries to push the image of his last meeting with the guy out of his head. But the memory of a burning man and nearly dying is very prevalently pushing at him. Making his hands sweat and his mind scream for him to run. He finds it hard to ignore that he’s standing in very close proximity to a murderer.

Well, two, taking Toga into account, but she doesn’t scare him like he does.

Part of him wants to drop everything and bolt out of the store instead of chancing his life again. But he has work. If he runs out now he’ll get fired, meaning he absolutely won’t be getting that raise he needs. And no raise means no apartment. No food. No clothes. No school. Eating food from the garbage with Cat. Living out on the streets and attending school still. Having to avoid drug deals and suspicious men wandering alleys. Which sounds a million times worse than being subjected to the possibility of burning alive.

His unfathomable ability to somehow charm people can’t fail him now. Not when he needs to do overtime hours for a month straight. Not when the boss promised Izuku there’d be a raise in the future if he keeps at it. He’d do anything for that raise. Anything. If the murderer wanted him to personally pick up all his items, he’d do it. And if the man wanted him to get down and clean the floors on his hands and knees, he’d do it.

“You’re as interesting as the last time we spoke,” the man laughs a terribly gravely thing.

He’d rather not talk about that time. He was just as afraid he was going to die back then as he is now.

Actually. If he died, there wouldn’t be any more financial problems at all. It might be worth just taking a stream of hot fire to the face. Cat would just have to go back to being alone. And the kids at school would have to go back to doing their own homework.

What a pity.

Izuku smiles his signature customer service smile, “Are you buying from the store or not sir?”

The staple smile diminishes to be replaced by something more neutral. Something more on guard. The man throws a pack of gum and a wad of one dollar bills onto the counter with a level of annoyance. As if he can’t believe that Izuku isn’t willing to play his little game.

Izuku feels a vein pop in his forehead in anger. This guy is an asshole. Well, apart from the general burning people in alleys bit of his personality. A factor he graciously ignored pointing out due to the fact he walked in here with Toga. Who, despite everything, happens to be his best friend. His only friend at the moment, but his best one regardless. So Izuku was willing to deal with the man if she liked him. But not if the dude is going to act like this.

He swipes the gum up, scans it, and inputs the money in one go. All with the kind of flourish that would make his boss cry tears of joy. He should get a raise for that performance, ignoring everything else he’s done so far. It’s the kind of movement that his boss might record and hand out to the other workers. Izuku is proud of that.

It does always irk him, working with customers like this guy. He doesn’t understand why people can’t just respect him a little bit. Just a minuscule amount of respect for someone working at fucking three in the morning. He’s not asking for conversation or anything, he doesn’t want to talk to people. He just wants them to set things on the counter nicely and not be so angry all the time. It’s a more pleasant experience when customer doesn’t actively hate employee.

He has a panic button on the underside of his desk for a reason. Honestly, it’d be a little funny to use it over something so petty when he’s never pressed it before. Even when there was a shotgun practically up his nose he refused to press it. Because all it does is shut down his job, not to mention the police questioning. He’d rather just deal with the gun and be done with it in one go. Guess he should just suck it up and deal with the guy’s rudeness too.

“Toga. Where the hell did you meet this guy anyway?” He mutters, throwing the extra cash back at the man.

This question is somehow extremely exciting to the blonde. She springs off the counter to rush at the man, hopping into his arms as gracefully as one might expect. Which is to say that the man is extremely unprepared when she flings herself at him. He catches her, but at the cost of dropping everything in his hands.

The leftover money and the gum clatter uselessly to the floor. Izuku has to hold back a snort. Serves this guy right.

She kicks her legs, beaming, “Isn’t he such a cutie? I met him a little ago when I was away from the store. He was such a nice guy that I made him give me his number.”
She has a weird sense of who’s a nice person or not. Because he wouldn’t really say a serial killer is generally considered a real stand up guy. Killing people normally sends you on a one way track to a prison cell for the rest of your life. Murderers are looked at with fear and contempt, as irredeemable villains. There’s nothing that can convince people you’ve changed into a better person. That you were always a good person. He could be wrong though. He’s been wrong before.
(He’s not currently wrong, but he will be in the future.

People are capable of such intense change it’s hard to believe at first. They go from a monster into something reminiscent of an angel in the span of a blink. It’s hard to fathom, hard to trust, in the beginning. But it really can happen. People can change so dramatically for the better it’s as if they’re an entirely new person. It is rare and barely possible, but it has happened.

That is the case for this forgotten Todoroki brother. A man who should’ve been worse, but ended up kind. All because he met some kid in a back alley.

But that is neither here nor there.)

“Quite the charmer,” Izuku scoffs.

Sue him for not liking an active murderer. Sue him for being a normal fucking teenager in a town of weirdos. Sue him for not trusting that someone he watched burn a man alive isn’t kind.

He has the intelligence of any normal person, any sane person. It just seems that intelligence is incredibly lacking in this place. Not just because people don’t comprehend basic math, but because they lack basic survival skills. Students at his school act like they’ve never seen someone with an IQ over a hundred. They’re the types to do stupid shit in horror movies and immediately die. The type to run into danger and do absolutely nothing for anyone. And die. They’re dumb.

Toga really isn’t the smartest person either, but at least she knows about math. And who not to piss off when the store becomes crowded on rare occasions. But getting a good read on who’s a murderer or not seems to be her weakness.

Toga has that offended look again as she pouts, “Mido. Be nice to him. He’s my friend, just like you’re my friend.”

Just because he’s friends with someone doesn’t have to mean he likes their other friends. That’s how it was back when him and Bakugo still hung out. He didn’t like all the friends that the boy had, even if he pretended to tolerate them.
There was a group of mean lackeys that always seemed to cling onto the blonde. Much like Toga, Bakugo had told Izuku that they all had to be friends or he wouldn’t talk to anyone. He didn’t see the point. The lackeys were openly mean to him, even when Bakugo was looking. They pushed him around and always had some mean comments to throw at him. All because he was smaller and weaker than the rest of the group.
Nobody cared about him being made fun of. It only mattered when Izuku screamed at them to stop bothering him that there was an issue. Because good friends never raise their voices at each other. Good friends should know how to differentiate between a joke and the truth. And that’s all the lackeys ever did- joke.

Whatever. He’s willing to put his past experiences aside if it means Toga keeps coming around. She’s a way better friend than Bakugo ever was. He’d do anything to make her stay his friend for the rest of his life. However short that may be.

“Sure,” he pulls out his phone as it buzzes in his pocket, “If you say so, Himi.”

She watches him with careful contemplation as he reads the texts. Something rests on the tip of her tongue, something unsaid, but she doesn’t voice it out loud. So he’ll never know what kind of thought gave her such a strange look.
 
Boss man

What are you doing right now? It looks like you’re not even working.

Conversations are only fine to have after you’ve done all your work.

Why did you leave the box in the middle of the aisle? I asked you to restock all the chips at once. If you don’t get back to it now you can kiss that raise goodbye.

Tell that blonde girl to stop jumping around the store. She might knock something off the shelves. She’s always being crazy. I don’t like it. If you want her to stay around, make sure she’s less crazy. Otherwise I’ll ban her from the store.

That black haired guy is shady. Don’t push too hard for him to buy something or you might get shanked.

Midoriya? Are you even paying attention? Do your work like I told you to.

And what have I said about that damn cat? Put it down while you’re working.
 
Did the man write a fucking essay over text? Why is there so much? It’s all such random nonsense too, jumping from his raise to the incomplete job to his friend. And is he watching Izuku over the cameras? It’s like three in the morning. That must mean he’s hovering over his phone and just staring at everything Izuku does. That feels mildly intrusive to his privacy and majorly creepy on his boss’ part.
He wonders if it’s a normal occurrence or just something that happened tonight. Either way, his boss needs to get a life or go to bed and leave him alone. Texting him about his shift mid shift is straight up evil behavior. Thats not something a normal person does to someone they employ. Not unless they’re weirdly obsessed or something. Or just weird in general.
He feels like he’s standing on the edge of a mental breakdown. But he has to listen to his boss, even if it makes him feel insane.

“Push through Izuku. You really fucking need that raise,” he grumbles to himself, manhandling Cat off of him.

The other two share a glance he’s too tired to read into. Whatever it is that they’re thinking, they can keep it to themselves. He’s not in the mood to defend himself if they’re judging. And he’s definitely not rested enough to have a conversation about why he needs that raise so badly. So they can keep their dumb looks. And they can keep their dumb mouths shut while they’re at it. He doesn’t want to deal with it.

He circles around the counter again to go back to the forgotten box of chips. Toga hops out of the man’s arms and follows him again. She’s walking in that same careful way as before, the way he hates. Except this time she’s dragging the serial killer behind her. Even Cat is following, soft feet on the hard ground. She’s looking at him like he’s forgotten to feed her. They all look the same amount of concerned, pity carved into their features. The Cat too- as crazy as that sounds.

He feels the part of the brain that makes you sane fly away, perhaps just plop right out of his head onto the floor.

Its fine. He’s fine. Everything is so fine.

Money is worth feeling insane. Money is worth a midlife crisis. Money is worth his shaking shoulders. Money is work the bone deep fatigue he carries around. It’s worth his long nights and double shifts. It’s worth getting no sleep and barely keeping afloat. It’s worth getting brutally beaten at school. It’s worth moving away from home. It’s worth being closely watched by his boss. Money is worth all the trouble he’s gone through. Money is worth it. It has to be. Otherwise everything he’s done so far would be deemed worthless.

Worthless and useless. Much like himself.

“Mido, if you’re really struggling with money that much, I can help,” Toga whispers.

He slams to a halt in the middle of the row. She must be crazier than him.

Does she really think that he’d let her give him any amount of money? He’s never going to ask that of her. Never. He doesn’t want to behave like his mother did back when he used to have a different job.

Izuku used to do odd jobs for the people around town. Walking dogs, mowing lawns, babysitting unruly children, and the like. In no way was it a particularly profitable venture, he was just trying to make enough to buy All Might merch. But he was bringing in enough cash for his mother to eventually notice and ask him about it. And when she saw his stockpile of money, she confiscated it. Said she was glad he was so willing to help her out with money. There was no room for argument. No room to explain that the cash had never been meant for her. His money had just been ripped out from under him.

He’d never do that to Toga, she’s too kind. He’s not desperate enough for money to steal hers to pay rent. She’d give all she had to Izuku if he asked, which terrifies him to the core. It terrifies him that someone he met this year is willing to give him money when nobody else would. But he’d never mooch off of her like that.

Besides, he’s willing to bet everything she has is considered dirty money. And that’s not something he wants to explain to his landlord.

He waves the thought away, “No. I’m not asking you for money.”

She doesn’t offer him any sort of response. No nod of understanding or any look of pity, just the normal pout. He continues walking, grabbing the box and resuming his earlier task. The other two silently watch over him. It sort of feels like the managers that oversee everything during the day shift. But not really, since they’re both- Izuku assumes at least- psychotic or killers. Or both. Psychosis and murder really go hand in hand based on what he’s seen.
Then again, in a day and age like this, it’s hard to be completely sane. There are people walking around that don’t look human but somehow are. There are villains with such jaw dropping power it feels like the plot of a movie. A person’s entire life is dependent on a single joint in their toe . You could die walking down the street. You could die on the way home from school. Someone could accidentally kill you. Life seems totally impossible when he thinks about the specifics of it.
A hundred years ago, quirks weren’t even real. They were fantastical ‘what if’ scenarios for little children playing games. Now they’re real. Now everything relies on what your quirk allows you to do that others can’t.

A supposed bad quirk? You’re hated in school and everyone screams about what a villain you are. You have to endure harsh treatment and harsher words. You have to learn how to handle being hit down, maybe even muzzled in an alley to keep your quirk at bay. Like Shinsou.

A good quirk- at least in the eyes of everyone else? You’re loved beyond measure. Coddled for your strength and praised your entire life. Everyone loves you and you turn out to be a competition prone person like Bakugo.

And if you’re quirkless? It’s somehow the worst fate of all. You’re beaten and bruised and screamed at when you walk through the halls. The teachers ignore you and the students laugh at your pain. Your tests with perfect scores are voided because there’s no way you have a brain. You’re told to kill yourself, that the world would be a better place without you. Nobody will ever truly love you. After all, how could anyone love a failure?

The empty box slips out of his hands. He stares at it, watches as it descends to the grimy floor. It’s not a very far distance in the grand scheme of things. Not far enough to hurt the box, nor crumple it beyond repair. Just far enough for there to be a noise as it connects with the ground.

He bursts into inconsolable tears.

(The train screeches to a sudden and jarring stop on the tracks. Passengers fly out of their seats and scramble to catch themselves on anything. An orange streak of hair flies through the train at a blinding speed. A blonde haired passenger starts crying, clutching at the black haired person next to her.

A train following closely behind nearly crashes into the suddenly unmoving train. But it stops in time, fast enough that no more people go flying.

Everything is at a silent standstill. The conductor makes no move to ease the tension. Does nothing to fight away the growing sense of doom settling over the passengers. The train is halted and quiet in a way it never has been before. It feels like it may never move again.

But in the distance another train can be heard. It’s fast approaching, cranking the whistle as loudly as it possibly can. Anyone on board could hear the incoming train no matter where they stand. Even if they slammed their hands over their ears they’d hear it. The noise is pounding into their skulls, loud like nothing ever has been before. But it’s exactly what the conductor needs to start inching the train forward again.)

(She’s running again. Just like she’s done a million times before.

She can hear footsteps just behind her, slowing catching up to her. Her legs aren’t long enough to expand the distance. Her legs aren’t strong enough to keep her completely stable as she sprints. It’s just a matter of time before the person chasing grabs her by the hair. And then she’ll be dragged back to that table and have to face Chisaki. He’d have that same anger as always, the imposing, drowning anger that makes her blood run cold.

A piece of glass obscured by the darkness of the alley cuts her foot open. It hurts, but not enough for her to stop running. Not nearly as bad as some of the things she’s been subjected to. Cutting her foot is nothing like having her torso torn open down the middle. It’s nothing like having her arm ripped from her body. It’s nothing compared to the torture of the chair, so she runs through it.

There’s a line of blood behind her, extending from the shard of glass to her current position. It’s bright red. Part of her hopes that a hero somehow comes across the line and questions its origins. That they’ll search and eventually find the compound. And then she won’t have to suffer anymore.The other part of her knows that someone will be sent here and will have to scrub her blood from the cement. On their hands and knees if they must, as long as the blood is scrubbed clean. Chisaki would never let a molecule of her to go waste.

Fingers swipe at her hair. She trips, falling on her hands and knees in the middle of the alley. It stings. But not enough for her to stay on the ground and sob.

The man chasing her trips over her fallen body and face plants into the ground. He grunts like the winds been harshly knocked out of him. A mean thought in her mind hopes that he never gets up. That maybe he injured his leg so badly he’ll leave her alone. But a thought like that is distracting, and she can’t afford to be distracted.

She pries herself up, clambering over his back and continuing her sprint towards the light. It’s closer than it’s ever been before. If she reaches for it, she might even feel the warmth of the sun. If she reaches for it, she might understand for a moment, what it’s like to be free. But only if she manages to reach. Only if her fingers manage to hit the light before the darkness grabs ahold of her.

It’s the first time she’s made it this far. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to do when she reaches the light. If someone will be in the other end, waiting. Or if she’ll have to keep running until someone notices her and takes her to the police station. Maybe she’ll even have to try and find the station by herself. But her pursuer would catch her by then, Chisaki would catch her by then. And then she’d never see the light again. She’d probably never see anything ever again.

Chisaki let her keep her legs and eyes so far, but he might not always do so. Maybe after this he’d take them away. He’d deconstruct them and watch her writhe in agony, promising a future of blind torment. She’d be a lump of a human. Just a torso with a few ugly limbs attached to it. No legs to walk and no eyes to see. Just a sad thing that people would pity if they happened upon her. That is what will happen if Chisaki catches her now. 
She’ll never manage to make it out of the alley again. She knows she won’t. It was only luck that got her this far this time, the only reason she made it further than she usually does. If she hadn’t fallen when she had, she’d have been caught. If the man hadn’t fallen over her, she’d have been caught. If her legs were taken from her she wouldn’t be out here at all.  She’ll never have luck on her side like this again. This is her last chance.
She should get her last looks now, while she still can. Feel the sun for the last time while she still can. Before she’s dragged back to the chair to be ripped apart a billion more times. Until she dies strapped down to metal for Chisaki’s sick experiment.

She throws herself out of the alley, ready to meet cement and nothing else. But she feels the sun on her back. And she smells the breeze, mixed with a hint of something sweet and unimaginable. It’s bright in a way the fluorescent lights could never achieve in her room. The scent is so much better too, real, not just the smell of antiseptic. She can smell food that’s so much better than the scraps she gets at the compound. And people are walking around laughing in a way she can distantly remember. It’s beautiful to her in a way that can only be mundane to others.

It was worth the millions of tries of running to see this scene now. The pain and suffering, the bleeding and crying, everything. It was all worth it.

All the trouble she’ll be in when she gets caught is trumped by the sheer joy that the sky brings her. It’s just as blue as she imagined- way more blue than any movie could ever portray. And the clouds are so much like cotton candy she wishes she could reach up and snatch a piece. The birds are lucky in that regard, being able to whisk themselves through clouds without a care.

But she can’t stop to admire the world for more than a single second. There’s someone after her, someone willing to tackle and drag her through an alley by the foot. So she can’t afford to waste a moment.
This is her chance to live. This is her chance to be happy, if only for a few fleeting minutes. 
She takes off down the street, wind whipping her hair out behind her. A few people give her odd looks as she passes by. And a few others try to stop and ask her a question, but she can’t stop running. She can’t stop running or else she’ll be caught and all this will end. She’ll be right back where she started, stranded and alone against cold metal restraints.

She’s never run like this before. Usually she sprints, a desperate sort of thing in which she’s trying to escape. But right now she’s running. She’s running at a normal pace and she’s not afraid of what’s happening behind her. She’s running and the sky is above and she just wants to stay under the sun for a little longer.

It’s joyous. And her life is never ever joyous. But right now nothing can stop her, because she’s running and there’s absolutely no metal in sight.

Her pursuer is behind, way behind, far enough that she’ll have enough time to see a lot of things. Like the ice cream that kid is holding. And that cute dog walking with its owner. The banners strung up between buildings and alleys with bright colors. Statues of popular heroes striking poses in shop windows. A park to her left, a fountain to her right. The rows upon rows of trees that line the street. The brightness of the day as the sun sits in the middle of the sky.

A cat barreling straight toward her. The green haired person chasing it crashing into her.

The subsequent tumble to the ground.)

bakugo

hey.

are you ready to hang out tomorrow?

what are we even doing anyway? Just eating or something. And we live kind of far from each other. So we might have to meet in the middle.

please don’t tell me we’re going back to you ignoring me

i thought we were going to talk about this

Deku?

izuku?

please reply

Izuku

sorry

am busy

ill see you tomorrow

something came up rn

stay safe at school

bakugo

its okay

why wouldn’t i be safe at school nerd???

there are pro heroes around all the time. My teacher, for example.

oh

gtg

Said teacher is glaring

Izuku

idk

just be safe

bye

have to go too

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Has he been avoiding Toga since his mental breakdown the other day? Yes. Yes he has. But is that really so wrong? Is it really such a terrible idea to stay away from the person he stupidly cried in front of? He certainly doesn’t think so. But maybe that’s an extremely biased opinion, seeing as he’s the embarrassed that a falling box set him off. Well, it was more than just the box really, it was the whole week. Month even. Year, if he’s being bold. Possibly even his entire life, but he hasn’t really been keeping track since the start.
He only started to care when his personal life was affecting his work life. Lately, it’s felt like everything has just been piling up on his shoulders one after the other. Stressor upon stressor upon stressor placed by some unknowing and uncaring hand. Sometimes the brutal beatings of the kids at his god awful school. Sometimes the way he’s slammed into a wall as someone lunges over the counter to get to the register. And sometimes it’s walking home at night without any way to pay for food. Or being too he’s the world’s worst liar by the principal after he was told to recount the story. Of him being punched in the gut. In front of the entire school.

How the hell would he have managed to convince the entire student body of a lie like that? Telling them to pretend they saw him getting socked in the stomach and go along with it. There’s no way anyone would listen to such an absurd thing. Especially not from him. He’s not charismatic enough to pull something like that off. Though, it does sound like a handy skill to have. Maybe he might’ve been able to convince his boss he’s worthy of a raise. Just a few more dollars to pay for a few more things. Anything would help the current situation he finds himself in, nearly out of food and about to be evicted.

Maybe he should just get a second job and stop complaining. If he can manage to find one, that is.
He never had to think so hard about finances before all this. His mother paid for everything- burnt school uniforms and all. She gave him food and clothes and everything he could ever need before he moved out. And she even paid his way for a little while here too, until she didn’t. He never thought about how hard it was to survive off a single income until he had to start doing it himself. When she pulled the plug and took his lifeline away, he was left standing in the ruins of his life. He was horrible with money to begin with. It was hard to adjust when he’d never had to worry before.
He should’ve learned to respect all the hard work his mother had done to give him things. It’s not easy living in an apartment and trying to feed two mouths. Izuku knows that now, and he’s finding it harder to keep up with all the demands. He can only survive off of leftover ramen noodles for so long. The same goes for Cat, even if she complains less than him.

But that’s life. You have to fend for yourself eventually, you can’t always survive off the salary of your mother.

(Izuku Midoriya does not realize that his mother is not a good parent. She only did the bare minimum of what was required of her. Only provided the very basics of what a parent usually does. But he’ll never realize, not even if someone showed evidence, proved it to be true. Because he wants to see the best in her. He wants to imagine all the things she’s done were necessary in every capacity because she did them for him. Even if he’s never wanted anyone’s help.

But that is neither here nor there.)

A heavy box slips from his hands, contents spilling out over the floor. He watches a can of beans roll across the dirty ground and disappear under the shelves. It reminds him of himself, lonely, vanishing from his life to go live in some far off place. Running away from all his problems and the inevitability of never being picked off the shelf. From the unshakeable truth that he’ll have to be taken out back with all the other unwanteds and thrown away. A sad can of beans when all anyone ever wanted was a can of preserved fruit.

…he’s been thinking about weird things lately. Ever since his freak out, he hasn’t been quite right. Comparing himself to a can of food might be an all time low for him though.

He needs to focus on more important things.

Izuku deftly hits the floor, snatching up the cans within his reach to mitigate the mess. None of them have managed to roll very far away. Unless you’re counting his counterpart, the beans he just compared to himself. Those seem to have disappeared without a trace. He’ll have to crawl under the shelves if he wants to retrieve it, but that’ll have to wait for later. Now, he has to focus on what’s in front of him, what he can manage. Which just so happens to be the tens of cans at his feet.

Fortunately for him, it seems none of the cans have any major damage to be seen. So at least he won’t be required to pay for any damages caused. Unfortunately for him, he already knows that he’s going to get another lecture about not dropping things anymore. Regardless of how pristine the cans appear to be. Because this is his second screw up of the week now, the second time he’s dropped products. And his insane boss is always watching those fucking cameras and spying on him. Meaning, he sees absolutely everything. So Izuku knows there’s bound to be some kind of talk about paying attention while working.

Why the boss even watches him in the first place is a mystery he fears may never be solved. It could just be to keep an eye on Izuku, make sure nothing is going wrong. But if that were the case he could just be in the store as a manager. He doesn’t gain anything from staying up late and watching a teenager. Unless, of course, he happens to be a pervert. Then it would make sense why he’s watching some loser work the graveyard shift. But maybe it’s best to try not to think about things like that, it might make him less productive. And he needs to be productive in order to earn any money at all.

He scoops up the last two cans with a sigh, straightening up just as feet pad quietly around the corner. Something in Izuku’s heart softens enough for his knees to hit the ground again. The cans get easily forgotten and tossed into the box to be with all the others. And in a move very unlike him, he doesn’t check if they remain undamaged. Just tosses them in and falls back to the floor to welcome Cat.

Her orange fur somehow looks neon under the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

He laughs to himself. Musing, he realizes he never even got the chance to properly stand up before he was pulled back down again. He just got down on his knees because someone came walking in his direction. If that doesn’t perfectly sum up his life, he has no idea what else might.

Cat rubs against his legs with a purr. She seems happier lately, as happy as a starving animal could hope to be. Well, not completely starving. She probably eats more than he does because he gives her his food too. But she doesn’t seem too upset about it, she’s not angry that he’s not feeding her enough or something like that. All things considered, she isn’t angry and scratching all the time anymore. She’s mischievous and prone to knocking things over in both his apartment and the store, but he doesn’t mind too much. It’s not as bad as an attitude as before.

Cat is the same type of crazy as Toga, which might be why he likes the both of them so much. They remind him of each other.

He can’t help but feel horrible about it though. About how terrible of an owner he is. But he’s trying. He wishes he could do more for her, but he really doesn’t have a single penny to spare. He’s giving her everything he can, including his things. She sleeps in his bed and eats his food from his hands. He lets her do everything she wants and defends her in front of his boss. He’s trying as hard as he can go make her life as wonderful as possible. It’s just not enough. It’ll never be enough.

Izuku isn’t really feeding her a whole lot more than what she’s used to out on the streets. It’s mostly whatever he eats but a slightly smaller portion. Unless he sees her sad eyes and gives her his as well. And he is very prone to falling victim to her pleading eyes. Which can’t feasibly be that healthy for a cat, but there’s not much else he can do. At least he’s keeping her out of fights and giving her consistent meal times.

He’d never admit it, but her company is keeping him out of fights too.
He used to wait around at school and get jumped eventually. But now he rushes straight home to her. It brings him a sense of elation to go home, something he hasn’t felt for most of his life. His mother never gave him that same excitement, not for anything. Not his favorite dish or the rare video call with his dad. Not the promise of a birthday party- even though they both knew he’d never have one. Certainly not the lazy encouragement or the careful dissuading of his dreams. Shes never made him beam on the walk home like Cat has. Maybe that means he’s a bad son, because she’s certainly not a bad mother. Just a tired one. He gets that, he’s tired all the time now.
But Cat gives him a bit of energy, just enough for him to skip a little, just enough for him to try really hard. Not just on bettering himself, but on providing for her. He took a mangy animal home and reemerged with an actual semblance of an cat. She went from bloody, bruised, and matted to a sleek cat with bright orange hair. She’s playful now, likes being around him in a way she couldn’t be before. It’s noticeable enough of a change for it to matter- for his contributions to have actually made a difference. He helped something and it mattered.

Despite the sheer number of fuck ups in his life, he didn’t ruin her. And he’ll die before he lets himself ever diminish any part of her life.

She’s perfect in every way. Untouched by the cruelty and hatred that he’s accustomed to, untouched by the filth and grime. And the two of them have come a long way from how it was at the start. Cat never runs from him anymore, never hisses or refuses to stand near. She used to turn tail and sprint when he came too close. He couldn’t get within five feet of her without a mad dash. Now she’s the one who initiates contact and comes to stand by him. He made her better instead of infecting her like he’s managed to infect everyone else.

She sits at his feet when he’s behind the counter and hops onto his shoulders when he’s standing still. She follows him around the store and on the way to school. And she waits in his apartment to greet him when he gets back. As if she was sitting by the door the entire day, hoping he’d open it. When he’s walking, she follows closely to his steps, keeping in line with them. She even weaves between his feet or curls her tail around his calf sometimes. It’s like she’s suddenly deemed him perfectly harmless, no longer a threat.

Izuku thinks that him saving her from maniacs kicking her should’ve solidified that, but he’s not one to judge. People haven’t trusted him for way less. He hasn’t trusted people for way less. It’s hard to gauge if someone is being genuine or not when they do something nice. If their actions towards him are separate from their true intentions. People are good at hiding things behind a crooked smile and a well placed good deed. It’s happened to him about a million times, and he’s grown accustomed to expecting the worse.

Someone helping him? They don’t mean it. One of these days they’ll turn around and demand compensation for what they gave up for him. They’ll tell him what a greedy bastard he is for thinking he’d never have to repay him. How cruel of a person he is for expecting to get by without ever repaying anyone. Life doesn’t work like that, nothing is ever free. He owes them something of equivalent value to their kindness.

(Sounds like his mother. Though that’s not who he’s thinking of.

She’ll never be who he’s thinking of, even when she deserves to be.)

Simple kindness? A lie. It’s all an elaborate plan to make him look like an idiot. Befriend him so that he trusts them enough to follow them into a trap. Make him believe that the compromising position he was in would never be seen by anyone. Laugh as his mother storms into the school and drags him from the classroom by the arm. Deny that they had anything to do with the situation he ended up in. Watch as his life crumbles because someone posted a picture of him on the internet.

There is no such thing as kindness. The world is cut and dry, mean and selfish. People do what they want to gain what they want. They don’t care who they have to trample over to get it, especially not the quirkless nobody. It’s impossible for people to be kind when it’s so incredibly easy for them to just exploit instead. Use someone else as a stepping stone on their way up the ladder. Or simply use Izuku as a form of entertainment when bored.

It’s like when girls used to come up and confess to him, giggling like they were the funniest things in the world. They thought he’d blush and trip over himself when they said something. That somebody like him would never expect to be approached by a girl. But a joke gets tiring when it’s done more than once. It gets annoying when it’s done more than a dozen times. He knows that it’s a joke the second a girl gets near him. He knows they’ll confess, do their annoying little giggles, and then announce that they were only joking. It’s an overdone joke. It’s not funny anymore. Not that he ever found it funny.

He never really liked any girls anyway.

(He only fell for it once.

It wasn’t a girl. And he never fell for it again.

But that is neither here nor there.)

He never liked another girl after his friend killed herself. Liking them was made harder when they always thought he was a joke and not a person. It seemed impossible for him to even get along with a girl, let alone like one. That all changed when he met Toga, but even then, the back of his mind always tells him to be wary. That perhaps her strange kindness is only to confuse him until her final prank comes around.

In any case, if everything she says is a set up, or a joke, she’s really good at lying. All the other people that’ve done this could only pretend for a day or two max. So either Toga is being extremely elaborate with her plans, or she really does think of herself as his friend. Which is perhaps more surprising than the fact that she could be a prolific serial killer. Because it’s a matter of fact versus suspicion. He knows she’s a killer, but he isn’t sure that they’re actually friends and it isn’t all some game. It’s a fact that she’s murdered someone before. It’s a suspicion that they could be friends.

Cat winds her tail around Izuku’s arm. He blinks, remembering with a start that he’s still on the clock. He needs to get back to work before he gets a cryptic message from his boss. The stunt he pulled with the box last time pushed back his pay raise, so he has to work twice as hard to prove his worth. Money is getting tighter and tighter each month. He shouldn’t be sitting on the ground and zoning out.

He pushes himself off the floor with a sigh, bones creaking with their usual tiredness. Cat mewls a complaint before stalking up the shelves and disappearing over the very top. Izuku begins the boring task of restocking stupid fucking beans into rows. How glamorous of a life. If his classmates from middle school could see him now, they’d laugh as they threw all his hard work to the floor.

He can practically hear the ‘I told you so’s from here.
In his entire life, Izuku has never been told that he could be not just a hero, but a somebody. Not even his parents, not the Bakugo’s or his teachers. Nobody. It felt like people had everything figured out ages before him, how he’ll live, how he’ll die. They seemed to know from the moment they saw him that he’d never make it anywhere in life. He might make it out of middle and high school, but he’d never be able to make it beyond that. Colleges don’t accept the quirkless. Neither do about ninety eight percent of jobs out there. He’ll live and die penniless.
It’s annoying that everyone is right. At least he’s managed to find himself a job, one with shitty pay, but he’s not completely broke. Maybe he’ll just work here for the rest of his useless life. Toga might be mad at him for that, but there’s not much else he can do. No other place in the universe will accept him for who he is. No other place would be willing to let him represent them. People like him don’t fit in anywhere, or with anyone, it’s impossible to. So he’s stuck where he is unless a miracle happens.

Besides, he still isn’t sure how long Toga will be around for, if this is all an act. In ten years she might not even care if he’s still alive. She won’t have to pretend she’s worried about his health and all that sappy shit anymore. And she won’t try to convince him that he’s a  hero when it’s an impossibility.

(Not impossible, but a long ways away from him. It’s out of reach in the capacity that it should’ve been. And he’ll never be the kind of hero that he was meant to be in another life. Everything changed in a single moment, when he didn’t grab on to All Might like he was supposed to.

It’s impossible to go back and fix the wrongs now. But it’s also not impossible for him to be a hero still, despite what he thinks of himself.

But that is neither here nor there.)
If he’s being honest, Izuku can’t find it in himself to be mad at her even  if she is lying. She’s been the nicest person to ever walk into his life and stay. Even if she’s absolutely insane and brought a murderer into the store with her. Her actions excuse whatever prank she may have in store for him, however awful it may be. She’s done more for him than anyone else ever bothered to. Like help Izuku survive an attack by a robber with a quirk that shot bullets from his finger. Or sitting around and keeping him company for hours on end. And walking him home because she knows how dangerous of an area it is. Giving him the only number in his phone besides Bakugo’s- him and his mother mutually blocked each other. Never prying into his life. Accepting him for who he is. Offering to help him with his money situation. Saying she cares. Saying he’s cute.
He expects her to walk out like everyone else has, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be happy to watch her go. It doesn’t mean it won’t hurt that another girl is leaving him behind. It’ll sting just as strongly- maybe stronger- than when he realized the girl he loved was dead. That the last words she ever uttered aloud were to proclaim her affections. That if he had demanded to walk her home, everything would’ve turned out differently. That her parents said she hasn’t talked or eaten dinner, just gone straight to her room. Straight up the stairs and to her death. Straight to the note and the chair and that rope on the ceiling.

The letter was for him. It didn’t blame him for anything, it didn’t blame anyone when it very well should have. It just said the same things she had told him aloud only minutes prior to her final breath. That she loved him, and she was sorry for what her death would do to him. Because she knew what her death would do. She knew how it would feel when her parents told him the news. She knew how it would feel when the bullies left him alone out of guilt. She knew how it would feel when the whispers started up.

She knew.

If Toga leaves too he might not be able to take it. He might not be able to ignore the thoughts in his mind if she’s not there to quell them. If she leaves, he might even be tempted to follow her lead and leave too.

(The train hits a bump in the tracks, passengers floating out of their seats and slamming back down. Bruises from the trains previous halt still litter their skin. Still ache in a way that won’t be quick to heal. Not with the amount of obstacles on the course the conductor has unknowingly chosen.

But they’ve already committed themselves to the seats in which they are. And they’ll only move if they find that the train is too broken to continue. Or if the conductor abandons the train. But even then, they may chase after him still to ensure he keeps driving.)

A booming crash echoes around the store, glass hitting the hard floor. It sounds like a gunshot goes off. Maybe even a pipe bomb. It’s enough to snap him from his thoughts. He abandons the mundane task of sliding beans onto shelves to go look for the problem. This is an extremely easy task, seeing as the entire front half of the store is covered in glass.

The doors somehow fell off the hinges and travelled an easy distance to the ground. Every inch of both doors is broken, not a single salvageable piece among the wreckage. Someone seems to be standing in the fray of it, arm still outreached to touch what used to be the handle. They look relatively unharmed so Izuku doesn’t question them. He’s too focused on the very real possibility that this is going to come out of his paycheck. And if that happens, he won’t be able to feed himself or Cat. Probably for the next week or two. Which also means that he might not be able to pay his landlord.

Izuku inches closer to the edge of the glass, trying to gauge how long it’ll take to clean up. He’s not sure how the hell he’s going to close the store. It’s impossible to. Someone is going to walk by, see no door and no cashier, and simply stroll in to steal everything. He can’t stand outside forever. He’ll keel over unconscious eventually, and he still has to go to school tomorrow. And even if he could guard the store, he doubts he’d be able to stave off some of the people that may wander by. The boss never equipped him to handle drug users or some of the crazier homeless people. But if he lets people steal he’s going to lose the only job he’s capable of holding. It’s kind of an all around lose-lose situation.

How much force do you have to open a glass door with in order for it to shatter? Maybe the guy standing in the center of it has some sort of quirk that makes him insanely strong. He looks entirely too scrawny for super strength, but Izuku isn’t trying to judge here. He’s sure there are super strong people that happen to be deathly skinny. That’s normal. Izuku’s been choked out by someone about the same size as a twig before. Whether that’s an indication of his own weakness or the others strength doesn’t matter. The point stands that skinny people can cause glass doors to shatter. Maybe not him personally, but certainly someone else. Someone like the very suspicious looking man now glaring at him.

He could jump him if he went now with the element of surprise.

…he shouldn’t.

It was probably an accident. He can’t immediately jump to conclusions and wail on a person. That’s generally considered bad customer service, even if they just cost him his apartment and food. He can’t afford to get mad at a someone like when he yelled at that mist guy a few weeks ago. That hiccup got him smacked by his boss- like actually smacked. Which Izuku isn’t sure is entirely legal, but it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone about it. It’s not like anyone would actually give a shit if he complained about it to them. His boss slaps like a little girl anyway. He’s been hurt worse, punished worse.

Bakugo’s lackeys hit way harder than a shrimpy middle aged man.

(Bakugo has never hit him. He’s scared him and burned him once, but he’s never hit.

Izuku never thinks about that.)

A glance to the clock says his shift already ended about twenty minutes ago. He’s just been a loser restocking shelves when he could’ve gone home. All this trouble could’ve been avoided, Izuku would be halfway home and whoever this guy is would’ve walked right by. The door would still be intact and so would the last embers of hope in his soul. His raise would still be within his sights, practically in his hands. Now it’s probably being snatched by some asshole who works an earlier shift.
He bets nobody else has to work this hard for a raise. Nobody else works even a fraction as hard as he does. He does most of the restocking, the sweeping, the cleaning, counting the stock, and just about everything else. Doing the bulk of the work by himself and working completely alone gets him a grand total of jack shit. Sure it’s the worst store in the known universe, and sure he’s quirkless, but it’s like he can’t catch a break. Just curveball after curveball after curveball . All for a little more money that other people would probably think of as pocket change.
Izuku runs an exasperated hand down his face, muttering, “Shit like this always happens to me.”

He kicks his foot at a nearby piece of glass, trying to decide if he should just risk it and go home. Technically he wasn’t on the clock when the accident occurred, and therefore he was just a bystander in a situation completely out of his control. There should be no reason to charge him the costs of the damage. If he pleads with the boss for long enough, perhaps the man will see that he’s a victim here too. This couldn’t have possibly been his fault.

But he knows that this’ll be blamed on him like everything else always is. Missing stock? Izuku’s fault for losing it. Dirty floors? Izuku should’ve cleaned them better during closing. The place being robbed? Izuku should’ve known someone would come in, and he should’ve closed the doors on them preemptively. Even though he’s supposed to roll over and take it if someone is robbing the cash register. So he’s supposed to simultaneously be extremely involved while not messing with anyone. Because that makes total sense. Super understandable instructions to be given.

The doors will be yet another charge against him, yet another thing he’s fucked up. He should’ve left the doors open and easily accessible to all sorts of people. If he’d done that, the weirdo with super strength wouldn’t have obliterated the doors. That’s what he’s supposed to do anyway, keep the doors open. The boss told him that on the first day. With the immediate follow up that the door was to remain closed at all times, no exceptions. Thus spawns his immense confusion on what he should actually do, what to prioritize.
How much do the doors cost anyway Hundreds? Thousands ? 
Somehow, Izuku can feel that his wages for the rest of eternity will go into paying off their repair cost. He’ll never get his very much needed raise and he’ll fade into nothingness. Just another useless quirkless drowning under layers of debt.

Maybe he should save himself the trouble and just kill himself. Cut his wrists open with the very available and very deadly glass at his feet. It might be an inconvenience to whoever’s on opening shift, but he’ll die anyway if he has to give up even a dollar of his salary. So it’s either someone finding him bleeding out here or in the bathtub in his apartment. And it feels more of a petty smack in the face to kill himself where his boss can see. Maybe the dude will stop watching people on the cameras like a creep.
“…Midoriya,” a raspy voice says, not questions- says .
Izuku pushes down the rising thoughts of suicide, “Ah. Yes,” he steps closer, crunching over glass as he goes, “Sorry I didn’t ask about your well being earlier.”

He honestly didn’t care. His life is about to end here. He still doesn’t care. He’s finding it hard to be concerned when he’s going to lose everything because the man made a stupid mistake.

The man tugs his hoodie down lower over his eyes, “Why is this door so weak? I’m a high level boss, but it shouldn’t have shattered so quickly.”

What is this psycho talking about, high level boss? He just broke super expensive glass doors and ended Izuku’s career.

“I apologize for the inconvenience. It’s never shattered before,” he plasters a smile onto his face.

The guy gives him a once over and shoulders past him, over the carnage he’s caused and the thousands of dollars wasted. Completely ignoring Izuku’s words too. Which is almost as unforgivable as being the cause of a quirkless kid committing suicide.

May any higher being- whether it be a god or something else, whatever’s listening- give him the strength he needs to clean this mess. He only wants the person opening the store to see his dead body. Not pick up the mess and possibly risk cutting themselves too. That feels a little inconsiderate of him, killing himself and then making people walk over a mess to get to him. He should make the clean up as easy and quick as humanly possible.

(Izuku Midoriya has much care for others while holding very little for himself.)

He grabs the broom from by the entrance, because he’s had his fair share of things to clean up by the door. While gathering all the glass to one side he looks for a proper piece that’ll be able to slit his wrist. Long enough to hold and sharp enough to actually do some damage. He doubts the perpetrator of the break will call the cops, but his boss might, so he should make sure that he dies pretty quickly. And he should try to make sure that he doesn’t get blood all over too. He at least wants to be polite to whoever will be subjected to cleaning all this.

“Are you the only one working?” The raspy voice calls angrily.

Izuku glances over his shoulder. The man is standing by the register with a few items, noticeably no water. Which seems desperately needed based on his voice. It sounds like someone shoved sand down the guys throat and then expected him to talk around it.

Izuku puffs out a breath and tears his apron off, sliding over to stand behind the counter, “Yeah. I’m the only one who ever works this late,” he grumbles, “I’m not even on the clock. Just my fucking luck that the door broke.”

He snatches the stuff and quickly scans them, mumbling about the shitiness of his life all the while. Glaring red eyes watch him the entire time. And he nearly feels bad for making this guy listen to him complaining. But not nearly enough to keep his mouth shut. Because the raspy weirdo is responsible for at least part of the problem, if not most of it.

He’s never going to get over this. It may even haunt him in death.
Izuku usually makes sure to treat customers kindly, listening to them and keeping his personal life out of it. But the door just literally came crashing down and he doesn’t care enough to pretend he’s feeling alright about it. So what if this random guy is uncomfortable while he mumbles about his personal life? He’s the one that shattered the fucking door into a thousand tiny pieces. He might’ve even shattered the last glimmering light of hope in Izuku’s barren eyes too. What a feat. Killed two birds with one stone there.
It’s so poetic. If he were anyone else, he might find this situation funny, from an outside perspective. But seeing as he very much is on the inside and not an onlooker, he’s struggling to find the humor.

He feels his phone beginning to buzz incessantly in his pocket. Which he elects to ignore based on the fact it is absolutely his boss texting him. Probably about the impending news of his immediate firing from the job. Maybe even a contract to sell off his soul in exchange for replacing the doors. He might take that offer, selling his soul before killing himself. He wonders who it’d go to when he died- his boss or the devil. It’s hard to say really, his soul might be split down the middle. His boss and Satan are pretty uncannily similar sometimes if he squints.

“Twenty four dollars flat,” he idly says, praying that his boss can’t tell he can feel his phone.

The man hands him quite possibly the crustiest bills in the nation. They’re stiff in his hands and somehow simultaneously crumbling away as warmth touches them. It’s like the light of the store is making them deteriorate the longer they sit in the open. But they’re not the strangest bills he’s been handed, not by a long shot. Izuku takes them without even bothering to count, shoving the bag across the counter. It doesn’t matter to him anymore if the man paid what he owed or if he didn’t.

They both stand there for a second, unmoving and unblinking, until he decides to get back to work. Well, work off the clock. But work nonetheless. Even if he’s about to be miserably fired. That can wait until he opens up his messages. For now, he’s an employed man. An employed man who has about an hours worth of clean up to do before he can kill himself and be done with it.

If he wants to be done with it. He just remembered he has plans to meet with Bakugo on Saturday. Which is nearly here, if he’s rounding up and saying today is Friday. So maybe he should slit his wrists after seeing the blonde explosion again. But he can decide while he’s cleaning.

He throws his apron down on the register with a huff, grabbing for the broom again. He’s nearly settled back into cleaning when Cat leaps from the top shelves and sprints out the front door.

All he can do for a moment is dumbly stare in her direction, wondering if she’s worth losing his job over. Because if he manages to keep his position after the situation he’s been dealt, he’ll definitely lose it if he leaves the store now. The boss won’t excuse him leaving the store completely unattended to be robbed of everything. Especially not because he decided to drop everything and chase an animal. An animal that the boss has expressed clear disdain for.

…but he also couldn’t live with himself if he let Cat get hurt again. After everything he’s done, all their progress, it would be devastating to lose her now. Even just the possibility of someone kicking her again makes his hair stand on end. He’s saved her from pain before, and he doesn’t want to see her further ever again. She’s one of the few things actively holding his tired and miserable life together. And maybe it’s sad that a cat means so much, but it’s the truth. He loves her just as much as he loves money. Which is saying a lot about her and what she’s done for him.

With a silent prayer and the smallest of glances over his shoulder, he drops the broom and starts the chase. The man says something, but Izuku is already out the door- what once was the door at least. He doesn’t have the time to stop and wonder what the customer wants. He’s off the clock and has way better things to do besides guard a shitty store. He’s saving something much more important than himself, much more important than glass or a dry looking man who should’ve bought water.

Cat is worth the risk.

She has to be. Otherwise the buzzing in his pocket might just be the beginning words on his suicide note.

(The train speeds up, picking up to a pace that it hasn’t reached in a good while. The conductor seems more flustered then usual. Less perceptive of the clear break in the tracks, a lone train car sat before it. It only gets a passing glance. A mere fraction of a moment. Not enough for any true danger to be gleaned despite the obvious prospect of crashing.

But everything seems to work out fine, perfect even. Because the car without a joined train seemingly repairs the tracks as easily as they were destroyed. It may have been purposefully done damage, but something seems to have changed. Something important enough to alter original plans happened. And it’s enough for the lone train car to easily join the end of Izuku’s train.

He never stops to question how the man knew his name before it was even possible to be seen. In the darkness, with a hoodie over his head, he wouldn’t have been able to make out the name tag from that distance. And he never stops to realize that he’s seen the same customer before, only days ago. The man came to the store already knowing who Izuku was.

Nobody but himself will ever know what he was planning to do.

Because that is neither here nor there.)

Bakugo Katsuki is not a nice person in any regard. He’s rude to his classmates, has an ego on par with All Might’s, and constantly walks into class with a bad attitude. It makes it extremely difficult to try to reign in and teach.

There’s nothing about him that screams ‘team player.’ He’s not the kind of guy to wait for others, he does everything by himself even if it breaks him. Even if his back is broken and his legs have failed him. He’ll never admit to failure and he’ll never give up unless he’s dead. It would be admirable if he weren’t barring other people from participating. Or helping. But that should’ve been easily expected. Every time someone tries to approach him in class he cusses them out. Refusing to be friendly with anyone, he’s amassed a large amount of hatred towards him. Hatred that’ll come back to bite him in the ass sooner rather than later. Hatred that has scored him a grand total of zero friends so far, a feat even Mineta avoided.

All of this is simple fact, truths that can be easily observed over the course of a single day. It’s not like Bakugo ever tries to hide his clear animosity towards absolutely everyone in the classroom. He made it clear on the first day that he hated all of them and didn’t want to make friends. A statement that initially sparked an intense feeling to covert him to niceness, but quickly turned out to be irrefutable.
The point is that he’s not nice and has no friends. It would be damn near impossible with that horrible behavior of his. Would be impossible, except for the chance that he’s somehow managed to make someone like him. Crazier still that he seems to like them back.
Bakugo always came in early to classes, but it’s been earlier and earlier lately. Enough for Aizawa to wonder what he was doing on his phone for so long. If the boy had perhaps gotten addicted to a game or was just obsessed with scrolling through social media. But that didn’t explain the smiles and the blushing and the nervousness. All things that the blonde had previously been incapable of showing. And unless he was in love with a game character or someone online, he must be texting someone. Something easily proven when he all but threw his phone into the whiteboard when Kirishima tried to grab it. A reaction only given when you’re texting someone you like and you’re trying to hide it.

Aizawa has been very careful to not draw attention to the fact that he has Bakugo figured out. And he’s been even more careful with his subtle glances and attempts to see the name on the top left. There’s a strange sense of importance in figuring out if his most troublesome student isn’t as troublesome as he thought. If it’s all an act, all go hide a schoolboy crush on someone. Or maybe he’s a nice person all the time, and something happened. He might just hate the people in the class. All very real and plausible explanations.

Aizawa even smashed down his pride to ask the rat to look at Bakugo’s phone on the cameras. Nedzu was surprised initially, but easily complied when asked a second time. It was trivial for him. Almost as easy as writing his name. Frightening enough for him to never want to get on the principal’s bad side.

So here he sits with a paper in his steady hands, proof that not everyone is as bad as their outward appearance. Proof that you can be mean and cruel and terrible to everyone and still not be a bad person. Proof that it’s possible for ill behavior to be easily and painlessly treated. Erased even. And all it is, is a paper with scratchy lettering on the top. A barely legible name- first and last- etched in red ink. Just two little words. And they’re proof that Bakugo isn’t as evil as he makes himself out to be.

Izuku Midoriya.

Bakugo Katsuki’s reason for smiling.

Izuku Midoriya.

Bakugo Katsuki’s potential savior.

Izuku Midoriya.

The cashier he met at the grocery store, the one who saved Shinsou’s life. The one that saved a stranger in an alley twice and never demanded anything for it. One that he’d been interested in since he saw him working at god knows what time.

The same Izuku Midoriya he’d been wanting to go and thank nearly every day. For saving Shinsou, for telling him if the danger.

What a coincidence.

(Nothing is ever a coincidence, not when it comes to Izuku Midoriya.

Everything is always as it should be for him. Even when he’s half asleep and contemplating ending his life. His train will never stray from the tracks, won’t ever be derailed. Because he’s meant to save and help. Always. Even if he strayed from his original path, he was always destined to be a hero- of sorts. He doesn’t have to have a quirk or go to UA. He’s a hero without trying simply because he is himself.

Fate will ensure that Izuku Midoriya does not die. And it will ensure that him and Bakugo Katsuki can never stray far from each other easily.

But that is neither here nor there.)

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Izuku isn’t really sure how long he’s been chasing Cat, just that it’s been a while. More than a while. Long enough for his lungs to ache and his legs to feel like they’re about to fall off.

The sky turned from a dark black into a bright blue somewhere along the way. And the sidewalks morphed from barren to absolutely packed, with both people and shops. The empty streets now have about a thousand cars cruising through every few minutes. And the dark, ugly place where he lives gave way to a nicer part of town. It’s as if he’s run into an entirely new world over the course of this chase.

He’s also run for a long enough time that he’s missed all his classes. The stream of walking students on their ways to school ended a few uncomfortable blocks back from where he is now. There aren’t any more kids out currently, so it’s safe to assume he’ll be marked tardy. (His mother will have something to say about that.) Not to mention that he’s ignored all of his boss’ messages. So he has to worry about whether or not there was a test today as well as stressing over his job security. And he’s had an ample amount of time to worry about both of those things during this never ending run.
So it’s safe to assume he ran really really far.He distantly knows that his phone is still buzzing in his pocket, which makes it officially Friday. Because of the time, he knows the texter is Bakugo and not his boss— that stalker gave up on texting him after the thirtieth unread message. So killing himself will have to be put off for a little while. At least until after he hangs out with the person who was once his best friend.
He’s not exactly sure what they’re considered now. They don’t hate each other enough to be enemies, but they’re not even remotely close either. They barely talked in middle school, aside from the odd snide remark, and they hadn’t been hanging out since elementary. So it’s not like they really had any time to dislike each other. Well, not unless the blonde was openly sneering at Izuku during class.

At least Bakugo said he was sorry. It meant a lot more than he probably thought it would. It probably meant more that Izuku forgave him so easily, so quickly.

But perhaps deep down, both of them knew they never hated each other.

(They couldn’t.)

Bakugo yelled and cursed and hurt, but it wasn’t the same as the other bullies. He didn’t use his quirk—not until the day Izuku got attacked by the sludge villain anyway. Everyone else kicked him down with everything they had and laughed in his face. They burned and they cut, tortured and abused, in a way Bakugo has never considered. If there was anything to say about Bakugo, it’s that his moral compass generally kept him from hitting. He even stepped in and blasted away bullies when he happened to catch them hitting Izuku. A redeeming act, if only barely. Enough for Izuku to not completely change his mind about his former friend.

(The most he ever did was trap Izuku to a wall. And that…didn’t necessarily have a frightening impact, he must admit.)

He’ll never be able to find fault in a person crafted so perfectly. He may hate, criticize all the boy has done, but he’ll always circle back to admiration. It’s impossible to hate the person he’s been chasing after his entire life. Harder to despise the boy who still shows him a kindness that nobody else bothers to. Accident or not, Bakugo treats Izuku with a respect not even his mother gives him. Helps him when it feels like the entire world is praying for him to never wake up.

It’s like he’s being constantly reeled in and then violently pushed away again. But everything hinges on that pull back, the reel in towards what he’s always known. Familiar words and eyes and insults. Familiar kindness that’s so closely intertwined with indifference that it’s hard to tell the two from each other. Familiar admiration and care that’s never gone away since the two of them met, since green met red and decided that it was a perfect color.
There’s a reason most of the notebooks back in his old apartment were of his childhood friend. Those pages were— are—a showcase of how he feels. Bakugo is an unattainable goal, the most fascinating hero that’ll ever exist. He can’t help but keep his eyes glued on sparking hands and the impending smoke that comes with them. He can’t help but stare when the blonde speaks. Or trains. Or presents. Or sneers, always. He’s always been looking. Izuku has never been able to stop looking.
(He never will be.)

His spiraling thoughts get pushed far away, far enough that he can pretend they aren’t his.
The butterflies in his stomach are only because he’s running. And the panic of discovery isn’t because of what he’s thinking about Bakugo. It has to be about how much he loves Cat—he should really give her a better name. His thoughts are completely and totally rational and have nothing to do with the blonde. It’s completely normal to admire someone. It’s completely normal for him to feel the way he feels. It’s normal.
…he just wants to be friends with him again. That’s all it is.

He just misses talking to Bakugo like a friend. Nothing more to it other than craving a lost friendship to be rekindled. It’s a normal, average, completely rational thought to be having. He misses being able to talk to someone and laugh along with their lame jokes. It’s only his loneliness that’s making him think such strange thoughts about someone he’s known his entire life. It’s only because he’s gone a while without a good talk, what with his avoidance of Toga lately.

But she’s been avoiding him too. Maybe because he didn’t get along with her murderous friend very well. Or perhaps she’s finally realized that he’s a loser and will never amount to anything.

From her perspective, he was being an asshole all night before bursting into tears over nothing—a box falls and he starts crying like he got news of someone’s death. So he looks absolutely and positively insane without proper context. Maybe more with proper context, since his life seems to be a bit of a shit show. But it’s too late to try and explain that to anyone, even her. There are some things that not even insane people can understand. His mental state is one of those things.
He just wishes he could tell her everything, if only to go back to the way it was before. Without her, or Bakugo for that matter, telling him to be quiet he’s going back to his mumbling habit. He only realizes when his jaw automatically clicks shut when he sees someone is staring.
So that must be part of his current dilemma as well. It’s only because Bakugo isn’t afraid of telling him to shut up that Izuku wants him around. So that he can train himself to stop embarrassing himself and annoying others. Not because he likes the sound of the blonde’s voice. Or because he likes it when the boy speaks to him. That’s definitely not it—or even remotely true— certainly not.

(He’s deluding himself. He shouldn’t. He should know that there’s no reason for him to hate how he feels.)

He trips over his own foot. He elects to ignore it, chalking it up to his fatigue. He’s been running for so long that it’s finally catching up to him. It’s only because he’s tired that his body isn’t responding to his brain properly.

(Actually, that one might be true. Izuku certainly has been running for a long time.)

Cat takes a sharp turn and Izuku skids around the corner in an attempt at following her. A very poor attempt. It wasn’t a lie when he said it’s hard to control his body right now. His legs don’t move the way he wants them to and he does more of a trip around the corner than a sharp turn. He drifts a little too far from the wall, nearly hitting a trash can as he does. Overcompensating as to not hit said obstacle, he throws himself to the right. His body responds easily enough for him to fly directly to the other side of the sidewalk. But not easily enough to make his life better. Because he can never seem to do anything quite right, there’s always an issue, a catch. Something to get him in trouble.

He crashes into someone during his flight away from the trash can, knocking shoulders with a girl. She rockets to the side as he hits her, like a bubbly ping pong ball. Her brown bob looks as if it defies gravity and bounces seemingly impossibly. But even still, she’s the sturdiest person he’s ever body slammed into. Aside from Bakugo, that is—which he thinks is rather impressive. It’s rare for a middle schooler to be strong, rarer for a girl to be so strong. One of her age at least, since she looks to be in about the same grade as him. Or maybe his viewpoint is skewed because he’s so weak.

The person the girl was walking with gets knocked aside as well, huffing angrily as he does. He doesn’t seem to bounce like her though. It’s more of a normal movement than her resemblance of a baseball soaring through the sky.

Izuku skids himself to a stop to gape at the scene he’s caused. Momentarily ignoring the issue of Cat, he checks to make sure everything is alright. That nobody is severely hurt and that the already shoulder deep trouble he’s in won’t get any worse. He’s already tanked his reputation, probably lost his job, and missed school for the first time this year. It would be hard to get more terrible from here, but knowing his luck, it’s always possible. And if he had hurt either of these teenagers it would’ve been a reality and not a possibility.

The both of them are wearing a uniform that feels incredibly familiar to him for some reason. But he can’t quite put his finger on why. He’s too focused on the chase and the fact both teenagers look ready to beat him up where he stands. In broad daylight. Which he might even dismiss because it’s entirely his fault. He should’ve been looking where he was going. Perhaps he shouldn’t even have been on this sidewalk to begin with.

They seem to be fine, aside from the obvious fact that he just knocked them both pretty aggressively. They’re a little angry, but not seriously hurt, if they’ve even been affected. It’s like they weren’t crashed into at all. Sure they were hit and knocked off course, but they’re standing up tall and proud. They never hit the floor and they never made any sounds of pain. Izuku feels like he just made contact with a brick wall, but the two of them seem like they’re more annoyed than anything else. As if he was just a fly that happened to brush into them and inconvenience their walk.

The brown haired girls companion, a boy with dark hair and a bossy demeanor, begins to lecture Izuku about being careful. He pushes his nerdy glasses up and acts all pretentious the entire time, taking the time every other word to push them up. And that’s between all the strange, choppy movements he’s making with his hands. Which makes him seem more like a robot than someone who lives and breathes. Maybe he’s some coddled rich boy who never learned how to talk to the other kids in school. He’s certainly acting like he has no idea.

Izuku opens his mouth to explain, but promptly gets hushed. His lips press together in a tight line as he holds back a scoff.

So the guy wants to boss him around but won’t accept Izuku speaking while he is? Won’t stop talking for even a moment to listen to what he has to say? How pretentious—how utterly stuck up—is this guy? It’s a miracle he’s managed to keep friends with an attitude like that. Not that Izuku can say anything, he’s not exactly the expert of friendships, but still. It’s crazy to think that everybody hates him when he can behave better than this guy.

He dares a heated glance at Cat, who’s stopped running in favor of taunting him. They both know he’s stuck until he’s freed from the binding shackles of this pointless as hell lecture.

With a barely audible sigh, he turns back to the droning voice of the bossy student. The girl nods along like her friend isn’t a total asshole for not letting Izuku explain himself. They’re both acting all high and mighty for a situation they didn’t even give him the chance to apologize for. Which makes him feel slightly less bad about disrupting their walk. Maybe more people should run into them, they deserve the clear annoyance it brings. Much more than Izuku deserves all the terrible things that have happened lately. But maybe that’s mean of him, maybe he should just suck it up and listen to other people for once in his life. Be the useless Deku everyone says he is.

Because this isn’t something he wants to start a fight over—accidentally bumping into someone on the sidewalk. He knows it’s his fault. And he knows he should be more careful. So he should just stand here and listen to the berating voice of someone who thinks they’re above him. It’s nothing new, nothing that hasn’t happened or been said a thousand times before. He can take someone not being willing to hear him out. And it’s easy to brush off the rising feeling of anger. He knows it’s not worth it anyway, since he’ll never see either of these people ever again in his life.

(In another life, another second, another instant, these two strangers were his first friends. The people who made him love his name and the meaning behind it. The people who made him feel just a little bit better about following his dreams. The people who became his unconditional support system when he needed them. And he too became theirs. They were meant to be so much more than they were now. They were meant to be so much better.

He was supposed to meet these two earlier. He was supposed to save her life and prove the boy wrong. He was supposed to irrevocably change their clearcut perceptions of the world. Then again, he was supposed to do a lot of things that he’ll never be able to since he jumped tracks.

But that is neither here nor there.)

Izuku is just starting to push out an apology, just to be done with it, when Cat meows incredibly loudly. He turns away from the angry students to glare at her. She spins in place, smugly licking at her hands, as if taunting him. Again. Rubbing it in his face that he’s inadequate and can’t possibly be fast enough to catch up. He’s been running for hours, and he’ll run more after this, but his speed isn’t even slightly comparable to hers. Maybe that’s because she’s an animal and he’s human. It’s hardly a fair comparison.

“You little shit,” he quietly hisses, “You are so lucky I love you.”

She hisses back and takes off at a pace slow enough he can manage to catch if he starts running now. And he almost starts running at that very moment, nearly forgetting he’s in the company of other people. But he finds that he doesn’t have any clue what he’s being told anymore. He could- should- just take off right now. Let this annoying guy keep talking to thin air. He’s done with this conversation anyway, though he’s been done with it before it even began. Forgive him if he doesn’t care enough to listen to some rich kid about the dangers of running so close to the street.

Izuku shouldn’t be rude. It’s probably the guy’s first walk out among actual people and not servants.
“And you-“ the boy pushes his glasses up, again.
Is this guy out of touch with reality? He’s acting like everyone in the universe should be willing to drop everything to listen to him speak. Like he’s the president or something. But he’s nobody Izuku has ever heard of- never in his entire life. So he’s certainly not as important as he’d like to be.

“Yeah yeah, I’ll stop running in the street and I’ll be super careful from now on. Sorry for hitting you. Bye,” he rolls his eyes, cutting off the rant before it can get any longer.

He slips around the both of them, awkwardly  offering the smallest semblance of an apologetic expression. But not really. He’d only be apologetic if he actually gave a fuck, which he does not. Not anymore. He felt bad for a second there, but now he really couldn’t care less.

Maybe he would care, be his usual people pleasing self, if today wasn’t the day it was. Aside from the raising taxes and the blown up door and having a spout with his only friend, Izuku is genuinely an optimistic person. He’s a nice little doormat that usually bends at the waist in forgiveness for everything. But he can’t do that— not today, when the world is conspiring against him. He’d be his nice, usual self if he were more certain of the future. He’d listen to whatever lecture he was given if he was sure he’d be going back to a job tomorrow. Or his apartment. But that’s a luxury he can’t afford while sprinting after a cat down the street.

He knocks shoulders with another rushing passerby, neither of them caring enough to say anything about it. Izuku does get a good look back at the annoying high school students he just ran away from. Safe to say, it could be worse.

Glasses boy looks livid, but the girl giggles at him, so he must be at least a little funny. That’s what matters right? That he’s sometimes a little bit funny. In the grand scheme of his shitty life and shitty circumstances, he can still make people laugh sometimes. That’s got to count for something. Or maybe he’s reaching because he’s already been through several mental breakdowns. In just this week alone, he must’ve had three. Which is rather low compared to what it used to be. Good for him.

Glasses starts to say something again, trying to raise his voice over the sound of his friend’s rising laughter. But Izuku doesn’t hear whatever he has to say, and it’s not like he’d stop to listen even if he could. They can suck his dick and go fuck off back to their rich, fancy school. He waves his hand in their general direction as he begins to chase his furry friend again. Someone yells something at him, again, entirely incomprehensible to his ears. But he keeps running without spending a millisecond of time trying to turn back around.

He has better things to do then converse with some random kid. Especially not one that genuinely irks him. And that’s a rare thing, to make him angry. He’s annoyed all the time, but that’s something completely different from hating. It’s surprising that someone he just met today for about three seconds could get under his skin so quickly. It must’ve been something about the boy’s attitude, the arrogance and disdain. But usually a person like that- Izuku has met about a million- doesn’t make him mad. They make him want to claw his own eardrums out. And they make him want to spontaneously lose hearing. But they don’t make him mad.Not a lot of people are capable of angering him.

Toga? Annoying. But he loves her. Despite their lack of talking lately, Izuku loves her the same amount he always did. And he’ll only find himself hating her if she tries to kill him. And even then he might take it, forgiving and forgetting like it’s not a big deal. He’s forgiven people for doing way more than just trying to kill him.

Cat? Also annoying, and he loves her too. She keeps him grounded and he keeps her alive. If he didn’t like her he wouldn’t be risking his job to chase after her in broad daylight. (Still in his school uniform from yesterday, mind you.)

His mother? Annoying. But still a desperate sort of love too. He can’t help the way he feels about the woman who birthed him. He simply can’t hate her.

His father? Hate. He hates his dad— who is perhaps the only person Izuku feels so strongly about. No doubt about that. Blood isn’t thicker than water when it comes to a man he’s seen about four times his entire life. Which is a shockingly low number considering he’s still married to Izuku’s mother.

Bakugo? Annoying. He doesn’t want to elaborate past that. He might trip and fall into the busy street.

God, he really doesn’t have a lot of friends, now that he’s trying to think of examples. There’s nobody else who comes to mind when he’s trying to think of people he knows anything about. He’s still a definite loner with extremely poor social skills. Paired with being quirkless, the amount of people who actually introduce themselves can be counted on one hand. It is getting better though. If only by a small bit.

The new school has helped him meet a lot more people, and his job has as well. He’s talking a lot more— less about quirks and more about homework, so the bullying obviously simmered down in a place full of idiots. It didn’t completely disappear, courtesy of the very strong people he pissed off by not taking a punch to the gut well, but it lessened.

Izuku is about a hundred times better at socializing than he was before. But he still has no friends. Nobody except a probable murderer, a childhood ex-best friend who is incredibly bipolar, and a literal cat. So maybe the socializing thing isn’t going as good as he planned.

His foot catches a crack in the sidewalk and he nearly eats cement. He throws a heated look up to the source of all his current problems, which happens to be about fifty meters in front of him. Cat is back to her full sprint again. So no chance of catching her unless she drops to the ground. Or gets caught in an alleyway like the first time he managed to wrangle her into his arms. Maybe then he’ll see Shinsou again, since the guy is always getting beaten by bullies in alleyways.

Speaking of Shinsou, how is he doing anyway?

That scruffy teacher never came back to tell him if everything turned out alright. If the muzzle left serious damage or permanently messed up his jaw, or even if it all turned out okay. Maybe Shinsou is fine and his face is perfectly healed and an infection was impossible. Maybe he had reprimanded those awful bullies and wouldn’t have to be hurt like that again. Maybe he could get out, escape from everything, like Izuku had never been quite able to.

Oh how he hopes Shinsou escaped his tormentors.

Someone shouts something ahead of him- nothing he can hear, but it definitely draws his attention. His eyes raise for a moment go find the source of the yelling. If perhaps Cat scratched a persons leg and he’ll have to pay medical bills. Or even if a hero has descended from wherever it is heroes live to mingle among the people. But there’s nothing, nobody, within his line of sight. Granted, his line of sight is extremely focused, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary.

Families. Banners between buildings. Ice cream. The park. Laughing children. The fountain. A shining sun. The smell of something sweet. A slight breeze. An average day with average sights and sounds. Everything is as it was yesterday, the day before that, and every day since he was little walking through town with his own mother. Izuku isn’t sure where he is- sure- but everything is the same wherever he manages to go. It’s harder to see where he lives now, but most of the things here he can still find there. If only in a more dilapidated state.
There are families where he lives. Only in the day, but there are families. And banners. Ice cream and the park and the laughing children. All of it. All of the things in this town can be found in every other town in the universe. Life is fucking mundane wherever he goes. That’s something he won’t ever be able to escape, even if he manages to claw his way away from his bullies. Away from the stigma above his head and the dreams that haunt him before he falls asleep. But that’s an impossibility. Those, too, are things that will never change. His phone buzzes a final time before he has the sense to look down again. Away from what he’s seen his entire life, away from the same walls and the same views and the same boring streets. His eyes fall from smiling faces and what he’s always known to the pure shock of the unknown.
He crashes into a little girl, harder than he hit the girl earlier, harder than he intended to.

(Two trains hit each other headfirst on the tracks. One is Izuku’s, large, full of passengers, and already significantly messed up. The other seems to be just two cars long and barely moving at all. It’s more ruined than his, crawling along as if a wounded animal. The wheels are ruptured and the sides are all but pounded in. It’s a miracle that it’s managed to drag itself this far, to keep going after all the damage it’s sustained.

Even still, as they collide, the smaller doesn’t sustain any more damage than it already has. The only one hurt is Izuku’s- contorting itself so that it can protect the other as much as possible. And it does a good job too. Because despite rolling over and off the tracks completely, the other train is the same as it was before. Sore, frightened, but exactly the same.

Izuku Midoriya may put up a front of not caring about anything anymore, but he’d be a liar if he said that were true. He cares more than anyone else.

He always cares too much.

But that is neither here nor there.)
In the grand scheme of life, he would consider himself an incurably ill man. His quirk made him a monster that lumbered around with borrowed skin and phantom pain. Staples poorly held his charred limbs together, ripping away at what little flesh was left and drawing blood if he moved too quick. His eyes are about as heavy as the burden of trauma that lays over his marred back. And if all that wasn’t enough, he was a monster inside too. He hurt and he killed and he found that the pain of others brought him a sick semblance of relief.
But he wasn’t always so irredeemable, so evil. He had been a kind boy once. He had cared about everyone, wanted to save everyone. His head was held low and his eyes never dared to venture high enough to offend. Every day he got a little stronger, a little more used to the fire that burned away at his chest. If he closed his eyes and pretended he was anywhere else at night, he’d swear he was going places. One day he’d wake up and everything would be perfect. One day he’d wake up and his body wouldn’t hurt so badly.

One day, if he was lucky, he’d wake up a hero. And he had wanted to be the kind of hero that could handle anything. It was an attainable goal, simply being able to withstand whatever wS thrown at him. He was already good at handling things—the beatings, the burnings, the screaming matches, even his apparent death. The problem was that the more horrible things that were thrown at him, the more he wanted to run away. To not be a hero, to sit on the sidelines safely until someone came to save him.

But nobody ever did, nobody ever cared enough. No hero would ever come to save him. And he would never wake up as one either.

(This is an unchanging aspect of his life. No matter what lifetime, what instant, what moment, he would always be set on the course of a villain. His train would be stuck on tracks leading to his eventual demise, despite whatever turns he might have taken along the way.

It goes without saying, however, that he wouldn’t be part of this story if that were completely true.

Because perhaps it’s not. Perhaps, in one lifetime among the endless others, he won’t die. He’ll still be a villain—at least for a while—and he’ll still be evil. But he won’t die. Not when his path has already intertwined so intrinsically with Izuku Midoriya’s.

But that is neither here nor there.)
(Back at the abandoned convenience store, a lone figure clad in black sits on the front counter. Somewhere between him shattering the door into a million pieces and the worker sprinting out, he seemed to gain a sense of morality.)
Long, dry fingers tap on the counter, remarkably patient for the kind of person he is. An ugly sort of hum fills the air and serves its purpose of driving away anyone who happens to walk close enough to hear. Whether that’s someone actually wanting to buy something or low lives looking to steal while the door is missing. About twenty people have walked by in the hours that the cashier has been gone for. Some of them were familiar faces, back from the failed attempt to attack UA. And some of them were entirely new and exceptionally untrustworthy all the same.

It’s strange enough that he’s sat here all this time, scaring everyone away with his horrifying humming. But perhaps it’s even stranger that he cares enough to wait here. If it were any other store, any other person working the cash register, he might’ve left already. Just walked away and let the store be robbed by every greedy thief in the city. But something about the skinny, starving looking boy caught his attention. Something about his eyes, his demeanor, made him stop and wonder.

And that is a praise worthy feat, making someone like him so intrigued.

Most people that look at him are immediately afraid, panicked. They even judge his appearance if they’re brave enough. But that green child didn’t even seem to care. He looked like he was judging plenty, of course, but he didn’t comment about it. And he seemed to care more about the door than the fact that somebody was capable of shattering it. To make it more amusing, the incredibly scary and dangerous person approached and he simply…didn’t give a shit.

It’s refreshing. Most of the people in his life are afraid or annoying, but this child was neither. He was an entire new third thing. An emotion he isn’t quite sure what to name, but he’s willing to sit here for the rest of the week if it means he’ll find out.

(On the tracks, somebody creeps behind the wreckage of Izuku Midoriya’s latest crash. Carefully, very carefully, they crawl into the car with the other passengers. Nobody seems to bat an eye as he settles in the seat closet to the exit.

Because that is neither here nor there.)