Chapter Text
Izuku stared, eyes almost unseeing, at the boy sat across from him in matching chains and matching yellow-purple mottling coating his skin. The boy with purple hair that looked as though it had once been fluffy, now coated in thick layers of grease and grime, pressing against his forehead and sticking up in haphazard directions.
They didn't speak.
They both knew what was coming.
The only thing that was missing was the mutation quirked kid. This was how it was. One with a mutation quirk. One with a villain quirk. One with no quirk at all. Three ten year olds, chosen to die because society believed that they should not exist, and the HSPC had decided that killing off three in a ritual would somehow make less of them be born.
It was an odd thing, growing up knowing you may be one of the three chosen when you turned ten, while no one around you knew it was a thing at all. Izuku wasn’t sure how he had learnt it would happen. His mother hadn't told him. He wasn’t sure she knew at all. When he said goodbye to Kachaan, getting an explosion to the face in return, the boy had said he was insane. Yet here he was. Maybe he would have been lucky. Maybe he would not have been chosen. Maybe he would have believed Kachaan, believed it was insane, in another universe where he hadn't been chosen. Not this one though.
Izuku stared blankly, exhausted, terrified, and refusing to let himself get to know the other kid. Not when they were both less than a day off of dying. No point.
The door slammed open with enough aggression for Izuku to whip his head around, wincing at the way that caused the chains to rip at his throat, bruising and burning even more.
The third stumbled in, falling to the ground, as some faceless agent attached his chains to the wall and left, not caring about the kid who was struggling to stand despite his four extra arms.
Izuku blinked at the other once more, before turning back to the kid who sat in front of him, resting his head against the wall he was leaning against, his eyes aching to flutter close, even as he refused them, remaining fixed on the boy in front of him, if only to stop himself from falling unconscious. He didn't know why he feared sleep as much as he did, but some instinct told him sleep wasn’t a good idea, and he trusted his instincts. After all, his instincts had told him he'd end up here, and look at just where he was.
A shaky breath dragged Izuku's attention back towards the new kid, and he winced, internally begging the kid not to do what he was pretty sure would happen.
The kid looked devastated. Unlike Izuku and the purple haired kid, this one didn't have that dead, accepting air of someone who had known this would happen. He had the pure terror and confusion of someone who hadn't known this was coming.
There was another shaky breath, the kid's hands moving to rub desperately at his eyes and Izuku winced. He was going to cry. Izuku wasn’t sure if he could handle it if the boy cried.
"Please don't cry," Izuku begged, his voice hoarse and desperate and pathetic, "Please."
There was a shuttering sound as the kid stumbled through another broken gasp, and Izuku felt his own eyes welling up. No. No, he had been doing so well. He couldn't cry. Not now. Not when he had been doing so well at holding it back. He flung his eyes back to the purple haired boy, craving some form of normalcy from the boy who had been stoic and silent with Izuku for the last several hours, but the kid was just staring at him like he had lost his mind.
Izuku opened his mouth, then shut it, then looked back at the shaking kid and back to the purple haired one, unable to control his distress, just silently pleading for help.
"I can't," The purple haired boy whispered, the first words he'd said since they had met, and oh. That was why he had been staring at Izuku, because those had been the first words Izuku had uttered as well. Izuku's stared at the boy, silently pleading, although what for, he had no clue. He doubted the other knew what he was refusing either.
They both looked to the third kid. Third lamb, Izuku supposed, if you were looking at it metaphorically. Izuku wanted him to stop crying. He wasn’t sure he could handle the tears. He knew he couldn't. Not here, not in this cold, dirty cell with no light and no padding and nothing at all really except for the stone that created all surfaces and the chains that held them.
"Please don't cry," Izuku repeated. He didn't know why he was so opposed to crying before his death. He just... refused. Deep in his soul, he refused. He did not wish to cry, and he needed the other to stop. To just stop crying so he wouldn't join. He looked back to the purple haired boy, simultaneously wishing he had the boy's name, if only to know how to refer to him in his mind, and allowing himself to feel inherently grateful he didn't know it. He didn't know who would die first. He thought maybe it would be easier to watch an unnamed purple haired boy with a villainous quirk die than to watch someone with a name die. He didn't want a name, because then he wouldn't be able to stop himself from caring. He didn't want to care. Not when he was set to die. He couldn’t handle that.
The boy with six arms did not listen to Izuku's pleas. The son he let out ripped into Izuku's soul and just like he had known they would, the tears overflowed. The salty water burnt as it ran down his face, getting into all the painful cuts that covered him and just burning. Izuku couldn’t make them stop, not even when the purple kid pushed himself across the room, wrapping his arms around Izuku and the multi armed kid who had somehow also joined him. Izuku didn't know how, but the cell had gone from silent, two broken kids who had accepted their coming death, to loud, full of choked sobs from three kids mourning the lives they would never get.
Izuku held the two close, dreading the ceremony where he knew he'd almost certainly have to watch them die. He could only hold that somehow he might be killed first and be spared the view. It was selfish to want that, selfish to want the other two to be the ones to watch, but he wanted it nonetheless. Forgive him.