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(Shouto | Now)
There’s a terrible noise that echoes through the gym when Midoriya’s head hits the floor.
The training session falls apart instantly, as Aizawa comes running toward where Midoriya’s crumpled on the ground, ordering Jirou away and bending over him, and half of their classmates from other battle stations up and down the gym falter in their own fighting as they turn to get a look at what’s happened. Yaoyorozu gasps and sinks to her knees, shaking. Jirou makes a beeline for her. And Shouto stands, frozen in place, right hand still outstretched to deflect a blow that never came, as he stares at the scene before him: Midoriya, half-conscious and bleeding from the head, being picked up by a swarm of the nurse robots; Aizawa, calling out unnecessarily to the rest of the class to stop fighting and remain where they are as he sees Midoriya off toward Recovery Girl’s office.
“I’m so sorry,” Yaoyorozu is saying, over and over again, to no one in particular. “I’m so sorry, that was—that wasn’t meant to—I didn’t see him…”
“It’s not your fault,” says Jirou from beside her, hand on her back and looking grim. “He came out of nowhere.”
“I thought Todoroki would put up an ice wall again and we could use it to trap him, or—I didn’t mean to actually hurt anybody—”
“I know,” Jirou says. “It’s not your fault. He jumped in front of it on purpose, I watched him do it.”
Yaoyorozu gives a small sob and buries her face in Jirou’s shoulder. Jirou closes her eyes as she breathes in, then opens them again as she looks toward Shouto.
“He’s gonna be okay,” she says. “He’s tough. Aizawa didn’t look all that worried.”
Shouto nods. It’s another moment before he lowers his hand.
Later that evening, Midoriya returns to the second-year dorms looking slightly run-down but otherwise none the worse for wear. Ashido jumps upright with a shriek as he opens the door and he’s surrounded almost instantly at the threshold by half the class, buzzing with excitement. From his seat at one of the tables Shouto watches as they follow Midoriya back into the common room, throwing questions at him one after the other:
“Deku—are you alright? We were so worried—”
“Did Recovery Girl chew you out again?”
“Midoriya, I want to sincerely apologize for the injury I caused you—I never meant for you to—”
“Yo, Midoriya—you’re okay, right? Did you break any more bones this time? Because, like, not to be insensitive or whatever but if you’re okay now and all—Sero owes me five hundred yen if—”
“Oh, I’m—uh—I’m fine,” Midoriya says, now looking more than slightly overwhelmed; his eyes are darting from face to face faster than Shouto can follow them. “You’re completely okay, Yaoyorozu—it only bruised me really, I would have been fine if I hadn’t landed wrong and hit my head, completely my fault—”
“So no broken bones?” Kaminari looks as though someone has deflated him.
“Well,” Midoriya says, suddenly looking at nobody’s face at all. “I mean, I had a minor concussion—and I think technically Recovery Girl said my skull was maybe fractured just a little bit? But I don’t really think that counts—she says it was really minor and it’s fixed now anyways, I’m allowed to go back to training the day after tomorrow—”
Kaminari is crowing and Sero is rolling his eyes as Shouto stands from the table and walks over toward the couches where his classmates are clustered. Yaoyorozu notices his approach, trailing off halfway through another apology; Midoriya turns to follow her gaze.
“Midoriya,” Shouto says, and then pauses for a moment before he speaks again. “We need to talk.”
Midoriya’s mouth twitches slightly, and he nods before rising from the couch.
(Izuku | Then)
“Are you doing alright, my boy?”
Izuku startles—still unused, even after nearly two months’ worth of hauling garbage off a beach under his supervision, to hearing the sound of All Might’s voice, addressing him—him—directly. He hoists the load he’s carrying a bit higher before he responds.
“Yeah, I—of course, I’m just—” He’s out of breath.
All Might is chuckling. “You look deep in thought.”
He’s that too. Two months of hauling garbage off a beach, waking up every day with aching muscles and going to bed each night the most exhausted he’s ever been in his life up to that point, still hasn’t managed to register in Izuku’s system as reality; every day he finds himself thinking, over and over—is this real? Can any of this really be happening? Ten feet away from him sits All Might (admittedly a somewhat deflated All Might, but still, the man himself) talking to him and calling him “my boy” and training him—him, of all people, Quirkless and not even particularly strong for his not-particularly-impressive size—to carry on his legacy. His legacy as the greatest hero the world has ever seen.
None of it feels right. None of it feels possible.
“Yeah,” Izuku huffs, then drops the pile of garbage he’d been holding at his destination and sinks down in the sand for a moment to catch his breath. “I’m just…” he gestures vaguely around himself. “Sometimes I feel like I’m—dreaming all this, maybe,” he says, and then feels himself color at the admission. “I mean—like, it’s kind of hard to believe that I’m really—here, you know? I keep waiting to wake up. Not that I want to stop,” he adds, hastily, pushing back to his feet, “obviously, it’s just—it’s hard to believe that of all people, I’m really the one you…” He trails off. He doesn’t know how to say this.
All Might seems to understand where he was headed. “I chose you for a reason, my boy,” he says, gently. Then, with a bit more gusto: “I believe in you. Someday you’ll be greater than I ever was.”
Izuku feels something in his chest swell and tighten. He nods and tries not to start crying as he turns away and goes to fetch his heaviest load of garbage yet.
Things don’t get any easier once he starts at U.A.
Izuku manages (barely) to get into the school despite essentially failing the entrance exam, and he manages (also barely) not to get kicked out of it on the first day despite failing the Quirk aptitude test. But now he’s surrounded by all these kids who passed both with flying colors, and the difference between him and them is so stark it’s almost embarrassing. He watches them train, noting the absolute control every one of them has over their Quirks. Iida can precision-maneuver around obstacles at a hundred kilometers an hour. Uraraka can float dozens of objects at once, up to a total weight of nearly three tons…
Izuku, on the other hand, can barely make it through one day of classes without being sent off to the nurse’s office with a broken bone—and that’s on the days he can even manage to activate All Might’s Quirk at all. All Might says that control over One For All will come with time, but then he also says that he had the whole thing mostly under control within a week. All Might says not to worry too much about it yet, that Izuku’ll have plenty of time to figure things out at his own pace before the class faces any actual villains, but then a giant monster is pinning him down before Izuku’s eyes in the center of the USJ and Izuku can’t do anything but charge toward the thing as fast as he can run and hope he can somehow manage to make something useful happen for once when he reaches it.
As it happens, though, the situation is handled for him before he can get there. Izuku draws up short and watches as one of the other boys in his class—the Todoroki boy, with the ice powers and the two-toned hair; Endeavor’s kid, a legacy hero if there ever was one, yet another shining example of everything Izuku’s not and apparently might never manage to be—does what he couldn’t do, freezing the monster’s limbs off and quite possibly saving All Might’s life in the process.
Todoroki intimidates Izuku a bit, if he’s being honest. He’s insanely powerful, obviously, but even beyond that, he’s just… unnerving. Izuku doesn’t think he’s heard him say more than four words their entire school year so far, and there’s this way he stares at things (and at Izuku) that’s just so—cold, maybe. For lack of a better word. It’s like his eyes are made of the same ice he’s capable of filling a building with in two seconds flat; being in his presence feels sort of like being inside a freezer even when he’s not activating his Quirk. Izuku wonders, sometimes, if he even feels things like other people do.
He does try, on Monday (their first day back in class after the USJ fiasco), to talk to Todoroki—approaches him between classes and thanks him for his actions the previous week; expresses his admiration (honestly) for Todoroki’s control over his ice powers and tells him (maybe slightly less honestly) that he’s always been a huge Endeavor fan. He doesn’t get any response beyond a slow blink. He doesn’t try again.
(Shouto | Then)
One of these days, Shouto reflects dispassionately, that green-haired boy Midoriya is going to get himself killed in training.
Four days into their first year of school and he’s broken three bones already. At least three, that is—it’s not exactly as if Shouto’s been counting. He’s already determined that the only two of his classmates who pose any legitimate threat to him at the moment are the creation girl who beat him at the aptitude test—the other recommendation, he knows—and the explosion boy who nearly beat him at hand-to-hand yesterday; the others don’t seem worth paying much attention to.
But even he can’t help taking some notice of this particular boy, because he is so… annoying, perhaps. For lack of a better word. Shouto doesn’t have much patience for bleeding hearts, and this boy cries over senseless things at least twice a day; Shouto doesn’t have much time for incompetents or fools, and this boy—now on his way out of All Might’s class to Recovery Girl’s office with a shattered forearm for the second day in a row—is apparently both. He’s powerful, maybe, but he can’t properly use the power at all, which makes him more liability than asset. He’s excessively emotional, and he lets it get in the way of any reasonable decision-making skills he might have; he throws himself senselessly into harm’s way at the drop of a hat and wrecks his body entirely in the process, often without even accomplishing anything meaningful. Shouto wonders, sometimes, if he even thinks about things at all before he does them.
Midoriya is out the door now. All Might turns back to the class and gives them the all-clear to resume fighting. Shouto breathes in, refocuses, and breathes out before sending a blast of ice across the playing field.
The Sports Festival is tomorrow. Shouto’s father tells him, “You’re going to win.”
It’s not a question. Shouto doesn’t answer it.
They’re in agreement on this much, anyway; Shouto does intend to win if possible, and based on the showing many of his classmates have put forth in training so far it’s certainly possible. There are a few people who might be difficult (Yaoyorozu, Bakugou, maybe Iida too; theoretically Midoriya, if he actually had any measure of control over his seemingly All Might-esque levels of raw power), but none that Shouto won’t be able to handle. He’s going to defeat them all and stand at the top of the podium—higher than his father ever has or ever will.
“You’re going to use both sides on camera.”
This is the part that they don’t agree on. Shouto has no desire to touch his father’s fire—especially not in the public eye. He’s not going to run around shooting off pointless blasts of flame in front of a camera so that the media can gush over how like his father the son-of-Endeavor is as he’s standing on top of that podium. He’s going to win on his own terms—ice and ice alone; his own Quirk, not Endeavor’s—and his father is going to have to live with that.
He doesn’t answer.
His father chooses to pretend that he takes Shouto’s silence for agreement. Shouto lets him.
(Izuku | Now)
“We need to talk,” Todoroki says, even more stiffly than usual, and doesn’t that take Izuku back to nearly a year ago—following a glacial Todoroki away from the Sports Festival crowd down a long dark tunnel under the stadium with nerves shredding his stomach, wondering what on earth Todoroki wanted to say to him that couldn’t be said in front of anyone else and worrying over whether he was possibly about to be murdered in cold blood. Izuku thinks about the way that conversation ended up going, looks at the ice in Todoroki’s eyes now as he stares down at Izuku on the couch, and does his best not to let the twinge of apprehension he feels in his stomach show on his face as he nods, stands, and follows Todoroki again across the common room toward the stairwell.
“You’re going to die,” is the first thing Todoroki says—as flatly as ever—after he’s settled into a rigid-backed cross-legged sitting position on Izuku’s floor, and Izuku freezes for a moment before bursting—he can’t help it—into nervous laughter.
“I’m not making a joke,” Todoroki says, and it’s hard to read Todoroki usually but he looks—Izuku thinks—like he’s frustrated for some reason.
“I’m sorry,” Izuku says, pulling himself together. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not a joke, it’s just—the way you said it… It sounded like you were going to kill me or something, I—”
“You’re going to die and it’s not going to be my fault,” Todoroki says. “I’ve told you before to stop throwing yourself around in training.”
So that’s what this is about. Izuku doesn’t understand why he seems so distressed, though. “Todoroki, I’m fine,” he says, like he always does, but it’s even true this time; he’s not in any pain and he’s allowed to go back to training the day after tomorrow and Recovery Girl didn’t even yell at him this time, because it wasn’t a self-inflicted Quirk-related injury. “Really, I am.”
“Okay,” Todoroki says. “One day you won’t be. You have to stop hurting yourself like this.”
Izuku tilts his head. “But, I mean—it’s not like I was trying to—”
“You jumped in front of a cannonball,” Todoroki says, and there’s definitely frustration in his body language now, subtle but undeniably there. His left hand is twitching in his lap.
“Well, it wasn’t really a cannonball cannonball, Yaoyorozu’s not trying to kill anyone, she always makes her rounds out of—”
“For no reason.” Todoroki gives no indication he’s heard Izuku speaking at all. “I could have handled it myself.”
That much is probably true. Izuku’s not stupid and he knows perfectly well how fast Todoroki can be; he recognized even in the moment, on some level, that Todoroki probably would have been able to put up enough ice to deflect the blow in time. But Izuku’s never been one to put his faith in probably when it comes to other people’s safety. And in any case Todoroki was standing in the corner that Izuku hadn’t been able to stop Yaoyorozu from backing him into, and if he’d put up any large ice structure in front of him he would have been a sitting duck until he could melt it, which Izuku knows from experience can take him a while. It could have cost them the battle.
Izuku tells him as much, and Todoroki doesn’t so much as blink in response. “We lost anyway,” he says. “I think it counted as a forfeit when Aizawa had to halt the match to carry you off the field with a broken skull.”
Izuku feels himself redden, but he can’t tell if it’s more from annoyance or embarrassment or—anger, maybe. He doesn’t understand why Todoroki is being so nasty about this. “Well, we wouldn’t have lost if things had gone like I thought they would—”
Todoroki’s right eyebrow is slightly higher than his left. “If jumping in front of a cannonball had ended well for you, you mean,” he says, passively, and Izuku feels yet more blood come rushing to his face. “Don’t try to tell me you thought that one through.”
“I did,” Izuku says, defensively, for lack of anything better to say. Because he had, in fact, thought it through—if not all the way, at least far enough. He’d seen Todoroki—his classmate, his friend—trapped and wide-eyed as he stared down the barrel of a cannon aimed in his direction. He’d realized that if that he didn’t do anything about the situation then—best-case scenario—Todoroki was going to be forced to ice-wall himself off alone in a corner, or—worst case scenario—Todoroki was going to get hit. That was about as much thinking as he’d had time for before he found his body hurtling through the air to knock the projectile out of the way before it was too late, but it had been enough.
And okay, maybe it was kind of a stupid thing to do, now that he’s looking at it after the fact, but really it all would have probably been fine, if only he hadn’t gone and failed, let himself get knocked off balance by the weight of the thing and botched the landing. His own fault. Another thing he needs to work on. He’ll add it to the list.
Todoroki is eyeing him sideways, with that slightly-more-skeptical-than-usual expression he usually reserves for inanimate objects whose function he doesn’t understand or for Kacchan. “You’re not indestructible, Midoriya,” he says. “It’s irrational to keep acting as though you are.”
“As if you’re one to talk,” Izuku bursts out, suddenly, more angrily than he meant to. Because it’s not like Todoroki’s never done anything stupid and dangerous and faced the consequences for it; he’s sustained his own share of injuries (admittedly significantly smaller than Izuku’s) in training, and he can and has pushed himself until he collapsed from heat exhaustion or hypothermia, and once he got himself hospitalized after illegally battling a serial killer in an alleyway right by Izuku’s side. “You’ve injured yourself plenty too.”
Todoroki does blink at that, and it’s a moment before he responds. “It’s different with you,” is what he comes back with, eventually. “Some of our classmates place bets on which bones you’ll break every week in training. It’s senseless. You throw yourself at everything with no thought of your own safety, and then half the time you hurt yourself with your own Quirk. And then the rest of us have to deal with—”
“Well, I’m sorry,” Izuku interrupts, defensive again, because something about the way Todoroki says ‘senseless’ gets to him, maybe. “It’s not like I want to get hurt, but – ”
“Then stop hurting yourself,” Todoroki says, as if it’s that simple, and Izuku wants to tear his hair out.
“I can’t,” he says, and—great—now he’s trying not to cry. It’s not going very well; he feels his eyes welling up already. “I can’t just—I can’t.”
Both of Todoroki’s eyebrows are up now, almost imperceptibly. He looks—Izuku thinks—possibly a bit alarmed.
“And why is that,” he says.
Because, Izuku is thinking, like he does every hour of every day, his heart starting to race faster, All Might chose me to succeed him, and I can’t fail him. Because he gave up his Quirk for me, and now he can’t save anyone anymore and it’s up to me to live up to his legend and be greater than he ever was, because every time someone gets hurt who he could have helped or who a stronger successor who would actually be able to use all of One For All without shattering his bones by now could have helped it’s my fault and—
He kicks the leg of his desk.
“Because that’s what heroes do,” he says, and hears his voice shaking. He knows he should leave it at that but he feels out of control; the words keep coming and he can't stop them. “Because—because I want to save people. I have to do everything I can to save people, or else it was all just a waste and there’s no point in me even having this Quirk which I can’t even use properly anyway and I don’t deserve it and there’s no point in—”
“It’s not a matter of deserving,” Todoroki says, almost—bitterly, maybe. “It’s just genetics. Strong Quirks aren’t an indicator of morality.”
And Izuku understands that—god, if only Todoroki knew how well he understands that, after spending his entire childhood Quirkless and at the mercy of the Quirked; he almost wants to laugh—but the thing is—
“It’s different with me,” Izuku says. “You wouldn’t understand,” he adds—stupidly, like a twelve-year-old—and one of Todoroki’s eyebrows disappears entirely beneath his hair.
“Try me,” he says, simply.
And suddenly Izuku is thinking back on the undisguised bitterness in Todoroki’s normally toneless voice just moments ago, when he spoke on Quirk heredity and the morality involved; he thinks about the previous year, when Todoroki had told him unthinkable things about the way he’d gotten his own Quirk, about the way he’d grown up with the knowledge that his father had purpose-bred him to be greater than All Might ever was. And then Izuku realizes—Todoroki probably would understand at least some of it, actually. More than anyone else, anyway.
It’s a heat of the moment decision, and he knows it’s probably a stupid one even as he’s making it. He’d told All Might after the Kacchan debacle that he wouldn’t share this with any of his other classmates without talking to him first, after all; this isn’t information either of them wants going public at the moment. But there’s a part of Izuku that desperately wants to talk to at least one person who isn’t All Might himself or Kacchan about his whole situation. And here is Todoroki, sitting before him with his hands folded in his lap and his eyebrows raised, and Izuku finds himself thinking: Todoroki would know how to keep a secret like this one.
He says, “Do you remember when we—during the Sports Festival, last year. Do you remember when you asked me if All Might was my—was related to me in some way?”
Todoroki’s expression is suddenly even more guarded than usual. He nods, warily.
Izuku takes a deep breath. “Well, you weren’t—uh—I mean, you weren’t right about that, exactly. But.”
(Shouto | Then)
The Sports Festival is over. Shouto hasn’t won.
Bakugou the explosion boy rages beside him at the top of the podium. Tokoyami is alone on Bakugou’s other side—it seems that Iida has seen fit to blow off the awards ceremony for some reason. None of Shouto’s business, he’s sure. He stares straight ahead and doesn’t meet All Might’s eyes as the second place medal is hung around his neck.
There’s a dull thud as Shouto’s head slams against the training room wall.
His father tells him, “I didn’t raise you to take second place.”
The irony of this isn’t lost on Shouto. His father has held the second place title in the national hero rankings for longer than Shouto has been alive. He’s made every day of his life into a competition between him and All Might but he has never achieved a victory and, despite his delusions to the contrary, he never will. Not even on the day when Shouto—on track to become by far the stronger one between the two of them—takes the crown from All Might himself, because Shouto refuses to be his father’s tool and his victory will be his own. He’ll do it without touching his father’s Quirk. He’ll surpass every expectation his father has ever had for him on his own terms.
Except for the fact that maybe he won’t, apparently, because his father is right. He’s spent his entire life being trained to be the best—greater than his father ever was, greater than All Might even—and he’s settled for second place just as his father always has. And now here he is, trapped in a corner by his father’s massive bulk, his head pounding as he faces the consequences of his failure.
His father tells him, “I didn’t raise you to let your emotions get the better of you on the field.”
There’s irony there, too. There are scorch marks all over the walls of his father’s office, on his desk and the ceiling too, and he adds new ones every time he sees newspaper headlines about All Might instead of himself. When Fuyumi burns a dinner, he slaps her hard enough to leave bruises on her face. Once, when Shouto was ten and first starting to flat-out refuse to use fire in their training sessions, he threw him into the wall hard enough to fracture his skull out of anger and then spent the next three weeks fuming at Shouto over the instruction time he lost while it healed, as though the whole affair had been Shouto’s fault. Endeavor, despite his delusions to the contrary, has never been a rational man—Shouto is the rational one, between the two of them. He is analytical and dispassionate, cold and hard as ice; he’s seen the destruction that his father’s hot temper causes and he’s never had any desire to replicate it. In this respect, at least, in spite of—or perhaps because of—the example his father has set him, Shouto is exactly what his father has always expected him to be.
Except for the fact that maybe he isn’t, apparently, because his father has a point. Midoriya, Bakugou… Shouto’s not proud of the way either of those matches went. Clearly his head was in the wrong place in his match against Midoriya, after their conversation in the tunnel—somehow with a few shouted words Midoriya managed to erase his resolve and his senses entirely, and Shouto stopped thinking logically and started acting just like his father always has. By the time he came to his senses and realized exactly what he was doing, halfway through his fight against Bakugou, it was too late to undo the damage; he hesitated, he faltered, he lost. His own fault.
His father tells him, “I thought you were finally improving after your match with that Midoriya boy, but then you went and threw it all away again last minute for no reason. I don’t understand you. I thought you wanted to win.”
Shouto doesn’t answer him.
His father releases him and tells him to go to bed. Shouto follows his orders.
The next week back at school, Midoriya won’t stop looking at him.
Shouto doesn’t know what had possessed him in that moment under the tunnel, when he told Midoriya everything. It had been a stupid decision, and he hadn’t meant to make it—he’d only meant to inform Midoriya of his suspicions about his paternity and of his intent to surpass All Might in the rankings someday. But then there was Midoriya, simple and naïve, standing before the son-of-Endeavor with hero-worship in his eyes and looking so—pathetic, maybe, or envious—and suddenly Shouto found himself, against all reason, spilling all of his father’s dirty secrets. And then on the field, Midoriya had screamed at him, and for a moment he’d stopped thinking entirely and lost control of himself and found himself lighting up and the pair of them had nearly destroyed each other because of it.
And now here they are.
Midoriya is, to his credit, apparently slightly less of a complete fool than Shouto had taken him for. He hasn’t run his mouth to anyone yet, at least. But he is also annoying. He keeps approaching Shouto after training exercises, offering unsolicited comments on his performance and not-subtly implying that he thinks Shouto should be working on strengthening his left side. Shouto is half-tempted to ask where he gets off offering Quirk management counseling to other people when he clearly has his plate more than full trying to manage his own. And then there’s the way he looks at Shouto. He’s noticed the way Midoriya keeps throwing glances toward him from across the room during class, eyes full of something like—pity, maybe. Like he’s something pathetic, someone who needs help. It’s irritatingly patronizing. He can handle this on his own. He truly doesn’t understand why Midoriya is being so soft about the whole thing.
It’s the bleeding heart again, Shouto supposes. One of these days, some villain is probably going to take advantage of that extravagant sympathy—smell the vulnerability on him and ask if the nice hero can loosen his too-tight handcuffs ever-so-slightly, and then there’ll be a criminal on the run and Midoriya will be found dead in a ditch somewhere the next day.
There’s a slight twinge in Shouto’s stomach at the thought. He ignores it.
(Izuku | Then)
Todoroki, as it turns out, leads a decidedly less charmed life than Izuku assumed the son of the number two hero would.
Izuku doesn’t know what to do about it. He hasn’t gone to a teacher—not even All Might—even though part of him very much wants to, because Todoroki specifically asked him not to and Todoroki has never asked anyone for anything, and Izuku doesn’t feel like it’s his place to pass on a secret like this without permission. And anyway he figures probably nothing would even come of it if he did; he’s not stupid and he has some experience with situations like these and he can’t see very much action being taken against a hero as prominent as Endeavor for Quirk-based abuse of power.
But he can’t stand the feeling of doing nothing—one of his classmates is clearly hurting and Izuku should be helping him, he should be able to do something about things like this, but he doesn’t know how and he feels useless.
He hates it. He hates everything about this entire situation.
He does end up asking All Might over tea one day about the state of his relationship with Endeavor, because he can’t help it. He keeps it vague, just a general inquiry about how often the two of them see one another in the course of their hero duties, whether they ever work together on things. All Might sets down his cup, looking pensive.
“I’ve always wished we could have gotten along better,” he says. “We’ve done an operation or two together over the years, but he’s always been very… distant with me. I haven’t seen much of him in a personal context since… oh, probably since around the time young Todoroki was born.” He chuckles. “I’m sure he’s been busy. Raising young heroes is quite the undertaking.” A beat. Izuku finds himself holding his breath. “But he seems to have done very well with your classmate. I wish that I knew how…” He trails off, sounding oddly frustrated.
So he has no idea at all, then. Izuku does his best to keep his face blank as he nods.
“But you’ll be with Gran Torino starting two weeks from Monday,” All Might says, an abrupt change of subject, and Izuku startles. “I’m sure he’ll be able to help you get control over One For All. He certainly whipped me into shape when I was your age,” All Might says, and he chuckles again but it sounds nervous this time.
Izuku tries very hard not to think about the kind of person who can inspire fear in All Might. He also tries not to think about the fact that he’s two months into his first year at U.A. already and he still can’t control One For All even slightly, much less do the kinds of things with it that All Might can, and All Might is running out of time and clearly starting to become concerned.
“Yeah, I—I’m sure I’ll get it all figured out soon,” he says.
And then All Might is giving him a relieved-looking smile and Izuku—ignoring the twinge of apprehension in his stomach—does his best to give a determined-looking one back.
Todoroki still hasn’t said anything to Izuku since the day of the Sports Festival. He also hasn’t touched his fire at all since that moment in his fight with Kacchan where he’d flared up for a moment and then promptly shut back down again. He’s been all ice every day, and it’s becoming a problem for him. The ice that keeps crawling over his right side from overuse slows him down—not enough that most of the rest of their classmates can overtake him, of course, but enough that on more than one occasion Yaoyorozu and Iida (not to mention Kacchan) come pretty close.
Izuku doesn’t understand it. He thought maybe, for a moment down in the ring with Todoroki as his fire flared up, that he’d managed to get through to him, somehow. But now here they are, back at square one. Apparently Izuku’s impassioned appeal wasn’t as helpful as he’d thought it was.
He wishes he knew what would be helpful.
He decides to give logos a try, ultimately, because this is Todoroki and Izuku’s still not sure that he processes emotions like a normal human being. “Todoroki,” he says one day in the changing room, when all the other boys have left already and it’s just the two of them, “I really think you’re thinking about all this the wrong way.”
Todoroki turns to face him. It still makes Izuku anxious, when Todoroki looks straight at him like this; there’s just something coldly intimidating about the way he looks right through things (and Izuku) without showing any kind of facial expression at all.
“I mean, think about it,” Izuku says, swallowing his nerves and fighting to keep his voice steady. “Even if you didn’t actually use your fire for offense at all, if that isn’t a thing you’re—ready for at the moment, or—I mean, if you would just use it enough to help regulate your body temperature, your ice could be a lot more powerful… And then, like—you saw, back at the Sports Festival—I mean, when you used it against me, it was—I just really think you’d be better off in the long run, if you just worked a bit more on getting comfortable with it…”
Todoroki turns away.
“Todoroki,” Izuku says, pushing his locker shut behind him and sitting down on the bench, “I’ve already told you—” No, too accusatory. He’s trying to be level-headed about this. “I mean—it just isn’t logical to keep refusing to use your own Quirk in situations when it would benefit you.”
Todoroki’s shoulders, always rigid, visibly stiffen as he pushes his gym uniform into his locker.
“I’ll use it when absolutely necessary,” he says, his back still to Izuku. “But I refuse to rely on it like my father does. I have to be better than him.”
“No, you have to stop wasting all your time comparing yourself to him.” Izuku doesn’t know where the fire in his voice came from; he curses himself for it as Todoroki freezes for a moment before shutting his locker. But then he turns, slowly, toward Izuku again.
“I don’t,” he says.
“Yes, you do,” Izuku says, because he doesn’t know how to stop talking, apparently. “You’re so obsessed with being different from him that it’s holding you back from being better than him.”
There’s a long pause before Todoroki says, “That doesn’t make any sense,” and his voice is so pancake-flat when he says it that it almost sounds like he’s going for disdainful, but the fact that he’s even saying anything at all is honestly a victory and Izuku’s willing to take them where he can right about now.
“Yes, it does,” he says. “You’re so obsessed with not using fire because he’s used it for evil that you’re not exploring all the possibilities of using it for good. I mean—you want to be a hero, right? Isn’t that what you want?” He pauses for a response out of habit, not expecting to actually receive one, and is pleasantly surprised when Todoroki gives this infinitesimal jerk of the head that could possibly be generously interpreted as a nod. “You’d be a lot better at it if you used both sides. Just think about how many more lives you could save if you weren’t dealing with hypothermia every time you actively used your Quirk for more than fifteen minutes.”
Todoroki doesn’t say anything. Izuku presses on.
“And then there’s the fire itself—I mean, there are plenty of—just look at Rekindle,” Izuku says, naming the second flame-themed pro hero he can think of off the top of his head. “Look at Combustion Man. Fire doesn’t always have to be—destructive, or dangerous, you know? There are plenty of ways that you can use it to help people. A lot of people. You don’t have to use it like he does.”
Todoroki still doesn’t say anything.
There’s a knock on the locker room door. Kaminari is yelling at them from the other side to hurry up or they’ll be late to their next class. Izuku looks away from Todoroki.
“Just—think on that, okay?” he says. “And if you ever need my—my help with anything, or want someone to talk to about—about anything, really...”
Todoroki doesn’t answer him. Izuku heads for the door, wishing he knew the right things to say.
(Shouto | Now)
“So, um…”
The pair of them are still sitting on Midoriya’s floor. Midoriya finished speaking a minute or two ago but Shouto hasn’t answered him yet, because he honestly doesn’t know what to say. Midoriya’s becoming visibly antsy; his hands have started fidgeting in his lap and his eyes are roaming around the room.
“I know it sounds kind of crazy,” Midoriya blurts. “I mean, I get it if—if you don’t believe me. I probably wouldn’t believe me either, if it were me—I still can’t believe it sometimes, to be honest, and it is me, but—I don’t know if you—”
“I believe you,” Shouto says. And it’s true; Midoriya’s not a liar by nature and the claims he’s just made about how he got his Quirk—while outlandish—answer many if not most of the questions Shouto’s had about him for nearly the past year. Although it does raise quite a number of new ones as well. Shouto is tempted to ask how much Bakugou knows, because he grew up with Midoriya and would have known he was Quirkless before entering high school, and in the present day he goes off alone with Midoriya and All Might often enough that he must know something. He’s tempted to ask about who possessed this Quirk before All Might did, if Midoriya is user number nine, and what happened to them. Or about what it was like for Midoriya, growing up Quirkless: perhaps Midoriya’s childhood wasn’t as happy as he’s always assumed. He gets the feeling that there’s more to this whole story than he’s been told tonight.
But all of these things can wait, until Shouto’s had time to think about the best way to bring them up. For now he says, instead, “None of this explains why you keep hurting yourself in training.”
Midoriya chokes and then sputters. Par for the course. Shouto waits patiently until he gets a full sentence out.
“But that’s—I mean—I mean, that’s the whole thing I was just saying—I can’t—my body isn’t strong enough to handle the power yet, so it rebounds on me and—”
“I’m not talking about that,” Shouto says. “This morning you threw yourself in front of a cannonball.”
“Yeah, well, that was because—” Midoriya is straining, visibly, to pull himself together. “That was because I let you get backed into that corner—”
“I got myself into the corner,” Shouto points out. “We agreed that Yaoyorozu was my responsibility. You were dealing with Jirou.”
“But I should have noticed, I should have been able to stop it from happening, I’m supposed to be—and then she pulled out the cannon and it was pointed right at you and—I mean, I just—I just told you, I’m supposed to be All Might’s successor, what kind of Symbol of Peace would I be if I just sat and watched instead of doing anything to help when my—”
“I didn’t need the help,” Shouto says. “Yaoyorozu isn’t trying to kill anyone. She wouldn’t have fired anything at me I couldn’t have handled.”
Midoriya makes a noise that Shouto doesn’t know how to interpret. “Yeah, but—I mean, what was I supposed to do, we were losing, I was watching you get shot at, I had to do something and I thought I could—”
This conversation is starting to go in circles and it’s exhausting. Shouto closes his eyes and says, “You were supposed to let me block the shot on my own instead of jumping in and getting yourself concussed. It was senseless of you and it wasn’t helpful.”
This was the wrong thing to say. Midoriya now sounds somewhere between offended and panicked. “Todoroki, I—I’m sorry I always just make things worse instead of better, and I’m sorry that we didn’t win, but I’m just—I mean, I’m just trying to—”
“I don’t care that we didn’t win,” Shouto says, and it’s true. There was a time, once, when just hearing the words second place might have filled him with dread, but he’s spent long enough with his classmates at U.A. now to realize that he’s never going to win every single battle by himself and that he doesn’t always have to. “Stop apologizing for the wrong things.”
Midoriya is giving him this blank expression that he doesn’t know what to do with. There’s some part of Shouto that wants to grab him and beat his head against the wall, because he doesn’t know how else to get through to him.
Obviously he is not going to do this, however, so instead he decides to give pathos a try, because this is Midoriya and Shouto knows that he doesn’t always listen to sense. “Midoriya, you have to understand what it’s like for the people around you when you do these things,” he says. Midoriya opens his mouth, looking shocked, and starts to cut him off, but Shouto doesn’t pay it any mind. “Yaoyorozu was a wreck all day,” he says. “Jirou might have killed you over it if that wouldn’t have only made things worse. And I…” He trails off. He doesn’t know how to say this.
There are tears in Midoriya’s eyes. Par for the course. Shouto leans back against the wall, slowly. “I’m asking you again to stop throwing yourself around so much in training,” he says. “Taking risks is one thing. Taking stupid risks is another.”
Midoriya bristles. “I’m not stupid—”
“Okay,” Shouto says. “I didn’t say you were. But I hate watching you act like it.”
And something in Midoriya apparently breaks right about then, because now the tears are out of his eyes and all over his face. This is the part Shouto always hates with Midoriya, because he never knows what to do about it; he doesn’t know how to make it stop or even whether he should.
“I know,” Midoriya is saying. “I know, I know. It’s just—I can’t not do it, you know? I see someone in danger and I know that All Might would have been able to stop it and I have to try to stop it too, because—if I don’t live up to his legacy then none of it was worth it. Him giving up his power, having to retire—none of it. And I’m already failing.” That’s clearly a difficult admission; he’s not looking at Shouto anymore, staring off instead at one of the dozens of larger-than-life All Might faces staring down at them from the posters all over his wall. “I mean, I—it’s been a year since he gave it to me, and I can’t even go above fifty percent power most days. I can’t even use my arms like he did anymore or else they’ll probably be paralyzed. I want—I need to save people, it’s what I’ve always wanted, and he keeps on telling me that he thinks someday I’ll be better at it than he was but I don’t even think I’ll ever get to be as good, at the rate I’m going, I’m just—every day people are dying that he could be saving right now, and I’m just sitting here wasting his Quirk.”
And doesn’t that take Shouto back to nearly a year ago – standing in the center of a stadium under brilliant sunlight and the scrutiny of scores of professional heroes and thousands of members of the general public as Midoriya screams at him that he’s being stupid, that he’s only hurting himself and that he needs to stop comparing himself to his father.
He says, now, “It’s not his Quirk anymore. It’s yours.”
Midoriya makes a noise that Shouto doesn’t know how to interpret. “Yeah, I guess, but that’s the entire problem. I just—I don’t understand why he—sometimes I think he shouldn’t have picked me. He should have picked someone else, there are so many people who’d be better at this than I am, because—” He gestures vaguely around himself. “Look at me, I’m a mess. I’m probably the worst possible person he could have chosen.” He hiccups. “I shouldn’t even be telling you any of this. I already told Kacchan—” (there’s that question answered) “—and I’m really not supposed to tell anyone else because the public can never find out about this, obviously, but I guess I just can’t keep a secret apparently. And I guess I figured maybe you would get it, because you’re—”
“I understand,” Shouto says. Because he does; he’s been through exactly what Midoriya is going through now. It’s strange, because their backgrounds are objectively as different as possible—raised by a hot-tempered father with a designer Quirk and told to be envious and resentful of All Might’s perpetual number-one status; raised by a kind-hearted mother with apparently no Quirk at all and taught to worship the ideals that the Symbol of Peace stood for—but, Shouto is realizing, so much has ended up the same between them now anyway. Shouto knows, as Midoriya apparently does, what it is to keep your father’s secrets (because the way Midoriya has talked about All Might throughout this whole story has only confirmed to Shouto that this is, essentially, how Midoriya views him, even if they aren’t related by blood) for the sake of his public image until there comes a moment when suddenly you can’t anymore. He knows what it is to be the heir to the number one hero’s legacy, to be endowed with a powerful Quirk that comes with a set of expectations, and he’s been slammed into the training room walls too many times throughout his life at the moments when he failed to live up to those expectations not to understand the weight they carry and how hard they are to stand up against alone. These are all things that the pair of them have had in common.
“But I think you’re thinking about this the wrong way. You have to stop comparing yourself to him,” Shouto says, and Midoriya’s eyes go wide as they snap back to him. “It’s obviously only hurting you. You’re stressing yourself out so much trying to be exactly like him that it’s going to hold you back from ever being better than him.”
“Todoroki, that doesn’t—”
“You won’t be able to save anyone at all if you die in training at sixteen trying to be what he was on the field at thirty,” Shouto says. “And it’s not reasonable to keep destroying yourself with your Quirk in situations where it isn’t actually necessary. You can trust the rest of us to handle ourselves sometimes.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, I was just trying to—I just wanted to—”
“I know,” Shouto says. “I understand. And I'm grateful for it. But you don’t need to do everything by yourself. You can let other people help you too, every once in a while.”
There’s a long pause.
“Okay,” Midoriya says, huffing out a breath of air. “Yeah, I—I get it. I’ll work on it. I promise.”
It’s not much. Just a promise. Midoriya makes a thousand promises a day—promises to stop muttering to himself during exams so Aizawa doesn’t give them all demerits for cheating, promises to learn how to tie his tie properly so Aizawa doesn’t make them all run laps for dress code violation, promises to turn the lights off when he leaves a room and go to bed before two in the morning on school nights—and he doesn’t always manage to keep all of them. But still, Shouto thinks, he does usually at least try.
It’s something, anyway. It’s a start.
(Izuku | Then)
Izuku first sees Todoroki use his fire in training about a week and a half after the Sports Festival.
He’s standing on the sidelines after being thoroughly and shamefully walloped in his own match against Ashido, and he’s watching Todoroki battle Tokoyami. Dark Shadow is smashing through ice like it’s nothing; Todoroki’s holding his own for now, but Izuku can see his movements beginning to slow, as they always do eventually. There’s ice starting to crawl its way up his right side, and the cold is clearly starting to get to him. As Izuku watches, Dark Shadow forces him to take a step backwards, and then another. He’s running out of places to retreat to; the corner of the gym is only two meters behind him.
And then—just at the moment that Izuku is thinking, refusing to use his left is putting him at a major disadvantage here, because it’s common knowledge now after Tokoyami’s loss to Kacchan in the Sports Festival quarterfinals that Dark Shadow has a weakness to light and fire is light, obviously, so the only logical thing to do is to pull it out—Todoroki takes a visibly deep breath, and his left hand blazes bright.
It’s not much, Izuku thinks. Just one blast of flames, there and gone as Dark Shadow recoils in surprise and Todoroki takes advantage of the moment to launch an ice attack on Tokoyami himself. It’s so brief that if Izuku hadn’t been watching Todoroki so closely these past few days, he might not have even seen it.
But still, it’s something. It’s a start.
(Shouto | Then)
Something doesn’t quite add up about Midoriya.
Now that Shouto’s been paying more attention to him, he’s started noticing strange things about the way he behaves. He dances around the subject of his Quirk and doesn’t give straight answers to Iida or Yaoyorozu when they ask questions about how exactly it works. He mutters constantly under his breath, seemingly unaware he’s even doing it, and some of the things Shouto’s heard him say about ‘strengthening the vessel’ or about ‘running out of time’ don’t seem to make much sense. Not to mention the All Might situation. Shouto believes him when he says that All Might isn’t his natural father, because Midoriya is a terrible liar and he’d denied that particular relationship when Shouto brought it up. But Midoriya is a terrible liar, and Shouto refuses to believe his subsequent stuttered claims that there is no connection whatsoever between them—especially given the way All Might clearly favors him.
And then there’s the way he acts in training. He’s as cloyingly cheerful and upbeat as ever around Uraraka and Tsuyu and Iida, but sometimes Shouto watches him as he struggles alone with his Quirk and notices the mask slip for a moment. He looks… stressed. As though something is weighing on him.
Shouto doesn’t know what it would be. Midoriya’s never struck him as the type who would have many secrets to keep. But he supposes it’s possible that Midoriya’s not as uncomplicated as he's assumed.
It all raises some questions, anyway. Shouto files them away in the back of his mind for later.
“Todoroki!” Midoriya calls out from behind Shouto one day after school, when they’re on their way out the gates, and Shouto slows long enough to allow him to catch up, knowing that if he doesn’t Midoriya will simply continue to yell his name over and over until people stare and it becomes a scene.
Because this is what Midoriya does. He follows Shouto down hallways between periods, rambling on about whatever crosses his mind, and now Shouto knows more than he ever cared to about obscure pro heroes from twenty years ago. He sits beside Shouto at lunch, uninvited, and he brings Iida and Uraraka and Tsuyu along with him, and now Shouto has to deal with four more people taking up space at the table he used to sit at alone.
He doesn’t know how he feels about their presence yet. But he hasn’t asked them to leave.
“Have you decided yet?” Midoriya is saying now, as if Shouto would have any idea what he’s talking about, before appearing to realize how vague he’s been. “About internships, I mean. I was just kind of wondering, since the placement forms are due tomorrow and all, and I know you haven’t turned yours in yet—I was thinking maybe if you were having a hard time deciding we could maybe talk about it some? You know, just—like you could list some of your top choices, we could talk pros and cons, I could... If you, uh, were interested,” he adds, all in a rush, and goes red. “I know you had a lot of nominations, and I know if it were me I’d want someone to talk it all over with…”
Midoriya, Shouto knows, is going to Hosu, to intern under some nobody who no one’s heard of—the only person to extend him an offer. Shouto has offers by the hundreds, but he hasn’t even looked through any of them, because he knew from the very beginning where he would end up:
“I’ll be interning with my father at his agency in Hosu.”
Midoriya looks surprised by his answer. “Todoroki, are you—are you sure that’s what you want? Are you—okay with that, or—”
“It was my decision,” Shouto says. It’s true, actually; if he’d put his foot down and absolutely insisted on going elsewhere there wouldn’t have been much his father could have done about it besides rage at him. But he hadn’t, because—“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About becoming more comfortable with my left.”
“And?” Midoriya looks nervous.
And Midoriya is still a mess in training most of the time, and he still cries in class at least once a day. He won’t stop fretting over Shouto as though Shouto needs his help for some reason, and he’s so much of a bleeding heart that Shouto’s still half-convinced that one of these days he’s going to hemorrhage to death. But he’s also, Shouto is starting to realize, clearly not entirely stupid. He consistently ranks in the top five for exam scores, he’s the closest thing Yaoyorozu has to a rival among her peers when it comes to battle strategy, and some of the post-match analysis he provides during All Might’s class is almost insightful enough to merit the lavish praise All Might heaps upon him in response. And he keeps on telling Shouto that his left side is more asset than liability. Shouto doesn’t know for certain yet how he feels about that, but—it’s possible that he has a valid argument.
Shouto says, “You aren’t as brainless as I thought you were.”
Midoriya draws up short, as if taken aback, as he searches Shouto’s face. Shouto’s not sure what he finds there, but after a moment he nods, and he smiles.
“Thanks, Todoroki,” he says. “See you tomorrow, then?” And then, without waiting for a response, he hoists his visibly too-heavy backpack higher on his shoulders, turns away from Shouto, and starts running to catch his train.
(Izuku | Now)
Izuku is so lost in thought that he almost misses the last thing Todoroki says, on his way out of Izuku’s room.
He’s somewhere between worrying about how he’ll break the news to All Might that he’s now informed another classmate about the secret of One For All without consulting him beforehand and worrying about how Kacchan will react when he finds out that he’s now sharing Izuku’s biggest secret with Icy-Hot of all people. The sensible part of him that knew that saying anything was a stupid idea in the first place is screaming at him for letting his guard down like this for no reason, because now he’s going to have to face the consequences for it.
But, he finds himself realizing as he’s jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of his name and looks up at Todoroki standing in his doorway, he doesn’t really regret it.
“You said you worry that you won’t be able to help people,” Todoroki is saying. “That All Might made the wrong decision when he chose you.” Suddenly breathless, Izuku nods—just once, warily.
“He didn’t.” Todoroki says, simply. And then he shifts his head, like maybe there’s something else he wants to say, but ultimately he doesn’t add anything. Instead he waits for Izuku’s response.
Izuku thinks about the Todoroki he met at the beginning of their first year—cold, hard, seemingly barren of emotions entirely. And in some ways maybe it might seem like not much has changed, because—Todoroki’s still pretty hard to read, usually. He still nearly always speaks in the same dispassionate monotone, and he still doesn’t really have much going for him in the facial expression department besides the eyebrows every once in a while. But Izuku’s spent nearly the past year watching him and fighting by his side, and he’s been learning to read his signs. It’s not at all that Todoroki doesn’t feel things, he’s realized, it’s just that he doesn’t always know how to express them the way other people would. And now he’s standing in Izuku’s doorway having probably just made the closest thing to a declaration of fondness that he’s capable of, fidgeting with his right hand in a way that Izuku knows means he’s nervous, and Izuku says—
“You know, Todoroki,” he says, a slight grin stealing across his face, “you’re really not as heartless as I used to think you were.”
A beat passes before Todoroki says, “Okay,” and he says it as flatly as ever. But as he does he tilts his head in acknowledgement, and Izuku catches a glimpse of the spark in his eyes and knows he’s pleased before he steps out the door and pulls it closed behind him.
(Shouto | Then)
(The message on his phone is frustratingly vague—just a location, no accompanying text. It doesn’t even convey for certain whether Midoriya’s in any actual danger. Shouto stares at his screen and thinks.
The rational thing to do would be to stay here by his father’s side. Even if Midoriya is in danger, Shouto knows that Endeavor has at least three sidekicks on duty tonight who are based in this part of the city; if Shouto explains the situation, he could radio them for backup and one of them could probably reach Midoriya’s location within ten minutes or so. Shouto belongs here with his father on the front lines of this conflict where the fighting and the cameras are thickest, where he can make a name for himself as his father’s been hoping. Endeavor and the son-of-Endeavor, side by side, attacking and defending against these Noumu creatures with walls of fire and ice respectively. The media would eat it up. It’s nearly everything his father could have possibly asked for his debut.
There would be consequences, if he were to leave all that behind. His father would likely be furious with him. It would be a senseless thing to do.
Midoriya is only three blocks away.
Shouto’s left hand bursts into flames. His father looks at him with undisguised glee in his eyes, starts shouting something over the roar of the fire raging all around him. But Shouto isn’t listening to him.
He turns his back on his father and runs.)