Chapter Text
The flashes of the cameras burn Izuku's retinas, it's too bright, the suit that usually gives him confidence now feels uncomfortable. The press truly is the worst, but he would rather get everything over in one conference than have those darn snakes predating on him every fucking second of the week.
How did he end up in this mess again? Ah! well, no, that's not quite right either. He guesses this moment is the result of many other events in his life so there's not only one correct answer. He could say this may have started when he was diagnosed quirkless and was isolated and bullied because of that, but that is stupid, it's too early, but in a sense this wouldn't be going on if that bullying hadn't happened. Maybe it was when All Might told him he couldn't be a hero? Nah, irrelevant; it had hurt, but maybe he would still be here today if it hadn't happened? Or perhaps it's when he fell? Yeah, that does seem more essential, if he hadn't fallen, he'd definitely not be here. But maybe even more so he wouldn't be here if he hadn't decided to stay at the bar. Hmmm, oh right! This is all Tomura's fault! Then again, he didn't have to be so… crude while calling All Might out on his bullshit.
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"What. The Hell. Are You. Doing. To Our FUCKING WALL?!" Midoriya Izuku had screeched so loud in the night that everything after that scream felt silent. It felt silent because it wasn't actually silent, there was some noise coming from a police radio somewhere, a couple of motors rumbling and a bit of shuffling here and there, but ultimately, his scream had been loud enough to overshadow everything else. He had taken a deep breath and throwing his hands to point just some centimeters next to the fool and added, "For fucks sake, All Might… WE OWN A FUCKING DOOR!" As if that was his cue, Kamui Wood had broken the door too and Izuku had lost his shit.
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Shigaraki should have just let the past stay in the past tho. Hmm? Should we start by the beginning? Very well then.
It was one 15th of July, when Inko and Hisashi Midoriya were receiving their baby... hmmm? Too early? OK, then.
Izuku was excited to hear what quirk he would be getting! He sat impatient and excited at the doctor's office but his dreams and hopes were crushed by the bald doctor that... Still too early? Alright.
Bakugo exploded Midoriya's notebook and threw it out the window, on his way out he stopped and mockingly said "If you want to be a hero so badly" What do you mean you already know this?! Why did you ask me to start from the beginning if you already know the beginning?! Fine, let's give it another go.
Izuku stared at the man that had presented himself as Yagi Toshinori with a face that told the man exactly how done he was with this bullshit… oh, but of fucking course! Now you don't know what the hell is going on! Great! No, sit down, shut up and listen from wherever I pick the damn story!
Izuku had been left devastated at the rooftop and when he reached the floor he was so busy being sad and sorry for himself that he didn't notice his feet had taken him almost on instinct to a villain attack, the same villain that had attacked him earlier and the victim this time was none other than Kacchan himself.
A 14 years old boy was suffocating to death and these people were waiting for someone with a suitable quirk to appear, were they kidding? For real?! Then was not the time! This kind of reminded him of the joke of "how many people are needed to change a light bulb?", instead it goes "how many people are needed to save a boy from a man made of mud?" Oh well, but Kacchan had looked so terrified, how could Izuku sleep at night if he ignored that and Kacchan was seriously hurt or worse? Would he be to blame as well? Of course he would be sharing the blame with this crowd and the three heroes present, (four if he had counted All Might's secret identity at the time) but he had not looked capable of a lot then, but would he be at fault too?
He doesn't know what he can do about it but he is at least going to try. It is the only thing he can ever do, try to stop Kacchan from harassing others, try to stop Kacchan from harassing him, try to become a hero, but still, it's better to try something, anything than to do nothing.
In the end All Might saves the day again and the heroes congratulate Kacchan on holding up for so long, they are about to start nagging Midoriya but he breaks his arm free and pushes through the people. "I don't have time for this," he said bitterly and rushed to his home. He expected Kacchan to try and "talk" to him, but he really just wanted to go home so he took some alleys and shortcuts to avoid him.
The smell of his mother's food greeted him once he opened the door, he loved that smell, it smelled like love. This small apartment was his most important safe space in the horrible reality he had to live through. It didn’t matter, he just had to start a new page, keep going. It's not like U.A. wasn't an option anymore. He talks with his mother over dinner, helps to do the dishes and investigates career options before going to bed.
Unfortunately things at school don't get better. He was a fool for wanting to be a hero, now he is a coward for giving up. He would need an empathic quirk for being a psychologist, a heat resistant quirk for being a firefighter, something to keep kids entertained for being a teacher, he gets detention when he tells his teacher he doesn't have that. A quirk for this, a quirk for that, heroics was a given, but what's up with everything else? He starts searching for job applications, no matter how dumb the job is, all of them have a quirk registration slot, even if you are just going to be picking up calls! What the hell? He tries applying for simple jobs, just to try and test the waters, he doesn't get any. The first week is fine, but when it's been a month and over 90 applications later he starts to panic. That's how he first starts searching statistics. Percentage of suicide by quirkless, percentage of quirkless that commit suicide, abandonment, unemployment, crime rates, victims of hate crimes, disappearances, finished high education. It's all despairing to say the least.
Izuku thinks too much, he had never realized how alone he truly was. Sure he didn't have friends but since he started using social media to investigate some of these topics, he saw other people with their friends and he realized that even if he wanted to post a photo like that, he doesn't have any he hasn't gotten photos like that since he turn 4. It's been a decade and it stopped hurting at some point, but it still gives him a feeling of sadness when he thinks about it for too long.
It's after a particularly bad day at school that everything starts to spiral. He really hadn't jumped, it had been an accident, he fell, he just wanted to enjoy the sunset and he likes high places, they are quite and peaceful and he quite enjoys the feeling of vertigo that comes when looking down.
Izuku goes to the library, not having friends means that you enjoy quiet places where everyone minds their own business. Midoriya is sure he has read half of this library over the years. He had forgotten exams are next week and gets shoved around by some classmates, but he doesn't want to sour the image of the library in his head, it's one of his safe heavens after all. He's walking home feeling oddly empty, he's just… nothing. He isn't even tired, which is what he would usually feel in this kind of mood, he just doesn't feel anything or not anything he can express with words at least. He sees the sun set behind far away buildings and it feels like he can capture just the tiniest bit of its warmth within his eyes. He pases by a fire escape and doesn't think twice. He hurries to the rooftop to feel the golden light on his face sitting down, it fills him nicely. The light feels warm like his mother's hugs and kisses and sweet and thick like honey.
Silent tears roll from his eyes at some point, he isn't sad, he doesn't think this is sadness, he is just overwhelmed, the future is scary, everything will keep getting worse for him. And he guesses it's the same for everyone else, but he is alone . This is something you can't understand unless you've been there yourself, the fear that strikes you. It doesn't even matter that you are frozen in place because there's nothing you could do even if you could move. He doesn't notice when the tears stop coming either, but it gets dark and cold and he really should get going home. Izuku stands up on shaking legs, they are numb, he probably shouldn't have stayed in that position for so long. He tries to take a step towards his forgotten backpack but his feet fail him and he trips. He falls off the edge and gasps, but doesn't scream; this is a pretty desolate area and even if someone heard him, could they act fast enough to help him? There's no point in screaming for help, people hadn't helped him even when they had the power to do so, so why should he waste his last breath on yet another fruitless cry for help? Live and die the same way? Nah, just let it be whatever. He expected pain, but it doesn't come, the world simply disappears in under a second.
Shigaraki Tomura walks aimlessly, he's used to Kurogiri dropping him off and picking him up all the time so he isn't really used to moving on his own. He doesn't even know which direction he should move in and Kurogiri is being rebellious. «I won't be your personal taxi unless you fix that attitude young man!» Shigaraki mocks inside his head, «as Sensei's successor you need to demonstrate that you stand up to the challenge and this childish attitude does not help you.» Then Shigaraki hears it, something crashes on the floor a couple of streets down. He moves towards the noise and finds the broken body of a green haired boy, there's also a lot of blood, but Shigaraki is a psychopath, he isn't faced by trivial matters like this, he's seen 10 corpses today already, what's one more? He calls Kurogiri and it rings once before being picked up.
"Tomura," Kurogiri starts, but is abruptly interrupted by Shigaraki.
"Yes, yes, I heard you the first dozen times just fine! But~ can you help me move one last corpse, it's bloody and I don't want to stain my clothes now." That is only answered with silence, until eventually a long suffering sigh and an instruction to send his location. A purple mist warp opens under the broken boy and Tomura doesn't doubt it for a second before hugging the boy and getting warped onto the laboratories with him. The Doctor flinches at hearing the new arrival.
"Another one? I thought the other one would be the last one!" he asks without a greeting, Tomura isn't one for such formalities either way.
"Yeah, well, I found one more," Tomura explains and The Doctor fliches again, the new subject is quite broken and Shigaraki is covered in blood and staining his floor again.
"Tomura, I have to repair these things in order to be able to use them… Don't move around too much! You are dirtying everything with blood!" Shigaraki rolls his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, just do whatever you can, Doc. On other note, could you use Johnny or whatever his name is to help me get back at the bar?" The Doctor looks at him for a moment before sighing and calling the small nomu.
Once Shigaraki is gone, he moves the body towards a capsule, since it's so broken the sooner it starts getting fixed, the better. The broken body falls on the capsule and water that will soon dissolve a bunch of chemicals that will help it patch up starts filling it. He leaves the secret lab once everything is connected and set. He'll come back to clean the blood later, but he can't disappear from the hospital for too long.
It's in that capsule in a dark laboratory that Izuku Midoriya's story truly begins. The first 6 months of his story are too quiet tho.
Later a woman cries into the phone in a small apartment in Musutafu. Mitsuki hears the woman fret about her son being missing on the other side of the call. If Izuku was anyone else it would have been quite alright, but Izuku is always home early and there aren't many people they could ask or places Izuku could be. Inko has already filed out a missing person report, but Izuku is a teenager and even though they didn't say so, she knows it's also because he's quirkless and they are not gonna hurry over a quirkless boy, they have greater problems to solve or so they think. It'll take longer for the police to start an investigation than the actual investigation.
Miteuki calls Kacchan that sits at the table, finishing dinner.
"Katsuki, do you have any idea where Izuku could be? Inko says he's not home yet…"
"Do I look like his babysitter?"
"It's a yes or no question Katsuki." There's a different kind of firmness on Kacchan's mother's voice, it makes him think about the answer carefully.
"We have exams next week, maybe he went to study at the library," he says as Mitsuki takes her purse and car keys, "it should be closed by now though."
"I see. Thank you. Masaru, I'm going to visit Inko, I'll be getting home late or maybe tomorrow. I don't know how much we can get done today but I don't feel like it's a good idea to leave her alone."
Now this is usually the moment in which someone like Bakugo starts feeling guilty or some shit like that, but this is Bakugo we are talking about, why would he feel guilt over anything? He doesn't really care, even when Inko cries her heart out, even when he sees her everyday after Mitsuki accommodates the extra room for her since she doesn't trust her alone, even when the police finally do start a search and find Izuku's phone location on a rooftop in his bag. Why should he? There's not even a body! He doesn't feel guilty, even when Mitsuki helps Inko put on a shrine for Izuku. Time goes by, Izuku doesn't show up and Bakugo gets into U.A.
Usually when the main character dies their story ends. When Izuku Midoriya dies, it's only his preface that ends, it is then that the real story begins. You could say he never actually died though.