Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Quirkless.”

The boy in the interrogation room snarled the word at the officer across from him. Tsukauchi remained unfazed, resolutely staring at his incident report. 

He had three scars down the left side of his face, claw marks with fading stretch marks that made them look unfathomably old.

There were more cuts hashed on his left collarbone, these ones fresh and visible in the torn hero costume on his bloody frame. Any hero or police officer worth their salt could tell they were from the same source. Shouta himself sported a matching pair in the same spot.

At Tsukauchi's nonchalance, the fight drained out of him.

“I wish I were quirkless.”

Tsukauchi tapped a finger against the table. The signal meant ‘true.’

Shouta dropped his pen.

So Midoriya had been telling the truth. The death wasn't his fault.

The day Izuku got his quirk, it was quiet in the house.

No, not the day he got it. The day his mother discovered he had it.

“Okaasan, Kacchan was mean to me again!” he whined to his mother.

His mom sighed. “I've been telling Mitsuki her son could be violent because of his quirk. She never listens to me. I'll take him to the quirk specialist I work with. He was never like this before.” She looked at Izuku seriously. He watched her lean down with wide eyes.

“In the meantime, Izuku, I want you to stay away from him.”

Izuku instantly deflated. “But Okaasan! Kacchan's the only one who wants to hang out with me because I'm quirkless.” Then he turned away, looking at the ground. “Except for it,” he muttered.

She stiffened, her spine going straight. “Izu-kun,” she said slowly. “What do you mean ‘it’?”

Izuku crossed his arms. “The thing over there! It only whispers, never says anything that makes sense.”

His mother was frozen, deathly pale. “Izuku, I need you to pretend it isn't there. Pretend it was never there, you never saw it. No matter what you do, you cannot react to anything it does. Izuku, do you understand me?”

“Okaasan?”

“Please, Izuku.” She had started crying at some point. "I'll be able to tell you when the time comes." Izuku had only seen his mother cry twice before, when his dad had to leave for a business trip and when he was diagnosed as Quirkless. And he was only five, when would he be ready? Why would Okaasan make him wait so long? “It's dangerous. Soon, it's going to be able to hear us, too. Don't mention it ever again, you hear me?”

Never again.

Never is a long time.

“Okay, Okaasan.”

He was never alone again.

It was always watching.

Always there.

Waiting for him to slip up.

And when he did…

everything was washed in blood.

11:53 AM, MUSUTAFU, JAPAN

The first time he made a mistake was in middle school. He'd been amazing so far. It had never reacted to anything thus far, just like Izuku himself. Of course, no one could keep that up forever.

It was standing on his desk, bending down with inhuman flexibility. The skin at its back cracked open, maggots and indistinguishable small wriggling creatures crawling out, dripping all over the floor. Some of them wormed their way into Izuku's shoes, aggressively biting and stinging at the skin there. He tried his hardest not to whimper, seeing as It hovered at a few centimeters of distance. 

Izuku reached up to scratch his face when he messed up. It wasn't anything major. He accidentally looked away from the board to It. He peered right at it. The skin on what passed for its face was inverting and imploding, twisting in and out almost mesmerizingly.

He stared a beat too long.

In the span of a second, he was ten feet away, splattered in gore, grisly bits of flesh and blood.

Several bone fragments were in his body at angles, cutting in and leaving wounds. His left eye and the skin around it hurt like hell. He could feel something warm dripping down, warmer than the other, rapidly cooling pieces he was covered with. It felt like the claw marks from the one time Izuku had an unfortunate run-in with an angry dog on the street.

His ears were ringing, and he heard screaming. When he looked at his seat, he found It hunched over his desk. The boy who always sat in front of him was blown to smithereens. Dead.

It leaned forward to sniff the boy's remains, before reaching an arm that was dripping decaying flesh into the body. It scooped out what looked like pieces of his liver and poured them into its mouth.

Every single eye in the room was turned towards it, except for Izuku's uninjured one, which was swimming in a hazy ocean of pain and blood.

The lights blinked out.

And so did the lives of everyone else in his classroom.

The walls were smeared in blood, blood, blood. It was dripping everywhere. Izuku heard a teacher hurrying down towards the door, yelling, 'Is everything alright?' and Izuku couldn't breathe.

He couldn't breathe. He gasped once again. Harder this time.

It moved to crouch in front of him and reached one bloodied claw out. Izuku could do nothing but watch as his vision faded.

In the end, it moved a claw to tuck a lock of stray hair behind Izuku's ear. 

He heard a rattling moan chime through the air. It sounded like the wind rushing through the swaying branches of polar trees, the wail of the damned in their own special hell.

"Izukuuuuuuu. Izukuuuuuuuuuu."

"Izukuuuuuuuuuu."

"Izukuuuuuuuuuuuuu."

"Izukuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu"

"I love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu."

Chapter Text

Izuku was in the hospital when he came to. His mother was holding his hand, and his left eye was covered in a swath of bandages.

"Izuku," she whispered. "Izuku, it's not your fault, okay? Everyone messes up sometimes."

Izuku looked around the room, dimly registering that It wasn't here.

His mother noticed his gaze. She smiled, but there was nothing behind it. "This room is warded. It can't get in."

"Can I stay here?" he said in a scratchy voice, then promptly doubled over and started coughing violently. His mother fumbled for a glass of water and handed it to him immediately.

"No, Izuku, I'm sorry. The wards aren't powerful enough to hold against It. Most hospitals have some vague protection against Them, but they aren't strong."

"Them?"

She looked away. "The Thing, Izuku. It. There's a name for them, but we can't say it. They've been following your father's family line for years. I should have known one would come for you."

She looked at him, her eyes brimming with inshed tears. She was trying to be strong for him, he could tell. "It's why your father isn't with us anymore."

Izuku felt a trickle of cold nothing slithered up his spine. "Oh."

His mother let his hand go to reach up and stroke his hair.

"There is a way to get rid of It, but your father never told me what it was. I'm sorry, Izuku," her tears finally overflowed, and she held him to her chest, sobbing.

Izuku heard a wind chime tinkle outside the windows. The golden afternoon light shine through the glass, reflecting a twisted shadow leaning through.

Izuku didn't look up.

The situation was considered an attack by a villain with a vaporizing quirk. There was nothing but smeared blood to give back to their families.

It ate the rest, and

it

grew.