Chapter Text
“Oh, yeah, Midoriya wanted to go to U.A. as well, right?”
In another world, where Izuku Midoriya is quirkless and the punching bag of his collective peer group, this statement sparks laughter. It sparks cruelty. His classmates openly jeer, openly taunt, and openly show their disdain that a powerless nothing like him would even dare to have aspirations for his future. It’s one giant joke to them.
Here, the room goes silent.
Every set of eyes turns to look at the boy whose existence flickers like a bad reel of film, and they whisper instead. Those who sit near him scoot away like he’s diseased.
Izuku Midoriya, in this world, has terrors under his skin. His smile curdles blood. The shadows that cling to him whisper, legions of voices that blend together in a buzz that feels as unnatural as his very presence. He is not a punching bag, but he isn’t welcome. He is alien. Other. Subtly terrifying in ways no one can aptly articulate, but everyone can feel. His classmates whisper to themselves in a different kind of buzz, casting judgment but looking away if his eyes find them. Here he is something they despise in a different way.
“Is he serious? A hero?”
“He’d fit in better as a villain.”
“U.A. would be out of their minds if they even let him on their campus.”
“I heard he carries knives around; the kid’s nuts.”
“Some kind of psychopath.”
In his seat, Izuku clutches his pencil and says nothing. He silently commands his shadows to stop their chatter and avoids looking away from the surface of his desk. He’s long since gotten used to this. This is only one incident in a long line of unfortunate days.
Izuku has terrors under his skin, so it’s only fitting they mock the monster.
Eldritch
In another time, another world, Izuku shows no signs of developing a quirk at age four and is certified quirkless by his doctor. He goes to school and his lack of power turns him into a social pariah. An example of the weakest kind of person one can be in the new age of super humans. He starts his life already a rung below everyone else and he has to fight against the label of useless branded on him his entire childhood.
Izuku, in this time, this world, does not have this experience.
That is not to say the experience he gets is any better.
Izuku is not powerless and has not been since the day he skinned his knee and watched in amazement as his skin sealed itself with the flicker of a shadow he could barely see. Since the day his shaky hands helped his mother fill out his registration with a smile. Izuku has a quirk of his own. A quirk he’s glad he possesses, even for all the misfortune it brings him.
“Oh, yeah, Midoriya wanted to go to U.A. as well, right?”
Bakugou hasn’t changed since they stopped being friends. That’s a constant here. Despite having power, despite not being the weakest, he still lost his friendship with someone he once looked at as if they were the sun. The circumstances are different but the results are the same.
When the class looks at him with suspicion and disdain, Bakugou doesn’t hesitate to show his fury.
Izuku doesn’t flinch when Bakugou slams his hands on his desk, setting off explosions that blacken the wood. He merely looks up, blinks, and sighs. It’s the same song and dance as always. His heart picks up the pace, though, an age old anxiety making his ribcage ache and his hands tremble. A lifetime of living by Bakugou’s rules has left him with old instincts he never can seem to get rid of.
“What makes you think you can rub shoulders with me, huh, Deku!?” Bakugou roars in his face. “Some creepy shit like you with a useless quirk that terrifies people has no place bein’ a hero!”
Izuku lets a beat pass, hoping the teacher will step in, but nothing happens. Lazy bastard.
“Hey, Kacchan, you want a Tic-Tac? Your breath is atrocious.” Izuku summons up a box from his hand with the quickest flick of a pencil sharpener blade, shaking it for emphasis, and suppresses a smile when he sees the vein in Bakugou’s head pop. The box is slapped out of his hand and winds up nailing someone in the head a few rows over. “Rude.”
Bakugou explodes again, this time blowing up his desk so effectively it gets tossed aside.
Izuku’s backtalk is a development that’s rather new, in the grand scheme of things. As a child, he was loud but he quickly learned to talk only when Kacchan felt like he should. He spent years being seen but not heard. But if there’s one thing Izuku learned from his former friend before it all went to hell, it’s how to have a smart mouth.
“YOU TRYIN’ TO COMPETE WITH ME? I’LL BLOW YOUR ASS ALL OVER THE WALLS!”
“Competition implies you actually think I have a chance, Kacchan,” Izuku replies. Man, he wishes he hadn’t lost his Tic-Tacs. He wants one now. Looks like Hayato’s keeping them, though, since he can see the guy eating them like popcorn at the circus.
Which: fitting. Kacchan is about the same level of spectacle as a rampaging elephant.
“YOU DON’T, THAT’S WHY YOU’RE A FUCKIN’ IDIOT!” Bakugou’s hands go off in a symphony of explosions, making Izuku flinch if only to cover his ears. “YOU’RE WEAK! YOU TERRORIZE EVERYONE JUST BY EXISTING! CREEPY FUCKS LIKE YOU HAVE NO PLACE WITH THE GREATS, SO GIVE UP, YOU FUCKIN’ LOSER! STOP CHASING YOUR SHITTY DREAMS!”
The teacher finally has the sense to call the class back to order then, and Izuku rolls his eyes as he retrieves his desk from its sideways position.
That day would stand out, if it weren’t so constant with how his life has been since middle school started. Every other day Bakugou is screaming in his face, showing off his power.
Every other day the teachers stand aside and let it happen, because Bakugou’s the top student. Izuku’s natural unsettling aura means they’re hesitant to intervene at best and ignore it entirely at worst. If it weren’t for the fact Izuku’s grades were also good, they’d have probably expelled him to take care of the problem ages ago. They make no secret of the fact they don’t like him. Izuku doesn’t really care anymore anyway. He only has another year before he’s on his way to his dream, and Kacchan can go fuck himself if he thinks he can keep getting his way by screaming.
Izuku doesn’t say any of this out loud, but it’s a nice vengeful thing to think about until the final bell rings.
He packs his things slowly, checking his phone and simmering in excitement at all the blog posts about the fight he caught on the way to school that day. He takes his time flipping through his usual news apps as the classroom empties. He’s always the last to leave, since he knows his classmates hate it when he walks close to them, and—
“We ain’t done, Deku.”
—and of course, because of Kacchan.
“What’s it going to be today, Kacchan?” Izuku asks, allowing his phone to vanish into his personal abyss. “Gonna scream at me? Hit me? Throw me out the window?”
Bakugou’s lackeys always find him hilarious, judging from the laughs they always muffle when he talks. It works in his favor sometimes. It’s harder to hold someone down when you’re trying not to laugh.
“Tch. That fat fucking mouth of yours ain’t enough to cover up the fact you’re pathetic.” Bakugou snatches his notebook off his desk, idly looking at the title scribbled in pencil before snorting. “Notes for the future? Really?”
“What’s it to you?” Izuku asks, trying to keep his tone casual even as his hands clench his bag.
Bakugou smiles at him, menacing and cold, and blows up his notebook before throwing it out the window. Izuku’s mind screams—those are his notes, his data, his future, his passion—but he keeps his face stoic. A reaction is what Bakugou wants.
Besides, his lackeys always look uncomfortable when he doesn’t emote. His face is terrifying all on its own, like a young Hannibal Lecter appraising them for mealtime. Or so he’s heard from the people who talk about him when he walks by.
Izuku bites his own tongue, staring at Bakugou’s eyes, and he decides today he wants to go for the low blow. Might as well rile him up immediately instead of dragging it on.
“Does that make you feel big? Like when you shake down the quirkless kid from 3-B for his lunch money? Big strong Kacchan, beating up people who can’t fight back.”
There it goes. Bakugou’s grin is wiped off his face, and Izuku’s cheek blooms with pain before he can anticipate the hit.
In another world, Izuku is already leaving the classroom and retrieving his notebook from the koi pond. He meets his idol that afternoon and his journey into heroism begins with a flourish. The most hurtful thing Bakugou does to him is tell him to kill himself with the light air of a child who has yet to understand a single thing about consequences.
Here, he runs his mouth and Bakugou spends the better part of ten minutes making him hurt all over. Which is for the better, because he knows if Bakugou weren’t tormenting him, he’d be after someone else. Izuku walks home long after the sludge villain is captured. He doesn’t meet his hero. Bakugou is never in danger and doesn’t begin his journey into learning about his own pride.
No one comes to help him, and he walks home nursing his bruises.
No one stops to ask him what’s wrong.
No one ever does.
Izuku wasn’t always like this. Once, Izuku was a bright child with bountiful energy. He couldn’t say a bad word about anyone, wanting to give endless second chances. His faith in others was blinding.
He isn’t sure how to describe himself now. Bitter, maybe.
Hateful and disrespectful, if he took the words of others into mind.
They called his quirk Eldritch at the suggestion of a volunteer who worked in the hospital. She was a college student with bright blue hair and multiple studs in her ears, and when little Izuku described his quirk while eating a lollipop from the doctor, she told him the name would be a perfect fit. He thinks it’s absolutely spot on and that time has only made it more fitting.
Eldritch: weird, sinister, ghostly. A word for the strange that invokes terror, or a horror that surpasses age and human understanding.
The way it works is that inside of Izuku is nothingness. When he skinned his knee, he saw a wispy sort of blackness before his skin closed itself up, and further tests showed that that was all that’s inside of him. He doesn’t bleed like a normal person. Izuku opens his skin and inside is ether so vast and empty people can barely comprehend the never-ending blur of movement that is the shadows who call it home.
It doesn’t show up on x-rays, and a camera fed into his stomach showed his internal organs are still very much there. It’s just cutting him open only leads to emptiness. To moving things that whisper and chatter in a language no one knows.
It’s not totally useless, though. He found out very quickly he can store things inside himself with no issue. Cutting his skin open hurt a lot when he was four but now it’s barely a pinprick; the pain fizzles away almost immediately. It’s nothing at all to open himself up now.
His mother isn’t home by the time he trudges to the door, so he flicks out a pocket knife and cuts open his palm. The shadows hiss and his keys are presented without much fanfare, the cut sealing itself as he unlocks the door and takes his shoes off. He’s glad she isn’t there. His face aches from where Bakugou let him have it and he doesn’t want her to worry. He doesn’t even have the heart to tell her he hasn’t been friends with Kacchan in years. He can’t imagine how badly she’d take it if she knew what Izuku went through every day just for existing.
He cuts himself again to deposit his keys back where they belong and exchanges them for his phone before grabbing the little first aid kit from under the bathroom sink. With practiced ease he wishes he doesn’t have, he goes about fixing himself up. His uniform goes into the wash so his mom can’t smell the smoke and burnt sugar twinge of nitroglycerin. A bruise reducing cream goes on his cheek. The surface burns Bakugou likes to leave him with are treated with ointment and bandages.
His terrors chatter as he works and Izuku seamlessly joins them as he mutters to himself over what to do about his notebook. The burnt edges he could have dealt with but it was in the water for a long time. The damage is too extensive to continue using it; he’ll have to grab another notebook and transfer over what he can. His notes being written in pencil may mean his data hasn’t run off the pages, but that doesn’t mean some pages aren’t stuck together too much to be separated. Ugh, that means he’ll have to use a hairdryer to dry it thoroughly; that’s going to take a while—
His phone beeps and he startles, but he’s happy when he checks what pinged him. He has an e-mail.
Hisashi Midoriya has not been present in Izuku’s life since age two. He doesn’t remember what the man looks like and he has no memories of the supposed closeness they shared when he was a toddler. But Izuku still knows him. Maybe not as well as some sons should know their fathers, but he knows him. He knows him as the wise voice behind a screen who’s essentially Izuku’s pen pal.
Maybe Izuku should feel bad his father is nothing more than an anonymous face on the other side of his screen. Maybe he should feel more guilt over hiding his suffering from his mother. But Izuku doesn’t. He smiles, reading over the message on his phone, and puts away the kit under the sink before locking himself in his room.
Posters and collectables stare down at him as he flips on the light. Every surface is covered in heroes. All Might. Endeavor. Best Jeanist. The area around his desk has become a shrine to up-and-comers, with postcards of heroes like The Magic Hero: Puck and Earthshaker covering the wall around his corkboard. His shelves are filled with action figures and statues that cost more than his limbs. Collectable trading cards stand in freshly dusted frames.
It’s the room no one expects from a child as gloomy and mouthy as he. It’s a refuge, a safe place for the little part of himself his peers haven’t managed to crush.
Izuku breathes, releasing the tension in his shoulders, and relaxes. The chattering that echoes inside his skull dulls a bit now that he’s home. Safe. Alone. He pulls on a comfortable set of house pants and a shirt that isn’t crinkled by rough hands before sitting down at his desk; the next notebook is awaiting him inside the drawer and Izuku has a lot of work to do if he wants to transfer everything. Once he labels this one, he’s going to spend all evening drying out pages and going over his notes for anything he might have missed the first time around. Maybe he can mock up a reply to his dad while he works.
His eyes catch on a photo on the corkboard as he writes, one that’s remained in the corner since the day it was taken.
Kacchan’s smile is facing the camera, with a younger Izuku’s unsettling grin matching just behind his shoulder. They’re in their brand new gakuen in front of the school gates. Even in photos, Izuku looks like a ghost. His skin is washed out and colorless compared to the excited flush on Kacchan’s face.
Izuku stares at it for a long minute. The aches all over his body throb.
He turns to the first page of his new notebook and rips the photo down without looking at it again.
In another time, in another place, this is the day Izuku embarks on his quest to become a hero thanks to a chance meeting with his idol. He performs an act of bravery and is told he has what it takes to achieve his dreams. Today he met no one. He experienced nothing he hasn’t before. This day is one of many exactly like it, where he crawls home licking his wounds and locking himself away in solitude.
The difference here is Izuku ends this day angry. He crumples the picture of happier times gone by, throwing it in the waste bin with more aggression than it deserves, and his pencil angrily begins scratching the paper as he thinks about the words his former friend screamed in his face.
Useless, creepy Deku, no business becoming a hero, no chance of making it, no chance of ever standing with the greats.
Izuku ends the day angry. He ends it angry, bitter, and as he shakes under the watchful eyes of his many, many posters, he ends it spiteful and filled with drive.
I’m going to become a hero.
There’s nothing anyone can do to stop me.
Izuku isn’t powerless, and he hasn’t been since he was four. He has what it takes. He knows he does. He’s going to prove them all wrong. He’s going to make it to the top and look down at everyone who said he couldn’t, and he’s going to be better than they ever were.
He’ll either make this dream a reality, or he’ll die trying.