Chapter Text
When Izuku was younger, he never understood why people thought that ‘May you live in interesting times’ was a curse. Even less so now, because he’s sure he’d go crazy if the world is as boring as they prayed for it to be.
Well, the people who told him that are long dead, and Izuku really couldn’t be bothered to remember anything anymore. Actually, it’s more like he can’t, but that shouldn’t be relevant, if at all.
Izuku doesn’t know how much longer he’ll be trapped in the box-- not passage --of youth. It’s such a strange phenomenon because his body just doesn’t change. At all. He’s been stuck at 16 years old for god knows how long. He doesn’t even remember his birth date. Or birth year. He only remembers that he’s had a family and their name was Midoriya.
Was Midoriya, because they’re gone. Izuku watched faces narrow, stubble appear, names no longer adorning a person but rather the stone slabs they’re buried under. When he was only 26, he could still make excuses, or rather, let the excuses fill themselves, because people couldn’t think of a better reason for that green-haired man to look like a child. He doesn’t even have to say much to change it, and he finds it tedious.
He’s no longer a part of that family because they died some forty years ago. Slowly but surely, the world moves forward, carrying with it the people he once knew and the silent whispers of his mother. He doesn’t remember if he’s had a father and doesn’t want to, because longing is not for people like him.
If there’s anyone else like him. He’s pretty sure that he’s the only one. Though it’s very much possible, because they would probably go into hiding just like him. He just has a feeling that it’s not.
The world moves forward without him. It stings a little more than it should, but at the same time, Izuku thinks that he should get used to this.
Since he’s immortal and all, you know.
---
He really wants to tell someone, to just relent, but he’s lived too long and seen so much until there is nothing else to see and nothing sacred to obtain, and he knows that humans are fickle, and to seal one’s words they must first be in a morgue. So Izuku can’t and will never(be able to) tell someone, anyone , about this.
Izuku repeats it like a mantra when it gets too bad when he’s so constipated and just longs to say anything , just to talk to someone, anyone about it, and he’s too scared of the consequences and he will probably regret it. He would waste all those years that he’d spent, carefully crafting identities for Midoriya Izuku and others he couldn’t even bother to make names for.
He’s a coward, but that’s okay. People often say that time heals even if it is the thing that kills them. Good thing that it bends even before him , so no matter how much longer it’ll take, he’ll let the coarse river of time sand the roughened edges. Of what, he’s not sure, but it’s a cool metaphor.
Semantics.
---
Izuku attempts to jump off a few skyscrapers at night when nobody’s watching, but he always got up just minutes after. It’s thrilling, though, watching himself die. He collects some stray brain matter from the ground and puts them into a bag and sprays disinfectant on the ground to get rid of the red. It’s not like they have his DNA anyways.
Dying should really feel more painful than this, but Izuku mostly does it for kicks. It probably shouldn’t be as fun, as references from the philosophical articles that he’s read from people who survived an almost-death predicament. But Izuku doesn’t think it’s that painful. He’s never felt much pain anyway. Maybe it’s the adrenaline.
But all fun things in life comes to an end, as Izuku’s quickly learned. Because he was put on suicide watch for a few weeks after one of his attempts was witnessed by a member of the force. But that’s okay because even the mimicry of death is starting to lose its meaning, now.
---
Izuku finds out that he could sleep for weeks at a time. Months even. Though with technology progressing, he can never find a good place to nap for a good few years or something.
Though he quickly realizes that it’s not as good of a plan to sleep for millennia at a time because he’ll either wake up six feet under or screaming his mother’s long-forgotten name. He doesn’t get nightmares and he considers his memory worse than most of his actual age, the long-term memories that are engraved into his years would only repeat as blurry fragments in his nights.
At least, that’s what his doctor tells him. He also told Izuku that it’s a medical miracle that Izuku still completely retained the body of a child, brain functions and frontal cortex, and all. And the fact that he’s functionally a teenager at best. Izuku tells him that it’s bullshit and he got banned from that hospital. Petty assholes.
Eventually, the lines blur out and tangle with each other. Years pass, again, and Izuku watches the world silently and develops a(frankly unhealthy) morbid fascination with death. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t killed anyone yet, but maybe he will one day.
So he settles down in an unremarkable part of the town(far and far and far away from his birthplace), buys an unremarkable apartment, and works in an unremarkable office. He buys makeup and disguises, organizes funerals and documents at the right time before people could realize that their upstairs teenage neighbor has been alive for decades.
---
Until everything starts to become blurry again and the only form of his entertainment comes from the boring fucking news .
So then Izuku picks up a few university major courses in human medicine and biology, in hopes of learning just what went wrong with his genes.
He almost forgot what schools are like, but university lecture halls are just as what he’s remembered then. Or did he even remember? Is he just projecting? Come to think of it, he originally studied programming. Or advanced physics, or something. To which degree? Where were his diplomas again?
And now he finds himself in a Biochemistry class. This is probably a Master’s degree. Should he get a PhD? It’ll be cool to be referred to as a doctor.
“Out of my fucking way, punk!” a pomeranian says.
Wait, not a pomeranian. It’s a human, but his hair is spikey and ash blond so it wasn’t Izuku’s fault that he mistook him for one anyway. Izuku takes a swig of his scalding black coffee and doesn’t choke, much to the pomeranian boy’s chagrin. He doesn’t know that Izuku can’t get burned, so it’s only fair.
“Did you fucking hear me?”
Ooh. A potty mouth.
Izuku is suddenly getting pulled to his feet. Well, he’s said that out loud, didn’t he? And then he curses at the fact that he stopped growing in his teen years because the pomeranian guy is really tall, and Izuku probably just looks like a thin noodle. Izuku tries to roll his eyes because they’re attracting a commotion despite being early to the hall.
“Hah? You a fucking brat or some? The fuck are you doing in a university?” The pomeranian guy says.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth,” Izuku says, instead of a reply, but quickly changes his mind afterward because he doesn’t really want to get throttled to death in front of dozens of people and potentially get his secret leaked out to the world and get sent for experiments and whatever inhuman unit 731 shit they want to pull on him and-- “Oh, yeah, I’m just babyfaced. I’m Midoriya Izuku by the way, who’re you?”
Izuku internally applauds his courage because the lecture hall is silent. But he’s gone through worse mortifying experiences than this and he got through. And he’s dozens of decades years old so it’s okay.
The taller blond snorts and lets him drop back to his seat. “Bakugou Karuto.”
And then Karuto sits down a few seats next to him, probably because there aren’t many people who like to torture themselves with Biochemistry these days. Karuto seems like the type who cares for his friends aggressively. Izuku’s never met someone like that before, not even in his long life. And he’s really, really bored. So why not befriend Karuto?
---
And then they became university buddies and fucked around a lot. Normally, these kinds of stories end just like that, because there’s no more story plot for the immortal character and the mortal character will just die eventually, leaving the immortal to mourn him. Except things go fucking wrong and Izuku would never mourn.
Izuku remembered an old myth, a folktale, about a boy named Icarus. The boy flew too close to the sun and burnt out his wax-and-feather wings. How fitting, he taunts, Karuto was always golden and shining, a ball of fiery plasma, bigger than life but still cowered before death. People mourned for Icarus, but Izuku mourned his wings and his sun.
Oh, wait, that’s a moot point. He did mourn. Just not for people. Never for people, because they are never constant. At least most of the trees in the forests are still there when he goes to visit. He could seek salvation in turtles but even they have an end, and they can’t really talk and are kind of slimy but it’s okay.
But there’s bound to be a day when everything goes to shit. It’s just that he thought he was prepared for it.
---
A glowing baby was born in the city of Qing Qing, China.
Along with several other cases of ‘Meta Abilities’.
When Karuto brings the topic up to him excitedly the next day and even showed him an article on their DNA analyses, Izuku wants to cry. In fear or relief, he doesn’t know.
They’re in their last year of Biochemistry, and it’s October. They would both get their doctorates by next year if they finish their credits early.
“Oi, fucker. You always look like a brat, even after the last few years. Do you think it’s because of those ‘Meta Abilities’ they were talking about lately?” Karuto probably meant it as a joke, but Izuku froze.
“That can’t be,” He reasoned to Karuto, “Because then I’d be the first person to get an ability, ever.”
The moment the words came out of his mouth, Karuto barked out a laugh, and Izuku is suddenly hit with a realization. He laughs along anyways. He laughs some more after that.
---
Izuku studied the cases and mutations of the people with Meta Abilities. He realized that there’s a specific part in their brain that stores an extra part of the DNA, called the ‘Plus Alpha’ or ‘Meta Ability Factor’. Izuku pulled a few favors to get to a DNA testing lab. He doesn’t even know why he’s doing it, but he goes anyway,
The results are back, and Izuku has a Plus Alpha gene in his DNA.
---
The rest of the year passes smoothly, just that the ‘Meta ability’ users are appearing more and more.
And just his luck, Izuku got hit by Karuto’s motorcycle one day and survived. When Karuto tried to check him for injuries, he found only faint lines of scars. That should have been the end of it, but he also saw the scars closing in on themselves.
Japan’s government hates Meta Ability users and it is currently a death punishment. Izuku had just exposed to him that he’s practically immortal or has an extremely efficient regeneration ability.
“Oh,” Karuto says when they get back to his apartment. It’s squeaky clean despite Karuto’s gangster personality. Izuku forgot to bring disinfectant with him that day, so he asks for a mop to clean the bloodstains with. Karuto waves him off and says it’s okay, and that’s when Izuku realized that he’s been fucked up bad by the sheer gore he’s just seen.
Well, Izuku couldn’t blame him. It’s not every day that you almost kill your friend(technically he did, but hey) and see their intestines hanging out. Or discover that there’s something wrong with their genes and that they are technically a wanted refugee.
So Izuku explained everything to him, despite the mantra clamoring inside his head, despite the pounding headache from not having died in so long and having bled out again, despite the years and decades of reassurances and backup plans and promises to himself that he would never tell.
He’d forgotten his mother’s voice a few decades ago and her face is starting to blur. He doesn’t even remember what her name was and he would never know again. All because he has a useless fucking Meta Ability. And his friend is going to die while he watches and life will go on without him and the earth will keep on spinning despite everything. Karuto would die one day too and he can’t do shit about it because he’s the only one with a too-long lifespan here.
“Hey, man, it’s okay, calm the fuck down,” Karuto pats his back with calloused hands from the explosions that he loved making in the labs and the knife cuts when they need to dissect stuff. Izuku looks at Karuto, 27 years old, and sees . He sees the faint stubble that’s appearing and narrowed, sharper chin, the disappearing baby fat from 21, and the lean muscles decorating his arms and the thin shades on his face that paints adulthood.
And then Izuku looks at himself and sees a pitiful child with the eyes that hold years of pent-up weather, shoulders a little too tense for the weight it had to learn to carry.
“I won’t judge you or anything,” Karuto then says, “I know it must suck.”
“That’s a euphemism,” Izuku shoots back.
“Still a fucking brat, you are,” Karuto snorts.
It almost seems like things are more normal again. But after a boring but calm decade of pretty much nothing for Izuku, but Karuto has acquired a family and has a child that has the exact same spikey hair as he did, then things go to shit, again , but this time the price isn’t on Izuku but on Karuto, because, what else, he died.
Izuku wished he could hunt down whoever did it, but he knows that he needs to help Karuto’s family first so he deposits a huge sum of money in Mrs. Bakugou’s bank and wanders off again, just so he doesn’t lose himself completely.
---
Izuku finds a child, one day.
He has white hair and an adorable but sickly little brother. He seems to love him a lot and protects him. But he has heard of rumors, from the underworld, that the child could take away Meta Abilities and give them away.
He knows it’s wrong, morally wrong, and that thousands of things could go wrong. But he goes anyway.
“Hello,” The child says. He did not tell him his name, but the little brother’s name is Yoichi. He is wary of Izuku, he could see that much.
“Hi,” Izuku says eloquently.
He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t.
“Do you have a Meta Ability?” The boy asks. Izuku nods. He has taken them to a secluded place, where his brother couldn’t hear. How sweet, children are.
Izuku takes a deep breath and he says it anyways. “Could you… take my Meta Ability away. I don’t like it.”
“What is it?” The boy looks curious and cautious. Izuku can’t blame him.
“Immortality.”
The boy’s eyes are wide and seeing into Izuku’s soul. Is it a Meta Ability?
“That’s…” Oh fuck.
“So cool! Can you live forever? Do you just not die? What happens when you sustain a fatal injury? Do you feel pain? Are you really a teenager or a millennia-old vampire? GASP! Are you the first Meta Ability user? Holy shit!”
Oh wow. That was not what Izuku was expecting, but he could understand the boy. Meta Abilities are just so interesting. Izuku would totally be like him if he was in his shoes. But he’s actually not the white-haired boy and he’s probably about to bestow upon him the worst torture known to mankind.
But before he could consider, the boy reached out with his hands to grasp his exposed arms(he wore a glove, but it seems that was not enough), and then he pulled .
At that moment, all Izuku could think of is the voices clamoring inside his head saying no, no, no, no, no---
But nothing.
Oh. “Do you need the other party’s permission to take their quirks?” Izuku asks.
“No,” The boy’s brows were furrowed and for a moment, Izuku saw a criminal mastermind of the underworld but he brushes that thought away because it’s unreasonable. He’s just a child, after all.
When he left, Izuku found out that his quirk could only be given with his explicit permission and if he was truly willing to push such a fate upon another. This is both a blessing and a curse, but izuku comforts himself in the fact that had he given such a quirk to a child with so much potential, he may one day turn to villainy and use that quirk to his advantage and the world would be shrouded in darkness. Truthfully, it’s not like Izuku would really care, he’s lived too long and seen too many people turn that way, but he thinks it’s being unfair to the child because he’s only but a child.
And that’s why he would probably not do many bad things with his Meta Ability, but it’s just that Izuku would feel a moral disparity even in the afterlife at throwing such a curse onto someone else. So he went away and slept for a few years, maybe even a decade, and could only hope that when he wakes up things don’t completely go to shit again.
---
He tried to search for quirks that could erase other quirks but found none. He gave up the search for immortality quirks soon after, because it’s fruitless.
He just wants the boredom to end, or else he’ll go crazy.
---
It’s probably been a century or so. Or a dozen decades of years, he can’t remember at all. That should be worrying, but Izuku is excited at the prospect because it means that he could finally forget everything.
He doesn’t think of Karuto, but he turns his head away at ash blond heads and avoids interaction like the social butterfly he is. It’s probably unhealthy, but Izuku can’t care less. He’s too tired from his decade-long nap. Memories of Karuto keeps on playing in his dreams during those ten too-long but too-short years and he almost feels rejoiced to wake up in his apartment which has miraculously not been taken down yet and the fact that he’s not in a fucking morgue, until, of course, he realizes that things are wrong the moment he steps outside.
And then he realizes that the kid, the child that he believed to be an innocent little angel who loved and protected his younger brother is now The supervillain, the bogeyman of ‘The Dawn of Quirks’ as they’ve called it. Wait, Meta abilities are called quirks now?
Izuku doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry because both options are quite tempting right now. He was quite fond of Yoichi and he wonders what he’s up to now. Wait, what if he’s dead? Is that why The Boy -- Who they now call “All For One’’ Which Izuku finds really fucking pretentious by the way -- has turned to Villany?
There’s too much to do, but Izuku is a man with too much time on his hands than anything else, so he starts investigating.
He has a feeling that he won’t like what he finds, and it’s true. Apparently, they’ve started this campaign of Vigilantes and Villains. Quirk Discrimination is as bad as ever and whoever has a quirk, or whoever has a familial relation to a quirked member of society(since they finally discovered that quirks are genetic, good job! Do you want an award?). Which is bullshit, but the last time he called that on someone he was kicked out of their facility so he prefers to not do that to an entire branch of government officials, but hey, since Izuku can’t technically be killed will they just subject him to mental torture instead?
That’s highly likely but since Izuku has never been trained for verbal altercations and psychological warfare like this, he doesn’t really want to risk his current precarious predicament.
Apparently, the government is at its all-time low and Izuku is debating on whether or not he should just take a vacation abroad, but decided otherwise because he did kind of want to see what the ever-loving fuck is actually going on in Japan. It almost reminds Izuku of an anime he’s seen a century or so ago, which is not very great because the best word to describe this entire state right now is just dystopian.
Well, Izuku isn’t a politician, but since he’s studied civil laws before he could say that the government is kind of fucked up. But, politics. Anyway.
He ends up tracking down All For One, ver undramatically, at a coffee shop that he took the siblings to once when they were younger. He prides himself on being able to track him down so easily, but maybe he’s just getting old and senile.
“You still look so young,” All For One marveled.
Izuku smiles lopsidedly. “And you are a brat as always.”
They talk about quirks and tread on shallow waters, because none of them are brave enough to step into the unknown boundaries. Izuku knows that All For One can’t kill him, and now he’s kind of glad that he didn’t offer his quirk to the supervillain.
But eventually, someone has to speak up.
“So how is Yoichi-kun doing?” Izuku says, deceptively casual.
He did not expect the glass in All For One’s hand to shatter into smithereens. He also definitely did not jump. The only other two unknowing customers’ heads turn to them but they don’t say anything. Izuku wishes he lived a normal life for the thousandth time.
He was quite fond of Yoichi, despite them sharing so little time together. He’s not as close to him as Karuto or All For One was to his younger brother, but he liked talking to him. He was a very pleasant child.
“I would hate it if anything bad happened to Yoichi,” Izuku says. All For One doesn’t move, nor speak. Izuku can be intimidating when he wills himself to, and him being able to imprint himself onto the younger and more innocent version of All For One gives him an advantage over everything else.
“How about you come with me, and then you’ll understand. I promise,” All For One says, standing up.
Izuku knows better than to trust the supervillain, and he must know it too, but since Izuku has practically nothing to lose, he finds himself barely caring.
He stands with All For One and they leave the small coffee shop on street 17.
---
“Long time no see, Yoichi-kun,” Izuku says.
Yoichi is still as easily sick and frail as ever. But he’s there nonetheless, and he’s grown even taller than Izuku now. Damned brat.
“Hello, Izuku-san,” Yoichi says. He’s still very polite. All For One probably told him about his immortality at some point, and how it couldn’t be forcefully taken.
(He’s kind of glad Yoichi is quirkless.)
They sit awkwardly in the parlor. In a secluded place where All For One can’t eavesdrop, of course. It’s truly a shame that the siblings fell apart, but it couldn’t be helped; their ideals were too different. After all, Yoichi dislikes All For One’s ways while All For One just wants the best for Yoichi, even though he is technically the leader of a villain organization.
It’s entertaining, like a reality show.
“I’m going to try vigilante,” Izuku says to the silence, “Want to join me?”
Of course, Yoichi said no. And then he stood up and left angrily. A sour taste rises up to Izuku’s mouth but he could barely blame Yoichi. After all, he, too, didn’t understand why he even told him that.
He wants to sleep for another decade but decides against it eventually.
---
Izuku has been many things in his long life, has done more things, and has seen even more of those things.
So far the list is way too long for him to even count, but recently, he has done the following: conspiring with a villain, becoming an information dealer, becoming a semi-villain, becoming a vigilante, hacked into government files, experimented on quirks and whatnot, finished a PhD on the study of latent human evolution, and, ah, teaming up with the man who is currently trying to rule the underworld of Japan.
All For One has always been an interesting man. He didn’t want to give the specifics of his quirk to Izuku, and while he could understand why(probably because Izuku wouldn’t give him any more than what he already knew), that didn’t do much to satiate his curiosity. However, mysteries are only fun when he has to make an effort in pursuit of the answers, and he hasn’t been bored out of his mind lately, so he thinks that he can suffice with this… occupation.
Sometimes, Izuku thinks that All For One is kind of pitiful; he sees All For One as more of a vigilante than a villain if anything, despite the disdain his brother holds for him. His plans to overthrow the current government are also very intriguing. Izuku has to agree with him on this matter, though, because as someone who has lived through a century observing human societies, this era of governments is truly the laxest and most deceitful. Izuku doesn’t really understand why they would want to fend off every single person who had quirks, even though some of them had turned to bad deeds-why couldn’t they just keep the good ones in check?
Izuku mostly watched. He didn’t want to get any more blood than what was needed on his hands as much as possible, except for his own, after all.
If this gets boring, he can just leave. Like what he always does.