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Belief.
What a pitiful word.
Everyone in the world had some form of belief. It could be as simple as believing they would wake up the following morning after going to bed, or as complex as a God that created heaven and earth, and offered his own body for salvation. But in the end, everyone believed in something .
So, what did Izuku believe in?
A shaking hand grabbed the edge of the mirror and turned it slightly, just far enough that he could see the monster in the corner of his room. ‘Monster’ was a dramatization. This was a man. It was just a man . But monsters were often nothing more than men in masks. This one wore a burlap sack over his head. His corded arms flexed as his fingers twitched. A line of blood splatter covered his front, smeared around the large gash wound straight through his torso from right shoulder to left hip. Izuku could hear his blood dribbling on the hardwood floor.
He tilted the mirror back to his own face, covered in sweat and barely visible in the low light of the bathroom at two am. It never mattered how dark it was, he could always see them clearly. A woman with long blonde hair stood behind him. Her eyes were a soft gray and her smile held the gentle kind of love you’d find on a mother’s face. She had an ax sticking out of her head, jutting over Izuku’s skull and towards the mirror.
Off in the corner there was a child, an unknown. It had its head buried in its knees, sobbing violently and screaming for help. Its voice often echoed in Izuku’s head all night long. The child’s fingers were digging into their own scalp so hard they were drawing blood. Its face was stuffed into its knees. Izuku had never once figured out who the child was, and he’d never gotten close enough to try. He didn’t want to.
Izuku believed he could see the dead.
But no one else believed him .
Izuku was supposedly quirkless. In a world where only your power and strength mattered, he was an outcast, the weakest link. He was the lone statistic, the lost genetic code. He was hated and bullied. He was barely fourteen and his life had run aground on a giant coral reef. He couldn’t sleep, barely ate, and oftentimes talked to himself. Or at least, that’s what it looked like on the outside. In reality, Izuku was plagued with lost souls that never let him rest.
The screams, the sound of bones crunching and bodies being ripped apart, it never stopped. The restless dead would beg him for attention, sob into his chest while he tried to sleep, asking for him to tell their loved ones they were here - they were still here . Sleep had been nearly impossible all his life, and eating was difficult when he was often nauseous from the grisly sights these visions gave him.
Sometimes it would all be too much, and he’d scream at the ghosts to leave him alone, to stop bothering him. This was a mistake, because then they knew he could see them. Then they knew he could be their interpreter. Izuku didn’t want to be some ghostly go-between. He wanted rest, he wanted to sleep, he wanted to eat without a hacked off arm being tossed on the table in front of him. His mother had taken him to several psychiatrists, they all believed he had schizophrenia. The heavy medications only made things worse, because they didn’t make the ghosts go away, they only made him more nauseous, and more exhausted.
Izuku had not slept in almost four days. It was Friday night, and he knew getting through the weekend would be rough. School made things only a touch easier. The ghosts apparently had a short memory because when he was busy getting bullied and had no time to focus on them, they’d forget he could see them. But the moment he left school and his eyes focused on those nightmares again, they’d be right back to haunting him.
Four days. Four long fucking days where this serial killer in the corner wouldn’t leave him alone. The woman and the crying kid in his bathroom weren’t much of an annoyance. They just were, and they barely bothered Izuku. If he shut the bathroom at night, they were easy to ignore. But this monster in the corner of his eye was driving him to the brink of insanity. Maybe Izuku really was schizophrenic. He was beginning to doubt himself.
Izuku’s mother was out of town on a business trip. She left Izuku with enough money to get through the weekend and a few days extra in case she was gone longer (she was usually gone as long as possible to get freedom from his supposed madness). He’d likely run out of money before she returned, and it wouldn’t be the first time.
Sleep deprivation was a form of torture, Izuku knew that, logically. He knew he was being tortured. Every time he tried to sleep, this monster would stand over him, right at the edge of his bed, and make these inhuman gurgling noises, like an animal drowning slowly. He’d stick his hands into the wound on his chest, and pull his own ribs out and leave them on Izuku’s bed.
“I…can’t-”
Izuku choked the words from his throat as he grabbed the large kitchen knife he’d stolen from his mother’s favorite set only an hour ago. He’d been standing here, watching the monsters through his mirror, trying to decide if he really wanted to use the knife or not.
Today was a very bad day. His bullies had left him covered in bruises. His face was a splattering of purple and yellow, like a mosaic or mural painted by a child with finger paints. Katsuki Bakugo, once his best friend, had told him to jump off the roof and pray for a quirk in his next life. Izuku protested, telling his friend-turned-abuser that he already had one. Katsuki laughed, a vicious cackling noise that was still stuck in Izuku’s ears.
The doctors had diagnosed him as quirkless, there was no chance he could have one.
There was no chance, right?
But Izuku didn’t have the extra toe joint. He had a quirk factor. He’d seen the tests. The diagnosis shouldn’t have been quirkless, it should have been un-manifested . It’s not like he could show the world the nightmares he lived through every day. He couldn’t prove he could see the dead. Had that diagnosis never been stamped onto his medical record, along with his mental illness diagnoses, they might believe him. Had his quirk manifested when he was four instead of six, they might be inclined to believe him. Had he never tried to tell his mother the truly awful things he saw, she might have believed him. But he was a late bloomer, with an unwanted diagnosis.
Izuku was a liar. Izuku was sick in the head. Izuku was disturbed.
That’s what everyone said. That’s what everyone believed .
His right hand, still shaking and crooked from how many times his teachers beat the knuckles with rulers, lifted the knife to his face.
“No.” The woman behind him begged. “Please, don’t leave me.”
She wasn’t talking to Izuku. She said this every night. But today, he wondered if her eyes were just a little less foggy than usual. He thought maybe they were looking right at him in the mirror. Was she speaking to him for the first time in eight years?
No .
Her body fell backwards, reliving her death, just like always.
Every hair on Izuku’s body stood on end, sensing his decision, the coming pain. He had no other choice. He could wear earplugs, and that usually worked for sleep on the not so bad nights. But earplugs and blindfolds only worked so long. The ghosts got into his head. He couldn’t live with the horrors he saw every single day. He simply could not do this any more. His logic was simple, if he couldn’t see them, maybe they’d go away. If he couldn’t see them, couldn’t react to them, then maybe they wouldn’t know he had this horrible ability to see them, and they’d leave him alone.
But despite his desire to end this madness, he didn’t want to die.
Izuku genuinely did not want to die. The only other choice?
Cut out of the cause of his pain.
If he could rid himself of the horrors he had to watch unfold around himself, he would be free. He could live without sight, plenty of blind people lived perfectly normal, happy lives, right? In expectation of the pain, he let himself scream.
An acidic twist coiled around his stomach; sorrow. He was so tired. He was so , so tired . He wanted to rest, to sleep, to stop seeing that monster in the corner of the room. Izuku had named it. He’d named that monster Jack - after Jack the ripper - and Jack liked tormenting Izuku. He liked haunting a scared teenager who only wanted people to believe him.
The agonized cry that filled the room turned into a shriek when he drew the blade across his face in one quick motion. Blood poured down his cheeks. The world vanished, everything was gone. The mirror, the bathroom, Jack, even the light from the ceiling. Izuku clutched his face, the kitchen knife clattering to the floor. He sobbed into his hands, screaming between each agonized hiccup.
“Izuku?!” Someone must have heard him screaming, the neighbors maybe. “Izuku! I’m coming in!” Mrs. Nara was a sweet old woman who used to babysit Izuku when he was a child. She lived next door. Her room was on the wall next to Izuku’s, she must have heard him screaming into the mirror.
“Izuku! Oh God, what have you done?!”
There were arms around him, real arms, kind arms, loving arms. These were the arms he’d begged his mother for. But she never offered him the love he wanted, the love he needed. This was the love he’d been searching for to soothe his soul from all the horrors he was forced to endure. All his mother ever gave him was distance and fear.
It was over. It was finally, finally over. He didn't have to watch the ghosts relive their deaths or rip themselves apart just to torture him. Izuku could put earplugs in, and he could sleep. He could ignore them during the day, and forget they were ever there. He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t see them anymore!
A manic laughter bubbled over his lips, his fingers digging into the sides of his face. He was free! Izuku was free! The laughter rose, a crescendo of peace and happiness he had not felt since he was a child.
“Yes, I need an ambulance at XX street, apartment 3C - a young boy has injured himself…No, I don't know. I- Izuku why are you laughing? What? No, no you. The boy, he’s laughing. He… he - I think he cut his face. There's a knife, and he’s clutching his face, and there’s blood everywhere. I can’t tell how bad it is. Izuku - look at me, please. Move your hands.”
Izuku lifted his head to the voice beside him and slowly lowered his hands. He didn’t know how bad the damage was, only that he couldn’t see, which meant he was free of the torment. He was free of the nightmares and blood and gore. If he couldn't see the ghosts, they wouldn’t know he could (once) see them, and they would leave him alone!
“Oh God.” Mrs. Nara gasped. “His- his eyes.” Izuku could hear the tears in her voice. “Please, come quickly. He’d blinded himself.”
The next hour was a blur of noise and bodies. The police came, along with an ambulance. Izuku didn’t speak. He was too busy enjoying the silence in his mind, the lack of horrible sounds, and the freedom without Jack haunting his every move. He was at peace. The EMT’s wrapped his head tightly to stop the bleeding and loaded him into the ambulance while Mrs. Nara explained that his mother was on a work trip. She gave the police his mother’s number and begged them to take care of Izuku.
Izuku silently wished he’d been born into her family instead.
~
“Izuku Midoriya?” He nodded to the doctor and followed the man’s footsteps with his bandaged face.
When the ambulance brought him into the hospital, Izuku had been ushered to the back in quick order, and immediately sent into quirk surgery. He knew there would be nothing they could do. He knew he’d destroyed his eyes beyond repair. He’d looked up all the ways to do this days ago. Acid and blade trauma were the most effective methods for complete removal of sight.
When he woke up after the surgery, there was a tight, fresh bandage around his face, and the smell of cleaning products and rubbing alcohol. The blankets on his legs were scratchy, he didn’t like them. The beeping of his heart monitor was too loud, but he couldn't explain why. When he asked a nurse to change it, she said it was set as low as it could go.
“I am Dr. Tsuga, and this is Dr. Itome. I’m your surgeon and she will be your psychiatrist.”
Oh, he’d missed the second set of shoes walking into the room.
“It’s nice to meet you, Midoriya.” Dr. Itome sat down beside the bed, the plastic chair creaking as she did. Izuku smiled at her. She sounded nice, honest. “Can I ask you a couple questions before we go over your medical evaluation?”
“Mhm.”
“Good. Can you tell me why you did this to yourself?”
Oh that was simple. “The ghosts wouldn’t let me sleep.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Dr. Itome sighed and Dr. Tsuga shifted awkwardly at the end of the bed. Izuku wondered if they thought he was crazy. They must have read his medical file, it was a mile long. They would believe he was crazy, wouldn’t they?
“The ghosts, have they been around for a long time?”
“Since I was six. I was diagnosed quirkless, but I have a quirk factor, and I don’t have an extra toe joint. I’m a late bloomer.” He paused. “I believe I’m a late bloomer. No one else ever believed me. They diagnosed me as schizophrenic, medicated me heavily. It didn’t work.”
“Well-” Dr. Tsuga moved to the opposite side of the bed. “We believe you, son. I’ve run the tests three times to be sure. You have a Phantom type quirk. They’re fairly rare, though we’ve seen a couple in your generation. Your quirk appears to allow you to see and hear the dead.”
“Not the dead.” Izuku clarified. “The violent dead, the restless dead. I only see ghosts who have died violently. I’ve never seen any grandmothers in rocking chairs. Only victims of horrible ends.”
“I see.” He shifted again, a nervous tick, maybe? “I’m so sorry this was missed, Midoriya.”
“We are truly sorry that you had to suffer alone. Did the ghosts ever try to hurt you?”
“They can’t.” Izuku explained. “They can’t interact with me, with anything, not like that, not physically.”
“Then-
“Dr. Itome - they torture me. Well, not all of them, just…just a few. Jack. I don’t know his real name. I named him after Jack the Ripper. I think he was a serial killer. He wore a burlap bag over his head. Someone had cut him from shoulder to hip, across his chest. He would make these…horrible noises to keep me awake. He’d pull his bones and organs out and put them on my desk or my bed. He’d twitch in the corner of my vision for hours on end. I haven’t slept in four days.”
“Oh sweetie.” She took his hand on the bed. Izuku didn’t shy away for once. The gesture was actually welcome. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know I shouldn’t have hurt myself, and I really, really do not want to die. I didn’t want to hurt myself. But no one believed me with that big red stamp on my chart. No one believed the little kid who just wanted a quirk so desperately he’d make anything up, like ghosts that no one else could see. It was just too much.” He sighed, some kind of weight taken off his chest by finally voicing his pain. “I’m just tired. I’m so tired, doctor. I just wanted the torment to end.”
“Alright now.” Dr. Tsuga placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You can rest in just a moment. I want to go over a couple things with you.”
“Okay.”
The doctor sighed before speaking. “Unfortunately, we were unable to save your eyes. We had to remove them to prevent your body from harming itself more.” Izuku had read about eyes being seen as foreign bodies when they were damaged sometimes. “Other than needing about a hundred and fifty stitches, you’ll heal just fine. I’m more worried about your mental health after this injury. Dr. Itome will be evaluating you - but I think you need to sleep first.”
“Please.” Izuku begged.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, alright?” Dr. Itome squeezed his hand. Izuku squeezed back. “I want you to get some good rest. Dr. Tsuga will be doing some more research into your quirk in the next couple days, you will likely be missing school next week.”
“That’s okay…I won’t miss my bullies.” He was slowly fading into sleep. For the first time in eight years, there was nothing but peace, no haunting sounds, no grisly visions. He could…rest.
“I think he’s out.” That was Dr. Tsuga. “We need to report this to child services. The EMT told me his neighbor said he’s been on his own a week already. The mother is rarely home.”
“He’s hardly fourteen. This should never have happened. I want to speak with his child quirk analyst. I have words for whoever that bastar-...person is.”
“You and me both.”
They left as Izuku finally drifted off into the first glimpse of restful sleep he’d had in almost a decade. There were no dreams, no nightmares, no startling noises or organs dropped on his bed by the ghosts that haunted him.
There was nothing but peaceful rest.
~
When he woke, he knew he wasn’t alone, but it wasn’t another person in the room with him. It was Jack. Izuku could hear the twitching muscles and cracking knuckles next to his bed. The ghost was trying to assess him, trying to get his attention. Izuku ignored him. There was no other option. Instead, he sat himself up carefully. It took him a long fumbling moment to find the bed controls and another several moments to figure out how to work them.
Eventually, he got the bed to sit up so he could rest against it. Not long after that, the door opened.
“Midoriya?”
“I’m awake, Dr. Itome, come in.”
“How are you feeling?” She asked. Once more, she sat herself on the chair next to him again.
“Better than I have in a long time. I haven’t slept that well in years. But Jack is here.”
“Excuse me?”
Izuku motioned to his left, right by the bed. “He’s here. He’s trying to get me to acknowledge him. I don’t know what it is, but they don’t seem to remember I can see them if I don’t look them in the eye for a while. They forget, in a loop.”
“Hmm.” She mumbled. “Do you think it has to do with focusing on them? After all, most people can’t see ghosts. So seeing you focus on them would be quite different.”
“That’s what I’ve always assumed, yes.”
“Is that why you attacked your eyes, instead of your ears?” Izuku was a bit shocked that she hit the nail on the head so fast. “I was thinking over your words last night. If you couldn’t sleep because of the noise, why not attack your ears? But then, I realized that they are tormenting you because you can see and acknowledge them. They want to be seen…and you made it so you are just another human, just another pair of unseeing eyes.”
“Mmmm, you’re good.”
“That’s what they pay me for.”
Izuku chuckled. “I guess so.” His laugh died into a groan. “But you have to evaluate my sanity now, right?”
Izuku heard her cross her legs, one heeled shoe clacking on the ground as she moved. He wondered what she looked like, but maybe it wasn’t his place to know anymore, not after what he did to himself.
“Well, I’m going to evaluate if you are a danger to yourself or anyone else. Physically, you are ready for release soon, but we are still obligated to give you a psychiatric evaluation since you did cause this injury yourself.” Izuku gestured for her to go ahead. “Okay, can you tell me if you want to hurt yourself again, Midoriya?”
“I do not. I didn’t want to do this, but I felt I had no other choice.”
“Why is that?”
“No one believed I had a quirk, and since only I could see it, there was no proof it was real. My own mother believed I was lying or hallucinating. Multiple psychiatric doctors agreed I had a schizo-effective disorder. I tried to ask the school nurse and counselor for help, but they also believed I was making it up for attention, and once my mental diagnoses were tacked onto my record, they would threaten to have me institutionalized if I kept interrupting school.”
“Hmm.” What was her take on that? Izuku couldn’t tell. “How is your home and school life? Are you subject to any physical or verbal abuse?”
“Yes.” There was no real point in lying or hiding the truth, not anymore. Izuku was, for maybe the first time in his life, well rested and clear headed. So he could make the decision to finally speak up for himself and not feel guilty about it.
“Can you elaborate?”
“My mother pretends I don’t exist. She resents me, I think. Though sometimes I think she fears me. My classmates bully me. Yesterday, one of them told me to kill himself.”
“And have you had any suicidal thoughts recently?”
“Of course. Who wouldn’t when there’s a nightmarish creature dropping broken rib bones on your bed?” Dr. Itome stifled a laugh when she heard Izuku chuckling. “But I have never planned to kill myself. I don’t want to die. I still want to be a pro-hero, but I don’t think that’s possible now that I’m blind.”
Dr. Itome hummed. “That’s not for me to judge.” She didn’t skip a beat after that statement. “Have you ever had any thoughts of hurting others?”
“Unless strangling a ghost counts…?.”
“I don’t think ghosts count, no.”
Once again, she took Izuku’s hand and gently squeezed. Izuku was actually thankful for the grounding sensation. He was a bit surprised that he didn’t feel adrift or in a vast ocean of darkness. There was no reason he shouldn’t feel that way, he’d just blinded himself. But for some reason, he actually felt seated in place, like he was actually in the right place. What a weird feeling.
“Ironically, I think you are the most mentally stable patient I’ve spoken with in a long time. I would call this very acute nervous breakdown caused by severe trauma and psychological torture brought about by your undiagnosed quirk. I wish there would have been a better solution, but I don’t know that any quirk analyst could find a solution that wasn’t just to ‘ignore them’.”
“That only works for so long.” Izuku agreed. “Eventually, you can’t not look.”
“Mmm, very true. There are very specific situations where a patient is given a dramatic medical solution for a quirk that is causing them harm. Had that been considered for you - I think the result would have been a medically induced blindness.”
“Dr. Itome?”
“Hmm?” She leaned forward a little.
“I feel weirdly connected to the world in a way I don’t think I should. It doesn’t make sense. I’ve just blinded myself, I should feel lost in a void, right? Isn't that how people describe losing their eyesight?”
“Some do. But you’re right, most people don’t feel grounded at all, quite the opposite, actually. I wonder if this has to do with your quirk. I’ll have Dr. Tsuga go over it with you when he does his quirk evaluations.”
Izuku was kind of excited to learn about his quirk. Since no one ever believed him, he’d never had an actual quirk evaluation. Dr. Itome stood up with another creak of the chair, drawing Izuku’s attention back to her.
“Unless there’s anything you wish to discuss, I need to file your case and work with Dr. Tsuga to find you a caseworker. Unfortunately, I’m a crisis psychiatrist, not a childhood abuse worker. This is above my ability and I’m not afraid to admit that. I will find you a good caseworker, and they will need to find you a placement.”
“A placement…”
“While we may permit your mother to see you, while supervised , here in the hospital, it’s not likely you will be permitted to leave with her.”
“You’re very blunt, Dr. Itome. I appreciate it.”
“You’re a very…up front young man. You’re…far too mature for your age. It worries me. But despite that, you’re very self-managed.”
Self-managed. Was he really? Izuku often felt like he was spiraling out, but maybe his version of spiraling was someone else’s nervous breakdown. Maybe he wasn’t as crazy as he thought. Maybe the ghosts were making him crazy. Actually, maybe they were. Izuku felt…calm, he felt like what people described sanity as being.
“Thank you, Dr. Itome.”
“I will check on you before you leave. But please ask the nurse if you need me.”
Izuku nodded as the woman left. Jack was gone, though Izuku wasn’t sure he had vanished completely. The room didn’t feel empty. Actually, Izuku had the strange feeling that he knew exactly where the walls were, and the door. He had not left this bed since arriving except with help from the nurses to use the bathroom, but he somehow knew he could count his steps to the door.
The longer he sat there, alone, in silence, the more he realized he could ‘see’ the room around him. Izuku lifted his hands and ran them along the bars at the sides of his bed. They were probably up so he didn’t accidentally fall down. When he touched them, something entirely unexpected happened, and Izuku’s whole world shifted.
The second his hand made contact with the surface of the bar alongside his bed, a concentric wave spilled out. His vision, no longer physical, opened in his mind. His legs shifted on the bed, sending yet more waves out, filling in the blank spaces with the white outline of all the objects and space around him.
Was this… was this how ghosts saw the world ?
How did he know that? Why did he assume that?
Something in the corner moved. It took a step, a foot appeared, the white outline spiraling up the body and around the burlap sack at the top of the man’s head. Jack. He was still here. He was still here, and he knew Izuku could ‘see’ him. Or did he? Izuku stayed focused on the ground. No, there was no way he would allow himself to be tricked back into torture by that bastard. Izuku took a few steady breaths and shifted his attention to the door. The passing nurses’ feet sent little vibrating waves around the hallway, through the building, echoing off the other feet and voices and bodies and walls.
Izuku clutched the side of his head. The sudden influx of information was almost too much. He was looking at the world like a wireframe, like a blueprint from an engineer’s table. The longer he focused on the world around him, the more information piled into his brain.
If this is how ghosts see the world - is this also what drove them mad, made them torture living souls like Izuku? Did that mean Izuku was going to lose his mind like the ghosts that tormented him?
“Ugh…” He was getting a migraine.
His heart monitor was also spiking up and the pitch was just too much. He reached over and deftly smacked the power button without ever having touched it before. Izuku knew where it was because he could see the little outlines of the buttons on the machine, a detail that was too painful to ‘look at’. Every tiny detail that became clear was like adding another lightbulb into a room already glowing with light.
Izuku unlatched the bed railing and kicked his feet over the bed. His stomach was doing flips inside his ribcage. He stumbled across the room, avoided the chairs, and shouldered the bathroom door open. By the time he landed in front of the toilet, his body was already regurgitating whatever remained of the last meal he had. Three heaving gasps later, when he’d emptied his whole body and the migraine actually subsided, he collapsed against the wall.
“Midoriya?” Izuku’s hand grabbed Dr. Itome’s wrist before it touched his shoulder. She gasped. “How did you-”
“I can see you.” He breathed, swallowing hard. “You’re so young…”
She blinked a few times, confused. Dr. Itome was a tall woman. He couldn’t make out the color of her hair, but it was short and framed her face. She wore glasses that were sliding off her nose. She was crouched beside him, her lab coat dragging on the ground and sending several white waves through the floor.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither-” Izuku gagged. “-do I.”
“I…I forgot my tablet on the table.” Izuku could see it across the room, laying the table. It was beeping, little lines cascaded down the bedside table and across the floor. “How did you get to the bathroom without knocking over the chairs?”
“I can see it.” He said again. “I can see…everything.”
“Midoriya-”
“It’s like…the blueprint of a house. The outlines of everything in white pencil. Everything…everything that…whenever there’s contact.” He tapped his finger on her wrist. A wave spiraled down her body and onto the floor. “It makes the world brighter. There was too much…too much at once. It hurt. It’s all so bright here. Too many feet walking, sounds beeping, people talking, buttons pressed. Every single touch, noise, tap, movement. It’s all so much.”
Dr. Itome carefully pried his hand from her wrist and took it in both of hers, wrapping it up carefully on her knees. She waited for him to explain before interrupting him. Izuku was exhausted again. He didn’t know how to stop the influx of information bombarding him. It wasn’t so horrible when the nurses weren’t outside his room, but he could still see almost the whole building all around him.
“Phantom sight. It’s a form of synesthesia that some people with phantom quirks can utilize. It’s rare. Incredibly so. I haven’t come across any patients in the country with it, but there’s a few recorded cases overseas. You are seeing sound waves, effectively. But it may also be that destroying your vision awakened your quirk fully, if it never manifested correctly due to your lack of proper care.”
“What does that mean for me, Doctor?”
“It means, you may be discovering new aspects of your quirk for a while. You will need to be placed with someone who can help you…and possibly contain your quirk.”
“Contain?”
She sighed. “Phantom quirks can be incredibly powerful, Midoriya. The ghosts tormenting you were a clue. I don’t think you can just see the violent dead. I think you can see the ghosts with unfinished business.”
“What use is that?”
“Well, maybe they can be of use to you. I’m not a quirk expert, but if you have phantom sight, you may be able to interact with the dead more than just seeing or speaking with them.”
“What good would that do?! It will drive me mad again!”
Dr. Itome shushed him gently. She brushed a hand through his hair, and Izuku leaned into it.
“No one but you can see them, or interact with them. You would have the most amazing stealth abilities if you could control the ghosts. If you could see through their eyes, use their hands. Imagine it. You could command an army remotely, travel large distances without ever leaving your couch. You could be a hero. ”
Izuku sucked in a breath. His quirk was…useful? Izuku had never once in his life known the faith and belief that Dr. Itome was giving him right now. He also didn’t realize just how much he’d needed to hear it. She was clutching his hand to her chest with this agonized hopeful look on her face. Izuku reached out his other hand and trailed it over her face. Dr. Itome didn’t move. She closed her eyes and let Izuku explore her features.
“Thank you.” He whispered. “I never-” He sucked in a breath. “I’ve never been believed. I’m so scared to be alone sometimes. I just want…I just want someone to believe me. Just once. I’m not lying. I swear!”
“I know.” Dr. Itome scooped him into a hug. Izuku clutched the back of her coat and buried his face into her shoulder. She smelled like peaches. Izuku could hear her heart thudding in her chest, each beat sketching the outline of her face. She was scared too. “I believe you, Izuku. I believe you .”
~
Izuku woke up to a relatively quiet hospital. Quiet meant the world wasn’t as bright or painful to look at. He could see the wireframe of everything around him, like yesterday, but he wasn’t nauseous and his headache had broken. Speaking of yesterday, after he finished sobbing into Dr. Itome’s shoulder, she brought in the hospital’s child caseworker, who’d arrived on urgent notice since Izuku’s case was so…unique, and developing rapidly. The police had detained and questioned his mother, and now he was waiting to find out if they had a placement for him.
The way Dr. Itome spoke yesterday, it seemed she had someone in mind already. He wasn’t sure who she might be thinking of; someone who could contain his quirk, as she said. Izuku might be a brilliant quirk analyst, but he didn’t know much about containing quirks, specifically because he never wanted to see quirks contained. Or well, not most of them. They fascinated him to no end, why would he want to turn them off?
But, ultimately, she had a point. If Izuku’s quirk was as weird or as powerful as Dr. Itome assumed, then he might need help to control it, or at least until he could control it himself.
Izuku ‘saw’ the footsteps before he heard them. He followed them with his head as both sets wandered down the hall. Actually - they were speaking. Izuku could see their mouths moving, he could also see the white waves spilling down their bodies and out around them. Could he learn to read lips this way, or read the soundwaves produced by speaking? The door opened before he could give that much thought.
“Good morning, Midoriya. We met last night. I’m Ishiyama-san, your caseworker. How are you feeling this morning?”
“Rested. Who’s with you, Ishiyama-san?”
“Oh…right, Dr. Itome warned me of your new…vision. Well, I’d like to introduce you to someone. We think he’ll be a good fit for you and it was a pleasant surprise that he has an emergency guardianship license.”
Izuku watched the man shift, and read his outline. He was tall, broad, and wearing loose clothing. He also had some kind of…large scarf around his neck? His hair was long and a bit scraggly. Izuku’s weird new sight couldn’t tell him if it was clean or not, but he hoped it was.
“This is Shouta Aizawa. He’s an underground hero, with a quirk that Dr. Itome and I both think will help you master yours. Would you like to introduce yourself, Aizawa-san?”
The man scratched the back of his head. “Hey kid. You probably know me as Eraserhead.”
Izuku’s eyebrows would have hiked up to his hairline had his face not been bound in bandages still. Eraserhead. The one and only. The country’s top underground hero. What the hell was he doing here? Wait, Erasure. His quirk! Dr. Itome was right. Erasure would be the perfect quirk to help him train. It might also prevent him from losing his mind or getting too sick if his quirk got overloaded with information.
“Midoriya?”
“S-sorry, Ishiyama-san. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Eraserhead.”
“Just call me Shouta. I’m not on duty.”
“Call me Izuku, please.”
The man nodded. He moved around the room but Izuku could tell he was inspecting the teen in the bed. His head tilted to the side and he had a finger out towards Ishiyama-san, as if telling the caseworker to wait. Izuku followed Shouta with his head, tracking him around the room. His footsteps barely registered on Izuku’s quirk, but everything else around them was too loud not to see him. Izuku imagined that in a quiet house, he’d likely never see or hear Shouta coming.
“Dr. Itome mentioned you can see, despite your injuries. That your quirk has a mental vision aspect. Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”
“Three.”
“And now?”
“Fi-...you’re hiding two behind your back. Seven.”
“Well, I suppose she was right. You are quite the rare gem, aren’t you?”
Izuku shrugged. “Not sure that’s what I’d call my situation…but I guess so.”
Ishiyama-san clapped her hands. Izuku winced at the bright light that filled his vision by the door from the action. The caseworker missed it, but Shouta didn’t. His head tilted back the other way, still inspecting Izuku with curiosity, or perhaps suspicion.
“Right then. I think this will be a good fit. If you’ll excuse me, I have paperwork to do. You two get to know each other. Izuku is ready for release from the hospital as soon as we finish up the placement documentation. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Shouta collapsed into the chair and kicked his legs up onto the end of the bed. Was that it? They just…decided Izuku’s fate without any input from the teen himself? Or was this some attempt to get things handled quickly and quietly to avoid the glaring hole in the childhood care Izuku had received? Shouta sighed beside him.
“The Commission got involved in your case. They are…apprehensive about your quirk. The only similar phantom quirk overseas belongs to a world renowned villain and serial killer.”
“They think I’ll lose my mind.” Izuku grumbled. “The nurses tip-toe around me. Dr. Itome is the only one who doesn’t treat me with kid gloves.”
“Well, you are a kid.” Izuku glared at him through his bandages. Shouta put his hands up. “Sorry. Look, the point is they think you have a rare power, and it scares them. They want you quietly contained. It’s not just my quirk that put me on the top of the list.” He waited for Izuku to figure it out, but for once, Izuku wasn’t that sure. “It’s because I’m a hero, and teach at a hero school. They want you surrounded by heroes, to avoid any chance of you becoming a villain.”
“They do realize…why I…blinded myself, right?”
“Mhmm.” The underground hero made an exaggerated shrug. “They’re worried you’ll want revenge on your abusers.”
“Do you think I could get it?”
“Revenge? Well - If your quirk is anything like that villain, Phasmophobia…yeah. I think you could. Is that what you want?”
“I’ve always wanted to be a hero. Or at least…that’s what I thought I wanted. I knew blinding myself would likely ruin my chances of becoming a hero…as if I had any chance as a quirkless teenager…but now - I don’t know. I don’t even know what my quirk can do yet.”
“Well, why don’t we find out together?”
Izuku smiled faintly. “Yeah? How, exactly?”
“There’s a few weeks left until the recommendation exams. Why don’t we see what your quirk can really do and get you into hero school?”
“Shouta.” Izuku snorted. “No hero school would take a blind kid - quirk or not. I’m a liability. I might have had an ‘acute mental breakdown’, but I’m not delusional.”
“Not having eyes doesn’t mean you’re blind. I wonder if Support could make you a blindfold that could work with your quirk. They started working with neural mods to integrate with mental and psychic quirks. It’s still new, but the work is cutting edge. They might be able to help regulate your vision.”
“Regulate?”
“You winced when Ishiyama clapped. Dr. Itome told me it’s sound based. Your vision is new. It’s only logical that loud sounds aren’t exactly pleasant.”
“It’s like…bright light. It’s like having a floodlight put in your eyes. That’s the only comparison I can think of.”
“Yeah that doesn’t sound fun. Dr. Itome explained that the manifestation of your sight yesterday was pretty violent.”
Izuku shrugged. “Not as violent as the ghosts I saw. It’s still…I’m still trying to process getting actual sleep for the first time in years, maybe the first time in my life. They’ve been- wait.”
Izuku looked around the room. He hadn’t noticed it before, he’d been too focused on Shouta, on the real people. But the ghosts were still there. Jack was in the corner, like always, but he wasn’t doing anything…bothersome. He just stood there. It’s like he was attracted to Izuku in some way, maybe they all were. There were more of them, all around the hospital…just standing around, or maybe standing guard.
“They?” Shouta leaned over. “The ghosts?”
“Yeah. But- they used to try and get my attention all the time. They would torment me, torture me. Jack would do horrible things to get a reaction out of me. Now he’s just…standing guard in the corner. It’s like he knows I’m here or-”
Wait. Izuku sat up straighter on the bed. He looked directly at Jack. The ghost turned and faced him. For the first time ever, they were staring at each other, eye to eye. It didn’t matter that Jack had a burlap sack on his head, or that Izuku was blindfolded. They could see each other, read each other. Jack wasn’t trying to get his attention anymore, because he had it. He had Izuku’s full attention, because his quirk was fully awakened.
“Izuku?”
“They-...They’ve been trying to awaken my quirk, I think. I don’t know. That’s my best assumption. Otherwise why would they just stop trying to get my attention now that I have Phantom Sight?”
“That’s not creepy at all.” Shouta shrugged. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about being haunted anymore. Now you can do the haunting.”
Izuku chuckled. “Really?”
“Let’s find out, kid.”
~ 6 Weeks Later ~
“Ready?”
Izuku huffed, giving Shouta a single nod. “I think so.”
“Trust yourself. You’ve got this.” Shouta squeezed his shoulders and walked off, leaving Izuku in the mock city training ground by himself.
Today was the recommendation student exams. Shouta had filed Izuku’s official recommendation a week ago, after he’d determined the blind teen was going to be a capable hero student. After a week in the hospital, he spent five weeks in intense quirk training, physical training, and hero support consultations. Izuku was deemed ‘acceptable’ by Shouta’s standards. Izuku knew undoubtedly that Shouta would never have recommended him to UA High Hero School if he didn’t think Izuku could make it. That did give him a bit of confidence, at least.
The recommendation students normally did their exams together, as a competition. Izuku was being given an exemption primarily because his quirk was a national secret (no, really, the Commission had gag-ordered everyone around him until he’d been either accepted or denied entry into hero school. Though Izuku suspected it would continue after, too), and partially because his quirk is actually dangerous. He had control of it, sure, but combine national secret with just a bit of hazard, and yeah, Nedzu (and all the other exam proctors) wanted him on his own.
Nedzu, the UA High principal, had made a true test for him, something to challenge not only his potential as a hero, but also his physical capabilities as a not-blind, blind kid. Shouta had been hard on him in training. If he couldn’t find the smallest of objects in a soundproof room, he wasn’t going to be ready - well, Izuku was ready. This test was a mock hostage situation. The city had been filled with robots, similar to the regular student exam, and somewhere, a hostage was being held by combat robots that he would have to defeat.
“ The test will begin in thirty seconds. You will have forty-five minutes to find and rescue the hostage… Begin. ”
Izuku tapped the side of his new blindfold to activate it. The bandages were long gone and replaced by a large black wrap that latched behind his head and looked much like black leather. Its function, however, was tied to neural implants they’d added to his brain, which were wired to his quirk factor. The surgery had been pretty easy since it was just thin, almost microscopic, wires with even smaller diodes at various points in his brain. The blindfold filtered his phantom sight, allowing much more refined control over what Izuku could see, and allowing him to filter out excess background noise. The blindfold also allowed him to tag items in his field of vision temporarily, almost like a radar. It was also wireless, which just made life easier.
He turned to his left, where Jack stood just behind him. That’s where his personal demon remained these days, two steps behind him, like a bodyguard.
“Find the hostage.” He ordered. Jack lumbered off about five feet, before wisping away on ghostly trails and zooming across the training ground. Dr. Itome had been right, Izuku could control the ghosts, and he could use them to extend his vision and reach. As Jack moved, Izuku tracked and traveled with him, visually.
But he couldn’t stand still. Izuku kicked himself forward through the city. This wasn’t just a hostage test. There were side quests. This test was far more complex than what the regular students, and other recommendation students, had to deal with. Izuku was going to blame his damn quirk. Nedzu, the little chimera principal, wanted to see what Izuku was truly capable of.
Izuku called on another three ghosts and sent them off in various directions to find the side objectives while also running through and finding them himself. He found one of the bots, a special one tagged with a different design on its chassis. He tapped its screen/face to activate the quest - effectively ‘gathering intel’ from a civilian. One of his ghosts found another one. Izuku switched gears and directions, bolting off through the city towards a mock mugging.
The mugger robots caught sight of him the moment he rounded the alleyway corner. Izuku grinned. Nedzu programmed them to try and get around him, trick him, and his vision. Except, Nedzu likely didn’t know Izuku’s vision was almost 360 degrees. The robot who tried to get around him would have gotten a hit on him otherwise. He ducked the swing and kicked the robot over. The second one threw a punch at the side of his head. Izuku caught the throw in gloved hands and twisted the robotic arm backwards and kicked the robot away. Once both robots were incapacitated, he tied them up with capture tape. He tapped the civilian’s screen to count the ‘save’ and ran off.
A ping hit his mind. Jack found the hostage. Izuku’s vision flipped as he focused on Jack. The ‘hostage’ was one of those training dummies tied up in a chair. The ‘guards’ were not as simple as the fake muggers. They were bigger robots, and likely had better programming. Izuku might not be an expert in all the ways Nedzu could evaluate students, but he had spent many years studying for the UA entrance exam, so he had some ideas.
“Distract.” He ordered as he ran towards the building where the hostage was being held. Another new aspect of his quirk. While his ghosts couldn’t physically attack anyone (yet) outside of taps or small grabs, he could have them interact with the world in small ways. Knocking things off tables, turning lights on and off, pulling at clothing; simple things that could pull attention away from something, or put it onto something else. Jack was getting the robots to follow him off to the side.
Nedzu never said he had to fight, though he likely got extra points for capturing all the ‘bad guys’. Still, he had to believe there were more points for rescuing the hostage and creative use of his quirk.
Sure enough, Jack pulled the kidnappers into another room and Izuku grabbed the hostage, cutting the rope with a combat knife Shouta gave him as part of his gear. The dummy was tossed over his shoulder and he was off towards the exit of the city where he’d come in. This run was the longest part of the whole test. But Izuku was a damn good runner. Ten years of running away from his bullies gave him amazing stamina. But it wouldn’t be as simple or as easy as just running back to the exit, would it? No, of course not. This whole test had been far too easy. He was halfway back to the entrance when thundering footsteps sent dozens of waves spiraling around his vision, making him momentarily dizzy. Izuku stumbled to a stop.
“What the-”
A robot almost twice the size of the buildings rounded the street corner. Its hand crumbled the corner of the building in its path, using it as leverage to push itself forward. It was heavy, too heavy. Izuku watched the white bands that made up his vision as they rolled off the beast in waves. Too heavy. Was it top heavy? Izuku tapped another button on his blindfold, which focused his attention on the inner workings of things around him. He stomped his feet a couple times, sending a few more soundwaves through the ground, though the giant robot was doing enough on its own, really. And yes, the robot was top heavy for some reason.
Move Izuku!
His body flung itself sideways as the robot jumped towards him, shockingly agile for its size. It tried to grab his legs and just barely missed them by a fraction. Jack crouched beside him and Izuku could tell the ghost was glaring at him.
“Don’t give me that look. I’m trying not to die here.” Jack said nothing. Izuku shook his head. He couldn’t roll his eyes anymore since he didn’t have eyes, but he sure as hell was doing it in his mind. “Just distract him already!” The ghost bolted off to try and pull the robot's attention while Izuku gathered himself back to his feet. The hostage dummy was placed gently in the alley to keep it safe while he ran off after Jack and the robot just outside on the street.
It had to have a weakness. That top heaviness had to be purposeful. Izuku tapped the side of his blindfold again, shifting the focus even deeper into the inner workings of the robot, it was like viewing the very blueprint schematic of the whole thing. Of course, that wasn’t exactly useful while it was moving , or-
There! A point on the robot’s side where all the wires met to connect into the motherboard. Perfect. That was something he could use. Izuku pushed himself forward as Jack distracted the robot, and continuously pulled it away from where the training dummy lay in the alley by throwing things in its path to simulate Izuku running away from it. Izuku focused on the little spot on the robot’s side, a place he was going to have to jump to reach. Great. Time to get to work.
Izuku pushed his body forward. The crumbling buildings became his playground, the blocks he used to climb himself high enough to jump right onto the robot’s side. Izuku threw the best punch he knew; a right hook. He’d been close enough to learn by example, hadn’t he? All his life. Now he was using it to help himself. Did he really expect to punch through solid metal? Actually, Izuku wasn’t sure why he thought punching metal was a good idea. The expectation of pain made him flinch, but the pain never came. Instead, when he landed on the robot’s side, he found his hand literally through the metal.
“That’s…new.”
Very new. But Izuku did not have time to process that he might literally be turning into a ghost. He grabbed the bulk of the wires and ripped them out. Weirdly, part of the wires came right back through the metal along with his hand. Could he…make some objects phantom? That was not a worry for present Izuku, that was a future Izuku problem. The robot whirred down, crashed to its knees, and shut off. Izuku huffed. That had been a little more concerning than he thought it would be.
Jack followed Izuku back to the alley to grab the dummy and head to the exit. Hopefully, that would be it.
“Izuku!” Shouta came rushing up to him as soon as he exited the mock city training ground and grabbed his right hand to inspect it for injuries. “How the hell did you do that?”
“Huh?” He set the dummy down one handed. “Oh - uhh, I have no idea. I wasn’t really thinking about it. I wanted to punch the panel off to get to the wires…and uhh, I guess I went through it…instead?”
“You’ve never…you haven’t shown any signs of physical phantom abilities before.”
Izuku shook his head, agreeing. He hadn’t. Not like this.
“It reminds me of Mirio’s quirk.” Nedzu muttered as he walked up. The little chimera tugged on Shouta’s pant leg to get the hero’s attention, who picked him up and placed him on his shoulder a moment later. “Permeation. Have you heard of it, Izuku?”
“Uhm, yeah I watched the sports festival this year. He’ll be a third year now, right?” Nedzu nodded. “Have they figured out how to get his suit to permeate with him yet?”
Shouta snorted. “Yeah, they have. Finally.”
“So…what does this mean for me?”
“It means you’re officially a UA student. If your quirk gets any weirder, we may end up getting Commission attention, which would be a problem. For now, we’ll keep this little surprise to ourselves.”
“Thanks, Nedzu.”
Shouta ruffled his curls. “Congrats, kiddo. And trust me, you passed with flying colors, it wasn’t just the Commission pushing this. You earned it.”
That made him feel much better.
Izuku’s guardian placed the chimera principal back on the ground so he could trot off back towards the school. Izuku wasn’t sure how long that would take him, given how short his legs were. Hopefully someone would come along and pick him up.
“Alright, kiddo.” Shouta handed a folder to Izuku. The teen squinted at it, confused. “Don’t panic. It’s just your UA entry forms. I filled out everything as your guardian, you just need to do the rest. We're going to be a boarding school as of next year, so you’ll need to be prepared for that.” The hero tipped his head back and forth. “There’s also a couple pages in there for your middle school.”
“I thought-”
“You were medically excused from the last six weeks of school since your grades were perfect, and, well…”
“They didn’t want me back.” Izuku shrugged. “So, why do I need to go back?”
Shouta sighed dramatically, clearly annoyed at Aldera Middle School’s antics. “They are refusing to hand over your diploma unless you accept it yourself.”
“Fucking, why?!”
“Take a breath, kid. We both know it’s only to try and torment you. So - instead, we torment them. You walk in there, and you accept your diploma, clean out your locker, and say goodbye to all the little assholes who once thought they could grind your nose into the dirt.”
“Easier said than done. I might have a registered quirk on record, but none of my former classmates know that. Hell, all they know is the news article they ran about the crazy quirkless kid that cut his own eyes out.”
They started heading back towards the parking lot, where Shouta parked. Izuku had been told about the boarding school change once before, in passing, but the dorms weren’t yet finished. Izuku had been staying with Shouta at his apartment a few blocks from campus. But, apparently, they weren’t heading back there just yet. It was still the middle of the day, and school wasn’t out yet.
As they walked, Shouta stuffed his hands in his pockets and smirked into his capture scarf. This was how the underground hero showed his confidence, how he reassured Izuku silently. He knew Izuku still struggled with self-worth. But Shouta wasn’t the kind of man to blindly provide compliments. Instead, he’d stand there and wait for Izuku to realize he was running quirkist propaganda through his head again.
“Might as well just get it done.” Izuku huffed. “I can do this.”
“Mhm.” Shouta’s car beeped as they approached, unlocking. “But, just so we’re clear. Since I can’t see your little ghouls - I’ll never know if you fuck with them while we’re there.”
Izuku crossed his finger over his chest. “I would never!”
“Maybe not, but Jack might.”
“He is a troublemaker.” The car filled with their laughter as they pulled out of the school’s parking lot and headed back into town.
Izuku’s quirk had fully awakened. The ghosts weren’t a problem anymore. He’d been sleeping regularly, and all of the nightmares were gone. He’d been right. The ghosts had been trying to get his attention purposefully to awaken his quirk. The doctors said there was a chance his quirk could have awakened on its own without him blinding himself, but it wasn’t super likely due to his poor medical care as a child.
He tapped one of the buttons on his facemask to turn it back to standard mode. This just allowed him to utilize his quirk for basic vision, and filtered out excess background noise so he wouldn’t get overwhelmed or ‘blinded’ by an excess of Phantom Sight. Izuku watched the streets whiz by as they drove to his school, every building in stark white outlines that filled his mind. He could see past that, to the people and furniture within if he focused. There was something fascinating about seeing the world in a simple way. There were no colors or light and shadow to change the way he perceived the world. It was all shapes, the literal direct outlines of objects. Sometimes, if he tried hard enough, he could even see heartbeats. He often watched the way the trees moved when the wind blew, it made them appear to wobble in and out of existence as they swayed. Izuku wondered if this would be the closest to seeing the truth he’d ever experience.
Shouta pulled his car around the front of the school and parked. Neither of them moved at first.
Izuku had zero desire to go inside. He could already see everyone in the building, but his eyes focused on the classroom missing one student, his seat. He was still learning how to see writing through Phantom Sight, and if he guessed right, they were currently doing math work. It didn’t really matter, did it? Though, seeing them in class was a slight reassurance.
Izuku opened the car door and stepped out. The breeze blew his curls back. He’d let them grow out a bit more, so they usually hung over his blindfold and partially obscured it. Shouta stepped around the car and leaned on the hood while Izuku thought over his whole life and how he got to this point, standing in front of Aldera Middle School after cutting out his own eyes and becoming a UA student.
“The longer you wait, the more control you let them have over you.”
Izuku sighed. “I know, Shouta. I’m just questioning how I got here, and maybe my life choices.”
“You did make some big ones pretty early on.”
“Tell me about it.” Izuku mentally rolled his eyes and brushed past his guardian. Shouta knew it was on purpose. Izuku didn’t run into things, ever. He actually had better perception and balance now than he ever had when his eyes were still intact. “Come on, I’ll show you to the office.”
The underground hero followed without question as Izuku led them into the building and past the entryway genkan. He’d stop here to clear out his locker once they were done. Izuku just wanted to get this over and done with as fast as possible to avoid any possible trauma. Jack leaned against the wall next to the office door with the sack over his face looking towards the door itself. Izuku shook his head, just slightly. Even if Shouta had said he didn’t mind a little trouble, Izuku wasn’t the kind of person to want revenge. He’d only ever wanted to be believed.
Izuku tucked his hands into his pockets and shouldered the door open, well aware it no longer latched thanks to rowdy kids and some delinquent who kicked it open in their first year. The secretary, who was quite familiar with Izuku, glared hard at him as she pushed her glasses up her nose when he walked into the office.
“Well, well, the prodigal student returns. Blind and still dumb, I see.”
Izuku set his jaw. His hand crossed Shouta’s path when the man made a move to defend him. Arguing with an old woman set in her ways wouldn’t help anything, and it certainly wouldn’t change her opinion.
“We’re here to see Principal Okano. He’s expecting us.”
“Hmph…when did you learn to speak for yourself?”
Izuku didn’t reply. Most of the school staff were accustomed to Izuku’s silence. He was often too exhausted to think straight, let alone produce coherent thought or words. Even when he did speak, his words often came out jumbled or stuttered as a result of the ghosts tormenting him, leaving him constantly tired. The secretary finally moved after another long glare. Once she went into the principal’s office, Izuku turned back to Shouta.
“You’re not used to dealing with quirkists.” He didn’t give his guardian a chance to argue, even though he could see the man open his mouth to retort. “Arguing them is like yelling at a brick wall. It will get you nowhere, and leave you exhausted. It doesn’t matter if I have a quirk now, they don’t know that my self-mutilation was a quirk manifestation. The principal likely won’t tell anyone, if the Commissoin even allowed him any details at all.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because then this entire school would have to apologize to me. That will never happen. That would change the status quo. It’s likely if I meet any of my former classmates at UA, they won’t know, either.”
“That’s ridiculous. They should apologize. I don’t know how bad it was but-”
“But nothing , Shouta. Everything you do from here on out directly affects me. If you try to start a fight or make a scene over how they treat me, it will only make things worse, and we may not walk out of here with my diploma.”
The hero sighed. “Fine. But we’re having a talk about this when we get home.”
“Fine.”
“Alright.” The secretary opened the door and gestured them in. “Principal Okano will see you now.”
Shouta was right, of course, it was bad. Izuku knew that, objectively. But if he didn’t walk out of here with his diploma, his life would get a whole lot more difficult. So they’d both need to put up with the current social climate for just a while. Izuku walked into the principal’s office and gestured for Shouta to sit down. Once he did, the teen took up his usual place against the wall by the door. Izuku’s guardian almost got back up once he realized Izuku wasn’t sitting next to him, but Jack put a hand on the man’s shoulder. Shouta looked up at nothing, knowing who’s hand it was, and settled back down. The principal didn’t notice any of this interaction as he flipped through papers on his desk.
“Right then. Izuku Midoriya.” The principal squinted at the page in front of him. Izuku couldn’t read whatever was printed on it, but he assumed it was a transcript showing Izuku’s grades and record. “You’re the new guardian? Where’s his mother?”
“Unfortunately, not in Tartarus.” Shouta quipped back. Jack smacked the back of his head at Izuku’s silent direction. “She’s being questioned and has had her parental rights stripped. Izuku has already been accepted into UA’s hero studies program as a recommendation student.”
The principal laughed. “Who would recommend him ?”
“The Hero Commission.”
While that wasn’t technically true, it also wasn’t technically a lie, either. The Commission insisted upon Izuku’s placement in the hero course, but it was Shouta who officially, on record, recommended Izuku to UA. After all, the Commission wouldn’t let their fingerprints be so obvious to the public.
“Interesting. What kind of quirk did he end up with, anyway?”
“Does it matter?” Shouta leaned back in his chair. “The point is - I need that diploma, otherwise the Commission will be on my ass, and then I’ll be on your ass. Does that make the situation…clear?”
Izuku had to admit, making it personal, rather than about quirks or how Izuku had been treated, or even his grades - might work. The principal likely gave zero fucks about Izuku’s past treatment, nor his grades, hell, he probably didn’t even care what kind of quirk the teen ended up with. He just wanted to be rid of the school ‘troublemaker’.
“Crystal clear, Eraserhead. Just a moment.”
Shouta turned to give him a weird look as the principal got up to grab something out of the filing cabinets behind his desk. Izuku shook his head. Now was not the time to ask about this whole wild situation. This was perfectly normal in Izuku’s mind, his usual treatment, so there was nothing to discuss…yet. He was sure Shouta would make a stink about this later.
“There we are!”
The principal came back to the desk with another paper. Izuku could actually tell this paper was thicker than any of those on his desk. That was an interesting realization. Okano leaned over the desk, signed the page with a flourish, filled in Izuku’s name, and handed it to Shouta.
He settled back into his desk. “Now he’s your problem. If you’d be so kind-” He gestured firmly to the door. “I have more important business to attend to. You can clean out his locker as you leave.”
Izuku led them back through the office with little fuss. They couldn’t speak freely with the secretary back at her desk, so Shouta followed him quietly until they were back to the lockers. The older hero leaned himself on the wall of lockers while Izuku struggled to open his own lock. He couldn’t see the damn numbers, not super well, they were engraved but…not enough.
“Do you need help?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
He dropped the lock with a loud clack. “If you have something to say - say it. I know how this looks to someone who’s used to living on the good side of quirk society.”
“You don’t know anything about me, kid. I know what quirk discrimination looks like. I’ve had kids beat me up thinking I’d be the villain that steals their quirks. But this isn’t just discrimination, Izuku, this is systemic abuse.”
“Yes. It is. I’m not an idiot, and I’m not brainwashed. But I’ve never had the energy to fight it, hell, with everything that happened growing up, I rarely had the energy to even speak or think straight. It’s a blessing that education and knowledge recall comes second nature, otherwise I would have flunked out years ago. This is just normal for me, okay? You’re not going to change the world by arguing with stubborn fools like that.”
“I’m not out here to change the world.” Shouta sighed. “But I want you to understand that it’s wrong, that it shouldn’t have happened, that it needs to change.”
“Why do you think I want to be a hero, Shouta? I want to change it. But it won’t change overnight. It won’t-”
The final bell for the day rang. Izuku groaned. This was not an argument he wanted to have here, and now that the students were dismissed, he couldn’t risk running into any of them, so they’d have to do this later. Izuku gestured for Jack to unlock the damn locker, and he did, in a quick spin of the lock tumbler.
Thankfully, Shouta remained silent while Izuku grabbed his backpack, took out his school textbooks to leave them here, and packed up anything that belonged to him. Teenagers began filtering around them. A couple shoulder-shoved Izuku as they passed, several more whispered obscenities and curses in his ears. Almost all of them stared. The shitty part about Phantom Sight was it happened to be nearly 360 degree vision, which meant he didn’t miss a single pair of eyes on the back of his head. Many of them whispered, too, making it obvious they knew of the news story the local paper and news station ran about the incident.
Once he was finally done, Izuku slammed his locker closed and brushed past a few other students. The hallway went still as he moved, their heads all swiveling to follow him like little meerkats on a prairie. Izuku debated the pros and cons of throwing some ghosts around the room just to startle the other kids, but decided against it.
“So you’re not dead, eh, Deku?”
Izuku took a deep breath when his hands literally phased through the door handle in reaction to the voice of Katsuki Bakugo several feet behind him. Thankfully, his body blocked anyone from seeing it, aside from Shouta next to him.
“What the hell did you just call him?” Shouta snapped. Izuku grabbed his guardian’s wrist. “Iz-”
“ Don’t. Engage. ” He whispered.
“Oh come on - You show up here just to clean out your locker after you make the news like you’re somebody? Do you think you’re better than me, Deku? Finally made the news for taking the advice we’ve all given you, and now you’re some big shot? You’re still a quirkless Null.”
“Okay, that’s enough.”
“Shouta. I said leave it.”
Izuku shouldered the door open and yanked his guardian with him. But apparently, Katsuki was in a fighting mood, he stormed after them, his bulky combat boots thudding on the wooden genkan exit. Izuku moved himself faster but Jack kept standing in front of him. Of course, that wouldn’t be an issue, except that Izuku knew he was doing it on purpose, for some reason.
“Kid-”
Izuku whirled around before Shouta could finish his thought.
“What do you want, Katsuki?” The teen stopped dead in his tracks when he finally got a glimpse of Izuku’s masked face, and his firm words. “I thought you wanted me to leave. I thought you wanted me to stop trying so damn hard to prove myself. I thought you wanted to prove I’m crazy. Guess what, turns out, I’m not. Does that make me better than you? No. But at least I never used my quirk to hurt you.”
Jack was standing behind Katsuki with a rather large knife hovering in front of the blonde’s neck. He couldn’t (yet) physically harm anyone except for light smacks or hair tugs. Izuku wondered if that would ever happen. He could touch things, move things, even fling open doors. But stabbing someone from the ghostly plane he existed on? That didn’t seem realistic.
Katsuki’s face scrunched up in heated rage. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that. You lied, didn’t you? You lied about the whole thing. Look at you, walking around like you can fucking see, you don’t have a quirk, you’re just a bullshit liar looking for attention.”
Again, Jack stopped Shouta. This time, the teacher brushed off the ghostly hand and placed his own on Izuku’s shoulders, but he didn’t stop the teen, just warned him that he couldn’t reveal too much.
“You wanna see the scars, Kacchan?” Izuku scoffed. “Your opinion doesn’t matter. I don’t take advice from villains .”
“What the fuck did you just-”
Katsuki’s body flung itself backwards when several ghosts shoved him across the courtyard at Izuku’s direction. Several kids moved out of the way, all staring at Izuku like he’d just committed a war crime.
“Izuku.” Shouta warned. “I know what I said but…”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stooped to his level.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” Katsuki blasted himself up with his quirk, but the second he moved to fly himself forward, Shouta’s quirk flared to life and cut Katsuki’s off, leaving the blonde to land on his ass yet again, halfway back to Izuku.
“Enough. You haven’t had any adults properly discipline you, ever, have you?” Shouta sighed. “Don’t bother taking the UA entrance exams if you’d planned to - I’m having you blacklisted.”
Several gasps sounded from the gathering crowd. A few kids muttered that Katsuki was the best of the best, the top of their class, the next number one hero. Izuku knew it was all propaganda. Katsuki was paraded around as the golden boy, but he was really just a bully. A bully with a powerful quirk. He would just become another corrupt hero.
“You can’t do that!” Katsuki scrambled to his feet. He tried to grab Shouta but the hero’s capture scarf snatched the boy’s wrist before he could. “You have no right!” His quirk kept popping and crackling but Shouta just kept canceling it anytime he tried to fire off any explosions.
“Watch me. If you keep pushing your luck, I might put in a formal request to have you put on the national blacklist, along with a ban from the adult licensing program so you can never become a hero in this country. We don’t need any more false heroes like you.” Shouta leaned in and lowered his voice. “You’re just another Endeavor in a shiny new box. You are a bad influence. You are an abuser. You are worse than most of the villains I arrest on a daily basis. Most of them do what they do because they have no choice. You abuse other people because it’s fun, and that’s not heroic. That’s monstrous . You have a long way to go before you can ever call yourself a hero. I’m not sure it’s possible.”
He dropped Katsuki on the ground. Izuku had never seen his ex-best friend turned bully look so defeated. There were tears in his eyes. Most of the kids outside had left to head home since school was out and the fight was over, but a few of Katsuki’s closest lackeys stood behind him, defiant looks on their faces. Shouta grabbed his arm but released it a moment later when Izuku flinched. Now was not the right time to touch him.
“I’m sorry - we should go. I know this school doesn’t care about fights, but that’s not an excuse to draw this out.”
“Mmm.” Izuku agreed. But he didn’t start walking just yet. This was a sight he wanted burned into his brain for the rest of his life. No one had ever stood up to a bully for Izuku. Hell, no one had even ever told Izuku that his bullies were wrong before. “Kacchan.” Slowly, the blonde looked up. “Even if I was quirkless, and still lacked a voice, it would still be wrong.” He needed to say this. He had to get these words out or they might drown him. “Heroes protect the people who can’t protect themselves. That’s what being a hero is . If you were a hero - you’d have stayed my best friend. You would have saved me from everyone else. You would have been my hero. Instead, you left me. You hurt me. You became my villain.” He took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know what you want outside of being number one - but if you want to be a hero, you have to prove that you aren’t a villain anymore. At least…to everyone else.”
Katsuki’s mouth fell open, his breathing rapid and panicked. Izuku finally turned away.
“To me, you’ll always be the villain that pushed me to the edge of insanity.”
Another frustrating thing about Phantom Sight? Izuku couldn’t turn it off unless he was in a soundproof room. They had made one at UA so he could train his quirk. But right now, he had to watch Katsuki sob into his own hands as they left the school courtyard and walked back to Shouta’s car.
Did Izuku truly think this argument would actually change Katsuki? No. Did it shock him enough to get him to start changing? Maybe. Izuku had done his part, he’d finally spoken up, he’d finally said everything that had been buried in his chest for years. That’s all he could do. It wasn’t Izuku’s responsibility to make Katsuki change. Besides, a person would only change or help themselves if they were ready to do so. No one had ever told Katsuki anything negative, Izuku knew that without a doubt. He’d never been called a villain. He’d never been told he couldn’t be the number one hero. But just calling him a villain wasn’t enough. He’d need to find his way back to heroism.
Izuku and Shouta didn’t speak the whole ride back to the hero’s apartment. They didn’t speak on the walk up, nor once Shouta shut the door behind them both as they toed off their shoes. They didn’t speak while Shouta walked into the kitchen and started making coffee. Izuku collapsed onto the couch with his head between his knees to negate some of the nausea building up in his stomach. Facing his bully was both harder and easier than facing the ghosts that haunted him all his life, what irony.
“Here - mint tea. It should help with the nausea.”
“How did you know?” Izuku sat up and took the mug carefully. He couldn’t see the level of water. It didn’t bounce sound the way other things did, it almost absorbed it, so cups and bath tubs full of water were like…voids in Izuku’s vision.
“I’ve faced a few bullies.” The older man sighed into his seat across from Izuku. “You’ve never talked about what those kids did to you, but I can make some assumptions from what you said. I saw the scars the other morning when you came out of your room while putting on a shirt.”
“Ah.” Izuku took a long gulp of tea. His fingers tapped lightly on his mug as he focused on the carpet. “They all thought I was crazy, an attention seeker. It didn’t matter that I could barely think straight, let alone beg for help. My mother had me diagnosed with schizophrenia and the second everyone found out - that was it. I was a crazy kid who believed he had a quirk when really, he just heard voices in his head.”
“Yeah, well your voices are getting more physical. I presume it was Jack holding me back earlier?”
“Mmm, yeah. He’s become protective, and he listens to my commands since my quirk manifested, but he does still have a mind of his own. He had a knife to Katsuki’s throat.”
“Think he could use it?”
“I’m not sure. Not yet, anyway. I’m getting more phantom powers, as the entrance exam proved - so maybe my ghosts are getting more physical powers, too.”
Shouta tossed his legs up onto the coffee table and draped one arm over the back of the chair. “I always meant to ask you - why do you think Jack is your personal ghost? I mean, it could have been some old nice motherly type of ghost, right?”
Izuku had thought about that, actually, a few times. When he was younger, he thought Jack was his self-punishment, or a realization of his bullies in his mind. Except, once he realized what was haunting him were ghosts, not mental illness, he began debating other ideas.
“I think my quirk picked Jack as my personal ghost because he’s the kind of person I needed and never had; a protector. He’s changed a little, did I tell you that?” Shouta shook his head. “He’s not gory anymore, the large wound across his chest vanished. He still wears a burlap sack on his head, but otherwise, he’s just a guy with a butcher’s knife.”
“Hmm. Do you think ghosts change based on our emotions surrounding them?”
Izuku shrugged. “Maybe? But I told the doctor in the hospital that I thought the ghosts were tormenting me in order to fully manifest my quirk, and I still believe that. So maybe the gore was just for shock value in order to push my quirk?”
“Maybe.”
“That, or Jack is a reflection of the parts of myself I can’t bring to the surface. The hate, the anger, the spite. Jack embodies that cruelty I wish I could have inflected back on my bullies, the dark parts of me that I hide away and bury. So maybe, he’s actually a part of my personality.”
Shouta whistled. “That’s an incredibly self-aware assessment. In other words; Deep.”
Izuku snorted. “Uh huh. Well, it doesn’t really matter. What I care about is training harder so he and I can do more.”
“I suppose that’s a good way forward. Speaking of ways forward, what you said to that kid, do you really think he can prove himself?”
“In three months before entrance exams and the start of high school?” Izuku shrugged. “I don’t know. What I do know is UA is his dream school, and I highly doubt he wouldn’t show up, regardless of your words. But I don’t know if he’ll change his mindset or personality in that short amount of a time. Could he start? Sure. Maybe. If he goes home today and tells his parents the truth, and asks for help - maybe . But that’s one hell of a big maybe.”
“Yeah, it is.” Shouta sipped at his coffee mug for a while. Izuku could see the contemplative look on his face, it was much easier to read micro-expressions now. Eventually, he put his mug down and tilted his head to Izuku. “If he can change - do you want to see him become a hero?”
In all the years of bullying and abuse, Izuku had never once considered the possibility that Katsuki might not become a hero, and even more than that, he’d never thought about if he wanted to see Katsuki as a hero or not. Because it had never been his choice, he’d never had any power to change that outcome. But now? One word to Shouta and Katsuki would be filed on the national blacklist and he’d never be a hero. One simple ‘no’, and Izuku would change the course of Katsuki’s life forever.
Izuku wanted to say that word so badly. He wanted to ruin the life of someone who had driven him to the absolute edge of his own sanity. He wanted to ruin the boy who burned him, bruised him, beat him. He wanted to crush Katsuki under his boot like the blonde had done to him countless times while Izuku sobbed into the floor. But no matter how desperately he wanted to say no, Izuku knew he wasn’t that person.
He wasn’t the type to continue the pattern of abuse.
Enough was enough.
Izuku glanced up to Jack, and what he found shocked him. The ghost didn’t have a bag over his head anymore. Instead, he wore a placid smile and a baggy t-shirt over broad shoulders. For just a split second, Izuku swore he was staring at the reflection of his own abuser, Katsuki. But then it was gone, flickered away as if he’d imagined it, and Jack was just some man that Izuku didn’t recognize.
“Now you’re starting to catch on, kid.” Izuku gasped, his mug of tea hitting the rug with a soft thud and a splash of warm liquid over his feet.
“Izuku?”
“Yes.”
“Huh?”
“Yes. I want to see him become a hero, if he can. If he can change, then maybe I can, too. Maybe I can learn there’s something within me worth protecting, worth existing…worth believing in .”
“Izuku…”
Shouta pushed off the chair to crouch in front of him. Izuku wrapped his arms around his guardian. Tears streamed down his face front under his blindfold. Shouta wrapped him up in strong arms and rocked them on the couch until Izuku’s shoulders stopped shaking.
“I know it’s a little cliché to say, but I think, in time, you’ll get to see the changes you create in the world. It’ll likely take a lot of time, but if there’s anyone who can do it, I believe it’s you.”
Izuku wiped the heel of his palm over his cheeks to brush off the tears. “What makes you think that?”
“Well, you did survive fourteen years of intense mental and physical torture. That’s kind of a big deal.” They both laughed. “If anyone has a reason to change the world, it’s you, and I believe you can do it.”
“Even if the Hero Commission is kind of forcing me to do it?”
“Let’s just call it…motivation.”
Izuku snorted. “Deal.”