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Izuku laces up his skates with nimble fingers, muscle memory taking over as he tightens them up his ankles and ties them off in a bow, tucking the hanging strings away. He pulls the hem of his pants over the tops of the skates and stands up, barely even wobbling on the thin blades as he makes his way to the rink.
Passing off his skate guards, he takes a step onto the ice, letting the feeling of gliding on solid water carry him further in, and the cheering of a crowd that knows nothing about him swallow him whole.
Izuku’s been skating since he was fourteen years old, the year he failed to get into UA. The year he realized everyone who said he couldn’t ever be a hero without a quirk was right. The year he realized he probably wouldn’t amount to much.
It had taken him a few months to pick himself up again, about until his birthday, when his mother, desperate for something to help him cheer up, had bought him his first pair of figure skates.
They were a cheap pair, with almost no ankle support and a wobbly blade on one foot, but Izuku took one look at them and realized this was something he could do without a quirk. He could be useful by making art on the ice, by showing people beauty every time he stepped onto the rink.
There were other ways to save people than by dragging them out of burning buildings. There were other ways to make them smile than punching villains in the face. Just because Izuku’s method had changed, didn’t mean his goal had. He would make people happy, no matter what.
He shifts his weight onto one foot and flips it backward, changing direction, doing a twizzle backward and then forward again. He does a quick single loop jump, landing easily. This is just the warm up. He has a few more seconds to get to the center of the ice, but he has to get a feel for it first, has to remember what it is to skate in circles around the perimeter of a rink, has to calculate the edges of the rink and how close to the wall he can get on all of his jumps.
“Now announcing, Midoriya Izuku, from Musutafu!”
If he wins bronze or higher in this competition, he’ll go on to World’s. And if he goes on to World’s, he’ll stand a good chance of going to the Olympics.
The Olympics aren’t as big anymore as they used to be before quirks, before the Sports Festival and heroes. But they still exist, and Izuku would still give anything to be in them.
He finds his starting position and cuts the edge of his blade into the ice, coming to an abrupt halt. Carefully, he places his arms in the opening pose, and waits for the music to begin.
After the gift of the figure skates, Izuku did some research.
He’d always been good at that, at finding information that didn’t want to be found, and eventually he found a rink with public skate hours. One try, he promised himself, and if he didn’t like that one, then he’d never make himself go skating again.
Izuku would never forget the first time he stepped on the ice.
It was horrible, and within two seconds he swore to himself he was never doing this again.
He was lucky, that day, because someone who knew what she was doing was on the ice. Izuku watched her as he clung to the side of the rink, watched her spin and turn and launch herself into jumps, and he understood what it was to fly.
That was the true moment that figure skating turned from something Izuku didn’t care about at all to something he would never, ever be able to escape from.
The music begins and Izuku sweeps his body into motion.
He picked a slower song for this routine, a slower song with bursts of energy in certain places, energy which he’s lined his jumps up with perfectly.
Skating is all about timing, but it’s also about being expressive. Skating is music with the body, keeping time while exhibiting every emotion humans have ever had access to. Izuku’s seen too many skaters move robotically through their programs, refusing to let it touch their hearts, and therefore refusing to let it touch anyone else’s.
Izuku is not one of those skaters.
Every song has a story, and Izuku considers it his job to convey that story to his audience.
This song… is about flight. It’s about that little pause between every inhale and exhale, the moment of suspension before everything comes rushing out again. It’s about the breath before a kiss, wind in his hair on a long summer drive, a view of the stars from the top of a building. This song is about beauty, and space.
Izuku has named it air.
That’s not really what it’s called, but that’s his name for it.
He places one foot in front of the other, delicate, precise, and slides into a pivot, looping one foot around the other once, twice, three times, before opening out of it. Picking up speed quickly, he glances backwards, catches his toe pick on the ice behind him, and launches into the air.
Quadruple toe loop. Both arms above the head.
He lands easily on his right foot, and uses his whole body to show everyone a bird, perching on a branch, before his foot comes down again and—
Quad lutz.
Something figure skating taught Izuku is that not everything is possible if he practices hard enough. Some things are physically impossible for him to carry out without doing serious damage to the rink and himself. It was a hard lesson for him to learn, the lesson of limitations, but he would argue it’s an important one. His coach had made sure he was extra aware of it, after the first time Izuku got a little too enthusiastic with his jumps and nearly broke his ankle.
Finding a coach had been a difficult step for Izuku, mostly because he and his mother didn’t have a lot of money to throw into Izuku’s passion. Luckily, he’d been trying to teach himself a single toe loop on the ice one day, when a retired coach caught sight of him, beckoned him over, and whispered conspiratorially, “You have to center your weight.”
Izuku didn’t know what that meant, but he nodded and smiled knowingly, wondering if that would make this conversation end so he could get back to practicing. The woman gave him a thoughtful look before asking, “Do you have a coach?”
He shook his head, muttering, “I’m self-taught,” and her eyebrows shot upward.
They got to talking, and he explained who he was and how long he’d been skating — nearly two months by then, two months of coming to the rink every time it opened and not leaving until the minute it closed. In his spare time, he watched video after video of skaters, beginners, experts, Olympians, until he could name the jumps and the spins in his sleep.
He was in love with skating. It allowed him to express things he never felt confident enough to say out loud in real life. It let him breathe without worrying about taking too much air.
“You’ve got natural talent,” the retired coach said when he was done talking and demonstrating a few things he’d taught himself. She nodded approvingly at him. “How’d you like a few lessons?”
And that was how it started.
He’d learn later that this particular retired coach had led several skaters to placing in the top three at the Olympics, although she’d never managed to win gold with any of them.
Izuku was determined to change that.
The later in the routine jumps are, the more difficult it is to carry through with them. By the time a skater gets to the second half of their program, they’re exhausted and about ready to fall over and take a nap.
What that also means is the more jumps there are in the second half of a routine, the more points Izuku can score with them.
That’s why, when he worked with his coach to choreograph this program, he asked for almost all of his jumps to be in the second half.
He shifts into his step routine, digging his toepicks into the ice, hopping and twisting. He’s a chickadee, a sparrow, searching for seeds to peck at, spreading its wings — and Izuku jumps, body horizontal to the ice, and he lands in a spin.
The world turns to a blur around him and he lets the wind take him.
A few weeks after getting a coach, Izuku learned about off-ice training, and immediately launched himself into it.
Mom always said he had a tendency, when he was set on something, to work on it with unmatched focus and determination. She said it was impressive that he could set goals and block everything else out while he reached for them. Apparently a lot of other people can’t keep the same goal for as long as Izuku has.
But she was right about one thing — that Izuku, once he decides he wants to do something, won’t stop until he gets there.
That’s why he started off ice training, why he started going to the gym and why he bought himself a pair of roller blades and why he started taking dance lessons. He got a jump rope and did two hundred jumps with it every day, until he could do a double under and then slowly worked up to two hundred double unders every day, and from there started to work on triple unders.
And every day, Izuku could be found in the park, practicing axel after axel after axel, taking it from a hop to the side, dragging his back foot up as high as he could, and taking flight.
He struggled with rotations, at first — he could get height, but he couldn’t get enough rotations into it to actually make a double or triple jump. Then he found videos online, and he asked his coach, and eventually, after too many times of falling down in the grass at the public park, he could land a double axel off the ice.
Izuku carries his body upward, still spinning, keeping his body as tight and compact as he can manage. He picks up his foot, grabs his skate in the palm of his hand, and lifts it above his head, feeling the spin slow.
He’s the image of a cage now, a bird trapped, but in one fluid motion, he releases his foot and goes into another spin, both arms up, one foot tucked neatly in front of the other.
And then out of it, into an outside spread eagle around the edge of the rink, and from there stepping backwards, forwards, backwards, gathering momentum, twizzle forward at the last second, swing the hanging back foot up and—
Quadruple axel.
The crowd applauds wildly as Izuku lands, putting his entire body into the landing, pushing emotion into it. This one… is longing.
He uses his toe picks to hop away again and he sends himself into another spin, crouching down to the earth, so close to the ice his face is almost touching it, his free foot centimeters above the ground. He stands up out of the spin and comes to an abrupt halt, digging his toepick into the ice and holding completely still for one second, arms floating.
Coach says the pauses are sometimes just as important as the movement itself. They make the audience, the judges want to see what happens next.
What happens next is a bunny hop, a quick skate over to the edges of the ice, and then he’s at the curved end of the rink again. He twizzles backwards, checks his shoulder, and launches himself into a quadruple salchow.
He lands, does a quick jump out of it, and hurries around the ice to the other end as the music swells.
This is probably his trickiest combination, the one he’s going to do now, but it’s also the most emotional, the most beautiful jump series in the entire program. This one is independence, is freedom, is showing everyone that all it takes to fly is just a bit of momentum. He has to do it justice.
He shifts backwards again, uses his whole torso to check over his shoulder, just because it’s prettier, and sweeps the edge of his back foot along the ice, giving himself height.
Quadruple loop.
He lands with his whole body, getting low again before digging his toe into the ice for a triple flip, both arms above his head, entire body squeezed together as tightly as possible, and then lands, foot swinging around to come to the back again.
He picks the ice with his toe one last time and flies into a quadruple lutz.
His landing on that one is a little wobbly, his left foot nearly sliding out under him, but he adjusts his upper half and regains his balance by going into a cantilever, one hand floating inches above the ice.
That was a good save, Izuku thinks, so he keeps going, heading for the center, backwards, forwards and leap and land again. Two foot turn, pivot once, switch feet and pivot again, and head to the edge for his final jump.
His first competition, Izuku fell on all of his jumps. It was frustrating, mostly because he knew he could do them — he’d done them in practice, after all — but somehow having everyone watching him, having all the eyes on the crowd on him, tripped him up. The expectations of everyone watching were so high that Izuku overthought, and once he fell on his triple axel, the entire thing was a mess.
His coach afterward sat him down and patted his hand a few times, his scarred hand which he’d tripped over one too many times on the ice. Blades were dangerous, sharp instruments. He’d had to have stitches several times by now.
“Midoriya,” his coach sighed, “you know it’s okay for you not to be the best?”
Izuku stared at her, completely lost about what she meant.
“Sometimes people fall,” she said, meeting his eyes. “But you know what’s incredible about skating?”
So many things were incredible about skating — the speed, the dancing, the physics. Izuku couldn’t pick one, but he suspected his coach had an answer for him if he waited long enough, so he shook his head.
She leaned forward and said quietly, like it was a big secret, “When skaters fall, they always get back up. And then they jump again, and spin again, and keep going until their six minutes run out.” Her eyebrows twisted together and she said in a wondering voice, “Isn’t that amazing?”
Izuku thought skating and heroics had many, many parallels.
Heroes fell and got back up. Heroes only had a short window of time to do their jobs. Heroes were an inspiration to the many people watching them.
And skaters were too.
Izuku took her words to heart, and promised that if he fell again, he’d get back up. He promised himself that no matter what, he would do all his jumps without fear of falling, because he could always get back up.
The axel at the end of his routine is strategically placed, because no one expects a skater to perform one of the trickiest jumps right at the end. Izuku doesn’t like being predictable.
The music is quieting down again now, a lone bassoon wailing out a sad tune, loneliness and enveloping darkness, Izuku dances across the ice, following the music and keeping careful time, because in six bars there’s one more dramatic sweep of music, and that’s when he’s doing his last jump.
He hears the opening sounds of it, and switches his foot forward again, coming quickly up to the end of the rink. Dragging his back foot up, he launches up and does his final quadruple axel as the music swells dramatically.
He’s exhausted but he somehow manages to land the jump perfectly, pressing out with his arms, and before he can even feel grateful for landing the jump, he hurries across the ice, adding in a spread eagle just because he can, and steps out of that into his last spin.
He drops low to the ground, twisting his body around itself and leaving one arm hanging straight upward.
A bird. A bird waiting for something, waiting for a breath of wind, which he grabs a moment later as he opens up out of the spin and extends his arms into the air.
The music fades out, and Izuku stops himself, putting his toepick down and stretching his arms out toward the judges, extending his heart to them.
There’s a moment of silence, just filled with the sound of Izuku panting. His shoulders are heaving, but he made it all the way through the routine, and it’s all done now.
The crowd erupts.
Izuku beams, skating across the ice to bow to the judges, before he turns on two feet and bows to one side of the crowd. He does one more to the end of the rink, waving his arms around excessively just like his coach taught him to, and then he skates off to the edge of the ice, flipping around at the last second to wave.
The second he’s off the ice, he’s just Izuku again, which is a little sad. But Izuku likes being on the ice because it allows him to be whatever he wants, and he doesn’t think that would be nearly as special if he wasn’t himself in between that.
His coach meets him as he steps off the rink, handing him his skate guards and wrapping him in a hug. “You nearly fell on your last lutz,” she hisses and Izuku breathes out a laugh, shaking his head.
“Sorry?”
She laughs, patting his shoulder. “You did well, kid,” she says warmly. “Now let’s go get your score.”
Izuku follows her to the Kiss and Cry, glancing out at the next skater who’s warming up with the rink to themselves. The person out there now will be the last skater of the day, which means as long as Izuku gets in the top two of the score board, he’s guaranteed to go to World’s.
He sits next to his coach, waves at the camera and smiles, and then sinks into waiting.
This moment, waiting for the score, is the most torturous moment of the entire thing. He hates this part, and every time he has to go through it again, he hates it even more. There are cameras on him, it’s awkward, and he really just wants to go eat some food and take a nap.
One painful moment later, his score is announced.
He’s in first place.
His coach squeals excitedly and hugs him again, and he lets himself laugh, hugging her back. He can hear his mom somewhere in the crowd, crying with happiness, and he smiles as widely as he can.
Because Izuku is headed to World’s.