Chapter Text
Izuku had never wanted to be a statistic. He hadn’t really thought about it that way, but he’d wanted to be singular. He was born quirkless and he’d had the dream of being a professional hero. Before All Might, if Izuku could have succeeded, he would have become the first quirkless hero. That wasn’t possible anymore. Power thrummed under his skin; One For All might be singular, but it wouldn’t mark any of Izuku’s accomplishments as such.
Izuku, however, had been a statistic in a lot of ways before he’d gotten his quirk. He’d seen them listed out now and then. There’d been a time his mom had worried over them a bit too much. Now and then one of his classmates would be kind enough to leave a list of them on his desk, with the suicide one highlighted. It wasn’t until now, as he reviewed the list for his social studies essay that he realized how closely he fit.
-Abandonment - He still had his mom, of course. She stood by him through everything (everything she knew about). His dad, however, had left less than a month after Izuku had been diagnosed.
Discrimination was broken down into multiple subcategories, and Izuku was too young to have faced housing or employment discrimination, but for the rest-
-Medical Discrimination - Izuku remembered waiting for hours in an urgent care with a broken leg when he was seven, and his mom yelling about the man who had a hangnail being seen before him, even though the man had gotten there after him. Never mind the stomach issues he’d had when he was younger being attributed to his ‘less evolved body’ and his mother having to find the likely cause and solution online herself.
-Discrimination in Education - The month he’d spent sitting out PE near the start of first grade for ‘liability’ reasons before his mom had found out about it. The countless assignments he knew he should have aced but had barely passed. Honestly, Izuku could write several pages on the topic.
-Mental Health - Of course, being quirkless didn’t have an impact on his brain, but everything else that came with it… He knew he’d had occasional bouts of acute depression, but he figured the anxiety was probably a long term thing at this point. Not that he’d ever talked to anyone about it.
-Physical Assault - He still had burn scars on his skin from Kacchan’s quirk. His broken leg had been from a fall down the stairs at school; he still didn’t know who had pushed him. Of course, he met All Might after…
-Murder/Attempted Murder - Before he’d gotten All For One, he’d only had one attempt on his life, when the Sludge Villain had tried to kill him. Except, it wasn’t like the Sludge Villain had known that Izuku was quirkless, so did it really count? He wondered if what Satori Senpai had done to him counted, he wasn’t sure if the older boy had intended things to go that far or if he’d just been indifferent to the consequences.
Izuku went out of his way not to think about that, though, so it wasn’t a question he intended to answer for the sake of this essay. Not that he was going to make any of his own experiences a part of this assignment.
-Suicide/Attempted Suicide - Did it count if it was because of Satori Senpai’s quirk? It wouldn’t have happened if Izuku had been in his right mind, and after Kacchan had stopped it, it wasn’t like he’d ever gone beyond being casually suicidal. Lots of people had dark thoughts. He’d promised his mom he wouldn’t. Mom knew the statistics. She’d made him promise he wouldn’t. He’d almost broken that promise because of Satori Senpai, but outside of that, he didn’t think he needed that promise to have avoided suicide before UA. He had to at least try to be a hero, after all.
He had broken other promises, though. He was supposed to tell her when something went wrong, or when someone hurt him. He’d stopped doing that long before she’d thought to make him promise to tell her. His dad might suck, but he’d at least given Izuku some good advice before he’d left. His mom was good enough to keep him after Izuku had ruined her marriage; the least Izuku could do was not cause her trouble when he could avoid it. He couldn’t stop bad things from happening to himself, but he didn’t need to make that her problem; not as long as he could hide it behind smiles and fibs. So, he handled things on his own when he could. Or, at least, he had endured.
-Drug/Alcohol Abuse - He wanted to say that he would have never done anything like that. There hadn’t ever been any alcohol in his house, though. Was that because mom had read the statistics? Before he got hero training, he wasn’t sure he would have had a clue on where to buy drugs. He was sure he could have figured it out, but it just wasn’t something that would have had ever seemed like an option to him. There were times in his life when he’d needed an escape, and he didn’t know how he would have responded if that had been an easily achievable or visible option. He’d talked to enough drug addicts during patrols to realize that there had been a time when there wasn’t much that had separated him from the sorts of choices they had made in the beginning.
-Kidnapping/Human Trafficking - Luckily that had never happened. Tanahaka San had once made a joke about renting him out, but Izuku didn’t think about Tanahaka San, just like he didn’t think about Satori Senpai.
-Domestic Abuse - An absolute no in that category. His dad had never been violent before he’d left, and his mom was a saint for putting up with Izuku, and for fighting for him when he couldn’t hide what was wrong. She’d never hurt him, and he knew that even if he’d never gotten his quirk that she never would have.
There were other statistics -
These were just things that had happened to him when he was younger. It was just the way the world was; the way the world had been for Izuku. He didn’t need to worry about any of it anymore. He had a quirk. He wasn’t the same kid anymore. It didn’t matter what had happened to him. What mattered was who he was now, and who he was going to be.
Today, Izuku had a quirk. Today he got top notch medical care. Today, Izuku had teachers and friends who supported him. All Might had asked him to be his successor. His injuries came from training or villain fights. All the bad stuff was in the past, and it would stay in the past, so why did reading a dumb list make him feel so small?
“Deku Kun!” Ururaka exclaimed quietly, coming up from behind him in the library.
Izuku quickly wiped at his eyes, but it wasn’t really any use. It was fine, though, it wasn’t like his classmates weren’t used to him crying over nothing.
“Oh, what’s wrong?” Ururaka asked, spotting his puffy eyes quickly. “I guess you got a rough topic. You probably wish you’d gotten mine, early quirk policy is probably right up your alley.”
She looked over the list he’d been staring at. “Oh wow, I didn’t realize it was that bad. I think there was a quirkless girl a few grades below me when I was younger. There’s a few older folks in my grandmother’s shogi club.”
“It was a lot more common in their generation,” Izuku said evenly.
“Are you going to talk to Jirou about her topic? Quirk discrimination is probably pretty similar.”
At least they hadn’t given that topic to one of the students with a major mutation quirk. Frankly, Izuku was surprised that the two topics hadn’t been lumped together, or that quirkless discrimination was being addressed in this section at all. Even Izuku had never met another quirkless student his age, except for online, and one of those had turned out to be an adult with a quirk who’d been pushing to meet with him in person. Huh, maybe he should add that to the Kidnapping/Human Trafficking section. Except he wasn’t adding anything to any of the sections, because his paper wasn’t going to be about himself. That would just be dumb. So he had no need of thinking about the past. He just needed to look up statistics, and probably a few police cases and it would be done with.
“Deku Kun?”
“I was diagnosed quirkless when I was four,” Izuku said.
That wasn’t what he was supposed to say.
“I mean, I was misdiagnosed. My quirk had a weird activation, um, I needed a higher muscle mass ratio to use it, and there’s a very small percentage of quirked people who don’t have the toe joint mutation, so they never looked more closely when my quirk didn’t manifest.”
He had plenty of paperwork with his diagnosis. It wasn’t like they didn’t have a cover story. It was just that it was best to not need the cover story to begin with.
“Oh wow, that must have been rough,” Ururaka said, sympathy heavy in her voice. “How old were you when it manifested?”
Just downplay it.
“I was fifteen,” Izuku said, like an idiot.
“Deku Kun!” Ururaka exclaimed sadly, staring at the list again.
He should not be talking about this.
“It’s fine,” Izuku said. “I should go get ready. Kacchan said he’d work with me on Black Whip later.”
“No, wait, Deku…” A horrified look came across Uraraka’s face. “Deku means useless.”
Izuku shook his head. “Now it means ‘I can do it.’”
“That’s not what it meant when Bakugo called you that,” Ururaka said, sounding angry now.
“It got better,” Izuku said. “He got better.”
“Because your quirk came in?!”
“Before that,” Izuku said. “He got better before that, he saved me from…”
Izuku froze, unable to say anything else. He started gathering his things into his bag, but Ururaka held tight to the list.
“He saved you from this?” Ururaka asked.
Izuku choked on a ‘no’ and managed to rip the printout in half and shoved the half he got into his bag before turning around.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he said over his shoulder. “I have to go.” He forced a smile. “It’s not a big deal, I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”
“Deku Kun, wait!” Ururaka said, getting shushed from three different corners of the library. “I mean Izuku Kun,” she said, more quietly, catching up to him.
“Deku is my hero name,” Izuku said. A year ago, a girl calling him by his given name would have given him a nosebleed. “You gave me the idea to turn it into my hero name.”
“I didn’t know,” Ururaka said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t want you to know,” Izuku said. “I wanted it to be in the past, and I liked the idea of giving it a new meaning. I like being the deku who can save the day. My… misdiagnosis is in the past. Deku doesn’t mean useless anymore.”
“I don’t think you were useless before you could use your quirk,” Ururaka said softly, because she wanted to kill him apparently. He’d add that to the list of murder attempts, but it happened after he got his quirk, so it didn’t count, like most of the attempts on his life.
Still though, he couldn’t help the sob that came out. “I was dumb enough to think I could become a pro hero without a quirk,” he said. “I was going to try.”
“I think you could have,” Ururaka said to a boy with a quirk.
“Well, you would have been the only one,” Izuku said.
“You’re more than your quirk, you’re… you don’t think you could have done it anymore, do you?”
“Even if I could have kept up,” Izuku said.
“You’re in the most rigorous hero course in the country,” Uraraka interrupted. “Don’t judge your past self by UA’s standards.”
“I don’t think they would have let me in the front door. What school would have? Aizawa Sensei only keeps students he thinks have potential. Do you think he would have let the kid with the lowest score in the quirk apprehension test stay if he didn’t even have a quirk?”
“Maybe you should ask him?” Ururaka said.
“Maybe I don’t want to hear him say it,” Izuku said.
“Izuku Kun,”
“Deku,” Izuku said with emphasis. “Please.”
“Iz- Deku Kun,” Ururaka said. “If you ever want to talk about any of this, I’m here, okay? And Iida Kun is here, and- well, Todo Kun should be back soon enough but-” She gestured with the half of the list that she’d held onto. Izuku could see the worst things on there. She let go when he tugged the paper out of her hand this time.
“It’s in the past, I wouldn’t want to bother them with it,” Izuku said. “Thank you, really. You’re being very nice, but it’s okay. People just made fun of me, that’s all, and it doesn’t happen anymore, so there’s nothing to talk about.”
So why couldn’t he have just kept his mouth shut about it?
Gran Torino had taught him how to use the entirety of his environment to his advantage, but Black Whip made that child’s play. Kacchan was probably the only person at UA who could keep up with One For All.
“Thanks,” Izuku said, panting for breath, once he saw Kacchan put his hearing aids back in. “I needed that.”
“Whatever,” Kacchan said. “You’re going to need to do better before you go kick Chapped Face’s butt.”
“I thought you were going to kick his butt,” Izuku said.
“Oh, I am, but you can keep him busy if you get there first.”
“You don’t think I could take him now?” Izuku asked.
Kacchan glared at him. “Don’t chance it.”
“You’re worried about me?”
“You’ve always jumped off the deep end.”
“Do you think I could have done it, if I’d never learned to swim?” Izuku asked.
“What the fuck are you talking about, shitty nerd?”
Why was he asking the guy who’d never been shy about his opinion on the matter.
“I just mean, do you think I could have been a hero if- if my quirk never activated.”
There were some things it was best not to say out loud.
“Why does it matter? It’s not going anywhere.”
“Exactly!” Izuku said.
“What?”
He didn’t know why he was asking.
“I’m just doing this dumb essay for social studies,” Izuku said. “What topic did you get?”
“Development of early quirk theory,” Kacchan said, an awesome topic that Izuku would have loved to have been assigned. “What did you get?”
“Quirkless discrimination,” Izuku said.
Kacchan just grunted.
“It was just a thought,” Izuku said. “Never mind.”
“You want to know if I think they would have let you get a license?”
“I want to know if you think I would have been capable,” Izuku said.
“Well, you couldn’t have beaten Muscular,” Kacchan said. “You’ve got the most powerful quirk and he almost killed you.”
“I know that,” Izuku said. “But he killed four heroes. They were still heroes. I know there’s stuff I can do that I couldn’t have done otherwise, but there are heroes who won’t even approach an S ranked villain without backup, and that’s fine, not all heroes can, there are plenty of things that need heroes but don’t need an All Might.”
Kacchan didn’t say anything.
“You’re right, it doesn’t matter. I have a quirk.”
Kacchan threw a water bottle at his head. Izuku caught it with Black Whip.
“You beat me,” Kacchan said.
“Just now?” Izuku asked. At best they got each other at a stand still.
“In the sports festival, in the first event, you didn’t even use your quirk. You beat everyone.”
“I cheated with the landmines,” Izuku said.
“Deku,” Kacchan growled. “If you’re fishing for compliments you can go fuck yourself. You beat me, I’m not saying it again.”
“So, now you think I could have done it?” Izuku asked.
Kacchan shook his head. “If Radiator Face broke out of Tartarus and stole your quirk, I bet you could still manage. If your quirk never activated, you would have tried and then given up at the first roadblock, the first time someone in authority got in your way and gave you permission to give up. You needed to save someone else before you bothered standing up for yourself.”
“Uraraka Chan, at the entrance exam,” Izuku said.
“Frog Face at the USJ,” Kacchan said. “Half’nHalf at the sports festival. You got a taste for it, and now no one’s going to take it away from you.”
“You changed after you saved me,” Izuku whispered.
“I was just fixing my fuckups,” Kacchan said darkly.
“It could have happened even if we’d never met,” Izuku said.
“You’d better not be trying to make me feel better,” Kacchan said.
“Never,” Izuku assured him. “I told Uraraka Chan.”
“Round Face?”
“I know you know her name.”
“The fuck did you tell her?”
“That I was misdiagnosed.”
“The fuck would you tell her that?” Kacchan asked.
“I don’t know,” Izuku said. “She asked me what was wrong when I was working on my essay.”
“You’re upset about the stupid essay?”
“No, I’m just thinking about stuff I shouldn’t be worrying about. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to tell her.”
“It’s your fucking secret. You want to fuck up your shit, be my guest.”
Kacchan was never subtle, but he threw as much emphasis into the ‘your’ as he could, because it wasn’t just Izuku’s secret, it was All Might’s too.
“She figured out the Deku thing pretty quickly,” Izuku said. “I asked her not to tell anyone, but if she punts you into the sun tomorrow, I guess you can blame me for it.”
“Tsk, she can fucking bring it.” Kacchan said. “Look, you said it’s in the past, is it?”
“Of course it is,” Izuku said.
“It’s not too late to go after Emo Fucker,” Kacchan said.
“This isn’t about Satori Senpai,” Izuku said.
“Senpai?!” Kacchan asked with a voice laced with every considerable bit of scorn he could put into a word.
“I don’t want to go after him,” Izuku said.
“Shouldn’t you?”
“I’m not going to cause problems,” Izuku said.
“Oh, you don’t want to inconvenience him?” Kacchan asked, sounding angry.
“It would inconvenience a lot of people,” Izuku said, mostly thinking about his mother, and how he didn’t want All Might thinking about a part of Izuku’s life when he wouldn’t even stand up for himself.
“Fine, whatever, so if it isn’t about him, and it isn’t about me, then why are you telling Round Face about things you want left in the past?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Izuku said.
Kacchan didn’t say anything, and Izuku figured he’d probably pissed the boy off enough for one day.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to drag you into this,” Izuku said.
“You didn’t drag me into shit,” Kacchan said. “I made that mess, so let me deal with it if it’s coming. You said it’s in the past, but it clearly fucking isn’t, so figure your shit out before you start spilling things you don’t want to to a blabbermouth like Raccoon Eyes.”
He’d never really talked to anyone about it.
But he didn’t want to talk about it. He’d never even told Kacchan everything about Satori Senpai. He didn’t even want to think about it, so why would he want to talk about it? Why did reading a clinical description about quirkless statistics make him start saying dumb stuff to Ururaka?
“I never told you everything about Satori Senpai,” Izuku said.
Oh, what was wrong with him?
“I didn’t think you had,” Kacchan said, standing over him now, and holding out a hand to help Izuku up.
“I used to tell the other students they could practice their quirks with me,” Izuku said.
He’d wanted to be useful.
“I remember,” Kacchan said. “You didn’t tell him he could make you want to kill yourself. Just because it was dumb doesn’t mean you were asking for it.”
Izuku wasn’t thinking about that. Kacchan already felt bad about it. Izuku didn’t need to make it worse.
“I thought he could be a hero with a quirk like that,” Izuku said.
“Tsk,” was Kacchan’s only response.
“Thanks,” Izuku said.
“Don’t thank me for fixing my mistakes,” Kacchan said.
“Thanks for sparing with me tonight,” Izuku said.
“Whatever,” Kacchan said. “Come on, I’m hungry. Time for dinner.”
They showered and changed quickly and made their way to the dorms. Izuku was pleasantly surprised to find an extra busy kitchen.
Kacchan, however, was not pleasantly surprised.
“Who the hell left Dunce Face deep frying?”
“I haven’t burned anything!” Kaminari exclaimed.
“No shit, put those back in, they’re paler than Flat Face! Since when were we doing katsudon tonight?”
Ururaka gave Izuku a smile from where she was shaving cabbage next to the sink. He didn’t miss the glare she gave Kacchan, though. Izuku smiled at her. Everything was fine. There wasn’t anything to talk about. He just needed to write his essay on a bunch of statistics and go back to forgetting about things that didn’t matter to him anymore.
Izuku sat down to his favorite meal made by friends who maybe wouldn’t have even considered being his friend back before he had a quirk. Boy, was that something he didn’t need to wonder about.
Izuku did not struggle to write essays. Certainly, not when he had enough research to write a whole book on the subject. For whatever reason, though, he was having a hard time writing a clinical essay about his own experiences when he was absolutely not writing about his own experiences. This wasn’t even supposed to be a big project. It was due tomorrow. His less academic classmates had probably finished in an hour or so.
A knock at his door was a welcome distraction.
“Uraraka Chan! Get in here before Iida Kun sees you on the boys’ floor after curfew.”
When did having a girl in his room become normal?
“If this is about earlier, it really is fine.”
“How’s your essay coming?” Uraraka asked casually.
“I’ve been finishing some other work, actually.” Izuku fibbed. “I haven’t really gotten to it yet.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Uraraka said. “But you were crying earlier. You don’t have to say it was nothing either.”
“I cry over puppy videos,” Izuku said.
“I’m guessing you aren’t going to write about your own experiences,” Uraraka said.
“I’m not quirkless. Just because I was misdiagnosed doesn’t mean I have any business making this about me.”
“Maybe you should,” Uraraka said.
“Kayama Sensei doesn’t want to hear about that.”
“Maybe you need to write about it, even if you don’t turn it in. Just get it out.”
“There’s nothing to get out. It’s really not that big a deal,” Izuku said. “And Kacchan really did change before my quirk started working right.”
“He still called you ‘Deku.’”
“He’s weird about names,” Izuku said. “We’re weird about each other.”
“He saved you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you saved me, and you’re my friend, so if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to, but I’m still going to be angry that people hurt you.”
“Would we still be friends if I didn’t have a quirk?” Izuku asked.
“Of course,” Ururaka said, like she didn’t even need to think about it.
“I was practically a different person back then,” Izuku said.
“We were all different people before UA,” Uraraka said. “Is Bakugo the same guy he was in junior high school.”
“God, no,” Izuku said.
“I don’t like you just because you have a quirk, Deku Kun.”
“I can’t stop wondering about everyone.”
“They’re good folk,” Ururaka said.
“I’ve met a lot of people who thought my quirk status was the only thing that mattered. You know, I’ve been wondering if my dad ever saw the Sports Festival. He’s probably kicking himself right now. He pretty much told me he was leaving because I was quirkless.”
Ururaka looked horrified. “I- I didn’t realize.”
“I didn’t want people to,” Izuku said, despite just having said that out loud.
“Maybe you don’t want people to know, but I think a part of you wants to talk about it,” Ururaka said.
“Well, definitely not all of it.”
“So write it down. Get it out, and if any of it is something you want to share, you can. Your dad didn’t leave because of you, he left because he was a dick.”
“Yeah, but he was still right.”
“Right to leave you and your mom?”
“No, just right that I shouldn’t make it other people’s problems.”
“Getting to stand up for my friends isn’t a problem.”
Ururaka wouldn’t get it unless he told her, and she was a good person, like his mom. She would make it her problem.
“And what do you mean he was right? That sounds like terrible advice, actually.”
“Oh, no, he was just making sure I would be a good son for my mom,” Izuku said. “I mean, as good of a son as I could be. I caused her a lot of problems.”
“Like what?”
“Like when she missed a promotion interview so she could go yell at the school board about me not being allowed to do PE with the other kids.”
“Why couldn’t you do PE with the other kids?”
“Because a quirkless kid was more likely to get hurt than a kid whose hair changed colors on command, or something? Sure, it was dumb, but I accidentally let on to my mom that I hadn’t been in PE for a month and she fought for me, and it cost her a promotion.”
“Well that’s dumb, that wasn’t your fault, your dad convinced you to hide your problems from the person who would have helped you and your school discriminated against you. You didn’t let your mom be your mom.”
“What? No, she was a great mom, she is a great mom, she did so much for me. A quarter of quirkless kids diagnosed today get surrendered to the state. My mom kept me, and she loved me even before we realized about my quirk.”
“Would she feel like a good mom if she knew a lot of bad things happened to her son that she never even knew about.”
“Well, that’s why I can’t tell her. And besides, there were still things she couldn’t have done anything about. Why put her through that, when people were still going to get away with hurting me?”
“Because she could have hugged you and told you that she loved you and that it wasn’t your fault.”
“She would have felt bad, though.”
“If your mom was being sexually harassed at work, would you want her to keep it to herself?”
Just the thought of it ignited a fury in Izuku’s gut. “No, of course not, I’d go do something about it.”
“Really? It wouldn’t be a problem?”
“Uraraka Chan-“
“Even if you were powerless to do anything about it, you wouldn’t want to know that your mom was hurting, Deku Kun?“
“No, it’s different.”
“Because you were quirkless?”
“No, I had a quirk-“
“But you thought you were, and a part of you still feels like that, so are you telling me it was alright for a kid to keep it a secret that people were hurting him just because he was quirkless.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Should civilians just deal with villains by themselves so they don’t inconvenience heroes?”
“That’s very different,” Izuku said.
“If Kota Kun had been quirkless, would you have tried any less to save him?”
“Of course not!”
“Are you sure? Even though we wouldn’t have needed him to put out the fires?”
“I would have died to protect him,” Izuku said. “Even if he’d been quirkless.”
“Well then why didn’t you deserve to be fought for?”
“Because I only ever caused problems.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“My whole life,” Izuku said. “Before I got- before I got enough muscle mass to use my quirk, I caused nothing but problems.”
“I think people scapegoated the quirkless kid,” Ururaka said. “And I wish I could go back in time and give that kid a hug, and tell him that it wasn’t his fault, and probably launch a bunch of people into the sun.”
“Uraraka Chan-“
“But all I can do is give you a hug, now, and tell you it wasn’t your fault that people hurt you, or that your dad left, and maybe ask for some names,” and then she did hug him. It should have been comforting, but sometimes he just couldn’t deal with stuff like that.
“I- I really can’t talk about it,” Izuku said with a sob, pulling back under the pretense of wiping at his eyes.
“You don’t have to,” Ururaka said. “But you can, and if you can’t, maybe you can write about it. Even if it’s not for your essay, though I think Kayama Sensei would appreciate your insight.”
“I’ll think about it,” Izuku said.
“And if you ever need a hug-“
“I’ll come to you and Iida Kun,” Izuku said.
“You’d better,” Ururaka said. “And if someone hurts you-“
“I’ll let you punch them in the nose,” Izuku said.
“I mean it, Deku Kun,” Uraraka said. “Fighting for your friends is a privilege. Don’t take that away from me.”
“Thank you, Uraraka Chan.”
“Do you want me to hang out while you work?” Uraraka asked.
“I think we’ve tempted fate enough,” Izuku said. “You should probably get back to the girls’ side.”
Uraraka gave him another hug and he hated himself for feeling uncomfortable.
“Good night, Deku Kun. I’m praying to the gods tonight that I get partnered with Bakugo tomorrow.”
“Good night, Uraraka Chan. I already warned Kacchan that you were going to kick his butt.”
He still didn’t feel ready to start on his essay, and he was already done with his other homework, so he worked ahead in English, which wasn’t his best subject. He still wasn’t in any of a better headspace so he lurked through hero forums for a while, but too many people were wrong about their analysis, so he stopped lurking and wrote a few essays that had nothing to do with class.
Maybe he really did just need to clear his head. He pulled out a blank sheet of lined paper and left all of the research he’d done closed in it’s folder on his computer as he started writing.
‘I was misdiagnosed as quirkless when I was four years old,’ he wrote. There were some things that just shouldn’t be put on paper, even if he wasn’t going to turn it in. ‘I used my quirk for the first time when I was fifteen, and before that, I lived a quirkless life.’
Somehow, he wrote until three in the morning. It might not have taken so long, but he had to stop now and then because he was crying. It felt good. It felt good to write about it. It felt good to cry about it. He wrote about things he didn’t think about. He thought about them in ways he probably couldn’t have a year ago, before he’d gotten his quirk. Of course, when he was done, and even though his hand was cramping, he still had to spend another couple of hours writing the essay he was going to turn in during class the next day, or in a few hours, rather.
He wrote about statistics. He did an analysis of how things had changed over time. He brought up sociological theories about prejudice and how it impacted everyone in society. It wasn’t just a bunch of numbers and social science, though. He titled his essay ‘The Quirkless Debate,’ because quirklessness was a debate. It was a debate whether the quirkless were as intelligent or as strong as the quirked. It was a debate if the quirkless should be protected by anti-discrimination laws. It was a debate if the quirkless should be sterilized. It was a debate if the quirkless should be considered to be the same species. There were oddballs who thought that gay people were the devil but no one thought they needed to put those people on camera to debate the topic. Izuku wrote about what it might feel like for a hypothetical quirkless person to see that discussed on the news.
He didn’t know how to end the essay. He didn’t have anything to tie it all together. He’d written a bit more than he was supposed to, and he’d probably get marked down for that again but he didn’t know how he could take anything out. He wrote ‘People aren’t up for debate,’ and made the two steps over to his bed to collapse there until he had to get up again.
It was a relief to turn in the essay. He was a bit nervous though. He wasn’t a stranger to working late, but he had not felt awake enough to proofread the essay before turning it in, and he was still deeply dissatisfied with the ending. Kayama Sensei was going to be disappointed. He’d slept through his morning run and breakfast and hadn’t had any tea yet. He would definitely need some later before heroics classes.
Iida scolded him for not meeting him for their pre-breakfast workout, and then for not getting enough sleep when he saw Izuku nodding off just before homeroom started, but Izuku managed to stay awake during class. He even managed a cogent conversation about his essay with Jirou, whose essay about quirk discrimination sounded more similar to his own than he would have thought. Maybe they should have compared notes ahead of time.
“How’d your essay go last night?” Uraraka asked him as they sat down to lunch, Izuku finally sipping on a large green tea.
“It went well,” Izuku said, cognizant of Iida sitting next to them. “I followed your advice. It, um, it felt good.”
“I too was satisfied with my essay,” Iida said. “I thought I already knew a great deal about the deputized vigilante era, but I found I still had a lot to learn.”
All of his friends had gotten topics that would have been so fun to write about.
“I’d love to read it when you get it back, Iida Kun,” Izuku said.
“Ah, I worry you might have higher standards than Kayama Sensei on the topic of early heroics.” Iida said.
“Oh, no, I’m sure there’s more for me to learn about that era as well.”
“Please forgive me,” Iida said. “I must have misremembered the topic you were assigned, as I heard Jirou discussing her essay on quirk discrimination earlier. But I’m sure, you brought a unique look at whichever topic you were assigned, and I’ll be happy to read yours as well.”
“Oh,” Izuku said. “We had similar topics. I actually got quirkless discrimination.”
“Ah, yes, Tensei has always said it is important for a hero to understand the challenges that others face. I’m sure there’s a great deal I don’t understand about the topic.”
“Right?” Uraraka said. “And of course, if you had a quirkless friend, you’d want to make sure you understand what they might be going through.”
“Oh, yes,” Iida said. “We discussed quirk discrimination in my junior high school, of course, but we never discussed quirkless students, which was certainly remiss considering we had a quirkless student.”
“You did?” Izuku asked.
“Did you know them?” Uraraka asked.
“Not particularly,” Iida said. “She was in her third year when I was in my first, but I recall receiving advice from her when I first joined student government. Did either of you know any quirkless students at your former schools?”
“They were a few grades below me,” Uraraka said. “I don’t remember ever hearing anything about bullying or anything.”
“There weren’t any at my school, but I met a couple online,” Izuku said. He’d dropped out of touch, though. How could he go on pretending to be quirkless, or tell them the same misdiagnosis lie? What if they thought he’d become one of those statistics when he’d stopped posting?
“I have heard it is much more common in western countries,” Iida said. “I wonder if their experiences are very different.”
“It’s fairly similar, actually,” Izuku said. “They’re still a minority group.” Maybe it was less lonely, though.
They were interrupted by Momo, who pulled Iida aside for class president business.
Uraraka grinned at Izuku. “See?” she said.
“Well, I already knew that you and Iida were the best,” Izuku said.
“And everything went well, last night?”
“Oh sure, besides writing until five o’ clock.”
“Deku Kun! No. I will tell Iida Kun on you if you don’t get some sleep tonight.”
“I procrastinated,” Izuku said. “And then I guess I had a lot to write.”
“I’m glad you got it out, at least,” Uraraka said.
“I don’t know why I couldn’t stop saying things about it yesterday.”
“I think a part of you wanted to talk about it. You know, even if it isn’t with your friends, or with your mom, Inui Sensei is sort of here for that sort of thing. I, um, actually talked to him after we raided the Shie Hassaikai.”
“I didn’t realize you were having trouble after that,” Izuku said.
“I mean, Sir Night Eye was your mentor, but I felt like- like I just got there too late. Like if I’d done more I could have gotten there sooner.”
“I know what you mean.” Izuku said. “Aizawa Sensei wanted me to talk to Hound Dog too, but I just wanted to focus on being there for Eri, and I wasn’t exactly close with Sir, not like Lemillion was. But I also thought about what you were saying about my mom. I don’t know, it really is all in the past, but you know, I never really told her about what happened with Sir, I just talk about how well Eri’s doing, or… I only tell her positive things, and maybe I should tell her more. I just don’t think I can tell her I was hiding so much for, well, my whole life.”
“Well, you could start by telling her what your dad told you. Besides, you don’t have to tell her everything, but you could start somewhere.”
“Did it help, talking to Inui Sensei?”
“It did, but talking to him about it also helped me explain what I was feeling to my parents.”
Izuku didn’t know about trying to be more honest with his mom when he was still going to be keeping a bunch of secrets, or talking to a therapist when half of everything he went through as a hero student revolved around the secret of being All Might’s successor.
Iida came back, and not much later lunch ended and they made their way back to the classroom. Izuku did a better job of staying awake through math before the day ended with a trip to the field for sparring. Izuku did not trust the determined look in Uraraka’s eyes when they split off. He was just wrapping up a session with Sero when a large explosion went off. Turning his head, he saw Kacchan flying through the air, letting off a string of curses. Izuku activated Black Whip, but Kacchan was already too far away. He found Uraraka at ground zero.
“Uraraka Chan, what happened?”
“He shouldn’t have let off an explosion after I tagged him,” Uraraka said with a satisfied look on her slightly singed face.
They got Kacchan back down eventually, and he and Uraraka were banned from sparring with each other when they weren’t in a covered gym. With the school day finally over, Izuku was talked into taking a nap before working on any homework. They walked back to the dorms and Izuku could hear the bakusquad ragging on Kacchan mercilessly.
He really was ready to collapse into bed for an hour or so when he got back to his room. His bed was calling to him. The sight of the wrong essay sitting on his desk drove all exhaustion away as a cold spike of horror hurried itself down through his chest and into his gut. He raced out the door.