i.
The first time, Izuku Midoriya was thirteen.
Kacchan had been so aggressive, so – so angry. Izuku had seen the bruise on the other boy’s arms and tried to offer his help, but he’d snapped. Told him for the millionth time he was a worthless, Quirkless bastard who hardly deserved to live, and if he couldn’t even help himself, couldn’t grow his own fucking Quirk, he should just fucking die.
He couldn’t deny that it hurt. Izuku had only ever wanted a friend, and it had been years since Kacchan had been that for him, if he ever had. They were children, once, still are, but…
But where age had made Izuku kind, it seemed to have bent and twisted Kacchan into a cruel, broken boy who wanted to be a hero.
It was the limping walk home, avoiding putting pressure on his burnt right leg, that it hit him.
He wanted to die.
He could give Kacchan what he wanted; sure, he was an angry kid, but he’d only ever wanted Izuku gone.
His father hadn’t wanted him; he’d divorced his mother when he turned five, six weeks after he was officially diagnosed as Quirkless, then left the country for work. His mother loved him, and he loved her with all of his heart, of course he did, but… every day she fretted over him, knew what dangers he faced at school being Quirkless, and he wondered if she’d be at peace knowing that where he went, he’d never need a Quirk.
Besides his mother, he didn’t have anybody. His grandparents had died long ago, he had no memories of them besides an old face and gentle laughter.
Izuku liked organising his thoughts, despite how his mumbling habits made it seem. It was easier to categorise his thoughts once he’d expressed them, and that was usually where his notebooks came in useful.
So when he got home, he greeted his mother with a shining smile, deftly avoiding a limp or wince as he walked normally into the kitchen for a glass of water, and told her that he’d be doing homework for the next hour or so, and if she wouldn’t mind just calling him for dinner that night.
He escaped to his room and took out an old, empty notebook. It was one Kacchan had bought him a long time ago, back when their friendship wasn’t quite so aggressive, before it ever strained and tore. Izuku had turned six, and Aunt Mitsuki had brought Kacchan for a lovely family meal, her husband working, the four of them had been all that Izuku had needed.
Kacchan had drawn them as heroes on the front of it, and Izuku promised he’d only ever use it for something important. Like when they got into hero school! He’d drawn himself as a spiky haired, tall boy with grenades for hands, because he mastered in explosives. Izuku was just a blotch of green, but he couldn’t say he minded. He didn’t have a Quirk to cater to, after all, so he didn’t need a particular suit.
From Kacchan’s anger earlier, he wasn’t really breaking his promise the other boy anyway. This was important.
He opened the notebook to the first page and wrote a list of the people he loved and cared for.
Mom
Kacchan
All Might
He stopped.
Stared.
Was… was that it? Was this the sum total of his thirteen years? Were these the only people he considered himself to be doing a service to, or at least looking up to? And he couldn’t even keep All Might on that list, because All Might didn’t know him personally. And Kacchan had told him to…
He dropped his pencil on the table and stared at the list. Not even half of the page was taken up. He racked his brain and tried, tried to think of anybody he cared for, anyone who might even be upset, if in passing, that he were gone, and –
He couldn’t.
Abruptly, he stood, his chair clattering to the ground, and he… laughed. It was a bit ridiculous, now he thought about it. How had he ever thought he could be a hero?
He picked his chair up as his mother rapped on his door, calling out to him softly.
“Sorry, mom,” he laughed as she opened the door, already pushing the notebook into his drawer. “Got excited. I knew all the answers already, so I was excited for some personal time tonight.”
His mother smiled brightly at him. “Would you like to help me with dinner then, dear?”
“Okay,” he agreed easily, at peace.
He cooked with her, and as they ate their katsudon, he asked if she’d like to watch a movie with him. Delighted, she agreed; it wasn’t too often after all that her son had time for his mother. To see that smile, she chose an All Might documentary, and he could have laughed at the irony.
But he watched the movie with her, and his final day was filled with the three people from his notebook, and that, that was something that Izuku knew to be grateful for.
After the movie ended, he turned back to his room and pulled the notebook back out.
Mom, he wrote.
I love you. Thank you. I’m sorry.
Kacchan wanted me to do this. He told me to do this. It’s best for us all, isn’t it? You won’t need to worry about me being Quirkless anymore. I love you, thank you for being the best thing in my life – besides All Might.
He felt tears pricking his eyes, and he realised he was getting upset about this. He tried to dampen the feeling, but the tears had overflown already, and had started to dot the notebook. It didn’t matter, even as the ink bled slightly. At least it meant his mother would know he wrote it, being the cry baby he was.
It was all still a single page. He wondered if he should write more, but he had nothing left to say. The sum of his life was condensed onto a single page, and he felt the sobs die down, even as the tears still tracked his cheeks. He felt at peace. Whole.
It would be easy. He knew it.
He waited until his mother had gone to bed, and then waited longer still – after midnight. He stayed up, reading hero forums for the final time, absently noting things in his regular notebooks, normal notes to jot his thoughts down to pass the time, until he felt ready to finally do it.
He tiptoed out to the bathroom, leaving the notebook splayed open on his desk, underneath the lamp he left on for his mother to find when she woke him the next morning. He didn’t bother locking the door, rarely did at night after his mother fell asleep. It would be easier for her to find him anyway, without having to break the door down.
Izuku began to run a warm bath, reaching into the cupboard and pulling out his mother’s razor blades. He broke one of the spare blades apart, nicking himself on the fingertip and entranced by the bright red spurt of blood.
It was painful, but only for a fleeting second. If the rest was like that, he wouldn’t really mind. In any case, he took some sleeping pills, quite a few, figuring if he was already committing to this plan, having a backup didn’t seem like a terrible idea.
He was starting to get drowsy by the time the bath was full, so he figured it was time, unclothing and sinking into the refreshingly warm water. His eyes drifted closed for a second, or what might have been a little longer, before he forced them open to make sure he did this right. He took a second to remember what he was doing, fumbling for the little razor.
And, with a deep inhale, Izuku Midoriya dragged the blade down the length of his forearm, hissing in pain he felt detached to, and bled out, falling into the darkness, the warmth, like a comforting embrace from an old friend.
He blinked.
The warmth seemed to let him go.
The darkness shifted.
He blinked again.
The ocean depths were a murky red, a beautiful crimson.
He blinked again.
There was a face in the depths. His own, but the green hair stained cherry red.
He blinked again.
There was no ocean. It was his bath.
He blinked.
The water was ice cold.
Blink.
The clock on the sink said 04:48.
Blink.
04:49.
He came in here at 02:23. He couldn’t remember what time he’d gotten into the bath, but it usually took twenty minutes to fill. But – it was almost five.
b l i n k
He wasn’t in pain.
He didn’t feel drowsy.
He felt cold.
He looked to his arms, wondering how he had failed, and almost screamed if he hadn’t had the presence of mind to keep his late night antics quiet from his mother,
There was no wound on his arm, only crusted over blood that sloughed away under the water. His head was clear, his arm free of pain and – and his leg was uninjured.
He searched around for the blade in the water, nicking himself again on the hand as he found it floating beside his hand. It wasn’t covered in blood, only the leftover tinge of the water, a stained crimson.
He wasn’t dead.
He couldn’t understand.
Swallowing, he pulled the plug from the bathtub and let the water drain, absently wiping at the pink stain left behind at the bathtub as he rose from it, freezing and shivering, teeth chattering. He didn’t leave until he was sure the evidence was gone. He threw the blade into the trash, hiding it beneath some wadded up toilet paper, and put his clothes back on as he shivered.
He went back to his room, turned off the lamp, and tried to pretend it was a strange, strange dream.
Izuku woke to a terrible cold, a thickness to the head and a phlegm in the throat, and when his mother came to wake him, she pressed a concerned hand to his head and told him to rest.
It was four days later when she rapped her knuckles to his door again and came in looking serious, solemn.
“Honey,” she said, perching on the edge of his bed as he stayed in his seat, bewildered. “I found this in the bathroom. Is… Is everything okay, honey?” she pulled out a wad of tissue, and he noticed the bandage on her pointer finger first, the gleam of metal next.
His heart dropped into his stomach. Did she know?
“Everything’s fine, mom,” he said tentatively, meeting her gaze even as her eyes filled with tears.
“Can you show me your arms, sweetheart?” she murmured, her voice level despite the gravity of the words, and he knew she didn’t know what he’d truly done – just what she suspected. How could she have known, anyway? Who could he tell?
Instantly, he pulled his sleeves back and stood, perching next to her on the bed for her to inspect. Confused, her fingers lightly traced the unbroken skin, not finding any evidence of the cuts she was expecting.
“Have you been cutting your thighs, instead?” her voice was a broken whisper, and for a horrible, awful second, Izuku felt so guilty that he ever tried to kill himself at all, if this was how devastated his mother felt at suspecting he was hurting himself.
He shook his head, going pink, but willing to shoulder the embarrassment as he pulled his clothes down enough to show her pure unbroken skin.
“I broke it the other night,” he grinned lopsidedly at her, soft and apologetic and angelic, and his mother began to cry with relief, shuddering as she pulled her son to her. “I figured you wouldn’t think anything of it, I just stepped on it when I went into the bathroom and thought I’d just throw it away, mom. I’m sorry.”
“No, honey, I’m sorry,” she wept, and pulled him even closer.
He felt the urge to throw the notebook away, after that, but he didn’t.
Instead, he hid it from his other collections and began to do what he did best.
He analysed his quirk.
He’d killed himself. Of that he was certain. He’d cut deep enough into the vein, and swallowed enough pills to ensure that.
And when he woke up, he had no injuries at all; from the burnt leg from Kacchan, to the suicide wound, to the pills in his system.
His body had cleared everything when he was dead, though it was impossible to say how long he was actually dead. He wondered if the time between death and reawakening was determined by the level of injuries he had to clear, and soon, it became a desperate calling beneath his skin to know, to understand, to wonder what his quirk was capable of.
ii.
He was fourteen the second time he killed himself. It was only matter of months after the first time, and he just couldn’t not know any longer. Kacchan had ramped up the assaults, seeming to sense some sort of change in Izuku that he himself couldn’t figure out, but whatever it was, Kachaan hated it. Hated him.
Then he told him to take a swan dive off the roof, and Izuku thought, well, there’s an idea.
He’d been ridiculed by his class already that day for wanting to go to UA, and perhaps there was something to their criticism. They didn’t know he had a quirk (and by all accounts, he shouldn’t possess one at all; there were simply no cases, none in the world, of quirked people with the toe joint) and the one he did have would hardly be any use as a hero. He couldn’t die, in theory, so villains could stay amused by killing him again and again.
So he ‘jumped’ at the chance. He left his notebook at the ground, near where he intended to land, knowing that if anyone found him, it’d be unmistakeably associated with the possible dead body only metres away.
If he died, then he was sorry to his mother, but the note would handle that. If he didn’t, then he could gather more information on his Quirk, more to add to the notes.
It was exhilarating, to stand on top of the school building, saddening to see people avoid his gaze and dash away when they saw him up there, but that didn’t matter.
The wind in his hair was soothing, but inviting; aggressive but soft, beckoning.
See how far you fly, it seemed to whisper. See how you land.
It was 15:49.
So he spread his arms, closed his eyes, and dipped forwards.
The agony of landing was just a second, before that same familiar warmth enveloped him, shrouding him in darkness as it seemed to take him in.
The warmth that swallowed him spat him back out, and he felt cold all over again, chilled, frozen, and unlike the first time, he sat back up in a heartbeat.
It was 15:52
Three minutes.
He felt no pain, but when he looked down his uniform was soaked in crimson, and he cringed, knowing it would look rather bad on his journey home. He wondered if he could pass it off as a nosebleed to his poor mother as he gathered his notebook and bag, and set off towards home, taking the route that would redirect his life entirely, and turn him into a man worthy of being a hero.
He drowned in a sea of sludge, and woke to a god tapping his face.
He told All-Might he had a worthless, latent Quirk, and he wasn’t lying, and it still hurt that All Might said he needed a strong Quirk to be a hero.
It didn’t stop him from running into the fight with the villain again, knowing that even if he died, he’d come back relatively quickly.
All Might chose him, him to pass his Quirk onto, and him to become a hero.
He spent the next two days in bed with a cold.
He asked about his worthless Quirk, once, and Izuku couldn’t bring himself to say the words, so he lied. Told him he had a slight increase to healing times, hardly by much, not even worth mentioning since the doctors had overlooked it almost entirely, and he gained All Might’s hand on his shoulder in sympathy.
The notebook Kacchan gave him became quite useful. He never wrote more on the first page, in case he ever revisited his attempts and needed a new note, but the contents never changed so he didn’t need to think much.
But he wrote about his Quirk, theorised, learnt, crossed things out, and compiled.
He couldn’t die (and he tested that several more times that aren’t quite so relevant to the story at hand, but he tested nonetheless). If he tried the route of the first attempt and achieved similar results, he slit his throat and was gone for four and a half minutes, after severe burns from Kacchan, hanging himself took about six minutes to return to.
He figured he’d be gone for around five minutes each time he tried unless he swallowed a lot of pills, but he thought that might have something to do with his body expelling the toxins as opposed to repairing the damage. Repeating the experiment without the pills brought him back in eight minutes and thirty eight seconds.
He tabulated the data in the notebook and tried to correlate the level of injuries experienced upon death to time spent under, and wondered how, if ever, he would need to know this information.
iii.
He carried the notebook in his backpack at all times when he went to UA. Not so much because he needed to add to it so frequently, but because he dreaded his mother finding it while he was out and pulling him from the course.
A few times he’d shattered his arms horrifically, and Recovery Girl could only do so much for him, so when he came home, he’d kill himself in the bathtub and wait to be revived.
It was sort of… morbid, he supposed. At any minor inconvenience, he’d just go and kill himself in the bathroom.
Then again, it was also kind of funny.
All Might pulled him aside, once, and questioned whether his healing Quirk had picked up in strength because of One for All, and he had no qualms about admitting that it had; it wasn’t even a lie. Even the first method he ever tried had been cut down to thirty-eight minutes. His shortest time was one minute and twelve seconds. All Might seemed sort of… pleased about it, too.
So he went on his way, updated his file to reflect regenerative healing, and carried on as usual.
He never truly expected to need to use the Quirk, especially not in the field, but as it turned out, he didn’t have a choice.
The summer training camp could only help with One for All but he didn’t mind that, it was his most powerful Quirk after all, but that didn’t mean he was suddenly able to overpower a fully-fledged villain.
Muscular was probably as strong as All Might was, and Izuku hadn’t even consistently gone above ten percent yet. He had to win, had to make good on his promise to Kouta, knowing that if he let that boy get injured it would be his fault, his fault for being unable to take the kid and run.
But Muscular was giving him such a thorough beating, his bones shattered in his arms, his ribs starting to crack beneath Muscular’s fists, that Izuku’s eyes suddenly widened as he was struck with the realisation that he was going to die if he didn’t move. If he didn’t act quickly, he was going to die.
His thoughts raced in his head, and in only a fraction of a second he mapped out his injuries and estimated that if he were to die now, it would probably take about a minute to come back. He couldn’t time it, but he thought it might be close to that.
Hopefully Muscular wouldn’t register that he was dead for a while, but wouldn’t move on to Kouta either, it was a huge gamble, but if it paid off, he’d have use of his limbs again.
So
he
died.
The darkness welcomed him, but it seemed to pull him into the briefest of hugs, before turning him back.
He was almost frozen solid.
He woke to the rumble of Muscular’s laughter, but the villain was still atop him, and, with a manic grin, he pushed one million percent into his right arm, and fought with All his Might, until Muscular was out for the count, and Kouta’s sobs were getting heavy and broken.
He didn’t have the time to kill himself again before going after Kacchan, so he left, ice freezing his very core as they almost, almost got Kacchan back.
For the first time, his suicide was a punishment to himself, and he didn’t come back for two hours, and was hospitalised with pneumonia not long after he came back.
iv.
Izuku knew as soon as he woke up, something very, very bad was happening. He just couldn’t remember it. His head felt like it had been split open, and his arms and wrists felt broken. Each breath felt like he was being stabbed in the lungs, and he gasped for every breath.
Sure enough, when he opened his eyes, he was on a cold, damp, hard floor, arms and legs chained up, with his arms almost definitely broken from the weird angle he caught in the dim light.
“You’re awake,” a familiar voice breathed somewhere to his right, sounding unusually emotional. He let his gaze creep over, and Todoroki looked to be in as bad shape as he did. That was why the emotion was unusual, he registered groggily. Todoroki didn't panic.
“What happened?” he croaked. “Where are we?”
It was a voice to his left that answered him, making him jump and then wince.
“We went out to the mall with the others,” Tsuyu said, her voice sounding the most whole of the three of them. “When we decided to get something to eat we got jumped.”
“How?” he shook his head, tugging at the chain just to feel the sharp agony in his right wrist. “We’re – we’re semi-pro, we shouldn’t have been able to be caught-”
“You put up a good fight,” Todoroki interrupted. “You took a nasty hit to the head, we wondered if you’d… if you’d wake up at all. They didn’t catch us without a fight, and they had some sort of gas.”
He couldn’t remember it. How hard had they hit him?
“When we woke up,” Tsu continued, gesturing to Todoroki and wincing. “They were chaining us up in here. They… they broke your arms and legs when they realised you’d give them the most trouble.” Her voice wavered for the first time, probably remembering them injuring him. “You… you didn’t even scream. You were unconscious, and they were… they were…”
They must have been hitting him pretty badly. Maybe even kicking him from the feel of his chest.
They hadn't killed him, though. He'd be in better shape if they had. He almost wished they'd done the dirty work already.
“It’s okay, Asui,” Todoroki tried to assure her, strained, and Izuku noticed for the first time the gash on Todoroki’s forehead, the odd cuffs around his hands, and the thickness to the chains that didn’t match his or Tsu’s.
“What are they?” Izuku whispered, gesturing with his head to the chains that enveloped Todoroki, ignoring the agony blooming above his neck as he did so. He hoped Recovery Girl would fix him for this.
If he didn't die before then.
“Quirk suppressing chains,” he sighed, Izuku thought he caught an undertone of anger. “I heard them talking. They said – said Asui’s Quirk was useless in here anyway, that you were out for the count for a while and as long as they broke your limbs you couldn’t fight back, but me – my Quirk would cause them trouble once the gas they used wore off.”
“Somnabulist?” he interjected, strained. Todoroki huffed, shrugging.
“I think so, but Quirk nullifying too. They had one set of Quirk suppressing chains, so they wrapped me in them. I can warm the metal up just enough to hurt, but I need to melt it off quickly to be effective. All I can do is hurt myself.”
He sounded so, so angry, and Izuku needed to figure out a way to help, needed to know where they were so he could try to formulate a plan.
“How long has it been?” he asked, voice hoarse, throat aching so badly he never wanted to talk again.
“If I had to guess, three hours or so, ribbit.”
“The others will have noticed we’re gone,” he surmised, brain frantically trying to kick itself into gear despite the probable concussion. “Probably alerted Aizawa, do we still have our phones?” At Todoroki’s shaking head, he tried not to be disappointed – he certainly wasn’t surprised.
“Don’t you have a healing factor, kero?” Tsu interjected, and he froze.
“W-what?”
“You heal from broken bones within days,” Todoroki agreed, beginning to sound hopeful, shuffling and wincing against the chains. “And that’s after you shattered your arm. Come to think of it, at the training camp you healed those wounds overnight even without Recovery Girl. How long will it take you to heal these?”
He knew, of course, they couldn’t know, they were just hopeful, they wanted any plan to get them out of here and it would make logical sense to focus on the one thing they knew of.
“I can’t,” he whispered, ducking his eyes and wincing as he pulled on the chains.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Todoroki demanded, getting angry. “You don’t have Quirk supressing chains, you could do it, activate the Quirk, and you could break these chains, couldn’t you?”
He cringed, tears welling up his eyes. “I have – have to – do something to activate it,” he tried to tell them desperately. “It’s not something I want you guys to see.”
“They might to kill us, ribbit,” Tsu said softly, nervously, and they both turned to look at her. “I heard them.” Her eyes were filled with tears, chin wavering. “They only haven’t killed us yet because they’re trying to contact the League of Villains. Even if the League does want us all, we'd be better off dead, but - but, ribbit, we can't do that either. So please, whatever it is, we can escape first, ribbit. Please?”
He swallowed, tears dripping down his cheeks, and he met Todoroki’s steely gaze and nodded.
“What – what I’m about to do… please don’t watch. You probably won’t get it out of your head for the rest of your life. Trust me, I know what I’m doing, but it’s going to be awful to watch. It’ll take a few minutes,” and he was stalling now, but he needed them to not be angry, to not be upset. “But whatever happens, don’t get scared, don’t scream, don’t cry, it’ll be okay. Don’t watch.”
“What are you…?” Todoroki began, but Izuku just cut him off.
“Please.”
He didn’t get confirmation from either of them, only stares, but he couldn’t wait any longer.
Nobody had ever seen this, and he hoped the wave-function of his quantum immortality wouldn't collapse just by being observed, but he had to expect he'd be okay. He set his jaw, brought his broken arms up to his neck, and snapped it.
The darkness had learnt not to swallow him whole, had learnt to dance with him as he felt the warmth enter his veins, and learnt to give him back.
When he opened his eyes, it was to Tsu’s face covered in blotched tears, to Todoroki’s frantic whispers.
“It’s okay,” he slurred, and Todoroki stopped dead (not dead, not dead, not dead), Tsu staring at him with what might have been horror on her poor face. He moved his arms experimentally, and felt no pain. “I’m healed. I’ll get us out of here. It’s okay. I’m sorry.”
He was so achingly, desperately sorry, but he couldn't take it back, not now they had an advantage. Izuku sent five percent to his arms and broke the chains off the wall; he’d hoped that it would just break his wrists free of them, but this would have to do, instead using the end of the chain to finish the job before breaking the links at his feet.
He broke Todoroki free next, decidedly avoiding the other boy’s wide eyed gaze, knowing that the Quirk suppression would probably be hurting him on a level deeper than just skin. Once the other boy was free, they freed Tsu next, Todoroki’s ice combined with a hard tug from Izuku made the chain’s break easily, and they nodded together, not saying another word.
With a deep breath, he spoke.
“We – we can talk about this after we escape,” they nodded, silent and eyes hollow. “Let’s just focus on doing that first.”
With that, he launched into a plan that he had to mumble about for a few minutes before it settled into a true plan; they’d break out of the cell by freezing the entrance courtesy of Todoroki, drawing the guards to them out of fear that Todoroki had escaped, and as they approached, Tsu would perch on the ceiling and take them out with her tongue in a surprise stealth attack. Once they were taken care of, they’d move up and out, taking out whatever or whoever came into their path.
With some improvisation from everyone at times, their plan seemed to mostly work, though Izuku had to hold back a scream when he saw Tsu get hit hard in the head towards the end of their escape. He snatched her up, unconscious, as Todoroki fought the last person in their way, and they, with a sharp nod at one another, broke through the wall and made their escape into the streets, Tsu on his back, Todoroki leading the way with his cold arm out, ready to fight at a moment’s notice.
They approached a police station quickly, beginning to run out of stamina as exhaustion overtook them from the fight, and as soon as they walked in, the station became high alert.
They took Tsu from Izuku, calling for a medic, and ushered them behind to a quiet rest room for them to sit until someone could be contacted to collect them.
And of course, Aizawa was the first to arrive after they gave their statements. He blasted in while Izuku was being checked over for injuries covered with a thick blanket, Todoroki already lying back on the couch with a butterfly stitch across the gash on his forehead.
“Are you alright?” he demanded in that flat but decidedly angry monotone of his. Izuku stared at him for a second, for once realising the extent of how his homeroom teacher cared for them all as his eyes were angry and red, like he’d exerted his Quirk in an effort to try to trace them down.
Todoroki answered him first, with a swallow as he looked at Izuku. “We’re alive. Tsu has a mild concussion and I just have this gash, some bruises. Nothing major.”
He didn't say we're fine. It was always going to be a lie anyway.
Aizawa turned his gaze accusingly to Izuku. “And you?”
He swallowed, but the medic answered him first. “He’s fine. Hardly a scratch on him, just a fair bit of blood on the hair. Looks like a serious head wound, till you get close and see there's nothing there, a miracle if you ask me, just what looks to be a cold settling in.” At that, Izuku gave a shiver, knowing he probably looked quite pale and frail. “I’ll go back to take a look at the girl while you catch up.”
They nodded and the medic left the way Aizawa had entered. Immediately, their teacher was suspicious, glaring at the problem child like everything wrong in the world was his fault.
“What’s really wrong.” He didn’t ask, he demanded. “You break at least a bone in most of your fights, Midoriya. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing,” he answered honestly, shooting a nervous look at Todoroki who couldn’t meet his eye. He trembled again, shivering and shuddering as he pulled the blanket closer to his body. “I have a healing factor. It… it took care of most of my injuries.”
“So you were injured then.” Aizawa surmised, eyes squinting dangerously. “Todoroki. What happened?”
Todoroki couldn’t bring himself to meet his teacher’s gaze. “I… I’m not sure I should discuss Izuku’s Quirk.”
He cringed at the flatness to his friend’s tone, knowing it was probably fear driving him. Aizawa’s brows raised so far he almost lost them to his hairline.
“There’s something I need to know, isn’t there?” he asked, settling onto one of the seats carefully. Izuku hesitated.
“Can… can we discuss this another time?” he breathed, eyes flooding with tears, but different to his normal outbreaks, that much seemed to be clear to Aizawa. Against the older man’s better judgement, it seemed, he inclined his head.
“We will discuss this back at the dorms,” he insisted, however. “The three of you will be speaking with me together after the police take your statement. Am I understood?”
“Yes sir.”
And then they collapsed into silence, Todoroki staunchly avoiding his gaze, and Aizawa’s eyes flittering between the two of them suspiciously. It was a few long moments before the medic returned, Tsuyu in tow, looking a little worse for wear but altogether alive.
“We’ve taken their statements,” Tsukauchi told Aizawa. “They’re free to go. Take care of this one, her concussion is mild, but she needs some supervision for a while.” He nodded to Midoriya. “If his cold gets any worse, take him to Recovery Girl. Last time his body went through something serious he caught pneumonia.”
Izuku stared at the detective, wondering how he’d made the connection; it was true, in any case. Whenever he went through a particularly difficult recovery, his body developed a terrible cold, though only once had it ever hospitalised him. He wondered if it was his body’s way of telling him that death and healing took a lot of out of his body, weakening him to the elements unless he was careful.
He also wondered if it was death’s kiss, reminding him that though he was warm when he danced with death, his body would turn cold and rigid without him.
Aizawa thanked the detective and instructed the three of them to stand, Izuku shivering under the blanket. It wasn’t the worst cold he’d had, but the first few hours after waking took the most out of him.
“I’m taking you all back to the dorms,” Aizawa shook his head. “Your parents have given permission to stay for tonight, tomorrow they’ll visit and decide if they want to take you home for the weekend.”
He herded them out of the building like a shepherd, and without a word, Tsu and Todoroki climbed into the back of Aizawa’s car, leaving Izuku to take the passenger seat with a cold shudder. Their unwillingness to be near him was obvious, and it stung, of course it did, but he knew it would happen.
Aizawa shot a sidelong glance at Izuku as he started the car, eyes flickering to the rear view mirror to check on his other two students, before starting the long drive back to the dorms.
After a moment, Aizawa flicked on the radio, a muttered, “Mic’s radio show is on. Hardly ever miss it.”
He couldn’t tell if it was his way of cutting the tension or if he truly never missed a show, but either way, Izuku pressed his head to the cold window and listened to his loud teacher’s voice telling stories of his hero days, before falling asleep.
It was Tsu, to his surprise, that nudged him awake. The sky was dark outside, and since Mic-Sensei’s show was on, it was early morning, he thought groggily as he finally managed to pull his thoughts together.
“Come on,” Tsu called softly. “Aizawa wants to talk.”
Cold fear gripped his chest as he pushed the door open, shutting the door behind him as he staggered to the dorms, Aizawa and Todoroki standing just off to one side before joining them. When they got to the common room, there wasn’t anybody there. He shouldn’t have been surprised – it was early, but he hoped that there would be somebody there waiting to see them, sparing him if only for a short while from his fate.
He was the first to sit, alone on an armchair, understanding that neither Todoroki nor Tsu would want to sit with him after what he’d made them see. To his surprise, the other two students took seats on the nearest couch, and Aizawa, instead of taking a seat, began to pull cups from out of the cupboard.
“What are you-?” Izuku called, and Aizawa sighed, staring pointedly at him.
“You’re freezing, and its two a.m., and three of my students have had a traumatising experience. I’m making hot chocolate.”
“May I have tea instead Sensei?” Todoroki asked quietly, and Aizawa nodded.
They returned to silence quickly, until Aizawa brought two cups, one for Tsu and Todoroki, then returning for his own and Izuku’s; he put his own on the coffee table, but wouldn’t let up until Izuku held the cup in his hands. He was grateful for the warmth instantly, taking a deep drink of the warm chocolate and letting it warm him from the inside.
“Something happened that none of you want to tell me.” Aizawa said at last, somehow not sounding disapproving but instead… soft? “I need to ask, and I don’t want to have to ask this, but I’m sure if it isn’t directly addressed it may never come up. Midoriya, were you sexually assaulted by those villains?”
His eyes widened and he shook his head, horrified, and a chorus of No! resonated through the three of them, and Aizawa looked relieved for a second, but still on edge.
“I’m glad you weren’t,” he acknowledged, but shook his head. “That’s the only thing I could think of that might be why the three of you are behaving so strangely, and while I’m glad that’s not the case, I need to know what did happen in case it affects your health.”
“His quirk,” Tsu mumbled after a moment, Izuku’s eyes lost in his chocolate. “It… I’ve never seen anything like it, and…”
“It scared us.” Todoroki finished quietly, and Aizawa seemed surprised to hear it from the boy. “Midoriya, I can’t… I can’t tell him what you did. You need to.”
Izuku started to tremble, squeezing his eyes shut as tears dripped from his cheeks. “You’ll all start asking questions,” he whispered, so uneven and broken that Aizawa moved from his seat to the floor in front of him just to meet his eyes. “You’ll want to know how I found out.”
“We pushed him to do it,” Tsu interrupted him, sounding horrified to her own ears. “We didn’t know what he’d have to do for it. But… we still made him do it.”
“Do what?” Aizawa asked slowly, baffled by the turn and eyes shooting around in a sign of uncharacteristic unease as he tried to get answers.
Izuku steeled himself, swallowing, looking up to meet his teacher’s gaze.
“I have a regenerative quirk. I can heal my body from most injuries.”
“Go on.”
“But… in order to activate it… I have to – to die.”
Aizawa blinked at him, seemingly gaping at his young student, his eyes looking over at Tsu and Todoroki as if trying to find any indication of a lie.
“You have to… die.” He repeated, the words bitter in his mouth. Izuku nodded.
“They broke my arms, my legs, my wrists… I couldn’t use my usual quirk in that state, I might have done permanent damage, and even after healing I can be left with scars, so – I – I had to… I had to snap my own neck.”
It was weird, saying it aloud. Izuku decided he didn’t like it. Didn’t like the way that Tsu and Todoroki couldn’t bring themselves to meet his gaze, didn’t like the way he couldn’t look his own teacher in the eyes.
It was shame, he realised, probably a beat too late. Shame. Because that meant they knew, they knew he had to have died to find it out, and they probably suspected…
“You snapped your own neck to heal your injuries,” Aizawa repeated, pure disbelief filling every crevice of his voice. “You..?”
“It’s true,” Todoroki interjected, but Izuku thought he sounded shameful. “He was… dead. We heard the crack, he fell to the ground, and he stopped breathing. He was dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Izuku whispered. “I didn’t want you to see. I tried to warn you…”
“We didn’t listen. We didn’t think it would be that bad, ribbit.” Tsu’s hands wiped at her face as tears streamed down her cheeks. “But – but watching Midoriya – d-d-d…”
She started sobbing after that, any words she might have lost in them, and Todoroki even had some quiet tears tracking his cheeks. Aizawa sat back. He didn’t quite know how to handle it. Izuku wasn’t even sure he could.
It wasn’t brought up by Todoroki or Tsu again, and they tried to go back to normal, pretend like they hadn’t watch their friend snap his own neck, but something had changed, and they itched to be able to tell, and Izuku just couldn’t do it.
Sometimes, at night, Todoroki would knock on his door and ask if he wouldn’t mind just keeping him company.
He wondered how many nightmares the others had of his neck snapping, and never waking up.
v.
“I’m not suicidal,” Izuku sighed, wondering if it was falling on deaf ears as Aizawa pursed his lips.
“But you were.”
Cheeks pink, he looked away and nodded. “I felt that there wasn’t much to live for anymore. Everyone either wanted me gone, or didn’t care enough that I was still here. So…” he shook his head. “I haven’t felt that way in a long time.”
Aizawa brushed his hair out of his face, resting his chin on his thumb, forefinger pressed against his lips thoughtfully.
“I need you to understand, Midoriya, that I have to refer you to our guidance counsellor.” He even sounded regretful, but the steel to his gaze wasn't to be trifled with. “I believe you, I truly do. I also have the feeling that any time you do use this quirk, it’s for the regenerative benefits. I believe that. But I would be doing you a disservice if I don’t refer you, and, just the same as any other students, we need you to learn healthy coping mechanisms.”
Izuku just stayed silent, staring at the ground.
“I suppose I should be grateful you had this quirk,” Aizawa tried to sound light, but it didn’t really translate well from the grimace on his face. “You’re a pleasure to teach, Midoriya. A pleasure to know. Even if you are somewhat of a problem child. It would be devastating for anybody in this school to lose you, not as a hero, Midoriya, as a friend. As a student.”
Izuku swallowed. “Are you going to tell All Might?”
Aizawa was silent for a moment. “No. I need to report it, yes, it will go directly to the counsellor, but who you tell is up to you. But if I can make one request?” At Izuku’s slight nod, he continued. “Don’t rely on this quirk. Train yourself well enough that you may never need to use it. I can’t imagine how it would feel to… to watch any of my close friends…” Aizawa sighed, swallowing harshly as his eyes went hollow and distant.
He had watched this before, Izuku realised. Aizawa had the same look his eyes that Tsu and Todoroki had, just older and wiser and darker all at once.
He knew it was a rather serious issue – he was committing suicide semi-regularly. There wasn’t much way to sugar-coat that.
“You can go, Midoriya. I hope you can trust me or your friends in future.”
As he walked away, he stopped at the door and turned back, muttering a quiet, thank you, before hastily making a retreat, before even catching a sad smile on his teacher’s face.
He hadn’t been able to kill himself in his usual method of choice, given the bathrooms didn’t have baths, only showers, so he’d had to make do. He’d stopped, though, after Tsu started to give him terrified looks after he got some sort of injury in class, after Todoroki began to level him with an icy stare, and he understood. He knew they wondered if he would go and kill himself that night just to reset his body, and after what he’d made them see, he – he couldn’t do it knowing the level of concern it gave his friends.
So he started to nurse his regular wounds like everyone else did, and visited Recovery Girl, or holed up with a hot water bottle, anything normal, and eventually Tsu and Todoroki stopped looking suspicious at ever little injury, and – and even Aizawa seemed to have a curl to his lips that told him it was okay.
Until –
“What happened to fucking healing yourself?” Bakugo muttered at him in class once after he broke his arm. “Thought you had a nifty fucking regen quirk.”
“I don’t like to use it anymore, Kacchan,” he laughed nervously, scratching at his head. “It gives me awful colds, and one time I caught pneumonia, so I figure I’ll just heal it regularly.”
Todoroki nodded almost imperceptibly out of the corner of his eye, and Tsu seemed to let out a breath.
“Oh that’s bull,” Kacchan insisted, crowding into his desk. “You used heal yourself over every scrape, cut, or burn in your life and now you stop because of a cold? You really are a weak Deku.” He scoffed, but Uraraka’s eyebrows knitted together.
“Burn?” she asked, loudly enough that the rest of the class took notice, and Izuku shrivelled down into his desk. “He hasn’t been burnt since the Sports Festival.”
“I’m not talking about the festival, round face, and stay out of it.,” he huffed. “In fucking middle school, always getting in my way, constantly getting burnt, then the next day he’s suddenly fine?”
“You used to burn Midoriya?” Todoroki demanded, rising to his feet as he approached Kacchan’s desk. “On purpose?”
“I never did it on purpose,” Kacchan growled, and, fuck, Izuku knew this was going to be bad. “Fucking bastard was always getting in my way. You got a problem, icyhot?”
“Maybe if you knew how he healed you’d care, Bakugo!” Tsu suddenly shouted from the other side of the room, before covering her mouth as her eyes filled with tears. She abruptly rose, and ran from the room.
Everyone stared after her, shocked, horrified, confused, until Iida tried to reign the classroom in. It was Uraraka who ran after her, almost bowling over Aizawa on her way out who raised a brow when she just kept running, shouting after Tsu. His eyes next caught Todoroki and Kacchan in a standoff, glaring at one another and clearly an inch from using their quirks, and then Izuku, who had shuffled so far down in his seat he was practically sitting on the ground.
“Seats. Now.” He commanded, but Todoroki seemed reluctant until Aizawa activated his quirk, hair raising and eyes flashing scarlet. Todoroki moved to his seat, seething. “Would anybody like to explain?”
If anything, Izuku shuffled further down, and hoped nobody mentioned Tsu’s outburst, but… of course he was never that lucky.
“Deku seems to think he’s fucking better than everyone else,” Kacchan growled. “Since he doesn’t seem to care enough to use his goddamn regen Quirk, like people wouldn’t die for a Quirk like that.”
Izuku and Todoroki visibly winced at his wording, and even Aizawa’s eye twitched.
“Midoriya has every right to use his quirk as he sees fit.”
“So what happened to Mr. It’s-your-quirk-not-his?” he spat.
“Bakugo, Midoriya has decided not to use a quirk and it has no bearing on your ability to become a hero, so stop your insolent sulking or I'll give you housecleaning duties for the remainder of the week.”
It pulled the class up short. Yes, Aizawa was a strict teacher, but he’d never, ever put his foot down so quickly on a matter unrelated to his personal life.
“What?” even Bakugo’s voice had lost its angry edge, more confused and irritated now. “So he gets special fucking treatment, is that it?”
“Housecleaning it is then,” Aizawa’s eyes narrowed to slits. "Do yourself a favour, and don’t make it the rest of the month. Now pull out your English work, Mic-Sensei wanted me to tell you all some corrections.”
Tsu and Uraraka came back halfway through homeroom, but Aizawa didn’t punish her or even acknowledge their tardiness. Izuku caught Uraraka’s bloodshot eyes, saw her pink stained cheeks and shifted his gaze to Tsu, who mouthed I’m sorry.
His heart was in a cold vice grip, and he stood abruptly. He couldn’t… he couldn’t not do this. If Tsu and Todoroki and Uraraka and Aizawa knew, then the rest of the class would hound him until he finally cracked, so he needed to – to-
“Midoriya?” Aizawa cut through his thoughts, surprised. “Is there something you need to share with the class?”
He nodded, swallowing, pulling his notebook out of his bag and throwing it on Bakugo's desk.
“Remember this?” he demanded, watching as Kacchan’s angry, conceited eyes widened at the sight of it. “Do you?”
“What the hell, you damn nerd-”
“Do you fucking remember it, yes or no?”
The class went deathly silent. The whispers, wondering what was happening, stopped as soon as the swear left sweet Izuku’s mouth.
“Yes.” To his credit, Kacchan’s voice was level.
“Open it.”
He complied, reading the half page worth of writing, eyes going wide as he reread them over and over again.
“The first and only suicide note I ever wrote.”
“Midoriya, you need-” Aizawa tried to stop him but he cut him off.
“He wanted to know," he snarled, meeting his teacher's eyes. "He gets to deal with the consequences. The suicide note I wrote at thirteen because you drove me to want to fucking die. Do you even know what you did?”
Kacchan seemed to shake, eyes flickering up to meet his gaze, throat bobbing up and down.
“The first, second, fifth, hundredth times that I killed myself, they were all because of what you did to me. All those burns from getting in your way, all those times you screamed at me for wanting to help you, all those times you called me a worthless, quirkless bastard? You wanted to know how I heal myself.” His hard, cold eyes looked over at the rest of his classmates, varying degrees of abject horror crawling across their expressions. “I fucking kill myself. So I hope you’re happy with yourself, Kacchan, because even after everything, everything you drove me to do, I’m still willing to save your ungrateful life.”
He left.
He hung himself in his bedroom, if to alleviate the racing of his heart for a few minutes.
The worst part was now they knew he’d done it. He’d told them all he’d committed suicide numerous times, but also that it healed him. His arm wasn’t broken anymore, so they would know he’d done it again.
His nose started to run. A tickle rising in his throat.
A cold.
Just like always.
+1
The rapping at his door that night wasn’t entirely unexpected. He sighed, kicking the rope further under his bed and hoping whoever it was didn’t see it.
Izuku opened the door, and was actually kind of relieved when it was Aizawa.
“What’s the punishment?” he asked flatly, and Aizawa looked just as flatly back.
“I haven’t decided if you deserve one or not.” Sighing, Izuku moved away from the door, letting his teacher come in and perch on the seat. “One the one hand, shouting and swearing at a student during class, disrupting classes for the day, committing social murder. On the other hand, you were driven to suicide by another student in the first place, and telling the truth on that isn’t particularly punish worthy. So. For now, no punishment.”
“And Kacchan?”
“Bakugo’s punishment is the vitriol pumped at him from every angle at the moment,” Aizawa shook his head. “I think with time they’ll move past it, especially since you’re willing to still at least try to be civil with him, and as you said, willing to save his life.” He paused then, letting his eyes drift over his unbroken limbs before shaking his head. “So you did do it again, today.”
Like a petulant child, Izuku hugged his knees on the bed, staring straight faced at the wall.
“Wanted to stop feeling. Restart.”
Instead of a lecture, his teacher just nodded. “I had to cancel class for the rest of the day. Informed the other teachers of a student crisis. The class is exceptionally worried about you, but I’m sure you know that.”
Izuku wished he could just stop sighing. “I don’t know what they want me to say. It’s not suicide to me anymore, it’s healing. I know it hurt Todoroki and Tsu, which is why I didn’t want them to see it, but it’s my quirk. It’s… normal to me now.”
“Normal enough to have told your mother?”
He flinched, eyes squeezing shut. “Please, don’t tell her. You can’t tell her, it’ll kill her.”
“I haven’t told her. With how things are going, I may have to, especially given your relationship to Bakugo.” He heard a rustling noise. “You left this in class, by the way.”
He snapped up to look at the notebook he’d left, horrified at the thought that his class had seen it, but he quelled the thought. He’d left it there, he’d invited Kacchan to look, what did it matter if anyone else saw?
“Your notes are always the same,” Aizawa’s lips twist wryly. “So analytical and removed, but somehow some of the best writing I’ve had from a student. Some of your projects I have to actively seek out marks to knock off." Izuku stared at him, unimpressed. "Is the first few lines what I think they are?” Aizawa asked gruffly, finally getting to the point.
“The sum total number of people that thirteen year old Izuku Midoriya felt he would be doing a disservice to should he kill himself,” he dutifully recited. “A list comprising only of my mother. Kacchan told me to kill myself, and I didn’t know All Might.”
Aizawa just hummed, thoughtful. “The rest of the class thought the same thing as I did. So here. I’m sorry for the defacing, but I thought you’d want it back.”
Confused, he pulled himself out of his self-hug, reaching for the old notebook and flicking it open.
The first page was normal, but there was ink bleeding through that wasn’t there before, so curiously he turned it over.
Shouto Todoroki
Tsuyu Asui
Ochaco Uraraka
Tenya Iida
Hanta Sero
Mezo Shoji
Koda Koji
Yaoyorozu Momo
Rikido Sato
Eijiro Kirishima
Denki Kaminari
Mina Ashido
Toru Hagakure
Kyoka Jiro
Yuga Aoyama~
Fumikage Tokoyami
Mashirao Ojiro
Minoru Mineta
Shota Aizawa
Hizashi Yamada
Nemuri Kayama
Toshinori Yagi
Katsuki Bakugo
sorry I was an asshole you never deserved to die
Tears splattered on the page before he knew what to do about them. His teachers had signed this, signed to say that he was worth something to them, and that if he were to actually die, they would miss him. And – and Kacchan had squeezed in his own apology at the bottom, and an apology for anything from Kacchan was worth more than gold.
Before he could even think straight, he registered a hand on his back, a soothing, comforting weight bringing him back down to earth, and he turned his head into his teacher’s coat and sobbed.
He’d never sat back for a moment in his life and thought about the weight of the world that sat on his shoulders, never until it was lifted off of him, and shared between his class, his family, of people who cared for him, who would truly miss him if he were dead.
He understood, now, why Tsu and Todoroki couldn’t bear to look at him sometimes; because the thought of how close they might have been to a life without Izuku Midoriya was terrifying enough to them that they froze up, cut themselves off from the world briefly to break it apart.
Izuku had never considered how he used his suicides as a crutch, as a way to unleash his fear onto the world knowing there would be no repercussions, knowing he’d wake on the other end with just a cold for his troubles, and it felt like a worthy trade.
Not anymore.
“F-for the s-strictest teacher at UA,” Izuku sobbed. “You s-sure are like a d-dad to us.”
“I’ve never buried a student,” Aizawa countered, pulling him up short. “I like to keep it that way.”
He tensed. “It stops,” he promised. “I won’t – won’t voluntarily…”
“That’s enough of a start, Problem Child. Enough for me.”
It wasn’t the last time he died, of course not, his job as number one hero was far too dangerous for that, but it was the last time he killed himself.
The final time he died, out of the reach of villains, not of his own hand, he passed peacefully, surrounded by all the love in the world that he needed.