Chapter Text
Monday, April 2, 2142
“Wait, I need to ask you something!”
All Mig- Yagi Toshinori paused, even as the strain of keeping his heroic form pressed upon his shoulders every passing second. He was far beyond three hours. The desperation in the green haired child's voice called for him to risk that moment’s pause.
Despite better judgements and the screaming in his muscles, he turned his head to look at the boy again. “What is it?”
“Can someone without a quirk… be a hero like you?”
Sapphire eyes widened slightly. Without a quirk? Like All Might? His left side twinged in pain, and Toshinori swallowed down a bloody cough along with the memory. “No. Without my quirk… I-” His thoughts are cut off, as another cough bubbled up within his lung. He struggled to keep a hold on One for All. Oh, shit.
All Might plasters on a blinding smile, gathering himself to jump away before the green child before him can see Yagi Toshinori, the pathetic skeleton of a man. “I must be going, justice waits for no one!” He could tell that he put too much pressure into the jump in his haste, as the sound of cracking stone followed him.
Upon landing on a roof out of sight of the child, Toshinori immediately lost control over his quirk. Deflating into the stick like figure of his civilian identity and coughing up more blood from the aggravation of his old injury. “That was a close one! Too close…” He pat his pocket subconsciously to double-check that a villain made of slime was still secured in a bottle there. Yep. “Okay, first things first, take you to the station.” No response, perfect.
He took a moment to look behind himself, towards the section of the horizon he came from. The direction of where an underpass tunnel is. Where a child he had to leave behind was. A sense of worry and possibly dread pools in his gut. “I hope that kid will be alright…”
You have crossed the event horizon
And there is no going back.
The self you thought you were is being pulled apart
and there is nothing you can do to save it.
In a single jump, the blond hero vanished from sight, barely cracking the concrete under him as he left. Leaving Izuku under the bridge and still covered in sludge. Alone. He kneels down with the hard ground biting into his palms, and allows for a broken sob to escape.
A low, raw scream tears through his throat. Years of explosive pain and clinging to glimmering hope, an accumulating darkness of despair, finally being released like a brilliant supernova in the vast emptiness surrounding him.
He had spent as long as he could remember holding onto the belief that the number one hero, his hero from the moment of his quirkless diagnosis, would be the one, the only one, to wholeheartedly support him.
Why did All Might have to say no? Why couldn’t he have just let him hang onto that brilliant dream even if he did inevitably fail? All he ever wanted was to help people. To save them with a smile, just like All Might did.
With the disapproval of his idol… What could he do now?
What could save him from the harsh reality of the world that hated him now?
Izuku continued to cry, concrete digging into his knees. Mourning his dream as it shattered on the pavement and echoed around him within the tunnel. He’ll never be sure of how long he cried, a few minutes? An hour?
It was only until a notebook tumbled past him. His notebook. The pages fluttering in the breeze, trying to take to the air. The title forever burned into his memory, not from this moment, but from how long he had notebooks like this one.
Hero Analysis for the Future #13.
He reached for it before it moved further out of his reach with the wind. Even burned, laden with water, and covered in slime, his notebooks were his safety blanket. Always. No one could take away his fascination with quirks, not since he was five, having just been told he would never have one of his own.
Even beyond the smiling form of the Symbol of Peace, quirks were always his salvation. His distraction from everything as the world beat him down for something out of his control. Why would this time be any different?
Bakugou Katsuki watched as Deku walked into the classroom the next day, head buried within his notebook as he muttered and scribbled at ludicrous speeds. The nerd probably saw another hero fight on the way to school. “Tch.” Despite his attempts to dissuade the freak from becoming a hero and getting himself killed, he never listened to him. “Oi! Deku! Shut up!”
“Sorry, Kacchan!” He’s never actually sorry, Katsuki can tell. If he was, he would stop being a creep and finally do something else instead. At least the muttering had quieted down to only the sound of lead on paper. Soft whisperings came back every so often during their classes, but a quick, small explosive pop from his quirk, Explosion, shut the fucker up.
As the lunch bell rang, Katsuki had enough, moving to block the nerd’s exit. The coward always ran away instead of at least attempting to fight back. How does he expect to be a hero if he can’t even fight for himself? “When will you ever give up Deku?!” He was prepared for the upcoming empty, stuttering apologies. Like always.
He wasn’t prepared for Deku’s slightly blank look, his eyes a dull green, with no stutter in sight. Like the wooden doll of his namesake. “I already have, Kacchan. I’ll never be a hero.” Katsuki stiffened. What does he mean he gives up?! He never gives up!
By the time it took Katsuki to fully process the statement, the nerd was already gone. Likely hiding in some forgotten corner of the school to eat by himself.
Why does it feel like I haven’t achieved victory? I finally won… right?
Later, Katsuki would notice that the nerd’s beloved notebook that he had damaged yesterday had parts of the title crossed out. Hero Analysis for the Future #13.
He doesn’t know how he feels about it.
Since that day, he never told the nerd to shut up again.
Midoriya Inko watched her son, her baby boy. Something was different. He seemed calmer, less frantic in some way. The most relaxed she may have seen him in a long time, but there was something missing too. She couldn’t quite place it.
He wasn’t running desperately out the door. He wasn’t writing into his book with as much intensity as before. There were a few days when she could barely get him to look up from his writing, but now he seemed to be stuck more in his head than in a notebook.
It took embarrassingly long for her to place what was wrong. Too long. It took seeing Izuku’s new bedroom layout, depressingly bare of All Might merch. Something had happened to him, something broke his hero fanaticism, and she didn’t know what it was or could be.
The next time she looked her son in the eye, she finally saw what was missing. The root of what was wrong. The spark in his eyes had dimmed, something had fully broken him. Something had finally shattered his dream of being a hero.
She silently hated that she felt relief.
Her baby’s spirit was crushed, and she felt relieved. All because she couldn’t bare the thought of losing him. Was she a bad mother? She only wanted what was best for Izuku’s wellbeing. Hopefully he would choose a safer passion… She could only hope.
For now, serving his favorite meal, katsudon, to comfort him seemed like a good choice.
It took a few days for Izuku to feel human again. Days spent in a daze as he scribbled and recontextualized everything of what he knew and wondered about regarding quirks. Days with his hand nearly cramping for the first time in years as he wrote and wrote and wrote.
He was stopping by a small store with all sort of bits and bobs, snacks and treats, pencils and paint, pens and paper. It was the perfect place to get notebooks. The old shopkeeper didn’t care who or what he was, always smiling softly as he handed over his yen.
His latest notebook had been a generic thing made for homework and class notes that he grabbed while restocking school supplies at a more generic supply store. This time, though, he wanted something special, something different.
A black notebook decorated with gold stars drawn into constellations called out to him from his peripheral vision. In the center was a gold circle that expanded out with points positioned at a tilt. A smaller circle and a line cut through it. The cover for his first real Quirk Analysis notebook.
He supposed quirks were as beautiful as the stars. Each were unique and each had the power to burn so brightly, if even for a moment. One could look at them all their lives and never find all there is to know. An endless sort of discovery, always something never seen before within the infinite cosmos of possibility.
Izuku skipped home in a lighter mood than he had been in for years, this was a new phase in his life. A fresh start in a way. A step to moving on with his life after the supernova of his dream dying. He would never be a hero, that would have to be okay.
He would make it okay, even if he had to drown himself in a sea of stardust to do so.