Chapter Text
“I’m so sorry Izuku!”
“ If you wanna be a hero so bad there’s an easy way”
“Pray for a quirk in your next life”
“And take a swan dive off the roof! ”
“ No I don’t think you can be a hero”
“Think more realistically”
“A police officer, or a doctor”
The wind blew around Izuku as he stood at the edge of the roof, his backpack thrown carelessly behind him. He stares out past the edge, sky painted in pinks and purples as the sun barely sticks up past the skyline. Tears drip down freckled cheeks, but he doesn’t make a noise as he watches his final sunset. He deserves this much at least, one last pretty thing in his ugly life. Curly green hair is whipped about in the wind, he’d be annoyed by the new tangles if he were going to live long enough for it to matter. He takes a step forward, one violently red Primordial sneaker at a time. Traditionally you’d remove your shoes first, normally he’d remember the symbolism behind it but right now the only thing running through his mind is “sorry” “think realistically” “ swan dive ” he thinks he can be forgiven for forgetting. He’s not going to remove his shoes anyway, he thinks this will say more after all. I mean the one brand of shoes for the quirkless is called Primordial. Prehistoric. Basic. Primitive. His gods awful red sneakers are staying on his feet. His worthless feet with their single extra joint, one little joint declaring him an invalid to the rest of humanity. He takes another step. The sky has gone back to blue now, it’s late enough that no one is walking the sidewalk below, but early enough that he can still see by the remaining sunlight that keeps the sky from being pitch black. There are no stars, light pollution ensures that much. He makes to step closer to the edge, but falters when he hears something hit the roof behind him.
"Kid? What are you doing up here?" Izuku recognized the voice, but he couldn't put a name to it. Too distracted by his pain, by the sadness.
Izuku couldn’t tell you what convinced him to give the stranger a chance, but he turned around. He turned to ask the stranger if he was serious, and in the exact moment he recognized the silhouette as Eraserhead he felt a tug on the back of his shirt and he went tumbling over the edge anyways. He watched in horror as Eraserhead jolted forward and threw out his capture weapon, only for the tug on Izuku’s shirt to rip him just beyond its reach. The wind whistled loudly in his ears but he could still see Eraserheads lips moving around his shout of ‘NO!’ as Izuku fell to the concrete below. His head jolted as his body made contact with cement, and then dropped to the side on its own. In the last moments before unconsciousness hit he saw a terrible sight, his mother smirked at his bloody body, her outstretched hand confirming that the tug he’d felt had been her quirk.
-_-
People often describe waking up as a slow process, like your brain activates, and then your body, like it’s a step by step process you have to work yourself through. Izuku’s never had that happen, isn’t even quite sure if it’s something that really can, and just like normal he wakes all at once. It’s almost like he just blinked when he hit the ground and appeared in a hospital bed. He knows that isn’t what happened, knows he blacked out from the pain and woke up here, but he always finds it a little fascinating how quick it always feels. This isn’t the first time he’s awoke in the hospital, far from it, and the swiftness his mind comes to speed tells him that he’d been put under at some point. His mind always takes just a smidge longer to work through things when his sleep is natural. He blinks open his eyes and is surprised to find the lights already dimmed, it must be rather late in the day then. He goes to look about the room and feels panic course through his body at the sight of his mother sitting in the chair near the window. His mind screams to get her away and he watches in awed horror as her body is lifted and flung from the room in an instant. He knows she shouts in surprise but he can’t hear her over his heart beat in his ears, his sheer terror at the reminder that she’d tried to kill him . As he watched her stand a new person appeared, it was the hero from the night before. Eraserhead quickly entered the room, standing between Izuku and his mother.
“Ma’am you’re clearly stressing him out, for both of your safety I’m going to have to ask you to remain outside.” He closed the door before Inko had the chance to respond. He turned back to Izuku and the fear slowly seeped out of him. “Can you tell me what scared you so bad?”
“Pulled me off ” Izuku mumbled, anxiously fiddling with the blanket. Eraserhead cocked his head and Izuku knew the man hadn’t been able to understand what he’d said. “She pulled me off, her quirk, she pulled my shirt. S-she was sm-smiling when I hit th-the ground.” Eraserhead slumped slightly, eyes widening as anger flitted over him before being swiftly schooled into a false calm expression.
“This is Erasure Hero: Eraserhead, I am with Midoriya Izuku at Musutafu General Hospital in the Hero Ward. As of 8:12 PM I am invoking Emergency Pro-Hero Foster rights on grounds of child abuse and attempted murder. Standing accused is Midoriya Inko, last known location Musutafu General Hospital, Hero Ward, outside the victims room.” Eraserhead spoke directly into his wrist, leading Izuku to assume there was some sort of microphone support gear there. “I’m gonna call a detective I know so we can get a statement from you, okay buddy? In the meantime you should talk to your doctor.” Eraserhead lightly ruffled Izuku’s hair, tapping the call nurse button as he did. It didn’t take more than a minute for a young man in pale blue-green scrubs to enter, his white hair and warm grey eyes sparkled slightly in the artificial light as he looked in at Izuku.
“It’s good to see you awake, my name is Todoroki Natsuo, though I prefer Natsuo. I’m your nurse. What would you like me to call you?” Todoroki Natsuo? That meant, this nurse was one of Endeavor’s children, one of the two middle children who were kept out of the spotlight. Izuku guessed that sort of explained the request to go by his first name.
“I-I’d prefer Izuku, Natsuo-san. Thank you for asking.” Natsuo smiled fondly and Izuku couldn’t help but smile back. “I um, I can’t feel my legs, Natsuo-san. Is that, I mean I know it’s not normal , I guess I just want to know if you know why? If it’s permanent?” Izuku didn’t have a good feeling about it, but at least Natsuo didn’t look scared which means they probably had a feeling this might happen.
“Do you want Eraserhead to stay here or would you rather he leave before I explain what we know?” Natsuo had kept this gentle look on his face the entire time, not quite a smile and not nearly pitying, just gentle, caring. Izuku liked Natsuo, he seemed so nice.
“C-can he stay? He’s, safe.”
“Of course, I’m guessing you want to hear about your legs first?” At Izuku’s nod he continued speaking. “When you fell, you landed on your back, I’m not going to get into the specifics since I’m sure you just want to know what it means for you. You’ve been paralyzed from the waist down, as things stand we don’t have any way to repair the damage to your spinal cord, you’re going to be wheelchair bound Izuku. You only have one other major injury, which is the reason they sent me to talk to you. Your quirk factor has undergone a traumatic mutation, for someone with a quirk this would usually mean a sudden increase in strength of their quirk or the development of a new ability. Someone with five-point activation may develop the ability to control whether their quirk activates, and activation with less than five fingers. Someone with an ice quirk may develop slight control over water, or the ability to make colder ice. But it’s different for the quirkless. There are a lot of theories as to why, and I’d be happy to go over them with you at a later date, but right now you just need to know that the quirkless develop quirks in these situations. Extremely powerful quirks that are usually dangerous for the user as well. You’ve developed a telekinesis quirk from what we’ve seen, it was activating even while you were completely unconscious. Right now you’re on a mild quirk suppressant to keep you from accidentally activating it. While you’re here it’ll be my job to help you understand how it works well enough that you can go off the suppressants before you’re released. You will have to see a licensed quirk counselor when you get out, but I want you to understand that quirk counseling is a kind of therapy. That means if you don't think the quirk counselor you see at first is right for you, you are allowed to find a different one. No quirk counselor is going to click with everyone and that's okay." Natsuo spoke calmly and clearly, and he made sure to keep talking so Izuku wouldn't get stuck spiraling on one topic. He was good, Izuku liked him. Eraserhead nodded, then seemed to consider something for a moment.
"My husband, best friend and I are all licensed quirk counselors, but it's up to Izuku if he wants to go to one of us or find someone else. As long as he's safe and happy, I'm happy." Izuku flushes violently at this, unused to the idea of someone putting him first.
"Good, he deserves to be happy. The world isn't kind to the quirkless, so we need to be kind in it's place. You treat this boy well, okay Aizawa-San? There's enough corrupt heroes in the world, don't you go adding to that." Is, the number two heroes third child threatening The Underground Hero , to protect Izuku ??? No one has ever treated Izuku like this, like he matters. He doesn't know how to handle it, so instead he shoved it deep down in his gut to have a panic attack over later.
-_-
Izuku was in the hospital for a total of two weeks, Recovery Girl had come in and got most of his injuries healed, but they wanted him to get used to the feeling of his new quirk and paralysis before they let him go. His mom still hadn’t been found, and he was terrified she’d show up when he least expected to get the job done. They also hadn’t been able to find a social worker for him, apparently they all suddenly couldn’t handle any new cases as soon as they found out how long he was quirkless. So Izuku would be going home with Eraserhead, who’d told him his real name was Aizawa-Yamada Shouta. He had two other people living with him, his husband Aizawa-Yamada Hizashi aka Present Mic!!! who was apparently loud but harmless, and their adopted son Aizawa-Yamada Hitoshi who was supposedly quiet and snarky. Aizawa-san said that his son was around Izuku’s age, that they’d met him much the same way as Izuku and he was still recovering. Aizawa-san seemed to think they might trauma bond, Izuku kindly disagreed. There was a hierarchy to quirk discrimination, and the quirkless were firmly at the bottom. Currently Izuku was using his new quirk to push his wheelchair along behind Aizawa-san as they walked the rest of the way to his house, it was supposed to help him get used to using his quirk in small amounts, and get used to how it felt to use it at all. They’d registered his quirk as Spirit, after he’d used it to lift himself up and float to his wheelchair. Apparently he’d looked like a little green spirit, and with how he’d gotten it the name seemed fitting.
“Zashi, Toshi, we’re home!” The blonde who came running with a huge grin must be Present Mic, Izuku was a little surprised to learn he had heterochromia. One eye lime green and the other bright red. Behind him a purple haired boy that must be Hitoshi simply glared at Izuku silently. “Izuku, meet my husband Aizawa-Yamada Hizashi.” Izuku waived from his chair but said nothing. “And hiding behind him like a grumpy little gremlin child is our son, Hitoshi. Zashi, Toshi, this is Izuku. He’ll be living with us for the foreseeable future, he’s been through a lot so be nice to him.” Hitoshi withered slightly so Izuku assumed Aizawa-san must have glared at him.
“I-I’m s-sorry to in-intrude.” Izuku bowed as best he could, but without his quirk he couldn’t go too far without risking falling out of his wheelchair.
“Toshi, could you help Izuku unpack his things? Zashi and I will make dinner.” The excuse was obvious, Aizawa-san wanted the kids out of the way while he spoke with his husband. Izuku would play along. He used his quirk to lift the front of his chair so he could wheel himself inside behind Aizawa-san. Izuku didn’t want to risk attempting to use his quirk without the assurance that Aizawa-san would be there to turn it off if it got out of control, so he simply rolled himself after Hitoshi by hand. The other boy didn’t say a word, or look back to see if Izuku was following, just walked away towards a hallway with an affirmative grunt. Izuku simply did his best to follow without bothering him.
“This is the room Papa set up for you. I said to put you in the guest room but apparently he thinks you’ll be here for a while.” Izuku frowned slightly, but was thankful Hitoshi was turned away and thus could not see it.
“S-sorry, social workers won’t t-take me. Your fa-athers were the only ones that w-would agree. It, p-probab-bly won’t be long bef-fore they de-decide I sh-should ju-ust take my c-chances on the streets.” Hitoshi scoffed, turning to look at Izuku now that they were both in the room.
“And why on earth would they do that? Telekinesis quirk so powerful they have Dad on standby in case you decide to kill us all, and you’re in a wheelchair so they feel bad for you. I’m stuck with you, whether I like it or not.” Izuku’s frown only deepened as his brows furrowed, did Hitoshi not know about him, about why he was here?
“D-did they not, t-tell you why I’m here? What, what happened?” Hitoshi cocked a brow and plopped himself on the bed.
“You got hurt and can’t walk anymore, mom’s missing, and I’m supposed to run for Dad if you start flinging shit with your mind. What the fuck more is there to know?” He didn’t know much of anything then. Maybe, they wanted Izuku to tell Hitoshi himself? Or they, were just trying to respect his privacy while still making sure Hitoshi knew what buttons not to push?
“I tried to kill myself. Or, I was going to, didn’t actually get the chance. I was, was standing on top of a skyscraper, got left there by a hero who’s quirkism overshadowed his obligation to do what’s right. O-oh kami I can’t believe I just said that about All Might I’m gonna die! E-either way! I was about to jump, just wanted to watch the sunset first, didn’t get a lot of pretty things in my life so I thought I, I des-served at least that. Someone jumped up onto the building behind me, asked what I was doing. I c-couldn’t begin to tell you why, but I turned around, maybe to ask if he was serious, maybe to spit out my reasoning and lose faith in heroes even more. I had just enough time to register that I was looking at f-fucking Eraserhead before something t-tugged me off the roof by my shirt. Last thing I saw before I blacked out was my mother, grinning at my broken body, hand out from using her quirk to pull me off. In life or death situations, people have always been known for performing seemingly superhuman acts. Mothers lifting cars off of their children, sexual assault victims biting the fingers off of their assaulters. When people are in those high stress situations, their bodies turn off their limiters. When quirks started appearing, those same things started happening with peoples quirks, but now the changes were permanent. It’s called a Traumatic Quirk Mutation, a mutation of the quirk factor in an extremely stressful situation, your body's last ditch effort to keep you alive. For most people, that means unlocking some new ability with your quirk. My mother’s quirk is Small Object Attraction, if she actually loved me she m-may have developed the ability to push things when she saw me on the roof. But what do you think would happen if you were quirkless?”
“What the hell does this have to do with anything?”
“You’ll understand when I’m done. Here’s the thing, if you were really quirkless, nothing would happen. You wouldn’t have a quirk factor to mutate. But there’s no longer a such thing as truly quirkless people. At least, none have been born in the last 30 odd years. Yet the number of kids diagnosed as quirkless has been rising in those 30 years. Because quirks are getting too strong. Too powerful for a kid to safely handle. Quirkless kids today exist because their bodies disabled their quirk factor for their own protection. So when someone quirkless is in those situations their body enables their quirk, a quirk so powerful it wasn’t safe for them to have when it was supposed to awaken. If I’d had my quirk when I was 4 like everyone else, I would have torn myself and everyone around me into confetti. I fell off of that building quirkless and woke up with a telekinesis quirk so powerful that I was able to fling my mother from my hospital room while on enough quirk suppressants that they legally couldn’t up the dosage because it would risk killing me. The nurse informed me that, while unconscious and in quirk suppression cuffs, I was rattling the entire hospital so much people thought there had been an earthquake. Why would they get rid of me? Even the nicest person anyone in my life had ever met, the sweetest most loving mother, was willing to pull me off of a roof to rid the world of her quirkless mistake. Every social worker in Japan refused to take my case when they found out I was quirkless before I got pulled off that roof. Even All Might, mister ‘anyone can be a hero as long as they work for it’ himself, told me to be realistic and then left me on a locked roof. Aizawa-san may say my quirklessnes doesn’t matter, but I have no confidence in it staying that way. Aizawa-san didn’t tell you to get him if I started ‘flinging shit’ because he thought I might attack someone, he said it because if I lose control on the quirk I’ve had for maybe two weeks I could accidentally kill everyone in this building and he’s the only one that could stop me.” Hitoshi was staring now, wide eyed as he put together just how wrong his assumptions had been.
“Guess I’ve got a little brother now, Dad and Papa are never letting someone else get ahold of you, and you clearly need someone around to remind you that being quirkless doesn’t make you worth any less than anyone else.”
“W-wait what?” Hitoshi pushed off of the bed, pulled Izuku’s single box of things off of his lap, and smiled sadly at Izuku.
“Is it okay if I hug you?” Izuku nodded, in a bit of a daze. He had expected Hitoshi to ask why his parents had taken Izuku in at all, not to claim him as a sibling and ask to hug him?
-_-
By the time Shouta and Hizashi went to check on Izuku and Hitoshi, make sure they hadn’t killed each other, the boys were sound asleep in Izuku’s bed. Izuku curled into Hitoshi’s chest, small hands gripping the older boys shirt. They’d worried they wouldn’t like each other, especially with how Hitoshi had reacted when Shouta brought Izuku home, they were glad to see they wouldn’t have to worry about that.