Chapter Text
He was eight when he coughed up the first petal.
Excited, but still confused because it kinda hurt, he showed it to him mom and hadn’t quite understood when she’d broken out into tears. Why was she crying? He’d gotten a quirk! Right?
They ended up going to the doctor's office that same day, their pediatrician looking stunned when he’d gotten his hands on the small yellow petal.
It wasn’t big at all, longer than it was wide, and a soft shade of baby yellow and the doctor identified it as a chrysanthemum as he elaborated on why it’d come out of his mouth.
Hanahaki was why, a disease based on unrequited love.
He chewed on the inside of his cheek, not really knowing what that meant. It was his mother who had to explain that it sometimes happens when you liked someone and they didn’t like you back in the same way.
Oh, he frowned.
He knew who it was, then.
The doctor, much more gentle as he explained this than when he’d broken the news that he was quirkless, gave them their options.
There was no true cure. You can confess to who you like and see if they’ll work to reciprocate, or if it’ll at least take the weight off your chest. You can also leave it to grow, but that was the option that ended up causing the most fatalities.
There was also the chance that the crush would fade with time, as frequently happened with Hanahaki that developed in children under twelve.
He nodded again, fidgeting hard as his mom thanked the doctor for his time.
The doctor just smiled, letting Izuku take a sticker from the basket on his way out.
Hand in hand, him and his mom were quiet all the way home, the silence breaking when they got into the living room.
“Izuku,” she prompted softly, “who is it that you like, sweetheart?” He swallowed thickly, picking at his hands.
“Kacchan,” he answered, because there really was no other option. She nodded, chin wobbling, as she swept him up into an embrace.
He melted into the hug, tears prickling in the back of his eyes when she asked another question. “Do you want to tell him?”
Shaking his head as he buried it deeper into her shoulder, she just hummed, gripping him tighter as the two of them sunk to the ground.
-
Hanahaki wasn’t too hard to manage. Once every three weeks or so he’d have a short coughing spell that would result in getting a new petal.
He’d taken to adding them to a glass mason jar that had taken up residence on the corner of his desk.
That was another thing. The petals never decayed or wilted and when he’d brought it up to his mom, she’d smiled sadly and ruffled his hair, quipping about how he’d start keeping a notebook to track it just like he tracked quirks.
That wasn’t too bad of an idea, actually.
He started writing small notes in an extra hero notebook he’d yet to use. Just things like how he’d feel tired an hour before and after coughing up a petal and how they all maintained the same size.
After the routine kept itself up for a few months, he realized there wasn’t much else he could write about.
Bringing it up to his mom (again, they kinda told each other everything) had made her frown and schedule another doctors appointment for the next day.
The doctor ended up frowning, looking through his notes for a brief second before frowning even deeper.
Early stages of chronic Hanahaki, he’d told them.
His mom looked horrified but he still hadn’t exactly understood what that meant.
“Izuku, that means that the flowers are going to last for a few years, or longer than that.” She told him, softly, and he nodded. The petals weren’t too bad, he could deal with that.
The doctor started speaking again. “While chronic Hanahaki isn’t as lethal as its more common counterpart, it can still develop into the more dangerous version overtime if the relationship progresses or changes.” Izuku nodded, kicking his legs from where he sat on the tall doctors office seat.
He already spent the whole day with Kacchan because they were in the same class. They couldn’t get much closer than that.
The doctor gave his mom more advice as he was sent to dig through the stickers for another one that he liked.
A few minutes passed and he ended up leaving with an All Might sticker with his mom in tow as she carried a few pamphlets and packets with her.
-
Eight turned to nine turned to ten and his symptoms remained consistent.
He’d taken to being quiet in class, not liking the way his heart pounded and lungs ached whenever Kacchan’s attention shifted to him.
It all changed after school though, when Kacchan or his friends would pick on someone and he’d step in. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence, but he’d end up going home with bruises and singed hair at least once a month.
There became a correlation between the bullying and the Hanahaki.
He would get hurt, go home to lick his wounds, then cough up a petal the next morning. It was like his body was trying to give him as much of a break as it could.
-
Middle school was harder.
Kacchan would zero in on him more frequently, calling names and drawing blood on a few occasions and the frequency increased up to a petal every two weeks.
The peak though, was in their final year, and the day Kacchan told him to take a swan dive off the roof.
He managed to keep himself composed for the first few minutes after that, then though, it was just a matter of trying to get home without bursting into tears.
Then there was that whole issue with the sludge villain and meeting All Might and Kacchan being attacked and he'd almost forgotten about it, too preoccupied with everything else.
Kacchan confronting him after the attack had been a breaking point, his whole chest aching and aching and he cried for more than one reason when All Might told him that he'd be able to be a hero despite his quirklessness and chronic disease (not that the man knew about that, some things he had to keep to himself). Dragging himself back home after that made him dizzy, his breath rattling in his chest and every time he tried to get a deep inhale it felt like he was breathing through a straw.
That night his mom had to keep him from complete hysterics when he gagged out a clump of three petals at once.
He caught her calling their pediatrician after that, her voice low, and he didn't have the energy to listen in, just turning in for the night and pushing past the dull ache in the back of his throat where one of the petals had gotten lodged before he'd been able to pick it out.
-
That was the lowest point of middle school. Things had turned around after that. Considering how strict the regime that All Might put him through was, he didn't have any time to dwell on Kacchan or the Hanahaki.
The disease still continued at the same rate, Kacchan having decided to just ignore him after the Sludge villain ordeal made it so he coughed up a single petal every three weeks like clockwork and he was silently appreciative of being left alone.
Then he finished training, received the power, arrived at Yuuei to take the exam and ended up nearly killing himself.
He'd've just been ashamed at his almost certain failure if the woman who'd healed him, Recovery Girl, hadn't dragged him straight to her office afterwards.
She gave him an odd look, the wrinkles in her face setting into deep lines and he had a sinking feeling that he knew what this was about.
"My quirk allows me to speed up the healing process, letting the body recover much faster than it would normally." And his hands felt clammy at that, throat tightening. "Sometimes though, I can tell that there are injuries that are deeper, more dangerous, that I can't set any of my power towards." She gave him a soft look at that and he shifted his gaze to the floor. "If you become a student here I'd like to know what it is. I take my student's health very seriously."
He nodded, not having it in him to tell her that he'd probably failed the exam.
She let him leave, shoving a few more candies in his direction before she went back to her papers.
-
A few days later he got the message that he'd been accepted into the hero course and him and his mom celebrated by crying for three straight hours.
-
The first day was scary but he was relieved to recognize the girl from the entrance exam. Her being equally as thrilled to see him again made him flush in embarrassment and stutter and she'd just laughed off his awkwardness. He really hoped that they could be friends, he'd like that a lot, honestly.
Kacchan being in the same class was a little bit awkward though.
His new quirk would be an issue but since Kacchan had left him alone in the last part of middle school, everything would probably be okay! Hopefully!
Their teacher interrupted them all in their talking and Izuku was immediately intimidated by the man.
Then there was the whole "impress me or be expelled thing" and he realized that maybe he wouldn't have to explain the situation to Recovery Girl! At least there was a bright side to the situation.
Not that he wanted to get expelled! He just really hated talking about it, it kinda made his lungs hurt if he thought about the illness itself for too long.
The first part of the test was pretty awful if he was being honest.
Then though! He'd been able to launch the baseball with his new quirk and only broke one finger!
That was progress if he'd ever seen any!
Kacchan went ballistic at that though and his breath stuttered for half a second before he saw him get restrained by the teacher.
As much as Kacchan scared him sometimes, seeing him held back like that reminded him far too much of the sludge villain for him to feel completely comfortable.
Their teacher (he really should start calling him by his actual hero name) ended up telling them that he'd been lying about one of them being expelled and he breathed out a thin sigh of relief, his lungs whining at that. Then he'd finally been dismissed to go see Recovery Girl and the anxiety from before came back in an instant.
His knees kept locking when he made the walk down to the clinic, feeling more like a death march than anything.
She tutted lightly when she saw him in the doorway, giving his finger a quick kiss before forcing him to sit down.
"You do remember what I told you the day of exams right? I would like to know what that feeling in the middle of your chest is, I'm having difficulties even trying to guess as to what it could be." Her tone was gentle and grandmotherly and he closed his eyes, figuring it was just better to get it over with.
"It's uh, it's chronic Hanahaki," she tutted softly but let him continue. "I've had it for most of my life, it's not too bad, I'm able to manage it pretty well." Nerves going haywire, he breathed deeply in an attempt to calm down, his breath stuttering in his chest. "I get a new petal every three weeks or so and it's been that way since I was little."
She nodded slowly, looking as if she was finding it difficult to accept his explanation. "Cases of chronic Hanahaki are rare in kids your age. I'm not going to try and force any more diagnoses or care ideas because I can imagine that your doctor and parents have already tried everything in the book." He nodded, feeling more than a little bit relieved that she wasn't demanding more information. "I just want you to keep your limits in mind, lung conditions are awful little things to have to work out. Make sure not to strain yourself too hard, it could exacerbate those little petals into something a bit harder to deal with."
He nodded again and she sent him off with a small handful of lollipops.
Maybe telling people wasn't so bad of an idea after all.
-
Considering this was a hero school, he shouldn’t’ve been so surprised when group-oriented lessons started cropping up.
His first one pitting him against Kacchan though, that was something that fate must’ve planned up specifically for him.
Being chased through the interior of the apartment complex made his chest rattle but the realization that he now had the opportunity to fight back in some sort of way steeled his resolve. Coordinating with Uraraka during it all was hard but the difficulties of that paled in comparison to the struggle between his body and mind as he had to look Kacchan in the eyes and face him down.
Physically flipping Kacchan made his head spin but it was far easier than when the grenades on Kacchan’s arms exploded the windows of an entire floor of the apartment complex, making his ears ring as he tried to figure out some sort of way for him and Uraraka to win.
The lesson ended with one of his arms destroyed from his own quirk, and the other arm blown to near smithereens from Kacchan’s explosions.
When he collapsed the only thing he could think about was Kacchan’s expression, the teenager looking as if he’d been struck, and how he finally felt as if he’d taken control of the root cause of his illness for once.
-
Waking up in Recovery Girl’s office and immediately coughing up petals into a trashcan that she’d provided for him showed just how wrong he was about the control thing.
Over his coughing he could hear the sounds of her tutting softly as she moved about the room. “You seem to forget about your chronic illness whenever you fight. You have to take it into consideration from now on, this Hanahaki isn’t a game.” He tried to nod but that just forced another petal out from the depths of his lungs and distantly he wondered how many petals he’d coughed up this time.
It seemed like a lot.
Wiping his eyes with the tissue she’d just handed him, he blew his nose into it as well. A coughing session always tired him out just as much as throwing up did.
She began speaking again, talking about how long he was allowed to stay here before he had to go back to class, and he absently listened as he began to count how many petals he’d lost this time.
’Four seems like, too much.’ His inner monologue was quiet, wavering, and he heard Recovery Girl pause in her talking as he stared down into the trashcan.
The office was quiet for a few moments before her voice filled the room again. “Is it getting worse, Midoriya?” He closed his eyes.
She ended up calling his mom to come pick him up and he was so grateful he could’ve cried.
-
Ignoring the Hanahaki became a part of his normal routine.
Slipping it into the other new parts of his daily routine, like going to Yuuei instead of his middle school, talking with Uraraka and Iida, and eventually, dealing with the League of Villains whenever they cropped up, wasn’t too difficult.
The year progressed though, and eventually Todoroki and Tsuyu were added to their group, eventually bigger fights cropped up, and then Kacchan was kidnapped.
(It had been seven petals that first night in the hospital and he trembled so hard he’d been afraid that he’d shake himself apart in that hospital bed.)
He began coughing up two petals every two weeks and the realization that it was consistently getting worse made his hands tremble and chest ache and he could only get so much support from Recovery Girl before things began stagnating (and regressing).
Ignoring the Hanahaki wasn’t helping him because he wasn’t able to ignore Katsuki like he’d been able to in middle school.
There the two of them had been encouraged to remain away from each other, the teachers and students reinforcing the differences between the quirkless kid and the student with the most impressive quirk. Here though, teamwork was encouraged and the amount of times they’d been forced to interact was becoming more than he could keep track of.
The dorms made everything especially difficult. He really didn’t like the dorms.
Progressively, it became more of a “how much time will the illness give me?” and less of a “I’ll be able to get past it eventually.”.
-
He was running errands with his mom that weekend, the two of them having split up to get more done in less time and it was in the line of the grocery store where he heard something that turned his world upside down.
The couple in front of him were talking about something inane at first and he just listened because he was bored, but when their topic shifted he had to struggle not to lose his grip on the grocery basket.
“Can you believe that they finally found a cure to Hanahaki? Well, a surgery but still!” His throat tightened and he had to try to keep his knees from giving out.
“I know, it’s crazy, the doctor who came up with it is gonna be famous.” The deep voice of the guy answered and Izuku was struggling to breathe. There was a cure?
When their groceries were done being scanned he was called up by the employee, the girl taking one look at his expression before snorting. “Geez kid, you’re looking rough.” A weak laugh left him as she scanned his items. “Tell ya what, I’ll give ya a few discount codes just to see if it’ll wipe that frown off ya face.” He tried to frantically explain that no he was okay and she definitely didn’t need to do that but it just seemed to encourage her.
He left the grocery store with what was collectively a 30% discount and the knowledge that maybe his case wasn’t completely hopeless.
-
Considering him and his mom told each other everything (well, mostly everything) she ended up finding out about the surgery later that night when they were making food with each other.
She dropped a plate when he told her.
“Are- are you sure?” Her voice was wobbly and his eyes immediately teared up because Goddammit Pavlov, this happened all the time.
“Yeah,” he rasped, moving to grab his phone so he could actually look this up before he got their hopes up too high. “I heard these two people talking about it in the store. It’s a surgery or something like that, but I’m pretty sure they were being serious about it.” She just cried harder and his chin wobbled when the search results came up.
News articles titled “French doctor discovers miracle surgery to cure Hanahaki!” and “Hanahaki cure confirmed, surgery instructions set to be made international knowledge in mere weeks” made him and his mother cry on the kitchen floor in abject relief for almost an hour.
At least they hadn’t put anything on the stove yet.
-
Laying down in the dorm that night, having returned after him and his mom actually managed to get food made, was when he finally let his mind race.
Sure the surgery would help, it would cure him, but what about Kacchan? Shifting in the bed, he stared at the wall, eyes tired. Realistically he knew that Kacchan didn’t know and he wouldn’t care because he had no idea, but was it a cop out if Izuku got the surgery?
Closing his eyes, he thought back to the near-full mason jar of petals in his old room, and he knew what he had to do.
-
He’d known that his mom had called in to make an appointment that same night, but he also kinda just wished that she hadn’t made it during school hours.
Listening to Aizawa-Sensei’s lecture, he’d been absentmindedly taking notes and had been completely startled when the intercom crackled on. “Midoriya Izuku to the front office for dismissal please.” An unfamiliar voice spoke before the intercom turned off with another sharp crack.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled uncomfortably when his classmates looked at him with wide eyes. Aizawa’s eyebrow pricked up and he looked as if he expected an answer. An awkward laugh left him as he tried to explain. “It’s just a doctors appointment, sorry for it being during class.” Uraraka was giving him a look that meant that he’d have to elaborate on that later.
Aizawa just waved him away and he grabbed his stuff, making a beeline towards the door.
His skin itched at the idea of Kacchan wondering why he was leaving.
-
The doctors office was just like how he remembered it.
He ended up getting a normal physical before they could ask any questions, the man looking more than a bit concerned when he heard the sounds of Izuku’s breathing through the stethoscope. Considering there was no medication for him to even get, the man just proceeded to their actual reason for the checkup.
“Over the phone you mentioned questions about the new options for people with Hanahaki, correct?” The two of them nodded and the man sighed, looking over his clipboard. “You may not like what I have to say about the surgery, but it does need to be said.”
Izuku was excited, hope bubbling up inside his chest when he heard about the first part of the procedure that disconnected the roots and leaves and flowers themselves that took up place in the lungs, even managing to take them out of the esophagus if they got that far. The idea of not having a routine that revolved around an illness made his heart pound with excitement and he almost missed the second half of the conversation.
“However,” the doctor continued, looking morose and Izuku had to hold himself back from gripping his mom’s hand. “There is one side effect that occurs each time without fail.” He watched as the man adjusted his glasses. “Once the Hanahaki flowers are removed from your system, all feelings towards the object of your affections will disappear. Negative or positive, it will just be a blank slate, as the flowers were a cultivation of the feelings. Once they’re gone, everything is gone.”
And all he could hear after that was white noise.
-
They ended up thanking the doctor before leaving and he almost didn’t hear his mom’s soft question as they walked out onto the street. “Do you want to do it Izuku?”
Did he?
The concept of not feeling anything towards Kacchan made his head spin, but was he really better off living with something that would eventually kill him?
His mom was quiet as he thought it over, throat tight, his breath growing more and more ragged as he thought about Kacchan.
Despite Kacchan’s attitude, Izuku’s admiration for him was something that he never wanted to forget. Tears pricking at his eyes, he thought about all the moments where he’d been stunned by just how amazing the blond was and how much of his adoration for him had shifted into feelings of personal courage and ended up enhancing his own desire to become a better hero.
Kacchan made him a better version of himself, even if he didn’t know it.
He, he just couldn’t. Not when Kacchan was such a big part of his life, important to the point where he couldn’t even comprehend a world without him.
“No, I’m, I’m sorry mom. I can’t.” He felt her arms wrap around him and he just let himself be held.
Her voice was thin and watery when she spoke again. “Okay Izuku. If you get worse though, I want you to think it over again, okay?”
He just nodded numbly and let himself be led home, the hope that had been forming in his chest crumbling more with each step they took away from the doctors office.