Chapter Text
Izuku isn’t like the other kids in his kindergarten class.
He isn’t as loud, for one. Every kid there is always so loud, always talking and laughing and screaming and crying. Dad would never let Izuku get away with that at home, and it makes Izuku wonder why other kids’ dads let them be so noisy. He wonders why his Dad wants Izuku so quiet.
And that another thing—Izuku’s Dad. It’s always just Izuku and Dad (unless its just Izuku), but every other kid seems to have a mom, too. Sometimes Izuku gets so curious that he almost forgets the Quiet rule, and the No Questions rule, and nearly asks where his mom is. His mom is probably really pretty, like all the other moms, and really nice too. Izuku likes to sit and imagine things like that—what his mom must look like—during recess or class, or really, all the time. None of the other kids seem to think as much either, but thinking was his favorite thing.
The biggest difference of all, however, was his quirk. Or lack of thereof.
Every other kid in class had a quirk by now, ranging from fragile illusions to wild explosions, but Izuku just never seemed to get his. The teachers looked on him with sad eyes, and tried to convince him that quirklessness was just as special as having a quirk, and some of his nicer classmates would apologize, like they made him quirkless. It became a bad thing, a horribly depressing thing, to be quirkless—that is, until Bakugou, the kid with the coolest quirk in class, started laughing at him for it. Then it was suddenly hilariously pitiful, and Izuku was suddenly pathetic. Any kid would hate being quirkless, and every hates a quirkless kid.
But Izuku wasn’t like the other kids in his kindergarten class. Maybe in the whole world.
He was deeply, completely, relieved.
Izuku didn’t like Dad very much. Dad was big and powerful, he was always right, and, more importantly, he was scary.
His fire was scary.
At five years old, Izuku had touched Dad’s fire two times, though he’s seen it much more often. Dad’s fire is raging blue and hot, pouring from his mouth and fighting to touch anything it sees. Dad loves his fire, but Izuku hates it.
“Midoriyas do not cry! You will not cry!”
It isn’t just that Dad’s fire hurts, or that it’s so bright, or even that it shows up in his dreams—it’s that it’s evil.
“Please—p-please, Hisashi! We’re friends, yeah? Yeah? D-don’t—”
Dad loves to bring people home, down into the basement, to do something. It’s a bad something. Evil, like the villains on tv, with sneer smiles and the people screaming next to them. The something always includes Dad’s fire, and Izuku can always tell when he’s using it on those people, in the basement.
Izuku watches All Might’s debut on the computer, turning the volume so low that he’s almost pressed against the monitor just to hear it. Dad doesn’t let Izuku use the computer, or allow heroes, so id Dad finds out Izuku broke two Rules, he’ll be in a lot of trouble.
But Dad is in the basement again, using his fire, and he won’t be out for a long, long time.
And it’s always worth it.
Only villains hurt people. Heroes save them. And Dad…
The video ends, but the thrill lasts. All Might is so amazing. Izuku clicks REPLAY, watches the screen load, and—
Screams pierce the air. Izuku jumps. They’re not coming from the video.
…Dad is not a hero.
Middle school is going just about as well as Izuku thought it would. Which is to say, pretty horribly.
His grades are perfect, of course (it’s a Rule), and he never gets in trouble. It’s the people that make school so terrible.
Izuku just doesn’t get people. Especially emotions. They always seem to be trading little secrets with their eyes, or their hands, or even right in front of him, and he is always out of the loop. It’s as if everyone speaks another language or something, and he’s supposed to know what it is. One thing he does know, though, is that people get very upset that he doesn’t understand them—and when they can’t understand him.
There are bullies at middle school, too. Bakugou is the worst of them, but there’s also the occasional event from Maeda and Ueno, to name very few. It’s annoying at best and bruising at worst, but with Bakugou, it’s almost as bad as being back home with Dad. Almost. Just barely.
The teachers are no help, either, since they’ll do anything to avoid confrontation (or really, to avoid Izuku). Take Mr. Hattori, who keeps assigning Izuku to the same seat in the corner of the class, out of sight and out of mind. At least he’s next to a window.
The lunch bell rings and cuts off Mr. Hattori from answering a question about his lecture on the Iberian Peninsula (or trying to), and he doesn’t bother to finish it before quickly heading out the door. It’s half funny, half incredibly sad that he has always been the first out of the door every single day.
Students gravitate towards their cliques and head out the door, leaving only a few kids left at their desks—including Izuku. The cafeteria is loud and full of people, so Izuku just packs his own lunch and stays away. No one really bothers him, anyways.
“Hey! Deku!” Nevermind.
It’s Ueno, who is, surprisingly, not trailing behind Bakugou like a dumb dog. That’s probably a good thing. He’s probably here to fatten his ego or something, and while Ueno never really gets handsy without Bakugou’s go-ahead, Izuku doesn’t really need to take any chances. He shoots out of his chair, gathers his things, pivots, and heads to the door.
“Hey, useless, I’m talking to you!” Ueno says, like that’s going to make Izuku stop.
He’s at the door, hand on the knob, when suddenly it starts shaking, denting in places, until it finally pops off and lands at his shoes sadly. Right, Ueno’s quirk—metal compression. Izuku tries the door, but it won’t slide without its handle.
“Uh-oh,” Ueno drawls, hands crossed and leaning against the one other door to the classroom, on the same wall and directly across from Izuku’s busted getaway. “You’re stuck in here, now, huh?” Ugh, he has on that stupid smile.
“I have to say, this is a pretty smart move for you, Ueno,” Izuku says, giving up on having a quiet lunch, “but you broke the door. Didn’t they say you only needed one more infraction before you were suspended? Again?”
Ueno’s smile slipped into one of his usual frowns, and he quikly stalked across the room towards Izuku. Maybe being mouthy wasn’t the best idea, considering Ueno tends to get violent the moment his small brain can’t conjure up a come-back. Izuku took a step back.
“I didn’t break it,” he said, and, god, it was one of those things that went right over Izuku’s head. Where they say something and mean something else—and he could never guess what that something else was. “Did I, Deku?”
“Um…” Izuku looked to the crushed door knob, the door, and back into Ueno’s beady brown eyes. “You… did? You did.”
Ueno pushed him against the wall and growled. Wrong answer. “You broke it, Deku.” Also wrong answer. The confusion must have shown on his face, because Ueno started laughing like he’d seen the funniest thing in the world. “You really are such a Deku.” And he was back to smiling.
And then it clicked. “Did you come here… to frame me for breaking a door knob?” Actually, maybe that wasn’t it. Because that is incredibly stupid.
“Let’s just say I came here to have some fun,” and then Ueno is laughing again, and Izuku has no idea what he means. Maybe breaking door knobs is fun for him. But still…
“I don’t see how you’re going to blame me for this,” Izuku blurts, and here comes one of his rants, oh no, “the doorknob isn’t just knocked off, it’s crushed. You’d either have to have a strength agumentation quirk or your quirk to crush a doorknob, and everyone knows I’m quirkless, and I don’t really see how you could frame it as an accident either, because how would you even do something like that without a quirk? Why? And my record is almost perfectly clean, anyways, and yours is not—whose to say a teacher would believe you? Why would I break a doorknob? Plus there are two other people in here who saw you do—”
And that’s why Izuku is walking home with a black eye.
Ueno, of course, did not get in trouble for assaulting (a Deku) a student, but, luckily, he did get in trouble for destruction of school property. Which means he’s totally suspended, and Izuku won’t have to deal with him until he gets back. This isn’t even the worst black eye he’s ever had (not even close), so… this is a win. Definitely.
The house is empty when he gets home, which has become a more and more frequent thing these past few weeks. There haven’t been any… visitors for a while, either, come to think of it, which is only ever a good thing.
Homework is easy this week, as it always is, and it’s done within the next hour, even though it’s a Friday. The weekend is always busy with Miss Emma’s training, so it’s better to get things done as soon as possible.
He lets time slip away while writing in his journal, the one reserved for quirk analysis, before he switches to drawing out his daydreams. Only when the sun is too dim to light his sketchbook does he realize that Dad isn’t home yet.
Izuku starts on dinner (katsudon, whenever he can choose) in case Dad come home from work angry. Izuku scoffs, laying out the cutting board.
Work. As if.
In his younger years, Izuku thought Dad worked at some office job, like most parents. Or, less thought and more assumed. Dad never told and Izuku is not allowed to ask. But Izuku is thirteen now, nearly fourteen, and he’s not as naïve as he was then.
Dad is almost certainly a villain.
Izuku has an entire secret notebook dedicated to decoding the mystery that is Hisashi Midoriya, and while he has been writing in it for some years now, he hasn’t gotten as far as he would’ve hoped.
I’ve been listening in on Dad when he has visitors over, especially when he takes them to the basement. He never brings civilians into the house—it’s always people he probably… works with. Villains. They’re his friends, almost. He’s their boss.
He only takes them to the basement if they don’t work well enough for him.
Izuku can’t bring himself to think about what would happen if Dad ever found the notebook. Maybe he’d go down to the basement for the first time. Izuku doesn’t dwell on it.
Dinner is finished quickly, and Izuku saran-wraps the other bowl and places it in front of Dad’s chair. He still isn’t home, but Izuku isn’t missing him, that’s for sure.
Izuku sets an alarm for five in the morning, sets several, on the clock next to his bed before lying down. It’s only eight, but Izuku has learned by now never to be late to a training with Miss Emma. He stares at his nightlight and goes through all of the adjectives he knows until sleep steals him.
By five-ten, Izuku is dressed in the usual sweats and tank top, backpack full of first aid, water, food, and a few knives, waiting at the front door for Dad come down from his room. The sky is still dark, inky black covering any stars, and none of the neighbors are up at such an ungodly hour. Despite that Miss Emma has been training his since he turned six, he still isn’t immune to Saturday’s early routine.
The oven clock reads five-thriteen, which is… late, for Dad. Which… never happens.
One of the Rules is to never touch Dad’s room, which includes Dad’s door, so Izuku doesn’t dare move to check if he might still be asleep. It doesn’t seem probable anyways, because he doesn’t remember a time when Dad ever slept in by accident. Or… did anything by accident.
“There is no excuse, ever. Everything happens with conviction, and never by chance.”
Except the oven clock hits five-twenty, and now Izuku is starting to worry. He should have been out of the house by five-twelve (it’s routine), and he hasn’t been this late in years. Miss Emma hates tardiness with a passion—if he doesn’t leave right now, she’s going to make Saturday hell on earth. Izuku knows this, Dad knows this, it’s a Rule, so where is he?
About thirty more seconds pass before Izuku finds himself in front of Dad’s door.
It isn’t a special door at all, aside from being at the end of a hallway. It’s the same white door that’s on Izuku’s room, even in the same hallway, but it still manages to be the most intimidating thing Izuku has looked at in a few days. This is probably the closest he’s been to Dad’s room in years.
He raises his hand to knock, but thinks better of it (never touch Dad’s room), and opts to step back and twist his hands together behind his back.
“…Dad?” He tries, then waits. Nothing. “Dad?”
Nothing.
Izuku tries one more before fear gets the better of him, and he tiptoes back to the living room, squeezing the straps of his backpack. That didn’t work, at all. It was just an unnecessary dose of adrenaline, and really, who needs that? What was the point of—
Izuku stops. The curtains are pulled back on the window to his right, and although that’s unusual, it isn’t what’s making his palms heat up and stomach drop.
Dad’s car isn’t in the driveway. He never came home last night.
Izuku runs to Miss Emma’s—a warehouse-turned-training grounds tucked perfectly out of sight to keep people from becoming suspicious from at the crying/screaming/gunshots/banging and etc. that frequently fill the place. It’s a twenty-minute drive normally, and a walk long enough that the sun has risen and there are people out to eye Izuku as he dashes across sidewalks.
Not once since being forced to train under Miss Emma has Izuku been hours late like he is today, and he has no idea what’s in store for him when he gets there. It’s definitely not going to be fun, and definitely going to be painful in Miss Emma’s unique way.
“If you miss again,” Miss Emma said, handing him another throwing knife, “I am putting you the wall.”
Izuku wills the sting in his eyes and the tremor in his hands to disappear. They don’t. He misses.
Panting, Izuku slows to a stop outside of the seemingly abandoned warehouse, dying red and rusty on the outside, but cold and organized within. He tries the door, an apology or excuse or something on his lips, even though he knows it will be useless, but it doesn’t budge. Locked.
Izuku screams and cries and begs but Miss Emma continues to drag him towards the metal door as if he weighed nothing. She pulls a key from somewhere, and the silver door opens to reveal a small, concrete room. A high pitched, monotone wine scrambles out and echos across the tall ceilings. No windows, no lights.
She throws him in and locks the door.
Miss Emma never locks door—unless this is the beginning of his punishment. Maybe he needs to find another way in?
He turns, evaluates the sturdiness of the windows, the rest of the yard, and finally notices---
No excuses. That’s a Rule.
The noise rings and rings and rings, penetrating his ears, and his screaming doesn’t cover it up. It never does. The dark seeps into him, choking and cold cold cold cold. Ring ring ring.
Miss Emma’s slick, silver car, always kept polished and gleaming, always kept on the side of the warehouse, is gone.
No excuses. That’s a Rule.
One hour passes and Izuku heads back home. Alone.
He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or terrified, but Miss Emma never showed up, and neither did Dad. The worst part is that it doesn’t make any sense, because adults never break their own rules. At least the adults he knew. (The villains he knew).
But already Miss Emma and Dad have broken at least three. It’s making him dizzy to think about, and he can’t stop twisting his hands together and shaking his head—a combo that’s all too familiar, and something he can’t really control. (When he gets too nervous or stressed or confused or anything his hands find each other and twist, and he only notices when his head starts moving slowly from side to side, and by then he has to just let it happen. He can’t really control it, which was kind of terrifying in hindsight, but he’s been doing his whole life—and it helps). Izuku spends the entire walk home brainstorming (panicking), trying to justify Miss Emma’s and Dad’s absences. And although he isn’t the best at deciphering people’s expressions, the looks Izuku is getting from strangers are extreme enough that he can tell the twisting and muttering and shaking is creeping them out.
He spends the next hour after arriving home pacing the living room, and then the entire house (sans the basement and Dad’s room). Thinking has become nonstop since this morning, and it’s coming to the point that his mind is getting stuck on words, repeating itself.
Gone. He circles around the couch. Gone. Where is he? Gone? Circles around the table, the untouched bowl of spoiling katsudon. Gone.
Gone
The oven clock strikes nine-forty-five pm on his umpteenth time through the kitchen, and the mantra of gone finally shifts to why. And when Izuku reaches the living room, all the noise in his heads quiets to make way for the answer:
Dad is a villain.
He probably got caught by a hero. Finally got caught by a hero.
The impact doesn’t hit, and Izuku isn’t catching up fast enough to really feel anything yet. Gone—captured. Captured by a hero. Because Dad is a villain. Because Miss Emma is a villain. Villains who probably… got caught.
Izuku’s legs fall out from beneath him, and he finds that he’s made it to his room without noticing.
When he was smaller, and when he first realized that Dad was a villain, Izuku used to wish every day that a hero would find out. He would daydream constantly, in vivid detail of All Might or Power House or Endeavor or any hero bursting through the front door, countering Dad’s fire, and freeing the people in the basement. Freeing Izuku. The daydreams would change All Might or Power House or Endeavor or sometimes, but they always ended with him being saved by a hero. No more visitors in the basement, no more training, no more blue fire, no more Dad.
If the heroes have captured Dad, then they’ll figure out he’s Hisashi Midoriya, and they’ll figure out there’s an Izuku Midoriya, and they’ll find him and—and—
Maybe they’ll save him.
Happiness doesn’t come. He isn’t elated. He isn’t terrified, or sad, or angry, or excited. He sits there, in his room, until the sun rises, absolutely numb with shock.
And maybe… the beginnings of hope.
Sunday morning arrives in tragedy. The TV is on, and a woman with a high pony tail and snake eyes is holding back tears as she relays live footage from Musutafu. Only bits and pieces make it past the ringing in Izuku’s ears.
Blue fire is everywhere. Screaming, panicked and tortured.
“—seems like a-a group of—of new villains—”
Two bodies, each with a long, familiar, black quill impaled through the middle. Red.
“—ro heroes Nighteye—apparently calling in the number one—”
An explosion. The sky is blocked with thick, black smoke. The cameraman has abandoned filming and switched to trying to escape.
“—Th-the—we so far confirmed at least t-twenty dead—god—”
And in the middle of all of the chaos…
“—where is All M—”
… stands Hishashi Midoriya.
Izuku faints.
He comes to covered in sweat, and thrust into a panic attack. When he come out of it, he’s exhausted, shaky, and his hands are pretzeled together again. The news is still on, it’s still daylight outside, and its still screening the—the massacre, but in much more detail now. It must have ended while Izuku was out.
The reporter is different this time, more composed, but just as haunted. He’s in the middle of explaining that there were four attackers, seemingly (definitely) lead by the one dressed in black and blue—the one with the incredibly powerful fire-breathing quirk. People have already chosen a name apparently, and they refer to (Dad Dad Dad) him as Dragon: The Pyre Villain. The others don’t have names just yet, but it doesn’t really matter since Izuku has seen all of their faces before. There’s a villain they identified that shoots black quills from her fingertips (Miss Emma), another who they can’t identify the quirk of (Taketa), and the last who has some sort of fog-emitting quirk (Sone). The three of them together killed at least twenty-four people, but officials aren’t sure yet and the cleanup is far from finished. There’s definitely more.
Izuku feels sick.
All Might was in America when the attack occurred, apparently, and that’s why he wasn’t there. Rumor has it he’s on the way back, but Izuku can’t help but wish he could be everywhere at once, even if it isn’t fair.
The entire massacre took place in front of a bank, and began there too. It may have just been a bank robbery (successful, too) that escalated, but most are assuming this was a debut that was always intended to end in murder.
Izuku has to shut off the television, but it doesn’t keep the footage from replaying in his head anyways. He’s head those screams before, in his basement, inflicted on villains but never on innocent people. No person deserved to die like that—to be murdered like.
Two bodies, each with a long, familiar, black quill impaled through the middle—
Had he heard people die like that before? Did he—did Dad kill people in their own home? Was that why the screaming was so familiar—because is was the same kind of dying cry?
Did Izuku really just sit and listen?
Sorrow like none he’s ever known hits him harder than any of Dad’s punches. It punctures is stomach and spreads like ice through his veins, heavy. He curls into a ball and, for the first time in years, cries. They are full-body, horse, ugly sobs and he can’t stop them. He cries and cries and cries, even though Midoriyas (villains) don’t cry.
“If you miss again,” Miss Emma said, handing him another throwing knife, “I am putting you the wall.”
He didn’t do anything. Why didn’t he say something? (That’s a Rule) Why didn’t he help? What could he have even done, as a little kid? Does it matter? Is it his fault?
No excuses. That’s a Rule.
Is it?
Dad has been training Izuku his entire life, and Izuku purposefully never addressed what for. But it was obvious now—he was training to be a villain. A killer, just like Hisashi. He always knew that, even if it never really registered, and he never tried to stop it from happening. It was never an option. But becoming Hishashi…
“I am your father,” smoke rises from Dad’s nose and the grip on Izuku’s arm tightens, “you will always address me as your father.” That’s a rule.
… Becoming Hisashi was not an option either.