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Eraserhead gave him a chance when no one else would.
Midoriya isn’t going to throw that away, but—sometimes it gets to him.
There is one person in the world who believes he can be a hero, quirkless or not. His mom, she tries, but he remembers the night that they came home from the quirk doctor, when he’d asked her, and all she could do was cry. They tiptoe around it, even now, and he can see the way her brow furrows whenever it’s mentioned, whenever the teachers bring it up or he makes reference to trying for UA.
It shouldn’t bother him, because he has someone. And he’s never had that before.
But he can’t help it.
Musutafu spreads out before him. His shoes are still on, and he can’t feel the wind biting into his feet as he swings them back and forth, so it’s different, but he looks down and wonders, not for the first time, and not for the last, how long it would take for anyone to notice if he jumped.
He blows out a breath. Aizawa’s mentorship is a secret to everyone except for his mom, and he gets why, and he wouldn’t want to tell anyone at school even if he could, but when his bullies shove him against the wall and laugh at him for daring to try, the words are on the tip of his tongue that maybe they can’t see it, but a pro hero believes in him.
So he has to be worth something, even if they tell him over and over that he isn’t.
Sirens echo in the distance. He looks in their direction and can just faintly see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles on their way to a call.
Maybe he should try being a police officer after all. It isn’t being a hero, but they still save people, and surely Aizawa has friends in the police department that could overlook the fact that he’s quirkless if he passes the program. He could still make a difference, even if it wasn’t what he wanted. And it’d be hard, but it wouldn’t the mountain of work that becoming the first quirkless hero is going to be.
If he gets into UA. If he passes the entrance exam to get into the hero course. If he doesn’t get expelled on the first day because he’s so far behind all the people with quirks, just by virtue of being born without one—
A scream splits the air.
Midoriya is up off the ledge and on his feet in a heartbeat without even thinking about it, looking around, trying to figure out what direction the sound came from.
Tilting his head, he can faintly hear desperate pleading, and a gruff voice responding, though he can’t make out the words.
Just the feelings behind them.
Someone’s in trouble. Someone close.
Midoriya’s hand goes to his phone in his pocket. He has Aizawa’s number, he could call—
There’s a sob.
And he knows that sound. He knows the desperation of it, the hopelessness. He’s made that sound before, when classmates come at him and he knows from the look on their faces that no matter how much he tries, they won’t leave him alone until they’re done with him.
He crosses the roof. A peek into the alley below shows that it’s empty, but he knows that they have to still be close. A building or two over, at most.
And no one else is coming. The streets are empty, and so are the skies. He’s the only one there.
He’s climbing down before he can second guess himself.
There’s less of a chance that they’ll hear him coming if he goes across the roofs, but there’s no guarantee that there’ll be an easy way down into the alley that they’re in without going through the building, and most of them keep the roof access doors locked at night—
Midoriya forcibly shakes his head. He needs to focus.
He lands lightly on his feet at the bottom of the fire escape. On the ground, the pleas are louder, and he can tell that they’re trying to keep themselves quiet even as terrified as they are, probably because they’re being threatened.
He rounds the corner of the building and watches his steps carefully, trying not to trip over trash or debris, not wanting to alert them of his presence. It’s easier to pinpoint their location now; they’re in the next alley over, and they’re really not being all that quiet, but he’s still the only one around.
Why isn’t anyone else coming? Shouldn’t someone have called the heroes by now? Or the police? There are residential buildings right across the street, and that scream wasn’t quiet.
But it’s just him. It’s just him.
His heart pounds in his chest. His blood is rushing in his ears, and he balls his hands into fists, trying to stop the from shaking.
Aizawa has only been teaching him for a month now. They haven’t even gotten to proper combat, yet, they’ve been focusing on self defense since he only knew what he could learn himself, from online videos and tutorials.
This is a very, very bad idea.
But it doesn’t stop him from carefully looking around the corner and trying to get a better idea of the situation.
A woman is pinned against the wall. He can just barely see her long hair and pink coat past the villain holding her there. Neither of them are looking in his direction.
A closer look reveals that he isn’t even touching her. Midoriya wonders for just a second why she’s not fighting to get away—she could duck under the arm that’s braced next to her head and make a run for it—and then the faint light filtering into the alley glints off of something between them.
A knife.
Whatever the villains intentions are, they aren’t good. If it was just a mugging, he’d be gone already—and her purse is several feet away from them, discarded on the ground.
Midoriya ducks back around the corner and takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. The woman’s broken pleading, in between sobs, makes his heart twist.
There aren’t many words. Just Please and Don’t and Let me go—
He recognizes that, too.
Before he can think about it any longer, he’s moving, turning the corner with confidence that he doesn’t feel.
“Hey!”
The villain and the woman both startle, turning to look at him. The woman’s eyes meet his over the villain’s shoulder, glistening with tears, and for a moment he’s in a different alley entirely, watching Bakugo being overtaken by a monster that would’ve been in a cell if Midoriya hadn’t gone and messed things up.
Then the villain shifts just enough to hide her face, and Midoriya’s attention shifts to him.
His hair is short and silver, and it looks sharp, like it’s made of metal. Part of his quirk? He has a nasty scar sliced diagonally across one cheek, and his jaw is dark with stubble that matches his hair.
“Mind your business, kid,” he says, and there’s a hidden threat there, as he presses closer to the woman. She whimpers as the knife digs harder into her side. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“Leave her alone,” Midoriya says, stepping closer even though his knees feel like they don’t want to hold him. He’s so, so far out of his depth here.
“Last chance, kid. Get out of here, or you’ll get the same thing she’s getting.”
“I won’t let you hurt her.”
The villain laughs derisively, and then turns just slightly to spit on the ground.
Midoriya has just enough time to think, Gross, and then the villain is slamming the woman hard enough into the wall that she gasps with pain and then slides to the ground, obviously stunned.
Facing him directly, Midoriya can see now that the knife he’d thought the villain was holding is actually protruding from the base of his palm, about half the length of his forearm. His quirk, then.
“You gonna run?” the villain asks, flicking out his other arm and revealing a second knife. He stalks slowly closer. “It’s always more fun when they run.”
Midoriya’s breath stutters, but he flicks one quick look to the woman on the ground, the tears on her face catching the light, and her hands pressed to her chest as she tries to suck in air after it’s been knocked out of her. There’s a dazed look on her face, and he thinks maybe he can see blood in her hair, now.
She won’t be running anytime soon, even without the villain pinning her.
So he can’t run. Because if he does, he’ll be leaving her behind.
As the villain takes another step forward, the look on his face making it clear that he’s enjoying himself, Midoriya frantically thinks over everything that Aizawa has taught him so far.
Surprise them.
He bursts forward, sprinting straight for the villain, and it’s clear that he hadn’t expected that because he stumbles and swears, but Midoriya doesn’t slow down, shoving his shoulder directly into the middle of the man’s chest before he can bring his hands up between them and knocking him a few steps back.
He’s backpedaling within seconds to put more distance between them, so the man can’t hit him while he’s within range, and for a moment there’s a pause while they size each other up.
Then the villain lunges forward, slashing with his knives, and Midoriya ducks and dodges, grateful, for maybe the first time in his life, that he’s small and fast and has lots of experience running away.
The man relaxes one hand, and the knife retracts. Midoriya takes note of that even as the man gets a grip on his jacket, yanking hard and using the leverage to hurl him into the wall.
His cheek scrapes against the brick, but he barely feels the slight sting of it, already throwing himself to the side, just in time for a knife to scrape against the place where he just was, sparking where it makes contact.
He’s between the villain and the woman now. He rocks on the balls of his feet, keeping his arms defensively in front of him, as the man takes a moment to reconsider the situation.
“I’m not playing, kid,” he growls. “I don’t usually kill children, but that won’t stop me if you get in my way.”
Midoriya sets his jaw and doesn’t say anything. It’s enough to get his point across—he isn’t going anywhere.
The man lunges again. Midoriya steps inside his reach even though his whole body is on high alert telling him to do the opposite and lands and unpracticed, sloppy punch to the man’s jaw that has him swearing despite how inexpert it is.
It costs him. The tip of one knife catches across his face, the same side that he’d scraped against the wall, and he feels the blood start dripping almost immediately.
The pain comes next, but it’s dull through the adrenaline.
The man grins at the sight of blood, distracted, and his hands relax just enough for both knives to retract slightly.
Midoriya presses the advantage, stomping down hard on the man’s foot with as much strength as he can muster. He hears something crack, and the man howls and bends down, just in time to take the full force of Midoriya’s knee in his face.
The feeling of his nose crunching against Midoriya’s kneecap is nauseating, but he doesn’t let himself think about it, aiming another well-placed kick directly at the man’s groin, which has him making a strangled, wounded sound and finally falling to his knees, bracing himself against the ground with one hand.
Midoriya backs up, keeping a wary eye out, but the man doesn’t seem like he’ll be getting up anytime soon. He doesn’t turn away from him anyway, walking backwards slowly until he gets to where the woman is still sitting on the ground.
He crouches next to her, splitting his attention.
“Hey,” he says softly, and she sobs, pressing her hands to her face. “Are you okay?”
“You saved me,” she says, through tears, and suddenly he has his arms full of distraught woman. “I didn’t think anyone was coming.”
He pats her awkwardly on the back, still with one eye on the crumpled heap of a villain a few yards away from them.
“I need to call someone,” he says, and she pulls away, cheeks bright with embarrassment.
“Right,” she says. “I’m sorry, I just—I really thought he was going to kill me.”
“It’s okay,” he says gently. “But that won’t stop him for long. We should move while he’s still down.”
She nods, and he helps her to her feet. She’s a bit wobbly, so he lets her lean on his shoulder as they walk, and he tosses one last look behind them before leading her several streets away, until they finally come to a corner store that’s still open.
The elderly clerk behind the counter looks up and exclaims, coming around to fuss over the woman, already pulling her phone out of one of her apron pockets to dial the police.
Which is all well and good, but Midoriya has another call he has to make.
He holds up his own phone, a bit awkwardly, and the clerk nods at him, wrapping a consoling arm around the trembling woman and leading her to sit down.
“Midoriya,” Aizawa says, picking up on the second ring. “What’s wrong?”
“Hi,” Midoriya says. His voice sounds small. He wonders where all the calm bravado he’d just had suddenly disappeared to. “Are you patrolling?”
“Where are you? Are you in trouble?”
“Not anymore,” Midoriya says, before he realizes that it isn’t exactly a very reassuring thing to say. “I’m fine, I just—there was a villain, and he’s probably still in the alley where we left him, and I don’t want him to get away before the police get there—”
“Midoriya. Where are you?”
“I’m in a corner store on,” he pauses to lean over just enough to catch a glimpse of the street sign outside, “10th Chome and Nakada. But the villain is a few streets down, in an alley two buildings away from the roof that you found me on—”
“What were you doing back there?” Aizawa asks, and guilt swirls in Midoriya’s stomach. Before he can try to reply, Aizawa speaks up again. “Never mind. I’m in the area, I’ll be there in two minutes.”
He hangs up.
Midoriya lowers his phone and worries his fingers over the edge of the protective case. A confused tangle of emotions knots up his stomach, and his hands are shaking with leftover adrenaline.
It was stupid, stepping into the middle of a fight like that. He should’ve just called someone.
He turns, and sees the woman with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, the clerk insistently pressing a cup of steaming tea into her hands.
If he hadn’t stepped in, she might’ve been dead before anyone else got there. Even with Aizawa’s speed—two minutes is a long time, when villains are involved.
He takes a deep breath. Maybe Aizawa will be mad, and he won’t want to train him anymore. Maybe he’s messed up, again, and just lost himself the only person who’s ever bothered to believe that he isn’t useless.
But he saved her. So he can’t regret his actions.
He tucks his phone back into his pocket and crosses over to them, summoning up a smile.
“Hi,” he says, a bit shyly. He bows politely to the store clerk. “Are you going to be alright?”
The woman reaches a hand out from under her blanket and grabs his, clasping it softly as she smiles at him, eyes shining gratefully.
“Thank you,” she says. “I realized I didn’t say that. If you hadn’t been there…”
“But I was,” he says, squeezing her hand slightly. “So you don’t have to think about it. You’re okay now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Young man,” the clerk says, tone stern, and he turns to her, bracing himself, expecting the usual lecture. “Do you know that you’re bleeding?”
He blinks in surprise. He remembers the cut on his cheek, and reaches up to touch it, wincing at the sting.
“Ah,” he says. “Yeah. It’s nothing.”
“Hmph,” she says. “You’re sure? It looks like a nasty cut. I’ve got a first aid kit in the back.”
He smiles as widely as he can manage without agitating the cut.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I promise. I think she needs it more, anyway.”
The bell above the door jingles, and they all turn to look as one, tensing a bit.
It’s Aizawa. Midoriya doesn’t feel like it’s been two minutes, and maybe it hasn’t been, but he’s not sure that he could accurately estimate the passing of time in his state anyway.
“Midoriya,” he says, crossing the store with long strides.
“You know this man?” the clerk asks, raising a doubtful eyebrow.
Midoriya nods.
“He’s a pro hero,” he says.
He gently extracts his hand from the woman’s, turning to meet Aizawa halfway. Time to face the music.
“Alright, Aoki,” he hears the clerk say behind him. “Let’s get you looked at, then. You’ve got quite a bump on your head there, don’t you?”
“Midoriya,” Aizawa says again, as Midoriya reaches him. His eyes scan him head to toe, stopping at the cut on his cheek. “What happened?”
“I heard her scream,” he says. He isn’t sure how to communicate everything that he’d felt leading up to the moment that he’d lunged at the villain—how he knew what the woman was feeling, because he’d felt it himself too many times to count. How he couldn’t turn and run and tell himself that someone else would save her, how he couldn’t even try, because he knew what it was like not to be saved. “No one else was coming. If I hadn’t stepped in—”
“You attacked a villain,” Aizawa says. Midoriya can’t read his expression.
“I attacked a villain,” he confirms, because there isn’t any point in denying it. “Did you find him already? Is he still there? Maybe I should’ve stayed to make sure he didn’t get away—”
“You did the right thing,” Aizawa says, and Midoriya is so stunned for a moment that he gapes, open-mouthed, at the older man. “The police are there now. They’ll want your statement, but I can give it to them for you if you’d rather not speak to them directly.”
“Ah, yeah,” Midoriya says, fumbling for words. “I won’t have to go to court or anything, will I? Only, I don’t want my name in the news or anything—”
“You’re a minor,” Aizawa says, interrupting what was rapidly devolving into an anxious mumble storm. “They won’t make you testify. They’ve got enough evidence that they won’t need it, especially if his victim steps up to press charges—”
“Her name’s Aoki.”
Aizawa stares at him.
Midoriya fidgets with the zipper of his jacket.
“Ah, the woman. Her name’s Aoki.”
“Aoki,” Aizawa repeats. “Okay.” He looks Midoriya up and down again, like he’s trying to figure something out. “You know they could arrest you for vigilantism?”
“Um, they can’t, actually,” Midoriya mumbles. “The law against vigilantism defines it specifically as using your quirk against villains without a license, and I don’t have a quirk. So I can’t be a vigilante, technically.”
“Technically.”
Midoriya fidgets some more, looking down at his shoes.
“Kid,” Aizawa says, and Midoriya can’t look at him, because he already knows what’s coming next, he’s about to be rejected all over again, he’s about to lose his mentor and any chance he has of being a hero once and for all— “You did good.”
Midoriya jerks his head up to look at him.
“I—I did?”
“I can’t say I’m happy about the fact that you jumped in to fight a villain with barely a month’s worth of training and no practical experience with combat, or that you didn’t call me or the police first, but—yeah. You did.”
Midoriya bites down on his lip hard enough that it hurts, trying to hold back the sudden tears welling in his eyes.
“He could’ve killed her,” he blurts out. “If I hadn’t been there, if, if I’d called the police or you and waited for someone else, he could’ve, he could’ve—you might not have gotten there in time, and I was right there, and I was the only one around, and I couldn’t just leave her, and I know it was, was, stupid, but if I could’ve done something and I didn’t what kind of hero would that even make me—”
“You’re not a hero,” Aizawa says, and Midoriya’s heart skips a beat. “Yet. Right now, you’re just a kid. I’m not about to yell at you for saving someone, Midoriya, but you’re still in for a lecture. Probably two, once we tell your mom what happened.”
Midoriya opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. That—seems fair.
“But not tonight,” Aizawa continues. “C’mon, kid. Let’s get that cut looked at.”
And he reaches out and ruffles Midoriya’s hair.
The tension drops so suddenly from Midoriya’s shoulders that he almost sways in place. That small touch—somehow it means more than anything that Aizawa could say.
He smiles. It’s small, and tentative.
But it’s genuine.
He lets Aizawa lead him over to Aoki and the clerk with the first aid kit without a fight.