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Izuku has never been so desperate to get out of his own skin. Away from his mind. The need to leave his body almost suffocates him, but he manages to lock the door behind him and collapse by his bed.
He almost wishes he could get up onto his bed, but he doesn’t bother. Izuku can’t find the energy to do anything other than lie on the floor.
He names himself silly or weak for not being able to get up– for being so affected by the intrusion on his mind.
Is it really an intrusion?
These thoughts might’ve been lurking the whole time. Even when he said he was getting better, when he had friends and support. Maybe the reason he pushed himself so hard in training until he threw up; when he would opt out of going somewhere with his friends even though he should be lucky they even asked ,– was because he always knew he was worthless.
Maybe to think otherwise, even for just a second, was absurd.
Izuku rubs a hand down his face, noticing what was inevitably going to happen if he was kept in his mind for too long– it had already happened multiple times that day. That floaty, away feeling, where he had no worries.
Though it sounds like a paradise, Izuku is sick of giving up control of his body.
He picks himself off the floor and onto the comfort of his bed, but something itches and it’s just too warm– even if he wanted to sleep, the fan isn’t on, and he can’t sleep without it but–
This won’t do.
Izuku’s eyes open from where they were previously trying to rest, and his body is slow to rise up from the bed. He rises with the creaks of the bed that show its age. His hands quickly find themselves rubbing his arms to rid of the goosebumps. Up and shivering, squinting eyes attempt to make out the time shown on his All Might clock, but the numbers and ticks blend into each other.
All right. This will have to do. Izuku wears a hoodie found discarded by his backpack. It’s far too cold to even think about being out without a jacket, as Iida had warned his classmates earlier in the week.
A sigh resembling a laugh escapes his mouth, but the reminder of his classmates doesn’t amuse him for long. It only makes him recall the school day he had had.
Izuku shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts—though it doesn’t quite work— and sets out toward the front door.
He merely hopes his mother won't come home to an empty apartment while the door locks shut.
Familiar streets of his neighborhood almost comfort him, if he was present enough to notice. For now, though, his automatic movements toward the park are what keep him going. The local park that the young children have loved well. He arrives at the rusted metal and the squeaky swing set, where he sits.
Izuku appreciated the quiet that came with far too windy weather for normal people to be out and about. Normal people who carried on with their everyday tasks, oblivious to his inner turmoil. Oblivious to the way he had felt the tightening in his chest that morning sooner than he had the quick, staccato breaths he was only able to release. He hadn’t known what had happened yet, just that he didn’t feel well.
He, nor anyone else, was aware that the man with the polite smile whom he had bumped into that morning would cause his problems. Of course, it wasn’t the man's fault, Izuku had been in a rush and careless.
His fingers tighten on the clinking chains of the swing. Wind assaults his cheeks as he stares ahead, unseeing.
Izuku should be embarrassed, honestly. After being given– it was already there– his first mind-numbing thought in the middle of Yamada sensei’s lesson, he dropped the journal he was lifting onto the ground out of surprise.
‘ Why are you here? Why? How can you be so selfish, lying to your friends? Your mother? They all bust their asses every day, while a fraud sits among them.’
Yamada sensei abruptly stops talking with the resounding bang of Izuku’s journal. Every head swivels toward him.
“You okay, listener?” he asks with concerned eyes.
He wanted to respond. He wanted to but he was too focused on trying to breathe. His classmate’s eyes pierced into him and suddenly the classroom became too small. Or was it too large? Izuku staggered to his feet, picking up the journal.
“I’m s-sorry! Sorry, s-sensei!” Izuku mentally begs for his erratic behavior to go unnoticed. His chest feels like it’s being torn apart yet squeezed together, and either way, no air is getting through his lips.
“All cool, lil’ listener!” With that, he swiftly takes the class’s attention off Izuku, though his worried glance doesn’t go unnoticed. The eyes off of him help him breathe, but the tightening of his chest doesn’t go away. Each breath doesn’t feel sufficient enough.
He vaguely hears Yamada-sensei moving into a new topic, but he couldn’t register anything past that.
Izuku doesn’t know what’s happening. He keeps his head down while his mind races.
Why does he feel like he’s suffocating? His eyes burn with tears.
He thought he was doing better. It seemed like it, at least. He had friends. Good teachers, who cared. Izuku was smiling a lot more. It seemed almost every day he laughed with his friends.
A fraud. He figures it’s true.
This quirk isn’t his. This position in the hero course shouldn’t be his. This isn’t his life. A fraud.
Izuku lets out a cold breath, the air visible from the cold. By now, the sky has darkened somewhat. There was probably an hour before his mom got home, he realized. His hands are numb from his rough grip on the swing chains.
Another thought like that had only occurred once more throughout the school day, toward the end. The class was doing a stealth training exercise with Aizawa-sensei in one of the city training grounds. Aizawa-sensei was correcting his stance when–
‘Your teacher is wasting time on you. How fucking selfish.’
Izuku couldn’t stop himself from noticeably faltering. From the confused look on Aizawa’s face, it probably looked like he had seen a ghost. This is mortifying. But he’s saved by the fact only Sensei had noticed his sudden stop.
“Midoriya?” Sensei asked, looking puzzled with an eyebrow raised. His hands paused from where they were fixing Izuku’s arms.
He tries to salvage the situation with a smile. “S-sorry Sensei! I thought I saw something!” Izuku hopes his face doesn’t show the desperation he’s feeling.
Ask him if he’s alright. Ask him if he's okay.
“We can continue!” Izuku says eagerly.
Though it was never obvious, very few things escape Izuku’s notice. He could feel Aizawa-sensei’s eyes on him for the rest of the day. He shivers, as if eyes are tracking him right now.
The light is leaving. It’s probably far later than he ever meant to stay out. Gazing across the broken playground, and empty streets, Izuku gets off the swing with a pop from his bones and a shake of his head.
He pats around for his phone, opening it to find a text from his mother.
{mom} I’ll be home late today Izuku. There are leftovers in the fridge.
{mom} Go to sleep early please!
Izuku can only be glad she didn’t come home to find him missing.
Okay I will! {izuku}
His thumb hovers over the send button, about to press it. Something in him makes him hesitate.
She’s lying. Mom probably got tired of you and left. Took her long enough, right? What an angel.
A tired whine escapes him. His eyes scrunch shut. Izuku doesn’t want to doubt his mother. At the very least— not his mom.
His thumb pauses, and it feels like his chest is caving in on itself. All of a sudden, he feels like he’s texting a stranger. Someone who doesn’t love him.
Does she?
Izuku is getting tired of this. He exhales and deletes his message before shutting off his phone and pocketing it. Wills the tears to go away. The sun is almost fully set now, and as he looks around, he notices pedestrians have filled the streets once again.
He starts the path back to his apartment, head down and fingers fiddling with his school uniform pants. He’s not sure who’s going to notice him, but he knows it’s best to avoid attention.
Once he finally reaches his apartment door, it’s completely dark outside.
Shame fills him when he realizes he left the door unlocked. How could he be so distracted? He steps in and checks around for an extra pair of shoes since–
Right. Mom’s coming late.
He looks around the dim apartment, lost on what to do with himself now that he is home. Izuku didn’t really have a plan. Maybe he could do homework? He needs to shower though. And then a new entry has to be filled in his journal, he told himself he would do that today.
His gaze lands on the kitchen before he remembers. Food. His stomach suddenly aches with hunger. Leftovers get put in the microwave while he shucks off his hoodie.
He can’t help but think about whatever quirk he was hit with as he stands alone in the silence of his apartment. Because he thinks–no, knows – that is a quirk.
When Izuku bumped into the man at the train station this morning, he thought he saw and felt a spark. Like a shiver going from head to toe. But the man had carried on, only apologizing with a nervous smile, so Izuku dismissed it. The train ride after, he had felt restless and on edge. But it was gone before he arrived at UA, and therefore, forgotten about.
But if Izuku tries hard enough, he can remember it coming back right before that first thought in English.
Fraud , his mind whispers.
The microwave beeps at him, so he takes his food and sits down.
He tries to think back to not even an hour ago when the last thought had appeared. He could barely breathe then. Although, Izuku suspects he is getting used to the effects now. He’s had a few thoughts since the morning, and the jittery feeling has lessened each time.
Izuku looks down at his fork and realizes his food has gone cold. He cleans up, washes his plate, and puts back the leftover containers. It’s late, and he told his mom he would go to sleep early, so he gets started washing himself up in the bathroom. It’s relatively peaceful, with no unwanted thoughts keeping him company.
Izuku wonders if sleep will make the quirk’s effects— what quirk? — go away, or if it needs to have been 24 hours. Nevermind even longer. Izuku doesn’t think he can do any longer.
These thoughts were never gone. They will never leave you.
Izuku closes his eyes and leans his forehead on the doorway, where he had been about to enter his room. Big breath in. Big breath out. They had a course on calming techniques earlier in the year.
Yet it doesn’t actually work, because his breath is interrupted by a muffled sob.
Izuku quickly muffles his cries with his hand–as if someone was home to hear him– and sinks onto his bed. By now tears are running down his face, but he has quieted down.
He pretends his tears aren’t there, continuing to get ready for bed. He plugs his phone in, wipes his tears, turns off the lamp. Izuku lays there in silence with nothing but the hum of the fan filling his ears.
It’s too easy, he’s too vulnerable right now, and the thoughts come in. Maybe the darkness of his room is inviting the monsters in.
Izuku has been doing better, but apparently not enough. Maybe it’s less obvious, but he’s aware that these thoughts always swim around in his mind. To know this brings no clarity to his life. It brings no comfort to his mind to know he is as pathetic as he’s always been, even though everything’s changed.
But there is a reason why he catches himself before a genuine laugh with his friends. And why he trains and trains and trains. Or when he purposefully gets one or two answers wrong on his tests because Deku got a 100? Must be f___ cheating.
But no one has noticed, and Izuku won’t bring it up. It’s better that way, and much easier.
Rid the world the burden of your thoughts already.
Izuku sighed and rubbed his hands to shake the anxious feeling away before turning around.
He’d be happy to.
Apparently, the effects of that man’s quirk don’t wear off after 24 hours. Izuku would know this because it’s only the start of the day, but it’s been an exhausting start nonetheless.
He had woken up and was immediately bombarded with crushing dread that bared down on his chest. It was hard to inhale, and even harder to get out of bed. The sheer sense of exhaustion that had hit him this morning was hard to overcome, but he did it because it caused too much trouble to miss a day of classes.
And now he was here, about to walk into UA’s walls for his first class. Class was to start soon, so only a few stragglers were left in the hall. It’s very unlike him to be cutting it this close to the bell, and Izuku knows he will have to deal with questions he really doesn’t want to answer.
Not that it’d be hard to come up with a lie. But when he thinks about the day ahead of him-
-–well, it’s much better to not.
The bell rings mere seconds after he walks through the 1-A door, and his entry unfortunately does not go unnoticed. Aizawa-sensei pauses from what was probably telling the class to quiet down–which, with his alarmingly late arrival, goes immediately ignored– to address him.
“Midoriya. Please sit down.” It’s with this that he realizes he’d been standing in the doorway like an idiot. Way to not bring attention to myself . Stupid Deku.
He walks down to his seat, head down and shoulders up. Because he could feel the curiosity bursting out of his friends,– Aizawa-sensei quieted them down once more so no one was speaking outright– he gave them a smile and look that hopefully tells them he would fill them in later.
Classes go on as normal, and he makes it to lunch without any incidents. Truthfully, it makes him a little nervous. There’s not much else he can do except wait for the other shoe to drop.
“Deku,” Ururaka says as they sit down at the lunch table, “what happened this morning? I’ve never seen you come in so late.” Shoto nods his head in agreement, and Izuku can see Iida rear up to go on a speech about tardiness and punctuality.
“I forgot to set my alarm last night and woke up late! I almost missed the train.” He laughs and they laugh with him. The topic moves on, and yet–
And yet, the walls are closing in and he feels his chest turn heavy. The chatter of the lunch room turns into one hum , and then silence.
They wish you missed the train. They wish you weren’t here today. They were happy before you walked in.
It feels as if every breath is not enough. He ducks his head and closes his eyes., almost gasping for air.
“Deku?” They are talking to him. His friends are trying to reach him, but it all feels too loud. Is it because he’s at school? Or that it’s been over a day? He was not as affected before.
He lifts his head and addresses them. “Sorry! I’m just tired.” Izuku gives them a weak smile. He hopes it’s believable. Iida takes the opportunity to make a speech about getting enough sleep– or it probably is. No sound is registering in his mind.
He’s learned how to breathe by now. Almost over with the day. He can make it.
How f useless. Can’t even breathe properly.
His mouth becomes wobbly and tears blur his vision, but he fixes himself in a second. He keeps his head down and stays quiet eating his lunch– it’s a miracle no one notices anything up with him.
Almost done.
Izuku almost wishes he had a clock to be obsessively staring at. Unfortunately, the mock city training ground does not have any clocks in sight. Maybe with a clock, he can keep track of how much longer until the school day ends. Then, he wouldn’t be left feeling unsettled.
Aizawa just announced a new exercise to practice their newfound stealth skills. Izuku picked it up easier than the others. This may come from sneaking around the kids in middle school. It wasn’t too much, but it taught him something about quieting his footsteps.
Their class is tasked to last at least 15 minutes in the mock city without being found by Aizawa-sensei himself. It was just Izuku’s luck that his group, consisting of Sero and Tsuyu, was chosen first.
They are given exactly five minutes to plan strategies, but Izuku already finds himself theorizing before they even make it inside the city walls.
Aizawa is known to travel on top of rooftops. That’s where he’ll probably be searching for them– or at least in the beginning. He figures it would be less risky to be a moving target instead of a sitting duck. If they are moving around within the fake buildings, they can stay out of sight. And even if Aizawa-sensei sees us, the rules are that he has to wrap them up in his capture weapon.
Even if he erases their quirks, there are ways for them to evade his capture. Izuku shares his thoughts with his group members, and they come up with a solid strategy. They are soon interrupted when a voice on the speakers planted around the city tells them their time is up and Aizawa-sensei is entering the mock city.
Izuku feels confident that their group can evade Sensei for 15 minutes. He’s realized that Sero and Tsuyu picked up stealth training well. And while Eraserhead is a seasoned pro, the mock city is huge. 15 minutes is hardly enough time to cover it all.
Since his goal was to find them all before the time limit, they made it a point to spread out.
Izuku nods to his teammates before entering a building on the far left of the city. He looks around. It’s run down and empty, as all the buildings are. Its only occupants are import boxes. Izuku faintly wonders if he could hide in those the whole exercise. If he stays quiet enough, it just might work.
He chooses against it, though. The plan was to move around for an easy escape, and it’s too risky to change that now.
To pass the time—it doesn’t seem like Eraserhead is here, yet— Izuku decides to create a distraction. He goes around to the neighboring buildings and sets it up as if he’s gone through them. The doors are left ajar, just enough to make it believable, and the insides look not quite lived in but visited. He hopes this is enough to deter the hero.
Izuku goes back to his original building. If he had to guess, he would say it’s been about 10 minutes. If everything is going well, then hopefully his teammates haven’t been captured. If they had, Eraserhead is probably coming to look for him now.
Now that he thinks about it, it doesn’t really bring up good memories— teachers looking for him. In Aldera, it meant he was about to get in a load of trouble. Some kid had probably told them Izuku hurt them in some way and he’d get sent to the principal’s office.
Once, he was given detention for two weeks for supposedly pushing a kid down the stairs. The principal didn’t believe the bruises on Izuku’s face and upper body, but she rarely ever believed anything he said.
It makes Izuku especially thankful to the UA teachers. Not once had they made him feel like he did in Aldera. …But they could. But they will.
Logically, he knows Aizawa-sensei would never treat him like that— and he’s not even quirkless anymore—but it’s hard to get the image out of his head.
Aizawa-sensei looking for him in a quiet rage ready to boil over. Searching to punish him for something he never did. (Every time it happened, Izuku still felt guilty. Did he deserve the punishment?) Scolding, yelling at him, saying How could you do that? What’s wrong with you?
A quirkless hero wouldn’t do this. Why are you still here? You don’t belong. You don’t belong. You don’t be-
Maybe it’s because of these images circling his head, or it’s what was inevitable from the past 24 hours he has had. But as he sinks to the floor from the wall of the building, it suddenly gets harder to breathe again.
It’s not the same difficulty of getting air in his lungs that he has before a thought —or, it is, but a thousand times worse. He’s gasping, almost panting, Yet when he tries to fill his lungs, he starts to choke.
The dust in the air makes it all the worse. In the back of his mind, Izuku recognizes that he’s in the middle of a training exercise and needs to get up. Aizawa-sensei will be here soon, after all.
But the task seems so monumental. He doesn’t want to face Aizawa-sensei. He doesn’t want to face any teacher right now. What will they do to him?
The first time he went to a teacher for help, in elementary school, they told him he needed to be careful. He was fragile , and couldn’t play with the other boys.
The second time, in junior high, he was reprimanded for causing trouble and making his injuries a big deal.
He’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop with the teachers at UA. For him to do something unforgivable, and they finally stop holding back. It makes him scared to think about it, though, because they’ve just been so nice. It scares Izuku to know it won’t last.
He doesn’t know how long he stays sitting in the old building, trying to breathe. Then, a weight was on his shoulder. In his spaced-out mind, he can barely register it as what it is, a hand.
The hand takes his, from where it was gripping his hair, to a solid warmth. A chest.
“Hey, stop that. Breathe with me, kid.” It’s Aizawa-sensei.
Aizawa-sensei is here.
And briefly, Izuku finds it in himself to panic at this revelation. His teacher was never supposed to find him like this. Not while he can’t breathe and can barely see.
But that is quickly forgotten about when Aizawa-sensei starts taking long, exaggerated breaths for Izuku to follow. There’s not much else for Izuku to do except listen to the unsaid instructions, and he starts taking those deep breaths as well, matching his teacher’s breathing.
Aizawa-sensei’s low rumble registers through, “That’s it, kid. In,” The chest beneath his hand rises, “Out.” The chest lowers.
If he had to guess how long that continued, Izuku would probably say about five minutes. When looking back at it, it’s an embarrassingly long time to be so vulnerable in front of his teacher. But at the moment, there’s no space in his mind for worries like that.
A hand moves to his knee, tapping out a pattern that Izuku can’t discern, but it’s consistent and grounding.
Izuku finally looks up at Aizawa-sensei. The man is staring at him with concerned eyes, worry swirling inside and evident in the furrow of his eyebrows. No one other than his mom has looked at him like that before.
“You with me now, kid?” Izuku stays silent, watching as the man glances at his phone. Izuku feels sort of impartial to everything right now, numbness washing over him. But that quickly diminishes as he gets a glimpse of the time from Aizawa-sensei’s phone.
He was supposed to be done with the exercise ten minutes ago.
This realization immediately sparks a new onset of panic. Where is his class? Do they know he’s been in here? How long has Aizawa-sensei been here?
Aizawa-sensei’s face softens, “They’re in the classroom. No, they don’t know you’re here. I found you about 12 minutes ago.” He was mumbling. Stupid Deku.
Aizawa-sensei shakes his head, “Don’t say that. You’re not stupid, Midoriya.” His voice sounds so tender, nothing like he’s heard the teacher talk before. Izuku realizes his hand is still held in Aizawa-sensei’s, and it makes him red from embarrassment. This whole thing is mortifying. All because he couldn’t handle the effects of a quirk that never should’ve affected him this much.
Thankfully, he didn’t say this part out loud this time. The man stood up from his crouched position with a sigh and motioned for Izuku to stand up as well. He quickly obeys, even if his legs are dead and a little shaky.
Aizawa-sensei places his hand on Izuku’s shoulder to steady him before saying, “How about we go to my office? It’s class time right now, so no one will be in the hallways.”
And he’s right. Except for a few stragglers, the hallways are almost deserted and eerily quiet. Izuku had momentarily panicked when Aizawa-sensei said office , and it must’ve shown on his face because the man assured him he wasn’t in trouble. So far, he’s acted a lot kinder than Izuku expected. It’s unnerving.
So far, the man has surpassed his expectations for how any of his teachers usually act. The quiet of their walk gets him thinking about all of the acts Aizawa-sensei had done for him in the past hour. He sat with him, helped him breathe, and waited until he was calm to talk.
When has anyone else ever given Izuku that much care?
Before he knows it, Aizawa-sensei stops them at a tall door that looks like any of the others. Izuku looks around the hallway they’re in, but it’s not one he recognizes.
Aizawa-sensei opens the door and gestures for Izuku to go in first. When he steps in, he realizes it must be a conference room. Except, instead of a table and chairs, there are two couches opposite each other with a small coffee table in between. The room isn’t very decorated at all, so he figures it must be an extra.
“Go ahead, sit down,” Aizawa-sensei said after Izuku spent awkward moments idling around the couches.
“Alright, Midoriya. I’m going to talk to you about what happened earlier, okay?” It was clear the man was trying to put him at ease with his words and posture, and it made Izuku both thankful and filled with shame. “Did something trigger you that led to a panic attack?”
Izuku shrugs, “I don’t know,” he mumbles. Aizawa-sensei just sighs. Izuku would think he was mad at him if it wasn’t so soft. “We don’t have to talk about it all. I just want to know if something has been bothering you, or if there was something that could’ve been done to prevent this.”
Aizawa-sensei shifts forward so that his elbows are on his knees. He looks directly into Izuku’s eyes, “I’ve noticed you’ve been acting differently these past few days. What’s wrong?”
Everything in Izuku tells him to stay silent. Pass up the help his teacher is so sincerely offering him. But does he mean it? He reminds himself that telling his teacher will work out in his favor. Aizawa-sensei is different. Maybe telling him about the quirk he thinks he’s been hitten with, or at least the thoughts he’s been having, then—
Then what? Then he gets to laugh in your face? Say you’re making it up?
Tears start to well up in his eyes. Izuku looks up to stop them from overflowing, feeling his face heat up with embarrassment. He does not want to cry in front of a teacher. He can not cry in front of an adult.
“Midoriya?” Aizawa-sensei places a hand to still Izuku’s shaking leg. When did he start shaking it? Izuku swallows, only hoping his voice won’t break as he speaks, “I-” He tries again, “I don’t know. I think I was- was hit by a quirk or something.” The last part comes out as a whisper, but Aizawa-sensei hears it all the same.
Aizawa-sensei’s eyes widen, “A quirk? What do you mean?” The man sounds suddenly and extremely worried, and Izuku feels the urge to soothe the concern in his voice.
“Or– well… I don’t know. Yesterday, I started to feel weird. Like– like I started to have these thoughts,” Izuku says.
Aizawa-sensei’s hand falls away from Izuku’s thighs before coming back, like he thought better of it, “What type of thoughts, Midoriya?”
Izuku looks into his teacher's eyes. They show nothing but kindness, so foreign and Izuku is greedy for it. He’s never seen anyone look at him like he is the only thing that matters right then. And that’s all the push he needs.
It’s an easy decision. He’s already gone this far and said this much, it’s not like Aizawa-sensei would let him leave without spilling the whole truth anyway.
So he opens his mouth and speaks. He shares the anxiousness and how he forgets to breathe, how it unsettles his whole body. And when Aizawa-sensei says I’m sorry you have to go through that while tracing a circular motion into his knee, it makes him choke on a sob.
When Aizawa-sensei says We’ll figure this out and I’m going to get you help, okay, Midoriya? It’s going to be okay well —
Izuku hasn’t trusted anyone in a long time. But when he looks at the man with kind eyes and arms currently out inviting him into them, and thinks about all he’s done over the past couple hours–no, months —
He thinks maybe now is the time to start.