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2017-08-06
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scalpels and tissues (down the tablets)

Summary:

Four years before Bakugou Katsuki utters something that haunts a child for years, sixteen years before it comes to represent something that becomes the new pillars of society, Midoriya Izuku is born with two names.

“Deku,” Hisashi whispers, eyes tracing the shaky kanji.

::In which even when things begin again, some things never change. If a hero is of the future, is he still a hero in the now?

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

When the child is born, Hisashi thinks to himself what a pity. The room is loud, clattering instruments and nurses rushing in the background, the curtains are a glaring blue that hurts his tired eyes. They say it is a magical moment, books spinning fantastical tales and pictures glowing with joy, but Hisashi—he doesn’t feel anything beyond exhaustion. He hides a sigh as a wisp of smoke.

“He’s beautiful, dear,” his wife murmurs, eyes sunken and sweat beading along her hair.

He twists his lips into a smile. “Yes.”

Something flashes in her eyes, and Hisashi sees one of the scalpels on the trays quiver. He has never had to fear her wife, thin and pretty and willing to bend as easily as a delicate flower, but in this moment, with a red and wrinkled wailing thing in her arms, she seems so very dangerous.

He clears his throat.

Midoriya Inko ignores him in favour of cooing at her still crying baby. “Shh, shh, I’ve got you. Mama’s got you.”

“Do you have a name perhaps?” One of the nurses pipes up, grinning and coming forward with another towel.

Hisashi answers, “No, not quite yet—,” and is unheard.

Inko replies, “Of course! Izuku. Izu, in originating from, coming from. And Ku, from the past.”

The nurse gives her a pad to scribble down the kanji.

出久.

And here, in a small hospital room, walled in by the smell of antiseptic and many other labouring mothers, Hisashi murmurs something that is lost to a baby’s cries.

Four years before Bakugou Katsuki utters something that haunts a child for years, sixteen years before it comes to represent something that becomes the new pillars of society, Midoriya Izuku is born with two names.

“Deku,” Hisashi whispers, eyes tracing the shaky kanji.

Encased in his mother’s arms, Izuku sleeps.

 

 

 

 “I wonder if I should blame my father instead of Kacchan…Well, it’s always more fun to blame Kacchan.”

 

 

 

Inko loves Izuku.

Hisashi disappears off into the wild unknown, and in return for keeping him in a married status, sends back money packages every so often. The first time, Inko nearly trashes it, feels her heart swell like a too-tight balloon, uncomfortable and pushing against her lungs, making it hard to breathe – fury and fury and fury. But she doesn’t, buys four All Might posters and five figurines for her little boy, and then spends the rest giving herself new clothes.

Izuku grows up with a single mother, but he grows up well-loved.

He also grows up next to a family that conveys love through shouting and all other emotions the same way as anger – the Bakugou and Midoriya family have known each other for longer than anyone else on their street.

Little Katsuki, at three months old, sees week-old Izuku, and punches him in the face. Or tries to, their mothers giggle as Katsuki rubs his grasping hands all over baby Izuku’s face, and then falls asleep and drools all over his shoulder.

They set up play-dates twice a week.

Katsuki learns to write Izuku’s name before his own. His first written word, however, is still DIE. (死). His mother is proud of such a complex kanji, and his father tries to sneak off to find a child psychologist.

Izuku, in turn, scribbles Katsuki’s name all over his home walls and tables. Inko would mourn, but the two are adorable.

 

 

 

“Kacchan.”

“Like it’s my fucking fault, shitnerd.”

“You punched me when you first met me!”

“You’re fucking punchable!”

 

 

 

 Bakugou Katsuki and Midoriya Izuku make a name for themselves in their little world of playgrounds and classrooms.

The other kids are pants-shittingly terrified of the little terror that is Katsuki, with his perpetually frowning face and spiky hair, and nose-breaking punches. In turn, they mostly worship the ground that Izuku walks on, cute pouts and fluffy hair, and able to tame his Kacchan with a word.

The first time a teacher tries to separate them to prevent what is looking like truly emotionally destructive codependency, they are five years old. Terrible idea.

Katsuki blows up the teacher’s desk – even though, by all means, the tests had shown his current quirk limit was a little charring of paper. Izuku tells the authorities the teacher had verbally abused and then neglected them – and all the other children back him up when he turns around to smile at them. The teacher is fired in a week, and all other teachers end up drawing lots to see who deals with the demon duo.

 

 

 

“Sneaky shit.”

“Thank you.”

 

 

 

Before long, their mothers are the only ones who do not find their insane bond worrying. They are together in absolutely everything. Katsuki and Izuku, lapping around classmates in gym class, finishing team projects within the lesson time, swapping lunches and then eventually just bringing one massive bento between the two of them. Izuku and Katsuki, walking together to school and home and shops, running with punches and kicks flying at third-year bullies, sitting together on precarious tree branches late into the night.

From the outside, it looks strange. Katsuki, with his aggression and violence and temper, who also seems to turn his fists onto his very own partner. Izuku, with his patience and meekness and fidgeting, who seems to shy away from everyone’s touches.

Their mothers turn down all attempts to send their middle-schooler children to psychologists or authorities.

From the inside, it looks like this.

Katsuki, who is raging and fearful and unable to stop worrying, voices spinning in his head, his hands reaching no one, his explosions dulled to puffs and his voice cut to muteness – and Izuku, who can roll his punches safely, who can calm him down with palms on his face and forehead on forehead, soft murmurs drowning out age-old screams.

Izuku, who still thinks himself small and useless, dreaming of death and blood and flaking skin, legs and arms broken, time running out and eight stars dimming to wisps in the moonlight – and Katsuki, who roars his way through the fog, who jolts him into the now and the here, growls and sharp eyes cutting through a blank mind and an empty heart.

 

 

 

“We won’t fail this time.”

“Duh, dipshit.”

“We can’t.”

“What else is new.”

 

 

 

The weeks crawl, and the months spin away like fairy floss lost to childish hands that can’t grip anything, much less time.

When he is fourteen, in another world, Izuku gets molested by a slime monster, meets All Might, goes for a fly, finds a skeleton, nearly kills Katsuki, saves Katsuki, gets reprimanded, and then becomes a hero.

In this world, Izuku tracks down Toshinori Yagi, a thin, frail man with rattling bones yet bright eyes walking out of a small store, and plunges a syringe into his neck.

 

 

 

“MIDORIYA MY BOY!”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“BAKUGOU TOO, MY BOY!”

“All Might! I-I-I’m so happy—hhhhh—,”

“My boy, don’t cry! You also answered each other’s names!”

“Get used to it. Took you long enough.”

“Ah! We have so much to do, too many things fells perfectly in place last time, Kacchan and I have already started to work on what we can, but we only have one more person we can bring into this and we’re still debating over that, it’ll probably be someone within 1-A, since we were in the heat of it last time—,”

“You never change, Izuku.”

“W-wha—,”

“Shitnerd is always a shitnerd, tsk.”

“But it’s alright! FOR I AM HERE!”

“Fucks’ sake.”

 

 

 

By the time the U.A. entrance examination of their year is up, Katsuki has enough marks on his record that it prevents him from applying altogether. This, mysteriously, disappears overnight from the systems. The teachers run around in a panic – the one child more likely to become a villain going into a school meant for heroes – and nobody sees Izuku drop a USB down a toilet.

Katsuki buys him a tub of icecream as thanks, and throws it at him and nails him in the stomach. Izuku still tears up at the display of affection.

Toshinori drops by every so often, more busy with trying to nudge certain things into place in U.A., the pro hero force, and the police forces. Izuku still bursts into sobs each time he sees his hero, and Katsuki has taken to carrying around a squashed, charred box of tissues in his bag.

 

 

 

The entrance examination day is sunny as it was last time, and Izuku is hit with a bone-aching sense of nostalgia. Just a few metres away, Katsuki screams profanity at his mother, and hops over his front fence.

“Move it, shitnerd.”

“I suppose it has to be him, in the end?”

Katsuki doesn’t answer, kicking a pebble into a pole. It leaves a dent.

Izuku scrolls through the news, and smiles when the front-page news is ‘ALL MIGHT SAVES ENDEAVOUR’. The ‘fiery shithole of majestic ass-stickery’, as from Kacchan, had been an unfortunate side victim of their plans this time around.

 

 

 

The three of them are enough to move worlds, Izuku knows this. Katsuki had always been the pulse of the class, explosions forming a beat of battle that all could follow, never stagnant and setting fire to a world that had once turned complacent in its safety. Toshinori barely needs to be explained, the pillar of society and the Symbol of Peace, smiling through pain and laughing through darkness. And himself, in the last world, Deku, the spiritual successor of All Might, with a grin on his face and invincibility in his will and destruction controlled tightly in his fists and feet.

But the fourth was necessary.

 

 

 

He feels maybe a little bad when he seeks out Todoroki Shouto after the entrance examination. He waves to him with a smile, and the boy, rarely out of his home and his training nowadays, blinks at him in confusion. Izuku walks up to him and says—

“Hi, Shou-chan!”

The boy stares, ice forming on his fingers as the stranger addresses him so.

Then Todoroki Shouto slumps over, syringe emptied into his neck, and Izuku pats the soft dual-coloured hair, and dumps him on the doorstep of his home.

 

 

 

“Izuku, did you have to leave me on the doorstep like that?”

“I mean – it’s not like I could have brought you to the hospital!”

“My father was the one that found me.”

“HA, serves you right, fucking half-wit.”

“Has Katsuki blown himself up yet? I can help.”

“YOU SHIT—,”

“Of course, around four times last session.”

“DEKU—,”

“Brilliant. Is All Might alright?”

“Yes.”

"OI!!"

 

 

 

Katsuki places first in the exam, of course, and Izuku ensures that he follows the exact same pattern as last time. He knows that he could try to steal first from his childhood friend just for fun, but his old actions had, initially, formed something 1-A could gather around.

They were children, young and stumbling like foals chasing butterflies, but their class had ultimately been the final line between their old reality and anarchy.

The sight of Uraraka has him bursting into tears. Iida, diverging from his old self of righteous annoyance, instead stares wildly between him and the girl, both of them equally confused.

Izuku bawls again when Aizawa rolls up to the class in a caterpillar, and doesn’t even get his quirk erased during the quirk apprehension test because his teacher is too busy pretending he doesn’t exist. Not that he needs to this time around – One For All was half mind and half body and full will, and Izuku had all three this time around.

 

 

 

“Goddamn shitnerd, your quirk might as well have been water fountains.”

“I’ll start bringing tissue boxes too.”

“I-I’m sorry! I-it’s just—so—so amazing—,”

“DO NOT WORRY, FOR I AM HERE! WITH TISSUES!”

 

 

 

The four of them garner suspicious looks.

They know this.

Katsuki and Izuku get mistaken for boyfriends more than half the time, and then Shouto joins the picture. Suddenly, there is talk about a ‘genius threesome of first-years’, and Shouto sets fire to Katsuki’s hair trying to hold in his laughter. He gets a face-full of explosion in return, but Izuku avenges him by jabbing Katsuki in the spot just below his last rib, ticklish enough that Katsuki actually squeaks. All Might makes things worse, a man of extremes by pure nature, and has a tendency to sweep the three of them into spine-snapping hugs that have the rest of the class going wild with jealousy.

They are too close for strangers.

Izuku finishes Katsuki’s sentences. Katsuki matches every move of Shouto’s ice and fire with fire in return. Shouto, unerringly, knows exactly what Toshinori is thinking. Toshinori spends most of his time sobbing in joy at Izuku, or pictures of Izuku.

Endeavour flares up in bloated satisfaction when his son comes home wielding fire, and promptly stops his training lessons when Shouto beats him so hard into the floor that Fuyumi has to call specialist rescue services. Tsukauchi thinks it’s the yakuza for a while, Toshinori acting so strangely, but then shrugs and moves onto other things – his friend has always been strange. Recovery Girl slaps all four of them senseless, and then accepts things as they come.

Aizawa starts downing migraine tablets by the dozens. Nedzu joins him.

 

 

 

“We’ll do this right.”

“Fuck you.”

“It begins tomorrow.”

“May peace remain this time around!”

"Plus Ultra!"

 

 

 

Last time may not have gone so well—blood like tears and wounds like voids, screams echoing from frozen throats and helplessness like an old friend that came up and slung his arm around shoulders and said maybe next time, except that there was no next time—but this time…

This time, this is their hero academy.

Notes:

Thank you very much.

This originally began as an emotional drabble on Midoriya's character - but it is quite difficult to put the sheer depth of emotions and various layers of relationships seen in the manga and anime into words. Bakugou came in as pure shock, but I suppose that is how it is - he exploded his way into this fic. With the line that it followed, writing itself much of the time, Toshinori and Shouto appeared like the figures over your shoulder that never disappear.

Time is the best teacher. Thank you again.

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