Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku blinks up at the cold white sky. The chill in the air stings at his face—but it’s summer, isn’t it? It’s summer, and Izuku was just at home, and now he's lying here and…the ground he's lying on is moving.  

A screech of metal echoes in Izuku’s ears and the ground beneath him lurches. He tries to scramble upright and gets caught on the folds of material hanging off him, heavy gloves dropping from his hands. He looks down at himself and sees a strange teal outfit that’s much too big. As he pushes himself backwards, oversized red shoes slip off his feet. 

He’s on a rooftop—high, high in the sky. Izuku pulls up the legs of the costume so they’ll stop tripping him and manages to stand up, the cold metal roof stinging the soles of his feet. He can see other buildings now, towering skyscrapers, and off in the distance smoke and movement.

“Creati, how’s the evac going?”

Izuku jumps, hand going to his ear where the voice came from: there’s an earpiece jammed there with a little microphone extending towards his mouth.

“The warning hasn’t sounded yet, but I don’t think that building’s gonna stand for much longer,” the voice continues.

“We’re going as fast as we can,” another voice answers, “but there’s still civilians in the impact zone. Deku, do you think you could use Blackwhip to buy us a little more time?”

A silence follows as Izuku wonders if he’s hearing things, if that was really his classmates’ cruel nickname spoken over this inexplicable comm. He doesn’t—none of this—

A siren cuts through the air, followed by a tinny, robotic voice that seems to come from everywhere at once: “One minute collapse warning. All students prepare to evacuate impact zone.”

Izuku almost misses the last few words as a strange resinous whine fills the air and the roof beneath him sways more violently. He crouches back down and puts his hands on the ground, but that can only steady him so much when it’s the floor itself that’s moving. He…he needs help.

“Deku?” Another voice says.

“Deku, report. Are you still up there?”

Izuku winces, but there’s no mistaking it now at least. “H-hello?” he tries.

A small silence, just the wind and faint creaking, then: “Earphone Jack, is he still on the roof?”

“I can’t tell—there’s too much other noise happening,” yet another voice says. “Maybe his comm’s busted?”

Izuku doesn’t know who these people are or how he can be here, but Earphone Jack sounds like a hero name. Izuku is alone, and afraid, and he needs a hero. He reaches for the comm again and feels a little button on the outside. He holds it down. “H-hello?”

There’s another silence and another stab of fear, but then: “Uhh, who was that?”

Izuku jumps and stumbles as the siren sounds again. “Thirty second collapse warning. All students abandon rescue efforts and evacuate impact zone.”

The second the voice stops, Izuku holds the button down again. “H-help me, please.”

“What the fuck,” another voice responds. “Is that a kid?”

“Is this part of the test?” 

The creaks get slower but louder, echoing clank-clank-clanks. Izuku can feel each one resonating under his feet.

“Shit, that building’s about to go—do we know if Deku’s clear?”

Izuku brings his shaking hand back to his ear. “Do…do you mean me? I don’t know where I am.”

“Who’s—”

“It’s okay,” a new, warm voice interrupts. “Can you tell us what you can see?”

“A rooftop,” Izuku answers, his voice shaking. “It’s…moving a lot.”

“Oh my god.”

A new voice comes through the comm—deeper, older: “This isn’t part of the test. Nobody go back into the impact zone. I’m almost—”

Another metallic shriek drowns out the rest. Other voices respond, louder and more panicked now, but to Izuku it’s all just noise. The sky is so white, so close. 

The ground beneath him tilts, more and more of the skyscraper across the way coming into view, and Izuku watches with a strange kind of calm as his discarded shoes begin to tumble and roll. Then the calm snaps, and he tries to scramble over to grab onto something but loses his footing, and then he’s falling over and over himself like when Kacchan tripped him down the big hill in the park, sky-ground-sky-ground—and then there’s no more ground anymore. 

Izuku fumbles once more for the comm in his ear, but it slips through his fingers and tumbles down, down, through the rushing air. Wind howls in his ears, the strange clothes that don’t fit flapping violently as the ground gets closer and closer. Tears form in his eyes and are wicked away before they can fall. He’s going to die, freezing and scared and all alone.

Something slams into him from the side. Izuku tries to cry out, but he has no more breath left. He struggles in blind panic for a moment, until he registers that the rushing wind on his face is different now, sideways instead of up. There’s an arm wrapped around him, holding him steady. Izuku blinks away more frightened tears and takes in the blurry impression of the person holding him, the other arm holding a strange white cord lashed out in front of them. 

The ground isn’t getting closer anymore. Izuku isn’t falling. This man—this hero—has caught him, and now they’re flying. 

“It’s alright,” the hero says. “Just hold on, I’ve got you.” 

Izuku obediently grabs a fistful of black jumpsuit. There’s a jolt as the arm holding the cord pulls back then throws it out again, all the while keeping tight hold of Izuku with the other arm. Even through his terror, some part of Izuku can’t help but marvel.

Their descent slows, slows, and then stops. The hero gently sets Izuku on the ground, then catches him by the shoulders when his shaking legs give out. He puts a hand to his ear. “I got the kid. Is everyone clear?” 

Izuku catches a tinny echo as someone must respond, but he can’t make out the words. The hero’s face relaxes a little and he bends down to Izuku’s level. Izuku can see the cord better now, looped around the hero’s neck like a scarf, and nestled beneath the loops he spies a pair of bright yellow goggles.  

Izuku finds his voice again, managing a reverent whisper: “Eraserhead.”

The hero stares at him with dark bloodshot eyes, an unreadable expression crossing his face. “Midoriya Izuku.”

Izuku slaps a hand over his mouth as his eyes widen. “You know my name,” he murmurs through his fingers.

“Uh-huh.” Eraserhead gives him another unreadable look. “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

“No,” Izuku says, voice still as shaky as his legs. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Eraserhead says, low and even. “We’re going to figure it out together, okay?”

Even through the fear, the echo of all that terrible wind still rushing in his ears, Izuku manages a watery smile. 

Eraserhead frowns, his hand going back to his ear. “Stop yelling. I don’t know what’s going on yet, but the exercise is over. Gather back at the safe zone and—”

He’s interrupted as a pink-skinned girl in a bright costume skids up to them. “Oh my god.” 

A redheaded boy in an even stranger costume runs up behind her. “Mr Aizawa, why is there a kid here? Wait, is that—”

“No way. He’s so tiny!”

More and more of them run or leap or swing in close, a dozen at least, all tall and colourful and with their eyes fixed on Izuku. Eraserhead straightens up to face them and Izuku instinctively ducks behind him, peering out from behind his legs the way he’s trying to stop doing with his mom—oh god, his mom. She’d been in the apartment with him, just minutes ago. Their warm, familiar apartment on a summer’s day. 

“Everyone be quiet!” a boy in armour shouts. “We are obviously causing this young man some distress!”

“You’re shouting louder than any of us, dude.”

“Enough.” Eraserhead’s hair flies up, his eyes flashing red, and they all fall silent. Izuku gasps because he hadn’t known his eyes went red like that! He’d always been wearing goggles in the few videos Izuku managed to find online, and that night—“I don’t know what’s going on, but I expect you all to handle yourselves while I deal with it. And every one of you should know better than to crowd a frightened civilian like this.”

The unfamiliar heroes seem various levels of cowed. They’re young, Izuku realises, even if they seem terrifyingly tall from his position half-hidden behind Eraserhead. Their hero costumes seem so real, but he isn’t sure if they’re old enough to be real heroes yet—which would also explain why he doesn’t recognise any of them.

“So he doesn’t remember us at all?” A girl in a pink-and-white suit asks quietly.

Everyone looks to Izuku again. Confusion and delayed terror and all those strange eyes fixed on him mass together inside his chest, a burn rising in his throat that threatens tears—but a hero asked Izuku a question, so he has to answer. He shakes his head, lip wobbling.

Eraserhead’s hand lands on his shoulder. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the main campus and we’ll get this figured out.”

Izuku wants to grip that hand right back, or go back to holding onto the jumpsuit again. At least Eraserhead isn’t leaving him alone—Izuku doesn’t know what he’d do if he had to leave behind the one hero here he recognises, the one who caught him and saved him. Saved him again. 

Eraserhead turns his attention back to the group of heroes. “Go get changed and head back to the dorms.”

Eraserhead’s hand slides off Izuku’s shoulder as he begins striding away, and Izuku immediately misses its weight. He scrambles along after, grabbing onto the legs of the costume again so it won’t trip him up.

“Do you think this means we won’t be graded on that exercise?” one of the heroes asks. “Because that was not my best work, for sure.”

“I mean, Mido probs won’t be graded since apparently he’s baby now? But you’re probably screwed.”

The loud boy begins scolding them again, and Izuku loses the specifics as they get further away. The street around him is even stranger than it had seemed from up in the air; they’re surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers, but all of them are in various levels of disarray—windows broken, some missing chunks or half-crumbled away. Aside from the gaggle of heroes behind them, there’s not a single soul in sight. 

“How old are you, Izuku?” Eraserhead asks without turning around. His pace isn’t too fast, but Izuku is slowed down by trying to pick his way through debris and avoid stepping on anything that will hurt his bare feet.

“S-seven, sir.”

“What’s the last thing you remember, before being up on the roof?”

“Um, it’s a little fuzzy but…” Izuku pauses, hopping over a collapsed metal beam and wincing as he lands on sharp little rocks. “I was just at home, I think. Watching TV?” 

The memories feel a little farther away than they should, like he just woke up from a long nap. There’s no way this is a dream, though: Izuku’s dreams always skip and jump around wildly, so dizzying and fast he sometimes feels tired when he wakes up, until some new thing fills him up with energy again.

Izuku looks up from the ground and finds Eraserhead has stopped, frowning at him. “You don’t have shoes, do you?”

Izuku feels a strange rush of shame as he shakes his head. “They fell off on the roof…sorry.”

Eraserhead sighs and reaches a hand back up to his ear. “Yaoyorozu? Catch up to us when you can, please.”

He crosses the distance between them and bends down to Izuku’s level again. “Did you cut your feet?”

“No,” Izuku says, even though he’s not totally sure if that’s true. 

Eraserhead frowns at him, not as stern as he’d been with the group of heroes but clearly not happy. Izuku looks down at the floor, at the strange teal fabric pooling around his feet. He shouldn’t be here, slowing down heroes, giving the wrong answers. He should be home with his mom, safe and warm. 

“It’s okay to be scared,” Eraserhead says. “I’d be scared too, if I didn’t know where I was or how I got there.”

The tears Izuku managed to hold back earlier fill his eyes again, and he bites hard at his lip. He’s seven now; he has to be brave. “I’m okay,” he says softly. “Th-thank you for saving me.” 

Those strange, dark eyes soften a little. “It’s my job,” he says simply.

Still. Izuku never got to thank him, the first time. 

A girl in a red costume jogs up to them. “Mr Aizawa?”

“Could you please make Izuku some shoes?” Eraserhead asks. “I know you don’t like to use your quirk frivolously, but—”

“Of course, that’s fine.” She looks Izuku up and down, an assessing look in her eyes, then a light glows from her arm as she pulls out a pair of bright red sneakers, like a miniature version of the ones he’d been wearing up on the roof. After another moment’s thought, she pulls out a pair of yellow socks too. 

She holds them out to Izuku and smiles gently. “Let me know if they fit alright? I can always make some more if they don’t.”

“Y-your quirk is so cool!” Izuku stammers. “Can—can you make anything, like food and things too? Can you make alive things? Can you make lots of stuff all at once?”

He realises belatedly that he’s started talking too fast again in that way people don’t like, but the girl—Eraserhead said Yaoyorozu?—is still smiling gently at him. She glances at Eraserhead, who’s ducked his face down into his scarf, expression invisible. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we have time for me to answer all your questions right now.”

“R-right, sorry. Thank you for the shoes!” Izuku sits down and starts to pull them on. He hasn’t cut his feet, he realises—they’re just dirty and a bit sore. It feels strange pulling socks onto dirty feet. 

The shoes are a little bigger than his shoes at home, but way better than trying to walk without any. “They’re great, thank you!”

Yaoyorozu smiles at him. “I don’t normally like to disrupt the economy like this, but for expediency’s sake…” One by one, she pulls out a full outfit out of her arm. “So you can change when Mr Aizawa takes you back to school.”

Izuku takes the clothes and turns them over in his hands reverently. They feel just like normal clothes, but she made them in an instant. Is it a fabric quirk, like that new hero Best Jeanist? She seemed to make them out of nothing, but quirks like that usually have some kind of limiter on them. So cool and versatile, especially if she can make rescue and first aid equipment too—

“Thank you, Yaoyorozu,” Eraserhead says.

Izuku realises he's been mumbling out loud without meaning to, but Yaoyorozu is still smiling softly at him and Eraserhead is giving her a look that seems appreciative. Maybe he’s thinking about how cool her quirk is too.

“Um, what’s your hero name?” Izuku asks.

“I’m Creati, the Everything Hero.”

“So cool,” Izuku murmurs. He’ll have to look her up once he gets home. The thought sends another jolt through him, realising he has no idea how far he is from home right now or when he’ll be able to get back there.

Creati gives Izuku another smile before heading back through the otherworldly streets. Eraserhead leads him on, and eventually the destroyed, empty landscape ends abruptly, giving way to an open grassy area, like someone’s spliced two worlds together. Neat, new buildings are dotted around, nothing like the dilapidated skyscrapers they left behind. 

None of this makes any sense, but Izuku’s voice feels as far away as it did when he was falling through the air. Eraserhead leads him silently into the largest building of all. Inside it looks like a school, just on a grander scale than anything Izuku has ever seen before, doors five times his height. Izuku isn’t tall enough to see through any of the windows, though he can hear low murmurs of voices inside. 

Eraserhead leads him past it all until they arrive at a door marked Faculty Only. He swipes a card and pushes the door open; inside is a single-stall bathroom. “You can get changed in here.”

Izuku hurries obediently inside and shuts the door behind him. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to undo many fastenings from the strange outfit he’s wearing before it slips off of him to pool on the ground below. He pulls on the clothes Creati made for him; the T-shirt is in his favourite bright primary colours, and on closer inspection Izuku realises the design mirrors All Might’s Silver Age costume. So cool! He’s wearing one-of-a-kind merch, made right in front of him. 

Izuku bounces up and down on his feet imagining having that quirk for himself, making whatever merch he wants and having such a cool way to help people too. He touches the soft fleece lining on the hoodie Creati made for him. He can so clearly imagine her making a soft blanket to tuck around the shoulders of a frightened civilian she’d rescued, smiling that bright smile. 

Once he’s dressed, Izuku picks the costume up off the floor and examines it. The material is strong, much stronger than it looks, and there are heavy reinforced areas over the legs, part of what had been making it so difficult to walk. The colour is nice, like one of Izuku’s favourite crayons. 

His hands trace over the material, folding it up in his arms—then he reaches the hood and freezes, staring at the shape the fabric forms. It’s so like the drawings he’d made—hadn’t been able to get himself to stop making, even after…after. Izuku’s hands long for his notebook, for his crayons, for anything familiar—the dip in the couch where he sits and scribbles, listening to his mom humming in the kitchen. There are tears welling in his eyes again and he scrubs them away, the costume an awkward weight in his arms.

There’s a quiet knock on the door. “Izuku?”

Izuku swipes once more at his face, then heads back out. “Eraserhead?”

Eraserhead crouches down to his level again. “What is it?”

Izuku hesitates. This is a grown-up and a stranger, one who could yell or scold him or just decide Izuku isn’t worth the trouble and walk away if he’s too much of a bother. But it’s also Eraserhead, who grabbed Izuku out of the air and brought him safe down to the ground. A hero. Izuku’s hero, twice-over now. 

“Why…why was I wearing this?” Izuku asks. “And…and why did those heroes know—they were calling for Deku? And you knew my name already, my real name. What’s…”

Eraserhead nods, seeming to understand the gist of Izuku’s half-finished questions. “I wasn’t going to explain until I had more information,” he says, “but I’ll tell you what I do know. I think you’ve been affected by a quirk that’s temporarily reverted you physically and mentally to a younger age. I know your name because normally you’re one of my students—the same age as the other kids you met back there. You were wearing that outfit because it’s your hero costume.”

Izuku blinks, too many thoughts racing through his head to know which to grab onto. “Hero costume,” he repeats slowly. “Like—like for pretending?”

“No,” Eraserhead answers. “You weren’t in a real fight back there—it was an exercise so you could all practise how you’d respond. But your hero costume is real. You’re a first year hero student.”

Izuku puts a hand over his mouth again and the costume starts to unfold in his arms, falling to the floor. Eraserhead takes it from him and Izuku crosses his arms across his middle, like he can hold himself together. 

“Come on,” Eraserhead says, his voice a little softer now. “Let’s go get you some answers.” 

Eraserhead leads Izuku to an infirmary, even though he isn’t sick. The woman inside exchanges a look with Eraserhead that Izuku doesn’t understand, and then he notices the syringe cane leaning against the desk and realises she must be Recovery Girl, the Youthful Hero! The excitement is almost enough to distract him from the little sting of fear when Eraserhead leaves, saying he’ll be back once he’s made some calls. 

Recovery Girl sits Izuku on a bed and asks him if he’s hurt at all or feeling anything strange, and doesn’t entirely seem to believe Izuku when he says he’s fine. But she gives Izuku a lollipop and doesn’t seem to mind Izuku quizzing her about her quirk until Eraserhead comes back.

“You’re not the first person this has happened to,” Eraserhead says, sounding even more tired than before. “The police have been getting calls all week. It’s apparently temporary, with people reverting back after a few days. The targets have been so random that they think it’s probably an accident, some kid who isn’t yet aware of their quirk or that they’re activating it. And the delayed activation is making it more complicated to unravel.”

Eraserhead sighs, then focuses his attention back on Izuku. “The point is, you’ll only be like this for a few days—no one’s gone longer than three so far.”

Izuku nods slowly. Normally he’d love learning about such a strong, strange quirk like this, but the details of this one are just making his head hurt. The way Eraserhead talks about it…for Izuku, it’s like he’s been brought into the future, or some parallel world. But for everyone else it’s Izuku that’s the odd one out, like he’s sick and just needs to wait until he gets better. The thought of being sick makes him long for his mom again, for her to tuck him up in bed and press a cool damp cloth to his forehead.  

“Can I see my mom?” Izuku asks.

“I called her,” Eraserhead says. “She’s out of the country for work right now. She’s looking at getting flights back, but it’s probably going to be a while before she can get here.”

“Oh.” Izuku fidgets with the soft lining of the hoodie again. He can be brave about this, like a hero. He’s seven now. He’s going to be brave.

Eraserhead holds out a phone. “But she’s waiting for your call.”

Izuku presses the video call button, and Eraserhead steps back and pulls the curtain around the bed. A soft murmur of voices begins behind the curtain, but Izuku only has eyes for the phone. 

His mom picks up and is speaking before the picture loads in. “Izuku, baby?”

“Mom!”

Her familiar face appears, a little rounder but somehow still exactly right. “Gosh, I haven’t seen that little face in so long! Mr Aizawa said you’re seven?”

“Uh-huh,” Izuku says, basking in his mom’s warm’s familiar voice. “He’s Eraserhead,” he whispers.

His mom laughs gently. “I know, sweetie. You know all these heroes now!”

Izuku smiles, but it’s wobblier this time. Now. Now for his mom meaning when Izuku is as old as the teenagers who’d crowded around him. He’s out of sync with everyone else, like he’s fallen between the floorboards of his real life. 

“This must be so strange for you,” his mom says, like she can hear Izuku’s thoughts even if she’s an ocean away. “I’m so sorry I’m not there with you, baby.”

“It’s okay,” Izuku says, telling himself it’s not a real lie. “I’ve been fine.”

“My brave boy,” she says, and Izuku sits a little taller even as he clutches at the phone like a lifeline. “The weather’s bad here, so it’s looking like I’m going to have to drive a little ways before I can get a flight back, and then there’ll be a connecting flight, so it might be a little while before I’m there with you.”

“Y-you don’t have to come back if you’re working,” Izuku says, even as his chest aches to be swept into her arms. “I know it’s important.”

“Izuku, sweetie,” his mom says, her voice serious and warm all at once. “There is nothing in this world that will keep me from coming to hug you right now, okay?”

Izuku feels a grin spread across his face. “Okay.”

“It just might take me a while to get there, so you’ll have to stay there at UA with the heroes and be good for them, alright? Do what they tell you to do and don’t go wandering off.”

Izuku almost drops the phone. “UA? The—the hero school, UA?”

The voices outside the curtain pause.

“Oh, Izuku.” His mom’s smile gets softer and sadder all at once. “Yes. You go to the best hero school there is. Do you know why?”

“Why?” Izuku whispers.

“Because you’re going to be an amazing hero someday. Just like you always wanted.”

In the minutes that follow, Izuku cries so much that eventually Eraserhead takes the phone back and steps outside to talk to his mom some more, while Recovery Girl pats him on the back and gives him a whole pack of gummies. Once Izuku has calmed down a little, he eats his way through the bag of gummies while slowly sipping water, interrupted by occasional miniature floods of tears when he remembers his mom’s words, the absolute faith in her voice.

“But,” Izuku says once Eraserhead has slipped back into the room and he’s capable of making words again. “I can’t go to UA.”

“You definitely do, dearie,” Recovery Girl says.

“But they…they don’t let people without quirks in.”

Kacchan had run right up to him in the playground one day, and Izuku had been so excited because Kacchan never seems excited to talk to him anymore—but it was just because he’d found out that UA had an official rule preventing quirkless people from even applying to the hero course. Izuku had lost a full weekend after despite his mom making his favourite meal, and putting the All Might debut video on repeat even though she finds it scary, and hugging him for over an hour while he sat on the floor and sobbed.

Eraserhead’s frown deepens, and Izuku starts welling up again when he realises he just told two heroes who were being so nice to him that he’s quirkless. “That isn’t a rule anymore,” Recovery Girl says gently. “And besides—Izuku, have you ever heard of late bloomers?”

Izuku feels his eyes go wide. He nods slowly.

“They’re rare—”

“—Extremely rare,” Eraserhead interrupts, an edge to his voice.

“But it does happen,” she continues, unphased. “It happened to you.”

“I…the grown up me has a quirk?”

“Not so grown up yet,” she says, a little sadness to her smile. “But yes, you do.”

Izuku looks from her to Eraserhead, then down at his own hands. A little lurch of strange, painful joy shoots through his chest, but somehow quieter than it should be. The doctor was wrong, just like Izuku always desperately hoped. It’s like a miracle. Like a story. 

It feels more like a story than anything real. Only in a story would two pro heroes tell Izuku he has a quirk and goes to hero school— All Might’s old hero school. In real life Izuku is seven, Izuku lives at apartment number twelve, and Izuku is quirkless. In the world he’s found himself in now, maybe none of those things are true anymore. 

Izuku chews his gummy and kicks his legs, too full of thoughts to even cry anymore. 

“Now, now,” Recovery Girl says. “You don’t need to worry about quirks or anything else at the moment. For the next few days, you’re a guest here at UA and we’re going to take very good care of you. Aren’t we, Eraserhead?”

Eraserhead looks just as full of thoughts as Izuku feels. “Yes, we are,” he says slowly, mechanically.

Izuku watches him anxiously. Is…is Eraserhead mad at Izuku for being quirkless? But Izuku isn’t quirkless, somehow. In this world, Izuku is a teenager with a quirk, one of Eraserhead’s students, and even through the strangeness that thought gives Izuku a little thrill. But maybe he still counts as quirkless in Eraserhead’s eyes, since he doesn’t have his quirk yet?

“Don’t mind him,” Recovery Girl says, her voice quiet and conspiratorial. “He makes those silly, angry faces, but he’s a softie deep down.”

Eraserhead glares at her, then looks back to Izuku and his expression softens. Then he does an exaggerated glare at him too, one that doesn’t touch the gentleness in his eyes, and Izuku smiles in spite of himself. 

“My mom said I should stay here until she gets back?” Izuku asks hesitantly.

“Yes,” Eraserhead answers. “Normally you live in a dorm with the rest of your class, but that’s not going to work when you’re this young.”

“I’d be okay,” Izuku insists, even though he barely knows what it means to live in a dorm. 

“Sure,” Eraserhead says flatly. “But instead I think you should come and stay with me.”

Izuku’s eyes widen again. “But you’re a hero. Aren’t you too busy to look after me?”

“I’m also your homeroom teacher, so you’re my responsibility. Plus there’s another kid I take care of who’s the same age as you are now, so it makes sense.”

Eraserhead has a child! Izuku never thinks about heroes having regular families. But…a kid his age. Izuku fidgets anxiously with his sleeves. Kids his age don’t like Izuku.

“Will…will they mind?” Izuku asks. “Having me there too?”

Eraserhead’s expression softens again. “She already likes you, kid. She knows the older you. It’ll take some explaining, but it’ll be fine.”

Izuku nods, head swimming. The older you…

“We can try to figure something else out if there’s someone else you’d be more comfortable with,” Eraserhead continues. “Like a relative or family friend. We'd have to clear it with your mom first, but—”

“I want to stay with you,” Izuku blurts out.

“You heard the boy,” Recovery Girl says, slipping one more gummy into Izuku’s hand and chuckling at Eraserhead’s expression.

Chapter Text

Eraserhead says they’re going to the teacher’s dorm, and the idea makes Izuku’s head hurt a little bit. His mind is full of images of teachers, who are also pro heroes, sleeping in a big room full of bunk beds. But it turns out a teacher’s dorm is pretty much like Izuku’s own apartment building, except all the apartments belong to different teachers. 

Eraserhead leads him to the fourth floor, then pauses outside the door. “I need to go and explain things to Eri before she sees you. Are you alright to wait out here for a minute?”

“Okay.”

Eraserhead gives him a stern look. “Don’t go anywhere else, alright? I should only be a few minutes.”

Izuku isn’t sure why both his mom and Eraserhead seem to think he’s going to wander off, but he nods seriously. “I’ll wait here. I promise.”

Eraserhead’s hand lands on top of his head, not quite ruffling his hair but just resting there a moment. “I’ll hold you to that.” Then he disappears inside.

Izuku glances down the silent corridor, eyeing the other doors curiously; he wonders which pro heroes are teachers at UA now, if they're ones he'd recognise or totally new. The thought makes him look at Eraserhead’s door more closely and spy a little sign that reads, “Aizawa Shouta.” His mom and the hero students had called him Aizawa, too. Izuku turns the name over in his mind, a little spark of delight at knowing the secret of an elusive underground hero’s real name, though he can’t quite bring himself to call his hero anything but his hero name even inside his own head.

At the edge of the sign there’s a little sticker of a black cat, holding up one paw in a wave. Izuku wonders if Eraserhead’s child put it there. Eri, he’d said…

The door swings open and out steps a blue-haired girl in a school uniform, quickly followed by a blonde boy in casual clothes.

“Whoa, Aizawa wasn’t kidding!” the boy says. “Not that he’s much of a kidder, but—tiny Deku!”

Izuku winces slightly. It reminds him of the first time a kid at school Izuku hadn’t even known had called him Deku, the realisation that the insult had more life to it now than Izuku’s real name.

“Wow, what a crazy quirk!” the girl says, leaning down to stare at Izuku with wide blue eyes. “Kinda cool when you think about it, but weird too. Do you feel weird? You’re all super small and back in time in your head! You don’t remember us, right?”

Izuku shakes his head hesitantly, his voice feeling far away again.

“Ah, then we’re being super rude right now, huh?” the boy says. “We’re talkin’ like we’re buds, because normally we are, but to you we’re just a couple’a random weirdos!” He steps around the girl and holds out his hand. “I’m Mirio and this is Nejire.” Nejire waves and grins.

“Izuku,” Izuku says softly, and holds out his hand in return.

“Hey there, Izuku!” Mirio shakes Izuku’s hand vigorously. “Nice to meet you! Normally we’re your senpais—or I guess we kinda still are!” The handshake stops, but Mirio holds his hand out for a fistbump next, which Izuku hesitantly returns.

“You’re hero students?” Izuku asks, glancing curiously from Nejire’s uniform to Mirio’s lack of one.

“Sure are!”

“Yep, yep, we’re third years,” Nejire agrees, “though Mirio’s on a little vacay right now.”

“Uh-huh,” Mirio says, pointing to himself with a double thumbs up. “Livin’ on easy street!”

They’re so loud and bright and friendly, like the hero students Izuku saw before but dialled up even higher. Izuku doesn’t know what to say—he doesn’t know what a vacay is, or why a hero student would ever stop being one. 

“Hey, De—” Mirio starts, then corrects himself. “Uh, Izuku, you like learning about quirks, right?”

Izuku brightens, even if it is weird to have these strangers know things about him. “Yeah!”

Mirio jerks a thumb at Nejire. “You want to see something super cool?”

Nejire’s wide eyes somehow get even wider. “Oh, yeah, you want to see? Are you watching? Okay, okay.” 

She backs up a little and stretches out her hands, and Izuku watches in wonderment as bright yellow light starts to spiral out from her palms.  

“Boring!” Mirio calls, hands cupped around his mouth. “C’mon, you can do better than that!”

“Aha, Togata, c’mon! I’m obviously just getting warmed up, obviously!” 

The waves start spiralling from her feet too, and she rises up into the air. She flows away from them down the corridor then spins back around, light arcing and dancing in delicate streams. 

“Pretty cool, right?” Mirio nudges Izuku gently. 

Izuku squeaks, unwilling to look away from Nejire for even a second. She twirls like a ballerina, rising higher, higher—and then the light abruptly cuts out and she falls neatly down onto the floor. “Awww, no fair!”

Eraserhead is standing in the doorway, hair dropping back down around his shoulders as the light fades from his eyes. “Hadou,” he says, voice flat and tired, “you’re licensed to use your quirk for matters of necessity. Would you care to explain what the necessity was here?”

“I mean,” Mirio says, “I think it was that, sir.”

He gestures to Izuku, whose smile is starting to make his face hurt. Eraserhead’s stern expression makes him think this isn’t the time for questions, but they trip over themselves inside his head anyway. Everyone here is so cool. 

Eraserhead scrubs a tired hand over his face. “Both of you go back to your dorm.”

“Sure, sure,” Mirio agrees easily. “It was super nice to re-meet you, Izuku!”

Nejire skips back over and ruffles Izuku’s hair. “So fluffy! See ya around, little guy!”

They sweep out of the corridor before Izuku can summon any words. He feels a little like he was just caught in a whirlwind, and Eraserhead’s tired expression suggests he’s feeling something of the same. 

“Come on,” he says, opening the door wider.

Izuku pauses, anxiety flooding back as he remembers he’s about to meet Eraserhead’s child. He follows Eraserhead hesitantly into the apartment, where a girl with long silvery hair is sitting on a couch, staring at Izuku with wide red eyes. 

“Deku?” she asks softly, and Izuku suppresses another wince. She doesn’t look gleeful the way kids normally do when they insult Izuku, though; if anything, she looks scared of him.

Izuku nods hesitantly. “H-hi.”

She tilts her head to the side, looking him up and down. A little horn sticks up through her hair, and Izuku wonders if it’s part of her quirk. “You…you don’t remember me?”

“No,” Izuku murmurs. “Sorry.”

Eraserhead leans on the arm of the couch between them. “But it’s just temporary.”

Eri looks up at him, a little hint of tears in her eyes. “Because…because it’s a different quirk.” 

“Yes,” he answers, steady and gentle. “It’s different, and it’s going to wear off in a few days.”

Eraserhead puts a hand on his chest and takes a deep breath in. Eri mirrors him, screwing her eyes shut for a second as she inhales. Her sleeve slips down, and Izuku catches a glimpse of large but faded scars. 

Izuku shifts on his feet, staring down at the shoes Creati made for him. He’d been prepared for a pro hero’s child to be someone tall and strong and mean, like the upperclassman who scare everyone in his class but Kacchan, who’s never scared of anything. Somehow the fact that he seems to be upsetting Eraserhead’s daughter just by being here is even worse. 

“And…you’re okay?” Eri asks, and Izuku looks up to find those big red eyes fixed on him again. 

Izuku nods hesitantly. Eri doesn’t look reassured, and her obvious fear makes something in Izuku’s chest ache. He needs to show her it’s all alright, even if he doesn’t feel like it is either. He swallows through the lump in his throat, pulls close the memory of the safety he feels watching All Might’s debut video in his warm familiar apartment, and smiles as big as he can manage. “I’m okay, really!”

Eri watches him for a long moment, then her lips twitch very slightly into a tiny, hesitant smile. Somehow it makes Izuku’s smile a little easier to carry too. 

Eraserhead rests a hand on Eri’s head for a moment, then heads away into the kitchen. He drops his bag and capture weapon on the back of a chair, then pulls out his phone and starts tapping away. Izuku looks hesitantly around the apartment, smaller but more open than his own. There are papers and colouring pencils scattered across the coffee table in front of Eri; the one closest to her is a colouring sheet of flowers, carefully coloured in purples and reds. 

“I like your pictures,” Izuku says shyly. 

Eri’s little smile makes a brief, dazzling reappearance. “Do you like drawing too?”

Izuku lights up and nods. Kacchan says drawing is boring, and so the other kids who follow him around don’t like to do it either. His mom is the only one who ever sits and draws with him, and even then not very much; she says he’s so much better at it than her anyway, but he knows it’s really because she’s too busy. 

Eri shuffles over to the side of the couch, making a space for him. Izuku takes a step and then realises he’s still wearing his shoes. He takes them off and leaves them neatly by the door, next to Eraserhead’s haphazardly discarded boots. He can’t see any slippers to change into, but a quick glance shows him that neither Eri nor Eraserhead are wearing them either. 

Izuku pads over to the couch and hops up beside Eri, the strangeness of all this flooding through him again—he’s in Eraserhead’s apartment, sitting on Eraserhead’s couch with Eraserhead’s daughter, at UA. 

Eri holds out a book of colouring sheets to him. “I like these,” she says. “But there’s normal paper too.”

Izuku flips through the book, careful not to crease the pages. He doesn’t want to accidentally take one that Eri wanted for herself, and he honestly prefers having the space to make up his own drawings, so eventually he hands the book back to her and picks up some plain paper from the table. He pulls a pack of colouring pencils closer and silently vows to use them carefully, making sure he doesn’t press too hard and muddy the tips. No one has shared their things with him for so long, and Izuku is so familiar now with the little lurch in his stomach when his own things come back dented or broken, or don’t come back at all because Deku is wasting them anyway. He’s not going to make Eraserhead’s daughter sad again.

Eraserhead comes back over to the couch. “One of the other teachers is going to go buy you some clothes for the next few days,” he says, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “And he’s going to pick us up some food too.” He hands Izuku a battered menu for a chinese food place, and Izuku feels a little pang remembering the drawer in his own kitchen full of menus his mom won’t throw away even though they can order everything with her phone. “Pick anything you like.” He looks to Eri. “The usual?”

Eri nods. “Extra spring rolls, please.”

Eraserhead huffs. “That is the usual, at this point.”

Anxiety swirls in Izuku’s chest as he looks over the menu, thinking of Eraserhead spending money on him, of another teacher and hero taking the time to go out and get him clothes. But it seems rude not to pick anything when Eraserhead told him to, and he is starting to get hungry. The last thing he ate was only carrot sticks, hours ago now—except it wasn’t hours ago, really. It was long enough that he grew up and became a hero student, with a quirk. His head swims again, and he forces himself to focus instead on the little lines of orange text in front of him. 

Izuku points hesitantly to some chicken chow mein. 

“Nothing else?” Eraserhead asks, but when Izuku shakes his head he takes the menu away and starts tapping at his phone again. 

Izuku sits side by side with Eri and looks at the blank sheet of paper. His hands itch to draw Eraserhead now that he’s seen the capture cloth working up close, but he’d be so embarrassed if Eraserhead saw. He thinks about the other heroes he could draw, but doesn’t have his computer like he does at home to look up reference pictures. In the end he grabs a red colouring pencil and starts to draw Creati, humming softly as he tries to remember the details of her costume. 

Eri continues her colouring sheet and opts for the larger crayons rather than the colouring pencils. Izuku wonders if those scars make her arms or hands hurt. He wonders how the daughter of a pro hero got so hurt in the first place. 

There’s the quiet sound of a pen scratching from behind them too, and Izuku looks around to see Eraserhead hunched over some papers, frowning and occasionally jotting something down—grading, maybe. It’s strange to see him doing teacher-y things—strange to see him like this at all, so close and still and normal, hair pulled back into a ponytail. It’s sort of like seeing a tiger curled up in the living room like a housecat. Eraserhead’s eyes flick to Izuku and he nods minutely.

Izuku turns quickly back to his paper. They draw together for a while, Izuku momentarily losing himself in trying to capture the way light glowed from Creati’s arm, or the shape or her goggles, then feeling the anxiety flood back in as soon as his concentration slips. He remembers his own oversized costume, the weight of it in his arms, his old drawings come to life. He thinks about the version of himself that was big enough to wear it properly. A late bloomer. A hero student with a quirk. Even thinking about it feels like staring into a light so bright it hurts his eyes, leaving strange impressions everywhere he looks.

Eri puts her colouring sheet down half-finished and reaches for some of the blank paper. She only works on it for a minute before pushing it across the table to Izuku. In neat little purple hiragana, she’s written: Are you really okay? Then, below it: Sometimes it’s easier to write things than say them.

Izuku feels a strange warmth curl in his chest. I’m okay, he writes back. Then, after a moment: It’s kind of weird knowing I don’t remember stuff I should know. 

Eri nods seriously and takes the paper back. They’re nice here. They’ll take care of you until you can remember again. 

It’s what Eraserhead and Recovery Girl said too, but somehow seeing it written down makes it more real. He doesn’t know why he’d expected the child of a pro hero to be strong but not kind.

Izuku takes one more quick glance behind him. Is Eraserhead really your dad?

They don’t look anything alike, and it’s still strange thinking of Eraserhead having anything as normal as a family, but the ease between them makes Izuku ache for his mom. 

Not really, Eri writes. He looks after me because of my quirk. Then she crosses out the last sentence and anxiously turns the crayon over in her hands. 

Izuku’s mind buzzes with curiosity—a quirk that means Eri has to stay near someone who can cancel them out, and their mentions before of what happened to Izuku being ‘a different quirk’—but he pushes his questions firmly back down. The most important thing is that he doesn’t make Eri sad anymore, and even writing the word quirk seems to have done that. 

He helped save me from a bad place, Eri writes eventually, then pushes the paper back to Izuku.

A bad place. Izuku glances again at Eri’s arm, sleeve now covering the scars he’d glimpsed before. He’s only just met Eri, but his stomach hurts at the thought of this gentle girl who shares her colouring things with him being anywhere bad. 

He saved me too, Izuku writes back. He thinks about adding twice, but it feels almost like bragging. And…that first time isn’t something he really knows how to talk about—a hazy memory that seems like it might shatter if he tries to speak it aloud.

You saved me too, Eri writes. She keeps writing for a while after that, her hand angled so Izuku can’t see the words until she pushes the paper back to him. And then you said we should be friends. You and Lemillion were my first friends. 

There’s a tightness in Izuku’s throat. He doesn’t know which part feels more impossible, or more wonderful—the idea of saving someone or the idea that they’d still want him around after the danger was gone. Can we still be friends? Izuku writes, quick and messy before he can chicken out.

“Yes,” Eri says immediately, and Izuku almost jumps at the sound of her voice. She smiles her small, gentle smile at him again. 

“Then you’re one of my first friends, too,” Izuku replies, smiling hesitantly back.

Their quiet drawing is eventually interrupted by a loud, musical series of knocks on the door. The knocks continue as Eraserhead makes his way to the door, muttering “heard you the first fifteen times,” under his breath. 

Eraserhead opens the door, but it’s angled so Izuku can’t see who’s on the other side. 

“Delivery!” the other person shouts, and there’s a rustling as Eraserhead takes and starts looking through a bag. 

“He doesn’t need this much stuff,” Eraserhead says. “He’s only going to be like this for another couple of days at most.”

There’s a creaking from the other side of the door, a hint of movement through the crack by the hinges. “Well, now he has choices! And you don’t get to judge my kids’ clothing shopping, Mr Ganriki Neko.”

Eraserhead keeps looking through the bag, then sighs. “You got him Present Mic pyjamas?”

Izuku lights up. He’s not allowed to listen to Present Mic’s segment on Amplifier’s radio show, since his mom says that show is for grown-ups only, but he’s seen clips of Present Mic fighting villains and he’s so cool. 

“They were 30% off, Shou!” the man on the other side of the door cries. “It was super efficient and rational.” There’s more creaking, and a little movement of the door that’s quickly stopped by Eraserhead’s foot. “Can I see the littlest listener now?” 

“He’s not a tourist attraction.”

“Awww, Papa Bear Shou, super special double edition!” 

Eraserhead shuts the door, ignoring the little yelp from the man on the other side. “Food’s here.”

Eri insists on sharing her spring rolls with Izuku even though he can tell they’re her favourites. Eraserhead watches them with an expression Izuku can’t quite name, but he feels a warmth from it regardless. 

Eri takes her bath first while Izuku finishes his Creati drawing, then takes one himself. It’s a relief to wash away the dirt from picking his way through the rubble, even if it feels strange bathing in this unfamiliar bathroom. The Present Mic pyjamas are just a little bit small, his wrists and ankles poking out, but Izuku adores them anyway. 

He comes out of the bathroom to find Eraserhead pulling a collapsible futon out of the hall closet. 

Eri pokes her head out of another door, twirling her still slightly-damp hair around her fingers. “Where are you putting the bed?”

“That’s up to Izuku.”

Izuku hesitates, pulling at the sleeves of his new pyjamas; they aren’t quite as good to fidget with as the hoodie Creati made. 

“It could go in my room?” Eri offers. “I have a little light shaped like a moon,” she says solemnly to Izuku, “so it’s never really dark.”

Izuku swallows through the lump in his throat. It’s been years since he had a sleepover—the last one had been with Kacchan, after he’d gotten his quirk but before it had become clear that Izuku wouldn’t get his. Except…Izuku shakes off the thought and refocuses on Eri. “Yes please.”

The futon is surprisingly comfortable, and Izuku’s eyes ache with exhaustion, but still he lies there with thoughts buzzing and twisting in his head for what feels like hours. He starts to worry he won’t be able to sleep at all, even though Eri was nice enough to share her room. Everyone’s being so nice and Izuku is still so scared, fear high and close in his chest. If he were strong and brave like Kacchan, he’d be making the most of this chance to visit UA and meet heroes and explore the future. If Izuku were like other kids he could close his eyes, let his head rest on the pillow, and his brain would just switch off like a light.

Izuku forces himself to lie still with his eyes tight shut, waiting and waiting, and after a while he does start to drift—unmoored, like floating on water, and then he’s falling down and down with the rushing wind in his ears and jerking awake with a start, heart thumping in his chest.

He gives in and sits up, gripping tight to the star-embroidered blanket Eri lent him. The glow of the moon-light is soft and unobtrusive, and it lets him see that Eri herself seems to be fast asleep, her hair sprawled out across the pillow and hiding her face. 

Eri’s room is nothing like Izuku’s: pastel colours where his is all bright primaries, no posters or action figures—hardly any toys at all, really. But she has glow-in-the-dark star and moon stickers across the ceiling, a giant fluffy rug covering almost the whole room, and a neat little bookcase piled with books and kits for things like modelling clay and origami. There’s an old fashioned music player sitting on top of the dresser, and a pile of chunky little boxes next to it. 

It’s a nice room, and Eri shared it with him even though she didn’t have to. Everyone is giving him all these things they don’t have to, and Izuku still can’t sleep.

He climbs carefully out of the bed and out the door. He passes a closed door that must lead to Eraserhead’s room; it still feels so odd to imagine a pro hero having anything as ordinary as a bedroom. He heads for the kitchen, walking as quiet as he can manage, the way him and Kacchan used to when they were pretending to be heroes on a stealth mission—but when he gets there he finds the light still on, and Eraserhead sitting at the table again with a pile of papers in front of him. He’s already looking up at Izuku as he enters the room, so Izuku’s stealth-walking can’t have been that good—or maybe Eraserhead’s just really good at noticing stuff, since he’s an underground hero.

“Everything alright?” Eraserhead leans back from his papers. He’s changed into a loose T-shirt now, and Izuku’s eyes catch on a swathe of discoloured skin all the way across one elbow. He wonders what kind of villain could do that, if it still hurts or just looks like it does.

“Mm-hm.” Izuku rubs at his eyes; it’s not fair that he can feel so tired and still not be able to sleep. “I just…wanted some water.”

Eraserhead eyes him for a moment, then rises from the table and walks to the sink. 

“I can get it,” Izuku says, glancing anxiously at the papers; Eraserhead’s already gone to the trouble of taking him in and now Izuku’s interrupting his work. 

“I’m closer,” Eraserhead says with a shrug. The tap hisses and then Eraserhead hands him a glass. 

“Thank you.” Izuku holds the glass tight in both hands—the idea of dropping something or making a mess in a hero’s apartment is awful. He takes a little sip to delay going back to Eri’s room to try and fail to sleep, his eyes drifting to the papers on the table again. They are tests, he realises, so it must be schoolwork rather than hero work. There’s a strange jolt in Izuku’s stomach when he realises one of those tests might be his own.

“Do I…” Izuku finds himself saying without really meaning to. He trails off, shifting on his feet.

“Do you what?” Eraserhead asks, sitting back down at the table. He’s easier to look at, somehow, when he’s down at Izuku’s level.

“Um,” Izuku murmurs, “when…when do I get my quirk? Or…or when did I, I guess?” He can’t quite get used to the idea that for everyone else, the world Izuku knows so well was years and years ago.

Eraserhead’s brow creases slightly. “Sorry, kid. I don’t know.”

“Oh.” Izuku stares down at the water shimmering in the glass, his chipped fingernails pressing against the side. It’s silly, he supposes, to think that Eraserhead will know everything about Izuku just because he’s his teacher. He has lots of students—all those heroes Izuku saw yesterday and more, probably. 

“We could try to find out tomorrow,” Eraserhead offers. “Text your mom, or see if Recovery Girl knows—since she’s apparently so knowledgeable,” he adds with a little frown.

Izuku shakes his head immediately. Even though he’d asked the question, the idea of knowing the answer is oddly frightening. “It’s okay,” he says quickly. “I, um…late bloomers are—are already really rare, right? A-and they’re usually not even as old as me, so…it’ll probably be really soon.”

Izuku stares down at his hands again, all his old daydreams crossing his mind—pulling things towards him with telekinesis, or breathing out smoke and fire. And then, when time went on and nothing materialised, less and less likely ideas: a quirk that only activated underwater, or when he held his breath, or when he was sleeping. 

“Probably.” Eraserhead watches him with that unreadable expression again. “There are things I can tell you,” he says slowly. “What your quirk is, what it does.”

Izuku is shaking his head again before he can even really think about it. It…it shouldn’t be a scary thought. It’s what he’s been wanting—desperately, sickeningly—ever since the doctor’s office. A miracle. Like a storybook. And now it turns out he did get one: a miracle he can’t fathom the shape of, unknowable days or weeks or months in the future that’s really the past. Izuku tries not to wonder if his classmates will still call him Deku after it manifests—then remembers, with a sickening swoop in his stomach, that people here call him that too. Eraserhead’s students over the comm, and Mirio even through his bright smile. Even Eri, who said they were friends, who said that he’d saved her, and who shares her colouring pencils and spring rolls with him. 

“Alright,” Eraserhead says, his voice a little quieter. “It’s late, anyway. Why don’t we get you back in bed?”

Izuku takes another sip of water to try and clear the lump in his throat. “I can’t sleep,” he admits. “I…my head’s too loud. Sorry.”

“That’s not something you have to be sorry for.” There’s a brief silence, just the soft ticking of an unseen clock somewhere and a rustle of cloth as Eraserhead leans forward in his chair. “I have trouble sleeping at night sometimes too.”

Izuku supposes he shouldn’t be surprised; those dark eyes do look tired. It’s just strange to think of a hero not being able to do something, even sleep. “‘Cause your head’s too loud?”

“Sometimes.” He scratches idly at the scar under his eye. “What helps you sleep when you’re at home?”

The real answer is slipping into his mom’s bed and curling up beside her, but there’s no point saying that when he can’t even talk to his mom right now; even if the time difference means she’s still awake, she’ll either be driving or on a plane by now. On a plane coming to see him, but the thought isn’t quite enough to soothe him when he’s craving the cool sheets of her bed and the soft sound of her breath beside him. 

He thinks harder. Sometimes if even lying next to his mom isn’t working, he takes her phone under the covers with the volume as low as it will go and watches hero videos until his brain quiets down. “Um…hero videos?”

Eraserhead blinks at him, but then he pulls his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it and hands it to Izuku. “We can do that.” He rises from the table and puts a hand on Izuku’s shoulder, leading him back down the corridor to Eri’s room.

“Won’t I wake Eri up?”

“Don’t turn it up all the way, but she’s pretty much dead to the world once she’s fallen asleep.”

Izuku sets his water down on the bedside table and hops up onto the futon, then realises Eraserhead hasn’t followed him into the room. He pushes aside the little surge of disappointment—Eraserhead just said he has trouble sleeping, and he shouldn’t have to stay up just because of Izuku.

But a moment later Eraserhead comes in with some kind of yellow puffy blanket under his arm. As he unfolds it, Izuku realises it’s a sleeping bag. Eraserhead climbs inside and sits down between the futon and Eri’s bed.

Izuku suppresses a smile—it’s not nice to laugh at people even if they do look like strange yellow caterpillars—and turns to the phone. He pulls up All Might’s debut video, making sure the volume is almost all the way down. He glances over at Eri, but she’s still sprawled out and still. Eraserhead’s eyes have drifted shut too. 

He’s barely a minute in when Eraserhead speaks up. “You watch videos of dangerous hero fights when you’re trying to go to sleep?”

Izuku meets Eraserhead’s disbelieving gaze and nods.

“That explains a lot,” Eraserhead mutters.

Izuku gives him a quizzical look that goes entirely ignored. “My mom thinks they’re scary too,” Izuku explains. “But nothing can be that scary when All Might’s there. That’s why he’s the best.”

Eraserhead hums in a way that isn’t quite agreement. “Whatever works.” His eyes fall shut again.

The introduction out of the way, the video starts to build to his favourite part, that image of all those people resting on All Might’s strong shoulders, his brilliant smile. Izuku bounces up and down in anticipation.

“This doesn’t seem like it’s helping you sleep.”

Izuku pauses the video to make sure he doesn’t miss the best part. “I have to watch this one first because it’s my favourite,” he explains. “Then I’ll watch something quieter. I promise.”

The sleeping bag shifts with what Izuku realises must be a shrug. “You’re the one who’ll be tired tomorrow if you stay up all night.”

Izuku would protest that he wouldn’t do that, except he has definitely stayed up all night more than once because of All Might. His mom had not been pleased to find him sitting at the computer at 6am, and the explanation that sometimes exclusive interviews and merch releases came out in the middle of the night from countries in other timezones did not seem to satisfy her. “Just once,” Izuku insists. “I promise.” 

“Sure.” Eraserhead’s eyes close again, and Izuku restarts the video. The full-body glow he feels at that I am here is just as potent and perfect as always, like there’s too much joy in him to hold it all. He’s tempted to run through it one more time, but he remembers his promise and switches to interview compilations instead. 

All Might never stays with the press very long, too busy running off to save even more people, and he’s been asked the same questions so many times that his answers are often pretty similar—but that makes it more soothing, watching dozens of them in a row. Izuku’s eyes drift shut as he listens to the same sound-bites on repeat, the same jokes, the same booming laugh that lets you know it’ll all be alright now. 

Izuku wakes blearily to the sound of quiet sobbing and the gentle drone of a low, even voice. Memories shutter through him in quick blasts: the roof, falling, Eraserhead. UA. Eri. 

Izuku blinks his eyes open, but even the soft glow of the moon-light stings. He blinks the burn away and slowly the room comes into focus: the yellow sleeping bag abandoned on the floor; Eraserhead sitting up in Eri’s bed; Eri tucked into his side, sobbing into his chest.

“It’s alright,” Eraserhead murmurs. “It was just a dream. You didn’t do anything bad, I promise.”

Izuku rubs sleep from his eyes, and Eraserhead’s gaze flicks to him. “Sorry, kid. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Eri lifts her head a little and looks over at Izuku. “Oh, no,” she says, her voice trembling. “I woke you up.”

Izuku wishes he could say she didn’t, but lying isn’t heroic and Izuku isn’t good at it anyway. “It’s okay,” he says, his voice coming out crackly and quiet. He clears his throat and sits up in bed a little. “Did…did you have a bad dream?”

Eri nods, her hands clinging tighter to Eraserhead’s shirt. His hand rubs slow, even circles on her back, just like Izuku’s mom does for him when he’s sick. 

“When I have a bad dream, my mom always says it’ll be better in the morning,” Izuku says. “All we have to do is get there.”

“Your mom’s right.” Eraserhead’s hand cards gently through Eri’s hair. “Some things seem real in the dark, but that doesn’t mean they are.”

Eri brushes tears from her face. “I…I didn’t make you disappear? Either of you?”

“No,” Eraserhead says immediately. He puts his hand over hers. “I’m right here. And if Rewind did start to happen, I’d make it stop before it could hurt anyone.”

Izuku’s sleep-muddled brain tries to take that in—Eri’s quirk is called Rewind, and it makes people disappear? Or maybe she just worries it will; there’s a girl in Izuku’s class who wears gloves all the time because she’s scared she’ll turn people into stone, even though her quirk has only ever transmuted inanimate objects into other materials. Kacchan always says her quirk is lame and not scary at all, but Izuku feels a weird sadness when he sees her tugging anxiously at her gloves.

“Izuku’s okay too, see?” 

Eri looks over at Izuku, blinking away tears, and slowly reaches out her hand. Izuku is climbing out of bed and crossing the room before he’s really decided to, but he gets to the edge of the bed and pauses; he can’t reach Eri’s hand without climbing up into the bed himself. Eri may have said Eraserhead isn’t really her dad, but the way she clings to him speaks only of family. Izuku doesn’t know if he can really intrude on them like that.

Eraserhead shifts silently over to make room for him, just like Eri had made a place for him on the couch. Izuku climbs carefully onto the bed and takes Eri’s outstretched hand. He summons the best smile he can manage. “See, I’m fine. I’m not disappeared. And—and tomorrow we can draw some more, or do whatever you want.” 

Eri hangs on his every word, holding his hand so tightly. He’s never had anyone look at him like that before—something like trust, something like awe. You saved me too, she’d written. 

“And soon I’ll remember you again,” Izuku adds, trying to ignore how the idea makes his head spin. “A-and then you won’t have to be sad anymore.”

Eraserhead’s hand lands on his shoulder, a warm soothing weight. Eri stares at Izuku in the soft glow of the moon-light for a long, long moment. “You’re still you,” she says softly. Her eyes are dry now, but Izuku feels tears prickling at his own. Eri slumps back into Eraserhead’s side, relaxed instead of clinging now, her hand still cradling Izuku’s. “I’m glad you’re still you.”

Izuku watches in wonder as her breath evens out, her chest rising and falling gently. She was scared, and sad, and then he talked to her and it got better. It feels like magic, like a spell that might break any second, but the moments stretch on and it all stays: Eri, quiet and calm, drifting back into sleep. Eraserhead, one hand still stroking her hair, the other hand coming to card gently through Izuku’s curls too. “Good job, kid,” he murmurs, close enough that Izuku can feel the rumble of his voice. 

Eraserhead’s hand is strong and calloused, nothing like Izuku’s mom’s, but it feels impossibly gentle carding through his hair. Izuku hadn’t know heroes could be so gentle, that the same hand that caught him when he fell could do this too. He slumps further into the warmth at his side, the world turning fuzzy and slow. It’ll be harder to dream of falling, he thinks, when he already feels caught.

Chapter Text

Izuku wakes up and immediately checks to see if he’s turned back into a teenager in the night, then remembers that’s silly because if he had then he’d remember being a teenager. Then he takes in where he is: still lying in Eri’s bed, but alone now. The moon-light is off, and pale daylight filters into the room from beneath the curtains. He turns over and looks up at the stars and moons stuck across the ceiling, glow barely visible in the morning light, feeling warm and homesick all at once. 

Izuku gets up and pads out of the room, then pauses when he sees that the door across the corridor is ajar now. He steps closer, head buzzing with the idea of seeing what a pro hero has in his room. 

The answer, it turns out, is not much. There’s a large bed in the centre of the room, covered not in a single sheet or duvet but a tangled nest of various different blankets: some fleece, some heavy-looking and stitched in little squares, and one that looks clumsily hand-knitted and is an incongruous bright pink. There’s a bedside table with nothing on it but a pile of hair ties and a series of shiny half-moon watermarks, the kind Izuku’s mom prevents by shoving coasters under everything. 

The rest of the room is equally bare; there’s a dresser with an almost-overflowing hamper next to it, and a yoga mat and some weights by the window. On the windowsill are a pile of strange, plasticky-looking scarves. Izuku itches to investigate but pauses at the threshold, not quite willing to invade Eraserhead’s space like this even if he couldn’t keep himself from peeking.

“Was starting to think you’d sleep the whole morning away,” comes a voice from down the corridor, and Izuku jumps guiltily.

“Sorry,” he says, and isn’t sure if it’s because of the sleeping or the spying.

“What’s so interesting in there?” Eraserhead asks, coming closer. He doesn’t have his utility belt or capture weapon, but Izuku honestly can’t tell if the plain black clothes he’s wearing are his hero costume or near-identical casual clothes. If he’s annoyed by the intrusion, he doesn’t show it on his face. 

Izuku shifts on his feet, shrugging. “I’ve never seen a real hero’s room before.”

“Pretty anticlimactic, I bet.”

Izuku shrugs again, taking another glance at the room. “You don’t have a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t like a lot of stuff.”

Izuku tilts his head. “Like…there aren’t a lot of things you like, or you like it when there aren’t a lot of things?”

“Both.”

Izuku hums, thinking of the rest of the apartment—the colouring things all over the coffee table, the plants dotted around, the general sense of warm friendly clutter. All that must be for Eri, then, if this is how Eraserhead actually likes things. The thought makes Izuku feel warm somehow; Eraserhead saved her from a bad place, and now he fills his home with things just for her. It’s like a fairytale, and somehow he’s right here in the middle of it.

“What are those?” Izuku asks, and Eraserhead follows his gaze to the things on the windowsill.

“Resistance bands,” he answers, then seems to take in Izuku’s lack of comprehension. “They’re strong and difficult to pull apart, so you can use them for strength training.” He walks over to the windowsill, grabs one and throws it to Izuku. Izuku fumbles it but manages not to drop it entirely. He grips with both hands and tries to pull it apart, and even though it looks flimsy it takes all of Izuku’s strength to stretch it just a little.

“Wow,” Izuku mutters. Eraserhead doesn’t look strong the way All Might does, but Izuku felt his strength firsthand when Eraserhead caught him in one arm and brought them both down to the ground with the other. Like the capture weapon and these odd little bands, he’s stronger than he looks. “You must train a lot.”

“Wouldn’t be a very good hero if I didn’t.”

There’s a soft sound of fast footsteps from down the corridor. “You’re awake!” Eri beams at Izuku, no hint of last night’s sadness on her face.

“Morning,” Izuku murmurs, suddenly shy again, but Eri runs up to him and takes his hand, tugging him to follow her back down the corridor. Izuku hastily hands the resistance band back to Eraserhead and lets her pull him along. A little memory comes through from years and years ago: when Kacchan would pull Izuku along just like this, instead of being content to leave him behind if he couldn’t keep up.

“Now we can make breakfast,” Eri says. “On Sundays we have omelettes.”

She leads him into the kitchen and hops up onto a little stool by the counter, where a carton of eggs and a bowl are already waiting. She picks up an egg and carefully knocks it against the side of the bowl, frowning in concentration as she pulls the two halves apart and lets the egg fall into the bowl. She turns back to him, shuffling to one side of the stool. “You can do half.”

Izuku still feels anxious at the thought of messing anything up in this apartment, and he’s learned a thousand times over that he doesn’t have deft hands no matter how careful he tries to be—but Eri seems so bright this morning, so eager to bring Izuku into this Sunday ritual. He squeezes onto the little stool beside her. It’s not really big enough for both of them, but Izuku picks up an egg and breaks it as neatly as he can, letting the contents fall into the bowl with only a couple of shards of shell. 

He teeters slightly on the stool and Eri grabs his hand again, both of them swaying and giggling. Eraserhead has followed them to the kitchen at some point and stands in the doorway, watching them with an almost imperceptible curve at the corner of his mouth. 

The omelettes Eraserhead makes for them aren’t as neat as the ones Izuku’s mom makes, but they still taste pretty good. He only makes two though, sitting down with just a cup of coffee for himself, perched oddly on the chair with one knee sticking up in the air. 

“Aren’t you gonna have one?” Izuku asks. 

“Nope.”

Eraserhead doesn’t look up from his coffee. Maybe the things he doesn’t like include food—but he works hard at being a hero, he just said so, and that means he needs lots of food to stay strong. 

“Heroes have to eat breakfast, though,” Izuku insists. “My mom said so.” 

Eraserhead’s bloodshot eyes stare Izuku down for a long moment. Then he sighs, mutters “it’s like having a mini Kayama,” and rises from his chair. He rummages through a cardboard box on the counter, pulls out a little plastic pouch then sits heavily back down in his chair. He sucks on the pouch pointedly. The lettering on the outside reveals it to be lime-flavoured jelly. “Happy now?”

Izuku nods contentedly and goes back to his omelette. 

Eri takes his hand and pulls him from the table as soon as they’re finished eating. “Sundays we water the plants, and then I have my quirk training, and then we go to the playground—”

“We’re not going off-campus today,” Eraserhead calls, still hunched over his mug. 

Eri gives a disappointed hum as she grabs a little purple watering can from a shelf. She takes Izuku to the living room, pointing to a pot-plant with tiny pink flowers. “Most plants don’t have flowers in the winter,” she explains, “but this one is special. And it’s making new flowers, too—here and here.”

Izuku has never really paid much attention to plants, but Eri’s serious expression as she points out the tiny buds sprouting from the earth makes him feel a little echo of her interest. 

After watering the first plant, she leads him over to the next one and hands him the watering can. “You do this one.”

Izuku hesitates. “If you like doing them, you can do them all.” 

Eri frowns. “We should take turns, though,” she explains solemnly. “Like on TV.”

Izuku remembers Eri writing that the older him and someone called Lemillion had been her first friends, and how when she talked about school at dinner last night it became clear that for her school was something she did at home, just her and a tutor. Izuku had felt a strange flare of jealousy at that, even though he wants to like school so badly. There are more and more days lately where it’s hard to make himself walk through those gates. No one at school is happy to take turns with Izuku. But maybe Eri doesn’t have anyone to take turns with at all. 

Izuku takes the can in his hand and tilts the water carefully into the pot, letting Eri tell him when to stop. She leads him to the next plant and Izuku feels that mix of warmth and homesickness again. They only have one plant at home and no watering can, so when it needs watering his mom takes it over to the sink. Izuku’s heart longs for the particular little sputter the tap makes when it starts. It was strange all the things he didn’t realise he could miss until he didn’t have them. 

But he’s at his first sleepover in years, listening to Eri tell him about all her different plants with such gentle seriousness, and every time they move to the next one she grabs onto his hand like it’s the obvious thing to do. 

It takes Izuku a little while to sort through the bag of clothes and choose an outfit—there really are a lot, and it’s strange to think he won’t get to wear all of them before this quirk wears off and they won’t fit him anymore—but he’s still ready before Eri, who sits patiently at the little desk in her room while Eraserhead braids her hair. 

Izuku heads back into the kitchen to retrieve the hoodie he’d left on the back of the chair. There were other jumpers in the bag, but this one was made for him specially, right in front of him like magic, and the lining is soft and feels good to pull and worry at. He’s just slipped it back on when there’s a soft knock at the front door.

Izuku glances back towards Eri’s room. Maybe he shouldn’t answer the door at someone else’s house, but he doesn’t want to interrupt Eraserhead and Eri either—and besides, this is a hero school, All Might’s old hero school. There can’t be anyone bad here. He pads over to the door and cautiously pulls it open. 

The man behind the door is so tall that Izuku has to crane his neck to look up at his face. He stares back at Izuku with strange sunken eyes, fist still raised in the air like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Then at last his hand drops to his side, and his face breaks into a gentle smile. 

“Hello, Young Midoriya,” he says, and his voice is so much more substantial than Izuku expected from that skinny frame that it almost makes him jump. “I’m Yagi Toshinori and I’m—” He pauses and coughs into his elbow. “I’m All Might’s secretary.”

Izuku gasps, his hand flying up to cover his mouth. Yagi’s gentle smile broadens slightly. A thousand questions teem in Izuku’s head, tripping over each other on their way to his mouth. Somehow all he ends up saying, in a tiny reverent whisper, is “you can call me Izuku.”

A voice from behind him makes Izuku jump again. “And what is All Might’s secretary doing in my apartment?”

“Not in your apartment,” Yagi mutters, and Eraserhead raises an impatient eyebrow. Yagi coughs again. “Young Eri has her quirk training soon, yes? I thought perhaps I could look after Young M—Young Izuku while you two are busy?”

Eraserhead’s frown doesn’t lift, though there’s a tilt to his mouth too, almost like he’s amused. “Sure you can handle him, All Might’s secretary?”

Izuku glances from Yagi to Eraserhead, unsure if the look exchanged between them is meant to be friendly or mean. Maybe both?

“I’m quite sure,” Yagi says. “So long as that’s alright with you, young man?”

Izuku shifts on his feet, shyness returning even as Yagi just keeps smiling kindly down at him. “You really know All Might?”

“I really do.”

“He really does,” Eraserhead mutters, and Yagi shoots him another not-quite-glare. Izuku wonders if this is some kind of underground-spotlight hero feud, one that even extends to hero’s secretaries. 

Yagi lets Izuku into the almost-deserted school building he’d been in yesterday and leads them to a faculty office. 

“Do you work here too?” Izuku asks.

“Yes, I’m a teacher here.”

Izuku frowns. “I thought only heroes taught at UA?”

Yagi pauses pouring out tea to cough into his elbow. “Exceptions are made for…hero’s secretaries.”

Izuku nods happily. UA has a whole support course too, and a business course, and he bets the staff at hero agencies would know tons about how things work behind the scenes. He realises he’s started muttering under his breath a little, but Yagi only smiles again as he hands Izuku a cup of tea. Izuku honestly doesn’t really like tea—his mom says it’s one of those things you grow to like as you get older—but he sips at it politely anyway. 

In the silence that follows, questions start to teem in Izuku’s mind again. He doesn’t want to be annoying, but he’ll never forgive himself if he wastes the chance to talk to someone who actually knows All Might. “Can…can I ask you questions about All Might?”

“Bit of a fanboy, huh?” 

Izuku ducks his head, flushing, but Yagi only chuckles. “Ask away, my boy.”

Izuku has to concentrate very hard to make his questions slow enough to be intelligible. Yagi doesn’t really answer everything, and he coughs worryingly when Izuku asks about All Might’s quirk, so he backs off that subject quickly—but he seems entirely content to let Izuku pepper him with questions about costumes and team-ups and every random bit of trivia he can think of. Izuku only wishes he had somewhere to write everything down. 

Izuku glances at the clock and sees it’s been almost an hour, the tea gone cold in his hands, and hesitates. “Am I asking too much? Y-you must be really busy being a secretary to the number one hero, and being a teacher too—”

“Nonsense,” Yagi interrupts. “I asked you here, didn’t I?” 

His gentle smile makes Izuku feel warm inside. He wonders if everyone who’s around All Might a lot picks up a little of his glow. 

“In truth, though,” Yagi continues. “I’d rather talk about you.”

“Me?”

Yagi nods. “All Might’s not so interesting, really.”

“Yes he is!”

Yagi waves off Izuku’s indignation. “Well, you’re interesting too.” He sips at his tea, then grimaces at the cold and sets it aside. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Izuku bites his lip, echoes of cruel laughter ringing in his head that even the knowledge of this impossible future can’t quite dispel. “A hero,” he murmurs.

“A hero, huh?” Yagi leans back on the sofa, eyeing Izuku appraisingly. “That’ll be a lot of hard work.”

“I know!”

“You’ll have to try your hardest to keep getting stronger.”

Izuku bounces in his seat. “I will, I will!”

“Gotta practise your smile, as well.” Yagi leans over and gently pinches Izuku’s cheek. “Keep those muscles growing too.”

Izuku giggles, letting his smile get bigger and bigger.

Yagi sobers slightly, looking intently into Izuku’s eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be a fine hero someday, Young Izuku,” he says, slow and careful. “I bet All Might would think so too.”

Yagi doesn’t seem surprised when Izuku bursts into tears. He even has a handkerchief ready: a bright, happy yellow one.

Eri and Eraserhead come to collect him not long after, Eri seeming tired but still cheerful. They bring sandwiches that Izuku munches on happily, though he gives Yagi a concerned look until he takes one too. None of the grown-ups here are very good at meals. 

“I know you said we can’t go to the playground,” Eri says, depositing her uneaten crusts on the plate.

“I did, and we can’t,” Eraserhead agrees.

“So can we go visit the dorm instead?” Eri turns to Izuku. “Sugarman usually makes cake on the weekends. And they have games and things too.”

Izuku nods slowly, remembering the dozen or so teenagers in bright costumes staring him down.

“There should be less of them around today,” Eraserhead adds. “Lots of them go visit their families or go out at the weekend.”

Izuku pulls some bread apart in his hands. He had it in his head that they’d be going back to the apartment after this, just him and Eri and Eraserhead—but Eri seems so excited. Besides, Izuku has a suspicion that he’s the reason they can’t go to the playground, if they normally go and this week they aren’t. He shouldn’t be ruining more things for them. “Sure,” he says, then glances at Yagi. “Are you gonna come too?”

Yagi pauses to cough again. “Ah. I would, but—I have rather a lot of marking to do.”

“Better get on that,” Eraserhead says, and they exchange another of those odd unreadable looks.

They get up to leave and Eri reaches up seemingly automatically to hold Eraserhead’s hand. Izuku hovers hesitantly before Eraserhead holds out a hand to him too, which Izuku shyly takes. 

“Th-thank you so much, Mr Yagi,” Izuku calls on their way out.

Crinkles form around Yagi’s strange sunken eyes as he gives Izuku one more warm smile. “The pleasure was all mine, young man.”

There aren’t that many students around as they walk across campus, and the few groups clustered around seem to be staring at Eraserhead more than Izuku. Eraserhead ignores them entirely, and leads him and Eri to another tall building with big columns outside. It looks more like a courthouse or something that what Izuku would have expected from a school dormitory, but he guesses everything at UA is bigger and grander than everywhere else. 

It’s big inside too, high ceilings and a long room full of couches and tables. The pink-skinned girl from yesterday spots them first and starts hitting a dark-haired boy’s arm. “It’s happening.” 

“Anyone who treats their classmate like a spectacle is getting a week of dorm-cleaning duty,” Eraserhead announces, then walks over and collapses onto a sofa in the corner. 

True to his word, there are only a handful of people rushing over to Izuku this time, and they’re just a little less intimidating in normal clothes instead of hero costumes. 

“Okay, okay, we’ll be chill!” the pink girl says. “But ahhh, he’s so cute! You’re still the cutest, though,” she adds, ruffling Eri’s hair. Eri beams and waves to the others; she doesn’t seem nervous of them at all. 

“We should probably introduce ourselves, right?” A girl with long dangling ears says. “We’ll be less scary if we’re not strangers.”

“Oh, good idea!” the pink girl says. “I’m Ashido Mina, hero name Pinky—or Alien Queen if you’re cool—and my quirk is—”

“No quirk demonstrations,” Eraserhead interrupts without opening his eyes. “I’m getting dry-eye just thinking about it.”

Ashido lowers her hands, disappointed. “Well, I have a super cool acid quirk that I’d show you if our teacher wasn’t lame.”

“Eraserhead isn’t lame,” Izuku insists, then flushes at having contradicted someone older than him. Eri nods in solemn agreement.

“Dawww, little Midoriya’s a hero fanboy too,” the dark-haired boy says. “What’s up, little man? I’m Sero Hanta.” He waves and Izuku looks curiously at his large, rounded elbows. 

“I’m Jirou Kyouka.”

“Satou Rikidou,” says a boy leaning in the doorway to what looks like a kitchen. “Hey Eri, you want to come be my little helper again?”

“Yes!” Eri claps her hands together and starts heading for the kitchen. 

“You want to help bake too, Midoriya?”

“No way!” Ashido cries. “You can’t steal him away, too. Ochako hasn’t even seen him yet.”

“Texting her now,” Jirou says. 

Eri disappears into the kitchen and Izuku immediately misses her presence at his side. He glances over at Eraserhead, whose eyes have opened just a fraction. He gives Izuku a questioning nod, and Izuku nods back. He’s seven now, and he’s going to be a hero someday. He can cope with talking to a few strangers. 

They aren’t even strangers, really, but somehow that thought makes him feel more nervous, not less. 

A girl with pretty chestnut-coloured hair comes running into the room. She gives Izuku a huge, warm smile. “Deku!”

Izuku’s hands tighten. He’d almost managed to forget that people here call him that. 

“We’re re-introducing ourselves, since he doesn’t remember,” Sero explains. 

“Oh, right, of course!” The girl rubs at the back of her neck, giving him another bright smile. “I’m Uraraka Ochako! Feels kinda weird to be telling you that all over again. Normally we’re really good friends!”

“Hello,” Izuku mumbles back. 

“He’s shy,” Ashido stage-whispers.

Jirou elbows her. “Commenting on people’s shyness doesn’t make them less shy.”

“Ugh, sorry. This is just so weird and adorable!”

“It is kinda crazy that this isn’t even the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to our class,” Sero says.

“Nah, no way anything beats spontaneous baby mode,” Jirou argues.

A kind of friendly argument unfolds as they reference events so quickly and vaguely that Izuku can’t really follow what they’re talking about. Some of the things they mention seem to involve actual villains, and others are referred to just as “the maple syrup incident.” Izuku is just relieved that it means they mostly aren’t looking at him anymore—they try to bring him into the conversation sometimes and Izuku does his best to smile and murmur a few words, but they seem to take the hint and leave him on the periphery. 

Uraraka checks something on her phone then abandons it on a side table, where it spins a little way away. Izuku’s eyes follow the movement, then something catches in his chest as he sees the background picture. It fades to black before he can properly take it in. 

Glancing quickly at the teenagers who are still too embroiled in their lively conversation to notice him, Izuku leans over and picks up the phone, pressing the button to light up the screen again.

The picture shows a group pressed in close together, just barely all fitting in frame: Uraraka herself, a boy in glasses, a girl with large dark eyes, a boy with a scar over one eye, and…him. He’s older, but he has Izuku’s eyes, his freckles, his messy hair. Everyone in the picture is smiling: the scarred boy the smallest and subtlest, Uraraka and this older Izuku tied for the biggest. 

“What’cha got there?” Uraraka says, and the phone drops out of Izuku's hands, bashes onto the table and then drops onto the floor.

“Oh no, I’m sorry!”

“Aww, you wreckin’ the place, little man?” Sero asks.

Uraraka scoops up the phone. “Don’t worry! This phone may not be fancy but it can take a beating. See?” 

She lights up the screen again and shows it to him: no cracks. Just smiling faces. Izuku’s right there among them, familiar and alien all at once.

The whole circle has stopped talking to look at him now—all these people who apparently know him, know things about Izuku he can’t even guess at. 

“Hey, Deku, it’s really okay.” 

Izuku looks from Uraraka’s grin on the screen to her gentler smile in real life. This girl who smiles so bright and calls him Deku.

There was a long period after Kacchan coined the name Deku where Izuku still kept tagging along with him and his friends. He remembers telling his mom he was worried Kacchan didn’t like him anymore, and her responding that he wouldn’t keep inviting Izuku to play with him if he didn’t. It took Izuku way too long to realise that she was wrong—that Kacchan and his friends were bringing Izuku along with them the same way they brought frog nets or a ball to kick around. He wasn’t there to be like them, but so that they could have fun inventing new contests for Izuku to inevitably be the worst at, or new games that left him behind. 

Even after Izuku understood that he was entertainment rather than a friend, he still kept accepting the invitations for a while. Some stupid, stubborn part of him kept on waiting for it to end—for things to snap back to normal, even when it had been long enough that this was normal, now. 

Izuku reminds himself that the older version of him has friends who’ll call him their friend openly, who’ll crowd around him and smile to take a picture in a way Kacchan and his followers would never stoop to. This older Izuku has a quirk, and goes to hero school. 

But Izuku’s memories of being left behind and mocked start even before the doctor’s office. And the games Izuku failed at were rarely because of quirks. Quirks didn’t help you skip a rock right. They didn’t tell you the right thing to say to not make someone mad. They didn’t stop him stuttering or mumbling or crying. 

Maybe this older Izuku has been waiting, too. Wincing as his classmates call him worthless, quietly hoping it’ll stop. Maybe those bright smiles are the kind Kacchan does when he pushes Izuku into the dirt.

“Deku?” Uraraka says softly. He doesn’t know which is real—the insult in her mouth or the soft concern in her eyes. 

The others aren’t smiling anymore either. Like the game just stopped being fun. Izuku takes a staggered step back and their alarm grows.

“Hey, what’s wrong, buddy?” Sero asks. 

Izuku opens his mouth to answer and nothing comes out.

“Should we wake Mr Aizawa?” Jirou mutters.

“I,” Izuku manages, and somehow talking breaks whatever barrier was holding tears back. He’s crying in front of hero students, but maybe he does that all the time. Maybe the Izuku who has a quirk is a crybaby too. “I’m sorry,” Izuku mutters, then turns on his heel and sprints out of the building. 

Most of the tears Izuku has cried recently have been happy tears, which burble out of him easily and freely like water from a spring. The only uncomfortable part is the knowledge of people seeing and thinking he’s a crybaby, and the feeling of his collar and sometimes his hair getting wet. 

Sad crying is different. His nose blocks immediately, and the pressure spreads out through his sinuses until his whole face feels like it’s throbbing. Phlegm builds up in his throat until he  has to spit it out onto the forest floor. He scrubs at his eyes over and over until the skin feels raw and he’s seeing strange impressions cast over everything, but he still can’t make the tears stop.

It’s cold enough that the leaves crackle as someone approaches. Izuku scrubs at his eyes once more and sees Eraserhead’s familiar figure walking closer. Shame and gratitude war inside him. A hero is watching you cry, a mean little voice in his head whispers, but another part remembers Eraserhead’s gentle hand in his hair and aches.

Eraserhead sits cross-legged in front of him, heedless of the leaves and dirt getting on his clothes, of the cold Izuku can feel seeping up from the earth below. “Can you do something for me, Izuku?” he asks, and his voice is just as gentle as it had been when he spoke to Eri. Izuku shouldn’t need that gentleness—he’s never been in a bad place like Eri was, he doesn’t have any scars—but he clutches it close anyway. He nods, even though he’s pretty sure there’s nothing he can do for a pro hero. He can’t even stop crying, and he doesn’t even know what he’s crying about anymore. 

Eraserhead puts a hand on his own chest, like he had with Eri yesterday. “Put your hand like this, and try to take a deep breath.”

Izuku puts his hand on his chest, feeling the cold of the hoodie’s zipper against his fingers. He hiccups and sucks in as much air as he can manage, then pushes it shakily back out again.

“Good,” Eraserhead says. “Now try it slower.”

Izuku breathes in; his nose is still blocked, so he has to open his mouth and the cold air stings at his teeth a little. He breathes out and feels the subtle warmth against his chapped lips. 

“That’s good. Keep going, as slow and deep as you can manage.”

Izuku lets his eyes fall shut as he concentrates. The hand on his chest feels strangely heavy, but a good heavy—he’s surprised it can still manage to feel warm out in the cold air.

“It’s okay if you need to be sad for a while,” Eraserhead says, his voice low and even, “but I want you to try to remember that you’re safe. If you start feeling like you aren’t, focus on how warm your hand feels. Try to make it move when you breathe in.”

Izuku feels his hand raise up a little with the rise of his chest as he breathes in, then come back down as he breathes out. 

Minutes go by and it gets easier to inhale long and slow, hold it a moment, then let it all flow back out. Izuku becomes aware of birds chirping softly around them; like the buds on Eri’s plant, he supposes some things still get by in the cold.

Izuku blinks open his eyes. They’re still sore, but no more tears come. Eraserhead still has his hand on his chest, mirroring him.

“How did you find me?” Izuku croaks.

Eraserhead gestures to the forest floor. “Followed your tracks.”

Izuku’s eyes widen. “Really?”

“No. There are security cameras all over campus.”

“Oh.” 

It sits in his stomach like a weight: Eraserhead having to track him down. All those hero students having to wake their teacher up and worry about where he’d gone, when they hadn’t even done anything bad. Izuku is the one who dropped Uraraka’s phone, and got all upset just because—

“Are you feeling any better now?”

Izuku nods quickly. “I-I’m fine.”

He meets Eraserhead’s gaze; it’s heavy, somehow, even though he isn’t exactly frowning. Izuku lets his hand drop from his chest and Eraserhead follows suit.

“Did something upset you, back at the dorms?”

Izuku shakes his head. His fingers reach again for the soothing lining of the hoodie, then a strange jolt goes through him as he wonders if Creati calls him Deku too. He looks down at the ground and realises he’s still wearing the guest slippers from the dorms—another thing he’s ruined. “It’s stupid,” he mutters.

“I doubt that, if it meant you ran all the way out here.”

Izuku glances guiltily at the trees around them. He has no idea how far he ran until his heaving lungs forced him to stop and huddle here on the ground. Insisting it was stupid means it’s even worse that he’s made Eraserhead come all the way out here after him, but it is a stupid thing to bother a pro hero about, so Izuku just shrugs and hugs his knees to his chest.

A long silence passes. Even the birdcalls seem to be getting farther away. 

Eraserhead sighs quietly. “I need your help here, kid. If I don’t know when something’s bothering you, I’ll just keep putting you in situations where it happens again. And it’s my job right now to take care of you. I may look lazy, but I don’t like being bad at my job.”

“You don’t look lazy,” Izuku mutters. Eraserhead just huffs. “A-and—and it’s not your fault. I’m n-not a baby, and no one did anything bad. I…if I wanna be a hero someday, I have to be...”

Izuku trails off. There are too many ways to finish that sentence, but if he tries to say one of them he might start crying again. 

Eraserhead looks at him with a strange sadness in his eyes, though his voice is still even and measured when he speaks. “Heroes have to be able to give their colleagues accurate status reports: injuries, mental state, whether they can handle something alone or if they need backup. It’s a hard thing to do, but it’s important. It keeps us alive.”

He makes being a hero sound so much more real than the bright clips on Izuku’s computer screen. Izuku swallows heavily, but can’t find any words to force up out of his throat.

“I know I’m not someone you really know, and it must be hard to trust me—”

“I do trust you,” Izuku interrupts. “You…you saved me.” The thought comes again— twice —but he can’t quite make himself say it. 

Eraserhead expression flickers in a way Izuku can’t quite interpret. “Do you remember after I saved you,” he says quietly, “and you’d lost your shoes up on the roof?”

Izuku nods.

“You couldn’t keep up, and I bet it hurt to walk without them.”

“A little,” Izuku admits.

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t…I—”

Eraserhead holds up a hand. “It’s alright. I asked you to follow me and you tried to do what I said. Were you worried about what would happen if you said you couldn’t?”

It honestly hadn’t even really occurred to Izuku to ask, to slow down a hero for his sake. “Kind of.”

Eraserhead hums. “What did happen, when I realised you didn’t have shoes?”

“You…you got Creati to come and make some for me.”

“Yeah.” Eraserhead leans forward onto his knees, meeting Izuku’s eyes. “Izuku, this is important. If something is hurting you, or worrying you, or you don’t know if you can do something, I promise that if you tell me about it then I’ll try and help you, just like I did yesterday. I won’t get mad. I won’t tell you you shouldn’t be upset. I’ll just do what I can to make it better.” 

Izuku feels tears welling in his eyes again, but they don’t hurt the way sad tears do. He puts his hand back on his chest anyway and feels its warmth. 

“But I need your help to do that. I need you to tell me when something’s bothering you, or if I’ve asked you to do something that you can’t do. Even if you think you should be able to.”

Izuku has to take another long deep breath before he can even think about answering, hand rising and falling with his chest. It’s…it’s too good to be real. For the hero who saved him all that time ago to appear like magic when Izuku needed him the most, pluck him out of the air and save him again—and now this too. Like a fairytale.

There has to be a lie to it somewhere, but Izuku searches Eraserhead’s face and can’t find any hint of one—and besides, heroes don’t tell lies. 

“You want to be a hero when you grow up, right?” Eraserhead asks.

Izuku nods hesitantly. It’s easier to admit this time, when he can still feel an echo of the warmth he’d felt talking to Yagi earlier: I think you’ll make a fine hero someday, Young Izuku. 

“So, hero: give me a report. What happened right before you ran off?”

Izuku knows he’s being placated—even the grown up Izuku isn’t a hero yet, just a student—but it makes him feel warm anyway, Eraserhead waiting seriously as if what Izuku has to say is important. That word in his mouth: hero.

Izuku answers before he can think too hard about it. “They…people keep calling me Deku.”

Eraserhead frowns. “That’s—” Then he stops himself. “And you don’t like being called that?”

“It’s mean,” Izuku murmurs.

Eraserhead rubs at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry, Izuku. But I don’t think they were trying to be mean.”

Izuku grips tighter to his arms. That’s what teachers would say too, when Izuku used to go crying to them: that other kids just don’t realise how sensitive he is. That now that he’s growing up, he needs to work on developing a thicker skin. 

“Wait, Izuku—what I mean is that they’re calling you that because the older you chose it as your hero name.”

Izuku freezes. “He…I did?”

“Yes.”

Deku…a hero name. “Why…why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Eraserhead says, and his frown almost looks apologetic. “You’ve never talked to me about it. I assumed there was a meaning behind it that I didn’t understand.” He sighs and scrubs a tired hand over his eyes. “I’ve been assuming a lot of things,” he mutters, so quiet Izuku almost doesn’t catch it.

Izuku turns the thought over and over in his mind. That bright teal costume, the students talking over the comm…they’d been calling for Deku, wanting him to do something. A hero name.

“Eri calls you that because you’re her hero,” Eraserhead continues. “You saved her. Togata because he thinks of you as a colleague; you two worked together on your work study. Uraraka…I don’t know why, exactly, but I know it isn’t to be mean. She’s your friend.” 

Izuku filters through the memories again, that name in Eri’s mouth and Uraraka’s…it should take the sting out of it, but instead he just feels dizzy again. This life the people here are used to him being able to walk in…he feels like he’s hunched down inside his own shadow, waiting to snap back to some unknowable thing. 

“But none of that is important right now,” Eraserhead says. “You don’t like to be called that, so we’re going to get them to stop. Would you rather people here called you Izuku?”

Izuku nods again. 

“Okay. Do you want to try asking them yourself, or should I tell them for you?”

Izuku bites his lip, thinking. He can’t imagine walking back into that giant dorm building and asking those teenagers for anything.  

“No wrong answers, kid. I think it might be good for you to see for yourself that people will listen when you ask. But I don’t mind telling them. I boss them around all the time—they’re used to it.”

Izuku feels a tiny smile pull at his mouth. “Um. I could ask Eri, I think? But everyone else…”

“You don’t really know them. That’s fair. I doubt you’ll be running into them much anyway—I’m done with that dorm today even if you’re not—but I’ll tell them just in case.”

Izuku feels relieved twice-over—that he doesn’t have to go back to the dorm, and doesn’t have to be the one to ask for it. “Thank you.” 

“It’s my job,” Eraserhead repeats. A tiny, foolish part of Izuku’s heart imagines getting to say that someday—helping someone, making the world lighter for them, then saying it was just his job. Maybe not so foolish, if he can find a way to believe in this future-Izuku who makes his home among heroes. “Now, come on. Let’s get you somewhere warmer.”

Eraserhead rises to his feet and holds out a hand. Izuku takes it and lets Eraserhead pull him to his feet and start to walk them back the way they came.

Izuku feels another little surge of guilt as he realises how far away he ran. He hadn’t been in a state to notice along the way, but there are leaves and tiny twigs caught inside his slippers. He tries to kick some out and almost loses a slipper altogether. 

“Um. Eraserhead?”

“You can call me Aizawa, you know. Pretty much everyone does.”

Izuku must make a face at that, because Eraserhead huffs as if amused. “Or not. What is it, kid?”

“Um. I can walk but…” He gestures down to the slippers. “I wouldn’t mind if you carried me again?”

There’s a pause that makes Izuku wonder if he’s pushed too far, but then Eraserhead leans down and scoops Izuku up into his arms, letting him rest against his hip. “Good thing you’re small for your age, huh?”

“I’m not that small!” 

“Yeah? How come I can do this, then?”

Eraserhead throws him up into the air and catches him again. 

Izuku giggles. “‘Cause you're a hero and you're strong!”

Eraserhead hums disbelieving. He ducks his head down, and normally the capture scarf around his neck would hide the tiny smile that crosses his face, but with Izuku up at his level he catches it anyway. Another little secret to carry with him.

Chapter Text

Eraserhead deposits Izuku on the dorm steps while he goes inside to check on Eri. He returns a few minutes later and hands Izuku his shoes. 

“Eri is very involved in some kind of guitar-based video game,” he announces flatly. “She’s good to stay there for a while longer, and the kids will walk her back over to the teacher’s dorm once they’re done.”

Izuku frowns in concentration as he ties up his laces. “If…um, I don't mind if you need to stay here too—”

“You’re saving me from having to listen to loud teenagers play louder video games.” Eraserhead hands Izuku his coat, and Izuku tucks it around his shoulders. “On,” he says, giving Izuku a milder version of the stern look he’d used on his students before. “You’ve been out in the cold too long already.”

Izuku obediently pulls his arms through the sleeves. His mom never lets him get away with that one either. 

Back at the apartment, Eraserhead takes Izuku straight through to the kitchen and puts the kettle on the stove.

“I’m not that cold,” Izuku insists.

“Sure.” Eraserhead starts rummaging through the cupboards. “You had tea with Yagi, right?”

“Mm-hm.” Izuku hesitates. “But…I don’t really like tea.”

Eraserhead pauses his rummaging and gives Izuku a strangely approving look. “Alright, then.” He kicks the stool over and gestures for Izuku to hop up so he can see in the upper cabinet. “What do you like?”

Izuku looks through the contents: it’s mostly coffee, some teas, and a few sachets of hot chocolate. He lights up when he sees mint hot chocolate. 

“Good choice.” 

Eraserhead makes one for each of them, and Izuku sits at the table warming his hands on the mug as he glances around the kitchen. Despite the clutter in the rest of the apartment, the kitchen counters are pretty bare compared to Izuku’s kitchen at home. “You don’t have a lot of cooking stuff.”

“I don’t do a lot of cooking. Almost never before Eri started living here.”

“Then how did you get meals?”

Eraserhead points to the box of jelly packets on the counter. “Meals.” Then to the takeout menu still lying on the counter. “Meals.” 

Izuku frowns. He likes takeout, and jelly is alright, but he can’t imagine that being all he eats.

“It’s different with kids, though. You’re still growing so you need proper nutrients.”

“But you’re a hero!” Izuku protests. “You do tons of training and stuff, you said so, so you need proper nutrients too.”

Eraserhead fixes Izuku with an unreadable look over his mug. “So what you’re saying is that it’s important for heroes to take solid care of their physical wellbeing,” he says, voice flat enough that it isn’t quite a question. Izuku nods hesitantly anyway. “Hold onto that thought.” He ignores Izuku’s puzzled frown, sighing and shaking his head. “Alright. You’re such a fan of cooking, we can make something for when Eri gets back.”

Izuku lights up; he can do something nice for Eri after all the nice things she’s done for him, even though he knows from experience that helping grown-ups cook doesn’t mean he’ll actually be doing much. He’s proven right when Eraserhead won’t let him anywhere near the knives, handing him a peeler and some carrots instead. 

Even with the stool and standing on tip-toes, Izuku keeps bumping his forearms awkwardly against the counter, so Eraserhead lifts him up and sets him down on the countertop instead. Izuku kicks his feet as he peels, strangely delighted to be breaking the rules and sitting on the counter even though that clearly isn’t a rule here, and enjoying the weirdness of seeing a pro hero do something as normal as chopping vegetables.

Izuku tries to peel the way his mom taught him, not pressing too hard so only thin little strips come away, but the peeler slips right out of his hands and off the edge of the counter. Eraserhead catches it before it can hit the ground and hands it back to him.

“Sorry. I’m not good at doing stuff with my hands.”

Eraserhead shrugs. “No one’s good at everything right away.”

Izuku shakes his head, turning the peeler over in his hands. “I know someone who is.”

“All Might doesn’t count.”

“No,” Izuku insists. “I meant my—” He breaks off. Calling Kacchan his friend isn’t really honest, and heroes don’t lie. “Someone in my class,” he mutters instead.

Eraserhead pauses a moment, chopping silently. “If they’re used to being good at everything, I bet they aren’t good at working hard at something even when it’s difficult.”

Izuku hesitantly starts peeling again, turning the thought over and over in his mind. “Maybe,” he admits. “But that’s just one thing. I’m bad at everything.”

“Says who?” 

“Everyone.” Izuku scrapes away the last few remnants of skin and stares down at the pile of orange shards. That isn’t quite true either—his mom says he’s the best at making her smile, but that doesn’t really count. 

“It’s illogical to be cruel to someone for not being good at something yet,” Eraserhead says. “Practising is the only way anyone gets better at things, and you’re not going to want to practise under those conditions. Besides, if your classmate is being cruel to you then there’s plenty of things they’re bad at.”

Izuku kicks his feet gently against the counter, feeling just a little lighter. He’s had that thought, too—that for all Kacchan’s perfection, he isn’t good at being nice. Not anymore, anyway. No one else has ever agreed with him before, though. 

“And you are good at things,” Eraserhead continues, eyes still fixed on the chopping board below. “You helped make Eri feel better last night. And you’re good at drawing—I bet you’ve gotten a lot better at that over time.”

“I guess,” he mumbles, flushing at the thought of Eraserhead seeing his drawing. He picks up another carrot and starts peeling carefully. 

Eraserhead jerks his head towards the capture weapon, slung over the back of a chair again. “You know it took me six years to master using that?”

Izuku’s eyes widen. “Really?” Six years seems like an impossible span of time.

“Sure. No one had ever done it before.”

“Wow.” Five years, and now Eraserhead can basically fly—it had sure felt like flying, anyway—and not even using a quirk. “So cool,” Izuku mutters under his breath. 

Izuku keeps peeling, then realises the knife in Eraserhead’s hand has gone still. “Can I ask you something, Izuku?”

Izuku nods eagerly. 

“Yesterday, you didn’t recognise anyone in class. But you knew who I was right away.”

Izuku freezes. He should have realised that would seem strange, but he hadn’t really been thinking much of anything at the time—the roar of the wind still so loud in his ears, barely able to stand steady even with Eraserhead holding him up. 

“I’m an underground hero,” Eraserhead continues. “I’m not well-known—and I’d have been even less so in your time. So how did you recognise me?”

The peeler goes still in Izuku’s hand. The words feel caught in his throat again, but Izuku swallows and forces them out anyway. “I…I saw you once.”

Eraserhead frowns. “On TV?”

Izuku shakes his head. 

Eraserhead puts the knife down and turns to face Izuku fully. “When did you see me?”

Izuku swallows through the lump in his throat. “Back…back when I was little. I’d just turned four.” He knows the time period exactly even through the haziness of the memory—it was after the doctor’s office, after everything had started to change, but before his dad had left. 

Eraserhead nods slightly, a growing crease between his brows—not angry, though, Izuku thinks. Worried, maybe, which doesn’t make sense when this all happened so long ago—even longer for Eraserhead. 

“Um. I was on a train with my dad. I don’t—I can’t remember it all, but…”

The memories flash through Izuku’s head, indistinct images with no context: a loud metallic shriek and a lurch as the train suddenly stopped. The fabric of his dad’s suit jacket clutched tight under his fingers, and the worry that he’d get in trouble for messing it up like that. The worry sharpening when his dad didn’t say a word, the absence where that ordinary scolding should be.  

“Something went wrong,” Izuku says quietly. “There were villains.”

He thinks there must have been more than one, if they made a whole train stop. He only saw one, though. The memory makes him feel cold inside, even though he didn’t see anything that scary: just a figure lit up in the doorway to the carriage, bright violet smoke billowing from their hands—except it didn’t move the way smoke should. It slithered forward like it was alive. Getting closer and closer.

Izuku grips tight to the peeler in his hand. He glances up at Eraserhead and sees his palm resting on his chest again—when Izuku meets his eyes, he demonstrates taking a long deep breath. Izuku copies him, and it’s the instruction as much as the warmth of his hand and the rush of air that makes him feel a little better—this thing that a hero has taught him. The nod Eraserhead gives him when Izuku does as he’s told and breathes in deep.

“One of them was…” Izuku trails off. He doesn’t know how to say what happened. The villain was there, getting closer, and then Izuku’s dad put his hand over Izuku’s mouth to keep him from making noise, even though he was already being quiet. Izuku swallows hard and presses down slightly with his fingers, feeling his rising chest push against them as he breathes in. “A-and then you were there.”

The smoke sputtering out. The villain turning their head. A dark shape knocking the villain out of the doorway and away into the dark. 

“You stopped them, but I didn’t really see how.”

The only shard of memory he has left is the moment when a figure came back into the doorway, but different this time. Just barely enough light to see by. Izuku doesn’t know how much he really saw and how much his brain filled in later. Now that he has such clear images of Eraserhead it’s easy to make a bigger, clearer picture: his wild hair, his hero costume melting into the dark. 

The only thing Izuku is sure he really saw is those bright yellow goggles—and even though that meant he couldn’t see the hero’s eyes, he remembers having the distinct feeling that they were looking right at him. 

There’s nothing left after that. Maybe Eraserhead said something—told them to run, or keep hiding. Izuku doesn’t remember. That whole night is so strange in his head—some flashes of memory almost painfully bright, and all the rest of it dark and foggy. 

Izuku realises he’s been quiet for a long time, his free hand gripping tight to the counter like he’s in danger of falling off. Eraserhead’s frown is even deeper now—like how Izuku’s mom looks when he comes home with not just grazed knees but grazed forearms and scabs on his chin. His hand stays resting on his chest, so Izuku keeps his own there too. 

“Are you alright, Izuku?” 

Izuku nods slowly. He’s seen footage of so many different villain attacks now, so many disaster scenes with raging fires and collapsing buildings, people bleeding and screaming and calling desperately for help. The quiet little flashes of a night on a train aren’t anything so bad, even if thinking about that villain and that shifting smoke makes him feel colder than when he’d been huddling out in UA’s woods.

“It’s scary to be caught up in something like that,” Eraserhead says. “I bet your dad was scared too.”

He’s right about that, at least—the hand Izuku’s dad had pressed over his mouth had been clammy and cold. 

“It was okay, though,” Izuku says. “You stopped them. You saved us.”

Eraserhead looks at Izuku for a long time, that worried expression shifting but never leaving.  “The older you never said anything,” he says at last.

Izuku shrugs helplessly. He doesn’t know why the boy he’d seen staring back at him from Uraraka’s phone screen would do anything. He’s just as much of a stranger as any of those teenagers.

“Your mom never brought it up either.”

Izuku hunches over a little more. That’s the only other memory he has from that night—his dad kneeling in front of Izuku and explaining that it wasn’t a good idea to worry his mom by telling her what happened. “My mom…worries,” Izuku echoes. “So I think my dad didn’t really…tell her. Or if he did, he made it sound…less bad? No heroes or villains.”

Eraserhead hums. “I see that’s a familial trait.” 

Izuku isn’t sure if he means the worrying or making things sound less bad. He shrugs helplessly again. 

Eraserhead is quiet for a while longer, hand scrubbing over his jaw as he thinks. “You knew my name too, yesterday.”

“I didn’t at first,” Izuku explains. “‘Cause I didn’t see your scarf properly, or your quirk.”

In retrospect Izuku thinks his younger self was a little silly for not connecting the smoke vanishing with the hero that arrived a second later, but quirks that messed with other quirks were fascinatingly rare. And it was always hard to think properly when he went over those memories, those strange disconnected flashes.

“Just the goggles,” Izuku continues. “I searched online for yellow goggles hero, but I guess lots of heroes wear goggles.”

There’s a little flicker in Eraserhead’s expression. “Didn’t your dad help you try to find out?”

“My dad stopped living with us pretty soon after that.” Izuku thinks he might have tried to talk to his dad about it a little, in that brief span of time between the train and all his dad’s things leaving the apartment. Izuku doesn’t remember what he said, but he remembers his dad never wanted to talk to him about it even when his mom wasn’t around. 

And then he was gone, and Izuku was the only one left to hold onto the memory—except maybe the mysterious hero himself, somewhere. 

“I only found you properly a little bit ago,” Izuku explains. “I watch a lot of hero videos online and there was a big compilation of unknown heroes.”

He’s only been half-watching while sorting through his notebooks, and then through the grainy footage he’d caught a glimpse of those yellow goggles. ‘Unknown hero utilising binding cloth’ the captain had read. ‘Support item or quirk-related?’ 

“You were there. It gave me more to search from and then…I found you.”

It was slow and difficult and partial, trying to string together the scant few clips and pictures and accounts of Eraserhead, and it seemed even more so when he was used to the almost overwhelming barrage of information that existed about All Might. He treasured everything he found, though—how unique and cool Erasure was, but also how much work went into using it well. 

Izuku loves quirks like All Might’s that could topple buildings and change the weather, but there was a special place in his heart for limited quirks that needed a lot of careful thought to utilise properly. Sometimes when he gets bored in class he thinks about random quirks he’d seen in classmates or neighbours and tries to think of ways to utilise them in hero work, no matter how minor or ill-suited they seemed. 

Erasure wasn’t ill-suited to hero work, but it required so much other planning and work to use well. Izuku thinks he’d have loved it even if Eraserhead hadn’t helped save him and his dad.

Eraserhead in the present waits patiently while Izuku drifts off in his thoughts again. Izuku feels it all over again—the miracle of the hero he’d wished for for so long not just saving him again, but looking after him. Talking to him like he matters.

“Thank you for saving me,” Izuku says, feeling strangely light—he’d been holding onto that thank you for years now.

Eraserhead shakes his head, though the crease between his brows softens slightly. “You already said that.”

Izuku smiles a tiny smile—he guesses underground heroes aren’t as used to being thanked. “Well, you saved me twice,” he says, “so you get two thank yous.”

Dinner is simmering on the stove when Eri returns, barely stopping to kick off her shoes before she runs over to Izuku and holds out a napkin-wrapped piece of cake. “We saved you some!”

Izuku takes it and smiles, trying not to pay attention to the quiet conversation Eraserhead seems to be having with someone on the other side of the door. “Thank you!” He pauses, remembering the promise he’d made to Eraserhead. “Um, Eri? Can…can you not call me Deku until I’m grown up again?”

Eri frowns. “Did I do something bad?”

“No,” Izuku says immediately, already wishing he could take it back. “You’ve been really nice. I just…” Izuku remembers Kacchan drawing out the characters in the dirt, showing everyone what his name really meant. He doesn’t know how to put it into words, so he remembers the words Eraserhead used: you don’t like to be called that. “I just don’t like it.”

“What do I call you instead?”

“Izuku.”

Eri tilts her head, considering. “Izuku,” she says, sounding it out. “Show me how to write it?”

After dinner Izuku sits with Eri on the couch as she shows him one of her favourite TV shows, pausing every few minutes to explain the character’s backstories while they share the slice of cake she’d brought. There’s a soft knock at the door and Izuku starts—he’d almost forgotten a world existed outside this quiet warm apartment, Eri’s icing-sticky hands gesticulating and leaving a little ring around the pause button on the remote. 

“Why don’t you get that?” Eraserhead says, not looking up from his papers. Izuku frowns quizzically, but pads over to the door and hesitantly pulls it open.

Izuku’s mom is windswept, rounder and more-tired looking than when he last saw her—but her smile as she takes him in is exactly the same.

“Oh, my Izuku,” she says, happy tears bubbling out like water from a spring, exactly like his. Izuku leaps into her arms and she sweeps him off his feet with her hug. “It’s been so long since I’ve been able to do that!”

“Mom,” he murmurs into her hair. Her coat is different, and still cold from the chill outside, but as she clutches him close Izuku feels a piece he hadn’t really known was missing clicking into place. 

She puts him down eventually, stroking his hair and giving him one more long look, like she’s drinking him in, before turning to the rest of the apartment. “Sorry, I’m being terribly rude. Hello, Mr Aizawa.” Eraserhead nods from his position at the table. “And you must be Eri.”

Eri’s big eyes seem unsure again. Izuku gives her a reassuring smile, so much easier to form with his mom’s familiar hand still resting on his shoulders. “Hello,” she says, her voice small and wavering.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Izuku’s mom says, smiling warmly. “I’m so glad Izuku’s had you here to play with! You’re like a little hero yourself, sharing your home and helping him feel better through all this strangeness.” 

Eri smiles shyly, then looks from Izuku’s mom to her suitcase to Izuku clutched at her side. “Are you…do you have to go now?”

Izuku looks to his mom, unsure what answer he wants to hear. Part of him still aches for the missing piece of their little apartment, but it feels strange to be leaving Eri and Eraserhead behind too. 

“Well,” his mom says, looking to Eraserhead. “We didn’t really get time to discuss this before, but…I’m guessing you’d prefer I didn’t take Izuku off-campus?”

Eraserhead nods, something grim in his expression. “I know it’s an inconvenience, but yes. We have no reason to believe this was targeted, but—”

“But,” his mom agrees, with a steely smile Izuku’s never seen before. 

Izuku looks between them, wondering. He guesses that confirms he was the reason they couldn’t go to the playground, at least.

“There’s a guest suite on the top floor,” Eraserhead continues. “It’s meant to be for Nedzu’s fancy VIPs, but this seems like a much more efficient use to me. You two should be comfortable there.”

“That sounds great,” Izuku’s mom says. “Thank you.”

“So you are going?” Eri asks again.

Izuku looks up at his mom.

“Gosh,” she says, “I’d forgotten how powerful that little face is. Mr Aizawa, I’d hate to intrude when you’ve already done so much—”

Eraserhead waves a hand, as if dismissing the concept altogether. He turns to Eri. “Let Izuku and his mom get settled upstairs first. And your bedtime’s in an hour and half.” 

Eri claps her hands together and grins at Izuku. “That means yes.”

The suite upstairs is yet another piece of a different world, spliced strangely together. It’s like a fancy hotel room Izuku would see on TV. His mom sets his luggage down and takes a seat on the giant bed. 

“Well, I’ve missed out on almost two days of hugs,” she says, holding out her arms. Izuku grins and leaps at her again. “There’s my baby,” she murmurs into his hair. 

She rocks him back and forth like he really is a baby, but he can’t bring himself to pull away, resting in her arms for long quiet moments.  

“Have you been okay here?”

Izuku nods and feels the fabric of her shirt shift against his face. “Mm-hm.”

Her hand strokes gently through his hair. “It must have been pretty scary, finding yourself at a hero school all of a sudden.”

Izuku hears the echo of that rushing wind again. The dizziness he feels every time he tries to comprehend all the things people have told him about his older self. He buries his face further in his mom’s collar. “A little,” he admits. 

“You’ve been so brave.”

A prickle of discomfort goes through Izuku’s chest. “I…I did wander off, though,” he murmurs. “You told me not to.”

“Oh, dear,” she says, sounding more fond than irritated. “But you found your way back?”

“Mm-hm. Eraserhead came and got me.”

“That’s good. He’s been looking after you?”

Izuku nods. “Everyone’s been nice,” he murmurs, “but him and Eri are my favourites.”

Izuku can hear the smile in his mom’s voice. “I’m so glad. Do you want to go play with Eri a little more before bedtime?”

Izuku nods, but doesn’t shift from his position in his mom’s lap. “In a little bit.”

“Sounds good to me.” His mom exhales softly and holds him tighter still. Izuku feels something inside him he hadn’t known was empty filling back up again.

Knowing there’s a limit on his time with Eri fills them both with a strange kind of energy. Eri shows him her favourite songs on her music player, loud and discordant like nothing Izuku’s ever heard before, but they make Eri’s eyes light up. Debating what to do with the little bit of time they have left, Izuku tries to explain a pretending game that he’s seen acted out on the playground but never been allowed to join in. He modifies it as he goes and Eri suggests further changes, and they end up lying up on Eri’s bed staring up at the stars on her ceiling as they plan out the perfect game.

Izuku blinks awake to the creaking of the bedroom door opening. There’s a soft sigh. “Well. At least we won’t have to deal with the drama of trying to separate them.”

Izuku’s mom laughs softly. “You should have seen the fuss when we’d try and separate him and Katsuki back in the day.”

Eraserhead huffs. Everything falls quiet for a moment. Izuku can hear Eri’s quiet rhythmic breathing somewhere close by. “I really can’t thank you enough, Mr Aizawa.”

“I didn’t do much.”

There’s another little silence. Then, so quiet Izuku almost doesn’t catch it: “He’s a good kid.”

Izuku can hear the smile in his mom’s voice. “He is.”

More quiet. Izuku almost starts to drift again, then hears the rustle that must be the bag of his clothes being picked up. 

“You know, I talked a big game about being able to pick him up again, but in terms of getting him up the stairs…”

“No problem.”

Izuku supposes he should open his eyes now, shake off the warm heaviness in his limbs and follow his mom upstairs. Instead, he stays quiet and still as Eraserhead slips an arm under his knees and another under his shoulders, lifting him up like he weighs nothing. He says a silent goodbye to Eri as he’s carried out of the room, out of the apartment and up the stairs. 

Izuku’s world gets very small as he’s carried up the stairs, sleep still hovering close and warm: just the soft footfalls, the sense of his mom’s presence nearby,  and the warmth and pressure of Eraserhead’s hold.

The door to the suite creaks open, then there’s a rustle that must be the bag being set down. Izuku is passed gently from Eraserhead’s arms into his mom’s. There’s a long moment of quiet where no one moves, and then the sound of Eraserhead clearing his throat. “Goodnight.” His footsteps make almost no sound as he walks away.

Izuku’s plan to keep pretending to be asleep until he’s asleep for real is ruined by how dry his mouth feels, and how uncomfortable it is trying to sleep in jeans. He listens to the sound of the shower in the next room over for a while, trying to find that warm heavy feeling again, then gives up and goes to get some water. He’s changed into his Present Mic pyjamas by the time his mom comes out of the bathroom. 

He recognises her pyjamas, even more worn and faded now, and it’s another little rightness in this strange world he’s found himself in—his mom, who hates throwing anything away. 

“Look who’s up,” she says, with a little smile that makes him wonder if she’d known he wasn’t really asleep earlier. “There’s a little pullout cot we can set up for you, but would you rather sleep in the big bed with me?”

Izuku sways on his feet, considering. “I’m seven now,” he says. “I…should have my own bed.” He bets none of the kids in his class share beds with their moms.

His mom sits down on the big bed. “You are getting pretty grown up,” she says gently. “And you know what grown-ups get to do?”

Izuku shakes his head.

“Grown-ups get to decide what they want to do. So, sweetie: what do you want to do?”

Izuku sways on his feet for one more moment of indecision, before he lets himself grin and hop onto the giant bed next to his mom. She laughs fondly. “Good choice.”

Izuku groans as he’s shaken awake. He tries to blink his eyes open and the light burns. “Izuku?” his mom says.

His mom? Izuku blinks harder and the world starts to focus. He’s…the suite, its big white bed. His mom, who’d come all the way back from her business trip because…

Izuku looks down at himself, dimly aware of a flood of memories waiting to pour through. He’s…he’s sixteen, and he’s stretched out all the seams on his Present Mic pyjamas, and he’s lying in a huge bed beside his mom as dozens of re-contextualised memories vie for his attention.

“Hi, mom,” Izuku murmurs. His head hurts, too exhausted and disoriented to really know what to think, but…“Thanks for coming back for me.”

“Oh, Izuku.” Tears fill his mom’s eyes. She pulls him close just as easily as she had when he was seven. “Still my little boy.”

Chapter Text

Izuku wakes more gently come morning, warm light streaming in under the curtains. That flood of memory presses behind his eyes, but he tries to skim over its surface and take in the facts one by one: he’s in the guest suite of UA’s teacher’s dorms, alone in the giant bed, wearing his mom’s baggy sweatpants and old stretched T-shirt. He’s sixteen years old. Yesterday, he’d been seven. 

His thoughts get faster from here. He remembers Saturday’s exercise, a moment of dizziness he’d thought would pass, touching down on the rooftop and reaching a hand for his comm as it intensified. Then he remembers not remembering, and the dissonance makes his head pound. He can string the two moments together, but they jar unpleasantly when he tries to hold them that way.

He’s awake enough now for embarrassment, at least, at what had followed. He’d ruined the exercise, then hidden behind Aizawa in front of half the class. Aizawa…Izuku loses control entirely of the memories from here, embarrassment and warmth warring in his chest as snapshots of the past few days flash in front of his eyes.

He shoves it all aside and pushes himself out of bed. Better to face the world right away, like ripping off a plaster. 

His mom is seated at the little table in the next room over, presiding over an array of pastries and coffee. “Morning, Izuku! The principal had all this sent over for us, isn’t that nice?”

She pours him a mug from the french press on the table, and Izuku blinks bemusedly at the odd normality of it all. 

“Morning, mom…um, how late is it?” He’s oriented enough to know what day it is at least, and that the warm light filtering through the windows suggests it’s past time for classes to start. His hand twitches automatically for his phone, and he realises he has no idea where it might be.

His mom checks her own phone, prompting another flash of memory—that photo he knows so well on Uraraka’s phone, suddenly strange and startling in his younger self’s eyes. He remembers dropping the phone, running out of his home that wasn’t his home then. Eraserhead coming to find him—Aizawa, he corrects himself. He can’t keep…Aizawa came to find him.

“Around ten thirty,” his mom replies, then holds up a reassuring hand at Izuku’s obvious panic. “Don’t worry about classes: I already spoke to Mr Aizawa and he said you’re excused for the day.”

Izuku grips tight to his mug handle, brushing off another flicker of memory: drinking hot chocolate in his teacher’s kitchen. He hasn’t missed a day of class at UA other than his three-day enforced house arrest, recent enough that he still feels the sting of falling behind again. “But…it’s over now,” Izuku says. “Once I get changed, can’t I…”

His mom looks at him for just a beat too long. “Well, we need to go over to the police station now that you have your memories back. Apparently you have to give a statement, in case there’s anything that can help track down the person whose quirk caused this.”

“Right, of course.” 

Izuku racks his brains: it must have happened on Friday, when he’d left campus briefly to buy new weights. Nothing stands out to him about the trip—he didn’t talk to anyone but the clerk at the store, and no one even touched him as far as he can remember. Mostly, he remembers coming back to the dorms with a shopping bag in hand, and the others hanging around in the common area teasing him about how maybe he’d graduated to being able to complete basic errands without getting into trouble—which, well. He has a feeling he’s in for more teasing later.

More memories shift and stir: Ashido and the others in the dorms, witnessing his horrible shyness. His head aches again, trying to make the two perceptions marry up: 1-A, his friends, the place that had taught him what it felt like to look up to people while knowing they weren’t looking down on him in return…it’s strange trying to hold that safety, that comfort, together with his younger self’s fear.

A soft thud as his mom sets her mug down brings Izuku back to the present. 

“The statement…that’s going to take all day?” Izuku struggles to imagine Aizawa approving an all-day absence otherwise, though he’s also currently struggling to think about Aizawa at all without a tide of impossible memories calling for his attention—less than twelve hours ago, Aizawa had carried him up to this place in his arms. 

“No,” his mom says, “Mr Aizawa didn’t think it would take long, but…we both thought you should take a minute. Re-adjust. Get back to school tomorrow—they’ll help you get caught up with anything you miss.”

Izuku mulls that over, and finds himself mostly getting stuck on this peculiar sense that adults are cooperating around him. Izuku remembers his dad a little, but he doesn’t have any memories of him and his mom talking—like his dad was this strange satellite that never quite came all the way into orbit, and then eventually drifted off forever. It reminds him a little of watching All Might talk to his mom when he’d visited their apartment to talk about the dorms—and that thought sets off another little flood of memories, All Might pretending to be his own secretary, smiling at Izuku so gently. 

“Besides,” his mom says brightly, “I spent all that time getting back here to see you. Just because you’re sixteen again doesn’t mean you can’t spend a little time with your mom, right?”

She smiles hopefully at him and Izuku can’t help but smile back. His mom, who’d come back for him just because he was small and frightened. He hadn’t even had to ask. 

They leave the suite tidy, his mom making the bed while Izuku starts picking up after them. He reluctantly throws out the ruined Present Mic pyjamas, and has the strangest flash of dissonance yet when he tries to get his head around his English teacher buying Izuku his own merch and obviously lying about it having been on sale. He stops when he gets to the bag of child-sized clothes.

“The stuff you didn’t wear could probably be returned, right?” his mom asks. “I do hate throwing good clothes away.”

Izuku smiles, thinking of her faded pyjamas. He touches the lining of the hoodie Yaoyorozu made one more time, then slips that inside the bag too; it can’t be returned, but maybe Eri would like it. He hesitates once more over the tiny red sneakers by the door. Unreturnable, and not Eri’s size, but he tries to throw them away and can’t quite make his hand move. 

In the end, he takes them with him back to his dorm room and leaves them under his bed. His backpack has been placed just inside the doorway, his phone inside. He takes both with him, but can’t quite bring himself to turn the phone on yet.

It feels strange to give a police report about something so mild and un-catastrophic; no one had been injured, and there’s no evidence so far that a single villain was involved. Izuku reports his unremarkable mall visit to the tired-looking officer, and wonders quietly if the other people affected by this quirk are looking at the world now with two sets of eyes at once, trying to marry it all together—if they too can feel the terrifying smallness of their younger selves buried in their chests like a burr. 

It’s Izuku’s shortest ever visit to the police station, which he isn’t sure if he’s really allowed to be proud of. Afterwards he goes for a long, leisurely lunch with his mom, and she tells him about the aborted business trip she hadn’t really wanted to be on in the first place, the office drama her work friend has been texting her about nonstop since she left. In return, Izuku tells her a little about his time as a kid, though he avoids the roof story entirely with the words familial trait echoing in his head. 

Mostly, he ends up talking about Eri, pretending he doesn’t see how his mom tears up a little. “I always wanted to give you a sibling, you know. It was so nice to see the two of you together.” 

Izuku swallows through a sudden lump in his throat. The memory of Eri leading him around by the hand melds with the pride he can feel now that he knows again how little time Eri has had to be a child herself, and yet she’d found a way to push through her fear and reach out to another scared kid. That dissonance floods through him again, but a little less painful this time; Izuku remembers carrying Eri on his back as One For All surged through him like a summer storm, and he remembers teetering on a too-small stool together taking turns to crack eggs into a bowl. 

Those memories don’t belong in the same life, but he has them both anyway. Two impossible things he’ll hold onto anyway. He wouldn’t give either of them away even if he could. 

Izuku insists on walking his mom home once they’re done.

She tuts gently at him. “I’m not the one who was hit with a rogue quirk on a 10-minute shopping trip, you know,” she teases.

“At least nobody got hurt this time?” he offers sheepishly. “And…it’s all back to normal now,” he says, wondering who he’s trying to convince more.

“Back to normal,” his mom echoes, and the word sounds strange in her mouth—heavy, somehow. He’s aware all over again of all the terror he’s put her through since he started at UA—a weight his seven-year-old self knew nothing about, come back to roost again. The only antidote he knows to that guilt is work, working to harness One For All so he never has to make her that afraid again—and the thought makes him remember all over again that he’s missing a day of class, that he ruined a class exercise and lost a full day of potential training because he didn’t even notice someone affecting him with their quirk.

Anxiety shifts cold and restless in his lungs as he walks silently beside his mom. Then, hesitantly, he brings a hand to his chest. He breathes in, feeling the warmth of his palm and the press of the pads of his fingers through his shirt. It doesn’t make the fear go away, but it’s…quieter, smaller. The warmth is stronger than the shame this time, as he cycles through the memories—a hand on his teacher’s chest. A gift he was given. None of the teachers who told Izuku to cry less ever tried to teach him how to calm down. It’s a sadder thought than it should be, when he can remember so clearly how afraid that little boy had been. How afraid he’d been. 

His mom hugs him for a long time before they part. “You know, of all the bizarre things that have happened since you started at that school, I think this was my favourite.”

Izuku thinks about Togata and Hadou putting on a show to make him smile, All Might and his mom rewriting the past and saying things he never got to hear in his real childhood, Eri’s delight at bringing him into the little details of her world. It’s too much to hold all at once, but his mom never minds when he tears up; she knows the difference between happy tears and sad ones without needing to ask. “Mine too.”

It feels strange to be taking the train back to UA again when he’s gotten so used to his morning commute being a five minute walk across campus. Izuku remembers being so scared the first few days he’d taken this journey, the surprise when Uraraka and Iida started wanting to meet him at the station so they could walk in together. He shakes his head, brushing the memories away. He can’t sit in nostalgia all day; soon enough it’ll be time to face the world, whether he likes it or not.

Izuku switches his phone on and watches notification counters tick up as it registers all the messages he’s missed. He scrolls through the class group chat, wincing at the many @s he’d received before they’d seemed to reluctantly accept that Aizawa hadn’t seen fit to give seven-year-old Izuku his phone. He pauses at a photo of him, tiny and huddled into himself in the UA common room. He hadn’t even seen Jirou take it. He keeps scrolling past the many lamentations from those who hadn’t been at the dorms that day, but the image of that little frightened kid lingers behind his eyes.

Private messages are harder. Izuku puts most of them aside, thumb hovering over his chat with Uraraka. He skims through the messages quickly, noting the moment when they all turn to apologies. The point where she stops calling him Deku.

Izuku gets so focused typing and deleting different messages in reply that he almost misses his stop. He scrambles through the doors just before they close, then turns to the phone again. Classes will have just let out. Can you meet me by the gates? 

Uraraka is standing just inside the front gate, fidgeting with her hair. She lights up when she sees him approaching. “De—Iz—” She breaks off and sighs, rolling her eyes at herself. “Hi.” 

Izuku laughs and takes a moment to marvel at the role reversal: normally he’s flustered and she’s unflappable. With all his memories back, he can recognise now that the calm voice over the comm asking him what he could see had been her—Uraraka, future rescue hero, always thinking of how to make people feel better. 

“Hi,” he says, letting the warmth propel him forward and pulling her into an easy hug. It’s only when she’s pressed close that he registers that they don’t really do this— Izuku doesn’t really do this. He lets his friends throw their arms around him or lean into his side when they’re slumped on the dorm couch together, but he doesn’t really reach out for them himself. A remnant of his days as a seven-year-old, maybe: he’d gotten so used to having people close, to easy uncomplicated touch. 

Izuku snaps himself back to the present and pulls away. “You can call me Deku! I told you to, remember? I like that you changed the meaning. You were the start of it being something better.”

She was the start of better things in general. Izuku remembers his younger self’s fear at the idea of meeting someone his own age; Uraraka was the first one to show him that people his age could be kind to him on instinct—like it was easy, natural. 

“I’m so sorry, though,” she says, emphatic and anguished. “I should have remembered it used to be a bad thing and that little you wouldn’t know anything else!”

Izuku flushes. “I wasn’t that little.”

“You were!” she insists, knocking her hip against his. “And you had these big kicked puppy eyes, ugh. I hate that I made you sad when you must have already been so freaked out.”

“Uraraka, it’s really okay. You were trying to be nice, I remember.”

It’s so easy to see it now, in retrospect—the ways everyone had been trying to make him smile, make him feel safe. His fingers twitch automatically for the lining of a hoodie he’s no longer wearing. He hadn’t known enough as a kid to see that Uraraka was genuine, but he can see it now—how much it bothers her to have caused him pain, even by accident.

“You’d never upset me on purpose.” He watches her anguished expression ease a little and remembers his younger self’s fear: that no version of him could ever have friends who weren’t just pretending. He can still feel the shape of that fear in his chest, the echo of that frightened seven-year-old who was understanding more and more each day that the world is not always kind. This one is, though, he thinks back as he looks into his friend’s eyes. These people, this world, that embraces him with open arms over and over again.

“Never,” Uraraka agrees, and Izuku hugs her again because he can, his mom’s words echoing in his head. Grown-ups get to decide what they want to do. 

Uraraka teases him for putting off the inevitable when he won’t go back to the dorm with her yet—and yeah, it’s a little true, but fixing things with Uraraka is only point one on the hasty list he’d compiled on his way home. Points two and three were at the teacher’s dorm.

He knocks on Aizawa’s door, doubt brewing in his head—should he have called? Calling seems weirder, somehow. Texted? Emailed? Are they even home?

The door swings open and Izuku looks at the man behind it with two sets of eyes at once: the strict homeroom teacher who almost expelled him on the first day, and the hero who grabbed him out of the air when he was falling, who brought Izuku into his home and coaxed him through these days of disorientation with a gentleness Izuku hadn’t known he possessed. Eraserhead looks back, unreadable. 

“Hi. Sorry, I should have…I just thought Eri might still be kind of freaked out because what happened to me looked sorta like Rewind so I wanted—”

“Deku!”

Eri sprints to the doorway, pushes past Aizawa’s legs and jumps at him. Izuku crouches down and wraps his arms around her. “Hi, Eri.”

“You remember me now, right?” She pulls back to look at him assessingly, as if waiting for him to suddenly devolve into a seven-year-old again.

“I do! I’m sorry if it was scary when I couldn’t.”

She frowns curiously at him. “Do you…remember being little too?”

“Yeah, I do,” Izuku says, his voice getting a little choked. “And I came here to say thank you! For sharing your crayons and your room and everything else. It was kind of scary being a kid again all of a sudden, and you made it so much better.” 

Eri’s expression softens, eyes widening. “I helped?”

Izuku beams at her. “You helped so much! Even though you must have been pretty freaked out too. You’re amazing, Eri.”

Izuku has seen her smile so many times now, but it never gets any less dazzling. He glances behind her at Aizawa, watching them with an expression that’s hardly changed but still somehow speaks of approval. Memories flash again: the way he’d looked at Yaoyorozu after she made Izuku smile. Good job, kid, a hand carding through his hair. 

Eri glances hopefully inside the apartment, then back at Izuku. “If you’re grown up again, does that mean you’re too old to draw with me now?”

Izuku hesitates. His instinct is always to say yes to anything Eri asks of him, but he feels the weight again of all the work he missed today, all the homework he didn’t do yesterday, the training he’s been neglecting for the first time since All Might handed him his training plan more than a year ago now. 

He used to spend so much time sketching heroes in his notebooks. He still keeps the notebooks but has so much less time to update them now, so they’ve become mostly hastily-scribbled analysis without any of the ornamentation. Over time that urge to draw, seeing something cool or beautiful and wanting to form it with his hand, had died away without him even really noticing it happening. 

He thinks about the same thing happening to Eri someday—adulthood sweeping her up in its tide and taking her from the things she loves—and feels a strange ache in his chest.

“You’re never too old to draw,” Izuku says. Eri grabs his hand and starts to pull him over the threshold and Izuku hesitates, glancing at Aizawa. “But, um, I might be—I don’t want to intrude?”

It seems strange to ask permission to enter a place he spent most of the last few days—but that was temporary, necessary. The sixteen-year-old Izuku has never been invited across this boundary.

“We made too much food yesterday,” Aizawa says, neutral as ever. Izuku remembers kicking his feet against the counter, gripping the peeler in his clumsy little hands. “You may as well help eat the leftovers.”

After they draw, after they eat, Eri only agrees to go take her bath if Izuku promises to still be here to say goodnight when she’s done. It sets off a little pang of guilt; Izuku had been so excited when it turned out Eri was going to live on campus, thrilled that he’d get so many chances to see her again. And then his year marched on, training and new quirks to master and new threats on the horizon, ceaseless and all-consuming. He hadn’t even realised until now how little time he’s managed to carve out for Eri, or that she might have felt that absence.

It hurts because he doesn’t know what the answer is. Izuku wants to give Eri everything she’s ever wanted, his time included—but his time isn’t really his to give. It belongs to his dream, to All Might’s legacy. To everyone who’s sacrificed and worried and struggled to help him get this far. 

He has so much further to go. Izuku puts a hand on his chest, but somehow he can’t feel as much warmth from it this time. 

He forces himself up and starts to gather the dirty plates. Twin worries dart through his head, in a voice that sounds a lot like his mother’s: that it’s imposing to wash dishes in someone else’s house, but inconsiderate if he doesn’t. The desire to have something to do with his hands wins out. 

“You never said anything.” 

Izuku almost drops a plate into the sink, but catches it before it can break. It’s easy to forget with how languid Aizawa is most of the time, how when he wants to he can move in absolute silence.

Aizawa leans up against the counter beside the sink, the same place Izuku had perched only yesterday. “About the train.”

It’s one of the questions Izuku had been expecting, but that doesn’t mean he knows how to answer. “No,” he says slowly. “I…I thought about it, but…”

He’d thought about it a lot in those first few days of school, after Aizawa let him stay. After he caught sight of those bright yellow goggles and realised who his new teacher was. But it felt…he was on such shaky ground already, last in the quirk assessment test, right on the verge of being shoved out of the place he’d been dreaming of his whole life. What if it came off like an attempt to garner approval, to get in Aizawa’s good books?

And then USJ happened, and in the aftermath Izuku witnessed firsthand how Aizawa brushed off any thanks the class tried to give him. And then the Sports Festival, and internships, and Stain, and the terrible exhilarating momentum of his life at UA. All these memories of Aizawa-sensei overwriting that little glimpse he’d gotten of Eraserhead. 

The glimpse he thought he’d gotten.

“I didn’t think you’d remember anyway,” Izuku says, a piece of the truth if not the whole of it. He realises he’s been scrubbing the same plate for a long time, its surface white and gleaming. He sets it aside. 

The quiet ticking of that unseen clock is just audible over the rush of the water. Izuku finds himself continuing without really meaning to. “And…I guess when I was a kid I was still pretty sure that it was…real? But the older I got, the more I realised…”

The water on his hands is getting hot enough to sting. He’s not sure if he should say this, but it’s too late to stop now. He doesn’t know why being in this kitchen seems to draw out stories he never intended to tell anyone. 

“I mean, I was really young. And I didn’t see your quirk, really, or your capture weapon. I started to realise that I could have just…gotten scared, and made up a hero to come save me. And then saw videos of you online and just…filled it in in retrospect.”

Izuku turns over those memories, as he has a thousand times. It’s like a photograph fading in the sun; he’d like to think he’s seeing the same things his four-year-old self saw, but Izuku knows better than anyone how memories can shift and change. How little kids can rewrite the world in their heads.

He stares down at his hands, turning red under the flow of the water, and reaches up finally to adjust the tap. “I mean…lots of heroes wear goggles.”

He risks a glance at Aizawa at last. He’s looking at Izuku’s hands too, or just at the running of the water, his frown seeming more thoughtful than displeased; he’s just a little easier to read now than he had been before all of this. Izuku wonders if that openness is really new, or if he’s always just been too intimidated to really look at Aizawa properly.

“I don’t remember you, specifically,” Aizawa says at last. “That whole year is…hazy.”

Izuku silently chides himself for the disappointed swoop in his stomach. “Yeah, I—it’s fine, I didn’t expect—”

Aizawa holds up a hand to quiet him. “But I do remember an incident with a train, vaguely. I wasn’t on duty, just happened to be on the train.” His frown deepens, staring into the middle distance like he can drag the memories from it by force. “I didn’t have my capture weapon. I took it with me everywhere after that, even when I wasn’t patrolling.” 

His eyes stay far away for a moment, replaying memories Izuku can only guess at, then he refocuses again. “It’s too much of a coincidence for you to have made it up. It was real.”

Relief floods in, slow and warm, and Izuku allows himself a moment to revel in it, in the answer he’d been too afraid to ask for. He sets the last dish carefully on the rack, then switches off the tap. “Then…I need to thank you.”

“No, you don’t,” Aizawa protests. “You already did, and it was unnecessary then.”

“Not just for the train, though,” Izuku insists. “For…” 

He doesn’t know how to sum up those days in words. The safety he’d found in Aizawa’s care, not just when he was falling from the sky, but when he was scared and unmoored and didn’t understand where or who he was. The times he can look back on now with the benefit of knowing how Aizawa is normally, seeing how he’d softened his sharp edges for Izuku’s sake. He’s still doing it now: reassuring Izuku that his memories were real ones. Giving him more than he had to.

“I was really freaked out,” Izuku admits, staring at his clouded reflection in the sink, “and you made me feel safe. That’s…that’s the kind of hero I want to be too, and I just…thank you. Really.”

Aizawa is quiet for a long moment. “Do you know how often I’ve had to hear about how amazing the hero Deku is since Eri came to live with me?” he asks. “You’re well on your way to being that kind of hero already. You’ll be better at it than I am, someday soon.”

A slow smile spreads across Izuku’s face before he can stop it. He wants to argue that it can’t be true, but Aizawa never gives compliments he doesn’t mean.

“Don’t thank me again.”

Izuku huffs. “Well, then stop being so nice.”

“Dangerous thing to ask for,” he responds with just a flash of that familiar malevolent smile. 

The quiet that follows isn’t quite as comfortable as he’d begun to feel in this apartment as a child, but it’s so much more than he could have imagined a week ago. 

“You think you owe me something,” Aizawa says, suddenly serious again, “how about an answer.”

Izuku tenses, even though he’d been expecting this question since he came here. Since he got his memories back and realised what Aizawa had seen and heard. He nods hesitantly.

Aizawa watches him for a long moment before he speaks. “To be clear, you don’t actually owe me anything. It’s not my business when your quirk manifested. But I’ve known Recovery Girl for a long time. She’s a good liar, but not that good. And I won’t pretend I’m not curious how you’ve got UA faculty lying for you—what, exactly, the two of you are trying to protect.”

Izuku shakes the last of the water from his hands and turns to face Aizawa properly. The old lie about his quirk just being too strong for his body to handle until he started training sits uneasily on his tongue. It’s what he’s supposed to do: protect the secret, protect everyone around him from the danger of knowing the truth. Of all the hurdles he’s faced since inheriting One For All, lying to his teacher shouldn’t feel like such a difficult one. 

But standing in the kitchen where Aizawa made him breakfast, brought him in from the cold and made him hot chocolate, listened to him tell the story of a night on a train and frowned like Izuku’s long-ago fear mattered to him…Izuku can’t make the words come out of his mouth. 

Aizawa watches him for another long moment, apparently impassive but with a sharpness in his eyes. The clock ticks quietly in the background. Then he moves slowly to the emptied table and sits down in one of the chairs. Another habit Izuku can see more clearly now that he’s back to himself: the way Aizawa had kept coming down to his level. Making himself smaller, easier to look at. 

“What I said to you before doesn’t go away just because you’re back to normal now,” Aizawa says, slow and careful. “If something is causing you pain, if you’re in any kind of trouble, if you aren’t sure you can handle something on your own…tell me what’s going on and I’ll try to help you.”

Izuku remembers the cold air, the crackle of halfway-frozen leaves, Aizawa crouched in front of him with a hand over his chest. He wants to protest, even just to himself, that One For All isn’t pain or trouble. One For All was the hand that lifted him out of the dark. 

But Izuku remembers All For One’s voice on the other side of a half-destroyed wall, that bone-deep terror. The ache in his hands and arms he’s had to readjust to since he got his real body back, from the way this borrowed power had ricocheted through him like a bullet. The fear that seems so much louder and closer since a grown-up kneeled before him and promised to try and make things better.

Izuku is used to fear. It's a constant of his existence, across every age. If he starts listening to it now…

“I…I’m not a kid anymore, though,” Izuku says. I don’t need this anymore, he thinks, but he can’t make it sound true even inside his own head. He folds his arms tight around himself. “I have to—to look towards the future, learn how to deal with things on my own.”

Aizawa watches him for another long moment, a kind of sadness in his eyes. “Why?”

“That’s…that’s what I’m here to do, isn’t it?” 

Izuku remembers his younger self’s awe of UA, the campus that had seemed so vast and alien to his childish eyes. That strangeness had melded over time into his sense of home, but never really disappeared. He’s here, in this place he never really imagined he’d be allowed to be, and he has to take that chance and run with it. Run and run and never stop running. “I have to get better. Get stronger. Villains aren’t gonna wait for me to…”

To become the thing he’s supposed to be—the next All Might. A symbol of peace. Izuku almost reaches to place his hand over the swirling mass of fear in his chest, but holds himself still. He’s not a child anymore. Not a scared little kid sobbing out in the woods.

Aizawa waits a moment for him to continue, but doesn’t seem surprised when he doesn’t. “Izu—” He stops, irritation crossing his face. “Midoriya—”

“You can—” Izuku interrupts before he can stop himself. “I mean, I know in class you’ll still call me Midoriya but…you can still call me Izuku, here.”

It’s quiet again for a moment, just the soft sound of footfalls from up above—one of the other teachers. This whole little universe Izuku never thought much about until he was brought to live and rest in it. 

“Izuku,” Aizawa says, still so slow and careful. “You are here to progress. You’re here to get stronger. But I need to make sure you understand that it’s not supposed to be like this. You shouldn’t have to worry about real villains yet. The hero course is about preparing you for life or death situations, but it isn’t supposed to be about being in them, certainly not in your first year. We’ve had to accelerate everything to account for the villain attention on your class, and All Might’s retirement, but…it isn’t supposed to be like this. And you are still a child.”

There’s a heaviness to the word, somehow; before this past weekend, Izuku can’t remember the last time anyone called him a child. His mom, maybe, when she’d been arguing with All Might about him coming back to UA. That was different, though. There’s no age he could get to where she wouldn’t think of him as her child. Still my baby boy. 

It might have been Shigaraki then, at the USJ—wondering aloud if All Might would show up if they killed some kids. Had he been a child then, even with the legacy of One For All humming beneath his skin? Was that when he’d stopped being a child, or just when he’d stopped wanting to be one? Maybe he'll come out to play if I kill some kids.

Sometimes Izuku can see the heroes his friends will become so clearly it’s like it’s already happened, as if they’re already grown and shining and strong. Other times…he remembers Tsuyu crying outside the dorms, the fear and loneliness she’d been keeping hidden. Kacchan at the training ground, saying he’d destroyed his own hero—how close it brought the memory of Kacchan at four years old, grinning in the light of the TV. Even Togata, his senpai, already so powerful and larger than life—but when he’d broken down with Nighteye’s hand cradling his face, he hadn’t seemed like he was a breath away from real adulthood. 

It shouldn’t be a frightening thought, that half the people he loved were still partly children. He wants them to have those things, the warmth and care he’d got to feel again these past few days. He does. Not so grown up yet, Recovery Girl had said. If I kill some kids…

There’s a gentle creak as Aizawa rises from his chair and walks over to him. Izuku doesn’t know what’s happening on his face right now, but he wishes he could make it stop. He wishes he didn’t feel as small and overwhelmed as he had on that forest floor. Slowly, broadcasting the movement, Aizawa raises a hand and rests it on Izuku’s shoulder. 

Izuku ducks his head and breathes in, trying to steady his lungs and his racing heart. He’s sixteen years old. He's All Might's successor. He shouldn’t be this harrowed by his own memories, shouldn’t need this kind of help to calm down. 

Those shouldn’ts are so much less real than that hand on his shoulder, warm and steadying. 

For just a moment Izuku leans in and lets himself feel the presence of someone older and stronger, standing between him and the rest of the world. He pulls close that feeling his seven-year-old self hadn’t lost yet, hadn’t even imagined he could lose, that if a hero was nearby then nothing bad could happen to you. It works, for just a heartbeat—the kind of safety that only children know is all around him.

Then the world rushes back. Izuku wipes his eyes and leans minutely away, and Aizawa obeys the cue he’s given and takes his hand back. 

Izuku swallows hard and hopes he can keep his voice from shaking. “I…why does it matter?” he asks. “If…maybe it shouldn’t be like this, but it is. There’s…no going back now.”

He’d thought about that sometimes, in the days after he’d offered One For All to Togata; the realisation that the losing One For All would end his dream, but not the target on his back. Shigaraki knew his name, his face—had rested four fingers on the column of his throat and grinned. 

“There isn’t,” Aizawa admits. “And if I could make it stop, I would have already.”

The weight in his voice, the resigned set of his shoulders…Izuku feels a sympathetic ache in his own chest. He’s spent so long wanting to be a hero, to stand between the helpless and all the dark things in the world. He wonders if it will hurt like that once he gets there: the knowledge that you can never really hold back the dark all the way.

“But it does still matter that you know the difference. That you know this isn’t right.”

Izuku looks to his teacher with a silent question in his eyes. 

“It matters because of how you treat yourself, the rules you try and live by. It matters that you know how to accept help, how to ask for it—adults need to do that too, you know. Especially heroes.”

It brings Izuku back to that forest floor again, Aizawa telling him about status reports, about the things heroes need to know how to do.

Izuku doesn’t want to ask for help. He doesn’t want to need help. He wants to become a person who helps, who’s strong enough to stand between every cruel thing and every helpless thing. To protect anyone small or vulnerable and frightened. Even if he’s afraid too. Even if he always will be.

But if that was all he wanted, this would be easy. He’d tell Aizawa his secrets are his own, say he’s got it handled, leave this apartment and its soft familiar sounds and walk onwards. There are other wants in him too now, left behind by this little interlude of childhood. By the memory of what it felt like to be held, to be caught. To play and rest and take time. His mom, not just far away and unworried like he thought he wanted, but close and comforting. Sitting in a cafe chatting on about her work dramas. Trying to take care of him, to get him to take care of himself. 

Izuku wants more than he has room for, time for. More than the thing he’s been trying to mould himself into. He wants to leave his helplessness behind forever, and he wants to rest in it just a little while longer, safe in the knowledge that someone else will take care of things while he does. He wants to be Eri's hero and her friend. He wants to surge forward and cling to all the best parts of what he's leaving behind. He wants more than he can hold all at once.

It hurts. It’s frightening. Aizawa said he wants to help Izuku when he’s hurt, when he’s frightened. Izuku grew up again, and Aizawa hasn’t stopped wanting to help him. Trying to teach him how to help himself. How to ask for it.

“You asked me for an answer,” Izuku says. “I…I have to talk to someone else first, but…there’s some things I want to tell you. Some things I might need help with.”