Work Text:
Izuku had almost forgotten what it was to be Quirkless.
He still has the scars, of course, that he traces with his fingertips when he tries to fall asleep. He still has his shoes and his ID with “Quirkless” in red capitals. He still has his friends on the Zero Forum and his own deep-seated knowing of who he is.
But it hits him some nights, staring at his ceiling, that he doesn’t feel like a Lace. Because the most defining feature of his Quirklessness wasn’t really any of those things. It was the fear , the constant anxiety and the pain and the shame and the desperate attempt to make his own existence easier for quirked people to handle.
And now, quirked-passing as he is, he isn’t that anymore. He may still be quirkless, but he is no longer a Lace. He is no longer afraid .
He’s lying, of course he’s lying, but Izuku’s good at lying. The lying he does now is easy, negligible compared to what he was doing in middle school, where he pretended to be weak. (Or, sometimes, pretended to believe in his worth.)
He turns away from the mirror when he changes into his school uniform, now. He doesn’t want to see the scars. He tells himself that it’s so he doesn’t break his cover by confronting Katsuki about it.
(He was never good at lying to himself. He knows, at a base level, that, really, he doesn’t want to remember.)
His old ID is locked away in the bottom drawer of his desk, beneath a stack of old school notebooks and crumpled paper. He can’t bring himself to destroy it, even if it's incriminating. He wonders what that makes him—a fake, and not even a half-decent one.
He doesn’t visit the Zero Forum very often at all, now. He doesn’t feel like he belongs. He still messages his friends, but even that’s sporadic, and if they ask about his Quirklessness he just won’t answer.
He still wears his shoes, but he spray-painted them black before going to UA. Doing it felt like a sin. He wears black shoelaces, and he feels like a monster because he doesn’t deserve this, he can’t deserve this, not when every other Zero he knows can’t handle a knife without thinking, What is there left to live for?
And he still knows he’s Quirkless, deep inside, but the more time that passes the less often he remembers.
And it’s nights like this, curled up on his bed, a pit of dread burrowed in his stomach, that he contemplates lying forever. Because, the truth?
He likes it. He likes being quirked-passing. He likes having a quirk.
He likes himself more when he’s quirked. He likes his quirked friends more than his Quirkless friends. Because, at a certain point, the Zero Forum is just fucking depressing. Because, at a certain point, they all know they’re just waiting for their own deaths.
Izuku was never good at lying to himself. He knew that Quirkless heroes didn’t exist. He knew that his mother, for all her love, would never believe in his dream. He knew that his diagnosis slated him for an early death.
And he knows now, deep-seated and gnawing, that when all is said and done, he’s more selfish than he is Lace.
He’ll always be more selfish than he is Lace.