Chapter Text
Izuku was laughing as he pushed open the abused door to the support labs. Their heroics class that day had centered on the importance of support gear, and Izuku, Uraraka, Iida, and Asui were visiting the labs in the hopes of getting some advice on that front. Izuku already knew that he needed more long- and mid-range capabilities from his fight with Todoroki in the Sports Festival, but he hadn’t gotten the chance to ask about it until now.
Uraraka had just cracked a joke about caterpillars (even Izuku could agree that Aizawa’s sleeping bag was the easy butt of a joke), and even Iida had cracked a smile, though it felt more fond than genuinely amused. Which was okay, Izuku thought. Uraraka and Iida deserved friends like that.
Once they were inside the labs, Izuku and Uraraka both started walking straight to Hatsume, who was easy to spot from her place in the back of the classroom, cackling triumphantly as a small mechanical dragon spit fire on her workspace, melting the handle of an unfortunate screwdriver.
Iida, surprising no one, rushed to reprimand the inventor for her recklessness. “Hatsume, I respect your talent and expertise, but surely you needn’t destroy school property in your inventing process!”
Hatsume waved her hand blithely in response, making Iida’s eyes widen visibility in exasperation. Izuku and his other friends looked on with mirth, not unkindly, knowing that nothing Iida said would have any effect on their acquaintance in support.
Izuku was so preoccupied with the fact that Hatsume’s desk was on fire that he missed the other person in the room until he heard the clattering of a tool being dropped on a workstation.
He turned around, casual and unconcerned until he locked eyes with the other person and his vision tunneled. Suddenly, he couldn’t hear Hatsume’s enthusiastic pitch for her newest invention. He couldn’t hear his friends next to him; he forgot where he was.
Because what he saw in that person’s eyes—shock, hope, disbelief, hurt, love, longing—it was unmistakable. For a moment, suspended in time, they became each other, one in the same, nothing hidden and nothing to hide, stars fell and the world held its breath and they were something beautiful, together Quirkless—
He didn’t need to look at her shoes to tell. He knew. Something like that, raw, and human, and broken, a sculpture of shards and adhesive, couldn’t be manufactured. He knew her, every sharp defense, every punctured dream, every hopeless rumination, every clutched-close ambition.
Like gravity, like falling to a safety net, like inevitability, they found themselves closing the distance between them, close enough now that they could touch, if either dared.
A whisper, breathless, reverent, nearly redundant. “Are you—?” (Are you like me? Are you Quirkless too? )
A response, the same. Yearning, ecstatic, afraid. “Yes. You too?”
“Yes.” It was the first time either of them have wanted to answer this question yes . Her gaze caught on his uniform. Her eyes lit up. “So you’re—” (You're a student here? You made it? )
“Yeah.” He smiled, disbelieving, a barely-there thing, like he couldn't believe it himself.
Hope built itself into cathedrals in her eyes. “Which—?” (Which course? How far did they let you fly? )
“Heroics.”
“How? I thought—” (I thought they’d clip your wings.)
“It’s not real.” (I’m faking it. I’m lying, always.)
“The test?” (The Quirk Registry? )
“I passed.”
The air tasted sweet. It tasted like a forest fire. It tasted like revolution.
“Really?”
“What else could it be?” (How could it not be a quirk? ) He smiled, and it was spite and victory and a promise, all.
“Do you think I—?” (Do you think I could, too? )
“Absolutely.”
“Would you—?” (Would you help me? )
“Every step. If you want.”
It was a promise. It was love. Unconditional, unrestrained, unmatched.
She looked around, as if remembering they weren’t alone. She saw his friends and asked, “Do they—?” (Do they know? )
He looked away. “No.”
“Oh.” A pause. “So nobody—”
“One.”
“So how—?”
His shoulders tensed, and when he spoke it wasn’t not his own words. “How dare he accuse—” (How dare he accuse me of being Quirkless? Because that’s an insult, isn’t it? )
“Oh.” It was quiet, for a moment. “So they’re not any—” (Not any different? Not any better? )
He swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
The silence that manifested was of mourning. For their shared hopes and their dissolution, and their shared disillusionment.
She eyed the boy’s friends again. “Do you think you’ll ever—” (Do you think you’ll ever tell them? )
“I want to, but—”
“Yeah.”
A breath.
“I’m sorry.” He grimaced. “I swear I’m not—” (I’m not ashamed of us. Of me. Of this.)
“No, no, it’s okay. It’s okay, I get it.” She offered a smile, cut and glued together, but real. “Prove yourself first, right?”
(There was never another option, for us.)
“Right.” He smiled back, dismantled and reassembled, but genuine.
“And trust me.” She read his eyes like blueprints, like computer code, like she was reading the future. “Trust me, we’ll know.” (We’ll know you’re one of us. You’re always, always one of us.)
And something between them sung harmonic.
And something between them threatened the very stone they stood upon.
And something between them burned. Like vengeance, like hope, like revolution. We’ll be the fire and the spring—
Iida cleared his throat behind them, and the Earth started to spin again.
Izuku's friends were staring at him. Shock. Confusion. Something almost jealous, from Uraraka and Iida. Asui, true to form, looked merely contemplative.
They were waiting for an explanation for the sentence fragment conversation, and Izuku found he didn’t have one.
When he had started lying about his quirk status, he made a notebook, fully detailed, listing prison sentences and past cases and how to fool a truth quirk. He meticulously plotted his hero career, planned how he could reveal his quirk status in the way that caused the least damage, if he had to. He considered how his hero agency would support Quirkless people, with job opportunities and medical training, focusing on capturing and prosecuting Quirkless trafficking rings, quirk supremacists, and abusers. And, more than anything, he pledged to listen to Quirkless people’s stories. Because he knew no other hero would.
He strung lies in that notebook, about his quirk, about his medical records, about his middle school classmates’ “misinterpretation” of his quirk status. About how the doctor who diagnosed him was later charged with fraud and medical malpractice, even if that had nothing to do with Izuku’s diagnosis.
Izuku had planned everything, but somehow, he never considered this. Somehow, he never thought he would meet another Quirkless person, not here, not at UA, where a Quirkless student had never walked the halls, for all that they were not officially banned. And the lies that he relied on to slip like oil off his tongue, the techniques he copied so carefully into his notebook, fled his mind. He froze, awaiting impact, as his mind whirred, uncontrolled and catastrophizing.
“We met online,” the girl cut in, soon enough to be unsuspicious. He admired her quick thinking. He knew it wasn’t learned casually. “I recognized him from his profile photo. I was just surprised to see him here.”
Izuku found himself breathing again. He smiled. “Well, you should have told me you were coming. Why are you here, anyway?”
They were so good at it, this dance, that it almost scared him. On-the-spot improvisation, deception, lying—it was a cultural staple. It was necessary, for people like them.
“My dad’s doing an outreach program, looking for potential interns at I-Island, and I asked to tag along.”
“Your dad?” Iida finally joined the conversation.
“David Shield. I’m Melissa Shield, his daughter.”
Iida bowed. “It is a pleasure to meet you. My family’s agency has admired your father’s work for decades, and I am sure that you will continue that legacy well.”
Melissa smiled, and Izuku could see his own relief at the topic change reflected in it. “I’ll do my best,” she laughed.
(Izuku wondered whether Iida would say the same thing if he knew. He realized he didn’t want to know.)
“Are you planning to become a support inventor like your father, kero?” Asui asked, and the conversation began to turn away from his and Melissa’s relationship to the projects she’d been working on and her experience growing up on I-Island.
For as much as it was one of the more stressful conversations Izuku had had recently, it was over quickly, when his friends realized they had to leave in order to catch the train home.
Izuku stayed behind as they left. Once the door closed behind them and the only sound that reached them was a few intermittent explosions from Hatsume, Izuku held out his hand for an American handshake.
“I don’t think we’ve properly met,” he said. “I’m Izuku.”
(His given name, because their red shoes—red like the blood in their veins, red like wounds, red like living—dictated nothing less.)
She smiled and clasped his hand. “Melissa.”
And something between them rained like absolution.
And something between them glowed like a guiding star.
And something between them sung harmonic.