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Part 1 of For Every Icarus Out There
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Published:
2018-04-23
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2020-12-31
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179,532
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24/24
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Burn Your Wings

Summary:

Izuku inherited his parents’ quirks, but he swore he’d never use his fire.

He knows first hand how—bright, burning, scorching, painful, terrifying, destructive—it is, after all, and Izuku promised (promised his crying mother, promised his burning self, promised the laughing memory of his father) that he’d become a hero who stops that kind of despair.

Even if he has to burn his own wings to do so.

But when someone with the exact same problems, fears, and pain shows up... Izuku can't help but try to heal them. And in doing so, he himself may be healed too.

Chapter 1: Midoriya Izuku: Origin

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Life isn’t fair, and it certainly isn’t kind.

Little Izuku doesn’t know what that means yet, but he does know that his father acts differently when he’s at home and when he’s outside. He watches silently as his father smiles and laughs with other people on the few occasions he sees his father in public and cowers under Hisashi’s hard sneer and rough hand within the confines of their home.

Being a bad person is not the same thing as being a villain.

Hisashi is not a villain (yet), but he is a bad person.

Like all children, the only world Izuku knows is his own. He thinks his world is absolute, and so Izuku doesn’t know that it's wrong. He just knows that it is. It always has been—and always will be—this way, he thinks.

But the first time his father beats his mother, Izuku’s world snaps.

Hisashi had never been gentle, either with Izuku or Inko, in the privacy of their home. But he hadn’t been outright violent, either.

That is, until he became violent.

One day Hisashi came home drunk, and it was only—ha, only—a backhanded slap to Inko’s face then. But after that one time, it became a common occurrence. Then it got worse. He started really beating her. Then, he began to beat her even when he wasn’t drunk.

Inko has started locking Izuku away in the broom cupboard whenever it was time for Hisashi to come back home, fearful of what the man might do to their helpless son. And Izuku does feel helpless. He curls into himself sobbing silently as all he can do is listen to the furious panting and swearing of his father, the muffled cries of his mother, and the merciless sound of flesh pounding on flesh.

He scrabbles at the door until his fingertips are bleeding, but he is never able to get out until his father wanders away to sleep in the bedroom and his mother—tired and broken and bruised and bloody—is finally able to pick herself off the floor and deems it safe enough to retrieve him.

But one day, Hisashi comes home sooner than expected.

Inko panics. She drags and shoves Izuku inside the broom cupboard, but in her haste doesn’t have time to lock it. Hisashi, not knowing and perhaps not even caring, just falls into habit and starts beating her.

But Izuku does know, and does care, so he scrabbles at the door with raw fingertips, and this time, it actually opens.

Izuku’s small body comes tumbling out into the living room. Both his parents turn to him, Inko’s bruised face falling in horror and Hisashi’s features twisting into a sneer.

“What’s this?” he asks, but soon turns away from Izuku’s trembling body with a scoff. “Whatever. Run along, boy, I don’t have time to deal with you right now.”

Inko’s defeated body sags with relief, but Izuku’s freezes with despair.

Hisashi is approaching Inko again, not even caring that Izuku is there.

If there’s one thing that’s greater than Izuku’s fear of his father, it’s his fear for his mother.

But Izuku knows that he can’t do anything to stop his father. Hisashi is the absolute ruler of their household, he’s too big and too strong, and is hell-bent on beating his mother again.

Izuku can’t stop his father. He can’t save his mother.

So Izuku does the only thing he can.

He steps between them.

“Wha, what...? No, Izuku, darling, don’t, you can’t, you... listen to what your father said and run —”

Inko reaches for her son feebly, but her legs have stopped working either from being strained or stressed. Already dark spots are invading her vision, and she can barely keep her eyes on the small, shaking back of her son as he stands between herself and Hisashi.

Hisashi sneers, licks of flame flickering menacingly at the corners of his mouth.

“You dare disobey me, boy?”

Izuku trembles, but stands his ground.

Hisashi slaps him.

Izuku’s face whips to the side, his small body swaying with the force of the blow. And yet, he still stays between his parents.

This time, Hisashi punches him.

Izuku falls to the ground. But he gets back up before Hisashi can take another step towards Inko.

Hisashi kicks him. Throws him. Stomps him. Breathes fire on him. But Izuku keeps getting up. Again and again and again, more bruised and bloody and tearful every single time, but he still gets up and stands between Hisashi and Inko.

Eventually, Hisashi seems to have blown off enough steam that he wanders towards the bedroom without going back to Inko, who seems to have fainted at some point.

Izuku stands there a moment more, panting and crying silently, adrenaline pumping through his veins, bruises and cuts and burns riddling his body.

But his mother is mercifully unharmed.

And for a moment, Izuku is exhilarated. He wasn’t able to stop his father, or completely save his mother, but at least he has been able to protect her from more harm. At this moment, he feels taller than a skyscraper, stronger than All Might. He feels like a hero.

Inko awakes, and Izuku smiles at her.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he whispers, unknowingly smiling through the blood on his teeth. “I am here. I protected you.”

But when Inko takes a look at her battered and bloody son, she breaks down sobbing. It’s a testament to just how much Hisashi has them under his control that even half hysterical and broken as she is, she still chokes and muffles her cries so as not to disturb the sleeping man.

“I’m sorry, Izuku,” she whispers through her sobs, not daring to hug her son least she worsens his numerous wounds. “I am so sorry, Izuku.”

And as Izuku looks down at his mother, who is curled up in front of him on the floor in a cruel parody of a dogeza, his adrenaline rush and exhilaration comes crashing down and he thinks no Mom, that’s not what I wanted you to say. What I wanted you to say was...

Before he can finish that thought, Izuku blacks out.

 

*

 

Izuku learns how to pick locks with bobby pins and paper clips.

The next time Inko locks him in the broom cupboard, he frantically fumbles in the dark until the lock clicks and he comes tumbling out once more.

He finds Hisashi standing over Inko with a bloodied fist.

He steps between them.

 

*

 

It happens again. And again. And again.

Inko learns that locking Izuku up is no use anymore and stops trying.

All she does is cry.

 

*

 

A few more times, and Hisashi doesn’t even bother going for Inko anymore. He starts coming straight for Izuku.

It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts, and Inko’s muffled sobbing hurts even more. But even through the blinding pain and flames, Izuku bares his teeth in a twisted parody of a smile. Because Hisashi beating him means that he isn’t beating Izuku’s mother.

Izuku learns that day that defeat can taste like victory.

 

*

 

Most people manifest their quirk before the age of four.

Izuku’s fourth birthday comes and goes without him showing even a hint of a quirk, and a worried Inko takes the opportunity when Hisashi is out for the day to quickly shuttle Izuku to the hospital.

“He doesn’t have the second joint in his toe that would make him quirkless,” the doctor says, pointing at his x-ray. “It may be that young Midoriya does indeed have a quirk, but he just hasn’t activated it yet. Is there anything that might be pressuring him, or oppressing him?”

Inko looks at the doctor wildly, because she doesn’t know where to even start. Then she looks down at her young son, who’s looking up at her with wide bright eyes, who’s never known what it’s like not to be oppressed that he doesn’t even know he is being oppressed.

A sob threatens to break out, but Inko stifles it with practiced ease.

She takes her son’s hand, and they leave wordlessly.

Later, when they’ve almost reached home, Izuku quietly whispers.

“I hope I get your quirk,” he says softly. “I hope I get your quirk, and not... not the one that hurt you so much.” That hurt him so much, he doesn’t say. Izuku looks up at Inko, and his bright green eyes are full of sincerity. “I want to protect you. I want to be a hero.”

And at that, not even Inko can keep in the tears.

 

*

 

But life isn’t fair, and it certainly isn't kind.

Hisashi had come home while the two of them were out, and he is furious at their absence.

What do you think you’re doing?” he hisses, flames rolling out of his mouth with his every breath. “You think you can just run around as you please? You dare defy me?!”

This time he isn’t just generally taking out his violent nature. No, he’s focused and angry at them. At Inko, to be exact.

For the first time in months, Hisashi lunges not for Izuku, but Inko.

“No!” Izuku yells, throwing himself in front of a wide-eyed and frozen Inko. His back is to Hisashi, trying to shield his mother from the flames that flicker from the man’s furious breath. He’s desperate and scared and frantic, and for a wild moment, he thinks he won’t be enough. Izuku pushes with all he has, trying to get his mother out of the literal line of fire.

Something bursts out from within him, and Hisashi lets out a shocked sound. Izuku opens the eyes that he hadn’t noticed he’d closed to find Inko staring at him with something akin to horror. Her wide eyes clearly reflect back Izuku’s reflection, and he finds that there’s an almost halo of flames at his back.

Izuku opens his mouth to assure her that it doesn’t hurt, but Inko beats him to it.

She screams.

The sharp, shrill sound penetrates Izuku’s heart and freezes his blood. He recoils, because she’s screaming at the sight of him, and his fire, and he never wanted to hurt her, he only wanted to protect her, why, why why why why—

At that moment, the flames that had been burning harmlessly at his back turn against him. And now it does hurt, and Izuku’s screams joins Inko’s as his flesh is burned by his own quirk.

Their sick harmony of screaming is cut short when Hisashi harshly slaps each of them in turn. Inko crumples to the ground, either from the force of the blow or from shock. But by now Izuku is too used to pain for the bliss of unconsciousness to take him at just one blow, and even with his back and shoulders a mess of pain, pain, pain pain pain pain he’s still alert enough to raise his trembling head and look up at Hisashi’s mad, mad grin.

“Well, lookie here,” the man laughs harshly, flames licking at his lips. “What have we got here, boy, hm? You’re not breathing it out like I do, but I’ll be damned if that’s not a fire quirk. My fire quirk.”

Hisashi leans down to Izuku, his black curly hair brushing against the child’s forehead and his black, black eyes boring into his very soul. Then he breathes the words that will haunt Izuku for life, that burn themselves onto his beating heart, that plague his every hopes and dreams:

“Like father, like son.”

 

*

 

When Inko wakes up again, she’s lying down with a blanket pulled over her, Hisashi nowhere in sight.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” a quiet voice calls out, and Inko whips her head around.

Izuku is standing a few feet away from the foot of her blanket, like he’s unsure of whether he’s allowed to come near her. His head is hanging, his hands are clasped in front of him, his shirt is torn and kept together by awkwardly looped bandages, and he reeks of the familiar smell of burn cream.

A sob catches in Inko’s throat.

“No, darling. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Izuku.”

Izuku opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then closes it. Inko waits, but her son says nothing so she opens her arms wordlessly, not trusting herself to be able to form any more words. He steps closer to her, shoulders sagging in relief, and Inko holds her son around his waist, careful of the loose bandages and burn cream on his upper back.

After a moment, Izuku slowly raises his arms to cradle her head. She’s not sure if the slow movements are because of the pain in his back, or because he’s hesitating from the uncertainty that she might reject him since she’s already screamed at him.

The vulnerability in his trembling body breaks her heart all over again.

Inko wants to apologize again. She wants to tell him that she’s sorry that she freaked out, that it’s not his fault, that she’s sorry she birthed him like this, that she’s sorry he feels like he has to protect her and not the other way around—

All that makes out of her mouth, though, is a broken sob.

 

*

 

Being a bad person is not the same thing as being a villain.

Hisashi had been a bad person, a bad father and a bad man, but he hadn’t been an outright, public villain that got heroes chasing after him.

But Hisashi used to not be violent, and then he became violent. Just like that, this changes too, and not too long after Izuku realizes his quirk a new villain makes himself known to the world.

Perhaps seeing Izuku with his quirk had changed something in Hisashi. Perhaps he just got bored of keeping his violent nature hidden in the confines of their small home. Izuku doesn’t know (and doesn’t ever want to understand) why, and for the longest time he doesn’t even know what. All he knows is that Hisashi comes back home late more often, smelling of smoke and ashes and wearing a satisfied grin that usually only comes after he’d de-stressed with a thorough beating session with Izuku. (As if he’d already taken out his anger on someone else, Izuku later thinks back in sick realization.)

Months pass before Izuku and Inko clue into the fact that Hisashi has become a villain. And they don't even learn it from the man himself. They are too afraid of him to ask anything, and he thinks so little of them to actually tell them anything, after all.

It happens like this.

Hisashi hasn’t come home in three days, and the bruises Izuku got from his last beating are slowly starting to fade away. But neither he or Inko dare hope their luck will last and are waiting with baited breath, tiptoeing on thin ice.

But then they see the news about a fire-breathing villain being caught by some hero. They see the blurry picture of a man with curly black hair, snapping black eyes and flames spilling out of his mouth, cuffed and led by the police. They both see, they both recognize, and for a long, long time, all they can do is stare at the screen.

 

*

 

It's anticlimactic.

It almost doesn't feel real.

Inko and Izuku still jump whenever heavy footsteps approach their front door even if it turns out to only be the mailman, still have a habit of talking softly even though there's no one in the house that will beat them for being loud, and still have a light—if any phobia can be called light—pyrophobia.

Wounds don't heal easily, after all, and scars take even longer to fade.

But Izuku will take it. Even if they're jittery and jumpy and nervous, it's worlds better than being bruised and bloody.

It's worlds better than having to watch someone else become bruised and bloody.

 

*

 

The hero that caught Hisashi is not well known. Their name isn’t even mentioned in any of the press. But Izuku digs until he finds them, then he finds everything he can about them. The information a five-year-old can dig up is admittedly little, not to mention that there isn’t much about the hero in the first place, but the heart of a determined boy isn’t easily put down.

Izuku finds all he can about this hero. He learns their name. He learns that they’ve just recently made their formal debut. He finds and prints out a blurry picture of the hero that looks like it’s from a paused footage of a security camera.

He carefully tacks it on his wall, right next to his favourite poster of All Might.

 

*

 

They move.

With Hisashi unceremoniously leaving and their sole source of income abruptly cut off, Inko has to work and leave Izuku alone. But still, even struggling to make ends meet, they move. Neither of them has any love for the place where Hisashi taints their memories like bloodstains on a wall.

So they move to a smaller apartment in a different town.

There, Izuku meets Bakugo Katsuki.

Izuku sees him standing over a crying child in the playground, laughing with youthful cruelty.

And Izuku knows that Bakugo isn’t Hisashi, that this child isn’t Inko. But he looks at the blasts firing in Bakugo’s hands, at the tears on the child’s face, and does the only thing he knows to in this situation.

He steps between them.

 

*

 

“You playing at hero, Deku? You don’t even have a quirk!”

“I have a quirk.”

"Yeah? Then show it!"

Izuku doesn't.

Because he really, really wishes he didn't have this quirk.

 

*

 

Izuku doesn’t want anything to do with his quirk that so obviously came from his father, that’s so destructive and painful, that made his mother scream, but he still inadvertently comes to know some facts about it. Quirks are as much a part of you as your limbs are, so accidental bursts of flame erupt from time to time until Izuku learns to keep a tight lid on it. In doing so, though, he learns more about his quirk.

Hisashi had commented on how Izuku’s fire quirk was different than his own, and it’s true. Hisashi had breathed fire only from his mouth, but Izuku can emit it from any part of his body, though he can still breath it out like a dragon. (Like his father, he resolutely doesn’t think.) It feels less like making fire and more like pushing it out of his own body.

He also learns that there’s another side to the coin.

When he accidentally uses his quirk and emits a burst of flame—thankfully when he’s alone in the bathroom, because he never wants to use this in front of his mother again, never wants to remind her of his father again, never wants to make her scream like that again—he feels a tug of something that leaves him almost breathless. He feels like he's just let out a long breath, but hasn't taken in another breath yet. His hand twitches involuntarily, and a toothbrush comes soaring towards him.

It smacks him in the forehead before falling to the ground, and Izuku can only look down at it dumbly.

It takes a moment to click, and when it does, Izuku laughs and laughs until he feels sick, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

He remembers that day when he was four, when he’d been walking home with his mother from the doctor’s.

“I hope I get your quirk,” he had told her. “I hope I get your quirk, and not... not the one that hurt you so much. I want to protect you. I want to be a hero.”

But it looks like he got both quirks. The one that hurts, and the one that could (maybe) protect.

He’s not sure what to think of that.

 

*

 

Of course, things aren’t as easy as just using one side of his quirk, because life isn’t fair and it certainly isn’t kind.

Izuku tries training his ability to pull things towards him, but it soon becomes clear that he can’t only do that.

Once he uses half his quirk to pull something towards him, the other half of his quirk struggles and wants to push out fire. He tries to control the impulse, but it’s physically taxing to keep it in.

It feels like trying to inhale, then inhale again without exhaling. You just can’t keep doing it. At some point, you have to let out that breath else you choke and suffocate.

Pull and push. In and out. Like breathing.

Once Izuku pulls something towards him, he has to push out a bit of fire.

He can’t use one part of his quirk without using the other.

And that—that almost crushes him, because Izuku promised his mother he'd protect and become a hero, but he also promised himself that he’d never use the fire that reminds them both so much of Hisashi.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn’t know what he can do, without becoming like his father.

 

*

 

Izuku enters middle school and he’s in the bathroom once more, this time staring at his own reflection in the mirror.

He thanks whatever higher powers there are that he doesn’t look much like Hisashi. Midoriya Izuku takes after Midoriya Inko so much that even strangers would look at them and know their relation at first glance. They have the same soft round features, the same big eyes, and the same green irises.

But Izuku looks at his hair.

Inko’s hair is straight, and the colour is a solid green.

Izuku’s hair is curly, and the colour is more black that has a green sheen when the light hits it.

It’s similar enough to his mother, but at the same time it has undeniable traces of him. His curly black hair, the image of which is still burned into Izuku’s memories even after all these years.

He doesn’t want his mother to look at him and see his father.

He doesn’t want himself to look in the mirror and see his father.

Izuku slowly raises a hand and rakes back the hair from his forehead, smoothing it out on top of his head. He had grown out his hair so that it's at a length that it just barely brushes his chin. He can comfortably take it and twist half of it into a small messy bun, mimicking his mother’s hairstyle. He sticks some bobby pins in to hold it in place and considers the end result in the mirror.

Most of the curls that used to make up his wild, fluffy hair are slicked back and pinned into the bun. There are some strands that fall out and frame his face, but they’re not overly curly. Surely a far cry from the fluffy mop of hair it was before, and nodding more to Inko’s hairstyle than Hisashi’s own mess of curls.

Izuku nods to himself.

He is not going to be like his father.

 

*

 

When Izuku walks into the kitchen and Inko first sees his new hairstyle, she almost drops the plate of dumplings she has in her hands.

Izuku just shrugs with a half smile. “It was getting in my eyes,” he says by way of explanation. Then he wavers, because he knows she can see the similarity (the difference) and asks in a smaller voice. “Does it... does it look weird?” (Do you dislike it?)

Inko stares at her son for a moment more, before putting on a  brave smile.

“You look lovely, dear.” (I’ll love you no matter what.)

 

*

 

Another year passes, and Izuku confronts his hero.

“Can you become a hero without a quirk?”

No, All Might answers his desperate question.

'No,'  echoes a voice that sounds like the half-buried memory of his father. 'You are nothing without me.'

You're wrong, Izuku tries to tell the voice, brushing away his tears. I won’t use your quirk. I won’t become like you.

But this cruel phantom only laughs and envelops Izuku’s hunched form in a mockery of an embrace, caressing the scars branded on his back, breathing flaming poison in his ear, reminding him.

'Like father, like son.'

 

*

 

But yes, All Might tells him later.

Izuku had seen  Bakugo—the one person in the world who reminds him the most of his father, besides Izuku himself—in the suffocating embrace of the slime villain, and he didn't think. He just did what he had always done.

He stepped—well, he couldn’t exactly step between them yet, given that Bakugo was practically inside the villain, but he ran towards them, reaching with his quirk and pulling Bakugo despite the fact that he well knew the backlash would make him push out the flames he hated so much. At that moment, he didn’t care. He couldn’t care.

Bakugo was tugged out of the villain’s grasp, coughing up slime from his mouth. Izuku shoved the other boy behind him, finally stepping between him and the villain.

The buildup of his quirk had him panting, and Izuku knew he would have to push out some fire soon least he suffocated, so he clenched his teeth and pushed as small a flame as he could out of his hand. It felt similar to the sensation of trying to swallow down instead of coughing up blood bubbling up his throat, but at least now his quirk felt more balanced and he could breathe again.

Not that it helped the situation with the slime villain in front of him, but All Might had saved the day.

And now, he’s here in front of Izuku, telling him the one thing that Inko couldn’t confirm and Hisashi made him doubt and he himself wished for but perhaps never truly believed:

You can be a hero.

 

Notes:

Before anyone starts bashing Inko in the comments, let me defend her first. Household abuse is a terrible thing, and the worst part is that you get used to it. You get used to being defeated and hopeless. So please, no Inko bashing. She, along with Izuku, will grow from their past. The Hurt is only here for the sake of the Comfort, Healing, and Fluff that will come later.

As for Izuku’s new hairstyle, I picture it to be similar to Aizawa’s during that time he’s going around meeting the parents. Half his hair pulled into a low, messy, fluffy bun.
Or, if you're familiar with Gangsta, picture it similar to Worick. Except, you know, shorter (about chin length), curlier, fluffier, and, of course, greener.
Here's a picture: https://crowbird-kamakse.tumblr.com/post/650180125024010240/this-is-probably-way-too-late-to-be-relevant-but

 

That said, I’m super excited to jump into the BNHA fandom! (Does the Izuku headbang from Chapter 1)
Comments are love, and I’d love to hear what you all think.