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Izuku couldn't remember the last time he slept soundly through the night.
They'd been on the run for months now, moving from one safe house to another, sometimes sneaking inside former pro heroes' homes with state of the art security, because even Japan's top villains couldn't get past the security measures of a dead man's house. More often than not they saved a civilian who in turn offered them a place to hide to, but they'd stopped taking up the offer after the second time it ended horribly.
They lay low, keeping their heads bowed as they shuffled from town to town, away from the city where the violence was at its peak. Izuku had long ago lost count of the number of disguises he used; his green curls were currently a plain black, nondescript in daily life. They used their quirks only when necessary, not wanting to draw attention to them given that the country had seen their quirks at the Sports Festival, given that all heroes and students aspiring to be heroes were being hunted down. The scars and marks on Izuku's body increased proportionally to his strength and ability; he could destroy buildings with a flick of a finger, could flee a hundred kilometers in under a minute without breaking a bone.
The end of the world started with the death of All Might.
Unstoppable in his triumph, All for One had turned to the other pro heroes lying around the scene and ended them, one by one, the whole thing being broadcasted live on national television. Best Jeanist. Mt Lady. Gang Orca. Edgeshot. Gran Torino. A good chunk of Japan's top heroes dead in less than an hour.
The dust hadn't yet settled in Kamino when the state of the country changed overnight.
Aoyama had been the first to die among the class. The moment he'd been revealed as the traitor, Nedzu raised a paw and a sniper from god knows where struck Aoyama down. He breathed his last on the grounds of UA, and then the League broke inside.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise that Aizawa was the next.
There had been no time to stand around, no time to do anything but fight and escape as UA became overwhelmed by the surprise attack. They'd left their sensei there, his white capture tape being trampled on by the onslaught.
They encountered a Nomu with the ability to cancel quirks two months later.
All for One had personally gotten to Shinsou. Izuku had cried while he battled his classmates, Shinsou's still-warm body forgotten at the side. One by one they'd fallen: Mineta. Sato. Kaminari. Never by Izuku's hand. Never by theirs.
The war had just begun at that point.
Sero had been the next. Then Iida. Asui. Pro-heroes getting swatted down like flies: Midnight, Ectoplasm, Mirko. As the number of heroes kept dwindling down and hero society fell apart, Endeavor, along with Hawks, stepped in and tried to do the best he could. But he was no All Might.
The top heroes had come for All for One himself only to be taken out by a commander of the League who used hot blue flames, scorching everything to the ground. Shouto had fallen to his knees beside Izuku when his father fell at the hands of his brother, the ash of burnt feathers following only moments after. They'd rushed to the facility where his mother was, but it was too late. Todoroki Rei was no longer there.
And then, Inko.
It had taken eight pro heroes and Shouto, Ochako, and Kirishima to hold Izuku back as All for One slit Inko's throat. My love, he'd called her, holding her lifeless body and never letting go even as the world rained dust and ash and debris, Tomura going wild with his granted permission to kill anybody you deem unimportant. All for One had smiled joylessly at Izuku and said, "I'm sorry. I wish I was a better father to you."
Izuku had only stopped struggling and trying to go to his mother when Katsuki was nearly dusted right in front of him. They fled the place with more than half of their numbers wiped out.
There were no funerals. No time to grieve, to honor the dead. No bodies to bury when they were either turned to dust or transfigured to become a Nomu.
Izuku and Katsuki's first big fight happened when Izuku nearly died and, in between coughing up blood and trying to move his arm, took Katsuki's hand. Katsuki looked at him as if he was crazy, then dropped his hand in horror when he realized what Izuku was doing. "No. Shut up. Shut up. You're not dying on me. D'you hear me? I still have to surpass you, shitty Deku, we still have to beat those fuckers down—"
So Izuku stood his ground, even with his right arm hanging uselessly. Katsuki looked like he wanted to drag Izuku out of here, to keep him safe, but there was no time to yell, to be angry, no time to do anything but fight as the League's forces pressed on. No time to do anything but take One for All, because how could Katsuki not, when heroes and civilians were dying all around him, when Izuku beside him learned to fight with his left arm right on the spot?
It wasn't enough. Of course — they were only sixteen. It would never be enough.
Izuku lay limp on All for One's arms as the villains teleported out of the site. He could feel All for One's concern and rage washing over them all, could hear him shouting for a doctor before Izuku slipped away.
On that day, Izuku discovered his quirk. His own quirk.
He came back to the present a week later, on All for One's headquarters no less. He snuck out and spent another week finding his team. When he arrived he was greeted by his friends looking at him as if he was a ghost.
Katsuki was the first to know. Izuku told him the story in between battles and retreats, when Katsuki gave One for All back and his long-overdue apology to Izuku. I went back in time, Izuku whispered, and from there the seeds of a plan started to grow.
They barely talked about it. Izuku barely talked about it, but as the months went by and more and more heroes perish, and Japan began to settle to a new normal of another group of powerful quirk users running the country, he let himself reveal his power to the people around him. Close friends, at first. Shouto. Ochako. Then the heroes that were still standing: Ryukyu. Nedzu. Little by little, something began to form, something only he could do.
When another ambush that left them reeling happened, he tried it again. With a knife sticking out of his chest, he tugged the threads of time and felt himself slip between them, and he landed in the past, his life starting to slip away.
He returned three days later. Fortunately, everyone was distracted by the building crumbling down and Shouto's fire razing the enemy lines that they didn't notice Izuku's sudden appearance in the midst of the battle. Katsuki had taken one look at his still too pale complexion and pulled him out of the battle.
He didn't see Ashido fall that day. He didn't see Kirishima either. He didn't see Ochako nearly bleeding out to death at the hands of Toga. Too many people were dead, and if this kept up Izuku didn't know how to be a hero anymore.
He whispered their names every night. Tried to remember himself. Hero. Hero. He mourned, he fought, he ran, he remembered. The half-formed plan bloomed in his mind.
Hope was a dangerous, treacherous thing, but damn if it didn't look like the light at the end of the tunnel.
In moments of rest, a plan started to take shape. Spy and undercover missions became more regular as they tried to unearth the past, to know where it had gone wrong. It wasn't enough to stop All Might from dying; the flaws of hero society had begun way before the age of Japan's mightiest hero. For the third time, Izuku attempted to go back in time again by sticking a knife to his gut. He came back successful but was greeted by a promise to never do that again.
But there was no time. Ochako whispered this as she cradled Izuku's cheek, face too close to his. And he knew this, he did, but they — him and Nedzu — hadn't figured it out to the smallest detail yet, didn't know all the pieces of the puzzle yet. The fate of the world rested on his shoulders, and he was sixteen years of age.
Ochako's hands fell to his, and they stayed that way for a moment, holding Izuku as he was on the verge of a breakdown. And then she slid a pair of quirk suppression cuffs around his wrist, and the world erupted. He looked up in horror and saw Toga's manic smile directed at him.
No time indeed. Izuku felt time and hope slipping between his fingers as Toga started to drag him over to All for One. He felt the reality of the situation like a bucket of ice being dumped on his body as Toga fell in front of him, a bullet lodged in her head. He knew, then, that it was now or never, when Shouto's screams pierced his ears, when the smell of burning flesh filled the air. When he looked around and saw Nedzu's broken body lying a few meters away, saw dozens of bodies strewn across the ground.
But first, he had something else to do.
Katsuki came to him, as he always did. They weave through the battle, smoke screen covering them, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the enemy found them. Katsuki wasn't happy with it, his mouth set on a thin line when Izuku told him, but he knew they had no choice.
He was even less happy when Izuku slashed open his palm and pressed it to the open wound on Katsuki's hand. He yanked it out of his grip and started yelling at Izuku, the words getting lost in the wind as they picked up their pace.
They raced through the thick trees of the forest; it could've been easy to run. They could both fly out of here. They could live to see another day.
They knew they'd leave the world to suffer if they did.
Yet for all their bravado they were still heroes-in-training. Even several meters away Izuku could see the mad glint of Shigaraki's eyes, an ungloved hand curled around Katsuki's neck. A pinky finger alone remained free, threatening to turn Katsuki to dust should Izuku not comply.
"Master. I've got them. I've got him. He's here," Shigaraki cackled into his radio. He paused for a moment, then, "Yes, of course, Master—"
Izuku felt the shift in the air beside him. Warp gate. From the mass of swirling black vortex All for One's hands reached out to grab him, but Izuku was faster. Even when this wasn't part of the plan, when he had no poisons nor first aid with him, he was nothing if resolved.
The knife glinted in the dying sun before it slid between his ribs. With the strength he could muster he jumped out of All for One's outstretched arms and reached for his quirk, activated it, time pulling him in hungrily as his vision started to darken around the edges.
The last thing he saw was Katsuki disintegrating into nothing from the corner of his eye before Izuku slipped into unconsciousness, the world twisting around him.
-
The sound of a beeping monitor was the first thing he heard. His limbs felt laden, his body heavy. Dimly he registered footsteps going across the room and then a light switch being flicked off. He opened his eyes to a man who looked like he was in his 20s beside Izuku’s bed, looking at him. The man smiled, and kindness and steel burned in his eyes.
“You suddenly appeared in our midst, bleeding and unconscious. You’ve been here for three days now. Your condition is starting to stabilize—be thankful that the knife didn’t pierce anywhere vital, or at least, anywhere that would’ve killed you immediately.”
Izuku only stared at him before looking around at his surroundings. Izuku was wearing a hospital gown, and there was no sign of any of his belongings with him. The room was quite spacious, not much different from the hospital rooms he had grown accustomed to back in his days at UA. But there was a certain touch of the past here, from the chairs that lined the wall and the monitor at his bedside.
He was here. He did it.
Seeing as Izuku wasn’t going to say anything, the man sighed. “Why don’t we start at the beginning? My name is Yoichi. Who are you?”
Izuku looked at the first One for All user, brother of Midoriya Hisashi. His uncle. The man who could change it all. “Deku. You can call me Deku.”