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"Wait, guys, I think we should test this, so we know if the quirk works how we think it does."
"Kaminari, I don't think we should be trying to talk to Midoriya right now-"
"Alright, what's your name?"
---
Izuku Midoriya has gone by many names in his life. Not all of them were important, but enough were that sometimes, he will slip up. He will call himself by another name, and he won't even realize that it's wrong, because to him, it's not.
Some of them, he likes. He likes Izuku, he likes Dekiru, and, on occasion, he even likes Deku.
Others, he doesn't. Usually, those blur and blend into each other, becoming an interchangeable sea of Idiot, Freak, Null until he can't distinguish between them. The only one he can easily remember is Deku.
Deku is probably the only name that he can love and hate at the same time. It can be bliss and happiness and joy to hear it from Ochako, but Kacchan's voice fills the word with so much disgust, so much hatred, that it makes him recoil. That's why he chose it as a hero name- it reminds him that he will always have a choice. He can choose to think of love and warmth, or stubbornly cling to pointless hatred.
As an infant, he was christened as Izuku Midoriya, although no one really called him that. He was Izu to his mother and his friends, and he was Zuzu to Kacchan. The only people who called him his name were strangers, because within a few moments of meeting a person he would already be insisting that they call him Izu, like his friends did.
Then, when he was four, things changed. Four year olds didn't know enough rude words to be very creative, so he was renamed Deku. It may as well have been his actual name. He was called Deku by his teachers, by his not-friends, and by Kacchan, who had made up the damn thing. He even thinks that he might vaguely remember his own mother slipping up and calling him Deku, before breaking down in tears and apologizing repeatedly.
He wasn't only Deku, though. Some kids had their own names for him- Idiot was a popular one, although not at all inventive. If anything, Izuku respected Kacchan's originality.
As they grew older, their vocabulary expanded almost exponentially, and it seemed like there were infinite names that they could use for him. There was a host of vulgar new words that everyone had just learnt and were itching to try out. They had grown to appreciate simplicity, as well, which became apparent for a month when he was thirteen when his entire class, including teachers, called him exclusively 'The Quirkless'.
Even people he met in halls knew his name. Just not his actual one. No, they knew him as The Quirkless Kid, and they would call it out in corridors as he walked past.
"Hey, isn't that the Quirkless Kid? Holy shit, what a loser."
"Shh! He's looking at us! Keep walking, and speed up- I don't know if it's catching."
And even though he had gone by so many names, Deku was the only one that truly stuck.
By the time he was fourteen, he responded to it as his own name. It came as naturally as Izuku, and maybe even more, seeing as the only person who called him Izuku by then was his mother, and he didn't see her very much anyways.
---
"Dude, what the actual fuck does that mean?"
"Deku, what do you-"
"Oy, don't ask too many questions. Let's just do one that he'll definitely answer normally."
"Okay... Midoriya, what's your quirk?"
---
Izuku is quirkless.
That has been a fact he has been painfully aware of nearly his entire life. It had been hammered into his skull- he was useless, he was stupid, he was quirkless.
It was his identity.
At first, that was only to other people, who would look at him and see only a lump of barely animate flesh with the word QUIRKLESS scrawled out on its front. They couldn't look past it, and so that was what he was.
One time, when he was somewhere around six, when he was still figuring out what it meant to be quirkless, he gave Kacchan a drawing of Izuku and him as heroes. Kacchan, upon seeing it, had torn it to shreds and exploded it, laughing as Izuku watched charred paper flutter to the floor.
As soon as he reached middle school, his streak of good grades was cut to an abrupt stop. While his elementary teachers were far from nice, they took no active part in his bullying other than the name-calling. The same could not be said for his new teachers. He watched his grades go from 100% to barely a pass, barely good enough so that they wouldn't see any kind of intervention.
Eventually, he became quirkless. He stopped seeing himself as human, almost. When he looked in the mirror, he still saw himself- just with sagging skin, dull eyes, and that same scrawl of QUIRKLESS across his forehead, until it was all he could see. He stopped having hobbies- what point was there in writing, in analysis, if he was quirkless? What point was there in existing, if that was what he was?
And then, suddenly, he wasn't. In a flash of burning sludge, loud explosions, and long hours of training, he had a quirk.
But what does he do with that, if quirkless is who he is? Who is he, if not quirkless.
He had One For All, and yet he still felt just as quirkless as before.
---
"...Are we sure that he was hit by a truth quirk?"
"Yeah, Detective Tsukauchi confirmed it."
"That's truth guy, right?"
"Yeah..."
"Maybe we should try just one more time."
"...Are you okay, Izuku?"
---
Now that was an interesting one.
Izuku didn't think he'd really been okay since before his diagnosis. Before, he had spent his time damn near frolicking in the trees near his house, skipping and playing heroes with Kacchan.
After, his days all blurred into a twisted compilation of hate, pain, and cruel words.
When he was ten, it became almost too much. He didn't really understand the concept of suicide yet, but he knew that killing himself was bad, and he shouldn't do bad things. At the time, though, Izuku couldn't care less about doing the right thing, not if it meant scars, bullying and more pain.
So, at 11:30 on a quiet Tuesday night, Izuku attempted to drown himself in the bath. He had fought to keep his head underwater, but in the end he just kept raising it and gulping down air when that was the last thing he wanted to do. He was sobbing harshly by the time he gave up, because after failing at everything, including dying, he really did feel useless.
He almost forgot about that incident, half convincing himself that he dreamed it up.
All of those painful memories were suddenly dragged to the surface when he stood in front of a steaming, smoking mockery of All Might, one that was telling him that someone like him couldn't be a hero.
When the man left, Izuku had walked slowly to the edge, and recalled words from earlier that same day.
"Pray that you'll be born with a quirk in your next life, and take a swan dive off the roof of the building!"
It really was a terrible day for Kacchan to say that, and so he found himself genuinely considering it as he stared blankly at the short ledge that traced the edge of the roof.
He remembered looking down, and thinking that maybe it would work.
In the end, he didn't need a swan dive to get a quirk.
From there, things began to look up. He was in a hero school, he had friends, even Kacchan was just barely amiable to him. For the first time since he was four, Izuku was happy.
But still, even as he smiled almost freely, there were things dragging him down, sagging his shoulders like heavy weights. There was the name Deku, there was Quirkless, there was Freak, and they were like chains tugging him back until he wasn't sure if he was actually happy.
He wasn't sure if he could be happy, anymore. Not after everything that has happened.
---
"What the fuck does he mean, 'I don't know'!"
"No one fucking knows, dude, shut up!"
"You know what, this one he can definitely answer."
"Uraraka, don't ask him anymore-"
"Are you alive?"
---
In some senses, Izuku was alive. It was in his beating heart, his blushing skin, and his whirring brain.
He even felt alive, sometimes. Like when he fought Overhaul, and there was wind rushing through his hair, and power rushing through his veins, and blood rushing through the air. He remembers Chisaki Kai's face, turned sideways on the bloodied concrete with a vacant expression, and feeling more alive than ever.
He didn't feel guilty for it either. Maybe, for a split second, he saw the paramedics wondering if he would live, and he felt a pang of something, but then he remembered Sir Nighteye's hung head and limp body, and he saw Mirio's crumpled expression, and he felt Eri's tears soaking into his shirt, and he found that he hoped Overhaul didn't survive it.
On the other hand, he can still vividly recall nearly eleven years of drifting through life as something barely human, as something pale and frail and sickly.
If being alive wasn't just down to his heartbeat, then he couldn't call those years living.
Somewhere between eight and twelve, his mother stopped coming home. Izuku had barely reacted when that happened, only skimming her note before cooking himself a dinner that was eaten in silence and going to sleep in a cold bed.
If he hadn't been quirkless, he probably would've been sent to counseling on account of his distinctive eye bags alone, though as it was, it was just more fuel for his peers to beat him down with.
Izuku has always been a logical person, so one part of him replies that of course he's alive! He's breathing, isn't he?
The other part is not so sure.
---
"Guys, I think the quirks broken."
"Yeah, it doesn't seem right, does it?"
"You all are being too vague with your questions. You-"
"How the fuck is 'are you alive' vague?!"
"Shh. You need to ask him something he'll know for sure."
"If you know it all then you ask him, fucker!"
"Sure. Midoriya, did you kill Stain?"
---
...
Well, that one was easy.
---
"HUH??? WHAT DOES HE MEAN, THAT WAS IIDA?"
"No! He doesn't know what he's saying! I don't know what he's saying!"
"IT'S A TRUTH QUIRK, IIDA!"
"Wait... WHY WOULD YOU ASK HIM THAT, TODOROKI?!"