Chapter Text
Toshinori wasn’t sure what he was expecting from Midoriya all those months ago when he offered him his quirk, but he certainly wasn’t expecting the issues that training him did bring. He thought that maybe he’d have to coax the boy to push a bit harder, to run another block or try lifting one more piece of trash off the beach. He thought that, perhaps, he’d have to steal a line or two from his own mentor, maybe push the kid to puking once or twice.
Instead, he is “blessed” with a workaholic.
“Young Midoriya,” he says, “please rest!”
“Young Midoriya, have you eaten today?”
“Young Midoriya! Are you keeping up with your studies?”
“Young Midoriya! What do you mean you didn’t sleep more than 4 hours last night?!”
Young Midoriya this, Young Midoriya that. He hadn’t realized that mentoring a child would turn him into an only somewhat effective mother hen.
And yet, when he looks at Midoriya, sweating buckets and half collapsed on a pile of old electronics, he sees his past self training his ass off. When Midoriya smiles, he catches glimpses of a grin that glows bright with confidence and assurance. And everyday, when Midoriya appears to train to death again, it’s like Toshinori can see a blooming bud of a brand new I’m Here .
“All Might!” Midoriya says, “I’m rested today! I promise!”
“All Might, I’m keeping to the meal plan!”
“All Might! I’m almost scoring at the top of my class!”
“All Might, I promise I’m sleeping just fine! It was only a little bit of extra training I swear-”
This boy is going to give him a heart attack, but quite honestly Toshinori might just deserve it. Gran Torino would probably call it an act of karma if he told him (which, of course, he isn’t going to do. Not yet anyway.)
(He definitely should but there’s a reason for his fear of short elderly people ok?! And it doesn’t matter what Naomasa says because it is a perfectly rational fear, thank you very much! )
Of course, between sweating buckets on the beach and running miles around the city, Toshinori begins to actually get to know his successor. Toshinori learns about the beginning of his dream, inspired by his own debut, as they stretch (“ I want to smile like you, one day”) . He learns about his notetaking and transformation from fanboy to active quirk analyst online in breaks from trash collecting (“ Oh! Did you hear about Mt. Lady? I saw her debut and it was incredible!) . Midoriya even gushes to him about his mother between gulps of water (“ I know she worries over me, but she’s never once given up on me. I just want to make her proud” ) .
He learns about Midoriyas’ friends, or lack thereof, as the sun sets one summer evening. He listens to the few excuses he has for the bruises he comes with that aren’t from training. He hears all the things Midoriya says about quirklessness in this day and age, and a few he doesn’t.
(“ I know that 20% of the world is quirkless, but it doesn’t always feel like that, you know? Sometimes, it feels like I’m the only one without anything special about myself, like I have nothing to offer that the world hasn’t seen before.”)
( That’s wrong, Toshinori thinks, you are so much more than what the world has given you credit for, and I will make them see it if it’s the last thing I do.)
There is still so much left for Toshinori to tell him, to show him, to try teaching him. And he has time to do so. Midoriya has made it into his alma mater. There is no big bad All For One there to steal him away before Midoriya is ready, no whisper of a villain looking to take him out that he cannot handle. Toshinori feels so blessed , so grateful , that though he may not have forever to give his boy, he has years to watch him grow into the hero he spies in Midoriyas’ shadow.
Maybe that’s why he feels so blindsided when Midoriya disappears.
There is no warning. There were no signs. One winter day, Young Midoriya waves goodbye after a long day of recovering from the entrance exam (“Did it take you long to harness One for All? Do you think I could manage 5% before class starts?”) and the next he never shows up. Toshinori waits by the entrance to the beach for hours, first patiently, then worriedly, because Midoriya has never been more than a few minutes late, and then he receives a text from Naomasa.
Toshi , it reads. Your successor's name is Midoriya Izuku, right?
Yes, types Toshinori. His hands are shaking. Why?
His mother has just reported him missing.
His room seems perfectly normal at first glance. Sure, there is an excessive amount of hero merch on the walls, but despite that it’s a normal teenage boys room. His bed is unmade but clean, there is dirty laundry in the hamper, and the desk is organized but well used. If it weren’t for the writing on the window, his mother may not have even worried about him for hours more.
He smiles just like you , it says in red ink.
There is no other sign of anything amiss.
Midoriya did not make it to school that day. His mother saw him off that morning with a smile and then left herself. A few classmates say they saw him on their way to class, but none can recall exactly where they saw him. One says Midoriya looked nervous, but “it’s not like that’s anything new, the nerd usually looked like that, you know?”
Toshinori doesn’t know. Not really. Young Midoriya is skittish, true, but he doesn’t think he’s actually seen him full blown nervous since that first day they met. And even then, it was tinged with excitement or admiration or determination or relief and-
He let his guard down. Toshinori let his guard down, let himself relax, and now his boy is gone.
He smiles just like you, the note had read. I wonder how long it will last?
Long enough , Toshinori thinks. Please, god, let it last long enough for me to save him.
Toshinori tries not to wonder what his smile looks like now, tries not to linger on what it must be twisting into instead of the grin he helped to grow each day. He doesn’t have time for that.
(They were supposed to have time . )
Izuku is a terrible person .
In all fairness, he tries not to be! He tries to help his mother with meals (especially now that he’s on a diet), he tries his best in school (even though it seems like even the teachers are pitted against him), and he even tries to do little things around the neighborhood to help out his neighbors (like feed Watanabe-sans cat when she runs away bi-monthly or help Adachi-obasan across the street or-). And for the most part, it seems to have paid off! (The cat will let him pet her now, and Adachi-obasan will sneak him sweets, and All Might said he had the makings of a hero and- .) Izuku tries to do what’s right, as much as he can.
Which is probably why, when the stranger in his bedroom wakes him up at some ungodly hour in the morning with a panicked whisper of “Please don’t scream Icanexplain-!”, he tenses up and flails around but he doesn’t scream.
It’s a close one though.
The stranger has a hand over his mouth, but when Izuku continues not screaming, he switches on the lamp by his bed and-. If Izuku wasn’t so sure that he got his coloring from his mother, he’d probably ask himself if he was about to be murdered by some clone of his dad. He’s got Izuku’s wild green hair and eyes and even his freckles, all on a slightly thinner version of his dad’s face. The jawline, the nose, it’s all unquestionably his dad’s. And that’s so freaking weird .
He has scars though, this stranger. A weird crisscross, like an X, over the bridge of his nose. Silvered lines and pockmarks over his hands and up his wrists until they disappear under his hoodie. All old and healed over, seemingly as much as they ever will be. The stranger glances nervously towards the door and back to Izuku.
“I can explain,” he repeats. Izuku stops flailing long enough to look at him incredulously. He winces. “Uh. I’m. You from the future?”
Sure he is, and Izuku is actually All Might's secret love child.
The stranger fidgets, then cautiously takes his hand off of Izuku's mouth to rub the back of his neck and looks away.
“You can’t actually expect me to believe that.” Izuku says as he sits up. He doesn’t whisper, because quite honestly he’s hoping maybe his mom might hear something, but he doesn’t push his luck and scream either. The stranger stops rubbing his neck (a nervous habit, maybe?) and looks Izuku dead in the eyes.
“Hero Analysis for the Future notebook number 3, page 26.” Izuku pales.
“That-that was a joke -”
“Does it look like I’m joking-”
“- because I was seven and obsessed with sci-fi novels-”
“-I look just like Dad how the heck do you explain that-?!”
“-and not to be taken seriously and Idon’tmaybeyouranevilcloneheretomURDERME-”
“-OK!” The stranger says. He smacks his hand back over Izuku’s mouth. “First of all, if I wanted to murder you, you’d be dead.”
To be fair, that does seem incredibly valid.
“Second of all, if I tell you the secret time travel passcode, will you believe me?” He looks dead inside as he says it. Izuku nods, because there’s no way-
“All Might Boy Junior to the rescue,” his future self says before taking his hand off his mouth again to smack it over his own face.
Izuku is horrified all over again, but in a different kind of way than the holy shit I’m about to die way he woke up. Is this regular embarrassment? Second hand embarrassment? Oh god he almost wishes his future self was actually here to kill him now.
Wait a second.
“How- uh, how are you not, like, dead? Or something? Isn’t time supposed to prevent us from meeting o-or do you remember meeting me already and this is a closed loop or-”
“I have no idea why the space time continuum hasn’t ejected me from existence,” his future self (Future self? Izuku 2.0?? Midoriya, the update??? What the f-) says. “I thought that the thing I used to send me back would, like, just be a mental thing? Like I would wake up as you but we would combine or something or you would have my memories, you know? I honestly have no clue how long I’m going to be here.”
“Huh,” says Izuku, in lieu of literally anything else.
“Considering that, I wanted to tell you as much as possible about the upcoming couple years now that I’m pretty sure I can’t mess up your UA entry.”
“Um,” says Izuku.
“For instance, you’re going to need to need to keep a closer eye on your friends-” (they make friends?!) “-because holy crap they get into so much trouble and that will be something they think will only be applicable to you but they can take that hypocritical thought process and shove it up their ass, Tenya, you literally tried to murder a mADMAN-” (his friends try to mURDER PEOPLE?!) “-AND I DON’T CARE HOW JUSTIFIED YOU FELT IT WAS AT THE TIME AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON KACCHAN-”
“WOAH WAIT A SEC-” Izuku says, only to instantly be shushed by his older self (which, rude , he was being much louder, thank you very much), “-wait a sec,” he whispers, “we’re friends with Kacchan?!”
“ Yes ,” his future self stage whispers back, looking exasperated. “Keep up. He’s gonna get kidnapped later but we can fix that.”
Izuku takes a deep breath holding his hands together in front of his mouth, and stares at his other self (other self? Alternate self?? Oh God this is confusing-). It’s only now that he can see just how deep the circles under his eyes are. Going off what he knows about himself, older him probably hasn’t slept well for days, and considering that he assumed older people just straight up need less sleep than teens, maybe even longer than that. Which is probably not great (especially since the last time Izuku was severely sleep deprived ended with him both comatose and in possession of several questionable emails that he has since deleted. He doesn’t know who ItsNotAPhaseDad37 is, and considering the content of the emails he doesn’t want to know). Izuku himself is pretty exhausted, what with it being like two in the morning and all, and the combination of the two of them like this can’t be a good thing.
But. Time travel. With unknown paradox factors that could kick in at any moment. Izuku can work with this. But first-
“I’m so sorry but I can’t keep looking at you and thinking of alternative ways of saying older me, do you have like a nickname I can call you or-?”
“Deku,” his older self deadpans. “I go by Deku.”
Izuku couldn’t stop himself from cringing and tilting his head in a “ like, for real?” way if he tried.
“To be fair, one of our new friends said our Deku meant Dekiru, and I. We? I thought that sounded a lot better than worthless so uh. I kept it?” Deku whispers, gradually losing confidence in the face of what Izuku is sure is an increasingly more incredulous look on his face. “It made Kacchan mad too.”
“...right. Ok. Well, it doesn’t mean that to me , so you can keep it.”
“Great.”
“Next point, we should write all of this down-”
“ Absolutely we should, that is an excellent idea, are our extra notebooks still-?”
“Under the desk, yes, also did you almost admit to thinking that you were just gonna body snatch me?”
“ -it’s not body snatching if I’m not an alien anyways Kacchan gets kidnapped after- ”
It’s the start of a long night.
Nearly an entire heavily coded notebook, several pens, and half a mental breakdown later, dawn begins to peek through Izuku’s curtains. He and Deku (which is still such a weird choice of name) are half collapsed against his bed and the floor. Izuku stares at the ceiling cocooned in one of his All Might blankets, back on the floor and legs swung over to rest on his bed, and Deku carefully spins a dead pen across the knuckles of his hand with the most scarring, his own blanket draped over his legs. The notebook lies discarded on the floor between them.
(They had argued over the title. Izuku wanted it named for the future, and Deku for his past. The argument had stalled out when they had realized it was the last thing to write.
The plain notebook is still blank.)
Izuku blinks hazily up at the ceiling, then turns to Deku.
“Why did you tell me all this?” He breathes. The sunlight sneaking past his curtains casts Deku’s face into one big shadow. “Wouldn’t it have been better to wait? To change things a little as they come up? Won’t telling me all this change things somehow?” Deku stops spinning the pen.
“Maybe,” Deku says. His face is still shaded. “But I don’t want to wait and see what little changes I could make. I just want to fix things now .” His voice breaks. Deku turns enough that the sunlight hits his face, and Izuku can see his anguish. The remains of horror and shame and desperation (“Don’t go too close to that cat Izuku!” his mother says, rushing towards him. “Cornered animals will do anything to get away”). “I want to make a change so big that things can’t ever be like that again.”
Izuku thinks back to all his blog forums, to his training with All Might, to his dream. He thinks of people who could one day bring him joy, bright faces and brighter futures tossed aside for some stupid villians idea of prosperity. Izuku thinks, and he looks at Deku, his older self, strong and stumbling and wishing, so hard , but this time it’s not for a quirk but for a chance at a better future and. Izuku has always wanted to be a hero, to do the right thing, to be like someone who would look at him (quirkless , worthless, good for nothing Deku) and offer a helping hand.
(Izuku is a terrible person.)
“Ok,” he says, sitting up. “Then let’s do something big.”