Chapter Text
“You should probably give it up. Normally, by age four, he would’ve manifested your quirk, your husband's, or some combination of the two. You can see by looking at this x-ray that Izuku has two joints in his pinky toe. It’s unusual to see that these days, but that means he has no quirk.”
“Can I… be a hero too?” Izuku asked, eyes overflowing with seemingly endless tears. Inko’s own eyes teared up and she stumbled over to her son.
“I’m sorry Izuku. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
That wasn’t what he needed to hear from her.
After the doctor told him he was quirkless, Izuku’s friends had started pulling away, leaving him in the dirt like the trash they thought he was. His friend group dwindled until the only one left was Katsuki, Kacchan. His best friend, the one who claimed he would always stay by his side. They promised they would become heroes together, no matter what. Kacchan didn’t care that Izuku didn’t have a quirk, they could and would find a way to work together. Even if that meant Izuku himself never got a hero license. Even if he ended up being nothing more than the man in the chair, unable to help people in person, always working behind the scenes. He told himself that he would do whatever it took to stay by Kacchan’s side, to be heroes together like they always planned.
To any outsider, it would seem like his best friend was no longer an ally to him. Not quite an enemy, but he didn’t seem to be the quirkless boy’s friend anymore. They wouldn’t spend time together at school, Izuku fading to the background as his best friend stepped into the light. Katsuki gained his own friend group, people who would cheer him on, always encouraging his quirk use as he proved his strength time and again, teachers turning a blind eye to the blatant breaking of rules.
Of course, it was all a ruse. Kacchan and Izuchan had too close a bond to ever be split by something as inconsequential as one of them being diagnosed as quirkless.
After the diagnosis, a plan came into play. A potentially stupid one that could easily backfire, but they were young and cocky and didn’t care. It didn’t hurt that Izuku was smart, too smart for his age, too cunning for the system to understand, and bright ideas came to him often. Learning of his newfound quirklessness changed nothing aside from what kind of hero he would become. He would be the man in the chair, and he would do a great job. He could content himself with being the voice in Kacchan’s ear instead of the hero beside him if it meant they could find a way to achieve their goals. They would be a duo unlike any that had ever come before.
A week after learning he would never gain any ability, Izuchan told Kacchan to stop being friendly toward him at school. Predictably, it didn’t exactly go over well. The school had only known about Izuku’s quirk status for a few days, and he was already being left out and ignored by people he would have called friends not long before.
The boys argued, voices raised as they stood alone in the park, hidden away from prying eyes in a small clearing they’d found months prior. The explosive one was unwilling to step back from his best friend, adamantly refusing to allow the boy to face the bullying that would surely arise once his quirk status fully settled in with their peers. The other students were already beginning to call him ‘Deku’ behind his back, whispered insults abruptly cut off each time Katsuki turned to face them with a half-feral snarl. Both of them knew that if he was no longer allowed to protect his friend, no one would. Izuku would be left entirely alone, and the blond refused to allow that. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that to him. Not to his best friend, the person who would become a hero beside him. They would stay together no matter the seemingly insurmountable odds. They’d promised.
Then Izuchan explained his plan. The pair sat down in the clearing as he laid it out simply and clearly, down to bullet points and sketchy notes he’d built up over the past few days in his notebook. A grin that would have been terrifying to anyone else spread across Kacchan’s face, agreement coming quickly once it was all laid out. Both boys had always been smart, but Izuku’s ideas in particular were always far beyond his age. It was to the extent that if the doctors hadn’t said otherwise, it’d be easy to assume he had an intelligence or analysis based quirk. His plan was proof of that, at least to Katsuki.
In school, they would no longer be friends. Izuku would take the bullying they knew would arise, and he would use it to make himself stronger. He would twist the pain and hurt around and use it to grow and improve, and to learn what kind of person he didn’t want to be. Katsuki would absorb the adoration and praise and he would grow stronger, faster, smarter, building connections from the toxic interior of popularity. The pair would grow, putting in the effort to push themselves harder than anyone else. They would prepare so that when the time came for them to show their true selves to the world, no one would doubt them. They would be seen as nothing less than true heroes.
In secret, they would be the same duo they had always been, best friends unable to be torn apart by something as simple as a quirk diagnosis. They would work in collaboration to grow as people, as analysts, as heroes. Because Izuku would be damned if he couldn’t become a hero of some sort, even without a quirk of his own, even if he stayed in the background, even if it meant no one would know his name. They would become powerful in their own ways, and when the time came, they would top the hero charts. Together.
But for the time being, to the world, they would be as strangers.