Chapter Text
Despite everything he’d already been through, Izuku was becoming increasingly certain that he was going to be done in not by a villain, but by the sheer, unsustainable workload of third year.
He rubbed at his cheek, stifling a yawn. It was an exaggeration, probably. Maybe. But between the internships, the patrols, the exercises, the exams, and the endless rain of reports and essays it sure felt like he had one foot in the grave. Izuku checked the time. Fifteen more minutes and his patrol would be over, and then he could go collapse into bed.
“Hey! Stop!” A voice rang out, followed by a chorus of shouts and Izuku straightened, scanning the busy street for the source of the commotion. There, down the block, a man burst from the crowd at a dead run, a purse clutched in one hand.
Izuku almost smiled. A purse-snatcher was barely a workout at this point. He loped toward the man, a year-old admonition from Aizawa-sensei rising at the back of his thoughts. Don’t use your quirk before you need to, especially in crowded areas. Unless the man had some sort of mobility quirk, Izuku shouldn’t have any trouble running him down.
The purse-snatcher caught sight of Izuku and drew up short for a panicked moment, before darting down an alley. Izuku gave chase, weaving around the bystanders on the busy street, taking the corner at a dead run only to collide with a woman coming the other way.
They struck hard enough to rattle his teeth. Izuku caught her before she could fall, an apology already on his lips when a wave of vertigo rolled over him. He had the most peculiar sensation of being pulled, like something curled around his spine and tugged, gentle but insistent. For a strange, airless moment all sound ceased, his limbs both light and heavy at once as the world seemed to slide beneath him. Then it passed like a snap, the alley slotting back into place around him, the sound of traffic and chatter loud after the unnatural silence. Izuku blinked down at the woman he was holding, except—
He wasn’t. His hands were curled around nothing, and she was nowhere to be seen. A teleportation quirk? Izuku shook the strange encounter away, trotting down the alley, casting this way and that. The purse-snatcher had taken advantage of his distraction to get away, and there was no chance Izuku was going to find him now, not with so much foot traffic in the area.
He pursed his lips, annoyed. Bungling a pursuit because he tripped over a civilian? Kacchan was never going to let him hear the end of it. Izuku returned to the mouth of the alley, looking around for the woman once more, because if nothing else he’d like to make sure he hadn’t hurt her. Izuku scanned the fire escape, squinting against the sun at the nearby roof. He paused, a sense of unease settling heavy as he scanned the sky. It had been overcast all day, drizzling a bit on and off, but now? Clear blue sky, not a cloud in sight.
It was also warmer, he realized. Too warm for early November, and—Izuku’s gaze ticked back to the sun, noting the position. Noonish. He pulled out his phone and frowned down at the display that read 6:55pm.
With a sinking feeling, Izuku suspected he was not getting his longed-for nap any time soon.
From the mouth of the alley, Izuku scanned the street looking for... something, anything, to corroborate the unpleasant suspicion that had taken root in the back of his mind. At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, the usual flow of evening shoppers passing the storefronts along the street. But there was something not quite right about the scene, and it took Izuku a moment to figure out what it was.
The office building at the end of the block. He stared at it, at the ordinary facade, trying to understand what exactly felt so out of place, and then it clicked. It shouldn’t be there at all. There should be an empty lot where the office now stood, one of the many structural casualties of the war. Most of the rubble had been cleared away, but the empty places still stood out like scars, pockets of emptiness that served as a reminder of everything that happened.
Izuku blew out a breath, very much not liking the direction the evidence was pointing. Across the street an electronics store had old All Might news clips running in the window display, and Izuku was halfway across the street when he realized that twenty minutes ago this shop was a florist. Resolutely ignoring the sense of mounting dread, Izuku stopped in front of the store window, watching.
There was something almost soothing about seeing All Might in his prime. A reminder of simpler times, maybe. He didn’t remember seeing this one live, he’d been too young at the time, but it had spent a good stint in Izuku’s clip rotation once his All Might obsession kicked into full gear. He idled for a moment, watching All Might rescue person after person from an apartment block fire, before pulling himself away from the storefront.
There should be an easy way to confirm his suspicion. The newsstand at least was still where he remembered it, and Izuku scanned the magazine display, gaze catching on a glossy edition of Hero Monthly. The magazine had been out of print since Izuku was twelve—he remembered being distraught because Hero Monthly had better analysis articles than the others. His gaze snagged on the date and he swallowed a choked laugh because unless this stand had taken to selling mint copies of old magazines he was in a lot of trouble.
He left the magazine and went to the stack of newspapers sitting nearby. The headline declared: All Might Saves 200 in Apartment Blaze! and the date confirmed what Izuku was afraid of.
He was fifteen years in the past.
* * *
“Sensei!!” Uraraka’s muffled voice was compounded by urgent pounding, and Shouta frowned, shoving the stack of reports he’d been grading aside.
Despite living in the teacher dorms, his kids did not generally bother him at home unless it was important. Eri looked up from her homework, concerned, and Shouta smoothed a soothing palm over her hair as he passed. Hizashi shot him a curious look from the couch and Shouta shrugged in answer—it was anyone’s guess what fresh drama his problem class had cooked up today. He opened the door to an agitated Uraraka, the tension in her shoulders easing somewhat when she saw him. “Sorry to bother you so late, but we have a situation and I—” she broke off, gaze ticking to Eri and then back to him. “Maybe we should talk outside?”
Shouta inclined his head and followed her into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. “What happened?” he asked, his hope for some dramatic teenage nonsense sliding by the moment; something in her bearing told him this was serious.
“Deku’s missing,” she said, the words punching all the air from his lungs, and Shouta reached for the chain beneath his shirt. A grounding ritual, a reflex. Could this be it?
“He never checked in after patrol, and he wasn’t answering his phone, so Bakugou and I went looking.” She sucked in a breath. “Witnesses said he disappeared into thin air after colliding with a woman. We found her and she said that it was an accident but—” her brows pinched together, expression a mix of worry and disbelief. “Her quirk... I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“Time travel,” Shouta said, keeping his voice level by sheer force of will. So it had finally happened, the moment he’d been waiting for and dreading in equal measure. The end of years of limbo, years of serrated hope and terrible uncertainty. He didn’t think he was ready. It didn’t matter.
Uraraka’s answering expression might have been funny if the world wasn’t tilting under his feet. “I. Yeah? How did you know?”
“Long story,” Shouta said, in what was probably the greatest understatement of his life. “Take me to her, I have some questions.” He opened the door to the apartment, and Hizashi’s expression went from curious to concerned at whatever he read on Shouta’s face. “Stay with Eri, I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Whoa, wait,” Hizashi said, sitting upright and tipping the cat onto the floor. “What’s going on?”
“It happened,” he said, voice scraping over the words, and he did not have to elaborate. Hizashi stared back at him across the apartment with shocked understanding. He ducked back out before Hizashi could find his voice, nerves like a live wire, one of the greatest questions of his life hanging heavy over him.
For good or ill, Shouta was finally going to get his answers.
* * *
Izuku indulged himself in a temporary bout of existential despair. He sat on the curb with his head in his hands, letting the horrible reality of the situation wash over him. He was three years old in this time. He couldn’t go home, his mother wouldn’t even know him. His friends were all toddlers. Aizawa-sensei was a teenager. All Might wouldn’t know who he was for another twelve years. Every avenue of help he might have had was lost to him. His entire world was lost to him.
So he gave himself five minutes to wallow, and then he swallowed the lump in his throat and got to figuring out what to do about it.
If you asked him yesterday he would have said there was no such thing as a time travel quirk, and yet that was the only explanation for his current predicament. The problem was that he had no idea what the parameters of such a quirk might be. Was it temporary? There were some types of translocation quirks that functioned like a rubber band, eventually snapping the user back to the point of origin. Or, more likely, was he stuck here? Would he have to try and find the woman in this time to be sent back? Where would he even start looking? He hadn’t gotten a good look at her and knew exactly nothing else. It was worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack.
The other concern was time travel itself, and all the implications therein. Was Izuku changing the timeline just by sitting there? Was he influencing future events by existing in a place he was never meant to be?
God help him, but he really was a magnet for the worst bullshit.
Okay. Think it out. Be logical. Problem the first, he was trapped in the past with no clear avenue home. Problem the second, every action he took had the possibility of influencing future events in unforeseen ways. Problem the third, he had no one to go to for help. There was very little he could do about the first problem, or even the second. Sure, he could run off and become some sort of mountain hermit but that would still be short sighted. Izuku wasn’t any expert on the complications of time travel, but he did recognize that it would be impossible to predict the outcome of anything he did.
So, problem the third. Under normal circumstances he’d go straight to Aizawa-sensei, but that wasn’t an option here. None of his obvious avenues were available to him, but that didn’t mean he was out of luck. The Hero Commission was a possibility, if a distasteful one. There was a very real possibility they’d throw him in a hole somewhere in an effort to protect the timeline, and Izuku wasn’t even sure that was the wrong course of action. Plan B, then, because he would at least like to try to solve this in a way that did not involve taking himself out of the equation entirely. So, where did he go?
U.A. was the only real choice. As far as Izuku knew, Nedzu was still the principal in this time, and while he—like everyone else in Izuku’s life—was currently a stranger, he was at least intelligent enough not to dismiss Izuku out of hand. And, if he was lucky, crazy enough to try and help fix it.
Feeling better now that he had a course of action, Izuku stood, taking stock. He had his phone, his license, his school identification, and the hero costume on his back. It was lucky that he was on local patrol and not on an internship halfway across the country, or this could have been significantly more complicated.
The walk back to the school would have been pleasant if not for the fact that Izuku was hyper aware of himself and the people around him. A man bumped his shoulder and Izuku’s thoughts went to the butterfly effect. He found himself wondering if that small, insignificant contact could have changed the trajectory of the man’s life in any meaningful way. He realized, grimly, that if he was going to be stuck in the past for any length of time the hole might have been the better option. For his own sanity.
Approaching the school was... an experience. Izuku slowed his pace, taking it in. The walls were just walls. No security upgrades, no indication of the fortress it would one day become. If you set aside the size, it hardly seemed different than any other high school. It was strange to see.
The gate was manned by a single, bored-looking guard, and Izuku found himself reaching for his student ID before he realized that might be a bad idea. Even on the outside chance they still looked the same, his was dated for the future and sure to put the guard on alert. Izuku could break into the school if he had to, but he’d very much prefer to avoid it if he could.
“Can I help you?” the guard asked as he approached, taking in Izuku’s appearance with mild curiosity. He looked like a hero, maybe it would be best to play the part.
“I’m here to see Principal Nedzu,” Izuku said with all the confidence he could muster, hoping that he wasn’t wrong about the duration of his tenure or this was going to go south fast. “I have a confidential matter to discuss with him.”
“One sec.” The guard retreated to the gatehouse, and Izuku could see him speaking into a radio behind the glass. He watched, eyes narrowed, but the guard seemed unhurried and unconcerned. He returned with a visitor pass in hand, and the tension in Izuku’s shoulders eased. He listened to the unnecessary directions to Nedzu’s office, and then he was in.
First hurdle cleared.
He used the walk to Nedzu’s office trying to organize his thoughts, but untangling the static weave in his brain was a losing battle, and by the time he arrived he still didn’t have the first idea how he was going to do this.
Izuku rapped on the door, a familiar voice calling, “Come in!”
Nedzu looked no different than he had when Izuku had seen him the day before, and even if it was an illusion, something about that small familiarity was soothing. “Welcome!” Nedzu said, gesturing to one of the chairs on the other side of his desk. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure...?”
Introducing yourself to someone you’d known for nearly three years was a surreal experience. “Uh, Izuku Midoriya,” he said, sinking into one of the chairs. “I—” he stopped, unsure where to even begin. I’m a student from the future, please help? He sighed, digging out his student ID and sliding it across the desk. “I’m having a very bad day,” he said, with an edge of humor.
Nedzu scanned the identification card, dark gaze gleaming when he looked up to regard Izuku. “A student then, but not one I’ve met. I assume this date is not a misprint?”
Izuku shook his head. “No, sir.”
Nedzu handed the card back. “Then you had best start from the beginning.”
Izuku did. He wasn’t sure how wise it was, exactly. How much could he tell Nedzu about the future without causing some sort of damage? Still, relating the details of his accident without giving away too much wasn’t so hard. He was a third year student who had fallen victim to what appeared to be a time travel quirk, and had come here for help because he didn’t know what else to do. Nedzu listened with focused interest and did not interrupt.
“Fascinating,” Nedzu breathed once Izuku was done, gaze calculating in a way that might have been intimidating if it wasn’t so comforting. “Time travel quirks are exceedingly rare, and the commission has gone to quite extensive lengths to keep them from public knowledge. I can’t say I ever expected to meet a student from the future, what a marvelous turn of events!”
Marvelous was not the word Izuku would have used, but he was just glad to be believed. Putting the problem in Nedzu’s capable paws was a relief. “You believe me?”
“I do, indeed. However, a little due diligence would not be amiss in this case.” His expression went calculating, like he was turning Izuku over in his mind like a particularly fascinating puzzle. “Validating both your identity and your story should be easy enough. The trickier bit is figuring out how dangerous you are.”
Izuku sat up straight with a flicker of alarm. “Sir?”
Nedzu waved a careless paw. “Time travel is a tricky business. It would be best if we determine quickly whether your presence here is going to cause some sort of irreparable damage.” His smile was so blandly pleasant it circled back to unnerving. “Time is a complex tapestry, and if you go pulling the wrong threads, well, then you risk unraveling the whole thing.”
It occurred to Izuku then that he’d chosen the more dangerous option, after all.
* * *
Despite Nedzu’s pleasantly threatening demeanor, Izuku was glad that the issue was out of his hands. Nedzu would do his best to determine if Izuku’s presence was any sort of real threat, and if it was, well. He’d deal with it. Not the ideal outcome, but it was reassuring in a morbid sort of way.
While Nedzu was working his magic, Izuku napped on the couch in his office. Or tried to, anyway. Omegas weren’t all that great at sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings to begin with, and Izuku was worse than most. He managed short snatches of twilight sleep, unable to relax enough to really rest.
A soft rap on the door roused him from his shallow doze, and Izuku sat up as Nedzu poked his head into the office. “Sorry to wake you, but we’re ready to get started.” He waited for Izuku’s nod before opening the door wide to admit a young police officer who looked familiar. “This is Officer Tsukauchi,” Nedzu said, and oh. That was why. “He has a very useful quirk that will help us confirm the veracity of your story.”
All Might had told him once that Tsukauchi’s quirk was the ability to tell when someone was lying. “Okay,” Izuku said, clasping his hands between his knees and feeling an irrational surge of nerves, like he was about to take a test he might fail.
Tsukauchi smiled, placing a folder on the table between them as he sat. “No need to be nervous,” he said, seeing right through Izuku. “Just answer my questions as truthfully as you can, and this will be quick and painless.”
Nedzu flipped the folder open, and Izuku was startled to see a photo of his mother on top. He leaned forward, curious. She looked so young. “We’ve confirmed that there is a child by the name of Izuku Midoriya living in Musutafu, and you seem to share a marked resemblance with the boy’s mother.” He smiled. “So far, so good.”
“We’re going to start by establishing some baselines,” Tsukauchi said. “Simple questions with obvious answers. Once we’ve done that, we’ll move on.” Another reassuring smile. “Ready?”
Izuku nodded. This would be the easy part.
“Please state your name.”
“Izuku Midoriya.”
“True. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“True. What color is my tie?”
Izuku smiled. Tsukauchi smiled back. “Blue.”
“True. Is this the first time we’ve met?”
The question was careless, likely one of his typical calibration questions. It probably wasn’t one the man himself didn’t often know the answer to. Izuku hesitated, then said, “No.”
Tsukauchi startled, friendly expression overwritten by surprise. “...True. Uh, somehow.” He looked askance at Nedzu, who shook his head.
“Right, then. Let’s continue.” Tsukauchi recovered with remarkable speed, moving on to the real questions. Was Izuku lying about anything he’d related to Nedzu, was he a student like he claimed, did he intend the school or its students any harm, was it true he was from the future, was the time travel incident truly an accident. Izuku relaxed as he answered the thorough onslaught of questions. If he was a danger, it wasn’t deliberately so.
Eventually Tsukauchi and Nedzu seemed satisfied with his answers. “Well, I can say with some confidence that it seems like you’re exactly who you claim to be.” Tsukauchi stood, offering a hand to Izuku, who shook it. “Good luck with everything.” He smiled, wry. “And I suppose I’ll be seeing you again at some point.”
“Thank you for the help, officer,” Nedzu said. “Please send in Sir Nighteye on your way out.”
Izuku sucked in a sharp breath. It was ingenious. Sir Nighteye’s quirk might be the only real way to ensure that Izuku wasn’t going to cause any problems. Like the wholesale destruction of time as they knew it, or something. Izuku couldn’t fathom how Nedzu had gotten the man here in a handful of hours, but he supposed an errant time traveler might land high on people’s priority list.
Izuku felt a small pang as Sir Nighteye entered the room. Their relationship might have been short and contentious, but he hadn’t deserved his fate and seeing him here now, alive and whole, was a peculiar sort of ache.
“This is him, then?” he asked, gaze sweeping over Izuku. He didn’t wait for Nedzu to answer, holding out a hand. Izuku followed suit and Sir Nighteye tapped his palm with icy fingers, eyes lighting purple as his quirk took hold.
He felt like a man awaiting sentence, standing in tense quiet as Sir Nighteye perused his future. Once or twice Izuku could have sworn he saw the ghost of a smile, there and gone, and he hoped that was a good sign.
Eventually Sir Nighteye blinked once, twice, the light of his quirk fading from his eyes. Izuku held his breath. “The boy is no danger,” he told Nedzu, and Izuku went lightheaded with relief.
And because he’d never been good at leaving well enough alone, asked, “How is that possible? I’m changing things just by being here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, but you already have, so it hardly matters.”
Izuku shot a bewildered look at Nedzu, who shrugged and asked, “Could you elaborate?”
Sir Nighteye pushed up his glasses, considering. “Time is a complex mechanism, and even those with... time-adjacent quirks such as myself often struggle to meaningfully influence the flow. Liken it to throwing a stone in a river. You may cause a ripple, but you cannot alter its course.” He cocked his head, regarding Izuku with a fascinated expression. “You don’t appear to be an obstacle at all, however. Instead, it seems your jaunt into the past is not unanticipated, and as such you’re essentially playing your role as part of a—let’s call it a stable time loop.”
A stable time loop? Izuku blinked as his meaning became clear. “You mean this has already happened before.”
“In a manner of speaking. You cannot change the future because you already have.” He gestured to Nedzu. “Take the principal for example. Perhaps here, in this time, you have a conversation about a change to the school curriculum. He likes the idea and chooses to implement it. Then in the future, you yourself attend this school and take that very class. Do you follow?”
Izuku did, and the implication was both comforting and overwhelming. “You’re saying that the future I come from was already influenced by the actions I’ll take here, in the past.”
Sir Nighteye nodded, pleased with his understanding. “Exactly so. I’d advise you to be circumspect where you can. Just because you’re unlikely to cause any real damage doesn’t mean you ought to go shouting about future events from the rooftops. You should also endeavor to avoid the public eye as much as possible, which is an unfortunate directive for a hero hopeful, I know. But otherwise you should be fine to live your life as you see fit without worrying overmuch about the outcome.”
It was probably the best case scenario, Izuku knew, but the idea that he was already a part of past events? It felt uncomfortably like fate. “Do I ever go home?” he asked, the question a little smaller than he meant it to be. The idea of being trapped here forever was more than Izuku was ready to contemplate.
“In my experience, knowledge of one’s own future tends only to complicate.” He smiled then, small and ill-fitting, but a smile nonetheless. “You’ll be fine.”
Izuku wanted to push, but he knew the man could be immovable as a mountain. He also wasn’t given to empty platitudes. If he said Izuku would be fine, then it was probably true. “Thank you,” he said, and he meant it. The anxious buzz at the back of his mind that had been his constant companion since he arrived finally eased. Knowing that he wasn’t going to break anything was a comfort.
Sir Nighteye inclined his head before turning his attention to Nedzu. “If there’s nothing else?”
“No, nothing else,” Nedzu said. “I appreciate you taking the time to come out here so quickly.”
“One can never be too careful in such situations,” Sir Nighteye replied with a brisk nod. “But if you’ll excuse me, I do have other matters to attend to.” He swept out of Nedzu’s office, the door clicking closed behind him.
“Well!” Nedzu said cheerily, clapping his paws together. “That went about as well as I could have hoped for!”
He wasn’t wrong. It was strange to think of his presence here in the past as something that had already happened, but it was far preferable to some of the horrifying alternatives Izuku’s overactive imagination had cooked up in the last few hours. It also left him at loose ends. “What now?” he asked.
“Ah, that’s the easy part.” Nedzu smiled. “I would be remiss as an educator if I did not ensure that you continue your education.”
* * *
“Fortunately we have a dorm available for students in such situations,” Nedzu explained as he led Izuku across the darkened campus.
“You get a lot of temporally displaced students?” Izuku asked, tired enough that his politeness filter was beginning to slip. As far as Izuku’s body was concerned it was creeping up on seven in the morning and he wanted sleep more than anything in the world.
“Not often, no,” Nedzu replied with a thread of amusement. “Typically they’re for students with financial struggles, or... complex home situations. And now, the temporally displaced.” He gestured to the darkened building as they approached. “Here we are.”
It was smaller than the dorm that Izuku was used to, but as they entered a familiar-looking common room, he could see that it had been the template. There was nobody around, which wasn’t all that surprising given the hour, and Izuku was glad. He didn’t think he had social interaction in him tonight. “There are only two other students living here at the moment. One hero course, and one support. I’m sure you’ll meet them soon enough.” Nedzu explained as he led Izuku to a room on the second floor.
The door opened onto a perfectly bland, serviceable room. A bed, a desk, an empty shelf. Nedzu dropped the key into Izuku’s hand, and then handed him the bundle he’d been carrying. “It’s a gym uniform, best I could do on short notice, but at least it’ll give you something to change into. We’ll look into getting you some supplies in the morning!”
“Thank you for helping me,” Izuku said, tired enough that the sudden swell of gratitude felt like a blow, eyes burning.
Nedzu’s answering smile was gentle. “Of course. Our students are our priority, no matter when they come from. Get some rest.”
With that he was gone, and Izuku was alone. Rubbing away the threat of tears, Izuku changed into the gym uniform Nedzu had given him, carefully folding his hero costume and putting it in the closet. The uniform was a little stiff but it was better than nothing, and Izuku dropped onto the bed with a deep sigh, rolling on his back to contemplate the ceiling. He was exhausted, but the room wasn’t his room. It was spare and empty, smelling of dust and disuse, and the unfamiliarity of it all was a discordant note in his mind.
Izuku had been a poor sleeper since the war. The time he had spent on the run, alone and hunted, catching only snatches of exhausted half-sleep had done some real damage, taking the omega need for safety and familiarity and cranking it up to eleven. For months afterwards Izuku had been unable to rest without one of his friends curled around him, the familiar scent and comforting presence enough to finally let him feel safe enough to sleep. He’d gotten better, since. He didn’t need Hitoshi or Shouto there to help him rest anymore, not unless the nightmares were particularly bad. He managed.
Except now he was alone in a way he had never been in his life, cut off from everything he cared about, everyone he loved. He was laying on a bed that wasn’t his, that smelled like nothing, bone tired and wide awake. Izuku curled on his side and closed his eyes. He’d have to get used to it. There was no telling how long he might be trapped in the past, everything familiar terribly out of reach.
He’d adapt. He didn’t have any other choice.