Chapter Text
All men are not created equal. A lesson Izuku Midoriya learned at the age of four.
Being declared quirkless made life difficult. It made Izuku an easy target for kids who had quirks, both physically and socially. His most common and most enthusiastic tormentor being his own childhood friend.
Because of this, he lived a life of ridicule and misery, the only reprieve being his mother. Which leads us to today. A day where, even by his previously abysmal standards, it was bad. Mocked all day through school, publicly ousted by his teacher as an applicant for UA, privately attacked by Bakugou, his notebook was burned by his explosions, then attacked by a sludge villain and almost drowned alone under a bridge.
His only saving grace was All Might appearing in the nick of time to save him. And even that ended on a sour note, the number one hero launching off across the city before he could ask him the one question he’d always wanted answered.
Now he was alone, as he often was outside his own home. He sat in the woods he used to play with Bakugou in. When he first started coming here, he was afraid Bakugou might find him. It didn’t take long for him to realise that his bully never came here. He never cared enough to.
So he sat alone, writing notes in the quirks and fights he’d seen that day, until his eyes started to droop. He could be forgiven for being tired. It had been such a long day. Unbeknownst to him, there would be longer days ahead, and much, much longer nights.
Opening his eyes, Izuku can’t see even a hint of sunlight. “Oh crap.” Grabbing his phone, he sees the hour. “Oh crap!” He jumps to his feet, fumbling to unlock his phone, he tries to call his mother, only to be met with the low battery icon before the screen goes dark. “Damnit!” Gathering up his belongings, he books it from his resting place.
He’s marched through these woods many times in his life, but doing it in almost complete darkness is another matter entirely. “This is why mom tells you to go straight home after school. How could I be so stupid? Now I’m gonna get grounded until I’m 30 and she’ll cry, then I’LL cry and-“
Izuku is knocked from his near panicked tirade by a baritone voice, seeming to echo from the darkest areas around him. “Twelve dreams for the Red Queen that sleeps under crown of stone, that she might linger longer, her eyes as white as bone.”
Stopping in his tracks, Izuku looks around, hoping to catch sight of the speaker. “Hello?”
The only answer given was more poetry. “A prayer for the summoned by warring song, a child born from darkness must take scent of his path.”
Suffice to say, Izuku was sufficiently freaking out. “W-who are you? What do you want?”
Everything suddenly goes quiet. Too quiet. The semblence of peace is broken by a piercing pain in the side of Izuku’s neck, making him cry out. Even bleeding out and pained as he was, the minor weight of his backpack making him feel like Atlas, he crawled forward. “No. I can’t… not yet. I still have to be… a hero…”
“Awaken from the harshness, and be born once more.”
Izuku Midoriya woke in darkness. Jolting from his place on the ground, he rises to his feet, forever changed.
Izuku’s gait was barely an uneven shuffle, weak and unsteady on his feet, moving in the vague direction of his home purely on autopilot. His breath came out in brief, harsh pants that didn’t condense in the crisp night air. And this feeling, this awful feeling. “Thirsty… so thirsty.”
Everything was so muted. He could barely call it seeing. All black and white. Then he saw it… red. Red held within a black shape. The shape took notice of him, and seemed to pause before rushing over to him, holding him. It spoke to him, weeping. But he couldn’t make sense of it. It was all just noise to him. Then the shape held him too close to the red. And he bit down.
The satisfaction, the ecstasy. He’d never felt anything like it before. Colour and sound slowly returned to the world around him, as did his rationality. And he saw his mother. “What? No no no! Mom, stay with me! Please!”
Despite his best efforts to stop the bleeding, it was too late. The wound that HE had caused, had DRANK from, had lost too much blood. And despite his mothers stillness, he could hear her voice. “I’m sorry Izuku. I’m so sorry.”
Mitsuki Bakugou answers the door, bleary eyed in the middle of the night. “What- oh my god!” The tiredness was blasted from her system at the sight of Izuku at her door, pale as a sheet and dressed in the uniform he disappeared in days ago, albeit more filthy, and covered in blood. The evidence of his… acts were haphazardly wiped from his face by his sleeve, disguised amongst the disturbing amount of blood that actually came out of him.
“I…I need help. Please.”
The blonde mother doesn’t hesitate. “Of course. Come inside, we’ll get you cleaned up and call the police.”
Not all men are created equal. Not all men die equal either. That’s a lesson Izuku Midoriya learned at the age of sixteen. And he would remain sixteen for a long, long time.