What Could Have Been (vigilante deku)

54

"Izuku...you have to...you have to promise that your views of me won't change when I tell you this." Sensei muttered.

Izuku looked up and tilted his head in confusion. "Okay." He replied simply. What could be so bad that Sensei thought he wouldn't look at him the same?

"I thought you were already aware of my unconditional admiration but, I'll promise I guess." Izuku joked heavy heartedly, trying to ease the mood.

It didn't seem to work because Sensei didn't laugh.

"Izuku, remember when I told you about my brothers?" Sensei asked, trying to figure out the best place to start.

Izuku nodded. He momentarily glanced at his empty finger, reminding himself to tell Aizawa to stop taking the ring that's supposed to be sitting there.

"Good. Y-you know how..I mentioned my oldest brother and how he was evil? How he wanted me and my other brother dead?"

Izuku sucked in a breath and nodded. Now that he had Sensei back, he didn't like the mention of someone wanting him dead.

"After killing...him. He..changed. He disappeared for awhile and when he returned.." Sensei gulped. "He noticed I didn't have a quirk."

Izuku gasped and shot back. "Wait, huh?" He asked in disbelief. "You were quirkless?"

Izuku remembered when he was a child, he was a late bloomer and didn't get his quirk until he was 7. For that he was bullied ruthlessly for being "quirkless".

"Listen," Sensei scolded with an eye roll and Izuku apologised quickly then resumed his spot on Sensei's chest.

"That's not the point. What is, is what I'm about to tell you." Sensei sighed. "Izuku...my brother's quirk was that he was capable of stealing quirks and distributing them to other people or keeping them for himself."

Izuku's face fell faster than a corpse in cement boots. In that instant his skin became greyed, his mouth hung with lips slightly parted and his eyes were as wide as they could stretch.

Izuku's brain seemed to have stopped working like some sort of emergency shut down. There is zero thinking going on in his head as his brain was desperately scrambling to make sense of it all,  rendering him speechless.

That couldn't be-

That's impossible-

What-

How?

"Izuku, are you alright?" Sensei asked cautiously.

Izuku blinked a couple times, trying to clear the fuzz that filled his brain and looked up at Sensei with a questioning gaze. "Does that mean..that..the man who tried to kill you.."

Izuku stopped.

His speech silences itself in reverence to Sensei's words, to the new light they shine upon old ideas. If this is dumbfounded, then Izuku has found himself quite stupid by comparison and didn't want to hear more.

The truth left Izuku with insides contracting, cold. It left him with a heart that explodes in his chest, clammy skin and attempting to stop himself from hyperventilating.

"He-" he tried again but once again, no words escaped his mouth.

He looked up at Sensei again, expecting some kind of remorse to be on his face, but there was none. Instead, he was met with a blank stare, his eyes almost as still as some bill board poster.

"Yes." When Sensei speaks his voice trails slowly, like his words are unwilling to take flight. There is a sadness in his eyes, the brown too glossy.