With Love, Comes the Pain

Abandonment

Midoriya was quirkless.

He knew that.

He hated that.

Not that he was quirkless. That was just fate. He was just unlucky.

No. He hated how everyone treated him like he was useless. His classmates treated him like a piece of shit, like he was just there. Something to be bullied. Something to be thrown away and trashed. Something beneath them. All because he had an extra toe joint and lacked a super power.

The adults weren't much better, treating him like he was made of glass, like he would break any moment someone even laid a finger of him.

He wasn't weak, dammit. He could take care of himself.

His mom ignored him. He was quirkless. She didn't want to have a quirkless child. She provided for him, but that's all. She treated him like he didn't exist.

That was good. He could be independent. His mom didn't care.

He hated bullies. He was sure he wasn't the only one discriminated against because of quirks. People needed help. People with weak or usless quirks needed help. The quirkless needed help.

He wasn't a wimp. He could be strong too even if he was quirkless. He needed to be strong. He wanted to prove his existence to himself.

So when Midoroya found himself face to face with All Might, a person he admired all his life, just the tiniest bit more than Eraser Head, after he had defeated a villain near his school on his way home, he couldn't help himself.

"Ne... All Might... do you think a quirkless person could be a hero?"

The answer hit him.

"I'm sorry. I don't think that's a good idea. It's good to dream, but please, make it realistic."

That statement shattered the boy.

But that one small shard of hope, deep in his heart, shined the brightest.

He couldn't be a hero?

Then he won't be one. No one officially acknolwdged by anyone anyway.

He was smart, he liked to analyse quirks.

He could do this.

After all, he could only get arrested if he used a quirk, right?

--------

Aizawa sighed.

He thought he had done a good job keeping a low profile. He was never mentioned in the media, very few police officers knew of him (it was annyoing having to call in Tsukauchi everytime he showed his licence to tell his subordinates that yes, he was a hero, and yes, he dressed like that on purpose, and yes that was the point of an underground hero - being unknown)

So when this crook he was stalking had been taken down by another person, he was surprised. There weren't any underground heroes that worked in his area, or wore so much green.

That wasn'r what aurprised him.

What surprised him was that the person had faced him after he had finished off the crook, waved, yelled "Bye Eraser Head!" and ran off into the darkness.

"He was caught in the end, right? Stop worrying about it." Yamada tried to encourage his friend.

"It's not the criminal! I didn't take him down. A person wearing green did it!" Aizawa groaned.