"B-But I d-didn-"
"That's you right there, Midoriya," Nezu said, a hard edge in his voice, as he studied the hand-cuffed student with his beady eyes. "There is no point in denying it. Please make this easier for everyone, just tell us what you did with the information you took."
"I'm t-telling you, that's not me!"
All Might scoffed and Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose. Seeing these reactions from his teachers, people he'd come to trust, it snapped his heart in two.
"Midoriya. Your fate is already decided. There is no reason to hide this from us any more."
"...why doesn't anyone believe me..."
***
Izuku Midoriya's life was a rollercoaster.
He grew up loving heroes, All Might in particular.
He was declared quirkless.
He got a quirk from All Might himself, and started attending his dream school, U.A.
As a hero-in-training, he did his best. Notably he'd saved Kota from Muscular, and Eri from Chisaki. Kota sent him a thank you letter, which he treasured, and Eri latched on to him as a surrogate father. He filled the role as best he could.
Things were looking up.
Until they weren't.
Information on schedules and teachers of U.A. had disappeared from Nezu's office one evening. On checking footage recorded by a hidden camera, he was shocked by what he saw. Izuku Midoriya. He was moving carefully, but the look on his face was what cemented the boy's guilt. 'Izuku's' eyes were wide. He was panicked and was exhibiting all the mannerisms that made Izuku Izuku. Nezu didn't want to believe it, but that was definitely him.
Why would Izuku have done a thing like that? Did he want to add to his hero notes? Then why take the schedule? Maybe he wanted a head start on what the school year would entail? In that case, he should have asked a teacher. But what would he need with the info?
Things moved quickly from there. Nezu was already on guard for a plant in U.A.. That was why he'd hidden that camera. Hound Dog was called in. He tracked the strange scent in the office out of the window all the way to Izuku's room. When Izuku's room was searched thoroughly and there was no sign of the documents, everyone assumed the worst had already happened.
To make matters worse for Izuku, no-one could vouch for his whereabouts that night. Aizawa made the tough decision to present Izuku's charges and the supporting evidence to his class. There were murmured sounds of disbelief, but like Nezu and the faculty, they eventually came to the conclusion that Izuku Midoriya was a traitor.
Aizawa held a hero training class later that day. He instructed everyone to target Midoriya. His goal was to restrain the 'traitor.' He called for the match to start, and Izuku focused on drawing out the power he'd been given, before all the energy just... disappeared, vanished, and he couldn't call on it.
'Where did One for All go...?' the boy thought, as his classmates advanced on him.
Izuku looked up, and from a distance, he could make out the distinct floating hair of his homeroom teacher.
Recovery Girl could barely heal him.
***
"Was everything an act? Did he set everything up?" All Might snarled, as he sat across the table from Izuku, who was still hand-cuffed. "Put Young Bakugo in danger so that you could shine?"
"Why..." Izuku started.
"What?"
"Why... are you- Why is everyone so angry at me? I-I've done nothing..."
"Because..." Toshinori thought for a while. "Betrayal stings. It's painful in a way that a lot of things aren't."
The shriveled blond man looked at the boy, who had looked away, and seemed to be internalizing his words. He cleared his throat, getting Izuku's attention, before he spoke again.
"If you truly are innocent, give me back One for All."
Izuku had hesitated, but had raised his cuffed hands to his bushy hair and plucked out one of his green locks. He stretched it to his... teacher? Predecessor? He didn't know anymore. He held out the strand of hair, and Toshinori practically snatched it, quickly consuming it, and getting up. After one last look of contempt at Midoriya, the pro left.
That had changed nothing. All Might never returned, and it's not like he could ask when All Might would come back. He'd soon come to the conclusion that All Might just didn't want him to have the quirk. Soon, the quirk's last embers would flicker out and he'd be quirkless once again.
Back to square one.
All that hard work, gone.
Useless to everyone once again.
Not like he'd even have the chance to use the quirk, now that he was always in quirk-nullifying cuffs.
Tartarus wasn't as bad as Izuku thought it would be. He wasn't really allowed to make contact with anyone else. He didn't know if that was normal protocol, but he didn't think it was to keep him safe or anything.
The loneliness was unbearable. He'd begun to lose track of time. He hadn't seen his mother in so long. What had happened to her? Did U.A. tell her? Did they think she was in on it? Did they try to convince her that her son was a villain? Did they keep him from her for her safety?
He blinked, and shook his head violently. No matter what U.A or anyone said to Inko, Izuku adamantly told himself that she'd always love him. She would never turn on him.
His mind wandered to Eri, and the way she called him 'Papa.' The thought brought him a little comfort. She probably missed him far more than he missed her.
He heard the door open. He looked up, hoping for the comforting eyes of his mother, come to save him from this waking nightmare, but was met with a guard who looked at him sadly. The guard had spent the most time around Izuku lately, and wasn't convinced he'd done any of the things he's been arrested for.
"Get up kid, you're having a hearing or something today."
"I thought it was tomorrow?" Izuku asked, his voice hoarse, and the guard shrugged in response.
"The earlier the better, right?" the guard offered. Izuku nodded. He knew better than to argue. This guard was just following instructions. He got up and once his cuffs were confirmed to be secure, he was put in the back of a vehicle. The driver had the radio on, and Midoriya could hear it. A broadcast had just announced the identification of a traitor in the U.A. hero course, and Izuku Midoriya was mentioned by name. The driver began to gloat and taunted Izuku, but Izuku's assigned guard in the passenger seat stopped him.
Izuku began to cry. Now, even if he was found innocent, he could never be a hero. The public would never accept it. He wondered how this would affect his mother. She might be in danger. Hopefully she and All Might stayed friendly. He chuckled dryly. Maybe in another world he could have seen the #1 Hero as a father.
The car was attacked. The doors opened, no, disintegrated.
Shigaraki.
He and Kurogiri were looking at the young hero. Shigaraki began to gloat. Izuku shut his eyes and tuned out the man-child of a villain. When he realized he was being ignored, he turned to Kurogiri.
"Let's go."
***
"All... for.. One?" Izuku asked. He was in the League of Villains' base of operations. A bar. He was placed in front of a screen.
"Izuku Midoriya, I presume," came the silky voice of the villain. "He took it back, didn't he?"
Midoriya fell silent, and near-ecstatic laughter came from the screen.
"Tomura, remove his shackles." Izuku swore he could hear the villain smirk through the screen. "Midoriya is now as quirkless as the day he was born."
"Quirkless? AWESOME! That must have sucked." Twice's personalities said, as Shigaraki hesitantly used his quirk on the metal bindings on Izuku which quickly crumbled to dust.
"What do you want? You want me to join you?" Izuku asked, as he rotated his wrists, which were sore.
"Straight to the point. I like that. And if I did want you on my side?"
"I can't think of any reason why you would want that. I will never be a villain. Even if I did, I have nothing to offer or gain. And you guys ruined my life."
"I will never be a villain." All for One repeated. "And that's true, isn't it? With that unbreakable will of yours. It's amazing, I can feel that conviction from here. But you can't be a hero now, can you?"
Izuku opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted.
"I-Izuku?"
He turned, and he recognized the girl in school uniform. Toga.
"That's you in the video, isn't it?" he asked. The girl seemed to have been crying, by the telltale stains running from her eyes down her cheeks. Twice was patting her reassuringly on the back.
"I-I didn't want this... We just had your blood..." Her quiet voice was filled to the brim with remorse... Wasn't she supposed to the be crazed villain in the League?
"But how did you get my blood?" he asked. Now that he thought about it, that's probably why Nezu didn't give the possibility enough thought, if any.
"Hm. It seems that drinking that much of your lifeforce restored some amount of sanity to our resident psychopath," Mr. Compress said, running a finger on the brim of his top hat. "You once donated blood for people with quirks like hers."
"The blood drive from last summer? Wait, her quirk-?"
"Yes, she loses a few screws if she doesn't have access to blood, and none of us really want to give her ours." Dabi said. The cremation villain was sitting in a stool, a bottle in his hands.
"She usually takes care of it herself," Dabi paused to take a swig. "But it once got so bad that if we let her out, she'd definitely would've gotten caught. That happened in the same week as that blood drive, and... you can figure the rest out yourself."
"It was pretty lucky. It was a genius strategy." Twice said.
"But she's right in that U.A. practically disowning you wasn't part of the plan, in fact it's one of the more surprising things I've seen in my lifetime." All for One said, and he sounded genuine. He was amused, but he was actually shocked by U.A.'s rash actions. "It could have just as easily been one of your classmates, or even one of your teachers."
"You have a plant in U.A, right?" Izuku asked. "Why not just use whoever it is?"
"Your rat of a principal is on the prowl for a traitor. Well, was. I think he was overly eager to pull out the potential weed." The century-old villain chuckled. "As for that accusation, I will neither confirm nor deny it."
"Sensei, what are we doing with him?"
"Ah, Tomura, ever so impatient. Well you have a point. Kurogiri, prepare to place our young guest in Purgatory."
"Purgatory?"
"It's a nickname for one of Kurogiri's abilities. Limbo. Not quite dead, not quite alive. Essentially, we're giving you a view of what reality looks like from the outside. Not that you'd be able to tell from the lack of anything tangible."
Kurogiri was now devoid of his usual purple tint. He wasn't black, per se, but it was like the lack of any color whatsoever.
"Reality... from the outside?" Izuku asked, scared now.
"Just think of it as the end of a series of unfortunate events." All for One said, in mock comfort, as Izuku was swallowed by the warp gate. "Goodbye, thorn in my side."
***
Uraraka was lying in bed, staring at the celing.
That was Izuku Midoriya in the footage, no doubt about it. The seething anger she'd felt at the boy's betrayal and deception was the same everyone else was feeling, during the fight they'd had against him, and they used it to let out all those feelings.
But something happened during the fight that planted a seed of uncertainty in her mind. Izuku had barely gotten to use his quirk, but he held his own for an impressive amount of time.
He was bleeding heavily, definitely broken bones, but he had a defiant and determined look on his face.
"If... I...can.. take out just... one..." she'd heard him mutter.
It reminded her of the day they'd met, the day he'd saved her for the first time.
The day he willingly sacrificed his place at U.A, if not for the secret hero points.
Uraraka stopped fighting at that point, and Aizawa called the exercise soon after the boy collapsed from exhaustion and injury.
***
Betrayal stings. It's painful in a way a lot of things aren't.
Izuku floated in nothingness for what felt like forever. He wanted to scream, but no sound was made when he opened his mouth. No air for the sound to travel through. Then how was he not suffocating? It didn't make any sense.
Now truly alone with his thoughts, Izuku once again asked himself the question that had been on his mind, throughout his 'series of unfortunate events.'
'How could they...? Is it something I did? Did they not trust me? I- Mom... Eri... will they hate me? I won't ever see them again...'
His body began to glow a brilliant blue, jolting him from his depressing thoughts. He stared as his body was deconstructed into wisps of blue light.