Izuku and I had made a game out of balancing along the train tracks below us.
He yelped, falling off of them as he turned into a mumbling mess. I turned around to find him staring at the lines so harshly that a line had formed on his forehead. "How much further!?" He asked.
"Don't rush this. Enjoy this time," I replied.
"But it starts soon."
"Soon. But not right now. Right now you're losing."
We had been walking side-by-side like this for the last thirty minutes. Both of us with our arms outreached as we tried to balance our bodies that had grown tired from training this morning. It has been two weeks since I discovered Dabi had access to my dreams.
Thinking about it eats me alive.
Right now, I am awake. Right now, I am only a sixteen-year-old girl trying to balance on the train tracks with my best friend. I am not a hero. I don't know Morning Glory. My name is not Asami Yagi. I am just Asami.
Just Asami.
"Have you been studying for our exam tomorrow?" Izuku looks up at me. He peers at me from the corner of his eye as he watches the way I place my feet as he begins to mimic me.
I groan. "Which one?"
"This semester seemed to get a lot harder after we moved into the dorms, huh?"
"Seemed to get a lot harder after I missed class for another two weeks straight. I can't keep up. Especially after I disappeared for a few days to go screw around downtown. Mr. Aizawa isn't very happy with me." I glanced over, finding him watching me sympathetically. He licked his lips, trying to decide if he should say what he clearly wanted to say.
"Maybe... You know... Kacchan is-"
"I can't." I snapped. Izuku falters on his feet, abruptly looking over at me with wide eyes. "I'm sorry." I leaned down, grabbing a first full of grass and throwing it at him. He threw his head back and laughed, raising his arms to cover his face.
"Okay, okay!" He laughed. "I forgive you. Keep talking."
"I just meant that I can't look Katsuki in the face and not tell him everything. I can't lie to him. I can't keep everything from him and I can begin to feel myself bubbling over. I need to talk to him. I need to tell him about the underground quirk fighting and the pills and the thing with my brain and All For One." I looked at Izuku, finding him looking it over. "What do you think? Do you think he can forgive me? Will he ever see me the same!?"
"You are Asami Yagi. You aren't your past. You aren't an addict or an illegal street fighter. You aren't All For One's victim. You're Asami Yagi!" He smiled. He reached over, plucking a dandelion from the ground as he handed it to me. He grabbed one for himself, immediately blowing it towards me. "You are the top of class 1-A at U.A. High in combat. You listen to classical music when you study. You dust your books off twice a week and your favorite part of being a hero is helping little kids. You only wear white shoes and you're terrible at keeping them clean. Your best friend is Kacchan, not Dabi. You're the first person awake in the dorms and the last one to go to sleep." As he spoke, he spun his hands through the air wildly as he made wide gestures. He spoke the same way he does when someone asks him about All Might.
He spoke passionately. Proudly.
"You're just Asami Yagi." My heart soared at his words. My body felt lighter and my chest erupted with butterflies.
"Did the way you saw me change after I told you everything?" I asked.
"Yes. I changed the same way I change every time you tell me something about yourself. I just understand you better. Now can I ask when we'll get there?"
I nodded forward. He turned his head, his mouth falling open and his eyes shining at the sight of the city.
The tops of industrial buildings glared back at us and the loud soundtrack of traffic and city life screamed at us from the bottom of the hill. He looked out at everything like he was looking at a buffet table after a day of training. He looked up at airplanes and watched elevated trains flying through the streets. We saw thousands of people dressed in boisterous hats and fancy coats speed-walking as they chattered into their cell phones. Babies in big strollers and the smells of a thousand restaurants.
What Izuku didn't see were the people living in torn tents in alleyways. He didn't see the homeless shelters or the villains that stole whatever they saw fit for themselves. He didn't see the brutal fighting or the children begging for food. He didn't see the expensive drugs sold on dead-end streets. He didn't smell the rotting bodies left in plain sight that everyone failed to acknowledge and report.
Izuku saw beautiful skyscrapers and love blossoming in the hundreds of coffee shops. I saw children falling to their nimble knees from hunger and fathers mourning their inability to feed them.
We were still so different. We were looking through the same glasses and yet we saw completely different things. We were the same person living two different lives.
"My rules still apply down here. If anyone tries to offer you anything I will kill them." I looked at him and he nodded. He looked down, digging through his pockets before pulling out a black mask to cover his mouth and nose. "It's getting dark so it's almost time. We should go."
Izuku wore a black tank top with black shorts to match. He'd swapped out his red shoes for a pair of black ones that had metal plates embedded into the soles like our hero costumes.
We came down here with one mission.
Find Dabi.
He doesn't know it, but I have another mission of my own.
"How have your dreams been?" Izuku asks. He lowers his head and glances at me with only his eyes. He begins fiddling with dead grass between his fingertips. He pulls it apart, focusing on the grass so that he won't physically react to my response.
"So-so. They've been the same. They don't scare me so much anymore because I know what's happening and I know it's not real. They're not unpredictable. At least Dabi has spared me that much," I sigh. I pick at the fingernail-shaped scabs on the palm of my hand. They bleed but I don't wince. This pain isn't foreign to me.
It's nothing compared to what my mother did with those metal beams.
"I want you to stay by my side down there. Please. I couldn't forgive myself if something happened to you." Izuku and I turn to each other and I watch as the sun sets behind him. "Promise me. Please," I beg him. He is the only person I would let myself be so pathetic for.
My sweet boy. My love. My sunset.
He smiles and holds his pinkie out for my own to interlock with. "Of course I will. You protect me and I'll protect you. I know I talked you into this so if at any time you want to leave, we will leave immediately."
"Thank you."
We turn, heading into the city that is everything good and everything bad all at once. It is where I left my childish self to die. It is where I found out who and what made me into what I am today. I am Dabi's puppet. Was. I was Dabi's puppet. I was an addict at eight years old. I was a bad person. I was a victim.
Now. Now, I am only Asami Yagi. I am only a girl holding hands with a boy with green hair.
We walk down a long hill that's littered with trash and spillage from unlawful civilians. The city begins to reek of gas fumes and spoiled food. I smell these things before I see them. Izuku's hand becomes sweaty and I can feel his head snapping every which direction as he takes in a city he's never been to. I can feel in my chest that part of him is enthusiastic but nervous all the same. I squeeze his hand for reassurance and I feel my chest settle as he turns to offer me a quick smile.
We steal away into an alleyway and I pull him close to my side. He takes his hand from mine and rests it on my lower back as he pulls me even closer and puffs his chest out. He looks over me and I can feel him scanning the shadows for anything out of the ordinary. "Where do you think we'll find him?" Izuku asks.
"I'm not even sure we will. I'm not sure about the Underground Fighting scene anymore. I've only been here once in the last few years and I'm not sure I quite understand how things run anymore. Dabi was once my eyes down here. As shitty of a person as he was, he sure knew his way around down here." I take a deep breath and scan the rooftops. I grab a fistful of the end of Izuku's shirt and pull him close enough that our shoulders and sides rub as we walk.
"Why are we so on edge?" Izuku asks softly.
"I feel like we're being watched." Izuku and I stop in our tracks and move to be back to back. Both of us are breathing harshly, our heads whipping wildly as we scan even the ground for something. My body locks up in terror and I'm no longer able to move.
"My quirk is called Eerie." My head snaps to the shadows that pour into the ground behind a large dumpster. My body shakes so terribly that I think I might vomit. I'm not used to this feeling. It's a stranger to me. "Forgive me. I'm unable to turn it off. If anyone comes within a fifty-foot radius of me, they'll begin to be filled with terror. I mean no harm. Truly. I am just a poor man. Nothing more. Nothing less."
He pulls himself from the ground as he limps towards us. His skin is worn with age and filled with spots that show me just how truly old he is. He has a long white beard and thin hair that hangs down past his shoulders. His eyes are milky and so deeply set that I can just feel that this man knows things I could never begin to fathom. "I am a poor blind man. Please, forgive me." He uses a cane to force his thin legs forward and he stops just before he reaches us.
Izuku and I stand in a circular pool of light that beams down from above us. This man stands just on the edge of it. Watching. Waiting.
The closer he gets, the sicker I feel. The more I feel like screaming. The harder Izuku presses against me. The bigger we try to make ourselves. My heart pounds so hard that my head begins to throb. My brain feels thick and swampy and my legs begin to lock.
"Please, don't apologize," Izuku speaks softly. I hear his voice shake and I feel his hand grip my side in order to steady himself. He places himself slightly in front of me, putting himself between me and the man with the milky eyes. "Can we help you with anything? Can we take you somewhere?"
"There is nowhere to take me, son. I only bring myself from the shadows to explain why you two are shaking like newborn deer. I know how much my disability can terrify others. I want to give you something besides an eerie feeling." I shift on my feet when he refers to his quirk as a disability. "I'm afraid I've run out of quirk suppressants. You must forgive me. I never meant to scare you two."
"Are you out here alone?" I ask. I peer from around Izuku's shoulder and I feel him tense. "There must be somewhere we can take you." My voice is shaking.
"No, no." The man's voice shakes and my face burns with the realization that I've upset him somehow. "The homeless shelter won't accept me because I take up too much space when people are trying to avoid my disease of a disability. There is no place for a man like me out here." I see the man watch us longingly and I know he just wants to speak. I feel sorry for the man. I feel a sense of... I feel something. Something other than fear. "Nobody offers work to a man like me. Nobody wants to sit next to me in an office. Nobody wants to work with me. Nobody will have me."
"I'm sorry," I say, softly.
"People can be cruel." Izuku looks down at me as he checks me over.
"People are cruel." The man nods his head with sympathy for himself. He looks down at his feet and he lifts his cane a few times as he taps it on the pavement. He is thinking of how to continue this conversation and have someone to talk to. He licks his lips and I can tell that he is holding back a million stories that beg to have just one reader. "People are cruel," he whispers to not us, but himself.
I feel sorry for this man. I want to hear his stories. I cannot bring myself to tell him this. The fear that his quirk releases eats me alive. It squeezes my throat until my eyes burn and it circulates in the pit of my stomach. I cannot stop shifting on my feet or looking over my shoulder. I feel like I'm going to be sick and the thought of losing my dinner in front of a stranger makes me even more afraid.
"I used to have a prescription for quirk suppressants. A psychiatrist said I would do best to have it suppressed. Very few people have been granted this option and I was the first." He rubs his hands like he's cold as he looks off at the stars gleaming down on us. "I don't have a way to pay for it anymore."
I think Izuku is at a loss for words. I look at him and find his teeth chattering in terror and I can feel his veins beginning to throb with the need to run. I feel the electricity of our quirks beginning to fire off lightning behind us. I can feel them intertwining like old friends and I can see them reflecting off the buildings around us. Even though they are so small, they give off so much power.
"I'm sorry for giving you young people my sob story. I haven't had anyone to talk to in a long time." He drags out the word long as he shifts on his feet and chuckles to himself as he watches our lightning flash.
I can't help it. I turn around and hurl into a trash can that had been knocked over. Izuku calls my name and I hear him turn around to help me but I hold my hand up to tell him to stay back. Suddenly, I hear his feet shuffling before he throws up as well. I try to catch my breath, one of my hands holding onto the side of the trash as I pant like a dog. I groan and wipe my mouth as I stand up and try to feel myself out. My quirk has turned off, the vomiting having tired my body out enough to get me to calm down for a second. "Are you okay?" Izuku asks.
"I'm okay," I gasp. "I'm okay. Nothing I haven't done before." I groan again and shake it off but when I turn back to Izuku, I find that the man has disappeared. I look around for him wildly and Izuku joins me, frustratingly grunting when he realizes the man is gone for good. "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay. I didn't want to be done talking to him. I was just trying to listen to him, I didn't want him to think I didn't wanna talk to him!" He becomes upset, rubbing his eyes in irritation.
"I don't think he took it that way, Izuku. People down here are just different, you know? There are thousands of people down here and people don't talk to each other. They just talk at each other. I can't stand the way people talk to each other around here and I don't even like talking." He nods sadly as I pull him along to a pile of soot sitting behind a glowing restaurant. "Lean down. We're getting close."
He leans down and sighs as I begin rubbing soot into our hair. "How do we help people like that? We have no problem standing here and talking to him even when he's making us so terrified that we throw up but others aren't. He could live a life in the countryside where he doesn't have to deal with discrimination."
"Yes, I understand that but we can't force people to move away into the countryside because we can't learn to live with them." Izuku stands and he sighs in defeat as he looks down at me.
"You're right. But what about the thousands of people just like him? What do they do? We were discriminated against for not having quirks but we weren't pushed away because they didn't wanna deal with us. What are we going to do once we become heroes, Asami? What can we do? Can we teach people to be different?"
"This is why I didn't wanna bring you down here. You didn't need to see this kind of stuff," I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. "I don't need you worrying about more than you already do."
"You can't deal with everything alone. You promised me we wouldn't do this anymore."
"I never tell lies. I am sticking to my promises," I retort. "This is just a different world down here. Look, let's just head to the tournament. I'd like to be in bed before two in the morning." He nodded softly, his eyes falling to the ground as he fell in line behind me.
I looked over my shoulder and found his eyebrows pinched up and I could tell his mind was running a thousand miles a minute. I knew he was detailing a million different theories and a million different solutions. "I'm sorry," I stopped walking. "I trust you. I am going to tell you everything and I won't do it all on my own. I am learning. I am trying."
He stops and looks up at me for a moment after I finish speaking. "I just want you to let me protect you."
"We will protect each other. Just as we always have. I just think the stakes are gonna be a little higher this time around."
"It's nothing I can't handle." He smiles and I feel lighter on my feet. "Let me show you how much I can handle."
"Okay," I nod. "But it won't be tonight. Not here."
Izuku Midoriya cannot protect me down here.
Nobody can.
—-
Hello to anyone still reading!!
I think I've decided I'm gonna do a lot of POV jumping in Redamancy because I want everyone to get to see what Asami is really like!
She always has so many harsh perceptions of herself and is extremely dense so I figured it would be refreshing and entertaining to see how differently everyone in her world actually sees her!
Anyways, I hope everyone has been doing well!! 🤍