He did not know what woke him up. But Izuku didn’t rise from his light sobering slumber all by himself.
The reason were the steps of a nurse who couldn’t even consider what her visit to the coffee-machine at the end of the floor would start.
The dead, green eye just needed to be opened so that the teenager knew where he was.
A hospital.
Swearing under his breath he sat up and carded a hand through his hair in a stressed out motion. Ignoring the vertigo taking over his head with the experience of a pro.
Firstly he took in his own state and was lucky to tell that there were no new scars.
It was better this way - he had more than enough.
He didn’t wear handcuffs and wasn’t tied to his bed.
Did the staff know who he was? Was the police waiting in front of this door? Did his mother know? The youth welfare office? Kacchan?! Did they bring his personal devil back to him to drag him back to hell again?!
The heart monitor started beeping loudly as his hearts speed picked up and he tried to calm down.
His fear was unreasoned.
There was no way that his past classmates or neighbours would ever be told that he was still alive and kicking.
His eyes wandered to his left arm. There was the typical needle in the back of his hand and another one in crook of his arm, tying him to an IV-drip.
With practiced movements he removed the needles and pressed the sheets at the indents in his skin until they stopped bleeding.
After that he palmed over his face to find the usual oxygen tubes.
With a sigh he shook his head and removed them as well. Shuddering at the well known gross sentient.
One problem less.
He took in the room.
There weren't any cameras so in that way he was safe.
His eyes stopped searching when they found the chair on the opposite side of the room.
The seat was adorned by his clothes which seemed to be washed, ironed and piled thoughtfully.
A service every hospital had.
Maybe he should show up more often?
NOPE! Bad idea! Stay under the radar and don’t take the risk of human interaction!
Beneath the chair was his backpack, leaned against a wall.
Hasty Midoriya ripped off the remaining cables on his body and rushed over to the chair to dress himself.
The boy stopped for a short second and let the feeling of his freshly washed hoodie linger on his skin but then he threw on his hood and pulled it deep into his face while grabbing his backpack as a sign to begin his journey again.
At first he examined the window but to his disappointment he was only in the fifth or sixth floor and there was a lock at the outside of the frame.
He tried to move the handle anyway but - just as he suspected -it didn’t bulge a bit.
He threw a look at the ground and compared the distance with the one of his first jump.
It was nearer.
His last jump had been from a roof, theoretically it would have been the seventh floor.
He could try it again…
But with his luck it wouldn’t end well, again.
May it be his attempt to throw himself in front of a car, (it ended up being a mass collision with four deaths.)
his excessive drinking, (he stopped counting how often he woke up in some hospital.)
or his one try to swallow an overdose of medications. (It never worked out in first place because some damn hero had seen him and made him throw them up before holding a lecture [of course in front of the press] why life was worth living. [He would have gladly started a second attempt after that, right in front of them. But he didn’t have the money to buy more pills.])
Every time when only he, Izuku Midoriya, tried to kill himself he would survive - so someone else needed to do the job because otherwise he’d never die.
For a moment he considered his options.
He could destroy the glass with a chair or throw another part of the furniture through it and jump out of the window. If Lady Luck was on his side he would finally bite the dust but if she wasn’t and he’d survive, he would end up with even more scars and god knows what kind of additional damage.
Or he could take the route through the hospital towards the main entrance. He could vanish in the crowd, maybe he could even manage to steal some syringes or something like that...
That didn’t sound like his worst idea.
With a phiole of Morphine, an unused syringe or two, a package of prescription requiring pills one could make good money on the streets.
And money was the promise of another high.
Everyone is finalising the salvation of someone else, that’s the whole magic.
All of this was thought in less than a minute which was filled with mumbling before the greenette started to move and opened the door just a crack - barely enough for him to look outside and see that nobody was in the corridor.
Quietly he opened the door further to get a look at the whole corridor that revealed itself as abandoned.
No human being as far as he could see.
Satisfied the boy stepped out of the room and closed the door behind himself.
When one made it out of their room without being seen they were almost outside. Because after that it was just a matter of acting plain and not to meet anyone who could identify you.
He went down the floor following the signs leading towards the exit, he stepped through a glass door-
“So you really wanna leave like that?”
His muscles rasted to halt and his shoulders pulled up before he turned to face the person that spoke with him.
The man sat leaned against the wall by the door so that he was obscured from Izukus former viewpoint.
He had black hair and wore a white armor, next to him laid a helmet on the ground that reminded one of a train.
Ingenium, he remembered himself, The hero Ingenium looks like that. He’s a member of the Iida-Family who were heros for many generations. Each and every one of them had a Quirk of type “Engine”. In his case it was centred in his legs and made them faster and stronger.
Running away seemed to be a really dumb idea.
With a sigh on his lips he turned around.
“What do you want from me?”
The man chuckled and shook his head.
“I want answers, Izuku Midoriya.”, he stated and tried to look into the the boy eyes, but the half-blind kid avoided his gaze with ease.
Why should such an awesome hero want to talk to him? Surely it was a trap laid by the police so that they’d have his full confession on tape or -
“So I’m an awesome hero? Thank you!”
Startled the greenette looked up and saw Tenseis’ apologetic smile.
“If it calms you: I’m not really helping with the investigation against you, I’m rather hindering it right now.”,
explained the hero before dropping the bomb:
“If you’re going to answer my questions like I think you will, I’m even going to buy you some time.”
The boy surveyed his surroundings quickly, before he tugged his legs beneath himself in front of the older male.
Ingenium was a cool and quite relaxed hero. Many of the people Izuku talked with called him a rather humane guardian of society.
He could be scary, if he fought against true villains but towards those ones like them who committed crimes because it was the last thing left for them he acted understanding and reprehensive.
“What do you want to know?”, the teenager demanded.
He wanted to leave the hospital as soon as possible to get somewhere safe - the money he could make if he left the building with the right stuff wasn’t even this necessary.
At the same time Tensei Iida observed the boy - who was wearing the eyepatch and his hood again - as much as possible.
He tried to imagine his upright and robotic little brother next to this chaotic, broken, haggard boy.
Two uncomparable worlds crashed together and left him the question if his idea would really work out.
But it would be a shame if he didn’t try.
“Is it true that you were bullied since being four and that you were in the hospital multiple times because of that?”, that was the most important question for the adult.
Izuku made himself smaller as he heard what the hero knew and was reminded of his trauma.
He would prefer it if this memories would stay locked away in some box that wasn’t openable to rot in there and never be touched again.
“Maybe.
Kids are assholes if someone is different than them.”, he mumbled in a defensive way.
Tensei nodded again.
He had seen what happened to quirkless kids on the playground.
Every time he saw it he stopped them but that saved this kid just for this moment, it didn’t enabled them to have a normal childhood.
“What did your mother and teachers do against that?”
The boy with the unruly hair stared at the ground and gritted his teeth whilst tears glazed his eyes over.
“Mum apologized.”, he growled and wished he could ban the hate out of his voice.
He loved his mother from the depths of his heart. He viewed her as a nice, loving, caring and hearty person and she looked after him unconditionally with everything she got.
But. Inko Midoriya never tried to give him what he really needed, yet tried to fill the shortcomings with overbearing in other cases.
And that made him hate her.
“And all the other adults said the same: Boys being boys. Nothing concerning. Let them play.”, he ended his short story of abandonment.
“Why did you run away?”
“‘Course I didn’t die!”, the boy spit into the olders face.
“‘Course I wasn’t dead! ‘Course I was just some days away from being thrown back into hell!
All of you quirked, you heros, you are so goddamn lucky and blessed and you don’t even know it!”
Maybe he should calm down a little bit.
“I had one day after leaving the hospital plus the weekend as a period of grace but after that it would have been my everyday-life.”
He started shaking and his nails dug into the flesh of his arms. The thought of what happened back then was enough to make him feel the horror of his history again.
“Do you know how an explosion feels against your skin? Or how loud an explosion can be? It’s enough to make your ears bleed.
Did you have fourth grade burns at the age of seven? Or, one day, when we were nine, he made it to the fifth degree. He was so proud of himself.”
He pulley up the sleeve of his hoodie and presented the ragged and glass-like scar at his upper arm, that stood out like a sore thumb.
“Should I have returned to this? To the beating, hitting, kicking, the insults, pain and destruction? What would be the benefits of that?
It’s been better for me since I lived on the streets.”
Finally he calmed down and relaxed a bit.
The hero looked shoon from his tale.
And indeed it was happening that Tenseis brotherly instincts were running highwire.
In front of him was a boy just as old as his little brother and he lived through so much sorrow and cruelty.
And no one thought about taking the time to take care of him!
He cleared his throat and shook his head to sort his thoughts before he kneeled before Izuku and ducked himself to see the scarred face of the kid.
“I’m going to be honest with you.
I’ve talked with a lot of people about you and tried to get an idea how they see you.
The doctors only wait that you’ll appear again and they won’t be able to reanimate you.
The police want to throw you into jail and only to bring you back onto the streets before imprisoning you again.
And a lot of heros have heard about you - most of them suggest to just leave you where you are because you’re a lost case.”
The greenette showed a big variety of emotions through this explanation, in the end it seemed that he could not decide between nausea and horror.
It could have been a funny expression if the subject wasn’t so sad and concerning.
“But the main reason why everyone thinks so bad of you is because of your constant presence.
My suggestion would be that you leave their view and mind.”
Now it was too much!
“And where do you think I should go?!”,
he hisses angrily,
“I don’t have any friends, I can’t afford a flat and I can’t return to mum! That’re no options!”
The raven haired man rose his hands in a soothing way and tried to make the kid calm down that way.
“That’s what I wanted to say.”, he explained with a smile, not even spending a single thought on the trantum.
“How would you like it to live with me?
You’d have food, drinks, a bed, clothes, a roof above your head. You could work with my brothers school material.
How does that sound?
You could stay as long as you want.”
The emerald eyed boy blinked unbelieving and tried to understand what he heard.
“What?”