"Did I ever tell you that when you were born, you refused to cry? The doctors thought you might be dead, but you weren't. You just didn't want to cry. And you were so small! Such a small boy. I cradled you in my arms, this tiny, tiny, tiny bundle. You still didn't cry, but when I looked at you, and you looked at me, you smiled. Doesn't that sound like such a nice story, Izuku?"

She draws her fingers through the boy's thick curls, soft like his father's. Izuku doesn't respond, his face still buried in her lavender sweater, while fresh tears begin to stain the fabric a deeper shade.

"Don't worry, baby," his mother soothes, "you can cry now. It's okay to cry."

ooo

His eyes are puffy and Izuku is too young, too fragile, to bare the weight of it. He lets his fingers brush over the name imprinted on his skin, feeling the light bumps against the tips, feeling how his heart skips a beat.

"We could cover it up," his mother proposes in her quiet voice. "Until you feel, well, better about it."

At first, she tried to cheer him up.

But Katsuki is your friend, isn't he? Aren't you happy?

He is happy, and at the same time he is devastated. Izuku didn't expect anything of his mark. It took so long to appear on his skin, dark letters standing sharp against his complexion that doesn't match that of Kacchan at all. He just knows he didn't expect this.

The morning he woke to a light prickle on his skin, the sun had managed to seep through the spaces between his curtains, warming rays falling directly onto his arm. Vision still blurred by sleep's embrace he blinked at the odd blotches on his wrist, before they began to shape a familiar name. He stared at the picture for a moment, the way the dark of the letters seemed to swallow the light that fell unto them, and then they blurred yet again, this time due to his own tears.

His young heart was ripped apart right in that moment.

He wept, wheezed, choked through the tears staining his cheeks and pillow, but it all happened silently. When he wasn't showing up for breakfast, his mother came into his room, telling him, that, Izuku, it's time to get up.

She stared at her child, blinking at her through tears collecting in his dark lashes, a name falling in broken chords from his lips.

"Kacchan," he whispered.

Izuku is too young, too fragile, and he doesn't want to bare the weight of this.

ooo

The way to school is short, and Izuku needs more time. But, deep down he knows the universe could never offer him enough time to be prepared for what is to come. He grasps the straps of his bag, so heavy today, and steps into class. The letters on his skin are burning. Silently, he shuffles over to his seat, avoiding to glance at the other students while they talk and laugh and most of them don't know their soulmate yet. They puzzle over who it could be, what do they look like, when will they meet.

How mundane.

For once, Izuku wishes he was as simple as them.

But nothing is simple about his life, is it? From his double-jointed toe to the way his father slammed the door the last time he was home, nothing is meant to be simple.

No, what Izuku wants to be is right.

He wants to fit in, not stand out in the worst way possible. He wants to be great, and yet, he is not.

Izuku is thirteen and he buries his round face in his hands, drowning out the noises surrounding him, buzzing, straining. Until he hears a new sound; a familiar voice, soaring over the heads of the others to him like a wild beast's roar. His muscles tense, his system jumps to alert, and then he sees Bakugou, the air around him almost fizzling as he makes his way through the astonished crowd.

No, he tears through it.

"You!" he howls, arm darting out, fingers formed to a claw. They grasp the front of Izuku's shirt, tangling in them, tearing.

Izuku is silent. He doesn't try to fight off the hands that shove him away from his seat until his back painfully collides with the window sill, arching as Bakugou keeps pushing him.

"You!" he spits between tightly gritted teeth. Izuku stares at him, mouth agape in shock, head empty of any words. On his own, his eyes wander over the fuming boy's frame, dropping until he looks at a slim wrist.

Dark letters etching across soft skin, swallowing the blue of tender veins beneath.

Before his brain can catch up and tell him to stop, Izuku moves, fingers closing around his own name.

"Kacchan," he manages out from numb lips, and there it is again, the choking, the curtain of tears veiling his eyes.

But the blonde boy shakes his head, shakes it so hard his stubbornly spiky hair flies in each direction.

"No!" he howls at the top of his lungs. "No, no, no, no, no! I refuse you, Midoriya! You hear me? I refuse you!"

"But, Kacchan –," the other boy whispers. His voice breaks, the words die before they can sprout from his mouth.

"How can you do this to me, Deku?" Bakugou wails, and now there are hot tears running over his cheeks. "I hate you! I refuse you! I hate you!"

Steam begins to rise from his palms, and Izuku wishes for him to just blow his body to bits, right in this classroom.

They're just kids. This shouldn't be happening.

Bakugou screams and hollers, scratching and biting as the agitated teacher drags him off the other boy. It needs two more teachers to catch his flailing limbs. Izuku watches as they carry the blonde out of the classroom, his violent howls echoing in the hallway, fading into distance.

He is left standing among the silent students.

Izuku's head drops. Against his fingertips, he still feels the imprint of his letters.

ooo

They say time heals all wounds.

Clearly, the person who said that didn't know the first thing about how deep the gashes run when Bakugou Katsuki strikes. It's terrible, and Bakugou is terrible, and his wrath is even worse. Izuku wishes he could just give up on wishing for things to change. But how do you defy the universe? How do you reach up to the stars and tell them, no, they are wrong, and this isn't meant to be?

What can you expect when you shout your heart out through your throat and into the void?

Will the void return it on tender palms, begging you to take it back?

There is nothing tender about Bakugou. He is all hard edges, has always been. Words cutting like a blade's knife and it's aiming for Izuku's heart.

How can such a young boy be so terrible?

Sometimes, Izuku comes home with bruises. That has happened before, but lately, Bakugou puts all his might into each blow. Like he could somehow cut those invisible strings connecting them by beating on Izuku's arms, cheeks, shoulders.

Izuku still fights him. He puts up his fists, cries with everything his lungs are able to give, but at the end of the day he still tastes blood and dust in the back of his throat.

His mother fixes him up every time, cooing soft words to him.

Izuku is only thirteen, but he knows there are wounds her brightly colored band-aids can't fix. The damage is too great, stretching from one corner of his heart to the next, leaving a jagged mark along its way.

"Why doesn't he want me?" Izuku asks, voice hoarse, as he sits inside the kitchen, his mother gently kissing a scratch on his hand.

She looks up, and Izuku sees his own bitterness mirrored in her eyes.

"I don't know, baby," she says, carefully, but she didn't need to be so tender. Izuku knows, there is no answer to this, this universe-defying, star-scraping natural disaster that is Bakugou Katsuki.

ooo

It's one day before his fourteenth birthday, and Izuku comes home with a shiner standing proudly against his skin.

His mother is sitting on her bed, crying.

"Mom?" he begins, his small voice strangely prominent inside the silent apartment.

His mother's head jerks up, and her eyes land on the boy standing in the doorframe. There is a tissue clutched between her fragile hands, but she quickly stuffs it into the pocket of her pastel sweater, standing up hurriedly.

"Izuku," she says and her lips pull into a warm smile. "You're back early. Did anything happen?"

The boy shakes his head. "No, it's the same time as usual."

"O-oh? Really? My, I must have lost track of time. Silly me! Now, take off your jacket, I'll make you something to eat."

She ushers him out of the door, padding through the hallway in her blue slippers, as Izuku stays behind.

There is a knife stuck inside his ribcage, and it punctures his heart every time he breathes in. It's leaking, lungs overflowing and it feels like he's drowning, standing before his mother's room in a jacket that is twice his size because nothing ever seems to fit him.

He wants to know why his mother was crying. But at the same time, the brittle path along the edges of his young heart is begging him not to ask.

Izuku closes his burning eyes, breathes in.

He is drowning.