Chapter Text
It starts, like all complicated relationships in university, at a house party.
Izumi hates parties, actually. Well, sort of. She hates this kind of party. She wouldn’t even normally go to such an event, except Ashido and Hagakure insisted that she should ‘try to live a little, and enjoy being young and hot.’ Izumi doesn’t think that she’s either particularly young anymore at almost twenty-two or particularly hot, though the insinuation flatters her.
Ashido and Hagakure are part of her friend group at university, though Izumi is mostly on the periphery of it. She misses Todoroki and Iida, her closest friends from high school. Those two went to a prestigious law school on the other side of the country, though, while she went for architecture at the famous Yuuei University.
Most of her friends are really Kacchan’s friends; some are people she knew in high school, like Kirishima and Ashido, but most are new faces. Izumi likes them, sincerely so, but she sort of understands that they aren’t strictly her friends. She’s just an accessory to it all. The thought is melancholy and born of insecurity, yet she can’t help but think it as she sips a drink in the corner.
She doesn’t want to admit that she’s here because she feels terribly alone in life and vainly hopes that surrounding herself like this with others might fix that. So far, it’s not working. They’re not… the right people. But she couldn’t properly articulate that complaint if asked to directly. She’s tried to both Kacchan and the school counselor, with no success.
There’s too many people here and it’s too loud. She wishes that she could go back to the apartment she shares with Kacchan and Kirishima. She could sit there with her nerdy comic book collection and work on some drafting in peace and quiet. She could stay in her room with the television on and pretend like she’s still a kid who didn’t live the wrong childhood.
She still can’t pretend like she has her own friends, though.
She’s wearing yoga pants and a baggy, gray, oversized sweatshirt, uncomfortable around this many people. Even after several years of being on hormones, she’s still insecure about how she look,s and she’s not out to the vast majority of people she knows. She largely passes now, with long, curly green hair that she wears in a ponytail most of the time and softer features than she used to have, but she’s normally not about to chance someone clocking her. Coming here was a mistake.
She’s getting hazy now, though, on her second drink already. It’s then that a man steps into her field of vision, leering at her a little bit. She doesn’t really recognize him, broad with black, curly hair. She thinks he’s a little older than her, but… she can’t remember ever meeting him and doesn’t care.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says in a silky smooth voice, offering her another drink. She stares blankly at it, then realizes the one she’s holding is empty. She doesn’t like how his flattery works on her. “You look like you need another one.”
She shouldn’t take it. He’s looking at her like food. But in her slight fog from being tipsy, she kind of likes that. She is ashamed to admit that she likes when people look at her like she’s attractive. Most people don’t, she thinks.
He leans into her space as they chat about nothing, mostly him talking. By the time she’s halfway through the drink he gave her, her tongue feels like lead jelly in her mouth, too heavy and like she can’t make it work anymore. She’s… she’s too drunk for three drinks, but she just laughs automatically at his unfunny jokes. She thinks it’ll be fine, making poor decisions through a haze. Her brain isn't working the way she wants it to anymore, and maybe that's alright. She's tired of always thinking so hard about everything in her life.
He gets up into her space, pressing against her, and asks her if she’d like to go somewhere private. She knows that she should say no, but her brain isn’t cooperating. No one else is paying attention to them and he’s caging her into the corner.
She lets him lead her to a side room upstairs, sort of knowing what he’s planning but unable to bring herself to stop him. She wants him to leave her alone now but her head is like mush, then he has her on her knees and she sighs. She drops down too hard and has to hang onto his belt loops for support, her arms tingling like they’re asleep.
Izumi doesn’t even particularly care for men anymore. She’s bisexual but her female lean has become much stronger, since she began transitioning, anyway. She hasn’t had sex with a boy in years, though the noise he makes when she takes his cock in her mouth goes right between her legs and she can feel herself hardening in her yoga pants.
“You look so fucking good on your knees, just like I thought you would,” he says in a low voice as she looks up at him with glazed over eyes.
Izumi lets him fuck her mouth like a toy, rocking back and forth into her. She can’t remember how to move otherwise and decides this will work. Then he’ll leave her alone. She feels like she weighs too much and furtively clutches at his jeans around his thighs, gagging on his cock when he’s too rough. She can't breathe anymore, but he doesn't even care.
They’re in some spare bedroom, the door locked, and he groans and holds her head still as he comes in her mouth. Izumi chokes on it and finally tears herself away, before she throws up. Her head spins and she wants to leave now, tears leaking from her eyes from how her throat hurts.
“I… I want to go… go back,” she whispers, wiping spit off her mouth. But she just feels too weak. He picks her up to carry her to the bed, like she weighs nothing, and she can’t even contest it properly.
He produces lube and a condom from somewhere. Did he plan this? Is she drugged? She can’t focus. He has her on top of him and drags her pants partially down her legs. She makes a noise of protest when she hears them tear, the music of the party muffled and far away. Then she whimpers and squirms as he plays at her ass with his fingers.
“Too much,” she murmurs, but he doesn’t stop and she whines as he sticks them inside her. They’re so broad and she feels stretched, panting for breath. She feels filthy as he shifts her position. “Condom… Don’t… condom…”
She’s given up on trying to stop him. She just doesn’t want him to fuck her raw at this point. She can feel him stroking himself and then he presses inside her and there’s rubber between them. So she relaxes into it and just gives in. That feels like the simplest course of action at this point. At least he probably won't hurt her that way.
“Ah… ah…” Her head lolls against his chest as he fucks her, his hands spreading her ass, and her own cock grinds against his front. She’s feeling it all like she’s underwater, the sensations blunted, but she feels so full. It's awful how her body responds when she doesn't want it to anymore. “Fuck…”
He briefly slips out of her and she barely registers, so foggy. When he slips back in, it feels different. The condom… She glares up at him and he grins shamelessly at her, fucking her faster. There’s not enough lube and it’s uncomfortable and painful now. She screws her eyes shut and grits her teeth. Then he comes again and she feels the way he spills inside her, dragging a sob out of her.
He doesn’t even make her finish, rolling her off him and leaving her like that. She makes a small choked sound and begins to cry in earnest, feeling pathetic and used. Darkly and dreamily, her mind points out that at least she got the genuine, unsatisfying, non-consensual house party experience of a normal girl.
She passes out like that, half-dressed, probably drugged, and a mess.
When she’s finally coherent the next day, she stupidly feels like her life is over.
It’s Kacchan who finds her, having realized something was wrong when Ashido warned him that she couldn’t find Izumi. It’s Kacchan who brings Izumi home and cleans her up. It’s Kacchan who brings her to the doctor, where she feels miserable and violated as they check her for internal tearing and run an STD test battery on her.
“I’m… I’m so sorry, Kacchan,” Izumi whispers when they’re back in the apartment. She’s wasted his entire day and he’s looked furious the entire time.
“Do you remember who it was?” Kacchan replies, cracking his knuckles habitually. Izumi shakes her head. Almost everything about last night is full of holes in her mind. She can’t even remember her second drink clearly now. Every time she shifts reminds her that she’s sore and thus what happened. “That’s fine. Just… get some rest.”
A lot changed about their relationship when Izumi came out as trans to Kacchan. She used to be ‘Deku,’ the shitty nerd who followed him around, until he told her to fuck off. The childhood friend who only stayed in his orbit because their moms are friends. The load, always being dragged around and not good enough to consider on her own.
When she came out to him, tears in her eyes because she thought he’d hate her, his first impulse was to get on his knees and tell her that he was sorry for how he treated her. Suddenly, it all made sense. He wished he had been a better friend. He never called her ‘Deku’ again after that, just ‘Izumi.’ He’s not strictly nice - he’ll probably never be nice - but he cares so much about her now and doesn’t pretend otherwise anymore.
Indeed, Izumi loves Kacchan. She used to wonder if she was in love with him, though now she knows she’s not. It was just hard to tell in her mess of emotions and hormones as a teen. She just wanted him to see her as worth his time. She knows she’s not in love with him now because she has finally sorted herself out enough to realize that Kacchan is a constant for her, finally recognizing that she’s always been worth his time. She isn’t in love with him but she loves him, and he loves her.
She knows this, because she knows that if she ever remembers who raped her Kacchan is going to butcher that man, and it will not be a quick death.
Still, Izumi feels terribly worthless as she sits in their apartment that day, because it’s such a ridiculous thing. She feels like it’s her fault. Just the stupid, useless Deku fucking up again. She came out to select people first when she was sixteen, and she thought she had left the ‘Deku’ chapter of her life behind at that point.
Now she doesn’t think she ever will. Kacchan must realize how she’s feeling because he makes her dinner. He doesn’t make any jokes at her expense today. He doesn’t stop her when she mutters about her schoolwork later. He’s just… there. And for that, she loves him.
But Izumi is not much for romance either way. She and Todoroki were briefly an item back in high school. It fell apart as she transitioned because Todoroki realized that he wasn’t attracted to her anymore as a girl. It was such a sad, pathetic break up because it made her feel validated.
She and Todoroki are still friends, though. Maybe he’s not interested in dating her anymore, but he still cares a lot about her, too. She just wishes he had come to Yuuei for university right now, rather than going to Shiketsu with Iida. She realizes that she could never bring herself to tell this story to them, and she wants to cry because she just wishes they were here, too.
Izumi sends her professors emails asking to be excused from class for a few days. She makes up a story about being very sick. Darkly, she’s glad that at least she can’t get pregnant. There’s at least a floor on how much being assaulted can ruin her life, she believes.
That thought comes back to haunt her later.
For the first day, she just sits there with a faraway look and blames herself for what happened. If she had been less of a pushover and more skeptical about who she talks to, she probably would’ve been fine. She should’ve fought back. She barely remembers what happened but she’s still an athletic person, and she should’ve done something.
By the second day, she’s just numb. She probably needs to see a school counselor. She didn’t let the doctors report it because she is in no mood to talk to the police as a young trans woman and deal with all of that nastiness. They probably wouldn’t believe her, anyway.
It’s on the third day that she forces herself to go out and do something. She ends up settling for the university coffee shop, wearing a different sweatshirt and jeans. She threw away the clothes she wore to that party on purpose.
She orders a drink and sits in an empty corner. It’s the middle of the day on a weekday, so most people are busy. She fervently hopes that no one she knows comes in here. If Ashido or Hagakure come waltzing in and ask her how her ‘search for an eligible bachelor or bachelorette’ is going, she might just burst into tears.
No, Izumi Midoriya is destined to remain pathetically single and desperately alone in life. She has Kacchan and her mom, and… that’s it, really. Everyone else either was never that invested in her or has slipped out of her life, like water through her fingers. It's all her fault, anyway. It's not like she's ever been worth their time.
She finds herself missing Mr. Yagi terribly as she sips her coffee. He was her high school guidance counselor and one of her biggest inspirations. He supported her through her transition and helped her work to keep in shape without feeling awful about her looks. She worshiped the ground he walked in and still thinks about him constantly.
He passed away from heart failure last year. She cried miserable tears at his funeral for hours. She feels like she’s been taking nothing but losses since being at university. She’s doing well in the classes themselves, but the rest of her life is a fucking mess. She just doesn’t understand why she feels so alone in life.
She sincerely wonders if her life is still worth living.
She’s suddenly distracted from these thoughts because she finds that she’s… itchy.
She pulls her sleeve up and is horrified to find that her arm hair is growing out. It’s… it’s growing out a lot. She stares at her arm, fucking baffled, because she just had maintenance treatments for her laser hair removal last month. But here she is, where her skin was smooth just a few days ago, now it’s growing out, like she never even got hair removal at all.
“What… the fuck?” Izumi whispers, quickly tugging her sleeve back down. If she looks at it anymore, she’s going to feel the urge to scratch her goddamn skin off. Already, she feels like she’s covered in insects, and she has half a mind to pull her hood over her head.
God, everyone around her is going to know. She gets up out of her seat, planning to sprint to the bathroom to see if hair is growing in her face. Instead, she crashes right into someone, though it’s like hitting a brick wall and she tumbles, instead.
There’s an unnatural chill in the air as her momentum stops dead.
The person catches her halfway down and Izumi goes limp, confused as she looks up. It’s… a girl. She looks about Izumi’s age. She’s definitely not a first-year, anyway, with very long, brunette hair that reaches past her shoulders. She has two distinct bangs in the front and a pleasantly round, cute face.
She wears much more fashionable clothes than Izumi - a pink blouse and black slacks - and looks very business-professional. She’s also effortlessly holding Izumi up with one hand, since Izumi fully expected to hit the ground and makes no effort to fight gravity.
She offers Izumi a brilliant, closed-eyes smile, shining like a star, and Izumi absently notes that the girl is curiously… pale. Her lips stay firmly closed, hiding her teeth, despite her smile. It gives her a certain air of… insincerity.
“Hi there. Are you okay? It would be bad luck to trip and fall, y’know. Careful now.” She gently tugs Izumi back upright and Izumi wobbles on her feet. The girl doesn’t really look like much, but she’s strong. She opens her eyes and they’re a beautiful amber color, though they have an underlying… redness that doesn’t seem natural, swirling behind the brown. Maybe she wears colored contacts; some people do that as a fashion statement. “What’s your name?”
“I…” Izumi trails off, confused. She feels hazy again but in an entirely different way. Like when this girl looks at her, her world slows down on its axis to a near-stop, the pull of her stronger than any other celestial body. Her thoughts scramble and become muddled. “Um… Midoriya Izumi.”
A delirious inner voice asks if this is what it would feel like if the Sun disappeared and the Earth began spinning away into the infinite night, only for the Sun to abruptly reappear and drag it back. Izumi preposterously feels like she’s about to impact the Sun when this girl smiles at her.
“Oh, Midoriya. That’s a pretty name. I’m Takeyama Yuu. It’s nice to meet you.” She’s still smiling and it’s disarming. Izumi is in no mood to trust strangers, but…
Something about this feels familiar. She has such an intense sense of déjà vu and her whole world spins again, like Takeyama stopped a globe from twirling out of control with her hand, only to flick her wrist and send it spiraling again. Izumi can’t shake the sense that she’s lived this exact moment before.
She can’t shake the sense that she already knows Takeyama Yuu.
Yet it’s all off, too…
“I… It’s nice to meet you. Thanks for… for catching me before I fell. I’m gonna go now.” Izumi nods twice after speaking, thinking that sounded right. She’s not sure anymore. She hates this.
She feels like her life is just wrong. Like nothing makes sense anymore. So she turns and briskly retreats, shivering uncontrollably and holding herself as she frowns.
She feels Takeyama’s intense gaze on her back as she leaves, swirling brown and red.
She feels like she keeps seeing Takeyama everywhere after that.
Izumi is trying to put her life back together. Days pass and she lives in a fog, unable to concentrate on anything. Kirishima came bounding up to her to ask if she would like him to make her food and she shrieked when he touched her. Her chest heaved and she looked at him with teary eyes, baffled, and so was he.
He still made her food, but he’s been distant since, like he’s afraid he might break her if he gets close again. She feels horrible. She’s not in the right place to explain to him that it’s not his fault, and she feels like it’s another thing she’s ruining in her life. She doesn’t want him to know why she seems more fragile now than she already was.
But she goes to her classes and barely takes notes. She sits in the school eating areas and has vanishingly little to put in her stomach. Her whole body feels like it’s going haywire, like when she first began transitioning. She’s taking all her meds but it feels like her whole body is just short circuiting.
She wakes up in a sweat half the time she tries to sleep and she always feels too hot. She’s been dreaming of the Moon, in between nightmares of how her brain has reconstructed what she remembers of being assaulted. But the Moon… It feels like it’s alive, like it’s not their regular Moon made of rock but something fleshy and horrible, a living creature that knows what she is.
And in between all of it, she keeps seeing Takeyama.
Takeyama doesn’t walk up to her or speak to her. It’s just like… like she was in every single one of Izumi’s classes before and she never noticed. Like she has the same schedule and is always passing the halls at the same time. Like she’s become another constant, except it makes Izumi terrified and find it hard to breathe.
She’s afraid that Takeyama is stalking her. Yet every time she catches a glimpse of Takeyama, she’s never looking at Izumi. She’s never going in the same direction. Sometimes, Izumi will think she sees Takeyama, only to stop and look and there’s no one, or it’s someone else.
She feels like she’s going fucking insane, projecting malice on an innocent classmate who’s been nothing but kind to her.
As the month goes on she feels worse and worse. She wants to make a doctor’s appointment to see what’s going wrong with her hormones, but she’s too depressed to pick up the phone. She wants to go to the guidance counselor, but the idea of recounting what she remembers about that night makes her want to vomit her entire inner body out.
She contemplates hurting herself again. She’s not even interested in dying or externalizing internal pain. She just wants something to distract her from how it feels like her world is shredding at the seams. She feels like she’s constantly seeing things - people that aren’t there, apparitions in the walls, colors that she doesn’t have words for - and it makes her feel like she has completely lost her goddamn mind.
As the full moon approaches, she gives up on going to class and just holes up in her room. Her nightmares are getting worse and worse. But she realizes that she doesn’t have food she wants to eat in the apartment, and Kacchan and Kirishima have gone on a hiking trip together this weekend. So she decides to go to the corner store, feeling numb and confused as night descends, making her decisions in a fog.
She just wants the world to make sense again. It’s a cold, late February evening. She’s going to turn twenty-two this year and she feels like she’s fifteen again. She wanted to die before she finally came out. She feels like she wants to die again.
As she walks down dusty, empty streets and rubs her arms, she feels a pressure in the air. It’s like something is… following her. Hunting her. She looks around and half-expects to find Takeyama, but she doesn’t. She’s been having issues with hyperawareness, like her senses are suddenly overtuned. She had good hearing and eyesight before but now she finds herself hearing things from through several walls. It’s maddening.
As such, she hears a pebble hit the wall as if kicked and slows down. Then she feels him watching her just before he speaks.
“Hey, beautiful. Long time, no see.”
Izumi freezes and feels a serene kind of mortal terror that settles heavy in her stomach. She turns mechanically and has half a mind just to scream, except they’re on a dark and empty side street and it wouldn’t matter. She could fight, but her knees are weak as she panics.
She’s met with the man from the party as she spins fully around. It’s him that’s been following her. She realizes, eyes wide and lips parted, that he kicked the pebble on purpose.
He wanted her to know he’s here.
She looks at him and everything about that night slams back into place with perfect clarity as she remembers all of it. The way he drugged the drink he gave her, the way he dragged her aside, the way he used her mouth, and the way he anally raped her when she couldn’t consent and stealthed her doing it, too.
Part of her is fucking furious because she finally accepts that it certainly wasn’t her fault at all. He planned that. But he’s also taller than her and probably has a dozen kilograms on her.
So she turns and sprints away. She’s quicker than she remembers ever being but he’s even faster still. She makes it about twenty meters before he’s on her, and now she screams.
“He—!“
Then his hands are on her throat, her back on the ground, and she wheezes. She tries to kick him, but he’s strong. Her foot connects once and bounces off. Then he straddles her and her eyes roll back because she realizes that it’s over. She can’t even beg like this.
As she sees stars and begins to lose consciousness, she’s vaguely aware that the temperature around them abruptly shifts down about fifteen degrees. It’s a sudden pressure, accompanied by a remarkable sensation of malice that she feels, like ice on her skin. Izumi can’t focus anymore but it’s… it’s familiar, yet different now, too.
His grip on her throat loosens as he seems to notice it, too. She wonders if maybe she was hallucinating because of a lack of oxygen but no, he actually shifts away from her and looks around. She gasps for breath and turns over on her side, trying to scramble away.
“Who’s there?” He asks, voice low and full of fear.
Izumi looks up just in time to see a blur hit him like a freight train. He yelps pathetically and hits the nearest building so hard that bricks cave in, falling off and piling on top of him, kicking up dust. The assailant is hard to see in the smoke, but they hover briefly, doing… something. There's no sounds of fighting or struggling, though.
Izumi blinks slowly as a figure then approaches her from the dust. It’s not the man, though.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Takeyama whispers, looking spotless as she leaves the haze. Her eyes glow in the dark, like beacons. The air around her is frigid, too.
Izumi abruptly realizes that she’s dead. The man was probably just going to rape her again but no, she’s actually dead.
She gets her feet under her to run, then there’s a pinprick sensation on her neck. She didn’t even hear Takeyama move. The last thing she registers is hitting the ground hard and a shockwave of pain up her chin and mouth.
Then she’s out.
When Izumi comes to, she finds herself laying on the floor in a heap.
She expected not to wake up at all, so that’s technically an improvement. She blinks quickly, unable to see… No, she can see. Her brain expects not to be able to, but she can. It just looks weird in the dark, lacking color, but she can still make out most of it.
She’s in a warehouse, by the looks of it. Oh good, she’s been kidnapped, too, by—
Takeyama. She remembers now. She looks over and goes very still when she sees two familiar amber-red eyes gleaming in the dark.
“Hi, Midoriya. I’m sorry I had to knock you out. You bit hard into your tongue when you hit the ground, but… you’re okay now.”
“What do you want with me? I don’t have any money, I… Please, I just want to go home…” Izumi hates that she begins to cry, but she’s terrified. She doesn’t know who this Takeyama girl really is, but she put a man more than a head taller than her and probably twice her weight through a brick wall, like he didn’t weigh anything at all. “I’m sorry for whatever I did to you, but please—“
“Midoriya.” Izumi goes quiet at Takeyama’s tone. It’s so… defeated. “You have never done anything wrong to me. Please, just relax. I’m not going to hurt you. But we need to have a chat.”
Takeyama snaps her fingers and a few lights go on. Izumi blinks quickly as her eyes adjust, her vision spotty now. Now she can see things in proper color, though. She assesses Takeyama and is… confused.
Takeyama wears a black leather jacket over a white tank top, along with some black leggings and a pink skirt. She’s sitting on a chair, cross-legged, with her hands folded in her lap. The warehouse they’re in is ruined and in disrepair, with broken windows and dust everywhere. The chair doesn’t match, though; it’s made of fine wood, like it was brought here from a nice home.
“You planned this,” Izumi murmurs. She tries to get up, but her body isn’t working. Whatever Takeyama drugged her with is still in her system. “I… Please, I want to… Wait.”
She trails off. Underneath Takeyama, tied up heavily with ropes and even chains, is the man from the party, laying in a crumpled pile with the chair caging him in. He’s looking at Izumi with wide eyes, mouth gagged, but he isn’t moving. She wonders if he was drugged with more of whatever it is than she was. He looks much more scared than Izumi is, and there’s something perversely satisfying about that.
He’s also not visibly injured, though his clothes are tattered. Izumi feels around inside her mouth and nothing hurts. Her head pounds from the headache she has but she doesn’t feel a bruise on her chin. Her throat also doesn’t feel sore from when she was choked before.
Nothing hurts, actually. She finds this… curious. It could just be from the drugs, though.
“This useless excuse for a ‘human being’ is Shindou You,” Takeyama says, gesturing down towards his head with one hand. “He’s a graduate of Ketsubutsu University, actually. He just likes to trawl through Yuuei house parties looking for easy marks.” Shindou makes a muffled scream of protest that Takeyama doesn’t pay any mind. “He raped you. I’m sorry, Midoriya. I… It’s sort of my fault. I was trying to protect you, but I lost track of you that night. Something else came up that I had to deal with."
“What… are you talking about?” Izumi asks, baffled but also suspicious. What Takeyama is saying doesn’t make any sense. Takeyama just frowns sadly at Izumi and looks so guilty.
“Your life as you knew it is over,” she says, her tone measured but direct, as if what she said isn’t absurd, and Izumi stares blankly at her. “Shindou here is a werewolf. A very, very stupid werewolf. Because he raped you without a condom, now so are you.”
“You’re out of your goddamn mind,” Izumi breathes, thrashing frantically to try and roll away. This is insane. But she stops when she hears a distinct click.
She looks back up and Takeyama is holding a handgun. Izumi’s eyes go wide. Takeyama just pulled the charging handle back. Shindou screams through his gag, muffled, as Takeyama twists a suppressor on the end of it.
“There’s a lot of things that people call myths or fairy tales but are actually real,” Takeyama muses absently. Izumi watches in open-mouthed horror as she takes her time checking the gun, fiddling with the receiver. “Werewolves are one such thing. Vampires are another one. There’s a whole world out there you’re not privy to, Midoriya.”
Shindou’s eyes change as Izumi looks down. They’re slowly turning yellow, jaundiced and sickly, and his body begins to bulge and shift as the ground vibrates beneath him. It cracks and begins to shatter in place. Izumi swallows and instinctively tries to look away, except she still can’t move much.
“Some people are soulmates, for example. Soulbonds tend to be passive, unless one half of the pair is marked by magic,” Takeyama continues, apparently unconcerned by Shindou’s… transformation. “If so, then inevitably, so will the other half. The only question is when and how. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to approach you for about a year and change, but… I’m sorry that I waited too long and Fate forced the issue. She corrected my mistake and the way that reality is out of balance.”
“I don’t… What’s happening to him?” Izumi says, horrified. She’s only sort of listening to Takeyama, because Shindou’s face begins to tear, blood slipping down his nose as it… expands.
“He thinks he’s going to survive the night,” Takeyama explains absentmindedly. Then, while still looking at Izumi, she reaches down, points the gun at Shindou’s head, and pulls the trigger. Fwip, fwip, fwip, his head caves in like a fallen fruit as subsonic rounds pierce his skull, then he is still. Bullets eject from the gun and clink, clink, clink against the ground, far too loud in the quiet otherwise. Takeyama flips the safety back on with her thumb, then twirls the smoking gun on her finger. As she unscrews the suppressor to put it away, she adds, “People like him need to learn their place.”
Izumi turns and throws up. She hacks and coughs, crying from the intensity of it all. Then she does her best to roll over and out of it. She tries to scream with her ragged throat when she feels Takeyama touch her, except it just comes out as a wheeze. She didn't even hear Takeyama move, and she's so goddamn fast.
Takeyama just sets her upright, though. Izumi turns her head away, chest pounding and eyes wide, and expects to be shot, too. Takeyama just produces a handkerchief and gently cleans off Izumi’s face.
“Listen. I… am not a werewolf.” Izumi tilts her eyes towards Takeyama, but otherwise stays very still. She’s acutely aware again of how the room is too cold but she feels like she’s running too hot. It’s like liquid nitrogen on her skin. “I didn’t want this life and I certainly didn’t want it for you. But you’re here now and your first transformation will be tonight. So I will stay with you and help you through it, okay?”
Izumi just sobs. She hates this. Part of her wants to hate Takeyama, but she can’t with how Takeyama touches her like she’s fragile. Like she’s special. Like she's the most valuable thing that has ever existed in the entire world. She brushes her fingers against Izumi’s cheek when she’s cleaned off, then walks away to give her space.
“You and I met a long time ago,” Takeyama muses absently as she takes her seat. Izumi looks over and is baffled to find that Shindou… is gone. His clothes are there and there’s a steaming pile of ash inside them. “Silver nitrate,” Takeyama adds in response to Izumi’s confusion. Her expression is probably preposterous, covered in sweat as she is. “He won’t be regenerating from that.”
Regenerating… Izumi runs her tongue along her teeth, no signs of having bitten it, and realizes that, oh, holy shit, Takeyama is telling the truth about all of it.
“My mother descended from a family that used to hunt vampires and the like,” Takeyama continues in the silence. “Her branch had fallen out of it for years. A vampire coven led by a man named Chisaki came after us, though. We had no idea what was going on.” Takeyama sighs. “They made me and my mom watch them torture my dad, bleeding him dry. Then they made me watch them rape and murder my mom. They left me alone with a vampire named Himiko.”
“Takeyama, please, I don’t…” Izumi swallows thickly. She can’t deal with this right now. Takeyama doesn’t stop, though. She looks at Izumi and her expression conveys that Izumi has to know.
“Himiko was an infiltrator from another coven, though. She didn’t like following orders. She took a liking to me. Wanted to keep me as her pet. She took me away and converted me, instead of killing me like she was told to do. I was only a few days over sixteen. I know you won’t believe me because you can’t remember this, but… Midoriya, you and I were best friends in our first year of high school.”
“What?” Izumi blurts out. She wants to say that’s preposterous, but she can’t stop thinking about how familiar Takeyama is.
“It’s one of the consequences of conversion, part of the curse. Every mortal I knew before turning forgot my existence. The news reported my parents' death as a break-in gone wrong but they didn’t even report their missing daughter. It was like I was erased from reality.” Takeyama doesn’t cry but she does look away, taking a deep breath. “I can make new friends and new connections but… I lost everything, Midoriya.”
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Izumi whispers. She vaguely remembers the… the headlines about the ‘slaying.’ It didn’t mean anything to her at the time because… “I’m so sorry, I don’t… remember you…”
“It’s not your fault,” Takeyama says, but for the first time, true emotion breaks through and she sounds devastated. “We were meant to be high school sweethearts. I… I was so in love with you. I was writing a confession letter to you the night they came for us.” She shudders and sighs deeply. “Himiko found it. She read it back to me as she raped me to mock me. To break me. She made fun of me for writing like that about a… Well, I thought you were… a boy, at the time. I’m sorry. You’re very beautiful now. I cared so much about you. You were the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
“Did I… Did I love you back?” Izumi asks in a tiny voice, not sure if she wants to know the answer.
She can’t decide which would be more sad: that she did love Takeyama and it was taken from her so thoroughly that she can’t remember anymore, or that she didn’t and Takeyama has had to live with that knowledge like this for years. She feels horrible. Irrationally, she feels like this is her fault, too.
“I think so,” Takeyama whispers, and finally one tear slides down her face. It’s made of blood. Then it dissolves away into rust and blows off her face. She giggles slightly hysterically. “We’re soulmates. I’ve seen the magic now. I’ve seen what… we were meant for. You were going to propose to me at nineteen. We were going to attend university together. You were going to come out to me at twenty-two, and you thought… You were afraid I’d hate you. But I’d have never left your side, God…”
Izumi’s face falls. She can’t help but feel sorrow for Takeyama. They really did take everything from her… From both of them, Izumi realizes. But she doesn’t know who Takeyama is. She doesn’t like that she can’t decide for herself if this is the life she would’ve wanted. But she has to admit that the idea of having had someone who cared so much about her and would never have left is deeply appealing.
“Anyway… When I was turned, it meant you were destined to be turned, too. Being a vampire isn’t fun, though. It took me a long time to sort all this out and… even longer to find you again. I was trying to work up the courage to confess this to you, to offer you the choice to be turned on your own terms, but… I was scared. I’m so sorry, Midoriya.”
Izumi frowns. She addresses Izumi so impersonally. Something about it feels… wrong. Like she’s saying the wrong thing. Like she’s not allowing herself to tell the whole truth.
Like she still has to keep something between them for the sake of her own sanity.
Izumi finally can move enough to roll her arms and shoulders. She’s so sore and miserable. Part of her feels such a weight lifted off her that Shindou is dead. She’s ashamed at how little she cares that Takeyama murdered a man in front of her. She decides that it’s because he deserved it.
“So… now you’re a werewolf. It’s not the same as being a vampire. Once you go through the first transformation, you’ll be able to learn to control it. You can only change at night, though. You’ll be able to see supernatural things and… it’ll be tough. But I’ll be here with you. There’s a different problem, though…”
Izumi stares blankly at Takeyama, then remembers the hair…
“My transition,” she whispers, putting it all together and feeling like her soul has left her body. Tears begin to track down her face as Takeyama nods solemnly.
“It… will play havoc on your hormones. You’ve probably noticed. Some things, like the hair on your body or your general hormonal balance, I can try to fix for you. I can do some magic and potion-making. But… you’ll never… Midoriya, you’ll never be able to have surgery again. If they put you on an operating table, you’ll heal faster than they can cut you open.”
“Oh my god,” Izumi chokes out. Then she leans over and throws up again, sobbing and feeling like this is it. Just the cherry on top of her stupid fucking life. She’s dimly aware of that coldness getting closer, then she feels Takeyama holding her ponytail back and helping her as she empties what little is left in her stomach.
“I’m so sorry. This is my fault. If… if I had done better, we could’ve avoided this. I’m sorry…”
Izumi isn’t listening to Takeyama anymore, though. Not really. She feels like her whole body is on fire, like she’s about to burn away because a new star is being born in her chest. Her vision swims and her hearing is muffled. Takeyama tries to grab her shoulders and steady her, but Izumi reflexively knocks her away.
She’s dimly aware that Takeyama goes sprawling, flung to the side.
It doesn’t matter because she feels herself being torn apart. Her bones crack and expand, her skin shreds itself, and fur tears out of her. The last part of her rational mind wonders how this all works. She’s always been a curious person.
In her grief and anger at the world, she wonders if this is enough to finally let her fight back against being treated like she’s worthless.
When she draws to her full height, blood dripping and steaming off her, vaporizing from the heat of her transformation as viridian lightning crackles on her body, the world is… different. The colors are all wrong. She flexes her hands and they feel strong. She has claws and teeth, and she feels like she could take on anything right now.
“Midoriya?”
Izumi looks over and her ears go flat when she finds Takeyama, struggling to recover. She’s so strong, but Izumi just knocked her away like an errant toy. It makes Izumi feel powerful, as all of her fur stands up on end and she bares her sharpened teeth, snarling in fury.
Takeyama doesn’t get another word in edgewise, because Izumi launches herself at Takeyama, carrying her to the far wall of the warehouse in a blur. Takeyama hits it with a crash, flattened under Izumi’s grip. This probably would’ve killed a normal person on impact. Takeyama just coughs blood and goes slightly limp, dazed.
Izumi tries to scream in her face but all that comes out is an incoherent growling and snapping, Izumi's spit flying wildly.
‘You did this,’ she wants to say, ‘you did this to me. You're a liar. You’re some kind of psycho. Why did you do this to me? I’ll make you pay.’ She’s just lost in her instinctual fury. She has control, but she doesn’t. Her brain is working but feels like it’s boiling. Her thoughts come too fast, coherent but not strictly rational.
In the stories, vampires have to be killed in special ways, Izumi remembers from being a nerdy, sheltered kid with a love of fantasy and science fiction. Izumi doesn’t have anything, except that gun, maybe. But now she’s a werewolf. Maybe if she kills Takeyama, she’ll stay dead. Two birds with one stone: Takeyama is released from the nightmare of permanent living death and Izumi gets revenge for this horrific reality she’s trapped in now.
She furtively hopes that if she kills Takeyama, she’ll just wake up in her own bed and this will all have been an awful dream. Maybe Takeyama is just the pretty new girl Izumi has been crushing on and this is some kind of abhorrent wet dream turned nightmare. She prays that’s the case as she rips Takeyama’s jacket off and lowers her jaws towards Takeyama’s left shoulder.
Her plan is to just bite down hard enough to take Takeyama’s entire left side out: heart, shoulder, arm, and all. Izumi is so much larger now that she could do it with ease. As she decides on the position, sizing Takeyama up, Takeyama finally recovers.
She impulsively reaches out and grabs Izumi’s jaws, one hand on the top and one on the bottom, her arms shaking with her attempt to hold Izumi back. Her grip is strong but Izumi is stronger, and her jaw still lowers over Takeyama’s body, painfully slowly. Takeyama squirms and begins to cry more blood, sniffling and shivering in her mortal terror as Izumi prepares to end her.
“Please, please no, wait. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please,” Takeyama chants, kicking ineffectively at Izumi. It hurts but then the pain is gone, lightning crackling over her body.
Takeyama kicks hard enough to bruise and break bone but it heals immediately, forced back into place. It’s another reminder of how Izumi’s life is ruined, and she prepares to snap her jaws shut, saliva dripping on Takeyama’s shirt. Her entire mouth hovers over Takeyama’s torso. Takeyama is covered in dust, her hair and clothes ruined, as she sobs.
“Deku!”
Izumi goes still at Takeyama’s scream. Then she pulls away and stares at Takeyama with her canine eyes, uncomprehending. Takeyama’s chest heaves and her blood tears dry on her face and evaporate. She’s not sweating, but Izumi absently imagines that it’s only because she can’t anymore.
Still, Izumi abruptly remembers everything.
She can feel the metaphysical pulse through reality, like a lock realigning into place. It feels like she’s been in a haze of panic and hideous anger, but now someone just punched her in the face. Like reality itself shattered every bone in her body at once to stop her from making the worst mistake she ever has.
She remembers all of it. She remembers tripping on the first day of high school, except Takeyama caught her. She remembers long study sessions with Takeyama, Iida, and Todoroki. She remembers playing video games, truth-or-dare, and seven minutes in heaven with Takeyama and the others, she remembers nights spent accidentally falling asleep cuddling with Takeyama among their friends, and she remembers staring at Takeyama’s hair sometimes in class and imagining what it would be like to curl her fingers in it.
She remembers the afternoons that Izumi walked Takeyama home, sometimes even holding her hand, and how loved she felt when Takeyama called her Deku. She remembers their kiss on Christmas Eve because of a mistletoe, and how Izumi was afraid Takeyama might have hated her after that.
Izumi remembers that she did love her… and her name is Ochako Uraraka.
Tears begin rolling down her snout as she remembers every single part, now properly contextualized and devastating. She had been so depressed and lonely when Ochako disappeared, feeling so severely that something was missing from her life but unsure of what, that it finally pushed her to come out to her mom, then to Kacchan.
She was afraid that if she didn’t she would hurt herself in a way she couldn't come back from. She couldn’t live with that hole in her reality, so extreme that she could still feel it even with her memories taken. The theft of one of her constants.
Izumi takes several staggered steps backward, while Ochako drops to the ground and struggles to collect herself. She seems woozy, maybe affected by the pulse, too. That’s the last curious thought Izumi has about all of it that night.
Then Izumi goes limp and passes out, as her massive new body finally collapses from the stress it’s been under.