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No one ever believed that Izuku Midoriya had a quirk. It didn’t matter how many times he tried to explain to them that he did, they never believed him. His own mother would shout at him to stop playing games, stop pretending, stop lying . He wasn’t lying.
He just…couldn’t prove it.
Izuku Midoriya had a quirk. His quirk allowed him to rewind time. He could visit the past, and rewatch the world changing around him.
The only downside? He was alone. People revisited the past all the time. Books, photographs, videos, even reading journals from long dead ancestors, all of these told a story and helped you relive the past.
Revisiting the past is incredibly easy.
But no one’s there anymore.
Izuku’s arms wrapped tightly around his legs. He was bundled up against the chilly winter air blowing across the rooftop of his apartment building. It was just before sunrise. He loved to watch the moments before the orange glow broke across the horizon and blinded him. Those brief seconds of pure darkness were the only moments where he found peace.
He was alone in the present, just like he was alone in the past. His own mother believed he was a burden for his diagnosed quirklessness, his former friends were his biggest bullies, and his teachers ruined his grades because they didn’t believe he could be smart enough to get top marks. So, he would sit on the rooftop for hours, watching the sunrise, over and over, until he got bored.
This morning was no different, not really. When the sun moved just over the horizon line, he’d twist his hand and watch it slide back down faster than it came up. Then, he’d watch it rise again. But the moment the rewind started, the people vanished. Because while time was not linear (it was wibbly wobbly, ya know?) people could not move backwards through it, unlike Izuku. So they kept moving forward until Izuku decided to catch back up to the present.
Today, he watched the sunrise sixteen times before finally letting it get past the horizon completely. He laid his cheek on his knees and closed his eyes as the warmth of the sun washed over him from the east.
The sound of footsteps wouldn’t be out of the ordinary on the rooftop, there was a garden and playground up here after all, except that he knew no one would come up here at the crack of dawn to watch the sunrise. Still, he didn’t lift his head or check who was with him. A set of black boots and pants stopped just within his field of vision to the right. The stranger cleared their throat before speaking.
“You shouldn’t be up here this early, kid. What’s on your mind?”
The guy probably thought he was up here to jump. Truthfully, the thought had occurred to Izuku several times in the last few years. But he wasn’t up here for that, not today at least.
“Mmmm the sunrise is really pretty today.”
“It’s too cold.” The man settled down beside him. Izuku watched the man prop his arms on his knees and huff out a cloud of foggy breath. “Too cold for a kid without a jacket.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m fourteen.”
“Yeah, well-” A pack of cigarettes and a lighter were brought out. Izuku listened to the clicking flick of the lighter and the pull of air to light the cancer stick. “I’ve had to talk a lot of folks off a lot of ledges…how bad are we looking today?”
“I’m not up here for that.” Izuku finally lifted his head. When he did, he realized it was actually Eraserhead sitting next to him. Of all the people to find Izuku on the roof at five in the morning, it had to be the one hero who hadn’t let him down - yet.
“You’re just watching the sunrise?”
Izuku nodded. “Just watching the sunrise…over, and over, and over.”
“Everyday?” He didn’t understand.
“Not everyday - just today. Been up here for hours watching it rise.”
“Kid, that doesn’t make any sense.”
Izuku shrugged. “I know.” It didn’t matter if it made sense, it was the truth.
He’d never been able to prove his quirk to anyone else. Izuku had come up with several ideas on how to accomplish it. But every time he tried, he was shot down. His mother refused to entertain his ideas, and even shoved him away a couple times when he’d tried to test his theories. Of course, his former friends just bullied him worse and laughed off his nonsense. After a while, he gave up trying.
“Shouldn't you be teaching?” Izuku finally asked.
“School doesn't start for two hours. I was on my way back. Shouldn’t you be on your way to middle school?” Eraserhead exhaled a large cloud of smoke towards the sky.
“I have all the time in the world, Eraser.”
The hero grinned around the cigarette. If it was for Izuku’s weirdness or his ability to ascertain the underground hero’s name, he wasn’t sure. Still, that smile was a welcome sight. Izuku rarely got praise from adults.
“You have a habit of talking in riddles, kid?”
“I can prove it - I think. It’s not a riddle.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that?” Eraserhead flicked the butt of his cigarette (which he finished with incredible speed) over the rooftop edge and finally looked at Izuku fully. Dark eyes inspected him studiously, as if evaluating what kind of risk Izuku might be.
“I don’t know. No one’s ever let me try it before. No one believes that I have a quirk.”
“They don’t believe you? What’s your quirk?” He didn’t immediately judge or question Izuku’s sanity. That was a shock, but it was far better than anyone else had ever done.
“I can rewind time. It’s like…watching a movie, over and over. I can sit here and watch the same sunrise for hours, or even days. I haven’t tried to go back more than a day before, there’s really no point.”
“Why’s that?” The man settled his arms back on his knees but he wasn’t watching the sunrise anymore, he was watching Izuku.
Instead of answering, Izuku offered his hand out. The hero stared at it for a few moments, as if debating his life choices that brought him to this random rooftop at five thirty am with a kid who was claiming he could rewind time. Eventually, Eraserhead took his hand.
“See that couple?”
“Mhm.”
“Watch them, and the sunrise.”
Eraserhead nodded.
Izuku activated his quirk as he twisted his free hand. The sunrise reversed itself quickly, the sun itself falling back under the horizon. At the same time, the couple Izuku had pointed out vanished. Then, the cold darkness of the morning chilled them once more, and the city was empty. Peeking at the hero beside him, Izuku watched Eraser’s eyes widen in shock. His hand squeezed Izuku’s as if he was terrified one of them might slip away, or vanish.
There was no way to know if this would have worked, and Izuku would be lying if he said he wasn’t shocked that it had worked at all. There was some strange comfort in knowing at least one person believed him, and knew he was telling the truth.
Izuku wasn’t alone anymore.
“Going backwards is easy. We can all visit the past in one way or another; pictures, stories, movies, there’s a lot of ways - but no one lives in the past. No one is here anymore. It’s just me. It’s just us.”
“But-...” Eraser gasped. “How do we-”
“Don’t worry. Once we reach the moment I started the rewind, we catch up and everything snaps back into place. I guess it’s like…getting pulled out of time, and your life gets put on pause? It’s really hard to explain.”
“I’ll say.” Eraserhead moved to stand up but Izuku stopped him by squeezing his hand back. “What happens if I let go of your hand?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this. I didn’t know if it would work at all.”
Eraser sat back down with a heavy sigh. “No one believed you.” Izuku shook his head. “Kid…this is…incredible.”
The sun was rising once again, the little glint of bright yellow-orange light peeking over the horizon between the buildings in the city. It was a beautiful sight. Izuku loved sunrises, and sunsets. He loved the way each morning and evening made the sky look like a master’s painting. The splashes of purple and orange melted into the sky like the perfectly mixed palette.
“It’s pretty, but it’s not really useful. I can’t redo my actions. It gives me time to think, but I can’t rewrite history, or change anything. I can’t stop someone from punching me in the face by rewinding time and moving out of the way. It’s already happened, and I can’t change that.”
“But-” Eraser pointed to the lamppost down in the courtyard in front of his apartment complex. Just as Izuku turned to look at what the hero was pointing at, the light flickered out as the sky got brighter. “But you can see what happens to the world, just without people. You could rewatch an explosion in slow motion, or find the source of a fire.”
“I…guess? I’ve never thought about it like that. I’ve never gone back more than 24 hours before. I’m scared I won’t be able to catch up…and then I’d truly be alone.”
“Well, heroes don’t generally investigate cold cases, so you wouldn’t be checking out crimes more than a few hours or a day old. But you could be a great help with bank robbery or arson cases, even missing person cases and kidnappings. You could see where someone entered a building, how a fire started or see the voids in the debris of an earthquake to find trapped individuals.”
“What use is that if I can’t see who set the fire or the people who are trapped?!”
Izuku squeezed Eraserhead’s hand, afraid that if he let go in his sudden upset that he’d leave the poor man in the past by accident. The tired hero sighed. Izuku wondered what he might be thinking. Izuku couldn’t be a hero. Even if he could get so far as to be accepted into hero school, what use would that be? His quirk wasn’t practical for fighting or saving lives.
“Investigating the crime scene is just as important as putting a criminal in cuffs.”
“Even if that is true, I’ll never be accepted into hero school.” Izuku raised his free hand and twisted it sideways, reversing the sunrise once more. “I’ve watched this sunrise seven-…eighteen times this morning. I’ve always wondered if I rewind enough times will the view change like an old movie film degrading from use.”
“If it did?”
“Mmmm…” Izuku leaned on his knees again. “Sometimes, I think I’d keep going until it corrupted itself into nothing.”
“Sometimes?”
Izuku tilted his head to smile at Eraser. “Other times, I teeter between rewinding time until it stops, and sitting here forever in the nothing I’ve corrupted.”
“Kid-”
“I don’t want to die. Just to be clear. I’m not trying to kill myself by rewinding the world into nothing…or, I don’t think so, anyway.”
“It’s still pretty self-destructive.”
Izuku shrugged. “Yeah. But I don’t have much to live for otherwise.”
Eraserhead tilted his head up to the sky as he rolled his tongue around his mouth in thought. Izuku watched his eyes shift from worry to hope, and wished he had that kind of emotion buried inside of himself.
“Why don’t you come with me, and maybe we’ll find a reason for you to live? We’ll do it together.”
“That…sounds nice.” Izuku finally released his quirk, and let time speed back up. In seconds, the world shifted back into place, and he released the hero’s hand. People passed by on the sidewalks below, laughing or chatting, the birds chirped in the sky again, and the sunrise was long over. “I think I’d like that better than sitting alone in the past.”
“You don’t have to be alone anymore, kid.”