Chapter Text
For as long as he could remember, his mother insisted on dying his hair the same color as her own. Or, as close as possible.
It’s not that it really bothered him, it didn’t! He loved the rich emerald green of his mother’s hair, it reminded him of nature and running in the woods. It was a safe color. But, the older he got, the more confused he was as to why he had to do it. Logically he knew it was because his natural color reminded his mother of his absentee father. The color-permutation of his hair and hair type fell in the recessive gene category, both belonging to the mysterious father who left them before his core memories formed.
Still, he didn’t really get why he had to change his hair to avoid triggering memories that were now eleven to twelve years old.
Before he moved into Alliance Heights, his mother insisted that he bring his color depositing shampoo and conditioner with him to make sure it stayed the same rich dark green color of his whole life. Her eyes flashed in his mind, deep green full of anxiety and some urgency that he follow the rules and never show his natural color.
So when he was by himself in the steaming showers, alone with his thoughts and the pouring water on him, he’d hold and stare at the white bottles and wonder what would happen if he simply, didn’t. If he just used a different shampoo and conditioner, or even just conditioner! The stuff didn’t smell that great and he was envious of the other students who used rich smelling shea butter shampoo, fruity strawberry or evergreen mint. Kacchan used Odd Spice it was a bit too potent for himself, he still wished he could use something similar to brand himself with his own personal smell. His own sense of self.
Similar to when you ask for patience and get an immediate answer, Izuku got his answer one day after Class 1-A decided to swim together.
Previously, he’d gone swimming right after showering and made sure to shower right afterwards to make sure the deep green stayed in his hair but today he couldn’t find the energy to shower or even really do much. It was a bad day, he’d rather just stay in his dorms with the lights off, but he knew seeing his friends would help and that exercise would as well.
(He still couldn’t believe he had friends. Friends! Him! Useless Deku surrounded by people who respect him and love him, who care and support him!
He tries to ignore the voices that tell him they wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for One for All, that if they found out the truth, they’d be disgusted and leave him.)
And so when he lazily slid into the pool and dunked his head under the warm waves, he didn’t think about the fact that the chlorine from the pool water might interact with his color depositing shampoo and conditioner. Izuku was more focused on the sensation of the water on his body and the comforting sounds of his class around him, acting like a lullaby to the voices in his head and his current mood.
After about ten minutes of relaxing in the shallow part of the pool, mostly floating there while his classmates screamed and yelled in excitement, jumping and splashing around, he head Kirishima address him.
“Dude! Do you dye your hair? That’s so manly.” Izuku lifts his head out of the water and squints into the wide eyes of his classmate, he finds his feet precociously balancing agains the bottom of the pool.
His eyebrows furrow and he asks, “what do you mean?”
“Your hair totally bled out in the water, is it lime green? Or is that white? Totally cool, dude.”
The noise of the pool dies down and Izuku feels his limbs grow heavy and his head fill with static. Looking around him, the blue pool water is tinged with green, and not just any green. Dark green bleeds in the water and acts like blood, floating atop like a beacon of lies. His heart shakes and he shakes, he panics. He wasn’t supposed to let anyone know his natural color.
(He’s supposed to match his mother, not his missing father.)
“…oh shit,” he whispers to himself.
The pool suddenly has all of its frantic volume back and his classmates are screaming on top of each other, voices overlap and it causes his scarred hands to shake lightly with slight sparks in the water.
“Woah dude, did Midoriya just swear?”
“Wait! Oh my god, he totally did!” Mina’s high pitched voice carries over the other’s.
“Your hairs so white!” Ojiro’s voice cuts in, he can hear Momo's and Tokoyami’s in the background somewhere.
“Midoriya! I would have never guessed you dyed your hair!” And oh Gods, now Iida’s cutting in. It’s too much, today was already too much and now this? His head pounded against his skull as his classmates reached a crescendo.
“Uh, y-yeah. I dye my hair to match my moms.” Izuku rubs his head sheepishly, eyeing the side of the pool for an escape route.
“Deku! The fuck! You lied to me about your hair?” Kacchan yelled as he swam closer to him. The firey blonde already though Izuku thought himself better, he really didn’t need some stupid hair color to add to his inferiority complex.
“I-I didn’t lie, Kacchan! You just never asked!” He waves his hands in front of him, acting as a barrier from Kacchan and other’s as he moves back towards the pools stairs.
“Damnit, what else are you hiding from me, nerd?!” Had they not been in the water, Izuku was almost 100% Kacchan would have been sparkling like a star about to explode.
“S-sorry guys, but I need to get out now! Need to train!”
Izuku runs up the pools stairs, almost slipping as he gets out with a spark of lime green covering his body. In a blink, the now white haired boy leaves his class in the dirtied pool water with more questions than not.
Class 1-A looks at each other in shock, still surprised by the evidence of what happened.
“That was super weird, right?” Mina asks, pink face contorted in confusion.
“Deku’s always been skittish, but I haven't seen him that panicked since the first week of school…” Uraraka’s voice replies quietly.
Bakugou grumbles to himself, loudly enough for those near him in the pool to hear: “stupid Deku trying to keep things away from me, shitty nerd can’t even dye his hair properly.”
Later, when he’s taken a shower to get all the chemicals off of his body and scrubs another round of dye into his hair, Izuku collapses on his bed with his knees tucked into his chest. Thoughts raced around him, circling him and preying on his mind. He needed to tell his mother he messed up but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. For some reason, his hair was a trigger for her and he couldn’t bare with himself if he hurt her.
(He needed to be a good son. His mother had done so much for him! He couldn't burden her with stupid worries, stupid ideas, and stupid curiosities about his hair. He already worried her enough with being a hero and his father was a taboo topic in the household. Any reminder of the mystery man and his mother shuts down and breaks into tears for a husband who abandoned them after finding out about a quirkless son.)
Silent tears roll down his cheeks, staining his bed spread and his chest heaves when he thinks about the woman alone in her house while he’s here, at UA.
A knock jars him out of his self-deprecating thoughts and Izuku limply stands to answer it, moving enough for his red glazed eyes to branch over a solum Todoroki, Uraraka and Iida, standing on the other side of his door. As quick as he can, Izuku fumbles to put on a smile.
“H-hey guys, what’s up?”
“We wanted to check up on you, Deku!” He flinches at the name. He knows now that it’s different, but with how wrapped up his head is, with how bad the day is, the nickname sounds more like a gunshot than a loving embrace. Uraraka watches her friend, her best friend, shutter and slide back into old habits and finds herself leaning towards him more.
“I'm okay…I just get nervous about my hair,” he whispers out to the trio, shuffling his feet and gazing down to not see them. He misses worried looks.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed of your hair! Can we come in to talk?” Asks Iida, Izuku looks up at him and slowly opens the door for them — “uh, sure, but it’s kinda a mess right now..”
With the door open, the gang of friends quickly move inside.
Izuku’s room has clothes pushed into piles, one near an open dresser with countless hero figurines on it. Another pile near the desk pushed against the window covered in notebooks and loose paper with messy writing scrawled across them. The group can barely make out the words “quirk” from the writing, but it’s clear their friend lost himself in analysis recently. All Might posters litter the walls with a few other heroes, but the yellow hero lightens the dim room with the larger than life smile. On the unmade bed, Izuku sits and pushes his laptop to a more visible position to make sure no one sits on it.
Honestly, the room wasn’t that bad, but judging by the dishes stacked next to the bed and random things on the floor, Izuku was slowly deteriorating. The group finds their normal spots on the floor near Izuku who still sat on his bed, now with his knees back against his chest.
“Listen Deku,” he flinches again and Uraraka clears her throat to try again, “…Izuku, we just wanted to let you know that your hairs totally cool!”
Iida pushes up his glasses, “yes! There's nothing wrong with your natural hair color.” He moves his hand up and down as he continues, “white isn’t a common color, especially with curly hair, but in the age of quirks, no hair is odd!”
Izuku looks up into his friends (friends!) eyes and finds no evidence of lies, but he still is having a hard time grasping the concept of anything but green for him. Anything but the panic of white curls.
“Do you think you could tell us why you don’t like it?” Todoroki looks at him with large heterochromia eyes, softly leaning in.
Shifting his feet to hold them more firmly against himself, Izuku breathes in and out a sigh before looking to the ground. “It's just that it reminds my mother of my dad. You know, he left when I was four and my mothers been sensitive about it since…Not that I blame her! I just…keeping my hair the same green as her makes her happy and I’ve done it my whole life. It's all I know.”
Izuku takes another breath before holding onto his toes to ground. “Iida’s right, white’s not too rare of a color anymore, but I'd prefer to keep it the same as my mothers and keep her happy.”
Todoroki moves closer to Izuku, gently putting his hand on the others scarred one.
“Midoriya…Izuku,” Izuku glances up, “does your father define you?”
He thinks of the blurred memories, the missing figure in parent teacher conferences and the empty pictures. “N-no…?”
“Does your father control you?”
Izuku shakes his head, “no.” A father can’t control you if he’s not there.
“Does your mother control you?”
That, is a question. While Izuku is technically almost an adult and almost a hero, his mother still buys his shampoo and hovers from afar. But looking back on his childhood, had he let his mother’s cries of “I'm so sorry, Izuku,” stop him, he wouldn’t be there at UA.
“…No.” He’s his own person.
“Then why should you let them define who you are? Izuku, you’ve helped me, let me help you now.”
Izuku gazes up into his friends eyes, tears on the edge.
“I'm just scared, what if she finds out?”
“Does it matter?” Todoroki’s eyebrows clash in confusion.
“She's my mother! I want her to be happy! I've been—I’ve been a hard son.” He holds onto his friends hand, it’s warm.
The air in the room is still as Todoroki asks; “shouldn’t she be happy if you’re happy? If you’re being yourself?”
“…I don’t know.”
His mother had always been his entire world. When he was alone, quirkless, his mother would hold him and protect him from the world. She would support and love him no matter what and for the longest time, she was the only person he had.
(He had always ignored the part of him that whispered her helicoptering wasn’t good. That she smothered him and tried to plastic wrap him. Ignored the screams in his head that she crushed his dreams and cried in pity when he missed the gene almost the whole world had. He wanted to cry when remembering the look on her face when he came home bloodied and burned, only to give him a first aid kit while cooking dinner.
He always ignored the fact that his hair, was more worrisome for her than the scars from his childhood.)
“I..I just don’t know what I should do,” he confesses.
“You should do what you want to do!” Uraraka jumps up, fist clenched and eyes burning.
“Yes! Midoriya, you should be yourself, as long as you’re not breaking the law or hurting anyone.” Uraraka misses out on Todoroki’s chuckle at the comment.
“Izuku, you’re not your fathers son, whoever the bastard was. You’re yourself,” Todoroki’s voice is soft as he rubs circles on Izuku’s hand.
It causes the dam to break and Izuku bursts into tears and throws his arms around the dual colored boy who stiffens and holds him like a robot in response. He’s so lucky to have such supportive friends, Izuku really didn’t deserve them.
Suddenly, Uraraka jumps and yells —“GROUP HUG!” And throws her arms around the duo which becomes a trio, and eventually quartet as Iida reaches around them with long awkward arms.
Izuku leans inward, closing his eyes and breathing in deeply to connect with his friends. He clenches his hands to bring them closer and snuggles his face in and whispers, "I've always wanted to try a fruit shampoo, maybe mint or tea tree." Uraraka laughs and says she might have some extra somewhere. He feels safe and warm, thoughts paused about his mother and the possible horrors of what would happen if he shows the pearly curls.
And the next morning when Izuku’s head feels less full of cotton and more clear, he steps into the steaming shower and chooses to use the tropical shampoo and conditioner Uraraka picked for him the night before, letting dark green run down the drain and turn into clear water. The products have a sweet and natural tone to them, causing his curly hair to fluff up more than usual and feel softer too. After drying them, using a defuser and getting dressed in his uniform, Izuku looks in the mirror and wonders how he can look anything like a man that no one remembers.
His classmates complement him and the healthier looking locks, and Izuku wonders to himself, why it even mattered.
(Down the halls of UA, a tall man sputters out blood when he sees his successor with flowing white curls, similar to another.)