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All Roads Lead to Love? - Chapter I

cw: no specific warnings for this chapter. Please see masterlist warnings. Masterlist

It’s a spring afternoon, sunny and bright, the kind that you associate with youth, longevity, happiness, and hope, and rather than strolling through the park or having a picnic just before sunset, you’re thankfully at the tail end of a work schedule from hell, nearly an entire hour behind in your clinic and your emergency 3pm iced coffee is already wearing off.

Your assistant pops in from the doorway and you see her in your peripheral vision quietly allowing you to take a moment to breathe, and suck down the dregs of your drink through a straw. Swiveling in your chair, making sure to care that your white coat doesn’t get caught in the wheels you glance at her.

“We’ll survive,” you remind her. Your face is tired, but you keep your expression determined and Junko nods, affirmed.

“Your 4pm that came late is finally here. Will you see them?”

You glance at the clock. It’s 5pm now, but you’ve never been one to turn away a patient, particularly when you’re running the pediatric clinic. The people that come to you come for uncontrolled quirks and odd conditions, and many wait weeks to be seen by you before a tragedy strikes, so you empower yourself to push through for another hour. After all, you’re finally doing the thing you dreamt of doing for nearly a decade.

“Of course.”

Junko offers you a smile, and disappears, and you take a few moments to gain your composure. After slipping a piece of caffeinated gum in your mouth and chewing rapidly for a moment before spitting it out in the bin next to you, you force a smile on your face, and then it soon becomes natural. Not too long afterwards, Junko brings in a small boy, no older than four years old, and a harried-appearing woman in her late 30s, possibly early 40s, presumably his mother. She’s whispering to him to behave already, and he has a small pout on his face. They share the same inverted checkmarks for eyebrows and sapphire blue, wavy hair, and you glean as much information from the way that she settles him before her, hands pressed carefully but firmly on his small shoulders, and bows to you before you can bow back.

“Thank you so much for being willing to see us, doctor.”

“It’s no worries! I know that you’re coming from afar - traffic is often bad, and if you had come earlier, we would have had you wait anyway, a few small things came up with a couple of patients before you,” you admit, with a polite laugh. That’s an understatement - between the teenager whose quirk, uncontrolled with puberty, left a hole in your waiting room ceiling, and the weird odor in one of your examination rooms, you’ve had a day and a half. You keep your smile friendly and big but the woman before you appears too distressed to smile back, hurriedly bringing her son to sit next to her in the pair of chairs Junko designates. Junko gives you a look with raised eyebrows when she finally makes her way out of the room and you take it in.

It’s a warning that this case will not be an easy one.

High acuity was all the information you were given, and nothing more. If there was anything you’d learned from your couple of years of experience was that the more information you got, the more likely the quirk was manageable, and the less information you got, the more danger you were in.

The primary examination starts with just looking at the patient in a comfortable setting. The young boy is about the right size for his age, and his feet dangle normally off the chair as he twiddles his thumbs. He looks upset he’s here in the first place, as if he’s been scolded, but from the way his mother gently rubs his arm, you can tell she’s a loving parent. All of his features and hers are completely humanoid from what you can see - parents will sometimes worry about sudden mutant quirks in their children and require extra counseling - although they are both wearing shoes, and thus you can’t evaluate him there. He sneezes and sniffles with his mouth open, and you whisper a “bless you” with a gentle smile.

You start the interview.

“What brings you and little Kazuo-chan today, Ms. Minamoto?”

Mrs. Minamoto sighs and runs her hand through her hair. Kazuo looks at her then pouts, crossing his arms, but she rubs his knee as she leans forward to explain. Again she looks severely distressed, and you nod to encourage her to keep talking.

“I’m not sure if I know how to explain this,” she starts. You continue to nod, clicking a pen. It’s for show, you tend to listen well enough to remember and recall most details, but you’ve found people feel more engaged when you write, like the severity of their issue is better captured on paper. You write the young man’s name down, and cross your legs.

“We can do our best to try to understand each other,” you reassure her. She laughs nervously, crossing her own legs at the ankles. Her mouth moves awkwardly for a moment as Kazuo, large-eyed as he senses his mother’s discomfort, watches her, and then she looks at him.

“Honey, just show her.”

Kazuo’s head tilts for a moment, but his mother has given him permission. Part of you braces yourself, with your own fortifying quirk - you’ve been punched suddenly and electrocuted enough times by now to not be prepared - and Kazuo jumps off the chair and approaches cautiously.

He extends a hand awkwardly, and you look to his mother before looking back at him. You smile, although a bit nervous.

Mrs. Minamoto encourages you to take it.

“He won’t hurt you, don’t worry,” she says. Kazuo looks expectantly at you with sea-green eyes you can practically see yourself in, the thumb of his other hand in his mouth. You take his hand.

A few moments pass quietly, where nothing is heard except the tick-tock of the overhead clock. You feel your heart thumping, but there is no strange sensation. No electricity coursing through your veins or loss of perception, or sudden illusions.

And then suddenly -

Kazuo’s eyes turn white, and his hand goes limp in yours. You gasp, but he remains steady, and by the time you blink, his eyes are back to normal.

But then, when you look up, there is a sudden burst of light, a sensation like a gash ripping into the ceiling above you, and your hair, on your head, even the fine ones on the back of your hand feel pulled to the ceiling.

You look up, and before you realize a body is falling through the rip in the ceiling with a scream.

You scream as well, but you’re not fast enough to try to break its fall. The body drops like a sack onto the floor of your examination room, then rolls into a sitting position, the sounds from it loud and shocked, while Kazuo scrambles and jumps into his mother’s lap. You look frozen in shock at the new person in the room who has finally stopped screaming, their wide eyes mirroring yours.

It’s not just the eyes that mirror yours.

Everything does. The curve of your lips, the bridge of your nose, the slope of your neck into your shoulders, the intonation and timbre of your voice as you utter the same phrase.

“Oh my goodness.”

Carefully, you approach each other, step by step. The woman stands at the same height as you, as you rise to meet each other, in different clothing - a pair of joggers and a loose, baggy shirt stained with some strange red substance that’s less blood and more likely ketchup. Her cheeks are slightly fuller than yours, her hair unkempt, and her skin not evened out and brightened by smooth foundation like yours is now, but it’s unmistakable.

You’re staring at someone that is not a clone, and not a doppelganger, but another sloppier, and similarly surprised version of yourself.

---

Your clinic visit ends with not one alternate version of yourself, but five.

Five yous, that aren’t exactly you, but are about your size, your shape, respond to your given name, and speak with your natural voice, sit in your break room, and are all talking at once. The first ‘you’ that fell out of the ceiling, the one who watched Kazuo make 4 more gashes in the time space continuum and force 4 more terrified women with roughly your appearance and temperament to tumble out, sits at the head of the table, and shakes her head when you finally close the door behind you. All you could do by the close of the visit was to dismiss the child and his mother with a year’s prescription of quirk stabilizers - it will be a temporizing measure for this universe-bending quirk while you come up with a long term plan on how to manage the quirk’s use.

“So why did you need this baby to use their quirk 5 times to make a diagnosis?” she asks, before you can even find a place to sit among your… contemporaries. You stop in your tracks, surprised, and she looks at you, arms crossed over her chest and eyebrows raised as she, or rather you, waits for an answer.

Stung despite the situation, you’re immediately defensive.

“Well, I wasn’t completely sure what was going on and didn’t want to make any rash decisions.”

She snorts, and opens her mouth to say something else, but realizes that it’s only ridiculous to be arguing with yourself, then shakes her head again.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” she murmurs, and the fourth-realized you in the room shrugs.

“It’s not unreasonable to be overly careful sometimes. In my practice, I actually let most of the kids wear out their quirks completely,” she says without looking up. This version of you, surprisingly defending you, is dressed in clothing that is still casual, but less casual than the your first alternate version who must have been lounging about at home when she materialized in your universe. She’d fallen through to your world holding a cell phone in her hands that no longer works, and is still trying to find a way to get it to turn on when your head turns her direction. You anoint her with the name Text Message in your thoughts.

“I think you should just give up on that,” the third extra you says. She looks like you but somehow more exhausted, if that is possible, dark circles lining her eyes, and it reminds you to drink water and sleep at a reasonable time tonight. You give her the name Beauty Sleep. “If we’ve already established that we’re in an alternate universe, I’m pretty sure whoever you’re desperately trying to contact is going to have to wait a while.”

Text Message frowns then pushes her phone aside. Her legs cross at the ankles first, but then she sits cross-legged on the seat, mirroring the action of the first annoyed appearing version of you - Salty - but she looks more worried than anything.

“Izuku and I were in the middle of a text conversation and stopped in a bad place, he’s going to be worried,” she murmurs in a quiet voice, leaning forward in defeat and pressing her chin to the table.

The mention of this name is sudden and unexpected enough that it startles you, but not as much as the fact that every other you in the room’s attention is suddenly captured.

“Oh shit, he is going to panic,” the quietest version of you in the room finally speaks up. She’d appeared with damp skin, a towel wrapped around her body and a plastic cap over her head, just fresh out of the shower, and the embarrassment she’d experienced as she scrambled to not expose herself to a bunch of strangers, including a child, prevented her from talking until now. Shower Cap is now dressed in a disposable medical gown that Junko offered her and looks concerned.

“He won’t die, he’s just dramatic,” another you pipes up. She’s the closest to you in appearance, nearly dressed in the exact same outfit, down to the white coat, except she opted for a bright red blouse, a color you wear rarely, over your more muted soft pink.

“I mean we all know that,” Salty starts, her voice flippant, “but I don’t think you not answering a text for an hour is that big a deal.”

“Plus, he’s probably working anyway,” Beauty Sleep chimes in.

Text Message frowns. “You’re acting like you don’t know his tendency to assume the worst, and I literally stopped talking mid sentence...”

Beauty Sleep and Salty both grimace, while Bright Red snorts.

“Kind of wish I could follow you back to your world just so I can see that search party.”

You continue to watch the other yous chatter and joke about Izuku in particular in confusion, without a word to say. It’s not odd for them to all know Izuku, after all, you went to high school with him and parted ways after graduation; you see him on every channel, every two billboards sport his million-watt smile, and you have his number in your phone even if you won’t call it, but the rest of your entities are preoccupied with him in a way much more than befits a high school friend whose paths no longer naturally cross.

It’s only when you see the glittering rock on Red’s hand, the facets reflecting the overhead lights, and realize that more than one of these women has a variation of this exact engagement ring, that you start to wonder. Your heart thumps.

“Hold on, who is Izuku to you guys?” you ask, your look directly on Text Message first who appears genuinely appalled by the question. She stares at you wide-eyed, then to Red across the room, who tilts her head as she looks at you. Salty leans in and whispers something to Shower Cap.

One after the other, each responds and your stomach twists more with every single response.

Husband. Fiance. Live-in boyfriend. Husband. Husband.

You grimace, frankly somewhat stunned, but now they’re looking at you strangely, as though you’re the odd one in the room.

Salty tilts her head. “Wait, what happened in this universe?” she asks. Beauty Sleep slaps her hand gently then hisses but it’s loud enough that you can hear.

“What if he died? It could be a sore topic!” she hisses. You look at her exasperated, reminding her that you can hear her.

“He didn’t die, we’re just…” you pause, unsure what to say next. You’re not friends, you’re not acquaintances, you’re just… not important to each other in this universe you think. Realizing that you had been standing the entire time, you slip into an open chair, and sit down. You run your hands through your hair for a moment, then sigh, then look up.

“Relationship issue?” Shower Cap asks, sympathetically. “We had a lot of those before we got married-”

You glare at her, and she falls silent. Salty’s hand goes to her belly for a moment, and she doesn’t say it, but the glow of her skin, the rounder cheeks, baggy clothing and snappy behavior now register to you as pregnancy. You hold your breath for a moment as this occurs to you, then irritation fills your throat instead.

“Enough about Midoriya.” You check your wall clock. Kazuo’s quirk, according to his mother, creates these clones for about 90 minutes, which gives you about a half hour to learn as much as you can from them. Rising again, you dig for five sheets of paper in a cabinet, and place a small stack with a pen in front of every version of you.

“Tell me everything up to today. Where you were born, family members, how your quirks work, etc. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Text Message gives you a sympathetic look, and you wonder if she can tell that you’re a bit shaken, then remember that of course you are, because you are her and she is you.

You make your way out of the room quickly, and don’t return until they’ve vanished. The medical gown you gave Shower Cap lays crumpled in a chair, and Text Message’s phone is gone. You pick up 5 narratives, and prepare to go home for the night.

By the time you get around to reading those narratives, it’s ten p.m. and you’re sitting cross-legged on the chair in your home office, not unlike the way Text Message was earlier. It’s uncanny at first glance just how similar just the handwriting is, although you can detect some differences - Beauty Sleep’s handwriting appears sloppier and her words are more disjointed, and Salty’s handwriting is much more compressed, as though she had a lot running through her mind. They all wrote in the form of a letter, although you didn’t ask them to, but you’d imagine you would have to if you were put in their situation. Shower Cap signs off her name with a heart, like you often did in high school, and Bright Red signs her name with her first and last unlike the others, but the last name is Midoriya, and it makes your stomach turn.

You let out a deep breath and start reading. All the narratives are essentially the same, same family, same Quirk, same schooling in both length and general trajectory, with small differences. In Shower Cap’s universe, you have not started your clinic yet, and took a couple extra years for a postdoc degree in America. She returned to Japan just a few weeks ago. In Bright Red’s universe, your clinic is partially funded and owned by All Might’s memorial agency (he is thankfully still alive) and is much larger and well staffed than your clinic now. Beauty Sleep had a child a few months ago and has taken a leave of absence from both hero work and medicine. Salty did not start a clinic and did an accelerated medical program and instead works as a Support Type Hero on the field full-time, although now in a leave of absence due to her pregnancy. She’s thinking of a name. Text Message was the closest to choosing to leave Hero Work and medicine completely, despite the fact that she seems to live the most parallel life to you up front, and when you read her narrative more closely, it’s because she was practically killed during the war about a decade ago. It takes you a moment to recollect yourself as you read her narrative, tears pricking at your eyes, as you remember your own trauma that is nowhere close to hers. You were not on the front lines.

Multiverse theory on TV and cinema had never been that exciting to you, but you have to admit that seeing it in real life is a blow to the psyche.

As you continue to analyze, you can tell they attempt to not center their narratives around Midoriya, all except Shower Cap, who seems a lot more carefree than the rest of you overall, but there’s not much they can do to avoid discussing him when he’s their partner. This part confuses you and makes you uncomfortable. It’s not that you find Midoriya unattractive - in fact, you find him very attractive, and your crush on him was not particularly subtle in high school, but it never went further than a few pointedly kind words, enthusiastic smiles, the stutter when he approaches anyone of the opposite sex fading over time when he spoke to you. You became friends, close in the way that people who go through the same trauma of growing up and having to save the world do, but not close in the way soulmates or best friends are. After all, he had a soulmate, and he had best friends, and anything you could offer was already available.

And even that had trailed off over time as you got busier and life got more demanding.

Your last real conversation had been somewhere near the end of high school; you’d considered telling him you liked him, more than a little bit, but by then he’d appeared so far out of reach. Your window was closed and thus you stowed away your feelings. You had a short-lived high school romance shortly thereafter, a boyfriend from the support class, who you’d also ended up parting ways with just months after graduation. You’d launched yourself in your studies, cultivating your friendships with your family and best friends instead, unwilling to chase boys.

Unable to notice if you were being chased.

At the end of Salty’s narrative, she states that she understands why you’re confused. She’d also not expected to fall for Midoriya in any serious way, but the cards fell as they did. She reminds you that if it’s different for you, not to force it -

Not to let anyone else convince you that your life is anything less than it’s meant to be.

#izuku x reader #izuku midoriya x reader #izuku fluff #midoriya x reader #this is so cute #deserves more recognition #you x izuku

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