Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He felt foggy.

It was a bad sort of foggy, where his head hurt and ears rang, where he could look at any object in the room and know it’s function, but look in the mirror and feel nothing but confusion. It felt like looking at a picture, but the picture moved as he did. An alien body when he didn’t even know what the correct one would be.

They said his name was Minoru Mineta, that he was a hero, that he got hurt helping someone. He was sixteen. He had amnesia.

Everything felt wrong in a way he couldn’t describe, every time he looked at- what was his name? The blonde kid with the soft smile and eyes that had so much concern and sadness and guilt that it drowned him? Derick? No, that wasn’t it. Denki. He felt a soft familiarity with him, like he should know him even if he didn’t.

“Were you my friends?” He had asked the gathered teenagers, gripping the scratchy sheets on his hospital bed and wondering how he knew that his bed back home had purple sheets, but didn’t know what purple was.

Most of them looked away, and he felt something twinge in his chest.

“Classmates.” The pretty ravenette corrected quietly. “We go to UA together.”

“I’m your best friend though!” Denki had assured him in his too loud voice and hands calloused by healed burns that Minoru somehow knew he’d once wrapped in gauze. He believed him.

He was introduced to them for the first time, saw disbelief in the eyes of some and pity in the eyes of others. He was being watched like they expected something and he wished he knew what it was so he could just do it and get it over with!

Denki filled him in on the details he should know as they did, nudging his shoulder and smiling at him in a way that always made him smile back.

“You. I can’t remember why, but you…” He, Minoru? Looked at the tall girl, Momo, and watched her tense. Why did she tense? “You were nice, I think.” His brain supplied that she used strawberry shampoo.

“But you…” He glanced at the pink girl, brows furrowed and skin buzzing. “I don’t like you, I’m sorry.” He was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to tell people that, but it didn’t matter much. Nothing mattered much right then. “Or you.” He looked at the blonde guy, who just cursed at him and stormed out.

Recovery Girl had explained that she couldn’t heal a matter of the mind, looking defeated in a way that didn’t suit her as she patted his small hand. The specialist they brought in had just told him there wasn’t much they could do, that every case was different and all he could do was go through the motions. Some may come back, maybe all and maybe nothing, but there was no easy reverse.

He didn’t like his room, cleaning up the tissues on the floor and folding the basket of laundry that he somehow knew was clean. He opened the sliding door to air it out and pulled down the girl poster that kept staring at him. He knew vaguely what he should do, that he should do something with the computer that he can’t remember how to turn on and sit on his bed, that the body pillow he’d pushed under the bed should be on it and that he slept best on his side. He knew things like he had read them in a book or watched a movie, like he knew how someone else’s life should play out but couldn’t apply it to himself.

Instead he stepped out on to the balcony and looked out other the grounds of the school he had somehow gotten into. Had it been hard? Had he done amazing despite how weak he felt? They had explained quirks and it felt natural to pull a ball from his head, squeezing it between his fingers. This was purple, a colour. He liked purple.

“You’re not planning to jump, right?” A teasing voice interrupted his thinking, not that he had been thinking much at all.

“Only if you do it first.” He responded, the words seeming to come out on their own as Denki laughed. He laughed with his entire body, throwing his head back as his shoulders rose, eyes closing and hair falling into his face.

“You’re still you. You might not know it, but I do.” His friend gave him a soft smile. “Aizawa says you have to bunk with someone tonight in case you have a seizure or something, I proudly volunteered. Sadly none of the girls jumped at the opportunity.” Mineta laughed at that, though he didn’t really remember why it was funny.

He went through the motions, followed Denki’s lead as he was taken the the showers. Let Denki clean dried blood from his hair that he didn’t realize was still there, washed grime from his own unfamiliar body with hands that shook until Denki took the washcloth from him and did it himself.

Denki had tied his blonde hair up with a ponytail to keep it out of the way. It didn’t used to be long enough to do that, it looked good.

He had apparently said so out loud, because Denki gave him a smile that radiated a sort of sadness, a sadness that came with mourning someone who was sitting right in front of you, with looking at a friend and seeing a stranger look back.

“Yeah, you told me that last week.”

Denki picked out a pair of pajamas that he insisted were his favorite, silk and purple. He said that Mineta had sensory issues, that he liked soft textures. He did, that was good to know.

Denki’s bed had an animal called a Pikachu on the sheets and smelled like lemons and smoke. He’d offered to sleep on the ground, but Denki had just laughed and pulled him on the bed.

“Naw dude, you barely take up any room. Besides, the floor always gives you a bad neck.” Denki caught his eye and explained as he set up his laptop in-front of them. “We have movie nights pretty much every Friday.”

Denki started an anime from the beginning despite every episode having the watch bar full.

“You always used to say that you would love to watch this series again for the first time when you showed me it.”

The anime was good, and he knew that it was well made despite everything. He got why it had been his favorite before.

“I like him.” He pointed at the protagonist as he tripped over himself. He was strong, but clumsy and awkward. He didn’t seem to be able to understand why these women found him attractive.

“Huh.” Denki’s eyes slid over to peer at him. “You always bitched about him, that he didn’t deserve his harem and all that. You even laid out a strategy of how he could have solved the main conflict in two episodes.”

“Oh. I don’t know, he seems nice, if a little stupid.” He watched the anime and wondered how many things he thought of differently without prior context, a life of little actions that wrote his perception all gone in an instant.

They watched it until his eyes grew heavy and he was laying on Denki’s shoulder, sleepily making comments that made Denki laugh as if he probably hadn’t heard them before.

“You’ll remember dude, I know you will.” Denki assured him, going in for a handshake that he responded to on instinct despite it’s complication. A secret handshake they’d made, ‘like all best friends do’. Denki had sat on the ground as they did it, and Minoru had punched him accidentally in the nose by not paying attention.

“I think you’re right.” He replied softly in the dark, feeling so familiar and warm and wishing he knew why. Wishing he remembered every little memory he’d probably once cherished. That he knew why he liked purple and what a birthday was, why he wanted certain people to look at him and others to not. He wanted to remember why he chose to be a hero in the first place. He was told his mom was on her way from New York to see him, he wished he remembered what she looked like.

He knew they’d figure this out, that maybe it would be a second chance at decisions he couldn’t remember making. He’d get through this.

He looked at Denki in the dark room, sleeping already with a soft snore he always denied having. He knew that he wouldn’t always have this blissful ignorance, that he would eventually see Denki and not some kind stranger that smelled like lemon three-in-one body wash and laughed like he was made to. That the ideas on the edges of his mind were telling him he was thinking new things that didn’t fit the old mold, the he was just causing more trouble for himself in the long run. Tonight however? He had plausible deniability.

He snuggled under the covers and cuddled into his friend’s side. He was warm, and even though something told Minoru that he tended to move around in his sleep, Minoru felt safe.

Chapter Text

“Was I a bad person?” Minoru looked at his classmate. Momo, he was positive by now. He messed up names a lot at first, and the gut punched look on their faces always made him feel guilty.

He’d studied the yearbook extensively with Denki to get them all right. She tensed under his gaze, looking away from the show that had been playing on the tv. She was on babysitting duty it seemed. They wouldn’t admit it to him that he wasn’t allowed to be alone, but he always had a classmate awkwardly hanging around.

They didn’t click like Denki had, and they remained strangers even as he remembered little moments about Denki each day.

His mother had been a nice woman, had kissed his forehead and sang to him in a language he couldn’t speak but could understand. She had to fly back to New York, but he called her every night. She pretended like he hadn’t made her cry when he asked what her name was. Everyone pretended, and it frustrated him so much that he didn’t know what the truth was supposed to be.

“No! No. You weren’t- aren’t.” She stammered, tucking her hair behind her ear and looking away again. People always looked away.

“I’m have memory loss but I’m not stupid. You and the others look at me weird.” They always seemed surprised at the stupidest stuff, like the clothes he picked to wear or the things he said, like he was making the wrong choice when he was just trying to do what felt right. It was annoying.

She turned her body to face him, pausing the show he hasn’t bothered paying attention to. “Mineta, you just… we’re used to a different you. It’s an adjustment.”

He wanted to snap at her, yell that he was the only version of him he could be, but he bit his tongue.

“Let’s start over. I’m Minoru. I’m sixteen years old and my favorite colour is purple.” He held out his hand for a shake, and her delicate hand hesitatingly took his and shook it. She had soft hands.

“Uh, Yaoyorozu, but everyone calls me Momo. I’m sixteen too, and I like red.” She gave him a small smile, like he said the right thing for once.

“So, tell me about yourself.” He wanted to hear about someone else for once. It was nice to know all the things about himself, he he was smart and could draw, but it got exhausting to learn constantly about a stranger he was trying to be. He didn’t want to hear more about what he should be doing.

She had a pretty voice, talking nervously about her hobbies and her quirk, looking at him like she expected a certain answer and looking unsure each time he missed the mark. He wondered if she knew herself what she was feeling, and he could relate to that.

“I might not remember you, but I can feel things about people. You were good, I liked you. I want to be friends even if I’m not the right person.”

“Oh Minoru, you were already my friend.” She said it like she meant it, and he almost believed her.

They all pretended like there was no pressure, like he wasn’t on a deadline to remember if he wanted to stay at ua. He stared at his textbooks and felt nothing but frustration, feeling stupid when everyone was telling him he’d been at the top of his class before.

The only thing he had retained was muscle memory, and even that was relegated to some obsessively practiced dodges and his aim. He just want to press a button and fix everything, make it so the world didn’t feel so wrong anymore.

Chapter Text

Mineta was started to get fed up with the campus. He was never alone for a second from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep. He peed with someone right outside the stall and he ate feeling eyes bearing into him. He was going to go postal.

“Please let me just walk down the street! Maybe I’ll remember something!” He pleaded to his teacher. Aizawa had been a shadow in the background his entire ‘recovery’ so far, keeping from doing anything strenuous or stupid. He hated it.

He wasn’t allowed to do any physical activity and could only watch trainings. He just wanted to walk for a bit before he wasted away into nothing!

In the end it was Tsuyu who volunteered to take him off campus. The teachers were hesitant, but Mineta knew they were starting to get desperate regarding his situation. He’d regained some memory, but it was all disjointed quick flashes that he was unsure were real, almost always directly regarding the person he was with. Was he making stuff up to fill in the gaps? Was that such a bad thing?

“Mineta-kun?” He was startled from his musings by Tsuyu touching his shoulder. She was gentle with him, but didn’t treat him with kid gloves like the others. Denki was great, but admittedly he became overwhelming after a while. He could talk and talk about stories and forget that Minoru couldn’t pitch in, or play music a tad too loud until Mineta had to excuse himself to lay in a dark room until he could think straight again. He loved Denki, genuinely, but he needed the space.

They had forgone the subway and instead were walking down less populated streets. They hadn’t gone far from the school as per orders. He had problems with noise and crowds still. The students, his friends, kept pushing, trying to force his memories free, but they were stuck and it just made his head ache. He knew they weren’t trying to hurt him, that they were only trying to help, but it wasn’t working.

“Can you tell me more about how Mineta- er, I, lost my memories?” His voice was quiet, but Tsuyu heard. He was pretty sure she always heard him out.

Nobody was telling him anything, it was driving him crazy.

He wanted to know why Mineta had done what he did to get injured. He was quickly learning that he wasn’t Mineta, or at least not all of him. He was just Minoru. Confused, mixed up Minoru.

Tsu smiled down at him, that wide smile that was sad at the edges. “We we’re out in a field trip,” She ribbited. “You wandered off, you and Denki always do. Don’t know why they keep pairing you up- kero.” Her hand found his head, stroking the short cropped hair around his quirk. Apparently that hair never grew, he wondered why.

“There was a little girl, about Eri’s age, running around looking for her mom. Kids always trust you, I think it’s the height. She asked you for help and you had Denki put her on his shoulders to find her mom. Then someone said he was her dad and took her from him. She didn’t say anything, but you’ve always been smart.” She sighed, helping him on to a bench to sit and look at the faded neon lights of the city around them.

“You told Denki to get Aizawa and you kept the man talking, and then something happened. We got back and you had pinned the guy to the floor, and was holding the girl, but both of you had a look in your eyes…” She craoked sadly, folding her hands in her lap. “Empty. We couldn’t get either of you to respond, so we had to call 119. The girls mother found us, and went with her to the hospital while we stayed with you.”

“Did I hit my head?”

“No, the man who you caught was a known offender with a memory quirk. They think he tried to edit your memories, but something went wrong.”

“Can he give them back?”

Tsu looked away with a pained expression, not a good sign.

“I don’t know everything, but the adults have been talking… He doesn’t remember you either. In fact, he doesn’t remember much at all.”

The hope that had been building in his chest crumpled into a pathetic heap. Mineta really was doomed to wake up every day and look in the mirror and see someone he didn’t know.

“Is the girl okay?” He had the vague idea of her, but he could just be imagining, filling in the blanks again.

Tsuyu huffed a laugh.

“Yes Mineta, she is. She’s mixed up, thinks that man is her dad even though her mom insists she doesn’t know him. Doesn’t remember her mom at all. They say she’ll bounce back, kids are tough like that.”

But he wasn’t. He was having trouble forming new memories too, as if something up there had broken. He wanted to jar them loose somehow, keep digging despite the pain and figure out what that bastard had broken when he went in Mineta’s head. It felt like a violation he couldn’t even remember, a second hand trauma he only had on the words of others.

“Could they make him go back in and fix me?” He asked, avoiding her eyes. It was a terrifying thought, to let the same person who stole his entire life from him go back in and fuck around some more. Was he really that desperate? Was it even worth thinking about when that guy was as mixed up at he was.

Yes, he was. He wanted to bring back the person everyone else needed him to be already, to bring Mineta back from the dead and no longer be a ghost without a name. To finally be able to stop pretending he knew what he was doing.

“Mineta… He’s practically a vegetable.”

“I’m just asking!” He yelled, louder than he meant to. He pulled at his tie, trying to loosen its hold on his throat.

“Maybe… Mineta?” Her voice sounded far away as he stumbled to his feet, unable to breathe and dizzy.

“M fin.” He looked at her. He couldn’t remember her name. What was it again? Susie? She was pretty, and his friend. Right?

“Wanna go sack. Sack to bool?” He muttered, before he found himself on the ground. The ground was hard, his head hitting the curb before he began to seize.

He could hear the girl talking, then crying, and then people came and took him away.

-

Tsuyu yelled as Minoru began to seize, eyes rolled back in his head and making a horrifying noise in his chest as his muscles spasmed. She remembered her training, pulling him to the clear area of the sidewalk and fumbling for her phone.

Mineta went limp and for a long horrible moment she thought he was dead, then he began to sieze once again.

Just as she began to dial 119 Aizawa materialized beside her. He scooped up the spasming student easily.

“I knew this was a bad idea.” He growled, beginning to run with Tsuyu stumbling behind him. They weren’t far from the school.

“Call the office the tell them what’s happening, I need Chiyo to meet me at the gates.” He ordered. Asui followed without question, dialing the number and gasping out the situation as the school came into sight.

Recovery girl and several teachers met them at the gate with a stretcher. Aizawa strapped Mineta down as his body was wracked with a third seizure. This one seemed weaker, but wether it was less intense or if Mineta was just weak from exhaustion was unclear.

Mineta went limp for a final time as he was rushed inside and away from the prying eyes of the students. Away from Tsuyu.

The class swarmed her, the girls hugging her and wiping her tears. Everyone wanted to know what happened, and she wished she knew what to tell them. He just had a seizure. Had he hit his head on the way down? Had that triggered it? Had thinking about what had happened caused it?

She confessed to the teachers what she’d told him and they began to discuss among themselves. Soon the class was sat down and told they weren’t allowed to tell Minoru what had happened to him.

A few hours later Mineta was lucid again. Tsuyu was nervous to face him again, but he just smiled.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Minoru.”

Chapter Text

Minoru Mineta stood in a white room.

There were screens on the walls playing videos that were slightly out of focus and a voice was talking in his ear but he couldn’t understand it. He stared at the screens. A blonde. Black ponytail. Pink. Green curls. Images flashing by fast enough to make him dizzy. He tried to speak but he couldn’t. He didn’t have a mouth. He looked down and found he didn’t have a body.

The images began to flow around him like a river, rushing by and slipping through his nonexistent fingers. He couldn’t cover his eyes, couldn’t close them.

He turned his head to see peeling grey painted walls. A stained porcelain sink stood against the wall where three shards of mirror cling to the wall where the rest had fallen to the ground. The carpet was brown and visibly dirty, pictures littered the floor.

A single picture was taped to the wall beside the mirror. A blonde girl smiling for a class photo. He trailed his eyes over to the mirror.

He met the eyes of a man that wasn’t him.

“Mineta!”

The boy jerked awake with a shout, opening his eyes to find a blonde stranger in his bed. He screamed, backpedaling and falling from the bed with a scream.

He hit the ground hard, rolling away and trying to stumble to his feet as the stranger sat up.

“Mineta! Mineta it’s me Denki!” The blonde boy pleaded with him.

“Mineta?” He asked, looking at his hands. They were smaller than they should be. “Is that my name?”

“Yes, I’m sorry I startled you, you were having a bad dream. Here.” ‘Denki’ handed him a worn journal. “This helps you in the mornings.”

Mineta opened the book to see a picture of a boy with purple hair and black eyes, a boy he knew was himself just with a glance.

‘This is you. Your name is Mineta Minoru, you are sixteen’ the messy writing under the photo read. He could vaguely remember writing it now.

He sat on the floor and read through the journal, reintroducing himself to each of his classmates with the memories he’d recovered so far and new ones he’d made.

By the time he finished reading he remembered the past week vaguely.

Just enough to know he was getting worse.

He met Denki’s eyes, ashamed that he’d ever forgotten him. Denki’s eyes said he had realized the same thing.

-

“So what did you dream about?” Denki asked him later as they got breakfast.

“I… I don’t remember.” He didn’t, but he knew it had been something important.

-

Mineta.

His name is Mineta.

He is sixteen.

His favorite colour is blue.

No, that’s not right.

Minoru stared down at the Flashcards he’d written, all with Denki’s help. Facts and memories that he should be able to hold onto, descriptions of people he’d met and their names.

Mineta.

Things hadn’t been sticking since the seizure and he knew they had noticed. It had taken hours to reset his progress, and he left with even less memories than before. He relied on the journal constantly, recording everything he thought of or remembered, only, it wasn’t always right.

Yesterday he  had made a comment about his mother’s death.

Denki looked up at him, brow pinched.

“Mineta your mom is alive, she flew down from New York a few weeks ago.”

Oh.

Minoru remembered his mother’s funeral distinctly, better than he remembered most things. Her coffin was oak and when they’d lowered her into the ground the pastor had said a few words in latin.

They had warned him about false memories, he just hadn’t expected them to be so vivid.

-

He hadn’t had a seizure since the failed attempt to get some freedom. He was on an anti convulsant but he didn’t take it. It made him fuzzy and he was sick of being fuzzy. He just wanted to be able to think clearly.

He could get through the day without too many problems. He was at his worst when he woke up, losing all his progress until someone sat him down and reminded him of the sparse details that he had retained so far.

Denki showed him 50 First Dates, trying to be funny. By the end he’d met Minoru’s crestfallen eyes and apologized.

Minoru didn’t like the idea of doing this forever, of reading the same journal entries and being told who he was every time he woke up.

Because he was getting worse. Because he kept forgetting the little things, the things he should know.

He felt like an imposter, like he was wearing someone else’s skin, like he was trapped in a cage in his own brain with all the knowledge he wanted just out of reach.

So he did what he could. He trained until he bled, he studied things he knew he’d forget immediately and scribbled them onto tests that he knew were dumbed down.

He woke up screaming from the same nightmare every single night, a nightmare he could never remember.

And through it all the strangers he loved were around him, names and faces he kept forgetting that smiled and told him it would be okay.

Denki was there the most, practically in his every waking moment. It was suffocating and maddening, but it was also right in a way he couldn’t place. He had a feeling Denki and him had been inseparable before the accident too.

He felt like something was coming, something bad, and he wasn’t sure how to stop it. That there were things he wasn’t being told, that he was worse off than he thought.

But for now? He’d do what he could. He’d attend class. He’d cook with Sato and knit with Kouda. He’d listen to Jirou’s music and Tokoyami’s poetry. He’d do it over and over and it would be a brand new experience every single time because he’d forget it.

They never scolded him, just watched him with those sad fucking eyes and introduced themselves for the hundredth time.

Confused, mixed up Minoru.