BEING QUIRKLESS
should not have come as a surprise.

After all, the nature of inheritance of quirks seemed to follow Mendelian patterns, albeit only within a circumscribed capaciousness, but still agglutinant enough to abide under the threshold of theoretically aphoristic axioms.  The attainability of two parents, both endowed with quirks, having a child with a quirk was high.  Likewise, the attainability of two parents, both absent of quirks, having a child without a quirk was high.  Inversely, parents each with a quirk were probably to induct a newborn with a quirk into their family, just as quirkless parents were probably to host a quirkless child.  Upon the surface, all was simple.  In the science, all was grounded.

Reality never proved itself as easy.

Reality enjoyed enacting itself through intricate, incomprehensible ways.

Such was the case of your early childhood.

Most was remembered through the blurred visions of emotion and the tarnished reflector of time, as if underwater, through an impenetrable bubble separating the girl that once was from the girl that now is.  The chill of the doctor's tables and chairs still sent shivers scattering round your skeleton, the disinfected air, so immaculately hygienic it almost stung your lungs to breathe, whisked in and out your lungs, interrupted only briefly by the comfort of a parent's hand or nurse's words.  The waiting room was still oddly lifeless for a place of supposed healing. 

Having to keep motionless while the machine scanned you was difficult.  Every piece of your young body protested against it - begged for playing, exercise, fun times with friends.  Every part of your mind regretted being forced into that same stupid position, over and over, week after week, for the x-ray to finish its job.  In truth, you hadn't minded the first days - you welcomed certain days off, enjoyed the calm voices in which everyone spoke to you.  But after almost a year things had shifted.

Drastically.

No longer would your parents wait kindly, complacently, at the bottom of the staircase for you to get ready for your visits to the clinic.  Instead they would call incessantly for your immediate arrival, and welcomed any backtalk - apparently any form of speech as a reply was, somehow, backtalk - with louder voices, angrier intonations.  You were not helped into the car but left to pull your small self up.  There were no more encouraging words, about how strong you were, and how grateful your parents were to have you, and how much they loved you.  There was only you and the x-rays.

You, the x-rays, and the results.  Of course, at the time, your young brain couldn't begin to comprehend what any of the gargantuan words the doctors spoke meant.  You understood 'quirk,' and 'toe,' but the rest fell upon the deaf ears of an innocent child at the ferocious hands of fate.  The tears on your mother's face were seen, but not understood.  Your father's hefty sadness, which quickly smoldered its way into anger, was felt, but not fathomed. 

Sometimes the only words you could understand were those spoken at the end of every meeting, with increasing confidence, melting way for increasing impatience, increasing implicitness. 

Those, you always knew.

"She is quirkless."

But as for why you had to keep undergoing this process, keep hearing those words and seeing those expressions, feeling the fault of it all as it continued throughout the years, over and over, again and again, in a seemingly never-ending cycle of regret and bitterness, you did not know.  Why your parents so desperately pleaded for more examinations, you did not know.  Why they refused with every fiber of their futile beings to believe the simple phrase - she is quirkless - you did not know. 

As those familiar performances of fate would have it, however, you would not have to wonder for long.

In the vicinal forthcoming, arguments and aggrandized altercations arose from the uncertain ground, as if part of nature themselves.  Never involving you, of course, but always about you; you and the simple sentence your family had straightforwardly spurned, she is quirkless. Still, you were sent off to preschool, like most other children around your age, and enjoyed the simplistic activities the caretakers offered to fulfill your days. 

It was then that you first understood what being quirkless meant.

Within a week, you had already seen more people performing superhuman activities than you had your entire life.  Perhaps that came from being sheltered, taken under your parents' wings, protected from knowing the true nature of society and the way it so unmistakably favored those who were unlike you, those who were not of the quirkless label.  Every day they would boast of their powers, and play around with them.  Of course, the caretakers welcomed this, even if only to a certain extent. 

Whenever someone would lift a pencil up sheerly with their mind, they would be rewarded.

Whenever you picked one up, nothing was said.

Whenever someone made water materialize in front of their face, they would be applauded.

Whenever you used the water fountain, nothing was said.

Whenever someone heated the room only through their own body, they would be praised.

Whenever you asked to change the air conditioner, nothing was said.

Whenever the teachers needed help, or wanted participants, they would happily choose the children with quirks.

Whenever you volunteered, nothing was said.

And so, with every passing day, you began to fade more and more into the fraudulent background, maintaining a facade of faux friendship with those around you, while your blood began to boil and your head began to spin.  Just because you couldn't perform anything extraordinary, that didn't make you less of a person.

Did it?

The more time that passed, the more you wondered about this.  And, one day, you decided to ask your mother.

The instant she saw the look on your face, and heard the tone of your voice, and realized the weight of your words, she was brought to tears, and kneeled down to face you directly, before hugging you so close to her heart that there was nothing but two beating souls, living for one another, forgiving the misgivings of the past and only attempting to conquer the future to the best of their futile abilities.  You had cried, and she had, too, stroking your hair gently, arms wrapped around your chest as you buried your head against her shoulder. 

It was then and only then that you began to understand why they had so desperately wished for you to have a quirk. 

"We love you so much, [y/n]," your mother had whispered once she regained her composure, "and I'm so sorry that we put you through that.  We were just so...so blinded...to not accept it."

"To not accept that I'm wrong?" you queried, shifting in your stance.  Quirkless was wrong, and the two were so synonymous that you had eventually stopped believing yourself to be quirkless, but rather wrong, in every inch of your pathetic existence. 

Your mother wiped your tears away, shaking her head.  "No, honey.  Before anything, you need to know this: being quirkless is not wrong.  It is normal.  It does not determine your status, nor your worth, nor the amount of love that your father and I have for you."  She paused for a moment, thinking over her next words extremely cautiously.  "But sometimes society doesn't see eye-to-eye with mom and dad.  Sometimes it makes things harder for people without quirks."

You fought back more tears.

"You can't let society win," she continued, "and I know, in my heart, that you won't.  There is a fire inside of you, darling, and all you must do is set it free.  We may not always be treated as equals.  We may not always be respected.  But I know that if anyone can change that, it's you, sweetheart."

The dam broke then, and your small body was racked with sobs, pulling hard on your lungs and pushing down on your spirit, and you embraced your mother again, and she embraced you, with more passion than ever before. 

"No matter what, we will always love you for you."

The world, however, would not.