A Spanner in the Clockworks by All_five_pieces_of_Exodia

Summary:

When Izuku wakes up in the forest not far from his home, he isn't prepared for what's about to come next.

Izuku's never dealt with time travel, after all, but that seems to be the least of his worries. He's not in his own timeline, for one, and he may or may not have been missing for the past few months.

With the threat of a future only Izuku knows about, a strange missing persons case, everyone around him getting suspicious, and a quirk he shouldn't have, Izuku has his work cut out for him.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Time Waits for No One

Chapter Text

A cold feeling sends shivers down Izuku's spine, unfortunately waking him from his slumber. He groans and tries to turn over, reaching for a blanket, but what turns up in his hands instead are twigs and leaves. Blearily, Izuku blinks the sleep out of his eyes to make sense of the strange sensation. What…?

His eyes snap awake and he takes in the forest around him. The sunlight peaks between the foliage of the overhead canopy and he is blinded by the brightness. He sits up frantically, his head whipping around. He shouldn't be in a forest. He shouldn't be outside at all. He went to bed in his dorm, just last night, he was sure, so why is he here?

He stands and brushes off the leaves and dirt that cling to his clothes. He's still wearing his pajamas at least, a t-shirt and gym shorts, and when the wind shakes the trees, it causes him to shiver as well. A closer look at the immediate surroundings reveals a riverbank not too far from where he was presumably sleeping.

When he moves towards the water he observes belatedly that he is also barefoot, which is normally how he falls asleep, but not having any protection over his feet leaves him a bit put off. It seems almost like a dream to him, waking up in a place he shouldn't. It would be easy to assume it's a prank too, if Izuku wasn't used to things having a more sinister meaning. With the League of Villains lying low, and no clear explanation to why he's here, a sense of dread fills him. It's not like he's in any immediate danger either, but his breath quickens nonetheless, visible in the cold morning air.

As his toes squish into the mud of the riverbank, Midoriya realizes with a jolt that he does actually know where he is. The Sumida river. It's a river that's not too far from his home where him and his mom live. Why would he be here though? It's a long way from UA and the dorms that's for sure. Way too far to chalk it up to sleep-walking or a harmless prank.

It's definitely puzzling and a bit alarming as well, but there's a relief that comes with the knowledge too, now that he can orient himself. Just to be on the safe side, he checks himself over, looking for signs of an attack, maybe a struggle? There are a few bruises that could be explained away with training and all his scars are accounted for with no new ones. There really isn't anything that jumps out at him that could explain how he got here. He's a fairly light sleeper too, certainly not heavy. Even if he was exhausted, as he is sometimes after school, he would surely wake up if people moved him to this extent. Definitely puzzling.

The wind blows again and Izuku's body is wracked once again with shivers. He may not be in immediate danger, but he isn't inclined to stick around, especially now that he knows where he is, approximately. He has never been to this particular spot on the river, but he's sure he can make his way home and work everything out with his mom. She'll be shocked to see him show up unannounced, but it'll be nice to see her regardless.

The wind blows once again and it becomes the only sound he can hear as it rustles through the surrounding trees. For an apparently peaceful place, it's awfully eerie and Izuku hastens to leave.

A thought occurs to him as he works his way over the forest floor; maybe he's been asleep for a while? He doesn't actually know that the morning he woke up to is the tomorrow he assumes it is. His circumstances aren't exactly promising. Perhaps there's more to the story? It's definitely a possibility. He might have been worrying everyone, which makes a heavy pit settle into his stomach. He needs to hurry then, just to be sure. He may be overreacting. But, then again...

The time it takes for him to get to his apartment allows the sun to rise further into the sky. It doesn't abate the wind chill though, and Izuku being barefoot doesn't help either. He jogs up the stairs of the complex and knocks on the door before tucking his hands back under his arms and releasing a hiss between his chattering teeth. He must look ridiculous if anyone were to see him. He's definitely not dressed for this weather, but to be fair, it shouldn't be this cold at this time of year, even if he were wearing warmer clothes. Sure, it's just at the beginning of spring and could still be chilly, but the weather has been beautiful lately. He hopes his neighbors don't look out their windows to see him barefoot in short sleeves hopping up and down outside his own apartment door. His mom really ought to open the door if she doesn't want him to freeze.

It takes him longer than he would have liked for him to realize that she's probably at work. His mom does work at the hospital and her shifts have her starting at the earliest hours of the morning. He wants to face palm, but he'd have to untuck his hands for that, so he settles for banging his head on the door. He'll just have to call her, or maybe just go to UA and explain his tardiness to Aizawa-sensei.

He untucks his hands reluctantly to fish for his phone, but it dawns on him, once again, that he is in his pajamas. There is no phone in his non-existent pockets, no school ID to get past his school's security system. And he obviously doesn't have his uniform. But with no phone, he can't let anyone know to let him in either. It's a little concerning that Izuku didn't realize the absence of his phone earlier, and he chastises himself for that not being his first reaction to waking up in the middle of nowhere. Not that it would have done him any good. Either way, he needs another option.

Izuku checks on top of the doorframe where they keep a spare key securely taped to the wood. His hand runs over the ledge that he can't see, but he doesn't feel anything. Which is really just his luck. He attempts it a couple more times, just in case he missed it, but no, there's really no key up there. He's a little frustrated and decides to search just about anywhere his mom could have put the spare key. She still has it right? She didn't get rid of it, right?

Thankfully when he pulls up the welcome mat, he finds the key lying there innocently. It's an old hiding place. His mom and him decided to move the key around every half a year or so, so no one can know consistently how to get into their home. The welcome mat was their most recent hiding place before they moved it to above the door just after he got into UA. It's really no big deal that his mom decided to move it back, after all, he's been at UA for a year now and thus she would've given it a new spot. Although moving it to a previous hiding spot doesn't seem very secure, not that there are many options. Oh well, he's determined not to think too hard about it since he finally has a way to get out of this wretched cold.

He swings the door open and steps into the warm air of his apartment. Izuku switches on the light and is struck by a sense of oddness. It's nothing big really, the apartment is almost exactly as he remembers it, but that's it. It's only almost. There's something wrong about it, but he can't pin it down and it doesn't go away. It's like when he woke in the forest; no impending danger but an unshakable belief that something was wrong. His eyes flit over every available object, so he can locate just where that wrongness is coming from.

With a growing sense of dread, Izuku wanders around the place. Everywhere he goes, he notices how spotless it is. Which isn't usually something worrying, but his home has never been a tidy place. It feels a little creepy to walk around and be unable to see the signs of a person living among the walls. Except he knows his mom lives here, he even peeks into her bedroom, which is noticeably more lived in, but if he were a stranger he might've mistaken the rest of his home for an Ikea display.

It's not until he looks into his own bedroom that he knows what's wrong. Before, it's just a creeping anxiety, he can pretend the shivers running along his back are from the lingering cold, but not when he sees that.

By all accounts, when he opens the door to his room, he sees his room. To anyone else, it is a normal boy's room. A boy who obviously has a love for heroes and all things All Might if you take in all the memorabilia decorating the shelves and walls. But to Izuku, it's completely and utterly shocking.

He had thought maybe, that if he didn't wake up immediately, he may be a couple days, maybe a week into an unknown future. It would appear that he had it backwards. Before him stands Izuku's old room. That is, the room he had before he packed up all his things and moved to the dorms of UA. Which doesn't make any sense, because he knows he decorated his dorm with these same All Might posters and that All Might bedspread should be at UA, not here.

Izuku's not sure what it means, what any of it means. He enters his room in a daze. It seems to be the only place not immaculately cleaned. It is organized exactly as he remembers it, and therefore tidy, but there's a thick layer of dust on the shelves and the desk and even the air feels thick with it. It looks like he hasn't lived in it for a long time, which he hasn't, but that didn't explain why all his possessions were still here then.

Izuku isn't sure how long he stays in his room. He has upset the dust in many places as he rustles through his drawers and closet and shelves. There are a few things he can't account for, which is a bit worrying.

There are no UA uniforms anywhere. Which, they would be in his dorm, but it's weird that they aren't back here if all the rest of his stuff is. His special red sneakers are nowhere to be found as well. Izuku even checked the entryway again, just to be sure.

He's missing his last hero analysis notebook, #13, as well. There's an empty space on the shelf for it, but that also brings up the location of his new notebooks and school supplies too. He does find his backpack though, which is once again weird. It should be in his dorm.

Izuku grabs his backpack and finds his missing notebook 13 inside in all it's exploded glory, which is good, but the other contents of the bag are old papers and textbooks from well,...from middle school.

And if that isn't confusing enough, Izuku finds his All Might wallet and his phone in one of the drawers. At first, he's relieved, but when he looks in the wallet, there is no UA ID. Just a normal middle school one with his smiling face plastered on it. Izuku knows that in this particular picture, he's faking the smile. It's like that for all of his old middle school photos. After all, he didn't have much to be happy about, but he also didn't want to not smile.

He's starting to panic a bit now, a picture slowly forming in his head, an explanation too impossible for him to accept. He is just being paranoid. There's obviously a logical explanation. After all, time travel doesn't exist. That's just too far-fetched, even for a quirk. So he brushes it off and turns to his phone. It's shut off. And when Izuku tries it, also dead. Trying to take calming breaths, Izuku plugs the phone in and attempts to ignore anymore conspiracy theories. It couldn't be time travel. It just couldn't be.

He decides to change into warmer clothes finally and ignores the way his fingers shake as he opens the drawers or the way he fumbles the hoodie over his head since he's shaking way too much. He's comparatively warmer, but he still feels ice cold. After changing he rushes out of his room, too spooked to stay there any longer and possibly discover something else.

What now? he wonders. The silence in the apartment presses in on him and Izuku thinks he might suffocate. Nothing makes sense, and the one thing that does should be impossible. He really needs to talk to someone who can help him figure this out. He needs his mom.

Izuku's at the landline in an instant and he pauses only briefly to wonder if it'd bother his mom too much if he disturbed her at her job. After all, although certainly disorienting, nothing he's seen is exactly life-threatening. But, it really seems as if he time traveled, and that's a little serious. He doesn't know how else to explain any of this.

Before he can think anymore about it, he picks up the phone and dials his mom's personal number. When he hears the ringing, he realizes she may not even answer.

After all, Izuku thinks, she is on the clock. She might not even have her phone with her.

But just as he's about to hang up because it's been ringing far too long, someone answers.

"Hello?" His mother's voice asks, sounding cautious. But the sound instantly floods Izuku with relief. "Who is this? Why are you calling from my home phone?" Which is fair, Izuku thinks. He has a cellphone after all and he'd usually call her from that. He doesn't even remember the last time he used the landline. And he should be at school at this time, his mom really couldn't know that he's home right now.

"Mom?" Izuku starts hesitantly, wondering what he should tell her. "It's me, Izuku."

There's an exhale of air and then a jarring noise as if someone is banging the receiver against something hard. Almost like his mom dropped the phone.

"Mom?" Izuku asks again, confused and a little worried.

There's a pause in which Izuku can hear more noises he can't discern the origin of. Then-

"Izuku? Baby? Is that really you?" And her voice is a little frantic and very wobbly, like she's on the verge of tears. It instantly rings alarm bells in Izuku's head. His mom (and him) may be emotional, but there should be no reason for tears as far as he knows.

"Mom? Are you okay? Is everything okay? What's going on?" He fires out one after another. The panic from earlier is growing and something must be wrong and why doesn't he know what it is? Is it a villain attack? Is someone hurting his mom? He's seconds away from booking it all the way to the hospital.

"Izuku, honey." His mom says and then she really is crying. The phone is wracked with garbled sobs and she continues even when Izuku frantically asks her what's wrong.

"Izuku, everything is fine. Just stay right there sweetie. I'll be there soon I promise. Just stay there, okay? You've got to stay there. I'll be there soon." She finally chokes out. And Izuku tries to ask her what's wrong, what could she possibly mean? But she tells him not to worry and she's going to hang up now and he's got to stay put. So Izuku agrees, if only because he really doesn't know what else to do and the line hangs up after a broken 'I love you' from his mother. So, maybe not a villain attack, since his mom has freedom of movement, but what could make her upset like that? Sure, she cries a lot, Izuku can attest to that, but she hasn't sounded that distraught since Dad...he shakes the thought away.

After the dial tone, Izuku puts the phone back in it's holder and slumps to the floor right there in the hall. He's close to crying too, but he's not sure if it's from hearing how distressed his mother is or just the overall strangeness of his morning. Probably both. Eventually, he pulls himself up from the wall, because he needs to be able to pull himself together to greet his mother and hopefully get some answers.

He finds himself back in his room and sits down heavily on his bed. It stirs up more dust that Izuku can see as it catches in the sunlight filtering in through his blinds. He searches for a distraction because he doesn't know if he can hold off a panic attack before his mom reaches him. He really hopes she's okay. His hands are still shaking and the dread in his gut has not gone away. In fact, he has to fight to swallow the bile as nausea threatens him. In the end, he picks up his old phone.

It's charged a bit, enough to turn on and hopefully use. The phone boots up and Izuku sends a prayer that he isn't about to discover anything else that will send him over the edge. But when his lock screen shows, a picture of All Might smiling up at him, he sees he isn't so lucky.

There on the screen, is today's date. September 26th. Just a little over a year and a half in the past.

Izuku drops the phone just as his heart drops. His breath quickens, but he doesn't get a chance to process as he hears the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock.

His mother rushes into the apartment calling his name and Izuku runs out of his room to meet her. He doesn't think about how quick she got home, as if she sped the whole way. He doesn't think about the confirmation that he has indeed time traveled. All he can register is being crushed in his mother's tight hug. But it seems he can't enjoy it. There, behind his mother, are two policemen standing in the entryway.