Chapter Text
“Well well, if it isn’t the truants,” Hatsume said as Katsuki and Deku approached the lunch table she sat at. It was a four-person table, with Hatsume’s bag of random inventions sitting in the only vacant seat. Katsuki was glad, as it meant none of the new extras would bother them. Hatsume being there was bad enough, but he knew Deku would throw a fit if he picked a fight with the pink-haired girl. Instead of doing just that, he took his seat at the table and unpacked his bento box.
“Truants?” Deku asked her friend, wrinkling her nose in confusion. Katsuki tried not to notice it.
“You weren’t at the opening ceremony,” Hatsume explained, not even bothering to look up from whatever trinket she was tinkering with. “I assume the two of you had snuck off to finally-”
Katsuki banged his thermos of soup on the table, glaring at Mei. The girl smirked cheekily at his reaction, clearly enjoying his suffering. ‘ Touche, bitch.’
“Our homeroom teacher took us out to test our quirks,” Izuku said, unpacking her own lunch. Unlike Katsuki, who got a full meal of miso soup, white rice and spicy curry, Izuku had nothing more than a bread and ham sandwich. Seriously, there weren’t even condiments on the thing. Katsuki didn’t hesitate to slide his thermos over to her.
“Take this,” he said. Izuku looked surprised, but still unscrewed the lid to take a sniff of the contents. The soup was still warm. When she looked up at him questioningly, he prayed that his face wasn’t burning bright red, like he suspected. “I… I hate that kind, alright? It’s a weird recipe my dad wanted to try.” The lie slipped out easily enough that he hoped Izuku wouldn’t notice. Somehow, she always knew when he was lying. Sure enough, she squinted at him, trying to read his intentions. ‘ She totally saw through me.’
“...Thank you Kacchan,” she finally said. “I could use some soup right now. Geez, Eraserhead-san really gave me a heart attack with that whole expelling threat!”
“Expelling?” Hatsume perked up. Threats, danger and fights always seemed to get her to pay attention to her surroundings. It might have been funny, if she wasn’t so goddamn weird.
Without further ado, Izuku began regaling their morning to her friend, with more details than strictly necessary. Katsuki tuned the both of them out, scanning the library for the two people who had beat his score earlier. Yaoyorozu Momo and Todoroki Shouto were sitting at the same lunch table, chatting quietly to one another. Every once in a while she glanced over at their table, although she didn’t seem to notice Katsuki’s staring. No, the girl was always staring at Izuku . Clearly, the girl had said or done something to catch her attention. It wasn’t surprising; Deku always had a way of getting under one’s skin.
Lunch ended faster than Katsuki would have liked, although the rest of the day was filled with meeting his new pro-hero teachers, so he wasn’t really complaining. The day couldn’t possibly get any better.
(x)
This day couldn’t get any worse.
When Izuku entered her house after school, she was immediately hit with an overwhelming sense that something was wrong. Sure enough, when she walked into the living room of the small home, both of her foster parents were sitting silently on the couch. They stared at her as she slowly entered the room, trepidation and bad memories making her movements stilted and stiff.
“Izuku, you’re finally back,” her foster mother Hama said. Her husband Tomoe didn’t say a word, or move his eyes from Izuku’s face. The pit of dread in her stomach only deepened with each passing second. Even so, the younger girl cleared her throat and tried to act casual.
“Is something wrong?” She asked. Try as she might, she couldn’t hold back the memories of her old foster home. Of her other foster parents calling her into the room just like this, right before they beat her up, or burning her with cigarettes, or fireplace pokers. Logically she knew that the Itami’s wouldn’t dare risk their government money by doing such a thing, but that didn’t mean they were completely safe.
No. Izuku was never completely safe.
“I don’t know, why don’t you tell us?” Tomoe finally spoke. “Is there something you would like to confess?”
Izuku swallowed hard. Was it possible… had they found out about her little hoby as “the Huntress?” She never brought any evidence of her pastime home before, for fear of something exactly like this happening; so did that mean that Hatsumei had been found out? She had probably only gotten home from school a few minutes after Izuku, which wasn’t enough time to text and warn her. Shs was totally screwed.
“No,” she fibbed, looking between their disappointed, angry eyes. “I- I don’t-”
Tomoe lifted his hand, which she just now realized had been curled into a fist the whole time. When he opened his palm, Izuku realized what all of this was for. Itami Tomoe held one of the locks from the kitchen cabinets, which she had jimmied open that morning to make the bread and cheese sandwich she’d brought for lunch. It was like she could physically feel her face paling as she realized that she had forgotten to put the lock back on the cabinet before she left the house that morning.
“We found this when we checked the kitchen earlier today,” Tomoe explained. “You took food, didn’t you?”
“I- I-” Izuku stuttered, swallowing against the frog in her throat. “I just- I took some bread, and a slice of cheese for lunch today. That’s all!”
“How are we supposed to trust you when you do things like this?” Hama asked, shaking her head. “Who knows how long you’ve been stealing from under our noses?”
“I haven’t been stealing!”
“I don’t want to hear any more lies, Midoriya,” Tomoe snapped. “Go to your room. You’re not eating dinner tonight to make up for the food you stole today.”
Izuku’s stomach growled as if on cue. “But I-”
“Don’t argue with me!” Tomoe got to his feet, his face turning red with anger. “Go!”
Midoriya didn’t have to be told twice. She fled from the room, darting into her bedroom and shutting the door behind her. She heard the outside lock click a few moments later, confirming they really weren’t going to let her out for the rest of the night. Her stomach growled again, but unfortunately, Izuku had run out of her emergency energy bars the week before. She’d meant to ask Hatsume to buy her more, but she hadn’t gotten around to it. That meant she was doomed to a night of starving by herself.
Still, compared to what she’d gone through before… this was paradise.
(x)
“izu-chan?” a tiny voice whispered through the darkness. izuku reached behind her to blindly feel for the child, gently putting her hand over theirs. she, denki, and the two little ones, haru-chan and kita-chan, were huddling in the closet of their bedroom. their foster parents, whom they were forced to call “sir” and “ma’am,” were screaming at each other from somewhere else inside the house. usually their fights ended with one of them storming out, with either the other one following a few minutes later, or the remaining one coming to find a few of the children to take their anger out on. izuku and denki made sure they were the children up for grabs, and not either of the little ones.
“shh, haru-chan,” izuku whispered, squeezing the two year-old’s hand. “i’ll protect you, no matter what happens.”
“izu…” denki whispered. “it sounds really bad this time.” as if on cue, the sound of skin slapping against skin echoed through the house. that meant that sir had hit ma’am, which was never good. he didn’t do it often, but when he did, it meant he was pissed enough to beat someone unconscious. that someone was almost always izuku.
izuku winced, scrabbling through the dark to find denki’s hand as well. he squeezed hers so tight that her bones creaked, but she didn’t mind the pain. it reminded her that she wasn’t alone in all of this. kita-chan began to cry, his tiny whimpers seeming to boom around the small space. he cried a lot quieter than he’d used to, but living in this house, one learned to do everything silently or risk a beating. kita-chan and haru-chan had only been beaten once or twice, but because they were so little, that was plenty enough for them to be scarred for life.
“let me take it this time, izu,” denki begged, his skin beginning to erupt with tiny sparks. he normally had phenomenal control over his quirk, so izuku knew he had to be especially agitated. “i can handle it.”
“no,” izuku said firmly. “sir always goes easier on me because i’m a girl. we agreed you only take it if ma’am is angry.”
“that’s not fair,” denki hissed, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything else. because they’d been talking, they hadn’t heard the sounds of the front door closing, or the sound of their bedroom door creaking open to signal one of the foster parents entering the room. it was a rookie mistake. the closet door flung open, causing all four children to shriek, revealing the tall, imposing form of sir standing over them. izuku scrambled to her feet, flinging her arms out to either side to block her foster siblings from harm. sir’s chuckle was dark and cruel.
“playing the hero again, izuku?” he rumbled. one thin, bony hand reached for her, closing around one of her wrists like a vice grip. just like that she was yanked out of the closet, so hard that her shoulder cracked like a popped joint. “haven’t you learned yet that heroes won’t save you?”