Chapter Text
Dearest Sabine,
It’s been a little while since I’ve written to you like this but I don’t think social media is the right medium for this. I do hope you and your family are well.
I’m sorry to say we are not so well. Izuku in particular has had a very rough time of it lately. He had a brush with a villain two weeks ago and the experience has had a profound effect on him. He’s in hospital right now. The doctors are all saying he’ll be fine and there will be no lasting damage, but I’m more concerned about his mental state. So is his therapist, which is why I’m contacting you.
Forgive me, I’m rambling. I believe it will be best for you and I to talk about the details of how he ended up in hospital over the phone. I’m not sure I want to write it all down; the memory is too painful for that. Perhaps the key thing is that my poor Izuku suffered a tremendous disappointment and, thanks to a handful of cruel coincidences, did not cope with it well.
His therapist believes that a change of scenery will likely do him a great amount of good. There’s nowhere we can really go in Japan, no other family. I was wondering if you might agree to take him in for a while? Perhaps a year at most?
I know it is a huge favour I am asking of you, and of course I will be paying all his travel expenses and board while he is there as well. He’s semi-fluent in English and he doesn’t speak any French but my Izuku is a very fast learner, I’ve no doubt he’ll pick it up very quickly. They have him on an online schooling course with his old middle school. It will end in a few months, after that we can re-enroll him, or maybe his language skills will be good enough to attend your daughter’s school.
I’m sorry for asking for so much. It’s perfectly understandable and fine if you are not equipped to take him in and I would not for a moment be anything but grateful for your patience in just hearing me out. Know that I ask out of desperation. Izuku is grieving and dispirited, it just about breaks my heart to see my happy boy this way. I am at a loss at how to fix it. Sending him away from the place that has caused him so much pain seems to be my only option.
Sabine, please call me when you get this.
Yours,
Midoriya Inko
Marinette had some misgivings over this whole thing.
Granted, waiting in an airport for their new guest to arrive was probably the exact wrong time to dwell on this, but Marinette was idly chewing a fingernail while her parents scanned the arrivals board, pensive. She’d never actually met her cousin (second cousin? First cousin once removed? Ugh, cousin) before, but her mum did sometimes mention e-mailing and Facebooking back and forth with relatives in Japan. Marinette had known she had cousins there but only in abstract, not in any meaningful way.
Two weeks ago her parents had elevated her cousin’s status from abstract to very much real by telling her that her Izuku would be coming for a stay; not a few weeks, but maybe a year at that.
Her parents had asked her if she’d mind having a teenage boy in the house. The bakery was a lovely, homey place, but it wasn’t the biggest; they’d be bumping up against each other constantly. They understood it was her home too, so she could cast a vote.
She’d wanted to say no. Not because she had any feelings for her cousin either good or bad, but because she had secrets to protect. One more person living in close quarters would make it even more difficult to hide the fact that she had a secret double life as the Paris vigilante Ladybug.
She was supposed to be Quirkless, but one old man, a Miraculous and a kwami later and suddenly she had superpowers, a partner in crime whose actual name she didn’t know and there was a real, live supervillian gunning for her, her Miraculous, Paris and the world. Hiding all that from parents, friends, her crush and the Paris Hero Police wasn’t exactly a cake walk as it was.
So yeah. Misgivings.
But after hearing her parents relate how lonely and sad her cousin was, what could she say? This boy was the same age as her but he’d been through so much. Japan was so insular that anyone deviating from the norm there was in deep trouble. Granted, it wasn’t the funnest thing in the world to be Quirkless in France either, but it wasn’t even remotely as brutal as some of the stories she’d heard from the east. Her call to duty warred with her conscience, but in the end her heartstrings had drowned out her more pragmatic impulse. She’d just have to be careful.
She’d have to keep a close eye on him too. According to her mother he wasn’t in the best emotional state. Given that Hawk Moth could turn even someone experiencing a minor frustration or disappointment into an unstoppable villain that ordinary Quirks couldn’t touch, Marinette couldn’t imagine how attractive a target someone with genuine troubles would be.
Oh my god, Marinette despaired. This is going to be such a disaster!
“Can you see him?” Sabine was asking Tom, who was squinting at the arrivals screen.
“His plane is definitely here,” Tom mused. He fumbled with their sign as a whole bunch of people came walking past.
“The sign’s upside down, dear,” Sabine corrected gently. “The three pronged radical means ‘mountain’, and the tallest part of the mountain is the peak. Like so,” she righted the carefully written sign.
They scanned the crowds hopefully, though Marinette couldn’t be of much help. She hadn’t even seen a photo of the boy. She settled for looked for anyone her own age that was all by himself.
“Ano...” came from behind her.
She turned to see a short, fluffy, green haired kid, eyes huge in his face. He was dressed in khakis and a long sleeved shirt, he carried a backpack and had a pair of vividly red boots on.
“Dupain?” The pronunciation was all off. It came out like Tzupaeen.
“Dupain, yes!” Marinette hurriedly waved at her parents. “Yes. Hai,” she added, because that was almost the only Japanese word she knew.
The boy – Izuku, breathed a quick sigh of relief and hurriedly brought out a tablet. He typed something into it before turning it around so they could see it, and bowing deeply. The screen read <pleasure meeting for first time. pleased take care of me.>
Marinette found herself smiling. He was an awkward, shy, polite boy but he was clearly trying his best in a bad situation.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
As it turned out there didn’t seem to be any time available to get to know her distant cousin. Marinette was at school and the bakery opened six days a week. Izuku was relegated to the little back store room they’d cleaned out for him. Marinette saw him at mealtimes and occasional brushes in the kitchens and the living room. They rarely even glanced at each other, let alone spoke.
Izuku didn’t interact with anyone very much, really. It was like they had a hermit living in the house, he made so little ripples. About the only thing she saw him doing other than school work on his laptop was kneading dough.
Yes, apparently he was able to force himself up at a bakers crushing early hour and go down and help her father knead the day’s dough for about three hours straight until it was time for breakfast. She was astonished when she found that out. She used to do it too when she was little, but the luxury of the sleep-in beckoned when she turned eleven or twelve and her attendance had dropped off entirely. Her father hadn’t minded – apparently he’d done the same when he was her age.
Now thirteen (nearly fourteen thank you!) she couldn’t imagine making such an effort, especially not since the whole Ladybug thing had come along to eat up her hours and her energy.
But Izuku went down every morning and arrived at the breakfast table still lightly dusted with flour, smiling quietly. Marinette wondered if he liked it because he’d never done it before, or maybe he was trying to be a good guest. At any rate, she didn’t envy his hours!
Life went on. Marinette relaxed infinitesimally. All her fears seemed pretty ludicrous once things settled down. There was almost no chance of Izuku finding out, any more than her parents. She seldom transformed inside the bakery and Izuku literally never left it.
“It’s very sad, you know,” Tikki said to her one night after Marinette had finished her homework.
“Hm?”
“Your cousin,” The centuries old Ladybug kwami flitted over to her. “It can’t be very nice to live in a strange new place. Especially when you have no one to talk to.”
Marinette squirmed a little. She hadn’t avoided Izuku or anything but she hadn’t actively sought him out either. She was super busy and that wasn’t just an excuse. Between class work and homework she’d had to deal with Pixelator and Guitar Villain and Dark Blade, plus the usually trappings of Heroes work.
Three villains in just over a month – between that, homework and designing an album cover she barely managed to keep her grades steady for April. They were heading into May now and there was a statue being made of her (what, what, what was happening to her life?!) that she’d have to do an appearance for and...and...
It was all just excuses from there, she knew. She was ashamed to admit it but even after a month of Izuku being here she tried to avoid talking to him whenever she could. It was excruciatingly awkward to try to hold a broken conversation with a boy in three different languages, none of which they spoke well between them. Marinette could tell it embarrassed Izuku too, the way he hunched down like a turtle going into it’s shell whenever they tried to converse.
“He’s trying to learn French,” Marinette offered, because he was. He’d taken to lugging around a notebook that he was filling with useful words that he actually needed. She knew her mother was trying to help him out and her father had hung picture signs all over the bakery to he knew where stuff was kept. Sometimes she’d see Izuku in the living room watching the TV like a hawk, mumbling rapidly – and, if she was honest, creepily – under his breath as he tried to parse out the news. “He’s learning very fast. He just seems, I don’t know, like he doesn’t want company most of the time. He just blushes and stammers a lot whenever I ask him something. I don’t want to make him more uncomfortable.”
Tikki did not look convinced. “Do you speak to him in French?”
Marinette nodded.
“Well, there you are, then,” Tikki waved her tiny hands. “He feels intimidated because he can’t understand you. Maybe you should try learning a few words of Japanese! I’m sure your mum would help you.”
Marinette grimaced. More study.
“Come on Marinette,” Tikki encouraged. “The heart of a connection is always communication. Even if you don’t bridge the gap straight away, I think just the fact that your trying would make him feel much better. I know it will help him come out of his shell! Then he can go to school and meet your friends!”
“I guess so,” Marinette replied. “But Tikki, he’s so shy. I don’t want to drag him out and force him to meet people if he really doesn’t want to. He’ll do it because he’s really polite but it wouldn’t be any fun for him.”
“Everybody needs friends, Marinette. Even really shy boys.”
Marinette sighed. Even though she hadn’t interacted with him much she had cottoned on to the fact that Izuku didn’t have many of those, even in Japan. He called his mother religiously and there was someone that sent him an occasional text but other than that his phone was barely in use. She couldn’t imagine waking up and not seeing a bunch of links and news and messages from her classmates and she saw them every day in person.
“I’ll... I’ll think about what I can do,” Marinette offered. “There must be some way to include him.”
The knife of guilt twisted worse in her once she got to school and Alya started asking after Izuku too.
“Come on, girl, it’s been a month!” Alya beamed at her. “When are we going to meet your adorable green bean of a cousin?”
The words green bean briefly etched themselves on the walls and floors around them before fading. Alya’s Quirk was Transcription; microscopic powdered ink particles would flow from her skin when she spoke the words would write themselves, which was dead handy for school work but also meant she couldn’t wear white gloves.
When she focused she could make them stay permanently on a paper (but not on a computer screen because coding and science). When she was unfocused she Transcribed onto walls, floors, doors and faces which had lead to, as they say, hilarious consequences whenever Chloe got involved. Walking around with QUEEN DOG written on her forehead all day until she spotted it had not exactly endeared her to Alya. Luckily the unfocused Transcribed words faded away pretty quickly; or you could wash them off.
“He’s being homeschooled for the rest of this school year,” Marinette told her. “He might come to school in September when the new school year starts over. His French isn’t very good yet.”
“Surely he’s not at it seven days a week,” Alya snorted. “You should bring him out to do stuff! That’s what weekends are for. He’s so fluffy and cute, I think I might pet him!”
Marinette regretted ever showing her a photo. “Well... I can ask, I guess. He might say no, though. He’s really shy.”
“That poor kid has got to get out of the house some time,” Alya pointed out. “You said he likes Heroes. Maybe we can go to the Ladybug and Cat Noir statue unveiling together.”
“Who are you talking about?”
Marinette.exe stopped working.
“Oh, Adrian, hi!” Alya beamed brightly, discreetly wheeling her suddenly stiff-as-a-board friend around to face her crush so it didn’t look like she was ignoring him while she rebooted. “We were just talking about Marinette’s cousin from Japan. He’s staying with them for a while.”
“Oh. That’s sound neat. I don’t have any cousins,” Adrien sheepishly ran his fingers through his perfectly coiffed golden waves. “Is he coming to school?”
“Uh,” Marinette managed after being nailed in the spine by one of Alya’s elbows. “Cousin...uh, cousin doesn’t French so good.” And promptly died inside.
Adrien burst out laughing. “Good one Marinette. Well, if he does come here I’d love to meet him,” he waved them goodbye before going to sit by Nino.
“Uuuuhhhhh,” Marinette’s moan came from the dark despair in which her soul was slowly pickling. “Just... just kill me now Alya. Just. Kill. Me. Now.”
Alya was bent double, nearly busting a gut trying to keep her guffaws silent. “No, no, no,” Alya wiped tears from her eyes. “I’ll die laughing first. Come on you poor, poor thing.”
Alya lead her broken robot body to a chair where she could at least die comfortably. Alya was a good friend.
“Seriously, you’re my best girl and all, but this is getting really, really sad,” Alya shook her bronze head. “The dignity of my gender is at stake here. I’m going to write you a script.”
Marinette lifted her head a hairsbreadth from her forearms. “Wha?”
“A script,” Alya repeated patiently. “You know, like a TV show? I’ll write something that you can read to him over the phone; that way you’ll both have something to say and you won’t get distracted looking at him.”
Marinette’s head popped up. “Hey! Maybe that will work!” Marinette firmly believed if she could just get past the crushing anxiety of communicating with the love of her life and actually have a normal conversation with him then confessing would be so much easier. “You’re the best Alya!”
“Buuuut,” Alya poked her nose. “You have to promise to bring your cousin out to see daylight. It must be hell for a teenage boy to be cooped up all day with no one to talk to.”
After this Marinette gave in and borrowed a Japanese phrasebook from the library.
All the best intentions in the world couldn’t help her when her life fell into a heap as it was wont to do. She had genuinely planned to coax Izuku outdoors, but the weekend was a total wash when she spent her time desperately trying to get a hold of Adrien’s phone so she could erase a stupid, stupid message she’d accidentally recorded onto it.
To her shame, she’s wound up inadvertently getting the Ladybug statue artist akumatized, leading to even more problems. By the time everything was fixed and the akuma de-evillized, the thought of bringing Izuku out of the bakery was not to be entertained.
Izuku did prove to be an unexpected help though. He’d timidly knocked on her trapdoor while she was staring at Adrien’s (stolen) phone, frazzled and nearly in tears. After all that trouble the phone was locked and she couldn’t unlock it so her message was currently immortalised. Adrien would geotrack the phone eventually and then what? How could she even begin to explain what she was doing with it?
Marinette’s name would live in infamy by this time tomorrow.
Izuku took in her bleary eyed look of despair and shuffled in once she nodded to him. He held out a hand for the phone. Marinette was so depressed at this point she just handed it over.
“Rokkusareteitta ka?”
Marinette looked at him blankly. She had no idea what he just said.
Izuku frowned at the phone speculatively, hit a couple of keys and side buttons, and then handed the phone back to her.
The screen was lit up with a text field and a security question. What is your mother’s name?
Gaping, Marinette fumbled around to her computer and rapidly typed in Gabriel Agreste wife into the search engine. Seconds later she was painstakingly typing Emilie into Adrien’s phone.
“It worked!” Marinette bounced upwards in glee, startling Izuku badly. “It worked, it worked! Thank you! Oh,” Marinette corrected herself; she had gotten a couple of pages into the phrasebook. “Arigato gozaimasu.”
Izuku looked taken aback for a second before beaming at her. Marinette was stunned; his whole face changed when he smiled like that. “Douitashimasite, Marinette-chan.”
She didn’t know that one, but it sounded like you’re welcome.
Maybe this communication thing wasn’t as hard as she’d thought it was. Maybe she just had to try more.
For a smile like that? Totally worth it.
*
Izuku didn’t like to think about the amount of trouble his mother had to have gone to in getting him all the way to Paris. He understood why of course, but it was a lot of trouble and Izuku hating causing her trouble.
Even with the trouble he’d caused, Izuku couldn’t deny his mother’s plan was working. Paris was practically another world from Japan, it’s streets cobbled and pretty (at least from what he’d seen so far). The Dupains had been really welcoming. They spent his first few days in Paris doing all the touristy things and Izuku was not ashamed to admit he went for the full stereotype with his camera at the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. They even braved ghastly line waiting times to see the Mona Lisa in person.
It had been nice. It was new. Right now, Izuku needed a little new.
His room in the bakery was a little side room that had apparently been a store room so it was cosy, but Izuku didn’t mind it. As he managed to convey to his generous hosts, if you live in Japan you get used to small rooms.
Really, that was his only major problem; the communication barrier. Aunt Sabine spoke a little Japanese and his cousin Marinette spoke a little English, which put them in better communication straits than Uncle Tom, who only spoke French and a handful of Chinese endearments. Izuku could hold a simple conversation in English but he didn’t speak any French at all. Communication became like performance art involving phrase books, a woefully inadequate translation tablet and a lot of charades.
After their touristy first weekend, however, they had to settle down into a routine. The Dupain’s had to re-open the bakery and Marinette had to go back to school, leaving Izuku to the drudgery of trying to set up his new life here. He didn’t have to start the homeschooling program until next week at least, but after that he’d be swamped with work trying to play catch up for all the lessons he’d missed while he’d been in hospital.
Aunt Sabine was more than generous with her time. Izuku had medications he needed to take which he needed prescriptions from a French doctor in order to buy in France, so they spent a day at a local psychiatrists that Izuku’s own psychiatrist had set them up with. Izuku had a session with a Japanese/French translator on speakerphone, going through the motions of therapy techniques and medical records. Eventually they were able to go to the pharmacy and pick up Izuku’s anti-anxiety medication. He was to Skype with his therapist every week at set times and his physiotherapist every fortnight while they scrambled to find some sort of in-home recovery plan for him.
Underneath his long sleeves were sports wraps covering his wrists tightly. Izuku never took them off. He put on a clean set after every shower but otherwise they stayed covered; with double layers of shirts as well whenever he could get away with it. They were giving a lot of support to his hands while his physiotherapy was going on.
His physio had told him that while his motor and grip skills would improve if he struck with his exercises, but some of the fine control had been lost forever. Izuku could no longer grip a pen with his right hand and couldn’t bend some of the fingers anymore. His left was better, but it was non-dominant and suffered intermittent fine tremors thanks to nerve damage.
His kana were atrocious. His kanji; illegible. He took notes on a laptop now, or used katakana. The blocky letters meant for foreign words were at least easy to write.
It took a while, and a few hilarious misunderstandings, but eventually Izuku managed to get word across that he’d like to help out in the bakery. The physiotherapist had recommended a program of gentle, repetitive motions that worked his wrists every day and after a blitz research attack on the internet Izuku thought that kneading dough would be the thing. He had to get up so early he was tired by mid afternoon but he would do it. He was determined.
His life turned into a peaceful, regimented routine. The early hours passed serenely elbow deep in yeasty flour, then breakfast where he mostly listened to the Dupain-Chengs chatter in inscrutable French, then he went to his room and dove into schoolwork until Aunt Sabine brought him lunch, then back to schoolwork, then dinner which was mostly a repeat of breakfast, then two hours back in his room diligently and slowly working his way through the online French/Japanese language course he’d paid a subscription out of his allowance for, then he’d call his mother right before bed, just as she was getting up.
He figured it would be better to be lonely and busy than lonely and idle.
It wasn’t bad to live in France. Uncle Tom was big and buff and endlessly patient as they worked their way across the abyss of the language gap between them and Aunt Sabine was always very kind, gently encouraging him to talk like his own mother would have done. Izuku wasn’t sure Marinette liked him very much, but that could have just been nerves talking. Izuku had never really spoken to a girl his own age before, even a cousin. Opening up a line of communication would have been intimidating enough just for that, but when you add in bad translation apps and incomprehensible pronunciation, there were exactly zero chances for Izuku to cover himself in glory here. She frightened him, quite frankly. He tried to avoid her as politely as he could.
Besides, she had a lot of friends, judging by her social media posts. Izuku took in this fact with no small amount of awe. To a boy ostracised from a very young age, Marinette’s outgoing confidence and popularity was like a fairytale. Quirklessness wasn’t the same in Europe than it was in Japan. People saw it differently. It wasn’t treated like a huge disability. It wasn’t treated like anything more spectacular than a different hair colour. Maybe it helped that Marinette wanted to be a fashion designer and not a Pro Hero like Izuku did, but the contrast was still startling for him.
Still, even with reams of school work, constant therapist appointments and mounds of dough to knead, Izuku found himself at loose ends sometimes, unwilling to have his hosts forced to entertain him, but at a loss with what to do with his time.
Despite all his best intentions, his old Hero analysis hobby reared it’s head soon enough. After an internal tussle, Izuku decided to just roll with it. His mother kept telling him to have fun and, while this wasn’t what she meant, that was fun for him.
The first thing he learned was Heroes in France were so different.
Not completely different. They definitely had Heroes and they were most definitely respected. But in Japan heroes belonged to agencies. In France – and pretty much the rest of Europe, Heroes worked directly for the government with no privatisation. They were actual police officers, INTERPOL agents and various monarchy guards. They didn’t even have costumes! They wore uniforms – very neat and high tech uniforms, but still uniforms. It was so weird.
There was barely any chart system. There was no number one, number two or number four hundred. That’s not to say some Pros weren’t more popular than others. Majestia seemed to be the biggest draw around Paris; the French/American worked for INTERPOL officially but did do some PR stuff as well. There was also Cosmique, Vivid, Knightowl and apparently a sort of underground Hero who worked exclusively around Notre Dame called Quasimodo, which, if Izuku was reading the badly translated blogs right, was a hereditary title.
A lot of the French Pros were inherited titles; and they weren’t bloodline inherited either. Izuku was surprised to realise that once the current hero retired, a suitable replacement took up the mantle. There was always a Majestia. There was always a Knightowl. Always a Quasi, as he was affectionately known.
It was nothing like Japan, where aside from a scant handful of Hero families, every new Hero was eager to carve out their own niche tooth and nail. It’s like the Heroes in France felt no drive to leave their mark.
Also, Pro Heroes in France were trained later than in Japan. In Japan a middle school student would have to beat out a bunch of other hopefuls to reach even an only semi-decent Hero course High School. Here the people who wanted to be Pros started their careers in special universities for training Pros after they graduated high school. Imagine waiting that long to become a Pro Hero!
There were also vigilantes. This is where Izuku fell down the rabbit hole of Ladybug and Chat Noir.
Because all the holy gods, Paris’ view of vigilantes was insane.
They were treated like Heroes.
Not all of them, Izuku amended fairly. Illegal Quirk use was a thing in France too, even if the punishments weren’t quite as harsh for misdemeanour level stuff. But there were two vigilantes in Paris that were treated like they were adjunct to the Pro Hero forces. They worked in daylight, on camera and even gave interviews. They even had merchandize and everything.
If a vigilante had pulled that kind of stunt in Japan they would never get out of prison, ever.
Tentomushi and Kuroneko; Ladybug and Chat Noir, the most celebrated vigilantes in the world. Izuku watched video after video of them in awe. They were so similar to All Might; no one knew what their Quirks actually were although Ladybug was at least powerful enough to essentially warp reality, according to the Ladybug sites. They were both strong and fast, though, both able fighters looking at the videos, both well equipped though the internet was awash with theories about who supplied their gear.
Unlike All Might, they weren’t actually licensed Heroes, though.
When he tried to find out why not Izuku ran up against the wall of losing-in-translation. Ladybug was known but not well known outside of Europe so most of the sites he looked at were in French. He got out his big French dictionary and gritted his teeth though weeks of bilingual research but eventually he figured it out.
There was a villain the Pro Heroes in France couldn’t stop. He had a couple of different names but Izuku stuck with the most common one he read – Hawk Moth. Nobody knew his real name. Nobody knew his Quirk either, because it was so fantastically weird that it didn’t exist on official records.
He could turn innocent people into villains.
Izuku read that about twenty times before he accepted it wasn’t some bad translation error.
Much, much more research gave him the rough parameters of how it worked. Hawk Moth had some kind of Quirk that allowed him to make a construct of pure energy – in this case, in the form of a butterfly. That would have been a rare enough Quirk as it was, but somehow when the constructs – the akuma, a word he actually recognised – entered something an innocent bystander had on their person, the akuma would, well, possess it would be the only description. Once possessed, the energy took over the person, giving them a new body and superpowering their Quirk to levels they had never reached before, sometimes twisting into something new.
Like, the first of Hawk Moths victims had been a middle school student the same age as Izuku with a mutation Quirk that gave him stone-like skin. When the akuma took him over he transformed into a massive stone monster a thousand times stronger than he was in his normal life. There was another who had a Quirk called Perception, which meant she could slow her perception of time right down. When she had been akumatized she gained the ability to actually time travel which was well beyond what her normal Quirk would ever be able to do.
They became not just villains, but supervillians. Worse, the person akumatized lost all sense of themselves and became this darker version with no inhibitions.
Worse still? Ordinary Quirks couldn’t stop them. If a Hero had super strength, the akumatised villain would be stronger, more indestructible. Emitter Quirks like energy beams or telekinesis or anything like that would just bounce off. They weren’t effected by heat or cold, they didn’t seem to feel pain. They could enslave people to their wills, or turn other people into copies of themselves. That was the thing that gave the Pros pause. If they, with their training and powerful Quirks, were subjugated to a villains will, there was no limit to the damage they could do.
Plus, even if a Pro could somehow hurt the possessed villian, then what? They were still an innocent bystander. It wasn’t really their fault. The Pros in France were scouring Paris to try to find Hawk Moth but it was impossible. There was no way to track an akuma to or from the source. He’d only ever appeared once, as a construct of his own making. They weren’t even sure what people saw was his real face.
That’s why Ladybug and Chat Noir could do what they did. The authorities didn’t exactly like it, there were still calls from them to at least register with the government, but the Pros themselves had intervened on the vigilantes behalf. Ladybug and Chat Noir were the only ones to have any chance against Hawk Moth. Paris would have been in ruins long since without them. As long as nobody knew their identities then Hawk Moth wouldn’t know them either.
This sort of thing would never happen in Japan but France was in a bind. Imagine having a supervillian that could get any ordinary citizen to do his bidding and given them superpowers to do it with. How could you win a fight like that? The Pros pointed out that the vigilante duo were the only weapon they had that worked.
Izuku wondered why.
He started yet another notebook. He started keeping it on him at all times, filling the pages with every little titbit he could find. He even practised drawing again, but his efforts weren’t very good. He winced to look at them, frankly.
Still, it... helped. Living is Paris was scary and lonely. He didn’t speak the language and he didn’t really know the Dupain-Chengs very well. He’d left a lot of unfinished business behind him in Japan that tormented him on occasion. He couldn’t study All Might anymore. He was still that mans number one fan, but All Might was too connected up to other things that were too raw for Izuku to deal with in his state.
He was staring down the barrel of having to accept that some people just aren’t born to help in the ways he wanted to help. He’d hoped for the longest time that he’d find some way, but it seemed less and less likely now. That hope was fading. Dying.
The Ladybug notebook became like a guilty little secret, an addict sneaking his drug in on the side.
He didn’t tell his mother or his therapist.
There was one other person he might tell, if he could work up the courage to bother them.
Until then, something to focus on that wasn’t mandatory school work, physiotherapy or trying to talk to his hosts helped. Izuku still and always would love Heroes and he’d never seen anything like Ladybug before.
He was just adding some (somewhat illegible) new notes on Ladybug and Chat Noir versus the villain the media called ‘Copycat’ when he heard a frustrated yell come from over his head. Nervous, but unable to ignore it, Izuku carefully made his way up the steep steps to the attic, where Marinette’s room was. He avoided it like the plague usually. It was a girls room, after all.
He sheepishly knocked on the open trapdoor. Marinette turned towards his. She looked nearly in tears, clutching a phone in her hands. Oh, phone trouble. Well, he’d been his mother’s in-house technical support for a decade now. Maybe he could help with that, if nothing else.
To his mild surprise she handed the phone off without a word. “Locked, huh?” he murmured, mostly to himself, but he saw the familiar blank look of incomprehension steal across his cousins face. Rather than embarrass himself further, Izuku quickly went through the emergency unlocking protocol. He wordlessly handed the phone back once the security question was up because he couldn’t read it.
Marinette was clearly astonished that he was able to do it do quickly. She spun around and hurriedly typed something into her computer, which puzzled Izuku. Wasn’t it her phone?
Before he could tease out the thought properly, she whirled back to him so fast it made him jump backwards. She shouted something in French while smiling hugely, clearly relieved. Then she truly surprised him by saying, in perfect, slightly accented Japanese “Thank you very much!”
Izuku was taken aback for a moment. Then he spotted the French/Japanese phrasebook laying on her desk, dripping with bookmarks. He smiled without thinking. Marinette didn’t dislike him at all. She was trying to learn to talk to him too. To someone who had almost no experience with someone his own age actually liking him, that was a huge step forward.
“You’re welcome, Marinette-chan.”
Marinette, still smiling, grabbed him by the hand and tugged. Faintly bewildered, Izuku followed her lead up to the rooftop garden directly over her room. Izuku was amazed to see it. He hadn’t even known it was here in the month he’d been here. He was so caught up in looking at the view of sunset over Paris that he didn’t realise Marinette was leaving.
As she clambered back down, she held up a finger; ‘Wait here’.
Bemused, Izuku looked out over the balcony railing while he waited. He’d never get a view like this in Mustafu. He wondered if he should get his camera and take a photo for his mother. Idly, he reached down to the necklace he wore around his neck and drew it out from beneath his shirt, the pendant round and glittery in the fading twilight. He’d asked his mother if he could take it with him to Paris. It had been given to her by Izuku’s absent father; Inko used to wear it all the time when Izuku was really little but had stopped after a while. He guessed because the reminder was too painful.
Little Izuku had been drawn to the pearly sparkle. The fact that it made a noise had made him giggle. Inko associated it with her deceased husband, but to Izuku it was a tangible reminder of her and of early days when hopes and dreams didn’t seem so impossible. He raised it to his lips now and blew through the hole; a clean, sweet note rent the still Paris night.
“That sounds pretty,” Marinette’s voice came from behind. She had come back toting his tablet, which he’d left in the living room, and a cake box from down in the bakery. The one immortal perk of living in a patisserie bakery was that you got the best desserts. “Kirei.”
Izuku grinned. Right sentiment but slightly the wrong word. “Utsukushi. Belle.”
“Hai. Utsukushi,” Marinette corrected. She handed him a cupcake from the bakery, green frosted with sugar pearls.
Izuku smiled. He loved those cupcakes. She’d noticed.
They both sat together, speaking the language of delicious cake for a while. Marinette pointed to the pendant curiously. That was a tablet-level explanation so Izuku typed up an explanation and held it out. It’s my mothers. My father gave it to her as a last gift before he died.
The translations were usually fabulously erratic, but he thought his cousin got the gist from what she read. She tapped something back in, which came to him as sweetness. Is it a whistle?
“Ocarina,” Izuku corrected.
Marinette blinked. “O-ka... oh! An Ocarina! Yes, I know that! Wakarimashita. We made them in art class one year. Not this small, though.”
It was true. The little instrument was about the size of a large marble.
“Hai. Chisai. Petite,” Izuku nodded.
Marinette gave it a go. It made a rather nice sound. The one she made in art class hadn’t made any sound at all, because she’d made it all wrong.
It was getting very dark now so they rose to go back inside.
Marinette made to get to her feet, tripped over an untied shoelace and ended up slaloming into poor Izuku, who yelped, stumbled and went down, accidently dragging her along. They both scrambled upright, red as tomatoes.
In the exact same moment as Izuku cried. “Pardon!” Marinette cried “Sumimasen!”
They stared at each other and then burst out laughing.
The heart of a connection is always communication, with words or without.
Marinette scooped up Izuku’s notebook which had fallen out of his jacket in the crash. She was surprised to see some very familiar if slightly wonky drawings in it. “Ladybug?”
Izuku was blushing again. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Uh, hai. Yes. Ladybug. I,” he tapped his chest. “suki da. Like? Admire. Ladybug is... kakuii. Uh, very cool.”
Marinette could tell her smile was odd as she looked at Izuku’s incomprehensible notes. She tapped her own chest. “Me too.”
Izuku smiled awkwardly. “I like Heroes.”
Marinette saw an oddly melancholy look come over Izuku’s face, though he did his best to hide it.
Suddenly she got it; Izuku didn’t just admire Heroes, he’d wanted to be one.
He was Quirkless, like her.
Marinette remembered how devastated she’d been when they diagnosed her, that she’d never have her father’s Hot Hand Quirk or her mother’s Bloom Quirk. She’d wanted to be a Hero too – all kids did at some stage. To be told you never would was always crushing, even when your dreams changed like hers had done. She’d wanted to make gorgeous things; she came to the realisation from her parents hard work in the bakery that she didn’t need a Quirk to do that.
Still, that old disappointment still flared on occasion, especially whenever Chloe or someone else mocked her for it.
Marinette couldn’t imagine how bad it must feel if you’d reached the age in Japan where young Hero hopefuls start planning for their future and you got left behind, friendless to boot. Maybe that’s why it got so bad he’d gone into hospital. Her mother hadn’t given her many details.
Well, he’s got one now, Marinette thought. It might not be everything, but it was a start.
She was going to help him no matter what.
*
Izuku was surprised when his phone rang the next day. It was the afternoon, the Dupain-Chengs were dealing with the afternoon rush before closing but it was still very early in Japan which was the only place he got calls from.
He became even more concerned when the number that flashed up was his mothers.
He hurriedly picked up. “Kaa-san? What’s wrong? It’s 3am where you are.”
“Deku.”
Izuku faltered. “Kacchan? What’s going on? Is my mum okay? Has there been a villain attack? What is-?”
“Deku, shut up! Aunty Inko is fine. I borrowed her phone, that’s all.”
Izuku was momentarily rendered speechless. “Kacchan it’s three in the morning in Japan! Why would you ask to borrow her phone?”
“To order take out, dumbass. Why the fuck do you think?”
Izuku felt a churning of anxiety in his gut. “Why do you want to talk to me? What could you possibly have to say?”
Silence. Then “When are you coming back?”
Izuku felt like he had been punched in the gut. “I don’t know. A year, maybe. Why?”
“A fucking YEAR?” Kacchan yelled so loud that Izuku looked around his room, certain half of Paris heard. “So that’s it then? You’re just going to run away and hide? Like a coward? I thought you wanted to be a Hero, you useless Deku!”
A band tightened around Izuku’s chest. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” he croaked and hung up.
It didn’t do any good though. His phone started to ring. Even the ringtone sounded angry.
Izuku had to get away. He darted down the stairs into the bakery proper. There was a crowd there getting things, but Izuku moved through them on autopilot. He waved to Aunt Sabine at the counter, trying to act normally, grinding out the word “Walk.” He sometimes took walks close by because his therapist recommended both sunshine and exercise, but Izuku wasn’t sure that he’d passed muster with Sabine, who was frowning at him in concern.
Izuku got out though, heading at a run from the nearest park where he could just sit and be anonymous for a while. There was an old man far away feeding pigeons, but Izuku took a bench and gripped his clammy hands together, struggling to control his breathing.
Kacchan always managed to strike where it would hurt the most, whether he meant to or not.
He looked down at his trembling, half numb hands. As if he could be a Hero now with hands like these. He drew out his notebook and looked dismally at the shaky, ugly katakana and the weird, crazed drawings where everything used to be so neat and precise. Underneath three layers, the scars on his wrists pulled when he flexed his fingers.
He remembered telling someone once that he’d hoped to be a Hero and that the hope hurt. Well, here is was, three months down the track and it still hurt. The hope would not die and leave him in peace. It was still there, teasing and tormenting him.
I thought you wanted to be a Hero!
“Painful, isn’t it? To want something that you cannot obtain? To be mocked for it? Your detractors deserve to be silenced, don’t they?”
Izuku has just enough wherewithal to think what? before a black shape flitted into view. Before he could make the mental leap between butterfly and akuma, the akuma had flown into his notebook and vanished.
A wave of despair overtook Izuku. Colour faded away. He was immersed in a black ocean. He was in it before he knew what it was, too late to even fight it. Izuku vanished.
Silence rose to his feet. He was dressed all in black. His hair was black. His eyes were black. Not black of iris. His eyeballs were black from edge to edge. So was his mouth. His skin was blinding, lifeless white.
Black tears tracked down his face. They fell like little ink drops on the ground. Wherever they touched, the ground turned into a miasma of dull grey. Black ink started soaking through his wrist wraps too.
“Go forth Silence. Show them what it’s like to live without hope. But you must get the Miraculouses of Ladybug and Chat Noir when they come to silence you!”
Silence didn’t answer.
The grey miasma started to spread.