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Midoriya Inko is not a woman who regrets often. She’s a crier, for sure, and people have tried to put her down for that and numerous other things all her life, but one thing she definitely isn’t is someone who looks back and thinks, what if. She’d done enough of that for a lifetime, burying a sister and parents and regretting and thinking if only I had–
Midoriya Inko is someone who puts her foot down, even when it’s hard and she wants to curl up and never see the sunshine again, even when she’s crying for the seventh time that day, and says this is what I am going to do. This is what drew Hisashi to her in the beginning, he’d told her one night – because she heard his song at his most vulnerable, and she’d never asked to hear it again, not even once.
(His voice is full of wonder as he says this, as if nobody has even tried resisting, never tried to keep themselves together when he tempts them to crack their ribs open and spill their secrets out, to break and shatter at his feet. Inko smiles in his hair, tightens her grip on his hand, and doesn’t say–
There was nothing left to spill out, dear. Hisashi knows this, so there’s no use repeating it.)
Midoriya Inko is not a woman who regrets often. She falls in love with a merman, fully aware of all his sharp talons and poisonous teeth, and doesn’t flinch even when she sees him transform in front of her, all disgusting fins, snapping bones and bloody limbs. She keeps the tiny life growing inside of her, even with Hisashi’s warnings that the baby might not survive, might tear her apart from inside out, might be a monster.
She weathers the glares and whispered conversations behind her back, about the empty space on her ring finger and the lack of a man in her life. She screams herself hoarse in the hospital, but there’s a warm, tiny body curled in her arms that she names Izuku, and somewhere in the waters, there’s the man who keeps her heart.
She grabs tightly for the control that’s been her shadow ever since that day ten years ago, when Hisashi doesn’t appear in time for their meeting, on that beach they’d first met. She doesn’t crack when he continues not to show up, doesn’t stop coming even when her little Izuku starts asking where Dad is, why he hasn’t come home yet.
The only reason Hisashi wouldn’t show up is if he’s dead. She knows this, not in the least because he’s told her so multiple times, but she still goes, waits for hours on end with a toddler on her hip and mountains of trash as her only company.
Midoriya Inko is not a woman who regrets often. She doesn’t regret her past, her relationship with Hisashi, her little Izuku. But when her four-year old son sends a blinding smile her way and says, when I get my quirk, I’ll be the best hero, just like All Might!–
(“Our kind doesn’t have Quirks,” Hisashi had told her, a hand on her stomach. “Our child won’t, either.”
“I know,” Inko had answered. “I’m prepared for it.”
But she hadn’t been, because she’d never, in any of her wildest dreams, thought that her child would blaze so brightly with the desire to help people.)
Izuku has the second joint in his pinky. The doctors diagnose him as Quirkless quickly, but Inko can still feel their sticky pity in the looks they throw her when they think she isn’t paying attention. She keeps her hands steady and her head up, and if her grip on Izuku’s hand is a little too white-knuckled to be entirely casual when they walk out of the hospital, she doesn’t allow any of it to show on her face.
Izuku… doesn’t take it well. He’s young enough that explaining why he doesn’t have a Quirk is going to be difficult, but old enough to know he’s not exactly human. It creates problems, because when they get home and Izuku starts watching that All Might video again, when he asks her if he can be a hero without a quirk, eyes full of tears and taking in shuddering breaths, she knows exactly what he’s asking.
The answer is no, because even if her boy is stronger than most humans with Strength Enhancing Quirks, even if he’s so much smarter than them, he’s still Quirkless, and to be a Hero you need a Quirk. Even if they pretend that his non-human half is his Quirk, there will be questions, prodding, research about the second joint in his pinky – they will be found out and that is something that must not happen.
How can Inko explain to her four years old son, as intelligent as he may be, that merfolk aren’t the most pleasant people to be around? How can she explain the bloodlust lurking in their blood, their savage nature, the predatory look in their eyes no matter where they are and who they’re with? How can she explain that the moment humans find out about them, this super strong, super intelligent race of predators that are hiding just out of reach, their first reaction will be mass extermination? Humans have morals; merfolk have instinct. How can she explain, your father’s people will be labelled as villains because they are not human,
even if they are people. How can she explain, if you get found out I will lose you like I lost Hisashi–
Her son is so good, possesses such an enormous heart that Inko’s scared for him; but she can’t let him do what he wants to, because she’s a coward, because she doesn’t want to lose another person she loves. The words get stuck in her throat, unable to leave, because what can she say except for–
“I’m sorry, Izuku,” Inko sobs out, hugging him tight, as if that will in any way protect him from the knife she’s sticking in his back, the trust she’s breaking. “Forgive me, please, I’m so sorry–”
(Midoriya Inko is not a woman who regrets often. Every time she does, it seems, it only gets worse and worse, she loses more and more.
This time, as she’s clinging to her son’s frozen body, Inko knows deep in her bones that she will live to regret her words until the day she dies.)