Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The cottage was haunted.  That’s what the realtor told Toshinori.  Some people considered that a bonus.  And he thought, why not?  Having a ghost to deal with might make his house arrest more interesting.

Toshinori sat bored on the porch swing, watching the movers haul his things up the cobblestone driveway.  If he did it himself, he would already be done.  But Recovery Girl would have his head if he popped one more staple.  The arm under his cast itched.  Maybe this whole this was karma for his recklessness.

It was a quaint little place.  A single-story building covered in vines that camouflaged it among the trees.  The flower beds along the side were overgrown and overrun with wildflowers.  So was most of the yard.  Butterflies danced between the blooms.  Pine trees encircled the whole lot, an extension of the forest behind it.  It wasn’t the worst place to be stuck.

The hard part was the distance.  Toshinori was stuck healing in a tiny mountain valley while All for One’s underlings were in prime condition for mass-takedowns while they scrabbled after the loss of their leader.  And how would the public react if All Might wasn’t around for who knows how long?  It wasn’t like he could just show up for a quick cameo every few days.  Traveling back to Tokyo without his quirk would eat up a whole day.

But this was personal too.  His home, the city.  The hustle and bustle.  The places to go and the crime to stop.  His friends and passions.  All that was hours away.  Sure, he had a handful of neighbors up the road, but Toshinori was hardly a social butterfly when he wasn’t All Might.  Successful friendship seemed unlikely unless he planned to bleed his heart out to strangers about One for All.  A confession, in the vulnerable state he was it, was out of the question.

At long last, the movers finished bringing everything inside.  After setting up the furniture, they offered to stay and help him unpack, but he waved them off.  They left with a generous tip.

Do I look like a helpless old man already? Toshinori wondered.  Maybe…  Maybe it’s for the best.  Don’t want folks knowing All Might is out here… 

The house interior matched the aged look of the outside, but without the aesthetic benefits of nature.  The yellow flower pattern on the peeling wallpaper looked like it may have been orange at some point.  It was clear to see where cracks in the wall had been papered over.  Toshinori dreaded what might be lurking in the ancient carpet.  The tile in the kitchen was faded and worn, as were the wooden cupboards.  There also looked like little scratch marks on the sides close to the wall.  Whoever cleaned up before he moved in missed a few cobwebs in the corners.  At least the ceilings were high.

“Let’s call it a project,” he mumbled to himself.  I have the money to fix things, make it nice.  Maybe nice enough I’ll make money back on the resale.  Like hell am I spending my last years here.  Dread spiked his heart.  This is just until I heal.

He kept an ear open for the supposed ghost while he unpacked.  In addition to the realtor, he spoke briefly with the previous owners.  They said you could hear a baby’s cries coming from the walls sometimes.  Their kids said they sometimes heard whispering at night.  That, and things would go missing sometimes.  Always something small, like a pencil or a corner of cheese.  That was the killing blow for whatever belief Toshinori had in anything paranormal.  At best, the family was just forgetful.  At worst, he had pests to worry about.

Speaking of pests, he did hear faint buzzing coming from the master bathroom.  A shiver went up his spine.  Toshinori’s fears were confirmed once he opened the door.  Wasps.  Three or four of them rested upside-down in the openings of the air vent.  One dropped to fly, and he quickly slammed the door.

Goddammit…  It was embarrassing, really.  The mighty Symbol of Peace petrified by a couple bugs.  He made a mental note to buy something to get rid of them, then thanked the moon and stars there was more than one bathroom in the house.

The doorbell rang.  A woman’s voice came from outside the front door.  Toshinori sighed as he walked over.  He wasn’t in the mood for neighbors right now.  What he really wanted to do was finish unpacking and sulk.  But first impressions matter.

“Hello there!” he greeted with the best smile he could muster.

“Welcome to the neighborhood!” the red-haired woman cheered.  She held up a plastic box of what looked to be assorted cookies.  Toshinori towered over her to the point he could see a young boy trying to hide behind her.  “Though, I should probably say street since it’s just the one.  Not much of a neighborhood!  I’m Hase Haya by the way, and this is my son, Kazuo!”  She yanked the small boy from his hiding place.  He must have been at least ten years old, and had the same shade of hair as his mother.  No eye contact was made and nothing was said.  “Oh, don’t mind him.  He’s still upset his friends moved away.  My husband, Yasuo, is out of town today, but I’ll be sure to send him your way once he gets back!”

“It’s lovely to meet both of you.  I’m,” -briefly, he considered a fake name- “Yagi Toshinori.”

“So what brought you to our little neck of the woods, Mr. Yagi?” she asked.

“My health,” he responded honestly.  “I had some surgery recently, and my doctor said the fresh air would do me good.”  It was this or get locked in my apartment with an oxygen tank.

The boy cringed.  His mother squeezed his shoulder a little tighter.

“Does that mean you won’t be staying long?”  She tilted her head slightly.

Hopefully not.  “Less than a year, maybe.”  While his arm cast only had two weeks left, nothing was set in stone for the hole in his side.  The bandages around his torso felt like a vice. 

“Well, hopefully we can all pitch it to help make you a little more comfortable!”

Dear god no.  “That’s quite alright, thank you.  I wouldn’t want to impose,” he said lightly.  I just want to be alone for a bit.

“Oh, but I insist!  Do you need any help unpacking?  Can’t be easy with that cast.”  He took a step towards the door, and Toshinori leaned over to block her.

“Thank you, but it’s fine.  The movers already helped me with what I couldn’t handle myself,” he stated, hoping she got the message to leave him be.

For a moment, she looked a little offended, but jumped right back into the happy, helpful neighbor routine.  “Okay!  But please don’t worry about asking for any help.  There’s a note in this box of everybody’s numbers if you need anything.  Plus, the dates for game night!”  She held up the cookie box, and he took it with a nod.

“Thank you.  I appreciate it, really.”  Now please leave.

“Of course, what are nei- Byron!  Stop!” she suddenly screeched and stomped off the porch.  Toshinori leaned out to look.  A little cream-colored dog thrashed around with a flower stock in its mouth.  He must have pulled it from the garden.  “You were supposed to be watching him!”

“I was I was!” little Kazuo argued.  The dog didn’t have a collar, and barely acknowledged its people’s commands.  Mrs. Hase had to carry it away, which she did without another word.

“Bye, I guess…”  And he went back inside.

Toshinori hadn’t brought many possessions in the grand scheme of things.  Most of it was new.  New furniture, new books, new games, and new clothes.  Nothing felt like his yet.  He brought along a couple of his favorite movies, along with a small collection of comics he hadn’t touched in a few decades.  Things that could connect him to All Might like costumes and photos were left behind.  Only exception was his work laptop.

Unpacking didn’t take very long, and Toshinori wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.  He was glad to be done, but now had nothing to do.  Well, not nothing, per se, just nothing he wanted to do.  This was a cage.  Watching TV or sitting down to read felt too passive.  And that was the sort of thing Nighteye and the others wanted him to do.  It was the first step to just laying down to die, and like hell was Toshinori even looking down that path.

But he couldn’t go anywhere either.  The nearest town was a twenty-minute drive, which he couldn’t make with one arm in a cast.  And what was he supposed to do once he got there?  Hit up the one bar when he couldn’t drink anymore?  Grocery shopping maybe, but he’d have to lug everything back by himself if he walked.

Even though he couldn’t feel hunger anymore without a stomach, Toshinori knew he had to eat.  Only food he had in the house was a half-eaten box of crackers he ate on the drive up, and Mrs. Hase’s cookies.  The box was full of different kinds that looked like something out of a Christmas variety tin.  A stray thought asked if she made them herself or if someone around was selling Christmas boxes in July.  He plucked up two, chocolate fudge stripe and sugar with green crystals.  The first was decent, if a little stale.  He was about to go for the second when he remembered:  without a stomach, he couldn’t process sugar properly.  It was a bad idea waiting to happen.

“This sucks…” he groaned.  Toshinori sat there staring at the ceiling, hating himself, when a sudden noise got his attention.  It sounded like something small fell in the cupboard.  If there’s mice, I swear…  He checked every shelf, but found nothing unusual.  Just a bunch of empty jars he planned to fill with cooking ingredients.  Honestly, he was disappointed.

Toshinori paused a moment to look out the window over the sink.  Beyond the tiny patch of grass that made up the backyard, there were trees as far as he could see.  And between some of the underbrush, there looked to be a small trail.  Maybe a walk wouldn’t be so bad.  He decided to leave the other cookie out on the counter; if he didn’t feel sick from the sugar once he got back, he’d finish it.  After ordering some groceries for delivery, he got on his shoes, and set out.

The forest trail hadn’t been walked in some time, given how overgrown it was.  Little sprouts poked out between the cover of dead leaves and pine needles.  Bushes were so thick in some spots Toshinori couldn’t see his feet.  When he could, he watched daddy long-legs spiders scurry out of his path.  All manner of birds chirped above and around him.  A stream babbled in the distance.  The trees shielded him from the afternoon sun.  The shade felt nearly ten degrees cooler.  He took a deep breath, and sighed.

This is nice, he thought.  Maybe this won’t be so bad.  The trail was long and winding, but never branched in a way that might leave him lost.  Those branches led to some of the other houses in the area.  Bayron’s shrill barking echoed sometimes.  But it hardly spoiled the atmosphere.

The final sight of the trail came after a small hill.  The forest opened on the other side into a strawberry field.  Toshinori could spot the not-quite-rip fruits from the top they were so big.  The sun was starting to set over the farmhouse on the other side of the range.  He’d have to ask around if there was a community harvesting even.  That might be fun to do.

The rest of the trail looped back to his street, leading him back to his house in less than half the time it took to walk the wilderness.  His grocery delivery was waiting by the door.  It wasn’t until he finished putting everything where it belonged, he realized with a happy gasp the cookie didn’t make him sick.  Toshinori could have sworn he left one out before, but no matter.  He had one more with his dinner, then went to get ready for bed at nine p.m. like the old man he was becoming.

Hours later and half asleep, Toshinori finally heard something.  Had he not been a hero trained and experienced to listen, he might have missed it entirely.  A tiny little voice, so faint and far away he could have easily imagined it.  It sang a tearful rendition of Happy Birthday to no one but itself.

Well, Toshinori thought right before he passed out.  I guess there is a ghost.

Chapter Text

There was a crayon in the closet.  A red one.  Completely whole and barely used.  It fell behind the shelf weeks ago, and the old family missed it while picking up for the move.  Izuku couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The new guy is probably gonna start cleaning today… he thought, staring up at the dark ceiling from his bed.  Though it wasn’t really a ceiling or a bed.  It was the underside of the hollow facade on top of the kitchen cabinet, and a ratty sponge wrapped in a dishtowel.  Izuku fiddled with the frayed hem.  Low light of early morning peaked through holes in the wood.  The new guy is a grownup.  Grownups don’t use crayons.  If he throws the crayon away, I’ll never get it.  

You’d think the trash was the best place to borrow from.  It wasn’t really borrowing if you were taking what people were going to get rid of anyway.  But getting it was the problem.  Trash bins were really big and hard to get to.  Even harder to get out of.  Mama said it wasn’t worth the risk.  And she was never wrong.

She also said to never take more than you need, or else it wasn’t borrowing, it was stealing.  Izuku rolled over to face the cookie.  That’s different.  I need that.  I don’t know the new guy’s routine yet, so who knows when I’m gonna get more food?  He sniffed.  Plus, yesterday was my birthday…

Eight-years-old is practically a grownup.  And grownups are brave.  Like Mama and Papa.  He didn’t really need the crayon, but the old family left it behind, so they didn’t want it anyway. 

Izuku pulled himself out of bed and went to look out of one of the holes.  The kitchen was silent and still.  A clock on the wall said it was just after five.  The new guy had a meal at midnight and four, which hopefully left Izuku another three to go get the crayon.  A little voice in the back of his mind told him it was a really bad idea.  He didn’t need the crayon, were the other ones he had not good enough?  No, they were good.  But they were all small broken pieces.  This was a whole one.  And it was a color he didn’t have.

He skipped back over to his shoes and shirt.  Mama used to say to always sleep in his clothes in case he had to wake up fast and run away.  She also said not to leave his clothes lying around.  But it was my birthday, and it was hot last night, he argued to himself again.  Izuku had two shirts: one he made himself, and one of Mama’s.  Hers was made better, with a single type of light green fabric and even stitching all around.  He liked to wrap himself in it for bed sometimes.  Izuku’s wasn’t as good.  It was made of lots of different patches he borrowed, all of different colors and fabrics.  The biggest patch was made of the same stuff as Mama’s, since it used to be a shirt she made for him.  But he got too big for it, so he cannibalized it.  “Cannibalize” was a fun word he learned from the fashion show the mom from the old family liked to watch.  His shirt would have gotten him kicked off though.

Izuku tucked Mama’s shirt back where it was supposed to be: a big envelope leaning against the wall.  That’s where important stuff went, like bandages, a tube of medicine, extra rope and hooks along with supplies for making them, and rare things like a glowstick. 

The rest of his things were kept in packages made of newspaper Izuku made himself.  There was one for dry food, which for now was just some cracker crumbs and his birthday cookie.  He took a little nibble for breakfast before wrapping it up, along with the last of his cheese from the wet food storage.  Those had to be rolled up tight so ants wouldn’t find them.  A plastic cup in the corner with cardboard over the top held his water storage.  Or it would if he hadn’t drank the last of it for his birthday.  Briefly, he checked his little box of crayon bits.  He had a green one, purple, dark blue, light blue, yellow, and grey that was almost gone.  There were some pencils leads as well, both colored and regular, but crayons were his favorite.  He would have drawn all over the walls if he could, but then Papa would be mad at him if he came back.

After he cleaned up, Izuku put on his shoes and borrowing gear.  His gear was a small cloth satchel he and Mama made together, some string and a paperclip hook for grappling, and a sewing needle.  A sword.  The shoes were made of paper, tape, and a little bit of cloth on the inside.  Izuku was better at making shoes than shirts.  He had a cut of paper under his bed ready to go for new ones once he got back.  He just needed the crayon.

Izuku lived in a hollow façade on top of the tallest kitchen cabinet.  To get down, he had to go behind the wall.  A heavy towel covered the open hole to the inside, the only thing separating Izuku’s little home from whatever else lived in the house.  No matter what time of day it was, it was always pitch black behind the wall.  Izuku carefully peaked out from the towel to listen for buzzing or squeaking.  Hearing nothing, he sidestepped out of safety and onto a popsicle-stick platform.  From there, he climbed half-blind down wires and broken drywall.  There used to be a rope pulley he could use to slowly scale down.  Mama and Papa built it before he was born.  But it broke, and Izuku didn’t know how to fix it.  I lost two baby teeth trying…

It was safer to go out at the counter level than the floor.  There weren’t as many places to hold on to, and dangerous animals were more likely to be there.  He felt around for the loose board, then pushed it open to step out onto the countertop.  And sneezed.  The climb always left him covered in dust.  Before anything else, he needed water.  It was too early for condensation on the windows, so he went straight for the sink.  Izuku grabbed the cool metal of the cold water handle, and pushed with all his might until water trickled out.  He pulled a thimble tied with string from his bag.  The string went around the base of the faucet twice, before Izuku tossed the thimble into the stream of water.  He slowly heaved it back up, drank it all, then threw it back in.

“I need to get some ice on the way back,” he mumbled, washing himself off with the next round of water.  His bucket was good for getting water before trips and quick baths, but the best way of getting it back home was as ice cubes.  He could carry more by tying one to his back instead of hauling liquid in a big container, and he didn’t have to worry about it spilling.  Once it was there, it could melt into the cup.  The crayon shouldn’t take too long to get.  “Maybe I’ll have enough time left to make two trips.”

The last round of thimble water was covered in plastic wrap to save for later.  It was heavy in his bag, but it would be worth it if he ended up stranded.  Izuku learned that one the hard way.  Gear packed, he moved on. 

To get to the floor, he had to grapple down.  Easier said than done.  Izuku looped the string and paperclip around the knob of a drawer.  He pulled on it three times to check the hold.  Mama used to say, ‘When you think you’ve tested it enough, test it one more time to be sure.’  So he did.  He moved down the length of the rom to the side and sat down with his legs dangling over the counter’s edge.  With a deep breath, he pushed off.  By starting further from the knob, he was able to swing down to the floor without any hard stops that could have cost him his grip.  After one pass over, he put his feet down to stop himself.  He got the loop loose and back down to him on the first try.  He almost wished someone could have seen it.

From there, it was a straight shot to what used to be the old kids’ room.  They were what he was going to miss most.  They were messy and constantly lost things Izuku could borrow.  Even though he knew they were long gone, he found himself scanning the kitchen floor for thrown food and he ran by.  Nothing big stood out, and the roaches he sprinted by probably got all the crumbs.  The kids had funs things to borrow too.  There was of course the crayons, but the glowstick was theirs, along with fun colors for clothes and little toys Izuku told himself he’d borrow when they were older and done with them.  Plus, there was that childish hope in his heart that one day they could be friends.

Izuku thanked the stars above the new guy didn’t close the kids’ door.  He knew the route to get in from the walls, but this was easier.  Old habits forced him to move slowly through the empty room.  The place looked so different without any beds or toys left on the ground.  Open carpet left him no cover should something spot him.  He traveled along the wall, sidestepping clumps of hair the old family didn’t bother vacuuming.

I wonder what the new guy will use this room for, Izuku’s mind wandered.  He seemed kinda old.  Old guys on TV have offices.  That probably means more paperclips at least. 

At last, he reached the closet.  Dark as it was inside, the shape of the crayon shown like a spotlight under the shelf in the corner.  Izuku took a moment to sit down and catch his breath.  He didn’t take his eye of his target even as he took a drink from his thimble.  There was one final obstacle before he could claim his prize.  The reason he hadn’t gone for it before: Shelob.  A giant spider even the old family was scared of.  The dad called her that after he said she chased him away.  Izuku had seen her himself twice before.  Once when he got stuck hiding in the closet while the kids played.  That time she just sat in one spot on the wall and left him alone.  The second time was when he first went after the crayon.  She blocked the way while holding down a hissing roach.  Roaches were to Izuku what cats were to big people (in terms of size not companionship.)  Which meant Shelob was like a panther.  And he couldn’t see her yet.

Am I really doing this for just a crayon?  A shiver creeped up Izuku spine as he stood.  Maybe I should leave my bag behind, it could get caught in her web.  The crayon sat there like always.  He swallowed.  But what if I have to get away?  I’ll be stranded if I leave my stuff behind.  I mean, I know how to get home without my grappling hook, but it’s a lot more dangerous.  He tightened the drawstring around his shoulder.  This is a really bad idea. 

Slowly, Izuku drew his sword with shaking hands, and stepped forward.  Carpet crunched beneath his feet.  I’m a grownup now.  I have to be brave!  Each creak of the house drew his attention.  His heartbeat grew louder with every foot forward.  A thin layer of cobwebs covered his path.  He felt like the shelf above him was going to eat him.  But he made it.  A perfect red crayon rested at his feet.  The tip was almost completely sharp, it had been used maybe once.  Izuku hugged it when he picked it up, before turning around to make a run for it.

The thing about spiders is that they don’t make noise.  Even to tiny ears like Izuku’s, their footsteps are as quiet as a falling feather.  Even if he had turned around to look, Shelob had him cornered the moment he was under the shelf.  He screamed all the same. 

Izuku dove from her strike, landing his own into her side.  Cobwebs yanked his hair as he tried to get back up.  He could barely see her in the dark.  She went for him again.  He used the crayon to block a direct hit.  A fang grazed his leg.  Her own legs thrashed and clawed at the boy.  She was completely silent.  With a desperate yell, he jammed his needle into her too-many eyes, and ran.  Heart, lungs, and leg screaming in pain, he ran.  Tears clouded his vision.  He nearly tripped on a cluster of dust bunnies.  But Izuku didn’t stop until he was at the base of the counter.  Blood oozed down his leg, pooling in his paper shoes.  He still had the crayon, but not his sword.

Mama’s sword.

The climb back home was one of the longest he remembered.  Every step made his leg hurt more.  There was no relief when he walked inside.  The wound was still bleeding after all that.  Mama once said some bugs have poison in their bite. 

Am I gonna die?

Shaking all the while, he washed off the dirt and retrieved a bandage and the medicine gel from the important envelope.  The gel tube was all flat and pretty much empty.  Izuku only managed to squeeze out a drop the size his tiny palm.  It would have to do.  He used half his remaining water to clean his leg up.  The new guy would be up soon.  It was too late to get water, and his leg might not be able to handle another climb anyway.  Before, it was all red.  Like the crayon.

He eyed the offending object from across the room.  If only he hadn’t been so selfish.  That wasn’t something he needed.  But he had it now.  Tucked against the wall behind the important envelop were some paper scraps.  Izuku got them out and got to work coloring.  Red really was a fun, bright color.  He’d never had anything red before.  He wanted to be happy about it, but couldn’t stop sniffling.  Once filled in, he folded the scraps and wrapped them in tape.  Then he stuffed cloth patches too small for clothes inside, so his feet fit better.

Shoes.  New, nice shoes.  Like the ones he saw heroes wear on TV.  Red was too bright a color for outside.  Bad stuff would spot him easier.  He couldn’t wear them outside.  They were just to have.  He just wanted something nice for himself.  For his birthday.  And it cost him his sword, at least a day of water, and he might die of poison.  Izuku lied down on his sponge bed, starred at the ceiling, and cried.

Mama would be so disappointed in me…

Toshinori’s first day of cleaning was uneventful save finding a dead spider with a sewing needle in its face in a closet.  It seemed like the sort of thing that would instill a curse.  A ghost perhaps, he thought jokingly.  But Toshinori wasn’t superstitious.  So, he took the needle for his own sewing kit, vacuumed up the spider, and forgot about the whole thing by dinnertime.

Chapter Text

Izuku didn’t leave his home for three days.  He hardly got out of bed.  Fever came and went, along with sleep.  Sleep was scary for a while.  Mama said that he could die if he got sick.  Izuku didn’t wanna not wake up.  Tears that weren’t from pain were from fear.

On day four, he ran out of water.  He rationed it as best he could, but there wasn’t much left to begin with.  Mama said that if he ever had to choose between food or water, take water.  But it hurt to just walk around.  Climbing around to get an ice cube felt impossible.  And that was without worrying about the old guy.

He didn’t sleep much either, and left the house even less.  Everyday he milled about between meals, jumping between several activities before he’d finally settle on something, only to be interrupted by his food alarm.  He didn’t even leave to get food; some other big person brought groceries to his front door for him.  Izuku wished he could do that.

One of the only things the old guy did almost everyday around the same time for a long time was read on the porch outside in the early evening.  That was Izuku’s best bet for a water run.

Izuku spent all day prepping.  He paced around his house to get used to the pain, practiced lassoing stuff with his grappling hook, and checked lots of times to make sure his bag didn’t have any holes. 

All that to lose his nerve once he reached the countertop.  The fridge and the floor were both so far, and his leg hurt so much.  His head felt funny too.  And he felt naked without his sword.  He could just see the old guy’s blond hair through the window.  Ice was a bad idea.  So Izuku filled up his thimble from the sink and went home.

I’m gonna die… he thought through tears back in bed.  Laying down did nothing to make his leg stop hurting.  He was scared to unwrap the bandages.  The bite was red and leaky the last time he checked it the other day.  And now the bandage turned brown.  What if it never gets better?  What if it gets so bad my leg falls off?  What am I gonna do?

Momma got the tube of medicine when he was even littler.  So little he couldn’t remember very much.  Just that he got a big slinter in his arm, and he had to wait by himself longer than normal for her to come back from borrowing.  Izuku had no idea where it came from.  He had no idea where to start looking.

The door opened.

“Hang on just one second,” the old man said.  Izuku pulled himself to a hole to watch.  The man pulled a few pieces of paper out of a small case, and returned to the door.  “I am so sorry, I completely forgot I ordered anything.”

“Not a problem.  Have a good one!” an unfamiliar voice called.

“You too.”  The door shut.

More groceries, Izuku realized.  He watched intensely as the old man unpacked the bags, searching for anything that looked like the medicine tube.  But it was hard to focus with so much food.  He hadn’t even seen some of it before.  But he recognized fruits and vegetables, plus a huge slab of meat the old man took out of a fancy-looking package.  Izuku’s stomach growled.  He’d only had meat once or twice, and always cold, borrowed from leftovers in the fridge.  But the smell of it cooking was otherworldly.  Longingly, he watched the man put the meat in the fridge, trying to imagine what it might taste like.

But then, something caught his eye: a tube.  Just over the man’s shoulder, bigger than his own but the same shape and colors. 

Medicine!  It has to be!  Relief hit him so hard he almost lost his balance.

The man gathered the tube up with some shakers and took them to another room Izuku couldn’t see from his house.  It sounded like he went all the way to the bedroom on the other side of the building.

There was no time to waste.  Tired and hurt, Izuku didn’t know how much longer he could go without the medicine.  The man might move the stuff somewhere else if he waited.  Izuku got to work on a plan while he got his gear back on.  It was almost sunset.  I could travel through the walls while the man was still awake, then wait for him to sleep or leave the room to eat to search for the tube.  If I’m done before sunrise, I can run back on the floor.  It’s perfect!

But he would need all the strength he could get to make it from one end of the house to the other and back.  So, he put on his new red shoes.

“Finally…” Toshinori mumbled to himself.  The wasp spray he ordered finally came in.  It was going to be nice to use the bathroom closest to his room.  All he had to do was work up the courage to use it.

Izuku hated traveling above the ceiling.  It was dark, dirty, and he wasn’t alone.  Every moment he stepped over the squishy foam floor, he was surrounded by movement.  The crunchy scratching of bugs kept him on alert.  He knew it was mostly cockroaches, but that didn’t relax him.  They could grow as big as him, and they could swarm in groups.  And that was besides whatever else could be up there with him.  There could be beetles, spiders, or worse: a rat.

He’d only seen a rat once before.  Mama woke him up in the night to make him look out the window at it.  Even far away and in the dark, it was huge.  It scurried across the kitchen floor, and climbed up the counter without any gear like it was nothing.  And Mama said it would eat them if it caught them.  He still had nightmares about it sometimes.

After a week without borrowing waiting for it to pass, Mama took him out to teach him how to tell if a rat was nearby.  Those were: scratch marks, nesting materials, and droppings.  Light came through holes in the roof in tiny amounts.  Just enough for Izuku to make out markings on the walls, but not enough he could tell for sure if a rat made them or not.  The smart thing to do would be to get closer and check for sure.  But the other smart thing to do was keep going so he spent as little time as possible in the open.  Izuku did the second one.

He should have done the first.  Over the next ridge of foam, a giant creature slept curled up in Izuku’s path.  He froze.  It was bigger than the rat had been, and much fuzzier.  Izuku tried to take a step back, but lost his footing on the incline and tumbled down towards it.  He crashed right into dirty fur, and the creature jumped with a shriek.  Izuku did the same.  He scrambled for the nearest crevice he could find before the giant animal could spot him.  But two steps inside the little hole, and he fell far down onto something hard.

“Ow…” he whimpered aloud.  Above him, the rat-thing scurried around.  Izuku’s vision spun as his head throbbed.  It steadied slowly.  He was lying on his back on a cold, hard surface.  Dust blew around him while something hummed in the distance.  A square metal tunnel.  “An, an air duck?”  Mama told him about something like this once.  Big people built them to suck up and store different kinds of air.  It made the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  Mama said they would have died without them and there was nothing inside they could borrow anyway, so it was best not to mess with them.  Which meant Izuku had never been in one, and had no idea how to get out.

He fell through a crack in the paneling.  It was as high up as three or four of him.  Grappling might have worked, but then he’d have to deal with the big rat again.  Back and head still hurting, Izuku got up and started walking. 

Everywhere looked the same.  Long grey halls branched off into even more long grey halls.  All the dust made his shoes dirty.  It was cold too.  Izuku didn’t have much gear for cold weather, but he would have brought it had he known this would happen.  All the while the noise hummed so loud he could barely think.

I don’t even know where I am in the house anymore…  The pain in his leg spread up his hip.  It’s getting worse.  He forced back tears and marched forward.

Suddenly, he heard talking.  On impulse he rushed towards it.  And almost snapped his ankle through bars in the floor.  Izuku stopped and slammed a hand over his mouth.  He could see all the way to the floor.  The old guy muttered to himself, and paced in front of a door.

I know where I am now!  Izuku beamed, then immediately settled.  But how do I get out?  How do I get down? 

Either way he took off in the direction of the old guy’s bedroom.  Every room in the house had one of those vents.  One of them must have a way out.  He’d start with the one closest to his mission.

But something changed as he ran.  The humming of the tunnel gained a new sound: buzzing.  Izuku stepped past a corner and jumped back right away.  His blood ran cold and his body shook.  Even the rat hadn’t frightened him so much.

Wasps.  Dozens of them.  The made a nest on one of the vents and cover that whole section of hallway.  If one saw him with so many others nearby, he was done for. 

So, he had two options.  Turn around find another way out, or try and get by.  The first would take longer and take that much more of a toll; the second risked certain death.  Izuku was in no position to be running.  His leg was swollen and his whole side hurt.  Walking past a wasp nest was too dangerous. 

…  Is it even worth it to keep going for the medicine? he asked himself, leaning against the cold wall.  I’ve come this far already, and who knows what’ll happen if I don’t get it?  He shuddered a sigh.  With a heavy heart and heavier leg, Izuku turned around.  Maybe he could at least find a safe spot to hunker down for the night.

But the world would not be so kind.

Toshinori groaned heavily as he stared into the mirror.  “Get it together, it’s just a bunch of bugs!” he hissed at his reflection.  I’ve faced countless villains.  People who could have turned me inside out if I made a wrong move.  These are wasps.  They barely have two braincells to rub together and if they get you at worst it’ll hurt a bit.  The sun was starting to go down.  He really didn’t want to worry about those buggers coming through the vents to stink him in his sleep.  But he also wanted them gone already.  “Just do it!  Now or never!”

He grabbed the poison spray off the counter and stomped to the bathroom door.  A shiver went up his spine.  God, I hate it here…  He shook up the can with one final deep breath.  Then he opened the door, sprayed the vent for a full three seconds, and slammed it shut again. 

Still the best!  Toshinori went right to the kitchen both to avoid any wasps that got out from the door, and to make himself a congratulatory dinner.

A few seconds later, he heard screaming.

The vibrations of the slammed door shook Izuku’s feet.  The buzzing got louder.  He ran.  Thuds of bugs hitting the walls echoed through the tunnels.  He felt their angry wingbeats in his teeth.  Each time he stepped on his hurt leg, pain went up his whole back.  But he had to get away.  He had to.

I have to.

He didn’t. 

A bug slammed into his back, knocking him to the ground.  It stung him in the side.  Izuku screamed.  He couldn’t stop himself.  But the buzzing dominated his ears.  It stabbed him again.  Venom and blood dripped from the wound. 

Desperately, Izuku grabbed the grappling hook from his belt and slammed it into the bug’s head.  It crunched.  The body still thrashed even after Izuku threw it off.  No time to finish it off.  More were coming. 

But he couldn’t think through all the pain, and his leg fell between the grate of a vent.  His face hit hard plastic. 

“Mama!  Mama!” he cried.  Tears made it so he couldn’t see.

Another wasp tackled him, this one stinging his free thigh.  Words devolved into wails.  He swung his hook hard but kept missing.  With his leg caught, he couldn’t turn over or crawl away. 

Wings blew dust in his face, choking him.  The wasp gripped his shoulder with piercing mandibles.  It wound up to sting again. 

Izuku pulled his arms close to his body, slipped through the grate, and fell.

Toshinori moved towards the screaming.  The ghost never screamed before.  It was a faint scream, like something far away yet it was clearly coming from the ceiling.  Like it wasn’t far at all, but tiny. 

Then he saw it: a small, itty bitty human leg flailing through the gaps in the air vent.  He rubbed his eyes, but it was still there.

“What the…?”  Toshinori walked closer.

The screaming dulled and the leg stilled.  The rest of the body fell through.

“Shit!”  The hero instincts kicked in.  Toshinori caught the little person before they could fall more than a foot.  A wasp tried to follow, but he slammed the little demon into the wall and crushed it under his fist.

From his other fist came a little sound.  But the man holding him couldn’t help but pause.  It was truly a little human being, no bigger than five inches tall.  He wore a patchwork dress and little red paper shoes.  One leg was bandaged.  He had a small, pudgy face with freckles the size of sand grains.  The first thing Toshinori thought was how tiny a brush and steady a hand a painter would need to add such detail. 

No way.  He swallowed.  I’ve seen shrinking quirks before, but this is new.

A moment past, and the little boy started screaming again.  He curled into himself and held his sides.

“You’re hurt,” he whispered, carefully taking him to his room.  Toshinori set him on a pillow before digging out the first aide kit.  Good thing I just got this stuff.  Carefully, as he could, he pulled the dress over the boy’s head to get a better look at his wounds.  The wasps did a number on the poor thing.  He washed the blood free from the three stings with a washcloth before rubbing them all with antibacterial gel.  He could feel every one of the child’s ribs under his thumb.  “Oh, my boy, what happened?”

Screaming became hard breathing, which became ever quieter as Toshinori worked.  Pale skin reddened.  Fever was setting in.  The wound under the bandage was already showing signs of infection.  Who knew how bad such a tiny body would be affected by insect venom?

That’s when it sunk in.  This is a person.  This is a whole person smaller than my hand!  And not just a person.  A child!  He can’t be older than ten!  Why is he here?  Where are his parents?

He called Recovery Girl.  By some miracle, he explained the strange situation coherently.  Though texting a picture helped.

“Goodness!” she exclaimed.  “Did you clean all his wounds?”

“And dressed,” he said, cradling the little boy wrapped in the towel.  Said boy passed out around the start of the call.  “Is he going to be okay?  Should I take him to the hospital?”

“Hmm.  I’d advise against it in this case.  You can’t drive well with your arm in a sling and the nearest hospital is almost three hours from you anyway.  Transit might be risky for someone so small,” she explained.  She tutted over some papers.  “Just keep an eye on him for now, most important thing is for him to rest.  I’m going to be up tonight anyway so don’t hesitate to call if he goes south.”

“And shouldn’t I call someone about him?  What if someone’s missing him?”

She hesitated.  “Like I said, getting through the night is priority number one, and that means he needs to rest and not be moved to much.  And something tells me he’s been on his own for quite a while…”

Toshinori looked back at the little satchel of tools rigged from small objects.  A paperclip and string no doubt for climbing, a covered thimble full of water, clothes made from scraps.  This wasn’t a child at play who wandered into the wrong house, this was a boy fighting for survival.

That boy moaned in his sleep.  Teeny little hands gripped the edge of the towel he was wrapped in.  Toshinori, unsure why, gently brushed hair from the kid’s sweaty brow.

“Just gotta get through one more night, my boy…”  How many nights did he have to brave alone?  He watched spindly fingers twitch in restless sleep.  Kids like you should be worried about what their favorite cartoon character is up to, not when they’re gonna eat next.  Well, no more.  “Just get some rest, okay?  I’ll be right here the whole time.”

Chapter Text

Toshinori didn’t sleep that night.  He almost didn’t eat he was so scared to take his eyes off the tiny child.  As soon as he looked away, he would stop breathing.  He just knew it. 

The little boy cried in his sleep.  A few tiny tears tracked down his pudgy, fever-flushed face.  Baby fat, all of it, given how malnourished the rest of his body looked.  It made it hard to estimate how old he was.  Toshinori locked his fingers in place around the bundled towel.  Any tighter, and he could crush all those twig-like bones. 

For what must have been the fifth time, he carefully unraveled the towel to inspect the boy’s stings.  Two massive welts bulged from his side and thigh.  They were no bigger than the sting on Toshinori’s own hand, but on such a small form, they looked like tumors.  Pain made him twitch.

If mine hurts as much as it does, imagine what he’s feeling.  Poor little guy… he though to himself.  He forced himself to pop a few crackers in his mouth. 

The stings weren’t his only injuries.  Most obvious was the inflamed gash on his leg, likely in the early stages of infection.  The white antibiotic cream barely hid the angry red.  There were all sorts of little scars and scraps all over his body too.  Especially his hands.  That, combined with how thin he was and the well-worn survival kit, told him this wasn’t just a lost child at play.

Has…  has he been living here?  In my house?  Toshinori gently held the doll-sized hand between his thumb and index finger, and was surprised to feel warmth coming from it, even though he knew the boy was alive.  For how long?  He could feel the little boy’s heartbeat, and reckoned the heart itself must have been no bigger than an apple seed.  You poor thing…

The boy shivered, and Toshinori wrapped him back up again.

Another bite of crackers.

There’s no way.  Absolutely no way a little child like this could survive on his own in the walls of somebody’s house long enough to get this messed up!  And yet, here he was.  Fighting off a fever from wasp stings after falling out of an air duct.  He had a paperclip grappling hook and a little patchwork dress.  The little heap on the side table told a desperate story of survival.  If Toshinori had found his little pile of things without context, he would have assumed it was garbage.  His shoes are made of paper for god’s sake!

He reached across the couch for his phone, and checked the hero network for missing children.  Good news: no children reported missing in the area.  Bad news: no leads on his little house guest. 

Shifting gears, he searched up extreme size mutation quirks.  Giants were the more common form.  Toshinori visited their colossal cities once or twice for work.  But surprisingly, there was very little information about quirks that made people the size of dolls.  A request for housing accommodations here, a woman giving birth to a baby the size of a jellybean there, always isolated incidents without follow-ups.  There were a handful of social media groups for shrinking quirks, but none he could see in Japan with recent activity.  In fact, none of the info he found seemed recent.  The inclusive living actions seemed to drop off the earth at least a decade prior. 

He typed, ‘where are the shrinking quirks?’ and got a gruesome answer.  People with small size quirks, or ‘borrowers’ as one article dubbed them after a series of pre-quirk children’s books about tiny people, had an incredibly high mortality rate.  Lack of public quirk accommodations meant few job prospects, limited housing options, and virtually no health care.  No jobs meant no money for food or clothing, no homes meant shaking up with questionable landlords or living on the streets, and no health care meant any injury had the potential to be life threatening.  And at that size, there was so much more danger in the world.  With no recorded registrations in ten years, borrower quirks were believed to be all but extinct in Japan.

Toshinori pulled the little bundle closer to his chest.  Oh you poor thi-  The towel was empty. 

“Shit!”  He desperately looked around.  Under the towel.  Carefully around his legs in case he accidently sat on him.  Movement drew his eye.  The little boy, naked and pale, stood out like a sore thumb against the ugly brown couch.  He limped pathetically over the leather wrinkles to the edge.  Toshinori didn’t even have to get up to reach him.  “Oh.  Come here little one- Ow!”  Did he just bite me!?  He scooped up his tiny target and, sure enough, that angry squishy face clung to the skin of his palm with teeth smaller than a broken pencil tip.  Deep enough to draw blood.  But it didn’t last.  Just a few drops were enough to clog his throat, and the kid let go with a wet cough.  Toshinori gave him a moment to breathe, then wrapped him up to his chin.

“Let me go!” the boy cried.  He struggled like mad.  Toshinori hardly felt it. 

“Hey, calm down.  It’s okay.  It’s okay,” he tried to soothe.  But the poor kid’s defiant yells devolved into incoherent sobs.  Tears that looked too big for his tiny eyes spilled down his reddened face.  The sight pierced right through Toshinori’s heart.  Without thinking, he gently brushed his thumb over the mop of green hair.  “Shh, it’s okay.”  Shaking, the child tried to pull his head away.  Toshinori didn’t push it.  “My name is Yagi Toshinori, what’s yours?”

“P-please don’t e-eat me!” he begged.

“W-what?” sputtered a flabbergasted Toshinori.  “What on earth makes you think I would eat you?”

“’A-anything tht’s bigger than you can eat you.’  That’s what Mama said.”  Two more tears fell in sync. 

“And where is Mama?”  Silence.  The boy was frozen save little shivers, wide eyes looking right through Toshinori’s soul.  So…  No Mama then.  I can’t believe this…  He threw back his head with a sigh.  “Well, I’m not gonna eat you.  Promise.”

“You, you could be lying!” he accused.  His eyes watched his mouth.  It wasn’t completely irrational for a child that small to fear a stranger who could eat him in two bites.

“Okay, how about this,” he began.  “Most things who would eat you don’t stop to talk, would they?”

The boy seemed to consider this a moment.  But before he could respond, Toshinori’s food alarm went off.  Six a.m.  He sighed, annoyed.

“Up for breakfast?  Any requests?” he asked him.  Still no answer.  No way he trusted him not to run off again.  He got up with the swaddled boy still tucked in one arm to go to the fridge.  Usually, he just had a scrambled egg with a bunch of cheese for breakfast, but that seemed awful plain to serve someone else.  Especially a kid who looked like he hadn’t had a real meal in months.  Some pork cuts caught his eye.  “How do you feel about katsudon?” 

“What’s that?”

“Deep fried pork and egg over rice.”

This silence came with a blank expression that said he had no idea what any of that was. 

What kinda kid doesn’t know about katsudon? Toshinori wondered.  Doesn’t sem to know what pork and eggs are either…  Maybe he really did grow up on scraps.  He fought back more pity.  Well, it’s not really a breakfast food but let’s hope he likes it.

He set the boy on the kitchen table while he got started on food prep.  The little bundle was quiet for the first few minutes.  Toshinori almost forgot he was there.  Then, a harsh sniffle cut through the kitchen.

“What’s wrong, little guy?”  Besides being captured.

“It hurts,” he wailed.

“Ah.”  The stings.  Toshinori retrieved the antibiotic cream and the little shirt, and unwrapped him.  He looked up cautiously.  “You wanna put it on yourself?” he asked, figuring if he knew how to bandage his leg wound, he’d know how to apply the medicine.  Sure enough, the boy took a drop of gel off the tube and carefully rubbed it over his stings.  They already looked smaller than before.  Toshinori rubbed some on his own sting, as well as the little bite mark the boy gave him.  A tiny ring of even tinier holes at the base of his index finger.  At least he’s got a taste for meat.

He left him the shirt to put on at his leisure.  He wasn’t wild about the kid wearing a dirty rag over his wounds, but they didn’t exactly have options.  Yet anyway.  Toshinori was already running measurement estimates in his head for ordering clothes. 

What are you thinking, dumbass?  It’s not like you’re keeping him.

The katsudon turned out nice.  Toshinori almost grabbed two bowls.  Instead, he got one for himself, and a small sauce plate for his guest.  Said guest had curled back up in the towel in the meantime.  Not asleep, but dead tired.  Toshinori cut up some pieces of pork as quietly as he could.

“Soup’s on, kid,” he called lightly, pushing the small plate of pork and rice towards him.  The boy crawled out of the towel slowly, though more weak than cautious this time.  Toshinori hoped the medicine would kick in soon.  He reached out for a little piece, then immediately recoiled.

“Ow!”

“What’s wrong?  Too hot?”

“It burns,” he whimpered.  “You lied!  You said you wouldn’t hurt me!”

“Kid,” Toshinori, more exasperated by the minute, said.  “Just wait a little bit, it’ll cool off.”  He eyed him suspiciously.  “Seriously?  Have you never had hot food before?”  It came out a little meaner than he meant.  But the tiny child’s expression didn’t change.  Yeesh, a few weeks out of practice and I’m already yelling at kids… 

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t right to snap at you,” he apologized.  He picked up the plate and blew on it a little.  After he set it down, he took a bite of his own meal.  “See?  It’s safe.  I promise.”

The boy waited a few moments and a few mouthfuls before he tried again.  He needed two hands to hold even the smallest piece of pork Toshinori cut for him.  He was about to offer to cut it smaller, when the kid took a bite. 

And his whole face lit up.  The first piece was gone in an instant.  Then another.  The boy inhaled every piece of pork and rice on his plate in record time with a contagious smile.  As he scooped up grease to like off his hands, Toshinori poured seconds from his own bowl.  The kid dove right in with a muttered “Thank you.”  Toshinori was so enthralled with his enthusiasm he almost forgot to eat himself.

He really hasn’t had something like this before? Toshinori wondered.  He recalled the info about people with borrower quirks, and the dots connected.  A poor mother with no place in society surviving off its scraps.  No money or means to cook a hot meal, probably fishing cold bits out of the trash to feed her young son.  Then, something happened to her, and her baby was left all alone… 

“How long have you been in the house?” he asked.

“Forever,” the boy responded innocently.  He munched on a scallion.

Maybe he was too young to remember coming here.  Or, what if he was born here?  “Were you alone?”

“Mhmm.”  A slight twinge of sadness.  Getting warmer.

“Do you know how long?”

“Four,” he answered with the accompanying number of fingers.

“Four what?  Days?  Weeks?”

“Years, I think,” he said, stuffing his cheeks with rice.  Toshinori’s jaw dropped.  The boy counted his fingers.  “Five, six, seven, eight!  I’m eight now!  And I was alone when I was four!”

Eight!?  He’s practically a baby!  And he’s been alone for all that!?

“What happened when you were four?  Why are you alone?” he questions worriedly.

The boy broke eye contact.  “Papa left.”

“Alright,” Toshinori sighed.  “What about Mama?”

He pretended to ignore him.  And after food had made him so chatty.

Toshinori’s face fell into his hands.  When he looked up, the boy had crawled back into the towel.  He sniffled again.  Okay, Mama is officially a touchy subject. 

He finished his own meal and washed the dishes.  His phone stood out in the corner of his eye the whole time.  The better part of his judgment said to call someone about finding an orphan.  Surely, he was better off in the hands of experts.  But what then?  Throw him in the system?  Bounce him between foster families?  I know how awful that is…  And all those articles said borrower quirks were practically extinct in Japan.  What if he’s the last of his kind?  Even if he survives the foster system, he may never have a community.  Not to mention the world just isn’t built for him.  There’s nobody prepared to take care of someone so small.  And I am?  Toshinori shuttered.  When he finished cleaning, boy remained where he’d left him.  By then, the sun peeked through the window.  He sat back down, and gently touched the boy’s hair again.  He didn’t flinch this time.

“All that food make you sleepy?”

“Mhmm.”  He yawned.  Toshinori would be lying if he said it wasn’t adorable. 

“Since you’re alone…”  He bit his lip.  What am I thinking?  He’s child, not a pet!  But it’s not like I can just dump him by himself somewhere.  “Is it okay if I take care of you?  At least until your injuries heal?”

The answer was so quiet, Toshinori thought at first he imagined it.  “…  Okay.”

He let go of a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.  With new fondness, he brushed the boy’s hair again.

“You never told me your name.”

“Izuku,” came the tiniest of whispers.

Toshinori smiled.  “Sleep well, Izuku.”  And he left to go do some more research.

The man, Yagi Toshinori, left.  He took his warmth with him.  Izuku suddenly felt like crying again, but didn’t know why.

Chapter Text

Izuku knew he was small, but he didn’t usually feel like it.  Yes, most living things were bigger than him, and his world was made of structures and items made by and for creatures who could (in theory, Yagi said he wouldn’t but still) swallow him whole.  But Izuku didn’t feel small.  Other things were just big.  And only when he stopped to compare.  No sense of wrongness or being out of place.  He didn’t believe the world wasn’t built for him.  Except for sometimes.  Like when he woke up, flat on his back, crushed by the weight of the vast emptiness between him and the ceiling he couldn’t see the edge of.  Izuku suddenly felt very small in the moment.

With a yelp, he curled up tight under the towel wrapping him.  It was about as thick as his arm, and felt far too thin a barrier between himself and the nothingness.  The wasp stings twisted with pain.  He fought down the tears threatening to spill.  It wasn’t like he’d never seen the ceiling before.  It was just usually too dark to make out much when he ran under it.  And he didn’t look up much anyway.  And the ceiling in the kitchen wasn’t as bad as the one outside.  It was so big, Mama called it something different: the sky.  That was way scarier.  Mama even let him close his eyes.

Izuku forced his eyes open and peaked outside his little burrow.  He was still on the kitchen table.  The loose tile on the counter leading to his home was right across.  His grappling hook’s rope was probably long enough to catch the sink if he could throw it that far.  But his gear was back-

“Little Midoriya?” the big man, Yagi spoke above him.  “It’s been a few hours.  Would you like to reapply the stuff for your stings?” 

Words from a mouth that could fit all of Izuku at once.  He said he wouldn’t, but the image still scared him.  And maybe he wouldn’t eat him, but he could still hurt him really easy.  The stings hurt bad enough.  The more he woke up, the more they hurt.  Just pulling back his arm from looking outside made him whimper.  And he didn’t even want to look at the wound on his leg.

I messed up really bad this time, huh? he thought.  I can’t run away like this.  I can’t go get food or water.  I don’t even have my sword to fight back with…  He sniffled.  Mama would be so disappointed. 

“You alright?  Still there?”  Something big touched his back.  He squeaked in surprise, and it left.  Then, a finger as wide as Izuku’s body carefully lifted up the edge of the towel.  His face turned sad.  “Oh, kid.  What’s wrong?  Are you in pain?”  He pulled back the cover, exposing Izuku once again to empty air.  He shuddered and shut his eyes.  “How long have you been like this?  You could have called for help if you were hurting.”  Izuku felt him drag him and the towel closer.  “Did, did you call for help?” he asked guiltily. 

Izuku hesitated, then shook his head. 

Yagi reached out of sight for the medicine tube.  “Do you want to put it on yourself, or would you like some help?”

“I can do it,” he mumbled.

“What was that?”  He leaned in too fast.  Izuku flinched.  Even his voice wasn’t meant to be around big people.

“I said I can do it!” he shouted.  Yagi straightened out, surprised, but he opened the tube and left it by Izuku’s side before walking away.

Izuku was starting to hate medicine.  It was supposed to make him feel better, but when he put it on the stings, they just hurt more.  That didn’t seem fair.  But it must have done something.  He’d been using the tube in his house all his life, and as soon as he ran out and hurt his leg, it got all gross and made him sick.  Now, even though his leg still hurt, it wasn’t as red and puffy as before.

Once he was done, Izuku crawled back under the towel.  The stink from the medicine got stuck under there with him, but he didn’t want to feel exposed.  But if he kept his head under, he couldn’t watch for danger.  This wasn’t his house with hard walls and one way in.  But if he curled up and closed his eyes, it was kind of like being back home under his blanket.  Not the smell though.  Carefully, Izuku pulled off his shirt, and balled it up into a little pillow.  He buried his face in it.  It smelled like home.  Like Mama.

Later, the table shook.

“Dinner,” Yagi declared. 

The instant Izuku raised his head, a powerful, delicious smell greeted his senses.  A new smell.  He got to know some smells over the years.  Rice, popcorn, grilled fish, peanut butter cookies.  That’s what the old family said they were anyway.  This was something else.  Something Izuku didn’t have the words for. 

He poked his head out to a plate of…  Something.  Yellowish squares bigger than his head stacked almost as tall as him covered in reddish-orange slime with little green bits in it.  Yagi picked up a square with his fork and moved it onto a smaller plate close to Izuku.  Steam came off it.  He cut the pillow-like square in half to reveal mushy brown stuff inside.

“Ravioli,” Yagi answered Izuku’s unasked question.  He put a little stick on the plate.  “Be careful, It’s hot.  If you want, you can use that toothpick to cut it up a little more.”  He popped one into his mouth. 

Izuku winced.  But he was hungry.  He reached out and pawed along the table to pull the towel closer to the plate.  This way, he didn’t have to get out fully.  He sat up with the fabric at his back, and stabbed a piece of ‘ravioli’ with the toothpick.  It tasted just as good as it smelled.

“Where’s your shirt, kid?” the big man broke the silence.

“Here.  Just took it off,” he responded, making sure to be loud.

“Why so?”

“…  Itchy.”  He didn’t want to confess to his homesickness.  If he did, Yagi might ask where his home was.  Or try to take him there.  He didn’t want a big person to know where he lived.  Then he’d have to move.  He’d been all over the house, and his home was by far the best spot.  Plus, he’d always lived there.

“Funny you say that…”  Yagi went to another room.  Izuku didn’t watch him go, just focused on how warm the food was.  He felt the giant footsteps coming back in his chest.  “I made you, uh, these.”  The man held up a solid red shirt between his fingers.  More clothes sat in his palms behind them.  “I know they’re probably not great, but I-I’d feel better if you wore something I know is clean over those injuries.

Izuku’s jaw dropped.  Material to make clothes was one of the hardest things to find without drawing attention.  That’s why his one shirt was all tiny patches.  The one big patch he sewed himself made the last family think they had mice.  He couldn’t use his favorite paths for weeks they were so full of poison.  And here were a bunch of shirts and pants all cut from the same cloth.  Right next to a giant plate of warm food just given to him instead of pieces taken cold.  Along with a big tube of medicine the man knowingly left him alone with.  Something warm that wasn’t the food circled his chest.  It was all too good to be true.

What if it is?  He remembered another lesson from Mama.  About mouse traps.  Food left out in an easy place was probably bait.  He still heard the deafening snap from when Mama threw something to set off the trap in his dreams.  And even if there wasn’t a trap, that food was probably poisoned.

“…  I like my shirt,” Izuku argued.

Yagi sighed.  “You don’t have to get rid of it.  Just, well, these are just options.  Wouldn’t it be nice to wear something different every day?”  Like big people, he probably meant. 

What if he knows I wanted to be more like big people when I was little?  Mama used to say some of them had special powers, like mindreading.  What if it’s all a trick?  But for what?  I’m too hurt to go anywhere and he’s way stringer than me anyway, even if I still had my sword.  He glanced at the clothes, then to Yagi, waiting patiently for a reaction.  But it still doesn’t feel right…

“Look kid, you’re hurt pretty bad.  And laying around in dirty clothes is probably going to make it worse,” he explained.  Izuku dropped eye contact.  Yagi sighed again.  “Will you at least try one or two on after dinner?”

“…  Fine.”

“Thank you.”  He went back to his own meal.  They were quiet for a little bit before he said something else.  “Is that really your only shirt?  Or do you have more back where you live.”

“Just one,” Izuku said simply.  I was right!  He is trying to find out where I live.

“Oh…”  He sounded sad.  Not what Izuku expected.  “I imagine, bits of clothes are hard for someone like you to come by, eh?”

He really is a mind reader!  Izuku swallowed a mouthful hard.  What do I do?  Instinct and Mama’s teaching told him to run and hide, but he circled back to that same train of thought about how he was already caught.  So he figured he might as well ask something else.

“When did you make all these?”

“While you were asleep.  You were zonked for a couple hours.  Most of the day actually,” Yagi told him.

“…  Don’t grownups have to go to work during the day?”  The old family’s grownups did.  The kids too during most of the year.  But Yagi hadn’t left for more than an hour since he moved it.

“Well, uh…”  He bit his lip and nodded.  “I’m taking some time away from my job.  I got hurt, and need time to recover.”  He gestured to the cast on his arm.  “That’s why I moved out here actually.  The fresh air is supposed to be good for you.”  He grumbled something under his breath Izuku couldn’t hear.  Big people could apparently be hard to hear too, even up close.  “What about you, huh?  What do you do when you’re not looking for food and fighting off bugs?”

“Wait.”

Yagi paused for Izuku to say more, but he didn’t.  “Wait?  For what?”

“Big people to go to sleep, so I can find food and supplies,” Izuku told him.  Was that not obvious enough?  Maybe Yagi wasn’t a mind reader after all.

“Okay then.  What do you do while you wait?”

“…  Wait?”  Izuku didn’t understand.

“But don’t you do anything while you wait?  Something to pass the time?”  They boy stared back at him lost.  “You’re what?  Eight?  Don’t you have any toys?  Or games you like to play?”  Izuku shook his head.  “I, I saw your little shoes.  You colored them with crayon, right?  Do you like to color?”

“Sometimes, like with the shoes…” he admitted.  “Paper is a tool, and Mama and Papa didn’t like me coloring on the walls.”

It was Yagi’s turn to drop his jaw.  He slouched back in his chair, and stared at Izuku for the longest time.  As Izuku finished his ravioli, Yagi leaned forward with his mouth behind folded fists.  His trance broke when Izuku burped, and he smiled.

“Well, speaking of being hurt, Recovery Girl is coming tomorrow,” he said.

Izuku lit up.  “The Healing Hero!?”

“You know heroes?”  He cocked his head to the side. 

“Yeah, the old family used to watch them on TV all the time!  Wait, Recovery Girl is your doctor!?”  Izuku couldn’t believe it.  The little ‘too good to be true’ logic alarm was going off again, but he really had to know.

“Yes, she is,” his smile growing as he spoke.  “And she’ll probably want to take a look at you too, Little Midoriya.”

Izuku warred with himself inside.  On one hand, another big person would see and know him and therefor be able to hurt him.  On the other, the chance to meet a real hero like on TV.  Izuku admittedly didn’t always know what was real on TV.  He had no scope of reference besides the old family parents telling the kids something wasn’t real when they cried about something that happened.  But then they’d talk about other stuff like it was important and ‘real.’  So it was really cool to find out someone he like was one of the real things.  He wondered what else.

“If she’s your doctor, does that mean you know other heroes!?” he grilled the giant man.

“Yes, actually.  I know quite a few.”  For the first time, Izuku wasn’t afraid of the teeth Yagi flashed in his smile.

“How about All Might?”

Yagi coughed away his smile.  “A-All Might, huh?  You, you like him do you?”

“Yeah.  He was my favorite!” 

“Heh.  Was?”  He smiled again, but not as big as before.

“Yeah!  I haven’t heard about him in a while though.  The old family moved away and you don’t watch TV.”  Izuku wiggled in place from excitement.  “Do you know him though?  What’s he been doing!?  Has he been in any cool fights!?”

Yagi looked up and rubbed his face.  “Sorry, kid.  I don’t know him too well.”  He inhaled deeply.  “I’ve seen him around, but I can’t say we’ve talked much.  Too much of a bigshot to pay attention to guys like me…  Never seemed like the type of guy I’d get along with anyway…”

“Oh…” Izuku whispered.  He sunk back into the towel.  Sure he was disappointed, but it was cool enough to know someone as great as All Might was really out there, even if Izuku would probably never get to see him.  He’d never get to see a lot of things.  The world wasn’t meant for him.  And he just like that he was sad again.  So he changed the subject.  “If you know all these heroes, does that mean you’re a hero, Mr. Yagi?”

The man, who looked so much older all of the sudden, looked back at him quietly for a long time.

“Allegedly.”

It was dark when Izuku woke up again.  Enclosed.  With a dull stream of light from small windows.

Am I…  Back home?  He tried to sit up, but flinched at the stings.  He uncovered to look at them.  They were smaller than yesterday.  The medicine really did work.  Then he realized the blanket in his hand wasn’t his blanket, but the towel.  Oh…

“Little Midoriya?  Are you awake?” Yagi greeted.  The shelter over Izuku lifted, revealing it to be an empty tissue box.  Instead of the kitchen outside, he recognized the main bedroom.  “Recovery Girl is here.  You ready?”

“…  What’s she gonna do?”

“Just look at your stings and such.  Make sure you aren’t hurt to bad.”

“Is she gonna heal me with her quirk?” he asked, almost but not quite excited.

“We’ll see.”  Yagi gently drew his fingers under the towel bundle Izuku was in.  Despite the slowness, the motion made Izuku queasy.  He buried himself back under.  Every footstep reverberated through his whole body.  “Here he is,” Yagi spoke softly.  They stopped moving.  Cold air hit his back as the towel was opened.

“Oh my goodness!” an old lady’s voice exclaimed quietly.  Izuku turned over to see.  It took him a second to recognize Recovery Girl without her hero costume.  Wonder at the presence of a real hero from TV battled with object terror at another big person.  The latter won enough to make him shake.  “It’s alright, sweetie.  I promise I won’t hurt you.”  She turned to Yagi.  “Put him on the coffee table, please.”  He did.  Izuku laid stiff.  “Could you please step out of there so I can have a look at you?”

Slowly, Izuku dragged himself from the comfortable hovel he’d occupied for the past day.  Chilling cold air hit every part of him.  He zeroed in on the wood pattern at his feet, if only to hold off looking up.

“Poor thing,” he heard Yagi whisper.

“And what’s your name, sweetie?” Recovery Girl prompted.

“Mi-Midoriya I-Izuku,” he stammered.

“And do you know who I am?”

“Recovery Girl.  You’re a doctor hero.  I-I saw you on TV…”  He folded his arms over his rattling chest. 

“Would you like Yagi to leave while I look you over?”  The man in question leaned over the couch.  Watching.  “Or would you feel better if he stayed?”  Izuku looked up at him nervously.

“Whatever you wanna do, kid,” he assured.  “I’ll either just stay here, or I’ll go get breakfast ready.”

Breakfast sounds good…  “You can go.”

“Okay.”  He stood straight.  “I’ll have food ready by the time you’re done, don’t worry.”

Izuku regretted his choice the moment he lost sight of him.  Recovery Girl’s hands were as cold as the air.  She thankfully didn’t touch him too much.  Just when he applied new medicine to his stings (one that didn’t hurt) and wrapped his leg with a small bandage.  The worst one though was the freezing metal circle connected by tubes to her ears she put on his chest.  All the while, she asked him the same sort of questions Yagi did yesterday. 

“How old are you?”

“Where did you come from?”

“Where is your family?”

That sort of thing.  But she also got more specific.

“Have you ever seen other small people besides you and your family?”

“Uh uh.”  Izuku had returned to the towel, wrapping it around his shoulders and he sit in it cross-legged.  “Just Mama and Papa.”

“Did they ever mention others?”  Izuku had to pause at that.  “It’s okay of you don’t remember,” Recovery Girl said.  “It must have been a long time ago, and you were very little.”

Izuku rolled a loose fiber between his fingers.  He hadn’t thought about others in a long time.  It made sense there would be others, he guessed.  There were lots of big people.  He saw lots of them on TV.  Some of them even came to visit the old family.  And there was never one cockroach or spider or mouse either.  Why would there be just one of him?  And there was Mama and Papa.  It couldn’t just be them.

“It can’t just be us!”  A memory flashed.

“I think…” Izuku began.  “I remember, Papa said something…”

“Go on,” the healing hero encouraged.  She sat on the floor, so she was as close to eye-level with him as she could get without touching him.

“Papa wanted to go somewhere…” 

“We can’t stay here forever, Inko.  This place was never meant to be permanent!”

“But, Izuku was born here…”

“And if we don’t leave, he’ll die here!  We can’t go on like this alone!  Every time something happens, we nearly starve!  That wouldn’t happen if we had other people to rely on!”

“Papa said there were ‘other people’ out there.”  Izuku turned over the memories in his mind.  “I, I think he left to go look for them.  His ‘village’…  He didn’t come back…”  Dark curly hair and big hands, but a blurry face.  Mama’s face wasn’t blurry when she cried.  “Mama and I tried to go after him,” the words fell out of his mouth the same as the tears out of his eyes.  “O-outs-si-ide…”  Izuku curled up and cried into his knees.  Frantic images flashed through his brain.  Too fast and broken to make out.  But he remembered to be scared of them.  And he remembered to cry quietly.

Something touched him.  He flinched.  Two of Yagi’s giant fingers rubbed soft circles into Izuku’s back.  He hadn’t heard him come back in.  But now, he sat beside the table, reaching across to the little boy, looking on with slightly misted eyes.  Izuku whimpered, then dug for his patchwork shirt before he resumed crying.  Mama always told him to hold in his tears until he got home.  Crying made noise, and left him vulnerable.  Izuku had never been good at that.  He was too caught up in his feelings to realize how not vulnerable he felt in that moment.

He tried to remember happier things.  Like how Mama always carried him places, told him stories when the house was empty, holding his hands while he danced on her feet to loud music from the TV.  How warm she always was.  Yagi’s fingers were warm against his back.

“I think that’s enough for now…” Recovery Girl spoke up.

Yagi nodded.  “Let’s get you some breakfast, Little Midoriya.” 

Izuku wept through the trip to the kitchen.  He smelled the food before he calmed down enough to open his eyes.  The warm pressure at his back stayed until then.  But once it left, Izuku found himself succumbing to tears again not long after.

“What did you make for him?” Recovery Girl asked as Toshinori reentered.

“Just some buttered rice.  Last two meals knocked him out right away, thought I’d try something lighter.”  He took a seat on the table where Midoriya had just been.  His body started to tense in anticipation for his own exam. 

“I’m not sure it was the food itself.”  She shook her head as she prepared her tools.  “Poor thing is half starved.  I don’t think he’s had a decent meal in his life.”

“How can you tell?” he questioned.  “I mean, obviously he’s thin now, but can you really say for sure if he’s always been like this?”

“He’s not just thin, he’s underdeveloped,” she explained.  “Surely you saw it?  The mismatched proportions.  Even on that little body, his limbs are short and his head is too big for his shoulders.  That’s just one side effect of malnutrition on a growing child.”

“You’re sure it’s not just part of his quirk?”

“Not one hundred percent,” she admitted, “but you and your kind have brought me enough neglect cases and trafficking victims over the years to have a pretty good idea.”  The old hero sighed painfully.  She held up a small pair of scissors.  “It’d be one hell of a coincidence.”

“Noted.”  Toshinori flexed his fingers nervously.  The ghost of the kid’s warmth lingered on his fingers.  “Did you heal him?”

“Of course not!  Weren’t you paying attention?” she snapped at him and elbowed his knee.  “Even a light touch of my quick would waste a child that size, let alone a starving one!”  She looked him up and down, holding the scissors up to his cast.  “And it looks like he’s not the only one on the thin side.”

Toshinori sighed heavily.  “Yeah…”

Recovery Girl at least didn’t chew him out for that.  He was trying to stick to his new dietary restrictions, really he was, but it was just so hard.  He could only eat small meals with lots of calories, but he had to do it every three hours.  That would make anyone go mad.  Surely skipping one or two a day wouldn’t kill him.  He had to sleep at some point.  But no.  Once she cut loose his cast, he couldn’t deny it anymore.  His arm, thankfully not scared, had noticeably thinned in just a few weeks.  Ten pounds at least.  The sight left him with the sense he should feel sick, but couldn’t.  No stomach to feel sick to.

And that wasn’t anywhere near the worse of it.

“Shirt off,” she ordered.

Toshinori swallowed hard, and did as she said.  Thick layers of bandages circled his entire torso.  More than necessary.  He had been a bit overzealous in rewrapping himself.  More made him feel better, even if they made it harder to move.  Honestly, it was already hard to move given what they hid.

Recovery Girl cut right through them.  No build up, no preamble, no warning.  Cruel, cold air burned the spot in an instant.  Toshinori made a valiant effort not to wince.  Which he failed.  He didn’t dare look down.  He didn’t need to.

Aching, reddened flesh gnarled by combat and surgeries into a mockery of a flower bloomed across the left side of his torso, from his hip to his armpit.  All for One, may history spit on his name until it’s forgotten, used a compressed impact quirk to contract part of his body together, before it burst back out.  He still had nightmares about looking down to see shredded pieces of his insides covering his boots.  It took almost two months of treatment to get him off machine-assisted living.  Recovery Girl said he was lucky his heart didn’t get yanked out with the blast.

Speaking of her, she wasted no time removing just some of his stitches.  “You’ve been doing a decent job of cleaning this at least…”  A peak at her expression said she wasn’t exactly having a great time either.  She winced with him when she hit a particularly sensitive spot.  It was more the surprise than the pain.  The wound felt somehow numb and hypersensitive at the same time.  And there was a chance it would be that way forever.

“Give it to me straight, doc,” he tried to joke once she seemed done.  “How am I looking?”

“Like you lost an argument with a mining drill,” she answered dryly.  Recovery Girl focused on wiping down her tools as she spoke.  “Toshinori…  I know this is something you don’t want to talk about…”

Something like a noose wrapped around his heart.  “I can’t.  I just can’t.  You know I can’t!” he whined.  That was the only way to describe it: whining.  Like an angsty teen told not to hang out with bad influences.  He knew he sounded irrational.  But he wasn’t.  Why didn’t anyone understand?  “I can’t just stop being a hero,” he whispered.  “The world needs All Might.  It’s bad enough I’m taking so much time off, but can you even imagine what would happen if I just announced my retirement?”  Like some washed-up has-been, he didn’t say.  He could already see the headlines: ‘All Might Gives Up!’ 

“The other millions of heroes would take you place while you got to focus on healing,” she said calmly.  “What’s so bad about that?”

“What’s so bad!?”  He almost wanted to laugh.  “You’ve seen the stats.  All Might’s mere presence is a deterrent to criminals.  Organized crime has been practically extinct in Japan!  If I go, all that comes back!”

“Do you really have so little faith in your colleagues?” Recovery Girl hissed back.  “Maybe if the system is so fragile, it falls apart with the lost of its figurehead, change is necessary.”

“You, you don’t honestly believe that, do you?”

She huffed.  “I’ve been around a long time.  There were heroes before you, and there will be plenty after.  We’ve survived this long.”

“But that’s the thing: not everybody survives!  Individuals don’t live in the long term!  What about all those people I could save in the future?”

“Toshinori, there will always be people you can’t save,” she said somberly.  “People in Europe while you’re in Japan, crime happening when you have to sleep…  And all those people who die of things no hero can save them from.  Things like disease, or freak accidents no one could have gotten to in time…”  Those last ones felt personal.  She was a doctor in addition to a hero.  She probably saw those sorts of things every day.  “And you can’t help anyone at all if your dead.”

“Maybe I could have…” he mentioned under his breath.  She heard, and hit him in the head with her medical bag.

“You better drop that martyr crap right now!” she scolded.  “What do you think Nana would say to that?  After she sacrificed her life to save yours, just for you to throw it away in some symbolic gesture!  Bah!”

And oh did that one hurt.  Guilt drowned out the physical pain.  She was right, of course.  The absolute last thing Toshinori wanted to do was disrespect his master’s memory.  Maybe dying in the heat of battle would have made for a compelling story that inspired people to take up heroic arms in his place.  But then Nana would have died for nothing.  And yet, without being a hero, he was nothing.  He hadn’t planned to live long enough to where retiring was on the table.  He didn’t have any plans at all.  Nothing to look forward to.  He didn’t have many friends and abandon all his hobbies over a decade ago, so far back he couldn’t even remember what they were.  Just that none of them made him as happy and being a hero.

Recovery Girl brough him back with a sigh.  “I know it’s hard, Toshinori.  I’m not saying it isn’t.”  She got up and patted his arm.  “But you need to open yourself up to more options.  There’s plenty out there for you.  If you’re willing to look for it.”

He didn’t say anything.  Toshinori just shut his eyes and hung his head.  Recovery Girl gave him one last pat before turning for the door.  She paused one last time.

“You don’t need One for All to find a little lost borrower’s village.”  And the door shut behind her.

Toshinori inhaled shakily.  Then keened on the exhale.  Robotically, he dragged himself to his feel and shambled into the kitchen.  Little Midoriya sat at the edge of the plate, nibbling on a single rice grain, eyes still puffy from crying.  He knew his own probably weren’t much better.  Recovery Girl left a sheet of paper next to him, no doubt with treatment notes for both of them.  But the real kicker was that he wore one of the shirts and pants Toshinori made for him.  He sat at the nearest chair.  The rice had long since gone cold, but he scooped up a bite anyway.  It was exceptionally bland.  But looking at the plate, Little Midoriya put quite a dent in it since he left him alone.

He probably doesn’t have much to look forward to either…

Toshinori got up and went straight to is office.  He returned with as many multicolored pens as he could find, and one of the dozen notebooks he always had but never used.  He placed the pile of supplies next to Midoriya, who looked between him and the stuff, confused.

“How would you feel about doing some art after breakfast, hmm?” Toshinori asked the little borrower.

Izuku’s eyes widened.  “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Toshinori could just make out the little boy’s outline through the hole in the tissue box.  The early morning light was just enough to see the little lump under the towel, moving ever so slightly from his breathing.

I should get him a real blanket, he thought. 

Beside the box sat their drawings from yesterday.  Mostly scribbles in the vague shape of bugs.  Not surprising.  The poor boy probably didn’t know much else.  Toshinori sat up, his back cracking as he went, and sorted through the pile.  In between the cockroaches and buttons were rough approximations of food.  Pretzels, crackers, bits of cereal, animal cookies, baby carrots, tiny clumps of rice, bread crust, and a red ball that could have been a cherry tomato or grape made up the obvious ones.  They painted a clear picture of the children who used to live there dropping little pieces of their meals on the floor as they ate, and little Midoriya sneaking across the floor after dark to take for himself.

This is what he’s lived on most of his life…  Toshinori shook his head.  He had no stomach to feel the hunger of his newfound starvation, but this child knew nothing else.

There were other drawings as well.  He recognized the ravioli right away, and with a bit of study, he deciphered the rest.  A bowl of noodles.  Chicken drumsticks.  A cupcake.  Chocolate chip cookies.  Apples, bananas, and all manner of fruits.  Different sushi varieties.  A burger and fries.  A pie complete with scent lines.  And a giant wedge of cheese that little Midoriya drew to scale on its own sheet of paper.  He could have drawn anything, and he chose those.  Toshinori squeezed his eyelids to combat approaching tears, humbled by the little boy’s basic dreams of a good meal.

He got up to make him a good meal not long after.  Recovery Girl agreed he should stick to the basics to help build Midoriya’s strength up.  Gorging himself on big hardy food that knocked him out for hours wouldn’t be good for him in the long run.  Plain egg fried rice seemed a fair way start to the day.  Toshinori even put in the extra effort to separate the clumps so every grain got an even coating of egg.

Midoriya woke up by the time he went back to get him.

“Well?”

“It’s good,” the little boy said.  He went for more right away.  It only took five grains of rice to stuff his cheeks.  Gooey drops of egg coated his fingers and ran down his arms. 

“I’m glad,” Toshinori chuckled.  He subtly made a note in his phone to look up tiny utensils later.  Surely there must be some company selling them or a craftsperson willing to take a commission.  He couldn’t let the kid eat like an animal forever.  Even if it was pretty cute.  Feeling bold, he reached across the table with a napkin to wipe Midoriya’s cheeks.  “Hang on…”  Confused as he was, he accepted the gesture, then got right back to eating.  “There you go.”  This is really strange.  The absurdity dawned on him once again.  I found a tiny child in my house, and we’re just eating rice together.  “Is there anything specific you want for lunch?” he somehow asked casually.

Midoriya swallowed and paused.  “Do you know pizza?”

“I am familiar.”  An amused grin split his face.

“The old family had it all the time, but I never got any.  It smelled really good though,” he explained.  Hs face soured.  “But the smell would stay for days after it was all gone, and it was really distracting.”  He took an angry bite of rice, eggs dribbling down his chin.

Toshinori sighed, and wiped his face again.

“I can do it!” he protested, in a rare moment of actually sounding his age.  Toshinori leaned back gladly, only for his smile to be stunned away as the boy lifted the collar of the shirt he made to clean himself.

“What am I gonna do with you,” he mused, shaking his head.  Unfazed, Midoriya cut through a third of his plate.  He ate huge portions of his other meals too.  Just one of those raviolis were almost as big as him, and he ate two without a problem.  Maybe his metabolism is faster, Toshinori wondered.  I think I’ve read about rodents and small birds that need to consume over half their body weight in a day.  He might have something similar going on.  Midoriya finally slowed down and sat at the edge of the plate to lick his fingers.  He can probably handle a little pizza.  “So what kind of pizza do you want?”

“There are kinds?” genuinely shocked.

Toshinori laughed.  “Tons!  Flat-crust, deep-dish, Detroit-style!  The list goes on!”  He gestured wildly for emphasis.  Midoriya’s eyes lit up with each new name, even though he clearly didn’t understand what any of those words meant.  “We’ll have to see what the local joint has.  We can pick something out together.”

“What’s a local joint?”

“The nearest place selling pizza.  Pretty much every town has one,” Toshinori told him.  He ate the last of his own rice before standing up.  Midoriya stood up with him.  “You wanna clean up before we go?”

The boy’s enthusiasm evaporated.  “Go…?”  His eyes flicked towards the door, terrified.

“Oh,” Toshinori breathed.  He recalled the way he was nearly reduced to tears at the mere mention of outside.  But he still asked.  “I’m going to walk to town.  You can come, if you want.”  He paused.  “I won’t let anything hurt you, promise.”

Midoriya shook his head hard.  He curled his hands close to his chest, took a limping step back, then retreated back to his towel.

“No!” he called out.

“…  All right,” he said quietly.  Toshinori went to pick up his bundle, but Midoriya cried again.

“No!  Don’t take me!”

“I was just gonna take you back to my room.”

“No!” he wailed.

“Okay.”  He left the towel on the table, then retrieved more paper and the pens for him to draw on.  Midoriya didn’t move.  “I’ll be back in a few hours.  Be good, alright?”

“Meummm…”  He sounded like a hurt puppy.

Toshinori stopped at the door.  “Will you be okay here by yourself?”

“…  Mhmm.”  Really that should be obvious.  He’d been alone for years until a few days ago.  But that didn’t stop Toshinori worrying he would try to run and hurt himself again.  Or just being lonely.

“Goodbye, then…”

Only a sniffle responded.

Town was a quick ten-minute drive away.  The houses got gradually closer together and the trees thinned out into yards, before being replaced entirely by small storefronts.  Maybe once his wounds healed a bit more, he’d try to walk there.  Then he could look for signs of the supposed village Midoriya mentioned.

His eyes scanned the ground as he left his car.  For what, he wasn’t sure.  He doubted any borrowers would be running around the middle of town in broad daylight.  But maybe there were other signs.  Little cracks in the wall artificially enlarged into caves.  Small structures like mini ladders or scaffolding to climb up higher.  Maybe even literal signs, warnings or advertisements or something written in tiny characters along the ground.

Toshinori bumped shoulders with someone.

“Watch it!”

“S-sorry,” he apologized.  Looking around, that guy was one of the only other people on the sidewalk.  “You could have gone around,” he mumbled to himself.  No, I need to watch where I’m going.  At least he didn’t recognize me…

The town itself wasn’t anything special.  Typical old-school Japanese style of dark wood bunched together with a canopy of wires strung above the street.  Not new enough draw attention, not old enough to be impressive.  But certainly old enough to shake Toshinori’s confidence in it having a pizza place.  Still, he could understand why such a place would be attractive to little people who wanted to remain hidden.  Low population and limited development probably meant they could put down roots and not worry about leaving a noticeable impact.  And the forest and farms all around likely provided more than enough food for them to thrive without drawing attention.  Little Midoriya lived eight years before he was discovered, and he was a solitary child with limited guidance.  Depending on how long the village was around, perhaps they had generations to get living in secrecy down to a science.

Supposing there really is one, Toshinori thought sadly.  The fragmented memory of a half-starved child wasn’t exactly the best source to go on, but what else did he have?  Little Midoriya needed to be with his own kind.  The wider world wasn’t built for him.  A community of people like him could raise and care for him better than Toshinori ever could.  Not that I could in the first place.  Once I’m healed, I have to get back to work.  All Might wouldn’t have time to take care of a child, let alone one the size of a doll.

He made his way to the local grocery store. 

“Welcome in,” the old lady at the register greeted.  Toshinori nodded to her.  “Oh, you’re a new face!  Just passing through, or…”

“Sort of,” he answered awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.  Am I going to have to explain this every time?  “I’m staying nearby for a few months while I recover from some surgery.  Fresh air and all that.”

“Really?  Well, I hope you have a nice stay, and please let me know if there’s anything we can do to help!”

Who’s ‘we?’ Toshinori dreaded.  She’ll probably send the whole town on me.

“That’s quite alright!”  He bowed slightly.  “Oh actually I was wondering if there was anywhere to get pizza around here?”

“If you’re looking for a restaurant, the closest one is in the next town an hour over.” 

He deflated.  “That’s alright, thank-”  His eye caught a hero gossip magazine on the display right under the register.  An empty silhouette of his iconic pose.  All Might hadn’t been seen in action in three months, and the cover promised speculation and interviews from other heroes about him.  He hid his face from the old lady harshly and cleared his throat.  “Thank you, ma’am.”  Then retreated into the aisle.  This is worse than I thought!  If that’s circulating this far in the sticks, it’s probably everywhere.  How many villains are going to see that get ideas?  Maybe I can get them recalled somehow?  No.  No that would look way more suspicious.  He slapped his cheeks.  I need to call Nighteye.  He’ll figure something out.  For now, I just need food.

He stalked along the aisle.  The selection was much smaller than what he was used to.  There wasn’t much non-Japanese food either.  Not a problem per se, but over the years he’d gotten used to a much larger variety.

I feel like spoiled brat…  He packed his basket with noodles and microwavables.  A pack of his favorite curry powder drew his attention, before the bitter realization that his stomach couldn’t handle anything spicy.  Maybe little Midoriya would like it though.  He grabbed it.  What else did he want? 

Toshinori pulled out his phone and consulted the pictures he took of the drawings.  He had plenty of noodles already.  No chicken drumsticks or cookies, but there were more than enough ingredients for sushi.  A quick pass through the produce section gave him the idea to attempt homemade pizza with the tomatoes on sale.  And he could probably manage an apple pie with a rice flower crust.  Then there were all these little sweets and snacks Toshinori couldn’t have anymore but Midoriya had probably never tried before.  Each new idea inflated his smile.

Leaving the store dashed it. 

All I’ve given him is food and medicine since I found him, Toshinori considered.  I mean, I also gave him clothes, but what eight-year-old wants that?  Street traffic started to pick up for lunchtime.  Delicious smells from food stands and small restaurants wafted down the street.  The plan was to grab something for the both of them before heading home.  All he wants is food.  All his drawings and conversations say nothing else.  And the only thing he did between eating and sleeping was wait… 

Toshinori tried to think back to what things were like when he was eight as he waited in line for meat buns.  Nearly forty years ago.  He shuddered. 

Fuck, I’m old…

Memories resumed.  Mostly just flashes.  A sandbox.  Footballs and baseballs.  Running around playing a giant game of tag with every kid in his grade on a school trip.  Not a care in the world.  He knew nostalgia was a fickle bitch and it probably wasn’t that good all the time, but it was something.  Midoriya had nothing.  Just survival. 

Toshinori went back inside to ask a few more questions. 

The door opened, startling Izuku from his drawing.  The pen streaked back over the picture of Shelob. 

I guess that could be Mama’s sword going through it…  He bit his lip.

“Little Midoriya?  I’m back!” Yagi called.  Izuku retreated to the towel.  The tall man carried a bunch of grocery bags into the room.  “You manage alright while I was gone?”

“Yes,” he responded quietly.  Yagi’s back blocked him from seeing what he bought.  But he heard the shake of cracker boxes and the squeak of skin against plastic wrap.  Meat.

“So, bad news, I couldn’t find a pizza joint.  But…”  He turned around dramatically, holding up a vine of tomatoes and a white log of cheese.  “We can make our own!”

“…  You can make pizza?”

Yagi laughed.  “Well we can’t exactly go hunt it down in the woods!”  Izuku watched him blankly as he calmed down.  He could have sworn he saw a commercial on TV where pizza grew on trees.  “But I did get meat buns for us.”

As Yagi got out plates and cut smaller pieces, Izuku thought about the word ‘us.’  Mama used it sometimes.  The old family used it for each other, and sometimes their friends.  He wondered for a second if someone else was coming.  ‘Us’ meant similar.  Didn’t it?  He and Yagi weren’t ‘us.’  He was a big person and Izuku was, well, Izuku.  They were different.  Mama called big people ‘them.’  That’s different.  He didn’t understand.  A plate of meat buns appeared before him all the same, complete with a toothpick.

After they ate, Yagi held up his hand, keeping him from his towel.  “Wait a moment, kid.  I’ve got something for you.”  He went back to the counter and pulled a giant pale blue blanket out of a bag.  Well, giant for Izuku.  Folded up, it fit in just one of Yagi’s hands. 

Izuku approached cautiously.  He reached over Yagi’s palm to feel, and gasped.  The blanket was the softest thing he’d ever touched.  Yagi put it down right away so he could crawl into it.  Every part of his skin that touched it felt smooth and warm.

“Wow…”

“But wait, there’s more!” Yagi declared.  Noise shuffled outside the blanket, but it was so comfy he probably could have slept through it.  “Can’t sleep without a stuffy to protect you.”  Izuku opened his eyes to a felt yellow and orange thing dangling from a chain.  It looked kind of like a pillow, but Izuku’s size with lots of different parts.  Some black thread sewn in the top sort of looked like eyes.

“…  What is it?”

“It’s, it’s a duck!”  He said it like it should have been obvious.  “It’s a stuffed animal.  You know, uh, a toy.  Lots of kids hug it while they sleep,” Yagi tried to explain.  “This one’s a little rough, got it from a coin machine.  But it’s yours to name and play with!”  He set the ‘duck’ down for Izuku to examine.  Its ‘fur’ wasn’t as soft as the blanket.  But now that he knew what he was looking at, he recognized the face in it, even if it looked nothing like the ducks on TV.  “But if you don’t like that, I’ve got plenty of other toys!” 

Suddenly, strange objects appeared around Izuku one after the other.  Not strange in the sense he didn’t know them, but that they were smaller than him.  Cars, animals, blocks and balls, a little blue sword.  Not like Mama’s, but like the ones knights had on TV.  Toys.

Izuku sat atop his knew blanket, confused.  He of course knew what toys were.  The kids from the old family had tons of them.  They’d spend hours in their rooms with them, talking to themselves or each other.  Izuku had some once.  Mama ripped up extra paper and drew faces on them too look like animals.  Izuku couldn’t remember what kind thought.  Except the dog. 

“Wait,” -Yagi clapped his hands- “I almost forgot!”  Izuku flinched as he got up.  He came back with a big yellow box.  There were crayons inside.  Full ones nearly as tall as Izuku with the paper still one.  Not crumbs or bits.  One hundred different colors.  His mouth opened on its own.  Yagi blew past Izuku’s shock to draw a bunch of lines next to each other with a grey one.  Then, he put one of the cars on top.  It fit right between the two sets of lines.

“This is the inaugural race of the Tabletop Speedway and what a beautiful day for a race it is!” he began in a strange voice.  “First on the docket today is an exhibition race between generations!  The old timer who hasn’t so much as touched a toy car in decades but is none the less determined to make a little boy smile, it’s Houdini Has-Been aka Yagi Toshinori in the Old Blue Faithful!  Haahh!”  He breathed into his hands to make a weird sound.  Kind of like a hiss but not really.  “But the real ticket today, the one really packing the stands, is up and coming legend in the making, the Small Wonder himself, Midoriya Izuku! Haahh!”  Izuku cocked his head, but smiled a little.  “Don’t be fooled, folks!  He may be a rookie, but little Midoriya has been winning hearts and minds across the house since he appeared out of no where at the beginning of the season!  And the question on everyone’s mind is: what car will he pick!?”  Yagi pushed the pile of little cars closer to him. 

Izuku finally stood up.  After a moment of consideration, he picked up a rounded green car and put it next to Yagi’s on the paper.

“And oh, it’s the Mean Green Machine!  A perfect fitting choice!” he cheered.  “Not only does it match Little Midoriya’s name, but it’s a clear power play over Old Blue!  You folks at home may recognize this vehicle as Superman’s target of destruction on the first ever cover of Action Comics, the sponsor of the rival team!  But now it’s back for revenge!  But now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for!  Racers!  Start!  Your!  Engines!”  Yagi made a bunch more sound effects Izuku couldn’t help but chuckle under his breath at.  He guided his hands so both cars were up against the line.  “On your marks!”  Yagi rolled his car back and forth just a little.  “Get set!”  Izuku did the same.  “Go!  Go!  Go!”  With one finger, the man rolled his car ahead.  “And Houdini Has-Been takes the lead!”

Izuku moved his car after his.  He went slower, carefully staying inside the lines.  Yagi hadn’t told him how to play, but he wanted to make sure he was doing it right.

“It looks like Little Midoriya is taking it slow and steady!  Must, must be familiarizing himself with the course for the first lap,” Yagi laughed through his description.  “But this race ain’t over yet folks!  Plenty of track left to see who’s the fastest!”

“Oh!” Izuku said.  He picked up his pace.  With both hands on top of his car, he pushed forward around the track.

“And Little Midoriya takes off like a rocket!  The Small Wonder is living up to his title yet again!”

Izuku full-on giggled.  He run up on Yagi’s hand, slipping himself and his car right under his fingers into the lead. 

“And what an incredible move by the rookie!  The sport of racing hasn’t seen something this exciting in its entire history!”  Yagi almost stopped moving his car he got so into making those not-hiss sounds again.  Izuku rounded the paper back to the line where they started.  “Oh can he do it?  Is it possible!?”  He crossed the line.  “It is!  Little Midoriya Izuku!  The Small Wonder!  Has finished first in a landslide victory his first ever major event!  Truly, he is destined to become the greatest racecar driver the world, no, the universe has ever known!  Woo!”

“Woo!” Izuku yelled back.

Yagi’s face lit up even more.  “That’s it my boy!”  He held up his fist close to Izuku’s face.  “You’ve just defeated a veteran racer in your first ever race, and it looks like you had a great time playing for the first time in a while!  Care to tell the fine folks at home how you’re feeling?”

“What’s a veteran?” he asked.

“Hah!”  The man fell into uncontrollable laughter.  So much that he leaned forward and rested his head on the table. 

It was contagious.  Izuku couldn’t remember the last time he laughed so hard.  Or ever, really.  But even though he was outside his blanket, he felt warm.

Chapter Text

When Izuku was very little (or at least littler than now) he asked Mama why they had to take things from the big people, while they just seemed to have it.  She explained that they didn’t just have it, they had to get it from other big people too.  There were hundreds of thousands of millions of big people all over who made food, clothes, and medicine from other things they had.  Most of them only made one or a small number of things, but they made so many, there was enough to share with everyone.  That way, big people who made clothes could spend all their time on making them better and better without worrying about starving, and others could make the best possible food without worrying about freezing to death.  Mama also described how there were so many more ‘jobs’ big people got to do because other big people had the basics covered for them.  And they didn’t even have to know each other.

“That is the difference between big people and us,” she said.  “They have a world to rely on.  We only have ourselves.”

Izuku pondered this as he watched Yagi slice tiny flakes of soap off a bar for his bath.  He had been nothing but nice to him ever since he rescued Izuku from the wasps.  His leg was almost all better thanks to the medicine.  Every meal was not only freely given, but was the best tasting thing he had ever eaten.  And then he got him all kinds of toys he’d never had before.  It made him wonder why Mama never just asked for help.

He licked some sauce off his arm.  Speaking of tasty meals, pizza was great.  Cheese was already a favorite as it was one of the foods that was easiest to steal and lasted a long time if he stored it right, in addition to the taste.  But mixing it with tomatoes made it better than he could have imagined.  Izuku even got to help make it.  He picked out which tomatoes to use by feeling how firm they were, pulled tiny pieces of eggshells out of the yolk for the dough, and he threw flour all over the counter before Yagi rolled it.  The man also pinched off a small piece for Izuku to roll out himself into his own mini-pizza.  He liked pulling off the cheese to eat that first, which gave him an idea.  Besides tasting great, pizza was also nice and warm and the cheese on the big slices could cover Izuku up completely.  Like his blanket.  Yagi said that sleeping in a pizza wasn’t a good idea, but he didn’t stop him when Izuku climbed inside to prove it.  Thus the bath.

“Okay, why don’t you check the water?” Yagi spoke up.

Izuku padded over to the square glass bowl and stuck his hand in.  Warm, but not hot.  He climbed in before Yagi could protest.

“Hey!  How many times do I have to tell you to wait?”  He held out his hand for Izuku’s clothes, which he squirmed out of easily.  “It’s slippery, you could fall and hit your head.”

“It’s just a bath, I can handle it!” he argued. 

Yagi smiled, and passed him his soap.  “I know, I know.”  His gaze traveled from Izuku, to the messy clothes in his hand, to the red sauce footprints he left behind on the counter.  “Wash good.  You look like you just walked out of a horror movie,” he chuckled.

“What’s a ‘hore’ movie?”

Yagi doubled over, making a weird sound as he tried to keep air in his mouth.  Blood sprayed over the drawers. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m alright, my boy,” the man said through giggles.  Izuku hadn’t heard him do that before.  “Just a, a horror movie is one where something scary happens.  Sometimes people get attacked or fight and wind up a bloody mess.  Like you with all your sauce.  Don’t forget to wash your hair.”  He followed directions.  Yagi sighed with his hands on his hips.  “And this counter now too.” 

Izuku didn’t pay his cleaning much mind until he got to his own footprints.  Mama’s lesson about making sure you don’t leave a trace, unless it was an emergency, rang through his head.  She would have gotten angry if she saw that.  There was nothing urgent about a bath.  He was just daydreaming while the water cooled.  And what would Mama say about a big person doing everything for him?  Mama used to do things for him, but she was Mama and he was still learning how to do stuff.

But Yagi taught me to make pizza!  I know what to do now!  Sauce and soup floated in the water around him.  I mean, I don’t know how to use the oven.  He looked across the room to the dials over the dim black window.  I probably wouldn’t be able to anyway…

“The world isn’t built for us,” Mama used to say.

But why?

“You know, if you really want to sleep inside a pizza, I’ll make you a deep-dish next time.  That crap’s better for that than eating anyway,” Yagi said, half to himself.  His hair bobbed just above the counter as he leaned down to clean.  “Guess you wouldn’t get that joke, huh?  Hmm.  How are you doing on washing?”  He didn’t look for himself.  The first time he set him a bath, he said it was rude to watch.  Then he had to explain that ‘rude’ meant ‘not nice.’  Mama never taught him that either.  Yagi rose up to his full height, back cracking audibly.  Izuku became aware once again just how much bigger the man was than him.  “Little Midoriya?”

“Um, almost done!”  He plugged his nose and dunked under the water to rinse the last of the soap.  Clean hair was the best part of baths.  He got to be clean more often when Mama was around to gather.  She could carry more water and was way better at it, so they’d have enough extra to dunk scraps of cloth in to wash themselves.  This bathwater alone was enough to last both of them two weeks at least.  And Izuku was just sitting in it.  Why do I feel so weird? he thought as he climbed out into the waiting towel.  A different one than what Yagi first wrapped him in.  He had so many.  Just for getting dry.  He buried himself in it, then yelled, “Done!”

“Alright!”  As per routine, Yagi laid out his clothes.  A new set.  The purple and white crisscross fabric wasn’t from one of Yagi’s old shirts, but from the store.  All his new clothes were.  They smelled odd compared to the first ones, but Izuku didn’t want to be ungrateful.  “So, what do you want to do tonight?” the man asked.  “I can read you something or we can just watch TV?”

“TV, please.”  That one Mama had taught him. 

But the TV taught him even more.  All those big people jobs she told him about?  Doctors, artists, builders, musicians, dancers.  All of them had their own show.  And when the show didn’t say enough, Yagi pulled up even more info on his phone or computer.  Izuku had seen some of the shows before, but Yagi let him pick exactly which ones.  He even let him push the buttons on the remote.

“What are you feeling tonight?” Yagi asked him, taking his spot on the couch.

I feel icky, he didn’t say.  His hand hovered over the ‘guide’ button.  It was bigger than his hand.  Not for him.  He backed away.

“You pick.”

Yagi bit his lip, then gently moved his hand towards the device.  Izuku meanwhile returned passively to his blanket nest to watch.  He sort of just wanted to go to sleep early.  He couldn’t do that before.  Before, he had to stay up so he wouldn’t miss his chance to gather supplies when the old family went to sleep.

“Uh, how about Air over Japan?  You liked that last time, didn’t you?” Yagi interrupted his thoughts.

“That’s good.”  He laid on his belly, head rested on folded arms.  His shirt brushed against his wasp stings.  They didn’t hurt as bad as before.  What happens when they stop hurting?

“Or do you wanna watch today’s Hero recap first?  That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”

“That’s good too.”  It was his favorite show, but he couldn’t stop wondering what Mama’s favorite show was.  What it would have been.

The blanket shifted.  Izuku tensed.  But it was just Yagi covering him up with the back half.  His finger lightly touched his head.  It was just as thick.  He held up his phone with his other hand.  There were pictures of pillows shaped like pizza.

“If you really wanna sleep on pizza, I can have it arranged.”  There was a clear smile in his voice.  Izuku didn’t react.  The phone moved away.  He felt Yagi’s breathing get closer.  “What’s wrong, my boy?” he asked softly.  The hair on the back of Izuku’s neck stood up.

“…  I don’t f-”

Dong.

Barking.

Izuku froze.

“Goddammit,” Yagi hissed.  He got up for the door, leaving Izuku behind.  Alone.  Towards the dog.

Come back!  The words died in his throat.  His blood turned to ice.  He couldn’t move besides shiver.  Come back!

The smell of wet dirt overtook that of the blanket and his new clothes.  Barking came from every direction.  He felt it harder than his own heartbeat, which was going wild.  Yagi’s voice disappeared under it.  The neighbor lady’s voice remained.

“Byron, stop that yapping!”

“Byron, what do you have?”

Don’t move.  Mama said not to move.  She’s gonna come right back, she said so!  I just have to stay here and wait! 

He slammed his eyes shut, like Mama told him.  Outside was scary and Izuku was always scared. 

I’m not anymore, Mama!  I’m a grownup!  I’m brave!  Take me with you!  Don’t leave me alone!  Don’t leave me behind!

He didn’t open his eyes this time, but he still saw. 

He screamed.  Izuku screamed so hard his bones rattled.  Any thoughts about being found went out with the noise.  His body quaked as tears poured out.  Giant droplets too big for their origin’s face that could have choked him if they got into his mouth.  Even the barking was lost behind the sounds of his own wails.

Suddenly, something moved him upwards fast.  Izuku was flipped to face the ceiling, foreign pressure on his chest.  His eyes cracked.  Yagi took up his whole vision, brow creased with worry. 

“-oriya, it’s okay.  It’s okay!  I’m here.  It was just the neighbor, I’m not going anywhere.”  His giant thumbs rubbed over Izuku’s torso.  Izuku summoned what strength he could to push him away.

“No!”

“No?  No, what?” the man asked.

“No!”  Louder, more crackling with anger.  He kicked the blanket off and tried to roll over.

“Wait a second, kid!”  He quickly lowered Izuku’s bundle back onto the table.  Izuku jumped from his hand, but he caught him in his other.

“Let me go!”

“You’re still hurt!  A-and I can’t just let a little kid loose in th-”

“No!” Izuku screamed at the top of his lungs.  He tried to bite him again.  Yagi caught on and wrapped him back up in the blanket, then pulled back his hands.  “No no no!” Izuku kept shouting. 

“What’s wrong?”  The shadow of his hands crept back into view.

“No!  Don’t touch me!”  His throat burned with each word.  “Don’t touch me!”  He felt his body locking up again.  Fear settled in his twitching stomach.  But I can’t I’m still out in the open, what functioned of his survival instincts told him.  No!  I’m brave!  Mama, I’m brave!  I can go too!  His tears stuck his face to the fabric.  Even wrapped up, he felt like everything was getting colder.  Mama would have picked him up and taken him home.  Then, they’d lay together in bed until he fell asleep.  Sometimes, even when she was supposed to make a supply run.  She still stayed.  Why didn’t she stay?  Why didn’t she just stay?

Unbenounced to him, someone did stay with Izuku until he cried himself to sleep, then carried him back to his little tissue box fort.  But that person wasn’t Mama, and he was suddenly very aware of that.  Toshinori stayed anyway.

Chapter Text

The wasps came back for him.  They wanted revenge.  Buzzing rattled the tissue box.  Then the blanket shifted as they stepped inside.  Izuku, already buried under the covers, held his breath.  He couldn’t move even if he wanted to.  Even when he felt the weight of spindly legs through the blanket.  His shoulder, the small of his back, the leg they stung.  Not even his throat had the range of movement to make the whimpers he felt.  He knew if he moved, they’d get him.  But he also wanted to run.  Cry for help.  Cry for Mama.

She won’t come though, he reminded himself without meaning to.  Mama’s never coming back.  The pressure of the wasps vanished, but he still couldn’t move.  It felt like before when he was wrapped in the towel to keep him from running away, but in his own body.  Tears flooded his eyes.  He was so cold.  Izuku wanted to bury himself deeper into the pile of soft things.  But his body still wouldn’t listen. 

Mama would pick him up when he froze.  Whether that was when he couldn’t move or was cold.  One time, he froze up while Mama tried to teach him how to hunt, he couldn’t remember for what.  But he panicked and couldn’t move.  So Mama carried him home on her back in a basket made of sticks.  They laid together back at the house on the sponge bed, it was softer back then.  Then Mama wrapped them up in a blanket big enough to cover them twice.  Izuku apologized for messing up.  She said it was okay, that he’d get the hang of it eventually.  He never did.  He cut the blanket up into pieces to make his shirt bigger and burnt the basket for warmth the first winter Mama was gone.

Mama’s gone.  I’m cold.  That was real.  The wasps were a bad dream, but all the other bad stuff was real.  A little keen finally left his mouth.

Izuku didn’t know how long he laid there awake before he worked up the strength to try and do something about the cold.  His new blanket was much bigger and softer than he remembered Mama’s, but it didn’t help much.  It was the sort of deep, shivering cold that didn’t just go away with more layers.  Yet he couldn’t stop sweating.  The clothes Yagi made him grew heavy and itchy as his body soaked them.

Yagi…

Izuku peaked out of the covers to stare at the curtain to the outside.  It was just a tissue, even less protection than the towel he used at the entrance to his house.  But it made him feel safer.  Before at least.  That and the walls of the box were so thin, Izuku could tear them himself.  And he thought about doing so the first few nights he slept there.  Rip up a hole in the back so he could sneak away back home.  He probably could now.  His leg was healed enough it didn’t hurt anymore.  But he didn’t want to run.  He liked eating so much good, different food everyday and playing with Yagi.  He would probably be mad if Izuku left, then he wouldn’t play with him anymore.  Izuku liked playing instead of sitting around waiting all day. 

But Mama’s shirt is back home.  That always made me feel warm.  He hiccupped through a cry.  The rest of Mama’s stuff was gone.  She took it with her.  He only had the last shirt because she wanted him to grow into it.  That’s why he was carrying it back then. 

Izuku covered his mouth as he cried.  Mama said it was okay to cry, but he could only do it at home and he had to be quiet.  Something might hear him.  She covered his mouth with her hand until he learned to do it himself, but sometimes that wasn’t enough and she’d cover it too.  He remembered promising her that he would do the same for her when she cried, but she never did.  Even back then.  It must have hurt.  It looked like it did.  A shudder racked his body. 

I shouldn’t cry anymore.  Grownups don’t cry.  But Yagi said I’m still a kid.  And he’s a grownup and he cries.  I heard him!  When Recovery Girl came to check on his arm!  And late at night sometimes.  Do grownups get nightmares too?

Slowly, Izuku crawled to the tissue box entrance and peered out.  Skinny as he was, Yagi looked like a mountain in the dark under the sheets.  There was just enough light from the clock on the nightstand to show his sleeping face.  His mouth hung open slightly.  Big enough to swallow Izuku whole.  But he never did.  He’d lost track of how many days Yagi had been taking care of him, and he’d been nothing but kind.  Like Mama used to be.  He sniffled.

He was warm.  When he picked me up.  Izuku dragged himself all the way out into the open.  All the space didn’t bother him as much as it used to.  Partly because of the dark, but also because if something happened, Yagi would save him.  He could warm him up too.  It would be rude to wake him.  Maybe I can just lay down near him.  But what if he rolled over and squished me?  He hugged himself.  No.  It’ll be okay.  I won’t sleep, just stay close.  Just until I’m warm.  If he moves, I’ll move…  But how do I move over there?

There was a big gap between the nightstand and the bed at least five inches wide.  A long way to jump in the dark with a bum leg.  The chill twisted through his body to the point it felt like his stomach was trying to crawl up into his chest.  His cheeks still felt frozen from the tears.  The night would last forever like this.

Izuku stepped back as far as he could before running to the edge.  His leg hurt for the first time in a while, but he ignored it.  He focused so hard on running, he didn’t realize the gap was smaller than he thought until it was too late.  He leapt clean over the void below, then hit the bouncy mattress wrong and tumbled right into Yagi’s face.

“Gah!  Wha?”  His shot up high over Izuku, bouncing him even closer to his body.  “What’s, Little Midoriya?”  He scooped him up like nothing in one hand, turning on the light with the other.  “What’s wrong?”

His hand was warm.  Izuku kneeled in his palm.  Fingers curved above him.  Big people’s hands were one of the most dangerous places to be.  Yagi could do anything to him, like squish him, and Izuku couldn’t do anything about it.  But he didn’t think about that.  He felt Yagi’s heartbeat under his hands and knees.  When he was upset, Mama would hold him to her chest and have him listen to her heart.  He hadn’t realized big people had that too.

“Little Midoriya?” Yagi asked again.

Please don’t put me down, Izuku wanted to say, but it only came out as a few jumbled cries as he let his head lull to touch him as well.

“Hey, hey, why are you crying?  Did something happen?  Are you hurt?”  He brought his other hand to the hold.  “You shouldn’t be jumping like that, you’re still healing.”

Izuku, huge tears falling from his tiny chin, looked up at him and cried.  “I-I’m cold!”  Sobbing, he stretched across Yagi’s palm to hug his thumb.  He desperately dug his own fingers into rough skin.  Warmth spread over his cheek as he squished against it.  Then, the warmth hit his other cheek.  Yagi gently ran his other thumb over Izuku’s face and head.  Fingers rubbed circles across his back.  Without thinking, Izuku turned over to reach for them.  They held his arm as gently as Izuku handled Mama’s old stuff.  Hot air hit him.  Izuku opened his eyes to Yagi’s face just a few inches from him.  He reached again, and Yagi met him halfway.  Unlike his hands, Yagi’s cheek was soft.  Izuku curled up against him, nuzzling in time with his sniffles.  The big man’s hands came to enclose him fully, shielding him from the outside. 

“It’s alright, I’m here…” he whispered, jaw rocking him as he spoke.

Izuku sighed heavily, warm at last.

Hugs weren’t new to Toshinori.  As a big famous hero, he gave as much as he got.  Friendly fans at meet-and-greets, especially little kids, would run up to him like an old friend and he’d welcome them with open arms.  Call him an attention whore, but he loved it.  Certainly more than trying to comfort people after something terrible happened.  Natural disasters, villain attacks, murders, break ins, hostage situations, car accidents, train derailing, parents losing children, children losing parents, lives and livelihoods destroyed, he’d seen it all.  And some people just needed a good squeeze after it was over.  He was always careful of course, even without his quirk he had a lot of muscle to work with; but never more so than holding that tiny, sobbing boy no bigger than his finger close to his cheek.  Poor little Midoriya shook so hard it felt like he might rattle his body apart.

What must it be like, he wondered, to not so much as touch another person in years?  Let alone interact?  And someone so young.  Toshinori once read a story about how some monks in Medieval Europe thought that children reared isolated from culture or connections would develop the original human language on their own or something.  They had nurses raise a group of babies with only the barest of basic care; food and hygiene, no affection.  All of them died of loneliness.  Granted, he wasn’t sure how much of that story was true, but when he was growing up, orphaned and alone without so much as a friend, there were definitely times where it felt like that alone would be enough to kill him.  But I still talked to people.  Little Midoriya didn’t do that for four years.

The crying died down quicker than he expected.  Was he feeling better, or was he conditioned by his environment not to feel too hard too long?

“Little Midoriya?” he ventured softly.  “Are you alright?”  No response.  “Do you wanna tell me what happened?  It might help you feel better.”  The boy in question squeezed Toshinori’s skin in his tiny fists, making him wince.  “My boy?  Please talk to me.  I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“…  Mama’s gone.”

Toshinori’s chest tightened.  “I…  I’m sorry.”  Midoriya cuddled closer.

“It’s m-my fault…”

“What?  No, how could it be?”

“It’s my fault!” he repeated, voice cracking.

“What happened?”

“Papa didn’t come back.”  He shifted in Toshinori’s hand.  “We waited for a while, but Mama said we couldn’t stay.”

“Stay where?”

“Here.  The house.”

“Had you ever left before?”

“No…” he whined.  If he was as anxious as he was just being out in the open indoors, seeing the outside for the first time must have traumatized him.

“Where were you trying to go?”

“The, the village.”  The way he inflected the word made it seem like he didn’t actually know what it meant.  But this wasn’t the time to ask.  “I don’t wanna go outside!”

“I know, I und-”

“Mama let me close my eyes.  I should have kept watch.  I should have kept watch!” he rambled.  “I could have warned her!”

“Warned her?  Of what?”

His cries became screams.  Panicked, Toshinori squeezed Midoriya closer, careful not to hurt him, and swayed back and forth to rock him.

“Mama!  She hid me!  In the grass!  She told me not to move and she ran!  She ran and it got her!  It-it ripped her up!  She told me not to look but I did!”

“Ripped…”  Toshinori swallowed a gasp.  The dog.  The neighbor’s dog.  Oh dear god…  “You don’t need to keep go-”

“Then the big lady threw her away in the river!  I couldn’t catch up!” he wailed like he was in pain.  “But!  But she fell down the dra-ain!”

“That’s enough,” he whispered.  “That’s enough, my boy.” 

Little Midoriya cried on while Toshinori formed a picture in his mind.  A tiny little boy clinging to his mother in terror of the sky.  Her hiding him away while she distracted the dog.  The neighbor tossing her body away into the gutter.  How bad must she have looked if the women couldn’t recognize her as a small human?  He found himself joining Midoriya’s shivers while struggling to comfort him.

“It’s not your fault.  It’s not your fault.  I promise.”  He wrapped Little Midoriya in his blanket, and carefully laid him beside his head.  Midoriya reached back out, so he moved close enough for his nose to touch his chest.  “You’re alright.  It’s gonna be alright.”

When he finally fell back asleep, he dreamed of running down a flooded street along a wall of grass taller than trees, after something trapped in the current.  No matter how hard he ran, he couldn’t keep up.  A white cape flashed in the waves.  Toshinori twitched awake.  Midoriya remained asleep.  He brushed a finger over his hair.

I understand.  I couldn’t save my mother either.

Chapter Text

Water from the neighbor’s sprinklers carried cut grass down the gutter into the storm drain.  Toshinori passed thousands of them in his life, no mind paid.  He floated leaves down a little river after the rain one or twice as a child.  Maybe.  Dreams had more substance than his distant childhood.  One, where he desperately chased a white cape and loving voice down the current, made him stop and look down.  Gurgling water echoed up from the blackness under the curb.  The opening was the width of his hand and only as long as his arm.

But to a child the size of a thumb?  He shuddered.

“Mr. Yagi!”

Then cringed.  He shuffled the grocery bag between his hands.

“I haven’t seen you in a while!  Where have you been?” Mrs. Hase called, crossing the street.  She had her dog with her.  Yapping incessantly and yanking on the leash to go everywhere except where his master was going.  On a leash at least.  Still, Toshinori swallowed the impulse to kick it.  “I keep wanting to invite you over, but you’re never around.  Have you just been inside all the time?  I thought you moved here for the fresh air!”  She laughed at her own comment.

He forced a smile.  “No, I’ve been getting out plenty.  I just prefer to walk in the early mornings and evenings when it’s not too hot.”  Not a lie.  Heat was a pain, but it was also a lot easier to search for signs of tiny life without too many people around.  Not that it turned up results.  Yet.  Optimism, remember?  “So, uh, I should ask why I haven’t seen you out.”

“Oh, I’m usually out in the early afternoon after lunch, but the strawberry harvest started today, and I had to go early before the best boxes were taken!”  She held up her haul: three small plastic boxes of large ripe strawberries.  One got shoved into his free hand.  “I was actually about to bring this too you.  Just to be nice and make sure you hadn’t died!”  More laughter that Toshinori wasn’t in the mood for.  “So what have you been doing all day inside?” she interrogated before he could get away.

“Nothing crazy.  Catching up on some reading and shows.  A few hobbies.”  Again, not lying.  He did all those things with Izuku.

“What kind of hobbies?”

“…  Miniatures.”  Great job.

“Oh, how cute!  Could I see?  Do you have pictures?”  The slightest pause.  “Or maybe I could come in and see?”

“Maybe some other time,” he dismissed, stepping away.  He put the strawberries in the bag with the rest of the food.  “I’ve got some exercises to do, doctors orders.  Have a good day, Mrs. Hase!”  And keep your dog in check.  Said dog’s yapping drowned out her reply.

Back home, he found Midoriya right where he left him: bunched up in his blanket watching TV.  Toys untouched.  Drawing paper left blank.  He didn’t even look like he was enjoying the program despite how glued his eyes were.

Toshinori set the groceries on the table and sat a moment to watch.  The animated variety show was meant to teach very young children simple facts and moral lessons.  The current segment showed a young boy confessing to his mother that he broke an expensive vase, and learning a valuable lesson about honesty.  A boy who lived in a wall all his life was probably behind on such things, so Toshinori figured it would be something appropriate to put on when he had to go out.  But even with a lacking education, a show for toddlers was probably under-stimulating for an eight-year-old.

“I got groceries while I was out.  You wanna help me pick out what to have for lunch?” he prompted.

No response.

“Little Midoriya?”

“…  You pick,” he answered flatly, not moving.

“I…  Alright.”  He itched the back of his head.  “Let’s do something light.  That way, you won’t have to nap as long and we can play longer,” Toshinori tried to encourage.  Midoriya remained quiet.  He moved the remote back onto the table before returning to the kitchen.

Poor kid.  What happened to that bright, happy little boy from a few days ago?  The cynical part of Toshinori’s brain seeped through the cracks.  He remembered his place in the world.  He’s smaller than your average action figure and even more vulnerable.  Every day of his life has been a struggle and probably will be forever.  And he doesn’t even have his mother to face it with him…  His eyes grew damp.

Most of the groceries were fresh produce.  Eggplants, cucumbers, okra, green beans, tomatoes, garlic, and strawberries.  Little Midoriya was a growing boy and needed to eat healthy.  As did old, broken heroes with dietary restrictions.  Toshinori took his time washing all of them in the sink.  Recovery Girl warned the boy was underdeveloped due to malnutrition.  He lived off whatever scraps and crumbs he found on the floor for at least for years.

What was it like before?  When he still had his parents to hunt and gather for him?  Could it really have been much better?  He opened the strawberry box and ran them under the water.  Whatever kind they were was much larger than the average supermarket fair.  Little Midoriya could probably fit inside a few of them hollowed out if he curled up.  Just one could probably feed him for a week, if not longer.  But nothing but strawberry for a week?  Would it even stay good that long?  As a child, Toshinori complained whenever they had leftovers for a meal.  How spoiled he was, even then.

Maybe I should forget the light meal.  Make him something comforting.  He set the eggplant and garlic aside for stir fry.

Did his parents ever cook anything for him?  He was surprised the first time I gave him hot food, but maybe it had just been a while.  When he looked up stuff about the old borrowers books, illustrations depicted stews, buttered bread, and hot tea heated on miniature stoves.  Such a thing seemed unlikely in reality.  At least one photo existed of a person with a micro quirk roasting a caterpillar on a stick over a match.  If Midoriya’s kind were out there in secret, they were most likely just surviving rather than living.

No, don’t say that.  You’re just trying to talk yourself out of giving him up.  He’s a child, not a pet.  Just because he’s the only person in your life who talks to you about things other than hero crap doesn’t mean that’s what’s best for him!  Toshinori peered back into the living room.  Midoriya still hadn’t moved.  He’d have to be retrieved and carried to the table once lunch was ready.  Unable to move freely on his own.  Subject to the whims and schedule of someone who could kill him on accident.  Is he really living like this?

Toshinori leaned over the sink, watching the water circle the drain.

But can people only just bigger than him really protect him from the rest of the world?

Izuku didn’t like this show.  All the kids were really loud, and whined every time they didn’t get their way.  Yagi could tell he didn’t like it.  He suggested changing the channel, even let Izuku have the remote, but he kept watching.  Because the show was teaching him important stuff to know.  Sharing, being polite, games to play with friends, how to make friends.  How to be a kid, like Yagi said.  Izuku never played with anyone his own age.  Or size.  He wanted to play with the kids from the old family, but they were big people, and he was afraid.  But if he was going to go live with other people like him, he had to learn how to be a kid like them.

After lunch, while Yagi was cleaning up in the kitchen, a new episode came on.  One of the kids’ grandma died, and they had to go to something called a funeral.  It was kind of like the birthday party from a few episodes before, lots of people got together and had to dress a certain way, but sad.  Unlike the birthday episode, the lesson wasn’t about how to act at a gathering, but about death and being sad.  The grandma was never coming back and it was okay to be sad, but the kid had happy memories to remember her by, so she wasn’t completely gone forever, they said.  Adults buried her body in the ground under a square stone with her name on it called a grave.  They cried too.  Izuku hadn’t seen grownups cry on TV before.  It made him feel weird.  At the end, the kid and his parents left flowers on the stone with a card that said, ‘I love you, Grandma!’  Izuku didn’t cry until then.

Yagi rushed in right away.  Izuku reached up from between two giant hands he’d come to know as safety.  He buried his face into his caretaker’s soft, warm cheek.  This was how it went ever since he told him about Mama.  And Mama would hate it, which made him cry more.

“It’s alright, Little Midoriya.  I’m here,” he whispered.  His jaw rolled under Izuku’s body.  The TV turned off behind him.  “Why don’t we do something else, hmm?”  Without moving Izuku off his face, he sat back on the couch.  “What do you think?  Wanna try drawing?”

“No…”

“No?”  His hum rumbled through his body.  “Doesn’t look like you wanna do much of anything…  Want me to read to you?”

“…  Okay.”

Izuku didn’t want to be put down.  This was routine too.  Yagi carefully lowered him to his chest, allowing him to crawl into his front pocket.  It was warm there.  His heartbeat rocked against his back.

“Let’s see now…”  Izuku felt his words more than heard them.  “Ah!  I was doing some research in line at the grocery store and found something interesting.  Apparently, there’s a whole community of borrowers living in Ireland.”

“What’s, sniff, what’s Ireland?”

“It’s a country really far away,” he explained.  “Do you want to see a map?”

“Later.”  Izuku didn’t really understand maps.  You needed to understand distance compared to outside, which he did not.  Yagi tried to teach him, but he still didn’t get it.

“Okay.  Let’s see…  According to their website, a group of them took over a fairy circle, these sacred places in Ireland where magical creatures live, to protest and escape unfair treatment by the government.  And since no one wanted to risk messing with the circle, they let them be.  And now they’re semi-autonomous, or uh, they make their own rules within their group.”

“That’s good.”

“It is.”  He heard his big finger tap the screen.  “Oh look, there’s a video some of them made about themselves.  Would you like to watch?”

Izuku stood up, hanging his arms over the pocket rim.  Yagi held up a video on his phone.  A girl with light hair backed away and waved.  She stood shorter than a glass jar of salt and a plant with leaves bigger than her.  Izuku’s eyes widened.

“She says she’s making a video about her neighborhood for school,” Yagi translated.  “She’s telling the story I just told you about where they come from.  Her family owns a meat curing business.  They feed everyone in town and still have enough left over to sell to tourists.”

The video cut between little houses made of stone and wood that looked sort of like the houses on TV, but instead of trees and grass, they were surrounded by bushes and large pebbles of soil.  A man pushed a wheelbarrow made of twigs past a shop selling sweaters knit with giant yarn.  Beetles and crickets lazed about a fenced clearing.  Everyone was small.  Like Izuku.

“The people in her neighborhood are from all around the world.”

More people appeared one after another.  They all looked completely different, yet all of them were small.

Izuku didn’t really think about there being other people like him before.  Not besides Mama and Papa.  They used to talk about others, but he never paid attention.  Those talks felt like the ones the grownups from the old family or the ones on TV had about ‘work’ or ‘investment.’  Just words that didn’t mean anything to him.  The names of places Yagi listed didn’t mean anything later, but the pictures did.  There were people out there like him.  But Izuku was alone.

He retreated back into the pocket, curling up on his back.  Above him, Yagi’s chin bobbed as he continued translating the video.  Eventually, he started describing what was happening too, realizing Izuku stopped watching.  His voice was enough to lull him past his loneliness into sleep.

Even though Yagi bought tiny chairs and a table, Izuku still preferred to sit crisscrossed on his blanket when he ate dinner.  But he did like the little forks.  Stuffed eggplant was too hot to eat with his hands.  But Yagi still cut his piece into smaller ones.

“And…  That should do it.  Enjoy,” he declared.  He sat back and dug into his own with a smile.

He’s acting happy to pretend nothing’s wrong.  Like the grownups on TV.  Izuku stuck his fork into a big green chunk.  A bellpepper.  The kids on TV didn’t like this one.  There was a whole episode about how sometimes things you don’t like are good for you.  Izuku took a bite.  It wasn’t that bad.  Nothing Yagi made ever tasted bad.  Izuku never wanted stale crackers again.  But sometimes, things you don’t like are good for you.

“What did you do all day, before taking care of me?” he asked suddenly.

“Work,” he responded right away.  “Before I came here, at least.  Here, I just read and watched TV all day.”

“What did you do for work?”  The TV kids knew lots about the other grownups, not just their parents.  “You said you knew some heroes, and Recovery Girl is your doctor.”

He swallowed a mouthful.  “Secretary.”

“What’s that?”

“I, uh, took phone calls and filed paperwork on behalf of…  Someone who’s too busy to do it themselves.”

“I don’t get it.”  People can get jobs doing someone else’s job?  How does that work?  And what would they be so busy with they couldn’t- Wait.  “Did you works for a hero!?  They couldn’t do their own work because they were too busy fighting villains!?  Is that why you know-”

“Got it in one, kiddo!”  Izuku didn’t realize he was smiling until Yagi praised him.

“Which hero?”

“…  All Might.”

“No way!” he yelled.

“Yes way.”

“Why didn’t you tell me!?”

“Well, I, um, you see…”  He scratched the back of his head with the hand holding his fork.  Some egg got in his hair.  Then, he leaned forward and whispered.  “It’s actually top secret who works for All Might.  Lots of villains try and get to him through his employees.”  He pointed to his bandages.  “I wanted to make sure I could trust you with such a big secret.”

“I promise, I won’t tell!  I’m good at keeping secrets!”  He tugged at his lip.  “I mean, I’ve never really had to keep anything from others.  There weren’t others in the first place.  Just Mama, and I’d never lie to her.  But I kept myself secret from the big people for a long time.  That counts, right?”

“I…  Suppose it does.”

“But you really know All Might!?  That’s so cool!”

Yagi looked happy for real.  “Oh, it’s not that cool.”

“Yes it is!  All Might’s the best hero ever!”

“Maybe.  But he’s also a huge dork.  And horrible at staying on schedule.”

“But still!”  Izuku gasped.  “Could I meet him?  I know I’m supposed to stay hidden from big people, but it’s All Might!  He wouldn’t hurt me!”

“Well…”  Yagi looked around the room.  “He’s pretty busy.  That’s what he needs me for.”  Izuku’s smile dropped.  “But, uh, I bet, if you write him a letter, he’ll respond.  He loves fanmail.”

“Okay!”  He shot to his feet and started for the crayon box.

“Hey, dinner first.”

“Oh yeah!”

Yagi promised he’d put in an extra good word with All Might if he ate all his dinner.  Izuku didn’t say anything after that, too focused on that goal.  As promised, Yagi took his plate once he was done and replaced it with crayons and paper before going to slice some fruit for dessert.

“Dear All Might…”

Izuku wasn’t sure what to say.  He’d never written a letter before.  He only kind of knew how to write at all.  Mama taught him some stuff at the same time as how to read.  Learn by doing.  And Yagi helped him learn a little more.  But what to write was a lot harder. 

“Dear All Might,

Mr. Yagi said I should write you a letter, but I don’t know what to say.  He said it didn’t matter what I said, you won’t mind either way.  He said if I ask you questions, you’ll answer them no matter what.  I have so many, but not a lot of them are about you.  I’m your biggest fan, so I know a lot.  I watched every special about you on TV I could.  Mr. Yagi even helped me find some old ones, even from before I was born.

I was born in this house.  I’ve only been outside once, and Mama died then.  I don’t want to be here forever, but I don’t want to go outside again.  I guess my question is: how do you be brave?  How do you go out and fight scary villains without being afraid every day?  Mr. Yagi takes care of me now, but he has to go back and work for you once he’d all the way better.  He’s trying to find a village of people small like me so they can take care of me instead.

I like Mr. Yagi a lot.  He makes good food and plays with me and hugs me when I’m sad.  What if the people in the village aren’t nice like him?  What if they all die like Mama did and I’m alone again, but Mr. Yagi isn’t around to take care of me anymore?  I took care of myself for a long time, but it was really hard.  I didn’t get to eat much, I got hurt all the time, I never got to play, and I was all alone, especially when I was sad.  Things are better now.  Me and Mr. Yagi eat lots of good food, and play and watch things of TV and his phone, and he reads me books or tells be stories.  But I don’t know if I want to do this forever.  Everyday was the same before I met him, but I never thought about them being different.  Now things are the same in a different way but I can think of so many other things I could do but can’t.  I think I’m too scared of outside to be a hero, even if I wasn’t so small.  I’m too small to do most things on my own.  That’s why I need to go to the borrower village.  I want to go.  I wanna play with other kids like the ones on TV, and I want to grow up and learn how to take care of myself like Mama used to.  But I don’t want to eat stale crumbs anymore.  Maybe it won’t be like that with a whole village, but I don’t know.  Is that bad?  To care more about tasty food than being with people like me?  But it’s not just that.  I don’t want to be afraid I’ll die every day again.  But I think, no matter what, I always will.

All Might, how do you always know what to do?  There are so many things I want but also don’t, and I don’t know how to pick.  I never had a choice before.  Mr. Yagi says I’ll be happier with my own kind, and he’s probably right, but I’m happy with him too.  But what if I’m not happy with him forever?  I don’t know what to do.  What would you do, All Might?”

“You writing a novel, there?” Yagi teased, setting down a plate of small fruit slices.

“Almost done.”  Izuku signed his name at the bottom, the pulled the first page back on top of the second.  His arms hurt from moving the crayon so much.  “Will you please help me put it in the envelope.

“I’ve got it.  You eat your desert.”

“Don’t read it!  It’s for All Might only!”

“I know, I won’t,” he chuckled.

Izuku kept his eyes locked on the tall man the whole time he folded it.  True to his word, Yagi averted his eyes for most of the process, grinning all the while.  Only once the note was sealed did Izuku go for a slice.  A pink, heart shaped one with red on the edges.  It tasted sweet.

“Have you had strawberry before?”

“Is that what this is?”  He ran his hand over the rim.  It had little scales like a lizard but even bumpier.  He ate strawberry cookies and something called a poptart once, but not the fruit itself.  Papa was right, they didn’t taste the same.  “Papa liked these,” he said without thinking.

“Oh?”

“I remember him talking about them a lot.  He said the cookies were never as good as the real ones.”  Izuku took another bite.  Juice ran down his neck.  “He liked them so much, he used to say we’d die without them.”

“You’d die?” Yagi repeated.

“Yeah.  But I don’t remember ever having any,” he said.  He took bites in a circle around the slice.  “Papa was good at catching bugs, so we ate those when he was still around.”

“Still around…”  Yagi weaved his fingers together over the table.  “Didn’t you say your papa left to go find the village?”

“Uh huh.”

He bit his lip.  “That strawberry is from a farm just up the road.”  Izuku stopped chewing.  “Is it possible he went there?”

“And if we don’t leave, he’ll die here!”

“Maybe…”

Yagi leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face with a sigh.  “I’m such an idiot.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, don’t you worry.”  His everything-is-fine smile returned, and he reached across the table to rub Izuku’s back.  Then he picked up his own slice to eat.  “Let’s finish up here and go watch a movie.”

“Are you gonna go look for the village again?”  His voice cracked.

“Tomorrow.  It’s getting late.”

The strawberry taste in his mouth suddenly turned sour.  He set what was left of his slice down.

“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t be gone too long.  Never am.”  He ate a piece of watermelon.  Then a grape.  “And who knows.  Maybe this time, I’ll find something.”

Izuku hugged his knees.  “Can we send All Might’s letter first?”

Chapter Text

The day’s harvest started hours ago.  Dozens of people in sunhats and casual clothes lined the rows, baskets in hand.  A sign by the road advertised picking your own strawberries for a handful of yen.  Toshinori handed a woman at a folding desk some, then got to work.

Strawberries were the last things on his mind.  He lifted the stalks out of the way to look at the plants more then take any fruit.  Same as before, he sought footprints, discarded tiny tools, or even bitemarks on the plants.  And same as well, he found nothing.

It made sense for the borrower village to be near a farm.  Better lead than Toshinori had before anyway.  Plenty of food in the form of crops or the pests attracted to them.  Hoses and sprinklers also provided fresh water.  The sign out front said this place was organic, so no pesticides to worry about.  Every other set of tracks he came across ended in a beetle of some kind, so they had that.

The folks in Ireland farmed beetles and grubs.  Wonder if these guys do too.  Toshinori wiped the sweat from his brow, back cracking.  What sort of stuff would they use it for besides food?  I’m no survivalist, I don’t even know what they’d need.  Mandibles and horns are pretty strong, I guess.  Tools maybe?  Weapons?  The carapace would made decent enough armor.  And some of them are pretty.  I’d wear clothes made from a beetle if I were small.

Dave once dragged him along to a steer dissection back in college.  Something about learning from the structures of the natural world to improve his own machinery designs.  At least the presenters didn’t kill the bull right in front of them.  They stripped the animal down layer by layer and laid all the disconnected pieces out on tables and floormats, until something that used to be alive was just a couple piles of bones and miscellaneous goo.  Toshinori had nightmares about being strung up naked and vivisected for weeks, and he still struggled with the smell in butcher shops sometimes.  It wasn’t enough to make him go vegetarian, but he thanked every lucky star he lived a life where he didn’t have to process his own food.

Still, he poked a millipede to make it curl up, I wonder what these little guys taste like.  For the borrowers’, for Izuku’s sake, I hope it’s good.

He combed the whole field to no luck.  At the end, he only had four strawberries in his basket, so he filled it with whatever he could find, no mind to quality.  People who came earlier in the day got the best ones anyway.  Despite giving up, he watched his step leaving the field.

“Didn’t find what you were looking for?” a middle-aged man, only a few years younger than Toshinori, pulled him from his self-pity.

“Huh?”

“I don’t mean to intrude, but that’s not the sort of face most folks leave here with.”  The man walked over to the farmhouse and patted a bench beside it.  “What seems to be the problem?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”  Toshinori sat with a sigh.  “Just wasn’t feeling too good today.  I thought getting out and moving around would help me feel better, but I’m still off.”  His strength may be fading, but his ability to make shit up on the fly wasn’t.

“You must be the man who moved out here for his health.”

He frowned.  “I guess word does get around in a small town.”

“Hmm.”  The man tipped his hat with a bow.  “Kudo Tamotsu.  My father owns the place.”

“Yagi Toshinori.  Recovering city slicker.”  He tipped an imaginary hat to return the gesture.

“What sorta city slickin’ did you do?”

“I’m a hero, actually,” he confessed, unsure why.  How could he be more honest with this stranger than the kid he’d been living with for weeks.  “Last fight got me pretty bad.  Had to remove a lung.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.  So, not only is mountain air easy on what’s left of the respiratory system, it also keeps me away from the impulse to get back out in the field right away.”  Allegedly.  Wait, hey dumbass, why are you dumping all this on a stranger?  You sound like Mrs. Hase!  “I-I’m sorry for rambling…”

“Don’t worry about it.  Sound like you needed to get that off your chest.”  He sighed, leaning back with his arms propping him up on the table.  “Hero, huh?  Anybody I’d know?”

“Hmph.  Probably not.”  He leaned back too.

“All Might?”

He almost kicked the strawberries off his lap.

“Ha!  I’m joking, I’m joking!”  Kudo snickered like a child behind his fist.  Toshinori meanwhile huffed and set his fruit to the side in case of more jokes.  “Though I am curious, and stop me if this is too nosey, but why here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why pick here to recover?  Aren’t there resorts just for heroes to take leave in private?  Swear I saw something like that on TV.”

“Yeah, but they’re private to the general public, not other heroes…”  What would they all think of me?  All Might, the Symbol of Peace, the immovable pillar they all look to for reassurance, wasting away in my own skin.  “I’d rather be alone for a while.”  Once Little Midoriya has a home, it’s back to it.  He blinked slowly.  It’s for the best…  Speaking of which.  “There is actually another reason I picked this place specifically.”

“Oh?”

“I like to, uh, research local folklore in my spare time.  More of a hobby really, I’m hardly a journalist, but I heard some talk about this town some years back and figured it’d give me something to do during my time off,” he explained.

“What sort of folklore?” Kudo asked, clearly trying to curb his enthusiasm.  But his body betrayed him.  He sat up straight and ran a thumb over his palms.  Even his eyes lit up.  “I’ve lived here all my life, and my family has been here for generations.  I probably know more than most.”

“Really?  That’s wonderful!  I’ve been hitting nothing but dead ends for weeks!”  An honest statement, but he buttered up the tone just a bit.  And the farmer took it hook, line, and sinker, smiling like he just won a prize.  “Have you heard about a supposed village of tiny people?”

Smile dropped.  “A what?”

“A village of miniature people about this big.”  His hands mapped out Little Midoriya’s size.  “I don’t know if they’re spirits or just a secret commune of people with shrinker quirks, but they live off of the small scraps regular folks wouldn’t miss or even notice missing, like a dropped button or crumbs of food dropped on the floor.  I heard a rumor there’s something like that around here?”

“…  Why are you looking for something like that again?”

Odd reaction…  “I mean, I don’t know if I literally believe in that sort of thing, I’m more interested in the history and impact of the legend,” he corrected quickly, capping it off with a big laugh.  “The closest thing I’ve found to evidence was a spider in my closet with a sewing needle stuck in it the day after I moved in, but I’d be more willing to believe the old homeowners were trying to hex me or something!”

Kudo’s frown deepened.  His shoulders stiffened as he crossed his arms, all while he shifted in his seat.  Not the reaction of a man disappointed he didn’t get to flex his local knowledge.

“I’m…  Afraid I’ve never heard of that one,” he said slowly.

“Do you know anyone who might?” Toshinori kept pressing.

“No.”  No hesitation.  Firm.  Matter of fact.  Rehearsed.  “You’ve either got the wrong place, or it’s something new the kids made up online.  Sorry, mister.”  He got up and left.

Well.  That was suspicious.  The farmer walked stiffly back into the field.  Didn’t seem to be headed anywhere in particular to Toshinori’s eye.  He was no master detective, but he knew an overcorrection when he heard one.  Not that he needed to be.  Poor Kudo probably didn’t have to lie much.  How many people show up looking for a colony of tiny people?  Still, someone who’d really never heard of such a thing would have just laughed it off.  So he’s hiding something, but that doesn’t bring me any closer to finding where that something’s hidden.  Assuming it’s actually what I’m looking for, and he’s not just a small-town weirdo I’m reading too much into.

Half the breaths he took these days turned into sighs.  He sat on the bench not to relax, but procrastinate on searching some more.  And going home to face Little Midoriya empty handed.  Not that he didn’t want to spend time with the boy.  Long, lazy afternoons of playing and TV watching together were the highlight of his recovery.  But recovery fast approached.  He’d gotten used to breathing with one lung.  The wound on his side mellowed from omnipresent agony to a simple, dull ache.  He hadn’t needed his sling in weeks.  In time, he could be All Might again.  And All Might couldn’t properly raise such a small child, in age and body.  All Might also wasn’t used to letting children down.

Toshinori’s back cracked as he stretched to his feet.

The valley was beautiful, and the strawberry farm doubly so.  The farmhouse was primarily built in a classic Japanese style, a triangular thatch roof over two stories of wood, raised on a platform slightly above the ground, with a more modern expansion along the field.  A few-years-old light blue paint job faded tastefully on wood potentially older than Toshinori.  Pink and White flowers dotted climbing vines blanketing the corners from the ground to the roof.  Bees and butterflies doted on a thriving garden with dozens of colors blended perfectly.  He new people back in Tokyo who spent small fortunes on architects and landscapers to try and recreate the peaceful, rustic look this place developed naturally over decades.  Windchimes drew his eye to the front door, down to a tomato plant under them, then to a perfectly organized woodpile by the steps up to the porch.  It reached over into the walkway, despite looking like the chopped logs could easily fit under the raised floor.

A house above the ground…  Toshinori dropped to his hands and knees and peered between the lattices.  And gasped.

Lights.  Electric light bulbs and Christmas lights.  Silhouetted tiny clothes hung on lines strung between little squares of wood and cardboard.  Squares with windows and curtains, and little movements insides.  People.  Tiny people moving about and making noise and living their lives in a miniature city under a house.  Someone screamed.  The noise stopped.

“Um, hello-urk!”

His shirt yanked him back.

“What the hell are you looking at!?” Kudo whisper-yelled at him.  “Wh-what are you trying to do?  Trying to, to sabotage my house!?  Plant some kind of, uh…”

“I’m not going to hurt you or them!  I just want to talk!”  Toshinori pulled his hand off his shirt effortlessly.

“Like hell!  Are you some kinda reporter?  Government spy?  You suits that desperate for taxes you need to go after people who can’t-”

“I found a kid!” he snapped.  Kudo backed away, mouth open.  “I, I found an orphaned borrower child in my house.  He’s been living alone for years.”  He brushed dirt off his pants.  “I’ve been trying to find more people like him.”

Kudo squinted.  “You said you were here looking for them.”

“I came here for my health.”  He was getting real tired of explaining this part.  “I got hurt in the field and had a lung removed.  Doctor recommended mountain air.  That part was true…  I…  I found him by accident.”  I heard him crying.  The first night I heard him crying and didn’t realize.  “There was a wasp infestation near where he lived in the walls.  He fell out of an air conditioning vent.”  His palms twitched, remembering a squirming body no bigger than a doll.  “He was hurt pretty bad, and I’ve been taking care of him while he heals, but…  But I’m almost healed too.  I-I have to go back to the city soon, and I can’t take care of him there.”  His voice cracked.  Tears fought a losing battle to spill over.  Why am I crying?  Get it together, dumbass!  The farmer still looked skeptical.  Toshinori snorted and pulled out his phone.  Little Midoriya sprawled lazily on his stomach watching TV in his palm.  Kudo relaxed at that.  “He needs a home.”

“…  Sounds like it.”  He rubbed his hands together, avoiding eye contact.  “How did you think to come here?  Did the kid say something?”

“Yeah.  He used to live with his parents.  They were looking for a village and he remembered his father saying something about strawberries.”  His eyes darted back to the trellis.  “Why do you have a village under your house?”

“Great uncle founded it.  We’re a family of shrinkers.”  He demonstrated by reducing his hand to the size of a pea, then back.  “Me, I can just do one part at a time, but he could shrink his whole body.  People stuck that size didn’t get a good lot living with regular folk.”

“I heard.”

“He dedicated his life to building a safe place for them to live and getting them to it.  Not everyone he offered came, though.”

Little Midoriya’s parents must have been descendants of stragglers.  Did the whole group change their minds and they were scouts, or did they leave them behind for a chance at a better life?

“You talk to them, yes?  Would they be willing to take in an orphaned child?”  I don’t want to take him away from where he’s lived all his life just to live on the tiny streets.

“You said he used to live with his parents?  What happened to them?”

“His father left to scout for the village, and his mother died trying to go after him.”

“Just them?”

“He’s never mentioned anyone else.”

“Odd.”  Toshinori tilted his head.  “We still get new folks every once in a while.  Mostly bigger parties moving together.  Or a couple scouts that bring word of a larger group I turn around to go get.”  He pointed to his truck in the yard.  The flatbed had a tarp tied to it.  “If his folks were scouts, there’s a chance they came from a group I might have picked up later.”

“He might have family here?”

“Or at least someone who knew them.”  Kudo nodded to himself.  “What’s his name?  I can ask around.”

Toshinori smiled for the first time that day.  “Midoriya Izuku.”

“Izuku!?” a third voice shouted.

Izuku pushed his little green car back and forth.  Running races wasn’t as fun by himself.  Even on the new track he drew.  Why did Yagi have to spend so much time looking for the village?

You should be grateful, he told himself.  He’s taking time out of his own day to search for other people like me.  And it’s my own fault I’m by myself.  Every time he leaves, he asks if I want to come with, and I always say no.  Because I’m a coward.  But outside is scary, even with Mr. Yagi.  He’d just carry me around in his pocket and I wouldn’t even have to look at the outside.  He lined the car back up with the others and examined his arms.  Little scar lines striped all over.  Izuku cried for every single one, but he couldn’t remember which ones Mama helped patch up.  She went out searching without a big person to help her.  The other little people probably do the same.  They have to be brave.  Izuku leaned back into his blanket, staring at the ceiling.  It still felt far away, it still scared him knowing how far away it was, but not as much.  He’d lived under this ceiling his entire life.  What would it be like to live somewhere else?

The door slammed.  He yelped and jumped under his blanket.

“Izuku!” Yagi ran into the living room, sweating like he’d been chased.  Cautiously, Izuku poked his head out.  The tall man’s face softened immediately, and he dropped to his knees by the table.  “There you are…”  He exhaled.  Izuku smelled the fruit on his breath.  Big hands appeared on either side to cradle him.

“What happened?”  He crawled over to hug Yagi’s thumb.  Despite breathing heavy, he seemed happy.

Yagi smiled so hard, his cheeks closed his eyes.  “I just met your father.”

Chapter Text

“Where did you live before I found you?” Yagi asked.

Izuku looked up, mouth still submerged in his bathwater.  He’d only asked once before, that first day, and he didn’t get an answer then either.  Of all Mama’s lessons, ‘don’t lead anything back to the house’ might have been the last one he didn’t go back on.  Yagi sat down at the table.

“I ask because…  Well, it’s your last night here.”  Izuku sunk deeper.  “I was wondering if you wanted to spend it back home.  Hmm?”

“Home…” he blubbered into the water.

“I mean, it’s a big thing.  Moving to a new place.  Especially when you’ve been in the same place since you were born…”  He never looked at him in the bath, but this time there was more than one reason.  “And I’m sure you’ve got stuff there you want to bring with you.”

He did.  So when the bath was over, after he got dressed and let Yagi dry his hair one last time, he wordlessly pointed toward the cabinet over the counter.  The man cradled him to his chest as he inspected the façade over the doors.  Eventually, he stuck is finger in the window, and pulled the whole wall open as easy as a drawer.  Izuku buried his horror at how easy it was.  He almost missed how Yagi gasped at the sight.

Home was exactly how he remembered it, yet different.  He’d never seen it at this angle with so much light before, for one.  Not until the hand holding him carried him right up to the edge did he recognize that everything was exactly as he left it.  The plastic cup with cardboard on top for water in the corner.  Newspaper packages of crayons and crumbs up against the right wall.  A ratty sponge wrapped in an old dishtowel to the right.  The empty medicine tube dropped in the middle among paper scraps.  His other, older pair of shoes by the fabric curtain that served as a door on the far wall.  Izuku spend most of his life in this room, but now, he felt like a stranger here.  He turned around to Yagi, only to face the view of the kitchen from his window.  Izuku remembered how small he was.

“Everything here?” Yagi asked quietly.

“Y-yes…”  He didn’t know what to do or say.

“Do you want your other things?”

“Other…?”  Oh, the stuff he got for me.  “Yes, please.”

He walked away, leaving Izuku’s once secluded home open to the whole kitchen.  Dizzy from the height, he stumbled onto his old bed.  It crunched under him.

Yagi returned with nearly everything he got for Izuku, all of which fit into his cupped hands.  From his toy cars to his pajamas to his tiny pillows and stuffed animals.  The only thing that wasn’t there was the giant box of crayons that could comfortably fit five of him.  His old patchwork shirt sat on top of the pile.  Yagi set them all down in the middle of his house.

“Can I really take all of this?”

“Of course, it’s yours.  And even if you don’t want all of it, I’m sure someone else in the village can make use of it.  Let’s make sure we aren’t missing anything.”

While he sorted the pile, Izuku sat on his bed.  Familiar smells washed over him like the blanket Yagi laid over his lap.  He was born here.  The weight of that fact suddenly dawned on him.  He started existing in this room, and starting tomorrow, he’d probably never see it again.  Izuku gripped his patch shirt tight.  He remembered Mama’s shirt just like it.  In the envelope up against the wall.  The one for important things.  Right where he left it.  He fished it out and hugged it close, no matter how it scratched against his skin, no matter if Yagi saw.

“Is that Mama’s?” he asked gently.

Izuku could only nod.  Big globs of tears splashed onto his pajama shirt before he realized he started crying.

“Oh, my boy.  If you’d told me before, I would have brought you back here.”

“She, she said to never lead a-anyone home!” he shouted back.

The tall man hummed.  “I understand…”  After a moment, he walked away again.  Izuku’s back felt cold against the exposed air of the kitchen, but he didn’t care.  The shirt still smelled like Mama, however faintly.  “Here,” Yagi appeared suddenly.  Izuku flinched like he hadn’t in weeks.  But when he found the courage to look up, his jaw dropped.  “I found this stuck in a spider when I first moved in.  Only just occurred to me it might be yours.”

There, between his thumb and finger, was Mama’s sword.  Shiny and silver.  A hole at the top for a belt thread.  Izuku wrapped his hands around the hilt gently, like Yagi did when picking him up.  His fingers molded around it like he held it yesterday.  Like nothing happened.

“You look like you know what you’re doing with that,” Yagi chuckled, but not in a funny way.

Izuku, shocked still, collapsed back on his sponge bed, starring at his warped reflection in the sword.  He felt Yagi’s breath every time he opened and closed his mouth, but he didn’t say anything for a while.

“Well, uh, if that’s everything…”  He licked his lips.  “I assume you want this closed for the night?”

“Y-yes, please,” Izuku said automatically.

“…  All right.”  Shadow overtook the room, save a small, flower-shaped spot of light from the window.  “Goodnight…  My boy.”

“…  G-goodnight,” he answered after a moment.  The light disappeared, and footsteps left down the hall.  Even when Izuku finally moved from his position, he didn’t sleep.

Izuku hugged his knees with one hand, and death-gripped Yagi’s shirt with the other.  He buried his face deep into the fabric beneath him, hiding from the glimpses of blue sky above.  The gentle rocking created by Yagi’s steps did little to ease his frantic heart.  He had no idea how far they’d gone, but he knew that it wouldn’t be long before they were further from home than Izuku had ever been in his life.

He should be happy.  He was finally going to live with his own people.  More ‘us’ like Mama used to talk about.  But ‘us’ only meant him and Mama.  He didn’t know anyone else besides Yagi.  Now he had to go live with that other ‘us’ forever.

Papa’s there too.  He made it to the village when he left.  But why didn’t he come back?  Was it that dangerous?  What if it’s so far away, that he’s been traveling this whole time and just got there?  Izuku’s lip quivered.  What if he doesn’t want me anymore?  Or he just doesn’t remember me?  Hard as he tried, he couldn’t picture his father’s face.

“We’re here,” Yagi said.

“Already!?” Izuku exclaimed.  They walked for less time than a TV episode, he was sure.  Big people could walk further faster than him, but still.  Yagi looked down into his pocket.  Izuku didn’t move.

“I know this is hard, and you’re nervous, but you’ve got to be brave, Little Midoriya.”  A finger rubbed his back.  “There are so many wonderful things to do and see in the world, and so many people waiting to meet you.  Things may be rough at first, but I promise it will be worth it.”  His breath brushed through his hair.  “Now, come on out.”

Izuku met Yagi halfway to crawl into his hand.  His eyes locked shut as he was lowered to the ground.  The light touched him hard enough to hurt.  Like siting under Yagi’s reading lamp, but all around.  Sunlight.  Yagi’s fingered remained around him, opening slowly to let Izuku go at his own pace.  A slow one.  Eye still closed, he inched off the hand one foot at a time, retracting when the floor sunk under him.

“It’s just dirt, don’t worry.”

“Dirt?”  He cracked an eye.  The floor was brown and soft.  Like the brownies the old family used to make.  But it didn’t smell like them.  Probably not the same thing.  On closer inspection, it was made of lots of little pieces all stuck together.  He tested his foot on it again.  His red paper shoe came away brown.  “It’s stuck to me!”

“It does that sometimes.  That’s what shoes are for.”

“…  I knew that.”  Two feet on the ground, he held on to Yagi’s finger while he got his bearings, just in case.  Grass rose around the edges of the dirt.  Mama told him to hide in the grass before she died.  And before that, she warned that grass could have predators they couldn’t see coming.  But even bigger plants arched over them.  And a house over that.  Taller than even Yagi.  As tall as the walls back home but without a ceiling.  No cover.  Just thee open, endless blue sky.  Izuku fell backwards into Yagi’s palm.

“Just take it slow, kiddo.  The sky’s not gonna hurt you.”  A thumb rubbed his cheek.  “Technically, it’s not even there.  Remember that show about the northern lights?  It’s like that.  The sun hits air in the sky at a certain angle, and makes it blue.  Nothing but air, clouds, and light, and then it’s outer space.”

“That’s worse!” he whined.  Not in a million, billion years did Izuku think he’d ever miss the ceiling.

Yagi chuckled.  “Well, you don’t have to worry too much about that.  You’re gonna be back to living in your own little room with a new roof over your head in a bit.”  Izuku rolled over and stuck his face in the curve of his palm.  The strong pulse made his head bob slightly.  “Not sure when exactly.  I don’t know if they’re going to meet you out here, or if you need to walk in on your own…”  He hummed.  “Can you see anyone under the house?”

He looked between his fingers.  The shadows of tiny square things stood in front of the light from the other side. Izuku didn’t notice them before.  The house they were under drew more attention.  The closer ones got some light.  Enough to see little holes in them, that sort of looked like windows.

“I don’t see anybody.”

“Hmm.  This is probably on me.  Should have worked out a meeting time…  Do you think you’d be okay walking in on your own?” he asked.

Be brave.  Papa was brave, he walked all the way here himself.  And Mama was brave.  She went out not knowing if Papa made it.  I have to be brave too!

With a deep breath, Izuku stood up and let go of Yagi’s hand for the first time.

“I can do it!” he declared.

“That a boy!”  Yagi set down all Izuku’s things.  Both the old stuff from his house, and all the new stuff Yagi got for him.  From toys and markers, to extra supplies he was supposed to share with the village.  Mama’s sword, and Yagi’s blanket.  “Is this everything?”

“Yep!”

“Are you sure?  I can quick run back and get it.”

“This is all of it.  I checked.”  It was so much, he couldn’t carry it all.  The bigger stuff was wrapped up in a towel; he was supposed to get the villagers to help bring it inside.  Back when he and Mama tried to leave, they could carry everything they owned between the two of them.  “…  It’s a lot.”

“I want to make sure you’re comfortable in a new place.”

Izuku cast his eyes down again.

“What?”

“What if they don’t let me in?”

“They will.  Only monsters would turn away a child in need.  And you’re father’s in there.  He was so excited to see you again,” he assured.

“…  But what if they don’t?”

Yagi sighed, then laid down in the grass to be close to him.  “How about this: I’ll wait out here for a little while.  If nobody comes to get you, or they’re just mean, you come back out here to me, and we’ll go home.”  He smiled bigger than Izuku’s whole body.  “How’s that sound?”

“But…  What if they do like me?”  Yagi tilted his head.  Izuku sniffled.  “Am I never gonna see you again?”

“Oh, Little Midoriya…”  He scooped Izuku up and brought him to his face.  He hugged him tight, pinching wrinkled skin in a way that must have hurt, but the man didn’t say anything about it.  Just held him there lightly with his other hand.  “I promise I’ll come and visit.  I’ll come back to this spot and call for you.  You can’t miss me!”

“But I will miss you!”  Something wet fell into Izuku’s hair.  It took him a second to realize that Yagi was crying too.

“Little Midoriya…”  His voice didn’t sound like his voice.  “I…  I just wanted to say how proud I am of you.  When we first met, I swear you were scared of your own shadow, but now, you’re moving to a new place all on your own.”  He chuckled again.  “But I suppose I should have expected that.  You’ve been surviving on your own for years before ever meeting me.  You’re an incredibly brave kid.”

“You think I’m brave?”

“I know you are.”

One more squeeze, then Izuku pushed off Yagi’s face.  Getting the message, he lowers his hands once again.  He hopped off into the dirt without a second thought.  Backpack full of borrowing supplies, a little felt pouch with his toy cars, and a towel full of food and his art stuff.  He was ready.

“I’m going in.  Promise you’ll be here if I change my mind?”

“Right here.”

“Then goodbye for now.  Thank you for taking care of me!”  He bowed deep like the kids on TV, before running towards the house.

Right into a fence made of twigs he didn’t see.  He stumbled back, but didn’t fall over.  The little boxes looked more like houses up close, even in the dark.  But everything was so still.  Still meant safe back when he was on his own, but this place was supposed to have people.  Mama always taught him to be quiet.  But when he wasn’t, Yagi came to help him.  Maybe the villagers would too.

“Hello!” he called out.  “Is anybody there?”  Nothing.  His eyes narrowed.  Maybe I should just turn around.  But there’s a fence here.  Bugs and rats couldn’t build this.  There must be someone.  “I’m coming in!”  Even with two bags, the fence wasn’t hard to climb.  He used to scale way bigger walls than this every day.  And this one hand rungs to make it even easier.  “Hello?”

The place looked sort of like the streets on TV.  Tightly packed buildings along a road.  Izuku’s feet didn’t sink in this dirt.  The deeper he went, the dirt turned into little stones.  Clothes close to his size hung from string above him.  Once his eyes adjusted to the dark under the house, he saw what the buildings were made of.  Milk cartons, cereal boxes, mail packages, turned-over cans, even little brick toys.

One building made from a frozen bagel box had a bunch of thread spools out front.  All different colors.  Izuku peaked into the cut-out door.  Four or five unfinished shirts were stretched out by different threads around the edges.  Each woven with individual yarn, unlike the solid cloth Yagi cut out and resewed to make his clothes.

He heard a shuffle.  Izuku froze, then scanned the room.  One hand on Mama’s sword, one foot out the door.  Beyond a shirt rack, sat a shadow.  One with eyes.

“H-Hello?” he asked.

“What are you doing out?  Didn’t you hear the alarm?” the shadow whisper-yelled at him.

“Alarm?”

“Were you born yesterday!?  There’s a stranger giant outside!”  A new voice came from beside him.  And arm, smaller than Yagi but still big to him, wrapped around his head over his mouth.

“There’s no stranger!  That’s my friend, Yagi!  He dropped me off!”

“You are in so much trouble once this is over, young man!  Who are your parents?”

“That’s why I’m here!” he shouted.  How can I be in trouble?  I just got here!

“Shh!” both hissed at him.

“I’m Midoriya Izuku!  I’m looking for my Papa!  His name is Hisashi!”

The arm let him go.  Both people, small people, like him, looked between him and each other.

“So the bastard wasn’t just drinking.”

“Hey!  That’s a bad word!”

They looked at each other again, and laughed.

“Mayor did say he talked to Kudo about something like this.”

“We should take him there after the hide warning is over.”

“Just hunker down here, and don’t make too much noise.”

“But we brought supplies!  I need help carrying them all in!” Izuku shouted some more.

“And we’re not about to get in trouble for breaking the hide!”  The big-small one tried to grab him again.

“No!”  He ran out, ignoring the quiet calls behind him.  “I’m Midoriya Izuku!  I’m looking for Midoriya Hisashi!”  Izuku barreled through dark streets calling out to him.  A lightbulb flickered on and off slowly in the middle of the underhouse.  Or, at least he thought it was the middle.  Twisting roads with no destination left him lost.  Even as more lights turned on around him.  He turned a corner and ran into someone.

“Ow!  Hey!” the lady snapped at him.  She was small too.

And there were more behind her.  Five total in his field of view.  More than ever in his whole life.  His heart jumped into his mouth, and it lagged behind him as he ran.

“I’m Midoriya Izuku!  I’m looking for Midoriya Hisashi!”

Even more people appeared out of buildings and alleys.  Ten.  Twenty.  Thirty.  Fifty.  A hundred.  Far higher than Izuku could count.  They all got closer every second.  Walls of people clogged the streets and blocked any effort at escape.  All their voiced bled into noise.  Too much noise.  Too many faces.  Tears blurred them further.  Izuku couldn’t yell for Papa anymore.  He couldn’t breathe.

Mama’s warning to hide pounded through his head.  He dove for the nearest dark spot, curling up under whatever was there and trying to remain as still as possible despite his shivering body.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“The alarm’s over.”

“Where are his parents?”

“Izuku?”  Hearing his own name cut through the noise.  New hands uncovered the cardboard scraps from around him.  A man appeared.  A sharp face framed by plain, curly, black hair.  Yellow eyes widened.  “Is, is that really you?”  He sounded like Yagi did before.

“I’m Midoriya Izuku,” he repeated automatically.  “I’m looking for Midoriya Hisashi.”

“You,” he gasped, “you look so much like your mother…”

Izuku’s jaw dropped.  “P-Papa?”  Blurs in his memory came into focus.

Tears fell out of his eyes as he nodded.  Before Izuku could react, he threw his arms around him.

“Izuku!  My boy!  My baby boy!  I thought I lost you!” he wailed.

His hand cradled the back of Izuku’s head, forcing his face into the crook of his neck.  Then he kissed his ear.  He was warm.  Like Yagi, but not.  Izuku fit into this man’s arms like the puzzle pieces he put together back at the house.  He remembered.  Something he remembered before everything else.  Papa and Mama both held him that way.  This was Papa.  This was really Papa.  He dug his fingers into his woven shirt, and allowed the family he thought he lost cradle him through his own tears.

“Welcome home.”

The sun finished going down.  Mosquitos hovered above Toshinori’s head around the single lit porch light.  He pulled at a loose thread of his shirt, then put it on top of the supply bundle with the others.

They could use that…  Faintly, he heard talking from under the house.  Kudo said they had a whole city under there.  I hope Little Midoriya found his father in all that…  He bit his lip.  It’s been hours.  He said he’d come back to me if there was trouble…  Why would there be trouble?  He’s home.  The stars started coming out even with light left in the sky.  More than midnight in the city.  But the way the city came to life was its own kind of special.  He missed it.  I should go home too.

He didn’t move.  Not for another half hour.  What if the little boy ran out mere minutes after he left?  A mosquito flew by his eye, and he batted it away.  But he couldn’t just sit outside all night.

Toshinori rose to his feet, joints clicking worse than an antique music box doll.  Pain bloomed outward from his injury, as it often did, but it hadn’t bothered him lately.  Probably the evening chill.  It would subside once he got home and took a nice warm bath. 

Back to the house, he corrected, not home.  Tokyo is home.  And now, he could go home on time without a guilty conscience.  No more loose ends to keep him away from work longer than necessary.  All’s well that ends well.  All Might saves the day again.  He huffed a half-chuckle.  Only a few more years left of that…