Chapter Text
When Hisashi finally got to the comfort of his own room (12:14am, but it should be around 4pm back home, right?) The first thing he did was check his computer, full hero gear still on. He was looking forward to his scheduled video call with his son, but his wife was acting cagey again. Or as cagey as you can sound over email.
1 new email received 11:17pm
From: Inko
I let Izu know you were patrolling all day today and didn’t have time to video chat.
Best,
Inko
So that was the excuse this time? Hisashi thought, throwing his belt and mask onto the bed with more force than necessary. Was this his punishment? Had Inko decided there was no more need for Izuku to have a father was too busy fighting villains in Seattle back alleys? Is he no longer allowed to offer his son moral support? Hisashi thought of his son growing up without someone to look to when he was being bullied just for being different, and felt sick to his stomach. Hisashi decided to forego eating (again), and lied on the bed, staring at the desk top light He didn’t doubt Inko’s parenting— but he wanted to be one of those people for Izuku.
Did he really deserve it? Facing villains was different than facing your problems. He was never good at that, and that’s why he was here in a shitty apartment, fighting shitty villains in shitty streets for the first shitty American agency that reached out to him.
Hisashi exhaled a plume of smoke through his nose. While his smoke wasn’t dangerous to people unless in large amounts, if he didn’t start keeping the windows open he was going to start damaging the walls more than the previous drug addicts who rented the place did. He listened to the sound of sirens a couple streets over and decided against it.
His personal phone began to buzz at the same time as his work phone, but by then the sounds of the sirens and dull music from the college student next door had already pulled him into a deep sleep.
Hisashi woke to pounding on his apartment door. Both of his phones had died in the night.
“Midoriya! Are you alive in there! Did you bleed out on the floor again?” Came his young neighbor’s loud voice. “Come on, open the door!” And, damn it, Reid was using her quirk on him, not controlling him, but he felt a bizarre and almost irresistible compulsion to answer the door, even if he was in his boxers.
“Is there an emergency?” Hisashi growls black curly hair sticking in every direction, but Reid just pushes past him, nearly bowling him over with her large frame. She must have been working out too, while Hisashi lost more and more weight.
“Yeah, you. I thought I was gonna have to call our dear friend again.” She said, setting a tupperware full of casserole in his barren fridge. Their dear friend being a friend of a friend who was a nurse, and had a healing quirk. “Shouldn’t you be at work, filling out shitty paperwork at a shitty hero agency?” Reid asks, now taking stock of what's in his cabinets (dust).
“Yes. How do you know my schedule?”
“Because you rarely deviate from it. You know if I was a pro hero--”
“Please not this again." Hisashi groaned, now speaking to her from the bathroom, as he got ready.
"I wouldn't work at Seattle's shadiest agency, I would just tell the villains to stop and they just would, and I would have a name that makes more sense than Solar Flare. You fight crime at night, and you have no flare.”
“Wow, okay.”
“But I can’t do that. Do you know why that is?” she asked. Her bright green eyes sparkled mischievously against dark skin.
“Is it your awful personality?”
“No, old man, my criminal record.” Ah, Hisashi had an inkling she had one of those. Her and her roommate were kind and welcoming but both of them had avoided sharing what it is they do for a living. While he was sure Quinn wouldn’t hurt anyone, he sometimes saw her roommate, a brawny, kindhearted Turkish man with a wolf transformation quirk, come home with bloody knuckles. But if Hisashi did not ask, neither would tell. “Anyways, Çeltin made that for you, so bring it with you for lunch.” She demanded gesturing to a casserole she'd brought in. She didn’t need to use her quirk on him this time, he knew her roommate was an amazing cook.
“Sure, sure. I’m leaving, get out of my house.” He says, hoisting a duffle bag of his hero gear over his shoulder to get changed into before patrol.
“I’m gonna stay and clean up here a bit, pig.”
Hisashi walks out, leaving both his dead phones on the floor of his room.
The Silver Star’s agency is in a nondescript, and almost crappy looking building. Hisashi had been desperate to get hired by an American agency, to show Inko, his mom, his former friends “look, I still have worth after what I did.” and Silver Star Hero Agency looked good on paper, good in their emails, and good on their shiny website, but it suffered in reality. Suffered from being in a poorer, high crime area of town, understaffing due to the shoddy hero schools in the area, and Silver Star herself was getting on in her years. While still maintaining the face of the company, Silver Star rarely went out into the field because of her health, and was very obviously unhappy about it. She was a woman of action, and her behind the scenes strategising was lacking. Perhaps, Hisashi muttered to himself quietly, that's why he was hired so readily.
Upon walking into his floor that day, almost everyone looked up from their work at him. Not that unreasonable he reasoned to himself, he was relatively respected, amongst his coworkers, and also nearing on two hours late. But, there was something about the way they whispered to each other that set him on edge.
The moment he sat down, a young administrative intern, approached him, seeming to steel herself. “Solar Flare, sir? Uh,” Her hair was turning from dark green to bright red with nerves, Hisashi supposed. He couldn’t for the life of him remember her name though. Roberts, maybe. “We had, uh. A lot of calls this morning from o-overseas numbers, and we thought they were all just spam, b-but they asked for you by name.” Hisashi didn’t like her tone. Not much could get Rob— Richards (?) this anxious. Dread and heat began to fill his stomach and chest. “It sounded urgent, and Silver Star wanted to talk to you in her office.”
Hisashi glanced around. Many other heroes and interns were watching, or obviously listening to the young intern. Hisashi knew how fast gossip traveled here. The intern obviously knew as much as the rest of the office did. No one else seemed willing to speak to him, or even greet him walking in, and Robinson (that was it!) was honest to a fault, having almost been let go for lack of tact multiple times. He leaned forward in his chair, and maybe some smoke escaped his mouth. "What do you think the calls were about?" He asks, quietly.
“Oh uh well I should let the boss tell you, but it was from a h-hospital? Ap-Apparently Midoriya Inko and Izuku were involved in an accident--” Robinson stammers, and Hisashi has already bolted out of his cubicle, barely grabbing his duffle bag, and nearly knocking Robinson over. He does spare a thought briefly for how much pressure the young intern had to be under. But the thought is buried under a wild panic— he bursts into Silver Star’s glass walled office, and for a moment she looked irritated in her sparkly grey pantsuit, but her face smoothes into something tired and practiced that he’s seen many times before that makes a dark and heavy pit fall into his stomach.
“Sit down Sol- Hisashi.” She says. “We received a call from Musutafu General Hospital this morning. Inko and Izuku Midoriya--” again they say their last name— as though he may not know who they were talking about, “were involved in a villain attack. A villain with a gigantification quirk had caused a building to fall near them, and your wife shielded Izuku from most of the damage. She didn’t make it to the hospital. Izuku is currently in the ICU.”
It’s here Hisashi, when later asked, would say that his mind became a foggy blur. It was as though he was sitting in his boss’ office thinking This is it? My best friend is gone? My boy is hurt and alone? For one moment and the next he’s digging in his bag for his keys in front of his apartment door, and he’s planning how much he should pack, or should he just take everything, he should book a flight now, there’s smoke irritating his eyes, is he going to quit the agency, is he going to have to talk to her parents--
“Whoah, whoa Midoriya!” A voice suddenly says behind him. “Just knock, Quinn is still in there, cleaning your kitchen.” It’s Çeltin Yılmaz, Reid’s roommate. He was tall, dark, had very nice long hair and an unsure smile on his face. Hisashi wonders why Reid is still in his house, it felt like this morning was ages ago, and it’s been so long since he’s been home, as in really home “Slow down, I don’t speak Japanese. Are you okay?” oh. He didn’t realize he’d been speaking aloud and distantly wondered for how long he’d been doing it.
He banged on his own apartment door. “Reid! Let me in, damn it!” When she opened the door, he began to rush around his apartment with a singular suitcase from his closet. Reid and Yılmaz shared a mystified and concerned look, until Hisashi suddenly stopped in his tracks. “What’s that?” He asks, but he knows what it is. There, sitting innocuously on his thrift-store coffee table was an open photo album. Reid walks over and picks it up.
“Okay, I’m actually really sorry for snooping, but I found this when dusting the spare room. I couldn’t resist, I’ve never seen your family! Your son is adorable, he looks just like you. What did you say his name is?” Reid opens to a page with a photo of three of them at a birthday party. The three were huddled together for a selfie, parents both kissing their son’s chubby cheeks. Hisashi takes the book in his hands as if it were glass. The other page had a photo he had taken himself of Inko and her best friend, posing by a homemade birthday cake, while his son peeks over the table and reaches for the frosting.
“Izuku… He--” It was as though all the strength left him at once, and he collapsed back into his sofa. “God… I have to go.” He says. His voice is cold to his ears, but he clutches the book to his chest with his hands shaking. “My wife and Izuku were caught in a villain attack, and she didn’t make it. Izuku is in the hospital.” he says.
He hears a quiet swear from Yılmaz as he sits next to him. Reid is still standing by the table, frozen. “How bad is it?” Yılmaz places a firm hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t know— Bad. He’s hurting and alone and i’m here,” His breathing is coming out hotter and quicker, “on the other side of the fucking world being a hero for— for no one.” He realizes he’s going to set the album on fire if he’s not careful.
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. I know you’re good at your job. I see you on the news sometimes, you save lives.” Reid says, arms crossed, looking indignant and supremely uncomfortable.
“Not when it mattered! Not when they needed me! I ran away! And now, Inko, she-she just… Fuck.” Okay, maybe now it wasn’t smoke making his eyes burn. Inko would tell him it was okay to cry— often through her own tears. He rubbed at his eyes, and he felt Çeltin’s hand squeezed his shoulder.
“Do you want us to come with you?” Reid said, sitting on his other side.”If I were you, I wouldn’t want to travel so far alone.” She didn’t reach out toward him, but Hisashi felt a warmth in his chest that was not his quirk. But he has to think rationally.
“No. No, I can do this, I’m an adult— neither of you know the language anyways.” And it would just be an added stressor.
“Alright, let’s get packing then.” Quinn said. “You stay right here, book a flight, call the hospital, whatever you need to do.” She and Çeltin began to pack all his essentials, while Hisashi leaned his head back and took a deep steadying breath.
