Chapter Text
The worst day of Toshinori Yagi’s life began with the best news he thought he’d ever hear.
A baby. He and his girlfriend were going to have a baby.
As the silence dragged on (he was going to reply any second now, any minute, once he found the right words to express his joy) the anxious woman on the other end spoke up again. “I’m sorry, Toshi, I know this isn’t the best time and I should have done this in person, but I… the thought of… are you angry? Please don’t be angry.”
Her words snapped him back from his daydreams of tiny socks and stroller walks. He knew her home life wasn’t the greatest, and it wasn’t really him she was afraid would be angry. When her parents found out… well, he’d just have to be the hero and rescue her before they could do any harm to her or the baby. Their baby.
“No! No. I’m sorry, Inko, it’s just…” His smile widened, creasing his eyes and forcing the tears out. “I was literally at a loss for words. You know how you leave me speechless. But angry?” He laughed, “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier!”
“But what about… everything?” Inko asked. Ever practical, always keeping him grounded.
“I’ve already got offers from over a dozen hero agencies around Japan. Money won’t be a problem no matter where we go, and we were planning on moving in together after graduation anyway. I don’t think this will present any problems.” His voice softened. “Of course, that’s only if you want to go through with this. I’ll support your decision, whether it’s keeping the baby or not.”
“Of course I want--” she cut herself off and lowered her voice. He could almost imagine her putting her hand over the receiver. “Of course I want to keep the baby!”
He paced his room, bare and packed in preparation for leaving UA at the end of the month. He nearly wore a hole in the carpet in his excitement.
Maybe it was a little early. Maybe it wasn’t the best time in their lives for this to happen. But he loved Inko, so much, and knew he would love their child just as much.
He heard her stifle a sob. How much fear must she have had that he would reject her, blame her, tell her to get rid of the baby she wanted to keep? He lowered his voice again, as if he were whispering while embracing her. “It’s going to be alright, because I am here.”
He didn’t remember when he started saying that phrase. It was some time in middle school, but he didn’t know exactly when --if it was after the first time he stood up to her bullies and walked her home, or when he found her crying in the boys’ bathroom because she was too afraid to go to the girls’ where her tormentors were. Maybe it was later, after middle school but before he transferred to UA, when he found her walking around her neighborhood alone at night with bruises on her arms.
No matter when it started, it had worked ever since to remind her that she was not alone. He would never, ever, let her be alone.
Softer than anything, she answered, “Thank you.”
“We should meet up to talk,” he said. If she was at home, it might not be safe for her to discuss specifics, and clearly they needed to have a longer conversation about their baby . “I have to go on patrol with my master later today, but how about after? We could grab a late dinner and talk things over. Come up with names.”
“We don’t even know the gender yet!” Inko laughed, and Toshinori’s world was complete.
---
Toshinori’s world was shattered.
“Master!” he screamed, reaching for her shrinking form as Gran Torino flew them further and further away, the hulking mass of All For One rising behind her to deliver the final blow. “Let me go! I need to help her!”
“You heard her, kid,” Gran Torino said, his voice gruffer to hide the pain. “Don’t let her sacrifice be for nothing! You have to live .”
“No! Master! ”
I didn’t get the chance to tell her…
He could only imagine the warm smile Nana Shimura would have given him when he told her the news. She might have thwacked him on the head for not using protection (they did , it just must have failed this time) and scolded him for making her feel old. Wasn’t she too young to be a grandmother?
Wasn’t she too young to die?
They landed, but the cement under Toshinori’s hands and knees didn’t feel real. Nothing was real. Nothing was right in the world without his Master’s smile.
“Toshinori, listen to me,” Gran Torino said, crouching down in front of him. He wiped his face with his gloved hand. “ You are the world’s last hope against All For One now, but you aren’t ready to face him. You have to escape, get away--somewhere he can’t reach you, so you can get stronger. Don’t let him take you out before your time.”
Hatred burned in Toshinori’s veins. Anger grit his teeth. Despair spilled from his eyes. He wanted to go back now , feel the surge of One For All through his fists as he pummeled All For One into a pulp for taking his Master from him.
But he couldn’t be hasty. Gran Torino was right, he needed to be ready. He couldn’t recklessly throw his life away in a failed attempt at vengeance.
It was Inko’s call that saved him. If he didn’t know he had a baby coming, he might have thrown Gran Torino’s words and all caution to the wind and charged back into the fight. There were people depending on him, though, and he couldn’t put them in harm’s way no matter how awful it made him feel.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gran Torino sighed to disguise a painful sob. “We can talk more tomorrow.”
---
“America ?” Inko gasped.
The small pieces of Toshinori’s heart that managed to stay intact shattered as he prepared to argue against all the same points he’d brought up to Gran Torino hours earlier.
“There’s a new hero program in California. They’ve extended an invitation to me to join.”
It wasn’t a lie, but it felt like one. Toshinori braced himself for her angry tears, her devastation at what this meant losing. He’d had his own before meeting with her, his wounds still fresh from losing Nana Shimura the week before.
“That’s such a long way,” she commented with a worried glance at her still-flat belly, “America… ”
Toshinori steeled himself. “It’s an underground program. I’ll have to separate my hero and civilian identities, and cut myself off from any possible security risks…” Her widening eyes stopped him from continuing. She understood.
She wasn’t coming with him.
“Is this… what you have to do?” she asked. Though he never explained to her the specifics of One For All, or the duty its users were tasked with, she did understand that there was something fundamentally different about him after the passing of his mentor. Whether she attributed that to grief or simply a shift in priorities as he was met with the realities of hero work, she understood the change in Toshinori.
“I wish it wasn’t.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I want to stay here with you and…” They still hadn’t chosen a name, hadn’t even had time to discuss names, “... I’ll find a way to support you. This program provides housing, so I won’t have to spend my money on rent for myself. I’ll find a way to send it to you. I know it’s not technically allowed, but I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re taken care of, as much as I can.”
“Then… phone calls? Emails?” Her heart was breaking with every word, and his found new ways to fall apart.
“Not allowed from civilians.”
And that was a lie, one he had to insist on keeping. If a villain hacked his phone or emails and found out about her and the baby, if All For One found out about her and the baby… then his world truly would be gone.
She pulled out her phone and typed something with furious determination, then held it up to show him what she’d written. It was a new email account, ridiculously bland, the kind of thing anyone would delete as soon as they saw it in their inbox.
“Mark this as spam, and make sure to check your folder. No one would look in a hero’s spam email for secrets, right?”
Somehow, Toshinori manages to smile and writes the email down on a piece of paper. “Right.”
---
The last time he saw Inko Midoriya, officially, was when she dropped him off at the airport two weeks later. He was set to leave immediately after graduation, having accepted the offer to attend university in America under the sponsorship of an up-and-coming hero agency. He already had the name of his roommate: David Shield.
She still wasn’t showing yet, but kept one hand resting on her stomach as she waved goodbye to him. The last he saw of her, she lowered her head, put her hand to her mouth, and sobbed in the relative privacy of her car before driving away.
Unofficially, he checked his spam mail religiously. He never responded--no one replied to spam emails--but he cherished each one before it was automatically deleted by his email client.
Inko gave every email a generic clickbait title and included only a few sentences and images in each email. If ever his computer or phone were compromised, Toshinori was certain no one would find anything odd about the emails at all (except, maybe, that they were all opened--but he made sure to open all his email, even the ones that really were spam, to reduce suspicion).
Top Ten Baby Names in Japan! read one email. The number one choice was Izuku.
Astonishing Ultrasounds! Can You Tell A Baby’s Quirk In the Womb? The ultrasound pictures, not that Toshinori could tell what part of the blob-like image was actually supposed to be the fetus and what wasn’t. The ability to understand an ultrasound image was a Quirk unto itself.
Woman Gives Birth to World’s Cutest Baby?!
And there he was. He already had Inko’s dark hair, and Toshinori could tell he was going to look just like her. Good, less suspicion about the father if he looks like her.
The emails came less and less frequently as the years went by, but they still came. One alarmed him more than the rest.
Food Shortage in Musutafu.
There were no images, no text. Just the title. A quick search revealed that there was no official food shortage, not that he needed the confirmation--it was obviously a cry for help, and if he knew Inko, it must be truly bad for her to reach out like that. She never asked for anything from him, a habit ingrained into her by parents who punished her any and all desires.
He doubled the amount of money he sent to her and lived on instant ramen and frozen dinners for the next few months.
He took the next email as a thank-you. Fifteen Pictures of the World’s Greatest Hero.
The email was full of crayon drawings of All Might, several of them with a little greenish stick figure labeled ‘Me’. Toshinori’s favorite of the drawings, and the one he was willing to risk saving to his phone (it wasn’t unusual for heroes to save fan art, right?), was one titled ‘Me and AllMight save Mommy.” A big, blocky All Might and a crayon stick-figure Inko held hands with the messy-haired stick figure between them. The child was supposed to be wearing a hero costume, and scribbled under him was “All Might Junior.”
The image he loathed being unable to save was the photograph of Inko, a little more tired than he remembered, holding their toddler. He beamed at the camera in his All Might onesie that didn’t quite hide the nest of dark curls on his head. It was the only picture Toshinori had of his son, and as far as he could tell the only physical feature he’d inherited from him was his untameable hair. Sorry, Inko.
---
Returning to Japan was, in a way, harder than leaving. It hurt to be so close, so close to Inko and Izuku, and unable to contact them. He knew they lived in Musutafu based on the email Inko sent once, and hopefully they hadn’t moved since, but Musutafu wasn’t a big city. If he was going to root out All For One’s evil--and now, he finally felt ready to do just that--he had to stay in the big cities.
Inko would know he was there, though. Of course she would know.
He would make sure she knew he hadn’t forgotten, too.
---
“Play it again, Mommy!” Izuku exclaimed, jumping up and down in his chair in front of the computer, All Might toy gripped firmly in his hand.
“Alright, alright! You must be responsible for ten thousand of this video’s views by yourself,” Inko laughed, “Though, it’s a little too scary for me…”
Izuku hardly heard, eyes glued to the screen as a civilian described the scene of the distaster to the camera. It was years old, and there were plenty of interviews and other videos of All Might (all of which Izuku had seen multiple times), but this video--the first appearance of All Might in Japan--remained Izuku’s favorite. He never questioned his mother’s reluctance to watch it with him. He remembered, vaguely, the way she burst into tears when it was first shown on the news.
“Fear not, citizens!” All Might declared after giving his signature boisterous laugh, “Hope has arrived--because I am here !”
---
Beeping. Wires. Tubes.
Toshinori’s head was fuzzy, a haze of pain and painkillers.
He tensed his fist. He could still feel the bones in All For One’s face crushing as his knuckles slammed into him, literally wiping the self-assured smug from his face. The damage he sustained was worth it to finally avenge his master and create a safer world for his boy.
Some hours later, he woke up in a more coherent state to the worried face of his sidekick. He tried to sit up, but Sir Nighteye put a hand on his shoulder to keep him down.
“All Might,” Sir breathed, relief evident in every syllable. It dissipated with his next words. “How much do you remember?”
“I remember victory.” Toshinori flashed one of his trademark smiles, only for his gut to clench. A painful cough tore through his body, and his palm was splattered with blood.
“Nurse!” Sir shouted down the hall, and a team of medical professionals swarmed inside.
“Has he got any emergency contact?” Toshinori heard one of the nurses ask as his consciousness began to waver. “Any… any kin we should notify?”
“Me,” Sir answered, “And…”
---
Gentle sobs woke Toshinori next. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but he felt a little less like chunks of him were missing, even though his side was still tightly bound in bandages and surgical tape and he was hooked up to more tubes and monitors than he could count with his fingers.
“I’ve discussed retirement with him already,” came Sir’s voice, “But he’s refused.”
Toshinori didn’t remember that, but it sounded like him.
“I’m hoping you might be able to convince him. I’m sorry to call you so far from your home on short notice, Ms. Midoriya.”
Midoriya?
Toshinori’s eyes snapped open. He turned his head as much as he could with the breathing apparatus over his face. “Inko…?”
He can feel fingers wrapped tight around one of his hands. “Oh, Toshi, what happened to you?”
“It’s confidential, ma’am,” Sir answered.
“If you think this is bad…” Toshinori coughed again, though thankfully it didn’t bring up blood, “... you should see the other guy.”
Inko’s face hardened. “Your sidekick says you won’t stop being a hero, even though you’ve lost a lung and most of your stomach! What are you thinking?”
His head was still fuzzy, but he was thinking of Why Do Kids Love All Might? , sent years ago, which included a video of an emerald-eyed boy excitedly waved his All Might action figure around like it was flying. “ All Might’s the coolest! He never gives up, no matter how bad it is! When I get my Quirk, I’m gonna be a hero just like him who saves people with a smile!”
“Because I never give up, no matter how bad it is…” His eyes started to close, even though he fought to keep them open. Another sob slipped out, and he lifted his hand to wipe her tears. “Don’t cry, Inko. It’s going to be alright, because…”
“I am here,” Inko finished as he passed out once again.
---
I’m here , Toshinori thought, standing in front of the modest apartment complex in Musutafu. He was dressed in a slightly ill-fitting business suit, briefcase and luggage in hand. Inko told Izuku that his father was away on business for all those years. He had to hand it to her, it was more of a half-truth than a lie.
While he recovered in the hospital, losing more and more weight by the day until he could hardly recognize himself in the mirror, Inko prepared Izuku to meet his distant father.
His poor health might be a blessing in disguise. No one would believe the thinning, sickly man was really the number one hero. He worked out the arrangement with Sir Nighteye; he would continue his hero work as All Might for five hours a day--his limit--and then return home to his family as Toshinori Yagi. To keep Izuku safe, he would be told that Toshinori’s job had allowed him to relocate to Japan and work part-time in a city office on account of his health.
As far as Izuku needed to know, his father was a normal salaryman who missed him very much but did what he had to do to provide for his family. That, too, was not entirely a lie.
He took a deep breath and opened the door. “I’m--”
“You’re here!”
I told myself I wouldn’t cry, Toshinori thought, wiping his eyes quickly.
Izuku had his smile.