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“Come on Inko, you haven’t been out in a week — you can’t just keep laying here!”
Here being Izuku’s bedroom, on his bed, with her head buried in his pillow.
(It still smells like him, even if it feels like Inko’s cried all the tears in her body since… since she learned what had happened.)
Inko knows Mitsuki is only worried, that this is why she came into the house and is yelling at her now. It’s always been her way of showing she cares.
But now, in her mind’s eye, Inko sees herself stand up and scream, throwing Izuku’s All Might-shaped lamp at her friend.
“What else am I supposed to do?!” she sees herself yell, her face red as her mouth twist into a snarl, because Mitsuki is her best friend but Katsuki is still alive, Mitsuki hasn’t lost her son.
Because Mitsuki will go home and be able to see her son, but all Inko has left is a grave to visit and far too few memories to remember.
She sees herself snap and throw herself at her friend, screaming and sobbing and desperate for any physical pain to take her mind off the awful hole in her chest.
Of course, she doesn’t actually do any of that.
Instead, she gingerly sits up and fakes a smile. “I’m sorry,” she tells her friend. “I’m just not feeling up to it today.”
Mitsuki’s eyes are soft as she sits down next to Inko, pulling her into a sideway hug Inko falls into gladly. “I know,” she says, and Inko doesn’t need to look at her friend to know that she’s scowling, the way she always does when she has to articulate feelings.
“I brought you food — don’t worry,” she adds with a smile that falls flat, “Masaru cooked.” She sighs. “You should come over for dinner more often, though. And don’t take this wrong, Inko? But if you wanted to move in with us, just for a little while… We’d make it work.”
Amazingly enough, that manages to break through the dull haze Inko’s fallen into, and she shakes her head.
Her hands shake as they bunch up Izuku’s All Might soft sheets. “N-No,” she replies, pressing her eyes shut for a moment as she takes in a trembling breath. The thought of staying with Mitsuki, who wants to help but still has everything Inko has lost, makes the air run thin. “I’ll stay here.”
Mitsuki sighs again, shaking her head. “Why did I know you’d say that?” she mumbles to herself.
Inko shrugs. She doesn’t reply, the haze already creeping back in.
If she ends up eating, Inko doesn’t remember it. She thinks she has — Mitsuki wouldn’t have let her not eat, and there is a faint aftertaste she’s too tired to identify lingering on her tongue — but she could be wrong.
Mitsuki is gone now, and Inko is back on Izuku’s bed. All Might’s grinning face stares at her from the wall, but Inko feels too wrung out to even try.
She just pulls the soft, soft covers around and over her, and buries her head into Izuku’s pillow.
It still smells like him — faintly.
She doesn’t know what she’ll do when it stops.
Masaru looks up from the cutting board — and his half-cut carrots — when he hears Mitsuki storm back in.
“Went that badly, huh?” he asks her gently, taking a sidestep so she can come stand beside him.
“What do you think?” she half-snarls half-sighs, her hand sneaking forward to steal a carrot stick.
Masaru only shoots her a droll look as he pushes the rest of the carrots away before turning to face her.
“Are you okay?” he asks, gently taking Mitsuki’s hand in his.
It’s always amazing, how easily he can make her drop her guard with just the right gesture. It’s not something he’d have dared dreamed about when they’d first met, but now, after years of marriage, Masaru knows when his wife needs to rant and rage, and when she just needs a hand to hold as she unwinds.
Like now.
He watches her shoulders drop as she heaves a long sigh, and distantly, his heart swells in his chest. He loves her.
“I’m just worried,” Mitsuki finally confesses, squeezing his hand and looking away. Toward Inko’s house, he knows. “Inko… She’s not doing well.” She’s started to gnaw on her lips too, and Masaru gives her a pointed look until she stops, rolling her eyes with a muttered ‘I’m fine’.
“Of course she’s not doing well,” Masaru replies with a sigh. “She lost her son.”
Masaru remembers only too well the icy panic that had filled his chest when they’d been told to come and pick up Katsuki after he’d been attacked by that monster, but Katsuki had been fine.
Well, physically fine anyway. He won’t talk about it, but Masaru knows that seeing Izuku die can’t have been easy on him.
(Katsuki probably thinks they don’t know about the nightmares, too, but Masaru’s always been a much lighter sleeper than his wife. He can tell their son has been getting up in the middle of the night, and he’s made sure to stock up on soothing teas for Katsuki to use.
He knows from experience that pushing him won’t lead to anywhere good, but quiet and steady support has always been more Masaru’s style anyway.)
Inko didn’t have the same luck. Her son is dead — gone, forever — and nothing will ever make that better. They’ll never see little Izuku running around again, his smile so bright as he chattered about whatever hero had caught his fancy this time.
“So what, am I just supposed to give up? Let her wallow and fade away too?” Mitsuki retorts, eyes narrowed in annoyance.
Masaru rolls his eyes. “I didn’t say that. But I think she needs more help than we can give.”
And he can tell from the way Mitsuki’s shoulders drop that she thinks so too.
“What can we do then?”
Masaru sighs again as he draws her into a hug. “We keep on being there for her,” he says. Inko’s always been more his wife’s friend than his, but he’s always liked her anyway. “And I’ve been looking into… support groups that might help her.”
Mitsuki snorts. “You and your support groups.”
“Hey, just because they didn’t work for you doesn’t mean they wouldn’t help Inko. Besides,” he adds with a wince, “I don’t think they’d be able to make it worse if they don’t.”
Mitsuki’s breath shakes against his neck as she sighs. “Yeah, they probably couldn’t,” she mumbles, so low Masaru isn’t sure he was meant to hear it.
Mitsuki drives her to the meeting. The ride there is uncomfortably silent, and Inko spends it staring down at her hands. She’s been biting her nails, she realizes. She hadn’t noticed she had picked up the habit again, but now the bitten-down nails keep catching on the soft wool of her top, and she can’t not notice.
"You don't have to go in if you don't want to," Mitsuki tells her as she pulls into the parking lot.
Inko takes in a deep breath and shakes her head, steeling herself. “I… Thank you, but I think I need to do this.”
Mitsuki’s right, after all. As much as it feels like Inko’s world has ended — and it has — she can’t just… do nothing.
Izuku wouldn’t want that for her.
(Which had been Mitsuki’s argument towards her going to this meeting — Inko had nearly thrown her out of her apartment for it, but in the end, her friend was right, and Inko does need help.)
Mitsuki smiles back awkwardly when Inko exits the car, and Inko just stays there for a moment, watching her friend drive off.
There is a slight chill to the air, and Inko welcomes it into her lungs until it makes her violently shiver.
“Well, I guess this is it, then,” she mumbles to herself, and then she heads in.
The meetings don’t really help the first time she goes, nor the second. By the fifth, Inko’s wondering why she still comes, and by the tenth, she’s wondering how it is that no one seems tired of hearing her sob continuously as the hour goes by.
But something keeps her coming back. She even talks about Izuku sometimes, and it helps, telling strangers who understand what she’s lost about her beautiful, beautiful boy.
Inko goes back to work and gives empty smiles to everyone who tells her just how sorry they are for her, and that if she needs anything (her son, she needs her son back), and she eats at Mitsuki and Masaru’s table once a week.
It is… not better, but it’s also not really worse, she thinks.
The meetings help her feel more real, she realizes after the fifteenth time she’s gone to one. Less like an empty shell.
There’s Kogane-san, who lost his son almost five years ago not to a villain but to a drunk driver, and Oshiro-san, whose daughter killed herself eight months ago, and seeing them here every week, talking about the fond memories they have of their children but also of the good things that have happened to them recently gives Inko hopes.
Every day she has to wake up without Izuku there to wish her a good morning is still a nightmare, still feels like climbing her way out some deep, dark abyss with only her fingertips — but at least she’s climbing.
She likes to think Izuku would be proud of her for that.
Meeting Yagi-san again is a complete happenstance. Inko certainly doesn’t expect it, but one Saturday morning, while she’s picking up groceries — and standing in front of the aisle, wondering if making katsudon again would make her feel better or worse (probably worse, she’s starting to admit) — she turns around and he’s just… there.
“Y-Yagi-san!” Inko stumbles backward, startled, and Yagi-san does the same, devolving into a coughing fit that brings blood to his lips.
She can tell that he recognizes her, mercifully, and she hastens to dig through her bag for a clean tissue to offer him.
“Here,” she says.
“Thank you,” Yagi-san replies, looking away from her as he carefully wipes his mouth clean before tucking away the bloodied tissue into the pockets of his ill-fitting clothes.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Inko asks him, even though she remembers him telling her that he had an incurable condition that sometimes led to these… fits.
“I’m fine,” he replies, shuffling on his feet and offering her an awkward smile. He licks his lips. “And erm, how have you been?”
“I’ve been… fine,” Inko replies, though she has a feeling her answer is just as much of a lie as his is.
She looks back down at her shopping cart, half-filled with the ingredients to make Izuku’s favorite meal, and she makes a split-second decision.
“Actually,” she says, “how would you feel about getting lunch? With me. I can cook.”
Yagi-san blinks and coughs again. “L-Lunch?”
“Yes.” Inko nods decisively, before she realizes how forward she’s been and she backpedals, her cheeks flushing red. “I m-mean, unless you don’t want to, or have anything else planned? Oh gosh, you really don’t have to if you don’t want —”
Her increasingly panicked mumbling is cut off by Yagi-san’s laughter.
He looks startled, for a moment, like he hadn’t expected to laugh either. He hides it quickly, though, but Inko still saw it.
“I can do lunch,” he tells her.
Inko exhales in relief. “Oh good. I just, erm, wasn’t looking forward to cooking this just for myself.” Her hand shakes as she reaches for the pork slices. “Katsudon was Izuku’s favorite meal, you know,” she tells Yagi-san sadly. “I’d make it for him after he had a bad day.”
She doesn’t really know why she’s telling him this — Yagi-san is still basically a stranger, for all that he came to Izuku’s funeral at her request (he had tried to save her boy, how could she not invite him?) — but it… helps, having someone listen.
Inko pays for her groceries — Yagi-san tries to insist he should be paying, since she’ll be cooking for him, but he eventually comes to see her side of things — and then they walk back home.
Inko doesn’t really remember what they talk about on the way there. Things. The weather. That new movie that came out that they both haven’t seen (and probably won’t see) but see posters about everywhere.
It occurs to her as she unlocks her door that letting a strange man she’s only met twice into her apartment might not be the smartest thing — Mitsuki would definitely yell at her for it, even if Inko can handle herself — but there’s something about Yagi-san that makes him easy to trust. An aura, almost, that tells her he won’t hurt her.
“Well, here we are,” she mumbles. “It’s not much, but it’s home.”
Less so now, without Izuku — his absence has turned the whole world colder — but still.
“It’s lovely,” Yagi-san tells her with a smile.
Katsudon isn’t a meal that takes a lot of time, and Inko’s prepared it so many times she sometimes thinks she could make it in her sleep.
But this is her first time making it without Izuku around, trying to help and sneaking bites while it cooks, and Yagi-san’s company is a very welcome distraction from the memories tickling at her brain.
They move to the living-room to eat, and Inko starts crying at the first bite.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Inko tells Yagi-san when he tries to offer her a tissue. “I just — this happens all the time.” She lets out a low chuckle, sniffling. “I cry all the time — Izuku…” She swallows, blinking back tears. “Izuku was much the same.”
It hurts to even say his name, but this is something that the group meetings have taught her — she can’t let his memory fade. Sharing memories of her son hurts, like a deep unending ache in her chest, but it’s sweet too, because every time she says his name she can picture his face, grinning up at her.
“You must be tired of hearing it,” Yagi-san says, “but I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Inko chokes on a sob, reaching up with the hand that isn’t still holding her chopsticks to wipe her eyes. “You’re right — I am tired of hearing it. But thank you.”
“I wish —”
“Stop,” Inko interrupts. Her hands shake, but she’s surprised by how steady her voice sounds as she glares at her guest. “Stop,” she repeats. “You did your best. I know you — that you probably feel like you should have done more, but…” She swallows, looking away as her eyes prickle.
“You tried,” she continues, willing him to understand how important that is to her, how much it matters. “I don’t think you understand how few people have ever tried to help my son in his life. Had,” she corrects after a too-long beat, deflating in her chair.
“I’m — he deserved better.” Inko can read the apology he was about to say on his lips, but she appreciates the way Yagi-san corrects himself anyway.
“He did,” she agrees quietly. She takes another bite of her food and chews it mechanically. It doesn’t taste like anything.
She sighs. “He was quirkless, you see, and some — most people didn’t quite… understand that.” She looks away and then down at her hands. She’s started picking at her nails again. “I… A lot of people looked down on him for that, and I… I wish I had been better at letting him know I didn’t care about it.”
Her vision blurs and Inko rapidly blinks back tears, forcing a smile as she focuses back on her guest.
She shakes her head. “Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It probably isn’t what you signed up for,” she adds in a low, embarrassed mumble.
“It’s fine,” Yagi-san replies, though it’s clear from how uncomfortable he is that he’s lying. “I, erm, knew someone who was quirkless,” he blurts out. “So I do know… some of what your son must have been going through.”
“Really?” Inko startles. “It’s a small world, I guess.” Twenty percent of the world was quirkless, Izuku’s voice reminded her — and yet, somehow, she’d never met anyone who even knew somebody else who was quirkless before.
“It can be,” Yagi-san offered awkwardly, stabbing his chopsticks into his rice.
Inko sighs. “You probably know more than me, then. Izuku wouldn’t… He didn’t want to worry me, I guess,” she explains, a bittersweet smile finding its way on her lips. “So he wouldn’t say much about what he was going through. I know it wasn’t easy, though. He’d come home with bruises all the time, and his teachers…” She purses her lips. “Well, I never listened, of course, because what they were saying wasn’t like my son at all, but…”
She looks back into Yagi-san’s worried eyes. “Was it like that for your friend too?” she blurts out, and then shakes her head again. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
Yagi-san huffs out an amused laugh as he waves his hands. “No, no, it’s fine. Really. I guess I just… haven’t thought about this in a long time, that’s all.”
He frowns, looking deep in his thoughts, and Inko’s heart stutters in her chest as she belatedly realizes he must have lost that friend he mentioned a long time ago.
What a mess she’s been making of things, hasn’t she? And when Yagi-san had been kind enough to indulge her silly need for company as she cooked too...
They finish their meal in silence, and after, Yagi-san offers to do the washing up.
He smiles like Izuku did when Inko finally relents, and the stabbing pain in her chest makes Inko almost drop the plates she’s carrying back to the kitchen.
She feels horrible for how glad she is to see him go, and then even worse when she realizes how lonely she feels again in her too empty apartment.
Because when Yagi-san was there and they were talking, there were moments — only a precious few, maybe, but moments nonetheless — where Inko hadn’t completely felt weighed down by her grief.
There are still some mornings where Inko wakes up, and she doesn’t remember Izuku’s gone.
She’ll turn over in her bed and stretch lazily, mind still hazy with sleep, and she’ll call out for her son to make sure he’s awake and getting ready for school.
Her voice will echo through the empty house, and suddenly Inko will remember.
It feels like losing him all over again every time.
(“No more,” she’ll beg into her pillow. “No more, please, I can’t stand this.”
She doesn’t know who she’s begging to, but they never, ever seem to hear her.)
Inko meets Yagi-san again. He becomes just Yagi, and then Toshinori-san. He is very kind, and Inko finds that she enjoys the quiet moments they spend together.
Toshinori-san, she eventually learns, is also All Might.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” he asks her as he poofs back into the man Inko knows with a puff of steam, instantly struck by a coughing fit that brings blood to his lips and overrides the shock Inko feels.
“Of course not!” Inko retorts, already fretting as she hands him one of the tissues she’s taken to keeping at hand. “I would never,” she adds, softly and slowly, when he still looks panicked.
“I… You probably have questions,” Toshinori-san tells her, his shoulders dropping. His left hand curls toward his side — it’s a habit he has, Inko’s noticed. Whenever Toshinori-san feels ill-at-ease, he’ll try to protect his side.
It’s subtle, mostly, until it’s not.
“I do,” Inko says out loud, because she does. “But they can probably wait.”
Toshinori-san — who is actually All Might, dear god, has Inko really been hanging out with All Might all this time?? — startles.
(Izuku would have been going insane over this fact, and for once, the thought amuses her as much as it hurts her.)
“Really?” The surprise in his voice pains her, and Inko pushes away the thoughts of the son she can no longer help to focus on this man she can help.
“It makes sense, really,” she teases.
Toshinori-san’s eyes go wide, and Inko almost laughs. “It does?”
“Mmh-mh.” Inko nods. “Explains why you were always so… red whenever the subject came up.”
Or whenever he spotted the All Might merchandise Inko had bought for her son, which still littered their home, on the handful of occasions he’d been over.
(Later, once she’s alone and has heard the sordid story of how Toshinori-san lost his stomach and a lung to a villain so horrible he refuses to even name him, once she realizes that even All Might couldn’t save her son, she’ll have a breakdown.
But she’ll also remember how somber Toshinori-san had been at Izuku’s funeral, how he’d come at her request even though he absolutely didn’t have to.
She’ll remember how All Might’s started a foundation in support of quirkless children — less and less of them are born every year, but they still exist, and they shouldn’t be forgotten.
Izuku shouldn’t be forgotten.
All Might is helping her do that, and Toshinori-san, who always listens to her story, helps her too.)
The weeks go by and turn into months, and before Inko knows it, it’s that time of year — the beginning of the school year.
“You should come over,” Mitsuki tells her, in that toneless voice that really means she’s worried. “The brat’s starting at UA tomorrow, you should come see him off.”
Katsuki had scored first at the entrance exam, Inko knows. She’s seen him more over the past few months than she had in the years before, and she’s so, so proud of the boy who still calls her Auntie, but…
“Are you sure?” Inko asks, twisting her hands and biting her lip. “I don’t want to…” ruin it, she doesn’t finish, but they both hear it anyway.
Because she could. Even Inko herself doesn’t know how her grief will manifest from day to day. Some days she still wakes up feeling like the world is pressing down on her, like nothing she could do would ever matter again because her son is dead.
Others she can laugh at things Izuku would have found funny, or smile as she remembers him.
Grief isn’t linear, the people at her group meetings say, and Mitsuki would forgive her for any reaction she might have, but…
Inko doesn’t think she could forgive herself if she somehow hurt Katsuki in her grief.
“You’ll be fine,” Mitsuki retorts forcefully, rolling her eyes and swinging an arm around Inko’s shoulders. She starts stirring them toward the door. “The brat won’t say it, but he’ll like having you there.”
“I…” Inko wavers. She takes a long look at her apartment — still so cold, still so empty — and then another at her friend, who paused and is now staring at her expectantly, and…
She doesn’t want to be there alone tomorrow, she realizes.
(Mitsuki had known this, probably, too. She’s a good friend like that.)
“Fine,” she finally says, relenting. Mitsuki grins at her victoriously, and surprisingly enough, Inko smiles back.
And so Inko’s there the next day, waving off Katsuki as he scowls back at them and pretends like he’s too old for family affection (more awkwardly around her, which Inko uses shamelessly to draw him into a short hug).
And for a moment, as Katsuki leaves, Inko thinks she can almost see it: her small, green-haired boy, grinning at her and hitching his bag up on his bag as he waves at her before hurrying out the door after his friend.
Izuku had always wanted to go to UA so badly.
Inko really hopes that there is one universe out there, at least, where he got that wish.
(She just wishes it was this one.)