Work Text:
Inko gets the call while Izuku is at school.
It’s a number she vaguely recognizes, the one Hisashi had loosely taped to the top of the fridge before he left in case of emergencies. She stares at her phone blankly before pulling the paper toward her to confirm it’s the same. It is, and her heart drops onto the floor near her soles.
Something’s happened.
She doesn’t know what, her mind racing as she tries to come up with anything plausible, but that’s the only reason she’d ever get a call from this number. Hisashi’s personal cellphone is pinned to the front of the fridge, right under his work phone and the worn out menu for the closest Vietnamese take out, and she doesn’t know what to do. Inko hasn’t heard anything from her husband since he called a week ago to let her know he was picking up more hours for a while, wishing her a good morning and a reminder to not let Katsuki have more sugar than necessary before sending the boys off. Her phone keeps ringing.
She answers it after a moment more, bringing it to her ear with a trembling hand.
“-araki Tomura, please calm yourself.” A voice cuts in, smooth and calm despite the obvious irritation in his words. Something crashes further away from the receiver. “My apologies, is this the Midoriya household?”
And, just like that, she knows this isn’t going to be pleasant. She swallows, her tongue sticking to the roof of her suddenly dry mouth. “Yes, this is Midoriya Inko speaking.”
“Ma’am, there was an incident involving your husband.” He says. The tone doesn’t change but the racket in the background reminds her of shouted conversations with the Bakugous - without the constant swearing, thankfully. Mostly because someone is very obviously yelling about something she can barely make out, outside of Sensei can’t be dead.
Inko grips the phone tighter.
“What…what sort of incident?” She asks. Her voice doesn’t shake, not yet, but it threatens to break into a thousand pieces against the tile floor. Inko doesn’t know if she truly wants to know, but she has to.
She has to.
“Last night, there was a fight between an unknown assailant and All Might that caused large scale destruction in a residential area. Midoriya Hisashi was living close to the epicenter, but his body has not yet been recovered. If we receive any further information about his condition, we will pass it on as soon as we are able to. As per our policy, since Midoriya Hisashi was both under our employment and on the clock, the company will provide compensation.”
There’s a pause and she can hear someone else join in with the yelling. It doesn’t register for the longest moment, drifting in and out of understanding. She can’t bring herself to actually focus on anything but the despair crushing her chest. “You have my condolences, Midoriya Inko.”
The line goes dead.
Inko doesn’t know how long she stays like that, with the dial tone buzzing in her ear and a hand gripping the back of a chair so tightly she can’t feel her fingers. Slowly, she shuts the phone off and sits down. Buries her hands in her hair and lets the crumpled slip of paper fall onto the table. It’s hard to breathe, breath stuttering in her lungs as the world blurs and tears slip down her face.
She feels unmoored, like her entire world has been swept away by an inopportune wave and jarred her hard enough that she has no reprieve from drowning in it. Hisashi is most likely dead, if they haven’t found him by now.
Hisashi is dead and her last words to him were dull and asking when he was going to be able to come back home to them. She barely remembers the conversation, held far too early in the morning thanks to the time differences, just the tired fondness in her husband’s voice. The worst part is that there’s really no one to blame. Inko wants to hate the hero, wants to cry and scream and keep her son home and safe so that he never even touches heroics. But that’s impossible and she already knows it.
They don’t even know who All Might was fighting, either. Some faceless, nameless, destructive villain.
Inko resists the urge to pull everything toward her to hide and untangles herself enough to dial a number she hasn’t touched since the wedding. It rings, three nerve-wracking times, before someone picks up.
“Grandmother.” She croaks, not giving the woman enough time to answer properly and mopping her face with an already soaked sleeve. There’s tissues around here somewhere, but she can’t bring herself to look for them.
“Inko?” Akatani Niwa’s voice is as sharp and unyielding as the woman it belongs to. The woman who raised her after her mother disappeared and heavily disapproved of businessmen. She can already hear the lecture gearing up and it almost feels like sinking into a hug. “Girl, if this isn’t about that man finally apologizing for the madness he’s-”
“Grandmother,” she says again, cutting her off before the older woman can truly lay into her, “Hi-Hisashi’s dead.”
There’s a sharp inhale from the other end of the line, followed by silence and the pale background noise of multiple clocks. Inko swallows again, her throat scratchy and raw. “There was an…an accident where he works and they haven’t. They haven’t found him yet.”
“Oh, Inko, darling girl.” Niwa says eventually, and the sympathy in her voice is enough to set off a fresh wave of tears. “Why don’t you come up and stay with me for a while? Or I can call your aunt for you - you remember Ikuko, don’t you? She lives down there, too.”
She takes a breath, fighting the urge to frown until she can finally sit back up without feeling like she’s going to tip over and spill everything that makes her alive.
“I…I think we’d like that. Izuku hasn’t seen you since he was small; we- I think it’d be nice.” Inko says, tracing the table’s grain. Better than sitting in a too-large house knowing her husband was never coming back. That she’d never see him standing in the doorway watching her cook or sprawled out on the couch with Izuku on his chest while they debate the latest issue of the journal they both like.
“Of course, of course.” Niwa says, cutting her out of the spiral of thoughts. “Tell me, who did he end up taking after? You mentioned the possibility of him being late the last time we talked, darling girl, don’t think you’re getting out of gossiping with this old lady, now.”
Inko, despite her ribs feeling hollowed out and filled with cotton instead of lungs, laughs. Watery and hysterical but it’s more than she thought she could muster up.
She still needs to tell Izuku about. About his father, about going up to visit his great-grandmother for a while. Still needs to call the school and tell them he’s going to be gone for a few days, tell Mitsuki that she doesn’t have to wrangle more than her own son. Clean out the fridge so it doesn’t spoil by the time they get back.
But that can wait until after she tells her grandmother about the scare Izuku gave Hisashi back when his quirk came in.