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Inko woke to the sound of screaming. She was on her feet before she even realized she was awake, shoulder catching on the doorframe as she rushed out of her room into the hall. “Izuku!” she cried, all but falling through his bedroom door, heart racing in her throat as she saw the red spreading across his son’s face, his tiny cries rending at her heart. “Izuku, I’m here.” she gathered him into her arms, trapping his hands against his chest so he couldn’t touch the wound which now dominated the left side of his face.
His soulmate, she realized distantly. His soulmate had been hurt, injured badly enough that Izuku was wailing in her arms from the echoed pain of it. “I’ve got you, baby.” she murmured, cradling him to her chest as she found her feet again, holding him close. “Mommy’s got you, it’s gonna be okay.” she found her way to the bathroom on pure muscle memory, and Izuku set off on a fresh round of tears when she had to set him down on the lid of the toilet.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” she assured him, strangely calm for all that she could hardly think past the fear crowding her mind. “Izuku, is this the only place it hurts?” she brushed her fingers through the air over his face, felt the heat radiating from it. A burn. They had aloe, at least. She could put that on, and bandages. Give him some of the painkillers and then get him to the hospital. The way it had spread, she could only guess that it was one of those awful delayed responses, that his soulmate had been injured so traumatically their young bond couldn’t process it all at once. If it had been a fire, there could be worse burns to come.
Izuku nodded, and Inko leaned in to kiss the middle of his forehead. “I’m going to get some things to make it feel better, okay?” she managed to keep her voice level, calm. Izuku needed her to be calm, needed to believe that she could make everything okay. “But I need you to be very good, and sit still for me. Can you do that?”
“Mmhmm.” he nodded, sniffling loudly. Inko pressed a kiss to his uninjured cheek and stood, pulling the doors of the medicine cabinet open with her quirk as soon as she set eyes on their handles. Everything she needed flew to her hands with just a thought and a twitch of her fingers, and Izuku hiccuped quietly. She’d not used her quirk much since they got the diagnosis, hardly at all in fact, but she didn’t have space in her mind to worry about quirks or quirklessness right now. All that mattered was her baby was hurt, and she had to fix it.
Izuku drank his medicine without complaint, for once, and Inko slathered the aloe on thick over his burning cheek, up around his eye- watering but not visibly damaged- and across his forehead. The bandages she wrapped as gently as she could over the injured area, more to keep his fingers out of the aloe than anything else, and by the time she taped the end down Izuku’s crying had petered out into the occasional hiccup or wet sniffle.
“Izuku, we’re going to go to the doctor now.” she said softly, setting her hands on his shoulders. “Do you want to walk, or should I carry you?”
Izuku opened his mouth, his throat and chest spasmed with a strangled sob, and he wordlessly lifted his arms towards her. Inko’s heart wrenched painfully, and she gathered her son up against her chest, holding him with one arm as she reached her quirk out for her phone, holding her free hand open to catch it. Mitsuki picked up on the third ring, and her old friend’s sleep-thick voice was immeasurably comforting.
“Mitsuki, I need a ride.” she said, and heard her friend sit up.
“What happened?”
“Izuku is hurt, we need to get to the hospital.” her voice, she thought distantly, was remarkably steady. Izuku sniffled against her shoulder, tears slowly but steadily dampening the fabric of her nightgown.
“Shit, I’ll be there in five.” Mitsuki lowered the phone, saying something to her husband that Inko couldn’t quite make out.
“It’s gonna be okay, baby.” she murmured, tucking her face into Izuku’s curls. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Izuku made a tired noise, and Inko’s heart broke a little. No child should have to endure this, and the thought that somewhere, earlier today, another child had already suffered the same fate... Inko’s hand tightened on her phone, the arm around Izuku clutching him tighter to her body. If this hadn’t been an accident, if someone had hurt her son’s soulmate on purpose, then when she found that person she would make sure they knew you didn’t need a powerful quirk or professional Hero training to dish out some justice.