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He remembered.
He had watched, just for a moment, wondering if this is where his baby-brother finally had gone mad, the child crawling around near the edge of the room, lying down to stare into a crack in the wall, his face scrunched up in concentration. Small pieces of food; fruit and berries were littered along where his little brother had been crawling, and he sneered seeing it.
“You’re going to attract pests.” He finally spoke up, and his little brother glanced back at him before looking back into the darkness behind the wall.
“They’re not pests.” His brother insisted. “And they might be hungry.”
"Things that aren’t real can’t be hungry”
He was ignored, his stubborn brother just as always not listening to reason, head stuck in imagination and fairy-tales rather than the actual world. When he was younger he would have indulged him with those stories, but he was almost a teenager now; how would he ever be able to survive without Hisashi making sure that whatever delusion he conjured up didn’t kill him.
With a huff his little brother sat up, ungracefully, deciding to look back at his older brother with an unimpressed stare only a ten-year-old could muster.
“Like superpowers weren’t real?”
He rolled his eyes, going to fetch the broom and reminding himself to buy poison to put inside of the pieces of fruit in case something actually came to try to find his little brother’s offerings.
Years later, that memory had struck him again, watching the scattering of food around the steel-encased room he had been forced to put his little brother into.
“What a mess you’re making.” He sighed, looking back to the sound of shackles moving, to his brother curling further into the wall as he pretended to ignore him. All for One let a grin creep over his face. “Are you hoping they will clean this all up for you? What was it now you called them…”
All for One felt warmth in his chest as his brother looked up from the apathy he had had, a glare through the dirty bangs over his face, looking not so much different from when he was a child.
“… Borrowers, was it.”
“Be careful!” His mother called yet again, and Izuku peeked over the edge for one last time, seeing her look up at him from the dusty floor, twisting the broom made out of an old paintbrush in her hands.
“I will!” He called down to her as she finally took a couple of steps back, carefully sweeping the upper layer of the dust, and then she reached out her hand, the dust behind her rising up and pulled along to follow behind her as she messed up the tracks until it no longer looked like anyone had recently walked over the old floorboards. Not even the bugs that they could be mistaken for. Izuku stood up, brushed the dust from off his knees before heading towards the crack in the frame of the window, where he could carefully loosen a bit of the cracked wood to create a good enough opening for him, sealing it once he got out.
The view from outside the window opened up and he stretched, the sun on his skin and the wind tousling his hair and he couldn’t help but letting a smile spread over his face. Staying inside for so long always made him restless, and even just looking outside made his mind start to run wild with ideas and plans.
Most of the bags, made from stitched-together pieces of fabric, that hung around him were empty. Two were not, one staying wrapped on his back, and the other he opened up the moment he got outside, pulling out a large glass pearl that he had found during one of his earlier excursions.
Izuku lifted the glass pearl with two hands, holding it above his head and letting the sunlight catch it in, sending scattered reflections of the light across the windowsill and he waited, the weight of it in his arms making them shake after just a couple of seconds. A shadow came across and looking up he could see the familiar swooping of black wings and braced himself against the wind from the wing-strokes as a raven landed a couple of centimeters away from him, ruffled its feathers and released a loud caw that had him pressing his arms against his ears to protect his hearing, the pearl still held tightly between his hands.
Looking closer at the raven that had landed, Izuku spotted how one of its talons was crooked, and immediately dropped any kind of caution that he usually needed dealing with animals bigger than himself.
“Thank you again for helping me!” He said, going forward and reaching the pearl out towards the raven, its large beak (that could without any doubt swallow him if it tried) snatching the pearl from his hands with a practised motion before leaning down, one of its wings outstretched to allow him room to climb on.
In a moment they were soaring in the air, Izuku holding a firm grip on the feathers and watching the vast unkept garden of the estate spread out underneath. Being able to take a lift saved him hours of slowly creeping through the tall grass and overgrown bushes that had turned into home for many critters, artificial streams and ponds now dirtied that always made him take detours if he didn’t use the small rafts he had built.
Now, in just a matter of seconds they had crossed the entire expanse and after the raven had circled once he pulled on one of the wings, a caw in response as it flew over the city towards the park that was Izuku’s mission for today. Far below, there was noise of the living human city, voices and rumbling of the rolling machines that carried the humans around and Izuku made sure to tighten his grip as he looked over the edge of the moving raven, ignoring the way something primal in the back of his head screamed at the distance down.
They almost looked as small as he was, from this height.
Would it be that bad to go down for a bit to explore? He did have time before nightfall…
A heavy crash was heard from somewhere further into the city and Izuku snapped his head up, watching with wide eyes as a giant woman, even for the humans, rose above the city. She was yelling something, a grin on her face as something seemed to launch up at her and she struggled to catch it (them?) in her hand, laughing as they fought.
Izuku swallowed. His turned throat dry as he watched a building crash as her elbow was pushed into it. The humans might have been evacuated but...
The image of his mother at home in their little hide-away, waiting and watching the window, a memory mixed with the new surroundings of the home they now had almost squeezed his hearts to pieces as he crawled back to relative safety on the raven’s back.
The raven made a quick stop at where the nest was, piles of shining pieces of trinkets and knick-knacks that Izuku could recognize about a third off, before it took off yet again towards the park.
A sea of pink cherry-blossom trees was laid out like a carpet before them as they reached the destination, and the raven landed in a tree in the middle of the park, a couple of its flock already gathered that squawked and cawed at his ride as he slid down the side of the wings to step onto the tree-branch. Before he even knew what was happening the raven that had carried him launched out at another that had started to jump a bit too close, aggressively snapping with its beak until it backed-off, the rest of the flock raising hackles towards the newcomer as well. Izuku let out a laugh, halfway between panicked and thankful and bowed towards them one by one, even if he wasn’t sure they understood the motion.
He walked across the thick branch, the ravens jumping aside to let him through before getting to the trunk in the middle, one hand against it and one up pulling on his lip as he tried to spot the best way down to climb, before his eyes landed on some people that settled down next to the tree below him. His heart almost skipped a beat as he realized how lucky he was, recognizing the family of three that had taken the spot beneath where he was.
With that, he pulled out the wrapped pieces of metal he had tied to his waist, and started the precarious journey down. By the time he got to the bottom of the tree he was sweaty and had to sit down, rest against the bark to catch his breath, his hands shaking and slightly hurting from his climb down, hiding behind the tall grass from the humans that were gathering and settling down.
He wouldn’t go to the closest family just yet. He recognized them from times before and knew that the food and the things they carried was much simpler than what other groups would have, the way they carefully counted and divided the pieces was enough to send him scurrying along to other parties that had gathered to watch the cherry-blossom’s bloom.
Gathering up food from the different seated humans was easy, all busy watching the trees or using their phones to take photos. He stopped, watching them move their fingers over the screens and struggled against his own impulse to go closer, to maybe even borrow one for just a moment. As the screen suddenly changed to look like a mirror, Izuku threw himself to the side to hide behind a bento-box to not be seen as the humans cheered and made a pose into the mirror of the device that had been pointed his way.
He allowed his racing heart to settle, listening to the group chatting about the photo that they had taken before he dared to look up, scooping some of the rice that had fallen out into one of his bags, finally filling it up to the brink. Dragging the last bag back to the tree, he was happy to see that no ants had been able to bite through the fabric of the things he had already gathered, and he had managed to nail them into the ground with his climbing-metal well enough that they hadn’t been able to drag it away.
He had even managed to snatch a shiny cufflink from some office-workers who had been a bit too drunkenly rowdy, the piece of jewellery lying hidden in the grass a bit away from them. It wouldn’t be missed.
He took a moment to huff out a heavy breath, stiffness of his limbs warning him of the way his muscles would be aching tomorrow, before looking up to the branches where some of the ravens still sat. A couple of them were watching him, curious of whatever treasure he had to offer for a ride home and he waved up at them. For the moment the cufflink hidden in one of the bags.
Normally, his haul would have been much too heavy to carry. But if he was very lucky…
Izuku crept towards the family that had taken its place underneath the tree that was his arrival and hopefully his departure as well.
The girl seemed to have gone to take a nap after eating, her head on her mother’s lap while her parents quietly chatted above her. They looked safe and comfortable with each other, wrinkles of worry and hardship had gathered in the parents’ faces that he recognized from his mother, but for this moment they looked content and happy. The image of the three of them gathered together squeezed his heart with a sadness that he had expected, that was easier to handle for every year that had passed, but never truly went away.
Before his eyes could water enough to grow blurry, Izuku shook his head and slapped his cheeks to keep himself concentrated on the task.
First, he looked towards the parents, towards where they moved and things might spill out from the pockets and to his absolute glee he saw a small screw-nut had fallen out of the mother’s pocket. With quick feet, careful to not end up in the view of the husband looking towards his wife he rushed over the rug to grab the screw-nut with both hands, mind already running along with the things that he could use it for.
He shrugged off the wrapped piece of paper that had been on his back, and very carefully put it into the pocket of the jacket that one of the parents had put over their sleeping daughter. Why humans liked the pieces of paper, he had never truly understood. There was something about exchange, and how some things were worth more than others, but after the first time that he had seen the brown-haired girl find a “forgotten” bill in her pocket, the way she smiled had made it clear that while it didn’t make much difference to him, paper was paper, these kinds of things he could leave with the humans.
Now, when all that was done, he would have to get himself and his enormous haul all the way home, something that would have been impossible if not this specific family.
While sleeping the girl had put a hand out, almost to the edge of the rug that they were sitting on and he sneaked forward. There was always a bit of guilt crawling along his excitement, his mother’s stories of how these things could go wrong, her own guilt inherited to him. Izuku whispered a quick apology and the promise that it wouldn’t be long, as he carefully touched her finger.
He could sense the light inside of her, that jumping spark free from all swirl around and with no effort at all he borrowed it. She was still asleep, softy smiling, and Izuku stood for a moment watching her just to make sure that she wasn’t in pain or discomfort, no sudden change in health, before he allowed the little piece of her to land in his chest. He bowed towards her in an unnoticed thank you as she shifted, mumbling something about food that made her parents laugh.
Moving quickly, he ran back to where his haul was, and with a couple of quick touches all of the bags started to float, free from gravity as the quirk he had borrowed made its work into them. He bound them together quickly, pulling the cufflink from out of the last bag, flashed it up towards the ravens and watched how they squabbled for a second before one of the swooped down and a few moments later he was back up in the air, bags floating behind them as the raven set coarse back towards the house where Izuku and his mother had made their home.
Izuku was happy. The haul was good, he got to see people and things, and his mother wouldn’t have to worry about him staying until tomorrow or trekking all the way back. Something that might take days.
It was a good day.
Except nearing the place where Izuku and his mother had made their home, something caught his eye, and Izuku looked down.
There was movement. A lot of of it.
There hadn’t been people at the house ever since they moved there years ago, and now without warning they were crowding the garden, almost intensely focused on their task as the overgrown vegetation was quickly bent to submission. There seemed to be no chatting, no laughter thrown about between the workers, moving quickly and efficiently, work that might usually have taken days would no doubt be done before the sun setting.
Izuku’s heart had begun to race along with the realization. Someone was moving in, or the old owner was finally coming back.
They landed on the windowsill, and Izuku looked in through the window, expected the same kind of mess of people tearing it apart and he heard an indignant squawk behind him as his haul suddenly dropped to the ground, the weight of it returning and it almost sending the raven off balance and off its perch.
“Sorry!” Izuku shouted to it as it jumped to de-tangle itself from the threads that he had used to keep all of it together. He had lost focus on keeping the quirk, and it would now be back with its owner, a fact that seemed miniscule in the moment in comparison to the worry building like a geyser about to blow inside of him. His mom, what about his mom.
He fumbled, just barely managing to keep the haul on the windowsill and well aware that he couldn’t take his time pulling it in, Izuku looked in through the window, darkness meeting him and his racing heart. No one there. Not yet. Maybe they worked their way in, or they weren’t going to go through the house today.
Maybe they had time.
The inside was still dusty, and Izuku chose only one bag to bring along with him, hiding the rest on the windowsill behind the thick curtains that helped him climb up and down every time. He didn’t care to hide the tracks through the dust as he ran along the wall, finally getting to where the entrance to their home was hidden behind an old bookcase.
Inko looked up from where she was sitting, the initial happiness at seeing him home quickly being exchanged with the fear and worry that Izuku knew was mirrored on his own face. Izuku had felt lucky, now the amount that he had gathered was even more of a blessing. With that haul they could last more than a week, hiding away until they could make the decision to leave, or stay.
A couple of days later was when Izuku first spotted the man that had moved in.
The first time he saw him, Izuku could barely believe that the human was standing. Tubes and wires protruding from a machine around his neck, and the entire upper-half of his head was a mess of scars and wrongly-healed wounds. It looked like skin had either been grafted or regrown over his eye-sockets, and Izuku’s heart clenched with the possibility that the man would drop dead at any moment.
He thought there might have been someone to take care of him, family maybe, perhaps children, but no one else seemed to move in and while there were sometimes other people showing up they didn’t seem much like caretakers. Izuku and Inko quickly learned to watch out for the warper, who could appear anywhere at any moment without warning.
The man himself was less of a problem, sometimes disappearing for days at a time and leaving Izuku free to roam the house to explore. He had of course done that when he was younger but now he didn’t need to care about tracks, the house cleared from the dust and grime that had settled over the years. Someone moving in also meant that there were now things filling up in the house.
Trinkets and all kinds of pieces littered around and forgotten.
Some things were especially exciting.
From underneath a drawer, he could see the man fidget with a cufflink almost absentmindedly, dressed up in a way Izuku had learned meant he would be going away for a while. Two things happened in quick succession, the first was that the man started to move away from where he was hiding, the second was that Izuku had to quickly dodge and jump back as one of the cufflinks crashed into the ground with an unmistaken sound, it bounced and rolled right past him to settle underneath the drawer and Izuku pressed his back against one of the legs, trying in vain to calm his racing heart.
The leg of the drawer was decorated, wood cut in intricate design and making it very helpful to climb up on as Izuku hauled himself up, waiting and preparing for a hand to reach after the dropped piece of jewelry. The man might be blind, but that only increased the possibility for him to accidentally brush up against wherever Izuku was hiding.
But the man kept walking away, apparently unaware of the thing that he had dropped. It was pretty, simpler than the one that he had gifted the ravens a couple of weeks ago, in the way that it was lacking the shine of a glass decoration; they probably wouldn’t accept this one as a trade for a ride. It seemed much sturdier, and looking close there were intricate designs that must have taken ages for a human to make.
Izuku would have thought it to be missed, but even after a couple of days after the man returned home the cufflink stayed where it was.
It was pretty. It might cheer his mom up since she hadn’t much dared to go out ever since the man moved in.
With that in mind Izuku had finally given in and taken the piece of jewelry back to their little home. It wasn’t a long journey even, just down the corridor to the small room that the man luckily had not decided to use just yet.
It was safer to just stay in that area, but it also meant less things for Izuku to find and to discover. He had vague memories of living like this alongside humans, when he was very young and his dad was still alive, and he had been watching them from afar long enough that completely hiding away everytime the man was home made restlessness bubble in him.
From a room on the other end of the house he could hear the sound of voices, not from the man nor from visitors but from one of those screens and Izuku paused for a moment to listen. It didn’t seem that the man would move from that room for a while.
He hoped.
Izuku found his way to the kitchen, stopping in his path only to listen to make sure that the sound was still on every once in a while, finding his way for the goal of his excursion. On the counter in the kitchen there was a bowl of berries and fruit, colourful and tasty-looking. One or two pieces of those going missing would not be missed, he had seen it be refilled almost daily.
Izuku stretched, looking the distance up to the counter. He had taken a couple of days to plan this carefully.
The counter itself was too difficult to climb, the design too sleek and if he used his climbing-aids there was no doubt that the holes would be noticed by some of the people visiting. The chair and the table, on the other hand, was a completely different matter. Using a small piece of fabric wrapped around the leg of a chair as a counterweight, he managed to slowly, with strength and effort, climb the way up until he was standing on the table.
Now all he would have to do was tying a hook he had made out of an old earring he had found way before to the thread he was carrying with him, throwing it over to make it catch on the handle of a drawer close the top of the top, tie the thread on his side to a decorative vase on the table he was standing on, climb over, get the food, and then try to do everything backwards to avoid leaving any clues of his existence.
Easy.
He would just need a moment.
For just a couple of seconds Izuku laid down, to catch his breath and to enjoy the silence.
His eyes snapped open after a moment. The silence was suddenly overbearing and he quickly stood up, looking towards where the talking noise should have come from and instead found his stomach dropping like a stone.
There, standing in the doorway was the owner of the house. Izuku held his breath, his entire being telling him to run or to bend down and cover from the being that was towering above him, even as high up as he currently was. He knew it was impossible for the man to hear him breathing but he still pressed his hands against his mouth, stood still as if any movement would reveal his location. It wasn’t logical, the man couldn’t see him through his scars, yet something far more basic inside him yelled at him that there was a predator near and that he should do anything to not draw attention to himself. Izuku let out a shaky breath, throwing a glance up at the giant who had started to walk into the room, around the table towards the cupboards, opening one of the top ones to take out a glass.
It was fine. It would be fine.
He would just need to make sure he wouldn’t be accidently stepped on when he got down on the floor again.
For a moment it looked like the man shifted his head towards where Izuku was standing, and every logical part of Izuku’s brain was overridden by an intense fear, and he found himself scrambling backwards, hiding behind the vase like that would make a difference.
Standing, making sure not to actually touch the vase as to accidently tilt it or somehow make a sound, Izuku waited, listening and flinching at every sound from the other side.
That had gone momentarily quiet. No rush of water like he had been expecting from the glass, no step towards the refrigerator. He was so focused on listening for a warning, that it was almost too late when he noticed the shadow that the vase cast over him shifting, as it suddenly started to tilt his way.
Izuku threw himself to the side just as it came crashing over where he had been standing, rolling and hearing the glass of it breaking before he was suddenly forced to a stop, his head smacked painfully against something hard. His head was spinning, twisting as he clutched the side that had taken the brunt of the blow with one hand, the other reaching out and finding the smooth and cold surface that he had hit. When he no longer felt like he would puke from the dizziness he opened his eyes, and found that his hand was splayed out against glass .
He found his breath quickening. There was a bend to it and Izuku knew what had happened before he started to look around the glass that had been placed over him.
With an amused grin, head tilted in Izuku’s direction, the man was leaning down and tapping a finger against it. He looked like a cat having caught its prey, and Izuku found his heart in his throat as that comparison merged into reality.
He’d been waiting.
Izuku pushed himself back as far as he could go, as the man slid the glass over the surface of the table, driving Izuku to go along it towards the edge.
As he was pushed over Izuku scrambled to try to hold on to something, anything, but it went much too quickly for him to manage and in a moment he was sent freefalling, this time landing on something warm and softer, moving underneath him. As he tried desperately to get his bearings back, tried to stand up and get away, the fingers closed around him, shifting to slot him with all limbs trapped.
“Hello, little one.” A dark voice, rumbling through his chest, and Izuku froze for a second before bursting back into life, struggling to get free of the fingers that were wrapping around him. He managed to tear one arm free, grabbing the make-shift hook and stabbed down into the hand.
Instead of shifting away the fingers suddenly tightened around him in response and a pained yelp burst out of him as his limbs and joints were pushed together for but a moment before the pressure was slightly lightened. He found his makeshift weapon gone from his hand once he worked through the pain and he had enough space to suck a breath in.
The man clicked his tongue, disappointed, and Izuku was moved, hefted higher up above the ground and it made Izuku’s head spin with the speed and the distance that he was taken.
“Now. I just wanted to properly talk with you, child. Why don’t you get your sense back.”
Izuku continued to struggle, terrified, he couldn’t get loose, the fingers firm like they were made out of moving steel or stone and with tears blurring his eyes the realization settled that he had no chance of getting free.
He was going to die. He didn’t know what the man was planning to do but there was no kindness, no mercy in the grin that he had, the way he kept shifting his grip around Izuku like he was studying him, pressing into his body and listening to the sharp breaths of pain when it was just a bit too much. He needed to be free, he needed to distract the man in any way possible to be able to run. He needed to warn his mom.
What about his mom.
Burning through any kind of moral holding, any fear, he managed to wriggle around just enough to get his palms pressed up against the hand trapping him, and inside the manthere was not like a spark but like a rolling dark and consuming sea. He couldn’t stop to contemplate the meaning of it as he reached for it and tried to pull it towards him.
He was interrupted by a laugh, a chuckle that sounded like a mix bewildered and frighteningly thrilled.
”Did you…” The man sounded shockingly unguarded, and if he hadn’t had a grip that felt like it was moments away from crushing Izuku completely, it might have enhanced the guilt he had about this specific type of borrowing. Izuku hoped his mother would forgive him for this, it was like taking a piece of their souls. Except… it wasn’t working, and Izuku’s heartbeat picked up once again, racing uncontrollably as he was moved, the force sending his stomach roiling with nausea as he was brought up closer to the man’s face. To his grin.
No.
No one ever noticed.
No one ever noticed because they still needed to follow the rules; only take what was necessary for survival, never take anything that would be missed, and return it immediately should the above rules accidentally be broken. But the fingers holding him were tightening, trembling and Izuku knew that the reason for that was not his own terrified shaking.
“Did you just try to steal my quirk?”
Bile rose in his throat, hope leaving and draining from him as he looked back at the man who stared at him with unseeing eyes, and Izuku didn’t know how he could have ever thought that this man was anything less than a monster. Not even human.
“I was going to give it back.” Izuku choked out, a desperate attempt to appease as the grin on the face of the man looked like it would split his face in half. “I promise!”
“Now, were you really?” The man spoke and his voice was like thunder rolling, dark humour dripping from it as the man’s thumb put further pressure on Izuku’s head, his neck straining against the push that he knew would break his neck in two with just a twist of the man’s fingers. “I find it hard to believe in your current position.”
“Let me go! I’m sorry!”
“Now, now. Calm down. That is interesting, frankly nothing that I had expected. How does that work for you? How do you work?” The man’s voice shifted again, to something mockingly sweet, the fake anger slipping away without granting any comfort. “If I had known that about you I would have picked you up much earlier, little one.”
And then, after a thoughtful pause and almost a frown. “You didn’t eat any of the food I left out, did you?”
Izuku couldn’t do anything else but shake his head as the pressure was loosened from it, and the man almost sounded relieved as he continued, the smile creeping back on his face as he moved his thumb to this time gently stroke the top of Izuku’s hair, like he was petting him. A violent shiver ran through him, like a prolonged flinch.
“Good. Wouldn’t do for you to die now.”
Scattered pieces of thoughts were running through Izuku’s head, mixing and twisting into a panicked mess until all he could find was a static of panic. The man didn’t seem to care, seemed almost pleased as he didn’t bother to get any response from him, continuing to talk like he was thinking out loud.
“I might be mistaken but you do sound young, look like it as well.” Izuku stared wide eyed into the skin-covered sockets that should not have been able to meet his gaze and suddenly the grip on him didn’t feel like it was just holding him still, but like it was putting him on display. All this time. “You’re not alone, are you?”
Izuku stilled.
Quietly inhaled, the breath trembling, before he gritted his teeth.
“There is no one else.” He forced out, coiled everything he had into not making his voice shake as much, to not sound panicked at the thought of the man finding out about his mother as well. He hoped that the man’s sight was bad enough that he couldn’t see the way his eyes watered at the thought of it.
He could feel a small twitch in the hand that held him.
“Fine then, my boy” The man sighed, and the relief that Izuku first landed within him with the words was crushed as the man opened his hand, and a pull of fabric choked around his neck as the man dangled him from the back of his shirt almost playfully, the floor far below. Izuku reached his hands up to grab at the collar of his shirt to pull it away, to be able to let air go through his throat again. “Let’s go ask No One if they care as much about you than you care about them.”
Izuku found his voice, the forced stillness he had tried to uphold broken as he yelled in renewed panic, begging and pleading shifting into a furious rage that was met with nothing more than a laughing shake of the man’s head, and then he was moved towards him unceremoniously dropped, finding himself surrounded by fabric, the light disappearing as he was dropped into the pocket of the man’s suit. Suffocating and muffling his screams.
There was pressure from the outside as he tried to move to stand, climb out, as the man began to move with heavy steps, none of that carefulness that Izuku now knew had been faked.
Even without seeing he knew where they were going, and the despair was really settling in. How long had he known? How had he known? Even if Izuku had thought that he was blind he had been so careful, and he had never even seen the man close to the entrance of their little home.
The path that had taken him an hour to creep through was covered in the matter of minutes.
The man stopped, and Izuku didn’t waste a second as the moment the pressure from the outside let. Grabbing hold of the fabric he hauled himself out of the pocket, avoiding the fingers that were reaching to grab him yet again as he tumbled out. The man was kneeling right by the bookcase that hid the entrance to their home, and as Izuku fell he landed on one of his legs, one moment of freedom before an immense pressure settled on top of him, the palm of the man’s hand pressing down and the laughter that came after shifting the whole world around him like a minor earthquake.
“Oh no, little one, you’re staying with me.”
Once again the hand closed around him lifting him up just in time to see the man reach towards the entrance.
“Knock-knock.” The man teased, tapping one of his nails against the wood next to the opening, calling to Izuku’s mother and Izuku’s stomach clenched as he desperately tried to bite the hand holding him, blunt teeth causing no more damage than a small pinch. ”Why don’t you come out here as well? I just want to have a little chat, little ones.”
“Mom! Don’t! He’s lying!” Izuku shouted, his voice breaking in a sob that he hadn’t even noticed building in his frustration, wanted to scream more, that he was sorry, that she should stay hidden, but he couldn’t get another word out before one of the fingers moved to cover his mouth and nose. He couldn’t breathe. The pressure immediately built in his chest and he started to struggle to try to twist away.
“Or maybe… I’m not sure how your culture works.” The man was continuing, almost to himself, and he turned his hand to look at Izuku squirming desperately in his grip. “Perhaps you would not care if I crushed him.” He paused for a second before grinning wide, Izuku being moved again up towards his face, still fighting against the suffocation. He felt the breath of the man rush over him. “Should I eat him?”
“No! Izuku!” A call rang out, his mother’s familiar voice breaking in fear and panic, and Izuku met her eyes for just a moment before a hand snatched up her as well. The grip wasn’t letting up. He couldn’t breathe. She screamed when she was picked up but didn’t look up at the man holding them both, instead her hands were reaching out towards him and he could just about feel his hair move, a gentle pull from the borrowed quirk that she carried that she had been unable to return, fighting against the strength keeping him trapped and still having no chance at making a single difference.
He didn’t even know if the man noticed.
Inko called his name over and over again, black spots gathering in his already blurry eyes, nails scratching harmlessly against thicker skin.
The man finally turned his attention back to him, and with a laugh badly hidden in an exhale the finger was moved from Izuku’s face, air moving into his mouth almost on it’s own and sending him into a bout of dry coughs, feeling like his lungs themselves were on their way up.
“Terribly sorry, I seemed to have forgotten about that.”
The world twisted and turned as the man moved, and after just a moment both Izuku and Inko was dropped on the surface of a desk in the room, any thought of escape dying as he lazily interlaced his fingers behind them into a makeshift cage, the only opening towards him.
Izuku was still trying to catch his breath as Inko pulled him towards her, her embrace engulfing him and for a moment Izuku allowed himself to crawl close to her, clutching as if they even had a chance to hold on should the man choose to seperate them again. Inko was whispering his name into his hair, terror colouring her attempts at comfort.
The feeling of being observed crawled through his skin.
“Let’s try this again,” The man spoke and Izuku tensed, looked up at him. “I thought it would be quite rude to not greet you, considering that we have apparently been living in the same space for a while now. Would you be so kind to share your name as well, Mrs Borrower?”
Inko tensed, pulling Izuku closer to her and Izuku could hear her heart race just as quickly as his was.
She answered in a whisper and Izuku felt retrospective horror settle as the man nodded, satisfied, where it should have been impossible for him to hear her.
“Inko, and little Izuku then.” The man had allowed a slightly softer tone to enter his speech. “I would have gone further into pleasantries but it seems that your son has some abilities that I just find fascinating. Would he have gotten them from you, I wonder?”
“No!” Izuku answered, struggling to free himself from his mother’s arms to face him. Bravery bubbling up to drown his fear, only to try to keep the man’s attention from her, even as he heard her breath his name, try to pull him back. “She can’t, I’m the only one who can do that.”
The man smiled, that ugly and horrible grin, and Izuku stood his ground.
“I don’t believe you.” He closed the space around them just a little bit more, suffocating the little bit of light that had shone through his fingers, trickling in from the window behind them.
“I’m not lying!” Izuku pressed on. “Believe me or not, but mom can’t use that any more.”
There was a thoughtful hum from the man, and Izuku clenched his fists. “Don’t you dare hurt her.”
“I won’t, little one.” The man spoke softly, almost cooing in a way that sent shivers down Izuku’s spine. There was a weight behind the words, a poisoning unsaid ‘unless’ trailing after them. “You have to forgive my reaction, I was quite surprised to find you here, and even more so when you tried to take something that is very, very dear and important to me.”
“We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to intrude.” Inko interrupted Izuku just as he was about to speak up, and a moment later he felt her hand on his head as she was pushing his head down into a bow and doing the same to him. “We’ll leave right away.”
There was a heavy pause, where Izuku struggled to keep his breathing even.
Then, it was like the air was drawn out of the room, his whole body started to shiver from a cold that blanked his mind from any thought, from any other images than that he saw the flashes of himself, of his mom crushed, the overwhelming knowledge of how easy it would be for this man to break and hurt them and Izuku found himself dry-heaving, Inko having fallen just as he down on the surface as the pressure lifted. Izuku couldn’t move his head, but he shifted just his eyes to look at the monster.
“...No.” He said, with chilling finality. “I’m the one at fault for intruding like this on your little family. There is no reason for you to leave.”
“I-it’s fine.” Inko choked out, wetness in her voice betraying her tears and Izuku reached a hand out to find hers.
“Why don’t you two stay here with me.” He fully closed his hands around them both, the last thing they saw being how the grin had thinned into a smile that would almost seem fond, and for some reason that scared Izuku more than anything. “I insist .”
Izuku saw the raven land on the windowsill. It was tapping the window, calling his attention like it was wondering what had happened to their customary exchange. He tapped the glass back on his end, the raven twitching and jumping in confusion. After a while it let out a loud caw, and flew off.
From inside the doll-house, built in the same design as the home that was now their prison, Izuku could hear his mom moving around, preparing dinner with the ingredients that had been given to them, gifted to them (gifts, that rarely came free). In a couple of minutes he would get up and go inside to help her, but for the moment he stared at the raven, following its path as it circled once over the well-kept garden.
He rested back against the bonsai-tree behind him, cherry-blossoms blooming, the sounds of rippling water from the small artificial streams and ponds filling the terrarium with a small bit of life, and watched the world outside.