Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s something about this office, something about the looming blandness of the walls, or perhaps the lack of natural light, that sets her on edge.

No matter how hard she tries, though, she can't quite put her finger on why.

Maybe there's something in the air in here that's setting her hair on end? A menacing aura, maybe?

Or maybe it's because the room (if it could be called that) is no bigger than a shoebox, or a cupboard - if she were feeling generous. Add to that the fact that someone's seen fit to shove a whole, working desk in here along with an array of cold, metal filing cabinets and... Well.

It's claustrophobic in here, to put it mildly. Everything is cramped.

Indeed, Tomoko could tell without even trying that her arms would hit the wall before she could raise them fully. She's not even that tall, for crying out loud! She's barely touching five-eight on her tip-toes, and she can't even stretch out!

And someone has to work in here!

Although, having said that, it's obvious to a trained eye that this office doesn't see much use. The sole occupant (and it can only be a sole occupant, anything else would be inhumane) is clearly the active sort - the sort that prefers to solve their problems on their feet rather than behind a desk - and it shows. The room is musty, Tomoko can clearly make out a fine layer of dust atop the desk, and there's a certain neatness to the desk that belies how little use it gets.

In short, the whole place has her skin itching for a multitude of reasons - and that's even before one factors in how this building sends her quirk into something resembling overdrive. So many people in such a tight space; criminals in the cells in various states of discomfort, Police Officers in the offices or around the pen running on caffeine and stubbourness alone, civilians in the interview rooms recieving the news that shatters their lives forever...

For someone with a quirk like hers, it's a lot to take in. The intensity of it all is such that, in the interest of keeping her sanity, the only real option she has is to cut it out - to (for lack of a better term) turn her quirk 'off'. Down on the streets isn't much better, either, and it's only in the heat of a rescue or the midst of a disaster that she can apply herself completely enough to shut out all the white noise.

Tomoko comes here only when she absolutely has to, because this whole city makes her uncomfortable.

She's not ashamed of the fact that, at heart, she'll always be a country girl. She loves the big, open spaces and the subtle sounds of nature. The sense of freedom one gets when they're free to go in any direction they want, to follow the wind wherever it may take them, to pick out a tree on a hill miles away and just go there. She's used to the colour green, the scent of the forest on crisp, clean air, the babbling of brooks and the dawn chorus...

None of those things are present here.

Here, there is polution and a sense of barely contained chaos. Walking along the pavements is like walking into a rugby match; people pushing and shoving, trying to weave through rapidly closing gaps. Everything is too loud, too in-your-face. There's too many people with too many places to be. There's too much traffic. Too much pollution. Too much noise.

In fact, she’d go so far as to say she hates it here.

She’d be glad to get back to the forest, and would have turned right around the second she got off the train had she been able, because this concrete jungle has nothing on the real thing. It's dirty here - grimy. She'd never take natural light and a cool breeze for granted again, especially if that breeze didn't smell like diesel and set her nose on fire.

This is the other reason for her reluctance to come to the city outside of work, and why she’s not been back here in a little while. Indeed, she'd not set foot here out of costume three or four years - and it's still too soon.

The moment she and her friends had graduated high-school; they’d struck out into the sticks as a rescue team – intent on filling a gap in the industry only they seemed to notice. Being a mountain rescue hero, primarily, was everything she’d ever dreamt of. She had her friends, she had her space, and she's doing something she can be proud of.

The Pussycats are everything to her. It's both a worthwhile, honourable company of rescue heroes, and it's simultaneously like the family she'd always wished she'd had growing up. The fact that they're still a fledgling outfit that's only just started to find their feet financially doesn't really matter to her, she's just happy to be fulfilling her childhood dreams. That they're starting to actually make a name for themselves though... that just makes her so proud. Already, they’d received commendations for their work from the commission, and from the press as well.

The fame isn't really Tomoko’s cup of tea (though the idea of it does make her feel slightly giddy), it's much more Pixie’s domain – but she can't deny the benefits. More money means more gear, more gear equals more lives saved. It's a simple equation, and she's willing to put her personal comfort aside for the greater good.

She's getting side-tracked. There's a lot to get distracted by.

Tomoko had already become very well acquainted with police precincts over the last couple of years, though she normally dealt with the smaller ones. The stations that surround their patch are all the kind of sleepy, rural constabularies that, on a busy day, would only see a few traffic infringements, a handful of domestic disputes, maybe one suspicious death, and the occasional natural disaster.

Chump change, when compared to the big city presincts. The level of activity here is considerably greater than anything she’d seen with the rural forces.

The harsh, fluorescent lights cast long shadows around the single, well used desk in the room. The towers of paperwork that sit to one side, meticulously ordered, loom up the wall like skyscrapers. Outside the office, police officers and staff hurry back and forth carrying folders, laptops, coffee, and sometimes all three of those things at once. 

Inside the office, someone clears their throat.

She needs to focus. This meeting can't wait.

Behind the desk sits a man, who looks simultaneously far too old and far too young, in a black turtleneck shirt. A cup of black, cold coffee sits forgotten by his elbow, and a phone lies (silenced) between them on the desk. He’d introduced himself as Tsukauchi, a junior detective apparently, and he'd never looked more than three paces away from keeling over in the entire time she’d known him.

An overachiever, clearly. Tomoko could relate.

“Did Miyamoto tell you why you’re here?” His voice is scratchy, and Tomoko’s quirk cheerfully informs her that this man is Tired – with a capital ‘T’.

He’d asked her a question.

“Oh! No!” She tries to focus on the yellow thumb tack on the corkboard behind him, just to keep her attention from wandering. “Well, he said it was urgent! But I’m a hero, so that kind of comes with the territory…”

Tomoko’s quirk happily informs her that Tsukauchi has the beginnings of a headache building somewhere behind his eyes. “Alright,” he mutters – pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Take a seat.”

Tomoko sits.

“Is there anyone local you can call?” Tsukauchi looks a little awkward for a moment, but the expression slides off his face quickly. “A friend, or a relative?”

A relative?

She thinks for a moment, flicking through the photo-album of faces that resides in her brain.

Her immediate family were all gone, and she only knows of a few distant cousins – all of whom are up north or in the capital. She never speeks to them, anyway. They're either too busy for the likes of her, or too distant to even remember she exists. Even if they did live locally, she wouldn’t have called them.

She doesn't think her friends would be of any use now either – which isn't to say they’re bad friends! They’re great! They’re also, invariably, extremely busy. The few who live in Musutafu are probably on patrol at this hour, because the only friends she has around here are underground and work at night.

Yamada might be free, but his schedule is so perpetually rammed that any spare hours he did have were exclusively dedicated to his grumpy boyfriend, or sleeping – sometimes both. Sometimes both at the same time.

Focus.

Frowning, Tomoko flicks through her albums again. Something is nagging at the back of her mind, a memory of cinnamon buns and soft laughter. Green hair, a gentle smile, shining emerald eyes.

Her mother’s voice, telling her that she wasn’t to speak to her aunt anymore.

Auntie Inko!

Her head, which had drifted around so she could gaze sightlessly into the corridor whilst she pondered her memories, whips back around so fast that the Detective instinctively flinches back. “Yes! I have an Aunt that lives in the city, I think! I can call her?”

“Midoriya Inko?”

“That’s her!” Tomoko fishes her phone from the depths of her bag, then scrolls through her contacts with rapid movements. “Wow, it’s been ages since we last spoke! I hope she’s not busy…” she’s reached the bottom of her contacts (Inko isn’t there), and switched to social media before it occurs to her that Tsukauchi had done a very good job of guessing which relative she’d been thinking of.

Tomoko is a lot of things. Stupid isn’t one of them.

She glances up, and her piercing eyes land squarely on the detective’s. “How’d you know we’re related?”

The fact that Tomoko has any living relatives at all isn't common knowledge, because having too many of them in this industry remained far from advisable even in this era of relative peace. Her cousins are all so distant that she doesn't have to worry about them, and Inko... well. Inko had been estranged for a long time, and the only people who knew how close they'd been are either dead or heroes. Tomoko, herself, hasn’t thought about her aunt in a long while – the memory of her face is dulled slightly by time and distance.

Tsukauchi remains impassive, though Tomoko easily picks up a sudden increase in his heart rate. “I’ll get onto that. Is there anyone else you can call on short notice?”

Tomoko slowly shakes her head, never once taking her eyes off Tsukauchi. A strong sense of foreboding had taken root somewhere in her gut, and Tomoko’s instincts never let her down.

Something slots into place. She wishes it hadn't

This was startlingly familiar territory for her. She’d already had a few of these conversations in her short career, comforting mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, partners and spouses in the wake of a loss. It had never occured to her, at any stage, that she'd be on the recieving end of it. Then again, nobody ever did. Nobody woke up in the morning expecting to be sans a loved one by the end of the day - it just happened. 

And now, if Tomoko's right about the look on Tsukauchi's face, it's happening to her. She wonders if he'd ever done this before, and how he'd handled the immediate whiplash of irrational guilt - because you were the one that delivered the news. You were the one who had to rip their worlds apart. These conversations are the ones Tomoko dreads the most out of any, and they're never easy.

“Okay,” Tsukauchi smiles a sad, strained smile – and suddenly Tomoko feels very small. “Well… early this morning, a fire broke out in Midoriya Inko’s apartment building – and spread quickly to the top floor. The local fire department evacuated the building, but couldn’t gain access to her apartment…” Tsukauchi takes a breath, and Tomoko can see the moment he steels himself. “When they eventually managed to break through, your Aunt was unresponsive – and was declared dead on arrival at Musutafu General.”

Oh.

Oh.

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Knowing what she does, and having had these conversations before (albiet from a different perspective), Tomoko thought she’d been ready for the hammer to drop. Once she’d put two-and-two together, and had seen the writing on the wall, she’d steeled herself for the inevitable.

She'd reckoned that, as a Pro Hero – especially one who had to give bad news on a regular basis – she could tough it out.

She'd been wrong.

She can't.

That picture she’d been holding in her mind’s eye suddenly gains clarity - like a fog had been lifted. Tomoko can see her aunt's face just as surely as she would have if she were standing right in front of her - full of love and life. An indulgent smile and a twinkle in her eye. Inko had been soft-spoken. A calm, gentle woman with a quiet laugh and an even temperament. Tomoko remembers, faintly, that she’d given really good hugs.

And now she's dead.

Oh.

She trembles a little, then wraps her arms around her knees to try and ground herself.

She’d not seen her aunt in a long time. Not since Inko and her mother had fallen out, some five years prior. Tomoko had been in her second year of High School at the time, and could remember the small pang of sadness she’d felt when her mother told her they wouldn’t be seeing her aunt for New Year’s – but could also remember how quickly she’d moved on.

It feels callous, in this context.

“I’m sorry to do this to you now, but I need to ask a couple of questions.”

Tomoko can only incline her head slightly.

The Detective takes a second, but she can’t see what he’s doing. She’s too busy looking into the fabric of her leggings. When he eventually starts talking again, his tone is gentle – but not condescending. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

She’s about to decline, but then remembers how a warm drink often seems to make all the difference in the aftermath of a disaster. Still, a quiet “Tea” is the only thing she can muster.

“Okay,” Tsukauchi quickly relays the request to someone in the pen outside – then returns his full attention to her. “I promise this won’t take long.”

Tomoko unwraps herself from the tight, protective ball she’d tucked herself into – and tries to sit up straight. She could do this.

She’s Ragdoll. She’s a Professional Rescue Hero.

She would strong-arm her way through this, so this detective could do his job.

Going home and falling apart could come later.

Tsukauchi takes a sip of his cold, cold coffee and immediately winces. “Before we get started, I’m legally required to inform you that my quirk is called ‘Lie Detector’. It does exactly what it says on the tin,” he smiles weakly. “It’s really just a formality, I don’t suspect you of anything – so don’t pay it any mind.”

“Handy,” Tomoko tries to grin – but isn’t sure whether it comes off quite right. The sensation feels hollow. “For a detective, I mean. Your boss must love you!”

He chuckles, and accepts the attempt at humour for what it is. “Hardly,” his smile is a little lopsided. “He’s paranoid I’m going to sneak up the ranks and snatch his job out from under him, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

Tomoko hums, the ghost of a laugh. “Is he right?”

“Gods, I hope not,” Tsukauchi cringes. “I find this amount of paperwork difficult to manage,” he gestures vaguely to the paper mountain that might have had an inbox underneath it – once upon a time. “I don’t even want to think about how much he has to deal with.”

She just about manages to smile at him, but can’t think of a way to carry this delaying tactic any further. Her brain had, for once, decided not to wander too far – at exactly the moment she’d have appreciated some form of distraction. Stupid brain.

Fortunately, just when she’s starting to get desperate in the lingering silence, the door quietly swings open behind her. Tomoko has to swivel slightly to see who it is, and that means she has an excuse to not look at Tsukauchi for a second.

The officer that pads into the room, nearly silent on his feet, turns out to be a younger man with the head of a cat. Normally, Tomoko would have squealed – because anyone with a kitten-head is precious and deserves to be fawned over. She wishes she had the energy to pounce on him – verbally of course. Shino had thrown a fit the last time she’d actually jumped someone with kitten-features.

This guy even has a little bell attached to his collar… but her legs feel like lead, and there’s a pit in her stomach…

“Sorry about the wait,” says Officer Cat-man – carefully placing a polystyrene cup on the desk in front of her. “Someone was trying to make the hot chocolate button work. Again. There was a bit of a queue.”

Tsukauchi casually dismisses the apology with a tired wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about it. Thanks, Sansa.”

The uniformed officer nods sharply, and turns to leave – but catches Tomoko’s eye as he walks past. For a moment, she’s certain he’s going to ask for an autograph, or ask her some question about her last reported rescue, or gush over her – and she mentally prepares herself to fall into the persona of Ragdoll despite the feeling of emptiness in her gut.

She can tell that the officer recognises her, and Tomoko braces herself – but Sansa simply inclines his head respectfully then walks out.

She releases the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.

Part of being a pro hero was smiling in the face of adversity. It was one of the ways in which they reassured the public that it’d all be alright even when the world crumbled around them. It was just another element of the job, but it was just so difficult to apply that skill here – when she was the one who needed comfort.

With only a slight tremor in her hand, Tomoko reaches out to snag the tea from the desk. “Ready when you are.” Her voice sounds tired, even to her own ears.

“I’ll get the hard questions out the way first,” says Tsukauchi – and she appreciates the effort. He seems to be going out of his way to try and make this easier on her, and she knew he probably doesn't have the time to do so.

“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Inko?”

Tomoko freezes with her cup halfway to her mouth and frowns sharply. “Why?”

Tsukauchi raises an eyebrow, but turns in his chair to regard her fully. “We haven’t got a clear picture of why the fire broke out yet – that’s subject to an ongoing investigation with the fire department. However, what we do know is that the only apartment in the entire block that couldn’t be evacuated was Inko’s.”

Well, when he put it like that…

“Oh,” Tomoko gently set the cup back on the desk – the contents untouched.

When he put it like that, it sounded like arson.

Like murder.

“I’ve already spoken to the marshals that broke the door down,” the Detective continues. “They said the door was wedged with something; a chair most likely – hence my question.”

Tomoko takes a moment to think.

Inko had been a kind woman, always going out of her way to help the people close to her – not the sort of person to have enemies. She’d have given her arm if she thought it’d help someone out, even her estranged sister.

So, no – Tomoko can’t possibly conceive of someone so sinister they’d want to hurt Inko…

Unless…

Slowly, like the sun creeping up over a distant horizon, realisation dawns.

“Hisashi…” she breaths, then looks up at the Detective when he lets out a grunt of surprise. “Her husband – or ex-husband I guess.”

“Did you know him?”

“Not… not really?” It came out like a question, and Tomoko can only watch as Tsukauchi’s hands stall on his keyboard. “I know they weren’t married very long, and Mom stopped talking to her after they broke up. It wasn’t… he wasn’t kind to her, I don’t think.”

Tsukauchi’s eyebrow went up – a bit like a kid might raise their hand to ask a question. “Why would your mother and Inko fall out about that?”

“Because Hisashi was her oldest friend,” Tomoko’s smile is a little wobbly. “I don’t think she could accept the idea that he was abusive, even when presented with hard evidence.” Tsukauchi’s eyebrow hasn’t returned to its resting position, even though he’d already gone back to his keyboard. “She was a bit like that. Burying her head in the sand was a coping mechanism.”

“Right,” Tsukauchi seems to accept that explanation. “Did he strike you as the type to hold a grudge?”

Tomoko wracks her brain.

She’d only met Hisashi a handful of times, and vaguely remembered him being a polite, but distant man. She wouldn’t have suspected him of being the sort of monster that could hurt Inko at the time, but that was just it.

Most of the time, abusers looked and sounded completely normal when they were out in public. It was behind closed doors that their true nature came to the surface.

Eventually, she concedes defeat. “I don’t know… He's a jerk, but he isn't a villain – not in the classic sense.”

Tsukauchi inclines his head slightly, making a note of her answer, then moves on.

Their interview continued like this for some time, but none of the other questions were so hard for Tomoko to answer. She’d had very little contact with Inko for the five years since her mother had cut her out, and it pained Tomoko to realise that she would never get the chance to correct that mistake.

The very last time they’d spoken, Tomoko had been greeting the mourners at her mother’s funeral. That had been early last year, and they’d agreed to catch up – but she’d heard nothing from Inko since.

Tomoko didn’t really know how to feel about that.

“Right,” Tsukauchi makes a few last notes – then turns away from his desktop. “That’s all I’ve got for you today, in terms of the investigation.”

Tomoko deflates slightly, but quickly latches on to the conspicuous implication.

Tsukauchi seems to wrestle with something for a moment, but then sighs. “There’s also the matter of Inko’s son to go over.”

Everything goes silent.

A Son?

Inko?

But that would mean...

Suddenly, a few things click into place. If Tomoko’s hunch was right, this son of Inko’s would be about five years old. That lined up roughly with the point at which Inko had filed for divorce, then turfed Hisashi out of the house. It might also have explained why she was so reluctant to let Tomoko back into her life, because she was afraid she’d treat Inko the same way her mother had.

If she had a child to look after, that sort of drama would have been best left alone – in the past.

“Is he…” and Tomoko hates that this was the first she was hearing of this. “Is he alright?”

Tsukauchi considers her carefully, and for a moment Tomoko could feel the world pressing up against the back of her eyes. “Physically, I’m told he’ll be fine,” some of the weight lifts. “However, he’s been admitted to the children’s ward down the road for monitoring. He inhaled a lot of smoke, and there’s some light burning to take care of – but they don’t think he’ll need to be there for long.”

She lets out a breath, and it’s somewhere between relief and disbelief.

She has a little cousin, and she’d never even known!

Her family had always been a small, tightly knit unit. Especially so after Tomoko's father died. That was why Inko’s banishment had been so strange. If their clan was so small, what good was there in chucking people out of it?

Tomoko had always wanted to have more relatives, especially her age – but it had just never happened. Her father had passed away when she was young, and then her mother had died last year. She’d never had any siblings, and all of her cousins were distant enough that she never really saw them.

So, now that she knows about him, she can’t help but wonder what might happen to this secret cousin of hers. She wonders whether anyone would be there for him when he woke up.

Surely, there must be someone?

But what if there isn’t…

“Can I see him?”

The question is out of her mouth before she can stop it, but she can’t bring herself to regret the impulse.

Tsukauchi, surprisingly, looks relieved. “It’s outside of visiting hours, now, but I’ll call ahead and let them know you’ll be by tomorrow. That’s not all I needed to talk to you about, though.”

Tomoko blinks at him. There was more?

The Detective clears his throat, and takes another swig of his – by now very cold – coffee. He doesn’t seem to notice the temperature this time.

“We’ve done some digging, and… well,” he crosses his arms against his desk and leans into them. “Since Hisashi is now our prime suspect, little Izuku can’t be entrusted to his care – and you’re his only other living relative.”

Oh.

“Oh,” was her intelligent response – and what else is there to say?

His name's Izuku. It's a pretty name.

Tsukauchi, at least, looks somewhat sympathetic. “You don’t have to make any kind of decision tonight, but we can’t keep him in hospital in perpetuity. I know you’re a busy woman, but if you could consider it…”

Tomoko can only offer a stuttering, abortive nod.

“Okay,” the Detective has clearly decided he’d dropped enough bombshells for one evening. “I’ll notify Child Protective Services, then swing by the paediatrics department tomorrow and check in on the two of you,” he keyed the intercom on his office telephone. “Sansa, can you call a cab for me?”

“Yessir. I’ll stick it on expenses.”

Tsukauchi groans quietly, but doesn’t offer any retort. Instead, he shows her out of the building and bundles her into a waiting taxi with instructions to drive to the nearest decent hotel – then quickly bids her goodnight and moves away.

The cab takes off into the swiftly settling night, easily merging with the busy traffic outside the precinct. Headlights blur in her periphery, and the neon signs above the stores flash by in a dizzying maelstrom of blinding colour. Normally, Tomoko might have found the spectacle of it all quite entrancing - she didn't have to deal with the smell inside the cab - but she doesn’t register the journey at all. Eveyrthing's gone blurry - completely out of focus. Like a dream sequence.

She feels simultaneously too heavy - like her head is full of water and a feet made of lead - and like she's about to float away. It makes it hard to focus, and she functions on autopilot until she’s safely sequestered in a quiet room on the top floor of a pleasant little hotel a few blocks over.

For a while, all she can do is stare at the wall.

Inko is dead.

It doesn’t quite seem real.

It felt like she was stuck in a particularly lucid dream that, at any moment, would be unceremoniously interrupted by Ryuko turfing her out of bed to talk about the latest chapter in her doomed love life. Or Yawara, bursting through her bedroom door like some sort of deranged sociopath at six-am just to make sure she exercised. Or Shino, gently rousing her a little past midday after a long night to make sure she ate something.

Tomoko sniffles. She misses her Cats…

She should call Ryuko.

The dial-tone ringing into her ear is strangely comforting, if only because it gives her some sort of grounding. It’s familiar, unlike the hotel room.

The bed's too soft, and the curtains are too thick.

Suddenly, the line connects. “Tomoko! Where’d you sneak off to?” Tomoko lets her eyes slip closed, and basks in the sound of her sister’s voice. “Don’t tell me you had some hot date lined up and didn’t think to say anything! I’ll never talk to you again!”

And, despite everything that’s happened to her today, Tomoko finds herself giggling. It sounds weak, even to her own ears – but it feels nice. “Good guess,” she tries to keep her voice level. Despite the small lift in her mood, there’s still some damp lingering in her tone. “But not quite.”

There’s a long silence on the other end, and Tomoko decides that her attempt to sound put-together hasn’t worked.

“Okay…” something rustles in the background, and Tomoko suddenly realises how late it is. “What’s happened?”

And what a question that was.

She’d found out her estranged aunt, the last of her close relatives, was dead. Possibly murdered.

She’d found out she had a little cousin. A little boy called Izuku, who was – at that moment – all alone in a hospital surrounded by unfamiliar people.

She’d found out that the boy’s father, who had abused Inko in some fashion, was likely the one who'd killed her.

And Tomoko had found out that, with Inko gone and Hisashi suspected of her murder, she was all Izuku had left.

All the weight comes back rushing back, and her head feels too heavy. She was that kitten’s only living relative – did that mean nobody would come to see him? Did anyone else even know?

Ryuko is still waiting for an answer, Tomoko realises, and she tries to stall her spiral for long enough to carry her half of the conversation.

“My-” she chokes off in a sob. “Inko-” and then everything that had gone blurry with the shock and the revelations of the evening comes piling back into sharp focus.

All the colour snaps back in, and the wall distorts and blurs and shifts as her eyes lose their focus. It's like she's looking through it. She's looking through the paint, the plaster, and the bricks - and instead staring a thousand yards back into the past. Every conversation, every small moment, every time she'd said something even a little bit hurtful without meaning to. Her brain, usually so helpful, replays it all in startling detail. 

Her hand clutches uselessly at her jumper, and a vice closes around her ribs. It hadn't been like this when her mother had died - it hadn't felt so desperate. Her mother had gone in her sleep, and it had been the most peaceful she'd looked in years. By the time death took her, it had been a relief. 

This was so much more unexpected, and the grief hits Tomoko like a freight train with the brakes cut. It feels like something's tearing at her lungs, trying to rip them out, but squeezing them at the same time.  Tomoko can faintly here Ryuko trying to comfort her over the phone, but her ears are stuffed with cotton and ringing at such a dizzying pitch.

It just wasn’t fair.

At some point in her formative years, around the time her father had been killed, she’d come to realise that bad things often happened to good people. Conmen and crooks seemed to get away with everything - stealing away into the dark, leaving chaos in their wake. Fate always seemed to look favourably on them, whilst good and honest people were so frequently confronted with unspeakable hardships. It was the good people who were murdered, robbed, beat down, and bullied. The good people who'd lose everything, and wind up on the streets.

Inko had been the best of them all, by far. A paragon of selflessness. Tomoko could say with certainty that she’d never met another soul so gentle, so kind.

She remembered how Inko used to pick her up after school, how she would ask about her day with genuine interest and cheer her up when the other kids had been mean. She would let Tomoko run riot around her tiny flat, playing heroes and villains, until it was time for her to go home.

Inko had never had much. She was a woman of modest means - but what she did have was always shared willingly.

How could something so horrible happen to someone so pure?

Where was the justice in that?

How could a woman so gentle and warm find herself trapped and burning to death in her own home, when she’d never done anything to deserve it?

What was the point of being a hero if those were the people you couldn’t save?

Tomoko takes a while to come back to herself, because she might have skipped sorrow and gone straight into anger. She’d hunched over at some point, bent almost double where she sat, and her head had found its way into her hands. There were dark stains on the carpet between her feet.

It’s Ryuko’s increasingly desperate reassurances and frantic pleas that eventually draw her out of herself. By the time the deafening tinnitus fades away and the waves of grief subside, Tomoko realises that her sister is actually on the way out their front door. Ryuko's an awful driver at the best of times, yet she’s prepared to drive all the way there in the middle of the night just to sit in her too small hotel room.

“Don’t.” Tomoko injects a small amount of iron into her voice, and the finality in her tone seems to stop Ryuko in her tracks. She can tell her sister is listening to her, actually listening, because their car keys aren’t jingling through the speakers anymore. “I’ll be alright.”

“You sure? I can be there in a couple hours…”

Tomoko feels her head shaking, even though Ryuko can’t possibly see it.

“No,” she says instead. “But I feel like I’m gonna crash in a sec, so I won’t be able to let you in.”

Ryuko’s soft laughter echoes down the phone. “Shut out by my bestest friend! How cruel!”

“As if you wouldn’t just break the door down.” Tomoko giggles softly, then drops backwards onto the too-soft-mattress. “The nice detective is putting it on his department’s expenses, I think. I’d rather not give him anything else to stress over.”

“He sounds like a busybody.”

Tomoko snorts, then shuffles backwards against the duvet so she can comfortably curl up. “Don’t be rude. He’s a very nice man.”

“You’re not doing much to disprove my original theory, you know.” Ryuko laughs, and the keys hit the bottom of the bowl by their front door. “You want to talk about it?”

Tomoko frowns… then she yawns.

She should talk about it. She can still feel the weight of it all on her chest, pushing her back into the (really too soft) mattress – but she’s so tired.

Ryuko, bless her kind soul, picks up on it quickly enough. “You don’t have to, Tomo. If you’re gonna crash, we can talk in the morning – yeah?”

Tomoko nods meekly in the solitude of her room, and her head brushes against the laundered duvet cover. “Yeah…”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

She yawns again, but just about manages to mumble a good night before she passes out.

She dreams of soft, warm smiles.

And she dreams of fire.

Tomoko’s glad that she’s become somewhat desensitised to hospitals over the years.

She’d struggled up until recently - because her quirk wasn’t something she could just switch off. The best she can do is, in essence, ignore it - and even that takes enormous amounts of effort. 

She can monitor up to a hundred people, and read their vital signs from up to a hundred meters away. That information comes into her brain in a sort of catologued list of physical and emotional data specific to the source (i.e the person that data had come from), and her quirk then converts that information into something slightly easier to comprehend. If she'd met the individual she was monitoring before, then all of that information would be attached to a picture and would be easier to analyse. If she'd never seen the person before, either in person or digitally, that information would be a lot more vague - but she could still build a pretty good picture of their condition and pinpoint their location. 

The issue with hospitals in particular was that the information she got would be of the latter variety; vague, faceless, and always a lot more emotional. That last part was the kicker. When she was monitoring people she knew, it was a lot easier for her quirk to catagorise the information. If she's monitoring people she doesn't know, it'll hit her all at once. In a hospital, where the patients are all so close together, this can be quite overwhelming.

Even today, despite everything she’s seen and experienced, she avoids intensive care wards like the plague. The hurt, the worry and fear all coming into her mind at once from so many different directions is not a pleasant experience.

Paediatrics would normally be another ward she’d shy away from. Children are much more reactive than adults, and they're a lot more emotional. To make matters worse, they don't always understand what it is they're experiencing - and Tomoko's quirk will pick up on that as a nauseating mix of confusion and fear. She doesn’t feel other people's emotions, as such, but her body does react to them.

Unfortunately, this isn't a visit that could be avoided.

The nurse suddenly stops in front of a private room, and Tomoko almost walks straight into the back of her. She'd been so focused on putting up the mental blockade between her conscious thought processes and her quirk that she barely has time to stop - she has to quickly back up a step to get out of the nurse's personal space. 

The woman quickly checks the room number on the door against the one on her clipboard, then - once she's satisfied that they match - she gently pushes the door open and ushers Tomoko inside.

“He’s not woken up yet,” the Nurse explains in hushed tones, and bustles over to the bank of machines beside the single bed in the room. “But he was subjected to a large amount of stress, so that’s not unusual.”

Tomoko inclines her head, but can’t find it within herself to actually speak. She only has eyes for the tiny kitten on the bed – a splotch of green in a sea of white.

“- obviously, we’d prefer to keep him here for observation until we were sure the damage to his lungs has fully healed, but hospitals can be quite distressing for children.” The nurse is still talking, Tomoko realises, and she tries to tune back into whatever the other woman had been saying. “If it’s safe to release him, then it would be better that he continues his recovery at home.”

Home.

Izuku had lost his.

“What-” she chokes out – before her traitorous mind can slither down that particular rabbit hole. “The Detective said something about burns?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about those!” The nurse sends her an appreciative little smile as she gently removes Izuku’s tiny oxygen mask. “He avoided anything too serious, so it didn’t take much effort to patch those up – they won’t even scar! The doctor said his mask could come off this morning as well, we just had to wait to make sure the healing took.”

Tomoko lets out a little wisp of a sigh. Good. That’s a good thing – one she can hold onto.

“Doctor Kurosaki will be by a little later for his check-up,” the Nurse makes a few notes on her clip board – then slides it into the tray at the end of Izuku’s bed. “He’ll be able to answer any questions you might have.”

Somehow, Tomoko doubts that – but she nods anyway.

Could a doctor tell her what she, a twenty-one-year-old pro hero, was supposed to do with a five-year-old child?

Could the doctor tell her how to help Izuku, who had lost everything in the blink of an eye?

She doubts it.

“Just focus on being here for now,” Tomoko’s eyes snap up to meet those of the nurse – and found her by the only door leading into the room. She smiles at Tomoko again, gentle and understanding. “All of the complicated stuff can come later. Right now, he just needs someone to hold on to.”

Then, with that, she pulls the door open and silently slips from the room, leaving Tomoko with nothing but her own thoughts and a sleeping child.

For a moment, she just stares.

Then, in a fit of frustration, Tomoko slaps herself on the cheeks. Of course she can help Izuku!

She's Ragdoll – Pro Hero extraordinaire! Of Course, she can!

She just… doesn't know how she's going to do it, yet!

Maybe Shino would know?

For a while, Tomoko simply sits and observes. Izuku’s face is peaceful in sleep – restful. If Tomoko hadn't known any better, she’d have assumed Izuku was taking a nap. There’s no worry marring his features; no stress, no scars. Nobody would have been able to guess this child had just lost everything in the space of a few minutes. He just looks so... normal. Plain, almost.  

He might have Inko’s nose, Tomoko thinks – though she couldn’t quite picture her aunt well enough to be sure. The shape of his jaw might be broadly similar as well. As she scoots her chair a little closer to his bed, she wonders whether he’d won the genetic lottery and got his mother’s brilliant, emerald eyes. Hisashi’s had been this cold, dull grey colour – a bit like worn steel.

Then, of course, there’s the hair.

Tomoko’s mother had told her once, a very long time ago, that some distant ancestor of hers had a benign quirk that turned his hair green – and that the trait now ran in the family. She could remember how, for months afterwards, she’d kept an eye out for anyone else with that distinctive, deep green hair – hoping to find some additions to their small clan.

Tomoko had been an only child, and hadn’t been very good at making friends. The idea of having relatives out there, other people that shared her blood and might see her for her, had been so exciting.

Of course, she’d never spotted anyone.

And then Inko had been cast out.

Tomoko had never quite forgiven her mother for cutting Inko out so suddenly, especially when one considered the strength her aunt must have needed to stand up to her tormentor. It was clear to her that Hisashi had been the problem in that house – but her mother just refused to see it. She refused to believe that her oldest friend could have possibly abused her only sister.

Tomoko had never been able to convince her mother to reverse her decision. As far as that woman was concerned, Inko had brought shame to their family - and had betrayed a 'decent' man in the process. She'd have known about Izuku as well, in all likelihood, and that would have rankled too.

It was just another way in which her mother had been twisted and warped by her father's murder. She'd been quite like Inko, once; caring, kind, gentle, and fiercly protective. By the time this all unfolded, she'd been bitter and short-tempered. A jaded widow from an old family of traditionalists - who had lost everything too soon and thrown herself into that responsibility as a way of coping. That, essentially, meant that she’d been perfectly happy not speaking to her sister again until the day she died.

Tomoko thought that was rather sad.

She hadn’t realised it until yesterday, sat in that office with a detective far too young to be delivering news that devastating, but she’d missed her aunt. Inko had often been affectionate in ways that her own mother simply couldn’t be, and the absence of that brand of love had left a hole in Tomoko’s life that couldn’t easily be filled.

Of course, she had her friends now. Two sisters and one brother in everything but blood, all of whom would shift heaven and earth to make her happy – and she would do the same for them.

Her phone buzzes.

Ryuko, of course.

She tears her eyes away from the sleeping form of her little cousin, only to glance back up for a second when she catches the fleeting phantom of a frown on his resting face. She scans him for a moment, tentatively reaching out to her quirk. 

He's fine. Some lingering discomfort in his lungs and throat – but mostly fine. He'll need to drink something when he wakes up, she muses, and then maybe eat something as well. But he's fine.

Tomoko sighs, then turns to her phone.

She has to spend a little while reassuring Ryuko that yes, she’s alright and no, there’s no need to drive all the way to the hospital and beat someone up. Tomoko had woken up that morning feeling a little steadier than she’d been when she fell asleep, a little more collected and a little less hollow. She'd learnt, a long time ago now, that there was nothing like a good cry and a good sleep for taking the edge off grief.

The sudden trip to the city had been a blessing in disguise, because dealing with the trains and the bustle of Musutafu had rendered her almost completely exhausted. It was a good thing it had, because she probably would have been awake all night, otherwise.

Eventually, after much wrangling, Ryuko backs down – but tells Tomoko to talk to the other two as well. Ryuko had, inevitably, woken them up as she rushed around the house in the middle of the night, and they'd both been in the room with her at the end of their phone-call. Obviously, in the wake of that, they're both worried sick - and they have a right to know what’s going on. Ryuko reasons that, after last night, it'd be better coming from her. 

Tomoko stares at the text for a second, then has to drop the device so she can rub at her eyes.  

She knows Ryuko has a good point, and that it would be reassuring to hear from her after all the collective panicking. It’s just so exhausting to talk about. It’s like getting pulled down into a bottomless pit, then having to pull herself back out if it again each time. Except, each time she gets dragged down the hole, the surface gets more slippery – more treacherous. Having laid it all out for Ryuko, part of her just wanted to turtle up in this her until everyone stopped asking about it.

However, she can't pin this all on Ryuko. It wouldn't be fair.  

So, with a steeling breath and a steady hand, Tomoko sets to work. She sends an explanatory message to Shino which, however successfully, tries to be reassuring whilst also establishing the facts. It ends up as something of a cliff-note version of events, and she purposefully avoids talking about how this entire situation is - emotionally - tearing her in half. Shino will probably see straight through the omission, but Tomoko finds the entire concept of discussing her state-of-mind over text too strange to contemplate.

In the end, having completely lost her nerve in the process of typing out Shino's message, Tomoko copy-pastes exactly the same message into a separate conversation with Yawara. She can’t bring herself to write it all down more than once.  

Out of her three foster siblings, Shino’s by far the most collected. Ryuko spends most of her time acting on impulse, working off the cuff and rolling with whatever life threw at her. She’s brash, but she’s also the energy of their team. Ryuko’s the one you can rely on to lift your spirits when the chips were down, the one who kept the others moving even when their feet felt like lead.   

Yawara was more like Shino, but with a flair for the dramatic. Most of the time, he could remain completely composed in the face of staggering adversity, but often lost his focus when any of his friends were in abject danger. Shino, on the other hand, could retain complete focus in the face of anything. She’s their strategist, the brains of the operation (or so Tomoko liked to think).

So, when Tomoko gets a text back from Shino that simply reads, ‘We're on our way’, she has to resist the urge to slam her head against the bedframe.

She knows better than to argue the toss with her sisters, however – because Tomoko knows what a losing proposition looks like. She’d just barely managed to hold Ryuko off on her own, but Tomoko knows her sister well enough to realise that she was just trying to respect her boundaries. With the support of Shino, the rational one, her protective instincts would be completely vindicated – and she’d be there in a flash. Against their combined front, Tomoko doesn’t stand a chance.

Tomoko sighs, then stretches out a hand to hold Izuku’s smaller one without really thinking about it. “I hope you like heroes, Kitten,” she pitches her voice low – barely above a whisper. She was speaking to herself more than him, really – just filling the silence. "'Cos there’s gonna be a whole litter here soon.”

“Mm,” a tiny voice from the bed freezes Tomoko in place. “Heroes?”

Tomoko's brain freezes, crashes, reboots, and the crashes again. She hadn't thought this far ahead! She doesn't know what to say to him!

Yellow eyes slowly look up to meet emerald, and Tomoko spends a second simply staring.

Izuku, evidently, did get Inko’s eyes…

It's like looking into a time capsule - because it's uncanny. Tomoko wonders what she looks like, whether she looks as though she's seen a ghost, because those eyes are identical. Indeed, for a fleeting moment in that one second of silence, Inko's in the room with her. Then Izuku coughs a little, and she's dragged forcefully back to the present. 

Focus, Tomoko!

“Izuku?”

The kitten frowns at something in her tone, not entirely with it, and he blinks in an effort to clear his vision. Tomoko doesn't have to look hard to see that there’s a sheen to his eyes, and he’s clearly still disoriented from sleeping for so long.

“Hi?”

He even sounds confused, but still thinks to squeeze Tomoko’s hand – as if she’s the one who needs comfort. Tomoko giggles weakly at his serious little face, and squeezes his hand right back.

This boy is very powerful.

“Hi,” she waves a little wave with her free hand, and smiles softly when Izuku’s bleary eyes follow the motion. “How’re you feeling, Kitten? Wanna drink something?”

Izuku’s little brow furrows slowly, and he silently mouths the word ‘kitten’ to himself.

“M’ Tired,” he eventually murmurs – barely loud enough for Tomoko to hear. “Wanna sleep.”

“You can do that, if you like! But only after you drink something!” Tomoko pats Izuku’s little hand and smiles over at him, and she’s fully aware the expression barely reaches her eyes – but she has to try.

She breaks away from Izuku’s side for a moment to snag the pitcher by his bedside, which grants her a blessed moment of reprieve. Tomoko's coming to the rapid realisation that she's starting from scratch, here. She'd not known about Izuku until now, and it isn't far fetched to assume Inko hadn't felt it appropriate to burden a five-year-old with their delicate family history either. Therefore, she would have to carefully manage her expectations going forward - she'd have to give him time to adjust. 

It's not the first time she's rued a decision her mother had taken years ago - and she doubts it'll be the last.

“The nice doctors had to use their quirks on you, to make the hurts go away!” She explains, returning her attention to Izuku after possibly a moment too long. The nurse had left the jug on his bedside table, and she uses the surface of it to steady her hands before bringing a half-full cup to Izuku's mouth so he can sip from it. “You’ll need to sleep a lot to get your energy back.”

And Izuku’s definitely tired. His eyes drift shut before the cup’s even empty, and Tomoko feels a wave of relief wash over her. Partially because, if he's asleep, Izuku won't have to deal with the irritation in his throat. She's also relieved because, if he's asleep, she can take that time to regroup. 

“I like quirks,” Izuku slurs – having latched on to the one thing he found immediately comforting. With another heavy yawn, he shuffles a little bit in the bed to find a comfortable spot. “So cool.”

And, oh, Tomoko is weak in the face of this amount of cute. He even yawns like a kitten. 

It's clear that Izuku is on the edge of sleep, at this point - so Tomoko knows that there's no point breaking the news to him now. So, just for a minute, she puts it to one side. Instead, she simply allows herself to exist. To allow that small, flickering candle of excitement to light up her soul - because this is her little cousin. Family she'd never thought she'd find. The circumstances are terrible, and the reality of this situation is ever-so cruel; but after all those years of scanning crowds for green hair, after years of wondering whether she was the last generation of her clan, after those terrible few minutes of knowing she was the last one left, along comes this child.

After all this time, she's finally found some family. 

“I can tell you all about mine when you wake up,” Tomoko offers. She doesn't voice any of her thoughts to him, because he wouldn't understand - and that's not his fault. Instead, she's hoping to ease him off to sleep knowing she’d be there for him afterwards, because - now that she's found him - she won't leave him. “It’s not really flashy, but I think it’s pretty cool! Sound good?”

Izuku hums, but it’s more a noise of groggy confusion than of acceptance. “Bein’ silly, Mama…” he slurs, and Tomoko’s heart cracks loudly in her ears. “I already…” he yawns, which conveniently covers up Tomoko’s quiet, gasping sob. “Already know your quirk.”

And what can she say to that?

The candle flickers out, and she lets the conversation flounder on the rocks of her despair.

Tomoko had realised that, in reality, she was a completely unknown quantity from Izuku's perspective. She knows that there's a possibility, however faint, that he'll reject her - just like her mother had done to Inko. She also knows, objectively, that she’ll have to break the news to this little sunshine child at some point. She knows that she can’t keep the truth from him forever - but she wishes she could.

All she wants to do was wrap this kitten in blankets and shield him from the world. To hide him away somewhere that the cruel realities of life would never find him - but she also knows how cruel that would be. Everyone faces adversity, at some point in their lives; everyone has to face loss, and demons. It’s just another harsh reality of life – but Izuku is so young.

A child so sweet, so kind as to offer her comfort when he’s likely covered in little aches and pains doesn’t deserve to lose his mother like this.

She wishes she didn’t have to tell him. She wishes there were some other way – but that isn't logical.

She would have to break his tiny heart, sooner or later. She would have to shatter everything he'd ever known.

And then it would be up to her to piece it back together again.

Rather than articulating any of this, Tomoko settles for stroking a thumb over the back of Izuku’s hand - though whether the comfort is for him or for her is something she'd rather not think about. Regardless, the soothing motion seems to work, because Izuku drifts back to sleep under her touch – and Tomoko suddenly feels like she can breathe again.

She feels so lost.

Tomoko had stared down earthquakes before. She’d faced flash flooding, rockslides, cave ins, and blizzards. One time, she’d trekked out into the mountains in the middle of a snowstorm (against the advice over every other hero in the area) without even blinking or stopping to think about the danger, because she lived to look after other people – to see them safe.

So why does this fill her with so much dread?

For the hour it takes for the others to arrive, Tomoko runs conversations through her mind, one after another. She tests them all out with the imaginary Izuku that had already taken up residence in her mind – a biproduct of her quirk. Every time, without fail, she would come up against one of two problems.

If she tried breaking it to him gently, using gentle language and comforting platitudes, Izuku would just yell about how wrong she was. He wouldn't believe her, because his Mama would always come back to him. So, instead, she would try the ‘rip of the band-aid’ approach – and little Izuku would become completely unresponsive. It rips her apart every single time.

She has a very active imagination, which is usually a blessing. In this case, because she can picture his reactions in startling clarity, it's agonising. In the end, she just has to accept the obvious truth. There’s no ideal way to break news like this to a child.

She wonders, somewhat desperately, if Tsukauchi would be any better at it. He’d seemed adept enough at delivering bad news when they’d met yesterday – though whether he had any experience with children was another matter…

Tomoko shakes her head firmly, and dismisses the idea immediately. She has to take responsibility for her own family, no matter how difficult that might be, because it was important. She hadn't known her father very well, because he'd been taken from the world far too soon, but that lesson was the one lasting thing he'd managed to impress on her. It was also, tragically, the one thing her mother had forgotten in her grief.

Nothing came before family.

Even if she’d only been made aware of Izuku’s existence the previous evening, even if they'd only had one conversation that - for one of them - had been awkward and stilted, they were still family.

And family looked out for each-other.

She would just have to do her best. Even if it tore her apart inside, and even if he never spoke to her again, she owes it to him - and to her father - to at least try. He deserves at least that much, after everything he’d been through.

The rest of the gang appear around lunchtime, though Tomoko can't quite decide how she feels about that. She'd missed her cats, of course she had, but she isn't sure she's got the energy to keep up with them. When they, characteristically, come bursting through the door in a display of concern and – to a lesser extent – pastry, Tomoko has to fight back an instinctive wince that's completely abnormal for her. Instead of musing on it for too long and getting worked up about it, Tomoko dedicates herself to forcefully shushing them before they manage to wake Izuku.

“You guys sure got here fast,” she observes, once they're all situated around the room. Her initial reticence had been dulled somewhat once they'd quietened down, and she'd forgone almost all of her reservations when Ryuko had - with a surprising amount of care - pushed some kind of chicken bake into her hands. It isn’t the tastiest thing ever, but she’s hungry. “Did you take the train?”

Shino immediately grimaces, and Yawara suddenly looks quite ill. “Pix’ drove us,” Shino explains – and Tomoko is suddenly very glad she hadn’t been in that car.

“It was an emergency!” Ryuko seems to think that vindicates her maniacal driving, and she crosses her arms triumphantly. “Clearly, you two just weren’t as worried as me!”

Yawara groans into his coffee. “I fear there’ll be a great many speeding fines in our immediate future…” suddenly, he spins around to jab Ryuko in the forehead. “And I was very worried, thank you very much! It’s not a competition!”

The two of them immediately dissolve into bickering, and Tomoko can only sit and giggle helplessly at them. Something around her chest loosens at the sight, and oh how she'd missed these three over the last twelve hours. Of course she needs them here - needs their support and their company. Even if they bicker from time to time, they're always there for each other. They always have each-other's backs.

When she’d arrived at High School in the first year, her emotional support network had solely consisted of her mother and Inko – because she had always struggled to make friends before then. She was a lonely kid, and the other children her age had always been put off by her eyes or the way she always knew when one of them was in pain. High School had been better than Middle School or Junior High simply because she'd not been singled out immediately and picked on.

Yet, despite the improvements, she was still lonely. She'd still sat alone at lunch and been the last picked for group activities, the last kid to arrive and the first to go home. Indeed, Tomoko had been fully prepared, by the start of the second term, to spend the entirety of her High School career alone. 

Then, suddenly and completely out of left-field, she’d had Ryuko. Then Shino had quietly come to sit with them one lunchtime, apparently fed up with 'the idiot brigade' on her previous table. Then, out of nowhere, Ryuko had dragged Yawara into their little group about midway through the year. It had been a little jarring for Tomoko at first - she didn't really know what to do with friends - but she got through it. They got through it. 

It was why she’d been able to move on so fast when Inko abruptly left the picture. She'd had other people – her own age no less – to lean on, friends to back her up and support her. Tomoko didn’t like to think about where she might have ended up without them.

Out of the corner of her eye, Tomoko can see Shino’s gaze affix itself to Izuku’s sleeping form. She doesn’t speak immediately, instead running her eyes over the kitten’s sleeping features – as if searching for some sort of confirmation that the boy’s alright.

“How is he?” She eventually asks, pitching her voice just under the pair of children closer to the door.

“Recovering,” Tomoko offers, trying to simultaneously reassure her sister that she is alright with a weary smile. “He woke up a little while ago, but I don’t think he really knew what was happening.”

Shino, ever-so-carefully, reaches up to brush the hair out of Izuku’s eyes. “He looks so peaceful…” and it’s true, Izuku looks completely unbothered in his sleep. Come to think of it, Tomoko hadn’t heard the attendant nurse mention anything about nightmares either. He's probably just too exhausted...

“Do you think he -” Shino takes a sudden, sharp breath in. “Do you think he remembers?”

And Tomoko can only shrug helplessly, because she’s wondering the same thing. “He thought I was his mama, but I didn’t realise until he was almost asleep again.”

Shino sighs, and combs through the kitten’s hair with careful fingers. “Poor little angel…” Izuku smiles in his sleep and lolls his little head in Shino’s direction, and she coos then rubs a thumb over his forehead in response. There's a small lull in which the only audible noise comes from the other pair, but then Shino glances back up at Tomoko with fire in her eyes. “So, what’s the plan?”

Tomoko pauses.

There’s a lot of things she wants to do, a lot of plans she’d made and a lot of scenarios she’d considered. She wants Izuku to be safe. She wants him to be cared for.

But, can they do it?

Can she do it?

The Pussycats may be a small outfit, and they’re still working their way up the food-chain, but they’re still busy. Moreover, it’s a dangerous job. What if, one day, they all went out and never came back? What if Izuku said 'no'?

All of this flashes through Tomoko’s mind at dizzying speed, and she can only look helplessly at her sister for a moment. She knows what she wants to do – but she can’t tell if it’s realistic or not.

“Can we?” She asks, voice barely above a whisper, in lieu of articulating her internal crisis – the same one she’d been having since Tsukauchi had broken the news of Izuku’s existence.

But Shino only smiles back at her, full of the confidence. “We’ll make it work.” She turns slightly, craning her neck and raising her voice to be heard over the calamity that is the other half of their pack. “Right, Cats!?”

“What!?" Ryuko screams, blatantly disregarding the reappearance of Tomoko’s frantic shushing motions. "Wait, no! I know this one!”

In a flash, she’s on her feet – pointing a heroic finger in Tomoko’s direction.

“We can absolutely do it! No matter what; because we’re the Wild Wild Pussycats, damnit!”

Yawara materialises behind her, and mirrors Ryuko’s pose. “So long as we stick together, there’s absolutely nothing we cannot accomplish!”

“So, whatever it is-”

“Just leave it to us!”

Tomoko, completely flawed until that moment, suddenly bursts into absolute hysterics because they'd finished in perfect harmony.

“Yeah, what they said.” Shino regards her with the smug look of a woman who’d gotten the final word, gesturing vaguely toward the two idiots by the door. “We’ve got your back, cat! Don’t worry about a thing!”

“Absolutely!”

“Yeah!” Ryuko’s triumphant grin suddenly turns sheepish. “But... ah, what’re we agreeing to?”

Shino’s shoe misses her eye by inches.

The next time Izuku wakes up, Tomoko's taking a call in the hallway outside.

The Pussycats had bunked on Yamada’s floor the previous night, because Shino and Yawara had taken one look at Tomoko’s hotel room and promptly one-eighty-ed straight out the door again. They hadn't divulged exactly what it was that had put them off the room so quickly, but they'd been adament that those accommodations would simply not do. They’d marched back into Izuku’s room a mere ten minutes after they’d left, and dumped her – admittedly meagre – overnight bag at her feet with the promise of ‘something more suitable’.

Obviously, that meant calling Present Mic.

Aizawa was not pleased.

Apparently, the sudden imposition of four wild, wild pussycats in ‘his’ (read: Yamada’s) living room would interrupt his ‘perfect schedule’ – but that claim was put into doubt by Yamada immediately losing his mind. Aizawa was a workaholic, a chronic one if Yamada was to be believed, and his ‘perfect’ routine apparently consisted of two hours of hard sleep, nutrient pouches, and naps in increasingly unlikely places.

The only reason he’d been at home to receive Tomoko & Co. was because his agency had turfed him out in the middle of the afternoon and told him not to come back for at least twelve hours, much to his consternation. Yamada, clearly, found the entire thing hilarious – and that hadn't improved Aizawa's mood at all.

He’d been rolling around on the floor and rattling the windows with his giggling for a few minutes, and Tomoko had wondered whether they got many noise complaints. If they didn’t, then they surely would have by the end of the night.

Eventually, and probably thinking along similar lines, Aizawa settled for erasing his partner’s quirk. Tomoko had to wonder whether that tactic ever actually worked, because losing his voice only served to calm Yamada down for a few moments. One look at Aizawa’s patented, award-winning bitch face and he was right back on the floor again.

In the end, Aizawa had been forced to capitulate. Tomoko couldn't decide whether he'd taken the easy way out to avoid eviction, or to save his reputation any further tarnishing. Aizawa himself had eventually admitted that, because they had already ruined his favourite napping spots, 'arguing would be illogical’. Obviously, the feeble, limp-wristed exhange they'd already had didn't count - clearly not.

Yamada had that man wrapped around his little finger, so - in reality - the argument had been lost before they'd even come through the door.

Tomoko, on the other hand, had been much more difficult to convince. Despite the gentle assurance of her family, the attendant nurse, and Izuku's doctor, she couldn't bring herself to leave him there - because what if he woke up all alone in an unfamiliar place?

Shino had barely managed to coax her as far as the door before she’d simply dug her heels into the tiles, because walking away from Izuku had just felt wrong. Even if he didn’t know it yet, she was the only family he had left – she couldn’t just walk away and leave him there.

She refused.

The last remaining, logical part of her mind that wasn't completely emotionally compromsied by this entire ordeal had informed Tomoko that she would – obviously – be back the next day. There was no reason to think that Izuku would wake up, scared and alone, in the middle of the night and realise that everyone had abandoned him. It would be hyperbolic to think that, in that scenario, he would be left alone to cry into the dark - wondering if anyone still remembered him.

Okay! So, maybe that last, logical part of her mind was a little terrified as well. Either way, it wasn’t offering her much comfort.

Unfortunately for the mounting hysteria in her head, she couldn't hold out against a combined offensive from her siblings forever. Shino’s gentle nagging had been getting increasingly desperate (and less gentle), and Yawara had been giving her a look which usually signalled that she was being dumb. Ryuko was, possibly, the only one of them who'd been broadly sympathetic - but she'd been shooed from the room to fetch the van before they could join forces. With great reluctance and wooden feet, she'd eventually left Izuku’s hospital room to deposit her overnight bag in Yamada’s apartment.

Her heart didn't come with her, but the worry did.

She couldn’t help it!

She could picture the scene perfectly in her head, and her mind played it on a sort of perpetual, torturous loop no matter how hard she tried to distract herself. Everytime she left the room in her mind's eye, Izuku would wake up - without fail - the second the door closed. After that, how he reacted would vary slightly based on some arbitrary factor that Tomoko couldn't name. Sometimes he'd end up weeping, and afraid - asking for the mom that was never coming back. Sometimes, and this was the one that really terrified Tomoko, he'd be completely catatonic - staring dead ahead with unseeing eyes.

You could call it hysterical, if you liked, but to her it was instinct. Tomoko could feel it in her gut - leaving him alone was wrong. Izuku's entire life had been torn apart in seconds, ripped in two and thrown in a lake. 

If she’d been in his shoes (and boy was that painful to think about), and she’d woken up all alone in a dark room in a place she didn’t recognise, she’d…

Well, she didn’t know exactly what she’d do – but Tomoko knew she’d be beside herself. Waking up all alone in a dark, solitary hospital room would just sharpen the knife in his heart. It would be frightening, confusing, and Tomoko would never forgive herself if that happened. 

So, leaving that room for any significant period of time was simply not an option. Any avoidable distress on the little kitten’s part was tantamount to failure on hers.

In the end, Yamada had graciously agreed to drive her back again. Something about the look in his eyes, the sympathy in his open expression, told her that he got it. She wondered how often Aizawa landed himself in hospital, considering how hopelessly self-destructive he was. She wondered how many nights Yamada had spent sitting by his partner's bed, waiting for the moment he could breathe easily again.

The steady hand that landed on her shoulder as they left the apartment was all the answer she needed.

So, once it had all shaken out, her family stayed at Yamada’s apartment – and Tomoko essentially remained as she had been all day.

She sat in her chair, she listened to Izuku’s soft breathing and the ambient noise from the corridor outside. She spent some time counting the dusting of freckles on his cheeks, and then – when she had established there were fifty visible freckles – she watched the sky-traffic out the window. Simply being back in the room had taken a great weight off her mind, had eased the guilt that had settled like iron in her stomach. She still couldn't breathe quite right yet, the clamp was still there, but she didn't feel like she was slowly suffocating anymore.

There was an airport somewhere nearby, and Tomoko watched the passenger aircraft taxiing in and out through a gap in the buildings for a while. The skyline was quite pretty in the evening, she realised, especially with the sun setting behind the tall buildings. Still, she was glad for the thick windows - she doubted she'd be such a big fan of the noise.

When she inevitably got bored of plane-spotting, she spent a little while working through her inbox. Being 'out of office' for a day was a good way to build up a backlog, after all. It was mostly fan-mail, which suited her down to the ground - especially at that moment. Shino and Yawara, blessed with longer attention spans as they were, dealt with the various financial, legal, and contractual elements of their 'agency' whilst she and Ryuko handled the fans and the media. It might sound a little lop-sided to most, and that had occured to Tomoko before, but the system worked. 

Ryuko had already taken it upon herself to cancel their more immediate media commitments, and had instructed Tomoko to reject anything else that came into her inbox. It was touching that her siblings were happy to put everything on hold for her, despite the risks that could pose to such a young outfit. Their industry was cut-throat, and even the smallest of hiatuses could wreck their upwards momentum. Sure, they could probably do their jobs just as well without being a long way up the rankings, but they wouldn't necessarily be able to make a living out of it outside the top one-hundred for very long. They had debts, and bills to pay - just like everyone else.

Plus, this whole ‘having fans’ thing was nice – though it was still a novel concept to her. Reading their messages – in which they mostly either thanked the team for their work or shared personal stories of the times they’d saved them along with how grateful they were – always left her with a warm feeling swirling around her chest. A soft sensation of fulfillment and satisfaction that they were somebody's heroes - that they had saved people.

Pride.

So, sitting in that rapidly darkening room and reading messages from the people The Cats had helped – even if indirectly – cheered Tomoko up no end. She spent a few hours replying to their messages - reading through each one with care. Then, just as the sun dipped completely below the horizon, she started to honour a few requests for birthday messages from their younger fans.

This, much to the group’s collective surprise, had become something of a trend over recent months. They hadn't gone advertising it, nor had they made any mention of it to the media, and yet here they were. The whole thing had gathered so much momentum that, after a particularly large influx of requests from harried parents, they’d done a silly photoshoot on the porch outside their forest home with loads of pawnshop birthday props. Then, after they’d photoshopped the words ‘Have a Wild, Wild Birthday!’ at the top, they’d sent them out to fans around the country.

Clearly, word had spread even further – because now they were swamped.

Despite the influx, Tomoko didn’t think she’d ever get tired of it. For each one, she’d attach an appropriate image, then she’d write a personalised message for the birthday-kitten, then she’d hit send and wonder whether they should start sending physical cards to their fans.

Then, invariably, she’d picture Shino crying over their budget and would shut that idea down.   

If she were honest with herself, it felt a little weird to be answering fan-mail whilst she was sat in a dark hospital room with a tiny kitten who – in all likelihood – was the same age as some of those fans she was replying to. A lot of their fans were younger, because their entire aesthetic was Kitties – and kids loved cats. It was a wierd thing to think about, and she wasn't entirely sure how it made her feel. That's not to say that the emotion in her replies wasn't genuine, because hearing from their fans made her heart soar, but she was met with hefty thwack of cognitive dissonance whenever she considered it for too long. 

Her thumbs hovered over the screen for a second, but then she shook her head and carried on.

Eventually, her phone cried enough and shut itself down when the battery died. Plunged into near-total darkness, it took a moment for Tomoko's eyes to readjust. When they did, she was left blinking down at a black screen. The little battery icon blinked back. Frowning, and realising that there was significantly less activity in the corridor outside the room than there had been the last time she checked, she glanced up at the clock on the wall.

She yawned, almost instinctively, when she saw It was nearly midnight. 

Despite that, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she actually crashed, so she swapped to a chair on the other side of the bed so she could find a power socket. She’d run out of mail to answer, which made sense – considering how long she’d been left to her own devices in that room, so she would simply have to find something else to do in the meantime. Thankfully, she’d picked out a few mindless, brightly coloured puzzle games to play in exactly these situations.

Well, not exactly these situations – because Tomoko would never have predicted anything like this ever happening to her – but something broadly similar.

Sitting in a dark room, waiting to crash – more those situations.

Once she was situated again, and she was comfortably curled up in her new chair, Tomoko instinctually reached out a hand to grasp Izuku’s. She couldn’t help it, really. Looking at his tiny form on this too-large bed had stirred something fiercely protective within her, and their previous (somewhat bleary) conversation had only hardened that instinct. Besides, she’d not brought any of her fidget balls with her when she came to the city.

It wasn't an oversight she was at all happy about, but she could hardly blame herself for it. She only ever needed them when she needed to ignore her quirk for a while, and needed something to do with her hands - just to stop her focus from slipping. It took a lot of effort to keep her quirk out, a large amount of focus, and that meant she couldn't let her mind wander too far. The fidget balls occupied at least a small number of her subconscious processes, and that helped a lot. It wasn't a sure-fire tactic by any means, and didn't always work in isolation, but it was something.

The officer who’d called her had, unfortunately, neglected to mention anything regarding hospitals, so she’d not anticipated being stuck in one all night.

As a consequence, she didn’t have any of her fidgets.

She fidgeted with Izuku’s hand, instead.

Mostly, she just rubbed little circles into his tiny knuckles. Mindless, repetitive little patterns that served no purpose other than making Tomoko’s presence known – to make sure little Izu knew he wasn’t alone. Occasionally, she’d swap hands when her thumb started to cramp, but she never took the pressure of the kitten’s hand for more than a second. Even if she did have to play pointless puzzle games on her phone, or try and overcome the dissonance of writing cheerful messages when she was sat in a paediatrics ward, she wasn’t going anywhere.

She wouldn’t abandon him.

Inevitably, she got bored of playing silly games – so she switched reading manga. That kept her occupied enough until, sometime around one-AM, she blinked – and was immediately assaulted by the sunlight coming through the window.

Clearly, sleep had managed to get the jump on her. 

Amusingly, she was still sat in her too stiff chair holding Izuku’s tiny hand - exactly as she had been when she fell asleep. She had to remove herself from his side for a moment to go through her morning stretches, and then rescue her phone from where it hung from the wall by its charging chord. It was a marvel that it hadn’t simply fallen out and broken on the floor, but Tomoko wasn’t about to stand around questioning it.

Gift horses, and all that.

That had been when the phone started ringing.

Quickly, hoping the blaring ringtone hadn’t woken the kitten up and wondering where all of her Gift Horses had gone, she'd extricated herself from the room so she could take the call in the hallway.

It was Tsukauchi, as it turned out, and he immediately apologised for not making an appearance the day before. He’d been having a hard time finding enough evidence to build a case against Hisashi, and had lost track of the time. Unfortunately, it didn’t sound like his all-nighter had done him much good, because Tsukauchi’s only discovery of note was Hisashi’s quirk: 'Fire Breathing'.

Hisashi could breathe fire.

Despite the obvious implications, Tsukauchi was quick to reign in her expectations. Whilst his quirk gave Hisashi the means to commit the crime, it was circumstantial evidence at best - not admissable in court without something else to back it up. They needed good, hard evidence that tied Hisashi to the scene at roughly the time the fire broke out, CCTV footage or reliable eyewitness testimony ideally - and then they could factor in his quirk.

Unfortunately, every CCTV camera in the immediate vicinity had either been destroyed in the fire, or was pointing in completely the wrong direction.

Obviously, footage from all of those CCTV cameras that had been destroyed in the fire was backed up to a server hosted by the company that provided them – but that was also causing an issue. The security firm that had installed those cameras had gone into liquidation a few months prior, and all of their data storage had been irreparably damaged in transit.

Tomoko didn’t need Tsukauchi to tell her that it was all awfully convenient.

To make matters worse, Hisashi had dropped off the grid immediately after the fire and hadn’t been heard from since. That, even more conveniently, meant that Tsukauchi couldn’t just turn his quirk on the man.

It was all very convenient really – for Hisashi at least.

Tsukauchi assured Tomoko that, now they had a possible means and a solid enough motive, they’d be able to trial Hisashi in absentia the moment they had enough evidence. Until then, the prosecution was reluctant to force the issue in case the defence had managed to cook up a believable alibi – but Tsukauchi was confident enough that something would turn up eventually.

As it was, there was a warrant out for his arrest – and the hospital had been given strict instructions not to let him in under any circumstances. In the meantime, Tsukauchi gave her the heads-up about Child Protective Services – who would be around with whichever social worker was assigned to Izuku’s case before he was released from Hospital.

Tomoko thanked the detective, and then had to spend some time just leaning against the wall.

These were all good things, she assured herself.

Hisashi couldn’t hide forever, not with a warrant out for his arrest and a suspected murder tied to his name. He would have Ragdoll to answer to if he tried.

And he would have a very, very hard time trying to hide from Ragdoll.

With that in mind, Tomoko had been ready to get back to what she’d been doing last night – but only managed to get halfway through the door before her phone went off again.

It was Ryuko, this time - calling to check up on her. Tomoko had been expecting this, honestly, and whilst it was a very sweet gesture it was plainly obvious that there was some sort of hidden motive. It revealed itself soon enough.

The rest of the gang had only just dragged themselves out of bed (or off the floor, as the case may be) despite the fact it was late in the morning, which clearly indicated how stressed Yawara had been. Shino, as it transpired, hadn't slept much at all, and had been worrying over her all night. It was completely on-brand, because Shino was a massive mother hen, but the realisation that her absence had worried her sister so greatly still chastened Tomoko slightly. 

However, that didn't mean Tomoko was above standing out in the hallway so she could tell Ryuko – firmly yet gently – that she shouldn’t bother getting her a breakfast she wouldn’t eat. Of course, Tomoko knew she should eat something; she hadn’t eaten anything substantial since Ryuko had pressed that chicken bake into her hands the day before, and that was at least two mealtimes ago now. But she just wasn’t hungry – she was too stressed.

Besides, she could vaguely recall eating a cereal bar out of a vending machine the night before, and she still had her emergency mochi in her bag…

She’d be fine – and she told the others that much.

It was clear they didn’t believe her. Ryuko made some vague, half-assed comment about ‘respecting her wishes’, but Tomoko had enough experience dealing with her sister’s pantomime voice to know when she was lying.

So, breakfast it was.

She’d been begging her sister not to get her anything too big when she felt it.

Something's nagging at her quirk, pushing up against the barriers of her restraint with pressing urgency. This would happen out in the field, occasionally. When someone got stuck under rubble and couldn’t get out it, they would generate a sort of ‘anxious spike’ that – without fail – would instantly get her attention.

Tomoko stops clicking the pen she’d found in a draw by Izuku’s bedside and listens.

Izuku’s presence is a buzzing mess of anxiety; quickening pulse, hyperventilation, tension in the shoulders and around the jaw…

She drops the call without another word.

Just over her shoulder, she can see between the blinds on Izuku’s window. Brilliant, wide, emerald eyes are strafing back-and-forth across the room as if looking for something. His little fists are clenched tight around his bedsheets, and Tomoko can see the outline of his knees getting closer to his chest.  

This had been what she’d expected to happen, and why she’d been so adamant that she would stay the night with him. Waking up like this, all alone and in pain in a place you didn’t recognise, was not a pleasant experience. Sure, Izuku had already woken up once whilst she was there – but she very much doubted he would remember that.

So, without further delay, she catapults herself back into the room – skidding to a stop on the laminated tiles.

Izuku’s eyes latch onto her own before she's even fully in the room, and he tracks her movement somewhat frantically. Tomoko wonders, as she tunes back into her quirk, whether her presence might help – but it only seems to confuse him. His little brow furrows, and he presses himself back into his pillows ever-so-slightly. She didn’t think this kitten could ever have looked any smaller than he had done yesterday, sleeping peacefully in that bed – but he’s managed it. It looks like he's trying to disappear completely - or trying to hide. 

Tomoko stops when that realization hits her, standing stock-still in the centre of the room. She has to remind herself that, right now, she isn't Ragdoll – and Izuku isn’t one of those kids she’d been replying to last night.

She’s just Tomoko, and this child has no idea who she is.

Izuku’s vitals are clearly betraying his alarm, as though the expression on his face isn’t enough of an indication. She would have to be cautious, here - like she's about to approach a stray cat down a back alley. She has to move slowly – she has to give the kitten time to warm up to her.

Her brain readily supplies an image of canned tuna and cat treats, but she doubts either of those things would do much good right now.

“Izuku?” Tomoko calls out to him, taking one tentative step closer to the bed and wondering whether it was a good idea to go for the ‘call nurse’ button above his head.

Izuku’s expression tells her it’d be best not to chance it.

His eyes have left her now – they’re focusing on the door she’d just come through. He’s still waiting for his mama to come back, she realises. Her heart stutters painfully, and Tomoko wrestles with her urge to leap across the room and hug him. That wouldn’t do either of them any good. She needs to be gentle; she needs to give him space.

In hindsight, Izuku’s probably a little bit higher up the stress scale than just a cold alley cat. Tomoko reckons he’s more akin to a cold, damp alley cat with a bad paw and a missing ear.

“Hi, kitten,” she calls his attention back to her – and his eyes track back from the still open door. “Hey! Are you thirsty? How’re you feeling?”

Izuku looks even more confused for a second, mouthing the word ‘kitten’ like he’d done the day before – but then something seems to click. “Who’re you?” He demands in a croaky voice, tiny fists clenching in his bedsheets. “Where’s my mama?”

Tomoko stops.

She stops, and stands dead still for a second – because suddenly she doesn’t think she can breathe.

She’d been hoping to ease into this discussion. She’d wanted to wait until she was sure the kid was alright before adding more weight to his burden.

Clearly, she’d made a mistake.

A tear sliding down Izuku’s cheek snaps her out of it.

The moment of doubt passes.

Inko had been a crier, too. She’d been an emotional woman, but she’d never been unreasonable. Indeed, she’d been a woman of remarkably even temperament. If Izuku was anything like his mother, then she would be able to get him through this.

Probably.

In lieu of answering his questions, she points deliberately to the button above Izuku’s head. “I need to call the nurse, kitten. Then I’m gonna need you to drink something. Is that alright?”

Izuku looks dubious for a moment, but slowly nods.

Tomoko approaches slowly. She has to concentrate, because she needs to make sure her steps remain measured, and that she keeps a respectful distance from Izuku’s headboard. It means that, when she finally reaches her destination, she has to lean awkwardly against the wall to reach the little button – but her task is completely easily enough.

Reluctantly, she puts some distance between them. “Okay, they’ll be here in a sec.” She scans Izuku’s face again, then lets her quirk back in.

His heartrate has gone down, but she’d already noticed that – the machines by Izuku’s bed are hard to ignore. Still, it's a little elevated, and that tension is still present around his jaw.

Oh, and he’s dehydrated – she needs to focus.

She carefully pours a cup of water from the purifier that sits next to Izuku’s bed. She’d been told by the doctor, the last time he was here, that Izuku’s throat would likely be sore and irritable for a little while – and that softer water would help.

Obviously, they can’t just use salt – so a purifier was the best they could do for now.

Tomoko helps Izuku up, arranging his pillows so he can sit comfortably against the headboard, then brings the cup up to his mouth. For a second, she thinks he’ll reach out and grab at it so he can do it himself – but then he seems to think better of it.

Tomoko completes her task in silence, because she still doesn’t know what to say.

Gods, this poor child.

She backs up again once the water was gone, and a moment later the attendant nurse bustles in and started fussing.

Tomoko watches her carefully, hovering a few steps behind her shoulder so she can still see over. The nurse’s touch is gentle as she takes his arm to check the already faded burns on his skin, and something about that seems to calm him down a bit more. She speaks softly to him for a second in a voice Tomoko can’t hear, then scans him with her quirk. A soft, green glow envelops Izuku’s chest area, and Tomoko’s own helpfully informs her of a little bit of strain materialising behind the nurse’s eyes.

Izuku watches the display with open wonder, and for a second Tomoko sees something light up in Izuku’s brilliant green irises. For just a moment, his fascination when faced with a new quirk had distracted him from the situation at large – but the expression vanishes all too quickly.

“Okay, Izuku!” The nurse’s throat is sore, Tomoko’s quirk supplies – and she hasn’t had enough sleep. Still, she manages to keep a convincing amount of levity in her tone for Izuku’s benefit. “It looks like the treatment has taken, but just to be sure; how’re you feeling? Does it feel funny when you breathe in?”

Izuku takes a slow, deliberate breath in, then shakes his head.

“That’s great!” The nurse beams, and makes a note on her pad. Then, she swiftly pours a cup of water from Izuku’s purifier, then gently coaxes it down him. “And what about your throat? Did that hurt at all?”

He shakes his head again.

Tomoko wonders whether she should speak up, because Izuku’s own body clearly betrays his lie.

Thankfully, the nurse has clocked it as well. Tomoko watches her furiously scribble a few more things down on her pad, all of which are followed by a multitude of question marks. “Well then, sounds like you’ll be ready to go soon!”

Izuku frowns suddenly, and Tomoko struggles to mask a wince when all the tension that had slowly bled out of his body comes rushing straight back in again.

“What about mama?” He demands, and Tomoko can only shrug helplessly when the nurse sends her a scathing glare out the corner of her eye. “Do you know where she is? That lady won’t tell me!” His voice perfectly conveys his frustration, and Tomoko’s already delicate heart disintergrates a little more when his finger is jabbed in her direction.

The nurse is still waiting for Tomoko, and she can only offer a weak shake of the head. She hadn’t tried to tell him yet, but she doesn’t want it to come from a nurse – it has to come from her.

Mercifully, the nurse picks up on her subtle cue – and inclines her head a fraction to show she understands. “I’m afraid not, young man. I’m sure, if you give her a chance, the lady will tell you where your mama is, alright?”

Izuku looks doubtful, but nods anyway.

“Alright then!” The nurse spins on her heel. “I’m going to hand this to Doctor Kurosaki. He’s on his rounds right now, so he’ll be by soon.”

Tomoko murmurs a quiet ‘thank you’ to her retreating back, and then she’s left alone with Izuku again. The door closing behind the nurse sounds like a judge’s gavel.

This is it.

Izuku’s clearly a smart kid, and he’d doubtlessly picked up all the subtle hints around the room that something’s up. His mother still hasn’t appeared, and nobody's telling him where she is. It won't take him too long to put two-and-two together if they keep skirting around the topic, because he clearly isn't stupid. If Tomoko doesn’t tell him now, it’ll just make things worse.

It's now or never.  

Slowly, deliberately, Tomoko makes her way back to the chair she’d spent all day and all night sitting in the day before, then slowly lowers herself into it. She never looks away from the precious child in the too-big-bed.

Izuku looks back - the intensity of his gaze is a little jarring, but she doesn't let herself flinch. She doesn't let herself back down. Gathering her resolve, Tomoko opens her mouth to deliver the most crushing news a five-year-old could possibly hear...

But nothing comes out.

She still doesn’t know what to say - her mind's drawn a blank.

How can she explain this in a way a child could comprehend?

How could she rationalise this, and present it so Izuku would understand the fact that his mother was dead?

The worst thing she could do was be vague, or non-comital. If she doesn’t choose her tac carefully, and fails to drive the harsh, cold reality of the situation home, Izuku might end up in some sort of limbo. He might end up thinking Inko was simply recovering somewhere else, and that she would – one day – come back for him. If that were to happen, they’d have to rehash this at a later date – and Izuku would think she’d lied to him.

He wouldn’t trust her – and that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

But how?

From the depths of her mind, a whisper of their last conversation flutters into her mind.

Hazy, emerald eyes alight with wonder. A hint of excitement.

“Heroes?”

It’s a vague thing to hedge a bet on, and Tomoko hopes she hadn’t misidentified the emotion in those brilliant irises at the time – but it’s better than nothing!

Okay…

Tomoko takes a deep breath.

She can work with this.

Okay.

“Izuku,” she starts – and notes how the boy’s focus had wandered over the course of her internal crisis by the way it snaps back to her. “You know, sometimes, that a hero might get really, really hurt?”

He nods slowly, his tiny brow furrowing.

“And you know that…” Tomoko takes a moment to snatch at her composure, to take a couple of shaky breaths. “Sometimes, they get so hurt that they… go away?”

There’s a calculating light in little Izuku’s eyes, and Tomoko is suddenly hit by the realisation that she’d underestimated this child.

There’s an intelligence in those emerald orbs that she wouldn’t have expected from a five-year-old, an understanding of how unfair the world is. Tomoko wonders, distantly, what could possibly have happened to this child before now to put that sort of weariness in those eyes. She also wonders, with no small amount of panic, if she was babying him too much.

Izuku ponders her question for a moment, but then looks back up at Tomoko with confidence. “Mama says that they go away because they’ve finished their work here, and they’re going to help people in the stars.”

Tomoko smiles softly, praying to the gods she’s not sure she believes in that this will work. “Your mama sounds pretty smart,” she says – and Izuku nods like that’s the most certain thing in the world.

“Mama’s really smart.”

He makes this statement with such conviction that, for a moment, Tomoko wonders whether she could ever measure up in this child’s eyes.

Thankfully, talking about Inko in a positive light pays off – because some of the tension drains out of Izuku’s frame. She hasn’t pushed her quirk away yet, despite the discomfort that comes with looking through it in the middle of a hospital.

“But,” and some of the confusion has reappeared now – but Tomoko can deal with confusion. “What’s heroes going away got to do with mama?”

He’s concentrating so hard that he doesn’t even notice the slip in his grammar – which had been almost immaculate up until now. He really was pretty bright, for a kid at least.

Focus, Tomoko!

Right.

Here came the hard bit.

Tomoko took another deep, fortifying lungful of air.

“Well…” she starts, and it’s all shaky and she’s a complete mess but she can’t back out now. “Sometimes… sometimes normal people – like your mama – can get really, really badly hurt too. A-and they have to go away as well.”

She’d closed her eyes sometime during that explanation. She had to, because – and she would freely admit to this – she was too much of a coward to watch Izuku’s little face crumple. She could face down a natural disaster, or mass civilian casualties – she could square up to a villain if she had to.

But she couldn’t watch this news hit home. She couldn’t bear it.

Izuku sniffles.

Tentatively, Tomoko cracks her eyes open.

He’s looking at her like she’s slapped him. Like she’s sprouted scales and burnt down a school.

Tomoko wants so desperately to reach over and take all of his pain away, because she can see in his eyes that he does understand what she’s trying to tell him.

Inko might have fashioned a slightly kinder explanation for it, but Izuku clearly understood the implications.

Izuku sniffles again. “Mama’s…” he pauses, and a big, fat tear rolls down his cheek. “Mama’s gone to the stars?”

All Tomoko can do is nod, and force out a watery ‘Yes’.

Izuku falls apart.

It’s sniffling at first, and then comes the sobbing – catching in the throat Tomoko knows is still sore because he’s coughing now.

Clearly, Izuku had been putting up a brave front. He’d been trying to be brave until Inko could come back to comfort him.

Now he knows she isn't coming.

Tomoko hovers, wavering, to the side of his bed. At some point she’d picked her hand off her lap to take Izuku’s own, but now she’s torn. Would he want her comfort, when she’d been the one to tear his life apart like this?

Then Izuku starts wailing.

He’s curled up on himself in his too big bed, almost foetal, and now he's wailing and suddenly Tomoko's on her feet because she can’t just sit and watch this.

Her fears, her insecurities… none of it mattered in the face of this abject picture of broken-hearted misery. She would comfort this child, and if he rejected her then…

Then she would accept it, and figure something else out.

Carefully, she sits on top of the duvet and – just like Shino had – smooths her hand through Izuku’s curls. She’d not done this before, but her mother had done something similar when she was younger – calming her after nightmares, or if someone had made some nasty comment about her eyes at school.

Still, the motion doesn’t come to her naturally, and she hopes it doesn’t feel too awkward. She knows how it should feel, how it had felt to her when her mother had done it – but she’d always attributed the soothing sensation to some sort of mom magic.

And she’s not Izuku’s mama. No amount of trying on her part could change that.

Thankfully, she might be making something of a decent hack of it, because Izuku’s leaning into her touch. He’s still sobbing, and he’s still trembling, but he hasn’t moved away.  

They sit like that for a while, until Izuku eventually uncurls himself from his little ball of misery. He moves slowly, like he’s trying to wade through treacle, but Tomoko’s too relieved that he’s not gone catatonic to worry about that minor detail. This means that, when Izuku’s head appears in her lap, she might have startled a tiny bit. If anything, she’d been expecting Izuku to shy away from her. She’d expected that, when they eventually arrived, he’d latch on to one of her siblings and never even look at her again.

Instead, he’d done this.

Izuku had already shown flashes of a deeper understanding in the brief time they’d been interacting. There had been a moment, just before Tomoko had lost her nerve and closed her eyes, in which Izuku’s eyes had gone carefully blank. Like he’d known there was another shoe, somewhere, and he was just waiting for it to drop. That means there's a possibility, however remote it may be, that Izuku knows it isn't her fault. 

Tomoko wonders, as she carefully cards her fingers through Izuku’s curly hair, what trials Izuku could possibly have gone through already at such a young age. She wonders why the look she'd seen on his face had looked so much like resignation - like he'd known that whatever was coming wouldn't be good. She wonders why Inko had felt the need to explain death to a child, because all of her grandparents were long gone – so that couldn’t have been it.

Maybe that was how she’d explained Hisashi’s absence?

Tomoko’s stomach clenches violently at the mere suggestion of anyone talking about heroes in the same breath as that man, but that isn't Izuku’s fault. Besides, it had been the look in his eyes that had put Tomoko on edge – because that had been the look of someone who knows the world isn't always fair.

Tomoko sighed to herself. Maybe she would never know, now that Inko was gone.

She keeps her ministrations up for a while, switching between running her hand through his hair, rubbing figure-of-eights into his back, and occasionally trying to get him to drink something. It's torture, not being able to do more for him, but she toughs it out - strong-arms her way through it. Her phone goes off, sometime around the ten-minute mark, but Tomoko doesn't move to fetch it. Izuku comes first, and she isn't about to leave him alone whilst he's still sobbing in her lap.

He keeps it up for a while – though the sobbing does eventually stop. It’s a wonder that, given his size, he’s got so much moisture in him. Tomoko’s mostly focussed on the fact he seems to be subsiding, so doesn’t spend too much time musing on it – but she does wonder how many pints it had been.

When he eventually, blessedly runs out of tears to cry, Izuku simply passes out - his head still resting in her lap. Tomoko waits for a moment, listening to the sound of his level breathing, then carefully parts the hair on Izuku’s forehead to check. He has, indeed, dropped off again.

Tomoko feels something loosen around her lungs.

It's done.

The thing she’d been dreading. She’s done it.

She wouldn’t dare call it a triumph – because she would never assign that sort of term to something like this – but she’s done it.

Now, they could all focus on what came next. They can focus on putting little Izuku's life back together, piece by excruciating piece, until it's whole and happy again. At that moment, Tomoko's so glad she doesn't have to do this alone - that she has her Cats to help her.

As if on cue, the door slams open.

Tomoko’s head snaps up at the sound, and she locks eyes with Ryuko in the doorway as her sister takes in the scene. She looks winded, like she'd run a marathon actually, and Tomoko realises that Ryuko's likely run all the way from Yamada's apartment.

Then, before she can ward her off, Ryuko’s wrapped around her like a winter scarf. “Holy s-!” she cuts herself off, then takes a deep breath. “Tomoko. What happened!?”

Tomoko makes a sharp gesture with her chin, indicating the sleeping Izuku in her lap, and comprehension dawns across her sister’s face. Slowly, and with a great degree more subtlety than she’d displayed on the way in, Ryuko backs away to give Izuku his space.

“You told him, then?” The question is almost rhetorical, but Tomoko nods anyway. “Okay…” Ryuko slumps into the chair Tomoko had spent most of the night in like all the air had been taken out of her, and examines the two on the bed again. “How is he?”

Tomoko blinks, then cocks an eyebrow. She would normally have the patience for this conversation, but the last two days have left her feeling uncharacteristically drained. She feels exhausted, mentally and physically – like she’d run a marathon then taken a maths exam.

Ryuko frowns at her for a moment, but then huffs with feint amusement. “Okay, yeah. Stupid question.”

The conversation dies there, and they sit in heavy silence for a few minutes whilst Ryuko catches her breath.

Tomoko returns her attention to Izuku, leaving her sister alone to compose herself. He’d shifted slightly at all the noise, now he's curled up in her lap and using her stomach as a pillow. She carefully folds her arms over the sleeping child, and allows herself to relax slightly against the pillows as the tension slowly drains out of her. She’d been ramrod straight until then, and there’s a kink working its way into the space between her shoulder-blades.

In fact, now that she can take a moment to examine herself, she aches all over.

Sleeping in a hard-backed chair would do that, she supposes.

Tomoko extricates one of her arms from Izuku’s tiny body, then stretches it high above her head whilst pretending that she couldn’t see the way Ryuko is looking at her. She's not about to call her sister out on it, because this new development honestly surprised her as well. She’d expected her relationship with Izuku – if they’d ever even gotten that far – to be awkward, stilted. She’d definitely not expected it to be as natural as this appeared to be.

But, at the same time, Izuku's so distraught that any comfort – no matter who it came from – might have been an acceptable alternative to being left alone. If Hisashi had been here in her place (and didn’t that little what-if make Tomoko shudder), then Izuku probably wouldn’t have turned him away either.

Sagging a little further against the pillows, Tomoko decides that it’s probably best to not get caught up in hypotheticals.

She's here, Hisashi is not.

Those are the facts that matter.

And Ryuko is still staring at her, but Tomoko still doesn’t know what her sister wants her to say. She's not ready to rehash what'd happened, and she's not ready to talk about how Izuku had taken it - so there's nothing to talk about. Not now.

Blessedly, before the awkward tension in the room can grow any thicker, Shino arrives.

She walks in the door with an easy grace, which is completely belied by the tension in her shoulders. Tomoko can, at a glance, detect a stress induced headache and some stiffness around her joints – a by-product of sleeping in the floor no doubt.

Shino pauses a little way past the threshold, and seems to realise that – for once – Tomoko’s not on her chair by the bed. Slowly, her eyes track from the chair – which now holds the fretting form of Ryuko – to the bed upon which Tomoko sits. There's a moment in which their eyes meet across the room, and Tomoko feels her spirits lift when Shino sends her an encouraging smile. Shino’s always been better with kids than Tomoko, because she’s the only one of their team that ever had to look after siblings. Therefore, if Shino thinks Tomoko’s doing a good job – then Tomoko is prepared to cut herself some slack.

This exchange happens in the space of a glance, which is not very long at all, and so it would appear to all the world that Shino had taken the scene in and decided that nothing was out of the ordinary.

Instead, she glides over to Ryuko like some sort of benevolent goddess – and then promptly smacks her sister around the head. Ryuko ducks, belatedly, when the not-so-sneak attack connects, and whips around in her seat to splutter uselessly at Shino.

“That’s for running off,” Shino explains as she makes her way around the bed to the other chair Tomoko had spent all night in. “We only waited an extra five minutes for you to come out the bathroom.”

Ryuko’s indignant – and Tomoko has to stifle her laughter at the expression on her face.

“Tomo could have been in trouble!” Ryuko is halfway to her feet now, but stalls her ascent when Tomoko makes a sort of flapping gesture in her direction. She looks at Izuku for a moment, then eases herself back down again.

Shino, by contrast, is much more restrained in her rebuke. “Yes, because there’s so much trouble she could get into at a hospital, Pix’”

“But-!” Tomoko makes another, slightly more urgent flapping gesture, and Ryuko forcibly wrestles her voice down to something more suitable. “She hung up on me, then she wouldn’t answer the phone! What was I supposed to think?”

Tomoko wonders, as she watches her two friends bicker back and forth, why they felt the need to talk as though she wasn’t there.

Shino, meanwhile, pins Ryuko with a level stare. “Thinking would have been a good start.”

Tomoko sighs, because this could go on for quite some time if she didn’t do anything. She loved her sisters dearly, but sometimes their bickering stressed her out. Plus, at times like these, they would get so caught up in their arguments that they would inevitably forget there were other people in the room.

“I hung up because Izu was awake, Ko-chan.” She interposes, playing the part of the mediator – and suddenly that feeling of exhaustion is seeping into her bones. “He woke up when I left the room to talk to Tsukauchi, I think, but he only started reacting when I was talking to you.”

Ryuko has the sense to look sheepish. “Oh,” is her intelligent response. “Yeah. That… that would also make sense.”

Shino rolls her eyes (and making such an action audible should not be possible, yet Shino somehow manages it), but doesn’t comment any further – and a precious moment of peace falls over the room.

It’s the first time since Tomoko had rushed back in from the corridor that the room had been completely silent for any great length of time, she realises. There’d been little moments here-and-there, but they’d always been interrupted by some disturbance or another. Tomoko glances up at the clock, and wonders how long Izuku had cried for.

She wishes, not for the first time, that things were different.

Her thoughts start to spiral, and suddenly Tomoko doesn’t like the silence so much anymore.

“Where’d Yawara go?” She asks, and if either of her sisters detect the small note of desperation in her tone they decide not to comment.

“Breakfast,” is Shino’s blunt response. “I told him to get something small for the kitten, but we didn’t know what you wanted – so he’s probably gone for pancakes.”

Great, because something sweet and rich is exactly what she needs right now.

Shino clearly notices whatever expression of resignation passes over Tomoko’s expression. “Don’t feel you have to,” she assures. “We won’t force you – but you need to eat something at some point, Tomo.”

Tomoko sighs down at the duvet, but nods. Pancakes might not be the worst thing ever, right now – because sweet things usually cheer her up. Ice-cream from the tub, Yawara's baking, and the occasional bag of sweets are her go-tos after a bad day - she even keeps a stash in one of the cupboards back at the lodge. 

So... maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

Predictably, and she should really should have seen this coming, Tomoko had been right the first time.

Yawara had gone to get pancakes. He'd even remembered her favourite flavour. So, being the good friend that she is, Tomoko makes an effort to poke some of it down – and ignores the sick feeling in her stomach at the sugary fair.

Something about it just feels wrong.

Sweet things do, usually, cheer her up – but this is different. Ice-cream, home baking... those were comfort foods. Pancakes were treats.

That was the difference.

Tomoko pauses with a meagre forkful of the stuff, dripping in strawberry syrup, halfway to her mouth – then slowly puts the fork back down.

She can’t.

Shino smiles at her, full of warmth and sympathy, and gently takes the box away. When Tomoko makes to apologize to Yawara, he just waves it off – and tells her not to worry about it. She tries.

A little while later, once the others had finished eating and had settled in around the room to wait, Kurosaki saunters in.

He’s a tall, broad-shouldered man with a resting mischievous expression and a pronounced limp that – Tomoko’s quirk supplies – is almost entirely psychosomatic. He’s also, as it turns out, not the most consummate professional. He swoons at the sight of little Izu on her lap, still sleeping despite the numerous presences in the room. Tomoko wonders whether he has kids of his own, because he seems to like them enough – but something tells her it would be best not to ask.

Fortunately, Kurosaki reverts to actual professionalism before too long, and he fills Tomoko in before asking her to wake Izuku. The healing they’d applied to his lungs had taken, just as the nurse had said when she’d first arrived, and most of the damage was gone. However, Kurosaki warned her that – in the long run – the injuries Izuku had sustained could have a permanent impact on his lung capacity, and that it would be best to keep him away from anything too strenuous until his follow-up appointment in a month’s time.

Tomoko carefully avoided the emotion that stirred in her during this conversation, because she would likely be responsible for Izuku’s health going forward. The prospect was both exciting, and terrifying all at once. As she gently coaxes Izuku back to the waking world, groggy and disorientated, Tomoko wonders whether she’d be any good at it. She wonders how they’ll juggle Izuku’s wellbeing and their careers.

This entire situation was, put lightly, less than ideal. But what other choice was there?

Nobody else had turned up to visit Izuku. Nobody had left any messages at the reception desk asking after him. His father was a criminal, and had likely murdered Inko – and the rest of their family were either too distant or had passed on.

All Tomoko could do, in the end, was her best – and she would. She would do absolutely everything in her power to ensure this kitten felt loved, to make sure he was safe.

She watches as Izuku’s eyes tentatively crack open, and smiles down at him when their eyes meet. He blinks up at her, then scans the rest of the room as if looking for something.

Or someone.

Tomoko spots the moment it all comes back to him, the moment when reality reasserts itself. His face crumples, and he lets out a single, pitiful sob – then turns to bury his face in Tomoko’s stomach again.

The Doctor at least had the grace to be apologetic – especially in the face of Ryuko’s hostile expression. Shino shakes her head sharply in her sister’s direction, and Yawara places a firm hand on her shoulder; a clear command to knock it off.

It wasn’t Kurosaki’s fault. He’s only doing his job. Besides, the faster they got through this, the sooner they could go home.

Kurosaki works through his checklist as quickly as he can, and checks over Izuku’s chest and throat with a peculiar-looking device that is – evidently – cold to the touch. Izuku squirms a little when the doctor touches it against his bare throat, and then emits a watery little giggle when it’s pressed up against his chest.

With the examination complete, Kurosaki pins Izuku with a particular sort of stare. It’s the sort of stare Tomoko’s mother had used when she knew her daughter wasn’t telling the whole truth about something, and that it would be easier for the both of them if she just fessed up to it.

Izuku had, obviously, been lying about his throat being sore. He’s started coughing again, all throaty and dry. Tomoko pats his back a little, and Shino fetches him a cup of water.

When he realises that he’s been caught in the act, Izuku squirms within the bracket of Tomoko’s arms.

“Now, now Izuku!” Kurosaki squats down so he can look the kid in the eye whilst he drinks. “I need you to be honest with me, because I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong. Does that make sense?”

Izuku hesitates, and Tomoko watches him carefully from above. There’s something, a mental hurdle of some sort, that he’s clearly struggling with. He opens his mouth a few times, then glances furtively in her direction – she responds with an encouraging smile.

“You’ve got to tell him, kitten. He won’t get cross! Promise!”

Kurosaki nods emphatically from his position on the floor. “Right, I promise I won’t get mad – but I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me.”

Izuku thinks for a moment longer, then murmurs something so quietly that Tomoko completely misses it.

Kurosaki flinches.

Tomoko sends him a curious look, but the doctor seems so wrapped up in whatever revelation he’d just been privy to that he doesn’t notice. “You gotta speak up, Izu,” she says – and ignores the way Kurosaki braces himself against the bed frame. “We can’t hear you when you mutter like that.”

Izuku takes a deep breath, then turns his head slightly so it’s pointed in her general direction – rather than at the floor. “Don’t wanna be a Deku…”

Tomoko blinks, then frowns.

Useless?

Izuku sniffles, and that pulls her back out of her head.

“Oh, Kitten.” She gently runs a hand through Izuku’s fluffy hair, then coaxes his head around so she can look him in the eye. “Where’s that coming from? Just ‘cos you got hurt, that doesn’t make you useless, yeah?”

Izuku looks dubious, and now he’s making a concerted effort to look anywhere but at her.

Tomoko’s about to say something else, some useless platitude or desperate compromise, but then inspiration hits her. She has a feeling, just from the few conversations she'd already had with him, that he was fond of heroes. That shouldn't really have come as a surprise, because most kids loved heroes, but if her hunch was right Izuku was particularly enamoured with them. Plus, if his lack of reaction to their presence was any indication, he might not have realised who they are yet. That, of course, hinged on him knowing about The Cats at all - but a lot of their fans fell into the younger demographics...

It's worth a try.

“Don’t look so glum! We get hurt all the time,” she grins and turns Izuku around to look at the rest of the room - silently prompting them with her eyes. “Right, Cats?”

Ryuko gets the hint immediately, and rolls her sleeve up. “Yeah! See?” She shows him the long, jagged scar that runs all the way up her right arm. She’d fallen off some rubble during their first year on the job, and laid her arm open on some rebar on the way down.

Yawara flashes his stomach, where a roughly circular shape adorns his abdomen. A villain with a mutation akin to a rhinoceros had caught him unaware just a year prior, and run him through from behind – he’d been laid up for months. “Scars are a mark of strength, young one!” He booms, then drops his shirt to flex his arms. Show off.

Shino turns around, so she’s facing out the window and away from them all.

“Little help, Ryuko?” She prompts, and her sister darts over so she can ease the back of her top down.

Spread over her shoulders, then snaking out of sight down her back, is a deep red, splotchy burn mark. She’d been evacuating a tourist bus that crashed up in the mountains a couple of years ago when the fuel tanks had detonated – it’s a miracle that the damage wasn’t more severe.

“I still can’t reach behind my back, and it still hurts a little when I raise my arms above my head,” Shino explains once Ryuko’s let her shirt slide back up again. “But I don’t let that stop me.”

Izuku’s looking around the room in awe, scanning each of their faces to verify that they’re not having him on. Then, when Tomoko carefully rolls the left leg of her jeans up, he swivels back to look at her.

“I’ve got plates and bolts in my leg, Kitten.” Tomoko explains, and slowly guides his hand down to touch the criss-crossing scars. “See? It got pretty messed up back in High School, but I’m still working!”

‘Pretty messed up’ was an understatement, but the truth of it still made her siblings wince – so it probably wasn’t suitable for Izuku’s ears. It was an internship to forget, that was for sure.

Izuku traces her scars like one might a delicate piece of ancient pottery, then slowly looks up at and around the room again. Tomoko has to crane her neck a little to see his expression, but it's worth it when she sees it – he's completely slack-jawed. Clearly, he had heard of them before.

“You’re…” he starts, then his head flashes back around to examine Tomoko’s face. He stares at her for a moment, then slowly turns again to point a slightly shaky finger at Yawara.

“Tiger,” he states – and Yawara preens at the attention.

“At your service!”

Izuku startles at his booming voice, but settles quickly – moving on to Ryuko. “Pixie Bob?”

“‘Sup, Kitten!”

This time, the term of endearment registers. It’s like a lightbulb has gone off in his brain.

He moves on to Shino, and she smiles at him serenely when he turns to regard her. “Mandalay?”

“Hi, Izuku.”

Izuku gapes at her for a second, but then swivels back to Tomoko. She catches his finger when he raises it in her direction, then squeezes it a little.

“Ragdoll…”

He doesn’t sound entirely sure of himself – because (out of all of them) Tomoko looks the least like her heroic persona out of costume. So, when she grins down at him and flashes her quirk briefly – the tell-tale glow of her eyes is all the assurance he needs. His little face lights up, and his completely starstruck little smile has Tomoko reaching instinctively for his cheeks.

“What a smart little kitten you are!” She pinches at his dimples, and Izuku squirms – but he giggles a little. “See? We get hurt all the time – like every week – but does that make us useless?”

Izuku shakes his little head so furiously that Tomoko has to reach out to stop him before it comes off.

“No!” He declares, as if she’d just blasphemed. “You guys are the Wild Pussycats!”

“Excuse me!?” Ryuko’s next to them, suddenly. “It’s the Wild,” she pokes him on the forehead for emphasis, “Wild Pussycats!”

“That second ‘wild’ is real’ important!” Tomoko agrees, firmly – then grins at Izuku conspiratorially. “It’s to ‘remind everyone that Pixie is still eighteen at heart’!”

Ryuko splutters, and Tomoko knows that she would normally have had to get the hell out of dodge to avoid a wrestling match – but Izuku makes for a good shield.

“I’m surprised you recognise us,” Shino interjects (before the situation could get ugly). “Do you like heroes?”

Izuku’s entire face lights up again, and it’s one-thousand watt. “Yeah! Heroes are the coolest! Like, they’re so cool and they have the best quirks! And they save everyone! And they beat the bad guys!”

He takes a deep breath, and Tomoko can feel the cracks in her heart stitching themselves back together. Seeing Izuku smile, seeing him excited about something – even if it was just for a moment – made the entire emotional rollercoaster they’d been on so far worth it.

“But you guys are like, super-mega cool!” Izuku continues, twisting around in his seat on Tomoko’s lap to take them all in. “I found your d-d-d…de…”

“Debut,” Shino supplies.

“Yeah!” Izuku beams over at her, and Tomoko watches as her sister melts into the floor. “I watched your de…debut on the computer like, a hundred times! So cool!”

Tomoko giggles, and Ryuko ruffles Izuku’s hair.

Izuku’s bouncing a little now, practically vibrating in place, and seems to be gearing up for another rant when he suddenly cringes. Tomoko pats his back lightly when a small fit of throaty coughs shakes his tiny frame.

“Ouch…”

Tomoko realises that now is their chance. “So, wanna let the nice doctor look at your throat now?”

Izuku nods meekly.

“Excellent,” Kurosaki sends them all a beaming smile to convey his gratitude. “So, Izuku, how about we get you some water? Then you can tell me all about it!”

They repeat the process the nurse had gone through the day before; filling his cup with water, getting him to drink it, then asking him whether it hurt at all.

As it turned out, his throat hurt when he swallowed – and it was quite dry. Now that he’s gotten excited, and spoken at any great length, his voice has gone all scratchy. Kurosaki scans Izuku’s throat again, then hums to himself.

“It’ll take a few more days for that to go away, I’m afraid.” He pokes Izuku on the nose when he groans his objection. “So, you’ve gotta keep drinking a lot – alright? We can give him some throat medicine as well, and that should take the worst of it off,” he’s addressing Tomoko now – and it takes her an embarrassing second to realise that. “I’ll write you a prescription, you’ll be able to collect it from reception on the way out.”

The doctor runs over a few more bits and pieces, mostly just setting up a date for a follow-up and re-enforcing how important it was that Izuku got plenty of fluid. Then, after he whips a startlingly large number of lollypops out of his pocket to present to Izuku, he bids them a good day and leaves.

Ryuko eyes the sweets with an air of intense distrust.

“He’s a doctor, Pix’. He’s allowed to do that,” Shino assures their sister – patting Ryuko’s arm.

“Damn creepy old dudes,” grumbles Ryuko.

Tomoko, meanwhile, is watching Izuku’s brows furrow in an expression she’s rapidly coming to associate with serious thinking.

“Gonna share with the class?” She prompts, and bops him on the nose.

Izuku blinks up at her, then furrows his brows even further – bringing a tiny hand up to rub his chin.

“Usually, heroes only come to see people in hospital when they’re not gonna come out again…” Izuku muses, and everyone in the room freezes. “But the doctor said I’m gonna be fine, so…”

He meets Tomoko’s eyes.

“So, why are you guys here?”

There’s a long, heavy pause.

And then Ryuko snorts, but tries to cover the noise with a serious of very unconvincing coughs. Yawara drops his head into one, large hand whilst Shino uses the motion as an opportunity to hide behind his taller frame.

Tomoko giggles, then decides to take pity on the – by now – very confused child.

“Yeah, I probably should have told you earlier, huh?”

Izuku cocks his head to one side, but doesn’t say anything.

“Well, first off,” Tomoko shuffles Izuku around so she can face him fully – he still has to look up at her a little despite the fact she’s still slouching. “The doctor isn’t lying, you’re gonna be fine.”

Ryuko ‘coughs’ again.

“Secondly, I’m here because we,” she points between herself and Izuku, “Are cousins! Pretty cool, right? The rest of these idiots are just here to make sure I don’t trip over thin air!”

It takes a moment for this new data to compute, but when it does Izuku’s eyes widen comically – almost as wide as Tomoko’s own.

"We..." his voice gives out, and Tomoko pats his back sympathetically. "You're... b-but, Mama never said..."

His face falls a little at the thought of his mother, but his excitement seems to be holding him together for the moment. Still, Tomoko winces at the mention of their complicated family history, because even she doesn't entirely understand her mother's decision even after all this time - so what chance does Izuku have?

She puts that all to one side, though, at least for now. "It's a really long story, Kitten. Like, really long - and really boring. I can tell you sometime, if you wanna hear it, but it's not important! All you need to know is that my mom and..." she pauses for a second, then softens her voice a touch. "And you mom were sisters, and that makes us cousins. Okay?"

Izuku nods, dazed, and looks up at her with wide eyes. 

Then he starts to vibrate.

And then this curious little squealing sound starts up.

“Uhm, Tomo?” Ryuko’s pointing at the back of Izuku’s head. “I think you broke him.”

Tomoko shoots her sister a look. “Izuku? Izuku, kitten, that noise can’t be good for your throat…”

“My cousin is a pro-hero!” Izuku’s voice is a reverent whisper, like he’d break the illusion if he spoke to loud. “I’m related to a Pro!”

“Man… you really do like heroes, huh?”

"Ryuko!"

"What!?"

“So cool!”

It was a little, light-hearted moment at the end of a fairly torrid day. There’d be more hurdles in their immediate future, and Tomoko was under no illusions about how tough this was going to be. Even now, as she watched Izuku’s excitement manifest itself via the medium of bouncing, she could see the occasional frown pull at his little mouth – moments where he looked completely lost. His emerald irises are particularly expressive, and Tomoko could clearly pick out every moment he thinks about Inko. 

But, for now, they'd gotten him smiling. At least a little bit. Something about that felt like a triumph. 

It’s a lot to take on, and she’s aware of that. All she can do is her best.

He deserves at least that much.

Chapter Text

Their moment of peace ends far too soon – lost before it can really begin. The Cats had tried their collective best to keep Izuku’s spirits up with light bantering and aimless conversations, but his mood had plummeted quickly regardless.

That little candle, the little flame that had burned like a bonfire behind his forest-green eyes, had been quickly been doused by fresh, painful tears. He looked morose, forlorn even – not the sort of expression one would associate with a child. Even when he cried, he looked more lost than distraught. Tomoko didn’t know what to do.

She wanted to fix it all for him, to travel back in time and stop that fire. She wished she could go back and talk some sense into her mother, or go and support Inko against her wishes. With the benefit (or curse) of hindsight, there are a lot of things she could have done differently. A lot of mistakes she’d made that, now that her aunt was gone, she could never take back.

And that hurt. It hurt more than she could describe.

Eventually, when Izuku had run out of tears to cry (again, he had a lot of them), his eyelids started to droop, and his head started to list – as if the weight of it was too great to support. Tomoko felt it best to try and coax him back to sleep again, like it would act as some sort of reset button.

She’d hoped, perhaps foolishly, that the lingering excitement of being related to a pro hero would keep his mind off the looming spectre of death in the corner. That it would distract him, or something. She had, of course, been wrong.

The stark drop in his mood, and the phantoms that had been left behind, are a reminder to them all of just how far they have left to go.

Izuku’s a remarkably resilient child, and he’s startlingly intelligent, but he’s still just that – a child. They’re at the start of a long process, a winding road to recovery that disappeared over the horizon and out of sight.

Sure, he’d probably bounce back someday – and Tomoko would do everything in her power to make sure that happened – but it might take years, not months. Couple that with a new home in a completely new environment, and suddenly they had a mountain to climb as well.

The first step, and possibly the most important one, was making sure he adjusted to them. Tomoko knew she was getting a little ahead of herself, here, because they’d not even asked Izuku if he wanted to live with them yet – not that he had a lot of options. She supposed that, if he truly rejected them, he would go into the foster care system – but that’s a particularly foreboding prospect.

She doesn’t, necessarily, have anything against the system, because it existed to serve a necessary purpose – but she’d heard some stories. Horror stories. Stories of neglect and abandonment, revolving-door foster homes and exploitation, children that disappeared and were never heard from again.

She couldn’t stand the thought of Izuku slipping through the cracks – of a child so vibrant and intelligent ending up in the dark, dingy underbelly of the city.

Tomoko could say with a great degree of certainty that, if he ended up in the system, she’d never be able to sleep again. She’d be forever fretting over where he was, and what he was doing – if he was safe.

That’s the one thing they could guarantee, to a certain extent: Safety. Tomoko would never be so arrogant as to think herself infallible, but she knew that Izuku would be able to enjoy a safe childhood with them if they took the right precautions. Plus, Izuku seemed to like them well enough. Even if their only interactions with him so far, as a group, had been halting and fraught with grief, it had been a good start.

Those glorious few minutes of levity after the doctor had left, as fleeting as they had been, had filled her with so much hope – a traitorous sense of optimism that she wanted so badly to put faith in. Because they might have a chance. A chance to build something good out of this period of needless strife. To build a home for this child, her family, who’d lost everything.

A chance is all Tomoko needs; because, given that chance, she would not waste it.

However, she can’t ignore that fact that this would be a lot of change for a traumatised child to take in such a short period of time. She would need to be patient, and not rush it.

Of course, she wanted to deliver him the moon and stars immediately. Of course she did… but she needed to keep an open mind. She needed to move at his pace, not hers.

If that meant that taking it slow, then they’d just have to take it slow.

Tomoko isn’t above scowling at the nurse in the doorway, when he arrives. It’s massively out of character for her, but she can’t bring herself to care – even if Ryuko’s giving her an odd look from the chair by the bed. Izuku still needs time to heal, and to do that he needs to rest.

Whilst all of his crying had likely been quite cathartic, it surely hadn’t done his throat many favours. To avoid the crying entirely, Izuku needs to be asleep.  

Fortunately for the nurse, Izuku only stirs a little at the ambient noise coming through the door. Ryuko seems to have come to the same conclusions as Tomoko in the short time he’s been standing there, and her scathing stares burned in a way Tomoko’s didn’t.  

Seeing all of this, and sensing that he’d – perhaps – interrupted something, the nurse has the presence of mind to apologise. However, Child Protective Services are down at reception and needed to speak to them within the next hour.

It’s nearly four o’clock, when Tomoko glances up to check the time – nearly the end of the working day. Hence the urgency, she supposes – these people have families to get home to as well.

The effect on the room, following the nurse’s proclamation, is immediate. Ryuko and Yawara shoot bolt-upright in their chairs, as if struck by lightning, whilst Shino rockets to her feet.

“We need to go! Now!” She cries, and hauls Ryuko from her chair. “Get your phone out, Ryuko!”

Ryuko squarks when she’s pulled bodily to her feet, but scrambles to follow Shino’s instructions anyway. There’s an urgency to their sister’s voice brooks no argument, and she only ever used their given names when she needed them to move.

“I need you to make the list so I can think!” Shino explains, answering an unvoiced question. She’s hurrying around the room, quickly gathering their belongings from various places, and only pauses for long enough to chuck their van keys somewhere in the general direction of their brother.

“Yawara!”

He stiffens like a soldier called to attention, and scrambles to snatch the keys before they can hit the ground.

“You’re on furniture! Nothing too big!”

The big man nods, then darts from the room.

“I’ll text you the list!” Ryuko calls to his retreating back, then rushes to help Shino gather the rest of their things.  

They’re out the door before Tomoko can question what, exactly, Shino and Ryuko were going to do – but she can hazard a guess.

Izuku, if he’s to come and live with them, needs all the things he simply doesn’t have anymore.

Tomoko had gotten so caught up in her own fretting, and had been so concerned for Izuku’s mental and physical wellbeing that she’d completely forgotten about his belongings. Everything he’d ever owned had been in that apartment, and Tsukauchi hadn’t made it sound like there was much left to recover. Of course, that he was alive was far more important than material possessions, but…

But he has nothing left. It’s all gone.

Tomoko wonders if he’d had a favourite toy. A stuffed animal maybe, or an action figure, or a blanket. She’d had a cuddly tiger when she was his age (and Yawara thinks that’s hilarious, she knows), and she’d taken it everywhere with her. It had been comforting – like a silent companion. If Izuku’d had his own cuddly tiger, in whatever form that may have taken, it’s long gone now.

It’d all gone up in smoke and flames, like everything else he’d ever had, or loved… it’s all gone. He’s got no toys, no books, no bed… no clothes…

An entire five years of his life – just like that.

Izuku grumbles a little in his sleep, turning away from her slightly. Tomoko, when his movements tug at her arm, realises that – in a fit of frustration – her grip on him had tightened. She’s stifling him, and he’s trying to get away.

Cringing, she snatches her hand back. She’s usually so much more careful than this, much more aware of herself. She can’t remember the last time she felt so off balance, so far off kilter.

Pushing her quirk away like she had been isn’t good for her, and she knows this – that’s why she avoids hospitals. It’s another sense for her, another dimension – ignoring it scrambled her brain in a deeply uncomfortable way.

But she hadn’t expected it to get this bad.  

She feels so tense, like a coiled spring on the verge of shearing. Like a tendon about to snap. She wishes she could just stop for a moment, and let her quirk back in so she could ease the ache in her head – but she knows better than that. She knows better than to stick her nose where it hurts.

Instead, she wraps her hands around her own forearms and squeezes. Squeezes until the joints pop, until the skin starts to redden.

Because she needs to stay focused. She needs to stay on task.

The ache in her skull subsides, and Tomoko takes slow, rhythmic breaths until she can think rationally again.

Her siblings are on the case, and she knows that they care enough about Izuku to make a good go of it. In such a short time, he’d wrapped himself around their hearts so securely that – and Tomoko knows this to be true – they would shift heaven and earth for him if they had to.

Whether Izuku himself realised it or not, he was already a part of their clan – and that would still be true if he elected to go elsewhere.

Whatever the future held for him; they would do everything they could to help.

On that note, she needs to get moving.

Focus!

She hovers beside Izuku’s bed for a second, pondering whether moving him is worth the risk of disturbing him, then gently scoops the sleeping kitten into her arms. She’d lulled him to sleep with the promise that she’d still be there when he woke up, and she isn’t about to break that vow so soon.

Any broken promises would be much more significant at this stage, and she needs him to trust her.

So, Tomoko will just have to bring him with her and hope that having him nearby would sooth the worst of her worries. Besides, this would be ideal chance to ask Izuku whether he wanted to come home with them. If he said yes, and she could sign the paperwork today, then that would be their first objective completed.

Shino, evidently, had already taken charge of half of their second objective (making sure Izuku was comfortable) and drafted the other two in to help – a pretty good outcome, all things considered. Between her three siblings, and with Shino calling the shots, they’d be able to tick that box in no time. Shino’s the rational one of their group, and also happened to be very good at writing lists. Yawara has a good eye for aesthetic, but he’s also practical.

Ryuko… is probably there to hold the bags and check off Shino’s list. She’s a little too chaotic to be picking children’s clothes.

So, with all this in mind, Tomoko tries not to worry too much. Really, really tries.

Predictably, as she walks out the door with her bag over one shoulder and Izuku against the other, she starts fretting anyway. It had occurred to Tomoko just as the door shut behind the other Cats that they don’t actually know what Izuku likes.

Of course, they know he likes heroes – but so does almost every other kid in the world. Does he like dinosaurs, or animals? Does he like cars, or other mechanical things? Does he like to draw? What’s his favourite colour?

He’s a boy, so they could hedge a bet on the colour blue – but Tomoko isn’t sure that stereotype is still correct.

She likes the colour blue – and she’s fairly positive she isn’t a boy.

Does Izuku like pinks, then?

Does he like greens?

Did he like…

Tomoko stops dead in the doorway to one of the lounges on the ground floor, and stares at the far wall with irrational fear swirling in her gut. Green is Inko – everything about her had been green. If Tomoko had been able to perceive auras, she had no doubt that Inko’s would have been green.

And that means…

Quickly, before anyone could buy anything potentially explosive, Tomoko sends several frantic texts to their group chat.

Cat Chat – STOP CHANGING THE NAME

Tomoko 16:01 – Guys
guys don’t get anything green

Ryuko 16:02 – Like, at all?
Not even light green?
(Mandy says you’re being dumb btw)

Tomoko 16:02 – idk? Maybe?
I’m just worried he’s gonna freak out

Ryuko 16:04 – Isn’t your hair green? He seemed fine earlier?
But yeah, whatever
Mandy’s just had to put like five things back
She wants you to know you’re being dumb

Tomoko 16:04 – Thanks cats
And you already told me that (-_-)

Ryuko 16:05 – It bears repeating apparently

Yawara 16:06 – I suppose I’ll just return this lamp, then…

Tomoko 16:06 – Sorry Yawa-chan!

A few minutes later, Shino appears in the chat to explain herself. She points out that, if the plan is to take Izuku home with them, they would be bringing him to their lodge in The Woods. Ergo, he would be spending every day surrounded by trees.

Unless Izuku became some sort of troglodyte, and lived in his room forever with the blinds drawn, there’d be no escaping the colour green.

Therefore, it is Shino’s submission to this court that Tomoko is simply worrying for worrying’s sake – and that it would be best for them all if she calmed down.

Case closed.

No further questions.

Consider your verdicts, please, members of the jury.

Tomoko had to admit that her sister… might have a point.

If this mythical worst-case scenario were to come true, and Izuku couldn’t stand the colour green, then any notion of him living with them could be struck off. She wouldn’t dream of taking him home if it made him uncomfortable, after all.

However, him not being able to stand the sight of foliage because his mother had been as green as river moss is highly unlikely. If Izuku was going to frightened by anything, it’s a lot more likely that he’d be afraid of fire.

Tomoko, of course, firmly hoped that he’d never be afraid of anything – but she has to be realistic. She, for example, is (and probably always would be) petrified by snakes. She’s a Pro Hero, and not supposed to be afraid of anything, and yet – at the first sight of a forked tongue or a scaly noodle – she completely froze up.

The best part of it all is that she had no idea where this phobia had come from. She’d never been bitten by a snake, none of her friends had ever been bitten by a snake, she’d not even seen that many snakes outside of a conservation centre.

Yet, here she is… with a strong aversion to snakes.

Izuku, on the other hand, had nearly… well.

He has every reason to be scared – more so than most people. If he were to be afraid of fire, for example, Tomoko didn’t think anyone would be able to hold it against him.

She glances over to where Izuku lies, wrapped up in her coat on a sofa that’s shoved up against the wall. He looks so peaceful in his sleep – like nothing could ever bother him. Tomoko wonders just how exhausted he still is – how tired he must be to sleep dreamlessly for so long. Even with how much he’s slept since she’d first come into contact with him, he’d never so much as muttered in his sleep – never cried out or spoke aloud.

She also realises that yes, Izuku had already wrapped himself around her heart too. She’d only known this kitten for a couple of days, and she’d only had a handful of small, interrupted conversations with him – but she’s already attached. At that moment, nothing else mattered to her. Her career, their rankings, Tsukauchi’s investigation – none of it even held a candle to Izuku’s wellbeing.

She wonders, and doesn’t this make her feel unfathomably old, if this is what being a mother feels like.

Behind her, the office door opens.

Tomoko yelps; caught completely off guard, and leaps about a mile into the air. Somehow, and she attributes this particular feat to her cat-like reflexes (and definitely not the heart-stopping shock, no sir), she manages to turn herself one-hundred-and-eighty degrees in mid-air to face the door.

There’s a woman with one foot over the threshold, and she’s come to a perfect halt midstride. For the barest of seconds, Tomoko can see the rigid tension in her shoulders and the way her fingers flex – but it’s gone in an instant.

“Shiretoko-san?” She’s soft-spoken, with a little bit of an accent, and she sounds concerned. Which, considering Tomoko’s reaction to her opening a door, is probably a reasonable thing to be. “Apologies if I startled you. I’m from the child protection directorate – I was told you were expecting me?”

She’s a shortish, pale, lithe-looking woman with straw-blond hair tied up in a functional, but loose bun at the back of her head. There’s two manilla folders tucked under her arm, which Tomoko’s eyes are immediately drawn to, and there’s a re-usable coffee cup in her free hand. In all, she’s not particularly remarkable – asides from the accent – but Tomoko immediately clocks the sharp glint of steel behind her eyes.

She’s staring, isn’t she?

“Oh! No,” Tomoko blurts, and wafts her hands about uselessly as if trying to dispel a particularly foul smell. “I mean, don’t be sorry! I’ve just been so distracted recently – I didn’t even feel you coming...”

The woman’s expression evens out somewhat, and she offers Tomoko a small smile that holds a surprising amount of empathy.

“That’s completely understandable,” she says – and moves further into the room with a purposeful stride. There’s something very efficient about this woman – not a single movement is wasted. It’s almost like she’d gliding – and something about that reminds Tomoko of Shino.

“I’m Orikasa Fumiko”, she even introduces herself efficiently. “Tsukauchi-san filled me in on the more unique elements of your case a few days ago, so it’s given me plenty of time to get everything in order.”

She sits down in one of the chairs across the room, and slips her folders onto the table so smoothly that Tomoko completely misses the movement.

“As a matter of fact, the only thing you need to do today is sign this.” She withdraws a small, stapled form from one of the folders and slides it over to Tomoko’s side of the coffee table.

Tomoko eases onto the sofa by Izuku’s head, careful so as not to disturb him, and scrutinises the form. It’s a beautifully simple document, really. It acknowledges Tomoko’s legal right to assume guardianship of Izuku, along with all of the responsibilities that title entailed. It details how, once the document is signed, Tomoko is required to house, feed, and provide an education for him.

Tomoko reaches the bottom of the document. Then she blinks, and then she frowns. She reads the form again – from top-to-bottom.

After a few more goes at trying to parse the deeper, hidden meaning of this fairly innocuous form, Tomoko fixes her gaze on Orikasa and blinks briefly back into her quirk.

In the heroics industry, managers and agents are forever trying to slip little bits and pieces into contracts. Tiny binding clauses that, once agreed to, were very tricky to get out of. Tomoko had learned, after a merchandising agreement gone sour, that crooks got particularly excited when they thought they were pulling one over on you. Thus, she had developed a nervous compulsion to scan such people for tells.

Orikasa is, surprisingly, completely impassive. Even her vitals are resting.

Tomoko reads over the document again.

“And I can take him home with me today? If I sign this?” She asks, and wonders when she last felt so singularly focused. She’s still shying away from her quirk, and had been having such a hard time keeping her head straight.

Now, for some reason, she’s almost completely single-minded.

Orikasa smiles – a small, strangely delicate thing. “Of course. As a licensed pro-hero, your name is automatically registered on the emergency housing database. Furthermore, as Izuku’s relative and his mother’s legal next of kin, assuming guardianship is a fairly straightforward process.” She extracts a few more papers from the folder, and spreads them out on the table. “With those few days warning Tsukauchi-san gave me, I was able to complete all of the necessary background checks as well.”

Tomoko immediately drops the pen she’d been holding to pour over the documents. There’s no reason at all that those background checks wouldn’t have come back clear – none at all. Yet, as Tomoko sees the confirmation with her own eyes, she feels an odd sense of relief. Perhaps it’s because those checks were the last hurdle, the last hoop the jump through before she could safely get Izuku out of the city.

“Don’t worry,” and there’s a laugh in Orikasa’s voice – masked by professionalism. “They all came back clear. In legal terms, once that form is signed you’ll be set – so to speak. I would always advise you to gain the consent of the minor – Izuku in this case – beforehand, but we have clauses built into these agreements that mean alternative arrangements can be made easily.”

Tomoko casts an eye over Izuku’s sleeping face – considering. She should wake him up beforehand, because he has every right to refuse – but what would happen if he did? Where would he go?

“Are there any alternatives?” She asks, though Tomoko can already tell she’s not going to like the answer. Orikasa is yet to open her mouth to reply, and Tomoko is already convinced that these so-called ‘alternatives’ will be poor.

Orikasa opens her mouth anyway. “In all honestly, his options are extremely limited. He has some distant cousins further north, and a few abroad – but few of them have ever had much contact with Midoriya Inko. Furthermore, none of them have ever met or had any knowledge of Izuku. So, whilst they are related, they’re not entirely suitable – nor are they particularly open to the idea of taking him in.”

Tomoko had expected as much.

She described her family as ‘small’ for a reason, after all – despite the existence of these cousins. They aren’t even family in name. She hadn’t even known Izuku, and she’d just been described as Inko’s ‘legal next of kin’.

“The only thing left to do, after considering his relatives, is to place him in the foster care network. From there, he’ll likely be placed into a foster home – or a state orphanage if none are available.”

Or want to take him…

Tomoko quashes the snide little voice ruthlessly. Izuku’s such a precious, sunny child – a foster home would be lucky to have him. Not that he should have to go to one.

Right. Stay on task.

“Izuku,” she tries – jostling his shoulder a little. “C’mon, Kitten…”

He rolls over, effectively trapping her hand against the sofa cushions. He does not, however, show any signs of waking. Tomoko tries again – and is rewarded with some irritable grumbling.

He still doesn’t wake.

Orikasa, bless her soul, takes pity on Tomoko’s aching heart. “As I said, if he finds this arrangement uncomfortable, we can always activate one of these clauses and resituate him.”

He’d been easy enough to wake before now, a few pats had been all he needed. Now, for whatever reason, he’s sleeping the sleep of the dead. Which is just fantastic.

“But…” Tomoko hovers above his shoulder, uncertain. “Surely it’s quite stressful? Moving him around all the time like that?”

It’s the reason she’d prefer for him to be present for this discussion. He’s already been through so much, and forcing him into a situation that would only make things worse isn’t something she can square against her conscience.

However, at the same time, he needs to rest. His throat would likely be irritable for a few days, and she hadn’t picked the prescription up from the front desk quite yet, so the more time he spent asleep the better. On top of that, he’s clearly still zonked from the treatment (and the crying…).

“It can be,” Orikasa’s smiling that delicate little smile of hers again. “Piling distress, on top of trauma, on top of distress wouldn’t be ideal, but…” she looks thoughtfully at Tomoko for a moment. “Do you think Izuku enjoys being around you?”

Tomoko blinks. “Well, I…” she has to stop and think.

Does he?

She remembers the majority of their last interaction as being quite positive. They’d established their familial relationship, and they’d gotten him to open up a little bit. He seemed – at least outwardly – to like them all well enough. In fact, he’d been excited at the idea they were related.

And he never flinched away from her.

Still, despite the facts establishing themselves in her head, Tomoko hesitates. “I mean, I think he might? It’s not really for me to say, though… surely?”

“It’s a good start,” Orikasa nods. “Has he told you anything personal, yet? What he likes? Any dislikes?”

“He likes heroes.” Says Tomoko without hesitation, despite it being an egregious understatement. “And I don’t think he likes doctors, particularly.”

Orikasa smiles knowingly, and would likely be spreading her hands like a showman were she the type. “Has he initiated any physical contact? Is he comfortable in close proximity?”

She remembers the way Izuku had curled up on her as he cried, and the way he’d then sobbed himself to sleep in her arms. She remembers how he’d traced the scars on her leg, and how he’d giggled when she’d pinched his cheeks.

“Yes,” she breathes – because she can that treacherous glimmer of hope in the middle distance. So close, yet so very far away.

The steady smile on Orikasa’s face is probably her version of a smug grin. “Well then,” she says, and pushes the pen Tomoko had dropped back across the table towards her. “It sounds to me like you’ll do just fine. And, as I said before, there are alternatives in case things don’t work out.”

Tomoko takes the pen without really thinking about it, acting on autopilot – she’s too consumed by her own thoughts. She’s been so worried about getting Izuku to trust her, by being open and honest with him, that she might have lost sight of what was truly important here; Izuku’s safety.

Part of being a parent is making sure your kids are safe, and that they’re in the best possible environment. It’s about keeping their best interests in mind, and giving them a fulfilling childhood that would serve as a foundation for the rest of their lives.

Tomoko isn’t Izuku’s mother – she never would be. That, however, doesn’t mean that she’s not feeling any sense of responsibility here. She and her cats can give Izuku a good life – a fresh start in a loving environment. Plus, at the end of the day, they’re family – and that’s not something Izuku would get anywhere else. A sense of belonging, and being wanted.

If she let him go into the system, he might never feel either of those things again until he reached maturity – and that would just be wrong. Besides, he had seemed fairly comfortable with them – and he’d looked genuinely happy when she’d told him they’re related.   

With a steady hand, Tomoko signs and dates the papers.

“Thank you,” Orikasa whips off the top sheet and slides it back into her folder with practiced ease – leaving only the carbon copy on the table. “There’s just a few more details we need to go over, then I’ll let you go.”

Tomoko grimaces, because that’s probably for the best. Her phone had been blowing up in her pocket for the last few minutes in a manner that can only indicate Cat-related shenanigans.

If they’re lucky, it’s because one of them (probably Ryuko) walked out of a store without paying for something. If they’re not lucky, it’s because one of them (probably Ryuko) had been recognised buying kids clothes in the middle of the afternoon – and had subsequently been mobbed.

Tomoko’s trepidation only grows at the prospect, and her phone suddenly weighed a tonne in her pocket.

Then, out of the blue, something occurs to her. A snippet of her last conversation with Tsukauchi.

“Isn’t there supposed to be two of you?”

Orikasa blinks, then chuckles softly. “Tsukauchi-san is still a man of endless optimism, I see.” Her expression sobers somewhat, but the mirth remains. “Musutafu has a particularly high crime rate, and that – unfortunately – means a lot of orphaned children.”

“Oh, yeah, that…” Tomoko sighs, then slumps back against the sofa – reaching out an absentminded hand to run through Izuku’s hair.

The Cats had dealt with their fair share of aftermaths, both in the city and out in the countryside. Tomoko has seen a lot of families torn to pieces, and – because she’s stupid and naïve – always hoped this one would be the last.

It never is.

It occurs to her, or (rather) slaps her around the face, that Izuku’s part of that statistic now. In the eyes of the masses, and those pencil-pushers in government, he’s just a number. Just another orphan.

She wonders whether, at the end of the year, Izuku would be represented on a graph meant to show how things were ‘better than last year’. How the situation is improving. A line graph on the news that indicated a downwards trend, and some faceless suit from the commission going on about how the ‘numbers are falling’.

The thought makes her queasy. “We see that a lot,” she says – before she can delve any deeper into that particular dungeon.

“It’s tragic,” says Orikasa – and Tomoko wonders how often this woman had thought along similar lines. “However, it’s the reality our directorate is operating in right now. With that in mind, our human resources have to be prioritised to those children most in need of help.”

Tomoko squints, and can feel some of that tension worm its way back into her hands again. “So Izu’s not getting anyone? Is that okay? I mean, he’ll be fine with us – I can take some time off and everything – but…”

Orikasa shakes her head. “Not at all. Due to the specific nature of Izuku’s case, and because of the specific circumstances surrounding your relationship, I’ll be your case worker for the time being.”

“Oh! Well… that’s great!” Tomoko’s confused now, though she’s glad the strain is receding. Was that supposed to be a big deal?

Orikasa squints at her, then something that looks suspiciously like long-suffering flashes across her features. “Ah, my apologies, it’s been a long week.” She rubs the heel of her hand into one eye, then starts fiddling with the other folder. “As the deputy-head of the Child Protection Directorate, it’s unusual for me to get directly involved in individual cases – but Tsukauchi-san was very adamant that Izuku is a special one. Whilst his comfort is important, we also need to be able ensure his safety-”

“We’re Pro Heroes,” Tomoko interrupts – because something about the implication behind that statement has rubbed her up entirely the wrong way. “One of us will always be there – like all the time! He’ll be safe!”

Orikasa sticks both hands up in a gesture of peace. “I accept that – but there’s a little more to it. Whilst being with a family of pro-heroes will help, we also have to consider the bigger picture.” She folds her hands across her knees, and Tomoko can see that hint of steel again. “If Izuku’s father were just a common criminal, a petty thief or vandal – for instance – then his safety would be guaranteed in the presence of competent pro heroes. However, as it stands, Midoriya Hisashi is suspected of murdering Izuku’s mother, and has so far managed to evade capture. Based on that, and taking into consideration the fact that Hisashi’s managed to commit something bordering on the ‘perfect crime’, we can extrapolate that Izuku’s father is either a very resourceful man – or has very resourceful friends. My position in the directorate, and – as a consequence – the HPSC, makes me uniquely disposed to keep him away from Izuku in the first instance.”

Tomoko had stopped stroking Izuku’s hair, at some stage, so she could hug herself about the middle. None of that had been a revelation, of any kind – Tomoko had realised all of that quite quickly. No, the issue was that she’d refused to dwell on the implications of Hisashi’s disappearance and the lack of evidence surrounding the crime itself. Now, Orikasa had turned up and metaphorically beat her over the head with it – which made the facts hard to ignore.

She takes a deep breath, and slowly uncurls herself. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, yeah. Thanks for offering, then.”

Orikasa smiles back at her, and slides the other folder across the table. “I’m glad to help,” she glances at Izuku’s sleeping form, and something in her expression softens even further. “In all honesty, the Detective only contacted me directly as a precaution. I was his superior back in the day, so I suspect he just wants me around as insurance.”

Tomoko is swiftly coming to realise how much they’d lucked out with Tsukauchi, because it’s only becoming more, and more apparent as time goes on.

If he’s willing to call in old superiors and to run around chasing – what are essentially – shadows for the last couple of days (and probably some nights as well, because people like him are always masochists), then Tomoko’s happy to trust him. The most likely reason he’d looked so harried, run-down and exhausted the first time she’d seen him is because he’s so dedicated.

If it were anyone else manning this case, Tomoko has no doubt that they’d be working regular nine-to-five hours – Tsukauchi is clearly the sort of man that refuses to operate that way.

He’s one of those people that takes their work home with them – a trait that most heroes inadvertently picked up during their first few years.

However, whether that work ethic is healthy or not bears very little relevance in Tomoko’s mind. Izuku wouldn’t be safe until The Monster was slain, and that’s more important than anything else.

“All of the information you need regarding Izuku is in there,” Orikasa gestures to the folder she’d slid across the table with an idle wave of the hand. It’s potentially the most wasteful gesture Orikasa had made in the entire time she’d been here, and Tomoko would be at all surprised if that hand went on strike as a result.

Tomoko snatches the folder up without further invitation, and starts to devour the documents inside. It’s all of Izuku’s basic information; his birth certificate, medical records, which school he went to…

She freezes in place, and can feel the joints in her fingers lock up. She scans the document again.  

“If you wanted to have a look through it now, please do.” Orikasa’s talking again, but Tomoko is only giving her half an ear. “I can walk you through anything tha-”

“He’s quirkless?”

Tomoko’s voice is barely a whisper – because it feels like she’d just been hit by a truck and thrown off the side of a suspension bridge. Those little oddities she’d noticed in Izuku’s disposition, the way he could shutter his expression and the fact that he seemed to have a sixth sense for bad news suddenly made so much more sense.

When his expression had closed off so suddenly in the split second it took Tomoko to lose her nerve that morning, there had been this age in his eyes. There’d been this weariness, a look of resignation spoke of an intimate relationship with cruelty and unfairness. She’d believed that Hisashi had been the cause, that Izuku had been conditioned to weather heartbreak by his father’s continued absence – but it clearly goes much further than that.

“I had a feeling you’d pick up on that.” If Orikasa had felt any irritation at being cut off mid-sentence, she does a good job of hiding it. “It’s a fairly rare diagnosis, these days – but it does happen. You’ll also notice that, since the start of this year, his mother had been home-schooling him.”

Tomoko had noticed – that was why she’d been pouring over the document again. She’d missed that innocuous box on his medical records before, but only because it’s empty.

It’s a twisting, gut wrenching feeling – because there’s an unpleasant implication buried between the lines of these records. An elephant in the room. A spectre at the feast. Something that sat in her peripheral vision, but would forever disappear if she tried to look at it directly.

Tomoko had never wanted to throttle someone quite so much before. Stupid, backward, prejudiced assholes. Not even a child was spared the ridicule, the discrimination…

Tomoko forcibly halts her train of thought there, because it might have run off the rails and hurt someone otherwise.

“Was he ever,” and she takes a moment to beat back a surprising amount of indignation so she can chase the information. She has to ask. “Did anyone ever hurt him? At school, I mean.”

Orikasa’s shaking her head before she’s even finished. “Not officially, but… well,” she offers a wan smile. “I doubt his mother would have pulled him out so soon for no reason.”

In that context, Inko’s decision to home-school her son makes a lot more sense.

“Oh…” Tomoko twists, and buries her face in Izuku’s curls. The kitten stirs a little, but doesn’t offer much more than a grunt at the extra weight on his head.

“If you want to continue in the same manner, then that’s your prerogative now.” Orikasa indicates the folder that holds Tomoko’s signature. “I can forward you the details of some more… forward thinking tutors, if that’s of any interest. They’re all vetted, of course.”

Tomoko just hums into Izuku’s hair.

A bad paw and a missing ear, indeed.

“Thanks,” she responds – her voice muffled in Izuku’s curls.

“I’ll do that, then.” Orikasa’s tone is kind, but Tomoko’s too busy centring herself to look at her. “We’ll need to set up a date for me to inspect your home – but we don’t have to do it today. I’ll leave my card on the table, please don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything.”

There’s some general shuffling across the table, and then steady steps moving away. Tomoko knows it’s polite to say ‘thank you’ to people who’re so clearly going out of their way for you – but the aftershocks haven’t cleared yet. The confirmation that her instincts had been right regarding Izuku’s hand in life, the terrible burden of realisation is still pinning her down.

The door shuts.

Tomoko breathes a long, heavy sigh into Izuku’s curls and tries to calm herself.

She had been expecting a sting in the tail of this rollercoaster. One last kick in the teeth to compound how desperately sad this whole affair is.

But she’d not been expecting this.

The quirkless in this country haven’t been treated well for decades, not since the number of quirked people had grown to eclipse them. Since they’d been placed firmly in the minority. It’s insipid, just like any other form of discrimination. It’s gotten under the skin of society and turned it rotten from the inside out. Most people don’t care whether someone has a quirk or not, but a lot of people seem to believe that the quirkless are fundamentally inferior or subhuman.

They’d go out of their way to make quirkless people miserable, to make things even more difficult for them. They’d bully and belittle them, and would join political movements to try and take their rights away.

These people are in the minority, for sure, but even a single percentile of an entire population is comprised of a large number of individuals.

And Izuku… Izuku has lived with that for at least a year. Most kids would have their quirks by the age of four, so when Izuku didn’t get one…

Well, Tomoko would have taken him out of school as well. Kids can be especially cruel, especially when their parents aren’t setting a good example. He doesn’t deserve to be in that kind of living hell.

Izuku is such a precious child, no matter what that little box on his medical record said – because it shouldn’t matter. Izuku’s strength of character, his open heart, and his caring nature are the traits that define him – not his quirk or lack thereof.

Tomoko can feel heat gathering around her eyes, and scrubs at them furiously with one hand whilst she cards the other through Izuku’s hair. She feels so helpless – because nothing she does now can undo what Izuku’s been through. There’s nothing she can do to take that pain away entirely.

The best she can do – what she will do – is ease it.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

Reluctantly, Tomoko extracts her face from her ward’s hair and wiggles a hand into the pocket of her jeans to fetch her phone. It’s a bit of a task, because she’s bent at an odd angle and women’s jeans have awful pockets – but she eventually manages it.

After one glance at her lock screen, she wishes she hadn’t bothered.

How any three people could find enough time in which to send such a vast number of texts is mind-boggling.

Tentatively, Tomoko unlocks the phone and scrolls back through the messages in their chat.

There’s… a lot of them.

She quickly gathers, in the few seconds of scrolling back up the log, that things had gone even worse than she’d thought they might. Shino is about five minutes away from a breakdown because (as she’d predicted) they don’t actually know what Izuku wants.

Likely because none of her siblings are telepathic.

Tomoko, sometimes, wonders whether the glaringly obvious is so glaring to anyone else.

Still, it could be worse. Shino could have had this epiphany when Izuku had looked upon his new possessions in despair when they got him home – or could have given it up as a bad job to begin with. As it is, they’d had the presence of mind to keep their selections general in lieu of any idea of what Izuku might pick out for himself.

Better yet, they’d managed to find the kitten some clothes to wear for the time being.

“Izu,” Tomoko reaches down to shuffle Izuku’s shoulder – and hopes she’ll have more success this time around. Miraculously, he stirs a little at the jostling, and Tomoko rubs a thumb across his cheek to try and coax him further. “Time to go, Kitten.”

Groggy, emerald twin suns appear over the horizon and blink, unfocused up at her. “Go?” Izuku asks, with the barest hint of trepidation catching at his tone.

“Yeah!” She snags the folder Orikasa had left behind off the table to show him, including the carbon-copy of the guardianship form – and lets her excitement bleed into her voice. “See? I signed that, and now we can take you home with us! Pretty cool, right?”

Izuku reaches out to take the form in his little hands, but his expression has become perfectly unreadable. Tomoko’s quirk can detect his slightly elevated heartrate, and she could see some tension in his shoulders even without it – but she can only guess at the emotion that’s drawing it all out.

“With you?” He asks eventually, as if such a thing had been off the cards until then.

And Tomoko’s heart stops – because for heaven’s sake she’d known this would happen. Something glaringly obvious that, perhaps, should have been more glaringly obvious in her own head.

She should never have let that woman talk her into it. She should have waited until Izuku woke up.  

Tentatively, she pulls the top edge of the form down so she can look Izuku in the eye. “If that’s what you wanna do, Kitten. Nobody’s gonna force you, alright?”

Oh gods, he looks confused now. As if being given a choice in the matter is baffling. Would Orikasa be able to find another solution on short notice? Would they be able to fix this?

She should have made sure he’d been awake for this – she should have made sure it was his choice because now it’s becoming very clear that he doesn’t trust them enough. Maybe she could call one of her cousins up in Tokyo and ask them…

“But…” Tomoko’s attention is brought crashing back onto Izuku and his dangerously wobbling lip. “You’re a… you’re a real hero and, like, super busy! I don’t wanna…” and he’s shaking his head now, “I don’t wanna be a burden. I don’t wanna be a deku and get in your way ‘cos you’re a hero ‘nd I’m just a stupid, quirkless-!”

Tomoko clasps a hand over his mouth before he can go any further, and Izuku’s watery eyes snap open to stare up at her in shock. She’d thought that his reticence was due to a lack of trust; because she was too new, or her pack too raucous. She’d been terrified that they’d made him uncomfortable because she’d moved too fast and not made sure he was present.

This is… this isn’t that. Not at all. This is worse – but maybe it’s something she can fix.

“I wanna tell you something, Izuku.” Tomoko isn’t really sure why, but Izuku’s tirade had turned her blood to ice. Her heart to stone. “I’m gonna tell you something, and I want you to listen to me. Okay?”

Izuku nods meekly against her hand, and Tomoko removes it. Instead, she puts reassuring weight on his shoulder, and pivots in her seat so she’s facing him properly.

“You are not a burden.”

Izuku opens his mouth, and his brows furrow as his head starts to shake. Tomoko cuts him off – because she’d just stated an irrefutable fact.

“You aren’t, Kitten. I don’t know what the kids at school said to you, or what the doctors said, or what your… what Hisashi said – but they’re wrong.” She squeezes his tiny shoulders tight, and bends her neck to catch his lowering gaze. “You aren’t weak, and you’re not useless. You’re a child – and that’s all you need to be. Okay?”

Izuku looks dubious, but he nods anyway. She considers pressing the issue until Izuku gives her more than reluctant acceptance, but she doesn’t want to force him away. She doesn’t want him to shut down. Besides, Tomoko gets the distinct impression that passing consideration is the best she’s going to get out of him.

“Now, if you don’t wanna come with us…” and Tomoko has to swallow something that feels like fear before she can continue. “If you don’t wanna come with us, then that’s fine – we can figure something else out. But you shouldn’t say no because you think you’ll get in the way, because that’s not true. We want you to come back with us, Izuku, because we think you’re a pretty cool cat. Besides, we’re family, right?”

Hope flashes through Izuku’s eyes, followed by awe, and Tomoko’s heart clenches as the ice thaws. Izuku is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most precious kitten Tomoko had ever come across, but convincing him of that is – and would likely remain for some time – the challenge. They’ve got to build him back up again first.

Izuku looks a little giddy for a second, and all the worry has washed off his face so quickly that Tomoko almost forgets it was there at all. He looks so hopeful, and now there’s something in his eyes that looks dangerously like trust as this hesitant little smile dawns across his face like the first sunrise in spring.

Tomoko grins, and prompts him again. “Right, kitten?”

“Yeah!”

Tomoko feels her grin broaden into something vaguely Cheshire, and she nods with all the authority of a respected elder. “And family’s gotta stick together! So! Wanna come see the forest?”

“You live in a forest!?”

“Of course,” she bops him on the nose. “We’re wild cats, kitten! We’re not designed for all of this civilised city-living! So, what d’ya say?”

The excitement on Izuku’s face tempers for the most fleeting of moments, but then he launches himself at Tomoko’s middle and latches his tiny arms around her.

Tomoko giggles, and wraps one arm around his shoulders whilst patting him on the head with the other. “I take it that’s a ‘yes’ then?”

Izuku nods frantically against her stomach.

“Alright, then!” She sends a quick message to Shino, who’s almost certainly hovering outside the door by now. “Let’s get some clothes on you, then we can go home – alright?”

Izuku scrambles back from her. “Clothes!?”

Tomoko flicks his forehead and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, duh. We’re not just gonna make you walk around in a hospital gown, Izu.”

For a second, Tomoko’s afraid the reminder of everything he’s lost is going to tip him back into the realm of silence – but his expression only darkens for a moment. That moment passes almost too quickly for Tomoko to notice, but she’s always been observant. Izuku is truly a smart child, especially so if he’s learned how to mask his own emotions so young. He doesn’t get it right all the time, and sometimes he’s an open book, but when he doesn’t want an adult picking up on something he’s remarkably good at shutting his face down.

Fortunately, Tomoko is better equipped for this than most.

Shino walks through the door shortly afterward, completely calm and entirely in contrast to the texts Tomoko had been reading through earlier. Ryuko, who’s in a state of complete dishevelment and carrying all the bags, is perhaps a more accurate representation of the frantic shopping mission they’d just undertaken.

Once Izuku is dressed in a deep blue hoodie and a pair of black shorts, both of which are (remarkably) the right size, they move on to the other bits and pieces Shino had picked out. Tomoko keeps a close eye on Izuku as they work through bags of stationary, books, puzzles, and various action figures that ranged from the top-ten heroes to the slightly more obscure – just to see if they’ve made any obvious mistakes.

Izuku seems perfectly enamoured with everything Shino had gone for, and is particularly taken by the action figures that Ryuko had picked out (and if her sister isn’t disappearing into some sort of infinite vanity vortex because of it then Tomoko isn’t exactly sure what she’s doing) – but Tomoko is blessed with hawk-eyes.

It’s not what is there that Izuku seems slightly forlorn over, but what isn’t. He keeps casting around for something absent; double checking bags and looking underneath other items when he thinks nobody is looking.

“Well, that’s everything.” Shino declares, once the last bag has been repacked. “Is there anything we’ve missed, Izuku?”

Izuku looks like he wants to say something, but quickly swallows it, and Tomoko isn’t having that.

She stoops to Izuku’s eye-level, and catches them when he tries to look away. “Are you sure? It’s not a bother if we need to pick something else up on the way home!”

Again, Izuku swallows whatever it is that’s bothering him. He almost looks embarrassed.

“Izuku.”

He blinks at the sudden intensity in her tone, then looks down at his socked feet again. “I like to write…” everything else in the subsequent sentence is lost to mumbling, and Tomoko has to hold in a sigh.

“Do you want some notebooks, kitten? Maybe some more pens as well?”

He nods.

“Ryuko, there’s a stationary store next to the car park – if you don’t mind.” Shino gestures to her sister like an empress might command one of their handmaidens, and Ryuko draws herself up for an argument before completely deflating again.

“Fine,” she grouches. “But you’re paying for it.”

What follows that declaration might – to most people – seem like nothing more than a brief pause, a small silence in the room that is neither awkward nor charged. However, Tomoko can sense a storm coming.

Two pairs of eyes slowly rise to lock with Ryuko’s own. One promising comfort, the other… well. Tomoko is entirely sympathetic, because she suspects that Ryuko has already realised her blunder. What wrath she’s just incurred.

Shino looks strangely strained, like her face had been dunked into liquid nitrogen and frozen over. Indeed, she looks as though she’d been carved from ice.

Tomoko carefully, so as to not draw attention to herself, covers Izuku’s ears.

“Ryuko, honey?”

Shino’s face has contorted into the terse, violent bastardisation of a smile. Everything about her is taut, right down to the way her arms are delicately folded across her lap. Were it not for the way her eyelid is twitching, she’d have looked like an avenging angel – one that promised only pain. 

“Oh,” whispers Ryuko. “Oh, no plea-.”

“For the one-hundred and ninety-ninth time,” Ryuko talks clean over the top of her sister in a voice that promises swift, brutal retribution. “We have a joint bank account and, for better or worse, all of our cards are connected to it. I should know, because whenever you take it upon yourself to ‘treat a date to a good time’,” the air quotations are like axes falling. “I’m the one that has to square the budget. Again.”

Ryuko looks like the fear of god had been well-and-truly put into her, and slowly starts backing toward the door. “Maybe…” she gulps, “Maybe I should…”

“Go?” Shino finishes, and the inclination of her head is as sharp as a knife. “Yes, perhaps that would be for the best, Dear Sister.”

Ryuko doesn’t need to be told twice, and bolts from the door at such a speed that a rough impression is left in the air after her departure.

Tomoko slowly lifts her hands from Izuku’s ears, only now noticing the look of abject confusion on his face.

“Did Miss Shino say a bad word?” He asks, and Tomoko has to choke on a bark of laughter for fear of violent, swift, terrible retribution.

Shino looks like she’s about to ascend, but manages to hold herself together. “I just had to remind my sister that, whilst I love her dearly, she is remarkably dense sometimes. ‘You’re paying for it’…” she shakes her head. “The nerve of some people, I tell you.”

Tomoko coughs violently into one hand.

Izuku’s brow furrows, and his little finger taps against his tiny chin – then inspiration hits. “Did Miss Ryuko say a bad thing?”

“Oh, no…” Shino pauses – and considers something for a moment. “Actually, yes, Izuku. She did say a bad thing, and I found it deeply offensive.”

Tomoko can’t do it anymore. She doubles over, then collapses to one side in a cackling heap.

“I knew it!” Izuku declares, triumphantly, and points towards the shaking mass that is his cousin-come-guardian. “Tomo-nee stopped me listening! Adults do that when someone’s about to say something mean!”

Tomoko’s now trying to strike a balance between hysterical laughter, and cooing over Izuku’s new nickname that makes her feel both ten-feet tall and like a puddle of blubbering goo all at once.

Shino, ever the elegant one, has a hand over her mouth. “Indeed? Well, I must say that Tomoko has remarkable foresight…”

Izuku might have been about to say something, but is stopped when Tomoko wrestles him down to the ground so she can cuddle him with extreme prejudice. His giggly cries of ‘no! Stop, Tomo-nee!’ only make things worse for him.

The drive back to the forest is, thankfully, uneventful – despite the lingering ice in the air around Shino and the look of abject terror on Ryuko’s face whenever her sister so much as breathes audibly.

Izuku had predictably fallen asleep again the moment the car started moving, and his head had nestled itself comfortably against Tomoko’s shoulder at some point. The contact is nice, and somewhat anchoring after the emotional turmoil of the last couple of days.

Under their feet, and propped up against the two sides of the van are all of Izuku’s new belongings – all in boxes or bags. Izuku hadn’t seemed too perturbed by it when they’d strapped him in, but she has to wonder whether he’d realised what it all was.

Inko had never been a fan of build-it-yourself furniture, much preferring the cheaper, second-hand pieces she could get from various charity shops around the city. Therefore, Tomoko wondered whether Izuku hadn’t reacted to his new furniture simply because he hadn’t known what it was.

Speaking of the furniture, Tomoko could see quite a lot of infuriating construction in her immediate future. Yawara had, predictably, gone for flat-packed on account for how easy it is to transport in bulk. Thus, before Izuku could sleep in his own bed, they would have to build all the furniture by hand. Or, more accurately, Tomoko would have to build all the furniture tomorrow whilst the other cats were working.

Deep joy.

At least she wouldn’t have to worry about keeping Izuku entertained. Between Shino’s initial purchases, Ryuko’s last-second stationary run, and the entire gosh-darn forest to explore, Tomoko is fairly confident that Izuku would have plenty to do. Obviously, she isn’t about to let him run wild in nature without some supervision – she’s at least responsible enough to know that would be unadvisable. She would, instead, use ‘tree time’ as a convenient excuse to get out the house.

She’d spent the last forty-eight hours trapped indoors – she’s not about to imprison herself inside her own home when there’s any other available option.

The forest swings into view on their left just after ten-pm, and Tomoko can feel something inside herself unclench at the sight.

Because they’re finally home.

It feels a little different to all the other times they’d spent a few days away – more like excitement than relief. They aren’t coming back from some difficult, high pressure mission this time for one thing. Tomoko still aches all over, but that’s more to do with the unusual positions she’s found herself falling asleep in than hauling rubble off terrified civilians.

Slowly, timidly, she relaxes her hold on her senses, and blinks back into her quirk with a steady exhale. Her quirk isn’t something she can just turn off; it’s wired into her brain – like an extra sense. What she’d been doing for the last few days was, in essence, ignoring it – and that was tough. Like making a conscious decision to ignore your nose, or to deliberately stop hearing things with your ears.

For her, tuning out of her quirk took some of the edges off the world. It washed out some of the colour, dulled some of the light. It was like being blinkered, and having her entire peripheral vision removed. So, blinking back into it now was nothing short of a relief. The extra dimension that she’d been starving herself of came back, and she blinks a few more times to readjust to the influx of information.

She takes in her sisters, then Yawara, then she scans Izuku’s resting pulse.

Tomoko hums to herself, then eases back into her seat for the final stretch of the journey. It’s good to be home.

Getting Izuku into the lodge is a much more muted affair than Tomoko had imagined.

She’d been rehearsing the grand tour all the way back, complete with all her special hideaways and favourite spots, the best spots to nap and so forth. She can’t quite hold back her disappointment at the realisation that it’s just not going to happen tonight, and Shino pats her on the arm sympathetically on the way out.

Tomoko sighs, and lets it all go.

Tomorrow is another day, after all!

There’d be plenty of opportunity!

Between the various bits of admin Shino was sure to dump on her (seeing as she was to be home for the day), building Izuku’s new furniture, and laying down some ground rules regarding exploration of the expansive forest – she’s certain there’d be time for a tour.

If there isn’t, she’d make it so.

Even if that meant ‘forgetting’ Shino’s incident reports and spending forms.

Her sister would be rightly suspicious, of course. Whilst Tomoko usually has her attention split in a greater number of directions than most thanks to her quirk, she’s never been forgetful. So, she would have to come up with a good excuse. Otherwise, she’d be doing all the housecleaning until Izuku left for university – or something similarly heinous.

With that in mind, Tomoko decides that it’d be best to remove Izuku to the cabin so she can scheme in relative peace. Besides, Ryuko looks like she might be trying to apologise to Shino – and that could get messy.

Unfortunately, despite the pressing need for haste, she can only rouse Izuku to a partial state of wakefulness – because boy this little kitten loved to sleep. Lucidity seems to come in fits and sparks for him at the moment, rather than any sort of sustained period, and Tomoko has to wonder whether he’d end up like Aizawa when he was older.

In truth, if Tomoko didn’t have her quirk, she didn’t doubt that she’d have ended up like Aizawa some time ago, but then – if she didn’t have her quirk – she might not have such difficulty falling asleep anyway.

Something to ponder. Maybe she should get Izuku a sleeping bag?

Yawara starts sliding the boxes of furniture out the back of the van, and Tomoko decides that it would be better to just carry him inside. They could confront his new surroundings tomorrow, rather than disturbing him further.

Forcing him into a whole lot of newness that his sleep-addled mind was likely too muddled to comprehend would be unfair anyway. Instead, she hefts him up against her shoulder and pushes the front door open with her hip.

Their lodge is big, both inside and out, and some might call it ‘a bit overkill’ – but there’s a good reason it had been built this way.

All these extra rooms served as emergency shelters in case they ever came across some hiker or rambler out in the wilds that needed a place to stay, or someone that had fallen on a hike and broken something. It meant that the lodge could double as a make-shift triage centre of sorts if there was a crash up on the mountain roads, and there’d been that one time a bunch of kids got caught out in a snowstorm.

The Cats are mountain rescue heroes primarily, and that means they need to at least have the capacity to be completely self-sufficient. If a blizzard rolled through, or a landslide cut off the roads, they would need to operate in isolation until the emergency services could get to them. The lodge, therefore, needed to have all the provisions one might find in a small family practice in case of emergencies.

That’s the reason their lodge is set up like this now, but there’s another reason as well.

Originally, at the time the lodge was built, the Pussycats had been planning on making this little venture of theirs into an entire agency of rescue and recovery heroes. Rather than just being a small team of specialists, their agency would have been a more generalised rescue outfit that could be deployed anywhere, anytime.

All these extra rooms would have been office space, or accommodations for live-in interns and sidekicks.

But it had never happened.

The Cats had a certain dynamic in the field that went beyond their unique aesthetic. They moved around each other subconsciously, worked together without having to stop and coordinate themselves. That sort of bond took years to form, and isn’t something that could be easily faked. In short, they’re more efficient as a small group of specialists than they could ever hope to be as a ten, or twenty hero team of rescue-oriented individuals.

Plus, if they inflated their team with a multitude of unknown entities they would lose something of their own rapport. In short, that unique energy that kept the Cats distinct from other outfits would be watered down so much that it’d become unrecognisable. They would, in essence, be indistinguishable from any other large rescue team.

Furthermore, and Tomoko had been prepared to die on this particular hill, their little family was good enough as it was. They didn’t need to be the biggest outfit in town – just the best.

In the end, the others had abandoned the idea. They’d found another use for the extra space, and so it had remained.

Besides, there was no sense in dismantling it all when they could become perfectly self-contained when the situation called for it, and they’d made a good return on their investments quickly enough to negate the extra spend.

As Tomoko carefully lays Izuku on one of their spare beds, she’s glad they’d left it all. A big space like this could be imagination fuel for tiny kittens. It could be a castle surrounded by trees, or just a really good set for a heroes and villains match – anything at all really.

With so much room to roam, and so many little nooks to find, this place is ideal for kids.

She’d just not expected kids to be here so soon. And she certainly hadn’t expected it to have anything to do with her.

Still, he’s here now. That’s what matters.

She drops Izuku off in the spare-room next to hers instead of dwelling on any of that.

Tomoko takes one last look at Izuku’s sleeping face, then slowly backs out the room. He’d slept so much recently that he would likely wake up sometime during the night, what with everything being so out of whack. Fortunately, Tomoko isn’t a big sleeper, so he wouldn’t be by himself if he did.

She holds her breath as she clicks the door into place, then slowly backs away. It’s probably completely unnecessary, because she knows already that Izuku sleeps like a particularly mossy log. It’s some kind of kitten-related paranoia that puts caution in her gait, that softens her steps and quietens her breaths. Izuku’s been through so much – he needs the rest.

Once she’s a certain distance from his door (determined by some arbitrary factor that she can’t quite name, but essentially comes down to feeling), Tomoko speeds back downstairs to find the other cats. Now that she’s operating at ‘full-capacity’ again, and isn’t one wrong blink away from a crushing migraine, she feels much more herself. It’s freeing in a way she’d not expected, but it’s entirely welcomed.

She’d never taken ‘Search’ for granted – and now feels adamant that she never would.

Predictably, she finds the others collapsed by and over the kitchen table. Yawara had made a token effort to get some food into them, but sleeping on the floor the previous night had completely wiped them out. A slightly more chipper than she had any right to be Tomoko is clearly what they need, then.

She slides into a chair without ceremony, and swipes the bowl of chilli that Yawara palms in her direction. Now that they’ve got Izuku home, a lot of the burden had lifted from her mind. She certainly feels less queasy, and eating doesn’t seem like such a monumental task anymore.

“‘s goof,” she comments around a particularly large mouthful – and pointedly ignores the look of distain on Shino’s face. She swallows anyway, because her sister had been through enough already today. “Is it a new recipe?”

Yawara offers up a tired smile, though there is a twinkle in his eye. “Leftovers, I’m afraid. I shall take the compliment, though! It’s not every day that I can elicit a reaction from you!”

“Lies!” Tomoko gasps, and she points her spoon at him dramatically. “I compliment your cooking all the time!”

“‘It’s nice’ doesn’t count, Tomo.” Shino interjects, a hint of finality in her voice. “And can we stay on topic, please? We need to decide on a schedule, or a rota, or… or something.”

It is, potentially, the first time her sister had looked truly lost in a long time. Tomoko can sympathise – and she’s entirely empathetic. This had come out of the blue – all the way out of left field. Tomoko would love to meet the know-it-all that believed they could react and adapt to this on the fly.

Luckily for all of them, she’d come to a decision on this a few hours ago. “I don’t mind taking the time out for a couple of weeks?” It still comes out like a question, because Shino is their fountain-of-all-knowledge for anything regarding children. “Wouldn’t it be better that way?”

Shino blinks at her, and Yawara looks faintly curious. Ryuko’s asleep at the table, using her arms as pillows, but Tomoko knew her sister would back her up if she were conscious.

“That’s…” Shino’s expression softens. “Yes, that would probably be for the best.” She reaches across the table to clasp Tomoko’s arm lightly, and her expression shifts into one that says, ‘I’m going to say something sensible now, and you should probably listen to me’. “Are you sure, though? It’s a big commitment…”

“Oh, yeah! I get that!” Tomoko taps the knuckles of her sister’s hand with her spoon, leaving behind a saucy residue. “But Izu’s family, y’know? We’ve got to look out for each-other. Besides, I know all the cool spots!”

Shino hums, and withdraws her hand so she can wipe it on a dish cloth. “So long as you’re aware,” she says. “But don’t forget you’ve got us, as well. Just ask, any time you need support, or a break, or whatever – alright?”

“Absolutely! You can count on us!” Yawara booms, and Ryuko rockets up in her seat like someone had struck her with a red-hot iron.

Their sister glances around the table, bleary-eyed and not-at-all with it, then just grunts something that might have been agreement, and starts patting Tomoko not-so-gently on the side of the head in a manner that could be construed as supportive.

Tomoko feels a giggle bubbling up the back of her throat, and lets it free whilst she swats half-heartedly at Ryuko. “Thanks, guys. You’re the best!” She fends off another Ryuko-pat, and jabs her sister mercilessly in the kidney. “Apart from you, Ko-chan! You smell! Get your grubby hands away from me!”

Ryuko launches herself away from Tomoko’s assault, but that only gets her as far as the floor – which she lands on in the least graceful manner imaginable. “Tomo…” she whines with feeling, “Tomo you suck – that hurt!”

“And it serves you right!” Yawara’s flown across the table to pin Ryuko in one of his infamous ‘unbreakable holds’. “How many times have I told you? No fighting at the table!”

He sounds so much like a parent scolding their child that Tomoko dissolves into giggling, and Shino’s covering her mouth with one hand whilst surreptitiously snapping a picture with the other.

“She started it!” Ryuko cries, only to get her face mashed into the wooden floor.

“Objection!” Calls Tomoko. “Lying in court! Hold her in contempt!”

“Upheld.” Shino supplies, helpfully.

“If I’m not being held in contempt already, then what the fuck is this!?”

The chaotic spectacle occurring on their kitchen floor is just one more reason that Tomoko is glad to be home.   

Being able to look through her quirk again without having to worry about blundering into a non-anaesthetic amputation that’s happening less than a hundred meters away has its benefits, because Tomoko’s up and out of bed before Izuku can work himself up into too much of a frenzy.

She’d been monitoring his heartrate absently in her peripheral all night, keeping an eye on its resting state whilst she worked through some of the backlog that had built up on her reading list. Normally, she’d have crashed by three in the morning, but having Izuku in the house for the first time had been wreaking merry havoc on her emotions.

She hadn’t felt this nervous since high school, for crying out loud! Looking back, it’s a miracle she’d managed to eat anything at all.

At first, there’s just a slight change in the steady, calm rhythm of his breathing – a slight alteration of tempo. That had been enough to alert Tomoko, enough to bring her fully back to wakefulness. She’d been in the process of bookmarking her chapter and stretching her limbs out when his heartrate slowly started to climb.

As it turns out, her buzzing mind is a good thing. Had she been firmly on the brink of sleep, she wouldn’t have been able to react as quickly as she does now.

She’s out of bed in a flash, trailing her duvet onto the floor in her wake as she hustles to her bedroom door. It’s pitch-black outside, because none of them had ever needed to consider something so ‘silly’ as leaving the landing light on. She’d have to remember to do so now, though – because something was telling her this might become a regular occurrence.

She’d put Izuku in the room next to hers just so he’d be close by – just so she could keep a little more than half an eye on him for a little while. As a consequence, she’s outside his door in moments, tentatively cracking the door open so she doesn’t startle him.

He’s sitting bolt-upright in bed when she has the door open enough to peak inside. His eyes are wide as they zero in on her, and he’s clutching at his blanket like it’s the only thing grounding him to reality.

Tomoko waves a little from the doorway, attempting to keep her expression soft. She’d been told on numerous occasions that her eyes glow a little in the dark – a faint, yellow light that matched the shade of her irises. Her siblings had told her before that the glow is quite comforting at night, like a campfire in the long, long dark.

She had also been told (quite emphatically) on a school residential trip in her early teens that if she smiled too wide, which is a hard metric for her to measure, it could look quite sinister. She wanted to believe her cats, of course she did – but years of barbed remarks are hard to forget.

“Hey,” she tries, putting everything else to one side when she got a good look at the fright that lingers in Izuku’s eyes. “Bad Dream?”

It’s a guess, but she thinks it’s a fairly solid one. Kids with overactive imaginations have nightmares all the time – but Izuku shakes his head.

“N-no,” there’s a little hitch in his voice – at which Tomoko frowns.

The attendant nurse back at the hospital had mentioned his lack of nightmares in passing, and Tomoko had yet to see any evidence of them either. When she’d felt his heartrate accelerating just a moment ago, she’d felt that a nightmare would be the logical situation.

Yet, now he’s saying that’s not the case.

He could, of course, be lying – but that didn’t seem like something he’d do.

Izuku is a sweet child. Loving, considerate, and strong in equal measure. Lying isn’t something she’d expect from him – though trauma can change people.

Besides, Izuku had already been awake when she’d opened the door. It’s not at all difficult to believe that the change in his breathing pattern had merely coincided with him waking up – and not the crescendo of some terrifying, dark dream.

But surely exhaustion couldn’t still be the case?

She hops up onto the foot of Izuku’s bed, then settles herself cross-legged so she can look at him. Since she’d come into the room, he’d calmed down considerably – which is a considerable relief. He’d latched onto her presence like an emergency parachute, and now he seemed to be using that to slowly lowering himself back to firm standing.

Tomoko spends a second deciding on how she’s going to proceed. She’s always liked a mystery. Indeed, crime-dramas are one of her late-night go-tos. But she also gets the feeling that prying too hard here would only make things worse.

She settles for letting Izuku decide whether he was going to tell her or not.

“Gonna tell me what it was then?”

Izuku blinks at her, then looks down at the outline of his legs. “Jus’ scared…”

His voice is still groggy and slurred with sleep, and Tomoko doesn’t think she’ll ever not be weak to the way he’s blinking to try and clear it.

His answer makes a lot of sense, though – he has a lot to be fearful of and a lot to be disorientated by. He also doesn’t sound like he particularly wants to talk about it, which also makes sense.

Still, she presses a little further – gently trying to pry the lid off whatever it is that’s bothering him. “Anything in particular? It’s okay to be scared, kitten – I’m not gonna judge.”

Izuku looks up, and meets her eye for a moment. She wonders, in that tiny span of time, whether he’s actually going to tell her – but then he looks away again. He shakes his head, and clutches at his duvet like it’s a shield. Tomoko decides that it’d be better not to push.

“That’s okay too, Izu.” She keeps her voice soft, barely a murmur, and reaches across the gap between them so she can gently squeeze his hand. “I’m not gonna force you, but you can tell me anything – yeah? I promise I can keep a secret, no matter what nonsense Ryuko tells you!”

Izuku’s hold on his blanket slackens a little, and he smiles a timid little smile. “Thank you,” says he – in a voice so vulnerable that it makes Tomoko’s heart pang in response.

Rather than giving in to her impulsive need to wrap him up in warm hugs and platitudes, Tomoko settles for a gentle hum. She squeezes his hand again, and then stands up. “Wanna come raid the kitchen with me, then?”

Izuku had missed lunch, then slept through dinner, and that’s a perfect excuse to get him up and moving. If she could get some of Yawara’s chilli down him, she suspected that Shino might give her some sort of medal. She would take as much of that positive affirmation as she could get, quite honestly.

Tomoko grins at his brightening expression, then snorts at his emphatic little nod. Clearly, the prospect of late-night exploration is an exciting one. Well, it’s enough to distract him from his fears at the very least – and Tomoko will take that win.

The two of them tiptoe out of Izuku’s room, and Tomoko leads them both down to the ground floor. It’s a fairly long landing, but the carpeted floors lend themselves well to stealth. In truth, the other cats are used to Tomoko’s late-night wanderings, so they didn’t need to sneak about. It just adds something to the experience.

Once they’re safely sequestered in the kitchen; Tomoko flicks on the light, then helps Izuku up onto one of the bar stools that line the kitchen counter. He looks very much awake now, which makes a lot of sense considering how much time he’d spent asleep over the past couple of days.

A small part of her worries for his circadian rhythm, because this pattern is definitely not a healthy one for tiny kittens. He’s been sleeping all day, and now appears to be wide awake at three in the morning – which is a bad habit to be getting into so young. Hopefully, once he’d settled in and the hospital stay was behind them, they could coax him into healthier habits.

They can make an exception for tonight.

Tomoko hovers for a second between the fridge and the cupboards, trying to decide whether she should be a responsible adult and put something constructive down in front of Izuku. On the one hand, Izuku hadn’t eaten much since breakfast. On the other hand, it’s late – and Tomoko (despite how much she cares) can feel an impending crash coming on.

Cookies it is, then. Being responsible could be a work in progress.

Tomoko starts rummaging around in one of the cupboards for Yawara’s stash, but keeps her quirk trained on Izuku. He’s almost calm now, but there’s still some lingering stress around his shoulders.

It’s frustrating, in a way. She’s not sure what she can do to help Izuku if she doesn’t know exactly what the problem is, and can only fall back on the age-old (if infuriatingly vague) gesture of ‘being there’ for him.

She has her suspicions, of course, because Izuku had made such a point of his own perceived uselessness already that Tomoko would be hard pressed to overlook it now. However, she would just have to hope that he’d eventually open up on his own.

After a handful of seconds, Tomoko’s grasping fingers close over a Tupperware box at the back of the cupboard. “Aha!” She cries, and hefts her spoils triumphantly. “Yawara hoards all the best ones,” she explains – rattling the box in Izuku’s direction. She has her own, but they’re all mixed together in one big box and some of them might be amaretti biscuits.

She doesn’t want Izuku developing a taste for that stuff so young.

He giggles at her conspiratorial tone, and she grins back.

“Milk or juice?”

Izuku blinks, then scrunches his little face up like she’d just asked him something of galactic importance. As though the fate of the universe hinged on his answer. It’s a little too much for her to resist, unfortunately, and Tomoko has to poke one of his cheeks.

“Hey!” He cries, and grabs at her retreating hand. She lets him catch it.

“Captured!” She wails, slumping over against the counter. “Foiled! My evil plot to poke your dimples has failed! Have mercy!”

Izuku’s giggling again, and dissolves into all-out laughter when Tomoko starts batting at his arm uselessly.

She stops after a moment, grinning over the counter at him whilst he calms down. “Milk?” she guesses, and cheers when Izuku nods. “Yes! We’ll make a cat of you, yet!”

Izuku giggles again. “But you call me kitten all the time, Tomo-nee!”

She has to call on every ounce of restraint she has in order to stop herself from marching right back over to hug him silly. “It’s called conditioning, kitten,” she quips instead – fetching glasses from another cupboard. “I’m gonna start drawing whiskers on you when you’re sleeping – that’s phase two!”

Izuku squeals his horror at the implication, but accepts the glass of milk Tomoko hands him steadily. With the box tucked securely under her arm, Tomoko flicks the light off again and leads Izuku back up to his room.

Normally, she would have her late-night comfort-food sessions on the couch under a blanket, in front of some trashy drama or with a book. However, she’s acutely aware that she has a unique opportunity to turn Izuku’s new room into a positive mental space.

The only thing he’d done in his new room so far was wake up all alone, get frightened, then get taken out of it in the middle of the night. Those are all pretty negative things, and Tomoko herself wouldn’t want to spend an awful lot of time in a place she associated with those particular emotions. Let alone sleep in there.

If Izuku were to instead associate his bedroom with kitchen raiding, late-night cookie sessions, and knew that comfort is only a few moments away, then it would likely be much more comfortable for him at night. A safe space, so to speak.

It made sense to Tomoko, this theory of hers. Of course, she’d have to wait and see how well it worked in practice. Outside of the most basic of interactions, or a hero-civilian setting, she didn’t have an awful lot of experience with kids. A consequence of having such a small family.

All she could do was fall back on what she knew – making people smile.

“So!” She starts, once she and Izuku are settled again. He’s back under his blanket at the top, wiggling a little to recapture the warmth he’d lost wandering around the house, and she’s sitting cross-legged at the bottom. “I thought we could go exploring, tomorrow – or today! It’s technically today, isn’t it?”

“It’s always today, Tomo-nee.” Izuku says in a very ‘It is the considered opinion of the defence, m’lud’ tone.

Tomoko giggles, but still pelts him with a cookie crumb. “Don’t go getting smart with me, young man! I’ll have you know that three-am is no time for philosophism – ‘specially not when there’s sweets to be eaten!”

She pops a whole one into her mouth as an illustration, and snorts very-not-delicately when Izuku does the same. He looks like a chipmunk, and the look on his face when he tries to chew hints at some serious regret.

“Anyway! Exploring,” she brings them back onto topic. “Sound good? There’re loads of cool spots out in the forest, and we still haven’t shown you ‘round the house yet!”

Izuku’s doing his ‘I’m going to nod my head off and there’s nothing you can do to stop me’ routine again. “Yeah! Exploring! But,” he pauses – looking around the room. “Is the house really that big? I’ve been to the kitchen, and down the hall…”

“That’s ‘cos you’ve only ever lived in the city, Kitten! Out here,” she gestures vaguely to where ‘the outside’ might have been. “We don’t have to worry about how big we build! I haven’t even shown you Shino’s hot-spring, yet!”

Something in Izuku’s eyes sparkles. “‘ot shprwing!?” He exclaims, and Tomoko has to dodge the supersonic crumb that shoots from his mouth.

“Ah, crap! We’ve ruined you already!” She cries, and leans forward to push his chin up until his mouth closes all the way. “No talking with your mouth full! Otherwise big sis’ Shino will come and give this really long, boring lecture about manners – like really boring. I sort of wandered off this one time, and she chased me so she could chew me out about ‘being polite when people are talking’, then she started the first lecture from the beginning again…” Tomoko can feel her eyes glazing over a little. “Ryuko didn’t talk to me for a week.”

Izuku nods gravely. “Teachers are really boring,” he s`tates with all the accumulated gravitas and knowledge a five-year-old could possibly muster.

“Well, don’t be too rude to big sis’ then,” Tomoko snickers. “‘Cos she’s gonna teach you maths, probably.”

Izuku makes a ‘bleh’ face at the word ‘maths’, but then looks up at her curiously. “I’m not gonna go to school?”

Tomoko is reminded of this one, charming English saying; to assume makes an arse of you and me. They hadn’t actually discussed the whole schooling situation yet – mostly because there hadn’t been time.

Logistically, it would make more sense to send Izuku to school, just because it would leave them with more hours in the day to work. However, there’s Izuku’s own circumstances to factor in. Kids can be awfully cruel, and Izuku’s quirklessness would be a prime target for bullies. A stern parent might argue that such isolation and belittlement would ‘build character’ – but Tomoko thinks that attitude is stupid.

Kids could be cruel, sure – but they’re also vulnerable. There’s a balance to be struck between building up their emotional strength, and sending them into the lion’s den to be torn apart by merciless bullies. Just like there’s a balance to be struck between protecting them and coddling them.

Besides, Inko had clearly taken Izuku out of school for a reason – and Tomoko doesn’t want to send him back into a hostile environment if there’s any other option.

“Well,” she starts, and carefully places her glass on the carpeted floor – then leans forward on her knees. “That’s up to you, really. If you wanna go to school then we can find one for you, but you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. Big sis’ Shino is really smart, and I’m pretty good with languages,” she needs something to do in those hours before she falls asleep, after all. “So, if you want to keep learning by yourself, we can work it out and home-school you. It’s absolutely your choice though!”

“But,” and his face has crumpled so quickly that Tomoko had almost completely missed it – and she panics internally. Good job Tomoko. “But you guys m-must be s-so busy and… and I don’t wanna get in the way…”

Tomoko frowns a little as the fractures in her heart widen, because there it is again. This is becoming a running theme with Izuku – a mental hurdle that he just couldn’t seem to get over. He’d said something similar yesterday morning, and again that same afternoon (and didn’t that feel like a long time ago?). And that word, the sick little nickname that could well have come out of another child’s mouth.

‘Deku’.

She thought it extremely unlikely that he’d picked this particular brand of self-depreciation up from Inko, or that she’d been the one to put these thoughts into his head. Nobody had come to visit him in hospital. No family friends, no personal friends with parents in tow. Nobody. Nothing.

She wonders whether anyone else even cared.

She wonders whether this was what had frightened him so much. Whether this is the thing that he seemed so petrified of earlier, when she’d felt his heartrate spike. He seems to have convinced himself that, at the earliest hint of inconvenience, everyone would leave him behind – even Tomoko and her family – and that just made her unfathomably sad.

Not for the first time, she wonders who’d been the one to ruin his self-esteem so thoroughly. She wonders who might have been the one to plant this seed of self-doubt, and water it with Izuku’s own tears. She hopes, rather unprofessionally, that this person (whomever it may be) is light enough to throw into the sun.

Not that she’d actually do it – being a hero and all. A girl can dream, though.

Tomoko scoots a little closer, until she can feel his toes under her calves. “You’re not gonna get in the way, Izu.” She states, and rockets a finger up to his lips before he can counter her. “It’s impossible for you to get in the way, because we’re family – get it? Nothing’s more important than that!” She retracts her finger. “We stick together, no matter what, and that means we’re not gonna turf you out just because you’re a kitten. So, don’t worry about it – okay?”

Izuku sniffles.

Tomoko blanches.

She’d been trying to cheer him up! Now he’s crying again and oh holy shit how bad at this can you be, Tomoko!?

In a bit of a panic, she does the only thing she could think to do. She reaches over, and hauls Izuku into an awkward sort of hug over her still-crossed-legs. It’s an awful angle, terrible. Her knee feels like it’s about to explode all over again. But, as she’s discovered already, she can’t just sit back and watch Izuku crumble.

But then, just as she’s trying to fathom a way out of these new depths, he giggles wetly and pats her arm. “‘M not sad, Tomo-nee. ‘M not.” He reaches over and hugs her back, and it’s weirdly comforting despite the angle. “‘S happy crying.”

Relief surges through her, cool and soothing. Tomoko smiles against the top of Izuku’s head and lightly rubs his back. “Well, that’s good then. I’d have to go and make you hot chocolate, otherwise – and you wouldn’t want that!” She shuffles them around, so the angle isn’t quite so awkward, and relaxes into Izuku’s pillows.

She’s not surprised that Izuku still seems to be balanced on an emotional knife-edge – because she would honestly be more worried if he weren’t. This is all a part of the healing process, it’s all perfectly normal. It’s all just being exacerbated by how fast this is all going, how rapidly Izuku’s situation is changing. Tomoko’s just glad that she’s managed to muddle her way through it so far – and that they had him home now.

Izuku, now secure in her lap with his head against her stomach, yawns widely. “‘S not a punishment, Tomo-nee.” He yawns again, and Tomoko giggles at the way he snuggles into her shirt.

“It is when I make it,” she declares with a grimace – and buries a hand in his curls. “Ryuko said it was like drinking mud, the last time I tried.”

He makes a little noise of disgust. “She knows what mud tastes like?”

Tomoko snorts. “Yeah I dunno either… Maybe you can ask?”

Izuku hums, then twists onto his other side. Tomoko smiles down at him in the dark, and pulls the duvet back up so it’s covering the two of them. Normally, she’d be pretty keen to get back to her own bed – because her knee always found new and inventive ways to torture her if she fell asleep with it at an odd angle. At this stage, however, it’ll be better for the both of them if she just accepts her fate, because she’s been comprehensively Izuku-ed.

Still, for the sake of posterity, she asks the question. “You’re not gonna let me go, are you?”

He’s already asleep.

But that’s fine.