Work Text:
Blood burnt and given,
From furnace called,
Thy death forgiven
and soul enthralled.
Izuku was never going to be the crafter that his mother had been. Her detailwork had always been amazing, flawless, her skill of magic perfect for pulling small pieces into place without having to use her hands or tools. Selling her pieces, the works of clay that she made, had been enough to support them to live spartically but comfortably and Izuku had always hoped he would have been able to follow in her footsteps, and continue her craft. Even when failure seemed to be the one consistent thing in the pieces that he was making, he had believed that hard work would compensate for his own lack of mastery of the magic his mother possessed.
“It’s not bad,” She had said with a soft smile, drinking out of the chipped mug that he had made when he was six. “A few mistakes and cracks just means that nothing can be trapped inside.”
Izuku never gave up, over and over again he tried, her hands guiding him on the potter’s wheel, carefully forming the clay. He did it perfectly, his mother as well told him so, yet they always cracked, pieces lost and even the simplest of mugs and plates would rarely withstand the heat of the furnace. The few that did survive revealed cracks within the hour after the beginning of the cooling-stage.
As he forwent the potter's-wheel and formed a small clay bunny with his hands, drawing the whiskers with the tip of a knife, he found that it did not break. Not at first. He even kept it by him, hidden from his mother’s view to make sure that no cracks would form, to finally show her a finished piece. He remembered how shocked she had been, asking where he got the idea to make a craft out of something living as he showed her the bunny in his hands, how her hands had shaken when she took it, and placed it on the shelf in the kitchen.
How sad he had been when they had been eating dinner only for it to slide off the shelf to shatter against the ground.
“Why don’t you try something else?” She said, a gentle smile and sadness in her eyes as she looked at his hands, calloused from work that never fully succeeded.
His greatest shame was to not even be able to form the urn that her ashes was kept in. Instead, one of her own crafts stood as her final resting-place above the furnace in her workshop. The workshop that now belonged to him, by default by her passing.
And Izuku was alone.
Izuku balanced the book on his knees as he sat cross-legged, following the ink with his finger as he read along. It was nothing like any spell-book that he managed to catch a glimpse of before. Nothing like the huge tomes written in languages that few could read and fewer still knew how to actually pronounce, hidden behind rows and rows of wards and enchanted glass and stone. Nothing like he had expected, finding it tucked away behind some of his mother’s creations.
In comparison to those old tomes, this read more like a book of recipes.
Handwritten with care, instructions and corrections, hints and tips in the margins of the pages in a style of writing that was not far off from his own. Even just through the words and theories that were rambled inside, he felt a kinship, made him drawn to it and convinced him that it was at least worth a shot. If only to pay some sort of respect to the book’s author.
Clearly it was a work of passion; and considering the subject of the book…
Whoever had written the instructions and the directions for this type of magic must have been very, very lonely to spend what must have taken years to figure out a way to bring clay to life, to create a facsimile of family, of bonds.
Izuku hoped for his own sake, and for theirs, that it worked.
Putting the book to the side, Izuku wet his hands in the bowl beside him, and reached for the clay, glancing to the side of the form of wires that he had made as a blueprint, his father’s old clothes that he had dug up underneath the wires as yet another way to get the proportions right. (He had taken one look at his mother’s clothes, and the crawling grief and aversion over his skin had convinced him to not even try).
It wasn’t easy work, forming limbs, the torso and the head to piece together, keeping each individual part sealed and wrapped, until he could merge them together.
The complete body of clay formed after hours upon hours of gruelling work.
Finally, he took the knife from the ground, glancing at the book before making a shallow line in his forearm, letting the blood drip down on the wet clay beneath. The book had specified it as a binding element, like eggs in a pastry.
“Please,” Izuku spoke his wish. “I don’t need much, I just don’t want to be alone.”
After haphazardly wrapping his arm with a towel, he set to work placing the body inside of the furnace, tried to not think about the images that had conjured up in his mind as his mother’s urn was placed in his hands, and busied himself and his hands with getting the furnace going hot and strong, settling down for a long night next to the bellows.
Watching the flames, and watching the clay-figure inside Izuku curled his knees into himself. Tightening his arms around them. Hope chased every negative thought away. If it failed, it wouldn’t change his situation and he would just have to make new plans tomorrow. Maybe go to the master-smith again and try to prove himself a second time, that he was not too young, that he could handle the toll it would take on his body. That he could meet any challenge that the smith would put him to before taking him up as an apprentice.
He managed to stay awake for hours, the flame steady and hot soothing, his mind filled with memories. His eyes drooped, and as sleepiness settled in he somehow convinced himself that he would be able to take a short nap before continuing his watch.
He slept in front of that heat that night, shivering when the flames stopped, and then relaxed as a blanket was placed over his sleeping form, a hand pulling through his hair.
Izuku awoke the next morning to the smell of fresh bread, something he had not smelled since his mother passed.
He sprung up, the blanket falling off of him, looking down to find a pillow that was distinctively not there before he went to sleep. He had decisively been trying to not make himself comfortable, determined to keep the flames going and the furnace as hot as it needed to be to…
Izuku twisted and turned to the furnace, since long gone cold and dark.
And the inside of it was empty.
His first, irrational thought was that the clay had completely shattered and he would find nothing but dust inside, yet the other explanation felt just as unlikely.
Then suddenly, it wasn’t.
“Good morning, my boy.” There was a man standing in the opening to the workshop, a warm smile on his face and his father’s old clothes on his body. He would have looked alive, except for the missing eyes in his sockets, dark nothingness behind, even as Izuku felt something like a gaze right at him. The smile, as well, showed the emptiness within as the man moved his lips to speak. “You’ve been so hard at work that I thought I would make you some breakfast before waking you up.”
Izuku scrambled up to stand, his eyes as wide as saucers as he looked at the man, the face instantly recognizable as he had formed it himself the very night before. “You…” he opened and closed his mouth like a fish, mind blanking except for the fact that it worked.
“Yes, my son?” The man smiled, tilted his head and Izuku caught himself on the word, and his creation narrowed the hollows of his eyes. Did he not know? “Is something wrong, Izuku?”
“Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine!” Izuku braved a smile, and fighting against the dryness in his throat he looked towards the man. “Dad?”
“Yes?” The man tilted his head, an amused quirk to his eyebrow. The man stepped up in front of him, a large hand ruffling his hair affectionately and bending down to pick the blanket up, wrapping it yet again around Izuku’s body. “Are you still a bit sleepy?”
With shaking hands Izuku held the blanket like a cape, staring up. Last night he had really struggled to get the body in one piece into the furnace, but seeing him standing up and walking made Izuku realize just how big and tall he was.
Father. He had rarely missed having a father, his real one leaving them at some point far before any lasting remembrance had been made except from scattered images. While there had never been a lack of love and care from his mother raising him on her own, there had been days where he had wondered how it would have been to have Father there with them during the good and the bad times.
How much he had ached for one when his mother’s accident occurred.
"I didn't see any dishes from yesterday, did you eat dinner? A growing boy must think of his diet, after all." As if on cue, Izuku's stomach rumbled and the man made from clay let out a fond laugh in an exhale that Izuku wasn’t sure that he actually needed.
“Let me take care of that, then.”
For a few weeks, it was everything he had imagined it to be to have a Father.
Father helped him cook and clean, took special care of the things that Izuku felt were still too sore to touch, the grief of losing his mother lingering over them like a fog. The workshop was such a thing, though he told Father to not go in there as well. Izuku attempted it a few times, sneaking in like he was hiding from his own shame to yet again try to learn his mother’s craft. After cracks and broken clay, the intrusive memories much too strong, he spent less and less time there.
He moved his mother's urn to the kitchen.
Spending more time with Father, he noticed that the man never questioned why there were no other adults around to visit, why Izuku wasn’t going to school.
Even while making food for Izuku with ingredients that Izuku bought with the money that his mother had left behind, he never tried to eat.
When Izuku awoke from a nightmare, shooting up in bed dreaming of fire, Father was there in a second. Gently talking to him, humming, until he fell asleep. The clay creation apparently had no need of rest either, even as he chided Izuku about staying up too late, blowing out the candle that Izuku had lit to write and read in his books far after sunset.
Father never brought up those discrepancies, between himself and his presumed son .
“Are you worried for me?” Father asked, as Izuku sat by him one evening, looking at the oh so human-like skin of Father, searching for tracks of any chip or fissure. The man allowed him to twist the limbs, an amused and indulging smile on his face. “There’s nothing for you to worry about. I will not leave you alone, no matter what.”
Not even through death, Izuku’s wish echoed.
The promise rang true, but it didn’t change the fact that Izuku was running out of the money that his mother had saved up before her passing. While his father looked mostly human there were pieces of him that were decidedly not so. The emptiness for one. The perpetual coldness and unusual firmness of his skin. Izuku did not think that the man would be able to find work and he wasn’t quite sure he was ready for others to know what he had done.
Would it be seen as unethical?
It was with that, that he steeled his heart opening the door to his mother’s workshop yet again. He had been grueling about it the entire day, and night had made an entrance as he finally stepped inside with a candle in hand, the light sweeping over the room and revealing a fine layer of dust over the craftsmanship that his mother had put her soul and effort into. Izuku winced as he saw it, hands twisting together. He had managed to create Father, he should be able to pick up the rest of the craft now. No more breaking and shattering.
As he started to move to clean, the rattling sound from one of his mother’s cups caught his ears, and he raised a candle to look inside. His eyes widening, as he poured the contents out into his palm. The small, broken clay bunny laid in his hand, and Izuku stroked his fingers over the shattered pieces.
He didn’t think she had kept it.
Maybe he could fix it? Izuku turned around to see if he could find any bits of usable clay that hadn’t been destroyed in his neglect, and froze.
Father was flipping through the book that had been left lying on the floor since his creation, empty eyes that were taking in the pages, even as the light Izuku had didn’t reach him. For the first time since Father woke him up, there was a frown on the face, a frown that disappeared slowly into a grin as he shifted to look at where Izuku was standing.
“This is quite an interesting thing.” He said, and Izuku was frozen with the firm pieces of the bunny cutting into his hand, staring at Father. Nothingness stared back. “And it does give some explanation, how I came to be here with you, my son.”
As if Father was looking at his hands for the first time, he twisted them, not unlike the habit Izuku had gotten into. Tracing the pages of the book in the darkness, as if he needed no light to see the text. "Some answers of who I am." He smiled, corrected himself. “ What I am.”
“I’m sorry.” Izuku said, feeling heavy guilt falling down around him, what he had done, forcing his creation to play along with him.
Father looked confused, closing the book with a decisive snap. "What are you apologising for?"
"Because you're not…" Izuku trailed off. He didn’t want to say the actual words that he himself had pushed away during the weeks of pretend, scratching at his arm with his hand nervously. He didn't look up as Father came to stand by him.
“Do you still wish to be my child, Izuku?” Father lifted Izuku’s chin with a gentle and cold hand, the book still in his other as Izuku looked up into the empty hollows of his eyes.
Izuku nodded.
"Then I don't see what the problem is." Father bent down, placed a kiss on his forehead. "You called for me, and I am here with you now, to help you and fix all of your cracks and fractures.” Izuku didn’t see the gaze shift, but Father took the pieces of the bunny from his hands, looked it over with a small smile. “Like this one.”
Izuku blinked, looked at the pieces of his very first successful figure, and up at Father. “You can fix it?”
“I have no doubt, I am your Father after all.”
Father put the pieces down on the workbench, and after a bit of searching Izuku found some workable clay, and set it beside the small broken form as Izuku settled down next to Father on the chair where he had spent many days beside his mother. It felt nostalgic.
As he watched his Father work, practicing with pieces of clay to form small and delicate shapes, Izuku started to feel drowsy, the hours passing. As the candle burnt down, Father continued to work in the darkness, his empty eyes seemingly needing no light.
Izuku finally allowed sleep to take him, leaning onto the moving, cold form of his own making.
He awoke at some point in the night, eerily like that first time when he fell asleep in the workshop. A pillow under his head, and a soft and warm blanket over his body. The room was seemingly empty, the door askew.
The furnace burning.
Izuku scuffled a bit closer to the heat, glanced up just to see Father return through the door. Through the shadow he didn’t see much, but it looked like his dad was carrying something, a small strangely formed bag.
It sort of looked like a bunny, Izuku thought through the sleep-addled haziness, and then he let sleep take him yet again.
“Izuku, my boy, wake up.” Father whispered, a delighted tone filled with warm fondness colouring his words. Izuku stirred, the floor cold and hard beneath him, so much alike as when Father had first woken up. The fire was still going strong in the furnace, and something even smelled delicious like cooked meat. “I have something to show you.”
Izuku’s eyes were blurry with sleep, a small bit of the morning sun cresting in through the crack of a window as Father turned him and pointed to something on the floor further away.
He must still be dreaming. On the floor the small clay bunny was jumping around, looking alive except for its dimmute size, and the very clear cut where Izuku knew that it had split open back when it shattered.
He looked towards Father, who gestured towards the bunny that was pausing its hops. Completely still, it looked like it had never been alive. “You’re not surprised are you? After all, you brought me back to life.”
Father stepped further into the center of the room, away from the workbench and motioned Izuku to follow him towards the bunny. Izuku inched forward, kneeling down and holding his hands out, captured and fascinated at the small bunny jumping into his palms. It was cold, the very small nose of it twitching a bit as he held it up to inspect it closer. As its nose twitched, Izuku noticed the smell, and looked closer. There was not only clay in the merged parts.
The smell of the furnace had hid it, but once Izuku started to look for it the smell of iron was strong.
“Blood to bind, my child.” Father said, as he noticed Izuku’s furrowed brow, as Izuku stood up and turned to face him. The small bunny trembling in his open palms. “Of course, you’re not supposed to use your own blood, but I don’t think I was too clear about that while writing the instructions. I never did assume someone else would ever use them, you least of all.”
Izuku felt a shiver down his spine even in the heat from the furnace; tiredness breaking away as the words registered.
As his gaze slipped past Father’s form to land on the workbench behind him.
There on the table, was a small clay doll. Its eyes black holes and the mouth a slit where lips should be. Much more simpler than the one that Father had woken up from, that he had made, yet the simplistic style still gave way to familiarity.
His own features looked back at him from the unburnt clay.
”Look at how cute you’re going to be.” Father had moved, swept around Izuku to stand by his back and he put his hands on Izuku’s shoulders, squeezing with a strength that formed bruises into his skin. “We’ll be a real family, then.” The moment the grip on his shoulders loosened Izuku pulled himself free.
He managed two steps, before the shadow overtook him.
Izuku felt his skull crack.
The estate had been in disappointing disrepair when he had returned.
Clay dolls of different make and size crowded the rooms, on every shelf and every open space. A few even finding themselves in the corners of the floor. Not yet discarded but disused. The work-desk still had some of his unfinished projects on them, a couple of new limbs to replace those lost, a half-moulded face that had dried and been ruined for long after his protective spells had stopped working.
It would be a bit of a hassle to clean up. With a few words some of his selected dolls came to life to help along, Kurogiri cracking in places as he moved, pieces of his soul drifting through the cracks like black embers. It was something to be fixed once All for One fully settled back into the estate, along with the newest one in his collection.
Izuku fit snugly in his elbow, the arms bent to hold the bunny of clay as well, as All for One carried him around the house, delightedly seeing that at least no one had dared to enter since his death.
Never would he have thought, to return the very creature that he himself had brought into being.
Blood of kin to call him, his own spells to bind him.
Of course, the blood was supposed to be from whomever the summoner wished to bind , not from the summoner himself. Presumably, Izuku being his child had been acceptable enough for the spell to work, even if the binding itself had been flawed.
The fact that Inko had kept the book was still mildly surprising. If the binding had been done correctly, he might never have remembered who he had been. It was perhaps not too much of a terrible fate, playing the role of Father to the very son whose upbringing he had lost with his unfortunate death.
He much preferred to be back with his collection, this time with his son by his side.
The small doll was yet unmoving, even as the fire of the soul burned within it. An almost unnoticeable sound caught his ears as he looked down on it with a furrowed brow, lifted its clay arms and moved it carefully around, twisting the limbs back and forth to inspect the normally smooth surface. He clicked his tongue in displeasure as he saw the small cracks that had formed, travelling like a lightning tree down the arms and into the fingers of the doll. The tip of one of the fingers had broken loose, and a quick glance towards the floor made it known that making a new piece would take much less time than trying to find the one that had fallen away.
His sigh was fond, annoyance betrayed by a smile creeping over his lips as he lifted the doll to look into the deceptively empty eyes.
”You’re quite an upkeep, my son.” All for One said, looking closer on the cracks. The arms would manage another night without breaking, and fixing them today wouldn’t change the fact that his boy would continue to try and break his prison. “But don’t you worry, I won’t let you break.”
“And you will never be alone.”