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“Izuku, sweetheart, it is time.”
Looking at her son sitting slumped at the end of the bed, hunched over his knees, head hung low, Inko Midoriya felt her heart break for what must be the thousandth time.
When she had been young, her heart had been a large, warm thing with room for all comers.
Inko fell in love fast, made friends easily and with a naivety that only came from a childhood full of safety and the love of those nearest and dearest to her.
The first time her heart had been truly broken was when her beloved father had died.
Nineteen and pregnant with Izuku, the thought that he would never meet his grandfather had torn something loose inside Inko.
Through that crack the darkness of the world had started to seep in. Like the tide, with each wave the everyday sadness of the world crept inside her.
Her father had been the tent post of her happy little world.
Without him to protect her and hold the world at bay, all the terrible little realities of adulthood descended upon her like a collapsing bigtop.
Caught between the heavy weight of her grief and the fears of impending motherhood, Inko’s safe little world seemed to disappear overnight.
Her husband's, Hisashi, reaction to her unhappiness was to constantly daydream about starting over in America. A fresh start! A place to complete their postgraduate degrees.
He ignored Inko’s protests about not wanting to move to a strange country where she didn’t speak the language. Hisashi’s own strained relationship with his parents made it impossible for him to understand why Inko didn’t want to move away from her newly widowed mother and all her friends.
A high school romance come good, Inko’s large foolish heart had loved Hisashi Midoriya with all the obsession her teenage girl soul could have mustered.
She loved him manically, like a pop star, superhero and fairy prince made manifest. So big was Inko’s foolish little girlish heart, that the reality of the kind of boy Hisashi was, got lost in the wide open spaces of her adoration.
The character flaws of the boy who had been her first everything were overlooked because it was easier to focus on his pretty eyes and on the kisses that made her cheeks warm and pulse beat flicker fast.
His wide smile and easy laugh had been charming and not mean.
The confidence with which he did everything was a strength, rather than selfishness.
The way everything had to be done to his specifications and standard spoke to his superior and meticulous nature.
It wasn’t until they moved in together after the wedding that Inko’s heart started to shrivel enough to see that Hisashi didn’t see her as a beloved partner and lover, but more as a dutiful subject.
Or maid, as all the chores of everyday life fell on her, making Inko’s restlessness grow. As the heavy weight of the child inside her belly grew, so did Inko’s awareness of her husband's flaws.
Inko knew it was common for mothers to have anxious dreams about their children’s future. But, in the wake of her father’s sudden death, Inko’s dreams were filled with visions of her future life with Hisashi.
His insistence that she smile for photographs in the face of her grief, as not to ruin their memories, made her nostrils flare.
His dismissal of her every mood and want as “pregnancy hormones” made her fists clench.
His refusal to take any interest in planning for their baby's arrival had left Inko alone to paint the nursery and fill it with furniture.
It seemed to Inko that if she wasn’t in complete compliance, then she wasn’t worth Hisashi’s time.
In the dark of the night, with the ripping sound of Hisashi’s snores filling her ears and the kicking of her child battering her insides, Inko’s thoughts of the future started to weave down dark paths.
One persistent whisper started to spread throughout her soul and threaded it's dark coils through her shrinking heart - “Hisashi will never be the man her father was.”
Her father had been a big man with an even bigger laugh. Who had always cooked too much food and sang too loud. He fed the neighbourhood cats and checked in on his elderly neighbours.
It was that kindness that had killed him in the end.
Hisashi, by contrast, was clever, with cutting humour and skilled hands. Top of their class and the student council's vice president, he was charming, handsome and knew how popular he was.
At sixteen he had been every girl’s dream - Inko’s included.
But at twenty, pregnant with his child, a child he blamed for ‘ruining their future’ - Inko had started to see the selfishness and vanity behind his every action.
Inko couldn’t figure out if Hisashi had changed, or if she had just been so blinded by her luck in ‘snagging him’ to see. Hisashi’s clever hands and nimble fingers, which had led his basketball team to victory, had made him a skilled lover.
Maybe it was the orgasms that had made Inko unable to see the fact that Hisashi refused to grow up.
Newly married, the baby had been an accident made on their honeymoon.
When Inko had realised she was pregnant, she had been so shocked, but also happy. Hisashi and she had created a person! A little human made from their love.
The timing would change their future by only a year or two. They had spoken of having children after university, having their first during their studies wasn’t that big of a change.
Hisashi disagreed. Loudly and repeatedly.
He berated Inko for her carelessness, as if he hadn’t had any part in not putting the condom on.
Hearing Hisashi talk, the pregnancy was the worst thing to ever happen to his perfect and carefully planned world.
A catastrophe that upset all his meticulously scheduled plans.
Maybe that had been the start of her heart breaking and not her father’s death.
Being forced to listen as Hisashi wished that their baby wasn’t real. Hearing the resentment in his voice. Seeing the petty darkness in his soul.
Inko missed her father so much then, she wished with all her stuttering heart that he had been there to talk her through her growing doubts.
It was so easy to imagine the sort of grandfather he would have been, full of stories, songs and good food.
It wasn't very hard to imagine what kind of father Hisashi ‘The Prince of Penau’ would be.
Inko couldn’t imagine Hisashi helping at all, let alone changing his baby's diaper, when he couldn’t even bring himself to load the dishwasher or do his own laundry.
Here she was, living with the love of her life, with a new life growing inside her, a constant companion, and yet she felt more alone in those last long months of her pregnancy than she ever had before.
Her highschool friends had all moved into the city for school and work. Her sister was up north with her husband and new baby. Her mother just wished to be left alone to grieve in private.
Inko felt ashamed of her own grief, it felt like a very public thing.
Visibly pregnant, people kept stopping her to chat about the future.
A future without her father. A future as Hisashi’s maid, instead of his wife.
The smile she faked for Hisashi was a fixed feature now. A grimace wide and toothy as a permanent feature on her face.
She wheeled it out for doctors, neighbours and so many others that there were moments she forgot to drop it and was startled by the grinning monster she saw in the mirror.
As her baby became more real, kicking up a storm, she felt less and less like herself. As her belly expanded she felt as though her soul was shrinking. The girl she had been was disappearing, slowly compacticing into the small parts of her body untouched by her pregnancy.
Inko daydreamed of being a caterpillar in a cocoon, the pregnancy turning her guts to mush as it reshaped her into the woman she was destined to be.
On good days she dreamt of emerging fully formed as the perfect version of a wife and mother. On bad days she knew the truth of herself, she was just a silly little girl, crying in the corner, wanting her dad.
She tried to sing her father's favourite songs to the baby inside of her, but she could never make it to the end without tears.
Everything was a reminder that her child was going to be born into the wrong world.
The last two months of her pregnancy passed in a haze, her exhaustion and grief creating a fog that stole her memory and motivation.
When the contractions began, Inko slammed back into her body as if she had been drifting along behind it, like a balloon. Her mother was there, and they were in the hospital. How they had gotten there she would never know.
Hisashi was notably absent, away with friends on an island vacation, one last hurrah before he became a ‘father and husband’.
Her mother held her hand and told her to breathe, as the drugs and pain pushed her out of her body again and the long hours of her labour became a strange movie she was watching in her own mind.
The baby’s first scream summoned her back into herself. Her mother had tears in her eyes, and the first smile Inko had seen on her face since they had lost her father.
“Oh, Inko, honey, he looks just like your dad!”
A beaming nurse put the wailing blanket into Inko’s arms and pushed the edge aside, so Inko could see the tiny face of her screaming son.
He looked like an old boiled turnip.
Pale skin blotched purple with the strength of his cries. His little scrunched face streaming tears and snot, his wails making his thick thatch of damp dark green hair vibrate with his woe.
He looked like Inko felt, enraged at being forced to exist in this new world. Upset that he had been torn from his safe, warm existence into this harsher one.
She’d known his name from the moment her father died. Inko’s world wasn’t right unless there was an Izuku in it.
And now there was one again. Izuku Midoriya came into the world kicking and screaming. Crying and fighting, and the first person he saved was his mother.
Inko clutched him close and began to sob alongside her son, her battered heart and exhausted body giving into the weight of her grief.
Later she sat by the window, rocking her son as he fed and watched the sun rise on a world that had meaning again. The pulse of her nipple in her son's mouth reminding her that her heart wasn’t a broken thing after all.
Hisashi arrived two days later, hungover and thoroughly unimpressed by his son.
The last straw, Inko had told him that unless he changed his ways, he wouldn’t have a son.
Indignant, Hisashi had left in a huff and moved into a hotel.
Informed her by email four weeks later that he had accepted a place in a postgraduate program in America and that maybe it was best for her and the baby to stay here to be close to Inko’s mother in her time of grief.
Anger flared, but was soon quenched by Izuku’s first real smile.
Instead of feeling abandoned, Inko felt blessed. Her mother had been right, when little Izuku smiled he did look like his namesake.
Inko’s heart was a bruised thing, forever changed by grief, battered and a little broken, it beat again in time with her son's.
Every laugh and smile healed it a little more. They were a team, the two of them. Every milestone warmed the dark shadows like the sun on a cloudy summer day.
Then when Izuku was four, the quirk specialist made his diagnosis and Inko’s heart broke again alongside her son's.
Forever linked, she struggled to help him through a grief no child should have to experience. Her words were imperfect, but her hugs were plentiful and warm.
After that day, Inko found her heart breaking as often as it beat with joy. Watching her son suffer and struggle was an ache unlike anything she had experienced before.
The stress of it frayed the ends of her.
But if Inko’s heart was a fragile thing, she learned over the next ten years that her son’s heart was the engine of a tank. The artillery shells of being quirkless hit him, rocked him, but onwards he chugged, shrugging off the blows.
Constant and strong, she watched Izuku pick himself and his dreams up over and over again and soldier on. He dried his tears, and used his father's quick wits to think himself a path through his sorrow.
Her father’s smile shone in his face as he filled notebook after notebook with his plans for the future.
She knew about the bullying. Her heart twisted again as she spoke to his teachers about what could be done.
She was condescendingly informed that it was preparation for what he would face in society at large for being quirkless.
Inko thought about pulling him from school, but when she discussed it with Izuku he had begged to stay.
He loved school, and the bullies didn’t mean it. They just didn’t know any better.
“They should know better! Tell me their names, so I can at least speak to their parents.” Inko demanded, arms crossed.
“...no.” Izuku said, his bottom lip pushed out and pouting, making the split on it even more obvious.
It was the first time Izuku had refused her anything.
“No?”
“It won’t be different anywhere else! At least here I know that-”
“You know what, Izuku?” Inko scolded, the same condescension creeping into her voice that she had heard in the school principal's.
“That they don’t really hate me...” Izuku insisted defiantly.
Inko couldn’t help scoffing, “What makes you think that? Did they say something?”
“No… it’s just something I know. Heroes aren’t cruel! And Kac-ak, And THEY don’t mean it!”
Kacchan.
Katsuki Bakugou, Mitsuki’s son. Izuku’s former playmate.
If his teenage temperament was anything like his mothers, then chances were Izuku was right and he didn’t mean it. All bluster and pride, Mitsuki had been known in highschool as “Desert Flower”, her sand coloured good looks and tendency to be full of hot air.
Sharp barbwire thoughts cut into Inko's fragile heart. Whispering that she was a bad parent, that Izuku was suffering, that she should take her son and run.
But anywhere they started again, Izuku would still be quirkless, the judgement of the world and his peers would remain the same.
Would speaking to Mitsuki change anything? Inko had never been good at confrontation. What would her father have advised?
“I trust you, my little leaf.”
Did Inko trust Izuku? Enough to make his own mistakes? Enough to pick his own battles?
In the harsh light of their small kitchen, six year old Izuku planted his feet in the face of the supreme being of his life and yelled his defiance.
“I AM NOT LEAVING HIM!”
Inko blinked back tears and wished for a mere drop of her son’s courage.
“Ok, Zuzu… you can stay. But I have one condition.”
“What?” Izuku asked suspiciously.
“Everyday, you have to tell me everything. The good and the bad. I want to hear about all your gold stickers AND about the mean words your classmates said…”
“But! I-”
“No, little leaf, this isn’t up for negotiation. You will tell me, and then we will talk about how silly they are and you will give me a hug. I’ve had people say mean things to me before… and if you don’t talk about it, they can start to become real. You can start to believe them.”
Izuku was clearly shocked, his own woes forgotten in defense of Inko, “WHO said mean things to you?”
Inko swallowed heavily as the words ‘your father’ went unsaid.
“No one you know Zuzu, it was a long time ago… but I need you to trust me on this.”
“Ok, mama.” Izuku agreed reluctantly.
“I will trust you to fight your own battles, little leaf.” She said, gathering him up into her arms for a cuddle, “But you have to trust me enough to watch. I’m your backup, if things go wrong.”
“My hero partner!?” Izuku exclaimed, eyes full of wonder.
“Always, sweetheart. We can be-”
“Small Might! AnnnnD - MummyEYE!”
“Mummy-eye?”
“Like Nighteye! But you are always watching with your mummy eyes.”
Inko laughed at that, and kissed the top of her son’s head before setting him down at the table with his crayons.
“Ok. Mummy-eye it is… Hmmm, I’m going to need a costume. Do you know anyone who could design one for me?”
“Me! Me!” Izuku volunteered, raising his hand.
Inko watched as her son sketched her hero outfit, and thought about her father. It had almost felt real when she heard the words “Trust him” in her head.
Was she going mad in her grief? She was the parent here, wasn’t it foolish to let her son pick his own battles while acting as cheerleader?
The world turned and her little fighter decided to take on the whole world.
Each new battle broke Inko a little more.
So brave was her armoured hearted son.
She had been her father’s little leaf, but Izuku was her little tank.
Like a slow moving artillery vehicle, Izuku moved through life relentlessly. His steady tracks bumping over all the obstacles put in his path.
Instead of bitterness and rage, his heart was fueled by kindness; he chugged along, breaking down walls and befriending enemies. Protecting them all behind the sturdy plated walls of his resolve.
All Might once said he had chosen Izuku because he had the soul of a hero. Inko knew the truth - her son had the soul of a warrior.
As the years passed and the scars on Izuku’s body grew, Inko’s heart broke over and over for her son.
She watched him lose teachers, friends and mentors.
She sat vigil by his bedside so many times she had a hospital go bag packed by the door, ready at all times.
But as many times as her heart broke, it was mended by Izuku’s love and relentless spirit. Like a Kintsugi pot, fused back together with gold, Inko was repaired by her son’s triumphs.
He had always been her hero, and as he grew he became the world’s.
By the time Wonder Duo became the number one heroes in japan, Inko's gold plated heart was a much mended thing.
Beautiful and hers, forged through her love of Izuku and a life well lived. Strengthening through experience, it only occasionally chipped as Izuku and Katsuki risked their lives to save others.
It was no longer the warm and welcoming heart she had owned as a girl, but rather a small, cool, porcelain shell that had room inside for Izuku and Izuku alone.
It was enough.
Until now.
Izuku’s curled form on the edge of the bed and silent tears broke her heart all over again.
As she watched her son sob into an old All Might sweatshirt, long mended cracks shook and shifted as Inko felt her soul start to falter.
So many times over the years she had watched him throw himself into battle and her fear had broken her. Later, safe and bruised, Izuku would introduce her to the person he had saved and begin the process of tenderly putting her back together.
Fusing Inko’s cracked pieces together with the shiny golden threads of love.
They say your children will teach you humility, but Inko had always found Izuku a source of strength. He taught her about resilience and hope. Through him she relearned what she had forgotten about kindness and forgiveness.
Her father had believed in second chances and seeing the best of people. It made her smile to think that his legacy lived on in Izuku.
She had tried through the years to be worthy of Izuku’s faith and love.
This time it was finally her turn to mend and support him. To catch the breaking pieces of his heart and help her son find his way back to himself after this was all over.
They had known this day was coming. The doctors had been telling them for weeks that this was the only possible outcome.
The decision had been made, the date had been set, goodbyes had been said and everyone except for Izuku had made a sad peace with the fact that today was the last day on earth for one of the earth’s mightiest heroes.
Inko knew her son though, he never gave up and fought with all of himself. In a world full of people with miraculous powers, he was the true miracle - someone who believed everything would be okay so hard, that he could make it happen.
This time, however, there would be no last minute reprieve. No amount of super strength or stubbornness could fight against the darkness this day was destined to hold.
Inko placed a soft hand on her son’s shoulder and broke him out of his soft crying.
“I - I don’t know if I c-can do this.” Izuku whispered, staring at the All Might hoodie in his lap.
“Aizawa called from the hospice, the doctors are making the preparations. He is awake and asking for you.”
Izuku looked up at that, green eyes, so much like her father's, full of tears.
“I-I don’t know how to live in a world that doesn’t have him in it.”
Crack! went Inko’s kintsugi heart, threatening to break as she heard the words she had thought so many times come out of her son's mouth.
Taking a deep breath, she centered herself, and sent a flash fire of love and resolve through her soul. The broken parts of her heated for a moment, softening enough to fuse back together.
Today was not a day for falling apart. Izuku needed his mother.
Deku needed Mummy-eye to face this final fight.
She sat down beside him and passed him a tissue from her bra.
No one had been there to talk to her the day her world had changed.
Hisashi, out of town on a trip with friends. Inko had received the call that her father was dead and then been left alone in the apartment.
She had hugged her stomach, rocking and crying around the baby inside her, before brushing herself off and somehow making it over to her mother's house.
So much of that day was lost to the haze of shock.
“Did I ever tell you about the day your grandfather died?”
“N-no...” Izuku said, curious. “You don’t talk about him much…”
“I loved him so much. He was my whole world.” Inko stretched her arm out around Izuku’s broad shoulder and pulled him in to lean on her, like she had done when he was a much smaller boy.
“...I think sometimes maybe that is why things didn’t work out with your father. Because when someone like your grandfather exists, it was hard not to compare other people to him and find them lacking… he was a little like you in that way.” Inko continued, smiling softly.
“I-I’m not-”
“You are.” She insisted with the surety only mothers have. “You are my son, and I love you more than anyone in the world... And, I have a lot of competition.”
Izuku sniffled, loudly blowing his nose as a way of showing his disagreement.
“You were always special to me - my little hero. But it took me a long time to see you were special to the world too. You save people... you saved me.”
“Mu-” Izuku objected, trying to pull away.
“Shh. And listen.”
Grumbling, Izuku leaned into her, settling to the sound of her voice like the fussy baby he had once been.
“I’m not sure that you have ever met someone and not left them the better for it…”
“I-”
“Shh Zuzu… let me finish. You save people, you have been doing it since the day you were born… but because of that… days like today are always going to be hardest on you. Because there are some things, like old age and sickness, that you can’t save people from.”
“If we had more time, he could-”
“Live on in pain? He has made his wishes clear. He doesn’t want to live like this. This isn’t how he wants to be remembered, as a broken, frail thing trapped in bed.”
“I know…” Izuku replied sulkily into her shoulder.
“You don’t. And that is your magic, my father's too. I know you have seen some terrible things in your time as a hero… but you have never accepted them. If you could just help one more person, it would all work out. And it has, my love He has had a good life, Izuku, you were part of that, his legacy is going to live on in you. It is why he chose you.”
“It’s why I chose him too!”
“I remember…” Inko chuckled, “Barely able to walk and he was already your whole world.”
She gripped Izuku’s shoulder hard, seeking his strength to say the next part, “I didn’t get to say goodbye to your grandfather. It is the one thing I wish I could change. To get to see him one last time and let him know how much I loved him… Instead he was gone. Taken. And I will never know if he was afraid, or felt alone. Nobody knows what his last moments were like - did he suffer? Did he cry out for me? Was there anything he wished he could have said before he was gone...”
The tears started then, escaping past the guilt of years.
Izuku wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close, handing her back the soiled tissue in an effort to help - for some reason it made her laugh.
“Sorry, Zuzu… I- I didn’t mean to… I know this is horrible and unfair. And I can’t imagine how much it hurts. But, love. I know exactly how much it hurts when you aren’t there when someone dies - you know that too.”
Izuku nodded into her shoulder, his tears soaking her as he clutched her close.
“So we will have our cry, and then we will go to the hospice, because that way we'll know. There will be no doubts in the dark about what his last moments were like. He will feel loved and he will not be alone when his time comes. We can do that for him - and then you will come home with me and we will cry some more…”
Izuku’s sobs were so loud now, Inko didn’t think that he could possibly hear what she was saying, so she just held him as his grief at losing part of himself shattered his armoured heart like it was a brittle thing.
Miracle that he was, Inko watched as Izuku reached deep inside himself and clutched tight the inner strength that had seen him through so many fights that others would have lost.
“W-we will have ice cream and Katsudon after?” The hero Deku asked his mother in the shaky voice of his seven year old self.
“As much as you can eat.” She agreed.
“I-I can eat an awful lot now…” He said, raising his head to meet her eyes.
“That’s ok, I can cook a lot.” She replied as she wiped away his tears.
As Izuku stood, the bed rocked as the loss of his large weight unbalanced it. Not quite All Might big, her son had grown into his genes as a teen. As tall as her father, in the shadows of the room Inko blinked away her own tears as her memory played tricks on her - one Izuku overlaying another.
Staring out the window, rubbing the healing wound on his neck, Izuku asked a question Inko had only ever thought about on her dark days.
“The woman who hurt Grandpa - were you glad when they killed her?”
Inko let out a shocked gasp. “They didn’t kill her!”
“Induced a coma and let her fade away… it is all the same thing.” He said, his voice carrying a sorrow edged with anger.
“It isn’t!” Inko protested, “Izuku… you know how dangerous even the most simple quirks can be. Dementia… it’s brutal. My father knew she was getting forgetful, he should have reported her for assessment. But instead he took her meals and helped her pay her bills because that is what good neighbours do.”
“It’s what you do-” Izuku said knowingly.
“I-It seemed the best way to honour him.” Inko said softly, “But what happened to her after my father's death, it wasn’t fair or kind… BUT, it was necessary.”
Inko paused, trying to think how to explain the complicated feelings she had about the events surrounding her father’s death, “You know, my quirk isn’t good for much, but even I could hurt a nurse or a neighbour if I forgot where I was and started throwing things…”
“I would take care of you!”
“Zuzu, most people don’t have children with superstrength. Amanki’s Law is a terrible necessity. It exists because of what happened to people like your grandfather... I think Mrs Kumo would have been horrified to know she had killed him, she loved him. She was a nice old woman who I’d known my whole life… but until the doctors find a way to cure degenerative diseases or remove quirks - we just have no way to look after quirk users with dementia…”
“Eri-”
“Izuku Midoriya! That girl has suffered enough in her life. Any cure that involves her being strapped down and experimented on is unacceptable!” Inko scolded, shocked that even in his desperation Izuku would suggest involving Eri.
“I know… I know!” Izuku exclaimed, frustrated, carding his fingers violently through his hair, tugging it in all directions.
“I know you just want more time, sweetheart. But he wouldn’t want that time to come at the cost of others. He is a hero enough still for that...”
“I Know!” Izuku yelled, clearly angry at himself and the world in equal parts.
Inko sighed, “You are too young to remember when Amanki’s law passed. The discussion and debate went on for years. No one wanted this to be the solution. But all the minds in the world couldn’t think of another. As quirks became more powerful, it was the only choice we had. No one wanted it. Not even people like me who had lost a loved one - but sweetheart, it is the only way to save lives.” Inko said gently, getting up from the bed to approach her pacing son.
Her glared at her then, eyes full of anger, “Assisted suicide or forced vegetation!?”
“Yes.” She confirmed with steel in her heart. “There aren’t enough doctors or Erasure quirks to take care of them… It is a way for them to choose a dignified end to protect their loved ones.”
“It’s cruel!” Izuku begged, pleading with her and the universe.
Inko placed her hand on Izuku’s forearm, halting his upset pacing.
“It is. It is also the only choice we have. And sweetheart, I know you are hurting, but raging at me and the world is not going to change that we need to go soon…” She said gently.
“I- I-” Izuku choked, unable to verbalise his torment.
“I know, I do… But if we stay here. He will pass on thinking you didn’t care enough to stand by his side.” Inko pressed, pushing a button that was in truth a gaping wound.
Izuku reared back, wounded and wild eyed. Looking around the room desperately before walking hurriedly over and picking up the All Might hoodie.
“I need to get the mug I got him for christmas last year, he asked me to bring it...” He said from the doorway, voice shaking, “Then… then we can go.”
“Yes, dear.” Inko replied, her shaking hand reaching for her handbag.
***
The hospice was a beautiful set of buildings, all delicate white walls and filigreed arches. Overlooking the coast and surrounded by immaculately maintained gardens, it looked like somewhere you might go to get married.
Designed as a place to make memories, the grounds exuded peace.
Beside her, squeezed into the passenger's seat of her small car, Izuku exuded resentment.
He had alway been a fidgety child, and his anxiety was causing his knee to vibrate against the door and shock the whole car.
Getting out, Inko looked around, getting her bearings. They were headed for villa nine.
As Izuku extracted himself from her car, Inko sought the guidance of a nearby map mounted near the car park's exit.
They need to head left, up past the zen garden and past the koi pond.
Reaching out for Izuku’s hand, Inko swallowed the lump in her throat and led the way, her son trailing behind just as he had done when he was much younger.
She tried not to think about the other information the sign had given, like the number of villas (28), the location of the chapel and shinto shrine (down by the beach) and the phone number for the onsite councillor.
That such a beautiful place had been made out of such a dark need hurt something within. Hidden behind a grove of tall trees was the main hospital building, where the people who chose to live out their days comatose were cared for.
These gardens were as much for their loved ones to walk and find some sense of peace as they were to provide an idyllic backdrop for the villa's residents' last moments.
Scattered along the winding path were water features and fountains. Statues of dolphins leaping and swans spitting water trickled everywhere, creating a very well disguised white noise generator that ensured each villa its privacy.
Izuku started dragging his feet as they passed the small sign for villa six. Looking everywhere, but straight ahead, he tugged his mother to a stop.
“It is very beautiful.” Inko said, just to say something.
“Kacchan would hate this place.” Izuku scoffed.
“Too Peaceful.” Inko agreed, nodding. “I wonder if they have different sorts of goodbye gardens? Maybe something with a rollercoaster or an open bar?”
That got a small laugh out of Izuku as she had intended, and with a small tug, they continued on.
Never had a small sign seemed so menacing.
Villa Nine.
They were here.
“Would you like me to wait?” she asked, unsure of what to do next, “I could take a walk and count the dolphins…”
“No. You should come in. Uraraka said everyone was gathering in the main house, they wanted to wait, comfort each other...” Izuku said sadly, looking at his phone resentfully, “- she messaged that they have set him up in the garden overlooking the bay. T-there is a gazebo… with roses.”
“Oh. Well, alright. It would be nice to see your classmates again. I-uh, haven’t seen most of them since the wedding.” Inko said dumbly, only realising her mistake at Izuku’s choked sob.
“Fine! I’m Fine! You go in, I will walk around… through the garden. I’m not sure that I can do this, and see everyone at the same time.” He said, as he sucked in his tears with big inhales. “No, crying til after.”
“Then ice cream…” Inko said gently.
“I’m not sure there is enough ice cream in the whole universe…”
“We shall find out.” She said, holding her arms open for a hug.
Izuku dove in so fast, it felt like he must have activated his quirk.
“I love you, mum.”
“Ditto, green bean. Big ditto…” With a squeeze she let her son go and started the long walk upto the villa, not looking back for fear he would see her tears.
***
They were all there, all of class 1-A squeezed into every nook and cranny of the generous open plan living room.
Mixed in were former UA faculty, some heroes whose names Inko didn’t know, but recognised from television.
They sat cuddled in groups, quietly holding each other and talking softly.
Everything stopped when she walked in, they all knew what her arrival meant - that Izuku had arrived.
Ochako disengaged herself from where Iida held her in his arms and rushed over, “Aunty! He’s here!?”
Inko nodded and opened her arms again to hug Izuku’s best friend.
“He went through the garden, he - he couldn’t bring himself to face you all yet.” She said sadly.
“That is probably for the best.” Iida agreed, “There will be time for us after…”
Inko nodded and made her way further into the room, saying her hello’s and defaulting to hostess mode.
So many, Aizawa had said people had been coming all morning to say their goodbyes… it hadn’t occurred to her that they would have stayed afterwards.
She teared up, realising that they were here to support Izuku, as much to say goodbye… and to think she had been worried that he was going to be forced to face this alone.
Minutes passed, and the chatter began again. The soft laughter of old friends enjoying each other after a long time apart spread through the room.
It was too much, too loud, she stepped out into the garden.
She just needed a moment to collect herself before she could go back in.
She hadn’t meant to go looking for them, but her heart led and her feet followed.
Around a corner, she spotted the Gazebo and Izuku sitting on a beautifully carved daybed beside the man who had changed and shaped his life as much as Inko ever had.
Katsuki Bakugou looked old beyond his years, propped up against too many pillows.
He smiled his feral Cheshire cat smile when he saw her, “Aunty! Took you long enough. If I’d known one little errand would be enough to make you late - I wouldn’t have asked.”
Inko felt herself smiling in return, pulled in by Katsuki’s disarming charisma.
“Izuku had trouble finding your “World’s Number One Husband” mug. Someone had put it behind the cereal boxes.” It was a lie, and one Katsuki acknowledged with a nod.
It had been at his insistence that Inko had driven Izuku home that morning to fetch the important items of his “favourite hoodie and mug.”
In his gruff way, he was taking care of Izuku even now. “Get the nerd out of my hair, Aunty. Can’t have him sobbing in the corner as the extras all drop by.”
Unable to refuse her son’s husband anything on this day of all days, she had led Izuku away by the thinnest of excuses.
Mistuki and Massaro had spent the previous day at the villa with Katsuki, saying their goodbyes. Mitsuki was not one to want her pain witnessed by her son’s friends.
Aizawa sat in one corner of the gazebo, arms folded, feigning sleep as was his way. His dark presence like a carrion crow, perched on the edge of Katsuki’s final hours.
His former teacher's presence was a necessary evil, a safeguard against further accidents like the one that had burnt Izuku’s neck.
Katsuki had only been thirty-six when the suspected diagnosis of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy had blown up his and Izuku’s lives.
CTE, or Concussion Syndrome, was a tragic early onset dementia caused by one too many blows to the head. Common in athletes who played contact sports, the last few years had been filled with the revelation that many former pro heroes also were suffering from the condition.
For Katsuki, the mood swings had been masked by his already dramatic personality. The memory lapses put down to his chaotic lifestyle. It wasn’t until he had woken one afternoon disoriented after pulling a double shift and attacked Izuku that any of them had an idea that something was wrong.
Thirty plus years of being in close proximity to so many explosions, had rattled his brain like pickled onions in a jar. Causing untold amounts of damage, and accelerating his mental decline.
The next few months had been filled with doctors and specialists as Katsuki and Izuku sought to make sense of the sword of damocles that was now swinging over their heads.
Within the year Katsuki had retired, and now, four years later, following a massive loss of control that had destroyed their house and nearly killed Izuku - it was time for Katsuki, despite Izuku’s protests, to make use of Amanki’s Law.
Inko was proud of Katsuki, her son had been walking smiling into danger since he was a toddler. Katsuki understood that nothing short of his death would keep Izuku from his side.
They’d discussed it, the two of them one night as Izuku worked a night shift and it was her turn to be Katsuki’s babysitter.
It was to the brash young man who had stolen her Izuku’s heart that she spoke about her father’s death for the first time in forty years.
About how it could have been prevented, about the brutality and tragedy of it.
He had listened, and fixed her a cup of tea. Silently taking it in, as was his way. Not a month later he had set the date for his visit to villas.
Now, with Izuku by his side, Aizawa playing guardian and the frail form of his mentor seated across from him, Katsuki Bakugou would drink another more poisonous tea and watch the sun set one final time.
“I-I should go back to the house. I got a bit lost - those friends of yours are very loud. You boys will want your peace and quiet…” Inko said, looking around the solemn faces in the gazebo.
“I will accompany you, my dear,” Toshinori said, unfolding his ancient skeletal form up from the white deck chair he was sat on. Over seventy, he leant on a cane that was almost as tall as Inko.
He paused beside Katsuki and extended his long fingers for a final handshake.
Katsuki gulped quietly, and stood, pulling the old hero into a fierce embrace, thumping his back with reassuring blows.
“Ahk! Ah! Not so hard, young man…”
“Sorry, All Might!”
“Toshi, Toshi! How many times- mmm.” Toshiniro pulled back coughing softly. “Yes, yes. My honour, dear Katsuki. It has been my absolute honour!”
Katsuki tilted his head, choking up “Don’t go getting soft on me, old man, you will make Deku cry.”
“Ah yes, well we can’t have that - Inko, would you be a dear and help an old man down those cobbled paths?” He asked as he held his arm out to Inko.
She accepted, nodding to Katuki and Aizawa, before throwing a smile to Izuku as they walked away.
Around the corner, hidden by a beautiful Azalea bush, they stopped so the old hero could catch his breath.
Unseen from the gazebo, they sat side by side and listened to Izuku say his goodbyes to the love of his life.
“I’m not ready, Kacchan.”
“Not sure anyone is ever ready for this nerd.”
“I can’t lose you!” Izuku begged.
Inko clutched tight to Toshinori and shook as her tears started to flow. They shouldn’t be listening to this, they should go back to the house.
She stood, intending to leave, only to realise that the old man was also crying. His long boney hands shook violently as they gripped his cane, knuckles white.
Their eyes met, and Inko saw in his will-o-wisp eyes a heart as broken and often mended as her own.
They would witness this together, she and this man that had been more of a father to her son than any other.
“Tcch- I’m not lost.” Katsuki scolded his husband. “I’m right here, telling you what I want. This is my choice, nerd - law or not. This is the only way left to save you... to save myself.”
Inko didn’t catch Izuku’s reply, so soft were his words.
Katsuki’s voice, however, was only gaining volume as the fight they had repeated over the last three months as Izuku fought this outcome picked up speed.
The CTE meant that his control over his already volatile temper was tenuous at best.
“I-I can feel myself disappearing! Every day there is less of me left! I hurt you Deku!. I swore I would never do that again! My quirk, with no control or consciousness, is a weapon of mass destruction. Don’t you dare condemn me to die a villain. Don’t you dare!” Katsuki spoke quickly, spitting his fears into the beautiful garden setting.
Toshinori sniffled and passed Inko a handkerchief the size of a small flag.
“Deku.” Katsuki’s voice was firm. “Stop. It’s done. I drank the damn drink as soon as the staff messaged you arrived in the carpark.”
“B-But your mug.” Izuku said dumbfounded.
“All part of my cunning plan, nerd. Consider it a villainous punch, or falling debris, it can’t be undone now. I’m already gone. Do you really want to spend our last hour together arguing with me? This is my choice nerd, and I made it. What I want to do now is spend the last of my time with you- but if you can’t handle that, Aizawa and I will watch the sunset while you cry in the corner.”
Again Inko missed her son’s reply,so quiet were his protests.
“Please, Deku, just let me remember us, and who I was…” Katsuki begged, trailing off.
Through the bush, Inko heard her son’s tear filled reply, “A hero, Kacchan, always My Hero.”
She was never going to be able to smell Azaleas again without crying, Inko realised.
Against her side, Toshinori extended one long arm folding her into him, and letting her know she wasn’t alone.
“Damn straight, nerd!” Katsuki laughed, “Now who does a guy have to kill around here to get some deathbed cuddles!?
“Kacchan!” Izuku exclaimed, horrified.
“Too soon?”
“It's all too soon. I thought we'd grow old together…” Izuku said sadly.
“I didn’t. Not with our lives. Not many old heroes out there, Deku... We had it real good for 20 years. Love and winning and all that shit.”
“Yes - Kacchan…” Izuku agreed.
“Plus the blowjobs were pretty nice!” Katsuki teased.
“Kacchan!” Izuku exclaimed horrified. “Aizawa-sensei is right there!”
“Don’t worry nerd, he knows what a blowjob is! HA! Run, old man!”
Around the corner, walking at speed came Aizawa, a sad smile creeping from beneath his long hair.
Silently, Toshiniro and Inko made room for him on the bench.
“I could do with one of those now…”
“Kacchan!”
“A bye-bye blowjob. A once in a lifetime sort of deal really…”
The three of them shared a look, stood as one and, linked in arms and sorrow, made their way back to the main villa.
***
Much later, after the sun had set, Izuku found his mother sitting outside, watching the stars. He sat down at her feet and leant his head against her knee, like he used to do as a child.
“The others?” He asked, after a while.
“They decided to give you some space. Todoroki invited them all back to his family's compound. From what I gather they plan to drink the night away, toasting you both. There was some talk of climbing over UA’s walls for old times sake.”
“He would have liked that…”
“I think he would.” Inko agreed, running her hand through Izuku’s curls.
They sat like that for the next hour, mother and son, staring up into the vast expanse of the milky way. Each in their own way, trying to make sense of how the universe is forever fundamentally changed by the loss of the person you loved the most in the world.