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Izuku pulls out his burner phone from his pocket, sitting on the steps of a fire escape beside a window he's come far too familiar with after the past year. There's a text waiting for him from a number he's got memorized by this point, and he sighs in relief, wincing when the movement of his chest and abdomen send a wave of searing pain through the nerves in his body. His hero suit is torn in all sorts of places, some stitched together in horribly-sewn patches from precious tears and rips, and the place he clutches near his chest is wet and dark red from his current injury. It's nothing too serious, not that he's not had serious injuries in the past year he'd been on the run trying to find All For One and Shigaraki, but it's only a slash on his chest from a knife that he'd been cut with from a villain he had encountered earlier.
The window in front of him opens, and Izuku smiles self-consciously when he's greeted with the tired face of an old friend and the smell of cigarette smoke in his nostrils, wafting out from the room inside.
"You comin' in or what?" Kariage asks him, raising his eyebrows. "C'mon, I got the first aid kit out already, get in here."
Clutching his chest with one hand, Izuku makes his way in through the window and sits down on the old mattress inside, knowing already from experience to unzip the top part of his hero costume so Kariage can help him clean and stitch his wound. "Your parents aren't home?"
Kariage snorts, kneeling down between Izuku's knees so he could see the laceration at eye-level. "When are they ever? 'Least they're not here tormenting me, so I could care less."
He sets out to wiping off the bloodied area of Izuku's wound with the antiseptic wipes, not reacting when Izuku jerks with a pained hiss. "Got any cigarettes left?"
"That bad, eh?" Kariage smirks, grabbing the suture needle and thread from the kit and tossing Izuku the box of Camels and the lighter from his back pocket. "Go crazy."
Izuku thanks him quietly, grabbing one from the box and lighting it with practiced ease. He closes his eyes upon the first inhale, a tiny amount of the tension in his shoulders easing with the familiar buzz of nicotine in his system. Used to it after so long, Izuku barely flinches when Kariage starts stitching his chest up.
"How long's it been since you've slept this time?" Kariage asks him quietly, breaking their easy silence. "You look like shit, Izuku."
"Thanks," Izuku chuckles. "I don't know, a few days? An hour here and there since the last time I was here."
"And that was a week and a half ago. Jesus, Izuku, this is getting ridiculous. You don't have to keep this up, you can come here anytime you fuckin' want to sleep, no one's ever here but me."
Izuku nods, exhaling another small cloud of smoke. "I know. But it's not fair to you for me to keep doing this. You have enough on your own plate to even be considering my own shit."
Rolling his eyes, Kariage doesn't pause in his stitching. "Look, I know my life is shit, and I made your life shit in the past, but we were friends long before any of that happened, and I'd like to think we're friends now. No one's gonna find you here, and I don't mind you being here either. Thought I made that clear to you the first time you showed up when I apologized for everything."
"My being here is already a danger to you. You know my secret, and beside that point, anyone who affiliates themselves with me is already in danger because of All For One. It's been over a year, and I'm still no closer to finding him than I was in the beginning. I'm here because I trust you, and because none of my former classmates or teachers will think to look for me here. Even Kacchan wouldn't think to look for me here because of everything that went down in middle school."
"Katsuki hasn't even talked to me since we graduated our third year," Kariage chuckles, tying off the final stitch and snipping the end of it with the scissors from the kit. "Of course he wouldn't think to look here. Don't move, I still gotta bandage it up. I'm gonna get the plastic wrap, too. Because you're gonna shower, and I'm gonna wash and fix up your costume, then you're gonna eat and get some sleep. Got it?"
Izuku huffs a laugh, putting out his spent cigarette in the ash tray on Kariage's nightstand. "Alright, alright. Promise me you'll let me know if anything happens outside. You know I can't ignore stuff like that."
"I know," Kariage rolls his eyes again, walking out of the room to go get the wrap.
Sighing, Izuku pulls out his actual phone and unlocks it, disregarding the nearly-dead battery percentage and scrolling through the new texts on his phone. Even after all this time, his former classmates and some of his teachers are still sending him texts asking where he is, or telling him that the principal is willing to accept him back, some even just asking how he's doing. They can't see that he's reading their texts, since he has his read receipts turned off, but the fact that none of them have given up on him yet just fuels the fire in his heart further to complete his mission so they never have to go through anything like they did again.
Kariage strolls back into the room. "Alright, asshole, sit still so I can wrap your chest and you can shower. I'll get you something to eat while you do."
Izuku sighs but does as he’s told, letting Kariage's careful hands put the plastic wrap over his bandages with practiced ease. "I was serious, though. You have to keep watch. I don't want All For One or anyone associated with him coming after you just because of my presence here. I'm endangering you just by being here."
"I don't give a flyin' fuck what that old geezer does," Kariage says. "Just because you got a quirk that belonged to his brother however many fuckin' decades ago, you can't let people take care'a you once in a while? Bullshit."
"You're the only once besides Kacchan who I actively told about it, which means I trust you enough with the secret, so that makes you a target. If he finds out about you, and that you know, he'd do anything to crush me. I know my old classmates and teachers and some pro heroes know now, since they all overheard during the war and undoubtedly had questions that All Might couldn't ignore. But it's a different story with them knowing, and with me telling people who aren't supposed to know."
"Like I said," Kariage gently presses the ends of the plastic wrap to secure it, trying not to aggravate the stitched wound further. "I don't care. Now go get in the shower, I gotta rinse your suit in cold water to scrub the bloodstains out before I can sew up the rips. C'mon, up with ya."
"I'm going, I'm going," Izuku snorts, making his way into the bathroom across the hall from Kariage's bedroom. "I'll throw the suit out before I get in."
"Good, now go."
"Yes, sir," Izuku chuckles. "Leave me out another cigarette, too. I want another when I'm done."
"Fine. But then you're getting sleep. You fuckin' need it."
Kariage sighs from his seat in his windowsill, listening to the sounds of traffic below and the soft breaths from Izuku, sprawled out in his bed next to him and sleeping restlessly. He'd plugged Izuku's phones in a few minutes earlier, letting the burner and his actual one charge their batteries up. Even in the middle of the night, Izuku's phone buzzes every so often with a new text message from his friends and classmates inquiring about his location and his well being.
Ashes fall into his lap from the cigarette dangling between his lips and Kariage swipes them away with a grimace. Izuku shifts in his sleep, whimpering quietly, and Kariage's attention turns from watching the street below to his friend beside him. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and puts it out in the ash tray, even though it was only halfway smoked, and sets his chin on his knee, his eyes not leaving the disaster of a broken boy in his bed.
It was weird in the beginning, when Izuku first showed up at his window in the fire escape asking for help a year ago. Their complicated past had made things awkward when Kariage would offer to help him with his injuries and to give him shelter for a night. Best friends as children, turned distant and cold, turned bully and victim. Now it feels almost natural for him to leave the window unlocked in case Izuku showed up in the middle of the night, injured or on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.
There are times when Izuku is off searching for All For One in other parts of the country, when Kariage is sitting at home waiting for him to return, that he sees people patrolling his neighborhood looking for Izuku in his hometown. Most of the time it's Katsuki and another boy that Kariage recognizes from watching the Sports Festival, the one with the dual quirk. They're usually arguing, but from his window he could see the tiredness on their faces. It's so similar to Izuku's but different at the same time.
Because while they're searching for a runaway classmate━a friend, Izuku is dedicating his entire self to finding the world's biggest and most dangerous villain to stop him for good, and he's the main target of said villain. His classmates and the others at U.A. can't seem to grasp that fact. Because while Kariage knows that most of U.A. knows the story of One For All now, he also knows that they would never understand the position Izuku is in as the holder of the quirk.
Not that he understands either. He isn't even looking to be a hero in his future. But after all the nights he's spent tending to Izuku's wounds and resetting broken bones and trying to convince the boy to even eat, he thinks that he understands the weight on Izuku's shoulders better than most. Izuku has even developed a smoking habit because he knew that the stupid cigarettes helped Kariage relax because of all the tension in his home life over the years, and he picked up the addiction himself.
Kariage picks up the rag off the nightstand and leans over, wiping some sweat from Izuku's brow gently to not disturb his rest.
It took a long time for Kariage to earn this level of trust from Izuku. The first few visits were only filled with awkward conversations and Izuku getting maybe two hours of sleep, if that, before he was off again after a quick thank you to Kariage. Eventually, he would stay for longer, Kariage apologized for everything he'd done to him in the past, for going along with Katsuki's years of taunting and abuse toward him. Now here they are, a year later, and Kariage is a little saddened to say that Izuku is pretty much his only friend. His other friends from middle school (Katsuki and Hisue) had gone off to high school and never spoken to him again, and he had dropped out of school midway through his first year because he was tired of classmates questioning where a new bruise came from every day. Not that his parents cared anyway, since they were never around sans the times they came home just to treat him like shit.
So whenever Kariage hears Izuku say things like he did earlier, I'm endangering you just by being here, it makes him want to laugh. He isn't going to, since it's something that Izuku takes more seriously than his own life, but really, what does he have to live for besides the nights and early mornings Izuku would come to his fire escape in need of his help? Besides the year worth of trust he's built up with his former childhood friend, after almost a decade of assisting in causing him pain that he's finally earned forgiveness for? It's not something Kariage takes lightly.
It's almost delicate, in a way. A steady and reissued friendship built on many quiet nights of talking things over and entrusting each other with secrets for no one else's ears to be privy to.
Whatever Izuku was dreaming about startles him awake with a gasp, throwing his body upward and clutching his chest trying to breathe. He seems to remember he was injured there earlier, though, because he groans and lets go, flopping back into Kariage's pillow. He sees Kariage sitting in the windowsill beside him and asks, "You're okay, right?"
Kariage chuckles and shakes his head, grabbing his half-finished cigarette back from the ash tray and relights it, holding it out to Izuku in offering. "I'm good, Izuku. Rough nightmares?"
"Yeah," Izuku nods, gratefully taking the cigarette and taking a long inhale from the end of it, exhaling afterward. "Nothing I haven't seen in them before, though, so I know none of it's real. Anything happen outside while I was out?"
"Nah. Go back to sleep, it's been quiet. Just traffic, but that's normal for Musutafu. Everything's fine right now. You're safe here."
Izuku sighs and finally settles back down, handing the cigarette back to Kariage for him to finish. "God, I want this to be over already. I just need to find him. I know I can handle this."
"You'll find him soon," Kariage says confidently, meaning every word. Izuku shifts to look at him. "And when you beat his ass, you better be alive at the end of it, too. Got it?"
Izuku chuckles. "Got it, Kariage."
A week later, when Kariage is sitting outside on the fire escape steps, he gets a text from Izuku's burner phone.
I found him.
Kariage grins, despite the dropping feeling in his gut. He texts back easily.
Told you. Now remember our deal.
Not even thirty seconds later there's a reply.
I remember. Do me a favor? I left my real phone at your place last week. I want you to go to my texts and to my class group chat and message them for me. Tell them I found him, but not to come after me. And don't mention who you are, either. They'll come right to you if you do. I just... I need them to know that I'll be home soon.
Kariage knows Izuku left his phone. It's been sitting in his pillowcase the entire week so his parents wouldn't find it in the rare occasions they would come home. He does exactly what Izuku asked, unlocking it with ease and sending the message to the Class 1-A group chat with the simple message of [Deku told me to tell you that he found him, and he'll be home soon. Don't go after him.] to the heroes-in-training.
The phone blows up with followed messages. Questions of Izuku's location, despite what he'd said, inquiries of his own identity and why he has Izuku's phone and not the actual owner of it, exclamations of relief that there's finally some news about their friend and classmate.
Instead of replying to any of them, Kariage takes his own phone back out and messages Izuku one last time.
Done.
As soon as you're back home at U.A. expect my ass to show up at the gates to congratulate you, yeah? Better fuckin' let me in, too.
Not to his surprise, there's no response from Izuku. Just an automated message that the phone he'd messaged was no longer in service, meaning Izuku broke the burner and threw it out so he couldn't be tracked by anyone.
Kariage looks up to the clouds overhead and snorts at how peaceful it looks outside on his side of things, when he knows that there would be blood and battle and destruction in some other place in Japan in a matter of no time. He's confident Izuku will make it out okay.
After all, he promised.
And Midoriya Izuku never breaks a promise if he can help it.