Chapter Text
“Izuku, sweetie, are you sure you want to do this?”
They said he wouldn’t live to high school with how severe the case was, and of course Inko wanted him to get the surgery to save his life, but she knew how important those feelings were to her son, so she wanted to be fair to him through this.
“Yes mom, I want the surgery. It’s better this way, for both of us.”
It was the steadiest she had ever seen Izuku’s expression, but she knew hidden off far behind that facade, he was crumbling to pieces over this decision.
“Alright. I’ll call your doctor and we’ll schedule it for as soon as possible.”
It’s quiet as she moves to grab her cellphone, and she looks down when there’s a soft tug on her hand. Turning back, her heart breaks for her baby, his eyes swelling with tears that spill messily down his cheeks as he hangs his head. With his thin frame shaking from his quiet sobs, she can feel the pain through his trembling fingers as they hold weakly onto her.
“Thank you, mom.”
She abandons her phone in place of pulling Izuku into her arms, holding him tightly as he wails in misery at what he must do. Petting back his hair, she kisses the top of his forehead just below his hairline. She closes her eyes as she cradles him. There are words she wants to say, but none of them feel like the right thing, and so she chooses to remain silent instead, allowing her son to fall apart against her.
The fits started when he was around six years old, one of the youngest to come down with the disease. Light coughing that eventually evolved into sharp gasping and choking, until the first few petals came up and it was evident what this was.
Inko had heard about Hanahaki, but she had never anticipated her son being the unfortunate victim of it. Though, maybe she should have seen it coming.
With how Izuku doted and fawned over Katsuki, how at such a young age he devoted himself completely to the other boy, this kind of development probably shouldn’t have blindsided her.
She would have immediately taken him to get the surgery to remove the flowers from his lungs, but the doctors were concerned he was too young for the procedure, and they insisted they wait a bit longer to be sure there would be no lingering problems for him down the line.
After the situation was explained to her, and she did her best to explain to Izuku, she was surprised when her son insisted as well, that they try to wait.
“Maybe when Kacchan is a little bigger, he'll love me back.”
As a mother there was nothing she could say to that. Her son wanted so desperately for his friend to reciprocate his feelings, and she couldn’t be the monster that tried to instill a harsh reality inside of her child.
That an unrequited love like this, didn’t usually get a happy ending.