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Even in this extravagant mansion, Izuku can smell the death. The smoke penetrates the large windows bringing the stench of what is left of hero society to his senses. The multitude of nomu through the house, if you could call it that, had left him alone. They were probably ordered to not engage with him. How considerate of his father.
Fires roared through the streets of the city only miles away. This place was positioned perfectly to watch it crumble. The bastard most definitely planned that. The screams had all but stopped; people had finally excepted that no one was coming. Every person had one thing to value and care for: themselves.
Crime rates had dropped because no one was reporting the deaths . Midnight’s smile still haunted him day and night. The colors creme and midnight navy tugged at his heart painfully. He couldn’t look at them without tears wheeling up in his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he had ever actually cried in the past months. Sure, they would come and burn, but did they ever fall? And if they weren’t, what was he saving them for?
Izuku Midoriya, once known as Deku, sat in what could only be called a throne in All For One’s primary base. It was elaborately decorated with gold trims and jewels. The carvings on the sides and armrests could only be rivaled by Michelangelo himself from the Renaissance period. Izuku thought his father would be a red-velvet kind of guy but he was surprised when he collapsed into a silk cushioned chair. He gently trailed his fingers over the soft fabric, his calloused fingers unused to such gentleness. His mind wondered about the state of the world.
Japan was undoubtedly in a civil war. Between who? No one could really say. The government wasn’t saying anything, the hero commission was useless or dead, and heroes had quickly become targets of assassins. Most sent by his sperm donor. Hunted, ridiculed, and untrusted they fell into a bad light with the public. The public in response had taken matters into their own hands.
He thinks back to how his old friends tried to get him to go home. Couldn’t they see? There was no home anymore. His friends, family, teachers, house, everything had fallen to pieces. His dreams weren’t crushed by his innate quirklessness but by the world itself. No longer was it because he had no power, but because he did . He couldn’t get a break.
In the old house, the video message left, the reveal of his paternal ancestry honestly hadn’t shocked him. He just wasn’t processing anything. After the message, he left the house to endeavor and his team. Izuku was on a hill hundreds of feet away when it blew, the number one hero, swat team, and all. Izuku, coward he is, walked away. He stumbled into the woods and just started running. He ran until he physically couldn’t anymore, his boots wore completely out and feet bleeding from the rough forest floor.
He hadn’t sobbed like that in a long, long time.
He faintly recalled the vestiges trying to comfort him but again, he wasn’t processing anything. He just knew that the weight in his chest, the tightness of his breath, and the guilt tangled into his soul were his fault. He ended up curled in the growing grass and mulch of the woods out of tears. That’s when he saw First, who was technically his uncle, sitting beside him. His glowing sage hands reached out to him and Izuku numbly sat up. He looked him in the eye and could just tell. This man understood damn well what he was feeling.
“Izuku,” He whispered with the most caring, sorrowful voice he had ever heard, “ I am so sorry. ”
He had found that he had not run out of tears. Izuku had no idea how the ghostly vestige of his dead uncle was able to hold him in the real world, but he could not question that at the time. He was the direct spawn of the worst man, the living catastrophe that was tearing his world into pieces. The man who put his own brother in a vault, who killed his own brother. The man who had killed his predecessor and his before him. He killed the one man who had been there for him when he abandoned him as a child. All just to isolate him. To make him feel alone so that he would give in, and collapse at his heel.
Izuku huffed a humorless laugh on his father’s throne. In his months of hell, not only had he refused to heel but taken his throne. Izuku turned to his left where a fucking crown of all things sat on a pedestal. It was solid gold with no intricate designs, just emeralds and rubies embedded in its frame. He smiled as a thought came to him.
Standing up through the burning pain in his joints, he stalked over to the shiny trinket. Izuku unconsciously tugged at Gran Trino’s cape around his neck. With surprisingly delicate hands, he lifted it up. His scarred excuses for limbs shook slightly. Not from fear or nervousness though, but from their severe trauma. His nerves were, for a lack of a better term, fucked .
Izuku swore he heard a laugh as he place the crown upon his head. All For One would not crown him heir to his empire. Izuku was the only person who could appoint him to any role. He chose his path, his fate. No one else. With this crown, he wasn’t accepting his father, no not at all. He was denouncing him. Izuku would return Japan to her freedom.
Izuku smiled with no joy. It wasn’t faked and it wasn’t a grimace. Just a small smile on his lips. His dad should be home soon. Let’s see how he liked this display.
It would be the first time he had seen Izuku in person, since god, maybe Kamino? He didn’t count the weirdness that was once Tomura Shigaraki. As soon as he became too much for what he was actually worth, All For One drove a spike through him after removing every quirk he had given him. Apparently, the man had laid there for hours before finally having his life snuffed out.
Eri had done a wonderful job of returning his father’s face to its previous state, along with home parts of his sanity. After the rewind, he had been much more cunning. More thoughtful. It seemed as if some of his higher brain functions had actually come back.
Izuku slumped back onto the throne without much grace. He sat sideways, throwing his legs over the side and turning his head to watch Japan burn. If he didn’t know the number of people dying, lives being destroyed, senseless violence, and the general feeling of terror he would almost call it pretty .
Izuku waited just under an hour for his father to return to his home. Izuku could feel it in One For All that one of its original parents was near. Izuku ignored it until he heard a door slam across the gigantic house. Daddy was home.
The hands that had fed him were the same ones choking people. They punched and bruised and killed with no remorse. They stole and gifted quirks to horrible monsters that used to be people. Those hands used to hold him at night, rocking him gently. He would pick Izuku up and hold him up so that he could touch the sky. They once held his tiny fingers while riding the train or walking to the park.
They now held broken bones and broken promises.
Izuku’s heartrate, honest to god, didn’t spike when he heard the rhythmic footsteps of expensive shoes on tile. It was weird. He thought he’d be more afraid but he was just tired. The kind of tiredness that makes you do stupid shit like walking directly into your archenemy’s house, stealing food, his crown, and sitting on his throne while he was busy destroying everything you hold dear.
His head didn’t turn as the man walked down the hallway. The tall, white-haired man stopped a few feet out of Izuku’s range of sight, as not to disrupt his viewing of the fires. Izuku didn’t have to look to tell he was in his signature black coat and formal wear. He wondered how much blood was on it, was in the very fibers of it.
“Hello, son” Hisashi Midoriya’s voice rang out, echoing down the hall. Izuku sighed.
“Hello, father.”
He could feel One For All’s nervousness inside him. There were a lot of conflicting feelings. A majority of them were on edge or tense. Izuku could pinpoint First’s, his uncle’s anxiety. He wasn’t on edge for battle but had a nervous fear . He was afraid for Izuku. Or maybe he was afraid he’d end up in his brother’s grasp again.
Hisashi stopped forward and turned towards the window. Together, in a moment of silence, they gazed at the destruction he had brought upon the world. Izuku swore he could feel the heat drying his eyes from miles away. Unable to stop himself from the burning questions in his soul, he spoke up.
“Is your name even Hisashi?”
He turned back to face Izuku meeting his eyes with a chuckle. It had always surprised him that his father had crimson eyes and stark white hair but he himself had neither. His mother’s green color palette had won out in his genetics. Too bad her quirk hadn’t either. If it had, maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess. Izuku would never blame his mother, but the lingering thought was there. Did he have a quirk? Did his dad take it?
Izuku hated to accept it, but he had his father’s face. His cheekbones and nose. The freckles that dotted his face were a gift given by his father. Izuku almost wanted to laugh at the thought of the world’s greatest threat having freckles. He had his analytical mind, his obsession over quirks, and the ability to dissect people in a glance. Those were all from his father. Against him, all his father had to do was pull that strings he had played himself for so long.
“Yes. The Midoriya part, however, well , I just made that on the spot.”
Izuku couldn’t even find it in himself to laugh. “Really? Green? ”
“I was distracted.”
Another beat of silence.
“So,” All For One started back up, “Are we going to do this now?”
“I don’t think so,” Izuku said to his father’s surprise. He could feel the vestige’s confusion as well. “For now, I just want to talk. I have questions.”
Hisashi put his hands in his pockets. It was the first sign Izuku had seen of the man having any sense or understanding of nervousness or doubt.
“Did you really love my mom? Or were we just a game? An experiment?”
Hisashi’s expression grew hard.
“I loved your mother more than anything else. She was the first person I loved ever since your uncle. I love you, Izuku. No matter if you give me or the world hell. I can and will give you anything you ask for.”
Izuku hummed disinterested. He was still looking out the window, but for this next part, he wanted to see his face. He wanted to see his reaction to gauge how honest he was willing to be with him.
“ Why, ” He hated that it came out has a harsh whisper. He hated that all the tears he had never shed, that he had saved up, were leaking down his face for this. For him . “ Why did you leave? ”
Izuku watched in real-time as a melancholy settles into his shoulders. For the first time, all of that confidence washed away and Izuku saw a sad excuse for a dad. He saw the man who had left his wife and kids. He saw the dad that he had bruised his lungs crying over as a child. A man who could never make up for his actions.
“Izuku, I swear to you, I never wanted to leave. After the fight with that blonde idiot-” Izuku took a breath and felt the presence of eighth eighth eighth over his shoulder, “-I couldn’t return. There was no way, not with how my health was and your mother-”
“ Shut the fuck up, ” Izuku snapped with a furious glare in his eyes. Hisashi registered his own scowl looking back at him. He almost admonished Izuku for interrupting him. They had their differences, but there was no reason to be rude . Hisashi was not prepared for what came next.
“You couldn’t return? You couldn’t take care of your family like that? Oh, but you had the time for fucking Tenko? Tomura? Whatever you want to call him?” All For One’s face paled considerably. One For All went quiet, but Izuku paid it no mind. “You left mom. You left me. There is no if, and, or but. You left. Period. And not even just for your health, but to raise someone else’s child? Over a petty fucking GRUDGE?! ” Izuku screamed the last part.
“You wanted to be a demon lord, yeah?” Izuku asked. He sat up suddenly, hunched over. The crown still laid perfectly crooked on his head. His eyes showed no mercy.
“You killed your brother, let your wife die, and abandoned your son like a god damn deadbeat. Congratulations, ” Izuku paused and swept the crown off his head. He looked his father in the eyes, in his soul. Throwing the crown at his feet, Izuku exclaimed with an animated smile and jazz hands,
“You’ve done it! Literally everyone fucking hates you.”
Izuku sat back on the throne, closing his eyes. Rivers streaked down his face in quiet acceptance of his fate of never feeling okay again.
“Coronation’s over.”