Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The blindingly white lights of the convenience store flicker ever so slightly as they let out a steady, droning hum.

Generic pop music plays from the store’s overhead speakers at a tolerable volume, though it can hardly be heard over the sound of the rain beating down on the roof of it. The storm had rolled in suddenly a few days ago, and it didn’t seem like it would be letting up any time soon.

Bored, the only worker in the store sits on a stool behind the register, chewing gum while lazily flipping through one of the latest hero magazines with one arm holding her head up. She blows a bubble from her gum, and it pops in time with a loud rumble of thunder from outside. The young woman sighs as her eyes flit up to the clock on the far wall of the store that reads “1:00am”. In another hour, her shift will be over, and it can’t come any sooner in her opinion. The store hadn’t had a single customer for the past hour and a half. For a Saturday, it’s a little strange.

As if the world had read her mind, her idle thoughts are cut short by the sound of the store’s front door chime, alerting her to the entrance of a potential customer. On instinct, she shuts the magazine and straightens her posture, trying to feign at least some form of pleasant customer service with her outward appearance.

She’s about to give out her typical company greeting to whoever had just walked into the store, but cuts herself off with a sharp inhale.

Her eyes widen and her mouth gapes at the sight of what seems to be a kid stepping in, maybe middle school age, probably younger, she’s not sure—but what she is sure of is the fact that the kid is absolutely drenched from the rain and covered in blood. Lots of blood.

The kid is maybe five feet tall, with a soggy mop of dark, vaguely curly hair—though it’s hard to tell with how it’s matted with blood on the side of his head. The bright crimson that drips down the right side of his face is a stark contrast to his deathly pale skin, and it’s hard to make out, but underneath all the dirt and blood on his face she can just make out a splattering of freckles, too.

While she’s taking this all in, the kid stares blankly across the store, seemingly frozen in a state of shock, not even acknowledging the worker, making no other movements aside from the intense full-body shivering he had going on. And the employee is no better, as whatever the hell is happening is way above her pay grade. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest from the spike in adrenaline, and it hasn’t exactly calmed down since the boy walked in. Really, though, she needed to break out of her stupor and do something about this situation.

“K-Kid? Hey, kid, a-are you alright?” She asks dumbly because, obviously, this kid was not alright, but she doesn’t know what else to say. What is someone supposed to say in this situation?

Instead of responding, the kid begins to move again, distant green eyes fluttering to somewhere else in the building. Only then does she realize that he only has on one scuffed-up red sneaker, and that his other exposed foot looks bloodied and injured, as if it’s raw from walking for far too long. He silently makes his way to the back of the store, all the while water and blood trails after him, making a mess of the stark white tiles below. Frozen in place, the young woman just watches him as he enters the men’s restroom. Blinking, she figures now’s as good a time as any to call the authorities.

Fumbling for the store’s phone, her shaky hands dial for 119. With her gawking, she realizes that her gum had fallen from her mouth, so she begins to nervously chew on her lips. It only takes three rings before the call is answered.

“119, what is the location and nature of your emergency?”

“This is Musutafu dispatch requesting the nearest available hero to the Family Mart located on the corner of block eight and twenty-one. We have a one-twenty-three, potentially a one-thirty-three in progress. The store clerk that called in reported that a young boy, estimated to be of junior-high age, approximately one hundred and fifty-two centimeters, entered the store covered in blood and grime; seemingly in a state of shock. The caller described him as having dark curly hair, wearing tattered clothing and appeared to be drenched from the storm. The boy is currently held up in the store’s restrooms and has yet to come out. Paramedics are already en route, any responding heroes please report.”

The darkly-clad hero can barely make out the emergency services operator’s voice over the volume of the rain and thunder surrounding him. It’s been like this for hours, and for a brief moment it surprises the hero that this is the first interesting call they’ve gotten since the storm began. Typically, there’s at least a few villains that think they can gain some sort of advantage to conduct their misdeeds within the chaos of a downpour such as tonight’s.

Maybe the local criminals were just as sick of it as the heroes and decided to take the night off. Or, maybe they were just waiting for the storm to get even worse.

One-twenty-three, possibly a one-thirty-three? Either the kid is sick or injured, or potentially dangerous, how does that make sense from that description? The hero thinks briefly as he begins to make his way to the location the call offered. Reaching a hand up, he taps on his ear piece. “This is pro-hero Eraser Head, I’m in the area. Responding to the scene now, I’d estimate an arrival time of ten minutes. Any additional info available? Over.” He speaks professionally and with a clear tone into the mic, hoping that his voice can be heard over the heavy rainfall.

“Responding to Eraser Head,” the dispatch woman starts, “The store clerk reported that the boy did not respond to her questioning whether he was alright before locking himself in the store’s restroom. She says that there are no sounds coming from the restroom other than the sink running, and that he’s been in there for more than ten minutes. He is not responding to any attempts to make contact, over.”

Well that’s concerning, Shota thinks before responding with a short, “Copy that, over.”

The rain is really putting a hamper on his estimated arrival time, as he has to be extra cautious while leaping between rooftops. It’s easier to stick to freerunning above the city, advantageous for any underground hero serious about their night-time patrols. His capture weapon flicks expertly from his wrist, latching onto whatever he can to help him cross any gaps too long for him to simply jump across, combat boots digging heavily into the gravel of every building’s slippery roof as he rushes to the scene.

Shota reaches the intersection that the store is located at and he quickly makes his way to the entrance of the brightly lit convenience store, squinting a bit. “This is Eraser, I’ve arrived on scene. Entering the premises now, over.” He alerts the dispatch before shouldering his way through the glass doors with one hand instinctively tugging on the free end of his capture weapon, ready for anything that might await him.

And, well, what was awaiting him is definitely what was described on the original 119 call.

Knowing he’s adding to the puddles with his own dripping clothes in a potential crime scene, Shota cautiously steps around the trail of washed off blood and water as he searches for the store employee.

His gaze quickly finds her slightly shaking form as she stares in the direction of what he assumes to be the restrooms—however after the bell overhead rings, her head snaps over to the underground hero who is now walking up to her.

“A-Are you the hero they said was coming?” The young woman asks, worry evident in her trembling voice. Shota tries to relax his hostile appearance to make himself look a little more nonthreatening, although he knew that it’s potentially a fruitless endeavor, given his current state of general disheveled-ness.

“Yes, I am,” he starts. “Are you alright? Any injuries?” He begins to assess the situation, following protocol—although he knows from the call that she’s most likely fine, which she confirms with a jerky shake of her head.

“I-I’m fine, it’s the kid you should be worrying about, he’s in there—” She then points to the back, but Shota could have found his way by simply following the old blood that now stained the store’s vinyl tiling.

“Right. Please, step back,” he asks in his usual monotone voice. She nods, all-too eager it seems to remove herself from the situation as she stumbles out of the hero’s way.

He steps around the trail of odd footprints leading to the men’s restroom, carefully leaving the evidence undisturbed. Shota tries for the handle, though it’s predictably locked. With a knock, he now addresses the kid inside with a slightly raised tone of voice so that hopefully it carries.

“Hello, is everything alright in there? My name’s Eraser Head, I’m a pro-hero and I’m here to help, if you’ll let me,” he announces.

When no response is given, he leans forward to press an ear to the door, and like the store clerk had said over the phone, all he can hear is the sound of the tap running, which isn’t a good sign. Bracing himself, he speaks up again. “If you don’t answer, I’m going to assume you’re incapacitated, and enter with force,” he offers in an attempt to get the kid to speak up, to give him any indication that he was okay.

He gets no response.

God, I really hope I’m not about to walk in on a dead kid. The grim thought passes through his head before he makes the decision to bust open the door. Rearing back with one powerful kick to the side of the bloodied handle, he’s able to enter the restroom—readying himself for the worst—before his clinical gaze flicks to every corner of the restroom only to find that it’s… completely empty.

“Shit,” Shota curses under his breath as his eyes lock onto the recently opened window—Seriously, why does this restroom have a window?—that is currently letting in the raging storm from outside. The hero lets out a world-weary sigh before reaching up to his earpiece as he quickly updates the dispatch on the situation. After doing so, he easily jumps up and out through the window to stand in the equally empty back alley, with no kid in sight. And thanks to the rain, any and all hope of a trail was completely washed away.

“Let the paramedics know they are no longer needed, over,” he spits out bitterly, angry at himself for being too slow to arrive. There’s no way they were going to find the kid now, and it would be a wasted effort to try and chase him on foot with how dreadful the storm is. Still, for his own peace of mind, he jogs down to the end of the alley where it opens out to the connecting street and makes a quick sweep of the area, but he finds nothing. He mutters some more expletives in disappointment.

“Alright, I’ll let them know, Eraser Head-san. Police are on their way for a statement, over and out.”

When Shota returns to the store’s restroom, he now takes his time to fully assess the scene. Over his shoulder, the young employee is also peering into the dimly lit room, anxiety oozing off of her. He ignores her to instead search for any potential clues left behind.

On the mirror there is a smudge of a small, bloody hand print, however it doesn’t seem like there’s any discernible fingerprints. The sink, now turned off, is filled with stagnant water that’s slightly tinted pink. Now, Shota is no forensics expert, but he knows the difference between fresh and old blood, what with his almost ten years under his belt as a hero. And, from what he could tell, it all seems like old blood. So, hopefully the kid isn’t actively bleeding, at least, which in turn makes him feel slightly better—but only slightly. Left behind under the window is a single red high-top and what looks to be trash from a pack of onigiri. Shota sighs as he squats down to get a closer look.

Really, his job there is done. Any and all investigative work would be done by whatever police would eventually show up, and they would take care of it; there was no further need for a hero on scene. It could all be out of his hands.

But for some reason, this situation demands his attention.

Standing up and turning around, he then addresses the clerk once again. “Can I see the store’s security footage?”

She blinks, shaking out of her stupor and nods quickly. “O-Of course,” she responds, voice still trembling with anxiety.

As the hero follows her to the computers, something in Shota’s gut tells him that this is only the beginning of something big, and he wants to be around to see it through.

Five days prior.

The day that Izuku Midoriya’s life would change forever starts out as a sleepy one.

It’s a normal Monday morning. Izuku allows himself to sleep in—it is summer break, after all—however, his bright green eyes begin to gently flutter open as the sounds of his mother making her way around the apartment not-too-quietly interrupts his slumbering mind. Yawning, he lifts his head slowly from his pillows to turn around and check his alarm clock that reads “9:02am”.

He hums to himself. Why didn’t Mom wake me up sooner? Izuku thinks, his mind still foggy from the dream he was having. He smacks his lips and realizes how thirsty he is, so he decides to pull himself out of bed. As soon as his feet touch the cold, hardwood flooring, he shivers and briefly debates going back under the covers to the pleasing warmth, but manages to push through that impulse to instead start his day.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Izuku slowly makes his way out of his bedroom and into the bathroom across the hall. He flicks on the light and is greeted with the sight of his somewhat chubby, freckled face and unruly bed-head. Although, when is it ever not unruly? His thoughts chirp in as he chuckles to himself. He hums a little tune while he brushes his teeth, and after that he attempts to pull a comb through his hair, but is unsuccessful in his efforts—like always—and so he eventually gives up trying.

When he softly pads out of the bathroom, he nearly bumps into his mother as she hastily walks out of the kitchen, seemingly in a hurry. She makes a shocked sound right before she stops herself with two hands on his shoulders, jostling him back slightly.

“Oh, Izuku! I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you get up!” She quickly says, brushing one of her hands down the side of his sleep-rumpled shirt.

Izuku smiles. “It’s ok, Mom, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” he easily brushes her off as he continues into the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of water.

His mom lets him pass as she goes back to whatever it was she was doing. Down the hall, she calls after him in a slightly raised tone of voice. “Did you sleep well, Sweetheart? I know you usually like to get up a little earlier, but I thought since it’s a special day you should get to sleep in a little longer!”

He stops sipping his water to tilt his head to the side in thought. “What do you mean? What day is it?” He asks, projecting his voice as much as she had been.

Izuku then hears the hurried steps of his mother from down the hall. She rushes back into the kitchen with an incredulous look on her face that makes him stumble back a bit in surprise. “Izuku! Don’t tell me you forgot!” The woman huffs.

Blinking, he turns to the calendar on the wall next to the fridge. Today is the fourteenth of July. Slowly, he makes eye contact with her again. “It’s… the day before my birthday?” He asked with a tone of uncertainty. His mother rolls her eyes.

“Yes, yes, I know it isn’t your birthday yet, but today we’re getting ready!” She exclaims with excitement, hands clapping together. He laughs a bit at that, still confused.

“Ready for what? It’s just my twelfth birthday—that’s, like, one of the unimportant ones,” he says casually as he walks over to the living room. He sits down on the couch and reaches for the remote to turn on the news, hoping that there would be some footage of any recent hero fights playing. He doesn’t get what his mom is so excited about—it isn’t like he ever wanted to plan anything for his birthday anyways. The last time he was actually happy for the day to roll around was probably his sixth birthday, when Kacchan still pretended to somewhat tolerate his existence. It seemed like every other year after that he was expertly ignored around this time of the month by all the kids at school, but he tries to push down those uncomfortable thoughts for the time being.

His mother huffs again, and he thinks for a moment how silly she is sometimes. “It isn’t just your birthday, Izuku! All of your birthdays are special, no matter how old you’re turning! You’ll always be my baby anyway…” she pauses behind her son as he sits on the couch and gently runs a hand through his curls. Izuku leans back into the touch before she pulls away. “And besides… we’re doing something extra special this year!” She exclaims then, making her way back into the living room and kitchen to start making whatever is for breakfast.

“Wait, what are we doing? I thought we were just staying home like always.” He asks, now slightly intrigued as he turns around on the couch to watch her intently.

The green haired woman grins as she pulls a cut of fish out of the fridge, closing the door with her hip as she saunters back over to the counter. “Well… it’s a surprise! Now, I know how you are and how you always like to know what exactly we’re doing and why,” she gives him a pointed look which makes him giggle in embarrassment, “But I planned this trip months ago just for you, so you are just going to have faith in your mother and trust that it’s going to be fun and that you’re going to like it!” And at the mention of a trip, Izuku’s interests are certainly piqued.

“A trip?” Her son smiles, and from behind his feet kick up and down excitedly.

“Yes, that’s right! So, while I make breakfast, how about you go and start packing, hmm? You’ll need to pack enough for at least three days, but of course pack a little extra just in case, you always need to be prepared for anything! Oh, and pack a swimsuit!” She tells him as she pours out some measured grains into the rice cooker.

Three days?! Where could we possibly be going for three days? Izuku thinks with a wobbly grin before eagerly nodding, forgetting about whatever he put on the TV to instead run back to his room to do as his mom asked.

Yanking open his closet, he pulls down his trusty blue and yellow duffel bag to begin putting his things together.

-

“You rented a car?!”

Izuku blinks wildly as he watches his mother fish a set of car keys out of her purse, clicking them to unlock the definitely-not-there-before blue sedan that sits innocently in their apartment complex’s parking lot. She then turns to him with yet another grin as she pushes Izuku forward by the shoulder, since it appears that he was frozen in place whilst gawking.

“Yes! Well, ‘Suki helped me rent it, but, yes!” His mother informs him while opening the trunk of the car, ushering Izuku over to begin loading up their belongings. He does so without grumbling, but at the mention of Aunt Mitsuki, he feels a twinge of nervousness bloom in his chest. Apparently, it shows on his face, too, because his mother then frowns a bit as she puts her hands on her hips.

“What’s wrong now? You have that look, you know, the one where you’re about to throw fifteen rapid-fire questions at me and not give me a chance to answer any of them,” she jokes wryly, but really, he knows that he has a habit of doing things like that. His face flushes in embarrassment as he scratches the side of his cheek with a nervous chuckle.

“No, no, Mom, it’s not that, It’s just… Kacchan doesn’t have anything to do with this surprise, does he?” He asks with an anxious but careful lilt to his voice. He watches his mothers face somewhat intensely, hoping that he might catch any micro-expressions that could even potentially hint that his somewhat-estranged, not-so-best-friend might be involved in all of this secrecy surrounding his birthday trip.

But Izuku doesn’t see anything like that. Instead, he watches as his mothers expression morphs into one that’s laced with obvious concern regarding her son’s seemingly out of nowhere probing. He then realizes that he should have just kept his mouth shut, because now she’s going to ask why he would ever be worried about having to see her best friend’s son.

“Katsuki? Why are you worried about seeing him?” She asks, because of course she does, and Izuku internally groans to himself while he quickly goes through the mental gymnastics required to figure out a way to pull himself out of the unfortunate hole he just dug himself.

“Worried? Who said I was worried?” He laughs a little too loudly, which he realizes because his mother winces slightly at his sudden uptick in volume, and he curses internally at his obvious discomfort. “I’m not worried, it’s just, Kacchan is always s-so busy, you know, and I wouldn’t want him to have to worry about something as trivial as m-my birthday plans, or anything like that!” He tries to explain his reasoning—hands fluttering about as he does—and after it comes out, he realizes just too late that it sounds so much worse out loud than it did in his head.

And his mother appears to agree with his internal conclusion regarding what he just uttered aloud, because now she looked slightly disappointed and upset, which makes Izuku only feel ten times worse. “Your birthday isn’t trivial, Izuku, so stop saying things like that,” she lightly scolds, which to Izuku feels as if he’s just received a physical lashing; because it was rare that his mother ever actually scolded him for something. His shoulders slightly hutch in on themselves before she continues with a sigh. “But, no, Katsuki has nothing to do with what I have planned. Though, really, Izuku, it’s strange that you would even ask something like that. I thought that you two were—”

“Friends! Yes! We’re friends, of course we are—best friends even—why would you even ask that?!” Izuku cuts his mother off and she gapes slightly, thrown off by her son’s sudden interjection. Before she can scold him a second time for so rudely cutting her off, he rambles again. “Anyways, just forget I asked. I was just, you know, curious! Like you said! I just can’t help but wonder about every little thing,” he adds on a poor attempt at a laugh at the end before dramatically swinging his duffel bag into the trunk, shutting it with a bit more force than strictly necessary.

His mother, however, does not seem entirely convinced by his flimsy excuse—but for reasons Izuku is most certainly not going to question right now, she decides to mercifully drop it. Izuku’s heart thrums in his chest with that lingering anxiety and he can now only hope that it will eventually dissipate once their journey begins.

-

Some time later after their awkward exchange, the family of two are packed comfortably into the rental and on their way to wherever it is that his mom is taking him. While she’s busy focusing on the road—while also somehow fussing with every little button and dial on the dashboard for some reason—Izuku is nervously watching the scenery go by with a hand on his chin, propped up by his elbow that rests on the passenger side door. He absentmindedly chews on the inside of his cheek, while his other hand fidgets with the edge of his shirt. Music plays on the radio idly, yet all of the sounds go in one ear and out the other, as he just can’t help but think about where they might be going.

Eventually, he can’t hold in his burgeoning curiosity any longer, so he turns to her. “Are you sure you can’t give me, I dunno, some sort of hint as to where we’re going? Please?” He asks with a hesitant smile.

“Izuku,” she sighs, and with just his name he’s already slumping back into the seat dramatically, groaning all the way, which makes her laugh. “Just relax! I know that if I give you any sort of clue as to what I have planned, that big beautiful head on your shoulders will eventually figure it out somehow, and then the whole surprise will be ruined!”

At the sudden compliment, he blushes and rolls his eyes a bit. “C’mon, you really think I could figure it out that easily? You somehow kept this from me for months, apparently. If you went through that much trouble to plan this, I doubt that I could guess it so quickly…” he mumbles slightly at the end, crossing his arms petulantly.

“Izuku, don’t sell yourself short! I know how smart my own son is,” she says easily with an overly fond smile while reaching over carefully to cup Izuku’s face in her palm—all the while still maintaining her intense focus on the road, of course. He leans into her touch with a pout, which makes her giggle at his antics, “Which is exactly why I am keeping you in the dark. Just go ahead and take a nap! I can at least tell you that we’ll be driving for a while, so I don’t mind if you doze a bit, don’t worry about trying to keep me company. I’ve got my music!” She punctuates by turning the radio up a little bit louder, and Izuku smiles before rolling his shoulders.

“Okay, okay, you win,” he relents, happy for even the tiniest bit of information given. He then leans his chair back so he can relax more, although he knows it might be awhile before he actually falls asleep, if he even manages that. He’s just so excited! So, to try and help his brain fall asleep, Izuku begins to theorize all the possible places that they could be going, hoping that it might lull him into a state where sleep might be attainable.

She explicitly reminded me to bring a swimsuit… so we’re going somewhere with water? But maybe it’s just because most hotels have pools… but, it’s summer, so maybe we’re going to a place with a really nice beach! That would be cool, I really like beaches… maybe we could find some cool seashells, or maybe we might even see some cool ocean-based heroes! That would be so cool! Even Kacchan couldn’t complain about a trip like that…

As he thinks of all the possibilities, Izuku knows he’s probably mumbling some of his theories out loud, but at this point he’s too excited at the prospect of getting to spend his birthday in some sort of sunny paradise with the best mom anyone could ever ask for. It’s been so long since they’ve taken a family trip, after all.

His breathing starts to slow and his anxious heart rate settles with how loved he feels.

Distantly, his subconscious begins to recall fleeting images of a much younger version of himself being picked up and swung around on a beach by his fathers’ arms. His eyes finally close as he faintly hears the giggles that he had let out all that time ago, playing with his dad. He can even remember hearing the smile evident in his mothers voice when she would call out to them while watching on fondly.

And it’s then, as Izuku is lost in that memory, that he slowly begins to fall into a state of slumber—all the while with a head full of sunny blue skies and the soft sounds of the ocean rhythmically licking up on the sand—and remembers the last time his dad had smiled at him.

-

The sun shines brightly that day.

A four year old Izuku laughs as he plays a game of heroes and villains with his mom and dad. His dad chases along more so than his mom, but only because she had already tired herself out thoroughly while making dozens of sandcastles with her son earlier in the morning.

The little boy squeals as his dad finally catches up with him, playing the villain. He makes a big show of his strength, easily swooping up Izuku by the arms, hoisting him upside down to dangle him over the back of his shoulder, only holding on to him by one leg; all the while his son giggles and yells in a pretend protest.

“Daddy! Daddy, no, put me down! I’m getting dizzy!” Izuku shouts, punching his arms uselessly against his fathers back. His dad, too, laughs at his antics.

“Do you surrender, hero?” His dad asks in a dramatically low voice, letting a bit of smoke release from his nostrils theatrically, his free hand now reaching up to tickle Izuku’s side. His giggling only intensifies as he thrashes.

“AH! No, hero’s never surrender!” Izuku tries to squeak out through his uncontrollable laughter, eyes tearing up ever so slightly at his fathers barrage of playful attacks. Izuku then pulls himself up to grab onto his fathers jet-black curls, yanking on him in retaliation—and only then does he stop.

“Ouch! Watch the hair, squirt!” His dad chuckles, lifting Izuku up higher to settle him on his shoulders, finally allowing him a break.

“Don’t get him all lightheaded, Hisashi!” His mother calls after them with a smile, and his father turns around to make their way back over.

“Ah, you worry too much, Inko! This little guy’s too tough to be bested so easily,” he praises his son, and Izuku giggles while he listens to his parents banter. His dad then tickles his feet a bit, and Izuku folds over on his head, covering his dads eyes with his tiny hands in response.

“Izuku, be careful! Don’t fall!” His mother worries slightly, and at that his father decides to dramatically swing his son over his shoulders and back onto the wet beach, and Izuku just goes along with it all, even if he ends up with his face planting in the sand by accident.

“Oh, Izuku…”

“Izuku? Izuku?”

Izuku jolts awake to the sound of his mother calling his name and the loud crash of thunder and rain pelting down on the car outside. His eyes blink rapidly as he takes in his surroundings before quickly looking over to his mom as she tries to get his attention, his breathing uneven ever so slightly from being woken up suddenly. He notices, too, that his eyes feel slightly wet.

“S-Sorry, I fell asleep,” he pants out, swallowing a bit. “What is it?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear—I just needed you to hand me something from my bag in the back seat,” she asks, now having to speak a bit louder to be heard over how loud the rain is. Izuku is shocked that the weather had changed so much from the time he fell asleep. He twists around to grab her purse.

“How long was I out? And where are we?” Izuku asks as he searches the back seat, though he struggles to find where her purse had gone. His gaze flicks to the window for a moment, and it’s only then that he realizes that they’re now in way more of a rural area compared to the cities he was born and raised in, as all he could make out past the rain was an endless sea of trees.

His mother grumbles a bit. “Well, you weren’t asleep for very long, actually. It only looks like it’s night time, but really, it’s just this nasty storm! It came out of nowhere!” She says, exasperated. “We should still have another hour or two before we make it to the ryokan that we’re staying at,” she explains, and Izuku is surprised that she let some details of her plan slip, but he thinks its just because of how thrown off she seems to be from the sudden change in weather.

She probably didn’t account for anything like this in our plans, he thinks idly as he’s still uselessly groping around in the dark of the car. He lets out an annoyed huff, confused as to why he can’t find her purse. “Mom, I can’t see anything—”

“IZUKU—!” His mother is suddenly shouting, cutting him off, and before Izuku can even comprehend what’s happening, he hears the sound of her slamming her hand on the car horn and tires screeching on wet pavement. In an instant, his body is flying into the side of the car—the vehicle violently rotating before he feels the impact of the them crashing into some kind of road barrier—and then everything goes black.

-

The world is a disorientating blur.

Izuku gasps, taking in a desperate amount of air into his lungs as his eyes fly open, heart pounding. For a moment, he can’t hear anything due to the blood rushing to his inner ears. His chest is heaving, and then he thinks he recognizes the sound of rushing water as his auditory senses slowly begin to focus in.

Something warm and thick uncomfortably clings to a large majority of his head. Everything is so dark, and his vision struggles to focus on anything around him properly. His hands slap to the car roof above his head, and he manages to turn on one of the dim overhead lights. He grunts, and suddenly it feels like his left leg is on fire—a choked scream rips from his throat, and his vision goes white from the pain very briefly.

What’s happening?! Did we get into an accident?! Oh god, my leg feels like it’s stuck—is that water?!

His mind races, thoughts barely coherent as they lag behind his current situation—he struggles to understand anything.

His head is pounding, completely disoriented. Then, fear shoots through him like a bullet as he remembers his—

“Mom! Oh my god, Mom?! Are you—” Izuku cuts himself off as his head whips to his right, and it’s only then that he sees the state his mother is in.

Izuku gapes in horror. His mother’s small form looks like it was thrown over the wheel, her seat belt somehow failed her. She’s completely motionless, face obscured from his view, hair a complete mess of tangles and matted with blood.

“Mom! Mom—oh my god—can you hear me? Mom, please!” Izuku begs, pulling against his trapped leg. He thinks he’s beginning to hyperventilate, but he hardly cares about that because he couldn’t see his mother breathing.

There is no rise and fall to her chest, not even a little bit. Inko’s son thrashes against his seatbelt, arms fumbling to release it, when it finally unlatches. Izuku’s upper body falls forward a bit, and it’s only then that he realizes that their car is almost completely vertical and currently sinking into a body of water.

His head flies around in several directions, taking in more information desperately. The passenger side window was busted open, and the windshield is just a spiderweb of fractures in the glass, somehow still holding together against the pressure of the water engulfing the car—it’s also splattered with too much blood. His expression twists painfully, morphing from the horrible feeling of his leg trapped within a crumpled spot in the car.

Shaky hands pull at his crushed knee. Izuku grits his teeth as he heaves back with all of his strength, and he somehow manages to wretch his leg free with another yell of agony, losing his shoe in the process, and gaining a brand new cut to add onto his growing list of problems. Unstuck, Izuku pulls his legs up more on the seat, trying to get above the rising water level. His entire body is so cold, and his brain only just then registered how badly he’s shivering.

Then it’s like his brain has frozen. Izuku doesn’t know what to do. His eyes are blown wide, trying to absorb as much visual information as possible, but it all feels as if nothing’s real. He then looks back to his mother’s still form, and is able to snap himself out of the brief daze, head now full with the sole focus of saving.

“M-Mom, it’s gonna be ok! I-I’m gonna get us out of here! D-Don’t worry, I’ll somehow save you,” Izuku blabbers out, teeth chattering, and he’s not entirely sure who he’s trying to convince more in that moment. His hands flutter over her uselessly, anxious to touch her. Lacerations seem to cover her entire body, which only makes him hesitate further. Izuku doesn’t know how he’s suppressing his urge to vomit just at the sight of her in this condition. Shutting his eyes tightly, the boy slaps his cheeks with both hands.

C’mon, Izuku, think! How can you get her out of here?! You’re supposed to be smart! What the hell else are you good for?! You can’t be a Deku right now! His thoughts screamed at him.

All the while Izuku is thinking, the water has reached up to waist level, and Izuku’s panic only increases with it. With how cold he is, he can only imagine how bad it is for his mom. He must have just gotten lucky, he reasons, that’s the reason that he woke up first. His mother is going to be fine.

She has to be. She has to be fine! She’s just unconscious, that’s all!

Izuku finally musters up the courage to lean over the center console to slink an arm across his mothers back to wrap himself around her waist. The entire lower half of her body is soaked, the water only getting faster as it fills up the car. Counting down in his head, Izuku takes in a deep breath and pulls with all of his limited might, yelling as he does.

But his mothers form won’t budge from her seat.

“C’mon!” Izuku whines, voice cracking as he reaches a wretched pitch that he didn’t even know he was capable of. He grits his teeth again, and it’s a shock that they aren’t cracking under the pressure somehow. Even with the dim light above, It’s still so dark, making it hard to even tell what is keeping his mother pinned in place. As he yanks and pulls, he hopes that he isn’t just harming her more, but he knows that if he did nothing, she would only end up succumbing to her injuries—or worse yet, she would drown.

Dammit! You have to get her out! You have to save her! Please, whatever force or god that’s out there, please let me save her! Let me save my mother! Izuku uselessly begs to himself, but he knows, somewhere deep in his mind, that his prayers will go unanswered.

In this moment, Izuku is completely and utterly alone.

The water is now up to their shoulders, and Izuku knows that he is running out of time. From the way everything flows, he can feel his body begin to lift, now being pulled toward the busted window. Bloodied hands cling under his mothers arms, but it’s no use. Sobs start to wrack through his body, hot tears flow and mix with the blood and sweat that covers his mess of a face; his cries drowned out the sound of rain and thunder.

“Please! Momma, please! I can’t lose you! Someone, anyone, please, save her!” He screams to no one. Izuku is beginning to feel lightheaded from his desperate calls, but what else can he do? The logical side of his brain has already came to the conclusion that there’s no way that he could possibly pull his mother out of this car. She’s pinned somewhere at the legs, worse than he had been, and the pressure of the water surrounding them isn’t helping him in the slightest.

But the emotional part of him still clings to the minuscule chance that he can somehow fix all of this—that, somewhere within him, he can tap into that sort of hysterical strength that people on the television would sometimes talk about. That the stories of mothers lifting cars off of their children in desperation were real, and that he could be the one to lift with superhuman strength.

But instead, he begins to choke on the water that’s now filling his mouth. He accidentally swallows, and some of it goes down his windpipe, causing him to lose focus, practically hacking up his lungs. His vision blurs, and Izuku has never hated his lack of a quirk more than this moment. He begins to feel his grip loosen, his arms failing him as his muscles start to tremor from the strain of his movements and the freezing water combined. Izuku attempts to keep his head out of the water, and then he tries to do the same for his mother. His expression crumples as he can just make out the side of her face, eyes closed as if she is just sleeping; his hands now just cupping her cheeks reverently as he tries to keep them both above the cold depths.

“M-Mom, I love y-you, I love you, I love you, I’m s-sorry, I’m so sorry,” her son weeps, a mantra of apologies falling from his lips, tumbling out like it is the end of the world—because to Izuku, it is the end of the world. His whole world. That’s who Inko Midoriya is to him. His mother is everything good, his closest confidant, his best friend, words can’t even begin describe how important she is to her one and only son.

Izuku’s own survival instincts were at war in his head as he still tries to cling to his mother’s body, because now the water is enveloping his face, entering his nose, flooding his senses entirely. Another large wave crashes into him, pushing his body back and forth with its momentum, disorienting him as it pulls him under. Without really thinking, his hands unwillingly release his mother’s face to feel around the interior of the car, searching for the broken window, all sense of direction failing him miserably.

But he’s too late.

He had spent far too much time on his fruitless endeavor to pull his mother out, and the car is now almost fully submerged into whatever body of water they had crashed into. He doesn’t even know if they’re in a lake or a river—though, if he focused, he would be able to realize that the water is flowing all in one direction, indicating that this isn’t any sort of reservoir or pond.

Izuku is then swallowed up completely by the unforgiving abyss, but all his mind can think about is his mothers face, and how he’s failed her. He thinks that he’s drowning now, but Izuku can hardly care about that, because if he’s drowning, then surely his mother is too, which agonizes him to his very core.

His lungs feel like they’re on fire, and his skin is like ice.

And then, everything woes dark for the second time that day—and this time, Izuku welcomes it.

Bakugo Mitsuki is, at heart, not a patient woman—and she knew this fact about herself very well; intimately so, one could say.

So, by the time nine o’clock that Monday night had rolled around, and Mitsuki had not yet received a call from Inko confirming that she and Izuku had arrived on time to check into their ryokan, Mitsuki was pissed.

As impatient as she is with people in general, it is, as always, different when it came to the Midoriyas.

With Inko, Mitsuki is soft and understanding, a far cry to how she behaves in her own home at times, even. With Izuku it’s about the same, mostly because she knows how her own son can be at any given time when it comes to the other children in his life.

Katsuki behaves like a firecracker that was let loose too soon upon a world that wasn’t quite ready for him—all boisterous noise and possessing a brazen sort of raw power that no twelve-year-old should reasonably have access to—and so Mitsuki felt like she needed to be the calming factor in her house whenever Izuku was around.

Although, that has been happening less and less lately, if at all, now that she is thinking about it. It’s odd, but since Katsuki has never brought it up, neither does Mitsuki. That’s how things always are between them.

This is all to say that Mitsuki is being very forgiving toward Inko right now for her having not checked in yet. She needs to keep a level head. Sure, the family of two hasn’t been on a trip on their own for ages—not since Hisashi—but it isn’t as if that suddenly means that Inko is completely incapable of handling things on her own. No, Mitsuki just needs to trust that her best friend and her son are fine, and that maybe they had just been a little delayed by that storm that had suddenly rolled in from the east coast.

The storm is an additional unwelcome irritation—mostly because the rain always put her livewire of a son in a sour mood—so she is also dealing with him throwing a hissy fit as soon as he gets home late from the gym, drenched from head to toe.

Mitsuki watches from where she stands in the kitchen as Katsuki practically busts through the front door, thankfully not breaking the hinges—he had managed to do that once in the past—loudly making himself known as he grumbles, aggressively kicking his shoes off, apparently not caring where they end up in the genkan.

“Oi! Don’t leave your shoes like that, brat! Line them up properly! And don’t drag in that water all over the house!” Mitsuki immediately yells, which Katsuki prickles at with a groan, making his movements far more dramatic than needed as he begrudgingly doubles back to do as he was told.

“How the hell am I supposed to do that, hag?! You gonna’ at least bring me a towel to dry off with?! I’m soaked!” Katsuki snips back, gesturing to all of himself—already copping an attitude, which Mitsuki does not want to deal with right now—so instead of replying back with her own biting remark, she pulls out a kitchen towel from one of the drawers, balling it up tightly to chuck across the room. It catches her son off guard as it smacks him in the face and falls to the floor before he could catch it. He growls in response, yanking the piece of cloth off the ground to begin drying himself off.

“Don’t get smart with me right now, Katsuki. I’m really not in the mood for it. Your father made dinner earlier, so eat it when you’re done with your shower because you are not sitting at my dining room table like that.” Mitsuki decides to forgo any nickname for her son, hoping that her serious change in tone will be communicated as best as she can manage. It’s difficult at times like this, with how Katsuki can often be. It takes everything within the woman to maintain some semblance of peace amongst the members of her tumultuous household—especially when she is already having an off night herself.

Thankfully, Katsuki understands that she’s serious. As soon as he’s dry enough, he stomps his way upstairs, slamming doors along the way as he does, though soon enough she can hear the distant sound of the shower starting up.

Sighing, Mitsuki pads into the den to sit on the couch. With one hand anxiously wrapping around her stomach, she bends over to pick up the remote from the coffee table, turning the TV on and flipping to the weather channel to track the storm. Is it really the best idea for her already nervous state of mind? Probably not, but Mitsuki just can’t help herself. She leans back into the soft cushions, hand still clutching onto her cardigan in an uncharacteristic way.

From down the hall, she then hears the door to her husband’s office open, and soon enough Masaru is making his way into the kitchen and over to the fridge, most likely to find himself a late evening snack like he usually does around this time of night before he gets ready for bed. Instead of acknowledging him like she typically would, however, Mitsuki just keeps her focus on the bright screen in front of her.

Masaru, ever the doting husband, stops what he’s doing when he picks up on his wife’s anxious mood.

“Dear? Are you alright?” Masaru calls from behind the kitchen island, but Mitsuki doesn’t immediately respond. The grip on her stomach tightens ever so slightly. She then registers that he is now stepping up behind her on the couch, but she still flinches just a bit when his warm, large hands are placed on her shoulders, massaging them gently.

“What's wrong? You’re all wound up, more so than usual,” he says, burying his face into her ash-blond spikes, voice a low timbre that sends shivers down her spine easily every time; Masaru knew how to relax her instantly. It’s basically his second job.

She straightens her posture a bit so that she can lean further back into her husband’s embrace from behind, and lets out a weary sigh. “It’s Inko,” she starts, and she can’t help how her voice drips with obvious stress. “You know how I was helping her with that trip she was planning? For Izuku’s birthday?”

Masaru hums in understanding, so she continues. “She just… hasn’t updated me yet, is all. I told her to call me and let me know as soon as they checked into the ryokan. They should have gotten there hours ago, I know they left around eleven, so she should have called me sometime after two or three this afternoon, but she never did.” She explains. And, after saying it, Mitsuki realizes that she might be blowing this way out of proportion, but still, she can’t help the bad feeling she has about all of this.

“Maybe they just got a little held up by the storm? Or she just forgot, you know how she can be sometimes,” Masaru reasons, because yes, Inko could definitely be considered a forgetful person at times. Being a single mom is tough—Mitsuki certainly doesn’t understand how she can do it and not be even more frazzled every day—though she supposes having an unproblematic son such as Izuku certainly helps.

“Yes I know that,” she snaps on instinct, but stops herself. She can’t get mad at Masaru right now. It isn’t his fault that Inko has gone radio silent, so it would be unfair for her to let her anger get the better of her. “Sorry,” she mutters as her shoulders slump.

“It’s alright, I know that you’re just worried for her,” he says easily, pressing a kiss into the crown of her head. She then turns her head up to get another peck on the lips, which he offers to her without hesitation. He gives her shoulders one last squeeze before going back into the kitchen to finish getting himself a snack. Though, now she can expect him to grab her something as well, because that’s just the kind of man that Masaru is.

“I just don’t know how much time I should give her before I blow up her inbox,” Mitsuki huffs, now crossing her arms as well as pulling up her legs onto the couch to get more comfortable. Masaru hums, thinking for a moment before replying.

“How about you wait until tomorrow morning? Then, when she answers, you can also give Izuku his birthday well-wishes.” He says, somehow having complete faith that Inko and her son are fine.

For some reason, it makes something deep within Mitsuki’s gut twist uncomfortably

“Fine. Tomorrow morning.”

Mitsuki can only pray that her bad feeling is just that.

Just a feeling.

-

“You’ve reached Midoriya Inko. Sorry I can’t answer the phone right now, please leave me a—”

Mitsuki lets out a strangled growl before hitting the end call button on her phone’s screen as aggressively as humanly possible and throws the device halfway across the room.

It is now Tuesday morning and Mitsuki still can’t get a hold of Inko, her phone’s newly cracked screen proof of her frustration. She hasn’t even gotten out of bed yet, but as soon as her alarm had woken her up at six o’clock sharp, she had called her friend—a whole hour earlier from when she would normally get up, because she knows how the entire day was scheduled. She had helped plan their day out, so Mitsuki knows that they were supposed to be up by now.

“Dammit!” She yells, ripping the comforter off of her legs to leap from her bed to go collect her phone from wherever it had landed in the darkness of their bedroom. A heavy sleeper, Masaru only rouses as his wife leaves the bed.

“Mitsuki…?” Her husband mumbles, sleep heavy in his tone. His eyes are squinting without his glasses, and he slowly lifts himself up to reach for them from where they rest on the nightstand.

“She still isn’t picking up! Why the hell isn’t she picking up?! Something’s wrong, I just know it,” Mitsuki starts to rant as she paces around the room, phone in hand as she continuously tries—and fails—to reach her friend, her other hand gripping tightly into her sleep-tousled hair.

“Still…? That… That is concerning, yes…” Masaru says, now wearing his glasses as he turns on a lamp to cast some light into their bedroom. At his words though, somehow Mitsuki only feels worse for having her worries validated by her husband. It makes them feel infinitely more real, which only helps to heighten her stress levels.

But before she can say anything else, the couple hears their son yell from upstairs.

“Hag! Why the hell are you yelling at ass o’clock in the morning?! You woke me up!” Katsuki screams, voice cracking with anger. Mitsuki feels her eye twitch again before she stomps over to her bedroom door, yanking it open to respond.

“As if you aren’t loud in the mornings when you’re brushing your damn teeth like a maniac! I do as I damn well please in my house!” Is all that Mitsuki yells back, too angry herself to give a proper reason to her son. She knows in the back of her mind that it will only raise tensions in the house further, but she really can’t give a damn. Mitsuki has bigger things to worry about.

Then, a loud clap of thunder could be heard from outside, followed by the familiar sound of rain beginning to pour down on the roof of their home. She makes out Katsuki letting out an aggravated “FUCK!” before a door slams, most likely him going back into his room. Mitsuki rolls her eyes, shouting something about not slamming the doors “like a damn brat”, before she turns her attention back to the problem at hand.

“I’m calling the ryokan,” she announces to her husband with a determined glare, stomping her way over to the floor-to-ceiling window that framed one of their bedroom walls. She pulls back the heavy blackout curtains to confirm that, yes, it had begun to rain again. What the hell is with these storms? She grumbles internally, now looking through her and Inko’s trip plan notes on her phone for the phone number of the place they were supposed to have checked in to by now.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Masaru agrees, “I’ll go start us some breakfast, okay?” Her lovely husband says as he gets out of bed as well. Mitsuki really did bag herself a catch in the form of one Masaru Bakugo, she thinks in the back of her mind as she shoots him a nod over her shoulder.

Mitsuki dials the number, and after a few rings they answer.

“Good morning! You have reached the Wisteria Family Ryokan—” A woman begins to speak, but before she can even finish the standard greeting Mitsuki is already interrupting her.

“Hi, yes, hello, I’m calling to check on the arrival status of one Midoriya Inko? She was supposed to have checked in yesterday evening with her son. I need to know if they made it in,” Mitsuki cuts to the chase, not wanting to delay any longer. The woman on the phone seemed to hesitate, as the line was quiet for a few moments.

“Um, I’m sorry miss, but I cannot give out information regarding our guests unless you’re a member of their party or family,” she explains calmly, although Mitsuki can pick up on the slightly miffed intonation.

“I am practically family!” Mitsuki shouts into the microphone, but before she could go off on this poor worker she collects herself with a deep breath, trying to reign in her anxiety. “Look, I just need to know if they checked in without any problems. They were supposed to confirm with me yesterday, but never did, and I haven’t heard from her since yesterday morning. If something happened to them, I need to know as soon as possible.” She tries to explain as rationally as she could, hoping that her conviction would come across over the phone.

“...Well, I suppose I can check on that…” the woman hums, and she can just barely hear the sound of a keyboard being typed on. “You said the name was Midoriya Inko…?” Mitsuki just grunts in an affirmative manner. The line went quiet again for a minute, and Mitsuki begins to pace impatiently, tapping her freehand on her elbow, just barely containing herself from yelling at the woman to work faster.

“Sorry for the delay,” she spoke again, “It seems that Midoriya-san and her son did not check in yesterday at their scheduled time,” the woman confirms and begins to say something else, but the sound of her own heartbeat in her ear drowns it out—and Mitsuki starts to spiral internally as her fears are confirmed.

“Hello? Miss?” She then hears after another moment of just staring out the window with a blank face, but instead of verbally answering Mitsuki just hangs up the phone. Her mind feels empty, and her ears start to ring.

But she can’t just stand around and do nothing. Opening the mail app on her phone, she quickly types up an email to her work explaining that she wouldn’t be in that day, before she went around her room hastily getting herself dressed with a single focus in mind.

Mitsuki makes a beeline out of her bedroom to the front door of the house, and Masaru calls after her.

“Mitsuki? Where are you going? I haven’t finished breakfast yet,” he asks, voice full of concern. His wife seems to ignore him as she slips on some boots and grabs one of the umbrellas from the basket beside the door. From upstairs, Katsuki peeks into the room with a glare, seeming confused as well, though he doesn’t say anything as he watches.

Yanking her keys from one of the hooks in the entryway, she opens the front door. The rushing sounds of the storm overwhelm the space immediately, and her hair whips around her face from the wind that enters the home. She spares her husband one last look.

“They never made it to the ryokan. I’m going to the police,” her tone leaves no room for questions. 

A strike of lighting illuminates her blazing red eyes for a split second, and before Masaru can respond she steps out into the rain and slams the door behind her in time with the following roar of thunder.

His limbs feel like dead weights at his sides.

“Izuku?”

His head is swimming. All of his body’s senses drift together—mixing, swirling, fading, drowning. Nothing makes any sense to his brain.

“Izuku!”

It’s like he can hear someone’s voice. A familiar voice, but he can’t exactly pinpoint who’s it is. He doesn’t feel like a real person.

“Izuku, wake up!”

He couldn’t possibly wake up. That would be impossible—unreasonable, even. Has he even been asleep? He can’t tell. He thinks he might be shivering, but he also thinks he could be dead.

“I’m so sorry, Izuku. Mommas so sorry.”

And that… That isn’t right. Why is his mother talking to him? Why is she apologizing? They were just in the car, weren’t they? They were going… somewhere. Where were they going?

“You have to wake up! Wake up, Izuku!”

But he’s so tired.

“Wake up!”

Izuku is suddenly choking, his body shooting up as if it’s moving on its own, and his lungs heave water out of themselves without his input. Glassy green eyes are blown wide, watery and red and hurting—but not nearly as bad as the pain in his chest as he gags on water and air, desperate for oxygen. It’s like he’s breathing for the very first time, like his body has never known what it was like to circulate air throughout itself. He’s hunched over on the ground, now on his knees, hacking and gasping, over and over and over again. Izuku’s beginning to feel lightheaded and numb.

Everything comes around to him slowly, but also far too fast. The sound of rushing water is ever present, as is the rain that feels like it would never end. He’s so cold, and he has no idea how he’s even moving. Why is he still moving?

Didn’t I…?

When it finally seems like he’s gotten everything out of his lungs, he tries to control his breathing, despite his growing displeasure with the act of moving any part of his body. It’s like the simple act of existing is now a herculean task, and Izuku isn’t sure if he’s up to the challenge. Nothing is making any sense.

Stop it! You have to breathe! Calm down—figure this out, Izuku!

Somehow, he manages to get his breathing under control and at a safe rhythm, so he lifts his head to try and make sense of his surroundings.

He’s… on a riverbank. Beneath him lies a riverbed of small, round stones, green and mossy and terribly, terribly cold. Water flows steadily just a few inches up and around his knees and hands, the surface constantly pelted with the rain, so he can’t make out his reflection. Not that he would be able to even if the water was calm, anyways, given that it’s so dark out.

I have to get out of this water before I freeze to death.

With trembling legs, Izuku slowly attempts to move. His knees feel as if they could buckle at any given moment, so he puts all of his focus into just standing up. Once he feels stable enough, his eyes travel away from the water and up to more solid land, hoping to find a way out of this river.

Izuku takes advantage of every flash of lighting, as it’s really only then that he can see anything in front of him. Thankfully, the storm is raging, and the lightning is plentiful amongst the inky blackness up above. He can’t really feel anything in his fingers or toes, but somehow he manages to push himself forward. Shaky hands feel around in front of his body as he stumbles on, so that hopefully he won’t run into any trees or fencing or anything of the sort. Izuku isn’t entirely sure what he’ll find around here, as he isn’t sure where here is, exactly.

Slowly but surely, Izuku claws his way further from the river. He needs to go… somewhere. Some place out of the rain and cold and dark. His gait is uneven as he steps along, though he isn’t sure as to why. His gaze slowly drifts down to his feet, and when lightning flashes to illuminate his surroundings, he can see that he only has one shoe on.

When… When did I lose a shoe?

His memories, then, hit him like a freight train.

The crash. Waking up. His leg, pinned. His head, soaked in blood. His mother—

His mothers broken, small body. The way she was slumped over, motionless. The water rushing in around them, rising until it had swallowed him whole. Izuku being pulled out of the car against his will, the water surrounding him, filling up his lungs—

His breathing starts to quicken again, and his hands grab at the sides of his head, tugging at the wet, matted curls. Pain suddenly shoots through his knees, which confuses him briefly until he realizes that he fell to them, and that they now dig painfully into the forest floor beneath him. He thinks he can hear someone screaming, but he quickly realizes that it’s him making those pained, devastated sounds. His head swims with those visuals, everything replaying for him over and over and over again, and it’s too much.

I have to go back! I have to go find her!

Izuku grunts, cutting off his sounds of mourning, because he needs to find his mother. Determined to get a move on, he wretches himself up, and turns back around. He’s much less careful than before, and he is just barely able to navigate back to the riverside to begin following it upstream, deciding that it would be his best chance at getting back to where his mother is. With every other step, pain shoots through his bare foot as it digs into every jagged rock and twig that he steps on. It’s unavoidable, though. He can’t really see where he’s going half the time.

That would very quickly become a problem for him.

Because, as it turns out, walking around a forest during a thunderstorm when he can’t hardly see three feet ahead of him, was, admittedly, a bit of a bad idea on Izuku’s part. Actually, it was a horrible idea, Izuku thinks just as the rubber sole of his only shoe slips down on a patch of muddy leaves, causing him to fall forward off of a small cliff that he didn’t see coming. His ankle bends the absolute wrong way, tumbling down pitifully with a strangled yelp—and just before Izuku knows it, his head knocks against something hard, and all-too quickly he’s fading back into a familiar darkness.

Mitsuki arrives at the Musutafu police station at around seven o’clock. She enters the precinct like a bat out of hell, all soaked from the rain and moving with a fiery determination that is evident to anyone looking her way. But Mitsuki is used to turning heads—she used to be a model, after all—so the staring doesn’t bother her. She doesn’t care about what other people thought of her, anyways.

After marching up to the front desk to the first officer available—a man with a tabby cat head, she briefly notes—and explains that she needs to report someone as missing.

They’re inclined to quickly help her do so, probably so that they can get her out of the lobby and into a private room as she knows how loud she’s being. She soon finds herself in an empty office, and is told that a detective will be with her shortly to take down her details and get a case started. Impatiently, she paces around the room instead of sitting in the chair that was offered.

Around five or so minutes after she was left in there, the door opens again and an unassuming middle-aged man walks in. The badge hanging from his lanyard is the only thing that indicates he’s a detective, as she certainly couldn’t tell from his current attire.

“Ah, good morning. Bakugo-san, was it?” He greets her, and she crosses her arms and nods to his question. “Very good. I’m Detective Hashimura, and I’ll be in charge of your case. Officer Sansa said that you needed to report a missing person?” The detective asks as he gestures for her to sit down, as he takes his own seat behind his desk. He has a pen and notepad, already beginning to write with them

“Yes. Two missing people, actually. A mother and her son,” she says as she begrudgingly accepts the seat. Her fingers tap on the surface of the table, outwardly expressing her feelings of urgency.

“I see,” he hums and jots down something, “And what are their names?” He asks.

“Midoriya Inko and Midoriya Izuku,” she quickly says, “Inko is thirty-seven. She has shoulder length dark-green hair and green eyes, and Izuku has short, curly green hair that’s almost black as well as green eyes and freckles. He turns twelve today.” She gives her brief physical description of the family, and continues once he waves for her to do so. “They left for a trip to celebrate his birthday yesterday morning at around eleven, and were driving to the Wisteria Family Ryokan, it’s only a few hours out from our neighborhood in Musutafu. Inko never called me like she was supposed to once she got there, and this morning I called the ryokan, but they told me that she never checked in.” Mitsuki explains as concisely as she can. Detective Hashimura hums while writing everything down.

“And you tried calling her?” He asks, and Mitsuki rolls her eyes.

“Of course I did. If she answered I wouldn’t be here,” she snips out, and the detective looks a little disgruntled, but doesn’t comment on her attitude.

“And how were you aware of what time they left and when they were supposed to arrive?”

“I helped plan their trip.”

Hashimura nods, “I see. Do you know if Midoriya-san would have contacted anybody else if she had any problems during her trip?” He asks, and Mitsuki sneers a little.

“No. I’m her closest friend, and she doesn’t have any relatives that she speaks to.” She answers.

“No husband?”

“She’s divorced.”

He hums again, and crosses out something on his notepad. “Do you happen to know the license plate of the car she was driving?”

“Yes, I also helped her pay for the rental,” Mitsuki explains as she pulls out her phone to show him the registration and license plates of the vehicle, as well as a picture of what it looks like. He then turns to the lone computer monitor on the desk, and begins to type something on the keyboard for the first time since he sat down. Mitsuki’s eyes flit around the room as she waits for him to finish.

He clicks on his mouse before turning the monitor around so that she can see it. On the screen is what looks to be a civilian database, and pulled up are pictures of Inko and Izuku. “These are them, yes?” He asks just to confirm, and Mitsuki nods when her heart pangs a little bit as she looks at the old pictures of her friend and Izuku. They both looked so much younger. Hashimura turns the monitor back to himself as he goes to look over their information. He has her confirm their address as he looks over what seems to be Izuku’s profile—she notices his picture reflected in the frames of his glasses—and then something about his demeanor changes after he reads something off of it.

Mitsuki notices the shift immediately, and straightens a bit in her seat. “Is something wrong?” she asks in a concerned way, and he quickly clicks off of Izuku’s registry to go back to Inko’s.

“No, no, I’m just a bit of a slow reader, apologies,” he dismisses her with a wave of his hand as he turns his monitor back to face him fully. Something about it leaves a gross taste in Mitsuki’s mouth, but she doesn’t push it. She just hopes that Inko and Izuku are okay.

Officer Tamakawa twitches his whiskers and flicks his ear as he hears the door to detective Hashimura’s office open. He watches the blond woman from before, Mrs. Bakugo, walk out after giving the detective a stilted, quick bow and a small departing request to keep her updated with any news. She does not acknowledge Tamakawa as she briskly strides past his desk and out of the station sporting an anxious scowl, but the officer doesn’t mind. The woman seemed incredibly stressed out about the situation, so he could cut her some slack. He’s been there before.

Detective Hashimura then exits his office with a sigh, and a look on his face that immediately tells Tamakawa that he’s about to drop off some paperwork to the cat-mutant. Tamakawa would say that it annoys him, but really, it doesn’t. It’s his job, after all, to do as his superiors tell him. And he’s right, because now Hashimura is setting a few papers down with a folder onto the officers desk.

“Please start an official case file for this report. All of the relevant information is in my notes. Get it done quickly—I don’t want to waste manpower on this,” Hashimura says with a disinterested voice, and it throws Tamakawa off for a moment as his large eyes blink. The woman and the detective weren’t in there for very long, it was around twenty minutes at best, so the officer is a little confused as to why Hashimura already seems so done with the whole thing.

“What do you mean, sir? I thought she was reporting a missing person?” Tamakawa asks with a slight tilt to his head as his pupils dilate with his growing curiosity.

The detective nods. “Yes. The missing persons are Midoriya Inko and her son, Midoriya Izuku. Although, I doubt they’re actually missing, though,” he says with a dismissive tone. It’s… strange. Something feels off about it. “Never mind that, though. An investigation still needs to be done. Just work on it with efficiency, and don’t dawdle, Sansa.”

Ignoring the detective’s odd comments, Tamakawa hastily gives his superior a salute before sitting back down at his desk to begin looking over the new case file.

The next day.

When Izuku comes-to this time, he does so slowly, unlike the last few times he’s regained consciousness with a desperate gasp for air. His eyes crack open, but he’s quickly squinting them shut again as he’s currently laying face up, almost basking in a sunbeam that’s cutting through the cloudy sky. He lifts up his right arm to cover his face, hiding away from the harsh rays.

Wasn’t it just raining…?

His thoughts are interrupted by a throbbing pain in his head and ankle, and Izuku winces as he gingerly pulls himself up from the forest floor. The intense feeling of exhaustion hits him then, and Izuku is finally feeling done with the whole constantly blacking out and waking back up thing. He decides then that he needs to get it together. He can’t waste any more time. 

He has to get back to… something. Suddenly, he realizes that he can’t remember what it is that he was doing before he got knocked out. He was going somewhere, that much he can recall.

Upriver! I need to go upriver. I need to find Mom, Izuku mentally scolds himself, shaking his head as if that would dispel the mental fog that seems to be suffocating his mind. He can’t forget it again. He won’t.

But Izuku is tired and cold, despite the sun that is now shining down on him. And, distantly, he realizes that he’s absolutely starving. He isn’t just going back to find his mother, he also needs to get out of this forest. Izuku is honestly surprised that he hasn’t died yet, considering that he was probably lying there all… night? Day? He isn’t quite sure what day it is, and with no phone or watch, he won’t know until he got back to civilization. He needs to get back.

Before he starts moving again, Izuku inspects his injured ankle. It’s swollen and angry and throbbing with pain, but he can manage it. He would have to, it’s not like he has any other choice. Maybe I can find a walking stick…

Blessedly, Izuku finds a large, sturdy branch to act as a temporary cane. Somehow, he’s able to climb his way out of the slight depression in the forest of which he fell down into some-odd hours ago. Everything is still wet and slippery from the previous weather, and from the looks of the dark clouds that are still hanging around overhead, they aren’t quite done yet. But Izuku would be stupid to not take advantage of this break in the scattered storms.

As it turns out, running around half blind during a typhoon was a great way for Izuku to get lost, as he is now far from the river and isn’t quite sure how to get back to it. He does his best to listen to the sounds around him, but really, Izuku is kind of just picking a direction and hoping for the best. Maybe it would have been smarter for him to have stayed in place and waited to be rescued, but… something about that option made his stomach churn. He can’t just sit around—no, Izuku has decided that he should be proactive.

But he’s also so, so tired. His head is pounding, and he’s exhausted. Every step hurt since he’s now putting more weight on his bare foot. He’s worn out. He wants to give up. But he also knows that he can’t do that. 

So, Izuku trudges on.

While Tamakawa had been working on the Midoriya case a lot the previous day, he still had other things on his docket, so he couldn’t devote his entire shift to it. But, now it’s Wednesday, and he’s right back to it and trying to sniff out some leads—well, as much as he can from his desk, anyways.

Like Bakugo-san had done so previously, Tamakawa had contacted the ryokan that the Midoriya’s were traveling to just to confirm with the proper authorities that, yes, they never made it to check in. He then tried to contact any other inns or even hotels in the surrounding area, or along the way, to see if maybe they had stopped at a different place due to the bad weather or something; but nothing came from that. They also put out an APB on the rental car, so really, that was his best chance at finding out anything regarding the family’s whereabouts.

And it would soon seem that his line of thinking was correct.

At around one o’clock in the afternoon, Tamakawa’s desk phone rings, and he answers it promptly. On the phone is another officer that’s currently responding to a 119 call… about a car matching the description of the Midoriya’s rental that had seemingly gone off of a bridge and into a river below.

Dammit…

Tamakawa lets them know that he’ll alert Hashimura and hangs up not too long after. Bracing himself, he gets up from his desk to go over to the detective’s office, and after a quick rap of his furred knuckles on the door he lets himself in.

“Hashimura, sir, there’s been a reported incident of an off-road vehicle around an hour outside of the area in Musutafu in which the Midoriya’s reside, and it matches the description of the rental car that they were in,” he explains as he reads from his notes. “It was called in around twenty minutes ago. A local hero is responding to the scene, and they’ll soon be making efforts to recover the vehicle from the site of the crash.”

Hashimura nods as he goes to stand from his desk to grab his coat, nodding for Tamakawa to follow him. “We’ll meet them on site, then,” the detective says, and Tamakawa responds with a quick “yes sir,” before going to get a squad car ready.

They’re able to get to the scene around forty minutes later, and as Tamakawa pulls off of the road to a gravel clearing right before the damaged bridge, they see a large body of water rising out of the river, and inside they can make out a floating sedan.

That must be a hero’s quirk, Tamakawa thinks as he parks the car and steps out into the open air. It’s lightly raining now, and he’s a little miffed about his fur getting wet, but is quick to brush off his own discomfort before jogging over to the riverside where a team of first responders are gathered around their cars that all still had their hazard lights flashing.

“What’s the situation?” Hashimura asks one of the officers on site as he follows along at a slower pace behind Tamakawa, mindlessly adjusting his windbreaker that he just shrugged on. The officer in question straightens out his posture before speaking.

“A call was made by a local at around twelve o’clock reporting some extensive damage to the bridge and that they suspected that a car might have gone off the road. My shift partner and I responded to the scene and we were able to see the car in the river, and it matched the APB that was put out yesterday, which is why I alerted Officer Sansa,” the younger officer nods to the mutant before continuing, “We then contacted some local hero agencies to see if there was one with a good quirk for this sort of recovery and thankfully the hero Waveform was available to come by and lend us a hand. His quirk lets him turn into liquid and meld with bodies of water to control them from within. He’s just pulled the vehicle out,” he then gestures to the scene behind them.

The floating body of water then slowly sets the car down a ways away from the riverside, and once it’s stable the controlled water slips out from the vehicle in one quick motion before swiftly returning to the river. After that, Waveform walks out of the rushing depths after transforming back to his original shape with a haunted expression. Detective Hashimura waves him over and the hero approaches them with a weary salute, and then begins to debrief the detective as well.

“As you can see, there’s extensive damage to the vehicle,” Waveform starts, swallowing anxiously, “And… there’s a body inside,” he reports, looking a little sick. Tamakawa’s heart sinks at the news.

He must be new to this sort of recovery, Tamakawa wonders before then getting confused about what the hero said. “Wait, just one body?” He asks with a weary lilt in his tone.

“Yes, the driver—a woman. Why do you ask? Was there supposed to be someone else in the car?” Waveform inquires with an innocent tilt of his head.

Hashimura decides to answer for him. “This car is connected to an open missing persons case. A mother and son.” He says, and the hero looks even sadder at that bit of information.

“How awful…” Waveform sighs with a frown, shoulders slumping even further. “Well, I removed all of the water from it so your forensics team can do their investigation. Is there anything else you’d need from me?” He asks.

Before Tamakawa can say anything, the detective cuts him off again. “No, that’s all, thank you for your hard work,” he goes to dismiss the hero, but Tamakawa stops him.

“W-Wait, sir, shouldn’t we send him downriver to see if he can find the missing boy? I mean, what if he somehow got himself out?” Tamakawa argues, and the detective seems a little… annoyed at his suggestion.

“Oh, for sure, I can do that in a jiffy!” Waveform nods, eager to help more, and before the detective can say anything else the hero is already running back to the water and changing into his liquid form, slipping downstream to search for the son in question.

“Right. Well, while he does that, let’s confirm that this is Midoriya Inko,” Hashimura sighs, apparently wanting to ignore what just happened. Tamakawa bristles uncomfortably, but follows after his superior without another word.

Carefully making their way around the forensics team that are already at work, the detective steps up to the driver’s side door and opens it with a gloved hand. Someone to his side is already taking pictures, and Hashimura grimaces at the sight.

Tamakawa hates this part of the job—though he’s not sure anyone likes it, to be fair. He stands beside the detective and wearily peers in as well, and has to avert his eyes quickly. There, trapped in the seat, is most definitely the body of Inko Midoriya. Gathering himself, he hesitantly opens his eyes again to fully take stock of the scene.

Her head is lulled to the side, and her hair is draped haphazardly over her face, all tangled up and wrong. Her skin is deathly pale and cleaned of most blood, but that’s only because it had assumedly been underwater for who knows how long. Her clothes are definitely stained crimson, however. Deep lacerations cover her body, and her legs are pinned at the calves within the crumpled spot of the car. The windshield is cracked, and a rusty red color rests within the thin lines of the splintered glass, though most of it has been washed away. It’s not a pretty sight.

“At least her body hasn’t started to bloat yet,” Hashimura says in a closed off sort of way, and he sighs before walking away from the car to allow the rest of the team to take care of the body.

“What do you think happened to the kid?” Tamakawa asks, because something about the way the detective keeps ignoring his involvement is really getting to him. Hashimura lets out an aborted sort of laugh as he glances back at him with an incredulous look as if he’s wordlessly asking him “seriously?”

“You really need me to spell it out for you? The kids’ dead too. See, the passenger window is busted in,” he says as he gestures to the other side of the car, “His body probably got pulled out by the current or something. I’m sure that hero will be back soon with it.” He says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Tamakawa’s whiskers twitch at the blasé tone he’s using, as if he isn’t talking about the incredibly tragic death of potentially two people—of a child dying, no less.

“What if he somehow survived though? You never know, he could have gotten himself out,” he suggests, and the detective actually rolls his eyes at him.

“Yeah, sure, and All Might’s my uncle.” He dismissively shakes his head. Tamakawa must look gobsmacked, because he scoffs at his expression. “Look, Sansa, the kid was quirkless. That crash was already a fatal one, so I highly doubt that someone with a quirk could have survived it, let alone someone without a quirk. I mean, look at his poor mother. It’s just the reality of the situation.” He says as he walks away to go speak with one of the other first responders.

Tamakawa is speechless. He’s not sure how long he’s stood there considering the other man’s words, before he shakes himself out of his stupor. The way that the detective spoke about a—again, potentially—dead child leaves him feeling sick, and after already being subjected to one gruesome sight, Tamakawa isn’t sure he’d be able to suppress the urge to vomit. Hell, he almost gags as he thinks about the body of Inko Midoriya again.

He isn’t quite sure what to do about this situation. He’s never encountered a problem quite like this. Tamakawa’s never heard Detective Hashimura express any kind of distaste for the quirkless population before, but he supposes that it’s due to the fact that they’re so rare in the current day and age, especially with such a quirk-dense population such as Musutafu.

Is it a legitimate bigoted opinion on his part? Or was it just an unusual off-color comment? Is he really just being “realistic” about the situation, or is it something more…?

Tamakawa debates with himself internally, thrown off by this new realization about his superior. He swallows down the cat-like urge to go find a dark hole to curl up and hide away in and instead makes his way back over to the ruined vehicle.

Also careful to not interrupt the forensic team, he skirts around to the passenger side and peeks into the open door. The buckle on this side of the car was undone, and he watches as one of the crime scene technicians pulls out a singular red high-top and places it into an evidence bag. Why is there only one…?

Tamakawa watches them work from a distance now, still mulling over the last conversation with the detective. It’s like a bad taste has been left in his mouth, and he’s not sure how to proverbially wash it out yet. He has to use all his available willpower to prevent his tail from swishing in agitation or let his fur stand on end along the back of his neck. And it’s a tough thing, especially with how uneasy he feels about the whole investigation now.

After a while, there’s a commotion at the riverbank again, and his ears immediately perk up when he sees Waveform returning… empty handed. He feels a nervous thrum of energy shoot through him as he jogs over to the hero.

“So? Did you find anything?” He asks. The hero just seems a little lost.

“No, it’s the strangest thing! I searched the entire length of this river from where it flows downstream, all the way to where it ends at a dam, and there’s no sign of a boy or anything! No stray clothes or belongings, nothing. He seems to have disappeared! Do you think it’s a quirk or something?” The hero asks, and at the question Tamakawa is immediately reminded of the bad feeling he had from his earlier chat.

He bristles a bit. “No, that’s the problem. The boy is quirkless…” the officer mumbles slightly, and the hero blinks a little in surprise, but doesn’t say anything else. Which is good. Because Tamakawa isn’t sure he’d be able to handle another out-of-the-blue comment from anyone else regarding someone’s quirk status today.

Tamakawa then marches back over to the squad car where Hashimura has been on a phone call for the last twenty minutes.

“Sir, Waveform is back,” he starts, and as he speaks he watches the detective hastily end his conversation to listen to the officer. “He searched the entire river, but he says there’s no sign of Midoriya-kun. Should I get a search party together to comb through the nearby area? Or, maybe we can call in another hero?” He asks with a hopeful tone, because surely, now that there was a chance that he boy could be alive his superior would take this a little more seriously.

Instead, the detective just seems uninterested in this turn of events.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” he says, and Tamakawa catches himself before he nearly growls. He hasn’t growled at someone since he was in middle school.

“Sir, you can’t possibly believe that, right? He could be out in this forest wandering around waiting for rescue! We can’t just leave him out here!” Tamakawa argues, and he’s surprised that he isn’t yelling. If he is to be honest, he’s stupidly nervous to even be talking back to his superior at all. But he just can’t believe what he’s hearing.

And Hashimura seems outright hostile now because of it. “Remember who you’re speaking to, Sansa. I’m the head investigator here, and what I say goes, am I understood? I highly doubt that the kid is out there ‘wandering around’,” He rolls his eyes a bit, and Tamakawa tightens a fist at his side. “I’ll have an officer or two walk the length of the riverside, but we are not wasting any more manpower on this. I’m swamped with too many cases right now, and looking for the body of some kid is really not that high on my list of priorities. And it won’t be on yours, either. We’re leaving, and we’re going to let the technicians finish up with the scene here. Got it?”

Tamakawa is very aware that his pupils are most likely thin slits now, because he isn’t sure if he’s ever felt so disgusted at another person’s words before this moment in his life. His tail is in full swing, and he just hopes that the detective doesn’t know enough about cats to tell how absolutely furious he is.

“Understood,” He grits out behind a barely contained snarl. Begrudgingly, he gets back into the driver’s seat of the squad car and waits for the detective to get in. In the distance, he can see the mothers body being zipped up into a bag on a gurney. He takes in a deep, grounding breath, and turns the key.

They don’t speak for the entire ride back to the city.

The next day, early in the morning.

Izuku really had tried his best to make his way back to the main road without any stops, but somewhere along the line he had collapsed in exhaustion and was dead to the world for who knows how long—metaphorically speaking, of course.

But now, he wakes up with his face squished into a pile of soggy leaves, smacking his lips, and realizes that he is very close to the cusp of dangerous levels of dehydration. Hunger, too, because as soon as he can feel his body again beyond the shivering, a sharp pang from his stomach makes him lurch forward with a groan, curling in on himself a bit. Rubbing the leaf litter off of his cheek, Izuku smacks his hand around on the ground in search of his walking stick before he once again pushes himself onward.

There’s a small part of his brain plaguing him with negative thoughts pushing the idea of giving up. Of simply laying back down and staying there forever. Because surely Izuku understood, right?

Surely he realized that his mother had died in that crash, and that he is now all alone in the world.

The tip of his nose burns uncomfortably, and his face tingles as his lips wobble, all the while limping along.

I still have to find her. I have to get back. I have to.

Izuku tries to power through the tears, ignoring the very tempting idea of throwing in the towel, because he can’t do that to her. Even if he knows deep down already that his mother is gone, he still has a responsibility to her. Izuku was all she had, too. It was always a two way street with them.

Izuku never knew any of his grandparents—his mom never talked about any of them, after all. He did know that his father had taken his mothers surname, however, as he had a much more tumultuous relationship with his own family, and so he wanted to distance himself from them as much as possible; but that was the extent of Izuku’s knowledge regarding his relatives. Hell, he didn’t even know if they were alive! The bottom line is that Izuku is an only child, and he needs to be there for whatever came next. Izuku has to be the one to put her to rest.

Because Izuku knows that he’d also never see his dad again. When he left their lives, his mom had told him that he was just going to work overseas for a new job. But like his mother always told him, Izuku is smart, as well as observant. After they learned that he’d likely never develop a quirk, his parents’ relationship turned rocky—anyone could notice the shift, really. It was quite obvious looking back on it.

He remembers how they would argue over him more when they thought he couldn’t hear them, and he remembers that last big shouting match that ended with Izuku loudly sobbing because he couldn’t understand fully at the time why his mommy and daddy were so angry at each other. It took his mother twenty minutes to calm him down from that particular meltdown.

And he remembers seeing his mother going over divorce papers with an attorney at their dimly lit kitchen counter top, even though she thought he was in his room asleep like he should have been. But Izuku played along, and pretended to believe his mother’s story. If that was what was easier for her to tell him, then Izuku would accept it. It was nice of her to spare his feelings, even if he secretly knew the truth.

Eventually, by some miracle, Izuku breaks out of the forest’s treeline and is met with a clearing. The light drizzle that had started to gently pepper his face during his ruminations revved up in intensity, and was now a steady rainfall. Not nearly as bad as it could be, but still, Izuku is already missing the sun again.

His heart seems to skip a beat as he is now able to see a bridge—the bridge.

All-too quickly he’s being reminded again of the sounds of tires screeching against wet asphalt, of car horns blaring and metal crunching and water rushing, and suddenly Izuku isn’t sure if he’s present anymore. His breathing picks up and he stumbles back into a large branch—causing him to twist his probably-broken ankle painfully—and falls back on his rear with a grunt.

He has to get it together. He can’t keep losing it like this! Izuku tries to shake away the painfully fresh memories, but it seems impossible. Walking stick momentarily abandoned, his hands are once again clutching into his hair with tightly shut eyes, pain blooming in the center of his skull and down his injured leg as his knees hike up to the sides of his head. He has to calm down, dammit!

Izuku isn’t sure how long he sits there in the rain reliving the crash over and over, but eventually he notices a shift in the air as the rain has calmed down again, and that subtle change in atmosphere is apparently just enough to break him out of his panic spiral.

“It’s fine, it's over,” Izuku mumbles aloud to himself out of habit, but of course it isn’t really fine, and it’s not quite over for him yet. But Izuku says it to himself anyway.

With a shuddering inhale, Izuku slowly but surely unfurls himself. He isn’t sure how he’s able to pull himself back together, but he does, piece by piece. He swallows thickly, hyper-aware of just how thirsty he is, before standing up, making sure to grab his stick along with him.

Tentatively, Izuku shuffles his way over to the bridge. There’s not a car in sight, which only causes his anxiety to grow, but he pushes that away for now. The familiar sound of the river grounds him, and yet it also makes his panic spike again. Somehow, somehow, though, he controls his beating heart enough to not crumple in on himself again. His gaze flitters over the scene before him, and that aching pit in his stomach yawns tenfold.

She’s already gone…

Which means—which means they’re not coming back. The police or whoever found them have already taken everything. There’s even caution tape strewn across the broken section of the bridge’s barriers, indicating that construction is soon to start on it. There’s nothing else left, though. No evidence of a tragedy taking place here, of a life being cut too short, of his world ending—

Except suddenly there’s a glint of light that catches Izuku’s eye on the ground several feet ahead of him.

Izuku zeros in on it instantly like a bird of prey that’s just found its latest meal, and he couldn’t hobble over to it quick enough. Once he realizes what it is his breath hitches and he falls to his knees in front of it, and his hands shoot out to retrieve it from the muddy earth.

Because it’s his mothers ring.

Despite leaving his father, his mom never stopped wearing her wedding band, oddly enough. When they were still happy and together, his mom would gleefully recount the story of how Hisashi proposed to her to anyone that would listen. Neither of them were very wealthy as young adults, and so the ring was simple, but his mother adored it. She probably wore it even after the separation to ward off unwanted attention from nosy people, if Izuku had to guess.

Made out of white gold, the smooth band housed a single inlaid Colombian emerald. The cut was square—her favorite shape of gemstone—and the emerald is such a bright green that it almost doesn’t seem real.

And it still doesn’t seem real, sitting now in Izuku’s shaking, wet palm, from the rain and also his newly shed tears.

Loud, echoing sobs tear through the uneasy quiet of the clearing as Izuku mourns.

How this was left behind, Izuku will never know, but he doesn’t care, because now he has something from her.

Izuku cries and cries into his hands, and it isn’t for some time before he finally stops.

His head hurts from how much he’s cried, and he feels utterly spent. Shakily, Izuku slips the ring onto his left pinky finger, as that’s the only finger it would fit on. His mothers hands were so small—

And, really, Izuku is surprised that this is only the first time he’d puked since his life fell apart. He heaves up stomach acid into the dirt beneath him, and whines a little more as the snot and salty tears run down his face. He rubs his torn up sleeve across his lips and nose, and tries to swallow back anything else from coming up with a full-body shudder; not that he really threw up anything of substance, anyways.

Izuku is starving. His stomach—now somehow emptier than before—growls so loud that he swears it echoes into the forest around him. He sniffles as he cradles his now ringed hand close to his chest, and goes to stand again.

There is, of course, no food for him here to eat, and Izuku probably won’t eat again until he makes it back to the city, but what he can do is drink from the river. Is it the safest thing he could do? Probably not, but Izuku can’t care less as there is now a full-on burn going down his already hoarse esophagus due to the stomach acid that he cannot let linger any longer, and so he stumbles to the river’s edge, careful not to fall into it again. He cups some water into his hands and drinks.

Izuku drinks and drinks and drinks from the river until he’s satisfied, and once he’s done with that he washes his face off as an afterthought. He doesn’t care that the water is freezing cold, his entire body is freezing, so it all cancels out in the end.

Actually, the fact that his entire body temperature is so low and yet Izuku is somehow still functioning definitely isn’t lost on him. But so much has been happening on top of it that it was hard to focus on the little details like that, so like most of his problems currently, he pushes his curiosity to the side for the time being. He’ll just have to look into it later.

Trying to refocus himself, Izuku slaps his cheeks with both hands to think for a moment.

If the police or… whoever… already came and… recovered everything, then I might be all on my own here. Did they send out search parties? Did they look for me? They must have… They must have just missed me—surely they would have gone looking for me, right? Yes, they must have, of course…

As Izuku is pondering all of this, he sees headlights in the distance and adrenaline instantly spikes through his entire body as he shoots up, and he gasps out of pure shock.

“H-Hey! Hey!” Izuku shouts, waving his arms as desperately as he can to the driver in hopes of catching their attention. He probably looks like an insane person, though—soaked from the rain and in tattered clothing with only one shoe on—which is probably why they drive right past him. Izuku tries to not let it get to him, but his heart does sink a little as he fails his first attempt at hitchhiking.

Who am I kidding? Hitchhiking? In this day and age? I’d have better luck meeting All Might in the flesh. Izuku sighs internally, shoulders sagging as he watches the car speed into the foggy distance.

And, wait—when did it get so foggy?

Izuku takes in a deep breath, once again ignoring how much pain he’s in and how hungry he is to pick himself back up all over again. He’ll just have to walk back to Musutafu on his own. There’s no alternatives left for him. No one is coming to rescue him.

So Izuku will simply have to rescue himself.

-

The fog on the trek back to the city is so thick and persistent that even when cars pass him on the road, Izuku doubts that they would even be able to see him as he limps along the treeline a safe distance away from the rural highway.

Izuku isn’t quite sure how he’s managed to keep going, anyway, so he doesn’t want to risk expending the energy required to try and get a car to stop for him as he walks. He has to save his strength. Besides, his mother always drilled it into head how he should never step foot into a stranger’s vehicle. Even in these dire circumstances, that warning still rings through his mind, causing his heart rate to spike every time a car passes him.

And then Izuku could see the city sprawl out ahead of him.

Maybe it’s due to his delirium that he hadn’t realized that he had been walking back into the city already for the last mile or so, but now that his awareness is back to focusing on his immediate surroundings, he tries to figure out where he actually is. Izuku must have missed a split in the road somewhere along the way in his trance, because nothing around him is even remotely familiar. He’d apparently lost his stick sometime ago, too, but he only just now notices that fact, and feels foolish because of it. Just how out of it is he? He needs to get a grip.

Swallowing down the growing feeling of trepidation inside of him, Izuku limps further into the outskirts of Musutafu.

Despite his insatiable hunger and thirst and pain, Izuku thinks that it would be best for him to find a police officer, or maybe even a hero to help him first. Surely they’d be able to provide all of those things once he found them, right? Then he could explain what happened, and then he could… he could…

I could… what? Go home? Can I… Can I even go home anymore? What happens next?

Izuku feels like his brain has short-circuited for a moment as he is once again forced to face the reality of his situation. Anxiety grows like a vice around his heart, crushing him from inside with feelings of fear and unease about what might happen to him. His mother is gone, Izuku knows this, but he also doesn’t want it to be real. He wants this to have all been a terrible, horrible nightmare that he’ll soon wake up from. Maybe it still is! Maybe he’s simply in some sort of freak coma from some kind of accident, and this is all just his mind playing tricks on him!

Izuku is now mumbling aloud to himself in a low tone of voice as he goes along, still only wearing one shoe and tattered clothing that is most likely stained crimson, which is probably why any stray person out tonight have been avoiding him like the plague; though Izuku is far too out of it to notice. With one hand covering his mouth as unintelligible words tumbled out of his lips, and the other brushing along the sides of the buildings he passed, soon Izuku is walking through a not-so-great side of town without even realizing it. At least his torn up appearance matched his surroundings as he somewhat blended into the slightly more dilapidated part of the city.

And, of course, it starts raining again during Izuku’s ruminations. Thunder rumbles overhead and promises another harsh storm, but right now it’s only a mild sprinkle. At least it’s somewhat more humid in the city, but Izuku is still freezing, though he had long since stopped shivering, even if he hasn’t even noticed it. It’s like his body has simply gotten used to the unhealthy temperature all on its own.

Then, Izuku hears shouting.

The sounds stop him in his tracks, and his head snaps up from the wet sidewalk to look for whatever had made the noise, though he finds nothing obvious. The street is empty except for him, but then he hears the yelling again, coming from somewhere down the road and to the left. The streetlights are dim and flickering, as it’s sometime in the evening now. Izuku still isn’t sure of the exact date and time. Squinting a bit, Izuku tracks the noise despite the logical side of his brain screaming at him to run and hide.

Soon, the indistinct shouting turns into an argument he can somewhat understand, and then everything happens all at once.

Right as Izuku walks into the opening of an alleyway where the commotion is coming from, he registers two large figures silhouetted by the minuscule light flooding in from the break in between the buildings. They’re hovering over someone on the ground with their hands outstretched in front of them in a pleading manner, and too quickly one of the standing forms raises their right arm and points something right into the face of the person beneath them.

“WAIT!” The man on his knees yells right before the clear sound of a gunshot rings out through the alleyway, and Izuku’s heart skips a beat as fear rattles through his entire body and he lets out a gasp unintentionally.

Izuku takes in the scene before him with his mouth agape, and he watches as the body of the nameless man falls unceremoniously to the wet concrete beneath him, dead.

Izuku hadn’t even realized that he had taken a few steps further into the alley way until his remaining shoe hits an empty soda can, knocking it to the side, making his presence known to the two shadowy figures as it clatters away.

Immediately, the figure that had been standing to the side of the murder that just took place whips around at the noise, and a pair of angry eyes quickly lock onto Izuku’s small form.

“Shit,” they say, and from their deep voice he assumes that they’re male. They nudge the person with the gun with their elbow, and Izuku swallows hard as the killer follows his gaze to look at who had obviously just become a witness to their crime.

And Izuku can only stand there, stunned. His breathing picks up in speed, and he is now slowly but surely beginning to hyperventilate. Terror-stricken, he tracks the man that is now stalking toward him, his eyes locked onto the hand that holds the still-smoking firearm.

“You shouldn’t have seen that, kid,” the cold, calculating voice breaks the tense silence between the three occupants of the alley. And with just one sentence Izuku finally turns away to try and sprint out of there, but in his stupor he had forgotten about his already injured ankle, and so when he pivots too-harshly, he cries out in pain and falls pathetically to the ground.

His elbows wobble as he tries to lift himself up, only to fall back again. “N-No! No, I-I didn’t see anything! I didn’t see anything, I swear! I swear!” Izuku lies, shaking his head in a fierce denial as he kicks away from the approaching man, backpedaling on the palms of his trembling hands. Tears spring from his leaky faucets for eyes as his chest heaves even harder somehow.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” the man replies, though it’s clear to anyone listening that he only says it to be cruel, “But you’ve still seen my face. And that simply won’t do.”

“P-Please! Please, I won’t s-say anything! I won’t tell anyone! I promise!” Izuku pleads, terror laced in his frantic words. But the look on the man’s face tells him all he needed to know; and that’s that he isn’t leaving this alleyway alive.

“Kashiko, we need to go,” the other man that still stood by the body deeper in the alley way calls out, and Izuku’s eyes snap over to him for a moment before returning to the threat that now looms over him, just as he did to the poor man he’d just murdered moments prior.

“Sorry, kid. Nothing personal.” The man says, and a strike of distant lighting briefly illuminating the alleyway. In that frantic moment, Izuku hyper-focuses on the man’s orange-colored hair that covers half of his face and the gold earrings that lined his left ear.

“Momma!” Izuku cries out before his shoulders hike up to his ears and his arms fly up to cover his face just like the victim before him.

And as he flinches to the side with tightly shut eyes, he only feels the cool metal of the gun press to the side of his head for a split second before everything suddenly stops.

-

Many hours later.

“Izuku! Izuku! Get up!”

Izuku sucks in a desperate gasp of air as his eyes fly open in time with a deafening crack of thunder and a bright flash of lightning. He is back to the sickeningly familiar feeling of cold rain pelting his face, as it seems that Izuku is just destined to never be dry again. And then it hits him.

What… What’s happening?

Izuku… Izuku had just died, right? He was just shot in the head! He didn’t just imagine that, right? Was this the afterlife? Was he a ghost now? Why was he still here, drenched from the rain and filled with a ravenous hunger? If he was dead, surely he wouldn’t have to worry about things like that anymore, right?

His brain lags behind as he tries to take in his surroundings once again, and he realizes that, yes, he is still in the dreaded alleyway; though now he’s alone. Except, of course, for the corpse of the man that still laid several feet ahead of him.

Izuku can’t help the high pitched scream that rips from his throat at the sight of the man’s distant, blank expression that is left on his now relaxed and very very dead face. The bullet hole is perfectly centered right between his eyebrows, leaving no room for doubt of his fate and what had happened here.

Reflexively, Izuku turns his head to the side to dry heave, but of course nothing comes up from his empty stomach. Though, surely, if he did have anything to eat recently, it would be all over the ground now. He still coughs and gags though, and his throat feels ragged all the same from the reaction despite the lack of substance.

His whole body feels even weaker than before somehow, and Izuku is pretty sure he’s starting to lose it, if he hasn’t already at this point. Izuku’s hand shoots up to the side of his head where he swore he’d just been shot, and his heart stops at what he feels. Underneath his shaky touch, Izuku feels a slight indent in his skull, and even a small bald patch on his head where there was surely a bullet hole before—and then he looks down at the ground.

And sure enough, he’s sitting in a giant puddle of his own blood that is now swirling and mixing with the rainwater.

Once again, his mouth hangs open, and his brain starts working through the events of the last few days.

The crash. Waking up. Choking on water, being dragged under. Waking up again.

How the hell did he survive any of that?

Have I… Have I been healing, somehow…?

Really, it’s incredible, Izuku thinks now, that it took him this long to finally understand what’s happening to him. Izuku didn’t survive the crash. He didn’t just get lucky somehow. He now remembers the blood on his head upon waking up for the first time, but finding no cuts on his body, belatedly. He remembers slicing himself on accident when he pulled his leg free from the crumpled part in the car, yet when he woke up later in the river, there was no cut. And, of course, he remembers falling down in the forest and twisting his leg and hitting his head, yet now—

Izuku quickly lifts up his previously injured ankle to find that it looks brand new, as if nothing had ever happened to it. He grabs his head again, and realizes that the previous throbbing he had going on had quit. And Izuku feels like his world has stopped once again.

Because Izuku is pretty sure that this means he has a quirk. And it’s a quirk that’s been bringing him back to life.

There’s… there’s no way, right?! That’s… that’s impossible! Quirks like that don’t exist! They can’t bring people back to life! They did radiographs, they checked! They checked my foot! There’s an extra joint! I can’t possibly have a quirk!

“By age four, a child should manifest either one of their parents’ quirks or a composite of the two,” Dr. Tsubasa explains as he gestures to the x-ray image of Izuku’s foot.

“However, early quirk research discovered one important finding. It has to do with the presence or absence of the extra joint in the pinky toe. Have you heard about this?” He asks, and his mother shakes her head with a frown, a hand idly carding through her sons unruly locks.

“Humans have no need for parts they don’t use, you see, and those without the joint represent the next stage in evolution.” He says as a matter of fact, and then looks back down at the stunned, quiet little boy that sits on the stool. “Izuku here has two joints. It’s quite rare nowadays, but it means that he possesses no quirk at all.”

That’s what he said! He couldn’t have been mistaken, right? Or was he lying? Am I some sort of outlier or something?!

Izuku hasn’t realized that he has been curled up on the wet concrete again until he snaps himself out of his old, unfavorable memories. The pool of blood and rainwater is far from warm, and Izuku is now getting sick of being so cold and wet.

Is it… is it because of this… this quirk? Surely I shouldn’t be able to be this cold and still be functioning, right?

Izuku then has the overwhelming urge to get up and leave. He can’t be in this alleyway anymore, not with that body lying just a ways away. He has to leave. He has to go tell someone, he has to go—

His racing mind is once again interrupted by his stomach growling, and this time he feels nauseous from just how hungry he is.

I have got to go eat something, he thinks as all of his other thoughts cease entirely.

With his mind finally made up and focused on a hopefully attainable goal, Izuku pulls himself up off the ground for what must have been the hundredth time these past few days, and stumbles out of the alley.

Izuku’s head is empty as he walks, and he’s sure that to anyone that might have seen him, he looks like a walking corpse. But with how horrible it is outside, he has a sneaking suspicion that he’s the only person foolish enough to be out at all right now, so he reasons that it’ll probably be fine.

He still keeps a slow pace despite his leg now being miraculously healed, as every now and then Izuku’s vision goes spotty and he swoons for a moment as if he were about to faint, but he keeps himself steady, somehow. He has to if he has any intentions of staying upright and walking long enough to find something to eat.

And then, Izuku stumbles upon his saving grace.

As if the heavens have opened, like a beacon of hope shining upon him in an actual storm, he spots the neon glow of convenience store lights. An open safe harbor where he could finally get out of the rain.

His body begins to shiver again, maybe from anticipation or anxiety, or just from the ever-present cold, but he trudges onward, uneven gait and all. Izuku crosses the street, not even bothering to watch for cars—he hasn’t seen any since he’d gotten back into town, anyhow—and he pushes his way inside the store.

Despite the frankly blinding overhead lights of the store that flicker ever so slightly as Izuku walks in, his eyes stare wide and unblinkingly into his surroundings. Everything feels so far away from him, so even when a feminine voice calls to him from somewhere to his right, Izuku doesn’t acknowledge it. His gaze flicks over the digital clock on the wall for a moment, and he starts walking again.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers that the employee is, assumedly, trying to talk to him. But again, he pays her no mind. He only has one goal in mind right now, and that goal is food.

Turning down the farthest aisle, Izuku manages to find a pack of onigiri, and he takes it from the shelf before quickly shuffling into the empty men’s restroom at the back of the store. If he was in his right mind, of course, Izuku would not be doing this. Izuku’s pretty sure he’s never even thought about the potential act of stealing something, but some part about being so desperately hungry overwhelms his usually very active moral compass.

Because, eventually, Izuku wants to be a hero, and heroes don’t steal things. But right now, Izuku is most definitely not a hero—so, hopefully it didn’t matter, right? Hopefully the lady outside the bathroom door right now wouldn’t mind him eating this.

He tears open the wrapping and wolfs the food down as if he’s a ravenous predator devouring live prey, and in less than thirty seconds the snack is gone. He regrets this almost immediately, of course, because now he’s struggling to swallow everything down, so Izuku quickly rushes over to the sink and turns it on to wash the food down. And even after he does that, he keeps drinking, because he was still so incredibly thirsty, too.

Distantly, Izuku thinks he can hear the girl outside talking to someone on the phone, and his heart rate spikes a bit. Of course it wasn’t ok for him to eat that food without paying for it! She’s probably calling the police on him now, and then he’d be arrested!

Wait, it’s probably good if the police come, right…? Then I can tell them about everything and I can get help, right?

Izuku is finally able to have a somewhat coherent thought as he mulls over his current situation, but his anxiety about the whole thing only continues to fester. He fidgets as he stares at his mothers ring on his finger.

Izuku quietly thinks for a moment as the water still flows from the sink. Absent mindedly, he puts his hands under the now warm stream of water, and lets out a shuddering breath as he begins to actually feel the tips of his fingers again. How Izuku isn’t currently hypothermic, he has no idea, but his thoughts on the matter can come to him later. Then his eyes look up, and he sees his reflection for the first time again since the accident.

His skin is paler than ever before, and he basically looks like a zombie—or, at least, what Izuku thinks a zombie might look like. The freckles dotting his cheeks have never stood out more, and he leans into his reflection to get a closer look—and then he notices his eyes.

Izuku’s pupils are now entirely white.

That’s… How is that possible?

Izuku tilts his head every which way as he stares at himself, and his mirrored image follows him. His pupils, which were most definitely black before, were white! His hand reaches towards the mirror, and he touches the image of his eye, bloodying the glass a bit. Izuku then remembers the dent he felt in his head earlier, and he quickly turns his head to the side to lifts up a portion of his matted hair, and gasps once he sees a circle-shaped scar right behind his right ear.

This is really real. I really got shot there, and healed!

Izuku swallows as his hand drags down the side of his face to cover his gaping mouth.

He can’t stay in this restroom any longer. For some reason, he just feels the overwhelming need to leave as quickly as possible.

His shoulders jump at the employee suddenly knocking on the door, and then hears that same feminine voice asking him if he was alright, and Izuku’s eyes dart all around the room frantically searching. For what, at first, he’s not sure. They widen, then, as he looks up at a window high above the nearby toilet and urinal, and bingo! He’s found his escape route.

Taking a step forward, his shoed foot slips on the water that has been dripping from him, and he swears under his breath in annoyance. The last time he slipped because of his one shoe, he’s pretty sure he broke his ankle. So, as to not make the same mistake again, Izuku shucks off the shoe in one sharp motion. It’s probably for the best anyway since he’d already lost the other one.

They were his favorite pair of shoes…

But Izuku had bigger things to worry about now.

His heart thrums in his chest from the stress of everything as he climbs onto the toilet, careful so that he doesn’t slip, and he’s just barely able to reach the latch on the window above him—and, really, it was strange that this bathroom has a window, let alone one that could be opened, but Izuku certainly wasn’t going to complain about it—and he quickly wretches it open. It obviously hasn’t been opened in a long, long time, or probably ever.

Izuku curses his short stature and weak body as he struggles to pull himself up and through the opening, but with enough straining and wiggling on his part, he’s able to climb his way out of the restroom and back into the storm outside, falling to the ground not-so-gracefully. Immediately, he regrets his decision to leave the dry, safe building, but every bone in his body is screaming at him to leave the area for whatever cosmic reason, so Izuku isn’t going to argue with himself, not after the last time he found himself in an alleyway.

He feels bad about trashing that restroom, but Izuku just hopes that the lady won’t be too mad at him, because now he’s scraping himself off the ground and running away as fast as his little legs can take him, away from the convenience store into the dark and stormy night.

And Izuku will run and run and run until he can’t anymore.