Chapter Text
True strength, Sakamata Kuugo reasoned, was control.
The greatest power one could have was control over the mind--the strength and conviction to take charge of one's own destiny and make even the most difficult decisions without breaking. To be accountable, responsible; dependable.
Subordinate to control over oneself was control over one's power. Every hero knew that with great power came great responsibility, though fewer and fewer cared to put this simple principle into practice as their world adapted to having heroes as the face of the mainstream. For a hero like Kuugo, however, who could kill just as easily as he could save—terrify as he could inspire—that was not a luxury he could afford.
Most importantly, however, was control over one's heart, for if one were to lose control of their heart—
—surely, like a dam bursting, everything else would come loose and be lost as well.
As chief among the heroes who looked like villains, Kuugo knew better than anyone just how quickly a single lapse in control—just one snap judgment—could wash away everything he had built like a castle standing in the sand.
He didn't think himself cold-hearted—just rational, like any good hero should be.
Yet a chance meeting with the one bearing a frozen heart left him wondering what sort of hero he was at all.
Though it had been nearly a decade, Sakamata Kuugo still remembered in perfect clarity the night he first met Midoriya Izuku. Like peering into a clear crystal of ice, he could still see the way the snow danced in the nonexistent wind like a shower of down feathers.
In the dead of that winter night, like Kuugo had chosen the lunar surface for a thinking spot, everything was silent—even the footsteps of the one who approached him as he sat on the park bench like a human and not a monster.
He had no idea how long the child had been there next to him, just waiting for Kuugo to notice. As a hero, he was always meant to be aware of his surroundings, yet…
To this day, his face still heated in embarrassment whenever he recalled the way he startled at the sound of the child's voice--a soft, twinkling sound, like that of a forgotten windchime.
"Aren't you cold?" the boy asked, dressed only in thin cotton pajamas, bare-foot and wide-eyed, blissfully unaware of irony.
Though he was a battle-hardened hero keeping steady in the Top Ten, Kuugo thought it completely reasonable to be taken aback by the absurdity of the situation he'd found himself in after the day he had.
Still, by some miracle, Kuugo pulled himself together well enough to answer the boy.
"No," he answered after a moment, careful to soften his voice for fear of spooking the kid as his mind raced to make sense of everything he'd ever known all over again.
Clearing his throat, he asked, "Are you cold?"
The boy didn't look at him, didn't nod, didn't shake his head--didn't do anything.
"I don't know," he answered after a while, pulling his knees to his chest, idly facing forward. "I can't remember what cold feels like."
At the time, Kuugo couldn't possibly understand what the child implied. A quirk, perhaps? Curious as he was, however, he knew there were more pressing matters to attend to.
"Where are you supposed to be?" Kuugo asked, wondering if perhaps the boy's parents were nearby. Yet, given the fact that the boy was in pajamas, Kuugo figured he simply wandered out an unlocked door.
Silence passed between them like the sort of winter that existed only in memories.
Still, the boy impressed him by answering the question he'd learned to avoid asking during his sensitivity training: don't ask about the parents.
"I live close to here—with my Mom," he said quietly. "I can get home okay. You don't have to worry about me, Hero-san. I don't need to be saved."
At that, Kuugo blinked again in surprise. So the child recognized him.
He was far from the most highly ranking hero back then, but he supposed his appearance would always stand out enough to be considered memorable.
"It's my job to worry," Kuugo said mildly, but not unkindly. "I wouldn't be a hero if I didn't."
The kid made no attempt to respond. Yet, for as strange and otherworldly as the encounter was, Kuugo couldn't bring himself to ask anything more. He intended to spend the night alone, just to pause and reflect in the midst of the hectic life of his own choosing, but at the very least the boy was polite—or at least quiet—enough not to disturb him.
That in itself, however, disturbed him more than anything.
Stale winter air settled over them like a sheet of snow, pervasive and silent. The boy's pine green hair shone with a crown of ice, never melting, shimmering in the faint streetlight like he belonged to the night.
"When you get cold," the boy began, wringing his little hands as if to stoke a fire, "how do you warm up?"
Briefly, for reasons Kuugo couldn't possibly describe, he thought the boy set a trap for him with his words. Was it a snipe at his appearance, or something more? For as much as the man adored children, he knew how ruthless they could be. Innocent as they were observant, children wielded the power of words without knowing what dangerous weapons they could be.
Something in the way the boy spoke to him told him that giving the most literal answer wouldn't do.
For a child who claimed to have forgotten the feeling of cold, how could Kuugo explain what it meant to be warm? What right did he have, as stone-cold as he worked to become, just to endure living at all?
He thought for a while, but in the end, he settled on the answer a better man might've given.
"I try to think about warm memories," Kuugo said into the frozen nothingness. Though it wasn't a lie, it wasn't true, either. For as many times Kuugo made a list of every good thing he'd ever seen a person do, he'd come back to himself as cold and cynical as the unforgiving earth. People didn't change; they just got better at hiding.
But what good would it do to teach such a hard truth to a child who looked to him for guidance--for warmth and companionship in the cold and lonesome world they were flung into? Even if learning the truth hurt, the youth at least deserved to believe in something--anything, as long as it meant as they could believe at all.
Yet, even so long ago, Kuugo knew that believing in anything was not a luxury afforded to everyone.
Izuku just so happened to be the youngest example of that: only six years old, left to wander in the night in search of something to believe in when reality—cold, cold reality—left him in darkness.
The boy knelt forward ever so slightly, huffing a soft sigh, not even a puff of mist escaping him, while Kuugo pumped it out like a steam engine.
"What if I don't have any?" Izuku whispered. "No… warm memories."
That was when Kuugo realized that innocence did not always coincide with happiness. One could be blissfully ignorant even to the reason for their suffering, thinking of it as being simply the way it is, and that no better life was possible, let alone within reach.
For someone like Izuku, who knew nothing but numbness, Kuugo could at least give him honesty.
"I don't know," he murmured. "Perhaps… you could try to make some."
Izuku said nothing. Yet, from the silence, Kuugo knew by some sinking feeling that he hadn't answered correctly. Even years later, on the nights the snow fell like prayers from a sinner's mouth, Kuugo asked himself what he could have said to make even the slightest difference for the boy.
Even if it was pointless to hope for a better past—to have made better choices—Kuugo wondered.
Was there anything he could have done? Was there a right answer for Izuku after all?
Kuugo walked Izuku home shortly after, exercising every ounce of control not to launch an investigation into the reason such a young boy could conceivably wander alone into the night in the deepest throes of winter. Were it not for the way Izuku's mother wept upon her boy's return, he might have stormed the place after all.
Yet, even as his mother fretted over him, Izuku didn't react at all. He simply appeared… frozen. Like his spirit had been plucked out, leaving behind nothing but a cold, lifeless body.
Even as his mother descended into near-hysterics, weeping and begging to know what drove him to do something so reckless, Izuku merely stood and endured his mother's tears. As Kuugo watched on, the chilling feeling of something being wrong set in like a cold front that refused to pass.
Izuku never looked him in the eye, even until the time came for Kuugo to venture back into the night, cold and alone, looking for something he couldn't name.
Deep down, Kuugo knew that no winter could last forever. Because spring inevitably must claim its rightful place, even the worst feelings must weather away eventually. It was only a matter of time.
Yet…
With a heart as heavy as lead, Kuugo prayed the boy would succeed in saving himself where he had failed.
…
A year came and went, and Kuugo's life went on.
Yet, even as time passed, the memory of that winter never faded. It loomed over him like a dark cloud, living on so long as he remembered the haunted look of the child as pale and wan as a snowflake. Every time he thought back to the boy's evergreen eyes, cold and empty as the depths of the sea, Kuugo worried he would drown.
He told himself that he did all that he could. He found no actionable evidence to pursue any sort of case on Izuku's behalf, and the boy's mother seemed kind enough, albeit obviously pulled thin by the herculean effort of raising a child by her lonesome. Kuugo couldn't fault her for the sort of mistake she would no doubt regret for the rest of her life; even a lonely man like him knew well enough that no amount of media coverage could ever do the difficulty of single motherhood justice.
He just had to have faith, though it pained him so.
Winter returned like it had never left, vengeful and bitter-cold, and on the one day off Kuugo had during the busiest rescue season of the year, his phone rang. He had half a mind to tear whoever dared to disturb him a new one for calling him in, but as soon as he heard the details of the rescue, he burst out the door and into the biting wind of a world painted over in pure white.
For as often as Midoriya Izuku plagued his thoughts, Kuuko never wished for a reason to reunite with the boy. It would've been better, he thought, if Izuku found something to smile about—anything to thaw the permafrost encasing his heart such that he wouldn't seek out someone like Kuugo for the answers he didn't have and the warmth he couldn't give.
But the world always had a way of subverting his expectations if not outright upending them entirely.
Izuku's social worker was a ragged wreck of a woman, slipping Kuugo a copy of Izuku's file and explaining to him that the boy's mother surrendered him unconditionally to an adoption agency that specialized in placing children with uncontrollable or dangerous quirks in suitable homes.
Even among such children, however, Izuku stood out as a unique case; his quirk, inherited from both of his parents, mutated in the exact opposite manner they expected.
Put simply, rather than any form of pyrokinesis, synthesized from Pull and Fire Breath, Izuku developed the ability to draw in warmth from his surroundings and dramatically reduce the temperature of anything and everything around him. The boy took ice from fire because nothing burned like the cold.
While ice quirks came with their drawbacks, they were far from the hardest quirks to adapt to living with. Yet, before Kuugo could interrogate the woman as to why the boy's family gave him up over something so trivial, she explained to him just how anomalous Izuku's terrifying power truly was.
Quite simply, Izuku's quirk couldn't be classified merely as a simple ice quirk. Most quirks of a similar nature functioned without regard for the finer workings of thermodynamics and came with the risk of suffering hypothermia with overuse.
Izuku, however, acted with respect for the natural laws and could endlessly absorb heat and reduce temperatures far lower than even the Himura clan, famous for their frost, whilst also gaining functional immunity to extreme heat and cold alike.
In short, Izuku's quirk, appropriately named Absolute Zero, was in a league of its own.
Unfortunately, however, this did not mean it was without its problems—first and foremost being the reason Izuku's mother, who held firmly to her son even after her husband suspected her of unfaithfulness and abandoned them both, surrendered him in the first place.
Whether it was because the quirk manifested late or a lack of guidance, Izuku couldn't control his power.
Wherever Izuku went, like a snowstorm rolling in, inescapable cold followed, and if Izuku were to further close himself off, like a vacuum, he would draw in every ounce of warmth from his surroundings, such that anyone in his vicinity would catch their death within minutes, even with protection.
As Kuugo hesitated to ask what would happen if, heaven forbid, someone were to touch the boy during one of his episodes, the social worker enlightened him as to exactly what it would look like were someone to make such a blunder.
The incident that landed Izuku in the system occurred at the boy's elementary school a few weeks before. While the bulk of the details were omitted for the purpose of maintaining the privacy of the other party, the incident itself presented itself in perfect clarity--in picture form, no less.
Like it had been dipped in ink, a young boy's badly blackened, frostbitten hand splayed out before him on the page, fingers swollen and necrosed.
Midoriya Inko pulled her boy out of school on the day of the incident and surrendered him to the agency not long after. Izuku's quirk counselor later resigned in disgrace.
Nobody ever asked why that other boy put his hands on Izuku to begin with.
While some of the social workers speculated on potential reasons for the boy's lack of control over his quirk, Kuugo focused on what he knew for sure: the boy needed someone to watch over him, and he was the star candidate.
With a quirk like Orcinus, Kuugo touted a resistance to cold that was superior even to those who harbored ordinary ice quirks: he possessed a thin layer of specialized cells for insulation that allowed orcas to thrive even in the icy seas of the far north. And, like a blessing from nature, it was that very same insulation that would prevent Izuku from directly draining his body heat upon contact—the pitfall that ice-quirked candidates who already ran cold would surely fall into.
In addition, Kuugo, like many pro heroes, possessed an emergency fostering license for such occasions as well as a background in education and quirk counseling. He hadn't completed his college coursework or become officially certified to proctor for the Hero Licensing Exams as he intended, but what credits he did have to his name blew every other candidate out of the water.
However, the pool of applicable guardians for such a special case as Midoriya Izuku was remarkably shallow. What value was there in being the biggest fish in a small pond?
Regardless, for as perfect a contender as he supposedly was to take the boy on, even the man who called himself Gang Orca, the hero who terrified villains into submission with his presence alone, wavered.
Kuugo never raised a child before. Rather, most kids he encountered often ran the other way screaming, a fact he would never admit to haunting his nightmares.
Yet, on that deathly cold and quiet night, Izuku approached him.
Logically, Kuugo figured it was because the boy knew who he was and trusted him not to hurt him as a hero, but as a guardian? Kuugo never even had a roommate before! Would he have to childproof his house or something?
Sensing his distress, the social worker assured him that she would guide him through the process every step of the way--through the paperwork, the evaluations, and eventually bringing Sakamata Izuku home.
Steeling his resolve, Kuugo threw himself into his preparations like the unstoppable machine he was, wiping his schedule clean and dividing his many responsibilities among his subordinates as he saw fit, all to make time and room in his life for the boy he would soon become responsible for.
Yet, nothing could have possibly prepared him for the first scheduled visit with Izuku himself since they'd met so long ago, though it felt like only yesterday. When Kuugo stepped through the door of the little office, he froze—not literally, but close.
What was once a quaint little room filled with knick-knacks and colorful posters, no doubt meant to put anxious children at ease, was now a tiny winter wonderland. A thin layer of hoarfrost had covered every surface in the room. Frozen fractals lined the windows, and diamond dust glittered like the stars in the sky, perfectly stationary in a world frozen in time.
Izuku sat on the floor in a heap where the layers of frost were the thickest, unfurled around him like a flower frozen mid-bloom. The boy slowly turned to look at him, his face as pale as it was placid. His eyes didn't light up with recognition, but the temperature dropped so sharply that it stung just to breathe. However, as he watched the boy back away, at long last acting as he should've when confronted by a beast like him, Kuugo remembered what true pain was—not merely stinging cold, but the sting of betrayal that pierced him through.
Control yourself, he thought. First, your breathing, then your thoughts, and then your heart. Calm seas.
Gingerly sitting in front of the boy, Kuugo tried his best to get down on his level, for all the difference in size did to make that impossible. He was a hero, after all, and a hero never backed down from a challenge, nor from someone who needed saving.
He failed Izuku once.
He would not fail him again.
"Hero-san," Izuku whispered, as quiet as the falling snow, in place of a greeting. "It's you."
Kuugo's smile never served to put children at ease, so he didn't bother. He simply nodded, taking in the sight of Izuku as if to thaw his memory of the boy. Though a great deal could change in a year, especially for a child, Izuku looked exactly the same all the way down to the placid expression he wore, like it had been cryopreserved.
Kuugo chose not to dwell on it.
"You remember me," he said quietly. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Izuku gave the tiniest of shrugs, looking out of place, yet remaining where he was.
"Why… are you here?" the boy asked, curled up as if he were on the verge of freezing, though he didn't so much as shiver.
Swallowing hard, Kuugo soldiered on.
"I'm here to save you," Kuugo said like it was a given. Izuku had waited long enough for a hero, hadn't he?
Though Izuku's expression hardly changed, he regarded Kuugo like he half-expected to be eaten alive. For once, it almost seemed like the boy saw him for how terrifying he really was. Yet, what came out Izuku's mouth next proved him entirely wrong.
"Why?" the boy asked, sounding lost, but unafraid. "Don't you know I'm dangerous?"
Of course the hero knew.
Not that Kuugo believed it, of course, but he knew how the boy saw himself. The social worker made sure to brief him on that little morsel of information very early-on, confessing that she was at a loss for how to convince the boy of his inherent innocence when she couldn't even get close enough to the boy to hold his hand and tell him everything would be okay—that it wasn't fault he may have permanently crippled the boy called Kacchan.
Yet, some part of Kuugo—the dark part he made sure to sink to the bottom of the ocean in his heart—seethed. After years spent hearing the same thing growing up, and even as a fully fledged hero, Kuugo had no patience for such drivel.
But, for the boy who already believed it to be true—
—Kuugo knew patience would be everything in and of itself.
A puff of mist escaped Kuugo as he huffed.
"I won't lie to you," he said, fighting to soften his voice. "Many quirks have the potential to be dangerous. Some people just need a little extra help learning to control their power so they aren't a threat to others or to themselves."
Izuku blinked at him, eyes shimmering like ice crystals, too cold even to shed tears. He said nothing, even as his frigid breath encrusted Kuugo's front with frost, just trying to make sense of him.
Kuugo cocked his head, thinking it wise to change gears and try a different approach.
"Do you like heroes, Izuku?"
The boy wavered, suddenly unable to so much as look at Kuugo. For as inexpressive as Izuku was, he wore shame like layers for keeping warm.
"I don't know," Izuku murmured. Then, after a long, frozen pause, he whispered, "I did—once. I think it was—because they help. They—help people. Right?"
Watching the boy struggle to make sense of something so simple as his own likes, Kuugo willed himself to stay strong. Though it was harrowing, a small spark of pride warmed Kuugo from within. The boy had a good head on his shoulders.
"That's right," Kuugo agreed quietly. "Heroes help people. And everyone needs help once in a while, right?"
Slowly, like a glacier stirring from its slumber, Izuku nodded. Kuugo cracked the tiniest of smiles without willing it. Izuku stared at him, eyes, like snowglobes, unblinking, and backed away.
"It's my duty to help you," Kuugo said again, daring to inch forward, though he was already in too deep. Yet, no matter how far he had to dive, he wouldn't come back up without Izuku, who had lived so long only knowing how to drown.
Gently as he could muster, Kuugo reached out a claw, the very same with which he'd crushed countless bones into powder, and grasped the boy's shoulder and anchored him in place, all so he couldn't possibly miss that a hero came to save him after all.
Maybe he was nothing like All Might, but, like any hero worth his salt, Kuugo never gave up on what mattered.
Izuku froze solid under his touch—almost literally. Kuugo's palm tingled like he'd reached into a tank of dry ice, but he held firm to his resolve and to Izuku himself.
"I can't say I know exactly how to help you," Kuugo murmured. "But I'm willing to try. Will you let me?"
The boy didn't react. Briefly, Kuugo wondered if perhaps the boy had simply gone deaf to the world. His anxieties, however, melted just as soon as the boy bowed his head like he'd received a gift he didn't deserve.
"I have a home," Kuugo murmured lowly, ever unwavering. "It could be yours, too."
Izuku said nothing for a time, but as he slowly arched up to look Kuugo in the eye, he gave a dry sniffle, unable even to cry as the icy fractals bloomed along the edges of the walls and floor.
"Aren't you cold?" Izuku asked quietly, brittle and glassy-blue with grief.
As slow as he could bear, Kuugo slid down his arm and gathered the boy's hand within his own—so tiny that the boy could scarcely grasp but one of Kuugo's fingers. Distantly, he wondered if the boy could feel the pulse of his heart through his touch, echoing a promise to always be strong.
"No," Kuugo answered, brushing a clawed thumb along the boy's lithe wrist, flecks of snow scattering with each pass. "Are you?"
Eyes trained on their joined hands, Izuku only gave a weak shrug.
"I don't know," he admitted, receding like the tide, yet making no effort to pull away.
Bowing his head low, Kuugo gave a silent huff—worn out, but fond all the same.
"That's alright," he murmured, slowly getting to his feet, careful not to oppress the boy with his towering figure by looming over him. Instead, he gave the smallest, most reassuring squeeze he could muster.
"We'll figure it out together," Kuugo said quietly. "We'll make some warm memories."
A beat came and went like a spring too weak, yet Kuugo preened at the distinct sensation of the boy sidling against him, as hesitant as it was. Like this, Kuugo became acutely aware of how small Izuku was compared to him—how fragile and uncertain this little life was, like a newborn bud, and how completely reliant he was on Kuugo as his hero. His guardian.
His—
"Okay," Izuku whispered. "Hero-san."
"Kuugo," the man gently corrected. "My name. I'd like it if you called me that."
"Kuugo," Izuku echoed, nodding against his chest. "Okay."
And so it went. Signing the necessary paperwork took longer than anyone would've liked, but before long, Kuugo brought a new Sakamata into the world and welcomed Izuku into his home.
While he'd run countless simulations of how the boy might respond to finally bringing his bags and his baggage into their new home, Kuugo couldn't possibly explain the meaning of the inexplicable anxiety churning in his gut as he watched Izuku take his first steps inside—all tentative footsteps and wraith-like silence, like he'd wandered into a monster's den.
Calm seas, he told himself as Izuku came to a stop, looking around like he'd found himself spirited away to a new world entirely, only to finally fix Kuugo with an expression that betrayed nothing, yet could mean anything—those glassy eyes focused on him, yet still unseeing.
Izuku's mouth cracked open and broke the silence.
"What… am I supposed to say?" the boy whispered, his gaze darting off to the side in a gesture Kuugo couldn't pin as either shame or shyness.
It shouldn't have been such a relief to know Izuku was just as lost as he was, but he figured this, too, they could figure out together.
Thinking for a moment, Kuugo huffed, watching his breath fog even as he stood under his own roof.
"Maybe," Kuugo began, "I'm home?"
Izuku thought for a moment, seemingly considering him. Seeing no reason to argue, the boy whispered, "I'm home."
Nudging Izuku by the shoulder, Kuugo offered a beleaguered smile like a peace offering.
"Welcome home," he echoed, "Izuku."