Chapter Text
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
Izuku’s breath caught in his throat as he jabbed a shoulder into Katsuki’s side, eyes wide with wonder. “Kacchan, look!” he whispered, voice trembling with excitement. “All Might’s gonna punch Volcano!”
The afternoon sunlight filtered through the window as Izuku held his All Might figure; chocolate smudges streaking across his freckled cheeks like fresh battle scars from his mother’s warm, just-baked cookies.
Katsuki’s grin split his face. “Nuh-uh. He’s gonna explode him! Boom!” He lunged forward, fist cocked. The edge of his All Might blanket curled into a small cloud of smoke.
At the far end of the rug, one of Izuku’s friends: Yuto, stretched his trembling fingers toward a lone cookie. “I… I think he’ll save those people first…” His voice quivered.
Tsubasa, another of Izuku’s friends, flicked a popcorn kernel towards Yūto’s thigh. “’Course heroes save people, dummy!” he crowed, clapping his hands.
Izuku’s grip tightened around his action figure, and he could almost feel a slight warmth beneath his palm.
When the credits rolled in the flickering screen, Katsuki sprang to his feet with his chest thrust forward and his arms raised. “I’m gonna be stronger than All Might!” he declared, flexing his arms like the hero.
Tsubasa clapped, the sound loud. Izuku bounced on the balls of his feet, heart pounding. “I’ll be strong too, Kacchan!” he called with the same intensity as his friend.
“No way, Icchan!” Katsuki rolled his eyes but, with a sudden shift, lobbed Izuku a chocolate-dipped cookie. “My sidekick’s gotta eat,” he muttered, and for a fleeting second, his eyes softened.
From the kitchen doorway, Inko’s laughter came. Her apron was dusted with flour, and the aroma of simmering stew drifted behind her. “Lunch is ready, boys!”
They ran toward the table in a flurry of giggles. Katsuki charging ahead like he always did. Izuku trailing close behind, chocolate still at the corners of his mouth.
But time, silent as ever, crept forward, and soon the clock’s hand slid to 5 p.m.
The door swung open as the sound of jackets straightening, names being called, and sleepy goodbyes could be heard. Izuku paused at the threshold, the echo of his friends’ laughter still ringing in his ears.
He turned to Inko, eyes shining. “Mommy, my quirk will come soon, right?”
She knelt, gathering him into a hug. “Yes, baby,” she whispered, brushing a kiss against his hair. “You don’t have to worry about a thing because I know you’ll be the greatest hero ever.” And in her arms, Izuku believed it with every fiber of his body.
Minutes drifted by in a rush. Izuku lay sprawled on the rug, crayons scattered around him. He colored All Might’s suit in vivid blues and reds, the wax smudging against his small fingers as he hummed the show’s main theme in half-remembered bursts.
His toes curled against the rug, the world reduced to the crinkle of crayon on paper and the gentle rustle of Inko moving through the room, finishing the last of her cleaning.
Until the front door opened again.
Hisashi, his father, stepped in. He shrugged off his jacket, loosened his red tie in a single tug. And before the knot could slip free, Izuku was already colliding with him.
“Daddy!”
Hisashi’s laughter broke the stillness, and the house felt whole. He scooped Izuku into his arms, until the boy’s socks threatened to slip from his ankles. “Hey there, champ! How was your day?”
Izuku clung tight, face pressed against the soft fabric of his father’s shirt. “Kacchan, Tsucchan and Yūcchan came over! We played heroes and watched TV!” His words tumbled over themselves in a rush, small fingers snagging on a shirt button.
Hisashi’s grin lingered for a few seconds, then tightened at the edges. A flicker passed through his eyes as he set his son down, fingers brushing Inko’s shoulder as she leaned in with a weary but gentle kiss. “Long day?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, Hisashi crouched, leveling his gaze with Izuku’s. “And your quirk, champ? Anything yet?” His thumb grazed Izuku’s palm, the gesture searching and impatient. As though he thought he might feel it suddenly there: a pulse of flame, a spark of energy; some proof that his boy was normal.
Izuku’s smile wavered, caught between hope and guilt. “N-Not yet. But I will get it soon, Daddy!” His voice pitched high at the end.
Hisashi stood too quickly, sending a few crayons clattering. “Well. Good thing Dr. Tsubasa’s coming next week,” he said. “He’ll sort it out.”
Izuku’s eyes widened. “The quirk doctor? From TV?” The thrill returned, his heart swelling. “Maybe I’ll get fire breath, or Mom’s power… or maybe… maybe pyrokinect! Or…”
Inko smiled, brushing a stray lock of hair from Izuku’s forehead. “Pyrokinesis, sweetie,” she corrected, voice soft. “But right now, heroes need good hygiene. Off to the bath you go, I'll be with you in a minute.” She took his hand and steered him toward the hallway.
As soon as he rounded the corner, Hisashi spoke, voice low and frayed. “Four years old, Inko. Even that long-fingered boy’s quirk has already manifested.”
Inko’s hand found Hisashi’s wrist, her wedding band cool against his skin. “He’s fine,” she said, too sharply, before letting go.
Izuku padded down the hallway, but halfway to the bathroom, he remembered his All Might figure, the one in the diving suit. He went to his room and noticed it sat atop his drawer on the other corner of the room. He took a step, and then the thought struck: Mommy could move spoons and keys with her hand. Maybe he could too.
He scrunched his face, hand outstretched. Tingle. Pull. Move!
And something replied to his plea.
It wasn’t an electrical sensation, or a greenish hue surrounding the toy, like Mommy’s power, but the same warmth he had felt in his palm when holding his other All Might figure.
The action figure twitched and then… wobbled.
It wobbled!
His heart leapt with joy. “Mommy! Daddy!” Izuku bolted into the kitchen, heart hammering. “I did it! I moved him!”
Hisashi’s chair scraped back hard against the tile. He turned slowly, a slight smile in his face. “Show me.”
Izuku gripped the edge of the table, sweat beading at his brow. That strange warmth fluttered around him again, a pulse that felt not his own and yet part of him. He focused on the spoon, willing it to lift. The warmth surged.
But nothing happened this time. The spoon stayed still. The pulse was gone.
“I… I felt it,” Izuku whispered, blinking back the sting in his eyes.
Hisashi’s sigh was a quiet, the sound of air leaving a tire. He reached out to ruffle Izuku’s hair, but his touch landed too soft, too absent. “Don’t beat yourself up, champ. The doctor’ll sort it out.”
Inko reached for Hisashi’s hand again, her touch pleading, but he slid away, retreating into the safety of his stew.
And there, between the clink of spoon against bowl and the soft hum of the refrigerator. Izuku’s shoulders slumped as he retreated. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” he murmured softly. Inko trailed after him, footsteps soft against the floor, closing his bedroom door with a quiet click.
Izuku curled in his bed, one small palm pressed to his chest, searching for the memory of that pulse, that warmth. It was alive, he told himself, It was alive and I felt it.
- THE FORCE AWAKENS -
The waiting room of Musutafu General Hospital was washed in a light that made everything feel weightless, suspended. The walls were painted a dull blue, and somewhere overhead, the steady hum of fluorescent panels buzzed tiredly.
Izuku sat with his feet swinging off the edge of his chair, a coloring book open on his lap though he hadn’t touched it. He hummed softly under his breath, even if no sound escaped. His green eyes darted now and again toward the closed office door, anticipation bubbling in his chest.
Inko sat beside him, her hands twisted around the strap of her purse. She kept smiling, though the corners of her mouth kept twitching, tugged down by a worry she couldn’t name, or maybe didn’t want to. She had fussed with his hair in the elevator, smoothed his collar twice, and still now, reached over to tuck a stray curl behind his ear.
“You doing okay, baby?” she asked softly.
Izuku grinned up at her, his freckles glowing under the flat light. “I’m fine, Mommy! I’m not scared.” His words came with a practiced brightness, and Inko’s heart gave a pained tug. Because of course he wasn’t. He still believed.
And why wouldn’t he? He had felt it. That warmth. That living hum in the air, the toy’s tiny twitch in his room. The world had finally answered him back, and it had felt right, felt alive. He was going to be a hero, and today the doctor would just tell them what kind of amazing Quirk he had.
Easy.
His mind drifted back to school: to Tsubasa grinning so hard his face might split, little winglets sprouting from his back. Everyone had cheered. The teacher clapped. And then there was Kacchan. He hadn’t spoken to Izuku since he had told him.
“I felt it. It’s coming. You’ll see.”
Kacchan’s had frowned, his mouth pressed into a thin line, but Izuku didn’t know why he acted like that.
He was brought out of his mind when the door to the office opened with a hiss.
Doctor Tsubasa stepped out, a clipboard in one hand, his face neutral. His thick graying mustache was trimmed carefully, and his movements never wasted a motion.
“Mrs. Midoriya,” he greeted, with a shallow bow of his head. “Thank you for waiting. You can come in now.”
Inko rose first, her hand catching Izuku’s. He squeezed it, grinning. “It’s okay, Mommy. I’m not scared.”
She smiled down at him, her eyes were glassy, too bright.
Inside, the office smelled of antiseptic and old paper. A monitor glowed on the desk, beside a stack of thick manila files. Tsubasa gestured for them to sit.
Izuku clambered onto the examination table, legs dangling. Inko settled into the chair beside it, her hands folded so tightly in her lap her knuckles gleamed.
“Well then,” Dr. Tsubasa began, adjusting his glasses. “Thank you for your patience. We’ve completed Izuku’s tests, and I’d like to go over the results with you.”
Izuku’s grin spread, his back going ramrod straight. “Okay!”
The doctor’s turned the monitor slightly, revealing an image: a black-and-white scan of a small chest cavity.
He pointed to the lungs. “First, we checked for any signs of pyrogenic adaptation; specifically in the lungs. Since Izuku’s father’s Quirk is fire-breathing, there would typically be minor biological markers. Denser alveolar tissue, increased mucosal linings, things like that.”
Izuku’s head tilted. “Huh?”
Inko gave a nervous laugh. “He means your lungs, sweetie.”
“Oh!” Izuku piped. “But it’s okay. I already know I have Mommy’s Quirk!” His voice rang with such conviction that for a second, even Inko nearly believed it.
Doctor Tsubasa’s brow furrowed faintly. “Ah,” he murmured, like someone setting aside an irrelevant detail. “Well, let’s continue.”
He tapped a few keys, and another image appeared: an X-ray of a small foot. Izuku squinted at it.
“Now,” Doctor Tsubasa said, his tone slipping into something cooler, fainter, almost eager beneath the detachment. “Most children developing a Quirk exhibit certain skeletal adaptations. The most reliable early indicator is the absence of a secondary joint in the pinky toe. You see, evolutionary theory suggests that with the onset of Quirk phenomena, redundant physical structures were gradually phased out.”
He gestured to the image. “Here, you’ll notice young Izuku’s skeleton retains the older two-joint structure. Which, medically speaking, is a primary diagnostic marker for Quirklessness.”
The words floated there, harmless in their medical detachment. A fact. A line in a textbook.
Izuku stared at the screen, not fully grasping it. “But… but I felt it,” he whispered, confusion flickering. “I felt it… in my room. I moved it. I did.”
The doctor’s face softened into something that might have passed for sympathy, though his eyes remained curiously distant. “I’m sorry, young man. The mind can be… persuasive. When we wish for something badly enough, sometimes it makes us feel things.”
Inko’s hand flew to her mouth.
Something in Izuku’s stomach dropped away, a sickening, weightless sensation, like falling off a cliff. The room swam. The overhead lights felt too bright. His ears buzzed. The only thing he could hear, hammering in time with his pulse, was a single word.
Quirkless.
Quirkless.
Quirkless.
No, no, no; there had to be a mistake. He felt it. He had felt it. That warmth, that hum in the air, alive, answering him. It was real. He was going to be a hero. He was. The doctor was wrong. The machine was wrong. The X-ray was wrong. It had to be.
“I… I can try again,” Izuku stammered, his throat closing. “I can… I can show you. I moved my All Might figure, I felt it. It was warm, it… it was there…”
His words cracked like glass.
The doctor shook his head, his voice the careful, practiced tone of a man who had shattered hundreds of childhoods before. “I’m very sorry, young man, but it didn’t happen.”
The warmth in Izuku’s chest vanished, leaving something hollow and cold. He didn’t cry. Not yet. He was too big for crying.
Inko reached for him, but he flinched away.
“Izuku,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Baby, it’s okay…”
It wasn’t. It would never be.
Doctor Tsubasa stood gathering his clipboard. “I’ll leave you for a moment,” he murmured, and left the room.
Izuku stared down at his hands, small and pale against the sterile white of the table. He flexed his fingers, willing that warmth back.
But it was of no use.
“I… I felt it, Mommy,” he said again, his voice so soft it could have been mistaken for an imperceptible whisper.
At that moment, the tears began to fall.
Not in a wail, not in a fit of sobs. In silent drops that blurred the world. Inko gathered him into her arms, holding him so tightly it hurt, pressing her lips to his hair. “I’m so sorry, Izuku. Please forgive me.”
And in the sterile hush of that cold, indifferent room, Izuku Midoriya’s world cracked open.
The dream he had held like a flame snuffed out in an instant.
Hope was gone.
And for the first time in his young life, Izuku felt the despair of being powerless; to be left behind.
- THE FORCE AWAKENS -
The news hit Hisashi like a ton of bricks. He was halfway through a quarterly review meeting, nodding along to some idiot’s presentation on profit margins when his phone buzzed in his pocket. One glance at Inko’s name on the screen was enough to take this seriously.
The moment stretched, the numbers on the screen blurring, the polite hum of the office droning away into a low, muffled roar.
When he returned to the meeting, he wore a blank face. A mask he had perfected over years of work, of putting down whatever feeling threatened to break through. Men like him didn’t have the luxury of visible grief. Not in public. Not in front of men who would sniff it out, peel it away, and leave him exposed.
He told himself; as he drove home through the cold haze of early evening; that it didn’t change anything. Izuku was still his boy. Still bright. Still kind. Still the kid who called him Daddy and climbed into his lap with crayon drawings of All Might and begged to stay up late watching hero documentaries with popcorn and wide, shining eyes.
Hisashi gripped the steering wheel tighter, repeating it in his head, like a prayer, like a drowning man clawing for the surface. It doesn’t change anything. He’s still my son. He’s still my son.
But a part of him didn’t accept those words.
Because he had heard the whispers at work. The jokes passed around in smoke breaks and after-hours drinks, dressed up as warnings.
“You hear about Tanaka? His kid turned out Quirkless. Poor bastard. Stripped of his post, couldn’t get hired as a janitor after that. Word is… well. He’s gone now. Bullet to the head. Can’t risk keeping that kind of defect in the gene pool.”
You could be the sharpest mind in the room, the hardest worker, the man with numbers the board loved, but none of it mattered if you produced a defective bloodline.
It didn’t just follow the child. It followed the blood. Marked you like a brand.
And Hisashi loved his son. He did.
But love was a fragile, human thing, and it buckled under the weight of terror and the judgment of society.
He didn’t sleep that night. He lay in bed beside Inko, staring up at the ceiling in the dark while her back curled toward the window and the muffled, hiccupping sound of Izuku’s crying echoed through the thin apartment walls. Hisashi’s hands curled tight in the sheets.
He told himself it was temporary. A bad dream. A wrong diagnosis. They would keep it quiet. No one needed to know. If Izuku kept his head down, didn’t make a scene, maybe the boy would manifest late. It happened sometimes. Rarely. Miracles were rare things, but wasn’t every hero story built on one?
Morning came brittle and too bright, the sky outside sharp and cloudless as if the world was mocking him. Hisashi poured himself bitter coffee and lingered too long in the hallway outside Izuku’s room, one hand braced against the doorframe. Inside, the boy was curled in his blankets, face swollen from crying.
And when Izuku noticed him standing there, the boy sat up too fast, scrubbing his fists against his eyes, summoning a smile too big for his small, bruised face.
“I’m okay, Daddy,” he said, voice thick but stubbornly bright.
Hisashi’s throat ached. He crossed the room, knelt beside the bed, pressed his palm to the boy’s hair, still so soft, and murmured, “I know you are, kiddo. You’re strong. You’ll be fine.”
Neither of them knew it would be the last time Hisashi would touch his son with anything resembling tenderness.
The days kept passing by.
Rumors moved through the schoolyard like wildfire through dry grass, impossible to stop once the first spark caught. It wasn’t malice, not at first. Tsubasa wasn’t cruel by nature, just a boy overhearing something he was never meant to. A phone call. A stray word. Not even the word itself, but the tone it was said in. That cold kind of finality only adults ever seemed to manage.
“No Quirk.”
The way his grandfather spoke, left something sour in Tsubasa’s stomach. But a child’s world is small and merciless, and the only way to rid yourself of a secret that heavy is to hand it off to someone else.
By the next morning, it was everywhere. A soft ripple of disbelief turned quickly into vicious certainty. The kind of certainty only children can possess when given the excuse to turn on someone different. Whispers behind cupped hands. Eyes darting away when Izuku tried to meet them. The circle of friends who used to play with makeshift capes had become a tribunal overnight.
Katsuki, who had once been the first to throw an arm around Izuku’s shoulders and call him his sidekick, went quiet.
His eyes glittered when Izuku insisted, his voice cracking with the desperate conviction of the doomed. “It’s not true,” he swore, to no one in particular. “I can feel it. I swear… it’s there, I swear it moved… I can show you! I can.”
But for Katsuki it was no longer a plea. It was a provocation.
Katsuki’s fist found his stomach before the words finished leaving his mouth. Yūto was next, a sharp elbow to the ribs, and Tsubasa screaming, “Freak liar!” as though the louder he said it, the less it would cling to him too. A flurry of hands, knees, and feet, Izuku curling in on himself.
And the teacher saw it.
Not in passing. She stood by the doorway, arms crossed, watching Katsuki’s quirk flare in tiny sparks across his knuckles as Izuku bled from a split lip, his eye swelling dark. She let it run its course, only stepping in when the blows lost enthusiasm, when Izuku lay panting like a dying thing on the floor, the crowd of boys satisfied for now.
Later, when the others filed out, she called Katsuki to her desk. Izuku, still trembling, still swallowing his tears like glass, heard every word. “Good,” she told him. “You’ve got talent, Bakugo. You’re going to be something special. Don’t waste your time on failures. Don’t let garbage like that cling to you, alright?”
And something shifted then. Not in Izuku, who had already begun the long, slow process of folding in on himself, but in Katsuki. A cruel kind of pride. The glint of superiority sharpened by validation of authority. He didn’t look at Izuku like a friend anymore, or even a rival. He looked at him like a problem. An obstacle. An infection you cut out before it spread.
It had started with bruises and bad words, but it wouldn’t end there.
Desks scribbled with insults that were barely comprehensible. Lunches vanished. The other children didn’t need to raise their hands to take part, they simply stopped looking at him.
Stopped speaking his name. The world around Izuku shrank with every passing day, each betrayal and silence another brick in the walls closing around him. Even those who didn’t hit him still participated in the violence of pretending he wasn’t there.
One of the many days that Izuku came home with a busted lip, dirt caked in his hair, and bruises along his arms was also the first day Hisashi noticed. Really noticed.
Izuku’ shirt was torn, his cheek streaked with dried blood, and Hisashi just… stared. Not with a father’s horror or a man’s fury, but something colder. Something brittle and alien, like he was trying to make sense of a puzzle piece that no longer fit the picture in his head.
As if the boy in front of him wasn’t a boy, wasn’t his son, but some fragile, dangerous thing that could shatter and leave them all bleeding in its wake.
“You’re supposed to keep your goddamn mouth shut,” Hisashi hissed through clenched teeth, snatching Izuku by the wrist and dragging him down the narrow hallway toward the bathroom. The boy stumbled behind him, too scared to speak, his small hand crushed in his father’s grip.
Hisashi flicked on the harsh light, the old fixture humming in protest, and shoved Izuku toward the sink. “Do you have any idea what’ll happen if people find out?! What you’ll do to this family?!”
The words landed heavier than any blow. Izuku flinched, his shoulders curling inward, the fight gone out of him like a candle snuffed too soon. He opened his mouth, the words tumbling out raw and pleading. “I feel it, Daddy… I swear I do. It’s there…, but…”
Hisashi’s hand let go of his wrist, only to curl into a fist that drove itself into the wall beside the boy’s head. The plaster cracked beneath his knuckles. His breath came ragged, his face a snarl twisted by fear and something deeper. “You can’t, Izuku!” he roared, voice thick with grief, terror and self-loathing in equal measure. “You’re nothing! You’re not a hero; you’ll never be!”
The house went deathly still.
Then, from the hallway came Inko’s voice, furious, a sound Izuku hadn’t known his mother could make. “Let him go!”
It hung in the air. It The first time she had raised her voice to him in years. And for a moment, Hisashi looked as though someone had struck him. His fury faltered, his expression cracked at the edges, exhaustion in his eyes.
Without a word, Hisashi backed away, leaving the boy clutching the sink. His shoulders rose and fell in a suffocating rhythm, then he grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and walked out into the thin night air. No apology. No excuses. Just the hollow slam of the door behind him.
It was the first time he left without a word. It wouldn’t be the last.
Somewhere on the dark streets, under indifferent city lights, Hisashi lit a cigarette with shaking fingers and tried to tell himself it wasn’t the boy’s fault. That it was the world’s fault. That it was his boss’s fault. The whispers. The weight of invisible eyes.
That everything would’ve been fine if Izuku had just stayed quiet, if fate hadn’t cursed them both. He took a long drag, held the smoke in his lungs, and promised himself he would come back when he felt calmer.
But a man could only carry so much dread before it begins to rot. And something inside him had already begun to decay.
- THE FORCE AWAKENS -
Days bled into each other. The rumors at work had always been a kind of white noise: muted, sidelong glances by the elevators, half-finished jokes by the water cooler that stopped the moment you walked past. The unspoken rules no one wrote down because they didn’t need to.
But suddenly those whispers had teeth. They carved themselves into the walls. Every conversation paused when Hisashi entered a room. Every handshake felt colder. And the fear he wore like a second skin began to crack.
His worst nightmare happened on a Wednesday.
Hisashi’s manager called him into his office: a narrow, windowless space with beige walls a vent that rattled when the air conditioning kicked in, and a single, dying plant wilted on the windowsill.
The man behind the desk didn’t bother to gesture for Hisashi to sit. He just leaned back, folding his hands over a stack of meaningless papers, and spoke with a chilling coldness.
“You’re one of the best we have, Hisashi,” the manager began, and Hisashi already knew. Could see the script laid out in the man’s eyes. Could hear the words coming before they arrived. “It’d be a shame to see your… family situation compromise your future here.”
He didn’t say Quirkless child. He didn’t have to. The word hung in the stale air like a corpse. A stink no one acknowledged but everyone smelled.
“I assure you,” Hisashi started, his voice rough and papery in his throat. “It won’t—”
“I’m sure you understand,” the man said, affixing a polite, bloodless smile to his face. “The company has an image to maintain. And you know how people talk. How these things… spread. We can’t have a relic of the past in our ranks. Bad for morale. Bad for business.”
There was no room for argument. No appeals. Hisashi felt something vital inside him shrivel, turn to ash. The conversation ended without a single explicit word about termination. It didn’t need one. The threat was already carved into his bones.
He left the office without remembering how his legs carried him out. The sun was too bright, the air too thin. By the time night fell, he was sitting in a corner dive he barely remembered walking into, the reek of cheap whiskey turning his stomach.
A couple of other men in wrinkled shirts stared into their glasses like they might find God at the bottom. Hisashi wasn’t looking for God. He just wanted the noise in his head to stop.
It didn’t.
When he finally staggered home long after midnight, the apartment was silent save for the faint, stubborn glow of Izuku’s bedroom light still on, a single square of warmth in the dark. His drawings sat in a neat pile on coffee table, filled with doodles and names for heroes he would never be. Hisashi’s stomach turned at the sight. A slick, ugly thing coiled inside his chest.
He slammed the front door harder than he meant to. The sound cracked through the stillness. Inko appeared in the hallway, her face pale and drawn, the worry in her eyes long since curdled into something harder.
“Where have you been?” she asked, and it wasn’t anger in her voice. It was fear. The fear of a woman who already knew the answer.
He didn’t have the words anymore.
Days went by. Time had a way of softening edges, of letting the terror of one day blur into the muted ache of the next. But in the Midoriya household, it was the opposite. The sharpness never dulled. It only cut deeper.
Hisashi stopped coming home before dinner. At first, there were excuses: late meetings, last-minute assignments, clients he couldn’t afford to turn away. Inko pretended to believe him. Izuku did, too. Children, especially children like him, are built to forgive their parents long after they have stopped deserving it.
But the absences stretched. One night became two. One dinner plate left cooling on the table became three. One unanswered voice message turned into a string of them, each one a reminder that the man who had once filled their home with laughter and love was slipping further away.
The rhythmic sound of Hisashi’s key turning in the lock was replaced by the silence of a door that never opened.
But one day he returned, and when he did, he had become a shadow of his former self.
Hisashi reeked of alcohol, the sour scent clinging to him like a second skin. His tie was crooked, his collar askew, his eyes glassy and bloodshot, staring past everything. He looked less like a father and more like a ghost; someone consumed by his grief until it twisted him into something darker.
“Boy!” Hisashi’s slurred shout echoed down the hall. “Where the hell are you hiding?!”
Izuku slid off the bed without thinking, even when his instincts told him not to. His tiny feet padded softly across the floor, the light from the hallway too sharp for his swollen, bleary eyes.
He knew something bad would happen, but there was still a small, stubborn spark of hope inside him, a desperate wish that maybe, just maybe, tonight would be different. That maybe Daddy would come home and be the man from the old days. The days before the world deemed him useless.
But the man standing in the doorway wasn’t that man.
Izuku took a step back instinctively, his heart hammering in his chest. “What… what’s wrong, Daddy?” The words came out barely more than a squeak, thin with fear.
Hisashi’s hand shot out and grabbed Izuku’s wrist. Too tight. His fingers, thick and trembling with rage, closed around Izuku’s fragile bones. Izuku gasped, a yelp escaping him.
“You’re ruining everything,” Hisashi growled, his voice slurred, but sharp with venom. “You little freak. Don’t you get it?! You don’t get to be special! You don’t get to dream!”
Izuku’s lower lip trembled. His voice cracked. “I feel it. I can…”
The words made Hisashi’s face twist in disgust. With a sudden jerk, he yanked Izuku closer, shaking him hard enough that Izuku’s teeth clacked together.
“No, you can’t!” Hisashi’s roar shook the walls. “You’re nothing! Nothing!”
Izuku’s chest hurt. His tiny fingers dug into Hisashi’s wrist, not to hurt him, but to make it stop. But the grip didn’t ease.
And then, worse than the shouting, worse than the stink, Izuku felt it.
That warmth. That invisible thing inside him. The quiet glow he didn’t have a name for, but always knew was there, just beneath the surface, soft and steady.
But as quickly as he felt it, it disappeared.
Izuku stopped struggling as he whimpered with desperation. His head dropped forward, his body sagging in Hisashi’s grip, not from exhaustion, but from the emptiness that spread through him like cold water. The world felt too big, too heavy, too cold without that thing. That thing he didn’t understand, but had always felt.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Inko’s voice cracked through the hallway like lightning, sharp and sudden.
Hisashi’s sneer faltered, eyes flicking to the knife hovering in midair behind him. He stiffened, tension crawling up his spine as the sharp point of the blade pressed closer to the back of his neck, its trajectory following the pull of Inko’s outstretched hand.
“What, you gonna stab me now, woman?” Hisashi scoffed, his voice slurring even more. But there was fear behind his words, a thin crack in his bravado.
“I’ll do worse,” Inko hissed, her voice low, trembling with a quiet fury that made Hisashi’s stomach tighten. The knife twitched toward him, its edge barely an inch from his skin. “You touch him again, Hisashi; you so much as breathe wrong near my son; I promise you they'll find nothing but pieces.”
He staggered back, his hand dropping from Izuku’s wrist. His lips parted, his eyes flicking toward Inko, but there was nothing left to say.
“I want you out of our lives,” Inko said. Cold. Final. The knife didn’t waver. “Now! Or you won’t walk out at all.”
The silence stretched. Hisashi stood there, swaying, the weight of what he had destroyed pressing down.
And then, without a word; he left. The door slammed shut behind him, the sound like a tomb sealing.
Only then did the knife fall to the floor.
- THE FORCE AWAKENS –
Izuku awoke in the middle of the night, many hours later.
He remembered his mother sitting by his bed after his father left. How she had gathered him into her arms, folding his small body against her chest, her touch gentle but trembling. She had hummed a lullaby and the notes had wrapped around him like a threadbare blanket.
Her fingers had threaded through his hair, slow and shaking, and little by little, the ache inside him had dulled until he fell into a fragile, fragmented sleep that barely held together.
Now, alone in the dark, Izuku lay flat on his back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. The light from the hallway was gone. Only the faint, uneven glow of the city leaked through the blinds, casting pale, broken lines across his bedroom walls.
His hand rested on his chest, fingers spread over his heart, as though trying to catch something. To hold it in place. That flicker. That spark. That quiet, familiar warmth that had always hummed beneath his skin like a hidden ember.
But it was gone.
And in its place, only emptiness. A hollow so sharp it felt like a wound.
“But… I felt it,” he whispered, and the sound of his own voice startled him. Thin, brittle, a papery thing barely able to hold itself together.
He swallowed hard, his throat rough, and tried again, softer, as if saying it quieter might make it real again. “I know I did.”
But nothing came. No warmth. No hum. No proof he hadn’t imagined it. Only the cold weight of the dark pressing against him.
He curled onto his side, pulling the blanket up to his chin as though it could shield him from the truth. His small frame tucked in tight, trying to make himself small.
Through the open crack of the door, he could just make out a shape in the hallway. A shadow, vague and motionless. Inko. Sitting on the floor outside his room, her back against the wall, knees drawn up, her head bowed low.
Ragged sobs shook her shoulders, her hands pressed over her mouth to keep them in. And even though she hadn’t said a word, Izuku knew.
It was for him.
I felt it. I know I did. The thought circled in his mind.
He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing that he could wake up in a world where his father came home with clear eyes and steady hands. Where his mother’s smile wasn’t so brittle. Where the warmth was still there beneath his skin, steady and alive, and he wasn’t hollow.
But sleep didn’t come. And neither did the warmth.