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Young Midoriya had been to his house before, Yagi having stopped at his apartment building to grab something before they'd gone back to training during the ten or so odd months that they'd spent preparing the boy to hold One for All. As much as anyone could be prepared for that, really.
It's not a night where he's able to sleep either, so he sees Midoriya's three in the morning text asking if he can come over the minute it's sent. Toshinori is about to type out some kind of reply when he hears the knock at the door, hesitant and soft, like the person on the other side of the door had to work up the nerve and only just managed that.
When Toshinori opens the door, he can't help but think that Izuku looks... rough. It's another week before the school year officially starts and he's going to get into UA, and at first he figures it's just the nerves that are making it hard for the boy to sleep. At least until he registers that he's still wearing his pajamas, a fuzzy pair of Christmas themed All Might pants over a ratty t-shirt, at the same time Izuku blurts out, "I think something is wrong. With the quirk."
That's enough for Toshinori to gently tug the boy into his apartment and shut the door behind him, any admonishing about him dashing across town in the middle of the night dying on his tongue. Izuku gets his shoes off in the genkan and Toshinori idly picks up a little around his apartment. He'll be more embarrassed about the state he allowed Midoirya to see it in tomorrow.
Izuku is fidgety and a bit of a cry baby, but he's also sharp and analytical- Toshinori had peeked at those notebooks of his and had seen just how adept Izuku was at breaking down a quirk to it's base elements and figuring out the exact mechanics for how it was meant to work and even suggestions for how it could be best applied.
Hell, if Toshinori hadn't been so set on making the boy the ninth holder, he'd have a lucrative career as a quirk specialist.
Not only that, but One for All had already broken three of his four limbs.
So when Izuku says that something doesn't feel right about the quirk, Toshinori believes him.
"What do you mean?"
"Its- I've been having these dreams-" Izuku says as Yagi wordlessly herds him to the sofa. Izuku curls on the cushions, his knees tucked up by his chest as he chews on his thumb nail. He's got a notebook in his other hand, "I thought they were just... dreams at first. But. I don't think they are now."
Toshinori settles across from him, "And why do you think that is?"
"I saw you." Izuku whispers. "In. In one of the dreams." Yagi wants to interject again. With how much of a fanboy Izuku is, he's sure he's had more than one dream featuring a hero, but Izuku keeps going, "You. You were young. Like before your debut in the United States young. Probably only a year or two older than me. Y-you were reaching out to me, someone was pulling you away, and- and you were screaming something at me."
"Shishou," The word drops from his lips before he can think better of it, and Izuku's eyes, to his horror, light with recognition.
"That was it!"
Toshinori swallows thickly, a horrible sort of knowing in his gut. "What... what color was the man's cape. The one you saw pulling me away."
"It was yellow." Izuku answers without hesitation, just like Toshinori knew he would.
He feels sick.
There is no possible way Izuku could have known about that day from an entire lifetime ago. There were only four people there to witness it and two of those people were dead, and the other two would rather get waterboarded before discussing it.
"You, um," Toshinori holds his head in his hands, "I think you saw my teacher's memories. The- the one who gave me the power."
That would be concerning enough. Toshinori had never, not once, experienced dreams as vivid as the ones Izuku just described. He'd have nightmares where he ran through a dark tunnel, nightmares he couldn't remember where he woke up in a state of panic, but nothing as clear as what Izuku's describing.
But then Izuku says, "There have been... more dreams. It wasn't just that."
Toshinori is about to get up and hunt through the mess for a notebook and pen, intent on drilling Izuku for details and writing down every single thing he says, but Izuku has already beat him to it in more ways than one.
He has the notebook he brought with him held out. It's not the one he uses for his hero notes. This one has a crisp and almost new cover, even if it looks like he's written in a good chunk of the thing already.
Izuku, the little record keeper, has made detailed notes by date, describing what exactly he saw. The dates go right back to February 26th, the day of the entrance exam, the day he got the quirk.
The first entry details Izuku in the woods with a shotgun and a well worn book. A mountain sunset and a nickering horse the color of ground coffee. The perimeter of the little cabin had been leveled with enough traps to hold off a small army, but Izuku had noted that he felt he'd be lucky if it even managed to slow Him down. Him being underlined in a thick, bleed-through stroke of the pen.
The other entries are like that too. Much too many details to be an ordinary dream, full of vivid fear and paranoia that all but bleeds off of the ink. Toshinori spends the better part of an hour leafing through the notebook, skimming the words, occasionally asking Midoriya to tell him what a word that was written too fast was meant to say.
The common thread in all the dreams, from the first to the one Izuku just told him about, is as simple as it is frightening for Toshinori; All for One. He can see the shapes of the man in each and every note of terror, in each beat of paranoia, through all the fear of a cornered prey animal who knows that they will not be able to run, not this time.
On the last page, Izuku has sketched a face frantically, the strokes of his pen sharp and hasty, like it was a race against forgetting to draw a middle aged man with short spikes of white hair, an angular face, a wide smile, and hollow eyes. Other than the speed with which it was drawn, it isn't a bad likeness.
Toshinori is quiet for a long while, staring at the last page. It's a face Toshinori is intimately familiar with. The star of so many of his own most terrible nightmares. Toshinori wishes more than anything he'd be able to forget that fucking face.
"I think," He clears his throat, stares at the terrified looking boy across from him on the sofa, "I think that the quirk holds onto memories, and-"
"No." Izuku says a little too quickly, a little too sharply. "They aren't just memories."
"What are they, my boy?"
"They're... they're trying to warn me." One of Izuku's fingers tremors ever so slightly as he lets it rest against the sketched face in the notebook. "About him. They don't want him to get me too. They think he's going to get me."
"He is never going to touch you, young Midoriya." Toshinori speaks with such conviction, that he nearly forgets that he hadn't meant to speak about All for One just yet. About what he had to do.
Izuku's head lifts with shock,
"You... you know who he is?"
Toshinori sighs and rises to his feet. "This is a tea conversation."
Izuku gets up after him, trailing a few steps behind as Toshinori sets about getting his electric kettle going and preparing two mugs.
Once the tea is poured and in their hands, Toshinori seats himself again, this time at the kitchen table alongside Izuku.
"The man you were dreaming about called himself All for One." Toshinori states. "He was, in a lot of ways, responsible for creating the power we now share. He'd forced it on what he thought was his quirkless younger brother and carved a path of destruction trying to get it back once his brother managed to escape him. And he's dead. I killed him myself."
Izuku doesn't looked as relieved as he would have figured he'd look if he had any knowledge at all of the man that hunted each and every holder of their quirk in order to slaughter them like animals is long since gone. Instead, his sucessor looks like he desperately wants to believe his teacher, but just... but just can't.
That hurts Toshinori's heart more than he thought it would.
"...Are you sure?" Izuku's voice wavers, his eyes swimming with tears,
Toshinori has never been more acutely aware of the fact that Izuku, for all his bravery and heroicism, is still just a little boy, one who's been given something old and arguably cursed.
He stands and pulls Izuku to his chest in a hug. Izuku clings to him and begins to weep into his shirt.
"They were so scared, All Might," He whispers, voice tremmoring with sobs, "They were all so scared-"
"I know, kid, I know," Toshinori states, one long and spindly hand running up and down Izuku's back, "I wouldn't have given this to you if I wasn't sure. I wanted it to be a gift, my boy, not just a target. He will never hurt you, Midoriya, I swear to you."
In the days after Kamino, Toshinori will struggle to walk to Midoriya's room. It's not the pain that stops him, it's the shame.
Recovery Girl has assured him and the boy's mother that he'll survive this. It will hurt, it won't be easy, but he will survive.
Toshinori wishes he could go back to that distant April morning, when Izuku had insisted that All for One was alive and coming for him. He wishes he could go back to that day and book Izuku the first one way trip out of Japan he could get his hands on. There were hero programs in the states, programs he could more than afford.
Young Midoriya must have been so afraid.