Half of the week had passed before some of his classmates became impatient. Many of them had kept in contact with him throughout the last few days, keeping him company via text since they knew he and his mother weren't allowed to leave the apartment until they were given the go ahead. With four more full days of break left though a few of them were itching to see him. Whether it was because they guessed he was spending too much time following news stories about the protest against their school or moping about the official notice of All Might's retirement was debatable.
"Mom?" Izuku asked hesitantly. He stepped out of the hallway and into the living room, phone held loosely in his recently mended hand.
"Yes, Izuku?"
She was currently reading a book on the couch as sunlight flittered through the window lighting up the room. It made her look at peace, the stress she'd been no doubt feeling the last few days finally seeming to die down.
In an instant Izuku wanted to kick himself for interrupting her reading, but he knew it was too late to back out of the room now.
"I was just wondering if some of my friends could come over. I know we aren't supposed to leave…"
"I suppose Tsukauchi-san didn't say anything about people coming to us," she mused when he'd trailed off. "Which friends want to visit? Uraraka and Iida?"
"Yeah, but I think Todoroki, Yaoyorozu, Tsuyu, Kirishima, and Mina want to check up on me as well. That's probably too many people visiting at the same time though, right? They could attract attention if they all came over at once."
"You're right. How about you tell Uraraka and Iida they can visit today, and your other friends can visit tomorrow after I've talked to Tsukauchi-san about it? We don't want to do anything that could attract unwanted attention without consulting him first."
The reason why went unspoken. Izuku had been keeping up with the news coverage of the aftermath of All for One and Shigaraki's attack, a sadistic part of him not being able to ignore the updates on the protest again him as well as U.A. for allowing him to stay there despite his apparent "connection" to the League. All Might and Tsukauchi advised them to not leave their apartment without police escorts due to the number of people that wanted to have words with them. The Midoriya's had never been so glad to live an area with so many busy people, or else they would've feared their neighbors would bring trouble to them. After all it had taken a police order for their landlord to keep their location confidential. The few neighbors that did recognize them had agreed to cooperate with the police to not tell anyone about them living there mostly because they didn't want any reporters, protestors, or villains banging on their doors too.
"That sounds good to me," Izuku answered with a nod. "They'll only be over for an hour or two, so no need to make extra for dinner. Thanks, mom."
She smiled at him softly, but it didn't quite reach her eyes like it used to. After she told him he was welcome she went back to her book. As Izuku turned around to make his way back to his room he couldn't ignore the sour taste that crept into his mouth.
Originally he'd anticipated spending the week with his mother. By that he didn't mean simply staying inside the apartment with her in order to lie low on the radar. He thought they would be able to watch shows or movies together like they did when he was younger, make dinner together, and just talk more than either of them usually had time for. Instead they had been doing their own thing, which wouldn't have been a problem if she didn't seem to be hiding something. She seemed off. Izuku had an idea of what it could be, especially with the way she seemed to become troubled when she looked at him for too long, but he couldn't ask her due to the overwhelming feeling of dread that overcame him every time he thought about it.
I don't think I can handle hearing those words from her, Izuku thought worriedly. But I need to know. I can't let this doubt fester in my head any longer. I can't ask my mom directly; however…
However, he could ask the person she'd been talking to on the phone nearly every night since he got released from the hospital. After texting his friends the game plan for their visits, he pulled up All Might's number and dialed.
"Young Izuku? Is everything alright?"
It startled the green-haired teenager to hear All Might use his first name again. He tried to push the awkward buzz the word created in his chest away though, since he would have to get used to it soon.
"Oh, All Might, we're doing just fine! I didn't call because we were in danger or anything like that."
"Thank goodness," the retired hero breathed into the phone. "I suppose I should stop assuming the worst. Anywho, my boy, what made you call me if you don't mind me asking? I thought you'd be keeping your mother company."
He swallowed hard, his hand suddenly feeling sweaty where he held his phone against his ear. Why was this so difficult?
"Uh, yeah, I would be, but…"
His voice disappeared on him as panic raced through his veins. He couldn't ask All Might after all— the answer scared him too much. What would he do if the truth he feared was the only truth All Might could share with him? He couldn't handle that.
He couldn't do it. He couldn't ask.
"My boy?" All Might questioned worriedly. "You've gone awfully quiet. Is something wrong? If you need to tell me anything or ask me a question, then you know I'm here for you whenever you want."
"I don't want to waste your time." Izuku admitted softly amidst his internal conflict.
A heavy sigh came from the other line.
"How many times do I have to assure you that you aren't bothering me? Talking to you is absolutely never a waste of my time. I much enjoy talking with you, actually. It's a pleasure. Now," he began in a gentler tone, "can you please tell me what the matter is?"
It took a bit of working himself up, but eventually Izuku replied.
"You've been talking to my mom a lot lately on the phone."
"Yes, I have."
"What do you two talk about?"
"Oh, nothing too important. I've been telling her stories of my younger days from before becoming a pro hero. She often tells me of her high school days and stories of you when you were younger. We've been exchanging more funny stories than anything in order to cheer each other up, what with all the negativity going on outside right now."
Izuku's shoulders dropped.
"So she is upset. She's sad, but she's trying to hide it by putting on a mask. I knew it."
"I wouldn't worry about her too much, my boy. She's a strong woman who I believe will be able to get past—"
"It's my fault, isn't it?" The question cut his mentor off, and the weight of it kept All Might silent. "You probably can guess more accurately than I can since she's been talking to you more than me the past couple days. She seems uneasy all of the time and every time I look at her it seems like she's hiding something. It's all because of me."
"What are you talking about?"
"I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, because I'm too afraid to ask." He starts with tears in his eyes already. "All Might, do you think she regrets having me as a son?"
"What? No! Where did you get that idea in the first place?"
"When she looks at me I can't help but think she sees him. All I am is a reminder of what he did to her, of a time she can't even remember because of some memory altering quirk. I can't even imagine how it must feel to have one's memories erased like hers were."
"I agree, Izuku, that what he did was undoubtedly inconceivable. What he did was evil, but it's not like you did anything wrong. People cannot control their circumstances of birth. Even so, there is no way she feels that way. She loves you."
"I know she did, All Might, but after everything she learned last weekend I can't help but…" He trailed off momentarily, gathering a steady breath before continuing. "This might sound like a stupid question to ask, but don't you think she has a good reason to hate me? Maybe she wouldn't show it outwardly. It's just… she looks like she's barely holding it together underneath her façade of smiles. There are so many questions she'll never have answered. What if she stops loving me because of how I was born? Her entire life spent raising me only to find out I was intended to become a villain's successor, a pawn in his game. The kind of role she had been meant to fill is sick. It's not fair, All Might. I know life isn't fair, but my mom never deserved this."
"Are you saying she didn't deserve you either?"
The younger froze. "What?"
"Oh, Izuku," the amount of concern Izuku felt coming from the other line was enough to push him over the edge. In seconds he was crawling into bed if only to save himself the energy of holding himself up. The tears on his face got all over his blanket, yet he couldn't bring himself to care when he was already feeling so embarrassed for having to subject All Might to his sniffling.
A moment later, after a few soft words telling him to take deep breaths, the retired number one hero's voice became serious.
"My boy, your mother loves you unconditionally. Neither of you are at fault for what happened to result in this situation. For some reason you both keep blaming yourselves for the mess All for One created. What I'm about to tell you is the same thing I've been telling your mother: please stop thinking you're at fault when you have nothing to be sorry for."
"B-but I'm just a reminder of—"
"No. I've already had to have this talk with Inko multiple times, and I will not tolerate having to have this discussion with you more than once. Izuku, I believe you should talk with your mother. She's been thinking along a similar line you have been; to know you think this way as well tells me you two haven't been communicating with one another like you should be in this sort of situation."
Izuku's brow furrowed when his brain latched onto something his mentor said.
"Wait, what did you say? Similar line… is she blaming herself for this too?"
"You Midoriya's are two of the most kind, selfless, yet somehow also stubborn and self-deprecating individuals I've ever had the pleasure of knowing," All Might gave as his answer.
"I…" Izuku wanted to say something, but he realized the person he really needed to talk to wasn't on the other line of his phone. She was sitting alone in the other room, putting on a pleasant brave face while she buried feelings of self-blame and hurt under a smile.
With a jolt he realized he was more similar to his mother than he thought.
"I'll call Inko later tonight," All Might said after a few seconds of silence. "I hope when we talk she'll be back to the fiery woman that gave me a talking to the other day. It pains me to know how troubled both of you are, but I know once you two are honest with each other things will work themselves out."
Izuku nodded in affirmation before realizing there was no way All Might could see him. He wiped the wetness on his face away with a hand before speaking determinedly into the speaker.
"I'm going to talk to her right away! Thanks for the advice, dad."
He didn't need to see All Might to know when a large grin enveloped the older man's face.
"Anytime, my boy. Anytime."
Uraraka and Iida were surprised when two red-eyed yet laughing Midoriya's greeted them upon their arrival. It was only after they were reassured about the two just having finished a therapeutic bonding session that they dropped their mutual feelings of worry. Instead they followed their friend to his room, leaving the elder Midoriya to go back to her book with a genuine smile on her face.
"Whoa," Uraraka breathed as she stepped into his room and took in all of his All Might merchandise. "You, uh, really admire All Might don't you, Deku-kun?"
"How long did it take you to amass all of this?" Iida asked in amusement.
Izuku ran a hand through his curly mop of hair sheepishly.
"If I'm being honest, I've been collecting stuff since as long as I can remember. I was three or four, I think, when I became enamored with heroes, quirks, and stuff like that. All Might was my favorite since the day he debuted. I don't buy as much nowadays though, especially since he's our teacher."
"I see you have his autograph." Uraraka said with a laugh as she pointed to a framed piece of notebook paper with All Might's signature on it.
"Um, yeah, that was before I even applied to U.A. I hung that up during my last year of middle school. I look at it when I need inspiration. It reminds me to keep going, and to not give up just because things get tough."
I'll probably be staring at it now more than ever, went unsaid.
She nodded sagely. "That makes sense. It totally fits you, Deku-kun."
"Question!" Iida said with a raised hand. "This implies you met All Might before he was our teacher. Do you mind telling us the story? If you wish to, of course. I don't want to impose or make you discuss something you're uncomfortable with."
"I don't mind at all."
Izuku sat down cross-legged against the head of his bed. He motioned for his friends to join him, and a moment later the trio was sitting in a small, comfortable circle.
"I'm not sure where I should start," he admitted, "because in context the first meeting was pretty brief. I was walking home when a sludge villain attacked me after he came out of the sewers. He almost suffocated me to death, since I couldn't get a grip on his fluid body. He would have succeeded if not for All Might saving me by blowing him away with a smash. He signed my thirteenth hero notebook that had fallen out of my backpack as I was waking up."
"Sludge villain," Iida mused. "Didn't Bakugo get attacked by one as well? He was on the news a couple years ago when he was taken hostage by a villain of a similar description."
The green-haired teenager winced. "It was the same villain. When All Might rescued me he had shoved the villain's liquid-like body into soda bottles. I really wanted to ask him a question, but he was about to leave without listening to me, so as he was preparing to jump off I got desperate and sort of… grabbed onto him?"
"You what?" Both his friends exclaimed.
"That's a tad disrespectful, don't you think? Not to mention reckless." Iida chastised while Uraraka added a "and dangerous" onto the end of his comment.
"I know, I know. It ended up fine in the end though. Anyway, he landed on a building's roof in order to drop me off somewhere safely; however, neither of us noticed he'd dropped the bottles the villain was being contained in until after we'd had a quick conversation. That villain happened to cross paths with Kacchan because I distracted All Might," he cut off whatever Iida was about to say with a single hand in the air, "but what I needed to ask him was really important despite the guilt I still feel about the incident now."
"What did you need to ask him that was so important?" Uraraka leaned forward curiously.
"You both remember how Kacchan called me quirkless, right? How the nickname he gave me was supposed to be a way of reminding me how useless I was? Until the day before the U.A. entrance exam my quirk had never shown signs of showing up. I'd nearly given up all hope on having a quirk, since the doctor told me about my toe joint when I was four and the rest of the class had gotten their quirks already. I got lucky with a last minute mutation, huh?"
Izuku's face turned solemn.
"Well, all my life I had been put down for being quirkless yet still wanting to be a hero. I had no friends because Kacchan bullied me so badly nobody wanted to be associated with me. My mom always just apologized like my fate was the worst in the world, but all I was waiting for was for one person to tell me that I could be a hero. I asked All Might on the rooftop that day if some quirkless kid like me could be a hero like him. I had to know, once and for all, if there was any hope of me becoming a hero. Do you know what he told me?"
"He told you yes," Iida replied with confidence. Uraraka nodded in agreement. When the two watched Izuku slowly shake his head, they became appalled.
"He said no?" Uraraka breathed, a hand flying to her cheek in devastation. "But why?"
"I was a scrawny, quirkless middle-schooler at the time. He simply told me to think more realistically, like looking into working in the police force since I wouldn't be able to protect myself from villains without a quirk. It was a like he'd used a smash on my heart," he said with a small, humorless laugh. "I nearly gave up on wanting to be a hero."
Taking a moment to collect himself, he left them in suspense.
"However, after he left me on the rooftop I noticed smoke coming from where the sludge villain was attacking Kacchan. I intended to head home after that, since I assumed the heroes would deal with it, but my habit of watching fights sort of brought me to where the action was? Once I saw Kacchan's face as he struggled to get away from the villain my body moved before I could think. Regardless of how he's treated me throughout the years I still thought of him as a friend. He was always amazing to me; he still is."
"Anyway, I threw my backpack at the villain and bought Kacchan some time to breathe just before All Might showed up again to save the day. Some stuff happened with the press, Kacchan yelled at me for helping him when he apparently hadn't needed it, but in the end All Might sought me out to tell me that he'd been wrong before. He apparently saw me, a quirkless boy who was obviously terrified, run into a dangerous situation all because I wanted to protect my friend. While others called me stupid, reckless, suicidal, All Might told me that what had happened was my body moving before I could think. He said that was how a lot of heroes started out. 'My body moved before I could think' is quite a common origin story cliché. But what he said after, what really had me crying, was that he told me I could be a hero. The only thing I'd ever wanted someone to tell me."
"Oh, Deku-kun."
"Midoriya."
The boy in question smiled a bright smile after hearing the concern in his friends' voices.
"I'm alright now, guys. That's my origin story after all. That was the day, the moment that brought me where I am today. I'm glad everything happened the way it did, otherwise we might not be here today. And I would be really sad if I had missed out on being friends with you guys."
His two friends were overcome by emotion, Iida reaching out to hug Izuku faster than Uraraka, which only made Izuku and Uraraka burst into laughter.
Extra: texts Izuku read the night after he woke up in the hospital [mentioned in chapter 7].
Kacchan: Hey, nerd. You better not be dying anymore or moping around. When school starts back up you need to be ready for me to mop the floor with your ass in foundational hero studies. Also, have Auntie Inko call my mom ASAP. The hag is worried sick and it's freaking annoying as hell to hear her complaining about the bastard that did all this.
Iida-kun: Please respond to me at your earliest convenience, Midoriya. Until then I will be worried sick about your well-being.
Uraraka-kun: Deku-kun! Text me back as soon as you can so I know you're okay!
Kirishima-kun: Dude, Aizawa-sensei just gave the class a quick update on what's going on with you. I hope you feel better ASAP and don't let that evil bastard get inside your head! Also, the media sucks. Don't listen to them either. Shoot me a text once you're up and feeling less sucky, okay, buddy?
Tsuyu: Aizawa-sensei said you got really injured, and Bakugo was being even more short-tempered than usual. I just want you to know we're all hoping for your fast recovery. Be sure to let everybody know how you're doing once you wake up, please. We're all worried about you.
Kimanari-kun: My dude, please please please text me when you wake up! I gotta know if you're alright. Actually, just text the entire class. We're all sort of freaking out.
Mineta-kun: I hope you get to feeling better Midoriya! Whatever that scary faceless guy said was probably to just screw with you, but you're too cool to let that bother you. If you need help getting the stupid reporters that're falling for that villain's trick to leave you alone just let me know. I'll stick 'em in place with my sticky balls!
Tokoyami-kun: I hope for your speedy recovery, my friend. Do not let these dark times ahead weigh down on your soul. The drive of the ignorant can be strong, but it is not long-lasting. You have the heart of a hero that will triumph over any obstacle.
Todoroki-kun: Midoriya-kun, text me as soon as possible, please.
Shinsou-kun: Midoriya, I heard about what happened from my classmates and the news. I just wanted to let you know that even if the rumors are true, that just like a quirk your lineage doesn't make you a villain. Your actions, your passion, and your heart are what make you who you are. We both know that this means you're nothing like what the media is painting you to be. You're a hero. Don't forget that.
Yaoyorozu: As soon as you get the chance can you please let everybody how you're doing? Aizawa-sensei gave us a brief amount of information meant to reassure us that you'd be fine, but we're all still worried. I'll be hoping for your quick recovery.
Ojiro-kun: Hang in there, Midoriya. We're all here for you whenever you need us.
Koda: Please let everyone know when you're awake, Midoriya. We're all so worried about you.
Sato: Little dude, let everybody know when you've woken up, alright? We're worried about you.
Hagakure: Get to feeling better, Midoriya! Also, don't watch the news for a little while. They're being pretty uncool right now believing the villain's stupid lies.
Jiro: Text us when you're awake, please! We're worried about you!
Mina-kun: Miiiidddooorriiii! I'm going to keep crying until you text me that you're okay!
Shoji: Let us know once you've woken up, please. Everyone in class is concerned about your health.
Aoyoma: No matter what anybody says, remember you shine brighter than any star!
Sero-kun: Seriously, dude, can you go one fight without almost dying? Take your time recovering and all that but please let us know what's going on with you, okay? I can't trust the media right now.
Hatsume-kun: Midoriya, you know as well as I do how selfish the media is when it comes to getting a story. I'm ignoring everything I see on the news until I can hear it from you personally. As it is, some of your friends told me you were hurt. Please feel better soon!
