For Nomou, the changes were gradual. For days upon days, he sat blankly, waiting for orders, hearing but not really listening to his visitors.
The green haired woman had visited the most, but occasionally a man with vibrant golden hair would come with her.
The both always looked sad. But they weren't the people he was meant to take orders from, so he couldn't talk to them.
They seemed to talk to 'Izuku' though. Nomou wasn't sure why 'Izuku' seemed almost like a order to him...
But most of the time, he was sitting still, surrounded by static and waiting.
Occassionally, there would be spaces in between the static. Those times were rare, and when they happened, Noumu would be filled with fear and relief and guilt.
Oddly enough, the breaks in the static had become more and more frequent, something that honestly terrified Noumu.
He didn't know why he was scared whenever there was a break in the static, but he wasn't sure he wanted to remember. Because he could remember Tomura's cruel smile. He could remember the gleam of metal in the darkness, and he could remember the smell of blood.
But whether he liked it or not, the time when the static peeled away was becoming more and more frequent as the days wore by.
You really were a hero to the very end, Nomou. I think if you remembered who you were, you'd be proud."
Whether he liked it or not, it had been several months since he'd been dragged to Sensei.
"I'm so sorry..."
And slowly, slowly Nomou was remembering. Slowly, slowly Nomou was recovering.
"Izuku?"
Until one day, the static just vanished, and Izuku remembered everything.
All Might walked down the halls, idly noting that the staff seemed busier than usual.
He wasn't surprised, there had been a nasty villain attack earlier that day, and it had caused chaos.
No wonder the staff were so busy. There had been so many injured. It was truly horrifying to see the work of the new villains. They'd been inspired by the attack launched by the League and Stain.
And now new villains seemed to be trying to out-do each other in terms of destruction. It was horrifying to witness.
It was also the reason Inko wasn't currently with him. She'd called him ealier and explained that she couldn't visit until later in the evening due to the traffic caused by one of the villain attacks, and so she'd asked him to visit Izuku instead.
Even though the boy was unresponsive at best, neither of them liked the idea of Izuku sitting alone in the hospital room, surrounded by silence and white walls.
He'd heard Inko's stories of a young boy who'd dreamed of being a hero. Stories of a young boy who always tried to help others. Stories of a boy with a bright smile and brighter eyes.
He'd seen enough of that boy for himself, when Izuku had run to save his childhood friend, and he'd seen enough to want the boy as his successor.
And so he could understand where Inko was coming from. The woman completely refused to give up on her son, she visited him every day. She didn't want him to be alone if- when a miracle happened.
But it had been months, and as much as he hated it, All Might was beginning to doubt. It had been months, and Izuku hadn't shown any signs of reaction, any signs of recognition... any signs of life.
As he drew closer to Izuku's room, there were practically no staff, aside from one frantic nurse, racing down the corridor with a pale face. If All Might had to guess, she'd just been called to the emergency ward.
All Might stopped in front of the door with a frown. He could hear a faint noise. His eyes narrowed as he opened the door, because he could have sworn that he'd heard sobbing, but that would be-
impossible.
Izuku Midoriya was hunched into a tight ball in the too-big hospital bed and was crying openly, his entire body shaking with the force of his sobs.
His eyes were so different to the lifeless, dull orbs they had been faced with before. No, these eyes were intelligent, so full of life: so unbearably sad and so unbearably guilty.
"Young Midoriya?" All Might asked, the words catching in his throat. The boy flinched when he realised he had company, and turned to stare at the pro hero with wide, red-rimmed eyes.
"A-All Might?" The whisper was hoarse, almost disbelieving. "Why are you here?"
"Your mother asked me to be here." All Might answered absently, still not quite believing that this was happening. It felt so wrong that he was here instead of Inko.
"S-she visited d-didn't s-she?" The boy's expression, if possible grew even more distraught, vibrant green eyes flooding with tears as the boy's hands shook. "B-both of y-you did a-and I couldn't e-even tell, n-not really."
All Might blinked, his blood running cold. Had Midoriya been unable to register their presence because of what All for One did. (Because it was All for One, because All Might knew. He knew that the bastard loved breaking things. He'd break them again and again. And the quirks were another indication... Too many things pointed towards another one of All Might's failures.)
"I-I'm sorry. I-I'm s-so, so sorry!" And suddenly the boy was sobbing, his expression etched with pure anguish.
"I-I didn't h-have a c-choice. I d-didn't want to do a-any of it." Izuku shrunk in on himself, seeming small and scared and sorry. "I-I... I never wanted to be a villain."
After that final, broken whisper, All Might realised how hopelessly underprepared and underqualified he is to deal with this.
He can't just smile at the boy and say that everything will be all right. Because heroes couldn't save him when the villains got him, because the heroes couldn't undo the damage the villains did to his brain... And heroes couldn't magically make everything okay again, no matter how much they wanted to.
"None of it is your fault." All Might found himself saying, although the words sounded lame, even to him. "You didn't ask the villains to kidnap you."
"I..." Izuku blinked, then looked down at his scarred hands. "I-I could have done t-things differently. I could have p-pretended to agree w-when they asked me to j-join them. Then, at least I could have t-tried to c-control how much damage I did." The young boy trailed of miserably, closing his eyes in defeat.
"They asked you to join them?" All Might choked out in disbelief. He wasn't sure why it never occured to him that the villains- that All for One- would offer Izuku a choice, maybe because they were confident he'd accept, maybe they just wanted to play mind games and make the boy break himself, maybe...
"I said no." For a second the tears and the guilt adn the shame are gone, and Izuku looked grimly satisfied. "I knew it wouldn't end well, but I couldn't just give up and agree to hurt innocent people because I was scared."
Once again, All Might was struck with just how plain heroic the boy was. How the boy with the big heart and big dreams managed to be stronger than even some of the pro heroes he knew.
He really would have made a good successor.
"My boy... That... That was very brave." All Might managed to say. He could imagine what kind of state of mind the boy would have been in. He'd seen how crushed the boy looked when All Might had destroyed his dreams. He'd seen how scared the boy had looked when he ran forwards to save his childhood friend when not even the pro heroes could. And he saw the bitter acceptance when he was scolded for trying by the very heroes that hadn't moved to help.
To deny the chance for revenge after that...
"They even offered me a quirk." Izuku snorted, quietly, bitterly. He stared at his hands, remembering when he thought that wasn't possible. He still wished it wasn't possible, that he had never been Noumu.
Meanwhile, All Might was struck speechless. To deny the villains even after being offered a quirk, the very thing that had ruined his dreams...
All Might wished more than ever that he'd been faster on that day, because it would have saved the boy so much suffering, because there's really no one else he could see being such a perfect successor.
Then, suddenly his phone vibrated, startling them both.
Inko: I've just arrived at the hospital. I'll be there in a few moments. Sorry for being so late!
"Who was that?" Izuku asked, before what he'd just asked and flushing. All Might shrugged, not really minding. Better embarrased than crying.
"Your mother. She'll be here in a minute." All Might said carefully, watching Izuku's reaction. The boy gasped, eyes beoming large and disbelieving, before brimming with tears once the greif and guilt and pain came crashing back.
All Might was reminded of the boy's mother- a woman mourning the loss of her son, mourning the damage done to her son, mourning the fact that he'd become so broken and she couldn't fix it.
He hoped the two would be able to help each other heal. They deserved a happy ending.
Izuku remembered the last time he saw his mother. The last time it was him and not Noumu. He'd called goodbye as he'd left for school. He'd seen his mother breifly, smiling at him as she made breakfast, but he'd overslept and had to rush, so he couldn't linger to chat.
He'd run out of the door and he hadn't looked back. He wished that he'd looked back. He wished that he could have thanked her, told her he loved her.
He wished he could have come home to her.
He remembered her visits less clearly. Enough to tell what was going on, but they were hazy and he couldn't tell what he was thinking... If he was thinking at all.
He wanted to see her again. He didn't think he could see her again.
Because he remembered all the times she'd been there for him. He remembered that she had been all that he had. He remembered that she would always be his mother and she would always love him.
But he also remembered the way he'd been ready to kill Stain. He remembered the way the static had wraped around his brain. He remembered Sensei's cold, reassuring voice.
He wasn't sure he could look his mother in the eyes, with all the things he had done.
Inko was expecting the worst when she opened the door to Izuku's hospital room. She was expecting her son to still be staring forwards with glassy eyes, to still be unresponsive, to still be Noumu.
She hoped for otherwise. She wanted her son back more than she wanted anything else in the world.
So when she opened the door to see Izuku crying and Toshinori awkwardly trying to comfort him, everything stopped.
Izuku's eyes were bright with emotions. Izuku was finally aware of everything. Izuku was finally home.
"Izuku?" She asked quietly, not quite daring to believe it. After so long...
"M-mum?"
And suddenly she was hugging her son close, sobbing and promising to never let him go again. And he was clinging to her like she was a lifeline.
Because Izuku had been kidnapped, experimented on and forced to work for villains. Because Izuku wouldn't ever quite be the same. Because, all in all, Izuku was still just a child and Inko was still his mother.
Everthing was different, everything had changed, but that at least would stay the same.
