The world faded into existence ever so often, no sense of time helping Izuku to discern how far apart events were taking place from one another. He could feel the ground beneath him almost vibrating at one moment, and the next there could be something wet wrapped around his torso. He saw lights, heard voices, but nothing seemed to really register in his mind. There was a numbing sensation all over his body which was only ever interrupted by a slight pang of pain in his side, but even that felt oddly distant.

But he was calm somehow. He could remember very little of what had happened and he wasn't even sure if he was with someone or alone, but his mind seemed to shut off to protect him for the time being and he was fine with that.

He just enjoyed the sunlight that sometimes passed over his eyes and the wet patches that would make contact with his skin also felt really nice. Unbeknownst to him, most of his peace had to do with both shock and pain medication, but he was tranquil all the same.

Stain, not so much.

The drive to their destination was less than five hours on a good day, but this was anything but. The highway was no problem, no one would have the time to focus on them, but in more crowded places they were forced to go down smaller streets to avoid getting stuck in traffic. God only knew what would happen if someone either recognized Stain or saw the horrible condition Izuku was in.

If it weren't for the fact that the burns had to stay covered, the boy's wounds would have been in full display for the world to see. Stain had stopped the car outside of Tokyo and had gotten everything he knew he would need to deal with all their injuries; he was not risking even a single burn getting infected.

God, I'm starting to sound like the kid , Stain thought, giving the passed out teen a glace in the rearview mirror. He hadn't moved in almost an hour, not since Stain had changed his bandages and given him water. Even in that brief look, the man could see the dark circles under Izuku's eyes. He looked like a freaking raccoon if you asked him.

Stain knew how to deal with burns, it wasn't his first time in this type of situation, but he still worried slightly for the teen behind him. Thankfully the worst burns turned out to not be as extensive as he had originally thought, if only by a little. With some luck, the kid wouldn't die on him.

He frowned, pushing that thought away. If he had learned to expect anything from the Izuku it was that the kid was too obstinate to just die unceremoniously.

He'll pull through.

Half an hour later, Izuku awoke from a dream and stirred in the backseat, mumbling incoherently for a few seconds before he gained the slightest bit of sense. He had his legs and part of his waist awkwardly wrapped in the seatbelts to prevent him from falling in case anything happened, and he weakly struggled against the binds.

He turned his face to the side, looking for something but finding nothing.

"... Stain? " The boy rasped quietly, barely above a whisper.

"What is it, kid?" Stain responded, giving the boy another glance in the mirror.

"What… why…?"

"It's alright, you're ok."

Stain feared for a second that the boy would freak out in his confusion, but Izuku just squinted at his mentor for a good minute in silence before,

"You have a driver's license?" The teen asked innocently and Stain actually snorted and smiled.

Yeah, the kid would be fine.

For the following two hours of driving, Izuku slipped in and out of consciousness repeatedly. He would wake, say something that rarely related to their situation at hand, and then pass out again. Of the few things that Stain could make out, Izuku spoke about homework, the weather, a cat, and about the music on the radio. That last one was a tad bit worrying since the radio had been off the entire trip, but Stain knew that of all hallucinations to have, that one wasn't terrible.

In truth, Izuku had practically no idea of what was going on around him and so he just ranted quietly to himself in an attempt to make himself known while he was awake. He didn't really notice at the time, but it was subconsciously important for him to make sure that Stain wouldn't forget about him being in the back seat. Stain didn't really have any way of forgetting the teen in the tiny car, but that didn't really register.

It just made him feel better to make himself known, for once.

Izuku could feel the car turning ever so often, the speed lowering considerably for the last thirty or so minutes before the car came to a total halt. He woke up a bit more when Stain lifted him out of the car gently and carried him down a small path. Izuku could see the car, the old paint peeling off, and he could see a brick house with an iron gate.

There was a wooden sign on the front gate, old and rotten but still readable and Izuku fixated on it in his drowsiness until he was close enough to make out the word.

"Akaguro?" He said quietly, like he recognized the name but didn't know from where.

"What?" Stain asked and Izuku made a small quizzical noise. The older man saw the sign as he walked past it, closing the gate behind them.

"Oh, that thing. I didn't bother changing anything after my parents died."

"What?" Izuku asked, sounding legitimately confused for a second before something clicked in his mind slowly.

"You have a house?" The teen asked once they were inside, looking around at the space but not really able to memorize much of it in his loopy condition. He could tell the place was relatively big and it seemed to be furnished if the soft surface he was laid down upon was any indication.

"I do," Stain answered simply, staying just enough to make sure that Izuku wouldn't fall off the couch before he turned back towards the front door. "I'll be back. Don't move."

Izuku nodded even if Stain couldn't see and he did such a good job at not moving that he was sound asleep when his mentor returned about an hour later from abandoning the car in some deserted street with the windows rolled down just to assure that it would get robbed of everything it was worth.

When the door shut behind Stain, Izuku's eyes fluttered open. He was unable to identify the figure that approached him.

"Mom?" He sounded like his throat had been rubbed with sandpaper.

"It's me. I'm back."

"...Dad?"

Stain just stood where he was, having no answer to that particular word but feeling an odd urge to get out of the house immediately.

He's just confused, the man told himself, taking a deep breath and half forcing himself closer to the kid to check on his burns.

"Try again."

Izuku squinted, pupils dilated and skin pale, but there was no apparent recognition for a long moment. And then, when Stain turned a certain way, Izuku smiled softly.

"Stain, you're back."

"I am." Stain answered simply, blinking at the kid's expression. He looked completely out of it.

"Stain?" The kid started, furrowing his brows lightly even if his smile didn't leave his face, "What happened?"

"...What do you remember?" The man asked cautiously.

"I… We were in Hosu. You spoke to the League and then… I think I'm making stuff up in my head." The boy said gently, sounding confused.

"Why?"

"I think I saw Kacchan?" Izuku let out a tiny laugh, which sounded like a pitiful croak, at his own words. That just couldn't be, could it?

"Blonde, loud, explosive?" Stain asked, sighing when the teen nodded hesitantly.

"Your memory is fine. He was there."

"What?!" Izuku attempted to sit up but Stain's firm hold kept him in place.

"Calm down. Tell me what you remember."

"I…" Izuku swallowed, his tiny smile replaced by a hesitant expression. His memories were muddied and mixed like he was trying to look at a picture through some dense fog. He blinked, trying to find a spot on the ceiling to focus on and settling on a little dark stain to his right.

"Ingenium's brother was there. He wanted to kill you. And then… Kacchan arrived. And then more heroes. The League attacked Hosu, right?"

Stain nodded and he continued.

"I remember fire. Lots of it. And then I… I fought Kacchan."

The last part was a tiny whisper and green eyes met red ones in a desperate search for confirmation. Stain took a moment to look at Izuku before he responded that yes, they did fight.

"Did… Stain, did I kill him?" Izuku sounded conflicted and afraid and for half a second Stain worried about the reaction before Izuku added: "I can't remember and I don't like that. I just wanna know."

Stain sighed, taking off the last of the old bandages on Izuku's body.

"I killed him." Stain said bluntly, gaging the boy's expression. There was a moment of shock, followed by denial and then shock again. In Izuku's mind, the idea of someone getting the upper hand on his old childhood friend was almost impossible. The image just couldn't form in his head but he knew his mentor wouldn't lie about something like that. But then, what was this weird memory he had?

"Did I hurt anyone? I remember something, kinda, but it's fuzzy."

"You cut off the blonde's fingers."

There was another long silence after the frank answer and Izuku had to blink a few times.

"I… what?"

"What did you call him? Kacchan? Yeah, you sliced part of his hand clean off." Stain gave his student an almost cheeky smile, "Not too shabby, kid."

"I… I cut off…" Izuku trailed off, his eyes wide and focused solely on Stain's face. His mentor still had that dumb grin on his face and almost without consent Izuku mirrored the expression. His brows were furrowed, almost like he couldn't believe what he himself had done. But the more he thought about it, the clearer the memory became. He really had done that, hadn't he? Given, Bakugo had all but impaled himself on the knife but Izuku had still aimed it directly at the blonde.

"Holy shit." The teen said, a nervous giggle escaping his lips. He might have been wrong, but he could have sworn that we could feel pride swelling inside him.

"Yeah. Endeavor had to jump in to attack you. Kid was just as hurt as you when you went down." Stain said encouragingly, making Izuku smile more calmly.

"Guess that explains the burns I don't remember," the teen said, closing his eyes calmly for a moment. Stain chuckled, but then got very serious all of a sudden.

"You're lucky you didn't die."

"I know. If it were for Kacchan, I would be scattered all over Hosu in tiny, crispy pieces." Izuku half-joked, opening his eyes to gaze at his teacher with a look that said he wasn't actually joking at all. It was painful to admit, but he couldn't deny that Kacchan hated him with every fiber of his being. Stain gave a small shrug, opening his cooler and taking out everything he would need to clean and treat Izuku's wounds.

"Well, he's gone now."

"Yeah. He is…" And then after a long moment of silence, Izuku's side tensed. Stain looked at him, guessing he'd hurt the kid, but the teen just looked at him with eyes wide as plates.

"Stain, oh God, you killed the winner of U.A's sports festival," Izuku whispered harshly, realization dawning on him. This would be absolutely everywhere on the news, the U.A. would suffer massively, the school wou-

"I also killed Endeavor, so that's a win-win."

"You WHAT?!"

Izuku slept until the next morning and now that he was much more aware of both his surroundings and himself, he wasn't as calm as he'd been before.

A lot of his skin itched and stung painfully, the way it does when you stay out in the sun for too long, and even the smallest of movements sent a rippling effect all throughout his body. It was draining to have to focus on not letting his hands scratch his skin for even half a second and most of the time he found himself wrapping his hands with his scarf just to stop himself.

He still had some blisters here and there, some having opened and some going down on their own, and those were incredibly uncomfortable as well.

The least bothersome parts of his body were that ones that worried him the most since the burning had been severe enough to get his nerves. On one side, it was nice to not feel pain in those areas, but on the other, he was really paranoid about how they would heal in the long run.

The rest of his body ached all over constantly, even with the strong pain medications Stain had gotten for him, and he didn't even want to know how he would be feeling without the drugs. His nose and wrist hurt the most, expected since they were both broken, and he just couldn't find a comfortable position to stay in.

The first few days, Izuku couldn't even stand on his own. Stain had to help him with pretty much everything and, had this taken place earlier in their trip, the teen might have felt too ashamed to even face his mentor. But they fell into a silent understanding that, if either of them ever had the real need for care, the other would give it, and that was that. There was no discussion needed, no excessive feelings of embarrassment, no nagging. Stain changed Izuku's bandages often, cleaned his wounds, gave him food, and helped the teen move around when he needed to.

The burn on Stain's back hadn't been a big deal after all and so the man needed almost no time before he was back to 100%. But Izuku's healing took weeks. He spent most of his time sitting at an uncomfortable angle that left most of his burns untouched by the surfaces around him, but it was still painful to just exist at the time.

His only distraction, though it wasn't a very relaxing one, was the news.

What had occurred in Hosu became the talk of the town, and you couldn't really find a radio station that wouldn't discuss the matter in between playing songs. Everyone and their mother had an opinion on what had happened and everyone was extremely vocal about it.

Thirty-four people died in Hosu that night, over a hundred finding themselves injured in some way. At the scene where Izuku and Stain had fought, there had been eight people found in plain sight, all heroes in some regard, and another four civilians found under all the rubble of fallen buildings and turned over cars.

The eight found first had been hero students from U.A. Iida Tenya, Todoroki Shoto, and Bakugo Katsuki, along with pro heroes Endeavor, Manual, The Fly, Native and Deadnite. Of those, three had been found dead and one had died on his way to the hospital. The kicker?

The fight had been recorded by multiple people from all types of angles and distances. They didn't have a TV, but the papers did a good job of describing the scene that, by now, had been watched by every single person in all of Japan.

Most clips began when most of the street was already on fire, the three villains (which turned out to be people from the League of Villains) were starting to destroy Hosu, attacking pedestrians and crushing the first few heroes that arrived at the scene. With all the chaos already started, most phones were already pointing in their direction when Izuku and Stain made their way onto the scene.

Paper after paper posted multiple screenshots from some of the clearer looking videos, and Izuku had been completely shocked. He couldn't have imagined just how hellish the whole thing had been. He'd seen himself almost as a stranger, his fight with Bakugo and who he now knew was Endeavor's son unmissed by the cameras. They looked unrecognizable in the pixelated pictures, but it was them alright.

He also read about how Stain had killed first Manual back in the alley, then Deadnite, and finally Bakugo and Endeavor. As it tends to happen in the sight of tragedies, people had kept recording until the last possible moment, and the image of Stain standing tall at the end of it all became viral in all types of media. It was surreal, in a way. He read about Stain leaving with Izuku on his back and how, a few minutes later, paramedics had arrived and taken the survivors with them.

Endeavor was still breathing when the ambulance arrived, but he had died en route to the hospital because most first responders with healing quirks were out on the streets helping civilians.

For the most part, all events had been written properly and the videos and photos pretty much described themselves, but there was one big thing that was wrong: Izuku was assumed dead by the general public and the authorities.

And that little mistake changed everything.

It had always been a taboo for heroes to kill either criminals and villains. That's what supposedly made them different from the bad guys: they did things without casualties. But in the eyes of the world, two heroes in training and one of the most important heroes in the country had miscalculated their actions and that had resulted not only on the escape of the Hero Killer, but in the death of two children.

People were pretty much rioting about the whole ordeal because of Kacchan and him and things started to fall down like domino pieces in front of everyone's eyes. The U.A itself was the first one to get hit, mobs of reporters outside its doors demanding an answer. All of the students involved in the incident had been in Tokyo as a part of their first-year studies, and to the public that meant that the school was responsible for what had happened to them.

The school made a statement, which Izuku and Stain listened to on the radio, in which they took full responsibility for the safety of their students. They reported that Iida and Todoroki were both alive and in hospital, and they apologized thoroughly about their inability to protect the three students involved. Izuku wasn't surprised when it was made public that the boys had all been from the same class, but that made matters much worse in the public's eyes.

Had the boys gotten together to attempt something dangerous? Had they been aided by their tutors or did they act on their own? Why had Ingenium's brother been allowed to go to Hosu so soon after his brother's attack? Where had Freefall, the hero in charge of Bakugo's safety, been the whole time? How on Earth had Stain been able to kill four people in an area that had been all but crawling with heroes at the time?

The U.A took full responsibility for the accident, but they too seemed at a loss at to what had happened. They could all imagine why Iida had been there, but only Izuku and Stain knew why Bakugo had gotten involved in the fight in the first place.

Things didn't look great for the school, or for anyone that was in the slightest connected to the Hosu attack for that matter.

Izuku's mother was on the news now more than ever, but for the first few weeks, she didn't do much. She was pointedly waiting for Izuku's body to be found amongst the wreckage, but there was no such solace for her. Her lawyer gave a brief statement in her name, in which they stated that they would not declare the teen dead until there was any physical evidence on his demise, and in the pictures that paparazzi snapped of her she just looked tired and angry.

She'd spent almost an entire year begging for all heroes to please bring her son back home safely, and now she was facing the probability that her son's murder at the hand of heroes would be online forever. She looked betrayed by pretty much everyone at this point, but she was getting an immense amount of people on her side because of what had happened, including Bakugo's own parents.

Izuku and Stain spoke about any new developments each night, right before going to sleep, and they both agreed that Hosu seemed to be the beginning of a new era for heroes. Or, in the very least, for heroism as a line of employment. People that had once been looked up to were being harshly criticized and none of them were expected to continue charging what they did for their "heroism" anymore.

Izuku had been optimistic, but Stain not so much.

"This isn't the first time that innocents die because of heroes, kid," Stain had told him one night while they each sat on one of the old couches in the living room, "They always find a way out of it. Besides, they think we were attacking Hosu with the League, so that won't help our cause."

Stain sounded bitter at the mention of the group of villains but, as the days went on, the media kept their focus on the heroes and on the U.A, and Izuku noticed that Stain looked the tiniest bit satisfied. For once, people were questioning their 'perfect little system' and that was good, in Stain's humble opinion.

Izuku was a little more focused on his wounds, though. He still kept up with everything and his mentor and he rarely had anything different to talk about, but he still found himself spacing out ever so often while he stared at the skin of his stomach. Even with the cleaning and the creams they applied to the wounds, the skin had scrunched up awkwardly in the areas. It looked shiny, dark, and stretched out, like what little tissue he'd had left had fought to cover his body once again.

The pain went down a little with each passing day and by the second week, the teen could get up by himself and walk around the ground floor of the house, though he had to wait till after the fifth week to risk wandering up the stairs.

It was odd thinking that the place belonged to his mentor and most of the time he even forgot about it, but the thought always came front and center whenever he looked around the rooms. Just like Stain had told him, he hadn't done anything to the place in over fifteen years, the furniture old and dusty but in general good condition.

The two tended to stay down in the living room, where they had the kitchen and a bathroom as well as a small library and a work-study. Izuku spent a few days looking through books and digging through drawers, but only when Stain was out of the house at first. He knew how reluctant his teacher was to speak about his past, and so he didn't want to be found sneaking around.

Stain tended to leave for a few hours every few days to keep buying the things they needed in multiple different places, not wanting to risk making a big purchase in any pharmacy and risk looking suspicious, and that gave Izuku some time to investigate the place.

The library had a bunch of books but most of them had been about law, and so the teen ignored them for the most part. He focused on the desk on one side of the room, and he spent a few days going through letters and notebooks, scanning handwritten notes, and looking at the few pictures that were in display in the room.

There was only one of Stain with his parents and it wasn't hard to see the resemblance. His mother had long brown hair and small eyes, while his father had severe red irises and black hair. They seemed nice enough, smiling in the photo with a rather young looking Stain in between them, each parent with a hand on one of Stain's shoulders.

They all looked happy, normal, and the fact that the house itself seemed to be frozen in time only worked to give Izuku a weird sense of nostalgia that he didn't feel belonged to him. He mentioned nothing of his findings, going through the office and finding mostly similar things and finally making his way upstairs after over a month of wondering just what was beyond those dirty steps.

There was a small painting room, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms, though one seemed to be a guest room, no personal objects anywhere to be found. The bedrooms had a bunch of clothes (some his size, though he didn't dare try them on), books, and other personal trinkets such as watches, pictures, and other nicks and nacks.

The painting room was the one with the best natural lighting in the whole house and the walls were filled with canvases of all sizes, all depicting different types of flowers and birds. The brushes and other art supplies, all of them still in their place and ready to serve, were covered in a thick layer of dust and some of the colors in the paintings had faded because of the sunlight.

It was in this small, pastel-colored room, that Izuku started to leaf through the albums he'd found on their eighth week there, in one of the closets in the hall.

It was like looking through a window to another dimension. He found wedding photos from Stain's parents and marveled at how genuinely happy they both looked in their formal wear, surrounded by family. He saw an unending amount of pictures of family vacations, of when Stain was a tiny child, of birthday parties and Christmases, and his mentor was smiling widely in all of them. It was so bizarre, seeing those bright red eyes filled with nothing other than joy and innocence and Izuku wondered if that's what he'd looked like a year ago. They looked like a completely normal family, untouched yet by tragedy and still blind to the unfair world around them, and Izuku found himself fascinated by everything he saw.

Stain was taking much longer than usual to come back and Izuku spent his time on the ground surrounded by albums of different sizes and colors, until sunset. It wasn't until Izuku awoke to the door open and the albums stacked away that he knew he'd been caught snooping, and he sheepishly made his way downstairs to apologize. But Stain didn't really let him, speaking first.

"Tell me something, kid," Stain started, the small black mask he used to go outside hanging off his neck, "Just humor me for a second."

Izuku nodded, sitting on the couch when he was signaled to and staying quiet. Stain gave him a long sideways glance before speaking again, his voice steady and soft.

"Imagine you never met me. Where would you be right now? What would you have done with your life?"

"I…" Izuku hesitated, not having expected such a question. One of his hands instinctively reached to touch his burnt side while he thought.

"I'd be home, I guess."

"And?"

"I'd be in high school right now. I used to get good grades, so I guess I'd be able to get into anything that didn't involve a hero program. I don't know what I would like to study later on, though."

"And then?" Stain asked, his eyes trained on Izuku's expression. There was a sad smile on the teen's face.

"I'd get a job at some regular place. Maybe some office job you know? I'd move out of my mother's place and get my own, I'd save up some money. I'd… I'd have a normal life, I suppose." The kid said gently, an odd tone in his voice. But then he laughed quietly and looked Stain dead in the eye before adding:

"And then I think I would just wish to die for a while until I actually did."

"What?" Stain asked, brows furrowed. He even turned his body to face Izuku better and the teen felt a sudden rush of heat in his cheeks that made him laugh even more.

"I've thought about this before, and I never get really far. I see myself not doing any of the things I wanted, how my lack of quirk would keep me from everything I'd ever dreamed of while everyone around me moved on to accomplish those same dreams. I'd see my old classmates on TV, I'd see their merch every time I went home from work and I… Every time I try to map out my life in that way, I get to maybe twenty-five or something and then I see nothing. I think that's how far I'd last. Maybe a little less, if Kacchan had stuck around, who knows."

There was a long silence in the room after that, both of them taking in every word and every implication of what Izuku had just said. It sounded bleak and horrible, but Izuku had always known that that scenario would be his life eventually. He'd pushed with all his might against that image, he'd kept on writing notebooks and analyzing quirks and saying he wanted to apply to U.A, but a part of him had done it to escape the inevitable. He briefly remembered the dreams he had about his school's rooftop and a familiar ache settled in his chest.

He secretly never actually expected to get to his thirties, but he'd never admitted that in front of anyone else. Hell, he had never even put those thoughts into words before this very instant in fear that uttering them would seal them as fate. But now the words had left his lips and he smiled softly at the realization that the idea couldn't hurt him anymore.

"Do you prefer this?" Stain asked motioning with a hand around himself and Izuku touched his wounded shoulder this time.

"I do. I really do." And then Izuku gave his mentor a look that reflected nothing but gratitude and admiration and some other genuine emotion that Stain was not quite yet ready to process, "Thank you for this, Stain. For everything."

His teacher gave him a long look before closing his eyes, leaning back on the couch with a soft smile on his lips.

"You really are hopeless, you know?"

Izuku chuckled at that, closing his own eyes.

"Yeah, I know."