His nails were red and sticky with his own blood as he tried to stem the bleeding from around his neck. He dug too deep into the old wound, it was so fucking stupid! He just wanted to feel that pressure again but he had to add his quirk into the mix because he wasn't thinking. He put a hand over where the blood was starting to flow with the erratic sensation of a beat as he watched the liquid flow down his arm and drip off his elbow as he tried to stem the bleeding.
A first aid kit was in his lap while he opened the box and pulled out the bandages with the disinfectant. He struggled to undo the latch with his single free hand but he somehow did it, pulling out a length of medical tape that might have been the right amount. He wanted to bite down on the other end of the strip when he remembered how filthy the human mouth is, he had plenty of nights where Himiko practically deep cleaned his body with the stuff after she got a bit out of hand. Damn, if only she was here then he wouldn't be worried at all but-
The mirror was suddenly covered in tiny red droplets that sprayed from his now exposed wound after he moved the hand away when his mind went elsewhere. Izuku deadly reclaimed his hand on the wound as he began to feel light headed. Shit, did he open an artery!? No, he would be dead by now so he must have hit something-
"Basher, is everything alright?"
Gentle's voice came with a knock on the door. What were they doing back here, weren't they supposed to be out on some sort of mission?
"Y-Yeah, I'm f-fine."
His response was thin as the pain left him unable to focus without subduing the panic that was rising in his heart. He moved to wrap the cloth around the wound when there was a loud bang at the door that made him flinch as the wood slammed open and crashed into the wall. Standing in the doorway was La Brava and Gentle staring at him in horror. His eyes were suddenly drawn to the floor where a small line of red trailed to beyond the bottom of the door frame.
Time slowed to a crawl as the three did nothing except look, then it exploded into a mad blur as La Brava shoved past her idol who quickly followed to hold the boy down. Her gloved fingers attacked the first aid kit, grabbing this and that with a frantic calm in her eyes. Izuku couldn't move, Gentle had his arms in a lock that the man never used before with an ungodly amount of strength brought on by fear. He held in a scream as the disinfectants were applied while needles pierced his skin, closing the opening near his neck with a familiar touch of cold steel.
The bleeding had stopped almost as soon as it started and Izuku was now partially wrapped up in bandages that kept an extra layer over the stitching. However, he wished that he had the good fortune to pass out before his teammates came so he wouldn't have to watch what would happen next.
"Basher...tell us what happened, now."
Gentle said as he retained his grip on the boy. His tone was like steel with the immovable weight of his order that left no room for refusal. Izuku avoided eye contact while his body felt much heavier and uncomfortable as found himself struggling to breathe until both of the criminals told him to.
"I-I...I-"
"Izuku breathe, just breathe and think. Tell us what happened and everything will be ok."
Gentle spoke at the same time La Brava put a hand over the teen's and allowed him to squeeze when emotion overwhelmed him.
"I missed my partner so...so I just wanted to give her mark a tug, but I ended up overdoing it."
Confusion filled the expressions of the pair while the boy began to shake.
"What do you mean by giving it a tug?"
He looked up at the older man with an uneasy chuckle escaping his lips.
"Oh, see my girlfriend always had this habit of biting me whenever I was feeling bad and...I felt bad so I decided to go with the next best thing."
Gentle opened his mouth to speak when he was certain the teen wouldn't harm himself but shut it as the statement he heard left him unsure of how to respond politely, thankfully his sidekick was far more blunt.
"She used to bite you?"
La Brava asked with a sort of morbid amazement with her hand still being clutched in the former hero's fist. A warm smile came over Izuku as the memories came back of better times.
"She...She was always strange, I mean I'd be to if my quirk was centered around drinking human blood but-"
The pair flinched at what he said.
"Hold up a moment, you mean to tell me that this just to remind you of that young lady you fancied?"
Izuku disregarded the reaction from the more humane criminal and answered normally.
"Yeah, she was quite the fiend for blood, always had to get her fix before the next new moon, it was kinda cute watching her gulp down packs of the stuff so I ended up enjoying her doing that. I swear that girl-"
"Did she ever drink your blood?"
The lady of the group asked with a horror that had her grip the boy's hand in turn.
"Of course, I was her partner so it's only natural."
He stated with no hint of the taboo linked apprehension in his explanation.
"And you never found this to be...dangerous?"
La Brava asked again with Gentle slowly helping Izuku to his feet.
"Definitely, but I was happy to do it because she needed me. It overjoyed me to see her light up when I gave her my blood."
His smile grew as he was placed on a couch by the pair.
"Hell, any pain was worth it just for that, even better was when she'd drink too much and start acting goofy...she was always clingy, but I couldn't explain how much it made me happy when she'd snuggle up to me and tell me all these sweet things."
The two villains shared a look while their younger comrade continued to become absorbed into his past. It slowly became more detailed with his smile growing into the warm nostalgia one gets upon reminiscing of good things.
Gentle stole a glance at his first fan to see if she was still partially frozen upon seeing such a horrible scene, yet that was the furthest from what she did next.
"You stupid idiot, do you have any idea of close you could have come to dying if we hadn't bust the door down when we did!? This isn't funny, you almost ripped a vein in your neck for crying out loud! Are you trying to die!?"
La Brava shouted at the top of her lungs with a righteous fury that neither of her compatriots had seen from the small woman. The pale color of her face flashed a scarlet red with her outrage that left her panting to try and recover some of her breath.
Izuku for his part was taken aback by this, if not more so than Gentle. He attempted to sit up, yet the redhead prevented this with a firm hand pushing down on his chest. The boy sighed as he resigned himself to looking at the two with the movement of his eyes while making sure to not move his head out of fear of tearing the bandages.
"I'm sorry, I just-"
"We don't want you to be sorry, we want to know what the heck is wrong. Izuku, this is the second time you've done something like this in the single month you've signed up with us and so far you keep having these episodes and little ticks every so often and it's driving us nuts not knowing why."
The villainess said with far less power in her voice as her expression became a slight more sympathetic when her hand balled into fists. A cough allowed the senior of the two his peers' attention once more while he went about settling in with his coat being set on the rack by the front door.
"La Brava is right, Basher, given our time working together I believe some transparency is needed if we are to continue in our quest. I understand your need for privacy but I'm sorry to say that you've forced my hand. I refuse to let you go on as you have, so I ask you for all of our sakes to tell us what happened."
Izuku allowed himself a sigh of pain as he answered his employer.
"I was lonely...and I wanted something to remind me of her so I dug my fingers into one of her bite marks and squeezed to try to get the pressure that always came when she did that, but it wasn't enough so I used my quirk which accidentally ended up in how you found me."
No one spoke as the information sunk into the minds of the villains, Gentle was unaffected on his part as he finished his daily ritual and approached the others with a hot pot of tea that he placed upon a coffee table next to the couch where his youngest ward laid. He poured them each a cup and one for himself, remaining uncharacteristically silent as he did it. The brew had taken him far longer to drain and when that was done, the classical criminal set it down with an audible THUMP that set everyone on edge as he leaned back in the chair he put by the table.
He inhaled for a moment longer and at last, allowed himself to speak.
"You're not telling us the real reason behind this, are you? At least not how you came to be in such a state."
Gentle said in a firm, yet not unkind way as Izuku met the man's gaze until he broke away to look at something else.
"...What do you want to know?"
The chair creaked as the eldest thief laid one hand atop another over his lap while appearing more like the dangerous force only those he fought with or against knew he could be.
"Tell us what happened to make you become a villain or barring that how you came to be involved with such a vile woman."
The teen glared at the man with ire clear on his face yet he let it go after seeing Gentle not budge an inch, only staring at him with that expression which meant he had no intention of playing around. Izuku stared up at the ceiling once more and clenched his fists.
"The answers are one in the same really. Long story short, I was forced into it and since I was in a shitty situation at the start, she was always around me and well, one thing led to another so before I knew it I was blowing thousands on a ring."
He said with regret and venom flowing in between his words. Gentle remained unmoving as he spoke again.
"What do you mean by forced?"
A shrug came from Izuku as best he could given his injury, earning him a glance from the pair.
"I was taken during a school field trip and they recruited me after that."
Gentle's expression turned into one of alarm.
"You were kidnapped?"
Another shrug answered him.
"I wouldn't call it that, more like...giving me help I didn't know I needed."
La Brava turned to her idol with terror replacing her earlier stance as they met eyes for the briefest of time before she found herself speaking in place of Gentle.
"Then why wasn't any of this on the news, UA would have to-"
A short, cynical laugh left Izuku's throat at the question.
"Oh please, that place is like any other that pumps out celebrities. They don't report things like what happened because that would hurt their image. That's why I didn't even see a damn missing poster for two years."
Gentle cut in with a slight crack in his voice.
"Two years? You were held hostage for that long without any notice by the public?"
Izuku grabbed himself a throw pillow to raise his head far enough to sip at the tea by his hand and cast a nonchalant eye towards his teammates.
"I wasn't a hostage, they let me pretty much do whatever I wanted after I got settled in...although I gotta admit that it only got that way because I held one of them at gunpoint."
The villains were now wide eyed with terror as the former hero drank his brew.
"How...How did that happen?"
Asked Gentle with his expression morphing into one far less becoming of someone who fancies himself a criminal. A smile returned to Izuku's face as he laughed at the memory.
"Well, one the guys I was running with decided calling me by my hero name would be a good idea and see, I was having a very bad day which left me in no mood for games so I turned around, asked him what he called me and hit him square in the shoulder with my pipe. He screamed, but he shut real quick when I pulled out his pistol and shoved it under his chin."
More laughter came from the boy as he remembered that ancient part of his past, completely oblivious to the faces of his comrades twisting in shock at his words.
"You tried to shoot someone? That...That isn't funny!"
Gentle shouted as he rose from his chair, nearly spilling his drink in the process. The act earned him yet another laugh from the youth.
"Depends if you're the one holding the gun or not."
A shade of doubt colored the man's face as he watched the humor from his underling explode outward. Still he bit his lip, this child had gone through something awful to become so cheerful in regard to topics so dire. Allowing himself to relax into the seat, ideas formed and failed to grant him any proper question or statement to navigate the depths of emotional pain which he was dipping a toe in. To his surprise, La Brava was the one to find the question before he did.
"The people who kidnapped you, they were the League of Villains weren't they?"
The redheaded girl asked while refilling Izuku's cup. He gave her a nod of thanks and sipped for a few seconds.
"Bingo, I've been with them for all that time and now I'm here with you two because I was getting screwed."
La Brava gauged what he said, sampling her own tea as her eyes softened a bit.
"How so?"
Silence came again from the boy for what felt like forever until he drained the cup dry.
"...I was being drugged with quirk suppressors by my fiancee for the entire time I was there and I only found out after beating the shit out of the heroes sent to rescue me."
Pain was evident in his voice as he cast his gaze down to the floor, his fingers unintentionally reaching for the bandaged part of his upper body. Another hand was put atop the searching limb then another was overlapped with that one.
"Izuku, I understand how hard it is to talk about things like this but please tell us the truth, have you killed anyone?"
La Brava asked with her hands clutching the boy in as reassuring a manner as she could.
"...Yeah, first night I was there the leader of that band of assholes took me outside and had me shank some poor bastard to death with the same knife I got in my pocket."
The news took the pair aback yet they remained as they were with the air growing a bit colder.
"Was it just that one person?"
She asked with a kind voice as a thumb ran over the top of her hand while Izuku's eyes grew distant.
"...I-I….yes, I've...done horrible things."
There was a slight crack in his voice when he gripped the hand tighter.
"How many people, Izuku? We just want to know so we can help you feel better."
Again nothing came from the killer as he focused on the ceiling intent on studying the paint until his voice came out in a croak.
"...I don't know."
"You don't know?"
La Brava asked in as soft a way as she could.
"..I...I stopped counting after a while. Didn't seem worth the energy when I couldn't remember the faces, they all just started to disappear suddenly and I..I couldn't care anymore. I started killing and I couldn't stop because if I did then the others would think badly of me and it didn't seem fair to not help carry the burden. I..I wanted to help them because they were the only people I had left and I began to like it...the rush of the fight and the way my girl would look at me when I was covered in blood made me forget-"
A finger hushed him while slowly running a hand through his hair.
"It's ok, you're safe and those people can't get to you ever again. We-"
A chair shattered against the far wall as Gentle stood with more anger radiating off his form then any of them had seen in the time they had both known the criminal. His face was contorted into a deep scowl that the mascara amplified into a frightening mask with his entire body quivering in rage.
"Those degenerate, evil sons of whores! They dare to subject an innocent boy to-"
The rant ceased mid sentence as Gentle remembered himself. Inhaling deeply with his knuckles popping at his inherent tick, he faced his sidekicks who both stared at him with uncertainty as he ran a hand through his hair.
"Izuku, I don't know what to say nor am I sure of what to do, but I swear that you will never suffer the evils of animals such as those again."
He studied the reaction of the two, La Brava shrank away from his momentary outburst but nodded proudly at his statement while Izuku tensed like a spring with his eyes hardening for a split second before he shook his head.
"Honestly, they weren't that bad all things considered. I mean yeah, each one was a horrible person but anyone can get like that if their backs are against the wall for long enough. The worst they ever did was lie to me and that was it, they never forced me to do things most of the time and I got along with them. They aren't evil Gentle, just really messed up in the head."
The scowl returned to the man as words rushed out of his mouth.
"That doesn't excuse the fact that they took you from your home and your family to purposefully harm you into doing things you didn't consent to."
Izuku shot him a look that had him try to sit up, only for La Brava to repeat her former action.
"So what? I'm grateful for it because that allowed me to become stronger then any of those heroes would let me. They let me see the world for what it actually is without expecting me to do more than pull my weight instead of having to break my bones every other day just to keep some bureaucrat in a suit interested."
Each syllable carried an ounce of indignation that spat out into the room like a poison which struck the pair harder then any physical blow could have. Gentle considered how to proceed without drawing another outburst from anyone as he began to stroke his beard thoughtfully.
"And yet you remain here."
Izuku leaned back into the armrest of the couch, turning away from his guardian.
"Isn't like there's many places for a guy like me to stay. Well there is but I rather not get involved with scum and I won't go back to those assholes."
La Brava took her hand away when he shifted on the sofa, earning him another question that she knew none of them wanted to hear the answer to.
"Then why do you keep trying to bleed yourself? You have to know that isn't healthy at all."
The teen bit his lip as he retorted.
"I miss her ok? She may have had her issues and we went through some highs and lows but I still love that crazy girl. I've tried to get over her, but every time I go to sleep or I wake or I do anything my mind keeps expecting to see her just to my right like she always was. So now I'm alone without her and the only thing I can do to at least give me something to remind me of how she loved me is to just taste my own blood until I can't feel anymore."
A sudden sensation caused the men to stare down at the lady of the house, it was a raw, unfiltered thing which struck them with a feeling of hesitation as La Brava seemed to radiate some sort of red aura around herself that surged in waves of heat. Her face was beset with anger that nearly made Izuku flinch.
"That isn't love! Someone who loves another human being or not even that, anyone who loves anything would never, ever want to see it get hurt! That girl was a monster who used you and manipulated your mind into becoming so messed up! Izuku, I'm sorry that happened but I can't sit by and watch you literally tear yourself apart because of some demon who abused you!"
He sat up with his teeth bared in snarl at the woman, almost matching her emotional power."
"She didn't abuse me! Himiko loved me in her own way! Yeah I know all too well how it seems from the outside but she showed a kindness and a faith in me that no one has ever shown me before, I fought right beside her and she was there for me every step of the way, never giving up on me even I did. She was the reason I kept going, the reason I found the will to do what needed to get done and become strong enough to be a hero to those who actually need one!"
A finger was cast in direction from the short redhead.
"That's exactly what I mean! She manipulated you into becoming dependent so you wouldn't think that you could survive without her! Those people turned you against the same heroes who never gave up on finding you and now even after seeing how badly they hurt you, that woman especially, you defend them!"
Bones popped as Izuku got to his feet and nearly fell back down from speed at which he got up.
"I owe them everything and I know she loved me!"
La Brava balled her hands when the heat from her body increased.
"Then why did she lie about the drugs and never tell you about how she was doping you?"
Those few words sent a freezing torrent over his rage, locking him in his own body while he remained unspoken. Eventually, water formed around the slayer's eyes as he started to breathe heavier and heavier while the color of his face changed into a deep red hue the longer he tried to sustain his dignity. Then, he fell onto the covers with tears staining his cheeks.
The room changed again as the criminals looked down at the lost, traumatized boy they had taken in. He was inconsolable with his sobbing leaving Izuku little more than a shell. La Brava ran a hand along his back and began to sing once the fury had left her, trying her best to ease the suffering of her friend. Gentle remained where he stood, watching with an unreadable coldness that rendered his face not but stone.
He met the gaze of his first ward and in that time they knew that something had to be done. That justice had to be served.
