Green Tea in the Woods
DISCLAIMER: Kōhei Horikoshi is the creator and owner of the world/characters of Boku no Hero Academia.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Inspired by TheLegendaryGoblin's story "Who Said The Only Green Thing About Him Was His Hair?" (on AO3). Since by now people know me as a writer for the BNHA universe, I have to IzuOcha shit up. Sheesh, at this rate, I'm gonna end up writing more shipping fics of these two than I did with Harry and Hermione in the HP universe.
It was night time and a twelve year old boy with dirty messy hair was digging through dumpsters by a closed restaurant. He was minding his own business, so he didn't hear her until she got close enough timidly.
"E-Excuse me?"
The boy climbed out the dumpster and sees a girl likely his age in old clothing, wearing a scarf around her neck to ward off the cold, and carried an old back pack.
"Hello."
"Uh, a-are you done?"
"You're homeless like me?" he asked quietly.
She nods.
"I ran away from home. I couldn't take the hate and abuse any longer," she said. "I've been gone for a week now…"
He smiled sadly. "I did the same thing. I've been hated and abused growing up. No friends. No one would believe in my dream of being a hero, the kids, the adults, even this one Pro Hero who I once idolized growing up told me I couldn't achieve that dream. Even my mom… she never once believed in my dream…"
"You're quirkless?" she breathed out, stunned.
He nodded shyly, looking at her fearfully. She didn't like that look of fear he had. Her eyes welled up with tears.
"Y-You're just l-like me…" She sniffled. "I'm quirkless, too."
On this cold April night, two kids hugged each other, crying softly because they each had found someone who understood the other's pain and hardships growing up.
In the countryside, far from Musutafu, but still within Shizuoka Prefecture, there was a wood cabin in a dense forest. It was a small cabin, with a water well nearby, and a custom-made outhouse. There was also a custom-made bathing spot made out of metal sheeting and ash-mixed cement tiling. Behind the cabin was a vegetable garden.
Inside the cabin would remind Americans of a frontier-style of living. It has a fire place, a small kitchenette space with wooden counter top cabinets, and a fire wood iron stove. There are shelves with canned foods. There's a living room space where an old sofa sits with a beat-up coffee table, and a corner with a small dining table and four chairs. There's a small shelf on the wall above a large chest that has stored books, most of them guide books of surviving the wild, identifying herbs and other edibles from the non-edibles, and other helpful books filled with valuable useful knowledge with two short chunks of log used as book weights (prevents them from falling off to one side). Then in the final corner was a full-size mattress that sits on a custom-made box counter top. It is covered with several blankets from over the past six years, with two heavy winter blankets. The cabin has only four windows and a front door by the living space section.
The cabin is furbished with recycled items found at thrift stores. It is even powered by a gas-power electric generator that was salvaged from a junk yard-littered beach which STILL worked; it sits on the outside of the cabin. And it had other things such as a home-made dehydrator so that the meats that were hunted from the wild game such as squirrels and rabbits were kept for long periods of time. The inhabitants of the cabin were only teenagers, both seventeen years old, and have been studying to pass high school without going to one.
With their collected street smarts over the six years, they would venture back to towns and cities once and awhile for keeping track of the months and days, research online for helpful stuff to help them survive on their own (examples include ancient Japanese pickling and food preservation techniques without most modern machine help), collecting and recycling plastics and some metals for Yen, or other means such as collecting goods from the Midnight Society, a group that was dedicated to helping the homeless (and not a fan club for the 18+ Heroine like most assume).
The young man has shoulder-length fluffy green hair, green eyes, and freckles dusting his cheeks. The young woman has longer brown hair reaching to her middle of her back, framed bangs along the sides, brown eyes, and her cheeks are perpetually highlighted with pink blush stickers. But sleeping in-between them was a three year old boy with short fluffy brown hair, freckles dusting the bridge of his nose, and he has beautiful eyes that are brown with flecks of green. The little three year old boy was awake at this moment, and he was gently poking his dad's face.
"Papa?"
The boy kept poking his dad.
"Papa?"
The teen finally moans, opening his eyes.
"Sachihiro…?"
"Wake up, papa," said the little boy.
A soft smile filters on his lips, as he sits up and pulls his three year old son into his arms, hugging him.
"Morning, Sachihiro-kun."
"Morning, papa. When's mama waking up?"
"I'm up, sweetie," said the girl, sitting up and now taking her son into her arms to hug him.
"Morning, mama."
"Morning, Ochako."
The young woman smiles warmly. "Good morning, Izuku, Sachi-kun."
Sachihiro was the bundle of joy he and his partner brought into the world close to four years ago. They were too young to have a child, but by the time Ochako ended up pregnant after experiencing sex together, he did everything he could to help her prepare. And it was very rough when nine months later she gone into labor. Luckily, the day she went into labor, they were temporarily taking shelter at a shelter for the homeless run by the Midnight Society.
July 15 was Sachihiro Midoriya's day of birth. Ochako almost died as a result of giving birth, but her strong will to continue living for her child helped in her mentally and physically recovering. But because of Sachihiro's birth, they had to flee again; afraid the police would come once they were learned to be missing runaways and drag them back to their old lives full of pain and misery. That's when a day later they found the cabin far from the city and they've ended up living there ever since, pretty much isolating most of the time from civilization, with a baby and newfound responsibility of caring for a life.
They fought hard to keep their child alive, to nurture their child until he was old enough to walk and then talk. Not once had they ever thought of abandoning Sachihiro; it would make them unable to face an already hateful society if they "got rid" of the baby. During those very rough months to a year, Izuku had struggled hard to support both their child and the mother of the baby, once falling ill. They made it work. They struggled, but today everything was good. The suffering was worth it, quirklessness and all.
Both of them had suffered through similar but different pains before Sachihiro came into existence. One was bullied by his peers and even his former childhood friend. Also treated like fragile glass by his own mother, and has never known his father's face the day he was diagnosed quirkless. Even his dreams to be a hero was mocked, and when one day at age twelve his dreams were finally crushed by All Might, he fled. Didn't matter that he showed his heroic soul by saving the abusive ex-childhood friend from a sludge villain; he was considered by society a parasite that shouldn't exist.
The other was from a poor family who suffered from loneliness because kids would not want to associate with someone who came from a poor family. And when her family's construction company slowly went belly up, her home life started to get abusive to the point she fled when she was twelve years old. They survived together for six whole years after one night meeting while dumpster diving for food scraps.
Today was just like any other. The couple get up to face the day together with their child.
Once clean clothing was put on after taking care of morning business, hands are washed and the young teen parents prepare today's breakfast. It wasn't much, but it was enough for them. Some dried meats paired with some thickened rice stew mixed with some veggies from the garden. And some purified water from the home-made rain catcher that filters through charcoal and other things (Izuku made this nifty item about three years ago); the water is stored in a large plastic container.
"I had a dream, honey."
"Oh? What was it?"
Izuku sighs softly, stirring the rice stew with the wooden spoon.
"It's the night we met diving through dumpsters for food," he told her.
Ochako frowned.
"I see."
"Yeah…"
"I remember that night. It was cold for that week in April. We bumped into each other digging at the same garbage dumpster, hoping to find some edible non-moldy food to eat. And we just connected so quickly… because we were both quirkless…"
"Quirkless people tend to stick together," whispers Izuku. "When you represent a hated minority in the world…"
She was sad.
"I had a dream myself."
"What was it about?" he asked his wife.
"You and I… we were living in a nice building. We weren't homeless. We were in school. We both were students at a hero school learning to be one."
"Did we have quirks?" asks Izuku.
She nods. "Yeah. I could manipulate gravity like my former parents, and you had some sort of stockpiling-type quirk that just made you stronger and faster and more durable to powerful quirk attacks."
He smiles sadly.
"Sounds like a wonderful dream…"
"Yeah. But… it's just a dream, honey. Besides, I have everything I could ever want right now. I have a wonderful husband in my life, and the cutest son God blessed us with."
Sachihiro was in the living room section playing with old action figures that Izuku and Ochako purchased from a thrift store two months ago. His imagination keeping him entertained. The chest sitting by the sofa was open which contained the toys, as well as children's reading books, including Sachihiro's school books Izuku managed to sneakily pilfer from the library's recycle dumpster during some late nights since his birth.
"After breakfast, I'm going out to gather more firewood, then we'll work on our studies."
Ochako nods.
"If we can pass the high school equivalency exam, we can start being treated like adults and look for jobs to get some more income aside from recycling thrown plastics and metals."
"If we're not overlooked because a quirk is required on the job application," said Izuku with some tone of bitterness.
When breakfast was done, each one has a bowl to enjoy. Soon Ochako is washing the dishes outside with the well water and the outdoor sink area while Izuku wandered off into the woods with axe in hand. Living on your own for six years, doing everything things like lifting and carrying garbage and other recyclables, gathering firewood, working on the garden, etcetera, does help one build some muscle.
Only an hour passed before Izuku returned with some gathered firewood, the handle of the axe slipped through one of the belt loops of his dirty jeans. He sets the wood in the wood pile before pulling the axe out and hanging it back inside the cabin. He then joins Ochako at the sofa, watching her teach their son the English alphabet. He smiled softly. The teen never expected that six years would go by and he'd be living a life of his own, away from everything that had caused him so much misery growing up. That he would meet a kindred soul, fall in love with her, and have a child with her even though initially it scared them greatly.
Izuku sits down next to his son, sandwiching the child between him and Ochako. He ruffled his hair gently, smiling to him.
"Sachi, after lunch, would you like to go to the playground?"
Sachihiro looks up from his reading book and smiles happily.
"Yes, papa!"
Ochako giggles.
"Planning something else, Izuku darling?" she inquires.
"No. Not today. I think today we need a change of scenery, even for one afternoon."
"As long as it's just the playground, papa. The city kinda stinks," said Sachihiro, nose scrunched a bit.
"Don't worry. We won't be going into the deeper part of the city. Just the park where the playground is," he assures his child, kissing his forehead tenderly.
A long time ago, Izuku and Ochako both desired of becoming heroes who help others with smiles. Today, they rather live their life away from the hatred and discrimination of society, raising their son on good morals and to stay away from anything that would cause him harm.
ೋღ IzuOcha ღೋ
Eighteen year old Katsuki Bakugo glanced at the calendar as he woke up on this Sunday.
Circled on the calendar was a specific date. July 15.
"This Thursday Izuku will be eighteen…"
Katsuki couldn't believe that it's been six years since Izuku vanished from home. Police tried looking for him. All Might himself spurred the search effort. He got Pro Heroes like Eraserhead and Present Mic in on the search. But six years had gone by and he wasn't found at all. And it hurt him so much.
He hated how absolutely shitty he was to Izuku growing up.
He shouldn't even be here at UA training to become a Pro Hero, not with what he did. Not with how he suicide baited Izuku that fateful day. They should have banned him from ever being a hero, and yet his teacher Aizawa saw potential in him.
"If you can feel remorse for your actions and want to do everything possible to absolve your guilt, to do the right thing again and find and bring your friend home, then you can be a hero."
A year of somewhat intensive therapy had helped him very much, to manage his anger, to change himself from being a bully to being someone who CAN save others with kindness instead of verbal and physical violence. It took him another year to forgive All Might for what he had said to Izuku, crushing his dreams of being a hero.
By the time he finally got into UA's Hero Course, Izuku was still missing.
"I wish you'd come home, Izuku… I miss you so much…"
He gazes at a framed photo sitting on the nightstand by his bed. It was the only picture auntie Inko had of Izuku a month before his disappearance, where he was smiling. Smiling because he had gotten a very hard to get All Might figurine that only had a limited run of just one hundred printed and made. The same figurine that now sits next to the photo. If Izuku ever comes home one day, he'd do everything he could to make up for how he treated him.
Once Katsuki was dressed in regular black shorts and his black tank top with the skull decal on the front, he left his room. He joins his other classmates in the common area as Rikido Sato was in the kitchen preparing breakfast for everyone. It was the usual loud Sunday morning for his class. And as Katsuki looked around, he could see in his mind Izuku getting along with everybody in Class 3-A.
His heart ached.
Izuku should be here with him…
"Morning, Katsuki."
He looks up to see Tsuyu walking to him before she sits down next to him. Her hand reaches for his hand and Katsuki grips her offered hand, squeezing it gently.
"Morning, sweetie."
Katsuki leaned close and gave Tsuyu a gentle good morning kiss, not caring if anyone were to see this act.
"Are you okay, Katsuki?" she would ask him.
He frowned.
"No… I'm not okay, Tsu," he whispers to her, leaning against her. "His birthday's coming up… and he's still not here…"
Tsuyu would envelop Katsuki in a firm hug, knowing full well who her boyfriend was referring about. Everybody in Class 3-A are aware of Katsuki Bakugo's mission of finding and bringing home a childhood friend who ran away several years ago. They are aware of his past transgressions, and are supportive of the young man of finding his friend, bringing him home, and apologizing and atoning for his past mistakes.
If anyone sees this moment between Tsuyu and Katsuki, they do not ask or interrupt them.
It's a start. Wanted to get this out of the way so I can try and focus on other things.