Author's Note: For those who've never heard of selkies: they're seal shapeshifters. The most common selkie legend involves a fisherman stealing a selkie's pelt, forcing her to remain permanently in human form and marry him. If she ever finds her pelt, she'll return to the sea.
Having said that, it may not surprise you that this story has a warning for dubious consent due to magical mind control, entirely off-screen.
Like all my BNHA stories, this is a Dad for One AU. Hisashi Midoriya = All for One.
Chapter One:
In her seal form, Inko crouched low and tried to avoid the sticks of the men shoving her off the ship and onto the beach. Dozens of seals packed in close around her—normal animals, not selkies like herself.
A light rain pelted down from the grey sky ahead. Inko shivered. Pressed tight by the bodies of the seals around her, she slid down the metal ship ramp and onto the wet sand.
She'd hoped for a chance to run as soon as the men were distracted. Hopefully they wouldn't notice one seal missing among so many. But she and her fellow seals had been shoved into a wooden pen with opaque walls.
This made no sense. Ever since Inko had been caught in the humans' net, she'd feared they might be fisherman hunting her for her meat or her pelt. But fishermen wouldn't hunt only seals. And they wouldn't coral the animals together on the beach like this.
As the seals around her barked and ran into each other, Inko pushed her way to the wall and tested its strength. Unfortunately, the wooden logs were quite sturdy.
If one of these men touched her, she'd slide out of her pelt and transform back into her human form. Though that would be an improvement over becoming dinner or a fur coat, she would rather avoid that if possible. Selkies became…vulnerable to a human who possessed their pelt. She still clung to a hope of escaping back to the sea.
Human voices drifted through the fence. Inko pressed her ear closer to listen. Through a peephole, she spotted two men in navy green rain jackets walking from the ship. Two of her captors. She could only make out bits of the conversation over the roar of the waves and the pelting rain.
"Why would a powerful man like Hisashi Midoriya…obsessed with finding seals?"
"If they're not…white seal…kills them."
Inko recoiled. She'd only made out part of the man's words, but she didn't like the sound of "kills them." Who was Hisashi Midoriya?
She thought the first man asked "Why?" so she pressed back against the fence in hopes of overhearing the answer.
The words came out clearer as the men walked closer to her. "He says the fewer the seals in the ocean, the easier to find the one he's looking for."
The first man snorted. "There are too many seals for that to work."
Grimly, the other said, "A man like Hisashi Midoriya could empty the ocean."
This failed to steady Inko's shaking nerves.
A gunshot pierced the air. Both men cried out in shock, looking up in terror at the man walking toward them.
He had snow-white, curly hair, brilliantly red eyes, and the beauty of a fallen angel. The force of his presence seemed to make the waves rage even louder. His right hand held a gun and his left hand dragged a dead seal. Inko flinched as the man tossed the dead seal forward.
His voice suited him, dark as the deepest parts of the ocean and crackling with fury like lightning. "Does this look like a pure white seal to you? The fur is light grey! The mangy creature has spots!"
The men cowered away from his wrath. "We're sorry for calling you out here for nothing, Mr. Midoriya."
The second man quickly added, "This wasn't the only unusual seal in today's batch. One had a green pelt."
Inko stared down at her green flippers. Selkies often had strange coloring compared to regular seals. She had a bad feeling. She'd heard the stories of men who stole selkies' pelts to force them into marriage. What if he nabbed her as a replacement for whoever he was looking for?
The man who could only be Hisashi Midoriya frowned. A cruel look hardened his eyes. "If I find out your perception of green is as faulty as your perception of white, then you'll regret it."
She had to get out of her, right now. She waddled to the weakest-looking part of the fence and threw herself at it. Not a single board budged.
Her head jerked up at the sound of wood grinding. A gate opened on the other side of the pen.
Her opportunity to escape, yet she was so far away! She tried to fight her way through the press of panicked, unhappy seals.
Then Hisashi Midoriya stepped inside, closing the gate behind him. Suddenly, Inko was quite happy to remain as far away from him as possible.
Hisashi stepped through the crowd of wet, furry bodies, touching each seal on the head as he passed. As she'd suspected, he must be looking for a selkie. A selkie's pelt would fall into the hands of the human who touched it.
Despite her efforts to hide behind a larger, black seal, his crimson eyes fell on her.
Inko tried to run. Hisashi pulled out his gun and pointed. She froze.
"Smart." Hisashi's eyes narrowed. "You're not a normal seal, are you?" Moving with predatory speed, he leapt forward and touched the top of her furry head.
Inko's green pelt slid off. Her limbs twisted and melded, becoming hairless and human. Long green hair fell over her face. She crouched on the wet sand on all fours, naked and shivering.
In her human form, the rain felt even colder. The triumphant smile of the man standing over her chilled her to the bone.
Hisashi took off his coat and threw it over her. It was more courtesy than Inko had expected. She wrapped the black, padded raincoat tightly around herself.
The terrifying man held her pelt. She could feel his icy cold fingers touching the fur, since even separated, her pelt remained part of her. It was a creepy sensation. The man stood tall and unaffected by the storm pouring down around him.
If she could just reach her pelt…but she feared the gun.
Digging his fingers into her fur, Hisashi said, "Tell the truth. Have you seen a pure white seal?"
Selkies could be controlled by a human who held their pelts, and from the emphasis on his command, he knew it. Inko's words were compelled involuntarily from her throat. "No, never in my life." Even among selkies, such coloring would be rare.
Hisashi frowned. "Do you know a selkie man with straight white hair? He's a few years younger than me. His eyes and face look like mine."
So this man wasn't looking for just any selkie—he was looking for a particular selkie. If he wanted to find a man who resembled himself, that sounded like a relative, not a runaway spouse. But from his smell, he was human, not one of her kind.
Inko's deceased parents had told her stories of the children of humans and selkies. They were always born either baby selkies with little pelts on their backs or completely human infants—a fifty-fifty chance of either one. If this man was the son of a selkie, that would explain both how he could have a selkie brother despite being human himself and how he knew so much about her people even though selkies had long ago faded into human myth.
Truthfully, Inko said, "I've never met anyone matching your description."
"I compel you to tell me any information you have about the location of your fellow selkies," Hisashi said.
Once again, Inko's words were forced from her throat. "My entire herd is dead. A storm tossed me to this area only recently. I know of no other selkies. Please."
"You lost your entire family?" This time, the question wasn't a command. It almost held a note of softness.
Inko nodded, desperate to snag any sympathy from this man who killed seals. "It's gotten harder for us to survive in the modern world. The oceans have been polluted and the fish have been overhunted." At one point, selkies had formed a symbiotic relationship with fishermen, but too many corrupt humans took advantage of the power they could wield by holding a selkie's pelt. Eventually, her kind had decided to fade into secrecy. "Was one of your parents a selkie? Did something happen to them?"
"My mother." Hisashi's gaze burned into her. "She's dead. You resemble her, somewhat."
Inko started to feel hope. "If you'll give me back my pelt and release me, I swear I'll leave this place and never come back."
Hisashi spoke as if he hadn't heard her. "I suppose I can rescue you. It might be nice to have someone to come home to. A family again."
Inko's hopes came crashing back down to earth. What exactly did that mean? Trying to sound calm, she said, "I don't need rescuing. I'll be fine once I return to the ocean."
"Of course you think that." Hisashi sighed. "All you selkies are the same. Addicted to the sea. Heedless of danger. You'll run off to get eaten by a shark without a single care for those who love you. Unless someone makes you stay."
Hisashi caressed Inko's pelt, and she felt the ghost of his fingers crawling down her spine.
"Come with me," he said, and she stood up, unable to resist.
Without taking his eyes off her, he called out to his men, "Kill all the seals."
Izuku Midoriya could barely contain his excitement about his first day at elementary school. He'd carefully laid out his clothes for Monday morning: jeans, a Superman T-shirt, and his favorite red sneakers. His father had gifted him the bright red backpack that sat by the door.
A brand-new school full of potential friends. For a five-year-old, nothing could be more exciting. Izuku tossed and turned under his Spiderman bedcovers, unable to fall asleep.
He heard voices coming from downstairs. His mother sounded loud and angry.
Strange. Izuku's parents never fought. Hisashi doted on his wife, finding an excuse to buy her expensive jewelry on a weekly basis and taking her on frequent romantic getaways. Inko was the envy of every housewife in the neighborhood, living in her beautiful mansion with her stunningly handsome and adoring husband. The two of them acted so lovey-dovey it often embarrassed their son.
Izuku had never been able to resist his curiosity. He padded down the stairs.
His parents weren't in the main living room. The mansion had several sitting rooms, with the least frequently used one in the basement. Izuku slipped down the second flight of stairs.
Inko was shouting so loudly he heard her from long off. "You're destroying the ecosystem of the ocean!"
Izuku peered through the cracked door. Inko paced the carpet, her face red.
Looking relaxed, Hisashi sat on an armchair drinking from a cup of wine. "Surely you can't be this upset about the deaths of sharks. They're nasty creatures who prey on seals."
"You kill as many seals as sharks," Inko snarled. "I don't understand why you claim you care about protecting seals when you keep rounding them up to slaughter them. Why do you do it? It's wrong to kill animals if you don't plan to eat them."
Hisashi set down his glass. "Clearly we're going to need to agree to disagree about this. Why don't we go to bed?" He caressed a lock of his wife's hair.
"Don't try to distract me." Inko scowled. "This is important."
"Finding my brother is even more important to me, so I can't compromise on it." Hisashi rose and walked to a metal bank vault door in the back of the basement.
As he entered the combination, Inko stared at him. Her brow wrinkled. "Was that there before?" An oddly distant note had entered her voice. She looked dazed.
"Don't worry about it." Hisashi pushed open the door. Izuku glimpsed a bed and an end table.
A bed, inside a vault? Izuku had always assumed it held jewelry and other valuables. Before he had time to ponder the oddness, Hisashi picked up a metal box and closed the door behind him.
The metal box had several locks. Eventually, Hisashi opened it to reveal two seal pelts: one green, and a smaller white one with little green spots like freckles.
From the instant he laid eyes on the pelts, a rushing filled Izuku's ears. It sounded like the ocean. He'd never wanted anything as badly in his entire life as he wanted to seize that pelt and wrap it around himself. The intensity of his desire frightened him.
As his father's hands brushed against the smaller white pelt, Izuku felt a sensation like a hand on his shoulder. It made him jump.
Hisashi picked up the green pelt. "Forget about the dead animals, Inko. Don't let it worry you any longer."
Mechanically, Inko repeated, "I won't worry about it any longer."
Something odd was going on here. A distant part of Izuku's mind screamed at him to think about it. But he'd been completely consumed by his need to grab the white-and-green pelt.
His control snapped. He ran forward, his little hands outstretched.
"Izuku?" Hisashi's head snapped up. "What are you doing here?"
"Mine," Izuku whimpered. That pelt belonged to him. He knew it like he knew his own name.
"This thing is dangerous. Never go near it." Firmly, Hisashi closed the metal box and locked it.
Izuku screamed. The heartrending sound surprised himself. It had felt as if a part of his body had been ripped away. Tears filled his eyes. He wanted the pelt. He needed the pelt!
"To bed with you." Hisashi picked his five-year-old son up and carried him past the dazed Inko and up the stairs as he wept and cried.
When his dad placed him in bed, Izuku fought and screamed. As soon as he was released, he leapt up and ran out the door. After returning him to bed several times, Hisashi eventually locked his son into his bedroom.
Izuku pounded at the door, screaming and crying. The roaring sound of the ocean had completely consumed his mind.
The next morning, Izuku woke up leaning against his bedroom door. His eyes were swollen and heavy.
This time, the door wasn't locked. He ran down the stairs.
At the dining room table, Hisashi set down an omelet.
"Oh, you didn't have to cook," Inko said, but she sounded happy. Unlike last night, there was nothing but love and contentment in her gaze.
"That's not all. Look what I brought you." Hisashi placed a jewelry box on the table.
Inko opened it to reveal a diamond necklace inlaid with pearls. "It's beautiful! What's the occasion?"
"I never need an occasion to spoil my darkling wife." Hisashi kissed her on the forehead.
Izuku burst through the door, screaming, "Where is it? Where's the pelt?"
Innocence in his gaze, Hisashi looked up. "What's wrong? You sound like you had a nightmare."
Izuku stopped. He hesitated. The strange scene from last night did feel like a dream. But he couldn't quite forget the longing under his chest. "It's mine. You can't keep it from me."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Izuku," his father said.
Inko looked amused. "Someone's a little too excited for his first day at school."
Izuku no longer cared about school. He ran to the door leading to the basement stairs, but it was locked.
His mother came and put an arm around his shoulder. "Come on, time to get ready for school. You look tired! You must not have been able to sleep from excitement."
Izuku was indeed too tired to resist. "It's not fair," he mumbled. "I'll be back for it later. It's mine."
But the basement door was never left unlocked again.
Author's Note: To be clear, Hisashi didn't initially take Inko's pelt because he was romantically interested in her. It was just a whim—he was extremely angry at the false alarm concerning his brother and decided that he was going to take at least one selkie home today. Over time, they fell in love and got married. Hisashi would claim it was all completely consensual because he never ordered Inko to love him, but there was still all kinds of sketchiness going on because he made her forget about being a selkie and she was completely financially dependent on him, hence the dub-con warning.
This story has a regular update schedule, twice a week on Thursday evening and Sunday. Thanks for joining me on this underwater journey.