When asked how she was doing-how she was, how she felt, how she was 'holding up' or any other cautious variation of the same, sickening theme-Inko couldn't ever muster a response. She would just shake herself out of her wet-eyed stupor long enough to offer a shaky grimace that she hoped at least bore a resemblance to a smile and thank them for their concern. But in the privacy of her own thoughts and locked bedroom, she admitted the truth.

She felt like she was drowning. Wallowing in pain and grief and the horrible numbing shock of it all, because her sweet, warm, bright little boy, her Izuku… was gone.

That day had started out like any other: wake up, roll out of bed, and head to the kitchen. Smile to herself as she passes her son's room and hears his All Might alarm clock loudly declaring, "I am here to wake you up! It's time to get ready for the day!" (he'd begged so hard to get it for his birthday, and what mother could possibly refuse such wide, pleading green eyes, especially when he was so kind and gentle and generous to everyone around him?), and prepare breakfast and a bento box for him to take with him to school. At some point in that process, he joined her, rubbing a hand down his face before fumbling with the buttons of his uniform. He smiled at her, his eyes as bright and clear and positive as ever, as he bid her a still-slightly-sleepy good morning, in spite of everything she knew he'd had to endure, even though he tried to keep it from her.

At least, she'd thought that she had known. She soon learned just how little she actually knew.

She'd first began to worry that something was wrong that evening, when Izuku never showed up for dinner. She tried calling him, texting him, and even emailing him in her desperation to know that he was alright, but to no avail. Then she tried calling the school, the neighbors, and even Mitsuki on the wild chance that he had gone over to play video games with Katsuki.

No one had seen him.

Izuku never came home that night, and she never went to sleep. Instead, Inko had paced the length of their small apartment, tears pouring down her cheeks as she babbled hysterically to Hisashi over the phone for hours on end, her breath hitching between each muffled sob, oblivious to his scattered attempts to soothe her. She only hung up once morning arrived and it had officially been twenty-four hours since her child had disappeared-the required time frame before she could file a missing person's report. She called the local police station right away, doing her best to hold herself together long enough to answer all of their questions and arrange a time to meet with an officer to provide them with more information.

After that, all she could do was wait.

Less than thirty-six hours later, she heard a knock on her door.

"Ah-! Midoriya Inko?" the man in police uniform asked on her doorstep.

"Y-Yes," she gulped, swallowing hard past the tear-induced swelling in her throat.

"My name is Tsukauchi Naomasa. I believe you spoke with my partner Sansa Tamakawa at the station the other day regarding your son, Midoriya Izuku?"

"Y-Yes. Yes, that sounds right," Inko nodded, her grip on the door tightening and her other hand curling into a fist over her heart. "Have you… Have you learned anything?"

The man seemed to hesitate slightly, a brief flicker of something like regret or even guilt passing through his eyes. "If I may, ma'am, I think you may want to sit down before I say anything more."

"I… I see…" she mumbled, cold dread writhing in her stomach to the point that she felt horribly nauseous. Eventually, she pulled her wits together enough to invite him inside before she wandered to the living room and sat heavily in the nearest chair. Her heart was racing, and she thought that her hands might be shaking too. Detective Tsukauchi took a seat in the chair closest to her, turning his body so that he could meet her eyes.

"Midoriya-san, this is going to be difficult for you to hear, but I don't believe in dancing around the truth."

Inko didn't respond. She just clenched her fists into the fabric of her skirt, fighting to keep her breathing under control.

"We found your son's school bag on the bridge overlooking the river. We haven't found a body, but… Midoriya-san, I'm afraid that preliminary evidence of your son's disappearance points towards suicide."

Through all of the shock, the pain, and the horror of the detective's revelation, some miniscule part of Inko's brain felt grateful that he had suggested she sit down first, because the wave of dizziness that swept over her in that moment would have sent her crashing to the floor otherwise. As it was, she felt her world spin, blackness closing in around her, only coming to when she felt a pair of hands grasping hers, and a voice urgently reminding her how to breathe.

Everything after that was a blur. The suicide note that sounded nothing like the bright boy she raised. The cold investigation. Hisashi's return home. The memorial service. The reception, when person after person expressed their 'condolences'. Most of them felt… strangely empty. His teachers all seemed shifty-eyed, the kids walking behind their parents seemed confused and uncomfortable, and the parents themselves even more so. There were very few people that actually shed tears with her, very few who tried to remember the sweetness and optimism that was her son, like Bakugou Masaru and Mitsuki (Katsuki was there too, but he didn't say much, if anything. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of shock, his hands shaking, his eyes wide and staring, almost feral in their wildness). Every one of them said essentially the same thing: I can't believe Izuku would do this.

I can't believe that he would leave you alone.

There was one man that kind of stood out to her. He was tall and gaunt, with long blond hair and piercing blue eyes, and he walked with a slight slouch. She didn't recognize him, but there was genuine regret, even pain in his eyes when it was his turn to step forward, take her hand, and tell her how deeply sorry he was for what had happened. The way he said it, it almost seemed like he blamed himself for her son's death. She didn't have much time to think on it though, because he soon stepped away, allowing the next person to come to the front.

The aftermath was the worst part, though. Even though Hisashi stayed close to her from that point on, finding a local job so that she didn't have to stay all day in an empty apartment, life had to go on and he couldn't be with her all the time. During the long hours spent alone, sitting on the couch with the laundry basket of clean clothes and no energy to fold them, the memories of the whispers would come pouring in, no matter her attempts to keep her head above the floodwaters.

"Quirkless… not uncommon…"

" … incidents of bullying…"

"… didn't notice…"

"… never found a body…"

"… didn't say anything?"

"… never took action…"

"She essentially killed her own-"

Knock knock!

Inko startled out of her thoughts, staring at the front door in bewilderment. Another, slightly more timid knock sent her stumbling to her feet, her heart suddenly racing in anticipation. Could it…? Could it be him? She found herself scurrying to the door, breath hitching in her throat, tears already prickling in her eyes as she seized the knob-

-to reveal a surly blond boy standing on the doorstep, still in his school uniform, his head bowed and his hands curled into stiff fists at his sides.

"K-Katsuki?" Inko blinked in surprise, fighting to ignore the stab of disappointment in her gut (What had she expected? Izuku was gone and she had to accept that). "What are you doing here, dear?" Slowly, hesitantly, the boy raised his head to meet her gaze, and the short, green-haired woman went stiff with surprise.

His jaw was clenched, each breath kept forcibly even, but there were tears pouring down his cheeks, and a deeper anguish and guilt than anything she had ever seen burning in his dark red gaze. "Oba…san," he whispered, choking on the words. Inko felt something like a chill settle in her heart. Katsuki hadn't called her that since he was five years old.

All of Inko's motherly instincts came alive at once, shoving aside her own grief as she ushered him inside and sat him down on the couch, then went to the kitchen to grab him a glass of water (unfortunately she had yet to work up the willpower to go to the store and replenish their stock of orange juice) and a few cookies from a plate one of her other neighbors had brought over. Before long, she had bustled back and laid the plate and cookies on the coffee table, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

"Katsuki? Sweetie?" she asked softly, gently laying a hand on his still-rigid arm. The boy twitched, but otherwise didn't seem to react. The tears still dripped from his cheeks unheeded, the tremor throughout his body remained unchanged, and each breath was still taut and shaky. "Katsuki, talk to me please."

"M'... aul…"

"What?"

"'s my fau…"

"One more time?"

"'s my fault!" Katuski snapped, his hand flailing to throw her off, his voice sharp and bitter with guilt and pain and anger and something dark that she didn't dare name. "It's all my fault; Dek- Izuku died because of me!"

"S-Sweetie… you're not making sense," Inko managed shakily, trying to reach out to him, but he shook his head vehemently, the action shaking his entire body so that she had to pull away again.

"You don't get it; no one gets it, if I… If I hadn't… If I'd never…" The tears return in earnest now, flooding like a river as he slowly raised his gaze to hers so that she could clearly see the anguish in them. "If I'd never known him," he whispered, "and if I hadn't been so mean to him… If I hadn't baited him…"

Baited him? What does he…?

Oh. Oh Gods…

Inko could feel her vision tunneling again, just like it had when Detective Tsukauchi sat across from her and broke the news of her son's fate. She stared without seeing, her breaths short and fast and weak and her heart beating wildly.

Baited him. Katsuki had baited him. Katsuki had told him… He'd told her son to…

Drowning. She was drowning; she couldn't see, couldn't breathe-

Katsuki stood up. The movement was so sharp, so abrupt, that it startled her a little bit further away from the depths of panic threatening to swallow her whole. "I should go," he mumbled tautly, turning sharply towards the door and stumbling slightly as his leg hit against the edge of the couch in the process.

Inko wanted to let him leave. She wanted him gone so that she could think. So that she could process and stew… and hate him. She wanted to hate him, wanted someone to blame. She wanted a reason, a way to understand why. Why had her Izuku, her precious, optimistic little boy, died?

So why? Why was her first instinct to reach out and grab Katsuki's wrist and pull him back down onto the cushions beside her? He seemed confused, too, staring at her with those bright red eyes, raw and guilty and vulnerable and shadowed by that horrible emotion that she now forced herself to face: self-loathing.

Katsuki hated himself for what he'd done. For what he'd said. And in that moment she knew, deep down, why she'd pulled him back.

It was because, had Izuku been here now, his first instinct, as always, would have been to save him. From pain, from grief, from his own despair, regardless of the circumstances. Just like when Katsuki had fallen off the log bridge and into the stream, when he had immediately-in spite of the bruises and burns and insults that he thought he'd kept hidden from her-rushed down and made sure that his friend was okay.

If Izuku could do it, then so could she.

Without a word, Inko scooted herself a little closer to the young man, then reached out and loosely wrapped her arms around his neck. Katsuki immediately stiffened, confused and tense and guilty and afraid, but he didn't pull away, not even when she slowly drew him forward so that his head was resting in the small hollow of her shoulder. His breath hitched, and with it his whole body. Inko felt the muscles in his face twitching as he swallowed hard, and instinctively she reached up to gently card her fingers through his hair.

That seemed to be the last straw for Bakugou Katsuki. A muffled sob escaped his throat and after that he simply couldn't stop. He just wept. Wept and choked and apologized over and over again as his fingers curled in the spare fabric of her sweater, and she cried with him, clutching him a little bit closer to her.

It wasn't much, but Inko hoped that it might be the first step towards healing for them both.

Hi everyone, I'm back!

So this story was born out of MANY different fanfics that I've read over the last few months and the nagging thought 'What would happen if Izuku got a Quirk from All for One instead of All Might?'.

This has been one of those ideas that seized me by the throat and REFUSED to let me go no matter how hard I tried to turn my focus to another story. So, apologies to those following Outcasts; I PROMISE I haven't abandoned that story, but this one wouldn't get out of my head!

That aside, this story is going to be a wild ride! I'm SUPER excited for it, and... y'all... there are gonna be so many twists and turns in this.

I already have 9 chapters written, but because I don't want to start posting and then not be able to keep up again, I will be posting every 10 days. Wish me luck!

Thanks for supporting me this far, y'all! I hope you enjoy my crazy addition to the Villain Midoriya AU! Don't forget to Favorite and leave Comments! I always love hearing from y'all!