They were both excused from school the next day, or rather Midoriya-san informed them that they wouldn't be coming back to Aldera. Ever. And then she wishes them a good day and goes out.
Well, more like she informed him, and knocked on Midoriya-kun's door telling him the same message, with no answer.
The worst part of all this is perhaps that the weird emotional link they got when force-fused so closely… persists. And that means Hitoshi can accurately say just how pissed Midoriya-kun is at him.
The emotions he feels can be safely categorised as eternal hate mixed in with longing for what was and dreading what will be.
Hitoshi can… kinda relate? Well, he is mad, for one. He is also scared of what's gonna happen. But he certainly does not miss what once was. In his humble opinion Bakubitch will be best placed in some dangerous quirks facility, rather than a hero school.
Midoriya-kun must have felt the spike in his emotions, because he can feel muted curiosity from him, which is quickly replaced with the same anger as before.
The day passes uneventfully for Hitoshi. He eats breakfast, watches TV, texts Midoriya-san to confirm when she'll be back from wherever she went, makes dinner and manages to not burn down the kitchen, eats said dinner with Midoriya-san and leaves a plate out for Midoriya-kun, then watches some more TV, reads a book, plays on his phone and goes to sleep. All in the quiet accompaniment of Midoriya-kun's anger in the background.
Laying in bed he realises that was the first day in weeks that he hasn't fused during even once.
He feels something clawing at his chest then, a sort of… loneliness? Despair maybe? Something. Something intense and sad and like something died in him a little. So he cries and cries, and cries. And he doesn't know when he starts wailing but he does. He misses being fused. He misses talking to Midoriya-kun. He misses being together and being understood and he misses being Diana, and a million little things that being the same being brought them. Fuck, he'd gladly become Joukan too. At least then he'd be able to process whatever's clawing at his heart from the inside.
Someone's at his side, he realises belatedly, and he turns around to face them, with the tiniest amount of hope… only to see Midoriya-san.
For some reason that only makes him wail harder.
It shouldn't. Midoriya-san is a great woman with a big heart who'd help him in a heartbeat, who has helped him in a heartbeat. She called him her son. She's there for him now, when he needs someone the most.
But he doesn't need her the most at the moment. He needs Midoriya-kun.
He blindly reaches out, physically, to Midoriya-san, getting into her tight and warm embrace, and mentally, to Midoriya-kun, and what he gets is—
'You deserve it,' Midoriya-kun hisses out. 'You deserve to never feel this whole again.'
Hitoshi shakes his head, and holds onto Midoriya-san a little more, as if getting closer to her could block out what Midoriya-kun is saying.
'You deserve it after telling on Kacchan.' Hitoshi hears this, processes it, and stops wailing. Instead, anger wells up in him, hot like lava. He stifles in Midoriya-san's embrace and slowly pries himself out of it, then comes closer to the wall dividing his and Midoriya-kun's room.
"SAY THAT TO MY FACE. COWARD," he screams out, both aloud and in his mind. He hears an offended gasp, and then footsteps. Midoriya-san follows him with her eyes uneasily.
Midoriya-kun bursts into his room, and takes him by the neck of his shirt. "You wanna hear it so bad? You want to!? FINE! YOU. DESERVE. THIS. For what you said about Kacchan."
"You mean the truth!?" he hisses, and catches Midoriya-kun by his wrists. "No. I do not deserve it, but you do!" At that Midoriya-kun's eyes go wide. He stammers a half-cut 'What?' and Hitoshi continues. "Keep chasing after your dear Kacchan, I'll wait to see the results, but I will get past this, find someone to replace you, and I'll be alright. You? You never will be." He says it like a spell, like a curse. The anger welling up in him just continues spilling with nowhere to go but forward. "I am stronger than you. I am foxier than you. You can put me back in foster care and I will survive it. I have a villain quirk and I'm gonna be a hero. I have a villain fusion speciality and I will be good regardless. You? You may be lucky, because you have not known hardship besides what your Kacchan has thrown at you, and you cling to him like a goddamn leech!"
Midoriya-san covers her mouth, eyes wide, but Hitoshi has decided already. If she throws him out for this, he'll be content having spoken his mind. And what he just said is all true. He can survive a few more years in foster care. He already spent more time in this household than wherever else. Four more years and he'll be eighteen and aged out of the system. He can survive this. Especially now that he has a master licence in fusion. He'll survive.
Midoriya-kun though? Well, that's debatable.
He looks at him impassively, and decides to do something he's never done before. He forcefully makes Midoriya-kun sit down on his bed, and closes his eyes in focus, as the boy stays silent in his confusion and cold rage. And then he pushes his memories onto him.
The confusion he felt when he first learnt Midoriya-kun is quirkless, the realisation that Bakugou is a bully when they first interacted. His forced-casual actions that were shielding Midoriya-kun from Bakugou's rage. His failure at shielding when Bakugou pinned him to the wall and burned his uniform, his rage at being called an orphan whose parents didn't want him, the desire for him to stop existing. The days filled with name-calling and tripping and pushing and ignorance and laughter. The escape, how desperate Midoriya-kun sounded when he called for help, how scared Hitoshi felt when Bakugou set off explosions so close to his face and realised that they're joined in forced fusion.
He shows him all that, the images, the emotions he felt, everything.
And Midoriya-kun cries, clutching at his head and repeating: "Stop. Stop. Stop…"
Midoriya-san suddenly gets up, tears streaming down her face too. "Hitoshi-kun, stop whatever you're doing," she commands, and he nods. He isn't projecting himself anymore anyway. "Izuku… go to your room," she says with a shaky voice, yanking Midoriya-kun up a little. "We'll… We'll talk in the morning." She practically drags Midoriya-kun from the room.
He hears them talk in hushed voices for a good hour after that.
Well, that could have gone way worse in his humble opinion.
The next day brings… well… he opens the door when he hears knocking, before Midoriya-san can get to it, and comes face to face with Akiyama-san.
…awkward.
"So… I guess I should start packing…?" he says in lieu of greeting, baring his teeth in a half-smile.
"Not yet, Hitoshi." Akiyama-san looks tired, oh so tired and a little disappointed, and Hitoshi looks down on the floor and clears the way for her to enter the apartment.
He doesn't manage to close the door properly when another knock comes and he, confusedly, opens the door to Kimura-sensei. Her brows are furrowed, lips set in a tight line… he doesn't want to know what pissed her off. Now that he thinks about it he's probably the reason.
Oops?
He follows the women to the living room where Midoriya-san is preparing tea and biscuits and generally doing everything just to not look him in the eye.
He avoids her gaze too, so fair's fair.
"I, uh, can I help with something?" he asks quietly, and the three women turn towards him with varying amounts of surprise.
"No, Hitoshi-kun," Midoriya-san says with a sad smile. "I've prepared everything, I'm just nervous. Okay?"
"I'm…" sorry "Okay."
"How about I talk with Hitoshi in his room and Kimura-san talks to Izuku?" Akiyama-san proposes and the other women nod, Midoriya-san vigorously, and Kimura-sensei stiff like a rod.
Akiyama-san grabs him by the shoulder and half-drags him away from the living room. The moment they're in his room and the door closes she collapses on the chair and motions for him to sit on the bed.
"Hitoshi, I… understand where you were coming from, but… don't you want to stay in this family? Don't you want to smooth things over?" she asks, and he blinks at her. Welp, that's a conversation they've never had before. "Midoriya-san filled me in about what happened in the past few days and I get that it's a heavy situation for all of you, but…" she trails off, looking at him expectantly.
He mulls it over. Feels the confusion that Midoriya-kun is currently feeling and the waves of shame that, now that he focuses on it, permeate his very being for some reason. He thinks about his own feelings, the fear, the anger… the tiredness and sadness.
"I… I want this to end," he says, raising his head to look Akiyama-san in her eyes. "But I also don't want to apologise. I've only said the truth."
"But you said it in a harmful manner," Akiyama-san points out and he winces.
"I did call him a leech…"
Akiyama-san's eyes go comically wide and she moves the chair closer to him. "You what."
"Listen! He is acting like one!"
"Not a reason to point it out!" she says offendedly, then hisses out, "Kami, this is gonna be harder than I expected."
"What part of 'My force-fusing charge has had a quarrel with his emotionally fused to him foster brother because they both got bullied by a maniac with bombs for hands' sounded simple and easy?" he asks rhetorically. Akiyama-san opens her mouth to say something in reply. "Don't answer that actually. Point is: I can acutely say how mad he is… was? At me. Currently all I'm feeling from him is confusion and shame which is weird considering the past day was nothing but anger." He shrugs and spreads his hands. "He doesn't want to smooth things over, he doesn't want to apologise, and I am not gonna be the better person in this situation and do that first."
"Why not?" His knee-jerk reaction is to say 'Just because' but he knows Akiyama-san is trying to help him, so the least he owes her are honest answers, and so he mulls it over.
"Well… I am angry too, you know?" he says, then purses his lips for a moment, searching for a better explanation. "He's acting like the only victim here is his precious Kacchan, while we were both bullied by him, sometimes even physically." He thinks about being pinned to the wall, explosions so close to his face he could feel the burning heat. "To be absolutely fair, Midoriya-kun had it even worse, because apparently Bakugou was even more violent before and used to beat him up daily before I showed up." Akiyama-san nods at him as if to say to continue talking. So he does. "He burned his uniform, pinned him to the wall, called him names… And he acts like somehow me exposing him is worse than all that."
"That… is A Situation™," Akiyama-san agrees, "And I see why you're waiting for an apology, but… have you at least tried talking to him?"
Hitoshi suddenly feels very sheepish. And cowardly. "Nnnnno…?" he smiles a tad bit too widely.
"You should. You should tell him how you feel without screaming and calling him names and maybe even without pointing out the discrepancies in his beliefs."
Hitoshi frowns and scrunches up his brows. "You're kidding me."
"No, I'm not."
"But he has to have a wake up call!"
"Clearly you've given it to him twice in a row. Did it work?"
"Well…" no.
"Exactly. Remember when you were in the Kawabashi family?" Well that question was a bit left field.
"Ye-yeah?" That was a bad one. But…
"What did you learn there?"
"That you don't do reality checks unless a person agrees?" he replies automatically and realises the moment the words leave his mouth. "Hey! Midoriya-kun isn't schizophrenic or anything."
"No, but he's been abused. That can create delusions too." Akiyama-san explains. "All I'm saying is… be gentle. You can change more minds this way than any other way."
Hitoshi frowns again but thinks it over. Chances are Akiyama-san is right and he's wrong, she is a dependable adult who taught him many life lessons and saved him from learning many of them on his very skin.
He sighs. "I'll… try. But no promises."
"That's all I ask for."
Hitoshi gets out of his room exactly at the same time when Midoriya-kun does. They both freeze, looking at each other startled. Hitoshi doesn't know whether the fear and apprehension he feels are his own or the other boy's.
Akiyama-san gently guides him towards the sofa, and Kimura-sensei does the same to Midoriya-kun. Once they sit down, Hitoshi plays with his fingers, unwilling to meet the other boy's eyes.
He promised he'd try though, so he'll try.
"I'm sorry I called you a leech." he mutters, swallowing his pride.
Midoriya-kun chuckles humorlessly. "No, I deserved that." HUH? "I… I'm sorry, I was out of line yesterday. A-And the day before," the boy says, his fists balled tightly. "And I regret that. You were right, I was chasing after Kacchan despite him not deserving that, I just… I don't want him to face punishment."
"I'm afraid that's called consequences of one's actions," Hitoshi comments sarcastically before he can bite his tongue. What is wrong with him? He just got an apology from Midoriya-kun, the thing he wanted, is he gonna ruin this now? No way. "I mean—"
"But there don't have to be consequences for that, we control it!"
"But there should be," Akiyama-san interrupts gravely. "If I closed my eyes each time Hitoshi was mistreated he wouldn't be alive now, it's a wonder you don't have any permanent injuries with what that boy's quirk is."
"It's like Shinsou-kun said," Midoriya-kun sniffles, "I'm lucky. So, so, so lucky. And I didn't see it before." He extends his hand and Hitoshi takes it. "But I see it now, and I'm really sorry for all that I said, will you forgive me Shinsou-kun?"
"Yeah," Hitoshi thought that forgiveness might come a little hard in this case, but he says the word easily. "Yeah I forgive you, will you forgive me?"
"There's nothing to forgive you for, Shinsou-kun" Midoriya-kun says, his eyes full of tears.
"Oh just call me Hitoshi," he decides quickly. "We've gone through too much to not be on a first name basis."
"Then call me Izuku," Midor— Izuku says.
They both start laughing at the same time, and their joined hands glow as they fuse.
Diana emerges in casual clothing for once, feeling stronger than ever, and immediately turns to Inko.
She comes up to her, catches her arms and says, "Thank you for getting them here," she gestures towards Hitoshi's and Izuku's role models, "They needed that."
She hugs Inko, who's smiling and crying, and sniffling but it's clearly a happy cry.
She then turns towards Akiyama-san. "We haven't met yet! I'm Diana, nice to meet you!"
Akiyama-san looks… startled. It seems no one informed her what exactly Hitoshi's and Izuku's fusion looks like.
"I have so many questions," the woman whispers.
"Well, since things are resolved, isn't this the correct moment to ask them?"
"I suppose… yes."