It is on one of his near-nightly secret runs that Katsuki notices Aunty Inko's light on. He stalls, staring up at the warm golden glow of her window and wondering why she's still awake. Seconds tick by and his heart begins to slow its frantic beating in his chest, allowing the cold to seep into his extremities and make itself at home. He shivers and tucks his hands beneath his arms, trying to keep his fingers from freezing. He swallows hard, acutely aware of how the cold keeps sweat from lingering on his palms unless he's running. Each of his breaths form tiny clouds in the space in front of him, pale and dancing in the flickering streetlights.
He's not sure what propels him towards the apartment stairs. Maybe it's the desire to unfreeze his hands in Aunty's warm living room, or maybe he just wants to check and make sure she's alright. It's dumb to go see her at this hour, though; so far neither of his parents have noticed his new routine, and Aunty Inko is almost certain to call his mom and tell her what he's been up to. Though he will never admit it to anyone (including himself), there's a small part of him that is glad that she'd care enough to tell on him in the first place.
The rickety old stairs ring with a hollow metallic clang with every step he takes, signaling his approach as surely as a shout. He wonders if Aunty recognizes the way he stomps up after all these years.
The porch light outside her door flickers and buzzes as he approaches. There are no bugs in the dead of winter, but he knows that once summer rolls around her front door will be swarming with bugs. Maybe he should tell his old man to get her a bug zapper for Christmas or some shit like that.
The outer walls of her apartment are just as thin as the ones inside; he could hear the old man two doors down snoring from the ground level. Aunty's voice rings clear as he comes to a stop in front of her door and he pauses, hand frozen inches away from the wood as he hears Deku's name.
"Izuku is your son, Hisashi," Aunty says. Her voice is pitched high, ringing through the walls like a church bell. "What do you mean your job won't let you take the time off?"
Katsuki stays perfectly still, brow furrowing with confusion; he hadn't heard that Deku's dad had come back to town. He waits for the response, but is instead met with a silence that stretches on and on. Aunty Ino huffs and hums along, and it clicks that he is hearing one side of a phone call.
Slowly, he lets his hand drop to his side. His heart is pounding painfully in his chest and there's a lump in his throat that he struggles to swallow as his brain screams at him to leave before he hears anything else from what is obviously meant to be a private conversation. There's no reason for him to hang around and listen to Aunty have another fight with her husband, hardly recognizable as a fight with how gently she always speaks. He is just turning to go when her voice rings out again, louder than ever.
"You're a heartless bastard," she says, and Katsuki swears his whole brain blue-screens for a second at hearing something so harsh from someone so mild-mannered. She continues, heedless of the mental damage she is inflicting on her unannounced visitor.
"Stop playing games with me! If you're not planning on coming back then at least have the balls to be honest about it. Have fun in America. You're not welcome here ever again."
Katsuki can hear the man's angry yells, muffled as they are, suddenly cut off with the cheerful chirp of her phone as she ends the call. Katsuki stands, open mouthed, on her doorstep for several long seconds. Inside the apartment, Aunty has begun to cry. They are gasping, heaving sobs, and he doesn't know what to do. Forcing his mouth closed with a click of teeth, he swallows hard around the tightness in his throat and turns to leave. He'll have his mom call her tomorrow for a girl's day or something. They can talk about it all then and he can stay far away from any of the drama.
.
Leaning against the singed door frame, Shouta wishes he could be pretty much anywhere else. The dust mask over his face traps his three-days-without-sleep breath against his face and forces him to face the fact that he's really gotten lax on his hygiene over the course of his seemingly endless patrols. This is the last case on his task list before he gets two blessed days off, which he fully intends to sleep the whole way through. This area isn't even in his patrol route, but he's here as a favor since the hero who normally patrols this area is helping cover the gaps left by Ingenium's absence. The faster this mess gets cleared as an accident, or as some stupid kids playing with matches, the faster he can go back to his apartment and enter the comatose state he so desperately craves. Watching the uniformed people moving confidently around the scene, he feels like more of an obstacle than an asset to the investigation.
His burning eyes rake over what was likely once a living room, and the charred remains of the sofa therein. The firemen combing through the scene have already confirmed that that was likely where the fire started.
"Not the first time I've seen it," one of the men says as he sidles closer, pulling down his dust mask to reveal a salt and pepper beard as he wipes sweat from his upper lip. Shouta tips his head, just enough to indicate that he should continue. The man shrugs, eyes averted to stare at the blackened wall just past Shouta's shoulder.
"Well, the area's known to have a bit of a homelessness problem. Lots of squatters around, ya know? This building isn't condemned, but it's pretty damn close. I wouldn't be surprised if someone got in here and tried to light a fire to keep warm and it just got out of control. No casualties, though, so that's a win in my book."
Shouta grunts something that the fireman seems to take as an understanding, because he flashes a bright smile before pulling his mask back up and continuing his investigation. The firemen have everything handled and, frankly, there's no reason for a hero to be on the scene at all. It feels redundant for him to be hovering here, taking up space while he could be asleep in bed, but heroes were required to be present at the scene of any suspected arson. He hates that he said yes when the spotlight hero asked if he could cover, but he understands the need. Ingenium's takedown was very violent, and very public. It would embolden villains and frighten civilians, so spotlight heroes taking up patrols on Ingenium's usual routes was necessary to boost morale and keep the city's underbelly from getting too rambunctious.
Shouta bites back a sigh, if only so he doesn't have to smell his own coffee-and-cigarettes breath blown back in his face. There's no getting away from the fact that he's stuck here one way or the other, and he knows for a fact that some of the other people on the scene have been on call for almost as long as he has. He figures that the least he can do is pretend like he's interested in the outcome of the whole mess. Forcing his stiff limbs to move, joints creaking in protest as he does so, he pushes away from his comfortable spot against the doorframe and makes his way towards the nearest fireman. Rubble crunches beneath his boots and the floor groans in protest. The windows had all been bricked over at some point, so there is blessedly little glass to have to worry about picking from the soles of his shoes later.
"Everything alright, sir?" the fireman asks as he gets closer, and despite the mask obscuring most of his features Shouta just barely recognizes him as the same man he'd spoken briefly with before. The uncertainty of whether the man had introduced himself flits through his mind, but dissipates quickly as he decides that he doesn't actually care.
"Yeah, it's fine. Just wanted to check if there's anything I need to know. It'll help when I file the paperwork later."
The fireman nods and Shouta can see his brown eyes crinkle with a grin as he lifts the clipboard in his hand and gives it a little wiggle.
"Everything you'll need is right here."
"Great. So am I still needed here or can I leave?"
The other man laughs, though it holds a hint of pity. Shouta scowls beneath his mask. Despite the brisk winter weather, a thin layer of sweat has collected beneath the collar of his rumpled black uniform. He doesn't know how the firemen scattered around the scene can stand being decked out in so many heavy layers.
"This your first arson case?" the fireman asks. Gritting his teeth, Shouta gives a curt nod and the man laughs again and says, "I thought so."
"How could you tell?"
"A hunch. You get a sense for it when you've been doing this as long as I have. Most of the newcomers are itching to keep moving, but the veterans tend to take the downtime to catch up on paperwork or just to relax."
Shouta's voice is a humorless deadpan as he drolls, "Is that so."
"Aw, don't be like that," the other man tuts, as annoyingly good humored as he's been since the beginning. "To be honest with you, that's how most of us prefer it anyways! No real reason for heroes to waste their time here – we'd call if we found anything of note, and most of them don't know what to look for in the first place – but the HPSC just loves to have a finger in every pie.
"Don't worry, young man. We can take it from here. Like I was saying earlier, it's likely just a squatter trying to keep warm with an out of control fire. There's no sign of any accelerants outside of some paper and a match, so I suspect at the end of the day you'll have nothing more to do than sign off on some form or another. You look about dead on your feet, so please, feel free to—"
"Hey, where's that hero?" a voice breaks through the old-timer's words, not quite urgent but certainly uncertain."I think I've got something he'll wanna see."
Shouta levels the older man with a hollow stare and what he hopes is a polite nod to excuse himself.
It's a short journey to the room in the back of the apartment, made longer by the way he has to tread carefully around evidence markers and places on the floor that have been weakened by fire damage. As he passes through the threshold, he takes note of the padlock hasp still clinging to the ruined wood and the scratches around the door's hinges, not quite hidden by the soot. Inside the room, there is an overturned mattress and a fireman and not much else. The mask hides most of the fireman's face, but Shouta can wager a guess that something has been found by the tense line of his shoulders and the furrow in his brow.
"What is it?" Shouta asks, low and gruff to hide the squirming apprehension in his chest, and the fireman's eyes flicker towards black then green before fading back into brown.
"You got gloves?" the man asks, and waits until Shouta has pulled them on before handing over the item in his hands.
"Careful with that. It was damaged, but the mattress protected a good bit of it. Make sure you give it back when you're done so we can take pictures of it."
Shouta hums his acknowledgement and the fireman goes back to digging in the mattress, checking to make sure nothing else had been stashed there. The paper scratches against the metal spiral binding, too loud despite the bustle of activity around him. On the first page, written in clumsy hiragana, is the name 'Izuku'. It takes up half the page, written in clumpy green crayon. Something catches in his chest at the sight and he has to resist the instinct to let his fingers curl more tightly around the edges of the book, careful not to damage what could very well turn out to be a vital piece of evidence.
He flips the page, eyes scanning over the too-big, but carefully written, words.
Stendhal is very big, the words say. This Izuku kid seemed to have some trouble with spelling, because 'Stendhal' has been crossed out and the name re-written in neat script by a different hand before the writing could continue. He is very strong.
Beneath the words is a childish drawing, little more than a stick figure, of what Shouta can only assume is a human man that probably goes by the pseudonym Stendhal. Red dots for eyes and a big frown are the only discernible features. He turns the page.
His quirk is cool. When he cuts people they freeze. He beats them up if they do bad things.
Another drawing, likely supposed to be the same man. This time he is holding either a sword or a long stick and the frown is replaced by a big, sharp toothed smile. It isn't hard to guess that the man would need a blade to cut people, if that really was how his quirk worked. On the ground by his blocky feet, another stick figure with X's for eyes and a waxy red line cutting through the purple crayon of his body.
Something about it strikes a chord, and a suspicion begins to form. It is a long shot; this apartment is nowhere near Naruhata, but the brief description of this Stendhal character brings to mind the confounding cases of murder in that city. A quirk that "freezes" the people it affects would explain why the majority of the bodies showed no sign of defensive wounds despite the multiple, sometimes torturous, wounds on their bodies.
Stendhal says he will teach me to be a hero, the next page declares. I would like that because I love to help people.
A smaller figure this time, with a cloud of green around its perfectly round head. There is a big smile on its face and wiggly lines and starbursts surrounding the figure in All Might's signature colors. His fingers hover over the smiling face, not close enough yet to touch. The upper corner of the notebook crumbles to ash in his grip and he gently readjusts his hold before turning to the next page.
I am getting stronger. Stendhal teaches me a lot. Some times it hurts but it is ok since it means I am learning to do what heroes do.
There is no picture to accompany the words. He can feel his skin crawling and when he flips the page the words that greet him feel like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head.
But I still wish I could go home. I miss my mama. I love you mama.
Two smiling figures, a woman with long green hair and the child, holding hands and smiling. There is no Stendhal in sight. Beyond that are choppy, childish stories of day to day happenings and training and through it all is an overwhelming sense of loneliness and hurt. Shouta swallows around a lump in his throat as he reads it all, willing himself to shove it all down and away, because feeling anything will be too much and he can't afford to let cases like this mean too much to him, especially this early in his career when there will only be hundreds more in the coming years. The firemen milling around the room keep casting him sidelong glances. They seem to be waiting for a reaction, or maybe just direction.
The notebook ends on a drawing of that same green haired kid, frowning behind the hollow outline of a closed door. The crayon Stendhal stands outside, smiling at the bright yellow sun with sword in hand and a body by his feet.
The lock on the outside of the door and the scratches at the hinges suddenly make a lot more sense.
Happy American Independence day to everybody except the people who had anything to do with overturning bodily autonomy for people with uteruses. Fuck those people.
Happy late Canada Day, too!
Thanks everyone for sticking around during the long wait for this chapter. Every review and favorite meant so much to me. Even if I don't respond, know that I read every notification and smile. Sorry this chapter is short! We bought a house and I have no mental energy to write or post anything else. :) Now we have to move in to the house (oof) so expect another wait.
As always, I owe my soul to my betas, TheFoxyPirateFox and Shaegal, who help me so much and have so much patience with me. Thank you so much, guys!