The time between his talk with All Might and when he was finally allowed to go home passed by quickly and quietly. All Might didn't say much more, and so neither did Izuku, sensing that it would be better if they didn't just talk about their—and that was weird to say, their—secret. Izuku felt like a weight had been lifted off his heart in the days following the USJ and his heart to heart with All MIght, as if he'd finally managed to shirk something off that had been clinging to him for ages, so long he didn't quite remember when it had gotten so heavy. Except he knew exactly when it had started, and who had given it to him. Okay, that was unfair, as All Might wasn't entirely at fault for Izuku's continued anger. He could've very well let bygones be bygones a long time ago, but Izuku had wanted to be angry, because it fueled him to reach even higher. But now that he'd talked things out with All Might, he felt that anger leaving him. When he looked at All Might now, he didn't feel bitter, or angry, but calm, and that was all but a foreign feeling to Izuku after the crazy week he'd had. So, yeah, he was adjusting to the new dynamic at his own pace.

The other thing he was thinking about was his missing finger. He wasn't allowed to move his remaining fingers on that hand, lest he exacerbates the damage, but even without wiggling them every now and then to feel out the new gap in his sense of touch, he could always feel it, always tell that something wasn't right. The day Izuku could leave, Saturday, was the day he'd get things figured out in regards to whether he wanted a transplanted finger or a prosthetic, and to do that, he'd talk with his mother. Izuku honestly didn't know how she'd react. For as long as he could remember, Inko had been supportive of his dream, but would this be too much? First, the whole thing with Bakugou, and now a villain attack, both in the first week of school? She'd be emphatic, she'd be terrified of letting Izuku out of her sight ever again. Izuku wondered if he'd have to convince her to let him stay at UA, but put that out of his mind for now. He had to focus on his task; regain a five-fingered hand.

That was the thought that rang in his head as he got out of the car UA had sent him home in. He held his messed up hand to look at it as he approached the stairs up to his apartment. It was still bandaged, all the way up to the elbow, and it would have to stay bandaged until they came to a decision on what to do. Recovery Girl had healed him as best she could, which meant that there was skin under the bandages and everything was healed over, other than his finger. He didn't know what the scars would look like, and he didn't want to, but he'd have to see them eventually, so he guessed that he'd just have to suck it up. Izuku managed the trek upstairs with his tired legs and finally arrived back home after what felt like years had passed.

Izuku opened the door, slid his shoes off, and closed the door, the clashing of a pan in the distance letting him know that Inko had immediately heard and had been waiting, regardless of whatever she used to trick herself into thinking she wasn't. She'd always been like that, reacting that same way whenever he had his first day of the school year, or on the rare occasions that the school would call in the stuff that happened with Bakugou, not that it was ever accurate. Izuku let himself smile as she appeared in the hall, rushing towards him but pausing halfway, coming to a stop on shaking legs and hesitantly reaching out to him with hands that shook with just as much anxious energy.

"It's okay, do it," Izuku said, and that was when the dam broke.

Inko resumed her half-run, half-walk and crashed into Izuku headfirst, wrapping him in a breathtakingly tight hug that he couldn't reciprocate, his arms hanging limply to avoid any mistakes. He wanted to, of course, but he couldn't; Decimation had grown too much for that. He felt a few tears come to his eyes, but blinked them away as he steadied himself for the talk they'd have to have. He let Inko hug him for however long she needed to, and honestly, he needed this as well. As the two of them embraced in the short hallway, Izuku felt his legs give out. Izuku and Inko fell to their knees as they continued to hold each other, and Izuku suddenly realised how utterly stupid he had been during that whole attack. What if he'd died? Obviously, he'd known it was a possibility, but that would mean that his mother would be alone. What if he'd been just a little less lucky, and she'd been left with nobody? Izuku stopped crying as those thoughts came to mind, his head overwhelming his heart and forcing him into a state of realisation. Sure, he'd done the heroic thing, but did that mean he'd done the right thing? Izuku didn't know the difference, or if there even was one at all. The hug continued for about five minutes, until Inko gasped and hurriedly got to her feet to pull Izuku onto his.

"You must be hungry, and tired. I'm so sorry, Izuku, I don't know what I was thinking!" she said, panic creeping into her voice.

"I'm good. We actually need to have a talk. I assume that UA contacted you about what happened to me," Izuku said. He'd unconsciously put his right hand away from Inko, hidden behind his body, as his left took hers as she offered to help him up. He frowned, but didn't move his bad hand.

"I … did," Inko said, looking like she'd tear up again. "Oh, Izuku, I was so worried! Are you okay? I was actually just making some dinner before you got here. Sit down and we can talk over some food, okay?"

"Okay."

Izuku followed his mother over to the dining table, sitting down on the side closest to him. He silently waited for Inko to finish up preparing whatever she'd made, not daring to offer his help. Izuku knew what she'd be like. Izuku, don't push yourself. Izuku, you need to rest. Izuku, you should conserve your strength. Yeah, he knew; he didn't like it, but he knew. It felt strange to feel this way, like he'd topple over if he wasn't careful. He'd felt it going up the stairs outside, he'd felt it on his way down the hall, and he felt it now. It was a persistent dizziness that accompanied his every action, like his very body was balancing upon a tiny, pinprick of a point. He supposed that was the inherent weakness and vulnerability that settled in after a series of intense healing sessions. After all, he'd spent the majority of Thursday and all of Friday in various states of consciousness being healed and left to rest, so he was drained. It didn't feel great to just sit back and let his frazzled mother busy herself with preparing him food that he could easily help with if he'd just stand up, but Recovery Girl had stressed before sending him off that it was imperative that he not aggravate his injuries, because it could jeopardise the whole healing process if he even steps a toe out of line. Amputations and their aftermath were tricky business, apparently, and they needed to be very careful to make sure that nothing went wrong so that he'd keep his hand as intact as it still was. That sure had gotten him to pay attention to her instructions.

As Inko joined Izuku at the table, she set a bowl of curry down in front of him, as well as one for herself. Curry was always her go-to dish for when she was stressed, as it always seemed to calm her down. Izuku didn't know why that was, but he didn't pry. Instead, he always just dug into the meal and enjoyed the spicy nature of it. If Izuku recalled correctly, she'd gotten this precise recipe from Bakugou's mother, a thought that immediately made him frown. This had been happening since that battle trial. Every now and then, he'd be thinking about something, and then, boom, Bakugou popped up. It was as if everything in Izuku's life revolved around him or something. Maybe it did. He couldn't think about that, though, because he had an important discussion ahead of him.

"So, about my hand, I—" Izuku started, not yet eating any of the curry.

"Can I see it? Your hand?" Inko asked, her face tense.

"Sure," Izuku sighed. He knew this would happen.

Izuku lifted his right hand up, as he'd left it in his lap under the table. Something stopped him before he could lift it up into the air, where his mother could see it. It was like there was a wall, an invisible extension of the table that he couldn't lift his hand beyond. He looked at it, his fingers beginning to shake as he tried, but he couldn't do it. He frowned, knowing exactly why that was. He looked back at Inko, seeing her meek eyes soften into a more gentle kind of concern. She looked at him and reached her hand out across the table, giving him a clear goal, a destination in mind. It was one of the things his therapist had talked about when he'd still gone, having an end-point that didn't rely on him making some big gesture, just a little one. He still couldn't do it. In the end, He grabbed his wrist with his other hand and forced himself to do it, dragging his hand up, and that seemed to break the spell. His movements were shaky, and more than a little stiff, but he managed to move his bad hand when his other let go and returned to his lap, his bandaged arm stretching out across the table to place his right hand in Inko's.

She took his hand and studied it carefully. He watched as Inko looked at the gap in the middle of his hand, the way the empty space registered as wrong in some base way judging by the look in her eyes. Izuku watched as it looked like she'd cry, but she kept herself under wraps long enough to put both her hands over his as she held it gently. It felt nice to have his hand held like this. Izuku didn't exactly get a lot of positive touch. Inko gave him as many hugs and kisses as she could, of course, and Izuku squirmed and acted as if he didn't like it in the moment, which was only half-true, but he did appreciate it on some level, especially now that he'd started high school and Inko's job was calling on her more and more these days. Over the last week, the only thing like that that he'd gotten had been from Uraraka, not that he hadn't enjoyed that, either. Distantly, Izuku wondered if she'd hold his hand, too, but quickly put those thoughts out of his mind as Inko spoke again.

"Izuku, can you tell me how this happened?" she asked, meeting his eyes again.

"Well …" Izuku stammered, unsure how to even begin explaining everything that happened. He decided to just get the crucial details out there, hone in on the precise moments where he was hurt. "I kinda did this to myself."

"What do you mean?" Inko asked.

"During the villain attack, one of them got me and just started … um, throwing me around, I guess. My finger broke pretty badly, but I was able to …" Izuku struggled as he tried to recall the events out loud. It wasn't that he didn't remember, he actually remembered a little too well if he was being honest. It was that he didn't want to phrase it in such a way that made it seem worse than it was. Izuku didn't want to lie, because it was really bad, but talking about how he'd been slammed into solid concrete by a monster with enough strength to rival All Might wouldn't exactly be a good way to get his mother to worry less.

"It's okay if you can't," she said, almost a whisper.

"No, I can. It's just … I used my Quirk on a person," Izuku said at a similar volume, nodding with a grim sort of expression on his face when Inko took a sharp breath. He felt a burning in his chest that he did his best to ignore. "A few times, actually. I think that was what saved us, but—!" Izuku had to stop talking when that feeling he tried to ignore suddenly lurched, and he felt like he'd throw up if he didn't shut his mouth that second, which he did.

Izuku bent over himself and turned off to the side, so as to not vomit all over the table and the food Inko had so kindly prepared. This also made Izuku retract his hand, and he almost clenched it into a fist at the coldness that washed over it at the lack of contact. He stayed like that for a moment, worried that he'd throw up and ruin his appetite without eating any of Inko's curry. After a long week, it was all he wanted to have a nice hot meal with his family. He couldn't mess that up, too. Izuku took long and measured breaths, trying his best to calm down from his sudden urge to vacate his stomach. He didn't know what had brought this on, or maybe there was no reason, but he couldn't let it happen. Nothing had actually come up, it had just been a dry heave, but if he wasn't careful, he'd actually throw up and he couldn't right now. After a few moments, he sat back up and let out a long sigh as he finally felt that burning hot sensation in his chest begin to fade.

"Are you okay, Izuku?" Inko asked, wringing her hands together as she watched on in concern.

"I'm fine. Snuck up on me, that's all," Izuku said, not bothering to put on a chipper tone and a smile as he faced his mother again. He might've, if he were at school, but he felt at least a little more safe to be his authentic self at home with his family.

"If you say so. You were saying?" Inko said, her tone betraying her words and failing to make Izuku believe in the slightest that she accepted that he was fine.

"Right, one of the big guys attacked me and I used my Quirk on him to—" Izuku tried once more, but there it was again, a rushing hot sensation that suddenly appeared, and which got him to shut his mouth and slap his good hand over it in a flash of movement. He didn't know why this was happening to him, but he figured that he should stop whatever it was that was causing him to react this way. Izuku took a deep breath, and slowly took his hand away from his mouth. "I don't think talking about that is the best idea right now," he said in a low, flat tone.

"Okay. What do you want to talk about?" Inko asked, a tight smile curling her lips.

"Recovery Girl said that we have a few options in terms of our next steps with this," he answered, trying to lift his hand up but not managing it once again. He frowned, and pointed to his bad hand, which had come to rest in his lap once again. "Transplant, prosthetic, or just leaving it are what I think the best options are."

"What do you want to do?" Inko asked again.

"That's the thing; I don't know. I was told to talk to you about it before deciding anything. I like the idea of having a real finger, but I don't think my Quirk would work through it. It wouldn't be my finger, so I don't think Decimation would register it as such and so it'd be as good as a plastic one, plus my body could reject it and it could be destroyed just as easily as the first one. I think I want a prosthetic, since those can be replaced and repaired way easier than skin and bone," Izuku said, rationalising his thoughts out loud as he spoke.

"A prosthetic it is, then," Inko sighed. "And all this because some punk villains decided they'd cause some meaningless trouble."

Izuku stiffened in his place opposite her. Was that the story they were telling? Izuku hadn't been told of any cover-up, so he thought it was best to just go along with what Inko thought was the truth and not risk coming anywhere close to revealing anything about One for All or All for One. At that thought, Izuku's mind suddenly remembered the way All for One had targeted him during the attack, how he'd come after Izuku with a frenzied passion that made his skin crawl even now. He quickly began eating his curry, as Inko did the same. All in all, it was good curry, but it just didn't do the trick to alleviate the feeling that Izuku got, as if he was being watched as the hair on the back of his neck and on his arms stood on end. He suddenly felt very uncomfortable sitting and eating as if nothing was wrong, especially just ignoring what had happened when he'd been unable to speak just before. Something about this situation felt wrong, and Izuku couldn't quite put his finger on what. It was probably just being back home after such a crazy thing happened, but it felt like more than that, like he should've been screaming and crying about what happened, but nothing came up when he searched his heart. Izuku just felt tired, that was all, and he only managed to eat half his curry before this realisation came to him. After a while, Izuku stood up, propping himself up on his good arm and groaning as he pushed himself up.

"I think I'm gonna go to bed," Izuku said in that same flat tone as before.

"O-Okay, just make sure you take care of that hand!" Inko said, scrambling up to her feet and hovering just inches behind him as he made his way toward his room. When he arrived, he turned back to see her still behind him, waiting for something. "I'm glad you're safe, Izuku, and I love you very much, okay?" she said, giving him another hug that he couldn't reciprocate.

"I love you, too. Good night," he said, not finding it in him to smile.

After that, Izuku turned in for the night, feeling like he'd been opened up and emptied out by the events of the week. That was it for his first week of high school, and now all he had to worry about was the next hundred and fifty five.