Chapter 1: The Father and the Son
Hisashi had met his wife by total chance just after turning 20, standing outside his apartment and taking a break between late night virtual meetings with an American company that he was trying to get to invest in local Japanese businesses.
His eyes glazed over as he looked out on the lights of Musutafu and the sounds of the city reverberated in the concrete jungle of buildings around him. A half-smoked cigarette trailed wispy gray from his lips as his mind wandered to think about everything and nothing at all.
Some part of him recognized the sound of the mechanical winch in the elevator moving, but at the moment he didn't really care if someone saw him outside for a late night smoke.
She stepped out of the elevator with her long dark green hair flowing in the night's breeze almost black in the shroud of night. He barely noticed, just listening to the sounds of her heels click against the concrete before the woman leaned against the rail next to him and heaved her own weary sigh.
The young man looked over at her and took a moment to remember to breathe, his eyes widened and his heart raced. She was gorgeous. A kind round face, big expressive eyes, and pouty pale lips that set his heart to drumming against his ribs.
For a moment he forgot how to speak, how to introduce himself. Why stop next to him? Why not just go inside for the night and rest? If the bags under her eyes were any indication, she could use it. He passed a hand through his cropped white hair and tried to get his brain back on track, Hisashi pulled his pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket in his suit and offered one to her with a small crooked smile.
"Thanks, it's been a rough day," she said with a soft smile of her own before taking one from the cardboard. "Do you have a lighter I can borrow? I haven't smoked in a year."
"Not exactly, come a little closer," his voice rumbled. Taking a small breath that he could feel heat up in his lungs, and then slowly breathing out a small stream of maroon fire about as large as a candle flame. The light played against the shadows of their faces as she bent in next to him and placed the end of the white stick to it and then pulled back to take a long and slow drag, smoke trailing from her lips and into the night air.
"Thank you again, I'm spending way too long on campus most nights now. Do you attend the university too?" She asks, the small smile from before growing and brimming with radiance that warmed his chest even further.
"No, I actually work for my father's investment firm. He wanted me to be part of the family business in some capacity at least, so I'll keep doing this for a few more years until I can safely start up my own. What are you studying?" Hisashi asked with a nod.
"Quirk law, I want to try helping out vigilantes who stay on the right side of morality at least, try and get them lighter sentences," she explained. Hisashi hummed at that, taking another drag before offering his hand out to her as he tilted his back against the railing.
"Shigaraki Hisashi," he smiled.
"Midoriya Inko," she smiled back and shook his hand.
~Ω~
After that, time seemed to almost fly by for the young pair. Inko was a few years older than he was, and three years later at 26 she graduated from law school at the top of her class. They'd danced around the living as large happy tears fell from her face and he smiled at her.
They'd started dating a few weeks into knowing each other, and one month after her graduation they were married at the Hie shrine just like they'd always planned, in the presence of her family, one of her friends from highschool, and a few of their neighbors. He took her family name afterwards, telling her he preferred it over his own by far.
Hisashi had insisted that his father not be invited under any circumstances, and that he'd been more than glad to have lost contact with the man two years ago when he'd started up his own small firm and cut every tie with the man he could find.
6 months after that, Hisashi had been blessed in a way that he hadn't even known could make him so happy! His wife was pregnant! He and Inko would be welcoming their own child into the world, he hoped to all that was holy they had their mother's eyes, her gentle green like the tall grass near a river instead of the deep red of his own.
Hisashi's uncle had green eyes, at least that's what his father had told him, so there was a decent chance.
Happiness and excitement filled the walls of their small apartment as they prepared the nursery. Painting walls, building a crib, and buying a large and plush white blanket. Each night was spent talking about names and whispering plans early into the morning as they lay in bed and stared into the eyes of their true love. Her bright and kind smile etched into his memory, and the feeling of his gentle hands as he held her face into her own.
~Ω~
6 months into her pregnancy, something had started going wrong. Inko knew that she would be able to do less and less as time went on but her body just felt so weak, and the morning sickness had turned into vomiting after meals more often than not. Something was very wrong and none of the home remedies or over the counter medicines they tried were helping.
Hisashi was worried, and took her to the hospital a week after it had begun. Each day that passed her face grew paler and even going to the store had become so tiring that it left her legs shaking and her face red. Hisashi was quite frankly, freaking the hell out. Inko just kept promising him that everything would be okay, her smile able to chase away the worst of his worries.
The doctors couldn't tell them much, but they thought it might be some form of a hypertensive disorder, and sent them home with a prescription and orders to call them if any further issues came up. Hisashi had gripped to her hand like it would heal her then and there, his arms shaking and a deep crease digging between his eyebrows.
Inko just smiled and thanked them, that same beautiful smile like the summer sun he had fallen in love with to start, and he thanked the doctors for their time before the pair made their way home for the evening.
As they walked into the apartment, Hisashi took a moment to excuse himself and stepped back out into the walkway of their apartment complex and stared down at the contact displayed on his phone's screen. 'Dire Emergencies Only.'
He knew, he just knew that if he called his father then he would have some way of helping to heal his wife, to keep his child safe and let them live on together. Even just the information of where he could find the right quirk would be enough. He'd do anything, pay them anything they wanted, he'd even go so low as to use his own quirk and steal theirs if necessary.
But Inko knew nothing of his past or his family, of his quirk, knew nothing of Japan's greatest supervillain. He'd been such a terrible person as a teenager just to make his father proud, taken so much from other people who hadn't deserved it.
Would she hate him for his past? Could he risk everything they had built together just for a chance the doctor may have already given them with the prescription? He clenched the fist at his side, feeling the quirks he had from years long gone roiling under his skin and pushing for something to change.
His finger hovered over the call button but never pressed it. Hisashi couldn't take the risk, couldn't let All for One back into his life and turn him back into that monster. If he knew of his child, it would just be one more thing for the mastermind to use against his own son to coerce him back into the underground and keep him there forever.
He would have to hope and pray to every god in existence that Inko would be okay, he could not and would not drag his family into that abyss. She'd never forgive him if Hisashi did.
It would be okay, that's what she always said when he was upset. 'It might not be okay right now, but it will be.' Her voice echoed in his head as he took a deep breath, filling his lungs from top to bottom, and breathed out with a hand on his heart.
He stepped back into their apartment with a smile on his face and a small spark of hope fluttering about in his heart.
~Ω~
"I'm so sorry Mr. Midoriya, but there was nothing we could do to save her. We tried everything we could to help with her labor but we don't have any medical quirks on staff here and I'm afraid your wife passed on during childbirth." The doctor's eyes were soft, and she spoke in a hushed tone to the man before her as her hand rested on his shoulder. Somewhere in his mind he recognized that he had sat down, but his ears feel like they're filled with cotton, his tongue dry and immobile.
"Your son will need to stay with us for a few days just to make sure he'll stay healthy after you take him home. When you're ready, the neonatal care unit is just around the corner. I'll give you some time to process."
Hisashi doesn't know how long he sat in the chair, staring at the floor with wide eyes and breathing like his lungs were a bellows, he tried to calm his aching heart but each breath felt as though it would rip him in two. All of his worst fears had been made real, in less than a month.
In just three weeks since their first trip to the hospital, Inko was dead. She was dead and he'd done nothing to prevent it.
He didn't even know what time it was now, his thoughts spiraled farther into depression, they hadn't wanted to know the sex of their child until they were born. Inko thought that keeping it a surprise would be more exciting when the time came.
And now he had a son, a son he hadn't even seen yet but was just around the corner and down a short hallway. He needed to see him, to see if he looked like his Inko. To know that he, at least, was okay.
Numb legs carried him down the hall, his footsteps echoed like thunder in his ears. The world around him blurred and bent in odd directions but he moved on regardless of the chilling fear that drilled a hole through his heart and soon found himself before the large viewing window into neonatal care.
Almost dead and center in the room, he sees his son. He'd know him blind and deaf. His boy's body already hummed with the same power that flowed through his own blood, reaching out and feeling the latent quirks of the other infants around him, eyes wide and curious.
Snow white hair just like his own, fluffy and drifting about his small red face, four freckles on each cheek in a small diamond, his mother's round eyes and lips, Hisashi's nose, and vibrant green eyes like leaves in the sunlight with white pupils.
Tears race down his face in a cascade and the man falls to his knees as he stares at his baby, a hand pressed to the glass. He looks down to the label at the foot of the small bed his son is lie in, and sobs. Midoriya Izuku. Premature-7.2 months.
At 25 years old, Hisashi is left alone to raise his little boy, his last memory of Inko and their time spent together.
~Ω~
5 years later
"Oh no! Someone save me!" Hisashi cries out from the broom closet with a smile. "I'm stuck! I need a hero!"
"I'm here to help!" A small voice yells, throwing the door open with a wide grin. Izuku stands in the doorway, his little fists held high and a triumphant fire in his eyes, the old white blanket from his nursery tied around his shoulders like a cape. "Heroes always save people who need it!"
"Oh, I'm saved! Thank you so much, tiny hero! I thought I'd never get out! How could I ever repay you?" Hisashi yells again, scooping his little boy into his arms and holding him against his hip, rubbing his face against his sons to elicit a giggle fit.
"Hot chocolate!" His smile beams up, so bright it nearly blinds the older man.
"That I can do!" He chuckles, setting Izuku down and ruffling his hair. "You go find something to watch while I get started kiddo!" The white haired child dashes off towards the living room as Hisashi walks into the kitchen and finds a small pot to make the hero his reward.
As he sets the pot to begin boiling milk, Hisashi stops for a moment to let his mind wander and rest while memories of the past few years rush by his eyes in brief flashes. Getting to bring his son home, the struggles of being a single parent, his first smile, first steps, and playing with the toddler as he runs around the apartment giggling like a machine.
None of it had been easy, and he missed Inko with each passing day more than the last, but happiness for being here with his son filled the hole she had left behind. Once Izuku had started going to daycare when he turned 3, he'd met the Bakugou's fully for the first time. They had come in to help more than he could ever have hoped or asked for.
Masaru was his closest friend now, the two sitting down for coffee at least once a week while their kids ran off into the nearby woods to play with their friends. His calm demeanor and sound advice had become the crutch Hisashi'd needed for a few years, and gave him a good way of getting opinions on his own parenting.
Mitsuki was an old friend of Inko's from highschool, but neither of them had kept in contact after graduating. After meeting Hisashi and Izuku of them on the first day of daycare, she'd offered her condolences and apologized for having missed the funeral, small tears filling her eyes as she looked down at his son.
She was a loud and outgoing person with a short fuse and filled with righteous anger, just the kind of friend Inko would have needed with her own intense introvertedness getting in the way of daily life back in school.
And Katsuki, the little terrorist, was so much like his mother that it scared the man a bit for his own son's safety at times. His temper was like a loose light switch, and it had been getting worse since his quirk had appeared last year. Whatever deity thought it was a good idea to strap bombs to the palms of a four year old was a cruel one indeed.
Izuku had come running home the day his best friend had showed it off for the class to tell his dad all about it, asking about what quirk he might have over and over again, bouncing on his heels.
But he knew already what his son's quirk was, the newest form of All for One. He'd had it since the day he was born, even if it wasn't ready to activate itself yet.
For my father, he could only take and give quirks as he saw fit. He needed to touch someone to take their quirk or give one away. That wasn't the same for me though, I could feel them around me. Sense what they were, how to use them, what they did. Even if I still do have to touch someone to take their quirk.
Hisashi had studied quirk theory for years under his father's guidance, how each generation of a quirk like theirs would only evolve and grow in power. All for One the man had to study and test the quirks he stole, letting more complicated quirks be left to the side for the sake of growing his own power, but Hisashi just needed to take them and he knew right away.
Izuku's version of the quirk was once again even stronger.
From what they'd talked about so far, his own son could feel the quirks around them too, not to the degree or detail Hisashi could though, but he didn't need to touch someone to take it. His mother's weak telekinesis quirk mixing with his own had evolved All for One beyond that, he could simply pull on the quirk with his mind and take it if he tried hard enough.
They'd experimented a bit at home after his son told him he could feel other quirks, Izuku taking and giving back Hisashi's stored quirks from the other side of the room with ease if his guard wasn't up. More than a few times he'd stolen his x-ray vision to cheat and win at hide and seek around the house, and one time even the fire breathing to help light his dad's birthday candles.
Though that one had ended with a stern lesson about using his quirk carelessly as the white haired man put out their kitchen table with a fire extinguisher.
Since every other child had started getting their quirks at the daycare, Izuku needed to have at least one to help him fit in. They'd had a LONG conversation the night before that day of school.
~Ω~
"Izuku, there's something I need to talk to you about. Can you come sit down with me?" From the living room, he saw his boy's bouncy white hair pop up from where he'd been coloring on the couch and walked into the dining room where his dad sat.
"What's wrong dad?" He scrambled his way up into the chair, green eyes looking up at Hisashi with worry.
"It's about our quirk. You know how you can take quirks, right?" his son nods. "What do you think about it?"
"It's super cool! If I become a hero, I can save so many people with it!" He cheers, the sunbeam smile lighting up his cheeks.
"You could! But I want you to think about how it must feel for the other person. A quirk is part of your body, just like your arms and legs. What would it feel like if you woke up tomorrow and one of your arms was gone?"
His son stops smiling to think for a second, holding his chin and looking at the floor with pouty lips. After a few moments, he looks back up at his dad with fear in his eyes.
"I'd be so scared, I wouldn't know what to do! I don't want to hurt anyone dad!" The younger Midoriya starts to cry, large tears gathering at the edges of his eyes that reminds Hisashi of Inko. With a fond smile, his dad reaches a hand out and runs his hand through Izuku's hair.
"That's good, I know you won't. For right now, unless someone is about to hurt you or try to take you away without me being there I want you to only take my quirks, okay?"
"But then why do you already have more quirks than everyone else?" he pouts.
"When I was growing up, my father wanted me to take as many as I could. He was a bad person, Izuku, a very bad person. I still have them because the people I took them from aren't around anymore, so I can't give them back. Do you understand?"
"Kinda," the boy sniffles.
"That's good enough for now, you'll get it the more you grow up. But I do still want you to have a quirk to practice with for now, so you can get used to the feeling. I'm going to give you three options right now, and as you get older I'll let you have a few more. Does that sound good?"
His mood perked up like a gopher from its hole in the ground, and he smiled wide and nodded so fast his face blurred.
"Okay kiddo," he laughs, "you can have night vision, flight, or quick thinking. It's up to you, and you don't have to answer right now." In his stockpile, Hisashi had quirks that were all stronger versions of these ones, but he didn't want to just hand those out to an over-excited four year old.
"I want quick thinking dad! One day I want to go to U.A. and be a hero, and heroes always think fast to save the day! That's what All Might says!" His eyes light up with inspiration, and his dads nods with a smile, holding out his hand.
As Izuku places his own hand in his, pulsing red energy runs off the man's arm and turns a bright nuclear green before entering into the boy's own, green eyes blown wide and mind already racing with new ideas to be a better hero one day, a slight glow emanating from them with the new power. A flavor like warm tea with honey coats Izuku's mouth for a moment before it fades away.
"There's one more thing I need to tell you though, and you really need to listen to me here okay, Izuku?" Looking at his hand, opening and closing it, the boy looks back up with a raised eyebrow and slight head tilt that is just too damn cute for the man to keep up the serious face.
"What is it?"
"You need to keep your quirk a secret until you start hero school, like I do. There are people out there who already know about it, including the Hero Commission, but some of them are very bad people, just like my father. I want to keep you safe, and the Hero Commission already helps us both with that, but we need to make doubly sure until you've learned to protect yourself, okay?"
"Okay dad," he nods, a bit of fear in his eyes again. Hisashi pulls his son from the chair and into his own lap, rubbing circles on his back as the boy's arms wrap around him in a tight hug.
"Nobody is ever going to hurt you as long as I'm around Izu, I'll keep you safe and sound and happy. One day, I'll get to tell your mom all about you, and she's going to be so so proud. Just like I am"