Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

After months of letting her therapist touch her thoughts and be a spectator in her dreams, Inko is finally ready for a walkthrough.

Mukawa never let her consider it as an option until now. She would always say that Inko wasn’t far enough yet in her progress to attempt something so mentally taxing. It was a decision made with Inko’s utmost safety in mind, and Inko understands that.

They’ve been working together to search through her fragmented memories in little increments to organize and make sense of the unreal. The past few months have been harder than ever before, but Inko thinks determinedly that if today goes right, it’ll all have been worth it.

“Most patients fail to see me once we arrive at the more taxing memories,” Muwaka explains to her kindly. Her eyes are so, so gentle, but her words are firm. With her kind of quirk, she has to be like that, Inko figures. “And if at any moment you become scared or hesitant to move forward, that’s alright too. You can back out whenever you feel the need. You only need to imagine yourself being pulled out, and I will do the rest.”

“I won’t pull myself out,” Inko says, and Mukawa smiles.

“Most people say that, but all of them end up doing it in the end, even subconsciously.” She leans back a little and lifts her chin. “And I have to tell you, of course, that I will pull you out myself if I think things are going too far. I’ll be there right beside you, even if you don’t feel it.”

“You’ll see it all?”

“I’ll see what you did.”

Inko lets a silent breath pass between her teeth, and she glances at her lap. “And if I do want to stop?”

“We can try again next time, or not at all. This is an invasive procedure by nature, and sometimes our memories are best kept hidden away from us. There are risks to this which I know we’ve already gone over in intricate detail, so I won’t bore you, but just know that this isn’t the only option.”

Isn’t it, though? Inko feels a sudden urge to argue, and this action in and of itself—this little act of courage—is indicative of something going right for once. She cannot remember the last time she felt so strongly about something.

She lives alone and has for years now, but she is only forty. Her apartment should not be empty. She should have walls decorated with photos. She should have another pair of shoes by the doorway. An extra room. One filled with posters and merchandise and other things teenage boys might like. The photo album on her phone should not be filled with only pigeons and rainy days and random goods she’s baked. She should have friends there somewhere. She should have someone else.

Why can’t she have someone else again? She can’t find what she found once, and she can’t live with that failure anymore.

She is so close to something changing for the better, and she swears if this opportunity slips by her this time she may just never be able to shoot for it again.

So, she closes her eyes, letting the drugs tug lightly at her, and feels Mukawa’s quirk wash over her.

With a desperation she cannot remember ever not feeling, Inko searches for the memories of him.

They come to her quickly and apologetically, as if ashamed for having not revealed themselves to her sooner. For years before this, trying to remember these events was like trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to make sense of something she only felt in her bones once and could not ever replicate again.

She was told the strongest memories will come first, oftentimes not in chronological order, which is exactly where Mukawa’s involvement helps. She can help Inko make sense of the unreal, of the forgotten. She can help order things to be manageable. So when Inko finds herself in the shoes of her twenty-three-year-old self, she is as prepared as she can be.

Stepping into the past at last is a feeling so indescribable that Inko does not even register it as a memory. She could not remember it before now, so for her, this is just her current reality. It feels like a warm shelter in a snowy winter, a place so comfortable and safe that she feels cheated by the fact she can only experience it again now.

She lives this fraction of her life all over again, finding no hope at all down the familiar slope.

It is sunny the day she first meets him.

They call her into work at the last minute to cover a twelve-hour night shift, and she has no real reason to deny it, so she trudges through yet another painstaking cycle before finally making her way home in the early hours of the morning. She is hungry, sweaty, and exhausted. The sun has just barely risen over the buildings around her, soaking the city in an orange glow. Workers are whisking past, ready to head to work at a time when Inko has just left hers.

She cannot recall why she agreed to go in. How many hours has she worked this week alone? How many? Nowadays her bed is always made because she has not had the chance to sleep in it. She lives to work, as she fears there is nothing else for her to do. If she is not working, she is at her little apartment alone, baking and cooking and sweating some more.

Wherever she is, loneliness follows, so what difference does it make?

The days are bleak, the sun shining only in muted colors. Every night she buries tears beneath the ground where her parents rest and waits for new life to grow in the morning.

It’s the product of some cruel sort of joke on the universe’s part, she thinks when a thief crashes into her and shoves her to the floor, yanking her purse from her as she falls. She is so tired she almost doesn’t process it at first, but then the static in her ears subsides and allows her to return to her aching body.

She scrambles to her feet and runs after the man, hand outstretched. The crowds don’t part for her, and she’s shoving against the flow of traffic, so it’s hard to keep track of the thief. She shouts, hoping to draw some attention, and jumps into the street to have a better look.

He’s running fast, and there seems to be no police or heroes in sight, so desperation takes over. She knows she shouldn’t, she knows it’s against the law and is punishable by up to thirty days in jail with a hefty fine, but she honestly doesn’t have a choice. Her wallet is in that purse, along with all of her cards and IDs—including her work ID. If she loses that, she’s screwed!

Her quirk tingles at her fingertips, and she focuses on the thief weaving in and out of the throngs of people. He’s just about to leave her sight! He’s going to get away!

The imaginary string forms with not a second to spare, and the connection is secured.

The hairs on her neck and arms stand up when she activates her quirk. For a brief moment, nothing happens, but then the thief freezes in place, still hunched over from when he was running, and writhes. He twitches, attempting to break free from her hold, and Inko grits her teeth while she uses her other hand to help keep him at bay. Her quirk was never meant to be used on large things—in fact, she was really trying to aim her quirk at just her purse—so it’s definitely taking a toll on her right now. She’s only ever been successful with objects as heavy as twenty pounds! She steps forward some, trying to get closer without breaking the connection, and the thief looks over his shoulder with wild eyes, searching for whatever is causing this to happen.

Just when his gaze meets hers, a loud horn blares beside her, and a truck flies past, honking the entire way. A tire splashes into a puddle and soaks her from head to toe, and the suddenness is enough to break her concentration.

She jumps out of her skin, heart pounding, and scrambles back to the safety of the sidewalk.

When she looks back up, the thief is gone.

Cursing, Inko runs forward again, attempting to catch up, but there are more people out here now, blocking her way. There’s no use.

Inko doubles over and fists her pants, struggling to regain her breath. Shit! I’m so stupid! Should’ve been paying more attention!

She straightens up and scrubs her face, eyes squeezed shut. Her week has gone from bad to worse, and she doesn’t know what to do. Her phone is in her purse, too, so she can’t even call the police! She’ll have to walk all the way to the nearest station to file a report, not that it’ll do anything. Purse snatchers in this part of Shizuoka are rampant precisely because nothing can ever be done about them. Unless there’s a hero to save the day right around the corner at the time it happens, you’re out of luck.

Inko sighs heavily and begins the shameful walk, her temples throbbing from quirk overuse. She just can’t believe it. Out of all things that could’ve happened to her today, did it have to be someone stealing her most important possessions? It’s almost like—

“Excuse me,” a smooth voice says, and if it weren’t for the fact the words came from directly behind her, Inko would’ve thought they were for anyone else.

She turns and immediately jumps back in shock, hand coming up to cover her mouth. Her dark green hair swishes, pooling over her shoulders.

A large man stands before her wearing a suit with no tie. He’s tall—Inko wagers he’s nearly seven and a half feet—and bulky. His velvet jacket looks almost too small for him with how his muscles bulge through it, but the fact that the fabric reaches his wrists tells her it’s actually the right size.

Her eyes drag up, chin lifting, and it’s like her body has a visceral, physical reaction upon seeing his face. He’s clean shaven, his skin entirely smooth, and it’s the eyes she notices next.

They’re narrowed, a striking red. She would almost call them inviting if not for how dark they are. Curly white hair sits atop his head, a few strands falling above his perfect white eyebrows and putting emphasis on his square jaw.

Inko, with her eyes now as wide as saucers, can only liken this man to a Goliath incarnate. It’s not abnormal to see people like this, especially not in this day and age where genetics and quirks have changed the national averages for every physical characteristic a human can have, but never before has someone of this stature managed to make her lose her breath like this one.

She feels her cheeks heat up, and it’s only when the man lifts up his hand more that she notices what he’s holding out to her.

“Oh, my purse!” Relieved beyond comprehension, Inko takes it and presses it against her chest, finally able to breathe again. She bows low once, twice, and can’t stem the mantra of thank yous falling from her lips. “How were you able to get it?” She asks in shock sometime in between all of her words.

“I saw him running,” the man explains simply. “I’m faster than most, so there wasn’t an issue in catching up.”

Inko is about to respond when she notices a few red droplets on the side of his jaw and neck, with some matching splotches staining the collar of his dress shirt. Is that blood?

“God, are you okay?” She quickly takes out a napkin from her purse and reaches up to hand it to him. “Did you get hurt? You didn’t have to do that! Really! I appreciate it, but that was—”

“It’s not my blood,” he says, declining the offer. Inko blinks, taken aback, but the man only shakes his head with a small laugh before he explains. “He tripped and hit the corner of the alley. He did it to himself.”

The explanation soothes her sudden worry, and she wrings the napkin in her shaking hands. This time she’s not scared, however. She’s nervous for an entirely different reason.

People move around them easily despite the rude blockage; Inko suspects it has something to do with the sheer size of him. Who would dare approach him and order him to get out of the way?

She’s still staring at him and hasn’t said a word, but the man doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, his lips pull back to reveal perfect teeth. “Even if he could have hurt me,” he promises, “it would have been worth it for you.”

Immediately, Inko is stunned into silence, an embarrassing noise leaving her throat. She coughs and laughs simultaneously, her hand going back to cup her mouth while she looks away. When was the last time someone flirted with her? Or even so much as showed interest? Sure, she gets a few compliments here and there from people on the streets and even on the job by her patients, but she knows those are rarely genuine. Most men are looking for something else when they approach her that way.

But even still, it’s been months. Maybe even over a year. She’s worked so hard lately she’s forgotten all about that stuff.

“Oh, thank you,” she says, and she cringes when she hears the words come from her mouth. She doesn’t remember how to play this game, but all she knows is that she can’t keep this dumb smile off of her face. “You’re really too kind. Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need some money? It’s not a lot, but—”

He pushes her hand away again, gentle even for such a big man. Something warm settles under her skin at the faint touch. “No, I’m alright, but that’s very generous.” He dips his head. “I’ll leave you to get back to wherever you’re going.”

He walks past her, continuing with the flow of the working people in Shizuoka prefecture. He takes great care to move around her so that not even the side of his jacket brushes against her.

It is as though, even while walking in the opposite direction, he sees her.

She doesn’t know why, but in the seconds that pass between them, decades of regret mount on her skin. Why is she standing here? Why is she frozen?

Inko should check her purse to make sure all her valuables are there and then get going. There’s no point in lingering around.

But when she tries to force her limbs to move away, headed in the very direction the man is not, she finds it is impossible for her to do so.

She needs to get out of her comfort zone. She cannot keep living such a recycled life. Everything is rinse and repeat, and she just cannot stand it anymore. Mitsuki keeps telling her to find someone to hold onto and lean on. She has already found Masaru, and they’ve been engaged for a few months now—it is Inko who is behind. She’s out of college and has a decent albeit straining job, but more than that, she is alone.

Sometimes the silence of her apartment absorbs these pathetic feelings of hers like blood soaking into cotton. She is so achingly lonely that she feels it physically, like a soiled clump of dirty rags against her chest.

She cannot unlearn the feeling, but maybe if she tries she can bury it.

The universe is against her, not that she knows it. The wind whips at her face, begging her to let him go. Dead leaves fly in the space before her, covering the eyes and mouths of every person walking past her. Thunder strikes somewhere in the far distance, warning of a morning storm and something far more sinister, and Inko crumples the napkin in her hand, ignoring it.

She turns around, and when she sees him just a short twenty feet away, still towering over the people around him, she takes the leap.

And this small bit of courage, this tiny moment of vulnerability, changes the course of so many lives.

“Wait!” She calls, and the covered stars overhead weep in response. Rain pricks at her skin, making her feel cold. It is only by thinking of him that she becomes warm.

He glances back, red eyes glittering, white brows stark as they lift up. “Something wrong?” He says, and somehow the words carry clearly to her ears despite the loud thrum of rain.

She rushes forward to meet him, shoes striking the puddles on the concrete. “I—I wanted to know if you’d like my number!”

He stares at her, expression unreadable, and Inko is prepared for the worst, prepared for the rejection, but she is pleasantly surprised when he answers in a smooth rumble. “I’d love your number.” His eyes flash teasingly. “Could I also have your name, too?”

She starts. “Oh, shit! Yes, that’s right. Sorry, I'm Inko!”

He shakes her hand, and she takes note of how large and warm his palm is, which causes her to shiver. The grooves of his hand fit into hers perfectly. “Hisashi,” he says, following her trend by giving his first name. “It’s lovely to meet you, Inko.”

Something about the way he says her name makes Inko hopeful. She gives him a scrap paper page with her number on it, wanting him to be the one responsible for texting first. She’s embarrassed of course, but now she feels a little more confident at least.

He takes it happily and is on his way, and Inko doesn’t think she’ll ever get that damn smile out of her mind.

That night, she dreams of him. The next night, too.

He doesn’t text her until a full week after the purse thief incident, and by then she’s already well into thinking she was rejected. He asks if she can join him on a date, and she happily obliges. She’s elated he didn’t forget about her! Inko can forgive the lateness if it means she has a chance.

And for one slicing second, alone on her bed, looking at his enthusiastic texts to her, only her, Inko is not lonely.

The first date is traditional. They meet up at a nice restaurant, and it’s wonderful, really. Inko doesn’t think she’s talked so much at once since, well, ever. He doesn’t seem lost for words, either, which only fuels Inko.

She never knew she had so many things to say.

The second date is more casual, and it happens the next day. Sitting together at a cafe and laughing over stories about work and life, teas and honey buns in hand, Inko finds herself already planning for next time.

They do every kind of date imaginable: they go to the park to walk around, they have a picnic, they go to an art and music festival, they paint ceramic mugs together, they go see some geeky old movie that Inko has been waiting to watch on opening night—they do everything.

And somehow, the spark doesn’t die out. It only grows. The heat within her is now a raging fire, a reflection of his overwhelming quirk. She feels fresh, she feels alive.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Inko forgets they’re dates at all. The more they see each other, the more it seems as though they’ve known each other forever, and the faster they move.

Inko doesn’t like to waste time. She’s glad Hisashi doesn’t either.

When she first told Mitsuki about Hisashi, Mitsuki was all for it. She was ecstatic, and she encouraged Inko to go for him and not let him go. But when they’re finally able to meet just over a month later, something changes.

The meeting itself goes great! They go on a double date to a local restaurant which also has a mini golf course in it. To Inko, at least, it seems like Hisashi hits it off immediately with Masaru and Mitsuki, but it isn’t until after that she’s told otherwise by her best friend. Mitsuki calls her the morning after and admits rather hesitantly that Hisashi felt off. When asked why she thought that, Mitsuki can’t provide Inko with a good reason. She doesn’t even have an example to give of something Hisashi did or said that could make her feel that way.

“It’s just a gut feeling,” Mitsuki says, her voice quiet, as if pleading to be heard and not taken the wrong way.

Inko isn’t sure what to say in response. She thinks she loves this man even though they’ve only known each other for just short of two months. They’ve gone on so many dates and they talk so often that Inko just can’t for the life of her understand why Mitsuki would feel this way. Inko is typically extraordinarily good at seeing through people’s bullshit, so she doesn’t think she’s blinded by her longing or emotions, but maybe, she reasons, just maybe I could be wrong. Maybe I’m just not seeing it.

So, fearing she may be making a mistake of some kind by being with that man, Inko listens to her best friend and pulls back after another couple of months pass with no change. Somehow it’s the hardest thing in the world for her to do.

Hisashi, as respectful as ever, notices her sudden distance and doesn’t push. He only waits. And this makes Inko want him more.

“He really makes you happy, huh?” Mitsuki says to her one day when they’re out together doing silly things.

Inko, busy scrolling through her old text messages with him, startles and shoves her phone back in her pocket. “Sorry, I was—”

“You don’t hafta apologize.” Mitsuki brushes back her spiky bangs and turns away. “And you know, you don’t have to stop seeing him because of me.”

Inko lurches forward. “No, it’s not because of that! I told you, I was just—just kinda losing feelings—”

Mitsuki waves her off. “Oh, bullshit. It’s obvious you’re still obsessed with him.” Her gaze flits away. “I shouldn’t’ve said anything to begin with. If I knew you’d drop him because of it, I wouldn’t have—”

“No,” Inko states firmly, grabbing her friend’s hand. “I care about what you have to say. I don’t want to be around someone that makes you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t like Masaru at first,” Mitsuki points out.

“That’s different! I thought he was—”

“Inko,” Mitsuki interrupts with an exasperated sigh. She twists to face her fully again, red eyes gleaming with intensity. “The point is, things’ll probably change. I told you how I felt about him after one interaction. I can’t judge someone based on that alone.”

“Yeah, but what about the other three times we all went out? How did you feel about him after those?” The blond only pops a brow and narrows her eyes, staying silent, which makes Inko cross her arms. “See? So you can’t say it was just a one time thing.”

“I think you care a little too much about what I—”

“You would’ve left Masaru if I didn’t eventually start liking him,” Inko says. “You can’t say anything about what I’m doing when you’d—”

“You’re losing weight again.”

Inko freezes. “What?”

“You look pale because you’re probably not eating as much of the healthy shit you used to, and you’re always so distracted. You’ve taken up more hours at work again and we barely talk.” Mitsuki presses a finger to her chest. “I’m not blind, ya know. When you started seeing him, it’s like you actually started to care about things again. But now that you’ve stopped, you’re going right back to shit.”

Inko’s shoulders rise defensively. “That’s not true. I’ve been—”

“Look, you still like him, and it’s not like he’s actually done anything wrong for me to doubt him. If being with him is what it takes for you to take care of yourself, I’ll support it with everything I’ve got.” She smirks when Inko doesn’t seem convinced. “And I can’t lie, y’all look good together. It’d be a shame to let such good genes go to waste.”

Inko rolls her eyes. “I’m trying to be serious with you.”

“I am serious,” Mitsuki reassures, and she playfully shoves Inko’s shoulder. “I want you to be happy. And if happiness is when you’re with him, so be it. I’ll still be here beside you.”

Here, Inko hesitates, torn between two sides. If there is one thing her mother taught her, it is that she should always, always trust her gut. Especially when it comes to men. But her mother never told her what to do when the gut feelings are coming from someone else, someone whom she trusts.

Mitsuki is not jealous, and she has no ulterior motives for telling Inko she is uncomfortable around Hisashi, so it’s not like she’s lying or making things up just to separate them. If the gut feeling is right, there must be something about Hisashi that is making Mitsuki’s internal alarm go off.

But what?

Inko thinks she loves this man, and though it wouldn’t have been easy, of course she would have stopped seeing Hisashi altogether if only to make Mitsuki worry even a little less. They’ve been best friends since forever—Inko can’t even remember when they met! They grew up nearly side by side, inseparable! She’d do anything for her.

But the problem is, Inko is so scared of her own bleak future that she does not see Mitsuki standing right in front of her with open arms, just as always, ready to catch her when she falls.

Without Hisashi, Inko will once more have to deal with that lonely, aching feeling inside her chest, and she will have to return to that empty apartment of hers again and again and again and again. She cannot bear it, not that she would have told Mitsuki this.

No, Inko would have killed herself quietly, little by little.

And so it is perhaps both a blessing and a curse when Inko asks with tears in her eyes, “Are you sure?”

Because Mitsuki only smiles again and seals Inko’s death warrant when she answers, regret already piercing her heart, “I always am.”

So, after a year of dating, Inko and Hisashi move in together. Living with him is so surreal, so impossibly perfect, that Inko does not notice him carving his name into her side. She calls him soft and gentle, and she is not paying attention.

The memories fly fast by this point. They are mere flashes of love and warmth, but Inko has no trouble keeping up.

Hisashi’s throat glows in the dim light of their shared room one night. He unhinges his jaws and allows for his firebreath to leave his mouth and settle on his hand. He holds it out to her, his gaze never leaving hers. “Alright, now focus on it. The trick is to visualize the entire thing as being smaller than it is. Feel the heat energy, and think only of that.”

Inko’s face screws up in concentration, and her fingers tingle when she activates her quirk. She does what he suggests and feels a slight tug, but the connection between her and the fire breaks soon after. It barely looks to have done anything at all.

“It’s one unit,” Hisashi adds, and he moves closer to her so he can move her hand himself. “Hold your fingers out like this instead. It might help your control.”

She swallows and tries again, pushing away her doubts. She’s never been able to manipulate any kind of liquid or gas before now, but Hisashi has convinced her that it can certainly be something she can learn. But this is a great challenge for her, as what’s more troubling is that fire is technically neither of those things: it’s a visible result of combustion between fuel and oxygen. So, while it’s impossible for someone like Inko to use her telekinesis on the fire itself like those with pyrokinesis can, she can potentially use it on the heat energy or the oxygen fueling the fire to either extinguish the flames or direct the movement of it.

“Get a little closer to it,” Hisashi says, moving her hand forward. He smiles. “The outer tips of my fire are rather cold, remember? It won’t burn you.”

It happens quickly, in the blink of an eye. The strings form, and it’s like something loosens inside of her. The fire jerks toward her, leaping off of his palm, and she moves away with a yelp, shocked. She ends up shoving herself against Hisashi’s side, who is laughing heartily now.

It’s the first time she manages to get it right, but it won’t be the last, because Hisashi loves helping her expand her skills. They work at it together happily over the course of a few months, and soon her control over his fire turns near master level.

“Imagine the shape you want, and let your palms do the talking for you,” he reminds her in a rumble, and Inko is in front of him now, already working on it.

With seemingly no effort, the fire contorts with its desire to follow the densified oxygen she’s moving around. A dragon appears out of the green, its tail swishing animatedly with how the flames crackle and flicker. It’s small, but the horns and wings are undeniable, and Inko lets out an unexpected laugh at the sight.

Hisashi does too. He flips his palm around so the dragon is prancing on the back of his hand, and the green glow lights up his face.

“You like it?” She asks teasingly.

“It’s perfect,” he says, and he’s only looking at her. She meets his eyes through the fire, and then her gaze falls to his lips. She stands up on her tiptoes, and he leans down to meet her halfway.

His lips feel like a home she doesn’t quite remember but ought to, like the stuffed animals that are shoved in the way back of her closet, the same ones she’s had since she was a little girl. Back when she used to hold them and love them each and every waking moment.

Hisashi is a busy man, but when he does have time alone with her, he makes it count, and she loves every minute of him.

He comes home bloody from work one time. She asks him about it, and he tells her that some idiot closed the door on him hard when he was about to leave. When she questions if the man apologized, he only chuckles, and she doesn’t know any better here, so she laughs with him.

He asks her a couple of times over the course of three or so years to get married, and she denies him each time. It’s not because she doesn’t love him but rather because she loves him almost too much that she hesitates for so long. It’s just too good to be true and everyone knows it. Mitsuki, despite staying true to her word and supporting Inko and Hisashi’s relationship as much as she can, tells her to keep waiting, to keep figuring things out.

Just in case.

So again, Inko waits. But she can only deny herself for so long.

When Hisashi asks her again, she accepts. They get married in the winter following the engagement. He likes the cold, and Inko really doesn’t mind it because he makes her warm no matter what the season is.

It’s snowing on their wedding day. The sun isn’t out, and to Inko, everything is much more beautiful covered in powdery white. Things appear so sharp and real.

She takes his last name, and finally things make sense.

She stirs awake to the feeling of him getting out of bed. She’s tired, but she actually has the day off today. He’s been encouraging her to stand up for herself at work and not be afraid to use her days off. She used to feel bad about ignoring calls to come in, but nowadays she doesn’t.

It’s nice to not have to worry about needing the extra cash, too.

In all senses, she should be sleeping in, but instead she blinks the blurriness from her eyes and watches him. It’s early in the morning. The sun hasn’t even risen.

A light glow permeates around his large figure like an ethereal outline. It’s soft enough that it wouldn’t have woken her if she was still asleep. It’s a product of his fire breath, he once told her when she asked about it. He uses it as a way to see in the dark.

The covers slip off of him, revealing wide shoulders and muscled back. Thin white scars litter his skin, and Inko wonders what she did to deserve to be with someone so perfect.

He senses her staring and turns with a raise of one brow. “Didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, and he leans over to plant a kiss on her nose. “Go back to sleep.”

“You didn’t wake me,” she whispers, sitting up. The covers slip off her too, and Hisashi’s eyes travel down her body in a similar fashion to how Inko’s are to him.

“Oh,” he says then, grinning cheekily, “so I obviously didn’t tire you out enough then.”

She laughs and scolds him for the comment, slapping his shoulder. It’s firm, and she lets her hand linger on the muscle for a few moments more. He uses the opportunity to take her palm and kiss the center of it. The touch sends tingles down her spine, and she shivers. She swears she’ll never get used to it.

“I wish you could stay for longer,” she says breathily, sinking back into the mattress with exhaustion pulling at her. She doesn’t know when the last time Hisashi was able to sleep in with her was. She usually wakes up in the morning for work and finds him gone.

Although he does make up for it with flowers and gifts and all the love she could ever imagine.

He sighs at her words and sits back down. Inko wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to continue talking with her, that he can start getting ready for work by first putting his clothes on—he must certainly be cold—but he speaks before she can get the chance. “I know. Believe me, I do as well. But I work this hard now so that in the future we’ll have more time together than we’ll know what to do with.” He cranes his neck to present her with a warm smile. “We could do anything, anything you want. And we’ll have it all.”

She smiles back at him, and she doesn’t doubt it for a second.

Inko is reaching into the fridge to get something when he walks behind her after coming home early from work one day in December. He presses himself against her, resting his chin on the top of her head, and wraps his arms around her. His hands settle on her stomach, just keeping her close, and she relaxes into him, drinking in the smell of his light Givenchy cologne. It’s an old scent, but she likes it a lot. It always makes him smell so fresh.

She tips her head, and she catches their reflection in the mirror hanging by the dining table. He’s looking at them too, seemingly deep in thought, but then his gaze meets hers and he flashes those whites.

Here, in the quiet of their humble apartment, Inko can’t remember how she used to live before meeting him.

It’s not until a couple of weeks later that she finds out she’s pregnant. She’s always had medical troubles, so it wasn’t obvious to her at first that the seemingly minor issues she was having the few weeks before were actually due to pregnancy.

She was scared—no, downright terrified. It's not like it was planned! Sure, they’re usually safe, but they didn’t take every precaution available, and sometimes she wanted him to—

The point is, she didn’t expect it when she saw the second line slowly appear on the pregnancy test that Mitsuki insisted she try. Her heart dropped to her toes, and she was frozen on that cold toilet seat, not sure what to think. She was there for hours, her head in her hands, legs shaking.

She and Hisashi have never really brought up the topic of children before. It just never came up. She knows Hisashi is good with kids, at least as far as she can tell, but he’s never come off as the fatherly type to her—just as how Inko wouldn’t consider herself the motherly type.

So, she keeps it from him for another few days until she’s absolutely sure. She takes three more tests during that time, and at that point there is no denying it.

She can’t delude herself any longer.

She works up her courage after dinner once Hisashi comes back inside after a break for fresh air on their balcony. He takes them a lot more often these days, but she can’t say she doesn’t blame him.

She doesn’t know how to say it, if there even is a good way to bring it up, so she doesn’t waste effort in putting together a little surprise or anything. Mitsuki did that to Masaru when she found out she was pregnant a few months back, but Inko isn’t so sure it would be well received for her if she did it to Hisashi.

What if he adamantly refuses to have this baby with her? Her doctor told her on the phone that she must be at least six weeks in already if her symptoms have anything to say about it. She has an appointment next week for the confirmation and initial prenatal visit, and she’s anxious beyond belief.

If Hisashi is upset, what will she do? He’s never been anything other than supportive of her, so she knows that, logically, she shouldn’t be scared, but this is about a baby!

They’re both relatively young. They’re stable, they have nice jobs, a nice apartment, and they’re even married! They could have a child, but do they want one?

Should they have one?

She’s so consumed by these thoughts that when Hisashi puts his hand on her shoulder and asks if she’s alright, she just blurts it out: those two words. She must be hard to understand at first, because Hisashi says nothing for a moment, so Inko reaches behind herself to grab the little box of her cleaned tests to hand to him. She’s shaking so badly she nearly drops it, but Hisashi takes it from her before she can.

“You’re pregnant,” he states, and there’s something about the way he says it—so normally, so nonchalantly—that makes Inko pause.

She swallows. “Yes.” Hisashi’s facial expression doesn’t change, and he honestly doesn’t look perturbed at all. This makes her heart beat fast out of her chest. “Did you… Did you already know?”

He carefully sets the box back on the table. “You’ve been acting differently the last few weeks,” is all he says, the ghost of a smile flitting across his face. “And you know how well I can sense things.”

These words cause Inko to deflate. She sits down and presses a hand to her forehead, relieved that Hisashi doesn’t seem to be angry or worried.

“Are you happy about this?” Hisashi asks, a note of caution in his voice when he kneels to look her in the eye.

“I don’t know,” she rasps. “Are you?”

He holds her hands tight, but never to the point of pain. “Of course I’m happy. But only if you want to do this.”

She wipes her eyes, feeling a sob bubble up in her throat. “I thought you said kids can be too much for you sometimes.”

“Not if it’s yours,” he whispers, and his hands are on her cheeks now, making her look at him. “I’d love anything if it’s ours.”

His promise, his burning intensity, melts away nearly all of her fears. She’s never entertained the idea of being a mother before, but having Hisashi beside her makes her feel as though she was always meant to do this. Only with him. Only now.

She doesn’t see the warning signs. She doesn’t notice the slight edge to his voice, the high-pitched sound ringing faintly in her ears.

They talk it over a few more times over the next week, and Inko finds that she is okay with it. She’s more than okay. She’s happy and so, so excited.

She can’t wait to tell Mitsuki that, if things go right, their kids will grow up together just like they did.

The next month passes by quickly, and Inko is only allowed glimpses of it using Mukawa’s quirk.

New technology allows Inko to find out the gender of the baby at only three months: a boy.

Hisashi is ecstatic, of course. Inko is, too, especially since Mitsuki’s little baby boy, Katsuki, is set to be due soon. Everything is falling into place.

Inko never imagined it could all crumble so fast.

One evening, Hisashi has a small, bloody scar on his forehead when he arrives home. Inko is confused, her lips pushing up into a frown while she chops up vegetables for an easy stew. “What happened? Another door slammer?”

“You can say that.”

“Tell me the guy actually apologized this time around?” She says, rolling her eyes playfully.

Hisashi hasn’t taken his coat off yet, and he’s still in his work shoes. His words, usually light or full of mirth, are uncharacteristically blunt and almost sharp. “Not at first.”

“Oh, yeah?” She teases, eyes twinkling with mischief. “What did you do to him? Give him a lecture?”

“I killed him.”

She snorts and shakes her head, waving away the obvious joke. “Honestly, with how rude everyone is these days, I wouldn’t blame you for scolding him. Someone has to do it to teach these people how to be polite—especially in the workplace. I swear, my job just keeps hiring the most awful people ever. The trainees were so rude to me today.”

She laughs at herself and flips one of the fried fish sandwiches she’s making. Her cravings have been driving her crazy! She puts it on a plate and moves to hand it to him, happy that he came home in time for a hot snack–only to see he hasn’t moved from the mouth of the kitchen. He’s staring at her belly, eyes dark.

She blinks, the plate heating up in her swollen hands. “Babe, you okay?” His eyes flick up, and his hollow expression scares her for a moment. She flinches, concerned more than she is confused now. She sets the plate off to the side. “Did you get your head checked out? You might have a concussion. You know, you always go on about how strong you are, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get hurt.”

One of his hands lifts, and she notices just how red and irritated it looks. His pale skin, usually unblemished, is now covered in welts and… and dried blood.

She takes hold of his large wrist, worry settling into her stomach. Her abdomen aches, but her pain is forgotten with the situation at hand. “You should’ve at least washed your hands before leaving work! How many things have you touched on the way–”

His other hand rests over hers and brings it up to kiss her knuckles, cutting off her words. The casual intimate affection isn’t new, but the look on his face is. “I wasn’t joking,” he says, and the words have a kind of melancholic hum to them.

“What?” She asks, not liking the sudden dip in temperature around them. She steps back to continue watching the other fish frying on the stove, slapping his shoulder softly. “If this is another prank of yours, I’m—”

“Sweetheart,” he interrupts, which is so unlike him that Inko finds herself shutting up immediately. “I killed him.”

Looking back at this moment seems easier from an outsider’s perspective. Here, Inko is not inside of her body. She is an onlooker. She stands between Hisashi and her younger self, entirely invisible, frozen, and so, so broken.

The sting of betrayal would be harmless if it killed the love along with it, but it’s never that easy. Even now, for the current Inko, there may still be some deposits of love inside her with her wretched husband’s fake name on it. Even now, rewatching everything through someone else’s eyes, through wiser eyes, Inko doesn’t blame herself for not believing Hisashi at first.

Who would? Why would she think he’s not just pulling her leg? He always loved his jokes. How could this have been any different? God, she didn’t want it to be any different.

She stares at Hisashi here, open-mouthed, confused. She’s drawn tight between trust and devastation, not knowing which way to turn.

How could such horrid words come from such a soft mouth?

“He didn’t slam the door on me,” Hisashi adds almost as an afterthought. “He actually didn’t do anything to me at all.”

She hesitates before laughing, and it sounds dull to the ear. “What are you talking about? You really did hit your head hard or something to be talking like—”

Inko’s hair lifts off her shoulders, and she sucks in a breath at the exact moment that white electricity erupts from Hisashi’s index finger. She can feel the heated energy even from her spot five feet away, and it’s so intense that she falls backward in her haste to get away from it. But something invisible pushes her back upright from behind, and her wild eyes find Hisashi again once she straightens against the counter, realizing that he had his hand out in a gesture.

“How—How did you—” Her realization is a sucker punch to the throat. All of the puzzle pieces from before click into place: the long hours away from home, the random, frequent business trips, the occasional blood she’d see or smell on his clothes, the glow around his body at night, the enhanced senses, his nearly inhuman strength—and now all of this? They were all things that didn’t seem that important by themselves, but now that she’s looking at them altogether, Inko feels incredibly stupid.

Because there is no way that all of the abilities Hisashi is showing are a side effect of his fire breath. Are these… multiple quirks?

He reads her mind. “I wanted the power he had,” Hisashi states, bringing the electricity back to his palm where he clenches his fist and snuffs it out. “So, I took it. There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“You took it?” She repeats, and it’s as though Inko can physically feel the delicate pieces of herself begin to break away and fall to the occupied space of her abdomen.

“I killed him for it.”

Inko’s mouth opens and closes like a broken hinge. Why? She wants to ask, but she isn’t quite ready to even accept his confession. If she asks why, that would mean she believes it. That would mean that this house, this life of theirs, and everything they’ve made together, will have to end.

Despite her refusal, their years of love are forgotten, all in one dreadful moment.

Hisashi must know this, too, must have foreseen this happening, for he lets out a quiet little breath and looks to the ceiling. “It isn’t my intention to make you upset. I only want to be truthful.”

“Truthful? How is this—?” She pulls away from him when he reaches for her, and her back is against the kitchen wall now, blocking out the warm light coming in from the window. “Where did this come from?”

Please, she thinks instead, tell me this is a stupid joke. Tell me you haven’t been doing this since we first met. Tell me that this wasn’t all a lie. Tell me we can still have each other.

Who is this monster standing before her? This is not her husband. Her husband wouldn’t be able to do any of the atrocities Hisashi admits to committing in the minutes of silence spanning between them. He shouldn’t be able to.

Her husband’s name is Midoriya. It is not Shigaraki. Her husband has the ability to spew firebreath. He should not be able to give and take other people’s quirks at will. No, her husband is not like this. This is not him, surely.

Inko does not remember the rest of that day. Her mind must have blocked it out entirely, and unfortunately the memories cannot be retrieved even with Mukawa’s quirk.

Her brain needed to protect her, it needed to keep her safe so she could take care of her baby, so it blocked out the way she stood there, frozen, disbelieving at first, confused and scared and everything in between.

She was waiting for an explanation that would eventually come—one she would regret asking for in many ways.

Somewhere in the midst of the smoke in her mind, Hisashi says something about loving her, about wanting to keep her safe. He wanted to spare her from what he was planning to do in the future. He says that he’ll make her his without question, without hesitation, if she’d still have him.

She can’t even respond. Are there words in any of the known languages that could possibly convey what she is feeling?

Inko wants him out more and more as he explains who he is in ways she doesn’t appreciate.

He tells her, somewhere in the middle of his traitorous explanations, that he has a kid, and she feels this weird pang in her chest when he says it, because this is the first she’s hearing of it, and God, was he ever really in love with her at all? Was any of it ever real?

How is it that Hisashi could tell her all the reasons to love herself but then show her why she shouldn’t? She’d like to say she felt nothing after this point, but that wouldn’t be quite true. If she felt nothing, why would she be shaking so badly?

Oh, how many times has he touched her body with hands that were stained with someone else’s blood just minutes before? How many?

Inko presses her nails into her skin, her tears working to blur the image that is Hisashi’s sad, sad expression in front of her.

He talks to her, and she listens, though she doesn’t want to. It is unbearable to hear of all the things he’s done and plans to do. It is shameful, it is heart wrenching, and she should scream. She should yell at him, lose her shit, maybe cry more, do something, anything. But she doesn’t.

Midoriya Inko—and what a godawful name that is now—only sinks to the floor on her legs, one hand on the cabinets beside her and the other on her stomach.

Her thoughts collect dust like the feelings she once had.

Inko does not have to ask for Hisashi to leave. He does it himself. He is quiet still, nearly apologetic, but not once do the words I’m sorry actually leave his lips. It is fine, she did not want an apology anyway. Not from him. Not from anyone.

He tells her before leaving their apartment that he already knew how this would end—he knew it from the beginning. But he was just so infatuated with her, so in love, that for the first time in three centuries… he had forgotten what his plan was.

As unbelievable as it sounds, Inko—tragic, young, mortal Inko—threw the devil off of his course.

If only for a few years. If only for a small stretch of time.

It wasn’t enough for Inko, and that’s the selfish part. Could he have hidden it a little longer? Could he have let her live a lie for just a couple more years? What would’ve been so hard about that? It would’ve been for their son, for her, for them.

Inko would’ve done anything if it meant Hisashi had never told her the truth, if they could live their false reality for a little while longer at least.

In the years where Hisashi was hers, Inko thought they were infinite. She guesses it was her fault for believing those childish thoughts of hers.

That is not the last time they see each other. For the next week following the first confession, he returns to her for a few hours each day, late at night, in attempts to soothe her.

She cannot call the police, as she knows it would be in vain. Hisashi told her himself too.

Besides, he’s never actually physically hurt her before. Even now, he keeps his hands to himself.

He explains to Inko that he came out with the truth so abruptly because he didn’t want to hurt her anymore than he already had. He felt guilty when she became pregnant, and he claimed he couldn’t bear to let her raise their son with him without knowing who he really was. When Inko doesn’t reply or say a goddamn word, he accepts it.

He doesn’t argue. He only says he’ll always be available for her if she ever needs him again, and that he wishes things could’ve been different for them.

Why are you the one leaving? Inko remembers thinking to herself those nights after he left, her blood boiling and her teeth shattered. Why couldn’t I have left sooner? Why did I ever stick with you? God, it’d be so much easier to leave than be the one left behind.

They don’t divorce, although she does try—multiple times. He manages to block all advances, however, as he is adamant she will need the financial support once she gets into the later months with the baby. She doesn’t want his bloody money, but he says to take it to save up for Izuku, and so Inko does.

They’re legally together, sure. But personally? Emotionally? To Inko, they are anything but.

Five nights after that horrible day, Hisashi visits her for what she thinks is the final time. He will not talk to her again in person for years, though she doesn’t know this then.

This time, he is not alone.

Inko stares into the red eyes of a small boy, maybe four or five years old. He has curly white hair, much like Hisashi, and a small mole on the right side of his bottom lip. Hiding some ways behind Hisashi’s tall legs, the child peeks out at her a few times in curiosity.

“Tomura,” Hisashi prompts, “say hello.”

As Inko stares, horror spreading all across her skin, the young boy creeps out, his gloved hands kept to himself.

He looks so defeated, so lost, that Inko has to turn her entire body away so Tomura—and what a horrible name for such a young, innocent child, Inko thinks bitterly—won’t see her tears. She puts her hand over her face, shivers wracking her entire body,

“Hi,” the little boy mumbles behind her, and when she turns back around, hot tears streaming down her face, he’s not looking at her. He’s shifting on his tiny feet, eyes dull and skin flaky.

There are bruises on his face and scarring around his eyes, and Inko’s heart clenches.

She meets Hisashi’s eyes above the little boy’s matted hair, fists clenched by her side. Did you do this? She wants to accuse. Is this all of your doing? He looks just like you. You can’t tell me it was just a coincidence.

But what comes out instead is: “He’s yours?”

The words are almost mean. Almost.

“Now he is,” Hisashi answers, all buttery smoothness. “His quirk’s first activation ended in an unfortunate tragedy, so he lives with me now.” His red eyes pierce through Inko. “I’m the only one he can’t hurt. You must understand this was a necessity.”

Why is he defending himself? Why is he even bothering with this?

Why show her?

She kneels and very carefully takes Tomura’s cheeks between her hands. He doesn’t try to pull away even though he flinches. Hisashi’s leg is pressed against his back, keeping him there, and Tomura’s face softens substantially at her touch.

His eyes close, and Inko focuses on his long, dark eyelashes. Beneath the bruises, she can see fresh, angry red scratches all over his face, no doubt from clawing fingernails.

And in this split second, Inko sees a life they could’ve had somewhere, sometime that is not now, that is not within her grasp. She is holding Tomura’s hand, leading him happily through some festival in traditional clothing. Beside them, Hisashi has Izuku hoisted up on his shoulders, and the boy is beaming brightly.

Why couldn’t it be this simple? Why did Hisashi have to be who he was? She still, to this day, can’t make sense of any of it.

Tomura’s mere existence nauseates her, and yet she wants to keep him. She almost wants to ask. Just let me have him, she’d say. Let me have this boy and Izuku, and I’ll never ask for anything else. I’ll have him if you’ll leave us alone. Please.

But All for One’s hold on Tomura is tight, even then. And Inko is so fucking sorry to be the one on the sidelines, unable to do anything.

If she fights against Hisashi, would it put Izuku at risk? It would certainly put Tomura in danger. How many would die if she went for help? How many heroes would she sacrifice needlessly? If she keeps quiet, it will save Izuku. She knows it will.

Her silence will kill so many more, however, and this is a fact. But that will have to be fine with Inko.

For the remainder of her pregnancy, she is almost always with Mitsuki or Masaru. She helps Mitsuki with her postpartum struggles, and she loves baby Katsuki as if he were her own. Because, in some ways, he is.

As she nears the end, she began to think more and more about everything. It is getting darker earlier, and her bones are shuttering like blinds on a window inside her. She only wanted to be someone who was easy to love, but now she is barely someone. It was all working out until it wasn’t, until the sparks died out and the cold returned with a vengeance.

She hasn’t been able to convince anyone she’s in this life for the long haul.

“You’ll be fine,” Mitsuki promises one time when Inko is at her house, and she’s holding Inko’s face with strong hands. “Trust me. Just stay by us, and you can get through all of it.”

And Inko wishes she could say that she wants to stay and mean it. She wishes she could want to stay.

She thinks entirely too much on what their relationship was like. She tries to see what she missed. All those times he was away, out on a quick business trip—he was out killing. He was hunting for quirks. That’s what.

It was her fault. She was a participant despite her not knowing.

Whenever she remembers his face, he looks different. Each time, she can’t seem to remember him accurately. His red eyes don’t look like roses anymore. They look like the blood dripping down her palms on the days where her nails dig in too deep. His soft smile holds no warmth. She only notices the sharp lines formed from the action, the leery glint to his eye that accompanies it.

Inko obsesses over it.

The worst part is that she can’t tell Mitsuki any of this. No one knows why they broke apart. Only that Midoriya Hisashi lied to her about something, and so Inko had to leave. She never tells a soul about what really happened.

And that is something she will take to her unfortunate grave.

If she tells anyone, especially someone like Mitsuki, she is nearly positive that they’d be hurt. He already warned her that if she did so, they’d only get in the way, and he’d have to remove them. The meaning was clear then, and it still is.

Inko loathes herself the entire time. She hates herself for bringing a kid into the world with the blood of a very real monster. But maybe it was fitting, she thinks. She couldn’t have borne anything else.

But when little Izuku arrives, Inko thinks differently. She cried every day the last few months of her pregnancy, thinking she would have the boy and not love him. That she’d turn out just like Hisashi and lie to him his entire life, making him think she loved him when she didn’t.

She was wrong. She does love him. By God, does she. After Mitsuki helps her through the difficult hours of labor, she holds her son close to her chest in that hospital and gives him the name his father picked out—the last thing Inko ever promised Midoriya Hisashi.

Although it’s not like she had any choice in the matter.

Midoriya Izuku was never supposed to be born. All for One was never supposed to have a kid. There is a cyclone raging outside during the time of his birth, and she knows the storm is the world rejecting him entirely, but she doesn’t care then, because soon after, Izuku’s eyes open, and they’re a striking green, not red. They’re green, God, the most beautiful green, and from then she knew that her son was hers only. He’s Inko’s, not Hisashi’s, and she is going to protect and love this boy until her very last breath.

She swears on it, right there in that hospital bed, covered in her own blood and sweat.

She will never, ever let him go.

As the months pass, Inko’s love for him only grows. She loves her son so much she thinks that maybe she never really loved Hisashi at all. Because she never loved him as deeply as she loves this boy. Has she just forgotten what it felt like to love that man? Or was she always blinded, just as Mitsuki may have feared?

Mukawa’s quirk extends deeper, showing Inko more of the kindest memories she has of her and Izuku. She can scarcely believe she managed to forget those first wonderful, wonderful four years of his life.

They’re walking around the city, and Izuku is swinging his arm back and forth as he walks close by Inko’s side. A white moth flutters in front of him, and he points at it with a gasp. Inko smiles down at him, not wanting for him to ever grow out of this curious phase of his. She takes him to work with her sometimes, and her coworkers are nice enough to watch him whenever she’s not around. They play little games with him, and Inko used to feel bad about asking them to babysit even if it was for only a few minutes at a time, but they say they don’t mind. He’s so smart, even for his age. He’s just so, so intelligent and caring.

Inko is so lucky.

But there’s a weight at the back of her mind even then. How could there not be? She prayed for Izuku to be quirkless. Prayed because it would be better for him to have no power at all instead of having a quirk like his father’s.

What are the chances he gets something like her telekinesis? Inko goes to three different quirk specialists to ask for an opinion, and they have no answer for her.

It’s a waiting game, and this is perhaps the moment when she starts to slowly lose herself. It begins small. Only a few bits of her fade away at a time. They get lost to the wind, never to be regained. Eventually, the rate at which things leave her will increase, and it will prove to be inescapable.

She just wants to protect him. She wants to raise Izuku in some semblance of normalcy. She rarely mentions his father to him, but when he asks, it’s hard to ignore it. So, she tells him the truth.

Inko tells him the good things. She speaks of his manners, of the roses he’d always bring back to her, of his smile, his kindness, his curly hair that he passed on down to Izuku—she speaks of the Midoriya Hisashi she thought she knew and loved.

And she says nothing more. She feels bad for leaving everything else out, but he’s only a child. He won’t be able to understand the kind of horrors his father was capable of. He shouldn’t understand. So, she shoulders the burden. She buries it inside and feels guilt stab at her every second of every day.

What is he doing now? She wonders sometimes. Killing? Planning more vicious traps for heroes?

But that is not her responsibility, bitterly enough. Izuku is here beside her, unscathed, and nothing else matters.

She lets it all happen, and she remains quiet, aware but unaware.

Inko, selflessly or selfishly—she doesn’t know the difference anymore—puts her little boy, so young and beautiful and kind, above the rest of the world.

She prioritizes him over the safety of everyone else. Izuku comes first. Everything else is secondary. She will take the punishment for her crimes as long as her son is alive and loved. That's all she has ever wanted since Hisashi left.

When Izuku is three, Inko begins to calm down just a little. Most children his age have their quirks by now, but Izuku doesn’t. Is it horrible of her to wish he’ll never activate one at all?

Katsuki develops his quirk, a perfect mixture of his parents’ powers, and of course Inko is excited for him—of course she’s proud.

She hides her fear when she’s around him. She’s not scared of her nephew. She’s scared of the truth he represents, because sure, Inko feared that Izuku would develop Hisashi’s quirk, but she never thought about what would happen if he got a mixture of her telekinesis and All for One.

Would Hisashi really stay away then?

Raising a boy as intelligent and sweet as Izuku proves to be the most difficult thing she’s ever done. It’s rewarding, though. That’s the weird thing about being a mother: you’re the happiest you’ve ever been, but you’ll never be happy again.

And when Izuku’s quirk manifests fully the night of his fourth birthday, Inko’s nightmares become reality. The pit in her stomach returns—a reminder of the lies she’s been feeding her son for breakfast every day of his life. How could she think she could run from it? How naive was she? Of course Izuku is hers, that will never change, but he is also his father’s. And that monster of a man left his mark on both of them by giving Izuku the gene he needed to get his quirk.

When his arms wrap around her neck in a hug, his palms pressing against the side of her throat, Inko experiences pain like no other. It’s an electric wire shooting straight through her body. She doesn’t even feel it at first. She sees the blood spurting out first, sees it arc in the air and ruin one of the pictures on the wall. It gets in Izuku’s hair, soaks both of their clothes, and that’s when Inko burns.

Her screaming alerts the neighbors, and when the ambulance arrives, she makes sure to shield her baby as much as possible.

They can’t know. They can never know what he did to her.

Even when she’s lying on the dining room floor, twitching and writhing in shock as the blood continues to pour out of her neck, with Izuku wailing and kneeling down right beside her, shaking her—Inko knows that she has to hide him. She has to protect him.

And so, on record, the events of that night are chalked up to a quirk accident on her behalf. She used her telekinesis too much, and she accidentally split her skin open, resulting in the gaping wounds. It’s believable enough. No one bats an eye.

Who would think that a four-year-old could do so much damage anyway?

Izuku cries the entire time in the hospital. Inko shushes him when she comes to, forcing him to keep quiet about what happened.

And if she’s crying too, she hopes this is something Izuku will never have to remember.

But then her little boy puts his chin on the edge of her hospital bed and says with an achy, tremory voice: “I’m sorry, Mommy, I have it. Mommy, I have it.”

He has it.

Somehow she knew this already, as of course she felt the absence of her quirk before this conversation, but she just didn’t want to believe it just yet.

She pulls him up to sit beside her, and she holds him close, her bandages crinkling on her neck. “I know, baby, I know. It’s okay. I’m not mad. I’m not mad.”

Izuku didn't know any better, but at this moment it is a little hard for Inko to control her anger. She hates Hisashi more than anything now. Before, maybe there was something inside her that still longed for him, that still loved the part of him he created just for her.

But now it is gone alongside her quirk. And, by God, she is so angry at the world. And her son, her poor baby, sees her anger and thinks it’s because of him. And in a way he’s right, but Inko could never blame him for existing. She could never blame him for just wanting to hold her.

She only has herself to blame. For everything.

She tries her best to keep her emotions in check in the months following the incident. Izuku is so hyper-aware of any and all emotions that he can tell she’s struggling despite Inko’s best attempts to hide it.

He takes it all on himself even at the young age of four years old.

Her life is divided into two parts now: the before and after. She can’t tell which is worse, but what she does know is that her paranoia will be the death of her one of these days.

She flinches when Izuku gets close too suddenly, her skin tingling in preparation for pain, and her heart breaks anew upon seeing the way he moves back, hurt flashing across his expression. She avoids him sometimes without meaning to.

He will come out of his room in the mornings to tell her something, but she is in her bedroom with the door closed.

She must really be losing her mind here. She allowed herself to believe she could stand tall in something that’s sinking without going under.

And that was too big of an order.

Losing a quirk is trivial to losing a child. That’s what Inko repeats to herself on the days where her skin feels wrong. Like it belongs to someone else. Something else.

To make matters worse, Hisashi is still there: ready and waiting on the sidelines. He has been sending her money monthly ever since their separation, just as he said he would, along with flowers on her birthday and their anniversary. There is never a card, nor a note.

On Izuku’s first day of school, though, a few months before he turns five, she receives a small package at her doorstep.

They’re emerald earrings. Gorgeous. Expensive. They dangle around a quarter of an inch from her earlobes, and Inko isn’t sure what to think.

Inscribed in tiny writing on the side is the character for beautiful.

The shadows become even darker after this day, and she just can’t keep it together. He is haunting her every path, her every waking moment. Izuku cries to her some nights about these urges that he gets. He can feel his classmates’ quirks, and it scares him. It scares him because his body urges him to get a closer look while his mind works to convince him to take them all for himself.

Fear grips him in icy talons, refusing to let him go, and how can Inko ever pretend to be able to help with that?

“I don’t wanna hurt ‘em,” he cries into her chest after a school day. “What if I hurt ‘em like I hurt you?”

And she holds him tight again, unable to find the words. She feels the absence of her quirk every day. It’s something she will likely never get used to, but that’s fine. It isn’t something crucial to her life. And it’s not like it’s gone. It’s with her son.

Why would she hate that?

She doesn’t know how to help him. His palms itch terribly, and he creates wounds at the center of them by scratching so much. No creams or steroids help, and no doctor can give her a good referral. She has to force him to wear goddamn gloves to stop the constant fresh scabs.

And maybe, deep down, she also does it because she too is scared he might hurt his classmates the same way he did her.

If he did that? There’d be no more hiding. The world would know that Midoriya Izuku, her son, her kind and smart and loving little boy, has the power of living gods.

Would they take him away? Lock him up? Plaster his name on the news? Hisashi told her all of these things were possibilities. He warned her. Specifically, he said that those were all possibilities only if she didn’t come to him.

So, pushing away her feelings and thinking only of her baby, Midoriya Inko goes to see All for One.

She doesn’t need to send a note. She simply walks to the place they frequented for date nights all those years ago. The sun is setting, and the cold is settling in. Izuku is at Mitsuki’s for the night, so she doesn’t have to worry about where he is.

And Hisashi is there as surely as the sun rises each morning.

By God, he is as beautiful as the day Inko made him leave. For all of his crimes, his lies, his horrifying ideals and plans—he was and still is stunning. He has always been unequivocally handsome.

His red eyes paired with that stark white hair—white like the freshly fallen snow around them—makes him near ethereal. His large build, long eyelashes, square jaw, and perfect lips are telling of an angel in disguise.

She does not smile upon noting these things this time around, however. She only stares, already beginning to shake. A white moth settles on a cherry blossom tree above them, watching quietly.

She swallows hard, now ten feet away from her ex-husband—if she can even call him that—and asks him a simple question: how? How does she help Izuku? How does she raise a boy with a quirk like his? How does she help him deal with the urges? She’s certain Hisashi must get them, too. So, how? How does he not grow crazy?

And Hisashi, to his credit, answers, his voice a soothing rumble. He answers each question about his quirk with incredible detail. He gives her every possible scenario she may come across with Izuku figuring himself out and testing the limits of what he can do. He tells her how to protect him, and the entire time—for maybe eight minutes—Hisashi is unfaltering. He is not shivering. He never shivers as he is never cold with her temperature regulation quirk.

This makes Inko more bitter, since she certainly is. Her jacket isn’t enough, and Hisashi moves to help her with green fire in his hand to warm her. Unthinking, Inko slaps the hand away when he gets too close and immediately freezes. The touch between them felt like static, and it’s like something switched in her brain.

Here, in the middle of a beautiful vacant park, Inko is terrified without reason. This is a monster who has lived in a human’s skin for centuries. Why did she think she could touch him now? Why did she still trust him enough to do that?

Hisashi has never laid a hand on her, though, and he doesn’t now. The green fire dissipates, and his hand is placed inside his jacket pocket. He is smiling softly at her. There is so much adoration in his eyes that it makes Inko feel sick.

Was I always just a pet to you? Something you could use whenever you needed to relax?

With these thoughts banging around inside her skull, Inko attempts to leave, but his gentle voice stops her. He says her name, and her eyes go to the bustling streets in the distance. Do they know? Do any of them know that she is dealing with the goddamned devil right now?

Or is it all in her fucking head like the monsters who follow her around wherever she goes?

“Can you bring him to me?” The question makes her look back at him. He brings a hand up to smooth back his hair, and it almost looks anxious, but he is surely anything but. “I want to see him.”

She’s sure he’s lying. He’s already seen her son, most likely. And that’s something that nearly paralyzes Inko with fear every day. At school, at Mitsuki’s, at the park, at her job, anywhere, Hisashi could have eyes on Izuku. And she’d be none the wiser. No one would notice, no one would bat an eye.

There have been days where she swears she felt his presence, where she swears she heard that deep voice or saw a glimpse in the distance of curly white hair.

Hisashi is so strong he could certainly keep tabs on them without effort, without her permission, but she plays along anyway, because the question has opened up something else inside her. “Why do you care?”

“He is my son.”

Her throat closes, and her shivering worsens. “And I was your wife.”

“Yes, and I loved you enough to tell you the truth, my dear.” Hisashi’s head tips forward, eyes piercing into hers. “I will always care for you. That will never change.”

She looks away again, her vision swimming. The pet name—something she would normally enjoy coming from Hisashi’s lips—now makes her feel disgusting and used.

She clutches her jacket and purse even tighter. No, she thinks bitterly, if you really cared about me at all, you would’ve left me alone from the very start.

But she does not voice these feelings. Instead, she takes a deep, shuddering breath before speaking. “If you ever come near Izuku, if you ever try to take him or—or hurt him,” she says, fresh tears frozen to red cheeks, “you’ll lose both of us. I—I promise you.”

The words have a similar cadence to a law. The meaning is clear between them without her having to outright say it: she will kill Izuku and herself before she’d ever let Izuku become his next pet, his next weapon. Yes, Izuku is his father’s, he is also hers and it’s her fault he has to live this life in fear to begin with. It sounds selfish, immoral, and all the other nasty things you can think of. And it is, truthfully. But Inko knows now with absolute certainty that there is no force in the universe capable of stopping Hisashi from using their son for his quirk or whatever other monstrous plans he has.

He has been showing great mercy by allowing her to raise Izuku uninterrupted so far, and he’s done good on his promise not to hurt the people close to her, but for how long will that last? Inko has not rested for a moment ever since that day.

Most heroes would be useless against him. She’s seen it firsthand—even All Might might not be enough.

So who is standing between Hisashi and Izuku? Inko is, but she knows she will never last.

The only thing she could possibly do to save Izuku from that kind of life is kill him herself. And without him beside her, she has no point to live, so, naturally, she will follow.

With these promises eating away at her, Inko leaves, and Hisashi does not follow.

The shadows taunt her in the weeks following their last meeting. Izuku’s fifth birthday comes and goes. She tries to be happy, she tries to make it special, but Izuku doesn’t smile, as he remembers his fourth birthday.

When was the last time he smiled brightly? Only at Mitsuki’s house. Only with little Katsuki.

Inko is failing him. And this realization invokes a new kind of mania within her.

The shadows begin to speak directly to her. They grow more real with each passing day. They jeer and taunt, blotting out the light. She sees Hisashi—or what was Hisashi, once—everywhere. At every corner, in every window, standing behind her when she looks in the mirror.

Hisashi. Is. In. Everything. But the worst part is? He isn’t.

She knows she’s spiraling. Mitsuki has already noticed something off, and so have her friends from work. Her job thankfully pays for her to go to therapy during the day when Izuku is at school so he won’t have to know she is struggling, but it doesn’t help.

Because sometimes, in her worst moments, Inko can’t convince herself in time that the shadows aren’t real.

She has this primal urge to protect Izuku from the monsters crowding around her when she’s at home. When she’s exhausted out of her mind from work, she goes home and begins carrying a knife on her just in case, because now she swears she can physically feel the monsters’ sharp touches.

She tries to keep going places with Izuku to distract him from how much she’s failing. She takes him to hero conventions, she blows money on buying him cute little merchandise of whatever hero he likes that month, and she frequently takes him to eat at restaurants he’s never been to.

But the monsters follow her wherever she goes, and it’s worse in public.

“Ma’am?” A waitress asks her, her kind eyes peeking out from above her mask as she waits for Inko to answer her previous question.

But Inko is unresponsive. There are sharp jaws about to enclose on the waitress’s head from behind, and Inko is not quick enough to stop it when they snap close around her neck. The head is ripped off, and blood sprays out, getting in Inko’s eyes.

She sits there, eyes squeezed shut, unmoving. She can still hear the waitress’ kind voice, so she knows it’s not real, but when Izuku tugs at her sleeve worriedly and makes her open her eyes, there is still blood on the table, and the waitress is speaking to her without a head.

They leave the restaurant without eating.

No amount of medication helps. The doctors do numerous tests, and they even send her to other specialists on the other side of Japan, but they don’t have a clue what’s wrong with her.

They thought it was schizophrenia, but some things are off about her symptoms, and no treatment has worked for her, so they had to rule it out.

Inko becomes a lost cause.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Masaru asks with a concerned lilt to his voice. They’re in the backyard watching Izuku and Katsuki play, but Inko isn’t happy.

How is she supposed to be happy when there are monsters playing catch with little Katsuki’s limbs?

She never answers Masaru. He doesn’t ask again.

The shadows howl at night into her ear, resembling a train whistle. She can't sleep, and she barely eats anymore. She throws open her window one evening out of desperation, trying to usher them out, and they do leave, for the most part.

Only a white moth remains each time, but it doesn’t matter, because the monsters always return by morning.

She begins to smoke to help ease her nerves. She can’t get away with doing drugs, as her work does regular tests, but she can get away with smoking.

This only forms a new kind of addiction within her. It’s a struggle not to let Izuku see.

“Mommy,” he says, and the memory turns dark as Inko’s vision shifts down to him. “Let go, please.”

She blinks, confused, but then sees that she’s holding his arm so tightly that her knuckles are white. She releases him with a jolt and immediately picks him up to hug. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she says, horrified, unsure of what else she could do to possibly make it up to him.

“It’s okay,” he whispers into her shoulder. “It’s okay, Mommy. I forgive you.”

But it’s not, it’s not okay, and it never will be, because things come to their peak one hot Summer day a few weeks before Izuku turns six.

On this day, she snaps, and things are never the same again.

The shadows scratch at her while she attempts to make dinner. She’s had such a long, painful day, that when the various sleek black creatures corral her, chittering loudly enough to hurt her ears, she loses what little patience she has left.

She grabs the closest thing: a wine bottle gifted to her from Mitsuki. When there’s a new unwelcome touch on her leg, she doesn’t think, she just does.

The bottle goes flying, hitting something solid, and it’s not until the creatures go still and quiet that she realizes what she’s done.

Izuku is on the ground a few feet away, scrambling away from her. Shards of thick glass are littered on the tile, cutting into his skin. Red wine soaks his clothes and body, making him shiver. She stares, mouth dropped open, mind momentarily empty.

He has a cut on the left side of his jaw, spanning so deep that she swears, she swears she sees white. Blood drips down his cheek, mixing with the sangria, and she is terrified.

What did she just do?

She stumbles back as the shadows intensify again, forming crazed faces that work to hiss at her. It grows into screeching, and Inko can’t hear.

Everything is secondary to her horror.

Izuku recovers faster than he should’ve. He sees her face and seems to break. “No,” he gasps out, trying to stand back up. “No! You didn’t hurt me! You didn’t hurt me, Mommy! I swear! See! I’m—I’m not hurt!” He slips and slides back into the glass. His hitch of breath in pain hurts Inko physically, and she jerks forward as if to help, but she’s forced to jump back when the shadows advance, getting in between them.

This time, however, they don’t look like they’re hurting him. No, they’re not tearing him apart like they would other people, like they would Inko—they’re protecting Izuku. They form a line in front of him, keeping him away—no, keeping Inko away.

Her eyes glaze over. All this time, has she been seeing it wrong? Who has been the aggressor? The violent one?

She hurt Izuku. The shadows never have. Hisashi never hurt him. The painful truth is that the shadows are only ever at their worst when she’s near Izuku. They’ve been crowding around Izuku, always Izuku, never her.

They have been protecting him!

God, she can’t do this anymore. She promised Hisashi that day that she would kill Izuku before ever allowing Hisashi to get him—why did she ever think she had the right to say that? Why did she ever promise?

In Izuku’s nearly six years of life, Inko is the only one to have hurt him so badly.

She doesn’t realize she’s moving towards the door with the monsters encouraging her out until Izuku begins to sob, back on his knees. “No, Mommy! No, don’t leave! Stay! Stay, please! Mommy, please stay!”

Inko’s mind and body are torn into two. She doesn’t have the words to tell Izuku the truth. She doesn’t know how to get him to understand. He’s still so young that even though he’s intelligent, he would never get it.

Maybe she doesn’t want him to get it.

“I can’t,” she thinks she says to him in the end. “I can’t, baby.”

“No! Mommy, don’t leave me—!”

So, Inko leaves her boy behind with the shadows who perhaps were never the monsters in the first place. She rushes out, ignoring his wailing even though she has never felt so monstrous before in her life.

When she makes it out of their wretched apartment and into the pouring rain, she wants out. She can’t handle the memory onslaught anymore, it’s just as her counselor said. She can’t manage to see any of this anymore.

The heart has its own memory, and Inko has forgotten nothing now.

So, Mukawa pulls her out.