Chapter Text
Impossible. It shouldn’t have been conceivable, but here they all were… All Might was dead, but Toshinori Yagi had lived in spite of the odds. Alive, exhausted, inhaling everything in front of him and not dead, but One For All was gone. All Might had been killed. What was left of the Quirk had been spent and that chapter had now forever closed. Now, it was Midoriya’s turn, so they said, but…
“Sir, you alright over there?” All Mi-Toshinori’s eyes were fixed just over his shoulder at an obnoxiously large, bow covered gift hamper. Mr Yagi was a different person, Mirai had been reliably informed.
“I’m fine.” It was the stress. His heartbeat would settle of its own accord eventually.
Gran Torino. “Yeah, right. Bakugou told us you were a mess and the doctors agreed. Them releasing you is because you’re not going to die on the spot and they’ve got people who’re worse off than you coming in.” A grunt. “Not like they can treat what he did to you anyway.” What was the treatment for a stolen Quirk? Mirai hadn’t ever thought to ask. They’d been chasing All For One for years, but All Might was immune to All For One’s theft and that was all that mattered. Not once had Mirai ever considered that one day it might happen to him. Not once had he considered that he might come to All For One’s personal attention… but it wasn’t because of his link to All Might. It was because of Izuku Midoriya and All For One’s obsession with his victim. No amount of Foresight could’ve warned him not to walk into his office for overtime, with Togata’s reassignment leaving them stretched thin. Nothing could’ve prepared him for All For One’s offhanded flick that flung him through half of the office. Nothing could’ve prepared him what had been said by that monster.
Then there was the months of torment Midoriya had endured at the hands of All For One. The boy who Mirai had assumed was long dead, but not even that had been granted to him. Midoriya who’d been held captive, then released on a whim and immediately moved to a secure hospital for evaluation before anyone was allowed to visit. Midoriya who had died and been denied his death, while Mirai did what? (What had he done apart from make a difficult situation even more difficult?) It was a wonder Mirai or Midoriya managed to walk away from their respective encounters with All For One. The same applied to All Might, now permanently Mr Yagi. Everyone had come away scarred by the experience, missing essential pieces of themselves. Mirai was lucky that out of the three of them that he’d only lost a Quirk. Toshinori and Midoriya had both died and who knew how much of them was still left on the other side?
“You had a heart attack.” The words came out of Mirai’s mouth before he could stop himself. “You shouldn’t be alive.” Just like Midoriya, who All For One had also resurrected, and shouldn’t have been alive. A real life necromancer out in the world. For their profession, raising the dead was a far more grim prospect than that same someone playing musical Quirks. Or it least it would’ve been had Mirai still possessed his original career prospects. The exact mechanism for how both deaths had been cheated was a mystery, which had only egged on the doctors in finding that smoking gun of the mechanism for their survival. Apart from the lingering biological signs, it was as if the death hadn’t occurred in the first place in Toshinori’s case.
“What?” Toshinori grimaced around a mouthful of hospital food. “I don’t feel like I had a heart attack.” There was no weakness, shortness of breath, pain or any of the other symptoms Mirai came to associate with life threatening cardiac events. By all accounts, Toshinori was falling over from a lack of hydration and nondescript muscle aches, but the distinct lack of him being a corpse indicated that cardiac arrest wasn’t among those problems. Both a marvel and a malady for the doctors on his team.
“The troponin levels are there, Toshi.” Gran Torino was leaning over a clipboard, eyeing off results he most definitely should not have been reading. “You weren’t awake when the team was here, but the bloods are the bloods. It wasn’t a small one either, from the results. You shouldn’t be alive.”
There was the vaguest hint of an eyebrow being raised. “But I feel fine. Bit knocked around, but nowhere near as bad as last time.” Last time, when last time was him bleeding out on the ground after returning the favour to All For One. For supposed reassurance, it wasn’t doing much to calm Mirai’s racing heart.
“You shouldn’t feel fine, Toshi. You should be dead. They reckon your heart stopped entirely - cardiac arrest.” The same as Midoriya.
“But I’m not dead!” Toshinori gestured with a flair. “I feel better than I did before. Like…” Too grand. Too enthusiastic. Too much like All Might. “Like from before I was injured. I haven’t coughed up blood once since I woke up. It’s… it’s amazing.” The entire room hurriedly averted their eyes. If there was a moist glint while Toshinori discussed his newfound, miraculous health, as granted by the local career criminal, then none of them were about to comment on it.
“Yeah, and what pound of flesh did All For One take for that exchange? He never does anything free of charge,” Gran Torino snidely shot back. Apparently, the elder had missed the memo about not commenting on the source of this goodwill.
“Nothing that matters,” Toshinori shot back dismissively. “The important part is that All For One, whatever brain snap he may have experienced, returned young Midoriya. That’s the only part mattering here.” Important for multiple reasons. Returning a captive hadn’t been in All For One’s playbook and the necromancy was an entirely new and outrageous dimension investigators now had to consider when dealing with All For One. Considering he had multiple hands in the collective pies of villain organisations everywhere, it’d haunt the dreams of law enforcement with added complexity.
“I can’t believe All For One gave him back without strings attached,” Gran Torino grunted and Mirai privately agreed, but as Bakugou had stressed, there was a time and a place for these thoughts.
Toshinori cleared his throat. “Not quite. Both the doctors and police have to make sure that no latent suggestions or any mind control Quirks are attached to his return. There have been previous hostages returned, but were sleeper agents.” Who went on to kill a large amount of people before they were caught and subdued. Clearing Midoriya for any lingering Quirk interference was for the best. “He’s going to be watched for a long time before he’s clear to do any work unsupervised from that let alone any atrophy.” Or torture, but Bakugou’s urgent texts to Gran Torino hadn’t made mention of physical injuries.
“You know what’s not what I mean!” The old man snapped back, clenching a fist. “None of this is in his character. Returning Midoriya, you and Sir Nighteye not being splattered on the pavement, him having a conversation with Bakugou that didn't end in a murder.”
“Running after a kid he dropped a building on wasn’t in his character either. We know All For One the villain, not whoever the hell he is when the mask drops.” What a difference it must’ve been when Midoriya’s main symptom was puzzlement at his change in location more than anything else. Was All For One a different person when not playing the part of the prime evil or was he mere better at hiding his tendencies?
“Hmmph, I still don’t like this, Toshinori.”
“We won’t know until we investigate and at least we have him back so we can investigate.” How unlike All Might in attitude. Before there’d be a rush to apprehend All For One, but after playing the part of policeman and losing his Quirk, at least the persona of Mr Yagi had prepared him for retiring from his role as All Might. “I’m eager to go see young Midoriya, but that fiend outside is waiting for me…”
“I mean him dragging you back from the brink,” Gran Torino added through gritted teeth.
“That’s not a mystery,” Toshinori chuckled. “He was clear it was only because of young Midoriya… which is precisely why we need to thoroughly interview him to find out what the hell happened to make All For One so obsessed with him.” Then find a way to arrest him, before All For One decided to abscond with Midoriya a second time.
They lapsed into a disgruntled silence. Toshinori was humming contently, Gran Torino was glaring daggers into him from across the room and Mirai found himself drifting off.
“What do I do now?” Mirai gazed blankly at the ceiling. No Quirk… no heroics. All Might was dead and so was Sir Nighteye.
“Easy, we need more people over at the police HQ,” Toshinori jumped in without missing a beat. “Tsukauchi’s having kittens at the clean up and search and rescue efforts. All hands onboard, including the police for sorting out the casualties and damage,” he nearly snarled. “That bastard’s still more than capable of wiping out a city when it suits him, even as a distraction.”
The police? Mirai hadn’t even considered the police, with their work relegated to processing prisoners. At least it had been until Mr Yagi had practically taken over his local department. Maybe now it wouldn’t be so farfetched if there was more of the typical legwork? “I’ll think about it,” he finally answered.
“That’s all I’m asking for.” Without another word, Toshinori wriggled further into his sheets. “I’m not sure why I’m so relaxed… I died, All For One’s on the loose and we can’t do anything about it. It’s such a weird feeling. Almost as if it isn’t mine in the first place.” He trailed off, before abruptly jumping back to attention. “Hey, can one of you check the tag on that hamper? It’s eating away at me, but…” Toshinori motioned out the door where a stern faced nurse was lying in wait, as he’d already discovered the hard way.
Mirai reached over and squinted at the tag.
Mr Yagi,
Thank you for taking care of him for me.
Neat, impersonal computer print with no name. Mirai obligingly read it out. “There’s no name.”
“Huh, that’s odd. Never would’ve pegged Mr Yagi for having an anonymous well wisher. Eh.” Only then, did he snuggle back under the sheets.
Perhaps, if Mirai took a leaf out of Toshinori’s book, he would still be able to do something. Anything without his Quirk. And to think he’d spent so many years unknowingly forcing Togata closer and closer towards All For One's line of sight.
All For One was still out there somewhere and with him was Mirai Sasaki’s Quirk.
What a fine mess All Might had left them with at the station. He might’ve been off, fresh from a life or death struggle with All For One, but Naomasa was of the firm opinion that a stint in hospital was an improvement over the city block sized crime scene that had to be established. What were they up to now? Five different crime scenes? Or was it six? Who knows? It wasn’t Naomasa’s department for once and for that he was eternally grateful as he micromanaged his way through the chaos. Endeavor had ejected himself out of a nearby bit of shrubbery, with the younger Todoroki right on his heels.
Naomasa could’ve sworn that UA hired babysitters to keep the kids occupied during the operation, but that question quickly died on his lips when Todoroki glanced up at him and mouthed “no” while shaking his head. Both of them plunged into a still smoking apartment complex and Naomasa shrugged.
Last time they’d flouted the law within range of All For One it resulted in a death. At least this time, All For One’s targets were nowhere near as dense with population, with numerous schools obliterated in the crossfire. It wasn’t much considering the travel of the shockwaves, but it wasn’t quite Kamino level. So long as they were supervised and no one got themselves killed, Naomasa was willing to turn a blind eye. That’s what he told himself anyway, because even without a blind eye, there wasn’t the resources to prevent them from helping in the first place. Ultimately, any punishment was going to be the responsibility of UA. The police had more than enough work with this alone.
With Mr Yagi in the hospital and everyone else frantically extinguishing fires, both literal and figurative, there wasn’t time for any police department posturing. Not now during an emergency and certainly not after the emergency as they shifted back to assisting the insurance assessors with claims stemming from criminal conduct. Between that, the new arrests of villains who decided to take advantage of the chaos and the obscenely large backlog of interrogations they had to peruse (courtesy of Mr Yagi), there just wasn’t the time or manpower to deal with 1-A. Long gone were the days of patiently waiting for villains to be dumped at their doorstep.
On the bright side, the police were enjoying record high public confidence due to the steadily dropping crime rate. Convictions were up, crime was down and there had been a spring in everyone’s step in spite of the crushing workload and management’s refusal to train more police.
On the downside, the police were also enjoying a skills shortage so severe, that local students from hero schools had been offered paying roles to help clear the backlog in report processing. It was only a matter of time before the local media caught wind of the police breaching the child labour laws while under the guise of work experience, but the tabloids were vicious and it’d only last so long. Everyone knew they were stalling for time.
Dabi, at least, had been dropped off their immediate books, with him being denied bail and set to appear in court at a much later date, much to Naomasa’s relief. Endeavor and his children had expressed their concerns about Dabi being the remnants of Touya Todoroki’s corpse, animated for a nefarious purpose by All For One. That left Naomasa signing off to forensics over at the local villain hospital for an examination of the perp in question. If Dabi was Touya Todoroki, or a rotting husk of him, then the white coated wonders would have it sorted out before it went to court. If this entity was indeed Touya Todoroki, they’d work out a timeline and whether or not he had legal capacity at the time the crimes were committed and when the confessions were extracted. They couldn’t take him to a conventional trial if he wasn’t acting under his own will.
If it wasn’t Touya Todoroki? Well, the local teaching hospital wanted was left after the almost guaranteed execution for medical research and that was beyond Naomasa’s control. If Dabi wasn’t a Todoroki, then the remains were left in the hands of the State and the State was big on life saving medical research. As a serial killer, at least he’d have redeeming qualities in death.
Much like Sekijiro Kan, as case managed by Tamakawa and the boys in the absence of Mr Yagi, who had a snowflake’s chance in hell of escaping the death penalty. There weren’t any questions about his level of complicity in his actions when he was caught in the act by the two criminal consultants that Mr Yagi had hired. Thanks to La Brava and Gentle Criminal (that name was going to need changing if they wanted to be hired full-time by the department), they could skip the weasel words and dig into the meat of how All For One had convinced Kan to spy on his colleagues. How they’d met, what All For One held over Kan, any other spies he knew and any other sordid details would be milked from him, then only at the end would bureaucrats have their neatly stamped off execution. Provided Mr Yagi didn’t stall on filling out the paperwork and with Kan, who was so universally disliked by everyone in the building, there was a good chance that everyone would “forget” to remind him to fill out the paperwork. Shame.
As for everyone else? Kurogiri was in a similar situation as Dabi, but Eraserhead and Present Mic were involved in that one and it was out of Naomasa’s hands. Likewise, Gran Torino was convinced that Tomura Shigaraki’s mind had been altered and it wasn’t suitable to process him without further mental and Quirk evaluation. The rest of the League? They weren’t so lucky and would be ash on the wind or tree supplements before the other three had their reports finalised.
All in all, with All For One out in the wild and Mr Yagi on the payroll, the police were far too busy to deal with kids on their provisionals. Thank god that, for once, it was someone else’s problem.
Izuku Midoriya was dead. At least the version of him that Katsuki knew was long dead and buried. There were shadows of his ghost that occasionally showed through, but his trademark nervousness had been blown to smithereens. After months of talking shit to All For One, maybe it was a side effect of the few fucks that remained in his body moving on to greener pastures.
“Bakugou,” Izuku nodded, smiling ever so slightly. Izuku almost never fucking smiled at the sight of him showing up, but if Katsuki had spent months with the international shithead of mystery himself, Katsuki had to be an improvement even with their history.
“You’re not the same are you?” The rest of 1-A, plus Monoma were hiding around the corner. Even after all the shit they’d been through, they still weren’t buying that the Midoriya they met on the first day of school wasn’t this Midoriya. They’d argued and Katsuki had told them to fuck right off, but seeing was believing right? They didn’t find him. They weren’t there when he opened his eyes and called him the wrong name. After all of it, they didn’t really know him. At least not like Katsuki did. They couldn’t understand what was like to see Mrs Midoriya come running and be ignored by her own son. So here they were at a random ice cream joint, so 1-A could see for themselves that Izuku Midoriya wasn’t Izuku or Midoriya, but a different person entirely. As if he could come back from the dead and be the same person.
“There’s a mountain of reasons for that,” Izuku winced and pushed over a milkshake. “You read most of it in the police report. It was easier for them to release part of it than for me to have to…” An inhale. “Relive it.” Katsuki couldn’t only imagine, but visualise the creepy, touchy feely bullshit All For One engaged in when he was out of sight. Gran Torino, as Tenko Shimura’s only visitor, had stressed to them all clearly in debrief that All For One wasn’t a touchy person, unless his Quirk was in play. For him to latch onto Izuku was a new and mortifying entry into All For One’s police profile. Of course, none of them at the time had known about All For One’s dead family and from what All Might had said, that detail only enhanced the severity.
“So, what wasn’t in the police report?” A fucking lot with the amount of redactions. Parts were more black toner than they were paper. All For One must’ve been neck deep in fuckery if the cops were hiding it from the public.
“ThepartwhereheaccidentallyclonedhisQuirkandgaveittome,” escaped Izuku’s mouth and Katsuki sprayed his milkshake across the table. Izuku expertly ducked out the way. For a moment, Katsuki was frozen in time with milk dripping from his still open mouth.
“What the fuck!? How the hell did that happen?” There was a muffled gasp behind him that Katsuki ignored. Had to ignore, because they weren’t due to say their part until after this conversation.
“All Might told you how All For One gave a Quirk to his brother?” Izuku was already mopping up the mess with a napkin, his face contorted in a grimace. Katsuki wasn’t too sure if it was the mess or the thought of All For One whipping his Quirk around like it was going out of fashion. Could be both.
Katsuki nodded, his heart beating uncomfortably in his chest. That shake in his hands wasn’t normal, was it? None of what they were discussing was normal, if Izuku had ended up with a clone of that arsehole’s Quirk.
“Well, it turns out that the stockpiling Quirk he gave to his brother captured a screenshot of All For One from back in the day when he was holding onto the Quirk. Because of that, his brother ended up with an imprint of All For One… and that imprint became known as One For All,” Izuku tiptoed through the explanation in the face of Katsuki’s silence. “One For All’s ability to hop from person to person comes from All For One in reality and he… the Quirk, has spent the last century posing as the brother, so the real All For One wouldn’t notice and have it destroyed. And now it’s in my head,” he concluded in a rush and Katsuki opened his mouth and closed it several times before he could kick the words out the hatch.
“As in a whole person imprint?” He croaked, because the words didn’t want to form.
“The whole person from back then,” Izuku confirmed… then drummed his fingers on the table. “But he made it worse.” Of course he did. Part of what made this experience so unnerving was Izuku’s total lack of hesitation. No crying, no sobbing, no lack of articulation in his wording. This was an irritating chore being checked off the list, not a life changing event worth crying over. This wasn’t the same Izuku.
Izuku spoke.
Katsuki felt like throwing up, the shudders wracking him all the more the longer Izuku spoke. The needles, the fussing, All For One’s dead kid, the realisation that Izuku had literally died and been yanked back through the gates of death by two psychopaths. “Trigger is made from his blood. He gave you a blood cocktail, like an elder vampire or some messed up shit.” That All For One’s blood still had those properties and it could distilled into a drug, made Katsuki’s stomach rapidly knot. He was still out there and so was the drug made from him, that was now known to cause mental instability. Tsukauchi and All Might had to be shitting cinderblocks. Hell, Katsuki was on the verge of shitting out half a building site just listening to the recap.
“That’s the major part of it and because I have One For All, it stockpiled the cocktail as well and reinforced it with more power.” Now he spoke in an almost whisper. “I went from being only able to hear him while I slept to hearing him all the time. That’s why none of it is in the police report.”
“Yeah, because you’d get that one mouth breather who thought you were a threat to public safety.” Depending on which part of the public they referred to, Izuku was definitely a threat to public safety. He was a threat to the subterranean IQ level, arse breathers who shared that collective braincell with their counterpart mouth breathers up in Public Safety.
Izuku’s mouth momentarily twitched before he carried on. “There’s two versions of the Quirk. The one I have that’s… not exactly normal, but has more people skills and can approximate a standard person. Then there’s his original version that’s not normal and has less people skills that… can’t approximate a standard person.” There was a shrug, as if it was the most bland topic in the world and Katsuki wanted to scream into the abyss. “They take turns visiting and making comments. Apparently the real All For One can listen in as well, but none of us know why that happens.” With a gentle push, Katsuki slide his milkshake off to the side of the table.
There were three versions of All For One flitting around Izuku’s head and two of them were batshit crazy. It was no wonder that Izuku’s emotional range had dropped down to the point where it could be beaten by the range of a toothpick. So much time was spent wrangling his head full of societal rejects, he had to wonder what was left over for everyone else in the waking world? “How the fuck are you meant to deal with all of that?” Still, there wasn’t any mention of getting rid of One For All/All For One either.
“From what I understand… I don’t deal with it? I can’t offload the Quirk because the strain will kill the next person it lands on.” A flicker of discomfort and that was a problem, especially if the Quirk had enough brains to turn the host into a meat puppet. All it’d do is make its way straight back to Izuku. “On the whole, after he got over the shock of it, he was happy that I had his Quirk. I spent every waking moment attacking him, attacking how he used his Quirk, how he treated people, how he treated his son and he was happy about it… because he wanted me to demonstrate the criticism.” Perplexed didn’t even begin to cover the combined feelings of everyone present. More of a shellshocked silence, really.
There was an explosive facepalm as Katsuki’s head slammed into both of his open hands. “What the fuck is wrong with this guy? Didn’t he have minions for that shit?”
“Not ones he liked talking to? I think?” For a moment, the Izuku of old shone through. “His Quirk checks in once a week. I think he’s lonely.” An indifferent shrug. “He didn’t really talk about his feelings that much.”
“Then why couldn’t he go off and make friends like a non-fuckwit?” Without leaving a carpet of bodies and the maimed behind him as he went, which the vast majority of the population could manage.
“Same reason as me,” he winced. “It’s not really the Quirk, it’s that instead of looking at people, he looks through them and they really, really don’t like having their protective layering peeled open. The white lies stop working, the flattery gets them nowhere and it’s just not… real.” Was that in relation to Izuku or All For One? Probably both.
For a moment, Katsuki thought he had a witty reply. Then sixteen years of memories slammed into him and reevaluated his life choices. “Yeah, that’ll do it.” Not much Katsuki could do to contradict that perspective, when he was one of the morons perpetuating it towards Izuku and his fellow weirdos.
Smiling sardonically, Izuku carried on. “In summary? I have a stalker who’s trying to fill the void of his long dead son. That stalker now has a link into my mind because the fragment of him hiding inside One For All influenced All Might to hand over the Quirk in first place. It doesn’t matter where I go, because he can find me with Search and I have absolutely no idea what his motives are, because dropping me off back home and disappearing wasn’t ever part of an agenda he discussed with me. So, uh, yeah, that happened.” And he rubbed the back of his head, as if he wasn’t being harassed by a person who should’ve had top billing on a specialised register. Izuku was handling it well, because Katsuki was holding back the urge to throw up through sheer force of will.
“And All Might’s reaction to this absolutely groundbreaking, colossal clusterfuck of a situation?” He asked over clasped hands.
“He passed out and I had to call an ambulance,” followed by an indifferent shrug. “I think you’re both handling it well… Much better than I did,” came out in a nostalgic mumble.
“You’re not the same person anymore,” Katsuki hoarsely observed, blinking dust out of his eyes. The Izuku of old would’ve been bawling his eyes out. For this Izuku, it was another Tuesday.
“You’re not either,” Izuku answered glumly. “Nor All Might from what I’ve seen in the news or All For One apparently, because he sent All Might a gift hamper after landing him in hospital. I’d recognise that handwriting anywhere." What the hell? A gift hamper? "It’s not a bad thing… it’s different, but not bad.” Different. Everything was sure as hell different. Irreversibly different.
There was a hacking cough and the last frayed cords of Katsuki’s nerves snapped. “For fuck’s sake, you may as well come out now.” With that, the full contents of the clown car, slunk out from the shadows, including the driver. Aizawa was lurking at the rear, wide eyed, pale and nursing darker than average rings around his eyes. Todoroki was right there with him, standing apart from the rest of the pack.
“We didn’t want to overwhelm him,” Glasses adjusted his namesake accordingly. Everyone else was making halfhearted attempts to mop up tears. What was the point of hiding it? Aizawa wasn’t bothering.
Ponytail stepped forwards. “We’re so happy that you’re back, but it’s been hard…”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Kirishima muttered from the back.
“In all honesty, it was an unmitigated nightmare and a good time was not had by all,” Monoma piped up, pushing his way to the front. “But we get it. We don’t fully understand what happened but we get that you don’t want to talk about it any great detail.” For all the theatre, Monoma was definitely strained. Shit had gone down around that corner. “If you want to know what we were doing on the other side, we’ll be thrilled to share it as soon as you’re ready.” He bowed with a flair and Katsuki hoped the rest of them were smart enough to keep that deflection alive.
Everyone else was shuffling back and forth, as if trying to push another person to the front. Round Face in particularly was trying and failing and Katsuki wanted to facepalm a second time. None of them needed to say anything.
“Thank you for understanding…I really… don’t want to dwell on it,” Izuku cringed, rocking in his seat.
“It’s okay Midoriya,” Froggy croaked.
Then Dumbarse went and ruined the moment and it all clicked together in Katsuki’s head. “You’ll always be the Midoriya we kn-”
“-If you start with the Midoriya I know horseshit,” Katsuki snapped out in falsetto, “I’m going to start slapping people and you’re going to be first. None of you fucking extras knew him before this happened. What, you go on one trip to a zoo or to the mall together and you think you’re a fucking expert on a person when you don’t even know his favourite hobby?” Slamming his chair backwards, he rose to feet. “You losers are the very last people, right up there with his parents, who get to stand here and talk about how much he’s changed. How the fuck would any of you know when you never knew him in the first place?”
Silence so thick that All For One could’ve smashed his way in with a tank buster and it wouldn’t have shifted.
“None of you were his friend. Fuck, even I wasn’t and I’m still not his friend, because it’s idiotic to assume that sharing a class and job field means that you’re best buddies forever after five minutes on the job.” They were going to understand. He was going to make them understand.
“But-” Pinky tried to interject and Katsuki dropped in the heel of his boot.
“- It’s not about you, Pinky and it’s not about imaginary friendships like a namby pamby self help comic. Shut the hell up. It’s about him having a traumatic experience and all of us piling on like it’s a circus event, instead of a deeply traumatic experience that’ll haunt him, more than anyone, for the rest of his life. Fucking nobody, absolutely nobody comes out a kidnapping without scars and you don’t get to sit here playing happy fun times, pretending nothing’s changed.” The only saving grace was Aizawa’s ever so slight head bob, along with a stealthy double thumbs up. At least Katsuki had backup.
“So here’s what you’re going to do. You are going to shut the fuck up. You’re going to give him space. You aren’t going to be weird or overly involved and when he wants to give you the time of day, that’s on him. Does that sound good to everyone?” Katsuki got the words out through gritted teeth.
“Yes!” Returned in a chorus.
Todoroki made a non-committal gesture and broke the awkward bubble that’d formed. “We can talk later, Midoriya. The old man’s invited you over for dinner. Wants to talk about work and an internship.”
Izuku visibly perked up. “Thanks, Todoroki.”
“That’s our cue, kids.” Aizawa was shameless. “We’re out. The police still need help with paperwork,” and he savagely bared his teeth when the class groaned. “Don’t be like that, there’s more to being a pro hero than fist fighting villains in fast food carparks.” With that, he manhandled them out the door, totally disregarding their goodbyes and pathetic glances back into the building.
“Thanks… Kacchan, I appreciate what you've all done since it happened. All For One told me what you guys were doing. I know they’re trying to cheer me up, but I’d rather they didn’t. It's too much, too soon.”
Katsuki paused. Stared and cleared his throat. “No worries, you fucking nerd.”
“Can we stick with first names this time around?”
“Sure…”
Not quite the same Izuku. At least this one didn’t burst into tears on a whim.
There was a stranger in her house. Well, maybe multiple strangers. The police and pro heroes had left a small contingent of observers, just to keep an eye on things, in case Izuku’s kidnapper reappeared. But… they weren’t the strangers. Izuku was the stranger in this house. Unemotional, serious, apathetic. He didn’t even try to communicate with her and him being home was a rarity. This wasn’t her Izuku. They hadn’t brought back her Izuku.
“Mum, we need to talk.” Flat, expressionless… Was… was this still her Izuku? “You’ve been avoiding me and I’ve been ignoring you.” Affectless. No tears, no tone of voice.
Was this her Izuku? How could it be him?
“Yes, Izuku?” The tears were already forming and she couldn’t stop them. Izuku’s eyes immediately narrowed.
“Was it a Quirk marriage? Did Hisashi pay you to have me?” A cannonball through her living room and her life.
Inko froze. “What?” Why was he asking that?
“Was it a Quirk marriage?” He repeated more slowly, while sipping a cup of tea at the other end of the dinner table. Like he was asking about the weather.
“No! It wasn’t like that at all!” Burst out from her. “How can you even ask that?”
“How can you expect me and everyone else looking at your sham of a marriage to not ask that?” Erupted from him so abruptly that Inko leapt back in her chair. “I’ve never met Hisashi Midoriya. I don’t know what he looks like, I’ve never spoken to him. I’ve never met him. This is meant to be my father who supposedly works overseas and sends back money…” The mug was set down with a clatter. “But he can’t manage a video call? He can’t fire up Hero View and say hi? He can’t call normally? I was abducted by a serial killer because of him. You don’t get to sit here and pretend that what’s going on here is normal. I’m over it, especially after what happened with All For One.” Cold. So cold. Inko trembled in an invisible wind. “Stop lying to me and tell me what you were really apologising for when that hack of a doctor told me I was Quirkless.”
Without meaning to, her mouth opened. “It wasn’t a Quirk marriage. Hisashi… Hisashi wanted a family and so did I.” She hesitated.
“There’s a but in there,” was the almost threatening counter. She could see every bit of him tense.
“I…” Why did it hurt so much? Why did these questions hurt? “I didn’t think you were going to be Quirkless,” she uttered and Izuku sighed, long and deep. “Then you kept talking about wanting to be a hero just like All Might and-and it was too dangerous and Hisashi thought so as well and-” She couldn’t stop. Not the sobs that wracked her body. Her poor little Izuku.
“So you sat there and let Bakugou and his friends beat me black and blue… because Hisashi wanted to keep me safe.” It wasn’t a question and the two images fought for dominance in her mind. “Did it ever occur to that you they had a greater chance of killing me than being a pro hero did? That a bunch of kids who didn’t know their own strength, who I had constant exposure to, were more of a danger to me than a job field that had specialised training in countering threats?” They were children. How could they they be more dangerous to Izuku than being a pro hero?
“I didn’t think-”
“-That’s exactly the problem. You didn’t think. For years I told you about all of these things. About Bakugou, about the training, about the Quirks, about how not every single part of the job involved taking out villains and you didn’t listen to a single word of it.” It wasn’t… it wasn’t true… “You stopped asking, you stopped caring, because you made it all about what you wanted instead of what I wanted. I was nearly killed by Shigaraki at that shopping mall and you immediately made it about yourself and your feelings,” exploded out of him and without thinking Inko moved to deny it.
“No! That’s not it at all! I wanted to keep you safe!” Away from harm. Away from the suffering that came with that awful work. He was too fragile. Why couldn’t he watch on and not be involved, like everyone else? Why did it have to be him?
“Then why could you intervene for the Camp, but not for Bakugou who spent almost a decade beating me while you watched on and did nothing?” He was standing now, glaring down at her. “You and Bakugou did more damage to me than All For One dreamed of doing and he literally killed me.” The wind was knocked from her lungs. Caught in her throat. Izuku… Izuku had… died? How had he died when he was right here? “Your excuses aren’t good enough.”
“Because Hisashi didn’t want you to be a hero,” finally burst forth from her. “He didn’t and I couldn’t… I couldn’t… tell him no.” And it was out.
“Because it was an arranged marriage, even if it wasn’t a Quirk marriage and you spent my entire life lying to me for a person who might not even exist.” The disgust on his face. The… the disappointment. “You should have said something, anything, but instead you were too cowardly to do it and let Bakugou attempt to beat my dreams out of me because you couldn’t bring yourself to say the words.” His face hurtled through far too many emotions for Inko to keep up.
“That’s not it!”
“Then why can’t you tell me what it actually was if I’m not accurate?”
“My little Izuku-”
“-Is gone. He never existed in the first place. You’ve spent my entire life projecting a lie onto me, then using it as an excuse to look away from real danger that required you to act. All because I didn’t have a Quirk, even though your own is functionally useless.” Useless. It stung, especially coming from him. A puddle was forming on the dining table. Izuku didn’t so much as flinch. “You cried, you didn’t move on and I died and you’re still doing it right now. Everyone else changed for the better apart from you.” How could anyone change for the better with such a terrible event? What was he talking about?
“We just wanted you to be safe!” Inko cried out. “Why don’t you understand?” Why didn’t he want to be safe and take care of himself? Why wouldn’t he give up?
“It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s that you’re a hypocrite and I’ve never cared,” he hissed back and Inko shrunk down in her seat. “What gets me more more than anything is that I had the same sort of conversations with All For One, and the serial killer who stole my corpse got it and you don’t.”
“But…” He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it.
“You need to talk to a professional, because I’m clearly not getting through… This…” He shook his head. “It’s too much.” And he left, his footsteps echoing to his room and the door snapped shut.
What had she done wrong?
If being questioned over Shigaraki was stress inducing, then absolutely nothing compared to the hours upon hours of word vomit as Izuku tried to convey All For One being… himself to the police. It was only after Izuku was offered a therapist four minutes in and one of the detectives hurriedly excused himself that it occurred to Izuku that the police had expectations from a prior source. From Izuku’s catchup with Shinsou after the fact, having your stalker attach himself like a sailor to a door from the sinking Titanic, was… illuminating. At least Shinsou had managed to score a trial placement for the Heroics course out of the experience. That saying about clouds and silver linings…
Police were the easy part. Official, understanding, non-judgemental and dripping with professionalism. All Might in the form of Mr Yagi had streamlined police questioning to such an absurd degree that papers could be written on the improved process and the reporting experience for victims of crime. The direct supervision period was almost over and with any luck, the mass of police stationed at his house would disperse with the order. Then again… if Mr Yagi was insisting, Izuku doubted they were brave enough to tell him no.
Everyone else didn’t have that training. A bombardment of text messages to his new phone. An invitation to a group chat. Suggestions of therapy. A mountain of gifts at his front door. It was too much. Izuku wanted to slink back to his desk in class and pretend that his absence had been a shockingly out of character period of truancy. It was easier to explain Izuku’s own actions than All For One’s, but they only wanted answers that Izuku didn’t possess because he wasn’t All For One. All For One himself struggled with understanding his own motives and if it wasn’t for the imminent deaths that were sure to follow, Izuku would’ve directed them to ask him for themselves. If All Might still had One For All, he would've taken Izuku up on the offer and questioned him with gusto.
It wasn’t all of 1-A who were smothering in their desperation to make sure Izuku had survived the experience in one piece. Kacchan’s outburst had worked a miracle in having the class back off. In return, Izuku invited himself unannounced to the Bakugou family home where he and Kacchan watched his mother shift gears from dysfunctional to functional within three seconds of opening the door. It was a small detail, but a reprieve for both of them nonetheless.
Todoroki as well remained the same as ever. Without any social skills to comment on the abduction, he elected to stick with the standard topic of heroics and the progress he’d made with his Quirk. Peppered by the involvement of the rest of his family who were happy to walk Izuku through their own lives without ever touching on his own, it was a stark change from the rest of 1-A.
All of the need to know details that Izuku didn’t want to endlessly repeat were in the police report… but that wasn’t good enough for them. So, Izuku had to keep his distance from 1-A, up to the point where Kacchan’s patience snapped like a high tension wire. After that, it wasn’t quite back to how it had been, but it was close enough. It was… different. Not necessarily bad, but different. Time might not heal all wounds, but it helped to an extent.
Though, there’d forever be details that Izuku never had any intention of sharing with the police or anyone who wasn’t All Might. Details like All For One’s form perched at the end of his bed in what was now a familiar, weekly, ritual.
“Hello, Izuku, everything going well?” All For One was unusually cheerful. Izuku would have to make sure that All Might hadn’t mysteriously died in his sleep when he woke up from the dream.
Mind drifting backwards to Inko’s denials, he winced. “Um.” Not his finest or most contained moment, but why did she have to look at him like that? He had dinner with Bakugou’s parents and they’d been so painfully well behaved that Izuku half thought he’d dreamed the entire experience.
“That’s a no, isn’t it?” All For One immediately frowned.
“I was right, by the way,” Izuku added offhandedly, watching the Quirk tense. “Definitely an arranged or a Quirk marriage.”
Realisation shot across All For One’s face. “Oh, so that’s what happened. I can’t imagine she was terribly receptive to that specific line of questioning.” Understatement. Such an understatement. “What gives you that impression?”
“Hisashi gave me that impression,” Izuku leaned forwards to rest his chin on his fingers. “Hisashi wants a family, but instead of doing what a normal person does, he pays a desperate, struggling woman off and an orphan no less.” Izuku paused. “Conveniently, that meant no one was around to witness exactly how little contact she’s had with her supposed husband or indeed, witness him exist at all.”
“Rather convenient, yes,” All For One vaguely hummed and Izuku was closing in on his answer. Each party to this sordid tale had a tiny piece of the puzzle and it was Izuku’s job to piece it all together.
“Hisashi didn’t have me because he wanted a kid, did he?” Pointed, from the corner of his eyes, Izuku spotted All For One, a deer trapped by the headlights of an oncoming b-train. “It was you all along. You arranged the marriage. You arranged the Quirks. You knew I would be Quirkless and therefore helpless when you came to collect.” Completely at All For One’s mercy, had it not been for One For All being the spanner in the works of the original’s plan.
“I knew there was a high possibility of you being Quirkless,” All For One uttered and a great weight lifted itself from Izuku’s shoulders, for of course One For All knew about Izuku when its connected counterpart had engineered Izuku’s birth in the first place. All For One had been stolen from by himself, not All Might. “Hisashi’s original Quirk wasn’t Fire Breathing and even then, Fire Breathing is an understatement of that particular Quirk’s capabilities. Due to the nature of the arrangement, it was always a possibility that you would be Quirkless and it wasn’t one that concerned me at the time.” Chills rippled down Izuku’s neck. “It was better for you, mentally, to not have a Quirk, so I thought at the time…” Which perfectly explained All For One’s frantic attempts to diagnose the origin point of Izuku’s unexplained Quirk. If All For One had been firing Cupid’s arrows from the distance, then just how involved had he been in the selection of the genetic components?
“You were planning on giving me one anyway, weren’t you?” The doctor’s Quirk was always going to be at risk. It was too useful. “He’d already outlived his usefulness, hadn’t he? Doesn’t really pay to have any loyalty to you,” Izuku muttered under his breath. All For One was repaying the doctor’s century plus of loyalty with a slow and agonising death. The doctor was dying, but dying so slowly at All For One’s tender mercies that All For One himself might die of old age before the Quirk was properly released.
“His loyalty was only to an individual who supported all of his agendas,” was fired back. “Your demise was not my agenda and all of his loyalty,” All For One sneered out the word, “was undone in that instant. The Noumu were designed to work around this shortcoming of the weak willed. They are to do as they’re told, not what they think they were told.” In a comparison that was sure to be unappreciated by both parties, Izuku immediately thought of the previous month when he’d walked in on Kacchan raiding in World of Heroes. “It killed my brother, it killed my son and it nearly killed you.” It also killed Kacchan’s entire raid team numerous times and Izuku aggressively squeezed down a nascent, wholly inappropriate grin at the memory of Kacchan’s keyboard upending.
“All those years of him at your beck and call meant nothing to you.” The doctor was another tool to him, just like Inko and Hisashi. There was no attachment to the people, only the product.
“All those years were nothing compared to months of you.” Now Izuku’s eyes widened and he inched away from All For One who had latched onto his wrist. “Before you there was nothing. An empty void that no amount of shovelled in platitudes or insipid pandering could ever fill, because it wasn’t real. No rapport, no shared interests, no understanding and then you came along and I miss what I had. None of it had any meaning, because none of them were you.”
“Fifteen years-”
“I’m not Inko Midoriya, Izuku. I didn’t have the liberty of secreting you away, because even from a tender age I knew you’d never tolerate me. You worshipped the ground All Might walked on for his natural sense of charity. Why would you ever care about me? What could I possibly bring to the table to compete with that?” Grimacing, All For One flexed a hand.
“Since when have you had that level of self awareness?” Izuku muttered under his breath and got a minor shove in response.
“What I’m saying, is that it was far easier to blame All Might’s pervasive media popularity than it was to acknowledge that I should’ve snatched you away far sooner in your lifespan.” Each word edged it’s way out as if Izuku was watching a slow motion, non-pain relieved wisdom tooth extraction. “Had I acted sooner, you wouldn’t have died, but…”
There was that but again. “If you acted sooner, would I exist as I am now?”
“The what ifs are painful, because you’re fine the way you are,” All For One admitted in such a defeated voice and Izuku did a double take. “You’re happy… aren’t you?”
Inclining his head like an owl, Izuku considered the question. “I’m… content, I think. Satisfied.” Happy had an unfamiliar tang to it that didn’t sound quite right in Izuku’s ears.
“But not happy?”
“Are you happy?”
“Point taken.” It was a volatile word and All For One wasn’t even qualified to be asking the question.
Pausing, Izuku redirected the conversation back to their initial topic. Questions surrounding All For One’s capacity to feel regular human emotions weren’t currently accounted for by Izuku’s pay grade. “What I don’t understand is why she had to lie about it.” Clenching the blankets between his phantom fingers didn’t help his mood.
“Not everyone has the self awareness to realise that they’ve done something wrong,” All For One rolled his eyes and Izuku stared at him. “Yes, that includes me, but unlike Inko, I’m willing to at least discuss it at this point in time. She might never apologise or understand that you’re upset with her.” That was the biggest risk going into the probing of his mother’s “marriage”. That she would refuse to admit to any wrongdoing. That All For One was pointing it out made sense when the type of person who’d agree to such a scheme would also be less likely to ever take responsibility for the damage done to the victims. All For One would’ve chosen his underlings well, had that same behaviour not resulted in a decade of neglect that left All For One seething, as much as he tried to hide it.
“How are people meant to handle these things?” Izuku asked more of himself.
“You don’t. If an individual’s behaviour is causing you distress, then disengagement from the source is your healthiest option. Don’t chase them, because they’ll see that as validation of their behaviour.” Matter of fact and punctuated with a fond pat on the head. “You’re not required to tolerate inconsiderate and hurtful behaviour, even from your parents.”
Izuku gawped at All For One. “And yes Izuku, I am attempting to take my own advice, before you ask.”
Hell had frozen over and Izuku cleared his throat in attempt to stall for time while his brain computed the exchange that had just occurred. “So why are you really here?” Izuku dumbly asked, while desperately tried to yank his mind away from the very concept of All For One giving life advice.
“I miss you,” came the plaintive response.
“I don’t see why when you keep showing up here once a week.” Every week for the last three months, All For One’s Quirk, without fail, stopped by for a chat, a whinge and an unavoidable hug.
“It’s not the same,” All For One insisted. “I get a summary, not all of the little details.” Why All For One cared that much about the details was still a mystery for the ages.
“What I’m hearing is that you want to kidnap me again.” At least that was a lot harder with Kurogiri locked down.
“Not quite,” All For One chirped back and Izuku jumped at the sudden shift in mood. “But what do you want, Izuku Midoriya?”
“I want what I’ve always wanted - to go out, to help people and do it without a single person worrying or providing commentary,” Izuku repeated. The exact opposite of his mother’s behaviour.
“You want to be normal, when you’ve always been normal.” Not according to the rest of society.
“I’m about as normal as you,” Izuku snorted. Gaining a Quirk removed only one aspect of how people treated him, but the moment he stopped being useful to them, they’d return to their old ways.
“I am what I am.” All For One rolled his shoulders.
“What you are is an idiot,” Izuku half heartedly shot back. “You were legally dead for six years and could’ve stayed that way it you kept away from All Might. You could’ve faded away and been a nobody.”
“The me from now isn’t the me from then, Izuku,” All For One patted him on the shoulder and Izuku swayed under the weight. “If I ever gain the ability to time travel, I will be sure to act on your sage advice at an earlier point in time.” Then he was gone.
Eyes snapping open, the sun peeking through his curtains, he texted All Might about how his nightshift went and got a cheerful smiley back almost immediately. A double shift, evidently.
Then he noticed it. “Hey, mum,” Izuku frowned at the painfully nondescript cardboard box sitting at the end of his bed. “Where did this box come from?”
“Your father sent it!” His mother’s tense voice echoed from around the corner. “As soon as he heard you were back, he had it delivered.” After three months? Hisashi must’ve existed within a pocket dimension that operated on a different timescale to the rest of them.
The first layer wasn’t particularly exciting. Shirts from Izuku’s usual place, with HERO, VILLAIN and MORALLY AMBIGUOUS VIGILANTE stamped across them. Strangely specific, but Izuku had weirder and more wonderful shirts.
The second layer was matching pairs of summer and winter socks that went straight into the sock drawer.
The third layer was an All Might hoodie that Izuku hadn’t seen before, neatly folded with an eye watering price tag in USD still attached and included 1st edition card that was tucked into its folds. Considerate, yes, but Inko must've told him what was missing from Izuku's collection.
The fourth layer was a book titled The History of Quirks by Hisashi Midoriya and Izuku’s eyes nearly dropped out of his skull. Flicking through the chapters, Izuku found a compendium of Quirks across every category, every theme, neatly arranged by type and sub-type. Right at the back, with a chapter of its own was All For One, in all its glory and Izuku heard a ghostly chortle from deep within. Of course All For One would pick a person who’d written a book waxing poetic about the Quirk of the man himself. Vain to the very end.
At the final layer, Izuku’s hands hit a soft and familiar object, his mind flailing as it was launched back through space and time. It was the scrapbook prepared by All For One. Each page carefully collected to fill in the gaps of Izuku’s missing six months of life… But… Izuku flicked through and the pages… were full. Photos, handwritten notes in the same script that was on All Might’s hospital hamper, dates, times and detailed observations. What Izuku liked to wear, his favourite news roundups, his favourite Quirks with source location included in a manner that perfectly matched The History of Quirks (Izuku trembled), the arrest of Vlad King, the memorial service… Everything that had happened since Izuku’s first death up to now was captured in excruciating detail.
All the air left Izuku’s lungs on the final page. A selfie of All For One, shamelessly latched onto Izuku who was buried in his chest in the same clothes he’d worn in the dream. A selfie from the dream Izuku had prior to Bakugou discovering him in the bedroom upon his return.
A dream that apparently hadn’t been at dream at all.
The weekly visits… that also weren’t dreams.
His breath quickened and a piece of paper at the base of the photo flopped open and familiar handwriting crept along the page.
Hello Izuku!
Please enjoy this care package. It contains a selection of some of your favourites, but we both know that imitation is no replacement for the real deal.
I’ll see you very soon.
Love,
Hisashi
P.S. I’ve spoken to your mother about your concerns. It's a work in progress.
Without thinking, Izuku rang All Might, hefted the box under an arm and bolted from the room.
Mid-flight, a familiar voice struck Izuku's ears. "It's been such a long time since I last saw him."
Izuku's heart froze in his chest and without a single thought he launched himself out of the nearest window.