Chapter Text
Izuku walked home, shoulders tight and head held down, eyes set on his shoes as he tried to make sure he crashed into nothing as his mind wandered with the memories of a life he had lived, of a man he had been, but didn’t feel like him anymore.
He knew he once had been Mochizuki Touya, he remembered Touya’s life, his friends, anyone and everyone he had met…
He remembered his death.
But he didn’t feel like Mochizuki.
He still felt like Izuku Midoriya, the quirkless 14 year old who had been thrown out of a window just a few hours prior by his best friend’s quirk.
‘Mai would have never done that’ his mind supplied and he found himself shaking his head, attracting the eyes of an older looking woman on the train. ‘She had been a good best friend, like a sister in all but blood, not like that other boy with hateful eyes and quick temper.’
Izuku closed his eyes, breathing in deeply.
He knew what was happening, he remembered it happening to Mochizuki Touya when he had been less than five - after a car accident that had left him in the hospital for a week - he remembered the child’s panicked breathing as he remembered the moment of his death, the family he had left behind.
Ironically, Izuku himself couldn’t remember that past life of his, couldn’t remember the name Mochizuki Touya had remembered, the faces of his loved ones.
Mochizuki Touya had once theorized it was the limitation of his quirk, to only remember the life that preceded his own.
Izuku was now sure.
He also knew it would take him a few days for the two sets of memories to meld, that he would spend the sometime lost in thoughts, prey of images that wouldn’t be of his own life, triggered by the most mundane of things.
‘Touya had been five, and the hospital had subjected him to scans and tests of his mental capacities when nurse after nurse found him frozen in front of small vases of flowers, picture books in the children’s section of the library and even a can of coffee one of the doctors had disposed of, hours of silent contemplation that made all adults around him fear for his cognitive abilities’.
Izuku sighed, eyes still set on his shoes as he got off the train, walking home by memory alone, knowing anything and everything could trigger him and that spending an hour frozen in place right now would be a stupid idea.
“Izuku?” a woman’s voice called, finally making him look up.
She had green hair, green eyes, a soft smile, her plump hands holding a shopping bag as she slowly approached him, worry marking every corner of her face.
Name.
Midoriya Inko.
Age.
41 years old.
Quirk. (Unnamed): Attracts small objects. Limitation: A certain limit of G force and distance.
Occupation: Office worker. (Civilian).
The part that was Touya supplied.
The part that was Izuku didn’t care about all that, feeling warmth and relief - safety - sink onto every inch of his body at the sight of her.
“Mom…” he whispered.
This was his mother, his mother - Touya didn’t have a mother, had found himself dreaming of a mother in more than one occasion - and wasn’t it wonderful? How someone this small, this incredibly soft could be someone so special and important?
The woman frowned, eyes shiny.
“What’s wrong, Izuku? Are you ok?” she asked.
Izuku wrapped his arms around her, face hiding in her shoulder, breathing into her scent of summer flowers and sugar - home, that’s what home smells like - the warmth of her skin chasing away the pain and the fright of the last few hours.
“Izuku, son,” Inko whispered, shocked, hands instantly reaching to card through her son’s curly hair, to check for injuries, for the cause of his distress.
Izuku felt himself smile.
“I’m home” he whispered, savoring the word - Touya had whispered it in the dark of his bedroom so many times, only to be greeted by silence - a tear rolling down his cheek and disappearing in the pink fabric of her cardigan. “I’m home, Mom.”
By all intents and purposes, Midoriya was weak, inconsequential in the grand schemes of the world, - Touya would have thought her cute but inofensive, would have quickly dismissed her from his mind and continued on his way - but she was Izuku’s mother, his mother.
And that meant everything.
Especially when, without a word, without any prompt whatsoever, Midoriya Inko wrapped her own arms around her son tightly, her cheek resting on top of his head - her breath hitching being the only evidence of her distress - and she whispered, softly, warmly.
“Welcome home, Izuku.”
He smiled back at her, so widely it hurt, but the relief that flooded into her face made it all worth it.
“Mom, I…” he began, hesitant. “We need to talk.”
Midoriya Inko didn’t hesitate for a second - another testament to her fundamental importance - as she nodded, ushering her son inside their small apartment and gently pushing him to sit in their beated couch - it had been red once, from what Izuku remembered, though now the color had faded with age.
Inko stared at her son, at how his hands clenched and unclenched against his knees.
“I’ll make us some tea, dear, is that okay?” she said softly. “Collect your thoughts, we have time.”
Izuku blinked.
“Yes, please…” he replied.
Inko smiled, hurrying to the kitchen - most likely she needed to steel herself so as to not distress her son herself.
Izuku closed his eyes again, breathing deeply, fingers clenched against his uniform, thinking of ways to start this conversation.
Should he ask whether his mother had ever heard of Mochizuki Touya?
Should he anticipate her disbelief? She thought him quirkless for so many years.
Should he begin by explaining the theory of plus alpha factors on developing youths? Chromosomes and recessive genetic factors.
Touya knew Mai would have whacked him in the back of the head, muttering about long words and subterfuges. Would have told him to just be blunt, to be his bold and stupid self and go from there.
‘He missed her, so very much’.
“Here,” Midoriya Inko whispered, pressing a warm cup of tea against Izuku’s trembling left hand.
Izuku blinked, surprised.
Had he frozen? How many minutes did it take for their beaten kettle to boil water…?
He stared into his mother’s eyes, hand instantly wrapping around the warm ceramic, the smell of tea filling the space between them.
“I have a quirk,” he blurted, flinching when her eyes widened.
“Izuku…”
“I- I really do, mom,” he interrupted, shoulders tensing. “I got it today, no, wait! I always had it but… it triggered today.”
Disbelief and concern clouded Inko’s face, her teeth sinking onto her bottom lip.
Izuku could almost read her thoughts about the doctors and his unhealthy obsession with quirks, with heroics.
He prepared himself.
“... a quirk?” she asked. “What… happened?”
So he told her.
He told her about his memories, about the hero Oracle who had died 14 years ago, literally minutes before he had been born, about the fight and Contort and Jeanist, about knowing he had past lives but being unable to remember them, of growing alone and forging a small family for himself out of lonely people like himself and graduating with honors from U.A.
Of knowing that for the next few days the smallest things would trigger his memories, until Mochizuki Touya and Midoriya Izuku had merged into one.
Told her about not being sure whether it was a recessive gene or a twist of fate because Touya had been too young to be diagnosed as quirkless when his own quirk got triggered but he was sure Touya had worn the same type of shoes he wore and wasn’t that something?
“I know that name,” his mother interrupted, hand tight against his own.
Izuku stared at her, shocked.
“What?” he asked.
“Mochizuki Touya,” she continued, leaving their couch to pull a small, beaten folder from a drawer and handing it to her son. “I took you there when you were young, for counselling.”
Izuku stared at the folder, shocked.
THE MOCHIZUKI TOUYA FOUNDATION FOR QUIRKLESS CHILDREN.
A charity.
He idly remembered going there with his mom for a year, talking to doctors and other adults alike, playing with other children that had told him he was really smart, swimming in a pool in the summer and getting a present from a bored young man dressed as Santa that winter.
He remembered the bronze frame with a picture of a man in a long dark cloak, with silver white hair and pale blue eyes staring at him kindly in the director’s office.
“I had forgotten,” he whispered, reading his psychological profile and the reports from the counselors quickly, there were many letters praising him from the staff, little drawings from other children.
He remembered crying when the director told him he didn’t have to go anymore.
He didn’t remember, however, starting a foundation under his name.
“You took me there when I was diagnosed,” he said.
“I did,” Inko nodded. “They helped you overcome your heartbreak. You were really happy.”
Izuku frowned.
“But I never started any charity,” he sighed. “I wouldn’t have named it after myself.”
“From what they told me, it started a year after you were born,” Inko supplied, calm.
Izuku tilted his head to the side, a perfect imitation of his mother. A year after he was born - a year after he died - just who had started a charity under his name? A charity for quirkless children no less? He had worked with many quirkless children in his life, it was his pet project to protect them from discrimination, to help them in a world that was stacked against them. Was it Mai? It didn’t seem like her. And he knew for sure En… no one else would want to preserve his work in such a way.
Suddenly a thought struck him.
“You believe me,” he breathed, in awe.
“You have no reason to lie to me, son,” she reasoned, softly. “If you say that is what happened, I believe you.”
Izuku smiled, fingers entwined with her own.
“Thank you.”
“I just need to ask,” Inko continued, her fingers tightening. “You say you remembered Mochizuki-san’s previous life after a car accident.”
“Yeah,” Izuku nodded. “I can’t remember that life anymore, though… I think it’s the limitation of my-”
“So what made you remember Mochizuki-san’s life this time?” his mother interrupted, voice growing grave.
Izuku blinked.
“Eh?”
“What triggered your quirk in this life, Izuku?”
Izuku bit his lips, skin looking its color when his mother’s eyes grew dull for a moment, then slowly started filling with tears.
“Was it someone at school?” she whispered.
“A-at school? Why would you think…”
“I know you are trying to hide it from me, Izuku,” Inko continued. “You’ve never come home hurt, that’s why I pretended not to notice you never go out with your friends anymore, or that you’ve grown more and more silent. I thought you’d tell me when you felt ready but you never did and now you just told me your quirk activated in your last life when you got seriously injured and I can only think something happened to you and…”
A tear rolled down Midoriya Inko’s cheek, her lips parted in a soft, almost inaudible gasp.
“Was it Katsuki-kun?” she whispered. “Is that why he never comes over anymore?”
Izuku stared at her, shocked into silence.
He hadn’t known she had noticed the growing distance between Bakugo Katsuki and himself - hadn’t really stopped to notice how she had slowly stopped meeting with Aunty Mitsuki herself - hadn’t even thought that his mom had just been waiting for him to say something.
What could he have possibly said?
He didn’t want to hurt his mother and he knew that the knowledge would only hurt her.
He only had a year left in Aldera and then he could start all over in a new school - in UA if things went according to plan - and she would never have to look at her best friend in the face and know her friend’s child was hurting her beloved son.
But Midoriya Inko - his soft,harmless, pure mother - had noticed, had known all along something was wrong.
“... I’m sorry,” he whispered back, eyes lowering, ashamed. “I didn’t… I just…”
Surprisingly strong arms wrapped around him tightly.
The scent of summer flowers and sugar enveloped him.
“Oh, Izuku,” she sobbed against his hair, her breath choked, trembling. “I’m sorry, my baby, I’m so sorry!”
Izuku closed his eyes, sinking into her embrace.
She always said that about things outside of her control, her empathetic grief so strong.
Izuku wrapped his own arms around her, shaking his head.
“It’s ok mom,” he reassured, his own voice trembling with the effort to contain his own tears. “I’m okay.”
They both knew he wasn’t.