Chapter Text
Inko Midoriya gets home from work at half-past seven.
It’s rather late. Usually, Inko leaves work at around five, which means she is home just in time to make dinner for Izuku, her son. However, tonight she decided to work overtime.
It was around the time of the month, in between checks from Hisashi, when funds started to run low. After leaving her to raise a child on her own you’d think he could pitch in a bit more. But while the checks still came in at the beginning of every month, the amount had been steadily decreasing.
(She’d bring him to court over it but the judges would take his side. No one wants to pay for a quirkless son.)
So, although she loathed leaving Izuku alone so frequently, Inko had begun picking up extra shifts. Leaving before Izuku woke up for school, staying a little later on days when she could spare the time. She wanted to maintain the lifestyle they had now.
Izuku deserved anything he wanted, the world if he asked. But, since she couldn't give him that, she would make sure he had everything he needed . (For this, she is sorry; she knows Izuku knows how tight things have been, he's too smart not to.)
Anyways, this meant Izuku was home alone more often than not.
She knew she could trust him to look after himself, and she knew he would never do anything bad intentionally, but Izuku had always had a knack for finding trouble and you can’t stop a mother from worrying.
And so, with her son in mind, Inko takes off her shoes and steps further into the apartment. With all these thoughts running through her head, she doesn't notice the missing pair of red sneakers that always lay next to hers in the evening.
At first, she doesn’t notice anything's off. She runs through the motions, hanging up her coat, putting the keys on their hook. Placing her bag on the dining room table as she fetches herself a glass of water.
It isn’t until she's resting comfortably in a chair and beginning to relax for the evening that the first inklings of something's off, something’s wrong start to tickle the back of her brain.
Then, she realizes that it’s quiet.
Now, the house has never really been loud. Izuku’s never been particularly noisy either but, it’s not just quiet, it’s silent . And that ’s what hits Inko as off.
Something you get used to after living with someone, with a kid, for 13 years is the sound of them living with you. Whether it be the sound of the shower running, the sound of footsteps in the hallway, or the sound of Izuku mumbling (a habit that, as much as he tries, he can't seem to get rid of), there is always sound.
But, as Inko makes her way towards Izuku’s bedroom, all she can hear is the beating of her heart and the rise and fall of her chest. (She revels in the sound because it means someone is home.)
Inko’s breath falters as she opens the door to Izuku's bedroom. It’s here, standing in the doorway, that that feeling returns. The static in her head as her brain screams, something’s off, something's wrong, something’s not quite right. Because here, standing in the doorway, Inko can clearly see that her son’s room is in perfect condition. Nothing's wrong, nothing's missing, nothing is out of place. But it feels empty. As if the very soul of the room has been ripped out.
She calls out for her son, but no one answers.
Inko returns to the living room, patting herself down on the way.
She needs her phone. It’s likely that Izuku went out on an errand of some sort, so there's no reason to panic. Though, Izuku always lets Inko know when he is going to leave the house. Especially on days where she’s working late (granted, sometimes she’s too busy to respond but it’s still nice to know what her son is doing while she’s away).
She could have sworn she checked for notifications when she left work, but she must have missed something. It’s the only explanation.
(A voice, barely even a whisper, wanders through the vast expanses of her mind. It frolics through flower fields and floats on top of rippling waters. It points and laughs at her distress and concern. It skips and giggles and tells her she is wrong. )
She picks up her phone from the coffee table and types in her password with shaky hands. No new notifications. So she dials Izuku's number, closes her eyes tight, empties out the air in her lungs, and raises the phone to her ear with trembling fingers.
By the third ring, Inko knows something is wrong . Izuku always picks up the phone by the third ring. It’s something that she had always found slightly odd but ultimately attributed to Izuku being, well, Izuku.
As the phone rings for the fourth time, then the fifth, Inko knows that her son will not answer (she knows, she knows, but she can hope, can’t she?).
The sixth. Seventh ( pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up. Please, baby, come on. You need to pick up the phone! ).
Inko hears a buzzing on the dining room table. Without even needing to look, Inko knows what it is.
Just as persistent as he was about picking up the third ring, Izuku made sure he brought his phone everywhere. If he took a single step past the front door, the boy had his phone with him. Not because he was addicted to it, no, Izuku had always preferred tangible pleasures to digital ones, but because he was deftly afraid of something happening to him whilst alone. (Inko had never dug deeper, asked why. She had never really wanted to know.)
The ringing takes a different form. One of the voice in her head. It wastes no time frolicking. This time it yells. It screams that something’s off, tells her something’s wrong. It kicks and she knows something’s not quite right. Something happened. As the voice simmers down to a quiet humming in the back of her skull, Inko vows to find out what.
Willing her body to move she makes her way over to the table. Her hands are shaking and her vision is blurring but she moves. Inch by inch until she can make out Izuku's All Might phone case. The one he spent weeks trying to get. He was glued to the screen 24/7 and didn't sleep until he knew he had outbid everyone else who wanted it.
She stays there for a moment. Breathing, or trying to. She stares at the phone on the table the same way she imagines God must have looked down on Adam and Eve. Eyes fearful and heart heavy. Scared of what they would one day become. (Or maybe it was sorrow. And as his eyes filled with tears he thought, not of Eve and her apple, but of a boy with green hair and eyes to match. Mourning his creation as one mourns the Earth. Of a beautiful thing ripped apart by humanity itself.)
The thing is, she remembers it vividly. Inko had stayed over time; it was almost midnight by the time she got home. She had hung up her coat, put her keys on their hook and went to place her bag on the dining room table. The apartment was dark so Inko almost didn't see him, but Izuku was there, asleep at the table, head braced against his arms. She had been so, so confused, and reached to wake him up. Her hands had barely brushed his shoulder before his eyes had blinked open. His eyes found hers in the dark and, for a moment, he looked so terribly frightened. Lost and in need of guidance that she longed to give him, but would never be able to. But then that horrifying expression cleared and was replaced with recognition, excitement, and she had moved right on without a second thought.
“Why are you sleeping out here, Izuku?” She had asked and Izuku had replied, voice raspy, the late hour weighing down on him, “I didn't mean to,” and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes.
“But I did it, Mom! I won!” Izuku’s eyes brightened and a smile spread across his lips and in the darkness of the apartment Inko could've sworn she was staring at the sun.
Inko looked around, searching for a clue as to what her son was talking about. Izuku’s laptop, covered completely in hero stickers, sat on the table. The brightness of the screen was dimmed as if it hadn't been touched in a while. She wondered, briefly, how long Izuku had been here, waiting for her to return.
It was open to one of Izuku’s favorite hero merch websites, an online bidding one. On the screen was a picture of the very phone case on the table right now. Blue and red with a cartoon drawing of All Might’s face. He’s just there. Blonde tendrils of hair sticking out, foolish, awe-inspiring grin on his face.
She remembers looking back up at Izuku. Taking in the way his eyes glittered with tentative pride. Like the emotion was foreign to him, like he was waiting for it to be crushed.
She remembers taking it all in and asking, with furrowed brows and a baffled smile, “That's great, Izuku, but why wait out here? Couldn't you have told me in the morning?”
And oh , this hurts to think of now, because Izuku had looked up at her blearily before his lips spread into a small, bemused smile and he had said “I just wanted to tell you.”
Inko wants her son to be home. She wants him to be safe and happy. She wants him to trust her. She wants him to ask for help. And it's for this reason that she stops ignoring the note on the table. It’s laying on the mahogany tabletop, next to Izuku's phone, and it's almost mocking her. Because she knows what it is.
She wants to continue on with ignorance. To pretend everything is fine and Izuku will be home soon. But she can't, not anymore. That’s what she was doing before, what she’s been doing since Izuku’s quirkless diagnosis. Inko knows exactly how society views quirkless people. How, in a world full of quirks, full of ordinary people with extraordinary powers, a boy with nothing but a kind heart and a bright smile could never be accepted.
It is simply the way the world works. Inko has never hoped to change this. She has wished that things were different, dreamed of a world where everyone recognized Izuku for the brilliant boy that he was. She has felt guilty, cried herself to sleep wondering if it was her fault. If Izuku’s quirklessness was the result of a complication during her pregnancy. Inko has always felt hopeless in the face of such misfortune. Not because she loved Izuku any less because of his quirk status, but because no matter how much she loved him, no matter how often she wished or how hard she cried, it would never be enough. Izuku had been cursed to live wretched life and there was nothing she could do about it.
But still, something is wrong. Tonight, something has happened to her son, and Inko will be damned if she doesn’t find out what.
Inko picks up the note and begins to read
“Hi, Mom,
Please know that this isn’t your fault.”
Inko nearly rips the note in half right then and there because come on. How is that fair? Why does Izuku get to know her so well but remain a complete mystery to her? How come Izuku can read her like a book he’s read a hundred times, but Izuku, to her, is like the ending of a bedtime story she hasn’t heard in years. Once so familiar reciting it was second nature but is now a memory so faint, all that’s left is blurry faces and whispered laughter that she longs to hear again.
She longs to rip it up. Or at least to hide it away somewhere she’ll never have to see it again. But Inko knows that that blissful ignorance she had once maintained so easily, she can never have again. The only thing left to do is read.
“I know you; I know you’ll blame yourself, that you’ll feel as if you failed in some way.
But that's not true so you better stop thinking that right now.
Besides, it won’t bring me back.
Look, I've re-written this note at least 100 times and I can never find a way to say this in a way that isn’t too harsh but to be honest with you I’m a bit tired of it.
So I'm just gonna say it.
I’m running away.
Well, when you read this I will have already run away but, yeah.
I’m sorry.
I’d just like to reiterate that this is NOT your fault! I am so, so grateful for everything you have done for me. I know it must not have been easy to raise a quirkless son. I’m sorry that I made things so hard for you. First with Dad, then with work. I mean, it’s hard to keep a job once they find out your kid is quirkless.
Anyways, I figured this was best for the both of us. I don’t have to deal with quirkists every day and you don’t have to carry the burden that is my existence!
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I know you never thought of me as a burden but I know that I was. And I know you love me, believe me, I know. I would never question that. I just don’t want your love for me to hold you back for the rest of your life. It’s not worth it.
But I hope you know that I love you too. I can’t remember the last time we said that to each other when one of us wasn’t on our way out the door. It’s kind of sad actually. I guess that’s just the way things played out.
I’m sorry about that too. We let the weight of the world drive us apart. That one’s not really my fault, but it’s not yours either. I just don’t want you to feel guilty about not being able to stop it. It was always going to happen. Tragedies aren’t single, isolated events. They often drag smaller happenings down with them. It’s the culmination of these things, all those moments in time where something could have gone better but didn’t, that makes them so tragic.
I just wanted you to know that I’m safe, I have someplace to stay. There's no reason for you to worry. Just, please, don’t look for me. You’ve wasted enough of your life on me already, don’t make that mistake again. I’m giving you an easy out, Mom, just let me go.
My hand is cramping from writing so much so I’m gonna end the note here.
Goodbye, I love you (Imagine me saying it to your face this time),
Izuku ”
Inko tries to breathe afterward. She really does. She tries to breathe, she tries to stay standing. She tries to do anything to pull herself together into some semblance of a person before she can unravel completely. But she fails. A tear slips out from where she had clenched her eyes tight, maybe hoping to alleviate the pain. Maybe just to stop herself from having to look around the apartment and realize how empty it is. How the silence consumes every pleasant memory she has ever had within its walls. She keeps her eyes closed to distract herself from the fact that the apartment has been like this for a while.
Inko shatters, crumbling to the floor in a desperate heap. She lets out a cry, full of pain and sorrow and desperation. Her chest constricts painfully, squeezing yet another horrific wail from her throat.
It’s pathetic, really. She’s wallowing in her own self pity and she knows it. She should get up and go look for her son but she can't. Though her hand latches on to the table beside her, she can’t seem to find the strength to stand. Because her son is missing. Because he chose to leave and Inko couldn’t stop him.
He had said it wasn’t her fault but how could it not be. She had noticed the cuts and the bruises and the burns. She had noticed when Izuku came home with a limp some days, head down and eyes dimmer than usual. She had noticed and she didn’t do a thing because whenever she asked he would brush it off and say he was fine. Then he would give her one of those bright smiles and tell her not to worry about it. Like an absolute fool, she listened. She was stupid. She was so, so stupid and now her son was gone and there was nothing she could do about it.
She knew it. She was right. Something was off, something was wrong and nothing would ever be right again. Her son had run away and the realization that it was her fault, no matter what Izuku had to say about it, was too much to bear.
Through her blurred vision, she stares at the note in her hands. It is crumpled and torn but she can’t stop staring. Because in her hands she holds the tattered remains of a happy home. The paper was wet with tears but still, she did her best to cradle it. Inko thought that, if she closed her eyes and focused on its weight in her palms, she could imagine it was Izuku’s chin instead. And she could lift him up and pull him closer to tell him to his face this time.
“I love you.”
The silence eats the words up as they leave her lips. Not even an echo in response.