Work Text:
“Uh.” Izuku says intelligently.
His homeroom teacher and mentor are standing expectantly on his doorstep. Mr. Aizawa looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, and All Might’s expression is a strange combination of amusingly-awkward-grin and I-just-ate-a-spoonful-of-salt.
“Young Midoriya,” All Might waves cheerfully. “We’re here about U.A.’s newly implemented dormitory policies following… the recent events. Is your mother around?”
And… well, shit, because how is he supposed to break it to them that his mother has been rotting in the earth for four years and that he’s been forging government documents for three?
—
It starts like this:
Izuku is freshly eleven. He is quirkless and hanging on to life by a singular thread. It’s a frayed thread and it makes an ominous creaking sound every couple of seconds, but at least he has his Mom.
Mom is a very gentle woman. She likes to trace his freckles and sing him to sleep with old lullabies. She likes to crack silly jokes and noogie his hair into a tangled mess to carefully card out later. She likes to dance in the kitchen and when Izuku comes home from a particularly hard day of school, dirt smeared across his face and palms raw, she warms a washcloth and kisses his head.
It’s a Tuesday night when Mom hugs him, keels over, and dies.
Pulmonary Embolism: A blood cot got stuck in her lungs. Inko Midoriya was a gentle woman, but also a fierce woman: She ran off porch pirates with a house slipper and shamed even the most authoritative of men with a waggle of the pointer finger. She was not the kind of woman to die of a random blood clot, and yet, Izuku stood by her headstone at eleven years old.
Hisashi Midoriya was the immediate choice for custody. A clean record, a stable income. Sure, he fucked off to another country after getting his girlfriend pregnant, and sure, he had the presence of a Mongolian Death Worm, but whatever.
Izuku lived with Hisashi for three weeks at a random motel. In those three weeks, he’d somehow managed to give Izuku a concussion, a hairline fracture in both (seriously, why not just one?) wrists, and steal his shoes.
At the time, Hisashi had been trying to figure out how to navigate all the legal crap that came with having a dead baby mama, plus the baby itself. His plan was to get the documents sorted and take Izuku back to America with him, where… he apparently had two girlfriends, one underage and the other married. So…
Izuku woke up, sprawled in the bathroom after getting his brains bashed in on the eighth night of his stay with the man and decided “Oh, fuck naw.”
The verdict: Hisashi left the country again. Izuku did not go with him like he was supposed to. Instead, he used his mother’s savings and payed some guy on the internet to forge a shit ton of paperwork.
Eventually, Izuku ran out of dark-web-money and learned how to do it himself. According to the government, Inko Midoriya is paying taxes, rent, signing school-related paperwork, and is totally not dead.
Things… are alright, he supposes, now that he’s at U.A.; All Might gave him a quirk, which is fucking awesome by the way, and all his new friends are so nice. They treat him like an equal and they never judge him for mumbling or nerding out.
And— dude— Kacchan? Was it just him, or was Kastuki “I-eat-kerosene-for-breakfast” Bakugo actually mellowing out? That whole kidnapping thing really sucked, but… He hadn’t seemed all that shaken up about it, and Izuku wasn’t surprised at all, because he’s been hyper-aware of the boy’s resilience and resolve for over a decade.
Izuku doesn’t really have a steady income of food, fine. Nor is he particularly on time with his electricity bills… And okay, yeah, he works three jobs. But it’s been like that ever since Mom passed, and even before that when she was a single mother trying to make ends meet.
Izuku’s life is freaking awesome. All Might’s predecessor: a boy with a quirk so overpowered it literally exploded his bones (He was getting the hang of it!!), amazing friends, and teachers who don’t mark down his grades for shits and giggles.
Oh, right.
And then Mr. Aizawa and All Might knocked on his door.
“…Yeah, so, uh,” Izuku tries a grin, but all it does is pull his face taught and make him feel like an idiot. His arm wavers where it’s held up gripping the doorframe, and he thinks there might be spiders crawling the length of his spinal cord. “My Mom’s… not here? Right now?”
All Might furrows his eyebrows. He insisted Izuku call him Yagi since he was officially retired, but there was no way a hero fanboy such as Izuku would ever be able to utter his real name out loud without fainting. Knowing him personally still seemed like a fever dream at times.
“Can someone come back another time?” Mr. Aizawa mutters in that grouchy voice of his, looking a bit like he’s fallen asleep standing. Izuku notices he says “someone” instead of “we.” Izuku understands; his teacher has been grappling with the claws of the press recently, dealing with the fallouts of a U.A. student’s kidnapping and the subsequent rescuing. Anyone with half a brain knows that Mr. Aizawa hates the press like a lion hates hyenas. He and All Might have probably been running around all day too, comforting other parents and doing business.
“Uh,” Izuku says for the second time. He is very practiced in the art of answering questions, you see.
Immediately noticing the frown that starts to pull at All Might’s face, Izuku backtracks. “Well, s-so— Is there anyway you could email the forms to her? Or the- the paperwork? You could leave it here if you have it printed, I, hm, I could talk to her myself.”
Mr. Aizawa glances at him. It’s a different glance than his usual indifferent one- something about it is calculating. Then it’s gone.
“The school prefers if we talk to her in person. The topic surrounding the dormitories and the rules themselves, both legally and according to U.A. policies, should be discussed face to face,” He explains monotonously.
Izuku feels the blood drain from his face.
And, yep, that’s his stomach melting and falling to his feet with a horrified squelching sound.
Here is something to know about Izuku Midoriya, folks: He prefers not to break the law. See, breaking the law tends to come with consequences. Fines, jail time, a mark on the record book… The general consensus is that punishments are inevitable, and the severity of those punishments are dictated by the severity of the offense.
Forging government documents is a felony. It is not a misdemeanor, it is a felony that Izuku has been continuously committing for three years.
Now, Izuku should probably think logically about this. Maybe he can convince his teachers that Inko Midoriya is on a business trip overseas and then use an embedded voice changer to talk to them over a phone-call. Maybe he can convince them that she is unbelievably busy and can’t afford a parent-teacher meeting.
Logic is good. Logic is great.
Logic is also being hurtled to the pavement at terminal velocity and the only vocabulary Izuku has at the moment is “SHITFUCK.”
“Uh,” Izuku says for the third time. This time, he is very eloquent; imagine a man with a monocle and a doctorate in MBA. That’s basically him, standing in his apartment entryway wearing a shirt that reads “socks” and flannel pajama pants.
“Young Midoriya?” All Might asks hesitantly.
“…Yes?”
“Are you alright?”
“Um.” He doesn’t say “uh” the fourth time. “Yes.”
“When,” All Might sniffles. Mr. Aizawa looks like he’s in physical pain. “Will your mother be home next? Our schedule is flexible, school doesn’t start back up for another week.”
“She’s on a trip,” Izuku blurts.
All Might blinks. “A trip?”
“Yes. Uh-huh. Long trip. Work-related, in Europe.”
“That’s okay. What about a video call? Where is she?”
Crap, a video call? A VIDEO call? shit, double shit, triple shit. Maximum shits all combined into one giant shit.
Izuku wonders how hot his shame will burn when he is expelled from U.A. His dream school practically since birth, and his friends will all feel so betrayed. They will feel angry at him, because how could he? How could Izuku be such a terrible person all along? They’re such nice people, and nice people don’t mix with liars.
“Wenzhou,” He exclaims without thinking.
There’s a brief moment of silence. Izuku’s ears ring.
“…Wenzhou, China? Apologies, I thought you said Europe—“
“I did. I mean. Yep, did I say Wenzhou? Haha, silly me. I meant Bangkok!”
“That’s also in—“
“Buenos Aires!”
“Now you’re way off—“
“How about you come back later?” And suddenly Izuku feels like vomiting. His mouth fills with saliva, coating his teeth in preparation of stomach acid, and the bile pushes into his throat. It tastes like guilt and embarrassment and pure, unadulterated terror.
His hands are shaking, when did they start doing that? He finds himself unable to make eye contact. If he sees those blue eyes, wide with confusion, or those dark grey, analytical glances? He’s sure that if he tears his eyes from his slippered feet, he’ll hurl all over them and then some.
And there is no denying it now, either:
Izuku is a terrible fucking liar.
For someone who has been faking having a mother for literal years, you’d think he’d be better at this whole lying thing. Unfortunately, something in his throat always clogs up and then he’s stuttering like a bumbling idiot. Thank God none of his friends ask about his home life, but also, couldn’t he have gotten some practice in?
A “lying one-oh-one class” would have been really helpful.
“Midoriya,” Mr. Aizawa halts his spiral with a solid tone. It’s a quality that Izuku respects; the commandment of attention. But in this scenario? He’s not stern, but he also doesn’t sound pleased, and that’s not good.
“Midoriya,” Says Mr. Aizawa. “May we come inside?”
Izuku doesn’t dare look up. Instead, he inhales, exhales, and opens the door wider. “Yeah.”
Admittedly, the living room is very bare. That’s not to say it isn’t lived in however, the couch is sunken in and the coffee table has permanent mug-rings across every inch. There’s no television because Izuku had to choose between news networks and dinner, but there are a few photos propped up on the sill where the television is supposed to go.
One of them is an old photograph of him and Mom. Izuku is seven, hair as wild as his eyes, scrunched into crescents by the most blinding, gummy smile the world has ever seen. He’s smushed against Mom, who crouches next to him and wraps two loving arms around his midsection. She’s smiling, too.
There’s also a photo of him and Kacchan before their relationship soured. They’re four years old, snoozing away on a futon with their limbs tangled and pudgy hands cradling. Auntie Mitsuki snuck inside Katsuki’s room to take the photo, cooing and whispering, careful not to wake either boy.
Mr. Aizawa eyes the photos, both of them, but doesn’t say anything. All Might is carrying the conversation for obvious reasons.
“Ah, pardon me, but could we turn on a light in here?” The blond asks sheepishly, settling into the left side of the couch as Mr. Aizawa takes the right. Izuku sits himself in a rocking chair opposite of the couch, which he can’t actually rock in because the squeaking is unbearable.
Izuku stares at him blankly for a minute. “No.”
Mr. Aizawa raises an eyebrow.
“I-I mean,” Izuku chuckles awkwardly. So very awkwardly. “Sorry, I can’t. I haven’t… really… uh…”
The room’s singular light source is a cracked window that he has propped open. Some kid with a strong arm on him got too close while playing baseball, and the spiderweb fractures weren’t really on his priority list. He usually keeps the window open anyway, the apartment doesn’t have very good air conditioning. The moth eaten curtains sway in a breeze that the afternoon periodically kicks up and lays down.
Mr. Aizawa decides to spare him the mortification of having to admit “I didn’t pay my electricity” and clears his throat.
He doesn’t look as bored anymore, but no less exhausted. Izuku thinks that it’s the most professional he’s ever seen the man when he threads his hands together.
“Midoriya, your only emergency contacts are your mother and Bakugo’s mother,” Izuku knows that. He taps his knee and syncs his breathing to the rhythmic fidgeting— he finds that having a consistent beat helps soothe his nerves. “Your mother is on a trip?”
“Sure is—“
“Try again.”
Izuku snaps his mouth shut so quickly his teeth click. He never wants to do anything ever again. He’ll become a hermit and live on a mountain surrounded only by crickets and one or two chickens. He’ll live a life of isolation; how hard can going off grid be?
Mr. Aizawa glares at him. It’s not a necessarily mean glare, just an… intense one.
“S-Sorry,” Tap. Tap. Tap. “Yeah, you’re right. She’s… She’s not on a business trip.”
All Might plays good cop. They might as well be sitting in a concrete room, color washed to grayscale, with a lamp shone directly in Izuku’s face. “It’s alright, my boy. Does she live with you?”
His eyes flicker to the photographs behind him and back.
Izuku shakes his head while saying “Yes.”
Then he realizes that he’s just shook his head while saying “yes,” backtracks, and nods his head while saying “no.”
…And then he notices that he’s just contradicted himself twice in a row and says “Fuck,” instead.
This situation is not ideal.
All Might seems to be at a loss for words, probably realizing that in the past year and a half of knowing him he’d never met Inko Midoriya once. Mr. Aizawa, ever the logical one, just leans forward.
He takes a good, long look at him. He probably doesn’t like what he sees, because after a moment he’s sighing the most emphatic, dramatic sigh to ever be sighed.
“I think that I should make something clear with you, Midoriya,” Mr. Aizawa shifts to his elbows, hands still threaded. He went to gesture a hand at one point, noted Izuku’s generous flinch, and kept them folded for the rest of the conversation.
“…Okay,” Nods Izuku. Tap. Taptap. Too fast, slow down. Tap.
And then Mr. Aizawa takes his worldview in two hands and snaps it over his knee, “Being a student at U.A. means that you are under the guardianship and protection of the school, and by extension, me. As a pro hero and as a homeroom teacher, when I say that my students are the top priority, you can believe me.“
“U-Um—“
“I’m not done.”
“Oh, okay, but—“
“No buts. Plainly and simply, your safety and well being is my legal and moral obligation, do you understand?”
“Well, I kind of—“
“Don’t care. For as long as you are a U.A. student, you are under my care and that is the full truth; To put it into more complexity, you are also a very bright student and I would probably be displeased if anything were to happen to you.”
“Proba—?”
“Whatever situation you are in,” Mr. Aizawa levels him with a stare. Izuku finally finds it within himself to make eye contact, finger losing its rhythm the longer he holds it. “You are only sixteen years old. You deserve to let me or another member of the faculty know if something is going on, and I can guarantee with one-hundred percent certainty that U.A. is not the type of school to slack off when it comes to its students. I made the mistake of not realizing that when I was your age and ended up getting legally kidnapped by a chupacabra the size of two shoeboxes.”
“You got what—“
“Midoriya,” Mr. Aizawa shuts him up for good. “Trust me.”
“What he said,” All Might adds helpfully.
“Pipe down,” Says Mr. Aizawa.
Izuku considers his options.
Option one: Keep lying. Insist that Inko Midoriya really is on a business trip and that she visited multiple cities for conferences: for example, Buenos Aires and Bangkok. It’s a solid excuse. Decide on a video call and sadly declare that the internet is much too choppy for live feed and switch to voice-only. Problem solved.
Pros: He doesn’t get arrested. Nobody at U.A. has to put up with him. He isn’t forced under someone’s unwilling care; That happened once before, and it did not end well.
Cons: Mr. Aizawa is a very observant man. All Might, not so much, but he has just as much of a savior complex as Izuku does; it’s an unfortunate trait they share. Also, Izuku, as we’ve discovered, is a terrible liar.
Option two: Let the cat out of the bag. Spill the beans. Give the game away. Let Elvis out of the building. Lift the rug.
Pros: …
Cons: Face jail-time or a massive fine. Get expelled, probably. Be forced to transfer One for All and become quirkless again. Lose all of his friends. Get out of jail ten years in the future. No job will hire someone with a black mark AND no quirk. He gets so lonely and miserable that he drinks his life away at a musty, suspicious bar. He’ll get in his car and attempt to drive home shitfaced. Pump the gas a little too hard and go flying over the guardrail, hit several rocks on the way down the cliffside, survive the fall but become paralyzed from the neck down, and get eaten alive by vultures over the next few days.
“My Mom’s dead,” Izuku says.
All Might blinks.
Mr. Aizawa isn’t amused. “And you’ve been living by yourself for…”
“Four years.”
“And your father?”
“I-If I had to guess, high as the ISS on LSD and shrooms and laying face down middle of a sorghum field in Kansas, America.”
Izuku slaps his hands over his mouth. He didn’t mean to say that.
He’s gonna die, he’s actually, seriously going to die. He’ll follow in his mother’s footsteps and spontaneously keel over. His heart is in his ears and he’s pretty sure he can feel it trying to escape his body: “Lemme out! This piece of junk body is too hard to keep alive!”
He can see the light.
And then—
Mr. Aizawa ruffles his hair. It’s a familiar feeling, but it’s long lost, and now the nostalgia of it— of having someone to affectionately acknowledge him in any way shape or form— is making warmth build behind his eyes. It spreads to his chest, too, bursting and suddenly alive.
I’m not dead, thinks Izuku.
“No, you’re alive. I think,” All Might awkwardly stands.
I said that out loud, thinks Izuku.
“Um, my boy…” His mentor of over a year stands sheepishly before him. Mr. Aizawa was messing with his phone now, and All Might steps up. “May I…”
Izuku doesn’t consider it.
He’s been alone for the past four years of his life in every sense of the matter.
Alone to face the landlord who hates his guts. Alone to walk the pothole ridden streets home from his graveyard shift. Alone to skimp out on nice meals and five finger discount clothes.
Alone to cradle his head, which still occasionally aches from a concussion healed without treatment. Alone to run his nerve-damaged arms beneath warm water in futile hopes of stifling the lingering pain of a quirk that’s too powerful for his literal bones.
Alone to reminisce a mother. A mother who was once so beautiful, so kind, and so caring. A mother whose heart pumped blood and who exchanged oxygen for carbon dioxide.
He’d been thinking all this time:
Alone is just the way things are.
This worldview is not baseless, but somehow the very foundation of it has been cracked. Cracked suddenly and with warmth and paternal love from… probably two of the most unsuspecting people in his life.
Izuku doesn’t think twice about hugging Yagi.
It feels nice, he realizes. To know that someone cares.
His secret’s finally out. It’s a weight off his shoulders, ten pounds, ten thousand, even. His shoulders feel lighter already, and he’s only just confessed to a complex family tra—
“Oh no,” Izuku’s panic is muffled in the Hawaiian shirt that… Yagi is wearing for one reason or another.
“Are you alright?” Yagi blinks, gently removing him from the curl of his chest by the shoulders. “Young Midoriya?”
“A-Am I gonna go to jail? I’ve kinda been committing a felony for the past three years.”
Mr. Aizawa, finished with whatever business was on his phone, pats his shoulder. He’s not much of a hugger. “Chupacabra has it handled. Don’t worry, Problem Child,” He manages to sound bone-tired and reassuring in the same sentence.
Who the hell is Chupacabra?
(Chupacabra is, in fact, two shoeboxes tall. Plus, maybe, like, an acorn or something. He’s also fuzzy and white and the principal of U.A.)
(Izuku also comes to figure out that the legal kidnapping thing is very much a true story. It ends up happening to him.)
(But… he’s not really complaining. He doesn’t have to work three jobs anymore, and the microwave doesn’t start imitating Kacchan every time he goes to heat up a cup of noodles. There’s electricity and the water isn’t perpetually ice cold.)
(But best of all? Surrounded by people who accept him for his complicated past and hypocritical behavior of breaking the law while simultaneously training to BE law enforcement? It’s pretty damn nice.)
(Izuku’s not alone anymore.)
—
OMAKE:
Aizawa Shouta thinks he is cursed.
In a past life, he must’ve been a massive asshole. He’s sure of it: he pissed off some higher deity and now he’s spending the next life facing punishment for his sins.
Izuku Midoriya was a bit of a conundrum. For the first half, anyway: A boy as skittish as a fawn but with a resolve so strong and sharp it could slice bricks like warm butter. A boy with a powerful quirk and an utter lack of control. For someone who was so affluent in analysis and with such a nuanced perspective of quirks and their applications, he barely had a grip on his own.
It hadn’t made any sense to Shouta, really. His one overarching thought, however, was that Midoriya really was a good kid.
Which is why he’s cursed. Of course the glue of Class 1-A, resident sunshine incarnate, was also committing falsification on the side.
Seeing that barren apartment filled the gaps. Well, most of them, anyway. He’s never going to poke the wasps nest of that kid’s quirk with a ten foot pole.
Even though the situation was admittedly surprising, and okay, he’ll say it— pulled on his heartstrings a bit (Lock it up, Hizashi, I don’t have “parental instincts”)— He wasn’t unhappy with the outcome.
On Monday, Midoriya waltzed into class 1-A like he’d just won the lottery. When asked for the reasoning behind this sudden and jovial behavior, the boy simply grinned:
“I’m not going to get eaten by vultures!”
Shouta Aizawa thinks his problem children are all annoyances. The whole lot of them.
And when the kids start referring to him as “Papazawa,” which is totally unprofessional and not amusing whatsoever, he is positive in his curse.
(Yagi splutters like an idiot the first time he hears “Dad Might.” It’s not even funny, and it doesn’t make sense either, but it’s always fun to watch him make a fool of himself.)