Chapter Text
“I’m home!” Izuku called out as he entered his apartment.
“Welcome back!” His mum rounded the hall to help Izuku with his bag as he shrugged off his blazer and shoes.
When he looked up to greet her properly, her eyes widened.
“Izuku,” she breathed, “is everything okay?”
His initial reaction was to just smile and tell her everything was fine but…
He let his shoulders drop, and the exhaustion that must have already been on his face shine through any lingering mask from the school day.
“Sorry, Mum. Everything’s just catching up with me now that we’re kind of settling into the past again.”
She ushered him onto the couch. “Izuku, why don’t you relax while I make us some tea?”
Izuku managed a gentle laugh. “I’m okay Mum, really.”
She turned to face him with an unusually serious expression. “Izuku, I know I haven’t been the best mother to you. I said all the wrong things when you were growing up and suddenly, there’s a version of you already grown and hurt more than I want to imagine. Let me take care of you while I still can.”
Izuku’s eyes grew watery for the hundredth time that day. “You’ve always been a wonderful mother to me.”
Her own eyes welled up and she squeezed his arm before quickly turning away to hide her face and go make some tea.
Izuku was left to his own thoughts for a few minutes. Logically he knew that he was bound to break. Too much had changed too quickly and too unexpectedly.
It was a dream to be back with everyone again.
But dreams can be decayed with a touch, and he was warring between paranoia and hope. The strange and the familiar.
More prominent than anything else at this point in time was his need to merge familiars from different timelines to create a new present that he was allowing himself to selfishly reach for.
He just got his mum back, and giving her up was not an option.
But did that mean losing his dad too?
Selfishly, selfishly, he needed this settled before anything to do with All for One. He felt so guilty. People were hurting. Especially people like Aoyama, and perhaps, the man of his nightmares too. Tomura Shigaraki.
But Izuku hadn’t been apart from Aizawa in two years, and he was really, really feeling the separation. More so now that they had titles to acknowledge that nuances in their previously unspoken relationship.
“Dad.”
“Izuku.”
(“Son.”)
He’d gained so much by coming back to the past, but he’d come to peace with those losses. He was not going to lose what little he had gained.
Selfish, selfish, selfish, his tired mind screamed. But now, he reminded himself as his mother brought tea over and sat next to him on the couch, exactly the way they’d sat the morning Izuku realised he’d time traveled, he was not a hero.
Right now, he was just his mother’s son. And he was going to ask if it would be okay for him to be his dad’s son as well.
He sipped at the warm cup that had been pressed into his hands.
It was silent for a while before his mum finally prompted him to speak. “Izuku?”
Oh, where to begin?
He took another sip from his cup, before placing it on the coffee table, and watched the steam dance for a moment.
He shifted on the couch and saw his mum’s worried gaze follow him.
“I uh… my d- sensei showed me that you messaged him?” He felt his heart skip a few beats. He didn’t want him mum to think she wasn’t enough. This conversation would have to be very delicate on his part.
She furrowed her brows. “That is… what you wanted me to do, right?”
His eyes widened and he rushed to reassure her. “Yeah, that is… just… thanks.”
Her eyes narrowed worriedly. “Izuku, what’s wrong?”
Izuku felt his breath shake as he exhaled. “Are you… okay with it?”
“You’re going to need to give me a bit more than that, honey.”
He turned desperate eyes on his mother, cracking slightly under the weight of his guilt and his longing to have a home with his dad.
“It’s my fault for not bringing it up, but we’re thinking the same thing, right? Like…” He thought of what Aizawa had said earlier that day. “Like split custody. The thing divorced parents do where the kid goes between houses? You barely even know him- are you- and, and, I don’t want you to think I don’t want to be around you anymore because you’re my mum and I love you so much and losing you was- it was…” Izuku trailed off, unable to continue through his shortening breaths.
His increasingly hazy vision meant that he missed his mum’s panic growing with every rugged breath. Her hands hovered wildly, trying to figure out how to best comfort her son.
She was out of her depth, but one thing was immediately obvious to her. “Izuku, Izuku, honey.” His breaths were still short, and she nearly fell back into her own spiral. But that wasn’t what he needed right now. “Don’t worry about me.” She cupped his face and locked her watery eyes onto Izuku’s own panicked ones. Once she was sure she had his attention, she repeated. “Don’t worry about me.”
Mustering all her conviction, she asked him, “What is it that you want, Izuku?”
He blinked, as though the question had surprised him. “Me?”
She let her hands drop from his cheeks and moved to hold his own. Izuku’s hands were larger than hers. They had been for a while, but the reminder of how grown her child was caused her lips to wobble.
“I’m your mother, Izuku.” Her voice was like a whisper. “Let me take care of you.”
Izuku’s mind immediately flashed back to when his dad had essentially said the same thing yesterday. He understood immediately. The waterworks began as his heart broke and began to pour out to his mum.
“We… we haven’t really talked about it. Me and my teacher. Nothing really beyond me calling him dad and him calling me by my given name, but he’s… he’s my dad. I love him like a Dad and I’m pretty sure- I know- he loves me like a son and we’re here. We’re here in the past and not the ruins of a whole country.”
“In the future there was no reason to exist. All the dreams were gone, and there was no one else but him. And he didn’t have to take on a parental role but he did. And suddenly we’re both here, not only with a present, but a future, with so many people to love and care for and with him I-” Izuku hiccuped a sob. “Just as much as I want to be a hero, I really want to live a life where we just get to be a dad and his kid in a world of dads and their kids.”
Inko thinks her heart physically broke in two. “Oh, Izuku.”
He raised his head from where it had ducked down to reveal huge globs of tears pouring down his face. “Is… is that okay, Mum?”
Inko hadn’t had to deal with this many emotions at once in her lifetime as she had in the past week. Her thoughts flitted between how empty the house would feel without Izuku for extended periods of time, how much danger her son was going to face, Hisashi, and how utterly small her bright, vivacious and heroic child sounded right now.
Really, what else could she say?
She reached upwards to place a gentle kiss on her son’s temple. “Of course, Izuku. Leave it to me.”
Inko would do her best to never do wrong by Izuku again, no matter how difficult it was for her. Izuku was strong. She would do her best to match his strength so that he would never have to cry like that again.