Chapter Text
He hates the colour green.
The world changes as the tides do, rising and lowering with the waves of new eras. He has lived enough years to watch the cycles repeat. They've become predictable. And at the turn of the new century, he's the rise of an opportunity with the fall of Nana Shimura. There is a whole in society that no one else can see, instead people turn unaware eyes onto the symbol of peace. The smile and sigh in relief with the false comfort of a man to stop all evil.
Evil lurks. It is not flashy and loud as heroes are, or at least the best kinds aren't. It builds in the shadows of the underground, as unassuming as a snowy mountain cap before the avalanche. He builds, and builds till all the pieces are in place and a checkmate is as simple as breathing.
He makes his pawn.
In the new era, he sees the value of a backup plan. For all the All Might is not as invincible as people make him to be, there is still reason behind his admiration and he must be prepared to face it and lose. He needs someone to store himself in, who he can mold to be the loyal successor he will eventually inhabit.
He meets green for the first time in this pursuit. She is across the road, completely bland in a world where people are born to stand out with wings or the power to fly. She is simply green, as natural as the earth's leaves and lily pads. She floats across the tides without a ripple. He does not notice her till she crashes into him.
There's an embarrassed stutter of apologies, an offer to repay the now stained shirt he wears, a scramble for tissues and hands on him patting away at spilled coffee before he can think to do anything. Anger flares in his fists for a moment, but there are hands on him. They are human. They do not flinch. They are small and the only ones to dare reach him in so very long.
Over an apologetic lunch, he learns green is moldable. She is unassuming, the perfect law abiding citizen. She believes the story of a hardworking businessman always on the move. She giggles when he lies through his teeth.
She will work.
Summer turns to fall turns to winter and there are dozens of emails under a fake name waiting for him. They all begin with hello and all end with Inko. He responds to them with haste, if only to keep her appeased. She wishes him well on his travels, and when he returns home she opens her home to him and they spend hours on her living room floor with wandering hands and questions about their dreams.
When spring comes around, they sit on that same floor with a puzzle half done between them, and she laughs so loud it echoes off the decorated walls and homes itself in his chest. It sets his nerves alight. The hand over his looks less small than it did before, and is so much warmer. Green eyes are all he can see.
It's not long after that she stops being a pawn, and becomes a queen.
Their third winter together has snow falling on his wife's happy tears with two positive tests clutched in her hands. When he sees them the tides rise higher than they ever have. His pawn will still come.
Or so he thinks, up to the final second where there is a child in his arms, crying just like his mother who lays flushes on a sterile bed. The room is packed with three too many people all trying to take the still bloody boy from his arms, but he won't let go. There is emerald staring up at him, wide and innocent. Eyes so large they consume all of his attention. He can't breathe.
He hates the colour green, because it is the most precious thing to him.
-:-
Midoriya Hisashi and All For One are two separate people, and for all that he knows and can do without a thought, he has never been a good juggler.
Hisashi spends his days in Musutafu at his wife's side. He cradles a newborn close to his chest often enough that Inko has to slap him playfully to even have the chance to hold him. He fills bottles with formula and he cooks his wife dinner when she rocks their child to sleep. He leaves on simple business trips around the country but always comes home when he can.
All For One jumps between city to city, rounding up shadows and silencing whispers. He builds and builds, and when isn't making the world up to be what he wants, he destroys. A broker lays on the concrete floor of his latest base, red spilling out from under their already cold body. As far as anyone knows, he has no home to go back to.
Hisashi is there among Inko's friends when they announce their child's name. Izuku loves it best when his father hands him the little rubber key toys he has seven two many of. He wears smiles around Inko's friends and doesn't flinch when they take his boy from his arms. In the evenings, he sits on the couch scribbling his way through paperwork and files while his wife sleeps against his shoulder.
All For One tracks All Might's movements. The wind changes and he goes with it, always chasing. He leaves false trails for silly men in blue suits, laughing as police fumble their way into another unsolved case. He kicks at heroes' ankles and watches them fall from the heavens, on their knees now before him begging for a mercy he doesn't think to give.
Hisashi cares about his son. Hisashi sees the successor he can become, a little notebook tucked in his office containing the plans for training one day.
All For One cuts meetings short, racing home when alarms blare in his head that tears ebb from green and cries echo in his home.
Hisashi can't let anyone find him. Hisashi lies through his teeth when his wife asks how his trip went.
All For One isn't thinking about the new recruit who failed yet again today, but the diapers he needs to steal on his way home.
Hisashi despises All For One.
He realizes this as he stares up at his ceiling, awake at an hour when the only things wandering the streets are stray cats and people in clothes worn down by the grime of alley and bench beds. The fan above him circles slowly, its frequency in time with the even breaths of the woman wrapped around him.
This is the hour of the underground. He should be up and commanding the roots of the city but this bed is warm and despite the energy quirks thrumming under his skin, he is tired. Out there is a game. Tucked in this tiny apartment, is a break.
A cry rings out.
He slides out from under Inko's arms, whispering reassurances when she stirs. He moves the the next room, his footsteps silent after so many years of training, and he makes for the white barred crib sitting in the center. The wailing pierces. He is unwavering and reaches in as he pulls out Izuku.
He shushes him, bouncing him steadily. The cries wane, and soon green eyes blink up at him with an odd mix of awe and tire. Hands no bigger than cherries grasp at his head. One curls around his nose, the other around his ear, and bells sound from the baby's lips in delight.
Just like that, a decision is made for him. He's not really giving up All For One, but letting him rest as he turns his attention to build something new. The boy in his arms will be the key to All For One's continuous reign, and that deserves his presence.
Hisashi lays his son down as his giggles die out, and whispers, "I am here."
-:-
Izuku cheers, victoriously holding a plastic shovel over his head as he stares down at the sand structure before him. Hisashi can't say what it's supposed to be, but judging by the ring of water around it, he thinks it might be a castle. It lilts to the side and could be an anthill in another life.
"He's not very good at that," he notes.
Beside him, Inko's lips turn down. She hums, a distant noise he's heard more and more lately. She says, "He's only three. Look, Katsuki's isn't any different."
The blonde boy's is admittedly in an equally horrid state, though his has a significant number of pinecones sticking out of it. The boy is almost four, and he can feel the quirk bubbling in his palms. It will be here soon, and will be as strong as all the early bloomers are. He wonders if he'll let the boy have it, or if it'll reside in his own fingers before the family even knows it was there.
"Izuku is better than him," he says. "He should be the best."
"Hisashi."
Turning his head at the sharp tone, he meets green eyes. They haven't lost their beauty. Maybe they've become prettier, even if they are hardened now into a look he only gets when they argue about playing nice for her friends or he spoils Izuku with toys.
"You need to stop," she tells him.
He doesn't ask what. This conversation has been coming since Izuku could walk, because after everything, his wife is not stupid nor as moldable as he thought. She watches him when he walks out the door every odd month for a week-long trip. She hesitates before asking him how it went upon his return. She purses her lips when he steers Izuku away from the hero toys his friends adore, no matter how wide-eyed he looks. She lingers on scars when hands skim across his ribs.
She is not stupid, and Hisashi feels like he is. To think Inko Midoriya would ever be less than the protective and perceptive woman she is was a joke. He backed himself into a corner falling for someone who pulls things towards her.
"I can't," he says.
"You will," she says. Her eyes are trained on Izuku cooing at Katsuki's sandcastle. "Or I will."
Stop letting him tell Izuku things three year-olds don't need to hear, like the whispers that heroes are bad, that he can one day work with his dad. Stop letting him push him to perfection in the afternoons when he shows him how to be quiet when he moves or to ____. Stop letting him see his son.
She can't stop him, not really. She will run but there is nowhere she can go where he cannot reach her. The strings of a boogieman are infinite, and he will catch her in his web if he must. He'll hold her where no one will find her and he will raise Izuku on his own. He could silence her permanently with a flick of his wrist and all the complication would disappear. He could.
He can't, for all the same reasons he can't truly give up All For One. It is the foundation of his life. Without it, he does not know who he is. Hisashi Midoriya is only half a person, not suited to depend on solely. There will always be someone chasing after him, be it heroes or other villains.
But some part of him will always chase the love of Inko Midoriya.
"I can't," he says again. "I need him to be strong or it all falls apart."
Inko sighs. The fists in her lap curl tighter, the warning sign to tears to come. When she speaks again, her whisper is laced with vitriol.
"What are you so afraid of?"
He startles.
The last time he heard that, he was sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, glaring at someone he also loved. They met his angered gaze with nothing but pity and a grace he never understood. White hair framed a hollow face so similar to his own, different almost only in the sickly pale of it and the weak tremor of their hands. He remembers wanting to snap his neck and hating the condescension he thought was in the question. Mostly, he recalls leaving and slamming the door on his way out.
He lost his brother. Is he such a fool to make the same mistake again? To leave his biggest weakness as an enemy? Will he lose again?
All For One is feared. He does not cower for anyone and is stronger than perceivable. What can he possibly be afraid of, besides himself?
"I. . ."
Hisashi sees Izuku trip in the sand. The boy is stunned, laying shocked in the sand, before his expression cracks into a grin as giggles burst from his lips.
"I will do better," he promises.
Inko hums, and this time it is less distant.
After, she never asks him what it was he did, even as he leaves for weeks at a time to settle his affairs. She is a kinder person than him for she doesn't make him share his sins, nor tally up the countless victims trailing behind him.
Instead, she holds his hand and doesn't question the new neighbor who moves in but has the keys to their apartment and sometimes follows them out on walks. If she hears the calls he makes to ensure all traces to him are burned, she doesn't mention it.
When he lets Izuku buy his first All Might figure, she smiles and it all becomes worth it.
-:-
The son of the man with more quirks than imaginable has none of his own.
Hisashi sends the scans to Ujiko to ensure the results are kept secret in case Izuku is anything like him. He does not tell him that the boy in them is his son. No one can know why All For One disappeared.
Inko frets over Izuku's lack of a quirk awakening, but Hisashi pats her shoulder and tells her it will be alright. After all, he did not know he had All For One until he was much older than their boy. When he reaches out to Izuku, All For One brushing against his essence, he senses nothing different from most kids under the age of four. He could simply be a late bloomer.
When the paper arrives at their door, Inko cries. Izuku cries more.
Sometimes he forgets what it means to not have a quirk in a society designed for them. He's still half stuck in a time when abilities were rare. People like him were scorned, pushed into the shadows he has now made his to control. They saw danger in his kind, he gave them something to truly fear.
The world changes as the tides do, but he supposes also like a coin, flipping to two different sides. He wonders if this flip against the quirkless was his fault, as he watches green break into grey with hiccuping sobs.
I can fix this, he thinks. As he hugs Izuku, feeling the shoulder of his shirt soak, his fingers twitch. All For One crackles. It's ready to respond and give his boy something to take all the pain away. There's so many he could give. The one of flight. That which can bend metal from the hero who stumbled upon him on accident. There's another that is a form of ice breathing, not different from his alias of fire breathing, that he stole during a teens dying minutes.
But it could break Izuku. It could cause his skin to peel back and his brain to fry as gifting quirks sometimes does to those without them, as giving two to those not meant for more than one can. It would ruin him mentally, surely, to be given a piece of the murdered.
If he wants him to be a successor, he has to give it. He has to take the risk. Izuku has to be powerful-
He can't lose Izuku.
At the end of the day, he hugs his son and lets him cry.
-:-
It turns out to be a blessing in disguise.
No one without a quirk can be a hero.
If he's not a hero, then no one will come for his son. Izuku will never have to face the people like his father.
-:-
The bullying starts, but it doesn't last. After all, everyone is afraid of All For One and Hisashi can be just as intimidating.
Sometimes he wonders if he didn't have a hearing quirk, would he have heard Izuku crying to himself in his room? If he didn't have a location quirk, would he have found Izuku's red shoes in the pond?
Inko yells at Bakugou Mitsuki until her throat is hoarse. Hisashi sends threats of top lawyers to the elementary school, and other such threats to the families of the kids Izuku names after hours of trying to get him to talk.
Hisashi remembers what it's like to be scrutinized by society. He will not let his son be treated the same.
-:-
He still tells him he can't be a hero.
Inko, to his surprise, agrees.
-:-
Izuku cries a lot, but he has a certain cry that strikes fear in Hisashi's heart. No matter where he is or what they're doing, his first thought will always be they found him. All Might hasn't given rest to the search of his predecessor's murderer. Villains still seek the weakness of the man no one has defeated. Police track patterns between cold cases, or at least the one who can't shake their hauntings.
Whoever it is, they could find him and when his precious green cries out, he never wonders who it is, just imagines claws reaching towards him and ripping him from Hisashi's life. He can't breathe in those moments, can't even think of anything but blinding rage. All For One flies to his aid and he finds Izuku with a fever he's never felt before.
It's not the fear of wasting a successor that he feels, but that of losing what he cares for more than anything in the world.
A green haired rully little six year-old with a gap in his two front teeth could make him face all the wielders of One For All without hesitation if it meant keeping him safe. He never wants a day to go by where he doesn't hear Izuku chatter excitedly about the hero fight he saw on the news, and beg his mom or dad to help him write about it in his hero notebook. He wants to keep tucking him in at night and finding his white clothes ruined by the stray set of All Might merch that makes it into the wash.
Inko knows this. She catches him staring at the jumpers Izuku has grown out of all too quickly when they fold laundry on Sundays. She'll knock shoulders with him and tease that he better contain himself in buying his clothes for the start of school. He couldn't stand to see her in ruin either, for she cares for Izuku just as much.
Most of the time when he hears him cries though, it's because Izuku scraped his knees on the pavement or he broke his favourite All Might toy. This time it's a little more severe, leaving Hisashi to carry Izuku and his broken leg back to their home.
"What happened?" he asks as he sets him down on the couch.
Izuku's lip wobbles. His tears are still flowing freely down his cheeks.
"I fell," he pushes out between whines.
Hisashi levels him with a look. Children are the least helpful for information. He says, "From where?"
"The . . . The tree. Kacchan and I were climbing it," he cries. "I'm sorry, Dad."
That explains why Katsuki was dragging him on a jacket over to where Mitsuki and Hisashi were sitting at the park. He had half the mind not to yell at the boy for hurting Izuku until he saw that he was actually trying to help. However, he did tell him putting a kid on a jacket and dragging him across the grass isn't an effective means of transportation.
Hisashi frowns. If Inko wasn't at work, she'd be sitting where he is, soothing Izuku with gentle words. Hisashi isn't certain what to say that will stop the crying and with it the jackhammering of his heart in his chest.
"Izuku," he says. "We don't apologize for things we aren't at fault for."
"I'm sorry."
Hisashi tuts. "Didn't I just say not to apologize?"
"But it is my fault," he cries. "I made you worry."
His blood goes cold. Carefully, his hand comes to rest on Izuku's shoulder. "How did you know I was worried?"
Izuku hiccups. "Mom says you look mad when you're worried. You looked really angry."
This little boy with untamed curls and freckles like stars scattered across a galaxy has a mind bigger than most kids his age; and, Hisashi thinks, a heart bigger than anyone he's ever seen. He is built from chaos, born with the intention of bloodlust and to exist with everyone below him. Yet, he was raised by nature's lily pads and grass and the soft greens of a much kinder world. A blade melts down to a jewel in this boy's hands. He worries for his father, even when Hisashi knows how scary he can look.
If their paths were slightly different, this boy would do great things.
Hisashi cannot let him.
"Let me look at that leg," he tells him. Izuku hesitates, but eventually uncurls on the couch and allows Hisashi to take a closer look. He clicks his tongue playfully, though his muscles spasm at the sight of malformed bones. "That's definitely a break. You're never going to be able to walk again."
Izuku gasps, his gorgeous eyes wide. He exclaims, "Dad, no! How am I supposed to become a hero if I can't walk! What about playing with Kacchan!"
Like a weed, Izuku's hero worship grows despite the many times Hisashi and Inko pull at it. Inko is gentle with it, keeping her disbelief mostly to herself. Hisashi yanks and covers the roots with chemicals. Unfortunately, his boy gets his stubbornness from him.
"I don't know about the hero part, but we'll get you playing with Katsuki again in no time. You have to keep a secret though," Hisashi tells him. He leans forward, keeping his expression serious. "Do you want to know what will fix your leg?"
Izuku nods eagerly. "Yes! I won't tell anyone! Not even Kacchan!"
"You can't tell Mom either."
Izuku falters, a frown working onto his lips. "Not Mom?"
"You'll upset her," he explains, as if upset will cover half the things Inko would feel if she saw he was doing this. It's bad enough that half of him is trying to drag him away from Izuku so he cannot push this power onto him and open up a crack to exploit.
He can only do this while he is young. His boy is smart and when he is older he will learn and understand things he should not with that keen eye of his. This instance, he may forget and if he tells anyone, well who believes a child about anything?
Except Inko. Inko will always believe their son, especially when she already knows her husband is not as he seems.
"Okay," Izuku says. His voice still wobbles around little sniffles. "I won't tell her."
Hisashi smiles and ruffles his hair. "It'll be our little secret."
As he leans toward Izuku's leg, he lets All For One flow to the hand still on the boy's shoulders. When his lips touch the already swelling skin on his shin, he lets a healing quirk push through his fingers and work to thread bone back together.
When he stops, he winks at Izuku and proclaims, "Done. Kissed it better."
Izuku blinks at him, then his leg, then back at him. "Like Mom does?"
"Like Mom does."
"That didn't feel like when Mom does it."
Hisashi stands up and wags his finger. "Which is why we can't tell her about it. She can't know I'm better at it or it'll hurt her feelings. If you tell the other kids, it might hurt their parents feelings too. You don't want that, do you?"
"No," Izuku says. He stares up at Hisashi and a smile blooms across his lips, gap tooth on display. "Thank you, Dad!"
Green is very precious indeed.
Though he says it would just be for that once, in the coming years Izuku is never with injury for long. He finds his dad and Hisashi can never say no to him. What's the harm? He's just kissing it better, after all.
-:-
He tells himself it's to protect them.
All Might was getting too close. He'd find them, he'd rip them from his life and take apart the one thing holding Hisashi's world together. There were too many loose ties with the hero running around. It was a risk.
Maybe, it was because for a moment, Hisashi thought he saw a weakness in All Might. Maybe, he wanted to rid himself of a haunting.
He throws blow after blow. Every nerve in him is alive at his full potential, alight with the current of quirks working through him and racing to his need. These last years have left him trapped in a metal box where his joints are to grow stiff and this - this feels like running for the first time again.
The taunts come back with the power, the callous smile across his lips, the suit, the mask, it's all there as he faces the symbol of peace. This is what he was meant to be. The anti-thesis to hope and the dawn of an age for people like him. All Might is golden, but like the equally bright sun he sets and All For One will wash over him.
But All Might's straining smile is familiar. It spends most nights on his TV or laptop screen while in his lap his son cheers and points excitedly. It litters the shelves of his home in figurines and posters, even the doormat.
It makes him falter.
All Might lands three too many damaging hits. All For One stumbles like he never has, and the man before him starts to look less like the shadow of his brother, the symbol of peace, his worst enemy, and more like Izuku's idol.
Would his son cry when the news breaks that All Might is gone?
That thought costs him another blow. This time it's one that blurs his vision and takes his breath away. All Might boasts about hope and the world of heroes, but he can't hear him. Instead, he's back in his apartments door standing at the threshold while green eyes stare up him. Paired with them is a small voice asking if he'll look at his newest hero notebook when he gets home.
As he's pummeled into the ground, he thinks of the plans to emerge victorious. He's barely hanging on to this life and knows he can't take much more till his lungs will collapse but he could defeat All Might once and for all with just a little push. He stomp out the flame of his brothers ghost with right now but-
He has to make it home.
So when All Might throws his next punch, to the symbol of peace it connects and vanquishes the greatest evil, to him it meets an illusion quirk.
All For One dies, and Hisashi Midoriya lives.
-:-
Hisashi Midoriya lives a simple life these days. He walks his son to school in the mornings when he's not busy with patients. Izuku chatters the whole way there, often so caught up in his words that he nearly runs into a sign or two. Hisashi makes sure to steer him on the right course.
His breaks at work are spent opening texts from his wife. There are grocery lists, there are forms from Izuku's school, there are complaints about slow hours, and sometimes there is a little white heart sent all by itself and with no explanation. He makes sure to send a green one back.
Work isn't his favourite, but he feeds a side of him that will never give up the pleasure of playing with quirks. He assists the quirk counselors at the hospital most days, and does research for patients on calmer ones. When he meets patients with quirks that nag at him, he'll take them for a little while when no one is looking. He spools them around his fingers and learns how they react. When he gives them back - and he always does even when the electricity under his skin is so enticing and ignites the hunger he once knew - he's already drafted a plan to enhance or tame them.
In the evenings he cooks or he does the dishes or he sets the table, depending on who is home. Izuku loves to set the table and Inko prefers to cook. On nights when Izuku is gone though, they eat on the same floor they used to do puzzles on and watch shows that aren't fit for kids to see. Behind closed doors, hands wander in ways kids aren't fit to see either.
Hisashi walks Izuku. He goes to work. He texts his wife. He comes home and eats and laughs, and tucks son in bed before curling up under sheets with the woman who never stops loving him.
He ignores the bones in his closet. Some days they bang against the door so hard they rattle and let a dark ink spill out from under the frames. The ink can be black or it can be red as it stains his fingers. He shoves it under rugs like he's shoved bodies into graves. He files it away like the quirks tucked tight to his chest. He tells no one.
Hasashi walks Izuku to school, but it's less and less lately. His son doesn't hold his hand on the way there anymore, but walks beside him in the sneakers they have to renew every month as they become too tight and cramped.
He comes home and more often it's just Inko and him as the youngest Midoriya ventures past their house into the Bakugou's living room or the library or the gym.
Skeletons reach for him when he sees Izuku pull his phone out to show him the fight All Might had that morning. He thinks of the way his lungs give out sometimes, succumbing him to coughing fits, because of the same hero's fists pummeling into him. Izuku has seen the fits a few times and knows where all the respirators in the house are located.
Izuku does not walk with him anymore. When Hisashi tries to take him, his son's shoulders rise to his ears and his face flushes red to contrast green. He shakes his head and stumbles through an apology between bemoans about how the other kids already don't think he's cool. Always, Hisashi lets him go by himself, but a little piece of him goes with. Metaphorically, and literally if one counts the alarm and tracking quirks clinging to the buttons of his middle school uniform.
The police don't come to their door, but Hisashi hears knocking and he thinks they have. The dead have risen to find him, the alive have come to avenge them, and his darling family sits in the living room clueless to it all. It's just the mailman, or Mitsuki, or the stupid salesman who can't take the hint of a 'no solicitors' sign. One time, it's Hisashi's coworkers with congratulatory drinks.
Hisashi does not walk Izuku to school. He goes to work. He calls his wife to make sure he can still hear her voice. He comes home and eats and laughs, and lays awake staring at a ceiling fan when he goes to bed.
Inko traces over the crater by his sternum when he wheezes through breaths. She kisses it and holds his hand, but never asks. Whether it's so he doesn't have to explain or so she doesn't have to confront who the man she lies with truly is, he never knows.
Before Izuku heads off to school by himself, he talks over breakfast about applying at Yuuei. Hisashi doesn't slam the cupboard he has opened, but it's a near thing. Years of weeding and still the dandelion grows, blossoming into a golden dream. Izuku does not understand that all flowers, even weeds, die in winter at the hands of cold evil. Izuku must not die. Izuku walks to school that day after slamming the door on his way out.
When he gives his patients back their quirks, he wonders about emptying himself of sins he holds. He could give out every quirk he has until their old owners stop whispering in his ears about murder and that all the building and building he did was just destruction. Patients don't notice when their quirks are taken for brief minutes while they are assessed, but if they did they'd notice it happens less.
Hisashi hugs Izuku when he comes home and ruffles his green hair. Izuku grins each time and asks him how his day went. They talk about quirks, they talk about heroes, they talk about what to get Inko for her birthday. Izuku teaches him how to play his new video game and Hisashi lets him help fold the laundry that still somehow is being stained by All Might merch after all these years.
Hisashi does not walk his son to school because he is old now and they are so very different at their cores, but he does spend as much time with him as he can. He goes to work where his patients look too much like those he sorted through to make Nomus. He calls his wife and tells her he loves her. He comes home and eats and laughs, and sleeps to the nightmares he cannot run from.
Hisashi Midoriya lives a simple life.
-:-
Izuku cries a lot and when he cries that particular way that strikes fear into Hisashi's heart, the man is nowhere near him. He doesn't hear because he doesn't use sound quirks anymore. He doesn't find him because a handful of glares from Inko made him pull the trackers from his buttons. He doesn't know because he has no connections to informants anymore, or eyes around the city.
He sees it after on the television.
He sees it after when his son comes home with scraped knees and bruises around his ribs.
He sees it after when Mitsuki cries on their couch while their two boys hang out a day later and explain what happened.
Most of all, he sees it in the memories of the villain who he visits in prison. The boogeyman awakens for that hour to slip through shadows and into a cell where he waterboards a villain with fear. He makes sure he knows exactly who's boy he messed with that day. His son jumps and stutters and disappears for hours on end, so for that the sludge pays.
He doesn't lay a hand on him though. He makes him fear and that is all.
There is too much blood on his hands already, and even if this is to avenge his boy, he knows it would hurt Izuku more for there to be any pain inflicted on his behalf.
The trackers don't come back, nor the sound quirks that he doesn't use out of guilt, because his son didn't have him that day when he cried. He didn't need him. Without training or trying to mold him into a great successor, his son is strong. Whatever dares to come after him will not win. Nothing can hurt a force of nature.
Hisashi lets that sit, and when he hugs his son later that night, he whispers into his hair, "You're going to be the best hero."
Izuku cries, and this time it's the cry Hisashi loves.
-:-
"If you try that I will leave and never come back," Hisashi threatens.
Inko rolls her eyes and moves the sample colours away from the wall. She says, "I don't know what you have against white."
"I don't want our home to become a modernized cube where everything is bland black and white," he argued as he put the last of the tape along the baseboards.
He steps over to Inko and plucks one of the colour cards from her hands. It's a dark forest green, the same Izuku hair though he fears the boy's hair is becoming more black than green as he gets older.
"No," Inko says immediately. "I will not feed into your obsession with green."
"Fine, fine. How about this blue?"
She smiles and holds the colour up to the wall. Hisashi puts his arm around her shoulder and hums. It would be a nice change to the room. He can see it across the walls, washing over their current beige like an ocean. A change of tides within their own little home.
"Mom! Dad! I'm home!"
Inko perks up as Izuku's voice carries throughout the apartment. She calls, "We're in the living room. There's some leftover diner in the fridge that you can have, and then you better come here and tell us how the exam went!"
"Thanks, Mom!"
Hisashi doesn't say a word, can't with every nerve in his body on fire. His chest is tight and it's not from his dying lungs. An invisible force presses into it, taking up all the space in the room. There is no longer paint ready walls or cozy furniture, but a battlefield no one ever saw. There is punch after punch, and there is this same overwhelming feeling. It is the presence of something to rival All For One.
"Hey, Dad," Izuku says as he stumbles into the living room, a container of food in hand. He sits down on the floor, crisscrossing like a little kid but he carries the aura of someone much much older.
Hisashi can only stare. Izuku tilts his head at his lack of response, brows furrowing.
"Dad?"
Despite the thrumming in his mind, Hisashi lets his quirk reach out and brush against Izuku. It snags on his center, where a dozen souls mix and splash, thrashing against him. He tries to grip it, but is met with an iron wall. He cannot take it.
No no no no, rings in his head. His son is wrapped in a centuries old cloak that pushes against him. After everything, Izuku carries the weight of those he's murdered. It's overpowering.
Hisashi sees his son.
All For One sees One For All.