Chapter Text
“You’ll always be my little boy, Izuku.”
IZUKU learnt from a young age of two simple things—
One, always do what you were told.
And two, don’t ask anyone about his Mama.
“You’ll always be a murderer, Izuku.
You killed her. As long as I live you’ll be sure to remember that.”
Because asking about her always led to someone getting angry with him. It didn’t matter to them if he was only four years old, it didn't matter how small and insensible he was, all that mattered was what was stated to be true that—
Inko Midoriya is dead. And Izuku is the one that killed her.
Sometimes, on the quieter days, Izuku finds his father at the kitchen bench, sitting beside a bottle that smelt like burning plastic and lemons, holding onto the picture frame of his Mama. On those days his father spends most of his time drinking, tripping over his feet and glaring at Izuku.
And sometimes, especially on the quiet days, he takes Izuku to his room and hits him, hits him so hard and so many times he bleeds.
And maybe even on rarer days, his father will drag him by the wrist over to the stove where he wasn’t allowed to be, and place his hands flat against the hot iron.
His father never explains why, never listens to him when he begs him to stop, he just does it and it always happens when he drinks from that foul smelling bottle.
It was a miracle that Izuku had inherited his father's resistance to heat. It made it hurt less when he did this, but all the same, his hands would blister and burn and he would cry quietly into the crook of his arm.
At school he would tell everyone he was a mummy, wrapped from head to toe in bandages and his classmates would laugh and giggle at him. Unbeknownst to his little heart of how the adults would overlook this minor detail.
Because, it was a known fact that Izuku just wasn’t like the other kids.
When his best friend Katsuki got his quirk, early and full of potential, he had accidentally scorched a hole straight through his uniform shoulder and instead of crying, he had squealed and blabbered about how cool it was.
At home, when he’d come inside with ruined and singed clothes, his father would make him strip in the bathroom and rinse his skin off with cold water. The pain was unbearable, in most senses, and most of the time he would pass out on the floor, shivering so hard his body would rattle.
He would wake up in his room, usually dressed, with the most care he had ever seen from his father. Nothing was ever wrapped or ointmented, but he was under his covers and the most warm he had felt in awhile.
It became almost routine for Izuku. He would leave for preschool with nothing more than an apple in his bag and more times than not, he would come home with burns on his face or tears across his shirt. His father never cared for the ruined articles, more content in the aftermath.
However, recently, Izuku’s skin had begun to itch because of it.
One night he had come tearing out of his room, blood underneath his nails and scratch marks lining his body. Izuku had complained that he couldn’t stop it, that no matter how hard he tried, the itch wouldn’t stop.
Offhandedly, Izuku was disregarded. He cried and pulled at his father’s shirt, his pant leg, begging for him to stop the pain. Izuku wept and wiped his blood from his face, huge green eyes pleading for his father to help him.
“Annoying little shit, go back to your room and stay there.” He goes, not even looking down at his son.
And yes, it hurt more than his skin ever would, but despite his better judgement, Izuku nodded his small head, hunched his shoulders in and ran back to his bed. Curled up atop of the covers, he rode out the waves of agony ebbing down his spine and across the top of his head.
His temples pounded so harshly that he swayed and rolled over the side, throwing up the small meal he was given.
The smell was pungent and burnt his nose, pooling at the base on his floor like a disease. It was often that little Izuku would get up in the morning, shaken, on his hands and knees scrubbing at the wooden surface.
It was among the other rules Izuku had learnt that—
Three, always remember to clean up after himself.
Four, make sure to never get in anyone’s way.
And five, never get caught touching his fathers things.
He wants to ask so desperately about his Mama, but every time he thinks he will, Izuku forces himself to cover his mouth with his tiny fingers and bite on the inside of his cheek.
Some nights after his father went to sleep, Izuku would sneak out into the kitchen and find that photo of his Mama. He would trace his thumb over her cheek and would cry at how pretty she was.
Izuku is too short to see into his bathroom mirror, but his father used to tell him all the time how much he looks like her. He made it sound like a bad thing. Izuku didn’t understand, why was looking like Mama a bad thing?
“Because you remind me of what I lost, and I’ll never forgive you for taking her away from me.”
Bringing the picture to his lips, Izuku kissed her forehead, holding the frame to his chest as tears wept down his face. He tries hard not to scratch at his scabbed arm, clinging onto the fragile moment as much as he could.
He sits there for a long time, so long that he can hear birds outside and see the pink sky. So long he can feel the slight draft come in from under the crack in the window.
Exhaustion eventually passes over him. He holds her tightly and everything feels almost right in that moment. With her, in his arms.
“What the fuck are you doing?” A gruff voice jumps him out of his stupor. Izuku whips his head to the side and sees his father in the doorway, a mean scowl on his face.
Slipping off the stool, throwing the picture back onto the bench like it burned him, like his father’s quirk did sometimes, Izuku runs off back to his room.
“Izuku! Get back here you little shit! What did I tell you about touching my things?”
His fingers slip on the lock as he pushes his heavy door shut with shaken arms. Thunderous footfalls carry closer and he feels the weight of his father slam into his room.
Screaming, he runs to hide under his bed, but a hand grabs him by the ankle and pulls him back. Without warning, without reason, he hits him. He puts Izuku over his knee and hits him so hard it burns. Burns like the hot iron did, burns like his nails grating over his skin.
Izuku cries into his hands, begging him to stop.
Why was it so bad to know about her?
“Stupid fucking brat! Who said you could see her? After what you did!” His father yells, spitting his anger onto his face.
“P-please stop, Daddy! Stop hurting me!” Izuku weeps. His body rockets with the motion, each hit harder than the last. “I j-just wanted to see Mama!”
One last beating, his father growls, “You. Killed. Her. She’s dead. She’s not coming back!”
Throwing Izuku to the floor, he pushes him aside with his foot like he was nothing. He wails and screams and tears at his face, snot smeared over his arms alongside the red marks of fingers.
Slamming the door behind him, so hard it bounces off the lock, he storms off and Izuku hears him go outside, muffled by the quiet hours of the morning.
Izuku made rules to live with him, but when his father was mad, they weren’t very good rules.
It was quiet again, too quiet. Like the quiet Izuku felt on those nights where his father was asleep at the kitchen bench, Mama resting next to his head and he would snore so loud he couldn’t sleep.
There was some point that he had been able to crawl off the floor and onto his bed. Izuku can’t quite remember when, he just knows that he did.
His body has fallen into a rhythmic ebb and flow of aches. Never had his father hit them that hard before, but also, never had he been caught breaking the rules more than once. There was only one other time Izuku was caught looking at his Mama, and because of it he had spent the night locked in on the cool floor of the laundry with nothing but a dirty pile of clothes he used to keep warm.
He doesn’t remember it very well, but he knows his fingers were blue by the time his father let him out.
Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, muffled cries hidden in the thin sheets he was curled up in. His knees are trembling, if not from his father, than the cold. It was already dark again outside and no one had come to check up on him.
A heavy sort of exhaustion nestled its way behind his eyes, dense and rough. Izuku couldn’t keep his eyes open, already being sealed shut with the reminiscent of his tears.
Covering his face with the crook of his arm, no matter how much they were itching, Izuku chased for a place with no light, hoping that he could find his Mama in his dreams…
..
.
“Iz..k..”
….. “Come on, baby, it’s time to wake up.”
“…Izu..”
“Everything is going to be okay.”
Warm hands, like the sun, kissing his skin.
“Mama?”
“…Izuku!”
.
..
…Izuku wakes to the feeling of fire. It’s all around him, burning his insides like it was alive.
Jolting up from his stupor, feverish and bleary-eyed, he clambers out of his blankets to make a rush to his door with no real purpose except that he has to run. Something sharp catches on the corner of the covers, and Izuku trips down the side of his bed and onto the floor harshly.
He cries, because he can’t move and he doesn’t know where his father is and he can’t breathe. Something is very wrong, but he doesn’t know what.
His skin swelters and to Izuku, when he brings his arms closer to his face, he thinks he sees black patches form underneath the scarring from his burns as if trying to replace them. Clawed feet and fingers carve out lines in the floor as he scrambles up to his knees.
“D-daddy help me!” Izuku cried, reaching for the doorhandle and tugging it open. “I-I’m dying!”
Heat began to spread down his back, webbing across his shoulders like an infection and through the end of his spine. Screaming, Izuku crawls out of his room, raking against the walls and slipping across the tiles.
“H-help! Daddy!”
Izuku makes it as far as the end of the hall before something stabs out of his back. It pulls and tugs at his shirt, ripping and tearing out and a heavy weight cascades over his wreathing body.
Encumbered, Izuku howls into the empty house, tears washing his face clean, in tandem to the blood dripping from his lips. He goes to speak again, to cry for someone until he feels something hard between his jaw.
Frightened, he spits it out, and the sight of white pearls rolling across the floor in his blood makes him shiver. He instantly recognises what they are and he wails. “My t-teeth!”
Arms become spotted, dashed with black scales and scars, hands reach for the pain in his head, feeling bumps poking out of his hairline. His vision blurs and Izuku tries to ignore the cold feeling in his soiled pants, dripping down his legs as he curls into himself.
He couldn’t breath and he could feel the smoke burning his insides.
Izuku doesn’t know how long he stayed there, but slowly the pain faded into the background and he was no longer itchy anymore, no longer boiling alive. Numbness fogs up his head like rubber and lemons always did to his father, and he thinks he can see double of everything.
It’s freezing, on the floor, he realises. It’s also dark.
Izuku can’t stop crying—hiccuping and shaking into his hands as he eventually covers his eyes up from the world around him.
He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, Izuku just knows that he did, because the sound of the door lock shaking wakes him up in another flinch.
As fast as the fire catched onto him, Izuku did his best to stand up. He runs over to the silhouette of his father, screaming.
“Daddy! H-help me it hurts! Something is wrong!” Izuku cried into the man’s leg.
He hears his father mutter something under his breath before reaching over and turning on the hallway light. But his body goes rigid the second it buzzes to life.
Eyes almost wide, with the most emotion Izuku has ever seen from him, his father for the first time in four years looks down at him, and stares.
“It hurts so bad D-daddy! I thought I wasn’t g-going to see you again!” Izuku cries, talons slashing holes into his shirt without care, without realising.
His father’s face pinches in confusion, almost distraught by him.
“Daddy?”
Izuku's hands clung tighter, tugging for him to respond.
“It hurts…”
There was a firm line in his fathers mouth, and Izuku frowned from his lack of response.
“…Daddy.. it hurts.” Izuku whispers, again, watching the way the man’s nose wrinkles at him.
And so slowly, Izuku noticed how his fathers eyes looked all over him, but never at him.
Only at his shirt, that he knows was ripped, the scales creeping over his shoulder, the blood smeared down his neck.
“I’m sorry Daddy! I t-tried to find you but I couldn’t.” Izuku starts crying, lips wobbly as he looks up at him.
Instead of replying, his father places his hands on his shoulders and for a fleeting second of hope, Izuku smiles faintly. “What’s wrong with me, Daddy—”
His father shoves him away, mouth curled in almost disgust. Izuku tripped on his padded feet and fell, landing harshly on his haunches.
Tears pool on his eyes, teeth kneading his bottom lip.
Not even a moment later, his father says, “What the fuck have you done, Izuku.”
His fathers face twists, looking all over him for something that wasn’t there.
“What have you done to her?”