Chapter Text
Six Months Earlier:
Being a kid again sucks. She isn't tall enough to reach the top shelf, nobody older than her takes her seriously, she's dependant on other people to survive, and she can’t seriously, openly talk with anyone. Probably ever, given that it'd be a bad idea to tell anyone about the reincarnation thing.
That last bit is probably what's going to kill her, really. Emotionally speaking, that is, because apparently death is but a minor annoyance to her now.
Yeah, being a kid again sucks. Being an extensively emotionally traumatized kid again after having already learned to deal with her first fucked up childhood? And in a new and uncertain living situation to boot? Hellish.
Everything finally fully connects for her when she's five years old and sitting in the back of a social worker's car, on the way to her new home. An estranged relative of hers, apparently. There are memories of her mother's terrified tears as she packs a suitcase tells her they're going to go visit ‘Hizashi-oji-san’ for a while.
They never made it there.
The name sounds awfully familiar and awfully significant to her, but she has no idea why because there's a nosy little pest in the back of her head that she can physically feel absorbing those particular memories. Everything else it doesn't touch, just anything and almost everything that has to do with one specific story.
“You doing okay back there, Kuron-chan?” The social worker calls back to her, her extremely expressive eyes practically bleeding concern. She’s new to the job, she concludes. Not yet jaded by the horror stories of a broken system, and suffocatingly kind to the little girl she was five minutes ago who hadn't said more than ten words in two days. It feels suffocating, even though she knows it comes from genuine care.
“F-fine,” she croaks out, her voice ragged with disuse. It feels… wrong, to be saying anything. Dangerous. Her adult memories know it's irrational, but her five year old body and mind expect pain. She shrinks back against the car upholstery instinctively in an attempt to quiet the voice in her head that expects a blow to come from her blind spot.
Ugh, she finally managed to come to terms with the neglect and emotional abuse of her first childhood, and now she has to dead with PTSD? Why does life hate her so much?
“Oh honey,” the lady croons, her whole… everything conveying nothing less than utter heartbreak and- are those tears in her eyes? This poor woman, she'll lose her soul in a year to this job. “Don't worry sweetheart, your oji-san is a very nice man! He's a hero you know.”
Which… doesn't really mean anything- she knows that from experience- but the Pest is chirping happily in the back of her head so he's probably a halfway decent person at least. Pest has apparently served the Before Merge her well in the past.
“127, 127… ah! Here we are!”
The house they pull up to is… nice. Not ostentatious and gaudy like she first feared when she heard ‘hero’, but obviously in a nice neighborhood. A two storey white house with light blue shutters, a mid-sized front lawn with an impressive garden out front with flowers in pastel colors, all lined by a low brick wall for a fence. Nothing special, really, but everything is well maintained- the lawn is freshly mowed, the car in the driveway recently washed, small things like that.
The lady- jeez, what was her name? Sawa-san? She hadn't really been paying attention to anything then- seems flustered. She gets out and opens the car door for Sumi, then pats down her skirt to get rid of nonexistent dirt and fusses with her rather… voluminous hair for a moment.
Playing along with her paranoia- for now- she reaches out and tugs on Sawa-san's skirt once and then quickly withdraws her hand and steps out of reach- and damn, even that makes her shake- and makes deliberate wide eyes, tilting her head just a bit to get the curiosity across.
Sawa-sana immediately melts, of course, and then goes red and clears her throat when she realizes what she was doing. “Oh, sorry Kuron-chan! I'm just a bit excited, is all. I'm a very big fan of your oji-san.”
How famous is this uncle again? She hadn't thought much of that hero comment earlier- there are thousands of heroes no one's ever heard of in the world- but maybe he’s a bigger deal than she thought.
The man who answers the door has long blonde hair- no, yellow hair, that is way too bright for just ‘blonde'- hanging around his face that looks… not right, according to Pest. His face is round and a bit short, his nose small and his eyes startlingly sharp and deep green. He has a funny little mustache and pencil thin eyebrows, and for some reason he comes across as being vaguely French. It's a face that should be smiling, she feels, and the hesitant, almost somber look there doesn't feel right.
“Ah, Sawa-san! Right on time, come in, come in!” His eyes land on her, and the solemn expression falls just a bit further. Kuron's hindbrain does not want to go into this stranger's house where she can be trapped, and locked away, and nobody would know if she were beaten bloody-
He crouches down to her level, and she shuffles back a step when he accidentally over balances and tilts forward for a second. “Hi there, you must be Sumi-chan,” he says carefully, his voice much too soft for someone who feels so… large, in personality. She's inclined to like him already. “I'm your Hizashi-oji-san. Did your mom ever mention me?”
She wants to say something, she really does, but- the words just won't come. Hizashi sees the look on her face and, to her surprise, starts to sign along with his words. “Did your mom teach you how to sign?”
Her hands move instinctively to answer even as she's still processing the fact that she understood what he was signing in the first place. Her memories haven't fully integrated with each other yet and some things need prompting before she remembers. [Yes.]
“That's good. This way you don't have to talk if you don't want to, and we can still understand you.” He says kindly, smiling softly. “Do you like cats, Kuron-chan?”
Kurom adores cats and always has, especially if they're fluffy or fat. She nods furiously. [Yes.] she signs, and then adds a hopeful, [Why?].
“Well, there are a couple of cats inside that I'm sure would love to meet you, if you'd like. Tufty in particular loves to sit on people's laps all day if you just pet him a bit. Does that sound like fun, Kuron-chan?”
Oh, this guy is good. Her adult memories want to applaud him in his expert handling of a distressed child. Her adoration for all things fluffy and or cat shaped manages to overcome her reluctance and she allows her uncle to herd her inside- from a safe distance, of course.
Inside Sawa-san is talking to a man with long black hair that she immediately names Scruffy the moment she lays eyes on him. “-and you'll have to see about getting her enrolled in school when you can, though there's no hurry, really. Kuron-chan was doing very well in school before and is clearly a bright girl, so it might be a good idea to let her get acclimatized for a couple of months before you enroll her anywhere.”
“I'll keep that in mind,” Scruffy says, his voice a textbook lazy drawl that belies his intent expression.
This man is, well, scruffy. Kind of looks like a hobo, really. His long black hair is all over the place and looks like he just got out of bed, but the heavy bags underneath his long, round, half lidded black eyes say that clearly he didn't spend enough time there. The five o'clock shadow doesn't really help matters. Where Hizashi’s face rounded and short, his his long and angular, though not excessively so. If he shaved, opened his eyes all the way, and either pulled his hair back or got it cut- and got a full eight hours of sleep- then he would actually be fairly handsome, in a rugged sort of way.
If Pest liked Hizashi, it's practically doing cartwheels for this guy. The predominant feeling she gets when she looks at him is safe, and it's a relief when she's finally able to let go of some of the tension practicing its knots with her back muscles.
“Kuron-chan, this is my husband, Aizawa Shouta. Shouta, this- this is my niece Kuron-chan. She's nonverbal right now, and I know you're not very good at ASL just yet but if you could try I think she'd be more comfortable.”
Scruffy turns his gaze to her and boy does it feel heavy. She can almost physically feel it assessing her, getting her measure. They lock eyes and she narrows hers in challenge. Neither of them blink.
“Er, Shouta? Kuron-chan?” Hizashi calls from the sidelines, but neither of them so much as twitch.
She's not entirely sure why she’s so stubborn about a staring contest, but she feels like if she gives in and blinks then she'll be failing some sort of test, and Kuron's rarely seen but incredibly stubborn competitive streak bristles at the thought.
Finally, he nods, deliberately blinking to signal the end of… whatever that was. “It's nice to meet you, Kuron.” It sounds almost approving if you tilt your head sideways, and she feels inexplicably proud.
Hizashi squawks next to her, offended on her behalf at the absence of honorifics which is frightfully rude toward someone you've just met in Japanese society, but she isn't offended. He doesn't seem like an honorifics kind of guy. [Same.]
The feeling of something- several somethings- brushing against her legs makes her practically jump out of her skin, and she looks down to see three cats (!) twining their way about and through her legs, meowling for pets, and she can't help but smile. The first smile in… a long, long time if memory serves.
One of them is fat with short grey fur, one of them is an extremely fluffy calico, and the black one is fat and fluffy!
Bliss.
“Wow, I've never seen Mr. Tufty act so friendly to anyone but Shouta before!” she hears Hizashi exclaim distantly, a bit louder and more natural than his careful coxing earlier. “Why does he love her, but hate me?!” he whines.
“Because he has taste. And ears.” Scruffy intones.
“Shooooutaaaaa, why do you have to be so mean?” he whines like the five year old she actually is.
It's hard to give any of the cats the affection they deserve bending over like she is, so she plops down on the floor right there in the middle of the living room and is ecstatic when the big fat fluffy one immediately drapes itself over her lap. She starts experimenting with head and ear scritches and tunes out the conversation going on above her head.
“-on-chan. Kuron-chan!”
She jumps, causing the cat in her lap to protest with an unhappy yowl and claws pricking her through her jeans, and fixes Hizashi with a dark glare.
Hizashi laughs nervously. “Wow Shouta, are we sure she isn't your niece?” he jokes. Nobody laughs. Hizashi clears his throat awkwardly in the ensuing silence. “Sawa-san is leaving now, Kuron-chan. Do you want to say goodbye?”
She gives him a deadpan look and he winces. “Oh, uh, I mean-”
She rolls her eyes and she and Scruffy exchange long-suffering glances. “Great, now the two of you are ganging up on me-”
Kuron tunes him out again, a skill she has a feeling she will get a lot of practice at, and fixes a sadly smiling Sawa-san with a grateful look. She is a bit naive maybe, but her cheerful attitude made the whole process easier. With that in mind, she raises her hand tentatively in a jerky wave and a rusty smile.
She beams. “Goodbye, Kuron-chan! It was nice to meet you! I'll be coming back to check up on you and make sure everything's okay,” she says pointedly in Scruffy and Hizashi's direction, interrupting their one-sided argument, “so it's just goodbye for now, but I'll miss you!”
“Would you like to see your room and put your things away?” Scruffy asks after a long minute of awkward silence (on their part) during which Hizashi goes off to start dinner. “Where did Sawa-san put your things?”
Kuron blinks, and then shrugs off her backpack and wiggles it pointedly.
“That's all you have?” Scruffy says disapprovingly. Which, fair, because she only has maybe two changes of clothing in there and some of them are slightly singed from the fire. She shrugs and he sighs heavily. “We'll have to take you shopping tomorrow.” He says this like it's the worst torture imaginable, and she ducks her head to hide the beginnings of a grin that won't come out completely. To be fair, shopping for other people- especially kids- is unimaginably boring, but the way he said it….
Scruffy throws open the door to her new room and Kuron immediately recoils in horror. The room is pink. Violently pink. The bed is covered in Hello Kitty sheets. The dresser has cartoon flowers painted on it in the gaudiest, most eye searing shades she has ever seen in one place. The toybox (ugh!) is overflowing with barbies and stuffed animals.
She slams the door shut to stop the assault on her eyes and presses her back against it in the event those colors gained sentience and tried to break down the door to murder her sanity.
Scruffy has his hands pressing down on his eyelids, clearly regretting life. “Why did I let that idiot decorate?” he says to himself. “If my eyesight suffers from this-!” he cuts himself off with a sigh and removes his hands to meet her reproachful look head on. “No, I am not going to make you sleep in there. You'd probably go blind come morning. You can take the other guest room for the night and then… well, it'd probably be better if you decorated your own room anyway. Agency and all that. It just means an even longer shopping trip.” She finds the dead look in his eyes vastly amusing.
The guest room was normal, thankfully. A bit plain and the air was stale, but it was heaps better than the pink monstrosity. As she set down her backpack one of the cats make a break for underneath the bed, only to be snatched up mid jump by Scruffy in an impressive display of speed and reflexes. “Tufty, no,” he scolded the fluffy black feline cannonball. “Don't let the cats into your room or they’ll make a mess of the place,” he warned, “and they have a knack for evasion.”
Kuron stared at him for a moment, considering his speed, then signed, [You’re a hero too?].
He stared intently at her hands for a minute, trying to parse what she was trying to say, before nodding. “Underground hero. Eraserhead.” he explained succinctly.
She paused in her perusal of the rescued clothing, thinking, then asked, [What's Uncle's hero name?]
He raised an eyebrow. “Present Mic.”
She thought about that, then grinned. As close as she could get to it, at least. [Because his voice is a gift to the world?]
Scruffy turned that over in his head a moment, then barked a startled laugh. “His exact words,” he confirmed.
[He is loud normally, isn't he?] She grimaced, already dreading the havoc that was going to wreck on her PTSD.
Scruffy's expression mirrored hers. “He'll try to keep it down, but Voice is a difficult Quirk to control.” It was almost apologetic.
She huffed a silent sigh, but changed the subject. [What are the cats’ names?] she asked, bending down to snag the calico only to get the grey cat instead when it evaded her hands.
“The black one is Mr. Tufty, the grey one you have now is Luca, and the calico is Apollo. He doesn't appreciate being picked up like the other two, but once he gets used to you you'll probably wake up in the middle of the night with him on your chest purring up a storm.” The both of them are well aware of how badly that could end up, so he doesn't need to tell her to- “Make sure to keep your door shut.”
She nods silently at that, deciding to focus on the cat in her arms rather than him, and eventually he stands. “I'll come and get you when dinner's ready. Take some time for yourself. Feel free to explore- don't be stupid, but don't be afraid either.”
It's strange, the sense of understanding that exists between them. There's something in the way he acts, the way he hides behind those scarves, that strikes a chord somewhere she doesn't want to touch. She knows that she's safe here, not just because of the Pest that likes him so much, but because if this was the her from Before and she were placed in his position, caring for someone who's been through what she has, that child would never know pain again so long as she was alive and physically and mentally able.
A part of her hates this even as it gives her a sense of comfort in that knowledge, because here is another broken boy, probably criminally neglected and abandoned by someone who taught him what weakness is.
Violent shudders wrack her frame as she lets the last few threads of self control slip away. The lies she told herself- that she was fine, that she was strong, that the freshly torn scars and new gaping wounds don't exist, can't touch her- they all fall away, leaving her struggling to properly breathe. The cat in her arms- purring heavily and not at all perturbed by her desperate heaving- grounds her, serves as an anchor to the truth, the reality of the situation. That she lives. That she died. That once again, somehow, she is innocent, has lost that piece of her- however bitter- that knew how to deal with this. That pieces of her are gone and everything she is is malleable to some higher power, even that which she thought of as sacred and unassailable.
She shakes and she cries and she continues to pet the small, warm, alive trusting creature in her arms and struggles not to dissociate. It isn't enough, though, that one point of contact, because suddenly she doesn't feel safe. Before she really knows what she's doing, she climbs into the closet and closes the door, moulding herself around the remarkably patient Luca.
Scruffy comes to tell her that dinner is ready, and blessedly doesn't push when she doesn't respond. A while later Hizashi is there, speaking in a low, soothing voice through the door about anything and everything. Inconsequential little details that make up life, like the way certain words sit strangely on your tongue and ring beautifly in your ears, the pride he feels when he sees his students grow and evolve into something spectacular and the heady feeling of knowing that he was apart of that, amusing little anecdotes and stories and day go day oddities that lessen the monotony of routine.
He also doesn't push for a response, doesn't ask her what's wrong or insist she come out and part of her wants him to. Part of her hates that she's let these things control her, problems she thought she'd healed from and problems she thought shouldn't affect her as a fully grown adult. The majority, though, knows how stupid that line of thought is and is simply, overwhelmingly grateful for the easy acceptance and understanding. It’s not something that's easy to find in most people.
Eventually, she works up the nerve to get out and pursue that delicious smell wafting in from the hallway, shaky and emotionally fragile in a way that feels physical, like she's made of paper. They’re already at the table and eating when she gets there, but beyond a brief glance neither of them acknowledge her presence until their conversation about patrols is over, even though she can see Hizashi's fingers twitching on his fork and making subtle, aborted motions to reach out to her. Once again she finds herself overcome with fondness for these two who don't interrogate her or hover or act as if she's defective and fragile just because she had a breakdown like people are wont to do after experiences like hers. They throw some questions her way every now and again and she even briefly helps Scruffy razz Hizashi when he turns to her for support in a playful argument between them, but she's proud to even do that much. Beyond that she gives one word answers when she can't ignore the question and eventually they get the hint and stop asking.
She goes to bed that night still feeling vaguely unsettled and disjointed, but the parts of her that jump at shadows are just low murmurs in the back of her mind and she manages to sleep through the night peacefully, blessedly unbothered by visions of guns and flames and cloudy, sightless eyes.