Chapter Text
“I–” Izuku stammered, digging his nails into his palms until he felt blood. He was so royally screwed.
SMACK
“I don’t want your goddam excuses!” Fumiko Takahira snarls. She has a manic look in her bright green eyes, her nose scrunched and her lip curled disdainfully. She grabs onto his hair, pulling him by his scalp and throwing him against the kitchen pantry. Warmth leaks from the bottom of his crown and he reaches a hand up sluggishly, grimacing when sticky red blood coats his fingers.
He frantically tries to push himself up the wall, a yelp escaping his lips when she hits him with a metal spoon. She grabs a belt from the back of the couch, “Take your shirt off and turn around,” She spits.
Izuku hesitates, just for a second, looking around the room frantically to see if he can outrun her.
“Now!” She barks impatiently, cracking the belt intimidatingly.
Izuku complies robotically out of fear, the movements ingrained into him from the tens of foster homes he’s been to. After that everything sort of blurs into each other. He knows that the belt should hurt and it does , but he’s too busy trying to breathe. (He’s suddenly brought back to earlier that day when he was with Keigo, his murmurs of comfort and his talons running through Izuku’s hair. “Just breathe Birdie,” He had said. )
He feels as if he’s watching a movie rather than being in the moment. He can feel him trying to protect himself with his forearms a few times before simply giving up. He can feel the bruises forming on every inch of his skin, a cut starting to bleed, the pain is searing hot, and he knows he’ll be aching for days. But at that moment he felt helpless, he could feel it devouring him whole.
Izuku feels Ms. Takahira grasp his hair again, dragging him up the stairs, and throwing him into his room. He’s limp on the ground, dazed as the door locks from the outside. The pain itches underneath his skin, making nausea roll through him in waves. He doesn’t think he has the willpower to get up.
He passes out from the pain, bloody and bruised.
—
Izuku’s waken by Mai shutting the door softly behind her, clutching a first aid kit in her hands. He tries to get up but the pain is debilitating. He groans when she turns on the light. It’s still dark out, then.
She leans beside him, pajamas rustling as she sits. They don’t speak to each other, they never do at first. She looks at him apologetically with every wince and hiss that leaves his lips. She cleaned up whatever blood hadn’t scabbed over, and applied liquid bandage and bruise cream as gently as she could.
Izuku sits up, resting on his palms “What’s the time,” he rasps.
Mai doesn’t look up from where she’s repacking the first aid kit, “2:40 am,” She closes the box with a quiet slam, “What were you thinking, you idiot!” Tears have gathered in her eyes, her eyelashes spikey, and her nose and eyebrows red. She had cried before coming in here.
“I’m sorry, Mai, I-” He shakes his head, “I got mugged and had to patch myself up, I lost track of time,” He tells her honestly, staring at her through thick lashes. He left out the part about Keigo, he didn’t know why, it just felt like the right thing to do.
Instead of a response, Mai wraps her arms around him gently, mindful of his injuries. Izuku brings his non-fucked hand to her head, stroking her dark blue curls softly. Sometimes he forgot that underneath her sarcasm and cold demeanor she was only ten. She was ten and yet she already knew how cruel life can get.
The two sat next to each other for a good while afterward before Izuku came to a decision he stood up wearily, “Alright,” he started, ignoring her questioning gaze, “I’ll be back before sunrise, I’m going to get us snacks.”
Mai scrambles to get up, gawking at him, “Are you crazy! You can barely stand,” she reminds, whisper-yelling, “and if the Takahira’s find out they’re going to whoop your ass and you’ll end up in a hospital!”
Izuku tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, a rueful smile playing at her lips, “I’ll be fine, I always am,”
“That doesn’t make it okay,” She calls out to him as he carefully climbs out of the window. Climbing the drain pipe and up onto the roof. Mai needed this, just something to calm her down. (And maybe he needed it, too.)
—
The rest of the weekend consisted of healing from his bruises and cuddling with his sister while watching Studio Ghibli movies and eating far too much mochi and soda. It had been nice, blissful, even.
Izuku’s school nurse, Mitsuba Kyona, had agreed to mend the break in his bones, stitching them together with her quirk. It had always fascinated him, her quirk that is. He knew that with it she could be one of the best field doctors out there, so why she was working in some shitty school at the Edge of Musutafu was beyond him. She had given him the same stern look she did every time before slipping him a ripe peach and a hall pass, in case he was late. He smiled mid-bite. She had always been good to him.
Luckily he hadn’t been late, he had no doubt that he would’ve gotten detention despite having a note. He sat down, pulled out his analysis notebook, and flipped to his upgraded analysis page of Present Mic. He was studying the hero’s directional speakers when Mrs. Kobayashi walked into the classroom primly, round glasses pushed to the very top of the bridge of her nose.
“Good morning, class,” She says with a sweetness that falls flat, betrayed by her tussled hair and dark circles, and Izuku wonders if she’s broken up with another fiance like she did last year, “I’ve decided to assign you a group project that you’ll have the rest of the semester to work on.”
People started turning to each other, poorly concealed whispers echoing throughout the room. Mrs. Kobayashi whistles between two of her fingers and the class goes quiet. Izuku winces and fights the urge to cover his ears.
“I will be assigning you partners!”
A collective groan roars through the students and Izuku can’t help but roll his eyes knowing he’ll be doing most, if not all of the work.
She starts listing trios and Izuku pretends to be listening to her until she calls his name.
“Midoriya Izuku, Shinsou Hitoshi, and Toga Himiko,” With that being the last of what Mrs. Kobayashi has to say groups start turning to each other, and out of the three of them Toga is the first to turn to them.
“Did she just…not explain anything about the project?” She asks with a furrow in her brow, “What are we even supposed to be doing?”
Izuku hums, “It’s probably on her class page, she did this last year, too,” He explains, taking out his laptop, decorated with Hello Kitty stickers. Shinsou looked at his screen from over his shoulder, and Toga scooched closer to look as well. The directions, were, indeed on her class page.
“Dude we’re not even supposed to learn about trigonometry until our last year of high school,” Shinsou drawls from behind him. His voice is low and raspy, and it sounds like he hasn’t used it in a while.
“Welcome to the hell that is Nakamura Junior High,” Izuku draws out, an unsettling smile on his face. Toga snorts behind him causing Izuku's lip to twitch up slightly.
“You guys okay with meeting at the Ivy Library in central Musutafu this weekend?” Toga asks, patiently waiting for the two boys to nod at her. They do, but something nags at Izuku.
Well, not nags per se, but doesn’t make sense to him. He had always done the projects by himself because he was the quirkless kid, so it made sense for him to do all the work while the others slacked off all the time. And yet here was Toga and Shinsou, making plans to meet and do the project together. Izuku had been kind with them and cracked jokes with them. Before Keigo, he had never had anything like that, besides with Mai, and it made something ugly curl in his gut.
Izuku wants this to last. Izuku will make this last.
—
Izuku doesn’t want to return to the Takahira’s quite yet, so he grabs some onigiri and a peach soda from the corner store and walks through the woods to his treehouse. Upon seeing Moon Side Lake, he thumbs the familiar piece of blue fabric and decides to eat on the dock.
Chewing on his rice-balls and letting Led Zeppelin’s Achilles Last Stand assault his ears he lets himself become aware of his surroundings. The rushing of the creek into the lake, the family of ducks swimming and quacking about, and the sound of a woman screaming “You bird-brained fuck! Let me go! I can walk by myself!”
Wait what?
Snapping his head to the commotion he sees Keigo hauling– que demonios… — Miruko, the number 6 hero over to the clearing where the lake and treehouse were.
“Izuku, you up there?!” Keigo calls. He’s in front of the treehouse’s curtain door and the lake is on the other side.
“Over here!” He calls, and he and the hero make eye contact. Keigo swings Miruko over his shoulder, ignoring her offended yelp, and flies over to the dock, setting her down gently.
“Hey,” Keigo starts, panting, it’s now that Izuku realizes the two of them are pretty banged up, but Miruko has the worst of it.
Her skin is littered with cuts, a gash on her forehead, and – ay dios mio – across her right thigh are two crisscrossed claw marks about five inches long, an inch deep, and half an inch wide. Her blood flows out steadily from them, sticky and red, staining her tanned skin. She’s almost completely out of it, too. Her head lolls now and then, pained pants escaping her lips.
“Can you help?” Keigo asks, so nervous and so worried. He has a large scratch over his face, and his jacket is so shredded it’s practically non-existent. Just what the hell happened to these two?
“Yes,” Izuku says instead of voicing his questions, “Get me the medical box from the treehouse,”
Keigo is quick to follow instructions, flying over to the treehouse immediately. In the meantime, Izuku takes out his school first aid kit, takes out alcohol pads, and begins to clean the gash on Miruko’s forehead, whispering silent apologies when she hisses at the stinging sensation.
—
Usagiyama Rumi has always had a temper. Her anger was the only thing familiar to her so she clung to it like a lifeline, adding kindling to the fire in her heart when she didn’t know what else to do. She clung to it when her father left, cursing his name when she saw her mother crying over unpaid bills. She clung to it when her older sister got sick, cursing the doctors who wouldn’t help because in their eyes it was only a matter of time before her sister got sick with her weak bunny immune system.
Clinging to that anger got her into fights and vigilantism. Clinging to that anger was the only thing that got her through the Hero Commision’s training so she wouldn’t go to jail for beating on a villain so bad he died.
Clinging to that anger got her and Keigo beat just too badly in their training, and instead of feeling like the seasoned pro hero she was, she felt like the sixteen-year-old girl getting thrown into the mat by her handler for the first time. Rumi had been out of it afterward, but she vaguely remembers Keigo picking her up and her protesting and calling him a ‘bird-brained fuck’.
When she came to, or as present as she could be, she could smell a lake, something peach, Keigo’s cologne, and the citrusy scent of evergreen trees. Opening her ruby eyes she’s met with the sight of a boy (because that's what he is, a boy. He couldn’t be older than fifteen) cleaning the claw marks of her handler on her thigh, and she hisses when the alcohol pad makes contact with her exposed flesh.
His hair is black, tied up in a loose ponytail that looks like it could reach the mid-section of his back. His school uniform sleeves are rolled up just above his elbows exposing his skin which is maybe a shade or two lighter than Rumi’s own, and it’s covered in freckles and littered with scars of all sorts. Burns, small cuts, and still healing cuts that eerily remind her of the belt marks she had seen on her mom before her father left.
“Morning sleeping beauty,” Keigo remarks, his lips pulled into a lop-sided grin. Rumi had known him for years, though. She could see how he tapped his fingers on his bicep, which was now exposed because he had seemingly discarded his jacket.
Most to soothe his worries she gave him a wry smirk and snarked, “Well excuse me for passing out after getting a concussion,”
The kid in front of her snorted and Keigo cast him a soft glance. Interesting, she thought, they knew each other, then.
The kid looked up at her through thick, long lashes, mahogany meeting her ruby, “I’m gonna start stitching this together,”
Rumi threw her head back, now aware that she was resting against a piling on a dock, that explains the lake smell, at least, “Get on with it,”
Izuku, she learns, is a lot like her. He had made ample conversation with her, mostly to distract her from the pain. He was 5 feet and three inches of snark, kindness, and random facts. Peach-flavored things were his favorite, didn’t matter what it was. He handled spice like a god, and Keigo’s jaw dropped when he found out that he ate the highest level of spice at the ramen shop that made Keigo shit his pants because of the spice. He was half Mexican and didn’t know any Japanese when he was thrown into the foster system at three because he never knew his father, who was Japanese. His favorite color was navy blue.
In turn, she and Keigo told things about themselves. Well, she more so than Keigo because apparently Izuku already knew most of those things about Keigo. She told him how she was half Guatamalen and had been raised by her single mother. She wasn’t as good as spice as he apparently was, but she could handle a good deal of it. She preferred carrot-flavored things, which he teased her for a bit about. Her favorite color was purple, and Keigo’s was cerulean blue.
Izuku had gone to grab some mochi for the three of them and Rumi took the time to ask Keigo about the cuts that littered the boy’s arms.
Keigo pursed his lips, a worried look in his amber eyes, “I don’t know, Rue,” He sighed and plopped down next to her, “But I'm worried,”
He grabbed a stick that lay in front of him, making stars and swirls in the thin layer of dirt that coated the dock, “He’s had bruises, cuts, burns,” He made a wide gesture with his hands, “But he always says he gets into fights, and with his temper it’s believable, I mean,” He huffed out an exasperated laugh, “The first time I met the kid he put a switchblade to my throat, stitched me up, and ate mochi with me all in an hour,”
Rumi let out a startled laugh, “He put a switchblade to your throat?!”
Keigo chuckled, “Yeah, I had a concussion though, and couldn’t take him seriously ‘cause of his lisp”
“Huh, I barely noticed that”
“I think it comes out more when he’s upset, his little accent does too,”
“I did notice that,”
—
Rumi, as Izuku learned, was pretty chill.
As the duo turned trio sat on the dock, watching two ducks fight to the death, he hoped he could make this last.
Good things never lasted very long for Midoriyas.