Chapter Text
SATURDAY APRIL 11TH, 2224
7:45 am
MIDORIYA INKO should not know how to secure someone to a chair with duct tape and skipping rope. Midoriya Inko is a simple, hardworking mother of one with a safe job as a phlebotomist at a family-owned clinic. However, given that all that is Midoriya Inko hinged on the very precept of her existence, perhaps some flexibility can be afforded. For up until some fourteen odd years ago, Midoriya Inko did not exist.
Oh, there was certainly a woman named Midoriya Inko. Indeed, she had green hair, a buxom figure, and a similar lack of family and friends. This Inko could not have slipped into the life she left behind quite as readily had she not been a social recluse with dead parents. Their quirks were much the same as well, though real-Inko’s (who this Inko kindly calls Rinko in her private musings) leaned more towards a sort of magnetism.
This Inko’s quirk is…
“Mmf! Mmmf!”
“Hush, you,” she tuts at the man in the chair, looping the rope into one more knot. “It’s not that tight.” His wild eyes fill with tears, but Inko has long since ceased being moved by the fear of her targets. It’s preferred that she is feared, that she is terrifying. The truest terror lies in not being able to protect the people one loves. For her son, Inko will become any manner of monster.
It’s all for him, in the end. This life—this uniquely unreal, painfully crafted life—where she is nothing but a mother was hard won for his sake. For Midoriya Izuku to be unfettered by the sins of Inko’s past, Inko’s past simply could not exist. She and Tatsuya made doubly sure of that.
Her chin wrinkles at the thought of that deceitful lark of an old man, the cretinous liar he is. May he choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of his own trite, foolish beliefs. Fraudulent, lying, predatory charlatan.
Truly, Inko knows she is the least blameless. She let him have her son. She let him cradle her Izuku to his chest as a toddler, let him witness many of his firsts, let him be part of their quiet, safe life out of some sort of foolish notion of forgiveness and trust. Tatsuya. Even his name felt like bile on her tongue.
Her fingers brush over the coarse rope, tugging it tight enough that the man squirms again, his muffled pleas breaking through her thoughts. She clicks her tongue in irritation, straightening up to glare at him. “You’ll stop that noise if you know what’s good for you,” she says lightly. “I’m in no mood for dramatics.”
The man stills, his wide, terrified eyes fixed on hers. A pity, she thought, not for the man but for the necessity of this situation. It was always a mess when they tried to squirm out of paying for their sins—metaphorically or otherwise. His was the biggest transgression of all—to think she found him there, nude and sprawled across her son’s bedroom floor while Izuku slept, blissfully unaware. A piddling thought begged her audience, one that reasoned this stranger’s presence to be related to Izuku’s revelations of the past evening, but it held little sway over Inko’s priorities—safety first, above all else. Izuku’s safety.
And to ensure that, this man could not be allowed to move or speak. Unknown variables are better left restrained until they prove useful, he had once said to her. She only partially agreed. Unknown variables were better left restrained until the threat they posed was neutralised. She knew not this man’s name, his age, his quirk—nothing. She needs to gather information. She needs—
“Mama?”
—to lock her fucking door. What a rookie, rudimentary error. Mighty God .
She spins, finding her son’s startled gaze.
Mighty God.
Inko forces her mouth into a smile, the kind mothers wore when they wanted to assure their children that everything was fine—fine when the stove had caught fire, fine when the cat had vanished, fine when they had to flee in the middle of the night with nothing but a prayer when the second man she loved turned out to be almost worse than the first. A practised smile, one she’d perfected over fourteen long years.
“Good morning, Izuku,” she said brightly, her voice lilting with false cheer. “Did you sleep well?”
Izuku’s wide, emerald eyes flitted from her to the man in the chair. His lips moved silently, as if struggling to form words, and for a moment, he reminded her of the way he used to gape at her when he was a toddler. How his sweet face would just fixate on her like he couldn’t bear to have her leave his sight. His stare was intense, even then, but now it feels like a brand on her skin. She never intended for him to see this side of her, certain she had put it away for good. But as with all good things…
“I… slept fine, um.What—what’s going on?”
“Oh, this?” She gestures to the bound man. “It’s nothing to worry about, sweetheart. Just a little misunderstanding.”
“A… misunderstanding,” Izuku echoes blandly. “Right. He’s um, he’s tied. To a chair. With a skipping rope? And tape. And—is that one of my socks?”
Inko winced. She probably could’ve used something else as a gag, but improvisation demanded only what was nearby, however inelegant. And he really should’ve put his laundry in the dresser instead of on his chair. “It’s temporary. I just needed to make sure he wouldn’t cause trouble while I... sorted things out.”
“Is this—is this a kidnapping?” His voice drops to a whisper at the last word, and he looks around as if the walls have ears. Stepping closer to her, yet still warily eyeing the man on the chair, Izuku continues, “Grandfather knows someone who can help you get what you need from… this person. You don’t—don’t have to get your hands dirty.”
Oh.
No.
No.
She will never forgive Tatsuya. She will never forgive him until every individual skin cell is peeled off his body with a cosmetic tweezer and his raw, flayed musculature is submerged in a vat of bubbling tar beside an oxyacetylene torch. She will warm her feet with the heat of his barbecued corpse and take a shit on the smoldering wreckage of his existence.
“… I did not kidnap him,” is the only thing she can say, because she’s mildly horrified that her son isn’t horrified by the sight of a trembling hostage in their living room. Part of her wants to praise his composure, but the rest is screaming not my boy, please, not my boy, because what else does that signal if not familiarity? This was vigilance, not shock. Ease.
“Did he break in?” Izuku sounds more aggrieved than scandalised, and the look he levels at the intruder makes his face blur into one Inko hasn’t seen in years. Her mind paints gold over his green eyes, auburn over his sleep-mussed curls. He looks like his uncle—the uncle who had to vanish —and the sickening realisation that Tatsuya’s done it again drips like oil deep in her throat.
Please, not this time.
“I went to check on you and found him in your room.”
Her voice is steady, but inside, she’s scrambling. She turns her back to Izuku, blocking the bound man from his view. This isn’t the time to spiral. Izuku’s safety comes first—his safety, his innocence, his childhood . She needs to defuse this before it festers into something unmanageable. Her fingers twitch at her side, longing to reach out, to smooth that crease of worry forming between his brows. But the look in his eyes—the flicker of something too sharp, too knowing—makes her hesitate.
How much of this has he seen before?
How much does he already understand?
How utterly has she failed him?
For a moment, she thinks his silence stems from unease, but then a quiet, shaky confession slips past his lips. “I thought that was a dream.”
Inko whirls around. “What? Explain now. Izuku,” She softens her tone, remembering herself. This isn’t a subordinate debriefing after a failed mission—this is her son. Her son, who woke up to find a strange, naked man on his bedroom floor. Did this man hurt her boy?
“Nothing… nothing happened,” Izuku mumbles, his fingers pinching at his cuticles—a nervous habit he’s never grown out of. “I just woke up earlier and saw… and saw him lying there on the ground.”
His hands tremble. Soon, she knows, he’ll shift to clutching at his hair, the inevitable precursor to a full-blown shutdown.
“Gummy bear,” she coaxes, stepping closer, “thank you for telling me. That was very brave of you. Did you see anyone or anything else when you woke up?”
He twists his fingers tighter, his face pinched.
“Izuku. I need you to tell me what else you saw. Please, sweetheart. Can you focus for me?”
He hesitates, his eyes darting to the floor. “He… He didn’t break in.”
“What was that?”
Izuku swallows, his shoulders stiff. “He didn’t break in.” His expression shifts into something detached, indifferent. Something Inko knows she didn’t teach him. “I brought him here.”
She tilts her head. She had considered the possibility of what he’s implying, of course—it had been lurking in the back of her mind since she found the man. But Inko believes in the simplest explanations first. Occam’s razor and all that jazz.
“Are you saying he might be the person you… encountered yesterday?”
The one from the underpass.
The one who attacked her boy—the very same underpass she has warned him to avoid more times than she can count. Not that her silly, stubborn child ever listens. And what did it get him? Shoved into a soda bottle like some kind of lab experiment.
Her jaw tightens.
“So yes,” she finishes, her voice sharper than she intended, “he hurt you, didn’t he?”
Izuku doesn’t answer immediately, but the way his hands clench and his lips press into a thin line is all the confirmation she needs. Her right eye twitches. She closes them, seeking calm. She always thought better in the dark.
People could live without their fingernails, couldn’t they? In pain, certainly, but survival didn’t hinge on something as chitinous and replaceable as a nailbed. Thumbs, though—those were trickier. Opposable thumbs were more of an inconvenience to lose. Still, they could be reattached in time-sensitive circumstances.
She wonders, idly, whether the apparatus used for severing would affect that process. A jagged, rusty bread knife would leave uneven edges and invite tetanus. Slow, torturous. A clean slice from a sharp axe, on the other hand—swift, final, and perhaps worse for it. The shock might double the pain.
A smile pulls at her lips. She’s calm now.
Inko turns to face the man, paying no heed to his pathetic writhing. “You will tell me how you ended up in this house.” Crouching close, she leans into his ear. Can’t have Izuku hearing her, can she? “And if you scream, I will peel your tongue in two. Do you understand?”
The man nods, jerky.
She smiles again, soft and pleased.
“At least you’re smart.”