Chapter Text
ii. mother
It’s on a routine visit to the gynecologist when your entire world tilts on its axis. You’re told it’s extremely unlikely you’ll ever bear children.
You stand up and leave, heart cracking open to let the void inside.
(You don’t know why you’re so upset. You’ve never wanted children. You’ve always looked down your nose at the sticky brats with their sticky fingers and tendencies to ruin everything they touched.
More than that, you’ve always been afraid. Afraid of cursing another child with your mother’s hair, your father’s eyes.)
You go home to Masaru, and for the first time in years, let yourself cry. He isn’t expecting it, but he wouldn’t be the man you married if he didn’t gather you in his arms and let you do so without judgment anyway.
You’ve never wanted children, not really, but the diagnosis seems to stick to your skin and follow you like a shadow, a void you’ll never be rid of. You’ve never wanted children, but you would’ve liked to have been able to choose.
(You and Masaru stop using protection after that. You like to think it of a ‘fuck you’ of sorts, even though the void will always be there. You think you could learn to live with it in time.)
A few months after that, you start throwing up everywhere. The smell of meat nauseates you, and you hope that this doesn’t mean what you think it does. Masaru voices his concerns, softly tells you to take a pregnancy test, just to make sure, but you can’t even think of it being a possibility.
You’d been told no. The doctor had looked you right in the eye and said this couldn’t be a possibility, and yet—
You put off taking the test for as long as you possibly can. It could be something else. An ovarian cyst, or something of the like.
(When you finally do take the test, you shove the stick in Masaru’s direction and pace around the living room. You haven’t looked at it. You want Masaru to be the one to tell you. When you finally do find the courage to look at him, the way he stares back tells you everything you need to know.
The world comes crashing to your feet.
You’re having a child.)
This is what you know. You were an unwanted child. You’ve been unwanted since creation. You’ve had this fact spat in your face since you can remember, and you’ve never wanted to be a mother, not in the way some girls dream of, but.
You think of how your parents shoved your unwantedness down your throat every second of every moment they could. You think of pinches and disappointment and resentment and cigarette burns, and you feel cold.
This is what you tell yourself. You are not ready for a child, not yet. But this could very well be your first and last. And a part of you, a small, buried part, does want a baby. You want to witness what you and Masaru can create together, want to hold them in your arms. You pray for this baby to have Masaru’s features, because there is a part of you that still flinches when looking in the mirror. You don’t want to flinch when looking at your child.
(This child is unexpected, but not unwanted. Never unwanted. This child is yours, but they won’t be you.)
Masaru names him Katsuki.
“After his wonderful mother,” he says, brushing over the soft blonde fuzz of Katsuki’s head. You don’t answer him. Your head is buzzing. You’re exhausted in ways you’ve never been before. And you can’t stop staring at the blonde color of your baby’s hair. He blinks his eyes open, smacking his lips softly together. The slowly building dread in the back of your throat turns into full-blown horror.
It was the one thing you’d prayed to not let him have. Not these cursed eyes.
But then he makes a little cooing noise, stretching his chubby little arms toward your face, and… the horror melts away as soon as it comes. How could you ever hate this little boy? No matter the color of his eyes, he’s your baby. A being created of the love Masaru and you had for each other—you would sooner die than ever hate this child.
“Katsuki,” you repeat, voice softer than you’ve ever heard it.
“I like the sound of that.”
(Masaru smiles down at the two of you, hands coming down to rest on both of your heads. He presses a kiss against your temple, and strokes baby Katsuki’s cheek with a gentle finger. The hospital room is full to the brim of happiness, and you are content to let yourself bask in the feeling.)
Katsuki is nearly three months old when your mother comes barging back into your life.
You and Masaru still live in that cheap one-bedroom apartment you’ve been living in since your college days, even though your career as assistant to a well-known fashion designer has been doing fairly well, and Masaru isn’t doing too shabby himself, as a manager for the same designer’s company.
The two of you have been saving up for a house deposit for the past two years, little by little, and you’re nearly there.
You’re on maternity leave and Masaru is at work.
It is absolutely rotten timing that your mother decides to pay a visit when she does.
You don’t think much of it at first. You’ve finally gotten Katsuki to go to sleep, and he’s peacefully snoring away into your chest, tiny body enveloped in the wrap cloth Inko had given to you as a baby shower present. When the doorbell rings, you think it might actually be her—she’s in the last month of her pregnancy, and her water could break any moment—only to come face to face with someone from your nightmares.
You want to slam the door shut as soon as you see who it is on the other side, but something tells you to let her inside. You don’t know what you are doing, as the mother who never loved you steps inside your life for the first time in years.
Katsuki is dead to the world, but you wrap an arm around his body and cup the back of his sleeping head with the other hand, as if you could protect him from the poison of your mother by sheer will alone.
You don’t like the way she looks at Katsuki, safely nestled into your arms.
For a while, she doesn’t say much of anything.
Then, she sighs, looking much older than you remember her being. Years have passed, almost a decade, but your mother looks as if she’s aged three times the amount. You tell yourself you do not care.
“Your father died last week. The funeral is being held in three days. I’d like it if you came.”
Whatever you’ve been bracing yourself for doesn’t prepare you to hear that.
After a moment of prolonged silence, in which your eyes have slipped closed, you open them again with an answer on your lips. You shake your head. You tell her no.
You are not going to the funeral of an abuser, and you tell her just as much.
Your mother’s unusually calm demeanor cracks at that, and the bitch that resides underneath the surface shows itself, much like you thought it would.
She tells you to stop being so fucking selfish and have some empathy, for once in your goddamn life, and you snort derisively. You ask where all of her empathy went when your father used you as an ashtray, and she goes silent. You laugh, bitter, and curse yourself for even daring to think that this woman could ever change.
“Get out,” you say, and it’s the end of the conversation, the end of the line with your mother and everything she is a part of.
She tries to protest, but you won't just stand there and listen to her bullshit all over again. You are an adult, you are married, you are a mother. You are a mother, and you know in your bones that you would never treat Katsuki the way your mother treated you.
She leaves. You close the door behind her, clicking the lock into place. Right after, you stumble to the living room and collapse on the couch. By some miracle, Katsuki is still fast asleep.
You hold onto him and try not to cry.
There is a thing Katsuki likes to do when it rains outside. He takes to curling into your lap. It never matters whether it’s thundering or not. You shift to accommodate his weight, because he’s a whole two years old now, as he wraps his spindly little limbs around your middle, not unlike a baby koala. You wrap your arms around him, because you can not remember ever being held, and because it’s the way you would’ve wanted to be held when you were his age.
You used to hate the rain because your father did. And when he hated something, he made sure to let everyone know. You’ve long grown out of your fear of storms, but when you hold Katsuki and ask him, he tells you this:
“I don’t like the rain, Momma.”
You hum, and soothe a hand over his back, fingers eventually running up to tangle themselves in his spiky blond hair. His head is tiny against the curve of your palm, and you make sure to be gentle. No boy of yours is delicate, but you can’t help but treat him like he is.
You think of your mother, who had never laid a hand on you unless it was to pinch and prod as if searching for defects, imperfections. You think of your father, and the phantom pain of all the cigarette burns scarred onto your forearms and shoulders.
You stare down at the little human being clinging onto you, this little thing made up of your flesh and blood and tissue—you stare, and you cannot fathom why your parents hated you so.
(Perhaps there was just something wrong with you. Maybe it had nothing to do with you being their child, but that you were a mistake, in some way or another. You hope the defects haven’t been passed down to Katsuki, who is another you. Who is so much like you it hurts.)
Your boy is a miniature you. You are not sure how to feel.
But here is what you do know.
Your hair is no longer your mother’s, and your eyes are no longer your father’s.
You are not a perfect parent by any means. But you try to be a good mother.
Your little trio is untraditional by all means—you can’t cook for shit (at least not in the beginning), and you’ve never been demure or soft-spoken in your life. Masaru is who Katsuki goes to when he scrapes a knee or accidentally hurts himself while playing. He handles it with the kind of grace he uses to handle… well, everything, really, and you can’t be more relieved.
(You knew you chose the right man to marry years ago, but your certainty only grows when faced with how Masaru is as a father. Katsuki will never have a man like your father in his life, and for that, you will forever be grateful. )
You’ve always been uncomfortable around tears, never knowing quite what to say to those in obvious distress. More than that, you’re not sure if you could ever handle the sight of your child crying to you.
Katsuki’s eyes are both a blessing and a curse. When he cries, all you see are your eyes staring back. The sight makes you uncomfortable, and for good reason. You can’t ever remember crying to your mother or father. Neither of them could be trusted around your tears.
You want to be a mother whose boy can trust with his tears. But you don’t know where to start.
It turns out, you don’t need to.
Because while Katsuki might not come to you when he gets hurt, he has no qualms about curling up into your side and staying there in silence for however long he feels. He doesn’t tell you about his days at pre-school, if anyone has been mean to him or not, and a part of you worries he doesn’t trust you enough to tell you.
But after school, he’ll climb up the couch and drape his little body over your lap while you read, and you’ll let him.
Your boy is a loud kid, a rambunctious child, and there is an odd sense of pride in you when you watch him be a little terror, running around and yelling and generally making a mess of things. You were never allowed to be loud, growing up, even though you were surrounded by noise as a child.
(It heals something in you, watching Katsuki be as loud and energetic and free as he wants, with no fear of you or his father shouting him into submission.)
It unnerves you to see your rowdy child so downtrodden and silent, but even so, you let him do what he wants.
When he’s had his fill of lying all over you, he’ll push himself back up, smack a childish kiss on your cheek, and climb down from the couch. You’ll sit there for a while, suddenly aching, hand raised to touch the spot where he kissed it.
The first time it happens, you go to Masaru in hopes that he might have the answers. He takes one look at you and laughs, though not unkindly.
Here is what he tells you:
Katsuki had a bad day at school today. He came to Masaru and told him what happened, crying all the while. Apparently, Katsuki doesn’t like crying to you because he wants to be strong for you, and doesn't want to make you worry. But he likes being close to you all the same, so sitting by you and simply being is enough.
You sigh. It’s not the worst, really. As long as the brat keeps going to Masaru about his feelings, he can sit with you in silence any time he wants. You still have trouble saying the words ‘I love you’ out loud, but you try your best to make Katsuki know that he is loved.
Because he is, even if you can’t tell him.
(You can’t help but hate yourself a little bit for that.)
You’re not good with affection, never have been. But for Katsuki, you try to the best of your abilities. He doesn’t seem to have any complaints about it so far.
Sometimes you barely know half of what you’re doing. But parenting is a learning curve, as you’ve come to know. Masaru’s mothers tell you just as much. You don’t have to be perfect to be a good parent, you learn. You just have to show up. You just have to be there.
(That is more than what your parents ever did for you.)
“What’s your favorite color, Momma?” Katsuki asks one day, when you’re making dinner. You look over to him, absentmindedly stirring the pot of curry on the stove. Your boy sits on top of the counter at a careful distance from the flames, and kicks his legs back and forth while he watches you work.
Something in you softens at the sight, and you turn back to the curry.
“Why are you asking, squirt?”
Katsuki shrugs.
“Just wanna know.”
You smile, leaning over to give his head a rough ruffle. He yelps, and looks at you in indignation. At the sight, you barely manage to suppress a snort. You think back to years ago, when your husband’s mothers had asked you the same question, with so much interest you couldn’t help but think they were faking somehow.
Your answer still hasn’t changed, all these years later.
“Orange. It’s orange, brat. Now, are you going to go and tell your father that dinner is ready?”
Katsuki scrambles off the counter in his haste to drag Masaru from his office, and you watch him go, a small smile on your face.
(Years later, when you first see your son’s hero costume, you laugh, and laugh, and laugh.)
Time passes. You land a contract with a client that sends your design sales through the roof. Masaru glows with pride when you tell him. You think you’re a little proud of yourself, too. Katsuki hugs you around the waist when you tell him, a brief, fleeting thing, but soft all the same. Your boy doesn’t quite know exactly what you’re both celebrating, but wants to congratulate you anyway. You brush a hand through his hair and tell him thank you.
He runs off to play with his All Might figurines, and you watch him go, an almost unbearable fondness welling up in your chest.
Katsuki keeps growing, hardly small enough to be carried by either of you without exerting effort, and a part of you wants to stop time, wants to keep Katsuki from growing so old that he no longer needs either of you at all.
You know he is your last. Your first and last child. The only one you will ever have. You think you have already begun mourning for the day he outgrows you and leaves you behind.
He is hardly alone now, however. He runs around with Inko’s child, Izuku, who is a precious bundle of energy and softness that balances the harsh edges of your son almost perfectly. You think they remind you a bit of Masaru and yourself, and smile. It’s good that Katsuki has a friend.
The years go by in a flash, and you wonder at the passage of time.
Katsuki grows, and with it, so does a certain darkness. You only catch occasional glimpses of it, but your son has hardly ever been one to talk about his feelings with you. You don’t want to push too hard and accidentally break something.
You ask after Izuku, who Katsuki barely mentions at all these days. Your boy shrugs and says nothing. You want to shake an answer out of him, but talk yourself out of it before you can. Katsuki is a teenager now. Teenagers were like this, weren’t they? Moody at times. Unresponsive, thinking themselves to be suave and nonchalant beings the embodiment of coolness.
You aren’t quite sure, however. You certainly can’t remember what you’d been like when you were a teenager.
(It feels like a lifetime ago that you had even been one.)
You wonder when ‘Momma’ turns into ‘old hag’ and you can’t help but feel like your boy is slipping through your fingers. You don’t know what to do to make it stop.
There is a rush of relief, when Katsuki sits both you and Masaru down before dinner one day, spitting out the words “I’m gay or whatever, so fuck off if you can’t handle it!”
You and Masaru exchange looks, before you burst into barely laughter. Masaru shakes his head, fond and amused in his own way. Before your son can inevitably get up and storm away from the table, you get a hold of yourself.
You hold onto his hand, and ask him if he remembers his grandparents.
He blinks at you, confused, and reluctantly shakes his head—which, to be fair, Masaru’s parents haven’t been fit to travel for a couple of years now, so he’s seen them less and less.
“Katsuki,” you say, soft and amused, and as gentle as you’re capable of being, which isn’t a lot, “Your father has two mothers.”
“Oh,” he blinks, and that’s that.
(“I think I like Kariage,” Katsuki mutters, mouth twisted into an embarrassed scowl, and you blink, just a little surprised that it’s not Izuku’s name coming out of his mouth.
“Undercut Kid?” you ask, and your boy gives a stiff little nod. You’ve always thought… but never mind. You suppose you should just feel grateful that Katsuki has deigned to tell you this at all—it’s so unlike him, he rarely tells you anything.
“Thank you for telling me, Katsuki,” you say.
“Don’t make such a big deal out of it, hag, it’s not all that,” he says, but the blush on the tips of his ears says something entirely different. You choose not to say anything.
“Still. Thank you.”
“Yeah, whatever.”)
You watch as your boy chases his dreams. He has never looked as perfect as he does when he flies. Some days you are in awe of the fact that you made that, that this rash and loud and blunt and absolutely perfect child came from you and Masaru.
You still struggle to voice certain things and get certain emotions across. You’ve never needed to with Masaru—he somehow just knows whatever you’re trying to say, whatever you feel, whatever you think. Your husband knows you, almost better than you know yourself. You think Katsuki is getting there.
(He still has a long way to go—he’s brash and arrogant in the way you tried to curb when he was younger, but you are only one person, with Masaru you are only two, and Katsuki has had countless others fawning over him and his supposed superior strength for years on end—U.A. will help him with that, you hope—but he’s getting there.)
Katsuki is kidnapped and you have never known fear like this.
You lay awake at night, gripped with terror. Masaru is hardly any better. The two of you go to bed in Katsuki’s room that night, clutching each other with desperation you can’t put into words. That’s your son. Your son, out there, left alone with a group of villains who won’t hesitate to kill him.
And you know he can take care of himself, you know he’s strong—but he’s only fifteen. And some part of you still sees him as your baby, as that rambunctious child who ran circles around his parents and drove them silly.
There is no telling what might happen to you if your son doesn’t come back.
(Masaru holds you tighter and doesn’t speak a word of the tears silently rolling down your cheeks. You know there are matching tracks on his face. You have never been religious, but for the first time in your life, you clasp your hands together and pray.)
When Katsuki comes back, the first thing you do is stare at him. You have to make sure this is real, that this is not a hallucination, that this is not a ghost coming back to haunt you for all of the mistakes you’ve made.
But Katsuki doesn't disappear the longer you look at him, doesn’t scatter into nothing but stardust.
You break.
Throwing your arms around your son—your child, that’s your baby—you clutch him to you like he’ll disappear the moment you let go. You’re crying, great, heaving sobs, shudders wracking your body. You try to breathe through the tears, but it doesn’t work so well.
You keep muttering things into his hair, frantic and panicked and so, so, relieved.
“God, baby, I’m so sorry, don’t ever do that again, god, I’m sorry—”
You pull back to cup his face with both hands, checking for any wounds he might have, any bruises, and you relax when you can’t find any. Katsuki looks at you like he’s never seen you before.
Then, still crying, you take one of his ears into your fingers, and twist.
Katsuki cries out in pain and indignation, glaring at you with the same pout and face he’s been using since he was three. It never works—it doesn’t work this time either.
“That’s for scaring us shitless—and for letting us think you could be dead!” you exclaim, and you’re torn between squishing Katsuki in your arms for the rest of eternity, or wrapping him up in blankets and feeding him his favorite spicy curry. It’s strange. Both are urges you’ve never felt the need to do before today.
But then again, you guess it’s not every day that your only child gets kidnapped by a league of fucking villains.
Masaru pulls him away and tugs him into an embrace of his own, and Katsuki goes willingly enough. You have to swallow a couple of times to stop yourself from continuing to cry.
“I’ll… I’ll get dinner ready,” you say, willing yourself to be strong. Katsuki cannot see you falter, not now. Besides, he won’t appreciate being babied. You breaking down in this manner has been uncharacteristic enough—anything else and your son will start thinking you’ve been possessed by an alien or taken over by a shapeshifter.
You hurry to the kitchen before anyone can answer, and wrap your arms around yourself in the privacy of those four walls.
‘Get it together, Mitsuki,’ you tell yourself. Your body is still shaking, minute tremors you’d have to feel rather than look for.
‘Breathe. Just breathe,’ you think.
‘Katsuki is here. Katsuki is here, he’s safe. My son is home.’ You tell this to yourself until it sinks in, until you stop shaking with the fear remnant of the past few days.
Somehow, you get through dinner without any other incidents, your body moving on autopilot. When all the dishes have been cleaned and put away, Katsuki stands to go up to bed. You look at the clock. It’s five minutes to 16:00. You breathe. Despite everything, despite all that’s happened, your boy is still himself.
You stand, and wrap him in another hug before you can help yourself.
“Keep the door open tonight, Katsuki,” you mutter into his hair. It isn’t a plea, although it comes out like one.
You brace yourself for any form of protest. It doesn’t come. Instead, your boy buries his head into your shoulder and mumbles something into the fabric of your cardigan.
“‘Kay, Momma,” he says, and slips away from you before you can react, and you don’t know how long you stand there, frozen, unshed tears glistening in your eyes, before Masaru gently pulls you toward your bedroom.
(Katsuki hasn’t called you that in years.)
When you hear U.A. is getting dorms, there’s a twisted sense of disappointment and relief that works its way through you.
On the one hand, you won’t be able to see Katsuki every day like you used to—but on the other hand, your boy will be safe. At least, safer than he would have been walking home every evening like before. You try to have faith in his teachers, both respectable heroes, even if All Might is no longer what he used to be after Kamino Ward.
But he’s saved your boy twice, so it has to count for something.
There’s something off with Katsuki, you can tell just as much. You can’t begin to imagine how traumatic it might have been for him, for whatever amount of time he spent in the company of those villains. You can’t bring it up to him though—right now, your boy is as fragile as a teacup, and pushing Katsuki to talk about his emotions has never ended well, not in your experience.
(You’d like to help. You want to. But you can’t, not like this. You’re a sitting duck, powerless in this position, and you hope those teachers of his will be able to do better than you.)
Predictably, Katsuki starts mouthing off the second he gets a chance, and you smack the disrespectful brat over the head to get him to shut up. You ruffle his hair, touch considerably softer, as a somewhat apology, and explain to Eraser-san and All Might as best as you can, the intricacies of your boy.
He’s a little rash, very arrogant, and confident to boot. He’s had people fawning over him and his quirk his entire life, and you know it doesn’t excuse much of his behavior, but you hope that it explains it somewhat. The three of you bow your heads, even if you have to push Katsuki’s head down to make him do so, and you are still afraid.
You have never not been afraid—these teachers, U.A., they won’t understand how big this is for you. How could they possibly hope to understand? This is you entrusting the safety of your son to almost complete strangers. The same boy who used to crawl into your lap and stay there for hours, who used to cackle loudly with delight, who used to weave between your legs and scream ‘Momma can’t catch me!’ when it was time for the dirty rascal to take a bath.
You breathe. You let go.
(For a little while, at least.)
(Then a war happens, suddenly and out of the blue. Your son is caught up in the thick of it when he’s supposed to be nowhere near the fight, and you feel the long-forgotten rage bubble up to the surface. You want to scream at U.A., at the heroes, for breaking their promise, for letting Katsuki get hurt when they’d vowed to protect him.
In the aftermath, you are left with a broken world outside, and Katsuki lying peacefully on a hospital bed, three stab wounds clean through his torso.
Later, when you learn the wounds had been meant for Izuku, you press your hands to your teary face and laugh, chuckling wetly. Of course. Of fucking course. Who else would your son take the bullet for, if not Midoriya Izuku?)
And then when Izuku leaves, to protect everyone, because of course that kid is as self-sacrificial as you remember, when Katsuki tells you he’s going to find him and bring him back, you don’t doubt him.
You know your boy.
There is not a place in this world Midoriya Izuka can go, where Katsuki won’t follow.
(You hope that when things get better, when this war is over and won and done with, those two work things out. You think Katsuki’s figured out his own feelings—finally—but you aren’t too sure about Izuku. It’s not like you can ask Inko if her son likes anybody while that same son is off who knows where, running himself ragged being a vigilante.)
Izuku comes back. From what you hear from the rest of Katsuki’s classmates, it’s a joint effort—but even they credit most of the success of the ‘rescue mission’ to Katsuki.
You’ve never doubted him.
There’s another war coming, because of course it is.
Katsuki fights in it, because of course he does.
You swallow down the fear, and it doesn’t get easier the more you do it. You swallow down the fear like you have been doing since the USJ attack, since you came across the news of Katsuki’s class getting attacked by villains on their first field trip.
When it comes to sending off the children before they go to fight, you restrain yourself from hugging the everloving shit out of Katsuki. You tell yourself that you’ll give him the biggest hug of his life when the war is over, when he comes back home, alive and snarky and still your son in all the ways that matter.
You settle for slapping his back in hurried little pats, afraid that if you let yourself touch for any longer, you’ll end up never letting go. And, well… the truth is you are a little embarrassed to be seen showing so much affection in front of other people.
(In the privacy of your homes with only Masaru and Katsuki as witnesses, affection comes easier. Out in the open, you seem to freeze up for no reason. You suppose that residual fear from your childhood never really leaves you.)
You watch as your child goes to war, and you feel helpless, helpless, helpless.
Katsuki fights like hell.
Somehow, it still isn’t enough.
(It rains the day your child dies, a hole blown through his chest, all alone. You learn, once again, that the world is not forgiving. If it were, you’d at least be next to him, to hold his cooling body in your arms. The world cannot grant you this mercy.)
There is not a singular pain in the world that compares to the feeling of losing your child, watching him die right before your eyes, helpless to do anything but stare. You wonder if it will always feel this way, if the grief will feel this raw in the years to come. If your body will feel this numb.
(What a terrible thing, for a parent to outlive their child.)
But then he’s alive. Your boy is alive, some way, somehow, and you can hardly believe your eyes, and the cameras are fuzzy but still live—your boy is fighting All For One and your heart is in your throat, but he’s smiling, and his explosions are bigger than you’ve ever seen, and he’s winning, your boy is winning against all the odds—
And as soon as the war starts, it’s over the very same day.
(You stay true to your word. As soon as Katsuki wakes up from his medically induced coma—he has just lost the use of most of his arm, and it’s mangled and burned and broken in ways that make you sick to your stomach to see—you wrap him in the biggest bear hug you can.
It’s a gentle thing, because he has bruised ribs and broken bones and arms and everything else that generally comes from being in a war. You brush back the hair from his face with a gentle hand, and can’t help the way you lean forward to place a soft kiss on his temple. He’s never seemed more childlike than he does now, in hospital scrubs and wrapped in bandages upon bandages.
He demands to see Izuku, and you bite back a laugh when he says so. From the corner of your eye, you see Masaru gearing up to say no, but you cut in before he can do so.
“Alright. Let us help you, brat, you’re in no condition to walk on your own.”
He rolls his eyes, and you help him get up into a standing position, before Masaru rolls a wheelchair over for him to sit in. Katsuki gets in it, grumbling all the while, and this time, you really can’t help the way the words slip out of your mouth, almost without permission.
“Proud of you, baby,” you say, and it’s true, even if you can’t remember ever calling Katsuki that particular term of endearment.
Katsuki whips his head up toward you so fast you think he might have hurt his neck, but nothing about his expression screams pain to you. Your mouth quirks up, amused to get the reaction you do, and when you glance at Masaru through the corner of your eyes, you find a similar amusement in him too.
Katsuki looks back down at his lap, the tips of his ears dusted red, and you want to laugh.
“Whatever,” he grumbles, and you love this boy so much it hurts.)
You watch as Katsuki throws himself into hero work after graduation. He’s more open with you two than he ever has been, and when he talks, the topic of conversation usually ends up being Izuku.
The boy has been quirkless again for the past two years, but Katsuki insists that he’ll be a hero again someday—he’ll ‘make sure of it’ or whatever that means. You have faith in your boy. If he says he’ll make something happen, then you have no doubt that it will.
(Katsuki has finally grown up, it seems.)
You keep waiting for your son to come home one day and tell you that he’s finally confessed to Izuku, that they’ve finally got their shit together—but the day never comes. You wait, and you wait, and you keep waiting, but Katsuki is as single as the day he went off to U.A.
(You don’t understand.)
Katsuki debuted as fourth in the hero rankings, but as the years continue to pass by, he keeps sliding down. You want to ask why, because Katsuki is just as passionate as ever, and his attitude is the same as it ever was, but you refrain yourself.
A part of you feels like you already know.
Time goes on.
Katsuki is twenty-five now, but to you, he’ll always be the same little shit he was at five, fifteen.
It’s a quiet night for you and Masaru. You’ve both grown older, and Katsuki has long since moved out to live on his own, though you drag him back by his ears every month for a family dinner, schedule be damned. (Unless of course, he gets called for emergencies. Those can’t be helped.)
You’ve convinced your boy to stay with the two of you for a few days. Seeing your son once a month doesn’t satisfy the need for you to see that he’s well and eating properly and getting enough sleep. You know he’s really grown up and matured, because fifteen-year-old Katsuki wouldn’t have ever tolerated all the ‘nagging’ and mothering and hovering you’ve become slightly more prone to doing.
But you know tonight is Class 1-A’s reunion party, so you aren’t expecting Katsuki to be back until at least after midnight.
Masaru has just broken out the good wine, when the doorbell rings.
You look at your husband and frown, because you aren’t expecting anyone—and Katsuki shouldn’t be back for another hour, at least.
You tell Masaru to stay seated with a little pat to his knee, and hurriedly walk toward the door.
When you open it, you’re surprised to find that it is Katsuki on the doorstep. You don’t get a single word out of your lips before Katsuki crashes into you, arms wrapped desperately around your waist, hunched over and small, despite all the height he has gained on you.
He’s crying, you realize in worried shock—great, heaving sobs that sound painful to get past his throat. Your arms automatically wrap around his shoulders and tug him closer—he’s saying something, too, in between the crying.
He keeps repeating, ‘I lost him, I lost him, I lost him,’ into your neck, and the ball of worry in your gut only solidifies.
Your fingers card through his hair. Desperately, you hope the motion soothes him in some way, anyway.
“Lost who, baby?” you ask, voice soft and oh-so-cautious.
Katsuki only cries harder.
(Later, when Katsuki is coherent enough to form full sentences, he tells you it’s Izuku.
He’s lost Izuku.)
iii. grandmother.
One sunny day, nearly an entire year after your boy crumbles to pieces in your arms, you’re at the door again. The bell sounds, and you hurry to answer it, pulling back the door while wiping your wet hands on an apron.
And there he is.
There he stands, your son, blonde hair tousled, eyebags pronounced under twinkling red eyes. There’s an edge of panic underneath all the contentment—and isn’t that a wonderful surprise, to see him happy like this—and you can’t understand the reason for it, until you look at him closer.
Rather, until you look behind him.
Half-hidden behind Katsuki’s legs is a little girl, maybe around four to five years of age.
Oh.
“Oh. Hello there, little one,” you say, voice gentle. When you stare up at your son, one eyebrow raised in askance, he sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. You frown. He hasn’t been this… bashful since… well, actually, since never.
“Meet… Rika,” says Katsuki, voice small but sure. The hand on his neck goes down to grip one of the girl’s hands in his own, and you take notice of the way it seems so natural, the way they go together as easily as breathing.
“She’s mine,” your son explains, and you feel all the air in your lungs leave you in one big swoop.
There will be time for explanations later, but for now, you focus on this little girl—this little girl, with her soft brown hair, sticking up in spikes, and even softer brown eyes, chocolate and cinnamon swirls brought to life. She looks like she could be your husband’s miniature. She looks like a Bakugou. Your heart swells and aches at the thought.
“Yours?” you ask, just a touch wonderingly, and your son nods.
You smile.
“Hello, Rika-chan,” you say to the girl, brushing a careful hand through the mess of hair on her head. You will have to brush it for her later.
“I’m your grandmother.”
(You think your family will be just fine.)