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Eli was nervous as hell because today would be the day that she would meet the person with a Quirk like hers. The plan was that hopefully, this woman could shed some light on the already small amount of information they had on her Quirk, and maybe if the person was up to it, she could help her control her anger better.
Apparently, when Nezu called her, she immediately agreed to meet Eli once she'd confirmed who she was. The woman's name was Himari Nakamura.
It was easy to say that Eli was very nervous, but that was exactly why Hitoshi, Hizashi, and Shouta were here. They flanked her, and Hizashi held her hand as they walked to Principle Nezu's office.
"Do you want us to come in with you?" Hitoshi asked. Eli didn't even have to think about it before she nodded.
She had no interest in meeting whoever this lady was for the first time by herself.
"Nice to see you're relying on us like we asked," Shouta voiced with a huff as he adjusted his scarf, earning some chuckles from Hitoshi and Hizashi.
She rolled her eyes subtly before they arrived at the door.
Eli didn't say anything as she stared at the door, but she opened it not a couple of seconds later. She would have knocked, but honestly, she was really itching to know who she was. Was it even possible for someone to have basically the exact same Quirk as she did? Did her being from the past make it possible?
So many questions circled her mind, so many she had half a mind to write about them, but that would have to wait until later.
When the door slid open, Nezu was revealed to be sitting behind his desk, and a woman sat where Eli once sat.
She had long, wavy white hair flowing down her back that draped over the back of the chair she was in and a set of large horns on her head that curled near the top. They were bigger than Eli's and she couldn't help but be a bit shocked at the beauty of the woman's hair.
Truth be told that Eli had been dying her hair for years now because of the weird white streaks that appeared every couple of months or so. She'd assumed it was just stress.
And her wings were fucking huge, much bigger than Eli's
The woman turned around, and Eli stumbled back as the woman stood up immediately after. She was tall, maybe 2 inches taller than Hizashi (who's taller than Shouta), and Eli noticed her hair went down to at least her knees. She had on a brown toga-like dress that was wrapped around her body beautifully stopping at her ankles, accentuating her tall stature and pudgy figure.
"Baby?" the woman, Himari said.
It sounded like a whisper, but Eli heard it. The woman suddenly had tears sprout in her eyes, and the wind in the office grew around them making Shouta and Hizashi instantly go on their guard as they stood beside their two children.
Gasps filled Eli's ears as the winds grew excited like they knew what was going on.
"Um?" Eli said, but she was cut off by the woman as she lurched herself forward to take Eli's face in her hands.
She was so close that Eli could see her eyes closely now. And they were just like hers... A headache began to form, and Eli had to close her eyes shut and resist the urge to take off her glasses as her vision changed for the umpteenth time.
Her face was so similar. She was lighter, much lighter, but her jawline, her eyes, her mouth...
"Oh after all these years, I never thought my plan would work..." she said. Her tears were falling now, and despite Eli's urge to push the woman off, she felt stuck. Her body was getting hot and she wasn't sure if she was just anxious or if there was something about this woman...
"I'm sorry, what plan?" Hizashi asked, not wasting any time pulling Eli away from the woman since he was still holding her hand.
He didn't care who this woman was, who the hell was she to be touching on his kids like that?
"The plan to bring her here of course," Himari said looking at him with sharp eyes, clearly not very pleased with his actions.
"Wait, wait, wait, so you're the reason Eli is here?! In this time?" Hitoshi asked, pointing at Eli who took her glasses off as she stared at the lady with wide eyes.
She couldn't bring herself to say anything, because she wasn't even sure what she was thinking. Her body was just reacting, her feathers were puffing out, and she could feel her nails fluctuating in length.
"Eli? So that's what Michael decided on?" Himari muttered as she stared at Eli with wide, loving eyes.
That made Eli flinch back, her wings hitting Hizashi's chest as she stared at the woman.
'Michael? Who the fuck is Michael?' she thought.
Eli named herself. She must've been about 6 years old when she did. It was around the time when she was living with the Brown family, and realized that she hated her name. Sure maybe her birth father called her something before he left, but she couldn't remember it. Since she was unnamed, fucking three, and could barely talk, they had nothing to go on.
The facility she stayed at before her stay with the Brown family started calling her Isabella, and that transferred over to her first temporary home as well.
She didn't remember where she got the name, maybe she heard it somewhere on the street, or saw it on TV, but it didn't matter. Because after her 3rd hospital visit from the disaster that was the Brown family, she went by Eli, and only Eli.
It wasn't until she lived with her moms did she actually consider herself to have a last name.
And that's how Eli Flower was born.
"Who's Michael?" Shouta asked for her, crossing his arms as he stared at the taller woman with quiet distrust. He knew who Michael was, he'd found out when Nezu tracked down Bakugo as Eli's long-distance relative, but he was hoping, no, pleading that he was wrong, that it wasn't who he thought it was.
'Please no...' Eli pleaded in her mind.
She didn't want to know. She was happy here, happy with her Dads and Hitoshi, happy with Uncle Nezu, happy to be ignorant.
"Why Eli's father of course,"
Dammit.
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Eli was racing towards the nearest window.
She wanted to get out of here, she wanted out. Something about that woman made her feel weird, fuzzy, mad... She felt some sort of connection to her, something that made her feel like she was out of control of her own body, and she didn't like it one bit.
Flight would be the best option here.
It kind of reminded her of when Bakugo's Quirk went off, but this was ten times that, like the connection between them wasn't as diluted. And the panic she felt flittered around the room harshly as the wind blew it every which way.
She didn't want to understand, she didn't want to know anything about what was, she wanted to stay ignorant to all the bullshit that lead to her existence and led to her even being here.
She just wanted to be fucking happy.
The nearest window in Nezu's office, to her luck, had been blown open by the terrible winds raking the office caused by Eli's fluctuating emotions.
"Eli, don't—" Hitoshi tried.
"Eli, honey wait!" Hizashi shouted, the usage of his Quirk being useless as Eli barreled out the window, the wind drowning out his otherwise loud voice.
"ELI!" she heard Shouta scream in absolute terror as Eli fell from the window. His body went limp as he saw her steady herself and flap her wings up and away from the building.
The woman, Himari was right after her.
"Wait, Nakamura-san!" Nezu said, already shocked by the reveal of Eli's parentage and her quick escape out the window, but now the woman was going after Eli.
Which Eli couldn't help but believe was a terrible idea.
"What!? I'm not losing my daughter again!" Himari said roughly, baring her teeth at the rat and the 3 men in front of her. Hizashi put his arm in front of Hitoshi, glaring at the woman.
Shouta glared, and his Quirk flared. And suddenly, Himari was forced to turn around and look at the man who stopped the voices of the winds from flowing in her ears.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the woman asked, teeth still semi-bared.
"You're taking me up there with you," Shouta said simply, a glare still on his face as he adjusted his scarves, tying them to his hands.
"And why would I do that?" the woman asked.
"Because lady, we barely know Eli!" he said angrily pointing at the others in the room.
He wanted to look at Hitoshi, to give him some type of comfort because he knew the boy was worried, very worried, but he couldn't break contact with the woman unless she just decided to fly off. And he had a gut feeling if this woman approached Eli alone, it wouldn't exactly be pretty.
"If we barely know her, what makes you think you do?! I don't care if you're somehow her mother, that is my child, you hear me?" Shouta said harshly, pointing out the window where Eli had just left.
His tone was sharp and his glare was fierce, and it was taking a lot out of him not to take all his frustrations out on the woman.
He cared about Eli a lot, just like he cared about Hitoshi a lot, and only a select few in his life were able to make him feel so much at once. So scared for them, a little scared of them, happy for them, sad for them, angry for and at them, and so much love...
Shouta didn't want to beat around the bush, he knew the woman standing in front of them was somehow Eli's mother. How? That had yet to be explained. But it didn't change the fact that she knew her father's name, and nobody but Nezu, his husband, and himself had known that after Nezu had discovered Bakugo as Eli's relative.
Plus, he saw how the woman looked at her. He saw how Eli looked at the woman. They looked too alike, had the exact same Quirk, and she'd even proclaimed that she was the one who brought Eli here. It all added up, and upon their realization, Himari sighed and flexed her wings with a small glare.
"Fine,"
Eli didn't know where she was going, and she also didn't know why she was crying.
She didn't care what Hitoshi said about the law, she just had to leave.
'Is that woman...' she thought.
She shook it out of her head, completely in disbelief. It made no sense, it couldn't. How could that woman be who she thought she was? Eli was 200 years removed from her time, and the woman was from now, so how would that even...
She didn't care, she couldn't care as she soared through the skies, wiping her tears as much as she could so she could see where she was going. Luckily, her eyesight was cleared up a bit for now, which means the only obstacle was her tears.
Eli ended up on top of a building. Which building, she didn't know, and she didn't care either.
Her head was hurting, and so was her back. So much that as soon as she landed upon that building she dropped to her knees in physical and emotional ache. Her fingers curled, and she had to resist scratching at the pain and making it worse.
"Sh, shh, sh," the winds tried to soothe her, words of goodness flowing around her as they tried to calm her.
But then the winds shifted, and Eli's sniffs stilled. Her wings fluffed up, and her nails grew longer.
She turned, and there she was.
The sound of her wings flapping was powerful, but maybe Eli's own calming winds made the flapping noiseless. In her hand, she had something wrapped, but her eyes are what caught Eli's attention.
They looked so sad, so somber, but then the woman flew upward, revealing Shouta who was dangling from his own scarf with his hand. He tugged at the scarf instantly, using the small bit of momentum to land safely on top of the building before he stood before her.
Eli sniffed.
"Dad," she whimpered softly, and honestly had they not been so close, maybe Shouta wouldn't have heard her.
Shouta didn't say anything, mostly because what was he supposed to say? There isn't a manual for these things. So, he bent down and hugged her, stilling her.
"You don't have to talk to her if you don't want to," he told her.
Eli's was aching all over, but she couldn't help but feel a bit lighter at the hug. And his words... she hugged him back, her face pushed to the side as she stared at the ground beside them and listened to him.
"B-but she's my--" she tried, but Shouta cut her off.
"I know, I know, but only if you want her to be," he told her.
Her body sagged as he tapped short rhythms on her back, but her arms clutched onto him tightly, not wanting to let go yet. She could hear the woman's wings flapping nearby, but she didn't care. Her wings dropped limply to the ground, and Eli took deep breaths as she calmed down.
She didn't know how long she sat curled up there, but when she was calm, she looked up at the woman with hard eyes, the sadness converting to something close to anger, but not quite and she inwardly huffed.
"Fine,"
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"I got my Quirk when I was 4 like the rest. My parents were Quirkless, so I inherited my Quirk from my Grandmother. The Dark Fae Quirk is an odd one because for one it's not just a Quirk. My grandmother told me that the Dark Fae once just lived in secret and instead of being big like humans we hid by being small. But, then when Quirks emerged and there were some crosses between species, it mutated into something of a Quirk," Himari began.
Eli sat beside Hitoshi and was holding his hand as she sat with her legs crossed. They sat against the side of the room where a small couch was and drank tea with everyone as Himari sat on the other chair at the head, and their parents sat on the couch across from them with Nezu.
"As you can see we can't shrink as we did a millennia ago, but we kept something vital about our race. As you know, we can speak to the winds, but that's a given for all of us, but what makes us special is that there is something unique each Dark Fae Quirk user can do. We can each manipulate a form of nature, and mine happened to be time," she went on, after taking a sip from her tea.
"It takes a while for one to discover what you can do, even after you get your Quirk so I wasn't exactly sure how to use it for a good portion of my life. But then, when I was 17, it went off. I don't know what happened, I got into some argument with my cousin, and my blood was boiling and I couldn't control it," she said giving a forlorn look as she stared out the window.
"Next thing I knew it was 1995, and my Quirk was gone," she said shaking her head.
"Matter of fact there were no Quirks, at all. I didn't know what happened, I just zapped through time. After a few weeks, I had realized what happened, and why it was happening. My grandmother had tried to warn me about my temper but I didn't listen. And since I was in a time without Quirks, I then discovered that my body had adjusted to the time it was in, so I had no access to my Quirk at all, even my eyes had reverted to how they used to be before I got it," she went on.
"Anyway, I adjusted, and then I met Michael. He was visiting Japan for a couple of weeks for Spring Break with a couple of friends. I'd completely given up on getting back to my time, I mean it'd been like five years, and nothing had happened. I had no family in Japan that I could talk to without sounding insane, or that I could find since at the time the Dark Fae were still in hiding. And when I met him, and it was like..." she trailed off, giving a small smile at the end as she stared down at her teacup.
Eli glared at the floor.
'Yea he must've been a great guy,' Eli thought sarcastically, resisting the urge to roll her eyes out of her head.
"He ended up staying in Japan for a while more than he anticipated, and we grew closer in that time. Since I had nothing holding me to Japan, I just went back with him to California. We moved in together shortly after, and I got pregnant with you maybe a year after that," she explained.
"After you were born, things changed though. I began to hear the winds again almost directly after you were out. You'd only been in the world for about a day when my wings and horns sprouted back, we hadn't even given you a name yet. I remember because you smiled at me when you woke up the next morning and then Michael walked in the hospital room. He screamed so loud that you started crying. I tried, I really did try to explain everything to him, but I couldn't, he wouldn't listen. And then a portal opened up and I appeared right back where I was when I left," she said, wiping a fallen tear from her eyes quickly.
"The only difference was that, for me, almost 7 years had gone by and for them, it'd only been a day. I wasn't 17 anymore, I was 24. I explained everything to my grandma and she explained what had happened. Turns out pregnancy is an enormous amount of stress on the body, especially with no Quirk and trying to cultivate another body to also not have a Quirk, you,"
"My body was trying to force yours to genetically adjust to the time period, and because of that, I put my body into a sort of fight or flight mode. My body thought I was in danger, so in response, my Quirk came back to protect me. And as soon as it came back, I was back, and you were there," she said, wiping more tears from falling.
Eli felt sympathy, how could she not? That wasn't her fault, her "death" anyway, but it didn't change the fact that Eli was so mad right now that she was contemplating not listening at all.
"After that, I didn't stop trying to get back to you. But my body wouldn't allow another massive time jump like that, especially to a time that wasn't my own. The only way I could get you back is to bring you here," she said, anxiously grasping at her teacup.
"The Dark Fae always had a deep connection to the nature around them, so I used that to find you. Instead of myself, I had to will the winds in your time to find you. It took years, but I did. At least I thought I did, your image was fuzzy but I knew it was you. It was my only chance, so I took it, but then something went wrong and you ended up here. I was relying on our blood to find you, and I realized that because your heritage isn't just mine, it'd probably messed with where you'd land when you got here,"
"And I know it was selfish, I know it was wrong of me to take you so abruptly. But just once did I want to see you, to see what you'd become, and then I'd send you right back to your father. But when things went wrong, I immediately went out to find you, and tried to get the winds to find where you were at. But it was like something was blocking me, you..." she said, looking up at Eli somberly.
"Our Quirk is protective of their owners, and when unknown people try to locate us physically, it blocks them from being able to. I should've known that, but then Nezu-san called me and asked me to meet with someone with a Quirk similar to mine. I just knew it had to be you, so I rushed right over and well..."
Silence.
Complete and utter silence filled the room. Her story was so unbelievable, so crazy, so out of this world... but yet, it filled all the blanks didn't it.
'Maybe I should jump out the window and not fly this time,' Eli pondered with a roll of her eyes.
The eyes were on Eli, wanting to see how she'd react. But she just sat there, staring at the woman before her with calculating eyes. They watched as she sat back against the couch with a huff, taking her hand out of Hitoshi's before bringing them together for a satisfying clap to part through the tension in the air.
Eli breathed a small laugh.
"Well... I certainly wouldn't have guessed that," she said laughing again, standing up and stretching her body, setting her cup on the table in front of her. She clasped her hands together and pressed her lips into a thin line.
"Okay so for starters, I don't know who the hell Michael is, but he's certainly not my father. I don't know the guy, so he's not mine, because 'Michael' dropped me off in front of the fire department when I was 3," Eli began, putting finger quotations around his name.
"Second and um I'm sorry because I have to ask this, tell me, what in the fuck were you thinking when you snatched a random girl from her time period just to say hi?" Eli questioned, all looks of sympathy draining from her face.
Himari almost flinched.
"Eli-sa--" Nezu tried to say, but he was cut off by Shouta and Hizashi, who shook their head at him. They knew if anything, she needed to get this out.
"No Uncle Nezu, no. Look lady, I know that you were grieving, I know it must've been really hard to part with your kid so abruptly. I get it, I really do, but you can't do that to someone, okay? You don't get to go around throwing people's lives upside down, I don't know if anyone told you this, but it's fucking rude okay?" Eli said crossing her arms.
"...I should've opened with an apology, I..." she trailed off, she gulped and blinked her eyes closed tightly before looking at Eli. She put her cup down in front of her as she stood up, walking carefully up to Eli who had small defenses in her stance.
"I had no idea about Michael and I... I shouldn't have assumed that everything went well after my disappearance. I'm sorry, for everything, I'm sorry about everything and I-I can send you back if you want. I should be able to warp you back where you were, going back is always easier," the woman said, sadness laced in her words as she put her hand out as an offering.
Eli stepped away almost immediately, fear fluttering in the wind, and Himari could almost sense it, but she the look on Eli's face was the more obvious indicator.
"I... I said it was rude, I never say I wasn't grateful," Eli said looking away from the woman.
"Look I... I just found out I have a nephew, okay? I got a friend that can give me three hugs at once, I just got a sibling that doesn't hate me, I have a mouse for an Uncle, and I've got two Dads, that's twice as many as I've ever had. I told everyone this, so I guess I'll tell you too, okay,"
"Ain't shit left for me there, alright? So we can drop that now," Eli said, clueless to the proud looks of their audience.
Yes, Eli knew Louis was still there. But she didn't think that was a good enough reason to go back. She loved him like family, she really did, but it didn't change the fact that she'd finally got what she'd always wanted, a family that actually gave a shit about her.
Maybe she was being delusional, but she didn't care, and maybe he wouldn't be fine without her. But for once in her life, Eli wanted to put herself first.
Was that so wrong?
"If anything, thanks and maybe..." Eli said looking at the woman, whose eyes perked up at the 'maybe'.
"Maybe... we can watch a movie or something..." Eli trailed off, looking away from the beaming woman.
The woman squealed with joy as silently as she could, but Eli heard it. She almost laughed honestly, but she was supposed to be serious, so she tried to keep a straight face.
Truth be told, she wasn't actually mad at the woman, she was mad at her perception of her sperm donor. She wanted to be mad, but she couldn't. This woman, Himari, was her biological mother, and that was it.
They were nothing more than that, and the funny thing was that that also meant that they were nothing less. She couldn't blame Himari for things that happened completely outside of her control. Of course, she wanted to be upset about her sudden disappearance, cause it almost sounded like if she hadn't left things may have turned out alright.
But they didn't, and that was her sperm donor's fault, not hers.
Eli couldn't even bring herself to blame herself as she usually would. She spent too much time in therapy to blame herself for her own abuse.
Suddenly, the woman took Eli's hand in her own.
"Can I... hug you?" Himari asked.
Eli smiled, just a little for it to be noticed, nodding.
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The ride home was quiet, mostly because Hitoshi and Eli were asleep in the backseat. And when they got home, all four of them deflated onto the couch behind them. They were squeezed together, but nobody minded.
After a couple of more words were exchanged, Eli and Himari exchanged numbers, and then Shouta and Hizashi exchanged numbers as well. Eli didn't know what that was about, but maybe it was a parent thing, so she occupied herself by talking to Hitoshi while they did that.
And later on in the night, Eli sat with Shouta and Hizashi on the couch. Hitoshi was doing homework, so the two of them decided to talk to her about what had happened today.
"Honey, are you alright?" Hizashi asked firstly. Looking away from the TV screen, Eli looked at him with a bit of confusion in her eyes, but the question was valid, so she answered.
"Yeah, I think I'm alright. I don't know yet, you know in my head I already had a mom right, two. Adding another is weird, and I don't even know if I'm gonna like her yet because she could be really nice, right? I mean who spends almost 20 years looking for a kid you don't even know?" Eli said with a shrug, turning her attention to Cinnamon who was on her lap.
"It is what it is though," she said, giving an exasperated laugh before shrugging again.
Shouta furrowed his eyebrows as he listened to her.
'Is she truly okay with all this?' he pondered.
Looking over at Hizashi, he could tell that he thought similarly, the worried etched in their eyes mirroring one another before they turned back to Eli.
"Eli, you know you can always talk to us though right?" Shouta said, Hizashi following up right after.
"About anything okay? You don't have to though, you can talk to Hitoshi or Shouji-kun, Bakugo-kun, or even Mirio-kun if you want. Or you can write about it..." Hizashi trailed off, rubbing her back softly as he did, and having to ignore the small scowl on his husbands face at the mention of Mirio.
"We just don't want you to bottle anything up, you have every right to freak out if you need to, and no one would blame you for anything," Shouta told her.
He was hesitant to take her other hand because she usually only held Hitoshi or his husband's. But he didn't have to, because when Eli saw his open palm, she took his hand herself, and he smiled.
Eli smiled, no, grinned at the two. Of course she knew this, she knew everything they were telling her. One of the first things they ask you in therapy is if you have a support system, and to rely on it or them if need be. She knew there was nothing wrong with reaching out for help when she needed to, even though she struggled with actually performing the action of asking for help from time to time.
But still, she knew they supported her, mostly because it was getting kind of hard to deny the fact. It was like she said, who spends 20 years looking for some random kid?
And who lets that random kid live with them, who feeds the random girl who pops up out of nowhere, who holds her hands and gives her somewhere to sleep, who buys her more clothes than she could ever ask for, and who adopts that random girl and gives her a home?
Who else but them.
"Yeah, I know. I won't, or I'll do my very best not too," Eli said with a smile.
"Thanks Dad," she said, kissing Shouta on the cheek.
"Ma," she said with a smile, doing the same.
Now in Eli's head, this was a perfectly normal action to do with your parents (it is). Kissing them on the cheeks, I mean she'd seen it in countless movies, so it was normal, right?
But maybe it wasn't, because Hizashi squealed so loudly he broke the sound barrier.
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5058 words
i hope you guys understood everything, but if not, just go ahead and comment and ill explain.
regardless, i love you guys, and get ready for some eri