Izuku POV
I fell out of the warpgate created by Kurogiri onto my bed, managing to have a soft landing for the first time since I've met the misted man. The first thing that I noticed was that I was in my room and it was already dark out. The second thing was that my phone was on my desk, face up in a way that I would never sit it down.
Ignoring the phone for the moment, I scrambled over to the light switch and turned it on as fast as I could. I've never been scared of the dark before, but now I knew the monsters that roamed in it. I had the bruises and cuts on my skin to remind me of them.
Maybe I'm the monster, maybe that's why everyone and everything else seems so driven to kill me. Knowing who my father is, it's not such a far off suggestion.
I walked over and picked it up, fully expecting to see hundreds of missed calls and texts from my mother, but all I found was a few from Hito, a good text from her in her time zone, and the date of the day.
Double checking the day, I saw that I'd been a full week, that Mom was supposed to be coming home this upcoming afternoon. I unlocked the phone and went to my messages, not believing for a second that my mother would go a whole week without saying anything to me and being okay with me not texting or calling her once during that time. Whenever I got there, I saw multiple messages and conversations that fit my texting patterns with my mother, but were not sent by me at all.
One of the villains created a cover to keep her from worrying and interfering.
Though looking through the rest of my messages, the ones from Hitoshi, they weren't so generous as to have the same consideration with anyone else texting me at the time.
Sucking in a breath, I took a moment to come up with a story that would settle the other teen, something with enough truth that he wouldn't be able to hear the lie in my voice. Something that if he were to talk to my mother during one of the times that he's over here, I could easily take care of the conversation before a mess is made. Living the way that I have for the past ten years, the lies bubble up on my tounge much easier than I would have wanted them to, but I have never had such a pretty life that lying could be anything less than an art form that I have become a master at.
Pressing the call button, the waiting tone was only there for a moment before the person on the other end of the line picked. "Izu?" The voice on the other end asked, their voice was small with worry and something else that I could place. It wasn't a sound that I heard often enough to know what the quiver in the other teen's voice meant as he spoke.
"Hey Hito," I greeted, silently glad that my voice has been so monotone since that day on the roof that the other boy couldn't hear anything in it even if he wanted to.
"Where have you been?" The purple haired boy asked. I could almost imagine the expression on the other teen's face, the pull of his brow and the downward quirk of his lips. It was an expression that matched the strain that was going in the boy's voice, growing enough that I could almost place the emotion but couldn't believe it, not really.
"I was sick," I lied. It was a bad lie, but it was the easiest one that I could give to explain away the past week. "I spent most of the past week too sick to move."
There was a heavy sign on the other side of the phone that told me just how tired the other boy was of my decisions. "You could have told me and me and Mom would have and brought you soup or something," the other teen said at last, seemingly deciding that I was a lost cause, something that I could have told him ages ago.
"You both would have gotten sick too," I told him, letting the point sink. "Besides, I was barely well enough to remember to text my mother that everything was fine, I don't think I would have been able to answer the door if y'all had come."
The sigh this time was more drawn out and tired than the last one. "You got to start letting people take care of you," the other teen insisted. "We're allowed to worry about you, you know."
A coldness swept over my body as my mind went blank at the words. "Worry about me?"
Growing up, the only person to worry about me was my mother, but her worry has always been suffocating, a heavy thing that I had to live with as my dreams died beneath its weight. I know that she meant the best, that people like me weren't meant to have as big of dreams as I was trying to, that my dreams could get me killed. Worry has never been a weight of someone else's that I wanted to bear, but Hito made it sound like it was the only natural emotion that another human could have when faced with something like this.
"Yes, Izu, worry."
I could almost imagine the look on the other boy's face as he spoke. It was one that I was familiar with, a look that seemed to wonder what had happened that I could understand simple things like this, but then the other's face would relax as he seemed to remember that he wasn't so pieced together either. As he seemed to remember that neither of us were truly used to having someone else care for them.
"How about we go running tonight?" I suggested, already hearing the defiance that I was sure was about to come from the other side of the phone.
"You just said that you were sick for a week," the other boy protested.
"Yeah," I agreed, knowing that that was the story that I had used. "I won't be as fast, but I've been cooped up all week, I need to see something other than the same four walls."
The other teen sounded tired when he finally answered, more tired than his usual amount that he allows himself. "We'll go slower than normal," the boy agreed at last, "but if you pass out, I'm not dragging you home." It was a lie, something that we both knew it to be but neither of us commented on, choosing to let it rest there.
We talked for a little while longer, neither of us able to sleep despite almost everyone else in the city seeming to already be fast asleep. We talked until the sounds of rattling cages finally quieted in my mind.
—-
When Mom came home a few hours later, she had a warm smile on her face, one much too kind for me to be able to copy even before the week from hell that I'd just left.
Not that she expected me to.
Ever since she found out the things that I hid from her growing up, our relationship has been different from the endless lies that it used to be built upon. She never expected me to fake a smile for her, or to try and present myself in a way that wasn't true. I was quiet and my voice much more monotone than I knew she would have wanted it to be, my skin still crawled at people's touch more times than not, but she would rather see my problems and try to help with them than have me hide them as I had before.
That was one of the reasons that I couldn't be mad at her for the way that she acted as I grew up, the way she cried and apologized, that she was the first to see my dream as something unreachable. I could forgive that because I knew that she cared.
I knew that she would still care even if she knew that poison that I was made from.
I helped her bring her luggage in, me grabbing one bag and her the other as she told me some of the things that she saw in the states. It would have been a much more pleasant scene if it wasn't for the way that every step burned like the tearing of flesh, but I was well versed in the art of pretending so I didn't give away that anything was wrong.
"What if we go to see Eri together tomorrow?" My mom asked, unzipping her bags as I leaned against the door frame, watching as she upended her things onto the bed with all the grace of a teenanger that just got back from a trip.
"That would be nice," I agreed, missing the girl that I hadn't been able to see all week. Missing the family that I chose. "I'll pick a new book up while I'm out with Hito."
Mom nodded, a strange, small smile on the woman's lips as she did, like she knew something that I didn't. It was the same smile that she always had when the other teen was involved. Just like all of the times before, I chose not to ask, letting her tell me about her trip. Apparently the Statue of Liberty is much smaller than you would think it would be.
—-
Shinso POV
For once, I'm the first out of Izu and I to make it to the park for our running. When the other boy shows up just in time for the agreed upon time, I can't help but notice that the way that he holds himself is different.
The boy's eyes are scanning the crowd as he walks closer to me, nothing like his lazy expression that he normally has, sure that he's safe enough to let his guard down. His clothes are baggier than normal, more loose fitting than the normal workout shorts and long sleeves that I've grown accustomed to seeing him in during our runs. As he walks, he looks closer to a stray cat than a human being. Closer to something ready to run for cover than run for fun.
It's like he's regressed.
He was like this too when we first met, all worried glances and quiet words. I know that he told me that he was sick during the last week, but I can't help but wonder if it wasn't something else entirely. But I shoved my worries aside for the time being, I would have plenty of time to obsess and theorize over what might have happened when I wasn't there to help him while trying to fall asleep in spite of my insomnia.
We stretched out as we normally did, Izuku quizzing me on the different historical events that he thinks I might need to remember for the paper UA entrance exam before moving onto vocabulary and different grammar rules. It was nice, but I decided to stop him as he was going over different algebra rules.
"You said that you were sick," I started, catching the other boy off guard, he only nodded at me and waited for me to continue, "what kind of sick?"
The teen before me looked like his body couldn't help but ache with every move that he made as every gesture was less fluid than the Nikes I've grown accustomed to, and his skin was impossibly somehow even paler than it had been just last week. He did look sickly, I didn't doubt that, I just wanted to know from what so that I could maybe push some of the more useless thoughts out of my mind before we started running and they had time to fester and run rampant.
"Birds," the other teen deadpanned.
I only looked at him, raising an eyebrow and repeated what the other had said in a much more dubious voice, "'Birds'?"
The boy nodded, his expression never changing. "I found some boys trying to shoot it out of the sky with a slingshot and stopped them, but by the time they ran off, the bird was already dead, so I buried it," the other boy explains. "But I got sick from touching it."
I look at the boy, blinking slowly and feeling some of my energy drain even though we haven't even gone for our run yet.
Of course Izuku would do something like that.
I sighed, running a hand over my face. "Next time," I started, watching the boy's eyebrow quirked up in a way that made me wonder if he knew that he was doing it, "let the bird rot."
The teen only sighs as he stands up in a motion just a little bit less graceful than his normal movements. "Trust me," he started, holding out a hand to where I was still sitting on the ground, "I have no such fondness for birds anymore." He pulled me up off of the ground and we began to jog a few slow loops around the park.
—-
Izuku POV
When I got home, I got a shower and curled up in my bed for an early night, not caring that it wasn't even late enough for Mom to have gone to bed yet. I felt my eyes close as an inky darkness took over.
It didn't last long.
Monster curled at the edge of my dreams, each of them armed with claws and brains much too exposed to be natural. They howled and scrapped at me as if I was the monster locked in the cage instead of them. Except when the cage opened again during our fight, it was the beast that got to leave and not me.
The scene changed and I was standing in the park with Hitoshi at night, but instead of wearing our normal running clothes, Hito was dressed in a way much too close to how I do for my vigilante work. He had a dead look on his face that I saw in the mirror everytime that I forced myself to look in it as he held his arm out to me.
When I looked down at his hand, expecting it to be empty, there was a gun in it. A gun pointed at me. When I looked down at my own clothes, I found a nice black suit with accents of a dark green, just a shade darker than my hair but a shade lighter than the black. I could feel from the pull at my mouth that if I were to look in the mirror right now, I'd see my father's smile.
My body snapped up as I threw the sheets off, all but running to the light switch to turn it on, the phantom pains from class still digging angrily at my skin as I did. I knew that I wouldn't fall back asleep, that it wasn't worth whatever was waiting for me on the other side of the dream, so I glanced at the clock and found that it was just after the time that I normally leave for patrol.
Pulling in my gear, I stared down at the tranquilizer gun in my hand, the same one that Hitoshi had pointed at me. I left it in the floorboards of my closet and snuck out the fire escape.