hero's shadow // mha

70) void whispers

There's a saying Izuku remembers reading in a book back when he was younger.

He couldn't have been more than seven or eight. When Father was bedridden at the laboratory for his treatments, Izuku was always a little more daring than usual. One week, he snuck inside his father's quarters and stole a little book from him.

Izuku can't recall what it was called, mostly because Kuro caught him and took it away before he could get too far into it, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that the root of a good portion of his deepest, most personal fears stems from one sentence from it.

If you are raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house. You will find him even when he is not there.

Izuku—for all his years of trying to work past the cards he's been dealt, for all his efforts of trying to prove that he's a better person than his father, that he's good —will always have this cardinal fear inside him. It's small; a little seed compared to some of the more common fears he has. But it's the most terror-filled one all the same.

The nightmares that are the most scary, Izuku finds, are the ones where he looks up at All for One and sees his own face staring back down. In those middle of the night moments, the moments where sometimes he wakes up and can't tell what time it is or where he is or even what he is, he forgets.

Sometimes there's a hero by his feet, and it's not All for One standing over them with bloodied hands, no.

It's always Izuku.

Izuku used to like to read in his spare time. He especially liked the psychology books he managed to find in the library. They helped him understand certain things.

He knows that for the most part, children will imitate aggressive behaviors displayed by models in their life. It's only natural. He also knows that children tend to imitate parents of the same sex. It's innate. It's just how it is, for the most part.

Which is probably why, although some part of Izuku always knew his father had to be bad—mostly because Izuku was bad, he always looked up to All for One. More than he did Inko at the beginning.

It's something he feels guilty for even now.

So this knowledge that he'll always hold a part of All for One inside him, beyond just shared DNA, scares him. Because he can only remember certain parts of his young life with his mother, but he can remember everything from All for One.

If All for One was the bad man in the house growing up, Izuku will be that bad man too.

Because children end up associating that anger and violence when they're young with a balanced, normal household. It'll become familiar to them. Natural. And so they'll search for that anger in all the love they come across. If the child doesn't carry that anger inside them, well, they'll gravitate to the ones who do.

And if there isn't a bad man in the house anymore when they're older, they'll just invite them in. Even without realizing.

This fear is all consuming. And if Izuku doesn't shape up, if he doesn't work faster, he worries he'll become just like the bad man who made him first think that love means the same as hate.

"What is this?"

Izuku drags his gaze up. Yagi is staring down at the contract with furrowed brows, confusion lacing his tone. His eyes go quickly across the paper, working his way down, and Izuku hugs his knees tightly against his chest as he turns away.

"Hawks gave it to me on behalf of the Hero's Commission," he says simply.

At this, Yagi's lips part. He glances up at Izuku in alarm. "They gave it to you or Rabbit?"