Chapter Text
Inko wasn’t a bad mother.
She had always provided a house, food, water, and school for her son, and those were all the things he needed. She knew she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Even when she refused to talk about him to her coworkers, she just didn’t want to talk about her personal life at her workplace, it was unethical after all. It wasn’t because she didn’t want them to find out her son was quirkless.
Even when Izuku came home from school covered in bruises and blood and she said nothing about it. She listened to his excuses and pretended to believe him, he'd never lie to her. It wasn’t because she thought that he needed to get used to that kind of treatment.
Even when she came home after Izuku had gone to bed and didn’t have the chance to make dinner. She made them lunch every day, her son could handle cooking for himself when she was busy. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to have the responsibility to feed her child every day.
Even when she sometimes liked to pretend she didn’t have a son, having a peaceful and quiet life, far away from Japan and the mess she found herself in.
Inko knew she wasn’t a bad mother.
She knew it was for the best when she packed all of her things in the middle of the night, and left, not leaving behind a note or anything else but enough cash for him and some food in the fridge.
Izuku was a good kid, quiet, obedient, smart, cute and polite. He didn’t deserve her. And she didn’t deserve him. She wanted a better life, one where she wasn’t strained to a quirkless child who’d probably be dead by his twenties.
She didn’t want to deal with the pain or guilt of having him killed by the discrimination and ego of the ignorant. She knew he wouldn’t survive, she had seen the statistics.
Midoriya Inko also knew that she was a horrible mother.
Izuku was eleven when he found out his mom had left him.
At first, he didn’t want to believe it, refused to. He would tell himself that maybe she had just been gone for a trip and would be back in a couple of days, maybe more.
Weeks went by, and he still couldn’t get it quite right. Why would his own mother simply leave, without saying anything to him, or at least leaving him with someone who’d take care of him? He was only a kid.
However, deep inside, he knew damn well why Inko had left.
It was also the reason why he was abused at school, why he was hated, belittled and ignored by so many people. It didn’t matter to anyone that he was a child if he was a quirkless one.
He knew the chances were high for child abandonment and neglect. They were also high for the abuse, bullying, suicide, murder, kidnapping and rape. He knew he wouldn’t get to live long, given the mental disorders weren't even listed on that.
That was also the reason why he chose to pretend his mother didn’t leave.
If Izuku ended up in the system, be in an institution or under foster care, he would be dead in less than a year, without a doubt.
He couldn’t go up to the police station and give them a report with the empty hope that his life would magically get better.
Although, he also knew that by the looks of how everything had been going, he wouldn't survive for long where he was as well. He had to do something about it, or else he really was hopeless.
He had to start small and slowly build up at least some confidence to stand up for himself, as no one else would. If he acted like nothing was wrong, why would anyone suspect differently? He could try to pass with an intelligence quirk.
He’d have to pay more attention to the way people acted around him, making sure he wouldn’t make a mistake that would get them mad at him, as that never ended well.
Getting to upgrade his notebooks with that kind of information was a good start.
He wanted to get better with his analysis, so that included more thorough psychological notes on the people he studied, their manners, habits, usually go-to responses and general behaviour.
Not that it mattered for him, but he inevitably also started to write suggestions for support items, new strategies and different moves that’d work with their quirk, while also fitting their fighting styles.
If he couldn’t be a hero himself, as he'd once foolishly dreamed, he’d at least try to help those who can to be good at it.
Izuku eventually grew scared of someone finding his notes and using it with not-so-good intentions though. He was so used to just using paper he never thought about how easy it was to get a hold of his stuff.
As he was so used to his notebooks, he found it hard to use tech for that kind of notes, and he used to be so carefree with his writing it was weird having to organize everything with little dots and slashes.
By the end of his internal debate, Izuku decided to rewrite and better sort his past notebooks. He took pictures and stored everything in a safe cloud just in case Bakugo decided to be an ass again, and hoped what he was doing was enough.
Growing an interest in making things harder for himself, the green-haired kid discovered some interesting things while he surfed the internet one day.
Cyphers were easy to learn, and he eventually found himself mixing them and constantly changing them through his notes. It was so messy sometimes that even he himself found it hard to know what he had written.
He found it funny how encrypted everything was, as if he was holding every heroes' darkest secret. Not that he didn't know them, he just liked feeling important, even if it was kind of childish.
Without even noticing, one day, Izuku found himself breaking down a villain during a fight. Sighing, he decided to separate his notebooks between them, and somewhere in between he'd have to add some vigilantes he'd been eyeing as well.
Deep inside, he knew no one would ever want to get their hands on his stupid notes, but, at the same time, he feared they would, and he didn’t want to be the cause of a disaster.
By the time all of his notebooks were new and rewritten, including the fresh information on villains, underground heroes and vigilantes, he had actually grown some confidence in himself.
Analysis for The Future #37 was his latest work, and he was planning on finishing it in two or three weeks. He got so invested in it sometimes that the kids at school didn't even bother to harass him.
He didn’t usually talk back to them, as that would only cause more trouble, but he got pretty good at keeping a straight face and completely ignoring them. That specifically pissed Bakugo off, which was even more worth it.
He would still come home with bruises at least twice a week, since they simply couldn’t leave him alone, but their words didn’t hurt as much as they used to.
Learning that no one would ever have his back was harsh, but it was the truth, and he was slowly coming to terms with it. They said he was useless, worthless, stupid, ugly, any easy words that fit their tiny vocabulary, but at this point, nobody even meant it. They'd grown so used to making his life a living hell that he would bet they didn't even know what they were saying anymore.
He was learning to survive, getting better at it, he was fucking proud of himself for who he'd become, even if he hadn't changed all that much.
Then, the bad news arrived. Because they always do.
The ones he had been expecting for a while, but didn’t truly know how he’d deal with when it got to him.
His mother had left him enough money for him to survive for a couple of months, which was nice he guessed, but he was saving all that he could and still his savings were growing close to nothing.
He was three months away from his birthday when his money finally ran out. The fridge remained empty, the bills were at least a couple of months late, and the landlord had been knocking on his door insisting on getting to talk to Inko.
It had been eight months since she had left, though.
Izuku was lost.