.
.
.
.
.
' Midoriya Inko '
...
Knock knock!
...
Inko startled out of her thoughts, staring at the front door in bewilderment. Another, slightly more timid knock sent her stumbling to her feet, her heart suddenly racing in anticipation. Could it…? Could it be him? She found herself scurrying to the door, breath hitching in her throat, tears already prickling in her eyes as she seized the knob-
-to reveal a surly blond boy standing on the doorstep, still in his school uniform, his head bowed and his hands curled into stiff fists at his sides.
"K-Katsuki?" Inko blinked in surprise, fighting to ignore the stab of disappointment in her gut (What had she expected? Izuku was gone and she had to accept that). "What are you doing here, dear?" Slowly, hesitantly, the boy raised his head to meet her gaze, and the short, green-haired woman went stiff with surprise.
His jaw was clenched, each breath kept forcibly even, but there were tears pouring down his cheeks, and a deeper anguish and guilt than anything she had ever seen burning in his dark red gaze. "Oba…san," he whispered, choking on the words. Inko felt something like a chill settle in her heart. Katsuki hadn't called her that since he was five years old.
All of Inko's motherly instincts came alive at once, shoving aside her own grief as she ushered him inside and sat him down on the couch, then went to the kitchen to grab him a glass of water (unfortunately she had yet to work up the willpower to go to the store and replenish their stock of orange juice) and a few cookies from a plate one of her other neighbors had brought over. Before long, she had bustled back and laid the plate and cookies on the coffee table, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.
"Katsuki? Sweetie?" she asked softly, gently laying a hand on his still-rigid arm. The boy twitched, but otherwise didn't seem to react. The tears still dripped from his cheeks unheeded, the tremor throughout his body remained unchanged, and each breath was still taut and shaky. "Katsuki, talk to me please."
"M'... aul…"
"What?"
"'s my fau…"
"One more time?"
"'s my fault!" Katuski snapped, his hand flailing to throw her off, his voice sharp and bitter with guilt and pain and anger and something dark that she didn't dare name. "It's all my fault; Dek- Izuku died because of me!"
"S-Sweetie… you're not making sense," Inko managed shakily, trying to reach out to him, but he shook his head vehemently, the action shaking his entire body so that she had to pull away again.
"You don't get it; no one gets it, if I… If I hadn't… If I'd never…" The tears return in earnest now, flooding like a river as he slowly raised his gaze to hers so that she could clearly see the anguish in them. "If I'd never known him," he whispered, "and if I hadn't been so mean to him… If I hadn't baited him…"
Baited him? What does he…?
Oh. Oh Gods…
Inko could feel her vision tunneling again, just like it had when Detective Tsukauchi sat across from her and broke the news of her son's fate. She stared without seeing, her breaths short and fast and weak and her heart beating wildly.
Baited him. Katsuki had baited him. Katsuki had told him… He'd told her son to…
Drowning. She was drowning; she couldn't see, couldn't breathe-
Katsuki stood up. The movement was so sharp, so abrupt, that it startled her a little bit further away from the depths of panic threatening to swallow her whole. "I should go," he mumbled tautly, turning sharply towards the door and stumbling slightly as his leg hit against the edge of the couch in the process.
Inko wanted to let him leave. She wanted him gone so that she could think. So that she could process and stew… and hate him.
She wanted to hate him, wanted someone to blame. She wanted a reason, a way to understand why. Why had her Izuku, her precious, optimistic little boy, died?
So why? Why was her first instinct to reach out and grab Katsuki's wrist and pull him back down onto the cushions beside her? He seemed confused, too, staring at her with those bright red eyes, raw and guilty and vulnerable and shadowed by that horrible emotion that she now forced herself to face: self-loathing.
Katsuki hated himself for what he'd done. For what he'd said. And in that moment she knew, deep down, why she'd pulled him back.
It was because, had Izuku been here now, his first instinct, as always, would have been to save him. From pain, from grief, from his own despair, regardless of the circumstances.
Just like when Katsuki had fallen off the log bridge and into the stream, when he had immediately-in spite of the bruises and burns and insults that he thought he'd kept hidden from her-rushed down and made sure that his friend was okay.
If Izuku could do it, then so could she.
Without a word, Inko scooted herself a little closer to the young man, then reached out and loosely wrapped her arms around his neck. Katsuki immediately stiffened, confused and tense and guilty and afraid, but he didn't pull away, not even when she slowly drew him forward so that his head was resting in the small hollow of her shoulder.
His breath hitched, and with it his whole body. Inko felt the muscles in his face twitching as he swallowed hard, and instinctively she reached up to gently card her fingers through his hair.
That seemed to be the last straw for Bakugou Katsuki. A muffled sob escaped his throat and after that he simply couldn't stop.
He just wept. Wept and choked and apologized over and over again as his fingers curled in the spare fabric of her sweater, and she cried with him, clutching him a little bit closer to her.
It wasn't much, but Inko hoped that it might be the first step towards healing for them both.
.
.
.
.
.