Work Text:
The first time they meet one another, she’s busy running for her life with her newborn son in her arms as her apartment building burns down around her. Stumbling around a corner, shielding Izuku from a falling piece of debris, Inko trips over something that looks suspiciously like it might have once been one of her neighbours and braces herself for an impact that never comes. A pair of large hands wrap around her waist and pull her back upright before she hits the floor. Squeaking, she follows the enormous arms the hands are attached to and her green eyes meet a pair of bright blue.
For a moment she stands immobile, unable to move as she looks into the eyes of Japan’s most dangerous villain, and then Izuku lets out a harsh wail breaking her out of her trance. Surprisingly, All Smite releases his grip on her arms and allows her to stumble backwards a few steps as she tries to hush her son. All Smite stands in silence, observing them both with a gaze that has her on edge, until he inevitably gets bored and takes a step towards her. A terrified noise escapes Inko as she curls around Izuku, one of his tiny hands catching a strand of her hair.
“Please! Don’t hurt him!” She begs through a few coughs when her lungs fill with thick smoke, voice barely audible over the roaring inferno surrounding them.
“I don’t hurt children,” All Smite replies, stepping past them to peer down the corridor she’d been running towards. Lifting her head, Inko regards him silently. This man, this villain, had saved her from falling and likely getting both herself and Izuku killed, then claimed he doesn’t harm children when she knows for a fact that he was the one who led an attack on one of the hero schools three weeks earlier. “Follow me.” She blinks, watching his back as he moves through the fires with ease. He pauses after only a few steps and turns to look at her over his shoulder, “Unless you would rather burn to death.”
Behind her a wall crumbles and burning furniture drops from the apartment above. Readjusting the damp blanket she had hastily wrapped Izuku in, ensuring his face was as covered as much as possible, Inko makes the decision that would change her life forever - she runs towards the one person she should most definitely be fleeing from.
He leaves her in an alley behind the burning building, tucking the strand of hair Izuku had been holding behind her ear and disappears into the night before she can even open her mouth to thank him. And when the heroes find her five minutes later, stumbling around and struggling to breathe as a result of the smoke inhalation, they don’t question how a single mother was able to get herself and her child out when so many others died. They’re just relieved that someone managed to escape All Smite’s latest rampage alive.
-
Inko meets All Smite again on Izuku’s first birthday. She doesn’t have much money to her name, not since Hisashi ran off to another country and left her to fend for herself and their child, but she’d saved up enough to scrape together a small picnic for the two of them and a few second hand toys for Izuku. It’s not the sort of first birthday she wanted her son to have, she’d much rather have had some friends and family to celebrate with them, but she reasons that her little boy is young enough that he won’t remember it and he’s happy enough to play with the brightly coloured pieces of plastic and teddy bear.
“He’s cute.” Startled by the voice behind her, Inko jumps and sends the grapes in her hands flying across the blanket they were sitting on. Turning around she’s greeted by the sight of a man larger than life, dressed in a nondescript navy hoodie, jeans and a baseball cap that did absolutely nothing to hide his identity.
“All Smite,” She whispers in confusion and horror, moving her body ever so slightly to hopefully hide her giggling little boy from view. That being said, she wouldn’t be surprised if the villain could see right through her, after all, he seemed to have a ridiculously powerful quirk and who knows what other abilities he might be hiding.
The larger man regards her in silence for a moment before he settles himself on the blanket beside her, leaving only a small amount of space between them, which also happened to put him in the perfect position to watch Izuku wrestle with his own feet.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” The villain comments, fiddling with a pair of sunglasses that look insanely small in his enormous hands, “I wouldn’t have saved you from that fire if I had planned on doing so.”
Biting her lip, Inko looks between All Smite and her blissfully unaware son. Questions that have been running through her mind in the months following their first interaction come back to the forefront. She’s pictured this scenario numerous times now and wondered what would happen if they were to meet again. Would he kill her? Would he come looking for her to tie off a loose end? Did he even remember saving the silly woman and her baby who hadn’t managed to escape before his fight with Endeavor destroyed her home? However, now, as he sits beside her watching her son, she doesn’t see a person she should be desperately trying to run away from (not that she’d ever be fast enough) but a quiet man and finds herself asking only one question.
“Would you like a cake?”
-
The third time Inko meets him, she’s laying in the free-standing hammock on her new apartment’s balcony a month after their encounter in the park, Izuku fast asleep on her chest and divorce papers in her hand, watching the lights of the city as the moon rises on the horizon. She isn’t a fool, despite what people might believe, and knew very well as she waved goodbye to Hisashi at the airport over a year ago, she wouldn’t see him again. He wasn’t ready to be a father, had told her numerous times since they’d discovered her pregnancy, and it was no coincidence that he was suddenly offered to transfer to another office overseas for a ‘higher wage’. She’d long since resigned herself to the life of a single mother, she just hadn’t expected it to hurt as much as it did when she opened the envelope. Izuku snuffles softly, rubbing his cheek against the soft fabric of her sweatshirt. Smiling, she runs gentle fingers through his messy green curls. Hisashi may not have been ready for a family but she couldn’t imagine a life without her precious boy.
A gentle breeze brushes over them, rattling the papers in the hand not buried in Izuku’s hair, and Inko sighs, tucking them beneath her hip so she can pull a thin blanket over them both. She doesn’t need to move yet, there’s no point in waking her son and it’s warm enough out that they won’t fall ill. It’s as she’s adjusting herself to get more comfortable that she spots him. Perched on the railing, his back against the wall of the apartment building, one leg stretched out on the metal in front of him and the other dangling over the edge, All Smite watches her in silence, an unreadable expression on his face.
Inko’s not sure how she manages to keep herself from jumping, which would inevitably send herself and Izuku sprawling onto the concrete below them, but somehow she’s able to maintain her composure. Or at least she hopes it looks like she does while her heart hammers away in her chest. Neither of them speak and yet the silence remains comfortable, which she supposes is strange. This man, this terrifying, murderous man, has saved her life and proven himself capable of being more than the brute the media portray him as. She has watched him roll around on the grass, holding her son above his head as though he were Izuku’s father and had known him all his life. He carried them both to safety, away from the potential of a horrifyingly painful death and showed compassion when he did not have to. However, in the year following their first meeting, he’s also killed upwards of twenty heroes, countless civilians and annihilated the HPSC for reasons unknown. She should be terrified, reaching for the phone in her pocket and calling the police. Instead, she’s quite content to lay in her hammock, listening to the sounds of the city and letting the wind rock her gently, while the country’s most notorious villain watches her.
After what feels like an eternity but is likely only a few minutes he frowns, “You aren’t afraid of me.” He states. “Why?”
Inko regards him quietly, gathering her thoughts. “I…you saved our lives.”
“And I’ve ended thousands more.” His piercing blue eyes stare directly into hers.
“You’ve also let a baby you knew for less than an hour drool on your face.” In retrospect, she probably should have thought through her answer more, especially when he later admits to having planned on killing her that night, but in that moment it’s the first thing that comes to mind. It also has the pleasant side-effect of dragging a startled laugh out of All Smite.
Chuckling, he shakes his head and gives her a smile. Not the one from his wanted posters, but a softer, kinder one that makes her heart melt. “You are certainly something else Midoriya Inko.”
“I’ve been called a lot worse.” She replies with a smile of her own.
-
He gives her his name 2 years after he saved her and Izuku from the fire. In that time she has grown used to coming home from work, or from picking Izuku up from day-care, to the sight of the villain in her apartment. He’s around so much that she even went out and bought a few t-shirts and sweatpants in his size, an impressive guess if she does say so herself, to tuck away in her bottom drawer for when he inevitably shows up bloodied from fights and needing a place to lay low. And if Inko is honest with herself, she looks forward to having him around.
Whenever he’s with them he makes a point of playing with Izuku until the little boy falls asleep, usually curled up into the villain’s side while some children’s show plays on the television. If she cooks for them all, he insists that she sit down and relax afterwards while he cleans up and puts everything away. When things have broken, be they a pipe or a hook for her coat, he takes it upon himself to fix them while she’s at work, leaving behind a note telling her to try not to break anything else while he’s gone.
She doesn’t know his name, and Izuku has started to call him dad, which in itself should concern her. All Smite is a villain, a horribly violent villain, and if anyone were to discover that she shelters him, plays ‘house’ with him in disgustingly domestic ways, it would be the end of her life. They wouldn’t kill her, at least she doesn’t think so, but she would undoubtedly be locked away in the depths of Tartarus, never allowed to see her son again. A fate worse than death. However, even with the sword of Damocles hanging over her head, Inko cannot find it in herself to bring it all to an end. She’s too…well, happy. And considering the fact that All Smite has yet to actually stop Izuku from gleefully calling ‘Dad’ whenever he’s around, she likes to think that maybe, just maybe, the villain feels something similar.
They’re sitting on the couch, Izuku fast asleep between them, watching a child’s animated film that they’ve somehow become invested in (they simply have to know if the little blue alien will get back to his human family) when he tells her.
“Toshinori,” He says out of the blue while the blue alien laughs manically on screen. Confused, Inko turns to look at him. His eyes remain on the television and his face is illuminated by the various colours, however, having known the man as long as she has now, she can see the hesitation clear as day.
“Pardon?”
He turns to look at her, “My name, it’s Toshinori.” And Inko smiles.
“Hello Toshinori,” She greets, holding a hand out towards him over the top of Izuku’s head. “It’s lovely to meet you.”