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“It’s a girl! Congratulations, boys,” the nurse says, smiling as she held a healthy, baby girl in her arms.
Izuku was already crying, and how could he not be? This was his daughter, his and Katsuki’s daughter being held out to him with a knowing smile.
He was over the fucking moon .
“Can I?” Katsuki asked, his voice choked and hands shaking, though they were already reaching out to take their baby girl with oh so slow movements, as if one wrong move would have broken her.
“Of course,” the nurse replied, a soft, knowing smile on her face, and Izuku cried harder.
“Holy fuck,” Katsuki whispered, his eyes blown wide and his hands gentle, leaning back in his chair with their daughter against his chest.
“She’s perfect,” Izuku whispered back, his own mangled yet gentle hand reaching out, placed softly on the small of her back.
“As perfect as she is, she does need a name,” Katsuki reminded, teasing grin on his face as his eyes sparkled with love.
“Yes she does,” Izuku agreed. “I had an idea, though.”
“Tell me.”
“Iyoko Mitsumi Bakugou-Midoriya,” Izuku rattled, feeling a bit frenzied yet filled with so much adoration and love that he didn’t even care how crazy he must have sounded.
Katsuki was speechless for a second and Izuku was going to take everything back, tell his husband they could come up with a new, different name until—
“It’s fucking perfect,” Katsuki choked, fresh tears glistening in his eyes. “Iyoko Mitsumi.”
“I—“
“I know what you did, you sentimental nerd,” Katsuki huffed. “Do you want to hold her?”
“Oh my god, yes,” Izuku breathed, positioning himself more comfortably and holding out his arms — and as Iyoko was tenderly placed in his arms he swore he felt the stars collide and explode around them.
Her eyes, green to match his own but hair as fair and wild as Katsuki’s own. So small and cute and everything felt just right.
“Oh jesus,” Izuku breathed, silently crying and desperately trying to stay as still as possible to not wake their sleeping baby.
“I’d judge you for crying but I’m doing the same thing,” Katsuki reluctantly admitted, wiping his tears as his smile was still etched on his face. “Damn you for giving me your last name, I’ve inherited your crying habits.”
“That’s not how it works, Kachaan,” Izuku chuckled wetly.
The two stayed like that for as long n as allowed, before Iyoko was taken back to her crib for monitoring — standard procedure, they were reassured, but they had researched this new chapter of their life well enough to know that by now.
“I think I’m going to see Narumi and confess my dying, platonic love for her,” Katsuki admitted, standing up. “See how she’s doing, and all of that.”
“Yeah, I’ll join you soon,” Izuku promised, “but I want to call my dad.”
Katsuki paused. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Izuku shrugged with a sigh. “He was an ass, and I won’t forgive him for half of the shit he put me through, but I want to tell him.”
Katsuki nodded, a smile on his face. “Now that’s the Deku I know, always too fucking forgiving. I’ll be with Narumi if you need me, yeah?”
“I know, Kachaan.”
Izuku smiled as he watched Katsuki walk out the door to confess his platonic love to their surrogate— a strong fucking woman who took no shit from either of them yet simultaneously calmed all of their anxieties — and sat.
He hadn’t spoken to his dad in years, for good reason. His childhood was filled with memories of an angry father slurring his words and slamming doors. They were filled with the stench of alcohol on his breath and bottles in the lounge.
His teenage years were filled with phone calls from the man, asking for Izuku to pick him up from the bar before it had even reached noon.
Izuku could never find the heart to block him.
He dialed and let the phone ring. Izuku almost felt so stupid calling him, even though it felt right. He’s twelve and alone with his father, witnessing the man black-out drunk for the first time.
A week later and Izuku was used to the bottles lying around, the constant stench of alcohol and the rage and tears his father screamed and cried.
He was thirteen and explaining to social workers that he had a roof over his head and all the food and resources he could need — his father provided for him, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t made of love.
He was fourteen, asking to stay at Katsuki’s for the night while his dad was too drunk to process what he’s saying.
He was fifteen and sitting in his run-down living room with Aizawa-sensei and All Might, listening to his father slur his words as the man readily agreed to having Izuku live in the UA dormitories full time — and Izuku was glad.
He remembered being pulled outside after that, watching All Might and Aizawa-sensei non-verbally communicate with each other, before he finally bit the bullet and asked what they were doing, a tired sigh escaping his lips.
Aizawa-sensei told him he was there to help no matter the hour, if only Izuku would let him. Izuku promised he would.
And even now he could almost smell the alcohol through the receiver, even now — but he still didn’t hang up.
His father would wake up in the morning and complain of a migraine, both of them sipping too-hot coffee they were both too stubborn to wait for to cool.
They never mentioned the numerous drunk-dialed calls, nor the desperate ones, and Hisashi never questioned why Izuku was coming back later and later during every holiday, and why Izuku never visited throughout his school years.
When he was seventeen, Izuku packed his bags and moved in with the Bakugou’s, getting emancipated with Aizawa-sensei’s help.
And he had never looked back.
Which is why, sitting in their private room at the hospital with their baby only five doors down, did Izuku feel so stupid.
Of course there had been stray calls over the years, usually to pick him up from a bar or to call him a cab, but they were short, and they were always angry.
The night Narumi had come over, tears in her eyes and a test with a plus sign, he had almost picked up the phone. Almost.
But his hand retracted as he realised he didn’t know what he would expect — a pat on the back? Fatherly advice?
Having an alcoholic father meant he barely had a father to begin with. He was just an alcoholic to whom he shared a last name, a man who was supposed to have raised him after his mother’s passing, and a man who failed at doing just that.
Izuku didn’t expect him to pick up. He was probably drunk off his ass in a ditch somewhere, watching the phone ring out of pure spite.
His daughter — and god that would never get old — deserved a grandfather, not a man who was barely even a parent. Masaru and Mitsuki were her grandparents and they would be fantastic ones at that, but Izuku wanted his child to have more.
She deserved more — she deserved everything.
Izuku and Katsuki already knew their old classmates would be there with them, as would the teachers who made with through the war and through to their students graduation and eventual fame, and Narumi as well — but Izuku knew he wanted this.
For whatever reason, Izuku was willing to try.
One last ring and another sigh, and Izuku went to hang up.
“Hello?”
Izuku paused, his breath catching in his throat and his anger dying out instantly. “Hisashi.”
“Izuku?”
“Yeah, Dad. It’s me,” Izuku replied quietly.
An audible sigh. “It’s getting late.”
“I know.”
“I remember you hating me.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you have to go save lives in the morning?”
“I’m off for a while, actually.”
“Good, you deserve a break, son.”
“Don’t call me that,” Izuku snapped, anger and frustration returning tenfold. “Don’t call me a son when you were barely even a dad to me.”
“I know, I…I’m sorry. I won’t.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“All of it. Everything we…”
“You,” Izuku sighed. “Not we, you. I was just a kid who needed a dad, and you weren’t that.”
“I wasn’t, and I’m sorry.”
“I might never forgive you,” Izuku informed, leaning back in his seat. “There’s a lot of shit I know I’ll never forgive you for.”
“I know.”
“And you don’t deserve that forgiveness for those things, no matter how hard you try.”
“I know…but I can still be sorry that I ever did that to you.”
Awkward silence followed, and Izuku almost lost his wit and hung up the phone then and there, the pained silence ringing in his head.
“Izuku, what is it?”
“What was it like?” Izuku asked.
“What? Izuku, it’s too late for all of this—“
“What was it like when I was born, Dad?” Izuku clarified. “How did it feel?”
“I was happy,” his father said, after spending some moments thinking. “But I was also scared out of my mind. One wrong move and you would break, I was sure of it.”
Hisashi took another breath. “They don’t tell you how it’s possible to feel so much love towards another human being, somebody that you brought into this world.
It’s incredible, really. I looked at your face and got this feeling in my chest.”
“Pride?” Izuku asked, terrifyingly quiet.
“Yes, pride,” Hisashi mused. “I was so proud but you were only an hour old, if that. You had only accomplished the task of being born and yet I was so damn proud of you for being here.”
Izuku stayed silent, and Hisashi continued on.
“I guess I was proud that you existed. That…that your tiny, frail baby body could bring so much happiness and light to me. And…” Hisashi audibly swallowed. “And I guess I was proud of me, too, for once. For having contributed to something so amazing and beautiful.”
Izuku was softly crying now, an emotional storm swirling in his gut.
“I have done many things in this life,” Hisashi said. “Not many I am proud of, and even less I don’t regret….but I will never regret you. Never you.”
Izuku promptly lost all sense of composure, sobbing through the receiver and taking deep, gulping breaths to calm himself down.
“Then why did you screw it all up?” Izuku asked, his voice cracked and broken. “How? If you loved me so much, why did you do the things you did? That’s not love, Dad.”
“I wish I had an answer for you, Izuku. I do,” Hisashi promised. “I’m still…trying to sort through all of that myself.”
“You could’ve saved the two of us a lot of grief.”
“I could have.”
“And you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t. And that is my biggest regret in life.”
Izuku heard something on the other line. Maybe sheets rustling, or papers being moved across a desk.
“Why did you call me, Izuku?”
Izuku struggled to find the answer to that, for he truly did not know. There was no logical thinking on his part that made him pick up the phone and dial that number.
There was nothing there other than a gut feeling, a sense of longing and the childish need to hear his father’s voice, even if it were for the final time.
So maybe he needed to hear his father’s voice. Maybe he did need to heal his inner child by having a conversation with the man, to see if he had changed.
Maybe he wanted closure.
“Are you drunk?” Izuku asked even before the words had properly been processed in his mind, slipping out of his mouth without a second thought. He wanted to take them back.
“No,” Hisashi chuckled, painful and humourless.
“And you’re telling the truth?”
“It’s been five years today, Izuku. I promise.”
“That’s…that’s really good, Dad,” Izuku said, swallowing the lump in his throat as his eyes burned with fresh tears.
“It is, isn’t it?”
Yeah, it is, but Izuku wondered if it would ever make a difference. His experiences would not be erased by his father’s sobriety, and neither would his feelings towards the man who failed so miserably at being a parent.
The anger and resentment was still fresh in his mind as though he were twelve, fourteen, sixteen and twenty- three.
He was the new number one hero and still cried over the ‘what if’s’ of his childhood, if things had been different, better.
“Dad.”
“Yeah, Izuku?”
“You have a granddaughter.”
A choke and splutter, a gasp and then silence was heard through the receiver, silence so long Izuku thought the man had hung up.
“What?”
“She was born earlier tonight, just over an hour ago now,” Izuku explained. “I just…I guess I wanted to call you. You deserved to know.”
“I…god, what can I say to that?” Hisashi asked breathlessly, sounding the happiest that Izuku had ever heard as of late.
“You could always ask her name,” Izuku smiled.
“Yeah…what’s her name?”
“Iyoko Mitsumi Bakugou-Midoriya,” Izuku replied, his voice wavering as he pictured his daughter five doors down, perfect in every way.
Izuku heard a choked breath on the other side. “Oh.”
Iyoko was close, eerily similar to ‘Inko,’ Hisashi’s late wife and Izuku’s own mother, a woman who’s grave he visited on every holiday and her birthday like clockwork.
Izuku missed her. And he knew his father did too.
“She’s fucking perfect, Dad, in every way. I…”
“I get it, Izuku.”
“Yeah,” Izuku breathed. “I was so scared to hold her before she was even born, like I’d drop her or hurt her in some way even though Kachaan told me I was being ridiculous.”
“Yeah, I felt the same way with you.”
Izuku and Hisashi fall into a soft, easy conversation. It’s about children and parenthood, mistakes every parent makes and the feelings surrounding this new chapter of their lives — and for a second, Izuku had forgotten who it was he was talking to.
“Dad.”
“Yeah, Izuku?”
“I know…I know you’re trying to be better,” Izuku started, not even knowing himself where he was going with this. “But that doesn’t change what I feel, or what I went through.”
“I know.”
“And there are things I refuse to forgive you for, things that won’t ever go away where the resentment will still cling to me.”
“I know.”
“And you knew I deserved better, back then.”
“I did. I always did know you deserved better.”
“But…I want to try.”
Hisashi is silent for a moment, and the silence rings in Izuku’s ears. Briefly, he wonders if he’s fucked everything up, if this was his father’s breaking point and he’d leave for good this time.
“Izuku?”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Thank you.”
“I haven’t done anything yet,” Izuku laughed softly, barely audible even to himself.
“You calling me was enough.”
Izuku checked his watch and saw that over an hour had passed. “Uh, I should—“
“Go. Be with Katsuki and whoever is there for you, and get some rest before she wakes you up crying her ears off.”
“Yeah, I’ll just…”
“Welcome to parenthood, Izuku.”
Izuku smiles. It’s small, but it’s a start, and small starts always turn into bigger and brighter steps.
“Thanks, Dad. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight son.”