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"Please state your name for the record."
The greenette shifted in his seat, eyes dragging away from the other people in the room. He was hyper-aware of everything around him. The air conditioning was just a tad too cold, and the machine was making an odd humming sound. The seat he was sitting in was just slightly uneven; one of the legs must be too short for the rest of them because it kept making the chair shift forward anytime he fidgeted. The mandatory cuffs on his wrists dug into his skin a little too much to be comfortable, leaving angry red lines to be worn into the skin along his wrists.
He could feel the eyes of everyone on him. The kind detective was looking at him encouragingly. His partner was simply staring him down, with an air of mild confusion on his face. Almost as if he couldn't believe that he, a small pale child covered in scars and a too-large t-shirt, was involved with the League of Villains. His supposed lawyer looked at him disapprovingly, like she hated that he had to represent someone like him.
He was hyper-aware of it all, and it only increased his anxiety.
"Ahm, Midoriya Izuku," he mumbled, voice shaking.
"True; Midoriya-kun, my quirk is called Lie Detector. It will be used throughout the entirety of this interrogation." The nice detective--did he say his name was Naomasa?--said calmly, an air of honesty and fatigue around him.
He shifted in his chair, his lawyer's eyes burning into his skin like a fire poker. "I understand, uhm, could you refer to me as Izuku only, please? I uh, I don't go by Midoriya anymore," Izuku mumbled, confidence withering under the stares from the adults in the room.
The detective nodded, writing something down in his notebook before looking him in the eyes and smiling. "Of course, Izuku-kun. Now how about we start with how you got involved with the League?"
"Excuse me," the lawyer, Kikido-san or something, snapped harshly. "My client will not be answering any of your questions until you have proved that he was involved with the League."
Izuku blinked at the woman, astounded. He was involved with the League. He wasn't trying to hide that. Did she not know that his email to the heroes had been all but shown to come from his IP address?
"Mikido-san, we have numerous pieces of evidence of his involvement with the League. We are simply asking for your cooperation in this investigation."
The lawyer's smug face quickly became snide at the detective's words, curses sat at her lips before Izuku interrupted her. "I was homeless for a while after I was..." he trailed off. How did he explain that his mom had chosen to die rather than live with him and his father just simply left without a note? "Uhm, I was homeless sometime when I was eleven? Or was it twelve? Anyway, somewhere between there. I lived on the streets and it wasn't a savory part of town. You got used to fighting to survive, even if it meant beating someone else, even if it meant diving into the trash for a scrap of food, even if it meant stealing from people. You did what you could to survive."
The room was silent save for Izuku. He stared at the detectives with dead eyes, the same ones he had when he was still out on the streets. His words were clipped and void of emotion. Sparing a glance at his lawyer, he saw the disgusted look on her face, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. She hadn't been there. It had been him, all alone. On the streets too rough for grown men let alone a child. Her disgust could suck it for all he cared.
"I had stayed awake for a few days before I noticed him following me. Maybe that was the only reason I had really taken notice of him. Lack of sleep does weird things to the brain, you know. He would follow me all the time, generally popping up after I got into a fight with someone else. People really think you're easy when you're young and quirkless."
He heard his lawyer scoff, making him pause. His dead eyes trailed over to her, watching her closely. She seemed annoyed to be his lawyer. She wasn't there for him, she was there for the money it would give her by taking his case. Anger seemed to sear itself into his skin and burn into his veins. "Get out."
"What?" she asked, surprise coloring her features.
"Get. Out," he ordered, voice seething under his barely controlled temper.
The door to the interrogation room opened and revealed Eraserhead. He didn't know if he was there to keep Izuku in check or if he was there to get the woman out, but at the moment he didn't care. He needed her out. He was not going to deal with her during the entire interrogation.
The woman got up with a huff, face red with embarrassment and anger. She cleared her throat to presumably say something but Eraserhead cut her off with a tense "Don't." causing her to huff and storm out of the room.
"Izuku-kun would you like to wait for another lawyer or carry on?" The detective's partner asked. His feline features seemed to soothe the anger that rose up within him, leaving him empty. What was his name again?
He shook his head, eyes seeming to dull even more to the others in the room. Concern spiked in them as they stared back at this child, an air of numbness radiating off of him. "Whenever you're ready, Izuku-kun," Naomasa murmured, voice intentionally soft and gentle.
"I got into a lot of fights. Some people try to take advantage of you when you're on the streets, but you learn the hard way." His voice was cold, numb even, but it did nothing to stop the detectives from flinching at the implication. Especially when Naomasa'a quirk rang his words as 'true.' "I've gotten trafficked three times, but I was lucky. I got out of it. Most people don't."
Izuku fell silent for a moment, remembering the faces of the women, the children, the weak who were taken and never seen again. Silently, he wished that they were dead so that they don't have to live with the atrocities that came with being trafficked. He wished their abusers suffered forever and that they had to live through it. Death would be a mercy to them.
The detectives shared a look as they watched the kid's eyes go distant for a moment. It was almost as if he was disassociating. "Izuku-kun?" Sansa called hesitantly, worry consuming him as he watched the boy.
Izuku blinked when he felt a blanket fall onto his slim shoulders. When had Eraserhead gotten into the room? The man seemed to read his mind because he sat down next to him in the seat his lawyer had previously been in, gruffly saying, "You were shaking. The air conditioning must've been too high or something."
Izuku nodded slightly at the words, feeling somewhat more present in the room with the blanket around his shoulders grounding him. It was thick and soft and heavy. Distantly, he wondered if it was a weighted blanket.
"Izuku-kun, are you okay to continue or would you like to take a break?" The feline officer asked gently.
Izuku squeezed the blanket further around himself, nodding. "I'll continue, uhm, where was I?"
"You had mentioned you had been in a lot of fights," Naomasa said quietly, not wanting to be the one to make the boy disassociate again.
"The man had watched me fight these people for roughly two weeks? He wouldn't interfere, he'd just watch. Almost like he was trying to see if I could get out of each situation. It made me so angry at the time. Here I was, getting beaten daily, just barely making it out every time, and this dude was just watching me. After a rainstorm that lasted for a few days, I got pissed. He'd just watched me fight off three guys while being drenched and cold and hurt and-" Izuku inhaled sharply, his anger dying out again, "and I lost it. I walked off to an alley and waited for him to follow me before I confronted him."
A slightly startled hum escaped Naomasa before he scribbled something down. Izuku blinked, noticing the slightly comically wide eyes of the others in the room. He huffed a laugh, it was amusing. Of all the poor decisions Izuku had made he hadn't believed that would be the one to startle the grown men.
"When he came around the corner I pretty much just asked if he was going to jump me or try to traffic me, but he just told me I'd die if I tried to fight him. When I asked what he wanted from me he was all like 'Tell me what my quirk is' and I must've gotten it slightly right at the time because he pretty much offered to get me off the streets rights after. I thought it was the best decision I could've made at the time." Izuku said, honestly.
He felt guilty, though.
If only he had asked more questions, had done more research, had bothered to look into the man who had taken him in. He should've known better, really. He was naive, yes, but he wasn't stupid.
"I was really fucking stupid." He groaned into his hands, remembering his naivety with a slight cringe on his face. "He told me his name had been Shigaraki and that I would work for his sensei. I thought it was a great deal since all I had to do was analyze quirks, which was something I was actually good at. I was given safety for the first time in years, and I justified every red flag by believing I was safest there."
He sighed heavily, head hung. He had been so fucking stupid. "I didn't know that the quirks I was analyzing had belonged to kids. I didn't know the League had invaded the USJ. I didn't know that they were trying to kill All Might. I didn't know that they had raided the training camp. Fuck, I didn't even know that I was working for the League until they brought Kacchan to the fucking bar." His breathing was heavy, previous guilt weighing heavily on his chest.
"When I saw Kacchan I realized what was going on; who I was working for. I couldn't just stand by and let them do that to him, so I figured out how to get the information that I knew to the heroes..." Izuku trailed off, ignoring the memory of Kacchan's eyes flashing in recognition when he had seen him in the bar.
"Izuku-kun, can you tell us what happened from the time you sent the information to the authorities to Eraserhead finding you in the bar?" Naomasa asked notebook in hand.
Unconsciously, he shuddered. The ghost feeling of those thick tendrils of midnight ink wrapping around his neck seemed to choke him, leaving him breathless. "Let's not ask that one right now. We don't need to know." The thick gruff voice of Eraserhead reached his ears as a tender hand rested on his body shoulder. Nimble fingers gently pulled the blanket further up, allowing it to rest higher on his shoulders.
"Of course, Eraserhead. Izuku-kun, we only have a few more questions for you, would you like to continue?" Naomasa asked, voice soft.
Izuku nodded even though he wanted to stop. He was tired. He wanted this to be over. He was likely headed to prison due to his crimes. Why couldn't they just get the pleasantries out of the way? Making him think that they cared was cruel, but a punishment fitting for scum like him, he supposed.
"You mentioned you were homeless around eleven or twelve, do you know what happened to your parents at all?"
Izuku laughed slightly, a rueful smile resting on his chapped lips, startling the others in the room. "Mom left sometime after my diagnosis, she died right before Dad left, I don't know how though. Dad left three months before I was on the streets, don't know what happened to him."
Naomasa scribbled something in his notebook, a distant hum coming from his mouth as the others processed his words. "Alright, Izuku-kun, final question, how did you know Bakugou Katsuki?"
Izuku blinked. "Kacchan? I knew him since I was a kid. We were childhood best friends before my diagnosis. I could recognize that hair anywhere. We fell out of touch after I became homeless but I watched the sports festival, so I knew he was still around. I didn't expect to see him so soon, though."
Naomasa wrote something else down before he clicked his pen and looked at Izuku. "That's all we needed from you, Izuku-kun. Do you have any questions for us?"
Izuku hummed, "When am I going to prison?"
The room seemed to stop, the others freezing in their chairs. "Why would you be going to prison, Izuku-kun?" Sansa asked lightly, watching the boy fidget in his chair with the blanket.
"I helped the League kidnap a kid, on top of other things. It's kind of obvious that I'm going to prison. I just wanna know when I'll be shipped off so I can apologize to Kacchan before I go," he stated bluntly.
"Kid, Nedzu actually wants to talk to you about that, so hold on-"
"Izuku-kun! I'm so glad we finally get to meet!" The short principal said jovially, suddenly appearing before Izuku on the table, startling him.
Izuku looked at him warily as his heart slowly calmed down from the sudden surge of adrenaline. "Hi?"
"I'm Principal Nedzu, and I would like to talk to you about your future! How would you like to be a student at UA?"
His mind halted, coming to a complete stop. "What?"
The stoat smiled at him with too many teeth to be deemed as comforting. "I would like you to become a UA student. Looking at the journals you had at the League's hideout was simply exhilarating! Your unrefined work was fascinating, I think you could make a future for yourself as a hero analyst. Obviously, we would need to hone your skills, but from what I read, you have incredible talent!"
He was frozen. "What?"
"Oh Izuku-kun," the principal laughed, something intentionally light, as if he didn't want to come off as intimidating. "I understand this is a lot to process right now, but rest assured if you wish to become a student at UA you will not go to prison. You will have to attend therapy, however, with Hound Dog a few days a week, but I don't foresee that being a problem."
"I won't go to prison? Doesn't that go against everything? I thought the Commission was trying to capture everyone involved with the League. Wouldn't that go against everything?"
"Ah, I see your confusion. The Commission is looking for everyone involved with the League, yes, but due to the nature of your involvement and your lack of knowledge of their intentions, I believe that it is very plausible to say that you won't go to prison if I have any say about it." The principal grinned, something feral laced with a wild mania Izuku hadn't seen since he'd first met Toga.
"Nature of my involvement? What does that mean?" Izuku asked brows furrowed.
"Izuku-kun, you were in a vulnerable position, and Shigaraki took advantage of that fact. You prioritized your safety over living on the streets, which cannot be counted against you." Naomasa explained softly, eyes gentle as he peered at the teen.
Izuku bristled, "But I still hurt people. It doesn't matter if I didn't know about it, that doesn't make my involvement any better!"
Aizawa watched Izuku's agitation as he yelled about his involvement. A part of him sighed heavily. The kid would likely never fully stop blaming himself for what had happened.
"Izuku-kun. If a child gets lost in a supermarket is the child at fault?" The principal asked, eyes keen.
"Wha-? No? The child got lost because the parents weren't paying attention to it."
"If the child walks around to look for the parents and ends up going farther away from them, is the child at fault?"
"No, the kid is just trying to make the situation better. It's scared and trying to find its parents."
"Izuku-kun," the principal started, "the child is naive, yes, but it's working off of what it thinks is right based on its situation. If the child is not to be blamed for getting lost, then you can't be blamed for trying to survive."
"Oh."
Silence hung in the air as Izuku contemplated the blunt words. He was the child, young and naive. He was just trying his best, doing his best to survive, even if it made things worse in the end.
"Izuku-kun, you can try again. You can finally get the life you deserve filled with people who will care for you. What do you say?"
Guilt sat like a stone in his stomach. He really didn't deserve this. Nedzu framed it like he was some lost sheep, but he was far more jaded--far more ruthless than something that was lost and weak. He was strong due to his circumstances. He was carved out of the hatred and anger that had made him. He was forged in the roaring fires of survival, and he would not bend and break because of some pretty words said by a stranger.
But looking at the other men in the room, he watched their kind eyes and how they held hope for him. The blanket sat on his shoulders almost as if to remind him that people still cared for him. And maybe a part of him wanted a break. Maybe a part of him yearned to be weak for even just one moment. Maybe he wanted to let his guard down for more than a few seconds. Maybe he wanted to let go of the hatred and anger. Maybe he wanted to do more than just survive.
Guilt still sat heavily in his stomach, but a lighter feeling made its way into his heart. For the first time in a while, he allowed hope to rest against the jailed cage that was his ribs. Maybe he could allow himself to accept this chance.
"Yes."