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It was just a stupid training camp. Something that Kouta got dragged into kicking and screaming because he had nowhere else to go.
Auntie Shino was anger-inducing, her team-mates even more-so. The hero students really pushed it. It was a relief when he could just curl up in his literal cave and pretend that a dumb training thing wasn't some odd kilometers away. That a stupidly true teen wasn't going to screw himself over in the same way his parents did for the same stupid goal, alongside other stupid teens.
Stupid heroes. Stupid villains. Stupid quirks.
Kouta busied himself with tracing patterns in the gravel, ignoring the vague ickiness in his body that Mommy had always said was hunger. At least, he thought Mommy said it. He could just sneak a meal replacement bar that Auntie always has a bunch of in and out of that dumb costume if it mattered that much.
He frowned, digging his finger deeper and scraping his nail against rock. It hurt and felt wrong when he repeated the action again, but maybe he needed to hurt. Mommy and Daddy needed to hurt, needed to leave and never come back, and they were always praised. Always doing something right.
Kouta glared at his hand like it was the source of all his problems.
He didn't know how long he spent like that, but the stupid kind boy that he had punched appeared at the entrance, holding some curry. He was still dressed in his exercise gear.
"My name is Izuku Midoriya." The teen introduced himself quietly. He held out the bowl of food in offering. "I noticed you didn't eat, so I brought you some of the food that we made?"
Kouta stared at him.
"You–" He cut himself off and frowned deeper, walking up to him and taking the still-warm bowl from Midoriya. "You didn't need to do this. It's stupid."
He sat down to eat it all the same. Kouta was hungry and this was convenient. It didn't change anything. It was Midoriya's own fault that he was worrying himself over a random kid that had hurt him before. Auntie's voice in his head telling him that he should appreciate either the care or the food if he couldn't accept both repeated on and on.
Midoriya sat down next to him, doing some weird repeated movements with his hands. His face was pinched in the same way that Auntie's often was when she looked at him. Something sad. It made him angry.
"What?" Kouta gritted out between bites. "You got something to say, dummy?"
"Your parents were Miharu and Yuito Izumi, right?" He asked.
Kouta paused, almost done with the bowl.
Any sort of cutting words got lodged in his throat.
Midoriya was still looking at him with those eyes. Wide open and trusting and calling his parents by name. When was the last time he heard those names?
"...Yeah." He mumbled, weirdly disarmed. "People just call 'em Water Hose. Even Auntie. Stupid heroes, fighting stupid villains, showing off their dumb quirks."
Midoriya hummed.
"That's mean." He stated, not bothering to clarify what he was talking about. He probably meant both Kouta's words and how other people acted. "Did they even fully explain why the Izumis made the choice that they did?"
Kouta shrugged. The usual stuff, the stuff about how brave and good his parents were, usually fueled by some need to convince a kid of the character of two people he barely remembered, was just talking about sacrifice.
"No one told me why, just what." He huffed. "Noble sacrifice, selfless final acts. I don't get it!" Kouta whined. "They left me! They made everything change just by fighting that stupid villain in that small town and I don't get it! Auntie said I'll understand eventually, when I'll meet someone who makes me understand heroes just by existing. I don't– Why didn't they–"
Tears banged against his eyes and he wiped at his face roughly as they fell.
Midoriya just watched with this look of understanding.
"Why didn't they fight to come back home to you?" He finished Kouta's question. Kouta nodded helplessly, sniffling. "They tried. I've studied so many heroes and especially parent Pro Heroes that I can guess what their thought process was. They fought tooth and nail. It's why Muscular has the permanent damage he does. They figured out they weren't going to get out alive and then went for the next best thing: giving everyone else a fighting chance because they weren't just about to orphan their own kid just to fail and have it all be for nothing."
Kouta pushed his bowl off his lap so harshly that the leftover curry spilled onto the cave's floor. He wanted to scream, to break apart, to damage. It scared him. Part of him finally had hope instead of this bone-deep anger. That his parents didn't just choose work over him. He wasn't even an option they could have chosen.
"They did their– their best?" He choked out. "They would have came back if they could?"
Midoriya just smiled softly. Sad.
"Absolutely."
He slammed his fists into the ground suddenly. The world around him was endlessly blurry. He was burning. Burning. Cold ice and hot fire and he was burning from the inside out.
Everyone else was mourning Water Hose, not Mommy and Daddy. Auntie didn't even call them by their names anymore, not like she used to when she talked with them face to face.
Water Hose. Water Hose. Water Hose.
Never Izumi. Never Miharu and Yuito. Never his parents.
"It's not fair!" Kouta shrieked into the open air. "Not fair–Not fair–Not fair!"
He repeated that for a while like a broken record. He couldn't bring himself to shout anything else. When his screaming gave way to hiccups, Midoriya started talking all gently. Kouta scooted closer to him and buried his face into Midoriya's side. He didn't catch all of what the guy was talking about. Maybe he wasn't supposed to.
It sucked.
"It's never fair." Midoriya whispered as he took Kouta's cap off to card his fingers soothingly through Kota's hair. "It's never right. Heroes are objectified, placed on some pedestal because of their career. It leaves kids like you hurting."
He shook apart in Midoriya's arms, getting snot on his shirt and tears all over and it hurt. It hurt. It wasn't the overreactions that he was used to. It wasn't crying over what Auntie would say was a small issue in an even smaller body. No, this was big. Bigger than even what Auntie could handle herself, from what he remembered. Dirty hair, bare face, dark bruises from a costume pulled too tightly over a trembling body. Her team managed the house back then, even more-so than they did now.
He coughed on his next breath.
"I want Auntie." He muttered. "Stay with me and Auntie?"
Midoriya nodded.
"Yeah, I can do that."
Kouta blinked tiredly as Midoriya lifted him up and situated him into a carry position. He rested his forehead on Midoriya's shoulder.
"Comfy." He breathed. "You aren't the worst, Hero."
They began the trek back to the main camp. Midoriya chuckled.
"I'll take that as a compliment." He replied lightly.
Kouta snickered.
"I don't regret the crotch shot." He chirped as he dozed off.
Midoriya sighed, an amused snort escaped him.
The last thing that Kouta heard was–
"...It was funny."