"Wait what?" Nezu almost fell from his chair, his small paws gripping the armrests as he caught himself before his adorable face met the ground, which it wouldn't have as I would have caught him.
"I think I'm ready, to tell you a part of my past."
"Really?" His voice carried a note of disbelief, as if he'd been waiting for this moment but never truly expected it to come. Which I could understand, it wasn't as if I'd being particular joyful about this, but I think I needed to talk it with someone.
To get it off my chest.
"Yes, really."
"Well, ok then," he answered, shutting up there. He even put down his tea cup on his coaster the soft clink of porcelain against wood the only sound in the now agonizingly quiet room.
His attention was fully on me, those black button eyes focused staring into my own, which made me wonder if I was doing the right thing.
I released a sigh. I grabbed Excalibur's hilt so as to calm myself and spoke.
"Well then, I guess we should start where everything starts, at the beginning." I paused, gathering my thoughts. "I was born May 4th, 2186. My father was Haruto Tadashi, he died three years after I was born. I don't remember much from my father, in fact all I do remember from him is because of my mom. She always said the same thing. He was always willing to help. He was kind. He was quirkless. He..."
My voice died in my throat as I felt, bile at the back of my throat.
It burnt. It was as if my own body was doing everything in it's power to stop me from speaking.
"I wish I could have..." my hands closed into fists, my knuckles white under my gauntlets. "He died in a villain attack. He was collateral damage. He shouldn't have died but he did, because that's how this world works."
I stopped speaking. Gathering my thoughts once more, the bile still at the back of my throat.
"After my father died, I awakened my quirk," my hand went over my heart, feeling it's steady beating. "It's called Dragon's Heart. My heart mutated, it reinforced my body beyond measure. The more I grew, the stronger I got. That's because this heart didn't just pump out blood, it pumped an energy. I'm not sure how. My mother decided to call it mana."
I expected Nezu to ask questions at this point, but he didn't, he remained quiet, like a statue. He listened and did nothing more.
"My mom wasn't the same after dad died. I could tell even when I was young, however I didn't know how much she was suffering until 5 years later. However, the first day I should have noticed something was wrong was about nine years ago." I took a shaky breath. "I remember it clearly now, though I tried so hard to forget."
The office seemed to fade around me as I let myself sink back into that memory, back to when I was innocent, back when I was just a child.
A stronger one than normal, but still a child.
Flashback, Nine years ago
Narration POV (A/N: I'm using narration to point to how much Arthur has dissociated from his past self)
"Mom, I'm hungry," a six-year-old Arthur muttered in Victoria's arms, his small whined as his stomach grumbled.
Victoria Tadashi looked down at her son, her tired blue eyes, so much like his own, softening as she gazed at the blonde hair that fell into his face. "Just wait a little bit, my precious knight."
Arthur nodded his head solemnly, as he was set down on the cracked pavement outside their apartment building. The building wasn't much to look at.
Weathered concrete.
Rusted railings.
And more importantly, it was affordable on a single mother's salary.
Victoria dug through her pockets her fingers shaking just for a moment. She grabbed her keys, and they shook in her hand with a rattle until she found the right one. The lock was old and stubborn, requiring her to jiggle the key just so before it finally gave way.
"There we go," she whispered, Arthur of course heard it.
The apartment wasn't big. Three rooms total, a combined living room and kitchen, one bedroom, and a bathroom barely large enough to turn around in.
The furniture was secondhand, the walls needed painting, and the carpet had seen better decades.
It wasn't expensive. It certainly wasn't luxurious.
It was, however, home.
Arthur's home.
Victoria's home.
"You go to the sofa okay, Arthur," she said in English now. She always spoke in English when they were at home.
Arthur shook his head. "I want to help you, mom."
Arthur looked up to his now smiling mother, even though her smile couldn't quite reach her eyes. "Well then, come on. Let's go make dinner."
Arthur's face lit up as he grabbed his mother's hand, his small fingers intertwining with hers.
They walked in tandem to their kitchen, which was small like the rest of the apartment. The appliances were old, even their stove still used gas.
"Let's make your favorite today. Tomato with meatballs."
"Yay!" Arthur yelled, his voice echoing off the close walls with pure joy.
"You know the ingredients, right?" Victoria asked, even though she probably hadn't need to. They'd made this dish dozens of times together, and Arthur had memorized every step.
Arthur nodded enthusiastically as he ran to the fridge with the boundless energy given to him by his dragon heart.
He opened it and carefully grabbed an egg, making sure not to crack it, then the ground beef wrapped in white butcher paper, and finally the fresh parsley they'd bought from the market that morning. He closed the fridge behind him with his hip, his arms full but his smile even fuller.
Victoria meanwhile opened a cupboard filled with spices, she grabbed the ones she needed.
Cumin, salt and pepper, and pine nuts.
Arthur set everything on the counter, having to stand on his tiptoes to reach the surface properly. His determination to help despite his small stature was both endearing to say the least.
After arranging the ingredients, so his mother had room to work with, he went for the crushed tomato in a can, while his mother grabbed the sugar from its place beside the flour.
Victoria turned on two of the stove's burners, the gas igniting with small blue flames.
She grabbed two pans from the cabinet below, one large, one slightly larger, along with a lid for the smaller one. She placed one pan on each burner and set the lid aside for the moment, then poured a little oil in the first pan, just enough to cover the bottom, and a lot of oil in the second, around two fingers' height worth.
As she let the oil start to heat up, she went over to the garlic. She selected a plump clove and began peeling it with, her fingers pricked at the edges and threw the skin into the trash.
Arthur meanwhile had dragged a chair from the dinner table with a scraping sound against the wooden floor. He positioned it in front of the counter, climbed up and grabbed a large aluminum bowl.
He began pouring the ground beef into it, carefully removing the plastic wrapping as he did so, his tongue poking out slightly in concentration.
Victoria minced the garlic and placed it in the hot pan, listening to the immediate satisfying sizzle that meant the oil was ready. The smell of garlic hitting hot oil filled the kitchen which made Arthur ruffle his nose.
"Ughh I hate the smell of clover."
"I'm sorry little one," she said, ruffling his hair with a small smile.
She then grabbed the crushed tomato can, popped it open with their old can opener, and poured it in. The tomato sauce jumped and bubbled at the sudden contact with heat, and a few drops splattered onto her hand, but she didn't panic. Instead, she quickly placed the lid on the pan.
"How are you doing, Arthur?" she asked.
"I did everything," he announced proudly.
By that, he meant that he had measured out the appropriate amount of cumin with the small spoon they kept specifically for spices, added salt and pepper, poured in the pine nuts, without eating any, well that was a lie, he did eat three.
Cracked the egg and placed it in the bowl, only getting a little shell that he'd carefully fished out, and finally poured in the appropriate amount of fresh parsley that would add green and flavor to the dish.
"Do you want me to mix it for you?" Victoria asked, knowing the answer but giving him the choice anyway.
Arthur nodded quickly, making a face at the thought of touching the raw meat mixture.
Victoria laughed. "So you still don't like how the ground beef feels on your hands."
He nodded again, more vigorously this time, making his blonde hair bounce.
"Well alright then," she said with another soft laugh. Before she grabbed the bowl, she took a spoonful of sugar, opened the lid, and tossed it into the bubbling sauce.
She grabbed the bowl and plunged her hands into the mixture, her fingers working to combine all the ingredients into a cohesive whole. The sensation was exactly as Arthur had imagined, cold, squishy, and distinctly unpleasant.
"Eww, it looks disgusting," Arthur observed, kids never lied after all.
"It feels even worse," she agreed with a smile. "But it's delicious once it's all finished, isn't it?"
Arthur nodded, his mouth already somewhat dry as he salivated at the thought of the meatballs.
After mixing everything thoroughly with her hands, Victoria lowered the heat on the second pan and began picking up portions of the mixture, rolling them between her palms into perfect spheres before carefully placing them in the sizzling oil.
Arthur meanwhile had taken it upon himself to clean up and set the table.
He placed the plastic wrapping in the trash can, returned the spices to their designated spots in the cupboard with military precision, put the sugar back in its dispensary, and carefully carried the chair back to where it belonged at the dinner table.
"I'll start setting the table," Arthur announced, grabbing their tablecloth, a simple white cotton one with small blue flowers.
Their table wasn't like most Japanese tables. It was European-style, standing on four legs rather than sitting low to the ground.
Victoria had insisted on it because they both found it more comfortable than sitting on the floor, and because neither of them could master chopsticks effectively without fumbling around for an hour and letting their food get cold.
Arthur placed the tablecloth, smoothing out the wrinkles with his small hands, which took a lot more time which he cared to admit.
He then gathered two plates from the cabinet, two sets of forks and knives from the drawer, a glass bottle of water from the refrigerator, and cloth napkins for both of them.
"Mom, the table's ready!" Arthur called from his seat, his legs swinging with excitement.
"Be right there, sweetie," Victoria called back, her voice warm with affection.
Arthur swung his legs on the chair, happily anticipating what was going to be another perfect evening eating his favorite food with his favorite person in the world. The kitchen smelled amazing, the table looked perfect, and his mother was humming softly a song, she always sung to him before bed, a sound that meant everything was right in his small world.
However...
CRASH
The sound shattered the peaceful evening like glass breaking against stone. Arthur heard the unmistakable noise of a plate hitting the ground and shattering into pieces.
Every hair on the back of his neck stood up, and with the enhanced speed that came from his developing quirk, he arrived in the kitchen before the last piece of ceramic had finished bouncing.
His mother was kneeling on the floor, a broken plate in fragments around her, perfectly round meatballs scattered across the wood. But it wasn't the broken plate that made Arthur's breath catch in his throat.
It was his mother.
Her left arm was spasming uncontrollably, tremors running from her shoulder to her fingertips.
Her right leg was twitching, the muscles jumping beneath her skin in a way only he could see.
However it was her face, which scared Arthur the most.
It was pale, almost gray, and she was crying, this had been the first time he had even seen his mother cry.
She looked up to see Arthur staring at her, his blue eyes wide with confusion and fear.
"I'm sorry, Arthur. I'm so sorry, Arthur," she whispered, her voice breaking on his name.
Arthur, however, didn't hesitate. He walked over to his kneeling mother, his fear dissipating, he walked over the broken ceramics. He wrapped his small arms around her trembling neck and held her.
"It's okay, mom. The floor is clean. We can just pick them up."
His mother didn't hug him back immediately. Instead, Arthur felt his shoulder become wet as tears soaked through his shirt.
"I'm so sorry, Arthur. This wasn't supposed to happen. I... I'm supposed to take care of you."
Arthur tightened his small arms around her.
"Don't worry, mom," he murmured against her hair, his shoulder growing even wetter with her tears.
"I'll take care of you."
A/N: God my eyes were teary in this chapter, it may just be because I know everything, but it really hit me in my own feels, even though I wrote it. The first part of his past has been somewhat revealed.
I loved writing this chapter, like loved it. Up there with chapter 13 on how much I enjoyed writing it. Oh and the meatball recipe actually works, it's something I cook usually and it's really fucking good, so take that with you lol.
Now onto other things. Arthur as class president. I'm leaning towards yes, since he is supposed to be a leader. A king. So I think class president is a good way to start that. Vote on the paragraphs.
Yes, class president.
No, just a normal student.
Oh sorry for this being late, I was sure I had put it on a timer but I guess not lol. Expect a bonus chapter in a few hours since I'm almost done with it. Thx for reading. Thx for all the stones ( I really appreciate it). Author out.