Hisashi the Swan (My Hero Academia)
Midoriya Inko wasn't sure how to tell her son what had happened.
She looked to advice online, from friends, from co-workers - and they all said the same thing.
"You need to tell him."
Some more kind then others - but they agreed there'd be no point to hide what happened to Hisashi. Dying in a villain attack is hardly uncommon - and Izuku had been asking where his father was. Why he seemed to not be home yet.
She wanted to tell him, she really really did. But everytime she saw his bright eyes gazing at her so curiously, she felt her will break.
In one universe Midoriya Inko told her son that his father was on a business trip abroad - unaware that her husband was alive and aiming to kill their child over a quirk she hardly knew anything about.
In this one - Midoriya Inko considered it, she won't deny that. But eventually she realized that maybe it'd give her son the wrong impression, to say that he was alive and abroad - would he not assume his father simply didn't care for him?
So here Midoriya Inko instead told her son a tale as old as time, the next time he asked her where his father was.
Once upon a time - well, roughly actually around 10 years ago - I was hiking in the woods when I happened upon the most beautiful swan I had ever saw. At the moment I was photographing the wild-life, so I started reading my camera to take a picture of the swan. I tried to stay out of sight, to not startle it.
But then the swan did the most curious thing - it started to remove it's own skin! In shock I watched as beneath the swans skin laid the most lovely man I had ever saw. I knew this story - my own father told me it once too. If you take the animal skin of the kind of person this swan surely must be, you can trap them in human form. Traditionally, forcing them to marry you was as par of course.
I was a little too weak willed for that, though. So instead I sheepishly approached the swan, covering my eyes - telling him that I had watched this very clearly private process occur on accident, and asked for forgiveness. In a bit of a shock, I think - he told me it was kind of me to not simply take his skin when he had not been looking. He thanked me before he put his skin back on and flew away.
Somehow though, me and this swan kept meeting eachother - in odder and odder places still. Until one day, the swan simply didn't put his skin back on. He told me to call him Hisashi - and I did.
For a few years we lived very happily together - and in that time we had you. But you father was growing restless - he was human for far too long, and he missed his swan form. Living free and going wherever he wanted. Eventually I felt a sort of - sorrow, and told him that I was fine with him leaving to adventure again, if only he promised to come back to me one day. I was his wife, not his captor - if he felt the need to run until he could no longer breathe, it felt wrong to take that from him.
He left, saying goodbye to me and you for the final time. That was about a year ago, remember? I'm telling you a very big secret by telling you this, you know. If any of the other kids ask you, just say he's on a trip okay?