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Izuku dreams of shadows. He dreams of reaching hands wreathed in darkness and the drag of claws (of extended nails and of wingtips and of claws belonging to his own almost-soul-) gentle upon his skin in the way that most means hatred, a tenderness he only knows to mean cruelty.
He does not know if his creature means to be cruel, means to hurt. Either way it doesn’t hurt as much as the ones at school, who scratch him from metres away or bat at him with wings or whisper snide, awful things at him. Who put hot hands, popping, to his skin until he can feel nothing but pain and heat and shadows.
Sometimes Izuku wonders if the shadows make him bad. Most of the time though, he’s just grateful to have their comfort at all.
On the nights he dreams of shadows (it is not quite every night, he knows, but sometimes it feels like it, endless and aching and eternal-) he wakes up with a bitter, iron-tang taste on the back of his tongue, his fingertips raw in an inexplicable, nerve-shuddering way. He thinks that his nails are stronger, now. Less likely to break, more likely to scratch. Perhaps that's why he wakes up sometimes with red marks down his arms, around the edges of his ribs, caught in the night, rust and blossoming columbines, the occasional crust of blood beneath his nails that he finds himself bringing to his lips before he can think twice about it, still half-asleep.
It's a little odd, but many things in Izuku's life are, now more than ever, so he simply accepts it and moves on, content with the awareness of a crooning, wordless thing in his chest, right where his ribs meet his spine. Where the shadows linger.
He dreams of shadows, and gets out of bed to shadows that he pushes away with opened curtains, except they still pool, thick and heavy as velvet drapes, around his feet. Izuku blinks against the sunlight, squinting. Ugh. It's bright. Sometimes he hates spring. Not as much as summer though, when it's hard to sleep with the light-lingering nights and mornings, when the hot, humid air clings to his lungs like tar.
No, better when it's winter, cool and sharp and clear. Better when it's night-time and he is safe from the world outside. (When the world is safer from him; when he can hide away, secure in the knowledge that his shadows will protect him-) But he has less to fear, nowadays. UA, for that, has been a true and genuine blessing. Even having Bakugou in his class, still, isn't anything like as awful as before. Izuku barely ever gets burnt anymore! And even when Bakugou tries to burn him, in the corridors or in Heroics training, his shadows swell up around him, seeping through his skin to prevent yet another scar, and Bakugou either stops too soon, expression twisting, or someone arrives quickly enough that he leaves Izuku alone before that point.
It's complicated. Izuku isn't sure how he feels about it all at this point, but that's alright, because his circumstances are still better than they were, either way. He has his shadows, his Mum, his dreams.
Overall, Izuku is okay. More than that, he has tangible, ineffable things worth living for, fighting for.
Case in point, Izuku is more than able to deal with the sunlight no matter that he doesn't love it, and it really isn't the end of the world either way, so he forces himself to go and get dressed, revelling as always in catching a glimpse of himself in the UA uniform. It's a bit terrifying some days, almost always surreal, but it's mostly just reassuring. He's not a weak, pathetic freak of a child anymore, not someone who can just be pushed around, who can allow others to be hurt because he himself is too weak to be able to save them.
No, Izuku isn't that person anymore. And no matter how his shadows make people look at him sometimes, how people shudder when they pool around him, an ink-raptured mantle, Izuku will never begrudge the fact that with his shadows, he can help more people than he ever could before.
They pledged it, after all.
He nearly falls asleep again on the way to the school, the clacking of the train and the low chatter of voices a soothing thing. Nobody is even too close to him today, which is good. Izuku gets antsy, otherwise.
(The shadows, too, don't always like it. Or most of the time, really. There is a growl, echoing up from the base of Izuku's spine, fingers slipping into the gaps between his ribs, tense. Something presses up against the skin at his shoulder blades, sometimes a solid enough sensation, sharp and somatic, that Izuku finds himself reaching up and back, trying to run fingertips over his shoulder blades, to try and check that nothing is going to burst out of his skin.
There never is. No, just shadows that drape around his shoulders like a cloak, fluttering wide enough with every breath he takes that people back off a little. It helps. How kind his shadows can be, no matter their bloodlust and cruelty.)
By the time he gets off of the train, Izuku is more awake than not, but also definitely not at his most present either. He'd still like to go back to bed. He would also very much like to go and learn, today, to get another step closer to becoming a hero, so he forces himself through the crowds that he hates, battering his shadows down when they want to surge up around him. Too-obvious Quirk usage in a crowded area is very much frowned upon, and he's in his UA uniform. He doesn't want to give the school any bad publicity.
Fortunately for Izuku, he escapes most of the people soon enough, turning right outside of the station instead of left, like most people are. As the crowd thins out, just small clusters of one or three people walking up the hill, Izuku lets himself drift a bit more once again.
With this, Izuku walks into class with half-lidded eyes, eyelashes hanging heavy and dark, a mantle of thick, rich shadows draped around him. He looks tired. Weary, wary, worn.
(The class and teacher aren't exactly unused to this sight, or to approximations of it at least. Still, even now, there is a concern to seeing Izuku visibly exhausted, more alertness in his Quirk-creature-demon thing (none of them know quite what to call it even though it surely must just be a Quirk, logically-) than to the teen himself.
But his freckles are a darker bronze than usual, something about the lay of his curls different, the hint of what might be a halo or a ring of thorns, his pupils too wide, too abyssal. He is human, but he is more, too.
Through all of that, however, Izuku is just Izuku. He's far too sweet for them to ever be worried about how he might treat them.)
But he is still more than alert enough that his gaze flickers directly to Aizawa, eyes brighter, more open, and quickly covers the entire room as well, cataloguing who is already present, where they are, if anyone seems notably annoyed or excited or upset today. It is both a very selfish and selfless thing, that attention; it allows him to check for a potential threat, to try and assess who might be a greater risk than usual, who he needs to stay away from. But it's also to try and pick up on somebody who might need help, if he could do something for someone, maybe. This is Izuku, after all.
His attention drags back to the hero as Aizawa nods slightly to him,
"Hey, kid."
"Good morning Aizawa-sensei," he greets, managing to keep the tremble out of his tone, the curl out of his lip, at the honorific. In his head, Eraserhead will always be Eraserhead, not a Sensei. Teachers aren't good. And, well, not all heroes are either, but Eraserhead is, Izuku has no doubt at all, and to conflate him with somebody in a school, to someone with direct power over Izuku's every day life, his future... It's a little scary, until he puts the man back into the context of a hero.
(Sometimes he thinks that his shadows know this, because they tend to trace up his arms, around his ribs, inside and out, winding around and around until he almost feels dizzy with it except it helps, a chill and a steadiness that keeps him grounded, reminds him that he is not alone anymore.
Izuku will be okay. More than that, he will be a hero.)
"Mido-kun, have you done the English homework yet?" Uraraka's call is the perfect distraction for Izuku to half-bow, half-nod to his teacher before hurrying away, already pulling his rucksack off to dump it by his desk before leaning over her desk, shadows thoughtlessly creeping up to push his curls out of his face.
"Do you have the verb conjugations sheet he gave us last week? It'll make it easier if I can highlight the weird ones."
"Hmm, I think so! Lemme just-" She's leaning over to dig through her own bag then, and Izuku takes the chance to wave to Shouji and Tokoyami, both already at their desks in the corner of the room. The waves he gets in return make his shoulders lighten a fraction.
(He's very happy that Uraraka's gratitude over being saved in the Entrance Exam has led her to wanting to befriend him. Izuku isn't sure he would have found it anything like this easy to click into place with his classmates otherwise, probably lingering on the outskirts rather than talking to the five of them that he seems to have fallen in with, pulled in by Uraraka and Dark Shadow. He likes them all, though. They're nice people, good ones. He might even be their friend, he thinks. Hopes.)
They settle into the morning from there. Izuku and his little group spend most of homeroom, other than when Aizawa-sensei is talking, going through homework together. Dark Shadow, static-purring, is draped over Izuku's shoulder, beak nudging sweetly beneath his chin, and it has his own shadows rising to meet them, seeping out of his freckles, up from beneath his collar, petting the Quirk-creature whilst his hands are occupied. It's nice, honestly. Calm, and ever-more familiar with each day that he gets to have this sort of experience.
He very much appreciates the opportunity to have it, now, even though he doesn't always have faith that it will last; even a short time of happiness, like this, feels worth it. Doubly so when his maybe-friends haven't even criticised his power, or how vicious it can be, or the fact that it seems dark and evil and unnatural.
(Izuku knows, intimately and utterly, how wrong his shadows feel to people, because sometimes he wants to crawl out of his own skin to get away from them, sometimes he only remembers the agony in his skull and how claws slide, too easy, beneath his skin, until they press, scraping, against his sternum, his ribs.
He thinks that the taste of his own blood should not be so familiar, so welcome.
And if it feels so weird to him, at times, so unnatural, then logically it must for other people. With how some people shudder away from him now, or the way that they stare at him for too long, wary-eyed and tense-shouldered, clearly unsettled... Izuku would have to be unobservant and stupid to never notice that, not something that growing up Quirkless would ever have allowed him.
So, no, Izuku is fully aware that his shadows make people uncomfortable. Yet his friends, all of his classmates really, are still here, still completely willing to spend time with him regardless of that unnatural edge to his being; it is a fierce sort of reassurance.)
Many, many good things have happened to Izuku since he made a pledge with a creature that he now lives with in every moment. Inevitably, many bad ones have too, he has seen bloodier horrors than he could have ever fathomed, has been haunted day and night by a void he still doesn't understand, perhaps never will, but they are worth it, to Izuku.
Being a hero is everything he could ever have wanted. And to be able to have friends along the way just makes it even better again.
So Izuku will keep his shadows wrapped around him, ultimately comfortable and safe no matter the moments when he feels paralysed by the weight of them, the drag of the claws in between his ribs, because they pledged, he and his shadows, to save people. Izuku will accept nothing less.