Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Are you awake?”

If you had told Izuku two years ago that he, a (once, and once again) quirkless kid would be laying in a hospital bed next to THE All Might, after saving not only Japan, but the entire world from an extremely powerful villain, he would have laughed right in your face. There was no way that he should have been there, in that hospital bed or in that situation. Everything felt wrong, like he was about to wake up from a dream.

“What are the odds that you and I would end up side by side, All Might?” Izuku’s voice was strained, tired, and hoarse from screaming so much, as well as from Blackwhip basically forcing itself out of his mouth earlier that day. His throat burned like he’d just thrown up.

A gaunt looking All Might, covered in bandages from head to toe and sporting a neck brace, mumbled a response. “Tsukauchi arranged it this way.” Izuku nodded to himself, a small oh trailing past his lips. “They’re short on rooms, and it was much easier for them to do it this way. The guards can’t be in multiple places at once.”

”Yeah, that makes—“ Izuku coughed, letting out a pained noise, “—sense.” Tears pricked at the edges of his vision. He was 99% sure that at least one of his ribs was broken. Maybe he didn’t have enough stamina for Recovery Girl to finish the job? Was she even here? He wasn’t exactly in the nurses office, but with the amount of injuries his classmates had suffered, he wouldn’t be surprised if she was here. He swallowed, trying to ignore the subtle tightening in his chest. Izuku shifted his head to look at All Might. “How are you holding up, All Might?” The man in question grunted in response, eyes locked on the ceiling. 

“The doctors said that they’d never had to use quite so many bolts to put someone back together.”

Izuku made a small sound in acknowledgement.

”How are you holding up, Midoriya?” The green haired boy shifted his head back to where it had been before and sighed. How was he doing? He had just fought in a war, and won, but winning was beside the point. Everything hurt, the lights in that room were far too bright, and he felt like he’d just been hit by a bus. 

“I suppose I’m okay. I’m getting some of the feeling back in my arms...” All Might sensed that there was meant to be a but after that sentence.

“Midoriya?”

Izuku just sucked in a breath. So much had happened in just a few hours, just a few days… It was all a lot.

”I…” He attempted to gather his thoughts, focusing his gaze on a crack in the concrete ceiling. “I couldn’t save Tenko. Even after I’d gotten through to him, he remained the leader of the League of Villains until the very end.” All Might let out a sigh.

”Midoriya.”

”Hm?” Izuku didn’t turn his head this time.

”I want you to picture what his face looked like in the end.”

Izuku tried to picture the final moments of their fight, replaying the words Shigaraki had said before turning to dust.

“Make sure you do your damn best.”

“If he didn’t look like that scared, lonely child you described to me before, then you did your job, Izuku. You saved him in every way you could— his soul, anyway.”

Izuku was sure that the boy he’d been a year ago would have burst into tears right then. But he wasn’t that kid anymore, was he? All he could do was purse his lips. He didn’t feel like crying.

“You did your duty to One For All. Don’t beat yourself up too much, kid.” Izuku didn’t speak for a moment, furrowing his brow.

”Yeah, but…” A yell from down the hall and the door to their shared hospital room being shoved open cut him off. He turned his head to look in the direction of all the commotion.

“Izuku,” Mitsuki huffed, holding the door open with white knuckles. She had tears running down her cheeks, painting her pale face with an iridescent shine. “He’s gone.”

—

“What?”

The couple stood in the sterile hospital hallway, side by side, awaiting what was supposed to be good news about their son. Well, they didn’t have to wait anymore. “Say that again.”

”Mr. and Mrs. Bakugou, your son suffered extensive injuries to his right arm, but more importantly, to his heart.”

Mitsuki couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to hear any more. Her brat had to be okay. He always was. There was no way that he had just given up like that. He had been through too much to just be gone. Apparently, her inner turmoil had shown on her face, because her husband pulled her in a little closer.

“Initially, the Pro Hero Edgeshot performed a risky procedure in the field in an attempt to close your son’s internal wounds,” The doctor paused to allow the information to process in the couples heads, “However, his tenacity, his willingness to continue fighting even when he was out of commission, was too much for his body to handle. He succumbed to his injuries before we could get him to the hospital. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

This was when Mitsuki had started to cry... or, more accurately, started to sob, she supposed, because from the wetness already staining her cheeks, apparently tears had already been shed. Masaru cried too, pulling her head into his chest. “He can’t be dead, Masaru, he just can’t.” She hiccuped, staining her husband’s shirt with snot and tears. “He never even got to be a real hero.” 

”But he did, Mitsuki, he did,” Masaru muttered into the blonde woman’s hair, sniffling and hiccuping as well, “He saved so many people.. and… and…” He struggled to find the words to continue. Mitsuki ripped herself away from him, her fists clenched at her sides. 

“He was just a kid, Masaru! He didn’t... he hadn’t even gotten to really live yet!” Mitsuki found herself screaming, and normally, there would be a small voice in her head telling her that she should quiet down, that she might disturb the patients in the other rooms, but right now, she couldn’t bring herself to care. The doctor gave her a sympathetic look, and Masaru just kept silently crying, looking at her in shock. She paused, still heaving with the force of her sobs, but faltering in her verbal outburst for just a moment.

Izuku. How was he going to react to this? Who was going to tell him? He was Katsuki’s best friend. How was he going to live with himself? Hell, how was she going to live with herself? She was the one who let him go to Yuuei, She was the one that let him join in on the fight. She had made the majority of the decisions that led her son to this terrible fate, and that truth shook Mitsuki to her very core. 

“I need…” She began to walk backwards, towards the room that she presumed Izuku was in. “I need to tell Izuku,” She sobbed, choking on air as she rushed towards one of the many doors that lined the hallway. The doctor shouted after her, and Masaru followed suit, so as to not let his wife do something she might regret in her fervor.

She shoved open the door, panting weakly and gripping the door handle with white knuckles. “Izuku, He’s gone.”

—

Looking over towards Mitsuki, Izuku’s heart rate spiked, causing the machine to his right to beep rapidly. What was she talking about? She couldn’t be talking about who he thought she was, because he had been fixed! Edgeshot had helped him, and everything had been okay!

Masaru caught up to his wife rather quickly, putting a hand on her shoulder. He was crying too.

 No. 

The doctor —Yoshida Ryu, as Izuku knew him by— followed shortly after, huffing and holding onto the wall. 

“Mrs. Bakugou, please,” the dinosaur-quirked man pleaded.

No, no no no no no.

”What... What are you talking about, Auntie?” Izuku stammered, the corners of his mouth curling upwards.

“Mrs. Bakugou, you’re going t—”

”Katsuki is dead,” Mitsuki grasped at her chest, bunching her shirt into her hand. “I’m so sorry, Izuku.”

It was like the world had been submerged underwater. Everything All Might, the doctor, or Mitsuki said felt muffled and far away. Dead. Katsuki Bakugou was dead. The distant beeping of his heart monitor did nothing to keep him grounded. How could he be dead? Kacchan had just been fighting alongside him, there was no way that he could have just died! They still had so much to do together!

”No, he was just with me, I swear! I mean, he was a little worse for wear, sure, but he certainly wasn’t dead!” Izuku hadn’t even realized that the beeping had grown more insistent, practically screaming at him that he needed to calm down, or he was going to join Kacchan wherever he might be. Hot tears trickled down his face, fat drops falling down into his ears, soaking his bandages and trailing down onto his pillow. “Please, Dr. Yoshida, tell me it’s not true,” but he was too busy injecting something into his IV to respond. Izuku hadn’t heard what exactly he was injecting into him, but he assumed that maybe it was something to slow his heart rate from the incessant beeping of the monitor and the fear-riddled expressions of those around him. Dr. Yoshida moved away from Izuku’s wrist and took a deep breath, stepping back towards the Bakugous. 

“Your friend had tremendous injuries, Midoriya. It was unlikely that he would make it after the first blow to his heart, and even less so that he would make it after the second. Bakugou’s right arm was shattered, and he had multiple fractures to his ribs and face. That boy lost a lot of blood, and hoping that he would make it even five more minutes was all we could do for him. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Izuku was starting to feel drowsy and disoriented as the medicine kicked in, effectively slowing his heartrate, but making him feel like a stranger in his own body. That just made him cry harder. 

“Young Midoriya…” All Might trailed off, tears of his own starting to fall into the bandages on his face. “I’m so sorry.”

Izuku just couldn’t stop wailing, as much as he wanted to. He didn’t want to cry this hard in front of All Might, nor did he want to cry harder than Kacchan’s own parents! All of this sucked! He didn’t want to live without Kacchan, not now, not ever! Even if he had made mistakes, Izuku never truly wanted him to die! No matter how many times he had wished that something, anything would end the constant barrage of harassment he’d faced at Kacchan’s hands, no matter how many times he’d wished that Kacchan would suffer like he had in his worst moments, this was never the goal. 

In his fervor of snot and tears, Dr. Yoshida had gently taken Mitsuki and Masaru out into the hallway to give them all a moment. Izuku couldn’t believe it. The boy that he’d grown to love as a best friend, as a rival, as everything, would grow no older.

Chapter Text

Izuku couldn’t be more ready to see his friends that night.

The celebration had been planned for weeks in advance to ensure that everyone could come without any problems or obstacles. Izuku had, for the past few days, been anxiously awaiting the moment that he would get to see his classmates again. He rocked on his feet, buzzing with anticipation. His suitcase banged against his knees as he did so, but the excited boy didn’t really notice.

Sure, he saw Uraraka every now and again because of work, but everyone else was a different story. That’s what happens when you grow up, though. You get jobs, have kids, and move on with your life. Izuku didn’t think that any of his friends had kids yet—if they were to ever have them at all—but he couldn’t be sure, since he hadn’t seen the majority of them in a long time.

Other than that, Izuku had everything he could ever ask for! He was able to do the things he loves every single day, and the suit that his class (alongside his predecessor, former principal and former homeroom teacher) had so graciously funded for him allowed him to continue to be a hero, even without One For All.

Well… maybe there was one thing that he didn’t have, but there was no need to dwell on that anymore. It had been eight whole years since Kacchan died. And there was no use in thinking that maybe he should have instead; Izuku couldn’t have died too, because otherwise, Shigaraki would still be out there, and the world probably would’ve exploded by now. Sighing, Izuku tried to shake the thoughts from his mind. There was no use thinking about Kacchan anymore. He wasn’t coming back. The green haired boy ran his fingernails along the indents of his suitcase. Maybe if he hadn’t—

“Hey, Midoriya!”

Izuku looked up to see a small silver car pull up to the curb, with Kirishima waving from the driver’s seat. A grin stretched across the freckled boy’s face, and he shot upwards to return the greeting. 

“Hi Kirishima!! Hold on one moment, I’ll be there in just a sec,” Izuku straightened out his shirt and backpack and trotted over to the passenger side door. He gave another small wave, Kirishima shot him a thumbs up, and Izuku gently clicked open the door, slipped inside, and settled himself into the pleather seat.

“Good evening, Midoriya! Still sporting your backpack, I see?” Iida’s hand popped out from between the two seats. Izuku flinched slightly, but quickly calmed once he realized who had spoken. 

 “Oh, hi Iida. And yeah, I guess! It hasn’t failed me before, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to keep it on hand.” He clicked his seatbelt into place and gently dropped his backpack and suitcase between his feet. “Also, Iida,” He turned to look at Iida, who was squished into the back of the car. “Why are you in the back seat? I totally don’t mind sitting there, and you look really cramped, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to take the worst seat just to make me comfortable at the cost of your own comfort, and—“

“Woah, Midoriya! Chill your roll!” Kirishima chuckled, “I guess some things really never change, huh.” Izuku turned to look at him, and the red haired boy placed a gentle hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Iida wanted to sit back there! Super chivalrous, right?!” Kirishima reached a fist backwards towards Iida, and he hesitantly tapped it with his own. Izuku just sort of sat there, watching the interaction unfold. Kirishima is just on a roll with interrupting me tonight, isn’t he?

“Midoriya, there’s no need to worry! Sure, I wanted to ensure that you were as comfortable as possible, but do not think for one second that I chose this seat knowing it would be at my own discomfort. Kirishima’s car is big enough for me to sit back here just fine, I can assure you.” Izuku flushed a pale red and rubbed the back of his neck, chuckling nervously.

“If you say so, Iida!” After a moment, he shifted himself to face the front, and Kirishima placed a hand on the gear shift to start reversing out of the lot. Izuku let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and deflated into the seat as they started to back out. Kirishima shot him a mildly concerned look from his peripheral vision.

“Hey, dude, you feeling alright? You seem jumpy.” Kirishima paused, pursed his lips and looked into his rearview camera. “More than I’m used to, anyway.” Izuku took note of his word choice. It really had been too long. Izuku took a long pause, which caused Kirishima to glance at him again.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” 

Kirishima made a face and turned the steering wheel to navigate onto the main road. “Dude, you suck at lying. Clearly something is off with you!” He laughed and clicked a few buttons to set the route on his sat nav.

”Midoriya, you don’t need to lie to us anymore,” Iida added.

Anymore. 

Izuku sighed and looked out at the road in front of them. He had been sixteen when he went off on his own; were his friends really still worried about that? Sure, it was nice that they cared, but seriously, it was concerning that they thought he could still be in that headspace. Was he still in that headspace? Izuku put a hand on his chin, one of his fingers resting on his lips. It was hard to tell anymore. Everything had gone by so fast; maybe he just hadn’t realized that he’s slipped back into old habits? It was clearly showing on his face or in his demeanor, since Kirishima had noticed, so maybe something was wrong, and he had just been so consumed by everything with teaching and hero work that he himself hadn’t noticed?

“Midoriya, you’re muttering.”

“Sorry!! I guess I’m just a little sad tonight; it’s no big deal.” He turned to look at Kirishima, whose face had mellowed out into a more pensive expression.

“It’s about Bakugou, isn’t it?” The atmosphere in the car shifted, and that small pause left the car in silence for much longer than Kirishima had originally intended. “We miss him too, Midoriya. We all do.” Izuku paled.

“I was trying not to mention him…” He muttered, sighing dejectedly. “Kacchan would have loved this. The whole reunion, I mean.”

“Not without complaining about it first,” Iida interjected, which elicited a laugh from Kirishima and a gasp from Izuku. “He would have been complaining the whole ride here! Don’t tell me that you think he wouldn’t?!”

“Iida!!” Izuku chided, and Kirishima just kept laughing. 

“He totally would have complained about Izuku getting the front seat instead of him and insisted that he drive, claiming something about ‘I don’t plan on drinking, Shitty Hair, so it makes sense that I drive instead of you, idiot!!’ JUST so he had the better spot!” Kirishima attemped his best Bakugou impression, and Izuku snorted. His chest tightened as he formed his next thought.

“I guess we wouldn’t know, though, since he never actually drank…” Izuku smiled somberly, and he tried to ignore the very obvious twist in his gut. 

For a moment, all the group could hear was the sound of the tires hitting the pavement. Someone needed to change the subject, or Izuku was going to blow chunks all over Kirishima’s brand new sedan. The red haired boy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

”Hey, Midoriya, I hear you’re doing quirk training with your students right now! Any of them match my style?” Izuku lit up almost instantly and the green in his gills receded little by little.

“Oh, are you after sidekicks, Kirishima?” 

“Yeah, I’ve just started my solo career!” The boy shot a smile at his friend in the passenger seat. “Fat and Amajiki are still helping me out, though, and I know a lot of our friends have a head start on me, but I figured that it was better late than never!” After a small tap from Iida, Kirishima turned to look at the road again with a curt apology. “To quote Fat: ‘There are things you only find out when you’re looking after people!’”

“Yeah, all of our friends are so cool! Yaoyorozu and Iida are truly in a league of their own!” Izuku beamed and looked back at Iida. “You’re leading your brother’s agency now, right Iida?”

He nodded and smiled. “Mm. It’s my duty as his brother, and as an Iida, to continue it, even if he can’t do all the things he used to do.” Izuku nodded and opened his mouth to speak when their conversation was interrupted by a shout from outside. The car rolled to a stop. Kirishima grinned and pressed the button to roll down the window.

“Hey, Ashido! What’s up?” The pink haired girl smiled and waved to everyone in the car. 

“Hi, Midoriya!! Hi Iida!!” Izuku gave a wave, and Iida followed suit in his own rigid way. She turned to face Kirishima. “The girls wanted me to let you know that we’re all parked—” She pointed off to the right towards a set of spots closest to the building, “—over there. We had to reserve parking since there are so many of us here, and Jiro offered to pay so those of us carpooling didn’t have to park somewhere else and walk all the way over.” Kirishima put up a thumbs up and grinned his signature sharp-toothed grin. 

“Oh, that’s sick! Thanks for letting me know, Ashido; you’re a real one!” She stuck her tongue out and retreated back over to the entrance of the building. She joined the group of girls by a sign that read the restaurant’s weekly special. Kirishima accelerated the car just enough to slide into one of the parking spots Ashido had pointed to.

“I think you’re doing great, Iida.” Izuku started to gather his things. Izuku paused when Kirishima started laughing. A heat flushed his face. “You too, of course, Kirishima!” Izuku stammered, almost dropping his suitcase right onto his feet. “I think everyone is doing amazing!”

"Yeah, yeah, I got it, Midoriya. Don’t worry about it; I know what you meant. Let’s just head in.” 

—

“… Let’s celebrate the fact that Todoroki Shouto, a former Yuuei student and an essential part of class 1-A, has risen to second place on the hero billboard charts!!” 

Everyone raised a glass in a toast, shouting and laughing in semi-unison. Kirishima was the only one who stood up, his drink sloshing over the side as he cheered. Todoroki stood at the entrance, holding up a glass of his own and a present from one of his classmates. Kaminari bounced beside him, grinning widely. 

“Sorry for making you all come here tonight.”

Kaminari immediately cut into Todoroki’s self deprecating comment and put a hand on his shoulder to hopefully reassure him. “Hey, don’t worry about it! This was just an excuse for all of us to get together!”

Todoroki paused and deflated slightly. “Oh, got it.” 

Kaminari shouted and waved his hands back and forth. “Oh my god, I was joking!! Of course we want to celebrate you!!”

Sero looked over, his brows furrowed. “Look what number forty four is saying to the number two. Stop that!!” Kaminari slunk over to his friend and shot Shouto a rushed apology. He kneeled down to sit on the pillow beside Sero with a sheepish look on his face. The tape-armed hero smacked him upside the head playfully, and Kaminari laughed shyly, rubbing the back of his neck. Izuku took a swig of his drink and smiled to himself as the rest of his classmates start getting into the thicket of hero rankings amongst themselves. Todoroki settled in next to Izuku and noted the green-haired boy’s forlorn expression.

“Midoriya.” 

Izuku turned to look and took another sip of his drink. “Huh? What’s up?”

“Are you okay? You seem upset.” Izuku immediately put his glass down and raised his hands, glowing red like an LED lightbulb. 

“Oh, it’s nothing, Todoroki; don’t worry about it!” Todoroki subtly raised an eyebrow, and Izuku’s expression softened. “Please?”

After a moment of silence, Todoroki nodded and dropped the subject. Izuku briefly caught a fragment of the conversation happening amongst Tokoyami and a few other of his friends, and figured it couldn’t hurt to listen in.

“…heroes…are slowly headed towards extinction.” Tokoyami paused and looked down. Izuku made note of his new hairdo—How did it get so shaggy?— “Also, I hate that advertising company… What do you mean by ‘making you even more fabulous’? I’m darkness itself.” Tokoyami shook mildly from how hard he was clutching his drink, and Izuku chuckled. Ojiro made a comment about the drinks being alcohol free.

 “Well, he’s right.” Todoroki agreed with Tokoyami’s statement and took a sip of his drink.

“Yeah,” Izuku affrimed alongside Todoroki and leaned back on one of his hands. Todoroki didn’t speak for a moment, seemingly lost in thought, or simply contemplating his next words.

”Recently, a lot of people keep saying this to me.” 

Mina immediately looked over at Todoroki, shot upwards, and started hitting her glass with a chopstick. 

“Guys!! Todoroki is gonna give a speech, shut up!!”

Iida shot up at well to chide her. “That is not very nice, Ashido!” She made a face at him and stuck out her tongue, leaning forward.

Everyone (minus Kaminari, who got hit by Shinsou and eventually shut up after realizing what was happening.) quieted, and Todoroki, mildly stunned as he was, continued.

”They say, ‘You fought against a cruel fate… and you fulfilled your duty.’ I stumbled and hesitated a lot along the way, but I wholly believe that I made the right choices.”

He paused, his eyes glazed over in thought. “Still… how can I put it? All this stuff about duty, destiny… Even if we are part of a much bigger story, I feel like wanting to keep fighting and getting to where I am now were things that were bound to happen.”

Everyone nodded along in acknowledgement. “That’s why I’ve decided to take bowl and chopstick making classes in Ishikawa.”

Izuku and Kirishima gaped and shouted their “What?!”’s in unison. The class started their usual uproar of excitement and congratulations. 

“I think soba would taste even better if I ate it using things I’ve made myself.” 

Izuku sat there shocked, and Kirishima shot upwards (again), and slammed his hands down on the table.

“That’s awesome, Todoroki! What style are you going to do?”

“If it’s in Ishikawa, it must be the Wajima style,” Izuku added and took another sip of his drink.

“I’m going to be learning both Wajima and Yamanaka. It’s a private class.” Todoroki took a small pause, and the class died down a bit, sensing that there might be more to Todoroki’s announcement. “While praying at Touya’s altar, I realized something.” Izuku, along with the rest of his class, now waited in eager semi-silence. “I’ve always enjoyed eating. I realized that wanting to become a hero isn’t all I am.”

A moment of pause followed; everyone congratulates their half-and-half friend, and soon after, people continued their previous conversations. Kirishima made another comment- something about free time, Izuku thought. He wasn’t really paying attention anymore, and as the conversation shifted to former classmates in relationships, he found himself lost in thought.

His gaze moved to the empty seat to his left, and his gut twisted uncomfortably. There was  a small white chrysanthemum in between the napkin and utensils set out for whoever was meant to be sitting there. Whoever wasn’t sitting there. He wondered who might’ve put the flower there, because it certainly wasn’t him. At least someone was thinking of him.

Izuku missed him. He sighed, and tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as he ran his fingers through the cream colored petals. It wasn’t fair to his friends that he was being sad on someone else’s big day. He needed to get over this.

Shouto glanced over at his freckled friend and noted his distress. He didn’t move to comfort him. He’d told him to not worry, and Shouto wasn’t one to break a promise.

Izuku’s thoughts were interrupted by the familiar shrill beep that exploded from everyone’s devices. He quickly pulled out his phone, as did all of his friends, to read the expected request for hero intervention.

“Law enforcement is currently trying to disarm a low-level criminal down on Gareki Street, in the second south district! The perpetrator hasn’t caused any damage yet, but backup is needed in case of escalation!” 

“And that’s why we can’t drink,” Sero quipped as everyone rushed to retrieve their hero suits from their respective cases. 

“No time to fret now,” Izuku mumbled, shoving his phone back in his pocket and grabbing his suitcase from under the table. He could come back for his backpack later.

The class quickly shoved on their respective hero suits and raced out to the scene, buzzing with energy. But all Izuku could think about was the gaping hole in their formation where Kacchan would be.

Chapter Text

By the time Izuku and his classmates arrived at the scene, the perpetrator was in the process of being detained. Izuku furrowed his brow and walked over to where Iida was disrobing from his hero suit. He lightly tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

“Iida, do we have any information on what was up with this guy?” Izuku tilted his head to the side. Iida gave a negative shake of his head.

“I’m afraid that I don’t know. One could assume the officers have this information, and I have no doubt that they’re willing to catch you up to speed.” Izuku made a small noise in acknowledgement.

“Alright, thank you, Iida!” Iida nodded to him as he trotted off towards Tsukauchi, who was talking to Sansa about the charges against the guy they were detaining. The chaos became increasingly apparent to Izuku as he got closer.

A man with crazy white hair was screaming profanities and pleas laced with feigned innocence as two officers fight to get him in Tartarus-level cuffs. Izuku’s heart skipped a beat as he inched closer. The report would have mentioned a high danger level if the officers had known about it, so what the heck happened before we arrived on the scene?

“No, no, no, no, NO!! This isn’t how it was supposed to go; you don’t understand! Please, let me go, I swear, I’ll be good!” Now that he was a few steps closer, Izuku was quickly realizing that the man was probably only a few years older than him. When the officers continue to read the man his rights, not paying any mind to his pleas, he began to curse them out. Izuku grimaced. 

Tsukauchi looked up from his notepad and waved Izuku over subtly. Izuku moved a little faster, jogging past the commotion. 

“Deku, I was just about to look for you.” Tsukauchi smiled softly, very clearly trying to disregard the unrest happening to his left. Sansa noticed Izuku’s arrival, nodded to the hero, and slunk off to help out the other officers. Izuku gave the tired detective a concerned look, and Tsukauchi shook his head. “They’ll be fine; I trust that they’ll call one of you heroes over if they need any help. Now, I wanted to tell you about something we found.”

Izuku nodded. “The guy has several warrants out for his arrest. He’s got multiple public nuisance charges, several resisting arrest charges, assault on an officer, and a menagerie of other things, plus the ones he earned tonight.” Izuku’s expression tightened, and Tsukauchi nodded. “Whenever a report is filed with his description, he’s always around this area, like there’s something here that he wants. It’s almost like he has a goal. Maybe he’s in some sort of group, or maybe he’s like Stain or Ending, who knows?”

Izuku sucked in a breath at the mention of Stain. It’d been a while since he’d heard that name. Izuku tried his best to relax his shoulders and let out a strained breath. “Thank you, Tsukauchi. Do we know his quirk yet? There’s a possibility that he’s one of the Stain Idealists, and he’s got a blood quirk? Or maybe he’s just like Ending, as you mentioned before, and he’s driven by experience, not by similarity?” Izuku looked off to the side and muttered about possible motives and potential dangers of not having him in cuffs right now. 

Tsukauchi stared at him for a moment, and at the realization that he was muttering, Izuku whispered an apology. The detective sighed.

“We don’t have any information on his quirk because he won’t give us any correct credentials. Even better, every name he’s given us belongs to someone deceased.” Tsukauchi pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s such a nightmare.” Izuku paled. Something felt very wrong about all of this.

—

Ochaco looked over from where she was packing up her hero suit. Just hearing the word "deceased" set her nerves on fire. She glanced over at Izuku and noted his concerned expression, and at Tsukauchi, who looked like he might just throttle someone if he weren’t so tired. She pursed her lips as she thought, and ultimately decided to file the information she had away and not insert herself just yet. For now, Ochaco was content with minding her own business… to an extent. She’d probe Deku for information later. For now, she had a bed with her name on it to get to.

—

Izuku noted the absence of the rest of his class, and Uraraka walking away as he discarded his hero suit into its case. He frowned to himself. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Todoroki. 

Tsukauchi wrapped up his final thought—something about the officers almost detaining the villain—and Izuku said his goodbyes. As he retreated, he glanced over to the villain in question. The officers had pulled up a larger vehicle to contain him in and were still trying to get the guy in cuffs. He was putting up a damn good fight, biting and clawing and scratching, shouting something about revenge. 

Should I intervene? Tsukauchi told me it was okay, so maybe it’s okay if I just head home… Izuku continued to walk, deciding to check his phone. A text from Kirishima sat unread on his lock screen.

“Taking Iida, Kaminari, and Sero home, Mina and Todoroki split the bill. Let me know if you need me to come back for you!”

Izuku smiled as he read the message. Kirishima is always so thoughtful. I’m glad that I have him as a friend. He slipped his phone back in his pocket, and something cold grasped his neck.

“Found you.”

Izuku froze, and mouth opened to speak, but no words came out. A hand was gripping his neck. It felt like someone had just dumped a bucket of freezing cold water down his back. The frigid sensation spread all the way down his neck into his fingers, and momentarily, Izuku wondered if he’d been injected with something. Izuku glanced through the corner of his eye at the assailant. Snot and thick tears dripped down the man’s face, and his thick white hair immediately raised serious alarm bells in Izuku’s head. 

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!!

“What do you mean, ‘found you’?” Izuku whispered as the hand was ripped away from his skin. One would assume that the crook would dig his nails into Izuku’s neck, but no, he barely put up a fight. Izuku wasn’t sure which scared him more: the fact that the man grabbed him in the first place, or the fact that when he had, he’d stopped being combative altogether. A burlier officer, presumably new to the scene, pinned the man down with no trouble at all. They finally restrained him with the thick metal cuffs that covered his entire hand and placed him—with less force than the man deserved—into the van. Izuku rubbed at his neck. The man hadn’t stopped looking at him, with a snotty, demented smile that momentarily made him think of Toga.

Tsukauchi immediately rushed over, and Izuku continued to look on at the van as it drove away. “Deku, what in the hell just happened?” Izuku stayed quiet and attempted to ignore the pooling dread in his stomach. When Tsukauchi received no response, he continued with his questions. “Did he just… Did he just grab you?” The hero nodded, the icy feeling slowly inching away from his fingertips. Tsukauchi, having noticed Izuku’s very apparent concern, tried his best to reassure him. “It was probably nothing, but you should probably come down to the station, just in case he had anything potentially dangerous on his hands.” Izuku nodded.

“I didn’t feel any pricks, so I don’t think it was anything injectable, if it’s anything at all.” He raised his hand from the spot where the man had grabbed him so Tsukauchi could examine it. “He was probably just looking for anyone in the area to rouse…” Tsukauchi gave him a somber look, which immediately revsered all of the comfort that he’d tried to give moments before. Izuku looked like he might actually throw up right then. The words didn’t even need to be spoken for Izuku to know what the detective might’ve be thinking.

“It would explain why he’s so consistent… Your office isn’t too far from here, is it?” Tsukauchi’s question wasn’t really a question. He knew the answer already, Izuku presumed.

“It’s a few blocks down.” The detective gave a sad nod to that answer and sighed deeply.

“How about you come down to the station tomorrow, unless something changes? I bet it’s been a long night for you, and from the information we have, it doesn’t seem like anything that could nip us in the butt.” 

Izuku nodded. ”That sounds good.“

 “Alright, stay safe, Midoriya. Call down if something happens.”

“Yeah, I will. Thank you, Tsukauchi, and I’m sorry that we didn’t get down here sooner. I hope he didn’t give you guys too much trouble.” Izuku started to rub his neck again, and Tsukauchi let a small, tired chuckle slip past his lips.

“Go home, Midoriya.” Izuku smiled and waved at Tsukauchi as he walked away. The green-haired boy started on his way back to the restaurant (so he could grab his backpack; he really hoped that they’d let him in, if they were even still open.) 

The walk back to the restaurant was weirdly quiet, save for the occasional whistle of the breeze. The only people out at this hour were at bars or restaurants with their friends, so the streets were essentially deserted. The roads were lit only by the street lamps lining the sidewalk, and Izuku couldn’t help but feel a little creeped out as he approached the building. The whole experience with that villain stuck in his mind. The moment where his hand had grabbed Izuku replayed in his mind over and over and over and over again. He really wished that he knew what the guy’s quirk was.

Izuku opened the door (only after having thoroughly examined the state of the place, just to be sure that he wasn’t breaking and entering). He figured it was safe to go in because of the light that still illuminated the room from when Class 1-A had dashed out. He carefully walked to where he, Todoroki, and Kirishima had sat, and extracted his bag from under the table. He rummaged through it to make sure nothing was out of place or gone. He made sure to leave the owners a big tip to account for their sudden disappearance. They’d already cleaned up after him and his friends, which was extremely kind, so Izuku thought it was the least he could do.

Leaving the building, Izuku pushed his backpack farther up on his shoulders with his free hand. The other hand held his suitcase. Izuku still had a few streets to go down in order to get to his apartment, so he figured he should get a move on. He tried to ignore the fact that as he started to walk away from the building, he swore he saw a pair of red-colored eyes watching him go.

Chapter Text

“Oh. Right.” 

The younger boy put a hand on his head, smiling nervously. “So… uh… Thinking back to when we first met. I was a punk going through some stuff.” He reached his hand into his pocket and looked off to the side. “I guess I’ve lost my chance to ask.”

Katsuki held out a little All Might trading card, pristine, but clearly well loved from how delicately he’s packaged it. His free hand came up to grasp the side of his neck. 

“Man, I wanted your autograph so bad.”

—

The continuous clinking of his spoon against his coffee mug acted as a metronome for Naomasa’s racing thoughts. The green haired boy on the other side of the table was having a quiet conversation with Aizawa about the nature of the events that transpired the previous night, and Naomasa was attempting to gather his thoughts on the matter before he had to talk to the two of them about it. He stopped stirring his drink and sat down, placing his coffee mug on a coaster to his right. 

Everything about this felt wrong. There was absolutely no reason for that guy to choose Midoriya, of all people, to harass. Or maybe there was, and that would be yet another unpleasant revelation for the detective to discover. He reached down into one of the drawers in his desk, pulled out a manila file, and placed it in front of him. 

Midoriya glanced over, and, after Naomasa waved them down, the two men sat down in their respective seats.

“Alright. Midoriya and Aizawa, thank you for coming down to the station. I appreciate your cooperation in this case thus far, Aizawa, and your willingness to contribute, Midoriya.” Aizawa scrunched his face just slightly and sighed.

“Of course I’m willing to help. It would be idiotic if I didn’t, given the case might be related to the one I’m working on now.” The detective laughed quietly at the short haired man—he wasn’t sure how he felt about his new haircut, though he couldn’t dispute that it made the man look wiser, in a way—and gave him a small smile. Midoriya seemed more jittery than usual, his gaze darting from thing to thing as if he was hearing a noise and was attempting to pinpoint where it was coming from. Naomasa had known the hero to have a generally anxious demeanor on the regular, so he didn’t register this behavior as unusual.

“So,” Aizawa began, “what information do we have on this guy?”

Naomasa sighed, flipping open the manila folder. “We have little to nothing aside from appearance and past charges. This is the first time we’ve successfully gotten him into the station.” He turns the papers to face the two other men and pushes the file towards them. 

The first page had a mugshot of the perpetrator (taken as soon as he’d been apprehended the night before). Snot was crusted to his face, tear streaks still marring his cheeks. It’d made Naomasa shudder the first time he’d seen it, because, despite all of this, the guy is still smiling. A smug, awfully delighted smile that almost makes it seem like he’s proud of himself. Aizawa had a grimace momentarily ghost his lips, and Midoriya paled. The information on the page was sparse, limited to his past crimes, his appearance, and locations law enforcement has attempted to detain him in the past (to no avail). 

“All of our attempts at arrest have occurred in the same area: streets or other public spaces near Midoriya’s office. I think that maybe he was aiming to attract him to the scene, given that Midoriya is likely to be there during the days he isn’t teaching or out collecting data for his hero suit. It’s possible that the guy’s motive is based around him, similar to, as I mentioned last night, a villain from his high school years named Ending.”

The green haired teacher’s eyes brightened just slightly, his face still riddled with nerves. “Yeah, after really thinking about it last night, I think that might be the case. Ending had the same location-situation going on for a while in hopes of getting Endeavor to…well, kill him. And when the guy grabbed my neck—"Midoriya subconsciously placed his hand where the man had grabbed him"—he said, 'Found you.' So it’s very likely that—" Aizawa swung his head to look at Midoriya, jaw clenched and eyes wide. Midoriya paused, seemingly expecting the lecture to come.

“Problem child, I swear to god if you didn’t tell Tsukauchi this when it happened, I’m going to make you assist Hizashi’s class on Monday.” 

Midoriya flushed dark red, and his eyes widened. He flailed his hands around and stammered out an answer. “I didn’t even think about it at the time! Everything was going by so fast, and I didn’t even really register the significance of it until after Tsukauchi stepped in!” Midoriya slowly deflated, still sweating, still flustered, but not waving his hands around so much. He exhaled heavily, and leaned his head downward. “And please don’t make me help Present Mic, Mr. Aizawa, you know how much I struggled in English…” Aizawa glared at him, but it held no real malice. In fact, it was more likely because of the name Midoriya used for him than the lapse in judgement. Naomasa sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and tapped his red pen (which he’d grabbed a few moments ago from his desk drawer) on the table a few times.

“Midoriya. I will say that I don’t blame you for not mentioning it, but it is still very important information to have.” Naomasa wrote down the new info on a notepad off to the side. “Now we know he was after you. That makes the interrogation easier on my end.” Midoriya nodded sullenly and ran a finger over his neck again. The boy glanced to the side, then back to the floor. “Midoriya, how have you been feeling? Anything out of the ordinary?” The boy shook his head and slowly returned to his previous position. He knew this wasn’t just a routine check-in. It was about the villain.

“When he initially grabbed me, it was really cold—” He looked to the side and then back, and Naomasa furrowed his brow. “—like someone had poured cold water down my back? It’s hard to describe. I feel fine right now, and last night I felt a little off, but I think that’s a given when you’ve experienced something like that.” The back door to the station opened, and Midoriya flinched slightly at the noise. 

“Tsukauchi! Sorry I’m late; I got caught in traffic.” Yagi stepped in, carrying a small white grocery bag. 

“No worries, Yagi. We were just talking about the incident between the suspect and Midoriya.” The gaunt looking man nodded, walked over, and held up the bag. 

“I brought sticky buns.” Aizawa rolled his eyes. Midoriya smiled, but his grin didn’t quite reach his eyes. Naomasa nodded towards the man, and Yagi took his seat.

“Thank you, All Might!” Yagi’s expression dulled just a bit as he settled. The bag is placed on an empty chair beside him.

“You can call me Toshinori, Young Midoriya. You shouldn’t feel compelled to refer to me so formally after everything that has happened between us.” The younger man’s face pinched, and he muttered an apology. Naomasa chuckled and shook his head.

“Well, now that everyone is here, we can officially get into this.”

—

The overhead light in the interrogation room flickered on and off, similar to what you would see in a horror movie. The actual interrogation hadn’t even started, and yet, it’s almost as if you could hear everyone’s heartbeats echoing off the walls.

Toshinori hated interrogations. As much of a public figure as he was in his prime, the man was never truly into things like interviews in the way that someone such as Nemuri or Mt. Lady could be. This whole thing, given the purpose of it in this scenario was quite literally to be intrusive, gave him the creepy-crawlies. Especially since he was a man known to keep secrets. 

Midoriya tapped his foot, occasionally turning around as if he’d been frightened by an unknown noise. Toshinori had noticed his jittery behavior while they discussed possibilities for the villain’s quirk, and though he wasn’t sure why his successor was acting this way, he assumed it couldn’t be good. He scooted over to the boy and tapped him on the shoulder. Midoriya jumped.

“Hey, hey, it’s just me. Are you feeling okay? You seem… jumpy. More than usual, anyway.” Aizawa shot them a glare from across the small room, but Toshinori ignored it. Midoriya smiled shakily, a bead of sweat rolling down the boy’s neck not going unnoticed by the blonde man.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just a bit shaken up, I guess. It’s been a rough couple of days.” His successor rubbed his neck, which was where Toshinori had heard the villain had grabbed him. Concerning, at the least. “I think I’m just tired. It’ll wear off in a day or two… The nerves, I mean.” Izuku stammered out another explanation before Toshinori could respond to his previous one. The gaunt man sighed, and the interrogation room door on the other side of the two-way mirror (where the criminal and Tsukauchi will be) opened, almost as if it was on cue.

“Young Midoriya… I can’t say I trust that you’re telling the full truth, but I hope you know that you can talk to me if you need to.” Midoriya nodded. The boy’s smile faded as he looked on at the event unfolding behind the glass.

The villain walked in (accompanied by two officers), cuffed and dressed in grey. His wild white hair was even less tamed than the night before, but his face was cleaner. The officers placed the man in his respective chair and left. Not long after, Tsukauchi sat down in the chair opposite to him. The detective spared a glance towards the mirror, then focused all of his attention on the criminal in front of him. Aizawa visibly tensed.

“Do you know why you’re here?” 

The man didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes trained directly on Tsukauchi, a deadpan, chillingly stoic expression on his face. Toshinori swore he felt a chill run down his spine, and goosebumps began to form on his arms.

“You have multiple warrants out for your arrest, the majority of them being on accounts of resisting arrest, public nuisance, and assault on law enforcement.” Tsukauchi leaned forward in his chair and placed his elbows on the table. “Do you claim to know about any of these charges?”

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Midoriya’s foot created a sharp sound on the concrete floor, and the man stayed silent still. Tsukauchi’s expression twisted subtly. 

"Why did you attack the One For All Hero: Deku? Do you have business with him, or did you just pick the first person you saw to grab?”

A grin spread on the criminal’s face, and he laughed. Tears laced his waterline with the sheer force of his joy, and the sight made Toshinori feel sick to his stomach. Aizawa crossed his arms, and Midoriya looked as if he may pass out. 

The man ceased his fit of laughter. Tears continued to stream down his face, and his demeanor dulled to a crazed kind of focus. The former symbol of peace couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away.

“He needed to understand what it means to really suffer. To hear things that no one else can hear, to see the real monsters—“The man paused; for whatever reason, Toshinori was unaware”—of our society, and to not only see them but also be able to get up close and personal with them.”

The detective furrowed his brow, and his lips thinned. He didn’t speak for a moment, presumably to gather his thoughts. Toshinori didn’t have any clue what any of that could mean, so he could only assume that Tsukauchi doesn’t either.

”What is your quirk, if you’d be willing to tell me?”

Silence. And then, ever so slightly, the man cracked another smile. A sinister, Toga-esque smile that cut through the tense atmosphere like a hot knife through butter.

”I’m quirkless.”

—

The door creaked open with a prolonged squeak, and Naomasa was greeted by a very grim looking Aizawa, a concerned Yagi, and an out-of-it, paranoid Midoriya. Naomasa was getting increasingly concerned about the younger boy, but he wouldn’t mention it to him directly. He’d probably end up reaching out to one of his friends; maybe even talk to Yagi or Aizawa about it later.

“So. Was he telling the truth?” Naomasa snapped out of his haze, blinked a few times, and nodded to Aizawa’s question. Running a hand down his face, Naomasa gave an exasperated sigh and leaned against the wall beside the door.

”As soon as I asked him about Midoriya, he spilled everything. I had a feeling that might happen, but still…” The corners of Naomasa’s eyes cinched in his grimace. “We have a full name for him now, Aizawa. Kodama Seihachi. That’s… That’s not something these kinds of people tend to just give out. It’s clear that something changed during that interrogation; I just… I just don’t know what.” Yagi gave him an apologetic look. 

“I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon enough. In all the years that I’ve known you, Tsukauchi, you’ve never outright failed to close a case.” The tired man nodded, crossing his arms. Aizawa huffed and jerked a thumb towards the door. 

“If that’s all…” He almost seemed apologetic in his mannerisms now. “I have to patrol tonight, and Hizashi wants me back in time to have dinner before I go.” Midoriya gave a curt nod and shot the group a quick, very fake smile. 

“Yeah, I have to… uh… go grade papers. Mhm, yup! My class had an exam before break, and I have yet to grade them. Silly me!” Yagi tightened his lips, and Aizawa shot a glare at the boy's blatant lie. Naomasa figured it was better to assume that the boy had his reasons for lying rather than to keep him from whatever he actually needed to go do.

“Okay, thank you for coming down today. I apologize that it took so long, and I hope you all have a good night.” He turned to look specifically at Midoriya. “Let me know if anything changes.” He turned back to address the whole group. “Take care, you three.” Naomasa waved to the lot of them and walked off into the station, and the man just barely made out the sound of the front door opening and closing hurriedly as who he could only assume was Midoriya rushed out.

 Yeah. He was going to have to keep tabs on that, wasn’t he.

Chapter Text

Izuku wasn’t sure how to tell his friends that he was hearing voices. I mean, I should tell them, shouldn’t I? 

It’s not like they were telling him anything bad, per se—Well, they weren’t really telling him anything at all. Izuku was catching static-y, underwater-ish snippets of conversations among voices with no bodies to accommodate them. He was hearing clipped, barely discernible pieces of a woman’s grocery list for the day; he was hearing muffled conversation about bacon and eggs being so kindly cooked for a hung-over boyfriend, and he was hearing fuzzy quips about a family of five’s pizza order for movie night. They were going to watch “Alien” and pretend it was the first time they’d seen it, from what he’d gathered.

As he walked into the sakura tree lined clearing, Izuku put his hands into his pockets. It was kind of sweet; he couldn’t deny that much. But the constant disembodied chatter had made it awfully hard for the boy to focus during his very important, possibly life-altering police station rendezvous. He was ninety-nine percent sure that Detective Tsukauchi had noticed something was off, and if he had noticed, that meant Mr. Aizawa had probably noticed, which meant All Might had probably noticed, and oh, he was getting way ahead of himself.

It was mid-afternoon by the time Izuku had left the station. The breeze was a welcome respite from the summer heat that was creeping into Musutafu, and given that he and his class were on spring break, the man had plenty of time to enjoy it. When he wasn’t grading work from before break or doing hero work, that was. 

In spite of the nice weather, though, Izuku still had to figure out why he was hallucinating before anyone got too worried. (Including himself, for once.) Though it wasn’t like anyone knew other than him…He paused in front of the infamous All Might statue and sucked in a deep breath.

”I could just be tired; maybe I’ve been overworking myself? Or maybe I ate something funny? If it were a drug that the villain had given me, then I’d probably feel much worse, like a bad high? Though I’ve never tried that kind of thing before,  so I don’t really know that much about it…and since that guy was a criminal, I wouldn’t put it past him to have been in possession of something with hallucinogenic properties…”

Izuku, after his muttering session had concluded, figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and focus on the muddied conversations that he was hearing in hopes of getting his answer. His heartbeat quickened. He probably looked a bit crazy to any onlookers, just standing there mumbling things about hallucinogenics to himself. Did he really care, though? 

Fuck. He needed to focus. 

He ceased his mumblings and sat down on the edge of the statue. Maybe if I close my eyes, then I can figure out where they’re coming from? He placed a hand over his mouth and leaned forward, his elbows landing gently on his knees. 

"Yeah… That could work…?" He muttered into his hand and shut his eyes. What would Jiro do? He figured that she would try to tune out any outside noise first, then maybe she would try to hone in on one thing in particular? Yeah, that sounded right. He totally wasn’t freaking out. Everything was fine. Yup. He took a deep breath in hopes of slowing his ever quickening train of thought.

Here goes. 

He attempted to tune out the whistle of the breeze against nearby trees and zoomed in on a static-y conversation that was supposedly happening everywhere (and nowhere) at once. It was like a fuzzy radio station that never got quite enough signal to make the music discernible, but you could still feel the bass in the speakers of your car. He furrowed his brow. 

What are you saying?

As he focused harder and harder, the voice became just barely discernible. The voice was coming from a woman; young, from the sound of it. 

“uch—nice—day—I—nk—ay—be—ll—an—de—oun—uh—aza—r—a—isle.”

…

Okay, so that wasn’t working. 

No matter how hard the teacher tried, he just couldn’t get the voice to string together a full, uninterrupted sentence. The conversations had been clearer when he wasn’t paying attention, which was…mildly frustrating, to say the least. Izuku didn’t really have a plan B, and his plan A was kind of a shot in the dark in the first place, so… he was kind of lost from there. What sane person even tries to discern their auditory hallucinations for god's sake? Most people just descend into madness… at least, that’s what Izuku had picked up from all the scary movies he’d consumed over the years. He didn’t really want to descend into madness, believe it or not. So he needed to think of a better solution. 

He could message Tsukauchi…though that would likely put a wrench in the case… But it could also be really good information! But the guy had said he was quirkless, and according to a later email from the detective, the quirk registry database had affirmed that. So that was off the table. If he told All Might, he would probably just worry his head off, and if he told Aizawa, the man would probably scold him about overworking himself again. 

He pulled out his phone, entered in the passcode, and clicked on the first person he thought to text.

—

The rosy cheeked girl was working on a few final tasks around her office when Deku texted her. She picked up her phone, pinky up so as to not make it float away, and clicked on the unopened message.

Deku: Hey, Uraraka, can we talk?

Her face pinched into a worried expression. Ochaco’s fingers quickly tapped at the digital keyboard on her phone to write out a response.

You: yeah ofc, is everything okay?

The three floating dots that marked Deku typing jumped in time with her heartbeat. She really hoped nothing was really super wrong.

Deku: Can we meet at the café down by the plaza? If you’re not too busy

Ochaco started pulling on her jacket as soon as she read his response, typing with one hand as she fought the buttons on her coat with her teeth (in lieu of her other hand, which was typing a hasty response.)

You: yub, i’ll be threre iijn a frw! 

She didn’t really care about the typos, though she didn’t doubt that her green-haired friend would wonder what she might have been doing to have made so many in one sentence. Flinging open the door and walking out into the unusually warm April weather, all she could think was: What happened?

—

“Hey, Deku!” Uraraka waved from the entrance to the café to Izuku, who was already in line to order a coffee for himself (he’d planned to guess what Uraraka might have wanted, and by his assessment of what she’s ordered at events in the past, he would have probably been almost entirely correct.) She trotted over, dressed in a coat that was far too puffy for the weather. Izuku grinned, albeit with a confused look on his face.

“Uraraka… Why are you wearing a jacket?” 

The girl’s face flushed a bright pink, and she immediately looked down at her attire. “Oh my god, I didn’t even register that I’d put that on. I just wasn’t really paying attention, I guess?” She looked to Izuku’s left, arms tight at her sides. “It’s usually the first thing I put on when I get ready to go somewhere, and I guess my head was elsewhere.” She looked up from her flustered fervor with a smile and a hot flush of pink coloring her cheeks. “Can we just ignore that, please?” 

Izuku nodded. “Yeah, no problem.” His gaze darted around the shop, towards and away from the chatter of unknown origin. It was hard to tell which conversations were actually happening between actual people and which were in his head. It was somehow worse in more populated places, it seemed. 

“Hello, Earth to Deku!” Uraraka was waving a hand in front of his face now, and Izuku found himself feeling quite bad for zoning out on her. He blinked a few times, and she continued talking. “The line?”

He swung his head to look at the ever-shortening line, which had left him standing basically in the middle of the café with no one in front of him for a distance equal to at least three people.

“Ah, sorry!!” Walking up towards where the line actually ended, Izuku tried his best to focus on the situation at hand rather than the multiple people giving their orders to the barista (when he was quite sure there was only one.) “Uhm, what drink do you want? I can pay.” His fingers fiddled with the wallet in his pocket, worrying at the seams. Uraraka seemed to debate her next words very carefully before she said them.

“Mmmm… Maybe something cold. Some sort of iced tea, maybe. Ooooh, wait, that looks good!” She pointed at a fruity drink on the menu above the counter. Something with strawberry and dragon fruit that looked too pink to be natural. The person in front of the line finished ordering and stepped away, leaving one more person in front of them. “What are you going to get, Deku?” Uraraka beams up at Izuku. He gives a hesitant smile. ”I don’t think I’ve ever seen you order coffee before, come to think of it…”

He tensed at that statement, and his hand came up to grasp the back of his neck. “Yeah… that’s because I usually only drink coffee at night. Grading, am I right?” He grimaced at how fake his words sounded. Uraraka immediately caught on, and her face pinched into something akin to confusion, worry, and horror all at once.

“That was horrible. Like, that was actually extremely painful to listen to.” Izuku nods dejectedly. She pats him on the shoulder, shaking her head theatrically with a sullen look on her face. ”We’ll discuss that in a moment.“

They approach the counter and order their drinks: Uraraka ordered that awful-sounding fruity drink with a name that had enough alliteration to kill a man, and Izuku ordered a simple mocha of sorts. It sounded interesting, and he felt like he needed the caffeine.  It didn’t cost that much, and the barista had absolutely recognized the two of them out of costume, which led to a pretty significant discount. Izuku felt terrible, but Uraraka seemed to have gotten a kick out of it.

The two heroes sat down at a table directly in front of a large window that made up most of the front wall of the café. They made sure to put down coasters before placing their drinks so as to not damage the table.

Uraraka sighed, tilting her head to the side as she spoke. “Alright. What did you want to talk about, Deku? Something is clearly wrong, so don’t even try to backpedal!” She took a large sip of her drink while Izuku thought about what he was going to say in response.

“I’ve… uh… not been feeling too great?” He held his paper-covered cup in two hands, his thumbs tracing the edge of the sleeve the barista puts on your cup so you don’t burn your hands holding your drink. Uraraka gave him a look that told him she didn’t believe his shit for one minute. 

“Go on.”

Izuku took a deep breath. It won’t be that bad if I just tell her, will it? 

“I’ve been hearing voices.” He grimaced and waited for Uraraka to run away or dial Hound Dog’s number (if she even still had it; he certainly did. Heroes and teachers get troubled all the time. It couldn’t be that unusual for him to still have his guidance counselor’s number, could it?)

But she didn’t. Sure, she looked just as puzzled as he felt, but she didn’t seem afraid or overly concerned. Well, obviously she was concerned, but she wasn’t about to check him into a mental hospital or anything. Actually, if he looked really closely, she almost seemed relieved.

“Oh.” She furrowed her brow and took another sip of her drink. “Is it… anyone in particular? That you’re hearing, I mean.” Izuku shook his head, and Uraraka seemed to deflate a little bit. 

“No, I don’t think so. It’s like…conversations…if that makes any sense?” Izuku lifted his cup but didn’t take a sip just yet. “It’s like I’m hearing people that aren’t there.” 

Uraraka nodded slowly, as if she were digesting the information. “I’ve been experiencing something kind of similar, if that makes you feel better.” His eyes widened, and he almost spit out the drink that he’d just taken a sip of. He swallowed quickly so he could respond.

”Seriously? What’s happening? Are you okay?” She flushed a soft pink and immediately put her drink down, waving her hands around. 

“Ack, I’m okay! It’s fine!” She shrunk into herself, drawing lines in the condensation on her cup. “It’s probably nothing. We’re here to talk about your voices, not mine.” 

A sad sort of chuckle escaped Izuku.“Yeah, I guess that is why we’re here… but we can talk about yours too, if you want.” 

She nodded slowly. “Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. For starters. When did this start?” 

“Last night. Or… er… early this morning. I’m not so sure anymore.”

Uraraka took a sip of her drink. Izuku followed suit.

“Are they… nice?” 

The boy smiled at the way she worded that question. “Elaborate.”

“Do they tell you to do bad things?”

“No, they don’t. I’m hearing about grocery lists, not homicide.”

Uraraka leaned downwards and placed her chin on her right hand. “That’s odd…”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Izuku paused to let her process the information (and to give himself a moment to collect his thoughts into a coherent sentence.) “It’s like they’re underwater, though, or maybe on a scratched record? I can’t fully make out what they’re saying unless I’m not really paying attention to them.”

“That sounds so frustrating. I’d want to know what they’re saying if I’m hearing them in the first place!” She raised her hand up and off her chin, making an exaggerated peeved face. 

Izuku beamed. “Exactly! I tried to listen in, but all I could get was bits and pieces. She kept cutting out in the middle of words.”

Uraraka smiled, a confused tinge to her expression. “She?”

Izuku looked down at his cup of now lukewarm coffee. “Yeah. It varies. I’ve heard quite a few women, from what I can tell. I’m trying to figure out if I’m just really tired or on some kind of very specific high.” Uraraka gasped, and the connotation of his words hit Izuku right in the face.

“Deku, how the hell would you be high?!” She stood up and slammed her hands down on the table, and Izuku panicked.

“Oh my god, don’t say that so loud! Jesus, Uraraka!” She squeaked and glanced around at the concerned customers looking on at the scene. She muttered an apology and sat back down. 

“I mean, I just didn’t take you for the type to do that, given it’s very very illegal! Deku, that’s not o—“

“I’m not doing drugs, Uraraka!” Izuku chided her in a stage-whisper, an icy pool of dread forming in his belly. “I would never do something like that. Like you said, it’s illegal. I feel like that’s against, like… every principle of being a hero.” He put two hands over his head, clamping down on his hair, elbows digging into the table. “I had an encounter with the villain from last night. He grabbed my neck, and it’s entirely possible that he might’ve had substances on his fingers, though I have no idea how that would work. Some frogs and toads have that kind of effect, right? They’ve got to have, like, slime or something that he could have had on his hands…”

Uraraka snapped in front of his face. “You’re muttering, Deku. Don’t get off topic. And… what? You had a run in with the Gareki Street guy? Why didn’t you tell anyone? I mean, I saw you talking to Detective Tsukauchi, but I didn’t really think anything of it.”

“It happened after you left, and I didn’t really think it mattered that much,” Izuku looked up from the table, “you’re the only one I’ve told so far. Please don’t tell anyone else.”

She gave a quick nod. “Of course.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. The afternoon bustle of the café, alongside the nonexistent bustle of everywhere else, took the place of their chatter.

“Do you want to tell me about your voices?”

Uraraka laughed quietly, but it wasn’t a nervous laugh or a giddy chuckle; it sounded sad. ”I’ve been dreaming about Toga.”

Izuku nodded, adjusting himself so that he was sitting normally. “The villain?” She nodded, tears already lining her eyes. Crap! He raised his hands to his mouth and back down. “Uraraka! Oh god, I didn’t mean to make you cry! We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to!” 

She shook her head profusely, clenching her fists in her lap. “No, it’s fine. It just makes me sad, that’s all.” She sniffled, letting her tears fall rather than trying to wipe them away. “It feels like she’s really there. I think that maybe when she gave me her blood, she came with it. Or maybe like… a part of her?” She took another large sniffle, coughing when she took in a gulp of air alongside it. “She gives me advice, tells me what I should do when everything is hard.” Uraraka looks up. “She told me to go after you at one point.”

Izuku smiled somberly. “That sounds like something she would say. She had a lot of love in her.” Uraraka nodded, very clearly trying her hardest not to ugly cry in the middle of that café. 

“I had such a huge crush on you, and she just knew! She knew during the war, she knew before it, and even in death, she knew! It’s not fair that she had to die!” 

Izuku sighed. “Uraraka… I will always be here for you. Obviously, I won’t be there in that way, because things are different now. We both know that. But I will be there in every other way I can be. We’ll figure out our voices together, yeah?” The girl laughed wetly and nodded. Izuku held out a hand over the table, and she took it with a sad smile.

“Yeah. I’d like that.“

Chapter Text

Uraraka: just checking in <3 it’s been a few days since we chatted and I wanted to make sure you were okay

SEEN.

Uraraka: are you okay?

SEEN.

Uraraka: i’m getting kind of worried here, deku.

              it’s not like you to not respond

SEEN.

…

Uraraka: deku?

SEEN.

Uraraka: call me when you have a chance

SEEN.

—

Izuku flipped his phone screen-down on his bedside table and rolled over onto his back. He should really respond to Uraraka, but he just didn’t have the energy. If he wasn’t going to respond, though, he should probably turn off his read receipts. He would eventually. Maybe.

It’d been far too long since Izuku had slept for more than an hour at a time. He wasn’t really sure what he’d expected to happen. The voices didn’t just stop when he needed to sleep or eat or do anything of any importance. Matter of fact, they’d gotten louder. More insistent. Earplugs barely helped anymore. It was almost as if the voices were coming from inside his head, which, to his point, they kind of were; from his understanding of the whole debacle, anyway. 

He slammed a pillow onto his face. He wished for nothing more than an ounce of quiet, even if it was just for five. Fucking. Minutes.

”Shut up.” He moaned into the white fabric, and instead of silence, he was met with the usual incessant chatter of his newfound roommates. Consistent voices that he could recognize by their intonation and manner of speech. He made a frustrated noise and threw the pillow off to the other side of his bed. 

It had been getting warmer the past few days; the Tokyo metropolitan area was in a bit of a hot pocket. It would go away soon enough, but as of right then, Izuku had resorted to ‘sleeping‘ shirtless. He sat up, giving up on even attempting to sleep, and stretched his arms out. 

His arms were heavily scarred, and a bit bigger than they were in high school. (Of course they were. He was twenty five, for goodness sake.) He figured tracing the thick white lines with his eyes was a suitable distraction from the whispers threatening to tear his skull open.

Most of them were from fights with villains, or training, or… 

He frowned slightly at the burn scars on his shoulders, and immediately internally reprimanded himself for even thinking about him. He shook the thought away and took a breath, letting his eyes fall down to the scars on his stomach.

He rarely had any injuries that scarred on his torso, aside from a few burns dotting his collarbone and a few angry, jagged lines on his right hip. Despite all of these blaringly obvious injuries, most likely from the final war or just before, he found himself examining the thin lines marking his lower left hip and belly more closely. Most of them were white, but just a few of them were still a sickening pink.

He wasn’t proud of them. 

Middle school had been hard for Izuku. Of course it was; Kacchan never gave him a break, his teachers constantly belittled and coddled him, and All Might, his idol, had quite literally told him that his one dream in life, his one aspiration, his one reason for living, was unattainable because of his quirklessness. And even after he’d received One For All, that day still stuck in his head. Sure, All Might had apologized profusely when he’d gotten older, but Izuku couldn’t help but feel a bit of resentment towards the man‘s actions. 

Doing… that…was a way for little Izuku to punish himself for being so weak. So helpless. 

“You wouldn’t even cut it as a Rent-A-Cop!”

He was just a useless Deku, after all. 

“Just pray that you'll be born with a quirk in your next life and take a swan dive off the roof of the building.”

He’d put down the knife when he got into Yuuei. Things had finally been looking up for Izuku, and he thought that he would be okay from then on. And he had been. He had no reason to be punished, because he was helping people! He was really helping people, and that made him happier than any thought of release could.

Then, his best friend died, and Izuku stopped really living for a while. He had basically haunted the year or two following Bakugou Katsuki’s untimely death. But there was no reason to dwell on that. Or him, for that matter.

He’d only done it a few more times after that. Only when he needed to feel something other than melancholy or pain-stakingly heavy apathy. 

Maybe hearing voices was a half-decent excuse to pick it back up.

The boy let his arms fall down to his equally scarred legs, and debated the thought. He was just tired. He wasn’t thinking straight. Some coffee wouldn’t hurt, would it? Just to get his head straight.

He hadn’t realized he was crying until he went to rub his sleep-deprived eyes, and his hand had come back wet. 

Izuku stood up from his bed, not bothering to grab a tissue to dry his tears before he got up to make some coffee. Or, more accurately, got up with the goal of making some coffee. By the time the tired teacher had made it to the kitchen, he’d decided that this was a matter to be solved by a glass of sake. He was allowed a drink once and a while, yeah? Especially since everyone was on spring break, and he was ninety nine percent sure he didn’t have anything scheduled the next day. He didn’t plan on getting drunk, though. He just wanted a bit of alcohol to take the edge off. That was all.

He grabbed an unopened bottle from the cupboard and placed it on the counter alongside a large metal pot. His oven always took a while to actually boil anything, so he settled to use his kettle to preemptively heat the water. All it took was him clicking down the little tab on the device for it to start working, which left him taskless until said device was done doing its job.

He slumped down onto the ground, leaning back against his kitchen counter. The tears hadn’t stopped flowing, but he hadn’t really cried. It was more like water falling down his face than anything else. Why was he even crying in the first place? All that stuff from before just made him kind of numb, if he was being honest. Maybe angry at times, maybe sad, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he cried over anymore. What’s done is done, or whatever. 

Maybe it was thinking about Kacchan. 

As much as he hated to admit it, he thought about him a lot more than he let on, if the reunion had said anything about it at all. And yes, he cried every time. So what? It was sad. He was allowed to be sad.

Click.

Izuku was snapped out of his head by the telltale click of his kettle. He stood and poured the boiling water into the pot, and then slowly placed the bottle of sake in. It would only take a few minutes for the alcoholic drink to warm to Izuku’s liking, so he took out a glass while he waited. 

He glanced towards the clock by his bed. 2:44 AM. He probably looked pretty pathetic right then, getting ready to drink sake shirtless in the middle of his kitchen so early in the morning. Though he could technically justify himself because of the fact that people drank at that time all the time at bars, but it felt a little weirder doing it in his own home. Alone. Or, not really alone in his case, but still. It wasn’t like the voices could pay attention to or care about that kind of thing; they weren’t even real.

Izuku had practically jumped at his sake when he realized it’d been just about the amount of time he’d aimed to warm it for, taking the slightly bubbling bottle out of the water carefully (so as to not break it.) He grabbed his cup from the other end of the counter and, with two hands on the bottle, poured himself a glass. Slinking back down to the floor, he placed the bottle to his left and took a swig. He grimaced at the sudden bitterness coating his mouth. Yup. That’ll do it. 

Even after he’d downed two or three glasses of sake, that familiar itch on his stomach lingered. He just felt dizzy and upset now as well. Izuku was a lightweight, he knew that. He’d really only meant to have one glass. Now here he was, sitting on the floor, tears crusted to his face with the same urge he’d aimed to suppress with the alcohol.

The unbalanced boy, only tipsy (but still inebriated) stood up and walked over to his bed, abandoning the bottle and glass on the floor.

”It’s in here somewhere, I know it is,” He slurred to himself, rummaging through his bedside drawer in search of his pocket knife. Sober Izuku would have been crying by now, but tipsy Izuku, with all the voices muffled by the warm feeling in his chest, was deadpan as ever. Usually he cried when he was drunk, but not tonight. ”There it is.”

He pulled out an All-Might themed knife that he’d gotten from some random gas station a few years back. He’d seen it and immediately knew he had to have it, even if he didn’t really have any plans for it at the time. It had two little hair tufts poking out of one end, and the rest was the pattern of All Might’s Golden Age costume. Izuku felt a little bad tarnishing it, so, with a hesitant huff, he put it back in the drawer and continued rummaging around for something else. All Might would be so disappointed. That thought made his stomach twist with nausea.

Finally, after a few minutes of searching, he found a boxcutter under his bed from when he’d unboxed his new lamp a week or two before. He’d accidentally broken it trying to shut off his alarm, and it’d been far more expensive than he would have liked to replace it. 

He sat down below his bed and reached for the razor, which, to his displeasure, bounced off his fingertips. He whined and reached for it again, and found that it had moved. Maybe he was drunker than he thought. Depth perception was known to be affected by alcohol, right?

Izuku fell to his belly and let out a pained oof. He stretched farther, and when he finally held the orange handle in his fingers, he inched out from under the bed and let his legs straighten in front of him. 

Did he really want to do this? Despite the pool of warmth in his chest, he still felt sad. It was such a heavy sadness. It was a sadness that made his lungs feel full of mud, a melancholy so thick that it made him feel like he was drowning in it.

He’d only do it once. Yeah. Then he’d put it away. 

He clicked open the blade with shaky fingers (since when had his hands been shaking?) and traced the familiar spot on his stomach with his free hand. When he had just begun to lift it to his skin, his hand slipped. The tool bounced off of his knee and fell to the middle of the floor.

“St-Stupid…” He grumbled to himself as he reached to pick it up, whining when it fell away from him again. He picked it up, aimed it, and it slipped through his fingers once more. He made a frustrated noise, somewhere between a groan and a whine. He stretched his arm out, scrunching his face in displeasure. “Kacchan, give it back.” 

He paused.

Why had he said that?

Kacchan wasn’t there.

He wouldn’t be there ever again.

He pulled back his arm slowly, eyes wide and mouth opened. And then, Izuku cried. He cried, and cried, and cried, until the force of his sobs made him taste bile in his throat. His heart felt like it might explode. (Oh my god.) That made him cry even harder, until he was almost dry heaving. He hiccuped and sniffled (to no avail; snot was running down his lips and into his mouth every time he opened it) like a child, curling in the corner between his bedside table and his bed. 

Izuku fell asleep with tears marring his cheeks, an abandoned bottle of sake and his glass, the cold pot of water and the discarded boxcutter the only evidence of his troubles that night. He could regret it all in the morning. For now, all he wanted to do was curl up and die. Sleeping was the closest thing to that.

A breeze wafted in from the window just as he was closing his eyes (he thought it was from the window, at least), and the last thing he remembered before he fell asleep was a warm breath on his cheek and a familiar voice whispering in his ear. 

“Stop waiting for me, idiot.”

Chapter Text

Shouta was ninety nine percent sure that the blue light from his computer screen had gone to his brain.

He had spent hours upon hours attempting to dig up old files and reports on Kodama Seihachi, the creep the station had taken custody of a few days earlier. And, to his displeasure, any information on the guy was few and far between. He clicked off of a faulty source and sighed. Shouta’s eyelids were laden with exhaustion.

As soon as the man had heard about the criminal’s very, increasingly possible association with his problem child (he still considered all of his students his problem children, even after their graduation from Yuuei High; though he would never admit it out loud), he’d plunged himself into the familiar world of Japan’s government database. More specifically the people side of it. Shouta was less concerned about the man’s possible outside affiliations at that moment, and more concerned about the possibility of Kodama’s involvement in previous aspects of Midoriya’s life. Could they have known each other outside of school? Maybe they went to the same middle school? What reason could this guy have for doing this? Did they have an altercation, or is this guy just batshit crazy? The guy couldn’t have just known where Midoriya’s office was; he had to have gotten that information from somewhere. But where?

Shouta groaned and leaned back in his chair. The bookmarked tab of the quirk-registry database Tsukauchi had sent to him (only accessed by those with proper clearance) stared at him, almost taunting his will. He placed his hands over his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair, then leaned forward once more. He clicked on it with a sluggish finger.

———

Kodama Seihachi
DOB: 20XX - 06 - 13
QUIRK: N/A
-
MOTHER

Kodama Ichika
DOB: 20XX - 04 - 27
QUIRK: X-RAY Vision

She can see through inorganic objects at will. It is not activated constantly, and can only be activated by the user’s command.
-
FATHER

Kodama Yuto
DOB: 20XX - 12 - 09
QUIRK: Rot

He can rot organic objects at will. He can also bring rotten objects back to their original state. It has proven to work especially well on fruit, Kodama Yuto states. He also mentions that he has not attempted to use it on any animal matter.

———

Shouta had read that form over, and over, and over again. He couldn’t bring himself to understand what was going through that man’s head. Sure, he had no quirk. That was unfortunate, given that only 20% of people (most likely even less now) were born quirkless. He’d been given the short stick. It was too bad, but there was nothing to be done about it. But that couldn’t have been the only motivator, right? Kodama hadn’t given them anything else, so they just sort of had to assume it had something to do with his quirk… or lack of one, so to speak. Tsukauchi was really saying too much when he’d claimed the guy had “spilled everything.” All he gave was what they already had, even if it’d seemed monumental in the moment. His name, his date of birth, some family history, a minuscule part of his motive…

“He needed to understand what it means to really suffer.”

From the information he’d gathered, the guy had had a tough life so far; the information in his family records was enough to tell that much. His school records were all but nonexistent, as was literally everything other than his family history and quirk registry form. And even then, those were typically the same document nowadays, with quirks being more prominent than ever.

That didn’t mean he got to tell his student he didn’t know how hard things could get.

He didn’t have a goddamn clue what his problem child Midoriya had been through.

Shouta sighed. That made him feel a little better.

He didn’t know anything about what Midoriya had been through.

That meant he likely only had surface level information on the kid, unless he was putting up a mask to fool the interrogators and the heroes. Shouta really hoped he didn’t know more than he let on, because if he did, this case was about to get a whole lot messier. 

“Sho…”

Shouta hadn’t even realized Hizashi had come into the room. His husband, carrying a cup of hot tea (“Shouta, you drink so much coffee that I can almost guarantee your blood is caffeinated”, his husband had said. Therefore, he was subjected to tea), walked up beside his tired partner and placed his free hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve been at it for a while. You should take a break.” Shouta grumbled, still looking at the screen as Hizashi placed his offering on the table, not bothering with a coaster. (“They’re annoying, and there’s no point in using them if I’m just going to forget it the moment I pick up my cup.”) “I lied. I’m making you take a break.” The blonde put pressure on the muscle between his neck and shoulder with the heel of his hand, and Shouta had to bite back a moan.

“Ow,” He grumbled, feigning annoyance. He leaned back, and, despite his best wishes, let his husband continue to push the knots out of his neck. Hizashi chuckled to himself, and Shouta picked up the mug of tea. It smelled like Earl Grey. He hummed as he took the cup to his lips.

(The tea wasn’t all that bad, he supposed.)

Hizashi tapped him on the neck with his index finger. ”May I?”

Shouta had almost forgotten his husband was there (for which he felt a twinge of guilt; maybe he really did need a break), and he nodded without any apprehension when his delightful partner curled into his lap. It was hot, but Shouta rarely said no to Hizashi’s requests; most likely because his husband knew how to keep his asks reasonable. Yeah. That was totally it. Not because Shouta was secretly a softie. And a little sweat never hurt anyone, had it?

“You’re worried about Midoriya.” Shouta nodded, humming an acknowledgement. Hizashi let his head fall to the crook of Shouta’s neck, his long, pin-straight hair cascading down the scruffy man's chest. “He’ll be okay, he can handle his own problems. You just need to trust that he can take care of himself.”

—

Izuku wasn’t gonna make it.

I mean, he was, in a more literal sense, but from a “I’m-not-gonna-go-crazy” standpoint? Izuku was royally fucked.

For starters, he’d woken up on the floor, with snot crusted to his face and puffy eyes. There was a boxcutter open on the floor, and a bottle of sake abandoned in the kitchen. None of that was a good thing. Izuku made a note to himself to not let himself drink until this whole thing was resolved.

Secondly, the voices were almost deafening now. Izuku wasn’t sure how things could go so terribly in only… What, five days? Time felt incredibly slow right then. There were only so many days left in the school holiday, and after those days elapsed, Izuku would have to go back to teaching. And even before then, he would still have hero work to do. How was he even supposed to do that with all this excess noise? He had no doubt in his mind that he would miss most small noises (an excellent example being, I don’t know, someone coming up behind him?) with his ghostly companions droning on about god knows what in his head. Ghostly wasn’t quite the right word, but his head was throbbing far too hard for him to care.

Izuku sighed, running a hand down his face. He’d fucked up big time. That is why I still have Hound Dog’s number.

The boxcutter stared at him from the middle of his floor. Izuku had worked so hard to stop. As much as he told himself it wasn’t a big deal, he knew deep down that it had been hard to quit. As much as it was ‘only discipline’ to him, he knew that if he hadn’t dropped the boxcutter, he would have done something that he would have royally regretted in the morning.

As if he didn’t regret it enough having not done it. Having even thought about it at all made Izuku feel incredibly guilty.

He stood up from his corner, letting out a pained noise as his back pinched, as if to say that’s what you get for sleeping in the corner, idiot. He stumbled around his bed to retrieve a white shirt he’d worn a few days prior. He lifted the shirt to his nose to check if it was truly disgusting. It wasn’t that bad. He slipped the shirt on and made his way over to the middle of the room.

Grumbling guiltily to himself, he picked up the knife and stowed it away in his bedside drawer. He paused as he was walking away, turned back, and took it out. On his way into the kitchen, he slipped it, alongside his All Might pocket knife and his stock of kitchen knives, onto the top of the pantry. He was tall enough to reach them standing on a chair if he needed the kitchen knives for cooking, and if he was delirious with panic, he wouldn’t have the dexterity to retrieve them. It’s a good plan, he thought.

He pushed the chair he’d used to get up to the top of the pantry back in, and grabbed his bottle of sake from the floor. He put the rim of the bottle to his nose and grimaced at the sour, vinegar-y scent. Crap. That sake wasn’t cheap, either. He groaned. The mixture of leaving the bottle uncapped and the high temperatures probably oxidized that thing at triple the speed. Izuku poured the remaining contents on the bottle (which was the majority of it; It was kind of like watching your entire wallet empty onto the train tracks through the gap) into the sink and recycled the bottle afterwards. He could have sworn he heard laughing amongst the barrage of conversation around him. Coincidence.

He picked up his abandoned glass and placed it in the dishwasher, sighing when all the tidying of the night before was finished. It wasn’t that much, but Izuku still felt heavy afterwards. It was likely because of his pounding headache, which was not being helped by the voices threatening to drown him in their sheer quantity and volume. Or maybe it was because of the icy pool of what Izuku thought was regret forming in his stomach. Low, low, in his stomach, like it was making it’s home in the curves of his pelvis. He shuddered.

Izuku made his way to the small grey couch in his living area and sat down, rubbing a hand over his face. What had he done?

Well, he’d drunk one too many glasses of sake (two too many), he’d almost harmed himself in the midst of his grief, and then he’d gone to sleep in a position no one should ever sleep in. His back hurt like the anger of a thousand suns. Izuku closed his eyes and tried to picture if he’d done anything else that he could add to his list of regrets.

“Stop waiting for me, idiot.”

Wait.

Hold on.

What was that?

What was he remembering?

Izuku felt himself pale, the pool of regret quickly turning into burning nausea.

That had to have been from a drunken dream. That was the only valid explanation. Because for one, he’d been able to make out a very clear voice. That hadn’t happened yet, and he’d been hearing voices for like… three entire days. (Which felt a lot longer than it should have due to lack of sleep, most likely.) And secondly, the voice had been someone he knew. A voice that he could recognize in a busy train station, a voice he could recognize when the commotion around them was almost blinding in its intensity.

Kacchan.

It had to be a dream. That, or his head was playing a sick, sick joke on him. It was cruel to taunt a drunk, grieving man with the voice of his deceased best friend. Yeah. No more alcohol. Maybe his sake going sour was a blessing in disguise. Clearly he wasn’t at his best when he was drunk and sad at the same time. He was much better off drinking when he was happy; those were fun times, according to Kaminari, at least. Izuku never remembered what he did when he was happy-drunk. He didn’t need to, though, because his friends always made sure to retell the events of the night in excruciating detail. It usually included Izuku making one too many personal comments about his classmates or him taking off an article of clothing. Nope. He didn’t want to think about that. Back to the problem at hand.

A. He had heard Kacchan’s voice; he was choosing to chalk it up to a drunken fever-dream. It was still concerning despite that.
B. He was ninety nine percent sure he was about to throw up, and the nearest trash can was all the way in the kitchen.

Izuku made a beeline for the bathroom as soon as he felt bile creep up into his throat. He crouched over the rim of the toilet, heaving up nothing but stomach acid.

“Kacchan, give it back.”

”Stop waiting for me, idiot.”

”All might would be so disappointed.”

”Give it back.”

”Stop waiting for me.”

”Stop waiting.”

Izuku watched as thick, salty tears started to mix with the bile he’d just thrown up. Everything was just so, utterly confusing. Why was he hearing Kacchan’s voice? Hadn’t he gotten over that? It had been eight years, why was this only coming up now? Why was he even hearing voices in the first place? Would they ever stop? Why was this villain after him, and would he be okay? Was he in real danger right then? Should he be worried? Why was everything going wrong?

Izuku thought he was done with villains being after him. He thought he was done hiding. There was no one watching his every move now; All For One and Shigaraki were dead. There was no one to haunt him anymore.

Oh, god, he was so, so wrong.

Chapter Text

Izuku hadn’t heard the incessant knocking on his front door over the cacophony of voices plaguing his mind and his tears, and he certainly hadn’t heard the door actually opening. 

“You wouldn’t even cut it as a Rent-A-Cop!”

He was taking more air into his lungs than he thought any average person could, but, at the same time, not nearly enough. His heart felt like it might beat directly out of his chest like one of those creatures from Alien.

He’d heard Kacchan’s voice. Why? And, even better, there was a villain after him, again. He knew where Izuku worked, Or, more accurately, where he worked half the time, but still. How did he get that information? Why was everything going to shit now, eight years after what Izuku had thought was his big finish? He’d fulfilled his goal, so why was the universe still throwing obstacles at him? Izuku felt like he was drowning in the constant buzz of conversation and choking on his own spit. Something is wrong, something is wrong something is wrong I’m hurt I taste blood what is happening please I want to go home I want to go home I want to go ho— 

“Deku!”

In the midst of his panic, he hadn’t registered the new, very real voices in his apartment, almost taking the shout of his hero name to be the voice he was trying so desperately to avoid. Footsteps cracked against his hardwood floor as the intruders rushed towards the sounds of Izuku freaking out.

”Crap, Uraraka, I think he’s having a panic attack… Ice! Get ice!”

It was like he was underwater, grasping at nothing, gulping down saltwater every time he tried to suck in a breath.

“Stop waiting for me, idiot.”

Everything felt incredibly loud, but muffled at the same time. The conversations that had merely been a nuisance (that was saying far too little; the voices had been a very real issue, but Izuku was far too worried about burdening others with his problems to admit it) before were consuming the majority of his hearing, like they sensed his panic, and were responding to it. 

“Idiot.”

Izuku hadn’t realized he had been digging his fingers into his scalp until he felt a familiar hand pull his arms down towards the porcelain rim of the toilet. 

“Midoriya, you’re alright, just try to breathe for me, okay? In and out, bro.”

Izuku gasped for air. He swore that his airway was collapsing in on itself from how little oxygen he was getting with each strained breath. 

“All Might would be so disappointed.”

There was so much noise his ears had begun ringing. If he weren’t so full of panic he was quite literally choking on it, he might have questioned that response to the fictional voices. He wasn’t really hearing them, so why was his body processing it as such? 

“I’ve got the ice.”

”Okay, yeah, that’s good, that’s good! Put it uhh… on the back of his neck? I can't really move my hands right now— Crap, he’s bleeding! God, Midoriya!”

There was quite a bit of yelling somewhere in the background, and he wasn’t quite sure if that was real or in his head at that point. There were the normal conversations he’d been hearing, and this terrible, terrible gurgling noise from somewhere in the bathroom he couldn’t quite pinpoint. All he knew for sure was that there was someone beside him begging him to breathe, statements of which he was too unfocused to fully process, and there was something cold and wet touching the back of his neck.

And, in the midst of all this commotion, he hadn’t realized the horrible choking slash gurgling noise he’d been hearing was himself. 

“Midoriya, dude, calm down!”

Izuku’s mind snapped back to the present moment, and suddenly, he could breathe again. He coughed and sputtered, and suddenly, he was acutely aware of the painfully cold compress on the back of his neck, and the pressure on his hands. He was aware of the rank smell of bile that coated the expanse of his bathroom, the frantic voices of his friends, and the ever dulling sound of his fantastical entourage (thank god.) Wait, Why were his friends there? 

“There we go, bro! In and out, just like that, but maybe a bit slower, if you can? You know what? Nevermind. Not the point. You’re doing great.”

A gentler voice cut in before the male voice could dig himself a hole any deeper. “Can you name five things you can see, Deku? As soon as you feel like you can talk, of course.”

Uraraka. 

He tried to focus his eyes on the contents of his abysmally decorated bathroom. 

Sink. Mirror. Uraraka. Toilet. Was that Kirishima?

So that’s what— or, more appropriately, who—was holding his hands down. Why was he doing that? Why were Izuku’s fingers red?

Izuku swallowed, wincing at the sudden dryness of his mouth. ”The sink, the mirror, you, the toilet, and Kirishima.” He cringed internally at how hoarse his voice was. Something warm dripped down his forehead, causing his breath to hitch. Had he done that? And what exactly was that? He glanced up at the red-haired boy that was hovering to his right and furrowed his brow, mouth still gaping as he tried to refill his lungs. He swallowed again. God, my throat hurts. 

“Four things you can touch?”

Izuku noted the newfound ache in his knees from being crouched on the bathroom floor for so long (despite the elapsed time only being around ten minutes). 

”Toilet seat, the floor… Kirishima’s hands, and the fabric of my pants?” He glanced at Uraraka through the corner of his eye expectingly. Did the fabric of his pants even count? 

Uraraka nodded and smiled. “Yeah, that works. How about three things you can hear?”

Izuku groaned, letting his head fall dangerously close to water in the toilet bowl. 

“Null.”

She made a small humming noise and nodded her head hesitantly. “Okay then… two things you can smell?”

”Bile, and… is that blood?”

”Ummm…Yeah. You scraped your scalp with your fingernails earlier. But don’t worry about that, though! Everything is okay and under control. Can you tell me one thing you can taste?”

Izuku swallowed again, trying to ignore the fact that he’d hurt himself in the midst of his panic attack. He would most definitely be making that call to Hound Dog later. “Bile, again.”

”Okay, awesome. Good, good.” Uraraka took a deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth. “Do you want me to take away the ice?”

Izuku didn’t really register her final question.“What… What are you guys doing here?” Uraraka deflated a little bit.

Kirishima smiled sheepishly, subtly letting his hands fall off of the green haired boy’s. “Okay, don’t panic Midoriya. We didn’t break in, I swear…well, we kind of did, but that’s not the point. You weren’t responding to your texts, and Uraraka got worried something might’ve happened to you, so she insisted that she come over. I was in the area and offered to come with.” He paused to let the words process in Izuku’s head. He glanced between the two of them and then continued talking. “It seems like you guys know something I don’t, but I won’t pry.”

Uraraka nodded, and Izuku noted that she was sitting off to his left, still holding the ice pack to his neck. The condensation dripped farther down the back of his shirt with every passing moment. “Uraraka used her emergency key—“ He swallowed yet again (He could really go for some water right then)”—didn’t she?” Kirishima nodded. “That doesn’t count as breaking in.” The teacher tried to crack a smile, but it fell flat on the tension in the room.

”Yeah, I guess so, now that I think about it…” He grinned nervously, his eyes creasing with the movement. “Do you need anything? Water? A hug, maybe?” 

Izuku didn’t think he wanted a hug. Despite as much as he could have wanted one, though, it would probably just make him cry again. He hadn’t even realized that he’d stopped until right then. “Water, if that’s okay.”

Kirishima nodded, and Uraraka made a small ‘hmph’ noise in acknowledgement. She picked herself up off the floor and removed the ice pack from his neck. “I’ll be right back, Deku.” Izuku nodded, and moved a shaky hand to click the handle on the toilet downwards. He twisted himself so his back was to the toilet as it flushed.

Everything felt so surreal. Like he was in a dream. Not a very good one, albeit, but a hazy sort of trance. Nothing felt real about this whole thing, and that scared him. It’ll wear off once the adrenaline fades. 

“So… you wanna talk about it?” Kirishima had his back to the sink’s cupboard system, his red hair squishing up against the corner of the wood. Uraraka arrived back with a glass of water and a piece of bread. Izuku didn’t even know he had bread in his pantry.

”Here. I went through your pantry, sorry about that. I found some bread, though, so that’s a plus!” She sat down beside Kirishima so that the three of them were forming a misshapen triangle on the floor. She looked almost uneasy, but Izuku chose to disregard it for now. He’d mention it later, because he thought he might have an idea of what might be making her look so queasy. Izuku muttered a grateful ’thank you’ and chugged down the water, relishing in the cool coat it momentarily left on his throat before the itching-burning sensation returned. He took those few moments to debate what he was going to say next.

He couldn’t just… tell Kirishima about everything that was happening. He didn’t deserve to have to shoulder that burden for him. Izuku already felt horrible enough about telling Uraraka (though it helped that she had her own things to worry about on top of his thing), so what was different about telling Kirishima? And as well as that, neither of them knew about the whole dead-best-friend’s-voice—he didn’t even want to think his name, because just the memory of his encounter the night before made his gut churn—situation yet, so that was out of the question for talking points too. Crap.

”I don’t really know what to say.” He shot Uraraka a worried glance. She stiffened.

”Oh.” 

“Yeah.”

”That’s… problematic.” 

“Mhm. Tell me about it.”

Kirishima glanced between the two of them, making an indiscernible face. “Guys, what’s going on?”

”You said you wouldn’t pry!” Izuku’s voice cracked on ‘pry’, but Kirishima pretended not to notice.

”Well, it’s kind of hard not to when the two of you clearly know something substantial about this whole situation that I don’t!” He took a breath, his face melting back and forth between barely restrained frustration and fervent worry. “I’m worried about you, bro. We all know something is wrong, but you just won’t tell us.” Kirishima’s voice started to raise more, and Izuku’s heart dropped into his stomach. “There were so many signs, don’t even get me started, Midoriya. In the car, at the reunion; Don’t think I didn’t notice you looking at that flower Mina and I put down for Bakugou. It’s just gotten worse and worse from there, and you’re entirely focused on keeping it to yourself—and apparently Uraraka! You haven’t come to a single 1-A hangout since then, and we’ve had… like… three! You’re usually so freaking eager to hang out, and for the past few days, you’ve been completely radio silent!” Kirishima paused to take a deep breath in and out. “I just want to know if you’re okay, and if that entails me knowing this big secret, I think maybe I have a right to at least some context! It’s not manly to suffer alone, dude!”

A moment of silence passed, and Uraraka pursed her lips. Izuku hadn’t even known there had been any mention of a get together after the reunion, let alone three actual meet-ups in the five—no, six—days it’d been since then. He was so not looking forward to checking his unread messages later.

Uraraka looked back at Izuku with a pensive, yet hesitant look in her eyes. “He’s got a point, Deku.”

”I know,” he snapped. His hand shot up to cover his mouth. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to snap at you, Uraraka!” 

She gave him a somber smile. “It’s okay. I get it. It’s not exactly information you give out to just anybody, I would expect any normal person to be at least a little apprehensive about this.”

Izuku nodded and leaned his head back onto the toilet lid, his curly hair falling wildly around his ears and neck. He brought his hands up to his face and talked through his fingers. “I guess I just thought I would be able to keep this between us until it got resolved, or at least for more than a few days.” He said the next part much quieter, almost so quiet his friends couldn’t hear him at all. “It doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon, though.”

Kirishima sunk into himself a little bit, ashamed for his mild (but warranted) outburst. “Look, you don’t have to tell me everything. But I’d at least like to know if you’re safe, and if there’s anything I or anyone else can do to help. We’re worried about you, Midoriya.”

Izuku sighed and dragged his hands down his face. You know what? Fuck it. What’s the worst that could happen? “I’ve been hearing voices.”

No one talked for a moment. Kirishima’s eyes were wide open, and Uraraka kept that pensive look on her face, but now, she had a somber sort of glimmer in her eyes.

“…Okay.”

”…Yeah.”

Kirishima shifted his sitting position so that his legs were crossed. “Are they…good voices? Like… Please don’t tell me you’ve got people in your head telling you to do bad things. I would hope that they’re… uh…benelevent. If you catch my drift.”

Izuku made a mildly confused face, and let his hands fall to his lap. He leaned forward as he spoke, rolling his head on the edge of the toilet lid to face Kirishima. “That’s the first thing Uraraka asked, too.“ He paused. “ And the word you’re looking for is benevolent.” 

Kirishima smiled sheepishly. “Ah.”

Uraraka cut in. ”Hey, it’s a pretty valid concern when your friend is telling you he’s hearing voices!” She made a faux pouty face, and Izuku chuckled lightly.

”Yeah, I suppose it is. Sorry.”

The silence stretched on for no more than a minute, and Izuku couldn’t really bring himself to fill it. 

“Why are you sorry? It’s not like you can control it.” Uraraka spoke first, leaning forward with her chin on her hand.

”Yeah, bro! There’s no need to apologize for something you can’t help!” Kirishima grinned. “We’ll always be here if you need us, Midoriya. Don’t forget that.”

Izuku nodded and smiled, shakily, albeit. “Yeah. Thank you.”

Silence again. They were just going in a loop at this point, and Izuku was starting to feel ill again just because of the sheer intensity of the awkwardness between him and his friends. He’d caused that, though, hadn’t he? With his stupid panic attack, with his stupid voices and his stupid, stupid complex (for lack of a better term) about his dead best friend. He glanced down at the abandoned piece of bread (which he’d accidentally placed on the bathroom floor; it probably wasn’t a great idea to eat that now) and back up again when he heard Kirishima begin to speak.

”Do you… wanna play UNO or something? Just to take your mind off of… well…” He trailed off, seemingly avoiding mentioning Izuku’s predicament in hopes of not triggering another panic attack, or maybe because it left a bad taste in his mouth. Who knows? “If you have it, that is.”

Uraraka nodded quickly and repeatedly. “Yeah! That’s an awesome idea, Kirishima!”

Izuku chuckled quietly. “I think I have a spare deck lying around here somewhere. We might have to play Go Fish instead if I can’t find it.”

”Oh, you’re so on, Midoriya!”

”I’m gonna kick your butt, Deku!”

The three of them got up (Izuku on the slower side, albeit) and started to make their way towards the living area. He lingered behind in the bathroom for a moment while Kirishima and Uraraka taunted each other just a few feet outside the bathroom door and took a deep breath.

Maybe UNO wasn’t a terrible idea. Just to take his mind off of things for a while (as much as he could, anyway), and hanging out with his friends again didn’t sound all that bad.

…

(it was a better option than getting more sake, at the very least.)

Chapter Text

“Plus four!” 

Izuku watched in horror as Kirishima slammed a plus-four card (directed at him, as unfortunate as it was) down on the carpet, and, in the process, dropped the rest of his hand. His cards scattered around and behind him, some face up, some face down, and the pile of placed cards that had been so meticulously kept tidy by Uraraka exploded with the sheer force of Kirishima’s plus four card. “Oh, crap! Look away!” The red-haired boy crawled around on the floor in search of his cards. (Izuku wasn’t quite sure which cards were actually his at that point, with the whole deck having exploded like a feather-filled pillow all over the living room.)

Uraraka screeched, clutched her stomach and leaned forward with tears in her eyes. And, she, in the process of the aforementioned, dropped all of her cards too. She rolled onto her side and kept cackling, and Izuku brought his free hand up to his mouth, laughing into his fingers. Kirishima let out a winded ‘oof’ as he fell onto his belly attempting to reach a card that had flown under the couch, giggling as well. 

Izuku didn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun. Maybe his memory was just bad, or maybe the past week had just been the thing at the forefront of his mind? He hoped that was the case. Even if it was, that thought made him feel a little sad. Things had been worse than he’d thought, hadn’t they. No matter. He was happy now. He should focus on that instead of getting himself in another tizzy. (Did people even say ‘tizzy’ anymore? He wasn’t sure why that was the first thing that came to mind.)

Uraraka, still laughing (but not as hard anymore), was crawling around in an attempt to help Kirishima collect his cards and what was left of the discard pile. She’d floated the couch up just enough to where Kirishima could reach any cards that had escaped the open living room territory, and her red-haired companion was doing just that. More cards than Izuku thought had ended up under there, and it was incredibly funny to watch Kirishima’s expression brighten with every new card he came across. 

“Here, let me—“ Izuku wiped a tear from his eyes (it was there due to him laughing so hard, believe it or not) “—help you, too.” He made his way over, walking on his knees, to help the two of them gather the deck. He picked up quite a few cards just on the few strides it took to get over to the couch, stashing them in his shorts pocket. 

“We’re gonna have to start a new round now, aren’t we?” Kirishima muttered sheepishly, laying faux-dejectedly on his belly with a pile of cards in his hands. “Sorry, guys! I just got so excited: Midoriya was about to win! I had a plus four! It was just so perfect!” He rolled his face into the floor.

Izuku smiled and got on his hands to help Uraraka with the last scattering of cards off to the side from the floating couch. “It’s okay, Kirishima. I don’t mind! I’m sure Uraraka doesn’t mind either.” He shot a teasing glance her way; she had achieved the honor of having a little over half of the deck in her hands by the time of the plus-four incident, so starting a new game would most likely work in her favor. 

“Oh, shush, you…!” She raised up on her knees and faced Izuku, making a choking motion with her hands a few feet away from his face and scrunching her expression into a theatrically angry one. She let out a little roar (it sounded more like ‘AAAGHH!!’, but roar felt like an appropriate adjective, Izuku thought), eliciting a small laugh from Kirishima, who’d since sat up on his knees outside of the range of the couch. 

“I think that’s all of it. You can put the couch down now, Uraraka.” Kirishima shot a double thumbs up her way. “Thanks for that, by the way!” 

“Mhm!” She muttered a small ‘release’ (Izuku used to wonder if that was a requirement for her quirk to deactivate, but she’d stated that it was just a habit she had that stuck. “Kind of like a catchphrase!” She’d said that day, clenching her fingers together in two fists and pulling them downwards) and the couch slowly lowered itself to the ground. 

“Alright, are you all set to go for another round, Midoriya?” Kirishima scooted himself over to the center of the living area and handed Uraraka his cards to shuffle into a new deck. 

“Yeah, I’m ready.” Izuku followed close behind, and sat himself in a position where Uraraka was to his diagonal left, and Kirishima was to his diagonal right, in the same triangle they’d formed in his bathroom a little over an hour before.

He felt better than he did then, he could admit that much. But the voices hadn’t fully quieted since then— he was grateful that they weren’t screaming at him, sure, but they were less muffled than before. He bet that, if he focused hard enough, he could maybe, just maybe, make out a word or two. It was like they (they? he really was going crazy, wasn’t he?) were behind a thin wall, and if he just sort of mentally maneuvered himself so that his ear hovered above the plasterboard, he could listen in. Possibly.

 It was just a theory, though, and not a very well thought out one—in his opinion, anyway. He’d had better ideas. Izuku had conjured it up in the middle of their second game when he’d fully calmed his shot nerves and the voices didn't go back to normal like he’d expected them to. (Or, more appropriately, hoped— things weren’t exactly going his way lately, so he should have expected this outcome. It was just his luck.)

“Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Earth to Midoriya.” Kirishima had begun poking Izuku’s shoulder insistently— the greenette wasn’t sure how long he’d been doing that—in the midst of his racing thoughts. He punctuated every poke with a ‘hey’. 

“Ah! Sorry! Was I mumbling? I hope I wasn’t mumbling…” He curled in on himself a little bit.

“Nope, you’re good! Don’t sweat it, bro. Let’s just play the game.” 

Uraraka handed out seven cards to each player, ending with herself. “Alright Kirishima, you go first, since you’re to the left of me.” She flipped up the first card to reveal a yellow zero at the bottom of the pile. 

Kirishima placed down a yellow reverse, Uraraka followed that with a green reverse, Kirishima played a green two, Izuku placed a blue two, and so on. 

As the game continued, Izuku couldn’t help but think that, despite how much fun he was supposedly having, he couldn’t help but feel like he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Everything had gone so awry those past few days, so he felt like it wasn’t that atrocious for him to think that something might go wrong during the one genuinely good day (for the most part) he’d had in a long time. No. Stop that. Focus on the game.

He tried to focus on his hand. His cards were okay; Izuku thought so, at least. At this point in the game (after a few go arounds and a few turns drawing cards), he had five cards: A blue seven, a red skip, a yellow three and five, and a green six. When his next turn came, Uraraka was nearing two cards, (how she’d done, that Izuku had absolutely no idea; luck of the draw?) and Kirishima looked to Izuku to do something about it. His face was cinched in despair.

”Play your six, she doesn’t have any green!” 

Izuku swung around to chide Kirishima for his blatant cheating. “Stop cheating, Kirishima! That’s not how you play the game!” It was so unlike him to look at other people’s cards, what could have possibly prompted that? Maybe Kirishima was more serious about UNO than Izuku had previously thought…

The boy stared at him with a puzzled look on his face, raising his hands up (a few cards in each) as he spoke. “What do you mean? I wasn’t doing anything!” 

“Don’t play dumb with me! I know you were looking at our cards!” Izuku grinned as he reprimanded his friend playfully.

But, to his surprise, Kirishima looked genuinely confused. 

“Dude. Cut it out.”

Izuku furrowed his brow and reeled it in a bit. “Wait, what? But you just… You just said that Uraraka didn’t have any green cards?” He twisted around to look over his shoulder and back. 

“Hey, how did you know that?!” Uraraka play-shouted, whinging about how her amazing plan was absolutely ruined. “I thought I was doing such a good job of hiding my cards!” She placed her cards down beside her crossed legs and leaned forward, placing her chin on one of her hands. Kirishima looked pensive for a moment, then somber. 

The reality of the situation hit Izuku like a semi-truck. There was the shoe.

”Oh… Oh my god. Oh my god!” His face morphed through at least four of the five stages of grief in a split second. “I just hallucinated that, didn’t I?” 

Uraraka’s expression dulled as she realized the true gravity of what had just happened. Kirishima gave a sad nod, and Uraraka sat up.

 “I think so, man.”

How had he not realized? Now that he really thought about it, the voice was more child-like than anything, and sounded nothing like Kirishima. It was comparable to Katsuma at best. And he’d just started to notice the familiar icy-pool that made its home low, low in his abdomen.

Everyone went quiet for a moment— everyone except his headmates, but that was to be expected. 

“…I’ve never been able to decipher a full sentence before now.”

A pause.

”Oh.” Kirishima put his hands in his lap.

Izuku swore he heard a hushed sort of whispering coming from directly behind him. He swung his head to look in the direction of the noise. He stared back at the whistling, breathy words that were coming from thin air (or a few feet away from his hallway; he wasn’t quite sure anymore. Maybe both?) for a few strained moments, and when he couldn’t bring his mind to comprehend the muttered nothings, he turned back to his very confused friends. He looked one more time, just to be sure he wasn’t hearing things (hah!), then turned his head back again. 

He smiled limply, trying to diffuse the tension, but failing miserably. “Sorry. I ruined it, didn’t I?”

Uraraka raised her hands up and shook them as she spoke. “No, no no! You’re good, Deku!” She placed her hands back on her legs. “Just… caught us off guard. Right, Kirishima?” The moment of silence before he answered did not help their case. 

“Yeah, no worries, Midoriya.”

Yeah. He’d ruined it.

Izuku deflated, and placed his cards on the carpet as well. He started to speak again, maybe to apologize again, or maybe to pour out his heart and soul to them, but a resounding ding! from someone’s device stopped him in his tracks. Kirishima pulled out his phone, muttering a genuine apology as he checked his notifications. He gasped, and made a small ‘agghh!’ noise.

”Crap! I’m so sorry Midoriya, this is absolute shit timing, but I kind of had a commitment with my moms that I kind of sort of forgot about and kind of sort of need to get to? Like… really bad. Like, I promised-them-I’d-be-there-ten-minutes-ago-bad.”

Izuku was almost grateful for the change in plans, but was still sad to see his friend go. Whatever. They probably wouldn't have been able to get back into their rhythm anyway after that whole debacle.

He smiled and started to get up. ”It’s okay! Just put your cards on the carpet, I’ll take care of them.” Kirishima placed his cards as neatly as he could beside the discard pile and got up as well. Izuku thought up an excuse so that Kirishima didn’t feel too bad. “It’s almost lunchtime anyway, and I don’t know if I have enough food to accommodate you guys.” 

Uraraka let a little ‘oh’ escape her lips. ”I can stay a little while longer if you want, Deku.” Izuku nodded at Uraraka as Kirishima rushed to get his shoes on and fumbled around in his pockets for his keys. “I’m genuinely so sorry, Midoriya, I’ll make it up to you, I swear!” 

“It’s okay, Kirishima, go, go go! We can catch up later. Have fun!“

 Kirishima made a strained grimace-of-a-face just as he was getting ready to open the door. “I have to help them move furniture; only one of them has got a strength quirk, and it’s more like mine than an actual heavy-lifting one. I just happen to always be the first one they call for help.”  

Uraraka winced at that. “Ouch. Stay safe, then!” 

Kirishima gave a wave, shot an apologetic look at Izuku, and was out the door. 

Everything felt consumingly quiet for a moment, and the two of them were just sort of standing in the middle of the room now, not saying anything, not making any moves, barely breathing.

Uraraka broke the silence first. “How’s your head?”

Izuku brought a hesitant finger up to poke at the gauze they’d placed on his scalp. The wounds were superficial; he’d just scraped off the surface of his scalp dragging his fingernails down his head. He shuddered internally at the memory. “Feels okay, apart from some stinging. The gauze is a bit weird though.”

”Yeaahhh… sorry about that. Your hair doesn’t really part right there, so we had to get creative with it.”

Izuku bent down to collect all the cards around their little triangle; Kirishima’s, Uraraka’s, and his own, plus the discard pile and the pick-up pile. As he crouched to nab the final few cards, Uraraka spoke up again.

”Uhm… so… I have a bit of an invasive question.”

Izuku’s stomach dropped.

“Here. I went through your pantry, sorry about that. I found some bread, though, so that’s a plus!”

“Okay.” He made sure to face away from her while he was re-packaging the cards; he wasn’t sure if he wanted her to see his reaction.

”I noticed, when I was getting your water and bread, that you’ve put all your knives up on top of the pantry?”

Izuku slipped his UNO deck into his bedside table.

”And I’m not confident that’s a very good thing. You know you can talk to me, right? I’ll always be here to listen, no matter what it i—“

“Can you just… please…forget about that?” 

Uraraka shut her mouth quickly. Izuku turned to face her. “I’m okay. Just… Please ignore that. You guys have worried enough about me today. And I’m sorry for not responding to your texts, I haven’t slept for more than an hour at a time for the past three nights, and I’ve just been exhausted.” He dragged a hand down his face. “I’m really sorry.” He would have been crying by now if he were still in high school. Hell, he felt like crying, but nothing came out of his eyes. Maybe his tear ducts had finally shriveled up.

”I get it. I have those nights, too.” She walked up to Izuku and took one of his hands, just like they’d done in the café. “Just… Can you try to give a proof of life every once in a while? Even if it’s just a simple emoji or something. I just need to know that you’re alive.”

Izuku nodded. “I’ll try harder to keep in contact. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

Uraraka nodded sadly. “It’s okay. I know how hard things are for you right now, so I completely understand.” She let go of his hand and moved to grab her shoes and purse. Pausing at the door, she looked back at the teacher standing in the middle of the living area. “Are you okay to be alone?”

”I’ll be alright. I swear on my life.”

She hesitated still, despite his assurance. ”Call me if anything feels off, okay?”

He nodded. ”Take care, Uraraka.”

She smiled at him and slipped out the door into the hall. As soon as the door clicked closed, Izuku felt more alone than he’d felt that entire week. He lugged his heavy legs over to his couch and sat down, sighing heavily to himself. His gaze drifted over to the hallway, where he’d heard the whispering. 

What the hell was he gonna do? 

Chapter Text

Ochaco couldn’t stop thinking about her visit with Izuku.

As she walked down the sidewalk towards the bus stop, swinging her house keys in her hand, a million thoughts were swimming around in her mind.

Why had Deku been so freaked out? She hadn’t even thought to ask, which was probably a good thing given the whole situation—she wouldn’t have wanted to risk triggering another panic attack—but she still couldn’t help but wonder what the reason might’ve been.

And the knives. God, the knives. Something was really, very seriously wrong, and it filled Ochaco with a frustration so strong she felt nauseous. Why wouldn’t he just ask for help? Had she done something wrong?

She sighed, putting her keys into her pocket alongside her phone. There had to have been a reason he hid them, the knives, she meant, and Ochaco wasn’t too confident that reason was something he could handle on his own. Of course, he wouldn’t tell her, or anyone else, for that matter. He was too worried he would burden them with his problems. That was just how Deku was coded, she had realized over the years. But…she needed to help somehow. Lest he do something unreverseable. If he did, she would never be able to forgive herself, and Ochaco doubted that Kirishima or anyone else in her class, would be able to either. 

They were right there. Ochaco should have let Kirishima know, or maybe she could've taken the knives with her? Could she have managed to hide them somewhere else? Maybe he had a good reason for putting them where he did? The fact that he’d told her to forget about it did not help his case as well.

She stood under the bus stop’s roof and waited ten or so minutes for her bus to arrive. It was a full route around Musutafu, so one of the few buses making the trek arrived every fifteen minutes. 

Should she really be thinking about intervening? 

Ochaco bit her lip as she thought, rocking on her heels a few times before steadying. 

She could tell someone. Deku probably wouldn’t trust her with anything ever again, though. Maybe she didn’t need to speak up about the voices part…just the knives. Even thinking the word made her shudder. She didn’t want to talk about the fact that he was thinking about hurting himself, but if he wouldn’t get help himself, she would have to get it for him.

Steeled in her decision, as her bus arrived and she pulled out her phone to pay for the fare, she shot a text to someone she knew could handle the situation accordingly.

You: deku isn’t doing too well, i don’t think, and we need your help to fix it.

—

Izuku had been having a prolonged staring contest with the wall for at least twenty minutes now, with the goal of maybe interacting with the UNO voice—which was a stupid idea in itself, but what else could he do? Apparently just willing it into existence wasn’t the way to go about it, he was very quickly finding, so how else could do it? Maybe talking back to them?

”That advice you gave me earlier wasn’t bad, if that’s what you’re worried about.” What was he even doing? It was all in his head, anyway, so why was he expecting a made up voice to respond to him? “You just scared me a bit, that’s all.”

He let his words stew in the air for a few moments, trying to focus on the constant buzz of conversation like he’d done a few days earlier. It was no use, of course—that was just his luck these days. He couldn’t decipher jack squat, not even a broken sentence like before. It was like the words were being said, but he was unable to process their meaning, especially given the overlap. 

Normally, Midoriya Izuku wasn’t one to give up so easily, but he was exhausted and sweaty and just…done. He was done trying with this. He would attempt it again when he was feeling up to it. For now, though, he just wanted to lay on his stupid, ratty, grey couch and soak in his angst for a little while. It probably wasn’t good for him, but he really didn’t feel like doing anything else. 

He sunk into the horrid grey cushions of his secondhand couch and sighed heavily. It was more of a futon, if he was being honest, but who’s counting? 

A knock on the door disrupted his settlement, and Izuku wasn’t one to be rude and leave them hanging outside his apartment. He un-stuck himself from the springy couch and got up to answer his second (Technically third, but he was choosing to count Uraraka and Kirishima as one unit) unexpected visitor of the day. He put his hand on the doorknob and pushed it down, pulling the door open in the same motion. 

“Problem child.”

Izuku froze in place, suddenly very aware of his state of dress—it wasn’t like he was naked, but the shirt he was wearing hadn’t been washed in a hot minute, and his shorts were kind of worn from frequent use, since they had an All Might pattern on them, and everyone knew how much he idolized the guy.

“Mr. Aizawa, hi.” Izuku blinked a few times, trying to think of a valid reason his teacher would be here, at his apartment, at eleven-something on whim. 

Aizawa glanced up at Izuku’s odd hairdo (due to the bandages) and back down. “Gonna keep your teacher standing outside your apartment, or are you gonna let me in?” His teacher was dressed in his hero costume, which was…mildly concerning to Izuku, to say the least. Had he come here from patrol? God, did Izuku have patrol today and didn’t realize? That would’ve been bad.

“Oh, sorry! Come in, come in.”

Aizawa stepped in, and, upon seeing the shoe rack Izuku had by the door, took his shoes off. That stunned Izuku a little bit. “Oh, sir, you don’t need to do that—“

”Stop with the formalities, Problem child. You can just call me Aizawa.” His teacher glared at him, but it held no real malice. In fact, it almost seemed as if he was…concerned?

Izuku deflated a bit. ”Yes sir.”

Aizawa rolled his eyes, and, Izuku having realized what he did, muttered an apology. The scruffy man took a few steps toward Izuku, so that they were face to face rather than across the room from each other. Not close enough to be suffocating, but close enough for Izuku to know something was up.

”I assume you’re wondering why I’m here.”

Izuku nodded, his eyebrows knitting together just slightly. ”I don’t have patrol today, do I?”

Aizawa shook his head. “Where are they, Midoriya?”

He froze, his heart picking up speed. What was he—

Oh.

Oh.

Crap, crap crap crap crap crap! How the hell did he know about that?!

Izuku swallowed. “Uh, I don’t follow?”

Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Midoriya. Don’t play dumb with me.”

A familiar warm breath against Izuku’s ear instantly made tears (and stars) prick at the edges of his vision. 

“Izuku, tell him where the goddamn knives are.”

Izuku would recognize that voice anywhere. He glanced over his shoulder, through his peripheral so as to not alert his teacher that he had heard anything other than him. A flash of red, there and then gone, made his breath hitch.

No, no no no no no. 

“Midoriya…” 

This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t happening.

A sudden jolt and a heavy pressure on his shoulders snapped Izuku out of his haze. He hadn’t even realized he’d begun hyperventilating. 

“Breathe, Problem child, breathe. I’m here.”

He choked down sobs as his teacher pulled his, now weightless, body against his, holding his arms up as he lowered the two of them to the ground. Izuku cried, and cried, and cried, and Aizawa held the back of his head with the hand that wasn’t holding his back. 

“I…I-I’m s..sso sorry!” He wasn’t sure if he was telling his teacher that, or if he was telling Kacchan’s voice. Maybe both.

“It’s okay, it’s alright. I’m just glad someone told me before you could actually do anything…” He trailed off, realizing an error in his statement. “I certainly hope you haven’t.”

Izuku shook his head fervently in his teacher's embrace. “No, no, no,no, I have…haven’t, I-I swear!” He let out a sob on the tail end of the word ‘swear’, but Aizawa pretended not to notice the way the word came out.

”Good. I’m glad.”

Izuku cried for a while longer, which he had become increasingly aware of by the time he’d semi-calmed. Mildly embarrassing, but he would live. 

He slowly pulled himself, puffy eyed and snot-ridden, away from Aizawa’s hug as soon as he could control his sobbing. He wiped one of his hands under his nose, which was mildly gross, but he didn’t really care.

”Do you wanna talk about it, or do you just want me to do what I came here to do?”

Izuku sniffled, looking off to the side (as if looking for his friend). “There’s nothing to t-talk about. I thought about doing something b-bad, that’s the end of it.” He paused. “What did you come h-here to do?”

—

Uraraka: deku isn’t doing too well, i don’t think, and we need your help to fix it.

Shouta had immediately picked up his phone—he always did when it was one of his students, albeit he usually left a minute or two in between responses so they didn’t find out about his true adoration for them—when he saw Uraraka’s name pop up on his notification screen. 

You: Care to elaborate?

[…]

Even at work, his (former and current) students took priority. Sure, he should be doing more research on whatever group this guy was a part of, but with the subject of Uraraka’s message, that could wait. Both tasks had the goal of helping Midoriya, therefore he had free reign to choose either.

Uraraka: so…to sum it up, deku hadn’t been answering his texts, and given a 

              conversation him and I had the other day, that was due justification

              for concern

You: Valid.

Shouta couldn’t deny he was curious about the conversation in question, but he decided not to pry. They were twenty five, they were allowed to have secrets. (He only said that because, if they were younger, he wouldn’t have hesitated to dig deeper.)

Uraraka: kirishima and i went over to his place to do a proof-of-life check today, and 

              we found him having a panic attack in the bathroom. concerning in itself,

              right? well, when he calmed down, i went to go get him some water and a 

              snack, just in case he wanted one

Shouta was getting more concerned by the minute. Sure, he’d noticed that the boy was more jittery, for lack of a better term, than usual the other day, but that was almost a week ago. Surely he would have told someone if something was seriously wrong?

He immediately took that thought back as soon as it reared its head. He absolutely wouldn’t have told anyone, not in a million years. He was stubborn and convinced that he had to deal with everything on his own.

You: Right. Go on.

Uraraka: sensei, I found a stash of hidden knives. I think maybe he was thinking 

              about hurting himself.

Shouta was instantly up and out of his seat, careful enough to not let all his papers fly around, but quick enough to catch a few people’s attention. 

”Aizawa? Where are you off to so quickly?” 

Shouta grunted as he made his way towards the back door. “Emergency. Be back soon.”

Tsukauchi’s face softened with understanding. “Call if you need me.”

Shouta nodded, and, as soon as he stepped a foot out of the station, He made a mad dash towards Midoriya’s apartment. With this particular Problem child’s history, he couldn’t get there soon enough. He shot Uraraka a quick text before making his way into the bustling sidewalks of Musutafu.

You: I’m on my way.

—

Aizawa placed his hands on Izuku’s shoulders. “There is plenty to talk about, Midoriya. There has to have been a reason for those thoughts to appear in the first place, even if you don’t know what that reason was or is yet. I just need to know if you do.”

Izuku’s gaze softened as he looked back at Aizawa. “I don’t think I want to tell you, but I know why.”

His teacher nodded slowly. “That’s okay. I won’t pry. But I will ask again,” He tightened his grip on Izuku’s shoulders, not angrily, but more so in an attempt to ground him, “Where did you hide them?”

Izuku debated telling him for a moment; he would maybe need those knives for cooking dinner, or opening boxes, or…

”I put them on top of the pantry.” He deflated a little bit as he said that, and Aizawa sighed and nodded.

“Thank you for telling me. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?” 

Izuku thought for a moment. He didn’t have anything he needed from Aizawa—he hadn’t even known that he was coming to begin with—but he did have a few questions. 

“Who told you?”

Aizawa sighed. “Will you distance yourself from them if I tell you?”

Izuku shook his head slowly, shrinking in on himself. “I would have done the same thing they did, honestly.”

His teacher nodded. “Good, because she was very worried about you. I’m grateful Uraraka reached out, because I know you wouldn’t have until it was too late. Which, I should lecture you about, but I won’t. Not today.” Aizawa got up and held his hand out to assist Izuku, of which he gratefully took. Izuku sat down in his seat at the dining table, and Aizawa walked over to the pantry to retrieve the knives. “You do know why I’m taking these, don’t you?”

Izuku nodded sadly. 

“Good.” He carefully took all the sharps out from the top of the pantry and placed them on the counter. “Do you have any bags I can put these in? I didn’t think to grab anything before I came out here.”

Izuku pointed towards the hall closet located to the left of his living area slash sleeping area. “I probably have some paper bags in there, behind the vacuum maybe?”

Aizawa nodded and made his way over, leaving Izuku to ruminate in his thoughts for a minute.

He’d heard Kacchan’s voice. Again. And he’d panicked, again. Though he supposed he had the right to panic, because the whole situation was fucked. 

He was starting to doubt his resolve a little bit. Maybe these voices were a little more than he’d initially thought. Something more complicated that he didn’t really have the energy to unpack right then, but he would get to it…eventually.

”Found them.” Aizawa held up a large brown paper bag labeled with the local convenience store’s logo and walked back into the kitchen. He placed each knife gently into the bag, and, when he was done with that, he began to rifle through the kitchen cabinets. Izuku furrowed his brow.

“W-What are you doing now?” Izuku felt his face heat up a little bit. Do I have anything embarrassing in there? He better not’ve gone through my bedroom… Oh, god that would be embarrassing. 

“Making sure you don’t have any other sharp objects. Would you prefer to go through your bathroom and bedside tables? I assume you’d like to preserve at least some of your dignity.”

Izuku’s eyebrows unknitted gradually as he spoke. That makes sense. ”Yeah, thank you, Aizawa Sensei.” His teacher scoffed, and Izuku swore he saw a hint of a smirk on his face. The man in question placed a pair of kitchen scissors he’d missed into the bag.

He walked off into the carpeted area of his apartment, which included where his bed and couch were, his bedside tables, the entrance to his balcony and the door into the hallway. He began to rummage through his bedside tables, finding nothing but what he’d expected to find in there, and a few things that made him blush at the prospect of his teacher seeing them by accident. No sharps, though. That was a relief. 

He trotted into the hallway and into his bathroom, and shuffled around through various medicine cabinets and cupboards to find a small pair of scissors for cutting bandages, a small pocket knife for opening plastic sealed containers, and a razor that he occasionally used to shave, but no other objects he could possibly hurt himself with. He debated taking the tweezers, but they weren’t sharp enough to do any damage, so he left them. 

“Clear?”

Izuku jumped, hitting his head on the roof of the cupboard. He made a pained noise, grasping his head (specifically where his bandages were: they were stinging like hell now) and pulling himself out from underneath the sink. 

“That was mean,” Izuku pouted. 

“What, you thought I would leave you alone in a place that is most definitely going to have sharp objects while you’re in this state? Not happening, Problem child.”

Izuku paled and blushed simultaneously, like some sort of fucked up cuttlefish. “Please don’t tell me you watched me go through my bedside tables. Or the stuff in here.” He looked around at the cupboard, scanning for anything he needed to hide in the moment. “I don’t even know what I have in here.”

He shook his head. “I lingered in the room, yes, but I didn’t peek into your private business. Keeping an ear out was the least I could do. Besides, your kitchen was clear other than that pair of scissors, so I had nothing else to do as soon as you left. I shouldn’t have sent you alone to begin with, though. That was a fault on my end. I apologize for scaring you.”

Izuku smiled nervously. “It’s okay. You didn’t mean to.”

The two of them stood (and sat) like that for a few moments, before Aizawa sighed and walked out. Izuku followed suit, and they ended up in the middle of the carpeted area. 

Aizawa pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not feeling particularly inclined to leave you alone right now, but, as the circumstances have it, I was in the middle of working on a case when I left, and I promised Tsukauchi I would be back.” Izuku opened his mouth to speak. “And do not apologize for making me leave, Midoriya. I left on my own accord, and you should not feel sorry for struggling and needing help.” Izuku closed his mouth.

”I have a few things to ask of you before I leave, though.”

The green haired boy nodded. “Of course.”

He held out his hand. “I need your balcony keys. If you have anything you think you’ll need, you may grab them. I’ll be locking that door.” Izuku deflated and nodded, eyeing the front door hooks for the keys in question. 

“I’m going to let Inui know to call you in thirty minutes if you don’t call him first. Unless you are unable to pick up the phone for some unknown reason, you are to answer him. Got it?” Izuku nodded again.

“Send me a message every few hours, unless you’re asleep, and let Uraraka and Kirishima know you’re okay. They’re worried sick about you.” 

“I can do that.” After a moment, and a nod from Aizawa, Izuku walked over to the front door, grabbed his balcony keys from their respective hook, and locked the door they went to. When he got back, he handed them to his teacher.

Aizawa took the keys and placed them in his pocket. He put his hand on Izuku’s head gently, but didn’t quite ruffle his hair in fear of messing up his bandages. “Alright then. Stay safe, problem child. I’ll be back if you don’t follow those conditions to the letter.”

”I will. Have a good rest of your day, Mr. Aizawa.” The man in question let his hand fall off the boy’s head, and started off towards the kitchen to grab the bag of sharps. As he made his way towards the front door, bag in hand, he shouted back to Izuku without turning his head. 

“To the letter!”

Izuku smiled as best he could. “I swear I will!” His teacher slipped on his shoes and headed out the door, clicking it closed behind him.

Izuku just stood still in the middle of his apartment for a few moments, waiting for the sound of footsteps to fade, and then, he started to cry.