Tangled in too-hot blankets, sheets sticking to sweat-slicked skin, Izuku’s eyes snap open in the darkness of his room. An after-image of the dream lingers in his head, half-remembered words and forgotten smells and the visage of someone long-dead haunting him. His breath comes fast but deep, and he closes his eyes and grits his teeth as he struggles to hang onto the last whisps of sleep.
Blond hair, sad eyes, a rattling cough—he’s dreamt of Toshinori again. More bitter than sweet, these dreams come every so often, taunting him with hazy days on the beach and long conversations in quiet meeting rooms. Sometimes, when his subconscious feels he deserves a harsher punishment, he remembers the arguments. He remembers hospital rooms and fraying nerves and the last months before his death. They knew it had been coming, the death he’d dodged in Nighteye’s vision finally coming for him at last, which had only made it harder.
They fought more in those last few months than in the prior ten years.
At least Izuku had the chance to say goodbye, the chance to make his peace with Toshinori before he finally passed. Very few get that choice.
Sighing, he opens his eyes again, and this time, he can half make out the wall of his room, grey tones and indistinct shapes rather than a memory-blurred face. He shifts so he can pick up his phone, squinting as he turns it on and bathes his face in the light of the screen.
Three in the morning.
Just great.
He sets his phone down and rolls over, careful not to jostle his shoulder. There’s a chance he can maybe get back to sleep, as long as he can put the dream and the memories out of his mind. He closes his eyes, slows his breathing…
His heart still pounds heavy in his chest, beating against his ribcage, and he’s uncomfortably aware of it. Sometimes, hearing and feeling his own heartbeat is… soothing, but tonight, it’s not.
Tonight, it just drags him back to awareness, out of the tender hold of sleep.
God, it’s been four years, hasn’t it? It’s almost June, which means…
Yeah.
Four years.
And he had barely even noticed the date passing, lost as he was in his own living death.
…That’s so pretentious. Who is he, Shouto? It was a depressive episode—a very long depressive episode—not a living death. Better to call it what it is than to make up some fancy fucking words for it.
And there’s one of the other ghosts in his head, Kacchan lending his voice to Izuku’s thoughts. All he needs now is Hitoshi, and he’ll have completed his holy trinity this morning.
Not that those three are the only ghosts he carries around; they’re just the most prominent. He lost too many friends to Shigaraki and the League of Villains, too many mentors and fellow heroes. And, while he may not know their names, he carries the ghost of every person he’s failed to save, every person he was too late or too slow for.
One in particular calls herself to his mind’s eye, a little girl in a dragonfly dress, his first child death in the field. He had been seventeen, interning under Mirko, the League of Villains’ war yet to kick itself into gear.
She had been seven. Her death had been quick, a chunk of rubble to the head, and he remembers pulling her body out of the wreckage, remembers the dent in her skull and the blood in her hair and the dust covering her dragonfly dress.
The cries of her parents still ring in his ears almost as clearly as the day he first heard them.
Groaning, he opens his eyes and sits up. Clearly, this isn’t going to work. If he goes to sleep now, he’ll just have bad dreams, memories of death and dying and almost-dying, and he’d rather be tired from no sleep than tired from that kind of sleep.
Having just rediscovered drawing, he turns on the lamp next to his bed and picks up his sketchbook. Anything that comes out of him now will probably be terrible, but at least drawing is fun, and it can keep his mind preoccupied—
Unless he draws the things he’s thinking about, which appears to be what’s happening. Just sketching without conscious direction, he begins to bring Toshinori to life on the page, at least, Toshinori as he remembers him before the last hospital stay, before the last months.
Carefully, he sketches Toshinori, moves onto Hitoshi and Katsuki, branches out into Tokoyami and Gran Torino and Sir Nighteye. Some of the bodies that remain emblazoned in his mind’s eye find their way out as well, the little girl and the aftermath of that explosion in Kyoto and Shigaraki, his throat ripped open, Izuku only afforded seconds to see it and know that he was finally gone before the building had collapsed on top of him.
He shakes himself, exorcises Shigaraki’s ghost and the memory of the collapsing building from his mind and sets aside his sketchbook for the time being.
Something moves underneath his bed.
He jumps right into the air and stays there, heart racing from the zing of adrenaline through his veins. His room is thrown into sharp green relief as One For All activates, and he twists around in the air just in time to see Mothman slink out from underneath his bed. She glances up at him, eyes flashing in the light of his quirk.
On his exhale (his long, drawn-out exhale) he floats back down to his bed and settles back into it. A moment later, she jumps up onto it and turns around in a circle, purring and kneading at his blankets.
He sighs again, shaking his head as she settles down, sitting in loaf formation at the foot of his bed. Picking up his phone, he takes a picture of her, a shitty, terrible picture, given that it’s almost four in the morning and still dark in his room, and on a whim, he sends it.
Class Hella Gay!!!
cryptid
[mothman.jpeg]
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
hey uh what the FUCK is that
cryptid
mothman
turning the frogs GAY
since when do you have a cat
cryptid
not my cat
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
that’s a CAT????
[sparkle emoji]
That is the ugliest cat I have ever seen in my life.
cryptid
you take that back. she’s beautiful
turning the frogs GAY
is that mr. aizawa’s cat?
cryptid
and what of it?
turning the frogs GAY
what are you doing with his cat?
cryptid
cat-sitting, obviously
there is no water on the moon, fuck you
who in their right mind would trust you with cat-sitting
cryptid
just because i’m incapable of taking care of myself doesn’t mean i’m incapable of taking care of cats
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
@spear and shield but lovingly ESSAY TIME ESSAY TIME
cryptid
NO
YOU TAKE THAT BACK
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
only if you say something nice about yourself
cryptid
what
turning the frogs GAY
what
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
those are the RULES. you say something mean about yourself, you gotta say something nice about yourself or else Eijirou will Essay Bomb You!
it’s one of the conditions of being in the Kirisquad[tm]
cryptid
what
no
i hate this
that wasn’t mean that was TRUE
turning the frogs GAY
it was pretty mean
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
and even if it is true, is that really a bad thing? i mean. @Your Goddess!!! :D is it a bad thing?
Your Goddess!!! :D
Nope!
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
see?
cryptid
unfair. that’s cheating. this is homophobia
turning the frogs GAY
we’re all gay here
cryptid
gay and homophobic
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
just say something nice about yourself
cryptid
ugh. fine.
…i got nothing
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
b r o
come on you gotta have something
cryptid
uh does it have to be related to what i said earlier or can it be anything
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
anything! just please for the love of all that’s good just fucking compliment yourself
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
Language!
cryptid
go to sleep tenya
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
YOU go to sleep!
cryptid
haha maybe
anyways
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
There is no maybe. You Will.
cryptid
i’m pretty good at drawing
???
are you gonna show up here again just to bully me to sleep
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
No, but I will if you want me to.
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
wait you can draw?
cryptid
[sob] [pleading face] ily tenya
turning the frogs GAY
yeah he’s pretty good at it
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
!!!! SHOW ME!!!!
cryptid
i don’t have any recent sketches on my phone, sorry. i can dm you some later tho
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
i will hold you to that
cryptid
anyways i guess i should get off before tenya decides he DOES have to come over here and bully me to sleep
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
Please do.
cryptid
or who knows, maybe i’ll flip the script and go bully YOU to bed. i can get there a lot faster than you can get here after all
Please Stop Changing My Nickname To Sonic
Please don’t. It would be on the news and then Japan would be in an uproar.
cryptid
killjoy. anyways good night. or good morning i guess
turning the frogs GAY
wow. that was the longest conversation he’s had in here in MONTHS
chestburster Full Of Love!!!
i know!!!! Hanta recently added him to our groupchat and it was so weird at first. but it’s so good to hear from him on a like. more common basis? he doesn’t talk much but he’s pretty religious about his goodnight texts
Izuku shuts his screen off before he can see any more messages talking about him. He feels better, chest lighter, although the fuzziness in his head remains, and the darker thoughts linger just out of sight. At least he feels less like his depression might eat him again, which is always a good thing.
The lighter mood doesn’t last, fading away in the quiet of his room and the darkness of the early morning. When he’s waited in the quiet for as long as he can, he gets dressed for his morning run, even though all he wants to do is curl up and try to not exist for the day.
He barely feels any better after it, but he’s eaten up another half-hour of his life, and is no longer the only one awake in the house. Shouta is up, getting started on the coffee. Just because it’s Sunday doesn’t mean that they sleep in. Something about a regular sleep schedule being good for your mental and emotional health…
Yeah, Izuku’s erratic sleep schedule has definitely had its part to play over the years.
Briefly, they exchange good mornings before Izuku vanishes into the guest bathroom to take a shower. He brings a change of clothes with him, and while he’s waiting for the water to heat up, he glances in the mirror.
He looks… so tired. The familiar self-hatred roils in his gut, but he bites it back in favor of taking a good, hard look at himself. The anchor points on his shoulder are still improving, the ones he can see less inflamed than the last time he looked.
…He should probably swing by his apartment and check to see if he can find his compression wraps and support brace. Maybe, with Mei’s acceptance, he can start wearing his arm a bit more often with them…
Now that he’s thinking about it, that might be part of why his shoulder had gotten so bad in the first place. He had misplaced them a few weeks ago, and just… never had the energy to really look for them. Fuck, but he could kick himself for that—what had he been thinking?
The answer is that he wasn’t thinking at all.
Moving on from his shoulder, he glances over his hair, which desperately needs a trim. Those split ends sure are something. He’ll have to arrange for one soon-ish, although it’s not very high on his priority list. A part of his chest aches at the thought, though: for years, he and Ochako have taken on the task of trimming each other’s hair whenever it needs done, and he shies away from the idea of going to someone else about it. If he wanted to avoid letting a stranger do it, he could ask Yamada, who, according to Eri, trims everyone’s hair in their family, but…
He shakes his head.
Enough of that. He’ll figure it out some other time, or he’ll ruminate over it in the shower, considering the water has probably warmed up by now. Sticking his hand in to check, he pulls it back out quickly—it’s a little hot, but he’ll adjust it once he’s underneath the water.
No shower breakdowns await him this time, and he’s in and out within fifteen minutes. For the first time in… weeks, maybe, he bothers with his hair mask, taking his time to work it into his hair before sitting down on the edge of the tub with his phone to wait the allotted twenty minutes before he can rinse it out.
It’s a small thing, but he feels better for it, the ache in his chest eased slightly as he finishes drying off and putting away his hair products once he’s done. He slaps some moisturizer on himself, pulls on his clean clothes, tosses his dirty clothes in the hamper, and steps out of the bathroom to go join everyone else for breakfast. Their presences help hold the cloud of his depression at bay for just a little while longer, Eri stopping him to drag him down to her level so she can wrap her arms around his shoulders, Shouta’s little nod of greeting, Yamada’s enthusiastic side-hug and cry of “good morning!”, each one sends a little thrill of warmth shooting through him. He sits down at the table with them, and despite the rough night and bad dreams…
Today might be okay.