Chapter Text
This can't be real.
He had just spotted a flash of familiar, green hair, passing through the crowds. An unmemorable face paired with green freckles sprinkled liberally across it…
Katsuki is terrified.
There's no other word for it. His heart rate picks up, nitroglycerin drips down his palms, his hands start shaking… it's embarrassing, why was he scared of shitty Deku?
Maybe, he thought detachedly to himself, it's because shitty Deku is dead.
———
Four Months Earlier...
Izuku is dead.
He is certain of it.
And that is why, currently, he is having a crisis.
He is a 15-year-old, quirkless, useless nobody, and he should not be alive right now. One of the windows is floating in front of him, and All Might help him. He's too panicked about being dead to properly process what's being displayed in front of him.
GAME OVER.
New High Score!
RESPAWN?
YES / NO
note - decision is irreversible
... what?
I'm sorry, hold up a second.
How...?
Okay, so maybe after a while he had gathered that the screens weren't exactly a commonplace thing. He quickly learnt a lesson about talking about the things he saw— Kacchan had burnt a reminder into his skin, hand-shaped and blistered. But… he was quirkless. He knew he was quirkless, but quirkless or not, people couldn't just respawn ! Once you died, you died , and that was the irreversible rule, save for a few very rare quirks… and even then they were along the lines of necromancy, and people didn't tend to retain their memories or personality—
Slow. Down.
Breathe. Think, but stay on track…
Izuku drums his fingers against his thighs, pent-up energy threatening to explode. He wanted to scream and kick and viciously attack a pillow or something, but that wouldn't help. He needs to think this through, be rational, be careful…
He knows that he died, yeah, but… how? What led up to it?
He takes a deep breath, and slowly recounts his memories.
———
Midoriya Izuku is fourteen years old. He lives in a house with his mother, Midoriya Inko. She's the most wonderful parent he could ever ask for, if he ignores the slight twinge of anger… (She had been having just as bad a time as him. She didn't say the right thing, but it still wasn't her fault.)
He loves katsudon and All Might and watching Hero battles…
He used to have a Best Friend named Bakugou Katsuki, but he's not a friend anymore. He still calls Katsuki Kacchan, and Kacchan still calls him Deku (it's mean, but he doesn't show that the name bothers him).
His life is a living hell. He is bullied relentlessly for not having a quirk. it's bullshit, to put it bluntly— like picking on someone for having asthma. Idiots, the lot of them.
Kacchan… Kacchan is the main tormentor. But he forgives him, because Kacchan would surely be an amazing hero one day, and he can't risk getting in his way.
That morning had been normal. Mostly uneventful. There was a hero battle, sure, and it was a debut fight on top of that, but that was all par for the course for Izuku. He didn't actively seek out battles, per se, but… he definitely saw a lot of them.
After scribbling down his notes and sketching out a hero costume, he made his way over to his school. Aldera Junior High, the land of burns and cuts and scrapes, malicious words and uncaring teachers and… and it wouldn't be long until he got out! He'd be going to high school soon, and that meant… maybe his next teachers would bother to help him. He wasn't dumb enough to hope that he wouldn't be bullied in his next school.
Oh, his next school! Yuuei! The top hero school in the world, if he was lucky there was a chance…! There was a chance he could get in, quirk or no quirk! And, well, he probably wouldn't be able to reach the Hero Course, but he'd settle for General Studies, no sweat!
He would have preferred it if his teacher didn't single him out about it, though.
He spent the rest of the day trying to melt into his seat and turn invisible. It obviously didn't work, of course, since he was cornered the moment the teacher left the room.
It wasn't anything he hadn't heard before. Sure, Kacchan had never burnt his notebooks, but that was fine! It was a relatively new one, anyways, he could transfer the pages once he got it back—
"Why don't you take a swan dive off the roof?!"
Oh.
Oh, that hurt.
Kacchan…
You can't be a hero when you tell people to kill themselves, yknow? It could ruin your career.
"HAAAAAH!?"
Oh, shit. He said that out loud.
Katsuki stomped over and shot his arm out, fingers gripping Izuku's neck. "You wanna say that again, nerd?"
The smell of burnt caramel made him nauseous, and he wheezed for air. A few pops sound out in the now- silent room, and all he can really think is oh, darn it. Now I'm going to have to wear a scarf for the next couple weeks.
"Tch," Katsuki scoffs, throwing Izuku to the floor. "Weakling Deku."
And with that, he turns on his heel and stomps out of the room, lackeys following close behind.
This wasn't the first time that he had knocked Izuku onto the floor and left him gasping for breath, and likely not the last either. He tended to go for the throat, like a rabid animal, and rightfully so— it was an effective tactic.
But, well, maybe he should try to breathe properly again. That seems like a good plan.
In, out. He knew how to block out the pain. In, out. He had been doing it for years, after all. In, out. But today… in, out. Today had been harder. In, out. There, see? In, out. He could breathe now without coughing! In, out.
Keep it even. Keep it measured. Keep it controlled. Ignore the burning on your neck and the tears on your face. Stand up and move, because if you don't you'll get left behind.
Izuku rises on shaky legs, supporting himself on a desk. He had to get his notebook, first. He knew that the information in them could be dangerous if the wrong person found them..
He wouldn't want that on his mind, not when he had other stuff to deal with.
———
After pausing by the door to pull a scarf out of his backpack, Izuku had gone searching for his book. It was easy enough to find, but he'd be lying if he said that he wasn't at least a little insulted by the fish trying to eat it.
Carefully lowering it into his bag, he keeps walking, kicking loose gravel away as he muttered.
"Deku… I really am a Deku, aren't I? Kacchan is right, I'm pretty useless after all. But that doesn't mean he should have said that stuff, he could get into real trouble…!"
The only warning he had was a quiet rattling of the manhole cover, and suddenly he was drowning.
With his wonderful reflexes, of course the first thing he had to do was breathe in. While he was drowning. He is such a colossal idiot.
And the last thing he heard— "Thanks, kid— You're my hero!"— echoed in his ears before he slipped under.
———
Izuku felt like throwing up. He probably wouldn't be able to walk under shadowy bridges alone ever again… if he got the chance, that is.
This was such a mess.