Chapter Text
Going home at the end of the day was something children looked forward to. Couldn’t wait to board buses or get driven home, to step through the threshold of a door and into a warm atmosphere circled with love and appreciation, that smelled and felt like home.
Izuku didn’t.
He was supposed to be quiet. That’s what mom had said, that’s what the teachers said, even the other kids! Izuku didn’t buzz in excitement, didn’t pace or tap his feet. Many wondered why. Many wondered why the boy looked so grey, why he wasn’t normal. Izuku considered himself normal. It was normal to go home to a dark house. A house covered in a thick blanket of dust that was never stirred, even as he stepped through it all. Considered it normal that his house was empty. That his house had been classified as abandoned.
Izuku Midoriya also lived a lie.
Izuku tried to think, tried to remember how long it had been since his mother had gone. How long it had been since he jumped, just to return to school the next day. How long it had been since he had slowly watched himself… what was the word mom had used when she had to throw away his favorite shirt? - fade?
Life was funny in the most peculiar ways. Such as the way that Izuku could see through his hands, once solid, now transparent. He could see the bristles of the cream- grey, it was grey now, he didn’t like grey - carpet through his palm, could see through them when he covered his eyes.
Izuku watched his hands pass through his phone, the only thing in the house that lacked a coat of dust. That was still shiny and new, the brightest thing in the dark household. Silently, he made a grab for it again, just to watch his fingers phase through the device, a half-done page of analysis staring back at him from the lit-up screen.
He supposed he should have expected that - ever since he had jumped, just like the big kid on the news, things had been like this. The adults had read what she had written before she jumped. She said she’d be happier like that.
He eventually grew used to it.
Rest - or, what he could classify as sleep - was to regain energy, and power. The thing that enabled him to still go to school. To still seem as normal as he could get. If he slept, he could grab things. If he slept, he became solid again, even if it was only briefly.
For that small amount of time, he was temporarily human. Not the husk he had become, the whisper of the past and proof of a translucent future. Not the see-through boy still riddled with scars, because if he slept, he was normal. If he fell asleep, he forgot his problems, forgot how he didn’t have a shadow, didn’t have a heartbeat. That when he walked, he was silent. How he left no footprints in the mud, or how he wasn’t affected by the wind. He could forget the image of his own body, neck and legs and arms and bones shattered and broken and bent at unnatural angles, could forget the scarlet puddle that had spread underneath green hair and wide empty emerald eyes. Could forget the rope in the bedroom he found his mother swinging from. Could forget that he still lived in this house because everyone thought his dad was still here. Could forget that he was an orphan.
Because if Izuku Midoriya slept, he wasn’t a ghost.