Chapter Text
Izuku’s wails fill the hall.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Please please, her baby sobs. “I’m sorry! Please! Don’t— you can’t- don’t take him away!” He’s hunched in on himself, clutching at bedsheets, wetted with tears. “Please please- please—” The words fall out with sobs. Breaths coming ragged. Izuku claws the blanket beneath desperately. “D-don’t take him!”
She can’t make sense of the nightmare, but it’s all still knives plunging into her chest with every plead. Izuku, she thinks and pries her child’s grip from fabric. He continues to wail for him— eyes screwed shut and unseeing as he beats against her chest- thrashing in her arms.
“Izuku,” she whispers over his crying calls “Izuku wake up.”
It’s okay, you’re okay. She knows the words are untrue, she doesn’t speak them.
She tries once, thrice. Her body bruises as small fists fight against her. Izuku can’t hear. “Wake up,” her pleads joins her child’s “please Izuku.”
“Please,” Izuku echoes with a scream. Her ears ring. “N—t G- ya!”
“Shh,” she murmurs. Inko raises her head, tucking her Izuku’s head into her shoulder and cards through sweat-tangled hair. He trembles in her hold, the beating dying slowly and the fists comes up to grip the fabric of her nightdress. “It’ll be over soon dear, just wake up okay? Wake up Izuku.”
“I’m sorry,” her Izuku whispers croakily.
She has no reply. Inko pulls him closer and continues to card through knots even when she feels Izuku’s finally slump, unconscious in her arms. He sleeps like death. Through the night she stays with him.
When dawn comes Izuku does not remember. She is not relieved.
————
The nightmares stay plaguing him. Izuku gets used to waking up in his mother’s arms. He asks what happens in the night, guilty for the dark bags lining her eyes, but his reply is that his mother doesn’t know. It’s just nightmares, she promises, he’ll grow out of them soon.
What he sees remain in his memory in a peripheral way. There, always, but not remembered or ever really seen. Fangs, the glint of a blade green coated red, and the grey of dust at his fingertips.
He knows he's forgetting something. He doesn't know what.
It’s better this way. This, Izuku is sure.
————
Tap. Tap tap. Tap.
Sensei drones in the background. His pencil spins in his hands, dancing over his fingers, before setting down to tap tap tap against the wood of his desk. The lead breaks and rolls to the edge of desk. Izuku sharpens his pencil the sharpest he can get it before he starts tapping again. The irritated glares from his classmates aren’t enough to stop him.
Another whole hour, the clock reads. That’s too long. He shouldn’t be here. Sitting at a desk, waiting. Listening to things he already—
A fly buzzes through the class, whizzing through the air above heads of hair. The pencil drops from his hand, Izuku pulls back his middle finger with his thumb. Flick. The fly drops. A broken piece of lead falls onto Kacchan’s desk along with the insect’s corpse.
“Deku!” Kacchan snarls, low so Akira-sensei doesn’t take notice. Izuku’s desk is right behind Kacchan’s, Kacchan knows exactly who’s to blame. “Cut it out!”
“Sorry Kacchan!” He shout-whispers back, then waits for Kacchan to turn back around before he continues in spinning his pencil.
56 minutes.
Izuku sits and sits. He isn’t bored, he loves learning! But Izuku shouldn’t be here, sitting in a classroom with a Sensei that teaches history that—
he lived through!
doesn’t engage him at all.
He’s restless. His mother says so all the time. It isn’t an attention disorder, because Izuku can concentrate, it just that he could be doing things so much better! Things more productive!
Izuku doesn’t know what, though. He pouts to himself and thinks he could if he weren’t stuck in this seat. The pencil spinning gets boring so Izuku starts to doodle on his paper, already filled out with answers. He’s no good at drawing, his handwriting is a mess according to Akira-sensei and Kacchan. It’s not his fault though, it’s just- so weird! To try gripping a pencil with five fingers. His mother laughs at him for it, Izuku thinks it’s silly too.
He’s found he’s a lot better at calligraphy. The type with the brush and ink.
The drawings on his page aren’t anything more than squiggles and lines. Izuku tries squinting his eyes to make sense of his own drawing. Squiggles and lines. He tries turning his head and lightly brushing an eraser over the paper.
He squints again. Fainter squiggles and lines. Izuku sighs, (maybe he is bored) it could be air? Wisps. Of wind?
Izuku likes that idea, feeling a faint tickle in the recess of his mind. He continues drawing, wilfully ignoring the gradual clarity the pictures he creates gains. Not enough for a real painting to really play. But enough so that he closes his notebook without a second glance once the bell finally rings.
(it’s better this way.)
His bag is packed and Izuku’s out the door before Kacchan can yell Deku. The park he runs and jays walks streets for is empty and weedy. The last time someone played in the park was probably way back whenever. Izuku casts his backpack somewhere within the tall grass and plops down in the same tall, weedy grass. He’s afraid of bugs as much as he’s afraid of Kacchan.
(Despite what Kacchan thinks, he isn’t that scary. Izuku grew up with Kacchan!
besides, he’s seen so much worse.)
Wind comes, blades of grass caress his face. Behind him the swing set creaks as the draft picks up. Izuku finds his breaths falling in line with the steady back and forth creak of rust, blood rushing in its cycle, the lungs beneath his ribs expanding, exhaling, holding, inhaling.
Breathing. Breathing is productive.
Izuku breathes for hours even when his lungs feel like bursting. But the sun eventually begins to dip, mum will start to worry. He sets back home.
His mother is in the kitchen, finishing up on cooking dinner as he toes off his shoes by the door. She greets him with a smile and tells him to change before dinner. When he’s done, dinner’s ready. Izuku helps setting the table, chatting amiably with his mother about their days. She talks more than him, but Izuku is far happier that way.
Dinner is delicious. Izuku excitedly informs his mum of an incoming excursion to the zoo over a mouthful of rice. He’s never been to a zoo before! She scolds him for speaking with his mouth full, but she laughs. Izuku laughs too but it comes short.
“Is something wrong?” His mother asks, her smile dying.
“Nothing!” Izuku injects cheer in his voice “just bit into a peppercorn!”
She breathes a sigh, shaking her head and lightening up again. “I thought I got them all out this time.”
“They’re easy to miss,” he comments, looking down at his bowl to hide his frown.
What’s wrong?
“Maybe I’ll grind them down next time,” his mother hums.
“Yeah,” Izuku replies, his own voice distant “that sounds good.”
Something wrong?
Izuku can't help but feel that something someone is missing.