Chapter Text

PROLOGUE I: Everything Everywhere

Musutafu, Japan

Before

There’s a heavy rain threatening to pour down atop of the rooftops of Musutafu, a swirling mass of promised destruction building up in the thickening gray clouds.  

Scattering like ants, people duck beneath awnings for shelter, and splashes of color appear on the dull beige sidewalk like watercolor on paper as umbrellas are fished out and pushed open. 

The school day has come to an end, students dispersed throughout the streets in clumps, running carelessly across puddles and sticking their tongues out to taste the diminishing sky. 

Somewhere across the city, where the storm has not yet pulled the people into her clutches, a boy in a similar uniform as them is fighting for his life. Slime catches in his tufts of blond hair, forcing itself down into his throat, thick in his lungs like second-hand smoke.

Men and women dressed in spandex, some wearing capes and others wearing hardly anything at all, stand off to the side like dumb, useless dolls, pressing gazes up to the clouds in prayer. The converging crowd watches, horrified and stunned in the midst of the explosions, and they beg to whatever deity above that a hero with a better Quirk will show up soon—that one will show up and save the day, even as their own powers stay hidden deep within them. 

Powerless in the eyes of the law, but still powered all the same. Despite the rush of possibility lingering beneath their skin, that hard suppressed feeling every child-turned-adult once had to do something , the horde of bystanders stands dormant as the boy not twenty feet ahead of them begins to die. 

“Isn’t All Might in town?” one of them demands, high on his own delirium. He's like an addict with how he twitches, eyes darting between the scene and the others around him like it might change if he blinks enough times. “He stopped a robber just down the road a little while ago! He’ll show up, he has to!”

Desperation begins to rise above the din, young men, women, and heroes alike tilting their heads to the heavens to call for the infamous Number One hero; the unshakeable pillar that has held up their society for over two decades without fail. If All Might is in town, they’ve decided, then all that they truly have to do is wait. Surely, this small middle school boy whose powerful Quirk has lit the surrounding streets ablaze can handle the sludge pooling in his stomach and throat for a little while longer.

Never mind the fact that it’s already long past the amount of time any ordinary human being could usually hold their breath. 

In the distance, a blur of white and yellow streaks across the sky as the man they call upon as if he is a God disappears into the streets, disguised as nothing more than just another helpless citizen escaping the approaching weather, and that is that.

If they stare hard enough, they might make out the silhouette that their hero has left behind.

Izuku takes a moment to try and listen to the rain, before he realizes that the downpour flooding the concrete beneath his shoes isn’t enough to drown out the rising static in his ears. He stares down at soggy red sneakers with his head hung low, soaked green curls falling down into his eyes that he can’t be bothered to push out of the way. 

A heavy strand tickles his nose and Izuku sneezes, and before he knows it one sniffle turns into another and suddenly he’s choking , dry heaving and suffocating, all the while the rain streaming in rivers down his cheeks makes up for the lack of tears that his eyes seem to have forgotten how to make.

Oh, Izuku thinks, clutching the charred fabric of his gakuran between trembling fingers. Oh. 

“You should be more realistic.”

He vaguely registers the water seeping through his clothes before he feels the pain of his knees cracking against the rooftop, free palm stinging with a new scrape as he attempts to brace his collapsed body.

Izuku thinks that he’s trembling, but whether it’s from the cold or from the raw, gaping hole tearing away at his chest is entirely undecided. 

“Stupid,” he gasps out, tight with pain and horror, heavy with regret. “ Stupid , why did you even think that would work? Did you even think at all?”

His voice echoes back to him above the pitter-patter of the growing storm, thick drops of heavy rain falling to rest on his eyelashes, dripping off the tip of his nose. He curls in on himself, fingers twisted painfully above where his heart should be, because oh, this is what it feels like. 

This is what it feels like to finally grow up.

Izuku had thought himself grown already. From the moment he turned thirteen and tawny envelopes shipped from overseas stopped showing up in the mail and his mother had to pick up a few extra shifts. He’d begun working then, too; first at corner stores and internet cafes until he could convince other businesses to take the Quirkless kid under their wing, let alone write him a couple of paychecks. But he's a sponge for knowledge with a quick mind and a smart tongue that he can hold if he needs to. Izuku knows that’s not something that many adults can say for themselves. 

But this is something else entirely; the final nail, he thinks, that’s finally rubbed him raw and torn him to shreds and drained every last bit of foolish, childhood hope that he knows has always lingered even after all of these years. That naive want that he’d let fester until it’d woven itself within his very strands of DNA like a poison. 

Over the rooftops through the heavy rainfall Izuku can make out the steady rise of ash and smoke, floating up to join the thick fog beginning to settle over the city. It’s dark and foreboding, and something about the sight is awfully familiar; it leaves a sour taste on Izuku’s tongue, but his heart is heavy and cold like ice and a tight lump has gathered itself in his throat and he can’t put his finger on it. 

He stares down at the busy road below, taking in the kaleidoscope of colorful cars and criss-crossed umbrellas that cut through the gloom, reds and pinks and yellow’s harsh against gray and blue. It’s so much that it makes his stomach clench with nausea. Or maybe it’s the vertigo from standing there at the edge against the rail—when did he get there, anyway? 

Izuku doesn’t remember. Last he’d checked he’d been in a miserable heap on the ground; his knees and palm still ache enough to prove it.

But the wind is a welcomed warmth as it whips against his cheeks, a strange and sweet contrast to the ice cold rain pelting down onto his shoulders, and the rail is even cooler against his burning palms when he hauls himself over it to stand on the other side, with nothing in front of him anymore but the open sky and the steadily deserting city streets. 

A bird caws just above his head, circling the rooftop where he’s standing, just barely holding up his own weight (it’s made heavier by the one that seems to have attached itself to his ribcage, swinging back and forth as he sways in the breeze like a pendulum), a splotch of white against the gray, and Izuku can’t help the broken laugh that tears its way from his throat. 

“You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you.”

Silly bird. Thinking that it can fly in weather like this. 

Izuku’s fingers slip dangerously against the metal as he leans forward, heels raised as he peers even further over, further down down down…  

It’s not like he’s never thought about it before. This is a terribly familiar place, if only in daydreams and nightmares alike, except they usually come to an end before he manages to let go. 

They usually don’t begin with All Might abandoning him up on a high rise in the first place, though, so that’s a new one. 

“If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life…go take a swan dive off the roof!!”

The pain in his chest subsides into a frantic flutter, less of a stab and more like a free bleeding open wound that’s fading into something numb, something worse. 

Something deadly. 

Thunder roars overhead, a deafening growl that trembles the earth and the concrete beneath Izuku’s feet. The streets are entirely desolate now, save for the few cars gunning it home, and the smoke over the horizon has begun to dissipate, drowned out by the storm. 

It’s hardly five o’clock, but the sun is blocked out in the sky and it’s like the world has been basked in silver; black and white and rotten like the skipping heart in Izuku’s chest. 

He tilts his head up towards the clouds, rain sliding down his face, down his bobbing throat as he swallows hard, and Izuku smiles . 

( He’d always thought that he’d see the sunset one last time, if he ever went through with it. But he supposes this is fitting, this is what Midoriya Izuku deserves. A miserable storm to top off a miserable day to top off a miserable life. )

“I’m sorry, mom.” Izuku whispers, and he can only pray that the wind will carry his words all the way across the city through the open window that he knows he forgot to shut before he left for school that morning, all the way to her. 

“I just need to be… somewhere.” he decides, speaking up to the sky like it might hear his pleas. 

He used to do that a lot when he was younger; scream and cry and beg some sort of greater power that he’d wake up the next morning with fire licking at his throat, or telekinesis at his fingertips. Izuku doesn’t know why he tries to beg, at that moment. He only ever woke up heaving from dreaming, anyway, just as grotesquely ordinary and unfortunate as he had been the night before. But still, despite their strained relationship, Izuku finds himself choking out his final wishes anyway. 

“I just need to be anywhere but here.”

He lets his eyes fall closed, breathes in the sweet air, lets it settle in his aching lungs. His skin is buzzing, like the static in his ears has poured out to crawl along his trembling arms and legs, and he’s almost certain for a moment that he’s floating. Lightning cracks just above him, and it’s like the sky is saying goodbye to him, too.

And Izuku

Lets

Go .

—

But because he is Midoriya Izuku, and misfortune is all that he’s ever known, all that he’s ever deserved, the moment of weightlessness that comes with falling doesn’t last for very long. 

At one moment, the wind is whipping past him, rustling his hair and billowing out his soaked and scorched uniform and it’s so wonderfully exhilarating that Izuku wishes with a passion that burns so brightly deep within his pounding chest that he’d done this sooner. 

The next, just before his body can hit the pavement, Midoriya Izuku discovers the true reason why he felt as if his body had been bathed in static.

Lightning strikes, and when it does, it strikes hard .

—

???, ???

—

Izuku blinks spots out of his eyes.

This is not typically something that might be considered unusual, if it weren’t for the fact that he’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be dead.

He inhales sharply as another flash goes off in front of him, flinching back so hard that he nearly slams into the person standing behind him ( and doesn’t that make absolutely zero sense; there was no one on that rooftop but him. He knows this, because he’s almost certain that no one else had been there to listen to All Might’s story. Unless there had been, say, a villain, lurking around the corner, and Izuku had not only been the reason why the number one hero had gotten drenched by rain but also why his biggest secret had gotten exposed to somebody malicious — )

“Woah, you okay, man?” 

Izuku whips his head around, head spinning, and realizes, rather abruptly, that this isn’t the rooftop. 

He isn’t even outside anymore, soaked to the bone and trembling like a coward. For one thing, the fabric hugging his frame is no longer scratchy with loose stitches, nor does it stick to wet skin, further irritating the burns that Katsuki had given him earlier that afternoon. It’s soft, silken, even, and clearly expensive; it’s something he might’ve seen in his fathers closet when he was younger, the sort of suit that he’d wear to his galas. 

For another, there’s a red haired stranger staring down at him with something like concern on his face, and dozens of cameras flashing to his right; bright and warm like lightning crackling up in the clouds, streaming down in currents to dance along his skin— 

“Izuku?” the man prompts again, and he blinks dumbly back at him.

Because Izuku doesn’t know this man. He would remember if he had seen him before, too, because the name tag pinned to his blazer reads: Pro Hero: Crimson Riot! and Izuku has never heard of a hero who goes by that name, let known one long enough for him to be calling him Izuku. 

But you do, don’t you?

Izuku stumbles away from him, palm pressed to his temple, and he nearly loses his footing on the red carpet beneath his feet, swaying dangerously like a flag in the wind. 

Of course , Izuku thinks. He does know him. 

This is Kirishima Eijirou; they went to UA together, fought tooth and nail alongside of one another and their classmates in a war. The dog days are over, now;  they graduated two years ago, nineteen of them. Aizawa had been, albeit begrudgingly, proud.

Eijirou and him hadn’t been very close, not at first, because he was always following at Katsuki’s heels and Izuku knew better than to try and get between them. But then, well, their third year had happened. And Katsuki…

Izuku whips his head around to take in his surroundings, bile rising in his throat so quickly that he can already taste it. 

This is the celebration for Shouto taking over his father’s hero agency, it’s been in the works for months . ( Who is Shouto? ) He remembers being with him just the day before, helping him finalize catering plans and appreciation speeches. Hell, Shouto had picked out the suit on Izuku’s back a few weeks ago and brought him to get it tailored…

No , Izuku thinks. No, he doesn’t know a Shouto, nor does he know an Eijirou. Something’s wrong.

But the longer he stands there, staring down at his shiny, perfectly polished shoes, the less he can seem to figure out what that something is. 

“You don’t look so good, dude,” Eijirou comments, brows lacing together, and he places a firm hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you outside—“

Another shutter goes off just next to him, so close that it fills his vision with splotches of black, and he swears that he’s falling down to his knees, concerned shouts rising over the clicking of hundreds of photos being snapped of the number five hero fainting at the feet of Crimson Riot.

His eyes go crossed with embarrassment as he catches himself on all fours, humiliation setting his face and ears alight. How horrible is it for him to pull a stunt like this on a day so important to Shouto—in front of all of these people, who will no doubt upload the photos of him making a fool out of himself onto the internet within the next hour. 

Izuku can’t be here. He should really go home. He needs to leave, to be anywhere else but here.

He retches all over Eijirou’s shoes, and the world all around him seems to bleed into numb, wonderful nothingness.

—

Somewhere, ???

—

Izuku’s strapped down to something hard, blinded by the bright fluorescent lights gleaming down at him from the weathered concrete ceiling. 

A man he doesn’t recognize ( He sees him in his nightmares almost every single night. ) lifts a poised hand above him, removing the velvet glove from his fingers so agonizingly slowly that it’s like he’s taunting him.  

It feels like torture.

Izuku thinks that’s what this must be; retribution for jumping off of that roof. 

He pulls against his restraints, screaming protests through the gag shoved into his mouth, and the man stares down at him in muted disgust, disappointment clear even from behind his medical mask. He leans back with a snarl, dodging the spittle flying his way as Izuku thrashes, and his eyes gain a dangerous glint. 

( Izuku knows that he needs to cooperate, because if he doesn’t then he’ll hurt her, and that’s infinitely worse punishment than whatever he could do to him instead.. )

“You’ll learn to behave, Izuku.” Chisaki says darkly, and it’s an order, not a request. “But I suppose I can remind you once again just why we follow the rules around here.”

Izuku doesn’t know why his chest swells with panic the way that it does, a weight laden on his gut that has him retching on nothing, suffocating on his fear before Chisaki can even touch him. He’s convulsing in place now, skin raising with goosebumps that are only partly from the cold, and he wonders through slight hysteria just why his body already knows what's coming, why his brain seems to be set alight with warning bells for a threat that he doesn’t remember ever meeting.

He can’t be here. He doesn’t belong here. This is wrong .

But then frigid fingertips come down to press against his bare chest, and all at once Midoriya Izuku knows nothing but pain. 

—

Musutafu, Japan

—

Izuku gasps for air so violently that he keels over to lean off the edge of the roof that he’s perched on and throws up his dinner. 

The cool night draft burns in his throat as he gulps it in greedily, harsh and scratchy with overuse like he’s been screaming, and he collapses in a heap on his back, legs dangling limply off in the open air as he heaves in deep, staggering breaths.

Stars swim above him, the ground beneath him spinning on its axis, and Izuku takes a moment to settle; to try to think. 

You were on patrol, a part of his mind whispers, brushing against the forefront of his mind much like the breeze rustling against the cloth mask that he’d yanked down off of his face to vomit, remember?

Izuku stares up blankly at the full moon, fingertips buzzing with electricity and pulse thumping unevenly in his ears. It’s so quick that he can feel it in his queasy stomach. He remembers, vaguely, something like what his brain is supplying. 

Just as he thinks that he knows through the haze that he’d eaten oyakodon with his father a couple of hours ago, before he snuck out through his window and shimmied down the fire escape with an ease that came only from obsessive repetition. He can still taste the meal, fresh in his teeth—or maybe it’s the fact that he’s just recently puked it out, and the reminder makes the nausea churning in his gut worsen tenfold.

That’s right, he remembers. He patrols almost every night without fail, as of five months ago. Five months ago, when Katsuki…

A sharp pain cuts through the fog surrounding his brain and he brings a hand up to clutch at his head. ( “I promise it’s okay, so stop apologizing, man; I don’t even like these shoes that much!” )

It’s that abrupt twinge in his temple that manages to bring things, somehow, into better focus. The constellations above are no longer a messy, dizzying blur, and the concrete digging into his shoulder blades through his gear is still; the spinning has ceased. 

For a moment, everything seems to snap into place.

“Kid?” a voice calls out to him, warm and perhaps a bit worried, and Izuku turns his terribly heavy head to his left to face the approaching footsteps. 

Something in him urges, or perhaps more like screams at him to pull his mask back up before the figure can spot his face, and so he rushes with fumbling fingers to do just that, trembling with each unsteady movement. 

Izuku doesn’t know why he feels so disoriented; he hadn’t been doing anything too exerting—it’s been a slow night, even. 

( Izuku can see the unrestrained glee behind Chisaki’s eyes as he brings him back for the fifth time, the way that he’s enjoying himself, high on the rush he gets out of killing him over and over again without consequence. It only makes him want to swallow down his screams even more, if only to keep him from receiving the satisfaction of watching him break . )

The figure comes to a stop beside him, falling to his knees to press a cool, rough hand to Izuku’s forehead. “Where are you injured?” he urges. When Izuku just blinks up at him, he asks again. “Kid, where are you hurt? You have to tell me.”

“M’ not hurt, Eraser,” Izuku promises, although it comes out far more slurred than he’d meant for it to. He winces when he realizes that there’s still saliva and bile left behind around his mouth, but he can’t move his mask off again to wipe it off even if he wants to. His body feels like lead—his limbs are useless and tired. He could fall asleep, if only Eraserhead wasn’t dragging his body away from the edge and forcing him to sit up against a wall. 

This is our rooftop , Izuku notes, taking in the scattered milk crates and the scorch on the cement from the time Eraserhead had snuck up on him while he was tinkering with a flamethrower prototype. They meet here every night, because their patrols cross paths in this exact spot.

It’s sort of funny, because one of the very first times he and Eraser had met up there the pro hero had grilled him for hours, bringing up the legality of vigilantism—the works, all of that good stuff, and now he’s on that same roof fretting over him like his mother when he has a cold. 

For some reason, that stray thought of his mother is enough to have him clutching at his chest, something like regret clenching a tight fist around his heart. 

( Izuku wonders why he feels like he might be sick again when he realizes how high up they probably are. )

“Drink this,” Eraserhead demands ( Aizawa reminds him so much of how he’d acted back when he was his teacher at that moment. Trying so hard to hide his concern behind gruff words and cool hands pressed to feverish foreheads. ), holding out a bottle of water. It glistens like ambrosia in the light, a drink offered up from the Gods, but Izuku just stares at his outstretched hand, stupid through half lidded eyes. 

The man sighs, exasperation tugging at his tired face. “I’ll look away,” he promises. 

True to his word, he turns his back to him as soon as Izuku’s fingers close around the bottle, and he pulls his mask down to chug from it greedily, gasping like a man starved even as the water spills down from his lips to run down his soiled chin and neck.

( “I said,” Chisaki’s voice lowers. “Do you understand me, Izuku?” His hand twitches, a hair's breadth away from coming back into contact with his skin, and Izuku’s chest might burst. He reaches his gloved hand out to wrench the gag from his mouth, and Izuku heaves. )

“I understand,” Izuku bites out between gasps, although it comes out as more of a whimper than anything else, lacking the venom he wishes that it had, and Erasherhead’s body tilts towards him further, shoulders tense. 

“Kid?” he begins, but he stays facing away, despite the way that his hands, clenching into tight fists around his capture weapon, give away just how badly he probably wants to turn around. 

The water splatters onto the concrete, soaking through Izuku’s pants, and something in him howls.

( Rain. It had been raining, and it’d poured down his face just like this, soaking his gakuran and pooling at his feet like the blood of his best friend. )

Oh.

Oh.

It’s finally coming back to him—why this is so wrong , why there’s a part of him that feels so unsettled, why he feels so worn out despite having done practically nothing at all. 

It was because not even an hour ago, Izuku had been strapped down to a table by evil incarnate, taking punishment in the place of an innocent eight year old girl, being torn to shreds and forced back together again like he was nothing more than putty at Chisaki’s fingertips. ( “ You understand now, right Izuku? You’ll behave, because you know better than anyone else what happens if you don’t.” )

What felt like a mere second ago he’d been at a party, hadn’t he? Celebrating the reopening of his best friend’s hero agency. He’d been so excited for Shouto, so damn proud of him , and he’d ruined the celebration by barfing all over Eijirou. God, he would never hear the end of it, would he? ( “Let’s just sit down over here, dude. We can stay out here until you feel better.” )

Because just a moment ago, Midoriya Izuku had been standing at the edge of a rooftop, peering down at the gloomy streets below with nothing left of him but the clothes on his back and the final dregs of his fading dreams, and he’d let go.  

Izuku chokes on his next gulp, coughing up water so violently that it hurts, and this time Erasherhead really does turn back around to face him, patience finally running dry as he reaches his wits end, but it doesn’t matter.

Izuku’s world is already breaking into fragments around him again, anyway.

—

Everywhere, ???

—

There’s something that the religious call Limbo.

A state of being and unbeing, an abode of stagnant souls and those too heartbroken by their own deaths and lingering regrets to let go and walk off into the light. Their fate is undecided; they are neither good enough to go to the eternal paradise nor cruel enough to be damned. 

Izuku isn’t religious, but he thinks that if he were then he must’ve crossed some sort of God in his life, angered them enough to land himself not in hell, not in limbo, but somewhere else decidedly worse. 

It goes on like this for a while, the uncertainty. The flashes of light, the loop he’s found himself in where he’s tossed into the unknown and regurgitated up into the next. 

His head is heavy by the tenth, and by the time he loses count of these… shifts , he’s vomiting all over the person unlucky enough to be nearest to him when he arrives. ( It’s especially unfortunate when he dry heaves all over some guy he’d apparently been having an… intimate moment with. )

And it’s a constant echo of voices, reverberating all around him, fragments of conversations from places unseen that he can’t help but try to reply to. Sometimes he finds himself back in the shift previous, words dying out on his tongue, before he’s being yanked forward again and forced to reorient himself for the nth time. 

The worst part is the amount of times he’s forced to watch the people he cares about die .

Some of them are nothing but faces to him, colors and shapes that he himself does not recognize but his consciousness does, and his body knows to react with horror every time their crumpled forms hit the floor, sometimes at his feet and other times yards away out of reach. 

It’s all too fast, too much, and Izuku wishes vehemently to himself as he suddenly feels sand between his toes that he would just die already like he was meant to because anything would be better than this. He would take fiery banishment in hell, something he’s never really believed in, over this.

He collapses in a heap on the beach, writhes in agony as the memories of this brand new body rush back into him in tandem with the waves crashing harsh against the shoreline, and Izuku screams. 

Vaguely, he is aware of someone above to him placing a concerned hand onto his arm, frantically asking if he’s alright, but Izuku can’t hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears, the slam of the waves against rocks, and the sound of his own thrumming heart. 

My name is Midoriya Izuku , he reminds himself, and he thinks that he’s mumbling it aloud too but there’s drool sliding down his chin and blood dripping from his nose and he can’t feel anything.  

My name is Midoriya Izuku , I’m fourteen — fifteen years old.  

The whisper in his head tells him that he turned fifteen just a month ago, even though he’s pretty sure it was just April. Or maybe it’d been December—he thinks that he remembers snow, cool on the tip of his nose and on his tongue. He tries to remember, to orient himself into this new place, but he feels that all too familiar splitting headache beginning to form so he shoves his face into the sand and tries to suffocate himself.

It doesn’t work, obviously. He feels ice cold metal beneath his back and knows that Chisaki will be above him, gloveless hands twitching in the light; the first time in about twenty jumps. 

He’s felt the effects of this man’s quirk hundreds of times by now, and Izuku is proud to say that he doesn’t even flinch.

— 

Somewhere, ???

—

There’s this recurring character in Izuku’s universes’—he’ll call him a character more than he’ll ever call him a human being, not only because of how this strange boy talks but because it’s easier to imagine him as something fake rather than a monster that’s undeniably real—that he’s growing far too used to meeting.

It’s not Chisaki, though there have been several times where Izuku has opened his eyes and been greeted by that man in his medial mask and ugly fur coat. Sometimes he’s fighting him, electricity dancing along his skin and raw foreign power laced within each punch. But other times, most of the time, he’s tied down; an experiment or a puppet with no strings that only exists to be taken apart over and over and over again —

It’s not Katsuki, either, because for all of his faults Izuku doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to see him as a monster. He’s met him far too often, seen universes where they stayed glued to one another's sides their entire lives and others where Katsuki beats him to a pulp and leaves him to cry in a pool of his own misery ( it’s sort of a welcomed nostalgia, as sad as it is, because it’s the closest thing he has to where he comes from ). 

Izuku watches Katsuki die forty-seven times, after all, so curse him if he’s grown a tender spot for his childhood friend after the last few worlds where he opened his eyes to him bleeding out in his arms. 

No, the character in question, the monster who always seems to be lurking in each corner of the universe, waiting to find Izuku, is the man currently throwing a fucking blade of poisonous blood, ( what the actual hell ) right at his face. 

Izuku dodges by the skin of his teeth, and it’s not just because of pure skill. It’s because he’s vomiting up his entire stomach and probably several other organs onto the street between them, and he just so happens to bend over at just the right moment. 

It’s not too unfamiliar of a scene, fighting Shigaraki. 

There were his several years at UA, multiple instances where they existed together as hero and villain arch nemesis’ just as they are now, and—of course—the very memorable universe where he’d kidnapped him and forced him to eat some very strange things he’d rather not name as a method of torture.

Izuku feels Shigaraki’s nails, sharp and rotten, driving through his shoulders, tearing through the fabric of his costume and piercing through already scarred and mutilated skin beneath. He’d made the mistake of letting him gain the upper hand in his brief moment of vertigo, and now this Izuku would pay the price.

Shigaraki howls at the look he must be wearing on his face, thick drool dripping from his stretched out maw, and he slams Izuku down into the earth hard enough to make a crater. 

“Run out of HP points that quickly, hero?” he taunts. “I thought you were going to stop me!” His voice raises an octave in a crude imitation of Izuku’s voice, and Izuku swears he sees red . 

He feels the rage as it builds throughout his body, scorching hot and horrible , it’s pouring out of him like the blood flaking his neck and face. Izuku’s never felt anything like this—never wanted to kill or maim somebody as badly as he wants to right now. 

But his head is spinning, not just from the fact that his head just cracked against the pavement but also from the shift, and Izuku knows that despite all of the training under his belt that he will lose. He takes the time to feel incredibly sorry towards the Izuku whose body he just hopped into. He hopes that he can forgive him for losing his life against this asshole.

Next time , Izuku swears to himself, just as Shigaraki’s five fingers come to rest over his face. He screams his throat raw, choking on his own blood and saliva, but keeps sparking green eyes locked right onto crimson red. Next time, I’ll kill you.

But the very next time Izuku sees Shigaraki, he’s kicking his ass at some fighting game and they’re sharing a bowl of burnt popcorn. 

He’s transfixed on the television before them as if he’s possessed, hypnotized by the flashing lights and colors. There’s a capri sun hanging out of his mouth, already sucked dry and, much to Izuku’s slight horror and amusement, he’s dressed up in Minecraft pajamas. 

His face glows red as the death screen pops up despite Izuku having gone ramrod straight, abandoning his own controller, and he curses loudly under his breath, expression pained like losing is a physical blow. 

The first thing Izuku’s brain provides him with is that this man is Shigaraki Tomura ( no, he corrects himself, it’s Shimura Tenko, here ), though he could’ve told himself as much with the fact that he’d quite literally just been murdered by him a few short moments ago. 

But right now, apparently, they were Tenko and Izuku: Roommates.

“Can you pass the soda, Deku?” Tenko mutters, fingers clicking rapidly on his controller as he restarts the game, and when Izuku doesn’t answer he side eyes him with impatient, raised brows. 

This is, without a doubt, the quickest Izuku’s managed to get his head on straight for quite a few shifts, and it’s almost worse to see everything so sharp, void of the murky haze that’s followed him for what must have been a couple of centuries worth of jumps. It makes the fact that Izuku is wearing matching boxers to Tenko’s pajama set all the more mortifying in contrast to the last few times they’d seen each other ( Izuku will never forgive him, different universe be damned, for choke slamming him through seven brick walls ).

Here, they’re sitting on a dingy couch in an even dingier living room, surrounded by empty candy wrappers and soda cans that litter the coffee table in front of them like a mountain at a junkyard. Izuku’s mother would’ve never let him trash a place like this, but a quick check in on himself tells him that she’s already passed away in this world, right around Izuku’s second year of middle school, so that about adds up.

Apparently, he’s been with Tenko ever since.

Skillfully ignoring his request, Izuku focuses his attention on anticipating the next jump, keeping his body carefully still to avoid any more unnecessary agony, eyes locked on scarred knuckles as he waits for all of the information to finish flooding in so that he can get whisked away to the next. 

He would humor the guy and pass him the liter of Dr. Pepper to his left, but he’s admittedly still a little bitter about the universe where he’d shoved a centipede into his ear so, you know, semantics. 

Oh well , Izuku figures. He’ll be out of his way in just a minute. The universe never seems to want him to stay for very long, and he doesn’t really mind it anymore. The less time he spends processing the fact that everyone he’s ever loved in his real world is gone in this one the better.

But then the awkward silence stretching between them lasts upwards of nearly a minute, and Izuku realizes that despite the fact that it seems like this version of himself has never drank a sip of water in his life ( who even drinks that much mountain dew, anyway? ), the headache that usually comes with an ensuing jump isn’t coming. 

In fact, Izuku doesn’t feel anything at all. 

He stares down in abject horror at the crinkled dorito bag resting against his foot on the carpet. His sock has a hole in it. Of all universes he could suddenly find himself landed in without any immediate after effects, it’s the one where he’s a damn hikikomori . 

“Deku?” Tenko presses, clearly growing agitated. Oblivious to Izuku’s impending mental breakdown, he presses a single index finger to the side of his freckled cheek. “You go AFK?"

Even worse. He’s a hikikomori middle school drop out with his arch nemesis as a roommate. 

But this curse is a strange thing, and Izuku can’t find it in himself to feel the same amount of blinding, white hot rage towards him that he’d felt just a few minutes ago. He’s too exhausted, bone-tired and rubbed raw, and the couch—shitty stained crumby cushions and all—somehow feels like a cloud beneath him. 

Wordlessly, Izuku passes him the soda. 

He passes out not even a minute later. 

—

There’s something touching Izuku’s shoulder. 

It’s not a harsh shove, nor much of a grab at all, really, but the fingertips brushing against his skin are ice cold to the touch and slightly scratchy, and they send goosebumps across his body the same way a cool breeze might. 

A groan tears its way from Izuku’s throat, guttural and despairing; a pure vocalization of all of his underlying misery, probably. He tries to squint open his eyes despite the pounding headache that seems to have finally made its appearance—he must have shifted after he passed out; it wouldn’t be the first time—only to be met with nothing but fuzzy, strange darkness. 

Ah, Izuku thinks. He’s probably blind, again. That one definitely wouldn’t be the first time.

But then a shape moves in front of him, the soft and breezy touch returns, and something freezing and slightly damp is carefully pressed against his forehead. 

“Quit your yapping, Izu,” a familiar voice sighs, throaty and exasperated. “Go back to sleep. You have a fever of like one-billion-and-two.”

Izuku stills. “Tenks?”

The figure pauses where he’s started to tuck in a blanket around Izuku’s form, before he flicks him gently against his cheek. “Who the hell else, Deku?”

That nickname is back, although Izuku doesn’t forget that he’d just called him Izu a few moments ago, in a tone that was all gentle and caring and perhaps tinged with just a bit of worry. He doesn’t say Deku like it’s a curse, doesn’t spit it out with venom on his tongue, dripping down to poison Izuku as he sleeps. He says it like a fact, like that’s who he is, but like he isn’t any less for it.

Izuku thinks that he quite likes it, actually.

“Mmrf,” Izuku replies, rather eloquently. “Thanks for carrying me here.”

So he hadn’t made any jumps, even after he’d fallen asleep and likely had stayed asleep for a while, if Tenko had to drag him from the living room to his bed and had the time to check his temperature. It’s strange to think that he’s been in one place for so long—it’s exhilarating , actually, and if Izuku didn’t feel so terrible and had a little less dignity he might’ve just gotten up and launched himself at Tenko right then and there.

But Tenko just pats him on the head, fixes the cloth on his face, and retreats back towards the doorway. “I’m going out or whatever to get you shit. Don’t have a heart attack and die while I’m gone, got it?”

The door clicks shut behind him, and Izuku is pulled back into the grasp of sleep, his lullaby the sound of a nearby fan blowing and the soft din of traffic rolling along beneath his window. 

Such mundanity is a songbird, and sleep has never come easier.