Chapter Text
“The world of reality has its limits, the world of imagination is endless.”
“Freedom is the power to choose our own chains.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Izuku Midoriya was quirkless.
The world thought little of a quirkless child. He was unimportant in every way.
Izuku was an outcast. Classmates refused to sit by him or play with him at recess because they thought his quirklessness would infect him; they thought him a disease. They worried that he’d somehow steal their quirk; they thought him a thief. He was pushed around as he got older, too scared to fight back against the insurmountable wall of quirks that surrounded him. Even if he wanted to stand up for himself, it just wasn’t feasible. Instead, he would eat lunch alone, turn in his homework on time, and write down every detail from every day.
He wanted to be a hero— he desperately needed to become one— because it was the one thing that set his blood on fire. Sure, he could do business—he could go into analytics— hell, he could do whatever he wanted except for going into heroics. The world shouted at him no , so he yelled back louder yes . He would block out the taunts and the jeers by muttering his thoughts under his breath. If he buried his nose in a book, then he couldn’t see the way people sneered at him, and if he couldn’t hear their insults, it was as if he was blissfully unaware.
Izuku Midoriya was left alone by the world, but never—not once— was he lonely.
When he would play in the sandpit, five years old and avoided by his class, he would giggle with the children that whispered in the sand. They would say things that made him blush and scold them for saying a naughty word , but they were friendly. He never did see much of them, only the occasional hand would disrupt the sand enough for him to find his lost action figure. On some nights they would ask him to dig— to just dig and dig— until he found them. They said that it was fun down there, but it got boring all alone. Even though he didn’t want to get that dirty, he would humor them, and start moving as much dirt as his tiny hands could manage.
By the time he had two or three mounds half his size, the teacher would come over and tell him to fill in his hole (or they would toe one of the piles until it filled it back in). The buried children would sigh, the sound watery and forlorn, but they would thank Izuku for trying. The sadness in their voices would make the boy’s lip tremble, until hot, fat tears were rolling down his cheeks, and the teacher would apologize for ruining his playtime.
How was he supposed to explain to her that he, himself, wasn’t sad, but was only sad because his best friends were lonely. He tried to tell her once, but she didn’t understand.
“There’s no one trapped under the sand pit, Izuku,” she said softly.
“They’re not trapped!” He sniffled. “They’re lonely, and they want to play with the rest of the class! I have to dig them out first. Why won’t you let me play with them?”
The teacher, obviously, wouldn’t let him continue digging so he stopped trying to convince her. He would just hang his head and cry from there on out.
Izuku was never lonely because he was never alone. His classmates wouldn’t sit with him, that was for sure, but the other people would keep him company; the ones with the flakey faces and the broken arms would join him for lunch. While Izuku tended to avoid eye contact with them, they often let their talking fill up the divide.
When he was walking home from school, he always took care to walk slow. It made it easy for the bullies to catch up to him, but it was always the right pace for the car crash victims to limp alongside him.
He could see the mothers that hovered dotingly over the shoulders of their grown children, or the younger siblings that would run circles around their older brothers and sisters.
The world may have condemned poor, quirkless Izuku to a life of isolation, but he did everything in his power to make the best of it.
Poor, quirkless Izuku wasn’t even quirkless— it was just complicated. His mother did the best job she could when she told him about it, but the quirk he inherited was not his mother’s. From a young age, Inko spoke frankly with her son; she refused to raise a boy unaware of his own potential (pitfalls and successes).
Life she called it. The Midoriyas— the ones with Midoriya blood— always got the same quirk. It didn’t mix well with others, and generally prevented their spouse’s quirk from passing on. (It made them a small family because everyone was so quirk-obsessed that they would never risk the chance of their child growing up quirkless. The Midoriya line had very few children born into it).
Life , while it presented as quirklessness, was so much more. Inko described it as having too much life to go around. Normal people had the right amount of life in them— whether it was longer or shorter, it depended on the person— but they were stable. The dead had no life left, they were hungry, lonely, angry, and confused. Normal people couldn’t see the dead because they had the right amount of life. Izuku could see the dead because he didn’t have the right amount of life in him: he had too much. Inko explained that it was his imbalance of life that allowed him to see and interact with the dead.
Some of the dead were too confused to do anything but mutter, shuffle, and pay no attention to the boy, while others happily flocked to his side to chat. Those that were kind to him were often rewarded with a burst of life to bring the color back to their sallow skin and clean up some of their wounds. It offered a clarity that the dead would lose over time.
The dead weren’t as plentiful as one would think, but there were always a few milling about. It may take twenty or thirty minutes, but a specter would surely float by.
But not all of the dead are kind. The dead, you see, generally want to live. Izuku’s family, they're great at that: they've got plenty of life in them, too much of it, got enough to share if they want. They can make a faint echo into a spirit, a spirit into an apparition, an apparition into a poltergeist, a poltergeist into a fully-fledged manifestation. If you really put your back into it, Izuku’s mom had told him, you could make them almost appear human. Let them touch and feel and eat and everything.
The Midoriyas were walking wish granters until it killed them. Their family doesn't live to thirty, not unless they're very lucky. Izuku’s dad was scarcely twenty five when he died choking on his miracles.
You see, that life that Izuku can share with the dead, some of that life has to be spent on living. Give too much of it away and you’ll be too weak, because sometimes the dead don’t ask for life. Sometimes they rip into you with blunt fingers and missing teeth, and they just take. That’s what happened to his dad. He was too generous with his life. One day he was injured in a villain attack while at work, and while he was gripping his life in shaky hands, the unquiet dead came for him and gorged on it. He died halfway to the hospital.
Izuku’s lucky though, he’s young and full of life, and it would take something short of a catastrophic accident to put him and his life in jeopardy. And as much of a kind soul that he is, he desperately wants to live. He wants to be a hero and help others, but you can’t do that if you’re dead— so he’s going to live. If living means he can’t share any of his life with the ghosts, then it was fine by him.
He didn’t care about them.
Really, he didn’t care.
Only he did.
I just want to greet my grandson , one tells him.
And, well… it can’t be that bad to just help one, right?
It isn’t. He gives her just enough to appear in front of the baby’s eyes and coax a coo from his lips. The old woman cries pure joy before fading to white, and all it does is make Izuku a little bit hungrier. He has an extra scoop of rice at dinner.
The next one wants katsudon.
It’s so simple and human that Izuku can’t help but laugh. (He pushes hard enough to get the man all the way to the poltergeist stage, and he eats three servings in the restaurant before passing on. It leaves Izuku with a splitting headache and weak knees, but he does it so rarely that it’s worth it).
Inko reminds him often enough that he has to give, that he can't deny it. Saying no is deceptively simple, until the unquiet dead come after him and make him understand that a bit of giving is necessary if he wants to stay alive.
See, the ghosts he helped because they asked are the ones who would defend against the ones who want to take without asking.
The cruel, the vicious, the ones who want revenge or pain, the ones who thrive on spite and pettiness, the ones that stuck around because they’ll be damned if they see someone else thrive. The murderers, the hitters, the waspish middle aged j-pop wannabes who have stuck around to ruin their rival's lives long after the competition's over.
They know Izuku won't say yes to them, so they don’t even bother asking. Instead they come with grasping hands, grabbing and hurting, until Izuku’s fragile bones creak like he's being pulled apart, his lungs choke up, and he gasps for air and—
The last few ghosts he allowed himself to help— a gang of teens who wanted to watch the latest All-Might documentary, a grandmother who attended a wedding she desperately wanted to be at, and a girl who has been talking her girlfriend out of suicide— suddenly they're there, pulling the unquiet dead off of him, and he can breathe again.
It seems to take forever. His friendly ghosts—his friends— they can’t throw off the unquiet dead fast enough. There’s just so many of them compared to the ragtag group Izuku’s assembled. It takes time, but Izuku’s limbs finally stop shaking and his jaw gets to relax.
The school nurse says he had a seizure.
Huh. Go figure.
“That was dumb of you,” a ghostly boy tells him when he wakes up. The boy looks rough, with pockmarked elbows and blood crusted under his nose and lips. He wears a grimey black t-shirt that’s five sizes too big for his childish form. (It does nothing to hide the stains on his chest that peak above its collar, but it at least reaches his knees and spares Izuku the pain of having to see his legs). Izuku can hear his mother and the nurse talking in hushed tones in the other room, which means he can talk to the boy quietly, without alerting the others to his wakefulness.
“What was dumb of me?” Izuku whispers.
“You didn’t have anyone strong enough to protect you. You needed a crowd of extras.”
The boy scoffed at him from his perch atop the filing cabinets. His red eyes were bright with intrigue, and his presence was all encompassing. The air seemed to heat up as the boy’s face split into a grin. He raised a paper thin wrist to the sky and announced, “I’m going to be the number one hero, I’m the strongest there is!”
Even though this child— this dead child — was at least three years younger than him, Izuku was fully convinced he would succeed.
“How will you do it?” Izuku mumbled.
The boy hopped down from the cabinet, waddling over to the bed Izuku was curled upon. It took a few moments for him to heave himself to the top so that he could sit on Izuku’s bedside, but that grin never wavered. “I’ll figure it out,” the blonde said once he settled in.
“‘M gonna be a hero too.”
“Not if you’re dumb.”
Izuku scowled at that. The younger child was right, but he didn’t have to go about it in such a brutish fashion. He was tired in a way he rarely was, where it felt like he’d been hollowed out from the inside. He felt like rolling over and just closing his eyes forever. He had no energy to get angry, but evidently still had enough to make a grim expression.
A ghostly finger appeared in front of his face and poked Izuku in the forehead, trying to smooth the crease that had formed between his brows. “Just don’t be dumb.”
Izuku groaned, swatting uselessly at a hand that he simply passed through. Grumbling under his breath, he allowed his eyes to close, even though the whispers of the dead were starting to mount. In a rare moment of clarity, the green haired boy cracked open an eyelid. The blonde child with the black shirt was still sitting beside him, though he was no longer watching his form.
“Will you help me?” Izuku slurred. “You’re so strong. You’ll protect me, an’ I’ll give you the power to be a hero.”
The child stiffened, his head snapping to look at Izuku. “I don’t want your damn life, you can keep it. I’ll be a hero all on my own.”
Instead of responding, something Izuku would’ve taken great joy in doing, he hummed. Darkness surrounded him as his eyelids slipped shut and he succumbed to exhaustion. He could’ve heard an amalgamation of different voices, but the quiet timber of the blonde child’s growl lulled him to sleep.
“A hero should protect the weak.”
When Izuku woke up in his bedroom, eyes bleary and mouth dry, a handful of hours later, his sentry was still sitting guard. The boy, frankly, didn’t believe his eyes. He thought that if he moved or did anything to interrupt the scene, his compatriot would simply fade away like a dream. He must have shifted by accident because those sharp, red eyes were on him once again.
It was quiet in Izuku’s bedroom in a way that set his teeth on edge. His ghostly group of friends seemed to have passed on, which made sense as to why there was no mindless chatter, however, the lack of spirits just passing through was concerning. Normally the boy had a handful of spectators at any given moment, each drawn in by the energy in his veins. Not a single ghost hid in the corners of his room, well, besides his guardian. In that moment, Izuku realized this child must have been an old soul. One of the things he learned was to be wary of the older spirits; there was a fifty-fifty chance they’d either lost their mind to age and emotion, or were some of the most cunning creatures he’d ever met. Other ghosts tended to stay away from them, like they were now.
Emerald and ruby clashed as the two boys stared each other down. “What’s your name?” Izuku pulled himself from the covers slightly.
“What’s it to you, necromancer?”
Izuku makes a face. "I’m not a necromancer," he protests. "I can't raise dead or command them; I just make them closer to living. Life-sharing. Totally different!"
The blonde boy scoffs in return. He swings his legs where they hang off the side of the bed, his mind clearly elsewhere. He doesn’t believe the living boy, not for one second, but he does seem earnest.
“My name is Izu—“
“—Midoriya Izuku. Yeah, I know. I’m gonna call you Izu, I like it better.”
There’s a pause between the two before blondie speaks up again. “Why do you want my name?”
Spluttering indignantly (for at least seven seconds straight) is the only answer Izuku gives. He has to consciously reign in his words before his sleep addled mouth can form them. “I don’t want to have to keep calling you ‘kid’ and ‘blondie’ in my head.”
The pensive expression on the ghost’s face never wavered, but he did end up shrugging his shoulders. “Katsuki,” he spat.
Maybe there’s something special about sharing your name with a ghost, because after that they're inseparable. Best friends from different eras, friends like neither of them ever had before. Maybe they’d have been best friends in another life, if only Katsuki wasn’t dead, but Izuku will take friendship with a ghost over nothing.
Izuku met Katsuki when he was eleven. (Katsuki was both five and twenty two when he adopted a bean pole of a broccoli sprout)
Izuku Midoriya was quirkless.
The world thought little about a quirkless child, who was unimportant in every way.
He knew better than that, though. And everyone was none the wiser.
He almost died the day he met his best friend, but that was just the beginning.