A/N: First, a general warning that this story deals with themes of death, suicide, and mourning. Major characters die in this story!

Second, some credit. This is my own take on the Ghost!Izuku concept, but the plot bunny surfaced while reading "Maudlin Murmurs" by Zaylix, over on AO3. It's pretty different in tone and plot, but just... y'know; I vibed with it. Several aspects of the Entity quirk were inspired by the manga "To Your Eternity" by Yoshitoki Ōima. You don't need to read it to understand this fic at all, but it's a cool manga, so you should anyway. The title comes from a line in the song "42" by Coldplay, whose lyrics were just so on the nose that I couldn't help but make a reference to it.


Chapter 1:

A Crow, A Cat, A Quirkless Boy

She didn't have a name, before, but the Entity would call her Karasu, later. Crow. Straightforward.

Karasu had a family, children. They'd hatched not two weeks before, three new baby crows for the murder, all dependent solely on her since her partner passed. She had parents, too, and siblings. But they had their own smaller families to care for; her nest was her own.

If someone had asked her back then — well, she couldn't have answered, but had she possessed the wherewithal to respond — she would have said it was her mothering instincts that did it.

What else could be strong enough, after all? (The Entity would have no reference point on power, or quirks, until Izuku joined it.) So, had someone asked Karasu what compelled her to leave her dead carcass behind and continue as normal… yes, she would have said it was instinct.

Karasu died in spring, and she left behind a corpse — a splatter of blood and feathers, really — on a local train car's front window.

But.

She did not leave behind her family.


Said Entity did not arise from Tomoko's instincts the same way it did with Karasu's, no. The Entity (or was it still Karasu at this point? Was it only ever Karasu?) chose to pick up Tomoko for itself.

Tomoko had just wanted to explore, see, nothing else. Maybe catch a beetle, or chase a mouse. Maybe take a nap. Maybe sunbathe a little, gosh, like that would have been too much to ask? Maybe Tomoko enjoyed watching the human who fed her crouch down on their hands and knees and try to tease her out from under the car. So what? It was funny. It was pleasing. Tomoko would lie well beyond the human's reach, tail twitching, and swat playfully at the hands that reached for her, and stretch, and settle just a little bit farther away.

It was a game. They were bonding. Tomoko would have come out eventually. They liked her, right? They had fed her and pet her and given her a name. Why couldn't the human just be patient with her? They'd been patient before, what had changed? Was it Tomoko? Had she done something wrong, out of order, maybe, or out of time?

They stopped reaching for her. They stood up. They started the car.

It was startling! Tomoko had never been under a running car before! So she'd ran. She must have ran the wrong way.

Roadkill. A different kind of splatter.

The car and the human had rolled off. But the Entity hadn't — the Entity stayed! It watched, and saw the death of a kitten, and it stayed by the body as it became cold.

And Tomoko stayed with the Entity.


The Entity — it very well was no longer just Karasu — found it enjoyed playing with its baby crows more often after that. Enjoyed diving in the air, enjoyed swatting at them sometimes, too, and wasn't that something? They were no longer fledglings, they were learning to fly by that point, so they could take a little teasing, the Entity felt like.

Some of the other crows found it annoying, how the Entity could swat at them now, but they were family, and they were together, and they were accepted, so it was alright.

Families should play together, and this, the Entity felt, was its purpose.


Midoriya Izuku had had a horrendously bad day, when he found himself on top of a building, the wrong side of the railing unforgiving against his back, his eyes fixed on the concrete six stories below him.

He felt… so alone. So small. So… useless. He felt, for one wild, interminable moment, that no one else would be able to leave him behind, were he to leave first.

(It was a different kind of splatter this time. Different, but the same.)

The Entity saw, and the Entity chose, and the Entity stayed.

...


...

It happens like this:

Izuku wakes up on the last day of his life feeling like death warmed over. He hadn't been able to sleep the night previous, and his overeager, traitorous brain had him analyzing fifteen different hero fight videos until four in the morning. Because what was the point in lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, when he could be lying awake in bed, watching hero videos, right? Productivity, right? (Wrong.) He could have sworn he'd only closed his eyes for five minutes before his alarm woke him up to school.

He doesn't want to go to school.

But his grades would suffer if he missed a day — no one would share their notes, or bring him homework — so he gets up anyway, rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and smiles reassuringly at his mother over breakfast. He pretends her concern is misplaced, just so she won't worry.

"Really, I'm fine," he tells her as he puts on his backpack and shoes, and it isn't quite a lie. "Bye, Mom!" he says, and this is true.

He manages to catch the debut of a new hero — Mt. Lady — on his way to school, so maybe the day wouldn't be too bad after all.

(Wrong.)

He's tired, his eyes are tired, and his own tiny handwriting in his notes give him a headache. He keeps his head down, literally and figuratively, squinting at the tiny characters from an inch above his notebook, shoulders hunched in defense, as if the voices of the rowdy class were blows. When his homeroom teacher exclaims, all easy-going and patronizing, that the whole class surely wants to be heroes, Izuku joins in, in the smallest way possible.

He really, really wishes that was the end of it. He isn't that lucky, however, and all his attempts at making himself smaller prove fruitless once the subject of UA is breached.

"Oh… Midoriya, you're aiming for UA, too, aren't you?"

Silence.

And then —

Izuku can't help startling at the raucous laughter. His face heats up against his will.

Kacchan isn't the first to shoot down his dream, but he is the most aggressive about it. It's fine, Izuku tries to tell himself, I decided a long time ago not to care what anyone else says.

(It got lonely sometimes, that's all.)

The day doesn't get any better.

Izuku finds it harder to regain his usual hopeful disposition throughout the rest of the school day, for which he blames his restless night. It's fine, he tells himself again, but there's a pressure building up between his eyes — the headache, most definitely. (Wrong.) His eyes sting and water, and he sniffles.

They can laugh all they want. It doesn't affect me.

He is so ready for the day to end.

(Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong-)

Unfortunately, Kacchan has a different idea. He and two of his hanger-ons — Izuku doubts he considers them friends — wait until the classroom is empty save for them to approach him.

They'd been friends once, Izuku and Kacchan. At least, Izuku likes to think so. He still admires him, despite everything. Kacchan doesn't have the best attitude; he's not the most liked of his peers, but he is universally respected. There is something brilliant about Kacchan, about his drive, his talent, his determination. Izuku cannot help but hold on to him, to the dying vestiges of what his friendship meant.

He's known Kacchan the longest he's ever known a person, save his own mother. He thinks about that sometimes, about the huge place in his life that Kacchan occupies, and hopes — assumes, kinda desperately, really — that he takes up a similar amount of space in Kacchan's. That, no matter how annoying his former friend may find him, he is still, in a way, important to him.

(Was that… so wrong?)

"And hey — if you want to be a hero so badly," Kacchan calls back from the classroom door, snide, "why don't you save yourself some time? Pray you have a quirk in the next life and take a swan dive off the roof!"

The smell of burnt paper scratches at his throat. Kacchan used his quirk on Izuku's notebook and threw it out the window, but the smell lingers. He tries to say something, but cannot get a sound past the knot in his throat. He hears blood rushing in his ears, aware that his hands are trembling. But he doesn't cry.

(He's always crying.)

Not this time. His mother was worried enough just this morning, he can't go home with tears in his eyes.

Instead, a heavy weight settles somewhere in his ribcage, somewhere between his lungs, so heavy he has trouble drawing breath. So heavy it aches, right in the middle of his chest.

His ruined notebook floats despondently in the koi pond where it fell. The fish nibble at it. Izuku doesn't know how long he stares at the scene, utterly hollow. He fishes the notebook out more out of obligation not to litter than because he actually thinks its worth something in this state. He holds it delicately in his hands but away from his body. He doesn't want to look at it, doesn't want to see the water's steady drip, the running ink, the black burned edges. He doesn't want to see what's left of it, doesn't think it can be saved.

Izuku walks home, mind somewhere far away from his body. He walks through an underpass, alone, and doesn't hear the clatter of a manhole cover behind him.

His day… doesn't get any better.

Trying to defend himself against the Sludge Villain is futile, though he tries. He swears he tries.

He's just not strong enough.

That he survives is something of a miracle. Saved by All Might! Izuku, of all people! And he gets an autograph, too! Surely, surely it's a sign. Izuku would take anything All Might gives him as a sign. For just one minute, right as All Might gets ready to take off, Izuku is strong enough to hold on to him.


The Entity would reflect back on that moment, later, wondering whether Izuku had done something wrong.

(In all it's timelessness, whatever remained of Izuku could never find it in himself to blame his hero.)


("A hero always puts their life on the line. They have to rely on their own power to survive, and save people while they're at it. So no, kid, I can't tell you you can do it without a quirk.

"If you want to save people, consider joining the police force. They're shunted off the spotlight quite often, but their work is no less admirable.

"Having big dreams is fine. But you have to face reality, kid.")


Izuku stays on the rooftop a good while after All Might, in his emaciated form, leaves. He can see the whole city from up here, but his attention is drawn to the sky. (If there is a commotion somewhere below him, he doesn't notice. There's static in his ears. He sways.)

The sky is blue, and bright, and vast, and Izuku feels so, so alone. There's no one on the rooftop with him, and no people on the street below. He places his backpack, and notebook against the railing, as he peeks down. He places his shoes, too. (Red was never his favorite color.)

Izuku truly thinks he is alone, as he climbs the railing.

But he isn't.

...


...

When it's over, the Entity stands above him.

And Izuku stays with the Entity.


A/N: Thanks for reading, please review, and I apologize preemptively for slow updates.