A/N: This was a difficult chapter to write... Warning for grief and depression due to the death of a loved one. I go a little more in depth as to why Izuku killed himself, so... warning for suicidal ideation and feelings of shame and uselessness. Also! There is a bit of body dysphoria... if you wanna skip it, ignore the small scene starting with "Izuku throws up." I think that's everything.

Previously... Karasu, a crow with a death quirk, dies being ran over by a train and leaves a ghost behind. Later, Tomoko, a young cat, is crushed underneath the wheels of her owner's car, joining Karasu as one Entity. Finally, Izuku commits suicide after All Might leaves him on that rooftop, and also joins Karasu and Tomoko as one Entity.

Now... To understand the Entity's next actions, one must understand the adult influences in its (expired) lives.


Chapter 3:

Ghosting

Izuku knows he's… changed.

He grows aware of his surroundings at some point, as the sun sets. He can't say he "wakes up," since he knows he hadn't been asleep, though it does sort of feel like waking up in the kindest way possible; it wasn't sudden or unpleasant, and he had no desire to continue "sleeping". He simply becomes gradually aware that there is a world around him. And that he exists in it.

He is floating idly above a six-story building somewhere near downtown Musutafu.

"Floating" may not be the right word for it. Izuku doesn't have a body anymore, so really, there's nothing to float.

That's alarming, he thinks, not at all feeling alarmed. Should I be scared? Izuku knows a fall from this height would hurt terribly, after all, were he unlucky enough to not land on his head and still sustain enough injuries to die anyway. He knows.

He remembers dying like this.

So. Floating midair somewhere above the building he jumped from, shouldn't he be scared?

But dying is normal, he thinks rather calmly, isn't it?

That's the thing. He remembers dying. He remembers dying thrice — the train that had come so suddenly that he couldn't fly away in time, the car that crushed him so easily under its wheels, and yes, the fall, laying facedown on the concrete with no room for thoughts beyond the pain and the shock of it. What's more, he remembers the event from a different perspective — from this perspective. He remembers watching a boy fall… and choosing to… to…

So. Maybe dying is normal. For him. Now.

(Yes, Izuku knows he's changed.)


He watches the sun set over Musutafu, growing increasingly restless. The sky looks nice. It's been a while since he's stopped to watch the sunset… except, no, that's not right. He sees it every day, doesn't he? He uses the sun to tell when it's time to head home. The sun had nearly set the first time he died, and had only just been rising the second. And now, the third, it had been the middle of the afternoon.

It's gone now. Nighttime. Izuku thinks he would be frowning, had he still had a body. He's forgetting something, he's sure of it. (It's always so confusing, the first few days he takes someone new.)

He didn't use to stay up past the sun, before he died the first time, but he enjoyed prowling the street in the twilight hours after the second. He remembers staying up well into the small hours the night now, after the third.

Hmm.

There is something he's forgetting.

Hmmm

He's bored.

With barely any thought, Izuku's formless consciousness descends to street level, at about the pace of someone not at all falling, more the speed of someone walking calmly to the store — except vertically. And when he's about a foot off the ground, he has a body again.

As the sky darkens and streetlights turn on in the city of Musutafu, a young calico cat seemingly materializes out of thin air in the middle of a deserted street, right where a large blood stain used to be, trotting away on soundless soft paw pads, tail high in the air and flicking restlessly.

He's bored.


Izuku finds a shiny candy wrapper on the ground in an alley somewhere — the streets look different from this height, so he couldn't tell you where — and that entertains him for a while. It makes a satisfying crinkling sound when he bites it, when he bats at it with his paws, and the streetlights shine nicely off its surface. It's the simple things in life that bring joy, Izuku reflects as he pounces on it once again. Or — would it be the simple things in death?

He digs his claws on the shiny, crinkly wrapper and rolls over, kicking wildly at it, instead of laughing.

But this, too, eventually grows tiring. It's a stray thought that does it — for just a second, he realizes the alley he's in is littered with trash, and he thinks, Is it littering if I don't pick up the wrapper I played with, even if I found it on the ground? He decides that yes, since he used it, he sort of took ownership of it, so leaving it here would be littering. He goes to pick it up.

And suddenly he's a fourteen year-old boy again.

The change was silent and instantaneous. (Blink and you'd miss it; don't blink and you'd feel like you blinked and missed it anyway.) He didn't feel any bones shift, or limbs expand, or much of anything, really. The only reason Izuku knew his form had shifted at all was the abrupt change in perspective — he's much taller now. Having hands instead of paws doesn't surprise him — both bodies feel natural to him, both forms are clearly him.

Izuku stares owlishly at the candy wrapper, so much smaller in his hand… though, he thinks as he crinkles it once more, it's still mesmerizing. He stuffs it in his pants pocket with a shrug. He'll just throw it in the trash when he gets home.

A cold, swooping feeling goes through him. Izuku freezes like a deer in headlights.

Oh god.

Home.

He forgot to go home!

His hands scramble at his pockets, but his phone isn't — where did he-!? He must have left it in his backpack, but where is his backpa—

His feet are cold. Izuku swallows tightly. Oh, right.

Right.

He left both his shoes and his backpack on the rooftop.

"Mom's gonna flip," he mutters, cringing. But there's nothing for it now. It had been a building like any other that he and All Might had landed on, and he'd wandered off in a random direction since then. If he has to find his way anywhere, it should be home, not wherever he'd left his backpack.

Best start walking; he will just have to replace everything later. And oh no, he'll have to ask his mom for a new phone. He'll be lucky to get one after making his mother worry like she's no doubt worrying now. Shit, what if she called the police? The last thing Izuku wants is to be more trouble…

And his homework! He's lost all his notes, and none of his teachers will excuse him for it, he knows. And…

His notebook. He's lost All Might's autograph, the only good thing to have happened to him today.

The exhaustion he feels at that thought goes down to his soul, makes him physically falter in his steps.

Today had been… bad. It's been such a long day. He doesn't want to think about it.

Izuku sticks to shadows and side streets, hyper aware of his socked feet on the cool concrete of the sidewalk. He's never been out this late before, and he doesn't want anyone to question why.

By the time he recognizes his surroundings — the arcade, just about a mile away from home — the sky is somewhat lighter. He's such a tight ball of anxiety at that point, he's past caring what people think of him if they see him running all the way home.

By the time he reaches his front door, the first light of morning is visible on the horizon.

(He should be tired, hungry, thirsty, after walking all night long. But he isn't. His feet should ache, his calves should hurt, his lungs should burn with the exertion. But they don't.)

His keys, like everything else, were in his backpack.

Izuku readies the most sheepishly apologetic expression he can muster, and knocks.

And waits.

And… waits.

Izuku's face falls as more of his knocks go unanswered. "Mom?" he calls out, face pressed against the door, and knocks again. There is only silence.

Izuku worries his bottom lip between his fingers, thinking. Mom is usually an early riser, but if she stayed up all night waiting for him, he can hardly fault her for sleeping in this morning.

Okay, he thinks. This is fine. I can make this work.

After all, Izuku is different now — he has a quirk! It's not like he can hide that from his mother, nor would he want to. Busting into his living room with the aid of his new quirk may as well be how he tells her. And maybe the news and its delivery will distract her from the fact that he didn't come home last night, or the fact that he got it by…

Never mind that.

He knows he can become incorporeal — intangible and invisible and unconcerned with gravity — so by all means, one locked front door should be no problem whatsoever.

The question is how, though.

Screwing up his eyes and tensing his body yields no results, no matter how many times he does it. Neither does confidently walking right into the door. Repeating both processes, but this time while taking a deep breath and holding it goes in a similar manner.

Neither does facepalming, or briefly curling up in a ball of humiliation, trying not to think about all the times he'd stupidly, naively tried to breathe fire or draw small objects toward himself as a child, even after being diagnosed as quirkless. It had been a desperate dream back then, a last ditch attempt at hope that the doctor had been wrong, that his x-rays had been wrong, that he was the exception.

This was different. He really does have a quirk now, and this isn't a dream.

Izuku gathers himself up and, hesitantly, presses the palm of his hand on the door gently and wills himself to go through it with all his determination. It's the same determination that's kept him going all these years, the very stubbornness that drove him to take painstakingly detailed notes analyzing heroes, the same conviction that made him list UA as his high school of choice despite nobody else wanting him to. He pours it all into believing he can become incorporeal.

Nothing happens.

(If anything, the wood feels more solid, like it's mocking him.)

Izuku narrows his eyes at the door.


Fifteen minutes later sees no change to his corporeal form, nor to the very solid, very locked door, and for the life of him (ha) Izuku cannot figure out what he's doing wrong. His apartment is on a corner of the complex, and he's leaning over the railing in frustration, trying to see whether the bathroom window is open and whether he can shimmy himself through it somehow. Yes, it's a sheer drop and there are no ledges, but maybe if he swings himself just right… It's not like he can die again, right?

Before he can make any other hasty decisions regarding tall buildings, he finds that he has wings. It's less a surprise, and more like suddenly remembering he can fly, the same way he remembered he had a home to come back to. It felt like pulling back a piece of myself, Izuku notes. Like something that had been just out of reach had suddenly slotted back into place.

As before, the change in shape came with no fanfare. There was no flash of light, no physical sensation, no sound whatsoever. Izuku was simply a boy one moment, and a crow the next, flapping his wings slightly to maintain his balance on the railing.

Izuku stands there, simply feeling the world in this form — the colors look different, and every breeze ruffles his feathers in ways he wouldn't have noticed as a human — and he feels a little bit like crying. Or flying, high as he can go, maybe.

This is real. He has a quirk. And Izuku isn't dreaming.

He takes to the air.


The bathroom window is shut, but their balcony door is unlocked. Though Izuku still can't make himself incorporeal, if he stops thinking about it and just reaches out to the door handle with the intent to open it, he turns back into a human with no fuss.

He slides open the door to a dark and silent apartment.

"…Mom?" It comes out as a whisper, seeming appropriate for the stillness of the room.

The balcony opens into the living room; it's a familiar sight, so much so that it takes Izuku a few moments to pinpoint what feels so… off about the scene. It's clean. Too clean.

That's not to say it usually isn't clean, of course. Midoriya Inko keeps a tidy household, given her tendency to stress-clean, and given her tendency to worry and therefore become stressed. That said… Izuku's never seen the living room quite this tidy before. There isn't a speck of dust on the floor, the glass panes are sparkling, and the books on the shelves have been arranged so their spines are perfectly lined up to the edges, their heights in descending order. The photographs hanging on the wall have been rearranged into neat little rows instead of their usual haphazard placement. Even the All Might paraphernalia that Izuku tends to trail throughout their home is gone — back into his room, he supposes.

Izuku bites his lip with a small frown. Did his mom spend all last night just… cleaning? Waiting for him? Shame curdles in his stomach, hot and putrid.

"Mom, I'm home!" he calls out firmly, sliding the balcony door shut behind him. If he gets in trouble, then he gets in trouble. He probably deserves it, making his mother worry like this. How could he have forgotten to come home?

(He'd had a terrible, terrible day. All in a day, he'd been told to die, been attacked, saved, had his dreams dismissed by his hero, and then killed himse-)

There was no excuse good enough.

A muffled sob comes from his mother's bedroom, and that single, soft, wrenching sound sends his heart plummeting.


The first time Izuku had found his mother crying alone in her room, he was five. She'd been sitting hunched over on her bed in semi-darkness, trying to muffle her sobs. They were criers, the both of them. Tears came easily and for many reasons. His mother wasn't usually shy about her tears; she simply told him why his "silly mom is crying this time" and explained that this — as all overwhelming feelings — would pass soon, and then she would stop crying. "So there's no need for you to worry, honey," she would say with a sad smile on her face, tear tracks still drying.

She'd never hidden her feelings from him before, so it had been concerning to find her clearly trying to cry as quietly as possible.

"Mommy?" five year-old Izuku had then asked, poking his head out from the entrance to his mother's bedroom. She hadn't heard him open the door, clearly, and had startled, hastily wiping the tears from her face. Izuku had stepped closer. "What's wrong, mommy?"

She had given him a watery smile. The light of the hall illuminated only a third of her face, but Izuku was able to see her puffy eyes anyway. His mother waved him over and he ran up to her without hesitation, climbing up onto the bed and into her open arms.

"Nothing is wrong, baby," she'd then said into his hair, rocking him gently. "Nothing is wrong." A weak chuckle. "Sometimes I miss your dad, that's all."

(Midoriya Hisashi had not been gone for long, back then. Mother and son still brought up his name in conversations. Back then.)

Izuku, being who he is, had tried to comfort her, even at five years old. "Don't worry! Dad misses you, too! He'll come back home soon, mommy!"

His mother's tears had started anew; she'd held him tighter.

Izuku has never known what to say when it came to the subject of his father. As the years passed, it became clear his father simply wasn't coming back, no matter how many checks came in the mail, no matter how many phone calls he and his mother allegedly shared, no matter how many postcards. Izuku had been part of the correspondence at first. He isn't sure when exactly his enthusiasm had waned; maybe after the third or fourth or fifth time he'd found his mother trying to stifle her crying, lights turned off in her room.

Midoriya Inko and Izuku shared a lot of tears throughout their lives, being sympathetic criers, but the tears she spilled over the man Izuku had come to know only as a stranger weren't some of them.

He'd tried to distract her any way he could. He'd tried to fill the space Midoriya Hisashi had left behind with happiness, with smiles and hugs and platitudes. He stopped asking about him. He gave her space to grieve whatever was left of their marriage, and made her tea and spoke enthusiastically about his day when she emerged from her room — as close to telling her to forget him, to let him go as he could without breaking her heart any further. He listened to his mother whenever she wanted to talk about Hisashi, but stopped contributing to the conversations, and made no comment when she stopped talking about him altogether. Izuku let her pour all her concentration on himself, let her fret over him without an ounce of the annoyance other teenagers may have expressed at her constant worry, with only love in his heart, in his eyes.

Izuku tried to be the best son a quirkless, useless, anxious wreck of a son could possibly be, even after he stopped finding her in quiet tears. Because he loved her.

(Because he owed her something? He'd found his father's increased distance right around his quirkless diagnosis suspect. He'd never brought it up with her. Wasn't sure if he wanted his suspicions confirmed, or whether he could believe her were she to deny them. Wasn't sure whether he should — or could — apologize.)

(Knew, deeply, that the trouble he caused her went further than his father anyway.)

She'd never known his trouble at school, though perhaps she'd suspected. Izuku had done his best to keep those suspicions unfounded. He never flinched if her hugs pressed on bruises, never hesitated to set off in the morning, and kept steadily high grades. However, there was nothing he could do about his lack of friends, or about the things teachers would say about him during parent-teacher conferences.

No matter how hard Izuku tried to present only the best parts of his life to his mother, he would always make her worry. Recently, as high school entrance exams approached — as teachers found amusement by his career prospects, as his classmates sneered in derision at his abilities, as he's forced to look at his future and be realistic, Midoriya — a nagging voice inside his head insisted that's all he'd ever be able to do for his mother, just make her worry about her weak, delusional son. All he'd ever be in her life, just one more reason for her to cry.

(In a moment of weakness, he supposes, he'd decided he didn't want to be there to see it.)


Izuku thinks of All Might for one nonsensical moment. I am here! he thinks, and pictures himself with his hands on his hips and a wide smile on his face, the classic All Might pose. The thought of it brings forth a rush of self-loathing so strong it almost makes him physically stumble. I am here! And absolutely nothing is better for it.

He tries to shake off the feeling. It's illogical since he can make things better. He can.

Logically, Izuku knows that Midoriya Inko is upset because her son is missing — because she loves him — and he could remedy that by just opening her bedroom door and letting her know that he's here. Instead his shoulder gently hits the wall; he's backed away from the bedroom door as far as the hallway will let him.

Some small part of him — younger even than he was when he last saw Midoriya Hisashi — knows rejection in the crunch of fragile bones. Izuku knew rejection before, too, of course, but not like this. He remembers being small enough to be carried by a single hand, and quick enough to dart out the front door and under a parked car. He remembers — and understands, finally, because Izuku brought with him understanding of many human actions when he joined the Entity — that the owners of a young cat named Tomoko had been annoyed and inconvenienced when the kitten had overstayed her welcome underneath their parked car, and had just… turned the car on despite her. Had just… driven off after crushing her.

Izuku knows his mother's concern manifests through tears, not anger. Not indifference, or neglect, or whatever the hell Tomoko's primary caretakers had going on. Midoriya Inko loves him. But the same part of him that knows this also knows rejection — not just through fragile bones, but through sneers and insults and Deku. He — all of him — falters.

Maybe… he should make her breakfast first? Maybe she would react better if he showed her (he can be useful) how much he cares with something tangible, instead of just apologies?

The kitchen is just as spotless as the rest of the house. More concerningly, there's no food in the fridge. Izuku balks at the sight of half a stick of butter, a single tomato, and an unopened energy drink populating the fridge. Something drops to the pit of his stomach. This isn't right… there's no way everything else had spoiled overnight, and his mother hates wasting food, there is no reason to—

The cabinets present a similar dilemma — they're bare, save for some spices and half a bottle of cooking oil. Instead of dwelling too much on the reason for this, Izuku scrambles to find at least some tea leaves.

He finds the reason anyway. Pinned to the wall over the kitchen counter is a the calendar, dates dutifully crossed off. Today is April 25, the calendar tells him.

A full two weeks after he jumped off that roof.

That's not right. That can't be right, Izuku thinks, but his stomach coils with dread. He has to — someone probably just made a mistake, crossing out all those days. He'll find the correct date on his phone — but no, he doesn't have his phone, he has to calm down because he's not thinking straight—

His computer. He can check the date there.

Izuku hurries out of the kitchen without another thought to preparing tea for his mother, light footsteps hardly making a sound in the hall. His bedroom door proudly displays an All-Might themed nameplate, which swings gently as he opens the door.

And freezes. On his desk, where his laptop used to be, rests a butsudan*. The doors of the small altar are closed, but Izuku doesn't need to look inside to know whose picture stands there. The Midoriyas hadn't owned a butsudan before; no one had died in the family, before him.

My mom thinks I'm dead, he thinks as he steps fully into his room and closes the door as quietly as possible. It's not as quiet as he wants it to be. Something's rattling. The doorknob, he realizes. His hands are shaking so badly that he's rattling the doorknob.

He lets go and the door closes with a barely-audible click. The sun filtering through the curtains of his small window is the only source of light. A single beam of sunlight highlights the dust floating in the air, striking one of his many All Might figurines. Unlike the rest of the house, besides the replacement of his laptop in favor of the butsudan, his room has been left untouched. The bed is hastily made, bedsheets rumpled still, like the last time he left them. There's papers haphazardly sticking out of textbooks on his bookshelf. There's even some stray dirty socks on the floor where he missed the hamper. Dust covers everything in a thin layer.

Everything except the altar.

My mom knows I'm dead, Izuku corrects his earlier thoughts. He leans against the closed door to steady himself, feeling lightheaded. (He'd sit on his bed, were this any other day. But the creases on the bedspread, the dust covering it — it seems important, like it shouldn't be disturbed. Like he has no right to disturb it. Like it isn't his anymore.)

I've been dead for two weeks. Thoughts come slowly and reverberate clearly in his mind, as if they were too big to allow for his usual rapid-fire and overlapped thinking.

My mom is crying in her room because of me… The room is stiflingly quiet, and Izuku isn't sure whether the silence is genuine or if his ears have simply stopped working, making everything feel far away. He can't hear his own ragged breaths. Is he breathing? (Does he need to?)

…Because, Izuku arrives inevitably at the conclusion, she knows I killed myself. Two weeks ago.

The altar leers at him from his desk, doors shut. At two weeks, the deceased would have already been cremated**. At two weeks, the family would have the ashes—


Izuku throws up.

(Izuku shouldn't be able to throw up because he is dead.)

Through choked tears and retching sounds he is still too far away to hear, Izuku throws up when there should be nothing in his stomach. (Because he hasn't eaten anything. Since he died.) Instead, on the floor of his bedroom in front of him, perfectly intact if covered with spit, lies a crinkly silver candy wrapper.

This isn't my body. The thought comes to him, loud and monumental, before he consciously makes the realization that this is the same candy wrapper he'd thoughtlessly placed in his pocket back at the littered alleyway. He feels his skin crawl, feels it down to the seams of the gakuran in which he died. Izuku clutches his arms, his chest, his clothes — clothes he can't take off, can't pry off his arms — with a gasp, with desperation, like how a prisoner may pull at their chains.

This isn't a body at all.

Something in him snaps at that thought and, as if to prove him right, his body blinks out of existence.


Izuku is floating idly somewhere in the middle of his room, intangible and invisible, completely body-less, so really, "floating" isn't the right word to use. There is nothing to float. Izuku is a presence in his own deserted bedroom, and nothing more.

Time passes. Hours, based on the amount of sunlight in the room. He hears a door open and close somewhere deeper into the apartment exactly two times in all those hours, with a toilet flush in between. If Izuku had a body, he might have flinched at the knowledge that his mother hasn't come out of her bedroom all day except to go to the bathroom once. If he had a body, he may have recoiled in shame at having caused such distress in his mother. But he does not.

Everything is muted when he's like this, not really there. The colors of the world are duller when he doesn't have eyes to see them, the sounds heard from far away. The painful feelings that a human teenager might have had reach him slowly and non-offensively, like a gut punch underwater. Sensations surround him, but he sways, he doesn't bend, he doesn't break.

It's peaceful. (It's nothing. Nothing at all.)

He wants to stay like this a little longer.


Then, a little after midday, someone rings the doorbell.

His mother doesn't answer the door.

A minute passes, and they ring the doorbell again.

"…Mrs. Midoriya?" calls a terrifyingly familiar voice, muffled by distance.

It's enough to shock Izuku back into existence, a fourteen year-old boy materializing out of thin air into his bedroom. He can't immediately place the voice — only knows that he's heard it before, knows in his entire being that its source shouldn't be here — and can't stop himself from reacting anyway.

Another ring from the doorbell. "Mrs. Midoriya…? It's me again," says the male voice, unfamiliar only by the way it sounds so nervous, so hesitant. "I'm aware… you may not want me here, but…" there's a pause, and when the man at the door continues, it's significantly softer, so Izuku has to press his ear to his bedroom door to hear it: "…I've brought some food."

Idly, Izuku notices he's a cat again, big ears twitching this way and that. He brings his face closer to the gap between his bedroom door and the floor in time to see his mother's slippers as she passes his room in the hall. His whole body tenses, tail twitching low and eats back against his head — but the moment passes, and his curiosity wins over his trepidation. He knows the voice at the door; it just doesn't make sense.

What would All Might be doing here?

He hears the front door click open.

"Ah! Mrs. Midoriya, good afternoon," says the voice that is undeniably All Might at his apartment's front door. Izuku knows that, by cordiality, the hero must be bowing in greeting, but the image doesn't compute in his mind.

"…Good afternoon," his mother murmurs back. Izuku's fur stands on end. She sounds… dead.

"I've, uh, I thought you might need—" there's the sound of rustling grocery bags followed by an awkward silence.

All Might coughs, and it sounds like it hurts.

"…I suppose you should come in, then," his mom says in the same soft monotone as before.

The voices migrate in the direction of the kitchen. Izuku shifts his ears accordingly. More rustling and the sound of various items being set out, cabinets opening and shutting — his mom putting away various grocery items, he supposes. Did All Might seriously hand-deliver his mother's groceries to her door?

Is this some sort of twisted afterlife? Has he lost his mind? Was he wrong in assuming he recognized—?

"Mrs. Midoriya, I would once again like to extend my condolences, and that of Mighty Agencies…"

—but Izuku has heard every single interview, replayed every sound bite, and that's All Might in his kitchen.

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

Izuku would recognize his hero's voice anywhere.

"How many times do I have to tell you this isn't necessary," his mother delivers, sharp enough to cut through the monotone. It doesn't sound like a question, and All Might doesn't answer. "I know All Might doesn't go around giving twice-weekly condolences to everyone he was not there to save, Mr. Yagi. I doubt the man cares so much, or even knows about my son."

"That's—"

"I asked Officer Nakamura," his mother continues, "whether she knew a Yagi Toshinori."

A pause. Izuku would frown if his current facial muscles would allow him to.

"She said… you found him."

Somber, All Might replies, "Yes."

"She apologized for giving you his name."

"That, uh—"

"Why lie." The monotone comes back.

"I—" another wet, painful cough. "I did not lie, Mrs. Midoriya, please. I truly do work for Mighty Agencies, and I have come in a professional capacity to apologize… for being unable to — despite being so near… That I found him was — was a different matter."

"…The condolences. Are they from you, or… from All Might?"

"Both, Mrs. Midoriya."

Suddenly, it clicks. All Might isn't in his house as the Number One Hero, he's here in his skeletal civilian form, pretending to simply work for Mighty Agencies and speaking on behalf of his hero persona. Well, he supposes that isn't technically a lie… It doesn't stop an unpleasant feeling from settling near his stomach at the realization that his mother doesn't know who she is talking to, or why he's talking to her.

"He was his favorite hero, you know," his mother says, voice cracking. It's the first sign of emotion he's heard from his mother since he heard her stifling her sobs that morning, and it makes him want to hide. "And still… s-still. It's the parent's first responsibility t-to take care of their children, not—" her breath hitches "—not their heroes'."

"Mrs. Midoriya—!"

"I don't n-need your apologies!"

His curiosity at the conversation dies a swifter death than his.

Enough, Izuku thinks. That's enough.

He turns back into a human long enough to open his bedroom window, the voices from the kitchen a lot less intelligible without a cat's superior hearing distance. As soon as he can feel the breeze through the open window, he is once again a crow, flying high, leaving the voices behind before they hurt him any further.

Before he hurts her any further.


(Yes, Izuku knows he's changed.)


A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews encourage me to keep writing!

*A butsudan is a Buddhist altar commonly kept in the home, for which one of its purposes is to pay respects to deceased family members. It looks like a cabinet, or a small closet, and may include a picture of the deceased inside. You see the Todoroki butsudan in BNHA chapter 249, for example (though the Midoriya's butsudan is significantly smaller).

**More than 98% of the dead in Japan are cremated. Traditionally, the family keeps the urn until the 49th day after the death, when they would be interred in a family grave. Before that, they might keep it in their butsudan...