Chapter 5: Are you still a squatter if it's your house?

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Twenty minutes later, Izuku was standing across the street from his old apartment building. Everything looked the same, the dim street lights, the creepy guys loitering outside on the sidewalk, the flickering outside light. It was as if nothing had changed, as if his mother hadn't died and he hadn't been left alone.

He shook the thoughts from his head before they could poison his concentration. These could be delt with later, but he needed to find out how to get inside the building and inside of his old apartment without getting caught or recognized.

Piece of cake…

Turns out that scaling a building is a lot than you'd think. It didn't help that he was also trying to carry a trash bag full of the few items he still had. If Izuku hadn't literally just died, he might have been terrified to be clinging to a small edge on the side of his apartment balcony three four stories up, but he was just chilling.

It took him a couple of tries, but he eventually managed to fling himself over the railing and onto the balcony floor along with his trash bag of belongings, landing on his back with a grunt.

This is the worst. I don't think that things could go anymore downhill from here.

But at lease that means they have to start going uphill at some point, right?

After a few more seconds of self-pity, Izuku picked himself up and tried to peek into the dark apartment, pushing his thoughts aside for the time being. It didn't look like anyone was in there, but it was still nighttime, if someone was there, they'd probably be asleep by now.

Izuku racked his brain for something, anything he could do to figure this out, but sometimes there's only one thing to do. Even if there were people living there now, what were they going to do? Report a dead person breaking into their old apartment? Right, good luck with that.

The only problem now was how would he get in? Luckily for him, he secretly kept one of the apartment keys for sentimental reasons, guess that he was going to be able to put it to good use now, as long as they hadn't already changed the locks.

Please work, please work, please-

Click.

Izuku smiled widely as he slid the balcony door open and stepped into his old apartment. He didn't think that he had smiled since her death…ironic that the first time would be while he was doing something illegal.

He quietly walked through the house to see if anyone had moved in. Everything looked pretty much the same as the last time he had been there. The police and storage company had taken almost everything out, so the place looked very empty with only a couch and matching chair in the living room facing an unoccupied entertainment center, bare walls, and a loud silence that was slowly suffocating Izuku.

After a full walk-through, Izuku concluded that the apartment was indeed empty…too empty.

Even without the visual, everything reminded him of his life before. It was like ghosts of memories haunting him and casting an illusion in his vision to make him see the place how it used to be. The thoughts began to make Izuku nauseous, but what was he going to throw up? He was pretty sure he hadn't eaten for more than twenty-four hours.

He looked in all of the cabinets and in the off fridge and confirmed what he had already suspected, like everything else, they had cleared out all of the food. Great. But at least he had the things from the orphanage. Izuku had kept a few snacks with him there, because he wasn't sure if he would like the food there or maybe get hungry in between scheduled meals. Luckily, the staff had thrown those out with everything else and Izuku was able to pick them up and stuff them into his trash bag.

Minutes later Izuku was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the couch with a small bag of chips in his hand and a bowl of toilet water on the coffee table in front of him. They had taken all of the dishes from the kitchen, but Izuku had kept one of his mom's favorite bowls that a friend gave her years ago. She used to use it constantly, so he thought that he might as well take it and continue to use it as she did.

It gave him some weird feeling of comfort while also slowly filling him with melancholy over thinking of his mother. He had been subconsciously putting off thinking about her too much, but he was alone now, and nothing was stopping him from taking everything in. And boy was it a lot.

Tears began to fill his eyes once again as he went over the past few days. The funeral, moving, the orphanage, those kids bullying him, Kacchan and his friends…the jump…the interaction he had with his mother, waking up in the morgue. So much had happened and he was right back where he started, alone, only this time he was truly alone.

What was he going to do?

Izuku glanced down at his wrist, the watch he was wearing was one that his mother had given him a year ago for his birthday. It was red, white, and blue, with a bit of yellow mixed in to look like All Might's hero costume. He remembered just how excited he was when he got it, she had been smiling the entire day and was practically bouncing on her feet as he opened the present and when he did, he almost tackled her to the ground in a hug.

He was thankful that it hadn't been lost when the orphanage threw away his stuff, the apartment didn't have any electricity, so he had to rely on his watch for the time and a flashlight he found to navigate around.

The time read one fifteen am. Not too late, Izuku thought. It wasn't uncommon for him to stay up late studying or analyzing different hero fights he saw online, but to most people it was pretty late. Now that his adrenaline levels were back to normal it was all he could do to keep his eyes open.

He didn't know how he had not noticed it before, but he was extremely exhausted, like more so than he had ever been before. If he had the chance, Izuku could probably sleep for a week and wake up feeling very well rested. On the bright side, that pain he had was pretty much gone now, but it had been replaced by more exhaustion.

It couldn't have been good for him to die and come back to life and then escape and break into his old apartment. A lot had happened, and it was time to just take a break for a while.

He probably didn't have school tomorrow considering that everyone thought he was dead and dead people don't go to school. So, Izuku would take that opportunity to sleep in, something he hadn't done in…pretty much ever. Mom was always an early riser, and he liked to wake up with her and spend the mornings doing whatever she wanted to because it made her happy and he just wanted to see more of her smile.

He missed that smile…

The next thing Izuku knew, he was waking up with a start drenched in sweat and hyperventilating from crying.

It was just a dream…

I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm alive….

I'm alive.

Once he finally calmed himself down, he rolled off of the couch with a groan. It would probably be a good idea for him to get up and change and see what time it was. It was difficult to tell from the sun outside, if Izuku didn't know any better, he'd say that the sun was about to set, but there was no way-

Or maybe there was…

After glancing at his watch, still half asleep, he jumped to his feet and swayed a bit at how quickly he had gotten up. According to his watch it was almost seven pm, but that couldn't be right. He couldn't have slept for fifteen hours, could he?

He had been really tired last night and dying probably took a lot out of him.

Wow. Okay, well he could figure out what to do about that later, he was still in his soaking wet clothes and needed to change into something…not drenched in sweat. He wondered about how he was going to wash his clothes. He might be able to go to a laundry mat, and he did have that little bit of money he had stashed with him at the orphanage.

Again, a problem for later.

Izuku slowly shook out of the daze he as in and his senses began to come back to him. The first thing he noticed was that he was still tired. How, he had no idea, but it was what it was he guessed. The next was that he was hungry, understandable considering he only had a bag of chips for food yesterday.

Maybe he would be able to stop by somewhere and buy something small. But would anybody recognize him? Izuku immediately pushed the thought aside, he wasn't important enough for people off the street to recognize him so he could probably get away with going to get some food.

Honestly, he just wanted to get out of the apartment for a bit. If he was away, then he wouldn't have to think about anything and that's exactly what he needed. To not think.

Izuku peeled out of his clothes and searched through his trash bag for something else to wear. He didn't have much, something that he would need to change if he wasn't going to be dying any time soon, but he might hold off on that for a bit, just until he knew for sure that he wasn't able to.

He ended up pulling on a pair of faded black sweatpants that looked closer to dark grey now and an old All Might hoodie that was two sizes too big for him. The outfit gave him a sense of nostalgia, it made him feel almost normal, like everything had just been a bad dream and he and mom were about to go out to get groceries for dinner and talk the night away.

Slipping out the window and down the fire escape was a lot easier than it had been last night. Izuku didn't know why he didn't just use this then, but at least he knew that he could scale a building now so that was nice.

When he got down to the street and began walking, people didn't give him a second glance. Good, he didn't need to be recognized and questioned about why he wasn't dead. Even so, he pulled the hood up and over his mess of hair as he walked and shoved his hands in his pocket, trying to look as nondescript as possible. Not that he ever had issues with that before, he was always teased about how plain looking he was, guess it was a blessing now.

All the shops weren't too far away from his apartment, which he was grateful for, but he did need to pass a park on the way there. As he was walking, he noticed that there was a small gathering of people a little bit further ways in the park, kind of near the cemetery part of it.

He almost brushed it off and kept on walking, but he caught sight of some spikey blonde hair that was too familiar to ignore.

What could Kacchan be doing in the park this late in the day? As he got closer, he saw the backs of two more familiar people and wondered what could be so important that the entire Bakugou family was here. That's also when he realized that everyone in the group had been wearing black and was circled around something.

The closer he got the easier it was to hear whoever was talking, it sounded like someone talking at a funeral, but why would-

Oh.

There beside the man who was speaking was a picture of Izuku. It had been taken a while ago, he was smiling widely, and his eyes were so bright. Izuku thought back to when that photo had been taken; it had been a normal day, nothing too interesting had happened, but it was the first day off that mom had gotten in weeks and so they spent the entire day together. He remembered just how happy they had both been that day. He hadn't smiled like that in so long…

The man spoke sadly as he talked about Izuku and his life. The Bakugou's looked sad from what he could see. Auntie Mitsuki's eyes were red from crying and Uncle Masaru rubbed small circles on her back in an attempt to comfort them. But it was Kacchan that baffled Izuku. If you had asked him how he would've acted at his funeral a week ago, Izuku would say that he would be yelling and praising that he was finally gone, but he wasn't doing that. He wasn't doing much of anything really.

It was hard to see exactly what his face looked like from where Izuku was hiding, but from his body language he looked almost…regretful. But why would he be regretful? Wasn't this what he wanted, for Izuku to die? Shouldn't he be celebrating?

The service ended shortly after that, and the small group dispersed.

Honestly, Izuku was surprised so many people showed up, granted most of them were his mom's friends who must've still been in town from her funeral, but it was still nice of them to be there.

The Bakugous began to leave too, with Kacchan lagging behind just a bit. He walked slowly, dragging his feet and keeping his eyes on the ground, so it surprised Izuku when his head suddenly shot up and stared at where he had just been hiding.

Did Kacchan somehow see him? What if he did, what would he do? He was dead. Maybe he would think that he was going crazy, or that he was haunting him.

The thought made Izuku snicker a bit, that would be hilarious, but he wouldn't do that. His plan at the moment was to lay low and try to figure out what was going on and then leave. Hopefully his mom would be willing to see him then.

Notes:

My question is how did nobody care that the body of a teenage boy who was supposed to be dead just disappeared from the morgue? If I had been the examiner or whatever and I came back to find that the body I was looking at wasn't there anymore I would just quit honestly. You would not catch me trying to solve the mystery or whatever and being killed by the evil teenage zombie who had come back to life. This ain't Scooby Doo or some crap.

And that is why I believe that I would survive a horror movie. Because I'm not an IDIOT. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a comment and let me know what you think of the story so far! 3