"You okay Izuku?" Himiko asked, snapping Izuku out of his own head.

Both of them were currently standing in front of the Heights Alliance dorms that UA had made for them and their new classmates and he had spent the entire time staring at the closed doors with fear in his heart.

"Yeah, just a little nervous" He answered back as he shifted his backpack and finally pushed the doors open. The sight of the familiar kitchen where he spent time with Eri making sweets, the common area where he and his classmates would spent nights watching movies together, all the memories made his throat tighten.

"Oh hey, are you the last students in our class?"

Ah there it was, the other of his concerns.

"Hi! Yeah, my name is Himiko Midoriya and this is my brother Izuku Midoriya!" Himiko quickly introduced them both to their new classmate and he smiled at hearing her introduce herself like his sister and patted the top of her head lightly which she just answered back with a giggle, but as he turned to look at their classmate his smile turned a little more forced.

In front of him stood someone who shouldn't be here, a girl with teal eyes and long orange hair that she had tied into a high ponytail on the left side of her hair.

Itsuka Kendo, in his past timeline she was the class representative for class 1-B, but now was one of his classmates taking the place of one of his closest friends, Uraraka Ochako.

Look, he didn't hate her at all, in his past life he thought of her to be a really kind girl and, yes he also understood that he was to blame for her being here but the thought of not being able to see one of his best friends made a lot of bitter feeling well up in his stomach.

"It's nice to meet the two of you, my name is Itsuka Kendo" She said with a warm smile as she stretched out her hand, Himiko eagerly shook her hand.

"It's nice to meet you, now if you don't mind, I'm gonna go find my room" Izuku excused himself from the conversation except that something caught his eye.

In the common room there they all sat, his old classmates.

But he couldn't help but think that it all felt… wrong.

Momo talked in a regal manner with a kind but slightly forced smile, her posture stiff.

Todoroki sat as far away from everyone as he could and looked out the window, ignoring the conversation entirely.

Shinsou sat next to a very excited Mina who kept bombarding him with questions.

It was nice, their first meeting…

but..

Why did it make his skin crawl?

He rushed up the stairs looking for the room that the school had assigned to him and when he found it he quickly opened the door and slammed it behind him as he fell to the floor.

His breathing had turned ragged as panic rose and took hold of his heart going so fast that it even worried him that it would just stop.

It was wrong.

wrong.

wrong.

WRONG.

...

No.

... no

everything is fine

The shadows crawled closer to him, their invisible hands beckoning him closer.

everything is off

The empty walls seemed to come closer to him, trapping him inside a cold box and taking away any air he could fit in his lungs

everything is supposed to be fine

everything is unrecognisable

The voices of his classmates came through the door distorted and warped beyond recognition, he couldn't recognize the voices of those he should trust, of those he should love.

everyt hin g is different

everything is completely fine

ever ything is g one

The trust, the love, the warmth he had once felt replaced by this terrible sense of wrongness all around him.

e verythi ng is broken

everything is distant

He feels out of place. This is his room, he remembers walking around it, putting posters and other memorabilia around it. He can recall the smile he had as he gazed at the finished room.

everything is wrong

everything is overwhelming

He doesn't belong. He wants to. More than anything he wants to sing I'm home with all his heart. He wants his friends to greet him with their smiles and warm embrace. He wants it to fold into normalcy. Izuku can't remember what normal felt like here.

everything is fine

"Midoriya!"

Pain.

Sharp pain.

That was all he could feel for a few seconds and it felt real. Real enough for him to hold on to and ground himself.

He took a deep breath of air, at some point he must have stopped, his face felt warm as if someone had…

It took a few seconds but his sight came back into focus and he saw the past user around him, all looking worried but the one kneeling in front of him was his father who was looking at his own ghostly hand with confusion but soon disregarded that and looked at him with genuine worry.

"Son, are you okay? What happened?" He asked but Izuku couldn't answer, no matter how hard he tried the words kept getting stuck in his throat so he went to his second option.

With trembling hands he slowly made different signs.

Sign language was something that he had always had a bit of interest for but he was forced to learn it when the war broke out so that he and his classmates could pass messages between each other in silence.

"Sign language, does anyone know it?" his father asked the other vestiges, most of them shook their heads except for En who walked forward.

"I know, I used to do this too when I was young" En kneeled next to his father to get a good look at his hands.

Scared. Don't belong.

"He's scared, I think… I think he feels like he doesn't belong here" En said but looking back at Midoriya for confirmation, he gave him a nod.

"Doesn't belong? but, isn't being here the thing that he had been waiting for all these years?" Fourth asked.

They aren't the same.

"Ah… it's because of your friends…" Izuku nodded.

"Son" his father began with a soft tone in his voice "I think, because of your memories, you were looking at this place with rose tinted glasses" he continued.

"You thought that when you came back things would be… the same but you broke the moment they weren't" Izuku looked at him surprised because they sounded not only genuine but as if they came from experience.

"What... Do you mean?" first asked with slight hesitation.

Hisashi took a deep breath before he answered "One day… I went back to our old home" first froze in surprise at the words "At the time, I didn't know how long I had lived for but a part of me… just wanted to go back and I thought that when I did everything would be the same"

"Mom and Dad would be there cooking dinner, you would be reading another one of your comics or working on homework and Kazue would come and visit us and you two dorks would have spent hours talking about comic heroes…" Everyone was looking at the old man as he told his tale, his face still held his smile but the usual mischief it held was gone and replaced by a deep sadness as his face finally began to show signs of the years.

"But when I arrived… It was gone. They had torn down every house and built new ones, nothing was left… so I left and never went back." he finished with a deep sigh as everyone looked at him with multiple emotions clear on their face.

First didn't speak and instead chose to look down at the floor, his hands on his side clenched into fists.

Izuku had somehow managed to calm himself down enough to breathe and talk again, even if his body still felt slightly numb and his chest heavy he couldn't forget that he wasn't alone and any of his classmates could come at any minute.

He took a few more breaths as he pushed the multitude of emotions that he had to deal with, including the ones about his father, to the side and did his best to act as if everything was fine as he went back to the common room.

He went with a smile on his face but it was nothing more than a mask as he sits down with the others and talks to them. He feels out of place. He remembered the room, talking to his friends about class and anything that came to their mind. He touches the seats passing his fingers over the soft cloth but he doesn't feel it. He was replaced with a void of static.

So he continues to talk and smile but he feels as much of a ghost as the other successors.

--

He wakes up the next day with a slight headache but he thankfully feels more like himself, whatever that means.

On a better note.

Today was their first day of class and he was ready to surprise Aizawa.

The walk to the classroom was fairly normal, his feet carried him there in automatic since he had already walked these halls hundreds of times but a sight had made him lose all the air inside his lungs.

Two blonde haired figures walked side by side on the opposite side of the hallway, both smiling brightly at each other as they chatted about their days, both of them shared so many similarities, like their blonde hair, bright blue eyes and warm smile, that they could be mistaken as father and son at first glance.

Izuku didn't make a move as he forced himself to stare in front of him when Mirio and All Might in his weak form walked past him, not even giving him a glance.

That's right, he had just been a spur of the moment thing.

The quirk was originally meant for Mirio.

...maybe he'll do better than him.

"Izuku?" The warmth of Himiko's hand on his arm was enough for him to get a hold on himself and push past his thoughts "Are you okay?" she asked softly.

The knot in his throat barely allowed him to swallow down his sadness, let less say anything, so instead he just patted her head and gave her a shaky smile.

She carefully grabbed his hand and looked at him with a worried look that showed she didn't believe he was okay but she gave him a reassuring smile "Hey, I know Aldera was hard but I'm sure things will start to look better for us here, I promise"

The confidence in her voice and the kindness in her eyes was more than enough for him to let a genuine smile slip into place and let out a low "thank you…" before walking to his classroom.

Himiko stayed behind looking at her brother's back wearing a worried expression. These past few days she had realized that something was wrong with Izuku, he kept staring into space more often, his muttering even more incomprehensible than usual and the way he carried himself had changed from that confident kid to someone who was carrying the weight of the world.

She wanted to know what was wrong but he kept deflecting it with smiles or by changing the subject and… that promise they made when they were younger kept ringing in her head.

She let out a deep sigh as she tried to shake the memory away before going to catch up to Izuku.