Izuku Midoriya wakes up at six in the morning. The sun falls through the curtains in the kitchen, illuminating the room in orange. It's cold, no heat blowing throughout the house. Goosebumps raise on his arms despite the long sleeved sweatshirt he wears.
It's six in the morning.
It's six in the morning on April 17th, 2046. Izuku Midoriya stands in his mother's kitchen, nursing a steaming mug of coffee in soft hands - hands that aren't calloused or scarred, hands that do not shake violently. Hands that are not his own, and yet they are. They are familiar for they are his own and yet foreign in the way his childhood is, because memories are faded and have not been that way for years.
It is six in the morning, and Izuku Midoriya should not be alive.
He died, stopped breathing when he was beaten bloody on the battlefield, with no way to survive. He died in war at the hands of All For One. There's a slim chance that the injuries he received during the war could be healed, but it would be impossible to heal him to the point he didn't even have the scars on his hands from his quirk. Even some of the scars he had from middle school were gone. Their only healer had been dead, anyways - had been dead for years.
There is no way for them to send him back in time, let alone so far ago.
The calendar on the wall says 2046, and so does his phone. He was a third year in middle school by that point, merely fourteen years old. He is fourteen - he's shorter with no scars and no muscles, weak like he had been almost four years ago.
It is six in the morning, and Izuku is currently fourteen and in middle school instead of eighteen and dead.
"Izuku?"
Izuku flinches, head whipping in the direction of the voice. Though the hallway is dark, he can make out the undeniable figure of Midoriya Inko. She wears her pink and white floral nightgown that she had always adored and her hair was tied into a bun, messy with sleep. She looked…young. Troubled, with dark bags under her eyes, but younger than the last time he had seen her. Happier, too, which is a lot to say considering she doesn't look happy at all.
"Mom?"
His voice is little but a whisper, barely carrying to her ears. Disbelief coats his voice. This can't be real. He physically cannot be seeing his mother right now, not when she was so young, and he is supposed to be dead with her and everyone else he knew. It's all a hallucination, he tells himself. One last thing to see before he finally kicks the bucket. Inko's eyes grow worried at the fragility in her son's tone, rightfully so considering Izuku feels as if he's one moment away from bawling and wishing for this life back.
"What are you doing up, baby?" Inko asks with a raspy voice, coming over to him to ruffle his hair and pour herself a cup of coffee. "You shouldn't be drinking that," she nods to his own cup, "it's not good for someone your age."
Izuku smiles, something in the back of his mind saying something like you don't even know. He is probably older than her with his experience, but he doesn't say that. It doesn't make sense anyways; bodily, he's fourteen, and so he's affected as such.
"Sorry, mom."
"Just don't let it become a habit," she replies sweetly, pouring milk and cinnamon into her coffee.
He watches her walk away, something remorseful in his gaze. Something guilty, for he couldn't save her.
He shakes his head, as if to physically shake the thought out of his head. He can't think like that, can't just…accept this. It can't be real. He could not have been sent back in time. The only rational option is a hyper realistic dream he had.
Yes, he thinks. That must be it.
(He doesn't believe it, but he has to. If he doesn't, that means he failed everyone he ever knew, means he spilled blood, watched children be raised to hurt and kill and then have to kill them himself-)
Hurriedly, he gets ready for school before rushing out the door. He doesn't look around the house. If he does, he'll surely start sobbing, or zone out long enough that he's late for school.
The day feels eerily familiar despite just starting. He's lived this day before, his mind screams at him, but he buried that thought deep into his brain, locking it away, never to be thought of again. There's commotion in front of him, and he looks up to see Kamui Woods fighting a gigantic villain.
His heart stops, and he stares, before shaking himself out of it, tucking his chin against his chest, and scurrying on his way to school, not bothering to stop and watch the fight. That's not good. A vague memory pushes its way to the front of his mind, a day exactly like this, a day that changed the trajectory of his life forever.
But that wasn't his life. It was just a dream.
It was all a dream.
He doesn't believe himself. He feels as if he's going mad.
He chants it to himself throughout the school day, just a dream just a dream just a dream justadream–
And it comes to a head during the last period, when his teacher publicly calls out that Izuku intends to apply to U.A. Bakugou jumps out of his chair, yelling about quirkless Deku and useless extras. Izuku doesn't hear any of it, the dawning feeling of deja Vu hitting him violently.
It's harder to believe everything was a dream when it's happening right now. How is he supposed to keep his sanity intact if this is what the rest of his life is supposed to be like?
Once class is dismissed, Bakugou immediately corners him. The blonde boy rips his notebook from his hands, speaking angrily as he burns and chars the book before throwing it out the window and into the school's Koi pond. Izuku can't hear any of it, the world sounding as if it's underwater. Voices muddle together, and words are unclear, but he knows exactly what's said.
If you really wanna be a hero that badly, take a swan dive off the building and pray for a quirk in your next life!
He wants to laugh at the irony of it all. The words had rung in his mind for years and years, and everytime he would look into Bakugou's eyes, he would think Do you remember? Do you regret what you did to me? He never spoke about these questions, of course. Regret was to be implied and accepted even if it wasn't explicitly stated – it was left unsaid but the shine in his eyes was telling in itself, the furrow of his brow and the way his eyes would linger on the faint starburst scars along his body. It all spoke of regret, regret so great that Bakugou couldn't speak of the atrocities he committed – or that is what he had to think, for the thought that Bakugou didn't regret…
He stares at Bakugou's retreating figure, at the crinkles in his uniform and the way he shoves his hands into his pockets, hears his shoes click against the tiled floor as he walks away. Foreboding falls over Izuku, and he wishes and hopes naively that he is merely hallucinating. That he just had a hyper realistic dream that he's still shaken up about.
That must be it, he thinks. What happened is retreating from his mind, was never really all there in the first place, merely thoughts and the realization that something has happened before once it does. He can't remember what happened the rest of the day, after his book got ruined. He didn't remember the fight with Kamui Woods and 's debut until he saw it, and didn't hear the words Bakugou spoke until he said them. The only thing tipping him off to the fact it's happened before is vague feelings of remembrance.
So, he's hallucinating. He's finally cracked. That must be it.
He attempts to keep his mind blank as he walks out of the school, grabbing his book and making his way home. He attempts to ignore the feeling in his chest, the dread and faint anxiety that he shoves behind his ribcage.
He tries to shove away vague images of bloodied bodies, of brown hair and bright smiles, of children, the hollow grief he knew he once felt.
But then, something erases all those thoughts for him, because he is drowning.
