Chapter Text
The winters were cold and long and cruel. The first days, Izuku could play in the gardens, stuffing his mother’s tsubaki into his pockets in the feeble hope that the warmth of his clothing might stop their withering. But as soon as snow touched the ground, Mom would sweep him up into her arms and rush him back inside. Draw their latticed windows tight and clutch prayers to the gods between her teeth, her little hands pale and trembling around Izuku’s small hips.
The villagers said that the yuki-onna came down from the mountains on those quiet, snowy nights. That she would steal the children away from their wholesome beds and lead them down the hills, only to stain the white snow red with their blood and kiss the warmth of breath from their lips. Mom kept him locked up tight inside, no matter how he cried and begged to play. Gave him oranges to peel and rice to sift through when he grew too restless, too anxious for the touch of sun upon his skin. And on those nights, when the wind would wail and scream, like a dying mother, she would weave him a haori on the loom and sing him old songs in an old tongue until sleep kissed his eyes shut.
When the sun at last broke through the thick, rolling mists and dozing fogs, the gardens were black and cold, and the grass blades crunched and snapped beneath Izuku’s geta sandals. He sobbed into his hands, picking fruitlessly at the broken primrose stems, and his mother hummed and cooed, gathering him in her arms and holding him tight against the slow beat of her heart.
All winter, she’d been pale with fear and trembling softly beneath her clothes, watching death’s shadows from the window of their tea room. But now, with the sun upon her face, her eyes were bright as the big trees just beyond the stone gate, and her mouth was soft and pink with joy.
“Don’t cry, my Izuku,” she laughed against his wet cheek. “The sun has finally returned to shine light upon the blessings the gods have given us. They have kept us safe. They have kept us warm. And now, by the light of day, we can grow new flowers and love each other a little longer.”
The winters were cold and long and cruel, but Izuku never wanted for warmth. He had his mother’s love. And what was a mother’s love, if not a sun that still shone after nightfall?
The hour after death was the longest.
Like a winter. Izuku could tell himself that he hid in the earth, fearing that the yuki-onna might come to steal his breath. Would tell himself that if the soil weren’t soft beneath his back, and the sky wasn’t blushing with morning. Winter. Winter carried pestilence on her crooked shoulders. Winter wore blood upon her lips. Winter coughed into her crackling palms and sobbed into her trembling wrists, walking in death’s shadow, holding his hand in her own.
So why was it that spring came to dig their graves?
Izuku lived.
The air smelled of rot, and the gardens were blossoming tombs for the children who’d collapsed where they’d stood. The birds crooned over the miserable cawing of crows, and the river washed the blood-soaked bodies down her stream. The sun touched his mother’s face. Warmed the dark hair strewn over her white mouth. Pooled behind the glass of her unseeing eyes.
The hour after death was the longest. Izuku kept waiting for him to come back.
There was no comfort in sleep. His dreams were baked in fever, falling apart before ever becoming one. He slept as if for days, but woke to the same morning. The sun, still sitting in the sky, watching him with angry eyes. The stench grew worse and worse by the second. Too many bodies. Izuku was lying in a tomb.
He lived though. His heart thought this was a mercy, beating with vigor, but Izuku knew it was a curse. To live, yes, but live in torment. For there was no one left to love. No one left who loved him. And he would live, unwanted, even by death.
He hid in the earth. Not from the yuki-onna who would lead him down the hill and kiss the warmth of breath from his lips. He’d already known a kiss colder than any snowfall. No. He hid in the earth from life. For now, she seemed a far crueler woman than the dying mother who walked those winter nights.
So the hour after death was the longest, and Izuku laid still as a corpse, waiting for him to come back.
At its last second, another came instead.
A man. Searching.
A man, though he didn’t look like a man. Looked instead like a morning moon. A paler sun. A quiet god.
He stepped over the bodies. He found Izuku, hiding in the earth. Light turned his wild hair golden, and against it, he did look like salvation. Izuku gasped when he came close, his eyes redder than even the spider lilies on his father’s grave. His face sharper than the blade, but softer than the summer’s twilight.
He searched and found Izuku’s hands. Pulsing with that wretched life.
And he laughed.
And his laugh was the sound a mountain makes when it falls down.
“Still alive, huh?” He grinned against the yellow wind, all teeth and feral warmth. “Knew you would be, damn Deku. Don’t know when to quit.”
Deku.
That name, spoken with reverence. With fury. With love.
Deku.
Familiar.
“Come on then,” The man huffed. “We haven’t got all day. Time keeps on moving, better keep up.”
The man grabbed him. Pulled him from that tomb. Held him up, and his life along with it.
The hour after death finally ended.
The sun touched Izuku’s face.
The man smiled.
He was beautiful.
“Guess we’ve got each other,” The quiet god said, almost like a confession. “At least, for a little longer.”
I’ll love you a little longer.
Is this why I’m alive?
Izuku closed his eyes.
///
He woke again, weightless.
He hurt.
His body…Life was a weight upon it. Never felt until it had been taken. Now he felt it in his bones. In the ragged wheeze of his breathing, the saliva dripping from his slack lips. He felt another’s skin beneath his. Bare skin. Warm. His head lolled uselessly against a shoulder, supported only by a broad hand, bleeding with heat. There was another hand beneath his thigh. Big hands, holding him up. Stealing him away from the earth.
Who…His mind croaked.
“Mnh…” Was what came from
his mouth. His throat burned around sound.
A sigh stirred the air.
“Awake?” Came a voice from both above and beside him. That soft, sharp voice, thunder shaking the sun. A finger brushed his eyelid. “Mm. Barely.”
“Mnh…” Was Izuku’s reply.
“Go back to sleep if all you’re gonna do is groan. Fuckin’ Deku.”
Faintly, Izuku realized he felt wind upon his cheeks. A stirring in the air, and heard the sleepy crooning of the cicadas perched high upon the dark trees. He was being carried. To where, he hadn’t the mind to think. But he could no longer smell death. There was only the scent of night, freshly descended, quiet with a promise of rain. And the sweetness of the hands that held him. A smell like sugar cane and sun warmed sleep.
Deku…
The name lingered as he fell once more, eyes slipping closed.
Where have I heard that name before?
He slept a while longer.
///
For many moons, Izuku slept. And in sleep, he was alone. His mind had known death, and in its wake, was slow to think. The fever faded from his flesh, and with it, it took the will of dreams. Izuku’s slumber was black and endless. And within that void of blackness, there was, at last, bliss, for no longer were his eyes mirrors through which the world finds its sickness. They were shut and empty, nearly still as a corpse’s. Several times, the quiet god pressed his fingers to Izuku’s eyelids, seeking proof of life, of some level of thought still moving. Each time, he would find it, faint as a bird’s heartbeat, yet steady, persistent.
Izuku would live. The quiet god was sure of it. But death had kissed him, had touched his lips, and had made a claim on his flesh. He bore the scars of mortality torn asunder. Bore the physical curse of his barely kept life, and his body would need to get used to the weight.
So, for many moons, the quiet god carried him. He did not stop for the night, but once the sun rose and turned its watchful eyes upon them, the god would stop by some deep blue stream and rest, covered by a canopy of sakura leaves or nestled in a bamboo grove. He filled a teacup with freshwater and forced it past Deku’s pale lips. He crushed herbs against his fingers and pressed them flat to Deku’s tongue. And in his weaker moments, he cradled Deku close to his heart, and felt the warmth of his skin. Then, once night fell, and the moon whispered, “Go…”, the god gathered the boy back up in his arms and crossed the world to keep him safe.
At last, just a day before they reached the gates of Kyushu, Deku woke.
There burned a fire, and by that fire, the quiet god sat, fashioning a magic flute from white jade. Once finished, he ran his weathered fingers over its sleek side, and gripping it, brought it to the part of his lips.
The moon sighed as he blew the first note, and Deku’s eyes opened.
The quiet god looked to where he’d lay the boy, swaddled in the god’s red cloak. His eyes were blacker than the god remembered, and his face hard with hunger, yet still, even starved by sickness and dark with death, he was beautiful. Beautiful and mortal, now scarred from his curse in a way the god never would be.
“Are you the moon?” Deku asked with a voice that sounded like death too, like shattered bones and broken porcelain.
The quiet god scowled.
“I am not,” He grumbled, rolling his eyes. “The moon wishes she looked like me.“
“You’ve met the moon?”
“Of course I have,” The god hummed. He rubbed his thumb over the mouthpiece. Remembered the last time he’d played a flute like this one, in the drawing room of the moon palace with a white rabbit at his feet. “She’s fuckin’ badass.”
Deku smiled. It was so loose and loopy, it made him look stupid. Still, the god’s heart recalled its thunder, for it had been too long since he’d last seen that smile drawn upon those lips.
“She’s pretty?”
“Sure,” He shrugged. “Not prettier than me—“
“Not prettier than you,” Deku slurred in agreement, blinking sweetly up at the twinkling stars. “You’re the prettiest.”
The quiet god blushed, though none but the moon herself knew that, snickering beneath the warm night wind.
He shook his head. Turned his eyes away for a moment, to watch the faint flickering of the orange-red fire, only to quickly return, drawn always back to Deku.
“Do you remember what happened?” He asked.
Deku frowned. He seemed horribly confused, and not all there quite yet. Still hazy, still understanding that his soul belonged inside his body. He tried to sit up, pressing his arms underneath him, but his hands trembled with a violence and pooled hot and red with blood. His wail was a quiet, strangled thing, his eyes welling up with a mist of tears, and the god tripped over himself to soothe him, swearing beneath his breath.
“Fuckin’ stupid!” He hissed, fire in his chest. He grasped for Deku’s shoulders, pushing him back down, onto the soft bed of leaves the god had painstakingly made up for him. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why the fuck would you try and sit up?”
Deku hummed dazedly. The god looked down at him, and he could feel his breathing, a slow, lapping tide kissing up against his palms. Could smell the dirt and sweat and residual fever on his skin. This close, he could see the sun-warmed freckles scattered across his brown nose, his gaunt cheeks. The very corners of his eyes.
“I wanted to see you,” He breathed, so soft, the words ached in the space between them. “Waited for you…Moon…”
The god sighed. Removed his hands, even as they itched with the ache to return, the will to feel that breathing and know it as life.
“That’s not my name.” He said.
“Then…what is your name?” Deku asked.
“It is nothing now.”
“Nothing?”
The god nodded.
“Nothing. So when you call for me, that is the name you call. That is who you call for. The God of Nothing.”
That was reasonable, the quiet god thought. He’d left his namesake in the high heavens, along with everything else. Here upon earth, he was humbled. Upon earth, he was belittled. Stripped of his worth, stripped of his title. He was a useless immortal. A forgotten divinity. A god misremembered. Such a creature knew no name, served no person. He was not the moon, and she was far more beautiful than he ever would be. He was simply nothing.
But Deku, even half out of his mind, was not satisfied. He blinked his dizzy eyes and scrunched his nose. His focus trembled, but he tried to find the god, to keep him in his sight.
“No, no, no…” He babbled, his mouth slow to form the words. “That’s…not right. Waited for you…wanted to see you. You saved me…after death.”
“Hah?”
“You appeared to me then,” Deku went on, his breath growing thin and tired. But his voice, ugly and wild, it was burning with reverence. “I’ll call for you again,” He said with a mouth bloody with conviction. Bloody with a love the god would kill to taste. “When I call for you…I’ll call you what you are. When I call for you…I’ll call for…my god…the one who appears…in the hour after death.”
There was little to be said to such a confession. A confession like a wound one inflicts upon their soul. A confession that hurt.
The quiet god sat, in quiet, for a long time. And in that quiet, he burned like he had not burned since he fell from the sun. He burned, and he did not know what for. Did not know if this burning were ruin…or a burning of salvation. He burned and did not know his burning for what could have been hours, and in the crossroads, the time gods fell still, watching on with silent eyes to see what the quiet one would do next.
The moon hummed. The crickets crooned, and far off, a river mouthed sleepily at its shore. And the quiet god stood and pulled his jade flute from the earth.
“When you call for me,” He said finally, shaking like a mountain on fire. “You may call for Katsuki. That is my name which I give only to you.”
And Deku wept. Grief and love ached in his face, and beneath the moonlight, he looked very much like a god himself. Holy in his mortality.
“Katsuki…” He whispered, his mouth warm with divinity and wet with tears. “My Katsuki…”
There were only a few hours left until morning. Once the sun rose, Katsuki would take Deku to the gates of Kyushu. He would give him to someone kind, so that he might spend some years in peace. So that he might be loved, and learn to live again. And when that happened, Deku would have no need for Katsuki, the God of Nothing.
But for now, the moon was their only witness. And Deku was broken with love, lost and found. And Katsuki was his for the night.
“Know this song,” Katsuki said. “And know that however long you live, I will love you longer.”
Katsuki lifted the white jade flute to his lips, and before the moon, the stars, and a boy touched by death, he played his last song. His truth, thought to be broken, redeemed at last before love.