Chapter Text
When five year old Midoriya Izuku saw the detective in his living room late that evening, he was unaware of the fact that he was about to go through the worst experience of his life.
“Izuku, sweetie,” Inko said from the couch. “This nice detective would like to ask you something.”
Midoriya slowly walked over to the couch and sat next to his mom, shyly looking up at the detective across from him.
“Hello, Izuku,” he said with a smile. “I’m Detective Tsukauchi, I have a few questions about one of your friends, Bakugou Katsuki.”
Midoriya looked down sadly at the mention of his name. “Is he mad at me?”
“Why would he be mad at you, Izuku?” Tsukauchi asked.
“He was being mean at school today because we still don’t know what my quirk is even though I have one, so when he asked me to come play after school in the forest, I said no and went to the park,” Midoriya explained.
The detective looked up at Inko. “It matches what the other kids said.”
“But what happened in the forest?” Inko asked, her face growing more and more concerned.
“They all played around and left him since they had to go home. He was the last one there.”
“Mommy, what happened?” Midoriya finally interrupted.
The detective and Inko exchanged another glance. “He’ll find out tomorrow. It’s best he hears it from you.”
Inko pulled Midoriya onto her lap and placed her hands on his shoulders. “After school today, Katsuki didn’t come home after playtime, so Mitsuki and Masaru went to go look for him.”
“Did they find him?” Midoriya asked.
Inko shook her head sadly. “No, they didn’t sweetie.”
It was another week before Bakugou was found. After rechecking the forest’s river for the hundredth time, an officer found him lying in the river, his body free from injury save for the minor scratches from the rocks underneath him and the life devoid from the body.
On October 15th, Bakugou Katsuki was found dead.
The funeral was a private event, with only those close to the Bakugou family attending. Midoriya remembered how rigid Mitsuki stood, no one daring to approach her and offer her condolences. Masaru was the better option to speak to.
It wasn’t until everyone had left that Inko approached her best friend with open arms, and Mitsuki practically crumpled as she fell into them.
“I should’ve played with him,” Midoriya whispered to Masaru. “We walk home everyday. I could have stopped this.”
“Izu.” Masaru crouched down in front of the boy and took his hands, holding back the tears in his eyes. “Please, don’t ever blame yourself for this. It’s all just… one big, sad accident.”
“But-”
“No buts. You wouldn’t want Mitsuki lecturing you instead, right?”
“No,” Midoriya muttered. He looked over at the gravestone. “Can I go talk to Kacchan?”
“Of course you can.”
Midoriya kneeled on the ground in front of the gravestone. He reached a tentative hand out to touch it before pulling away. He took a deep breath and steeled himself, looking at the stone with determination.
“I’ll figure out my quirk, Kacchan. I’ll figure it out, become a hero like All Might, and then I’ll find out what happened to you. I promise.”
The fallout from his death unconsciously affected the children in the neighbourhood. Everyone had to come home straight after school, and if they wanted to play, it was to be in a public place where you can be seen. No one dared to enter the forest anymore.
Midoriya took an emotional nosedive in the months that followed. Like a robot, he would get up, go to school, come home, and head to his room.
The computer had two tabs open constantly. One had the All Might video he so dearly loved in case he ever needed a push, and the other was for research he couldn’t even begin to process.
Two months after he turned four, his mom finally took him to the doctor’s. After exhibiting no traits of either fire breathing or some form of telekinesis, they wanted to find out what was going on.
After xraying his foot, they finally had confirmation that he indeed have a quirk, they just weren’t sure what it was. It wasn’t until his brain scan that they finally got a clue as to what it could be.
“His limbic system is working overtime,” the doctor explained. “My guess is that his quirk has to do with emotions since that’s the purpose of that part of the brain.”
He spent weeks staring down strangers in the hopes that he could subconsciously make them smile. He searched up what colours are linked to what emotion and wore those colours when he had to go out. All of that lead to nothing.
The extent of his knowledge when it came to his quirk was the ability to spell “limbic system,” but looking at pictures of it gave him no help whatsoever.
It wasn’t until four months later when he finally found something.
He wasn’t exactly sure what drove him to walk to the forest that cold February day. As far as his mother knew, he was at the school park, but his legs moved without him realizing and he someone ended up walking along the familiar path.
He stopped once he got to the river he hadn’t visited in months, not since Bakugou had rejected his help when he fell in so long ago.
He told Masaru he wouldn’t blame himself, but a small part of him knew that things might’ve been different if he didn’t take Bakugou’s teasing seriously and actually came with him. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped, and if he didn’t get kidnapped, he wouldn’t…
He fell to his knees in the snow and sobbed harder than he ever had before. It was worse than when he found out Bakugou was missing, and worse than when his mom cried in his shoulder and told his he was dead, and it was worse than at the funeral.
It didn’t hit him until he was alone with his thoughts in the spot where he was found just how awful it was that he lost his best friend.
He kept crying until he heard the crunch of snow from beside him. He stood up immediately and backed up, not wanting the same fate as his friend, but there was nobody to be seen.
He heard the crunch again but this time, he saw something. On his right were footprints walking up to him, but with nobody making the footprints. He took slow steps backwards and tripped on a rock, falling onto his butt.
“Please don’t hurt me!” Midoriya yelled, shielding his face with his arms.
“Why—hurt you?”
The moment Midoriya heard the voice, he felt his heartbeat speed up. His looked at the blank space where a person should be and whispered. “Kacchan?”
In the space in front of him, a figure flickered in an out of existence before finally stopping on him. Standing in front of him, looking the exact same as he did the day he went missing, was a translucent Bakugou Katsuki, looking just as confused.
The first thing Midoriya did was scream. The second thing he did was throw a rock at him, only to watch it pass right through Bakugou.
“What was that for?” Bakugou shouted.
“Who are you?” Midoriya yelled back.
“What kind of question is that?”
“You’re dead! How are you here?”
Bakugou raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you hit your head when you fell? I’m right here and now dead, and when did it start to snow?”
“Oh, oh no,” Midoriya whispered. “Kacchan, look at your hand.”
“Why would I loo-” He stopped when he lifted his hand and saw that he could clearly see through it. He lifted his other hand, and then he looked down, finally registering what was going on.
“I’m dead?” His voice cracked at that.
“It’s February. You went missing for a week in October and then the police found you here,” Midoriya quietly explained.
Bakugou was silent. He clenched his fists and opened them, getting frustrated at the lack of explosions to relieve his stress. “Go away,” he whispered.
“Wha-”
“GO AWAY!” Bakugou shrieked. “Don’t tell anyone I’m here and just GO!”
Midoriya stood up and sprinted all the way home.
He laid awake in bed that night, trying to process what had happened in the forest.
As far as his mother knew, he came back from the park out of breath because he was having a lot of fun with his friends, not because he might have hallucinated seeing his best friend.
“Hey, Izu.”
He sat up in his bed and whipped his head towards the door, where Bakugou was standing, no, floating.
“Am I imagining you again?” Midoriya asked.
“If you were imagining it, then I wouldn’t have yelled at you,” Bakugou replied. He came closer to Midoriya’s bed and crossed his legs, now sitting four feet in the air. “I went home after I calmed down.”
“Oh, that must’ve been weird,” Midoriya said.
“It would’ve been if they could see me,” Bakugou snapped. “I jumped and screamed in front of them, I went up to different strangers, I walked in front of Auntie’s TV. Why can only you see me?”
“I don’t know,” Midoriya whispered. “Maybe it’s my quirk?”
“Have you see other dead people?”
Midoriya shook his head. “What are we going to do?”
“Nothing.” Midoriya looked at Bakugou in surprise as he continued to talk. “We don’t do anything until we figure out what’s going on with us. Our parents are going to think you’re crazy if you go up to them and tell them you can see me.”
“But-”
“We’re kids, Izu. They’re not going to believe you.”
Midoriya opened his mouth to argue but quickly shut it. As much as he hated it, Bakugou was right, they needed proof.
“Can you pick stuff up? Maybe write a note in front of them?”
“I tried, but everything goes through me,” Bakugou huffed. “I can walk through walls though.”
“That’s not going to prove anything, but at least I know how you got in here,” Midoriya replied. He let out a yawn, realizing it was way past his bedtime. “Do you want to come to school with me tomorrow?”
“Why?”
Midoriya shrugged. “If we’re going to figure out my quirk, you can’t be dumb.”
They had a schedule in place that seemed to have worked. Bakugou would go to school with Midoriya, floating beside him as a silent companion and occasionally correcting his schoolwork. After school, they would head into the forest to talk without anyone thinking Midoriya had an imaginary friend, and once they got home, Bakugou would leave and check up on his parents, sometimes going back to Midoriya’s afterwards or not showing up again until the next morning.
Two months had gone by and April 20th was upon them, a solemn day for everyone but Midoriya, who had to pretend like Bakugou wasn’t calmly floating beside him.
Once they went into the forest, Midoriya sat down on the ground and opened his bag. “I know you can’t even hold this, but I still wanted to make you something.”
He pulled out a colourful sheet of paper and held it for Bakugou to look at. “Happy Birthday Kacchan!” was written on the front of it, along with two stick figures, one of which did not have their feet touching the ground. Bakugou’s eyes went wide.
“Why?” was all he whispered.
“You’re right here in front of me and went through a whole year, even if you missed like four months. You’re being celebrated in a sad way today, I want to make it happy. You’re six years old today whether you like it or not.”
Bakugou reached a hand out to take the card, and watched his hand pass through it. “Thank you. Keep it hidden in your room though,” he said.
“I’ll put it in the research box,” Midoriya says. “I didn’t bring a cake and a candle, so just close your eyes and make a wish.”
Bakugou rolled his eyes but complied, staying silent for a moment before opening his eyes.
“What did you wish for?” Midoriya immediately asked.
“I’m not telling you. It won’t come true then,” Bakugou replied tensely. “And I really need it to come true,” he thought.
In the simplest terms, Midoriya’s birthday was far more eventful.
In the months leading up to it, Bakugou, who had been acting more and more stressed, had finally convinced Midoriya to ask his mom about his death, much to Inko’s concern. After a lot of pushing, she finally explained, believing that telling him would give him closure.
“The investigators said that he died the day he was found, but they don’t know how he died,” she said.
“Didn’t the kidnapper…” Midoriya trailed off.
“We don’t know dear, all we know about that that day is that one second he wasn’t there, the next, he was.”
The two also talked more about Midoriya’s quirk.
“So if my quirk is about emotions, and I can see you, maybe I can only see people I care about?” Midoriya said. “But I don’t see how that has to do with the dead.”
“Do you think I was always a ghost and you couldn’t see me, or did you make me into a ghost that day?” Bakugou asked, rubbing his hands together nervously.
They had a thousand questions and no answers, and things only got more complicated as time went on.
On July 15th, once the festivities of the day died down, Midoriya headed over to his and Bakugou’s meeting place.
“I missed you at the lunch party,” Midoriya said to his brooding friend.
“I don’t eat,” Bakugou replied from his seat on a log.
“I know, but it would still be nice to see you.”
“I just didn’t want to see my parents,” Bakugou confessed.
“But you visit them almost everyday,” Midoriya said.
“That’s when they’re doing normal stuff, not when they’re celebrating a birthday they can’t have anymore,” Bakugou spit out.
“Then let’s tell them, Kacchan!” Midoriya pleaded. “We can just say I can see you because of an emotional attachment, forget the proof!”
“I already said no, Izu!” Bakugou shouted, getting up to face him. “They’re not going to believe you!”
“We don’t know that for sure! They’ll be happy to see you!”
“And then what?!” Bakugou yelled. “They have a son they can’t see and can’t age! The only reason I float all the damn time is because you’re taller than me now! I look the same after every birthday while they get older and older. What happens when they die? Do I see their ghosts or not? Did you know my mom only now just stopped pulling three plates out during dinner? They’ve moved on! If we tell them what happened they’ll only end up worse than before!”
Bakugou was panting by the end of his outburst, and Midoriya watched him furiously wipe away his tears.
“How long have you felt that way, Kacchan?” Midoriya finally said.
“Since my birthday.”
“You really think it’s better not to say anything?”
Bakugou looked back over at him. “It’ll be torture if they knew.”
“Okay,” Midoriya slowly nodded. “We’ll take that off the goal list. Let’s just figure out my quirk and find your kidnapper.”
“Excuse me?” Bakugou asked. “Find my what?”
“When I become a hero, I’m going to find out who did this to you and defeat them,” Midoriya explained. “Did I not tell you?”
“Obviously not, especially since that’s a terrible idea,” Bakugou said.
“‘Terrible?’”
“Your quirk is me, Izu, and I can’t make my explosions. What are you going to do? Watch me walk through the person’s body?”
“Obviously not that,” Midoriya muttered.
“Then ditch that idea too.”
“What’s your problem?” Midoriya snapped. “Do you not care about what happened to you?”
“No, I don’t,” Bakugou shot back. “I went missing and died, end of story.”
“But what happened in that week that you can’t remember? Why were you taken?”
“Are you the ghost here? No! So drop it, Izu,” Bakugou snapped.
“Are you telling me you don’t want to know at all? You’re not the tiniest bit curious?”
“I can’t remember the last week I was alive. Have you considered that maybe there’s a reason I can’t?” Bakugou asked.
“Who says this is just for you? Your parents want the truth, my mom wants the truth, I want the truth!” Midoriya shouted.
Bakugou threw his hands up and screamed. “Why can’t you just let me be?”
He took a step forward and pushed Midoriya, and that’s when both their vision went white.
When their vision cleared, they were on the ground and groaning. Bakugou subconsciously lifted a hand to his head and froze, seeing that the limb was not the translucent grey he grew used to seeing.
“Kacchan? Where did you go?” Midoriya asked, and Bakugou started to panic because that was his mouth moving.
“Izu?”
He jumped with a start and Midoriya opened his mouth once more. “Kacchan, did you turn invisible or something?”
In Midoriya’s moment of confusion, Bakugou found a hidden reserve of strength and reached a hand up to touch his hair, pulling one strand in front of his face and looking directly into a familiar shade of green hair.
He was so surprised by this that a loud pop came from his other hand, and he looked down to see tiny sparks going off on his palm.
“Izu?”
“Kacchan?”
“Are we…?”
“I think so.”
“Holy shit.”
“Holy shit.”