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There is nothing here, for him. Nothing in the old neighborhood he had grown up, that as he walks through in the lightly falling snow he can barely recognize. The concept of going home means nothing when there’s nothing to go home to. A small two bedroom apartment on the other side of town, sitting empty.
How long has it been empty, the television and dishes collecting dust? The truth of the matter evaded him, because he did not want to think about it. A few days ago, maybe. Everything has been a bit of a haze, he doesn’t even remember coming down all this way.
He stops, in the middle of the street, and looks back at where he came. Two sets of footprints in the lightly set snow, leading right up to him, and to his teacher. He must have come this way, even if he doesn’t remember it.
“Midoriya?”
The student doesn’t say anything as he turns back around again. There isn’t anything to say. Just a moment of uncertainty, of doubting his reality. What is his current reality? Something grey, as grey as the snow in the gutters, mixing with the slush from the uncommon car.
There’s a hand on his back as they walk again, hesitant and almost jumping. Perhaps as the teacher holds himself there as a comfort, he wonders if it’s the right thing. There aren’t many things known to do in cases like this. In this society, it is supposed to be the heroes who die in glorious blazes, not the mothers. The mothers in stories told and retold, they wait for their heroic sons never to come home. The lights left on front porches and in the living rooms aren’t supposed to go out first.
Or maybe that was just the world that he was living in. The world where he desperately wanted her to be alive again, because thinking about living in a world without her doesn’t even sound real. She’s always been there. At his hospital bed and on the phone late at night when he doesn’t think that he can continue on anymore.
Now he is alone.
The building comes into view now. He doesn’t know why the lights are on, at the front door. It isn’t night, just early afternoon. Maybe it has something to do with the snow creating a blanket of grey over the city, or maybe the lights are always on in front of the building. He can’t tell anymore, can’t remember. Doesn’t really want to remember, because what difference does it make?
The hand on his shoulder leaves as he steps ahead, pulling his keys out of his pocket. He doesn’t remember grabbing his keys, but here they are. His hands shake as they open the door.
Aizawa lets him lead the two of them up to the apartment, hanging back quietly, acting as nothing more than a dark shadow. He doesn’t know this place, didn’t come here during the teacher and parent conferences months ago. There’s nothing he can do besides let his student lead him through the halls, carpeting stained with the smell of old curry, absorbed through the years as it was neither cleaned nor replaced.
The apartment is cold.
With no one home, there’s no one to make sure that the heat gets turned on in the mornings, and no one to make sure that the lights get turned on when the sun starts to go down. This is a place that has been suspended in time since December 20th.
He knows that if he were to check under his mother’s bed right now, there would be a gift wrapped underneath it. That’s why he doesn’t check, and in fact, he doesn’t move from where he’s standing because the very thought of moving and disrupting this space makes him want to fall through the floors below him and be absorbed back into the earth.
The space is disturbed when Aizawa turns on the living room light.
Then the two of them stand there, one waiting for the other to move. What now? After a moment that seems to stretch on into eternity, Midoriya toes off his shoes, and walks towards his room. For now he’s just supposed to be here to come collect some more of his things. There is nothing else for him to do right now. No family to lean on, no father to speak of. When he’s done here, he can return to the UA dorms, his new home, and perhaps sit with his friends. Yes, what a relief that will be.
No one in the world could replace her, nothing will be able to fix this cold, grey haze that seems to overtake even the brightest yellows in his room, but to sit amongst the people that care for him, will be an improvement. Maybe they’ll even coax him to cry.
The faucets that usually turn on at the drop of a hat ran dry the day he learned that he was still here while she, quite simply, was not.
Midoriya sits on the edge of his bed, and his teacher watches from the doorway. Neither of them want to talk, want to disturb the quiet. Any moment, Midoriya thinks to himself, he will be able to hear his mother walking through the hall, offering them something to drink.
There’s nothing disturbing the quiet.
“Midoriya…”
The word dies in the air when he doesn’t look up, doesn’t bother to react. When the moment has gone on too long, when the word has sunken into silence as though his teacher had never said anything, the man steps into the room. What his student cannot do for himself, he must do. That’s alright.
Crossing the room, ignoring the action figures that must be so painfully bright for him, he opens a drawer in his student’s dresser. There is no reason to linger here longer than they have to. It’s time to collect the clothes, the extra bottle of conditioner, and leave again, trudging a path back to the school that in the morning the student won’t remember.
Midoriya doesn’t move. He doesn’t think he can.
Everything is grey.