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"wow!" izuku says, his eyes glistening, arms reaching up, "it's so massive!"
"what is?" inko chuckles, bobbing him in her arms.
"the SKY!" he yells, and the way that the light glitters and his eyes and the freckles across his cheeks shine like constellations makes the breath in inko's throat catch. his eyes glimmer like a hundred suns have made their home in them, like they're part of his being, like he’s brimming with molten starlight and his heart is bursting at the seams with sunlight.
he shakes with laughter, wiggling happily in her arms, and the image shakes and crumbles, and she finds the sparkling wonder pasted over her eyes falling away in thick sheets. she grins, spinning him around in her arms, and their giggles ring like cirrus clouds, high and feathery.
<×>
"deku, what are you doing?" katsuki asks, sitting up from the grass. cloud watching is Boring, no matter how cool deku always says it is. he doesn’t get why he enjoys it so much.
izuku looks up from his notebooks, stardust spinning through his irises.
"writing."
his voice is distant bells, windchimes, pulsing like light from beetlejuice, thrumming right to the core-
“what are you writing about?” katsuki’s mouth blurts, and deku grins.
“did you know the hero tsuki can use more power when it’s a full moon? they’re never out on a new moon and-”
“just say you’re writing about heroes! it’s just Confusing when you start rambling!”
deku shifts uncomfortably, his fingers messing with the grass, and katsuki rolls his eyes.
“what were you saying ‘bout tsuki?”
“oh, well-”
deku keeps rambling, and katsuki nods along even though it makes hardly any sense. (izuku is freaky sometimes (he eats sand like it’s Actual Food, who does that?), but it’s something he’s gotten used to.)
<×>
“stop bothering me,” he yells, and pushes deku over, because he never leaves him Alone and he wants him to go away.
katsuki doesn’t offer a hand to pick him back up, leaves him on the ground, and for a moment deku's eyes-
they're all the spaces between the stars, the points where there is no light at all and there never will be any-
katsuki stomps away, silent, his fists trembling, as the hollowed out core inside of him refills.
deku has always been a freak, and he always will be.
<×>
inko watches izuku looking up from the map of stars on his phone and back at his ceiling, watching the glowing stars (he managed to dig up some website that calculated the positions of the stars on the day he was born) spread across it, well known constellations easy to spot. he concentrates so hard that he seems to forget she’s there, and inko leaves after a while to let him continue in peace.
later, she walks in again and sees the ceiling covered in smaller and smaller stars, tiny fragments snapped off them and specks lighting up the ceiling.
"that's… it's really nice, izuku," she feels her lips susurrate, bewildered.
and for a moment under the artificial stars, izuku glitters in the all the ways humans don't, shimmering like pulsing lights, buzzing like the sun, his grin white like sunshine dancing through mist, glimmering with all the depth that the arm of the milky way that stretches across the sky holds-
“thanks!” her son chirps, his hair bright with lime light, and inko can finally take a full breath.
“how did you do this so quickly?” she asks with a soft smile, the delicate crystals of awe and something close to comprehension melting like snow in her palms.
izuku shrugs, "i just got really focused on it. oh, did you know that there's no actually green stars, but some nebulae are green?"
"really?"
"yeah! there's nc 7009 and ngc 6826- or cadwell 15, and…"
inko listens to izuku rambling, quietly wondering if he'll ever slow down, thoughts of izuku's star-like appearance dripping away like water from her hands, evaporating with the sunlight. (but the chill remains, the afterthought slow in its peeling away.)
<×>
izuku forces the world into the form he wants, working as hard as he can make himself; stars his eyes can't perceive guttering out slow and thick, andromeda inching closer and closer to the edges of milkyway-
izuku knows that some day the sun will swell red, meet the edge of the earth, and swallow it whole. (he knows this like he knows the shape of his hands, the bridge of his nose, the malachite sheen of his hair in the sunlight. he grew up with that knowledge, the shape of it etched into his freckles, the ones that dust his cheeks and shoulders and knuckles. he heard it and knew it was correct, the same way he knows he has five fingers on each hand.) he wishes that the blue of the summer sky wouldn't have to burn up with it, the way the moon borrows the sun to light up the night. it's a shame, the same way it is to forget about a comfortable jumper until winter comes and find it in a drawer thick with mold.
izuku has heard someone describe humans as the feelers of the universe. (izuku wonders what that makes him, as he stares at the ceiling, the threads between constellations brushing over his edges. is he the wrong way round? (izuku has always wondered if something is amiss with him. when he looks at his mother and sees her hair green like leaves and the shadows of his black like cosmos, he knows there is.))
<×>
inko and izuku walk side by side on a summer evening; he hops over the gaps in the pavement, and inko is surprised when it starts to snow-
it’s hail.
“oh!” she gasps, the tiny pips tapping across her skin, and izuku grins at her.
“i told you it was going to hail while we were out!”
“the news said it would be later… oh, i hope it doesn’t get any bigger.”
izuku hums noncommittally, still hopping between the stones, and the moment he trips inko grabs his hand.
inko is about to scold him for not being careful, but-
he's cold like the universe, sunlight condensing on his fingers across the hail, all of him glittering, tiny sunspots flecked over his arms-
"i'm still cool even though i'm quirkless, right?"
cool like the spaces in the universe, is her first thought.
"of course you are, izuku," inko whispers. he turns to her, the light in his eyes tumbling like the whispers of nebulae, stars spinning across the sky, galaxies pulsing and-
she's frozen, because his eyes are Galaxies, and all the oceans has a millimetre's depth compared to all his eyes encompass, and the entire sky has been lit up because for a moment distance doesn't exist and she can see every speck of light stitched through the sky-
his eyes wide and cheerful, and she remembers that his eyes are meant to be green, his eyes Are green and her eyes have been taken away from the telescope, the memory untangling itself, separating and-
(there is no such thing as green stars.)
his grin is bright and flat, compared to whatever inko just perceived (she wishes she understood her son more, could hold all the thoughts he gives her close to her heart).
“y- you’re really great, mum, you know that?”
“oh, sweetheart-” she starts, but he suddenly winds his arms around her and presses his head to her shoulder, his fingertips tapping on her back, restless as ever.
“you’re wonderful too, izuku, i wish-” she sighs, “i wish i could tell you how you look, sometimes, like-”
“like stars,” he interrupts with a tone that’s almost sad, unwrapping his arms and stepping away, “right?”
she nods, and he blurs before her eyes, and she ruffles his hair as they both sniffle.
“it’ll be okay,” he says a little more certainly, even though his smile is watery.
"it always turns out that way," she soothes, and they turn to walk back home.
<×>
as izuku sweats, his lungs burning like they do when he's ran too fast and too far from those chasing him, he grinds his jaw and sand crunches between his teeth.
the soles of his running shoes thump dully over the road, and the breeze blowing in from dagoba, sour and sandy, changes direction, and he wheezes as he pulls in breath after breath, the chalk of universes on his tongue, the scrape of stardust high in his ears.
he feels entirely at peace on runs, when the atmosphere is just right, and he could stretch himself across the sky like this and become part of it, something out of a painting, find something so soft under it like the dust of nebulae-
he swears under his breath as he accidentally throws his waterbottle out of his hand and it cracks and scrapes across the ground. he runs over and picks it up worriedly; he'd pasted dozens of stickers over it, but they're not horribly damaged-
(the different track of thought is just enough for him to lose his grip on the threads of the universe, the way they tie to him and sing through his soul; but he's found them again, over and over. izuku's hands never stray from the strings for long, and he'd plucked out tiny tunes on them hundreds of times without notice.
for izuku, this tiny slip is no true loss.)
<×>
izuku looks up at him, the tang of iron sharp and familiar in his mouth, coating his teeth.
(iron is only naturally formed in the cores of dying stars; everyone is built of stardust and izuku can feel it thrumming his veins, electric. he clenches and unclenches his fists)
his knuckles throb.
"well, kacchan?" he asks cheerfully, the stars singing through him, the sun spinning through the syllables like silver and rust and dust of nebula towering, kilometers and hectares and suns and solar systems and lightyears across, higher than izuku can reach even on his tiptoes, encompassing the sky.
izuku's grin doesn't waver whatsoever, even as kacchan stays deathly silent, staring. izuku can hear it, he can hear it so close, like this whole time he's been pulling threads from above and weaving them into himself, knotted thick through his hair and into the weft of his skin, and the syrup of the sun is sweet and soft in the back of his throat, and he holds the heat, trying not to choke under the aching pressure of spiralling solar systems and galaxies torn apart by-
"what the fuck even are you."
it's not a question.
"guess," izuku chitters, unsure himself, only knowing that this harmony is his his his and nobody else can unpick it into synchronicity.
kacchan shakes his head, jaw tight. (izuku can Almost feel the threads weaving him together too, can hardly comprehend them but he can brush his fingers over the fibres and he knows he could pluck one out if he stopped existing so much, just for a moment to unthread the taut strings-)
"i'm sorry, but i Have to go to u.a. you can't stop me kacchan, not today."
izuku feels the blood running from his nose, sweet like the taste of rabid hope in the back of his throat, mixing with the scent of suns on january mornings, and he uses a hand to wipe it off his lips-
izuku's fingers smear blood across his cheek, and he only then realises that his nosebleed was a lot worse than he thought.
(izuku doesn't realise it until later, but it was the closest he came to untying someone.)
<×>
momo stands with the rest of the class as a green haired boy, midoriya she thinks, is scolded by aizawa for being reckless in the entrance exam, and she hears her classmates around her whisper about a zero pointer that got stopped (she doesn't know what that is, but she hears one of them call it the size of a building, some kind of robot in the exam she didn’t take).
midoriya picks up the ball, and he stares at his hand, in something that seems to be contemplative, and it's there that momo realises the boy hasn't actually shown any signs of a quirk at all. he did better in several of the tests than the rest of them, but he didn't do anything remarkable.
"uraraka-san?" he asks politely, turning to the row of his classmates, something panicked in the corners of his smile, "could you throw the ball for me?"
momo and the rest of the row turn to the girl, who looks nervous, fidgeting with the tips of her fingers.
"i- sure, midori-kun!"
midoriya grins, and she hops into the circle, throws the ball once more, and skips out without so much ad a glance at aizawa. momo silently congratulates her confidence.
their teacher turns to midoriya, seemingly for some kind of explanation.
"i don't have a quirk," he says quietly, a deep note of pain pained hidden beneath the surface, and their teacher grins-
and for a moment, when he turns to walk away, the determination in his eyes coalesces into a sky and peels into layers: there's the sun, and sky and all the stars that are invisible in the daylight, his eyes tearing up a little and the light in them spiralling like nebulae, folding into something almost unimaginably graceful, and almost the whole row of her classmates holds their breath-
the phantasm is wiped away by a boy with blonde spiked hair, bakugou, scuffing the ground and whispering that midoriya is a freak, but there's still smear marks left of the moment lingering over momo's memory, even if the depth of it has been drained away.
<×>
"you have a plan, midoriya-chan?" tsuyu asks, her fingers thrumming with tension, as she tunes out mineta's wailing.
"...yeah," midoriya says, his hands fluttering over his lips, and for a moment mineta's tears stop, in between the space where he draws breath, and then it keeps going because-
midoriya's eyes glimmer with thousands and millions and trillions of lights, the sunlight reflected by water sending sparkles streaming over his face, water droplets on his face emptily shining in contrast, his freckles bright as sunspots, his whole face the picture of skies and skies layered and molded together into one, all the light years nobody could ever cross and yet- Yet-
midoriya still looks as if he's marched his way to the stars and drank molten sun cores, and then he takes a deep breath to speak and the image rips apart like wet paper.
tsuyu tilts her head at mineta, wondering if he also saw it (and it’s like pond water between her fingers, spilling onto the ground: she can’t remember what was so spectacular, but she Knows there was Something Massive there, residue of the image still on her palms) he has a bewildered look on his face. that’s enough of an answer for her.
(some makeshift circuitry saves them, and as they fly over the water, tsuyu can't help but wonder exactly what gives midoriya the power to keep trying, and she feels a little guilty for doubting he deserved a place here.)
<×>
izuku scrabbles at the fabric of the villains in front of him, but the panic makes his hands like sunlight: unholdable, intangible. he’s so so cold, like all the gaps between the stars; the light from the glass roof barely seems to hold onto him, slipping off like water on a duck’s back.
he watches the villain monologue to aizawa (mostly ignores mineta burbling), the massive purple thing beside him too still to be living, and for a split second izuku Glimpses-
the nomu is strips of different weaves and threads and fabric felted together in a way all the shreds line up; the worst work of art-
the wave of nausea is what knocks him out of it.
“s-something’s no-not right with th-that monster,” he wheezes, the afterimage sour, “it’s-”
“yeah,” asui- tsuyu says, something distinctly unsettled in her voice, “what’s wrong with its brain?”
“gods- i don’t know but that thing just isn’t right,” izuku gasps.
(and then it goes even more not right- but they all make it out of the usj in one piece.)
<×>
"it's your power, isn't it?!" midoriya screams, "yours, not his!"
and in that moment, for a split second between flashes of the past, of his mother being hit and him being hurt and his mother holding him, shouto saw in midoriya's glimmering tears the shadows of cosmos, his determination comes off in waves, like being doused in flame; in his eyes there sits something brighter than scorching sunlight, something aching and reaching tied into him thick like stardust-
for a speck of time, shouto feels the syrup of suns and suns and suns between his lips; not enough to taste it, but enough to forget Him-
and fire sparks and roars from his left side, and he grins with all his teeth. (and the image of midoriya sunny like all the stars combined evaporates, but the knowledge that midoriya isn’t as simple as he may seem stays all the same.)
<×>
fumikage, irritated with dark shadow's protests about how boring the work is, takes his pen off the page and glances at his classmates.
uraraka has a concentrated look on her face, and midoriya hums through his teeth, staring hard at his sheet, no longer biting his lips.
they're bitten raw, more blood orange than pink at the edges, like the skin has been peeled away and is yet to fully heal-
it burns from within, like solar flares, branching out in loops, like the way sunlight feels over dark shadow, warm like sunshine and flame and chilling all the same, his being too far to feel more than whispers of it-
"how do we do this question?" midoriya asks quietly, tapping to one of the last questions on the physics worksheet.
fumikage blinks, and glances at uraraka, but she doesn't seem to have noticed anything amiss.
"midoriya-kun, i'm surprised you're so far ahead!" uraraka grins at his side, "i'm only on question six!"
"alas, i too have not advanced so far."
midoriya slumps a little, before sighing and rifling through the textbook.
uraraka snatches his worksheet from under the book, ignoring midoriya's protests and flailing hands, and shows it to fumikage.
"i didn't realise you were so skilled with applied mathematics," fumikage murmurs.
uraraka whistles, "how d'ya think hatsume would react to his physics skills?"
"don't you Dare!" izuku hisses, "she's already on my case about how i took down the zero pointer, you know."
"wait, really?!"
"you actually subdued that beast?"
"yeah, it wasn't terribly difficult…"
fumikage and uraraka steadfastly ignore their homework, and instead listen to (or recall, in uraraka's case) how midoriya used scrap electronics and too much research to interfere with the signals sent to it, and the moment of midoriya looking like the sun and all the stars melted into one doesn't quite leave fumikage's head, but it doesn't quite stay either; only a shadow of it lingers.
<×>
he stares down stain, and the terror runs through his veins thick and fast; he's powerful like roiling clouds over the night's sky-
but izuku still holds the stars inside himself (even though the chill of the darkness crawls over his ribcage and thuds like his pulse in the tips of his fingers), and he manages to move through his fear. he grinds his teeth, the grit of stardust buzzing between his ears, silently praying that someone saw his message, terror thick in his veins but starlight singing in his heart all the same-
an attack bursts between him and stain.
"midoriya, be more specific in your message next time. i nearly didn't get here fast enough," todoroki's voice is stoic but it fills izuku with heart-wrenching relief.
"todoroki-kun!" izuku yells brightly, his voice ringing like something terribly distant in his ears in a way it has before, resonating like homes he can't get to, starlight brimming into something with sounds, churning up emotion he forget he held deep in his heart and melting for a moment and mixing like the molten core of a star, everything pausing for a blink-
but the second sublimates just as suddenly as it wove itself into being, the sun in his voice evaporating into clouds with stain's next movement, into a type of air izuku pulls into his lungs and warms them like coming home in winter, and stain’s blades flash and shreds the moment into unravelling fibers.
<×>
"want some stars?" midori asks with a smile in his voice, and ochaco is caught off guard, looking up from her textbook.
"what?"
"stars!" he grins, putting a hand in his pocket and suddenly, mottled paper stars skitter across the table, between plates and bowls and on top of school books.
tsuyu tilts her head at them, flicking one halfway across the table.
todoroki picks one up, almost perturbed, and turns it over in his hands, and after a moment he asks, "...is this our maths homework?"
"midoriya-kun!" iida hisses, his hands waving around.
"um- it's alright!" deku tries to soothe, "i've already done the homework, so-"
"this is blatant disrespect to ectoplasm-sensei," he says, but less forcefully than usual when he picks up a couple stars himself and seems mildly fascinated.
ochaco decides to pick a few up as well, and she grins, "these look really cute, midori-kun!"
"i think so too, midoriya-chan," tsuyu agrees, rolling one between her fingers.
"i know right?! the shape of them is just really pleasing to me," and with his smile, the white of his teeth gleams like the visible arm of the milky way cracking through the night sky, his eyes shimmering like all the night skies she’s only ever seen outside the city, light pollution entirely absent. everything seems to pause for a moment, a space between breaths, but then the noise of the canteen rushes back in and midori starts to chatter about hero related things as usual, and ochaco can't help but wonder if she imagined it, still half believing in it even when only the skeleton of the thought remains.
judging by the faces of iida, tsuyu and todoroki, she's not alone.
<×>
deku won't shut up like usual, he keeps going and going and-
katsuki whirls around to yell him into submission, to get him to understand who the hell he should be listening to-
the shock in deku's eyes jolts him out of the words (and Damn It he's trying to be a slightly better person) and katsuki's hands clamp onto his shoulders as he stares deku and hisses at him to make him understand how stupid his plan is as it Always is-
but izuku's eyes are brighter than sunshine, the light in his watering eyes shining like the branch of the milky way they pointed to and yelled about as tiny brats-
katsuki lets go and curses under his breath, because deku has always been some kind of freak; but by then the moment is already cracked, shattered by his hands and blowing away into dust, and only the constant exposure to deku’s bullshit keeps an approximation of the thought still in his mind.
<×>
shouta huffs in amusement, watching all the kids drag themselves out of the forest, muddy and exhausted.
he glances over the ones heading the class, and midoriya catches his eye because despite his exhaustion (and his quirklessness, how fast Is he? he'll have to see how much better he is when they start properly training.) somehow midoriya's-
the light in his eyes shines like the sun setting overhead, like stars uncovered by the darkening dusk, like hidden galaxies, invisible between millions and trillions of stars and his determination boils in his eyes, molten and blazing like the cores of suns-
the moment tears apart in two when midoriya leans on his knees to breathe out slowly, and shreds and melts into pulp in his thoughts, but the outline of the trice lingers in his mind even when the wild wild pussy cats start speaking again.
<×>
mezo manages to just snatch one of the marbles, and tokoyami appears out of it, and todoroki just misses-
"no!"
for a breathless moment, compress releases midoriya, and his heart wrenching expression reminds mezo of all the Space between the stars, all the lights that humanity could never hope to reach, all the things only midoriya could ever hope to hold-
“kacchan!”
the moment shatters, and they all reach out for him-
“izuku-”
even though bakugou almost grabs his hand, a portal still swallows midoriya and all the villains up, and the silence is like something broken, something stolen-
midoriya shouldn’t be Gone like that-
bakugou yells curses at the sky, and smacks away mezo’s arm when he attempts to comfort him. (uraraka and tsuyu, through no fault of their own, turn up far too late to help.)
<×>
izuku sits on a chair, his arms bound behind him and his ankles tied to the chair legs.
“the heroes never believed in you, midoriya-kun!” shigaraki grins all too genially, “with us you could reach your true potential, maybe even get- well, let’s not be too hasty-”
his voice fizzles out into a distant hum, because izuku won’t betray everyone like that, he won’t because he isn’t Like That, and shigaraki’s words and promises have no value to him.
(what does is the hum beneath his flesh, the pulsing in his veins; his heart beats quick and heavy and panicked, but the hum of the stars is faster and constant and something izuku has always known, from even before he ate sand as a child because it felt something like a home, rock and chalk and the bodies of what was once stars. iron runs through his veins and he is made of carbon and oxygen; the sun is so far away from that point, not even all its hydrogen exhausted but-
it will become heavier and heavier, and izuku is already what other long lost stars have become.
(he just has to Listen to it, become it: he could settle himself into the sky if he wanted it bad enough, and he is reaching up, inch by inch, millimetre by millimetre. he’s achingly close to where he could be, and he breathes elements the earth’s sun doesn’t have yet (there’s only the tiniest amount of hydrogen, barely enough to make any difference, but he breathes long and slow and Waits.)))
<×>
izuku looks up at the man in front of him, and the black tar heavy in the back of his throat threatens to loosen his grip on the stars, the webs between nebulae, but he still holds fast, feels the stars that swim across his vision and they sound the same as twinkling, jittering and pulsing between his hands-
"let's see what quirk is hiding inside you, hm?"
izuku grins up at all for one, the hand reaching towards him a mess of scratty knots and clusters of stars, melted and remoulded but the shredded fibers are still loose enough to-
izuku laughs, stardust dancing with ash, glimmering starlight singing with him, melodious voices whimsical in his ears, the ones that call for him to come back, come Home, and izuku rips out a thread by the tie holding the two snapped halves together, tinkling and someone screaming below, What have you done, What are you doing, but izuku is so far away, he can feel the sky cupping him whole, holding his head, threading hands through his shimmering locks and singing welcome back, we have so many stories to tell you, you are doing such a good job as a feeler of the universe, you are the whole world, i am holding it right here.
izuku blinks his eyes open to a hospital room, and he can't tell what's changed. the air is fibrous and thick with debris, a slurry of chalk between his molars, his head spinning like he's been picked up and thrown and It's So Big, The Sky!
he leans over the side of the bed, his ears ringing, and throws up.
<×>
“what did you Do?” a man asks izuku, tsukauchi, the one who talked to izuku after the mall incident. izuku doesn’t want to answer.
unwrit him, is what first comes to mind. unweaved comes next.
all for one is (now has always been) homeless letters, piles of thread. izuku feels rows and threads and tapestries of words burn the back of his throat, but he doesn’t let them out; is this not what you wanted, from me from us from everyone? to unpen all the names of evil, to make good incomprehensible as it has no contrast?
izuku stays silent, his head in his hands, staring sightlessly at the white wall. he doesn’t quite know what he’s done (if he’s unwritten, why does anyone remember him, what izuku pulled apart, snapping the tense, knotted shreds back into the loose strings they should’ve always remained?) and he doesn’t think he could describe it.
this, izuku thinks, staring at the covers of his hospital bed, is what clouds feel like. suffocating, strangling, cloying.
it’s impossible to explain, so he says nothing at all. (and after all, he has some sort of alibi; he has an extra joint in his pinky toe, and nobody seems to quite know what happened, and izuku can’t exactly remember either, not when he was so much Higher-
his hands feel heavy and thick, and his palms feel like clay. he’s so much more soil than he should’ve ever been, the sounds of starlight distant, like the aftermath of a loud bang ringing in his ears. izuku wonders if the man trying to question him has always felt this way, and he hopes not. (good is unintelligible when it has no contrast, and the same applies to flesh.))
<×>
they let him go, when he's healed; all the evidence is at most circumstantial.
(there could never be any proof of exactly what he did. izuku didn't worry about that.)
when he and his mother are left alone fully, the doors of their apartment closed and hot drinks in their hands, inko's gaze is soft like that of clouds, nebulae, sunlight. (he thinks he can hear it a little better now; the proper sound is coming back in bits and pieces, all his outer senses coming back, a tongue unburning and able to taste again.)
"i know nobody knows what exactly Happened," she starts slowly (izuku's hands tighten on his mug; nobody knows anything but him, and they're not getting an explanation), and she can tell he's already withdrawing from the conversation, and speaks a little quicker, "but whatever it was, something out of our understanding or just coincidence- oh, izuku, it doesn't make you bad."
he can't answer that, because-
hurting people is meant to be bad, isn't it? is that just what heroes are supposed to be doing, and izuku didn't get the memo yet?
she sighs (and it’s not tired or exhausted; it’s something izuku can’t quite describe, something bigger than that), "you didn't- i have a feeling you didn't really know what you did, and that you.. still don't."
"but- i- i did," izuku whispers, "i just- i just- i pulled him apart, i knew and i still did it."
his eyes feel warm and his mug blurs, "i didn't think about the consequences, i- i just could- couldn't thi-think straight."
the fabric of the universe falls apart for just a moment; something held taut suddenly dropping to the ground, and izuku wails and rocks in his mothers arms, brimming with anguish.
(izuku, despite the fact he was made of void and threaded together fragments of stars, has always just been a boy, a child, human. there is only so much he can hold in his heart, and so much he can handle.
he will make it through this as he has many things before, but he needs comfort to do so.)
<×>
“hey midori-kun!” uraraka grins, waving him over, and he runs up to her, tension melting from his form, his fingertips wiggling. (he’s still wanted, even though he unwound all for one, unspooled a being- it’s a little shock, pleasant in the way noticing the birth of a new star is.)
“h-hi, uraraka-san,” he smiles nervously, “it’s um, good to see you.”
“same!” and only then does izuku notice how a tension around the corners of her lips is gone, the anxiety that was once there, “the dorm building looks massive, i wonder what rooms we’ll be getting?”
they chatter between themselves, and when iida and tsuyu join in it feels like it’ll all turn out okay. (inko’s voice echoes in his ears, and even though he didn’t feel it in the moment, he sees the truth in her words.
despite aizawa’s scolding and the day being tumultuous and difficult, he sees it like he sees nebula and stars and the sun: It Always Turns Out That Way.)
<×>
tenya and the rest of his classmates stand outside, after comforting tsuyu, and stare at the sky; only a few stars stand out, between the light pollution and the thin haze of cloud across the sky, but-
something in midoriya’s eyes sparkles like the chinkliling of hail, hard against metal, and the freezing spaces in the gaps between stars feel tepid when he looks into midoriya's eyes. the stars in the sky seem to tremble under his classmate's gaze.
when they all step inside, the thought melts like wet tissue paper, the overlapping layers melting into something wholly unremarkable, the sunrays that lit the mosaic guttering out.
tenya can’t deny it; there is something entirely other about midoriya (kamino proved it, in some awful way), but despite everything-
yes, tenya thinks as he passes midoriya a mug of tea, it by no means makes him worse.