Chapter Text
The thing they don't tell you about working at a graveyard is how many swans you’ll have to wrestle.
Izuku cornered the thing against the fence. This was the meanest bird they had there, and that's why he lovingly named it Kacchan.
Kacchan snapped at Izuku, and he barely got out of the way.
“This is for your own good! You gotta go, you can’t stay here in the winter.” Izuku lunged at the swan. Why the graveyard rents swans was lost to him. Sure they made the man-made pond look a lot better than a hole with algae-filled water in it. But it was like a cheap coat of paint over the cracks on the whole cemetery.
With tight hands, Izuku wrapped his fingers around its beak and laid on the bird as he taped it shut.
He was a small kid, barely thirteen, and even then, he was tiny for his age, and so it was no surprise the bird could buck him off. Kacchan ran as fast as his little webbed feet could carry him away.
Sighing, he stood back up and chased after it, wiping the sweat off his brow.
Izuku supposed he couldn't complain. Where else would hire a kid? And a ‘quirkless’ one at that. Though he wasn't quirkless, he just had the extra toe joint. Not that he could prove that he had a quirk when it had suddenly stopped working on a Saturday when he was eight.
Again Izuku had cornered Kacchan against another fence. As much as Izuku wanted to just grab the swan, he knew he had to be careful about it. If he brought back damaged merchandise he’d be fired for sure, swans weren’t cheap.
He needed the money, he had to keep this job.
The tape still held its beak shut, at least something was going his way this morning.
Izuku pounced again, pinning the bird beneath him. It squirmed, but Izuku had learned from the last time and lifted it up. Arms wrapped around its middle, keeping it close to Izuku's chest as Kacchan thrashed as hard as he could. The bird got a couple of good pecks in before he got back to the path where his cage was.
With one last desperate peck to Izuku’s face, right on his eyebrow, Kacchan drew blood that dribbled down into his eye and down his cheek onto his uniform.
Then click went the latch and the swan was safely away from Izuku, but man was already battered and bruised.
“God, you are bad at that.” A voice behind him said.
Whipping around, Izuku saw one of the other groundskeepers. Dabi was a tall willowy man with purple burn scars that mar his body and made it hard to tell how old he was but Izuku guessed in his twenties at least.
He too was paid under the table like Izuku, which formed a sort of kinship that had Izuku sharing his sandwiches and Dabi letting him ask questions about his quirk. He was mean most of the time, but Izuku couldn't really pick and choose who he was friends with and this guy was pretty much his only one.
Izuku wiped the blood out of his eye, only to smear most of it on his oversized work uniform and deeper into his face.
“Did you catch all of yours?” Izuku said, ignoring the man's jab, he wasn't in the mood to deal with Dabi this morning. His mother had a rough night last night so he had stayed up with her till the crack of dawn, getting only a few hours of sleep before his shift had started.
It was quite fitting that Izuku had ended up working at a graveyard. He had a way with the dead, even with his quirk somehow taken. No matter he could no longer see or hear the ghosts of those killed or had their quirks taken by that monster, but he knew that they deserved the respect and decency that gravestones and flowers barely cover.
“Yeah, and way faster than you,” Dabi commented as took out a pack of cigarettes. He pulled two out, offering Izuku one. “You look like you need one.” the man was rarely anything close to kind, Izuku must really look like hell. And Izuku really did need one, damn he had really became addicted.
“Can I?”
“I offered. I’m not gonna snitch.” Dabi replied as he lit up both cigarettes with his quirk, just a lick of blue flames was all it took.
Izuku knew he wasn't gonna snitch, this guy was an arsonist on the weekends and a petty thief on the weekdays. Which he found out when he was collecting data about his quirk which he used often in those activities (though it could also be considered mild stalking). His quirk was just so interesting and Izuku had to have hobbies. Hero watching just wasn't the same now that All Might was gone.
Taking the offered cigarette from Dabi, he took in a deep breath. His shoulders lost a little of their tension as the smoke-filled his lungs.
But before he could let out the smoke, A loud voice boomed from down the path. “Dabi, Deku.” Their boss called.
Izuku hadn’t used his real name, he had panicked when they asked. He hadn’t wanted to have his name connected to this clearly. It wasn't for his own sake that he had used a fake name but if his mother found out that he had dropped out of school to try and support them, she’d probably kill him. He was just some Deku anyway, might as well that be his name.
They both quickly extinguished their cigarettes. Izuku held his breath, lungs still filled with smoke. Both Izuku and Dabi turned to their boss who had his hands on his hips and breathing hard.
“Why aren’t those birds upfront?”
“We just finished.” Dabi lazily replied, leaning slightly on the cages, all stacked onto a trolley cart. The holes were too small for the swans to get their beaks through but that didn't stop them from trying.
The man huffed. “Well get moving, the truck is already here.”
They both nodded. Izuku was getting a little faint from the lack of oxygen at this point.
“This isn't a job that takes two. Kid, I’m gonna need you to start the clean-up of the section by the large statue, the one with the lady with her fist raised and all hero-like.”
Izuku did know where that was, though he had never seen the statue itself before since he never had a reason to go over there, though he had always wanted to. Dabi had talked about how creepy it was in that part of the cemetery, it was older and more overgrown. A lot less foot traffic went that way so it wasn't as maintained.
With a nod, Izuku grabbed his cleaning equipment and turned the cornered on fast feet. Once out of sight and earshot of his boss, he hacked up half a lung as the smoke finally was out of his body. It took a minute or two for his breathing to finally even out back to normal.
A couple of wrong turns later, he finally came to the section that the man was talking about. The statue was large, not the largest in the cemetery by any means. She had a gloved fist rising up as if claiming victory even in death. This woman must have been a true hero. He was entranced by everything about it from how well maintained it was to how she smiled reassuringly out into the world,
Something golden wisped in the corner of his eyes, taking his attention from his awe.
A woman in a cape floated there idly in a transparent gleaming glory. This was a ghost.
This was a ghost .
The ghosts Izuku used to be able to see were always tinged with a glow that was akin to moonlight. This ghost was like the sunbeams itself and Izuku could stare without burning his eyes. It made him want to stare at the real sun just to compare. Her whole body screamed hero, from her cape to the way she held herself as she floated by the graves.
This wasn't a quirk, this was definitely a ghost; the twinge in his gut and a knowing in his heart told him so.
“Ma’am?” he asked, not getting her attention. “Um. Mrs. Ghost lady?” He got closer and tried to touch her, though he knew that his hand would go through like it had with his ghost friends as a child. But something felt different as he made contact, like the light she was made up of was more tangible somehow.
She turned, startled, pointing at herself with her gloved hands in disbelief. “Can you see me?”
“Yes,” Izuku said out loud, there was no one around to judge him while speaking to seeming no one, not like before. He started to tear up, he wasn’t broken, his quirk hadn't been ripped from him. “Yes, I can.”
The woman smiled so wide it crinkled her eyes. “I missed talking to the living.” she joked, landing a hand on his shoulder.
“I missed talking to the dead.” Izuku got out between shuttered breaths, wetly smiling right back.
It looked like she was about to say something else, but she turned at the sound of footsteps coming up the path.
Izuku turned too, her hand still slightly warm on his shoulder.
A tall, gangly man stood there, his mouth agape and flowers he must have been holding scattered onto the stone. His blond hair waved in the wind over his pale gaunt face.
“Nana?” he asked, looking directly at the ghost as if he could see her.
Izuku looked from the man to the ghost. The woman, too, was taken aback, silent hope written over her whole body.
“Toshi?”