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Well that mission had been a complete disaster.
Okay, Not a complete disaster, but enough had gone wrong that Izuku felt warranted in calling it one.
The villains had been all over the place, which made making any kind of plan moot, and so the day had ended with Izuku exhausted and sore and honestly just wanting to pass out. The villains had managed to get a couple of hits in, one with their quirk active, and while the medics had given him the all clear, he still felt a little battered, and wanted to sleep so he didn’t have to think about that for a bit.
When he got back to the dorms he was falling asleep on his feet, tiredly responding to his classmates’ way too cheerful ‘welcome back’s before trudging up to his room and flopping onto his bed, clothes still on, and passing out immediately.
His dreams were agitated and abstract, flashes and flickers of colour and feeling and sensation, things he could never quite reach and understand, but that left him feeling tense and anxious and like he was outside his own body, grasping and struggling to get back to it.
Izuku felt like he finally slipped completely away from himself, and then his dreams turned to black.
—
When Izuku woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he felt surprisingly light and not at all like he had been punched several times the day before.
He let himself just exist for a moment, basking in the unexpectedly refreshed feeling of the morning, before getting up to start his day.
He got out of bed, remembering that he had gone to sleep in his clothes from the day before, and that he should probably take a shower and change before anything else.
He went to grab his clothes and toiletry basket to go to the showers, and that was when his so far pretty decent morning went to shit. That hadn’t lasted long.
As he reached out to grab the basket’s handle, his hand just sort of. Phased through it. He tried again, and once more he couldn’t get a hold of it, hand just going through it.
He felt the calm of before giving way to panic, and began frantically trying to grab at the basket’s handle, each time failing, and each time feeling the panic get worse and worse.
Eventually he stopped trying and just looked at his now shaking hands, and saw that they were just a little bit transparent, like he could see the world through himself. He didn't cast a shadow, and where the golden glow of morning should be painting his skin orange, it instead looked sickly pale and flat.
He tried clasping at his own arms and hands, and let out a shaky sigh of relief when he felt and saw his hands clasp each other, and felt the panic ebb just a little. He pinched himself, just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming, and while it felt dull and strangely distant, there was still the familiar sting of pain. He wasn’t asleep.
Okay. He needed to calm down and think.
He took a moment to take stock, and consciously tried to slow his breathing, and the panic became a background buzz, still there but blocked off temporarily by a wall. He knew it wouldn’t last, but at least it was something.
Time to answer some questions to get a handle of the situation. Doing that always helped him calm down.
What did he know?
He seemed semi-transparent, he was passing through objects, and light was not interacting with him normally. He could feel pain to some extent, and could touch his own body, but so far could not interact with the rest of the world, though he was still standing on the floor and had woken up lying in bed.
What did he not know?
Why was this happening? Could he interact with food, water, etc… and did he need to when he was like this? Did he look the same as he usually did to others or was something obviously wrong? Was this permanent or temporary and if (hopefully) it was the latter, how did he gat back to normal?
What can you do right now to try and answer these questions?
Find out how others see him, maybe also look in a mirror. See what he can and can't interact with. Don’t panic (too much). Think about what happened yesterday that could have made this happen.
He felt a lot better, and now he had something he could do.
First things first: doors. Every other question required going through a door, so he needed to test that out.
He gulped and walked towards the door to his room, bracing himself for whatever happened.
He reached out and tried to grasp the door handle.
His hand went right through it.
He took another shaky breath, and tried again.
Once again, his hand went through, but this time he tried to focus on the feeling, the sensation, and compare it to the basket handle. It felt… different, like moving through heavy humidity and wavering heat, but without the temperature. He would make a mental note of that for later.
Next, he tried the door itself, and yet again, his hand went through, with that same cold heat-haze sensation as before, and rather than think too much about how weird it was, Izuku decided to just try and walk through it like it wasnt there.
He closed his eyes and just went for it, feeling the haze wash over him, and then it was gone. Izuku opened his eyes, and he was on the other side of the door.
Well. That was good. At least he could move around pretty much how he wanted.
He glanced back to his door, just to check that it was still there and he really was phasing through things, and then made his way down the stairs to the kitchen to ask anyone if they knew what was happening.
As he approached the bottom of the stairs, he heard soft conversation and frantic questions about the time, and overheard Uraraka asking Aoyama if he had seen Izuku yet that moring.
Izuku decided to make himself known, walking round the corner in the most relaxed way he could muster, waving and giving a cheery greeting.
He heard the sound leave his mouth, felt the air leaving his mouth and his vocal cords moving, and yet despite what he thought was an obvious entrance, no-one acknowledged him.
He cleared his throat then tried again, louder this time, and still no response.
The panic began to bang against the wall.
He moved even further into the kitchen, and instead of a ‘good morning’ or ‘speak of the devil’, he was met with nothing. No words, no acknowledgment, not even a sign of anybody registering his presence which, given the number of people in the kitchen, was definitely not a good sign.
He began waving his arms, jumping up and down, clapping, whistling, stomping, anything to try and get even a flicker of acknowledgement, and yet, no matter how hard he tried, no one even so much as twitched in his direction.
The panic was getting more insistent.
He turned and ran down the corridor towards the ground floor bathroom, trying to grab the handle for a moment before remembering he couldn’t and just plunging through the door, and stumbled in front of the mirror, looking desperately to his own reflection.
It wasn’t there.
He wasn’t in the mirror.
No-one could see him. Not even himself, not really.
The panic brought down the wall, and Izuku was on the floor.
He collapsed into himself, grabbing at his hair, the strange, dulled-down pain only reminding him that everything was wrong, that no-one could see him, that no-one could help him, that he was alone and forgotten and everyone was fine without him-
He spiralled and spiralled, and by the time he came back to himself, back to the world, the dorm was quiet. The quiet he knew meant everyone had gone to class.
He was exhausted in a way that made him feel thin and floaty, and while there was no evidence, it felt like he had just cried all of the liquid out of his body, even though he was fairly sure there was none.
He took a while to just sit there, letting himself stabilise a bit, before he got up, still feeling wrung-out and shaky, and decided to follow his classmates.
Maybe this would wear off, and he could just go about the rest of his day as normal, nurse’s visits and probing questions notwithstanding, or something during class would fix it, and he could put all this behind him.
Hopefully, this would all be over soon.
—
Things stayed very much in the same vein for the rest of the morning.
Once he had made his way to the main UA building, he followed his usual path to class, noting that while he couldn’t touch or grasp door handles and passed through doors and even walls, he still stayed on top of the floor, not falling through them, even when he knew there were rooms below.
He moved through the building, steps muffled, sounding like they were being heard through water, or wool, or a wall, and he still wasn’t used to the fact that even when he walked right in front of someone, they would register his presence, and just keep walking as if he wasn’t there.
He hadn’t actually had someone walk through him yet, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out how that would feel.
Once he finally got to class, Present Mic was explaining some English verb conjugations he had written on the board, and everyone had their heads down, focusing on their work, or staring blankly at some random point in space, bored out of their mind.
Izuku walked further into the room, and habitually made his way to his desk. He only realised once he got there that he probably wouldn’t be able to sit in it, and spent a couple of moments just staring at his seat blankly, before trying to sit down on top of his desk anyway. He managed sort of phased through the chair when he tried to pull it out, and then managed to perch in top of his desk.
He sat there, in class, listening to Mic, unable to take notes or ask questions, unseen by his friends, and waited. Waited to be noticed, for whatever was happening to stop, for things to go back to normal and maybe scare his classmates in the process.
When class ended and nothing changed, he felt despair begin to set in.
—
English was followed by lunch, and as his classmates filed out of the classroom to head to the cafeteria, he sidled in next to Iida and Uraraka, and listened in to their conversations, trying to interject whenever he could, but getting no results.
He stood with them as they waited to pick up their food, and the sat down next to them at the table they chose, luckily being able to sit on a bench this time. At least that felt almost like normal.
Their conversation drifted through topics until it ended up on him, and he felt some of the fear he hadn’t even realised he had been carrying melt away when they talked about how they were worried he hadn’t shown up, that he must have been really exhausted, and maybe they should take him to Recovery Girl.
He didn’t even try to hold back the tears, no-one would see them anyway.
—
By the end of the day, Izuku was starting to lose his mind, and his friends were getting more and more worried about him.
He had just sat in class, watching, testing things, and had found that when he was especially emotional (which was most of the time right now, though it did spike) he could nudge small objects or make quiet thumps. He didn’t really know what he could do with that, but at least the fact that other people reacted reassured him that he really did exist, that he could do something .
He followed everyone back to the dorms, and followed as his friends went up to his door to check on him.
He followed, a little hopeful, a little scared, just glad that finally someone would realise something was wrong.
He was so glad he wasn’t in the habit of locking his door.
Uraraka knocked on his door, calling out, and Izuku watched, panic mounting as his lack of response only made them think he was asleep, that they should leave him be for a bit longer and he didn’t want that didn’t want it to be even longer until someone realised something was wrong that he wasn’t there anymore -
He darted into his room, not even registering as he phased through the door, and began frantically looking for something he could touch, move, something he could do to make sure someone actually came in and didn’t just leave.
He scrambled to his desk, breathing fast but quiet, and grasped for a pen, any pen, but his finger just went right through, and his desperation rose and he began to grab more and more desperately, and eventually, to his sobbing relief, he tipped over his pen pot, spilling his pens all over his room in a great clattering sound, and Uraraka finally, finally opened the door.
He stood to the side, still trembling with panicked energy, and Uraraka and Iida entered his room, saw that he wasn’t there, and then immediately began to search for him.
He watched them leave, still trying to gather himself, and now he was alone in his room, and that was so much worse , so he ran down to the kitchen, entering just as Uraraka and Iida finished explaining that he was gone.
He stuck close to Todoroki as the class split up to look for him, taking comfort in his relatively calm and steady presence, and just followed him around. He stayed with him through the whole search, and through the following increasingly worried meeting about what to do, and when Yaoyorozu called in Aizawa-sensei and told him what was going on.
He switched to following his teacher when he went up to check Izuku’s room, and watched as he scanned the room, and then the rest of the dorms, and, finally, when he reported to Nedzu.
He felt tired, and slightly numb, and like all of the intense emotion had been drained out of him, and he just wanted to be able to walk through a door normally, or pick up a pen, ro move a chair.
He just wanted it to end.
—
The next 24 hours simultaneously felt like an eternity and no time at all.
Nedzu had called up the group he had been on a mission with the day before, and asked for details on the previous days’ mission and all involved, then went around asking anyone he could think of whether they had seen or heard from him, and if they did could they please contact him.
After that it was, unfortunately a waiting game, and Izuku spent a few boring hours testing out what could and could not be moved by him.
He found out he could slightly move doors if he focused enough, and nearly gave Ashido a heart attack when he managed to push her glass of water off the kitchen table and shatter it. He found that the more dense a thing was, the easier it was to interact with, and took to lingering near small but dense objects so he could move them if he felt the need to get someone’s attention, if only to keep proving to himself that he was still a part of the world.
All Might had come in at some point, worried but trying to hide it, and offered to get in contact with some people who might be able to help, although none could make it immediately, and he ultimately ended up just hovering worriedly in the teachers’ area of the dorms for a few hours before being forced away by other responsibilities.
He watched as his classmates became more and more tense, some pacing or baking or training to take their mind off it, but every time he tried to get their attention by moving something, it just made started them, made them twitchier and more paranoid, looking behind them and leaving on lights where before they had turned them off.
He had a feeling they thought the dorms were haunted.
He tried not to dwell on the fact that he was beginning to feel like one.
—
By the time an answer came in, Izuku had had several more silent panic attacks, and was feeling even more wrung out than he had by the end of the day before.
Something about his… condition meant he couldn’t sleep, and so he had spent the night drifting between rooms, feeling completely alone and isolated, and occasionally crying silently to himself when it all overwhelmed him.
He couldn’t really ache, didn't feel pain or dehydration or exhaustion, at least not in the physical sense, but he felt thin on the ground, like the smallest thing would break him and leave him a hollow shell, empty of all emotion, too drained to feel.
So when Nedzu came into the dorms at 10:30 am, and told everyone assembled there that the leaders of the other day’s mission had gotten back to him with information about a quirk that turned its victim into what the user called a ‘ghost’, Izuku felt like he could collapse in relief.
Nedzu announced that Aizawa was on his way over to erase the quirk in question to see if that would help, but also said to the room at large, presumably thinking Izuku might be there, that it might not, and that it could be up to three more days before it wore off.
Izuku really hoped erasure would work.
He knocked over a fake plant to try and prove he was there, prove he was listening and eager to go back to normal, and while the rest of his class jumped, Nedzu just smiled, telling Izuku ‘good morning’ before leaving to do whatever it was he usually did on a saturday morning.
It felt so good to finally have someone address him, even if the gaze had been a little off, that he didn’t really notice when his friends began darting their gazes around the room, asking if he was there like some stupid ghost hunting show, until it all hit him, and for the first time since he woke up incorporeal, he laughed. Laughed at how silly it was for everyone to be moving as if they might bump into him, like they hadn’t already phased through his limbs a few times, then he cried because he had an answer, he had people who knew he was there, and he had an end in sight.
—
Izuku felt it when dinner was being cleared away.
It was like cold water suddenly trickling down his spine, like the heat haze he felt when passing through objects but sharper, colder, like a ghostly hand reaching into him and poking, and he knew the quirk was about to wear off.
He froze for a moment at the feeling, before running over to the sofa and flopping down on it, not wanting to find out how messed up his balance was, and then waited.
It hurt.
He felt every single hair, every single nerve, every single cell making itself corporeal again, and it itched and burned like cold and when it was over it left him panting and whimpering on the sofa.
The very textured sofa, which was solid and dented beneath his hand when he pressed down, and he was so relieved to be a part of the world again that he started crying right there, gaining the attention of Hagakure and Shouji who were washing up.
Hagakure immediately rushed to him, crouching down and gently but firmly gripping his hands, helping him feel grounded and safe and he suddenly realised that maybe she had experience in feeling like no-one knew he existed, and he was so grateful she was there.
He loved his friends, but he thought their overexcited hugs might be too much right now.
He overheard Shouji leaving the room to get Aizawa, and followed as Hagakure lead him through breathing and grounding exercises, until Shouji returned, Aizawa and most of the rest of 1-A in tow, and she finally released him, and he felt much more ready for the crushing hug Iida and Uraraka dragged him into, enough that he could return it, clutching at their clothes and laughing in relief.
He was so glad to be back.