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Awareness comes to Tenya in thick, heavy currents, weighing down on his limbs like the waves of a furious ocean. His chest feels crowded, his head fuller still with thoughts that refuse to settle.
Poisonous thoughts. Despairing, hopeless thoughts that make the notion of moving something insurmountable.
Even the idea of opening his eyes makes his stomach churn, rebelling against the simplest of actions.
Here, in this inky darkness, nothingness reigns. Peace reigns, blissful and intoxicating in the absence of higher feeling. Tenya could sink forever in this realm. He would. He should. The world is off kilter, where it is lurking against his lids- eager to make itself further heard. He can feel it, know it; as intimately as the apathy settling into his bones. The world isn’t right. Not quite flipped upside down, not yet, but skewed, a wrongness that chatters like bugs under his skin. Waking up would mean facing this wrongness, this depravity that pulls at his flesh, slowly but steadily making home in the tightness of his chest. How could Tenya handle it?
Why should he? He thinks a moment later. He’s content after all, entangled in the embrace of his blankets, their smooth texture a welcome balm against his body. He is cool, safe. The world beyond their grasp is sweltering, hot with emotions that would overwhelm him the moment he truly awakes. To wriggle out of this cocoon, this safety- well. Tenya wouldn’t want that.
So he sinks. He sinks, further and further into the awaiting deepness of sleep, time slipping past him like ill fated wind. His sheets embrace him further, Tenya likes to think, nestling him, hiding him from the rest of the terrible, terrible world. He doesn’t have to face it. He doesn’t have to face it at all. He could stay here, says a thought, as cool as the void it emerges from. Tenya could stay here forever, sleeping. Unfeeling. The bed is comfortable, the room silent. Wrongness doesn’t exist here. It's a pleasurable prospect, one that makes Tenya all the more eager to keep his eyes shut. He should stay here. Forever and ever, until the world is gone, until he has become nothing but the nothingness he longs to be part of. Wouldn’t that be grand? Wouldn’t that be better? He agrees before the thought is finished, a fickle sigh blowing past lips he can hardly feel. Teyna doesn’t have to do anything, if he stays here. Tenya doesn’t have to remember all the icky feelings that have been building over the passing days. Tenya doesn’t have to bend under the weight of insecurities, the weight of hopelessness that only grows and grows.
Tenya doesn’t have to exist.
He only has to sink into oblivion.
He wants it. He aches for it. Just a little longer, just a little more. Just a second longer in bed, a second longer kept half asleep. It won’t hurt to stay like this, Tenya tells himself. It won’t hurt any more, if all he did was sleep.
And he almost succeeds. When he is roused from this oblivion for a second time, he is irritable, distressed. It's easy to push aside those terrible feelings in favor of the unconsciousness waiting to swoop back in, barely feeling the pressure in his limbs as he shifts further into his blankets. In fact, he barely feels at all. He’s disconnected from the rest of himself, adrift. Tenya is wonderfully, beautifully go-
Someone knocks.
His lids flutter.
“Hey kid, are you alive in there?”
Tenya recognizes that deep, rattling rumble anywhere, even in this realm of empty space. Aizawa-sensei. What he doesn’t recognize is the surge of anger that sweeps through his chest, a fury that seethes and snaps with the indignity of it all. He just wants to sleep. Can’t he have that?
“Kid?”
It's not that hard to leave him be. Please Aizawa-sensei, Tenya wants to call out. Can’t I sleep a little longer?
“Iida…?”
Just five more minutes. He longs to say. Just five minutes more, I swear. Don’t make me wake up.
But the void is consuming, and the world stays terrible and if Tenya speaks now it means facing all of it. So he doesn’t. He stays half slumbering, half unexisting. He can feel time slipping by again, his body fading away with it.
It's all he ever wanted, really.
But the world will not let him have it.
Distantly, through the fog his mind is entrenched in, he can hear the squeak of a door, the quiet, but still too loud footsteps of someone entering. The anger returns, tenfold, rousing him from the nothingness Tenya barely just returned to.
His lids flutter.
Aizawa-sensei speaks.
“Iida. Kid, come on.”
Rough hands, coarse hands, mean cruel and sadistic hands tap at his shoulder, pulling at the sheets tucked over Tenya’s face.
His lids flutter.
But nothing more.
“Tenya.”
Another time, another day, another place, Tenya would have felt the nervous, thrilling burst of energy that comes from his teacher using his given name. Aizawa-sensei hardly used it anymore, now they were teacherandstudentbullyandvictimtormenterandtormenteepleasejustleavemealone.
It wasn’t appropriate, he had said the first day, when Tenya tentativelynervouslyanxiouslyworriedly stepped into his office. They weren’t uncle and nephew here, Aizawa-sensei said.
Aizawa-sensei said other things too, that day.
But Tenya couldn’t remember any of it.
He’s better off not remembering, anyways.
Remembering would mean being part of the horrible, horrible world. And Tenya doesn’t want that.
He really doesn’t. So he groans and shies away from Aizawa-sensei’s touch, not speaking but not unheard either.
Aizawa-sensei doesn’t care.
Tenya hates Aizawa-sensei.
“Ten, wake up.” Says his cruelsavageuncaringvicioushateful teacher. “It's almost afternoon, you’re going to give yourself a headache again sleeping in so late.”
Aizawa-sensei’s voice doesn’t sound soothing at all. Its grating, vile, and every slowly waking part of Tenya loathes it. He wants to be left alone. He wants to sleep.
Aizawa-sensei’s fingers graze his cheek.
Tenya Iida wants to stop existing.
His lids open anyways.
A pale, pinched face swims above Tenya’s head, dark eyes not nearly as black as the void Tenya wants to return to.
“Ten.” Says his uncle, emotionrelief dripping from his voice like bitter, disgusting poison.
Tenya hates every syllable that falls out of his uncle’s mouth.
“The problem children are worried about you.” Says Tenya’s bully, unheeding of the venom that stirs and pools in Tenya’s mouth. “Midoriya hasn’t heard from you since you went to bed last night.”
His uncle chuckles, and Tenya thinks he’d like to strangle him.
The world isn’t right. Not quite flipped upside down, not yet, but skewed, a wrongness that chatters like bugs under his skin.
Tenya wants to tear his skin off until the world is right again.
Something that terriblesomethingnotnothingnotpeacenotrest in his expression must give it away, because his uncle’s face falls, dark brows furrowing in concern.
“Tenya, what’s wrong?”
What’s wrong, he wants to mock back, spit out the venom threatening to drown him. He wants to make his uncle hurt, wants to scream and rage until Aizawa stops pretending the world is right.
He settles for groaning instead, clumsy, swollen fingers uselessly stretching out towards his demon. Tenya doesn’t know what he means to do. Maybe he means to push him away, or pull him closer. Maybe he means to wrap his fingers around his neck and make that expression goawaygoawaygoawayallofitgOAWAY.
Aizawa grabs his hand, squeezing it tightly.
It feels like knives stabbing into his very being.
“Tell me what’s wrong Tenya.” His uncle whispers, face pinched further.
It's hopeless enough, desperate enough that Tenya cannot gather up the energy to be angry at it. He swallows, and his tongue bops uncomfortably in his mouth. Like venom, thick and sour, collecting but not going away.
“I‘m tired.” He manages.
His uncle doesn’t understand.
“I don’t want to get up.”
He never does.
Aizawa’s face falls.
“Ten.” He murmurs.
Tenya wants to- he needs to reassure his uncle that it's alright. I’m fine uncle, I just need to sleep. I just need to sleep, and the world will be all right again.
“I’m okay.” He says dumbly instead.
His uncle’s fingers are soft now, as it brushes against Tenya’s cheek.
“You’re not okay, Ten.”
The words are spoken so softly, so gently, and that’s all it takes.
Tenya bursts into tears, ugly and loud, and not at all okay.
________
Evening finds Tenya Iida huddled in the oversized armchair of Aizawa’s living room, nursing a cup of hot tea.
The moon’s rising is prettier at this angle.
He lets himself believe, for a single moment, that it's brighter too, just for him.
Tenya blinks, and then it's not, and then he blinks again, and then his uncle is there. Eraserhead, strong, unshakable Eraserhead sighs, rubbing a hand against the back of his neck. It's rare for Aizawa-sensei to look so uncertain.
A small, cruel part of Tenya that has yet to quell is viciously satisfied.
The moon’s rising is prettier at this angle.
“Your brother is coming in tomorrow’s afternoon.” Aizawa says, his dark, heavy eyes pinning Tenya’s own. “He’d come in the morning, but the only flight available is later in the day.”
A small part of Tenya may feel vindictive, but the rest feels ashamed. His head is clearer now, after Aizawa had all but hauled him out of bed and wrangled him into showering and eating. The cloud of angered apathy had left Tenya hours ago, leaving him wrung out and twitchy. Now, he’s appalled by his waking behavior, horrified by the idea of wasting into sleep.
“Don’t feel bad.”
Tenya startles, grip tightening unconsciously on his cup. He balks at his teacher’s words, mouth opening and closing uselessly. Before he can gather the correct words, the elder continues, frowning in what Tenya now recognizes as concern.
“I know you, Tenya. You’re going to have bad days, just as you’re going to have good days. This isn’t something you can magically control.”
“Except it should be.” Tenya whispers. “I- this- it's all in my head. I should be able to control what goes on in my head.”
The darker haired man sighs, kneeling in front of the teen. Slowly, he takes Tenya’s hand in his own, carefully unfurling his fingers from the tight fists they formed. Violent red crescents are marked into his palms, throbbing painfully in time with his erratic heartbeat. The sight makes him want to cry. He can’t even stop his hands from hurting himself.
“Ten, look at me. This isn’t your fault.” Aizawa grunts. “You hear me? None of this is your fault. You can’t help the fact you were born with a chemical imbalance kid.”
His fingers knead circles into the knuckles of Iida’s, a soothing motion that blurs out the worst of the feelings that threaten to push out as tears.
“But-”
“But nothing. It's okay to not be okay. Just like it's okay to ask for help. You understand that?”
Hesitantly, he nods. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes unbidden, threatening to let them spill.
“I got you, kid. Your brother, Hizashi, hell- your friends- we’re not going to let this disorder get the best of you. You’re not alone.”
It's those words, and the tentative hug that Aizawa pulls him in, that finally- finally dislodges those traitorous tears, spilling down Tenya’s cheeks. He hugs back desperately, burying his face in his uncle’s shoulders. He’s not completely fine, not yet. Today was only thwarted, and the following days are sure to be worse. But for now he’s safe, and that’s enough.