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Deku rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Ugh, what time was it? He somehow felt like he'd been out for hours, but didn't get any rest. Not like he didn't wake up feeling like that every day. He checked the clock. 1:56. Considering he'd been up til' 3 the night before, he actually slept for a while. What a shame he was still feeling exhausted, he thought as he stumbled into the bathroom and splashed water on his face to wake himself up. When he was just about to leave, his reflection caught his eye. He barely recognized the person he'd become. Green hair hanging limp and greasy, bags under his eyes, and his ribs showing under his shirt. "Who are you anymore?" He asked it. It just stared at him with contempt.
Okay, time to focus, Deku told himself as he set his math homework on his desk. He swore he could do this honors class, so he had to do well. Pencil, paper, and consistent numbers and formulas. He had his calculator, how hard could it be? Yet, try after fail and fail after try, he just couldn't get the pieces to click like they used to. He hadn't even finished the first problem yet. Pathetic, stupid, liar, pretending to know anything. But how long until the facade falls? He asked himself. He wadded up the packet of paper and thew it in the trash so hard it knocked over the bin. He slumped in his chair and half groaned, half exhausted sighed. He'd have to ask his teacher for a new packet for that assignment, and hopefully another extension. He didn't know how much longer he could just tell her he'd get it done soon though.
Week after week, day after day, they mushed together in the blender of life. It felt like the world went grey and zapped out all his energy. It felt like time was crawling by and speeding up into a mushed mess at the same time, somehow. How, how, how did he get like this? Didn't he used to love life?
When he looks at his homework, it's incoherent lines, equations, and words. When he looks at himself, it's incoherent... something. Nothing was looking up. If this rough patch lasted much longer, he didn't think he would. He just needed more time to- to something. Have some realization that puts him back together. Because if he didn't get the chance to change, he was so fucked. So so so fucked. But he was just an idea without substance when it came down to it.
It's a new day, it is a new day, He told himself. Today is the day he would pick himself up and dust off the boredom of everyday routine. Just as soon as he finished that stack of missing work on his desk he'd been repeatedly pushing off. He knew if he delayed anymore, he'd start getting Fs. Him, the A student. He couldn't-wouldn't-shouldn't ease up. He had no right to be so lazy. If he were to stop now, he'd fail, and he couldn't have that. There was no more room for error, so he picked up his pencil and got to work.
After finishing a particularly long essay, he reread it for errors. And that is why Rainsford is a dog in a bed. He shook his head. What the fuck did he just write? He was pretty sure he meant to say that because Rainsford won that game with the dogs he slept in the bed. But who knows what he was thinking anymore? He didn't trust his own head, and that was for certain. The whole thing was similarly confusing. No good, no good at all. He tore up the essay into little pieces and stomped on them, cursing himself out. He couldn't even bother to clean up the paper mess. Instead, he just went to go lay in bed, wondering what happened to that bright genius child.
That kid was so perfect. He had it all. He could think, operate, understand things. His worlds was so perfect, full of color. But now... But now it was all grey. What would he have to do to reclaim that? Reinvent his world so color and love could take back the emptiness left and filled by... whatever this was? Whatever he tried, it couldn't match up to what he used to be. To what he could be if he just stopped fucking around and applied himself. He could do it once, but lately any attempt at that had failed. He could never hit that ceiling again.
He decided creativity would be a good way to go. Write a story, right? Just make it poetic. He put pencil down to paper and wrote a heartbreaking story about a ghost drained until her spirit couldn't even work right anymore. He put it online. His English teacher somehow found it told him it was awesome and to write more. He'd done it, he'd recaptured that spark! Except nope, because now he couldn't think of anything new. He did one good thing, one perfect thing, and he wasn't even trying. That was more soul-crushing than anything. He had it for just a moment, that perfection that used to come so naturally, and now it left him, dead gone and buried. How could he summon it again? He just had to accept he was useless at this point, he told himself as he threw things and then collapsed into bed with the effort.
Nothing was working anymore, and that wasn't going to be fixed. If he was supposed to grow into something good, it surely should have happened by now. But he was evolving in reverse. If he didn't have that time he needed, he was terrified of what the outcome could be. His first real feeling that wasn't exhaustion, and it made him more exhausted. Great. He had so many hollow dreams. But no foundation for anything.
He remembered a happier time, where he could do things. A realization dawned on him. It wasn't his mind he'd lost. It was that happiness. He was too tired, too exhausted. He was like an equation without enough numbers to solve, peices taken and worn overtime. He wasn't meant to just be a empty flesh sack to be filled by success that could never quite be achieved. He wasn't meant to know he'd do horribly before he could begin. He was meant to have optimism and happiness, and that was taken from him through time and burn out.
He fell to the floor in a sobbing mess. He didn't know how much more he could do, could take. If he had to try to outline yet another writing peice, he's surely rip it to shreds. If he had to make one more big choice he wasn't ready for, he'd surely ruin himself. If he hit one more block, obstacle, had to wipe away one more tear-
He tried to piece together that writing he had ripped, but the prices were too small. It didn't work, no matter what way he put it. He cleaned his room, hoping seeing it like it had always been would heal him. But it wasn't, so he tore down the ribbons on the wall and emptied his bookshelf, old clothes into a donate pile, making space for the new him. Or what he might be if he had the time to make a new him. If he didn't have that, he was doomed from the start. Just an accident that couldn't amount to much. Dreams he couldn't fill, and hollow feelings.