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He could never seem to get it.
Social norms, sure, he didn’t get those. Why people glorified heroes so much, he didn’t get that at all. How people were content to be mindless little sheep and go about their everyday under this oppressive system that stifles and shuts out the undesirables, yeah he definitely didn’t get that at all.
That wasn’t what he was talking about though- wasn’t what was haunting his thoughts and screaming shouting and clawing at him to understand, ragged crooked nails bitten to an edge scratching all over his skin demanding for him to remember. What was there to remember though, if he never forgot anything?
If he steps close to the edge of a rooftop, the buzzing in his mind growing as loud as static that he was able to finally tune it out, he could think for a second. Most people would shy away from it, scared of the thought of slipping off and get hurt. Some would step even closer, smiling as they accepted that everything would come to an end. Him though, he would fly.
He stared back at his reflection in the mirror, static taking over all sensation in his body, in his mind, in his being. He couldn’t hear anything: not the shouting of the other members of the League being rowdy as always in the bar’s lounge area, not the faucet hissing and spitting out water, not the voice in his head that forced him to forget.
His skin was pale- which sure he didn’t really go outside, why would he when Kurogiri could teleport them directly wherever they wanted to go or to get whatever supplies they needed or when he could stay inside and play video games to ease the ceaseless urge to enact unfathomable violence to a degree that horrified, scared him sometimes strategize for their next mission. But even then he had the thought that if he were to press a flashlight to his skin, the light would be able to travel through him. The idea was almost comical in how stupid it was, but it just made him sneer in self-hatred.
The stormy expression made him look towards his eyes, sullen and sunken into the sockets as his eyebags looked swolen over them. He blinked slowly, cringing at the way his eyelids seemed to say stuck together for a moment as he separated them by opening his eyes. His pupils looked dilated, almost blown out. Red lines branched closer towards his irises, thorny rose vines growing closer to entrap him into an eternal bouquet.
His mouth curled into a snarl only showed how chapped and bloody his lips were, him having taken to chewing it raw out of irritation with his party members. They were valuable in their roles and what they could do for him, but their antics made him want to reach out and press his palm flat against their mouths to get them to shut up.
He raises his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose with his middle finger and thumb. Calm down. He has more important things to be doing than to be standing in front of a cracked bathroom mitror and looking at his reflection like he was a ghost grappling with their fleeting existence. If he were lucky, he would be a ghost, maybe then he’d finally be able to fly like he was always meant to-
“Hey dustfuck, stop jerking off your tiny dick and get out the bathroom already!” A gruff, gravely voice shouted out as a fist banged repeatedly against the door.
He growled low in his chest, the static in his mind receding back to that constant buzz- the swirling thoughts he had disappearing without a single trace and his contemplative mood being blanketed with the usual rage that wracked his body in flowing waves of fury and need to destroy. He threw a hand out to let it get hit by the spray of water from the sink’s faucet, glaring down at the dried flakes of skin and blood dying the water pink which only worked to make him bubble even more with anger. Turning the knob just enough to choke out the flow, his hand darted back to where it belonged- his ragged crooken nails bitten to an edge scratching into his nape and digging into the raw, open wound that was never given a reprieve to heal.
He would never be able to get it, the thing deep inside him screaming to be acknowledged and seen, no matter how much he tried to sink his fingers deep enough to yank his spine out and feel the air fill him enough so that he could finally feel light enough to float.