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It started before he could remember.
Izuku was always jumpy; it was something noted by anyone who knew him from the moment he was aware enough to be considered anything other than just a baby, and no one ever thought much of it, other than to be quieter and more gentle with him so that he wouldn’t start wailing.
When he was old enough to play, but too young to truly understand anything, he would be the first to shy away from anything like a test of courage or sneaking into something or somewhere you weren’t supposed to go. He was naturally anxious, liking to stay where the shadows were soft and parents close at hand, more than maybe most would consider normal.
When the rest of Izuku’s peers got their quirks and he didn’t, his jumpiness only got worse. He was not only nervous about the world, about the things that could be hiding in the shadows or lurking under beds, but also about the words people would say, the things that were just as insubstantial as the shadows, but much more real. He could actually pinpoint where the crawling unease and fear came from when the thing causing it was someone he could touch and something he could explain.
By the time he was in middle school, the jumpiness was well on its way to becoming full on anxiety. He would wake up in the morning with the feeling that something was wrong for no reason at all, eyes darting to the corners of his room where the light wasn’t quite as bright. Sometimes, when he was walking home from school he would find his body urging him to walk faster, to just keep moving, especially when the sun was low and the ground was wet from rain.
He was also more alone than he had ever been. Between the quirklessness and changing school, he had lost any of the slightly more friendly people he’d had before, those who remembered the time before quirks and hadn’t quite forgotten it. He spent a lot of time in his room, researching and planning and dreaming, more settled than when he was out of the comfort of his room, but still sometimes shaken from his focus by a shiver down his spine or his gaze locking onto something his brain swore was movement.
With less than a year until high school entrance exams, and the weight of his uncertain future bearing down on him, Izuku thought he might be closer to snapping than he had realised.
He would startle when his hair shifted in a way that felt like fingers touching his neck, quicken his pace when a puddle rippled from an insect and jolt awake in the middle of the night, always locked onto the same point in his mirror before he was even aware enough to know he was awake. He was losing sleep and nerves, and he still hadn’t nailed down how he was going to become a hero.
He nearly reached his breaking point when he was attacked by a villain, saved by All Might, had his dreams shattered, and was attacked and saved again, but then he had the pieces of his dreams picked up again by the same man who had broken them in the first place, and for a while, things were…less. Certainly not as overwhelming now that he had a goal and a promise. He didn’t feel the need to speed past puddles and keep his eyes on dark alleys quite so strongly.
It took him longer to notice than it should have, considering how much more often he looked at himself in the mirror now.
It wasn’t until he had woken from his healing sleep after shattering his arms and legs for the first time, and the uncluttered cleanliness of the nurse’s office he was in left nothing to distract him from what he saw when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in a medical mirror left leaning against a wall on a medicine cart.
There was movement where there should be stillness. Shadows where there shouldn’t be. Eyes in empty air.
Someone else was in the mirror. Someone who was not him.