Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Izuku had a nightmare, he was four.

He doesn’t remember it, but his mother has told him stories about it. He’d woken up screaming after falling off the bed at three in the morning, sobbing about burning forests and lost children. 

After that, fire became a recurring theme in his dreams. Sometimes there’s ice too, though they don’t offset each other—there’s a new kind of burning, then, something hot and cold at the same time, leaving him sweating and covered in goosebumps when he wakes up.

There are other things, too, gunshots that echo in his ears even when he’s not thinking about them, or the heady smell of blood coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.

He doesn’t remember his dreams, usually. Not fully, at least. The details get blurry once he’s been awake long enough, which is a few minutes on a good day.

When he was nine, his therapist—the only one in the area who would take quirkless kids, though she moved away a year later—told him to start writing down what he can remember before it fades. She gave him a notebook with his name on the cover to put them in. It was grey with black stars, and the first thing he did when he got home was scribble “DON’T READ” on the front with a thick black Sharpie. 

She gave him a new one when that filled up after six months, along with the address of the store she’d found it in. Now, seven identical grey journals sit hidden behind the line of Hero Analysis for the Future notebooks on his shelf.

He doesn’t read any pages after they’re written; he usually doesn’t even think about what he’s writing as he does it either. Izuku’s nightmares are forgotten secrets that he doesn’t want to recall, so they stay sealed in Nightmare Records for the Past as bygone memories. 

It’s not all bad. Sometimes there are good dreams, where he wakes up with a happy feeling in his chest and warm fuzziness in his head. He sits in bed for hours after those, unwilling to move for fear of the warmth going away and the chill of his usual dreams seeping back in. Sometimes he even tries to go back to sleep.

Those don’t happen often, though. 

When he was younger, they tried finding a way to get the dreams to stop altogether. Medications didn’t work; meditation didn’t either. They tried going to the doctor for a prescription, but nobody cared enough to deal with a quirkless kid’s bad dreams. 

The worst part is that he can’t avoid it by not sleeping. He’s never been able to stay awake for longer than twelve hours at a time, so he’s stuck with a bedtime earlier than Kacchan’s. Some people call it a blessing to be able to go to sleep on time every night; Izuku calls it a curse. He’d much rather deal with eyebags than the royal road to the unconscious.

When he wakes up twelve hours after passing out, though, he’s still tired, so maybe eyebags aren’t only the burden of the underslept.

Every morning is a routine that recycles itself daily like clockwork—wake up three minutes before his alarm with tear tracks down his face, spend the next fifteen minutes staring at his ceiling until his second alarm goes off, and drag himself out of bed to get ready for school. After seven grueling hours at school, he comes home to a dark house, and the cycle begins anew when his head hits the pillow.

He falls asleep curled in a nest of pillows with tears in his eyes and crescent-shaped marks in the palms of his hands.

When Izuku sits up, he’s in the dark. The air is dry and warm, so he’s certain he isn’t in his room.

A moment later, the lights turn on on their own.

He sits there for a few more seconds, staring up at the tall ceiling of the warehouse. There’s nobody else there, he knows, because if there were, it wouldn’t be nearly as quiet. The only other person who comes here is Candy, and she would be working on her babies if she were there.

Izuku yawns and stretches, standing up on the workbench he found himself on. He feels tall and light, like he could float away on a breeze. His arms don’t ache from bruises and burns, and his legs are steady when he hops off the bench.

That’s how he knows he’s dreaming; in real life, he never feels this okay.

He spends a few minutes poking around the workshop, careful not to touch the babies that are prone to exploding. That’s most of them, though, so he doesn’t leave with anything new. 

Candy would have his head if he took any of her babies without her permission, anyway.

He checks his appearance in the reflection of a piece of scrap metal. His hair is blue and long enough to tie into a small ponytail, but he leaves it down anyway; his eyes are the same color. He likes how it looks, though he isn’t sure if it suits him very well.

It’s colder outside than it was in the technically-abandoned warehouse, but it doesn’t bother Izuku. He sighs, watching his breath condensate and turn foggy in the air, then smiles.

In his dreams, he isn’t Deku. He isn’t Midoriya Izuku, and he isn’t quirkless.

He’s whoever he wants to be. 

Izuku laughs when he steps onto a cloud of his own design. The sun has barely set, the last traces of pink and orange still tainting the skyline. He grins and settles into place, tucking his legs under him. A familiar weightlessness seeps into his bones as he takes off, like he just reached the precipice of a roller coaster. His hair whips around his face in the wind, and he squints, his eyes dry.

This quirk is new; the first time he used it was two weeks ago. He can’t remember where he saw it for his mind to latch onto, but that doesn’t matter much to him right now.

Usually his quirk is something basic, like telekinesis. Once, he had echolocation, which came with the unfortunate side effect of being blind.

Clouds are a welcome change, in his opinion.

Traveling by clouds is impressively fast, though it’s not without downsides. His eyes sting, and he idly thinks that some kind of eye protection would be nice. Like magic, aviator goggles appear on his head, and he grins and whoops into the air. 

God, he loves dreams.

He stalls when he reaches a hundred feet in the air, leaning over the edge of his cloud. He’s confident he won’t fall; if he does, he can always catch himself with another cloud. And if that doesn’t work… 

Well. There’s always another night.

He sits there for a few minutes, relishing in the cool night air. There’s too much pollution to see the stars, so instead he stares out over the Kyoto skyline. 

When he blinks, the buildings change, and he recognizes it as Musutafu. He’s still in the air, dozens of meters above ground, but now he can see familiar landmarks. Izuku doesn’t react; he’s used to the mechanics of his dreams, and he’s learned not to question them.

He takes off again. In the back of his mind, he wonders how fast he’s going: forty, fifty, sixty miles per hour? 

He whoops again, leaning forward. A tiny, recognizable figure on a roof catches his eye, and he slows down, veering toward it.

“Saint!” Izuku shouts, and Saint whips around before relaxing.

“Lucidity,” he greets. Izuku can tell that he’s smiling behind the face mask.

“Aw, how’d you know? I look different tonight!” he says, drifting to a stop.

Saint’s hood is down, his white hair sticking up in the breeze. He glances Izuku up and down and raises an eyebrow.

“…Never mind,” Izuku says, smoothing out the wrinkles in his pajamas—blue with white clouds, not the All Might pajamas he went to sleep wearing—and climbing off his cloud. His balance is off, and he almost falls before steadying himself. He waves away Saint when he reaches out to help. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Why,” Saint says, crossing his arms, “do you wear pajamas to commit crimes?”

“Stop calling it that,” Izuku whines. “It makes it sound bad. And vigilantism isn’t a crime when it's imaginary!”

“Oh, right, sorry. For a minute there I forgot you were loopy in the head.”

“Hey!” Izuku protests, but Saint keeps talking over him.

“But seriously,” he says, “is the pajamas, like, a quirk thing? Is that why they always match your quirk? Or are you just not only delusional, but also a weirdo?”

Izuku shrugs, sitting on the concrete roof. Saint sits beside him, pulling up his hood. 

“It’s quiet tonight,” Saint says after a few minutes of silence. “I’ve already ran my patrol route once, but there was barely anything.”

Izuku snorts. “Yeah, cause you patrol in the richest part of the city.”

And because he’s a figment of his imagination, which means that things only happen when Izuku is around, but Izuku doesn’t say that; he doesn’t want to ruin the vibe.

“Whatever,” Saint says, and Izuku can tell he’s hit a sore spot. He wrinkles his nose, glancing at Saint out of the corner of his eye, and silently marvels at the complexity of the people his mind creates.

“I’m gonna go on my usual route,” Izuku says. “You wanna come with?”

Saint sighs, long and low, before standing up and stretching. 

“I’m gonna head home, I think,” he says, peering over the edge of the roof. “My sister’s probably wondering where I am.”

“Oh.” It feels as natural as breathing to create a cloud that dances around Saint’s head, like he’s had this quirk his whole life. “You want a ride?”

Saint gives him an unimpressed look and swats the cloud away.

“Geez, sorry for asking,” he says, grinning at him. Saint rolls his eyes, but Izuku can tell he’s smiling too. “Be careful, okay?”

When he was younger, Izuku would often find himself in Saint’s house. His family never noticed him unless he wanted them too, which he never did. Izuku doesn’t remember much about them—it’s been years since he was there—but he knows that they’re not the best people for his friend to be around. Their names, along with Saint’s, are lost to his memories, but he remembers how his father yelled and how both his siblings cowered when he did. 

That was before Saint became a vigilante. Now they meet on rooftops instead of his room, which is probably for the best; Saint’s family scares him. 

Izuku watches him run across rooftops until he’s too far to see. 

After a few more minutes of staring contemplatively into the distance, Izuku stands and jumps off the edge of the roof, catching himself on a cloud. He breezes through the streets, letting himself fade from the perception of the people below. Saint was right, it seems; even in the worse parts of the city, there’s barely anything to do. It feels strangely peaceful. 

The heroes in the area think so too, apparently, because he finds Eraserhead sitting on the edge of a different roof holding a cup of coffee to his chest.

The strange thing about having real people appear in his dreams is that his brain likes to make up information about them. He doesn’t know much about the real Eraserhead aside from his quirk; he knows plenty about this one, though.

For example, he knows that he can’t stand black coffee and only drinks it if it’s ninety percent milk and sugar, and that he collects cats like they’re trading cards, and that he has an obnoxiously bright yellow sleeping bag. He also knows that he works at UA and is married to a man who he calls Zashi, but Izuku knows is Present Mic. (He’s still not really sure how his mind came up with that one, to be honest.)

Izuku lands lightly on the roof, swinging his legs over the edge of his cloud. Eraserhead doesn’t seem to notice him, and he remembers that he basically doesn’t exist right now.

Lucid dreaming is weird.

“Hi, Eraserhead!” he says brightly, coming back into perception. Eraserhead jumps up, and Izuku realizes that he should probably stop sneaking up on people.

Eraserhead’s eyes go wide when he sees him, and then he falls off the roof.

Chapter Text

“Eraserhead!” Izuku cries, lunging forward. He scrambles to the edge as Eraserhead’s capture weapon goes flying up, flailing for something to grab onto. The walls of the buildings around them are smooth, though, and Izuku can tell that something is wrong with Eraserhead, so his heart is in his throat as he sends a cloud speeding down to catch him.

Eraserhead seems to go still when the cloud catches him, the strands of his capture weapon falling back down around him loosely. Izuku’s knuckles are white around the edge of the roof as he stares at the hero.

He looks terrified.

“Eraserhead, are you okay?” Izuku shouts, dragging himself back away from the edge as the cloud clears the top of the building.

Eraserhead stares at him with a numb, panicked look in his eyes, like he’s seeing something that isn’t there. He lays limp in the cloud, though his fingers are moving like he’s trying to grasp it; Izuku isn’t sure if he’s even aware that he’s doing it.

Izuku says his name again, tentatively this time, and Eraserhead snaps to attention. His eyes are looking straight through him, and Izuku briefly wonders if he’s gone imperceptible again, but then his gaze focuses, and bile rises in Izuku’s throat. There’s a haunted look in his expression, somewhere between horrified and hopeful and a dozen other emotions that Izuku can’t even name.

Then his mouth is moving, but Izuku can’t tell what he’s saying. He just sits there, staring at Izuku with that awful look on his face.

“Eraserhead, please,” Izuku says, his voice shaking. He can feel the fear in Eraserhead’s eyes leak into his own chest, a pervasive terror that makes his arms tremble and his legs feel weak. The cloud drifts closer as Izuku steps forward. “Why— Why are you—”

He shrieks when Eraserhead lunges toward him, something desperate and feral in the way he reaches out. 

“Who the hell are you?” Eraserhead hisses. There’s a violent kind of anguish in his voice that sends alarmed shivers down Izuku’s spine. Izuku tries to tear himself out of his grasp, but he’s weak against a pro hero. One hand grips the back of his neck, bracing him in place against Eraserhead’s shoulder, and he realizes that Eraserhead isn’t trying to fight or capture him—he’s holding him. 

“Why are you here?” Eraserhead says, his other hand digging into Izuku’s back between his shoulder blades like he’s afraid Izuku might slip away if he isn’t there to anchor him. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

He’s not talking to him, Izuku thinks, letting himself relax against the hero. If he looks up at the hero’s face, he knows he’ll see eyes that see right through his, but that’s alright. 

In the back of his mind, he wonders what kind of trauma his brain has given dream-Eraserhead. It’s sick, sometimes, the kind of things his subconscious invents. He listens to Eraserhead’s watery sobs over his head, keeping his eyes closed and pressed to the shoulder of his jumpsuit because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“You’re dead,” Eraserhead whispers, and Izuku doesn’t think that he’s supposed to hear that. He wiggles his arms, but Eraserhead’s grip just tightens. “You’re not supposed to be here, Oboro. Why won’t you leave me alone?”

Oboro. Who is Oboro?

The fingers in his back dig in harder, and Izuku grits his teeth to keep from gasping. He goes slack against Eraserhead’s chest, trying to figure out how to get out of his grasp.

Shit. He’s an idiot.

“Eraserhead!” he shouts, shaking his arms out when he teleports away from the hero.

Dream physics: 1; Eraserhead: 0.

Eraserhead looks panicked when he realizes that Izuku isn’t in his arms anymore.

“I’m not who you think I am,” Izuku says, darting away when Eraserhead lunges for him again. He’s not even using his capture weapon. 

“What are you doing here, Oboro?” Eraserhead shouts, and Izuku realizes that there are tears streaming down his face.

“What the fuck is happening right now,” Izuku whispers under his breath, lamenting how weird his dreams are. He makes a shroud of clouds to hold the hero in place, raising his eyebrows when Eraserhead doesn’t even try to use his quirk. “Eraserhead, I’m not Oboro. I don’t even know who that is. Please, Eraserhead, you’re scaring me.”

He doesn’t mean to say the last part, but it spills out all the same. Izuku takes a step back when Eraserhead doesn’t do anything; clarity has returned to his eyes, but he isn’t struggling against the clouds either.

“Eraserhead?” Izuku asks tentatively. His heel hits the edge of the roof, so he stops there, clouds ready to catch him if he falls.

“Lucidity,” Eraserhead says, and his eyes seem to finally see Izuku. “You— What the hell, Lucidity?” 

Izuku, like a fool, lets the temporary cloud prison drop once he’s sure that Eraserhead doesn’t still think that he’s whoever Oboro is. In an instant, the hero is in front of him, gripping the front of his cloud-themed pajamas. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Izuku blinks and shrinks back, gently trying to loosen the fingers twisted in his shirt. “Did it ever occur to you that this isn’t just a game? This isn’t funny anymore, Lucidity. You need to stop.”

“I-I don’t—” Izuku swallows, trying to keep his voice from shaking even worse. “What? Who is Oboro? What— What did I do?”

Eraserhead’s glare hardens, and Izuku can barely tell that he’d been crying just a couple minutes ago. “This has gone too far, Lucidity.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Izuku says, his voice still shaking, and he moves the aviator goggles up on his forehead to rub at his eyes. They sting like he’s gotten something in them.

For a few moments, they just stand there, Izuku suspended halfway in the air with a wall of clouds behind him and Eraserhead’s hand balled in his pajama top. Finally, Eraserhead tugs him away from the edge, letting go of Izuku’s shirt and shoving him away. 

“Who is Oboro?” Izuku asks when Eraserhead doesn’t say anything, staring at the hero’s back. There’s no answer.

“I’m sorry,” he tries weakly, his shoulders hunching forward to make him smaller. “I didn’t know. I mean, I-I still don’t really know, but— Yeah.”

His voice stutters and wobbles like it does when he’s awake. He winces, biting his tongue to stop himself from saying more. If he doesn’t stop now, he’ll never shut up.

“Shirakumo Oboro,” Eraserhead says finally, “was going to be the greatest hero the world had ever seen.”

“Oh,” Izuku says, processing the words. His throat feels tight. “Oh.”

“Go home, Lucidity,” Eraserhead says, still not looking at him. He’s holding his capture weapon loosely in his hands instead of around his neck. “I’m not dealing with this tonight.”

He can’t deal with this tonight, Izuku thinks he means. Izuku doesn’t say anything else, and neither does Eraserhead. 

When he wakes up three minutes before four in the morning, his cheeks are wet and his blankets are tangled around him like he’s been tossing and turning all night. He blindly grasps for the journal hidden in the stack on his nightstand— Nightmare Records for the Past No. 7 —and scribbles four words on the most recent page without turning on his lights.

Who is Shirakumo Oboro???

Chapter Text

“Sleep well?”

“Mm,” Izuku mumbles, rubbing his eyes. His mother looks at him sympathetically, putting a warm hand on his shoulder and rubbing her thumb across the back of his neck. He tenses for a second before relaxing and tilting his head forward.

“Another nightmare?” she asks, and he nods with his eyes closed. “I’m sorry, baby. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not much to talk about,” he says, blindly reaching into the cabinet for a bowl. He opens his eyes when his mother’s hand falls away from his shoulder; she’s getting the milk from the fridge. Izuku yawns as he picks out a box of cereal and opens it.

“Careful,” she says with a smile as he spills half of what should be in his bowl onto the counter. “You want coffee?”

He wrinkles his nose at the cup she nudges toward him. Yuck.

“So,” she says when they both sit at the kitchen table, “still can’t remember anything?”

Izuku shakes his head, pushing his cereal around with his spoon. “Nah. Just woke up crying, and… yeah.”

“Was it crying crying, or could it’ve just been natural tears?” she asks. “You know, from sleeping, or something.”

He peers over the top of her phone to see what she’s doing; she’s playing the color-by-number game she does every morning when the new daily picture loads. 

“No, it was definitely, uh, crying crying.” He takes a bite of cereal, pulling at the collar of his All Might pajamas. “I was scared, I think. Like, panicking. I woke up super early and then couldn’t get back to sleep ‘cause every time I tried, I would just start crying again.”

“Oh, baby,” his mother says sadly, reaching across the table to run her thumb over the ridge of his knuckles. He pulls his hand back and shrugs.

“I mean, it’s not a big deal or anything,” Izuku says, scratching his neck. “I’m used to it.”

“You shouldn’t be,” she says with a soft frown. After another few seconds of uncomfortable silence, she clears her throat. “Well, I have to get ready for work, and you should be getting ready for school. Make sure to rinse out your bowl before putting it in the sink, alright?”

“M’kay, Mom,” he says as she walks away, slurping down the last of his milk. 

Thirty minutes later, she shouts from the front door, “I’m heading out!” He calls back a quick goodbye from the bathroom just before the door shuts.

Objectively, Izuku looks awful, he thinks as he stares at his reflection. His eyes look tired and dull, and the bags under them look heavier than his backpack… which has three textbooks and a pile of notebooks in it. He frowns and pokes his cheek, watching the way the freckles shift under his finger before turning away from the mirror and leaving to find his uniform jacket.

Izuku finds himself wishing he’d also brought a coat as he walks to Aldera Junior High, but he’s already halfway there by the time he starts shivering, so he just copes by hugging his arms around himself the rest of the way. It’s supposed to start warming up in the next few weeks, but evidently that hasn’t happened yet. His mother would be rioting if she knew he was going in this weather without a coat. 

It’s only a little warmer when he walks through the main entrance. Izuku breathes on his hands to warm them up, weaving through crowds of students who don’t give him a second glance. Most of them are peeling off towards the stairs, but Izuku is on the bottom floor with the rest of the first years. 

This is Izuku’s favorite part of coming to school; the impersonality of crowded hallways in the morning, where nobody cares enough to pick on the quirkless kid, is like a shining beam of light cutting through a cover of clouds. 

Unfortunately, that utopia ends the second he steps foot in his classroom—not that the foot ever lands. Peals of laughter ring around the classroom as Izuku struggles to right himself. The leg that had tripped him pulls back like it’s going to kick Izuku, and he scrambles away quickly, his backpack straps clenched in his fists.

“Dude, he’s so flinchy,” someone says, and the crowd disperses back to their desks as the bell rings. Izuku scrambles into his seat, ducking his head to avoid the unamused look his teacher gave him.

This is how most of his days go: walk in, get messed with, hide, go home. He’s used to it now.

During class, he glances over at Kacchan. His childhood best friend is staring at the board, though he doesn’t look happy about it. Izuku almost misses the days when Kacchan would look back at him and glare. 

Now all he does is ignore Izuku. 

Lunch is the same as it is every day. He didn’t bother bringing anything to eat because he knows that his classmates would just steal it anyway. Izuku doodles in his school notebook while he waits for the day to be over. A man in a black jumpsuit and a grey scarf stares back at him from the page.

Izuku isn’t sure why, but he’s been thinking about the pro hero Eraserhead a lot lately. He doesn’t know much about him; in fact, he barely knows his quirk. The one thing he knows for certain is that he’s an underground hero that only comes out at night, which is why Izuku has never seen him despite living in the same area. He found that one out from the internet.

He keeps looking at that drawing for the rest of the day even though the longer he stares at it, the more his tummy starts to hurt and his chest starts to ache. The milk must’ve been bad that morning.

When the final bell rings, Izuku doesn’t waste time. He shoves all his books into his bag and slips out the door before anybody else; he knows from experience that the longer he stays, the more he gets picked on. 

Footsteps follow him on his walk home. 

He knows exactly whose they are without looking back. Kacchan stops walking a block before Izuku does, leaving Izuku in silence with nothing but his own slow heartbeat to accompany him to his apartment complex. 

He pauses to look at the clouds before heading inside.

Chapter Text

“I need help,” Izuku says, crawling through the window they woke up outside of, at the same time that Eros says, “I swear I’m not gonna get a face tattoo.”

As if he had never said anything at all, Eros continues, “What do you need help with?”

Izuku blinks. “Roll that one back for me real quick.”

“What do you mean?”

“Face tattoo. Why?” Izuku asks, sitting on Eros’s bed. They fold their new gangly legs beneath them, hugging a pillow to their chest. Their veins are bright red in this body, plainly visible through their skin. When they look at Eros, the air around him has a subtle pinkish tint, though sometimes it wavers towards yellow.

Does Izuku have an emotion quirk in this dream?

“Who said anything about a face tattoo?” Eros says innocently, except Izuku knows that nothing Eros does is innocent.

“You did!”

Eros laughs at them, turning in his rolling chair. Izuku peeks at the screen behind him; he’s streaming. They give a little wave to the imaginary fans their brain made up, though they’re too far away to see what the chat says in response. There were probably less than twenty people watching anyway.

“I’m not gonna get a face tatt, don’t worry!” Eros reassures them. They don’t buy it.

“You know what you always say?” Izuku gestures wildly. “You always say, ‘Don’t worry! I’m not gonna do it!’ when I’m not worried and then I worry and then you do it.”

Eros rolls his eyes and waves a dismissive hand in their direction. “I don’t even want a face tattoo. Trust me.”

“You know what else you always say? ‘I’m not gonna do it, trust me!’ And guess what happens! You do it!” Izuku seethes, their eye twitching. 

“Relax,” Eros says, waving them away again. He spins back toward the computer. “Chat says I should do it.”

“No!” Izuku cries, slapping their hand to their face in exasperation. 

“What, are you worried that my beautiful face will be obscured?” Eros teases. 

Izuku goes redder than their veins. 

“I need your computer,” they say, glaring at him. 

“Sorry, I’m streaming,” he says, but he doesn’t look very sorry. 

“They won’t mind,” Izuku argues, hopping up from the bed and leaning over Eros’s shoulder. “See? They’re… oh.”

The chat is being spammed with heart emojis.

Without hesitation, Izuku reaches over and clicks the “end stream” button, ignoring Eros’s protests. They open a new tab and type in a name.

“Who’s Shirakumo Oboro?” Eros says out loud, watching Izuku type. 

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

Eros watches in silence as Izuku scrolls through the results. They click on the first article, scanning the headline.

Public funeral held for Shirakumo Oboro, second year hero student at UA High School, though body has not yet been found.

Izuku’s body goes halfway limp. Eros barely catches them in time.

“Oh,” he whispers softly, holding Izuku to his chest. In this dream body, Izuku is taller than Eros, but still they curl up in his lap, staring at the computer screen blankly. “Did you know him?”

Izuku shakes their head, guilt bubbling up in their chest.

In the background of the picture at the top of the article, Izuku can see what looks to be a young Eraserhead alongside a young Present Mic. They’re dressed in UA uniforms.

Now they remember where they saw him: a news reel of dead or maimed heroes.

And if Eraserhead was friends with him…

Izuku turns their face so its buried in Eros’s shoulder to muffle a weak sob. They’re not crying, not yet, but the sound escapes all the same.

Even though rationally they know that it had been a dream, shame and guilt wash over Izuku as they imagine how Eraserhead must have felt. Nobody deserves to see someone dress up as their dead friend, not even fake dream people.

“Luce?” Eros asks gently, pulling Izuku’s body back just enough to look them in the eyes. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“I think I’m a bad person,” Izuku confesses. Eros’s grip on them tightens, and the look in his eyes prompts them to explain. “You know how I always look different? Well, I… I accidentally looked like someone real and it really upset my friend.”

That was an underexaggeration.

“Shirakumo?” Eros guesses. Izuku nods. “Well, I don’t know exactly what happened, but I can tell you this. You said it yourself: it was an accident, yeah?”

Reluctantly, Izuku agrees.

“So you’re not a bad person. You’ve told me before you literally can’t control it. In what world does that make you bad?”

“I guess you’re right,” they mumble, frowning. 

With his free hand, Eros ruffles Izuku’s hair. It falls in Izuku’s eyes, and they realize that in this dream body, its black. “You want to watch a movie?”

“Nooo,” they whine, batting Eros’s hand away. 

When Izuku wakes up thirty minutes past his second alarm, he has a content smile on his face for the first time in a while.

Chapter Text

“Eraserhead,” Izuku says, climbing up onto the rooftop that the hero is perched on. “I need to talk to you.”

“Lucidity,” the hero says, not looking back. “Please leave.”

His voice is flat, but Izuku knows there’s a whole wave of emotion behind it, especially if he’s already ordering Izuku gone this early. 

“I’m sorry,” she says earnestly, sitting beside Eraserhead. He doesn’t look at her. “I didn’t know. Is there any way I can make it up to you?”

“I don’t know how you found out about Shirakumo Oboro in the first place, but I don’t have to put up with this. Leave, or I will make you.”

Izuku doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she continues on, unaffected. “You were friends.”

“Lucidity. Stop.”

“I just want you to know how sorry I am for hurting you. I didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t change the fact that I did,” she says, turning her head to stare at the hero with big eyes. She’s not sure what color they are; all she knows about this dream body is that her pajama pants have little computer symbols, so she probably has a technology quirk of some kind. She doesn’t feel like testing it right now, though, which is rare for her.

Helping Eraserhead comes first.

“How do I make this better?” she asks again, and finally, Eraserhead glances over at her. 

He sighs and stands. “Follow me.”

Izuku climbs back down the building into a seventh story window after Eraserhead and looks around. They’re in a bedroom, though she doesn’t get much time to observe anything important before Eraserhead leads her through a couple of doors into what seems to be the living room.

“Sit,” the hero says, gesturing to a couch. Izuku plops down, folding her legs under her. “Water?”

“No thanks,” Izuku says. 

After filling an opaque glass with what Izuku thinks is probably coffee, Eraserhead sits across from her in an armchair. He slouches over his drink, taking big gulps until it’s empty before looking back up at Izuku.

“I met Oboro during my first year at UA,” Eraserhead says, looking at the wall behind Izuku. “He was loud and obnoxious and I hated him.”

“Um,” Izuku says, about to question literally everything he just said, but the hero holds up a hand.

“He was loud and obnoxious and I hated him, but he and Present Mic wouldn’t leave me alone. When I transferred into the hero course the next year, they quickly became my best friends, despite my best efforts against it.”

“Wait, you can transfer into the hero course in your second year?” Izuku asks, bewildered by what her own mind has come up with, then adds, “You can call Present Mic by his name, by the way. I know he’s your husband.”

Eraserhead levels an even stare at Izuku. “No, he isn’t.”

“Oh, we’re playing this game again?” Izuku says, exasperated. “For the last time, I heard you on—”

“Honey! I’m home!” someone says from the front entrance dramatically, and she whips around. Eraserhead groans and puts his head in his hands.

“Present Mic!” Izuku shouts excitedly. She recognizes the hero easily even though his hair is in a bun and he has normal civilian clothes on.

“Random child in my apartment!” Present Mic shouts back just as excitedly. Then he frowns. “Wait. Random child in my apartment?”

“This is Lucidity,” Eraserhead says with his head still in his hands. “Lucidity, meet my husband, Present Mic.”

“Yamada Hizashi,” Mic says, holding out a hand. Izuku jumps up to take it. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Yamada!” she says, grinning ear to ear.

“No need for formalities! Just Hizashi is fine,” he responds, waving a hand through the air. “Any child of Shouta’s is a child of mine.”

“That is not my child,” Eraserhead says crossly. Izuku makes big puppy dog eyes at him.

“Are you disowning me, Dad?” she says, pouting. 

Eraserhead looks her dead in the eyes. “Yes.”

“Welcome to the family, Aizawa-Yamada Lucidity,” Hizashi says, smiling broadly. He wraps an arm around Izuku’s shoulders so they’re standing side by side facing Eraserhead.

“At least one of my fathers loves me,” she says solemnly. Hizashi ruffles her hair.

“Family game night!” Hizashi announces, and Eraserhead looks mildly terrified.

“I have patrol,” he tries, but before Izuku can blink, Hizashi already has a stack of games in his arms.

“Family game night,” Hizashi repeats, and this time it sounds threatening.

Oh boy. Her dreams get real weird sometimes.