Chapter Text
The seven-year-old child raced through the streets. He daren’t scream. Nobody in the surrounding area would help and it would just draw unwanted attention. Not that that wouldn’t happen anyway. This child was a trouble magnet, as the gods had decided they hated this one. Quirkless, abused, bullied, depressed and/or suicidal, diagnosed with anxiety, and all at seven. Gods, these alleys were a maze. The kid ran straight into a wall, reaching a dead end. Usually he could navigate pretty well, but he must’ve gotten turned around.
Well, that sucked.
The angry man, who’s enemies call All For One, but for the purpose of this story we will call by his real name, the name his wife and close friends call him by, which is Hisashi, though you may call him Midoriya if you wish, closed in on the child, who was called by most Deku, but we shall call him Izuku in this story, though you also may call him Midoriya if you wish, I would just advise against it.
The child, Izuku, cowered away from the man, Hisashi, who had decided that now was a good time to activate his quirk and add to the many scars and burns Izuku had. He closed in on Izuku and brought his hand out from behind his back, where it had previously been, to reveal a bottle of beer - Budweiser, to be specific. Said bottle then got downed and smashed over poor Izuku’s head, getting glass all over his green curls. Now the man was angry and slightly tipsy, leaning more towards being drunk as, despite the fact that the man consumed a minimum of three bottles of alcohol a day, he was a lightweight.
This is really not good news for Izuku.
Hisashi closed in on Izuku, who was now sobbing heavily. Using the broken beer bottle, he stabbed the boy. His own child! This motherfucker. Blood coated the jagged ends of the Budweiser bottle as new wounds opened up, coating the boy in blood and soaking his ripped t-shirt, what with him being stabbed in the back. Discarding the bottle, Hisashi pinned Izuku to the wall by holding his tiny wrists together above his head with his left hand. With his right, he pulled back his fist and when he released the kid's head snapped back the short distance to the wall and thick red blood ran down his face, pumping from his now broken nose. Izuku screamed, the sound guttural and raw, ripping itself from his throat and leaving it sore. Next was a blow to the stomach. And another. And another. This repeated itself five more times until Izuku was trying not to projectile vomit everywhere. Hisashi ignored this and focused on raking his nails down Izuku’s back and legs - in fact, he had grown his nails out just for abusing his quirkless “disappointment of a son”. And barely resisted the urge to pull out the knife. Instead he shoved his foot in the kid’s mouth and down his throat, making Izuku gag. Eventually he left, leaving Izuku to bleed on the alley floor, most probably to death. Izuku got on his hands and knees and heaved, his body desperately ridding itself of his barely-a-meal dinner of some undercooked chicken and some limp beans. He heard men laughing, sounding like they were drunk, and eventually they discovered Izuku’s half dead body on the floor and decided to mess around with it - specifically, his ass and his mouth but also his dick a little bit. Some time after they left, he wasn’t sure when, Izuku passed out, fully believing he would never wake up again.
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Anyway, a few hours later, or so we believe but we really have no idea when this happened.
Izuku woke up, groaning. He felt like he had been sleeping on the cold hard floor for years after falling down seven flights of stairs. Slowly, he stretched his aching bones and sat up. He looked down at himself and realised he was still lying down. Strange, he could see himself as if he were, indeed, sitting up. He tried standing, despite his joints protesting and pleading with him to lay back down and sleep.
He looked down and realised he was both standing and lying down. But how? Then he noticed the state lying down him was in. Broken, beaten and bloody. I won’t go into much detail but a few things he noticed were a black eye, a split lip, a broken nose, dried blood everywhere, and most definitely a fractured, or maybe even broken, forearm. Also his clothes were in tatters. When he looked at standing up him, he looked the same, just slightly transparent, so translucent, and apparently wispy in parts?
Odd.
Also he could apparently fly?
Or at least it seemed so - he wasn’t entirely touching the ground.
He tried putting his feet flat on the ground, and it worked, but it was easier to just float.
So he just floated along, looking for something to do. Where had his shoes gone? Oh yeah, he had run out of the house without them on, trying to escape his father.
Just then somebody walked through him, and all he thought was, “Oh shit, am I a ghost?”
After a few days he could confirm he was, indeed, a ghost. Another friendly ghost had helped him, a kind lady who had died due to cancer and seemed to take pity on his state. Luckily his shorts were mainly intact, so he at least had some basic decency.
Now to test the boundaries of this ghost thing. The lady had said that it tended to vary from each ghost, but most could interact a little with the world around them and make themselves visible but not solid.
After months of testing, Izuku was apparently kinda more powerful? He could turn solid and levitate whole books to read them as being solid too long made him anxious he would be seen and it would start to bring on a panic attack. So it was more like a quirk in certain respects but another ghost he had seen could turn solid and the lady could levitate things, however both to some extent. The other ghost had to be visible and solid and even then it hurt if they were solid too long. They had died in a fire.
So Izuku decided to visit his old home and school (as a ghost) to see if anything had changed. Kacchan seemed quieter but otherwise everybody had forgotten him. Good! Now he didn’t have to worry about people recognising him when he was visible if they happened to be in the area!
He didn’t know that Bakugou Katsuki, a.k.a. ‘Kacchan’, hadn’t forgotten at all. And his parents didn’t think he was crazy or talking about an imaginary friend when he mentioned Izuku. They remembered something about green, but they just assumed that it was because ‘Izuku’ and ‘Inko’ were so similar and Inko had green eyes and hair. But they still knew Izuku was a real person. If only Katsuki could find a photo of the green eyed, green haired freckly nerd.
If only.
Maybe then he wouldn’t be forgotten. If Katsuki could just find a photo or remember his family name… it was something that was funny because a certain part of it meant something that was a big thing about Deku.
If only!
But as Izuku wandered the streets, he noticed a few certain heroes he hadn’t seen around as much before.
Particularly, one sleep-deprived cat lover and one loud blonde with wild hair, who seemed to have *ahem* matching rings? *ahem* *ahem*
Perhaps they were friends? Yeah definitely just friends.
And they seemed to notice a presence too.
(They just won’t realise the full extent of the situation they’ll find themselves in until a certain infamous Class 1-A comes around and fucks up aforementioned sleep-deprieved cat lovers life and mental health, and same sleep-deprieved cat lover picks up another sleep-deprieved cat lover who needs an actual family and not a muzzle.)
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It was Kacchan’s eleventh birthday today. Izuku had managed to get a calendar and convert an old run-down building into a home so he knew. He also had a clock and for when that broke, a sundial. Izuku wanted to get Kacchan something but he had to be careful with how he delivered it and probably use a way-too-big-for-him hoodie to hide his current appearance and ding-dong ditch the gift at the doorstep, whilst watching to make sure nobody else took it. A hoodie would be a good idea anyway for those cold nights.
So Izuku went out to the mall and stole (yes stole but people tended to let him off when they saw the state of him) some wrapping paper and a gift bag, along with some craft scissors and tape. He then went into another store and got a bunch of vouchers that he spent the last of his money on (he could go without food for a few weeks, he’d be fine, it’s not like he could die of starvation, he would just get cramps when in solid form) and stole the ones he couldn’t afford.
He also stole a game of Jenga for Kacchan as he had always hated that game and Izuku thought it would be funny.
After Izuku had finished wrapping them up, he snuggled up in his big black hoodie with the name of some band (My Chemical Romance?), a little marching band man, some random words at the bottom (The Black Parade?) and what looked like snow on it, and left the gift on Kacchan’s front door step after making sure he definitely still lived there.
But after he made sure he got the gift he went home and started overthinking. What if Kacchan didn’t like it? What if he threw it away because he didn’t know who it was from? Izuku’s leg started to bounce as he sat on the most comfortable counter that he used as a bed. Slowly, he started hyperventilating until it turned into a full-blown panic attack with Izuku flickering and having no way to ground himself.
(A/N: Also random side note, in this AU ghosts can control when you can and can’t hear them but in situations like this it’s between solid and full on ghost.)
He tried heading outside when he had calmed down a little but he was still on the verge of a full-on panic attack again and was very on edge.
All the sleep-deprived cat-loving hero saw was a young, beaten-up green haired boy about to have a panic attack. He didn’t see a physically, mentally and emotionally abused ghost who had just delivered a birthday present to his ex-best and childhood friend. Obviously he would try to comfort him and then leave after he calmed the boy down and the boy screamed at the sight of him and scrambled away.
So that’s what happened.
(A/N: See, I gave you a little bit of fluff. And to think I originally wanted to make this JUST a crack fic about ghost Izuku terrorising Class 1-A and add a little bit of plot in there. But I guess exposition is needed.
But we have our favourite sleep-deprived cat-loving hero meet our little dead broccoli.
I don’t know what else to put so I’ll just end it with a quote!
“Freddy Five Nights.” - Senator Armstrong
I’m not funny.)