Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

  He’s never been well and truly away from the shore before, perhaps wading up to his knees in the waves once or twice…

…but not like this.

He’s neither sinking nor drowning, nor is he swimming, simply being pulled along by the current. Maybe not a current exactly, that implies something far less… directed? Izuku knows what running water feels like, he knows what some variants of telekinesis and aerokinesis feel like when used on him, for that matter. None quite fit.

His shoulders brush silt, sand, and then wave-worn rounded pebbles, and then his eyes open as he stands up in the ankle-deep lapping waves. The rocks, almost all the size of his fist or smaller, shift and knock together almost musically with the water’s movement. There’s a breeze, but his soaked state doesn’t chill him. He’s in a small cove, this time, but there’s a path around the cliff at one end. At first, he simply sits just outside the reach of the waves, listening to the stones and watching the gently roiling twirl of the clouds above and waves below out into the horizon. These dreams have never really had any urgency to them. Perhaps they’ve never been quite so… lucid?… either.

  It’s a quiet thing, and it feels like minutes pass before he notices. The sound of the stones and the waves has something more to it. The burbling, whispering, tumbling rythm of it reminds him of a type of unburdened laughter he hasn’t heard nor experienced in years.

Those days in the park before… befo-

  Another sound catches on his attention like a bit of limp detritus against an anchor’s chain… subtly, not particularly forcefully, but nonetheless it’s there. Something metallic, or perhaps like waves echoing against metal instead of tumbling stones against one another? His curiosity is piqued, but he still doesn’t hesitate to slip a few nice rocks and seashells into his pockets before exploring the path around the cliffs.

The breeze picks up and abates in shuddering bursts as he nears the stony ledge the path beside the waves takes, and as he finally rounds the bend-

…

  -Izuku lays face up in brown seawater, late twilight giving way to a night sky mostly bereft of visible stars, given the levels of air pollution and light pollution inherent to Mustafu’s relatively urban environment.

He’s not floating so much as resting against the hood of a partially submerged car-

…

-his foot slips, the dark of the sea rising up to meet him, but he hasn’t fallen. A whisper of waves and wind urges, surges him on for a few moments, finally allowing him the chance to look up.

and up…

and up.

…or is it really?

  Something about that notion in regard to the ruin which his eyes say is there doesn’t quite fit. It gives off a feeling almost like a starfish or a barnacle, and those can cling to the sides and undersides of things just as easily. It’s… something, something that had surely been been intended to be beautiful once. A beacon of safety. At some point, it seems it was partly hollowed out…

in some places it bears more resemblance to the wounds of a mauling than a dismantling…

and left to crumble away. Izuku would find the gleaming wreck more sorrowful if not for the resilience of some of the things it resembles.

Starfish limbs, when cut off from the main body, are capable of outright regenerating into other new starfish after all,

so perhaps there’s hope here too.

~-=-=-=-~

  A sodden green-haired boy wakes up among partly waterlogged piles of garbage.

The muddled salty water is knee-deep, murky brown and treacherously opaque, but his steps would appear unhindered, if there were anyone watching him at the time.

It’s not that there are no dangers or obstacles in the water, he doesn’t need to see them to know where they are and how to avoid them. He’s not exactly in a position to contemplate how he knows at the moment.

  Left to avoid one jagged metal edge, circle around that mound of garbage on the right and step lightly,

take a right to avoid the washed up rubble of a nearby collapsed building.

Hang left to avoid the shards of a car’s windshield and a rusted piece of metal that resembles Endeavor’s face,

climb carefully up the heap with the dead fish and the broken neon-orange umbrella,

then, use it to hop part of the awkwardly half-collapsed fence unhindered.

  The nearest rescue Heroes and other disaster relief personnel are nearly a mile away. Perhaps, had the circumstances been different, Izuku would have immediately headed in their direction. He knows where they are. He knows they’d save him, but also how little it would change in the long run. He knows where to scavenge the most useful supplies he can safely access in the surrounding few blocks nearby.

He knows.

He knows.

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