weary travelers.

DREAMS CRUMBLED TO ASH

Clouds shroud overhead, sobbing and sobbing until they drown the street. Shaking hands and children huddling in fraying blankets to block out the cold. It never helps, they turn blue. Lips dusting away to greys and cold. The older ones tell the younger ones that the rain will pass and that soon it will be warm again. That their brother will come back.

They still cry, then a seven year old, all bones with deshelved hair that roles to their ears, with green eyes like Big Brother goes up to them. They smile,

And then the little ones laugh. Giggling through the too harsh storm, wiping away bitter tears and stilling the trembles that wrack through their hands.

_

He meets Tomura on a rainy day.

It's cold outside, but Izuku does not miss summer. Summers are for children that laugh and dance through the forest, playing heroes and fighting villains who give up too easily. Summers are for kids who do not know that people without quirks exist. Summers are for children that do not face cruel realities.

He holds out a hand for the first time in years, and Tomura lashes out. (He's so guilty about it, even in the future, he looks at the handprint he left and winces.)

Izuku does not give up, he cradles the wound and leads Tomura to the livingroom. He pads to the bathroom and washes away the blood, there is an abrasion on his forearm, under the red on his elbow. His fingers twitch at the burning pain. (Don't scream, it'll only hurt more and then Kacchan will―)

Tomura is odd, he has fingernails full blood and skin and hate, he has eyes that are red as fire, and fire burns; Tomura sears like a slow inferno. But he can be helped. He can be warm instead of scorching and searing. He can hold instead of shatter the things in his broken hands.

Izuku invites him into his apartment, though it was more like a cubicle. Tomura looks at him with weary eyes and reluctantly joins, the hate is gone. He has lit his fire to protect himself because he is covered in scars, just like Izuku, and the fire is the only thing that can protect him from hurt. Izuku knows that Tomura is lonely, but he is willing to burn if he helps at least one person. His arm is covered in a paper-towel, red sings past the white.

They sit, awkward silence rings like a choir around them. Singing a mute song of devastating nothingness. Izuku twiddles his thumbs, bitting his lips. He tells himself that the world is not kind, that if this boy― if this teen wants to, he could kill Izuku with a single touch.

"You can sleep here," He points to the bed. All of his posters― he can remember All Might's smiling face ―are gone. They leave pale spots on his walls, cutting in rough patches and rectangles. Stains line the walls, the stickers from his old room are gone, he is no longer a child (he doesn't think he ever was).

Nobody says anything. The night has sunk it's way into their bones and eyes and it has stolen their smiles. It leaves harsh memories and screaming in their minds. Crying for something that does not exist, they are indulging in a hireath.

They sit on the floor because there is no couch, and after ten agonizing minutes of awkward silence, the kind he is all too used to― with the pitying stares of teachers who never do anything; and when he needs a pencil but the girl in front of him is scared to give him one because Kacchan will hurt anyone who helps him ―Tomura slips out his GameBoy from his tattered hoodie pockets.

Izuku watches in awe whenever he beats a level. Eyes shining, nerves lost in the amazement of it all. Warped visions. (Yellow is a happy color again.)

When Tomura leaves, Izuku says that he can come by any time he wants. Cracked GameBoy or not. Tomura smiled with crinkled eyes and chapped lips and yellowed teeth. He is glistening under the winter sun of morning. Izuku grins back. Suddenly, the night is gone and the day has returned their joy and will to survive another strip of endless torture that the moon oversees. Tomura has a smile that weathers like sunshine and for a moment, Izuku feels safe.

(Then Tomura leaves with a promise to return, and he hears Kacchan shouting at him. Ha! Do you really think he'll come back? God, you're more stupid than I thought, Deku.)

Maybe life isn't so bad, maybe normal people can be good, too. Izuku ruffles his hair and looks at Tomura's tattered, stringy locks. Maybe all he needed was a helping hand, too.

(They're all going to leave once they know.)

(He'll make sure they never know.)

_

It's a week later, when Tomura comes back. He tells Izuku his name, his full name. Not the fractal of information he'd so scarcely handed with scarred fingers and broken eyes.

He is hollow, they both are. Tools of a world that turns it's back on the unlucky, worshipping destruction and chaos at its finest.

"Hey, Midoriya?"

"Y-yes?"

Tomura looks at him with fire in his eyes― cuts around his nose and mouth and face as a whole ―and he smiles. "D'ya think that.. maybe we could be friends?"

Red colors his cheeks. His eyes split open to a vivid green, alight with a world of innocence and he smiles like his is a child-but-not again. Reaching for the sun and basking in summer as yellow halo's his head. He is a hero again, all bright smiles and saving graces.

"I-- I'd like th-that, Tomura-kun."

He wonders if this would happen if he was stronger, had he thought Yuuei wasn't just a pipe dream. That being a hero wasn't impossible. He latches onto Tomura, not afraid. He's all smiles and happiness; the butterflies in his stomach have gone away for but a single moment and he shows his chipped teeth.

"I'd really, really like that."