Crimson Murders

Chapter Twenty-Six

This is an informative chapter for unspoken questions. Um, there might be a few ships but they will be background and I am not shipping Midoriya with anyone but if you guys like comment your favorite ship and I may end up putting one in.

Izuku never realized it before. Heck, he never really stopped to think about it. It's been weeks almost a month since the incident, but he just now has been able to sit down and think about it. He didn't even know why he was thinking about this in the first place. Maybe it was the book he was reading not too long ago? The Lovely Bones. He's read the entire book twice already. After seeing the movie before reading, it was hard to get into the book at first but it got better. He doesn't know what brought him back to reading it again. Then again, he doesn't know answers to a lot of questions. With that thought in mind, he sighs as he rereads the line that brought the question, "You don't notice the dead leaving when they really choose to leave you. You're not meant to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper undulating down." The thought that followed, it seemed inevitable. He had locked it away. He forced it down, not wanting to even think about it. Coming close to dying and actually dying are two different things. Five minutes. He's given five minutes to fully heal from the death alone. He bookmarked the place of another quote.

  "What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone." That's just how he felt that night. For two minutes, he felt cold, frozen in place and unable to move. He wasn't gone but he could have been. If not for Death, he'd be gone with them to the afterlife. As he reads about the girl who was murdered, he can't help but feel for her and for her family. The book is old, but he enjoys reading old books. It's sad but the way the story is set, it's good. He feels horrible for her family who has to deal with the aftermath of her death; he feels horrible for her to watch this all happen. In those five minutes, he is not aware. No, not like the girl in the story, Susie. She is aware after everything. At first she doesn't know, but she can still see. In the first two minutes, it's dark. Izuku, while in death, is surrounded by darkness. He sees nothing. He doesn't get the chance like she does, he's stuck in his own body and waiting for it to heal back to its natural state. It just all depends on the injuries sustained to it. He can force it to heal faster but it takes too much energy and his heart takes the backlash from it. It's only happened once but he could feel it.

  At the three minute mark, he can feel his heart beating again, the feeling coming to his muscles. That was how he pushed himself to get up and continue. Every new injury he sustained, it pushed his healing back and his heart continued to pay for it. One time experience and he learns. People learn from their mistakes after all. By the three minute mark, that's something he stays at. He never allowed his body to fully heal when it was needed. He was basically a walking corpse at that moment. Barely back from dying and is up and about. Honestly, the backlash is so terrible, it's agony and torture mixed together with the hint of Hell. He knows that he must've scared his friends, if not psychologically scarred them for the next few years. He found out about Iida's nightmares that he had for a while now, watching him die and never get up. He was lucky—that was Iida's line of thinking. If he hadn't met the person who gave him those three chances, he wouldn't be there.

  "Izuku?" Another problem. His mother. Not that he's saying she's a problem! It's just that her attitude towards everything about him and his life is changing. He understands that she wants to keep him safe and all, but no, there's something else. Almost like maternal instinct dialed to eleven—almost possessive. She feels like he might be trying to leave her too soon or—or something, she doesn't want him to get hurt or leave. That's it. That's all. That's his argument towards his paranoia. He just hates to see what may happen if he does accept the Grim Reaper's proposal.

  Izuku leans back and blinks, breaking out of his thoughts. He's driving his mother insane. He can tell; he's just surprised it's taken this long for it to have happened. "Yes Mom?"