⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

"WAY TO DROP A BOMBSHELL," Midoriya joked, in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood. Y/N attempted to smack him, rolling her eyes as her hand went through his arm.

"I found this book in the library, it's 'ghost-friendly'," she explained, quickly retrieving the leather-bound text, throwing it on the ground. "Turn to page 374."

Shoto grabbed it first, licking his thumb and opening it to the correct page, his eyes flicking over the thin lines of text, biting his lip in concentration. Y/N had to look away, afraid some flicker of emotion would show in her eyes, as she tried to rearrange her thoughts.

However, all she could think about was him - he sat right in front of her, yet her thoughts played memories of his face like a movie.

Holy shit, Y/N, you're dead. Don't go falling for boys you can't have.

But maybe that was the reason she was so desperate to try the anchor method, searching so hard for a way to make it happen, to get back to her life in any way possible. 

She already knew, deep down with the purest honesty, she would do anything just to be able to brush her fingers with his. 

Todoroki Shoto - how had she become the girl who fell in love with her best friend?

"Y/N. Y/N!"

She shook herself back to reality, leaning over Shoto's shoulder as he pointed at the list of numbered steps. 

"Yeah?"

"This procedure is ... crazy dangerous. If you fail, if you do it, then-"

"I know what the risks are," Y/N interrupted, somewhat snappishly. She'd read the page back in the library, closing her eyes and repressing the urge to cry. If she failed this time, not only would her Necromantic Quirk be unable to save her from a second death, but she'd bring her anchor down with her. "I just ... I ... I have to try. There's nothing else I can do."

Shoto nodded, turning to Midoriya. "Do you think you're the anchor?"

The green-haired boy, blinked, evidently confused by the sudden, blunt question. "I- I don't know. There's got to be a way to find out, right?"

"Right." Y/N flipped a few more pages, to one labelled Anchors - Identification. She gave herself a couple seconds to scan it, before groaning and flopping onto her back. "Oh, great, this whole anchor thing is ... a theoretical mess."

"What did you expect?" Shoto shot back, though this time his tone had lightened to a teasing one. "You're bringing yourself back from the dead, I mean ... oh, let me see the page."

He reached for the book, and Y/N waited for both boys to examine it before she started speaking again. 

"Well, that explains why two of you can see me," she reasoned. "A person can have multiple anchors, but only one will be able to actually participate in the anchor method."

"This is confusing," Midoriya whined, pulling a blackened notebook from his blazer pocket and scribbling a few notes on a fresh page. "So, we're both anchors. But only one of us is the ... right anchor?"

"The books calls it the 'antithetic anchor', if that helps," Y/N added, pointing to corresponding phrase on the book currently in Shoto's hands. "Antithetic, like opposites. One living, one dead. Often they're opposite genders as well, which we have here. And ... opposite experiences."

Shoto tilted his head to the side, pulling his long legs up to his chest and curling his legs around them. "What do you mean by experiences?"

Y/N blew out a breath, gesticulating randomly as she searched for the correct words to express the definition. "Like ... if I had a happy childhood, my anchor would have a sad one, right?"

"That crosses me off, then," Midoriya joked, a flash of guilt reddening his face as he thought of his poor mother, who worried about him every day. 

However, Y/N definitely wasn't in the mood for joking, and, from the expression on Shoto's wide-eyed face that she guessed was identical to her own, they were both thinking of the same memory.

≻───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────≺

"Shoto?" Y/N asked, rolling over on his bed to stare at the ceiling of his bedroom, lit with artificial constellations in a beautiful array that screamed 'rich'. "Can you sleep?"

"No," the other six-year-old mumbled, throwing one of his cream-coloured pillows to the side and folding his arms in annoyance. "What's wrong with me, Y/N?"

"Nothing's wrong with you," she responded, with the same unshakeably childish belief a toddler may have when insisting Santa was real. "You've had a hard time."

Shoto didn't deny the fact, flashing back to every 'training' he had to endure, every time his father yelled at him, his siblings distancing themselves because they were too afraid to face Enji's wrath, but most of all ...

Todoroki Touya closing his bedroom door, leaving Shoto alone in the dark. 

He choked on a sob, breaking down for the twentieth time in as many days - 20 days since Touya had left - covering his turquoise-and-grey eyes with a shaking hand as he felt the cold sensation of Y/N attempting to stroke his back, her hand vanishing through him.

"I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry. I'm sorry you're having a hard time. I think ... I had it pretty easy. I wish I could help."

"You're helping."

A smile shared in the dark as Shoto slipped off the edge of his bed, swiping at his reddened eyes with his sleeve. "I'm getting a drink of water. Be right back."

Y/N waited, drifting up to the canopy of his bed and swinging her legs, her head occasionally phasing through the roof as she straightened her back, waiting patiently for him to come back.

A scream echoed down the lengthy halls of the Todoroki abode, followed by begs made in a child's voice. "Mum! MUM! MUM, STOP!"

Y/N was flying through the air in a heartbeat, twenty days of being a ghost a very small amount of training, but enough to teach her how to fly in her spectral form. As soon as she melted through the kitchen wall, all she could see was chaos, Fuyumi and Natsuo holding a thrashing Rei in the corner, Enji bellowing at the top of his lungs, and Shoto ... Shoto ...

He was curled up in the corner, his hand over his turquoise eye, crying loudly as Rei wailed, a cloth wet with his mother's ice forced over his head. 

"SHO!" Y/N yelled, desperately fumbling towards him, stumbling backwards when her hands went through his shoulders, causing him to cry out in pain at the sensory overload.

He raised his head, and she flinched back, a burning red welt over his eye, flesh beneath the skin revealed in a splash around the part of him that looked exactly like his father.

"SHO!"

≻───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────≺

"Antithetic ..." The word slipped from Y/N, her mouth hanging open as she flashed through thousands of memories of her childhood, and his childhood.

"A good life, a bad life, a Quirk and body of halves, a girl who is whole," Shoto ticked off on his fingers, though the action was slowed by shock.

Somehow, this made the whole situation worse, as the proof added up so perfectly Y/N could no longer deny what she'd been hoping to be wrong for years.

"Todoroki Shoto, you're my anchor ... and I'm your ghost." 

Silently, she added, and if I want to have you, I might have to lose you.

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

thank you for reading this
book and i hope you enjoy it!
~ jazzi