Chapter Text
1997
Some decide to make their peace with God on their deathbed, but the twenty-four-year-old Katsuki Bakugou made peace with his mother on hers.
“...mama please make it stop! Make him stop, mama it hurts! What did I do?...”
The house whose hallways and under the bed in the first room on the left up those old, wooden stairs that he knew all too well were quiet except for the two nurses in blue when Katsuki pushed open the front door. They told him his mother was upstairs and that he needed to be easy with her, but Katsuki wasn’t listening; instead, he trailed his fingers along the walls and the kitchen door, checking to see if there was any hint of dried blood on the tiles. The stairs went creak! creak! creak! under his shoes which he didn’t remember them doing, although the musty smell of the upstairs hallway that greeted him was far too familiar.
thud! thud! thud!
It was as if the house was haunted by the ghost of heavy footsteps and Katsuki closed his eyes with one hand on the banister, breathing out shakily as if about to confess all his sins through the curtain before he nudged open the bedroom door. The smell of antiseptic in the room was as strong as church incense but not nearly half as sweet. Katsuki’s mother was laying under the floral quilt, faded as the wallpaper lining that damned hall.
“Hey, Mama,” Katsuki said softly, pulling the armchair from the corner of her room to sit by the bedside and take her hand, “it’s me, Katsuki.”
His mother neither shook it off nor tightened her grip around his hand, but just lay with her eyes on him from the pillow and made some hint of noise in the back of her throat.
“No, no, it’s okay,” Katsuki shushed her, “the nurses told me you can’t talk much, so you just lay back there and rest. I’ll do the talking. Do I look different, mama? Maybe I do, but I’m not sure. I keep wondering if I’m starting to look more like I'm like you as I get older…I’m 24 now, it’s been 8 years since I left...”
Katsuki pressed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to ward off the voice in the back of his head telling him that she hadn’t raised her head from her hymn pages back when it was his birthday and before her stroke.
“You’re probably wondering why I’ve come back,” Katsuki started, a small smile on his lips as he laughed to himself, “and I was too if I’m honest, mama…coming back past where used the church used to be…they’ve built a new one, haven’t they? But I know why I’m back and I’m sure of it now…”
He sat back in his chair and gave her a half-hearted Rumi Usigayama smile.
“...it’s to show you that I’m okay. No, that makes it sound like some kind of vengeance thing which…well, actually, maybe underneath it all that’s all this is. I’m human after all, mama, I’m not perfect like they say God is. Sorry, I’m rambling, I know that…”
Katsuki broke off to take a breath and ran a hand through his hair in some attempt to try and get his thoughts together.
I guess what I mean is that I just wanted both you and myself to see that I’m okay, whatever you let him put me through. Izuku’s okay too, actually, he’s good…I mean I don’t think he’s doing any better than I am because he’s got this stammer when he’s anxious and…and sometimes he has these really bad nightmares that have him wake up crying and then he can’t sleep for hours…”
Another breath and Katsuki looked up to the ceiling cracked like a mantelpiece angel before continuing.
“He’s got as much of a reason to hate you as I do, mama because you were supposed to love him and me, weren’t you? Mothers are supposed to look after their children, aren’t they? You see, I’ve been torturing myself for a long time now, trying to figure out whether I should feel sorry for you, or whether I should hate you.”
He paused once more, trying to keep the bath in his head from overflowing, and splash! splash! splashing all over the floor.
“Only recently, I remembered something that Izuku said to me eight years ago,” Katsuki went on, “about God maybe just being asleep and thus having nothing to do with the wrongdoings here on Earth. He said that it was just the bad people in the world making everyone hurt, and God being asleep meant he wasn’t there to stop them. And…and it’s so easy to hate you, mama, so easy to say that you are a bad person when I find Izuku crying in the corner of the room all on his own at night because the nightmares mean he can’t sleep, or when I catch sight of the scars up my back in the bathroom mirror. And I think that you would have watched that priest kill Eiji at the altar, mama, just as you watched my stepfather beat me and Izuku until we were black and blue…because it’s so easy to say that it wasn’t God who was ignoring me, mama, that was you.”
Katsuki was crying now, but he knew that his mama wouldn’t mind, so he just kept going in despite the tears getting in his way.
“But then sometimes I wonder if you were scared like Anah was…if you really were just that scared of my stepfather…and the truth is I don’t know, mama, and I guess I’ll never know…but what I do know is that when I stepfather about to hurt Izuku, I tried to throw my damn self right in front of him…”
The bedroom was so, so silent, and Katsuki found himself wondering (as terrible as it was) whether maybe his mama could actually talk and was just choosing not to.
“But you know what?” He concluded, sniffing hard and reaching his mother’s eyes with his own, “I’ve decided to make my peace with you. Some make their peace with God, but he and I don’t get on well. I’ve made my peace with you, mama, because I’m okay…because Izuku and I are okay and what’s the point in ruing our lives with hatred that just eats and eats and eats away at you? My stepfather is dead and I’m not scared of the night anymore… the priest is dead and I’m not scared of God anymore…so why should I throw away the life I’ve got now hating a woman who doesn’t care? The answer is I don’t, and I make my peace with both her and myself. I’m showing you mercy, and it’s not like you want it but I’m giving it to you anyway. I forgive you for hurting me and Izuku, mama…I don’t know if Izuku does, but I’m saying this all now in the hope he does…and when it’s time for you to go…”
Katsuki leaned across to press a quick kiss to her forehead, rather out of duty than a flickering ash of affection.
“...I hope it’s painless.”
With that, he got to his feet, wiping his eyes roughly and sniffing hard before he turned back to face his mother one last time.
“Whenever anybody asks me about my mother, instead of telling them some sob story about a woman I ought to hate, I’ll tell them that my mother died in 1989, that she’s buried on a riverbank and that her name was Rumi Usigyama.”
Out in the hall, Katsuki leaned against the wall lined with useless paintings of useless saints who, if Izuku was right, had been sleeping over Katsuki’s head since that day in 1970 when Akio Kirishima walked into Makato Bakugou’s kitchen. But for once, Katsuki didn’t stain the carpet with tears or blood, but simply walked to the next door down. He paused for a moment outside and shut a hand, motionless, on the bedroom door handle.
He hesitated only for a moment before he pushed open the door and revealed the angel over his bed and the metal radiator under the window.
“...you know with your bedroom light all orange behind you, you looked sort of like an angel...”
As 14-year-old Eijirou Kirishimas’s voice filled Kats’s head like the early morning sun rising over the lavender kiss hills, Katsuki caught sight of something beneath the bed. Getting down on his hand on his hands and knees, he found the worn-looking teddy bear that he had clung to through his tears and stuttering prayers as a little child. Katsuki held the bear in his hands for a moment if he had been religious, he surely would’ve thanked God for Rumi Usigayama leading that boy with the unholy red eyes down the aisle back in 1987.
Instead, Katsuki left the teddy bear propped against the pillows under that painting of the angel, in case the ghost of that same frightened little bruised blonde boy who’d died in 1989 ever wanted to come up and play with it.
~
With his hands in the pockets of his blue, denim jacket, Eijioru Kirishima stood before Rumi Usiyagami’s house with the light summer breeze pushing his hair back to reveal the ragged, now healed, 666 on his forehead. His eyes were closed as he felt the serenity of the surroundings; he listened to the gentle rustle of leaves, breathing in what he imagined was smoke from a burning church.
“Eijirou?”
The 25-year-old man, hair dark as the remnants of charred wood, turned his head at the mention of his name cutting through the peace. He looked to see Izuku by his side, wearing a jacket Eijirou had never seen before, clothes thoroughly soaked through with water.
“Jesus christ, what happened to you?” Eijirou asked, shaking his head. “Fall in a river? And I swear you weren’t wearing this jacket before – whose is it?”
“Whose house is this?” Izuku asked, avoiding the question as a blush started to bloom on his cheeks, “I recognize it.”
“Do you remember that nice lady called Miss Mirko?” Eijioru asked, and Izuku furrowed his brow trying to remember, “Katsuki and I called her Rumi?”
“Mm, vaguely,” Izuku nodded uncertainly, “I think so, why? Is this her house? Wait, was she the one who took me outside class when she saw that I…that I-I had bruises?”
“She did?” Eijirou asked, and then his expression of surprise melted into a small smile. “Sounds like her. Rumi seemed to get on well with sad boys. Now c’mon Izuku, who’s jacket is that?”
“Nobody’s,” Izuku mumbled, blush deepening.
“Who’s nobody?” Eijirou replied with a small smirk, wondering if Rumi would mind if he had a cigarette (seeing as she hated that house like the wedding band around her finger).
“So this is Miss Mirko’s house?” Izuku asked, avoiding the question once more, “Shoto said other kids say it’s haunted.”
“Don’t see why it would be,” Eijirou sighed, “seeing as there’s no need for her ghost to hang around here now. So…is it Shoto’s jacket?”
“I…” Izuku started, pulling the jacket sleeves as far over his hands as they would go as was a nervous habit of his, along with the stammer he still couldn’t kick, “m-maybe…”
“What’s that kid's surname anyway?” Eijioru asked, admiring the dead flowers curling on Rumi’s front doorstep, “Don’t think I’ve ever been told actually.”
“It’s…” Izuku trailed off, picking at the inner seams of the jacket’s cuffs, “it’s Kayama.”
“Kayama?” Eijioru asked, eyes widening, “wait you mean as in- ”
“Mhm,” Izuku nodded, willing the sleeves to go further over his hands even though he knew he shouldn’t get so anxious all the time.
“-As in fucking Midnight? That crazy bitch?”
“She was his mama,” Izuku said quietly, “but Eijirou hh-he’s nothing her…he’s n-n-”
Izuku broke off to take a breath, trying again.
“He’s nice.” Izuku managed to get past the stutter, “even if his mother was- ”
“Insane?” Eijirou laughed slightly and Izuku’s hair bounced a little as he nodded, “that poor fucking kid. Where’s he living now?”
“Aunt’s house,” Izuku replied, “he…he’s really nice, Eijirou.”
“So you’ve said,” Eijirou teased playfully, raising an eyebrow, “just a friend, huh?”
It was then that they noticed Katsuki walking out of the woods, Izuku once again dodging Eijrou’s questioning, blush spreading somehow even further.
“How did you know I’d be here?” Kats asked, wearing a smile seeping with nostalgia.
“I dunno,” Eiji said, chuckling lightly, “lucky guess.”
His expression grew more serious as he reached out to touch Kats’s face.
“How was your mother?”
Kats simply took Eiji’s hand and held it to his cheek, leaning into his touch gratefully.
“My mother is dead,” he smiled, kissing Eiji’s palm, “she died in 1989.”
There was a silence between them, full of red lipstick and lavender, a silver crucifix catching a peachy light in a long-lost living room.
“Christ, Izuku, what happned to you?” Katsuki asked suddenly, reaching out to touch the boy’s drenched clothes.
“What was it Rumi would have said?” Eijirou teased, smiling fondly at the memory, “you’ll catch your death.”
“No, luckily he won’t,” Katsuki said, “he’s got that jacket…wait, Izuku, who’s jacket is that?”
“Shoto Kayama’s,” Eijrou announced, leaning against the house.
“Kayama?” Katsuki asked, stunned, “she had a son? Wait you mean- ”
“Look,” Izuku started, “h-he’s not…he’s not crazy- ”
“He’s ‘just a friend,’” Eijirou said in an exaggerated tone, to which Katsuki slapped him lightly on the arm, and Izuku couldn’t help but shake his head wearily with a smile.
“So,” Kats said, hands in his own jacket pockets as he looked Rumi’s house up and down again, “I wonder if she’s still got gasoline in the garden shed.”
“I’ll bet,” Eiji smirked, picking himself up off the wall, “well, I guess we better go in and say goodbye again, seeing as we’re here. C’mon lover boy,” Eijriou said ruffling Izuku’s hair, “let’s go inside, shall we?”
“I’m glad you could see Shoto again,” Katsuki said to Izuku as Eijirou pushed open the front door.
“How was he?”
Izuku tried to find a word other than perfect to describe Shoto so that he wouldn’t have Eijriou teasing him for days on end, but couldn’t find one.
“Perfect,” he mumbled, trying hard to keep it quiet enough for only Katsuki to hear. Katsuki just smiled and stepped into the hallway, whose faded, dusty pink walls alone left the faint taste of vanilla icing on his tongue.
“Well then,” Katsuki smiled softly at Izuku, then up at Eiji, “there’s something else they didn’t manage to take away…Father Sakamata and everyone else, I mean.”
“The whole fucking village you mean,” Eiji joked, smiling lovingly at Kats as he spoke. The starts of the faint scar on his lover’s neck from the priest’s knife were just visible at the neckline of Kats’s shirt, and it reminded Eiji just how close he was to losing him. Of how he had seen the blood drip! drip! drip! onto the white of the wedding dress. There was still no wedding ring on Eiji’s hand to catch the last light of the day as he shut the front door behind them, because as he’d said eight years prior: he didn’t need religion. He only needed Katsuki.
“Will I get to see him again?” Izuku asked as they walked into a living room with a gramophone doused in cobwebs but still looking relatively new. “Sh-Shoto, I mean.”
“Of course you will,” Katsuki reassured him, “I promise. And watch your stammer, okay?”
Izuku nodded, thinking it would be better to let Katsuki and Eijirou honor the memory of a woman they clearly love in peace; he sat down on the couch, hands in the pockets of Shoto’s jacket, smiling secretly at the taste of pretty lips on his own.
“She hated these things,” Kats said over his shoulder to Eiji, touching one of the arranged porcelain angels on the mantlepiece, which was covered by an even thicker layer of dust than before, “I could tell.”
“She never really listened to vinyls much either, did she?” Eiji mused, sifting from records front the 60s and 70s before one particular album cover brought the smile of a boy in a graveyard in 1987 to his face, “Hey, baby, look- ”
Kats turned to see Eiji holding up a record of “Angel Baby, Rosie and the Originals” so that he could see the title. Kats just rolled his eyes with a loving laugh as thoughts of walkmans and lavender fields in the rain and kisses on the church step in the middle of the night hung in the air between them like dust caught in a sunbeam, just as beautiful.
“...look, I made God cry...”
“God, I love you,” Kats said suddenly and Eiji just smiled sunshine bright as he said “amen.” Meanwhile, Izuku’s heel hit something sticking out under the couch that caught his attention. Getting down on his hands and knees he saw what looked like a box covered by a small, floral and dirty washcloth. He put the cloth to one side and took out the box to read it properly.
“Hey, Katsuki?” He asked, to which he got a hum in reply, “what’s a…what’s a ouija board? Is that how you say it, I don’t-”
“Oh my god,” Katsuki said, the grubby box with dog-eared corners sparking a memory like a lighter to a cigarette, “Eiji, Eijirou, oh my god, remember this?”
“Jesus fucking christ,” Eiji breathed, kneeling down like Kats and carefully taking the box from Izuku’s hands, “holy fuck…”
“What is it?” Izuku asked, tugging at the sleeves of Shoto’s jacket once more, “I’ve heard of them before but…but I’m not sure…”
“It lets you talk to people in heaven,” Eiji said, then decided to rephrase, “or hell. People who aren’t here anymore.”
“You mean…” Izuku started, “you mean like my mama?”
“Yeah,” Katsuki nodded softly, “yeah, exactly. Do you want to talk to her, Izuku?”
He paused for a moment to think, taking in the feel of the jacket’s material under his fingers for teddy bear comfort before shaking his head.
“No?”
“No, thank you,” Izuku shook his head again, shaking away a curl from his eyes, “n-no I mean…I-I didn’t really know her, did I? I…I don’t really know what we’d talk about.”
Katsuki rubbed his shoulder reassuringly, meeting Eiji’s eye, realizing they were thinking the same thing about the ouija board between them.
“Can’t hurt to try,” Eiji murmured quietly, and Kats nodded without hesitation. Carefully, they both put their fingers on the planchette as Eiji quickly tried to remember in detail how Rumi had done this before back in ‘87.
“Is…” Eiji started, closing his eyes for a moment and chewing the inside of his cheek, “is anyone out there?”
There was no reply at first, so Kats tried.
“Rumi?” He called softly, “Are you there?”
It took a moment before the planchette began to move, and both Katsuki and Eijioru smiled as the word became apparent.
y-e-s
“And is…” Eiji started to ask hopefully, before reminding himself not to get his hopes up when god might be dead as the lavender, “is my mama there too?”
The house reminded Katsuki of being thirteen again, of wrinkled hymn pages and cinnamon, of honeydrops.
This time there was no pause before the planchette moved, and as both Kats and Eiji’s smiles bloomed like the yellow archangel flowers growing on the riverbank, the lavender outside seemed to be singing a different song for once.
A song for all the sweet sinners in their sanctuaries.
~ Fin ~