Work Text:
In the staggering wake of the war, Katsuki learns to cling to memories.
He remembers, after flitting through nightmare after nightmare, blinking through the haze of sleep—almost as if wading through murky waters with limbs of lead. What he first came to is the acrid white of his ceiling. Then, the sterile scent of his room. And then the chorus of hushed whispers that seemed to surround him, the noise drifting to his ears with compromised clarity. He blinked again, and brought his unfocused gaze to the curtains parted just enough to taunt him. The sky was an unsettling shade of grey. He remembers this clearly.
He remembers everything else.
Where the hell am I, he demanded then, and the answering cries of relief from his classmates did little to appease him. They told him that he was in a hospital. Apparently he had been out for a while, but these were irrelevant details if one were to ask Katsuki. These weren’t the things he wanted to know.
And so he asked more questions with a stomach filled with dread. He remembers hearing answers he wishes he didn’t ask for.
Midoriya, the distorted version of his classmates’ voices in his memory dutifully remind him, he’s shown no sign of waking up.
He remembers silence—and then anger. He remembers blades piercing through his skin and flesh after he catapults himself into the fray. He remembers turning away the hand offered to him that day he fell into that damned river. He remembers gasping for air, watching in horror as the same hand reached out to him through a screen of smoke. He remembers mistaking a boy’s kindness for a weapon. He remembers being dragged by hospital staff and heroes and classmates alike—fucking extras, the lot of them— as he marched his way to wherever the hell Izuku is playing dead to give him a piece of his mind because how dare he, how fucking dare this idiot try to die on my watch.
And he remembers, once the anger subsided, how grief washed over him like a tide when he caught a glimpse of Izuku, ghostly pale, scarred, asleep. How defeat tasted on his tongue when he was not allowed to stand by Izuku’s bedside. How the salt of desperation stung his eyes when the door was shut on him because this—this lifeless picture Izuku made—is not how he wanted to remember him.
They had forced him to his bed after that, perhaps to sedate him, but Katsuki couldn’t have cared less. What difference would it have made? In his dreams, the ground caves in and pulls him with it. The river rushes into his lungs. The nightmare hadn’t stopped when he chose to wake.
Reality is often a lot less kind than expectation. Katsuki knows this. He’s learned this long ago; he’s only being reminded of it now that he hears Izuku is gone.
He’s not, like, gone-gone, Kaminari had interjected uneasily when he heard Katsuki cursing about it under his breath. He just, I dunno, left?
It was a piss-poor attempt at lightening the somber mood that blanketed their dorm, and if Katsuki had been capable of summoning a spark to his palms, he would’ve blasted the idiot out of his way for even saying shit. Even Uraraka had something to say, always milling around with wide, hopeful eyes, repeatedly muttering about how Deku-kun wouldn’t just run away, right?
Katsuki hated listening to them; his hands could only curl into fists each time he chanced upon their euphemisms, nails digging into skin as he swallowed the bitter taste Izuku’s name brings. He has no line of defense against the hollow ache in his chest when he walks through halls without a pair of excited footsteps trailing behind. Izuku is gone, and any reiteration of the matter holds no bearing against that fact.
He wonders how he could have been so stupid. The news of Izuku waking had left him fatally optimistic and he remembers, foolishly, how he thought, there’s still a war to be won.
Now we can win it together.
But the morning came without Izuku, and in his place, a piece of paper with the weight of the world as Katsuki knows it.
Thank you for everything, read the nearly illegible scrawl, and it sounded direct. Final. Almost like a farewell, and it might as well have been, considering the stupid suicidal mission the bastard ran off to, and Katsuki wanted to scream, wanted to raze the city to the ground and fling himself into the raging storm to search for Izuku because fuck, you shouldn’t thank me just yet.
I still have so much to atone for.
Katsuki would be lying if he says he doesn’t feel the slightest hint of hurt, but more than that he is angry, veins pumped with white-hot rage every damn time he recalls what Izuku is capable of doing—for others, to himself. He will never forget how that idiot jumped through fire to save him with no plan to speak of, nor will he ever stop recounting all the times he’s broken his bones for the sake of anyone who seemed to need help. The memories still haunt him, in flashes and in whispers of dreams, always in punishing detail. Izuku, with bruises for skin. Izuku, running with fractured arms outstretched. Izuku, screaming—not in pain but for Katsuki himself.
He crumples the letter in his fist. His heart threatens to burst out of his ribcage. He’s seething.
He’s terrified.
And that’s it, isn’t it? There has always been one irrefutable truth he couldn’t deny, not to himself. It never not terrified Katsuki, how Izuku could easily destroy himself with the thought that compelled him to think he was worthy of being a hero in the first place. His desperation to save often eclipses his will to live, and this, this is exactly why he’s deathly afraid of letting Izuku in—why he’s kept him at a distance, even if he was always bound to fail.
It certainly doesn’t help Katsuki that every bit of his instinct is telling him that Izuku is out there, all alone in some place that only knows cruelty with no one but All Might to look after him. Or maybe he is actually involved with that partnership between the top three heroes, not that it matters. The chances of it being true does nothing to soothe any of his concerns, what with knowing that none of them could possibly understand how utterly fucked Izuku is with that concept of self-preservation he’s got in his head, essentially nonexistent.
“That damned nerd,” he spits through gritted teeth, tearing that flimsy excuse for a letter into indistinguishable pieces until he’s granted some sort of respite. But it doesn’t come. Not even after he’s ripped it all apart and watched as the fragments clustered around his feet.
Fuck you, Katsuki wants to tell him, to wipe that godawful smile he always wears when he pretends everything is great and the cracks in his façade are hidden from the naked eye. Fuck you for leaving and only with this shitty goodbye.
Didn’t I tell you to stop trying to win this on your own?
“It has to be All Might,” he continues instead, and the words feel heavy in his mouth. “I’ve got no doubt that they’re partners in crime.”
“Then he’s with an adult. Shouldn’t that give us reassurance?”
“No,” Katsuki quickly rebuts, and there’s so much to say, so much history to account for. He thinks of Kamino, of a boy bearing a burden far greater than himself, of watching one’s hero lose himself to the spirit of sacrifice. He thinks of Ground Beta, of disillusionment in the face of truth, of fear in knowing what could become. He thinks of kindness as a strength shared, of an ideal passed from mentor to student, of a weakness forgotten in flawed selflessness. And he wonders, now, as he tries to paint a picture of how Izuku could be faring as they cluelessly stand among themselves, how could they possibly understand?
“I know Deku and All Might better than anyone.“ He chooses to say, closing his hands into fists to hide how they tremble. “This is the worst scenario I can think of.”
Because he does know Izuku, knows the image of his reflection on disturbed waters, the shape of his hands before they knew of any violence, the contours of his heart—soft and tender and destructively good.
“I know him better than anyone.” He whispers, again, to the quiet of the room, and it sounds as good as any confession one could expect from him, only the person he wants to lay himself bare to is not there to hear it.
When Katsuki finds the offending piece of red fabric folded neatly under piles of rolled up socks, he almost grins at the odd hilarity of it all. He’s never worn it before, not even after the multitude of disapproving stares he’s got from teachers and classmates that demand him to look proper at least once. But he never cared about looking proper, only about being the best he can be.
And yet here he is, wrapping the strip around his ironed collar, looping one end around the other with fingers so blatantly unsteady. It’s quite uncharacteristic for someone like him, for someone who takes pride in having such meticulous hands, but how is Katsuki to be blamed? They have always been the most honest part of him, earnest even as they betray him before everyone else.
Shakily, he tightens the knot and straightens himself, grimacing at the unfamiliar reflection staring back at him. It looks wrong, as if he were looking at a stranger instead of who he must be, but he resists yanking the thing off his neck. He’s doing this for a reason. He’s doing this to make things right.
I’d find you, he thinks, the slope of his shoulders decisive as he finally takes a step away from the mirror. And I’d do it properly, this time.
The walk to U.A.’s main building is as nostalgic as it is unfamiliar, and Katsuki finds it jarring to realize how dreary the corridors can be without the noise of overexcited students loitering around, without sunlight filtering through glass windows to paint them gold. It makes for a bleak picture: the emptiness, dismal; the silence, oppressive; and the sky, still an unsettling shade of grey.
It’s been grey for a torturous while.
Convincing Principal Nezu to allow them a meeting with Endeavor was a tense affair, but their class was able to secure one in the end. Katsuki had been anxious for it, and each day of waiting wore him down in a way no rigorous training ever managed to achieve. Now, every inch of him just feels like a taut bowstring waiting to be pulled, or perhaps an explosion waiting to happen, but he reins himself in. He still has answers to demand for, things to set straight.
He clenches his fists. The doors open.
Surprise mars Endeavor’s features when he sees all nineteen of them standing behind him, and the question he asks is wholly expected.
“Principal, was this a trap?”
“I heard the children out and determined that this meeting was warranted.” Principal Nezu replies without a hitch, and with no preamble, Todoroki is first to say his piece.
“Why have you been ignoring me?”
The inflection of his voice startles even Katsuki; it’s rare for the half-and-half bastard to show any semblance of emotion save for that stoic default of his, but the urgency in their cause must be enough to warrant something else from him.
“Why is Midoriya the only one with a free pass, Endeavor?” Todoroki barrels on, and the shoulder that brushes against Katsuki is significantly colder than it had been moments prior. “You’re letting Deku and All Might operate together, aren’t you?”
The resignation painted on the face of the usually domineering hero is already an answer in and of itself, and the confirmation of his fears slices through Katsuki like a familiar blade—waking the ghost of each and every one of his wounds. He could almost taste the blood in his mouth; if he blinks he might even find himself falling again. Helpless against gravity pulling him back to the dust of war. Helpless as Izuku is ripped away from him.
He shoves Todoroki to the side.
“Thought so,” he scoffs, and he fights through the water filling his lungs, threatening to spill out of his mouth. Now is not the time to drown. “You know, in any other situation, it was the right move.”
“But you see,” Katsuki snaps, taking one, slow deliberate step towards Endeavor, “you don’t know the first thing about Deku.
“He’s fucked in the head, alright. That guy? He never takes himself into account! He only just says shit like ‘I’m fine’ and calls it a day even if you catch him with half of his bones busted. He’d probably even walk up to you and ask you if you’re okay, and look, that’s just, screwed up, right? Asshole’s hellbent on making sure that everyone around him is fucking peachy and yet he doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of himself because damn it, he’s Deku!
“He’s always been like that, even when he could barely tell what’s left and what’s right—even when he was still young and quirkless,” he spits out, and the memory tastes like copper on his tongue. “You know, I used to think that the nerd was looking down on me every damn time he tried to help me out. I mean, why wouldn’t I? I was supposed to be stronger than him, miles ahead of him, and yet he walks up to me and thinks he can save me.
“And that shit’s insulting, alright? I figured that the fuckwit was undermining me with those stupid eyes of his, all wide and unassuming and innocent, but hey, apparently not! The idiot really just wanted to save everyone he can to the best of his ability and smile until there’s nothing fucking left for him!”
He takes a shuddering breath. “It took me a while to realize that maybe, maybe that’s so much worse than whatever it was that I thought.
“And you know what made him like this? Who made him like this?” he pauses, just for the sake of false bravado, and continues before any of them could even blink. “All Might, of course! All Might who became the symbol of peace with the same self-sacrificial bullshit for a mindset that—” he puts one hand to his knee to stop himself from keeling over, “that nearly killed him, you hear? It nearly killed him, and it nearly did so many times. He lost half his organs and it’s a miracle he’s even alive, yet he didn’t bother retiring until he milked every last bit of One For All. If he had something left after that night, maybe he wouldn’t even have retired!”
Katsuki steadies himself, and for a brief moment there seemed to be nobody else in the room. Just him, suspended in free fall, alone with only the echoes of All Might’s voice calling out to him.
I’m worried for him.
You are too.
Of fucking course I am, he thinks, and Katsuki feels so small. I’ve always been worried for him and I’d always be and I don’t know a version of myself that would not worry for him.
“So you see, All Might won’t be the one to stop Deku. Not when he doesn’t know any other way of being a hero.”
The silence that follows is suffocating—encompassing, even—and the weight of everyone’s gaze on him is too heavy to bear alone, but damn it, Katsuki is not done.
“Listen, Endeavor,” he cries, voice cracking as he finally sheds all pretense of not giving a shit about Deku, “You can’t leave those two alone with each other! Not them!”
Katsuki feels how palpable it is, the varying degrees of surprise following his fucking monologue, but he couldn’t really care less about what his class thought of him now because fuck, fuck, he’s never not given a shit about Izuku—not when he was just a blubbering klutz, not when he was just a boy struggling to run after him, not even when he made a complete fool out of Katsuki in all the mangled ways he held his heart and stitched it into something whole—and he’s so damn tired of pretending that he didn’t care about that shitty bastard because they were made to conquer this hellhole, together.
And there is nobody else Katsuki wants to stand next to once he finds himself atop everything he’s ever known.
Chatter eventually erupts in the room, a chorus of suggestions and arguments being put forth as they clamor for approval to be out there, to find him, but he elects to remain quiet. He’s said everything that needed to be said; all that is left is the grueling wait. Bitterly, he thinks that perhaps cruelty is best served like this: with the world still spinning on its axis and the space beside him unoccupied. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it should be worse.
Perhaps all this is simply retribution.
Finding his way back to Yokohama is something Katsuki hoped he didn’t have to do while he still bears wounds that have yet to heal. But fate has its own brand of humor, one that he hasn’t quite appreciated, and it never cared about whatever it is that Katsuki thought, much less hoped for.
As it stands, his body is as whole as it can be. Modern-day medicine is truly something else; on some nights Katsuki would reach for his stomach to reach for what he is sure to be a gaping hole, but the spikes that went through his body are no longer anything but a memory. All that remains of them are jagged reminders on his skin and a persistent phantom ache, fading into nothing when he succumbs to sleep.
But these aren’t the wounds Katsuki is pertaining to. It would have been much easier if they were. He could deal with torn tissue and lacerations alike, but not this. Not the taunt of previous yesterdays nestled in between the ridges of his brain, incessant in the way it tells Katsuki that you played a part in this, that this is your fault.
Because this is not a wound that is easily sutured, no. Only one that he has to bear until he is absolved of his mistakes.
And bear he must, now that he is led back to the heart of the city, to the witness of the beginning of the end. Kamino is as dreary as it had been that night. Rebuilt somehow, yes, but haunted still. The scars from the battle this ward has seen are far too much, far too deep, and if Katsuki knows anything about those stubborn little things, it’s that they never truly go away. He could practically taste the fear and regret tainting the air, stifling him like smoke, and it almost drives him to turn back.
But Katsuki has things he needs to get done.
Go on, Principal Nezu had said to them, just before they all suited up in haste. Do what you must to bring them back to us.
“Guess I’d be damned if I don’t bring you back, Deku,” Katsuki grumbles to himself, and with that thought, he kicks off the pavement and throws himself into the air.
The downpour that had ambushed them upon arriving in the city proves to be a nuisance, but as he jumps from one building to another with only the force of his quirk to propel his flight, Katsuki finds that he doesn’t really give a shit. The rain could drench him to the bone for all he cares; he’s not letting anything try to slow him down. All that matters to him is the rhythmic beep of his phone, leading him to wherever the hell Izuku could be.
Endeavor was explicit in his warning to not be too optimistic, however. It’s not a guarantee, he’d pointed out. There’s a hundred different ways he could lose his phone and have it end up in the place where the tracker points you to. And yet something—despite the herculean effort it took to not hope—is telling Katsuki that he’s here, this is where you will find him.
You can reach for his hand this time.
But the irony is not lost on him. It would be terribly funny, albeit in a twisted kind of way, if their paths were to converge here, in the very place where they both learned of the true meaning of power and what it meant to see both sides of an absolute. Kamino is many things, but to the rest of the world it is merely a stage where All Might raised his fist for the last time.
Not to Izuku. And certainly not to Katsuki.
Kamino is a wretched loathing for himself. Kamino is a reminder that being weak comes with a cost. Kamino is watching his hero fall to his knees. Kamino is a legacy cut short. Kamino is proof that One For All is both a gift and a curse. Kamino is Izuku’s fate made definite.
The rain is relentless in its onslaught, but the bite of the cold has nothing on the way Katsuki is seared by the thought of what had transpired in this city. Kamino, truly, is many things.
It takes a couple of heartbeats for Katsuki to realize that Kamino is about to be so much more.
A shared lifetime, as it turns out, is enough to recognize someone even from afar. High above the ground, he sees a huge cluster of people at a standstill before the foot of the city’s own tribute to All Might, surrounding what seems to be someone who has the rest of them under his control. A villain, his senses immediately tell him, urging him to run to the scene at once—
But all thoughts come to a screeching halt when he catches it.
A distinctive shock of green—just a glimpse of it, but one that he would notice anywhere.
For a moment, he finds himself at a loss for what to do. Katsuki must have dreamt of all the possible ways they could meet again in the aftermath of his departure, his mind traitorous in its pursuit to trade one fantasy for another, yet he can’t quite figure out how he’s supposed to proceed now that Izuku is right there. But time is selfish, and it gives him no chance to ruminate. He blinks, and the horde of people descends upon Izuku like a wave, burying him under a mass of bodies.
Katsuki is moving before he could even notice.
He blasts through the storm with single-minded focus, closing the distance at a speed that would have surprised him if he paid attention to it, and flings himself into a graceful arch once the villain is in his direct line of vision. The height he achieves is great; he could see the extent of the fight from where he is, and the trajectory he is sustaining puts him in a position perfect for an attack. But Katsuki is also fully aware that he can’t be in mid-air forever—it won’t be too long before he starts losing momentum.
Well, fuck that, he decides, stretching an arm out and curling his hand with the other. I won’t fall.
Not today.
One concentrated explosion from the center of his palm proves to be enough. It shoots directly to the villain’s head and easily knocks him down, but Katsuki’s not looking. Not at him, not at the chaos his attack left in its wake, not at the ground he’s plummeting to. No, his eyes are somewhere else, trained on a lone hunched figure underneath him, staring at the shape of him in disbelief.
I found him.
“He’s here!” he rasps out to the phone he fishes out of his pocket, and the answering tinny voices all fade into static as he plants both feet on the ground.
The civilians previously strung by the villain quickly dissipate in a fit of panic as the rest of class comes to his aid, but nothing quite registers in Katsuki’s mind even when they all try to rush past him. His chest seems to collapse on itself, trying to create a bigger cavity to house the hurricane brewing inside of him, and it almost makes it impossible for him to discern what to even feel. There’s hope and fear and fury and concern and anguish and foolish, bittersweet relief—a confusing totality, yet, perhaps, one that should only make sense. Nothing that Katsuki felt towards Izuku could ever be considered simple after all.
Nothing that stood between them could ever be easy.
Eternity stretches into gossamer-thin seconds when he approaches him, feet moving like a reflex yet still so unsure, and Katsuki’s hands ache with the urge to touch, to hold, to wipe the grime off his cheekbones and offer him rest. To exchange his very nature for something gentle. To save him, in the way Izuku has tried so many years ago. But he keeps them firmly by his side; for now, he walks, steps deliberate, cautious so as to not scare Izuku away.
And when their gazes finally meet, it rings in his head, the sound bouncing off the crevices of his skull. Red against green like blood before the earth. Except Izuku’s eyes are dimmed now, aged and tainted by the war, the shadows casted nothing like the vibrant canopies on a summer morning. Something breaks in Katsuki at the sight of it, even more so when Izuku finally speaks.
“Everyone,” he says, almost inaudible against the harsh patter of the rain, and Katsuki wants to crumble at the sound of it, wants to burn the universe for making Izuku’s voice so painfully defeated because it’s so, so wrong. “Why?”
“We’re worried about you, Deku-kun,” Uraraka replies from behind him, firm yet fragile, but Izuku waves her off.
“But I’m fine,” he parries on instinct, already picking up his discarded mask—a pitiful, fractured, unrecognizable little thing. “So don’t worry, and stay away from me.”
It slashes at Katsuki like a blade, how Izuku responds just how he thought he would, and at the forefront of his mind he figures that this, this must be kindness weaponized. He knows because it’s nothing like the Izuku who waded through the river only to ask him if he got hurt, nothing like the Izuku who came for him when no one even braved to do so. No, this Izuku is shuttered, still selfless to a fault but harsh, cruel, willing to do whatever it takes if it means he could keep them safe.
And so when he stands before Izuku in all his bloodied, battered, broken glory, he wields mockery like a shield and thinks, fear has made me do many things. He thinks, I pushed you away because the thought of you fleeing with a piece of myself scares me more than it should. He thinks, I've hurt you and it disgusts me still, but why must you hurt yourself too?
He voices none of these and claps instead.
“How inspiring of you,” Katsuki snarls, lip twisting in hurt before forcing a cackle, the sound of it manic and ugly. “As expected from the mighty inheritor of One for All!”
“But tell us this, Deku,” he enunciates carefully, one foot already in front of the other. “Are you smiling now?”
Except it’s not a question. They both know it’s not. Not when the answer is already laid out before them in fine print and Katsuki has known it long before he even dared to open his mouth. It’s in the slump of Izuku’s shoulders and the tilt of his head, the falter of his footsteps, the way his syllables are as frigid as the howling wind. No trace of the smile he wanted to wear when he vowed to be a hero.
It pains Katsuki more than it should.
In the next instance Izuku bows himself, boots dragging across the pavement as if it took everything in him to stay upright. His eyes are downcast, the tendrils of blackwhip dormant around him, but Katsuki recognizes how he squares his shoulders. It’s an answer to a question he has yet to ask.
“Those smiles,” Izuku grits out, “everyone’s peace of mind. Those are the reasons I need to keep going. Those are the only things that could make me smile again.”
And then Katsuki hears the familiar crackle of One For All, electric green wrapping itself around Izuku when he finally lifts his head. His eyes are brighter now, greener, but still not the same.
“So please. Get out my way.”
“Ha!” Katsuki huffs just as Izuku takes a step back. He hears his classmates shuffling by his side, an attempt to cover the perimeter in the event that Izuku runs away. “Try and make us, you All Might wannabe!”
It’s a low blow, that Katsuki can admit, but he knows that this Izuku would hear no reason. Goading him is not exactly the best alternative, but if prodding him where it stings is what would get him to listen, if hurting him is how he could save him, then Katsuki would do just that.
Kindness weaponized, Katsuki decides. Just as you’d taught me.
But Izuku seems unfazed. That much isn’t surprising; he also knows, unfortunately, that Izuku is just as stubborn as he is, that Izuku would not put up an easy fight. It proves to be true when Izuku straightens himself with blackwhip coming alive at his command. The air surrounding them becomes charged, and the strength emanating from him is so powerful that Katsuki could barely suppress a shiver when he gets a feel of it. He’s heard that Izuku has managed to control the quirks of the Fourth sand the Sixth, bringing the count of his arsenal to five—if not more—but to see how that development affected Izuku up close is as exhilarating as it is terrifying.
“Thank you, all of you, for coming for me,” Izuku says, and adjusts his stance as if to lunge. “But—”
Smoke envelops them at once, effectively obscuring their vision, and Katsuki belatedly realizes that the calculated change in Izuku’s form was meant to be a distraction.
“It’s a smoke screen!” yells Kirishima from his general left, confirming what he already knew, and he curses the audacity of that nerd to pull such a cheap party trick.
“That fucker!” he growls out. “Don’t let him get away!”
He drops to his knees, pushes both of his gauntlets to the ground, and fires. The force of the blast immediately dispels the diversion Izuku put up for them, putting a halt to his attempt to escape.
“Don’t wanna chat, hah?” he yells, stalling Izuku to the best of his ability while he tries to brush off the recoil of his quirk. “You just gonna sneak off, then? Not even gonna grace us some of your time now that you’re a big shot?”
It’s hard to see clearly, what with the downpour not letting up, but if Katsuki squints hard enough he might just pick out the pain swimming in Izuku’s eyes, raw and all-consuming. He should be glad all his shit-talking is working somehow.
He should be.
“Are we just a bunch of extras to you now, Deku?”
But he’s not.
A flock of birds come zooming to swarm Izuku and Katsuki knows it’s time to move. If Izuku were to forgo having a conversation with the rest of them, the plan was to mobilize a coordinated attack to corner him until he fucking listens. A mission authorized both by U.A. and the heroes Izuku is supposedly in partnership with to ensure his safety because he very clearly was hellbent on saving the world all by himself.
So Katsuki momentarily takes the back seat as Kouda begins talking to Izuku while commanding the birds to circle him like a moving, living cage. Except it’s obviously not enough to keep him captive. He breaks away and floats, uses blackwhip to anchor himself to a nearby building, but it’s Sero who tries to give chase this time. From there, the entire thing devolves into a glorified mess. One classmate comes after another, each of them trying to say something, anything, that could possibly get Izuku to hear their cause while trying to subdue him, and Katsuki just watches. Waits until he has to intervene. Marvels at how destructively strong Izuku has become as he easily negates whatever is thrown at him. Nurses the visceral ache in his gut as he listens to Izuku, anguished, crying out for him to be left alone.
And then he hears Iida screaming from the speaker of his phone, voice insistent as he addresses Bakugou through the shared line.
“Bakugou! Bakugou! We lost visual on Midoriya! Last spotted northeast of the plaza! ”
Now isn’t that just fantastic.
“Any more specifics I need to fucking know?”
“He should still be on elevated ground, but it’s difficult to confirm with the smoke screen in place!”
“On it,” he affirms gruffly, and in the next breath he’s already thrown himself off the ground.
The landscape blurs before him as he races to the vicinity where Izuku could be, and when he sees the scale of the smoke, he grits his teeth. The same trick won’t work for this one; the smoke from his quirk may only add to it. But he’s smart enough to know that this puts Izuku at a disadvantage as much as them, and if he’s covering this much area as a last-ditch attempt to escape, then he must be buying time.
Katsuki peels his eyes open as he surveys the area, searching for any trace of the nerd. And when he does, he almost misses him. He finds Izuku hidden in the shadows, crouched low with his hands on his knees, the lines of him tense in all the wrong places. His breathing is labored, sounding more like frenzied wheezes for air, and Katsuki almost lowers his gauntlets and shows him mercy, almost tries to walk up to him instead of maintaining this stupid excuse for a fight, but Izuku must have sensed the moment he hesitated because he’s up again, eyes alight, the beginnings of blackwhip materializing before him like a warning.
“Don’t make this any harder than it should be, Kacchan,” Izuku tries to threaten him, but to Katsuki it sounded more like a plea.
He blasts himself forward and Izuku reflexively jumps to the side, already slipping under Katsuki before his right arm could even complete its swing. He turns, and immediately he sees Izuku trying to coil his arms together, but he hasn’t trained with the nerd constantly for nothing. He creates a calculated explosion between his palms, strong enough to force them apart and break out of the incomplete bind but not enough to blow Izuku’s hands off.
“What? You think this shit is hard? You think that getting as many quirks as your fingers on one hand means fighting you is going to be hard?” Katsuki spits as he watches Izuku try to regain his footing. “You’re gon’ make me laugh.”
Izuku opens his mouth as if to say something, but he bites down on whatever it is and takes to the air instead.
“Not so fast, Deku!”
He thrusts his hands back and fires, increasing the strength of each explosion until he’s closed the distance Izuku managed to attain in such a short amount of time. But Izuku is not Izuku if not for his insufferable creativity, so Katsuki can’t even say he’s surprised at the slightest when powerful gusts of air are used against him to ward him off. He retaliates by latching onto his ankle, pulls until they’re squabbling mid-air, and sends another blast with his free hand, pushing them to the nearest rooftop they could probably crash through.
They hurtle towards it in a tangle of limbs, and once they both find themselves rolling on a horizontal surface, Katsuki wastes no time in trying to immobilize Izuku. He straddles his knees, pinning him down with his weight as he holds both of his wrists down to the floor. A familiar position though lacking in finesse. He finds that he doesn’t appreciate the tinge of nostalgia it brings him.
“You really think you could outrun me mid-air, nerd? Tch. I could already do this just fine before you even got a quirk!”
“Kacchan, please, just let me go!”
“And what, hah? I’ll let you go so you can run off to fuck knows where and fight one shitty fry after another until you find All For One and Shigaraki? So you can face those bastards while you’re all worn down with hardly anyone to back you up? So you can try to save the world when you don’t even know how to save yourself? So you can be a fucking martyr?”
“Stop! You don’t even understand—”
“No, you stop,” he interjects, grip tightening. “And don’t you dare tell me I don’t understand what it means to tell people who want to help me away to fuck off when I think I don’t need them because trust me, Deku, I do.”
Katsuki takes a short intake of air, pausing just so the weight of his words could sink in and serve its purpose.
“And I know that you’re doing this because you want to protect everyone and whatever other bullshit you got in your head, but have you stopped to consider that maybe we can protect ourselves just fine, hah? You’re looking down on us—on me, now, you nerd?”
Izuku stares up at him, looking defeated, resigned. “Kacchan, you know that’s not—”
“Then why, Deku!” he exclaims, hands thrown up in the air. “I get it, the fate of the world depends on whether or not you can defeat All For One. You have to be the one who does it because that’s the only damned reason One For All even exists. It’s a big thing! I get it!”
He brings his face down and pushes a finger to Izuku’s chest. This close he could make out his reflection on Izuku’s irises; it almost makes him think about how the other boy must be seeing him at this very instance. “But you—you don’t have to do this alone.”
“Except I have to!” Izuku shouts, shoving Katsuki off him, reignited with fervor. “Did you know what the other users told me, Kacchan? With the way One For All is now, it’s highly unlikely that I could even transfer it! I’m going to be the last wielder of One For All, and that means I have to do everything to make sure that this evil, all this—it has to stop with me! And I’m not going to put you and anyone else in a situation where any of you could get hurt when this responsibility is mine!”
“You asshole, you are looking down on us—”
“I watched you almost die, Kacchan! You were literally skewered in front of me because you pushed me out of the way and I don’t want to see anything like that ever again! And not just you! There’s Aizawa-sensei! Gran Torino! Todoroki-kun, all our other classmates, our senpai, the heroes who died because Shigaraki was looking for me.” Izuku hiccups, desperation cresting. “I can’t have more blood spilled for me, Kacchan. I can’t.”
“You self-centered piece of shit!” he backs Izuku up, toe to toe with him yet still so far away. “If we get hurt, then that’s on us! None of us here are going to sign up for a war for your sake! You’re not the only one who wants to end all this—you’re not the only one who wants to smile again, Deku!”
And maybe the distance between them as it stands is wider than any river, grander than any skyward fall, but Katsuki swore that he would reach his hand out, this time.
“So for fuck’s sake, just come back. With us. With me.”
Izuku crumbles before him like a house of cards, spilling over as his legs give out. He shakes his head, once, twice, and muffles his sobs with the back of his hand. It’s futile. His cries occupy the silence louder than the rain, and that probably shouldn’t have relieved Katsuki, how Izuku has changed yet still stayed the same.
“I’m not going to stand by and watch you kill yourself, you fucking moron. Who else is going to be my regular sparring partner, hah? Who else is going to make me work for the number one spot? Who else is going to help me show all those stupid extras how it’s done?”
A series of sniffles and a wet chuckle. And then:
“Kacchan.”
It’s not the first time he’s heard the nickname slip from Izuku since they saw each other again, but it deals far more damage than any hit he’s taken today nevertheless. A clean fissure straight through his chest, wounding even the poisoned, beating thing that lived inside of it.
Stunning, truly, how Izuku breaks him in the worst and best of ways.
Katsuki then extends his arm out, palm up, fingers curling ever so slightly—a question and a promise. The gesture embarrasses him, and for a brief second he considers that Izuku may not even remember whatever the fuck his inane ass is trying to reference, but when he sees how Izuku looks up at him, with tears brimming his eyes and the shadow of childlike innocence tugging at a smile, he thinks, yeah. This is worth the mortification.
This is worth any sacrifice.
Izuku takes his hand, and Katsuki forces himself not to count the new scars that have made a home on his skin. Instead he hauls Izuku up, pulls him into his orbit, and wraps him in an embrace. A startled noise tumbles out of Izuku, but he quells the urge to look at his face.
“I never want to be without you, you hear me?” he whispers to the space between them. He feels how damp his cheeks have become, but he doubts that the rain is to blame because he could taste it, the salt on his lips, on his tongue, lingering even after every shaky exhale. Perhaps he is finally drowning. “It’s dumb and pathetic but fuck, I never want to be without you again.”
Izuku breaks again, this time in his arms, and clutches tightly at Katsuki like a lifeline. He doesn’t answer him. Only holds him hard enough to bruise, bawls into the crook of his neck, comes apart. Katsuki is not naïve. He knows that Izuku could still run away. He knows that Izuku could still slip from his fingers, still choose to fight a war Katsuki may not even hear of until it’s too late. He knows that Izuku could still leave him behind. It’s a possibility in every passing second, grave as it may be, and as he slowly acquaints himself with the feel of Izuku pressed against him, warm and solid and real, he figures that this, this would hurt him so much more.
And still he wants, desperately, even if the pain of losing Izuku is something he may not be able to bear.
Such is the price of loving a boy who sees his body as an instrument of a cause, a sum of obligations, a mere means to an end.