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Bakugou is kidnapped.
Bakugou is tortured.
Bakugou is rescued.
Bakugou is gone.
It’s as though he’s begun living his life through a lense, like he’s nothing more than a spectator in his own body, just someone to observe from the back row rather than the first person perspective Katsuki’s almost certain he’s supposed to be experiencing each day. He’s trapped in a little glass box somewhere deep inside his mind, unable to reach for the controls yet forced to watch nonetheless. It hadn’t always been like this, he thinks. Once upon a time he’d actually partaken in the dedications of what to do, felt the brightness of the world through his own senses rather than the dull grey through a filter of his confinements, under fuzzy fingers.
Everything had been different before. Before. Before what? Katsuki can’t quite remember, his memories drawing blank as he tries to picture anything before the starchy hospital with its fluorescent lights and incessant beeping. The best he gets are the flashes of something that come to him in the moments before sleep, so vivid and raw, the sharp edges of unwanted emotions dragging along his crawling skin. In those moments he remembers it all, every painful second of it. In those moments he begs to forget, to never have to feel this burning pain ever again. By the morning it’s always gone again, leaving Katsuki with no recollections of anything Before.
The first thing he remembers after the sterile smell of the brightly lit hospital with all its beeping machines and scratchy gowns, is a car. He finds himself in a car. His mothers car, he’s pretty sure, although he doesn’t quite know why he is sure of that. He has no recollection of the woman, and yet he knows her, knows things about her only a son could know about his mother. He knows her perfume, the deep musk of it filling his nostrils whenever she leans in too close to him. He knows her hands, firm and uncaring as they clamp down on his forearm, the familiarity of the position uncanny. He knows her voice, the harsh drawl of it scratching against his eardrums as he talks.
It’s strange, being in this car. He could’ve sworn that he was in a hospital bed just a second ago, fighting against the restraints of the stiff gown.
There are people talking somewhere nearby. The blond woman. His mother. She’s talking, her voice just as piercing as ever. Is she talking to him? Katsuki doesn’t know, he can’t really make sense of the words in any case. Maybe she was talking to the brown haired man next to her in the passenger seat. He seems to own the other voice, the softer one with the flat tone and bored expression Katsuki had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. The image sticks in his mind, burning into his eyelids when he blinks.
This man is familiar too, much in the same way as his mother. He knows this man. Perhaps he’s Katsuki’s father; although he can’t remember this man in the same organised way as he can the woman, it seems fitting.
The man and woman continue to talk. Katsuki can’t bring himself to care, not bothering to even try to make sense of their conversation. They’re in the car for a while, the seconds crawling by unremarkably slowly. He’s in a car, and then…
Katsuki blinks up at the sore in front of him, this too is something he recognises. Mitsuki fumbled with her keys for a moment, the man shifting impatiently beside them. And, oh. Katsuki’s mother’s name is Mistuki. He adds it to the list in his mind of things he remembers about her. So far it had her perfume, her hands, her voice, and now her name. It’s not much, but it’s the most Katsuki knows about anyone else.
A moment later he’s in his room, watching an All Might poster fall from his hands. All Might. The name brings a painful twinge to his chest, a scowl growing on his face as he looks around at the bare walls and messy floor of the room. His room. He was here Before.
Then he’s asleep, lost amidst a the white hot burn of Dabi’s hands and the unnatural cold of Shigaraki’s, crumbling into disoriented hyperventilation as he wrestles with his duvet, with the villains, with himself, panicking when he quickly realised his efforts are pointless. There is no escaping the prison of his mind.
When he next returns to himself, Katsuki’s sat around a table with the man and woman, spooning soup down his throat without really tasting it. Mitsuki and Masaru don’t speak and Katsuki knows somehow not to disturb the tense quiet. Not when Miatuki’s mad. Perfume, hands, voice, name, anger.
And then he’s gone again, lost to the abyss of The Inbetween place that fills the blanks of his disconnected memories. But that’s all it is; blank. Katsuki spends what feels like days in the Inbetween, each moment stretching to infinity in the vast nothingness of this place. He supposes it must be a place in his mind, The Inbetween, but it doesn’t feel like the glass box from where he spectates his life. There’s even less than that in The Inbetween. It’s mind numbing, not that he feels much anyway. In fact Katsuki can’t even find it within himself to provoke enough emotion from his lifeless brain to even feel vaguely bored by the sheer absence of anything.
Sometimes he’ll teeter on the edge of Something, ready to fall forward into the Something he seems to be so close to reaching. If only he could break out of the glass box, he’s sure everything would become much clearer. He gets so close to remembering the Something, and then he’ll blink and he’s back to what he supposes is ‘the real world’, to the life he’s been watching in snapshots, the one he’s not quite sure he’s still living. He never remembers The Inbetween when he leaves. He never remembers the Before when he wakes up.
In these moments where the fuzziness fades and Katsuki returns to the world outside his own head, nothing ever feels quite right. It never is right, but always seems as though reality spins further off axis when he’s staring down at hands that don’t feel like his, or lying in a hauntingly familiar bed that looks just a little wrong. Maybe it’s the house, he’s always hated it here. Perfume, hands, voice, name, anger, hatred.
Funnily enough, when the numbness begins to fade and The Inbetween seems to move closer to the glass box, it’s the hurt that comes back first. It lingers after the horrors of the night, leaving him to revel in memories hee not sure he wants to have back. Memories he’s not sure are real. Memories he’s scared will be snatched back by the darkness of the next night.
It’s all the same, the memories that come to him in the mornings. They’re memories of slaps across his face, the sting of his mothers hands at his throat, hee ring digging deep into the tender skin there. Memories of the sludge villain’s hold on his body, the awful green slime oozing from his mouth for hours after he’d been rescued. Memories of Dabi’s burning hand as he was dragged through the portal. Memories of Shigaraki’s shaking fist, four fingers dancing along his skin, taunting the ever present possibility of a sudden death. Perfume, hands, voice, name, anger, hatred, pain.
Katsuki stays away for longer after that, gagging and panting whenever he’s touched, shrinking away from the hands, hands, hands. He starts to fear going back, and just in the usual cruel way of the world, he begins to struggle differentiating The Inbetween from the glass box, as though the two are becoming the same thing. It leaves the ‘real world’ seeming even further away than ever as he dwells endlessly in the shapeless memories of emotion, the ghosts of his past haunting his dreams each night without fail.
People come slower to Katsuki’s muddled mind. He knows his parents' faces, they at least are a constant. Even then, sometimes he finds himself staring at the blonde woman with the mean eyes for a moment too long before the connection of ‘Mitsuki’, or ‘Mum’ floats into his memory.
A boy comes next. With green hair and a freckled face. A boy who cries when Katsuki dreams of him. A boy who’s face sticks in his mind and causes endless guilt and frustration to build in his chest until he feels as though he might explode. A boy who makes Katsuki feel ashamed when he thinks of him. A boy who has seen too much of him. A boy who knows more than most. Izuku Midoriya comes back to Katsuki slowly. The boy who hurt.
Then there’s someone else. Flashes of red hair and a pointed smile. He bombards Katsuki’s thoughts, circling his confused mind like a whirlwind of unmatched longing. Then more of the pieces come back to him, the confusion clearing a little. The longing stays strong, a deep ache in his chest as though Katsuki’s missing a part of himself without this boy. These memories are softer, skipped heartbeats as his heart rises in his throat, the phantom of soft hands held in his, the warm kisses and stolen breath, the quiet whispers meant only for his ears. Kirishima Eijirou comes back to Katsuki like a rush of life. The boy who loved.
They come quicker after that: the yellow boy with the charged buzz. Denki Kaminari. The pink girl with her warm hugs. Ashido Mina. They boy with the widest smile. Hanta Sero. The insomniac with the floaty hair. Hitoshi Shinsou. The boy with two quirks. Shouto Todoroki. Shouta Aizawa. Tenya Iida. Hizashi Yamada. Kyouka Jirou. Momo Yaoyorozu. Yuga Aoyama.
It’s slow progress, but steadily Katsuki’s regaining a feel for who he is, or rather who he used to be. Before. Before what? He wishes he could forget.
As he continues to remember, Katsuki spends more and more time out of his head, away from The Inbetween. He almost misses it some days. Remembering is taxing, like relearning everything that’s ever happened to him all at once sometimes. He has moments of clarity where’s it’s as though someone’s flipped a switch in his brain and now he’s suddenly got access to things that have been hiding feel in the forgotten folds of his memory.
Even as Katsuki goes through the motions of everyday life, he still struggles to feel , like sometimes ripped his heart right from his chest and left him hollow, missing a crucial piece of himself. Whoever’s stolen his emotions away doesn’t let anything escape until he deletes too deep and is met with a sudden shock of feeling, often leaving him all the more empty in the aftermath. His emotions stay in their own Inbetween.
Eventually, the glass shatters.
Two weeks (months? days? years? minutes? decades?) pass, Katsuki coming back a little by little, inching ever closer towards Something. Quite suddenly, one night it’s all there. Katsuki has too many pieces, all of them crammed into the fumbled jigsaw that is his identity, his memory, his emotions. None of it quite fits, all of it much too large for Katsuki to sort through. He’d thought he was in pieces before, but that proves quickly to pale in comparison to After. After the glass breaks and Katsuki’s left falling right out of the bid and into this mix of assorted memories, with the sense that he’s falling apart even worse than before, the gap between who he was and who he’s become ripping wide. An unwanted feeling of unease runs along the greyed seams of this tear, as though Katsuki’s ended up on the wrong side with no prospect of crossing back over.
So suddenly had the careful construction of his mind come crashing down, the Inside and Outside of Katsuki’s loathsome self mingling in the most awful, disorienting way. He’s not sure what time it is when he stumbled downstairs, gasping desperately for air, his mind a colourful mess of stained sadness and tinted anger king since last. Katsuki finds himself longing for the numbness of The Inbetween more now than ever before.
Somehow he’s on the floor of the kitchen, shattered glass glinting up at him from all around. Blood sero’s from wounds he can’t feel, crimson ribbons trailing lines of remorse and fear across his aching limbs. Katsuki could scream. He just wants an out from this confusion, from blurred lines and false realities, from missing pieces and too much time lost to useless frustration.
Someone’s screaming. It’s loud. Too loud. And, oh. It’s Katsuki. He’s being loud. Too loud. He should stop. Someone will hear. They’ll come here…
But despite the unfeeling hand that he raises to wipe his face free of tears, fresh tracks fall. And no matter the force with which Katsuki clamps that same hand over his mouth, the anguished screams never let up, echoing off the pristine countertops.
When it finally stops, Katsuki has only a second of shocked relief to relish in before horror floods over him in icy waves of shock because HE certainly didn’t do anything to calm himself down. It’s then that he registers that hands around his throat, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. The wall against his back presses on closer as the hands grow tighter still. Perfume, hands, voice, name, anger, pain, fear.
A brief moment of panic blooms in his mind before Katsuki blanks, barely able to hear the disappointed words spewing in hateful shouts from Mitsuki’s mouth, hee lips curled upwards in obvious disgust. It isn’t as though he’s not already heard it all before anyway.
‘Insolent child’ - he’s been hearing that one for as long as he can remember.
‘Bully’ - since he’d started bossing Izuku around when they were small children, long before any actual bullying.
‘Disappointment’ - after every test, every report card, every score on anything Katsuki had ever done.
‘Mistake’ - whenever he messed anything up, especially if it made more work for her.
‘Cruel’ - for the very mannerisms he’d learnt from Mitsuki.
‘Unworthy’ - to make him feel as far from heroic as possible.
‘Villain’ - because she knows it hurts.
Katsuki doesn’t feel his limbs move, but Mitsuki ends up in the floor, scrambling quickly to her feet to chase after Katsuki as he flies through the house, barely breathing as he snatches up his long neglected fully packed bag, and rushes out of the front door before his mother has the chance to catch up.
He runs and runs and runs. For several blocks he keeps up a constant spring, only coming to a half to catch his breath outside the train station. He’s on a train to Shizuoka before he can stop to think about what he’s doing. He can vaguely remember Aizawa and All Might making a house visit a week or so ago to explain the new dorms UA has implemented. He’s going there. Anywhere where there aren’t people who are actively trying to kill him. Eijirou will be at UA. He’s going to where there aren’t hands, hands, hands at his throat. Perfume, hands, voice, hands, anger, hands, pain, hands, fear, hands, hands, hands.
The train ride takes longer than Katsuki would’ve hoped, but the quiet of the empty carriage does sort of remind him of The Inbetween. A small comfort in this jarring situation.
When he does eventually reach UA, it’s dark out. Katsuki scrambles for his keycard at the gate, rushing across campus to the Heights Alliance building where he’s sure his idiots will be. Sure enough, as he staggers into the common roll there they are, grouped around a table, cards strewn in front of them. They all pause when they spot him before rushing over to erupt into endless concerned questions.
“Bakubro! What are you doing here?”
“Kacchan, it's good to see you. Are you doing alright?”
“Bakubabe! You’re back! We’ve been so worried about you, because school started and we all woven in here but you were here and-”
“Kats,” Eijirou. It’s Eijirou, his eyes searching Katsuki’s form before stopping to linger on his neck. Alarm grows on his face, forehead scrunching into a frown. “Kats, are those bruises?”
The bags drop from Katsuki’s hands, his body filling them down soon after, face crumpling as his mask slips. Eijirou gets to him first, holding Katsuki to his chest as the silent years begin to fall. Mina’s next, enveloping him in one of her warm hugs from his other side. Then he’s surrounded, and for once the hands on him don’t feel threatening. Firm as they are, they feel more like a rope he can cling to so as to prevent himself from falling any further into the maze of his emotions. He’s sure they’ll let him hang onto them.
They stay there for a while, comforting hands, hands, hands reaching out for him, grounding Katsuki as he cries. Soon, he’ll tell them what happened. When they ask, he’ll tell them everything. But right now he just cries, held up by his favourite people.