Archive of Our Own ^beta

Izuku climbed the tree next to his house and threw his backpack through his open window on the second floor before hopping into the house himself.

He shut the window as quietly as he could before turning to rummage in his bedside drawer.

Izuku had woken up that morning, gotten ready for school, ate breakfast and said goodbye to his mom before leaving the house. He had walked down the street towards his school for a while, just in case his mom was watching him. He then looped back around to re-enter the house from the back window.

Once he had collected everything that he needed from the drawer, Izuku went to his school bag and pulled out a spiral notebook - an outlier to his impressive collection of composition books - and opened it up to a page somewhere in the middle.

If anyone had found the notebook before he was ready, he wanted it to look like it was a new notebook with nothing written in it at all. So he had left pages at the beginning blank and started writing around the middle instead.

Izuku flipped through the pages until he came to the last one with writing on it before he signed his name below the last line.

Waiting till now to sign the note left him with deniability if anyone were to look past the empty pages at the beginning. He could simply say he found it, and the only one that would care to ask would be his mom; and her wanting to believe him combined with the oddity of the spiral notebook would lead to her accepting that excuse.

However he probably wasted his time with all of the preventative measures. Lately, not even his mom was asking after him. He would get home from school and she would gesture halfheartedly to a sandwich on the kitchen counter, kiss his forehead and return to her recliner with a sigh. If she wasn’t working of course.

His mom had been visibly exhausted and stressed for months and this cemented Izuku’s plan in his mind.

He left the notebook open on his desk, flipped back to the first page of writing, and anxiously fiddled with the knife from the drawer in his hand, and clutched a bottle of pills and a pad of bright yellow sticky notes in the other.

The pills were just insurance to make sure everything went the way he wanted it to, so he had added pop rocks into the bottle because he figured, why not?

Izuku took the top note and stuck it on his closet door before surrounding it in a circle with blank sticky notes. He nodded, satisfied with his work.

Izuku opened the closet door and closed it behind him.

Moments later blood was already pooling on the outside of the closet.

~~~

“Katsuki! Get down here, you’re going to be late to school!”

“Coming, hag!” Katsuki yelled down the stairs in response before grabbing his backpack and flinging one strap over his shoulder.

“Brat, what did I say about calling me that! Respect your mother.”

“Whatever.” Katsuki mumbled, rolling his eyes, and kicked his door shut behind him.

“If you are talking back to me, say it to my face!”

“Shut up! I’ll be right down!”

Katsuki’s mother always knew when he was griping about something she did or said, he swore that she had some sort of sixth sense or something.

Katsuki stomped down the stairs, as he did every morning, and sat down at the kitchen table. He grunted his thanks when his father passed him a plate with toast and jam. He picked up a slice and shoved it into his mouth.

“Katsuki!” his mother chided, looking at his father and gesturing in Katsuki’s direction.

“Mind your manners, take bites of your food please.” Katsuki’s dad requested softly, earning him a nod from his wife.

Scowling into his toast, Katsuki obliged, it wasn’t something that was worth fighting over at the moment. If he started he definitely would be late for school like the hag had warned him when he was in his room. He hated Mondays.

~~~

Deku never showed up to school and Deku was never even as much as a minute late. Katsuki was now in his afterschool fencing club but he had spent the entire morning thinking that he would show up any minute and then he could interrogate the Nerd on why he was late.

Deku probably slept in or some other dumb shit like that and Katsuki would never let him live it down when he showed up for school tomorrow.

Katsuki was scowling down at his after school snack when his homeroom teacher approached him.

“Bakugou-san come with me and grab your things, your parents are here to pick you up.” the teacher told him.

Katsuki didn’t move and just glared at the teacher, confused and indignant, “Can I eat first?”

“Your mother said it was a family emergency, so just get up kid,” The teacher responded.

That got Katsuki’s attention. His first thought was that his mom or dad were hurt, but his lame teacher had said parents so nothing would have happened with them if they were both here for him. But that left Katsuki stumped. They didn’t have any other family… unless you counted Midoriya Inko who he had been calling ‘Auntie’ since he had been in diapers.

Katsuki froze.

Suddenly everything made sense to him. Deku hadn’t been at school that day , something had to be wrong with Auntie Inko. He scowled at the brief worry he felt for Deku’s feelings. But he would be sad if Auntie Inko had died. She had always been nicer to him than his mom was to him, which was a part of the reason that he resented Deku in the first place.

Although she would probably hate him if she knew how he treated her son.

Katsuki shoved his lunch into his backpack, pulled one strap of the bag over his shoulder and pushed past his teacher as he walked towards the main office.

The hag had always liked Deku better than him, so if Auntie Inko couldn’t take care of Deku anymore, she would for sure try and tell the ass-wipe that he could live with them and it would be a cold day in hell before Katsuki would allow that to happen.

He would make sure Deku didn’t want to stay with them.

~~~

The hag’s eyes were red and puffy when Katsuki walked into the office. His useless homeroom teacher had stopped following him. His mother showing evidence of crying Katsuki was counting as a confirmation of his theory.

She didn’t even speak after he approached his parents. His old man put his hand on his shoulder.

“Did something happen to Auntie Inko?” Katsuki asked as he tried to shrug off the hand.

“We’ll tell you when we get home,” His dad said gently, which irritated Katsuki. He wasn’t a fragile little kid, he was on his way to becoming the next number one hero.

“Can’t you just tell me now so I can go back to class? I have perfect attendance and the entrance exam for UA is coming up .” Katsuki dismissed, pulling away further from his dad.

The hag started crying and Katsuki realized he had never seen her cry before- and damn she was an ugly ass crier.

Katsuki wasn’t able to read the look his dad had when he looked at him, “I’m sure they will make an exception this time.”

Katsuki nodded wordlessly and trailed behind his parents as his dad escorted his mother to the car; whatever happened to Auntie Inko must be serious to get this kind of reaction out of the hag. She was leaning on his father and seemed to barely be able to walk.

A feeling of dread started to pool unbidden in Katsuki’s stomach. He didn’t like where this was going.

~~~

Katsuki didn’t try to get his parents to talk during the car ride home. He knew it was a lost cause, plus he wasn’t really into risking his life by getting the driver of a metal death trap emotional.

He waited impatiently until they were all seated in the living room and then he finally snapped after no one started to speak to him when they were situated.

“What the fuck is going on?” Katsuki asked sharply, in a tone that demanded answers.

“Katsuki…” the hag started before bursting into sobs.

“You know how Izuku wasn’t in class today, Katsuki?” His father waited for him to nod and cut him off before he could say anything, “Well, Inko got worried when Izuku didn’t come home from school so she went up to check his room and found out that he killed himself in his closet.”

Katsuki’s mind went completely blank as the words he expected to hear didn’t come and instead a wave of anger and denial washed over him, “Deku wouldn’t do that, he wants to be a hero.”

“Get that wretched name out of your mouth,” The hag snapped, “What the hell is wrong with you.”

“Inko had us come by for his suicide note herself, he left a letter specifically for you. I’m sorry, Katsuki, but he really is dead. I saw the blood-”

“She didn’t want to see you, Katsuki, do you know why that might be?” Mitsuki cut in accusingly, causing Katsuki’s hackles to raise immediately.

“Mitsuki, please,” Katsuki’s father reached out a hand and placed it on the hag’s thigh, serving as a warning.

Katsuki relaxed for a moment before starting to process things. All of the things he had ever said and done started to crash down on him. Deku was dead. Auntie Inko didn’t want to see him. Deku left a note. Katsuki killed Deku and Auntie Inko knew it. His parents knew it, but most importantly Deku would never become a hero now and it was all his fault.

“How about you go to your room, we left the letters up there,” his dad suggested and Katsuki got up immediately, as he started to walk away his father called back out to him, “Katsuki, the three of us will have to have a talk later about your relationship with Izuku.”

Katsuki turned away, leaving the ominous promise of what was to come to hang in the air.

~~~

Katsuki sat on his bed with his chin in his hands, staring at the two photocopied pieces of paper on his desk.

He had been sitting and staring at the letters for thirty minutes. He already knew what the letters would say. Dek-Izuku would condemn him for killing him, blame him and call him out for every shitty thing he ever did and every horrible thing he ever said.

A month ago he had told Izuku to kill himself for the first time ever. Had told him to pray for a quirk in his next life and now he was gone. Katsuki wasn’t ready to be confronted with what was written in Izuku’s letters, but he would never be so he tried to will himself to stand up.

His dad and the hag were going to be talking to him soon and he needed to know what they knew. Katsuki wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him after that talk but if he was being honest, he didn’t really care anymore.

When he finally got up and had the letters in hand he couldn’t bring himself to make his way back to the bed. Katsuki simply collapsed onto the floor and rested his head against his desk, choosing to read the one that wasn’t addressed to him first.

~~~

Somehow the conversations that followed that night didn’t end up with Katsuki’s parents kicking him out. They had a long talk about what he had done to Izuku and then they had an even longer talk about their family and what Izuku had said in his letters. The hag had even apologized to him, she never apologized. His dad wanted them all to go to therapy together and separately and the hag had even agreed. Katsuki was left reeling. He got rid of all of his All Might merch that didn’t have memories of Izuku attached to them and developed an unhealthy anger towards the hero.

Izuku’s funeral had been open casket. After what he said in his letters and Auntie Inko had found in his diaries she refused for the casket to even be closed for one second. Her and the Bakugou’s were the only ones that showed up and it was a very quiet ceremony. Auntie Inko had him cremated after and the four of them traveled to the beach where Auntie Inko had taken Izuku and Katsuki as kids before everything went to shit.

They spread his ashes into the ocean and waited until the tide took him out to sea.

In the next few weeks, things got better for Katsuki, better than they had ever been. The hag didn’t hit him anymore and yelled at him less. Therapy was seeming to help them all and Mitsuki made sure that Inko found her own therapist as well. They had dinners together at least twice a week and Katsuki was pulled from Aldara to finish his education online.

Katsuki felt like he was benefiting from Izuku’s death and the thought made him sick, his therapist tried to console him and feed him some bullshit about grief and tragedy, how they bring people together but Katsuki blew him off.

Katsuki eventually got accepted into UA but it lacked the satisfaction that he thought he would have just a few months ago. All he could do now was become strong enough to fulfill Izuku’s request of him, and be the hero Izuku always saw him to be. Maybe then he would finally feel less like a disgusting monster.