Chapter Text
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A year has passed since Izuku tried to kill himself.
he still hasn’t woken up. He has changed, physically, he has gotten taller, his hair longer and he looks older too. But, he’s still not awake.
Everyone now has gotten in different universities and Academies. Katsuki is now in a musical academy and he is the lead singer of a band he and his friends made.
It’s been a whole year, yet Katsuki still hasn’t gotten over it.
He was sitting in the waiting room chair, his head between his knees, his hands locked behind his neck.
He looked like he was bracing for an explosion, but the explosion had already happened.
Izuku had jumped.
He hadn't left a note. Or maybe he had, and the police had taken it. Katsuki didn't know. All he knew was that for three years, he had told Izuku he was useless. For a decade, he had told him he was a burden. And then told him to jump. And he actually did.
The combination had finally been enough to break the person Katsuki thought was unbreakable.
"Bakugou."
A hand touched his shoulder. Katsuki flinched so hard he nearly fell out of the plastic chair. It was Kirishima. His eyes were red-rimmed, his usual bright energy extinguished like a candle in a vacuum.
"The doctors... they said he might wake up soon.."
Katsuki didn't look up. "He did it because of me."
"Don't say that," Kirishima whispered, though his voice lacked conviction.
"I was the one!" Katsuki roared, finally standing up. His sudden movement made a nurse nearby jump. He didn't care. He felt like he was vibrating out of his skin. "I was the one who told him to do it back in school! It’s my fault! It’s all my fucking fault!"
He turned and slammed his fist into the wall. The drywall cracked. He didn't use his quirk—he wanted to feel the bones in his hand protest. He wanted the physical pain to drown out the sound of the heart monitor he knew was beeping rhythmically in a room just down the hall.
Beep. Beep. Beep. The sound of a life hanging by a thread that Katsuki had been fraying for years.
Two weeks later, the band practice room was a tomb.
Katsuki sat on the floor, surrounded by his instruments. He hadn't picked up the mic in days. The rest of the band didn't even bother showing up anymore, the guilt was a contagion that had infected the whole class. How had they not seen it?
Katsuki picked up a pen. His hand was shaking, a side effect of the stress that he couldn't blast away. He looked at the lyrics he’d been writing before the "incident." They felt shallow now. Pathetic.
He started a new page. He wrote about the hospital room. He wrote about the way Izuku’s skin looked almost translucent under the fluorescent lights, and how his green hair usually so vibrant and messy looked dull against the white pillowcase.
I'm shouting into the empty air, he wrote, his handwriting jagged and ugly. I'm screaming at a ghost who’s still breathing. Wake up so I can tell you I hate myself. Wake up so I can tell you I was wrong.
He picked up his acoustic guitar. He didn't plug it in. He didn't need the volume. He just needed to feel the strings. He played a slow, mourning melody, his voice barely a whisper.
"I know I can treat you better… just please give me a chance.."
The words felt like a lie. Why would Izuku give him a chance? If Izuku woke up, the first thing he’d see was the face of his tormentor.
Katsuki leaned his forehead against the neck of the guitar and let out a broken, jagged sob. It was the first time he had cried since he was a child. He cried for the boy he had broken. He cried for the hero Izuku was supposed to be. And he cried because he realized that he loved Izuku Midoriya with a desperation that was terrifying, and he had realized it only when Izuku was halfway out the door of this world.
The chapter ends not with a recovery, but with a vigil.
Every night after school, Katsuki would go to the hospital. He didn't go inside the room—he didn't think he had the right to be there. Instead, he sat in the hallway, leaning against the door of Room 402.
He would bring his notebook and a small, battery-powered keyboard. He would play with the volume turned all the way down, the "click-clack" of the plastic keys the only sound in the hallway.
One night, the door opened. Inko Midoriya stepped out. She looked a decade older than she had a year ago. She looked down at Katsuki—the boy who had been her son’s best friend, then his bully, and now his silent shadow. Katsuki told her what he had done. He couldn’t keep it a secret anymore, not from izukus own mother.
But She didn't yell. She didn't tell him to leave. She just reached out and placed a trembling hand on top of his blonde hair.
"He can hear you, Katsuki-kun," she whispered. "The doctors say... they can hear music. If you have something to say to him, don't say it to the door. Say it to him."
Inko walked away to get water, leaving the door cracked open.
Katsuki looked at the gap. The light from inside the room was a soft, pale blue. He could see the edge of the bed. He could see the tubes.
He didn't go in. Not yet. He wasn't ready to face the silence of the person he had spent his life trying to silence.
He turned back to his notebook and wrote the final line of Chapter 1:
The world is quiet without you, Deku. And I hate the silence.
—
The hospital was a vacuum. It sucked the air out of Katsuki’s lungs every time he stepped through the automatic sliding doors. The smell of lemons and death followed him into the elevator.
It had been a year and fourteen days since the "Swan Dive" became more than just a cruel suggestion.
He sat in the chair outside Room 402, his fingers tracing the jagged edges of his songbook. He wasn't the "Golden Boy" of UA anymore. He was a ghost in a school uniform. The teachers looked at him with pitying eyes, and his classmates—even Kirishima—had started giving him a wide berth. They knew. Everyone knew that the bridge between Bakugou and Midoriya hadn't just burned, it had collapsed and taken Izuku with it.
Katsuki stared at the door. Go in, you coward, his mind hissed. Look at what you did.
But he couldn't. He was terrified that if he saw Izuku’s chest rising and falling only because of a machine, he would lose his mind. He was terrified that the silence in that room would be the only thing he’d ever hear for the rest of his life.
Instead, he opened his notebook. He needed words. He needed a melody to hold onto, or he was going to drown in the hallway.
“I’m sorry” is a paper shield, he wrote, the pen digging so deep it tore the page. It doesn’t stop the rain. It doesn’t stop the fall.
He closed his eyes and hummed a low, broken vibration in his throat. He imagined the stage. He imagined a world where he was famous, where he was a hero, where he was anything other than the monster in this hallway. He saw himself under a spotlight, singing a truth he was too proud to speak.
“I know I can treat you better than the voice in your head... the voice that sounds like me.”
The lyrics were shifting. They were becoming a promise. If Izuku woke up—when he woke up—Katsuki wouldn't just be better. He would be everything Izuku needed. He would be the wall that kept the world away.
A year and thirty-five days.
The hospital was quiet. The night shift nurses moved like shadows. Katsuki was asleep in the hard plastic chair, his head lolling to the side, when the sound changed.
The rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor suddenly spiked. It turned into a frantic, high-pitched chirping.
Katsuki bolted upright, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Deku?"
Nurses scrambled past him, their rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the tiles. "Code Blue! He’s seizing! Get the crash cart!"
Katsuki stood frozen. He watched through the small glass pane of the door as they swarmed around the bed. He saw a flash of green curls, pale skin, and the violent thrashing of a body that was trying to decide if it wanted to stay or go.
"Get back, sir! You can't be in here!" a doctor shouted, shoving Katsuki back as they slammed the door shut.
Katsuki hit the opposite wall and slid down to the floor. He covered his ears, but he could still hear it. The shouting. The sound of the defibrillator charging. The silence that followed the shock.
"Please," Katsuki whispered into his knees. He wasn't a religious person. He didn't believe in fate. He believed in strength. But right now, he felt like a grain of sand in a hurricane. "Please, don't let him die. I'll do anything. I'll leave him alone forever. I'll never speak his name again. Just let him breathe."
He sat there for hours. The sun began to bleed through the hallway windows, painting the floor in shades of bruised purple and orange.
Finally, the door opened. A doctor stepped out, looking exhausted. He spotted Katsuki still there, still waiting and sighed.
"He's stable," the doctor said. "The seizure was a result of a spike in brain activity. It’s... it’s actually a good sign. He’s trying to wake up."
Katsuki’s breath hitched. "He's coming back?"
"We don't know the extent of the damage yet," the doctor cautioned. "But he’s fighting. He might be awake within the week."
Katsuki didn't feel relief. He felt a cold, sharp dread.
Izuku was coming back to a world that had broken him. He was coming back to a life where Katsuki Bakugou existed.
Katsuki stood up and walked away. He didn't go to his dorm. He went to the music room at UA, grabbed his guitar, and played until the sun was high in the sky. He played a melody that was frantic, desperate, and loud , a song that screamed for forgiveness it didn't deserve.
——
The day Izuku woke up was the day Katsuki stopped being a bully.
He didn't do it with a grand gesture. He did it by disappearing.
When Izuku finally opened those dull, green eyes, Katsuki wasn't there. He watched from the shadows of the doorway as Inko sobbed with joy. He watched as the teachers brought flowers. He watched as Izuku looked around the room with a hollow, vacant expression—the expression of someone who had gone to the edge of the world and realized there was nothing there.
Katsuki waited until everyone left. He waited until the hospital was draped in moonlight.
He stepped into the room.
Izuku didn't turn his head. He was staring at the IV drip, his hand resting limp on the white sheets.
"Deku," Katsuki whispered.
Izuku flinched. It wasn't a big movement, but it was enough to make Katsuki stop in his tracks. The fear was still there. Even after the coma, even after almost dying, the first thing Izuku felt when he heard Katsuki’s voice was fear.
"I'm not here to... I'm not going to hurt you," Katsuki said, his voice cracking. He felt like he was breaking apart.
Izuku slowly turned his head. His eyes were huge in his thin face. He didn't say anything. He just looked at Katsuki with a profound, soul-crushing sadness.
"I'm sorry," Katsuki said. The words felt too small. They felt like a cup of water thrown onto a forest fire. "I'm so fucking sorry, Izuku."
Izuku’s lips trembled. He didn't accept the apology. He didn't scream. He just closed his eyes and turned his face toward the wall, shutting Katsuki out.
It was the loudest rejection Katsuki had ever heard.
“Okay.. if.. if you change your mind.. um..” He sighed and left the room, his chest aching so badly he thought his heart might actually stop. He walked out of the hospital and into the cold night air.
He had his answer. He had broken the one thing he was supposed to protect.
He pulled his phone out and called Kirishima.
"Bring the gear to the garage," Katsuki said, his voice hard as flint. "We’re going to play. We’re going to play until the neighbors call the police. I need to scream."
———
a few months have passed. Izuku was fine now.
The recovery wasn't a movie montage. There were no sudden smiles or triumphant returns to the classroom. Instead, there was a heavy, suffocating "after."
Izuku returned to the dorms, looking like a blurred charcoal sketch of himself. He moved through the halls like a ghost that had forgotten how to haunt. He ate in silence, he trained in silence, and most devastatingly of all, he looked through Katsuki as if he were made of glass.
Katsuki couldn't handle it. The screaming, the explosions, the bullying, that was a language they both understood. This silence? This was a new kind of torture.
It was a Tuesday night, the air thick with the humidity of an impending storm, when Katsuki finally broke his own rule of staying away. He found Izuku on the common room balcony, staring out at the dark treeline of UA’s campus.
"Deku."
Izuku didn’t flinch this time. He didn’t move at all. He just kept staring at the horizon.
"The doctors said you’re cleared for light training," Katsuki started, his voice uncharacteristically tentative. He hated how he sounded. He sounded like he was begging. "I... I can help you. If you want to go to Gym Gamma. I won’t push. I’ll just... be there."
Izuku finally turned his head. His eyes were no longer the vibrant, emerald green that used to sparkle with annoying hero-worship. They were flat. Cold. Like the bottom of a lake.
"Why?" Izuku asked. His voice was raspy from disuse, stripped of its usual stutter.
"What do you mean 'why'?" Katsuki snapped, the old anger flickering for a second before the crushing weight of guilt extinguished it. "Because you’re behind. Because you need to get your strength back if you’re going to—"
"If I'm going to what, Kacchan?" Izuku interrupted. "Be a hero? Take a swan dive? Which version of your advice am I supposed to follow today?"
The words hit Katsuki with the force of a physical blow. He felt the air leave his lungs. He deserved it. He deserved every jagged edge of that sentence, but hearing it out loud made the reality of what he’d done feel final.
"I didn't mean it," Katsuki whispered, his head bowing. "I never... I was a brat. I was a monster. I know that now."
"Knowing it doesn't change the fact that I jumped," Izuku said softly. He stepped off the balcony railing, walking past Katsuki. He stopped for a fraction of a second, his shoulder inches from Katsuki’s. "You want to help me? Then leave me alone. Every time I see you, I remember the wind hitting my face on the way down. Is that the help you wanted to give?"
Izuku disappeared into the dorms, the sliding glass door clicking shut with a finality that felt like a gavel.
Katsuki didn't go to sleep. He went to the basement.
The band was already there. They had seen the interaction from the kitchen window. Kirishima was sitting behind his kit, spinning a drumstick nervously. Kaminari and Jirou were tuning their instruments in a silence that was thick with tension.
"We doing the upbeat set?" Kaminari asked, trying to break the mood.
"No," Katsuki growled. He strapped on his electric guitar, the weight of it a comfort against his chest. He stepped up to the microphone, his eyes shadowed. "We’re doing the new one. The one I wrote in the hospital hallway."
Jirou frowned. "Bakugou, that song is... it's really raw. You sure you want to go there?"
"Play the damn chords, Earphones."
The music started—not with an explosion, but with a haunting, minor-key riff. It sounded like rain on a tin roof. It sounded like regret.
Katsuki closed his eyes. He didn't think about the rhythm or the tempo. He thought about the look in Izuku’s eyes on the balcony. He thought about the way the hospital bed looked too big for such a small boy.
He began to sing. His voice wasn't the polished, clean sound of a pop star. It was a jagged, gravelly baritone that sounded like it was being pulled through broken glass.
"I'm writing letters to a version of you that I killed..." The lyrics poured out of him. He wasn't singing for an audience. He wasn't singing for fame. He was trying to scream loud enough to drown out the sound of Izuku’s heartbeat on that monitor.
"I built my ego on the bones of your dreams, I watched you flicker while I fed the machines. Now the silence is screaming, and I'm losing my mind, Looking for a spark that I left far behind."
As the bridge hit, Katsuki stepped on the distortion pedal. The room exploded into sound. Kirishima hit the drums with a violence that matched Katsuki’s soul. This was the birth of Ground Zero. This wasn't hero work it was an exorcism.
They played for three hours. By the end, Katsuki’s throat was raw and his fingers were staining the strings red again. He leaned his forehead against the mic, breathing hard, his sweat dripping onto the floor.
"That's the sound," Jirou said quietly, her eyes wide with a mix of awe and fear. "That's the sound people are going to remember."
"I don't care if they remember it," Katsuki choked out, his voice nearly gone. "I just need him to hear it."
But upstairs, in the dark of his room, Izuku Midoriya had his headphones on, playing white noise to block out the world. He didn't hear the music. He didn't hear the apology hidden in the chords.