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Power.
For a long time, what that word had meant to Katsuki was the ability to be victorious. To be greater than anyone else.
There were only two kinds of people, those who had power and those who didn’t. The winners and the losers.
Katsuki Bakugou had no intention of being the latter, because he saw with his own eyes what it meant. His father caved into to his mother’s every demand. It annoyed him to no end, the way he would stammer and plead to get his opinion across. When Katsuki asked him why the hell he didn’t stand up for himself better, he just laughed and said he was okay with it. That he was happy with his life, and those little details didn’t matter.
He was fine with being pushed around like that.
Katsuki couldn’t understand that at all.
But he never questioned whether it was right. It was simply the way of nature, that someone as weak-willed as he was would be pushed around.
That acceptance only made it all the more annoying when he met Midoriya Izuku. The spitting image of his father, except…different somehow.
Izuku didn’t bow down. Izuku stood defiantly, shaking and scared but standing all the same, clenching his fists in some pathetic attempt to save some kid he didn’t even know. But he was weak.
Those without power are destined to bow to those without.
Izuku didn’t follow the rules that were so integral to Katsuki’s existence, and he didn’t like that.
Because sure, his father might be living a miserable existence (surely it couldn’t be fun to be pushed around like that), but Katsuki had realized it would only be worse for him if he resisted. Mitsuki might hit him, or fight back stronger, and he’d be in a worse place than where he’d be simply bowing his head.
So he showed him. He had to make Izuku realize how deluded he was, get rid of that stupid idea in his head that he could do something in life.
And in turn, assure that Katsuki, of course, was going to be doing many great things in life.
So he named him Deku, Deku meaning someone who couldn’t do anything, because if he called him that it would serve as an eternal reminder that he was below him, and always would be. He could make himself believe it.
Because if people like him could do something, then what was the difference between them? What made Katsuki special?
He couldn’t just be just another insignificant person, no. Sparks flared in his palms, a reassurance that he was destined for greatness. Mother said it, that his quirk was strong, even though she criticised almost everything else he did as weak.
His father praised him often, about everything, but it was only a given – he was amazing, and his father wasn’t, of course he’d be praised.
He trained hard and studied hard, making sure every part of himself was strong enough that he could live up to his quirk, and be worthy of becoming the next Number One Hero.
What shocked him the most was that, no matter how he tried, Deku never lost it. That defiance, the inability to accept his own wretched situation.
He clearly became scared of him, flinching away from him when he hands flared. Katsuki would feel a pang of something deeply uncomfortable when he saw that frightened face, but it was always overshadowed by anger.
How else could he possibly show Deku he was better than him?
He was clinging onto that old admiration of All Might, a faded dream, even though Katsuki had put him down all these years.
It all came to a culmination on that fateful day. To be honest, his temper got the better of him. He would come to regret it years later, but the fact was, he told Deku to take the dive if he wanted to become a hero so badly.
It was nothing but the cold truth. Those born with power, and those born without. He knew Deku knew it. Deku had been born without blessing, and the only way to escape that was to win the jackpot next round, like he had.
There was nothing wrong with what he was saying.
There was nothing wrong, but…
Somehow, that didn’t help the sick feeling in his stomach, the way he felt like destroying everything, because he just couldn’t get a handle on what the hell he was feeling right now.
And then Deku saved him.
No, he hadn’t really saved him, but his eyes had watered and burned with the determination and pity of someone who wanted to save him. He would have died doing it if All Might didn’t show up.
That fucking face would haunt his dreams for weeks.
He found that he couldn’t look at Deku without seeing him looking down on him, as if saying it was easy enough to succeed that even he, a quirkless loser, could do it. No, he had worked hard, and he was special, and he was going to the only one in UA.
And he found himself, in extension, hating the way his dad recoiled when he got angry, the way he muttered under his breath about a problem he couldn’t solve, and the way he just kept submitting to his mother.
Deku would fight back.
The thought came without warning and with none of his disdain, and he hated it. His palms sparked, his eyes narrowing, and he realized his dad was looking at him with a degree of fear.
He slammed his door, but the thoughts wouldn’t stop.
He imagined a world in which his dad wasn’t scared of him because of his quirk, where there was no divide, where he didn’t have to be strong to be worth something.
That was the kind of world Deku was living in.
It was fine.
It was fine until Deku got into UA.
Until he showed off his flashy new quirk right in front of him. A quirk he must have been hiding for years like some cruel joke, laughing at him behind his back.
Poor Kacchan, he won’t know what hit him!
He thinks he’s so powerful? How funny, I could smash him to pieces.
And what the hell was that stammering, jumpy mess that he acted like? Was he just acting weak so he could turn on him and laugh?
As if to top it off, he dared to reclaim the name Katsuki had given him to remind them of his worthlessness, and turned it into something to inspire.
Katsuki lost.
He lost in every conceivable way, not just the battle simulation, but his pride, his beliefs, and his...friend?
Maybe in some twisted definition of the word, they were friends. Because there was no other explanation for the intense betrayal he felt for what Deku had done.
He was losing, falling behind in this race for the top, being surpassed by someone he hadn’t even thought to be a competitor, someone who had looked down on him even though he was nothing...but now he was something.
He didn’t really know what the word friendship meant, anyway – he had followers and admirers, and they had called himself his friends. None of them were his equal, but he supposed that was what friendship was.
But whatever they were before, that path had been cut off.
Permanently.
The second time they fought, all that resentment and crushing fear had come to a tipping point so high up he hadn’t known what to do with it. He’d stayed sane all those years, able to brush off the way Deku looked down on him, because he could convince himself it didn’t mean anything, Deku was worthless.
But as Deku grew stronger with incredible speed, he couldn’t dismiss it anymore. Deku really was incredible, he had something he didn’t. After all, why else would All Might choose him over any of the other amazing candidates in UA? Over him?
He was forced to consider the fact that deep down, he had always seen there was something worthwhile in the worthless nerd, and that it scared him.
Deku had been chosen by the hero they had admired together from the beginning, and he was doing everything Katsuki had expected to achieve in UA – he’d made leaps and bounds of improvement in his battle style and quirk, so astonishing it was hard to believe he was the same quivering boy of junior high, he’d won the simulation battle, and gotten his provisional license.
And Katsuki had failed on every one of those points.
It wasn’t just that Katsuki wasn’t thriving. No, he was worse than that, he was weak, he was failing. He was the only one captured by the villains, had caused so much trouble and meant that All Might had to fight All for One, and lose his powers, exposing himself to the masses. All the media uproar was his fault. The reason they were living in dorms away from their families was his fault.
The reason they were all back safe, from what he had heard…it had been Deku’s plan.
It always came back to Deku.
When he thought back to it, Deku holding his hand out that day wasn’t only angering because Deku was pitying, it was also that Deku had always shown the essence of heroism.
He had saved him again and again.
And finally, in that fight, he might have saved him again, a little. Some of those pent up feelings inside him had found a place.
Walking back, in the quiet of the aftermath, side by side with Deku as the pair of them trailed behind All Might, Katsuki felt so awake, with the adrenaline still pumping through his veins and the world in clear vision. But it also looked so ethereal, as if he was waking from a bad dream and just realizing it wasn’t real.
The creeping dread and fear that had curled its way up his body like a vine had given way to an optimism he hadn’t felt for months. Not since...the UA entrance exam.
When he bickered with Deku about surpassing each other, even that made him want to laugh and cry and smile all in one, not that he’d ever admit it. Because it was all okay. Deku had caught up to him, that was okay. All Might was retired and exposed to the world, that was okay. He just had to work harder to become a hero that could beat Deku, and be just as great as All Might. It would all be up from here.
No more fear, no more guilt, just the simple passion and drive to be the best hero he could that had taken him here in the first place.
Nothing had changed.
Yet everything had changed.
After that, things changed faster than he could follow them.
The path to becoming a hero had never been straightforward, but he met each obstacle with pride and overcome them all. It was almost pleasant, to look to the watching crowd and see the way Deku’s eyes were all lit up, knowing it was admiration. It made him feel a little cocky and he got overconfident at times, but he did well.
He got his provisional license. He secured a solid middle tier internship, and did well enough as a sidekick that he started to erase the image of ‘sludge villain victim’, ‘kid who lost his shit on the Sports Festival podium’ and ‘the kidnapped kid who caused All Might to retire saving him’.
He graduated top of his class, barely scraping the win over Deku, and moved out into the world as a Pro Hero, his passion and strength winning over enough crowds that his old deeds were forgotten.
He was doing good.
The only thing was, his feelings surrounding Deku didn’t seem to get any clearer. The definition of what Deku was to him only became harder to name. From childhood friends to rivals, but always there was something else there, an unspoken bond between them, linking them through space and time.
It was something he only noticed when he was taken away.
He should have seen it coming. All Might had spoken of that great threat Deku had to face one day, but...just one moment, where his attention had slipped, and Deku had vanished into thin air.
Sometimes, he swore he could feel Deku’s voice calling him, his hand reaching out for him, him standing next to him with his fists raised ready to fight together. He’d look to the side, only for there to be emptiness.
He was afraid some days that he didn’t have the strength to save him.
It was powerlessness, but a different kind to when he had been captured. This was the inability to protect someone, and he had never expected how important it would become to him.
In the end, it wasn’t the power of One for All that saved Deku in the end, it was the calls of the masses.
A full scale attack was launched on August the 8th, the anniversary of the day All Might lost his powers. The combined force of the heroes rained down on the villain hideout, but had been unable to do much more than keep them occupied. If they could just break through, the fortress where he was being kept would be easy enough to navigate through.
Katsuki fought his hardest but nothing seemed to be enough. No matter how many villains he maimed or defeated, there were more cunning opponents to face. He grew more desperate every second, until he spotted something strange below him.
A massive crowd of people, distant enough from where he was fighting atop the fortress that they looked like ants.
“Keep holding them off!” Iida shouted through the gusts, his voice magnified a hundred times through an amplifier around his mouth.
He didn’t know how it happened, but they won. Iida announced that Deku had been successfully retrieved (even though Katsuki hadn’t seen any of the heroes get into the fortress proper).
He’d refused to believe it until he blasted himself down to the rendezvous and found Deku waiting there, looking incredibly thin and pale and bruised, but he still smiled when he saw him.
Later, Katsuki saw the footage.
The crowd moving like a steady wave towards the fortress. The attacks from the fighting raining down on the crowd, blasts that made crater sized holes, thrown weapons and rocks, leaving no one alive where they struck, even as the heroes tried to keep the villains’ focus away.
It was impossible to imagine just how many lives were lost, but regardless of all that blood, the crowd never stopped moving.
The villains retreated after Deku was successfully retrieved, not wanting to shed more blood for an already lost battle.
Who were they?
There were fans who had followed Deku through his full journey through UA, civilians who had seen the heroism that Deku had in the feats he’d performed even as a new graduate, and the ones who supported him because of how clearly he mirrored All Might and his ideals.
Katsuki learned that All Might himself had made a plea on live television to the public that if they wanted to, they could help Deku now by supporting him.
The idiot had always been stupidly biased when it came to Deku – he’d never make such a reckless and unplanned announcement for anyone – and All Might had always been a stickler for the rules. There was no way he had meant for the public should start up a giant riot to go into the fortress itself.
He muscled Kirishima up until he confessed what had happened – of course it was his own stupid former classmates from 1-A (well, 3-A) who had supported the fortress infiltration, rule breaking idiots that they were.
“We would have told you,” Uraraka said.
“-but you looked like you were in your element,” Todoroki finished in a monotone.
“You were doing the most out of anyone, because of how damn destructive your power was,” Kirishima said, seeming to sense his annoyance. “We didn’t leave you out because we didn’t think you wanted to help.”
“It’s fine, that’s not it anyway.”
Katsuki kicked a rock. No, if he was honest, his natural instinct was to blast his way through the villains and rush in to save Deku himself, though he hadn’t been able to do that. In the end, his way hadn’t worked and it had been Deku who had saved himself with his own damn public image and charisma.
Deku had a natural draw that made people like him – it had been hidden under the flaw of quirklessness most of his life, but Katsuki had seen it all along, annoying as it was. Why people liked such a crying wuss was beyond him (despite the fact that he was quite fond of Deku himself, but he didn’t like to think about that).
“We didn’t force anyone to come,” Uraraka said, biting her lip. “They all organized themselves and came, and we just…”
“Used them to your advantage,” Katsuki finished.
“If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have been able to overwhelm them and take Deku back,” she said simply.
“Strength in numbers,” Kirishima said, though he sounded incredibly guilty. It wasn’t a good look for him. Katsuki wanted to wipe that look off his face. It was all done, lives had been lost, but Deku was still here.
“Yeah,” Todoroki said. “We’re stronger together. Those people knew what they were doing.”
Stronger together.
Katsuki didn’t know what to make of that. It prompted a sense of déjà vu and a feeling it should mean something, but he didn’t know what. Until now, he had won perfectly fine on his own, with his own power.
Deku didn’t like it. That so many had died to save him.
He holed himself up in his room for days, refusing to come out even to eat. Katsuki was tempted to blast his door down while Uraraka simply levitated trays of food up to his windowsill. They went untouched.
One week after the incident, he finally appeared, the hard determination in his eyes outshining the dark bags underneath them.
“I will make this up to you all,” he said, on live television. That determination was still there, but it was starting to break down, revealing the grief behind them. They showed hints of watering, because no matter how much he went through, Deku was still a damn crybaby. “I’ll make sure that those who died saving me won’t have done so in vain.”
Katsuki felt incredibly proud, and incredibly turned on, much to his horror.
Deku kept to his word, and several weeks later, after tireless work, defeated Shigaraki and the remnants of his supporters in a fight that lit up the skies with how brilliant and destructive it was.
He claimed that Katsuki and the others deserved just as much recognition – but Katsuki wasn’t one to take credit where it wasn’t due. They’d supported him from the start, but Deku had definitely been the star of the show.
“I couldn’t have done it without you there,” Deku said, when Katsuki told him that.
“But that doesn’t mean…” He shook his head. “I didn’t do much damage to him at all.”
“How many times do I have to tell you until you get it?” he replied, smiling and flicking Katsuki’s forehead. “You inspire me. And, when you saved me from his final attack, I think that was more breath-taking than any final blow.”
Katsuki blinked.
It had been a long time coming, but things felt a lot different to how they had been before. In a good way.
It was only when he returned home at long last, after living in the UA dorms and then the high-security hero accommodation, that he realized just how much his view of the world had changed.
He looked at his father, his mother, saw the way his mother’s eyes grew a little bit softer every time she saw him laugh, saw the way his warmth could cool her temper when she was becoming too irrational, a stroke through her hair and a gentle ‘Please, darling’.
She called Katsuki weak, and she could be a real darn bitch sometimes about it, but maybe she had her own issues to work out. And maybe his father wasn’t all bad either. Sure, he couldn’t win in an all-out shouting contest with Mitsuki, but he had a soft persuasion and stuck to his values and argued for the things he thought were important.
He’d always thought of a relationship as being something to win. There was always the one on top and the loser, the trampled on and the trampler. He’d thought of his family like that.
But there were different types of power in the world.
He found himself wondering if he could have a relationship like that, one day, one of equals.
He didn’t really make the connection until he was walking down the wedding aisle.
Power wasn’t just the ability to win.
It was the ability to inspire, to save others, help others.
In the fortress incident, it had been the most obvious. All Might hadn’t lost all his power the day he’d fought All for One. His influence was still shown in how he inspired Katsuki, Deku and many many others every day to become better heroes. He had been the catalyst that had driven the public to action, and it was because of Deku’s magnetic influence that they wanted to help him in the first place.
Words had power. Ideas had power. People had power together. There was so much more than simply being the most powerful and winning.
Years ago, when he had wondered if he could have a relationship like his parents, one where even though he was so flawed and angry and unstable, he could still find some happiness in someone who understood, who balanced him out and who could deal with his insecurities and strength without being trampled by it.
It’d been there all along.
He and Izuku walked down the aisle together, hand in hand. It was a warm spring day, with the cherry blossoms in full bloom along the garden path, and the sky a content, cloudless blue that echoed the way he felt.
He refused to make eye contact with All Might, who was standing at the front, even as he read out their vows. It was embarrassing enough that Izuku’s face was already tear stained, and to see him looking at All Might with such admiration when it was his goddamn wedding was kind of annoying.
But nothing could match the look of sheer adoration when Izuku turned to face Katsuki, the look that sent his heart whimpering and made his legs feel weak.
“I do,” he said, softly.
God, he’d never been able to win against him. But he didn’t have to, he never had.
All Might read out his vow, and he was almost bursting with the need to say “I do” before he finished.
“I do.”
They made each other stronger. They could be strong together.
“You may now kiss the groom.”
It was a beautiful thing, he thought, as Izuku leaned in, eyelids fluttering, a gust of wind carrying pink petals surrounding them. Katsuki met him halfway, scooping his legs up into a princess carry, and kissing him with passion – there was no half assing it for Bakugou Katsuki, no matter how many curious faces were watching.
Izuku didn’t seem to mind.
Whistles and ‘oooohs’ emitted from the crowd.
“Kacchan!” Izuku protested when they finally broke apart, though he didn’t look very annoyed at all, face flushed and grinning. “You always have to one up me, don’t you?”
The crowd laughed.
Katsuki kept a straight face, focusing on the thing he still had left to do. “There’s something else that should be in the vows,” he said, before he could think too much and chicken out. It wasn’t his style to overthink it.
All Might looked shocked, eyes scanning through the script frantically to see what he’d missed. “I’m sorry Bakugou, what-”
Katsuki sighed, and looked to Izuku, who looked equally confused. Pair of idiots. “You didn’t do anything wrong, All Might, relax.” He placed Izuku down and turned to face him. “Deku.”
“Y-yes?” Izuku sounded apprehensive, probably because Katsuki hadn’t called him Deku for over a year now. Little did he know it was referring to his hero name, not the nickname he’d given him.
“I know we’re to be married today,” he said. Izuku nodded, blinking, watching. “But I also have another request to ask.” Just say it, just say it. “Deku, will you become a hero duo with me?”
Izuku’s eyes widened like saucers, and then he just laughed. For a second Katsuki felt afraid that he was making fun of him, bringing back memories of inferiority, but then he spoke. “Of course, idiot. Aren’t we already?”
Katsuki spluttered. Well, they did fight together an awful lot, but it wasn’t like they were fully registered partners, and…Izuku was the one who’d been clueless that they’d been dating even after a month. “Y-yeah, whatever, I just wanted to make sure.”
“Aww,” Uraraka and Kirishima said from their front row seats. Katsuki glared at them, and Kirishima gave him a thumbs up. Uraraka just stuck her tongue out.
They danced together on the dance floor Izuku had insisted on having, and ate the finest finger food in Japan – Izuku had insisted that all Western style weddings featured those as key parts of the ceremony.
It was long and hot and far too much social interaction for Katsuki’s tastes, but it was a once in a lifetime event, and he liked most of the people here (otherwise, he wouldn’t have approved them to come in the first place), so it wasn’t too bad.
In the end, the one he’d thought to be the most powerless had somehow turned out to be the major driving force in his life.
He had been so afraid of being weak his entire life, and to even think of a happiness like this was out of the question, the only thing he had been interested in back then was becoming the best.
Midoriya Izuku had never followed the rules. He’d defied him even when he had nothing, and eventually, changed him.
If he asked his teenage self what his future would have held, it would have been a spot as Number One Hero, and all the glory and pride that came with it. But this was far better, he thought, watching Izuku’s chest rise and fall beside him in the bed.
He’d fallen asleep before they’d even started to do any of the typical wedding night activities. The little nerd. He’d put his all into making it a fun event for everyone.
“Good night,” he whispered, leaning down to kiss his forehead.
Izuku grumbled in his sleep, as if he’d heard, and Katsuki grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
“Let’s become number one together.”