Chapter Text
-
The sun is dying down on the horizon when he finds them.
The woods near the Tribelands are strong heat-resistant goliaths that stretch high above his head as he runs. Well…most do, there are many broken and scorched, snapped and splintered. The trail of fallen giants and the smell of bloody ash is all he needs to follow.
Izuku Midoriya is bruised and bleeding and his body is lighter than he’s felt in ages. The Demon Lord is defeated by his own hands. The Tribes and people of the land are safe. Their world is safe and it should make him soar.
But his heart only grows in weight when he thinks of the cost.
“Kacchan.”
It’s a choked sob, deep in his throat.
Golden eyes glare at him as Bakugou Katsuki raises from his place and draws a single blade, for the other is broken and melted in the head of a monster behind him. Glowing beyond the black and blood, from head to toe he is covered in magma-like markings that paint him in scales, gold streaks of light leak from his eyes and from everywhere he bleeds, he bleeds gold and burns the earth beneath him.
Kirishima and Ochako are behind him.
Ochako’s staff is broken. The red and blue stones are cracked and the ancient mahogany root that twisted them together is completely splintered. Other than this she is largely undamaged, battered and bruised yes, but she has been largely protected by the giant red scales and claws of one of her closest friends.
Kirishima…
Red scales litter the earth around them. Parts of his horns and some of his spines and scales missing. In his clutches he holds Ochako in what was an effort of protection. But despite the intense damage, overall it is his wings that have taken the brunt of the Demon Lord’s attack.
Pink bloodied tatters.
Kirishima may never fly again.
He chokes his worry and looks the tribal prince back in his golden eyes. He feels the growl and rumble of ancient anger that bleeds through the scales on the young prince’s arms. In the growing dark it is as if he stands as if fire.
The tribal prince coils and winds into a protective stance.
“Kacchan, we need to get them to a healer.”
He thanks All Might for blessing him with his reflexes.
In a flash, all of Kacchan’s heat is bearing down on him, heaving with ferocity. It takes almost everything he has left to attempt to deflect the blade that sits so very close to cleaving him in two. The eyes of a dragon man shine with his own face. They glow with magma and heat and so much anger and yet…
…the anguish that they emit could drown mountains.
“Ka-”
The blade strikes again.
“Kacchan!” Izuku blocks.
“DEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKUUUUUUUUU.”
-
He remembers the pain…
…or at least…
…he thinks he does.
It was a colder morning in the Tribelands when Bakugou took his hand, pulled him from the nests and brought him to the edge of the highest cliff face. Kirishima was smaller then. By dragon standards he was a little bit of a runt, eager to please and be of service to the nest.
Ixen, Hrrac, Iejir.
Fire, Nest and Blood.
This is the creed of Dragon Tribes, for you cannot live without them and to be without one is to not be a dragon at all.
Kirishima, that day, was too eager to help. In that rising dawn, with the stars of the hunter fading slow in the growing light, he believed he could. He believed in his fiery belly that he could carry the weight of the small boys on his back and the boys in turn believed him.
Izuku remembers the feel of Kirishima’s scales against his small knees and the ever-comforting warmth of Bakugou against his back, securing him in his confidence and his strength. In the dawning light, the hot air from the magma pools had brushed against their faces as Kirishima stretched out his ever-growing wings and jumped.
For the few minutes they stayed aloft it was indescribable magic.
They managed to soar above the lands, catching updraft after updraft of hot air coming from those magma pools. They didn’t get too far beyond the end of them before Kirishima started beating his wings harder, the ground got closer and they inevitably crashed in a small valley of rock on the outskirts of the Tribal City.
Right, where the monsters lived.
He remembers being surrounded by angry looking darkness and not knowing what to do. He remembers fearing for his life. He remembers being struck down and blood and the angry form of Kacchan shifting into something else, something that glowed like fire and decimated the beasts that attack them in a pure unadulterated rage.
A boy with the eyes of a dragon.
He remembers being scared for that boy.
“Don’t tell anyone!” he’d screamed.
Except he did.
When they’re home and their mothers are holding them in their arms, tight with worry, when the bright green eyes of his mother crying demand truth the words slip past his lips before he realizes.
He remembers the horror on Chief Mitsuki’s face.
He remembers the look of betrayal on Kacchan’s.
No matter how much love he had for him, no matter how much fear he held for him it would change nothing.
That boy would never forgive him for what he’d done.
-
Not even when they were fully grown.
“DEEEEEEKKKKKKKKUUUUUU!”
The cut from his blades levels the entirety of a tree.
It’s nearly black now. The sky, the land, the ash falling down on them like white snow puffed from some nearby volcano. The glint of speed and fire and the orange glow of Kacchan as he streaks toward him are the only light around for miles.
The stars are starting to show their faces.
“YOU BROUGHT THEM OUT HERE!” the dragon man screams. His voice is anguish and anger and loathing as Izuku blocks another strike.
“Kacchan!”
He chases him for what feels like eternity. The sunset brings a chill, even on the lands of fire and the sweltering darkness. No matter where he goes, the tribal prince is mere seconds behind him. A game of cat and mouse, darting from tree to tree, effort after effort after the battle they’ve just survived.
Then they’re in freefall, blades clashed and faces an inch apart. The heated blade lights the side of Izuku’s face in a glow and burns the edge of his shoulder. But as he has the entire time, he glances in the direction he knows they left Ochako and Kirishima. But everytime he moves to help them, Bakugou attacks.
The eyes of the man burn him with their loathing.
It takes effort but he manages to manoeuvre them both back to the clearing, back to the people they shouldn’t be wasting this time to save. As he lands Izuku sees the outline of Kirishima and Ochako in the growing black, among the ash fall.
They seem so very still.
It’s the distraction Kacchan’s been waiting for.
“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE FUCKING EFFECT YOU HAVE ON PEOPLE.”
He’s an angry roar of blades, a storm of fury, in his face, by his heart as he screams a blow that sends the green haired boy flying across the landscape with a blow that blurs his vision and makes him dizzy.
(Was the heat of the mountain always so cold?)
Then tribal prince stands above him, scimitar in hand, golden blood leaking from his scales. His eyes gleam with cold conviction.
With blame.
(Izuku’s vision swims with blur of a boy so much smaller.)
“You inspire idiots to their deaths.”
Green eyes close for the blow to come.
It doesn’t.
“KATSUKI!”
The outcry of the Chief of the Mother Tribe pierces her son with a kick to the face. The tide of battle is turned and in moments, it’s a mother’s own blade that pins her son to the floor across his neck. The tip of his father’s spear crossed the other side, pinning his glowing angry body in place.
“RE WUX XOALIR EKESS SVENT DOUTAN?” she screams down at him, her eyes are filled with worry and her voice is hoarse and sore. Izuku rolls to see her shaking and it makes her son freeze and falter.
His markings flicker.
“You can’t last as a Zezhuanth, son,” the calming voice of the father, Masaru leans low, his voice a cooling balm against his lover and greatest pride. But even despite that Izuku sees his blade shake. “Please.”
Kacchan turns his face toward him, the brunt of his family’s feelings too much. The eyes of the hunter catch his prey and he looks torn between his urge to kill and something far more painful. Izuku sees a young man torn in anguish and wonders, if he could see past his own weary blood and tears if his face looked the same to his childhood friend.
(Which was easier? The violence or the pain?)
And then from the side of the clearing there’s a whimper.
“B-Bakugou…”
It’s such a small voice, from Ochako.
Heads turn to see her looking up to them from the edge of the clearing. Small and wounded on the ground, she clutches something small in her hand against her chest like it’s her only source of life. Her eyes are wide and worried and fixated.
“Ocha—"
A couple of shouts of surprise pierce the silence behind him as a glowing blur streaks past his face.
“Bakugou…”
“Y-your…” Izuku watches her hand reach up and touch the face of the dragon man that falls to his knees to be on her level.
He watches as he lets her.
“K-Kirishima, he…” and the tears bubble up as she wails.
The magma scales on the dragon prince fade as Ochako reaches for him blindly. Her sobs are messy and she shakes with every effort to breathe, to mourn. Izuku moves to comfort her, but it’s the Chief and her mate that sticks a quiet hand to stop them.
Aunt Mitsuki shakes her head.
Bakugou’s eyes, his glow, are gone now. Gone is the boy of fire, nest, and blood and there before them is a form so much more human. One so exhausted, yet as he raises his arms so very slowly and grips her shoulders, shaking her to look at him, he seems stronger than ever.
She refuses to look up.
A hiccup and a sob.
He grips tighter and his mouth moves and Izuku wishes he could hear the side of the boy he’d forgotten existed. The one who’s voice doesn’t even carry in the tense silence of the coming night.
There was once a time when he knew that boy like a brother.
Kacchan’s hands fall down the sides of her arms and grip her fisted hands and open them, revealing the small green gem that sat at the heart of staff not hours before. The faintest light glows from it’s scratched surface and Ochako raises her puffy eyes to meet his.
“You can,” echoes confidence, throughout the clearing.
Slowly, so very slowly, she nods, between her tears and her sobs she schools herself in a position toward Kirishima that Izuku recognises.
Kacchan stays by her side.
She raises her hand and jewel against the darkness, toward the sky, toward her moon and her stars and places the other on the closest claw or scale she can find. Her eyes close and she begins to glow. Her eyes clench tighter and she begins to shine.
A sun under the watchful stars of the Hunter.