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Death did not bring regret.
It was loss that echoed within the walls in his head. It was the ghost that haunted his bed.
Faced by the weight of his own mortality, Katsuki breaks, Izuku’s unmoving body being the only witness.
Bring him back to me, Katsuki sobs to the night sky. His kingdom is in flames, miles away, but the fires light up the night sky. Oddly reminiscent of the festivals that he and Izuku would attend, how the air would be filled with laughter and music.
The eerie silence, devoid of even the slightest hint of wind, tears into his spirit even more.
Kirishima, his loyal dragon, curls his massive body around their bodies, with a torn wing, he tries to shield them both from the harsh cold. The biting frost goes unacknowledged by Katsuki, even as it threatens to freeze him to death.
He can only stare at Izuku.
Izuku’s face is peaceful in its eternal rest. Even with the gaping hole in his stomach, and the blood soaked into his vest. He looks beautiful, still, and Katsuki acknowledges that even in his sorrow.
He aches.
With a heaving sob, he wraps his arms around Izuku, and holds his body close.
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By morning, Katsuki is found by the queen, his mother, Mitsuki.
Fingers frostbitten and arms crusted with dried blood, still wrapped around Izuku, still holding on. Heart still beating. His stubbornness proves to be stronger than death, this once.
Her heart breaks twice. Once for the boy he loved like her own son. Once for her own son, who she knew, loved no one else the way he loved Izuku.
She treats Kirishima’s wounds, and with the help of her men, she puts Izuku and Katsuki’s bodies onto the dragon’s back, and they start to trek back to their kingdom.
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“Our walls may have broken, but they did not crumble.” Mitsuki informs Katsuki, even as he stares blankly at her. “We have to start again, Katsuki, through pain and through trials.”
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Katsuki soon realized, there is no greater pain than feeling the remnants of Izuku there. To feel the brushing chills against his shoulder as if his lost lover was leaning on it, or hearing thumping footsteps in the halls.
Exhaustion settles deep in his bones.
Still, he can only focus on healing.
Heal, and move on.
He blinks back his tears as the horn echoes throughout the city. His cue to emerge.
Katsuki peers through the curtain, swallowing his grief and steeling up his expression. Then he pushes out into the balcony, showing his face to the crowd. His people.
The crown sits on his head proudly.
He tries to imagine Izuku beside him. Under his arm. Loved and accepted by his subjects. Viridian eyes almost completely hidden by how wide his smile was.
It brings him cold comfort.
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Katsuki rules with a heavy, yet kind hand.
He makes sure his people are fed. He fights in the front lines of his own wars. Punishes those that commit crimes so unspeakable by feeding them to lions.
When innocent people die, Katsuki participates in their burial rituals.
He holds the hands of grieving mothers who lost their children. Husbands left behind by lovers. Old women who tended to the sick on their final days. He cares for all of them, aches with them, bears the weight of the emptiness on his own shoulders. Anything to alleviate the pain, anything.
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Grief eventually forced Katsuki to turn to religion.
The white man, dressed in garments his finest tailors could never replicate, tells him stories in exchange for gold.
Stories of an entity, benevolent and all knowing. One who has plans for everyone, and guides those whose souls linger and wander with no direction. Omnipotent. One who watches over us all.
Katsuki had initially frowned at this. He gave the strange man his gold and told him to never return.
It felt wrong to kneel, to pray to a God he did not truly believe in, just to get closure. Just so he could sleep at night and not think about how Izuku will truly disappear once no one was alive to remember him. Just so he could believe in souls, in spirits, in eternal rest being granted to his lover’s weary existence.
It has been years since Izuku was killed— could praying for his soul make a difference now?
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As mighty of a king as he was, Katsuki was still haunted by his past. By the only man he ever loved. He craved rest, he was so tired, yet his soul yearned and ached for someone who could never return to him.
He has dreams about that night.
What’ll happen now, Kacchan, Izuku’s voice sounded so unbearably fragile. I don’t want to die.
If we die, then we die. Fear of death threatened to claw at Katsuki’s throat, but he couldn’t be weak now, not when Izuku needed him to be strong. You’ll be stuck with me even after. We’ll be reborn into two apples on the same tree. Or as birds in a neat. Maybe even as the earth and the moon in a different universe. I don’t know and I don’t care. I just know you’ll be there with me like you’ve always fucking been.
Izuku had given him a smile. Anywhere is okay, as long as it is with you.
Katsuki wakes up with tears in his eyes.
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“Foolish little brat.” Shigaraki holds his sword to Katsuki’s throat. The blade emits a dark energy. Katsuki could not stop it even if he tried. “You kept the stomachs of your kingdom full and filled their heads with ideals far too over their heads. So much wasted power. Potential.”
It digs into the flesh of Katsuki’s skin on his stomach the slightest bit, and he lets out a muffled groan of agony. White hot pain spreads out over his body.
Still.
Perhaps losing Izuku had softened his heart, smoothed out the jagged edges that being raised as royalty had given him.
It didn’t matter now.
The blade sinks into his stomach.
It doesn’t hurt.
Just like that, he joins his lover in oblivion.
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“Kacchan! What—”
The world seems to focus sharply around him, as if looking through some sort of lenses that made everything louder and brighter and too much. Katsuki chokes on a soft cry.
His eyes frantically look around. The edges of a wooden table are charred underneath his hands. A library. He’s in a library. With Izuku.
Alive, he’s alive, is all he can think, leaping over the table, propelled by his quirk, crashing right into Izuku, who just barely catches him.
Alive, he’s alive, to the mercy of whatever god he had prayed to centuries past. Oblivion had given him a second chance.
Alive, he’s alive, he nearly sobs into Izuku’s neck. He doesn’t hear Izuku’s panicked yelling. He can only feel Izuku’s body against his, the warmth of it, affirmation of just how alive he is. The pain of a lifetime he never remembered living festers within the deep recesses of his chest, throbbing with pain unknown yet so achingly familiar.
My Izuku is alive.
Perhaps that was all that mattered now.