Chapter Text
He saw his whole life as if he'd already lived it; an endless parade of parties and cotillions, yachts and polo matches. Always the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter. He felt like he was standing at a great precipice with no one to pull him back, no one who cared or even noticed.
Let go, for fuck's sake.
Katsuki wasn't sure why he was hesitating. By now he should already be freefalling into the dark embrace of the endless body of water laid out before him. But his grip on the railing of the Titanic only tightened further as he prepared to take the dive into the ocean.
Nobody here cares about you. You're just a tool.
There were plenty of reasons for letting go. He only had to conjure up the mere thought of entering a loveless marriage, the pointless upper-class small talk he would have to make each day, not to mention that fact that his rich fiancée would buy him even more restricting suits, top hats and ties than he had any use for. Speaking of which, Katsuki carefully freed one hand from the railing and tugged at the silk evening necktie he was wearing for the night and having freed himself from the gaudy material, he dropped it into the waters below.
If I'm really going to die, I'm leaving this world with no more restrictions.
He watched as the cold wind blew the necktie away from the Titanic first, before the waves closed in on it and swallowed it whole, lost forever. Just like he was going to be in a few more seconds. Katsuki shook violently as he tried to convince himself that this was the best thing to do. His mother would be shocked, tearful, even sad of course, but she would also lament her lost opportunity to be filthy rich. The money that would guarantee her a life free of troubles. The money that would allow her to step up into a newer, better social class.
The money that she sold her son for.
Filled with renewed anger, Katsuki was now fully prepared to fall to his doom out of spite. He loosened his grip on the railing slightly and closed his eyes…
"Don't do it."
Katsuki's eyes flew open and his grip tightened once more, out of shock. He turned to find a boy about his age, approaching him with a cautious stance but a steady, determined look in his wide brown eyes.
His anger flared up again but he had lost some of his resolve to jump. "Stay back! Don't come any closer, Round Face!"
The boy's eyes widened almost comically at the nickname but he decided not to comment on it and simply stretched his out hand towards him as he continued to approach the railing slowly, "Come on. Just give me your hand." he offered a reassuring smile, "I'll pull you back over--"
"No!" Katsuki yelled and the boy stopped still in his tracks, clearly worried that he would do something rash in his panic. "Stay where you are!"
The boy had stopped but he did not seem to have any intention to move. Katsuki's patience was wearing thin. Was it too much to ask for a quiet, private death? "I mean it, I'll fucking let go, right the fuck now--"
"No you won't."
Katsuki couldn't believe what he was hearing. This fuckwit had some NERVE to talk back to a gentleman of his standing. "What the fuck do you mean, no, I won't? Don't tell me what I will and will not do. You don't even fucking know me!"
"Well, for one, you would have done it already." the boy threw a quick glance at Katsuki's hands on the railing, knuckles deathly white from gripping the metal bar too tightly. "Also, I've noticed you've got quite a foul mouth for a rich boy but do you know any cuss words that's not a variant of 'fuck''?"
"You're distracting me, fuckface. Go away." Katsuki mumbled and turned his head back around to the task at hand. He couldn't let an idiotic commoner with a lack of boundaries take his mind off what he needed to do. He needed to jump, now.
"I can't. I'm involved now."
The sound of shoes clacking against the floorboard of the deck forced Katsuki to turn his eyes back to the boy once again. Or at least, what he initially thought was a boy.
As soon as Katsuki's unwanted companion took off her flat cap, a small wave of short brown tumbled down from the top of her head into a light, friendly bob that framed her round pink cheeks. She started to take off her jacket and offered him another, much bigger smile as she told him, " You let go and I'm going to have to jump in there after you."
Katsuki started to find it difficult to maintain eye contact with this girl who was so bold as to strip in front of a man. "Don't be an idiot. You'll be killed."
"I'm a good swimmer." she reassured him as she placed her jacket on a nearby bench before ambling casually towards Katsuki with her hands in her trouser pockets, as if she was taking a stroll in a park on a fine spring morning.
"The fall alone would kill you." Katsuki bit back. However the thought only added to his own hesitation, while the girl had not been deterred by the fact in the slightest.
She was now at the railings, about five feet away from Katsuki and as she leaned against the pole, the contact sent the tiniest of vibrations through the metal connected to his own hands. Katsuki found it oddly warm and comforting.
She nodded slowly as she thought about what he had said. "It would hurt. I'm not saying it wouldn't. To be honest I'm a lot more concerned about the water being so cold."
A sinking feeling started to grow in the pit of Katsuki's stomach. "How cold?" he asked, taking care not to betray his fear.
"Freezing." the girl seemed a little perturbed herself at the thought of it, "Maybe a couple degrees over. They have some of the coldest winters around where I grew up. Once when I was a kid, me and my father were ice-fishing out on the lake... Oh by the way, ice-fishing's where you chop a hole in the--"
"I know what ice fishing is!" Katsuki bellowed.
The girl covered her mouth to prevent a laugh from escaping. It was a matter of life and death after all. "Sorry. You looked like an indoor kind of guy." Katsuki began to protest but she continued before he could speak, "Anyway, I went through some thin ice and I'm telling you, water that cold, like that right down there, it hits you like a thousand knives all over your body. You can't breathe, you can't think, at least not about anything but the pain."
Stopping to sneak a peek at Katsuki's reaction, his jaw was clenched firmly and a cold sweat had broken out on his forehead- she knew that she had gotten through to him a little. She decided to move in a little closer to him. "Which is why I'm really not looking forward to jumping in after you. But like I said, I don't see a choice. I guess I'm kinda hoping you'll come back over the rail and get me off the hook here."
She gave him another sweet smile paired with an outstretched palm but this time, her own nervousness was evident in the way her hand shook slightly. Katsuki couldn't believe his eyes. Here was a common girl, seemingly a cross-dresser at that, offering to commit double suicide with a man she had only talked to for a few minutes despite her obvious fear. He could handle the thought of hurting his mother with his death if he found enough reasons to fuel his rage but taking an innocent life along with him was never a part of his plan.
In his frustration, he didn't even know what to say. The only words that ended up coming out of his mouth were, "You're crazy."
The girl raised an eyebrow but she seemed a lot more relaxed than before, "With all due respect, I'm not the one hanging off the back of a ship."
For the first time since childhood, Katsuki felt like laughing. At the absurdity of life, at this giant, unsinkable piece of metal, at the ridiculous stranger who would put her life on the line to save him. A single hot tear spills from the corner of his eye, blown away by the wind too quickly for the girl to even notice in the dim lighting of the stern deck.
"Come on. You don't want to do this. Give me your hand."
He looked back, searching her eyes for any sign of malevolence at all, anything to give him a reason to jump, and all he saw was pure sincerity. Her desperation made it clear to him that, right here, right now, he was the most important thing to her. Nobody, not his greedy mother, his vain fiancée or their power-hungry investors could ever begin to imagine that this was the one thing he needed most. And before this very moment, not even himself.
"Alright."
Katsuki turned his body fully towards the girl and grasped her hand tightly. Her eyes lit up almost instantly as a genuine grin breaks out on her flushed face. "I'm Ochako Uraraka."
A small smirk begins to bloom on Katsuki's face, only a mere ghost of the one he always used to have after winning first place in sports matches back in school. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Uraraka."
Katsuki Bakugou had only been given a small taste of what life had to offer and he was not in the mood to die right now.