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The hardest part of dying, Katsuki thinks, is the In-Between.
It's the "neither here nor there"; the void that he can't quite enter; the space that he can't quite take.
It's the anger in his gut that keeps him from moving on. The stubbornness of his heart and the wariness of his mind, both halves of his soul warring with the notion that he needs to go, technically, but he does not want to.
He can't.
Not when Ochako is still here.
And oh, actually, that is the hardest part of dying.
Knowing that there is nothing that he can do.
It happens too quickly. A patrol gone bad and a villain too cocky, a bad combination that leaves Katsuki bleeding out on the way to the hospital and being dead before he even gets there.
It's falling asleep and not waking up. Not really, at least, because you can't really wake up when you're dead. You more... Rise.
And that's exactly what he does, in the small corner room in the far end of a hospital. One minute he is not there and the next he is, standing above his own body and watching his mother scream and scream and scream at the doctor's to bring him back, to do something, to make themselves useful before she dragged his ass back into his body herself.
He almost laughs.
Almost.
He sits for a while instead, watching his parents as they mourned for their son, and it pulls on his heart in a way that nothing else ever has. He is an ocean of feelings that he can't quite place; waves of nausea and anger and sadness rolling off of him and into the abyss, and he just isn't sure where to place them.
So he moves.
This is another thing that's hard. It's hard to place time and motion and distance when, technically, these are not things that you need in the In-Between.
The same as Rising: one minute he is in the hospital, and the next he is in their apartment.
And, oh , no, this is not right, the way Ochako is there, curled in on herself, eyes swollen shut and hair matted and tangled, cocooned beneath their blankets as she shakes and cries and wails.
No.
This isn't right at all.
She is supposed to be strong, supposed to be unwavering in the face of pain and grief and anger.
Logically, he knows that Ochako is human. Knows that she feels things so much more than other people do. That she's always dialed up to 11, the same as he had been, just on a different frequency; a happier frequency.
She was always happy.
This is not.
He takes a step forward and crawls into bed with her, wrapping his arms around her body and pulling her to him.
And, oh, maybe this is the hardest part of dying, actually.
Being there, being able to touch, being able to hold, but having no weight behind it. Having no heat to his presence. Having no way of knowing if she can feel his heart not-beating in his chest, not knowing if she can hear him as he tells her she'll be okay, that he loves her, that she has to be okay, that he can't stand the thought of watching her wither away.
That even as he kisses her forehead, her cheeks, her jaw, the soft spot behind her ear, having no way of knowing if she can feel any of it.
The room is silent.
Stifling.
The only sound being Ochako's shattered sobs and Katsuki's unheard reassurances.
After a time, though, Ochako calms.
She takes a breath, deep and present, and rolls over in bed so she's face-to-face with Katsuki.
She looks directly at him, her eyes meeting his, but he knows - he knows - that she cannot see him. That she sees through him.
"I don't know what to do," Ochako says into the silence of her room, and Katsuki's investing heart shatters.
"Anything," he says. "Everything."
"I don't know what to do," she says again, and he reaches out, cups her face in his hands, knows there's no weight behind the action.
"Live," he says forcefully.
Ochako stares through him.
"What am I going to do?"
" Live ," Katsuki repeats, angry now, angry that he cannot be there to hold her the way he wants.
"I don't know what to do."
" Fuck , Ochako, please just-"
He's hysterical now, grabbing any part of her he can reach, pulling them as close as possible until she's practically through him. She doesn't move, though, so it's Katsuki moving through her , and he feels so helpless, like he's drowning, like he can't breathe, like he's dying-
Oh.
Fuck .
--
Ochako’s phone rings almost half an hour later.
She doesn't turn, just reaches an arm behind her until she finds her phone vibrating against her back. She pulls it around her until it's laying on the bed by her face, and she slides to answer it and belatedly remembers to put it on speaker rather than hold it to her ear.
All of her movements are dead-weight.
"Hm," she says in lieu of greeting, and Katsuki chokes on a cry.
"Ochako."
It's Deku. Fuck , it's Midoriya, calling her to check on her. Of course he is. Of course.
"Hm," Ochako says again, and Midoriya sniffs on the other end of the line.
And suddenly Katsuki is there, with Midoriya in his own apartment, but still with Ochako in hers.
Like a split-screen television, he can see both at once.
Midoriya is pacing, a hand tugging at the roots of his hair as the other grips his phone so hard Katsuki wonders if it might break. He looks panicked and worried and stressed and oh-
He doesn't know.
"Ochako," he says again, and Katsuki wants to look away, but can't. Like a car crash in slow motion, he watches it happen.
"Izuku," Ochako says, and Katsuki can see her, too. Can see the hollow look in her eyes as she stares through him and at the wall, unmoving, arms limp at her sides and head pushed into her pillow. "Katsuki is dead."
The way the words slip from her mouth is like cotton falling from a milkshake. Soft, slurred, all mixed together and forced out through the cracks of her lips, barely able to be understood but still crystal clear.
Midoriya is silent. Unmoving.
"What?"
Like lead dropping from a three-story window.
Ochako repeats the words, as if tasting them on her tongue could make her understand.
"Katsuki is dead. A villain killed him."
Midoriya sits. Hard. Falling onto the couch and letting his phone roll out of his hand.
Katsuki counts the seconds.
Three minutes.
Three minutes of silence before Midoriya moves. He picks up his phone slowly, holding it back to his ear.
It's another thirty seconds before he speaks.
"I need to-"
"Mm." Ochako says, and the line is disconnected.
Another fifteen minutes pass in silence, until the clicking of the front door catches Katsuki’s attention.
Ochako doesn’t move, her back to their bedroom door as Mina knocks on the doorframe softly, plastic bag from the supermarket crinkling in her hand as she steps into the room.
“‘Chako?”
Ochako doesn’t respond.
Mina drops the duffle bag she’s carrying by their dresser. Katsuki assumes it’s full of things Mina needs while she stays here for the next however-long. She sets the supermarket bag down next, and when it falls open Katsuki can see all of Ochako’s favorite foods and candies and drinks.
The rush of gratitude he feels for Mina in this moment is overwhelming.
“I came as soon as I heard,” she says softly, crawling under the sheets behind Ochako and wrapping her arms around her waist. She pulls her into her back, pressing her forehead against Ochako’s spine, and curls around her.
“I don’t know what to do.”
It’s the fifth time Katsuki has heard her say it, and it still cuts through his soul like a knife.
“I know,” Mina says.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I know.”
“I just... I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” Ochako’s voice is rising, borderline hysterical, and Katsuki thinks this might hurt more than the silence. “I don’t. Know. I don’t know what I’ll do for income. For a house. I can’t stay here; my future? Where will I go? What will I do? Mina, I’m going to be-- I’m going to be alone. Forever. I’m never going to- to kiss anyone ever again. To hold anyone ever again. To love anyone ever again. Mina. Mina, I don’t know what to do . What do I do? Mina, please. Please -” Ochako spins, suddenly, so she’s facing Mina, her hands clutched in the front of her shirt.
“Mina, what am I going to do?”
Mina takes a breath, fighting the urge to cry, and wraps her hands around Ochako’s.
“I don’t know,” she says, truthfully, and they lie there for a moment, staring at each other.
Ochako doesn’t move, doesn’t respond, and Katsuki watches as a single tear trails from the corner of her eye. At the angle she’s laying, it tracks across her nose and falls into her pillow.
The silence settles around them again.
--
Eijirou calls next.
“Ochako,” he says almost immediately after she picks up, her hand falling back onto the mattress like a stone. “Ochako, tell me it’s not- tell me he’s not-”
“I’m sorry, Ei,” she says, and Katsuki is there, now, in Kirishima’s own apartment, watching him frown at his countertop, eyes full of tears, fist shaking at his side. “I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck?”
It’s a simple statement, one that Katsuki used at any opportunity, but it spits out of Kirishima like acid, the words nearly enough to burn through Katsuki’s soul.
“He was- Ochako, he can’t. He’s my brother. He can’t-”
“I’m sorry.”
“He can’t.”
“I know.”
“How-”
“Villain.”
“He-”
“I know."
It’s a back and forth of half-formed sentences and numb apologies. Neither getting anywhere but both understanding, the pain and the anger and the sadness palpable even through the phone line.
Mina is holding Ochako, curled around her like a parenthesis, and she pulls her tighter through the call.
“I’m just-”
“I know.”
“Love you. Call me if you need me.”
“Love you too. Same to you.”
The line goes dead.
In his split-screen view, he watches the two closest people in his life break down, and he tries very hard not to do the same.
--
It takes three days for Ochako to pull herself out of bed.
He hovers. He knows he does, but he just wants to make sure that Ochako can feel him. Wants her to know that he’s here.
Mina stays with her. When Mina needs to leave, one of the other girls will rotate in. Tsu, Momo, Jirou, Hakagure.
Katsuki’s parents visit, and the three of them sit and talk and pointedly do not cry.
“You’re still my daughter-in-law,” his mom says. “You know that, right?”
“And you’re still my mother-in-law,” Ochako says back.
Katsuki thinks about the ring that he had been going to buy. Thinks about his plan to propose on their anniversary; that was three months from now.
He had been so close.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
--
Ochako sits silent through his funerals.
He has two.
One for family and friends, and one for the public. Ochako attends both, wearing something sleek and black and beautiful both times, her makeup done and not a hair out of place.
She does not cry.
She tolerates the tears from others. Accepts the hugs and condolences and “if you need anything”s, and simply nods and says thank you and moves on to the next person.
“You’re the girlfriend, right?” Someone asks at one point; some stranger at his public funeral, someone he doesn’t even know who thinks they have the privilege of speaking to Ochako at all. Ochako’s expression grows tight.
“Fiance,” she corrects, which is mostly true. They had been together for five years, had talked about marriage often, but had never really gotten around to making things official.
Regret was a monster of a thing.
“Ah,” the person says, clearly uncomfortable. “Right. Just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’ve been crying non-stop since the news broke. I don’t know how you’re so composed.”
“I’m out of tears,” Ochako says. “I’ve cried them all. I don’t think I have anything left to give.”
“Right,” the person repeats. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Ochako says, and moves on.
--
The most annoying part about dying, he thinks, is the media frenzy that follows.
People online tweeting pictures of the roped-off crime scene where his body once was, people on Facebook posting about his death as if they knew him personally, people attempting to send Ochako friend requests just to send her messages telling her that they’d be praying for her.
Ochako is contacted by three news outlets attempting to ask for an interview. She denies them all.
One reporter shows up on their apartment’s doorstep, microphone in hand, a camera behind him, zooming in to get a shot of Ochako’s face, pinched with annoyance and slightly ruffled from sleep.
“Do you have a moment? Just a few questions.”
Ochako slams the door in the man’s face.
--
She gets his fingerprints before his body is cremated.
She has to fight for them; when she’s on the phone with his mother and father and the funeral home, she’s almost manic in her tone.
“Please,” she says, choking on her words and forcing them out anyway. “Please, that’s all I want. I want a portion of his ashes, and I want his fingerprints. Please. Please , that’s all I want.”
“Of course,” his mother agrees. “Of course, baby. We’ll get them, don’t worry. Don’t worry, we’ll get them for you.”
Katsuki can see her body unwind a bit at this. He knows she’s been panicking; he’d heard the conversation with Mina earlier that day.
“I’m the fiance,” she had said, her voice laced with scorn. “Not the wife. The fiance of five years has no rights. They don’t give a fuck about me, Mina. I’m so lucky that his parents like me. Or I could be denied everything. I would have nothing. No one cares unless we’re married.”
They had missed the mark by three months.
Katsuki is so full of anger he could scream.
--
She uses his prints to get two rings: one, a small silver band with his ring-finger print on the bottom, “my love” engraved in the top. The second, another band with a heart on top, the same ring-finger print pressed into the top.
One above, one below.
One for others to see, one for Ochako to feel pressed against her skin.
He watches as she runs her fingers over the ridges of the engraving, lying in bed, her hands inches from her face.
She still does not cry.
--
She gets a necklace, next.
It’s actually a gift from Mina: a key with a heart at the top, hollow on the inside so Ochako can fill it with some of his ashes. Mina got his name engraved on a plate that hangd beside the key, with his birthstone directly beside that.
It sounds like a bell when she walks, all of the pieces of metal clinking against one another like windchimes.
She never takes it off.
--
She gets a tattoo.
Well, she gets two actually, where before she had none. She’s always been too afraid.
Not anymore, it seems.
She gets one on the inside of her left arm. It’s a small image of Jupiter, surrounded by stars. It’s the planet she said reminded her of Katsuki.
On the inside of her right arm, to mirror the left, she gets the moon. The “planet” that Katsuki said reminded him of her.
--
She gets lunch with Eijirou. She spends time with Midoriya. She goes back to work, taking more patrols and clocking in more hours. She laughs at Mina’s jokes. She joins online groups. She reads more books. She makes more friends.
She comes home at night, curls into a small ball in her bed, one of Katsuki’s unwashed shirts beneath her head, and stares at the wall until she falls asleep.
--
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispers one night, parked in her car on the hill above the city, her seat leaned back and the sunroof open, letting the moonlight flood her car. “I know I keep saying that, Katsuki, but I really just... Don’t know.”
Katsuki sits up in the passenger seat with a start, realizing that she’s talking to him .
“Sometimes I feel like you’re here with me,” she says, and he practically scrambles over the console to reach for her hand. “Like I can almost feel you. But most of the time I can’t. And I’m just... So scared, you know? It’s so selfish of me. To want to keep you here.”
“It’s not,” Katsuki says, even though he knows she can’t hear him. “It’s not. I’d do anything-”
But she starts talking again, unaware of him beside her.
“I just can’t stand the idea of being here without you. Of living a long, healthy life, when yours was just... Taken. It’s not fair.” She balls her hands into fists, pressing the heels of them into her eyes. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair Katsuki and it hurts. It hurts so much sometimes that I have no idea what to do with it. With all this fucking... Anger . I’ve never felt so much anger in my life. Ever. And I have nowhere to put it.
“I just want to hit something,” she says. “Just want to fucking hit something until it bleeds. Patrols aren’t doing it for me anymore. Because I have to hold back. And I just... Don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know and I know I keep saying that but it’s the only thing that I can say because it’s the only thing that my stupid fucking brain can supply me with. I can’t fucking. Think. Of anything else to say.
“Because I just. Don’t know. I just don’t know what to do with myself most days, Katsuki. Because you were my light. You were the sun that I revolved around. I lived my life for you . I did everything for you . Or I did everything because of you. I did everything with you. And now I’m just... alone. I’m alone, and I don’t know what to do about that.
“How am I supposed to be alone for the rest of my life? How am I supposed to live? I’m never going to move on. I know, I know you told me forever ago that if something happened to you, I should move on. But I don’t think you understand that I fucking can’t . Because you were it. You were my forever. And now I’m all alone.
“I’m never going to sleep beside anyone again. I’m never going to kiss someone. Never going to go on a date or text someone and get those stupid fucking butterflies. I’m never going to come home to anyone. The house will always be empty.”
She pauses, huffing out a choked laugh in the silence of the car.
“I’m never going to have sex again.”
Katsuki can’t help it.
He lets out his own laugh, startled by the words.
“Really! Of all of the things- it just kind of hit me the other day. I think I was watching some movie and they started fucking and I was like ‘oh my god... I’m never going to do that, ever again’. It was so... jarring.
“But honestly, sometimes it’s all I can think about.” She curls up into herself, pulling her knees to her chest and laying sideways in her seat. “I’ll forever be ‘the poor girl who lost her fiance’. Not even a widow. Just... fiance. And that makes me angry, because in my eyes, we were married. But no one else will ever see it that way.
“I’m so scared about people telling me that I’ll move on,” she continues. “Some people already have. ‘Oh, just give it 5, 10 years and you’ll be itching to find someone new’. ‘Well, things happen for a reason’. As if you’re just something replaceable . As if your death was meant to bring me to the person that I’m meant to be with. As if that person wasn’t you . As if the one person who was made for me on this Earth was taken, and now I am alone.
“That’s what makes me the angriest,” she says. “The people who think that they know what they’re talking about. Like they know my grief. They don’t . They can’t ever . And it makes me so mad that I think I want to be sick, sometimes.”
She’s quiet for a long time, and Katsuki takes in the shape of her face, the ridge of her nose, the hollowed out look in her eye.
“I wish you were with me,” she says, so softly that he almost misses it. “I wish I could know for sure. That you could give me a sign, or something. I just...”
She reaches out as if to touch him, but stops just short of his chest.
“I wish I knew .”
--
The hardest part of the In-Between, he thinks, is coming up with energy for Visits.
He tries visiting Ochako in dreams more than once; he only succeeds a handful of times.
They’re snippets: riding shotgun in the car with her as she drives down the interstate, her excited expression as she tries to catch him up on all of the things he’s missed. He doesn’t get to speak. Not enough energy.
There’s one where he simply stands and waves, smiling a bit at her as she looks up from whatever she’s doing in her dream. She beams at him, and then he’s gone.
But finally, finally , he saves up enough, dropping in on her in the middle of some dream that makes no sense to him because he is not her.
“Katsuki,” she breathes, sprinting across whatever dream-space they’re in and throwing herself into his arms immediately. He can practically feel her, feel his arms wrap around her waist, feel her head as is rests against his chest, and he almost cries.
And then they’re sitting, somehow, a cut fro here-to-there the way that dreams do, and she’s in his lap, and he’s beaming up at her, and she’s kissing his face over and over and over and over and-
“I miss you,” she says, and she’s crying, tears streaming down her face. He wipes one away. “I thought you would never come.”
“I’ve been trying,” he says. “I’ve been really trying. But it’s hard to save up enough to get here.”
“Like what,” Ochako asks, tilting her head. “Money? I can give you money, Katsuki, if you need that to get back-”
“No, Ochako.” He laughs, squeezing her tighter, and he buries his face in the crook of her neck. “Not money. Just... It’s hard to explain.”
“Okay,” she says. “But if you need it, I have it.”
“Thanks.”
“Mmm.”
They sit in silence for a moment, simply basking in each other’s warmth, and he can feel her shudder as she cries.
“I miss you so much it hurts,” she says softly. “I really do.”
“I know,” he says. “Me too.”
“I love you,” she says, and she kisses him slowly, softly, her hands cupping his face as she bends down to reach him from her spot on his lap. He can taste her, he can feel her, he can talk to her-
Let me keep this.
“I love you too,” he says. “I’m always there.”
And then she wakes up.
--
She bleaches her hair.
It’s nearly platinum blonde, now, something that she had always talked about doing but had never done.
“What would you think?” She had asked him one day over coffee. She’d pulled a strand of her hair forward so she could stare at it. She was cross-eyed as she looked.
“I think it would be cool,” Katsuki had said, shrugging.
“You think I would look good?”
“I think you would look good no matter what you did,” he said. “You’re beautiful no matter what you do.”
She had blushed, and smiled, and hid behind her hands for a good five minutes.
And sure enough, as he looks at her now, platinum blonde and smiling softly in the mirror as a triumphant Mina stands beside her, Katsuki thinks that he was right.
She does look beautiful.
--
He gets his opportunity one day, unexpectedly.
“Excuse me,” a woman says softly as Ochako makes her way down the street, heading home from the grocery store. “Excuse me, ma’am.”
Ochako slows, and the woman looks behind her pointedly.
At Katsuki.
“Ah,” the woman says, nodding slowly. “I think I can help you.”
“I’m sorry?” Ochako says slowly, and the woman shakes her head.
“Not you, dear,” she says. “Though I suppose it would be beneficial to you as well. No-” she points a finger over Ochako’s shoulder. “I’m talking about him. Your fiance.”
Time seems to stop.
Ochako turns, slowly, to look at the spot where Katsuki currently stands.
“Excuse me?”
Her voice is low, dangerous, like the woman in front of her is treading on very thin ice. Katsuki knows this is an opportunity, and so he makes a scrambled effort to let her know that this isn’t some game.
“Tell her that I was right about her hair.”
The woman smiles, nodding once.
“He says he was right,” she says, and Ochako freezes. “About your hair.”
Katsuki is breathing fast, now. This is it. This is the time to tell her things, to tell her what he’s been thinking all this time, to get it out without having to save energy to visit in a dream-
“Tell her that it looks good. That I was right, and she looks-”
“-beautiful no matter what she does.” The woman is speaking at almost the same time as he is, but he’s not looking at her. He’s looking at Ochako.
Ochako, who looks ready to sprint at a moment’s notice.
“Tell her that-”
“-he’s fine, Cheeks. All’s good. He’s still here, and will be here until you’re ready for him to go. It’s not selfish, it’s him protecting you, even now. You can’t get rid of him that easy, he told you that before, right? He says he hopes you can-”
“-feel the way I hold you sometimes, when you’re sad or crying. I hope that’s why you stop after I do. Because you can, I dunno, feel me or something. I hope you can feel the kisses I plant on your stupid round cheeks and the push I give you sometimes to get you moving-”
“-in the right direction. He hopes you know that it’s him that keeps messing with your radio dial, because your music is garbage, he says, and you could use some better taste. He tries to visit you in dreams when he can, but it’s hard, sometimes. He says he’s happy that he’s here with you, and that he’s fine, and that he will be fine until you make it back with him when you’re old and grey and full of wrinkles. Because he’ll be mad if you come meet him before then.”
There’s a pause, heavy and silent, and then Katsuki says:
“Tell her that I was going to marry her.”
The woman does.
“Tell her that I was going to ask her on our anniversary.”
The woman does.
“Tell her that we would have been married in 6 months. And that I would have spent the rest of my life with her, knowing that we were going to grow old together.”
The woman does.
“Tell her that I didn’t know what happiness was until I met her.”
The woman does.
“Thank you,” Katsuki says, and the woman nods.
She leaves Ochako standing in the middle of the sidewalk, crying so hard that she can barely see.
--
The hardest part about dying, Katsuki thinks, is the In-Between.
It’s having to watch Ochako go about her life knowing that he can’t help.
It’s having to sit and wait, sit and watch, sit and do nothing day in and day out.
It’s having to work with snippets of visits in dreams. Of fleeting moments of kisses and hugs and tears and “I love you”s that are taken as soon as an alarm clock rings.
It’s messing with the radio dial and Ochako laughing out loud when she realizes.
It’s not being able to kiss that smile off of her face in retaliation of her changing the station back.
It’s knowing that Ochako will meet him, someday, and they’ll leave the In-Between for the Far Beyond, and it’s only a matter of waiting for that to happen.
It’s both wishing that it would come soon, and praying that it won’t happen for decades.
So he waits, listening to Ochako talk into the emptiness of her bedroom some days, watching her talk to actual people on others. He continues to wrap his arms around her when she cries, continues to believe that it helps calm her down.
He nudges his friends when he knows she’s having bad days - Mina, Eijirou, Izuku - pushes them to message her, to check in on her when he can’t.
He holds her at night, sometimes visits her dreams, always cries with her when it gets to be too much.
He misses her. He misses her. He misses her.
He loves her. He loves her.
He will wait for her.
He will stay.