Work Text:
“As new heroes on the scene, tell us, where do you see yourselves in five years?” the reporter asks. She’s a beautiful woman and at least ten years their senior, but neither stop her from shamelessly batting her eyelashes at Kacchan. She’s probably bordering on the lines of unprofessionalism with how close she’s standing next to him. Izuku’s certain if she was any closer, she’d be on top of him. He can smell her sickly perfume from where he is and he’s not sure how the other can handle it at all.
“Well, obviously I’ll be No. 1 by that point,” Kacchan boasts, arrogantly puffing his chest out. He’s smirking, clearly not oblivious to the reporter’s unsubtle attempts at flirtation. “What a stupid question.”
“How ambitious! I admire your confidence as a rookie, Ground Zero," she trills, eagerly drinking in every last word the teenager utters. "And you, Deku?” she tacks on, as if he's an afterthought, momentarily lost in the overshadowing presence of Kacchan. He’s not offended. He’d forget himself as well, if he was in her position.
“I’ll probably be competing with Ground Zero for said No. 1 spot.” Izuku sends Kacchan an easy smile. He’s still wearing his hero suit, blonde hair pushed off his forehead with his mask, red marks around his eyes from its absence. Izuku can barely hear the reporter cooing in the background from behind him. She only falls away as he beams up at his childhood friend glowering before him.
“Oh, trust me, it won’t be any competition, idio—” Kacchan is hissing before he catches his manager waving at him from behind the cameras. He sourly closes his mouth, much like an angry cat, Izuku notes, at the reminder he is being filmed.
Izuku laughs, and it’s a genuine sound reminiscent of their youth together. Katsuki thinks it’s a painful reminder of how far they’ve come together, how incredible it is that they were both able to catch onto their juvenile dreams like this, and not let go. Izuku’s eyelids are pressed shut. He doesn't see Katsuki’s face becoming a soft pink from beside him at the noise.
Katsuki rolls his eyes upon seeing another picture of Deku on the banner above the windows of his train. It’s terrible, nowadays he can’t even go home in peace without Deku’s smug little face assaulting him wherever he goes. It’s an advertisement for a high-end brand of sneakers this time, but Katsuki’s seen him promoting other things, like flavoured milk, or even salon-grade shampoo.
It’s amusing to Katsuki because he knows Deku used the same bar of soap for both his hair and body at UA. Not that Katsuki is familiar with Deku’s shower routine, of course not, they’re just passing words in a long forgotten conversation. Katsuki assumes even if Deku doesn’t have products sent directly to him to endorse, he definitely has the money to burn if the offers Katsuki received himself at No. 16 are anything to go by.
Sponsorships were one of Katsuki’s least favourite things from when he was a pro hero. He remembers receiving an offer for an energy drink company which was more than triple his annual hero commission salary. Isn’t it, great, his manager had said. You won’t have to do any actual hero work for a while. We can just stage a few incidents every now and then so you don’t drop below top 20. Katsuki recalls promptly excusing himself and being sick in the men’s.
He’d called Kirishima, who had said he didn’t get offers like that, and was jealous he didn’t have a flashy quirk like Katsuki. Katsuki remembers not knowing how to reply to that because his quirk was usually too destructive to be usable in his job, and what was the point of having a strong quirk if he was always at risk of harming civilians and damaging infrastructure.
To Katsuki’s immense frustration, Kirishima had actually been right. Maybe Katsuki had been too naive, too blinded by the light of what was the hero industry, his childhood dream. Pro heroes were too often marketed on their likability and appearance, not their actual skills and achievements. The hero that saved the most people was No. 1 in Katsuki’s books, that’s who All Might had been. So why were everyone else’s standards different? Why was performed heroism garnering more attention than actual heroic feats? And when he asked his manager if the hero commission knew about it, if it was illegal, she had the gall to laugh. She called him sweet, and said it benefited the economy too much for anyone to do anything about it. Don’t worry yourself. This works in our favour, Bakugou-san.
Katsuki knew that was only half the truth, though. The more popular, the more beloved a pro hero was, the more power the government had. He knew the government could use the public’s favourite celebrities as spokespeople, as symbols, could hide their new agendas behind the glittery facade of the beautiful pro heroes. He knew the government controlled their pay and orchestrated their position on the leaderboard. He knew his first duty was not to the people he was paid to protect, but then was it ever? If there was ever a conflict between the government and the people he was supposed to save, where would he be allowed to stand?
He was desperate to say something, but everyone else was surely complacent with the status quo. The current system definitely benefited all of the pro heroes. Who would want to go against the corrupt government with him? It drove him insane wondering if he was the only one that could see how truly broken it was.
Katsuki gazes upon Deku’s vacant green eyes looking down on him. The other surely hadn’t come to the same conclusions as Katsuki, There’s really no reason for either of them to question it when such subversions allows them both to live so comfortably. They’re the ones who benefit from it, beyond everything. Katsuki blinks. The scars on Deku’s right hand are missing from his enthusiastic thumbs up. Katsuki wonders whether they were photoshopped out, or if they had simply faded over time. He refuses to feel guilty for not knowing which it is.
He hadn’t said anything, he didn’t need to announce anything to the media, he didn’t owe that godforsaken industry anything. But after closing his agency for the last time, all he had wanted to do was call Deku. It was the only thing that made any semblance of sanity to him. After all, Deku was the one he had shared this childhood dream with. He didn’t, of course. Katsuki was far too proud. He’d driven home in silence and turned the volume of his ringtone up, hoping Deku would contact him, himself, upon hearing the news. His cellphone never rang. Deku had stopped chasing Katsuki a long time ago.
Sometimes he sees people with bunny ears hanging off green hoodies. It doesn’t make his heart ache anymore. It only makes Deku seem more distant, like he is a character from a film Katsuki saw as a child, not an actual person from his life. Deku was ultimately a bully’s name for their victim, but it was still Katsuki’s special name for Deku, and it meant something to him. It meant Deku was more than the other extras in his life. Even still, Katsuki never apologised for the terrible things he said, for the terrible things he did. It shouldn’t have been surprising that Deku would take his special name and make it non-special. Now everyone across the country speaks of the No. 1 hero, and Katsuki honestly can’t say he doesn’t mourn the days Deku would duck his head and fight back tears at the same nickname sliding off Katsuki’s cruel tongue. It’s not because Katsuki’s a sadist or anything, but because Deku would glare at him with this childish intensity Katsuki knows he’ll never be able to experience ever again.
The thought of people wearing Katsuki’s colours certainly appealed to him once, but the thought of children in another country sewing t-shirts for scraps never did. If he was a pro hero and his job was saving people, why would he not think about the people directly affected by the production of his own merchandise. These were the very same people he had vowed to protect. Why were pro heroes even profiting off such externalities when there were children starving? And Katsuki had realised, in that exact moment, he was never going to save everyone. Because even if he made his merchandise fairly, not every hero was going to. Not every hero would be able to. There was no way to truly save everyone. Not in the constraints of this position. And he would not allow himself to benefit off the oppression of others.
The day Deku had made No. 1, Katsuki had been in his university’s library hunched over a laptop. Katsuki had pursued heroism straight out of high school, so he was considerably older than the most of the other students in his course. They would often gossip about him being a failed pro hero, someone plagued by PTSD, or the likes, someone who had given up the honourable profession as a pro hero to selfishly pursue knowledge for himself.
There’s a part of Katsuki that sometimes wonders, if he was still a pro hero, would he be able to overtake Deku? And he has to remind himself that it’s all staged, it’s all a ploy to control the general population, that pro heroes are just glorified police officers serving as the government’s pawns, but he can’t help thinking, I’m never going to be able to pass Deku. I gave up.
But if saving people was never Katsuki’s motivation, then what was? No. 1? A superficial number on a falsified leaderboard? (To be better than a quirkless child?) Katsuki pretends he still doesn’t know.
“Fuck.”
Katsuki missed his stop.
When Izuku catches Kacchan at the end of a news segment, he has to do a double take. Bakugou Katsuki for MP 2020 is printed in block letters on a sign behind him and Destroy the Corrupt Pro Hero Industry is written underneath it in handwriting Izuku can remember from cruel words scrawled across his desk in middle school. However, the expression on Kacchan’s face is not one he recognises. It’s something unreadable and it has a certain maturity to it that Izuku thinks should look almost wrong on the other’s face, but doesn’t. It appears, even as No. 1 hero, he’s still never going to be able to catch up.
“Dr. Bakugou, do you have any final words?” the reporter asks, and if Izuku had to label her manner of speech it would be timid. It’s amusing. Interviewers used to flock to Kacchan as Ground Zero, flirtatious and eager to be the first to publish whatever thought was running across his mind that day. This woman looks as if she may get herself in trouble simply for talking to him.
There’s a period of silence, and Izuku’s not entirely sure whether Kacchan will respond at all, and then—
“There’s more than one way to be a hero,” Kacchan finally answers, looking into the camera and it’s like he’s talking directly to Izuku himself. He doesn’t smile, the expression is still unfamiliar, he’s miles away, but Izuku feels like he’s coming home at last. “It took me a long time to work that one out for myself.”