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Ochako didn’t know what she was expecting when she reached the scene, but Deku on his hands and knees in the middle of the street of an absolutely ravaged city block was not it. She’d witnessed him take plenty of hits before and beatings of a lifetime, but the moment she realized his body was trembling, her stomach turned. He spat out blood onto the broken pavement, tears following shortly after, and it hit her that he wasn’t just wounded physically.
Rushing over to him, Ochako crouched down and placed a hand on his back. “Deku?”
“It’s-It’s him,” Deku managed in a shaky sob. “It’s him .”
Her stomach twisted even more, her heart lodging itself firmly in her throat. “Who? What are you talking about?”
“Ochako, it’s–” Deku lifted his face. A trail of tears had streaked down his dirty face, blood matted on the side of his head where he’d taken a nasty blow. “It’s Kacchan.”
Her heart did a freefall from her throat to the pit of her stomach. “No, it can’t be. Deku, he– He wouldn’t–”
Her mouth was dry, likely from all the dust and smoke in the air. It was familiar, now that she thought about it – the aftermath of a quirk she knew by heart even if it wasn’t her own. When she closed her eyes, she could even smell the faint traces of nitroglycerin in the air, or maybe it was just her imagination. A small part of her wanted to hope that it was him, if only so she could see him, but a larger part of her, the logical part, pleaded for Deku to be wrong.
She couldn’t have her heart broken like this, not again, not right now when she needed to be strong.
“It’s him,” Deku repeated, this time firmer. Lifting one leg up from underneath him, he planted a foot on the ground and placed a hand on his other knee, his other hand digging into the rabble. “You have to warn the others. I’m gonna do whatever I can to subdue him, but I don’t–”
“No,” Ochako cut in. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving him .”
A grim smile crossed Deku’s face as he gazed at her. “Are you prepared to take him down?”
“Are you?” Ochako countered.
The smile flickered as he admitted, “I don’t know,” but he didn’t look away from her intense glare.
“You’re not gonna be able to take him down on your own,” Ochako told him. “You might be physically stronger than him, but…” She took a deep breath. “I don’t think we can fight him head-on.”
The truth was, they both knew there was a chance Deku would hesitate. She honestly wasn’t sure. Never one to get in the middle of their complex relationship, she watched them evolve from enemies to rivals to comrades, but some things never changed between them. No one had admired Katsuki like Deku – and no one pushed Katsuki to his greatest and most powerful heights like Deku. They would both fight each other with everything in them, but if Katsuki was willing to cause this much damage, she wasn’t sure what he was capable of now.
Deku considered her words and then glanced around them. Now that the smoke was clearing, the devastation from their fight had become more apparent. One building was precariously teetering in the wind, nearly half of its support and structure from four lower levels destroyed. The street itself was all but demolished, the asphalt cracked in pieces and cars engulfed in flames or crumpled up like napkins. Glass and debris were littered everywhere, a stoplight blinking red on the ground from the poll being torn down.
“He’ll take the whole city down with him,” Deku muttered to himself.
Ochako opened her mouth, but before she could get a word out, something glowing in the fog caught her attention. When the light bloomed even brighter, her eyes widened, and she smacked Deku in the chest, sending him flying to the other side of the street. A second later, an explosion burst through the smoke, striking the ground where Deku had been crouched before. She barely managed to avoid it, the explosion throwing her into the air. Using her jets, she managed to flip and stop herself mid-air from crashing into a building, freezing when someone stepped into the clearing.
“I thought I heard your sweet voice, Ochako,” Katsuki called out mockingly. He came to a halt, stomping his feet hard, and tilted his head back to meet her eyes. “You here to fight me too?”
Gritting her teeth, Ochako pressed her fingertips together and released her quirk. She dropped to the ground with a solid thud just a few meters away from Katsuki, never once looking away from him. His red eyes were the same as before, intense and vibrant as ever. How long had it been since she’d stared into them? Six months? Seven? They’d gotten into a vicious argument, one so bad that the police had been called, but by the time they arrived, he was gone, and she never heard from him again.
All she’d wanted was for him to get help. Driven to a reckless rage by his own ambition, humiliation, and insecurity, he had become someone she didn’t recognize, someone she couldn’t love, but that hadn’t meant she didn’t. Not loving him didn’t seem possible, not after everything they’d gone through.
Even now… Even now when she couldn’t understand what he was doing, her heart yearned for him, her fingers itching with the desire to reach out and touch him. They twitched at her sides, but she didn’t move, the short distance between them an open wound that neither one of them could close. He didn’t move either; he must’ve felt it as well, seeing as how he’d never had a problem crossing it before.
“I don’t want to fight you,” Ochako confessed. “I never wanted to fight you.”
A cruel grin cut its way across Katsuki’s face. “C’mon now, you loved that shit.”
“Not like this!” Ochako snapped. “Not like–”
(Katsuki throwing their door open so hard that the handle put a dent in the wall, Ochako following after him hot in his heels and watching helplessly as he threw a fit over his suspension. Trying to stop him when he began to throw some of their belongings across the room, trying to reason with him, only for him to corner her against a wall and demand to know if she thought he was unbalanced, unfit for duty, incapable of being a hero.
Do you trust me? Do you really think I’m nothing but a loose cannon? C’mon, Ochako, tell me the truth. Or are you afraid I can’t handle it? What’s with that scared look in your eyes? Tell me, Ochako, tell me– )
Ochako forced her body to relax. “This isn’t you.”
“You sure about that?” Katsuki asked, gesturing at the destruction around them. “Isn’t this what everyone kept telling me I was destined for?”
“They were wrong!” Ochako exclaimed. “I knew that. The people who truly cared about you knew that. Deku–”
“Don’t fucking bring him into this!” Katsuki shouted, mini-explosions bursting in front of his palms. “Everyone always has to throw his name into things, like he’s everything I’m not!”
Back when they first met, she would’ve flinched at the hint of violence, but they were older now and had gone through too much together. Those explosions used to rile up her, excite her, make her grin and laugh. She’d loved the way they hyped up him and everyone around him. Difficult and brash as he was, he could inspire people too. He was one of the first people to truly inspire her, after all. She looked at herself far differently after their first match, and he never let her forget it.
Ochako took a step forward. “Katsuki–”
“Don’t,” he snarled, taking a step back. “Don’t try to fucking appeal to me like that.”
She blinked innocently but stopped. “Like what?”
“Like you still–” Katsuki clenched his hands into fists. “Like you still give a shit about me.”
“You mean like I still love you?” Ochako shot back. “Because I do. I never stopped loving you, even if you were the one to walk out.”
“Ochako…” He stared at her hard, anger burning in his eyes but something else too, something that looked a lot like hope and fear. She doubled down hard, spilling all her emotions out in the open for him to see. If he was going to wound her like this, he might as well see the consequences.
She pressed a hand against her heart. “I tried to look for you, but you were just gone. I didn’t know what to do. All I could hope was that, wherever you were, you could find some sort of peace that I couldn’t give you.” Tears pricked at her eyes, burning as hot his glare, but she didn’t let them slip out just yet. Seeing him like this hurt, yes, but it also infuriated her as well. “What are you doing, Katsuki? You always had such lofty goals, but I don’t understand. You’re supposed to be a hero.”
His face fell. “I was never a hero in the public’s eyes. They wanted something charming and pretty that they could mold, someone they could parade about, and I’m…” Katsuki shook his head. “That ain’t me. It never was. I was only kidding myself.”
“You were to me,” Ochako insisted. “You were my hero.”
Katsuki scoffed. “You’re too fucking compassionate.”
“Is that so bad?” Ochako asked.
For a moment, Katsuki didn’t say anything. He just looked at her, considering her words. Contrary to what so many people believed, he was much more of a thinker than anyone realized. He was smart and strategic. Seeing him act like the loose cannon people believed him to be was wrong on every level. It wasn’t him. If she could just reach out to him and appeal to that logical and true side of him, maybe she could end this without a fight. Deku had to know she was right, hence why he was still hiding somewhere.
If they fought Katsuki, it would only end in more suffering. He’d make true on his old hero name.
“Trying to rescue me from myself?” Katsuki asked, his tone completely flat.
Steeling herself, Ochako took a step forward. When he didn’t back away, she took it as a good sign and crossed the rest of the way to him. He was only wearing half his old hero costume, the grenade gauntlets missing. She couldn’t help but think that it was for the best. Had he had those on him, the block would’ve been decimated entirely. Perhaps he had held back because he wasn’t entirely sure about what he was doing. She had to hope he still had some of that old hero in him.
When she finally reached him, Ochako raised her hands to touch his face, slipping a thumb under his mask so she could lift it over his eyes. “I promised I would always be here for you, didn’t I? Or did you forget the promises we made to each other?”
She certainly hadn’t, if the ring tucked under her costume was an indicator.
“I’m not that person anymore,” Katsuki told her in a low voice.
Ochako stared up at him, pleading with him with her eyes. “That’s not true. I know–”
“It’s too late.” Katsuki gripped her wrists, weaker than she expected. A pained look flashed across his face and then it was gone, replaced by that hard glint again. “It’s too late.”
She searched his eyes, looking for an answer she knew she wouldn’t like. “What do you–?”
An explosion down the street cut her off, followed by another and another. She gaped at him in horror, unmoving in his hold even as the aftershock from the distant explosions blew her hair in her face and screams echoed in the air. When her eyes started to drift, his grip on her tightened, bringing him focus back on him. His gauntlets. He hadn’t been wearing them because he was using them for some other reason. If they were stored up with nitroglycerin and someone was to spark them in any fashion…
Ochako nearly went limp in his hold, her face paling in the face of what he’d done. “No, you didn’t…”
“You can’t save everyone, Ochako,” Katsuki told her, and then he threw her back.
She fell behind a large piece of asphalt from the upturned street, too shocked to use her quirk on herself, right as he pointed a hand in the direction of the building opposite of them and let out a massive explosion. It was so loud that not even she could hear herself screaming his name, so strong that it threw her heart off its rhythm and the whole world went dark after such a bright explosion. It was him and it wasn’t and he–