Chapter Text
“one day, maybe the universe will give us another chance
to meet again, to love again,
and then, when that happens,
i will never let you go”
You met him in a dream.
It was a bit strange for you to be able to remember your dream in such vivid detail, considering you often tended to forget the things that passed through your brain in the silence of the night. Somehow, though, you grasped onto the memories of this dream and held on tight, able to remember it all down to the smallest point. You guessed that dreams were an unpredictable thing, and this one was just another inexplicable coincidence in the world, and that was that.
A smaller, quieter part of you felt that it might mean something. This part suggested that maybe, just maybe, the dreams were leading you into something much bigger than yourself, something far too vast to lie within your realm of understanding.
You ignore that part of you.
You’re just a small girl in a big city, a mere gear in the machine of the world.
Bakugo met you in a dream.
He doesn’t really like dreaming, since it makes him feel a little weird when he wakes up. Control is the name of his game, and he doesn’t like the idea of his brain playing make-believe while he’s resting and forcing him to participate, but there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He can’t bring himself to care much anyway, because he has more pressing issues to deal with in the real world. Training to be a pro-hero is far too difficult and demanding to waste time wondering about fairy tales.
He’s a pro-hero, a pillar of hope in this villain-ravaged society.
The two of you have nothing in common, nothing that could possibly intertwine your lives in a meaningful way.
Or so you think, but fate has a funny way of proving you wrong.
The cliff overlooks a lovely sky.
Being so high up, your feet dangling into the void below, all you can see is the painted blue in front of you. That, and the boy beside you. You’d met him before, the night preceding this one, but you’d both sat in silence then. He hadn’t felt compelled to speak to you.
It’s weird, because you aren’t startled at the sight of him despite believing that you were alone here. He just looks at you, and his nose wrinkles in disgust.
“Great, another weird ass dream,” he remarks sarcastically.
You frown, wondering why your brain made this boy so rude, especially if it was going to force you to spend time with him like this. You also wonder why he thinks this is his dream, and not yours. At least the view was nice.
For a few minutes, you attempt a conversation, asking him about his day, what he thinks of the weather, and other small talk topics. He responds with little to no enthusiasm, seeming annoyed at the sound of your voice, and you suddenly yell in frustration.
“Listen, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. If I was awake right now, I’d be getting work done.”
Bakugo stares at you, his eyes running over you as if sizing you up, and he snorts. “You don’t look like someone who works.”
Your expression is offended, and he just looks at you boredly.
“How would you know what someone who works looks like?” you snap. “You don’t know anything about me!”
At this, he cocks his head at you, bringing his hand up to his face. “So tell me where you work then, if you’re such an interesting person.”
“My parents own a big company,” you start, finger lazily drawing patterns on the skin of your thigh, “so I work there. One day I’ll probably inherit the company, and I’ll be set for life.”
You don’t really mind telling him this, considering he isn’t real anyway.
Bakugo rolls his eyes, a displeased expression on his face, his tone filled with snark. “So basically, you’ve never had to work for anything in your life. Nice.” You turn to him with a shrug, a slightly dejected expression on your face as if you’ve heard millions of people say that same string of words before.
“I won’t deny that, I’ve lived easily. I’ve been the perfect daughter to my parents my entire life, never once straying from the narrow path they’ve set for me. Even so, I can’t help but feel like I want…” you trail off, your hand gesturing vaguely as you try to find the words to say what you’re feeling.
You don’t even know why you’re ranting to him like this. These are words you’ve never said aloud, never pondered because you’re too afraid. You know what you’re supposed to do in life, and most of the time you stick to it, but sometimes you find yourself a bit disappointed.
Bakugo understands. He knows exactly what you’re trying to say because he feels it too. It’s a foreign feeling, he thinks, to have someone else comprehend what drives him in life.
“Something more.” You both say it at the same time, and you glance at him in surprise.
“You too?” you ask.
He sighs deeply, the air leaving his lips in a strong puff, and he scratches the back of his head. You can tell he’s trying to decide whether to tell you anything or not. His voice sounds through the air after a few moments.
“I’m no company CEO, but I was born with a strong quirk and a decent brain. I’ve always been good at what I do, and everyone thinks I should be satisfied with that, but I won’t be done until I reach the top. I mean, what’s the point in doing all of this up until now if I can’t get there? Until I get there, I’ll always be searching for something more.”
A moment passes, a lone cloud floating across the sky, before you nod in understanding.
There was not a moment in your lives that you had lived the same way. Your childhood was filled with endless meetings, etiquette classes, various things meant to breed you into the perfect heir to the company. Bakugo spent his younger days playing with friends, expanding his knowledge of the natural world, and learning new things about his quirk. His power makes him the perfect candidate for heroism, while yours is so weak it barely even merits being one. Yet, at the same time, your goals align in a way that no one else could understand.
You give him a half smile, your eyes lidded in complete relaxation as you sit next to him. “I guess we’re more alike than I thought.” you admit.
He returns your smile begrudgingly, before turning back to the open expanse of the sky. The pale yellow rays reflect on his nose and eyes, his skin glimmering like he’d been touched by the stars.
“Yeah,” he mutters, leaning back on his hands, “I guess we are.”
The two of you discuss your aspirations, inviting each other into your respective heads, until the dream ends.
When you wake up, you’re a little more than confused. The digital alarm clock on your bed is blaring annoyingly, and you shut it off with a quick swipe, your arm falling over your eyes. The bedroom is as silent as always, nothing out of the ordinary, evidence of your overwhelmingly mundane lifestyle. You take a quick glance around, searching for something else to wonder about except the boy you met in the darkness behind your eyelids. Soft rays of light filter lazily through your curtains, and it reminds you of him, but you don’t know why you’re even thinking about it.
He’s just a person you’ve created in your head, and here you are bringing him to the planes of reality where he doesn’t belong.
Somewhere on the other side of the city, Bakugo sits up in his own bed, steadily rubbing at his eyes. The fog of sleep is still invading his brain, and he can’t seem to remember anything except your face, the sound of your voice, and the way you smiled. He frowns. There’s no time to wonder about things that aren’t real.
On your walk to work, you pass by endless buildings. A dry cleaners, a theater, a restaurant under construction. Your eyes wander vaguely in front of you, too lost in thought to care about what’s before you. Your dreams are starting to creep into real life, and you don’t know how to stop it. You can’t force yourself to stop dreaming, can’t force yourself to stop meeting him, so you decide to just let it happen. Either way, you’re interested in who he is.
He is a human, a regular person just like you, yet you feel like you understand his complexities as easily as you understand your own thoughts. Well, you suppose he isn’t really human, being a mere creation from your mind, but the fact that you can grasp his feelings so well truly shocks you.
Dreams are just such a weird phenomenon, you think.
Bakugo can’t seem to focus while he’s training, and he’s starting to tire himself out. He grits his teeth, forcing the explosions from his hands, but the thought of you keeps worming its way into his mind. He has no explanation for why this is happening to him, why he feels so connected to someone he’s created in his own stupid mind, but he can’t make you leave the confines of his brain.
You’re the kind of person he would usually hate, someone who hasn’t had to work hard like he has, yet he finds himself strangely attracted to you. Despite your differences, you seem to recognize and support his goals and dreams, and the lengths he’s willing to go to get there.
Dreams sure are annoying, he thinks.
Over the next few weeks, you and Bakugo discover a few strange characteristics about your dreams.
First, you find that you’re unable to leave the cliff. For a while, you had tried, walking away into the forest behind you, but you just ended up in the same place you had started. You had even tried jumping off once, to Bakugo’s horror, only to find yourself sitting in the grass again. You guess that your brain isn’t creative enough to generate scenery outside the cliff.
Second, the dreams are timed. Now this is something you can’t explain, yet it happens every night. Right after your dream ends, you wake up briefly at midnight on the dot, before falling back asleep and staying that way until morning. You had tried to extend the dreams through willpower alone, but you can never stay past midnight.
Third, and perhaps the strangest of all, is that the boy in your dreams is unable to tell you his name, or where he is from. You’d both tried, but the sound came out incomprehensible, like you were underwater. You suppose that it doesn’t really matter, because he isn’t someone who actually exists, but it would have been nice to know his name at the very least.
The dreams continue every night without fail, and you spend hours talking to Bakugo, getting to know him, his thoughts, and his dreams.
Eventually, so slowly that you don’t even realize it’s happening, you start to trust Bakugo. It’s weird, to trust someone you only know in an unknown reality, but you find yourself relaxing more in his presence and thoroughly enjoying your time together. He stops flinching at your touch, stops stiffening up when you hug him, stops shrugging your head off when you lean on his shoulder. You can tell he feels the same way, but he would never say it.
Life gets harder for both of you, the responsibilities on your shoulders becoming a more difficult burden to bear, so you escape into the night together and heal each other, sitting on that cliff.
You stop hating the nighttime, start looking forward to the dreams, longing to be with the boy who understands you. Even though you know he isn’t real, you can’t stop yourself from wanting him.
The cliff becomes your home away from home, somewhere you can truly be yourself, somewhere no one else can see you except the made-up boy whose name you don’t know.
When you meet him this time, you’re quieter than usual. Bakugo can tell, sitting beside you in the grass, that there is something weighing you down. He’s talked to you enough to know it. Something is holding like a vice on your heart, preventing you from saying anything to him, to anyone. And he hates it.
He tries to get you to open up slowly, making casual conversation, but you’re still closed-off, and he’s getting frustrated. With a yell of anger, he addresses you in a last-ditch effort.
“Hey, I know there’s something up with you, so just come out and say it. I’m not gonna sit here and watch you wallow in nothing, so stop being stupid about it.”
Your mouth falls open in shock, and he doesn’t react, his eyebrows furrowed. Your voice comes out small.
“I don’t want to do this… I don’t want to be there anymore.”
It’s Bakugo’s turn to be shocked, because he’s never heard you say that before. You’d complained about your life, sure, but never to the extent of wanting to quit. You were too devoted to your parents to even consider it. Based on what you had told him, they’d made it clear that your role was to inherit the company, and not much else beyond that. But now, something about you is different, and he doesn’t know how to identify it.
A few tears are streaming down your face now as you lay your feelings out before him. The sheer volume of them spills at his feet, twisting up his legs until he is chest-deep in what you’re experiencing. “I’m not strong enough,” you stutter, barely getting the words past the lump in your throat. “I’m not who they want me to be. I never have been, and I don’t think I ever will be.” There’s a slight tremor in your fingers when you wrap your arms around yourself, as if trying to contain the influx of emotion. There’s a pregnant pause as your words hang in the air.
When Bakugo speaks, it’s as quiet as the breeze in your ears. It’s so uncharacteristically gentle, so soft, that you’re almost convinced it’s not him.
“Quit that, okay? You’re no idiot, trust me, I know one when I see one. Everything will be okay because you’re strong. You don’t have to be whoever those extras want you to be, just be yourself.”
The words are crude, as his usually are, but they’re laced with something softer, more loving. The sentiment is received all the same. Your eyes shine at him, and Bakugo looks away in slight embarrassment, noticing the darkening sky. The tears on your face are wiped away with your sleeves, quickly forgotten, and you crane your neck up.
To your amazement, a single star streaks across the black, and you clap in excitement.
“Oh my god, a shooting star! Quick, quick, wish, wish!” You shove at Bakugo’s shoulder as if to encourage him, and he scowls.
“I don’t believe in that stupid stuff,” he states, drawing one knee up so he can rest his chin on it. You pout, trying to puppy-dog-eye your way into a wish from him. He rolls his eyes, tilting his head at you.
“What’s your wish, then?”
You ponder for a moment, finger to your chin and head resting on Bakugo’s shoulder, before you answer. “I wish for you to stay with me and find the perfect hero job!” You say it with such sincerity, such care that Bakugo’s face flushes red, and he shoves you off of him as you laugh.
“Don’t wish for me, idiot! Now you just wasted it!” He scolds you. You flash him a smirk in return, and he takes note of the way your lips quirk up happily.
“Don’t worry, you still get to wish too!” Bakugo’s eyes roll at this, and he rejects your suggestion. For a minute, the two of you argue, you trying to force him to make a wish, and him trying to avoid it. He huffs in irritation, throwing his hands up.
“Oh my god, fine, stop being so damn annoying!” A giggle sounds from your lips, and his voice is low when he talks again. The tone is so serious that it forces you to listen.
“I wish for you to be yourself and...find something more. Find something that makes you happy, even if it means leaving everything that’s familiar to you.”
Your giggling ceases, and the two of you fall into silence. Bakugo feels a bit nervous from your lack of response, goosebumps forming on his skin.
When you look at him, your eyes are full of tears, but you’re smiling softly.
“Thank you,” you whisper. “Thank you so much.” Bakugo nods curtly, but in his mind, he’s making another request to the universe.
I wish you would stay with me .
A boy and a girl, both of them real, fall in love under a shooting star.
It happens so suddenly that neither of you are prepared. It had been another dream, the two of you sitting on the same cliff as always, discussing things about your current lives. Your head rests gently on his shoulder, your eyes wandering throughout the sun-kissed sky as Bakugo recounts a story to you.
“Yeah, and Deku wanted to celebrate because that’s just how he is. He’s always going around doing all that positivity crap.”
You frown at him. “There’s nothing wrong with being positive.”
The old Bakugo would’ve sneered at that, called you an unrealistic idiot, an immature child, but the Bakugo sitting here with you is different. He merely rolls his eyes, begrudgingly agreeing with you. “Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry. Anyway, Deku texted us all to meet him at this one stupid family-owned Italian restaurant, I think it was called Passerini or something, and it had this super dumb painting on the window-”
Something triggers you to ask him. “Wait, what did you say?”
He gives you a weird look before repeating himself. “He told us to meet him at Passerini.”
Passerini. You don’t know why, but that name causes something to click in your head, and it has you ruffling through the numerous memories in your mind. Memories of your walks through the city, on the way to work, passing several unnamed buildings.
And then, you remember.
It’s a small place, a few blocks from your workplace, and you only remember it because your friend had mentioned that a new restaurant had opened nearby. Now, you can clearly see the storefront (including the painting) in your mind, but when you had passed it before, the sign had been covered up due to construction, preventing you from reading its name.
And you realize it. Bakugo knows Passerini. But if he’s just a product of your mind, a figment of your imagination, how would he know something that even you don’t?
You whip your head around, your stare intense on Bakugo’s eyes, and he recoils, thinking he had said something wrong.
“You…” the words die in your mouth, and you clear your throat to find them. “You’re real.”
He raises an eyebrow at you, an incredulous expression apparent on his features. He places a hand over yours. “I think it’s pretty damn obvious that I’m real. Are you losing your mind or something?”
Your eyes are staring blankly at nothing, too floored at the realization to even focus. Your lips are parted just slightly, barely making a sound.
“You’re real. You exist in the same world I’m living in, in the city I’m living in. You’re real yet you’re sitting next to me, talking to me in a dream right now.”
There’s a full pause, Bakugo’s hand lifting off of yours, the feeling of his fingerprints lingering on your skin. And in that moment, he realizes the same thing that you had, and his eyes widen. There’s a familiar swirling feeling on your skin, and you realize the dream is about to end. In a panic, you grasp at Bakugo’s skin, which is disappearing beneath your fingers like smoke.
“Meet me before midnight!” you yell, trying to reach him before he leaves. Your own voice sounds garbled, and time is up. “Tell me your name!”
His eyes reflect understanding, and the dream ends.
You both wake with a jolt, throwing the bedsheets off with shaky hands. Rapidfire thoughts course through your minds, but you realize there’s no time to waste, no time to think. You’re rushing out the door, your hair messy and your pajamas a bit rumpled as you head out into the night air. Bakugo is halfway out the door already and is still working on putting his shoes on.
He shoves passerby to the side, not caring of whether or not it is right or wrong, rude or polite. All he cares about right now is finding you. He runs around aimlessly, his eyes darting around, searching for the familiar shade of your hair. The noise of everyone in the city speaking at once sounds in his head boisterously, and he feels himself losing focus.
“Move!”
He commands everyone out of his way, desperate to find you, to meet you, to be with you. But the streets are too crowded, the faces starting to blend together, and he feels himself losing hope. One of the bright neon billboards adorning the tall buildings displays the time in white, bold font, and Bakugo feels his breath hitch.
11:54
He wills for the time to slow down, but he still can’t seem to locate your familiar form. He’s begging for guidance now, looking for something, anything to give him the slightest hint as to where he can find you. A shriek of anguish and rage pierces the night air, but no one stops and looks at him, because he is just another one of the thousands of people in the big city.
And so are you.
You’re just one of the thousands in the city, one of the billions in the world, a mere speck of dust in the vast, infinite universe. It doesn’t make logical sense for him to be able to find you right now. There’s nothing special about the two of you that would let you meet like this, in such a complicated situation.
But something about you, something about the way you make him feel, convinces Bakugo that he is meant to meet you. He is meant to be with you right now, and he won’t stop until he fulfills that.
11:59
At the moment the clock turns to 11:59, he sees you.
You’re way across the plaza, and he barely spots you among the crowd, but he sees you and he knows it’s you. He knows because he sees you and gets the same feeling he got when he first saw you, the slight flutter under his skin. His hands shake a bit with the recognition, and he realizes that he’s nervous to meet you in person.
Then, for a moment, you see him too.
You’re running toward each other now, arms extending forward desperately to meet in a final embrace, but you can’t seem to move fast enough.
Bakugo feels like he’s drowning. Sweat drips off of his face from the exertion of running around for so long. The waves of people are too strong, pushing back back every time he gets closer to you, and you get lost in the tide.
As the time runs out, he screams his name at you, his voice ragged, and you do the same, but you can’t hear each other over the crowd. The futile attempt goes unnoticed by the world.
Your voices are drowned out by the violent hum of the city, and you disappear into nothingness.
When you and Bakugo wake up at opposite ends of the city, you remember nothing.
You wake up to a call from your mom, reminding you of another company meeting that day. You respond with polite enthusiasm, reassuring her that you will be there and that you will be ready. She sounds happy at that, and you feel a pang in your heart. When she ends the call, your phone drops from your fingers with a thump, landing on your soft blanket.
Resting one elbow on the windowsill, your chin in your palm, you stare out the window wistfully, wishing for something to be somewhere far away from here.
You don’t even remember the blond-haired boy.
Bakugo wakes up to a text from Kirishima, asking if he wants to go to the gym. He responds with a quick agreement to the invitation, hauling himself out of bed to get ready. Changing into more comfortable clothes, he makes a mental list of training exercises he plans to complete this week. When he brushes his teeth, making eye contact with himself in the mirror, he sees the future number one hero, and he resolves to work harder to get there.
He doesn’t even remember the girl with the sunny smile.
Somehow, the train station feels lonely.
Maybe it’s because you’re one of the few people on this platform, since it is in a relatively unknown area far outside the city, but standing there next to the tracks makes you feel empty, hollow, like you’re missing something crucial to your existence in this world. The one thing that consoles you is the sakura trees surrounding the platform. Light pink, deep red, and pure white surround you in a sea of calming petals, and you can’t help but admire the way they sway in the wind.
Once you get on this train, you’ll never be coming back to the city.
On the other side of the tracks, Bakugo doesn’t even know why he came here. He was just passing by on the way home from his job interview, and he couldn’t have been in a better mood. The interview had been phenomenal, and he was told that he was basically a shoe-in for a prime position at the agency. His dreams were coming to fruition in front of his eyes, yet something had called him here to admire the quietness of the station. Perhaps it was because he knew he might never see this place again. It was a bit far out, much too far out of the city to constitute a visit, and once he became a pro-hero, his entire livelihood would center among those skyscrapers.
Once he left this spot, Bakugo would never leave the city.
For a moment, you both feel at complete ease, standing there by the tracks, staring up at the sakura petals that dance through the air. You’re here, existing, and that’s all there is to it. Neither of you see the other across the tracks in your awe.
The train approaches noisily, accompanied by a loud clatter and the deep rumble of the engines, breaking you both out of your respective stupors. You turn to pick up your bags, and Bakugo turns to leave.
Wait .
The voice comes out of nowhere, floating aimlessly and randomly from the wind, and it surprises you a little when it enters your ears. Bakugo turns at the sound of the whisper, craning his neck at the sky to see where it originated from.
And then, it happens.
Fate is a cruel mistress, toying with the feelings of humans as she sees fit to entertain herself. Her intentions are selfish, without reason, without regard for the true desires of those she controls. Yet, even she has her moments of mercy, and because of this, she gives you one last chance.
Perhaps it was because you and him were so different, and she liked that. She liked the way the two of you fit together like oddly-shaped puzzle pieces, finally finding someone to connect with after a lifetime of solitude. Perhaps it was because she liked the expressions on your faces when you saw each other, the countenance of pure adoration. Or, most terrifying of all, perhaps it was because you had something that transcended even her power. Something that reached across the limits of the possible and impossible, meeting in the middle in a loving embrace, something that even she could not break.
For a moment, when your eyes meet his scarlet ones, the realization hits you so hard that you wobble on your feet, nearly losing your balance. His expression mirrors yours, the wide eyes, the mouth dropped open in shock, and you unconsciously reach for him.
There’s several feet between the two of you, yet as you reach for him and he reaches for you, the feeling of touch is so intimate that you know you will never experience it again. Your extended hand touches nothing but the open air, and his grasp is also empty, but you both feel it, and you know. Somehow, you know him.
The train is mere seconds away now, and time, once again, shows you no mercy. It’s a simultaneous cognizance between the two of you, the awareness that once the train comes and cuts off your vision, you will never see each other again. You have mere moments, even less, to do something, anything, to express everything you’re feeling and more.
Bakugo was always quicker than you, even in your dreams.
He’s saying something you can’t hear, the sound not reaching your ears over the incoming train and the impending separation. Somehow, though, you can read his lips, and you understand. It’s something out of character for him to say, but in the moment, it feels like something that needed to be said all along. Your heart soars at his words even though the phrase is so short, so brief that you could blink and you’d miss it. The train is now inches away from covering your vision, and all you can do is nod.
You nod at him, agreeing with his words, telling him that you understand everything he was trying to convey with such little time and such little action. It’s as if an invisible thread stretches between you, connecting you and intertwining you in ways no one else can understand. The connection is so profound that for a second, you feel like you can read his mind.
He smiles at you, and you smile back, and he silently wonders how many of your signature grins he’ll never get to see.
And then the train arrives, and the thread snaps.
When the connection is gone, you feel strange for a moment, sucking in a desperate breath as you try to focus. The train is still loud, the monotonous voice of the announcer ringing in your mind as your head swims. You’re dazed, seemingly without reason, and you can’t get your eyes to focus on anything except a single spot covered by the train’s body.
Bakugo, on the other side, flinches, snapping out of his dreamlike state. His chest aches, like he is missing something dear to him, but he shrugs, turning to leave and return home. The sakura petals fall behind him, and for a moment, he pauses mid-step, turning back toward the train. He chalks the strange feeling up to a lack of sleep, and he walks away. Within moments, he is gone.
You are steps away from boarding the train, such a short distance to travel to start your new life. Somewhere far from here, from the city, where you can begin anew and never have to wander back again. It’s such a refreshing, exciting emotion, yet you can’t stop the feeling that gnaws at you.
It’s the feeling of a slight dread, a hint of anxiety that tells you you’ve forgotten something. It tells you that you’re leaving something behind in this city that you need, something that is so important to you that leaving without it could completely rearrange your life. But you can’t think of any such thing, you can’t think of a single thing that would require you to stay here where you lost so much. Your mind is completely blank.
You already have one foot through the door, one foot into your new life filled with promise and fresh beginnings. All you have to do is walk through. Your suitcase rests on the very edge of the platform, as if trying to decide with you whether to stay or go. The universe is pulling you into the train, into that direction, urging you to take the chance for yourself and build something meaningful. Your heart pulls you the other way.
How can you trust a feeling you don’t understand?
The train announcer signals that the train is about to leave, but you still haven’t decided.
You take a deep breath, counting to 5. You smile.
And then, you make your choice.
fin.