Chapter Text
Once upon a time, there was a young woman. She lived a simple life, alone in a small cottage at the edge of a charming little village. It had everything that she needed to survive; a bedroom for her to rest her head, a bathroom for her to clean herself, a little kitchen for her to cook in, a living room where she read herbology books, and a massive garden. This garden was so big that it reached all the way to the tree line by the forest and had every type of flower imaginable in it!
The woman spent a lot of time outside tending to the flowers. She watered them each day, and sometimes she even danced with the wind as she sang along with the birds.
Little did she know, she had an audience one afternoon.
She was humming a tune, her skirts twirling about when a slow clap startled her. The girl spun around with a gasp. Standing behind her was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen!
He was nearly seven feet tall with broad shoulders. His muscular chest was bare, except for the golden necklace that rested against his breast. He wore a pair of woven slacks that were tucked into thick boots. Golden bracers were wrapped around both of his forearms and his skin was decorated with many intricate tattoos. Atop his head was a shag of messy ash-blond hair from beneath which a pair of glowing crimson eyes stared back at her.
His lips curved into a haughty smirk.
“That was quite the performance.”
The girl took a step back, gathering her skirts and preparing to run. The village was small enough that she knew nearly everyone and she had never seen this man before.
“Who are you?” she asked. “State your business.”
His brow arched as a look of surprise came over him. “You sure are snippy.”
“And you, Sir, are trespassing!”
He worked his jaw, contemplating how to respond to her. To her surprise, he didn’t say anything as he began to walk toward her, head tilted in a curious fashion. The way his eyes landed on her made her feel as though he were seeing right through her. It was a piercing gaze that froze her to the spot.
“Give me your name.”
The girl tightened her lips, refusing his demand. Her heart beat quickly, mind racing as her legs disobeyed her desire to run.
“Your name.”
The tone of his voice changed. It was deep, with a low rumble that sent shivers down her spine. She had no choice but to obey. “Ochako,” she stated.
He stopped less than a foot away from her. The wind carried with it the scent of warm, spiced cinnamon and sweet glaze as it brushed overhead. It was a soothing scent that she soon found herself relaxing in. “Who-?”
A calloused thumb brushed against her lower lip, silencing her.
Her eyes widened in shock as the man leaned forward and stole her breath away with a kiss!
The man left late in the night, leaving the young woman curled beneath her blankets, no longer afraid. That would not be the last time that she saw the man.
He came again, a few weeks later as she tended to her garden. She sang a song in harmony with the chirping birds that fluttered in the trees overhead. As she twirled with a watering can in hand, sprinkling the thirsty roots, a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist.
Ochako relaxed. The smell of cinnamon revealing who her company was.
“You came back,” she said.
The man said nothing. He just lowered his head to her shoulder and hummed softly. Ochako was curious. She knew very little about this man, only that he had no intention of harming her. “Who are you?” she asked again, wondering if this time he would answer her.
Of course, he didn’t.
Instead, he ran his fingers through her hair and placed a kiss on the side of her neck. “You know of me.”
As hard as she tried to think, Ochako couldn’t remember ever seeing this man before. “Where are you from?” she asked this time.
She felt him smirk against her neck. “Everywhere.”
Her brows furrowed in confusion. How could someone be from everywhere?
“You’re a traveller then.”
He snorted, fingers holding close to her waist. “That's one way to put it.”
Ochako huffed, frustrated with his vague answers. “Do you come through here often?”
“I’m beginning to think I will be, now.”
“Why is that?” She turned in his grasp, holding fast to her questions.
A hand cupped her cheek. “You.”
He came many more times after that, without notice or expectation. Ochako would sometimes be watering her garden. Other times, she would be cooking dinner. He once interrupted her reading — she hadn’t even heard him enter the house and nearly threw her book at him in shock! He once helped her bring her laundry back from the river where she washed it, giving her odd looks and making comments that didn’t make sense to her.
She offered him food and drink when he came, along with other entertainment. He only ever stayed for one day at a time, but Ochako grew fond of the nameless man’s presence.
Then one day, as Ochako was boiling tea in the kettle, he poked at her sketches and commented, “You’re the strangest nymph I’ve ever met.”
Ochako didn’t understand what he meant by that. “Nymph?” she asked.
Their eyes met and she watched as the expression on his face changed to one of confusion. “…Yeah. It’s what you are, right?”
Of course she wasn’t! Nymphs were creatures of fairy tale and legend! They didn’t actually exist, though she had read quite a few adventurous tales about some. At first, she thought perhaps he was joking. So she laughed and said, “Of course not! I’m a human.”
His eyes widened and his face turned ashen. Her giggles faded at his reaction. “What’s wrong? Do you not feel well?”
She stepped toward him, only for him to peddle backwards. Before she could say anything else, he vanished right before her eyes!
Ochako’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Her hands flew to cover her mouth and she looked all over, but there was no sight of him. The man simply disappeared without a trace!
For weeks, Ochako didn’t see him again. She waited. Each day she tended her garden, hoping to feel his sudden embrace. She longed for him to waltz into her study and catch her off guard. Once more, she wanted to smell the spiced glaze that no longer lingered on her clothes.
Though his visits had been infrequent and unexpected, they were something she had looked forward to. As the months passed, she grew lonely. Her garden became more gray; reading was tedious; and her every day chores were more monotonous than ever.
One quiet night, Ochako sat in bed, looking out her window to view the crescent moon. Her chest felt heavy with grief and longing. Clasping her hands beneath her chin, she gathered all her strength and prayed. “Please,” she whispered, “mysterious man, wherever you may be, come back to me.”
She knew her request was in vain. Perhaps, in her seclusion, she had dreamt up her visitor. It was possible he was a ghost. Maybe he never existed in the first place, though he had felt so real.
“It’s so lonely here…” Even if no one could hear her, perhaps letting out her sorrows would help her feel better. “I wish you would be at my side once again.” A sob shook her shoulders. “I miss you.”
Her heart felt so full and yet so empty at the same time.
“I love you.”
It was then, as the words left her lips, a pair of strong hands cupped her cheeks. Two thumbs brushed beneath the damp lashes of her eyes, gently wiping away the tears that gathered there. His voice was deep and husky as he towered over her and grumbled, “Now why the hell did you have to go and say that?”
Ochako thought she must be dreaming, but when she reached out to grab him, he was solid beneath her hands. “You’re really here…” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“Yes, and I shouldn’t be.” Blond brows pinched at the bridge of his nose.
A frown tugged at her lips. His response dampened the small bit of light shining on her mood. “Why not?”
He sighed, and with it, Ochako could see the weight on his shoulders. “Because, you’re a damned mortal.”
A mortal?
“And you are not?” she guessed.
His lips quirked humorlessly. “I am not,” he confirmed.
He had thought she was a nymph. Ochako didn’t understand why. She wasn’t a creature of magic, but was he? Was he not of this world?
Finally, she grasped his forearms as he clutched her face and asked, “Who are you?”
At long last, he answered her. “Bakugou Katsuki.” Their noses touched as he continued. “The God of Victory.”
That night, he explained everything to her. He begrudgingly admitted that he mistook her for a Nymph that day on the outskirts of the forest. Nymphs, he said, often played with the gods and entertained them. There was a very small window in which the gods were allowed to interact with humans. They answered prayers and came to their calls for help, but were not allowed to show their physical forms unless under certain circumstances.
He had revealed himself to her out of error, not realizing she was a mortal, with whom he was forbidden to interact with.
When he had learned the truth, he fled immediately.
Only to be drawn back by her pleas. He confessed that his heart ached for her as well, and being apart left him in such agony.
Ochako cried on his shoulder. “You have to leave me again…” She understood now, but the knowledge didn’t make it any less difficult to bear.
“I do,” Katsuki sighed, resting his forehead against her own. “However…” He told her of his plan. It was a crazy scheme, but before he parted from her, he left her with a kiss and hope.
For a mortal, life is finite. They live for only so many years and then they die, their souls resting forever in the afterlife. Gods can live forever though, their lives plentiful and infinite. Katsuki returned to Ochako with the oath that he would bind their souls together. The trade off was that her soul would never find peace in the afterlife. She would be reincarnated for eternity, living each life after the next, with no memories of him or her previous lives.
At first, the thought terrified her, but then he made a promise.
He would find her, no matter where she went, and he would make her fall in love with him. Over, and over, and over again. He would watch over her when he could not be with her. He would keep her safe; her life, full of successes.
It all seemed too good to be true. “What if you grow bored of me?” Ochako asked him when he returned. She knelt before a ceremonial altar set up in the center of her garden, surrounded by the flowers she cared for so tenderly and the sky beneath which he reigned. He connected their hands with a red ribbon.
He growled, pinching at her cheeks. “Don’t you dare underestimate my love for you.”
Candle wicks and flickering lightning bugs aided the moon and stars in illuminating their sacred union. “Do you want this or not?” Katsuki asked.
It was so much for Ochako to grasp, but Katsuki seemed so sure of his plan. She decided to trust him. She had spent many nights waiting for him, reminiscing in the void left by his absence, that the thought of never being with him again was unbearable to her. This was a chance she had to take. She put her faith in him.
“I do!” she declared, eyes burning with passion.
There, beneath the stars, Ochako consummated the marriage of their souls for all eternity…
True to his word, Katsuki balanced his godly duties along with his pledge to Ochako. Instead of visiting for days at a time and vanishing for weeks on end, Katsuki began living with her. He stayed with her in his free time, learning how to live as a ‘human’, and left only when he needed to.
They enjoyed many long years together. Gradually, Ochako grew older, however, and Katsuki did not, but their love for each other transcended time. When it was time for her to leave him, her wrinkled hands clutched his thick, strong fingers. “Katsuki, I’m scared…”
Katsuki stroked her thin, gray hair with a patient gentleness and whispered in her ear, “Don’t be. I’ll be here when you wake up.” His lips pressed to her brow. “I will be with you in this life, and every life you have hereafter.”
No matter the time that passed, Katsuki always found her again and as the God of Victory, he always took up the challenge of winning his ‘forest nymph’ over, again and again.
They made a life together, each one different than the last and all of them were beautiful and special. He remembered everything, though she did not, but the memories they made only served to strengthen their bond. Finding her became easier. Each time they met, Katsuki struggled less and less to make her fall for him. He was creative in the ways he made her fall for him, so he claimed. They even had a son.
His name was Yoshiki; a little blond haired, red eyed, spitfire of a boy, with round pink cheeks and a strong will, who was far more special than he realized.
“Pfffft!” Yoshiki threw his head back, sputtering with laughter through his fingers as he gazed up at his mother beneath his ash-blond bangs. “Seriously, mama?”
Ochako gasped, puffing her cheeks as she pouted down at him. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
He pointed up at her with a big grin on his face. He lost two of his front teeth on his sixth birthday last week when he bit into a carrot stick covered in ranch. “You are, Mama!” He rolled his eyes with such sass she wasn’t sure if he got it from her or his father. “That’s not true!”
Ochako gaped at him. Wha-but..yes, it was! “It is true,” she argued. “Your papa is the tenacious God of Victory! And he—“
Yoshiki placed a hand on his hip and puffed out his chest. “Nuh uh. You can’t trick me mama. I know better.”
Her brow twitched. “Oh?”
“Yeah. You can’t fool me! I’m a big kid.” Nose in the air, Yoshiki declared, “I know Santa isn’t real either.”
Oh, did he now?! “And who told you that?”
“Tomoya!”
Of course he did. Iida was always so practical, he was terrible at convincing the kids Santa was coming at Christmas time.
Ochako sighed as Yoshiki wiggled out of his mother’s arms. He ran across the field of flowers, laughing boisterously as he twirled in the summer winds.
According to Katsuki, this park was once her home. A cottage had sat where the fountains now stood and flowers once filled the field instead of being confined to the small patch they now inhabited. This park was her favorite place in the city. She loved sitting on the bench by the trees, reading her books no matter the season. It was where she met Katsuki, who she once thought was a businessman in his rich, fitted tux.
He didn’t tell her the truth until much later.
When he peeled the layers of his suit off in her small apartment, revealing the intricate tattoos across his body; when his black eyes turned blood red; when he shoved her back against the wall, hand clasped around her throat and growled in her ear, showing off his sharp canines. Ochako was so wet, he could have weaved her any fable and she would have believed him.
“Well, I can see that went well.”
Ochako jumped, nearly falling off the bench she sat on at the sudden voice. She whirled around, finding Katsuki sitting on a tree branch with one leg bent to his chest. He leaned against the trunk, completely relaxed in his sweatpants and black tank top that did nothing to hide the tattoos that laced up his biceps. He had two new piercings in his left ear and she caught a glint of gold on his tongue when he snickered at her.
“How long have you been there?!” she snapped. “Maybe it would have gone better if you had backed me up. I thought we agreed it was time to tell Yoshiki the truth.”
With a snort, Katsuki dropped his weight off the branch, landing on his feet with a heavy thud. “Maybe,” he sauntered over to her, “it would have gone better if you hadn’t sugar coated the fuck out of it.”
Red painted her cheeks. “I was absolutely NOT going to tell him the story you told me!” she exclaimed. Her sweet, innocent son had no business knowing those dirty details. Their story was one of love and passion and —
“You made it sound like a fairy tale.”
Huffing, Ochako sat back in her seat. She pressed her finger tips together, glaring at a fluffy cloud overhead. “It is kind of like a fairy tale though…”
Two hands pressed to her shoulders, thumbs digging into her traps. She melted beneath his touch. “Sap.”
She pouted. “How would you tell him then?”
“Not with the sappiest story in existence. That shit a Disney movie yet?”
“Katsuki!”
He relented, going back to rubbing her shoulders.
“We need to tell him,” she reiterated.
They did.
“We will.”
“Now.”
“Ochako,” Katsuki grunted. “Relax. He’s six. His abilities haven’t even started to emerge yet.” It had taken centuries for whatever higher power Katsuki reported to to finally allow them to create a child.
Demi gods were extremely rare. Evidently, thousands of years ago, before they were regulated, their existence was more common and caused real problems for the gods and humans alike. Katsuki mentioned something about Nephilim and Hell Spawns, but Ochako could only fathom so much.
“I know, but…”
A loud crash startled her. Her skull bashed into Katsuki’s chin, making him groan in pain as he released her to clutch his face. “What the fuck was that…?” he asked, looking around for the sound of impact. “Yoshi…?”
“MAMA!!” Yoshiki came sprinting toward them, cheeks flushed brightly with exertion. “MAMA, MAMA!”
Ochako jumped up, rushing toward him. “Yoshiki! Are you okay? Are you hurt—?”
He ran straight past her. “PAPA! MAMA! LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!” He ran straight for the tree line, arm reeled back. With one punch, he slammed his tiny little fist into the trunk of a tree, splintering the wood. The integrity of the tall oak crumbled and the tree went down with a thunderous crash.
“I’M SUPER STRONG!”
Ochako swayed, suddenly dizzy. “Oh my God…” She felt like she might pass out.
“Fuck.”
It was time to talk.