Archive of Our Own

Bakugou Katsuki has never been saved.

Being saved means powerless, means soft-hearted, means breakable. And he is not breakable. No, Katsuki has been invincible since he learned he could split the sky open with his own two hands. He knows the acrid taste of victory on his teeth like prayer, knows how to fly like a boy trained for war. So he cauterizes Midoriya Izuku like an open wound, leaves him bloody and tangled on the ground because he is weak. He is weak at age four and age fourteen and he will be weak when they are old, if they ever live long enough to be old. And there is nothing Katsuki hates, fucking hates, more than weakness. Izuku is a living testament to it.

But it’s still Izuku.

When he wakes up in the hospital after the battle, it’s Izuku sleeping in the bed next to him. He looks so small, drowning in the sheets tucked up to his chin. With a start, Katsuki sees the empty space at his side. His left arm, gone. Just white, so much white, bandages wrapped over the bloodied slope of his shoulder. Gone.

“Fuck,” Katsuki says, his throat so dry that it burns. “Goddamn idiot,” he rasps, and he’s still turned sideways towards Izuku when he passes out. It’s how the nurse finds him when she rushes into the room with Recovery Girl.

He drifts for a long time. Days in real time, but in his dreams, it’s lifetimes. He dreams of a hundred different lives, a hundred different outcomes to the battle. Izuku is in every single one of them. Sometimes Katsuki dreams he lets Izuku beat him until he’s unconscious. Sometimes he dreams he’s the one hitting Izuku. Sometimes he dreams he’s the one lying there instead, arm missing and face broken. Those are the ones he wants so badly that it hurts. He wakes up in feverish bursts, always turning to see Izuku’s face before the dreams tug him back under. It’s almost easier this way, hovering in this unconscious space between savior and victim. He dreams that he’s not fast enough to save Izuku, that he watches his shattered body fall to the earth, blood at his lips and Shouto never fast enough to catch him. He dreams that he kills the villains again and again, stands victorious over their crumpled bodies before the civilians start to scream. He dreams that he stays back with their classmates, holds Ashido to his chest when they find Midnight’s body.

He dreams that they can still save the world. It’s not so different from the reality they used to live in. That’s what heroes do, right? Save the world. Save people. Heroes have so much to protect, the villains had taunted, but it’s not something Izuku’s ever been ashamed of. It’s something Katsuki’s still learning how to accept. That protecting means more than the rough plates over his ribcage or the high scores of a rescue exercise. Protecting means watching the morning light bruise the skin of the boy sleeping beside him. Protecting means pressing a bandaged hand to his chest, where Shigaraki had broken right through skin and bone, where he carries the kindness in All Might’s voice when he’d said that’s your way of trying to atone, right? Protecting means this boy. Protecting means this moment, this weightless second before Izuku’s chest moves with breath.

It’s you, Izuku had said, looking at Katsuki like he’d ripped his stupid, bleeding heart right out of his chest. You were someone amazing in my life, someone even closer to me than All Might. And Katsuki’s pulse had stuttered, violence edging out the shock, and he’d blasted him straight through concrete. Pressed his sweaty palm to his face as a threat. Covered his eyes so he couldn’t look at him like that anymore. Like Katsuki was something — was someone worth —

“Bakugou. Hey, Bakugou. You with me?”

Katsuki opens his eyes with a groan, squinting against fluorescent light.

“What,” he coughs out, and Eijirou sits up in his chair like an overexcited puppy. Katsuki can almost see his tail wagging, if he ignores the shadows sunken beneath his eyes.

“Bakugou! Thank God you’re awake! You kept mumbling in your sleep so I thought— shit, should I call someone? Where’s the nurse? Are you okay? How’re you feeling?”

“Can you shut the fuck up for a second,” Katsuki grinds out, cutting off Eijirou’s panicked fretting. He rubs the grit out of his eyes and turns to see an empty bed beside him. He blinks slowly, then thrashes out, grabbing Eijirou’s arm so hard his knuckles crack.

“Whoa, man—”

“Deku. Where the fuck is he.”

“Midoriya woke up a few days ago, it’s okay, he’s okay,” Eijirou says placatingly. “They moved him to another wing to treat his… arm. And the police had some questions for him when he was feeling better.” He slowly pulls his arm out of Katsuki’s vice-like grip.

“So he’s better already? That shitty nerd,” Katsuki mutters, sinking back into his pillows. He closes his eyes. Izuku is awake. Izuku is better. Izuku is not dead, twisted on the ground in a thousand different false memories. He is breathing, somehow, somewhere, twisted on a hospital bed where Katsuki can’t see him.

“And the villains?”

Eijirou gnaws at his lip. Katsuki watches the color seep back in, slow, scarlet running under pale skin.

“Shigaraki got away.”

Katsuki blanks out for a minute. He must be shouting, or something, because Eijirou’s shaking his shoulder when he comes to, begging him to calm down.

“Just drink some water first,” Eijirou says, after a nervous pause that Katsuki refuses to read into. “C’mon. Here.” He picks up the paper cup at his bedside and lifts it gingerly towards his chapped lips. “Just let me—”

“Don’t treat me like a fucking kid,” Katsuki snarls, but he’s so parched that he gulps at the water greedily until he realizes Eijirou’s watching him like he’s never seen him before. Katsuki doesn’t even have the strength to do more than tilt his head towards the cup.

“Just—”

Bakugou whips his head away, clenching his fist until the pain grounds him.

“I don’t need your pity,” he says, but it comes out softer than he wants it to. “Just fuck off. Just let me be.”

Eijirou crumples the cup in his fist, and his smile is so, so sad.

“Okay, Bakugou. Okay. Someone will be back to check on you.” He leaves with a gentle press to his fist, and Katsuki lets his fingers uncurl.

Izuku’s better. Katsuki closes his eyes, chants it in his head as the fury of defeat starts to rattle his bones. That’s all he has left. Izuku’s better. He’s awake. He’s still here.

The doctor tells him it’s bad.

Broken ribs, he hears distantly. Punctured lung. Katsuki looks out the window and waits for it to be over. Nearly all of his classmates had been at the hospital — they were either there for their own injuries, or they’d come by to wish him well. There’d been something distinctly empty in Ochako’s eyes when she’d visited, and Katsuki had hidden his shudder by barking at her to get some damn sleep. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there’d been something gone, gone like Izuku’s arm was gone. So he sits there and waits. It’s nothing his body can’t heal from. He’s only lost blood. Not his limbs. Not his heart.

When his fever breaks, and the nurses leave him alone, Katsuki dreams again. It’s familiar. He and Izuku are fighting. This time, they’re grappling underwater, and Katsuki’s driving fist after fist into Izuku’s stomach but he won’t let go. He’s got his arms and legs wrapped around Katsuki’s body, choking the breath out of both of them. They tumble through silt and weed until Katsuki can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t feel anything other than the suffocating clench of Izuku’s arms around his chest. He can’t shout without losing air, so he beats the water back with his arms and bucks his body like a wild thing until stone lashes his back and he washes up on shore, gritty sand in the creases of his skin but a gasp clenched in his teeth that says I will not fucking drown here.

“Kacchan,” Izuku says, and he’s sitting right next to him, completely dry. “Why won’t you let me?” He tips his head to the side, big green eyes watching him struggle for breath. He shuffles closer to place a hand on his chest, and Katsuki jerks away with a swear, coughing water onto himself.

“Fucking— let you what,” he manages. Izuku’s freckles look a bit darker, the way they soften in the summer. But it’s not summer. Right? He squints at the blooming red of Izuku’s cheeks and the weathered brown of the fallen tree above them. It’s too cold.

“Stay,” Izuku says quietly, and Katsuki’s eyes snap back to him. Izuku holds out his hand again, and with a start, Katsuki sees that his scars have tripled. Some of them are still raw, pink skin puckering under the midday sun. They look like they might never fully heal. “Would it really be so bad?”

Katsuki swallows. The phantom rush of water slips down his throat, like sorrow, like mourning, and he can’t breathe. Can hardly speak.

“Yes,” he says, breath made brutal, and he wakes up.

He doesn’t move for a long, long time, staring up at the ceiling until his neck starts to ache.

No, he hasn’t lost anything more than blood. He hasn’t lost his limbs. His heart.

No, his heart is on the other side of the hospital, propping himself up in bed to answer the police chief’s questions. His heart is not frail, or cruel, or selfish. His heart is just a boy, giving his life for the world. A boy, carrying the legacy of gods on his shoulders.

When he finally sees him, Izuku looks awful. His face is torn up like something out of a horror flick, and Katsuki refuses to let his eyes linger on the space where flesh should be. The worst of it is his eyes. Shadowed. Blank. Still too damn big. They tell him stay away, stay away, stay away, and Katsuki has half a mind to listen. He can barely even face the others after all they’ve lost. And he can’t stand the way Izuku’s looking at him. Like he’s worried about him, when he’s the one missing a fucking limb.

“Kacchan,” Izuku says, and it’s so hollow that Katsuki’s fingers spasm.

Did you know, his heart whispers, pulse throbbing like a war chant, did you know I dreamed of you? I fell and I dreamed that I never let go. I dreamed that your hands had no scars. I dreamed that I held them in mine, and they were soft, and clean, and kind, and you smiled at me.

“You are so goddamn stupid,” he snaps instead, because anger has always come easier to him than softness. “Why would you go this far?” He steps forward and gets right in Izuku’s face, frustration leaving his teeth bared. Stop, his heart warns, but his head is still full of images of Izuku, dead, dying a thousand different ways. It slips out, the rawness excruciating. “What if you— what if you—”

“Kacchan,” Izuku says, and he’s still looking at him like he’s worried about him, that damn fool, when Katsuki’s the one who couldn’t save him when it mattered most. Izuku makes as if to reach for him, but his arm is secured to his chest in a painful-looking cast. He winces. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize to me, you piece of shit,” Katsuki shouts, and, oh, his hands are shaking. “Don’t you dare apologize when you’re the one who ended up like this. When you’re the one who got too damn carried away playing hero, claiming all the glory for yourself, being a fucking idiot like you always are.” He slumps into the chair at Izuku’s bedside, wounds throbbing. “Asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Izuku repeats, and this time, it’s not self-flagellating, the way it always used to be when he apologized to Katsuki. It’s firm. Still hollow. “I let him get away. I made you—” He cuts himself off harshly, blinking away tears. “I—”

“I this, I that, just shut up, shut up,” Katsuki shouts, squeezing his eyes shut.

And it’s not fucking fair, it’s not fair, because Katsuki doesn’t have anything to spare. Katsuki’s only got this foolish body of his, this body that snarls, howling, desperate, the shuddering beast of it thrashing away from anything that tries to capture it.

But Izuku — Izuku still has so much left to save. And what does he have of Katsuki? Katsuki has never willingly given him anything. And yet. And yet, Izuku still has all of him. Izuku has learned his hunger and stolen his flight and earned his stupid, greedy heart tucked beside him each morning.

“Can you just—” He cuts himself off with a groan and reaches out, fumbling blindly, until his hands find Izuku’s remaining hand, shapeless as it is under all the bandages. He cups it carefully in his palms like the breakable thing it is, bowing his head over it as if in prayer. He presses his forehead to the back of Izuku’s wrist, breath shuddering out. “Just stop.” He strokes a thumb over the plaster. Imagines he feels skin, warm and unscathed and familiar.

He feels Izuku shifting nervously above him, and after a few moments, he bends over Katsuki with a shaky breath, gingerly pressing his face into his hair. He exhales, and soon enough, warm tears are running over Katsuki’s scalp.

Let’s just stay like this for a while, Katsuki lets himself think, the weakness stuttering bitterly up his throat. Just a little longer. No loss. No cursed power. Just your hand in mine. The thought tastes like bile.

He thinks he could do it. Spend the rest of his life earning the feathery press of Izuku’s lips to his head. He thinks he could do anything, riddle his own body with violence for this single, gentle touch. It’s the least he can do, when he’s the one who’s spoonfed Izuku cruelty since they were kids, foolish and heady with their dreams. Now the only dream left is to survive.

“I’m sorry,” he mouths against Izuku’s hand, soundless. I will do it right this time.

It will be lonely, lonely work. It will never be beautiful again. The war will never end, because ghosts will never die. But they will survive. He will burn this promise into the earth until nothing is left but their living. And Izuku will smile, and smile, and smile.

I swear it.