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Katsuki is a god. It's simple he thinks, when the sky breaks open and he falls from it fully formed, breaks like morning does, bright light and terrible edges, but he doesn't know that yet. He knows that its warm, that the world is sticky on his hand and his dad really should have designed this better because, what the fuck?
He can feel it coursing through his first breath. Or, the way everyone may realize him to be.
everything is horribly bright, terribly rounded. edges like rice cakes that float at the top of soups his mom will make. It's warm too, at the edges, the middle, everything is warm and bright. Katsuki wonders if this is what life is, if this is what the world stitched by his fathers hands is made to be.
Mitsuki stares at her newborn, hair haloed around the edges, yellow blonde bright and glittering in the hospital lights. He looks like a cherub, even as the goop and blood is scraped off with a hospital towel, he glows beneath it all. Mitsuki is the first to realize her son is otherworldly, that he isn't normal like he should be.
(she can't decide if it's a bad thing yet, can't decide if it is something to be feared or something to be protected.)
Treasured. she thinks a bit later, when the twenty thousand drugs are flushed from her system and her newborn looks less like an angel and more like a child wrapped in cheap hospital cloth. She wonders if in her high she had imagined it, that by the light, the euphoria of release and joy, that it was all just a trick of the light. It's what she believes most of the time, but in small moments she sees it again, Katsuki rising by angel wings, shrouded by clouds and angry planets.
((All held in his palm.))
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Quirks aren't as common as they could have been, maybe as they should have been.
Katsuki sits in his classroom, brash and drawing with yellow and brown crayons. The perfect chicken. He muses for moments, watches his teacher set up the blocks and blackboard. Everything touched by her humanity, it makes him choke.
Maybe the moon smiles down at him when he’s not looking, katsuki ponders a bit. Scratching lazily at the skin on his wrist, the shirt he picked out being pushed around underneath the kids uniform. A door opens, creaky and well used. Probably sticky with old oil, tainted by the weird glue that’s alway in preschool classrooms.
But the door is open which means someone is here, someone new. Katsuki knows because the steps are different, the air is changing. More saturated, like moss and adolescent leaves.
Izuku Midoriya.
(Katsuki will later find out that the kanji in his name mean forest, mountains and green. will later etchasketch that name along with his because the earth needs the sun. all the stars glowing and bright. They all mellow in comparison.)
He walks into the classroom, green hair bouncing back and around like it's orbiting his head, like rings on saturn and the layers of the sun's highest heat, they reach higher than Katsuki’s stovetop could, can, which is impressive in his book.
All the things katsuki thinks are special go in his book, It's buried beneath his bed placed underneath a blanket, shoved into the corner. Written in something like Kanji, something similar to scrawled drawing in sundry dirt that his mom would scuff with her shoe. White vans with little hearts at the bottom.
It's during their time outside that Katsuki approaches, or is approached. The sun orbits the earth and all that. Izuku walks up to katsuki, hands splayed in his front, offering nothing but air and the threads that hold him together. Katsuki feels a different pull, more moss and grass and dirt, his hair has little pieces of destroyed grass, daisies littered in between.
Like a field filled with clover and honey, katsuki buzzes back. Thurming energy between two points like batteries do.
Izuku is pleased, bright eyes become bigger and louder. Green going electric against the red swing set, the yellow sandbox. Katsuki decides then that he would like to be friends with Izuku, collect him in his jar, and put him underneath his bed.
((He might need to get a bigger bed though, one with higher setups so that izuku doesn't hit his head. He might actually scrap the bed idea. just let izuku live around him, Orbiting. Something like that.))
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It's a sunday that Katsuki realises something is wrong, his mother's glaring from across the room. It wouldn't be that strange except it isn't her usual glare, nothing in her face is relaxed. Her entire brow is split into lines, angry and pronounced. You would never guess she used to be a model. Katsuki puts away his notepad, skips his way to his mom and sits at her feet.
She sighs, loud and put upon. Katsuki only leans further into her calves, resting his chin on her knees. “Brat, you know that won’t work right?” except it is working, she’s loosening her jaw and the thirteen lines are down to six. So no. It i s working, she just can't see herself.
But it doesn't explain the why, and katsuki can count the planets on his fingertips. Dissolve clothing by the perfect amount of bleach and vinegar. he almost melted a bathtub once but it's fine because it got rid of the water stains so really they should be thanking him and-
“I'm just stressed is all.” Katsuki lifts his head to his mother, chin leaving her knee and their eyes, carmine, meeting. Katsuki always wondered what his mother was before she became who she is now. Was she Eris? A god among the worldly, a planet that dwarfs and glows red underneath the human contraption.
(He doesn't know. it bothers him more than he’d like to admit.)
It's buried underneath his bed, sung with the questions lacing his walls, drawn on with crayola and washaway markers that they picked up at a craft store. Dropping thick jars of paint heavy and saturated yellows and golden tones. Greens and ivories. He sat in the shopping cart, mother pushing them along as he counted off the colors of the human eyes, the colors we can see and nearly feel.
Katsuki tells his mom that there's this thing called Synthesia.
(Announces it in the yarn selection.)
His five year old voice is chirpy and bright as he explains that a yellow brown might feel like cotton underneath your fingertips. That rusty red might taste like burnt gingerbread. Mitsuki looks back from the woolen fabric, the threads and the shelf reading “200 Yen Sale!’ already stocking up for the cool of fall. Knowing that it will soon roll over and turn into the freeze of late october.
It's once they arrive home that the Katsuki waddles in with plastic bags. Four bags carrying yarns and crayons, paints and crayola waxes for katsuki to squash and smear against his ceiling. Mitsuki yells to ‘ slow down ’, but katsuki is already tearing into the bags, placed onto the floor in the haste of ‘Gotta do it now!’ and “Mom, mom, mom! Look at the colors I chose!!’
Within ten minutes Katsuki is stretching toward the sky of his bedroom, white ceiling washed out and blank. He uncaps the pens, the pencils and braces his back against the bed, pushing with his weight to move it into the middle of the room. It's only a second before he jumps up again, feet planted in yellow red sheets. And then he begins.
Strokes of paint brushes and indents where he pressed in with pencil lead, each movement of the his hand against plaster feels like the sky shifting to appease his movement.
Katsuki wasn't made to reside here. He's always been too big for it, existence weighs upon his shoulders like the sky weighs them all down. Suffocated beneath layers of ozone and oxygen.
But it's alright like that. It's a year later when his mother drags him to a doctor that he thinks something might be wrong.
The doctor prods at his stomach, his legs. Everything is looked at under the guise of a mother who is stressed about her son who is apparently too big for the world he lives in. The doctor has seen this a million times, parents who think their child is gifted or special or God help them- an angel, so no, the doctor doesn't appease anything, doesn't even try.
((He tells Mitsuki that she loves her son so much that it's distorting her view of him. Hell, the kid is quirkless. He’s as basic as a ken doll.))
Mitsuki huffs when she leaves the doctor's office, Katsuki has a lollipop in his hand. Bright red cherry, a small wand that he banishes the weeds with ‘away with you, away with your pollen’ Katsuki chants, waving finished stick around. He looks a bit like a tiny wizard.
Mitsuki smiles down at her son, he is millions times bigger than any other kid, the doctor is just blind to it. Who does he think he is telling her that she isn't seeing right? And implying that katsuki is anything less because he’s quirkless-
‘Mom?’ There's a tug on her hand, she looks down to see katsuki with his eyes squinted, looking at her like she’s the sun. A bright thing. The anger that resided in the left corner of her chest mellows for a second, her son. He is bright against the street, horribly so. Mituski shakes her head a moment later. They walk back to their home, protected by the eclipse of Jupiter meeting Mars.
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Izuku Notices it too, he is the second to Mitsuki.
both of them can pick out Jupiter from mars, they've both seen the documentary stating that earth will be swallowed by the sun. that each day there is a small, almost unseeable difference in the ozone layer to protect them from sizzling underneath the world's heat. It's unnoticed by most, easily mistaken as a change of the wind. The tree’s shedding their leaves and allowing the golden light to pass through and warm the world.
Katsuki standing on the top of a slide. Blue sneakers holding against red plastic, melting in the cicada summers of hosu, its tired and echoey. Bright and unbalanced. izuku watches from the bottom, katsuki standing above. It's easy to see then, the nagging that Izuku feels whenever the world shifts breath his feet to accommodate kacchan and all his weight.
All his glory.
Katsuki whips down the slide, going fast and reckless. lifting his feet so the rubber soles don't catch on burning plastic, so that he can flow with the curve and movement. He makes it in seconds. Feet hitting dust and dirt, dried from the heat.
((He glows sometimes, when he’s not angrily messing with the dirt beneath his shoe, izuku can pick it apart with his fingers, watch the sun reflect on golden blonde, and he can tell it is no world of his.))
Mitsuki comes to pick them up, midday sun beating down on her shoulders. The freckles that threaten to show up due to sun exposure become more and more evident as June flips its belly to july. Basking in its heat. Mitsuki approaches the sandbox, sign saying ’Hosus children park’ beaten down by dirt and soot. The rainbow that was once bright neon, dusted pastel.
Izuku is running away, katsuki laughing behind him. Both covered in grass stains, covered in the playful echo that says ‘childhood’ all golden and glassy, melted like tupperware in a microwave. Mitsuki can bet on it. Can bet on the fact that they will remember this too, ‘Remember it with glory’ she thinks.
They all go home together, Inko working a later shift. Voice all soft and pleading. ‘Do You mind watching him? Just until I finish my shift” she is spring fields, burrowed beneath the snow of december, glowing specs of daisies, their heads covered by frost. Bodies pushing against the weight.
Mitsuki laughs into the speaker, telling her not to worry and that izuku is a pleasure.
After the phone call Mitsuki walks to their living room, white carpet and sofas, black accents that her husband brings home from work. Stock to full, their house is often a warehouse for projects that have been rejected by their company. Covered In ultrathin plastic, away from the world.
Katsuki and izuku orbit each other. They chase and move, they tumble into couches and blanket forts. It's the happiest Mitsuki has seen Katsuki, when he cried from his birth to the moments he lives in now.
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Izuku snores on the couch, TV playing a space documentary left on in the background. Mitsuki threads her fingers through green hair, pulling out stray weeds left by the earlier adventure. Inko should be here to pick him up soon.
Katsuki is propped against the back of the couch, leaning forwards so his eyes are in perfect line with the tv. Enamoured. captured . Mitsuki watches in eagle fashion, lazily admiring the way her son is learning, the way he is interested in everything that is untouchable.
((what is this? Eris? sure, yeah. Eris, the TV echoes statements about the dwarf planet. Red in the images they show.))
The doorbell rings, quite at nighttime. Inko comes in after two knocks, scooping her son up from the white couch. Mitsuki and inko chat for a bit, filling up the space from the last time they saw each other. Ignoring the child slowly walking towards the TV in awe.
Mitsuki walks inko out. Locking the door behind her she heads back to the living room, she stops at the middle ground, the step between halfway and carpet suddenly becoming giant. Katsuki has his hand pressed against the tv, eyes glued to the scene, mouth opened just slightly.
He looks like a kid who finally understands an equation, pride and glory etched into his face. Posture straight and strong against the world.
She gets it now, that katsuki isn't just anything. Something of everything. Atoms being built around them, she crosses the threshold, feet touching carpet and moving to her son. Wrapping him in arms, she swears she can see the cosmos swimming in his pupils, whited and grey specs. Its carmine-
He huffs in her arms, too much a child to be held so softly, he knows the eye of the planets, has stressed the milky way with his fingertips- his mother holds him like a starfire.
Echoing whales, dolphins, bottlenose, bright.
He knows his mother is a planetarium in herself. That izuku is the planted bright child, all human and kind. It makes him sick sometimes, when he feels cold like the atmospheric pressure is building on his skin. Like how space freezes everything that lives within it because it isn't made for life.
Preservation maybe, or the decay that happens when you leave a piece of meat frozen for too long. Freezer Burn, melting away his flesh and burning at the underneath itch.
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Katsuki breaks, coughing into the sun bleached sky. Spitting up the filth, silt, and sand, dragged under by the waves constant crashing of move, down, clamor, and finally, break.
((Mitsuki watches from the bay, her child shimmering like dusted clam shells, polished silver, he breaks the waves now. Getting swept deep, further away from the sandbar covered in red and white checkered sheets.))
Wicker baskets holding sandwiches and pip, drinks split by laughing children. children that press and mold water soft sand into designs that please their goddess, their gods.
Izuku fears it all. head whipping back and forth, little arms being pulled towards the sea by katsuki. A ushering of ‘i'll protect you’ as Izuku digs his heels into the sun hot sand. But katsuki is no stranger to humanity's reluctance. He too was drowned by the undertow, lungs salty and brined by its remembrance.
But he also knows that fear is something that will only hurt more, and katsuki is a protector of life, of earth. He drags Izuku into the waves, touching their ankles and joined fingers, intertwined like stitched silk. And katsuki breathes deep.
Knee deep in the water izuku chatters beside him, worried humming as their mothers watch from the blanket forstrest covered in their existence.
((Silver mollusk's life catches his eye.
A sand dollar, the perfect gift.))
He scoops it up with his free hand, shaking it slightly to loosen the sea sludge the sand and the reverb of salt that threatens to stain its shell. Hands pruned, fingers wrinkled with water's affection he slips the dollar into Izuku's palm, and then, a shell.
Katsuki walks the beach, hand in smaller hand, collecting the sea's good graces. Izuku now unafraid hums besides him, katsuki bending to pick up at the world's creation slipping it into izukus awaiting palm. Relishing each satisfied thrum of energy izuku lets out.
((It feels oddly like rebirth, like the sun and its cycle. When the moon crosses the border into an eclipse. Katsuki can feel it all.))
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Mitsuki wraps skin tone fabric around a purple mottled skin. Katsuki swings his free leg back and forth from atop the kitchen counter, tapping against Mitsuki's chest like a clock ticking with lost time.
‘How’d you do it this time?” she questions, wrapping the bandage once, twice, three times around the protruding bone. The swollen skin, the bruises on an ankle attached to legs that carry her son through, across, and above the world.
Above the grass, forest lush.
Katsuki pauses his free leg, swinging stopped in front of her chest, almost touching her collarbone. “Hm, I fell,'' he says. All innocent, like those bruises are invisible to those around him, like she can't see. “Fell off a moving truck?” she questions, amusement mixed with anger because if he really thinks she’d believe-
‘Yeah.’ Katsuki says like it's nothing. Mitsuki swings her head up, bandage left in a half loop around the crux of his foot. ‘What?’ she asks, slow words drawn out as her hand starts to shake. ‘I said ‘yeah?” he replies. It's as if he doesn't-
“Why were you on a truck?’ she asks. But it’s not meant to question the why, it’s to question , what the fuck.
It's a meaningless conversation Katsuki thinks, so he ignores it. Moves off of the kitchen counter, landing on one foot to slink away, moving to the couch Mitsuki follows behind. Awaiting an answer, an explanation.
But Katsuki is nothing if not incredibly at ignoring. He ignores the way the sun has been inching its way closer, closer, closer. He ignores Izuku's wave of excitement whenever their faces become close. He ignores the way his mother is a tidal wave of everything he is going to protect. Everything he’ll eventually need to leave.
The sun beats down, chirping along with the world. Katsuki looks up. He admires. Sometimes he’ll breathe deep, and he’ll feel it all. It courses like electric current and it burns his skin. Angry mornings that pinprick on his neck and katsuki swears he can see the almost of a tomorrow. But it's never promised right? That's what they told him before he was sent through the ether.
Before they dropped him from the sky with a soft whisper of ‘good luck’ and Katsuki, while falling into the ozone yelled back ‘i won't need it’
But childhood is a lie, there is no deity protecting him from the horrible pattern of the wrong person seeing a child, young defenseless, (blessed.) that could stop the child from being snatched away. But katsuki is none of those things, he is angels, he is cherub, but he is also heaven and hells bloodbath.
There is a lot of blood to be fair, red on the ground, in the dirt.
Back to the earth, forest blood.
(sometimes Katsuki presses his fingertips into his skin, watches the skin whiten underneath the pressure, watches the blood flow move around. Sometimes, in the distraction of his own delicate humanity, katsuki will press too hard. And later he'll find his own fingerprints left in a circle around his wrist, a reminder that instead of the infallible being he was created to be, he is still flesh, still blood and tendon, bone and marrow.)
katsuki wipes his palms on his pant leg. The man's beaten body rolling around on the ground, attempting to get away. Katsuki is the son of Eris, he is strief, he is discord.
He doesn't lose .
So maybe the twisted ankle was annoying, maybe jumping out of a moving car was a bit much for his all too human body.
But the kids in his prefecture will be safe, house and its ugly belly. Hosu and its wonderful green. Hosu and its awful people. House and his family. All the bright things will be safe, protected, and haloed underneath katsuki’s own grace. So he counts it a win, places it underneath his belt, later to be added to the list of achievements he’s been making since he woke up.
(All alphabetical, listed by importance, ready to be shown to Them, maybe, just maybe, if he shows the list to the stars, they'll take him back.)
welcome him home.
He limps back to his house, rubbing dirt and dust on the soiled blood stains that decorate his jeans. It could be worse he thinks, he doesn't need their luck.
But time isn't made with human intention in mind. Time is made to flow through too big fingers, time is made to learn and grow, echoing all the stories from Before. But really, there is no such thing, nothing grand. Just time.
And katsuki can count all of it, when there was the Before. When the sun was still babybreathe, when the moon itself glowed because there wasn't anything, anyone, around to steal its light. katsuki remembers it all, not in time. But in his bedroom ceiling. Painted with cosmos, painted with planets and goddesses carrying cherubs, carrying worlds.
((If he looks close, he can see himself nestled between the yellow red glow.))
But he is still a protector, still thrown out of the heavens, bits of it still clinging to his skin. Sin soft, glowing with heavensgate. And katsuki wonders when it’ll all fade away. When the sun will let out her breathe, fanning across the earth, and it will all collapse.
He was promised. He was told they would come back for him. Then they tossed him away. And he wonders, tracing the lunar rings in his ceiling, if they lied. If, like the cosmos do, they burst in the middle of the Before. In the beginning of After.
But once again, time is everything and nothing. Like an obsolete, like nothing between. Like everything. All shrouded in the grey chaos, golden against the backdrop they, he, Them, have created.
And really it should have been easy, given instructions and promises, all saying the same mantra. ‘You were created, you were made. Now go, protect, ensure.’ and then finally, when he was fully formed, ears listening to echoing voices, too big for bodies with feet, legs, anything undivine. They tell him ‘good luck ’ and katsuki is sent, and maybe, in their tossing of new life, in the moments before they opened up the sky.
A chasm that's not light, not dark. Just is.
He wonders if instead of saying ‘ Good luck’, they somehow meant ‘Goodbye.’