Chapter Text
There'll always be a few things, maybe several things (that you're gonna find really difficult to forgive)
Bakugou Katsuki is cognisant enough, self -cognisant enough, to be well aware of the fact that the way his parents raised him is far from ideal. He’s not always aware enough to acknowledge that it’s not his fault— but for the majority of his waking moments, Katsuki knows the way in which he was raised was wrong .
But— Katsuki is also fucking well aware that he’s an asshole and he can’t pin that entirely on his parents. He can’t pin the way Izuku’s eyes used to widen in fright when he saw him, the way his body trembled at his words— he can’t blame the hot pool of satisfaction in his gut when he sees blood on his knuckles on anyone but himself.
Katsuki learns, as the years pass— he learns the lesson that even though he is, was, maybe won’t be someday, a victim : he learns that the line isn’t clear cut and he has become the perpetrator.
He learns it first, when he tells a boy to take a swan dive off of a roof and spends the next six months tracking green hair through the school, watching the doorways to the rooftop— he waits until the nerd leaves the school grounds before he finally leaves himself.
This is the moment where Katsuki stamps down the part of his mind that will always be five years old and tells himself it doesn’t matter.
(but it does, god it matters what if he had fucking d o n e it )
There are many moments, turn offs, opportunities— whatever you want to call them, Katsuki ignores them. He misses the chances, the exits from his headlong dash down into the long valley— some he ignores and most he does not see.
He wants to bite back when people ask him, in that soft pity-rich voice that makes him want to crawl out of his skin, if he’s okay.
Of course I’m fucking fine, he snaps back. What else is he meant to be? The facts of his life haven’t changed: they look at him like they are expecting him to collapse under the weight of his own failings, his mother’s failings, his father’s failings.
They can’t understand that these things— their failings, their mire of toxicity— are not something that has formed out of nothing, overnight, from out of the shadows like a thief. Katsuki hasn’t been shown that these things were wrong— he’s known it all his life, has lived these wrongs.
His family is a wreath of flowers, built by a child and Katsuki has spent the years pushing the flowers back into place, even as the frame grew into a labyrinth of barbed wire and thorns.
Katsuki is eleven, when he fully realises that children aren’t meant to be treated like he is. It’s a gut punch, going home with a flyer buried beneath his books— a man comes to speak at their school, tells that the adults in their lives are meant to be kind . He looks over their class with blue eyes like a wildflower, and settles a seed deep into Katsuki’s heart, one that he cannot pull out in time to stop it from growing roots.
“Sometimes, people who hurt you will tell you that it is your fault. It is not.”
Hurt—it burns, hotter and hotter until a supernova blooms between his ribs and his brain turns over like a steam engine from its heat, slowly boils between his ears. The pamphlet is a scarlet blur among his papers— it is red hot beneath his fingers.
If you think you’re in danger
It’s printed in that fucking childish script Katsuki hates, like a little kid has scrawled it on the shiny print paper. It’s almost morbid, too ironic.
It feels like contraband, and Katsuki resists the urge to burn it, to hide it, to conceal the evidence of his thoughts. He’s reading this for the future, he tells himself. How can he know how to win against things, when he’s a hero, if he doesn’t know what they are?
Children are meant to feel safe and loved in their homes, especially by the adults in their families.
Katsuki’s hands feel cold, and he’s not sure he could burn the paper if he tried.
If you have picked this up, you might be worried about someone close to you or aren’t feeling safe at home.
Katsuki wants to scoff. He instead finds his breath is caught up in his lungs, locked behind the boulder in his throat. He cannot breathe.
Adults are meant to take care of you, keep you safe and happy to the best of their abilities. They make you food, make sure you are healthy— they provide for you, because that’s their most important job.
Katsuki screws his eyes shut against the backdrop of his bedroom— so different from his childhood room, but he doesn't remember changing any of it. It’s clean, neat, tidy : if Katsuki didn’t know better, he would think it was a showroom. The bed is straight, a perfectly arranged coverlet and the colours accent the room perfectly.
Katsuki doesn't give a shit about those things: but his mother does .
And Katsuki is meant to be perfect, to be everything they ever wanted— some sweet, docile child that lets things slide. His parents wanted Izuku: instead, they have Katsuki. Unruly, wild, aggressive— Katsuki can still hear his mother’s voice, so deadly quiet, when she tells him that he is everything she never wanted.
Katsuki wants to scream that he is her, everything she has taught him to be. If Bakugou Katsuki is a monster, it is of his mother’s making.
And sometimes adults don’t do the right things for their children.
Katsuki scoffs at that and crumples the pamphlet with hands that shake.
“Yeah, no shit.”
⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅
Katsuki doesn’t forget, as much as he shoves it down as deep as it will go and locks it away. He cannot forget something he sees everyday, that Katsuki spends half his day not thinking about.
The thing is, the more Katsuki doesn't want to think about it, the larger it grows in his mind. The tiny seed that goddamn presenter had planted grows like a wild thicket in his mind, sharp thorns and brambles.
Doubt digs at his thoughts: the roots of some insidious, noxious weed taking up every gap in his mind. Until everywhere he goes, he finds it: on the signs that say ‘we are here to help’ and ‘you are not alone’.
They know nothing—
There is no help for Bakugou Katsuki.
Katsuki finds that if there is no one who can help, he will have to help himself.
The day Katsuki decides to yell back for the first time, to scream frustration at his mother and hurl her own words back at her: that day is the beginning of the end.
It’s not hyperbole to say that, Katsuki doesn't think.
There is so much anger, so much rage wound up in the places of his mind he pretends don’t exist. And they don't exist until they explode, physically and metaphorically. His quirk fills his body with adrenaline, keeps his heart beating even when Katsuki is certain he wishes it would just stop.
There are people on the internet, in little forgotten corners— people who understand . Katsuki seeks them out there, in the dead of the night, sneaking out to the family computer when he knows for sure his mother is asleep.
It’s full of the people who know, who whisper through words what they see, what they feel— how anger is cruel but it is all that they can bear to feel.
There is no depth to anger, no layers— there is just anger, rage, fury: when Katsuki is angry, he no longer has to think about why. It is an emotion that leaves no room for thought, for sadness or terror or that creeping, desperate need for something Katsuki has no words for because he has never seen it.
It feels a little like how Auntie Inko’s hugs felt, when he was very small and could ask for them.
Some days, Katsuki wishes he still could.
Instead Katsuki’s world devolves into endless arguments, hurling vitriol back at those who throw it back at him. He screams loudest at his mother, even when he knows that it’ll end how it always does: it will end with bruises and Katsuki will have won himself nothing but wounded pride.
It is a comforting routine: Katsuki understands that his mother is just trying her best ( lies) , just trying to make him better and that he’s just not trying hard enough to be good. That’s all there is to it.
So, yeah.
Bakugou Katsuki is well aware that his childhood is not the best. He was dragged up because there was no other option, by a mother who wanted a daughter and a father who never wanted a child to begin with. Adults are meant to be kind to children, but Katsuki doesn't count: and that's okay because it’s fine. He’s fine.
⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅
Katsuki feels like anger is his only friend, until it becomes the only thing that holds him together and he has forgotten what he’s meant to be when he’s not.
People don't like anger. It’s loud and confronting, aggressive— it’s everything his mother hates about him, and maybe Katsuki wants to be the opposite of what she wants. He can’t be anything else when all he has ever known, his only example has been her.
But eventually, anger isn’t enough.
It’s enough to get him into UA but eventually, he finds himself standing before his home room teacher.
Aizawa is not a man Katsuki understands, not well. He’s cold, abrasive, vicious — but he isn’t angry. People listen to the hero, pay attention to his words— people do what he says, purely out of respect.
Watching Aizawa makes Katsuki realise that maybe anger isn’t going to get him what he wants.
By habit, by will, by the complete lack of knowledge as to what he is allowed to do, Katsuki determinedly does not fidget under his teacher’s gaze. He wants to, because Aizawa watches him like a hawk. Even though he is a teacher, a hero, a good person : Aizawa, above all, is an adult.
Adults are above reproach, above criticism and most important of all, adults cannot be trusted .
“I’m not here to lecture you, Bakugou, let me ask you something.” If Katsuki could get away with rolling his eyes, he would— but he doesn’t care about what he can ‘get away with’, so he does it anyway. Aizawa’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t pull Katsuki up on it.
“Why are you here?”
Katsuki blinks, then scowls at the clutter of the teacher’s office. None of the other pros are here, and Katsuki wonders whether that’s on purpose— there was always a reason behind everything people did. “‘Cuz you asked me to come?”
Aizawa fixes him with a deadpan glare, and Katsuki might be a little curious about whether his teacher can actually make any expressions that aren’t mildly terrifying.
Katsuki shrugs and tucks his hands in his pockets as he sinks into the proffered chair, slouching against the uncomfortable back. One would think they’d at least give the teachers comfortable chairs, but it seems even pro heroes were borderline masochists when it came to seating. “Well, I don't know so why did you ask me to come?”
“Because if you keep going the way you are, you will crash and burn.”
It’s not exactly what Katsuki had expected from his teacher, and something hot wells up in his throat. “What?”
Aizawa folds his hands on top of the desk and meets Katsuki’s gaze straight on. “You are rash, irascible and violent, Bakugou. You have potential, but you are being dragged down by your unwillingness, and apparent inability, to work with your classmates.”
Katsuki can feel his shoulders tensing, fists tight in his pockets. His palms sting as the sharpness of his nails dig in. “I don’t need them to be a damn hero, why would I waste my time?”
Aizawa leans back into his chair, face unreadable but his eyes are still intently focused on Katsuki. He opens his mouth to say something, and then stops, like he’s changed his mind about what the right thing to say is. “What do you think is the most important thing for a hero to have, Bakugou?”
It’s not like Katsuki hasn’t been asked the question a hundred times this year, a thousand times in the decade of his life where he’s always known that a hero was all he wanted to be. Katsuki knows what makes a hero successful.
“They have to have strength—“
“Wrong.”
Katsuki feels his face twist up in a snarl, and his palms are hot in his pockets. “Whaddya mean wrong ?! Heroes have to be strong, they have to win! ”
Aizawa doesn’t react to the heat in his voice, just keeps his gaze fixed on Katsuki. He wants to shrink back from it, because nothing good ever comes from an adult being interested in him, and Katsuki doesn’t trust his teacher’s motives, even if he has a begrudging respect for the pro. But Katsuki can’t shrink back from it, can’t back down: backing down was the first step to giving up, to losing, to not being enough .
So he braces his shoulders under Aizawa’s gaze, and meets it head on because there’s no other choice.
“Strength is a tool , Bakugou. Our quirks, our equipment, our strengths: these are the tools we use as a hero. What matters is the person who uses those things.” Aizawa breaks eye contact then, glancing down at his interlocked fingers and one thumb tracing the lines of calluses. “What matters is trust, Bakugou. How can you hope to be a hero when people cannot trust you ?”
“Hah?!” Katsuki’s palms are hot, supernovas in the space between finger and palm. “Why wouldn’t they trust me?”
“You do not get along with anyone, Bakugou. You refuse to work with your classmates, and your teammates do not trust you to have their backs— why would anyone trust a hero who isn’t trusted by other heroes?”
Katsuki feels the words like a blow to the head, a hollow rushing in his chest— for one dizzy, terrifying moment he is both full and empty. Fear and anger rage in the gaps between one breath and the next. For once, Katsuki doesn’t want to let anger win.
His head rushes, blank sound and a white noise haze filling his ears: his lungs are clamouring for breath but his chest will not move. So Katsuki eases the stale air out, and unclenches his hands through sheer determination. “Goddamn it, then how —“
He bites the sentence half way, the words bitter and rancid on his tongue. They are old words, long buried thoughts— there has never been anyone he has trusted to ask but maybe… maybe his teacher can be that person. Even if Aizawa doesn’t really care, and is here out of duty , Katsuki thinks he can live with that.
Adults don’t care and adults couldn’t be trusted—
But Eraserhead is a hero, first and foremost, so Katsuki chokes down his fear, his unease.
“How do I become someone they can trust? What’s the… I don’t know, step one?”
Aizawa eyes him for one long moment, seemingly searching for something and then smiles. It’s not that eerie, too sharp baring of teeth Katsuki usually associates with his home room teacher— but something softer, a curve of his lips. Katsuki now has proof that his home room teacher has non-terrifying expressions, and something about the slight warmth in Aizawa’s expression makes his eyes prickle uncomfortably.
“That was step one, Bakugou— the first step to changing something is knowing it needs to be changed in the first place. And Bakugou—“ Aizawa leans forward, just a little and Katsuki wonders if his teacher had been hiding the pride he feels in his class this entire time. “I know that was hard to hear, and I’m proud of how far you’ve come even now.”
The prickling in Katsuki’s eyes grows sharper and he ducks his head, away from the all too knowing light in Aizawa’s gaze. “I don’t need your pride.”
Aizawa sighs, and somehow it sounds like a laugh. “I’m sure there are plenty of people proud of your progress, Bakugou.”
Katsuki thinks of the shatter of glass next to his head when he ducks a projectile in the kitchen, of the cold anger that drips from his mother’s every word and the telltale silence of his father’s distaste. Katsuki rolls his shoulders, and wonders what Aizawa would say if he knew the house Katsuki will go home to after this.
He doesn’t really want to think too much about it, and doesn't want to consider the unknown quantities it brings to his life. So he shrugs, silent, and studiously ignores the barely hidden concern on Aizawa’s face.
⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅
Adults can’t be trusted, but heroes can.
Katsuki isn’t sure when that changes, or even if he trusts all heroes: all Katsuki knows is that he trusts Eraserhead.
It’s almost alarming, in the end, how much of his life boils down to trust. The trust Katsuki has never had in those he was supposed to trust, the people he had trusted and learned the bitter lesson that putting yourself into someone else’s care meant getting hurt.
But slowly— Katsuki finds ways to trust.
It starts, like everything else in Katsuki’s life, with Deku.
Midoriya Izuku is an enigma, at least to Katsuki. He laughs as easy as breathing, makes friends like he was born to do it and he trusts at the drop of a hat. Katsuki sees it in training— watches tip off the edge of a building in a dizzying vertigo that makes Katsuki’s stomach to his feet ina. Wild rush.
And Izuku falls, freefalling through the blue and trusts that he will be caught, without thinking or worrying.
He just knows someone will be there, knows he will be caught and like clockwork he is . There is always someone to catch him, just like Izuku is always there to catch them.
It is a trade off, a system— Katsuki sees more and more sense in Aizawa’s advice as time goes on.
So one day Katsuki decides that even if he can't trust anyone right now, he can prove himself worthy of trust.
He waits for the opportunity, and gets it— Izuku crouched to leap, trusting that there will be someone to catch him. And… Katsuki does.
There's the rush of wind in his ears, the howling a dull pitch against his hearing aids and his eyes sting at the pressure against them as he rockets through the air. He passes Aizawa, perched on the viewing station and he swears he sees the hero smile as he speeds past.
It lights some soft fire in his chest, nothing like rage or fury or heat— it warms him, rather than burning and Katsuki cherishes the feeling.
He slams into Izuku with all the delicacy of a truck. That is to say, none.
But—
he does catch him.
There’s some wild eyed excitement, a thrill and a fear in Deku's eyes when he stares up at him. And for a brief moment, Katsuki is hit with gut deep guilt and it knocks the air from his lungs, the wind from his sails.
It doesn't ease even when they hit the ground, Izuku falling in a well practiced tumble along the ground, like he knows Katsuki needs his hands free to catch himself. Knowing Izuku, that's the exact reason he does it.
“Kacchan! Are you okay Kacchan, you hit me awfully hard! Are your hands okay? I was worried because you couldn’t move them with me there but thank you for catching me anyway!”
It should make him feel cared for, trusted— instead, it lights a bonfire where his heart should be. He opens his mouth, acid on his tongue and—
And he sees Aizawa, a dark smudge on a fake rooftop in the distance and Katsuki wonders what his mentor would say to him right now. Because that’s what he thinks Aizawa is to him now: Eraserhead supports him, guides him, chastises him when he needs it and Katsuki trusts him to do so.
It’s unnerving, to place his wellbeing so implicitly into someone else’s hands, even more so the hands of an adult. But Aizawa is a hero, and Katsuki knows he can trust heroes.
‘Assess, and think Bakugou. Think first, feel second, always,’ says the Aizawa in his mind. It’s the motto that's been all but hammered into his skull over the last few months, till Katsuki wakes up with the words on his tongue. He is quieter than he has ever been in his life, learning to not only look at the world around him but to see .
So Katsuki lets the instinctive heat dissipate, smoke curling away from his palms and breathes. Then Katsuki tucks away his emotions and thinks , attempting to see the world around him.
Checklist part one: they are standing in training ground beta. It’s Friday afternoon, the last class of the week and it’s a hands-on urban combat session— Katsuki knows they need to rendezvous before they are surrounded by the B team extras.
But something about the nervous shift of Izuku’s feet on the concrete makes Katsuki pause, and makes him want to delay a tactical discussion. Something about this moment feels important, like a call back to that moment months ago in this training ground. Katsuki wonders if Izuku trusts him.
Katsuki wonders whether Izuku should trust him.
Checklist part two: neither of them are injured, or suffering from any quirk effects or backlash.
Checklist part three: there are no enemies in the immediate vicinity— the crazy blond from class B is here somewhere and Manga isn't exactly quiet with his quirk. So Katsuki is relatively certain they’ve got a few moments to themselves.
Izuku is looking at him with… something heavy in his eyes that grows more apparent the longer Katsuki doesn’t respond and he cannot for the life of him determine what it is. He thinks it might be concern, and that thought segues him into checklist part four—
Feel.
“I’m fine, nerd, so stop with the word vomit.”
Izuku stops fidgeting completely and peers up into Katsuki’s face like it's a particularly difficult algebra problem, oddly serious all of a sudden. He seems to be looking for something, and his mouth is twisted into a worried slant. “Kacchan, did you hit your head?”
Katsuki almost chokes on his next breath in and feels his lip rise in a snarl. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Izuku blinks at that, and smiles sheepishly. “Well, personality changes are a symptom of concussions and Kacchan was acting too nice to be Kacchan so I got worried!” He rubs awkwardly at the back of his head, and Katsuki honestly wonders if his childhood friend actually has zero self preservation. “But Kacchan is definitely still Kacchan!”
Katsuki kinda wants to hit him.
Think first, feel second.
Katsuki breathes deep, and thinks on it for one long moment.
Katsuki still wants to hit him, just a little bit but he doesn’t. Katsuki thinks that’s as obvious a sign of self-improvement as he’s gonna get at this point.
“I don’t have a fuckin concussion Deku, quit with the stupid shit. I’m fine and dandy, you’re in one piece and you didn’t hit the ground, so can we get back to the ‘kickin crazy blond’s face in’ plan already?”
Katsuki thinks he’s going batshit, but he’s fairly sure Izuku just laughs at him. It feels like heresy, like a betrayal to the person Katsuki has spent a decade honing himself to be… but Izuku laughs, and Katsuki cannot help but join in.
“Okay Kacchan,” Izuku hiccups out, face red. “Let’s go find Monoma.”
Katsuki stalwartly ignores the warmth in chest, and retroactively blames Aizawa for dragging Katsuki, kicking and screaming, into the realm of emotions that aren’t anger.
And like everything else in his life, Izuku is there in the moments that matter and Katsuki drowns in the familiar bile-hot guilt because… Katsuki’s never been there for anyone before, and he knows he’s missed out on something crucial in life.
⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅
It shouldn’t surprise Katsuki as much as it does, when things finally start to fall apart. He’s always known it would, that it was an immutable, unavoidable fact that nothing good had ever lasted long enough for him to savour it.
But even though Katsuki has been dreading it, the eventual collapse still shocks him out of his comfortable routine.
So much of dorm life is built on routine, at this point. Katsuki takes most of the cooking shifts, since he still has major concerns over cleaning duties from the last time his sweat had ignited with a cleaning chemical. There’s still a scorched section of wall and half melted carpet on the third floor to attest to how potentially dangerous it was to let Katsuki on cleaning duty. The infuriating transfer kid had taken the accident to be his new favourite event, and Katsuki has had plenty of opportunity to repress his temper with the mind control freak sprint to test its limits.
Kirishima drinks a chocolate protein shake at exactly 6am every morning— Katsuki knows his footsteps, how he steps on the same squeaky floor section every day. The walls are thin, sturdy but the sound echoes in the early morning.
And Katsuki is well-accustomed to tracking where his family are by the sounds of their footsteps. He knows how to tell whether someone has slept well, whether they are going to lay into him the moment he pokes his head out of his room. It’s a skill that serves Katsuki well in his family home, and he can’t afford to give up the habit.
But in a space where no one means him harm, the constant alert state exhausts him. He runs himself, body and soul, in a nose-dive towards the ground.
And one day, the ground finally catches up to him.
“You feeling okay, Bakugou?”
Okay.
Okay.
okayokayokayokayokayokay—
A fist flies and there’s blood on his knuckles and Bakugou Katsuki has fucked up.