Chapter Text
"Did you close the bay doors?" Izuku asked Katsuki softly, her voice barely a whisper. Katsuki, though he guarding the door across the room from where Izuku was typing as quietly as she could while still maintaining speed, nodded in confirmation, sparing Izuku a glance. The tension in both of their shoulders didn't lessen in the slightest.
"How much more time do you need, Izuku?" He asked her, his voice equally soft.
"As much as you can give me." Was the immediate reply, though no less softly spoken. The reason for that was simple really - habit and the realization early on that noise attracted what you should stay the fuck away from. Thus, being as quiet as possible was what kept you alive.
"Just-" Katsuki started, turning to look at Izuku for a brief moment before turning away. "Remember to eat, Izuku."
Izuku nodded, not giving a verbal reply. They had food, but the sources were dwindling quickly and they didn't have much food to begin with. One of the disadvantages to the end of the world. Rather, she kept her focus on the coding of what was so important. A machine. More specifically, a Time Machine. Seems science fiction, but with what Izuku was able to accomplish in the years before the pandemic hit, science fiction was a mere word for something she could work into reality.
The plan was for both Izuku and Katsuki to go through it once it was completed - all that was left was the code and blood. It had to have a power source, and with no other options because of the limited supplies, blood was the only thing that could act as the fuel. You take some, you lose some, and in this instance, that was as good as they were going to get. The problem with the code was that there was so much of it, and the problem with the machine was that they couldn't test it before using it. It would either work, or it wouldn't.
A loud, thundering, explosive sound from above gave both Izuku and Katsuki pause. A mere moment later, another explosive sound came, rocking the very foundations of the place they were holed away in. Izuku needed no prompting - the was clicking away on the keys with a new ferocity.
"Katsuki, draw my blood and input it in the fuel slot." Izuku said, not looking away from the code. Just a few more lines-
"Like hell, we're using your blood, Izuku." Katsuki said, going quickly to the make-shift medical station and getting out a needle and empty blood bag.
"Katsuki, we are using my blood because you'll have a harder time fighting with the blood loss, malnourished, sleep deprived cocktail you've got going on there." She said, a slight edge of stubbornness and worry in her voice. "You're more valuable than I am right now."
"That's bullshit and you know it, izuku." Katsuki said only to be stopped by a glare.
"This isn't up for debate, Katsuki. Get my blood into that machine. Now." She said, her voice hard. Another explosion rocked their hide away, dust and debris starting to come loose from the ceiling. Katsuki growled lowly before giving in, bringing the needle and blood bag over to Izuku. She didn't even flight or stop when Katsuki put the needle in her vein.
When another explosion rocked the building, Katsuki had finished up drawing her blood and was putting it in the time machine that was beginning to glow as it was booted up. Then the explosions stopped. Izuku clicked the input code button and the time machine fully blazed to life.
"You have the self-destruct button?" She asked, turning to Katsuki who nodded. She swayed slightly, the blood loss making her head swim a little at the movement. She nodded in satisfaction and collected the papers with the machine ideas on it. It was ended quickly though when the both of them saw the wall begin to crack.
Izuku stepped quickly towards the time machine with the papers clutched in her arms, her heart clenching in fear for not the first time in the passed few years, but her knee gave out as she stepped and she fell, her head swimming as she went down. The blood loss had fully caught up to her at the worst time in the worst way possible. Katsuki quickly rushed to her, catching her right as she hit the floor, and cursed as the wall finally disappeared. Red eyes, and an outreached hand was what greeted them first. Upon seeing them, one on the floor and the other crouching next to her, the both of them gaunt and skinny from their time trying to survive, he laughed a high degrading echo of a sound.
Katsuki scooped up Izuku, the research papers cluctched tightly to her chest, and threw her straight into the light of the machine, the red eyed Shigaraki already lunging towards the both of them by that point. At the same moment that Izuku sunk into the light, she could see as Shigaraki wrapped his hand around Katsuki's throat. Izuku might have screamed in horror, she couldn't be sure as all the noise around her had overwhelmed her senses into an eerie white noise, but she did clearly see the movement of Katsuki's mouth with words as he began to disintegrate with a reassuring smile on his face. The detonation remote was in his hand and the button was being pressed - a dead man's switch being the only thing keeping the machine around.
She couldn't process the words fast enough as she was completely enveloped in the light of the machine, the feeling of being ripped apart and put back together being the main thing keeping her focus away as she was thrown back through time. The smile of Katsuki etched into her brain being the only thing she could see with the blinding light and pain.
_-o0o-_
Izuku was brought back to reality by her knees buckling under her weight, her body falling and barely being caught by her hands and the papers fell around her.
"It's not bad to dream kid," She heard from her right, and looked to see the back of shrunk All Might opening the doors to the stairwell. "But dream realistic. If you want to help people, try becoming a police officer - they get a lot of crap for locking up villains detained by heroes, but it's a fine profession." Then with those words, All Might walked down the stairwell, the door closing behind him and leaving Izuku up on the roof.
Izuku remembered this day, the day that her dreams were finally crushed. She had just come back to one of the worst days of her life from the single most terrible day of her life. Katsuki's reassuring smile as he was disintegrated shown behind her eyes when she closed them with vivid clarity, making her immediately snap her eyes back open.
A tear leaked down her face. Then another. And another until they were coming down in rivers down her face, Izuku's body shaking with quiet sobs and panic as she sat back on her legs, hugging her arms tightly around her torso. The noise of the city didn't even register with her, diving headlong back into the white noise she had heard right before being thrown into the time machine. The rooftop was to rough on her knees, scratching them and causing one to bleed, but she didn't notice or care. The world was swimming before her eyes with the amount of tears going down her face, a washed out world of color and life she hadn't seen or heard in years and had yet to from her senses denying her of such things.
It was a few minutes later, when her tears had stopped simply because of how dehydrated she was, that she saw it. Among the papers for the machine was a little notebook. It was scuffed and extremely dirty, but there was a slight bulge to the closed pages along with the fact that she hadn't seen it with the paper when she had originally picked them up. Wiping her cheeks of the tears, she paused. She was wearing exactly what she had been in the bunker, and it seemed she also had her weapons from the bunker that she had on her when she went through.
She still had the papers, so it made some sense that she would still be like she had been in the bunker. Shaking the thought from her mind for the moment, she reached out and picked up the notebook. She hadn't held it properly, and whatever caused the slight width of the notebook was heavy, because the weight of what was in the notebook caused it to fall out and make a metallic sound on the rooftop. And if she wasn't physically able to produce tears anymore, she would have burst into tears again. Lying right where it had fallen was a ring of braided silver and copper for the band.
Katsuki's wedding ring. An identical one - only smaller - rested on Izuku's own ring finger. Even without seeing them, Izuku knew there were words etched into both rings.
Forever Intertwined.
Picking up the ring, Izuku held it gently in her hand as she opened the notebook. What she found was Katsuki's handwriting, along with dates, places, first person accounts, and very personal messages. A lot of the messages were directed towards specific people, but Izuku found that she was the one most were written for from briefly looking through the pages. Izuku hugged both the ring and the notebook to her chest, and just breathed for a few minutes.
Even if he's gone, he's still here with her. Her Katsuki is right there with her.
_-oOo-_
When Izuku finally collected herself and what little she had left, she knew she had a decision to make. Go back to her mother when she was clearly not alright and worry her, or don't go back and make her mother besides herself with worry. Either way, her mother would be worried, and she doesn't deserve that - but she doesn't deserve a traumatized daughter when she could just have the guess of where Izuku could have gone.
With that in mind, Izuku didn't take the familiar but strange path back to her mother's apartment. Rather, she went down a different path towards a nicer part of town. She knew that those who did see her were giving her sideways glaces, and after so long without the presence of people, she returned the stares. People were such an abnormality to her - the last time she had seen another person besides Katsuki had been nearly two years ago when her group and gotten separated.
The sound of commotion back the other way caused Izuku to pause. She could here explosions. Izuku walked back the way she had come towards the explosions. When she glaced around the corner, she found a crowd of people taking about a villain made of sludge, and how the heroes weren't doing anything because it had taken a middle schooler hostage.
That was when Izuku remembered exactly what had happened involving a sludge villain and a middle school hostage. Sure, she figured Katsuki was alive still here - none of what she had gone through had happened yet so it was plain that he should be - but after seeing him die, it had sort of shorted out her brain. Her Katsuki was dead, but this Katsuki was still very much alive.
Without pause, Izuku picked up a rock from a nearby flowerpot, climbed up the side of the building she was next to, and went closer to the alley that she could now see into. Fire was raging around as Katsuki attempted and failed to get out of the sludge villain's grip on his own. The heroes were stuck between trying to help get him out, putting out the fires he was causing, and keeping the bystanders at a safe distance. Izuku drew the hand with the rock back, inhaled, and threw the rock with deadly accuracy at the sludge villain's eye on the exhale.
The villain cried out in pain as his eye seemed to explode from the force of the rock's throw, his body recoiling from around Katsuki and allowing him room to breathe. As Katsuki coughed, he looked up to where the rock had come from and caught a glimpse of Izuku as she retreated. The Pro Hero Death Arms took the opportunity to take Katsuki out of the grip of the sludge villain entirely, and it was finished up quickly after that.
With that done, Izuku left back the way she had been going before, the papers, notebook, and ring held to her like a life line. In the light of the setting sun, she looked back just in time to see this Katsuki round the corner. Her breathing hitched as she saw him, and he stopped with an angry look on his face.
"You think this changes anything, shitty Deku?! You think you'll gain my favor?! Don't you dare look down on me Deku, I didn't need your help!" He yelled across the space separating them to her. He scoffed, and turned away, stomping away. He didn't see the sadness on Izuku's face, or the way she looked like she wanted to cry when no tears would come.
Taking in a shakey breath, Izuku turned and continued on her way. Passed the nice streets to the even nicer ones, the sun leaving her for the light of the moon instead, the street lamps coming to life. On she went until she came to a specific number she remembered vaguely at the back of her mind. She walked through the front yard of the large house, and couldn't help but to stare at the fountains and statues she saw. One of the statues looked to have been recently destroyed if the smoldering scorch marks on what was left of it could be any indication.
Izuku eventually made it up to the front doors. Taking a breath, she worked up the courage to knock. When she raised her hand to knock on the door, she was slightly startled as the door flung itself open to reveal a pink haired girl with soot on her face, grease on her hands, and slightly burnt clothes.
"Heya, stranger!" She said as she bounced in place, excess energy radiating off her in waves.
"Mei?" Izuku asked more for herself than for the girl. She wasn't nearly as... eccentric when Izuku had known her.
"Oh, so I do know you! Sorry, I'm running on energy drinks and sleep deprivation right now so I can try finishing my newest baby!"
"N-no, you don't know me. Or, you di-do! Will? You will know me? I-" Izuku tried, getting confused at the prospect. Mei, for her credit, just waited patiently with a large smile. Izuku took a breath and started again. "I'm Izuku. And I know you from the future. That's where I came here from. The future."