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Katsuki hears about it after the fact. He was dead when it actually happened. Things happened so quickly after that that no one on that floating fortress knew anything until the scene had already been locked down.
Glasses is the one who tells them. Or, rather, he tells De-Izuku when Izuku is fretting at Katsuki’s bedside and Katsuki just happens to overhear. For a moment he thinks he’s dreaming. Having a nightmare. He could have sworn-
Last Katsuki had heard, before exploding his own heart in his chest, Shouto had won his fight. He’d beaten his murderer brother and hadn’t been too badly off for it. Last Katsuki had heard.
But the class prez is telling Izuku something at the doorway, almost too quiet for Katsuki to catch when he doesn’t have his hearing aids in, but he didn’t cover his mouth and Katsuki is the best when it comes to lip reading.
Shouto is dead.
Katsuki almost wants to make Glasses repeat himself, but by the way Izuku wails and collapses to the floor, Katsuki got it right the first time. There’s a strange blackness entangling itself around Izuku, and Katsuki can just get himself out of bed to throw himself across the other boy. Izuku buries his face in Katsuki’s chest and keeps screaming. It’s fine. Without his hearing aids in, Katsuki barely registers it. Everything about the moment feels removed, like he’s swaddled in a cotton batting too thick for anything to penetrate.
Katsuki buries his face in Izuku’s unruly curls, feels that black energy encase his limbs, and rocks his vision of saving back and forth on the hospital room floor. Neither of them get up for a very long time.
Going back to UA is one of the most difficult things Katsuki has ever done. Shouto is the only student they lost, but not a single person on campus treats that as a blessing. That, in a war against the biggest villains of the age, they only lost one single student.
Katsuki almost doesn’t go to the funeral. He stands outside Shouto’s dorm room door for what feels like hours. Eijirou is the one who eventually comes and collects him and brings him to the service. There’s a monument for him- his likeness recreated by Cementoss, no doubt. The plaque is simple: The Fire and Ice Hero, Shouto. Beloved student, brother, and friend. It’s not enough, Katsuki thinks. The statue doesn’t capture enough about him. It won’t ever tilt its head when it gets confused; it won’t ever grit its teeth when it’s frustrated; it won’t ever smile with just the right corner of its mouth when Katsuki cracks a joke.
It won’t kiss Katsuki, even if he asks it to.
From what Katsuki understands, there’s no body to bury. Whatever ice Shouto used to finally stop Dabi, there wasn’t any left over to protect himself from the cremation his oldest brother had always had planned for him.
Even before this, Katsuki wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to set foot in Kamino Ward again. Now, he thinks he’d rather die than go anywhere near the place. The two greatest heroes Katsuki’s ever known both died there. One of them was Katsuki’s fault. The other… His biggest regret, maybe? He’d expected to have more time. More time to figure it all out, more time to focus on the things that really mattered . Just. More time.
Aizawa-sensei is the one who starts the eulogy. He is not the one who finishes it. He gets three sentences in, platitudes on how Shouto died being a hero. His voice breaks and no one pretends not to see him cry. Katsuki heard it from Lemillion, how Sensei had reacted when Katsuki had died, and he’d been able to witness that. He can’t imagine what it must be like for Sensei to know that one of the students he’d sworn to protect had died so far away from him, and in so much pain, fighting a fight that never should have been his.
Katsuki wonders if Shouto even had the time to be scared.
Present Mic, in the least animated tone any of them have ever heard from him, finishes the eulogy. It’s a very long time before anyone in Class 1-A moves from their spots in front of the monument.
Classes start back up, and the hallways are mostly silent. Mindfreak starts the second year with their class, but Todoroki’s seat remains empty. The newcomer sits at an unaligned desk near the window instead, on Ponytail’s other side. It’s for the best really. Katsuki doesn’t know what he would have done if Shinsou had sat in Todoroki’s seat.
To his credit, Aizawa-sensei only stalls once, when his eyes catch and hold on the empty seat. Katsuki grips his pencil so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t snap in half. Behind him, he can hear Izuku start crying. He resolutely does not turn to stare at the unoccupied desk.
It’s three days after the first class back that Katsuki comes across Glasses in the middle of the school grounds, surrounded by trees. He’s got a wood block between his teeth, and there’s blood and scattered machine parts on the grass around him. He finishes pulling an exhaust pipe from his skin.
“I need to be faster.”
Katsuki leaves.
It’s Tape Face, who’s the first of them to fuck it up. He gets a new manga in the mail from his sister and perks up in his seat.
“Oh, man, Todoroki’s gonna be so excited!” He’s already halfway to the elevator before he realizes his mistake. Pinky is already sniffling into her sleeve.
It gets worse from there.
“Where’s Todoroki?”
“I’ll go see if Todoroki wants to come.”
“Man, Todoroki’s gonna be pissed!”
“Oh, it’s Todoroki’s birthday soon-”
That’s the one that gets everyone in the class crying again. It weighs on Katsuki, just how young they all are for having fought and won a war. Shouto was one of their youngest. He was sixteen. He’d never be seventeen.
January 11th is a day spent mourning.
Katsuki stands in front of Shouto’s door for a while, until Izuku comes to join him. Katsuki can’t bring himself to open the door and step inside, but it seems like Izuku doesn’t have that problem. He shoulders the door open and drags Katsuki inside.
No one has been in to pack up his things, even though it’s been months, at this point. The cover of his futon is still askew, like he hadn’t had the time to fix it when he rolled out of bed for the last time.
Izuku drags him over to the futon and lays down on it, smushing his face into the pillow. If Katsuki breathes deep, he can still smell Todoroki on the pillow: a campfire on a clear winter’s day.
“I keep looking for him. I keep expecting him to be there.” Izuku’s voice is a whisper, like no one else can hear this secret, even though everyone sees him continuously look to his side for the boy that had always stood by him. “I miss him so much.” Katsuki tucks Izuku’s head underneath his chin. He feels so small, wrapped in Katsuki’s arms like this.
“I know, ‘Zuku.” Katsuki’s voice is ragged, but he makes no move to clear it. “Me too.”
When he and Izuku wake up some indeterminate amount of time later, eyes still red and puffy, they don’t talk about it.
Unsurprisingly, Momo is the valedictorian when they graduate. Unsurprisingly, Katsuki is second in the class. She insists on holding graduation at the base of the empty grave they have all spent too much time in front of for the past two years. It’s sunny enough that she’s essentially standing in Todoroki’s shadow as she gives her speech.
Katsuki has never in his life so badly wanted to be third best at something
He’s supposed to give a speech, too. He has it written down, something gruff and heartfelt and it felt like pulling his own teeth out and exploding himself to pieces all over again to write it. In the end, he can’t say it. He gets up there, enters the coolness of the shadow after the heat of the day, and almost immediately tears up. All he can do is reach up to touch Shouto’s cement leg where it stands tall on the base of the cenotaph and squeeze his eyes shut.
“Nobody else is fucking dying, got it?”
Never has Katsuki ever felt Edgeshot so acutely in his chest than when his heart squeezes painfully, than when it takes more effort than it should to pull his hand from the monument and return to his seat. Izuku clings onto him for the rest of the ceremony, soaking through Katsuki’s uniform with his tears. It’s good that everyone is avoiding looking at them, so as to not draw extra attention to Izuku’s grief. No one notices the tears tracing down Katsuki’s cheeks, too.