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There’s something in regret — how the guilt of it weighs heavy on Katsuki’s chest, a sinking stone pressing him further, deeper, under. Makes him feel weak, submerging him into the depths of a feeling, no hope to breathe when he’s set to drown, over and over. But there’s no redemption in death, only an endless silence, an emptiness that freezes you over in your grave.
Desperation bubbles in his chest, and he kicks and scrabbles upwards, struggling. He doesn’t know when this submersion became so literal, breaking out into reality when the suffocation became water rushing to his lungs, and the threat of being laid to rest six feet under became nautical.
But the struggling gets him nowhere. Just this misty blue on all sides, all consuming, an oceanic gut that’s swallowed him whole. His quirk holds no use to him, here. And that’s the fear, isn’t it.
Helplessness in the face of danger. Of being able to do nothing, a spectator when his bones scream and beg for action. For a fist thrown, and a crackling sizzle to his punch.
(Of being downed in sludge.)
And still, if it were him, Deku wouldn’t do nothing. Recklessness ingrained in a membrane around his sense of self, he’d dived in and fought, nothing but skin and snappable bone. Quirkless. He’d break easily in the face of a villain. And yet — and yet he’d done it anyway.
It’s a heroic spirit to be feared.
And Katsuki had. Pushed it down, shoved it around, blasted it to kingdom come. Shrouded it in his own shadow, an attempt to block out its light. But the spirit never wavered, always pushed back up and stood. There was a resolve in those eyes he’d hated — at least, thought he had; it had festered for too long to be recognised as anything but — and something else. Some other emotion.
He still can’t quite put a name on it, and he regrets never trying to. Always giving into the voice that had screamed avoid avoid avoid . Katsuki never could stare those eyes down directly.
He regrets the build up, and the explosions that had followed, bursting forth with a tightness in his chest, a sting in his eyes, and a whiff of caramel. There would be no need to be a ticking time bomb if he’d acknowledged him before.
As more than a pebble. A boulder. A mountain.
He’s always been unavoidable like that.
(He wonders what reason Deku has for staying, continuously through it all. Why he still stays now when Katsuki should be a face he despises.
He never did. Inexplicable, really.
Sometimes Katsuki thinks it would be easier if Deku learned to.)
Katsuki finds himself looking, and seeing, watching on and thinking. Seeking out the boy who’d tagged along in the dark.
He doesn’t know when he started this chasing routine too. But he has. And they grow closer — slowly, but surely, at a speed too gradual to identify — because of it, glue in the secret they share.
Katsuki can’t mend what he broke. Cannot fix actions done that cannot be redeemed, or a guilt that cannot be quelled. There is no peace in that past.
But a future — maybe. If he can outweigh it, be here for him now in the way he never was. Challenge him, train with him, apologise to him. He can push past a life he’s left.
And all it takes is a hand.
So Katsuki reaches out, again. Through the water and to the sun, an illuminated sky free of murk. Out of the depths and into the shallows, where light flickers and dances with liquid momentum.
He rises and rises, ready to break through to the surface.
But he is not alone.
Overhead, smeared in a watery ripple, he can vaguely make out someone wearing a gakuran, back from his middle school days. They’re almost formless like this, a shadowy figure, and yet he’s never seen a presence so bright.
When he surfaces — bobbing like an apple in water, subtle ripples spreading outwards — he understands why.
Deku.
That’s Deku standing over him, back in an outfit he’s long since put away, hanging off of him like he isn’t deceptively built of muscle. And yet here he is, those wide eyes looking at Katsuki like he’s the strange one, perplexed but intrigued.
To be fair, he is the one who’s seemingly taken a dip in a koi pond like it’s a public bath house. The water’s not nearly so deep now, a strained sea, and the fish who’s home he’s disrupted squirm and flap their fishy tails around him, tickling his face with scaled kisses.
He knows this place.
Aldera’s koi pond.
The middle school uniform.
Ah.
(The quirk.)
“Kacchan? Your clothes…?” prompts the younger, years younger Deku, having caught sight of Katsuki’s choice of fashion for this impromptu dip. His voice sounds distorted, clipped by the lapping water, so Katsuki pulls himself into a sitting position, water droplets cascading like rain.
His Yuuei uniform is soaked through.
But that isn’t what Deku means.
“What? Like you didn’t think I’d make it into Yuuei?”
“No, no! Of - of course not! I knew you would make it in Kacchan.” He’s skittish, this one. But who’s fault is that?
He’s just thankful he hasn’t seen this side of Deku in a long time.
Younger Deku continues, hesitancy starting his trail of thought slow, “I was just wondering. Is this um, a quirk? I’ve hardly ever heard any instances of a time travel quirk in effect, and if anything it’s usually users who can travel up to little or more than a five minutes at most. But you seem older, not to mention that’s a Yuuei uniform you’re wearing, and I just saw you — but not you so other you — a moment ago when he — ”
“Nerd, you’re muttering up a storm there.”
“Oh!” he squeaks, then shame dampens his tone, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just — would you like a hand up?”
(“Need help? Can you stand?”
Of course he’s always projected back to that moment. Up to his ankles in water, back then. And again, now in a pond.
History just can’t let it go.)
He thinks about batting Deku’s extended hand away, of how easy that would have been before. But — but.
He can’t let this moment go to waste. Not again.
Katsuki reaches up and grasps it, firmly, heaving himself up from the pond. Deku seems a little dazed, somewhat, staring at their interlinked hands like he hadn’t actually expected Katsuki to take it. And he hadn’t, once.
But not here, not now.
He thinks that this hand, freely given, forever and always without a second thought, may end up being the death of him.
(Or perhaps that’s just a new beginning.)
Katsuki pulls away, patting down his uniform and wringing the fabric for an inch of its life. It won’t do him any good to remain in sopping wet clothes for long.
“So, why’re you still hanging around after hours in this dump, anyway?”
“For this.” Deku bends down into the pond, plucking from it a dripping wet notebook he holds close to his chest and —
Oh. The blackened marks, the scorched remains of the cover.
Hero Analysis For The Future.
Katsuki’s been taken back to this very moment, hasn’t he.
“… He shouldn’t have said that to you,” it comes out quiet, heavy and loaded. Katsuki can’t look him in the eyes, shame a blistering wound caving into his chest. “ I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
They both know what he’s referring to.
“It’s okay,” Deku says weakly, and it’s not, it’s not, “I know you didn’t mean it. And if I did end up over a ledge, I know you’d pull me back and call me stupid for even considering it.”
“Damn right I would have,” there’s no hesitance, just fierce surety. In no life would he let Deku make that jump. Even so — “But, fuck. You shouldn’t have had to hear that.”
“You’re right, it was dumb. You were an idiot,” Deku says, a little more confidently than before, a growing comfortability emerging before his eyes. Katsuki has to fight down his instinct to refute that, because, well, even he agrees with him on this one. “But you were right about one thing. I am quirkless. It’s going to be difficult to stand in the same ring as heroes with powerful quirks as I am now.”
“Tch, like you’re gonna let that stop you,” Katsuki scoffs, and Deku startles at his answer, “Look. I’m from the future, okay? I fucking know what I’m talking about. And I also know you. You’re determined as hell, and I don’t think there’s a bone in your self-sacrificial body that doesn’t wanna be a hero.”
“Are you saying…?” Deku swallows thickly. His eyes start welling with tears, and oh damn, this pond is about to get a newly instated fountain. “That I could really be a quirkless hero? Am I? In the future? Do I get accepted into Yuuei too?”
Deku’s near enough bouncing on the balls of his feet by the end of that rapid fire of questions.
“That’s — damn.” How does Katsuki put this? “You’re gonna get into Yuuei, wouldn’t have it any other way. And sure, if you were still quirkless, you would’ve applied anyway and trained your ass off. Maybe break more bones in the process if that’s possible. But that didn’t happen.”
Deku’s been frowning for quite some time now.
“… If I were still quirkless?” he repeats, trying at the words like he can get them to make any more sense, “What do you mean by that? No one gets a quirk this far past the age of four. I’ve - I’ve checked.”
“Then today’s your lucky day, you damn shitty nerd. You get to win the quirk lottery. All Might’s waiting out there for you as we speak.”
Deku splutters, doubling over, strong emotions always so heavy a weight to carry. The face is pretty funny. Any lower, and his jaw would be on the floor. “ALL M- You- he- ALL MIGHT?!”
“Yeah.”
“All Might?!”
“Now you’re repeating yourself.“
Deku takes two great, heaving breaths, attempting to steady himself. “And you’re not lying to me?”
“Oi, fuck no. I’ve known you your whole damn life. Don’t start calling me a liar now.”
“Right, sorry, Kacchan. I just. Can’t believe it’s my future, that’s all.” A stricken expression shadows Deku’s face. “It will be, won’t it? Or have you changed things by being here? Now that I think about it, I may have asked too many questions.”
At least he’s self aware.
“This ain’t reality,” Katsuki admits, “Shit’s already hit the fan and happened. So don’t get your nerdy pants in a twist over some time travelling quirk ‘cause I’ve yet to see one myself. I’m just stuck reliving one of my regrets — that’s what the extra told me when his quirk activated.”
Katsuki can’t get a read on Deku’s expression. It’s indecipherable. “Your regrets, huh. Seems more like I’m living a good dream of mine.”
“I wish I could take it back.” Katsuki eyes the tell tale marks of his quirk on the cover clutched in Deku’s hands. “More than anything. But it doesn’t work like that.”
“Because I’m just a memory?”
“Uhuh. Ain’t gonna have an effect on anything.”
“But it will have an effect on you. You’re going to remember,” Deku says. And he’s right, he is. Guy’s quirk is usually used for making peace with ghosts who’ve lost the chance to. People pay him to have a fond memory to remember. But Katsuki just bumped into him on the street. “And I think other me would be happy to know how you feel about this moment.”
“Already does, De- Izuku.”
(“I’m sorry for everything.”)
Deku stiffens at the name, eyes flashing, wide and stunned. But then they soften, and the tears creep back, flooding his ducts.
“I’m glad, Kacchan.” And how can Deku look at him as if Katsuki is the sun when he himself smiles with the warmth of one? “I can’t wait to be him one day.”
There’s bigger things out there to worry about than their relationship. Villains that’ll rip that smile right off of him, steal the light from his eyes.
So he doesn’t tell Deku that. Can’t let that light wink out again.
Deku comes first.
“Won’t be long. Still longer than you deserve. But we’ll figure our shit out.” Nothing like combat and near death experiences to push them along. But currently — “He thinks you’re looking down on him.”
Deku squishes his nose up, and it’s like looking at a pug. A green, freckly pug. “I’m not.”
“I know that now. Other me doesn’t.”
“Then I’m going to tell him.”
“Oi, hold on — ” Katsuki reaches out, swiping for the black fabric of Deku’s uniform.
He doesn’t even make contact. Not with that flinch, a full body quiver. And Katsuki remembers just exactly who he’s talking to.
“Shit.”
Because when had the him of this time ever reached out in kind?
There was always an explosion. Always a lasting mark.
Deku seems embarrassed by the reflex reaction — like Katsuki didn’t put it there, like this isn’t his fault — and smiles it off, awkward and stilted. “I’m still going, Kacchan. You can come with me, if you like.”
“Two of me in one place? Hah! Are you asking for a fuck-ton of property damage? Shit is gonna explode.”
“You did say this is just a memory.”
Katsuki cracks a smirk.
“You’re right there.” Katsuki would be able to deck him where he stands. Fight wouldn’t be a challenge when he already knows who will win — he’s got stronger . His younger self would hate it if he hadn’t. “But you don’t need to go searching for him. I know I watched you take that book out of the pond when I was him. He’s here somewhere, ready to spring up and ask who the fuck I am.”
(The burn of red stings from somewhere. He knows his own eyes watch on.
But there’s no point in talking to a boy who’s already learnt — will learn.
Look how he got here in the first place.)
But there’s a buzz in his fingers, a thrum of energy that makes his hands fade in and out like a kid’s found the dim switch and is attempting a homemade disco. He holds his palms out in front of him, inspecting how translucent they’ve come.
Back to the future indeed.
“Not that he’ll get to try.” Katsuki clicks his tongue. “Time’s up. See ya round the long way, nerd.”
With his free hand, Deku manages a small wave. Dejected, but looking a lot more at ease than he had that day. “Bye Kacchan.”
And when as he fades completely he thinks maybe, just maybe —
— The crushing weight isn’t so heavy as before.
He can finally breathe.