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“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” Izuku mutters to himself, huffing, and the rest of the saying is lost when the gleaming red string he’s using to scale the tower flutters out of existence.
He falls.
Not far, surprisingly. The red string of fate tying him to an abandoned, half-manifested soul bond usually disappears for fairly long periods of time, but in this instance, it flickers back into existence almost immediately. Still, it’s long enough to drop his ascent by several feet—and the pit of his stomach into the planet’s core.
It’s always been like this: a red string, usually phantasmal and impossible to touch, flickering in and out of existence as conspicuously as if he’d had “bondless” written on his forehead. Where most people can interact with the strings of their soul bonds freely and at-will once they’ve manifested, Izuku has been stuck in the awkward limbo of in-between. Unlike those who haven’t yet met their soul mates, he can choose to touch his string—sometimes.
Only, he thinks, panting against the sun-warmed stone wall of the tower as he dangles, when it’s inconvenient.
It’s probably because Kacchan hated Izuku so much when he left. Half-bonds are like this—unreliable, a representation of their bearers’ relationships. Izuku kind of knew that it would turn out this way the moment he was old enough for a bond to manifest and realized who it bound him to. He and Kacchan were friends when they were young enough that the difference of species didn’t matter, but all it took for things to fall apart was for Kacchan to get some dragon friends, and then a human kid like Izuku could never keep up. Of course he would be disgusted that he ended up tethered by a soul bond to someone like Izuku—the reason it flickers is probably so that Izuku can’t tie him down, no matter how far away he is.
At least Izuku can still use it to climb, sometimes, even if scaling towers in the middle of the royal forests is probably not what soul bonds were manifested for, spiritually speaking.
He takes a deep breath, shaking off the cobwebs of reminiscence, and keeps climbing. Fallen several feet or not, he’s nearly at the top of the tower, and he’ll be in a lot of trouble if he waits long enough for the red string to flicker again. There have been times when it disappeared for minutes or even hours. Currently, anything longer than a few seconds would result in an Izuku-shaped pancake at the bottom of a seventy-foot drop.
It’s not too arduous of a climb, and sweat beads on his brow less from exertion and more from the way that gentle sunlight dapples across his eyelashes, filtering through the tree leaves. Where Izuku lacks social graces and, er, people that find him tolerable, he at least makes up for it in strength and determination. It only takes another minute to make it to the top, and he’s so eager to get away from the danger posed by his flickering soul bond that he tumbles himself over the edge of the windowsill without taking a proper look inside—
—and promptly comes point-to-nose with the tip of a sword’s blade.
“Um!” Izuku squeaks, much pitchier than he would have liked his first impression on anyone to be.
Two-tone eyes peer down at him over the blade, but the reflection of sunlight on cool steel makes it hard to see anything else. Izuku scrabbles a little bit, wriggling backwards against the windowsill where he’s sprawled, and the stranger with the sword steps forward to follow.
“You’re not food delivery,” comes the stranger’s voice. “You’re a knight. Or… a page. What are you doing here?”
“Um,” Izuku says again, raising his palms in the universal sign for nonaggression. “A knight! In training, I guess, haha. No armor, but that doesn’t mean I’m a servant or anything—that’s, er, actually why I’m here? The knight-in-training bit, I mean.”
Wow, that’s an embarrassing amount of rambling. He is embarrassing, and it shows, as heat trickles and prickles uncomfortably up Izuku’s cheeks in an undoubtedly-blotchy flush.
A single skeptical eyebrow rises over a single, equally-skeptical eye. It’s not a particularly kind expression, but he still tries to focus on that rather than… anything else about the stranger. Mostly because he is a very, very handsome stranger. Izuku has such a tendency to land himself in situations where pretty people look down their noses at him, and he’s awfully tired of it.
He flushes further. “I’m here to rescue… you, I think. From… the dragon. My name is Izuku Midoriya?”
“Ah,” says the stranger—or, well. Probably the prince, if Izuku is right. He sounds less than impressed. “I see. In that case, I will have to kill you.”
“Wait, wha—?”
And that’s as far as Izuku gets before the sword at his neck swings, and years of trained reflexes are the only thing that send him diving to the side before he’s skewered through the throat.
He rolls over one shoulder and draws his blade in the same motion, just in time to catch the edge of the prince’s blade on his handguard. It makes a terrible metal squeal, and Izuku winces—partly from the sound and impact, and partly because that is a very nice sword to be swinging around, dulling against other people’s handguards. Izuku can only afford the one blade, and he’s been doing his best to take care of it, which includes not slamming it against hard metal objects.
That doesn’t mean he hesitates to parry when the prince goes for another strike, though he does use the flat of his blade to smack away the next jab, a sharp point that nearly brushes Izuku’s stomach. The prince—Shouto, his name is supposed to be—is a fantastic fighter, clearly well-trained and oddly well-practiced for someone who’s meant to have been in isolation for the past two years. He advances on Izuku with a formal, unyielding grace, a slight frown of concentration on his face and no other strain in his expression or his form.
Izuku, in contrast, dances back haphazardly and does his best to avoid getting skewered or, actually, skewering any of the rather expensive-looking furniture. Heavy wooden armoire, beautifully-painted wooden room divider, tatami flooring that is not designed for someone to be stomping around on in thick-soled boots—
“Hey, hold on, Prince Shouto, this seems like a misunderstanding!”
“It isn’t.”
—But he’s still better than Shouto, when it comes down to it. Maybe not in a formal match, but a messy, indoor fight that’s close to turning into a brawl—Shouto clearly hasn’t fought like this before, and his sweeping, beautiful moments are as elegant as they are restricted by his surroundings. It doesn’t take long for Izuku to find his footing.
The tatami ends in a pattern that speaks to an in-the-works replacement process, ragged edges showing the age of the mats, and Izuku digs his heels into the sturdy wooden flooring that lies underneath. His next strike doesn’t just glance away Prince Shouto’s blow, it knocks the sword entirely out his hands.
It’s the first thing to put a change of expression on Shouto’s face. His eyes widen, just slightly, and his lips press together tightly.
“Look,” Izuku says, voice shaking but sword firm as he points his blade at the sovereign prince of his nation. “I’m here to help, not hurt you! Please stop attacking me!”
The furrow in Shouto’s brow deepens and, after a long pause, his stance shifts.
He brings his hands up, fists curled.
“You’re going to fight me bare-handed?!” Izuku blurts, sword tip dipping. “I have a sword!”
“I don’t have much of a choice,” Prince Shouto says, making a loose circling gesture with one hand. Some kind of ‘come and get me’ gesture, or just training from whatever the royal equivalent of fistfighting classes is? Regardless, the flinty gray of one eye is no less piercing than the icy-sharp blue of the other. “And I will win. I have more on the line. You’re fighting for one life, but I’m fighting for two.”
Izuku hesitates. “... Two?”
Prince Shouto’s circling hand tightens, pulling backwards—and something yanks at Izuku’s sword-hand, sending his weapon skittering across the floor and his body flying forward.
His eyes blow wide and his breath leaves his lungs as he slams into the floor. At the same moment, a floor-shaking roar shatters through the room, and Izuku’s shocked cry is drowned out by the noise as he slaps his palms over his ears.
Shouto has no such compunctions, and shoves a boot into Izuku’s shoulder to pin him to the floor. One of his hands goes to the side of it, whipping out a thin knife, and he presses it to Izuku’s throat.
Izuku gasps against it, breathless with impact, and his throat bobs against the blade. He can’t inhale fully, and when he tries, his Adam’s apple presses against the sharp edge of Shouto’s knife and warmth runs down the side of his neck.
He can’t move his free arm. When he tries, he tugs against a restraining force—a string around his finger, pinned under Shouto’s knee and tracing up to where the prince has it wrapped around his palm, pulled taught and biting into the soft flesh of his hand.
The red string of fate.
Izuku stares up, eyes watering with what he tells himself is pain. “I don’t understand.”
Shouto shrugs, and presses the knife closer. “You don’t have to.”
“Don’t.”
Izuku freezes, voice catching in his throat as a deep rumble expresses the exact word that was about to escape from him. A deep, deep, deep rumble, accompanied by a flush of hot air that ruffles both his and Prince Shouto’s hair and bodes very ill if it’s coming from what Izuku thinks it’s coming from.
He tips his head back.
Yep. That is exactly what he thinks it is.
“Is that,” Izuku squeaks, before coughing and clearing his throat. “I, um, Prince Shouto, I feel like if this is the second life you were fighting for, you really might have been over-estimating me.”
The dragon snorts.
This sends another puff of air over Izuku, because the dragon is very, very large. In fact, it is large enough that the only part of it that can properly fit into the room is its head, a behemoth of glimmering black scales that are trimmed with a caustic, explosive orange and a serrated trail of boney horns.
“Seriously,” the dragon says, voice dragging like gravel as smoke puffs out from between his teeth—each one is the size of Izuku’s hand, and yet he’s more worried about the smoke, which indicates an inflated flame bladder ready to spew caustic, sticky, burning tar. “He’s way too pathetic to actually hurt anyone, candycane.”
“He is a skilled fighter,” Shouto mutters back, yanking the red string tighter around Izuku’s hand when Izuku so much as twitches.
“And yet you’re still in one piece,” says the dragon, “so what does that tell you? Hold on. I thought you were getting skewered, so I have to swallow this before I vomit fire on you.”
He withdraws his head for a moment, the smell of smoke and ash receding for a moment, and there’s a long moment of silence as Shouto and Izuku stare at one another. When the dragon’s head returns, the billowing smell of burning tar is gone—apparently, he’d been serious about not intending Izuku harm.
Without the smoke obscuring Izuku’s vision, the dragon suddenly looks a lot more familiar, too.
“K—” Izuku’s breath stutters in his throat. “Kacchan?”
For the first time in their very short acquaintance, Shouto’s expression breaks—he snorts, clapping a hand over his mouth. “What?”
Kacchan’s eyes widen. “No—”
“Kacchan,” Shouto says again, eyes crinkling in mirth.
“I said—ugh!” Kacchan’s giant head starts wriggling through the window, scraping stones with his scales as he goes, and after a few seconds of fruitless pushing, he gives a loud snort—and twists, shrinking in a smooth, snake-like fashion until it’s a very familiar, if older, childhood Kacchan standing in front of Izuku, looking as angry as ever.
“You’re right,” Shouto says, though he doesn’t remove the knife from Izuku’s throat. “Nobody that calls you Kacchan could possibly be a danger. What do you call him, ‘Izukkun’?”
“Deku,” Izuku murmurs quietly, and Shouto falls quiet, looking down at him.
“What?”
Izuku feels heat crawling up his cheeks again, gross and uncomfortable. He looks away. “Um. He calls me Deku.”
“Well, that’s…” Shouto trails off, eyeing Kacchan. “Cruel.”
“It’s! It’s fine!” Izuku says. “Really, it’s just—kids, you know, and—haha—I used to be pretty useless anyways, so—I mean, I guess I still am, right now, but…”
God, he’s really pathetic, isn’t he? A half-realized soulmate bond and with both of them standing over him, and still Izuku can’t do anything except showcase his shortcomings.
Shouto’s brows furrow further, and he finally flicks the knife away, tucking it back into his boot.
“I didn’t think that Katsuki was that kind of person.”
“Yeah, well,” Kacchan grumbles, shoving his hands into his pockets. He’s not dressed as finely as Shouto, but Izuku knows that the black dye used for most of his clothes must have been expensive. “There’s a lotta things you don’t know. Like how much of a piece a’shit I can be.”
“It’s fine,” Izuku mumbles to empty ears.
“Look, that’s not the point,” Kacchan says. “The point is that this usel—this shithead knows even less than you, and he definitely has no idea what he’s really here for.”
“I was thinking I’d sneak Prince Shouto out of the tower before the dragon noticed us, actually,” says Izuku, “but I think it’s a bit late for that.”
“The dragon,” Shouto says, tugging on Izuku’s soulmate bond—it feels more teasing, this time, just a little waggle of the thread, “is the main thing keeping me alive, actually. Otherwise my father’s detractors might have managed to assassinate me by now.”
Izuku blinks, staring up at him. “Assassins?”
“Don’t tell me you think a guy like Endeavor’s got no enemies, Deku,” snipes Kacchan, and Izuku winces.
“Well, he’s not the nicest, but…”
“Life under his rule is particularly unkind to the less fortunate,” says Shouto. “Which I think you’re familiar with. There’s a particular group that’s out for his head, and they’re trying to use me to do it. Katsuki and I are going to get him first, though.”
“Hey!”
“What?” asks Shouto. “He’s our soulmate. He has to be on our side, right?”
“You read too many fairy tales, princess,” Kacchan mutters, but doesn’t argue further.
“Look, it’s—” Izuku coughs, residual smoke tickling his throat, and Shouto makes a face at it before pulling him up. He still keeps a hold of the red thread, but loosely—it seems less like a thread and more like…
Well, now that they’re not fighting, the way Shouto’s eyes keep darting over to Izuku seems a lot more—reserved?
“Thanks,” Izuku says. “I just wanted to say… I’m not going to drag you out to get assassinated. I thought you needed help, but I guess I was misinformed, so I won’t get in your way. But—you shouldn’t use the soulmate thing as a reason to trust me. My bond isn’t realized, and—you two seem happy with each other, I mean, and Kacchan doesn’t…”
Kacchan frowns, crossing his arms. “I don’t what?”
Izuku shrugs, crossing his legs. “Want me around. So I’ll get out of your hair, okay?”
He makes to get up, then, not wanting to stick around and watch the look on Kacchan’s face when he realizes how much Izuku annoys him—or to watch that gentle, burgeoning fascination on Shouto’s handsome features to curdle—but before he can get anywhere, there’s a yank—
And he’s sprawled on the floor again, halfway in Shouto’s lap.
Shouto blinks down at him, straight-faced, and lifts the thread innocently. “Seems plenty realized to me.”
“Um!” Ohmygod, Shouto is so much prettier up close.
“Look, Deku,” Kacchan says, crouching down—Izuku tries to scramble away, but Shouto has a tight hold on the thread, and Kacchan helps by yanking him via his shirt. “No, shut up, I only wanna say this once. Look, I…”
He looks away, frowning at the wall. “I’m sorry, alright? I was a piece of shit to you as a kid and it took the princess here straightening me out for me to realize. Your soulmate bond being fucked up was my fault, and it’s looking like now we-all are together, it’s sticking around. So… stick around, too, alright?”
Izuku stares at him, trying not to let hope blossom too rapidly in his chest. “Are you sure?”
Kacchan shrugs, standing back up and scuffing his boots at the ground. “Yeah, whatever.”
“Perfect,” Shouto says, and when Izuku looks back at him, he’s grinning. It’s a weirdly scary expression. “Now help me overthrow my father.”
Ah, right. Well, shit.
