Work Text:
The war is over.
The war is over, but it never really goes away.
A nightmare is a nightmare because it isn't real. So what is it called when it is real?
A memory.
The battlefield is stained red. There are other bodies strewn about, but Izuku’s subconscious doesn’t focus on them. Instead he focuses entirely on the body that’s right in front of him.
Kacchan.
He’s bleeding. His chest is burst open, his heart ruined and torn to shreds. Distantly, Izuku can hear Shigaraki laughing as he presents Izuku with his gift.
In real life, Izuku had burned with anger. In real life Mirio had been there to tell Izuku that Kacchan was going to be okay. But in the dream there’s no one else there, just Izuku and Shigaraki and Katsuki, and the bodies of everyone he couldn’t save. And it isn't anger that Izuku feels but despair, a despair that cuts deep and chokes the life out of him.
Izuku jerks awake. The memory is fresh in his head, of Kacchan and an All Might card and so, so much red.
Kacchan.
Izuku sits up, heart beating fast and chest heaving. The blankets pool at his waist as he fights to catch his breath, his face wet with tears.
A hand smooths up his back, and with a tired grunt Kacchan wakes up. He sits up and pulls Izuku into him, and when Izuku devolves into tears, Kacchan presses a kiss to his head.
"I'm okay," Kacchan says, because he knows that's what the dreams are usually about, those horrible few moments when both their hearts had stopped beating.
"I know," Izuku says. But knowing doesn't stop the nightmares. And knowing doesn’t remove the scar that cuts down Kacchan’s face, or the one over his heart, or the starbursts on his skin from where he’d taken the hit for Izuku. Each scar is an indictment against Izuku, the cold hard proof of every time Izuku failed, and every time Katsuki paid for it.
Kacchan shifts them so they're lying down, Izuku's head pillowed on his chest, over his heart. He listens to it, the steady thumping his own version of a lullaby. Kacchan's arms come to wrap around him securely, and Izuku buries his face in his shirt, lets the tears sink through the fabric. Kacchan just holds him until they both fall back into fitful sleep.
It hadn't always been like this. For the first few days after the war, when they'd gone back to U.A. and tried to pretend everything was back to normal, Izuku had tried to stay in his own room. But the nightmares were far worse when he was by himself, and eventually, after three sleepless nights, he showed up at Kacchan's door. Kacchan had let him in, of course—he hadn't been sleeping well either. After that Izuku went straight to Kacchan's room at night, and nobody—not lida, not Momo, not even Aizawa, who surely knew by now—said anything about it. What was there to say?
Kacchan and him didn't talk about it. Izuku showed up at his door and Kacchan’s face had softened and he’d stood to the side, and Izuku had stood in the middle of his room and sobbed, and Kacchan hadn’t said anything. Instead he’d gently pushed Izuku towards his bed, pulling him down onto it and crawling in beside him so he could hold him, and if Kacchan’s cheeks were wet, as well, Izuku didn’t say anything about it.
In the morning Izuku had been embarrassed; he’d woken before Kacchan and had lain in bed, trying to decide if he should try to sneak away, cursing himself for being so weak. But Kacchan had woken up, yawned, stretched, and then asked Izuku how he was feeling. And the next night, when Kacchan headed to bed, he’d given Izuku a meaningful look—so Izuku followed him up.
Izuku stopped going to bed in his room after that, but they still didn’t really discuss it. He went a week of sleeping in Kacchan’s bed before he finally broke and asked him one night when they were lying in bed.
“Kacchan?”
Kacchan was spooning him, face buried in the back of Izuku’s neck, and he grunted in response. Izuku had been surprised at how touchy Kacchan was, curling around him, grabbing his hand, a hand playing with his hair while they watched television. They haven’t kissed, and Izuku wants to, but he doesn’t at the same time. It’s really confusing.
Kacchan grunted in response.
“I was wondering… what are we doing?”
Kacchan did not insult him by pretending not to know what he was talking about. Instead he sighed heavily and said, "I don't fucking know." His breath tickled the back of Izuku's neck. "Figured we were just making it up as we went along."
"I don't… I don't know how to…" He didn't even know what he was trying to say.
"Izuku," Kacchan said, and god, would he ever be used to that? To the way his name rolled off Kacchan's tongue? “You don’t need to know how to do everything.”
And that—that explicit permission to just be lost, to not know—it felt so good that Izuku had started to cry again, and Kacchan had just held him until he drifted off to sleep, and they didn’t really figure anything out at all.
The first kiss took a while to come.
Of course, everyone—them included—knew what was going on. Besides the fact that they couldn’t be apart, there was handholding, and cuddling, and the occasional date night. But there was no first kiss until quite a few months after they returned to UA, during the aftermath of one of Izuku’s nightmares. It was not, perhaps, the most romantic of situations, wet and sobbing and snot nosed, the image of your dead friends burned into your mind—but Kacchan was comforting him, rocking him back and forth, and when Izuku calmed down and the sobbing tapered off he opened his mouth and blurted out, without even realizing he was about to say it, “I want to kiss you.”
Kacchan paused, and Izuku cursed himself. Maybe Kacchan was happy with it just like this. Maybe he’d just ruined everything because he was never satisfied. Stupid, stupid, greedy Izuku—
Kacchan said, “Can you blow your fucking nose first?”
And Izuku did something he hadn’t done in a while, which was laugh. And then he blew his nose, and then Kacchan had cupped his face with one big, warm hand, and he’d leaned in and kissed him, the most gentlest first kiss that Izuku thought had ever existed.
Izuku knows this—them—isn’t healthy. But no one makes him feel as safe as Kacchan does, and right now that’s the most important thing to Izuku.
The next night the nightmare is different. This time it's Shouto he sees, and since he didn't see Shouto's fight (and he refused to watch the videos) his brain conjures up horrible images, of him burned to a crisp, of Dabi's vicious laughter, of—
He jerks awake. Chest heaving, heart beating. A well worn script by now. Kacchan wakes up and sits up to hold him, warm body an immediate comfort.
"What was it this time?" He asks quietly. Izuku doesn't know how Kacchan always knows when the nightmare is about him or about someone else, but he always does.
"Shouto," Izuku says quietly. Kacchan hums.
"Wanna go up?" He asks. After a moment Izuku nods, and Kacchan helps him up out of bed.
They hold hands down the hallway and in the elevator and while waiting outside Shouto's door. When it opens Shouto looks first at Izuku then at Katsuki, and then he holds out his hand wordlessly.
It's a completely unnecessary exercise, checking Shouto's pulse when he's standing alive and well in front of them. But it doesn’t stop Izuku from wrapping his fingers around his wrist, thumb finding his pulse point and pressing down until he can make out the steady beat of Shouto’s heart. He closes his eyes and syncs his breathing to it, the reminder that his best friend is alive and okay and here with him still.
“Are you okay?” Shouto asks quietly. He always, always asks; Izuku always, always lies.
“Yeah,” he says, opening his eyes again. “I’m okay.”
“Do you want to stay?” Shouto asks. Sometimes they do; sometimes the three of them find a way to pile into Shouto’s bed and sleep like that, and those are some of the only times Izuku wakes up feeling safe. The boundaries between them broke down completely after the war. But tonight he wants the comfort of his own (or, well, Kacchan’s) bed—the idea of the three of them in the small bed leaves him feeling claustrophobic.
“No, I’m okay,” he says. “Thank you, Shouto. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“I don’t mind,” Shouto says. “You know I don’t mind.”
Him and Kacchan exchange glances over his head; he pretends not to see it so he doesn’t have to feel annoyed about it. He knows they do it because they care about him.
When they get back down to Kacchan’s room they get into bed; but instead of going back to sleep, Kacchan says, “Izuku.”
He doesn’t know what it is with Kacchan always knowing when something is wrong, or when he needs something, but all he needs is to hear that one word, his name, before he’s sobbing into Kacchan’s chest for the second night in a row. Kacchan holds him, rocks him, does all the things he never would have imagined Kacchan ever doing for him—the war had changed them all so much.
“How long is it gonna be like this, Kacchan?” He asks tearfully. “Are things ever going to go back to normal? Am I?”
Kacchan doesn’t have an answer; none of them do.
The truth is, Izuku isn’t okay.
He took most of the war home with him. He could barely look his classmates in the eye most of the time, taking on their pain and their trauma as if it was his personal responsibility. The guilt he feels when he sees Jirou’s ear, or Shoji’s scars, or that haunted look in Monoma’s eye that never seems to go away is stifling. And those are the survivors; when he thinks about those they lost, the heroes and the students and the villains they couldn’t save, it’s a choking, cloying panic that seizes him. His new habit of checking pulses extends to his classmates and even, on one horrible day, to Aizawa. But the survivor’s guilt is overwhelming, especially when Izuku thinks about him.
Shigaraki.
Izuku had reached out to him, held out his hand, grasped Shigaraki’s fingers within his and tried to pull him back into the light; and Shigaraki had reached out to him too, had grasped his hand—and his battered, broken body had fallen apart, pushed past the brink of recovery. Izuku had saved him but not in time, and that survivor’s guilt on top of everything weighs on him. All the ones he couldn’t save, all the ones he failed.
Everyone has noticed, of course. It was impossible not to, not to see the way Izuku’s light had dimmed, the way his grades had dipped. And of course there was the fact that he could barely be apart from Katsuki, ever—all those things came together to paint a picture of a boy who was barely holding himself together.
A few days later, Izuku is in class. He’s not really listening to Aizawa’s lecture; instead he's looking at the back of Kacchan's head, and he's thinking about the war, and he's thinking about the way it had felt to arrive and see his broken body on the ground, and as he thinks of this he sees, on the back of Kacchan's head, a bright spot of blood.
Izuku yells.
The class stops around him. Aizawa looks at him in concern, and Kacchan spins around, reaching out towards him.
“I'm sorry," Izuku says, mortified. "I'm sorry, I'm okay."
Aizawa considers him. "Go to the nurse, Midoriya," he says, and Izuku doesn't argue. He gets up, and in front of him Kacchan does the same.
Aizawa says, “Not you, Bakugou."
Kacchan's fists clench, but after a moment he sits back down. There’s really nothing else he can do. He knows he shouldn't be feeling this sense of panic over leaving Kacchan, but it kind of feels like his throat is closing up.
"Midoriya,” Aizawa says, not unkindly. Izuku gathers up his books and heads down to the nurse.
Recovery Girl looks at him with pity filled eyes, but there's no sense in wasting her quirk on him. Instead she sets him up in the Infirmary with a glass of water and a fuzzy blanket, and he watches an old All Might movie until class is over, and Aizawa comes down to see him.
"How are you feeling, Midoriya?"
Izuku picks at the threads of the blanket. "Embarrassed," he admits.
"You don't have to be," Aizawa says. "Every single person in that room—in this school—understands what happened to you."
lzuku looks up, and so he sees the complicated look that crosses Aizawa's face when he says, "Where's Kacchan?'
"I sent him back to the dorms," Aizawa says. He takes a seat beside Izuku. "Listen to me, Midoriya. I know that you went through something no teenager should have to. But this, this need to have Bakugou around you at all times… it's not sustainable."
"I know," Izuku says, because he does. "I just—" He starts to cry. He can't get any more embarrassed, after all. "I don't know what else to do." Aizawa's face is pained, and he rests a hand on Izuku's shoulder. "I've talked to the doctors and I’ve talked to the therapists and to other heroes and they don't… nothing seems to help. Only—only being around Kacchan helps."
"Did I ever tell you about my best friend? Shirakumo Oboro?" Izuku shakes his head, and Aizawa continues. "We were at U.A. together. Did our work studies together. One day… well. There wasn't much left of him to find." There's clear pain in Aizawa's voice. "I know what it's like to find your best friend's mangled body. I know what it's like to be unable to get those images out of your head. It won't always feel like this, Izuku. Eventually, with enough time, it will stop hurting this much."
Izuku looks up at him, tears still flowing freely down his face. "Sensei," he says brokenly. "What am I supposed to do until then?"
Kacchan is waiting for him once he gets back to the dorms; he's sitting with his friends but immediately gets up and heads over to Izuku when he sees him. He runs his hands from Izuku's shoulders to wrists as if he were checking for injuries, face concerned.
"Are you okay?"
They don't lie to each other, so Izuku shakes his head. He hasn’t been okay in a while.
In bed that night Izuku tells him about what happened.
"Fuckin' Aizawa wouldn't let me go," Kacchan says peevishly.
"Yeah," Izuku says. "He talked to me about that. Said this wasn't… sustainable.”
"Sustainable," Kacchan says derisively. "Fuck that. I'll kill anyone who tries to separate us, even Aizawa."
And that probably shouldn't make Izuku feel so good—but it does.
It was Kida Kenji's third shift on the job.
He'd thought joining the Musutafu Police Force would be nonstop action—it had been during the war, after all. But in the fragile peace that came with Shigaraki's death, it appeared that even many villains were taking a break and considering what their place in this new world was.
All this to say, Kida was very often bored at work. It didn't help that his partner was a few months away from a cushy new job outside the force, and had the worst case of senioritis Kida had seen since actual high school.
Kida is just contemplating the unfortunate circumstances of his life when a blur of green rushes past him.
Kida is suddenly alert. He cranes his neck but whoever it is is too far to see. Still, this is action, at least. He knows all the heroes in this area. This is unauthorized quirk use.
"Don't bother," comes his partner's bored voice. Kida shoots him a distrustful look.
"That's unauthorized quirk use in public," he says slowly. His partner sighs and lights a cigarette.
"Do what you want, newbie. But I wouldn't bother."
Kida bites back a comment about how that must mean he's a better cop and instead he calls dispatch.
“Dispatch this is Musutafu Car #218, reporting unauthorized quirk use in public—”
"Green lightning?"
"I—what?"
"Was it green lightning, heading west?"
"Well, yes, actually."
"Leave it," dispatch says, in the same bored tone of voice his partner had used.
"Leave it," he repeats, in disbelief. "But—”
"It's Deku," dispatch says.
"Deku? As in—"
"That Deku, yes. Leave it."
They disconnect. Kida shoots his partner a questioning look.
"He's going to his mom's." He takes another drag. "It's a deal we worked out with his school."
"A deal for what?"
He blows smoke through his nose. "First time we stopped him, he was a wreck. Sobbing to the point of hyperventilation. Says his mom isn't picking up the phone, and he's afraid something's happened. The hell were we supposed to do? It's the goddamn saviour of the world, and he's worried about his mom. Were we gonna arrest him?" He flicks his ash out the window. "We escorted him the first time, then the Chief met with his school. I dunno what was said, but the order came down shortly after. As long as he goes to his mom's, we let him be."
Kida thinks about the fact that they all owe their lives to a seventeen year old boy, and he thinks that maybe things being calm and boring isn't that bad.
Inko gets out of the shower to find her son sitting in her living room and sobbing. Her heart breaks the way it always does when she sees Izuku like this. She hurriedly pulls him to her as he sobs into her newly washed hair, cursing herself for forgetting her phone. She should be used to this by now.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, holding Izuku and rocking him gently. “I’m sorry, baby, it’s okay. I’m okay. You’re okay.”
After he calms down she makes him some tea and starts working on his favourite for dinner. Then she brings out her phone and texts Katsuki.
He’s alright. Are you almost here?
She knows that the police look the other way when Izuku uses his quirk to get to her, but it’s a deal that doesn’t apply to Katsuki, who must take transit the long way to her. She and Katsuki had made their peace with each other—now that both of them were concerned with keeping Izuku as happy as possible, she doesn’t hold him responsible for all the times Izuku had come home from school crying because of him.
People change, she thinks, looking at Izuku sadly.
Five minutes. Katsuki’s reply is curt as ever. She puts her phone back in her pocket and continues cooking.
“Mom?”
Izuku’s voice comes from behind her, small and tentative. She turns around and feels her heart break at the sight of him. She can feel the pain in him, and there’s absolutely nothing she can do about it. Her son, her baby. She was supposed to protect him, and she’s done nothing but fail him from the very beginning. Hisashi leaving, and Izuku not getting his quirk and the way she reacted…
It’s a line of thought she goes down often, although she tries not to—if she’d reacted better, if she’d taught him better, if she’d fought against every adult and child who treated him lesser because he was quirkless… If she’d supported his dream of being a hero, would he have run into the arms of All Might’s quirk? Would things have been different? Or would his desperation be the same? Was there anything she could have done to have stopped this from happening?
Her therapist says no. Her therapist says that line of thinking is not “conducive.” Her therapist says the hardest thing a parent has to learn to do is look at their child in pain and accept that there’s nothing they can do to change it.
“I’m sorry,” Izuku says tiredly. “For always doing this.”
“Oh, baby, don’t apologize,” she says quickly, stepping forward. Gosh, he’s so tall now. And strong, too. She barely recognizes him half the time. “I’m sorry for not responding—”
“You shouldn’t be!” She rears back slightly at the passion and anger in his voice, although she knows her son well enough to know it isn’t her he’s angry at. “You shouldn’t have to text me every time you’re going to be away from your phone, you shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have—”
“One of the things I’m trying to work on,” Inko says slowly, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around Izuku. “Is that I’m trying not to use the word should as much. I’ve found it more… conducive to instead focus on what’s actually happening. Should is an empty word, Izuku. Maybe I should have remembered to put the lid on the garbage can properly, but I didn’t, so instead of berating myself for what I didn’t do, I need to just clean up the mess the raccoons made.”
“Mom—”
“Just an example, sweetheart.” She pulls back so she can look up at him, smiling slightly as she cups his cheeks. “It doesn’t matter what you should be able to do, Izuku, it only matters what you can do. And none of us mind adapting to what you need right now. What you went through was something no one should have to have done, let alone someone so young. You saved Japan, Izuku. You saved the world. Cut yourself some slack.”
“You can’t just leave the damn stove unattended,” she hears someone say, and she turns around to see Katsuki tending to the dinner she’d abandoned. He clicks his tongue, but she sees the worry on his face when he turns away from Izuku.
“Kacchan!” Izuku says. She watches the smile on his face, the briefest glimpse into the past and the boy he used to be. She only ever sees it around Katsuki anymore. “You’re here!”
“Ain’t I always?” It’s true—Inko always makes dinner for three on these nights.
“Why don’t you two go sit down,” Inko says. “Let me finish dinner.”
They do; she watches them go. Katsuki reaches out to grab Izuku’s hand, and she feels something tight in her chest. They’re both so young, it breaks her heart to think of what they’ve been through.
Inko sighs and turns back to the stove.
They eat dinner at Inko’s and then take the train back to school. Izuku is quiet on the way; Katsuki keeps staring at him in concern, but he doesn’t bother to ask what’s wrong. He knows what’s wrong.
Back at the dorms they head up to bed early; days like today are hard on both of them, wearing them out, so they say goodnight to whoever is in the common area. Izuku does a headcount; twelve down here, plus him and Kacchan makes fourteen. Before they go up to bed he sits beside Mina and asks her where everyone else is (as she tends to be the person to ask), and she holds out her wrist and tells him, outlining exactly where the other six people are as he fumbles for her pulse. When he’s comfortable in the knowledge that everyone is safe and accounted for, then he and Kacchan can go up to bed.
He remains quiet up to the room; it's only when Katsuki closes his door that Izuku lets himself cry.
Just like with Inko, Katsuki feels nothing but helplessness. There's not a thing he can do except take Izuku into his arms and hold him as he shakes and cries—and Katsuki's mended heart breaks inside his chest.
Aizawa grabs a blanket before he goes in search of All Might, since the absolute moron likes to sit out in the cold with no jacket, as if he forgot that he was the size of a toothpick now.
He finds All Might on the usual bench, shivering. Aizawa exhales through his nose and drapes the blanket on the shoulders of the former symbol of peace.
"Oh," All Might says. "Aizawa. Thank you."
"You're going to catch your death one day," he rebukes. He hates how much like a mother he sounds. He hates how much like a mother he's become.
"Apologies," All Might says. "I'm still getting used to taking care of myself."
"Yes," Aizawa agrees. "That's why I'm here."
All Might look at him. "Young Midoriya?"
Of course All Might has been thinking of Midoriya, as well. He nods. All Might's successor in his quirk, in his habits, in his pain.
"I don't know what to do," Aizawa admits. "I don't know when it stops being normal for the seventeen year old who went through hell to act like this, I don't know when I should interfere, I don't know what I should even say." He sighs. "I became a teacher because it was supposed to be easier than being a hero."
"Who told you that?" All Might says with a snort.
Silence settles before Aizawa asks, "Have you talked to him?”
All Might sighs. "I have. Quite a few times. I think he tells me more because I can... understand, more. I've been where he's been, done what he's done. And I—I do get it. I understand. But what am I supposed to tell him? How do I tell him the nightmares don't stop? That sometimes it doesn't get better? That I remember every person I couldn't save?” He gives another heavy sigh. "Shigaraki was my failure, but Midoriya is the one to bear that cross."
Aizawa looks at All Might and understands. He and Midoriya are too similar. Of course he understands what Midoriya is going through, the sadness and fear and anger inside him, the grief and the guilt. But what is All Might going to do about that? When those are the same feelings that he himself has been suppressing for decades; always taking care of others before himself.
"Sometimes," All Might says quietly, "I wonder if this is the real legacy of One for All."
Aizawa thinks carefully about his words before he speaks. When he does, his words are slow. “I became a hero because of you,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, you were far too flashy. Still are. I didn’t want to be anything like you.” All Might chuckles. “But you still inspired me, just like you inspired everyone else here. That is the legacy of One for All. Not the ones you failed, but all the ones you saved.”
All Might gives Aizawa a soft smile. “Thank you, Aizawa. That truly does mean a lot.” He looks up at the stars; Aizawa gazes in the direction of the dormitories. “You know,” All Might says, and there’s a little smile on his face. “He does have something that I didn’t—or someone, rather.”
Aizawa has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. “You mean Bakugou.”
“I can sense by your tone that you don’t approve,” All Might says carefully.
“It’s not that,” Aizawa says. “I just worry. They won’t be able to keep this up. While they’re in school is one thing, but they graduate next year. They need to learn to be apart. But how am I supposed to force that?” He shakes his head. “How am I supposed to take away the one thing that makes them happy?”
“They just need time,” All Might says. “Everything is still fresh. Give them time, and I’m sure things will return… well, not to normal. Never to normal. But hopefully, eventually, the two of them won’t feel quite so dependent on the other.”
Time, Aizawa thinks. He mentally counts down how long it is until graduation, and vows to provide them the time and support they need for as long as they live on these grounds.
. . .
Kida Kenji is playing a farming game on his phone when his partner turns to him in a hurry and says, “Kenji-san! Unauthorized quirk use in public!”
His partner is new and enthusiastic, so Kida doesn’t fault him for it.
Still, he doesn't look up from his game. "Green lightning?" He asks, bored. It's been a long and uneventful shift, which he supposes is a good thing.
"Yeah! Should we—"
"Leave it," Kida says.
His partner falters. "Wh-what? We can't just—"
Kida interrupts to ring into dispatch. "Dispatch, this is Musutafu Car #218, reporting Deku heading west."
His partner is giving him the look all newbies get when they are trying to determine if they're being fucked with. Kida takes pity on him.
"In situations like these, just call dispatch and report what direction he's headed."
"You said ‘Deku,’" his partner says. "As in that Deku?"
Kida sighs and closes his phone game. It's only as he's telling his new partner about Deku that he realizes his new partner has been with him for almost three and a half months now, and this is the first time they've seen Deku. He thinks about the boy who saved the world and hopes that's a good sign.
. . .
Present Mic sighs as he scribbles a very depressing 8/20 on Kaminari's English quiz. He's going to have to have another talk with that boy.
He falters when he sees the name on the top of the next test—Midoriya Izuku.
Part of him wants to just give him an alright grade, put 15/20 on the top and call it a day. He thinks it's slightly ridiculous that the boy should have to take tests after everything, but Aizawa had said it was better to attempt a return to normalcy.
It hadn't been a proper return to normal, though, not for any of them, and especially not for Midoriya. The first time Mic had graded one of Midoriya's failing tests, he'd remarked it two times to ensure he hadn't messed up.
It pained him to see it. Midoriya had always been an enthusiastic student, hand always up, and he was, Mic could confidently say, always a pleasure to have in class. So to see the difference in him, sitting quiet, not participating, eyes glued to the back of Bakugou’s head, and to know that the reason he was like that was because they, the adults, had failed… it hurt, and it hurt even more to know that no pain he felt was anything near what Midoriya was feeling.
He starts to mark his test and is pleasantly surprised, as he goes through it, to find that most of Midoriya’s answers are correct. Now that he thinks about it, he’s been paying a lot more attention in class lately; he’d even answered a question today.
Mic finishes and writes 17/20 at the top of the test.
. . .
There’s a knock on the door of his office; Enji puts away his phone, where he’d been drafting a very embarrassing question to Fuyumi about one of Shouto’s favourite dishes, and bids them come in.
It’s Midoriya. This is not a surprise, or anything, as the boy is still doing his work study here (there had been a long discussion about work studies, and internships, after the war. Some people were of the belief that they should give the students a break, let them be normal students. Other people, Enji included, had reminded them that they aren’t normal students, and getting back up and fighting after you’ve seen the most horrible things is an integral part of being a hero); what is a surprise, however, is that Bakugou Katsuki is not with him.
It was Shouto who had told him, actually. It was part of his demands when he agreed to come back to Enji’s agency for his work studies this year. One was that Midoriya and Bakugou were also invited (not an issue—Enji would have brought them on anyway, and not even because they were the saviours of the world. He wanted them working with him because they were hard workers, quick learners, and because he gets to see Shouto smile far more often than he ever has when they’re around). The second was that he keep the two of them together; according to Shouto, who had looked pained at having to tell his father something so personal, Midoriya wasn’t doing well, and needed to be around Bakugou at all times. And much like Aizawa, he knows that it isn’t sustainable—but he’s also willing to give them what they need while he still can, before they truly go out into the world.
“Deku,” he says in greeting. “Do you need help with something?”
Deku enters his office holding a folded piece of paper. “This is a note from Recovery Girl,” he says, handing it over to him. “Kacchan got hurt today during hero training, and even though she used her quirk she didn’t want him pushing it.”
This gives Enji pause—Bakugou was hurt, and not coming in. And yet here, in front of him, in uniform, was Deku.
Enji gives a curt nod and files it away. “Alright,” he says. “Make sure you’re ready, we’re leaving soon.” He looks at Midoriya then, looks past the bravado to the teenager underneath—and he says, “I want you paired with Shouto today.”
It’s only when Midoriya smiles at him that Enji realizes how long it’s been since he’s seen it.
. . .
When Izuku gets to the battlefield, all his friends are dead.
He sees Uraraka’s mangled body, sees Iida’s corpse, sees Shouto. He cries out and turns around, and that’s when he sees Katsuki. Just like he was during the war, heart blown out of his chest.
Izuku wakes up.
“It’s alright,” Katsuki is immediately saying. “It’s alright, it’s just a nightmare.”
Izuku clutches at him as he cries and shakes, and Katsuki holds him, a warm hand rubbing soothing circles into his back as he works to calm Izuku down. When he’s stopped crying quite so hard he feels lips press against his wet cheeks.
“Been a while since you had one this bad, huh?”
They settle back down into their post nightmare formation, with Katsuki on his back and Izuku lying with his head over Katsuki’s heart. He takes a shaky breath in.
“Yeah. I think that’s what makes it so bad. Because it’s been so long since I’ve had to deal with it. And it—it was all of them, it was everybody, not just you. They were all gone. I couldn’t save them.”
“Izuku,” Katsuki says, arms tightening around him. “Izuku, you saved everybody.”
“No,” Izuku says, voice small. “I didn’t.”
Katsuki knows immediately what—who—Izuku is talking about. “You did everything you could,” he says quietly. And Izuku knows in some part of him that he did, and that everything he could just wasn’t enough; but there’s another part of him that can’t help but obsess over everything he could have done differently. Maybe if he’d done this, or this, or that, he’d have been able to get through to Shigaraki before his body collapsed. But he thinks about what his mom had told him once, about the word should; and he thinks about his friends, sleeping safe and sound in their beds. He doesn’t need to check on them as much; he knows they’re there, and safe.
“Do you think they’ll ever go away?” He asks quietly. “The nightmares, I mean.”
Katsuki is quiet. “I don’t think so,” he finally admits. “I think that’s… I dunno, our fucking penance, or something. We’ve gotta remember.”
Remember. Izuku can do that. Remember the people he saved and the people he didn’t; remember the person he used to be. He knows he won’t ever be that person again, but each day is getting better.
He snuggles deeper into Katsuki and feels his lips on the top of his head. Izuku vows to remember, even if it hurts—and he vows to try to live for all those who no longer could.