Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I guess I thought we’d be competing and I’ll be on your heels… for the rest of our lives.”

“Hey, stop that, Kacchan! This isn’t like you! Seriously, it’s fine-”

“Raise your head, young man. Izuku is fully capable of chasing your heels for the known future. Until he truly passes on One for All, it will always be in his heart.”

“All Might..” Izuku whispered. Kacchan stilled.

“The vestiges spoke to me very briefly before they passed. One for All is an ember now,” All Might raised his head from his pillow. “But even sparks can become a blaze under the right conditions.”

“So,” For the first time since Izuku woke up in the hospital, tears welled up behind his eyes. “So, the source isn’t gone? It’s still there?”

“I doubt One for All can truly leave any user. I don’t think the vestiges will be coming back, though. But I can still use just the bare minimum of One for All even now, even after I transferred it to you and you gave it to Tenko. I think,” All Might smiled, a bright looking thing with wrinkles around the corners of his mouth. “That if you train just as hard as you have before, you should be able to blow those embers into a bonfire once more.”

“All MIght-!” Izuku choked out. Then the dam that was holding his tears back broke, and his nose was dripping, and his chest was tightening up, and his heart monitor was spiking higher- 

“Breathe, Izuku!” Kacchan hesitated, regarding Izuku’s wrapped up arms and legs, but then settled on grasping his shoulder with his left hand. 

“I’m- hic - I’m fine-! I just-” 

“You have to get stronger now! Because there is no way I’m not going to stand at the top without you by my side! You asshole!” Kacchan sniffed. All Might and Izuku were polite enough to not mention Kacchan wiping away his tears with the back of his hand. “You really scared me. I thought for a moment that I wouldn’t be able to catch up to you anymore.” 

“Touche, Kacchan! Your heart had exploded right there on the battlefield! And then you blew up a 200 year old supervillain! I’m never gonna forgive you for scaring me like that. Also, what are you even doing here? You should be lying down at least!”

“Young Bakugou, I really do think you should at least-”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Kacchan yelled, before yanking the IV pole from the hallway and dragging it into the room, before seating himself in one of the hospital chairs.

“Katsuki! No, you’re going back to your room. I’m happy that you’re up and about, but you seriously need to let All Might and Izuku rest.” Mitsuki grabbed her son by the elbow and started to pull him away. 

“Ah, Bakugou-san! Please, one more moment with your son in here! I have something important to tell both of these boys.” All Might held up a heavily bandaged hand. 

“All Might-san, I am sure that whatever you wish to tell my son can wait until he is-”

“MOM!”

“BRAT, YOU ALMOST DIED!”

“You two, quiet down. We’re in a hospital.” 

“AND THIS BRAT DOESN’T EVEN APPRECIATE IT! THE DOCTORS ALREADY DID ALL THEIR HARD WORK, AND HE SHOULDN’T LET THAT HARD WORK GO TO WASTE BY HAVING ANOTHER HEART ATTACK!”

“MOM! OH MY GOD FINE I’M GOING!”

“Young Bakugou!” All Might didn’t yell, but somehow his voice was a lot louder than Mitsuki and Katsuki’s arguing. 

“The two of you have grown so strong since I met you both! Young Midoriya, when I saw you diving into the fray against the villain that had kidnapped young Bakugou, you were already a hero as far as I was concerned. But now, with the way you want to encourage the world to get back up on its feet? You’re going to be a great hero to them all.”

“And you, young Bakugou. You made darn sure I’d still be around to see these things. To my pair of my great heroes, I thank you.”

“Can I have your autograph?” Kacchan blurted out. He patted around his hospital gown, before frantically looking at Mitsuki. She pulled the battered holographic All Might card out of her pocket. It was damaged and well loved, the corners rubbed off and bent at different angles and had a speck of dried blood on it. 

It was the most beautiful thing Izuku had ever seen, because he had a near exact well-loved copy in his wallet. The tears he had tried to suppress came back. 

“Of course, young Bakugou.”

“I, uh,” Was Kacchan nervous? “I never really got around to asking you for one. And I know it's silly, but I really regretted not asking sooner. Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. I have signed several of young Midoriya’s things over the past few years. I’ll be willing to sign many more for my great heroes.” All Might pulled a sharpie from seemingly nowhere and tactfully ignored the waterfall of tears flowing from Izuku and Kacchan hiding his face behind his arm.

“How did you get your body strong enough to handle One for All in the first place?”

It was the afternoon break of their first day back at UA after the war, still covered in bandages and bruises. Izuku was still in minor shock from the chaos of the graduation ceremony and Uraruka’s strange comment on the way out. 

Izuku wanted to take a nap after the events of the school day. He hadn’t been in school for a whole six months and the added stress of staying in one place all day really tired him out. It was better than sleeping in the back of All Might’s car or spotting little catnaps here and there in abandoned buildings, but Izuku honestly missed his days of not staying in one place.

“Huh?”

“Like, your regime. Your exercise regime. How did All Might get you from being a skinny 12 year old to a pretty buff looking guy in under two years?”

“Oh!” Izuku perked up. “You know that beach that used to be covered in trash from illegal dumping before they refined the recycling laws but it never got cleaned up? I cleaned it!”

“... That’s it?”

“Well on top of doing strength conditioning. I think I was doing 100 pushups a day at one point. Running and cardio also. But it was really cleaning up that beach that gave me the most training, because I had to use different muscle groups in different ways. Also figuring out which piles of trash were safe to move and which weren’t helped me a lot in urban rescue training later on.”

“No, seriously, that’s it? You didn’t have to eat a ton of protein supplements? Or, I don’t know, steroids?”

“Where would I even get steroids? And no, All Might said that most protein supplements are basically trash and meat and balanced meals are the best way to get nutrients anyway.”

“I don’t know, after Golden Week that one year everyone in our middle school thought you were doing steroids.” Kacchan shrugged.

“What!” Izuku totally did not let out a high pitched squeak.

“I mean, obviously you weren’t since you weren’t on any sports teams! But people thought it was a possibility, I guess?”

“Kacchan, how many of our old classmates think I am doing performance enhancing drugs?”

“I don’t know! It was just a rumor that was being spread around! I think they obviously don’t think that anymore!”

“Oh my god. This is the worst day of my life.” Izuku buried his face in his hands. 

“Shaddup!”

Chapter Text

After their introduction into their official second year at UA, Kacchan and Izuku have taken rekindling One for All as a full time job when they aren’t helping with the rebuilding efforts.

Well, that was somewhat of an over exaggeration. Clearing rubble and debris was their full time job. Proper schooling was their after-work hobby, and recreational training was reserved for their break days from both society and school. Izuku didn’t mind too much, as the rebuilding efforts were good and hard work. 

Honestly, the rebuilding efforts itself are sort of similar to the training ground that Izuku carved his body into. The rubble filled streets that needed to be disposed of and cleaned to perfection were just like his days of racing to the beach after school and cleaning the beach as fast and as efficiently as possible. His friends made it fun, sure, but the burn in his muscles that he went to bed with every single night made the efforts he made seem real. 

Pushing aside rubble and clearing hazardous areas were fun. It was routine, menial and meaningful work, and it kept Izuku’s hands and mind busy. Each day of long hard work was a drop in the bucket. Even with volunteers and heroes from other nations pitching in, the work was endless and would take months, maybe years. The best part of it by far was the end of the day, coming home to UA to a good meal and enjoying his classmates' conversations as they joked and laughed. Hot work under the blazing sun and laughing with his classmates made the days go by slowly but surely. That was the best part. 

The worst part was the bodies. 

When the mass evacuations happened, a lot of people got left behind in the fray. Not everyone chose to evacuate right away, or could do so safely. With the low number of active heroes at the time, it was even more difficult to make sure everyone was accounted for. 

Izuku had seen dead bodies before. He’s seen the limp freshly dead corpses of Chisaki’s own men being used like pawns to make Overhaul more powerful. He’s seen the color in Nighteye’s face go pale as he grasped Mirio’s hand and smiled. When he was acting as a stand-alone hero, he found many bodies of people who had gotten into fights with each other and lost. Technically, the Nomu that they all encountered were also the bioengineered bodies of the deceased. The poor and desolate, the ones who no one would notice that their graves weren’t filled with their ashes. 

He’s never seen bodies in a state of active decay, however.

The smell was awful. Something about the sickening-sweet stench of decay that hits your nose first like gummy candy. A reminder that the body is made out of the same meat that you (should) eat every day. It smelled almost good, sweet even, if it wasn’t for the active rotting smell that ruined the whole effect. Then, as soon as you realized that it wasn’t some melted sugar or industrial runoff, the smell would persist into every breath you took. 

The first body he came across was buried under a particularly dangerous pile of rubble, with active asbestos suspected. He and everyone else in their group had their respirators on, and they didn’t smell the corpse until much, much too late. 

Izuku had lifted a particularly large panel of sheet metal and there she was.

For a fearful and heart stopping moment, he thought she was his mother. The gentle rolls of fat and long hair and round face added to the illusion. Her dark hair was done in a ponytail and she was wearing mom jeans and a cardigan and one sandal. Then he blinked, and the woman wasn’t his mother, but still had blood around her mouth and her head was bent at an awkward angle. Her belly was bloated, common in bodies left out in the elements to decay. Flies buzzed around her, and the skin around her wounds had been eaten away to show the dried ligaments and meat under. Upon closer inspection, there was something moving in the exposed flesh. Izuku didn’t want to look, but he knew what it was. 

“Uh!” He whispered. He was so surprised that he almost dropped the panel of sheet metal. His hands were sweaty under his gloves. “Uh, Aizawa!” 

Something in Izuku’s tone made Eraserhead head over immediately, cutting off his conversation with Shinsou on proper asbestos disposal and removal. 

“Oh.” Is all Eraserhead said. Then, “Drop that metal over in the recyclables. Then go take a break. Don’t take off your mask until you’re well clear of this area.”

“Right,” Izuku said, faintly. He walked as if in a daze over to the recyclables area where Kirishima and Satou were mashing and cutting the metal into smaller pieces. There must have been some look on his face, because Kirishima took one look at him and grew worried. 

“What’s wrong, man?”

“A woman,” He said. His mouth was dry. “There’s a woman under the rubble.”

“Is she okay?” Kirishima asked. He looked around at the mountain of drywall and bent rebar and concrete where Izuku had walked from. He seemed to realize that was a stupid question. “Are they getting her out?”

“Yeah,” Izuku swallowed. “Yeah, they’re getting her out. She’s dead, though.”

Satou made some sort of high pitched gasp and Izuku said something like “If you don’t mind, I’m going to sit down over there,” and aimlessly wandered towards the little canopy that they had set up with drinks in coolers and fans hooked up to Momo-made batteries to help beat the blazing sun overhead. Izuku sank down in one of the camping chairs and felt cold. 

Later, when the body was packed away neatly into a black bag and carried away by an ambulance to the hospital, Eraserhead sat down next to Izuku. Neither of them had removed their respirators. Eraserhead wordlessly passed him a sports drink, and Izuku just held it in his hands.

“You doing alright, kiddo?” Izuku would rarely describe Aizawa-sensei as gentle. Aizawa-sensei being gentle did not fit under the many categories Izuku knew him as. Kind, yes, and careful, but rarely gentle. Izuku would not describe this tone that Aizawa-sensei was using as gentle, but it was perhaps the closest equivalent. Gentleness he used on children, like Eri-chan. This was a tone he used on adults, understanding their maturity and their perspective of the world and acknowledging it as equal.

“Yeah,” He said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Her neck was broken, so it was a quick end.” Eraserhead said after a moment. 

“That’s good. I wouldn’t have wanted her to suffer.” Izuku felt his lips move around the words, but it was distant. Far away. As if someone else was using his body. Or he was on autopilot. 

“There’s thousands of people missing. Hopefully, many of them got lost in the chaos and are fine, just unaccounted for,” Eraserhead said. “But many of them are not.”

“I understand.”

“You will see many more of them as we continue.”

“Yes.”

“And whenever this happens, I always, always, want you to come to me.” Aizawa put a hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “When it gets to be too much, students should always go to their teachers for help. I will show you the proper procedures for calling in a body. I will show you the way to treat their bodies with respect that they may have not gotten in life. I will show you how to find their records later, so you can visit their grave if you wish. But before anything else, I want you to come to me when you need help. Just like today.”

Tears welled up in Izuku’s eyes. “I thought she was my mom at first,” he whispered. “I know she’s fine, I saw her just yesterday. But for a moment…”

“Oh, kiddo.” Aizawa pulled Izuku from the chair and wrapped his arms around him. Izuku shoved his face into his shoulder and tried not to cry. 

Chapter Text

The bunker that housed this particular cell of the resistance was small, carefully tucked away in the cisterns under Tokyo. Everything had a constant slight dampness to it- the stone walls, the guns, the people. Even the beds had a coolness pressed into its sheets that made them just uncomfortable enough to sleep under. But to Yoichi, it was the warmest place he’d ever been.

Maybe it was because he was raised on the streets by his big brother who was always smarter and stronger than him despite their shared age. 

Maybe it was because he spent months in the dark and quiet, refusing food and fighting for his life whenever the chance came to him.

Maybe it’s because it occurred to him recently that he never truly had friends on an equal footing as himself. 

Either way, despite the persistent dampness and the chronic dim lighting that no candle could ever quite brighten, Yoichi was actually pretty happy with his current living arrangement. Considering his status as a transient growing up, a roof over his head and clean bedding to lie on was already the height of luxury for Yoichi. Clean clothing and a place to wash made it even more so. 

It had almost been two months since Kudou and Bruce had freed him from his brother’s control, and he had given them every shred of information he could think of. When he couldn’t think of any more, Bruce gently asked if he would consent to his mind being searched for anything else. Bruce and Kudou made it very clear that their hospitality will not end if he refuses, nor will they judge him for denying it. 

Yoichi agreed instantly, wanting to thank the organization that helped him by giving them all he had.

It was his name, after all. Giving. 

The mentalist was a quiet woman who gently probed his mind and held each memory that came across to his mind with a practiced mix of non-judgment and acknowledgement. Each memory, the good and the bad, the useless and the useful, the happy and the anger, were all held with equal regard with her quirk. She skimmed over them all with equal amounts of interest and boredom. 

What a kind woman, who could see his innermost thoughts and yet made him feel so safe at the same time. He imagined that this is what the afterlife felt like, that samsera felt exactly like slipping under the influence of her quirk. To be held in the nonjudgmental truth of prajna before the transfer of vinnana from one life to the next.

Death would behold him with kind hands, and have no judgment on the circumstance of his birth. The woman here has beheld him with the same hands and with kindness, cast no judgment. He’d never before felt so seen and understood but also so at peace. 

Kudou held his hand the whole time. Yoichi didn’t ask him to, but he did it anyway. In between the flashes of memory that the woman recalled to the front of his mind Yoichi could feel him, warm and dry and soft hand in a world where warm and dry and soft things were in short supply.

The mentalist eventually pulled away and Yoichi came back to control his thoughts, not quite opening his eyes just yet but tightening his grip around Kudou’s hand all the same. 

The woman left the room as quietly as she had searched Yoichi’s mind. Suddenly, despite the hand in his own, Yoichi felt very lonely.

“You didn’t have to do that, Yoichi.” Kudou said after a long moment. 

“You told me that many times. I wanted to.” Yoichi whispered. His lips were dry from the lack of use for the past few hours. “Any scrap of information is useful.”

There was a long pause, and Yoichi was almost ready to open his eyes before Kudou spoke again. “I know. I wish you didn’t have to.”

“It’s alright. It didn’t hurt a bit, and you stayed with me the entire time. Even though I didn’t ask, but I really wanted you to. You stayed.”

He finally opened his eyes, and Kudou was softly smiling at him. It was a rare look on his face that Yoichi thought suited him much more. He wanted to burn this smile into his memory, so it was the first thing that he remembered every morning and the last thing he thought of before sleeping. 

“Of course I stayed.”

“Why is that?”

Kudou broke eye contact and looked away, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “When this is all over, can I take you somewhere?”

Taken aback by the sudden change in subject, Yoichi made a confused noise. “Why not take me now?”

“I don’t think it's the type of thing that’s around right now. But sometime, in the near future, can I take you to a carnival?” 

“A carnival?”

“The type that has overpriced crepes that are loaded with caramel that makes your hands sticky. And a ferris wheel where you can see the whole world from atop. And we’ll play the games and win silly prizes and those giant overstuffed plushies that aren’t nearly as soft as they look. And I’ll probably use my quirk to cheat at the ring-toss games, but it’ll be a future where quirks can be used in public anyway.” 

“I like the sound of all of that. And then what will happen?” Yoichi shifted so he faced Kudou on the bed they both sat on, taking his other hand in his own. It felt somewhat like holding a butterfly in his hands. The fluttery feeling in his chest didn’t help at all. “After we eat those crepes and ride the ferris wheel and win those stuffies, what will we do next?”

“There’ll be one of those dark rides that are supposed to be scary but really aren’t. And we’ll ride it over and over and in the dark I’ll lean in-“

Yoichi lowered his face until he was nose to nose with Kudou. His eyes sparkled. Kudou was beautiful. “Like this?” he breathed.

“Yeah,” Kudou whispers. “Just like this.”

“And then what will you do?” Yoichi could feel Kudou’s breath against his upper lip. 

Instead of answering, Kudou finally closed the gap between them in a chaste kiss, lips soft against his own. His hand reached up to rest in Yoichi’s hair, burying his fingers into his curls. Yoichi made a noise in the back of his throat when he did that, lips parting enough to let Kudou in, licking him gently and delicately. A contrast to his rough personality that Yoichi’s heart squeezed for. 

The calloused hands that have killed several men and reached out for him to hold. A bit of kindness for that anger. A dash of sweetness to that sense of duty. Yoichi can appreciate the beauty in that. 

“Everything okay, Izuku?” Kacchan shook him out of his thoughts. 

Carmel dripped from his crepe onto his fingers. The other hand Kacchan held like he was holding a butterfly. Tucked under Kacchan’s arm was a normal sized plushie that Izuku had won for him by cheating at the ringtoss with One for All. 

“Yeah. I just remembered something.” Izuku closed his eyes, feeling the sun on his face and the gentle breeze in his hair. Tears well up in his eyes. “Do you think they have one of those dark rides that are supposed to be scary but they really aren’t?” 

“Maybe. We can go on the ferris wheel and see if we can see one.” Kacchan starts to pull in the direction of the ride, before stopping.

“Izuku!” Kacchan whisper-shouts. “You’re crying. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Izuku doesn’t want to stop holding Kacchan’s hand so he uses his shoulder to wipe away the tears on one side of his face. “I’m just so happy I’m finally here with you, Kacchan. I’ll always treasure this.” 

Kacchan’s hand comes up to his own face and gently wipes away his tears with his thumb. A few years ago, Izuku wasn’t sure if Kacchan could do anything gentle. Precise, yes. With the perfect amount of pressure and control, absolutely. But gentle and Kacchan from a few years ago did not go together. 

Now, it was the first description that Izuku would use for Kacchan. Especially when he tucked his hand behind Izuku’s head, burying his fingers in his curls and leaned in, pressing his lips to the corner of Izuku’s mouth. 

“Me too.” Kacchan said without looking in his eyes. His hand tightened around Izuku’s own. “I’ll always treasure this too.”