Work Text:
NOW
Himiko’s hands shook, blood dripping from her fingertips. Somewhere behind her, a war raged.
“Katsuki?” she whispered. “K-Katsuki?”
She could hear Shigaraki’s screaming. Could hear Deku’s yells of determination. She was supposed to be playing a second Midoriya, a distraction, a diversion. The plan had left her the moment her brother had fallen from the sky.
Her knees ached distantly from how hard she’d landed at his side. Her fingers were blood soaked from where she’d touched at the wound. What had been a beauty, a fascination, her whole life, was now a horror show.
His mouth was smeared with it, like he’d choked it out. His torso was slashed clean through. Eyes grey and lifeless.
His stupid fucking All Might trading card by his side, fallen from the pocket he kept it in every time he fought.
Himiko Bakugou’s brother was dead. And there was nothing she could do to save him.
THEN
The Bakugou twins were not late bloomers. They developed their quirks exactly on time.
Four years to the day they arrived in this world, Katsuki’s hands exploded at the breakfast table. He cried. Everyone in the entire family was sworn to secrecy about that. His quirk was the perfect combination of his parents’ quirks: the glycerine his mother secreted, and the acidic, combustible sweat of his father.
The family spent the day watching Katsuki explode and then try not to cry while his hands formed callouses, and going to the soft play place with the ball pit and the big slide while Himiko waited for hers.
Katsuki was certain she’d get it that day. “I did,” he said, stood atop the climbing wall. “And we do everything the same, so you’ll get yours too. I bet we’ll even have the same quirk, though mine will be cooler.”
“Nuh-uh,” she said. “Mine will be cooler, because I’m the cool one.”
There was only one solution to this major issue of who the cool twin was: “Ball pit dive competition.”
Katsuki cannonballed into the ball pit, which was incredibly cool, so Himiko knew she had to beat him. She had to do a flip.
Himiko took a deep breath, visualised the coolest flip in the world, and then leapt off the ledge. She did not get the necessary spin to do a full flip, but she did get the power to launch herself far enough into the ball pit that Katsuki, who thought he’d moved a safe distance away, got kicked in the face on the way down.
His yell got muffled by the balls as Himiko vanished into them.
She emerged afterwards, foot hurting, eyes wide, searching for her brother.
“Katsuki!” she called. “Kats! I’m sorry—I didn’t mean... Oh no, you’re bleeding, I’m gonna get Mom.”
Katsuki’s face was twisted in determination to hold it together and not cry. “No!” he said. “I’m fine. It just hurts a bit.”
“There’s blood,” she hissed. “You can’t bleed in the ball pit!”
Katsuki let her have a look at it, and as she did, she started to… feel… something. It was unfamiliar, deep in her gut. Like a wanting. A yearning. A desperation. It flickered in and out, twitching her fingertips. She was reaching out before she knew what she was doing, swiping across the blood.
“Ow!” Katsuki flinched, bringing up a hand to slap hers away. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” she said. There was her brother’s blood on her finger. She had the urge to taste it. She struggled to keep her breathing level – what was this feeling? It was so overwhelming. Like nothing she’d ever felt before, and all-consuming. Was this her quirk coming in? Was this how Katsuki had felt that morning before exploding his hands.
Was she about to explode? But instead of her hands, her stomach? Her body? Would she splatter across the ball pit?
Himiko almost cried at the thought, but in that brief moment of releasing herself to her feelings, her hand shot up to her mouth and she licked the blood from her finger.
“Ew,” Katsuki said. “That’s so gross, Himi!”
The wanting levelled, the desire quelled. Satisfaction draped across her like a warm blanket, calming the desperation inside her. And then Katsuki’s eyes widen, and he stepped closer, pain long forgotten.
“Himiko,” he whispered. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said with a content sigh. “I am now. Sorry, that was weird, huh?”
“I think this is weirder,” he said.
“What?”
“You look strange.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your eyes are red. And different. And your face looks… different.”
Himiko frowned, confused. She looked around for something that could help and spotted the silly mirrors in the lowest corridor of the soft play maze. She struggled through the balls to reach the edge of the pit and hauled herself out, Katsuki only a few steps behind. The two ran over to the mirrors and found the one that let them see her face with the least wiggles and stretches.
But it wasn’t her face. Or—it almost was. But it was also Katsuki’s. She knew his face like the back of her hand. So she knew that her eyes had slanted into his, and her cheek bones were a little more prominent than they were before.
She poked at the skin, and then the two watched in awe as it melded back into its usual shape, as her eyes widened and lightened to gold.
“Whoa,” she whispered.
“Your quirk is so cool,” Katsuki said. His face brightened, “Let’s go show Mom and Dad!”
Later, when they were confused about their differing quirks, Mitsuki drew a family tree on a napkin and explained how quirks were a type of DNA, a thing that made a person. They could skip generations, or be less likely to show up from person to person. Her father had a quirk that allowed him to change shape, and their father’s uncle had a quirk allowing him to control blood.
Those pieces had just come together in Himiko. Which made her much cooler than Katsuki, who just blended their parents’ quirks together.
NOW
“Katsuki, please,” Himiko begged, knowing her brother was already dead. She shook his corpse. “You’ve gotta wake up. Come on.”
“Bloodlust,” Best Jeanist said as he arrived, quickly kneeling by Katsuki’s side. What she could see of his face shuttered as he got to see his student up close. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve gotta help him,” she begged. “Please—where’s Recovery Girl? Couldn’t she—”
“Bloodlust—”
“She always fixes Deku up and he gets hurt way worse than this—”
“Himiko.”
Her mouth shut. Jeanist’s expression softened. “There’s nothing Recovery Girl can do for him now. I’m not sure there’s anything any of us could do.”
A shadow cast over the three of them. “I could try.”
THEN
Himiko thought Izuku Midoriya was the cutest boy in the whole wide world. Katsuki thought he was a lame, quirkless deku, and while Himiko agreed a little bit, she also thought he was funny and smart and good to go on adventures with, and she knew Katsuki agreed with that part too, even if he let the other stuff cloud it.
So even when Katsuki was mean to Izuku, the three of them would still explore the woods at the weekends or have dinner at Izuku’s house with his mom. Sometimes Himiko dared Katsuki to destroy Izuku’s sandcastle at the beach when he wasn’t looking, and sometimes they stood between him and the big kids in the playground who wanted to be mean to him because he was seven and still didn’t have a quirk.
Sometimes they had sleepovers.
“Shh,” Himiko giggled. “You’ll wake him up!”
“You’re the one yelling,” Katsuki hissed, marker poised over Izuku’s face. “You be quiet.”
“I’m so quiet,” she replied, a little loud.
Katsuki drew a few cat whiskers on Izuku’s cheeks while he slept, finishing it off with a circle on the tip of his nose. Himiko watched, drawing her tongue across the sharp edges of her canines. Her baby teeth had fallen out like any other, but when her canines came back in, they did so like vampire fangs, double the length of her other adult teeth.
Izuku had called them pretty, which meant Izuku thought she was pretty.
Katsuki snapped the cap back on the marker and held it out for her. “You want a go?”
She took the pen, uncapped it, and drew a wobbly third eye on Izuku’s forehead.
NOW
“Edgeshot,” Best Jeanist said. “You think you can save him?”
Edgeshot crouched beside Katsuki’s body while Himiko stared. “I can try,” he said. “If I make myself as thin as a surgical suture, I could sew him up. I could try and restart his heart from the inside.”
“That could kill you,” Jeanist said, firm.
Edgeshot looked at the dead boy and then his sister. He placed a hand on Himiko’s shoulder. She gasped air into her lungs.
“I’m aware of the risks,” he told them. “I’m willing to try.”
THEN
Katsuki’s room was becoming an altar to All Might. He had the bedsheets, the posters, the action figures. He had the limited edition trading card and an All Might lunchbox to go with his All Might water bottle.
Himiko thought All Might was fine. As heroes go, he was the greatest one—but that was boring, wasn’t it? To love the number one hero like everyone else? She was a little more discerning with her tastes.
She’d had a Ms Joke phase until age six, because of the Ms Joke’s Hilarity Hour on TV, where Ms Joke and a bunch of puppets would do stand up comedy and skits for children. After that, she’d started to like King Vlad, because he had a blood quirk like her and still managed to be a cool hero – which was something some of the kids in her class had said she couldn’t be, but the private quirk counsellor she’d been seeing since she was four meant that she knew she could be anything with her quirk, and her quirk didn’t define her at all.
(Her quirk counsellor also helped her reign in her urges to drink people’s blood constantly, or to great degrees, and arranged safe and legal ways for her parents to provide her with blood. Her urges grew stronger the older she got, and her shapeshifting was getting more advanced to the point that she could become a whole person, clothes included, by the time she was eight, but that’s what the specialist was for – to manage her quirk to keep her and others safe. Her parents paid a lot of money for them, too.)
And while she was always going to be a King Vlad fan, she had acquired a new favourite shortly before her tenth birthday, when Ninja Hero: Edgeshot entered the top ten for the first time. He was all sharp edges with his silver hair, and rumpled ninja clothing. He could string himself into tiny pieces and pierce the bodies of villains so that it wouldn’t kill them, but it would if they moved to keep fighting. He spoke in short sentences and never acted friendly or familiar with anyone, and did lots of flips when he fought.
And Himiko thought he was the coolest.
Which meant that she had the Edgeshot backpack, and the Edgeshot hoodie, and the Edgeshot charm bracelet with little ninja stars catching the light.
And more than one fantasy about marrying Edgeshot in a castle in the sky one day, and living happily ever after.
NOW
Edgeshot met Himiko’s watery gaze and gave her a firm nod. He squeezed her shoulder, and then he unwound himself into paper thin lines and angles that shot into her brother’s body. Katsuki had completed his first internship with Best Jeanist, which he’d incessantly complained about afterwards as if they both hadn’t met Jeanist at their parents’ fashion events as children and so knew what he was going to be about, really, but Himiko had completed an internship with Edgeshot.
For a week, he had taught her hand-to-hand combat and given her a gleaming silver rope dart weapon; a sharp shard of dagger on a long cord, that would maximise her reach and make use of her dexterity. She couldn’t fly like her brother, or cause area effect damage, but she was sneaky and quick. She was agile and could use her injection tools to drain even the slightest blood to become another person, and she had spent a decade watching people’s mannerisms and practicing them for herself so she could hide inside another’s body.
Edgeshot brought her back for a work study, too, while Katsuki spent days chasing Endeavour around the city. He was her first real and true mentor.
And he had vanished inside her brother’s body to save him for her. Not for the battle, and probably not even for the look of devastation on Best Jeanist’s face, but for her, only one half of a whole who wouldn’t be able to live without him.
She watched the way Katsuki’s body moved with Edgeshot fixing him up from the inside; the skin pulling taut, being reattached, the subtle movements beneath the flesh. Around them, the battle still raged. Their ear pieces were full of yelling about All For One and Dabi’s blue flames and the ways in which Deku was not entirely winning this fight.
She was supposed to be up there with him. She loved him, after all. She had since she was little. And while he had never really loved her back the way she wanted, that hadn’t stopped her, nor had it stopped her quirk.
THEN
Himiko Bakugou did not go to Yuuei because she wanted to be a hero. She could take it or leave it. She went because she couldn’t fathom Katsuki going without her.
It had probably ruined his great plan to be the first from their school to go, but Izuku was also ruining it so it didn’t really matter.
The three of them made it in and became hero students. They made it through the attack on the USJ (Himiko drank the blood of a villain and then masqueraded as that villain until the heroes showed up to save them), the Sports Festival (Katsuki won, like he said he would, and Himiko got knocked out in the Cavalry Battle), their provisional licensing exam (Himiko passed the battle royale phase by drinking the blood of a competitor and then following their friends around as if she was one of them, and then by just generally trying not to suck during the disaster relief phase), and then attended the summer camp together.
Where Katsuki was kidnapped. And Himiko failed to save him.
She was the first person Kirishima spoke to about getting him back. Of course she said yes to his plan. Of course she was going to save him.
And she did. They all did.
By the summer, she had reserves of several people’s blood. Katsuki’s, whom she had been drinking her whole life to practice; Izuku’s, who had stopped letting her drink his blood since they started at Yuuei and he miraculously acquired a quirk out of thin air; even Kirishima had let her, because he had wanted to see her magic trick in person. Half the class, even, had provided her with small amounts over the months of their friendship, but she always kept some back – didn’t use it all every session, and made sure that her years of quirk counselling weren’t for nought.
She never wanted to get an urge so great she would kill someone for their blood.
But at the same time, she came to love transforming. Loved becoming another person whom she already loved. It was as if she could show them how much she loved them by becoming them; by drinking part of them.
She loved Katsuki and Izuku and all of their news friends. She loved Kirishima’s determination, and Ashido’s exuberance and Uraraka’s kindness. She loved being in their bodies and wearing their smiles. Loved knowing how it felt to be as tall as Iida, or as strong as Shoji. Loved feeling her skull take shape as Tokoyami’s, beak and all, and her tongue grow to the length of Tsuyu’s.
It was in Kamino, when everything was going badly, and they needed a way to get Katsuki out and distract the villains while All Might flew en route, that she evolved.
All that training at the summer camp in becoming multiple people, switching between bodies… she would bet that Eraserhead had known she had the potential all along.
She drank some of her reserve Katsuki blood and moulded into him. Her twin brother, her best friend; her arms became stronger, the body leaner, her legs a little longer. Her hair shortened to his signature look of explosive angles, her eyes becoming blood red and sharp.
She ran out into the battlefield, the two Katsuki’s catching sight of each other immediately, and the nearby villains yelling in confusion. She hadn’t gotten far enough into the Sports Festival to reveal her quirk on a grand scale, and she had been stuck in the remedial classes due to her inability to pay attention in normal class at the summer camp to take part in saving her brother’s life.
A second Katsuki Bakugou was a perfect distraction.
All Might arrived. All For One fought him. The villains tried to pin the two Katsuki’s down, but one had explosions and the other had unforeseen agility and speed.
Above them, Izuku and Iida shot into the air, Kirishima in their arms.
“Take my hand!” Kirishima yelled, and Katsuki launched himself into the air.
Himiko didn’t even think about it. She exploded. She flew.
Katsuki grabbed onto Kirishima’s hand, and with his eyes wide, he held out a hand for Himiko too.
Who caught it, explosions bursting out of her fingertips.
She had evolved.
She didn’t need to love someone to become them, although it did make it easier. But she had to love them, had to care right down to her core, to use their quirk too.
And there was no one in this world who Himiko loved more than her brother.
NOW
“It’s not working,” Himiko cried.
“He’s lost too much blood,” Jeanist agreed. “Even if Edgeshot can get his heart restarted…”
The tiny shard of Edgeshot’s face appeared at the wound in Katuski’s chest, slipping through the holes between the patchwork skin. His voice was very tiny, very hoarse.
“Bloodlust,” he said, “he needs more blood.”
“How am I—”
“You can do it,” Edgeshot told her. Her hands shook on her brother’s arm. Jeanist placed one large hand atop them; his face was soft, understanding.
“You can do it,” Jeanist repeated.
“But—”
“Himiko Bakugou, you can do it.”
THEN
Their costumes matched. They had since they came in at the beginning of the school year, and everyone thought Katsuki was going to get mad about it, but he hadn’t minded at all. Sure, his was black and orange, with all those green and silver detailing, and hers was navy blue and light pink, with cream and silver accents, but they both had a single matching quality: the giant X. His on his chest, hers on her back: a unifying symbol.
He hadn’t been mad because he had known it was coming.
Their whole lives, they’d worn matching outfits courtesy of their parents, and designed matching hero costumes courtesy of themselves. It was not a question of if they would have similar designs, but in what way would they be similar.
No, Katsuki hadn’t minded at all. He’d even dropped his design on her desk before submitting it so she could look at it first and copy whatever she wanted.
Their costumes had both changed in the winter, though.
They’d gone to collect them together. Katsuki’s now had sleeves and a tall collar like Best Jeanist, Himiko’s now had sleeves and a mask like Edgeshot.
They were predictable in those ways.
As they walked back towards the dorms, costume briefcases swinging by their sides, Himiko said, “You know, sometimes, I just wanna go totally batshit.”
Katuski snorted. “You bit Kaminari the other day. You do go totally batshit.”
“More than that,” Himiko said. “I just get this urge sometimes. To just do whatever the hell I want and ignore the consequences. It’s like, the ultimate freedom. That’s what I want.”
Katsuki nodded, kicking his foot through the snow that had piled up beside the pathway. “I get you. Sometimes I just want to explode as hot and loud and bright as possible and see what happens.”
“You’d probably die. And many others around you might, too.”
“Yeah. But then I’d know. And I would’ve done it, and I would be satisfied. It’s like how sometimes you want to bite down as hard as you possibly can and crack all of your teeth but you have to stop, because you can’t do that to yourself, even though breaking all of your teeth feels so good and so tempting.”
Himiko blinked. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s exactly like that.”
“But we can’t do it because it’ll hurt us, or others,” Katsuki said.
“I still want to, though.”
Katsuki shrugged. “Freedom at the expense of others doesn’t feel worth having,” he replied. “Sure, it would be great to go batshit and do whatever we want. But what the hell gives us the right to hurt people in the process?”
Himiko stared up at the sky, grey with clouds, and nodded slowly. She wanted freedom. She wanted to be able to love whoever she wanted and drink their blood and become them. She wanted to do anything and everything she desired without a single person stopping her, and she certainly didn’t want to be branded a villain for the mere act of following the desires her quirk gave her.
But Katsuki was right. She couldn’t imagine it feeling as good to be free if she was hurting people by doing so.
She tipped her head towards him. “Race you to the dorms.”
“Oh, you’re on.”
She had already started to sprint away. Katsuki’s laughter echoed behind her as he chased her down.
NOW
Himiko’s hands shook as she clicked through the blood reserves stored on her belt. She found her brother’s, and flicked the switch, allowing it to drain into the tubing that led to the gear around her neck. Her mask was long gone to this fight. She lifted up the mouth piece of the tube and drank Katuski’s blood, feeling the familiar way her body reshaped into his.
Then she grabbed the injector ends and stabbed one end into her own Katsuki arm, and another into his. It took a little fiddling with the machine, but it did what she wanted it to do; her Katsuki blood pumped from her version of his body, into his real one.
“Careful,” Jeanist said. “We want to give him enough to help, but not so much that you’ll suffer for it.”
“Okay,” she whispered, and wondered if that was her intention at all.
She could give it all to him. She could drain herself dry and exist forever inside her brother’s body as his blood. They would be inseparable literally. She would circulate his body, keeping him alive, for all time.
“Bloodlust,” Jeanist said, as if he could see all of his in her eyes. “He’ll need you alive and ready to fight when he wakes up.”
She stared at him. Would Katsuki be lonely without her? He was half of her, and that made her half of him. Maybe he would miss her laughing at his jokes, or cheating off his homework. Maybe he would turn to talk to her automatically, only to find her gone, or perhaps he would move his arm to wrap around her shoulders and find no one beside him.
Since they were little, they would fight each other in the living room to see who would do the dishes after dinner.
Sometimes, in the dorms, they still did it. Himiko would throw her brother over the sofa and he would launch himself at her in return.
He would have to do the dishes every night if she was just the blood in his veins.
Himiko nodded firmly at Best Jeanist. “Right,” she agreed. She was starting to feel lightheaded. She watched the tubes pump the blood, watched the skin move with the subtle machinations of Edgeshot, watched the way Katsuki lay dead, no longer bleeding.
Then Edgeshot appeared as barely a thread by her brother’s side, and Katsuki burst to life.
He heaved, looked around, stared at the duplicate of himself by his side, linked with needles and bloody tubes. Himiko reached forward and carefully pulled the needle from his forearm, before doing the same with her own.
“Himi…”
Himiko exhaled all the energy in her body and lethargically knocked her knuckles into his bicep.
“You good?” she asked.
Katsuki, bloodied and resurrected and alive nodded jerkily. Best Jeanist clapped a supportive hand on his shoulder, then stood and pulled Katsuki up with him.
“Don’t step on Edgeshot,” Himiko said vaguely, before taking the hand Katsuki offered, pulling her onto her feet. “He’s very tiny right now.”
“I’ve got him,” Jeanist said, stooping to pick him up.
Katsuki stared at her, and she let his body drain as sludge, reverting to her former self. His costume’s X was torn but still visible; hers still pink across her back.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Turn into Izuku, probably,” she replied. “Or sleep for a hundred years. I’ll decide in the moment. As for you, All For One is on his way. You feel good enough to kick his ass?”
He showed her a row of shark teeth with his smile; she felt herself grin back with her own fangs on display.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Katsuki replied.
“Sounds lit,” Himiko agreed. He held out a fist and she tapped it with her own, before taking a shaky step towards the ongoing battle between Deku and Shigaraki that had been raging all the while. “Tell me about it later.”
She only took a few steps before Katsuki said, “Himiko,” and she turned to look at him. He still looked like a wreck as he slipped his ruined trading card back in his pocket. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“Literally anytime,” she replied, and he showed her that massive maniacal smile he had been wearing since the day Yuuei gave him grenades to strap to his wrists, before exploding away from the ground, from the floating coffin, and towards the distant location of All For One, rocketing towards his second body.
Himiko watched him go, her newly resurrected brother, and then shook out her arms, turning back to Shigaraki and Izuku. She didn’t really care about being a hero – not the way everyone else did. But she cared about being by Katsuki’s side, about staying his equal, and the way to do that was to become one of the greatest heroes to ever live.
She flicked through her reserve blood and found Deku’s. She loved Deku very much. She loved him, and wanted to be him, and wanted to know him inside out.
She drank his blood, and her body changed. Green lightning flickered around her hands, and when she smiled, there were no fangs.
Yeah. She would keep up with Katsuki, and he would keep up with her.
They were going to be heroes.