Chapter Text
When someone asks, Katsuki says he’s doing okay. He shoves his hands in his pockets and tries not to flinch as the fabric brushes against the fresh burns on his skin. He scoffs at their worry and hopes they don’t notice how loose his shirts fit, how many nights he’s spent skipping supper to lie motionless in bed staring at the ceiling. He’s fine. He doesn’t need help. He’s Katsuki fucking Bakugo, and he can figure it out himself.
Until now.
Shifting and unstable concrete rumbled around him, and dust showered onto his neck. He spat out another clump of bloodied saliva and pressed his hand tighter to his side. Slick, warm blood pulsed from between his fingers. He couldn’t see much in the broken light of his rescue lamp, one of the few resources they were given for the exercise, but he knew enough from their first aid lessons to know he’d been hit somewhere important.
Everything had happened so fast. He’d split up from the others, gone through the motions of this stupid fucking exercise so he could get back to the dorms and not have to deal with this shit. It was a useless exercise, walking through the abandoned halls of the building with a dim light to illuminate the way. A simple, harmless class.
No one had expected the whole damn place to come down.
“—hear me?” Kirishima’s voice crackled through his earpiece, startling him. It was the first voice he’d heard since descending into the building. His friend sounded fine, though his voice was slightly distorted and a little shaky from adrenaline.
“I’m here, Shitty Hair,” Katsuki said, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Bakugo! Thank god. Are you okay?”
He glanced down at his blood soaked suit. The already dark fabric was stained a deeper black around his fingers. He sucked air through his teeth and decided to ignore the question, managing a strained: “How are the others?”
“Ojiro and Ochaco are working on getting down to the lower levels. Tokoyami and Dark Shadow can’t go down without the light, so they’re setting up a first aid area. We’re still missing five, including you. Which level were you on again? Second floor, right?”
“I don’t need your help,” he grumbled, reaching down to strip a piece of his costume off to make a bandage. He hoped Kirishima couldn’t hear the fabric tearing. “Help the others.”
“We’re— —get to all of you. Are you hurt?”
“Tch.”
He meant to dismiss Kirishima’s worry, but the noise came out more like a hiss as he pressed the bandage to the wound. Pain shot through his body from his head to his toes, and a cold shock spiked against the burning heat in his gut.
“Bakugo?”
“I’ll get myself out,” he growled. “Get to the others.”
The earpiece crackled, and he thought he heard an affirmative and a ‘stay safe’ and the connection cut off.
Katsuki rested his head on the ground and took a deep breath. His lungs expanded halfway before lightning shot through his broken ribs. His right forearm was a mess, and his leg was probably fucked as well, if the pulsing pain was anything to go by.
He was wrapped in a stifling cage of concrete and loose debris. Dust particles swam in his vision, glowing gray and swimming in and out of focus in the illumination of the rescue light. The floor was covered in chunks of concrete and twisted rebar. Katsuki wanted to kick himself. If he had just waited for a minute instead of rushing in to investigate, if he’d held back and been a normal fucking person for once, he’d never have been caught in the hallway as it collapsed, and he’d never be in this mess. He would be out there, helping his friends get rescued. Not here, helpless and bleeding out like. . . Like. . .
Like a burden, his mind supplied. He shoved the feeling down, swallowing thickly.
The world tilted suddenly, and he closed his eyes to regain his balance. He was propped awkwardly on his elbow, unable to sit up but unwilling to lie down, afraid that if he did, his eyes would slip closed and he’d never wake up again.
It was stupid—it wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it before, alone in bed, clutching his chest as he stifled his sobs into his pillows; how much easier it would be to close his eyes and never again wake up to a world where his mind was his own worst villain. But dying here, trapped and helpless—no. That he wouldn’t succumb to. But his classmates needed help, and he’d be damned if he’d let the others waste their energy on rescuing his pathetic ass before them.
“Okay, okay,” he whispered. He shifted his makeshift bandage and pressed it harder against the wound, and cursed when blood began to soak through. It wouldn’t be much help anyway without anything plugging the second hole on his back. Whatever had gone through him during the collapse hadn’t had the courtesy to remain inside to staunch the bleeding. He was losing blood, fast. “Think, Katsuki. Think.”
He crawled to the wall of concrete and pressed himself against one of the larger rocks. It shifted, and the building groaned around him. He froze until the noise passed, then tried to angle himself so that there was pressure against the wound, but couldn’t be sure if it was working. The rescue light was dim, shining the wrong way on the opposite side of the room, but at least it was something. He didn’t want to risk using his flames for fear of using up the oxygen in the small space.
“You’re not dying here,” he growled at himself, but already his hands were shaking.
Weak.
Burden.
“Shut up,” he hissed.
He’d thought about cauterizing the wound, but wasn’t sure it would work on a wound this big. And with the amount of fire it would take, would his oxygen last? And deep down, deep enough that he refused to accept it, he was too scared to do it anyway.
His earpiece crackled, startling him and sending a wave of agony through his body.
“Bakugo, what’s your ETA? We need your help.” That was Sero, his voice clearer through the earpiece than Kirishima’s had been.
“None of your damn business, Tape Face,” Katsuki growled. His stomach swooped, and he closed his eyes to make the world stop spinning. The smell of copper was thick in the air. It was making him nauseous. That or the blood loss.
“Kirishima said you were on the second floor for the exercise. You good?”
Breathing was becoming hard. He squeezed his eyes shut and ran a hand across his face. His fingers, slick with blood, smeared it all over his face. He grimaced and let his hand fall to the ground. “You’re going to have to go on without me.”
“Nah, dude, never. We need you. I’m serious, though. Where are you?”
The rescue light blinked out momentarily, and the space was cast into pitch darkness. A lump lodged itself in his throat until the light flickered back on, a shade dimmer than before.
“I’m trapped, but it’s fine. Get the others out before me.”
“You’re trapped? Where?”
“Fuck if I know,” Katsuki cursed, then winced when the words left a foul taste in his mouth.
“You’ve got like eight stories on top of you, dude, we’re getting you out now!”
Anger flashed through Katsuki, and he tried to ignore how much it felt like fear. “No.”
“Bakugo—“
“Listen, idiot! I’m fine. I’m not hurt, and where I am, the building is stable. You get the others out first, you hear me? They could be injured, running out of air, or helpless in a thousand other ways. Their rescue comes first.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sero said, and he sounded angry. “You’re hurt. I can hear it.”
Katsuki grit his teeth. “Fine. My wrist is sprained or some shit, so I can’t blast myself out of here. That’s all. The others might actually be hurt. Get your ass off his line and help them before I blow up my earpiece to make you shut the hell up!”
There was a long pause, then Sero sighed. “We’ll get you once everyone is out. But you let me know if anything changes, okay? The building is unstable and—"
“Sero, go.”
The use of his real name surprised Katsuki, but it seemed to put Sero at ease. With a quick goodbye, telling him to stay strong, the line through to Sero was cut.
Katsuki took off his glove and pressed it where he thought the second entry point was, then lowered himself onto his back and let his head fall back. The pressure against the wound made his breath catch, and he had to use considerable effort to make his heart stop racing.
Lying to Kirishima and Sero had been harder than he thought it would be, taking into consideration that he’d been lying to their faces for the past five months.
Did you sleep last night?
Yeah, I got my eight hours in.
You ate dinner, didn’t you?
I had some leftovers in the fridge.
Are you okay?
I’m fine, idiot.
Maybe the blood loss was making him delirious, making him feel weird shit. Making him feel in general. Then again, he’d spent the last half a year feeling much he didn’t want to.
He hadn’t noticed his eyes had slipped closed before he startled awake again. The world was dark, and it took him several moments to find the rescue light again. The beam was much weaker now. He could barely see the ground around it. His nose was stuffy, and each breath was labored. His tongue was as heavy as his eyelids, and he blinked sluggishly. His hand rested on the ground by his side. Shit. He’d stopped pressing down on the wound.
But moving was taking too much effort now. It was like he was trying to solve ten dozen puzzles while hauling behind a bus-load of All Mights, all the while being stabbed from all sides. His mind and body were at their limit. How could a couple fucking wounds make him like this?
Wouldn’t it be easier to just lie here and close his eyes, let oblivion take him like it had just moments ago? Wake up to the sound of his friends coming to rescue him, or. . . not wake up at all?
He didn’t want to die here, wasn’t ready to die at all, not really, but his every waking moment felt like sinking in a pool of tar, kicking to the surface while every move only made him sink deeper and deeper. Clawing at the it, getting it under his nails, into his skin, and never gaining back so much as an inch. Wouldn’t it be easier to just give up fighting, and let oblivion take him before he went under and had to feel the thick sludge fill his mouth and lungs and slowly crush his body under its pressure? Wouldn’t it be easier to just give up now and let the world be rid of him in this way?
He wasn’t going to go in the ways he had planned in the dead of night. Dying a hero was a dream that would never become reality; he would either die a coward on the floor tiles of his bathroom, hacking up a choice that had become a mistake or clutching onto wounds that bled for every tear he had shed in secret or chocking and kicking with the words that had poisoned his mind for the last countless months. No, he would die here, trapped and alone like always. Weak and scared, unable to save anyone, much less himself.
He was no hero.
Tears blurred his eyes. He didn’t have the strength to wipe them away. If these were to be his last moments in his world, he’d want to see what little he could in the dim light, but he was too fragile, too pathetic, and couldn’t move.
Where were the others? Where were his friends?
Why didn’t they insist on saving him?
Did they know he was more hurt than he let on? Did they decide to leave him either way, finding this a golden opportunity to get rid of him?
Katsuki, who never smiled. Katsuki, who yelled and spat insults and gave the people who cared for him nothing but cold indifference. Katsuki, who didn’t understand why his friends stuck around. Katsuki, who wanted to die. Who wanted to be gone until he was too much of a coward for that, too.
His ear buzzed. He blinked his eyes open. Didn’t wonder when that had happened again. His finger twitched, and something coppery filled his mouth. He coughed, splattering it over his chin.
His ear buzzed again.
With more effort than he’d ever had to use before, he tapped his earpiece to accept and let his hand fall to the ground by his head.
“Bakugo.”
Shitty Hair. “Hey.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.” Had he suddenly switched with Present Mic’s quirk, or was his voice echoing?
“I talked with Sero. He said you were hurt.”
“Yeah, my ankle’s shit.”
A long, heavy pause. “You told Sero it was your wrist.”
Shit.
“’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. We’re coming to get you. Tell us where you are.”
“No. . .” Katsuki tried to rise, but his body went rigid as agony shot through him, and he slumped back to the ground. He must have made a noise because Kirishima’s voice tightened, and he demanded that Katsuki talk. “I’m fine, I promise. Kirishima, the others—“
“We contacted the others. They’ve got nothing but minor injuries, which I’m pretty is not what you’re dealing with. Are you bleeding?”
“Fuck off.” His words slurred.
“Bakugo, please.”
The world was spinning. Fuck, he couldn’t see.
“Can’t. . .”
“What?”
“Can’t see.”
“Talk to me, Bakugo. Where were you when the building collapsed?”
“I was. . . second floor,” Katsuki supplied. It was where they put me. That’s where I was. Until I wasn’t.
“You’re on the second floor?”
No.
“Where on the second floor?”
I went down. Heard a noise. It was the support beams collapsing. I made a mistake.
“Bakugo, answer me.”
“Down.”
“What?”
He couldn’t feel his legs. His fingers twitched by his head. From between them, he could see the last flutters of his rescue light blinking their last life. His other hand was limp over the wound on his stomach.
Kirishima was speaking. No, he was yelling. Katsuki tried to focus.
“Answer me! Shit, please— Bakugo, seriously, you’re scaring me. Answer me, man.”
I’m too far down. You won’t get to me in time.
“I’m okay,” Katsuki whispered. He could feel his heartbeat. It was slowing. Good. He wouldn’t bleed out so fast.
“No, you’re not, dude, tell me where you are!”
It’s okay. This is what I want. What I’ve been too much of a coward to do myself. It’s okay.
“Earphone Jack! Get over here, I need you! We need to find him, fast!”
“I’m okay.” His lips barely moved. His voice rattled. His voice was quiet even in the silence. “This is okay.”
“Bakugo!”
The shadows of his cage leaned in. Brushed soft kisses over his brow. Reached into his body and made the pain go away.
The rescue light flickered, one last effort to cling to life. Darkness leaned over its luminance, humming a wordless lullaby. It flickered once, then went dark.
The only left sound in the darkness was the frantic screaming in an earpiece and the fading echo of one final heartbeat.