Chapter Text
Katsuki steps into Izuku's room and the war in his mind does not follow him in.
It stays outside, obedient for once, held at bay by white walls and low light and the fact of Midoriya Izuku breathing. Wide awake.
That’s the first shock. He didn't think Izuku would wake until tomorrow, what's up with his fucking immune system? The second shock is All Might who collapsed in the bed next to his childhood friend and lifetime rival and many many other things that Katsuki simply cannot name. The former symbol is by the window, folded into himself, reduced to a man who is now exhausted, who can now sleep through things he should be witnessing. Katsuki clocks it distantly, files it away, because Deku is looking directly at him now and the world narrows to that fact.
He does not look surprised, which is a surprise to Katsuki. He sits at the foot of the bed without really thinking about it and without invitation. His body remembers the place he has at the foot of Izuku's bed. He's been here before.
“It’s over,” Katsuki says, because if he doesn’t say it out loud, he might not believe it and also because why the fuck isn't Izuku saying something.
Izuku nods. “The fight’s over.”
That's it? True, technically. Katsuki can see the technicality of it etched into him in the too-still posture, and the darting eyes, like he’s waiting for a second impact, bracing for it. He doesn't look like someone who believes the fight is done. Katsuki understands that but, that's it?
He presses his lips together and nods because he does not trust his voice with anything more cause fuck Izuku is acting unnatural alright- what is he supposed to do? He looks down at stupid bandaged hands. His hands. They ache dully, and persistently, like they’re complaining that he’s stopped using them. Or maybe they're glad that he has. His head throbs in time with his pulse and he does not want to think.
“Anything hurt?” he asks, eyes fixed on the blanket.
Say something, say something, say-
Izuku shifts a little. “Not particularly. You?”
“My hands,” Katsuki says automatically. “Head. Kinda.”
“You should lie down. You shouldn't be walking around like this.”
It’s said gently.
Katsuki looks away. “My bed’s all the way in the other room.”
Izuku doesn’t answer but there's a knowing look in his eye and Katsuki finds himself waiting.
Izuku moves.
It's just enough, and that's his answer. A fraction of movement, a recalibration. Space appears beside him, for Katsuki to occupy.
Katsuki stares and stares. He tries to parse it, he tries to make it something small. He tries not to think about how many times Izuku has made space for him like this, without asking for permission or repayment.
There’s a hurt in his chest that has nothing to do with injuries. It feels old. It feels new. It does not feel earned yet.
He slides in next to Izuku anyway.
Carefully. As if sudden motion might break the spell, might wake All Might, might wake something worse. He slides in next to Izuku, close enough to feel the heat of him through the sheets, far enough for his body not to be satisfied. He's fine with that. He can work with that.
They sit in silence and time moves slowly. Discomfort loses it's grip and the future is deferred. The past has already done its damage. There is only this narrow present, this shared oxygen.
“We’ll be okay, right?”
He doesn’t even know why he’s asking. He just needs Izuku to say something. The silence rolling off the other boy is wrong- thick, suffocating, like the air before a storm breaks. Izuku’s always been loud in one way or another: muttering, rambling, crying, yelling. Quiet Izuku feels like the world holding its breath.
“Mhm.” Izuku nods.
“What’s on your mind?” he asks, and the question tastes old. A little too old. It’s muscle memory at this point right , a reflex honed over years of watching Izuku fray at the edges while insisting he’s fine.
It’s nostalgic and it's nostalgic in the worst way, it's not the soft, rose-tinted kind where time has mercifully sanded down the sharp edges, where even the horrible days blur into something you don't remember being that bad, something you can cradle and miss without bleeding. This is different. It's familiar enough to make him nauseous but it's too familiar. There hasn’t been enough distance for the pain to dull into ache, for memory to rewrite the hurt into something poetic. It’s still happening, still bleeding; the past isn’t past enough to be safe.
What’s on Izuku’s mind?
Once upon a time, Katsuki had been terrible at this. Loud, clumsy, all wrong guesses and worse conclusions. Now though... now he’s good at it. Near perfect, most days. He studies Izuku constantly and knows his tells by heart. But sometimes—sometimes there’s a look Izuku gets, something shuttered and distant, and Katsuki’s mind blanks completely. It leaves him restless, pacing inside his own skull.
This isn’t that look.
Izuku isn’t even looking at him.
Katsuki knows the general shape of the storm in his head. Shigaraki. Himiko. All Might. Still, he needs the other boy to talk. Because just knowing isn’t enough. Izuku needs to say it out loud. Izuku talking is the only thing that still feels normal in Katsuki’s life, the last familiar rhythm in a world that keeps demanding new versions of them.
“I’m just… worried about—” Izuku hesitates, thumb rubbing absently over a scar on his knuckle. “About… myself? Uraraka-san, you, our other friends? I don't know.”
Katsuki doesn’t overanalyse the order of the names. He’s not twelve anymore; he’s not going to explode over something that obvious. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t land somewhere deep and tender anyway.
“Have you seen Round Face?”
“No.” Izuku doesn’t look up at first. His fingers worry at the edge of the blanket, folding it, unfolding it, like it might tell him something if he does it enough times. “She isn’t allowed visitors. And I’m not cleared to move around anyway.”
Then he turns, like an afterthought catching up to him. “You know,” he adds mildly, “you aren’t either.”
“They can’t stop me.”
Izuku laughs.
“She’ll be okay,” Izuku says suddenly. Not looking at him. Like he’s convincing himself.
Katsuki doesn’t answer right away. He listens to the beep of the monitors and thinks about locked doors and clearance levels and the particular cruelty of being told where you’re allowed to care.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “We all will.”
The laughter is gone now, but the echo of it stays. Katsuki clings to that instead of the silence.
“Cheer up,” Katsuki says. “It’s weird seeing you like this.”
Izuku blinks, startled out of whatever quiet spiral he’d been in.
“Yes—yes, I’m fine.” He straightens a little, forces the corners of his mouth up. “What’s on your mind?”
“Getting the hell OUT of here,” Katsuki says immediately, voice dropping to a growl. “I hate this place. The nurses come all the time. I can’t even breathe without someone checking my vitals. And I just want the physical therapy to start already.”
Izuku laughs again and Katsuki loves it.
“Yeah,” he admits. “No, me too. All this lying around… it’s exhausting.”
“We should go for a run.”
Izuku’s head snaps up. “What—right now?”
“You up for it?”
There is a light in Izuku’s eyes then, and its fitting.
“Well,” Izuku begins, already sounding halfway convinced, “Nurse Polly isn’t on this floor right now, and Andrea is new, so she doesn’t know our conditions particularly well, and—”
Katsuki stares at him. “How the fuck do you know that.”
Izuku coughs. “Huh—oh—I um. I talked.”
“You’re such a nerd.”
Izuku shrugs, already pushing off the wall. “Knowledge is power.”
Such a dorky answer. “Alright then.” Katsuki jerks his head toward the exit corridor. “Get up. Let’s go.”
They make it out the door like criminals in socks, the hallway blissfully empty. Katsuki's pacemaker starts beeping on the stairs and he rushes to stop it, yes he's in a hospital, yes he's getting help, blah, blah blah. He hates it. He keeps walking, then glances sideways nervously. The automatic doors at the end of the wing hiss open just enough for them to slip through into the stairwell.
Once they’re clear, walking down the second flight even slower now because Izuku fretted about the pacemaker. Katsuki glances over.
“Polly and Andrea,” he says, a little breathless already. “Those aren’t exactly Japanese names, huh?”
Izuku nods, keeping pace. “Yeah. I asked them about it. Said they were informed that Japan was short on medical staff and other personnel after everything, so they were sent to help.”
“Huh,” Katsuki says. “Who would've thought.”
They hit the ground floor and push out into the side courtyard, the cool air hitting sweat-damp skin like a slap.
Izuku hums. “Yeah. Especially considering they didn’t really help much with the war.”
Katsuki kicks at a loose pebble on the path, watching it skitter into the grass. “It’s just what America always does. They don’t help with shit until the last second, then swoop in and end up looking like the good guys.”
“Literally,” Izuku agrees, voice low, almost amused. “Tie the bow, take the credit. Greatest country in the world.”
“Yeah, and we are gonna thank them for their help,” Katsuki scoffs.
Izuku sighs, long-suffering and resigned. “There’s no point being mad about it, I guess. Help is help.”
Katsuki hums.
Disquisitions on polity with Izuku rank among his private pleasures, though he would sooner swallow glass than confess it. No one troubles to solicit Izuku’s true opinions on his political stances. They see the big eyes, the nervous smile, the endless encouragement, and they slap “ball of sunshine” on him and call it a day.
But they don’t know. They don't know him the way Katsuki does. As one of the most brutally realistic thinkers, grudgingly, he admires it. Sure, the nerd still clings to hope like it’s oxygen. But even when Izuku’s optimism makes him grind his teeth, it’s backed by a track record of doing the impossible.
Katsuki smiles despite himself, remembering their history classes. Izuku used to go online and read and read more in depth about everything they did in class. He was always under the impression that schools were lying by omission and unfortunately for Katsuki who had to sit through four hours of aggressive ranting on ethnic cleansing, he was right all the time. He remembers those late-night study sessions very well. As a Japanese hero, Izuku’s candid views on their nation’s past would scandalize many.
He looks over at him now, wondering again what’s running through his head.
Izuku catches him staring and smiles. “Tired yet, Kacchan?”
“No way,” Katsuki lies instantly. “You?”
“A little,” Izuku admits and Katsuki feels stupid for lying. He slows down and Izuku comes to a stop next to him.
“We should turn back soon,” Izuku says after a moment, catching his breath.
Katsuki nods, spotting a bench covered in bougenvillia flowers. He jerks his chin toward it. “Come.”
They drop onto the wooden slats. Katsuki lets his head fall back, eyes half-closed.
“That felt nice,” he mutters.
Izuku nods, pulling his knees up onto the bench, curling in on himself a little as his breathing evens out. “Yeah.”
Katsuki’s almost drifting when a sudden burst of chatter snaps him upright.
Izuku’s already looking around, curious.
A gaggle of kids—maybe eight or nine years old—have materialized out of nowhere, circling them with wide eyes and bouncing energy.
“Hero Deku! Hero Dynamight!”
“That’s Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight to you,” Katsuki snaps, glaring.
Izuku laughs, brightly. “Hello!” he says, sweet as ever, and the kids immediately swarm him.
“We saw your fight on TV!”
“You’re so brave!”
“Is it true you were quirkless before?”
The questions tumble over each other, loud and overlapping.
Katsuki’s patience lasts about four seconds.
“Oi. Quiet down. Give him some fu- um. Space. Shoo.”
“Kacchan!” Izuku protests, laughing again. He smiles placatingly at the kids. “It’s all right. Thank you for saying hi.”
They stare at him like he’s descended from the heavens personally. Katsuki stands up slowly, menacing on purpose.
They scatter.
“Let’s go,” Katsuki says immediately. “Before we end up on the news and all our stealth goes down the drain.”
Izuku takes the hand Katsuki offers without thinking. The second their palms connect, something electric jolts straight up Katsuki’s arm. He doesn’t let go until Izuku’s on his feet.
They walk back in comfortable silence, slipping through the side door, past the dozing guard, and up the stairwell.
Back on their floor, Katsuki follows Izuku into his room without asking. All Might is still sprawled in his bed, fast asleep, skeletal frame rising and falling under a thin hospital blanket.
“We got away with it,” Izuku whispers, grinning like they’re twelve again and just pulled one over on their moms.
“Obviously.” Katsuki mutters, but he’s grinning too.
The interruption arrives on sensible shoes.
There is a perfunctory knock and then the door opens without waiting for permission.
“Bakugo-san,” Polly says, voice clipped and Britishly precise, “you are not supposed to be in here.”
Katsuki does not move from where he leans against the wall beside Izuku’s bed, arms crossed, one boot propped negligently against the baseboard. He meets her gaze without blinking.
“Visiting hours,” he says.
“Are over,” she finishes for him. “And even if they were not, you are meant to be in your own room, resting. You are a patient."
Izuku begins, “He was just—”
“We need to check vitals,” Polly says, already approaching the bed. “And you,” she looks back at Katsuki, “need to step out.”
Katsuki doesn't move.
“Kacchan” Izuku says finally, gently. A concession disguised as a request.
“Fine,” he mutters stiffly. He pushes off the wall, shoulders rolling as though shaking off invisible restraints. “Whatever.”
Nurse Andrea falls into step beside him. She is shorter, younger, and Katsuki can smell her scrubs still carrying the slightr scent of fresh laundry and antiseptic.
They reach his door. Andrea stops, one hand on the handle, the other gesturing toward the room with polite insistence.
“Inside, please. Sit on the bed.”
The thin blanket bunches under his thighs. Andrea moves with practiced efficiency: cuff around his arm, clip on his finger, thermometer under his tongue. The numbers blink onto the little screen one by one.
“Still elevated,” she murmurs, mostly to herself. “102 over 68. Pulse 98. Temp normal.” She removes the equipment with gentle hands, then pauses, studying him. Not the numbers- him.
Katsuki feels the weight of that look. He stares at the opposite wall, at the framed hospital-safety poster in Japanese and English that he has long since memorized out of boredom.
Andrea speaks again, but it's quieter now.
“You know… Midoriya-san’s room is for two people. All Might is stable enough to be moved to a private suite tomorrow morning. If you’d prefer to room together—” She hesitates, choosing words with the care of a good nurse. “—I could speak to the charge nurse. It wouldn’t be difficult to arrange.”
Katsuki’s ears burn and heat climbs the back of his neck, sudden and humiliating. He keeps his face turned away, his jaw locking.
Room with Izuku, room with Izuku... why on earth was he acting like a school girl with a crush?
There is something strange about this though, about being asked so plainly, so casually. He does not want to answer truthfully.
But he feels the strange looseness of the foreign tongue in his mouth, foreign syllables, borrowed sounds, a language that has always felt like armor on his skin as he answers her. Saying yes in Japanese would mean admitting it to himself in his own voice. In English it is… distant. Someone else’s confession. It's easier.
“Yes,” he says, and he instantly feels better. “Yeah, I want to.”
“Okay,” she says simply. “I’ll make the request tonight. If the doctor approves, we can move your things in the morning.”
Katsuki nods.
She turns again as she's leaving. "And Bakugou-san? I'm only doing this because it's convinient for me to check both your vitals at once yeah?"
Katsuki couldn't help the grateful smile that spread across his face.
Maybe Americans weren't so bad after all.
Katsuki wakes up exactly when he always wakes up because his body has memorized the hour so thoroughly that even devastation can’t quite erase it, can’t quite convince his spine that it’s allowed to stay down, so he sits up at six sharp, back straight, blanket folded neatly, that used to mean something like discipline and now means nothing at all except that his hands know what to do when the rest of him doesn’t.
He brushed his teeth with his left hand, the foam tasting exactly the same as yesterday and the day before that and every day since the final battle, and he stared at the sink drain swallowing the spit and toothpaste while his mind looped on Deku, Deku, Deku.
His right arm doesn’t help.
It sits there, attached but not involved in the proceedings, slack and faintly foreign, a thing he drags along with him the same way you drag a suitcase that lost one of its wheels and Katsuki is a bit like the suitcase now isn't he? Without a couple wheels.
Every morning there is a moment just a quick sharp second where he expects it to move properly when he pushes himself out of bed, and every morning it doesn’t, and the bedframe creaks and his shoulder protests and the room tilts because he leans too far to the left to compensate.
It makes him crooked.
When he turns his head the world shifts wrong, sound arriving unevenly, voices muffled on the right side like they’re speaking through water, and the refrigerator hums somewhere behind him but it feels off-center.
Somewhere, faintly, a sparrow lands on the balcony railing and the sound comes into his good ear too sharp and too sudden and it reminds him of—
Izuku.
Not that Izuku is here, because he isn’t, and not that Katsuki is thinking about him deliberately, because he isn’t doing that either, but that every single small thing in the morning is built like a trap door that opens straight into green curls and freckles and that stupid earnest voice.
There is no fire left to burn the hurt away; there is only a vast, flat tundra of nothing, where the rage used to live and where patience never bothered to grow.
He dresses himself with one hand, a slow, agonizing ballet of teeth and tremors, tugging at fabrics that feel too heavy against his skin. He used to scream at the frustration of a stuck zipper, but now he just stares at it for ten minutes, watching the light crawl across the floorboards, until the zipper eventually gives in or it doesn't. It doesn’t matter. Nothing has mattered since the sky broke open.
Izuku is everywhere, a persistent afterimage burned into the back of Katsuki’s retinas.
He sees the green of a mossy stone and it’s Izuku’s hair; he hears the static of a radio and it’s Izuku’s mumbling; he smells the rain on the asphalt and it’s the scent of a war they supposedly won but that Katsuki is still losing every single second. When he walks through the UA dorms, he is a ghost haunting his own life, passing classmates who look at him with pity—a look he used to despise but now accepts.
No one spoke to him much anymore and that was fine because he had never been the talking type before the war either, only the yelling type, and yelling required something hot and alive in the chest that had been cauterized away and now indifference sat in its place.
He fought a war.
The fact sits in his mind like a dull rock.
He fought a war and the war ended and now he wakes up at six and brushes his teeth and stands in a kitchen all alone. He has his loud, impatient mother who's always trying to talk to him and he has his quiet, sweet patient dad who tries too but it looks different than his mom's. He has Best Jeanist who checks up on him regularly and he has Kirishima who never leaves him alone, and like always, he has Izuku who only smiles at him and Katsuki knows what he's trying to convey through that wide, tight press of lips but he won't accept it, yeah? He won't accept it.
He won't accept his forgiveness.
Katsuki does not hate himself.
That would require a certain indulgence he has never possessed, the long slow spiral of self-pity, the indulgent curling inward that people do when they want to sit with their own misery and examine it from every angle like a cracked tooth, worrying at it with their tongue until it hurts worse than it did before. He has never been built that way.
He wakes up, he trains what is left of his body, he eats the same measured portions, he exists in the rigid lines of routine because routine does not ask for forgiveness or permission or even acknowledgment, it simply continues, and so does he, one slow mechanical step after another, slow because the stupid monitor in his stupid chest beeps even when he does as much as walk briskly, so the indifference is a thin armor over whatever used to burn hottest inside him.
But then there is Izuku.
Izuku, who no longer moves like sunlight spilling through cracked concrete, but who still reaches without thinking because reaching has always been his language, who brushes the back of his hand against Katsuki’s left forearm in the crowded hallway between classes one ordinary afternoon when everyone is rushing and no one is watching except Katsuki, who flinches so hard the motion yanks his whole asymmetrical frame sideways like a puppet with half its strings cut.
The contact is nothing—barely a graze, feather-soft, and entirely accidental and yet it lands like live wire against ruined nerves, and Katsuki’s breath stutters out in a soundless hiss while his stupid, useless right arm hangs there between them like evidence of every wrong choice he ever made on that battlefield.
He hates himself then, right there in the bright light with lockers slamming and voices overlapping in his good ear; he hates the scarred, calloused thing that used to be his dominant hand, the one that only knows how to explode, how to destroy, how to push away everything soft before it can be ruined. He hates that it cannot learn tenderness, cannot rewire itself into something gentle enough to cradle the curve of Izuku’s cheek or trace the freckles that still scatter across his face like stars high up.
Katsuki stares at his hands.
He has always known what they are.
Explosive. Violent. Hands meant for impact and recoil and the sharp bright bloom of destruction that made him famous long before he deserved it. Even now, injured and unreliable and sometimes trembling faintly when he pushes them too hard in therapy, they still look like that.
Rough palms.
He wants to reach out—he does, sometimes, in the split-second before reason catches up—imagines the left hand lifting, steady, careful, cupping the side of Izuku’s neck the way he has seen other people do it in movies or in real life or in the quiet corners of his own traitor mind.
But the thought curdles instantly because his palms are still rough from years of nitroglycerin sweat and callus and war, still twitching with the ghost of sparks that could ignite at the wrong pressure, and Izuku is—god, Izuku is soft in ways Katsuki never learned to be, delicate not in fragility but in the way light bends around him, in the way his skin would probably bruise under anything less than perfect care. Katsuki’s hands are not built for that. Not built like Inko's not built like...
And then there is Uraraka.
He sees her do it without effort, without hesitation, during lunch on the rooftop where the wind carries voices away and no one expects him to speak anyway; she reaches across the bento boxes and taps Izuku’s wrist to get his attention, fingers light as air, laughing at something he said, and Izuku turns towards her.
There she is—someone whose hands do not threaten detonation, someone whose quirk lifts instead of obliterates, someone who can brush against Izuku and leave him warmer instead of flinching. Someone who deserves to stand in that space beside him without the constant terror of breaking what is already so carefully mended. Izuku deserves a hand that knows how to hold, and not one that just knows how to hold on.
"-right Kacchan?"
"Huh?"
Izuku had been speaking. Katsuki looked around and found nobody else there with them. Uraraka must have left already. There's a thrill that goes down his spine at being alone, being alone with Izuku and he wonders and wonders about what Izuku will say.
"What were you saying?"
Izuku looks up at the clouds when he answers. "I said, you are not going to Gunhead, right Kacchan?"
"Gunhead? Oh. Oh no, I'm not," Katsuki watches him closely now that Uraraka is gone. Looks like Izuku wasn't skirting around topics the way he expected him to. It's a relief. "Are you?"
"Hm? No, no I'm not either. All Might wants me to, but honestly I don't think it would help. I just want to train."
“You can rest now,” Katsuki says and he looks up at the clouds too. It comes out flatter than intended. Less reassurance, more instruction like. But he couldn't help it.
Izuku smiles anyway. A small thing. A concession. “You too, Kacchan.”
"Yeah."
"Kacchan?"
What now, what now, what now? Katsuki does not know what he's waiting for, what he's waiting desperately for the other boy to say. He doesn't know himself very well because of the same reason he does not hate himself, because if he indulged, if he tried to get to know the way his mind words, maybe he would understand why people go to Gunhead after all.
"Yes?"
"I'm here you know. Here if you... want anything at all. And I know you hate asking for things but I um. I really, really wish you would. Even if it's not me and it's... Kirishima or someone. I'd understand."
Katsuki has no idea what Deku was trying to get at but if there was anyone in the world who did know him, it would be Midoriya Izuku.
"I have no idea what you mean."
"Help. Help, like. If you want to talk... if you had like, a nightmare or something-"
"Why? Do you get nightmares?'
"-and it's late at night. What?"
"Nightmares. Do you get them?"
"Um. Yeah," Izuku laughs. "Almost everyone does now, so it's okay if you do too. You know, even All Might said he-"
"What are they about?"
"-used to get them after the... what?"
Katsuki shrugs and waits and Izuku twists his face. He does not want to answer, Katsuki realises. Izuku’s body has always been easy to read if you know where to look, if you pay attention to the small places where tension gathers. And Katsuki does pay attention. He has always paid attention.
Izuku shifts slightly where he sits, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck in that familiar awkward gesture, eyes still angled toward the sky even though he is clearly no longer looking at the clouds.
"You. They're mostly about you," he says finally.
"I'm sorry."
Izuku laughs and it's a weak, weak sounding thing. "Don't be. I was too late. I'm sorry."
"Stupid. You couldn't help it."
"Not anymore than you could help it Kacchan."
Katsuki scoffs. "I couldn't help dying? Yeah thanks Izuku."
"No that's. No, no- you know what I mean. You were-"
"I don't care."
He leaves Izuku standing there on the rooftop.
The dorm kitchen is dim at this hour, lit only by the under-cabinet strip that spills weak yellow across the countertops and the faint blue glow from the fridge door someone left ajar earlier; laughter echoes from the common room where Kirishima and Kaminari are probably losing spectacularly at whatever video game they dragged out tonight, voices overlapping in bright, careless bursts that never quite reach this corner where the tiles feel colder and the air tastes bland.
Katsuki walks in with his hands shoved deep in his pockets because that is the only way he can keep the left one from twitching toward something it has no right to reach for, the right sleeve pinned flat against his side like always, and he stops a careful two steps in front of Izuku who is pouring water from the filter pitcher into a glass with that same deliberate slowness he uses for everything now.
For a second he almost leaves at the sight of him.
The routine inside him hesitates, unsure where this action fits but he feels bad about earlier today and he'd promised himself to never, ever walk away from Izuku again.
“I get nightmares too.”
Izuku startles and green eyes meet his own and it's too much, it's too much but he recovers quickly.
“What are they about?” he asks.
His voice is quiet enough that it barely survives the noise from the other room.
Katsuki watches the liquid climb the side of the glass.
“Dying.”
Izuku nods again and moves to pour another glass for Katsuki.
"Do you wanna go up to the roof again?"
Katsuki feels a familiar, dull ache behind his eyes. A groan catches in his throat, dry and raspy. "I don’t want to describe them, Izuku. I’m not... I can't do the talking thing, you know that. You know that."
"No, no, Kacchan," Izuku interjects, his voice soft and sweet. "Not to describe them. Just to watch the stars."
So they go and they sit on the edge, the concrete rough beneath Katsuki’s one functional hand. Izuku is a blur of green and warmth to his right, his silent side and for a moment, the world feels almost symmetrical again.
Katsuki stares at the sky. The stars are tiny, indifferent pinpricks of light, millions of years dead and still burning. He thinks about his hands, hidden and curled in his lap, and the way Izuku’s shoulder is only an inch away.
"They're bright tonight," Izuku whispers.
Katsuki looks down at his left hand, the one curled into a white-knuckled fist against his thigh. He wants to open it. He wants to lay it flat against the concrete, or maybe, in a moment of impossible bravery, let it rest near Izuku’s hand.
Look at the stars.
Izuku is humming. Izuku is humming and it's soothing the war in Katsuki's mind. He closes his eyes.
Look how they shine for you.
The gym is a sensory nightmare and for once he is glad he can hardly hear.
Katsuki sits on a bench, his back against the cold concrete wall, his right arm tucked into a sling to keep the dead weight of it from pulling his shoulder out of alignment. He is a spectator in a theater where he used to be the lead, relegated to the sidelines like a broken piece of equipment.
Katsuki isn’t allowed to participate.
This fact is delivered to him with great professionalism and several polite explanations about nerve damage and recovery timelines and the importance of not pushing injured muscle groups too soon, and he listens to the entire speech numbly.
He watches Izuku who sparring with Iida, and from this distance, through the haze of Katsuki’s half squinted eyes it looks like the war never happened.
Izuku dodges, pivots, redirects the attack with a practiced movement that looks almost casual, the other student stumbling past him before Izuku taps their shoulder in that polite almost apologetic way he always has when ending a match.
“Again,” Izuku says.
They go again. And again. And again. And Katsuki watches.
He becomes aware of something unpleasant rising slowly in his chest. The whole training ground fills with that old familiar energy again, that bright competitive heat that used to make Katsuki feel alive. Now it just makes the bench under him feel colder.
He leaves soon, slipping by unnoticed.
"Bakugou."
"Bakugou."
"What?"
"It's me, Todoroki."
Katsuki turns around. "Yeah I could fuckin' hear that."
"Touya is dead."
Huh. Katsuki didn't even know he had survived the war.
"When’s the funeral?" he asks.
"Tomorrow," Shoto says, his voice sounding like it’s coming from the bottom of a well. "I wish you’d come."
Katsuki closes his eyes again and turns around and hears the other boy walk away.
But then, the footsteps stop.
"Bakugou," Shoto says, and there’s a softness there that makes Katsuki’s skin itch. "You can talk. We would understand. We are all fighting the same war."
He opens his eyes and turns back around. Fighting. Present tense.
Todoroki is standing there with his hand on the door handle, back straight, other hand loosely in his pocket, the wind from the open window pushing gently at the red and white halves of his hair.
“No we're not,” he says. “You lost your brother.”
Shoto looks at him, his expression unreadable, his dual-colored eyes searching Katsuki’s face for a crack, a sign of the boy who used to scream because he wanted to be heard.
"We are friends, Bakugou," Shoto says quietly. "And grief shouldn't be compared-"
"We are not friends," he retorts because dammit, everything is different and everyone feels different but he will not let this change. "And don't quote Gunhead at me. There's a reason I'm not going."
"Yeah. You're too afraid to."
Before Katsuki could say anything to that, Todoroki leaves.
The funeral was at late-afternoon and how sad was that? Katsuki thought. He had always pictured funerals late into the night, where everything is dark and nobody's face is visible so that grief can be a little bit louder.
Todoroki Touya's name was said again and again—by the priest, by principal Nezu, by relatives whose mouths shaped it with possessive familiarity. It sounded almost sad now. As though death had taken not only the body and the name but the weight of what he had been. What he could have been.
Katsuki didn't care for the man. Especially now that he was dead. But he took in the somber expressions around him and felt something akin to grief. He had been a villain, yes. Everyone here knew it, even if no one said it aloud now. He had been sharp-tongued and cruel-handed, had killed and laughed when bones broke and rules bent. He had stood across from them on streets and courtyards, eyes bright with something hungry, and they had fought him. Bruises still lived under their shirts, yellowing into memory.
But he had also been someone’s elder brother. He had also only been a child.
Todoroki Shouto stood at the front, rigid as a statue, garland slipping from numb fingers. The boy did not cry. His face was composed in that terrible, adult way grief sometimes demanded of children, children would you believe that, jaw set, eyes dry and shining. All Might hovered nearby, hand half-raised, uncertain whether comfort would be permitted. The hand never landed.
Shouto's alive older brother, taller, shoulders already learning the language of responsibility felt the old anger stir, unwelcome and ashamed. He remembered the way the dead man had smiled when he fell. Remembered blood on gravel. Remembered thinking, then, that the world would be better if that smile were wiped away.
But now the smile was forever gone and the world didn't feel any better.
Katsuki watched Izuku swallow hard. He had always been the one who believed that fights ended cleanly, that victory had edges you could see and name. He stared at the pyre and understood, dimly, that he had been so, so wrong and victory didn't look anything like it did on those big TV's, it was full of smoke in the lungs, heat on the face, and the unbearable sight of their friend bowing his head to a man who had made monsters of them all.
Principal Nezu's voice broke, just slightly, while reciting the last words. Someone sobbed openly now. The sound was raw, animal, impossible to ignore. Parents shifted, exchanging glances heavy with unspoken calculations: how close, how dangerous, how easily this could have been their own.
The priest finished. A handful of wet earth pattered onto the lid. Todoroki stepped forward first, small and hunched in his too-big school blazer, and dropped a single white flower—something snatched from the school garden that morning. It looked pathetic against the dark wood.
All Might cleared his throat, stepped closer. "My children," he said quietly, "whatever he was... he was still family to someone. Remember that."
Katsuki nodded, though he wasn't sure what he was agreeing to. Izuku just stared at the ground.
The taller boy, who Katsuki assumed was a friend of the family looked like he wanted to leave. Wanted to turn away from the fire and the prayers and the knowledge that justice did not feel the way it had been promised. But his feet stayed planted. So did the other’s. They stayed because their friend did not move, and because this, too, was part of the debt of having survived.
When it was over, when the flames were left to their work and the crowd thinned into murmurs and dispersal, Izuku approached him and Katsuki followed.
Shouto looked at them then. For a moment, something old and feral flashed in his eyes, grief sharpened into blame, into memory. Then it dulled, smoothed by exhaustion.
“Thank you,” he said, hoarse, for reasons none of them fully understood.
They walked away from the pyre as the sun dipped low, three boys carrying the weight of a man who had been terrible, and loved, and gone. Behind them, the fire enveloped the boy, indifferent and thorough, turning everything, sins and loyalty alike into the same pale ash.
And it was all yellow.
"Why are you against therapy?"
"Because talking to a stranger does not help me."
"Then why are you here still?"
Dammit Todoroki, he thinks. I am not afraid of this.
“All right,” the therapist says eventually. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
Katsuki does not talk.
The therapist nods, like this is going exactly as planned. He scribbles something down.
They sit.
A full minute passes.
“…You’re doing great,” the therapist offers.
“If you’re tallying my silence like it’s a symptom, I’m leaving.”
“I’m noting comfort with quiet,” the therapist said, unruffled. “Do you always prefer silence?”
“Mostly.”
"Do you think you know yourself well?"
"Not all the time."
"When's a time you didn't?"
"I thought we were going to be quiet."
“I’m asking a few questions now.” The therapist's tone stayed even, patient as sunlight on stone. “Have you always been a little aggressive?”
“I’ve been told.”
"Do you not think you're aggressive?"
"I know I am. I don't know if it's always been this way."
“Do you feel confident, usually?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a time you doubted your abilities?”
“No.”
The lie came out smooth and instant, and yet beneath it moved the memory of green eyes, wide and bright and mercilessly honest; of freckles scattered like stars across cheeks flushed from effort; of a voice saying you can do better that somehow always meant you are not enough, not yet. Izuku had never needed to say the last part aloud. The silence after his encouragement did it for him. But Katsuki had learnt lately that he was wrong. And Izuku had never say anything after that because he had nothing to say.
"I see."
He can't tell if the therapist believes him. He finds that he doesn't care.
“Do you ever push yourself?”
“We’re training to be heroes. That’s all we do.”
“Yes, but…” A small pause, careful. “That’s not what I mean. Do you feel satisfied with the progress you make?”
“All the time.”
Another lie. He has no idea why he's lying. He sighs. He knows the therapist doesn't believe him now.
When asked about fatigue, Katsuki says, “I’m good.”
When asked about dizziness, he says, “Only when you talk too much.”
When asked about frustration, he says nothing at all.
"How did the funeral make you feel?"
"Nothing. He was a villian."
"He deserved the ending he got?"
"I don't know shit about who deserves what. But actions have consequences and those were his. There's no point discussing the could haves."
"Do you feel sorry for your friend?"
Katsuki throught of Todoroki and didn't feel the familiar hatred with the same intensity. But he feels nothing with the same intensity these days so that can't mean anything.
“I’m tired,” he said after a while. “Can I go?”
“Of course, Katsuki. You can leave anytime you want.”
"Great."
He leaves.