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"We all eat lies when our hearts are hungry." - Author Unknown
The Man
The rusted badge is the first thing Izuku picks up every morning, without fail. It isn’t really golden anymore; the worn-away iron showed underneath its thin coating of yellow.
Izuku calls that a metaphor. Looks good on the outside, feels like nothing but cold, hard metal on the inside. Ain’t that the truth.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of it was.
He takes a quick ol’ bath, buttons his shirt, puts on pants, throws on his coat, and adjusts the brim of his greenish hat. He has work today. Lots of it, actually. He takes a breath in and out, then pins the simple badge to his silk shirt. His boots clump with red-tinted dust, the same dust Mr. Toshinori coughed up until he fell down the stairs, the same dust every goddamn man who’s tried to keep this town clean dies in. It settles on his tongue like burnt communion ash.
He imagines his badge piercing his skin, going straight to his heart, and slicing it deep. He wishes it would.
Glancing back at the bedroom, Ochako is still there, wearing nothing but a slip and pantyhose, hair mussed, gently snoring away. He smiles, but it slices in half. He should wake her up. Make breakfast maybe. Something. Anything.
But he doesn’t.
Goodbye, Mr. Midoriya, we hardly know you.
He rides out to the edge of the desert, where he feels at home with the dust and the sand, where the green is going, going, gone, disappearing into a sea of anything but water.
There – there is something that can take the pain away. There is something that can take the pain away.
“Evenin’, Sheriff.”
There, is something that can take the pain away.
Mr. Katsuki Bakugou, the right and dishonorable outlaw himself, waits at the rotten wood fence, leaning against his own dark-maned mare, cigar between his teeth. Izuku doesn’t smoke; he never has. The stench is off-putting. But he cannot deny the appeal of it when Bakugou takes a slow drag and flicks ashes carelessly to the ground.
“Good evening, Mr. Bakugou.”
Bakugou smiles. It is sharp and it is dangerous. Izuku loves it. “No need for the formalities, Sheriff. You and I know why an upstanding fella like you might pay me a visit.”
And there, there lies the problem. Izuku loves Ochako so much, more than he expects anyone else to understand. He loves her enough to whittle mountains into nothing but gravel, to split the sea in two. Yessir, he married her of his own free will and would rather die than take those vows back.
Except.
He goes to church and prays to God, every night and day, that he’ll learn his lesson, that this wicked part of him dies somewhere. God responds not with pity, but with a sort of weary understanding that has Izuku praying on and on.
Then he rides out to a stretch of land no one knows about. Then he dismounts his horse, like he’s doing right now, Bakugou smiles, and it happens again.
He goes back to town with swollen lips and ties an ivory scarf, a wedding present from Mr. Toshinori, tight around his bruised neck, in the middle of August. He fights no-goods and helps starving children. He hears a whisper or two. He doesn’t mind them; they’re all wrong about his mistress.
What do you think that Missus Ochako Midoriya thinks?
She’s gone hysteric, the poor girl. Sheriff shuts her up in the house and don’t let her out, never.
None of it is true. She simply waits. She tends to her household, her chores, the land. She waits for him with the patience of someone who has seen enough of life’s cruelty to know that waiting is both a punishment and a gift. She waits, and she has one happiness, and he might as well let her have it, because he’s vile and wicked and cruel, but he loves her.
It’s true.
He leaves her not because he doesn’t love her, but because he does. And she…
He rides back home after a long day of work and Bakugou, chaining his wonderful mare to the shed, as she nickers happily before leaning down to chew her grass.
He grins. “There’s my girl. See ya tomorrow, darlin’.”
The door is large and dark wood. Ochako opens it before he even knocks, with a smile.
“Hi. How was your day?”
“Good.” He tells her, and Izuku isn’t one for lying, so she knows he’s telling the truth. If only…
“Come in, dinner is ready.”
And he does. He eats her dinner, and they laugh and smile, and Izuku is happy. So happy. He loves her, his woman, so much more than anything else in this world.
Her eyes travel to his scarf, furrowing her brow for a second, before she looks back up at his eyes.
He forces a chuckle.
Does this make him a sinner?
Well, shoot, Jesus died for all our sins, anyway. So one more don’t hurt.
The Wife
The smell of freshly baked bread wafts throughout the kitchen, seeping into the nooks and crannies of the walls. Izuku don’t like cherries much, she thinks to herself, but she’s put them in the bread anyway, because she does. The dough looks pale and lonely without them, like the wan moon on a dim night, half obscured by the desert sand.
She’s had to keep herself from eating them plump and whole, licking her fingers clean of the blood-red, sticky-sweet juice after kneading the dough, shoving a flesh-covered pit into her mouth and licking the pulp clean off of it, rolling it around with her tongue.
Her fingers tremble all the time. Ochako doesn’t know why. But they do, and as she reaches for her knife to slice the bread, her fingers tremble so hard she nearly points the blade towards her chest.
“Careful with the knife, ‘Chako.” Momma used to call. Ochako would giggle. Wasn’t that why Ochako did all this?
Careful, Ochako. Patience, Ochako. Breathe, Ochako. Care–
She knows why Izuku leaves every day at the crack of dawn. She doesn’t hate him for it. Maybe she should, but she loves him enough to let him.
She only really hates the fact that the door squeaks on his way out, and he doesn’t shake the dust off his boots when he comes back. She dislikes that when she goes out to the market with Mina and Tsu, they look at her with pity and ask her if she likes that house. She tolerates the rumors that everyone else spreads about Missus Midoriya in hysterics because Ochako knows she’s not crazy, yet. She likes it when the sun rises just over their bedroom window on those seldom days the mister drops a kiss on her forehead before he goes to work. She loves it when…
The church bells ring eight times. She counts each one in quick succession, making a slice through the bread every time she hears another ring. Steam curls up from each loaf; the smoke from a gun barrel. Opening a cupboard, she pulls out two plates. Her good china. One slice on each.
She should leave out three plates, just in case. So she does. But he’s not going to come, he’s too busy keeping order in a world that’s never grateful for it.
She used to dream of running away. Not from the house, not from him. Just away from the weight of Ochako Midoriya. Maybe she’d have run with him. This town swallows dreams whole, though, and she is learning to live with what survives. Now she’s stuck like a root in dry earth. Too attached to let go.
A gentle rap on the door awakens Ochako from her daze. Guilt treacherously sinks into her throat, but giddy, childlike excitement smothers it halfway.
“Hel-lo,” she breathes. Himiko stands at the door, wearing a man’s shirt and trousers, and her collar is unbuttoned to show off her generous chest.
And then:
Well, the next part isn’t important, not really, anyway. Because it’s the last time, Ochako promises, like she promised yesterday and the day before that, and because it’s the last time it doesn’t matter that Himiko kisses her hard and rough, biting and nipping painfully at flesh.
Right?
Himiko is a damned witch and she knows it.
Is it any better, Ochako wonders, as her fingers shake again, reaching up for the buttons on Himiko’s shirt, that she imagines screaming his name when Himiko kisses a trail down Ochako’s collarbone?
Is it any better, Ochako wonders, that she lets her husband ride further out, a little further past the sun, and leave her in this house? It’s her punishment. And she makes peace with it. She is a better person for it.
So, take that, you pearl-clutching fools. Take your sorry church and your silly prayers away from me and my house because I-I am just doing the best that I, that I–
The tears just fall on their own.
Himiko hums gently, pulling away, and Ochako chokes back a sob, taking her in. Her blonde hair falls gently down her shoulders, choppy and rough, and her eyes widen as her pupils dilate almost imperceptibly.
“Don’t cry, Ochako. It makes me sad.”
Mrs. Midoriya’s voice cracks. “I know. I–Sorry.”
The Gun
Words. There are a lot of words to describe Katsuki Bakugou, outlaw, 27-or-so. Male is one. Blond is another. But those are fucking boring.
Morally reprehensible is a better start.
Katsuki takes a slow swig of whiskey, burn snaking down his throat, looking up at the warm-toned sky and cursing under his breath. He’s home now. Whatever home means in this hellhole, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to think about that name.
But he does.
Izuku Midoriya is a cacophony of noises and sounds. He’s justice and he’s goodness, kindness and virtue, and he’s also the man who rides miles out from town every day to cheat on his wife with a man.
Visions of him come easy, words come easier. Unruly hair. Bright green eyes. A tired smile, one that could have been childlike happiness and excitement only eons ago. Maybe. Jaw clenched tight enough to draw blood. Maybe he was always drawing blood and Katsuki didn’t know, the coppery taste on his tongue natural to him, too much like that stupid badge affixed to his shirt.
“Still playing holy man, huh, Sheriff?” He mutters to no one in particular, then laughs, the sound wretched and ugly.
Katsuki’s not much of an outlaw himself, though he scarcely admits it. He steals chickens from that crazy girl’s lawn to eat, that’s all, and money to buy liquor and smokes. His only real crime was so long past that it can’t really be held against him.
But there’s something about the idea of do-goodery that irritates him. Something about the upstanding pricks in uniforms telling him what he should do with his life and how to change pisses him off. Izuku does that sometimes, when he’ll tell Katsuki that “It’s not over yet for him” before they kiss once, twice, again.
The first time they’d met up. Clearer than crystal in his head. He recalls the memory, curses under his breath.
“You gonna stop running, Sheriff?”
“Are you gonna keep pretending you don’t?”
He can still hear that conversation, soft and raw in the back of his skull. Before Izuku went all righteous. Before he decided law and love couldn’t share a bed.
The bastard probably thinks he’s saving him. Well, Katsuki is happy to let everyone know, there’s nothing left to save of the Bakugou line, no sir. Nothing left except an empty husk who’s sittin’ and smoking, shooting birds to pass the time, until the Sheriff shows up and maybe this life has meaning again for an hour or two. Izuku’s here, now he’s gone. Here, gone. Here, gone.
That is his life. What a fucking joke.
Dropping his bottle of whiskey on the ground, he keels over, retching. He fumbles with the back pocket of his trousers. Pulls out a matchbox and a cigar. Lights it. The motion is practiced and fluidlike.
Katsuki’s not fucking stupid. He knows that while his body is all cut, sinewy muscle, and he can still breathe the cold, night air right now, a few decades down the line of just this is going to kill him. He accepts it. When he was Good Katsuki, maybe still Angry Katsuki, he wouldn’t have dared pick up a cigar.
The cinders burn his throat and his lungs. It burns his tongue with a popping pain that spreads when he swallows. It’s only natural to feel the sting in the back of the throat. When he coughs he thinks, Ah ha. I’ve made a change. This doesn’t feel the same anymore. Because so help him, he’ll take feeling shitty than feeling like nothing at all. He spits dark tar on the red sand, coloring it a darker shade than before. Katsuki stomps on it.
Guns are only useful when they die quiet. A loud gun tells everyone that you’re there. You’re doing the killing. You’re shooting a man in the throat. You’re doing everything you’re not supposed to do, even if you think you’re doing good. You’re too loud, Katsuki, everyone knows.
A frog croaks in the lonely wilderness. Searching for his mate. The sky’s bleeding itself out over the horizon, all gold and rust. Another day that ain’t got the decency to end.
Katsuki takes one last drag, watching smoke curl up into nothing, and lets the quiet have him.
The Lover
If you ask anyone else about Himiko Toga, they’ll give you strange looks before talking about the girl with bright golden eyes and a large smile, teeth so sharp they look like fangs. The girl who lives alone with two men everyone knows are bad news. They’ll tell you. “She raises them chickens in her yard, and she’ll come ‘round to yer house with some jam and bread, real friendly-like. But don’t trust her. Don’t trust a devil girl, lest you got Satan on yer back.”
Himiko only wishes she was that interesting. She’s kind of boring, plain, simple. She likes people, she likes Ochako.
She’s busy applying her makeup, a little dab of powder there, a bit of rouge there, being extremely careful not to smudge the beet paste she uses on her lips. Himiko can’t wait for Ochako to kiss-kiss-kiss it all off of her. Her improvised shelf made of old scrap wood shakes gently with the breeze drifting in from the window. The December air is frigid, blowing strands of hair in her face, as she blinks like a deer caught in the crossfire of guns.
Katsuki’s words from yesterday ring like a bell in her head over and over again and again. She’d thought him a friend. Guess not. But the bitter truth in them makes her shoulders ache with the kind of weight she’s not used to carrying. She's supposed to be the happy one, and she is, but she can't feel happy right now. Not without Ochako.
“I know what your appointment is. Visiting the married Mrs. Midoriya, aren’t we?”
Her heart freezes into glassy shards, sharp and brittle, all the air knocked out of her, as she only manages to wheeze a confused “What?”
The air goes taut, like a pulled thread. Outside, the rain whistles in a clear tone, falling faster and faster to the ground, until she's not quite sure that it isn't just hail.
Something in her face goes still. The blush falls off her cheeks. “Watch your mouth,” she whispers.
Her hands are trembling, though she hides them behind her skirt. Her pulse beats against her throat like a trapped bird. Get out, get out, get out.
“Get out of my house. Out! Out!” She screams at him, all spittle and rage, no longer lovestruck. “Leave!”
Then she starts crying. She doesn’t know why. Katsuki was mean; she had known that from the start. He didn’t care about her, not one bit. She had known that too. But she liked him. She thought he was pretty. She thought, it would be nice to have a friend for a change.
She had fed him for months, laughed at his jokes even if they weren’t funny, brushed off his insults like a damn fool. She knows she’d imagined something that wasn’t there. But imagining it hurt less than not having it. Whatever.
She walks to the Midoriya house with her favorite dress on, a tulle mishmash of red, yellow and pink. So pretty… All of her favorite colors. She so hopes Ochako loves it as much as she does. And she will! Hmph. Katsuki is just a boy, a silly boy, he barely matters when there are real people who care about her.
She knocks on the doorway hesitantly. Biting the skin of her lip when Ochako swings the door open. “Himiko. Come in.” She has tired eyes. Himiko doesn’t like it when she has tired eyes.
“I got you some jam,” Himiko mentions offhandedly. “You’re disappearin’ on me, Ochako,” She jokes. But she means it. And her joke doesn’t come out quite right. It sounds too honest, too faithful. She catches her reflection in the mirror, it’s meaner and older than she recognizes herself as being at all.
She’s working herself into madness. Can Ochako notice that there’s something wrong with the lines of her face, the smile in her eyes? It’s not reaching. Himiko grabs for Ochako’s hand, her pale knuckles turning an even brighter white with the force.
Ochako doesn’t even notice her hand. Her skin is not warm; it is not welcoming. She is a paper ghost who doesn’t belong here. Ochako looks out the window, trembling ever so slightly. “Izuku doesn’t like jams,” she murmurs and looks down at the floor.
Like that, the moment is broken. Was there a moment in the first place? She’s not so sure anymore.
Her stomach drops, sour and burning.
“Ha.” She forces out.
It’s not funny.
“Do you think it’s going to rain today? Oh, I hope so. Izuku will be back home sooner then.”
In that moment, she realizes that maybe she has spent her life celebrating loves that don’t exist and mourning things she never really owned in the first place.
She walks back in tears, wipes her makeup off furiously, tearing pieces of fabric off of her makeshift skirts to blow her nose. But she comes to visit Ochako the next day anyway.
Because she’s not a devil girl. She’s just kind of boring, plain, and simple. She likes people. She likes people. And she’ll keep trying to get them to like her back.
“Hush now,” She calls to her stilling and breaking heart. “You can last another day.”
Across the shanties and shacks, houses and homes, dunes and dirt of a wasteland, four hearts beat in tandem. Out of breath, their owners can only hope to catch up.