Chapter Text
They go west.
Every time the sun sets, he points his mount out towards the bloody fields and gored mountains, and they pick their way among whatever trail they can find.
“You should head out West,” someone had said when they’d undone his cuffs and removed his collar. “‘Lotta you critters is settling out there.”
His eyes had been shaded and he’d refused to look at him as he’d opened the gates.
It was guilt he’d seen flashing there- or remorse maybe.
It didn’t make it better.
Didn’t make it right.
“You’re so young, maybe you could use a fresh start.”
He’d shouldered the pack they’d given him; all his worldly possessions plus a few things from the state to ease their conscience: clothes, coins, the licenses he’d need to purchase and then ride a horse.
His name is stamped on it.
BAKUGO, KATSUKI it says, and then his serial and the words that had changed the short course of his hard life: PARDONED.
No one could look him in the eyes.
His jailers of ten years had handed him these things without comment- all except that man at the gate who’d given the advice and told him where to buy the horse.
He’d left without another word.
Now their shadows cast far behind them, monster forms that chase them as they chase the long, hot days.
Hunting for a future as far away from the past as possible.
So they go west.
For days weeks, months- a year- two years.
Past the forests, past the meadows, past the prairies and the planes and the mesas with their red, wild rocks and surrealist landscapes.
He loses the pack, and gets another, loses the coin, and earns more back, loses the horse, and then another and then a mule, and goes on foot until the next foal is old enough to carry him.
They go west and they never look back.
Even as the nights get cooler and the sun starts to blister, even as the game gets scarce and the watering holes disappear with the heat baking them harder than chips of old pottery.
Even as they start to see the bleached bones of other men and their horses, ash pale and brittle dotted along the way like grisly reminders of the harshness, the futility of their journey.
They go west.
They’ve got nowhere else to go.
The world blurs as they go and he feels like he blurs with it.
No longer a man, not quite yet a ghost.
A dream.
Moving forwards with no end in sight.
His mule starts to founder, her pelt thinning and growing coarse, her ribs showing through like old boat timbers.
He shifts and trots beside her so she doesn’t have to carry his weight and that buys them a few more night’s time.
They’ve long since given up on traveling through the heat of the day, the hard march only starting once the sun bleeds down into the ground to point their way.
He hunts bugs and lizards, licks the rocks sometimes to cool his parched throat.
His mule collapses to her knees one night and can’t seem to go any further and-
He bullies her up, leads them both to a large outcrop of rocks- the only thing in the hard-baked land for what’s probably hundred of miles, and undoes her packs for the last time.
They’re too heavy, too much for her without food and water and hope.
She’d be another dumb beast he’s lead straight into her own grave.
But he wont.
The sorry story of their life together ends here.
He has to chase her off in the end; the dumb thing too loyal to know when it’s time to pack it in.
When he finally has to show her his teeth she brays at him and kicks.
He leaves her behind.
This one hurts a little, but he keeps going, he only looks back once.
Maybe without him she may find some way to survive.
He’s got nothing to do but walk.
He goes west.
Another day.
Two.
Until his own body gives up and refuses to go any further.
He lays there with the sand blowing to his fur and closes his eyes.
He wants to get up.
He wants to keep moving.
He doesn’t want to be another set of picked bones in the dirt out here, the thought makes him rage, makes him want to snarl at the wind and heat and desert itself and howl his challenge-
But he’s so tired now.
So hot and weary and angry.
He closes his eyes.
And doesn’t do anything at all.
He’s still pissed about it when it turns out he’s survived.
——
He wakes to cool shade and a confusing babble of mixed voices.
“Careful now-”
“C’mon! Don’t push him-”
“Whoa there! Watch his tail.”
“Try and shift him back Eiji-”
Someone runs a soothing hand over his brows and in between his ears
He feel the rumbling force of Earth Magic flow into his body and try to coax him back to his two legged form, but he clings stubbornly to his teeth and his fur- he won’t give them up, he’d be completely defenseless without them.
“Whoa, I think he’s awake!”
“Impossible. He’s been out here for days it looks like-”
“Shh! No, he’s right. I think I hear him growling...”
He is growling.
He tries to bare his fangs, but finds that same hand between his ears stroking down his raising hackles.
“You’re alright, friend,” he hears someone croon from what sounds like a long way off, “You’re alright. Rest easy now, we gotcha.”
He closes his eyes and lets that be true.
——
When he comes to again he’s laying on something soft in the shade of the big red rocks where he’d ditched his mule.
The Magnificent Lady Murderbeast II stares down at him, munching on a mouthful of hay with her eyes full of reproach and her long ears laid back in her signature temper.
He lifts his head to sniff her and she leans down and whuffles back.
He’s forgiven apparently.
He could whine with relief.
Fuck. She’s alive.
They’re both alive.
“This your mule?” He hears someone call over to him.
He turns his head and sees a man in a big straw hat and poncho grinning over at him.
“We tried to tie her to the train, but she bit the shit outta us.” He tells him cheerfully. “If we hadn’t found you we’d’ve have to have left her out here to starve. Ol’ girl’s mean as hell.”
A wagon train.
Travelers.
He begins to understand the banality of his miracle.
They just got damn lucky.
The Magnificent Lady Murderbeast II continues to peaceably munch her hay.
At least for the moment.
She whirls around to bite at another horse that’s come to close to where the two of them are standing in the shade and squeals in outrage.
The other horses he can hear and smell milling around all shy away nervously.
The man chuckles and comes over with a heavy pail that smells like water and Katsuki and his mule both fall over themselves to drink at the same time.
The mule bites at his ears, but he ignores her and laps at the water as quick as he can manage.
“Careful now,” the stranger warns seriously, “You’re like to make yourself sick.”
He growls at the man and continues to drink deeply
He doesn’t remember the last time he’s had water…
He drinks half the bucket, gets violently sick, and drinks the other half more slowly as his mule and the stranger watch him with similarly judgmental expressions.
“Think you can shift back?” The man asks, “Or you still need a minute?”
He stares him down, but the man just nods his head over towards where his pack is still resting against the rock, dusty and untouched.
“All your kit’s still there, it’ll be easier to talk with your hands on.”
He stands, annoyed at how shaky and weak his legs are and trots over to the pack to throw on his skin and shimmy into his filthy, worn-out old pants.
It feels almost foreign, the action of dropping his magic to slough into his human form, he doesn’t know the last time he’s done it.
The man’s smile widens.
“Huh,” he says. “So you are a blond.”
He stares at him and the man opens his hands.
“We’d wondered was all,” he explains, “Ain’t never seen a coat like yours before on one of your people.”
He lays his ears back and growls from his belly.
His interest unnerves him.
The stranger smells human and the stink of him is making his skin crawl.
The man’s smile never falters.
“Folk call me Sero,” he cheerfully indroduces himself. “What do they call you, Straw-top?”
Katsuki narrows his eyes and doesn’t answer.
The man’s eyes flicker over his flattened ears and scarred chest, the way his tail is bushed out and curled in his anger.
He lingers over the ropey knotted flesh of his wrists and his neck and the brand on his shoulder that blurs and obscures the tattoo there.
Katsuki lets him look, he isn’t ashamed. He’s used to the way humans ogle.
The man Sero’s eyes narrow, but as he opens his mouth to speak pandemonium suddenly breaks out.
Another strange man comes out from around the horses and gives a bellow of joy before bounding straight towards him.
He’s large, bigger than Katsuki who’s tall and built big for their kind, and shirtless with the kind of hair that comes out of some obeah’s potion bottles- a garish red colour found nowhere in nature.
Katsuki jolts away from him as he crashes to his knees right beside him and grins happily into his own fanged and aggressive expression.
“Well, look who’s finally awake!” he crows, slapping him on the back and ignoring how his teeth instantly lock over his wrist with a snarl.
They scrape uselessly over something rock hard and cool and he startles and pulls away from his still beaming expression.
Huh.
“Sorry friend,” he laughs, “Them teeth are nice, but they don’t much work on my kind.”
He’s Twofolk then, not like his human buddy there. The human stink of the camp must be masking his scent.
Katsuki grunts an apology.
“How you feeling?” The beaming stranger asks earnestly, glossing over how he’d just tried to maul him. “We all thought you was a goner for a while there! You’re sure lucky our Mina’s Waterbound! I don’t ‘reckon we’d last long out here without her! Think of the balls on you to come a’wanderin’ out here all on your lonesome with no kinships!”
He chortles like he’s just told a great joke and Katsuki flattens his ears again and gives him a sour look.
“Are we familiar?” He asks.
It’s got to be the first words he’s spoken to another person in over a year and they’re filled with hostile intent.
Figures.
The odd stranger beams and laughs.
“Of course not,” he says, “How many coyote you think we’d be friendly with out here? I’m Ejirou- er or Kirishima Eijirou? I guess to you- ‘S’nice to make your acquaintance, friend!”
The man sticks his hand out again and he stares down at it before grumbling and grudgingly handling it the way human folks do.
Privately he thinks there’s a little money in his pack and he figures he’ll pay for as much straw and water as these folk want to sell him and be on his way.
This is already more annoying than having died.
“You gonna introduce yourself?” Kirishima asks shrewdly, “Given your guest rites and such?”
He flinches and bares his teeth reflexively.
He didn’t ask for fucking guest rites!
Now so blatantly and willingly offered it might be deadly insult to refuse.
He scowls and bites out his name.
“Bakugo.”
“S’that the pack name or yours?” The human asks from where he’s openly eavesdropping.
He rolls his eyes.
“There ain’t a pack of us no’more s’just me, so it’s my name.” He grunts.
It feels strange to say his name out loud after so long. His instinct is to catch it out of the air and stuff it back between his teeth, but he’s got nothing to offer these people for his life except this.
The two men have some sort of long, complicated and almost entirely silent conversation with just their eyebrows.
The twofolk man Kirishima suddenly turns back to him at the end of it and says-
“Come meet the rest of the fam!” And jumps up.
He waits for him to follow and when he gets up and stuffs himself into his torn and ragged shirt walks him around the bend of the rock and past several strings of horses to where a bunch of wagons are arranged around a little fire.
Two more men and a woman sit there chatting and laughing.
They all look up at the man’s approach and he holds out his hands jovially and says.
“Look who survived!”
The people arranged around the fire all smile.
The mixed smells of horses and food and smoke and human dampens some of their natural scent, but they smell like his own people to him.
They look like them too: he notes the woman’s face is pink with millions of delicate little scales, and the tawny eyed man sat at the opposite bench has feathers in his hair.
Twofolk. Not the warmblooded pelted kind, some sort of air-kin and the woman is a leatherback, probably the redhead is too given his how he’d almost chipped a tooth on him.
“Howdy!” The woman chirps and pats at the bench she’s sitting on.
He ignores her offer and leans near one of the wagons with his arms crossed, ready to bolt for his mule and ride out if he needs to.
“He’s a little gun-shy,” the big red stranger laughs and flops between her and another bulky silver-haired man who immediately croons a welcome and noses into his neck. “Damn near tried to take my hand off when we was being introduced!”
Katsuki has to look away from where the men frantically scentshare like they haven’t seen each other for days.
He’s never seen that much open affection out where other folk can see.
It seems a little indecent.
The pink woman doesn’t seem to notice it much.
“That’s not very friendly,” she teases him instead, “Thought you warmbloods was all ‘brotherhood’ and ‘pack’ or what have you.”
“That’s racist, Mina.” The red-haired man chuckles, looking up from where he’s finished nosing with his silver-eyed friend. “Just ‘cuz all the warmbloods we know is cuddly don’t mean they all are.”
“Yeah, don’t be racist, Mina.” The air-kinsman grins, “What’s our guest here gonna think?” He peers over at Katsuki with obvious curiosity. “What do you think, stranger? How’d you get way out here?”
Like he’s one to ask.
A human and a bunch of mixed twofolk caravanning in the middle of the desert?
He’s not sure what to think.
He looks between all their open, relaxed and slightly expectant faces and shifts a little on his feet.
“Your friend offered me guest rites,” he starts with, carefully checking their faces for a reaction. “You folk fine with that?”
“Of course,” the silver haired man smiles, “Figured he would, given he’s the one who saw you out there and all- we thought you was dead.”
“That…human gonna mind?” He asks after a moment.
All the warmth leaves their little group like he’s suddenly blown out a candle.
“Hanta is a member of my clan.” The woman says with surprising venom in her tone. “You don’t like that I suggest you collect that ornery ass of yours and move along, friend.”
Katsuki blinks in surprise.
A human, in a twofolk clan, even one as obviously strange as this one would’ve been unheard of back East.
But he’s a long, long way from those parts now.
Not that that matters to him.
He dips his chin and says.
“Just as you like, ma’am.”
He can see their astonishment as he turns to go collect his things and head out.
“Hey now, wait a minute, friend!” The red-head suddenly bolts up, looking panicked. “You can’t go back out there! That’s suicide!”
“The lady made herself perfectly clear.” Katsuki answers him. “You can keep my mule though, she should be good for you now she’s seen me,” he adds. “I’ll make her understand.”
There is no reason to take her out into the sands to whatever uncertain end. Plus, he owes them for the guest rites and the water.
“We don’t want your mule,” the big man scrunches his face up looking confused and hurt. “You can’t hardly stand! You got no food and no water. Mina says it won’t rain for months out here!”
Katsuki ignores him and goes to look through his pack.
He’ll have to leave what he can’t strap to his fur, which is most of it.
“What’s going on?” The human Sero asks as he watches them reappear from behind the bend.
“He’s leaving.” The big man huffs crossing his arms.
Sero just looks somber as he watches him pick through his belongings.
The big twofolk man dithers and looks upset, but doesn’t stop him.
“If you leave now,” Sero says carefully, “I’m sure you understand that you ain’t like to survive.”
“I’d rather take my chances,” Katsuki grunts, dumping out his pack.
“So you would really rather die than break bread with a human?” The man questions softly.
Katsuki looks up and glares at him.
“You got good ears for a human.” He admits.
He doesn’t mind that he overheard; he’s never been one to tuck his tail.
It’s better they all know where they stand.
“I seen your scars,” he says soberly. “I saw the brand. I know what it means.”
Katsuki stands with his tail bushed and his ears laid back and his fangs out in the full force of his anger.
“Then you know why we ain’t like to be friendly.” He snarls.
He feels familiar heat build and then the wild rush of power that brings on his fur, but Sero holds a hand out to stop him.
There’s magic there, not as potent as the stuff that runs boiling through his blood, but enough to fight his change and give him pause.
He must be staring like an idiot, because the man smiles a little and chuckles.
“Sorry,” he says, “I know that wasn’t very polite, I just figured we oughta have a chat before you slink off.”
“How’d you do that?” Katsuki growls.
“Same as you,” the man shrugs.
He’s never known a human to touch the Great Force, let alone be touched back.
Well-
Not personally.
“We fought on the same side of that war, friend,” Sero tells him with something wistful in his eyes, “Lost the same things- I’ll swear on whatever you like. We ain’t enemies.”
“Wha-”
The man Kirishima looks between the two of them.
His eyes widen.
“You’re a war-hound,” he realises, looking stunned.
Katsuki has had enough socializing.
Probably for the rest of whatever is left of his short life.
Kirishima shakes his head to brush off his shock and looks hopefully between them.
They’re waiting on his decision. Not that he really has much of one.
Katsuki huffs.
“We ain’t friends,” he picks his shirt up out of the dirt and shrugs it back on. “Don’t matter what you swear to.”
“That’s fine,” the human says, “S’long as I ain’t got your blood on my hands. Don’t feel right being the cause of a war hero’s death- can’t be any good in that.”
Katsuki scowls at the term ‘war hero’.
No one’s called him that in a long time.
Kirishima looks at him with a muted sort of awe as he goes back to stuffing his kit into his pack.
He ignores him, but the man trots over and plops down next to him in the dirt to help he regather his things.
“Was Hanta right?” He presses, “Are you really a war-hound?”
Katsuki ducks his head to avoid his gaze, but nods he once.
“Where’d you see action?” The man asks eagerly.
Katsuki’s tail bristles.
“Out east of here,” he says evasively.
“And you were captured?” He murmurs. “They put you in the zoos?”
Katsuki nods tightly again.
He remembers thinking at the time it was better to spend his life at the end of a leash than as a tattered scrap of hide somewhere serving as a warning to his kind.
He’d been young and stupid then.
“Wow,” the man breathes softly, “A bonafide war-hero! Who’da thunk!”
Katsuki feels his claws creep in and poke through the worn-out old leather of his bag.
He rumbles a growl without meaning to.
‘Hero’.
It doesn’t sit right.
Like an itch between his skin and his fur.
Heroes are people who win their wars.
They had done far from that.
“Eiji.” Sero says with some censure. “Leave him be, he’s had enough for now.”
Katsuki doesn’t want to feel grateful towards a human for anything, but he is a little relieved when his friend takes the human’s hint and gets up to re-join his clan.
“Supper won’t be ready for a while,” he tells him, with a hefty clap on the back as he turns to leave, “You should rest up, I’ll come get you once it’s done.”
Sero doesn’t say anything else to him and continues currying his horses and looking over tack.
Katsuki settles back against the rock next to his mule and feels himself doze in the dry heat of the afternoon.
—
The leatherback woman nudges him awake a few hours later.
She looks mulish and kind of cross.
“Supper,” she says tersely, turning back to the wagons.
“We gonna have problems?” He asks.
“You’re under the rites of my house,” she rolls her eyes. “M’not tryna lose my magic over a case of bad manners.”
“I ain’t gotta stay.” He reiterates to her, wanting to be clear. “You can rescind the rites.”
She gives him a complicated, exasperated look.
“I won’t haunt you none if I die out here, I swear.” He adds dryly. “S’no hard feelings.”
Apparently she finds that kind of funny because she gives a reluctant sounding snort.
“A fool pride like that will get you killed for sure someday,” she says with the tinniest hint of a smile. “It won’t cost you none to play nice with our human.”
He slides his ears back and shows her his teeth.
“It don’t cost him none to keep clear of me either,” he snaps back.
“You really are a feral stray, huh?” She says with some wonder, cocking her head and looking him over with her brows raised. “A genuine war-hound! ‘Figured the humans had nailed all’a y’all to their fences by now.”
“‘Reckon they missed one,” he growls, sourly. She shakes her head.
“The war’s been over a long time, Rover,” she tells him a bluntly. “I know what you’ve done for us, and I appreciate what I got, but I won’t let you hurt none of mine over a bunch bodies we buried more’n a decade ago.”
They look over one another coolly.
He’s reluctantly impressed by her boldness.
“Thought you coldbloods was supposed to be all dumb and peaceful,” he smirks.
“That’s racist,” she grins back. “But we’ll call it on account of our dust up earlier- I’m Mina- I guess Ashido Mina for an old-fashioned mutt like you!”
She winks at him and he rolls his eyes and sticks his hand out like he saw Kirishima do, making her crow with delight.
“Even dogs like you can be taught tricks, huh?” She snickers as she takes it and helps haul him to his feet.
She’s surprisingly strong, but that’s to be expected from a leatherback he supposes.
When they walk back around the bend to join the little clan by their fire they go quiet.
Katsuki prowls around the fire for a moment, suddenly restless at the idea of having to sit so near to it and its unfamiliar strangers.
The leatherback woman is right.
He has gone… a little feral out here.
He can’t remember the last time he even ate with his skin on and not his fur.
It’s their human who seems again to be the one to understand his plight.
He dishes out a steaming heap of some sort of stew into a bowl of rice and slides it out as far as he can from their little group and the fire.
Katsuki warily drags it over with his foot and crouches down to eat.
There’s no meat to it.
Either they’re not keen on game, or there’s not much to hunt with all the noise the wagon train is making.
“Have more to drink,” Ashido offers from where she’s sat beside her two big men again.
Her palms glow and she makes a willowy, tugging sort of motion.
Water collects between her hands and pours freely into a pitcher by her feet.
A nifty trick in the desert; he wonders who gave her the bond.
Water kinships are rare for Twofolk who don’t live under Its care.
But he’s got no room to say much about rare bonds.
Sero slides the pitcher out and he hooks the handle and brings it over to gulp it down.
The others watch him out of the corners of their eyes, trying hard to seem like they’re not.
As he finishes the bowl the air-kinsman piles more into his own and wordlessly slides it out over to him.
He glares at him, but the man just offers him a smile.
“Go on,” he cajoles, “You look like you been living rough, we got enough to spare and you’ve already had the rites- a bit more won’t hurt.”
He takes the bowl with a nod and tries to eat with a bit more dignity.
“I’m Denki by the way,” the blond introduces himself.
“That’s his given name,” The big silvery man sitting at the edge of the group by Kirishima supplies.
The blond cocks his head.
“The coyote clan’s introductions always begin with the pack’s name first and the individual second.” Sero explains to him.
“Oh,” he laughs, “Weird, well I guess they’d call me, what? Kaminari…Denki?”
He beams at the big man who spoke before and guffaws.
“This’ll be fun for you.” He teases.
The man chuffs good-naturedly and turns his grin out towards him.
“Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu,” he says pointing at his chest, “You’re well met, friend.”
Katsuki raises a brow and loudly slurps his stew.
The group looks at him, clearly expecting something.
“I already told you folks my name,” he states.
“You told Eiji,” Ashido corrects with a theatrical seeming pout, “The rest of us ain’t been introduced.”
He looks into their eager, curious faces and sighs.
“Bakugo.” He says, and feeling he ought to put a little more effort into the thing given their generosity he swallows and whispers, “…Katsuki.”
They all smile encouragement and Ashido pointedly redirects their attention away from him by asking about their plans for the next day’s business.
The men are all drawn into the discussion and Katsuki uses the distraction to edge a little closer to the fire.
It’s colder now without his fur on.
The human eventually notices his subtle advances and moves a bit farther along the crates they’ve been siting on to give him more access to the light and the heat.
He can’t…quite bring himself to sit out with a strange clan in unfamiliar territory, but he gets as close as he thinks is safe.
The air-kinsman Kaminari notices him eventually and asks.
“So friend, where are you bound?”
He shrugs.
He’s not bound any place.
Except the grave at some point.
“I heard,” he tries after a moment when he notices they’ve all gone silent and are staring at him again. “There’s supposed to be more of us…out west.”
“There are!” Kirishima grins, nodding in excitement, “Lots of Folk have started settling out here since the treaty was signed! We been going out to The Briars! There’s some big towns going up out that way now! We brung some horses and goods from Follsom and Pettyville we’re looking to trade.”
“The Briars?” Katsuki’s echoes.
Kirishima nods again.
“S’wild land- off the maps the ‘feds have got! We got the lot of it after the war in the treaty!” He beams, “S’all ours now!”
“-However far it goes,” Kaminari adds a touch wryly, but Kirishima ignores the little dig.
“We don’t know what’s out there,” he acknowledges, “But plenty of Folk are coming out of the Confederation and headed out to see what we can make of it!”
Katsuki considers that.
It’s been…a long time, since he last heard or saw any news.
The world changed and keeps changing.
He feels like an idiot suddenly, with no real sense of any of it.
“That sounds,” he clears his throat and struggles to find words. “Good.”
He picks at the scars on his wrists and curls his tail towards his toes.
The little clan shares looks between them.
“It is,” Kirishima whispers and he seems a little pained as he says it. “S’real nice, Bakugo.”
“You oughta come with us,” Ashido adds quietly, “Come see what your teeth bought your people.”
He looks at her in surprise and tucks his ears.
That’s-
“You do owe the guest rites,” Kaminari helpfully points out, “We saved your life and fed ya- you gotta give us something in exchange!”
Ashido grins.
“That’s right,” she coos, “A big mutt like you! A damn war-hound to boot! Come with us! Help protect our haul; we’ll call it good on the chow and the keep of that miserable animal a’yours. What do you think?”
He looks between their eager, friendly expressions.
“Oh hell,” he shrugs, “Why not?”
These “Briars” sound as good a place to make bones as any other.
The little clan trades satisfied looks and explain their route to him, not that he’s familiar with any of its stops.
“One we’re in the Briars we’ll met up with the rest of our clan at Chowder and then head on through to Clerksville and eventually out to towards the border towns by the Spine,” Tetsutetsu volunteers, “Last stop for us is…uh, well it’s Rampart.”
“Oh boy,” Katsuki deadpans, “Rampart, I can’t wait.”
The others all check at that and trade sudden, strange looks.
Kaminari giggles nervously and takes a swig of water to disguise the sound.
Katsuki raises an eyebrow and looks around the little group.
“Something I oughta know about that place?” He grunts.
“Uh-” Kaminari begins, looking hunted.
“No!” Kirishima blurts.
“Wellll-” Ashido edges.
“Don’t listen to her,” Sero states firmly. “Rampart is a fine town.”
“Yeah! You’re gonna love it friend,” Tetsutetsu beams, “It’s Haunted!”