Work Text:
This is a work of fiction and does not reflect real events.
The first time Katsuki Bakugo saw that green-eyed medic, he thought she was gonna get herself fucking killed.
It was somewhere in the shithole countryside between Lysandre and Teutoria, late summer of 19**, and the world smelled like burning rubber and rotting corpses. The Allied forces were pushing through Veloria like a goddamn steamroller, and Katsuki's unit had been tasked with clearing out pockets of resistance—both the enemy kind and the Velorique kind who didn't know when to stay the fuck down and let the professionals handle shit.
He'd been separated from his squad after a mortar blast turned their temporary encampment into a crater. His ears were still ringing, blood trickling down from a gash above his eyebrow, and his VK-40 felt heavy as shit in his hands. The old farmhouse ahead looked abandoned, half its roof blown off, walls pockmarked with bullet holes like some kind of fucked-up Swiss cheese.
That's when he heard it—a someone’s voice, soft and trembling, speaking rapid-fire Velorique.
Katsuki crept closer, his boots crunching on broken glass and debris. He pressed himself against the doorframe, peering inside with his weapon raised. The interior was dark, lit only by slivers of sunlight cutting through the destroyed roof. And there she was, kneeling beside a wounded man on a makeshift cot, her hands covered in blood up to her wrists.
She was small, probably barely reached his shoulder, with a messy curly pixie cut that looked like she'd hacked it off herself with a dull knife. Her clothes were civilian—a dirty cream-colored blouse and dark trousers, both stained with god knows what. But it was her eyes that caught him off guard. Big, green, and focused with an intensity that didn't match her soft, nervous voice as she murmured reassurances to the dying man beneath her hands.
"Restez avec moi, restez avec moi..." she whispered, her fingers working frantically to tie off a tourniquet around the man's mangled leg.
(translation: stay with me, stay with me. :3)
Katsuki should've shot her right then. Should've put a bullet in her head and the wounded bastard she was trying to save. That's what his training dictated. That's what the fucking war demanded.
Instead, he found himself lowering his weapon slightly, watching as she worked with a practiced efficiency that spoke of too much experience with this kind of carnage. Her hands shook—he could see that even from across the room—but they didn't falter. She packed the wound with cloth torn from her own shirt, her breathing quick and shallow.
"Merde, merde, merde..." she muttered under her breath, and then the wounded man convulsed once, twice, and went still. (translation: shit)
Her whole body sagged. She sat back on her heels, those bloodied hands falling limp in her lap, and for a moment she just stared at the corpse with this look of utter devastation that made something uncomfortable twist in Katsuki's gut.
Then her head snapped up, those green eyes locking onto him like she'd known he was there the whole fucking time.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Katsuki's finger tightened on the trigger, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. She was Velorique resistance, had to be. Probably had information about Allied movements, supply routes, weak points in the Valdenstahl defense.
She opened her mouth, and he expected her to scream or beg or try to run.
Instead, she said, “D-Du bist... verletzt. Dein Kopf.“ (translation: you are injured. your head.)
What the fuck?
Katsuki blinked, thrown completely off balance. "The hell are you—"
"Bitte," she interrupted, her voice soft but urgent, and she slowly raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “„Ich bin Sanitäter. Nur Sanitäter. Ich helfe jedem. Deutscher, Franzose, Amerikaner … das spielt keine Rolle. Sie brauchen …“
(translation:Please,I am a medic. Only medic. I help anyone. Valdenstahl, Velorique, Novaterra Unionn... does not matter. You need…)
[Just pretend they are speaking in Valdenstahl now….😔]
"Shut the fuck up," Katsuki snarled, raising his weapon again. "You think I'm stupid? You're gonna stick a knife in my gut the second I let you close."
She shook her head frantically, curls bouncing. "No, no! I have oath. Hippocratic oath. I do not harm, I only heal. Your head, it bleeds very much, you could have concussion, maybe fracture—"
"I said shut up!" His voice echoed in the destroyed farmhouse, and outside he could hear the distant rumble of artillery fire. He needed to get back to his unit, not stand here arguing with some pint-sized Velorique medic who had more balls than brains.
But she was already moving, slowly pushing herself to her feet, and Katsuki tracked her with his weapon. She was even smaller standing up, practically drowning in her bloodstained clothes. She reached for a battered medical bag beside the cot, moving with deliberate slowness like she was trying not to spook a wild animal.
"I take supplies," she said, enunciating each word carefully. "Then I go. You go. We both live. Ja?"
Katsuki's eye twitched. The sheer audacity of this woman—negotiating with him like they were haggling over vegetables at a fucking market instead of standing in the middle of a war zone where he could end her life with one squeeze of his trigger finger.
"You got ten seconds to get the fuck out of here before I decide you're not worth the bullet," he growled.
Relief flashed across her face, so genuine and open that it actually pissed him off more. She grabbed her bag, slinging it over her shoulder, and started toward the back door. But then she paused, glancing back at him with those too-wide green eyes.
"You should clean wound soon," she said quietly. "Before infection."
Then she was gone, slipping out into the ruined Velorique countryside like a ghost.
Katsuki stood there for a long moment, his weapon still raised, his heart pounding in his chest for reasons he couldn't quite explain. The dead man on the cot stared at nothing with glassy eyes. The blood on the floor was already drying, turning from red to rust-brown.
"Fucking hell," he muttered, finally lowering his VK-40.
He didn't tell anyone about the encounter when he rejoined his unit. Didn't mention the Velorique medic with the soft voice and steady hands who should've been dead but wasn't because he'd made a split-second decision that could've gotten him court-martialed if anyone found out.
It didn't matter anyway. He'd never see her again.
Except he did.
—————————-
The second time was three weeks later in a bombed-out village whose name Katsuki didn't know and didn't give a shit about.
His unit had been tasked with securing the area before the main force moved through. It should've been simple—the place was supposedly abandoned, all the civilians evacuated or dead. But intel was about as reliable as a chocolate teapot these days, so Katsuki kept his guard up as he moved through the rubble-strewn streets.
The village church was still partially standing, its bell tower leaning at a precarious angle like it might collapse any second. Katsuki was checking the interior when he heard voices coming from below—the cellar, probably.
He crept closer, his weapon at the ready, and peered down the stone steps leading into darkness. Candlelight flickered below, and he could make out at least three distinct voices speaking in hushed Velorique. His finger moved to the trigger. Could be resistance fighters. Could be civilians. Could be a fucking trap.
Then he heard it—that same soft, anxious voice from the farmhouse, speaking in rapid, rambling Velorique.
No fucking way.
Katsuki descended the steps slowly, each footfall deliberate and quiet despite his heavy boots. The cellar opened up into a larger space than he'd expected, probably used for storage back before the war turned everything to shit. Now it was set up as a makeshift field hospital, with half a dozen wounded people laid out on whatever flat surfaces could be found—doors ripped from their hinges, church pews dragged down the stairs.
And there she was, moving between patients with that same focused intensity, her hands working quickly to change bandages and administer what little medicine she probably had left.
She looked worse than last time. Thinner, more exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights. Her pixie cut was even more uneven, and there was a nasty bruise blooming across her left cheekbone.
Katsuki's presence didn't go unnoticed for long. One of the other people in the cellar—a grizzled older man with a bloody bandage wrapped around his torso—spotted him and shouted a warning.
The medic's head whipped around, her eyes widening in recognition.
"merde," Katsuki heard her whisper, which would've been funny if the situation wasn't so fucked.
The other people in the cellar started panicking, shouting in Velorique, scrambling for weapons that weren't there. The medic held up her hands, trying to calm them down while simultaneously keeping herself between Katsuki and her patients.
"Attendez, attendez!" she pleaded, then switched to Valdenstahl, looking directly at him. "Please. These people—they cannot fight. They are civilian. Wounded. Children."
And fuck, she was right. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dim candlelight, Katsuki could see that most of the people down here were either elderly, women, or kids. The youngest couldn't have been more than seven, a little girl with bandages wrapped around her head, staring at him with terrified eyes.
"This is a secure military zone," Katsuki said, his voice flat and hard. "You're all in violation of—"
"Of what?" The medic cut him off, and there was an edge to her soft voice now, something sharp beneath the anxiety. "Of trying to survive? Of not wanting to die in the street like dogs?"
Her accent was thicker when she was worked up, he noticed. Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides, and she was trembling—but whether from fear or anger, he couldn't tell.
"You should have evacuated with everyone else," Katsuki said.
"There was no evacuation!" Her voice cracked. "The Valdenstahls came, then the Novaterra Unionns people, then more Valdenstahls, and nobody told us anything except to stay inside and pray! These people cannot walk, cannot run. The old woman there—" she gestured frantically to an elderly lady lying on a church pew, "—she has pneumonia. The man beside her, his legs were crushed when his house collapsed. The children lost their parents. Where should they go? Where is safe?"
Katsuki said nothing. Because what the fuck was he supposed to say? That war was hell and civilians were acceptable casualties? That following orders was more important than the lives of a handful of Velorique refugees who'd had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The medic took a shaky breath, visibly trying to compose herself. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped back to that soft, pleading tone.
"I know you could kill us all," she said. "I know you have orders. But please... please just let us be. A few more days, that is all. Some of them are strong enough to move soon. We will go, we will hide somewhere else, and you never have to see us again."
"You're asking me to ignore a direct violation of military protocol," Katsuki said.
"I am asking you to be human," she replied.
They stared at each other across the cellar, and Katsuki was aware of all the other eyes on him—frightened, desperate, waiting to see if he'd be their executioner or their salvation.
He thought about his orders. About what his commanding officer would do if he found out Katsuki had discovered enemy civilians in a secure zone and just... walked away.
Then he thought about the look on this stubborn, reckless medic's face when that man had died in the farmhouse. The way her whole body had sagged with defeat.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath.
He turned on his heel and headed back up the stairs, ignoring the confused murmurs behind him. At the top, he paused and looked back down.
"You got seventy-two hours," he said, his voice carrying in the enclosed space. "After that, my unit will clear this whole area, and I won't be able to do shit to help you. So get these people somewhere else, understood?"
The medic's face transformed, relief and disbelief warring across her features. "Yes! Yes, thank you, I—"
"Don't fucking thank me," Katsuki snarled. "And if anyone asks, I never saw you. This cellar was empty. Got it?"
She nodded frantically, and Katsuki could've sworn he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
He left before he could do something stupid like ask her name.
————————————————-
The third time was during a supply run that went to absolute shit.
Katsuki and two other soldiers from his unit had been sent to retrieve medical supplies from an abandoned Valdenstahl field hospital about fifteen kilometers from their current position. It should've been straightforward—get in, grab what they needed, get out.
Except someone had tipped off the local resistance, and they'd walked straight into an ambush.
The firefight was brutal and chaotic, all close-quarters combat in the narrow corridors of what used to be a school. Katsuki took out three resistance fighters before a grenade went off too close and sent him flying into a wall. His head cracked against concrete, and for a second everything went white and fuzzy.
When his vision cleared, he was alone. The sounds of gunfire had moved to a different part of the building. His left shoulder was screaming in pain—dislocated, probably—and his weapon was nowhere in sight.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he hissed, trying to push himself upright with his good arm.
That's when he heard footsteps approaching, quick and light.
Katsuki's hand went to his knife, the only weapon he had left, and he prepared to fight despite the fact that he could barely stand. If he was going out, he was taking at least one of these resistance bastards with him.
But the person who rounded the corner wasn't a resistance fighter.
"Oh no," the medic breathed, her eyes going wide as she took in his condition. "Oh no, no, no..."
She was dressed differently this time—men's trousers and a oversized jacket that hung off her small frame, both in dark colors. Her medical bag was slung across her body, and there was a red cross armband tied around her upper arm.
"The fuck are you doing here?" Katsuki snarled, even as his vision started to swim again.
She didn't answer, just rushed forward and dropped to her knees beside him. Her hands were already moving, checking his head wound, his shoulder, looking for other injuries.
"You are in shock," she said, her voice tight with concentration. "Your shoulder is dislocated. I need to—"
"Don't fucking touch me," Katsuki tried to pull away, but his body wasn't cooperating anymore.
"If I do not help you, you will die," she said bluntly. "The resistance, they know Valdenstahl soldiers are here. They will search every room. You cannot fight like this."
"Then let me die fighting," Katsuki growled.
She sat back on her heels, and for the first time since he'd met her, she looked genuinely angry. Her soft features were pinched, her green eyes hard.
"Why are all soldiers so stupid?" she snapped. "You want to die for what? For pride? For orders? There is no honor in dying when you could live!"
"You don't understand shit about—"
"I understand plenty!" Her voice rose, cracking with emotion. "I understand I have watched too many people die who should not have died! I understand this war has taken everything from everyone, and still you all want to keep fighting, keep killing, keep throwing away lives like they mean nothing!"
She was breathing hard, tears streaming down her face now, and Katsuki realized with a jolt that she was having some kind of breakdown right there in the middle of a combat zone.
"I am so tired," she whispered, her voice breaking. "So tired of blood and death and—" She cut herself off, wiping at her face with shaking hands. "But I cannot stop. I cannot walk away when someone needs help. Even if they are enemy. Even if they hate me. I cannot..."
The sound of voices and footsteps were getting closer. The resistance was conducting their sweep.
The medic seemed to come back to herself. She grabbed Katsuki's good arm and started trying to haul him upright.
"There is room," she said urgently. "Storage closet, I hid there before. They already checked it. Come, quickly."
Katsuki should've told her to fuck off. Should've faced the resistance fighters head-on, taken as many as he could before they brought him down.
But his body made the decision before his brain could catch up, allowing her to guide him down the corridor and into a cramped storage closet that smelled like mold and old textbooks. She squeezed in after him and pulled the door shut, plunging them into darkness.
The space was so small they were pressed together, her back against his chest, both of them trying to breathe quietly as footsteps thundered past their hiding spot. Katsuki could feel her trembling against him, could hear her trying to muffle her ragged breathing.
They stayed like that for what felt like hours but was probably only twenty minutes. Eventually, the sounds of searching faded, and the building fell quiet.
The medic eased the door open, peeking out cautiously before turning back to him.
"They are gone," she whispered. "But we must hurry. Your shoulder—I can relocate it, but it will hurt very much."
"Just do it," Katsuki ground out.
She worked with practiced efficiency, explaining each step in that soft, rambling way of hers—probably trying to distract him from the pain, which was fucking excruciating when she finally popped his shoulder back into place. He bit down on his own fist to keep from shouting, tasting blood.
"I am sorry, I am sorry," she kept murmuring as she fashioned a sling from strips of cloth. "I know it hurts, but it will heal better this way, and you should not move it too much for a few weeks, though I know you will not listen because soldiers never listen to medical advice..."
She was rambling now, her anxiety bleeding through every word, and Katsuki found himself fixating on her voice instead of the pain. It was... not unpleasant, actually. The way she talked herself through her nervousness.
When she finished, she sat back and looked at him with those too-expressive green eyes.
"You should go," she said. "Before they come back."
"What about you?" The question was out before Katsuki could stop it.
She smiled, small and sad. "I go where I am needed. That is all I can do."
"That's fucking suicidal."
"Perhaps." She stood, gathering her medical bag. "But we all die eventually, ja? At least this way, my death might mean something."
She moved toward the door, but Katsuki's good hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. She froze, looking back at him with wide eyes.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She hesitated, and he could see her internal debate—whether it was safe to tell him, whether it mattered.
"Izuku," she finally said. "Izuku Midoriya."
"Katsuki Bakugo."
Something flickered across her face—surprise, maybe, that he'd offered his name in return.
"Try not to die, Bakugo," she said softly, and then she was gone.
Katsuki found his way back to his unit eventually. Made up some bullshit story about getting separated during the ambush. No one questioned it too closely—they'd all barely made it out alive.
But he kept thinking about her words: “At least this way, my death might mean something.”
————————————————-
The fourth time was in late autumn, when the war had ground into a miserable stalemate of mud and blood.
Katsuki's unit had been pinned down for three days in a half-destroyed monastery on a hill overlooking a strategic crossroads. The resistance and Allied forces controlled the valley below, and Katsuki's commanding officer was too fucking stubborn to order a retreat despite their dwindling supplies and mounting casualties.
They were down to fourteen men from an original force of thirty. Food was running low. Ammunition was critically low. Medical supplies were nonexistent.
That's when Izuku Midoriya walked through their front line waving a white flag made from what looked like a torn bedsheet.
Katsuki had been on watch duty, and he'd nearly shot her out of pure shock before his brain caught up with what he was seeing.
"Hold fire!" he shouted, scrambling down from his position. "Don't fucking shoot!"
A hard-faced veteran named Arno who'd lost an eye at Drachenreich—came storming over.
"What the hell is this?" Arno demanded.
"I am medic," Izuku called out, still holding her makeshift flag high. "I come to treat wounded. Both sides. I have supplies, medicine. Please, I ask for temporary ceasefire. Two hours. I help your men, then I help men below. After, we continue fighting if you wish."
Arno looked at her like she'd lost her goddamn mind. "You expect me to believe you're just some neutral party here to help out of the goodness of your heart?"
"I expect nothing," Izuku replied calmly. "But your men are dying of infection and blood loss. I can hear their screaming from the valley. And my conscience does not allow me to walk away when I can help."
"It's a trap," one of Katsuki's squadmates muttered.
"Probably," Arno agreed. But then he looked at the monastery behind them, where their wounded were suffering with nothing but dirty bandages and prayers. "Fuck it. Bakugo, search her for weapons. If she's clean, bring her inside."
Katsuki approached Izuku cautiously, and up close he could see how much the months of war had worn on her. She was thinner than ever, her hair growing out in uneven chunks, her clothes patched and re-patched and her freckles were slightly covered with dirt. But her eyes were still that bright, determined green.
"You're insane," he told her as he patted her down for weapons.
"So I have been told," she replied, a hint of dry humor in her voice.
She was clean except for her medical supplies. Katsuki escorted her inside the monastery, where the wounded were laid out in what used to be the chapel. The smell hit him first—blood, infection, unwashed bodies, death.
Izuku took one look around and immediately went to work.
For the next two hours, Katsuki watched her move from patient to patient with that same focused intensity he'd seen before. She cleaned wounds, administered precious antibiotics, stitched up injuries that had been festering for days. She talked to each soldier in her soft, rambling way—in Valdenstahl, sometimes in broken Novic when she encountered a captured Novaterra Unionn.
"You are very lucky," she told one kid who couldn't have been older than eighteen, his leg a mangled mess. "The infection has not spread too far. I clean it well, give you medicine, and you will maybe keep the leg. Maybe. You must rest, keep it elevated, and for the love of God, do not walk on it."
The kid stared at her with something like awe. "You're an angel," he mumbled, delirious with fever.
Izuku laughed, short and bitter. "No. Angels do not exist in war. Only people trying very hard not to become devils."
Katsuki found himself helping her without being asked, holding patients down when she needed to do something painful, fetching clean water, organizing her supplies. They fell into an easy rhythm, and he realized with some surprise that they worked well together.
"Why do you do this?" he asked during a brief lull. "You could've gotten out of Veloria months ago. Gone somewhere safe."
Izuku was cleaning blood from her hands with a rag, her movements methodical. "Where is safe?" she asked. "The war is everywhere. It touches everything." She paused, her hands stilling. "My father was a doctor. He taught me that medicine is sacred calling. That we help people not because they deserve it, but because they need it. Valdenstahl, Velorique, Allied—it does not matter. Pain is pain. Death is death."
"Was?" Katsuki picked up on the past tense.
"He died. Early in the war." Her voice was flat, carefully controlled. "Your country men executed him for treating resistance fighters."
Katsuki felt something cold settle in his stomach. "Then why the fuck do you heal my country men?"
She looked at him then, really looked at him, and there was something ancient and weary in her eyes that didn't belong on someone who couldn't have been older than twenty-five.
"Because hating you will not bring him back," she said simply. "And maybe, if I save enough lives, his death will have meant something. Maybe the scale will balance." She went back to cleaning her hands. "Foolish, I know. The scale never balances. But what else can I do?"
Before Katsuki could respond, Arno appeared in the doorway.
"Time's up," he announced. "Get her out of here."
Izuku nodded, gathering her depleted supplies. She'd used most of what she had on the Valdenstahl wounded, Katsuki realized. She'd have almost nothing left for the Allied and resistance fighters waiting below.
He walked her back to the front line, neither of them speaking. When they reached the edge of the Valdenstahl position, she turned to him.
"Thank you," she said. "For helping."
"Didn't do it for you," Katsuki muttered.
She smiled, and it was genuine despite everything. "Yes, you did. You just will not admit it."
She was right, and they both knew it.
"Try to stay alive, Izuku," he said.
"You as well, Bakugo."
She walked back down the hill toward the valley, her white flag fluttering in the cold autumn wind, and Katsuki watched until she disappeared from sight.
——————————————
The fifth time was in December, during the coldest winter Veloria had seen in decades.
The war had turned again, the Valdenstahls retreating in some sectors, holding firm in others. Katsuki's unit had been sent to secure a small town that had changed hands three times in as many weeks. The civilians who remained were starving and desperate, caught between opposing forces that saw them as either obstacles or resources.
Katsuki was conducting a patrol of the town square when he heard shouting coming from one of the buildings—sounded like an argument in rapid Velorique. He investigated, weapon ready, and found a crowd gathered outside what looked like a makeshift clinic.
The door burst open and Izuku Midoriya stumbled out, followed by an angry man waving his arms and yelling at her in Velorique. She was trying to explain something, her voice rising with frustration, but the man wasn't listening.
Then he hit her.
The backhand caught her across the face and sent her sprawling in the muddy street. The crowd gasped but no one moved to help her.
Katsuki moved before he could think. He crossed the distance in three strides, grabbed the man by his collar, and slammed him against the nearest wall hard enough to knock the wind out of him.
"Touch her again and I'll break every bone in your fucking body," Katsuki snarled in Valdenstahl, knowing the man wouldn't understand but the message would be crystal clear.
The crowd scattered, not wanting to be anywhere near an angry Valdenstahl soldier. The man Katsuki had pinned was making choking sounds, his face turning red.
"Bakugo, stop!" Izuku's voice, sharp with alarm. "Please, let him go!"
Katsuki released the man, who collapsed to the ground gasping. Izuku scrambled to her feet, mud covering one side of her face, and positioned herself between Katsuki and the Velorique civilian.
"He does not understand," she said quickly. "His wife, she is sick, needs medicine. I had to choose who to treat first, and I chose the children instead. He is angry, grief-making him—"
"I don't give a shit about his grief," Katsuki interrupted. "He hit you."
"It is fine—"
"It's not fucking fine!" The words came out louder than he intended, and Izuku flinched. Katsuki took a breath, forcing himself to calm down. "It's not fine," he repeated, quieter.
Izuku looked at him with those too-perceptive green eyes, and he could see her putting pieces together, drawing conclusions he wasn't ready for her to make.
"Come," she said finally. "We should not stay here. People are watching."
She led him back to her clinic, which was really just a repurposed bakery with a few cots set up. It was freezing inside—no fuel for heat—and Katsuki could see his breath misting in the air.
Izuku went to a basin of water and started cleaning the mud off her face, wincing when she touched her rapidly swelling cheek.
"Let me see," Katsuki said.
She turned, and he examined her face with a critical eye. The bruise would be spectacular by tomorrow, but nothing was broken.
"You need ice," he said.
"In December, ice is not difficult to find," she replied with a weak attempt at humor.
Katsuki found a clean cloth, went outside, and packed it with snow before bringing it back and pressing it gently against her cheek. She hissed at the cold but held it in place.
They stood there in the freezing bakery-turned-clinic, and Katsuki was suddenly aware of how close they were. Close enough that he could count the freckles across her nose, see the flecks of darker green in her eyes.
"You should stop doing this," he said. "Stop putting yourself in danger for people who don't even appreciate it."
"I cannot."
"Why the fuck not?"
"Because if I stop, who will help them?" Her voice was soft but firm. "You think Valdenstahl army will provide medical care to Velorique civilians? You think the resistance has supplies to spare? I am all they have."
"You're one person. You can't save everyone."
"I know." She smiled, sad and tired. "But I must try. Because the moment I stop trying, the moment I give in to despair, then the war has truly won. Then I am no better than those who kill without thought."
Katsuki wanted to argue, to tell her she was being naive and reckless and stupid. But the words wouldn't come. Because there was something in her stubborn refusal to give up, her insistence on maintaining her humanity in the middle of hell, that he found himself respecting despite himself.
"You're insane," he said instead.
"So you have mentioned." She took the cloth from her face, examining the pink-tinged snow. "But perhaps insanity is the only sane response to this world we live in now."
Katsuki stayed with her for the rest of the day, helping however he could. He used his status as a Valdenstahl soldier to intimidate the locals into behaving, to secure a small supply of fuel so the clinic wouldn't freeze. It was a strange, surreal experience—him in his Valdenstahl uniform, her in her civilian clothes, working side by side to patch up the wounded and sick.
When evening came and he had to return to his unit, she walked him to the door.
"Thank you," she said. "For today. For all the times you have let me live when you should not have."
"Stop thanking me," Katsuki said gruffly. "It's fucking annoying."
She laughed, and the sound was like something bright in the darkness. "I will try to remember that."
He should've left then. Should've walked away and never looked back.
Instead, he reached out and tucked a strand of her curly hair behind her ear, his hand lingering perhaps a moment too long against her bruised cheek.
"Stay alive, Midoriya," he said, and it came out almost like a plea.
"I will do my best," she promised. "You as well, Bakugo-san."
He left before he could do something truly fucking stupid like ask her to come with him, to get the hell out of this war zone and find somewhere safe.
As if anywhere was safe anymore.
——————————-
The one time Katsuki Bakugo didn't run fast enough was in early January 19**. (following year)
His unit had been ambushed during a supply run. The fighting had been vicious, and they'd been scattered across the countryside. Katsuki had been making his way back to the rendezvous point when he heard the sound of gunfire coming from a small village he'd thought was empty.
He should've kept going. Should've prioritized reuniting with his squad.
But something made him investigate. Some instinct, some dread that settled like ice in his gut.
The village was burning. Bodies littered the streets—civilians, resistance fighters, a few Valdenstahl soldiers. It looked like there'd been some kind of massacre, one side or the other deciding that mercy was a luxury they couldn't afford.
That's when he saw the clinic.
Or what was left of it.
The building had been set on fire, smoke pouring from broken windows. And standing in front of it, facing down three Valdenstahl soldiers Katsuki didn't recognize, was Izuku Midoriya.
She was screaming at them in broken Valdenstahl, tears streaming down her face, trying to get past them to the burning building.
"There are people inside!" she was shouting. "Please, there are wounded inside! Let me—"
One of the soldiers hit her with the butt of his rifle, and she went down hard but still tried to stand up.
Katsuki was moving before he consciously decided to, his weapon coming up, his voice roaring across the village square.
"Stand the fuck down!"
The three soldiers turned, surprised, and Katsuki saw the moment they calculated whether to obey or eliminate him as a witness to whatever atrocity they'd just committed.
He didn't give them time to decide. Three shots, three bodies hitting the ground.
Then he was running to Izuku, who was trying to get back up, blood streaming from a cut on her forehead.
"The wounded," she gasped, clutching at his uniform. "Bakugo, please, there are people inside who cannot move, children—"
The building chose that moment to collapse inward with a roar of flame and smoke. The heat was intense even from where they stood, and Katsuki knew without a doubt that no one inside could have survived.
Izuku's scream was something inhuman, torn from a place of such utter anguish that it made something in Katsuki's chest crack. She tried to run toward the burning wreckage, and he had to wrap his arms around her to hold her back.
"They're gone," he said, his voice rough. "Midoriya, they're gone. You can't—"
"No!" She was fighting him with a strength born of desperation, her frame thrashing in his grip. "No, no, no, I can still save them, I can—there was a boy, only twelve years old, his name was Henri, and a woman who just gave birth three days ago, and—" Her voice broke into sobs. "I promised them. I promised I would keep them safe."
Katsuki held her as she fell apart, her screams dissolving into wrenching sobs that shook her entire body. She was making sounds he'd never heard another human make, animal sounds of pure grief, and he could feel her tears soaking through his uniform.
Around them, the village continued to burn. The smoke was thick and choking, the smell of burning flesh unmistakable. Katsuki knew they needed to move, that staying here was suicide, but he couldn't seem to make himself let go of her.
"I couldn't save them," she was whispering now, over and over like a prayer or a curse. "I couldn't save them. I couldn't..."
"It's not your fault," Katsuki said.
"Then whose fault is it?" She pulled back to look at him, and her face was a mess of tears and blood and ash. "Whose fault, Bakugo? The soldiers who set the fire? The officers who gave the orders? The politicians who started this war? God, who allows such things to happen?" Her laugh was bitter and broken. "Everyone is guilty. No one is guilty. And still people die."
She sagged against him, and he realized she was at the end of her strength. How long had it been since she'd eaten? Slept? How many deaths had she witnessed, how much trauma had she absorbed trying to heal the unhealable?
"Come on," he said, trying to get her standing. "We have to move. If there's one patrol, there'll be others."
"I do not care anymore," she said dully. "Let them come. Let them shoot me. At least then I will not have to—"
"Don't you fucking dare," Katsuki snarled, grabbing her by the shoulders and forcing her to look at him. "Don't you dare give up now. You told me that giving up means the war wins, remember? That you have to keep trying because someone has to?"
"I am so tired," she whispered.
"I know."
"I cannot do this anymore."
"Yes, you can." He didn't know where the certainty came from, but it was there in his voice. "You're the strongest person I've ever fucking met, Midoriya. You've survived this long, you can survive longer."
She stared at him, something complicated and painful in her green eyes. "Why do you care? I am nothing to you. Enemy civilian. Velorique resistance sympathizer. You should have killed me the first time we met."
"Yeah, well, I didn't." Katsuki stood, pulling her up with him. "And I'm not letting you die now. So shut up and move."
She didn't have the strength to argue. She let him half-carry, half-drag her out of the burning village, away from the bodies and the smoke and the ashes of all her failed promises.
They made it maybe two kilometers before she collapsed completely.
Katsuki caught her before she hit the ground, and when he checked her pulse it was thready and weak. She was unconscious, her breathing shallow. Blood loss, exhaustion, shock—probably all three.
"Fuck," Katsuki muttered.
He couldn't take her to his unit. They'd ask too many questions about why he was carrying an unconscious Velorique civilian, and eventually someone would put together that she was resistance-affiliated. She'd be interrogated, probably executed.
He couldn't leave her here. She'd freeze to death before morning.
So Katsuki made a choice that he knew might get him court-martialed or shot.
He carried her.
There was an abandoned farmhouse he'd passed during a patrol weeks ago, far enough from any strategic locations that both sides had ignored it. He made his way there as night fell, Izuku's weight barely anything in his arms, and he tried not to think about how fucked he was.
The farmhouse was in shit condition but it had four walls and most of a roof. Katsuki laid Izuku down on a pile of moldy hay in what used to be a barn, then spent the next hour trying to make the place marginally less likely to kill them both. He got a fire going, found some old tarps to block the worst of the drafts, and checked Izuku over for injuries.
The cut on her head wasn't as bad as it looked, and miraculously she didn't seem to have any broken bones. But she was severely malnourished and suffering from exposure. He needed to get food and water into her, keep her warm, let her body recover.
He was fucked. Completely and utterly fucked.
His squad would be looking for him. When he didn't show up at the rendezvous, they'd assume he was dead or captured. And he was sitting here playing nursemaid to a Velorique medic who should mean absolutely nothing to him.
Izuku didn't wake until the next morning. When she did, she bolted upright with a gasp, eyes wild and disoriented.
"Easy," Katsuki said from where he was sitting by the fire. "You're safe. For now."
She looked around the barn, taking in her surroundings, then her gaze landed on him. Memory flooded back into her expression—the burning clinic, the deaths, her breakdown.
"You should have left me," she said quietly.
"Probably." Katsuki poured some water from his canteen into a dented cup and held it out to her. "Drink."
She took the cup with shaking hands and sipped slowly. "Your unit will be looking for you."
"Yeah."
"You will be in trouble. For desertion."
"Yeah."
"Then why—"
"Because I'm a fucking idiot, apparently," Katsuki snapped. "Now drink the goddamn water and stop asking stupid questions."
She fell silent, but she kept glancing at him with those too-perceptive eyes, like she was trying to solve a puzzle.
They stayed in that farmhouse for three days.
Katsuki knew each day he waited made it worse, made his eventual return to his unit more impossible to explain. But Izuku was in no condition to travel, and he found himself unable to leave her.
They talked, during those three days. Real conversations, not just the brief exchanges they'd had before. She told him about her life before the war—growing up in a small village in southern Veloria, her father teaching her medicine, her dreams of going to university in Lysandre. He told her about Valdenstahly, about his family's small farm, about how he'd joined the military because it seemed like the only option for someone like him.
"Did you want to be soldier?" she asked one evening, both of them sitting by the fire.
Katsuki was quiet for a long moment. "I wanted to be strong," he finally said. "Wanted to prove I was worth something. Thought the military would give me purpose." He laughed, bitter. "Funny how that turned out."
"You are strong," Izuku said. "But not in the way you thought. Strength is not just fighting. It is also knowing when to stop fighting."
"That's some philosophical bullshit."
"Perhaps." She smiled slightly. "But it is also true."
On the third night, Izuku's fever broke. Her color returned, and she could move without assistance. They both knew what that meant.
"You should go back to your unit," she said. "Tell them you were captured, escaped. Make up a story. They might believe you."
"And what about you?"
"I will find other resistance cells. Other places that need medic. I always do."
"That's fucking suicidal."
"We have had this conversation before, Bakugo."
They stared at each other across the fire, and Katsuki felt something shift in his chest, some awareness clicking into place that he'd been avoiding for months.
"Come with me," he said.
She blinked. "What?"
"Come with me. I'll desert, we'll head west, try to make it to Allied lines. You can surrender as a civilian, I'll—fuck, I don't know, I'll figure something out."
"You would give up everything? Your unit, your country, your honor as soldier?"
"What fucking honor?" Katsuki demanded. "I've been fighting in a war I don't believe in, following orders I hate, watching people die for causes that stopped making sense years ago." He leaned forward, intense. "You told me that helping people has to mean something. Well maybe this is what means something. Getting you somewhere safe. Making sure you survive this fucking war."
Tears were streaming down Izuku's face again, but this time they weren't tears of grief. "Why?" she whispered. "Why would you do this for me?"
And Katsuki realized he didn't have a good answer. Or maybe he had the answer but didn't know how to say it. Didn't know how to explain that over the past months, she'd become something important to him. That her stubborn refusal to give up, her determination to save lives in the middle of hell, had somehow saved something in him too.
"Because you matter, you idiot," he said roughly. "Because I've saved your life five times now, and I'm not about to let all that effort go to waste."
She laughed through her tears. "That is terrible reason."
"It's the only reason I've got."
She looked at him for a long moment, and he could see her weighing her options, making calculations. Then she reached across the fire and took his hand.
"Okay," she said. "Okay, we go west."
They left before dawn, traveling through the frozen Velorique countryside with nothing but the supplies Katsuki had scrounged and the faint hope that they'd make it to Allied lines before getting shot by one side or the other.
It should have been impossible. They were on foot, in the middle of winter, in enemy territory. They had barely any food, no identification that would help them, and every day they risked discovery.
But somehow, they made it work.
Katsuki's military training kept them alive—he knew how to move unseen, how to find shelter, how to avoid patrols. Izuku's medical knowledge kept them healthy, treating their inevitable injuries and illnesses with whatever she could scavenge. They fell into a rhythm, learning to read each other's signals, to communicate with glances and gestures when speaking was too dangerous.
It took them three weeks to make it close to Allied lines. Three weeks of sleeping in ditches and abandoned buildings, of going days without food, of close calls that nearly got them killed or captured.
They were camped in another ruined farmhouse, this one only ten kilometers from where Katsuki estimated the Allied front line was, when Izuku finally asked the question he'd been dreading.
"What will happen when we reach the Allies?" she said quietly.
Katsuki had been thinking about that. He'd deserted, which meant if anyone from his unit identified him he'd be executed. The Allies might take him as a prisoner of war, or they might shoot him on sight. And Izuku—she'd probably be fine, would be reunited with the Velorique resistance or whatever remained of it.
"You'll be safe," he said instead of answering.
"And you?"
"I'll figure it out."
"Bakugo—"
"Don't." He cut her off. "Don't fucking say it. I knew what I was doing when I decided to come with you. I made my choice."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she moved closer, until she was sitting right next to him, their shoulders touching.
"I think," she said slowly, "that maybe I was wrong before. About strength meaning knowing when to stop fighting." She turned to look at him. "Sometimes strength is choosing what to fight for. And you chose to fight for me, even when it cost you everything."
"Didn't cost me everything," Katsuki muttered. "Just my shitty military career and probably my life."
"You know what I mean."
Yeah, he did.
They sat there in the darkness, and Katsuki became aware of how close she was. Close enough that he could feel her warmth, smell the soap she'd managed to wash with a few days ago, see the way the moonlight caught in her curly hair,freckles that rivals constellations.
"Midoriya," he said, and his voice came out rougher than he intended.
"Izuku," she corrected. "After all this, you can call me Izuku."
"Izuku." Her name felt strange on his tongue, intimate. "I—"
He didn't know how to finish that sentence. Didn't know how to put into words the complicated tangle of feelings that had developed over months of brief encounters and three weeks of constant proximity.
But apparently he didn't need to, because she was looking at him with those green eyes that saw too much, and she was leaning in, and then her lips were on his.
The kiss was soft, tentative, like she was asking a question. And Katsuki answered by pulling her closer, deepening the kiss, pouring months of unspoken feelings into it.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Izuku was smiling. Really smiling, the first genuine expression of happiness he'd seen on her face.
"We are both insane," she said.
"Yeah," Katsuki agreed. "Completely fucking insane."
They spent that night wrapped in each other's arms, stealing whatever warmth and comfort they could from each other, knowing that tomorrow might bring their deaths but choosing to live in this moment anyway.
———————————————————————
They tried to cross into Allied territory the next morning.
They'd scouted out a section of the line that seemed less heavily guarded, planning to approach with a white flag and hope the Allied soldiers didn't shoot first and ask questions later.
It might have worked.
But Katsuki's luck, which had held for three weeks against all odds, finally ran out.
They were spotted by a Valdenstahl patrol before they made it to the Allied side. Four soldiers, probably on routine reconnaissance, who saw Katsuki's Valdenstahl uniform and assumed he was a deserter—which, to be fair, he was.
Everything happened fast after that.
Katsuki shoved Izuku behind him, raising his hands to show he wasn't armed, trying to explain. But these soldiers weren't interested in explanations. They'd seen too much death, too much betrayal, and a deserter was lower than shit in their eyes.
The first shot went wide. The second didn't.
The bullet hit Katsuki in the chest, and he went down hard, the world tilting sideways. He heard Izuku screaming, heard more gunshots—Allied soldiers responding to the firefight, probably—and then there was chaos, voices shouting in Valdenstahl and Novic and Velorique, more gunfire.
And then Izuku was there, her hands on his chest, her face above him, and she was crying.
"No, no, no," she was saying, and her hands were already working, trying to stem the bleeding, but Katsuki could feel the warmth spreading through his chest and he knew. "Bakugo, stay with me, please stay with me—"
"Katsuki," he managed to say, and blood bubbled up in his mouth. "Call me... Katsuki."
"Katsuki," she sobbed. "Please, I can fix this, I can save you, just stay awake—"
But they both knew she couldn't. The bullet had done too much damage, hit something vital. He could feel his strength draining away with every heartbeat.
"You're gonna be... okay," he said, each word an effort. "The Allies... they'll take care of you..."
"I do not want to be okay without you," she said fiercely. "You cannot die. I forbid it. As your medic, I forbid it."
He tried to laugh, but it came out as a wet cough. "Sorry... not great at... following orders..."
The fighting had stopped around them. Katsuki was dimly aware of soldiers approaching—Allied, from the uniforms—but they seemed content to hang back, to let the medic work, to give them this moment.
"I love you," Izuku said suddenly, desperately. "I know it is foolish, we have known each other only for months, most of it apart, but I love you and you cannot leave me alone in this world—"
"Not... foolish," Katsuki managed. His hand found hers, squeezed weakly. "Love you... too... stupid medic..."
She was crying so hard she could barely see, her hands still trying to stop the bleeding even though they both knew it was useless, and Katsuki wished he had more time. Wished he could have given her the life she deserved, somewhere far from war and death.
But this was what they got. This moment in the mud, with blood on both their hands, surrounded by soldiers and weapons and the evidence of humanity's worst impulses.
"Thank you," he said, and he wasn't sure what he was thanking her for. For saving him, maybe. For being saved by him. For showing him that even in hell, there were still people worth dying for.
"Bitte," she whispered. "Bitte, do not go..."
But Katsuki could feel the darkness closing in, could feel his grip on consciousness slipping. The last thing he saw was her face, tear-stained and beautiful and utterly devastated.
The last thing he felt was her hand in his.
And then nothing.
__________________________________________
Izuku Midoriya survived the war.
She was taken in by the Allied forces, identified as a Velorique resistance medic, and eventually made her way back to Veloria after the armistice. She continued her medical work, helping to rebuild the shattered healthcare system, treating the wounded and traumatized in the war's aftermath.
She never married. Never had children. When people asked her about it, she'd smile sadly and say that she'd already given her heart away, and there wasn't enough left over for anyone else.
She kept a small photograph in her pocket at all times—one she'd found in Katsuki's uniform before the Allied soldiers took his body away. It showed a younger version of him, before the war had carved lines into his face, scowling at the camera like it had personally offended him.
On the back, in her own handwriting, she'd written: ‘Katsuki Bakugo. The bravest man I ever knew. He ran toward danger five times to save others. The sixth time, he ran to save me, and didn't run fast enough. I will love him until the day I die.’
And she did.