Chapter Text
Katsuki wakes up on a metal table with his right arm strapped with multiple buckles at his side and his left arm secured only with a thin band around his wrist.
His first thought is that the roles should be reversed — his stronger arm should be held down more tightly — but then he processes the fact that his left hand has been covered with what feels like a larger version of those Quirk-suppressing gloves that his mother used to make him wear as a kid, and his right hand is completely bare, which means that whoever took him is aware that he can’t produce anything more than a few sparks from his mangled palm.
His second thought is:
I don’t feel like dealing with this again.
He’s no stranger to being abducted — it happened a couple times when he was younger, more out of convenience rather than any targeted motive, and then there was Kamino, which he thought he got over pretty quickly due to the absolute shitshow that occurred in the months that followed — and he would like to say that the reason for his utter distaste is because the whole song and dance of these kidnappings has become boring, but that would be a lie, and he tries to avoid lying whenever possible. He knows in a not-deep-enough way that the real reason he hates getting snatched off the street like this, even though he knows logically that nothing truly horrible will happen to him, is because it scares him.
There’s nothing in the world that he hates more than being scared.
He can handle a truly vast amount of pain, and that threshold always seems to be increasing, but plain and simple fear is the one thing that he has never been able to ignore.
His mind has a defect that turns even the smallest inkling of anxiety or trepidation to full-blown terror, and he has always been like that, and he will probably always be like that, and the uncertainty of waking up in a strange place has never failed to send him into hysterics within a few minutes of gaining consciousness.
It always takes him a while to become fully aware of his surroundings, somehow. He can feel the panic building at the back of his mind as the world sharpens into view.
The restraints and table and blinding overhead lights: those are the first details, things that he noticed as soon as he woke up. He lists them all out because he knows that it’s important to keep the facts straight. He stares up at the ceiling and registers the smell of the room — or, rather, the utter lack of it. He has never been in such an odorless environment. He files that fact away, too, because there’s a chance it might be useful on the report he’ll have to fill out when he manages to escape.
He tugs at his right arm in an attempt to stave off his mounting panic. He notes with his best attempt at clinical detachment that the cuffs holding the injured limb to the table are padded, almost gentle on his skin, tightened enough to hold the limb down but not enough to even bruise.
Drawing his own conclusions from that, he hopes that means that whoever took him isn’t interested in actually hurting him. He’d be able to handle that, like he handles everything else, but it would be a pain in the ass to limp back to school with both his tail between his legs and new cuts and scrapes and scratches that Recovery Girl would undoubtedly chew him out for.
She’s been worse than ever since the war — always nagging and scolding and complaining about something — and he knows that it’s because she’s worried about him, but all her bitching and moaning still annoys him to no end.
That being said, he doesn’t really want to think about all the other reasons he could be here if his abductor is trying not to hurt him.
He starts to think about them anyway, because he can never seem to get a break — not even from his own horrible, traitorous mind. His imagination has always been too vivid for his own good, and right now it kicks into overdrive as he thinks about all the worst-case scenarios: another criminal recruitment attempt, a premeditated kidnapping, maybe even some kind of Quirk trafficking scheme. He supposes that all those options would probably be connected to one another, but right now his thoughts are running so rampant that every possible situation hits him like an individual blow.
His heart is beating too fast. He knows that even without the monitor that has been strapped to him since he woke up in the hospital after the war. He can feel the rapid thudding of it against his ribs, feels almost light-headed with the roar of his pulse in his ears.
This is bad. He needs to get out of here, and he needs to do it right now.
How the fuck did this even happen?
No matter how hard he tries, he can’t remember the events that led up to this moment. He must’ve been off-campus, because there’s no way that something like this would’ve occurred on school grounds, not with how much money has been invested into repairing the security systems. Katsuki remembers that one of his friends had somehow managed to trip an alarm back when they had all just gotten released from the hospital, and a half-dozen Pro Heroes had shown up so quickly that it was like they had simply materialized there. Everyone has been paranoid, terrified that something horrible and world-shattering might happen again, and that fear hasn’t abated even several months into the next school year. Katsuki exists on a hair-trigger of emotions, fight-or-flight instinct constantly oscillating between those two options, and he knows that the staff members at Yuuei have it even worse.
Which means that this didn’t happen while he was at school. He would’ve been rescued and returned to his room before a single person could lay a hand on him with the intent to harm.
… But that doesn’t make sense.
He hasn’t left campus since the last scheduled class outing. He has had no reason to leave campus, not when the school provides everything he needs, and even his parents have told him to stay where they know he’ll be safe — so what the fuck was he doing when he got snatched? He tries his best to think about it, to figure out some kind of logical, plausible answer, and comes up blank.
This doesn’t make sense.
None of this makes any fucking sense.
Katsuki tugs at the restraints again, chest tightening when the attempt yields the result he had been expecting. He tries to sit up through sheer force of will and only manages to send a flare of pain all the way up to his right shoulder. He doesn’t want to just lay there and wait for something to happen, but that’s exactly what he ends up doing, because he’s weak and useless and will always need someone to save him.
There’s no way to tell time in a place like this. He stares up at the ceiling, thankful that he hasn’t been placed directly under one of the glaring lights, and has settled into a kind of numb resignation when the door finally opens.
He turns his head and glares at the person walking toward him. His voice comes out weaker than he’d like when he asks, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Good afternoon,” the man says. He doesn’t look like much — plain-faced and dark-haired, expression carefully neutral, completely unreadable. He lowers his clipboard slightly and gives Katsuki a scrutinizing once-over. “Are you Bakugou Katsuki?”
“Tell me —”
“Answer the question, please.”
Katsuki resists the urge to slam his head against the table. “Tell me what’s happening!”
The man gives a flat, toneless hum in response. He scratches at an itch on his neck with the back of his pen, then scribbles something down on his clipboard. “I’ll note that you seem to lack the ability to follow directions.”
“Fuck you!” Katsuki struggles against the restraints, blood boiling in his veins. “What the fuck is your problem, asshat?! Just tell me what’s going on!”
He’s more angry than scared at this point, fear overshadowed by the pure fury mounting in his chest. He thinks that he might choke on it — can feel it clawing up the back of his throat, hot and familiar and suffocating, and the only thing he wants to do is rip this bastard apart for having the audacity to treat him like this.
“Do you have any secrets that you would never let another person know about, no matter how much pain you were forced to endure?”
Katsuki sputters — chokes on his next ragged breath. He’s so startled that he completely forgets that he’s supposed to be angry. He blinks dumbly at the man and asks, “What kinda question is that?”
“Having important information to protect isn’t necessary, but some people have found that it makes this exercise feel more realistic,” the man continues, reciting the words like he’s reading them straight from a textbook. He maintains eye contact as he speaks, and there’s nothing that Katsuki wants to do more than look away, but he forces himself to hold the man’s gaze because he doesn’t want to seem any more vulnerable than he already is. “However, please keep in mind that offering that information will not change anything.”
Every word that leaves his mouth only makes Katsuki even more confused. His anger has long-since fizzled away, replaced by utter bewilderment and a slow, creeping dread.
The man gives him a brief, perfunctory smile. “Do you have any questions, Bakugou?”
Katsuki feels suddenly, achingly small, trapped like a bug under a microscope, and he can’t breathe. He doesn’t realize that he’s about to cry until the tears have already started welling up in his eyes. He hates how sensitive he has become, despises his own emotional instability, and thinks that he would rather die than be laying here right now. “What’s all this bullshit about secrets — are you about to interrogate me?”
He almost laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. He thinks that he would laugh if this situation wasn’t so simultaneously terrifying.
The man’s expression doesn’t change at all. He obviously doesn’t deem Katsuki’s question as important enough to answer, because he ignores it completely as he says, “You’re more likely to be isolated and contained than your peers, given the fact that you’ve already made several public appearances, which means that this training will absolutely be necessary.”
“Training —?”
“Comply with the instructions given to you.” The man pauses, then adds in a softer, almost kindly tone, “Despite how unbearable it may feel at the moment, this program was devised to help rather than hurt, and it would be in your best interest to use this as a learning experience.”
Katsuki makes a noise — a weak, strangled sound. His head spins, his chest hurts, and the only thing he wants to do is wake up and realize that this was just some strange, fucked-up dream. He should be struggling, should be fighting back with all his strength, but it’s like he’s been drugged or something: his limbs refuse to work, mouth dry enough that it’s impossible to form any words. He can feel the temperature of the room dropping by several degrees, the overhead lights dimming so slightly and steadily that it makes him wonder if he’s simply going insane, and he realizes in a single, vital moment that nobody is coming to save him.
The man speaks again, voice sounding far-away like he’s speaking from the end of a very long tunnel:
“This session will be recorded and reviewed.”
The room goes dark.
—
There are three main categories of torture: physical, physiological, and sensory. There is no shortage of ways to break a person’s will, and heroes are the most targeted due to the confidential information that they often hold.
That being said, it is of the utmost importance that they know how to handle those types of situations. Drill it into these students’ heads that the mission comes before the man. Place them in situations where they have to make impossible choices, break past their boundaries, reshape them into the perfect heroes.
What happened a few months ago absolutely cannot happen again.
—
The towel that they put over his face is clean.
Katsuki notices that in an off-handed kind of way, smelling the faint floral scent of laundry detergent even through the buzz of panic that has overtaken his mind. His entire body is rigid, ankles strapped down as well after he refused to stop kicking out at the hands reaching from the darkness to manhandle him into place, and he feels dizzy from the angle that the table has been tilted into — arms still secured at his sides, legs elevated in a way that makes all the blood rush to his head. He yanks at every restraint and only stops when he hears the unmistakable sound of something filled with water being set down.
This isn’t happening.
He thinks the words, almost says them out loud.
This can’t be happening. He doesn’t know why this is happening, doesn’t know how to stop it from happening, which means that it simply can’t be happening, because it doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t real, this isn’t logical, and this most definitely can’t be —
The torture starts.
Katsuki opens his mouth on instinct, and only manages to inhale the water that crashes down over his face, soaking into the towel, cold enough to chill him to the bone. His entire body seizes — limbs locking up, jerking in harsh, sporadic movements — and he realizes vaguely that his right arm has been secured so much because allowing it to thrash around like the rest of him would set the healing back by several months.
The water keeps coming, and he gets locked into a horrible, vicious cycle: he tries to breathe, panics when he realizes that’s impossible, tries to cough to clear his lungs, and panics even more when he realizes that that’s impossible, too.
There’s a hollow pit in his stomach, a yawning chasm that grows wider with every second that passes. He only realizes that the downward pour has stopped when the soaked towel is peeled away from his face.
Katsuki takes a ragged, gasping breath, and then immediately bursts into a coughing fit so violent that he nearly throws up. His head spins as the table is leveled back out, and the only thing he wants to do is curl into a fetal position and bawl his eyes out, but all he can manage to do is gasp and choke and cough. His chest heaves. He thinks that he might be dead, that he’s dying, and he’s a few short moments away from blacking out completely when the lights turn on again.
“That was a technique called waterboarding.”
Katsuki is shaking, trembling so hard that he thinks he might fall apart at the seams. He’s too terrified to even snap something snarky at the person who just spoke.
“The session lasted twenty-five seconds.” The voice is different from the man who greeted Katsuki earlier, accompanied by the scratching sound of a pen against paper. “As expected, the trainee panicked and exacerbated the effects of the procedure. Will review and correct mistakes before attempting again.”
Twenty-five seconds — less than half a minute. Katsuki feels like it had been going on for an hour. He realizes that he’s crying at the same moment that someone steps into view.
The person is a woman, this time. She doesn’t look like she belongs here, doesn’t look like she should be doing something like this. Her expression is almost serene as she says, “I think that you’ll be pleased to know that you’re doing better than most of your classmates.”
Katsuki’s head lolls back against the table. He takes a weak, wheezing breath, unable to even react to the knowledge that his friends are going through this as well.
“I know that this isn’t a pleasant experience, but it’s necessary training.” The woman’s hand settles gently on his injured wrist, light as a feather but still enough to make his skin crawl. “Wouldn’t it be worse if you graduated without knowing how to handle things like this?”
Katsuki stares up at the ceiling until he feels marginally more sane. He wants to close his eyes and go to sleep, but he knows that’s not an option, so he settles for muttering a hoarse, “I’m gonna kill you.”
He really, truly does want to kill her. He knows that that’s not an option, either.
“Waterboarding is an effective enhanced interrogation method because it preys on the subject’s innate fear of drowning,” the woman responds, still smiling like Katsuki hadn’t just threatened her life. “That makes it extremely difficult to withstand. Physical resistance is nearly always impossible, which means that mental fortitude is more often than not the only way to protect any information from being revealed.”
Katsuki watches her through the soaked fall of his hair, blinking away the water dripping into his eyes. He’s still trembling slightly, more from the cold than anything, and he can barely process a single word that’s being said to him.
The woman tilts her head slightly to the side. Her smile fades a little, melding into a pensive expression as she says, “Knowing that you aren’t going to die is perhaps the most important aspect of retaining your composure. Keep track of the seconds, remember that there are people depending on you, and do your best to remain calm — after all, in real-life situations like these, you’d most likely be killed after giving up any kind of important information. The only way to prevent that is to resist the urge to relinquish control.”
“Stop —” Katsuki takes a shuddering breath. “Stop fuckin’ talking to me like that. You sound like a goddamn robot.”
He remembers the man from earlier talking in that stilted way as well, each word carefully spoken and enunciated to really drive the point home. His tone had been different from the woman’s almost gentle voice, but it still has the same flat, clinical affect, and that pisses him off so much that he almost forgets that he’s still terrified.
“I don’t understand what you —”
Katsuki snarls, interrupting her with the low, animalistic noise. “Shut up! Just shut up, will you? Don’t you have anything better to do with your life than sit here and talk to me?”
The woman frowns at him, eyes narrowing. “Are you that desperate to continue?”
“Nuh-uh.” Katsuki jerks repeatedly against the restraints, knowing that he’ll have belt-shaped bruises pressed into his skin when he finally manages to escape — and also knowing that’ll be the least of his worries. “Fuck you, I hope you die — don’t touch me, don’t fucking touch me, I’ll kill you —”
“The next session will be longer. I’ll make sure to keep it under forty seconds, but this training is designed to break past your limits, Bakugou. I can’t do that unless you accept the fact that this isn’t going to stop until you give me what I want.”
“I don’t give a fuck about what you want,” Katsuki says, but his heart isn’t in it, and his attempt at bravado falls flat and pathetic to the floor.
“But I want the same thing that you want,” the woman counters. “I want to make you stronger. Think of this as just another way to shape you into the best hero that you can be.”
Her hand snakes under the table, and there’s the soft, nearly inaudible click of a button being pressed. Katsuki squeezes his eyes shut as he feels the table start to tilt again, heart clenching painfully in his chest as the red-blackness switches suddenly into pure dark as the lights turn back off.
He flinches as a new, dry towel is laid down over his face.
“Count the seconds.” The woman’s voice is calm and cool and collected, like this is something that she does every day. “Stay calm. That’s the only way you’ll be able to get through this.”
Katsuki can barely hear her voice through the static filling his head. His chest is tight with anticipation, and he just keeps waiting for it to happen, waiting for the water to start pouring down — and the waiting is almost the worst part, freezing him in place, making it impossible to breathe even while he still can.
He waits and waits and hears the faint noise of the woman speaking above him.
“This session will last thirty-five seconds. The trainee has been informed of his past mistakes and is expected to make an attempt to rectify them. Starting in three, two, one…”
And then Katsuki is drowning again.