Chapter Text
Katsuki’s hands always hurt. They hurt so much that sometimes he can’t feel them at all, and then they’re just numb, prickling like his feet do when he kneels for too long. Falling asleep, that’s what his father used to call it. Back when Katsuki was still good enough to talk to.
His father hadn’t spoken to him for an entire week before Katsuki burned the house down and ruined everything, Katsuki remembers that. He also remembers the way that his mother looked at him, and the way her face would twist up whenever Katsuki did something bad, like knock down a vase or speak even though nobody had asked him a question or anything.
His mother always wanted him to be quiet.
That was hard, because Katsuki’s Quirk was so loud that it made his own ears hurt, and that’s why his parents had to buy that thing that locked his arms together and made it so that he couldn’t explode anything.
He thinks that he was supposed to thank them for helping him, but he never did. He was always crying too hard.
And then he killed them.
For some reason, he can never remember that all the way. He keeps forgetting that they’re gone. Not gone like they were whenever they had to go on a work trip, but gone forever, gone in the way that meant they were never coming back. Dead, and it was all his fault. Everything is always his fault. He can’t do anything right, that’s what his mother would tell him, and Eraserhead tells him that too, so it must be the truth.
Katsuki likes Eraserhead. He doesn’t feel like he has any other choice. Eraserhead doesn’t like him, but that’s okay, because he still saved Katsuki after the accident, even though he didn’t have to. Parents had to take care of their kids, but Eraserhead isn’t his parent, which means that he’s taking care of Katsuki just because he’s a nice person.
But there are times when he doesn’t seem very nice. Times when his face looks the same as Katsuki remembers his mother looking at him, all twisted and dark. Angry. Those are the times when Katsuki gets so scared that it’s hard to breathe, because when Eraserhead is angry —
Katsuki tries not to remember anything about those times. Tries to forget. His arm is almost healed, anyway. Eraserhead said it himself.
Too bad that Uncle Hizashi isn’t here to sign the cast, though. Katsuki knows that Uncle Hizashi isn’t really his uncle, just like Auntie Nemuri isn’t actually his aunt, but they both look happy when he calls them that, so he keeps doing it. He wonders what would happen if he ever tried to call Eraserhead something else, like Dad or Papa. Eraserhead would get mad at him, probably. Really mad. Especially after what Katsuki did to his old father. He might start thinking that Katsuki wants to kill him, like he killed his parents, like he killed the cat.
He misses Sushi every day. He used to talk to her when Eraserhead went to work, but now all he has is his stuffed animals, like the bears and tiger and panda from when Uncle Hizashi was decorating the room for him, and the giraffe from the hospital. Katsuki likes the giraffe because Eraserhead gave it to him. Eraserhead only really gives him things that get used up, like food and candy, but the giraffe stays right on its special spot on the bed no matter how many times Katsuki looks away.
Talking to the stuffed animals isn’t very fun, even though Katsuki loves them. He has to make up conversations and change his voice so that he can pretend that they’re actually speaking to him, but then his mouth gets dry, and the cups in the kitchen are too high up for him to reach without climbing on the counter, and Eraserhead would get mad at him if he ever did that. Katsuki spends a lot of time thinking about all the ways that Eraserhead could get upset with him, and he doesn’t like thinking about that, but the thoughts keep coming, anyway. They stack up in his mind like building blocks. He can never stop crying when they get too loud. He always thinks that he doesn’t have any tears left in him, but he always does.
Eraserhead is scary when he’s mad. He’s always scary, but it’s even worse when Katsuki does something wrong — like when he locked his door, even though he knew that he wasn’t supposed to. That’s the first time that Eraserhead hit him. He was a lot stronger than Katsuki’s mother used to be, so it hurt a lot, but it was just one hit, so it wasn’t too bad.
But then Katsuki killed Sushi, and Eraserhead hurt him so badly that Katsuki had to go to the hospital. That’s where he got the giraffe. His sides still hurt a lot whenever he breathes in too deep.
Katsuki still remembers the blood and the way that Eraserhead was yelling at him. He remembers Eraserhead grabbing his arm and making him hold his hand over the stove, and the rest of it after that is all blurry, but Katsuki knows that it hurt. He remembers thinking that Eraserhead was going to kill him, and that would’ve been fair, because Katsuki killed his parents and the cat, but he still didn’t want to die.
Maybe it’s wrong to not want to die after all the bad things that he has done. He doesn’t know.
There are a lot of questions that he wants to ask Eraserhead, but Katsuki is scared to talk to him. He’s scared of a lot of things, like the apartment when it’s empty at night and the sound of the front door slamming shut and when Eraserhead is yelling at him. Eraserhead yells at him and then hits him and it hurts, and then he says that he’s sorry, but Katsuki is scared of him when he does that, too. He’s just scared. He tries to be brave but he’s not. He had friends when his parents were alive, and he was the bravest of them all because everyone else was just so scared, so it was easy to boss them around, but now he’s alone and there’s nobody more afraid than him. Eraserhead isn’t afraid, Uncle Hizashi isn’t afraid, Auntie Nemuri isn’t afraid. They’re all heroes, and Katsuki is just a stupid little brat. A bad kid. He’ll never be anything else.
It’s hard to think about what he wants to be when he grows up. He had a lot of dreams before he came here, but now they’re all gone, and that makes him feel even more alone. He could be a firefighter or a police officer or a doctor, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a point in thinking about any of that.
It doesn’t feel like there’s a point in doing anything.
He’s so tired all the time, and sometimes he can’t even get out of bed because his body feels so heavy. He doesn’t even know what month it is. He just knows that it doesn’t feel like he’ll ever get any bigger or stronger than this.
Those thoughts scare him. He can’t stop them, just like he can’t stop the bad dreams that happen at night. He used to wake up crying from those, but then he got too loud and Eraserhead had to tell him to shut up, and so now when he wakes up he just stares at the ceiling until it’s light outside or Eraserhead comes home, whichever happens first. Uncle Hizashi would help if he knew about the nightmares, but he doesn’t know about them, and he isn’t even here, so Katsuki tries not to wish for things that he can’t have. He always just makes himself sad.
Plus, Uncle Hizashi would get mad at Eraserhead. Katsuki thinks so, anyway. He knows that Uncle Hizashi got mad when Eraserhead hit him that first time, even though Eraserhead lied and said that Katsuki fell, but he didn’t do anything, not really. Katsuki got taken away for a few days but that was just because Eraserhead was too tired to leave his room, not because of the hit or the bruise or any of that, so Katsuki really doesn’t know what would happen if Uncle Hizashi knew about this.
He knows about Katsuki being left alone, but he hasn’t done anything about that, so maybe that means it’s okay, and Katsuki is just being a crybaby. Maybe he just needs to toughen up. His mother said that to him whenever he cried over a scraped knee or anything like that, Toughen up. Stop whining. Eraserhead would probably say that to him, too, if he ever spoke to Katsuki at all.
It’s okay, though. Everything is okay! Katsuki knows that everything is okay because things could be a lot worse.
Still, it feels like the world is ending every night. He watches Eraserhead put on his boots and then walk out the door and then the only sound is the neighbor’s voice through the walls and whatever conversation that Katsuki has with his stuffed animals. Sometimes he doesn’t do anything but hide under his blankets or in the closet. He likes the closet because the door could close if he wanted it to, even though he doesn’t want it to, and he knows that because he did it one time and then cried so hard that he almost threw up. He just likes knowing that he could close it. If he wanted to — which he doesn’t. But he could.
Dinner is always just whatever Katsuki finds in the fridge. Leftovers, sandwich meat, things like that. He’s not allowed to touch Eraserhead’s drinks, just the juice boxes and little water bottles that always run out too fast. He has to be careful to not take too much of anything, because Eraserhead doesn’t have a lot of money, that’s what Auntie Nemuri said. Heroes are supposed to get a lot of money, but Eraserhead is just a special kind that doesn’t. He still sometimes comes home with candy or crayons for Katsuki, and that makes Katsuki love him so much that it makes his chest hurt and he almost starts to cry.
Drawing is just about the only thing that Katsuki likes to do. He uses all the brightest colors in the box and draws people, animals, houses. Red and orange and yellow. His mind goes all fuzzy and then there’s blood scribbled all over the page. He doesn’t like it when that happens, but he likes everything else about drawing, so he keeps doing it. He just makes sure to flip to a new page so that his cats don’t have to live next to all those screaming faces.
He remembers that Eraserhead drew a picture with him, back before Sushi died. When everything was better. Eraserhead was nicer back then, but that was before he realized that he didn’t like Katsuki, so it makes sense that he isn’t as nice now.
But it’s okay. Eraserhead is busy. He doesn’t have time for stupid things like drawing pictures or reading Katsuki any more bedtime stories. Katsuki doesn’t mind at all. Really. He doesn’t.
It’d be stupid to care. And selfish. Katsuki doesn’t want to be either of those things, so he tries to stay out of Eraserhead’s way. When he closes his eyes, he can almost forget that he’s alive, because everything is just red-black darkness. He likes to sleep because it feels the same way, at least when he’s not having bad dreams. He just doesn’t like to be awake. There’s nothing to do and no one who likes him and he feels tired all the time, so tired that it feels impossible to be that tired, but it is possible, because Katsuki is that tired, and it’s horrible.
It’s silly, but sometimes Katsuki thinks that he might already be dead.