Chapter Text
The war did not end all at once. People would say it did later, on television specials and documentaries with dramatic music, like there had been one final punch, one final scream where evil collapsed and everyone survived. But Katsuki knew that wasn’t how it worked.
Too many quirks detonated at once until the sky was completely unstable, glowing strange colors through black smoke clouds and explosions that weren’t his own. Somewhere, someone was shouting evacuation orders as metal scrapped against metal. Katsuki remembered the heat coating his skin as it felt impossible to breathe, and the metallic taste of blood in his mouth every breath he took. He felt himself running without even realizing it.
No.
Not running.
Chasing. Always chasing.
“Izuku!”
His own voice sounded wrong— desperate, in a way. Nothing like himself at all.
“Kacchan—“
Izuku stood ahead of him, his voice the most clear sound out of all the noise in Katsuki’s head. He was barely visible, green lightning stuttering weakly across broken limbs. He looked terrible. Worse than terrible. Blood ran down his face, one arm hanging at his side, costume torn apart so badly Katsuki could see purple-black bruising spread half across his chest.
He was still smiling. Still somehow fucking smiling, even as he slowly fell to the ground.
Katsuki managed to limp toward him, propping Izuku up against a pile of rubble.
”We did it, Kacchan,” he mumbled, eyes unfocused yet focused on him at the same time.
“Yeah,” Katsuki managed. “We did.”
“I have somethin’ to tell you,” Izuku replied, barely audible.
”No,” Katsuki interrupted. “You’re not dying. You can tell me later.”
He ignored the burning feeling all throughout his chest, and he could feel something slowly flowing down his head. Blood. This wasn't fair. He had so much to say.
“I love you, Kacchan.” Izuku managed. “Always have, always will.”
Katsuki will never forget the look on his damn face when he said that. There was no trace of fear, no trace of regret, but certainty. Like he was certain this would be his last time saying this.
“I love you too, nerd,” Katsuki croaked. He tried to make it sound tough, but instead it came out so desperate, so fast.
No matter how hard he fought it, the light swallowed everything after that. This wasn’t fair. He had so many things he needed to say to him.
Izuku, remember our All Might cards?
Izuku, I still have the birthday gift you made me when we were kids.
Izuku, I wish I never said that to you in middle school.
Izuku, you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.
Izuku, don’t do this to me.
Izuku, don’t go.
“His heart is crashing—“
”Get him stabilized, now!”
”’Zuku—“
”Bakugo, don’t move.”
Katsuki felt hands grabbing him. Voices overlapping. He could practically feel the familiar smell of antiseptic mixing horribly with smoke still trapped somewhere in his lungs. He remembers trying to sit up despite something in his rips screaming immediately afterward.
A ceiling light passed overhead as someone wheeled him down endless hospital hallways, and white fluorescent lights burned into his vision one after another after another.
He remembered trying to rip the oxygen mask off his face because nobody would answer him. He remembered restraints on his wrists at some point. He remembered shouting himself hoarse, and he remembered darkness again.
Time— At least his concept of time, had stopped existing after that. Sometimes he surfaced halfway into consciousness hearing voices around him.
“…extensive internal damage…”
“…miracle he survived…”
“…still unconscious…”
“…the funer—”
Memories had started blending together and now Katsuki really couldn’t keep track of time. He remembered brown hair first, then red hair, he remembered a hand gripping his tightly enough to hurt, he remembered his mother crying, which was the most disturbing, because his mother never cried.
Whenever he got hurt, she had always been more angry than emotional. To the Bakugos, or at least the blondes of the family, anger fixed things. It moved things forward instead of wallowing in pity. Hell, even when he got kidnapped, he didn’t see her cry a single tear. But here she was, in these drifting memories, he remembered hearing her cry quietly beside his bed.
”…greatest loss of heroes in modern history…”
”…new symbol of hope…”
”…unforgettable sacrifice…”
The memories started getting worse, because every time he surfaced enough to think clearly, not one person said Deku’s name. Not the doctors or nurses, not his parents, not any of his damn friends lingering by his side. Nobody at all.
And Katsuki understood it before he was ready to. Even unconscious, part of him understood.
He remembered dark green curls against the sunlight when they were children.
“Look Kacchan! Look what I can do!”
“Stupid Deku, anyone can do that.”
Somehow, every major moment of Katsuki’s life somehow led him back to Izuku. Like gravity.
The next time he finally gained consciousness, it hurt. It hurt a-fucking-lot. A deep throbbing ache hit his chest, and stomach, and shoulders, actually scratch that, it hurt everywhere. It was as if the doctors had taken his body apart and put it back incorrectly with some cheap glue.
Even breathing felt wrong. His mouth tasted dry enough to crack and he felt like he was sinking into the bed he was on— though it felt like cement. He heard steady beeping first, then fabric rustling nearby, then his mother inhaling sharply.
That sound made Katsuki force his eyes open. Machines and dim hospital lighting surrounded him, and his parents sat beside the bed.
His mom looked awful. She always made it a point to make sure she always looked composed, even in their household. But here, in a semi-public area, her eyes were swollen red, her makeup was completely gone, and her hair looked like she stopped caring years ago. His dad looked slightly better, but still just as exhausted as she was. His shoulders slumped forward in a defeated way that Katsuki had never seen before.
He jerked upright violently, and the pain that ripped through his ribs instantly were hard enough to blacken his vision around the edges.
“Easy!” his father said immediately.
“Izuku?”
Silence. Too much silence, and his mother’s expression broke first— this look of grief and pain that Katsuki had never seen on her before. And he knew. No.
No no no no—
“Izuku?” he repeated harder this time, like saying it differently would change the answer.
Nobody spoke, and that was the answer. Something inside him caved inward so violently it felt physical.
“No.”
His voice came out different than he had wanted it to sound.
“No.”
“Katsuki—”
“No!”
He ripped the IV from his arm before either parent could stop him, ignoring the pain soaring through his hand as blood spotted the sheets instantly. Machines started screaming beside him but he barely heard them over the roaring in his ears.
“No!”
He shoved himself out of bed. The second his feet hit the floor his knees almost gave out beneath him. Pain shot viciously through his torso but adrenaline forced him forward anyway.
His mother grabbed for him. “Katsuki!”
He staggered toward the hospital door half-blind, dragging wires and monitors with him. His chest burned. His heartbeat felt wrong. Too fast. Too uneven.
Doesn’t matter.
“I need to see him.”
His father stepped in front of him carefully. “Son—”
“MOVE!”
His voice cracked halfway through the scream. Katsuki Bakugo did not sound like this. Weak. Desperate. Small.
He stumbled into the hallway anyway, ignoring the pile of shame and guilt and grief filling up his lungs.
Nurses turned immediately. Someone shouted for a doctor. Hospital lights blurred together painfully bright against his vision as he limped forward without direction because he didn’t even know where he was trying to go. Another room. This had to be some sick, elaborate joke that was being played on him.
His mother caught his arm and he almost ripped it away before realizing she was crying again.
”Katsuki,” she whispered shakily. “Please.”
He stopped, even though every thought in his head screamed at him not to. But his body physically couldn’t keep going anymore. His legs gave out beneath him fast enough that his father had barely caught him before he hit the floor.
The hallway floor was freezing.
Someone guided him into a chair outside his room while doctors hovered nearby uncertainly. Katsuki stared blankly ahead while his parents spoke to him, voices muffled and distant like underwater static. Words reached him in fragments.
“…severe injuries…”
“…couldn’t…”
“…hero commission…”
Nothing processed correctly, and all he could focus on was anything else but their words. The sharp unbearable ache inside his chest, the way his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, the pitying glances from nurses walking past, the pressure building in his throat.
It wasn’t until something warm hit the back of his hand that Katsuki realized he was crying. He stared at the tear landing on his lap in complete confusion for half a second. Then another
His voice came out weak when he finally spoke. “…How long?”
His mother wiped at her face quickly. “What?”
“How long since…?”
Since the war ended. Since Katsuki arrived in this hospital. Since Izuku died.
The hesitation before she answered felt like forever. “A week.”
A week. An entire week of the world existing without Izuku Midoriya in it. His father crouched slightly in front of him, speaking gently like Katsuki was something fragile now.
“The nurses need to check your injuries again.”
He could only nod faintly. He felt emptied out, like the war had reached inside him and removed something vital. As his parents slowly helped him stand again, a couple turned the corner down the hallway toward the elevators.
Katsuki recognized them immediately despite the blurriness clouding his eyes. They were Uraraka’s parents. He briefly met them as the class had said their ‘final goodbyes’ before they were sent off to a war.
They looked older somehow. Exhausted in the same specific way everyone did now. Her mother’s eyes widened slightly upon seeing him standing there while his own parents stiffened beside him. Nobody knew what to say. What even existed to say anymore?
So instead, the adults exchanged small sad smiles and quiet nods. The kind people gave each other after funerals.
Then they disappeared into the elevator.
That meant Uraraka was somewhere in that hospital, most of his classmates most likely were. But he couldn’t think about any of them right now. All he could do was understand with horrifying clarity that even though the war had ended, this was only the beginning.
—
The next day passed in pieces. Doctors came in and out of his room constantly, checking the injuries he barely managed to understand. Broken ribs, internal damage, strain on his arms from overusing his quirk. Every injury felt irrelevant now. They could have told him he was dying and he genuinely did not think he would have cared enough to react.
The television stayed muted in the corner of the room all morning, flashing footage of reconstruction efforts across Japan. Crumbled highways. Rescue teams. Crowds holding flowers outside destroyed hero agencies. Every channel used the same words over and over again. Recovery. Sacrifice. Victory.
Katsuki wanted to put his fist through the screen.
His room was overwhelmingly sterile now that the smoke from the battlefield was completely gone from his senses. It made him feel trapped in a way. Every few minutes, he caught himself staring toward the door and expecting it to open and reveal someone standing there with green hair and freckles and a stupid smile plastered on his face like none of this happened.
But that door never opened, and Izuku Midoriya was dead.
Katsuki lay back against the hospital pillows staring at the ceiling while rain tapped softly against the windows outside. He hated how quiet everything was now. During the war there had at least been noise constantly, like explosions, or screaming. Now silence sat beside every thought, forcing him to sit alone with memories he didn’t know how to survive.
He remembered being four years old and shoving Izuku into the dirt beside the river. He remembered middle school hallways and cruel words spat thoughtlessly. He remembered burning Izuku, and his notebook a few months after. He remembered the shock he had seeing that stupid look of hope on his face almost every day. He remembered apologizing. He remembered Izuku reaching his hand toward him during the war. A knock at the door pulled him out of it.
His father stood there quietly. He looked exhausted still, tie loosened and eyes shadowed heavily from lack of sleep.
“Katsuki,” he said gently. “There’s a visitor here.”
Immediately his mind jumped toward Kirishima. Maybe Aizawa. Maybe both. The thought alone made exhaustion and dread fill him, because he didn’t know how to talk to anyone right now. He didn’t know how to sit through pitying looks or careful voices or condolences that made everything feel more real. Still, he gave a small nod.
His father hesitated for just a second before opening the door wider.
Not Kirishima nor Aizawa.
Inko Midoriya stood in the doorway, and the only word Katsuki could find to describe how she looked right now was wrong.
She had always felt warm to him somehow. Soft sweaters and gentle smiles and the smell of home-cooked food whenever he’d awkwardly ended up at the Midoriya apartment as a kid. Even when they got older and things between him and Izuku became complicated and ugly and painful, she had still greeted him kindly every single time she saw him.
Now she looked like a ghost. Her eyes were swollen red and puffy enough that Katsuki wondered if she had slept at all. Her skin looked pale almost gray beneath the hospital lighting, and there was something hollow about her face now, like grief had physically carved pieces out of her. She had lost weight too. Enough that the sleeves of her cardigan hung loosely around her wrists.
Katsuki sat up immediately. “Auntie.” he greeted.
This was Izuku’s mom. The person who used to patch scraped knees when they were children. The person who cried when Izuku got accepted into U.A. The person who loved him first before anyone else did.
And Katsuki had failed to bring her son home alive.
“Katsuki,” she said softly.
His father stepped out of the room, giving them privacy. The door clicked shut behind him.
She walked slowly toward the bed and sat carefully beside him.
He realized now that he was almost a foot taler than her now, even sitting down. Now, he was broad-shouldered and scarred, but his brain kept replaying the images of how she was when they were children. How she’d stand over both him and Izuku when they were little, hands on her hips while scolding them for fighting. Even though it wasn’t Izuku who had faught—- it was just Katsui completely attacking him for no reason. Her laughing softly while serving curry rice at their kitchen table. Her wiping his tears whenever his own mom was too harsh to him.
He opened his mouth to say something, but words couldn’t come out. She just looked at him the same way she always did— caring and warm. That made him feel even worse.
“I’m sorry, Auntie.”
Her expression broke slightly. ”Katsuki…”
“I couldn’t—“ he tried. “I couldn’t save him.”
The words started spilling out before he could stop them.
”I tried, Auntie. I swear I tried. I should’ve been faster. I should’ve—“
”Katsuki,” she said softly but sharply at the same time, and he could hear her voice trembling despite how calm she tried to sound. She grabbed his hand. “This is not your fault.”
He shook his head.
”You were children fighting in a war.”
They weren’t children, they were heroes. They trained like them, fought like them, bled like them. But sitting here in this bed with Izuku’s mother holding his hand, he felt seven years old again. Young, and angry, and helpless.
“You loved him,” she whispered. “That’s all that matters.”
She said it so easily, like it was obvious, like she had always known. Maybe she had.
Maybe every adult around them had understood long before either of them did that Katsuki’s entire life had somehow wrapped itself around Izuku Midoriya’s existence. Rivalry and resentment and admiration and guilt were tangled together, and no one, not even him, knew where one feeling ended and another began.
He tried so desperately to stay composed after that. This was her son. Her child. She should not have been comforting him right now. He should be the strong one, comforting her. He knew that. So he clenched his jaw hard enough it hurt and looked away, blinking against the tears threatening him, but she gently pulled him closer anyway.
He cried like a child as she held him.
—
The funeral was held four days later. U.A. paid for everything— from what he knew. Katsuki was nowhere near getting discharged from the hospital, but his parents knew he would be going to this either way. For Deku.
There were cameras stationed far outside the ceremony gates, crowds gathered behind barricades holding flowers and handmade signs with shaking hands. News reprters circled overhead despite strict requests for privacy. Pro heroes stood guard around the property in silence. Katsuki hated all of it instantly, and he resisted the urge to punch all of those journalists back to where they came from.
The service was held at a traditional temple just outside Musutafu, one large enough to accommodate the impossible amount of people arriving. Everything felt so public.
Most people Katsuki recognized— neighbors, heroes, politicians, schoolmates.
He stood near the back, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a black coat he stared at for hours before putting it on. Beside him, his mom quietly adjusted the collar of his suit for the fifth time despite the fact he was taller than her now. His dad stood nearby, softly speaking with Inko.
But he couldn’t hear any of it, because his eyes stayed fixed on the front of the temple. There was a framed photograph of Izuku smiling, surrounded by flowers. It was a real smile, not the fake, nervous one he uses around strangers. The smile that always showed up when he got excited talking about heroes.
Everytime he tried to look away, his eyes drifted back again like some kind of punishment. The place slowly filled with more and more people.
Nobody looked like themselves anymore, especially his classmates. Kirishima walked in first with Ashido beside him, but even from across the room Katsuki could see how exhausted they both looked. Her eyes were swollen red like she’d spent days crying, and Kirishima looked strangely empty without his usual energy holding him together.
Kaminari and Jiro entered together quietly after them. Normally Kaminari would have been talking too loudly about something stupid while Jiro threatened to hit him. Today neither of them spoke.
Todoroki arrived with his siblings, Iida looked thinner somehow, and Uraraka had the same exhausted look on her face. All of their families were there as well, including her parents.
The last time he had seen Uraraka was during the war, she had been covered in blood desperately trying to keep Toga alive long enough for medical support to arrive. Almost the same thing he was trying to do for Deku. Both of them failed.
Now she looked pale and fragile beneath the dark funeral clothes she wore. Her eyes looked empty, like pieces of her were somewhere else entirely. Katsuki guessed he was staring for too long, because their eyes met. Usually if something like that would happen she’d smile and crack a joke about him being grumpy, but instead, she looked away as someone— Asui, approached her.
The ceremony hasn’t even started yet, and Katsuki wanted to leave. Present Mic looked down, and Aizawa looked worse. The scars from the war were still healing visibly, but somehow the grief looked heavier than any physical injury. Katsuki had never seen his teacher look old before.
Recovery Girl and Best Jeanist had arrived too, but out of all the pro heroes, All Might looked the most visibly upset. He looked like more than a grieving teacher— a grieving father.
For the first time in Katsuki’s life, he didn’t look like the Symbol of Peace. He walked slower now. The injuries from years ago seemed even more obvious under the black suit he wore instead of his usual hero clothes.
All Might’s eyes looked exactly like his own had in the mirror. Destroyed. Hopeless.
Katsuki watched him walk to Inko, and bow. Lower than Katsuki had seen him bow to anyone. She immediately shook her head through tears and grabbed his hands before he could fully finish, but he stayed there for a moment anyway, shoulders trembling slightly.
He looked away. Katsuki knew he couldn’t handle seeing that.
The ceremony began after. Words blurred together after a while. He sat through all of it feeling strangely detached from his own body. Like he was underwater. Like none of this could possibly be real because Izuku had always moved too much, talked too much, muttered too loudly to fit inside a wooden coffin at the front of the room.
Everyone described him the same in their speeches. They told stories about Izuku’s heroism, called him kind, selfless, brave and hopeful.
He watched as Eri sat beside Mirio in the front rows reserved for U.A., her small black dress wrinkled slightly like someone had dressed her in a hurry that morning. Her legs swung faintly above the floor because the chair was still too tall for her even now.
Mirio sat beside her with one arm draped carefully behind her chair the entire ceremony, like he was making sure she stayed tethered to something solid. The large smile that was usually on his face was gone, so painfully subdued.
She whispered something to him as Aizawa spoke, and Mirio whispered something back. Katsuki watched quietly as they spoke in hushed voices.
After the ceremony, people slowly filtered outside into the temple gardens while staff talked about the burial process privately with the family. Izuku would be buried in two days.
He managed to escape the building without having to talk to anyone. He stood alone near the edge of the garden staring blankly at the city skyline in the distance.
“Young Bakugo.”
Katsuki felt himself stiffen immediately, as All Might stood a few feet away. He looked even more tired up close.
“You know,” he said quietly as wind softly moved through the trees around them, “he never stopped admiring you.”
Katsuki shut his eyes immediately.
Don’t.
“He talked about you constantly.”
Don’t.
“He believed in you more fiercely than almost anyone I’ve ever known.”
Katsuki’s jaw clenched hard enough to hurt. “He shouldn’t have.”
All Might looked at him painfully. “Yes,” he said. “He should have.”
Katsuki stared ahead silently. If he looked at him right now, he thought he might genuinely fall apart again.
All Might continued softly, “You were important to him.”
Were. Past tense.
“He died saving everyone,” Katsuki said flatly. “That’s who he was.”
All Might’s expression broke slightly. “Yes,” he whispered.
He looked just as lost as he felt.