Chapter Text
The first thing Izuku noticed upon waking was the smell.
Bleach. Antiseptic. Clean sheets. The kind of cold, artificial scent that only existed in hospitals.
For a second, he didn't understand why he was there, until he tried to move his right arm and a bolt of pain shot through him so violently that the air was knocked straight out of his lungs.
And with the pain, the war came rushing back.
Smoke. Blood. Crumbling cities.
One For All tearing his bones apart from the inside.
The shouts of the heroes he had admired so much, and his friends cheering him on from afar.
Shigaraki.
Izuku snapped his eyes open. The white light above seemed to split his head in two while a sharp ringing echoed inside his right ear, leaving him unsure if it came from the machines or his own skull. He tried to sit up, but it was a mistake. Agony exploded from both arms up to his chest, tearing a muffled groan from him. Something pulled uncomfortably on his right cheek, just below the eye: stitches. He could feel the bandages, damp with sweat, over wounds that still refused to close.
And his arms…
God.
It felt as though they were still breaking. Especially the right one, where the pain expanded in relentless waves. He could barely feel his fingers, but they tingled with the echo of old electricity. He wanted to feel ashamed of the relief that washed over him just knowing they were still there, though he didn't dare move them.
For a moment, he didn't understand where he was. Everything was white, blurry, and heavy. The air smelled of disinfectant and stale smoke, and something was tightening around his chest, keeping him from breathing properly.
For one horrible second, his surroundings turned blurry and heavy, and the oppression in his chest made him believe he was still trapped up there, in the floating coffin, covered in dust and despair.
The memory fell with the force of an impact: explosions lighting up the dark sky, the metallic taste in his mouth, and Kacchan’s body falling.
No, not falling.
Breaking.
Izuku could still see the hole in his chest, the vacant expression in his eyes, and the horrible sound that ripped from his own throat when he witnessed it.
And then—
Edgeshot.
Turning himself into threads of flesh and blood to sew a destroyed heart back together, like someone trying to save a life with trembling hands. Izuku remembers running toward him before he could even think, his legs failing him and his hands stained, repeating the name like a mantra: “Kacchan... Kacchan,” as if naming him could keep him alive amidst the screams and the chaos around them.
But Izuku could only stare at Katsuki’s unmoving chest and think:
No.
Not him.
Anyone but him.
And the worst part was that Katsuki had still tried to get up before falling.
He was still fighting. With a shattered heart.
As if dying were less important than continuing to fight by his side.
He shifted in his spot, trying to orient himself at least spatially, remembering where he was. Timelines crossed into one another; memories and the present blurred together. An unbearable pain shot through his arms and his side once again.
“Midoriya, don't—
Someone held him down before he could tear half his body apart trying to get up.
Izuku breathed in ragged gasps, overwhelmed by distorted voices he could barely hear over the frantic beating of his own heart. He couldn't think. Everything hurt. And not in a simple way; it was a deep, heavy pain, embedded in his bones.
Then, a sharper, more unbearable pain tore through both arms, and something pulled violently at the right side of his body. He let out a choked sound before falling back against the bed.
“Kacchan,” he said before even registering that he was speaking. His voice came out raspy and torn, horrible. “Where is Kacchan?”
His throat burned.
His mouth felt dry. Heavy.
Realization came slow and unpleasant.
He tried to lift his left hand toward his face, but someone stopped it with extreme gentleness.
“Don't touch your wounds.”
Recovery Girl. Or maybe a nurse.
He struggled to focus his vision.
“Ka-Kacchan…?” he repeated, more desperate this time. Fear crept through his body slowly and sickeningly, soaking into his bones and devouring his hope.
There was a silence that lasted far too long.
And immediately, panic began to rot his stomach.
Because Izuku knew that silence.
He had heard it too many times during the war.
The silence before bad news.
“He’s alive.”
The relief that rushed through him was so sharp it physically hurt.
Izuku let out his breath in a trembling sigh and sank back into the pillow, closing his eyes tightly.
Alive. Kacchan was alive.
Thank God.
For a moment, that was enough.
***
Recovery, however, was worse than he had ever imagined. The first few days passed in a thick haze of painkillers. Izuku barely recognized what was happening around him, but he clung to every fragment of consciousness. He knew doctors and nurses came and went, and he even saw his mother, always beside him, her warm voice barely keeping him anchored. “I'm sorry, Mom,” he managed to say when a fleeting moment of lucidity allowed it, before fading away again.
The doctors spoke in low voices near his bed, believing he couldn't hear: stiffness, permanent nerve damage, severe limitations. He couldn't get out of bed; the machines connected to his body measured every pulse, every breath. The only option was to stay still, to seek recovery in stillness. His right cheek bore stitches. “You were lucky not to lose the eye,” they told him, a phrase he hated hearing over and over again.
And on top of everything, One For All was gone.
At first, it took him time to comprehend what he had stopped feeling. That humming energy beneath his skin, the pressure built up in his muscles, the voices of his predecessors… everything had vanished, like a flame on the verge of burning out. After months of training to contain that vibrant, warm energy, its absence felt unnatural, a lacerating void, almost as unbearable as his physical wounds.
Sometimes the impulse to activate it flared up out of pure réflex, during the frustration of physical therapy, or when the clatter of a dropped tray startled him, but nothing happened. Only broken bones and a human body remained. Quirkless. He would repeat to himself at night, and the word made him sick to his stomach. After all, there were wounds that never fully healed.
He would wake up convinced he could feel the final echoes of their voices: Nana Shimura, Yoichi, Banjo… for months, he was never truly alone inside himself. And now, silence. A silence so absolute it sometimes gave him nausea. Lying in his bed, he would stare at the hospital ceiling and try to figure out why it hurt so much. He had saved the world. He had chosen to relinquish One For All, and he would do it a thousand times over.
Then, why did victory feel so much like a loss?
The answer was atrocious: that power hadn't been a mere gift; it had been his dream. The bridge between the boy who cried while admiring heroes from a rooftop and the person who saved the world. The proof that he could be someone. And now… Izuku didn't know who was left beneath those scars, those fractures, and that pain.
The doctors repeated the same warnings: permanent damage, reduced mobility, definitive limits. Izuku listened in silence, while something dark inside him whispered: What is the value of a broken quirkless hero?
He hated that thought, but fear isn't logical. He had saved people, he had mattered, he had been loved, and yet… he still feared becoming the one who watches from the outside again.
Some physical memories still betrayed him. He dreamed of the feeling of Full Cowl surging through his veins like live electricity. He imagined Blackwhip wrapping around his arms. He calculated distances, trajectories, and points of support as if he could still launch himself from the rooftop of a building.
Then reality would crash back in.
Soon, that was all going to be in the past; sooner or later, One For All was going to fade completely inside him, leaving him empty.
The days following the war had drawn specialists from all over the world.
Doctors, researchers, and quirk-users focused on treatment and recovery arrived to relieve the pressure on the Japanese healthcare system.
One of them was temporarily assigned to his case.
Their Quirk allowed them to stimulate the regeneration of damaged tissue and accelerate recovery processes that would normally take months or even years.
The doctors seemed optimistic. Izuku tried to be, too.
He sat still as the specialist's energy slowly coursed through his arms. He felt heat beneath his skin. A strange sensation, almost electric.
For the first time since waking up, he allowed himself to imagine that maybe things could go back to the way they were before. That maybe he could still fight. That maybe he could still become a hero.
“Try to move your fingers,” the doctor requested.
Izuku obeyed.
The pain arrived instantly.
A fierce stab shot through his right arm, forcing him to stifle a gasp. His fingers closed barely a few centimeters before they began to tremble.
The specialist fell silent. The doctors did too.
And suddenly, Izuku understood the answer before anyone could speak it.
“We managed to recover part of the muscle damage,” one of them finally explained, “but the joint and nerve injuries are too extensive.”
Izuku lowered his gaze to his hand.
It had improved.
That was true.
But it wasn't enough.
He would never be the same person he was before.
The war was over, and some of its consequences had decided to stay with him forever.
For an instant, something broke inside him. He had spent months destroying his body for One For All, and now he didn't know how to distinguish the ruins from the dream. Every fracture had been a sacrifice to move forward, to save lives, to feel useful. Now he didn't know how to look at the scars without searching for the power that had left them there.
The dream remained fulfilled. The power did not.
He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes.
He had always had a direction.
Become a hero.
Master One For All.
Save people.
He had fulfilled the promise he made to All Might the day he received that power.
Stop All For One. But the war was over.
And the future, suddenly, felt like an strangely empty place.
***
They didn't allow him to move on his own for nearly a week.
Izuku hated it.
He hated needing help just to sit up; he hated that someone had to support his right arm when the pain worsened; he hated feeling useless.
But more than anything, he hated not being able to see Katsuki.
He asked constantly. Too much, he knew, judging by the weary looks of the doctors and nurses.
“Did he wake up?”
“How is his heart?”
“Is he still in intensive care?”
“Can I see him for even just five minutes?”
“Please.”
Please let me see him before I lose my mind.
The answer was always no.
Katsuki was in a medically induced coma. They needed to keep his heart rate stable and minimize the stress his body had been subjected to.
Unsurprisingly, the cardiac damage was severe.
Despite the efforts of Best Jeanist and Edgeshot, the wounds he had suffered were so critical that he was taken straight to surgery the moment he arrived at the hospital.
The operation lasted fifteen hours.
Fifteen.
Izuku remembered getting stuck on that number for several minutes when someone first mentioned it to him.
Fifteen hours with his chest open.
Fifteen hours during which an entire team of surgeons had fought to convince Katsuki’s heart to keep beating.
The doctors spoke of tissue reconstruction, muscle damage, internal bleeding, and experimental procedures. Izuku barely understood half of what they were saying.
He spent fifteen consecutive hours in open-heart surgery, which exceeds the duration limit for this type of operation under normal conditions.
But Katsuki hadn't been a normal case. The doctors said so afterward, using that incredulous tone of people who still didn't understand how he was still alive.
The surgeons hadn't operated on the heart of an ordinary patient.
They had operated on the heart of someone who had already died once and had still found a way to keep fighting.
Because Katsuki had died.
Izuku knew it. He had seen it.
He had seen the gaping hole in his chest. He had seen the blood. He had seen how his body stopped responding.
And yet…
Katsuki had gotten back up.
In some absurd, impossible way that was entirely typical of him, he had forced his body to keep fighting even with a shattered heart.
Izuku still remembered the explosions.
Flashing against the darkness of the night like orange and yellow lightning.
Violent. Beautiful. Desperate.
Katsuki moving through smoke, blood, and ruins as if pain didn't exist.
As if his body weren't literally collapsing from the inside out.
Every explosion had been a defiance of death.
A “not yet.”
And maybe that was what terrified Izuku the most when he recalled that night.
The look in Katsuki’s eyes.
No fear.
Never fear.
Only a fierce, almost suicidal determination to keep fighting by his side. To win.
Even with a hole in his heart.
Even though each detonation was probably destroying him further.
Even though he should have been dead already, Katsuki kept moving forward anyway because that was just who he was.
Like an explosion that refused to be snuffed out, even after consuming everything.
Which meant he needed to wait before he could go see him in his room.
Wait.
Izuku began to hate that word, too. Izuku had never been good at waiting; he had always been impatient.
Because while he was conscious, breathing, and speaking… Katsuki remained trapped in a hospital bed. Asleep. Motionless.
With his heart literally broken and forcibly reconstructed.
That was how things were, to Izuku's misfortune; he could do nothing but wait, wait, and believe.
Wait for what they were telling him to be true, wait to see Katsuki alive again, believe his mother's words when she said everything was going to be alright.
But Izuku couldn't erase the image of Katsuki lying on the ground, covered in blood, his eyes wide and dull, his heart literally stopped. Dead.
***
As the days passed, Izuku began to memorize the sounds of the hospital machines.
Especially the heart monitors.
The day they finally allowed him to visit, the sound of the heart monitor was the first thing that greeted him upon entering. Izuku almost fell out of bed in his haste; the pain caused white spots to flash behind his eyes, but he didn't care. He hurried down the white hallways, his stomach churning with the fear that it was all a mistake and he had arrived too late.
The hospital corridors seemed far too white under the artificial lights of the early morning. Everything smelled of disinfectant, clean plastic, and stale coffee. There were wounded heroes in other rooms. Doctors walking fast. Monitors beeping behind closed doors.
But Izuku barely saw any of it.
He could only think about that room at the end of the hall.
“You shouldn't stay long,” the nurse warned gently. “His body is still very unstable.”
Izuku nodded, unable to speak, and the door opened.
And then he heard it:
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The heart monitor.
Steady. Stable. Alive.
The air slowly left Izuku’s lungs.
Katsuki was there.
The room was darker than his own, illuminated only by the dim lights of the machines. The constant sound of the monitors filled the silence while rain tapped softly against the windows outside.
And in the middle of all that…
Katsuki.
Izuku froze by the door.
Because Kacchan looked… small.
Not physically. Katsuki Bakugo had never looked small a day in his life.
But lying in that hospital bed, covered in bandages, hooked up to machines, and entirely too still under the pale lights… something inside Izuku’s chest broke violently.
White bandages wrapped around part of his chest, disappearing beneath his hospital gown. His right arm was immobilized. Dark bruises crept up his neck. And yet…
Even so…
Izuku could recognize small remnants of him everywhere.
The jaw clenching, even while asleep.
The slight furrow of his brow.
His hands covered in new scars.
As if, even unconscious, he remained ready to fight.
“Kacchan…”
The word came out broken. Small.
Izuku walked slowly to the chair beside the bed and practically collapsed into it.
For a few seconds, he did nothing.
He just listened to the monitor.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
He was still alive.
He was still here.
And God.
Izuku wasn't prepared for how much it would hurt to discover how grateful he felt just to watch him breathe.
***
Izuku had been fighting with the blanket for nearly five minutes.
Five.
Minutes.
The corner kept folding strangely over Katsuki’s legs, and every time he tried to adjust it using his left arm, he ended up wrinkling another part.
“This is ridiculous…” he muttered in frustration.
He used to be able to destroy buildings, and now he was losing a battle against a hospital blanket.
He sighed wearily and tried again.
Worse. Much worse.
“Kacchan would literally yell at me for this.”
The thought popped into his head so clearly that, for the first time in days, a small laugh escaped his throat.
He could hear him perfectly:
“Are you useless or what, Deku? You can't even fold a shitty blanket right, dammit.”
Izuku smiled faintly as he finally left the fabric as twisted as it was.
“Well,” he murmured, looking down at the sleeping Katsuki, “you're going to have to survive to fix it yourself.”
After that, his eyes stung.
***
The third week was when Izuku truly began to shatter.
Not in front of others. Never that. He smiled whenever his mother entered the room, his lips curving into a grimace that fooled those who watched him. He still made the effort to thank the nurses with the right flicker of brightness in his eyes, and repeated “I'm fine” even when lifting a spoon sent tremors of pain through his arms like tiny electrical currents. But deep inside, something was splintering, imperceptible from the outside, but devastating within. The root of that fissure was always the same: Katsuki still wasn't waking up.
The doctors assured him over and over that it was normal, that his body required time to heal, that the cardiac trauma had been so severe that any excess stress on his nervous system would be counterproductive. Izuku understood the medical terms, the statistics, the logic behind every cautious gesture.
But fear doesn't answer to reason. Fear is a cold fist that squeezes your chest when you wake up startled in the middle of the night, convinced that the monitor will flatline when you least expect it. It’s a knot in your stomach every time you walk down the hospital corridors and stop outside the door of that room where your friend's body rests, silent. It’s watching, almost with fury, how Katsuki’s chest rises and falls in a monotonous rhythm, like an unyielding metronome, just to make sure his breath is still there.
Alive, still alive. But absent, entirely too absent.
That night, the rain lashed at the windows with a constant murmur, a symphony of drops bouncing off the glass. Izuku sat at the foot of Katsuki’s bed, his body leaning forward, elbows resting on his thighs. The pale light from the hallway slinked through the crack in the curtain. Around him, the scent of disinfectant and freshly washed sheets floated in the air.
The monitor recorded an unswerving rhythm.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Izuku looked away and stared at his own hands: slender fingers, covered in healing wounds, trying to hold onto a strength that was slipping from his body. Pain still flared through his nerves when he moved even a single muscle. He thought about the inventory of his own losses: the embers of One For All burning out day by day, the ordeal of surgeries, and a painful rehabilitation that threatened to stall him for months. He was willing to pay the price of the war with his own body, but Katsuki didn't belong in that equation. Katsuki wasn't a loss he could accept. He couldn't conceive of survival if Kacchan's silhouette wasn't waiting at the end of the road.
Izuku inhaled in shuddering gasps. He had never been particularly religious. Not truly.
Sure, he had visited shrines, clapped his hands before praying at New Year's, and tossed coins into fountains for childhood wishes. But this was different: he found himself standing at the edge of the abyss of despair.
With a slowness that felt almost reverent, he laced his fingers together in front of his mouth. He brought his forehead down to the back of his hands and closed his eyes.
And he prayed.
Without grace, without beautiful formulas. With the raw honesty of someone who has nothing left to offer.
“Please…” His voice broke into a whisper. He felt a fist tighten in his chest.
“Please, let him wake up.” Each word came out with difficulty, as if carrying the weight of a mountain. “I don't care if I lose what's left of my power… I don't care if I never fight again… I don't care about any of that.”
His breath came in fits and starts.
“Just… don't take him away.”
The unvarying pulse of the monitor was the only witness to his plea.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Izuku swallowed hard and felt a hollow void in his throat.
“I know I've already asked for too much,” he murmured. “I know we survived when, by all odds, we shouldn't have.” Stray tears rolled down his cheeks. “But him…” The last word choked into a sob.
He didn't even know how to explain that vital bond that had held them together since childhood. To think of losing him was to bleed out from the inside.
“He still has things left to do,” he spoke softly, as if weaving a promise into every syllable. “He still has to become the number one hero. He has to yell at me for my recklessness. He has to smile with that triumphant arrogance, like he won a fight against the whole world because… he did.” Izuku let out a broken, almost ghostly laugh. “He still has to live.”
The silence that followed became unbearable. The rain redoubled its hammering against the glass. And then, Izuku uttered in a barely audible voice the truth he had kept trapped in his throat:
“How am I supposed to call it a victory, a world where you aren't here?”
The confession left him exhausted, vulnerable. Because it was his deepest truth: Katsuki had been his North, his challenge, his engine. The first person he ever admired, the goal that drove him to improve, his partner in falling down and getting back up. His first love, even before he understood the meaning of the word.
Utterly spent, he rested his forehead against the cold edge of the hospital bed.
“Please…” he whispered one last time. “Wake up.”
For an eternally painful instant, the only response was the steady heartbeat of the monitor.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Until he felt a tiny tingle against his hand. Izuku snapped his head up. Katsuki’s fingers, still fragile and trembling, had shifted imperceptibly, brushing his own like a reflex. It was a microscopic gesture, but to Izuku, it looked as if he had been handed the entire universe.
Then, finally, his tears spilled over without restraint, and he began to weep in earnest. He didn't let go of Katsuki’s hand, not when his arms burned with tension from staying leaned forward, nor when the tears blurred his vision. The slight tremor of those fingers was the spark of hope he needed.
“Kacchan…?” he whispered with a broken voice, finally feeling a pulse of comfort in the middle of a night of uncertainty.
Katsuki’s fingers had gone still again.
But they had moved.
Right?
Izuku knew what he had felt.
His heart beat so loudly he could hear it inside his head.
“Kacchan…?”
Nothing.
Just the monitor.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
However, something had changed.
The room didn't feel so cold anymore. So desperate. The constant hum of the monitors and the soft whir of the respirators formed an almost comforting backdrop, as if each beep reminded him that life, somehow, persisted. Izuku wiped his face quickly with the back of his hand and pressed the call button with a start.
Within seconds, the door opened with a slight creak and two figures rushed in: a nurse, her face tense behind her mask, and the doctor on duty, frowning under the harsh white light.
“What happened? Do you notice anything wrong?” the nurse asked, looking at him expectantly.
Izuku drew in a deep breath, as if each word required all his air.
“He moved his hand!” he exclaimed with a trembling voice. “I'm sure of it… he heard my voice.”
The nurse exchanged a dull look with the doctor, whose eyes revealed the same mixture of pain and hope.
The machines emitted their regular beeps, marking the quiet pulse of Katsuki, stretched out and motionless beneath the immaculate sheets.
“Calm down, Hero Deku,” the doctor said, approaching with a small penlight. “We're going to check him. It could be an involuntary reflex.”
As he shined the light into Katsuki’s pupils, Izuku felt his heart thumping hard against his ribs, each pulse resonating in his ears like a war drum.
“But even if that's the case,” the doctor continued, lowering the light, “it's a good sign.”
A good sign. Izuku clung to those words as if they were a breath of fresh air in the middle of the ocean.
It didn't matter that it was a slight, almost imperceptible movement. It was something.
After weeks of absolute silence, a single gesture was a miracle.
The nurse adjusted the IV fluids, checked the staples on the bandages, and looked up to meet Izuku's eyes.
“You need to rest too,” she warned gently.
Izuku twisted his mouth into a wry smile. Rest… as if that were possible. The white light of the ceiling lamp left him exhausted, and his eyelids, heavy as lead, threatened to give way.
Nonetheless, he waited for the medical staff to leave the room before drawing closer to the bed again. There, Katsuki lay pale, covered in bandages and scars, but Izuku barely saw his body: the only thing that mattered to him was that hand which, seconds before, had responded to a whisper.
With reverent care, he intertwined his fingers with Katsuki's. The skin, lukewarm and brittle, still held traces of human warmth. Izuku held his breath, feeling the knot in his throat tighten.
“Did you hear me, Kacchan?” he murmured, barely believing it. “I told you everything…”
He paused, embarrassed by his own words. He, the hero fanatic with a plan for every situation, found himself brought to his knees before the inert silence of his best friend. But Izuku's heart wouldn't let him pull away.
A dense silence filled the room, interrupted only by the rhythmic heartbeat of the machine. Izuku rested his forehead against the cold mattress, exhausted to the core, and felt a sudden wave of fatigue wash over him. The sleepless nights, the fist tightening around the air, the tears shed into his pillow… everything had brought him to this instant, as full of fear as it was of need.
He whispered something different then, something that came from deep within:
“I don't know how I'm supposed to keep going if you aren't here.”
The words hung in the air, raw and sincere. Izuku closed his eyes, wishing they would vanish with his breath. They didn't.
It was then that he felt a light pressure on his fingers. A faint, almost ethereal touch that grew a millimeter: Katsuki's hand was returning the squeeze. Izuku snapped his eyes open, the air cutting short in his lungs.
And, very slowly, he saw a flutter in his friend's eyelashes. The entire world seemed to stop in that blink.
“…Kacchan?” Izuku whispered, his voice cracking with emotion.
Katsuki’s eyelids moved again, this time with more force. As if waking up were costing him an absurd amount of effort. His brow furrowed slightly right after—an automatic reaction so familiar that something warm and painful twisted inside Izuku’s chest. Because even on the brink of death, Katsuki still looked irritated with the world.
Because even destroyed, even sedated, even half-dead.
He was still Kacchan.
“Hey,” he said quickly, suddenly nervous, “take it easy, you don't have to—”
Katsuki’s eyes finally opened.
Red.
Heavy.
Unfocused.
Izuku’s heart hammered so hard against his ribs he thought he was going to throw up.
For a second, Katsuki didn't seem to understand where he was. His gaze slowly scanned the white hospital ceiling before drifting to the side.
Until it found him.
And then, something in Katsuki’s expression shifted just a fraction.
Not much. Barely anything.
But Izuku knew him too well.
He saw relief flash through his eyes so quickly he almost thought he had imagined it.
Izuku’s chest tightened so hard it ached.
“Hey…” he said, and he hated how much his voice trembled.
Katsuki watched him in silence.
His eyes were still clouded by exhaustion and medication, but they were still intense. Entirely too present.
Izuku was on the verge of breaking into tears all over again.
Katsuki took a few seconds to speak.
“…You look horrible.”
Izuku’s laugh burst out and cracked at the exact same time. “You don't look very good either”
Katsuki made a barely perceptible face, as if even that took too much energy.
Then he tried to move.
Mistake.
The heart monitor accelerated its rhythm slightly as pain sliced through his expression all at once. Katsuki let out a choked sound and clenched his jaw immediately, too proud even now to let slip a real whimper.
“No, no, no!” Izuku leaned forward right away. “Don't move, Kacchan, please, you just woke up.”
Katsuki breathed slowly and deeply through his nose, his nostrils flaring, clearly trying not to pass out again.
Izuku felt panic clawing up his throat.
“I'm going to call the nurse—” But before Izuku could even stand up, Katsuki's hand closed weakly around his fingers, stopping him from pulling away.
Izuku froze.
The grip was weak. Incredibly so.
But it was still Katsuki.
Direct. Firm. As if even on the verge of collapse, he still refused to let him go.
Those red eyes fixed back onto him.
“…Stay.”
The word came out broken from lack of use. Almost unrecognizable.
But it pierced Izuku straight through the chest.
Because Katsuki never asked for things like that.
Never.
Izuku swallowed hard and sat back down on the edge of the bed.
For a lifetime if you ask me to, he thought.
And Kacchan closed his eyes for a few seconds, holding his hand with an almost imperceptible strength.
And for the first time since the war, Izuku felt like he could actually breathe.