Chapter Text
praying for sparks
in that dark
where tinder is heart,
where tender is not.
Katsuki
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It’s been seven years. Seven years of relentless torture by the League of Villains, of abandonment, of starvation, of isolation. The long stretches of near-starvation and the countless injuries he survived, the mental strain of years of torture and the physical trauma of constant combat for nearly two full years have done Katsuki in. Perhaps permanently.
He looks small on the bed, his head looking too big for his bony, narrow shoulders, and his ribs jut out from his flesh like concentric rings. His arms and legs are twig-thin like you could snap them if you accidentally stepped on them.
He sits cross-legged on a white hospital bed, softer than anything he’s had for years. Apart from the restraints, they gave him some gloves and put some flame-retardant substance on the inside of them to prevent him from accidentally setting off an explosion. His Quirk is a bit… fickle, nowadays.
He fidgets with the restraints around his wrists to resist the urge to take off the gloves as his rotten red eyes flick to Aizawa, who is seated in the corner, watching Katsuki carefully. When his eyes meet Aizawa’s they immediately flit back to the restraints, which he continues to fidget with to no end.
The hospital decided to physically restrain him after he nearly blew a nurse’s face off in the midst of a panic attack. They said he was ‘a little more than unpredictable.’ And then they decided that he needs a chaperone whenever he has visitors. Of course, it had to be Aizawa, his old teacher. Of course, it had to be one of his most prominent reminders of just how far he’d fallen.
He wishes he could apologize to the nurse — he hadn’t meant to harm her. He didn’t want to harm her, it was just that she was the exact height and build of Toga and his mind was still muddled from the sedatives. He hopes her burns aren’t too bad. He wishes he could apologize.
He hears exactly when his visitors come down the hall. He hears two sets of footsteps, accompanied by what sounds like a fifth foot that has a metallic clang to it. A cane, perhaps. It must be All Might — he’d seen his old teacher on TV, hunched over his cane like a decrepit old man (although he doesn’t actually know how old All Might is). All Might’s footsteps are slow and careful, and beside him are the footsteps of another man — someone very big and very tall who clomps about like a farmer. Katsuki doesn’t recognize the steps. A lump forms in his throat.
“Who’s coming?” He asks Aizawa, his voice tiny.
“All Might and Deku.”
Deku.
Deku.
It’s Deku’s green head that pokes through the door, his eyes bright like emeralds. Good god, he’s tall, taller than the fucking doorframe. His face is blank, his lips pulled into a slight pout as they always do when resting (that hasn’t changed, at least).
“Please sit down, Yagi,” Deku says, pulling a chair for All Might and his voice is hoarse and deep and absolutely nothing, nothing like the pink-cheeked teen Katsuki knew all those years ago.
Katsuki has only ever seen Deku with that mask on when he was blowing through hordes of villains — he can’t bring himself to look Deku in the eyes now. His head drops, gaze fixing on the restraints once more.
All Might gives a proper old man groan as he sits down, resting the cane against his knee.
“Deku. All Might,” Katsuki answers stiffly.
“Kacchan,” Deku answers, just as stiff.
“Young Bakugo,” All Might answers, a bit more genial.
While ardently avoiding staring at Deku’s face, he catches sight of his heavy black combat boots, scuffed with use. The soles are thick. ( He heard on the TV that Deku uses iron soles to add extra power to his kicks.) His legs look like fucking tree trunks as well, bulked up with black knee pads that extend across his entire leg and open at the back. (He heard that Deku suffered injuries to his shin when kicking a piece of metal and now wears extra padding as a result.)
“I saw you on TV,” Katsuki says simply. “You’re an amazing hero.”
Deku inhales sharply. “Thank you,” he says simply, his voice so stern that it stings.
“If I told you that seven years ago, you would’ve burst out crying,” Katsuki comments.
“I’m not fourteen anymore, Kacchan,” Deku states. “I’m not a crybaby.”
His voice is flat as he says it, but it feels like a personal jab. That’s when he finally understands the cold, flat tone of Deku’s voice, the blank look on his face. Deku’s moved on — he’s defied all of Katsuki’s expectations and become the number one hero, a dream Katsuki did nothing but attempt to snuff when they were little.
He feels stupid for having expected any sympathy from the boy he relentlessly bullied into their teenage years, the boy who his memory has followed around and stuck to like a leech. All the reporters talk about when they speak of Deku is how his ‘best friend’ vanished when he was fifteen.
It must drive him mad.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” Deku suddenly interjects his thoughts. A lie, Katsuki thinks.
“Your parents will probably receive clearance to visit you tomorrow — they really missed you, Katsuki. Your mother nearly fainted when I told her you were safe.”
The corner of Katsuki’s mouth twitches towards a weak smile — god, he can’t believe how much he misses them, his incessantly nagging, caring mother and spineless but well-meaning father. He misses how they’d fight, throwing things at each other but never enough to hurt each other — and on the occasions that they’d actually fight, his father would always come into his room to comfort him before he went to bed.
He remembers how they’d hugged and kissed him when he got accepted into U.A., how he shrugged them off. He wishes he hadn’t.
“And- And Mom — my mother, Inko? You should’ve seen her face — she burst into tears…” Deku trails off.
Auntie Inko. She remembers how she would always have treats for him when he visited, how she slowly grew distant after Izuku was found to be quirkless and Katsuki turned from friend to bully. He wants to apologize to her.
And he wants to apologize to Deku, too, but he hasn’t the slightest idea what to say. His words are gone. He speaks in shows of violence now, in threats and in brutality.
“Katsuki,” Deku uses his given name, hissing the word like it’s something foul. I hate you, Katsuki expects him to say. Why couldn’t you have just died?
“Why won’t you look at me?”
And he doesn’t have an answer. He stares at Deku’s midsection, the dark green stubble on the bottom of Deku’s chin skirting the edges of his vision. He keeps Deku’s face just a hair’s length away from his field of sight.
“I’m sorry,” Katsuki whispers, voice quiet as a church mouse.
The skin of Deku’s hands pops with scars and veins as he flexes them, his fists clenching and unclenching. His chest is broad and muscled like a mountain cat, his arms packed with burl like a bodybuilder’s. His chest begins to rise and fall rapidly with short, tight breaths. Deku’s (notably large) hands continue to flex.
That’s when Katsuki considers the possibility that Aizawa doesn’t need to be here for Deku’s or even All Might’s safety. He’s the number one hero, for fuck’s sake. Deku could crush Katsuki’s skull in his hand. He could cave in his ribcage with his boot. He could snap each and every one of his twig-thin limbs with ease.
But he wouldn’t, Katsuki tries to tell himself, but as he stares at Deku’s twitching fingers, he wonders how easy it would be for Deku to snap his neck. He wouldn’t.
Would he?
Katsuki’s heart rate picks up. "I'm sorry-"
“Katsuki, that’s not an answer!” Deku suddenly snaps, making Katsuki jump.
He tries to look Deku in the eye, his gaze drawing up and catching a square jaw full of stubble, a straight nose, and cheekbones that sit high on his face, features that have sharpened with the years. And he sees the smattering of freckles over Deku’s nose and cheeks, the four nearly identical freckles on each cheek uncanny.
And his eyes, which shine like emeralds only for a moment before Deku blinks, and they’ve hardened to the deep shade of jade. They’re big as they've always been and ringed with dark bruises and — he can’t find the word. Sad, no — angry. It comes to him suddenly, almost startlingly so.
Sullen and bitter as cyanide.
Katsuki’s heart drops into the pit of his stomach as his gaze drops back to Deku’s feet.
“I-I’m sorry,” he whimpers.
Deku inhales sharply, and the sound of the single step he takes forward before Aizawa leaps out of his seat to stop him echoes in Katsuki’s ears for hours.
“That’s enough, Midoriya,” Aizawa commands, and the air seems to stand still. Katsuki fiddles with the restraints, wishing that they would let him curl up under the bed and never come out.
“Young Midoriya, let’s speak in the hall,” All Might says, his hand clamped around Deku’s wrist. Deku’s hands are trembling, but Katsuki still can’t bring himself to look at Deku — Izuku’s face. He’s sure if he did, he’d see it twisted with rage.
Izuku leaves, All Might tottering after him, and Aizawa closing the door behind him. Katsuki doesn’t calm down — he sits there, cross-legged, his heart racing at the speed of light hours after Izuku leaves, that one step taken against him echoing in his skull like a gong. He wishes Aizawa and All Might hadn’t stopped Deku.
He deserves it, after all.
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Thanks so much for reading!