Chapter Text
“Sir! Commander Katsuki, sir, we’ve got new reports on his location!”
Out here, the alarmed shouts are almost lost in the bustle of the capital’s mid-afternoon marketplace. But thud-thud-thud came the footsteps behind him, each one punctuated by the familiar clank of heavy armor and softened by worn leather hitting stone. Despite their hustle, Katsuki had already resigned himself to more faulty reports and another reluctant tally on the growing number of days—months, years—that the blasted market thief has evaded the Royal Guard. He turns, mouth already affixed in a snarl, and does not allow himself to feel even the barest spark of hope.
Hope is not something he can afford, not after all this time.
“Sir, we—”
“Spill it,” he snaps, no patience for preamble. “The reports are on Jackrabbit?”
“Y-Yes!” the knight sputters, and points wildly into the throng of people perusing the open-air stalls. Onoda is his name. Newly promoted squire. If he fails to lose the stutter, he won’t last long under Katsuki’s new command. “The thief was s-spotted on the south side of the marketplace, skulking around near the border wall behind the fruit vendors! I-I’m sure he’ll try to make his rounds around the plaza today, but we’ve had several of our lookouts say they saw him going slower, almost like he was—l-like he was—”
“Spit it out.”
“Like he was limping, sir!” Onoda says, trembling beneath Katsuki’s impatient stare. “This is as many sightings as we’ve seen in years, so what… what do you think we should do…?”
Limping?
Katsuki’s hand tightens around his sword, mouth set in a grim line.
You’re getting cocky, Jackrabbit.
“I want every exit in this market locked down. No one goes in, no one goes out,” he orders, eyes narrowing as he scans the crowd, flocking in and out through the few arching gates strung around the brick perimeter. “If he has just begun his rounds today, then we may have a few minutes on our side. Perhaps more. Either way, we have to act now.”
Too many times, the thief has slipped from the guard in the most daring of ways—ways that scarcely seem human. But Katsuki is Commander now, and not even Jackrabbit will slip from his grasp.
He and his men will just have to act quickly.
But instead of springing into action, as was implied, the knight chooses to stare at him like a brain-dead deer. “Ah, s-sir? Isn’t he, um, going to flee as soon as the gates start to shut? He’ll know he’s been spotted, he’s clever enough, and this chance—”
“What else are we going to do!?” Katsuki spits, blood set to a boil. “Everyone and their damn mothers know the guard has been chasing this thief for too long. They can call him Jackrabbit, but even that is a title too noble for the vermin he is!” His hand twists around his knife. “Unlike the inept idiots that led the guard before me, I refuse to stand for him terrorizing innocent merchants and unwitting commoners—he is a cutpurse and a criminal, and if we have even the barest chance of ending his reign now, I intend to take it.”
He stops. Stares at the quivering guard before him, who is fixedly looking at a crack in the cobblestones—unmoving. Katsuki unsheaths a throwing knife from his thigh, raises it to Onoda’s throat, and tilts his chin up to meet his eyes.
“Look at me, knight,” he whispers, each word cold enough to burn. “Did I order you to waste time?”
The knife digs into the soft skin of Onoda’s neck, and the quick obedience that follows is almost satisfying enough to temper Katsuki’s rage.
“N-No, sir, y-you—”
“Then quit yapping, clear the crowd from the south end, and get this place locked down,” Katsuki demands, already turning away. “Go!”
I have no time for thin-skinned knights or rumor mills. No, I…
One hand on his sword, one on his knife, and one foot launching him into the crowd.
I have a rabbit to catch.
Nothing to the left. Nothing to the right. Katsuki’s head turns, looking past milling bodies into the nooks and crannies of the haphazardly packed market stalls for the barest hint of Jackrabbit’s green clothes and disgustingly distinctive red boots. Shadows lurk along the area’s two-story walls; even if Jackrabbit is hiding back there, there is no way he’d be able to scale the brick and escape with an injury. But his efforts aren’t going unnoticed—heads are turning and chatter is circling in the midst of his frenzied search.
Dangerous, the reports all say. Rumors of murder, violence, and over a decade of of confirmed thievery.
For the barest second, he is eight years old again, and Momo is telling him about what she’d heard the older squires say in training. They call him Jackrabbit, she’d whisper. No one can catch him.
No one? he’d asked, cradling his first sword, wooden and short and scarred from practice.
No one, she’d said. Not even the commander.
He grits his teeth and shoulders through another dense cluster of people.
Then I’ll catch him, he’d promised. I’ll be the best.
As Katsuki breaks towards the south end of the marketplace, he’s relieved to see that some amount of his knights have done as instructed and begun to redirect the crowds. Gods, it shouldn’t be so hard to assert his damned authority, but the slack he’d inherited from Shindo’s command has been taking ages to train out of them. Privately, he also knows that his age doesn’t help—no one wants to take orders from a man only a few years from squirehood, and Katsuki hasn’t had a chance to prove his strength in full yet.
Sparks crackle in his palms. With luck, Jackrabbit’s capture will change that. It has to.
“I know you’re here!” he shouts, stalking towards the vendor’s stalls, abandoned now that his knights have herded most of the civilians away. “Show yourself, coward!”
A panicked crowd, in the best of times, is not ideal. But Katsuki is close now, and he’ll be damned if the thief slips through his fingers because he pauses to quell some crying babe.
The noise of the crowd quiets to a low rumble in the wake of his barked demand—at least they understand his authority—but the shadows behind the stalls remain still.
Silent, aside from the faint scuff of leather boots on dusty ground.
Katsuki’s hands tighten around his knife, lips slowly twisting to a haughty smile.
Found you.
One step. Two steps. The crowd has been dispersed, once-busy streets bared to his blade and waiting on his every move. Everyone knows the face of the Commander of the Royal Guard. Everyone knows who Katsuki is. And everyone—everyone—knows what his presence means.
Justice, and blood.
Before him, the canvas batting of an abandoned stall shifts with the slightest breeze—in a bustling crowd, it would have been nigh invisible. Jackrabbit has escaped justice too many times before, but now, there really is no place to run. Brutal daylight will sear the sins on his back, and for once, Katsuki will be here to breathe in the smoke.
“Take another step, coward!” Katsuki goads, standing his ground and raising his knife towards the stalls. “You can’t run this time. Face me now, or die where you stand!”
I want his body at my feet. I want his head on the chopping block. I want—gods, I want—!
The thief moves in the shadows again, and Katsuki’s body reacts with practiced precision. His knife flies from his hands mid-run, splitting the air and scattering shards of brick when it hits the wall and topples to the ground. No scream echoes, no blood speckles the cobblestone. But when Katsuki catches up with his knife a second later, he spots the scuff marks on the stones and a billowing scarf vanishing down the alley.
There.
His legs move faster than he can think; Katsuki only spares a moment to snatch his knife from the ground, then twists to the side as the thief’s shadow jolts ahead. Stolen things drop from Jackrabbit’s bag as he runs—swung onto his back, it’s fallen open in his haste, strands of pearls and crystalline jewelry hanging from its gaping mouth. But as he speeds through the shadows of abandoned stalls, the thief somehow starts growing brighter, brighter, haloed in green light and crackling with electrified anger.
What!? Katsuki feels his heart skip a beat, even as he grits his teeth and bears down harder on the ground, willing his limbs to move faster. Our records don’t say he has a quirk.
He shakes his head, lets a few angry explosions rattle out from sweating palms, and charges.
I must be seeing things.
Pop-pop-pop sound the blasts barrelling him forward, screaming from Katsuki’s ungloved palms and knocking goods from unfortunate stalls. He grimaces—it will cost him a gift or three to a few innocent shopkeepers, but any price would be worth Jackrabbit’s capture.
He’ll have to raise it with Momo. She, of all people, would understand.
He’s limping. He’s weak.
“Surrender!” he commands, blood-red hunger staining his vision. “Every exit has been sealed, so face me, you scum!”
The thief smashes a stall beside him, a slew of apples spilling into the alleyway as he darts out to the market plaza. Katsuki curses, smacking errant fruit out of his way, and stumbles after him—but not before Jackrabbit tosses his bag into the crowd, glistening jewels and coin swarmed in seconds. He must think he can slip away in the chaos, robbed of his take but still clinging to his life.
Smart. It won’t work—not with Katsuki sheathing his sword and blasting himself above the frenzied cluster—yet, it’s smart. He wants to shout, to launch himself forward and slice the thief to ribbons, but Jackrabbit doesn’t run.
Instead, in the bright sunlight, he greets him with something new.
Green hair. Green eyes. Green lightning sprawling over his skin like a spider’s web. A large, battered scarf flutters in the breeze, dark rags billowing over his lean frame before they’re wrought captive below his elbows by a swath of worn cloth and cinched tight by the belt around his waist.
Katsuki swallows.
He’s…
The sun’s rays spill over his back, but the thief isn’t burning—that vicious, viridian glare holds no fear, nor cowardice. No, Jackrabbit glows before him, radiating only defiance and an undeniable, electric ferocity.
Katsuki will forever deny going weak in the knees at the sight of it.
“You want a fight,” Jackrabbit says, poised to leap at any moment. His features are rough, gaze sunken and veins startlingly prominent in a way that suggests years of malnourishment. The reports all suggest he has only five, maybe six years on Katsuki, but circumstance has aged him another ten. “But I don’t.”
“Who do you take me for? You think you have a choice in the matter?” Katsuki hisses. After all this time, after the frustrating nights poring over reports and maps and merchants’ stocklists, all in pursuit of this one man—
“I am a sworn defender of the Kingdom of Exast, First Commander of the Royal Guard, and you are an insolent thief who has found a calling,” he sneers, “—in stealing what was never his!”
The thief stands frozen. Katsuki stalks forward, finally drawing his longsword from its scabbard, raising it level with the thief’s scarf-clad throat. “Get on your knees, or I will put you there myself!”
Jackrabbit tenses—it must be an unconscious reflex—and Katsuki finds his eyes drawn to the taut line of the thief’s right arm. A curved, steel dagger, held partially hidden at his side, thrums with quiet power as green sparks dance along his arm.
A quirk? Some sort of mystical weapon? Katsuki grits his teeth. He has no time to waste on pondering it now.
“I know exactly who you are,” Jackrabbit whispers, and in the small step he takes, Katsuki notices a slight favoring of his right leg—the reports were right. The thief had been hurt. By whom? Not by one of his men, but he will find out soon enough. “And I ain’t about to fall to your level of name-calling, Katsuki.”
The name drags off his tongue with the stilted grace of the southeastern slums, and with a jolt, Katsuki realizes that Jackrabbit speaks with the same accent that he had spent years ridding himself of.
“And you’re far from home, Jackrabbit,” he retorts, seizing this information even as his stomach twists. But the discomfort is worth it—he is unable to suppress the satisfied twitch of his lips when the thief flinches at the comment. “I bet there’s no one back there who will miss a lowly thief like you.”
He sees the thief bristle, limbs growing stiff and brittle, and parries the predictable strike with ease. Yes. Katsuki has him where he wants him—scared, desperate, and angry.
“Back there?” Jackrabbit curls his lip in disgust as he steps back, obviously rattled, but somehow still collected enough to watch Katsuki’s every move. The leg he favors is trembling; Katsuki wonders how much pain he must be in. “You say that like I’ve ever had anyone to go back to, highborn brat.”
He lashes out again before Katsuki can retaliate, the curve of the tarnished dagger catching on his sword before the thief is thrown back again, skidding against the pavement and tearing holes through ratty pants. Stronger than he looks, Katsuki thinks, wondering how on earth he put so much power into a single stroke of his blade. Despite the simplicity of his fighting, Jackrabbit’s honed precision is almost admirable.
He advances, sword in motion once again.
“I don’t—want—to fight you!” the thief yells, careening back after a particularly harsh strike. “In all my years of coming up here, not once have I bothered the castle guard!”
Sidestep. Swing. Jackrabbit’s eyes are wild, the shorter blade forcing his body to take the brunt of the power from Katsuki’s strikes. Despite his evident lack of training, his stances are solid, the strength behind his blows incommensurate with his frame.
Katsuki grits his teeth—perhaps if the thief had been in good health, he might have even had a chance. An inconvenient truth, and one that he will have to deal with later. “If you had no desire to fight me, you should have stayed in the slums you crawled out of!” He pushes himself to move faster, stronger, a flurry of explosions held captive in his palms. “Eat shit, you animal!”
Jackrabbit is tiring. He can see it in the arc of his swing, the way he fumbles with his steps—the thief is struggling to remain upright. Katsuki presses his advantage, forcing him toward the market walls, boxing him in so that he’ll have nowhere to escape, no rabbithole to burrow into.
The thief’s back hits brick, and Katsuki barely takes in the brief flicker of shock on his face before he rears back and strikes him with the heel of his blade, sending him reeling.
“Your noble blood has tainted you,” Jackrabbit sneers, skidding to a stop with a hand pressed to his face. Blood trickles down between his fingers, sluggish and dark. "You think I want to be here? No, no… not all of us were lucky enough to be born with silver on our tongue and magic beneath our skin." His tone is bitter, cold, dismissive.
For the briefest moment, Katsuki hears a different voice, feels phantom hands too-tight on his shoulders, moonshine breath on his face. The grit of dirt under his nails, in his hair, stinging his eyes. “What a good boy, lucky boy. Aren’t you? Lucky, lucky, lucky...”
Despite his initial resolve, Katsuki snaps.
"Whoever said I was?" His voice sounds like it's been dragged over gravel. He thanks every god that it doesn’t waver.
Jackrabbit’s gaze shoots up, holds his. Katsuki grits his teeth, his palms itching to ignite; trembling, he tells himself he needs to get it under control.
“You—“
It’s been years since he’s had a moment like this. A decade. He’d thought that he was beyond it now.
It’s the gods-damned accent.
“I’m done playing with you, rat.” Katsuki bares his teeth. “When I’m done with you, you’ll wish you had fallen to your knees and begged for mercy!”
He charges. The flat of his sword smacks Jackrabbit’s bad leg before a counter strike reaches his throat, and in one smooth, fury-ridden swing, knocks that damned dagger from his hands before he can try again.
“Nng—no—!” Eye-to-eye, Katsuki can see that he is half out of his mind in agony, drawing on every reserve of strength to remain upright. Disarmed and at such a disadvantage, the only possible move for him is to retreat.
Katsuki snarls, blade flashing. As if I would allow it.
The pommel of his sword hits the thief flat against his chest, knocking him to the ground in an instant. He’s done with dances. Done with games. If this thief can rip out even a sliver of his most guarded truth from him in ten words, Katsuki doesn’t want to know what he could make him confess in ten minutes.
Jackrabbit thrashes, trying to scrabble backwards, but it quickly becomes evident that it’s fruitless—the sound of harsh boots and the clattering of armour precedes the appearance of Katsuki’s guards just behind him, weapons at the ready. He holds up a hand towards them—his catch, not theirs.
He stalks forward.
It takes every inch of Katsuki’s resolve to not crush his ribs, to not snap his jaw, to not submit to his most primal instincts and blow the damned thief to bits. But he won’t, he won’t. Instead, he places his foot on his chest, moves his sword slowly, slowly, and holds the tip just above Jackrabbit’s throat.
“Get—g-get the hell offa—!”
“I should kill you,” he says softly, barely holding back the curses he wants to fling. “Our records say it’s been fifteen years that you’ve been stealing from the capital’s markets. But I’d like to hear it from you.” He pauses, hoping his hands aren’t shaking with his prize underfoot. “So tell me, Jackrabbit. How long have you been thieving?”
Jackrabbit stares up at him, defiant to the last.
“Answer me,” he repeats, putting more weight on his foot and pressing the tip of his sword to that tanned skin. “How long have you been thieving?”
A second passes. Five. Ten. He can see the fluttering of Jackrabbit’s pulse at his throat, feel the shallow rise and fall of his chest beneath his boot. Like a rabbit.
Katsuki hasn’t endured so many years of searching for silence.
I’m in charge. He’s at my mercy. Why is he—
“You look young,” Jackrabbit says, deceptively casual, interrupting Katsuki’s spiraling thoughts as if he’s not a single thrust from death. “What are you, sixteen?” Twenty. “Hm. S’pose I shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve been promoting boys to commanders with that king in power.”
Katsuki blinks, unmoored by the clumsy change in subject, though he rigidly refuses to let it show. His anger still simmers, thrumming beneath his skin.
What in all hells is this thief getting at?
He’ll entertain this. For the moment.
“Yet you are still on the other end of my blade,” Katsuki says, and doesn’t keep the sword from breaking skin this time. A reminder. “And in all your years of defying the laws of this kingdom, not one knight has held you at swordpoint before me.”
Katsuki watches that throat move, blood dripping where the skin is caught on his blade, red bleeding into the pale fabric of his scarf.
Despite it all, Jackrabbit musters a laugh.
“I’d think that speaks more to the so-called skills of the knights than to your ability alone. How lucky for you that I had a bit too much fun last night and, ah… tweaked my hip.” The thief’s grin is lewd as he lets his legs fall slightly open. With a jolt, Katsuki realizes that he’s having fun.
Without warning, he mercilessly presses down with his boot, and all air flies out of Jackrabbit’s chest. He wheezes, head knocking back into the dirt, and Katsuki takes the chance to move his blade up, to press further into the soft skin beneath his chin.
Still panting, Jackrabbit’s gaze flicks down, cuts into him again.
“You gonna kill me, coward?” he mocks, a strange fire in his eyes. “They teach ya how to slit throats in that mighty castle, too?”
Katsuki doesn’t know why he even bothers justifying himself to this thief. It would be so easy—so easy—to let his sword dip a fingers-length down, to make a show of the thief’s demise, to kill him now and never think of him again.
He could. He could.
But he can’t. He isn’t sure why. Jackrabbit’s dagger still gleams on the pavement, and he has no way to tell if it’s insanity or smarts or some sort of trickery that keeps the thief from panicking under his blade. Whether he likes it or not, the thief holds his curiosity in an iron grip, and Katsuki knows that allowing this one to die like a common criminal would be a dishonor and a waste.
And, he thinks to himself, perhaps I could make use of his odd power.
He raises his hand, and lifts his blade. His boot stays on Jackrabbit’s chest.
“Stay back,” he begins, raising his voice to the rest of the marketplace. “We don’t know if he has any accomplices.” His gaze sweeps the crowd, lands on the nervous knight from before. “Onoda!” The kid snaps to attention, and Katsuki beckons him forward. He looks as if he’s ready to piss his pants. “Bring me some rope. I want him bound and gagged.”
As the knights approach to carry out Katsuki’s orders, he takes a moment to look back down at the face of his captive. In what he can only explain as a moment of weakness, he allows his eyes to trace the smattering of freckles across Jackrabbit’s gaunt cheeks, the length of his dark lashes, the strength of his brow. In another life, he may have been beautiful.
Katsuki quickly shoves that thought away.
Jackrabbit is tied up and dragged to his feet by the knights, hardly able to walk between his injured leg and the rope binding his ankles. He isn’t sure what to make of the look the thief gives him—despite the thick gag in his mouth, Jackrabbit holds his head high, staring at Katsuki as if he is somehow above him.
“I will follow you shortly,” he tells the guards, avoiding meeting the thief’s eyes. “Ensure that the night watch has arrived, then go ahead and bring him to the castle. He will be dealt with once I return.”
But as Jackrabbit is taken away, Katsuki notices that the strange green glow that had enveloped his form had vanished. He blinks—maybe it was an illusion, after all.
A few paces away, the thief's odd dagger still rests on the ground, abandoned. Katsuki strides to it, making a mental note to discipline the guards who had just left a potentially dangerous weapon on the ground in a public market after a chase and fight with an outlaw. Katsuki would not have his guard earn a reputation of incompetence—not after the disarray that Shindo Yo had left it in following his deserved demotion.
He picks it up and examines it briefly. The weapon appears unremarkable, a curved dagger forged in the Al’Aamoan style, scuffed and bound tightly—if clumsily—at the handle, but with a diligently-oiled blade. His mind flashes to the moment when he saw the green lightning arc up along Jackrabbit’s arm, how tightly he held the blade, how he had subtly tried to shift it out of Katsuki’s sight.
A frown creases his face, and he shakes the blade just so, but it remains diligently boring. With a sigh, he moves to sheath his own sword—only to notice something else.
Right in the middle of his own blade, where he’d met Jackrabbit’s steel for steel, his expertly-forged sword bore not just one, but several nicks.
What… what the hell?
He knows it’s the same blade, but this one couldn’t cut cloth, let alone steel. Before he can think too hard on it, he harshly scrapes the dagger against his sword. No cuts. Of course there are no cuts. Katsuki quashes the flicker of paranoia surging in his chest, but can’t pretend he doesn’t feel the subtle, rhythmic beat in the handle, or the heat welling beneath his grip.
He slips it into his belt. There is no time to dwell on it now.
Katsuki busies himself with attending to the stunned shopkeepers, calming the people and settling the chaos left in the wake of Jackrabbit’s capture. Many wave to him, thank him, and the praise blots out his lingering uncertainties.
For now, he allows himself to be proud.
It is only some time later that he leaves the market, ignoring the weight of the dagger on his belt and pretending that those electric green eyes hadn’t seared scars into his skin.
“Are you honestly trying to tell me that the king cannot spare five minutes for an audience!?”
“Commander, his court hours are over. His Majesty has requested he not be disturbed.”
“For the last time, this is important!” Katsuki snaps, his patience long spent. “I understand that the king’s afternoon tea is a,” he swallows with difficulty, “serious matter, but you know I wouldn’t be asking if the situation wasn’t critical! All I require is five minutes—five minutes—and I will leave you be!”
“You are free to return with your query tomorrow,” the attendant repeats dryly. Katsuki feels a surge of anger and the beginnings of a pounding headache at that, his hands clenching reflexively. He’s finding the idea of blowing down the door to the audience chamber—or the attendant’s neck—more and more appealing.
“I have the prisoner right here!” Katsuki grits his teeth—even his knights are starting to shuffle restlessly beside him, tired of the back-and-forth. “What should I even be expected to do with him until—”
“Katsuki? Is something going on here?”
The attendant’s gaze snaps behind him, and he straightens, brow smoothing from its contemptuous arch. The shuffling behind Katsuki halts immediately.
Oh, thank the gods.
Shouto’s voice has never been more welcome. He isn’t wearing his courtly attire—of course he isn’t, he never is—but the small frown creasing his face and the scar spilling over his eye is enough for anyone to recognize the prince on sight.
“Is this the thing I heard you dragged in?” He stops beside him and lets his gaze drift to Jackrabbit’s form, trussed up and held between a pair of now perfectly poised knights. He had given up on struggling against the ropes halfway through the walk back, but from his taste of Jackrabbit’s tenacity during their brief, vicious encounter, Katsuki can’t help but feel as if he might simply be biding his time and waiting for a chance to escape.
Not that Katsuki would ever allow it.
“Yes—” he stops himself from following with Your Highness, familiar with Shouto’s displeasure of him using the title, and swallows. “I didn’t think that the news would have arrived so fast.”
“You know how gossip travels,” Shouto says, stepping towards Jackrabbit and reaching to take his chin between his fingers. His touch is immediately met with recoil, the thief struggling to pull away as the prince’s grip tightens. “Huh. This one’s got a pretty face. Did you finally find something to warm your bed?”
When Katsuki bristles at the question, Shouto waves his hand. “Oh, please. You know I’m kidding. But honestly, just what is this? It looks as if it hasn’t eaten in a week.”
For all I know, he might not have.
Katsuki straightens.
“This is the market thief that’s been giving us trouble for some fifteen years. You know the one. Ja—”
“Your Highness!”
Interrupted. Again. But Momo’s presence is not unexpected; she never strays from Shouto’s side for long, always keeping a dutiful eye on her prince.
“My goodness, Your Highness,” she sighs, crossing her arms over her armored chest. “Please do not run off like that. I almost lost you.” Then, she turns to Katsuki, offering him an exasperated smile. “My apologies if I disturbed you, Commander. How was your patrol toda—wait.”
Momo stops mid-sentence, looks at the captive to his side, then back to Katsuki. “I ordered you to stay at the market till sundown, correct? What are you doing back so soon, and just who have you brought with you?”
“This is Katsuki’s new lay,” Shouto says before Katsuki can get a word in, completely impassive. “I think it’s the freckles that made him want to get his cock wet.”
In private, he would retort tenfold, but there are knights watching, and Katsuki will not allow his behavior to reflect poorly on Shouto—if not for the sake of the prince himself, then because the king would have his head. He bites his tongue and wills himself not to rebuke the prince’s crude comments, angry that he feels the need to defend himself despite it being—being common knowledge—that Katsuki has never taken a single soul into his bed.
And I won’t. I won’t, especially not with him.
Thankfully, Momo halts any further comments with a subtle glare toward her charge, one that can only be read by the sharpest eye. “I would like to hear my commander’s report.”
Her voice is completely even, and Shouto unerringly obeys the unspoken not yours. He knows to pick his battles. Out of everyone in the castle, Momo is the only one Shouto ever listens to without question—even before she became the Captain of the Prince’s Guard. For that alone, Katsuki’s respect for her stretches miles.
“Like I was saying earlier,” he begins, clamping down his irritation with the prince’s comments, “I’ve captured Jackrabbit, the thief that’s been causing trouble in the capital markets, and I would very much appreciate an audience with the king so I can deal with him at once.” He glares at the attendant again, who remains perfectly nonchalant.
Momo’s eyes go wide, and Katsuki allows himself a swell of pride. “Jackrabbit? The market thief?” When he nods, she continues. “You’ve been wanting to arrest him since you picked up a sword, haven’t you? I’m impressed.”
Despite her words, she eyes Jackrabbit again, well-hidden surprise in the line of her brow as she takes in his gaunt form. It seems as if she wants to say something—a question of how this man could have avoided them for so long, perhaps—but Shouto steps towards the throne room before she can say a word.
“Should’ve just told me you wanted that earlier,” he pauses, and motions to the attendant at the door. “My Commander requires an audience. Let us in.”
The door opens without question. No one in the castle would dare oppose the prince’s wishes. Despite his rather indecorous behavior, Shouto has proven himself willing to discipline disobedience without hesitation. And if word made it back to King Enji that his son’s requests had been turned down, well—everyone knew that he was as vicious on the throne as he was in a fight.
Shouto walks in first and Katsuki follows, only to freeze as soon as he spots two tiny figures standing before the throne, the king in full blaze seated upon it. This delegation should’ve come and left this morning, and if those are, as he presumes, children, then Katsuki has just unknowingly let a dangerous prisoner into the same room as them. Fuck.
Showing no sign of surprise, Shouto doesn’t break stride, heading directly towards them.
“Uncle Shouto!” he hears, just as the cloaked figures rush forward, colliding with Shouto hard enough to knock him back a few steps. As they cling to his leg, Shouto raises a hand in greeting to the room at large.
“Father,” Shouto says, and Katsuki has to keep from screaming at his casual demeanor. “I heard that we were receiving the delegation from Dalais today.” A few paces in front of him, several older individuals drop into a deep bow at Shouto’s arrival, despite the prince paying them little notice.
The king’s flames somehow seem to burn even redder. “Shouto, what is the meaning of—”
“The Commander of the Royal Guard has some important business to discuss,” he says impassively, then turns to the kids. “How about we go play in the gardens?”
Without a backwards glance, he takes their hands and leads them towards the adjacent antechamber, leaving the children’s entourage to scramble after them. Momo follows him too, but not without giving Katsuki a last, empathetic glance. Good luck.
Katsuki’s throat is dry as he stares up at the king. He’ll need it.
King Enji’s audience chamber is now empty save for the king himself, his personal guard, and his attendants. Every morning, open court is held for visitors—pilgrims, messengers, and appellants—and every afternoon it closes to the public while the king takes his tea and occasionally holds council. If it was not such an urgent situation, Katsuki wouldn’t risk a confrontation with the king after hours, but just this once he feels it will be permitted—so long as Shouto’s behavior and the delayed delegation hasn't ruined his chances.
He swallows. Steps forward, and his knights follow him towards the throne. Jackrabbit doesn’t—can’t, he reminds himself—make a sound.
“Your Majesty!”
The temperature rises as they approach, swelling into an oppressive heat. Katsuki kneels before the throne, sweat building in his palms as his heart beats in his ears. “I apologize for the interruption.”
If there was ever a time to keep from showing weakness, it is now.
“Commander,” comes the response, cold despite the flames blitzing about the king’s hulking form. Shouto’s performance earlier had been of no help; any good mood the king may have had is clearly gone. “What was so urgent that it could not wait until tomorrow?”
It’s impatient. Stern. Fifteen years he’s lived in the castle, and in all those fifteen years, the king has never grown less imposing.
“Your Majesty,” he begins, raising his gaze from the floor to hover near the king’s own. “I have apprehended Jackrabbit, the thief. He will be a nuisance to our kingdom no more.”
Under so much pressure, it takes every ounce of Katsuki’s willpower to keep his words proper, precise, perfect. Training the crude accent from his voice had taken too many years, and the heat of the king’s ferocious stare only makes his focus trip.
“Jackrabbit… ah.” The king curls his lip, eyes drifting to the one outsider in the room. The thief hangs limp between the two guards holding him, head bowed. If he hears his name, he makes no move. “Is that what this scrawny thing is supposed to be?”
His gut twists.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Why has it taken our forces so many years to arrest this common thief?” the king says, turning back to Katsuki with a sneer of contempt. “Are you sure this is the right one? This thing hardly has any meat on its bones.” He shakes his head, and Katsuki’s newfound pride from the capture begins to spiral away.
Despite his misgivings, he knows better than to rebuke his king. Instead, he clenches his fists, steadies his breathing, and focuses.
“This one is no common thief, Your Majesty,” he begins, willing himself to not look away. “I know he may not look it, but I fought him. His form belies his strength, and his speed is nigh unmatched. We have struggled for so long because his skills are substantial and legitimate.”
The king’s eyes narrow. “But the thief is quirkless, correct?”
His breath hitches.
“...I am afraid I do not have an answer, Your Majesty.” Jackrabbit’s dagger is heavy at his side. “I do not know if the strength this thief possesses is due to a quirk, but he almost certainly has some sort of ability that has kept him alive this long, and I believe there is much that could be learned if we were to—”
“Some ability?” the king scoffs, openly glaring at Jackrabbit. “Did you interrupt my meeting for the sake of a jest, Commander?”
He knows what he saw, yet the king’s conviction is almost enough to convince him otherwise. Katsuki spares a glance towards Jackrabbit, but the hint of humor in his eyes is utterly unhelpful.
“It is no matter, I suppose,” the king says, dismissive, and Katsuki visibly flinches. “His trial will be held tomorrow. Once he is sentenced, we will have him publicly executed. His head on a stake will make a good example for whoever else attempts to steal from our merchants, even if it is hard to believe that this is what gave the guard trouble for so long.”
And all at once, Katsuki’s nerves are replaced with frustration.
This is the man I’ve been hunting for years. This is the man I wanted to catch. This is the man I wanted to kill, but…
“Your Majesty.” He sucks in a breath, lets his eyes lock firmly with the king’s. “Please—grant me a single request, and keep him alive.”
When the king doesn’t immediately dismiss his words, he takes it as a cue to keep going.
“I fought him in the markets. I know there’s something different about him. I want to know how this peasant—” his gut churns at the word, “—has managed to evade justice for so long, and I believe there is much we could learn for ourselves if I can uncover the secret to this strange power he carries.”
The king is clearly unconvinced.
“You, of all people, should be aware of the grievances he has committed,” the king says, his contempt directed at Katsuki now. “I believe we have recorded fifteen years of his thievery. Food, goods, gold… not to mention, we have reports of people being brutally attacked and assaulted by him.”
He nods. He knows.
“I have watched you grow over the years, Commander.” The king’s voice falls to a quiet, authoritative murmur, reminiscent of a parent reprimanding a child. Even if he is now Commander of the Royal Guard, Katsuki suddenly feels five years old again, shrinking at the too-familiar tone. “I was under the impression that you had shed any inclination to interact with such undesirables.”
“I swear, I have no wish to fraternize.” His heart is pounding in his chest. “I—I simply see potential in him for more, just like you saw in me, Your Majesty.”
A long, weighted silence hangs between them, and Katsuki has to hope that his plea is enough.
I can’t let him die yet. We don’t know how he was able to run for so long. We need to find out why he’s so strong, why this dagger is junk in my hands and gold in his, whether his strength is skill or a quirk or some sort of mysticism, and—
“Well,” comes Shouto’s voice from behind—he must have slipped back in earlier, but Katsuki has no time to contemplate the specifics, accepting the cool shock of unexpected relief. “If this thief is as Katsuki says he is—and, do remember his inability to lie—then I think his request is reasonable.” There’s a glint in his eye. “You value strength, father. So why not?”
Perhaps it is the suffocating heat in his throat, or the ice gripping his bones; either way, Katsuki cannot move.
Shouto has no taste for his father, and as his strongest and only remaining heir, King Enji has been known to bend the rules in order to keep what flimsy relationship they have alive—if nothing else, his own son’s lack of respect for him would cast doubt on his authority if it became common knowledge.
With the prince beside him, an inkling of Katsuki’s resolve is returning—while there is a chance, he knows he must speak now.
“If I can train this thief into a weapon worthy of this kingdom, drill into him an unwavering loyalty towards you, and harness this power that may lie beyond even quirks...” his hand slips to his side—he must be imagining the dagger pulsing beneath it— "could he not be of more use to us than a corpse?”
The king is silent, considering. Jackrabbit shifts in his restraints, the first he’s heard him move through the whole exchange.
“If this is to be done, and no trial is to be held,” the king stares Katsuki down, “then this thief will be your responsibility alone. His needs will come second to your duties, and I expect no decline in your performance as Commander. And, if you fail to do as you say you will—” flames flicker along the king’s hands, arms, face, “—punishment will be in order.”
His rank. His life. His everything.
I’ll catch him, he’d said. I’ll be the best.
“Do you understand, Commander?”
Katsuki turns to Jackrabbit. He’s raised his head; shocked, glassy eyes frame the gag, not even his lank hair able to hide the reaction. In this moment, barely held upright by his bonds, he looks nothing like the man who could have brought Katsuki to his knees.
It is no matter. Already he’s planning what needs to be done: a bath, a change of clothes, and more permanent cuffs are in order.
But, for now…
“Yes.” No hesitation, no second-guessing. “Yes, Your Majesty. I will fulfill my royal duties, and I will continue to exceed expectations,” he says. “And, as for this thief…”
Katsuki rises, takes a step towards him. Meets Jackrabbit eye-to-eye for the first time since coming to the castle. Feels his stomach turn, but refuses to acknowledge it.
“His life is mine.”