Chapter Text
Blood.
So much blood.
Blood, ash, and smoke.
Smoke pouring across a once blue sky and blood running like a river over the grass of his homestead. Drowning on dry land with his mouth tasting of pitch and death. Buildings collapsing under oppressive fire, roars of anguish, the gnash of teeth and blades. A head wound and black, spotty vision; crawling up from smoldering coals and leveled wood beams that stoked the flames.
Katsuki couldn't remember how he ended up in the mountains. Adrenaline pumping, he just knew to run with the little power he had left in any direction, run until the ground transitioned from dangerous rust and crimson to soft, chalky whites. He didn’t limp. Only continued until he felt a snap when the shattered bone in his leg finally gave out, and he hit the piles of snow face first. Punishment —for the most cowardly thing he’d ever done. He started to crawl, gasping in pain as he tried to grip at nothing sturdy with his left hand, unable to see if the arm was broken, crushed, or anything else. His bare feet were numb and twitching, frozen over by the extreme cold of this region and scuffed up by the terrain of rock and ice. He was ill prepared for this weather, with nothing but one thin layer on his back, a sheepskin tunic. His clamoring shouts echoed amongst the trees every time he pulled himself along. He gagged, threw up his own blood and bile, but he would not cry. He would not stop moving. He would not lay down and die, allowing frost to consume his wounds, body curled around a tree as he snivelingly gave in to rest; no matter how blurry his vision became, how exhausted he was growing. Katsuki was not weak. He would not say his final prayers and let them succeed in putting him down like a rabid dog. He was born a fighter and that would not change, if he had any say in fate.
Flashes of his childhood came clear into his mind.
Chasing his younger brother and sister around the village while they squealed and tripped over their own tails.
No.
He remembered presenting as an Alpha and being guided by his mother on his first hunt.
No.
His first woolen cape; his coming of age gift from his father.
Oh gods —his siblings, his mother, his father.
“No!” Katsuki growled out with the last of his wind, knees coming up to his stomach in wheezing pain. He was not going to die like this.
The visions stopped at his scream. The snow underneath his body was stained red. There was, somewhere deep in his core, beyond the goreish agony and unending nausea, mingling with his sense of shame, a sense of smug pride that he’d resisted a force of nature. The most powerful force of nature, he’d say. Feeling himself smirk was enough to roll onto his back, wincing as the wetness of ice pierced his wounds. A freezing chill danced over his skin, the dullness it brought a deceiving mercy from the god of seasons.
He blinked, or at least he thought he did, slow and deliberate. There was nowhere to go but further into the woods, completely turned around directionally, with stirred emotions and memories.
Get up, goddamn it, Katsuki, he heard his mother say, and his head craned towards her distant voice like a sunflower to the sun.
“I will, Ma,” I will. “In just a second.”
Was that his voice? How was he talking when his jaw felt locked in place? He flinched up at a blunt and persistent throbbing at the back of his head.
“I will, Ma.”
How could he have just left them in it? In that horrible scene? He had to live. He had to survive to find his family. If he couldn’t find them, he’d slaughter anyone who had a hand in their murders, and carve a trail of blood and guts all his own. His feeling eclipsed the word rage, something hotter than they yet had a word to describe. It wailed louder than all his afflictions, his blood boiling giving him the illusion of heat.
The sky was white. It was snowing, as it always did this deep into the mountains. He didn’t know if it was day or night anymore. The attack began after midday, before they could leave for a hunt, but Katsuki had to make peace with time unaccounted for. If he didn’t move soon, he’d be buried frail and pathetic rather than just sinking, becoming part of the soil. That would not be how they found his body, in this state of surrender. It was hard to make a snowball with one hand. Once he found a strong grip to keep him tethered, his wrist cramped and the ball broke apart into pink powder atop his stomach. It was only then he realized, for these last miles, the world around him had been utterly scentless after the assault on his body, mind, and senses. Katsuki breathed another soft groan of discomfort through his mouth, eyes fluttering closed once more. What had he expected? To climb a mountain in the middle of a blizzard, maimed and debilitated? Put himself back together and take on an enemy tribe in a few days time?
The cold was painless, at least. The cold held back the suffering.
He fell asleep before he could argue further with his spiraling mind.
When he woke up, it was as if he’d been blindfolded and made to walk into a damp cave. When he woke up? He was sure sleep had been his death. Maybe it was. The fact that he couldn't see paid no credence one way or the other if he was living or dead. Despite his clouded vision, his ears twitched at tiny noises becoming progressively louder. He heard mumbling as someone frantically dug around, wiping snow off of his frigid body, then heard the crunch of ice crystals dipped in his dried — drying? — blood. Had it been hours? Days? That smug feeling crept up on him again.
“Oh, gods!” a gentle voice cried out — male, Katsuki thought, hesitant still from the almost motherly tone. Whoever they were, they frantically patted along Katsuki’s form to find somewhere safe to grab him from without poking at his wounds or his rapidly developed frostbite.
Once they made hold, they lifted him onto something and threw a layered fur over his body. It was only then he realized his teeth were chattering again, his body shivering, his leg and arm immovable. Whatever he was on was wooden with wheels. A wagon, most likely. He could tell from the way it hit the rocks and bumped against his deadened back. Their anxious mumbling continued, and they sounded as if they were trying to suppress chest-wracking sobs. Katsuki’s sense of time was long muddled, but it felt hours before they reached a stopping point.
A well-tended fire blazing brightly cleared up his vision, at least, for the eye he could open. He was in much worse shape than he thought, and Katsuki had been certain a perceived moment before that he was going to meet his makers. The person who had saved him was bundled up, so he couldn't reasonably surmise shape or size, but they had forest green hair with streaks of viridian, gold, and even a darker sage. Katsuki chuckled to himself, thinking it was wonderful camouflage in this part of the country. They were a ram, with curled, ribbed horns thick as an arm and as big as half Katsuki’s face. Their tiny ears were drooped with panic. Sheep, rams, and goats were rare in Katsuki’s area. When it came to cattle hybrids, you were more likely to see a bovine than an ovine where he came from. Katsuki himself was a wolf, and in his current state, for the first time in his life, Katsuki found a new appreciation for irony.
The stranger turned back to the wagon, and Katsuki was stunned by the face he was met with. Lightly tanned skin dusted with reddish-brown freckles everywhere he could see, indicators of a warmer climate. His eyes were just as green as his hair, flicking with speckles of gold and blue above the tinder. He didn't speak anymore, just hefted Katsuki off the wagon with a huff of strain, pulling him as carefully as possible under the largest tent.
He left for his packed materials, coming back with an armful of bandages, cloth, and salves, placing them on the large blanketed hay bed he rested Katsuki on, pushing his hair out of his face with steady hand and whispering, “You’re safe,” again and again, the croakiness of fear plain in his voice. Then, he jumped up and walked to another side of the shelter.
Summoning words was challenging through swollen lips. Katsuki felt wrung out, like a child learning to speak for the first time and just not quite getting the words right to communicate with another.
“How…” He gasped, trying to iron out the nasally tone. “How did you…f-find me?”
“I was gathering firewood,” The man explained as he moved around his encampment, not looking up. He gathered what seemed to be ingredients into a deerskin satchel —herbs, vegetables, and things of the like. “And I smelled your scent. Faint, with the winds, but remarkably unique: mahogany and burning sugar — that’s what I smelled first. But the smoke, the blood, that hit me next. I rushed to you as fast as I could, my body giving no time for my head to catch up.”
Even though they were in safety as he continuously assured, his eyes still seemed as if he would melt into tears any second. “The snowstorm almost consumed you! I thought I was seeing your death rattle. I’m just thankful I got you wrapped up before it was too late.”
Katsuki didn’t trust it. Not completely, anyway.
“You’ve a great fever. Hotter than I’ve ever felt,” He continued, carrying a clay pot outside from his wooden pallet that was covered in tools, arrows, and loose scraps of fabric. Katsuki heard a light clang, then the sound of water — both filling something and emptying into another. Now with a bundle of sticks tucked under his arm, his rescuer returned to grab a wooden ladle. “I’ve little medicine this winter, but in warmth and regularly fed, your body will gain its vigor back.”
Katsuki’s lips parted to speak, but the other man just turned heel and went back out. Alone, his ears flicked at the whistle of the passing tempest while waiting, trying to remember what happened however long ago, but the memories were blotched in murky, barely recognizable colors. The harder he thought, the more the dull throbbing returned, before it became a stabbing that made him curl in (as much as he could). The sound he made must’ve beckoned the man back inside.
His lips pursed, and he took off his woolen coat, the top of his many layers.
“I can dress your wounds now; while the stew simmers,” He slipped his gloves off next and placed them, neatly folded atop his coat, on the rug in the room. There were many hides around the camp, he realized. “Staying in that blizzard cauterized them —temporarily, yes—, but if I don’t clean and wrap them, the warmth might breed infection in you. If I start quickly, the salves shouldn’t hurt, at least.” His movements were finely tuned and his explanation educated, as if he was some kind of medic, despite living here all alone. If he did live alone.
Was he an Alpha? He seemed and sounded kind and nurturing, as an Omega would, yet strong with a penchant for hunting and tanning. Katsuki couldn’t use his nose to parse his scent, but he’d never met an omega strong enough to lift him while he was healthy, let alone hypothermic and half-dead weight. Especially not one that was so, well, unassuming in appearance. After kneeling next to the bed of hay, he gathered up the salve and bandages, rolling out a few measured pieces and then pouring the salve carefully onto his hands.
“I can’t,” Katsuki’s infirm voice shook him, to say the least. He’d rarely been sick, let alone bedridden. “I can’t smell you. Are you–”
“Omega,” He said easily, cutting him off.
Katsuki nodded, but the gesture tugged at the aching tendons in his neck.
“Where was your pack, or village? Were you separated on a hunt? What were you attacked by to mangle you like this, pup?” His voice was soothing enough to be disorienting. There was that irony again, Katsuki thought.
“I am not a pup,” Katsuki protested unskillfully, ignoring the question entirely.
“I am only teasing,” He giggled, not pressing the issue as he decided the question functioned perfectly as a rhetorical one. Katsuki flinched at the stiff pricking running over his wounds as the stranger began to apply the salve. “How old are you then, since you’re not a pup by any means?”
Katsuki shifted however he could, but his lower body hardly agreed with him or took the signal from his mind. “Twenty-three years.”
"Only twenty-three years? That is but a pup!" He said, shocked considering Katsuki's demeanor and physique.
Incredulous, Katsuki tried to scowl, wincing at the way the muscles in his face struggled to make the expression. “Not a pup,” he repeated to the man at his side through gritted teeth.
“I am almost four years your senior,” he hummed, splaying a hand over Katsuki’s distended stomach and wrapping the torn flesh at his side. “I’ll have to fashion a sling for your arm. Your nose seems fractured judging by the bruising, so I’ll need some sort of splint as well. The leg will be much more difficult, though. The bones inside seem fragmented to bits, you’re lucky your kneecap didn’t break through the flesh.”
Things went on in silence for a bit, Katsuki occasionally grunting at the sting. As he came closer to finishing the gauze, the man paused. His focused gaze lifted to examine Katsuki’s upper body, moving from his chest to his neck to his face.
“The head wound isn’t as bad as it looks, although it might need sutures, which means I’ll need to find a numbing herb,” He offered, taken to mumbling before he reoriented himself. “I’ll just clean that after you eat, keep it clean while you stay here. I’ll bandage your eye as well, another time.”
Katsuki didn’t refuse him.
“You’re so pale now,” his face fell with sadness as he touched fingertips to Katsuki’s cheek, almost comparing his tan to Katsuki’s deeper, sunkissed brown tone. “I knew you couldn’t be from the mountains as soon as I saw you.”
Shirking away from the touch all too late, Katsuki coughed. “Neither are you.”
He agreed, eyes falling to the last bandage that needed applying, as if to close the window to his soul. “That I am not.”
Their conversation trailed off, suddenly feeling heavy for the first time, even as he was trying to bring a corpse back to life. Apprehensively, he caressed Katsuki’s arm which was still intact.
“What’s your name?” He asked, mouth curling into a sweet smile. “I’ve no way to call you.”
“It’s Katsuki.”
“Katch– Katchuki?” The man tilted his head. “Is that from your tribe? Kachui?”
“Katsuki,” he repeated, lacking the strength to be stern, feeling sleep drift onto his head again.
“I’ve never heard that name.”
“Means victory, in our language.”
He nodded seriously. “Suits you, then. Anyone else would’ve surely died out there, as illfitted as you were.”
“Oi,” he grunted at the insult. “What’s your name then?”
“Izuku.”
Not daring to attempt its pronunciation, Katsuki sucked his teeth. His dialect lacked the middle consonant.
“Save your strength,” Izuku’s warm smile became a grin, leering at Katsuki as if he knew he couldn’t say it. “Here, the soup is almost ready.” He placed each of his hands on his thighs and lifted himself, taking a bowl from one of his bags and leaving to fix Katsuki a meal.
It was humiliating, how Katsuki needed to be fed. The vulnerability of being seen incapable, a closeness he’d seldom shared with anyone aside from his mother and father just offered up to a stranger, against his will and part of the gods’ cruel plan for him. As much as he wanted to, he could not reject the gesture. Katsuki couldn’t lean up to eat, so Izuku met him halfway with the spoon. The situation was made worse by the fact that, despite his seemingly limited ingredients, the soup was incredible, and quite filling. After maybe twelve feeble spoonfuls, Katsuki’s stomach cramped and he cried out in pain, worry setting in immediately.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” Izuku set the bowl down in an instant, touching light but probing fingers to Katsuki’s side and moving up towards his diaphragm, making Katsuki wheeze. “Your injuries are deep, Ka…” At least he gave it an attempt. “We’ll give it some time, then we’ll try again.”
Izuku did just that. Feeding Katsuki however many spoonfuls he could manage, before returning the soup to the pot so it stayed warm, and repeating until he had had two bowls in total, which must’ve soaked up the rest of their night. As he recognized Katsuki’s fatigue, he stood to his feet, grabbing a rolled bamboo mat and blanket from nearby and unrolling it only a few feet from the hay bed.
“I’m imposing,” Katsuki rasped. “Making you sacrifice. It’s not right.”
Cavalier as if he were not preparing to sleep on the ground, Izuku waved him off. “Don’t worry about me, pup. I’m plenty comfortable here. And I’ll be more than close enough to hear if something is wrong while you sleep. We’ll be in close quarters for some time, while you recuperate, but there’s no need to be that close,” it was a joke, and even though it was inopportune and somewhat painful, Katsuki let out a soft laugh.
His tone straightened, almost at the flip of a coin. Still kind, but serious. “I will take care of you from now, till you are even stronger than before, pup.”
The regular Katsuki would’ve told him he needed no help, but for once in a way he could not dispute, that wasn’t true. Instead, he nodded silently, feeling sleep finally take him.