It would have been over in a second if the bastards hadn't snuck up on their camp in the middle of the night. Five on two was nothing, normally. But, fast asleep as he was, Bakugou only got the barest warning that something was not right before he heard the sound of swords being slid from sheaths. His axe was in his hand before his eyes were even open. And Deku-
Deku was not at his side. Deku was still down. Asleep?
Impossible to say in the dim light. Bakugou killed three of the men before they could land a blow on him. The fourth man was only a little trickier, but in a minute he too was down. The last man hung back a little, and he held his sword like he wasn't sure how to use it. Bakugou raised his axe and stepped towards him. It didn't matter if he was a fighter or not - he was still with this group, so he deserved to die with them, too.
"Stop!" the man said, his voice shrill, frantic. "Stop!"
Bakugou took another step forward. He'd heard all this before.
"You can bring him back. I can tell you how!"
Bakugou stopped at last, axe still high, and frowned. Then, by the light of the enemy's torch, he looked down properly for the first time. Deku's neck and chest were nearly black with blood. He hadn't even had time to reach for his own weapon; he'd never woken up.
Bakugou was still, frozen. There was a pounding in his head, vicious and throbbing, and his stomach rose into his throat. His hands on the axe handle were clammy, and it threatened to slip out of his grasp.
"There's still time," the man said, but Bakugou could not stop staring down at Deku, whose head was facing to the side though his body faced up, and whose chest was very still.
"You can go into the land of the dead and bring him back."
Bakugou finally turned to look at the man again. "Deku's…"
"He's dead," the man said. "But you can bring him back."
"Deku's dead?"
It rang true. Deku was a lighter sleeper than he was; from the very moment he had not risen alongside Bakugou it had been obvious something was wrong. But the word felt so wrong, so leaden in his mouth.
Moving very slowly, the man slid his sword back into its sheath. "I have gone into the land of the dead before," he said, over-enunciating his words as if Bakugou was a child. "You can only go once. But if you follow my instructions you can bring him back."
"What are you talking about?"
"The land of the dead," the man said, but Bakugou had heard him - the words just weren't making sense.
Bakugou switched his axe to one hand and ran the other through his hair, only realizing afterwards that it was coated in the dead strangers' blood. He could smell it on himself. "How," he said. His throat felt dry. It had not even been two minutes since he'd been woken up. "Tell me how."
"Fall asleep with his blood on your hands, and picture him. When you awake, you'll be there," the man said. "Walk for a day. It doesn't matter what direction. Walk until it's night - when the sun sets, you'll see a building. Do not go inside. Sleep next to that building, and in the morning, walk away from it. Do not look back, and do not eat or drink while you are there. When you fall asleep next, you'll wake up back in the world of the living."
Bakugou stared at him for a long moment, then made the man repeat everything he'd just said. Even after that, it still seemed incomprehensible. "A building… what kind of building?"
"I don't know."
"You said you'd been before."
"It varies by person. For me it was a church. For you, I cannot say."
"And - don't eat anything?"
"Don't eat or drink anything, or you won't be able to come back. And once you wake up on the second day, don't look back."
"Why not?"
"Because spirits are fragile compared to living people," the man said. "Your gaze will be enough to destroy him, and there will be no returning."
Spirits? Bakugou looked down. Deku was dead. Deku was a corpse. His spirit was somewhere else, and his body was here, because he was dead. Bakugou rubbed his eyes, and they began to burn; his hands were still bloody, he realized for the second time.
"Are you full of shit?" Bakugou asked the stranger. He was still holding his axe, but it was oddly heavy. Normally it was almost an extension of his arm, but it felt like a burden. "You're just pulling my leg, aren't you."
"I swear I'm not!" the man said quickly, voice rising in pitch. "I told you, I've been there myself! You can tie me to a tree if you want, and only release me when you come back. You can kill me if it fails. I swear on everything I own that I'm telling the truth."
"Repeat it all again. All the instructions, from the beginning."
For the third time, the man went through everything. Bakugou listened carefully, and, as soon as the man was done speaking, he killed him. Then he lay down beside Deku. The blood was already cooling and turning thick, and the smell was strong - Bakugou almost gagged. He turned away and buried his face in the collar of his shirt, but the stench was still there. He'd smelled it a hundred times, but not like this; it had never before been Deku's blood.
When he awoke, the sun was already high overhead. His axe was gone. His hands were clean. And the world around him was different - it was no place he'd ever seen before in his life.
It was only then that he realized the man had been telling the truth.
The air was warm, but Bakugou himself was cool and damp, covered in dew. He was lying in a small grove of trees; beyond him, he could see yellow-green grass and rolling hills, dotted with more patches of trees here and there. When the wind blew threw, the air smelled sweet, like blossoms.
He was in the world of the dead.
Bakugou stood, his legs shaky. He thought back on the man's instructions and began walking, positioning the sun at his back. The grass was not quite up to his knees, and was softer than it looked, pleasant to walk through. At the tops of the hills there were clusters of yellow flowers.
He kept walking. He never grew tired, but he did grow hungry and thirsty. When he came to a little stream, the water was tempting, and he even let it flow over his hands, almost painfully cold; but he thought back on the man's words, and moved on.
The day seemed longer than it should have been, somehow. The sun moved slowly. Even when it was fully overhead, though, Bakugou did not feel too hot. The sight of the dead strangers on the ground, and Deku with them, all seemed very far away, as if it had happened years ago instead of the night before. It was easy to forget it all, in the brilliance of the day.
Finally, as the sky grew red-orange with sunset, Bakugou saw a glimmer from a hill in the distance. He reached it just as the sky grew fully dark; it was a little cabin, all of its angles lopsided, as if its builder had not been very skilled. From the windows poured a rich golden light, the kind that might come from lamps or candles, but Bakugou did not dare to even look inside. As he lay down next to the building, he thought he could smell meat and the smoke of a cooking fire. He had not smelled anything so good in a long, long time, and lay there, kept awake with hunger and excitement and nerves, for what felt like half the night.
Bakugou awoke once more covered in dew. He could feel the press of the cabin's wall on his back, and steadied himself against it as he rose, but he did not turn around as he began walking towards the rising sun. As he took his first steps away, he thought he heard something behind him - a faint click, as if a door had latched shut.
Bakugou could scarcely breathe from wondering whether Deku really was following him. He wanted to run, although from what the man had said it would not get them home any faster. He balled his hands into fists, clenching them so tight they hurt. The worst part was the not knowing. He might get to the end and find out the man he'd killed had been lying, or wrong. He might never leave the world of the dead, even. Or…
He couldn't even stand to think of the or, because of the possibility it would not happen.
Bakugou wasn't sure if the geography was the same as the day before until he got to the stream. Then he knew; it was almost certainly the same one he'd passed the morning before. He crouched down to run his hands through. The urge to drink from it was even stronger than the day before - it had been nearly two full days without water, and his tongue felt fuzzy and dry in his mouth, his lips chapped.
The stones beneath his feet must have been damp with moss, because as Bakugou was bending his knees, he lost his footing and slipped face-first into the water. He just barely shut his mouth in time; but as he was picking himself up out of the water, he heard the unmistakable sound of laughter. Deku's laughter.
It was such a familiar, natural sound that Bakugou forgot - he forgot everything - the attack in the night, the corpse, his hands covered in blood -
He forgot all of that, and turned, laughing and growling out, "What are you laughing at?" in mock anger, realizing what he was doing only after he had already turned. The knowledge shot through his body like a physical wound, but he could not stop himself in time.
And there, in the forest with him, was Deku.
He was wearing loose white and blue robes, like the kind he told Bakugou they wore in his village. His hair was messy, his face dappled with sunlight and freckles - and his neck was whole, bare of blood.
As he met Bakugou's eyes, he was smiling. Laughing.
"Izuku," Bakugou said, and reached out for him, but before he could even get close Deku was gone, completely gone - disappearing like dust, like sand tossed into the sea.
Bakugou did not speak of it for years.
Even before Deku's death, he'd been a great warrior; he had no choice but to be a better one. They'd been a duo, but he was solo now - he had to learn to do alone what they'd done together. And he did: there was no enemy stronger than he, no foe he could not cut down.
On all his travels, he kept asking the same question, over and over again: is it possible to go to the land of the dead? Because, everywhere he went, among everyone he spoke to, he never heard anything like that. If everything had not been so vivid, he might have thought his journey across those grassy hills was a dream, but no dream could be so convincing. It might have been real, or it might have been a spell cast by the man Bakugou had killed - but the things he saw and felt did not come from Bakugou's mind alone, of that he was certain.
So he asked the question over and over again, and over and over people told him no, no living man can enter the land of the dead. It wasn't until he spoke with Aizawa that anyone questioned him further.
His former teacher was older by that point, his hair and stubble streaked with gray. He listened to Bakugou's question wordlessly, watching him with those huge, dark eyes. "I have never spoken with anyone who's done it personally, but I've read that it can be done," he said - the first time anyone had given Bakugou an answer other than a flat no. "Why do you ask?"
And, like a dam had broken, Bakugou spoke of it for the first time. He told Aizawa everything. Aizawa had been Deku's teacher too, once upon a time, but he'd already known about his former student's death; he did not look surprised until Bakugou began to describe waking up in the summer-warm grass, his journey, the cabin. Deku's laugh.
Afterwards, Aizawa was silent for a long time. His voice, when he did speak, was low and almost inaudible. "While there have been stories of people going to the world of the dead to retrieve those they've lost, no one has ever succeeded," he said. "It is thought that it cannot be done. The living may occasionally cross over, but the spirits cannot cross back. Even if you had made it out without looking behind you, Bakugou, he would still be gone."
Bakugou never doubted his teacher before - not until that moment. Not that Aizawa was ignorant, but that he was lying. Lying to make Bakugou feel better.
But it was nice to believe - that it was not Bakugou that had caused Deku's second death, but the world itself. Deku had been too fragile, his spirit barely clinging together, alive only in that quiet world. Maybe it was true. And if it was, the journey had been worth it for that final glimpse.
Bakugou could still imagine that moment - the lines of Deku's smile and the faint, familiar sound of his laugh, echoing through the forest and along the hills.