For now, this is going to be a Pilot chapter. Hopefully if it's well received, I would like to turn it into a multi-chapter story one day.
Please read and review because I would really like to know what you think! Especially constructive criticism because I won't be able to improve if no one is willing to point it out to me. Your time and thoughts would be most appreciated. Thank you and please enjoy!
Work Text:
PROLOGUE
He dreams.
Every night for as long as he could remember, he dreams.
He dreamed of things. Horrifying things that were more like nightmares than dreams and they all made absolutely no sense. Every dream was different yet similar in its contents. Of blood. Of screams. Of faceless people speaking in a language he didn't know but understands. And then he woke up. Cold sweat clinging to his clothes, heart threatening to beat right out of his chest. Already, his dreams would fade like smoke.
He would always, always wake up at dawn, body paralyzed. The first time it happened, he was a scared three-year-old, terrified out of his damn mind. He couldn't move, couldn't even speak. Before panic could set in, a hand reached out, smoothing his forehead.
A girl.
Brown hair and eyes, a few years older than him wearing foreign clothes and ornaments he didn't recognize.
Every time he wakes, the same girl would reach out a hand to soothe away the horrors that he could never recall. She'd be leaning against the headboard of the bed, a book in one hand while the other kept his panic at bay. And when dawn finally bled into morning, the girl disappeared like dissipating mist, a finger pressed to her smiling lips.
Don't tell anyone, was what the girl left unsaid.
And for some unexplainable reason, he listened. Went on his day like normal, body in control once again.
The cycle repeats. Over and over again. Until one morning, a week since that first dawn.
Moments before the girl faded away, he finally managed to rasp out to ask who she was. The girl had smiled and answered, voice barely a whisper.
"Sera."
The next dawn, he regained his voice. Asked questions about dreams that were never answered. Couldn't be answered. So he settled by filling in the silence by trading stories with the—with Sera as she insisted for them to do. It was one of the few rare times he'd be quite. The stories were about impossible things, even by Quirk standards. Normal everyday things. Family, friends. He knows about Sera's life as much she with his.
Until he was made aware that Sera knows more about who he is than he himself does. "You'll know. Right now you can't because your mind and heart can't accept it yet."
He raged and railed but quieted when Sera admitted that the answers she has were not what he wanted. She knows but she didn't know. Not they way he wanted her to. Never once did he tell those closest to him of what transpired every dawn. Not about Sera and definitely not about those nightmarish dreams that refused to stop.
As the years gone by, he started to remember bits and pieces of them. He grudgingly admitted, at least to himself, that Sera was right. He hated them. He hated that he remembered the brief flashes of blood. Of corpses. Of a massacred village. Of an evil deity. But then come the screams. Fucking hell, the screams were always the worst of them all.
And in the midst of the chaos that was his dreams, one thing stood out the most. A strange gold ring with a decorated triangular bit of gold in the middle and five dangling gold charms. The gold points of the charm would dig into his chest and through his soul. Burning him. Damning him. That would be when he'd wake up.
When he offhandedly mentioned the golden ring to Sera, she turned sad and tired, looking far older than she should. "That ring had taken away many. My brother and our friend Mani to name a few. But eventually they were all saved...all but one." Her words chilled him more than he would like to admit and since then, he never brought up the ring again.
Eventually, his dreams inevitably bled into his waking hours.
It caused him to steadily lose control to a point where he lashed out. Violently. Cruelly. Sometimes with his Quirk. Other times without. He grew arrogant, carried beliefs that echoed those in his dreams. That he was better than everyone else. Everyone was guilty, weak. Mere pebbles at the side of the road.
Hell, he even turned his back on his friend. On Deku— on Izuku.
The dreams were twisting him.
Many times, he wanted to tell his parents but never could, in fear of being seen as insane. And many more times, he wanted to stop. But it felt so damn good. To make things explode at the palm of his hands. To be in control and in power, to be the best. To be King.
And Sera, she never left but he could feel her disappointment. Whenever he acted out particularly bad the day before, she'd stay silent and still as a statue, refused to breathe a word to him. At first, he didn't care. Until the silence and daily paralysis, frightening in its familiarity, almost drove him mad. So he cut back the bullying to a minimum. But even when Sera talked to him again, the disappointment still lurked in her eyes, in her voice.
"You're making the same mistakes again, Katsuki."
He ignored her warnings until the day he finally couldn't.
The sludge villain. Deku. All Might.
It was like a dam finally broke as more of his dreams flood into his mind. He didn't want them. Especially when he eventually realized that the him in his dreams, that wore those ancient red robes, was consumed by madness and hatred. Who resembled too much to that of a villain.
Vicious. Violent. Cruel.
A monster.
A villain.
He was not a villain. Fuck no. No way in hell. He was going to be the best damn hero. Not a villain. Not a monster. These dreams weren't real. They couldn't be. Just lies his overactive mind conjured up. Not real, of course, they weren't real. He would never be a villain. He won't, he won't, he won't.
He pulled back. Ignored Deku and many others completely. Focused on getting into U.A. For almost a year, he concentrated on his studies, on keeping his erratic emotions at bay.
But the dreams still didn't stop.
Even then, Sera stayed. Every dawn, without fail, she stayed. Did her best to sooth away the increasingly traumatizing, confusing dreams. Sooner or later, something's gotta give. All it needed was a trigger.
And a trigger he got.
He successfully got into U.A but so did Deku.
Deku the former friend.
Deku the Quirkless.
Deku the fucking liar.
So now here he stands, in their first class training which consists of heroes vs villains.
And he's the fucking villain.
Huh.
Somewhere along the way, his lips twisted into a familiar cruel grin. An exact replica to the one in his dreams. But there's no longer a line between dreams and reality, is there?
His mind is a fucking mess of thoughts and emotions. With faces and voices overlapping one another. In Deku's place, there are others. People who cared, reaching out for him, but failed to pull him back in the end. Because he burned them. Broken them into fucking pieces. He damned himself. Staining his hands with blood. Over and over again.
He's had enough.
Rage. Hatred. Disappointment. Pride. Guilt. Madness. He can't take it anymore. The dreams, the lies. No more. No more. No more.
He screams.