IT. IS. DONE!
a thing to keep in mind while you read this chapter:
i looooove japanese honorifics, both as a lexical category and as an immediate indicator of the nature of a given, often layered social relationship. i'm very attached to them, which is why i've chosen to use them throughout this series, except in cases where i believe the relationship in question is such that the honorific isn't necessary, which itself is an indicator of the closeness of the individuals. (although, quick note: i don't use the honorofics at all in exposition, because that would be tedious as fuuuuuuck.)
that said, tl;dr: in this chapter, just once, i've used an english 'mr' instead of –san or –kun or what-have-you, because in this single instance, i really think the 'mr' works to better effect. it's cheap and arbitrary, but that's my justification and i'm stickin' to it.
enjoy~
It's close to another hour after Uraraka's parents show up before the kid finally arrives, during which time a whole lot of fucking nothing happens. Katsuki takes a quick nap as instructed (though when he'd closed his eyes he hadn't actually meant to fall asleep), and is gently awakened after fifteen minutes –as promised—by Uraraka's mom. As he comes around, she holds a finger to her lips for quiet, then points left, where he discovers Deku and Four Eyes on the couch beside him, the both of them conked out and –in Deku's case—drooling and softly snoring.
A couple minutes later, while Uraraka's parents are engaged in deep, hushed conversation by the bed, Katsuki perceives an open window and –unable to help himself— coolly backhands Deku in the stomach –not hard enough to cause any real pain, just enough to be jarring, and effect a literal rude awakening. Deku comes to with an audible 'OOF!' and surges to his feet in a battle-ready pose, head whipping around frantically in search of an unseen assailant, whorls of electric green already snap-crackle-popping around his body and standing that seaweed mop he calls hair at stiff, static attention.
The room fills with awkward silence. Uraraka's parents stare at Deku in open shock, Four Eyes blearily stirs but somehow doesn't wake up, and Katsuki smears a slow, shit-eating grin across his face as Deku sheepishly realizes he's been had. In a blink, the Full Cowl flickers out, and Deku fastens his arms to his sides and starts bowing repeatedly toward the Urarakas, apologizing profusely. They wave him off and politely assure him it's fine, but it takes him a while to stop blabbering and bobbing like a damn dipping bird long enough to get the memo.
When he cuts himself loose at last, he turns a frown down at Katsuki.
"Somethin' to say, Deku?" Katsuki challenges, in a smug tone very much intended to provoke. Deku rolls his eyes and gingerly sits back down, sighing exasperatedly but ultimately keeping his nerd mouth shut. Katsuki basks in the glow of his triumph for several minutes.
The rest of the hour passes in relative peace, with Deku occasionally stepping out to answer phone calls from friends and colleagues looking for updates on Uraraka's condition, or from authorities needing to confer about matters related to the raid –which already feels like a lifetime ago.
Katsuki gets his own fair share of calls, probably similar in nature to Deku's, but he ignores them all. The only messages he bothers to check are the texts Eijirou sends him, which consist mostly of pointless, flutter-by musings or indecipherable strings of emojis. Katsuki never responds, but the messages roll in relentlessly anyway, every few minutes or so, not once letting up. Which is every bit as aggravating as it is annoyingly welcome.
Once Four Eyes wakes up, he attempts to open a dialogue with Uraraka's parents –and with him, though Katsuki shuts that shit right the hell down— and fields a few calls of his own, including one apparently from Frogger, who's out on a mission somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and only just got the news.
Finally, as the sun starts to set, every phone in the room goes off at once. A group text from Eijirou instructs them to report to the waiting room for the obligatory 'meet-and-greet.'
Scoffing, Katsuki tucks his phone into the pocket of his ridiculous sweats, spares Uraraka a parting glance, and files out with the rest of the group.
/-/
The kid arrives flanked by a posse of pros: there's Eijirou, holding her hand and chattering cheerfully; and there's that Tin Tin-looking motherfucker, Lemillion, posted up at her other side, bizarrely mirroring her sprightly, bouncing gait; and bringing up the rear, seeming to blend into the shadows of the darkening hospital, is Aizawa, looking fried and weathered and overall like the fucking living dead. So, pretty much exactly as Katsuki remembers.
Aizawa beelines for Uraraka's parents, probably to break down for them how the kid's quirk works, and make clear the risks involved. Meanwhile, the second the kid lays eyes on Deku, she shrieks excitedly, detaches herself from Eijirou, and sprints into Deku's waiting embrace. He grabs her up and twirls her around, much to her giggling delight, and sets her on her feet as they simultaneously fucking erupt with stories and life updates. Tin Tin cuts in every once in a while, but seems largely content to stand by and proudly watch two dorks geek the fuck out at each other. Eijirou splinters off to greet Four Eyes, who has to make a frenzied fumble for his glasses when fucking Hard Head jovially slaps him on the back and they nearly go flying off his face.
Katsuki hangs back, leaning up against a wall with his arms crossed, observing.
The kid looks dramatically different. He hasn't had any personal cause to see her after he graduated from U.A., but Eijirou's dragged him along on a few babysitting visits over the years, insisting each time that Katsuki bring her a gift in the form of hero apparel or candied apples, since she's apparently nuts about both for reasons he's sure are tragic and schmaltzy as fuck and hence has never asked about.
In the year and change since he last saw her, she's gotten significantly taller –hell, she's nearly shoulder-high on Eijirou now, where before she'd been just below chest height. It's obvious at a glance she's still growing into her new stature, 'cause she's gangly and a little uncoordinated, but even enveloped in that rainbow-vomit fucking travesty of an outfit she's wearing, he can tell she's developing some tone and definition, which undoubtedly means Aizawa's been helping her to condition more than just her quirk.
Another difference that leaps out at him immediately is her hair: long and platinum white as ever, but today pulled back into a simple, fashionable ponytail instead of twisted into a thousand variably sloppy, Medusa-wild braids (she'd been obsessed with braids a year ago) he'd spent hours furiously –but delicately—untangling and re-plaiting while she and Eijirou played video games.
And last, but definitely not least, is her horn, jutting out of her forehead like a knife-edged spire, nearly as long now as Four Eyes' palms are wide. According to Eijirou, the longer her horn grows, the more powerful her mysterious quirk becomes. Unfortunately, as her power increases, so too does the risk that comes with using it. To keep her from tipping over into 'dangerous instability' territory and help her maintain some degree of control, Eijirou had once explained, the occasional, carefully-monitored 'power dump' was deemed necessary, which must mean she has at least relatively regular opportunities to exercise her quirk. And, as Deku noted earlier, the kid had successfully restored Tin Tin's stolen quirk, without incident.
But the risk remains, even with Aizawa there to step in if things get dicey. By all accounts, the kid's control is still extremely limited, and this is a big, stressful, high-pressure ask; in the heat of the moment, she could rewind Uraraka clear out of existence just as fast and easy as she could rewind his partner safely to a point before she'd gotten stabbed.
Which is why, as irritating as it is to see these idiots pointlessly dicking around, wasting time, and as fist-eatingly impatient as he is to get this shit over with, he's also reluctant to call them out and speed things along, because as soon as the kid steps into Uraraka's room, it's do or literally fucking die, and fuck, no, shit, he refuses to spin out in front of all these assholes-!
"Hi, Mr. Lord Murder." A tiny voice hails, from right the fuck in front of him, and god fucking dammit, even the kid can sneak up on him now? He has got to get his shit in check.
"'Sup, Apples." Katsuki returns, concentrating on breathing evenly as she unfurls one of the fists she's got bunched in the flared skirt of her jumper and shyly waves.
"Kiri-nii* says you look sad, and I should come give you a hug." He sends a poisonous glare over her head at Eijirou, whose Cheshire grin only broadens obnoxiously as he beholds it.
"Did he." Katsuki grinds out from between clenched teeth. Heeding his tone, she takes an uncertain step back. He's only vaguely aware he might be upsetting her, focused as he is on trying to light Eijirou on fire by sheer fucking force of will.
"Are you scared about Ura-nee?" That brings his attention squarely back to the kid.
He could lie to her, and insist he doesn't get scared –ever, because fear is for chicken-shit cowards and crybaby Dekus, but considering his profoundly traumatized, Deku-adoring audience, he figures that probably wouldn't go over so well. He could also say nothing, and just glower steadily down at her until she buckles and runs crying back to her watchful squad of older brothers, who will shake their fists at him and threaten to kick his ass for hurting her precious fucking feelings (well, Eijirou and Deku will probably just frown at him in consternation, but the point fucking stands).
But, though she doesn't know it herself, the kid had done what no one else could, and pulled him back from the brink. He had come so fucking close to forsaking everything he's ever wanted, everything he's overcome and fought so hard to accomplish, everything he is and ever could be –for what Deku naively called 'love,' but Katsuki knows as something far more sinister. Theonly reason he hasn't already taken off to melt Lionfish down to a fleshy fucking paste is the hope that the kid might rectify his fatal mistake and revive Uraraka.
The kid deserves a real answer. She deserves the truth.
"Yeah, kid." Katsuki grates, following a lengthy pause.
"I! I-!" It's a false start. She loses her nerve and has to take a moment to steel herself. Then, she shuffles closer and balls her hands into fists at her side like she's about to pantomime an old-timey steam train, cheeks puffed out and eyes shining. "I'm—I think I can—I'm here to help!" She declares, in a watered down imitation of Deku's go-to hero pronouncement, which itself was flagrantly cribbed from All Might. "S-so you don't have to be scared anymore, 'cause I'm going to save Ura-nee!" At the last, she slides her right foot a half-step back and bends her knees slightly, in a pose that unmistakably resembles one of Deku's classic battle stances. He's beginning to sense a shitty theme.
Sighing heavily to release the encroaching anxiety of seconds prior,
"That s'pposed to be news?" He arches a brow. "'Course you're gonna save her. It's only what I've been telling these dick-brained fuckmunches all goddamn day." Peripherally, he sees Tin Tin and Deku wincing in horror at his language, while Eijirou facepalms and shakes his head. This brings him a brief moment of real joy. Then, since he's apparently a fucking masochist, he adds: "Uraraka's gonna owe you," he almost can't say it, because it feels like someone's using a knife like a stirring spoon in his guts, "big time." Beaming like he just handed her a basketful of puppies, she leaps forward and wraps her kid-skinny arms around him to complete the task she was originally sent over to perform, only pulling free when Deku arrives and calls her off.
As the kid dances back, reaching for the hand Deku's already extending to be taken, the rest of the party assembles around them. Then, the announcement they've all been waiting for:
"I'm ready," Eri proclaims, "Let's do this!"
/-/
Eijirou, Tin Tin, and Four Eyes are designated to wait outside of the hospital room –much to Four Eyes' silent, burning chagrin—while the rest of the group process solemnly inside to take up positions around Uraraka's bed, where a nurse is already extracting Uraraka's breathing tube and removing her IV. It's nasty and unpleasant as shit to watch. When she finishes, the squat woman gives them the go-ahead, reminds them their window for action is exceedingly narrow, and quietly trundles out of the room, wishing them luck as she goes.
Uraraka's parents, on either side of the head of her bed, lean in to kiss her face and whisper words of love and encouragement before stepping back to give Eri enough clearance to work her magic without affecting them, too. Deku's shoulder-to-shoulder with Uraraka's mom, arm looped around her elbow in a show of support.
Eri appears to hesitate as she's going for Uraraka's right hand, but only for a tick. Once she's got hold of Uraraka, she looks to Aizawa, posted up directly across from her, arms folded and expression deceptively aloof.
Katsuki stands apart, a meter or so away from the foot of Uraraka's bed, wondering if anyone else's mouth feels like it's filling with sand.
In low, droning tones, Aizawa begins working his way through some sort of pre-activation checklist.
"How far back are we going?" He asks flatly.
"Twenty-four hours." Eri swiftly responds. They've obviously gone over these details exhaustively.
"Margin for error?" Aizawa continues.
"Two hours, plus or minus." Eri says, a note of tension cracking through the veneer.
"What's our tempo?" Aizawa's pronouns, it occurs to Katsuki, are intentionally 'we' and 'our' instead of 'you' and 'your.' Because he wants the kid to know she's not alone, that they're a team and they're in this together. But it doesn't seem like it's enough.
"Five or six hours per minute." Katsuki's not imagining it: the kid's voice is softening more and more with each reply, and her posture's drooping, like she's trying to curl inward and make herself smaller. Deku's noticed, too; he can see the nerd's gears turning, seeking something he alone might do or say to salvage the kid's nerve.
"Meaning we should be finished in…?" Aizawa prompts, deadpan as ever, though Katsuki knows for a fact he has to be perceiving the kid's spiraling self-doubt, because for all his lethargic, done-with-this-shit austerity, Aizawa has always been freakishly dialed in to the emotional vulnerabilities of those under his care.
The kid doesn't answer. Her eyes are shut tight and her lips are quivering like she's about to cry, and Katsuki almost can't take it. It's too fucking much – he's splitting at the fucking seams and crumbling away to dust, because the kid's lost it and Uraraka's actively dying now, and there's not a thing he or anyone else can do to stop it. He bites down on his lip to keep from unleashing the litany of wretched, exigent 'fucks' threatening to spill forth, and focuses despondently on the barely perceptible rise and fall of Uraraka's chest, because it means she's still alive, if only just for another minute, another second…
Don't you fucking leave me, he vehemently charges. Please.
"Eri." Aizawa utters, in a dull yet firm tone. Timidly, she peeks up at him from under stray wisps of hair that've come loose and fallen into her eyes. What he does next is drastic, and something none of them expect: he smiles.
Katsuki and Deku –and probably the kid, too—have seen him smile before; it's rare, but it definitely happens. The thing about Aizawa's smile, though, apart from the infrequency of its appearance and its undeniable inappropriateness under thesecircumstances, is that it invariably makes him look fucking ghoulish. The smile's all teeth, and never reaches his sunken, sleepless eyes, and is in every way the stuff of nightmares.
The kid produces a puffed, snorting sound that transitions into full-blown laughter as his ex-teacher's undertaker smile wedges wider still, and just like that, Aizawa tears through the atmosphere of oppressive hopelessness with a single, weary swipe.
When Eri calms down, it's been almost an entire minute since the nurse finished unplugging Uraraka. He can see a similar realization dawning on Uraraka's parents' faces, that their daughter's time is draining rapidly the fuck away, before their very eyes. Uraraka's mom's knuckles are white where they're grasped around Deku's forearm.
But the waiting is at abruptly at an end when Eri's horn begins to glow, and Aizawa repeats his earlier question.
"How long do we need?"
"Four or five minutes, max!" She calls back, over the sudden, buffeting wind that picks up around her.
"Ready?" Aizawa checks. Eri, crackling with energy, vigorously nods, and closes her eyes again, this time to concentrate.
/-/
Katsuki doesn't know what exactly he expects when the rewind commences, but as the minutes crawl by and the radiance around Eri's horn grows more brilliant, there's no visible change in Uraraka's condition. She just lies there, continuing to breathe but otherwise unchanged, even when Aizawa calls it and the light of Eri's quirk starts to dim.
Finally, Eri's personal whirlwind quiets, and she unclasps her hand from around Uraraka's, and the room holds its collective breath, waiting for a sign that the rewind was a success. But there's nothing. Nothing seems different, or better –until the nerd gets the idea Uraraka might simply be sleeping, and tentatively nudges her shoulder.
The effect is immediate. Like someone's shocked her, Uraraka's eyes open, her hands flying for her abdomen to feel for a wound that's…no longer there.
Addled and dry-throated, she croaks out, "Is Bakugou-kun okay—?" But that's all she manages before she's mobbed by her parents, Deku, and Eri. "Mama? Papa? Why're you—? What's goin' on? Where is—am I in the hospital?"
Katsuki takes this all in from the floor, where he'd crumpled to his knees at some point or other. The sound of her voice, strained and thick with sleep, is music to his fucking ears. The flustered flail of her arms as she tries to extricate herself from the smothering press of bodies tangled around her is somehow the single most heartening thing he's ever fucking witnessed.
She's alive. She's awake and talking and alive and she's going to stay that way, in fucking perpetuity, if he's got anything to say about it.
Katsuki's already making plans to stop off at that dinky, family-owned mochi shop Uraraka goes out of her way to visit every time she's in his neighborhood, clean the place out, and magnanimously make the trip across town to Uraraka's too-small apartment to hand-deliver the goods –because, as she'd made painfully clear before he nearly lost her forever, he owes her. And he's mature and well-adjusted enough to know when he needs to pay what's due for services fucking rendered.
After that, scales balanced and slate clean, they can go back to being partners and building the Kamino Pizza Agency together and occasionally invading each other's homes and personal lives when interfering Eijirous and/or Denkis and/or Ashidos stick their idiot noses where they don't fucking belong.
Everything will go right back to where it was before all this heinous, crushing shit went down, because fundamentally, nothing has changed.
Absolutely nothing.
"I know it hurts, Kacchan, believe me. It hurts me, too. Because I love her, too."
Fuck you, Deku, he mentally thunders, clinging to his misplaced resentment for dear fucking life, because Deku and his asinine assumptions can get fucked.
The only thing that's different now is that Katsuki knows he can't go through this, ever again. He never intends to let this happen again, which is a good fucking start, but in the impossible event they find themselves in a similar position in the future, he cannot allow himself to fall prey to whatever the hell madness incited him to so glibly cast off his integrity, his principles, the cornerstone of his whole fucking identity and his reason for existing, all toward the fulfillment of some trumped-up, played-out goddamn revenge fantasy.
Which means he has to let go –not of Uraraka herself, as a partner and business associate. Katsuki's not a total fuckwit; he knows they've got a good thing going, and he'd sooner chew glass than give up their professional affiliation. But this other, indisputably powerful, nameless thing he's got for Uraraka is toxic, and twisted, and completely unacceptable, and he wants no further part of it. It's a dangerous liability, and a threat to his career, and it ends today, right here, right fucking now.
And the first step, he realizes, involves getting the hell out of here before she says his name again; or beckons him irresistibly to her side so she can fret over the injuries he sustained when she's the one who just fucking cheated death; or chortles endearingly at his dumbass digs; or –worst of all—looks at him with those big, brown eyes he would sacrifice the whole fucking planet to protect. (Which, again, is hugely fucking problematic.)
As furtively as possible, Katsuki tries to climb to his feet, only to be thwarted when his legs won't stop fucking wobbling like he's Deku's bullet-fast, senile, first mentor. Aizawa's the only one who appears to notice his sudden onset paraplegia, and while obviously he'd prefer his incisive former teacher watch the celebratory reunion instead of his inexplicably rickety ass, Aizawa's –weirdly unrelenting— attention is better than literally anyone else's in the room, because literally anyone else would call him the fuck out and try to bring him into the jubilant fold, and fuck that noise.
At long freaking last, he gets his feet under him and starts for the door, hoping to slip out before anyone has the wherewithal to attempt to stop him.
Naturally, in the same instant, the door slides loudly open, and Eijirou, Four Eyes, Tin Tin, a couple of curious nurses, and a white-coated doctor burst into the room all at once. Uncertain how his life has become a goddamn comedy of errors, Katsuki irritably forsakes the now-crowded route and spins on his heel to make for that big-ass window he'd napped under earlier, while the auxiliary group tears toward Uraraka's bed to join in the joyous fracas.
Ignoring Aizawa's dead-eyed stare –which for some reason is still locked onto him—Katsuki steps onto the couch, fluidly unlatches the locked casing, and doesn't concern himself with trying to stay quiet as he opens the window. The point is to get out of here fast; stealth is a secondary consideration.
He's half out the window before his Imminently Murdered roommate speaks up and ruins everything,
"Hey, man, where're you off to in such a hurry?" The clamor of voices quiets, and Katsuki can feel every eye in the room pressing against his back, weighing him down, compelling him to stay.
"Bakugou-kun!" Uraraka chirrups, sounding surprised and utterly elated.
And that nearly seals it. He almost turns around, strides back into the room, bowls every fuck in the room out of his way –you bet your ass that includes her parents and Eri—and does something so monumentally and tremendously fucking stupid he'll never be able to take it back or live it down.
But that's not what happens. Ultimately, all her heartfelt summons does is reaffirm the dire necessity of his leaving.
Katsuki thinks he hears Uraraka begin to say something else, but he can't be sure, because he's already thrown himself out the window and blasted off into the night.
That this might qualify as running away is a notion he flatly refuses to entertain.
*niisan/neesan = older brother/sister; in essence, eri's referring to kirishima as 'big bro kiri,' and to uraraka as 'big sis ura.' this sounds pretty clunky when translated to english, but it's a cutesy kid way of referring to older brother/sister figures, and you CANNOT TELL ME eri doesn't refer to her full squad of rescuers in this specific manner (i.e. 'mirio-nii, deku-nii, tsu-nee). you also can't convince me she doesn't call aizawa 'papa,' but that's a story for another day...
/-/
and there we have it: The Reason bakugou and uraraka haven't already gotten together when the events of 'a feat equal' begin! ta-daaaaaa~
(if you're *new* to this series and don't like that the kacchako didn't explicitly happen by the end of this piece, please allow me to direct you to the centerpiece of the floaty 'splodey universe this fic belongs to: 'a feat equal!' more conclulsive kacchako lies therein. ^_^)
meanwhile. the entirety of the opening scene was crafted to let us know why the hell tsuyu isn't there when she definitely should be, but somehow it turned into exhibit a: bakugou's a giant poop monster? as much development as this boy undergoes, and as much as i think he *can* genuinely admit to himself that he cares for deku at this point, i don't think he's ever really going to *stop* being the perpetual lord of flaming garbageville, so. y'know. sorry, deku, you long-suffering darling.
also: i worked about eight gazillion headcanons into this chapter, not the least of which includes the one i've run across on more than one occasion that, as a result of interning with best jeanist, bakugou came away with unexpectedly incredible hair skillz. so yesthat'sRIGHT eri got the star treatment at the bakugou hair salon. XD
thecontinuingsagaofheadcanons: no, i don't think kirishima, like charles boyle of brooklyn 99 fame, is a serial texter. i think he just loves bakugou and knows his bro is hurting and wants to do what he can to cheer his soul-bro up from afar, so what he's doing is texting bakugou nonstop, hoping to annoy the bejeezus out of him to distract him. because kirishima is Number One Best Bro for LAIF.
stopshakingsticksatmyheadcanons: though at first aizawa's fashion choices for eri are unanimously overruled by Others, at some point, he's solely responsible for buying her clothes, and *she* didn't come with any preconceptions of what is or is not fashionable, so maybe what i'm saying in this chapter when bakugou observes eri's terrible, terrible outfit is that most of her wardrobe is hideous, because her larger fashion sensibilities were cultivated by none other than Caterpillar Dad himself.
i'mma take a break for a few days and soak in this goodgood positivity week, because this fic has destroyed me, both spiritually and in terms of Having a Life. but next stop is the last chapter of 'feat equal,' and i am hella excited to write it, so stay tuned!
thank you to the gottdamn moon for the support, y'all, and much love, you cool babies~