Deep into the night
With the moonlight as my guide
I will wander through the pines and make my way to nature's shrines
And I look up to the sky
And I know you're still alive
But I wonder where you are, I call your name into the dark
—
TEN YEARS AGO
Kota was nine the first time he ever saw a walker. He mowed lawns over the summer for some extra pocket change, and to keep himself out of trouble.
"Idle hands are the devil's playthings," his father always said when he'd catch Kota lazing about in the summer heat, bored out of his skull. So, he did yard work, fed stray cats, and helped the old grannies on his block with their grocery bags with only a few complaints.
Granny Nakamura, a behemoth of a woman, was the first one on their block to join the dead. She died of natural causes, and Kota found her splayed out in her chair, as if she were peacefully sleeping. She hadn't smelled, hadn't even looked all that dead, but she opened her eyes and all that looked back at Kota was a blank, hungry stare in milky pupils.
He screamed, running out of the house like a startled jackrabbit—fast, but frightened, jerky movements carrying him down the block—as the dead woman waddled after him, a guttural hiss coming from deep within her.
His dad found him, just coming back from work as if the day were ordinary. The sleeves of his white button down we're rolled up, his blue tie stuffed in his shirt pocket. He looked tired, but he smiled all the same when Kota met him in the front yard.
"Dad! Granny Nakamura—she's—"
Kota's almost glad she'd caught up to them before he could say something stupid like she's going to eat me. He flailed around a bit, waiting for his dad to do something because he always knew what to do, and the circumstances they'd found themselves in should be no different.
"Kota, go inside," he said, his soft voice belying what he was about to do.
"But—"
"Go inside, and call your mother. Tell her to come straight home," he said, more firm this time. Kota was about to argue again, but his dad grabbed the garden hoe, metal end up—the one he used to till the soil on his days off—and it suddenly looked like a weapon in his hands.
Kota walked stiffly back in the house, and did what he was told. He grabbed their ancient landline, probably for the first time in his life, and holed himself in a dark closet. He didn't want to see what was about to happen to his neighbor.
Except, morbid curiosity pushed him out of the closet and to the front window. He told himself he just wanted to watch out for his mom, to make sure she really was running home, like she said. He got to the window just in time to see the dulled edges of the garden hoe stick in the side of Old Nakamura's temple. He heard his dad grunt, the blood squelch, the hissing reach a crescendo and then taper off, leaving only silence as she fell limp.
Kota hid in the closet again, pretending not to see the flecks of blood speckled on his dad's once clean shirt. Idle hands may be the devil's playthings, but so are frightened hands—hands that save and kill in one fell swoop.
THE CAMP
When it came down to it, running around with this group didn't differ too greatly from running around with his family, or with Dabi and Himiko. Same shit, different day—different people, different places. It's a small comfort to know they accept him, that they care if he lives or dies. They're good people, and they think he's good, too. Sometimes, Kota isn't sure. He used to think he was unquestionably good before the dead rose. He used to be smart and sweet and kind—and then his parents were murdered, and he fell in with the sort of people who always put themselves before anyone else. They muddled his moral compass, confused his sense of right and wrong.
He isn't sure what kind of person he is, but he's finding his way all the same. Freckles makes him feel like he can come back from his past.
"It couldn't be easy, growing up in the apocalypse," he says, placing a calloused, comforting hand on his shoulder, after a particularly long conversation about the past. Kota resists the urge to lean into it, to use his own idle hands to pull Midoriya close to him and never let him go. They're past this—Kota bowed out. He loves Bakugo, and Bakugo loves him. He can't compete with decades of proximity, but that doesn't stop him from wanting to.
He thought things would get easier. He thought that if he really got to know Midoriya, he'd get over his crush—that's what it was after all. Crushes are supposed to be fleeting, fickle things that are more about the chase than the end result. Kota thought learning more about him, about his past, about his life with Bakugo and all the rest of his group, would dull the shine for him. It hasn't. They've been on the road, flitting from desecrated towns to devastated forestry, for eight months, and Midoriya is still the brightest thing in Kota's line of sight.
"It could've been worse," he mumbles, tense and awkward.
"It could always be worse. That doesn't mean it was easy."
NINE YEARS AGO
All things considered, Kota and his family were lucky. His dad knew about the outbreak before it was an outbreak. Kota wasn't privy to all the details—children never get to know anything important—but from what he can tell his dad was prepared for the end of the world. Whenever he thinks of that day, the first day the world went to shit, he remembers just how prepared his father was to take a life. He made it look easy. Nevermind the fact that he vomited in the yard the second Nakamura stopped twitching, or the tears in his eyes when his mother finally returned home. He was ready.
He had bags packed, food rationed, camping equipment squirreled away in the garage. They wasted no time leaving home. They were in a little suburb just outside the city, and before the day was through they loaded into the car to head to the mountains. Mom's sister had a lot of land about three hours away. Kota can't believe he spent the ride up there playing his PSVita, like he hadn't witnessed the dead walk only hours earlier.
A few families from the village find their way into the compound. There are other children his age and they continue on as if nothing's changed. They read books and play with dolls and cry when their parents die. Kota is just like them, a stupid kid. He's only ten years old, and everything scares him. It doesn't matter if the dead are few and far between in his aunt's compound. One night, a herd wanders onto the compound and slaughters more than half the residents. He's one of three stupid kids left.
Things change after that. Children aren't children anymore. They're small and weak, but they don't have time for childish things. Idle hands are the devil's playthings, his father says, so they spend their days in preparation. For what, Kota can't say, but he learns a great many things over time. He learns how to start a fire without matches, how to navigate using the sun and stars, how to hold a gun and fire a crossbow, how to take a life.
The first time he took a life, he cried. His aim was poor, and the deer he shot suffered for it. He remembers its heaving, wheezing breath, the terror in its eyes. He remembers how sad his father looked.
"You need to break its neck, or cut its throat. It's the kind thing to do. Let's not let it suffer."
"I don't want to," he cried—like the stupid kid he was.
"I know, but this is how we survive."
"But—"
"Kota, listen to me. Sometimes, we have to kill. Sometimes, it's you, your mother, our family—or them. Sometimes, we'll have to do unpleasant things to get by."
In the end, Kota can't do it. His dad makes a clean slice across its neck, and it's done. Kota decides then to never be the hunted, the maimed. He can't be a stupid kid because stupid kids die screaming and leave their families unprotected.
The next time, Kota's aim is true. He drains the buck mechanically, skins it the way his father taught him, committing the act to memory.
Kota's ten years old, but he's not a kid, anymore.
THE CAMP
Kota follows the soft tracks in the mud. The air is cool and damp, the sun barely up. This is the time Kota enjoys most. Here, in the quiet half-light, he can forget things. He can forget the way it felt to kiss Freckles. It happened so long ago, and it still plagues him like it happened yesterday. He can forget about his family and his years spent with the people who killed them. He forgets everything that isn't the weight of his handmade bow, the silent padding of feet, and the thrum of the bowstring as his arrow finds a home through his prey's eye.
"Nice shot," Bakugo grumbles. He seems unable to give any kind of praise without regretting it instantly. It comes off as condescending. Kota rolls his eyes.
"Fuck off."
"What I can't figure out," he starts, light feet stepping towards him. "Is why you never left those assholes, if you're so capable."
Kota glares at him. They may have some tentative truce, something forged wordlessly in the bowels of a burning prison, but every interaction they share holds something of a challenge in it. Bakugo is trying to figure him out—trying to understand what makes him tick, so he can keep him under his thumb. Kota won't let him.
"You're an idiot," Kota says, too bored with the conversation to throw any real heat behind his words. Bakugo, of all people, should know. He claims to know Midoriya, and to understand the things he went through during his year alone—things Kota is only starting to learn he understands whenever Midoriya opens up to him. If he did, he wouldn't be asking. If he really understood the fear of being totally alone, he'd have his answer.
EIGHT YEARS AGO
Newcomers come, and then they become old news. No one really saw Dabi and Himiko for what they were: devils with idle hands. They were quiet, they kept to themselves, but they never seemed dangerous. Kota thought he knew what danger looked like—roamers with flayed, decaying skin; hunger that's so deep it aches in more than just your stomach; guns and knives and creatively modified something-or-others with blunted, heavy edges.
He never thought people were the dangers. Apparently, neither did his family. Kota was playing at being a lookout when it happened—the irony of that still stings. The main building of the compound was fine, and then all of a sudden it was an explosion of smoke and fire and rubble. He watched it burn, and just like that day—the first day—when he couldn't make himself look away from Granny Nakamura and the garden hoe in her temple, he couldn't take his eyes off the burning carcass of his home. He couldn't move, couldn't even summon enough emotion to cry. He collapsed in a graceless heap, two words screaming through his head on a loop.
No survivors.
The thought almost jarred him into action. Almost. He stopped when he spotted two figures, completely unscathed, walking through the wreckage like vengeful gods. He never went back, never waded through the burning husk of his home, never took the time to scavenge for supplies or blubber over his parents' charred corpses. He just followed after them.
He trailed them for weeks, picking through leftover scraps in their temporary camps, hiding in trees, watching and starving and wondering what would become of him. One day, she spotted him. He'd wandered too close, and they were too good at being predators not to see him. Her yellow eyes glinted with recognition.
"You're that kid," Dabi said, no inflection in his tone. He'd hardly moved, his face cast in shadow, the light of the fire they'd started the only light in the dark night. Kota approached coolly, determined not to let them see him sweat. He sat down and helped himself to the last of their food—rations he recognized from the pantry back home. He took a bit, not really tasting anything other than his palpable fear.
"I'm not a kid."