Katsuki turned the obsidian lump in his hands. Its tiny, sharp facets glittered, and it had a smooth, glassy texture. One facet caught his eye, having the shape and size he had been hunting for.
His free hand reached for a brush, one of a dozen sticking out from a cup filled with clear, viscous surgical glue. His hand found the correct size without looking, a delicate brush with a wispy tuft of tiny bristles, just small enough to dab a thin layer of glue across the facet without running over the sides. With steady fingers, Katsuki pressed the piece in place, held it tenderly for a few seconds, and carefully withdrew.
Katsuki held his breath, his eyes glued to the piece he had just set in place. No bead of glue spilled over, no gap parted the pieces. It looked as though it had never been out of place.
"Ground Zero, sir!" an intern called from outside Katsuki's room. "We're gonna be late for the rankings!"
"Give me a sec, Kota. I'm busy."
Katsuki stepped back to take in everything in front of him. The costume had been from Izuku's first year, before the cracks had set in. Its shades of green had faded, and a freshly-laundered smell still wafted from the fabric. Katsuki had wanted to restore Deku's final costume, but between the gaping hole in its chest and the lack of legs in the original design, the rest of 1-A had shot him down. Hatsume had suggested digging out an older costume. It was too small for him, not quite reaching his ankles and stretching awkwardly from the extra muscle mass Izuku had built up in the intervening years.
Izuku had lost his right arm first. Not much of a shock, given the hell that arm had been through. Katsuki still remembered that day he had caught a glimpse of a black line poking out from underneath a bandage. He dragged Izuku all the way to Recovery Girl's office as he stammered out protests. Izuku had brushed the grim diagnosis off at first, still throwing punches with it, but as the cracks spread, he learned to write and use chopsticks with his left hand. Even when he had stopped using his right arm, the cracks spread, and pieces fell off at the slightest movement. Katsuki had saved every single one in a box under his bed.
The left arm had lasted longer, as though it had known it would have one final task. Even as the cracks had run up his shoulder and into his chest, even as fingers fell away one by one, the arm itself held firm, up until the very end.
As the damage crept towards his shoulders, Izuku switched to his legs, using Shoot Style. By the second year, he needed casts to keep his feet from falling apart. If it hadn't been for the other Quirks coming out of the woodwork, those black whips and the floating, Izuku would've spent the rest of his life in a hospital. Recovery Girl had come close to pressing the issue, but Nezu overruled her when the League killed half the former top ten in a gruesome battle.
Even as he started floating everywhere, his legs fell apart until he was just a torso. While Izuku crumbled before his eyes, Katsuki had treated him like porcelain, too afraid to touch him lest another piece fall away. That hadn't stopped Izuku. Katsuki could still feel the cracks brush across his skin as Izuku patted his arm.
Down to a single useless limb, Izuku was still better than the rest of them. He rocketed across the streets, blinding villains with clouds of smoke while black whips darted out of the cracks in his body, pulling civilians out of crumbling buildings and slamming villains into the ground. His arrest and rescue counts had hit the thousands before the end.
"Ground Zero, sir! If we don't leave now, we will be late."
"Then we will be late," Katsuki snapped. "The damn rankings can wait. Everyone knows what they're going to be anyways."
Kota huffed outside his door and walked away.
Katsuki put a hand on Izuku's chest. It was ironic, how All for One lost to Izuku's frailty. The centuries-old villain had expected Izuku to be somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic after punching him with everything he had. Instead, his fist went clean through Izuku, leaving behind his head, his left arm, and just enough shoulder tying the two together to throw one last punch.
All for One never got up from that punch. Katsuki had personally made sure of that. Izuku never got up either. His punch had shattered his arm, and the cracks ran up his face as his head split apart into dozens of glittering shards. It had taken weeks for Koda's ants to comb the field for every last grain of obsidian, and months longer for them to piece the tiny specks together into chunks Katsuki could handle with his fingers.
The others had helped, in the beginning. Ochako made the bigger pieces weightless, Tokoyami had sent Dark Shadow inside the cracks to check for any gaps, and Komori had grown a mold to hold it all in place as they had worked. They had started off without adhesive. That came to an abrupt stop when a sudden sneeze from Kirishima had scattered half a year's worth of work. Katsuki had still been firmly against using adhesive against any kind until Yaoyorozu had suggested surgical glue used to bind wounds.
Over the years, their lives, romantic interests, and careers had pried the class apart. Most left with an apology as Katsuki strangled the urge to explode at them. Shoto, pulled in fifty different directions between his mentally ill mother, his physically ill father, and the needs of the Endeavor Agency he had inherited, stopped showing up without a word. Ochako had lingered longer, but as the progress piecing together granules the size of peas together slowed to a crawl, the discovery that they had to redo a month's worth of work due to a single misplaced piece had her running out of the building in tears.
Kirishima had been the last to go, but not without trying to convince Katsuki that he needed to move on. It turned into an ugly shouting match, and Katsuki regretted half of what he said, but Izuku would have done the same for any of them. He owed it to him to try.
Katsuki held up the final piece, one the size of his hand. He studied the black facets, lining them up with the gaps, checking one last time that he hadn't missed any pieces. With a broader brush, one the width of his pinky, he slathered a fine layer of glue until he meticulously coated every surface. When he turned it, smooth, cream-colored skin, a vacant green eye, and the corner of a gentle smile caught the light.
Recovery Girl had suggested that a Quirk, hers or another's, might undo the fractures. It had given them all hope, but Recovery Girl bit the dust weeks later, and Eri's Quirk registered the obsidian flecks as inorganic matter, immune to her ability to turn back the clock. Despite those setbacks, Katsuki had held on to hope that if he could just put the pieces back together, Izuku would live again.
It had to work. Deku was All Might's successor, the ninth wielder of One for All, the new Symbol of Peace. Japan went into mourning for a week when word of his death hit the news. In the streets, Katsuki still heard people speaking in hushed whispers about the time Deku saved them, or little kids saying they'll be just like him when they grew up. The world still needed him. Katsuki still needed him. He still had to make up for being such a terrible friend.
Katsuki's heart raced as he held the final piece over the gap in Izuku's face. Despite the excitement bubbling in his chest, Katsuki's hand was steady as it pressed the piece in place. The last trace of black lines vanished as the piece settled into the gaps. Within seconds, the glue set, and Katsuki pulled his hand away.
Fully reassembled, Izuku had his left arm punching out, standing as though he had put every missing fragment of his broken body into that final punch. His smile was the same smile that had burned itself into Katsuki's memory when the two ancient Quirks clashed for the last time, gentle, comforting, a promise of a kinder future.
For a full minute, Katsuki waited. In the dead silence, he listened for the whisper of a breath. In the still room, his eyes hunted for the slightest trace of movement. Nothing. No twitch of the fingers, no sudden gasp of air, no verdant sparks of One for All.
In his heart, he felt Izuku shattering all over again. Katsuki's legs gave out from beneath him. He sank to his knees, hands clasped together on the ground as though in prayer. An anguished cry strangled itself in his throat while tears spilled onto the floor. Deku was gone. One for All was gone. The Symbol of Peace, his very reason for being a hero, was gone.
The door flew open. "Ground Zero, get down here now, Red Riot's-" Kota saw Izuku and froze. With a thin and trembling voice, Kota asked, "Is… is that…"
Katsuki stood, wiped his face dry, and took his intern by the arm. "You can pay your respects later, Water Geyser. Right now, we have a job to do."
As they left, Izuku's kind smile followed them through the door.
A/N: Thanks to Greed720, HardwinPotter, and LArc for beta-reading! This story started its life as a concept for a much larger story. However, I've got plenty of other ideas begging for my attention, and I decided this would do just as well as a one-shot with a particularly poignant scene. If anyone wants to take this idea and run with it, be my guest. Shoot me a message so I can check it out.
Since a manga reveal about OfA, that idea had been rattling around in my head. After all, All Might had OfA for so long, one might expect it would get too powerful for anyone to handle, right?
Another Precognition chapter next weekend. After that, either another one-shot, or the first chapter of a five-part short story, depending on which idea strikes my fancy. Speaking of Precognition, its one-year anniversary is tomorrow! Kinda wish that I had a chapter to post for that anniversary, but the one I have in the works needs some more polishing before I release it. Ah well.
So, to anyone reading it, thanks for checking it out, and let me know what you think!