The morning after, Katsuki's phone goes fucking nuts.
He stumbles into the kitchen at the ass-crack of dawn like every other day, his groggy brain still trying to piece together why he feels so heavy. A buzz pulls his eye to his cell phone on the counter, lit up with a notification. It's really more like a dozen of them, which is odd, but it doesn't bother him. Then his gaze twitches a centimeter to the left.
The pile of green hair lying next to the phone hits him like a kick in the ribs.
Fuck.
He slaps on a jacket and shoes and stomps to the lobby of his apartment. It's early enough that no one will see him. The vending machines have cans of coffee for 250 yen. He buys two. When he's back in his apartment, he pounds them both in quick succession with a grimace. He hates putting this crap in his body. But today, he knows he needs the energy. He pointedly ignores the hair and the phone and forces himself to make breakfast. Forces himself to sit down and eat his food like a normal human being. Only when he's washed his dishes and set them to dry does he let himself nudge Deku's hair to the side and pick up his cell phone.
Their normally-quiet group chat exploded in the small hours of the morning. He scrolls back through the recent messages, which are just stupid platitudes and requests for updates from his former classmates until he finds the text that started it.
Todoroki (9:47PM) Midoriya is in critical condition, but alive.
Relief washes over him, immediately followed by chagrin. The last he'd heard before the police swept him away was that Deku needed surgery. But seriously? Had he been that worried about him? Nah. Of every hero he knew, Deku could take the biggest beating out of anyone by a mile and still pop upright like an inflatable bouncy house, grinning. It must not be relief about that twerp's condition— Katsuki's just glad he doesn't have to deal with One For All.
He thumbs through the rest of his messages. Apparently, it leaked that Best Jeanist's collaborators got involved despite how the cops smuggled them home; Kirishima has sent him a half-dozen messages since last night wondering if he's alive or not.
"I'm fine, dumbass," he huffs to himself as he writes the same and sends it.
There's one leftover notification from Todoroki messaging him privately. Katsuki opens it.
Icy-Hot Bastard (3:36AM) I lied. Midoriya is on life support.
Icy-Hot Bastard (3:36AM) He might not wake up.
Fuck. He almost falls out of his chair.
Me (5:57AM) what the hell do you mean he might not wake up
Icy-Hot Bastard (5:58AM) He's comatose. They're scheduling more surgeries, but the prognosis is uncertain.
Me (5:58AM) that's the fastest you've ever responded in your life
Me (5:59AM) why the fuck are you still there. Dont you have a job
Icy-Hot Bastard (6:02AM) My agency and collaborators know the situation. Midoriya's mother needs me.
Icy-Hot Bastard (6:11AM) She asked about you. You should visit.
Icy-Hot Bastard (6:45AM) Bakugou?
He tears a leaf of paper from a notepad and carefully folds Deku's hair into it. Whether he's dead, dying, or on the mend, the hair still has One For All in it. Can't be too careful. He seals it with a generous amount of tape and slips it into his pocket before he leaves for work.
After a big mission like yesterday's, he should have the day off, but the last thing he wants to do right now is sit around at home. He shows up to Best Jeanist's morning collaborators meeting at the same time he always does. The other heroes at the table give him sidelong looks as if they think he shouldn't be here. Between his fiercest fuck-you stare and Jeanist's calm acceptance of his presence, they knock it off after fifteen minutes. At the end of the meeting, however, just as the others leave the room, Best Jeanist pulls Katsuki aside.
"Bakugou, are you certain you're fit to return to active duty?"
"I'm not your intern anymore." He slides past him through the door.
"Did you engage with the villain that attacked?"
He reels from the microphone that's stuffed in his face the second he leaves the agency, snarling. He can't take a step outside without these damn reporters swarming him like flies. It's not even about him— their bullshit's for Deku.
"No," he says.
"Do police have any leads on the perpetrator?"
"Ask the cops."
"Can you tell us your impressions of the villain?"
He's gotten better at keeping his head in front of the press since he first started professional hero work. But having developed that skill doesn't mean he hates this situation any less. Heroes aren't meant to stand and talk and smile and wave at an invisible audience; he's here to act, to do shit. The fact that they're demanding his say on a situation he couldn't do anything about makes him burn. Heat flashes across his skin, and he rounds on the reporter.
"Like hell I would!" he roars into her mic. "You wanna give this fucker publicity? Screen time? That's what these bastards want: attention." She tries to pull away, but he grabs her hand where it's wrapped around the microphone and pulls it close to his mouth. "All I have to say to the sick fucks is this: we're coming for you. You killed a god-damn hero, and you bet your ass I'm gonna find you and make you live to regret it. And anyone else who feels like following in their footsteps? I'm coming for you next."
He thrusts the reporter away from him with a harsh grunt. The outburst will earn points for him in some camps and lose them from others, but he's too worked up to care. He tips his head to address the whole crowd of people, bringing out the meanest voice he has.
"You're all so obsessed with damn Deku you don't think of the ones taking his place. Now let me do my fucking job and go on patrol."
They part, and he doesn't hesitate to shove through the gaps as he goes on his way.
The makeshift packet of hair doesn't leave his possession for a minute, even during hero work. He rubs it between his fingers as he roams the neighborhood, willing himself not to think about its weight. He is wildly unsuccessful. No big jobs come down the pipeline for Best Jeanist, so he's left with area patrols. He takes down petty burglars and pickpockets with a level of aggression that reminds him of his first year in hero work, back before he learned to chill the fuck out. He isn't trying to unleash the typhoon inside him on such puny miscreants; he has to stop himself from pounding them to dust.
Two weeks pass, and Inko Midoriya still hasn't decided whether she should pull the plug.
The hours he doesn't spend on patrol, he occupies with increasingly-ludicrous attempts to get away from the media hounding his every step. Everyone has stayed tight-lipped about Deku's last fight, and they want answers—what kind of power could decimate Japan's favorite, most powerful young hero? And somehow even a vault over a chain-link fence and climbing to the roof of his agency can't shake them off his tail, not even after his furious outburst the very first day.
Todoroki periodically urges him to visit the hospital, but he ignores him. Just the thought of dealing with the weeping woman while Deku vegetates in a hospital bed makes him want to level a parking garage. And so the days pass in a haze of building stress and attempts to pretend One For All isn't sitting in his pocket.
He's at work when the pressure chamber finally pops. Slipknot says something stupid and Katsuki finds himself halfway on top of the conference table before he realizes it, teeth bared as he shouts down the other hero.
"I'm doing my job, aren't I?!"
"Detonation." Best Jeanist says his name, trying to put a stopper in the flood of rage, but Katsuki pushes right past it.
"Who gives a damn if I crack a few skulls, eh?! They assault old ladies and shit, they have it coming!"
"Detonation."
"And fuck your media professionalism," he whirls on Warp Thread as she tries to interrupt. "They're getting in my way every other damn minute! They're a swarm of flies making meals off heroes' corpses and I won't play their—"
"Bakugou."
He breaks himself off mid-sentence and his gaze snaps to Best Jeanist at the head of the table. The older hero's even, placid stare pushes him back into his chair.
"I think it would be best if you leave for the day." Katsuki opens his mouth, face contorted into a snarl and defensive anger rising in his chest, but Best Jeanist cuts him off. "You are emotionally compromised, and your current instability creates a risk to the professionals around you. That is unacceptable. I understand that you are under abnormal stress," he continues, his voice softening. "However, that does not change the situation. I am no longer suggesting but requiring that you take today off and relegate your duties to desk work until the situation is resolved."
Katsuki bites down on his anger and feels a muscle twitch in his jaw. He knows damn well that Best Jeanist is right—his head is far from clear. Still, if he didn't have so much respect for him, he'd tell Best Jeanist exactly where to stick telling what to do.
As it is, he doesn't trust himself to say anything without proving his mentor's point, and he won't give him the satisfaction. He pivots with a frustrated grunt and stalks away. As he crosses the threshold out of the room, Best Jeanist calls out after him.
"Take care of yourself; I am concerned on your behalf."
Shoving himself into civilian clothes takes less time than he expects it to, and he finds himself leaving the agency before the mission briefing is over. Thank fuck for small mercies; it'd be humiliating to be seen walking out of the building in sneakers while everyone else prepped for combat. Outside the back door of the agency, he shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, hunches his shoulders, and starts walking. Damn Best Jeanist for calling him out like that. Even if he was right, he had no business telling Katsuki when or how to take care of his mental health or whatever the hell it was he was "concerned" about. He wasn't his intern anymore and hadn't been his sidekick for almost five years now. Deku's situation hadn't messed him up that bad. Top Five hero or not, Best Jeanist needed to step off.
A loud siren makes his head snap upright on instinct, all his fuming evaporating as his brain switches into hero mode. He spots the ambulance and is ready to get to work, costume be damned, when he registers the hospital looming over him. Specifically, the hospital they took Deku to.
"Fuck's sake," he mutters to himself. After days of specifically avoiding this place, his feet take him right to it the minute he isn't paying attention.
He's tempted to keep avoiding it. In fact, he would really prefer to leave. But he's already here.
"I'm here to see Midoriya Izuku," he tells the receptionist inside.
"Can I see your ID, please?" She takes it and taps something into the computer. After a moment of looking at the screen, she frowns. "Mr. Midoriya is in a restricted-access wing of the hospital. Do you have documentation verifying your affiliation to the patient?"
Katsuki resists bitching about how stupid this is and pulls out his hero license. Pink rises in the woman's cheeks when she takes a look at it.
"Wow, I can't believe I didn't recognize you," she says as she turns back to her computer to copy the information. A scowl pulls the corners of Katsuki's mouth. He is not in the mood for small talk with a fan. "My son is obsessed. He liked to pretend to fight villains with an explosions quirk as a boy." She slides his license back over the counter, and Katsuki forces himself to say something in reply.
"Kid has good taste."
"Well, ah, if you wouldn't mind… it's not technically protocol, but if there's any chance I could get an autograph… He got into his dream high school…"
He should have kept his damn mouth shut. Or gone to the heroes' entrance.
Against his better judgment, he ends up signing a sticky note to Eisuke Jin while the receptionist prints an access card and points him to the hero ward. He registers again with one of the nurses there, who tells him Deku is in room 121. It's easy enough to find. Somehow, it's damn near impossible to go in.
Only a few days after being almost literally beaten to death, he still looks like someone trapped him in a meat grinder. The skin that isn't bandaged is bruised to hell, and they'd shaved off half his stupid broccoli hair to sew his fucking head back together. An assload of monitors tracks his stuttering pulse and his ragged, forced breath. The muscle bulk he's gained since high school is meaningless now—he seems puny and helpless in the hospital bed. He still looks like a clueless, Quirkless, playground-battered preteen.
Katsuki suddenly can't breathe.
He turns and reaches for the handle. Before he even touches it, however, the door swings into him of its own accord. He rears back, surprised, and then promptly freezes in place at the sight of none other than Todoroki fucking Shouto on the other side. For a moment, neither of them does a thing.
"When the nurse at the desk said you were here to visit, I almost didn't believe her," Todoroki says at last. His voice snaps Katsuki out of whatever stupor he was in.
"Yeah, well, I'm full of surprises." It's almost a relief to be defensive and harsh. This, he knows how to deal with. He tells the caught-stealing-from-the-cookie-jar feeling in his stomach to shut the fuck up.
"What the hell are you doing here? Don't you have a job?"
"I could ask the same of you," Todoroki points out. He takes in Katsuki's surly glare and steps past him into the room, waving the manilla folder in his other hand. "My agency collaborates with Endeavor's, and his building is close. I bring paperwork when I'm off patrol."
Katsuki glowers silently. Todoroki meets his gaze, obviously expecting him to say something. When he doesn't, he scoots the flimsy table from the corner to beside the bed, pulls a chair up to it, and settles down with the papers in his folder.
Katsuki lingers in the corner by the door. He still can't stand this room, but he can't just leave when Icy-Hot's sitting a vigil for Deku's almost-corpse. Like hell, he's going to lose face in front of Half-and-Half. His hands twitch. He flexes them, then curls them into fists. That bastard's gonna pay for making him stay longer.
The remaining chair could almost be considered a couch for all the cushions built into it. He collapses into its arms, tense and bitter as all get-out. The room is silent as Todoroki works — at least, silent as it can get with the half dozen monitor machines. Their whirring and beeping is soft but incessant. He starts to be able to hear the scratch of Todoroki's pen on the paper as well. Slowly but surely, it's driving him a little bit nuts. He forces his muscles to relax. Five seconds later, every inch of him is tense again. Shit, he hates this.
He leans forward in his chair, elbows propped against his splayed knees and his hands folded together between them. He's speaking before he even realizes he's opened his mouth. The words that come out drop like ice into his stomach.
"What did you know about Deku's Quirk?"
Todoroki stills. He hesitates, then the pen in his hand slowly finds its way to resting on the tabletop.
"Only that it's connected to All Might's, somehow," he says carefully. "They're too similar for it to be coincidental."
Katsuki hesitates despite himself. Is the secret of One For All his to tell? The cat's halfway out of the bag already, anyway. And he doesn't want to deal with it.
"All Might and Deku had the same Quirk," he says, shifting on the couch-chair. The cushions wobble treacherously underneath his weight. "It's called One For All, and it accumulates power as it's passed from person to person."
"So Midoriya was All Might's bastard son after all?"
Katsuki shoots Todoroki a withering glare. "You've always been dense as a brick, Icy-Hot."
He lifts a hip out of the cushions to rummage around in his pocket and withdraws the bundle of hair. He picks the paper wrapping open with his fingernails and sets it on top of Todoroki's paperwork. The green looks duller than he remembers it, more disheveled and worn.
"Deku gave this to me before he checked out. Said it was how All Might passed down the Quirk to him. He told me to find the next hero to give it to."
For several long heartbeats, Todoroki doesn't speak.
"Who else knows?"
"I don't fucking know who Deku told! The principal. Maybe Round-Cheeks. I thought he'd have told you after making kissy faces at each other for almost ten years."
"If it's a secret All Might entrusted to him, I doubt he'd spread the knowledge readily. But it explains why he had so little control over himself in our first semester," Todoroki continues. Katsuki snorts, thinking back to when Deku all but spilled it to him right out of the gate at U.A. He had always been such a damn mess.
"Try to find a kid who won't fucking demolish himself this time, 'kay Icy-Hot?"
"I'm sorry?"
"I said, try to find someone less stupid than Midoriya."
"Sorry, you want me to nominate All Might and Midoriya's successor instead of you?"
"Yeah, that's what I'm trying to fucking tell you!"
Todoroki pauses.
"No."
"What the shit, Icy-Hot?"
"I won't do it."
Katsuki slams his hand on the flimsy table; the pen launches itself to the floor on impact and skitters underneath the bed.
"Like hell, you won't! I didn't ask for it, and Deku's not my fucking problem!"
"He trusted you to—"
"Bullshit he did! I never would've given it to him, why the hell would he think I'd choose a good successor?! Me being there when he checked out was pure chance!"
Todoroki stands, frowning. "Don't you think that if he wanted me to do it, then he would have said so?" he retorts, his voice a little louder and much more forceful. "After everything you had to do with his training as a hero, you owe it to him to obey his final wishes."
"Bullshit," Katsuki spits again, but less emphatically. "They're not his final wishes—he's right there, isn't he?" He gestures, and Todoroki's gaze follows his hand. They stare at Deku's unconscious body, his pallid skin, and the shallow, forced rise and fall of his chest. Todoroki turns back toward Katsuki, once again solemn.
"We both know what his chances are of waking up."
Nonexistent. But Katsuki can't force the words out from between his lips. He chooses to snarl instead. Pivoting on one foot, he makes for the exit.
"Whatever. If you're not going to be helpful, I don't know why I'm even bothering to put up with you."
The hollow thump and empty click of the closing door sound infinitely louder in the silence of the corridor. Katsuki pauses outside Deku's room, looking blankly at the beige wall across the hall. He's not sure what he's thinking or feeling — nothing, really, his mind and heart seem blanketed with static — but the emptiness fills his senses. He fucking hates it. Anger at the absence heats his chest and he finally relaxes. This is better, he thinks, and then his mouth ticks up in the beginnings of a bitter smirk. Seven years out of high school and it's like he's suddenly sixteen again, finding comfort in being pissed.
"Ah, I was beginning to think you'd died standing up." A wry, unfamiliar voice yanks Katsuki from his internal monologue and back into his body, which he forces to look up and find the speaker. In the barren hall, it isn't hard—a lanky young man with acid green hair and a smirk stands a few meters away, watching him. The kid can't be more than sixteen, tops, and he gets the feeling the smirk is a permanent fixture.
"Buzz off, Extra."
"You're the Professional Hero Ground Zero, correct?" Katsuki scowls; half the point of the ridiculous costumes is to keep a hero's civilian life private. But the kid doesn't stop there. "Who were you visiting?"
"What's it to you? Mind your own damn business," he snarls with a threatening glare at the teenager. Who the hell does this kid think he is? If he doesn't step off, Katsuki won't be responsible for whatever happens next.
"A colleague you weren't hero enough to save?"
"You sure have a big mouth, brat." His hands twitch at his sides. "What the hell makes you think you can say that shit, eh?"
"Kyohime Kaoru," he says with a defiant lift to his chin. "You'll soon know me better as your competition."
A caustic leer plasters itself over Katsuki's features. Somebody needs to take this twerp down a few notches. "Oh yeah?"
"I'm the competition for every current hero, actually. You guys can hardly do shit, and I'm gonna be better than all of you. I'll save all the people and other heroes you didn't give a rat's ass about."
Alright, that's it.
He stalks up to the teen in a few angry strides. A good cuff on the shoulder pushes him up against the wall, and Katsuki cages him there with one arm while the other hand finds the brat's collar.
"Listen up, Kyohime Kaoru," he growls. "I don't know who you are or who the hell you think you are, but you don't have a damn clue what heroes face out there, what kind of ugly shit we beat back from your sheltered, prissy little life every single day. Until you can put your ass where your mouth is, you need to shut the hell up."
He takes half a step back and thrusts Kyohime away from him. The teen stumbles, but Katsuki doesn't look back as he stalks toward the exit.
"I got into U.A.!" Kyohime shouts down the hall. Katsuki still doesn't stop till he's turned the corner, where he pauses mid-stride to hear the bullshit still pouring from Kyohime's mouth. "I got into U.A. and I'm gonna prove it! I'll prove that the pros now are worthless! And I dare you to watch me do it!"
Katsuki snorts, shakes his head, and keeps walking. The kid doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, and even less of an idea what he's in for at U.A. No idea at all.
One week later, Deku's mother decides it's finally time to let him go. Katsuki finds out not from texting with his classmates, but an announcement on TV.
Our whole country is in mourning today, the news anchor is saying, and Katsuki thinks this might be what dissociation feels like. His body has gone weightless, but the packet in his pocket seems to weigh a thousand pounds. Pro hero Deku, also known as Midoriya Izuku, has officially died.
