It's late at night when Katsuki sits up in his bed after being startled awake by seemingly nothing, he checks the time- 2:06am- and shrugs the feeling off as a nightmare, he'd been having much more the past year anyways.

He lies back into bed and stares at the ceiling, a good twenty odd minutes pass staring at his off white wall charred in a few places before his brain finally stops buzzing with a low thrum of adrenaline from a nightmare he can't recall and calms down. He sinks into his bed, closes his eyes and-

For whatever reason he thinks it's 2:06am but when Katsuki sits up in his bed after being startled awake and checks the time it's 1:56am, he can feel the slight beginnings of a headache start to drill their way into his mind and a feel of dread prickles up his spine.

He stands out of his bed, getting the feeling he won't be able to go back to sleep for a while he wanders to his window and looks out of it hoping that a calm night is what will still his racing mind and allow him to get a good nights sleep.

Unfortunately for his sleeping schedule he caught a glimpse of someone hanging out of a window a couple doors down at Izukus house, as he watches Izuku drop to the ground then brush himself off and start walking he knows he won't be able to get back to sleep- he'll probably stay up staring out of the window intensely until Izuku comes back.

And so, with that in mind, Katsuki grabs a hoodie and sneaks out of his own window, following Izuku from a good few metres behind him as he walked through town to the part he'd been told to avoid for years. Izuku walks right through to some 24 shop and comes out holding nothing but a small flip phone- why would Izuku need another crappy phone? He already had one.

He continues to follow Izuku to a run down looking house which he presses himself at the side of the open door and seems to be listening in. He's too far away to hear what's being said but from the annoyed expression on Izukus face he can just about make out in the low light.

Katsuki creeps closer as quietly as he can manage as Izuku starts talking to whoever he was listening to, he's close enough to hear but missed the first half of their conversation.

"Ok" Izuku says whilst standing just in the doorway

"Ok?" The person on the inside repeats incredulously

"You're going to shoot me whatever I say so is there a point to dragging this out? Just shoot me already"

- there's metal glimmering in the light that Katsuki recognises with a jolt, he's trying to make his legs move to push Izuku out of the way, to grab his hand and drag him far away from this- the blood is rushing so loudly in his ears he can't hear what the man says in response before there's a loud shot.

Izuku falls to the ground outside, Katsuki can do nothing but shake and scream at his muscles for not doing anything as blood coats the concrete overgrown with unkept grass below him.

-Katsuki sits up in bed thinking it's 1:56am, he glances at his phone to find it's 2:01am, his lungs are straining for air and before he can breath properly he's already out of bed and at his window- watching Izukus window and waiting for something to happen, a minute or two passes and nothing happens. It sends a further wave of dread over his whole body and he moves to his wardrobe without much thought.

He pulled a hoodie on over his sleep clothes and snuck out his own window, feet only covered in socks that got soaked the second he hit the wet grass. He pulls his hood up as far as he can and pulls the strings tight as he walks a path that's a little familiar, the night is quiet but feels oddly threatening as he treads into the part of town he's avoided since he was young- he's never walked these streets before but somehow knows exactly where he's going as he twists through unknown alleyways until he reaches an abandoned looking house, his eyes are drawn to the patch of concrete overgrown with grass by the old front door and he tries to swallow the small ball of nerves that's crept up into his throat with little success.

Katsuki walks around to one of the smashed in windows that isn't boarded up and looks inside- he can barely see anything in the low light but the smell of metal invades his senses.

He stares at the barely visible figure of Izuku for a couple minutes before he's snapped out of it a little as the front door opens, he crouches just enough so he can still see through the window.

Izuku is talking to another man for a brief moment and hands something he can't make out properly over, he can barely make out what they were saying since they talked in hushed voices

"The league thinks you've proved you're not a spy, no hero would endorse this and no straight laced hero kid would follow through- they'll be in contact"

With that the man leaves and Izuku rustles with something before there's a small light held to what seems to be an item of clothing that promptly sets itself alight. Katsuki's mind is filling with questions as to what the hell Izuku was doing in an abandoned building at 2:30am, what had he done that a hero wouldn't endorse? What league?

In the newfound flickering light the burning piece of clothing offers he can begin to make out the scene and it's an unwelcome one that tightens his lungs and flips his insides around- in the unreliable light he can make out Izuku standing not even two feet away from a corpse lying face down in a pool of it's own blood, it's creeping towards Izukus shoes as he stands and watches the fire crackle.

The tension in Izuku that seems every present begins to leak out of him, his shoulders slump a little seemingly content with the scene he was present in. There's blood splattered on one of his hands and it feels sickeningly familiar, Izuku over a dead body with blood on his hands.

Katsuki tried to block the rational part of his brain that screamed that Izuku had done this, Izuku had killed this man and was now watching a fire and relaxing next to the body- his mind raced to cover the known truth up, Izuku had been forced to do this, it had been like this before Izuku even arrived, it had been in self defence, it was a mistake that Izuku didn't mean to make.

No matter how many lies and excuses he smothered the truth in he couldn't shake the feeling that this had happened before, or the feeling that Izuku was a stranger as he stared at his relaxed back.

A couple of minutes pass and the light from the fire dies out as it goes out, plunging the night into darkness again and covering up the scene just as he was trying to do in his own mind.

Izuku left the building and Katsuki almost wanted to pull him aside and ask what happened, to get the truth and make sure that he wasn't a stranger but he didn't- maybe he knew that Izuku would lie as he did about everything else, maybe he thought that if Izuku had done that then what would he do to him for knowing? The part of him that knew Izuku had killed that man thought that he already knew the answer, the same part of him that knew most of what Izuku spoke was lies, knew that most that passed across his face was fabricated, knew that despite what he kept on telling himself about how Izuku was the same that there was something dark there that made his spine shiver sometimes when it'd show through.

Katsuki didn't talk to Izuku much the next day, his head filled with thoughts of a bloodstained floor, the stranger he'd made out to be his friend and all the lies between them. He decides he'll tell him in a couple of days, after his mind has had time to excuse and cover everything up and painted Izuku as the victim as it always does, but until then he'll completely block it out and try to ignore the knot of nerves in his chest.

xxxxxxx

This chapter almost got thanosed after my laptop crashed but I manged to save it

If this fic isn't for you and you want to review I only ask it's constructive, if it's mindless hate I will ignore