Bakugou and Satou are quiet and sit on other sides of the hospital room and yet for the first time, something ties them together.
They killed a man yesterday.
Satou shivers when he remembers the feeling of hands on his skin, sliding and prodding and touching. He remembers the guns, the scent of smoke in the air, and of Bakugou's scream, half of rage, half of terror, as fabric ripped.
He doesn't exactly remember how it happened, how somehow he and Bakugou had torn apart the very concrete beneath them. He doesn't know which of them, if either, had been the one that officially caused his death.
He does remember the blood, the shattered limb, the man's scream breaking off as the building collapsed. He remembers finding Bakugou trembling, ready to collapse, his own head swimming with the concussion he was later diagnosed with. He remembers the gun wound bleeding sluggishly from Bakugou's shoulder, the grazed line on his own cheek that told just how close he'd come to death.
The lawyer had told them they weren't in trouble, that it was a clear cut case of self defense, that neither of them would even have to go to court, but even though Satou can't quite bring himself to regret doing what they had to protect themselves, he can't quite forgive himself for letting it get that far in the first place.
It's not their fault, so why does it feel like it is?
The lawyer comes in with Cementoss and they both startle. Satou's head pounds as the two adults sit in front of them, and his heart pounds with it as they begin to ask them questions.
Ever since the attack on Midoriya and Ashido early their second year, students had to pair up to go off campus, and Bakugou was the only one who wanted to go to the shop Satou was interested in. They'd headed off and been intercepted by some villains.
That was how the story started, and the beginning was so clear and yet Satou could hardly find the words. Yesterday seemed like a thousand years before.
Bakugou explains next, how they were taken off guard by a body freezing quirk, how guns were brought into play, how the men had pressed cold metal against their foreheads and touched them. Part of Satou wishes he could sound as calm as Bakugou did. Part of Satou couldn't understand how Bakugou could sound so calm.
Satou explains with shaking, stumbling words how the men had gotten sloppy when they'd moved to undo their clothing. He explains how they'd both attacked, managed to get one gun away, and then one had shot Bakugou, how a bullet grazed his cheek, how they'd both lashed out with their quirks, how the building had collapsed all around them. He pauses, stumbles in his telling where his memory blurs and sometimes Bakugou can fill in where he'd forgotten.
He explains how he'd done chest compressions on one man, how Bakugou had saved the life of the bastard who'd touched him, not sure if he's just explaining to explain or if he's desperately pleading for them to believe him, believe they hadn't meant to kill the man, how they weren't villains, please please please—
He can't get the image of blank eyes and crushed chest cavities out of his mind. The scent of blood fills him and he can't escape.
He jerks away when someone touches him and he drags in a breath and then another. Across the room, Bakugou's eyes are blank.
The adults tell them it's not their fault, speaking as if they are startled animals, about to dart at the slightest provocation. They tell them this isn't going on their record, that even if the surviving men try to press charges that UA will make it disappear and something sick curdles in Satou's stomach at that. They tell them that criminal charges for aggravated child sexual assault and abduction with a weapon and other charges are being levied against the men, that his and Bakugou's uses of force are considered reasonable, that there'll be an inquiry because they have provisional hero licenses but to not worry about it, that everything will be made okay.
It doesn't feel okay.
Satou doesn't know if he wants to be a hero anymore.
A dark part of him wonders if UA would have handled it even if it hadn't been self defense. A dark part of him thinks back to the quiet deaths that sometimes followed in All Might's wake, in Endeavor's wake, how deaths of villains are seen as normal in a fight against a hero, and wonders if he has become one of them.
Maybe this time it was just two kids fighting against their would-be abductors, but next time, if there was a next time, would they be so blameless?
Satou wants to make sure there is no next time but knows, knows now, there's no guarantee.
He never wanted to kill.
Satou doesn't know if he wants to be a hero anymore.
Bakugou's still in the hospital when Satou returns and he wants to wilt as the whispers follow him. People point, whisper, and Satou wants to scream at them when he catches bits of conversations like confetti spiralling through the air. Explosion. Hospital. Lockdown.
The bandages still glued to his head feeling like sirens, drawing attention to him, marking him as one of the victims— perpetrators— of the building collapse, a heaviness that sticks to him and makes his stomach sink.
The mark on his cheek itches and it takes everything not to tear apart the scab there and let himself bleed.
Aizawa told him he doesn't have to go to class today, or tomorrow, or the rest of this week but the idea of sitting alone in his dorm makes him want to scream. There's no mom to call for him, no father, just the foster parent of the month who hadn't even bothered to come down to the hospital, instead signing papers over the phone to release him back to campus. He can't stand the thought of just sitting on his bed, the memory of that night running over and over and over until he's throwing up in the bathroom yet again, his stomach rebelling at the memory of crushed skin and bone.
He enters the classroom and half the class goes quiet and it takes every inch of his self control not to flee. He walks stiffly to his desk and then he's surrounded by Ashido, Kaminari, Kirishima and what seems like most of his classmates.
They ask him questions and it all blurs together. He can't find his words, can't make out what they are saying and he feels cold, ice cold, and can't draw in a breath.
One question gets through, Mineta's voice curious and sharp. "Did Bakugou really kill someone?"
Satou realizes he could very easily blame this all on Bakugou. Anyone who doesn't really know him would not be surprised he had gone that far and he was pretty sure no one would ever think Satou had done it over Bakugou. As soon as he thought it though, nausea choked him and the revulsion that followed felt deserved.
No. He couldn't do that to Bakugou. Not when he was in the hospital with a gunshot to the shoulder because Satou hadn't been able to figure out a way to stop the men that didn't result in a man dead and his classmate shot. He couldn't blame it all on Bakugou. He was better than that.
Still killed someone, his subconscious whispered and Satou swallowed back the bile.
"Satou-kun?" Ashido says, worried now. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he manages to say, hoping the expression on his face is a smile and not a grimace. "Just thinking."
"So Bakugou did kill someone?" Mineta says, and Satou is grateful that Aizawa comes in at that moment and with a single look sends everyone scattering to their desks.
Class begins and the stares burning into his back and the almost concerned glances by Aizawa at him make him squirm like an ant under a microscope. He can hardly focus on the lesson but part of him knows even this is better than sitting alone on his bed.
Time passes slowly but too quick all at once and then Satou is at lunch and purposefully sitting alone in an out-of-the-way corner where no one can see him.
He can't eat, so he aimlessly checks his phone for texts that don't come, browses the web for news, searching for any trace of what had happened but all he finds are short news articles so brief they had to have been forcibly classified. The nausea pulls at his throat and he switches over to some puzzle game and breathes.
The covering up of it all makes him feel dirty, like a criminal. It'd almost be a relief for everyone to know that he helped kill a man, that he'd taken a life. Instead, he burns with it, a secret burden he can't bear.
He forces himself to get up and head back to class, the stares incinerating.
Satou finds sleep at half past three. His dreams are half fiction and half reality, a building crumbling beneath his feet, blood dripping down his cheek, and oh—
In the dream it's him, his quirk powered up and hand slamming down on the roof as it crumbles around him. The building shatters around him and above him, Bakugou barely discharges his quirk enough to break his landing, rolling to a stop just out of range of a massive chunk of rock and stone and then there's screaming and a stone strikes his head and the world becomes blurry—
And there's the body, reaching out and moaning, misshapen and gorey and horrifying and its begging Satou to stop, asking, pleading why he killed him, blood pouring out of its eyes and rising up and choking Satou, choking him until the world goes black and then white and then he's awake, breathing hard and sweaty and shivering.
Unreality fills his chest for a long moment and he can't bring himself to move, a knot in his throat as he bites back tears.
He still feels the man's hands on his chest, on his hips, lower, and he almost doesn't regret it except the blood burns in his nose and he would give anything to feel less dirty.
Bakugou is out of the hospital and they are both secluded in the lawyer's office. They're running the CCTV of the night and Satou wants to forget it all, but they are needed to identify what's going on from their perspective as it happens.
The boys on the screen are so tiny in black and white and he can almost separate it from himself but the man they killed is on screen and Satou doesn't think he'll ever forget those eyes.
And then it happens.
It's Satou's hand that strikes the floor, Satou's hand that sends shockwaves rippling through the roof. Bakugou staggers forward and the instinctive explosion to catch himself that follows only accelerates the collapse and then all of them are lost into the rubble below.
It was his fault.
It was his fault.
He can't breathe and some part of him recognizes he is hyperventilating, can feel Aizawa's hands on his shoulders but Satou can't breathe because it was his fault, he killed that man, it was him—
"—too much for them! It's not even been a week—"
"They're lucky there's enough evidence that they were approached outside of their duties as a hero student that they are not facing a full inquiry, we needed absolute proof that the death was indirect and an accident in the course of self defense—"
"They don't need to be here for that! The kid is having a panic attack and the other one is so out of it I don't think he even knows he's here!"
Satou drags in air and then Aizawa is looking at him, his face all serious and concerned and Satou wonders for a moment who he's looking at before he realizes it's him.
Aizawa walks him through a breathing exercise and he pulls himself back to the present and takes the water bottle from his teacher as the man goes over to Bakugou, who is still and distant and uncomfortably quiet in a way Bakugou never is and tries to pull him from wherever he had retreated to.
He sips the water, his hands trembling.
It doesn't feel real but at the same time feels too real, painfully real.
There's blood on his hands.
He killed a man.
"It's not your fault," Aizawa tells them when the lawyer leaves and Satou shakes his head. "It's not. Those men attacked you. They assaulted you. You didn't make the best choice but you made the choice that kept you alive. That's what matters."
"He's dead!" Satou snaps, and why doesn't anyone just give him justice already? "He's dead because of us! Because of me!"
"Did you put a gun to his head?" Aizawa says and Satou stumbles to a stop. "Did you tell him to attack you? Did you collapse the building purposefully to kill him?"
"No!"
"Then how is it your fault?" Aizawa says and Satou turns away.
How does he explain that if he could go back he would do everything different? How does he explain that he wishes he never went to that stupid fucking kitchen store? How does he explain that he's drowning in the blood and the guilt and this moment is going to be a scab that he can't ever stop scratching open?
If he was punished, somehow, it would feel like his guilt had been validated. That he had done something irredeemably wrong.
Aizawa sighs and stands and Satou can't stop the flinch at a man towering above him and he feels so weak when Aizawa notices and steps back, giving him space.
"You both will be attending mandatory therapy sessions," he tells them, and then keeps talking but Satou hears nothing else, the words buzzing in his head.
Why won't anyone punish him?
Why are they treating him like a victim?
"Satou," Aizawa says, and he's dragged from his thoughts like bursting through ice cold water. "Bakugou. This incident is considered classified from here on out. Get some rest. Neither of you need to return to class for the rest of the week if you do not wish to. My office is open if you need to talk."
Satou killed a man.
It pulses through him, a mantra, and it keeps him centered as he stumbles through busy hallways and toward his room, the panic and anger and fear and guilt twisting in his chest like snakes. He killed a man.
There was nothing that could make it better.
He didn't think there ever could be.