this is going to be short (in chapters), but meaty. hope you like it :
also: chapter titles are selected verses from Miyazawa Kenji-sensei's poem, "Be not Defeated by the Rain", where Horikoshi-sensei confirmed is where he got deku's name from (in Jump #33.34)
it's 5 chapters, and the last is a bonus one :
an inch worth of distance
Chapter 1: In the meadow beneath a canopy of pines
It's the sight of Izuku bleeding that greets Katsuki once he gets past the last line of fire trees.
Stygian branches part and rising flames of ever-burning leaves nudge him onwards. The ashen grass under his feet burns, and claws scrape against volcanic soil, remaking a path the land knows is his. Down the ashen bank, he walks and stops just before the stream rushing between them.
Closer, it's a sight to behold in a way.
Izuku's propped up against a fire tree, its coal roots coiling around him as its done since it passed the journey across the stream. Flames snap at blunt-tipped green leaves of cypress trees in the vicinity, yet fall and caress its master.
Katsuki wants to call it a traitor, but not even he can fault the goddamn tree for snapping at anything else that dared come near Izuku with how he's breathing too deeply, too roughly, and too preciously like he's savoring each as his last.
Spots of red bloom beneath the white samue; a loose-fitting work garment that sticks to Izuku's skin. The red seeps through and blossoms into pseudo-flowers of the fire tree Izuku's leaning against. Sewn accents of blues and reds along the jacket and pants' hems gleam under the setting red moon's light before it sinks under the western seas.
It's a sight to behold because despite the dark smears of pooling red on the green bank, Izuku's not showing any sign of pain. There's ragged breathing, the occasional wince when scarred hands push a little too hard on the bleeding wounds, and a sheen of sweat covering him that makes dark green curls stick to skin.
There's all of that and more that Katsuki knows Izuku's keeping to himself, but of all things other than pain, it's relief that the goddamn idiot shows. As he looks on, he's reminded not of an injured man trapped in the machinations of injustice, but of a warrior who wears his scars with pride after another day of wholehearted service.
It's fucking sickening.
Perhaps sensing eyes on him, Izuku snaps his eyes open, and Katsuki looks away.
Slitted scarlet eyes shift from Izuku's twitching form, to the slips of blood mixing with the clear spring water of the stream. His eyes follow it–that curling tail of red–, and silently watches until it reaches a distance he can't follow after.
"Kacchan."
Katsuki's still looking off to the west where the stream ran and flowed with blood that should've never spilled, pooling and coalescing in the setting moon's embrace. He's still wondering if he can get that drop of life back when Izuku speaks again, and Katsuki couldn't ignore it anymore.
"Kacchan," Izuku's voice shakes and cracks in between syllables and he knows it isn't from the injuries, no. Katsuki knows better.
He knows, when he finally looks back and meets Izuku's pine green eyes, that the infuriating idiot isn't trembling from the injuries that'll add another scar to his body.
"Kacchan," Izuku says again, lips stretching and curling. He coughs and a slip of blood slips through his lips, down his chin, and joining the soaked collar of his samue.
Katsuki knows better than to think Izuku's showing this deep-seated relief out of expectation of being helped. He fucking knows that this idiot with deep dark circles, pale freckled skin, and chapped lips isn't thankful for anything else but the fact that Katsuki's here.
Katsuki knows–fucking knows that Izuku's saying his name not as a prayer for help, but out of pure relief that he showed up.
"Kacchan's here. Ah–" Izuku rests his head back on the stygian trunk, eyes half-lid and glazed like he's stuck in a dream. "I'm glad you're here, Kacchan."
(As if Izuku truly thought, when days turned into weeks, months, and years, that Katsuki's capable of leaving him)
Izuku shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be dragging himself here and making a bloody trail through the great cypress forest behind him.
He shouldn't be fucking drowning in his own blood, pale and breathless, and smiling and laughing as he says all of this.
"You're bleeding," Katsuki grits out. His hands curl into fists at his side, claws digging uselessly into scaled palms. He feels it threatening to break past; to pierce fireborn scales and rip through flesh, draw blood, break bone and tendon.
Even if he let it, he knows the pain would be nothing compared to how the smiling man across the stream felt every time.
(Katsuki knows because underneath hardened scales were four scars that still ached whenever he saw Izuku's smile dripping with blood)
"You're bleeding, Deku," He says again and his voice cracks. Growls mixed with snapping fangs and deafening rumbling brings silence to this forest of fire trees that lives in a cycle of noise and music–
The bubbling of lava streams winding around coal roots feeding on the lands' magma veins, the crackling of burning leaves, the popping along stygian branches that ceases only at harvest season when the famed ruby apples of the North East Region sprout from the flames.
"You're bleeding, you asshole," Katsuki's voice still cracks, and it makes little sense why amidst the rush of everything else he wants to say–to scream, that's all that slips past the lump in his throat.
Again. You're bleeding again. Injured again. Again and again, you're smiling with blood.
Again–
"I'm–" Izuku's voice shakes, and it's pathetic how the idiot pushes himself from the comfort of the fire tree's base just to drag himself as near as he can to Katsuki. "Kacchan, I'm–"
It's pathetic because he should know just as Katsuki does that they're past–have been past this point of apologies, explanations, and futile attempts to close the distance.
Izuku should fucking know it, damn it.
"Shut it," Katsuki rips his gaze from Izuku's, and moves to slide off his furoshiki satchel. He takes a knee and lets–forces himself to focus on untying the knot with trembling fingers.
(Because he knows they were about to reach out in a catching embrace. He knows his feet were about to take the step into the flowing stream and try catching this idiot who was foolishly moving while injured)
Though he lacks the eyes at the back of his head that Kansai's timefrozen skeletals do, Katsuki's done this long enough to know what to expect when he raises his head from the unraveled furoshiki.
Izuku's stopped midway with a foot forward in an aborted move towards Katsuki. There's another smearing trail of blood on the green bank that pools again under his worn and torn samue. A previously outstretched hand is pulled back, disfigured fingers curling into a fist over his chest.
Katsuki's done this far too many times that Izuku's expression is seared into his mind— like a broken record that Kantō's humans invented, the player's stylus long stuck on the record's ridges.
He wishes he can forget; be oblivious and unknowing and fucking blind to the tears silently falling and joining the blossoming red on white.
Katsuki wishes it as he wades through the stream, the burning soles of his clawed feet making steam erupt with every step. It's a wish–a foolish desire that sinks another slice into his chest when Izuku does the same, stumbling and staining the water red until there's only an inch between them.
He reaches and out and so does Izuku.
When Katsuki hands over the rolls of bandages, tubs of ointment, bottles of antiseptic, anesthetic, and needles and threads, they don't touch.
When the last of the supplies pass through that damned inch between them, Katsuki's only consolation is that it isn't only him whose hand lingered on the pantomimic wall of nothingness between them. It isn't just his fingers that twitched, and whose eyes can't help map the smallest of details of lines on their palms, callus on fingers and knuckles.
It's with that consolation of his clawed hands and Izuku's scarred, disfigured ones lingering, that he fools himself again in thinking they're really touching.
It's just a fucking inch. An inch. A goddamn inch.
Throughout the entire handover, Katsuki doesn't say a word, and neither does Izuku.
(It's always when the time comes to talk that words fail them both. Katsuki can't help but think if the chance to speak has already slipped past him–past them)
Katsuki's clawed hands curl, he shudders as he takes in and forces out a breath, and, finally, pulls away.
He's back on the ashen bank. He lays out his drenched nagagi kimono, hakama trousers and haori coat to dry on the volcanic rocks, leaving him in his short-sleeved hanjuban and knee-length suteteko undergarments.
Katsuki knows that even if he didn't take each off, the heat running through a fireborns' blood was enough to dry it.
He knows.
He just needed an excuse to turn his back and get lost in the methodical motions while Izuku threads back together the deep and oozing wounds. He needs it— that excuse to stop the urge to beat himself bloody in clawing, bashing, and burning that impenetrable inch between them.
It's something he clings onto and forces himself to focus on whenever Izuku lets out a hiss from the splash of antiseptic and the dab of ointment.
By the time Katsuki spreads his crested nagagi on scorching volcanic ground and turns around, there's only one cut left untended.
He knows he can ignore it; an option to look away until he hears the ruffle of bloodied samue attire being put back on. Katsuki can lay back on the ashen bank, close his eyes, and focus on everything else–on the natural clamor of the fire tree forest behind him, the rushing water of the stream, the farewell explosion of colors in the North East sky as the red moon sets, and just fucking everything else.
It's something he idiotically entertains for a second and throws into the bubbling depths of Mt. Chōkai the next.
(Since this losing battle he's been caught up in for years is a fight he won't–can't retreat from)
So Katsuki watches.
He doesn't notice the last of the day's cool winds fluttering through the loose slips of his hanjuban and suteteko. While he's sitting cross-legged on the bank of ash grass, hands flat on the ground and arms holding him up, Katsuki sees one thing and one thing only.
The last wound–lacerations, this time–ran from Izuku's left hipbone to his ribs, toned stomach, and ending just at the base of his sternum. Slitted red eyes runs over the smooth edges of the gash and the bubbling spurts of dark red blood stained with flecks of cotton that latched on and stuck.
If Izuku left this for last, Katsuki doesn't want to know how the others looked like.
(Though the man on the other side of the stream made it clear to him that what Katsuki wants is something that doesn't–can't matter)
It's like this, with him stuck to sitting and waiting on the ashen bank, that Katsuki realizes a sickening thought. Scales pop out and bristle along his arms, legs, and neck and the scent of burned grass beneath him fills his nose. He grinds his teeth, fangs catching on molars and filling his mouth with the iron tang of blood.
That's better, he thinks, than the bile that threatened to crawl up his throat.
Because Izuku's… doing better.
Where it once took hours for one wound to be patched up, Izuku breezes through it now with practiced ease. He still sweats. He still groans at the pour of the antiseptic on the bubbling gash, winces at the sting of anesthetic, and whimpers at the prickling pressure of the threaded needle dragging lacerated skin back together.
But Izuku's… doing better. He's getting used to it and the realization comes hard and fast that the volcanic ground of the ashen bank trembles under his anger.
The idiot shouldn't be getting used to it–to this, where Katsuki's come to always remain on the other side of the stream, unable to do fucking more than watch.
It's fucking frustrating.
(But he'll still come no matter what he says in the heat of the moment. He'll pack the bandages and everything else into a furoshiki and go to watch.
Because the alternative of not seeing Izuku is something he can't even think about)
The red moon's fully set and the night sun's taking its place in the skies of Tōhoku by the time Izuku ties the knot of the last bandage. He glances at Katsuki, mouth opening and hands moving towards the leftover supplies.
"Kacchan, here–"
"Keep the shitty stuff, Deku," Katsuki's half-lid eyes flutter and open fully, slitted scarlet glowing against the dim light of the forest. "You need it more than me, idiot."
Izuku's every move and reaction–the way he flinches from the criticizing words, how tears build up in pine green eyes that doesn't dare to look at Katsuki anymore, and remains silent with his head ducked down–is suffocating. Silence descends upon them and tendrils wrap around Katsuki's neck, squeezing and unrelenting to let go.
He sees something crystalline and clear drop on the bloodied white samue and he curses.
Damn it.
Slitted scarlet drills its gaze into Izuku's still ducked head before Katsuki sighs deeply. Smoke rushes out of his nostrils. His eyes flash once, and the scorching land beneath him trembles again at the fire that races through it from his hands and feet.
Then he speaks.
"Tell me about your day, shitty Deku."
Katsuki locks up the raging words and strings of letters back in his chest and shoves them down from where they built up a lump in his throat. The golden scales bristling along his arms, legs, and neck settle back beneath skin and muscle. Pointed fangs and claws draw back, too, until he's back to being simple flesh and blood.
He sees how Izuku's body tenses and jolts in surprise, and there's a flash of guilt that passes over those pine green eyes dotted by freckles.
But of course, Izuku doesn't push Katsuki to ask what he really wants to ask.
No… as the ever-burning flames of the lone fire tree blankets this infuriating idiot and makes his eyes light up, Izuku speaks and speaks and speaks.
Izuku tells Katsuki about Chūbu having another good harvest, the past weeks' worth of rain showers, making the taste of calming leaves rich and euphoric. He talks about the joys of someone proposing to their childhood sweetheart and an old couple gaining a newborn as if they're his own; his love, his child, his hopes and wishes come true.
The green of the grass under him, the lush of majestic cypress trees behind him, and the sparkling clarity of the stream between them rightfully claims Izuku's bright disposition with ease.
Through it all, Katsuki looks at the man and thinks of happiness.
(If he doesn't, he'll think of ugly things like how fucking pathetic it is to be jealous of things like grass, trees, and a shitty stream)
It's to the sight of Izuku's shining eyes and flushed face, the feel of the scorching night air on his face, and the sound of Izuku's unending babble that Katsuki closes his eyes.
When he first met Izuku, it was a time in Tōhoku when fire trees didn't play their orchestra of crackling, bubbling, and popping.
It was a time when the streams of lava froze and let the land claim it back into its fiery veins. When fireborn children of the land beamed with pride, and foreign tourists from everywhere came to witness the event–coldbloods from the icy landscapes of the North Sea Road, humans from the clunky metropolis East of the Border, timefrozen skeletals from the cultural ground West of the Border, and nature-worshippers from the Four Countries who could not resist coming down their rocky cliffs of pilgrimage.
Katsuki met Izuku during the grand harvest festival of Tōhoku's ruby apples; fruits born from a trial by fire and blessing of molten earth sustenance.
Of course, it'd sound more romantic if it didn't start with him getting fucking lost in the goddamn forest his old hag threw him into.
Literally.
'It'll be a good show if you bring home the ripest, biggest, and most juicy looking one as future leader' his ass. Katsuki knew what his old hag was really saying when she shoved a harvesting basket in his hands, took him by the collar of his haori, and chucked him.
Katsuki swore he heard her cackle of 'good riddance, now date time with Masaru' ring out as he sailed through the air before crashing into a nest of trees.
He'd been in the middle of burying crushed apples and sorting through the ones his fall hadn't crushed (and swearing he'd ship his shitty parents to Hokkaido as retirement) when he heard it.
In the passing red moons and night suns, fire tree forests were noisy. The incessant crackling, bubbling, and popping were sounds that lulled nearby villages to sleep and annoyed wrong-timed tourists.
But harvest season demanded a time of rest from every tree and forest. There'd be the occasional rustle of branches when powerful gusts passed, but a deafening silence dominated this time. The place where Katsuki–just several moons old–was (unjustly) thrown to was one of the unexplored ones, far from the bustle of touring groups and expert harvesters.
So what was the sound of a child's crying doing here?
Normally, Katsuki wasn't the type to impulsively dart to one place and the next, especially in an environment he was unfamiliar with. Normally.
But he was alone, battered and sullied from the 'landing' earlier, and, well, fucking lost that he was pretty sure he passed by the same tree more than once.
It'd been a mix then of unfortunate circumstance, childish curiosity, and a sliver of fear from being without the night sun's light that made Katsuki follow the sound.
The smell of burning ashen grass followed in his wake, and burning hands left claw marks on wayward stygian branches as he pushed them aside, all the same looting them of ruby apples. Though he already resolved to go to whoever's idiotic enough (like not him) to get lost, he wouldn't call the journey easy.
The cries stopped more than once, and Katsuki had to strain his ears to follow the soft sniffles and whimpers before it erupted again. Loud then quiet, it was a routine he soon got used to.
Unsure and unsteady steps turned to surer ones (carrying a basket full of ruby apples that weighed like rocks had its toll on all, child or not). Less and fewer branches garnered claw marks, and the burning soles of his clawed feet barely brushed against the ashen grass as he winded through the forest with ease.
When he broke through the treeline, pushing past one last stygian branch blocking his path, the crying had devolved to (forcedly quiet) sniffles, whimpers, and hiccups.
Taking that step, Katsuki wasn't sure what he expected to see and meet.
A crying kid whose friends dared them to go into the dark forest and back, maybe. A visiting fae's trick meant to lure the foolish into its clutches? Farfetched, but his frustrations from being easily handled by his old hag made him itch for a fight.
There was a lot more he expected; from the tamest ones of the cries being a figment of his imagination to the wilder ones of someone using the cover of dark foliage to bury their victim.
Well, Katsuki wasn't sure if the sight before him now fell short of or exceeded his expectations.
Past the sliding slope of a bank full of ash grass was a stream. Just a couple feet wide, it went from the farthest stretches of the east to the west, as far as Katsuki could see. No rocks or small boulders interrupted its flow with clear and crystalline water rushing smoothly under the night sun's glow.
That was the problem.
In the hellfire-esque landscape of Tōhoku–a region where erupting volcanoes replaced mountains and the very air burned, there should've never been a stream of water anywhere. Where other lands had them, Katsuki's home had rivers of bubbling lava, with scalding hot springs the closest thing they had to 'water.'
Yet on the other side of the stream was another thing he didn't dare to expect. The bank was flat and level and covered with an expanse of green everything–grass, not-burning leaves on majestic cypress trees, and–
A boy with dark green hair and pine green eyes that spilled water clearer and more crystalline than the stream between them.
If older, Katsuki would've been more cautious. He'd be filling his chest with air and letting out a bellow of fire to the sky as flares. Or he'd have retreated since his old hag already deemed him old enough to see the map of the world they lived in (and know–realize just exactly where he was)
If he was older.
"Oi," Katsuki snapped, stomping over to the edge of the ashen bank and crossing his arms. "How long are you going to cry, idiot? You cursed to be a stupid crybaby 'till you die, ha?"
It must've been Katsuki's ragged appearance more than his words–haori torn, hakama stained with crushed apples, face smeared with dirt, and broken branches sticking out from untamable gold-platinum hair–that made the boy, upon seeing him, cry out harder than earlier.
Which, of course, made Katsuki angrier than he already was and made his straining levels of annoyance reach an all-time peak.
"Shut the fuck up, idiot! You want to attract those bloodthirsty cows here or something, ha?"
The boy kept crying, body shaking and with how the white samue hung off his body, looked like a sob away from breaking altogether.
Briefly, Katsuki remembered his old man telling him about patience and understanding as important virtues for a budding leader.
(He also remembered just nodding along to the two-hour lecture, thoughts of combat practice not letting a single word stay in his head)
Other than discovering that he could survive being thrown into a forest, that night was a time of discovery for other things.
How else would he have known that throwing a ruby apple–a fruit true to its namesake of the precious stone–would end up crushing the crybaby's nose?
(Logic, probably)
The moment of self-applause at his good aim turned to panic real quick when he saw that the blood wasn't–oh shit–stopping, and the flow continuous in practically bathing the now-silent boy.
Katsuki shucked off the basket and waded into the stream. The rippling surface showed bristling scales on the side of his face, elongating fangs, and shaky pupils uncontrollably shifting from slitted scarlet to rounded carmine. Steam erupted with every step of burning clawed feet, the earlier tranquil flow of water stirring in the disturbance.
"Shit, shit, shit," He cursed as he drew nearer to the bloodied boy. "Fuck, I didn't mean to– fuck, just, ugh– I'll head over real quick–"
"You can't!"
"Wh– I'm trying to help, shithead! And no one tells me what to fucking do–"
Other than the domineering claw of his parents, being the Tōhoku leaders' child made him untouchable (and, by extension, not taking anyone else's bullshit but his own). How could this idiot crybaby, who was weak enough to bleed from being hit by a shitty apple, try to tell Katsuki what he can or can't do?
(Maybe he should've heard the honest plea underlying the boy's cries)
If he noticed how the boy's hand was outstretched to save and not control, Katsuki wouldn't be flat on his ass, neck-deep in the stream, and mirroring the other's injured state to a tee.
"The fuck–" He sputtered, spitting and gagging out the iron tang of blood and, was that his fucking fang? Wide-eyed, he watched the small yellow-white canine follow the flow of the stream, bobbing on the surface as the water whisked it away far from Katsuki's mouth.
For a moment he just sat there, gold-platinum locks now drenched, sticking to his face, and tips poking at his eyes that remained wide-eyed in disbelief. If the initial jump into the stream hadn't already drench his hanjuban and suteteko when he came into the water, it was now— along with pretty much his entire montsuki garb; a formal crested attire the elders forced him into for the shitty harvest ceremony. Steam continued erupting around him, his burning palms and soles of his feet raging war with disturbed waters.
Katsuki almost went with the temptation to pinch his (injured) nose to see if this was all just a fever dream when a strange sound rung out.
It was the same timbre but lighter–happier–and fuller than the ones he heard from playing children in the common streets. It was a sound Katsuki never heard when he announced his presence–be it child or adult who'd let out forced imitations after.
Katsuki looked away from where the water swept his fang to and turned to see the boy laughing with a swollen nose and dried blood on his face.
"That's why I– ha, told you–" said the boy between giggles directed at Katsuki's still dumbfounded face. "–that you can't!"
Katsuki probably hit his head harder than he thought (against what, he wasn't sure), because instead of erupting to anger and swearing like those outlaws festering in the Summer Regions, he snorted.
"Yeah, well, you were crying so goddamn much that I didn't hear it, idiot."
"Izuku."
"Ha?"
The boy scooted closer to the edge of the green bank and leaned forward on crossed legs. A passing wind fluttered his loose jacket and pants, and the sullied white of the samue did nothing to dull his star splatter of freckles and pine green eyes that glowed under the night sun.
Izuku smiled with a missing tooth. "Me. That's me. I'm Izuku! What's your name?"
Whether Katsuki was going to give out his name or tell Izuku that he didn't deserve to know was something neither of them found out. Not with the growl of Izuku's stomach stopping whatever Katsuki was about to say.
"You…" Katsuki frowned and looked over Izuku's thin limbs, gaunt face with red-rimmed eyes, and the frayed cotton threads of his samue. "Were you crying 'cuz you're hungry?"
"…No."
Even with his ears half-clogged with water and ringing from the impact against whatever it was preventing him from getting to Izuku, Katsuki wasn't that incompetent to not hear the resounding growl and gurgle of protest from the boy's stomach.
Izuku flushed and sputtered out shitty excuses that flew over Katsuki's head as he trudged back to the ashen bank. His drenched clothes hung on his shoulders, steam going off with every step towards the harvesting basket he left behind.
He looked at it for one good second amidst Izuku's non-stop babble before walking past it.
Clawed feet dragged against volcanic soil as he trekked back up to the treeline. Burn trails followed him before he stopped at what he'd been looking for–an unharvested fire tree.
Though the stout cypress trees on Izuku's side were tall, the mass forest of fire trees posed a domineering figure with their stygian branches almost blanketing Tōhoku's crimson-blood sky. Where a fireborn child could easily reach up to harvest apples from the lowest branch, Kantō human children would need to hitch rides on each other's shoulders to brush against even that.
To put it simply, fire trees were tall.
Tall enough, as Katsuki judged, that when toppled over and uprooted, it'd definitely reach the other side of the stream.
"–it's not about when I last ate or anything! It's just, um, a hard day toda–um… What are you doing?"
Katsuki cracked his knuckles, clawed fingers wiggling and stretching out its joints. Not an expert yet on blending them with skin, his golden scales bristled along bare arms where he pushed up the sleeves of his haori and nagagi.
He glanced at Izuku and shot him a one-fanged grin. "Told you I'll help so you can stop your shitty crying, didn't I?"
"Eh? Wait, what do you me–"
He clicked his tongue. "Katsuki."
When Izuku just blinked, he sighed, rolling his eyes while his claws stabbed through the coal roots of the fire tree. "It's not 'you', it's Katsuki. Remember that, crybaby."
The tree creaked and groaned, stygian branches shaking in confusion and coal roots uselessly clinging onto the magma veins of the land. The snapping of roots rung out as a feeble cry to its brethren that turned blind eyes for fear that they'd take on Katsuki's ire instead.
Better the sacrifice of one than misery of all.
A mix of lava and volcanic earth clung onto Katsuki's claws as he heaved the fire tree out of the ground, and in one breath, let the branches full of ruby apples fall towards the green bank.
(There was a moment, as it fell, that Katsuki thought it wouldn't be able to pass through like him. A moment where he had to entertain thoughts of the bright-eyed boy who let him hear laughter, waste away)
The stream continued to flow onwards. The uninjured ruby apples rolled on green grass, and stygian branches stood out amidst dark red brown cypress trees with lush green leaves.
It was a success, but Katsuki didn't give a damn about that.
What scarlet eyes focused on was Izuku. They took in the comical popping out of his pine green eyes, jaw hanging open, and the boy looking unnaturally small in sitting cross-legged beside the toppled fire tree.
Katsuki flicked off the messy mix of coal wooden splinters, volcanic soil, and hardening lava that clung onto his clawed fingers. And, since he still had an image to keep up, leaned haughtily against the fallen trunk and mass of roots, grinning at Izuku's dumbfounded expression.
"Well? Now you'll never get hungry," Katsuki said this as he watched Izuku shakily get up, lean down, and pluck an apple.
Slitted scarlet eyes watched–followed–how Izuku held the fruit in his hands tenderly. Fragile fingers failed to wrap around it and showed just how small this boy was. But there was a budding greatness in him–if not in size, then in strength as Izuku pressed into the middle and cracked the ruby apple open.
When tears flowed again after Izuku swallowed the last bite, seeds the only thing left in his hands, Katsuki expected what'd follow. This boy would say lines of gratitude, hand him promises of loyalty, and all that everyone else had ever given him–
"You're kind, Kacchan," Izuku's voice was soft but sure and strong with hands preciously cradling the seeds against his chest and eyes looking clear and bright at Katsuki. "You're a very kind person."
–but from the very start, since he followed the cries into the forest and past the stream, Katsuki'd known that expectations were something Izuku would always be beyond of.
His birth placed him on a pedestal too high for everyone and anything else to even try to reach. With rare golden flaming scales framing him, they laid a wreath of greatness that made him shine above all others.
It was with murmured exaltations, Masaru's tearful eyes, and Mitsuki's tired arms holding him they declared his fate.
Katsuki; to win against all, even himself.
(He sometimes wondered if his parents and the elders knew how the wreath of his name pricked and made him bleed out warmth for anyone else; even for himself)
Placed so high up, eventually, Katsuki came to forget that there were people below. Distinct forms of people 'like' him whose hardened bodies made them able to live in the hellfires of Tōhoku blurred.
Day-by-day as reverence for his existence poured out–every action glorified and words taken to heart–, Katsuki forgot that 'everyone else' existed.
Where his old hag's heavy disciplining hand landed, his skin-scales hardened until even the hardest hit became incomparable to the piercing charge of Tōhoku's ash grass-easting bovine. Where his old man's hours-long lectures tried to worm their way in his mind, his ears with slightly pointed tips eventually closed themselves off with scales.
It wasn't a surprise when ineffective disciplining hits and lectures stopped that Mitsuki and Masaru consoled themselves instead with blind belief that he'd 'learn.'
(Learn what, Katsuki didn't know. Was it something he should've learned when his parents stared at him with wide eyes and pale faces the first time one of his 'friends' showed up with handprint burns and a clawed-out eye?)
True to their expectations, Katsuki learned. About the existence of those formless beings 'like' him beneath his pedestal. How they'd exalt him as "great" one time, and "cruel" the next when they couldn't handle the scorching heat from his clawed hands and feet.
They wanted him to be great, and so he did.
–But being great didn't mean he had to be sympathetic, nice, understanding, and all those things that the wreath's prickling thorns had bled out from him.
Katsuki couldn't be that anymo–
"You're a kind person, Kacchan. You'll ask if I hit my head or got something in my eyes, but I only say what I see and what you've shown me since we met." Izuku paused and shifted to face the ashen bank. Green grass tickled his face as lips stretched wide and pine green eyes closed.
"Thank you for being kind, Kacchan."
It was on that day he trudged back home, joined his parents for dinner, and said that he 'learned.'
The second Katsuki stops hearing Izuku's voice, his eyes snap open, and slitted pupils dart around in panic. The lull he let himself fall into breaks with his once tranquil beating heart now thundering in his chest and rushing in his ears.
He blinks through the darkness of the night (when did it get so fucking late?), eyes shaking as it darts to where Izuku's supposed to be. The burning leaves of fire trees around him are dim in this dead hour of the night when their brilliant flames are snuffed and engulfs the forest in dark depths.
Katsuki's breathing is stilted and comes out in short pants and gasps. The ground beneath him shakes to answer the call of its graced child, but none of that fucking matters because where the fuck is Izuku–
"Ah," A light flickered in existence a couple feet from him, its purple wine glow slowly diffusing. "You're awake, Kacchan? Did you have a good sleep?"
With a lucent stone in hand, Izuku truly looks like one of the bewitching fae scattered across the regions that indiscriminately snatch people from the lives they built–good or bad, innocent or guilty, old or young.
Purple wine light spills forth and touches everything–the scars on Izuku's hands and arms, the splatter of freckles on youthful cheeks, and dark green curls framing a scarred neck. Rays of it reach all the way from the green bank to the ashen one, from majestic cypress trees to now-snuffed fire trees, and tints the stream as an unending flow of wine.
(It's fucking stupid how Katsuki, just as with the lone fire tree standing by Izuku's side, feels that ugly pang of jealousy over a shitty rock. Because unlike them that can cross the stream, reach out and touch Izuku, Katsuki alone remains bound in his place)
"Kacchan? What's wrong?" Izuku's brows furrow and the soft smile on his face shifts into a frown. "Did you have a nightmare?"
When he sees Izuku, the words he's locked up always clamor and rage in his chest; strings of lines and letters mark up his throat, ripping through blood and flesh to get the turn to roll out on his tongue. Clawed fingers rake through black soil as they curl into trembling fists, his body shaking and scales bristling along his arms and ankles.
Katsuki wants to fucking scream out the pitch-black dread that took the place of blood running through his veins when he couldn't hear Izuku anymore. His tongue's heavy in his mouth from the putrid taste of fear forced down his throat when, no matter how much he blinked and looked, Izuku was nowhere in sight.
He wants to cr–
"I wasn't sleeping, Deku. And when I do, I don't get shitty things like nightmares."
The clamor of words gets locked up again. Bristling golden scales seep back under skin and muscle. Curled fists unfurl and he snuffs out the licking flames aching to run along the rest of the bank's ash grass. The scorching air of Tōhoku fill his lungs again and his body gives out one last tremble of deep-seated relief before the stiffness recedes.
(Katsuki tells himself he's relaxed, but he shifts closer to the stream and measures the time his eyes are closed with every blink)
Izuku's still staring at him, pine green eyes gaining a vibrant tone from the lucent stone's purple glow. He's no longer weakly leaning against coal roots and the stygian trunk of the fire tree, but sitting by the edge of the bank, hugging his knees to his chest.
Katsuki fucking hates when Izuku does that because it always seems like the idiot wants to make himself smaller than he already was until there's fucking nothing left.
(But he says nothing because it's also the only position that makes the weight on Izuku's shoulders feel a bit more bearable)
Izuku smiles and hums, cheeks squished against his knees. "Hmm… is that so? The great Kacchan doesn't get nightmares?"
"That's what I fucking said, idiot."
Katsuki lets out a plume of smoke from his nose when Izuku chuckles softly, his hunched over body shaking.
It's scary how easy it is for Izuku to do this–to Katsuki. The man's chuckling–just a moment away from laughing–with lips stretched wide and eyes lost into crescents and… Katsuki forgets almost everything.
He almost forgets the bandages under the hastily washed samue, the darkened smears on green grass, and even of the cursed distance worth an inch between them.
It's easy for Katsuki to forget when the sound from the other side of the stream travels across the wine-tinted water and easily–scarily–drags out a chuckle of his own.
Katsuki's laugh is a mix of a growl, snort, and bellow that no one else has heard past this patch of peace and happiness he's protected for years. If people back home heard it, he knows they'll cower from the jarring mix of sounds that's too displeasing to be recognized as a laugh. Hell, his parents might just come out of their molten graves in their lava domes in Mt. Zaō just to check if he's gone nuts.
(Maybe he was, is, had been, and would continue to indulge in this type of insanity that takes the form of green-eyed idiots)
Izuku doesn't gape. There's no wide-eyed staring and over-exaggerated remarks about it.
There's nothing else–just as it's been for the past years since Katsuki first laughed–but Izuku's smile widening. Pine green eyes rival the lucent stone's glow with how they sparkle, and his face brightens just from the fact that he did at least this.
It's a stupid look that's never gone away and appears to never would.
(The question of who's the idiot remains unanswered. Was it Izuku, who gives away his bright smiles too easily for shitty reasons like a weird laugh, or Katsuki, who does it again and again just to keep that smile in his mind and heart?)
When Izuku chuckles and his laugh trails off, silence descends again.
There's a league of difference from the one earlier–it's a blanket that doesn't crush them both under its weight. Instead the silence settles softly across their shoulders, eases away the knots from the last few hours, and clears their ears to hear each other–the syncing mix of their breaths, beat of their hearts, and flutter of lids on eyes stuck on each other.
Katsuki doesn't know what Izuku sees when they end up quiet, still, and taking in each other's appearances. He feels and lets those pine green eyes look at and through him–from the leftover splatter of sumi ink on his cheek to the very heart of fire in his chest.
(Anyone else would've had their eyes burned out of their sockets and brain matter spill through their skulls)
"What are you looking at, Deku?"
Izuku doesn't flinch. He continues peering through the dark green curls that fall over his eyes, expression simultaneously soft and vibrant in the purple night.
He hums. "At you, Kacchan."
"Cut the shit. What are you really looking at?" Katsuki scoffs at Izuku's surprised look because, really, he's known the idiot long enough to discern between those looks of his. One where Izuku looks at the Katsuki of now, and the other looking at the Katsuki of then and to be.
Which one is it tonight?
Izuku lifts his head up from his knees, mouth opening and closing, before settling into a fond smile. "You really know me, huh, Kacchan?"
Katsuki doesn't answer and waits. The lukewarm night wind of Tōhoku comes and ruffles through gold-platinum hair, the loose sleeves and hems of his undergarments, and almost blows away his long dried montsuki garb. It briefly fans the snuffed embers of the fire trees' burning leaves, making the flames' crimson glow mix with the lucent stone's purple wine light.
It's in that moment, when Katsuki's enveloped in graced gold and Izuku in vibrant green, that his heart of flames stills.
"When you were sleeping…" Izuku pauses and rests his chin on his knees again, hugging them closer to his chest. The words that follow come out muffled and almost lost if the wind didn't catch and lay it on Katsuki's heart.
"You looked so much at peace, Kacchan," says Izuku amidst the reviving embers of fire trees. He laughs softly, the sound spreading the cracks of Katsuki's façade. "I like it when Kacchan's at peace."
It makes me feel at peace too.
Izuku doesn't say it, but there's no need when stifling reality crashes upon them too soon and too much and too fucking unfair.
Izuku's eyes are lost again into crescents, the starting show of crow's feet drawing up scattered freckles. The fullness of his cheeks hide the dark circles that the lucent stone cast shadows on, lips stretched wide and corners almost reaching his ears.
It's at that moment of Izuku smiling and looking at him that Katsuki breaks.
Twilight hours approach and the night sun's already sinking beneath the clouds in the east to make way for the red moon in the west. The forest behind him's clamoring again with the noise of crackling burning leaves, bubbling streams of lava, and popping ruby apple seeds.
The new day approaches, and it's too fucking soon.
The lump in Katsuki's throat grows and grows, and he chokes.
"You fucking know I'm only at peace when I'm with you, Deku. You know that. You fucking know it, you goddamn idiot."
The volcanic ground underneath Katsuki burns just as his eyes do. His claws rake through soil, and another claws at his chest and tears through the hanjuban's fabric as he leans forward as much as he can.
(The lock on years' worth of repressed words and strings of letters break, and he's drowning–choking–on their rage to get out)
Just as before and just as it is every time, nothing more gets out between glinting fangs and a closed throat but–
"Only with you, shitty Deku," says Katsuki, tongue tasting the tears that have never fallen for anyone else. "Only you."
He can't see much anymore through the blur of tears–can't discern as clearly, but he can still see.
Slitted scarlet eyes can still see the flush that rises over Izuku's face–from his scarred neck, freckled cheeks, and the tips of his ears, where molten gold piercings strung by chains hung and swayed. He still sees the trembling of Izuku's slighted parted lips, and how kaleidoscopic eyes that shifted into varying shades of green shone with overflowing tears.
(Katsuki sees, and it's fucking unfair how seeing is all he can ever do)
The night sun slips under the sea in the west as Izuku's tears flow and join the water stream that splits their worlds from each other. The red moon breaks out the new day as Izuku's words come after where Katsuki's retreated to, it being time for the leader of the North East Region to go back to where he's needed.
It's when the burning leaves of fire trees are ablaze again and alive with clamor of crackling, bubbling, and popping that Izuku breaks too. It's only when the sound of Katsuki's footsteps are gone and his strong back disappears into the forest that Izuku stops, for a moment, being strong.
"Me too, Kacchan," Izuku sobs, his voice too broken to keep up the front of strength that both their tears eroded. Scarred hands shake and tremble where they're curled on his chest–over his heart.
"My peace is you too, Kacchan. You know it too, my love."
(A couple leagues back to his people and away from his home, Katsuki sinks to his knees and this forest of fire dwarfs his screams)
There be a tale of one who sees and seers
Kept close, shut off, this child to toil for all
Its ears bleed duty from the pleas it hears
Despite asleep it rouse to hear the call
This child smiles wide, eyes shine, 'midst duty bound
Mouth moves, "what future would you like to have?"
It pays the price and yet there is no sound
What end the tale of seer who want but love?
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