Chapter 21- The Day Before The Wedding (1)
The princess awoke, slightly before her liking, to the gentle rustling sound of Ashido getting dressed. Stretching her arms, she greeted the morning and waved at Yaoyorozu, who was brushing her hair at the foot of the bed. After a deep yawn, she hopped out of the covers and set about getting dressed in a mechanical, unthinking way. She was alert enough to hop-step-jump her clothes on in perfect order, surprising her non-lasandunian roommates, but not enough to tie the fiddly ribbons at her breast. Sleep was still leaden in her fingers.
Yaoyorozu watched her struggle for a moment and then, unprompted, got up to help. She put down her hair comb (her silky hair was currently untied, a rare sight) and set about tying Uraraka's dress on properly, accepting the head that flopped tiredly onto her shoulder without complaint. Having secured the last black velvet bow, she patted her on the back softly.
"Come on now," she coaxed "there's lots to do today."
Uraraka, whose face was still buried in Yaoyorozu's collarbone, made a faint whining noise. The taller girl sighed.
"I'll brush your hair, but then we've to go have breakfast, alright?"
"Alriiiight."
Ashido watched with amusement as she struggled to comb through the tangled brown bed-head, hindered by the princess' tendency to shy away when the brush hit a particularly tough knot. Finally, after a bit of back-and-forth struggle, everyone was ready to head down to eat, and they duly did so.
"Goodness," said Yaoyorozu as they rounded the bottom of the kitchen steps "what ever's gotten into you this morning?"
"It's-" she noticed the boys sitting at the table and stood a little straighter, embarrassed "oh, good morning."
They replied (with the exception of Bakugou) with morning greetings and prepared bowls of porridge as the girls seated themselves. Kirishima and Bakugou had once again colonised the stone on the edge of the fireplace, whilst the rest sat in clusters at the table.
Uraraka rubbed her eyes softly as she waited for her bowl to cool down, feeling the steam on the backs of her hands.
"No, it's just-" she began again "it's the strangest thing; I woke up with such a clear sense of something that I thought I must have forgotten years ago. I must have dreamed it. The memory has been coming back to me all this time."
"Oh?" said Ashido between tentative sips of hot gruel "And what's that?"
"When I was younger, I was to be married to a prince from Onirus."
Iida and Midoriya blinked at her in surprise. Todoroki twitched.
"The prince, as in king Endeavor's son?"
"Isn't that quite a large age gap?"
"Oh no, not the eldest prince. One of the lesser ones, except that he wasn't that lesser. He was my age. Is my age, I mean. Probably."
Kirishima raised an eyebrow. Bakugou was still not looking at her.
"So, why didn't things work out?"
"If I remember correctly, king Endeavor eventually pulled out. I was awfully young, so I had quite a hard time understanding the whole thing. I'm still not sure I do, to be honest. I think he thought I wasn't good enough for his son."
"That's mean!" cut in Ashido, laughing.
"Oh, I don't know. I'm sure there must be other reasons. It's true that there are stronger political allies to be had than Lasandu."
Kirishima looked over at Ashido, giving the princess some time to finally start on her food. She ate as quickly as was permissible by polite standards, ravenous now that her thoughts had settled themselves. Midoriya shot her a sympathetic smile, which she returned between spoonfuls.
"Oy," Called out the dragon-boy to his rosy friend "didn't the Onirian princess marry to one of your Capcanish lot?"
"Our 'Capcanish lot' is prince Houde, thank you very much. But you're right, yeah. Fuyumi, 'f I rem'ber correctly."
"So rainy old Capcana is still good enough for their standards, then."
"Watch it! Take that back!"
They descended into laughter, and the princess did a rather poor job of hiding her own amusement when she choked on her porridge. Yaoyorozu gave her a subtle but firm thump in the side, allowing her to regain her composure, but by then Iida had already noticed her plight, and marched over to present her with a cup of water, which she accepted red-faced and ashamed.
She sipped the cool drink, now intensely aware of the eyes upon her, and felt a salty guilt thrash in her stomach. The sun was barely up, and she had already burdened her friends. She did not want to drag them down with her again, to pull them to her place of shame or to make them wait upon her. She did not want to take more than she could give, and she could not give very much.
Midoriya gave her a little smile (and wasn't that why she had loved him?) and coughed into his brown gloves to draw everyone's eyes away.
"Well," he said "once we're done with breakfast, we ought to get on with the day's work."
"What is there to do?" asked Ashido slightly sourly. The others were beginning to catch on that she was utterly work-shy. "I want'y have a bath."
Kirishima rolled his eyes with a smile.
"What?" she retorted "It's been a while."
"It can't do any harm, I suppose." Mediated Iida.
The princess put down her bowl and interjected coolly.
"Well, Ba- Katsuki and I both need to bathe before the ceremony tomorrow, so I don't see why you couldn't tag along."
"I'm in!"
"If you don't mind," added Yaoyorozu "I'd like to come along too."
Todoroki said off-handedly that he ought to go as well, prompting Midoriya to commit to going, and soon everybody in the drafty kitchen had agreed to the trip.
The others left to gather their things, and the princess stayed behind to wash her bowl, filling the fresh silence of the stone walls with gentle, off-key humming. She did not want to sing the words aloud, for she had fast forgotten them, but the tune of the song that Ashido had sung in the washer's well still echoed in her mind, trying urgently to escape through her lips.
Cold water splashed on her hands. What was the next line? What was the next note? She knew that the lyrics were not for Midoriya's green eyes, and that she should not hang her stale heartbreak on them, but she did not know how to go on.
A whistle cut through her discordant hums, correcting her. She whipped around, landing droplets of soapy water on her bruised cheek, and found Katsuki Bakugou standing on the scullery stairs. He looked down at her.
"What do you want?" she said.
He twisted his lips.
"You were singing it wrong." He said.
"I know."
There was a pause. A drop of water fell with a taunting plick from the swinging pump.
"What am I doing when I get back?" he continued "Fitting the coat, right?"
"And trying the bells. I've to teach you how to tie them."
"Fine."
"In my room again, so that I can have the thread at hand."
"Fine."
He turned about and left. Her wet fingertips were so cold that they were beginning to lose sensation.
XXX
The bathhouse was rather busier than Uraraka's previous visit, and it proved quite difficult to find the space for all three girls to bathe together. The air was perfumed with a thousand sweet, mixing scents from the flower oils that older girls massaged into their skin or ran through their hair, and a low chatter echoed over the low marble walls. Small children laughed and splashed, and warm skin shone bare through the mist or reflected, wobbling, on the water's surface.
"Well, isn't this nice?" sighed Yaoyorozu, leaning back "It's been a while since we bathed together."
Ochaco hummed in agreement and sank into the soapy water. There was white foam on her eyelashes, obscuring her vision to a blurring, opalescent mirage. The faint smell of herbs reminded her pleasantly of her childhood, and, combined with the gentle heat of the baths, it almost put her to sleep.
Ashido shook her from her drowsiness by scooping some water up to run through her short, curly hair, and shivering from the wetness. The princess laughed, and copied her, washing the suds from her eyes and shaking her head in delight. It was such a lovely, simple thing to be warm and clean, to scrape away the winter's lethargy and bring in the supple spring.
She swiped her sodden brown locks behind her ears with a grin, and Ashido smiled back at her.
"That girl over there's got t' same haircut 's you." She said, flicking her eyes conspiratorially to another short brunette in a shallower pool. Ochaco followed her eyes as subtly as she could.
"Yes," she mused "the guilty girl's haircut. Just try to count how many girls have it and you'll soon realise your folly."
Ashido seemed to take this as a challenge, and set about looking through the crowds around them and counting down on her fingers. Yaoyorozu rolled her eyes with a smile, and ran her hands through her own hair as if contemplating whether she ought to cut it too.
Yaoyorozu's method of bathing was unusual and particular; the princess had yet to see anybody successfully replicate it. She leaned into the water as far as she could go on her back, but kept her neck supported on the bath's stone edge, and let the rest of her body sink comfortably. She said that she could always trust the water to hold her exactly as she wanted, and she did indeed seem perfectly in her element as she lay there, her breasts half-floating and her hands half-curled. Ochaco absent-mindedly tried to copy her, but ended up hitting her head on the border with a noticeable bang. Her friends whipped their heads to her in alarm.
"Oh, no, don't worry," she excused as she rubbed her throbbing head "I'm alright. I was thinking of getting out soon, anyway."
"Aw, so soon?"
"You two can stay in, I need to get back sooner anyway."
"Thank you muchly." Beamed Ashido "We'll catch up to you later."
Yaoyorozu pushed herself back up to sit. Her long black hair cascaded gently over her shoulders as it emerged from the waves, shining mutedly.
"Would you like some orange-flower oil for your hair before you go?" she asked politely.
"Oh, yes please, if it's no trouble."
"It really isn't, my dear. Hold out you palm once you're out."
The princess climbed out of the water (the fresh air hit her with a fierce cold) and wrung out her short brown hair as best she could. After scraping some of the water from her limbs, she crouched down beside her friend and reached her hands out. Yaoyorozu held her arm over the open palms, and, closing her eyes to concentrate, sent a jolt of reddish magic down from her elbow. A few fat drops of golden oil slipped down into Ochaco's hands.
She smiled.
"Thanks!"
"It was no trouble at all. Get back safe now, won't you?"
"Of course."
She said her goodbyes, and left the girls to sink back into the water or continue their counting as she shivered off to dry herself. After towelling herself down with the hand that was not cupping Yaoyorozu's gift, she set about combing through her hair. The oil allowed her to pull through the tangled ends with ease, and as she used the remains to work into the skin of her face and arms she looked about to distract herself from the throbbing of her head.
There were so many more girls about than there had been the last time. They milled, naked and content, about each other with no mind for their bareness nor that of those surrounding them, happy to do away with the extra layers of clothing for a little while longer. They glistened with sweat or moisture, lounging so that their skin and fat rolled here and there as they chatted lowly. The princess found it hard not to stare.
Every stranger's body told the same story: that of the famine, and the slow climb back from starvation. Curves swelled awkwardly back into place and old injuries faded petal pink, nails were dappled with white spots like snow and the expanses of leg were slowly reclaimed by hair. They were getting better. They were beautiful.
She did not dare to look in the mirror as she dressed.
XXX
The princess returned to the castle far before the others, and, finding herself without anything to do, went to the treasury to find the ceremonial cup that would be needed for tomorrow's ceremony.
Using one shoulder to lean on the red-lacquer doors, she heaved them open agonisingly slowly, battling the whining hinges back as they protested their use. Having finally gained access, she did not bother closing it behind her; she was now wary of the effort that it would take to open again once she had the cup in hand.
The room was still dusty and bare. A draft blew in from the open doors, ringing the bells on her crown and fluttering her veil as they sat unused on their stand, and the empty coin-jars whistled hauntingly in the wind. She paid no mind, and stepped carefully between the porcelain pots to the edge of the room, to the high racks and hidden shelves on the dark stone walls. Midday shadows hung black from every corner.
After a short stretch of her shoulders, she began her search. She recalled that she had hidden the chalice somewhere towards the back, so that it could not be found without considerable effort, and regretted that she had done such a good job. It was going to take a while to uncover it.
She stood on empty jars and clambered, arms over elbows, to reach her hands to the backs of the deepest and highest shelves. She rolled her sleeves back and bent at all sorts of uncomfortable angles in an effort avoid the thick layers of dust, and blew grime from crannies that had not been seen by human eyes in many years. Finally, as she tiptoed on top of a storage barrel and stretched shoulder-deep into a stone recess, her fingers grazed something cool and smooth.
She huffed victoriously and pulled herself as high up as she could manage. Her feet were no longer grounded; she held herself in free air. With an ungraceful swipe, she batted the cup forwards and grabbed it tightly with the other hand. She had forgotten, of course, that this was the hand holding her up.
Gravity took hold of her immediately, but she never got the chance to float herself to safety as she plummeted through the air. Instead, someone caught her.
She yelped in surprise, and turned to find herself clutched up in the arms of Katsuki Bakugou. He looked down at her disapprovingly, silent.
"I, um, I didn't expect you." She said, pulling away from him. As she peeled a sturdy bicep from around her, she felt herself somehow miss the warmth of his skin.
"I came back with Mina. You weren't in your room."
"Oh, sorry. I was just finding the cup for tomorrow. You know? The-"
"The one I give you wine from." He stated.
"Yes."
She rolled the chalice in her hands awkwardly.
"Let's go, then." He said.
They wound their way carefully back around the jars scattered on the floor and past the clothes stand with its white veil and golden crown. Bakugou shut the grand doors behind them once they had left, and they began their winding journey back to the top of the tallest tower.
There was silence. The princess used the edge of one of her sleeves to wipe the dust from the cup in her hands as she walked, watching as her own face was slowly mirrored back to her from its golden surface. A pattern of wild wolves was hammered on its edge, she noted, and its rim was surprisingly sharp. She twisted it in her hands, allowing the light to glance off it, and the reflection of Bakugou's face danced past. She looked up at him. His eyes were already upon her, pinched.
Her eyelids fluttered with confusion, searching, as they twisted through a star-shaped junction and over a wearing carpet. He looked away again.
"You were right." He said, his voice hushed. The last syllables lingered, echoing in the cold air. Through the stained glass the afternoon light projected a river of blue beneath his feet and engraved his face with green. Everything had the slight haze, the unsteadiness, of the underwater.
"Right about what?"
"Right about that thing with Mina. The threat."
Her breath left her in a flurry of bubbles. She bit her lip.
"Did something happen? Was… is she alright?"
"She's alright. Nothing like that happened. It's just- on the way back from the bathhouse. Someone shouted at her in the street. And we scared the fucker off, obviously, but then she talked about how she was used to it, how it wasn't the worst thing that had happened to her."
The princess tugged at one of her sleeves. Her surroundings weighed down on her, impossibly heavy- the silence, the dust, his breath. She could feel her heart thumping in her fingertips against the metal of the chalice. These waters were uncharted, unfamiliar.
"Did I not tell you?"
"Yes, but it's more than that. It's more than what happened."
They ducked under a low-hanging cobweb. Uraraka said nothing. Her hands were trembling about the cup. What could she possibly say?
"She faces everything with a smile on her face, you know. I feel like I never would have known unless she'd said it, like I wouldn't have noticed, and that's kind of fucked up. It's fucked up that she had to live with that and I was so unaware."
"And why are you telling me this?"
His gaze tightened. She had to quicken her pace to match his. The gloom was so heavy that it was almost liquid, resisting her steps as she chased him.
"She told you, not me. I have no right to know the details of her struggle as a girl, though I can guess them rather easily." She watched him twitch and was struck with understanding "Surely you're not aggrieved by it?"
"Fuck no! It's not her, it's… shit, forget this."
They rounded a sharp corner, her shoulders brushing the cold stone wall as she tried to keep up with him.
"No," she said "I don't think I will. You have dragged the both of us into this now. After you took all of this time to see that girls are often afeared in the company of strange men, you feel that you are the one that has been done wrong?"
"Stop fucking twisting my words, cheeks! Fuck, I should never have told you." He grunted "You don't fucking get it. It's not her I'm disappointed in, it's-"
"Yourself?" she cut.
He glared at her, but the expression lacked its usual hard edge. He looked almost hurt by it.
"Wait!" she had to grab him by his sleeve to prevent him from slipping away. "It isn't wrong," she said, and his back was turned on her "or shameful, then. And all that I have said has been on the wrong foot, and I apologise. But surely you must see that Mina still trusts you greatly, and loves you twice the same?"
They halted in the middle of the narrow corridor. Around them the dust in the air swirled erratically, and his lion skin pulled gently out from under her fingers.
"Then why didn't she tell me?" his voice was quiet. She could not see his face.
Something inside Uraraka slipped from its peg, and without thinking she grabbed him by the fur of his collar and hauled him back around to meet her. It was exasperating, she thought, to tell him so explicitly what he ought already to have known. It was not her job to pick through other people's problems.
"Because she did not owe it to you, and she never shall! She took you all the way to the Great Plains and followed you up this godsforsaken mountain! Earth Mother knows that there are very few of us with hearts great enough to do the same with a character such as you. Isn't it clear enough that she already likes you for what you are? She knows, most likely, that by telling you she has set off in you an unworthy kind of guilt-" he huffed in protestation, but she continued "and that that guilt might soon melt into pity. You yourself have said that she prefers to face her problems with a smile. Your guilt is what she has feared the most, not your judgement. That is why she did not tell you, though she has told you now, and it is yours to hold, not mine."
For the first time since they had entered the labyrinth of winding castle passageways, he looked her in the eyes.
"So, what do I do?"
She held his gaze. A hundred unidentifiable emotions swirled in his rubies for eyes, and she realised, like a burst of clarity, that in that moment she held him at her mercy. It was a freeing revelation, yet the thrill of power was tinged with responsibility and anger.
"How can I know?" she spoke calmly "Respect her or love her or hold her still aloof. You know already that she has placed a great trust in you, and there is nothing worse in this world than a man's pity."
He breathed deep and long, then turned from her. They began to walk again, but the air was clear this time, fluid, a current that held them both steady.
"You're only thinking of Deku again." He said after a time. There was a bitterness to the other boy's nickname.
The princess said nothing but knew that he was right. In the stained glass above them, their reflections twitched in unnatural colours.
What warped figures they were, she thought, that they both held heavy their long-scarred guilt, that it was too late for either of them to clean the wounds and that instead they pawed at the tender gashes, took hold of each other's tangled heartstrings and pulled. Their claws were bloody with each other's half-dead loves.
"His is a special kind of pity." She said after a time, looking up at the carved-pattern ceiling as she walked. "You know it. You saw it once before and it maddened you. But I see it every day, every day, and it is the only thing holding my terrible heart together."
"That's a lie." He replied immediately, not even bothering to look at her. "Don't make a habit of it, round face. I won't always be there to cry to."
She bit her lip in shame, and a hot flush swept over her. Why must she always end up talking of painful things when he was near?
"And you're wrong again," he added, just as they reached the bottom of the winding spiral staircase to her room "I've seen it twice now, and it's fucking sucked just as bad."
"When? How?" The shame melted from her, replaced with curiosity.
"Why should I fucking tell you?"
"At the bathhouse?"
"I said why should I bloody tell you, already?!"
The exclamation rung around the circular tower walls. She could see his cloak flap in a strange twisting motion, the lion's tail twitching as though it were still alive, as he ascended the stairs ahead of her. It was getting hard to see any of him at all except for his fur-trimmed leather boots as he climbed higher and higher.
"You brought it up," she pointed out, raising her voice slightly "so surely you have wanted to tell me all along. Maybe that's what's been hanging in your brows all this time."
Over the regular thump of his footsteps, she heard him click his tongue.
XXX
The male bathhouse had been gloomier than Katsuki had expected.
Though the washing pools were separated from the sacred grounds by meandering couloirs, the heavy scent of incense still carried, smoky, above the water, illuminated strangely by the minimal light. A thick quiet hung in the steam, paralysing, and as he stripped his clothes off a chill sense of unease swept over him.
The boys were not usually like this. Teenaged boys, in general, were not usually like this. There was normally some gaiety or other directed by the leader of the group, livened or dampened by his entourage, and at least a little disorder in the way their boisterous collections moved about. A subtle competition was felt but not admitted in one another's wise-cracks and jabs; an unspoken, happy rivalry wriggled under the surface.
Now they were silent, and their movements were slow. Their naked flesh wielded an unseen, solemn influence, firmly and willingly divided them. They would not acknowledge their bodies as separate entities, allow them to be judged except as a single unit, all whole, all growing back.
Beside him, Kirishima loosened the ties of his soft tunic, and hidden in the mist somewhere behind him that strict knight with the square face was sweeping his cloak from his shoulders. He could hear only the sound of shuffling fabric and slow breaths, the occasional soft grunt as a shoe came off.
He felt a light tickle at his bare feet, and looked down to see what it was, temporarily distracted from the sombre stillness about him. It was a strand of red hair.
A pang of dread shot at his stomach. It was too soon, far too soon, to have his first love so near again, and have his skin bare, and hear his heart beat in the still water. Already he could smell the strange, inviting dragon's sweat that hung under his collarbones and see his spiked red hair droop in the heat. Some unfamiliar, unwelcome emotion swelled in his neck. He needed to escape.
The scarred, sickly boy upon whom Deku seemed to dote so stepped slowly past him, disappearing into the springs, and suddenly some primal and idiotic urge seized Katsuki. He tore off the last of his clothes, and lunged out into the vapour to grab Deku by the arm before he too could disappear.
"Let's go somewhere else." He growled, without meaning to. He could not see Deku's face, which made intimidating him a lot harder.
But Deku did not tense, only sighed softly (he did not know out of what emotion, nor really care) and followed him as he stalked off in the direction of the other baths.
They washed in acid soap without exchanging a single word, then sank into the slow water of the furthest pool from the others. It was smaller and shallower than the more popular ones, and it left only half a coffin's space between their knees. The mist there was clear enough for him to notice Deku staring.
The broccoli-haired runt's eyes had settled on Katsuki's left bicep, where a wreath of black ink encircled the taught skin. It was a simple pattern of repeating shapes that carved his tan, and he unconsciously rubbed at it under the pressure of those heavy green eyes.
"Kacchan," (That name again; why must it still be Kacchan?) "did you really get tattooed?"
He grunted in reply. The answer, he thought, was fairly self-explanatory.
"When?" Searched Deku. His brow was disconcertingly furrowed.
"In Abrassa, Illium."
"But when?"
"In the dusty season before we left for Capcana. You-" he placed a clear emphasis on the next words "weren't there."
Deku bit his lip. Gods; no matter how hard he tried to suppress it, an ancient hatred for the boy surged up at the sight of it.
"And you've had it all this time? Even in Capcana?"
"Great bloody attention to detail you've got there."
"Were you hiding it?"
Katsuki bit back a sharp insult and instead settled on a resentful sigh.
"We were both wearing fucking plate armour all the time, dumbfuck."
"But did you not want me to see?"
"I didn't give a shit if you saw it. I couldn't fucking care less what anyone has to say about it. It looks fucking sharp."
Deku fiddled his scarred, gnarled fingers under the water. Katsuki's irritation slipped into anger and threatened to boil the bathwater as Deku began to speak again.
"You got your ears pierced at around the same time, didn't you?" he asked "Was it Elder Priam?"
"Fuck off, I'm not telling you."
"It was, wasn't it?"
He rolled his eyes. Deku continued.
"Did it hurt?"
"Only as much as old hands driving a needle into you a thousand bloody times usually does."
"Kacchan," (Still kacchan; that old name that stuck to him like a scar) "why did you do it?"
The weight of the pity in those viridian eyes was unbearable. Heavier still, the beads at his ears felt suddenly like they were no longer a part of him. He was compressed, pulled apart.
"I'm Abrassan." He snapped "Born and raised. It's my culture, and yours too. Don't get on my case because you never fucking bothered to participate."
"You know it's not that."
"Fucking don't I? You say that too often. It sounds like a pile of bloody excuses."
"I know exactly what our culture is. I know what I love and hate of it. I know what I willingly left behind."
"And what's that? The things that would hurt? The things that were the hardest?"
"The past."
For a moment all that Katsuki could do was glare. The past? There was so little, and yet so very much, of the past behind him; all that he had ever been was past now. Every tick of his heart and every breath melted into the past. He felt the past become him.
"Why's it for you to say what traditions are the past? Who left you in charge of leaving things behind?" he growled, and his bristling upset the water's surface "You spent too much fucking time with All Might, filling your head with floppy Capcanish customs. Now you look down on your own fucking homeland like it's uncivilised and barbaric, like you can't bear the thought of it. You think your mum would be proud of you for it? Huh? You think she'd like the way you absorbed five hundred years of foreign superiority complexes and wear it on your skin?"
"She'd be proud of me for never submitting to cruelty." Replied Deku calmly. "And don't act as though you haven't had prejudices of your own."
"Fuck. For fuck's sake." Katsuki sighed deeply "Look, there are plenty of things to dislike about the way that we were raised, about the war, about fighting, but tattoos? Piercings? Honestly, what the fuck has that got to do with anything?"
Deku scooped two handfuls of water over his forest of green hair, and bowed his face away.
"I don't believe that a boy should be forced to take the habit of enduring and giving out pain to prove that he is a man."
He turned his heavy emerald eyes back, and it was hard for Katsuki to meet them.
Rage and desperation bubbled up at the sight of that excruciating pity. He had endured the training and the hunt and the needle a thousand times, and yet nothing could compare to this terrible condescension, this self-righteous and needless compassion so confidently doled out by a boy far shorter than he. Deku's look (and he looked down on him, as though he were not sitting before him but above) twisted his guts and made his heartbeat rise in his neck. Deku's look said that it had all been for nothing. That he had never been in control. That he had only ever been a mindless victim of it all.
(And perhaps that was what Deku told himself; a delusion, Katsuki realised, a fantasy, to protect the image of him that he had formed as a child. Perhaps if he had not been vicious of his own accord, and there had always been some nicer, battered boy lurking beneath, forgiveness would come easy, and they could be as children again.)
But he wasn't. He knew he wasn't, yet there was no way to convey it to such a stubborn boy.
He had chosen to be cruel and to join Elder Priam's games, and he had also chosen to break free. All of those choices, all of the past, made who he was, and he would always be an imperfect patchwork of his former mistakes. He had chosen to get his ears pierced and his arm tattooed. He had chosen to endure because it had been what he wanted; even now, he did not regret it. It was its own reward.
He was crowned with black fragments of stars and seashells and the swell of the tide. He carried the ocean with him. The red of the desert sunset hung from his ears.
He could not leave the past behind. It was engraved into his skin.
There was nothing to pity. To do so would be to negate all that he was.
And still Deku gave him that heavy look, and Katsuki knew that when he left he would return to his Capcanish-laced vest and his slightly affected voice (he supressed the Abrassan accents on the word-ends), and that there was nothing more he could do. Deku had not only left behind the past, he had remade it.
Every piece of him longed to fight the new claim to superiority, to swing his fist and shatter the bathhouse silence with yells of anger, but a tiny nagging voice in his head held him back. Deku would only pity him more, it said, such violence would only strengthen his resolve.
He clicked his tongue, and climbed out of the water.
XXX
Uraraka bit her lip as she pulled the heavy fabric onto Bakugou's shoulders. He stared away from her, at the wide windows that overlooked the valley, and she felt a kind of relief that he could not see her discontent.
There was no need for words, she knew, but the silence still weighed heavy.
Having tied the first ribbon at his breast, she stepped away, and he was brought back from his thoughts to tie the rest. She could tell, from the way that he went about it slowly, pondering each loop of the black bow as he came to it, that he was unused to wearing clothes with such intricate ties. His thick fingers fumbled about the knot.
"If I help you," she started, quiet and low "will you take it as pity?"
He clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"No," he snapped, and he had that russet tinge again "because I can tell it's fucking not."
"I suppose we have rather become experts on the subject."
She walked back over to stand in his shadow, and took the dark silk from his hands. He held his arms stiff at his sides as she pulled close at his chest, and her calloused fingers made fast work of the long trail of ties.
"Perhaps you already know-" she started quietly, "but I think your expertise in pity is of the highest calibre."
He snorted. It was an unflattering sound.
"Oh? That's a very bloody thinly veiled insult, coming from someone as classy as you."
"I assure you that it is not! I've told you things that I have never before been able to put into words. And though you were, of course," she put a bitter emphasis on her words "lying through your teeth, you made me feel as though it was alright to say them, and I didn't worry that you would pity me. I am sure that you will be perfectly well with Ashido, who knows you far better besides."
There was silence as she secured the last ribbon at his midriff, and finally she stepped back to admire her work. He shuffled about a bit, and as she leaned in to adjust a fold on his shoulder, their eyes connected.
"I wasn't always lying." He said.
Uraraka's breath hitched. She had known it, known that he had told her many truths that he did not owe her, but she still did not know why. So many crucial pieces still eluded her and yet she could not bring herself to ask for them. A hundred questions snagged in her throat, cowed by the sight of his lips pressed thin, and she knew that they would remain there just as his secrets would remain sealed away inside of him, sheltered by teeth and tendon.
She coughed, partly to break the silence, and partly to let the air back in.
"Thank-you," she spoke quietly, all in a rush to change course, and with her next words she acted as if she had not said it at all "your coat fits fine. Now I only have to show you how to tie the bells, and we shall be done and ready."
He clicked his tongue in annoyance, his old self again.
"Why'd I have to learn to tie? I tied on my own necklaces just fine."
"Firstly," she replied, walking away to pick two little golden bells from the window sill "it is around the back of my neck that you'll be tying the bells, and not yours, and secondly, we will need to knot the tops of them quite securely to stop them from ringing."
She handed him a red ribbon with a chiming bell, and he held it awkwardly in his palms.
"Why stop them from ringing? I thought the whole bloody point was that you could hear them ring."
"Oh, so you were paying attention at the washer's well. You're right. But we ought not to let ours ring, or to follow custom by tying them tight about our necks where they may be seen."
She looped the ribbon in her hands through the crown of the bell and pulled it back on itself before starting over, and after studying the movements of her fingers he followed.
"Why not?" Bakugou asked as he knotted the line in the middle, a twinge of irritation sounding when the ribbon pulled tight. "Sounds like a lot of fucking effort for nothing."
She looked over his work with a nod, comparing it to the now-finished one in her hands. She then came up to his shoulders and, without warning, held her arms around him. Her cheek leaned close to his pulsing jugular as she practiced tying the bow of her ribbon around his neck. He flinched at her cold fingers on his nape.
"Because," she said, and the words like a whisper echoed warmly in his ear, closer than ever before "the bells ring to call lovers." She paused to tug at something he could not see, and her hair brushed his cheek "We are not lovers. You would not want to claim me as your own."
When she finally pulled away, she found that his face had set firm and grim. His narrowed eyes searched her face for something she did not understand, and an inexplicable guilt twinged in her stomach. She laughed nervously.
He leaned down on her, and tied the bell around her neck with perfect ease. It sat there, cold, like the silence about them, and neither of them moved.
Finally, he removed it in a single tug, never sparing her a glance, and its absence left her cold.
A/N: Thank you so much to the lovely commenters! I truly appreciate any comments or favourites, they're so motivating! Thanks to you, I was able to realise that this chapter lacked clarity in a few key scenes, and I have gone back to tweak some of them slightly.
Here are some explanations for pieces that tended to confuse people:
1) Ochaco mentioning that she was to be married when she was young is the first time this plot point has been mentioned. Don't worry, this will be expanded upon later.
2) When Bakugou and Uraraka talk about Ashido's experiences, it is more of a general examination of what women in various kingdoms have to live with. Bakugou is horrified that he has only recently noticed (when Uraraka shouted it at him last chapter) that harassment and threats of sexual violence are a big problem, and feels guilty about it. Uraraka assures him that it is not through any fault of his own that Ashido has not told him, and that from now on all that he can do is try to be a supportive friend, as pitying her experiences will not do any good, and is patronising.
(GUILT AND PITY ARE BIG THEMES IN THIS CHAPTER)
3) At the bathhouse, Deku notices Bakugou's piercings and tattoos and worries (incorrectly) that Bakugou had them done under duress/pressure from Old Man Priam. Bakugou feels frustrated that Deku pities him for his own decisions, and they argue because Bakugou thinks that Deku's unnecessary concern springs from bigotry that is common in Capcana (the kingdom where they were trained to be knights). In the end Bakugou chooses to stop arguing, as he sees that Deku's saviour complex is a way of processing his feelings about having been bullied and outcast at a young age.