I seem to be on a roll with my updates today, so I figured I'd update this one too. Hopefully I'll get Empyrean and AUW updated soon too, but no promises.

Author's Note: Hope everybody enjoys the update! I know it's pretty ... angsty right now, but it'll get better. Eventually.

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Chapter Two: Lights In the Dark

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It took six months of physical and emotional therapy to get Izuku in any kind of condition to leave the safety of the private hospital ward. It took eight months before he was in any condition to do more than go from his home back to the hospital for his check-ups, therapies, and adjusted diet plans —which mostly consisted of going onto a full milk, meat, and sushi diet. Wheat, vegetable, and fruit products made him throw up violently, cheese gummed up in his mouth and peanut butter had been a disaster that required an ambulance and therapy for his hysterical mother—.

Everything that had once been simple was now hard to impossible. Walking? Four legs were stupidly hard to coordinate, his tail kept moving without his conscious consent and knocking into things —or people—, and his wings kept catching on things when he forgot to take them into account —like doorways, he hated doorways with a passion now—.

Writing? Impossible with a pencil or a pen or any other conventional writing utensil. He had no thumbs now, his jaws were too strong to keep from breaking things, and unless he was incredibly careful, his claws went straight through paper —and any surface that wasn't two-inch-thick steel if he got frustrated—. He was learning to dip one claw into ink and write that way, but the ink kept spilling and his claw-writing was mostly illegible. The less said about trying to use conventional dishes, cups, and utensils the better.

Talking? Genuinely impossible without a very uncomfortable collar-style vocoder clamped over his throat. Every time he tried to speak without it, all that came out were warbles and hisses and screeches. He had to learn think-speech now, a way of focusing his thoughts so that the nerve-readers in the collar picked it up and transmitted the words with its synthesized voice —not his voice, this was all monotone and blank, the only variation was the volume—. Oh, and his teeth kept retracting whenever he was concentrating too hard on something —a distracting and unnerving feeling—, then springing out and biting his tongue when he got too frustrated —which was often—.

He was pulled out of school indefinitely, none of his clothes fit anymore —and who made clothes for night furies?—, he couldn't even give himself a bath without help —unless he wanted to give in to the newfound instinct to lick himself which was just- no. Just no—. He knew the doctors had repeatedly recommended moving to a bigger house with a backyard he could exercise in, or at least a larger apartment, but his mother was already having trouble with the medical bills for his rehab, there was no way she could afford a new place.

Izuku hated it. Hated his new, clumsy body, hated the way he could smell sadness clinging to his mother all the time now, hated that he was so useless in this form, hated himself for not being able to fix it-.

The downward spiral of his thoughts might have gone to truly dark places indeed if it hadn't been for Kacchan.

About two weeks after he'd been allowed to bumble around the apartment rather than be stuck in the animal-quirk ward of the hospital, Kacchan had appeared at the door, carrying literal months worth of homework and a stack of jumbo-sized pet dishes so that Izuku could stop breaking plates when trying to eat or drink anything.

He wouldn't look Izuku in the eye for a very long time. But after the initial first arrival, he showed up outside the Midoriyas' door without fail every day after school or early in the morning on weekends. He went with them to Izuku's hospital/therapy visits and stayed glued to Izuku's side whenever he could, talking to him in an oddly quiet but still gruff tone and listening to Izuku —trying to understand Izuku— even before Izuku got his think-speech collar or during the times when he couldn't stand to wear it.

But perhaps the biggest thing Kacchan did for him, the most important, was that he believed in Izuku. Izuku's mother never wanted him to risk anything, never wanted him to push himself or do something that might lead to potentially hurting himself. His therapists insisted he never stray from their plans for fear of further damage, told him straight to his face —muzzle now, he supposed— that even if he did everything they told him to, he would never again be able to do certain things he'd done while having a human body.

But Kacchan was different. If Izuku wanted to learn something, Kacchan sat down with him and worked out how to do it. If Izuku wanted to reclaim a skill he'd had as a person like playing video games or running through the apartment without falling flat on his snout, Kacchan sacrificed his collection of game controllers or chased Izuku in a demented game of tag whenever Inko was shopping for groceries and couldn't stop them. Kacchan pushed Izuku, refused to let him accept the limits set by the therapists and Izuku's loving but overprotective mother. He forced Izuku out of his depressed fog of "can't's" and "used-to-be's" and made him find workarounds and new abilities.

Izuku wanted to finally use his wings and fly like Toothless did in the movies? Kacchan smuggled him out to the park and had him practice jumping off the jungle gym. Izuku thought he couldn't open doors with round doorknobs anymore? Kacchan made him practice with his teeth and paws until he could —even if it almost always left toothmarks in the knob afterward—. Izuku wanted to see if he could eat a raw fish, bones and all, like in the movies? Kacchan went down to the fish-market, brought back a fresh salmon, and pitched it at Izuku's face with a loud "Think fast!" And cheered for Izuku when instinct had him snapping it up and swallowing it in two bites without difficulty.

Kacchan was still bad-tempered. There was still a lot of yelling and sparking palms when angry or frustrated —which was a lot—. There were still times when Kacchan pushed too far and insisted Izuku try something again even when Izuku genuinely couldn't do it. But no matter how angry he got —how many screaming fights they had, because Izuku's stress was too high and Kacchan's temper too short—, Kacchan came back. And once they figured out there was something Izuku genuinely couldn't and would never be able to do, then Kacchan set about making a new workaround, or even becoming that workaround —writing down Izuku's answers on his homework for him, googling stuff about bats and birds since Izuku would only break the keys, turning on the TV for him so that they could watch movies together—.

He also defended Izuku after Inko reluctantly let Izuku out of the house to play in the park or go back to school. The kids whom Kacchan had once led in bullying were now cowed and driven off at the slightest hint of mean teasing. And after Izuku got hurt defending the other classmates the bullies turned on —being just a bit bigger than a St. Bernard and equipped with teeth, claws, and budding fireballs made him no joke in a fight, but he was still too inexperienced and prone to hesitating— Kacchan began defending the other kids too.

They went everywhere together, exploring and testing and struggling, but everything they did, it was always as a pair. Kacchan helped Izuku up whenever he fell down and, somewhere along the way, began to let Izuku do the same —a spread wing over blond hair during a surprise rain shower, a flat head catching Kacchan by the midriff after a slip in return for calloused fingers writing down all the hero theories Izuku couldn't and a proud smile when Izuku finally learned to fly—.

Izuku had always admired Kacchan, but now Kacchan became Izuku's hero, even more than All Might was.

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Changing himself was hard. It was painful and made him angry. He hadn't wanted to go see Deku after he got back from the hospital at last —hadn't wanted to see what his own weakness had wrought, his failure—. He'd procrastinated on it for two weeks before finally sucking it up —because he'd promised Never Again and he'd meant it— and hauling himself over to Deku's apartment with all of Deku's missed homework and the biggest dog dishes he'd been able to buy —because Toothless didn't have fingers to hold utensils with so Deku probably didn't either—.

And then he'd made himself go the next day, and the next, and the next, until eventually it became a habit and he stopped fighting with himself over getting up and preparing to deal with a cranky, broken-hearted dragon.

That didn't mean it wasn't hard. Oh no, it was hard. Almost impossibly so. Katsuki had a temper and was very used to pushing Deku around —and wasn't that a shameful thought even years later—. He was used to not listening to Deku even when the other boy had been able to speak. Plus, Deku had stress and anger he couldn't release because his go-to stress relief method —crying— wasn't an option anymore —because apparently Night Furies could scream and sob all they wanted, but no tears would ever fall—. Those first few weeks were mostly spent with Katsuki accidentally pushing Deku too far and Deku taking out his stress by screaming wordless hatred at him until Katsuki stormed out of the apartment only to make himself come back the next day.

At first, the only thing keeping him coming back was guilt and sheer stubbornness that managed to override his own aching heart and the tears that soaked silently into his pillow every night.

It might have reached a bad breaking point if Katsuki hadn't been flipping through the TV channels for Deku on one of their rare non-combative days and stumbled across a documentary of a man who worked with abused animals. They'd watched for a couple minutes before Deku had nudged him to change the channel in favor of something with heroes on it, but Katsuki remembered the part of the interview he'd heard.

"After everything they've been through, you can't expect them to be normal at first. They aren't going to trust you, they aren't going to let you pet them or move fast around them. They're going to be scared and it's going to take a long time for them to get over that. One of the most important things to remember is that to build trust, the communication has to go both ways. Yeah, they've gotta listen to you, but you've got to listen to them too. Watch their body language, listen to what noises they're making. They'll tell you when you're pushing too far, or going too fast. You just have to pay attention. You gotta go slow, speak soft, stay firm, be patient, and listen."

Katsuki decided to try it.

He forced himself to shut up more often, made himself watch every inch of Deku's new body, trying to memorize every twitch and what it might mean. He tried —and failed a lot at first— to not shout when Deku wanted something and Katsuki didn't know what it was. He still pushed Deku around, but now he started trying to push Deku into doing more than just lying around whimpering softly. He provoked Deku into games, or made Deku try something stupidly simple he wasn't able to do anymore —while Inko was out grocery shopping, because she hovered too much—. Deku began to pick himself up, he began to learn how to live again.

And slowly, painfully slowly, Katsuki learned too.

He learned to pay attention to the cant of black wings, the flicker of ear flaps and tail, the pitch of Deku's warbles and grunts. It was a language with no school to teach him other than a broken-hearted boy who'd lost his world. It took patience, more than Katsuki had ever thought he'd possessed, but he had never given up on learning a new skill before and he wouldn't give up on this. And along the way, Katsuki found himself learning other things too.

When he watched Deku finally reclaim a skill —opening doors, navigating a room without knocking everything over, playing video games without puncturing the controller— he learned to be proud of someone else's accomplishments. When he saw Deku pick himself up, sad but determined, after realizing that there were some things he would never reclaim, he learned to be sad for someone else's pain. When Deku began going to school again, Katsuki saw the looks on the bullies faces —a look that his face would have shared not that long ago— and learned what it meant to drive a threat away rather than be the threat, even if it meant getting in trouble with his parents. When he saw Deku —timid, shy, introverted, courageous Deku— hurl himself into the fray to defend someone who had never treated Deku very well just because they were now the ones being bullied —and Deku knew so intimately well how that felt—, he learned that he couldn't be picky about who he saved. It was all or nothing.

Patience, empathy, honor, compassion.

Things he'd never really thought about before. Didn't think of even now in those terms, but learned nonetheless. The things he might never have learned —or at least, not for a very long time— if he hadn't first tried them on Deku to make up for what had happened.

At first he only did them for Deku, or to others when Deku was there —because Deku inevitably did it first and Katsuki refused to let Deku get into trouble without him—. Then one day he snatched an inattentive little kid out of the street before a car could hit her while on his way to Deku's apartment and realized that he'd just pulled a Deku. On instinct. And the look the little girl gave him, the look the parents and bystanders gave him…

It was different from how other people usually looked at him —wary respect and poorly hidden fear or jealousy—. It was a glow, a light of awe and gratitude in their eyes and smiles, like he was some kind of-.

Like he was some kind of hero. Rather than someone more powerful than them to be appeased and catered to.

It shook him to his core. The realization that he, the boy who had once declared he would be Number One, had never actually been looked at that way. Had never done anything to earn that light —that trust, like his own voice, his own face in the mirror as he cheered that no matter what happened, All Might would always win in the end before the Incident changed his cheers to silence and his smile to a blank mask— in another's gaze.

He found himself sitting down very hard on the pavement hours later while on his way home after helping Deku fly through a makeshift obstacle course around the park when he realized that he was wrong. He had been looked at that way before. He'd been stared at with those admiring, trusting eyes for years.

Those were Deku's eyes. Even before the Incident, even before Katsuki forced himself to stop yelling long enough to learn what Deku wanted —what he needed—. Even when Katsuki had kept pushing him around and hitting him and mocking him —because he'd thought Deku was doing the same, he'd thought Deku looked down on him, thought he was just a loud idiot and that Katsuki had to prove him wrong—, that had been what was really shining in those big green eyes.

Admiration.

Awe.

Trust.

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"You're amazing, Kacchan!" Not his quirk —not just his quirk like everyone else focused on, like everyone else simpered—, but him. Just him.

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Delighted laughter after he showed off some minor trick, "Wow, Kacchan! That was so cool!"

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Footsteps scampering behind him, always trying to catch up even though Katsuki never slowed down, "Wait up, Kacchan!"

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A flash of a bright sunshine smile beside him, no longer cowering at the dark of the park's forest because Katsuki was by his side, "When you become a pro hero, can I be your sidekick, Kacchan?"

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A tiny black form —warped and wrong-wrong-wrong— curled on the pavement, too hot and scaly to the touch while blood-blood-blood seeped into his pants and coated his desperately shaking hands while a voice in the back of his head screamed, "My fault would have been me-should-have-been-me-MY-FAULT-"

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Katsuki barely made it to the nearest trashcan before he was violently sick.

He'd been blind. So f*ing blind.

And he decided, after stumbling home in a daze with a sour taste in the back of his throat for more than one reason, that he was going to make up for it even if it killed him. He didn't think he could be a hero —wasn't really sure those existed, not anymore—. Didn't think he wanted to be one after what had happened with All Might —All Might who always won, All Might who felt no fear, All Might who had been just a few seconds too late the one time it mattered most—. But … he had to try. He might never be a real hero —if those existed, if it wasn't all just lies people built to feel safe— but he was going to do his best to be the person —hero?— that Deku somehow thought he was.

And since he didn't know how to be that person yet, he'd just have to do what he'd already learned for now. He would just … expand it to other people too.

So he did.

He was still terrible at it —temper too short, voice too loud, words too blunt—, but his actions changed, and that was what counted in the end. He started off with little things, like not waiting for Deku to jump into the fray to help the other kids at school when they were being pushed around. Or helping a couple of littler kids get their ball safely out of a tree. Running errands or doing chores for the old couple down the street who were getting too arthritic to do it themselves. Volunteering at the local animal shelter —one of the few self imposed tasks he enjoyed and only one he was wildly successful at, the other workers thought he had some kind of animal communication quirk for a very long time because of his skill at listening to body language—.

Every step of the way, when he kept fumbling and failing and losing his temper —with only his bullheaded determination making him pick himself up and try again—, he would ask himself two questions over and over. Two questions that always made him dust himself off and try again. But instead of his old childhood question, "What would All Might do?" —which was win no matter what, which was be too late—, he asked himself, "What would Deku do? What would Deku want me to do?" —which was be patient, stand firm, listen, be kind—.

And so he did.

And so he changed.

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Review Response: Dear Dragon Lord Draco, hello! Not ... not really? I mean, to be a crossover it at least has to have the characters exist right? HTTYD is a franchise in this story that Deku and Kacchan were fans of as kids. But I guess if you want to look at it that way (shrugs). Glad you liked it, I hope you enjoyed the latest chapter! OfA is short for One for All. Mostly because it gets a bit bothersome to write out the full title all the time in author's notes and stuff.

Dear Frolicks for Fun, greetings! Well thank you for giving it a try! I'm glad you liked it and I hope you enjoyed the update!

Dear StrangeLady1331, hi there! Happy to hear it! I hope this chapter answered at least a few of your questions, but to answer one of them, Deku's going to grow as big as Toothless, though for now he's only little-ish. The size of a large dog right now. I'm going to have so much fun with Kacchan's character arc. SO MUCH fun (snickers).

Dear LittleWolf1991, hello! Well thank you! Yeah, he'll work through it eventually. And hey, he has a quirk now!

Dear wolfsrainrules, hi! (laughs) Well good! Because this is all your fault™. And yes, he's gonna be the Best Boy™. All of them are.

Dear RedWolf Lover, hey there! At least I'm not boring, right? XD

Dear Verrath, hello! Well thank you! I hope you enjoyed the update!