ii.

At the Point of Ignition

"In our proud momentum, thrust ahead from the start; our fragile frame falls apart."

She woke to dust in her mouth and something sharp digging into her back. A groan tore from her, miserable and hurting only to cut off with a hacking cough. She was heavy, her quirk having released with the fleeing of her conscious state of mind.

She blinked, panic fluttering in her chest when she realized that nope- it didn't matter how hard she squeezed her eyes shut or widened them, it was still dark.

The struggle came next, heart beating a tempo likely to burst from her chest when she realized something heavy was on top of her and solid walls fell to her immediate right and left.

Her left arm was pinned down.

She couldn't feel it.

Her right pushed at the thing that weighed her down, her breath coming in gasps as the world seemed to get smaller and smaller around her.

Ochako had never been claustrophobic before, but here; trapped in the dark where she couldn't see, and couldn't breath, and couldn't move her animal brain seemed to decide that it was a really great time to adopt a fear of small spaces.

"Fuckin' quit it." A familiar voice exhaled raggedly into her ear and even without the ability to see she suddenly realized the thing immediately on top of her was Bakugo, and not in fact a building.

No, it seemed the order of progression was herself, and then Bakugo, and then a building.

Oddly, the realization that she was not alone in the dark tempered her down to a more manageable level.

"Shit." Bakugo coughed, expelling dust from his lungs and expressing her own sentiment.

"I can't see." She was not proud to say that it sounded more like a whimper than a statement.

"No shit." Bakugo did not seem to appreciate her pointless commentary.

"I can't feel my arm." She blinked at nothing, his skin slick with sweat and sliding across her arms in a scintilla of sensation as he attempted to move.

She felt him pause the in the dark, his hands finding purchase on the uneven ground on either side of her ribs, fingers splayed beneath her. Ochako felt him flex in a motion like a push up but the movement was cut off by what she could only call a grunt of pain. His body came back down on top of her only a moment later, heavy and overheated.

"Can we get some light?" She whispered it, afraid that anything louder would bring the unimaginable amount of concrete bearing down on them. At least, more than it already was.

"Stupid." The word didn't have his usual heat, which struck her as strange especially coming from Bakugo Katsuki. "You want to run out of oxygen even faster? What do you think fire fucking requires to exist dip shit?"

Ochako stiffed, a new worry weighing on her just as surely as all the literal things- she hadn't thought about how much oxygen they might have in this tiny, confined space.

Probably not a lot. Leave it to Bakugo to come to such immediate conclusions about their situation.

"Okay," She tried, "I could levitate what's on top of you, and maybe we could move it enough to get out?" As she spoke her good arm rose past his shoulder; feeling at the sold, flat layer of building that left barely an inch between his shoulder blades and it's own surface.

"Don't." He grunted again, a sound that had an undertone of discomfort; a pained sound. "We don't know how deep we are, can't risk shifting anything."

He coughed again, great hacking sounds that she was suddenly terrified sounded almost like sobs. Something wet dripped from his mouth and down the side of her neck.

Oh, Gods. Please just be spit.

"Bakugo?" Her voice came like a lost spirit in a graveyard. There was a long pause as he tried to catch his breath in a measured way.

The silence was drawn enough for her to realize he was counting them.

Three in, hold two, four out.

"Bakugo?" She tried again, a little louder this time as her awareness zeroed in on the sensation of his breath ghosting across her neck. The little puffs were getting shallow.

Panic welled in her, because they'd managed to actually live through a building falling on them- he couldn't leave her now- They weren't good friends, hell she wasn't even sure if they were friends at all but she'd known him for almost two years now and he was familiar, Bakugo was warm and here and alive. He couldn't die, he just couldn't!

"Katsuki!" She barked it, loud and sharp and his whole body jerked atop her as if he'd just remembered she was there at all.

"Shut it Round Face!" He snarled right back, leaving a ringing in her ear that she was sure matched the ringing in his.

"Tell me what's wrong." It was not a question, her hand already smoothing across the skin of his exposed arm, seeking the injury she was sure she'd find. He tried to shrug off her touch but there wasn't near enough room to make the motion successful.

Her fingers traced his collar, noting the way the tendon strained against the fabric of his tank top.

It was wet.

Ochako became aware of a new drip, landing on her chest and rolling down the side of her breast to pool under her back. It fell from his shoulder in a steady trickle.

The flat of her palm curved over him, fingers sinking into the moist fabric of his shirt as he heaved for breath above her. Her fingernail hit metal, and everything went full stop.

Ochako swallowed reflexively, Bakugo's weight pressing down on her in one more increment. His arms trembled lightly, she could feel it against her sides. He was losing strength but putting up a front. She imagined it wasn't so much for her sake as it was that pretending like he wasn't injured was just the Bakugo thing to do.

Her hand wrapped around the shape of what she thought might be jutting rebar. She followed its length until is disappeared into Bakugo's back.

"Fuck." She'd never been one to curse, but now seemed like as good a time as any.

Bakugo chuckled weakly, and she realized that if blood was coming out of his mouth then the metal might be piecing his lung. The positioning seemed about right but she certainly wasn't a doctor and it was pitch freaking dark. The information available to her was damned limited.

Ochako was not the kind of thinker that Deku-kun was, let alone the boy atop her. That however, did not mean she couldn't follow a line of thinking and figure out what would give her a desired outcome.

"We have to stop the bleeding." She told him, but in return all she got back was some half-hearted grumbling, his weight settling atop her fully. She though she felt his eye lashes sweep across her neck as his eyes fell shut. Bakugo went lax.

His riot of blond hair that she could not see, was astoundingly not coarse like she had always thought but a soft halo pressed into her neck and face.

That was probably neither here nor there right now though.

Ochako had no room to move to the left or right, but when she experimentally raised a knee, trying desperately to ignore the way it came up between Bakugo's own legs twisted around hers, and lifted up her foot it kept going until she had it stretched all the way up.

There was room down there.

She just needed to get them over there in the first place.

It was in this moment that Ochako realized she had two options. Two, very dangerous options that could both lead to Bakugo's death just as surely as the other. She knew her life was also in the balance, but somehow it just didn't feel that pressing compared to having a metal bar impaling one's body.

She needed to get him out of here- he needed immediate medical attention.

If she did managed to shimmy past him, and move him to where she could treat the puncture; the wound itself might be bad enough that he would bleed to death once the rebar was removed. Or worse yet- if his lung was actually punctured he might drown in his own blood.

The rebar was keeping him from bleeding out- temporarily.

But- if they stayed like they were now, there was no guarantee anyone would get to them in time. The clock was ticking. Asphyxiation, exsanguination, honestly the odds were not in their favor.

Running out of oxygen seemed like a very real eventuality. The air already felt whispy in her lungs, thin and dry and uncomfortably dusty. Ochako trampled the itchy desire to cough, afraid of josling Bakugo's injury atop her, at least, more than she already had.

Then of course there was the little problem of her left arm, her head turned in the dark, hair sticking to her cheek with either blood or sweat, she wasn't sure. Honestly she wasn't even sure if it was her hair or Bakugo's.

A slight testing movement of her shoulder had pins and needles flaring own the length of her arm, and she had to grit her teeth past the pain.

So, first things first then. Make a decision, make a choice.

Then live with that choice.

TBC