ii.

At the Point of Ignition

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep- but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep." -Robert Frost

Real life was not like the movies; where the beautiful and mildly disheveled heroine endures terrible things and comes out of the tunnel with herself and her co-star intact. When in the moment of truth the beautiful actress knows just what to do to save her hero, all the right actions and not a single movement wasted. Perfect and austere; scripted. Culminating in that ever desired happy ending.

Ochako wondered if there would ever be a happy ending for her after this.

In real life, she scrambled to pull Bakugo up the ledge that would allow her to lay him flat in the shallows of disgusting sewage water. The smell had started to permeate her senses; humid, hot, and putrid. She was no stranger to her gag reflex due to her quirk but even this was pushing it. She did what she could to set this sense aside. There wasn't a time or a place for it right now.

Ochako's hands fluttered over her unconscious companion- the action useless and wasteful, but still doing her best to determine what the hell was wrong. If somewhere in the recesses of her overwhelmed mind she knew the answer- her brain was not forthcoming with it. Her head was a crowded place right now; full of odds and ends that had little to do with the price of tea in china, and others screaming for attention but distant and ill thought.

What was the right thing to do?

What would save his life?

What could she do?

In real life, Ochako was injured; body full to bursting with panic and fight or flight inducing hormones. Her head fired conflicting signals and her animal brain forged civil war with her morals. It was a jumbled mess, a cacophony of the highest order. She was an imperfect human, an inexperienced hero, and an even worse medic.

A choking noise registered to her ears, faint through her own damaged ear drums and the bubble of hope popped quickly when she realized it was her own throat and not the boy in front of her.

"Katsuki," She heard the sound of her voice as if from a great distance, her mind so far removed and hanging by a fraying thread that this only registered on the fringes of her consciousness.

Ochako was in no position to be saving someone's life right now.

But she didn't have a choice, because this was Bakugo- and there was no way in hell she was just going to give up and let him die.

He trusted her to get them out god damnit.

Her fingers stretched into the dark, desperate and searching.

His bare chest felt mostly fine- if not a little banged up with his bandages completely missing, his shoulders were straight, arms unbroken. The curve of his nose felt normal, cheekbones solid under her padded fingertips. Ochako catalogued without pause, determined to figure out what little she could in the deep dark as quickly as possible.

Why do people stop breathing? She asked herself again and it felt god awful important to know right now because if she tried to fix this and made it worse she didn't think there would be any coming back from what lay beyond 'worse' of this.

Her fingers sunk into his hair, wet and messy, digits snagging on a multitude of tangles. His forehead was wet with warm fluid, and her fingers slid across a cut beneath matted hair. It wasn't deep but when she laid her palm flat on the laceration she couldn't feel his pulse beneath the skin. That… probably wasn't a good thing.

Could a head wound cause someone to stop breathing? She thought, yes probably, but if that was the case it could mean nothing good.

Brain damage? Fractured skull? Hemorrhaging into the cranium? Spinal injury, swelling of the brain tissue, prolonged oxygen deprivation, pain- severe pain? Could pain cause apnea? Ochako's thoughts rambled on and not a single answer was found. She didn't know. She just didn't know.

It was too much, everything was just too much-

Ochako felt her world edging on hysteria, looking over the sharp cut precipice of sanity, toeing a line she had no business even knowing was there. Her pulse beat a harsh tattoo in her neck, an incessant throbbing in all of her wounds that made her lips feel numb with the nerve-fried oversensory. She knew it must partly be the overload of adrenaline for such an excessive amount of time taking a toll she was already negative to afford.

Everything was wrong. Why did it have to be Katsuki- he was too strong for this- it should have been her-

"Don't do this Katsuki." She pleaded with him, fingers curling around his shoulders to give the boy a shake. His head listed to the side bonelessly, his chest as still as death.

Her emotions flipped like a pancake.

Fury, hot and visceral burned in her throat, clogged her eyes with wetness and sent an uncomfortable flush down her neck.

What is going on-

"Selfish asshole," she accused, "you can't die and leave me here!" Frantic, unsure fingers that shook something terrible smoothed over his gritty skin; feeling for a heart beat and finding none. That explained the lack of a pulse.

Her hand curled into a fist and she slammed it against the contoured planes of his chest. It made a hollow sound.

Something ugly pooled inside of her, putting immense pressure on her throat with demands to be answered that she didn't even have half a mind to pretend to understand. The emotion rolled forwards anyways, burning and familiar in ways she didn't care to admit.

"You can't do this!" Her voice was shrill, a wavelength pitched in genuine, overwhelmed distress; it bounced off the stone walls around them but she was too far gone to notice.

White hot fury imploded in her veins and she wondered dimly if this was what it was like for him, to be furious with the helplessness, the frustration, the not knowing. An apoplectic discourse rampaged against the slowly sinking realization of the truth.

Her sanity crumbled like wet drywall trying to support the weight on an entire house.

Everything culminated into this one singular moment for Ochako, and there was no bright spark of hope that compelled her into magically saving his life, there was no sudden moment of clarity that brought her shattered mind back together to give her all the answers.

There was no Midoriya Izuku to swoop in and save the day. There was no Bakugo Katsuki to push her out of the way at the last second. This wasn't a training course, this wasn't a test or a midterm exam. This was real life.

There was no time left. There was only what was left of Ochako, and what was left of Bakugo in the impenetrable dark and the sluggishly flowing sewage water. Remnants of what had once been people, the course of so many choices that may have one day been made nothing but cinders and ash.

Dead people make no choices.

The anger fizzled out just as quickly as it had come, carbon on her tongue and sorchmarks behind her eyes. She sat, surely just as broken as the boy on the ground before her. Snot and tears running down her face, her sobs too quiet to hear at all.

What would she tell her mother? She thought nonsensically, What would she tell Bakugo's mother?

Her fist thumped against his chest again, arms trembling, her whole body flagging as she wobbled to the side. Water rushed over her legs, tugging at Bakugo's limp, lifeless body but she held on.

She needed to bring back the corpse. His mother would need something to bury.

The thought was was unbidden, and it hit like a freight train and cut like a knife.

Ochako broke.

She didn't know how to fix this.

The gravity girl pushed listlessly against the dead boy, pinkies lifted only by the saving grace of muscle memory. Suddenly overwhelmingly tired, drained beyond compare.

"C'mon." She pleaded to no one. "Please get up." She knew she said the words, she felt her tongue and teeth shape the syllables to the combination of sounds that had been meaningless until this exact moment in her life.

Now they meant more than she was capable of comprehending in her current state.

Her sobs tapered off and all that remained was a voided shell. Lost, nebulous. Forgotten in this foul place with nothing but a ghost for company.

It was here, in this blurry mindscape that she stopped asking questions and started to move.

Ochako crawled over Katsuki's cooling body, pressing down on his chest, and she jerked her weight against where she knew his heart must rest, just beneath useless palms that didn't offer a life-saving quirk. Her arms were rigidly straight, her pains a distant memory.

She put all her glorious, genetically-bestowed natural weight into pressing down on him.

Again.

And again.

Ochako's mind was a blank slate. An empty field of freshly fallen snow. There was no panic in this place, no thought, no feelings. Doll-like and uncomprehending she tilted his chin, lengthening the expanse of his throat and peeled open soft but chapped lips.

She pressed hers to his, and her breath filled his lungs.

But still he wouldn't breathe.

Ochako kept going.

AN:

Fun fact: 'Fugue' is one of my favorite words, by both definitions.

So this chapter is my baby y'all. I worked so hard on this chapter. It has consumed the last week of my life. I know it probably doesn't feel like it but this chapter is a good 3-400 words longer than the usual fair.
I'm really, super excited to hear what everyone though of this chapter, so I hope you guys will drop me a review and tell me what you think! I really hope you guys enjoyed it, thank you so much for reading!