Author's Note: Here's another short chapter!
Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own BnHA. (Sadly.)
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Two – cold case
She goes to the Bakugous, first. Little Katsuki opens the door, wearing his usual grumpy scowl, hands stuffed in his pockets.
"Why the hell would I know where that useless Deku is?" he complains. "It's not like we're friends anymore."
Inko stares down at him. She's known that Izukkun and Katsuki are going through a tough period – Izuku hasn't asked him over in months – but to hear that they aren't friends? Not anymore?
And… 'useless Deku'?
That's new.
"You didn't walk home together?" Inko asks, wringing her hands anxiously.
"Hell no," Katsuki says, and slams the door.
Mitsuki flings it open again moments later. "Apologise, brat," she orders.
Katsuki rolls his eyes. "Sorry, Auntie."
"No, no," Inko says reflexively, "it's alright. But do try not to swear, okay, Katsuki-kun?"
Katsuki does not answer. He looks grumpier than before.
"You coming in?" Mitsuki offers.
"Ah, no," Inko says. "It's just that Izuku's supposed to be back at five, it's five-thirty now, I got a little worried –"
Mitsuki looks concerned. "Your kid doesn't usually stay out late like that, does he?"
"I could be overreacting." Inko tries to smile at her. "You know I worry too much. And there was that one time with the abandoned cats, Izukkun was back really late –"
Mitsuki pats her arm. "I'm sure he's fine."
Except he's not. Inko goes back home and waits in the living room, nibbling uselessly on a bar of chocolate, for an hour more before she gives in. She goes to the park, searches it high and low.
Izuku isn't there.
She hurries around the streets and back alleys, calling out for her son until her voice is hoarse and three separate people have asked if something's wrong. She tells them it's fine, just, kids, you know? Always wandering off to who-knows-where.
Maybe, she thinks, Izuku has found another box of starving kittens, or has gone to the bookstore and fallen asleep. Maybe there's really nothing to stress about.
She doesn't know who she's trying to convince.
You said you'd walk home with Katsuki, she thinks worriedly. Oh, Izukkun. Why did you lie?
Inko returns to the park and asks around. Takara-san who sits at the bench all day long, feeding the hungry sparrows, says that he saw Izuku leaving with a man in a grey hoodie. A friend, he assumed.
That's when she calls the police.
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There are police cars in front of the Midoriya house. He walks past them on his way home – barely spares a glance for them. No doubt Deku's fucked up big time, somehow, but it's none of his business.
They tell him at dinnertime. His dad says that Deku's missing, went and got himself kidnapped or some shit. Mitsuki tries to give him a hug.
Katsuki blows up her favourite teacup. Old hag should know better.
"Nobody'd want to take Deku," he roars over Mitsuki's shouts. "Deku's nothing! He'll be back! Betcha he just got lost like the Deku he is."
(But even stupid Deku wouldn't get lost for an entire day, he knows.)
At school, they look at him with dumb expressions, like they think he's upset. Like they think he's weak.
He and Deku aren't even close! Why the hell should he care if Deku's gone?
He explodes a classmate's notebook after the first week and they stop with the freaky stares. The teachers, however – they're the worst. They bring flowers and everything, and they even schedule an assembly where they talk and look sad and everyone's supposed to stay silent for a full minute. 'In respect', they say, like they somehow know that Deku's dead. Bunch of bastards. Shitty adults never really cared about Deku anyway, just his smarts.
He remembers them ignoring Deku, dismissing him, because Deku's Quirkless and useless and always has been. And then there was the exam, the long one, where Deku got top scores, and suddenly Deku started being praised and fawned over and everything.
Two-faced, the lot of them.
Now, whenever he goes out, Deku's everywhere. They've stuck missing posters on every flat surface, put his face on TV – a bunch of policemen promise they'll find him, but Katsuki knows they won't. Deku'll find his way back before then, because Deku's a tough bastard. Always has been.
He stuffs the red ball, the one they played with on the day Deku vanished, in the back of his closet. Fatty and Freaky-Fingers ask about it, and he snarls back with something unimportant. Eventually he tells them he blew it up. They believe him.
He gets taken to the police station after a while, when they find out he was there That Day. They ask him questions like did he see anyone suspicious, were he and Deku friends…
(He tells them a resolute no, for the latter.)
They look at him pityingly, too. Assuming bastards.
Then they tell him that the kidnapper, a tall man in a ratty hoodie, took Deku right after Katsuki and his friends left him lying in the dirt.
Sometimes, he wonders – what if he had stayed? For just a minute or two more, or maybe several. Maybe that would've been enough. Maybe Deku would still be annoying Katsuki all the time, and Auntie wouldn't be looking more and more pale each day. Fatty and Freaky-Fingers would stop looking so guilty and there would be no more dumb flowers on Deku's school desk, because Deku would still be there and he'd need the space for his dumb notebooks.
Sometimes his parents say stupid things like you know, Katsuki, you can't keep believing that Izuku's coming back, or, the police are thinking of declaring it a cold case…
(Never when Auntie Inko's in the house, of course.)
He always spits out something loud and angry. Something like, "Deku's too useless to be dead!", which doesn't even make sense, but whatever. It always shuts them up pretty quickly, and they look away, and Katsuki stomps up to his room.
Maybe he digs out the shitty red ball sometimes and thinks about hurling it into a river. But he never does. He throws the ball back into the closet, blows something up, and goes to bed early.
You didn't walk home together? It rings in his ears. He remembers Auntie looking so surprised, when he told her no.
"Shitty Deku," he growls to himself.
His classmates try not to look at him weirdly.
His head feels too quiet nowadays. It's like, without Deku, his thoughts are running in circles and escaping out of his ears. He talks louder to fill up the silence, makes bigger and better explosions and smirks as people look at him in amazement. This one'll be great one day, they whisper.
But no matter what he shouts, no matter what he blows up, nobody actually listens to him. Not the hag, not his old man, not Fatty or Freaky-Fingers, not even kind Auntie Inko. Deku was the only one who listened, really. But of course, he's gone now.
Without Deku, Katsuki is not real, not to anyone - he's only That Loud Brat, or Future Hero Bakugou, or The Boy Who Made Hana Cry, Did You Hear? And of course, he's The One with the Explosion Quirk.
It all comes back to his Quirk. Regrets are not a new thing for him, even at the age of seven, but what he regrets most is, perhaps, that his amazing, awesome Quirk was no use That Day because Katsuki wasn't there. Heroes save people, but he wasn't there to save Deku. He should have been, because useless Deku couldn't save himself and got fucking kidnapped.
What use is an amazing Quirk if you aren't there when it's needed?
(Heroes are heroes because they're there for people.
Katsuki is not a hero.)
Mostly he just wants to forget. Deku doesn't matter now because Deku's not here. But his parents are persistent. They keep bringing Deku up when Katsuki just doesn't want to think about him.
Useless extras.
They keep asking Katsuki, too gently, if he really believes that Deku will come back.
He snaps, yeah, duh, every time.
It takes a year – of quietness in the classroom when they do their worksheets (because there's no more Deku to annoy everyone with his endless muttering), of Auntie putting on weight and drowning herself in her job (because Deku's still gone), of posters gradually being taken down from walls and storefronts (because everyone's giving up hope) – for his answer to change to silence.
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Midoriya Izuku disappears with a mysterious man on a sunny June day. There are no clues and no leads. The police tear their hair out trying to find anything, anything, that might bring him back to his mother, but all they dig up are dead ends.
It's as if he literally vanished into thin air. But who knows, with the Quirks popping up these days?
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A/N: I should really go to sleep now... Also this will probably be the last we see of Bakugou for a while haha