2. Murphy's Law
I'm tired,
I've been waiting for you
I'm so tired and
I need to lay down
But you're
Travelling high speeds
And you're fast
Too fast to chase anymore
You're too fast to chase anymore - 'Highspeeds' By Elliot Moss
Katsuki Bakugou was Murphy's Law.
Turns out, when someone literally rips your heart out, it's not quite the same as the glamourized version that litters novels and fills up movie theatres. In reality, you are numb, in shock, unable to think for an action that suspends into a kind of nothingness. In the romantic context, it is explained as an afterthought. A trauma response for a moment that resonates so deeply that your ego cannot withstand the shift around itself. On the contrary, the body convulses, jolts and flails, and as it does the mind jutters and continuously spreads error messages around the body, disconnecting against broken tissue and ravaged nerves.
The ego waited for a mere moment, the mind still reeling as it was met with gold and silver wisps of a vestige, those familiar pinhead sized blue eyes and lingering sentiment holding onto his psyche like a discarded rag carried amongst the waves, dragged out gradually with the roll of the spray. He had been claimed by it, initially in awe of its beauty and its hold, until he watched it drift into nothingness. And then his soul just….let go. Succumbed the might of it all.
Had his ego been intact, his thoughts would have lingered on several ideas, such as the fact that Shigaraki had foolishly thought him closest to Izuku Midoriya, when in reality he felt the furthest away, and had for a long time. He would have pondered on the thought that if he were to leave anyone as a willing gift of a victim for Midoriya, it should have been Uraraka Ochaco. She was his crush after all? Or Half-n-half. Iida, maybe…but not him.
What even was he these days? Just a bully, like Shigaraki? A pillarstone of Deku's growth? A past marker of a time that he could look back on and see how much he'd grown.
Luckily the ego had been cut some time ago, freeing the soul from its choking confines.
And the soul, in contrast, just watches, mostly everything other than itself. So the idea of being dead isn't even an idea…it is…a moment of calm. A shrug. A non-event. An acceptance of the fact that you are watching, vaguely, over your shoulder as people pool in to save a 'you' that doesn't even exist anymore.
You could say it was the calmest that Katsuki had ever been. Detached, unimpulsive, serene, unbothered.
His focus, through eyes that weren't even there anymore, was on the sight in front of him, watching as the two people laying over his body, panic ridden yet focused as two suddenly transformed into only one. Something buzzed beneath veins that should no longer hold form, catching his attention with a sharpness before becoming cold and liquid and then warm until the energy could be felt, like a fuzzy static in the air.
He turned, feeling drawn once again to the noise and spectacle behind him.
Izuku appeared, with familiar flashes of emerald and teal, suspended in shock, staring at a limp and vaguely recognisable body that Katuski couldn't even really comprehend anymore. Only the distant knowledge of the past is able to knit the thread of understanding now.
In a lash of shouting, goading and support of the young man, Katsuki watched as Izuku paled into a fury, lashing away from his previous focus and darting suddenly amongst the fray. Wild eyed and rampant, raging like the Kraken dancing in the tumultuous sea, his shots keen and controlled against the enemy that Katsuki had failed to quash.
He stared for a matter of moments, but enough to equate one whole forever, and watched emerald lightning light up the daytime sky with the same vigour as if it danced between the shore and sand…
With a spark, as if to catch Katsuki on purpose, he felt a sudden shock within his non corporeal form, pulling his focus to the shell of a body behind him. He blinked, concentrated with a held composure, feeling the strange sensation between where his form floated and where his supposed body lay, before turning back to witness something akin to history.
Just as the action was about to reach a peak, he felt a cumbersome jolt, and then a hard pull, far away from the activity, and then a compound motion, like being folded awkwardly back into a box he no longer fit in.
Dry eyes opened slowly, fluttering a blink against the backdrop of a rather grey day.
Katsuki Bakugou opened a mouth that was his again, a tacky dryness clinging to his throat and lips as they fell into a grimace. He winced at the dust in his eyes and nose.
His body fuzzed into his awareness slowly, like sifting through heavy fog, all limbs and requisite body parts accounted for as toes twitched and fingers flexed. The smell of sterilisation and gauze filled his nostrils with a prominence, but what distracted him was the deep warmth that claimed his right hand with a possessiveness that he'd never experienced. He waited a beat for the nitro-glyercin sweat to fill his veins and pour over his skin. But nothing materialised, just warmth and dryness in place of such empty expectations.
"...Kaachan…?" He heard the familiar voice ring out its light chime, the breath shaky and yet all at once braver than he himself could manage in the moment.
All at once Katsuki remembered.
He had died.
And it had been…so beautiful.
Watch all the torches go out
One at a time
The world gets darker every night
Cause I see it all
Without the lights
- 'Without the Lights' By Elliot Moss
(This song reminds me of the Toga Himiko scene)