It only got minutely better as they got older.

Izuku's vocabulary expanded and he properly pronounced all the consonants in a word now. That was good. Birdie had a harder time pretending to be a baby so she finally stopped, and she'd discovered the divinity which was soap, hallelujah. So there was that going for him.

But the toddler stalkers didn't disappear. They were replaced, because damn it if people kept reproducing. And then there was some unspoken rule that after you pass five you become open game for the teenagers, which was fucked up. Not that Katsuki could complain much about that, he could handle himself, but he could only ask so much of his stupid kid body when Izuku got thrown into the mix.

Because the little buttmunch just couldn't stop following him or trying to do everything he did. And he'd fail at it! Spectacularly! Because, get this! He didn't have 16 extra years of practice with his own brain and life, and just because Katsuki was a genius and amazing at everything he tried didn't mean he could teach that.

Oh? What, so this was his fault now?

His only salvation was that Izuku wasn't dumb. With each passing year, Katsuki was forced to admit time and time again that Izuku was a smart little fuck, even as a brat. Not world ending genius, but smart enough to keep up most of the time with whatever Katsuki was talking about, and even thinking.

"Why do you just get sad sometimes, Kacchan?"

They were sitting in their little hideout on the cliff face, looking down at the river of tents. The teenagers would be hard pressed to get to them here, due to their fat asses being too big to get through the crevice that served as the gateway. Also, if they tried shouting insults to get them to come out, their voices would bounce down to the tribe and they'd have hell to pay, heh heh.

Wait, "Sad?"

"Yeah. Like just a minute ago. You just…look out and get this look on your face, like you're thinking about something sad. It actually happens a lot."

"Kinda creepy you're watching my face like that."

Izuku gave him his 'no-nonesense' look Katsuku knew he'd learned from Auntie Inko.

That kind of made Katsuki smile. Kid copying his mom so obviously like that, as though he could scold Katsuki.

He thought for a moment, considering the freckled, curly-haired mass which was eight-year-old Izuku.

For a moment, he saw Deku, half man, half lightning, gnashing his teeth at the sky. His tears had been like green light.

He looked down at his own hands, calloused and red from probably too many hours of sword practice. His palms had yet to give even a single spark.

"You would rather practice fighting than play," said Izuku. "You don't even like to play. My mom says playing is a kids work, that it's important for them to be happy. Is that why you're sad? Is someone making you practice all the time?"

Katsuki denied that. His parents were actually worried about him. They'd asked the same question as Izuku multiple times: "Why don't you play?" He'd even heard his father mutter at night, long after they thought he was asleep, that he worried that Katsuki was afraid of something. That he didn't feel secure enough to just be a kid. People had started watching the teenagers more closely after he'd wondered that, meaning his mom was ready to pop some teenage heads if anyone caught them in the act.

Katsuki closed his fists.

This was Izuku. And they were just eight. Eight-year-olds were gullible. The truth wouldn't hurt him.

"I had a life before this one. Then I died when I was sixteen and this glowy-shit-angel guy gave me a chance at another life."

Whatever Izuku had been expecting, it hadn't been that.

"Huh?" he squeaked.

So, Katsuki opened that can of worms and sprayed it all over him. Aka, he told all the nitty gritty details, sans that he'd died saving Izuku's sorry ass. Even he wasn't stupid enough to tell an eight-year-old he'd died because of him.

He thought that he would regret it, frankly. Izuku was nothing if not curiosity on steroids and he'd have questions, and questions he did have. Loads of them. But rather than be burnt out by them, Katsuki found himself relieved, as though he were taking off a too tight shoe he had to wear for weeks. He didn't have to pretend anymore. He could be really him, the awkward eight years of growing up and the sixteen-year-old. He could talk about the world unlike this one and not be thought of as crazy or mumbling, not that he'd been dumb enough to tell his parents, but sometimes things slipped out.

For the first time, he didn't fight it when Izuku slipped into his bed for an unplanned sleepover. He faced him under the covers and whispered with him into the night until Izuku and he inevitably passed out from exhaustion. He dreamed he was back at UA, finally back in his desk or on the gym field, ready to pick up where he had left off. In it, Izuku was strong and bold, ready to watch his back. His old friends were there, Kirishima, Mina, Sero, Kaminari, and even all the rest of the extras, as though he had never left.

He woke up feeling like a baby again with tears covering his face. Izuku hadn't woken up yet, so he carefully climbed over him and went outside to take his usual first breath of open air.

Except it came out a barely muffled sob.

Damn it. It had been eight years. Eight long, busy, humiliating, irritating years.

And yet it still somehow felt like it was just yesterday. And damn…it would never come back.

When Izuku slipped out only a minute later and quietly held his hand, he was surprised. But he didn't shake it off.

Izuku, the smart little fuck he was, knew better than to try asking why Katsuki had woken up a crying mess, and he thanked him for that. It was nice not having to fight the urge to punch him.

A few days passed as usual for them, except they spent more time on their shelf, talking about Katsuki's other life. And at the end of those three days, Izuku came running up to him with a big, goofy grin on his face that told Katsuki he was so pleased with himself he could sing.

"Kacchan," he held out his hands. "Want to play heroes?"

He held a clumsily made mask of scrap black fabric Katsuki knew for a fact came from his mother's old witch robes. It had string off the sides to tie in the back and scraggily zig-zag cuts with poor, sandstone-based orange paint around the edges trying to be explosions.

God damn if he didn't almost cry.

"...Only if I get to be All Might."