"Ugh," Katsuki rubbed his forehead then tried to shake away the ache--bad idea. "Argh," he hissed at the blinding flash of pain that sent nausea twisting through his gut. "What the hell happened?"

"You had a fight with a tree and lost," the hag said dryly, then reached forward to give him an incredibly awkward hug, mostly aborted due to his place in a... hospital bed? There we no windows on the door or the wall... a secure room at a hero hospital. How the hell did he end up here? Had he been in a training accident--no. They'd been on a real mission...

"What...? We were at Gunga Mountain, right..." And Tokoyami had gone off script, saying something about "saving Hawks" before taking off for the middle of nowhere in the forest.

Katsuki chased him... what after that? There was a fight with... Hawks was there, yeah, and Dabi, and Tokoyami and Dark Shadow and even Izuku for some reason... Why had Izuku been there?

He... Katsuki lost? He did, didn't he, otherwise he wouldn't be here--wait. Izuku, and yeah, Tokoyami, too, "what happened to them?" Katsuki demanded, nearly ripping the hospital sheets away as he struggled to get to his feet.

"Sit down!" his mother roared. It wasn't the usual tone she used when they fought, no, he hadn't heard her talk like this since... he couldn't even remember. Maybe the time he broke his arm when he was six. "You had a skull fracture. You are not allowed out of that bed for a week minimum. And you are not going to give the doctors the slightest bit of grief, am I perfectly clear?"

"Skull fracture...?" What the hell happened?

"I told you, you lost a fight with a tree."

"Izuku?" he repeated, no longer trying to stand--and that was probably a good thing given the incessant pound of a jackhammer against his skull.

The hag exhaled slowly. "You just focus on you for now."

"You can't say something like that hag! That's like what you'd say if he were dead." That look on her face--"No. No, no, no, no, no--"

A knock on the door. "Come in!" his mother yelled.

Aizawa stepped in slowly. "I'm glad to see you're awake," he began. God, the man looked terrible, like he'd been hit by a car or two.

"Izuku--" he began desperately, undeterred because the hag just couldn't say things like that and expect him to calm down again!

"Disappeared," Aizawa said dully.

"W-what? How?"

"HPSC bullshit," the teacher deflated as he sank into one of the bedside chairs.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we don't know, Bakugou," Aizawa snapped, nearly snarling.

That was... it was like his mom's weird tone but worse. "Mr. Aizawa... w-what happened?"

Aizawa sighed, leaned forward, and rubbed his face in his hands slowly. "Look. I know... you didn't intend for any of this to happen."

His head wasn't so bad when he wasn't moving, but suddenly the nausea was nearly intolerable. The expression on the hag's face was making it all worse. Never mind. He didn't want to know. If he didn't know, that meant it wasn't real, right? As long as he didn't know about it, it might as well have never happened. "Nobody knows where Midoriya Izuku is, or at least nobody willing to talk about it knows. It's been a week now which... well, it's not a good sign." He paused again, taking a deep breath. "With the exceptions of you and hopefully Midoriya, everybody who fought in that clearing on Gunga Mountain died on the scene."

Wait. "What? But..."

"It's not clear exactly what happened. We can't exactly ask Midoriya for details. You may know more than us."

"But... Tokoyami..." he hadn't meant for--no, god no. That wasn't--so he was mad at Tokoyami for siding with a murderous traitor and the idiot needed to get his head out of his ass and start living in the real world but--but--

"Tokoyami and Dark Shadow were killed by Dabi, we think, and Hawks was mortally injured trying to protect his former student, for what it's worth. Midoriya shot Dabi afterwards, and finished off Hawks, too, for some reason. Not sure exactly what happened there... As for Midoriya, the HPSC claimed he had a breakdown afterwards and was shipped to a mental hospital. We know that's not true, but we don't know what they actually did with him. We will find out," Aizawa promised, "but the country has been rapidly dissolving into a full civil war over the last few days, and we've had... not as much time as we want to for things like this."

"No," Katsuki repeated dumbly. A civil war? Tokoyami dead? Izuku missing? That was like a nightmare and nightmares weren't real so how could this be real? "That can't be... that doesn't make any sense."

"Believe me I know."

"No..." Couldn't he think of something else to say?

"I know you didn't mean for this to happen," Aizawa sighed. "I don't know what you were thinking when you chased Tokoyami. I don't care. The story that's been told is you believed he'd gone after Hawks and Dabi," Katsuki nodded dumbly, "and you were afraid that Hawks and Dabi would kill him, and you had to do something because there was nobody else available. That's all you say when you're asked, understand?" Katsuki didn't understand. He didn't understand anything. "Do you understand me, Bakugou?" The blonde nodded numbly, jerked into motion by his teacher's steely tone.

"I... They're dead?" He couldn't believe that. It just... he was...

"Yes. It's not your fault," Aizawa began carefully, "not really."

Not really? What was that supposed to mean? But... "You..." He didn't know what he wanted to say.

"Look. Most people would sugarcoat this for you, but we don't have that luxury right now. We're in the middle of a war. There's no room for lying to try to spare feelings or... We don't know what would have happened if you hadn't showed up to fight when you did. We've no idea. But you were there and, as the only available survivor... Look, legally you're in the clear because we've spun it so you had an immediate, life-threatening situation that you had to respond to with your best judgement and it wasn't as if you made an objectively bad call.

"You're going to get a slap on the wrist, probably, for disobeying orders in a combat situation, nothing more, but that doesn't matter. People are going to blame you for this." Of course they were. Katsuki would blame Katsuki for this. "Most of that blame isn't going to be deserved," it wasn't? "But some of it probably will be." No sugar on this coat at all, huh? God that hurt. He was thinking it but to hear somebody else say it cut like a white-hot razor. "I can't even begin to try to help you deal with that, much as I'd like to, because I need to be five other places at once right now. Ojiro and Shouji have both been asking about you. They'll be in to see you as soon as they can... Talk to them, please. Don't push people away."

"I'm sorry," Katsuki blurted as it finally began sink in that this was real, that this was the outcome, that nothing could change it. The permanence of past events was so shocking sometimes. The nausea and the dread and the... helpless regret settled like a weight in his chest and stomach. It was over. It was done. He'd made his decisions, his bad decisions, his mistakes, his horrible mistakes and now there was nothing he could do to change them.

It felt like that week when he believed Izuku had killed himself at Katsuki's goading except a hundred times worse because it all happened so fast, the horror dawning in the course of minutes rather than the course of days. He knew this mental pain well, the kind so intense and overwhelming that it moved effortlessly from the realm of intangible thoughts to the realm of the physical feelings. He wasn't sure if his headache was actually getting worse or if he just thought it should be getting worse.

"I'm sorry," Katsuki said again as Aizawa sighed.

"I know," his teacher replied. "Me, too. But I really can't stay."

Aizawa left after a few words with his mother. He didn't hear any of them.

It hadn't even occurred to him that this could happen. It just... hadn't occurred to him that he could--well, it had occurred to him that he could lose when he went chasing after Tokoyami and Dark Shadow. The idea that he could die in a fight with someone like Hawks or Dabi was not foreign to him but this? He'd... he got Tokoyami and Dark Shadow killed and, sure, he'd been mad at them but not like, not like that . Not like... Even Hawks and Dabi. He'd wanted to beat the crap out of Hawks but not kill him, not really much as he might have said he wanted to kill him he didn't--he wasn't like that! He wanted the both of those bastards bruised and bandaged and chained to beds in a prison hospital but he... he wouldn't have really killed them, would he? He wouldn't have struck a coup de grace if offered the opportunity, would he? Had he been that twisted, that angry?

And Izuku, sweet little Izuku, who had turned so dark and vengeful in the last year as the curse Katsuki's carelessness had placed upon his green-haired friend wreaked havoc on Izuku's life, had been forced to kill two people and witness the deaths of two others because Katsuki had been so careless again, so useless again, so--how could he? How could he have done this? This was his second chance for god's sake! He'd already ruined Izuku's life once with this kind of bullshit!

He covered his eyes with his hands as if that could block out the horror of the past. Hear no evil. See no evil...

"Katsuki?" the hag asked, quiet now.

"No," he said pathetically, almost pleading.

She talked to him. He ignored her. How could anyone expect him to focus on words right now?

Tokoyami strumming a guitar, Dark Shadow coiled triumphantly about his shoulders, rose unbidden in his mind and stayed firmly in place, a vague watermark superimposed over every other thought. "What have I done? I did it again, just like with Izuku before I--why didn't I fucking think? I don't--I don't--" There were no do-overs in life, except in the sense that this had been his second chance. When he'd been a middle school bully he'd done the stupid, impulsive things that had sent Izuku's life careening of course and nearly careening into an early grave and now he'd done all the same kinds of things again and Izuku had been sent who knows where again and this time people really were dead! A second chance and he did even worse this time.

"I don't know what to do," he whimpered.

"It will get better," his mother said quietly, hollowly, stroking her fingers through his hair tentatively.

Usually he'd explode even a family member for petting him like this. As it was, any distraction from what was going on in his mind was welcome. "It will get better?"

"It will. With time."

Something like half the class blamed him for Tokoyami's death. Aizawa was very clear that, regardless of how people might feel, bringing that up was completely off limits. That didn't stop the looks, though, nor should it, because the glares he got from his classmates were deserved. This was his fault. He knew more about what had happened in that clearing than Aizawa. Katsuki recalled well enough now what he'd seen when he arrived... He'd interrupted a cease-fire when he charged in explosions-blazing. If he'd just stayed put everything would have been fine. Hawks would have gotten away, sure, and Hawks was a bastard but so what? What was Hawks escaping in comparison to Tokoyami getting killed?

It was all his fault.

Asui Tsuyu very obviously and very rightly held Katsuki responsible for everything. She was furious with him, although she never said so outright, following Aizawa's order to the letter. Kaminari was angry with him, too, same with Icy Hot although the latter was much more subtle and much more preoccupied with his own problems and regrets. It was hard to say what Yaoyorozu thought. She seemed to resent and pity him in equal measure. Nobody else was nearly so hostile.

Katsuki rejoined his classmates on battlefields within three weeks.

He did exactly what Yaoyorozu said exactly when Yaoyorozu said it. She was his squad leader and he trusted her. She never questioned his obedience to the letter of her law, not after their first day on the field together when she constantly gave him appraising looks, measuring him up.

"You learned something, huh?" she asked him as they trudged back to UA that evening.

He gave her a halfhearted glare. There was no need to ask for clarification. They both knew exactly what they were talking about. "Yeah. I learned my own decisions are worth shit."

She considered this. "I appreciate you being careful and trusting my judgment, but this is not a long-term solution. I'm sure you know that. You're going to have to learn to make your own decisions, good ones, rather than just depending on your superior to make them all for you. We know what kind of superiors the HPSC were, don't we?" That was a point, but it used an extreme example.

"It's not a long-term solution," he replied dryly. "It's a very short term solution! And it's the only one I've got."

She sighed. "You're not the only one who screws up sometimes. I made a bad call today. You can't just follow blindly."

"Yeah. You made a bad call. So what? You made up for it. I didn't. If I see you doing something stupid, I'll let you know, promise, but if you tell me to do something stupid anyway after I tell you it's stupid, I'm gonna do it. That's how I'm running my life now."

She considered this for a time. "I'll take it I guess."

Night after night he stared at the ceiling and thought about sleek black feathers and the shining eyes of a companion quirk the likes of which had never been seen before and would never be seen again. Night after night he stared at the ceiling and thought about Dark Shadow making terrible puns, playing truth or dare and being so pleased when Izuku suggested he should start the round...

Katsuki never knew Tokoyami and his familiar that well, really, and now he'd never have the chance. He had missed it. He had missed out on something extraordinary and now he only had a handful of memories left to him supplemented by the second hand collection of stories told at Tokoyami's funeral. His classmate and the familiar had so many hidden depths he'd had no concept of. They used to have a pet ferret named Nibbles for heaven's sake! And he'd never known.

And he never would.

Katsuki wasn't really surprised when Nedzu finally announced the circumstances of Izuku's death.

Somewhere under the hood, Katsuki had always known he'd killed three classmates that day on Gunga Mountain. Here he stood, the sole survivor, the fool, the rash and culpable one.

Strangely, nobody blamed him for this part. Asui was still furious with him, boiling furious, for Tokoyami and Dark Shadow but in Izuku's death Katsuki was held harmless. This was the HPSC's fault, pure and simple, as far as anyone except Katsuki was concerned.

He spent the small hours of the night after Izuku's death announcement laying on the floor with a cookie in one hand. He couldn't quite bring himself to eat the thing.

Izuku had always been there, like a piece of furniture or a part of the skyline or an integral part of his Katsuki's own personality. Izuku was the stable one, the sane one. And now he was only a concept held in memories. All that time spent with Izuku, that was over. A thing only for the past. What did it matter now? It could never happen again and it was only the future that mattered, right? The past was unchangeable. Couldn't be recaptured. Couldn't be reexperienced. It was irrelevant. So did it matter at all? All those years together? All the time their lives intertwined? All the things he'd learned from Izuku, all the things they'd achieved side by side?

Did none of it matter?

It had to matter. It hurt too much to think that their shared past just... became irrelevant with his best friend's death. Most people who had ever lived were dead, right? And they were still plenty relevant. The world wouldn't be here like it was without them so clearly they mattered. So clearly Izuku mattered, too, to Katsuki at least. To Inko and Shouji and Ojiro and Monoma. To everybody who built their futures on a past shared with their emerald-haired classmate.

He spent dozens of nights like that, thinking about Izuku, wondering what Izuku would say if he were still around. It hurt to think about him, terribly sometimes, but the idea of forcibly turning away from his best and dearest friend, of abandoning the only pieces of Izuku that still existed--memories--hurt much more.

Night after night he stared at the ceiling thinking about green curls and greener eyes, about the sparkling intelligence and endearing mumbling, about childhood games and about... all the things he'd wanted to take back, the things from middle school.

Aizawa had told them about a classmate from high school who had died on a mission while they were still students. Apparently the teacher was still thinking about Loud Cloud after all these years, still missing him... probably staring at the ceiling at night and thinking about the good times he'd like to reclaim, about the bad times he'd like to erase, about what his friend would be up to now.

That was going to be Katsuki, too, in a few decades.

He could practically hear them now. "He died twenty years ago. Aren't you over it yet?" "Come on. You've got to move on. I know you and Midoriya were really good friends but he wouldn't want you to drag your feet like this for decades. It has zero impact on your current life." "You hardly even knew Tokoyami. You weren't friends. You've got to get over it now. It's been years." "Dark Shadow wasn't even a person, really. How can this still affect you so much?"

No. He'd never be over it. And he shouldn't be.

Because it was his fault and if he ever let himself forget that, ever stopped thinking about it, then he'd probably do it again, the same stupid thing, and then somebody else would get killed and he'd have another person to think about at night, staring at the ceiling and raking himself across the coals with every memory visited.