blackugou widow Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/22146253.
Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Category: Gen Fandom: 僕のヒーローアカデミア Boku no Hero Academia My Hero
Academia, Marvel Cinematic Universe Relationship: Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Akaguro Chizome Stain &
Bakugou Katsuki, Bakugou Katsuki & Hatsume Mei, Bakugou Katsuki & Class 1-A, Bakugou Katsuki & Shinsou Hitoshi
Character: Bakugou Katsuki, Midoriya Izuku, Natasha Romanov (Marvel) Additional Tags: Reincarnation, Protective Bakugou Katsuki, BAMF Bakugou Katsuki,
handwavy science--don't point it out thinking i will not die on the hills i have unwittingly created, Unreliable Narrator, Bakugou Katsuki-centric, bkg just makes a bunch of friends and then suffers a lot
Language: English Collections: Identity Crisis, oc self insertSI, Best Fics From Across The Multiverse,
BKG AC, Reincarnation and Transmigration, Quality Avengers Fics, progress, Reincarnation and Self Insertion, Kacchan is different (but still the same), Mixed_Fics, Stories That Are Cool, A Collection of Beloved Inserts, Absolute Favorites, Kaachan fics, Fics so good I want to throw my chair out the window, Into another world, why do i make myself suffer like this, Bnha Bookclub Discord Recs, Bakugou Angst, Fanfiction Deem Worthy Of The Name, SakurAlpha's Fic Rec of Pure how did you create this you amazing bean, caissa's crypt of fic ,️ absolute best picks, BKG Fic-List, Interesting Books, Road to Nowhere Discord Recs, will reread, my collection of si oc, Collection of treasures that I've cried river if it ever got delete :)), Among the best, Hanya Fic yang Aku Sukai, Magnolia's Favourite Fics, Late Night Reads For Restless Spirits, saviors of aerois :, Best of Fanfiction, my skin is clear my crops are flourishing my grades are up and its because of these fics, Mha heart mah soul, Leymonaide fic recs, my Hyperfixation is ~Very Pleased~ (‿), Boku no hero academia, isekai fics made by certified geniuses, boku no hero fanfiction archive, and i held the softest of smiles in my hands, Almost every Bakugou fanfic I have read, brilliant and innovative favs, Amazing fics :D, Best Bakugou-centric with plot focus (thatdeserveattention), Down The Rabbit Hole, Boom Bitch , To be or not to be completed, not completed bkg fics, Long Fics to Binge, II~ My Adoration and Feelings cannot be expressed~II, ~ angry pomeranian approved ~, Potterette's Neverland Treasure , BNHA/MHA, Things to fuel my escapism., Why can't I have both?, My Entire History, Selected Best Reads, fics that i would read again and again, Favs (edoabb), Amazing Crossovers ( ), Creative Chaos Discord Recs, Boom Boom Boy , addictive fics , [The Constellation 'Pineapple' recommends these works of art to you, Its Called Being F*king Competent!, cauldronrings favs ( • ̀ ω • ́ ), Fav Reincarnation Works
Stats: Published: 2020-01-06 Updated: 2021-08-11 Words: 61,531 Chapters: /collections/ReincarnationSoGOOD
blackugou widow by wonhaebunny
Summary
In one world, Natasha Romanoff takes her final breath, and in another, Bakugou Katsuki takes his first.
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Alternatively: Black Widow is reborn as a blond trash goblin with a whole lot of anger issues. Things go a little differently.
Notes
trying my hand at a reincarnation fic... let's see how this goes.
tags will be added and the rating will be modified as the fic progresses. please keep an eye out for that!
See the end of the work for more /users/wonhaebunny/pseuds/wonhaebunny
one
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Katsuki doesn't cry when he's born. The nurses, when they overcome their initial shock, jostle Mitsuki, breathlessly telling her what a resilient boy he is, how strong he's going to be when he's older. Mitsuki watches those red eyes, so similar to her own and yet so different. Katsuki watches back with a keen intelligence that a newborn baby has no business possessing. Nurses bustle in the background, gently patting her on the back, putting away dirty sheets and tools. He's absolutely gorgeous, eyes a piercing crimson and blond hair matted against his tiny crown. He stares at her long after he's taken from her arms and placed in a basin to be cleaned off, and then into a cot. Mitsuki lets herself sink into her hospital bed, and she smiles. Her beautiful boy is perfect, the nurses are delighted, Masaru is weeping at her side, and she's so proud. She's still smiling when she finally slips into an exhausted slumber, and his gaze lingers on her turned back long after the lights are dimmed.
He doesn't cry the next day, or the day after that. Mitsuki is vaguely unsettled at first, but ultimately decides it's a blessing—Katsuki is her first, and she's heard enough horror stories to know that a baby's crying will grow to be a nightmare. So she lets herself be relieved, grateful that her son is so low-maintenance, so sweet, and decides to enjoy the silence while it lasts. And it does last. It lasts and lasts, and lasts some more. They're taking Katsuki home in the car, finally discharged from the hospital three days down the line, and he hasn't cried once. He watches her, eyes steady and unwavering and inexplicably dissecting in a way that makes her look away instinctively, before she mentally slaps herself for it. That's her baby boy. She turns and smiles at him gently. He stares back. The ride is long.
When three weeks have passed and Katsuki still doesn't cry, the relief turns to concern. No parenting manual prepared her for this: this placid, imperturbable infant. He doesn't even cry when he's hungry, or when he's uncomfortable. She tosses and turns, wondering if he's sick, or if something has gone astray. The nurses had been concerned at first, only easing up when his lungs checked out fine in the scans—now, the possibility of something having gone undetected at the hospital plagues her. Masaru, however, assures her that he's just clever for his age. Of course he's clever, Mitsuki knew he would be. He's hers. But when she takes Katsuki to a play group and sees all the other babies sobbing, hands clenching in their mothers' shirts like the babies in the Pinterest photos that she'd fawned over in the early stages of her pregnancy, she feels amiss, for the briefest of moments. Then he stays nestled primly in her arms, watching the other wailing infants unblinkingly as he fiddles with a button on Mitsuki's shirt, and frazzled mothers watch in jealousy, at her baby boy sitting pretty and still in her grasp, and ask her how she does it. Mitsuki doesn't answer, doesn't know how, but somewhere inside her, she feels that same pride she'd felt when the nurses had crowded her the back the day Katsuki was born. Her boy might be a little off, a little too smart, but he's hers. And she's damn lucky to have him.
At two and half months, Katsuki has started to babble. He gurgles happily, stubby fingers reaching for any and everything in his grip. He still doesn't cry. He's crawling by six months, and by seven he's forming words. The sounds are unfamiliar on his tiny tongue, falling out roughly like mismatched puzzle pieces. Mitsuki is yet to see a single tear fall. Inko brings her boy around now, and they start to hold playdates. Katsuki is only three months older than Izuku, but the green-haired infant is nothing like her son. He cries constantly, little face screwing up at the slightest inconvenience, at nothing. He's absolutely lovely, pudgy little fingers clinging to Katsuki's shirt as he wails. Katsuki doesn't push him off, but there's an adorably petulant curl to his lips at the younger boy's loud cries. Mitsuki and Inko take so many photos.
Katsuki is eight months old when Mitsuki finds the knife in his cot. She thinks she's hallucinating, at first, when she goes to check on her son and finds him curled around the santoku knife from her kitchen, sleeping soundly. His soft, tender skin is close, too close to the blade, and she feels her heart stop. Already ready to give Masaru the verbal beatdown of his life when he gets home from work, she reaches into his bed to shakily extract the tool, only to halt in her tracks when Katsuki's eyes snap open and latch onto hers. His small fingers reach to cling to the knife, tightly in the way that babies do, and she flinches violently as the edge cuts through soft skin and blood begins to well up at his fingers. But he doesn't cry, doesn't let go. His eyes stayed fixed on hers. Swallowing thickly, she reaches down again to retrieve the knife, but pulls back instantly when his grip tightens around it, earning another droplet of blood.
"Give it to mommy, darling," she whispers, hands trembling in fear. He watches her, grip unfaltering on the blade. "Katsuki, give it to me. Please?"
He babbles something back in his weird baby speak, which has now developed into something that is somehow more coherent, clear, yet no more understandable.
"Sweetheart, give it to me," she says again, failing to keep the desperation out of her voice. He chatters something back again, and without looking away from him she reaches her other hand to take her phone and call Masaru. He rushes home, and ten minutes later he stands with her and looks down at Katsuki in worry. Mitsuki is almost hysterical at this point, at the sight of the blood that is beginning to stain his baby blue blankets, and Masaru is just as lost as she is. Katsuki watches them both warily, still gripping the knife tightly enough that Mitsuki won't look away from it. It takes forty minutes for them to back off and him to relax enough to fall back asleep, and Masaru finally takes the knife from his grip smoothly. Katsuki wakes up again as it happens, face scrunching so much in fury that Mitsuki thinks he might actually cry for the first time. But he doesn't. Instead he frowns, brow furrowed, and lets Mitsuki shakily wrap his hand with a bandage. That evening, she moves the knife block to a high cabinet. It takes a stool for her to get to the knives now, which is a bitch when she's cooking, but every time she considers moving it back she's reminded of tender skin wrapped around metal, blood seeping into cotton, and suddenly the stool doesn't seem so awful.
It's when Inko's visiting that it's pointed out.
"He's talking," Mitsuki says. "It's just not… words. He's not speaking Japanese, he's still speaking some weird baby language. I catch hints of Japanese here and there and that's it."
Inko sips at her coffee, and watches the blond boy from where he sits with Izuku in front of the television. She swallows slowly, before saying, "Well, you know, Mitsuki… I didn't know if I was just being silly, but… Doesn't it sound kind of like English? When he talks sometimes?"
She says it hesitantly, but the thoughtfulness of her tone betrays the amount of time she has spent thinking about this. Mitsuki hums around a forkful of cake.
"But I never taught him English. Hell, I don't even speak it myself. There's no way he could have learned it from me."
Inko nods, still watching the two boys absently.
"I guess you're right. Well, he's definitely smarter than any other baby I've seen, so he'll get to talking soon. Don't worry, Mitsuki."
And that's that. Until two weeks later, when they're at the grocery store and Mitsuki turns away for two goddamn seconds only to look back and find Katsuki babbling away to some stranger. They seem to be holding an actual conversation of sorts, more fluent than any of the disjointed and short ones Mitsuki has held with him. The stranger perks up when he notices her watching, and beams. "Your son is very clever! He speaks very articulately for someone his age, and speaking English at that!"
Mitsuki stares at him, and then turns to stare at her son. Katsuki blinks back guilelessly, still grinning from his previous chatter as he fiddles with the zipper of her handbag.
"Excuse me," she says, and then picks up Katsuki and fucking books it out of the store, abandoning her basket of groceries completely. When Masaru gets home, she glares at him tearfully.
"No more television for Katsuki," she announces.
He blinks at her in confusion. "I never put it on for him," he says.
"Well I sure didn't! So why the fuck else is my Japanese son speaking fluent English while he can't speak more than two words of Japanese at a time?"
Masaru's brow furrows, and he crouches down to look at their son.
"Katsuki, darling," he says gently, before adding in English, "What's your name?"
Katsuki, to Mitsuki and Masaru's utter shock, chirps back a happy, "Katchuki!" as he bounces from his spot on the couch.
Masaru smiles at him, and swallows before speaking again. "And how are you?"
Katsuki beams at him, reaching up to fist a hand in his father's business shirt.
"Goo'! 'M goo'!"
Masaru shares a look with Mitsuki, and she slowly moves to put the television remote in a higher cabinet. They don't talk about it again.
By the time Katsuki reaches his second birthday, he's speaking Japanese properly. He holds conversation with Mitsuki and Masaru and Inko like any other baby, and the English is forgotten. Izuku is only three months younger, but he still struggles with consonants, and takes to calling the other boy 'Kacchan'. It's adorable, but for Mitsuki it's just another reminder of how different the two really are.
Katsuki is quiet, only really speaking when he's spoken to and still managing to find his ways to her knife sets one way or another. It really freaks Mitsuki out at first, but she soon learns from experience that it's safer to leave him be, as counterintuitive as it seems: he's not really in any danger of hurting himself unless they try to take the knives away. He forms weird fixations like this over the months, and she does her very best to ignore it.
When he's three years old, he sees a ballet dancer on the television and is instantly enraptured. It's the first time he's ever been this interested in a television program that isn't All Might-related. He watches the entire twenty minute show, and at the end he turns to her with shining eyes and points at the screen. "I wanna do that," he announces. Mitsuki beams at him, ecstatic to hear that her son is interested in something that doesn't actively endanger him—something normal—and enrolls him eagerly before he inevitably begins to shun all things delicate, as boys tend to do.
The master at their local ballet studio, Saki, is surprised and somewhat hesitant given his age, but her delight at having a male student outweighs this. She finally agrees to take him in after seeing the way he gazes at her stretching students in open captivation. Izuku soon asks to join after noticing his Kacchan doing so, but quits after one class when he finds his attention span isn't really fit for ballet the way Katsuki's is. Katsuki, on the other hand, flourishes. He's a natural at it, taking to the art so rapidly that within the first month, he's dancing circles around the older girls in his class. Saki grows to adore him, beaming when he saunters into her lessons every week with hungry eyes. He forms somewhat of a soft spot for her, too, in the form of an awkward, shy little smile so lovely that Mitsuki can't even bring herself to be jealous.
Katsuki can read fluently by the time he's four, already narrating Izuku's storybooks to him confidently and basking in the green-haired boy's awe. His quirk manifests around this time, too. He comes home from the park with red, raw palms adorned with painful blisters. His eyes are glassy with tears but he doesn't let them fall, scrunching his face up to blink them away. Mitsuki bandages his palms and takes him to a quirk doctor, and after this day, he spends all his time reading. He reads science books, math books, whatever books he can get his hands on. He doesn't understand half of the words, but he pores over the pages anyway like he's possessed. Any time he's not at ballet classes or school, he's reading. Mitsuki lets him, hopeful that this will translate into a good habit for his academics in school, and it does. His teachers gush about him; his confidence, his natural leadership skills, his studious nature even at this age, his control over his quirk. Mitsuki has never been prouder.
A few months after this, Inko breaks the news that Izuku is quirkless. Mitsuki braces herself for a conversation with Katsuki, feeling her heart break for her best friend and her son. But she doesn't get a chance to have this talk with him, because the next day she is called into the principal's office and told her son had started a fight at school. She doesn't ask him anything, doesn't speak until they're sitting in the car. He's sullen, arms crossed and glaring at the dashboard of the car. Mitsuki glances at him.
"Did you really hit that boy, Katsuki?" she asks finally. He nods unhesitatingly, still glaring at the
dashboard. This isn't him—this isn't Katsuki. She knows he wouldn't do anything like this.
"Why did you do that?"
At this, he turns his angry red eyes on her, and scowls. "They called Izuku names," he mutters remorselessly. "They made him cry."
Mitsuki's brow furrows, but she can't bring herself to be mad when she sees that familiar glint in his eyes, that same protective glint she had seen in herself when Inko used to get shoved around in high school.
"What did they say to him?" she asks carefully. His fingers curl around the edge of his seat tightly.
"Said he was useless," he grits out. "Said he's no good 'cause he's got no quirk." His hands start to shake, The familiar smokiness that precedes his explosions beginning to drift through the air. She rolls down a window calmly, before leaning forward to gaze at him intently.
"And what do you think about that?" she asks.
His fiery red eyes return to meet hers. "I think they're stupid," he spits. "Izuku is Izuku, a quirk doesn't mean shit."
And Mitsuki knows she should be telling him off, honestly, what mother lets their four-year-old swear? But she can't help the beam that overtakes her face, as she wonders once again how she was blessed enough to have a son like Katsuki. He's only four, and already so good. She reaches over to pull him into her arms, and he falls into them with little resistance. "I love you so much, sweetheart," she says into his hair. "You're my angel."
He squirms out of her grasp to stare at her uncertainly. "You're not mad?" he asks. She shakes her head, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "No, not for this. But next time I'd like you to tell a teacher instead of hitting."
He pouts, and burrows back under her armpit.
"I told sensei yesterday. She didn't do anything. She laughs at their jokes, too. Makes 'zuku sad."
He falls silent for a moment, before glancing up at her. "Mama?" he calls quietly, vulnerable in a manner rare enough that Mitsuki almost startles.
"Hm?"
"I wanna be a hero when I grow up."
She laughs, finding herself completely unsurprised.
"I knew you were gonna get there at some point," she says, and he blinks at her.
"You gotta buy me knives, then, mama. For hero stuff."
She jerks away instantly, giving him a frustrated look.
"What is it with the knives, Katsuki?" she asks in exasperation. He grins at her.
"They're fun."
"What about ballet?"
"That's fun, too."
"What, you wanna do ballet and play with knives?"
"Yup."
She sighs, before ruffling his hair.
"If I get you some proper, safe ones and sign you up for training, do you promise to stop sneaking the kitchen knives under your pillow?" she asks in resignation. He nods eagerly, and she sighs in defeat. It's unsafe, and pretty much poster potential for bad parenting, but there was nothing in the countless parenting books Mitsuki read which even remotely prepared her for Katsuki.
"Alright," she says finally, pressing a kiss to his temple. "Alright, baby."
Chapter End Notes
tw bad science or whatever. yeah babies have to cry when they're born. i am just choosing to ignore that fact for the sake of the Symbolism
two
Chapter Notes
[throwing darts at a board] i wonder which adult is going to enable katsuki this chapter!
/ italicised sentences during speech are english!! /
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Katsuki realises something might be wrong with him when he's six. He's sitting at school during English class, and the girls in front of him are braiding each others' hair. Now, Katsuki would normally be too busy paying attention to the lesson to be noticing these things, but English has always been a bit of a bludge subject for him. It's always come easy—too easy. Not just easy like the other subjects, where he answers questions at the blink of an eye and gets full marks on tests without studying, but easy enough that he can pick out flaws in his teacher's accent when he tunes in. Easy enough that sometimes he feels like he can express himself in English class better than at home. The words come out smoothly in this class, like a dam has been removed and suddenly all the water is flowing out. So here he is, watching the girls braid their hair clumsily, as his fingers itch to fix their lopsided twists. Why, he doesn't know. How, he doesn't know. But his fingers itch. His teacher chats on in the background, reading out a conversation from their book. She's way too into the story, in Katsuki's opinion, but the other kids eat it up.
"I like to read, says Emily," she says animatedly, and Izuku is fucking rapt, rocking back and forth as he listens with wide eyes. The twisting of the girls' fingers in each others' hair has become more consistent, more confident as they continue. The braids look a little nicer, but Katsuki's fingers don't itch any less.
"—I like to watch movies, too! What do you like, Natasha?"
Katsuki's head snaps up so quickly his neck twinges. His teacher startles, and he stares at her, head spinning.
"What," he says loudly. The class goes silent. Katsuki's skin starts to buzz, all down his arms and neck, and his fingers itch so much that he presses them between his legs to stop them from shaking.
She gives him a slightly concerned look.
"Is everything okay, Katsuki-kun?" she asks warily, and swallows, legs bouncing under the table with energy that appeared from nowhere.
"What did you say?" he asks, almost desperately. She blinks in confusion, before slowly turning back to the book.
"Ah, this line. What do you like, Natasha? Do you have any questions about it, Katsuki-kun?"
The name bounces around his head, echoing back and forth until it stops, fitting somewhere deep in his brain and staying there. Natasha. He stands abruptly.
"I would like to use the bathroom," he says quickly, and she blinks again, before nodding her permission—albeit hesitantly.
He scrambles out of the room, almost sprinting to the bathroom to lock himself inside a stall. Pressing his forehead to the cool wood of the door, Katsuki sucks in a deep breath. Natasha, Natasha, Natasha. When he repeats it in his mind, he can almost hear it in another voice—in dozens of different voices, overlapping. A man's, a woman's, a child's. He hears it with an American accent, and in a British one. He hears—Natalia. Katsuki's head is spinning so fast that he has to lean against the wall, a dull ache creeping into the back of his head.
He straightens, absently curling his arms through the port de bras that his ballet teacher, Saki- sensei has taught him. He moves from first position to fourth, unable to reach the second or third within the tiny cubicle. The headache dies down slightly with the familiar motions, but his head continues to spin.
He distantly registers the sound of the bathroom door swinging open, and then rushed footsteps approach his stall.
"Kacchan?" Izuku calls from outside his cubicle. "Are you feeling okay?"
Katsuki heaves a heavy breath against the door, and swallows thickly around the lump in his throat.
"Izu. Can—can you say it again? What sensei said?"
There's silence from the other side, and then Izuku hums.
"Ah, the English? Wha—What do you like, Natasha? That was it!"
The words fall off Izuku's tongue wrong, the L rounding into an R as his clumsy accent blankets the phrase heavily. It doesn't fit right, doesn't sound the way it should, but it sends a shiver down Katsuki's back all the same. There's a click in his mind, like something that he didn't even know was broken has been fixed.
"Oh," he breathes to himself. "I—oh."
He doesn't mention it to his mother when he gets home, doesn't answer Izuku's incessant questions the next day. But late at night, he hunches over his desk and shakily writes out the letters in his notebook. Natasha, Natasha, Natasha. Natalia. They scrawl over pages and pages, different sizes and levels of neatness. One evening he dreams he's hanging from a cliff, the sky painted hues of purple. He dreams of holding onto the hand of a faceless man, of letting go. When he wakes, his fingers are reaching for the butterfly knife under his pillow before his eyes are even open. Natasha. He carves the name into the wall behind the headboard of his bed, deep enough that the paint chips, and then pushes his bed back into place so he can cover it. He stays up that night, knife at his side and fingers twisting braid after braid into the fringes at the edge of his blanket.
When Katsuki is seven, he finds out he can speak German. It's not a huge revelation this time, nothing that sends him into another existential crisis. He's walking down the street with his parents, and he overhears a man on the phone. He's arguing, yelling at who Katsuki assumes is his wife, about how she's being immature and bitchy. Katsuki only realises that he hadn't been speaking Japanese hours later, as an afterthought, when he recalls the conversation in his head and
runs the words over his tongue. Oh, he thinks. Another thing that I can do without ever having learned it. Neat.
His childhood consists of a number of these revelations. When he turns nine, his parents buy him a set of Perfect Point throwing knives for his birthday. He's so excited to test them that he goes straight to Kenjirou-sensei's gym. Kenjirou-sensei is a retired bodyguard who worked in America, and he's a badass. He's all muscle and scars, and his hair is shaved down and dyed blonde. He teaches Katsuki how to throw knives, and when no one's watching he teaches him other things too, like how to fight with a Bo staff or nunchakus. This time, however, Katsuki runs into him using a gun. He freezes, staring from outside the glass window as his sensei fires a rapid volley of bullets at a bullseye target, tearing holes into the inner circle of the board uniformly. When Kenjirou- sensei turns around and spots him, he doesn't jump but his eyes betray his fleeting shock at Katsuki's presence. After a moment's hesitation, he gestures him into the gym.
"What are you doing here today, Katsuki? Isn't it your birthday?"
Katsuki nods, eyes transfixed to the gun in his coach's hand. Kenjirou-sensei follows his gaze to the weapon, and quickly places it back onto the table.
"Not this, Katsuki," he says firmly. "This is dangerous."
Katsuki tears his gaze upwards to give him a flat look, and then gestures to the throwing knives in his own hands. The man snorts but shakes his head all the same, and Katsuki's glare dissolves into a rare pout.
"It's my birthday," he coaxes imploringly.
Kenjirou-sensei gives Katsuki an assessing look for a moment, before wilting in defeat.
"Alright, shit. Just once. Only for today. But you gotta listen carefully to what I tell you to do, yeah?"
Katsuki beams, reaching out for the weapon eagerly, and the man gives him a stern look before dropping it into his hand.
The second it falls into Katsuki's hand, his grip molds around it instinctively. His fingers are a little too short, palm a little too small for the butt of the gun to rest properly, but it feels oddly right. It fits. He turns it around in his hand, awed, vaguely aware of Kenjirou-sensei giving him instructions in the background. The man is slipping a pair of headphones over Katsuki's ears, holding out a pair of glasses.
Without a word, Katsuki wraps both hands around the butt of the gun with an ease that is far too practised, even to him, and turns around to fire four bullets into the white circle in the centre of the target. Each bullet meets the exact same spot, and his body braces for the recoil instinctively. The weight of the gun is nice in his hand, the metallic smell bringing the tiniest of grins to his face. The headphones are suddenly tugged off his head roughly, startling him out of his musings, and he turns to face an ashen Kenjirou-sensei.
"Katsuki, what the fuck," he snaps, voice cracking around the middle. Katsuki puffs his cheeks out sheepishly, and Kenjirou-sensei rubs a hand over his face. "No really, what the fuck."
The man looks like he's aged ten years suddenly, one hand placed over his chest. "Where did you fucking learn how to do that?" he demands, taking the gun from Katsuki's hand quickly, and the
blonde boy shrugs.
"Dunno, just felt right."
His coach looks like he wants to cry.
"Katsuki, you're nine."
Katsuki doesn't answer, doesn't know how, and the itch returns under his skin again. Kenjirou- sensei seems to sense his discomfort because his glare softens and he places a hand on Katsuki's shoulder.
"Hey, you're fine. I know you're a good kid. I was just surprised."
The man steps back to give him an appraising look, as if weighing an argument up in his mind, and finally clicks his tongue as an expression of resignation settles over his features.
"You got a talent. How about we train you up for a little bit and if you're real good I'll get you one of these for yourself when you turn thirteen?" At the way Katsuki's eyes light up instantly, he hastily tacks on, "With your parents' permission, obviously."
This does nothing to dim the excitement in Katsuki's grin, and the boy skips all the way home, throwing knives all but forgotten for the day. When he gets back and tells his parents that Kenjirou-sensei's gonna buy him a gun when he turns thirteen, they instantly and simultaneously pale. His mother's on the phone angrily yelling at the man in the blink of an eye, but despite her ire, there's an expasperated, comical kind of frustration in her voice that suggests she's fully aware she's fighting a losing battle. Katsuki simply beams, leaning up to press an innocent kiss to her cheek and then dancing over to the kitchen to eat some cake, leaving Kenjirou-sensei to suffer through Mitsuki's verbal lashings.
By the time Katsuki is eleven, he's carrying knives with him everywhere. During school, he keeps them strapped to his body with fitted sheaths, wearing baggy uniforms to hide them. Izuku is accustomed to it, and no longer startles when Katsuki gets bored and flicks blades at trees during lunchtime. Katsuki tried teaching him once, but the dumbass ended up nicking his thumb with the tip of the knife and crying until Katsuki hid the tool away again and reluctantly pressed a kiss to the tiny cut.
His ballet classes are now twice a week, and Saki-sensei has moved him up to the teenagers' class after he grew bored in the kids' one.
Over the years, he has also found an innate ability to speak Mandarin, Italian and Russian fluently, much to the bemusement of his teachers, parents and himself.
Kenjirou-sensei spars with him three times a week, starting to incorporate knives into their spars without the knowledge of Katsuki's parents. One day when Mitsuki walks in to pick him up when a session runs late, she catches Katsuki hurling a knife at the man's head and screeches so loudly that Katsuki's ears ring for hours afterward.
When he's twelve he tries on a pair of his mother's heels for fun and walks so effortlessly in them that he reduces her to jealous tears.
"How are you doing this?!" she cries, and he grins, kicking a leg into the air smoothly.
"Shit's easy, lady. You're just weak."
It takes him two hours of cuddles and a manicure to console her.
The day Katsuki turns thirteen, Kenjirou-sensei gets him that gun. It's a Glock 26, weighty and sleek and black and perfect. He doesn't ask where his sensei got it, simply strapping it to his waist where it quickly becomes a permanent fixture alongside his knives. The first (and last) time a teacher notices it, Katsuki has to build some bullshit story about toy guns and being prepared for police work if being a hero doesn't work out. The dumb woman buys it, smiling at him encouragingly and telling him he'd make a wonderful police officer. He's offended at the implication that she thinks it's possible heroics won't work out for him, but he smiles sweetly anyway and lets her walk off.
He's also thirteen when their teachers start telling them to make plans for after middle school. When he says he's going to UA, his homeroom teacher pats him on the back. Moments later, when Izuku says it, he receives awkward laughter. Katsuki thinks this is fucking bullshit, obviously, and yells at his stupid bitch of a teacher until she stammers out an insincere apology. He glares at her, spitting out some more curses before turning to a wailing Izuku.
"Kacchan," he cries, face scrunched obnoxiously ugly in gratitude. Katsuki shoves him away roughly, explosions itching at his hands. God, Izuku has such a punchable face sometimes.
Katsuki is fourteen when he has his first real fight with Izuku. The boy approaches him one day after school and tells him he's not gonna apply for UA.
"I just… I think the teachers might be right, Kacchan. There really is no chance for me without a quirk."
He looks heartbroken at his own admission, and Katsuki decks him in the fucking face so hard he hears a crack.
"You asshole!" he yells, and the green-haired boy reels back in shock. Katsuki wants to punch him again.
"I fucking stood up for your ass for years! I covered for you time and time again, and now you're gonna trust the word of some shitty teachers over me?"
The other looks devastated at his words, and Katsuki shoves him back again mercilessly.
"Did it not matter that I believed in you? Was I not enough?"
He masks his hurt when he doesn't get a response, doesn't get a denial. Heaving a deep breath, he steps back to glare at his childhood friend viciously.
"So you're giving up? That's fucking it, you're giving up because some shitty random told you
to?"
The silence he receives, the wide eyes and lack of words is enough. He scoffs, turning on his heel and walking away. He pauses, just before he's out of earsight, and throws over his shoulder, "I guess they were right. You really are a Deku."
Katsuki doesn't let his head lift until the other boy is gone and the wetness rimming his eyes has been blinked away.
The next day he ignores Izuku, refusing to soften when the other turns those heartbroken kicked puppy eyes on him.
"Kacchan—" he begins, and Katsuki slams his books down on the table, staring at the board pointedly. Izuku wilts and heads back to his desk. The classes pass like that, an awkward kind of tension settling over the classroom at Katsuki's poisonous silence. He's never been particularly sociable, but this is the first time Katsuki's been pissed—openly so, with his jaw clenched tight and his eyes glued to the board in front of him. Even their teacher doesn't appear to know what to do with it, opting to act like nothing's wrong while the other kids watch the pair like they're a particularly entertaining zoo attraction.
Of course, he doesn't even get to stay mad at the shitty crybaby for the entirety of a fucking day. He brushes off his classmates' invite to the arcade, wanting to go home and stew alone without their stupid scrutiny burning holes into his skull.
But one second he's walking back alone, kicking a stupid empty soda can down the alley, and the next, he's wrapped in cold and he can't fucking breathe. He chokes on tar, helpless to the way it crawls across his skin, digging wetly into warm flesh. Within minutes, there's a crowd of civilians forming around him. Within five, there's a team of heroes on the scene, barking into their radios and posing for the cameras and doing absolutely fucking nothing.
He stretches his fingers out, aiming for the knife sheathed against his torso, but the villain yanks the entire strap away from his body with a sharp jerk, flinging it out of reach. His limbs are yanked in opposite directions, every inch of his body held immobile and painfully taut. Just like that, in one swoop, Katsuki is helpless. His martial arts training is useless against sludge, and the rough sparks that flicker at his palms are extinguished in moments.
Distantly, he's aware that the villain is going on some shitty monologue. It wraps its slimy appendages around his mouth and Katsuki bites down, gagging as the sludge turns to liquid and fills his throat. The wetness pulsates around him, and there's a flash of light from his side, as news reporters stand at a safe distance with microphones held to their flawlessly-lipsticked mouths. There's irony somewhere in that imagery, probably. Katsuki will revisit it later, when his limbs aren't going numb from the tight sludge that constricts them.
It's just when his vision begins to blur, a strange, static haze creeping into the edges of his vision, that he hears that goddamn screeched "Kacchan!" that's been the bane of his existence for the past ten years. Katsuki tears his face away from the villain just in time to see Izuku's stupid ass sprinting towards him, face contorted in fear as he hurls a backpack at the villain.
Time seems to slow down as the backpack makes impact, before sinking into the sludge like it was never there. Katsuki feels his heart pound out against his ribcage as his stupid friend stops short in his tracks, leaning back shakily to stare at the monster that now looms over him.
"Oh, fuck," Izuku whispers.
Chapter End Notes
not sure if i want any romance in this fic, guess i'll have to see where it goes!
regarding the guns - this is something that i noticed while writing but didn't take time to mention--i understand how unrealistic it is to be giving a kid a gun, let alone one this young and legally unqualified. let's just pretend it's not as big of a deal in the world of bnha. when people are walking around with quirks that decay matter by contact and manipulate gravity, i doubt much attention is being given to laws surrounding gun control and such. please ignore this huge plot hole (???) for the sake of katsuki channelling his inner natasha :')
three
Chapter Notes
oof big chapter here!! sorry it's a bit of a mess i just wanna get to the UA stuff already hehe
See the end of the chapter for more notes
Just when the sludge monster is closing in on Izuku, All Might comes to save the day. Of course he does. He punches the villain away hard enough that the entire city shakes, and the civilians and surrounding heroes all cheer and it's the beautiful movie ending. Because fuck Katsuki's probable newly acquired boatload of PTSD, right? The reporters all flock around All Might with their flashy cameras, and Katsuki turns on a trembling Izuku and punches him hard enough to knock out two of his teeth.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he yells. "Are you fucking suicidal, Deku?"
The boy shrinks back, having the nerve to look ashamed as if he hadn't just run headfirst into his own death moments ago. Katsuki steps forward to punch him again, and it takes three police officers to tear him away.
"Fuck you, Deku!" he spits, before tearing out of their hold and storming away. The cameras follow him, and he has to duck his head to shield his angrily teary eyes from their view. Izuku is so, so stupid and if he had died Katsuki would have brought his ass back just to kill him again.
He keeps walking until he's out of view of the cameras, and continues to walk aimlessly for a while as he calms himself down. His hands are still shaking when he walks into a convenience store and slams a bottled energy drink on the counter, paying for it wordlessly. He realises, moments later, however, that he has absolutely no idea where he is.
The convenience store is one he's never been to before, in a narrow, shady-looking alley. The store itself is equally shady-looking, albeit pretty much empty save for one or two people. He takes the drink and heads off quickly, realising that this is the exact type of place his parents have told him to avoid, and ends up walking straight into another person in his haste.
"Shit," he says eloquently, still slightly disoriented as he blinks up at the person.
The guy in front of him is huge, bandaged arms each the size of Katsuki's fucking torso and wearing spiked boots that are fucking badass, in Katsuki's opinion. However, most noticeably, he lacks a nose. Said nose-less man stares down at him. "What's a kid like you doing around here?" he asks, voice rough and drawling. Katsuki crosses his arms stubbornly.
"The fuck, am I not allowed in conbinis anymore? Talk to me when you get a nose, asshole."
To his confusion, this draws a loud, booming laugh out of the man, instead of the murderous intent Katsuki had expected. Well, he's not complaining.
"Orudera, hm?" he mutters, leaning forward to finger Katsuki's name badge, close enough that he
has to fight the urge to lean back. "You're quite far from home, Katsuki-kun."
Katsuki flicks him away, before unscrewing the drink bottle and chugging half of it at once.
"Yeah, well. People suck," he explains matter-of-factly, earning another low chuckle.
"You're right about that, kid." He's looking at Katsuki differently now, an interested glint to his eyes. "Say, what do you want to be when you're older?"
Katsuki straightens.
"I'm gonna go to UA and become the number one fucking hero," he announces. The man clicks his tongue at this.
"Ah, a hero fan. How… disappointing. Heroes really aren't all they're built up to be, kid."
Katsuki finishes off the drink. "Suck a dick, old man. I don't care what you think," he says coolly. Nose-less dude sits down on one of the stools facing the window. "You're not offended," he observes blandly. Katsuki tosses the empty bottle in the bin, and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Am I meant to be? Half the heroes right now are fucking half-assed trash. That's why I'm gonna beat them all."
The man taps a spiked toe against the vinyl floor and pats the stool beside him slowly. "Sit, kid. You're interesting," he drawls. Katsuki hears a voice at the back of his head screeching at him to get the fuck out of this shady-looking conbini and get the fuck home now. The voice sounds suspiciously like his mother's, and he shoves it at the back of his head and plops down on the seat with a shrug. Whatever, the guy's fun to talk to, and his boots are cool. It's not like Katsuki's got anything better to do anyway.
"Why the fuck do you hate heroes so much, old man?" he asks curiously, leaning against the counter. The other rests a scarred palm against the edge, pushing forward to look him in the eye. "It's not heroes I hate, Katsuki-kun. It's fakes. People who call themselves heroes to earn money and fame… they disgust me."
Katsuki shrugs, drawing circles into the plastic tabletop. "Valid, I guess," he mutters, earning a surprised laugh. The man watches him with an unreadable expression, and after a moment of thoughtful silence, he holds out his hand.
"Akaguro. Akaguro Chizome. But you can call me Stain."
Katsuki is considering shaking it when his phone rings in his pocket. He fishes it out, wincing slightly when he sees his mother's contact.
"Ah," he mutters. "I have to go. Have fun hating heroes or whatever, old man. I hope you find a nose soon."
He doesn't wait for a response, turning on his heel and promptly marching out of the store to the sounds of Stain's fading chuckles.
Katsuki realises when he's trudging home, his mother screeching at him over the phone wildly, that he may have just become almost sort-of friends with an honest to god villain.
Fuck.
He doesn't talk to Izuku for the next two months. He trains and trains and trains some more, going to bed every evening with more muscles aching than not. He practises with Kenjirou-sensei almost every day, and wakes up at 5 in the morning to run. He diets, too, cutting out the already tiny amounts of sweets he used to eat in favour of more protein.
His classmates notice it, pointing out how much muscle he's put on. He preens under the praise but when he stands in front of the mirror in his room and examines the hard bulk of his biceps and abdomen, his skin starts to crawl slightly. His body feels heavier in a way that he's not used to, shoulders broad and muscles foreign and weird. He tells his mother this and she cackles about him being unused to having muscles instead of being a stick, and he doesn't have the heart to tell her that it's different.
A month from the entrance exam, Izuku approaches him. He's put on weight too; more than Katsuki, to the blonde's eternal surprise. Katsuki has been focusing on maintaining a lean figure, to help him stay weightless and streamlined in the air while using his quirk, but Izuku—Izuku looks like he's been pumping barbells every day.
"Kacchan," he says shakily, muscle growth doing nothing to improve his timid hunch. "I'm gonna be a hero."
Katsuki stares at him from where he's filled in his high school application sheet.
"What changed?" he asks flatly.
Izuku wrings his hands together.
"I… I have a quirk, Kacchan."
At this, Katsuki actually straightens up to fix him with an unimpressed glare.
"No shit," he scoffs, and Izuku frowns at him.
"I do! I know it's—it's hard to believe and I'm sorry I can't tell you more, but… I just came to tell you that I'll be sitting the UA exam. I'll be a hero too, Kacchan."
He bows, and turns without another word to walk away. Damn, Katsuki thinks. The nerd really has grown a spine.
"Oi, Deku," he says, halting the other in his tracks. Izuku freezes, but doesn't turn around to face him. Katsuki pushes up from his table to stand in front of him, forcing Izuku to meet his eyes.
"What, you think you can get a quirk and magically become a hero? You think not having a quirk is what was holding you back? Newsflash, dickhead, having a quirk doesn't mean shit if you aren't willing to work for it."
Izuku's face twists, expression contorting into one of frustration.
"T—that's easy for you to say, Kacchan. You've never had to- to deal with not having a quirk. You don't know what it's like—"
Katsuki holds up a hand wordlessly, cutting off the other boy in his tracks.
"Then I'll show you. I'll show you, Deku, that I don't need a quirk to get into UA. Watch me."
He brushes past the green-haired boy and out of the classroom, a deep ache panging in his chest like something is digging into his ribcage. He realises, belatedly, that it's hurt—hurt at Izuku's lack of faith in him, in himself. It's frustration at Izuku thinking he can run around and laugh and become a hero without ever trying, while Katsuki busts his ass daily working toward the same goal, and then blame it all on his quirklessness at the end of the day.
That evening Katsuki skips training. Instead, he opens his computer and browses the UA website for their protocols regarding permitted support gear and weaponry in the entrance exam. It turns out that UA is really chill with weapons. As in, concerningly chill, like why the fuck do they not have any restrictions on weapons? Most of their guidelines are designed around the assumption that support weaponry will be utilised in relation to or conjunction with an applicant's quirk, but that's the thing—they don't flat out specify it. So technically? Katsuki has free reign to use whatever support gear he fucking wants. He doesn't even need a quirk, he could hypothetically bring a flamethrower into these entrance exams, and the school couldn't stop him. Huh.
So he trains with tools for the remaining month before the exam. He doesn't work on his quirk beyond basic exercises, much to the confusion of both his parents and Kenjirou-sensei. He knows the entrance exam will feature robots, so he instead focuses on his knives, and puts in an express order for support weapons from an external company. To his eternal frustration, his parents refuse to let him bring his gun. However, the nunchakus he receives a week later from the support order are fucking badass, if he does say so himself. Expensive, sure, but fucking cool. They're electroshock nunchakus, an unassuming grey colour while switched off, but when Katsuki presses the button at the bottom they glow a bright, electric blue. He has to wear insulated gloves while he uses them, made of a thin, flexible black material. Kenjirou-sensei is half-convinced they're not legal but Katsuki likes to remind him that he is the one who supplies guns to thirteen year olds, and his sensei conveniently falls silent.
Unfortunately, he doesn't get the chance to test the nunchakus out on a real person or robot, largely because he doesn't really want to get arrested before the exam. Instead, he practises on mannequins, trash, and pretty much anything else in reach. (He fries the television at one point when he misses a shot at the wall, but watching the electricity pulse through it is so worth the verbal beat-down he gets from his mother.)
Soon it's the morning of the exam. Katsuki's mother sends him off with a kiss on the cheek and promises of pain if he injures anyone with the nunchakus. He wears simple workout clothes, modified to be insulated in an all-black ensemble that's loose enough to conceal the eight knives and countless shurikens he's strapped and tucked into various places around his body. The nunchakus hang from a loop on his belt, looking for all the world like a normal set while switched off. Gloves tucked into his pocket, he trudges off to the exam. When he gets there, all the other students give him a wide berth at the sight of his expressionless face.
The written exam is a fucking breeze, no surprise there. He finishes it and triple-checks it with twenty minutes to spare, and ends up folding paper cranes with the working out paper to pass the rest of the time, earning a number of dirty and exasperated looks from the other students. They then move on to the practical exam, which is the fabled robots that they've heard so much about.
He watches Present Mic embarrass himself in front of all the applicants for a few minutes, and then follows the other students into the grounds. Apparently all the other applicants are fucking idiots, because when Present Mic gives a totally predictable surprise start, he's the only one to move.
He walks forward, relaxed, and doesn't even falter when a two-point robot comes lumbering around a corner. It's bigger in person, towering up to at least five metres tall. Hearing screeches of fear from behind him, he realises that the other applicants haven't moved from their starting place, presumably still in shock about Present Mic's abrupt start. He smirks, turning his arm to fit a shuriken between his thumb and pointer, and smoothly flicks it straight into the crease between the robot's torso and right limb without stopping his walking forward. Bingo. The robot stutters, making a series of clicking noises before collapsing into a neighbouring building with a crash. Katsuki has studied this exam inside out, knows these robots better than he knows himself. He ducks under the robot's twitching body without a backward glance, plucking the shuriken out of the cracked metal as he hears the students behind him jump out of their stupor and start to run forward with mutters of, "What the hell is that guy?"
By the time he gets to the next robot, still walking leisurely, at least fifteen students are standing in front of it, staring up at it in horror.
"Dude, it's even bigger in person," a boy with green skin whispers as the three-pointer looms over them. Katsuki steps forward, sighing wearily as he realises that with its height and jerky movements, he can't get a good shot at it with a shuriken. He tucks it away, instead pulling out a knife and starting to scale the robot. It bucks wildly, arms flailing to swat him off, and he thinks to himself that this would be infinitely easier with his quirk. Too bad he's got a point to prove. The kids beneath him watch, speechless as he grapples his way to the robot's shoulders and jams the knife in the gap between the robot's two neck plates. It sputters almost immediately, and he yanks his knife out in time for the machine to crumple to the ground, allowing him to hop off it smoothly and keep walking ahead. "What the fuck," a girl mutters from behind him. "No, really, what the fuck."
By the time the exam is half-finished, he's lost count of how many points he's scored. The students have already finished off most of the robots, leaving the zero-pointers lumbering around aimlessly. Katsuki pouts when he looks up at the clock and realises that he hasn't been able to use his nunchakus once.
He's contemplating whether he'll get penalised for testing them on another student when he catches sight of a red-haired boy, completely unaware as he stands below a slowly malfunctioning one-pointer robot.
"Oi, dumbass," he yells. The red-head perks up at the sound, looking at him questioningly, and Katsuki snorts at how quick he is to respond to that name. "Fucking move, maybe?" he calls, gesturing one-handed at the teetering robot, and the other boy lets out a string of colourful swears before darting to the side just as the robot falls down where he was standing moments ago. "Thanks, man!" he calls, giving Katsuki a thumbs up, and the blonde resists the urge to throw a knife at his grinning face. Dude is way too happy about his near-death experience.
He's trudging off aimlessly when he hears an excited yell from behind him, and realises the red- head is bounding towards him.
"No. No, go the fuck away. Fuck you," he says, walking faster, and the beaming boy speeds up to catch up to him. "I'm Kirishima!" he announces, sticking a hand out. Katsuki hates him already.