Chapter Text
“Bakubro, you shouldn’t go in there!” Kirishima shouted as he held Katsuki back by the shoulders. “Let All Might talk to them first!”
Katsuki’s eyes stung with tears of desperation. This was not how things were meant to go. He needed to see Deku, needed to hear that stupid heart of his beat, needed to feel a warm pulse underneath his skin. “I need to see him, Shitty Hair. You don’t get it! He was fine and then, then he went limp like a lifeless doll. That fuckin’ bastard! I know that bastard did something to him.”
Kirishima’s eyes glance down with guilt.
They stepped out of the elevator, Katsuki's eyes narrowed with suspicion, and he stated, “You know.” There was no doubt about it; his friend was hiding something.
The redhead gulped. “Listen, man…What happened to Izuku was an accident, ya know? We’ll do anything to bring him back.”
Katsuki’s breath hitched. “B-bring him back?” he whispered hoarsely. “You have five-motherfuckin’-seconds to explain before I blast something, Bro .”
“W—well you see—”
The doors swung open and the nurse walked out. A clean-shaven doctor with graying hair stood at the threshold with a somber smile. “Ah, I thought I heard you, Mr. Bakugou.”
Katsuki’s attention shifted from his friend to the man, and it took everything in him not to storm into the room. “Tell me what happened, Doctor.”
The older man stepped aside, letting the two young heroes in. Inside was Yagi Toshinori with puffy, red eyes, clutching to his successor’s arm with one hand as the other smoothed out his untamable curls. Izuku’s body was completely still, as pale as when he collapsed. It was as if the life had been drained from him, leaving his scars more prominent and his freckles faded.
“Young Bakugou, Kirishima, thank you for coming,” he said, getting up from his place beside Izuku to wrap the two men in a fragile hug. “It seems he’ll be like this for some time.”
Kirishima nodded, knowing, and it made Katsuki wonder why he hadn’t been told first.
“What happened to him?” Katsuki asked, not even bothering to mask the betrayed tone that was embedded into each word. Katsuki was Izuku’s boyfriend, his hero partner, his childhood friend, so why was he kept in the dark?
Toshinori smiled and patted a chair, beckoning them to sit and listen. “Young Midoriya was hit with a soul fracturing quirk.”
Katsuki’s eyes widened with horror. He stumbled back, bracing himself against the wall to keep from falling.
“According to the culprit, his soul has been shattered into fragments. The amount of fragments is determined by how many times his heart was broken, but the problem lies in the fact that it is not only limited to one lifetime.”
Kirishima made a confused noise in the back of his throat. “What does that mean? Previous lives?”
Toshinori nodded solemnly. “While many do not believe in reincarnation, there is a part of us that carries onto a future generation. Think of it like One for All, except that instead of power, it’s like a base life source.”
“Oh.”
Katsuki had so many questions, but he gritted his teeth and tried keeping his breathing steady until the man finished explaining. He would not revert to violence as he had in the past—he owed Deku that much.
“Do we know how many times that was?” Eijirou asked.
The old man shook his head. “The only way to know—and to bring him back—is to travel through those previous lives and retrieve the soul shards.”
With a scoff, Katsuki said, “So it’s like the world’s most high stakes video game? Get the pieces, save the prisoner or some shit like that?”
“Yes, young Bakugou, precisely.”
“Fuck.” Katsuki ran a trembling hand through his hair, pushing himself off the wall, pacing back and forth in the small space he had at the foot of Izuku’s bed. “Ok, ok,” he muttered as if convincing himself, then turned to the other three. “I’ll do it.”
“I don’t think that’s wise,” the doctor interjected.
“Why the hell not?” Katsuki snapped back, his brow furrowed.
“This quirk…it could make it so that neither of you return. You see, you would have to experience everything Mr. Midoriya did. Chances are, some of those experiences were what led to his previous deaths, so you would have to go through the pains of betrayal, rejection, and even death many times over before you reach the ones in this life. In some cases, people do not return because they lose the will to return in the first place. They simply stop looking for the shards.”
Katsuki shook his head vehemently, willing that knot in his throat to go down so that he could speak clearly and without any hesitation. “I’m the one that knows him best, and if anyone is saving this nerd, it’s the Symbol of Victory himself. He gave me that title...now, I will own up to it.”
Toshinori walked over to him and put a frail hand on his shoulder. “I want him back, Bakugou, but not if we risk losing you too, my boy.”
A whimper threatened to crawl up, his eyes watering immediately. Shaking his head, he whispered, “I’ll bring him back, old man. Trust me, you won’t lose us.”
The hand tightened around his shoulder, and they stood with their heads bowed for quite some time. He saw Toshinori’s frame shaking, and he decided to stay still until it passed. He felt tears pricking at his eyes again, and he swallowed. This wasn’t the time to break down. Somehow, though, he managed to look up at the doctor and asked, “What do I have to sign to do this?”
Kirishima lowered his head and clenched his fist, while Toshinori sighed in defeat.
“You will have to be tested first. Are you willing to do that?”
“Are you deaf, doc? I said I’ll do what I need to do.”
Shaking his head, the doctor made a quick note on Izuku’s file and snapped it shut. “I will get in contact with the quirk user and establish a time. I’ll have my secretary send you the details. We’ll be doing this tomorrow, and we don’t know how long you’ll be gone, so let your agency know.”
Katsuki looked at Izuku’s chest, steadily rising and falling to the beat of the monitor. “Consider it done.”
XXX
Katsuki passed the tests they gave him with flying colors. Psychological, physical, lie detector–he’d done them all before, so he knew what he was facing, and he’d do them again if it meant bringing Deku back safely. The toughest one by far was the “foresight” test, which consisted of Camie creating illusions of stressful situations that he might encounter. Seeing Deku die, sleep with his best friend, and spew hatred at him wasn’t a walk in the park, but he’d managed to stay calm—errant tears aside, and stay aware that it was a lie, no matter how strong the feelings and fears they evoked were. In every situation, he sought out the shards and was able to retrieve them. It was this that finally convinced them.
Two days after the last test, the doctor wrote to him. He and the old man had secured an appointment with the culprit so that Katsuki could enter Izuku’s fragmented core. His agency, though, was not as understanding, but with other heroes’ support, they were swayed. Given that he and Deku were in the top five, their PR agent would release a statement that they’d gone on a secret mission a week post-departure to avoid panic. For the first time, he smiled at the agent and promised a bonus upon his return. Kirishima was in charge of the newbies, Uraraka was in charge of their bills, and Mina was in charge of communication with his family.
Everything was set in the real world. Now it was up to him to bring Deku back to it. Katsuki knew he’d made this life crappy for Deku, and he was making amends for it, but the past shouldn’t be as terrible, right?