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Her aunt had died five years ago, and the wound still felt fresh. Mina swept around the edges of her headstone, diligently cleaning away the evidence of time.
Her aunt had been wild and free, and Mina had admired her with every molecule in her body. She strove to embody her spirit—to keep her passion for life alive, even when she wasn't.
That's how you honored people, right? By keeping pieces of their spirit entwined with yours? By taking on the parts of their hearts that you admired?
That's why Mina started every day smiling.
She chatted as she worked, telling her about her life. It had been a few months since the last time she visited. She'd competed in her final sports festival since then, and she'd done better than she thought she would.
For a moment, when she'd looked into the stands she'd been sure that she'd seen her aunt cheering—arms stretched out over her head and screaming in the crowd as Mina cinched fourth place.
Nobody had ever cheered her on like she had.
"I have to go, now," she sighed. "Ectoplasm's midterm is gonna murder me. Maybe I can get Kats to tutor me. I told you about him, remember? He's one of my best friends. He's been kinda spacey lately, though. It started around the time we started talking about postgrad plans."
She fiddled with the flowers a moment longer, frowning. "Denki'll need the tutoring, too. Maybe we should go to Momo instead. She's just behind him in the ranks, and she's got more patience for Denki's intentional idiocy. Besides, Kats seems...tired. I should probably let him sleep instead of bothering him."
She stood, brushing the dust off her jeans.
"I'll come back, soon. I wanna tell you all about the last mission I went on, so don't let me forget." Leaning down, she pressed a kiss to her headstone. Her aunt had always said goodbye with a kiss to the forehead. This felt as close as she could get. "Love you."
Reluctantly, she pulled herself away. She felt bad that as her time at UA had stretched on, her time to visit had diminished. She didn't want her to think that Mina was forgetting her. The last thing she wanted to do was leave her behind. She carried her wherever she went.
Her hero suit was in her favorite colors, and she'd started learning to dance because she loved to dance.
She would have loved Mina's friends. She would have loved Kiri's buoyant personality and Denki's antics and Hanta's dry sarcasm.
She would have liked Katsuki the most.
She would have adored his instinctive bitchiness and the way he knew to own up to his mistakes. She would have loved how much of a tsundere he was, and she would have teased him relentlessly for it.
Mina did that in her place. She was so lucky to have a friend like him.
He was an explosion of a human being—kinda violent and generally loud. His words were harsh but always had purpose. He took care of them while calling them 'stupid D-list losers.'
He made her laugh. He made her feel good about herself. He did it without compromising who he was: brash, bold, and abrasive.
He'd been on her mind, lately, though.
By his very nature, he was proud. He came off as mean, and he could be a really sore loser. And a sore winner. He didn't accept less than the best. He'd scream and yell after every fight, either smug with victory or furious with defeat.
Later, he'd help them fix their mistakes and admit he had a high horse that he had trouble getting down from. He was self-aware. But in the moment he would be nearly insufferable.
That wasn't the point, though.
Like she'd told her aunt—he'd been off lately. A little quieter. A little more tense. And then there was the sports festival.
He'd won for the third year in a row and, for the third year in a row, she'd been caught off guard by his behavior. Just like the past two years, he'd accepted his medal quietly instead of acting like a feral demon about his win. He didn't rub it in their faces. He didn't even smile.
He just dominated the competition with brutal efficiency, then quietly took what he'd earned. This year had been no different.
Except this year, he'd escaped the stadium as quickly as he could instead of joining them for the after-party. The previous two years, he'd at least linger in the background and sip on whatever Kiri put into his hands. This year, he'd vanished.
She was worried about him.
Unfortunately, she didn't know how to help. He wasn't exactly the type to let himself be vulnerable. His shell softened for them, but it had never broken.
She'd only gotten him to open up for a split second before. He'd failed the licensing exam, and he'd thrown himself into his remedial course. It had been driving him into the ground.
And when she'd asked why he was going insane, he'd said: "I don't want them to think I'm a monster. I want them to look at me and feel hope."
The way he'd said it, it sounded like he'd been seen as a monster before.
"Pinky?"
She startled, looking up into burning red eyes. Think of the devil, and he shall appear.
"Kats!" she gasped. "You scared me! What are you doing here?"
He was holding a paper-wrapped bouquet of flowers, and he looked like he'd been caught red-handed.
There were dark circles under his eyes. They were in a cemetery.
Her heart sank.
"...Visiting someone," he replied. It was quiet and hesitant like he was keeping a secret.
"Me too," she replied with a sad smile. "My aunt."
"Right," he murmured. His shoulders dropped a fraction—relaxing. She'd talked about her aunt before.
"You want company?" she asked softly. He hesitated. “I don’t have to if you don’t want. I can pretend I never saw you here.”
She waited while thought it over.
"You can come," he said. "But you gotta promise me something."
"Anything," she agreed. He scrubbed a hand over his face. When he pulled it away, he looked sad.
"Don't talk to me about this later," he said. She blanched, and his face went stony. "No, I fucking mean it."
"Why not?" she asked. His shoulders hunched, and she backtracked. "I promised you already. But Katsuki, are you sure—"
"I'm sure. I've tried, alright? I've fucking tried. I tried for years but when I think about it outside this goddamn graveyard, I can't function. He shouldn't be here, so I shouldn't be here to visit him, and thinking about it—" He broke off, looking down at his shoes. He took a shaky breath that sounded like a sob, and she relented.
"Alright," she agreed. "We won't talk about it."
He looked up at her, and her heart broke. His eyes were wet and his lip was trembling and it looked like he was holding himself together by a thread.
She wanted to hug him. To do anything except stand here. She wanted to tell him he could crumble, and she'd hold him together.
She knew he wouldn't go for it, though, and she didn't want to push it.
He didn't say anything. Instead, he just started walking and Mina trailed after him—flanking him on the left. He came to a stop in front of a modest grave.
He smiled, pained and affectionate.
"Hi, Izuku." The way he said the name made her chest feel tight, aching from the longing in his tone. "Sorry I skipped last week," he said. "We had dinner with your mom and she...uh," he swallowed. "Anyway, I felt off and I didn't want to bring that shit here. Anyway, this is Mina Ashido. I've told you about her. Acid quirk."
Her heart clenched—honored that she'd told this person, whoever he was, about her.
His eyes were closed, and she recognized the look. She did it, too—imagining what they would say if they could talk back. She wondered how engraved he was in Katsuki's heart. She wondered if he could still hear him, like they were still standing beside each other.
"Mina, this is Izuku. He was a fuckin' nerd, and he loved heroes. He wanted to be one, even though people told him he couldn't."
She frowned. "Why would they say that?" she asked. Almost any quirk could be used heroically with the right training. Hell, Ojiro's quirk was a chunky tail. That was hardly—
"He was quirkless."
Oh.
Her heart sank.
It must have been heartbreaking to want to be a hero and find out that you were quirkless. To realize that nobody would take you seriously. To know that everybody else would have an advantage over you.
She knew the statistics, too.
"Don't look at him like that," Katsuki muttered. She glanced at him, and there was a scowl on his face. It wasn't angry, it was...disappointed. In her. "Don't pity him. I thought the same thing. That he'd never be a hero without a quirk. Told him that shit every day."
She felt a little sick. "Did he..." she stopped herself from asking. It felt like Izuku was watching her, all of a sudden, and asking felt rude. Uncouth. Cruel.
"Did he kill himself?" Katsuki asked, giving her an uncomfortably knowing look. She swallowed, then nodded. "No. He died proving me wrong. And I'll never be able to make it up to him."
"You can't blame yourself—"
"I can. Maybe not for being wrong. Lots of people were wrong about him, and I was a dumbass kid. But for being cruel?" he laughed, and it was bitter. "I can't let myself off the hook for that, or I'll never be better. I'd never live up to what he saw in me. He would have forgiven me, though, even though I'm the reason he's here."
His voice was tight.
"What do you mean, Kats?" she asked.
He gave her a wry smile. "Remember the sludge villain?"
Of course, she did. "When All Might saved you," she replied, unsure of where he was going.
"Ten different heroes stood around while I suffocated. Waiting for someone to show up and do their job." She remembered. She'd seen the news that day and wondered why nobody was helping. "I remember losing oxygen. The way your vision goes dark around the edges while your lungs burn. No matter how many explosions I let off, I couldn't get free."
She nodded, following along.
"Then, suddenly I could breathe, and all I could see were his eyes. Green eyes, so fucking worried about me. Digging through sludge with his bare fucking hands just to get to me."
That's right. Somebody had run in. They'd thrown something at the villain.
"He was tiny, and quirkless, and braver than any hero there," he sighed, touching the headstone. "He bought me the time I needed, but—" he swallowed. "The villain got him, then. He drowned before All Might got there."
Her heart broke. "I didn't see anything about him...the news—"
"They made him a footnote. He was a hero that day, and he deserved to be seen. But they didn't want other quirkless people to follow his example. There was one shitty little line about him in the National Examiner. 'The villain claimed one civilian casualty.' That's it. I try to be the kind of hero he would have been, but sometimes it's—" he broke off.
An old, bitter frustration was poisoning his voice, and she felt it, too. It was unfair, to Izuku and his family.
"He deserved to be recognized," she told him. He nodded.
"I was angry, for a really long time. I was angry that everyone told him he couldn't be a hero when he was the only one who actually had the heart for it. I was angry that they tried to sweep him under the rug. I was angry at the heroes because they hadn't done their goddamn job, and Izuku felt the need to do it for them. But I was mostly mad at myself." He looked down at the bouquet still clutched in his hands.
"He scared me, you know? He'd get himself into shitty situations because he was brave and did what he thought was right. So I tried to push him down."
"You didn't know, Kats. You were a kid. And you carry him with you, now."
He looked at her again, and there were tears in his ruby eyes. She wanted to hold him. She wanted to hold his pieces together with her bare hands.
"Some people stick with you, Pinky. Izuku is...fuck," he muttered. He ran a hand through his hair. "He was my best friend. And he kept trying to be my friend when I was being horrible. He's all of my favorite memories and my greatest regret. He's my inspiration and my burden. I told him he couldn't be a hero, and he died saving my life."
She reached out, damn the consequences, and took his hand. The first tears spilled over his cheeks, and she wiped them away with her sleeve.
"Sounds like he loved you a lot," she told him.
Her heart bled as the tears came faster—his frame caving in on itself. It was horrible to watch him crumble.
"He did," he replied with a shaky sob. "Too much. He loved me so much and I was so mean. I wanted him to think. To put himself first, just once. But it was always me."
She ran her hand over his back, imparting whatever meager comfort she could.
"I have no choice but to carry him with me. He's...he was my person. But we were doomed from the start," he said, jagged and raw. "That's the worst part. I was too afraid to be with him, and he was too brave to stay with me."
She held him until he gathered his broken pieces. She stayed with him to tidy Izuku's grave. She told embarrassing stories to his headstone, and fought for every reluctant laugh she pulled out of Katsuki's mouth.
Her heart bled the entire time.
He was Katsuki's person.
Katsuki had thought that he'd have time. Time to fix what they'd broken, time to be with him, time to appreciate him.
And he'd been wrong.
Instead, he came here to talk to stone and pretend it was someone he loved.
He was too young for his heart to be trapped below the earth.
Katsuki looked pained when it was time to go, like leaving Izuku alone here would tear him apart. Like he wanted to do something horrible, like crawl through the dirt to lie beside him.
"I'll be back soon," he promised to empty air, lingering as long as he could. There was a tremor in his voice when he whispered, "I miss you, Izuku."
He was quiet, as though he was listening—head bowed as he waited. Maybe he was hoping to hear Izuku, saying he missed him too.
Then, he turned, wiping the tears from his face.
Mina followed when he walked away, taking his arm. She knew he'd shake her off when they got to the gate.
The pain left his face with every step he took. The sadness disappeared from his eyes. His spine straightened and his jaw clenched.
He hid Izuku's presence in his heart.
By the time they got to the gate, his face was stony and stoic, like he was wearing a mask. He hid his shattered pieces hidden behind a blank facade.
He felt less real like this—more statue than man.
It was almost like he'd left his very soul behind.