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It was purple.
“Why is—“ Shouto asks.
“Shut up!” Bakugou snaps, shoving his extraordinarily purple knapsack underneath the bus seat. “This entire summer camp was a disaster, I don’t need you adding to it.”
“Okay.” Shouto says. He thinks, privately, that if Bakugou didn’t want him involved, Bakugou wouldn’t have sat next to him. There were a few empty seats in the bus still; but then again, he supposes, the summer camp had been— well, disaster was probably an understatement. Shouto looks out the window as the bus pulls away from the Pussycats’ forest, and wonders how things could have gone so wrong and so right at the same time. “Don’t we have to talk about it, though?”
“No.” Bakugou says.
“You got kidnapped by villains.” Shouto reminds him.
“I didn’t .”
“Are you sure?”
Bakugou is not, in fact, sure, and therein lies the problem. He kicks his obnoxiously purple backpack, and glares out the window, but the problem of “talking about it” still waits patiently for him to address it. More importantly, so does Shouto.
“I’ll start, if you want.” Shouto offers. Bakugou doesn’t say anything, so Shouto takes this as an invitation, and starts speaking.
***
“That’s my seat.” Todoroki says.
“It’s my backpack’s seat now.” Katsuki tells him.
“There’s nowhere else I can sit, and the bus is going to be leaving soon.” Todoroki points out, and Katsuki grudgingly puts his backpack on the floor. “Keep your feet away from it.” he huffs; the backpack was black and orange. Katsuki had gotten it because it looked like his hero costume, and was nearly as durable, which he needed in order to protect the item he’d brought with him.
Bring that to the summer camp, Izuku had said. Make sure it doesn’t get broken, and it’ll do what it needs to. And Katsuki wasn’t really in the habit of listening to Izuku, but circumstances had been… extenuating, to say the least.
“Weren’t we supposed to put our backpacks in the storage?” Todoroki asks.
“No.” Katsuki says, lying.
“We were.” Todoroki says; and what Katsuki hates about Todoroki, is how expressionless he always is. You can’t trust someone who doesn’t yell when they’re angry— that, and with no way of telling what Todoroki is feeling at any given time, he’s more or less unpredictable. Katsuki didn’t like unpredictable (yes, the stupidity with the Gyroscope was nothing if not unpredictable, but he didn’t really have a choice there, did he? And there was a certain sort of routine in its insanity, if you really looked).
“It’s not your problem if I didn’t.” Katsuki says.
“I suppose.” Todoroki says. The bus rumbles as it drives out of UA’s parking lot, towards who knows where and hero training. Katsuki vaguely wonders as to where they’re going, and is about to engage in imagining possible options (escape room buildings, some kind of wilderness obstacle course, private training with a group of pros) and ways to defeat them (explode everything, explode everything, and explode everything) when he hears an annoyingly grating jangling noise.
“What is that atrocity.” Katsuki asks, but it’s less of a question and more of a demand; Todoroki has taken a bracelet out of his pocket and put it on, but in Katsuki’s expert opinion, it’s less a bracelet and more an attack on all those who care about fashion.
“A bracelet.” Todoroki says, not inaccurately. Katsuki glares at him, using sheer willpower to cow Todoroki into clarifying. It works. “Sometimes I’ll find a key, and have no idea what it’s supposed to unlock… so, I keep it. I’ve found a lot of them.” Todoroki says. His supposed bracelet is just an extensive selection of keys attached to a metal loop.
“Where’d you get that one?” Katsuki asks, pointing at a small one of silver metal. The symbol on the back of it is rather unmistakable; how did Todoroki get ahold of what is likely to unlock the inside of the Gyroscope? The back panel of the device being locked had tormented Katsuki for months, since he won’t risk destroying it by exploding it open, but has found no recourse in alternate ways to pick the lock. He thinks exploding it wouldn’t work either, but still holds that as a back-pocket option.
“This one? Someone gave it to me.”
Katsuki feels the pricking of a horrible suspicion, one that wasn’t fair at all. Didn’t they trust him with the Gyroscope? He could manage not letting it get broken on his own, villain attack or no— he didn’t need help, much less help from Todoroki .
You sure about that? a voice in his head asks. You certainly needed Todoroki’s help when—
Katsuki tells the voice to shut up, even if he’s not convinced it will listen.
“I was angry about—“ Todoroki starts, and then he says a name that could be two different names at once, but Katsuki can’t hear either of them, “—dying; this was a few years ago… I went on a walk, ended up in a forest. Met someone there, we talked a little, and when I mentioned collecting keys, he gave me this one.”
“Did this person remind you of anyone?” Katsuki asks, before he can stop himself, and then he mentally punches himself. Not that physically punching himself is entirely guaranteed not to happen, he thinks darkly.
“A few minutes ago I would have said no, but now I think yes.” Todoroki says, looking directly at him, and Katsuki swears under his breath.
“Don’t say that.” Todoroki says. Katsuki decides he will be punching himself. And Izuku. And Todoroki.
“I can say what I like, Double Face.”
“Double… Face?” Todoroki asks, understandably confused at the nickname. It’s a deviation from the norm, for one, and Katsuki wasn’t much for that, never mind that the nickname didn’t really make sense. Unless you were Katsuki, at least.
“Half-and-half-and-half-and-half is two. Double Face.”
“I see.” Todoroki says, but he could be lying. He’s lying, isn’t he? Because if he’s not lying, that means he understands what Katsuki means, and if he does, then— “What’s in the bag?” Todoroki suddenly asks.
“The Gyroscope.” Katsuki says, because if Todoroki understands that, then he understands everything, and they’re all doomed.
“Oh.” Todoroki says. There’s a silence between them, or at least it would be a silence if it wasn’t for the background chatter on the bus. “I think this key unlocks it.”
“You think?” Katsuki asks, sarcastically.
“Yes.” Todoroki says, because he doesn’t understand sarcasm, so Katsuki tugs the atrocity of a bracelet off his wrist and unzips the backpack. “You’re going to unlock it here?”
“Why not?” Katsuki asks, and then, because Todoroki looks ready to start actually explaining why not, Katsuki pulls the silver astrolabe-looking thing out of his bag and unceremoniously unlocks the back panel.
“Was something supposed to be in there?” Todoroki asks, after a moment. Katsuki is about to respond yes, but then he remembers that no one ever told him anything about the back panel, so technically, no.
“Maybe it’s invisible.” Katsuki mumbles, and sticks his fingers into the tiny space. Nothing.
“I think,” Todoroki says, “I know what was in there.”
“What?” Katsuki asks, looking up, and then he sees it, too. “Oh.”
***
“Say,” Shouto asks, “do you still have the Gyroscope?”
“Do I look like I still have the Gyroscope?” Bakugou asks, holding up his hands locked in a quirk-restraint box. The League of Villains wasn’t kidding around in keeping him down, however, they had made the mistake of leaving him alone in a side room. Or at least he’d been alone until he and Shouto had arrived. “Let me out and we’ll see.”
Shouto obliges, unlocking everything keeping Bakugou down. No Gyroscope magically appears in his hands, which is disappointing.
“Time to get out of here.” Bakugou says, shoving open a window.
“But don’t the villains have to talk to you later?” Shouto asks.
“They will.” Bakugou says, gesturing back at himself, and Shouto remembers that transport does not result in replacement.
“I hate time travel.” the Bakugou who traveled with Shouto off the bus says.
“Seconded.” says the other Bakugou.
“I like it.” Shouto says, because despite everything, it made life interesting. “Do you have the Gyroscope?” he asks this other Bakugou.
“What do you think?” Bakugou snaps. That would be a no, then.
“I think that—“ and here is a name he cannot say, because he is forced to say both of them, “—probably has it, since he gave you the key in the first place.”
“Does he, now?” asks the Bakugou that’s staying. He punches his fist into his hand. “I should go take it from him.”
“Good luck.” Shouto says, and he means it.
After climbing out the window with Bakugou (one of them) the two walk for a short while until they encounter a group of people.
“Bakugou!” a badly-disguised Iida shouts.
“Todoroki?” an equally badly disguised Kirishima asks.
“I’m right here.” a badly disguised Todoroki says. Shouto looks at the other Todoroki, and then finds that the rest of the badly disguised group is glancing in shocked surprise between the two of them. Understandable, really, considering the circumstances.
“Bakugou’s getting the Gyroscope.” he says, by way of explanation, and then when the group looks at Bakugou, “not him.”
“Who, then?” badly-disguised Midoriya asks.
“The other one.” Bakugou says, because he’s contrary like that and doesn’t answer people’s questions.
“Can I have the key?” Shouto asks his other self, who easily gives it to him. Bakugou looks between both of them, and laughs.
“Half-and-Half, and Half-and-Half. That makes two— hah, maybe I should call you Double Face.” For this Bakugou was from a time before where Shouto is from, if events come to pass in a way that indicates he should exist at all.
“Now what?” Todoroki asks.
“We wait.” Shouto says. They don’t need to wait long.
***
“I can still miss him if I didn’t know him, can’t I?” Todoroki asks. Katsuki, tossing the Gyroscope up and down, glances at the seven-year-old version of his not-friend.
“Course you can. I miss the friendship I never had with Deku.” Katsuki says, because there’s something about talking to a baby Todoroki that makes him want to say things he wouldn’t say to anyone else. “Don’t tell that to Deku, mind.” Todoroki nods his head emphatically, even though he has no idea who Deku is, yet, and Katsuki thinks things through.
“What would you do if an older version of yourself showed up with this sparkly thing—“ Katsuki hefts the Gyroscope “—and with an older version of fricking Deku, too—“ Why hadn’t he realized the older Izuku had a quirk? That he was a hero? “—and they told you that the world was gonna end after summer camp if this thing stopped working.”
“Um.” Todoroki says. “I wouldn’t let it stop working?”
“No, of course you wouldn’t.” Katsuki says.
“If you’re from the future, do you know what happened to—“ Todoroki asks, and Katsuki can’t hear the name he’s saying, because it’s two names at once, but one of them is the answer to the question.
“Yes,” Katsuki says, “and so do you.”
“How?” Todoroki asks, because there’s no reason to ask why.
“He broke the world.” Katsuki sighs. “It’s our job to fix it.” He presses a silver key into Todoroki’s hand. “Hang onto this, won’t you? I think you’ve got a bracelet where it’ll fit.”
***
There’s a boy without a quirk, building a machine, because he hopes that the machine will give him one. It’s made out of an astrolabe and a world globe and a gyroscope, and named after the last, because Midoriya Izuku has never been all that good at naming things. He’s not particularly good at getting a quirk, either, which is why he doesn’t have one; but what he is good at is building time machines, even though he doesn’t know it, and that’s why he gets one of those.
After activating the Gyroscope (the power source of which is something that Izuku isn’t aware of, but he’ll figure it out eventually) the first thing Izuku sees is green lightning all over himself, and he assumes he’s gotten a quirk. For one second, that is, before his brain recalibrates and he realizes that although he’s looking at himself, he’s not looking at his current self.
“Oh.” Izuku says, twelve years old.
“Oh.” Midoriya says, sixteen years old. They stare at each other for a few moments, and then Midoriya takes the Gyroscope out of Izuku’s hand, unlocking the back of it with a key he had in his pocket.
“How’d you open that?” Izuku asks, because he bought the globe second-hand, but then he finds there’s a more pertinent question. “Why is the inside glowing?”
Maybe he should have asked why an older version of himself had inexplicably appeared, but those types of questions were usually answered in time. As it were.
“It’s glowing because it has half a soul in it.” Midoriya says. Izuku frowns.
“Whose soul?” he asks, and Midoriya answers with a name that’s two names at once.
“But— we have to get him out! I didn’t mean to trap anyone’s soul!”
“I know you didn’t. And don’t worry, he’ll get this half of his soul back; the question is whether the soul halves will go back together.” Midoriya says. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t reassure Izuku very much.
“You should ask Kacchan for help.” Izuku says. “He’s very smart.” And it’s been years since Katsuki and Izuku were anything resembling friends, and what Midoriya knows that Izuku doesn’t is that the only reason they held on for so long was because they didn’t want to let go.
“He is, isn’t he? I think I will ask him. Thank you.” Midoriya says, because it’s been a week since Bakugou and Midoriya have become friends. I’d say again, but they all know there wasn’t really a first time.
***
“What the frick. ” twelve-year-old Katsuki says, because he’s looking at himself, and at Izuku, and both of them are taller than he remembers.
“Hello, Kacchan.” Izuku says, and he has green lightning dancing around him.
“What’re you looking at?” Bakugou asks, and half of Bakugou’s shirt is burnt off. The edges of it steam in the rain, and more rain falls onto the silver globe, the Gyroscope, that Izuku holds out before him.
“We need your help.” Izuku says, and Katsuki takes the Gyroscope, because of course they do.
“Why?” he asks.
“Half-and-half’s in danger. We all are, really, because he did something idiotic. Getting kidnapped sucks, by the way.” Bakugou says.
“What kind of loser gets kidnapped?” Katsuki asks, even though he can guess the answer.
“You. Or rather me. But don’t worry, Double Face’ll get what’s coming to him; I won against his ice, I can win against his fire.” Bakugou says, confidently.
“Bring that to the summer camp.” Izuku says. “Make sure it doesn’t get broken, and it’ll do what it needs to.”
Katsuki shoves the Gyroscope inside his backpack, which is green.
“Who’s this Double Face Half-and-half person? And what’s he in danger from?” he asks. And there are a lot of answers to both of those questions, but one answer answers both of them, so Izuku uses that one.
“Himself.” he says.
“When you lock your fire away, where does it go?” Bakugou asks.
“And when you use it again, what will it do?” Izuku asks.
“How would I know?” Katsuki asks.
“You will.” Bakugou says. Katsuki glowers at both of them, and then, having decided to no longer suffer fools, walks off, possibly to have an existential crisis.
“Here’s the key.” Todoroki says. He wasn’t standing in front of Bakugou and Izuku a moment ago, but he is now.
“You’re looking very… crispy.” Bakugou says, because he has no tact, and he’s not wrong, either.
“I’m aware.” Todoroki says. “Thank you both, so much, for all you’ve done to help. For helping us reunite.”
“I just don’t want the world to explode.” Bakugou says, but he doesn’t want Todoroki to explode, either. Even if he’s a little late towards preventing that.
“I’m sorry. It was my fault.” Izuku says, because it was.
“I don’t blame you. You did what you should have, when it came down to it. You saved us all.” Todoroki says, because Izuku had.
“I still started the problem.” Izuku says.
“And I was the problem. There’s nothing we can do for what’s done; only what will be.”
“What happened when you reunited? Did—“ and here Bakugou says a name at the same time as another one, “—get erased from existence?”
“Who knows?” Todoroki asks. Bakugou takes the key from him.
“Where’d you get this, anyway?” he asks.
“I made it.” Todoroki says, because he’s both the end and the beginning of the story.
***
The forest is on fire, burning a bright blue, and Bakugou Katsuki holds the Gyroscope in his hands. Todoroki runs behind him, and Izuku runs beside him, but none of them can escape their fate; the Gyroscope glows white, and they encounter the source of the flames.
“Who are you?” Todoroki asks, staring up at a man made of staples and scars.
“I’m Dabi.” the man says, but that is not his name.
“No.” Todoroki says, because he knows, even if it’s far too late.
“I’m Touya.” the man says, and you might wonder why he tells the truth, and that’s because it’s a lie.
“No.” Todoroki says, and wonders if he will die.
“I’m Shouto.” the man says, and he’s got it right this time.
“Half-and-half, and Half-and-half. Double Face.” Bakugou says.
The Gyroscope is empty, because it holds half of Shouto’s soul; because he swore off his fire at the same time that Izuku was looking for a quirk, as he’d built a machine out of objects bought at thrift stores and wished for something impossible. And Shouto had half a quirk to give and half a soul to lose, and he missed his eldest brother, even though he never had one.
Shouto— not Todoroki— takes the Gyroscope from Bakugou’s hand, and there’s a moment that puts everything in motion before stopping it in the same second it began.
Dabi appears when Shouto first uses his fire in the sports festival, a manifestation of long-held hate, and he believes he knows his own name. He does not. The thing about time travel is that if one thing is changed, then all must follow, and the Todorokis gain memories of a brother who never died, because he never existed, and yet still always lived.
Shouto breaks the world, and then Todoroki fixes it by putting his soul back together, and then Dabi doesn’t exist anymore, and that kind of changes a lot.
***
In one world, Bakugou was kidnapped by the League, and a mission was mounted to rescue him. But that world isn’t around anymore, and neither is the Gyroscope, and Class 1A rides safely home.
“So, the bag is purple because you didn’t order a custom extra-durable backpack to protect the Gyroscope.” Izuku concludes, leaning over his bus seat to talk to Bakugou and Todoroki.
“And you didn’t get kidnapped because Dabi wasn’t there to kidnap you.” That’s Todoroki’s contribution. Oh, look, Izuku thinks, we can say his name now. Probably because Todoroki has only one name to his… name… now.
“Now what?” Bakugou asks, and there are a lot of answers to that question, really.
“Whatever we want to.” Izuku says, and erasing a version of your classmate from existence is the kind of experience that isn’t easily put aside, so then he asks if they can all be friends now.
Todoroki says yes , because he’s spent so long without half of himself that he’s now more than ready to make space for others; and Bakugou doesn’t say no , because a twelve-year-old Izuku broke the world in search of a quirk and told his older self to ask Bakugou for help, because Bakugou told a seven-year-old Todoroki the truth of what he wanted. He doesn’t say yes , though. He has too much pride for that.
What’s important is that he didn’t say no, and that’s okay for now.
THE END