Chapter Text
Katsuki needs to die the way a person needs oxygen to live.
He craves death like an addict, fantasizes about it, hell, prays for it. But it never comes. A bitter disappointment. He likes to say that he isn’t suicidal, but then again, can you really wish for your own death and not be? Yeah, I didn’t think so. It didn’t help his case that for years he’d been actively seeking a way out, to, you know, delete himself from the server… Trying to figure out how to die has become a hobby of his, one of two things that occupies his mind.
The thing is, Katsuki lost a big chunk of his will to live a long time ago.
A. Long. Goddamn. Time. Ago.
I was destined to suffer, that’s the only explanation he had to offer as to why shit hit the fan every fucking second of his life. It hadn’t always been that way. Born with raw natural talent and a fucking awesome quirk to back it up. From the moment he drew his first breath, envy was leeching off others before they ever realized it. Yeah, life had been pretty fantastic for a bit.
He’s had plenty of time to think about where it all went wrong, and every internal conversation with himself led him right back to the same conclusion every time: the final battle against Shigaraki and All For One. But his biggest regret in life, however, came just days before it all ended.
_________
Before
Life as everyone had known it was crumbling around them. The League of Villains under orders from All For One was making life a living hell. Criminals ran rampant around the cities, stealing and destroying everything in sight. Families of students and civilians that were willing took shelter at UA in hope of keeping casualties to a minimum. Everything about this situation was wrong, and if you had told Katsuki that this was how his first year of being a hero student was going to go when he was first accepted into UA, he would’ve told you that you’re out of your fucking mind. But unfortunately this was his—and everyone else’s—reality. Regardless, Katsuki had hopes that this would all work out in the end, that the heroes would prevail, but honestly, he didn’t know.
At the time, the only thing Katsuki did know was that he was hopelessly in love with Izuku Midoriya. Insane, he knows, but fuck if it wasn’t the truth. It was sick— he was such a sick fuck for falling in love with the same boy he tormented for years, but he couldn’t help it. The heart wants what it wants, or whatever. In his own twisted way, Katsuki always knew he cared about Izuku. He’d never been great at expressing his feelings; bullying Izuku throughout their childhood was a testament to that.
It all started after their fight at Ground Beta. He’d told Izuku that “nothing would ever be the same,” though Katsuki never intended for those words to mean much more than what they did. Because somewhere along the way, through rivalry and late nights helping Izuku harness One For All, Katsuki started to feel much more drawn to the nerd for far deeper reasons than wanting to best him. No, Katsuki had started to feel more, to want more than just the game of chase they’d played with each other for so many fucking years. He just didn’t understand how much more until Izuku left UA to hunt down villains on his own. Cliché, yeah, but he couldn’t help if that was the last line of defense on his heart’s breaking point. So when he finally got the chance to make it right, he did with a heartfelt apology in the rain.
Izuku had been utterly filthy that night. Blood and dirt caked into his hero costume, his hair was matted with sweat and god knows what else. But Katsuki didn’t care; he didn’t pay it any attention—not when Izuku fell into his arms. The only thing that mattered to him was that he had Izuku back because fuck, it had been a rough couple of months without that dumbass. Katsuki hadn’t been able to sleep or eat much, for that matter. He’d always had a bad attitude, but it was working overtime after Izuku left. He had been snapping at his classmates more and more as the days passed, and Izuku’s absence was taking a toll on everyone. But that was all over now.
What Katsuki did the night Izuku returned to UA had been incredibly selfish, he knew that. But he also knew that if he didn’t lay everything out on the table, he probably would lose the courage to ever do it. And Katsuki Bakugou was no fucking coward.
It had been late into the night, almost two a.m., and everyone in the dorms was fast asleep. Or so Katsuki had thought. He remembers that he had a godawful headache (probably from lack of sleep) and he went down into the kitchen for something to drink when a head of wild green curls caught his attention from behind the couch. Katsuki moved closer, finding Izuku sitting with his knees pulled tight to his chest, watching an old All Might cartoon on the TV.
“Can’t sleep?” Izuku mumbled, only glancing away from the TV for a second as he spoke. Katsuki took a seat on the free cushion beside him.
“Nah. I haven’t been able to for a while now,” he admitted softly. “What about you? Why are you still awake?”
Izuku shrugged and tore his eyes away from the TV, allowing Katsuki to fully study him. The dark circles under his eyes were still prominent, and Izuku’s entire face looked exhausted. “I can’t sleep either. I’ve gotten so used to staying up for so long that I can’t make myself rest. You’d think that being here would finally help, but to be honest, it just makes it… harder.”
Katsuki shifted so that he was fully facing Izuku, pulling his feet under him. “Why? I mean, it’s gotta be safer here than wherever the fuck you’ve been sleeping for the last three months.”
Izuku scoffed lightly. “Yeah, safer for me maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that my being here endangers everyone else. I can’t sleep because—” Izuku paused and let out a heavy sigh, looking off to the side as if he would find the answer sitting in the darkness. “Kacchan, I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to everyone here because I came back home.” Tears began to well in his eyes and Izuku looked back toward the TV, blinking quickly so that they wouldn’t fall.
Katsuki didn’t know much about comforting anyone. He’d never been good at things like that, which was a big part of the reason he’d shoved his own feelings down for most of his life. He’d seen in movies where, most of the time, you hug the person who’s hurting, and honestly in that moment he wanted nothing more than to pull Izuku into his arms and hold him. So he did.
It didn’t help keep Izuku from crying, in fact, it only made it worse. He laid his head down on Katsuki’s chest without hesitation and wrapped his arms around him as he let out a choked sob. Katsuki didn’t know what to do from that point. He had no idea what the fuck to say. So he just pulled Izuku close and held him as he cried, running a scared hand through his clean curls. It had felt so foreign holding Izuku like that, in a way that Katsuki had never touched anyone or allowed anyone to touch him. It had felt… nice. Too damn nice. After a little while, Izuku’s sobs died down to sniffles, yet he still clung to Katsuki like his life depended on it. Katsuki felt pleasantly surprised to find he was glad that Izuku didn’t let go.
“You don’t have to worry about us… Izuku,” Katsuki started. That was another new thing, using the nerd’s real name. “We can take care of ourselves. You don’t have to run yourself ragged to protect us. We’re gonna be heroes too, ya know?”
Izuku nodded into his chest. “I know that, Kacchan, but the League wants me. I can’t help but feel like if I wasn’t here that everyone would be safer—”
“No!” Katsuki said rougher than he meant, as he tightened his hold around Izuku. He wasn’t completely convinced that if he let go Izuku wouldn’t disappear. “You belong here at UA. You belong here with…” me, His mind supplied. Katsuki swallowed hard and rested his face in Izuku’s hair. “Don’t leave me again, Izuku.”
Izuku let out a surprised noise and pulled away just enough to look at him. “Kacchan, what!? I didn’t leave you! I was trying to keep you and everyone else safe—”
“You did leave me!” Katsuki accused, his eyes stinging with tears he didn’t realize he was holding back. All those feelings and emotions from the last couple months without Izuku were finally catching up with him in the most humiliating way possible. He fucking hated crying, but he couldn’t make the tears stop, or the words that were coming from his mouth despite how fucking embarrassing they sounded. “You left me behind. I could’ve come with you and we could’ve fought the villains together. You didn’t have to do it by yourself! Do you know how fucking worried—!?”
“Kacchan, calm down,” Izuku said gently as he cupped Katsuki’s face with rough hands, using his thumbs to wipe away the tears streaming down his face. “I’m not leaving like that ever again. I was just letting you know how I feel. That’s all.”
“Promise me then,” Katsuki said hoarsely with a sniffle. “Promise that you won’t leave me again.” Through the dim light cast by the TV, Katsuki could see the puzzled expression that was written across Izuku’s face. He knew how embarrassing he sounded, how desperate, but he didn’t care. Because with Izuku, showing how he felt was always safe. He knew that with him he was never being judged, no matter how much he might have deserved it.
“Kacchan, I— where is this coming from?” Izuku asked softly. Katsuki wanted to look away, and he tried, but Izuku’s hands held his face steady. “Tell me what’s going on with you? I’m not trying to rub salt in the wound or anything because I’ve already forgiven you long before you apologized to me the other night, but I’ve never seen you like this over anything… especially me. Tell me what’s wrong?”
“It’s you, Izuku. You’re what’s wrong with me,” Katsuki blurted out before he could stop himself. A flash of hurt flicked across Izuku’s face, and Katsuki gathered the other’s hands in his as he continued. “I couldn’t sleep or fucking eat while you were gone, and you can ask everyone here that I was the asshole of the century. Do you know how it felt, wondering if you were even still fucking alive? If you had something to eat or somewhere safe to lay your head at night?”
Izuku stared at him with wide eyes, a mixture of confusion and disbelief reflecting off those expressive greens. His bottom lip began to tremble as he finally spoke. “Kacchan, are you… what are you saying?”
Katsuki could’ve told Izuku right then and there that he loved him. Looking back on it, he should have. It wouldn’t have changed the way things went, but at least Izuku would’ve heard the words. But Katsuki couldn’t bring himself to do it, to tell Izuku despite everything. He feared it would’ve been too much. He had just apologized a day before for everything he’d ever done to Izuku, and Katsuki felt that confessing his feelings right then and there would’ve been too selfish. He’d already been selfish to Izuku to last several lifetimes over. There was too much going on, so much for them to work out still, that it didn’t feel appropriate to say I love you. Truthfully, Katsuki hadn’t deserved to say it yet, and when he eventually planned to tell Izuku, he wanted the other to wholeheartedly believe him. So instead Katsuki took the scarred hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing a crooked finger like it was something sacred.
“I’m saying that I need you here, Izuku. I need you with me. Promise me that you’ll stay.” Katsuki whispered as he searched Izuku’s face. He prayed that was enough for Izuku to understand. It only took a second, just a few moments for Izuku to process what Katsuki had just said, before with a tearful smile he fell back into Katsuki’s chest and hugged him back.
“I promise, Kacchan.”
God how Katsuki wished he had told him.
__
The two of them never voiced aloud that they were together; it was just something they silently understood after that night on the couch. Izuku started to spend the night in Katsuki’s room after that, where they would hold each other as they talked and fell asleep. It seemed to be the only way either of them could sleep. For Katsuki it was the security that he had Izuku right within his reach, that when he woke up from a nightmare of Izuku being gone he would blink himself back to life with the smell of Izuku’s shampoo under his nose and a warm body pressed against his. For Izuku it was the confirmation that even though his presence at UA posed a danger to everyone else, he could sleep knowing that one of them was safe in his arms.
Waking up to Izuku running his fingers through his hair had to be Katsuki’s favorite part of the day, and every morning it got harder and harder not to say those three little words. If the rest of their families and friends noticed how close the two had gotten, they never mentioned it to Katsuki or Izuku. Life had become bearable with Izuku back with him, and even though they were all planning the attack on the League, it was still the best nine days Katsuki had ever spent.
Was.
__
Both of them died on the tenth day, but only one came back to life. Well, as alive as you can after finding the person you love the most dead.
Katsuki doesn’t remember much from that day. He remembers fighting Shigaraki in the sky coffin before he died. Death had been like a dream. It was warm and comforting, but other than that he couldn’t recall what happened. When he was finally revived thanks to Edgeshot, he then went on to defeat All For One and save All Might. He was sure that had been the worst of it. It had to be because nothing could be worse than his mentor half dead in his arms or the terrible ache in his chest. Yeah, Katsuki was sure that the worst was over. That was until he returned to the sky coffin to find Izuku’s lifeless body, with Mirko, Jeanist, and Miro surrounding him.
Everything is vague from that point. All Katsuki remembers is falling to his knees beside Izuku’s corpse. Izuku was cold, the kind of cold that couldn’t be fixed by being held in strong trembling arms, but Katsuki tried anyway. His hero costume was tattered, only the bottom half remained, and even that bit was bloodied and torn. What little of Izuku’s skin that wasn’t caked in blood that Katsuki could see was pale. It seemed impossible for a living person to be that white. Katsuki watched carefully for the rise and fall of Izuku’s chest, he listened for the sound of Izuku’s heartbeat. But neither of them ever came.
“Dynamight…” Mirko’s voice had come softly from behind him, and he felt a hesitant hand grasp his shoulder.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Katsuki rasped through a sob, roughly shoving off Mirko’s hand. “He’s not— no, he can’t be…”
Dead
But he was. Izuku Midoriya was dead. Katsuki’s hands trembled around Izuku’s cold, limp arms. This isn’t right… it can’t be! Not Izuku. He can’t be… this can’t be real. I’m dead. I’m fucking dead and this is hell.
“Izuku… wake up,” Katsuki pleaded through his tears. His voice wasn’t his own, torn and forced through the vice grip his throat was in. Katsuki began to hyperventilate, and his heartbeat thumped off rhythm as he pulled Izuku’s body upward. His head lolled back sickeningly as thick dark blood oozed from his cracked-open skull. Nausea twisted inside Katsuki’s gut at the sight and the taste of bile coated his tongue. Izuku looked positively dead. It was almost like the unfathomable notion finally clicked in Katsuki’s head, and he felt a surge of fear and pain coursed through him.
“No, no, no, no, no! Wake up, dammit!” Katsuki shrieked, shaking Izuku’s body as if it would revive him, but it only made the blood gush out from his head faster. He didn’t look right, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Like a deku.
“Oh God… no, fuck, please Izuku wake up p-please!” Katsuki begged, sending spit flying as he screamed into Izuku’s face. “You p-promised me, dammit! You promised!”
Katsuki didn’t know how long he screamed at Izuku’s lifeless body, just that his throat felt like knives with every swallow and painfully spoken word. He wasn’t sure when Izuku had been ripped away from him, or when he ended up curled into himself on the ground with his hero costume soaked in Izuku’s blood.
All he knew was that Izuku was dead.
__
It had been a brain hemorrhage, is what the coroner said after the autopsy. Once Izuku’s skull had been cracked open and he chose to continue fighting Shigaraki, he’d signed his own death certificate. The intracranial pressure had been too much. There was nothing to be done, no amount of cellular regeneration could save him.
The funeral was held three days after his death. Sooner than a normal funeral, but it had to be done. There were no funeral homes, no way for his body to be preserved long enough before it began to rot. It wasn’t even close to what Izuku deserved. A sick fucking joke. Everyone came— their teachers and friends, even people who’d never met him. Due to the damage done to Izuku’s face, it was a closed casket funeral, if you would even want to call it that. His casket was nothing more than a wooden box that some of the support course students had thrown together during the little time they had. Only his loved ones were allowed to see him one last time. Inko had been inconsolable at the sight of her baby boy in his casket. Katsuki thought that he wanted that, to see Izuku before he said goodbye forever. God, how fucking wrong he had been.
Izuku didn’t look anything like he’d hoped for. Due to the mass destruction done during the battle, there were no mortuaries to help fix and replicate his face. So instead a thick white bandage ran from Izuku’s scalp and all the way down his cheek, covering his left eye completely. His cheeks were already starting to sink in, and he was so goddamn pale from blood loss that even his freckles had lost their color.
Katsuki hated himself for it, but as he stood there staring into Izuku’s casket, he envied him. He envied that Izuku didn’t have to feel this way, like his heart had been ripped from his chest for a second time. He knew that Izuku had saved the world, but it had been at the expense of his life. It wasn’t worth it.
The world’s worth didn’t weigh half of what Izuku did.
__
Nine years passed, and Katsuki’s 25th birthday rolled around. He had to work, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. As a pro hero, you never really have a day off. Besides, there wasn’t much to celebrate anyways. After graduating from UA and earning his permanent hero license, Katsuki decided to stay with Best Jeanist’s agency. Most of his class traveled outside Musutafa for hero work, but not him. He couldn’t bear to leave, to stray too far away from the last thing that held him close to Izuku.
Katsuki never stopped thinking of him. Anytime he tried something new, his mind would wonder: would Izuku like this? It was like a compulsion to find some way to integrate Izuku into everything he did. He had to. His therapist, whom he’d known since the war ended, suggested journaling, which he did. The first couple of entries had been about mundane things—how his day went or how he felt. Somewhere along the way they became only about Izuku.
He wrote down everything about Izuku. At this point in his life, he’d probably accumulated fifty journals, all of which were filled from front to back with things about Izuku—what he loved most about him, the things they’d done together. On his worst days, Katsuki would write letters to him, hoping that somehow his soul could hear the words he never said aloud. He kept everything that reminded him of the boy he loved. Inko had given him old photographs of the two of them when they were so young. Katsuki couldn’t bear to look at them for too long; they were constant reminders of how much time he’d spent trying to get away from Izuku and how he would never have the chance to make amends with more than just words. He carried one everywhere he went.
When Katsuki arrived at the agency on the morning of his 25th birthday, he was greeted at the door by Kirishima. He was one of his classmates who decided to stay in Musutafa, though he worked at Fatgum’s agency a few streets over.
“Happy Birthday, Bakugou! How does it feel to be so old?” Kirishima asked happily, with a toothy grin, shoving a gift bag into Katsuki’s hands.
“Tch, fuck off. I’m only a couple months older than you,” Katsuki grumbled, taking the gift anyway. He opened it carefully and pulled out a pair of gloves. “What the fuck is this?”
Kirishima beamed despite Katsuki’s sour mood. “They are heating gloves! I had Hatsume make them just for you, so you won’t have any problem generating heat with your hands during the winter! Isn’t that cool?”
Staring down sadly at the gloves, Katsuki didn’t have the heart to tell his best friend that his winter suit already had heated gloves—something Izuku had suggested he incorporate during their first winter at UA. “Yeah, that is pretty cool,” Katsuki settled with, in a whisper, plastering on a tight smile. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem!” Kirishima chirped before pulling Katsuki close in a tight side hug.
“What the—“
click
“Oi you know I hate taking pictures!” Katsuki yelled after a giggling Kirishima that had ran nearly halfway down the street.
The day started like a shift of hero work always did. Katsuki went inside the agency, greeted his coworkers, and then settled into one of the squishy office chairs Best Jeanist kept in the conference room. After debriefing the heroes, they all split away to their respective sections of town to patrol. Katsuki clung to the roofs of the buildings, surveying each block from a bird’s-eye view. When he didn’t notice anything suspicious, he took the streets on foot, walking around to bring a sense of security to citizens and to let his presence be a deterrent to potential villains. It was about two hours into his patrol, and there was still nothing going on within his section. Boring, but something to be thankful for. Then again, not many people chose to fuck around and find out when the number eight hero was roaming the streets. Katsuki frowned when he thought about his ranking, but honestly, it didn’t bother him that much. Sure, he was still fighting for the number-one spot, but dying to get it wasn’t as exciting as it once had been. He stopped to look at his reflection in a small shop window, wondering as he stared at himself when he’d lost his drive. He scoffed at himself. You know when. And as an afterthought, What I wouldn’t give to have the life we should have had together, Izuku…
At that moment, something caught his eye in the window’s reflection. Someone was watching him. He squinted to get a better look, not daring to turn around too quickly in case that would scare the stranger away. Off to his left, at the opening of a small alleyway, stood a woman. He could tell that she was tall and thin, with long dark hair, but he couldn’t see much of her face from the distance. She wasn’t doing anything suspicious; in fact, she wasn’t doing anything at all—just staring.
“Tch.” He clicked his tongue and picked up his pace again. Probably just another fan, he reasoned. Dynamight had plenty of fans, but among those were the select few who had a tad of stalker-ish tendencies. Whatever. It was nothing for him to worry about. Most of them were too afraid to approach him directly anyway and opted to leave hundreds of letters in his P.O. Box. He glanced in the woman’s direction as he walked by, and she seemed rooted to the spot, standing still as ever, her eyes following him as he went. He had half a mind to yell over and ask what the problem was when a screech of metal caught his attention.
Katsuki’s eyes shot forward, and just a few yards away was a car that had seemingly lost control, hurtling straight toward a bus stop full of commuters. Moving before he could think, he propelled himself using explosions from his hands, heading directly for the people at the bus stop.
“Watch out!” he shouted as he soared through the air. None of them were paying attention— because of course they weren’t—until they heard him scream. He didn’t miss the look of horror on their faces when they realized they had no time to get out of the way. He knew he couldn’t stop the car; his quirk wasn’t built for that, and if he used an explosion to try to slow down the vehicle, he’d not only be unsuccessful but would also put the driver at greater risk and possibly other pedestrians.
The four people waiting froze, and just before the car was able to hit any of them, Katsuki swooped two people into each arm and used explosions from his feet to send them all out of harm’s way. That quirk awakening during the war had come in handy countless times, and it was moments like these he was grateful for it. He landed with the people just mere feet away from where they had stood before, crashing into a brick building with a hard thud. His arms took most of the impact, and oh yeah—that was definitely a broken wrist, but fuck it. Setting the people down in the blink of an eye, Katsuki turned just in time to watch the car fly by, long thick strands of white chasing after it and sticking to the car’s back windshield, causing the wheels to squeal as they spun in place.
He knew who the tape belonged to before he even looked. Standing about twenty feet away was Sero, heaving out short quick breaths as his elbows buckled from the car’s inertia. With no time to think about how the fuck that man’s arms hadn’t been ripped in two, Katsuki darted to the front of the car and pushed to help relieve some of the pressure, slapping the hood hard enough to dent it. “Get your foot off the fucking gas!” he yelled over the car’s engine, looking up to find that the driver was out cold. “Shit!”
Scrambling to get the driver’s door, Katsuki grimaced at his throbbing wrist as he pulled on the locked door until it popped open. He pushed the driver’s foot off the gas pedal, and immediately the car shifted to a complete stop. Katsuki slumped forward with the rock of the car, his vision blurring a little as he tried to catch his breath. “Fucking Christ.” He sighed, propping himself against the steering wheel to pull the keys from the ignition once his vision cleared. He put two fingers to the man’s neck, a thready but present pulse beating irregularly against his gloved finger. He was breathing too— so he probably just passed out while driving. Katsuki clicked a small button on the communicator in his ear to open up a line. “I need an ambulance on 47th Street, stat. Got an unconscious driver and probably a few minor injuries.” He said, glancing over at the pedestrians he’d just saved, one of whom was clutching a bleeding nose.
The police and ambulances arrived a short time later and tended to all the injured first. It took a little shouting and a lot of convincing from the paramedics and Sero before Katsuki allowed himself to be checked out too. It wasn’t anything terrible—just a possibly broken wrist (he fucking called it)—and his heart rate was a little out of rhythm. “I can take myself to the damn hospital. I don’t need an ambulance,” Katsuki complained. The paramedic wasn’t easily convinced.
“Yeah, I don’t think so. You really exerted yourself trying to stop a moving vehicle with just your raw strength, and based on what you told us about your shortness of breath paired with these EKG readings we’re getting, it’s not safe enough to take yourself.”
Katsuki only half-surpressed the growl that rose from his throat, and he opened his mouth to spew a string of curses at the medic before Sero interjected ever so kindly. “Dynamight, c’mon now, you know damn well how serious your heart thing is. It’ll only take a little bit for the hospital to heal your wrist and check up on your heart.”
“I fucking know that, Elbows! I’m not pressed for time or anything, it’s just that…” Katsuki growled, running his uninjured hand down his face before shoving it in the direction of the press that magically appeared from nowhere. “I don’t need this shit right now.”
Sero glanced over his shoulder, frowning at the photographers inching closer to Katsuki’s ambulance. “Don’t worry about them,” he reassured, turning his attention back to Katsuki. “I’ll get rid of em’. You just worry about getting that heart under control.”
Katsuki thumbed at the oxygen tubing around his ear, his glare bouncing from the press back to Sero before he sighed. “Fine.”
He nodded. “Thank you. I’ll come check on you as soon as we get this cleared up.”
Katsuki relaxed into his stretcher once the ambulance door was shut, blocking his view from the press. Every time his heart acted up during hero work, that’s what made the headlines. Not that he saved people, no—just that his body can’t keep up with what he does. In the last few years it had gotten persistent, and he’d tried his best to ignore the tabloids, but how the fuck do you ignore it when talk shows start to say that “Dynamight’s physical limitations call into question how competent he can be as a hero”? It’s pretty damn hard. Whatever, he still gets his job done and he’s in the top ten and rising. He saves people—that’s what matters, busted heart be damned.
After arriving at the hospital, Katsuki went through the usual tests he’s subjected to whenever his heart goes a little wonky: cardiac enzyme labs, another EKG, vitals, that sort of thing, while he waits in a private room breathing in oxygen from a nasal cannula. The worst part about his heart issues is how tired he gets, and he’s about two seconds from dozing off when the doctors finally knock on the door.
“Ah, Dynamight. It’s always a pleasure.” He greets, closing the door quietly behind him. “How are you?”
“I’m all right,” Katsuki grunts out, pushing himself to sit up straighter in bed. “Lemme guess, everything’s normal, just my heart’s being a crybaby.”
The doctor laughs lightly. “Yes, I suppose that’s one way to put it.” He pauses, then his expression turns serious. “But I have to tell you, just as I’ve done on your last few visits, I think it would be wise for you to get a pacemaker.”
Absolutely the fuck not, and Katsuki tells him exactly that. “Yeah, no. I already told you I’m not getting a pacemaker. I’m not some old man, I’m not even thirty yet!”
“Getting a pacemaker won’t make you an old man, Dynamight, but it would make you a wiser one. With your heart rhythm going off like this, there’s a chance it might not correct itself someday. A pacemaker would keep you safe—“
“Look I already said no,” Katsuki interrupted, trying his best to keep his tone even through gritted teeth. “I’m fine. Just tell me how long you’re keeping me for observation this time so I can go back to work.”
The doctor sighed heavily through his nose, glancing between Katsuki and the vitals monitor keeping track of his readings. “We will revisit this conversation another day. I’m not trying to pressure you, but you’re too young to die, especially from something completely preventable. Observation is the standard three hours, as long as we see no significant change in your heart rhythm. I advise that you do not return to work today, but,” he sighed and handed Katsuki a work excuse slip— one of the dozens he’s never used, “if you do please keep it light. I’ll be back to check on you shortly.”
“Thanks.” Katsuki mumbled as the doctor stepped out of the room, laying the slip down on the bedside table before closing his eyes. Maybe he could squeeze a quick nap in before Sero came by. Katsuki made a mental note to take his friend out for a drink for handling the press for him before drifting into an uneasy sleep.
He got maybe an hour’s rest at most before a sharp knock on the door woke him with a jerk. “Come in.” Katsuki yawned, rubbing his eyes as the door opened. Sero walked in and took a seat in the chair closest to the bed.
“Hey, man! Got the press all taken care of for you. I might have lied a little and said that you injured your shoulder while trying to stop the car, but at least they won’t be focused on… you know.”
Katsuki nodded. “Yeah, I get it. Thanks for that.”
“Anytime,” Sero replied. “Speaking of which, how is your heart?”
Katsuki let out a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a scoff. “How’s my heart? What about your fucking arms! How the hell do you still have them? You stopped a moving car with your elbows.” Not many things awestruck Katsuki, but that, yeah, even he could admit, was fucking awesome.
Sero grinned wildly and raised his elbows, both sporting two bulky mechanical-looking sleeves. “Support items from Hats. They’re steel springs inside that help take the tension off my arms. I think they’re probably shot now though; stopping a car might have been a little much.” He finished, frowning slightly as he petted at the sleeves.
“They were free, am I right?” Katsuki smirked, and Sero visibly blushed. “Perks to being married to the best tech genius UA had to offer.” Hatsume was fucking insane, sure, but that woman definitely knew how to throw together a support item like no other.
“Yeah,” Sero admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “It is pretty great.” It was quiet for a moment, and then Sero spoke again, but this time his tone sounded much more solemn and hushed. “Y’know, I bet Midoriya would’ve loved these.”
Katsuki inhaled deeply before letting out a slow breath. It still shocked him how, even after nearly ten years of Izuku being gone, it still hurt just as bad as the day he died when someone brought him up. “Yeah, he would have. He would’ve definitely wanted something similar for his legs. No doubt the nerd’s knees would’ve gone out by now.” He said quietly. Sero agreed.
They talked a bit longer, mostly about how the other victims were doing, and Katsuki was pleased to find out that they were all okay and that the driver was in stable condition. Wanting to let Katsuki use the last hour of his observation period to nap, Sero told him goodbye and closed the door behind him. No such nap would find Katsuki. He couldn’t push Izuku from his mind even if he wanted to; he lived rent-free in Katsuki’s head. He didn’t mind the occupied space. It was depressing to think about how far they would’ve come together, what they could’ve accomplished. Katsuki chuckled sadly to himself. If Izuku were still alive, he had no doubt that he would’ve gotten the pacemaker by now; that little shit would’ve been relentless until Katsuki had. They’d probably be living in some cozy three-bedroom cottage that Katsuki would’ve absolutely hated, but Izuku would have loved. Probably have a cat or two… be married.
“Fuck.” Katsuki hissed in a low breath, rubbing the tears escaping from under his closed eyelids away. Izuku would have stayed with him the whole time at the hospital and absolutely refused to let him go back to work. Katsuki would’ve bitched, of course, though it would only have been just to keep the habit of annoying the nerd. He wouldn’t have wanted anything other than to be lying in bed for the rest of the day, being doted over, watched by those careful, loving green eyes. Kinda pathetic, but not really. Izuku had made things like that feel safe. If he focused long enough, Katsuki could almost feel the way Izuku used to thread his fingers through his hair. He focused really hard for that last hour.
Katsuki started heading towards work once he was discharged from observation. Just like he always did. He wasn’t short on cash and he didn’t enjoy being a workaholic; there was just nothing else for him. This was it, this was his life. Work, eat, sleep. He hung out with his friends a good bit; he certainly wasn’t a recluse, but on the days when everyone was busy and Best Jeanist absolutely refused to let him work an extra shift for the third time within two weeks, Katsuki was at home. Simply existing.
While he walked back to Best Jeanist’s UA hero agency, he thought about a lot of things, mostly what the doctor had said to him. Something along the lines of, “With your heart going out of rhythm constantly like this, there’s a chance that it might not correct itself one day,” and, “I’m not trying to pressure you, but you’re too young to die, especially from something completely preventable.”
To any other twenty-five-year-old, hearing those sentences would have been terrifying enough to convince them to take the pacemaker the first time the doctor suggested it. But to Katsuki, for the oddest reason, those words brought him… relief. Almost like a breath of fresh air. Probably something he should concern himself with more, but those are thoughts for later. He also thought about how, if Izuku were still alive, he would probably have already gotten the stupid pacemaker the moment the nerd gave him those eyes and that pout. Gave him something to live for.
He was well aware of how ridiculous he sounded to himself, how out of character and overboard his thoughts were. He never quite understood how people lost their minds when they lost someone they loved. Thinking back to when he was a kid, before Izuku’s passing, when he’d see movie scenes or hear about people falling apart because of a loved one dying, he’d thought it was because they allowed themselves to fall that deep into grief. It’s up to you to pick yourself up; no one else can do it for you. He’d always lived by that, which is probably why he never accepted a helping hand until it was too late. Yeah, that was definitely why. The point was: he understood now. He wished he didn’t, but he did. How do you pull yourself out of something that consumes your entire being? That makes you feel like you’re drowning in air? Something that can’t ever be reversed or fixed?
How do you get over the one thing that you’ve been running toward your whole life?
The short answer: you can’t. Not completely, not forever. There was no “getting over” this, not for good. Izuku wasn’t something for him to get over. He was something Katsuki loved a little too late for too short a time. No, that’s not quite right. He was something that Katsuki would love forever.
Maybe that’s why, instead of going straight to Best Jeanist’s agency, Katsuki walked right past the joint. It was absentminded at first, but after a few blocks he knew exactly where his feet were carrying him. To the oldest cemetery in Musutafa, on the other side of town—the only one that had survived the mass destruction a little over nine years ago. The one that was home to his loved one’s decaying body.
He was still in his hero costume, his work slip clutched tightly in one hand. He didn’t mind the wetness from the dirt seeping into the fabric covering his knees. It felt like home. The closest he could get to Izuku. Tears that he hadn’t realized were welling up in his bloodshot eyes fell freely, seeping into his clothes and the ground below as he read the headstone.
Here lies Deku: Japan’s Symbol of Hope
A bitter taste coated his tongue, just as it always did when he read the headstone. Deku. The fucking insult that he’d given Izuku immortalized forever. He knew the meaning behind it had changed for Izuku when he picked it as his hero name, but that didn’t stop Katsuki from wondering what the nerd would have picked instead. Would it have been something silly? Something far too close to ‘All Might’ but not close enough for people to side-eye? He’d never know. Katsuki never got to ask that question, and he never will.
That realization hurt the same every time Katsuki felt it. Like salt on an open wound, except the salt is acid and the wound is every nerve ending he has exposed. He would never see Izuku again. Never see that smile, those eyes. Never touch him, never get to tell him that he loves him. Never get to hear Izuku say those three words back. Would he have said it back? That’s a question that Katsuki wouldn’t ever have the answer to.
Katsuki can’t be sure when, but at some point during his sobbing and barely audible apologies, he became aware that he was no longer alone in a graveyard that very few people visited. He was being watched. Again. He didn’t have Danger Sense, but if he had to guess it probably felt similar to the way his hairs prickled and stood on end on his neck. It was uneasy. He looked around, vision slightly blurred from hot tears, when his eyes landed on what had drawn his attention away from his desperately needed visit. Thirty feet away, by a tall sakura tree in the center of the graveyard, stood a woman—the same woman he had seen earlier, right before the car incident. Katsuki saw red.
“What the fuck do you want?!” he spat angrily, sending spit flying. This wasn’t the goddamn time for a stalker fan to show up, not now. Fuck, he thought even they had boundaries, but apparently not. “You gonna follow me and stare all fucking day, or you got something you need to say? Huh?!”
She moved closer, her steps slow and deliberate, until she was standing on the other side of Izukus headstone. “I can help you,” she said softly. Her voice was probably meant to be soothing, but it was anything but.
“I don’t need your goddamn help!” Katsuki was on his feet now, noses-to-nose with the crazy woman. Who the hell even is she? “Get out of here right now or, so help me God, I will have you arrested.”
She hummed. “And on what charges? I’ve done nothing to you.”
“I think stalking is a pretty serious charge, lady.”
She smiled, something soft and warm. “I’m not stalking you. You asked for my help and I’ve come to give it.”
“I didn’t ask you for shit!” Katsuki shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at the mystery woman. His shout came out more like a sob. This was all so confusing. Who the hell is the woman, why is she saying Katsuki asked for her help, and what the hell does she want? He knew he was overreacting… maybe. You really can’t judge a book by its cover. Just because this woman looks kind doesn’t mean she is. He wasn’t afraid of her because, hello, he’s Katsuki Bakugou and he’s not afraid of shit. But even he could recognize that he was in a very vulnerable position. He needed to be on his guard. Katsuki dropped his hand and gripped on Izuku’s headstone to ground himself. He needed to calm down. “I won’t ask you again. Leave.”
Please
She smiled sadly at him once more and simply placed her hand on top of his. He should’ve jerked it away; he had no idea why he didn’t. For someone who had just reminded himself that he needed to be on guard, allowing a potential enemy to touch you is a definite no-no. But he allowed her to. And it went all downhill from there.
“As you wish.” She said, and at the same time a pale blue light radiated from under the palm covering Katsuki’s hand, sending a warmth up his arm and through his body, making his heart skip a beat. Her quirk.
He did move that time, jerking his hand free and skirting around the headstone to grab the woman and pull her to the ground. He kept one hand around her wrists, pinning them. “What the fuck— what was that?! What the hell did you do?”
She didn’t resist, simply lying on the ground, calm. “I only did what you asked.”
She’s fucking with me. Got to be.
“No you lunatic, I asked you to leave and you didn’t. Now your charges are being upgraded from stalking to assault.” Katsuki seethed, tightening his grip on her wrists. She made a pained sound, but she didn’t try to break free. Raising a finger to his communicator, Katsuki’s voice came through harsh and shaky. “I need backup at Sakura Cemetery.”
It wasn’t his first time being hit with an unknown quirk; that’s just what happens in the hero business. After the police came and took the woman into custody for questioning, Katsuki was taken to the hospital for the second time in a day. A new personal record, believe it or not. They ran the usual battery of tests after an unknown quirk, and the results were all negative, meaning nothing had been affected. For the last hour between tests, Katsuki had been firing small pops of expositions to ensure that his quirk wasn’t fading away. It was fine—everything seemed completely normal. So naturally that really pissed him off, because that meant nothing was fucking normal and they were missing something. After being discharged for the second time, Katsuki went straight to the police station to do some questioning of his own.
He got absolutely nowhere with that. He questioned the woman— whose name was Keiko Wantanabe— for hours. She only kept repeating that she had done what Katsuki ‘asked her to do’. She wouldn’t elaborate what that meant. So eventually Katsuki moved to a different approach: figuring out what her quirk is.
“I call it stress relief.” Keiko said, the handcuffs around her thin wrists clinking as she folded her hands together on the table. “I just wanted to help you feel better.”
She was full of shit, had to be. But dammit, Katsuki couldn’t prove it. Even in the quirk registry she was listed as having an emotion-stabilizing quirk.
“I’m sorry, Dynamight, but considering all of your tests came back clear, your quirk is performing fine, and the woman has a harmless quirk, we have no reason to hold her any longer.” The chief of police, Kenji Tsuragamae, said.
“Oh, that is such bullshit! Besides, she was fucking stalking me; you’re really going to tell me that’s not enough to hold her?” Katsuki was beyond outraged. He didn’t know what to make of this.
The Chief gave him an exasperated sigh. “Look, we’re gonna keep tabs on her for a while and we’ll conduct more tests on you for the next couple of weeks. We can even put a restraining order on her for you. If any of her activity comes back as suspicious or you start acting haywire, then we can make a move. But until then, our hands are tied.”
Katsuki shook his head and muttered under his breath. “This is unbelievable.”
“Dynamight… I’m not trying to push aside your concerns, I understand them. But the facts are pointing to her actions as harmless. It’s possible that, maybe, just maybe, she was an overexcited fan who got a little carried away trying to cheer up her favorite hero.”
Could it be? Maybe… but Katsuki had only ever dealt with people who used their quirks against him with ill intent, so the probability that this case was different was slim to none. He didn’t feel relaxed after she touched him; if anything, he felt even more on edge. At the time of the assault he had no idea what kind of power she had or what she planned to do with it. Could he have been overreacting a bit because of the shit day he’d had? That was also a possibility, but this also wasn’t the time to doubt himself. Not once had his gut led him wrong. But at the same time, he knew the chief was right. Technically, the woman hadn’t done anything harmful to Katsuki. By all accounts he was fine other than being worried about the aftereffects of this woman’s quirk. Was it possible that he was actually looking too far into this?
“Fuck it. Fine.” Katsuki said, glaring past the chief and at the woman on the other side of the interrogation glass. “Let her go. But if I even catch a peep of her or if one thing flags on her while you guys are keeping tabs, something better get fucking done.”
“Of course, sir. We will keep you updated.”
After the longest day ever, Katsuki finally went home to his apartment, crashing into bed after a well-needed shower. He was so exhausted that it only took a matter of minutes for him to fall asleep, despite the fact his mind was still racing about the events from earlier. He dreamt of car crashes and tall women with long dark hair. He dreamt of Izuku.
When he woke the next morning, he fired off his quirk with a small explosion first thing. It was fine. He looked himself over, making sure that nothing on his body had changed. He was fine. This continued over the course of several weeks, a ritual he performed every morning and evening. Eventually the police investigations concluded, and when Katsuki learned there had been no suspicious activity he felt even more at ease—and a bit of a whiny bitch for overreacting. Everything was fine. He was fine.
__
For a large part of his life, Katsuki had blamed his youthful appearance on his mother’s quirk. Well, not really blamed; it was just a fact. Glycerin kept them appearing younger. He was thirty now, and his mother and father were well into their sixties. His father looked the part, his mother had aged noticeably but only slightly. She could easily pass for someone in her late forties. So the fact that Katsuki still passed for someone in his twenties didn’t bother him much. It didn’t bother his friends either, though they were a bit jealous that their skin had wrinkled in some areas.
“You could date literally anyone you wanted, Bakugou!” Mineta had said to him at their annual Class 1-A party. After the war, they all agreed to meet once a year. Things like that bind you forever. “Even the ladies in their twenties. They’d never know you were ten years older.”
“First of all, you’re fucking disgusting,” Katsuki snapped after taking a swig of his drink. He wasn’t sure what it was exactly, only that he loved the burn that followed. “Second, I’m gay, asshat.”
“This is why you’re still unmarried, Mineta! I thought you would’ve grown out of that by now?” Kaminari chastised, wrapping his arm around Jiro.
Like you’re one to talk, Katsuki thought with a secretive chuckle. Then again, Dunce Face did grow out of his perviness… sort of.
Mineta scoffed. “Please, you act like I’m the only one who isn’t married! Bakugou isn’t—“
The purple fuck cut himself off, but it was too late. All eyes were on Katsuki, and an uncomfortable hush fell over the table. He didn’t notice the eyes on him, though; he was too busy staring at the empty chair across from him. The chair that only held a framed photograph of the classmate who wasn’t present. That couldn’t come.
He missed Izuku terribly.
__
It didn’t get concerning until his fortieth birthday. Katsuki was hanging out with Mina and Kirishima, smiling as he watched their two children run around the coffee table, playing the classic game of Hero vs. Villain.
It was just Katsuki and his two friends and their children that night. The rest of their group was busy, which he understood. He was turning forty after all—nothing too special there. Kirishima and Mina were wonderful; they baked him a cake and made him dinner, even gifting him an antique All Might figure. He didn’t have the heart to tell them he already had two of them same one at his apartment, but he wouldn’t complain. All Might had passed away five years prior, and Katsuki wanted everything he could have tied to his old mentor. Aizawa was the only one still kicking it, and everyone knew that wouldn’t last much longer. It wasn’t until after everyone was fed, dessert eaten, and Kirishima had tucked Mina’s and his children into bed that the mood shifted.
“Alright, what is it?” Katsuki asked, annoyance creeping in. They had been staring at him for what felt like five whole minutes in silence. Kinda fucking weird since Mina talks like her life depends on it. She bit her lip and glanced at her husband hesitantly, their eyes passing a conversation that Katsuki was itching to be a part of.
“Spit it out, dammit! You’re starting to freak me out…” He said and then a thought came to mind. “Oh god, don’t tell me. She’s pregnant… Kiri, please leave the woman alone; your youngest is already ten, for Christ’s sake—”
“Bakugou, oh my God, stop!” Kirishima said, visibly shivering. “Mina’s not pregnant, Jesus.”
He glanced between the married couple again, uneasy setting in. It was a blessing that his temper had cooled with age, or else he would have definitely blown up by now. “Well, what is it?”
“It’s you, Bakugou. We… we’re concerned.” Kirishima said carefully, as if he feared saying the wrong thing would spark Katsuki’s fury.
“What the hell are you concerned about? I’m fine.”
“Bakugou seriously. Don’t tell us you haven’t noticed?” Mina asked softly, picking anxiously at the fraying couch cushion.
Katsuki had enough, raising his voice slightly as he cracked. “Dammit, will one of you tell me what the fuck you’re talking about? Nothing’s wrong with me, I’m fine—”
“You haven’t aged a day since you turned twenty-five!” Kirishima blurted out before covering his mouth with his hand. Mina shot him a dirty look and slapped his shoulder hard. “Kiri, what part of ‘lay it out easy’ did you not get?!”
“Mina, baby, I’m sorry; it just kinda slipped—”
Katsuki doubled over laughing, borderline hysterical. “You— you guys are fucking with me, right?” He giggled, wiping a tear from his cheek. He was met with looks of concern. Oh. “Right?”
“Look at this picture, man,” Kirishima said, standing from the couch and retrieving a photo from his mantel. “I took this of us that day—on your twenty-fifth birthday, remember?”
“Yeah? So what—”
“So the thing is, you look exactly the fucking same, man! Something’s not right with you.” Kirishima exclaimed, as if the photo proved their point once and for all.
“Kiri, c’mon. It’s my mom’s quirk; she’s nearly eighty now and she looked sixty!” Katsuki tried to reason. His friends were being delusional. He didn’t look twenty-five anymore. That was absurd… right?
“Bakugou, you only have half of your mom’s genes. Half of her quirk. You’re not going to age as slowly as her. Something’s wrong with you.” Mina said in a sort of wobbly voice, like she was about to cry. For some reason that was enough to spook Katsuki. Mina never cried.
“Look, you guys have had way too much to drink. I’m going to head out, and we’ll talk about this some other time when you’re not being fucking weird.” It was rude, probably inconsiderate, as he gathered his things and pushed past his friends’ pleading hands. They were being ridiculous, and the conversation was making Katsuki nauseous. Once he finally pried away, he set off toward his apartment. It was a short walk, and he got home about twenty minutes later.
Shivering from the late-April night air, Katsuki stepped inside his warm apartment and kicked his shoes off, heading straight toward the bathroom. He looked in the mirror for about an hour. Yeah, he guessed he looked pretty young for his age, but as he’d said before, it was his mother’s quirk. He definitely couldn’t pass for twenty-five. His friends were just drunk morons. They were too old to be playing dumb jokes like that.
__
His friends never let up on him, not even five years later. He still didn’t believe them. He was confident they were losing it. That was until it was time to renew his driver’s license. The DMV didn’t believe Katsuki was himself.
“You look far too young to be forty-five, young man. I’m forty-eight, and you could pass for my son,” the attendant said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s from my mother’s quirk; it slows aging.” Katsuki sighed. He was getting tired of explaining it.
She didn’t believe him. So much so that he had to bring his mother’s quirk identification and his own to prove it. And even then the attendant was hesitant. Walking out of the building and back to his car, Katsuki’s disbelief in his friends’ theory started to crack. Moving forward there were more and more instances like that—people denying the age he claimed. He studied his face nightly, begging for a wrinkle to surface. One never came. He blinked at his reflection in mild disbelief. He really did look young.
But the incident that sent him into a spiral was visiting Izuku’s mother. He’d been visiting frequently for the last twenty years; he wouldn’t abandon her because Izuku was dead. She was all that was left of the boy he loved so long ago. A part of him still did.
Unfortunately her grief, along with the medications she took for her mental state after Izuku’s passing, sent Inko into early Alzheimer’s just ten years after Izuku’s death and she had to be placed in a assisted living facility. She’d been in and out of lucid periods since, hardly ever remembering Katsuki when he visited. He still always came, visiting at least once a month.
Inko was sitting in her rocking chair, knitting as Katsuki entered the common area. He sat down across from her, drawing her attention to him, and her eyes widened in surprise.
“Oh my god! You— you must be Katsuki’s son! Oh, you look just like your father, I—”
His son? Katsuki didn’t have any children, he never even married.
“No, no, no! Auntie, it’s me— it’s Katsuki.” He said, and his heart began to hammer in his chest. He wondered if she could hear it.
Inko looked at him sideways, to the point of grabbing his face and inspecting it closely with squinted eyes. “No… no you can’t be. Katsuki’s almost fifty now and you look like you’re no older than twenty.” She paused, her eyes widening slightly when she studied his left cheek. “Why, that’s interesting. You’ve got the same scar as your father— do you do hero work too?”
Removing her hands gently from his face, Katsuki held them in his trembling ones. God, why the hell was he trembling? “No Auntie. I’m Katsuki Bakugou. The same one who was…” in love with your son, “… who was friends with Izuku. You remember him, don’t you?”
Immediately Inko looked offended and snatched her hands away. “Of course I do! How could I forget my baby boy.” She wiped at her eyes, tears streaming down her face. She turned her attention back to Katsuki, anger flaring in those expressive eyes. “How dare you ask me such a thing? I’ll have you know that I still have your father’s number and I will contact him. If you came here to insult Izuku’s memory I suggest you leave!”
“Auntie, no! It’s really me! I’m Katsuki—”
“Leave!” Inko shouted. “I won’t sit here and listen to lies!”
Nurses ushered him out because Inko was growing agitated. “She’s probably not lucid right now,” one of the nurses said before escorting him out the front door, leaving him standing in a frozen state of shock.
He felt suspended in air as he walked to his car and climbed into the driver’s seat. This… this wasn’t right. Inko had been lucid today; she fucking remembered Katsuki for the first time in years. Normally they would sit and chat about Izuku, and he’d listen to her tell stories about her son he’d heard millions of times by now. Katsuki began to shake, anxiety flooding his veins and turning his blood to ice. Could it be that I’m really not aging? Katsuki doubled over and vomited onto the asphalt parking lot at the thought.
__
On his fifty-fifth birthday Katsuki set out to find the woman he’d met on his twenty-fifth. It took weeks, but he found her. He had to use Todoroki’s connections through his agency to locate her. Katsuki had retired from hero work shortly after his fiftieth birthday. There were too many questions being asked about how he’d stayed so youthful—questions he didn’t have the answers to. By now he could admit that something was wrong, and his entire group of old classmates knew it too. From the raised questions from the public, Katsuki decided to change his name for a while and move away from Musutafa. Just until he could figure this out. His father had passed two years ago, so he opted to use his first name as an alibi, claiming to be a distant relative.
When he found the woman, Keiko Watanabe, she looked to be his age, or rather the age he should be. She was shorter and still thin, wrinkles spelling out a life well lived on her skin. He revealed himself to her once she’d confirmed her identity. She remembered that day—his twenty-fifth birthday.
“I wasn’t completely honest with you and the authorities that day,” she’d said.
“What do you mean? What the fuck has happened to me?” Katsuki asked, voice shaking slightly. He was afraid, no point in lying about that.
Keiko took a sip of her tea. She’d made some for Katsuki too, but his had long gone cold. “My quirk. It’s not an emotion stabilizer. I don’t know what it is for sure, but I named it Wish.”
“Wish? What the fuck’s that mean?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said slowly, looking up toward the ceiling as she gathered her words. “I can hear people’s thoughts, sort of. I hear what their heart wants the most. And I give them that.”
Okay, this story felt like more bullshit than the first one, but whatever. Katsuki decided to humor her. Not like he really had a choice or anything. The woman continued once he nodded.
“That day, when you were standing by the window looking at yourself, your heart called out to me. It was… one of the saddest pleas I’d ever heard before. So I followed you; I had to do something. I had to help.” Keiko said.
“And exactly how did you do that? Help me, that is?” Katsuki asked through gritted teeth. So he’d been right all along. This crazy woman had done something to him and everyone had brushed it off.
“I granted your wish. And you’ll have it in time.”
“My wish?! Katsuki shouted. “What was the fucking wish? And how much time are we talking? I need to know when I’ll be fixed! Please you gotta do something!”
She shook her head. “It can’t be reversed. It’s as if it were written in the stars, destined to happen. An entire reality catered to your heart’s desire.”
He was on his feet now, marching over to the woman and caging her in as he loomed over her chair. “What was the wish? And what do you mean a reality made just for me? This makes no fucking sense!”
Keiko peered up at him sadly. “Your heart was crying out for something… No! Someone. A lifetime mourned.”
“Who?” Katsuki asked, twisting his face in confusion.
She shrugged and tugged her bottom lip with her teeth anxiously. “I-I can’t remember their name. But I know it was someone! A person. I wish I could remember their name….”
“Ah ha, oh the goddamn irony of that last sentence, you old hag!” Katsuki yelled, slamming his hands on the armrests. She flinched. “Fine, fuck it. You don’t know. Then search my heart or whatever the fuck you have to do. Just make it so I age again.”
“I can’t. It’s the way my quirk works. I can only grant one wish per person.”
Katsuki growled and pushed himself away from the womans chair roughly, rubbing his face furiously as he tried to gather his thoughts. If Keiko was telling the truth about not being able to grant him another wish, then he was utterly fucked. He had to figure out who the wish had been about.
He thought long and hard about it as he settled back into Keikos couch trying to calm down, about who the person could have been that she granted Katsukis ‘wish’ for. It took some time, but eventually he remembered what he’d been thinking about when he first saw the woman who doomed him— Izuku. It always circled back to that nerd, didn’t it? Of course at that time all he wanted was to have him back, and truthfully he still did even after almost forty years since his death. He’d kept everything he had of Izuku. There was something wrong with him, definitely. Or maybe it was just a side effect of that woman’s quirk, forcing him to hang on to a teenage love he should’ve outgrown long ago. Whatever it was, it was going to be impossible for Katsuki to fulfill the stupid wish. Izuku was dead, had been for a long time, and there was no getting him back. And he told her this much.
“You will find him again and have the life you so desperately wanted.” She said with a nod. She seemed so sure, so fucking determined that her quirk had made it so Katsuki would see Izuku once again. He didn’t believe it for a second.
Katsuki scoffed. “You don’t fucking know that! And news flash, you can’t raise the dead, idiot. The only way I’ll get to see him again is if I’m dead!”
The woman shook her head, as if it meant something. Like her word was credible enough. “He will be returned to you.”
Katsuki left that woman’s house empty-handed and more confused than he was when he first arrived. He filled his friends in on it, even brought the woman in for more questioning. When asked why she lied about her quirk, she revealed that she was afraid someone with a power like All for One might resurface again and try to force her to use it, or steal it from her to grant wishes. She admitted she couldn’t grant wishes of her own, only others. After admitting to using this quirk on Katsuki, something that permanently altered his life, she was sent to a high-security facility that wasn’t exactly a prison, but she wouldn’t roam the streets again. Her power was too dangerous, and she couldn’t be trusted to use it consensually.
“You were so sad that day. It broke my heart. I just needed to make you happy,” she said to Katsuki before being taken away.
He shook his head, rage and uncertainty in his voice. “You’ve fucked my whole life. I had to retire early—there were more people for me to save! Who knows when I’ll die?!”
She bowed her head. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I hope once you find what you’re looking for you’ll think differently.”
“I won’t,” he spat. “Because you granted something impossible.”
__
For years they tried everything to remove the Wish. Test after test was run to determine how this had affected Katsuki’s body. Physically, he was fine. His quirk remained intact in every way. He was just immune to the changes of time, stuck as a twenty-five-year-old man until further notice.
__
Katsuki lost every single one of his friends. His family. Even Izuku’s mother. The last of his class to die was Tenya. He was 102. Katsuki went to every funeral, watching the service from afar before leaving.
__
He lost track of his age, but he knew he’d been alive for over a couple of centuries. He lived so long that he witnessed something no one of his generation ever dreamed could happen: quirks were phasing out.
Over the years, the mutated gene that had once powered quirks began to mutate to the point where it was recognized as an attack on the body. So during the mother’s pregnancy, the babies body began to destroy the gene using white blood cells. More and more people were being born quirkless. Before long, Katsuki was the only human on Earth still with a quirk. One he kept hidden. He’d changed his name hundreds of times, moving from country to country to keep his immortality and quirk a secret.
Oh yeah, that was another thing. After living so long, watching the people you love die over and over, it takes a toll on your mental health. He couldn’t get close to anyone, because in the end they’d all die and he’d be left alone. So naturally, Katsuki did what any rational person would do:
He tried to kill himself. A lot.
It never worked, of course. Turns out that crazy hag had been right about one thing: her wishes were destined to come true. Katsuki couldn’t die, he was bound to live out this ‘wish.’ More like a curse, if you asked him. She’d written the impossible. Yeah, he was cursed—doomed to suffer for all eternity.
He tried to stop loving Izuku, to hate the boy again, and for a long time Katsuki placed blame on him for getting him stuck in this mess. But it wasn’t Izuku’s fault, just as it wasn’t Katsuki’s fault that he could never let the feelings he had for his dead love die. He hoped that maybe if he stopped loving him, the curse would break and he’d start aging again. But it was in vain.
So Katsuki just opted to keep living. It’s all he could do. He had all the time in the world, right? So that meant he could do anything—not that he was happy about it. He couldn’t die, so why not? And that’s what he did for another two hundred years, marking 412 years since the Wish quirk incident.
Eventually after jumping country to country and city to city, Katsuki decided to go back to his roots. He was currently living in Hokkaido but it was time to go, he’d been there too long. He didn’t wanna move back to Musutafa— too many bad memories, but something in his heart was tugging him there. So he figured, why not. He could live there maybe twenty years and then hightail it out to somewhere different. He hadn’t been back since Tenya died, and that was over 300 years ago. He wondered what it would look like as he packed up his things. After pilling everything into his SUV, Katsuki set his GPS to his hometown and started driving back to where it all began.
And then everything changed.