How I Remember

Chapter 1: Sleepy-time

When their plan was initiated, and put into motion, Izuku had one job: end up at the makeshift UA campus, and fight for his life.
Things went South before he could even arrive, so much talk about love and feelings for just a battle with a girl he could barely picture standing beside.
Actually, in all that talk about love, all he could think of was Katsuki. They should be fighting together, right now.
They had made a promise to eachother, that they'd be side by side when this all went down, and now he was on a beach, looking for an opening to run away.
When it was available, he immediately took it, flying as fast as he could to UA without expending too much energy into just arriving. As he flew, a pain in his heart like no other squirmed in his chest. Something was wrong.
When he arrived, he saw nothing but a person he couldn't take his eyes off of.
Blood. Oh god, so much blood. It painted his hands as he desperately tried to find where it was coming from. His hands shook as they frantically searched the almost-corpse in front of him. Why hadn't he been faster? He should have been. Now, this innocent bystander was dying, if they weren't already, on his watch.

"Sir, can you hear me?"

He said loudly, trying to alert whoever he was kneeling too. Using a cautious hand, he turned their face towards him, and his world tilted.

How did he not know it was him?

His face was blurry, broken and distorted, but there's not a world in which Izuku had ever forgotten Katsuki's face.
He wanted to scream, but his lips betrayed him.
He couldn't move, he felt his body stiffen in something that could only be described as absolute dread. As it took over, his face grew hot, and his hands trembled.

And then he woke up.

He was cold, sweating while hyperventilating. His hands trembled as they wrinkled his bed sheets through his grip. He brought his knees up to his chest and hugged them as tightly as he could. He didn't dare to close his eyes in fear of seeing those dead, distorted eyes.

He had to see Kacchan.

Izuku's eyes darted to his alarm clock, it read "2:29 A.M."
That wasn't too late for a Saturday.
He threw on acceptable "leaving the dorm" clothes, and left for the third-floor, where Kacchan had resided.

The stairs were easier to go up. They didn't confine you in a small room, or limit your speed, or control your destination. You can run up them as fast as you can, or walk as slow as you want to.
Izuku liked that about stairs.
Despite the freedom stairs permitted him, he didn't dare use the power he had so little of already to quicken his pace.
When he did get to the front of Katsuki's room, he hesitated.
Did he want to see him?
See those eyes, even if they weren't dead anymore?

He had to.
He couldn't sleep peacefully. Couldn't close his eyes even just to blink. He needed to force the image of Katsuki being alive into his brain until it forgot the concept of him being dead to begin with.

So, against all odds, he opened the door.
He was to impatient to knock, anyways.

For a while, he stood there. The room was dark, only a small sliver of light was visible, brought from the tiny gap between the curtains of Katsuki's window. The moonlight shone on his face, that small sliver of light displaying his calm, resting eyes. His chest rose, and fell, he was alive. He was alive.

That still wasn't confirmation enough.

"Kacchan." He said quietly, standing in the small hallway that led into his actual room, with the door shut behind him.

Katsuki was sleeping lightly, as he always does, and woke up to the soft sound of Izuku's voice immediately, sitting up as though he'd been shocked awake.