KATSUKI POV
I never gave the future much thought.
Course, I knew I'd be a hero. Cause that's what all the best people were- heroes- and that's all I wanted to be.
When you're the best, you're invincible. You can take on the world and even if you cry and get some blood on your shirt, you walk away knowing you're the one who made it. You're the one who won.
And I wanted to win just like All Might. Just like the symbol of peace and the one person in the world I actually looked up to.
Once I got my quirk, everything started comin together. Everybody said I was destined to be the best, that it would be easy, I was gifted, that I'd be a hero for sure, that nothing could get in my way.
Turns out they were wrong: Everybody.
Because it wasn't easy, even when I said it was. I worked, and I bled, and I cried, and I worked again to keep up with those words everybody spat at me.
I didn't want to be the best anymore, I had to be.
I didn't want to win, I had to.
Whenever I'd get the feeling of certainty slipping through my fingers- whenever I thought I'd crumble beneath the weight of my own expectations- whenever it was just too much-
All I could do was hide behind my own strength like it was a barricade. I kept everything out, everybody out. I wasn't invincible just because I was the best, I was invincible because no one could see the real me behind the wall I built...
If only people knew that strength, that wall was paper-thin. That if the wind blew a certain way it'd fall and so would I.
I thought my entire life would just be that cycle. Try, work, bleed, cry, start over. Try, work, bleed, cry, start over. Until all that'd be left of me was pride and ego that just suffocated who I wish I could let everyone see...
Then I met someone. Someone who didn't seem like an everybody...
She was a gladiator of a girl. The kind that could bring you to your knees and smirk when you shivered yet also become fragile at a few words.
She dreamt of seeing the sky and cozy conversations by a riverbed. She wanted freedom and love and joy and laughter and a life unrestrained by a past filled with awful things she didn't deserve.
God, she was beautiful- she still is- but it wasn't even her pretty eyes or her messy hair or those cheap headphones or her ugly laugh- it was the fact that she felt like a reflection.
She thought no one could see, but I did.
I saw someone at the mercy of orders disguised as love turned into a shield. She hid from the entire world with her strength just like I did.
When I realized she didn't fight for herself, it made me angry. It made me feel like even if we were opposites, we were the same, and when she couldn't understand she was worth more than a weapon, it hurt.
What was worse is I never realized the reason I liked her so much wasn't because I saw her.
It was because she saw me...
You're not a star. She said, lying under the dying light of suns long defeated by the expectations everybody put onto them. You're just a boy...
I carried her home that night. Because for the first time, I didn't feel that weight threatening to crush me. Because she took it all away without even meaning to.
Thing is, no one ever took the time to realize there was more to me than some explosions and some ambition- no one till her.
And when I finally made her realize that I saw her too... That I wasn't afraid of her, that she was more than a tool to be used, that she was strong- I wanted her.
Pride and fear and longing got in the way for a while, but...
Even when she saw me bleed... even when she saw me cry, saw my weakness pooling through my tears, she gave me her strength. She held me in the dim light of some room neither of us called home and made me feel safer than anyone ever had.
She gave me her strength and her body and her love. She made me feel like I deserved it. She taught me to stand and fight for myself rather than to fulfill the hopes and prospects of everybody else.
She gave me everything, she heard my heart when no one could, and finally, I felt like I could breathe...
I never gave the future much thought.
But when you decide someone is more important to you than yourself, the future starts to become a dream. It paints itself across a blank canvas you thought would forever stay blank. And you begin to see that someone smiling at your side till the very end...
I didn't want to build walls anymore...
So instead...
I built a red plane.
So that she could imagine it taking her to that sky she always dreamed of.
But when it fell apart in my hands, so did my dream of going there with her.
***
The night felt weightless for some reason. Cold and taken to a wind, patiently watching the two boys who should've been asleep roaming its streets.
"That's why we're settling this," One of those boys said, his energy far heavier than the one he was facing. Out reaching his hand he formed it into the shape that preluded his explosions, a wordless threat. "Right here. Right now."
"Wait what?!" Across Bakugo, Deku's face fell.
He wanted to fight? Why? And why now!?
Deku was starting to panic. They were both in the clothes they usually slept in, it was night time, surely someone would find them out so, "How is that the best way to figure things out?"
On the other side of the street, Bakugo craned his neck back and forth. As if he wasn't even listening. He stretched out his shoulders, flexed them as he created small explosions to warm himself up.
"No." Deku shook his head, looking around for escape, some way to convince Kachann this was the worst possible idea. "This is bad. We're not even supposed to be at Ground Beta by ourselves. Why don't we talk about this during one of our free periods?"
"If we fight at school we'll be stopped," Bakugo reasoned, his eyes dead of anything. But if only Deku could see the storm that was brewing beneath the red.
The boy's eyes hooded as spite took over his expression, deepened his voice. "I wanna know what made All Might give his power to a little loser like you." He didn't even look angry. He just looked... like he meant every word to the bone.
Suddenly then a tinge of high-pitched laughter left his throat, causing his head to drop. Wiping at his mouth, he asked as if crazed, "Is it because you looked up to him more than I did? And does that mean everything I've done to be like him is wrong?" He laughed some more, stared at his hands, then went dead silent till he whispered to himself. "Is it because I'm too weak... too weak for her?"
"No," Deku responded breathlessly, more fearful for himself than Bakugo, but still, he couldn't think it was like that, it wasn't. "Kacchan, please"
"It always made me mad," His tone returned to normal. Like he buried everything, regained enough will to. "That I couldn't be gentle like you. That I didn't have the heart of a hero."
As the wind blew through a bit harder, matching Katsuki's aggression, it waved his and Deku's hair from their faces. In those innocent green eyes, he only saw love and caring and everything you'd ever needed.
You chose to find comfort in the arms of someone else because everything he offered was everything he lacked and he understood, but just because he understood didn't mean lessen the pain of knowing him and Deku were opposites would lessen.
He was so close to reaching his breaking point. This was the only way to escape it.
To keep. Burying. Everything.
"Wait," Deku put out his arms as Bakugo started to walk closer. "Are we really doing this?!"
"If you don't wanna get hurt then punch back." Immediately after saying that, Bakugo scoffed and shook his head. "Oh, that's right. You switched to using kicks more these days, didn't you?"
"C'mon, stop it now. I'm sorry for what I said in the study room, it wasn't my place-"
"I don't give a shit about your apologies," Suddenly then, Bakugo swung his arm just in front of Deku's face, forced him to flinch backward. "Kacchan! No!"
As Deku started to fall back, Bakugo released a blast that sent him into the building at his back.
Those bruises from the training yesterday still on his back would make him feel that concrete a hundred times more than he would've.
Deku made a pained sound, the muscles in his back seizing up. Falling forward on his knees, the sound of crumbling concrete behind him sent him into gear with instinct.
Katsuki always started with a winning move whether it was a blowback, a right hook, whatever. He was Deku's image of victory for a reason. But that also meant Deku's objective of wanting to surpass him was what always inspired his training.
"You know your problem is that you're always overthinking things," Bakugo said, waving the smoke aside, his teeth bared, his breath coming out of his mouth like steam.
Deku returned the same pissed off expression. He just had to predict what Bakugo would do next. He was agitated, in pain, he felt rejected, of course, he was acting out. That would make him more reckless.
Katsuki popped some firecracker-sized explosions in his palm again, growled as he saw Deku's power come alive in green sparks across his veins... Just like your power always did in a glow the color of the sun.
Deku propelled off his feet, dodged another deafening blast, skid across the center of the street causing dust to rise.
"Urgh!" Bakugo groaned, spinning on his heel, sick of chasing. "Just fight me!"
"Just wait!" Deku yelled, but unfortunately, Katsuki didn't have much patience.
Instead, he just created another blast, localizing it with his palm so the heat and pressure would increase, force Deku to not go far. Izuku was getting frustrated, but he had to keep a level head, just remembered why he was doing this.
"You have to stop this Kacchan! Why hurt each other when we could just talk things out!?"
"Quit your whining!" Bakugo spat back. "You've been doing that shit since we were kids! Enough! Stand up and fight!"
His voice was so rough, his eyes glossing over like he was remembering things- remembering those moments in his childhood when he first realized him and Deku would never be the same.
Like that park he showed you when he'd slipped and fell as a child. He never told you about that. Because he was ashamed. Ashamed that someone so small and gentle as Deku had been the one to lend a hand when he was on his knees.
"You were always behind me our whole lives! You stuck to me! I couldn't get rid of you!" Bakugo yelled, his explosions taking a breath as his chest heaved. "No matter how much I tried you kept coming back!"
"Kacchan, just calm down!"
Katsuki saw his past in a sort of comforted, faded yellow light. He saw the reflection of his face as merely a toddler in the tv screens of a tech shop- the news feeds they showed. All Might in all his grandeur, in all his strength and his glory and his heroic air.
"We both admired him! So why!?" Bakugo screamed, the combustion in his palm heading for Deku causing smoke to rise even above the height of surrounding buildings. "Why!?"
His voice started to weaken with every explosion he created that Deku just barely dodged.
"WHY!?" He was screaming now.
The dam of his emotions was overflowing. Everyday that he ignored it, the water rose closer to the edge, threatened to break the barrier he made to hold it all together.
That wall of his, paperthin- it was torn and crumpled at the edges, casting a shadow with a lit match threatening to burn it all down.
"Tell me!" He yelled, the friend standing across him genuinely not knowing how to answer.
Bakugo couldn't take it anymore, at this point wanting to result to physical fist fighting in order to just be able to keep up his front, to seem like he wasn't falling apart inside, but he just couldn't take it anymore.
His body tripped as he was making another explosion, causing him to stumble to the ground, almost hitting his head.
He was so wary, knowing Izuku would use this as an opportunity to strike him, so he looked up, got ready, but...
Deku didn't do anything of the sort. Instead, he reached out his hand. A spitting image of the child he once was when he tried to help a fallen boy out of a riverbed.
"Are you alright?" He asked, his voice so gentle it caused the dam Bakugo once thought was made of stone shatter to pieces inside him.
"Don't you dare worry about me!" Bakugo yelled, swinging at Deku's arm, rejecting his offer.
He tried to force his hurting body up, the one that hadn't slept in days, the one he overtrained, the one he hadn't fueled with food for over a week.
"Attack me!" He yelled, the deepness of his voice completely gone now. "Why won't you fight back!?"
You were in so much pain since the accident. It didn't even dawn on you that his pain was eating him alive.
Katsuki let out a pained sound, one of his legs shaking as he covered his face with one hand, tried to hide now that his wall was no longer standing.
"Why did I end up having to chase after someone who was always so far behind me!?"
Deku's eyes went wide. He took a few hesitant steps backward.
Kachann.
He'd always been his only image of victory and resilience and strength.
What was he now but a friend he hadn't noticed was in need breaking apart before him.
"Why did you get so strong?" Bakugo asked, quieter this time like he was crying. Holding in sobs he didn't want to let out. His breath hitched, his hand shivering as he wiped as welling tears. "You became the number one hero's sidekick? His favorite!"
Again, he stumbled forward, finally looking up at Izuku, grasping at his own chest like his heart was falling out of it as he screamed, "You became the person she went to instead of me!"
Izuku's lower lip trembled. The shock in him hit like a battering ram.
Bakugo's eyes. Their usually stone-faced color and light bled with fear and guilt and hurt and so much suffering you could feel it just looking into them.
Without looking away he went on, "You became her someone!" The boy's voice cracked, like a child's who just needed to be held as more tears streamed down his face and caught the dust carried by the wind. "I was her someone!"
His chest shook as he cried. His hands grabbed at his body, wrapped around as if he'd physically fall apart and into the earth if he didn't.
"But I'm not strong enough," He cried, a pained whimper leaving his throat.
Weeks.
Months maybe.
And he'd been holding all this in.
All this fear and guilt and hurt and so much suffering. If those emotions had the color of blood. If they cut into skin and left scars like razor blades, the boy wouldn't even have a body left to hold.
Deku clenched his fists, wanted to step forward, kneel down to Katsuki, tell him it was okay, that it would be okay, to just let everything out like he should have so long ago, but he couldn't.
Katsuki gripped at his hair, as if ready to tear it out of his head. Once again he met Deku's gaze, bit down on his lip as it shook, blinked only to let so many tears fall. "I destroyed All Might!" He yelled, another pained sound leaving him as he was forced to find balance by planting his hands into the earth. "I got the girl I love killed!"
A few sobs left his throat in choppy, broken breaths. The ache in his chest and stomach burned through his want to stand back up, to fight, to just pretend he could be strong again, but he went past his limit.
He broke apart.
And once the flood started, it wouldn't be stopped until the dam was emptied.
"I admire him so much! I love her so much!" He cried. "But it's because of me that he ended up losing his power! It's because of me that she died! If I had just been stronger."
His tears mixed with rubble from his explosions. He stared down at the damage he'd done. Saw your features i the earth as you winced and cringed from that bullet wound. Dragging his fingers across the ground, he pretended for a second, that he could caress your face instead.
He sniffled, his tone that of a confession for a crime. "If I hadn't let us get kidnapped by villains," he said, his jaw clenching, his eyes shutting tight as he screamed, "Then All Might would be okay and she wouldn't be in so much pain every day!"
Deku was crying too. A few tears streaming down his face just from the empathy.
"They both know it was my fault but they can't bear to say anything," Katsuki went on. "Every time I look at her, she's hurting." He said, as if he was remembering every single time you'd misstepped or had trouble dressing or couldn't walk right or winced from the soreness or told him it was fine when you clearly weren't. "She's hurting and I want to hold her and tell her it's gonna be okay, but-"
Katsuki hissed, covered his eyes. "When I touch her," he said, his voice cracking again, so high and faint, Izuku had trouble hearing, "Every time I touch her, I see her die again... I feel her heart stop beating, she gets all cold, I see her eyes close-"
"Kachann," Deku said, with so much want to take his hurt away, to make him realize. "Kachann, she's not-"
"Heroes are supposed to save people! They're supposed to protect the people they care about! But-" The boy was interrupted by his own cries. "But I killed her!"
Pressing his hands into his face, Deku only now began to see that he'd gotten thinner. That there was a darkness under his eyes not related to his costume, but beneath the skin instead. That his hands were all torn up, bruised, cut up, nails broken.
Everyone thought he was okay. Because he acted like he was.
But every time Izuku tried to remember, he couldn't think of a single time anyone had truly sat him down and asked if he was okay.
"I killed her," He whispered again. "I killed the only person who ever saw me."
Even if he was breaking down, venting, letting everything out, the guilt latched onto him like a parasyte. It fed off his tears and his cries. It waited, alive and thriving in his mind and heart alike, waited for this moment. But it'd been feeding on his conscience ever since.
"Kachann," Deku said again, taking a few steps closer, cautiously as ever. He still wanted to take away his hurt. He still wanted to make his friends realize. "Kachann, she's not dead."
The boy took another step closer, wanted to reach out again.
He knelt closer to the ground, waited Katsuki's tears to cease, for him to look up as he repeated, "It's not your fault."
But he shouldn't have said that last part. Because when he did and Bakugo finally looked back up, he didn't hear what Deku'd really said. All he heard was something that in his mind was only a lie. And he had just enough strength to bury whatever was left, to stop the flood, to stand back and fight with his rage rather than his sadness.
So when he growled, threw another punch at the one person who made him feel utterly helpless, the night knew this fight wouldn't end so easily.
***
You fell back against the concrete wall like you were lost in another world. Like you could hear and perceive everything that was happening, but your body didn't have the means to so much as take a step.
The only show you were even still conscious was the wideness in your eyes as you stared down at the ground in utter shock, one of your hands shaking. You sunk ever so slowly to the ground, your knees caving into your chest, palm covering your mouth.
He felt this way. All this time.
You couldn't even look back over the corner once him and Izuku started to fight again. One for All's flickering sounds, Katsuki's explosions combusting in the street, they were all muffled.
Maybe you could've stopped them, gotten up, just gone to them, but maybe that could've just made things worse, made Katsuki break down even more.
It all started to make more sense than before.
He wanted to keep you safe, consciously wanted to be there for you, but every time you spoke or touched all he saw was you falling, dying, and he just couldn't take the pain...
He never left Camino Ward. He never left that awful place you died in his arms. He was still there. The moment repeating over and over by order of his guilt.
More yells and hits and fighting sounded around the corner, but you just couldn't move. It was like everything was replaying in your mind.
He hadn't eaten in front of you in weeks.
All he ever had in hand was water, water he only drank to avoid having to talk. You never noticed he thinned down because of his uniform, because of his costume, but for some reason now, as you thought of every time he ever stood in front of you or sat at your side, you saw just how degraded his body was.
He didn't sleep either. If he did it was out of pure exhaustion and it never lasted more than an hour or two. He was always woken by a strange noise or a nightmare or the thought that someone or something was planning to take you away again.
Katsuki never asked for help. He never wanted help. But it wasn't his fault nobody noticed he desperately needed it.
That's why he never spoke to you about Deku. Because even it hurt him like hell, he didn't want you to feel alone. It's why he blew up in the lunchroom- let some of that hurt slip out- because if you didn't get your quirk back, if you didn't stay in the hero course where he could keep an eye on you and make sure you were strong, how would he keep you safe?
But none of that even mattered. Because even if you were right there in front of him, in his mind he'd killed you a long time ago.
You grabbed at your hair, shook at the thought of it, bit down, started to cry out of your own guilt that you hadn't been conscious enough to notice him.
He needed help. He needed help. How could you help him!?
But the moment you were about to self-destruct, just run out there, make both him and Deku see you, just get them to stop fighting, someone gently touched both your shoulders.
Usually, you would've freaked out, but the hold was so gentle. It almost felt like Aizawa when he crouched down to tell you everything would be okay.
Your eyes snapped open, you gazed up, tears still blurring your vision.
You blinked, the man looking down at you offering a hand to help you up.
"All Might?" You said, in disbelief, the hero nodding, knowing it was time to put a stop to this...
Bakugo and Deku fought so harshly, bare-bones, with no rules that both of them were covered in scratches, cuts, bruises. Katsuki's hands were in worse shape than before, Deku's back and arm throbbing at the pain.
The adrenaline kept them both going, but in the air, Katsuki had an indisputable advantage. Even if Deku put up a valiant effort, in the end, his opponent was able to overpower him.
Back to the ground, both of them were breathless, their lungs heaving. Izuku was pinned to the ground, Bakugo pushing his hand down on his face and wrist, his foot pressed down on the other.
"That's it." Katsuki panted, his jaw nearly dislocated, his arms and hands bleeding. "We're done here. I won this fight."
Izuku didn't even have the strength to respond.
And though Bakugo thought this would all alleviate his suffering, it did nothing. If anything it strengthened his anger. Made everything else he forcibly suffocated back within himself fester like an untreated wound.
"You have All Might's power, but even with all your strength, even making it your own, somehow you still managed to lose to me."
Izuku winced as Katsuki pushed harder on his face, his face wound up like he just wanted to fight again.
"Why?" He asked, shaking his head. "How could you lose?!"
"Stop this right now! Both of you!" Katsuki and Izuku's breaths both hitched, the two of them separating. Bakugo stood, took a step away, Izuku crawling back. When they both looked up, emerging from the smoke was All Might.
Walking at his side, wrapped in one of his arms, tears in her eyes, was the last person Bakugo ever wanted to hear any of this.
"I'm sorry, but I heard what you said." All Might spoke, walking closer, sure to keep you with him.
"All Might?" Deku sounded, but Bakugo couldn't say a thing.
His eyes went as wide as yours had been when you were paralysed against that building. And when he saw the evidence in your eyes of just how much you'd heard him say, he had turn around.
***
This was very interesting for me to write and to see everyone's reactions to (chapter 49-55). Because I think it truly shows our capacity to forget peoples' complexities.
I read the comments profusely for those chapters because I wanted to see what people thought of Katsuki's actions towards Y/n.
The majority were very upset and angry at him which is highly understandable. But there were very few people I saw actually concerned about him.
That was the purpose of these chapters. I wanted to see if anyone would actually realize how badly he was hurting inside and question why he was acting this way rather than just give up on him and get mad and expect an apology.
People tend to have unrealistic expectations of their partners. A lot of the people in the comments expected Katsuki to dote on her, be completely fine and mourn with her whereas even if he wanted that, his PTSD and guilt simply wouldn't allow him.
The boy literally starved himself, went through panic attacks in private constantly, hurt himself, and couldn't sleep unless his own body forced him to.
But no one noticed because he's Katsuki Bakugo.
Because he's so strong of course he'd never be that weak. And of course, he'd never show it.
I only saw a total of two comments actually saying something like "I wish someone other than y/n would try and get to him."
Because that's what he needed. He needed someone like Deku to cause him to fully break down so he could let everything out instead of keeping it bottled in.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Katsuki Bakugo is one of the most accurately depicted characters in all of Shounen and that's another reason I really wanted to write a story about him.
He is so complex in the manner that he is a slave to his own toxic masculinity. And his fight with Deku was the moment that his own image of what it means to be strong was reformed.
He ignored y/n because in his mind, he killed her. He was the cause of the love of his life's death.
I don't think many realized how much that broke him on the inside. His actions aren't magically excusable- he said some extremely hurtful things. But that was meant to test the faith you all had in him.
Anyway, this was just a very interesting social experiment for me. To everyone who was saying that he needed help and y/n wasn't the only one suffering despite her being the only one trying to get help- I praise your ability to analyze character and want effective communication.
I used to have unrealistic expectations of myself and the people around me, especially in friendships. I learned along the way that everyone, even if they don't show it and act out, has something going on. I hope someone people could see that through this story too.
Anyways, stan Katsuki and y/n for clear skin- chapter 57 is next.
Patreon has a new nsfw chapter that was like 8k words I think and up to 61.