This chapter is an ALTERNATE ENDING.
It connects with Chapter 11. In this version, chapters 12 and 13 have not happened.
No real warnings for this chapter except canon-typical violence. :)
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"Let me go," says Katsuki, eyes level and serious. "Or I'll kill you."
Izuku takes a step backwards, towards the door. Katsuki steps forward.
"If you do that, you'll die down here," Izuku says. Another step - Katsuki follows.
"Better than being here for the rest of my life."
A bluff, Izuku knows. Katsuki had been happy here many times. He takes another step, and that's when Katsuki lunges. He knocks him over into the dining table, which is made of metal and bolted to the ground and therefore stands beneath their weight, but they quickly crash onto the ground beside it as they continue to tussle. Katsuki is like a wild animal. His fingers dig into Izuku's skin, his elbows and knees sharp points against Izuku's body. Izuku knows that if he gets too close, Katsuki will bite him.
Katsuki sits atop him and Izuku reaches up for his cord. Katsuki gets it first. It's long enough now that when he yanks on it...he can wrap it around Izuku's neck, and he does. The steel cuts into his throat and suddenly he cannot breathe. Atop him: Katsuki, hair stuck to his face with sweat, his bright eyes wide and fierce, all his teeth bared.
Suddenly Izuku is certain that Katsuki can and will kill him.
Will he?
He can.
He does.
Almost.
Katsuki gasps for breath as he clambers to his feet. On the ground, Deku lies stretched out beneath him, his face pale and his body limp and unmoving. He might be dead. Katsuki thinks he's just unconscious. Either way, he needs to move, as quickly as possible.
First he rips the ring off his finger. Throws it at Deku. It hits him in the chest, then rolls down the side of his body and lands on the floor with a tiny chink as it hits the concrete. "Fuck you," he hisses, although Deku cannot hear him, "Dumbass. As if I'd ever want to be married to you."
He takes the control for his collar clipped to Deku's belt. And the extra one on Deku's wrist that he'd tried to keep secret for the last several months, quietly pretending it's just a watch and not another part of the torture device designed to keep Katsuki under control... as though Katsuki is a fucking idiot.
The keys to detach the retractable line from his collar are not within reach. He knows Deku hangs them up on the other side of the bedroom door. He's heard them clinking as they nestle onto their hook there. Getting them may be a tiral, so Katsuki picks Deku up, depositing him on the bed before tearing a blanket into strips using his teeth and sheer force of desperation and adrenaline. This material he uses to tie Deku's hands and feet to the head and footboard respectively. It's not dissimilar from the short-bondage position he'd usually been in when Deku had been in a foul mood.
It feels weirdly satisfying, seeing his tormentor trussed up like that, little more than a useless lump of flesh laying there in the bed, completely unable to do anything to Katsuki. He's been divested of his power, these little switches that have allowed him to torment Katsuki for the last year.
And he's alive, that much is clear when he makes a little noise in response to being jostled.
Katsuki resists the urge to slap him across the face, but he does ball up a sock and cram it into Deku's mouth, tying another strip around his face to hold it in there.
The important thing here is getting out of this basement and getting help. Not revenge. Revenge will come at the hands of the courts - it's not like there isn't abundant evidence of what Deku has done - and at the knowledge thereafter that Deku will be forced to live a life worse than death (as he'd so put it himself), since he won't have his favourite toy to play with anymore. Wasting time now looking for some satisfaction might mean he never gets away, and that would surely spoil any pleasure that might be had in some brief moment here in this basement.
Deku secured, he steps away, heaving deep breaths, feeling alarmingly close to hyperventilation. The room is too bright. He feels hot. He knows he's close to a panic attack and he tries to swallow it down.
If he gets caught now...there's no telling what Deku will do. Trying to escape last time had resulted in being tied down for weeks at a time, unable to do anything but stare at the ceiling and think about how full his bladder was.
This time? Having attacked him? Well, maybe Deku would finally graduate from kidnapping to murder.
The anxiety takes a grip on him, but he grits his teeth. "Stay focused," he tells himself.
The room is full of useful things. Over time, Deku has bought him more and more stuff. He's virtually unable to say no to Katsuki, unless it's to deny him freedom or requests for Deku to stop molesting him. He fastens things together into a pole, every long thing he can find, wrapped around with torn sleeves and blankets into a grotesque-looking, ten foot long stick.
He sits all the way out at the maximum of his cord, and he throws things at the door until he gets it open. Then he begins to play the world's most stressful game of blind fishing, angling the stick through the door and attempting to get it into position to hook the keys.
Deku wakes up. Katsuki hears it when he does, nearly jumps out of his skin as Deku suddenly grunts and attempts to sit up, his arms and legs yanking at his bonds all at once and rattling the bedframe.
"Stay there!" Katsuki shouts at him, unable to turn around and look at him for fear of what he'd see.
He hears muffled shouting back. Thank god he'd gagged him.
He's at the wrong angle, he thinks, so he pulls his cord out to the very maximum, the taut steel rope connecting him to the wall tight, his collar pulling back against his larynx and choking him. Like this he can stretch out his arm as far as it will go, and get an angle that allows him to scrape the wall with the stick.
And then, finally, as black spots dance in his vision from lack of air, he hears the jingle as the keys hit the floor.
He gives himself a breather, just a few seconds to gulp down air. Deku's struggle is becoming more pronounced, louder. Katsuki can hear the bed frame protesting his movements as he fights to get free of the multiple ties and knots holding him down.
Katsuki has heard all those sounds before. He'd made them. He knows the bed won't break, though his haphazard bondage might. He shifts his grip on the pole about three feet further up, then begins the arduous process of attempting to drag the keys closer to him. He misses, mostly, at least until he can see the keys, but he can hear when he's able to scrape them over the concrete.
They appear in the doorframe and he nearly sobs in relief. His throat hurts from the collar pulling at his neck, he's dizzy with fear and adrenaline and inadequate oxygen. But there! There are the keys.
He drags them closer, bit by bit, until finally, he can reach out with a bare foot, stretching to the very maximum and sliding them all the way to his reaching fingers. He can't help the sob of relief that bubbles up in his throat, his hands shaking as he fumbles, attempting to get the right key into the hook that locks the cord to his neck.
"Kacchan," Deku croaks. Must have gotten his gag free. "Please don't go."
"Fuck off," snaps Katsuki.
"You belong with me," he says, "Please, Kacchan. I love you."
"I hate you," gasps Katsuki through tears.
"No you don't," says Deku, quietly, "You don't. Whatever else you feel for me, I know you love me too, deep down. I know you feel how much I care for you."
Katsuki can't stand to look at him, just continues to fight with the lock until finally, with barely a sound, it clicks open. When he yanks the clip off the collar, the cord is immediately retracted into the wall, whipping back furiously. It hits the metal bedframe as it goes, narrowly missing Deku's hands.
"No," gasps Deku, sounding anguished, and Katsuki can hear him start moving again. He turns to leave.
A thought suddenly occurs to him. Is it cold outside? He doesn't have shoes. Should he... put on a sweater? Deku suddenly jerks, a hand comes free and shoots up from where it had been tied. His wrist is bright red.
Katsuki turns and runs. Through the door, which he slams behind him, and halfway up the stairs. Then he stops.
The last time he'd tried to run, he'd gone down in a blaze of glory. He'd never forget how that electric shock had felt - like he was having a heart attack. He'd thought he'd die, that he'd stop breathing on the pristine tiled floor of Deku's kitchen.
...Well, not so pristine once he'd bled all over it.
He remembers being carried back downstairs. Watching the strip of the world through the door to the basement shrink as it got further and further away.
He remembers sitting on his bed afterwards, hearing Deku cleaning up, wondering if his return would mean the end. Would he be so angry that he'd finally kill him? Katsuki had thought a lot about it. Choking, he thinks, would be the way Deku would do it. With his bare hands. So Deku could look him in the eyes, feel the life being squeezed from him.
Would this be it? Would this be a big enough betrayal for Deku to finally do it?
"Kacchan!" he hears, wailed from the bedroom. "Kacchan! Wait!"
He still calls him by his stage name half the time. God he's fucking stupid.
He takes another step up. At what moment last time had he been stopped by the collar?
Fuck, he's shaking. He's actually afraid to try to escape.
What if the collar goes off again and this time Deku isn't here to drag him back to a place where he can breathe? What if he suffocates on said pristine kitchen floor, too choked up by electricity to scream? What if his body is found weeks later, bloated and rotting, by some neighbour who smelled a bad smell.
(The smell would be worse in the basement, where Deku is).
But what if none of that happens? What if he stands here and waits for Deku?
Wouldn't that be worse than death?
He takes another cautious step upwards. The stairs creak. He can hear movement from the bedroom, and then suddenly a clunk, furious movement. Katsuki takes another step up. Still nothing happens with his collar.
How far up had he been last time?
The door is within reach. He stretches out trembling fingers to brush the doorknob. The outside world is so close.
There's the sound of movement behind him. Deku is shouting something, probably his name, desperate. He takes another step; the doorknob settles into the palm of his hand. He turns it. The door opens.
Katsuki steps out into Deku's kitchen and closes the door behind him. It's quiet, up here. The sound proofing is good, like Deku had said, even with the door to the bedroom downstairs still open. He can't help but huff a rueful laugh. All that screaming he'd done had been completely pointless. All those hours shouting his voice ragged, only to be given a nasty electric shock for his efforts. Doing it over and over again (in case someone might hear him this time).
He'd just been torturing himself for no reason.
Slowly, dreamily, he crosses the kitchen. It's raining outside, heavily, the water running down every window. It's thundering down, white noise turned up to the maximum, the sound of dripping so close it might as well be inside the kitchen. The backyard looks swampy, filled with mud. Not as nice as the last time he'd seen it. Deku only brings him out on the nicest of days.
He pulls a knife from the butcher's block and holds it tightly in his right hand. He's been up here quite a few times. Always gagged or... "gagged" with the collar. Always handcuffed to Deku. Always with the fear and the knowledge that if he'd done anything Deku hadn't liked, he'd be punished.
He'd stood right here when the doorbell had rung and he hadn't done anything, because he'd feared losing the freedoms he'd earned. The books, the video games, the string that reaches long enough to let him use the bathroom.
He looks at the front door.
The collar obviously isn't working right now. Maybe it's broken. Maybe it's dead. Maybe some connection had just gotten fried thanks to the storm currently thundering down around him.
Without it, there's nothing really holding him back. God. Can he leave? Can he just...walk out of the house? Could that be possible?
Quietly, he crosses the kitchen, his footsteps nearly silent on the tile. There's a living room close to the front door. A couch, rarely used. An armchair, used a little more. A television. Older. Dusty. Deku hasn't spent much time up here in the living room since Katsuki had "moved in". Most of his waking hours are at work or in the basement with him.
Lightning. Four seconds later, a crack of thunder, so loud it seems to shake the house. He hadn't heard any of that in the basement.
The curtains are drawn in the living room, since the window presumably looks out on the street. Katsuki has never looked through this window. He wonders what the view is like. Does Deku draw the curtains every morning when he goes to work? Does he close them every evening before heading down to Katsuki's prison? How much effort does he go through to appear normal?
How much --
"Katsuki," says Deku, from somewhere behind him.
"Fuck off, Deku," says Katsuki, clenching the knife harder.
The rain drums down, on the roof, on the windows. Slowly, Katsuki turns to look over his shoulder. Deku is there, between the rooms, both fists clenched, his face set in an unfamiliar expression. It's cold. Resolute.
Katsuki can see in his face that Deku will not let him go.
"Where are you going to go?" Deku asks him quietly.
"The police, to start," says Katsuki.
"And then?"
"Home."
Deku sort of half-smiles for a moment, a sort of sad expression. "Home? What home? Someone's been living in your apartment for more than a year. Your friends from school have all moved on."
"My parents."
"Your parents moved to another town. They said something about needing a fresh start."
A lump has formed in Katsuki's throat, "How the fuck would you know that?"
"You were all over the news," says Deku, quietly, as though his soft voice will make the news less difficult to hear. "They did lots of interviews. I had to watch them all, to see how the investigation was going. To see if they were close to catching me."
"Thanks for sharing them with me," says Katuski sarcastically. One of Deku's wrists is dripping blood. He's standing on the hardwood between the living room rug and the kitchen. At least it won't stain anything.
"Better for you to come to terms with it sooner," says Deku, "Rather than worrying about whether you might be found."
"Hmm," says Katsuki. He starts to turn away again. He wants to look out the window. Wants to see a different view.
"You won't be, you know," says Deku, "You're a cold case. No one saw you disappear. No one tracked you to this city. No one even noticed you were gone for almost five weeks."
The lump is so large that Katsuki can hardly croak, "Five?" around it.
Deku takes a step forward. Katsuki raises the hand holding the knife and he stops, bringing both hands up in a classic surrendering pose. He still talks though, "Yes. Kacchan, please. This is...this is what I'm saying. I love you, I need you, I adore you with every fibre of my being. You are everything to me." His face warms a little, eyebrows scrunching into the center, a cute and wistful expression, "You know that. I know you don't agree with much I say, but surely you know that."
"Yeah," says Katsuki.
"I love you so much that I would die for you. I would kill for you. I would do anything for you, Kacchan, except let you go, and everyone else didn't even notice you were missing for five weeks."
Tears he hadn't noticed gathering suddenly spill down his cheeks when Katsuki blinks. Five weeks.
Wow.
That's...
"Please, Kacchan," says Deku, and his hands lower a little, reach out to the sides, offering an embrace, "Please don't go."
And for a moment, Katsuki is tempted. Tempted to run back into Deku's arms, because despite everything, Deku is not lying when he says he cares for him. He's in love with him, all the way into Katsuki's scummy soul, in a way that no one else will probably ever match. And, though he's resented the imprisonment, being locked away from the rest of the world, shut down in the basement by himself, in many ways it's simpler and safer than being out there.
When you cannot make any choices, you have no need to worry. It is pointless. What Deku is going to do, he is going to do. Katsuki might fight it but the end result is already written in stone. And Deku loves him, no matter what he does.
Out in the real world he has to contend with failure.
But.
Outside there is rain. Sunshine. Snow. There are people and places, food to eat, things to do. He can run, feel the wind on his face, climb a mountain into the clouds and swim in the ocean. He can make choices. He can choose who he sees and when. Who he sleeps with and when. What he does and when and why and how.
He can choose.
Katsuki takes four steps to the left, towards the front door. Deku lurches forward. Katsuki brings the knife up, horizontal, pointed at Deku's gut.
"I'd rather die than let you go," says Deku, "Can you kill me, Kacchan?"
"Yes," says Katsuki.
"Will you?" asks Deku, and takes another step closer. His eyes are dark in the dimly lit room, almost black. Behind him, the light from the kitchen lights the edges of his hair in a halo, sending his face into silhouette. It sends shivers up Katsuki's spine.
Katsuki's hand reaches the doorknob.
Behind it, the world. Open. Endless. He'd be free to choose, even if that choice is to die trying to get away.
"Kacchan," murmurs Deku.
"Don't come closer," he hisses in return.
"I love you," breathes Deku.
Katsuki's sweaty hand slips on the doorknob as he tries to twist it. Deku jerks forward at the rattle of it. Katsuki jerks up the knife.
"You," says Katsuki, his voice trembling in fear and grief and anger, "You locked me up, for years, Deku. You kept me inside. You kept me alone. You tortured me. Why can't you see that if you love me, you have to let me go?"
"I can't," cries Deku.
In a flurry of movement, everything happens at once. As he sees Deku's expression break into despair, Katsuki turns, wrenches the doorknob to the side, and yanks the door open, in towards him. Deku lunges for him, attempting to grapple him and avoid the knife in Katsuki's other hand.
The door is slammed shut by Bakugo's spine. Deku's face is inches from his, his expression furious. The cold look is gone, this is a man filled with emotion. Katsuki is too close to leaving him. He's desperate.
"No!"
"Get off!" shrieks Bakugo.
He kicks Deku square in the gut, a sudden rush of power surging up in him. He can do this. Without the collar, he is stronger than his captor. Stronger, better trained. He can escape. He hits Deku again, this time in the shoulder, and then again in the knee, sending him crashing to the ground.
He wrenches the door open again and this time gets through it, dashing out into the pouring rain.
It hits him all at once, frigid, the droplets like ice, and goosebumps spread over his entire body as his hair flattens to his scalp.
God it feels so good! The feeling of rain on his skin. Holy shit. Something that would have made him miserable before --
Focus.
For a moment he is disoriented. He has never seen this street before - hasn't seen any street in months or years or decades, it feels like. Everything is grey and dark, the rain coming down in thick, slanted sheets, undulating with the wind. He has no idea which way to go, except towards the nearest lights which he hopes is a house of people who might help him.
He runs; sprints from the house and into the street, the asphalt rough against his bare feet.
And then Deku slams into him from behind.
It's wet. He goes sprawling, face meeting the pavement with the weight of two men behind the fall. Pain cracks across his face from his cheekbone, and blood fills his mouth from where his teeth have cut into his cheek. The knife goes skittering across the road.
"Get inside!" hisses Deku, "Kacchan, please. If you come now --"
"Fuck you!" screams Katsuki, twisting in his hold, trying to get his arm into a good position to smack Deku in the head.
"-- I won't tie you up, it can be like it was before. If you come back willingly."
Katsuki hits him in the temple with his elbow, and Deku's arms go just slack enough that he can slither out of Deku's grasp, towards the knife. His grasping fingers brush the hilt of it as Deku drags him backwards, pulling him down into his embrace.
They're in the middle of the street, but it's a rainy Tuesday night, and the neighbourhood doesn't seem particularly busy. There's just the sound of the rain, the occasional crack of thunder. The flustered huffs of breath from the man on top of him.
"Kacchan," he snarls, "I won't let you go."
Katsuki hits him in the face again. Deku's cheek is already swelling, but he hardly seems to feel it; a man possessed by one desire, and one desire only - to get Katsuki back into his house. Thankfully, Katsuki is also a man similarly motivated, although by the opposite objective.
Deku's hand clenches in his hair, slams his head down, the back of it into the pavement, and the world goes blurry with more than just rain for a moment.
"Fuck," gurgles Katsuki, the blood from his gashed cheek spilling into the back of his throat. Then he punches Deku in the nose.
As soon as Deku falls back, he dives for the knife, and with a desperate swing, he buries it into Deku's side.
For a moment they both stop.
They stop and stare at the hilt of it, sticking out of Deku's body. It had gone in so easy, with barely any resistance. Like cutting through butter.
He'd just...
He'd just stabbed Deku.
Katsuki is horrified. He'd just... done that. He'd just maybe...killed someone. Killed Deku. For all his desperation to get away, he's never wanted to do that. Never wanted to murder him.
His mouth drops open, his trembling hand pulling away from where the kitchen knife sits, embedded into the other man.
Then Deku fucking yanks it out and stabs it down into the meat of Katsuki's thigh.
"Don't die," he hisses, "Kacchan, don't die, okay? I can't take you to a doctor."
There's a moment before it hits him, before the pain all crashes into him at once and he screams from it. It fucking hurts , having a big-ass piece of sharp fucking metal in his goddamn leg. Deku leaves it in (and Katsuki has a weird thought, about how Deku's blood had been on that knife - how his blood is now inside Katsuki), and stands, somehow, blood bubbling out of his ribcage and staining his white button-down.
Tears gushing down his face, Katsuki looks up at him, at the man standing over him, clutching his chest. "Deku, what the fuck! You're bleeding -- stop!"
"Once Kacchan is inside," huffs Deku, bending towards him, and Katsuki's stomach goes cold. Deku really will die before he'll let him go.
He kicks at his hands when Deku reaches down for him, to try to grab him and drag him away. "You'll die! Call an ambulance."
"No," says Deku.
Katsuki kicks his hand, hard, so that Deku drops him, and scrambles to his feet, the knife still jutting from his leg. "I'm sorry, Deku," he sobs, and kicks him again. Then he makes a run for the next house over, the one whose glowing golden light seeps out from behind the curtains, a beacon in the darkness.
He hears Deku try to follow, but he stumbles and struggles. Maybe about to collapse.
Katsuki crashes into the front door.
"Help," he cries, into the door, "Help me!"
Long ago this would have hurt his pride. To beg for help like this.
Now he knows better. That pride is how you make yourself vulnerable. Pride is how he was caught by Deku in the first place. Pride is not what is going to keep him in that basement any longer. Maybe he's grown. Maybe he's broken.
Either way.
He slams his fist over and over against the door, until it opens, and he collapses across the threshold of the home, soaking the floor in blood and dirt. He hears the people - the family - screaming and running from him, deeper into the house.
He just hopes they call the police. Or an ambulance. Hopefully an ambulance.
He hopes they don't run over Deku when they arrive.
He hopes...that he's free.
Katsuki had been missing a long time.
Kirishima had finished school without him, had gone to graduation, sat next to Kaminari, and thought of where Bakugo should have been, in the front row, not just because of his last name in alphabetical order, but because he would have been valedictorian. Maybe.
...Maybe it would have still been Iida. Bakugo never had been much for speeches.
Kirishima hadn't forgotten him. He'd gotten a tattoo, when Bakugo's case had been proclaimed cold, a year after he'd vanished into thin air. A grenade, about the size of a kiwi fruit, on the inside of his right wrist.
Bakugo had been like a grenade. Explosive, but only if you do something to pull the trigger. A tough outer shell. Maybe it's a stupid comparison. He had still gotten the tattoo. Bakugo would have told him it looked badass.
Kirishima had never stopped thinking about him. Had never given up hope.
...Despite all that, it had still been surprising to get a call from one Bakugo Mitsuki on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.
"They found Katsuki," she'd said, without even a hello. Her voice was nothing but a croak, like she'd cried herself hoarse.
"Where?" Kirishima had asked.
A town three hours away. In a suburb. In some guy's basement .
She hadn't given him all the details, but Kirishima's mind had filled it in. There's only one reason to keep someone in a basement for years without killing or badly maiming them.
When he'd hung up, Kirishima had cried. For a while. For long enough that his eyes had hurt. He'd had to have a glass of water to replenish his freaking fluids! Then he had gotten his things together, and he had gone to see Bakugo.
Bakugo is different now. It's not easy to pinpoint what, exactly, has changed about him, but he is different. He looks the same, more or less. Still blonde, still fit, still with sharp, angry eyes and a wide, expressive mouth. He still calls Kirishima a moron - the very first sentence he had said when they'd met again had contained the word - and yet, he is different.
"Why do you want to visit him?" asks Kirishima, trying to keep his eyes on the road. They're nearly there.
"None of your business," says Bakugo.
He knows it isn't, but also? It kind of is? Bakugo is his best friend. Kirishima had been there with him at the hospital, at the trial, at the sentencing, and afterwards. He's driving him now, in his car. "I know, but... I don't know, maybe talking about it would help."
"You know what he did," says Bakugo, and Kirishima does glance over then. He's sitting low in the chair, his too-big hoodie bunched up around his neck, covering half his chin. He looks like a grumpy teenager. Kirishima knows. He'd heard and seen the evidence.
"Yeah."
"So you know he made me..." Bakugo sighs, and turns his head away, to look out the window. Kirishima puts his eyes back on the road. No sense dying en route to visit Bakugo's kidnapper in prison. There's a long pause before Bakugo continues, "He made me be in a relationship with him."
"Yeah," says Kirishima.
"I dunno," mumbles Bakugo, "I just need to see him. Closure, or something."
"That's totally..." well, he can't say it's normal. Nothing about Bakugo's situation is normal, "fine, dude. I support you, whatever you choose to do."
"Thanks," grumbles Bakugo, so quietly he's nearly inaudible over the sound of the car engine.
They arrive. They both check in as visitors. Everything is under control, right up until Midoriya Izuku arrives on the other side of the glass. He looks delighted. He smiles as he sees Bakugo, eagerly picks up the phone. His eyes are soft, his expression indulgent and warm. Kirishima remembers everything he'd said in the courtroom. How he'd talked about Bakugo. He'd pleaded guilty to everything, because he "hadn't wanted to put Katsuki through a trial too."
Kirishima isn't a violent man, but god does he ever want to shoot him.
"Hey," says Bakugo. Kirishima can't see his expression, but his voice is soft. Fond, almost.
Midoriya says something, smiles, presses his hand to the glass in the ultimate cliche. There's a ring on his finger, still.
And as Kirishima watches, Bakugo brings his hand up to meet it, and he sighs, into the phone, "Deku."
T H E E N D
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If you want me to make this not an ending and maybe make another alternative to this comment or I wanna make a Bakutodo version of this so if you would want to see that tell me :)