Chapter Text
He doesn't think anything of it, the first time. Of course he doesn't, the reset point is only a few moments prior to slipping and bashing his skull against a stone in the river, the actual death easily mistaken for a terrified thought when he plummets -a little differently, a little more safely- into the river a second time.
(That's a lie, he does think about it, it races through his mind over and over and over and over again in the span of a millisecond, but other than making him a little more understanding toward Deku, worried as though Katsuki could have died or something silly like that, when the ivy-haired boy jumps into the river after him and extends his hand.)
(Katsuki still slaps it away, he isn't weak, but still can't help the vivid images of pain and terror and incomprehension that whirl in his head. But he's fine, the odd sense of déjà vu he experienced moments before falling is just that, and it's not as though that flash of I'm dying I'm dying it hurts is anything other than a vivid train of thought sparked by a maelstrom of fear from falling .)
(Déjà vu it is.)
He clambers back up to the path, laughing it off when his other friends ask if he's alright.
"Of course," he boasts, puffing his chest out, "nothing can hurt me!"
He watches his step a little more carefully, though.
Deku is annoying and all that, but maybe he isn't completely wrong about being on alert when playing at the edge of a ravine.
.
The second time, however, he notices and thinks. Thinks a lot, because it doesn't make sense and for all that everybody says he's smart and bright and amazing (which, yeah, he is, nobody else can get everything right on their maths test without studying) he just can't figure it out.
He's back in art class. He can recognize the mess around him, the paint stuck in his friends' hair and splattered across their shirts, the tears Deku tries to suppress when he regards his half-finished painting (ugly, of course, Katsuki's own looks way better) that has been ruined due to the paint war which had ensued when the teacher left the room.
Breathing is so easily he barely feels it. It's weird, because he's never thought much about breathing and his ribs and lungs, but here he is and it's marvelous how easy and unhindered it is. No rubble crushing him to the ground, no ribs or whatnot tearing through his lungs until they're so filled with his blood that he dies from suffocation rather than trauma or blood loss.
(It's what he understands much later, anyway, even though he doesn't really want to think about his deaths and generally avoids that part of memory lane.)
Katsuki doesn't realize he's panting until the kids around his table start giving him odd looks. He tries to stop, and clearly it works because they soon go back to trying to save their projects. A scathing part of him reasons that they're lucky he started that paint war, really, it only improved their ugly paintings. They all look the same beneath the array of splatters, all uneven green hills and a yellow sun tucked into the top right corner, and while he had to stick to the theme as well, at least his hills are even and green without ever going outside the borders of the initial sketch they'd all been handed, and his sun is not in the top right corner like a kindergarten kid's drawing.
It hasn't been completely saved from the carnage of paint wars, however, lines of rusty brown and deep, metallic gray streaking it. It looks like the beams and poles of the scaffolding which had fallen onto him on his way home. (But no, he's at school, he hasn't started walking home yet today.)
He quickly adds more brown and tries to salvage the project by adding trees even though trees aren't meant to be in the picture.
The teacher will just have to deal.
When he walks home from school that day he does it on the other side of the road, and his eyes widen when the scaffolding does indeed break, killing and injuring those walking beneath it. The shaky, unconvincing explanation he comes up with is that he must have bumped into somebody whose ability allowed him to see briefly into the future, or that maybe he accidentally bumped into somebody whose quirk made him see his next potential death experience. He doesn't tell anybody, however, because something about being stabbed by rusty, blunt poles and dying in a pool of blood is both frightening and embarrassing.
But it's okay.
He'll just tell everyone when, if, he avoids something a little less-
A little less-
Just.
Something cool.
Not- not-
Katsuki runs to the bathroom when he gets home and his thoughts start to settle, arms wrapping around himself as if to remind him that he's whole, that it was just a feverish quirk-induced vision, because it's not as though he could know what it feels like to break and bleed.
.
It turns out to be difficult to tell people about something once he's kept quiet about it. Nobody realizes that he's keeping a secret, of course, even though his dad convinces his mom to let him stay home the next two days. The conversation goes along the lines of:
Masaru: He looks pale, my dear, and he's rather quiet too-
Mitsuki: What are you saying?
Masaru: Well, it's just that Katsuki wouldn't want to admit to being sick, and...
Mitsuki: I think I can tell when my son isn't feeling well! He doesn't have a sore throat or fever, and he sure as hell isn't coughing.
Masaru: My dear, don't you think it would be best to keep him home tomorrow?
Mitsuki: And let him steal all the cookies because of some act? No way.
Masaru: But think about all his classmates, it wouldn't be responsible of us if his cold spread to the rest of the school.
His mom can't argue with that or his dad's already magnified eyes widening imploringly, so he stays at home for two days. They're nice days, odd days. Days spent with cookies and video games and hero magazines. Days spent sucking in crisp air as he vaults from his swing at the highest peaks, soaring through the sky before falling down to the earth like the scaffolding had done.
He doesn't break, though.
Katsuki is whole and flushed and pumped with adrenaline, jumping higher each time until he scrapes his knee and has to go inside to find a plaster. He doesn't talk much and when Deku stops by in the afternoon, he scoffs and sends the clingy boy home with a dismissive snap.
He doesn't tell him to go die, though.
He doesn't think he can ever sling those words around as carelessly as before, but nobody seems to notice that once he's back in school, as loud and brash and noticeable as before. It makes the small, scathing part of him wonder how much attention people have really payed to him all these years. Sure, it's always been there -"You're amazing!" "That's very bright." "How awesome isn't that quirk!" "You'll become a great hero." "I've never met somebody with as much innate talent as you."- but how closely have they really been searching, what feat made them put him on a pedestal, how well do they really know him?
He puts it out of his mind.
Instead, he does what he does best and lets heat and sparks dance in his palms, learns to equate the smell of smoke to action and progress, forces everyone around him to acknowledge him. (But it's all wrong, it's so easy, he's stuck stuck stuck and the cracks in his view of his classmates spread and thicken, because not only don't they notice any differences in him, they also watch him with superficial awe they don't deserve, because they can't begin to comprehend him, not when they're weak and don't make an effort to improve and say stupid things like Bakugou is invincible.)
.
When no more visions (because it must have been a vision, people don't die and come back) occur, the episode slips into the back of his mind. Part of him reasons that he probably dreamed it or actually just had a sense of deja vu and simply remembered the series of events all wrong, or something, but most of him simply moves on and lets it fade along with memories of telling people to die whenever he doesn't like them. He can tell them to piss off, he can be mean, he can be harsh with the truth when he tells others off and with his hands when they tremble with power, but.
But.
But he doesn't bash somebody against a wall for taunting him, thinking they can get away with it because he's younger. But he doesn't tear into his classmates because of their weaker quirks, only their delusions that they will be able to do what Top Tens can. But he doesn't wish death upon Midoriya just for being annoying; sometimes he snickers whenever the boy starts rambling particularly nerdily, sometimes he spits harsh facts, sometimes he scoffs when his friends are particularly mean because heroes don't treat civilians like shit, even when they're quirkless nerds, but mostly he ignores him.
Aside from sharing a dream, they're nothing alike.
Their moms are still friends, which he can't wrap his head around because Mitsuki is strong and tall and classically beautiful with a mean temper and harsh tongue, and Inko is soft and short and mellow and prone to crying, but somehow his mom never scolds Midoriya's mom unless Inko is being particularly down and Inko never makes Mitsuki seethe unless the blonde is already upset about something. (Usually her coworkers, because now that Katsuki is older he learns that his mom's glycerin quirk, which makes her look younger than she is, means people think she's pretty and there's something disturbing about people thinking that. She's his mom. That's, like, gross and wrong and fuck it all, he thinks he'd probably have castrated somebody already if he were her.)
Katsuki can't ignore Midoriya when it turns out both are applying for U.A., though. His classmates laugh and he can't decide what to do, because it's a comically tragic thought and he is torn between sniggers, a wince and a death glare. He settles for a scowl, which encourages his followers to start jeering, but the teacher isn't half as in awe of them as he is by Katsuki and quickly tells the class to settle down so that he can start distributing the papers.
"Not that there's any doubt what anybody here wants to become," the balding man repeats as he shuffles between the tables. Katsuki is quick when he fills in his own paper, writing only Hero Course and U.A. because that's the only place he'll go for. Anything less would be humiliating, and he won't go easy on himself by adding fall back options.
No catch nets for Bakugou Katsuki, future No. 1 Hero.
He thinks his classmates should use their two shared braincells a bit more, though, because there's only one or two others who stand a chance of becoming Heroes, and that's only if they're realistic and apply to a shitty local school, and the most they'll ever become is the sidekick to a sidekick. If they're lucky they'll be promoted to bring coffee to a Hero.
"So awesome," the giggly girl behind him sighs when she sees that he's only applying to one single place for one single course. "What if you don't get in, you'll have to wait a whole year before applying to other high schools?"
He doesn't dignify that with an answer, only a sneer, and the giggly girl turns bright red and starts whispering to her friends:
"Bakugou-kun looked at me, did you see-"
Class passes quickly. Everybody is too excited to focus the final half an hour before school end and the teacher knows it: he lets everybody talk and scribble as long as it's not so loud that he can't hear the music in his headphones. The two boys sitting next to Katsuki have already decided on their Hero names, Wings and Fingers, and ask him what his will be.
Katsuki shrugs and says something along the lines of deciding on it after imprisoning his first villains, prompting unwanted conjecture about how the three of them (the three of them? Hah! As if) would make a name for themselves. He doesn't say this, although it's difficult not to and amused, condescending words burn on his tongue.
He's been pretty damn clear that he's the only one here with a shot to become one of the greatest Heroes- hell, essentially the only with a fair chance of making into any Hero course worth mentioning at all.
He waits for class to be over, though, before looming over Midoriya, who predictably pales and fidgets and tries to become nonexistent. It makes Katsuki's mouth curl further, because for all that the quirkless boy already stands no chance to become anything, trying to be nonexistent just makes it worse. Was he, what, going to get past villains by looking pathetic?
"What do you think you're doing?" He demands, teeth bared and fists clenched. "Do you really think so little of U.A. and those who can actually go there that you apply anyway? You need power to get in there, not tears, or did nobody ever teach you that back in elementary?"
"N-no no you misunderstand-"
A scratchy kind of heat sizzles just beneath the surface of his skin, born from his hatred of baseless ideals that could never be backed, born from Midoriya applying to the same place implying that Midoriya thought U.A. and everybody else applying there were as useless as him for him to have a chance, born from anger at the thought of people applying to the best school on an unfounded whim where he applies to push himself to greatness because he can actually get there while they can't and if they don't even see that how can they ever-
"I misunderstand?" He snaps, slamming a smoking hand down onto the table and leaving a blackened handprint, "you think I fucking misunderstand this? You, you think you can just waltz in there with a snotty nose and piss on everything U.A. stands for just so you can say something pretty like at least I tried, huh? Guess what, all you're doing is wasting one of your five high school options!"
Midoriya flinches as Katsuki jabs a finger at the paper on the desk, which proudly announces that Midoriya Izuku is applying to U.A.'s Hero course.
"That's not, it's not like that," Midoriya tries, words breaking in the air between them, forest green eyes averting to the charred mark on his desk. "They accept quirkless people now, a-and when I get in-"
He doesn't get to say anything more, because the blond boy bursts out laughing, a hoarse sound bouncing off the classroom's bare walls. "When you get in? I'll tell you what happens if you get into U.A. fucking High's Hero course, you'll have taken the place of somebody who can actually make a difference when they graduate, because let's face it, you need a quirk to get shit done and make a difference. And accepting quirkless people? Yeah, right, of course they can't do the whole institutional discrimination thing and say quirkless people aren't allowed to apply, but you think a school priding themselves on making the best Heroes -the best fucking Heroes, the crème de la crème, get it through your head, dipshit- will accept somebody who will never become a successful Hero?"
(There's a difference, he thinks, between heroes and Heroes. The Heroes have made it their job to be just that, taking on the burden of the rest of society so they don't have to stand tall and speak up and be heroic, and then there are heroes, who don't get payed for what they do but do the little things. Midoriya might become a hero one day, might rescue a puppy from the riverside or pick up a purse dropped by an old lady, but a Hero? Fighting against powerful quirks and masterminds and plots? Yeah, no.)
Midoriya doesn't answer, the eternal flow of tears glistening in his lashes.
"Didn't think so," Katsuki frowns and turns to walk away. At the door, he pauses but doesn't turn back to face the quietly weeping boy, eyes trained on a spot down the corridor that is bland and unchanging and predictable. "You'll thank me later, when you get your college math degree or whatever."
On that note, he leaves.
(And, yeah, he thinks he was pretty cool back there and although he'll admit that he might not be the best at communication, he probably got his point across.)
For old times' sake, he tells himself, I gave Midoriya advice for old times' sake.
He takes a detour on his way home, mulling over U.A.'s entrance exams and what they might entail. The written exam is predictable, he knows that much: basic quirk regulations, academics like language and history and science. It's the practical exam he looks forward to, the fact that he has no clue what it consists of only making him more excited.
He can't wait for it, and it's with a grin on his face that he kicks a stray bottle on the ground. It ricochets off a nearby wall, and he scowls with disgust when a thick, murky goo spurts from the lid that popped off at the impact.
The scowl slowly fades.
The goo only continues to grow in mass as though it'd been forcefully entrapped, building and gushing and creating at revolting slime creature whose laugh catches against the walls and echoes around him in a gruff, gurgling whisper. The beady eyes are trained on him, and Katsuki feels a shard of ice form in the pit of his stomach.
His first explosions are defensive, trying to keep the assaulting heteromorph (of course it's a heteromorph, just like on TV) at bay, but he hasn't worked up a sweat and there's not enough nitroglycerin being produced to do real damage. Others might have been daunted by the blasts, but not giant slime villains who cackle about using bodies and escaping.
The slime rushes towards him, shying away from another explosion with a hiss before enveloping him.
Katsuki fights.
He fight and fights and fights, until fires rage around him and his limbs have gone numb. The struggle lasts long, even when his lungs cramp for oxygen that isn't there and slime starts seeping past his stubbornly ground jaw that is starting to slacken with exhaustion. He struggles even when it gushes up his nose, when it pours down his throat, when it's everything around him. He struggles while helpless Heroes whose quirks aren't suited for villains of this texture tell him to hang on and keep calm, a crowd of onlookers gawking and gasping without realizing that they're treating this like it's on TV -which it probably is. He struggles when the numbness of his extremities is replaced by not feeling them at all, and soundlessly screams with fury when the slime villain's hands start popping and cracking with his own quirk, with his own fucking quirk, how dare the bastard how dare he how dare he-
I'll kill you-
.
Katsuki blinks.
He's just kicked the bottle and watches with wide, unblinking eyes as it crashes against the wall. The red lid pops off, and thick, dark green slime rushes out of the tiny plastic container that shouldn't possibly be able to hold such a large entity.
At first, thoughts won't form. Surely he is still choking and this is just a delusion, something his oxygen-deprived brain conjured when on the brink of death? But no, everything around him is too real, he can breathe fine, his limbs feel normal, his eyesight isn't marred with black spots.
It isn't until the villain is fully formed and spreading out across the shadowed street that it all clicks into place. He's died, again, it wasn't a vision, it has never been a vision, he died and blinked back into life about ten minutes prior to his death. Mind torn in a million different directions, he doesn't even listen to whatever the heteromorph is cackling.
He had frozen while his brain rushed to process. It doesn't sink in that he has yet to move a muscle until the villain rushes at him and the world around him becomes real. Shaking the thoughts -frazzled, disjointed, confused thoughts- off, he leaps into action and tries to fight.
It's less of a struggle this time. He'd lost precious seconds staring into space while trying to make sense of everything, and he hates himself for it, but he hates the slime villain more. Roars tear from his throat when he trashes around in the gooey substance, battling for every second of life he can win back, his heart beating wildly in his chest and the villain hissing with pain whenever he explodes him from the inside. Then the sounds of agony turns into victory: the horribly familiar sight of his precious quirk starting to sizzle in the enemy's slick hands makes something shameful burn in his eyes, and in that moment, Katsuki wants to hurt him over and over and over and over until he can breathe again and the slime is little more than char and crisp that turns to ashes in the wind.
Then the thick, wet being wells up his nose, down his throat-
.
Katsuki blinks.
The bottle, the stupid fucking bottle with the stupid fucking red cap and stupid fucking red sticker, crashes against the wall. This time around, he doesn't freeze: he blasts the villain before it has even fully emerged, chapped lips stretching into an ugly snarl when it howls.
He doesn't stop. He blasts and leaps and dodges, weaves beneath the tendrils of goo that speed toward him in an attempt to entrap him.
Which.
Yeah, no.
Katsuki is not going through this again, he is not, he is not he is not he is not, and so, he crouches low before jumping into the air, aided by explosions that send him high above the slime villain.
His throat is raw from the smoke, but it feels good when he roars as he blasts the slime villain right in the face from the air. The shockwave whispers against his skin like a desert wind, and for all that he's somewhat heat resistant due to his quirk the rapidly reddening skin on his hand still stings from the heat and potency.
Katsuki fires off a second one and grins, wide and feral, when the slime villain shudders and tries to shield itself. Pain is evident in every movement of the tentacles and shuddering growl, and it's satisfying after two deaths at the hands of this sewage-reeking piece of shit. Perhaps because of that pain and the fear of losing, the slime villain charges again with a ferocity he hadn't witnessed before.
He jumps away form the first tendril, blasts the second, vaults over the third but the fourth catches him mid-air. (Part of him hisses that if only he'd had more time, if only he'd had more time, he could've continued his illegal practicing in the park to master his quirk- he knows it's difficult, but he's certain he can become adept at moving around in the air by the time U.A.'s entrance exams come up.)
The impact of being slammed against the ground is jarring, and for a horrifying moment he cannot breathe. Then air rushes back into his lungs, and just in time too since he's barely had time to grind his mouth shut before slime envelops him.
The ensuing struggle is familiar.
But it's not the same.
The helpless Heroes still call out to him, shouting things like you're doing great, keep calm, it'll be okay, while fires rage around him, and then the slime villain's gooey hands pop with the beginnings of his quirk. But then-
Then Midoriya is there.
Katsuki's vision is still unhindered, his limbs are still his own, he still has plenty of air left: as doomed as he'd been when caught the previous times, not even at the brink of death had somebody rushed toward him. Maybe he'd finally stalled long enough.
Maybe he'd kicked a pebble which'd knocked into another and caused a butterfly effect.
It didn't matter.
It was different this time around, and Katsuki couldn't even bring himself to despise the useless way Midoriya clawed at the slime. His eyes, too large and too green, shone with tears and his expression was frantic; there was nothing heroic about the way he looked, and yet, he'd still come when nobody else did.
Then the slime knocked him away and Katsuki watched, fire burning in his eyes, as Midoriya sailed through the air and miraculously avoided landing in the flames, instead sprawling across the ground not far from the crowd.
Just as his fingers started going numb, there was a flash of gold.
A rush of air so powerful it ripped the villain right off him.
The asphalt meeting his back -he'd fallen to the ground again- and the clouds growing dark above the block.
Rain began to fall, thick droplets that were out of place when considering how sunny the day had been, cheers rising from the crowd which had gotten what they'd stuck around for, a Hero saving the day, one of the previously helpless Heroes now putting out fires.
Aware that he should at least be bruised and therefore be in some pain, Katsuki felt light instead. The air was smoky and smooth all at once, lovely in his lungs, adrenaline fading and leaving him bemused, grit and debris digging into his back non too unpleasantly if comparing it to the smooth, damp chill of the villain.
He was alive.
(He was actually-)
It was over.
All Might was there, tall and bright and dispelling any residue of gloom that lingered in the ruined shopping street. Midoriya was there, shaken and being scolded by those who'd done even less than him.
Heroes helped him up, their hands warm and dry through his uniform. The stench of sewers was blocked by the familiar, comforting smell of smoke and fire, but somehow the damp chill seemed to have latched onto the ground around him, reluctant to yield in the face of flames.
But the flames would win, he was sure.
"You did great," one Hero beams.
"When you finish high school, give my agency a call!"
"That was some serious skill, kid, good job."
"Now that's raw talent right there!"
Over their heads, he spies for All Might, and there he is, tall and built and smiling that eternal smile, easily shoving the remnants of slime back into the plastic bottle. Maybe, just maybe, Midoriya had a point about All Might being amazing not just because he always won, but because of the people he managed to save.
He'd never given it much thought before.
(Before dying.)
Katsuki goes home. He's excused from filing a report for the police, one of the eager Heroes who either want to make up for how little they could do or wanted him to join them later (as if he'd ever) getting him off the hook. Midoriya and All Might are both gone, but he looks for neither. After all the things which had sped, whirled, and clicked in his head today, his mind now feels empty.
Once he's kicked off his shoes in the hallway and made himself a cup of coffee, he slumps into the couch with the TV playing some mindless sci-fi that's woefully predictable and shallow in the background. It's white noise, something to stare at. Masaru and Mitsuki are still at work, but he doesn't doubt they'll rush home once somebody tells them the news. The mug on the floor next to him is his dad's. It isn't until it's empty, residue leaving a dark spot on the bottom, that everything finally settles.
It's laughter that bursts from his lips. Scratchy and dry, so very relieved, going on and on until it finally breaks into a single sob that hurts when it forces itself up his throat like a sharp rock. It takes four tries to swallow it back down. (But he's also died four times, hasn't he, twice as a kid and now two time again, so maybe there's some poetry there.)
A deep breath, the kind that fills him up like a balloon before slowly exhaling, shoulders slumping.
Face wiped on the back of his sleeve, leaving salty stains he hadn't realized ever gathered in his eyes.
Another breath, more resolute.
Bakugou Katsuki switches channel and gets comfortable. That's how Mitsuki finds him, pouring a million questions that begin with are you okay and end with want me to call Masaru and tell him to make tempura tonight instead of salad. Of course, she doesn't wait for an answer and phones his dad right away, which he doesn't really mind, though he'll never admit that.
"I'm fine," he mutters, surrounded by dry warmth. "I didn't die or anything."