Archive of Our Own ^beta

Now.

There are sounds, and BK2004 can’t identify what they are. This is not unusual, because BK2004 can’t see. His arms wrap tighter around his Other — MI1507, though BK2004 will never call him that —  and pulls the his-not-his body closer to his side. 

“You hear that too?” he asks, because once, when it was something new, his lack of sight made him hear things that weren’t there. 

His Other takes BK2004’s hand and places it against his rounded cheek, a practiced motion, one filled with care. MI1507 nods once, exaggerated, bringing BK2004’s hand along with the movement. Then he taps once on the back of his hand as well — Yes. A double confirmation. 

“Test?” BK2004’s whispers into his Other’s ear. It might be. All the lab coats ever want to do is test them. All the tests ever bring is pain. 

MI1507’s fingers flutter to the skin of BK2004’s inner arm. He begins to slowly sketch out katakana symbols,BK2004 constructing their meaning in his mind’s eye. 

‘Different,’ his Other writes to him. ‘Unsure. Can’t see yet. Careful.’  

“Understood,” says BK2004. He feels his Other shift into a position where they can both move faster, if they need to. Then he feels his Other move the hand from where it still sits on his round cheek, so that it’s covering his lips instead. 

BK2004’s Other mouths his secret name into his palm. BK2004 wraps his fingers around it, as if it’s a physical thing he can clutch. 

He wonders what it would be like to hear his Other say it. He can’t imagine the sounds at all — it gets fuzzy, whenever he tries. But he knows just by feeling that his secret name has a sharp sound at the beginning and a long sound in the middle, that it closes in the center and then opens up again. He knows it's important. 

BK2004’s knocks his arm against his Other’s, tangles their fingers together in a motion as familiar as breathing. He bends his head until he feels hair tickle his nose, and breaths his Other’s secret name to him as well. 

The lab coats want them to be one thing — a single unit, eyes and mouth and soul divided into two bodies. And maybe they are, now. But it feels good to keep those names, even if it was just between each other. 

The noises get closer, and MI1507 turns them so that they are more completely facing the door to the room where they are kept. BK2004’s squeezes his hand in thanks. They fall into loose defensive positions. 

They wait. 

.

Then. 

Katsuki wakes up alone and without his sight. 

“What the fuck,” he hisses, feeling fear rise up and then crushing it with a wave of anger. He clutches at his face. 

There is nothing tied over his eyes. He cannot sense the movement of his hands. Everything is dark, and the room around him echoes. 

He forces himself upright, unsteady on his feet. He gropes in front of him. 

Nothing. 

Heart rate climbing, he flexes his palms, tries to ignite a spark of Explosion. 

Nothing. 

Katsuki howls.  

.

Hours pass, maybe. It’s hard for him to track time. Katsuki has barely moved. 

He tried to, at first. He reached in front of him to try and find a wall. But then he’d been consumed with the image of a huge, gaping chasm in front of him, waiting for him to blindly stumble into it. 

He can’t stand his own irrationality, but he doesn’t take a step more after that. 

He makes up for his lack of movement by screaming. 

“Get out here and stop hiding like cowards,” he bellows. “What did you do to me? Think you can take me if I can see you? Come out and give me my Quirk and face me.”

He gets no response. He tears his own throat hoarse. No one comes. 

Time keeps passing. 

Katsuki has never considered himself someone who dislikes being alone — just the opposite, most of the time. He’s self-sufficient. He doesn’t need anyone, not for anything. He is strong enough to stand on his own and he’ll shut up anyone who implies otherwise with a liberal application of his words and his fists and his Quirk. 

But, whispers a voice in his mind, insidious, fed by the silence and the darkness and the nothing around him, he’s never really been totally alone, has he? There have always been people milling around, somewhere. Always sounds from the street or the next classroom over, always light creeping in from the bottom of the door or his phone on the desk. 

Ensconced in his room during a late night study session, door closed and lights dimmed, he could still hear the hag in the kitchen, cursing out the toaster. Could still hear his dad singing off-key pop ballads to himself as he wandered the house, making sure the doors were locked. 

Could still see his fucking sheet of notes in front of him.  

Katsuki presses his forehead to the ground. Feels the coolness of it on his skin. Something real outside his body. Something real outside of his aching throat. He reaches out a shaking hand a few feet in front of him, and still can’t find a wall. 

How did he get here? He forces his breathing slow. Maps his thoughts ruthlessly. How did he get here? 

He remembers leaving the agency to go back to the dorms. Getting onto a train, a later one than usual, he stayed an extra half hour at the gym. He ran into — 

He ended up on the same train as — 

A door opens. Katsuki stops breathing. 

The sound of another body hitting the ground echoes through the space. 

Katsuki hisses through his sore throat. He isn’t scared. He isn’t scared.   “Who’s there? What the fuck do you want?”

He hears the sound of the door closing. Katsuki swings his unseeing eyes in that general direction. He clambers to his feet, criminally unsteady, furious that his lack of sight causes him to be this off-balance. He raises his fists. 

“Who are you? Face me!” 

No answer. There’s no answer, but he can sense and hear the body getting closer, stumbling towards him — this whatever-it-is, there’s no guarantee it's even human, and Katsuki is tired, and hungry, and it maybe isn’t his clearest thought, but — 

He swings his fist at the noise, a scream in his throat. 

Katsuki misses. He overshoots. 

His momentum carried him to his knees, and it stings like a shockwave in the dark. He hears a thump of something going to the ground next to him. 

Heart in his throat, he launches himself at it. Collides. Warm skin on warm skin. Both Katsuki and the whatever-it-is fall to the ground, Katsuki on top, and he pulls his fist back to strike it. 

Then he stops. He is heaving breaths in and out through his nose. 

Katsuki smells his Auntie’s kitchen. 

The body below him quakes. Katsuk, staring someplace far away, lowers his hands until he finds narrow-growing-broader shoulders, and feels scars there. He follows the lines of his neck up to rounded cheeks damp with tears. Wild curls meet his searching fingers. 

“Deku?” Katsuki breathes. “Deku, is that you?”

Under his hands, he feels the head frantically nod Yes.  

“Fucking — shitty nerd,” Katsuki releases his hold on Deku’s arms, falls to one side so they’re next to each other. He can hear the other body move, presumably sitting up. “Why the fuck didn’t you say something?”  

Silence. Katsuki can barely hear his breathing. 

“Listen, I can’t fucking see anything. They did — some shit to my eyes, I don’t know. How the fuck did we get here?” 

Still, no answer. No sound at all, not even any shitty mumbling. Fear bubbles up in Katsuki’s throat again, swirling with doubt, morphing to anger — 

What if this isn’t Deku?

“You piece of shit,” he growls, “don’t fucking mock me. When I ask you a question, you fucking —”

The other body grabs his wrist. Katsuki yanks it away, nearly cocks back a fist to strike again, until he feels the hand tapping frantic patterns onto his wrist. 

He stops. Tries to mop away the haze of anger, before it stops him from being able to think. He counts the tapping, logs the numbers. 

4...6...1...9...1...4

Oh. 

That’s the punch code for the back door of their dorm. 

How infuriatingly clever. 

“Deku,” he says, voice tight, “Okay, I get it, I know it’s you, nerd. What’s with the god-damn silent treatment, cause now is really not the time.”

His hand is tugged up, and moved so that it covers Deku’s mouth like a gag. He feels the other boy’s lips move, slowly. Repeating the same words over and over again. 

Dread spreads through his chest. 

Katsuki copies the movements with his own mouth, exhaling sound around them. 

“I...can’t—”  Katsuki stops. He is staring, but he knows he is not staring at Deku’s face. Who knows what he is staring at. He doesn’t know either. 

“You can’t speak,” he says for Deku, and feels the other boy’s head move in an exaggerated nod. 

This, Katsuki thinks, is pretty fucking bad. 

.

Deku pulls him over to the wall of the room, because the room does have walls, and no randomly placed gaping pits. There are two beds there. 

Katsuki shrugs off Deku’s hands, and runs his fingers over the linens. They’re cold and neutral-feeling, like the sheets on a hospital bed. His conjures up the image of white, sterile sheets, but he has no way of confirming the color. 

Well. He could ask Deku. But he isn’t going to ask Deku. 

He runs his hand over the walls — also smooth, also cool — and begins to pace the perimeter of the room, hand skimming the wall, mapping it out as well as he’s able. He counts his steps until he hits a corner, turns, walks, counts his steps again, logs the changes in texture. Hoarding any information he can get which doesn’t come from his eyes. 

And, fuck. His eyes. 

“Oi, Deku,” Katsuki says, because this is important medical information that he needs to know, “what do my eyes look like? Can you tell what’s wrong with them?”

Deku doesn’t answer, but — well, Deku can’t answer, apparently. 

Katsuki turns back to where the beds are, where he left the nerd a few minutes ago. He starts walking across the room toward him. “This is going to get real fucking annoy—” 

He loses the wall. He doesn’t know where Deku is. He isn’t expecting it, but Katsuki’s stomach drops.  

Images, once again, of gaping chasims in front of him. He would never know it if someone else was here with him. He’d never know if Deku was here or— 

A sharp clap, startling and loud, sounds right in front of his face. Katsuki reels back, and then feels familiar, scarred hands clamp down on his shoulders. Deku clutches them. Shakes him slightly. 

“Don’t touch me,” Katsuki manages to spit out, and then trudges towards the beds, trying to pretend like he isn’t following Deku’s uncertain footsteps to get there. 

Now.

The sounds get louder, and closer. Screams and calls. Over and over again, the word “Clear!”

BK2004 snakes his arm firmly around his Other’s waist, and his Other taps anxious little nonsense patterns onto his opposite shoulder. That’s what that shoulder is for, like his forearms are for longer messages and his palms and fingers are for shorter messages and both their hands are for always being connected. BK2004 knows his Other is filled with words and vibrating, anxious energy, and he knows the only way for him to let them out is through him, the same way 1507 is the only way BK2004 will ever see. 

BK2004 wonders if his Other’s lips move with unvoiced muttering. A far-away part of him wonders how he knows what that looks like. 

More noises interrupt his thoughts. Not the kind they are used to. 

Together, without much thought, they shift and back themselves to the place that’s farthest from the door. 1507 tries to nudge himself in front of BK2004, and BK2004 stops him with a sharp sound from the back of his throat. 

“Quit that,” BK2004 hisses. 1507 tries to step in front of them all the time, as if it’s his job to protect their bodies. BK2004 doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like that he gets to do it, much of the time, because he can see where the threats are coming from.

He moves them back so they’re standing shoulder to shoulder, one whole side of their bodies pressed together. He squeezes his Other’s wrist in warning. 

His Other reaches out and taps one of their codes onto his arm — ‘Need time to see.’ 

Not just see, that meant. Time to tell BK2004 what he is seeing, as well. 

BK2004 bears his teeth, but relents. He tenses, feels 1507 write over and over on his palms — ‘wait, wait, wait.’ 

Something hits the door of the room where they’re kept. It hits the door again. Someone shouts, “this one’s reinforced, get one of the strength heroes over here!”

Something strange and parallel to fear twists in BK2004’s chest. He can nearly feel his Other’s pulse change in tandem to his. One of them tightens the grips their hands have on each other. 

“That’s not the lab coats,” BK2004 says lowly, and he just has enough time to register his Other tap out a frantic ‘no’ into his palm, before the door comes crashing in and everything gets very, very loud. 

.

Then.

“You speak for him, he sees for you,” says the man Katsuki has dubbed Bastard . “The sooner you think of yourself as one continuous body, the easier this will be.”

Katsuki says, “Go fuck yourself,” and then all he knows is pain, pain, pain, and Deku’s hand in his.

.

The worst part is that neither of them, not Katsuki nor Deku, know why. Bastard is obvious about the goal, but not the thinking behind the goal. If they want a weapon, they are trying to create one with an obvious handicap. 

That doesn’t seem to deter them. 

“Tell us what he needs,” Bastard says, voice cold and echoing around their cell. It makes it hard for Katsuki to tell where he’s standing, and he hates it. 

He feels Deku’s fingers press lightly against his jaw, and turn his head slightly to the left. The fingers are shaking. Katsuki wants to rip people to shreds. 

“You know damn well what he needs,” Katsuki snarls. “You’re the one doing this to us.”

“Then you won’t have a problem telling me,” says the smug asshole. “Come now, 2004. You’re the voice. Tell me why he’s fading.”

Deku’s hand squeezes his. It feels like acceptance, and permission. Katsuki hates that he knows just what Deku is giving him permission to do. 

The only time they’ve been separated in the past god-knows-how-long is for meals, where they haul Katsuki away and pump him full of nutrients through a tube and leave Deku with nothing in their cell.

Katsuki knows what the Bastard wants. Deku knows how much Katsuki would rather die than beg.

Fuck Deku for knowing. And mostly, fuck Deku for assuming Katsuki still values his pride that god-damn much.

“He’s hungry.” Katsuki forces his tongue to move. Every word tastes like acid. “Obviously he’s hungry. He needs food.”

He feels Deku’s hand twitch. Knows that it’s in surprise. 

Katsuki can here the stupid smile in Bastard’s voice. “Good,” he says. “Good.”

.

Days blur together. He hates how he is becoming used to Deku’s scarred fingers in his.

“They’re trying to break us,” he breathes to Deku, and he gets a ‘yes’ tap in return which somehow manages to carry the sarcasm of ‘no shit.’  

Katsuki says, “Gunna need an escape plan,” and lets Deku tug his arm out straight to trace rapid katakana on it. It feels like nonsense. He catches Deku’s wrist with his other hand and squeezes.

“That’s worse than your shitty mumbling, nerd. Slower.”  

Deku pauses, and then complies. He takes more time on every symbol, presses down harder. They get through about two sentences before Katsuki is ready to bite through the wall in frustration. 

He hears Deku exhale deeply through his nose. He takes the palm of his hand and runs it once over the span of Katsuki’s forearm. Then he waits. 

“Fuck,” says Katsuki. “Okay. Starting over. Got it.”

A tap for yes. Then Deku traces one word, several times. 

Katsuki says it out loud. “Shorthand.” 

Yes. 

“We need to come up with some easier way for you to talk to me.”

Both of Katsuki’s hands are brought up to Deku’s cheeks, so he can feel how enthusiastically he’s nodding. 

“Fine. Yeah, fine, okay.” Katsuki lets his head bang against the wall behind him. “Let’s figure it out. Might as well.”

So they do. 

.

There are tests, and the terrible part is that they get better at them. 

Bastard sets the two of them in obstacle courses. Against robots. Against other sneering, mocking people. Beats Deku whenever Katsuki trips. Beats Katsuki whenever Deku coughs or hisses or makes any of the very limited noises that he can currently make. 

But they get better at it. 

At fighting with their hands joined. At speaking to each other in this state. The line between whose body is whose is blurring in a way that Katsuki is deeply, deeply uncomfortable with. 

Before this, he barely tolerated hair-ruffles from his mother, only occasionally allowed extended contact from Kirishima. And now — 

Their hands slide together like two greased parts of one machine. Deku pivots and plants his feet, a pillar for centripetal force, and Katsuki flies, grip slipping from forearms to the tips of fingers. His feet crash against the robot and he kicks back. Deku’s fingers twitch an instruction into his own, and he twists at the last moment to avoid an obstacle on the ground. 

He lands with Deku tucked under his arm, and despises how it makes him calm. 

Katsuki hears — and it’s shocking what he can hear, now that he needs to rely so heavily on it — the robots powering down. He hears the slow, measured clapping of Bastard. 

“Well done,” he says, and it feels like the kind of failure that Katsuki hates the most. 

Then he says, “Let’s go again,” and something powers up which makes Deku shake and grasp his hand like a lifeline, and this time they don’t get a ‘well done.’

This time, Katsuki once again learns how it feels to stare, unseeing, as Deku bleeds against him.

.

Then, they try to escape. 

They fail to escape. 

And everything gets so, so fuzzy.

.

“I’d wanted to do this completely naturally, but some things can’t be helped. Go get Hysteria, will you? Tell her I have two subjects that need Weakening.”

Now.

The door is open. People are speaking. It is not the lab coats, there are a lot of them, and BK2004 can’t understand a god-damn word that’s being said. 

His Other’s fingers twitch, quick and clever, tell him ‘many, many, colors, bright, I don’t know, I don’t know —’ and BK2004 pulls them closer together, closer to the corner they’re in. He wishes, often, that they really were one body. He wishes they were one mind. It would be so much easier to know where his Other is, to know if he’s hurt. Maybe, together, they’d be able to see and talk and — be whole. Be not afraid. 

As it is, they are two, which makes BK2004 ache with vulnerability. 

But now isn’t the time for such thoughts. There are people here, and he doesn’t know what threat they pose. 

They are still saying things, and he can understand them now. Some voice shouts, “They’re here! Signal! Signal everyone — they’re both here!” 

His Other tells him what the speaker looks like — ‘one in room now, male, adult, bigger than us. Quirk unknown. Danger unknown.’ Though his fingers rarely shake anymore, BK2004 can always tell when his Other is scared. Usually because his heart rate has picked up as well. 

So BK2004 does what he always does, because he’s the voice, and he needs to make sure they both understand what’s happening, enough to perform the way they’re expected to. So he says, “What’s going on?”

“Boys, hi,” says the voice, quieter. Unfamiliar. Closer than he'd like. It does something to BK2004’s chest which he doesn’t like. “We’re the pros, kids. We’re here to get you out.” 

His Other taps him question marks. BK2004 raises his voice above the speaking man and tries again. “What are the parameters of the test?” This works, sometimes. The lab coats like it when they talk like that. 

A long pause. BK2004 wishes he could see the man’s face. His Other taps ‘I don’t know,’ and moves so he’s standing just in front of BK2004. 

“Midoriya Izuku,” the new voice says, “and Bakugou Katsuki. We’re here to take you home.”

There are words that hurt to think about, and this man has just said all of them. This must be a punishment, and BK2004 has it confirmed when his Other signs, into the palm of his hand, ‘approaching.’ So he squeezes the hand back, shifts on his feet, and attacks. 

He hears the voice all out in surprise, but doesn’t let that stop him, as his Other directs him with all the ease and understanding which he’s now built his life around. 

The next few minutes get very chaotic, and very hazy, but one thing is sure — they lose. 

Fuck, they lose. 

So BK2004 hits the ground and curls, bringing his Other close to him, braces. Because if this is a test, they’ve just failed. And if this is a punishment, he just resisted. He knows what’s next. 

He’s inhaling something that smells — sweet and familiar, and it’s making his eyelids droop, and that’s bad, and he goes to squeeze his Other’s hands so he can know if he feels it too, but — 

but soft hands are pulling them away from each other, disentangling their hold, and BK2004’s brain goes white. 

No, no, this is the one stability they’ve been given. The single thing they were promised would never happen to them again, so long as they behaved. They would not be separated, Bastard and the lab coats promised. 

BK2004 attempts to thrash, but his muscles have all gone weak. People are speaking above him, but he’s not listening, he can’t — he’s squeezing his Other’s hand as tightly as he can manage, but doesn’t know if it’ll be enough — 

Their hands slip. For the first time in a long, long time, BK2004 does not know where his Other is.

His throat goes tight, and he opens his mouth and shouts. “No.”

His voice is aching, and he finds it in him to thrash from his shoulders, knocking away the hands that are grabbing him there. He propels himself forward into his ever-present darkness, eyes wide and taking in nothing. He’s searching frantically for his partner’s hands. 

They can’t be separated. BK2004 will never know if there’s danger in front of him, and his Other — his Other cannot scream, his Other cannot speak, if something happens to his Other when they’re not touching than he’d never know, he’d never be able to find out. He knows this from too many experiences. 

“Don’t! Don’t!” he lets his voice build, lets it rocket out of his mouth, because this is his role, after all. This is all he’s good for. He’s the voice. He speaks for them. 

Someone tries to say something soft in response, but he lunges out again. Searching, searching — 

Everything is so fucking dark. He doesn’t know if his Other is even still in the room. 

They’re taking his eyes away from him. They’re taking his eyes away from him again.

And something builds up in his chest, deep and aching and not anything he would usually let himself feel, because it’s forming into a word. The most important word he knows, though he struggles to understand why that is. The match to the name is Other mouths against his palm. 

Those names are not for sharing. Those names are for hiding, from the lab coats and the Bastard who tells the lab coats what to do. They’re just for each other. But he can’t — he can’t — 

As the grogginess of unnatural sleep drowns him, BK2004 opens his mouth and the word is ripped from his throat in a howl — all he can do, all he can do —  

“DEKU!”

Then.

The woman Bastard calls Hysteria does something to their heads. She puts a cold hand on the back of Katsuki’s neck and everything goes hazy on its edges.

It’s hard to remember things. When they realized it was getting hard to remember things, they came up with a list to recite every night before they fall asleep, but it’s getting harder to justify why with every passing day. 

“I really fucking miss being able to see,” he says nonsensically one day, as they’re leaning against each other, sore and bruised and bleeding. The whole side of his body where he and Deku touch is warm. 

Deku jostles him gently, clearly saying, “And I miss being able to talk,” before he ducks his head into Kacchan’s shoulder and mouths his name into the fabric there. 

Kacchan realizes that he doesn’t remember where that name comes from. Only that it’s important. 

.

Deku is hurt, and Kacchan calls him Deku where someone can hear, and then Deku almost bleeds out silently in his arms. At one point, Deku’s fingers stop twitching against his, and Kacchan screams so loud he feels the wall panels shake. 

Good. He’s screaming for both of them.

.

Time passes. Kacchan falls asleep on Deku’s shoulder. They try to escape again. 

Hysteria comes back. 

.

They are locked together in someplace dark — dark for Katsuki, because everything is, but it’s also dark Deku, because Deku told him so. This room is colder. There are no beds. 

They are told they will be here until they’re ready to behave. 

They cling to each other and starve. 

.

They are taken out of the room. Kacchan does not know his body without Deku pressed to its side.

“BK2004, MI1507. Welcome back,” says Bastard. “We will continue your training now, if that’s amenable to you.”

Kacchan says, “Yes, sir,” and Deku squeezes his hand so hard it shakes. 

.

They move through an obstacle course so smoothly it’s as if the obstacles aren’t there. Kacchan’s shoulder is hit once, and both he and the other body flinch. 

.

Kacchan wakes up one morning to Deku shaking like a leaf next to him. Rocking back and forth. 

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Kacchan's hands find his shoulders, and then run down his arms. Searching for injury, searching for the problem. “Are you hurt? Where are you hurt? Deku?”

Kacchan feels a No tap. 

“You’re not hurt?” he repeats, voice breaking. “Deku, what’s the matter?”

His arm is grasped, and he feels their shorthand being tapped and sketched into his skin. 

“You don’t know?” Katsuki verbalizes for him. “Fuck. You don’t know what, though? What don’t you know?”

Deku tells him, ‘Anything,’ his tears splashing onto both of their arms. ‘Anything, anything. Don’t know anything. What before? Don’t know anything.’

Kacchan realizes that he doesn’t know anything, either. 

.

They do something wrong. He doesn’t remember what. 

He is in this obstacle course alone. There’s no wall. He has nothing to touch to orient himself.

He has no partner. 

Every time he steps incorrectly, he knocks his leg into something thin, sharp, and electrified. It sends a synapse of pure pain jolting through his entire body. 

He tries not to cry out, because he knows how the lab coats operate, and knows that they have his partner somewhere close, watching and silently crying. 

Kacchan can do this. He can. He just needs to — 

He steps into the dark and his shin hits a wire. He collapses. 

He can’t get up.

“BK2004, please continue the experiment,” says Bastard. 

He folds his knees under him, and still can’t stand. And it’s just — 

It’s too much. It’s been so long. It’s just too much. 

“BK2004—”

“Give him back to me,” he sobs out, loud enough so that he knows Bastard can hear him. 

A pause. “Say again?” he asks. 

“Give him back to me,” BK2004 repeats, swinging his head towards where he thinks the man is standing. “Please. Please give him back to me. I can do it, but I need him. So give him back.”

“I see.” BK2004 can hear the smile in Bastard’s voice. He can’t process what that could mean, knows it’s bad. Doesn’t care. “Well. Since you asked so nicely.”

BK2004’s Other is shoved into his arms. 

Now.

He wakes up alone. There are other people around him, but he’s alone in the only way that matters. 

There are bandages wrapped around his eyes. 

People keep trying to speak to him, but he won’t. He can’t speak when he’s only speaking for himself. He opens and flexes his hands into fists. 

He floats, a bit. 

“Bakugou,” he hears a voice, all gravely and low, something familiar about it but he’s not about to try to remember what, “they think they’re going to be able to completely reverse what was done to your sight. Same with Midoriya’s voice. It was likely done with a Quirk, not medically.”

He doesn’t say anything. What the man is saying makes no sense, anyway. His sight can’t be fixed. He doesn’t have his sight because he’s one half of something larger. 

The man keeps calling him that name, too, which hurts him to think about. Familiar from this mouth, not familiar in his mind. He knows it just as passionately as he doesn’t know it.

“Some of it has already been fixed, but it needs to be done slowly. The bandages are there to avoid the light hurting you. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t care if he understands or not. Nothing makes sense, anyway. This is not the way the world should be. 

“Do you want your parents to come in, Bakugou? They want to see you.”

This is a direct question. His mouth opens on instinct. 

“I want to see my Other,” he says. His throat is still sore from screaming. “I want to see him. Don’t take him away anymore.”

There’s a long, long pause. The man exhales, and the exhale shakes. 

“Hold on,” he says, and his footsteps leave the room

BK2— or, no, the man call him Bakug — but his Other whispers Ka — or is it Kats — no, no he, him, the body in the bed, listens to voices outside. They probably don’t know that he can hear them. 

He hears arguing, which he doesn’t like. He hears ‘more harm to them both than good.’ He hears, ‘we’ve tried everything else.’

He closes his fingers in the blanket and waits. 

Someone comes back into the room. Someone talks to him, but he doesn’t really understand them. They put him in a wheelchair. 

They move. 

The boy in the wheelchair cannot see. He doesn’t know where they’re going. He holds onto the arms of the chair and lets himself hope. 

Then, he is lifted so he’s sitting on another bed. There is a movement to his left. Heart in his throat, the boy leans towards it, reaching out — 

Fingers entangle with his, and he would know those scarred palms in death. 

The boy makes a broken noise. He flings himself forward, and feels something click into place inside him. He touches cheeks he knows by heart and feels them nodding, the most assuring feeling in the world. 

The adults are saying something, but he isn’t paying attention. He feels his Other’s hands reach around his head, finding the bandage fastening. He lets him undo it and carefully unspool the bandage onto the bed they both sit on. 

They’re gone, and the boy’s eyes are closed. Into his palm, his Other traces the katakana for ‘see.’

He opens his eyes. 

Green. Green, bright against white, hair too short, though he doesn’t know how he knows that. Everything is too blurry and so bright it hurts, but he sees. He sees everything that matters. 

He sees a smile he has felt against his shoulder, sees a mouth open. And then he hears, quiet and scratchy and sacred, he hears — 

“Kacchan.”

And Kacchan laughs. He pokes the rounded cheek without having the tap around or be guided to find it, and his eyes well up. 

He says, “Hi, Deku.”