Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Katsuki was four and a half, he presented his quirk. Explosions like stars in the night sky erupted from his hands, making everyone around him smile. 

Coincidentally, that’s also when he met his biological father for the first time. A man towering over everyone around him, flames dancing on his skin and in his eyes, looking at the sparks that came out of Katsuki’s hands like they were a promise for greatness, a gift that would help him go where he himself couldn’t. 

Katsuki always knew that his dad wasn’t his ‘actual’ father, not by blood anyways, which didn’t mean much to him. They played together, they cooked together, and he bought him hero merch, which is pretty much what a dad was supposed to do by his standards as a child. 

He never knew who his blood father was, not until that day, sometimes in late September or October, where he was met with him for the first time. Whatever his dad was, Endeavor wasn’t. He wasn’t gentle, not in his manners, nor in his speech, he didn’t want to play games, and most importantly he didn’t like his favourite hero. But Katsuki met him, encouraged by his parents, something about how important it is for him to know his origins and what not. And in the span of a few days, he met a whole new panel of people, including siblings he supposedly had, a whole bunch of new information to digest, with less than welcoming feelings directed towards him. 

When Katsuki was four and a half, he learnt what it meant to not be liked. Not by his supposed real dad, nor his siblings, or the rest of that new family he apparently belonged to. But he was given the promises of being forged into a hero, by the hands of none other than Endeavor, so none of it mattered.  

The rest, for him, is history.

Middle school is stupid, and Katsuki can’t wait for it to end. Repetitive days and countless hours spent around idiots he didn’t want to do anything with were just unbearable, not when he could be preparing for UA instead. The entrance exam was still a year from now, but Katsuki isn’t the kind to take it easy on himself. He has every intention of wrecking whatever record the school had, which was the least he could do if he ever dreamed of surpassing the number one hero. Or stupid Endeavor. 

Alas, he has no say in that—he still has to graduate from Aldera, and of course he has to be the best at it, so he has to attend his stupid classes and see the stupid faces of his stupid classmates. 

“Kacchan,” he hears across the empty hallway.

Talking of stupid classmates—

“No.”

Katsuki doesn’t even turn his back to face the stupid nerd, who for some reason thought he got to talk to Katsuki at all. They weren’t friends, hadn’t been in a while, but somehow, he could never get him out of his life. 

“Kacchan,” the nerd sighs this time, as if he was personally bothered by this conversation he was the one to initiate in the first place. Katsuki ends up having to see his stupid face anyways because the idiot made his way in front of him. 

“Deku,” Katsuki parrots, “why the fuck do you bother me? Don’t you have better things to do in your life?”

Deku is a good five centimetres shorter than him, but he somehow always manages to look at Katsuki straight in the eyes. Contrary to other people their age, Katsuki natural harshness doesn’t seem to affect the idiot anymore, who somehow seems to take it as an invitation to talk to him. Right now, he looks at him with those green eyes, full of some watery and mushy feeling Katsuki hates and can’t put a name on.

“You should answer your phone,” Deku ends up telling him. “People are trying to reach you.”

Katsuki wishes he could be surprised or confused for at least a second there, but unfortunately he knows way too well what the boy in front of him is implying. They’ve done this dance before, and it always ended the same way. 

“What are you, my fucking secretary?”

“Apparently,” the boy mutters, probably not meant to be heard by Katsuki. Alas, they’ve known each other for too long for him not to understand through the muttering. “Seriously, though, Kacchan, you should answer to Shouto-kun at least. He’s been blowing up my phone.”

To that, Katsuki raises an eyebrow. Shouto has never sent anyone more than three consecutive texts in the same day, so that’s a gross overexaggeration.

“Alright,” Deku corrects, defeated by his disbelieving gaze. “He’s sent me two messages in the span of ten minutes, which is the equivalent of spamming for him. Just —answer him.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole!” He shouts, frustration bubbling inside of him. “And fucking block him if he bothers you that much. Why do you even have his number?"

“Because you won’t answer him, maybe?”

“Shut up.”

Shouto, just like his father and the rest of his family, is quite predictable. Katsuki already knows what the topic will be if he were to answer to any of the calls he’s been receiving, whether it’s from his half-brother or Endeavor. He could pick up, and tell them to fuck off, he isn’t the kind to shy away from an occasion to curse at someone, but he believes that ignoring their calls gets the message across much better. 

Unfortunately, there are certain people who don’t get the message when they are being ignored. That someone happens to be named Midoriya Izuku, the second-biggest pain in Katsuki’s ass, right after his fucked-up pseudo-family. 

The boy looks at him, his eyes full of badly hidden contemplation, his shoulders hunched. “I get it, if you want to ignore… him,” he almost whispers despite them being alone in the hallway of their school, the other students having left for the day already. “But I think… I think you should speak with Shouto-kun.”

“Did I fucking ask? Leave me fucking alone, Deku.” Katsuki hisses, sick already from the asshole. Why did he always believe he had a say in his life, he didn’t know, but it pissed him off. 

But Deku, rather than cowering away with his tail between his legs like anyone else would when confronted to Katsuki’s anger, roots his heels deeply in the ground and holds his gaze. No matter how much Katsuki tries to push him away, no matter the name-calling and the ignoring, he always fucking stays, his shoulders rounded and his fingers twitching anxiously, trying to muster bits of courage in order to look him in the eyes and latch on him. He doesn’t fear him, contrary to everyone else. 

Well, that’s wrong. Endeavor doesn’t fear him either. Neither does Shouto, the masterpiece was way above that. And then Deku, somehow. Quirkless, useless, Deku. 

“You’re both applying to UA, right?” He continues, because of course he cannot take a hint to save his life. “It’s better if you don’t ignore your brother, then—”

“What is it to you?” Katsuki cuts him, voice almost squeaking in anger. He marches towards him, making the other one go back and back until the wall corners him. “Why do you even fucking care, are you crazy? None of this is your business, so stay out of it!”

And Deku is smaller than him, his green curls don’t even reach Katsuki’s forehead when they stand like this, face to face, one cornered by the other. And Deku is scared, he is always scared, he would start stuttering by now if he were facing anyone else. But stupid fucking Deku always acts differently with him, and so despite the fear and the lack of confidence, he stills doesn’t try to escape, he stills tries to hold his grounds.  It all makes anger bubble up inside of Katsuki, the lack of control making him dizzy. He wants to punch someone. He wants to scream and he wants to curse. Worse than all, he wants to understand the boy in front of him, and he wants to hate him at the same time. 

“Why do you believe,” he begins, words like venom, “that you have any rights to tell me what to do and what not to do? What makes you believe you know anything, huh, Deku?” he spits the nickname like an insult, anything to hurt and gain back control. 

For a moment, Izuku tries to sink into the wall, to get away, and Katsuki thinks that finally, he is the strongest here, in control. He isn’t the weakest one in the room. 

But then again, Deku can never make anything easy for him, so he talks. 

“I…,” he starts, voice shaky, “I just care. About you.”

And if he had any humour in him, Katsuki would laugh. An ugly, dry laugh. But he doesn’t. 

“You care,” he repeats, trying to force a wheeze. “You care—why the fuck? What do you think, Deku, that we are friends?”

“No,” he admits, quick and sure. A certainty that’s impossible to deny, not even for the most delusional person in the world. “We aren’t friends. But we used to be, didn’t we?”

Once upon a time. Long time ago. In a time when quirks didn’t mean anything, in  a place when no one expected Katsuki to be the greatest. Back in days when no one was better than Katsuki. Where there was no Endeavor and no Shouto and no Rei and no Touya. 

Once upon a time, they had been friends. Since then—

“Well we fucking aren’t anymore.” Katsuki takes a step back, and watches as his childhood friend peels himself off the wall, slowly, unsurely. “So you don’t have to fucking care or anything.”

And the boy still has some words to say, Katsuki knows it, he can see it. But he doesn’t leave him the chance to.  He turns his back, fastening his backpack on his left shoulder.

“You don’t get to talk about my life,” he says as a reminder. “And don’t you ever call anyone my brother again, fucking understand?”

Somewhere, in the south of Musutafu, not too far away from the trashed municipal beach, there is an old site of abandoned buildings. The prefecture had probably decided that it was easier to abandon it rather than to do any kind of work in the neighbourhood, leaving it in a pile of dust and ran down buildings. Some people still lived, Katsuki’s pretty sure, and some other types of activity that weren’t too legal probably took place around there. Regardless, that was the only place where Katsuki could practice his quirk freely. 

He jumps off a building, using his explosions to propel himself before hitting the ground, and redirecting himself. He had first thought of using his quirk that way when he was eight and his quirk had started becoming stronger, evolving from sparks to explosions. His dad—his actual dad, the one who raised and loved him— almost had lost days off his life when he had first seen him do that, hugging him tightly when Katsuki miscalculated his landing and scrapped his knees. Endeavor, on the other hand, had pointed out all the flaws in his technique, and Katsuki had corrected them by the other day. 

It was so stupid that they were expected to pass a physical test for the UA entrance exam, but were not allowed to train their quirks without licences. Or supervision, which Katsuki did not have anymore. Not since last year, when he decided to pull the door of the Todoroki estate one last time, in shouts and splutters of anger and shame, and had therefore not trained with Endeavor since.

Katsuki lands back on the same building he had jumped off, his muscles sore of all the exercise he had already done since the end of class. In the horizon, he could see all the dust he had lifted with his quirk, the particles falling down in a messy rhythm. The place wasn’t ideal for quirkless training, but it was definitely suited well enough for his explosions. The people who still lived around there were used to that kind of noise, and whichever junkie had chosen this place for their business knew better than to look for trouble. 

Katsuki was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a hypocrite—he didn’t get to complain about Shouto getting ready for the entrance exam in better conditions when Katsuki was the one who made this choice. 

As he does his stretching, his phone screen lights up, showing another notification pop-up. He scrunches his nose at the name that briefly shows up on his phone, unconsciously furrowing his eyebrows. 

Shouto had never been the kind to reach out to anyone, and even less the kind to do it several times. Katsuki had a few ideas on why he had been so adamant to contact him lately, and none of them pleased him. 

Shouto  

> Katsuki, we need to talk. Call me.
09:37 a.m.

> I know you see my messages, don’t be immature.
11:02 a.m.

> What are you, scared?
07:42 p.m.

The bastard was so painfully good at sending the most obnoxious messages known to mankind. And Katsuki swears he didn’t fail for the bait, he didn’t —but whether he liked it or not, he knew the asshole that they called his brother, and he knew him enough to realise that if he went as far as to send Deku messages about him, he needs to talk to him. 

as if, asshole. call me yourself if you dare <

As his fingers hoover over the keyboard, he cannot help the racing thoughts inside his mind. While Shouto could only contact him for one thing after a year of close to no contact, he couldn’t totally scratch the idea of Endeavor being behind it, somehow. And anything that involved that man was—

His phone rings, and Katsuki stares right into the name of his brother. He waits for a few seconds; he doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of picking up immediately. 

“What?” he groans directly into the speaker, an attempt at levelling his voice to sound as normal as possible. 

“Katsuki.”

Said boy rolls his eyes. “Well fucking yes, who else? What’s your deal?”

There is a beat of silence through the line, and Katsuki wonders briefly if he is being pranked, before Shouto speaks again, voice low and cold. 

“How are you?” 

The question sounds rushed, the attempt at politeness of someone who never interacted with people in his lifetime. A weird distance to put, between two people who’ve seen each other at their worst. Between two brothers. 

And Katsuki cannot hide his anger. “What the fuck—you’ve been spamming me to ask me how I am? Are you serious?”

“I wasn’t spamming—”

“—yes you fucking were, asshole. You even sent messages to Deku.” He lets out a loud breath, failing at channelling his anger. 

He cannot see Shouto’s stupid face, but he can already guess how hard he is trying to adjust his face to seem as icy and cold as his voice, all that despite the general anger burning deep inside of him at any given moment. He’s seen it beforehand, that anger, and he it better than anyone else. Katsuki generally knows Shouto better than anyone else, better than Endeavor and better than himself, even. So he knows that he isn’t getting a call just for the sake of exchanging news. 

“You obviously want to tell me something,” he continues, “so just fucking do that and drop the act.”

“Not everything is an act,” comes the immediate response. A statement and yet not a denial. 

“With you Todorokis, almost everything is.”

A beat of silence. And then—

“Are you still applying for UA, next year?”

Katsuki’s chest raises in a humourless laugh. Bingo . He had guessed the topic right. 

“What do you think, asshole?” 

“I think,” he starts, his voice cold in a way that people unfamillar with him would mistake for assurance, “that it’s foolish to assume that things will go smoothly if you refuse to take things seriously.”

“Take things seriously—take things— are you fucking insane?” he shouts. “Who the fuck do you think you are, huh, Todoroki, saying shit like that? I’ll beat your ass into next Sunday and you’ll see who isn’t taking things seriously!’

“You say this like you ever managed to beat me. You are not stronger than me, Katsuki. And you probably will never be.”

“I’ll fucking show you, asshole! I’ll shove your head in dirt in UA!”

“If you even get in there.”

Katsuki wants to reach through the phone, and tear off the head of the piece of shit in the other side, who knows him way too much. He knows all the right buttons to push, he mastered at railing him up, and Katsuki always fell for it, like a prey into a trap. And none of this was banter, either, Shouto only intended on being cruel. 

He forgot that two could play these games. 

“Those aren’t even your words, are they?” he spat, voice hoarse. “What happened, Shouto, did daddy dearest set you up so you’d call me, ask on how I’m doing without him? Did you call like the perfect golden son you are? Or what is it, does he want me to come back?”

“These are my words,” he answers. “My thoughts, all of them.”

“Yes right, and I fucking believe that. Do you think I don’t see what’s going on, Shouto? All of this—you implying that I can’t beat your ass without being trained by Endeavor. Which—isn’t that fucking crazy, considering how much you wanted me out of your perfect little family life?”

“You’re fucking reaching, Katsuki,” he hisses, and had Katsuki not being too deep inside his own anger, he’d be smug about finally bringing him to his breaking point. “You’re making up things in your head.”

“No the fuck I am not,” he spits right back. “And let me tell you two things, Shouto. First of all, when I left that day, I didn’t do it because of you, so get your ego-inflated head out of your fucking ass. I just have a personality of my own.”

The words fall easily out of his mouth, thoughts rooted deep in his skull, truths he always wanted to admit. And yet, they don’t sound right. They don’t get any weight off his shoulders the way he thought it would. 

But he continues. “And tell your dear dad, if he’s the one who sent you calling me, that I don’t fucking need him. I didn’t give up training, and I’m stronger than I ever fucking was. Everything I do from now on is for myself.”

And he probably should wait for an answer, but he doesn’t. He hangs up, throws his phone inside his bag, and goes back for another round of training, despite his sore muscles calling for mercy. 

When he was four and a half, he met people that they called his family. He met brothers, and he met a sister. He met their mother, so different from his own, lacking the spark of his own. It was the first time anyone had ever looked at him that way, with so much ill-concealed hatred, staring at him with tired eyes who saw in him the proof of how everything wrong. At the time, he didn’t get it. Now, it doesn’t matter much. 

There was an exception, though, in the name of Shouto. A boy as small as he was, bearing expectations even bigger and heavier than those placed upon him the moment Endeavor laid his eyes on him. Katsuki doesn’t remember how, exactly, they became close, but it was probably through the long hours of training, and the few moments of rest they got, talking about the number one and their admiration for him. 

When he was four and a half, he started going at the Todoroki estate periodically, for hours and hours of training, all in the sake of forming them into the perfect heroes. 

At the age of thirteen, he closed the door of the estate behind his back one last time, and never looked back. 

Chapter Text

The walk back home after his daily training was usually a calm one, the hours he spent working out exhausting him and helping him burn off his excess energy. He’d usually take in the evening air in and use that time to let his heart rate drop, before he’d make it to the chaos of his house. 

Today, that walk is nothing but calm. The conversation he had earlier is still turning in his head, the words looping, distorted, echoing things he’s heard all throughout his childhood. His heart is drumming inside his chest and his breath will not steady, his muscles aching for a fight, anger flowing in his blood. He wants to punch something. He needs to break something. 

Instead, he forces in a deep breath, and holds it for a few seconds, before exhaling longly. ‘Four, seven, eight,’ his dad would say when he was younger, the only one of his parents qualified to approach him when he threw anger tantrums.

Four-seven-eight. Katsuki repeats the breathing motions; he inhales for four seconds, holds it for seven, and exhales for eight. He feels ridiculous. There is no reason for a dumb phone call to put him in such a state, and fuel back the anger inside of him. It’s not like any of the shit Shouto said was true—Katsuki is working harder than anyone else, and he is ready to crush everyone at the entrance exam, and the dumb fuck knows him well enough to know that. It’s not the words that bother him, he tells himself. It’s the fucking intent—the audacity, to call and tell him those things, most likely as a puppet to Endeavor. That’s all anyone who stayed in that place could ever be, at the end of the day.

The breathing exercises don’t work. Fuck Shouto for ruining a perfectly good afternoon. 

He enters his house and the smell of curry hits his nose, followed closely by chatter in the living room. People say he got everything in his speech from his mom, in the way she is unapologetically loud, which somehow sounds like a backhanded compliment. Endeavor used to say that he needed to learn how to control his volume, if he wanted to make it to the top, discipline being the crucial for heroes.

“Katsuki, that’s you?” he hears her scream from across the house. 

“No, I’m a fucking stranger who happens to have the keys. What do you think?”

“Show some respect, brat!”

He rolls his eyes as he makes his way to the source of the noise. His mom is sitting on the couch, her arms crossed as she looks at him with red eyes identical to his own, her gaze both sparkling and worn out at the same time. She looks disappointed. 

“Have you seen the time?” she asks, which is a rhetoric question, since the giant decorative clock on the wall points at 09:21.

“I told you I was being late today—”

“—and I told you to come home anyway,” she cuts him. “I’m sure you had trained enough already two hours ago, you didn’t need to stay out any longer. You missed dinner.”

She’s referring to the message she sent him, not too long after he talked with Shouto, asking him when he was coming back. He sent her a simple text, stating that he’d stay longer than usual, before turning off his phone and going for quirkless training. 

He honestly isn’t in the mood for her complaining, he feels all sweaty and gross, and the taste of his anger still lingers. He needs a shower, and a good night’s sleep so he can have energy to for his training the next day. 

“Whatever,” he rolls his eyes, “it’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal, Katsuki!” she answers right back, her pitch higher in frustration. “You can’t just stay out that late whenever you feel like it, without even telling me where you are!”

“I was training,” he feels the need to emphasize, equally frustrated, “And I can look after myself!”

“Well, you’re still my child, and you need to listen to my rules! I let you train every day because I trusted you to be reasonable, but you can’t just come home so late .”

And Katsuki is just—he’s overwhelmed. Maybe she’s right, he doesn’t know, doesn’t allow himself to think—he’s just exhausted, and angry, and full of something he cannot quite name but can’t ignore either. He cannot find anything to argue about, the conversation not so foreign, and yet something he hadn’t heard in a while. 

“It’s nine, not midnight,” he hisses. “You’re acting like I do this everyday !”

“You might as well—”

“Okay, you two,” come his dad’s voice in a gentle wave, “I think it’s better to stop this conversation right here.”

Masaru Bakugou has always been soft-spoken, everything Mitsuki wasn’t. He is the air to her fire, both able to both fuel her and calm her; they complete each other so naturally they were probably always meant to be. Despite his natural calmness, he rarely had trouble making himself heard in their household.

His mom looks like she’s about to continue, and Katsuki is ready to fire right back, but his dad is faster than they are. 

“Katsuki still hasn’t eaten dinner, honey.”

And his mom simply exhales in recognition, her ruby eyes taking him in. She somewhat looks older, right now, despite her quirk—she always does, whenever she looks at him like that, like he is about to disappear before her very eyes. Katsuki can probably pinpoint when she started looking at him like that, though he cannot remember a time before that, he was way too young when he had started training under Endeavor after all. 

“We’re not finished with this, brat,” she says, her voice incredibly softer. “Go get cleaned, and get your gross ass back here to eat something.”

“ How can my ass be gross if I shower… ” he mutters back as he makes his way upstairs. 

Katsuki hates the cold, he always did, even before manifesting his quirk. He hates the winter, the weakness it brings, and the flu, and the dark nights. Even in the shower, he prefers to drench himself in hot water, which he unfortunately couldn’t do right now—ice-cold showers were the best to cool down his muscles after an intense workout. It’s a habit Endeavor had ingrained in him when he was very young, despite how much he hated it as a kid. The only reason he would do it was to not seem weaker than Shouto, who was unphased by the freezing temperature of the water.

Despite this, he never got to like those showers, so he quickly washes up so he can find the comfort of his pajamas. The material of his shorts is soft as he puts it on, and he lets himself fall on his bed. He is tired.

There is a knock on his door, and his dad waits for his soft hum to enter. 

“You’re coming to eat?” 

“In a minute,” he answers, suppressing a yawn. 

The mattress moves under the weight of his dad as he sits down on his bed, slowly, like every of his movement. 

“Did something happen?” he ends up asking. 

“No. What’s your deal?”

“You wouldn’t stay up so late until it did,” he answers truthfully, analytic as ever. 

And Katsuki could talk to him about it, there isn’t exactly a taboo in bringing up the Todoroki family with his dad. Whatever biological truth there was to his relationship with them never changed a thing between them, contrary to Endeavor with whom he had never been allowed to talk about his dad. His real dad, which he didn’t consider the number two hero to be. 

Legally, as much as emotionally, he was Bakugou Masaru’s son. He had been married to his mom when he was born, which automatically made him his dad in the eyes of the state, and no one had ever challenged that. Legally, he was nothing to Todoroki Enji. To the eyes of the public, he was nowhere in Endeavor’s life. A secret not to be told, a dirty truth never to be unveiled.

“I just needed to train,” he ends up settling on, which isn’t untrue. “The entrance exam is soon.”

Despite knowing that it didn’t bother his dad, he never got to talk about things relating to his other family. Not to him, not to his mom. It's burden for him to carry.

“Isn’t the exam in ten months?”

“Yeah. Soon.”

His dad puts a hand on his shoulder, “I think you’ll be just fine, Kats.”

“Of course I will.”

Of course, he will. Endeavor can go fuck himself, he doesn’t need his training, and he doesn’t need to listen to the bullshit he sent Shouto to say. 

“Your mom is just worried.”

“How much sense does it make sense to be worried about me? I’m not fucking weak.”

“You aren’t,” his dad agrees, honest and direct. “Neither of us think so, Katsuki. It’s normal for parents to be worried, sometimes. Even All Might’s parents got worried, from time to time, I’m sure.”

His dad pulling the All Might card is the oldest trick in the book, and somehow it still has its effect. Katsuki simply huffs, looking away. 

“Whatever. It’s not like something happened.”

It had been a while, since he had a version of this conversation. His mom always hated it, when he came back from the Todoroki estate, late at night, exhausted and bruised. She had stopped complaining of it around him sometimes in his younger years, realising that he was too tired to register anything she said. And if he did, it never stopped him from going back there the day after, and the one after that, again and again, drawn like a moth to a flame, drawn to the promises of greatness he had been offered.

His dad firmly presses on his shoulder, before getting up—he had never been the kind to press when Katsuki didn’t want to talk. “Alright, then come downstairs, we put a plate for you. You can’t miss out on my curry.”

And Katsuki doesn’t need to be told twice. Curry had always been his dad’s thing. Whenever comfort was needed somehow in the house, he’d make a big pot, and the smell of it alone would ease up any tension left. That’s just what he needed, at the end of such a day. 

Their homeroom teacher gives them the paper for their high school inscription. Katsuki doesn’t need to think twice when he receives the papers, he already knows what he’s going to put, and he already knows that he won’t put any second choice in there. ‘UA’ will be displayed proudly in the middle of the paper, just like his name will be written next to the no.1 spot after the entrance exam. 

Except, he apparently isn’t the only one who wants to go there. He hears the dumbasses of his class mock Deku on his delusions, and he can only roll his eyes, silent. One would think that the boy had come to terms with reality, by now, but it was apparently too big of a hope to have. 

Once class ends, he is left alone with Deku in the room. Katsuki doesn’t exactly have friends to leave with, people find him too rigid —he thinks they are lazy fucks. Sarcastically, Deku is the only one of them who wouldn’t think of his habits as bad ones. 

“Deku,” he begins, a moment later when neither of them has gotten up to leave yet, disbelief clear in his voice, “how do you even think you’ll get into the UA hero course?”

The boy’s shoulders fall, but doesn’t back off. “There’s no rule saying you need a quirk to pass the entrance exam.”

Deku doesn’t seem like it, but he is so painfully confident, it pisses him off. Not in his speech or his behaviour, but in his beliefs and his convictions. He is the kind of person to believe he could fix the world with kisses and cuddles, he probably also shits rainbows and butterflies. 

“Do you think being a hero is easy ?” he ends up asking, the shake in his voice betraying him. “What do you think you’ll do before a villain with a quirk?” 

The boy looks at him, finally, his green eyes still full of something. Something mushy, something full of feelings and understanding and things that look like determination and pity all mixed together. Katsuki isn’t sure of what it means, but it infuriates him. “There are heroes without quirks, in America,” he says. “They have tools, they can save people—”

“If you want to save people,” he cuts him, “start by saving your fucking self.”

“...what?”

“You heard me. You can’t just become a hero for shits and giggles, fucking Deku. You wouldn’t be able to make those concessions in a million years.”

“I can.” The two words come out crystal clear, louder than he’d dare with anyone else. “I can, and I will try everything, Kacchan. I will still try, again and again, until I can become who I want.”

“You will try? What do you think, that trying is enough? That it’s a fair game, a world full of glitter and sparkles and shit that rewards those who try? Wake the fuck up, Deku, the world is unfair, and you’re not in a favored position.”

“Because you are?” 

“Fuck you. Fuck yourself. Didn’t you always dream of being like All Might, of being number one? Do you think that you’ll be like him without a quirk?”

“Why not?” He almost screeches, getting up from his desk. It’s the most confident he gets, only around him. “Why do you think that you know better than I do?!”

“Because even if you make it to UA,” he spits right back, getting up as well, “they won’t let you be a full fleshed hero. They’ll reduce you to a secretary for real this time, and you’ll only answer to the calls of other heroes. Is that what you want to do? Is that your dream? To be a figurant in someone’s agency?”

People who aren’t fleshed to be heroes don’t become heroes. He’s seen it happen. Natsuo, and Fuyumi, and Rei, and even Touya—none of them could become heroes. And so they were reduced to figurant roles in Endeavor’s life, nothing but extras who would support his wrath when needed, ignored when not. The world isn’t fair, and it isn’t gentle to those who don’t have the powers to handle its harshness. That’s why he was Endeavor’s best student. He knew how to take in anger, and he knew how to stand strong before what would scare others. 

This time, Deku is almost shaking with anger. It would be funny to explain this sight of him to others, to those who’ve only ever seen him silent and cowering, ignoring just how strong willing he can be when talking to his childhood friend. 

“I think, Kacchan, that you’re just projecting.”

And the words hit him like a whiplash, like he received a physical blow. Even Deku takes a step back, only now registering what he said. He realises that he just sunk his hands deep into his chest, and removed his organs. 

“Kacchan, I—”

“Shut the fuck up. Shut up.” He takes his bag on his shoulder, and looks at the boy in front of him one last time. “Fine, do whatever you want, Izuku. I don’t give a shit.”

He leaves without looking back, decides to ignore all the tears that he knows will follow, because he knows Midoriya fucking Izuku too well. He doesn’t understand how easy it is for him to dream of being a hero, to indulge into these dreams so unapologetically, like miracles exist when you’re nice enough. 

Endeavor hand shaped both him and Shouto to make sure they could withstand the hero world. He has sweat hours and hours every day, for years, training his muscles and his reflexes and his quirk, everything so he could become the very best. And even if deep down, Endeavor never believed in him as much as he believed in Shouto, it never stopped him from building himself. If Endeavor thought that he’d never be half as good as his masterpiece, it didn’t matter. Katsuki would shape and mould his own self. 

He walks the way out of his school, his feet automatically guiding him towards downtown, to his training spot. He kicks a plastic bottle at his feet while he makes his way down a dark alley, his mind still on Deku’s audacity. What good does he think will happen to him, in a school where everyone is most likely trained from birth?  

Katsuki sees the shadow forming behind him before he hears the noise. He is quick to turn back, already in a fighting stance, his brain running quick to assess the situation. In front of him moves a shapeless greenish dump of mud, mismatched eyes and a mouth that seem out of place swiftly moving as he speaks. 

“A body…a young vessel…the perfect coverage…” comes the distorted noise, the body closer and closer to him. 

“What the fuck—” Katsuki quickly jumps out as the sludgy bastard moves towards him, seemingly trying to leech onto him. 

He takes a look at his surroundings, quick habits installed onto him since childhood; they are alone in a dark alley filled with trash, the walls are dry and dirty, with no windows or doors in view. He is a few meter off the main street, with many more people strolling around. If he wants to take down the apparent villain, he needs to avoid the busy area.

“A strong body…perfect…”

Once again, the sludge quickly moves towards him, his muddy body outstretching to grab him, making him take several steps back. Fuck it, if he keeps on walking back, he’ll end in the main street and put people in danger. He knows that he isn’t allowed to use his quirk without a licence, but if it keeps up, he won’t be left with any other choice. 

“I’ll fucking kill you,” he hisses, sensing a smile grow on his lips. He’ll just keep the damages low, and they’ll count it self-defence. 

He runs to the villain, his palms facing him and releasing a series of low explosions to not attract any unwanted attention. Unfortunately, they aren’t strong enough to push the villain back. 

“A strong quirk….good…I’ll get to get my revenge…”

Revenge? How does Katsuki’s quirk even benefit him? As he sends another wave of explosions, he tries to understand exactly what the villain might want from him. Does he have a copy quirk? That would explain why he is interested in his quirk. But that wouldn't explain why he seemed interesting in his body. Didn’t he refer to him as a vessel? 

“Get the fuck—”

“Kacchan!”

Katsuki’s head whips to the side in a fraction of second, and he sees the last possible person he wants to see there. He runs towards him from the main street, and clearly they are starting to attract a crowd. 

“Deku get away!”

Of course, Deku is set in doing anything to infuriate him, so he doesn’t, in fact, go away. He stops for a second, his eyes big as saucers, terror in them facing the villain in front of them. That one second observing his classmate costs Katsuki to lose any kind of upper hand he had towards the villains, and finally it gets its slimy self on top of him. The green goo starts to envelop his body, making him trash against the restraint by reflex. 

“You’re the prefect body…prefect for my revenge on All Might…perfect, Kacchan.”

More and more people start to agglomerate, seeing Katsuki struggle against some D-Class villain like a fool. But he doesn’t get to think about it, goo encircles his throat, and fills his throat. Maybe it fills his ears too, because he doesn’t hear anything any more—not Deku’s pleas of ‘Kacchan’, not the public most likely calling for heroes, nothing other than the villain calling him perfect in that disgusting stench of voice of his. 

He cannot use his quirk any more, his hands are blocked, they won’t obey him. For a second, he isn’t fourteen, but five, his hands pined down, his brother on top of him, ready to burn him. For a second, he forgets how to fight back. For a second, he is the failure that will never be worth half of Shouto in Endeavor’s eyes. 

Out of nowhere, he sees a flash of yellow fly towards him—no, fly straight into the villain’s eye. Deku’s ugly backpack, he realises. The hit makes the villain loose its hold for half a second—half a second enough for Katsuki to gain back some composure. He frees one of his hands enough to let out a big blast, successfully freeing the rest of his upper body. He repeats the motion, falling out of the villain’s hold, as it screams in fury. 

Deku immediately gets to him, his lips parting to ask him if he is okay, certainly. 

“Get away,” Katsuki sharply tells him before he gets to it. Last thing he needs is for the nerd to get caught by the villain, too. 

He lets himself fall back into his fight stance, heart pounding, ready to get back to the Sludge Motherfucker for the humiliation he just set him up to. His hands let out blisters, as he gets ready to jump on him. But before he gets to it, another flash of white and yellow surprises them all, faster than him. This time, it isn’t a backpack, but the brightening smile of All Might that faces them. 

“Worry not, everyone. I am here!”

He takes the villain down in an instant, under the amazed eyes of everyone that had gathered around. People cheer, jump out, scream in joy at the sight of their hero. Katsuki doesn’t move. 

He couldn’t take down the villain. 

People talk to him, he thinks. Journalists, whom he doesn’t even get to chase away before civilians rush to him, followed by some second tier heroes who want to recruit him, probably. He doesn’t remember the answer he gives them, pushing them away with the back of his hand.

He couldn’t do what All Might could do. Katsuki really is the failure his father didn’t believe in. 

His heart is beating too fast, the rhythmic thump-thump-thump feels like a threat that it’s going to give out, give up on him right here and now. His lungs probably work on their own now, the air he inspires through his nose crisp and too fresh, prickling at his nose. His eyes won’t focus on a single object, unseeing. He clenches his right hand, his nails settle into his palm, helping him to get some sort of grounding. Four-seven-eight, he remembers. 

A hand settles on his back, guiding him somewhere. Katsuki sobers up, his eyes focus back, ready to go for another round if needed, but he quickly lets his guards back down when he realises that it is a paramedic. 

“Sir, come this way,” she seems to say through the cotton in his ears. 

And Katsuki obeys, taking any occasion to get out of there. He is guided inside an ambulance, the noise in the outside dying the moment the doors close. He didn’t register how loud it was before he got back some calm. They make him sit down on a stretcher. 

“Hello dear, can you hear me?” 

Katsuki’s eyes focus back on the face of the paramedic. She looks pretty young, her dark hair is pulled in a low bun, and she looks at him with the same mushy eyes Deku’s got. It instantly makes some fire burn inside of him. He doesn’t want pity . 

Seeing that he won’t answer, she continues.“My name is Hana, what’s yours?”

Her gentle tone rubs the wrong way, so Katsuki gets up immediately. “Don’t treat me like a kid. I’m fine.”

If she’s taken aback, she doesn’t show it. “Alright, happy to hear you’re fine. Do you have any injuries I could look at? That was quite a though after school scene, wasn’t it?”

“I said I was fine,” he repeats, his voice cracking. He isn’t a fucking child who needs someone to hold his hand and put All Might band-aids on his scraps. 

Without breaking her composure, Hana nods. “Okay, I won’t ask that again then. Do you have your parents outside, would you like to call them here?”

He shakes his head as he makes his way towards the doors of the ambulance. They hadn’t moved yet, and he knows that the EMS won’t be forcing him anywhere right now, not without any threatening injury. Physically, he's completly fine. The taste of the disgusting goo lingers in his mouth, and his brain is screaming at him, but he is fine. 

“I’m going back home," he declares.

“You should call your parents or a guardian,” she seems to restrain a sigh. “You know, so they can pick you up.”

“I’m not a baby. I can go back on my own. Thanks, or whatever.” 

He doesn't wait for her answer before jumping out of the vehicule.The crowd had dispersed by the time he got out, so he doesn’t have to face any more unwanted attention upon himself. Deku isn’t there anymore either, but Katsuki doesn’t want to see him right now anyways. He doesn’t feel like going back home either. 

Right now, he only wishes he had been stronger. 

Someone had caught most of his encounter with the Sludge fucker on video, and naturally it ended up on the journal. The blurry video had started somewhere in the middle of his fight with the villain, capturing both his fight against him and the moment he got caught by him. Naturally, his parents had seen all the footage. Naturally, they had freaked out. 

They didn’t want him to stay out late after school anymore, damned be his training. As if he was a defenceless little kid. 

Katsuki isn’t the kind to lurk around on social media, so he isn’t sure and doesn’t truly care of what’s said about him on there. However, he’s heard the commentary on TV, of people praising him and calling him though and brave and whatever other bullshit they liked to say to make him feel good about himself. There was absolutely nothing impressive about his fight—he could barely hold back the villain before being caught by him like a fucking beginner. All because he got distracted. All because of fucking Deku. 

No. There was no point in blaming his incapabilities on others. Katsuki should have known better than to look away in a fight, he was taught to mind his surroundings, to never underestimate an opponent.All those lessons had been drilled into his head all throughout his childhood, so by all means he should have been above that kind of rookie mistake. If he had been any good, he wouldn’t have been caught, would have sent the ass of the villain into next Sunday, and he wouldn’t have needed to be saved by All Might. 

In the end of the day, he was just another proof of his father’s failure against All Might. Eternal second one, a self-fulfilling prophecy, a never ending cycle.

His hands are begging for a fight, his quirk is sizzling, asking for a release, a relief. Katsuki needs a workout. It had been two days since that day, Sunday had rolled, and he hadn’t been allowed to leave the house. Countless hours of stretching and building up his resistance hadn’t been enough, he has to get fresh air. 

He puts on comfortable clothes, grabs his headphones, and makes his way downstairs. His dad was working on some patrons on the dinner table, having always preferred the space it offered compared to his study. On the couch, his mom was on the computer, probably responding to e-mails. 

“Where are you going?” she asks, a frown taking place on her face. “Didn’t we discuss your training already?”

“We didn’t discuss anything,” he sneers, “you just told me that I wasn’t allowed to go out, like I'm in prison."

“Can you blame me?” she scolds. “You barely spend any time home, you’re always out at places I don’t know, and now you get attacked by a villain. I just want you to be safe—”

“I’ll encounter villains everyday when I become a hero!”

“Right now, you aren’t a hero. You’re a child—you’re my child, and you can’t blame for wanting your security!”

They are having the exact same conversation again, no new points are being brought up. He doesn’t feel like going through that again. 

“Katsuki,” his dad gets up from his seat, “maybe it’s better not to go out today? We can talk about training again, but let’s take it easy this week-end?”

Once again the pacemaker, his dad’s intervention calms down both him and his mother. 

Not in the mood for arguing, Katsuki sighs. “I’m not going out to train, I just want to jog a little bit.” 

He holds his headphones up as a proof, and it seems to ease down both his parents. He resists the urge to roll his eyes, he hates to be considered so weak. But it isn’t time to argue the topic with them again, he doesn’t want to lose his right to go out and run over his pettiness. 

“Don’t stay out late, I want you back by dinner!”

He hums some words of agreement before finally making his way out. The afternoon sun blinds him, shinning brightly in the horizon and warming up the air. Spring is a good season. 

Katsuki spends a few minutes stretching, before setting up the timer on his phone and starting his run. He breathes in the fresh air, the volume of his music is low by habits, to stay aware of his surroundings. Running helps him get his mind off the clusterfuck of a weekend he’s had, it allows him to reset his mind on what really matters. There is no point in letting his mind circle back to the same things again and again, like a scratched record. The villain attack happened, he failed at defeating him, and Endeavor has probably seen it by now, big deal. There isn’t anything he can do about it anymore. 

Except, he’s never been good at letting things go. No matter how hard he tries to focus on other things, like the pink petals of the cherry trees, or the spring air, or the sun bathing everything in his sight in a warm orange blanket, he constantly thinks of how he could have done things different. He thinks back of the fight, thinks of how he shouldn’t have been distracted, and how he should have been the one to take down the villain. It would have the occasion to do something better than All Might, a proof that he doesn’t need Endeavor to achieve what he could never achieve. What he did instead was the opposite. He’s further established himself as a failure without assistance. How does he dream of being number one without the help of Endeavor, when he cannot even defend himself against a stupid low tier villain? 

Somehow, he is lost so deeply in those thoughts, that his feet guide him at the foot of Sekoto Peak. Vegetation had grown back on the area by now, and the rain had washed away the soot by the years, but the charred rocks were a constant reminder of what had happened there. No amount of time could erase the failure of that damned family, their history was burnt deep in the walls of the Todoroki estate, inside their training rooms and in their DNA. They were all flame, even Natsuo and Fuyumi, all of them had a fire burning inside them, different and yet feeding of the same wood. 

All of them was burning from inside out. Touya just had to go out and die in the most Todoroki way possible, didn’t he? 

The way back home feels faster, which is simply a perception, Katsuki knows it. A street away from home, in the distance, his eyes catches a mop of white and red hair walking on the opposite side from his house. Katsuki slows down until they come face to face, he can only look at the boy in front of him in confusion. 

“What the fuck?” he says in lieu of greetings.

Somehow, Shouto himself looks as confused as he is, almost as he didn’t expect to see him there either.

“Hello to you too,” he ends up telling him. 

Katsuki ignores the sassiness in his tone. “What are you even doing here? You don’t live here to my knowledge.”

The Todoroki estate isn’t too far away, but clearly not in the same neighbourhood, so Katsuki’s point stands. 

When Shouto doesn’t give an immediate answer, looking aside instead, Katsuki frowns. “If it’s him sending you here, tell him to grow a pair and—”

“No,” Shouto immediately cuts him. “Endeavor doesn’t know I’m here. I came here by myself.”

“What’s your deal, then?”

Shouto hadn’t been to his house in years. Well, they hadn’t seen each other at all in a year. Katsuki would like to say that he hasn’t changed much in that time, but that wouldn’t be the full truth. If his unmistakable hair had stayed the same, he was now taller than him by a few centimetres, much to Katsuki’s annoyance. Mostly, he seems icy towards him, distant in the way he is to strangers, in a way he’s never been towards him. 

“How are you?” Shouto asks, a direct echo of their conversation a few days ago. 

The question seems so out of place, his tone so weird in an unplaceable way. Katsuki doesn’t remember them ever having such a pointless conversation, something that would seem like small talk coming from others. Except it’s not small talk, Shouto doesn’t do that. He looks out of place, standing in his neighbourhood in his shorts and plain t-shirt, looking like he got caught by accident. 

“Why do you keep asking that? What’s your fucking deal? If you want something, speak clearly!”

“Maybe I just want to know how you are,” comes the direct answer, frustration creeping in his voice. “Can’t it just be that?”

“Well I’m just fucking peachy, then, since you wanted to know.”

Then it hits him. Katsuki feels anger rise inside of him.

“It’s about the villain attack, isn’t it, you asshole? You came all the way here to rub that shit in my face, didn’t you?”

“I’m not here to rub any shit on anyone’s face,” Shouto protests. “I just wanted to see you, but clearly that was a mistake.”

They don’t know how to talk to each other, Katsuki realises. If they had been close in their childhood, the last few years their interactions had only been constants fights, both figuralively but also physically, for the sake of their training. They only knew how to antagonise each other, civil conversations were a challenge. This last year, they hadn't talked at all.

And right now, the struggles Shouto was showing at talking to him were simply a proof of that. 

Suddenly, he feels quite frustrated with the situation. 

Jumping on the occasion Katsuki laid by talking about the events of last Friday, Shouto starts talking again, effectively redirecting his train of thoughts. “The attack, was it because of…” he trails off, no need to finish his sentence when its ending is implying so certainly.

“Obviously not,” comes the direct answer, Katsuki resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “How the fuck would he know about my connection with Endeavor?”

“He could have,” Shouto says, most likely for the sake of arguing. 

The Todoroki family history is a big old mess, and no one outside the circle knows about all the details regarding it. Katsuki’s existence is a major secret, second only to Touya’s overall disappearance, that only some of Endeavor’s main sidekicks know about, mainly because he spent time at his agency while he was training under him. Unless some of them spills the beans, no ones has a way of knowing about it. 

Shouto knows that well enough for Katsuki to keep on arguing, so he simply huffs in annoyance.

“Well that wasn’t the motive. Fucker only needed a host and I happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Shouto hums, distant. Once again, they ran out of conversation material, and an uncomfortable silence starts to loom over them. 

“And you…,” Katsuki starts, trying to sound as natural and detached as possible. “How are things?”

No matter how hard he tries, the words come out clumsy, unnatural. Maybe it’s because he is trying too hard. Maybe their brotherhood was too damaged for this kind of conversation, for small talk and silences that wouldn’t feel like a threat.

If Shouto had let his guards down earlier in their conversation, his walls were back up once he was the one interrogated. “Everything’s like usual,” he says curtly. 

“Like usual,” Katsuki repeats, unamused. “So it’s shitty.”

“Why do you even care? It’s not like you have to deal with it.”

There doesn’t seem to be any accusation in Shouto’s tone, only plain cold truth, which Katsuki can’t even disagree with. Hours of ruthless training under Endeavor were old story for him now, none of it worth it in a place where he’d forever be seen second to Shouto in Endeavor’s eyes. He had accepted it a while ago, that no matter how much he trained and the proofs he brought, no matter his strength and capacities, Endeavor’s aspiration would never live within him. He wasn’t willing to shape Katsuki into number one, but merely as a support for Shouto. So Katsuki had decided that he had no use for him, he’d build his own self, brick by brick, damned be the number two hero. 

(Except, he failed a few days ago, didn't he?)

“No,” Katsuki agrees. “I don’t.”

They stay there, looking at each other. They don’t look alike; funnily enough, they both look like their respective mothers. There is no indication of their brotherhood if not for twin flames of anger inside of them, both different but fuelled by the same combustible. 

There are so many things they could talk about, and yet there isn’t anything either. Right now, they might as well be two strangers who just happen to know each other inside and out, aware of each other's biggest weaknesses and worst fears. Two people who once shed blood and tears together, now unable to stand in the same space without feeling the weight of so many expectations on their shoulders. Unable to have a conversation.

“Whatever,” Shouto says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Just make sure to make it to UA. We’ll see each other there.”

Katsuki doesn’t lose a beat. “Of course I’ll make it! Worry about your own self!”

Katsuki finally makes it home, with a new weight inside his chest, an uncomfortable feeling that was both familiar but also different, old memories resurfaced, scratching the same wounds but spilling new blood. He tries not to think about it, of his damaged bound with Shouto, the only one of his siblings he had any kind of relationship with. If he dwells on it, too many feelings will resurface, and he doesn't have it in him to deal with that yet.

Right before he goes through the main gate, he sees two people get out of his house. A woman in her thirties, with black hair held in a slick bun, and a man around the same age with cat eyes, both dressed formally. They look like they were there for business, their faces inexpressives as they make their way out. The woman briefly glances at him, their eyes catching for the shortest second, but she turns back as if nothing had happened and gets inside the black car waiting outside.

His parents are at the door watching them leave, neither of them looks happy by their presence. 

“Who were these people?” He asks once he is next to them. 

“Nobody you need to worry about,” his father says curtly, uncharistecilly inexpressive. “Go help your mom set the table.”

“What?” he perplexes suddenly, unused to the tone. “Why are you being so obnoxious—”

“Katsuki,” his mother cuts him, her tone a final warning. She puts her hand on his back, leading him inside. “Trust me, it’s nothing important.”

And he would argue, because his parents aren’t the kind of people to look so puzzled out of nowhere. No conversation or encounter ever leaves Mitsuki Bakugou with her eyebrows furrowed, she is used to getting what she wants out of people. He has rarely seen his dad so defensive, either. So he wants to press and argue. But he also knows better than to think he’ll get an answer out of them right now. Only two kinds of situation tend to put his parents on edge like this: Endeavor, or bad business news from their clients. Considering that Endeavor hasn’t had interest in him in the last year, and knowing the man enough to know that he wouldn’t be sending people to talk in his place, he can only assume that it’s the second situation. 

“Whatever,” he grumbles, taking off his shoes as his father closes the door behind them. “But if it’s your client’s lawyers or something, they should know not to bother people on a Sunday.”

“Don’t worry,” his mom says lowly, “they know better than to bother us again.”