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Katsuki entered the gate of his home to find the old hag there, standing at the front door and crying. The sight captured him in an enduring, breathless moment where he felt like his world was hovering, suspended in the ether, threatening to any second now come crashing down. His mom never cried.
“Katsuki,” she said gently, wiping the wetness from her cheeks. “Honey.”
Katsuki braced himself to hear that she was sick, or that his dad was sick, incurably and terminally. He imagined the worst, life-altering and terrible things, to prepare himself. So he wouldn’t fall and break.
She leaned down, her eyes never looking fully into his, and told him that Deku was dead. He heard the words, but they didn’t make sense to him. He’d just seen Deku a few hours ago, before he went to the arcade with his friends. He’d stayed a little after school to…
You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time saving idea for you…
His mother pulled him into a hug, but he didn’t feel her. His body went numb, cold. Bile rose in the back of his throat.
Deku…killed himself?
That couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t have.
I did this.
Deku didn’t have to do it. It wasn’t like Katsuki took him to the roof and pushed him over the edge. As if he’d ever listened to anything Katsuki said before. How could he have known?
"You were too harsh on him."
That didn’t make him responsible.
I told him to do it.
“I know,” his mom’s voice was unusually soft in his ear. “I just feel so awful for his poor mother. To have your child taken from you by a villain.”
Her words reached him slowly. “A…villain?”
“This sludge creature escaped the police and nearby heroes. By the time they were able to catch up to him…” She pulled away, still wiping at her face. “Let’s go inside, okay?”
Deku had just been a bystander killed by some random-ass villain. The villain was caught and taken into police custody where he awaited trial. What had started out as a simple robbery now held a much heavier charge. Katsuki didn’t know how to process any of it.
He expected time to slow down. He didn’t know why. Probably the influence of shows, movies, that sort of shit. There was always a montage of quiet, empty moments when someone died.
Time didn’t slow down. The day after Deku died was a beautiful, sunny day. Life marched on.
No one really talked about the fact that he was gone. Katsuki’s mother didn’t, not after the day she broke the news to him. He didn’t hear anything about a memorial service. He didn’t hear anyone at school talking about what had happened. It didn’t feel like Deku was dead. The only evidence was his empty desk at homeroom.
Katsuki didn’t grieve. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to, they weren’t friends or anything. People died. So what if he’d known Deku? So what if they’d played together as kids? That had been years ago. He wasn’t suffering. He didn’t need to work through some trauma. He just wasn’t used to Deku not being there. He’d always been there. Especially when Katsuki didn’t want him there.
It was strange. To know that he would never be there again. Katsuki kept looking back at his desk, just to see that no one was sitting in it. It felt wrong every time, like a glitch in the universe.
One day he looked back and saw him. Deku was sitting there as he always had. As if nothing had happened. The air was sucked from Katsuki’s lungs and he nearly jumped from his chair. The teacher called his name, a warning in his tone, as his classmates cast sideways glances in his direction. Didn’t they see him?
Katsuki had barely turned away, but Deku was gone when he looked back. So, his mind was playing tricks on him. Great.
He turned his head down, eyes on his workbook. His hand shook every time he had to turn a page.
The hallucinations got worse. He saw glimpses of Deku all the time now—in their homeroom, in the hallways, in the bathrooms—but it was more than that. He thought he heard his voice sometimes. He would get this chill in his core, and he would feel Deku’s presence before he saw him. Once or twice, he thought he felt a hand on his shoulder. There was no one there, but he was certain that it had been Deku.
Katsuki had never thought much about whether ghosts were real or not, but now he had to seriously consider the possibility that Deku was haunting him. If he wasn’t, well, then Katsuki had an even bigger problem.
For the rest of the school year, Katsuki endured being haunted. It was only ever at school, so it wasn’t too bad. Deku’s ghost was never menacing, and over time its presence, in typical Deku fashion, became more of a nuisance than anything else. Graduation was just around the corner, and Katsuki didn’t expect that Deku would follow him to UA. He’d be free soon. He just had to stick it out a little longer.
He was accepted to UA with the highest score on the entrance exam. He was set to graduate at the top of his class. Everything was going according to plan, and yet he carried this weight. It had crept up on him slowly, he hadn’t noticed when it started. It settled in the pit of his stomach like a pile of rocks, and it grew heavier every day.
He was distracted by this feeling as he walked with his friends after school. The two of them were having their own conversation that he didn’t necessarily want to listen to, but suddenly Tesaki’s voice cut through the haze of Katsuki’s mind when he said, “Hey, isn’t that Midoriya?”
He spun around, fully expecting to see Deku’s ghost trailing behind them. There was no one. Katsuki’s gaze drifted down to the small bouquet of flowers on the side of the road, next to a photograph of scrawny, awkward, nervous little Deku. His memorial.
“Wow. I never knew this was where it happened.”
It felt surreal to have them finally acknowledge the fact that Deku was dead after all this time.
“Do you think his mom put that there?” Katsuki couldn’t think of anyone else who might have done it, and the rocks in his stomach got heavier. Kemuri elbowed Tesaki, who seemed to get the hint. “Oh, sorry.”
Katsuki looked between the two of them, who pointedly refused to meet his gaze. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What the fuck are you sorry about?”
“We thought it was best to not talk about Midoriya around you,” Kemuri said bluntly.
“Why would I care?”
“Are you serious? Don’t you remember what happened?”
Katsuki felt the heat of ignition in his palms. “All I remember is you two fucking laughing and going right along with anything I ever did to him! Like you gave a shit before he was dead!”
They didn’t respond, but there was something sickeningly familiar in the way they looked at him. Katsuki gritted his teeth and turned away.
“If I ever see you anywhere outside of school again, I’ll blow your faces off.”
Katsuki woke up the next morning in a cold sweat. As if he didn’t see Deku enough at school, Deku began haunting his dreams as well.
Graduation came and went. Katsuki’s parents left soon after it was over. He’d told them he’d be with friends.
It was nearly 7pm when Katsuki finally emerged from the stall in the men’s bathroom where he’d been waiting since after the ceremony. He hadn’t heard any noise from the halls for a while. He figured everyone had cleared out a few hours ago, so he pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and started searching.
Katsuki had never seen the school so dark and deserted. His shoes squeaked across the floor, the eerie echo bouncing back to him from down the hallway. The flashlight on his phone gleamed across the tile and windows.
He wasn’t sure where to find Deku, but Katsuki usually saw him around their homeroom, so that’s where he headed first. He slid the door open and held his phone up to the room. The light illuminated the shadows around the figure looking out the window, but it did not catch or reflect in his hair, or in his eyes when he turned around. It passed right through him.
Katsuki wasn’t afraid. It was just Deku, after all. His spirit was nebulous and pure energy. There was a wispiness, a constant ebb and flow, though he stood perfectly still. And despite everything, it was 100% Deku.
His too big, too green eyes shot wide open. “Kacchan? What are you doing here? Wait. Can you…see me?”
“I’ve been able to see you for months, fucking Deku.”
“You have?”
“How the hell are you surprised?”
“I didn’t think anyone could see me. I didn’t know I could make myself be seen. I’m not really sure how…” he looked down at his translucent hands, “how any of this works. Sometimes I thought maybe…but there weren’t any clear signs. This is the first time you’ve really looked at me, you know.”
“So,” Katsuki gritted his teeth. “All this time, you’ve been fucking with me, thinking I couldn’t even see you?”
He reeled back. “Fucking with you? I wasn’t...”
“Bullshit! Why the hell would you even be hanging around this place if you weren’t trying to mess with me?”
He stared sullenly at the floor. “I didn’t know where to go. I went home first, but…I couldn’t stand to see my mom grieving over me. I felt so terrible, leaving her all alone like that. And I felt like me being there was making it worse. Guess now I know why. If she saw me or felt me there…it’s probably a good thing I left.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Katsuki seethed. “You’re dead! You could do whatever, but you come here? Goddammit! You were dead! And no one would even say your damn name, and somehow that only made me think about you more! You were dead, and I still couldn’t get away from you!”
He shrunk inward. “I’m sorry, Kacchan.”
Those three little words set Katsuki off like nothing else. “Who wants your apology! Why the hell are you apologizing to me?!”
“Because…I guess me being around upset you.”
“I could not fucking care less about you,” he said with as much malice as he could muster. “Why should I have to care about you just because you died? If you hadn’t died, we would have graduated, and I would have forgotten all about you. You were never meant to be anything but a background character. You think I was an asshole to you? I was just giving you a wakeup call. But you refused to listen!”
He waited for the quivering lip and tear-filled eyes with which he’d become oh-so familiar. But Deku stared straight through him in that perceptive way that he couldn’t stand, brow knitted in confusion. “Did you come here just to tell me that?”
“I came here to tell you off for haunting me all those months! Just to find out you weren’t even meaning to haunt me. I should have known. You’re a fucking Deku even as a ghost.”
“Why would I be haunting you?”
“Why else would I be the only one who can see you! Why else were you constantly around me at school? Like you were making sure I didn’t forget! No one else really knows, but you know what happened the day that you died!”
“You thought I was haunting you…because of that?” He gave Katsuki those sad goddamn eyes. “Kacchan…”
“Don’t look at me like that!” He could scream and yell until his throat was raw, and Deku still wouldn’t hear what he was saying. “Fuck this! I don’t know why I came here. I’m going home.”
“Kacchan, wait!”
Deku flickered across the room, appearing before Katsuki in an instant. As a reflex, Katsuki shoved a hand in his face, but his hand and the subsequent explosion speared through his ghostly form without fazing him.
“Kacchan!”
“Get away from me!”
“Please!” He stepped in front of him, fists balled at his side. “Please…for once…just talk to me!”
Katsuki could have walked right through him, but he stopped. Something held him there, something he couldn’t shake. There was an urge, constant any time he was near Deku, to get away, but the quiet tremor of Deku’s voice was so goddamn pitiful.
Deku embodied pitiful. All his heart, all his spirit, all the things that Katsuki had wanted to crush, none of it had ever mattered. Because he’d been quirkless. And now he was dead.
“Did you…” Deku started, hands fidgeting like the same familiar awkward mess he’d been before. “Did you…feel bad about what you said? Is that why you’re here now?”
The short answer was no. When the thought had first popped into his head all those months ago, and when he’d decided to say it out loud, no, Katsuki hadn’t felt bad. Even after the words had made their impact and he saw the look of hurt and anger on Deku’s face, or even later when his former friends had told him he’d gone too far.
Deku had more potential than Katsuki wanted to admit and had an insane tolerance for the shit that life threw at him. And Deku wanted to apply to UA. Deku wanted to be a hero, like All Might. The best hero. Even after finding out that he was quirkless, even after years of people making fun of his ridiculous ambitions, he still wanted to try. Despite Katsuki saying he wanted to be the only one from their shitty school to make it to UA, despite the entire fucking world being set up to work against him, Deku still wanted to try. And the crazy thing was, if he had managed to get into UA, Katsuki wouldn’t have even been shocked.
Katsuki had been relentlessly mean to Deku until he’d successfully ruined whatever friendship the two might have had growing up. Once Deku had gotten the hint, they continued growing up in proximity to each other. Parallel lines, never crossing. And that had been perfectly fine.
Then their teacher announced to the class that Deku was planning to apply to UA. Still pretending that the laws of the world didn’t apply to him. Still trying to steal Katsuki’s dream.
It had been Katsuki’s intention to be cruel. He considered it a fair and measured response. Nothing else up to that point had stopped Deku, so he was forced to go to extremes. He hadn’t thought much else about it, until the cold, hard reality that those were the very last words he’d said and would ever say to Deku slapped him in the face. That…that bothered him. It scratched at him, burrowed beneath his skin, wrapped around him in an icy, suffocating grip. But the words were said and done, and Deku was dead, and he had to live with that for the rest of his life.
Except…
“I never considered it. Killing myself,” Deku said. “What you said was terrible. And I hated that you could say something like that like it was nothing. Like I…” He choked on the words, and Katsuki felt an unfamiliar, icy pang clench his heart. “But…I wouldn’t have killed myself, just because you told me to. It didn’t even cross my mind.”
“I know.”
“I’m not saying that to mean what you did was okay. If you feel guilty because I died, then you don’t need to. But if you feel even a little bit bad about what you said…then I think that’s a good thing.”
Katsuki wasn’t sure how they weren’t intrinsically linked. If Deku hadn’t died, maybe he would have felt regret at some point down the road, but there was no way to know that now. Because Deku had died, and Deku…
He wasn’t supposed to die.
As an old man, sure. Years after their diverging paths had separated them, and Katsuki hardly remembered the weird kid who’d stuck to him like a dirty piece of gum on the bottom of his shoe. Not like this.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, in recesses he didn’t visit too often, Katsuki had always thought that Deku was going to do good things in his life. Now he couldn’t. And that just…just fucked with his head in a way he couldn’t put into words.
“It would be a relief,” Deku said. “To know that you feel bad.”
“What difference does it make?”
His brow furrowed. “Because you’re going to be a hero, Kacchan.”
There were plenty of people that doubted that. At some point in Katsuki’s life, it had become abundantly clear that he didn’t have the attitude that people generally associated with heroes. He’d been told before that he would need to change his tune or else he wouldn’t get very far. Katsuki never listened to that shit.
Neither did Deku.
Katsuki leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor. He didn’t know how to respond, didn’t know what he had left to say. He was tapped out emotionally, but he felt that there was some end that they hadn’t yet reached.
Deku squatted beside him. “Well. This is disappointing.”
“What is?”
“Dying.”
Katsuki snorted. “No shit.”
The tension between them was a solid barrier. Katsuki couldn’t remember the last time they’d talked like this. It was weird, to say the least, and not just because of Deku’s circumstance.
“Is that why you’re a ghost? Disappointment? Unfinished business, or whatever.”
“Maybe. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it, though.”
Katsuki didn’t really know shit about ghosts. Just vague superstition. Something about things you wanted but never got to do tethering you to the earth. But if Deku couldn’t have been a hero before, he certainly couldn’t now. “Is there anything that you wanted to do besides be a hero?”
“Um.” Deku curled his arms around his knees and buried his face. “Sort of.”
“The hell kind of answer is that? What did you want to do?”
“You’ll make fun of me if I tell you.”
That was a distinct possibility. It wouldn’t have been anything new. “Fine. Stay a ghost forever.”
“I don’t think this would help me stop being a ghost. Besides, it won’t happen. And I…I don’t know if I’m ready to leave.”
This conversation was quickly becoming heavier than Katsuki was equipped to handle. “So, what? You’re just gonna stay here?”
“The school is gonna be empty over break. It’s gonna get lonely here.”
“So don’t stay.”
“You’re the only one who can see me.”
“And?” He turned toward Deku, who was peering up at him from the shelter of his arms. The glitter of his eyes told Katsuki exactly what he was hinting. “Don’t even fucking think about it, I swear to god.”
Deku chuckled. “I figured you’d say something like that.”
Since when did the nerd get so bold? This new attitude of his was annoying.
They fell into something like a comfortable silence and stayed like that till the last rays of orange light had all but gone. Distantly, Katsuki knew he was waiting for some feeling of closure, but it never came. Loathe as he was to admit it, they were a little bit too complicated to untangle in a single evening, and at some point he had to go home. If he put it off much longer, the old hag would have his head.
“I understand,” Deku said with a smile that never met his eyes.
There were some words that Katsuki thought he should say. Maybe goodbye. Definitely something else, something he’d stopped saying a long time ago and didn’t know how to force out without choking on the words. He glanced back one last time at the ghost of the boy crouched on the ground, guilt rising because he was out of time and couldn’t bring himself to say it fast enough, and he left.
Katsuki had heard the news through the chain of office gossip and arrived on site after disaster relief and clean-up were already on the scene. Everything had been leveled, the entire block, including Aldera Middle School. There was no way to tell where the school yard or the fence or the cafeteria had once been, it was all just a pile of rubble now. The chunks of debris crunched under Katsuki’s boots.
He hadn’t returned to this place in almost ten years.
“Bakugou?” Round Face was not someone he’d call a friend, not someone he socialized with since graduating from UA the same year, but she approached him nonetheless. Probably because he wasn’t technically supposed to be there.
“I went to this school,” he explained, rather than have her ask.
“Oh.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “Did you have a lot of good memories here?”
“Not really.” There weren't many memories from middle school that conjured strong emotions in him, and the ones that did mostly brought shame. At some point in his life, thanks largely to UA, he'd learned how to not be such a shithead, but his late personal growth had come at the expense of someone else.
There had been a few times he’d almost talked himself into coming back to this place, sparked by thoughts of the smallest chance that Deku might still be here. Or, even if he wasn’t, that maybe Katsuki could find where he’d gone. Dumb, wishful thinking.
“Well…” Round Face said, “at least you might be glad to know there were no causalities. No one was in the school when it collapsed.”
"Yeah," he said absently, not really listening.
She allowed him a moment, and even gave him some space, but gently reminded him that this was a restricted area and that he should let the other pros do their job without obstruction. The weight that Katsuki carried since middle school had never really went away, it had just become a part of him. There were times where he hardly noticed it. As he surveyed the few and scattered remains of his school, he felt gravity's pull on him increase.
Katsuki had stopped holding out for “closure”. Moments in a life weren’t like chapters in a book. They didn’t get neat, pretty endings. And while he knew he'd changed for the better, the Deku that died back then had been more good than Katsuki at every stage of his life, including the present version.
“I'm sorry,” he muttered to no one. It felt pointless, stupid. Anticlimactic, even. Too late to mean anything, and unable to reach the person it was meant for.
In the end, Katsuki left, not even sure why he came.