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Shifting his wrists as subtly as possible, Katsuki bit back a snarl when the restrains encasing his hands didn’t so much as budge. He glanced across the room at his solitary guard, the blue flames bastard, who was ignoring him in favor of watching the clock on the wall.
A wimp who couldn’t wait until his shift was over. Katsuki scoffed.
Half-lidded eyes briefly flicked his way before returning to the clock, as though he knew what the teen was thinking but couldn’t care less. The blatant dismissal pissed Katsuki off even more.
“Hey, Scarface,” the blonde called out. “I need to use the restroom.”
“No you don’t.”
Katsuki grit his teeth - he didn’t, in point of fact, but felt irritated to be called on it so quickly. Just as he opened his mouth to try another tactic, however, the clock hit five minutes after the hour, and his guard sighed, turning to head for the back door. Katsuki watched with a puzzled glare as the villain yanked it open, revealing one of his smaller companions standing on the other side.
It was the fast fucker, with a katana slung over one shoulder and a bunch of daggers secured to his belt. The one covered head to toe in solid black, only subtle tilts of his hooded head indicating where the bastard was looking. The villain who’d led Katsuki on a pointless chase at the USJ attack, who’d been working with the Hero Killer during the Hosu chaos and nearly killed Shitty Glasses.
Growling, Katsuki glared with as much intensity as he could manage as the fucker stepped into the room, the blue flames bastard slipping out and closing the door behind him. For a long moment, neither captured teen nor mystery villain moved.
“Well?” Katsuki finally snapped, his frustration and angry terror making his patience break even faster than usual. “The hell do you want?”
Slowly, the villain moved to get a folding chair from behind the bar, then brought it over to rest directly in front of the restrained boy. Sitting down on it backwards, the villain folded his arms over the back and rested his chin on top. “You aren’t going to accept Tomura’s offer, are you?”
The muffled voice came as a surprise - as far as Katsuki knew, the villain hadn’t ever spoken around him or his classmates before. Then the actual question registered, and he sneered. “That stupid recruitment pitch of his? Of fucking course not.”
The villain made a considering hum. “Tell me what drives you.”
“Hah?!”
“What pushes you to be a hero so badly? Is it really just a desire to win, like Tomura thinks?”
“Why the fuck should I tell you anything?” Katsuki spat as his mind reeled. Tomura... Unlike the other members of the League, this one was on a first name basis with their creepy hand-faced leader. He felt something twist in his gut.
“Because,” the villain said, head tilting to one side. “If you’ve really got the makings of a True hero, I’ll let you go.”
Katsuki blinked at him. “...you can’t be serious.”
“Oh, trust me,” came the sharp reply, “I’m deadly serious. Because if I don’t think you could be a True hero, if you’re on the path to being False, then I’ll just kill you, and save Tomura the headache of trying for a conversion.”
The twisting sensation came again, and Katsuki barely held back a shudder. When he thought about it, though, truly considered what Shigaraki might do if he didn’t agree, the teen decided he’d take the risk of death for a chance at freedom.
“Fucking fine,” he muttered. “I have... a promise, I need to keep. And for that, I need to be the best - I need to be better than All Might.”
“What promise?”
Damn, he was going to have to explain from the beginning, wasn’t he? “It’s a long, shitty story.”
The villain made an exaggerated turn to look up at the clock, then at the empty room, and back at Katsuki’s restrained hands before returning to his slouched position. Asshole.
Katsuki grumbled under his breath, then spoke up louder. “I used to have a- a friend. My best friend, when we were little. Used to follow me everywhere, before... before he got diagnosed as Quirkless.” It was probably just his imagination, but the teen thought his audience of one sat up a little straighter. “I... did a lot of shit I’m not proud of, back then. Pushed him around, because- fuck, it doesn’t matter why. Point is, it was wrong, but I never got in trouble, never had a reason to stop.”
“You aren’t exactly making a good argument for your heroicness, y’know.”
“Oh shut up, I’m not done.” In the back of his mind, Katsuki wondered why the hell he’d suddenly become invested in telling the villain about his past. He’d never talked with anyone about it before, not even the dumbass therapists his parents paid for him to see. “When we were nine, his mom found out. Decided that the best thing to do was to transfer him to another school. But- but the day they went to look at prospective places- there was an accident. A villain battle got out of control - spilled onto the highway.”
Fuck, he could still remember his old lady’s reaction to the phone call. With her husband long gone and no other close friends or family on hand, Auntie hadn’t ever changed her emergency contact information, so they were the first to find out.
“All Might was there. He was the one to find their car. Took my friend to the hospital personally - his mom had died in the crash.” The doctors never did manage to determine if she died upon impact, or faded in the few minutes after, before All Might arrived to tug the car out from under a pile of rubble.
Katsuki could feel the villain’s gaze bearing down on him, but with only a blank mask to look at in return, he chose to keep his own eyes firmly pointed towards the floor. “All Might was still there when my folks and I got to the hospital, sitting with my friend in the waiting room. If things had been different, we probably would’ve both been jumping all over him. But then... that bastard showed up.”
His hands shook inside their metal confinement, with rage that still burned after six years. The villain sitting in front of him tensed, but whether over Katsuki’s movement or the sheer venom in his voice, he couldn’t guess.
“My whole life, I knew that the best heroes always won, that All Might always won,” he forced out. “But that day, he didn’t. He just stood there, when that bastard took Izuku.”
Katsuki remembered screaming, yelling for Deku to come back, struggling to get out of his mother’s iron grip and run to the other boy. But Izuku just sent him a wobbly smile, green eyes glistening with tears as he let the villain grasp his hand, and said bye, Kacchan before a shimmering mist filled the air and took them away. He’d been haunted for years by that memory, by the broken look on All Might’s face - but especially by the knowledge that, if not for his bullying, none of it would have happened.
“You want to know what drives me?” He rasped, blinking back his own furious tears as he looked up into the masked face before him. “That. I will never let a villain slip away with a hostage like that. All Might lost, but I won’t. I can’t. Even when I hurt him, Izuku still thought I could be a hero, and I- I have to live up to that. I promised.”
Silence reigned for a long minute, before the villain spoke again. “I believe you, Kacchan.”
Katsuki’s heart stopped.
Gloved hands reached up, pushed back the pooled material of his hood. Grasped at the bunched fabric around his neck, and slowly tugged the mask upwards. Pale skin was revealed - a pointed chin - then lips twisted into a wry smirk, and an upturned nose, and freckled cheeks. Then the eyes, just as wide and green as ever, framed by limp strands of hair and staring into Katsuki’s own with a fierce intensity.
The frozen state his body had gone into reversed dramatically, with his heart suddenly hammering, tears spilling unchecked from his eyes, breath coming out in a heavy gasp- “Izuku?!”
“Geez, it’s weird to hear you say my name,” the other teen muttered, rising from his chair and drawing a dagger from his belt. “I got used to ‘Deku’, apparently.”
“You’re- you’re-”
The straps holding Katsuki to his own seat severed cleanly under Izuku’s blade - then a key came out of one of the jumpsuit’s pockets, which easily popped open the lock of his box-cuffs.
“Better?” Izuku asked as the restraints fell away, and Kastuki staggered upright.
“Fine,” the blonde said faintly, before shaking his head. “Fuck, I can’t believe it’s you.” He brought his hands up to grasp the other’s shoulders, just to prove he was real. And when Izuku grinned at him with the same wide smile he remembered, Katsuki pulled the shorter teen into a bone-breaking hug. Izuku went still, the coiled tension in his frame obvious even under thick layers of cloth, but after a moment he melted into the blonde’s embrace
“...guess this means you missed me,” he mumbled, arms tentatively coming up to wrap around Katsuki’s back.
“Fucking did not,” the other boy scoffed, cheek pressed against tangled green hair. “Just making sure your dumb shitty ass is really here.”
Izuku huffed a laugh at that, though it came out more sad than amused. “I missed you too, Kacchan.”
There was no telling how long they might have stayed like that, if the back door hadn’t opened.
Katsuki whirled around, one hand pushing Izuku behind him, the other coming up glowing, ready to fire off an explosion. The patchwork villain just raised an eyebrow, and closed the door before leaning back against it. “Cute. And here Shinja was worried you wouldn’t be happy to see him.”
Baffled, Katsuki couldn’t help but shoot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Shinja?”
Izuku’s face scrunched up unhappily. “It’s what Tomura named me, when I first got here.” He stepped out from behind the other boy, to face the man who’d interrupted them. “What are you doing, Dabi? We agreed it would be better if you stayed out of the way.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll turn around and leave again,” the villain drawled. “But I wanted to make sure our accounts were settled before you took off.”
Izuku frowned. “We are settled. You owed me, and now you don’t.”
“By letting you sneak in here to talk to your old friend, sure. But by turning a blind eye as you two take off into the sunset, well, that means you owe me.” Dabi grinned, and Katsuki took a half step closer to Izuku as the other teen scowled, his eyes darkening. “Once you’re away free and clear, little Shinja, I want you to deliver a message for me.”
“What message?”
“Tell my mom I said hi.”
Izuku’s stern expression morphed into surprise, and then outrage. “Your- are you fucking kidding me?” Katsuki stared at him in shock. “With as much security as that hospital has? I’d be as good as handing myself over to the Pros by trying to break in there- oh. Oh, hell no, you absolute shitstain-”
As his old friend went into an increasingly foul-mouthed rant, Katsuki looked towards Dabi, who didn’t seem at all disturbed if his smug face was any indication. “The fuck is going on here?”
Izuku cut himself off, pointing a stiff finger at the villain. “This son of a bastard thinks he’s being clever when he’s really a moronic jerk-”
“I’m not the one who planned to drop my childhood friend off at UA’s front gate and then vanish into the shadows,” Dabi drawled. For the second time in ten minutes, Katsuki’s heart stopped. His hand shot out instinctively to grab Izuku’s arm, causing the other teen to flinch in surprise.
“You can’t.”
“I have to - the League will come after me for this, Kacchan. It’s for the best if I’m not around other people when they catch up.”
“Bullshit. I just got you back, dammit, I can’t lose you again." Whatever the other boy had been going to argue, he faltered at that, and Katsuki pressed his advantage. “You pulled the self-sacrifice card once already, Izuku, but it’s different this time.”
Bye, Kacchan.
Turning to fully face his friend, tightly gripping his shoulders to keep him still, Katsuki poured every bit of fierce sincerity he had into his words. “You saved me before, so please, let me save you back.”
Silence. Dabi watched without saying a word. Izuku stared up into Katsuki’s eyes, his own filled with confusion and grief and longing.
“...okay, Kacchan.”