Chapter Text
forget them. burn all, burn everything. fire is bright and fire is clean.
- ray bradbury
The first lesson that Katsuki learned was this: heroes never die.
He learned it when he was five years old, watching with blank eyes as an empty coffin was lowered into the ground - empty, because there hadn’t been enough left of his older brother to bury - and his father was standing on one side and Shouto was on the other, and Shouto was crying and holding Katsuki’s hand and Katsuki wasn’t crying but there was a bitter darkness in the pit of his stomach that reached up between his ribs and soaked into his heart and made it hard to breathe.
After the funeral, after his father dragged Rei away from the freshly-filled grave, after Shouto calmed down, after all that, Katsuki sat on the living room couch, sat and stared and waited for his father to come down for late-night patrol. He didn’t get mad at Katsuki for staying up late. Katsuki always had been his favorite.
“Dad?” Katsuki’s voice, small and shaking. “Why did Touya…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Saying it would finalize it. Would freeze his brother - the boy who snuck him candy and bandaged his cuts and applied cream to his burns - in time. Never aging. Never breathing.
He couldn’t do that to him.
His father sat heavily beside him, and his bulk made Katsuki feel small, insignificant. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and there was an almost-kind note in his voice that he never let anyone else hear. It made Katsuki feel guilty, sometimes, that he was the favored one, but at the same time he was glad. That someone in this house loved him. “You won’t ever die, Katsuki. You’re going to be a hero.”
“And heroes don’t die?”
“That’s right.” His father sighed. For a moment, he looked old. “Heroes never die.”
There are times when Katsuki doubts that - like when he’s shoving Shouto out of the way of Rei’s anger, like when he feels Fuyumi’s eyes burning into the back of his neck, like when he wakes up screaming for a mother that he can barely remember - but, so far, his father’s words have held true. As far as he knows, Katsuki hasn’t died yet, not even once. He’s pretty sure that he’d know if he had. That seems like the kind of thing that he would notice.
Point is, Katsuki has learned a lot of lessons, from a lot of people, but that’s the one that he thinks of the most. It's carved into his bones and seared into his lungs, a part of him, forever and ever and ever. Maybe it's because that was such a rare moment, just him and his father in that little pocket of grief, full-bodied, before the sun came up and a new day started, or maybe it's because it was the night of his older brother’s funeral and that doesn’t tend to be the kind of thing that you can forget, but either way, it's those words that Katsuki lives by.
Shouto, though, has always been… different.
Not always in a bad way, but rarely in a good way.
He’s always angry, angrier than Katsuki, even, limping around on sprained ankles that he refuses to have healed, bloody hands wrapped up tight in layers of gauze, band-aids plastered onto his face, and through the wall between their rooms - they used to share a room, but then they got older and developed different opinions about the same things and suddenly being roommates with his brother, his moody, sullen brother, wasn’t quite as fun anymore - Katsuki can hear him pace, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, and when Katsuki yells for him to get in bed and go to fucking sleep, Shouto just yells back, fuck you!, and then they end up arguing through the wall until one of them gets too tired and passes out.
He’s doing it tonight, the fucking pacing, but for once Katsuki doesn’t snap at him, because - even though he’s loathe to admit it - he’s nervous, too. He knows that he needs to get some sleep so that he isn’t dragging himself around like a zombie tomorrow, but knowing and doing are two completely different things.
He checks to make sure that everything is in place for the millionth time. He lays out his uniform, hangs it back up, and then lays it out again, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles with fingers that won’t stop twitching. He goes over the class roster - a copy of which he had to cajole his father into giving him - so many times that the words blur together. Finally, around two o’clock in the morning, he admits defeat. He walks a few steps down the hall to Shouto’s room and yanks the door open without knocking - startling his brother enough that he stops pacing - and, kneeling on the floor, pulls out the drawers beneath Shouto’s TV.
Shouto, hovering over his shoulder, says, “We can’t play anything. We’ll wake everyone up.” Katsuki doesn’t answer, just continues sorting through the games, and he huffs in irritation. “I know you hear me.”
“I’m pretty sure that everyone is already awake, thanks to your annoying fucking pacing.”
“You are literally the only person who gets bothered by that.”
“You mean I’m the only person who has the balls to tell you that it's annoying.” He rocks back on his heels, tilts his head back to look at Shouto. “You need to get rid of that bruise by tomorrow morning. Get it healed, something. I don’t know why you’re always being so fucking difficult, but it needs to stop.”
Shouto raises an eyebrow. “Just because I’m not you doesn’t mean that I’m being difficult, Katsuki. It just means that I have the ability to think for myself.”
This is how most of their arguments start, with Shouto accusing Katsuki of being their father’s brainwashed follower and Katsuki accusing Shouto, in turn, of being a whiny little bitch. Katsuki knows that he shouldn’t be drawn into it, shouldn’t go along, but he’s always been very good at doing things that he shouldn’t do, and at acting impulsively, recklessly. If Shouto was the best at making plans, then Katsuki was the best at completely disregarding said plans, which irritated their father - who was always trying to get them to work together - to no end.
That being said, Katsuki feels absolutely zero remorse as he slams his elbow into his brother’s stomach. Shouto doubles, wheezing, and Katsuki slaps him hard across the back of his head. It won’t hurt him. Katsuki knows better than most that Shouto has a thick skull. “That’s what you get for being fucking annoying,” he snaps as Shouto sits down heavily beside him. “I’m your older brother. You’re supposed to respect me, you little shit.”
Shouto glares at him, rubbing the back of his head. “We’re the same age,” he points out.
“I’m eight months older than you.” Katsuki turns back to the games. “Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros.?”
“Neither. I’m going to bed.”
“Loser.” But he still puts the games away and shuts the door. Sometimes, rarely, he does in fact know how to stop when he’s ahead, and this is one of those times - he’s tired, Shouto’s tired, and they both have to get up at ass o’clock tomorrow. So he stands, holds out a hand to help Shouto up. Shouto eyes it warily. Katsuki snorts. “Get up, dumbass, unless you want to sleep on the floor.”
Shouto heaves a world-weary sigh and lets Katsuki haul him up. The moment he’s on his feet, Katsuki shoves him towards the bed, which is covered by the same red-white striped comforter that he’s had for as long as Katsuki can remember.
Katsuki spins on his heel and walks towards the door.
From behind him, Shouto calls out, “Good night.”
“Go to sleep, Shouto,” Katsuki says, and turns out the light.
After closing the door softly behind him, he hesitates for a moment, then starts down the hall in the opposite direction of his own room. He pads down the stairs, one hand on the railing to brace himself in the dark, stopping at the last step to listen for any signs that anyone else is awake. His father stayed the night at his agency, which means that the only person in the house besides Katsuki and Shouto is Fuyumi, who had a bad habit of looking at Katsuki like he was a monster in human skin. It's not anything new - she’d been doing it since he first arrived at the Todoroki house - but still, it's irritating, and he avoids her whenever he can.
But there are no footsteps, no rattling from the kitchen, so Katsuki continues on his way.
He kicks his slippers off in front of the training room, slides the door open, and steps inside. There are scorch marks on the tatami mats, mostly thanks to a few ill-aimed shots on Katsuki’s part, and the air is heavy with the smell of smoke, also thanks to Katsuki, seeing as Shouto was going through a phase where he refused to use his fire.
Katsuki stands still in the doorway, eyes closed, and breathes it in. It's a smell that’s been hooked deep under his skin for longer than he can remember, but it's more potent here, concentrated, making the entire room vibrate with a nervous, expectant energy, like the world itself is holding its breath, waiting for something bad to happen. A bigger tragedy. A bloodbath that will make Touya’s accident look like child's play.
Katsuki opens his eyes. “I don’t know if you’re here,” he says, “if you’re haunting this place or whatever, but if you are, I just wanted to let you know that Shouto and I are starting high school tomorrow. We’re going to Yuuei. In case you, y’know, in case you care. In case you’re here.” He opens his mouth to say something else, then shakes his head and turns to leave. He starts to put on his slippers, bracing himself against the doorframe.
He pauses.
Then, without looking back, he says, “And you don’t have to worry about Shouto. I’m keeping him safe from Dad.”
He slides the door shut and walks away.
Mom? His voice is so small that he can hardly recognize it as his own. There’s a sharp sound, like the lingering end of a scream, beginning to howl in his ears like a siren. Where’s my mom?
A woman with long hair kneels in front of him, trying to shield him from the scene, but he is burning red and blue and gold and she flinches when she touches his arm, pulls away, as automatic of a reaction as snatching your hand off a hot stove. He shoves her, melts through the police tape, and sprints towards his house - only to stop, frozen still, watching with numb, uncomprehending horror as two paramedics carry something charred out on a stretcher. One of them stumbles, jostling the body, and a hand - what was once a hand - falls limply over the side, poking out from under the sheet.
The nails are smeared with glittery red polish.
No, he says. No. No.
He lunges for the stretcher, determined to make his mother wake up, only for arms to wrap around his waist and chest. Hey, calm down, a voice says. Snap out of it.
He isn’t screaming. He isn’t screaming, but a sound is ripping from his throat, a desperate, cracking wail that hollows him out from the stomach up and eats away at his lungs. The person holding him carries him away from the scene, from his home, sits him down on the curb across the street. He looks up through his tears. He wants to close his eyes, wants to pretend that this is all a bad dream, but Endeavor is in front of him so he knows that it isn’t. Because if it was a dream, it wouldn’t be Endeavor. It would be All Might.
But this can’t be real.
This can’t be happening.
But there is just him, a burning house, and his father, watching with solemn eyes as his son comes apart in his arms.
And that’s where it ends.
Katsuki wakes up with a jolt, breaths short and sharp and fast, his heart trying its damn best to break open his ribcage. He catches a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye and acts on instinct, arm swinging forward, prepared to hurtle a handful of fire into -
He stops a bare inch away from Shouto’s face.
Relief and anger flood Katsuki’s veins in equal measure as the flames fizzle out of existence. “Were you fucking watching me sleep?”
Shouto raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t even look fazed by the fact that Katsuki almost melted his skin to his skull. “I was coming to wake you up, but you did that by yourself.” He glances around the room, eyes narrowed, and Katsuki notices for the first time that Shouto is already dressed for school - he looks like a fucking nerd, but Katsuki decides not to comment on that, seeing as he himself will be wearing that same uniform in a matter of minutes. “Why were you sleeping on the couch, anyways? Last time I checked, you had a perfectly nice bed.” A pause. “Unless you somehow managed to burn it. Again.”
Katsuki stands, elbowing Shouto out of the way as he heads for the stairs. Shouto, the persistent little shit, matches him step-for-step, asking, “Did you manage to burn it?”
“Fuck off,” Katsuki says, shoving a hand into Shouto’s face to keep him from following him into his room. He shuts the door, locking it for good measure, and starts for his bed - which is, in fact, not burned - as he ignores Shouto’s indignant protests from the hallway.
He shoves his arms through the sleeves of the uniform shirt, resolutely not looking at the old burn scars tracing his skin, and buttons it up. Shouto apparently gets tired of complaining after a few minutes and leaves, and Katsuki is - thank God - able to get dressed in peace. When he’s finished, he looks at himself in the mirror and grimaces.
“You, good sir,” he says to his reflection, “are a fucking dork.” After a moment’s consideration, he loosens his tie and tugs it off, which makes him look slightly less like he’s about to give a speech about morals and ethics or some shit like that. “Better.”
He grabs his backpack and slings it over his shoulder, then unlocks and opens the door. He’s more than prepared for Shouto’s ambush, and kicks his brother’s legs out from under him the moment he tries to launch himself at Katsuki. He goes downstairs, and, after taking a deep breath, walks into the kitchen.
Fuyuymi doesn’t look up, but he can tell that she knows that he’s there because she starts chopping the carrots in front of her with a little more force than necessary. Typical. Katsuki yanks open the door to the fridge, bending down to grab one of the energy drinks on the bottom shelf. As he pops the tab, Fuyumi, still not looking at him, says in a voice that is just a tad bit curt, “Those aren’t good for you.”
In response, Katsuki stares at her and takes a long, throat-burning sip. Once he swallows, he says, “Morning, Fuyumi.”
She pauses, hesitates like she’s about to say something, then continues chopping her vegetables. Katsuki watches her for a moment - aside from the red streaks in her hair and the glasses, she looks almost exactly like Rei - then, without another word, drains the can and throws it into the trash on the way out of the kitchen. His plan is to get out of the door before Shouto comes downstairs, and he’s just started to put on his shoes when the strap of his backpack slips and digs into his shoulder painfully. He adjusts it on instinct, even though he knows that it's futile. Years of his father’s training sessions - and the injuries that came with them - have long since ensured that nothing sits comfortably on him. He hardly even remembers what the word comfortable means. He is nothing but bone-deep aches and ridged scars and the clinging smell of smoke, his mother’s blood on his hands, her nails painted messily, clumsily, because he’d done it himself, hanging over the edge of the stretcher, the hand that - once upon a time - smoothed his hair back from his face and checked his temperature and flipped the pages of a bedtime story.
His Quirk.
His fault.
He hears footsteps thumping down the stairs and so he bites his tongue until it bleeds, forcing himself back to the present, his face a carefully crafted mask of bored nonchalance by the time that his brother rounds the corner. Shouto seems to have learned his lesson from the failed ambush, because he scowls at Katsuki and gives him a wide berth as he ducks into the kitchen.
Katsuki snorts and crouches down to tie his shoes. The bruise on Shouto’s face is still visible, but Katsuki decides not to give him any more shit about it, especially since he’s the one who put it there. It wasn’t intentional, of course, but Shouto hadn’t gotten out of the way fast enough to avoid getting hit during one of their sparring sessions.
Dumbass.
He straightens up, adjusts his backpack again, and calls out, “I’m leaving!”
There is a concerningly loud crashing noise from the kitchen. Shouto yells, “Wait for me!”
“No.”
With that, Katsuki goes outside, shutting the door firmly behind him. It's a nice morning, quiet save for a few passing cars and early-rising birds, so he’s almost expecting it when his phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out and double-taps the screen to open the notification.
[6:42 AM] Yaoyorozu Momo: Are you walking to school today?
I guess I am now, Katsuki thinks as he starts down the driveway. Usually he’d just take the bus, or ask Fuyumi to drive him - though that technique only worked if Shouto asked as well - but Momo always has been a sucker for pretty skies. It's something that has managed to rub off on Katsuki over the years, much to Momo’s delight and Shouto’s amusement. There’s no doubt about it that Momo just sent the exact same text to Shouto, which means that Katsuki should hurry up so that he can beat Shouto.
[6:43 AM] Todoroki Katsuki: I’m on my way. You better be ready.
He hesitates at the corner of the street, unsure as to whether he’s supposed to go left or right, even though he’s walked to Momo’s house countless times before. He finally decides on left, walks down a few more streets, turns a few more corners, and is both relieved and gratified when he spots a familiar gated estate and an even more familiar girl waiting outside of it. So his sense of direction isn’t completely fucked up. That’s always a good thing.
“MOMO!” he yells, cupping his hands around his mouth to make his voice louder, and he can’t help but break into a grin when her head whips around so fast that her hair, pulled back into a ponytail and carried by momentum, slaps her in the face. She drags a few stray strands from her mouth as she walks towards him - she never runs while in view of the manor, having been told multiple times by her mother that running in a skirt is unladylike - and is smiling when she reaches him.
“You are a gentleman,” she says.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“And such an articulate way of speaking. Truly stunning.”
Katsuki sighs, but he’s smiling, too.
He and Shouto have known Momo since they were kids, ever since they met at some kind of charity gala hosted by Momo’s mother that Katsuki and Shouto’s father only attended because the reporters were getting a kick out of accusing him of being a quote-unquote ‘impassive tyrant’ - not that they were wrong, half the time - and their parents shooed them all away so that they could socialize in peace. The friendship had a bad start, mostly due to Katsuki tripping Shouto and Momo telling him in no uncertain terms that he was being an asshole, but anger turned to frustration to grudging admiration, and now here they were, eight years later, so comfortable around each other that Katsuki only scowls when she points out that, yes, she is still taller than him.
“By, like, half an inch.”
She grins at him in a way that’s more like a sneer, teeth gleaming white, canines razor-sharp - she probably isn’t even aware that she’s doing it - and it's like looking in a fucking mirror. Her love for pretty skies may have rubbed off on him, but he’s not the only one adopting other peoples’ habits. “I’m still taller.”
“Asshole.”
“Takes one to know one.” She reaches down, grabs his hand. “Ready?”
Katsuki closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, blows it out, thinking about what he’s walking towards. A life of fame and infamy, of praise and criticism, of exhilarating highs and devastating lows. A life that Touya never got to have. A life that he has to live, if only for his older brother’s sake. A life he can never stop living, because heroes never die.
He can do this.
For Touya.
For his mother.
He opens his eyes, squeezes Momo’s hand, and grins.
“Let’s go.”
—
It's 6:50 by the time they reach the door labeled 1-A, and there’s hardly anyone in class - most of the students, from what Katsuki can see, are lingering in the hall, enjoying the last few minutes of freedom before the bell rings - so they get their free pick of seats. Or… almost, anyways. Katsuki raises his eyebrows as Momo hurries towards the only occupied desks, taken by a serious-looking boy with glasses and an impeccable uniform.
Something about him reminds Katsuki inexplicably of Shouto. Maybe it's the expression, or maybe it’s the stick-up-the-ass bearing that Shouto tends to adopt whenever he’s in public, but, whatever it is, Katsuki doesn’t like it. He can barely deal with one Todoroki Shouto. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to deal with two.
With that in mind, he takes the seat as far away from Glasses as possible, a desk in the second row, all the way against the wall. He’d take the one in the front row, but there’s a bag in that seat and Katsuki really doesn’t want to have to listen to one of his new classmates whine about him touching their shit.
“Katsuki!” Momo calls. “This is Iida!”
Katsuki looks over, eyebrows raised. “Iida?” he asks, inspecting Glasses closer and - yeah, now he can see it. He’s stupid for not noticing it sooner, really, because it's glaringly obvious. Except for one thing. One extremely important thing. “You should smile. That’ll make you look more like Tensei.”
Glasses leans forward, fixing Katsuki with a stare so scrutinizing that he could do part-time as a drill sergeant. Katsuki doesn’t flinch. He can look his father in the eye, and Glasses has nothing on Todoroki Enji. “Have you met my brother?”
“Yep.” And he has, actually, even if it was more in passing than anything. You meet a lot of top heroes when you’re the son of one of them. “Are you planning to be the next Ingenium?”
“Not while my brother is still in service.”
“Makes sense.” Katsuki leans back in his chair, kicking his feet up on the desk. “Hey, Glasses. What’s your Quirk?”
He’s not looking at him, but he can sense Glasses’ frown, burning into the side of his head like a brand. “You really shouldn’t do that.”
Katsuki glances at him, genuinely confused. “What? Ask questions?”
Glasses adjust his… well, his glasses. “It's extremely disrespectful to put your feet on the desk. It’s school property.”
Ah. So he’s one of those. It seems that the stick-up-the-ass theory was correct. “It's a fucking lump of wood, Glasses.”
Glasses sputters. Behind him, Momo covers her mouth with her hand, hiding a smile. “Your upperclassmen have sat at that desk. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? That you’re sitting in the seat that current Pro Heroes have occupied?”
“No,” Katsuki says. “It doesn’t. The way I see it, I’m going to surpass them all, so it doesn’t matter that I’m putting my feet on the desk or that I’m not kissing the ground where they’ve walked.” He stares Glasses in the eye. “By the time I’m finished, Glasses, whoever sat here is going to be honored that I chose this seat. Not the other way around.”
Glasses grits his teeth so hard that a muscle in his jaw jumps. With what seems like superhuman effort, he looks towards the front of the classroom and doesn’t say another word.
Katsuki sighs. That’s just great. He’s already made an enemy, and school hasn’t even fucking started yet.
Momo opens her mouth, like she’s debating whether or not to break the tense silence, then closes it. She gives Katsuki a look that he has come to know as the stop-fucking-shit-up look, then walks across the room and sits three seats behind Katsuki. With a sigh, Katsuki takes his feet off the desk.
A moment later, the door opens and Shouto enters, visibly disgruntled. He looks to make sure that Glasses isn’t watching him, then flips Katsuki off and mouths, Bastard.
Maybe you shouldn’t walk so slowly, Katsuki mouths back.
Shouto huffs in irritation and takes the seat beside Momo. Katsuki’s almost tempted to move just so he can join them, but that’d mean he’d be sitting in the row behind Glasses, and after what just happened he’s not so sure that that’s a good idea. Besides, more students are filing in anyways, like they’d just been waiting for Shouto to take the lead, the most noticeable of which being a girl with pink hair and skin, a hulking boy with what looks like two extra sets of arms, and a kid with a… bird head.
Katsuki doesn’t know if it's a mask or what, but it's pretty interesting.
The pink-haired girl catches Katsuki’s eye and waves, and he notices that her own eyes are solid black with yellow irises. The general effect is pretty damn unsettling. He wonders what her Quirk is, but before he can even entertain the idea of asking, the eye contact is broken when someone sits in the desk beside him.
It's a girl in a vest-like version of the school blazer. When she glances at Katsuki, he sees that her ears are - elongated, somehow, into cords that end with the metal tips that you’d see on aux cables. She nods at him in greeting and then fixes her eyes on the chalkboard at the front, chin propped on her hand, already looking bored. A boy sits down on the other side of her and tries to strike up a conversation, but she just ignores him until he gives up on her and starts talking to the pink-haired girl.
Katsuki’s half-thinking that it can’t get any weirder when a floating uniform starts to walk in his direction. He whispers, “What the fuck,” under his breath as he watches said floating uniform slide into the seat in front of him. He automatically glances over his shoulder to make sure that Shouto is seeing the same thing that he’s seeing, only to flinch when he finds a boy with poison-bright green eyes sitting right fucking behind him. When did he get there? How did he get there without Katsuki noticing? The boy tilts his head slightly, lips twitching up like he finds Katsuki’s reaction vaguely amusing.
Bastard.
Katsuki, heart still racing, scowls and looks past him. Shouto is sitting with perfect posture in the chair, but Katsuki just knows that he’s twirling a pencil or something under the desk. All that restless energy makes it so that he can’t stay still worth shit. In front of him is that kid with the bird head that Katsuki noticed before, and then, next to the creepy green-eyed bastard, is a boy with a sardonic grin and black hair that falls in spikes across his forehead. He’s talking to the person on his other side, a boy with bright red hair that somehow sticks straight into the air - what a weird fucking fashion statement - and a scar slashed above his right eye. Like he can sense Katsuki looking at him, he looks up and grins. His teeth look like they were transplanted from a shark.
A rustling noise snaps Katsuki’s attention to the front of the room. He watches with raised eyebrows as a man unzips himself from a bright yellow sleeping bag and stands. From the class roster Katsuki looked at last night, he’s guessing that he’s Aizawa Shouta, AKA Pro Hero Eraserhead but Katsuki wasn’t expecting his teacher to look so much like a… well, a hobo. Had he been lying there the entire time? Had he somehow managed to slink in unnoticed? Like a fucking caterpillar?
Katsuki is so confused.
Eraserhead looks around the room, glaring, and whatever chatter has continued since he first stood up instantly dies down. By the time he gets to Katsuki, the classroom is dead quiet.
Eraserhead’s eyes bore into him.
“That was a bold claim you made earlier, Todoroki,” he says, which at least answers one of Katsuki’s many questions - Eraserhead had been there for a while. Long enough to hear Katsuki’s conversation with Glasses, anyways. In the silence, the man’s voice is like a gunshot. “Are you really going to surpass every hero that has come before you? What about your classmates? Will you surpass them, too?”
Katsuki doesn’t look away. “Of course.”
“Interesting.”
After he says that, the silence holds for one moment, two. And then the classroom explodes with noise. Katsuki catches a few words - shit like Todoroki and Endeavor and brother - but he does his best to tune them out. He crosses his arms and sits back in his chair, glaring at Eraserhead, who just raises an eyebrow in response. Katsuki resists the urge to flip him off. He doesn’t want to be suspended on the first day.
After about a minute of chaos, Eraserhead snaps, “All of you, sit down!”
Thank God.
The room settles into a buzz of barely-contained shock. Out of the corner of his eye, Katsuki can see the pink-haired girl stealing glances at him, and he can feel the bastard behind him staring at the back of his head. To her credit, the girl beside him doesn’t seem surprised. Or maybe she is surprised and is just doing a better job of hiding it. Either way, she just gives Katsuki a brief once-over and then looks back at the front, where Eraserhead is standing, arms crossed, with a pained expression on his face like he regrets choosing a career as a teacher.
Katsuki wonders if he does this every year, or if this class is a special case. And then he decides that he doesn’t care.
Once everything is moderately quiet, Eraserhead says, “Starting with you -” and he points to a girl sitting behind Glasses “- stand up and introduce yourselves.” When there’s a murmur of protest, he glares in the direction that the sound came from. “These will be your teammates. You need to be familiar with each other, unless you want to be killed just because you’re not comfortable asking someone for help.”
Nobody else complains.
The girl he’d pointed to stands up. She’s small, with a round face and really pink cheeks, and her eyes are glinting with excitement when she looks around the room. “My name is Uraraka Ochako,” she says, then pauses, like she’s not sure what she’s supposed to say next. “Um… my birthday is in December, and I really like mochi. I’m happy to be here! I hope we all have a really good year together!”
Which sets the precedent for the introductions. Name, birthday, something that they like. A personal note. As they continue, Katsuki learns that Glasses likes beef stew, that the girl in front of him is Asui Tsuyu - call me Tsu - and that the pink girl is named Ashido Mina. Aoyama loves cheese. Ojirou likes fruit. The blonde boy behind him introduces himself as Kaminari Denki, then smiles, sparks dancing across his teeth. The redhead with the ridiculous hair is named Kirishima Eijirou, and the timid-looking boy behind him signs that he likes to take care of bunnies, which draws an aww! from Ashido and makes the boy - Kouda Kouji, he’d signed - flush and bury his face in his hands. Satou Rikidou’s hobby is baking.
And then, just like that, it's Shouto’s turn.
“My name is Todoroki Shouto,” he says. “My birthday is in January, and I like cold soba. I hope we have a good year.”
Katsuki catches his brother’s eye as Shouto sits down, mouths, Boring.
Shouto glares at him. Shut up.
Katsuki suppresses a smile and watches as the kid with the bird head stands up. The first thing that he notices - beside the bird head, of course - is that he’s… short. The next thing he notices is that his shadow is - twitching, somehow, like there’s something being contained in it, straining to break free. “I’m Tokoyami Fumikage,” the boy says, and his voice is deep and dark and gloomy, the kind of voice Katsuki would associate with the monster under the bed. “My birthday is in October. And… I like apples.”
That ending is so unexpected that it's almost comical, and Katsuki has to bite his lip to keep from laughing.
After Tokoyami comes the boy with the longish hair, who stands and introduces himself as Sero Hanta. There’s an edge to his words, almost lyrical, that makes everyone listen. He’s not from here. Katsuki can tell that much.
The girl beside Katsuki is next. She stands up with a sigh, and, twirling one of the cord-like… things on her ears, she says, “I’m Jirou Kyoka. My birthday is in August. I like to play music.” Short and simple, straight to the point. As far as classmates go, Katsuki has a feeling that she won’t be that bad.
The boy in front of her, the one with the extra arms, stands. His school blazer is sleeveless, seemingly specifically tailored to his proportions, and the mask over the lower half of his face muffles his voice slightly. “My name is Shouji Mezou. I was born in February, and my favorite food is takoyaki.” He gives a stiff bow. “I hope we have a great year.”
Next is the floating uniform from earlier. “I’m Hagakure Tooru! My birthday is June sixteenth, and I really like caramel!” She’s either seriously ADHD or hyped up on enough caffeine to floor an elephant, because she keeps bouncing up and down. “Let’s have a good year!”
She sits down, and suddenly everyone is staring at Katsuki. He scrapes his chair back reluctantly and stands, glaring daggers at Eraserhead. “I’m Todoroki Katsuki,” he snaps, then waits for the noise to die down. “My birthday is in April. I like…” And he pauses. What does he like? What can he possibly say that won’t make everyone hate him? “... Spicy food,” he settles on. That’s a neutral enough thing to like, and it's true, which is always a good thing. He sits down.
Behind him, the creepy boy with the green eyes stands up. Katsuki forces himself not to turn around, but it's - hard, because he’s right there, he’s looking at Katsuki, Katsuki can fucking feel it. “My name is Midoriya Izuku,” he says, and his voice sends chills down Katsuki’s spine. It's low and scraping, grating, like listening to some horrifying eldritch creature wake up from a thousand-year slumber. “My birthday is July fifteenth. My favorite thing to do is draw.” And he must be bowing, because suddenly his voice is right fucking next to Katsuki’s ear. “I hope that this year is a good one.”
Katsuki swallows. His thoughts are blurry, like the bastard’s words have wormed their way into his brain and are turning everything upside down until he doesn’t know who he is, doesn’t hear anything that’s going on around him. He thinks that Yaoyorozu says her introduction. Maybe. Maybe he’s just losing his fucking mind, but there’s something there, a memory, dizzy and disorienting and fucking psychedelic. Green eyes. Green hair. A park or a house or a yard, grass beneath his feet, someone’s voice saying -
Saying -
“Katsuki?”
A hand touches his shoulder and he flinches, eyes wide, smoke seeping from the sleeves of his blazer. That’s what jerks him out of his stupor, the smoke, because he doesn’t want to burn holes through his uniform. Not on the first day of the rest of his life. He takes a deep breath, looks up at Shouto. “What?”
Shouto’s eyebrows furrow. “Are you okay?” He moves to check Katsuki’s temperature, looking offended when Katsuki slaps his hand away. He tries again.
Katsuki snaps, “Stop that. I’m fine.”
“People who are fine don’t zone out during class, Katsuki. Did you even hear Aizawa-sensei?”
Katsuki blinks and looks around the classroom for the first time. Other than him and Shouto, it's empty. Where did everyone go?
“What’d he say?”
Shouto sighs, shakes his head in a way that is somehow both exasperated and affectionate. “You’re a mess, Katsuki.” He holds up a jacket and a pair of pants, blue with white stripes. “He said to put this on. I grabbed this one for you.” He takes Katsuki’s wrist, pulls him up, and tugs him toward the door. “C’mon. Everyone is probably outside already.”
Katsuki, still a little woozy from whatever the fuck just happened, obliges. He lets Shouto drag him down the hallways, down a set of stairs, lets him push him into the locker room. Shouto shouts through the door, “Hurry up!”
Katsuki stands, frozen, the clothes dangling limply from his hands. My name is Midoriya Izuku, he mouths. That name means something. He knows that it does. He doesn’t know how he knows but he does, he knows, Midoriya Izuku, Izuku, but when he was younger Katsuki would say -
Shouto kicks the door.
Katsuki shakes his head, runs one trembling hand through his hair. He unbuttons his blazer, pulls it off, unbuttons his shirt and pulls that off, too, and numbly zips up the jacket. The pants come next, then the shoes. He’s like a fucking kid, a toddler learning how to dress himself for the first time. He feels jittery.
Maybe that Fuyumi-disapproved energy drink is finally kicking in.
He folds up his uniform and sets it on the bench since he doesn’t know which locker is his, then turns toward the door, which rattles on its hinges as Shouto - steadily getting more impatient - kicks it again, harder. Katsuki wants to linger, just to spite him, but he doesn’t.
Something other than Shouto is waiting for him outside. Something dark and twisted and charred. Something better left asleep.
He opens the door.
—
Glasses seems determined to be as annoying as possible. The moment that Katsuki and Shouto step outside, he hurries over and practically manhandles them into line, and Katsuki knows he’s doing it on purpose when he puts Katsuki behind Shouto.
Shouto keeps stepping on his fucking toes.
When Katsuki tells him to stop, he says, “Sorry, didn’t see you there,” and proceeds to stomp on Katsuki’s foot.
Katsuki shoves him out of line and refuses to let him back in, saying, “You’re supposed to be behind me, anyways. You’re the younger one.”
“Only by eight months,” someone says in his ear. He throws an elbow back on instinct, intent on catching the fucker right in the stomach, but Midoriya just grabs his arm and holds it tight and doesn’t let go. “Right, Todoroki-san?”
He doesn’t know why Midoriya puts so much emphasis on his family name, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like anything about Midoriya. In fact, he might even hate it, hate him, the bastard who snuck up on people and whispered creepily in their ears and watched them like he knew the answers to every question they’d ever asked themselves.
Katsuki yanks his arm away with such force that something in his shoulder sparks with pain, then whirls around to face Midoriya. “Don’t touch me.”
And Midoriya smiles, grins, a white slash of teeth that stretches just a little bit too wide to be anything but predatory. “Sorry about that,” he says, and the lie is so smooth that Katsuki almost falls for it. Almost.
Katsuki glances down at Shouto, who is still sitting on the ground, watching the scene play out with vacant eyes. He doesn’t know exactly what Midoriya’s Quirk is, but that dazed expression on his brother’s face can’t mean anything good. He crouches down and flicks Shouto on the forehead. “Hey, get up,” he says. “Snap -”
- out of it is how he meant to finish that sentence, but the words don’t come. For a single, frozen moment, he is four years old again, watching his house burn. Nothing moves. The flames don’t flicker. It's like a photograph, a snapshot from Hell. There is a woman kneeling in front of him. A woman with long hair. A woman with green hair. Ashes are smeared across her face and the flower-print pattern of her dress, a dress with that threadbare look of something that’s seen the inside of a washing machine a few too many times, a dress that her son picked out for her.
And then the image is gone. It shatters into crystal shards with a cracking noise that echoes in his mind, and he tries to remember how to breathe as clarity comes flooding back. The first thing he notices is that at some point, he went from crouching on the ground to sitting on the ground. The second thing he notices is that Eraserhead is standing in front of him. The third thing he notices is that his teacher’s eyes are glowing red. The effect is downright demonic, and Katsuki scrambles to his feet so fast that Shouto has to grab him to keep him from falling right back down.
Eraserhead and Midoriya seem to be having a staring contest of some kind, a silent conversation, and Katsuki looks between the two of them, trying to ignore the taste of ash in his mouth and the ringing in his ears.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Midoriya huffs and looks away.
For a long time, nobody speaks. A glance around shows that the rest of the class is… somewhere. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. As long as they weren’t here to witness whatever the fuck Midoriya just did, they could’ve been teleported to fucking Mars and he wouldn’t give a shit.
Katsuki breaks the silence.
“What the actual fuck just happened?”
Shouto offers him his water bottle and he takes it, gargling a mouthful before snapping his head forward and spitting it out. He wipes an arm across his mouth and turns to Midoriya, stabbing an accusatory finger into the bastard’s chest. “What the fuck did you just do to me, you little shit?”
Midoriya’s face gives nothing away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He doesn’t smile, doesn’t frown, doesn’t do anything but stare at Katsuki. It's fucking unsettling, but, then again, so is literally everything else about him.
Katsuki rears back a fist to melt that stupid placid expression off of his classmate’s face, but before the blow connects, someone grabs his wrist and forces it down. Cursing, Katsuki kicks out at Eraserhead - fucking Eraserhead, he should try getting hit by Midoriya’s Quirk, just to see how it feels - and tries to break the grip so that he can make Midoriya stop staring at him like that. “Let me go!” Through the roar of blood in his ears he can hear Shouto’s voice, but it's distant, like his brother is calling out to him from the end of a very long tunnel. “Fuck you! Fuck you!” By pure luck, he manages to hit Eraserhead in a way that makes his hold on him loosen just a bit, and Katsuki springs forward and tackles Midoriya to the ground. “Who the Hell are you?” he snarls. “Why do you keep fucking with my head?”
But Midoriya doesn’t answer. Maybe he would, if there was more time, but there are hands on Katsuki now, ripping him back and pinning his arms to his sides and dragging him away and Katsuki looks down and realizes that it's not hands, it's Eraserhead’s fucking scarf, and Eraserhead is on the other end and he’s yanking him forward so fast that Katsuki can barely stay on his feet, he feels like he’s on a fucking leash -
Katsuki’s gotten tired of yelling by the time that Eraserhead finally stops. The scarf loosens, falls in coils around Katsuki’s feet, and Katsuki could attack right now if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t.
He just - stands there, watching Eraserhead as he sighs and runs his hand through his hair in a way that reminds Katsuki of his father, of how he looked whenever Katsuki goaded him into a fight to keep him from dragging Shouto to the training room and locking the door. Seeing as those nights usually ended with Katsuki unable to breathe properly for at least a week afterwards, the comparison isn’t comforting in the slightest.
Katsuki swallows. His mouth is painfully dry. The anger is boiling down now, slowly being replaced by a mixture of shock and horror, because what the fuck is wrong with him? He just left Shouto alone with that - that freak.
All because he couldn’t control himself.
He doesn’t even realize that he’s started to pace until Eraserhead clears his throat.
Right.
Eraserhead.
Katsuki looks up and meets his teacher’s eyes and then freezes in the spot because, shit, he looks fucking pissed. He looks like how Katsuki’s father looks when he’s in a bad mood, and then there’d be new burn marks on Katsuki’s throat when he went to school the next day, and Momo would ask him where he got them and he wouldn’t answer her because she wouldn’t believe him, anyways, and Eraserhead looks like that now, looks like his father, looks like Endeavor.
Katsuki blanches.
Eraserhead’s eyes widen.
And then Katsuki is running, sprinting, at first trying to go in the direction that he came from but then giving up because he’s in a fucking model city for fuck’s sake, too many turns and streets and alleyways to remember. He runs until his heart is beating out of his chest, until his lungs burn, and then he runs some more, he runs and runs and runs and then -
He falls.
He lands hard on the concrete, pain exploding in his hands and his knees, and he knows even before he sees the bright red splotches on the ground that he’s ripped straight through the fabric of his pants, that his skin is flayed open, that he’s hurt, that he’s really fucked up this time.
He stays there, kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk, choking on his own wheezing breaths. His vision blurs, but he forces back the tears as he hears footsteps approaching. He forces himself to look up, to meet Eraserhead’s eyes, and he searches them for revulsion or hate or fury because that’s what everyone felt when they looked at him, at Todoroki Katsuki, the son of a man who loved a former schoolmate more than he loved his wife.
Eraserhead stops a good two feet away from him. Katsuki tracks his every movement, watching and waiting for the inevitable, the blow or the scoff or the disgusted sneer that always came when he couldn’t stand back up, the rare moments in which Katsuki would curl into a ball and ask his father to please stop, to please-please-please stop hurting him, but he never would, and in the end Katsuki would always limp back to his bedroom in more pain than he’d be in if he’d just faced his father one more time.
Eraserhead’s hand reaches down.
Katsuki braces himself.
The hit doesn’t come. Eraserhead just… holds his hand out, the same way Katsuki had last night, to help Shouto up, except Katsuki isn’t Shouto and Shouto isn’t Katsuki.
He swallows.
Eraserhead pulls his hand back. He crouches down, slowly, carefully, and reaches behind him, and from one of the pouches on his belt he pulls out a small white box with a red cross on the front. It looks like the one that Katsuki has in his room, but Katsuki’s is bigger, has more supplies, has finger splints and shiny needles pre-laced with thread and a cautery pen that burns and burns and burns. Eraserhead opens his first-aid kit and inside is a nearly depleted stash of band-aids and antiseptic wipes and gauze. Katsuki watches as he holds out his hand again, this time palm-up, and says, “We don’t want those to get infected.”
“... What?”
“Your hands. They’ve probably got a lot of debris in them. We need to clean out the cuts.”
Katsuki somehow manages to unclench his jaw. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he asks, “Am I in trouble?”
Eraserhead’s eyes flash with an emotion that Katsuki can’t quite identify, but he doesn’t think that it's anger. Or maybe it is. He’s always been bad at reading people, one of the few traits that he and Shouto share, so maybe it is anger. Maybe it's irritation or annoyance or rage. Maybe it's all of them. Finally, Eraserhead says, “No. You’re not in trouble. And… I’m sorry if I made you think that you were.”
Katsuki stares at him. He can’t remember the last time someone other than Shouto apologized to him, and even then it was always a little mocking, sarcastic. He doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust him. But - they’re just bandages. Nobody’s ever gotten hurt by bandages.
He holds out his hands.