Work Text:
Izuku really did admire Kacchan.
When they were little, before stereotypes infected perceptions and quirklessness was a playground death sentence, they had been friends once. Countless sleepovers at each others’ homes and nights spent saving the world with hero figurines were splashed in diluted watercolor across the walls of Before. The walls were half-scrubbed clean from time and Sensei’s dedicated work, but if Izuku searched hard enough between the ridges, the cracks in the drywall, he could see faint lines and compositions of the past. He could determine the paint from the bloodstains.
And for as far back as Izuku’s memory allowed, Kacchan had always been in the narrative, always a figure etched into the walls in solid reds and blonde spikes and toothy smirks.
Kacchan wanted to be a hero. Izuku wanted to be Kacchan’s sidekick.
It was a story that practically wrote itself.
Except the tragedy came much sooner than Izuku would have preferred, but what was fate if not a fickle creature?
It wasn’t Kacchan’s fault their dream was ruined; even now, years after Izuku had left their little world behind, he never blamed Kacchan.
It was just an accepted fact of society that quirkless people couldn’t be heroes. They couldn’t be doctors or policemen or firemen. There were better people for the job—better people with better quirks and better advantages that gave them the upper hand. Quirkless people couldn’t do, couldn’t be, what quirked people could. They couldn’t be anything really but names on street-side memorials if they were lucky.
(Izuku didn’t have a memorial, at least, not one he’d seen.)
They hadn’t been friends the last time Izuku saw Kacchan, but the optimistic, foolishly hopeful part of his brain liked to think that maybe his disappearance erased some of the bitterness between them. He liked to think that maybe Kacchan would miss the boy he called Deku, even if it was just a little bit.
The other part, the more realistic one, knew that that wasn’t how life worked. Absence didn’t grow fondness like some twisted plant reaching towards the sunlight; absence built resentment that spread like mold across diluted watercolor walls. It was an ugly, sickening process of rotting and polluting that yielded no happy endings.
Izuku would be lucky if Kacchan even remembered his name if he was being completely honest.
But despite it all, despite the sheer impossibility of ever seeing him again, of ever being able to reach a hand out towards him, Izuku would always admire Kacchan. It didn’t matter how useless it was now or how that admiration seemed more like a sputtering spark rather than a glaring flame these days. It didn’t matter that Izuku hadn’t seen Kacchan in over four years.
Nothing could change an inevitability.
And Izuku had been hurdling towards this one for quite a long time now.
With rusted brakes, it was only expected that he splattered against the finish line like a bug against a windshield. Between will and inertia, it wasn’t difficult to determine the winner, and Izuku wasn’t enough to veer courses, to twist the steering wheel into another direction. There would be no unbalanced forces working in his favor, no second vehicle to collide with; he’d still crash either way, still burn.
Merciless, some might call it, but Izuku didn’t bother assigning such titles to things out of his control.
He wasn’t meant for that. He was an analyzer. He existed to see, to translate pixels into words on some half-ruined notebook with soot stains and crisp edges. He was a witness writing a statement, someone to connect hypothetical dots with chipped graphite and frayed string. An outsider looking in on the inner workings of a clock: the cogs and gears and gadgets all hidden away beneath the wood and tick tocks.
His job was based upon facts, upon absolutes and correct hypotheses.
The whys didn’t matter. It wasn’t his job to evaluate whys.
Deku wasn’t designed for meaning.
Hero A’s patrol route circled around a children’s hospital at 4:35 p.m.
It didn’t matter that it was because their son was chronically ill, slipping away between cupped fingers. It didn’t matter that Hero A patrolled in that area because their child could die at any minute and end up as another sad soul heroes couldn’t save and they’d be damned if they weren’t the first one at his side when the end finally knocked at their door.
What mattered was that Hero A patrolled around a children’s hospital at 4:35 p.m. and they couldn’t afford to cause property damage in a fight so close to a building full of civilians.
What mattered was that the next time Izuku faced Kacchan, they’d be on opposite sides, that Izuku still admired the boy he knew who offered punches and kicks more often than he did hugs.
It didn’t matter that one was a villain, one a hero. It didn’t matter that one would be raised with explosions lighting the way to heroism, a bright path with no gnarled branches or stubborn dekus in the way. It didn’t matter that the other would drown in the shadows of anonymity and solitude until the final curtain call when all the pawns were revealed in Sensei’s plan.
Sensei didn’t want pages filled with nonsense of sentimentality and meaning.
He wanted facts.
Eventually, inevitably, Deku and Kacchan would meet again, divided by a ravine of harsh years and could’ve-would’ve-should’ve beens.
Eventually, inevitably, Deku and Kacchan would fight one another in a war, in the street, in some abandoned warehouse outside Jaku, with violent hits and crackling fire bursting in the sky like menacing fireworks.
Eventually, inevitably, Deku and Kacchan would see each other once more.
Eventually. Inevitably.
Surely, it would destroy something vital inside of him, disconnect a screw or a bolt that made Izuku functional. Because despite how the years since he’d seen his childhood friend only grew, Izuku would always admire the version of Kacchan he’d wished the boy could be. The hero who was stronger than any opposition with his powerful quirk and obstinate will. The hero who would become number one.
His Kacchan—the hero who won to save.
Because despite how broken Deku was now, mangled and cold from stone prisons and permanent blood stains, at eight-years-old, that admiration was still a spark glimmering inside his chest.
One day, Izuku would have to smother it.
Realistically, it wouldn’t last much longer, sparks never did.
It’d simmer down to embers and warm ash and then nothing at all but smears of black and gray on his scarred skin. The impression of warmth would last longer than the spark did, but that would fade away too given time.
But that spark was as stubborn as Kacchan, it wouldn’t vanish so easily.
So Izuku would have to get rid of it himself.
Killing that light would be like ripping a piece of himself apart, like swallowing sharp spears of ice to drown the flames in blood and freezing cold. It would shred the only tie he had left of Before, the only reason to leave, to never return to Sensei and Tomura and Kurogiri.
Chipping away that last piece of that childhood innocence, growing out of his admiration into something other that Izuku has never known, would be the worst thing he would ever do.
Sensei had told him that long ago, and Izuku was only beginning to understand what he meant now.
Because Izuku wasn’t meant for meaning either.
One day, he’d have to see Kacchan again, and one day, he wouldn’t be Kacchan anymore. One day, in the coming years, the boy Izuku knew would become a hero. He’d grow up, grow stronger outside of Izuku’s view, and one day, they’d fight. They’d fight on opposite sides, maybe unaware of who the other was, maybe ignorant to the fact that they used to be friends. They’d fight with everything they had because they were both too stubborn for their own good and never really knew how to quit even when their faces were in the dirt.
There would be a victor. There would be a loser.
But that wasn’t important, Sensei wanted facts, not sentimental speculation.
And the facts were as such:
Katsuki Bakugo would be a hero.
Izuku Midoriya would be a villain.
They’d fight on opposing sides.
Katsuki Bakugo would win the fight.
Izuku Midoriya would win the war.
It didn’t matter who they used to be or that Izuku knew Kacchan better than he knew himself. It didn’t matter that they used to be friends or why they were battling or even where. It didn’t matter that Kacchan wanted to become a hero because he wanted to be just like All Might, their idol, their aspiration, their life-long goal. It didn’t matter that Izuku was a villain not by choice but by a series of unfortunate events that would never be written about in history books or police reports.
Admiration wouldn’t matter then, whether it was still a spark or an ember or a pile of stone-cold ashes, not when they were at each other’s throats.
Kacchan would win the fight, eventually, inevitably.
But Deku would win the war.
Not because he’d beat Kacchan, no, he could never hope to do that. Kacchan was too powerful, always would be, but Izuku could still prove him wrong.
Kacchan said Deku would never be a hero, and he wasn’t, never would be now.
But he also said that Deku would amount to nothing.
And maybe a villain was worse than nothing in Kacchan’s eyes, but in spite of the boy’s cruel words back then, he’d never expect Deku to fall so low, to crumble and break into so many irreparable pieces that he’d end up as this mess of bones and sinew. Even though he was quirkless, a crybaby with dreams bigger than his fragile body could handle, Kacchan never once believed that Deku would ever be a villain, not in their wildest imagination.
Kacchan would finally be wrong.
The whys didn’t matter, just that it happened, that Izuku won in the end.
Just that, one day, Izuku wouldn’t be that four-year-old kid anymore, and Katsuki would forget Kacchan used to be a part of him. That admiration that Izuku kept safe from the ruthless winds would be long dead by that point, and Izuku could laugh about it without the ashes leaking from his eyes like streams of oil down his cheeks.
One day, Izuku would be nothing Kacchan thought he’d be.
One day, Kacchan would be everything Deku knew he’d become.
And one day, Izuku wouldn’t admire Kacchan anymore.
One day.
Eventually, inevitably.