Chapter Text
Bakugou’s world ended forty-eight hours ago on a humid Friday night.
There wasn’t much for him to say about it. The whole thing had been televised. Everything that mattered had been broadcasted live, cameras on helicopters pointing their lenses, crowds forming on the streets to watch, every video posted for eternity on the internet and the backs of his eyes.
He didn’t need to go over it again. Rehash the same goddamn points every other person in the world had, the same things he’d told the police, the same things that had been shouted out at him by reporters when he finally left the station with the sun just peeking over the horizon.
Still.
It was Sunday, and it was humid.
Sweat trickled down his neck, trailed down his forehead into the dip of his eyebrow, made the back of his head uncomfortably damp. Every so often, he popped little firecrackers off in his palms, wicking off the sweat gathering there.
On Friday, it had been the thing keeping him alive, propelling him through the sky and leaving burns on the flesh of his enemies.
On Sunday, it was just a nuisance.
Really, there were more important things to think about, other than the heat. The time of night, where he was, how he got there. How much time he'd lost. Why he was losing time at all, when he’d been so hyper-aware of it just a few days ago.
But every street looked like an off-branch of Kamino, and the night air was too warm to be comfortable, and he wasn’t tired enough to go home yet.
He turned another corner, knocked a shoulder into a street sign, and kept walking. Every few steps, a muscle in his body twinged and ached, a sharp pain in a random joint. The doctors who checked him over cited no serious injuries; they said he was lucky. Everyone else involved came out the other end covered in blood or missing a piece of their soul, but he just walked away, no more scuffed than if he were training.
Hungry, aching, dirty, sure. But there hadn’t been a single cut on his body.
He’d taken a shower since then, and ate a full meal. His parents offered to cook whatever he wanted, and then they’d all taken to the couch, and fell asleep watching a documentary on deep sea fish. Bakugou hoarded the blankets, and his mom didn’t even complain about it that time. And when his eyes were slipping closed, and his muscles finally untensed, his dad carried him upstairs to bed like when he was five years old and exhausted from playing outside all day, careful to only touch the blankets, never him They stayed by his bed until he lost consciousness, fell into the deepest sleep of his life.
He didn’t know why he’d pretended to fall asleep on the couch. He didn’t know why his parents played along with it, either, when he knew they’d learned how to tell years ago.
Whatever the reason, he wasn’t tired anymore. Hadn’t been, since that first night.
Bakugou turned onto a stone walkway, passing a sign for the park. It was one of the ones that was more flowerbeds and sectioned off plants than real nature, a picturesque place to have a picnic and pretend to at least be outdoors-adjacent. For as fancy as it was, as Bakugou traversed its paths, it was clear it needed some upkeep. Stray rocks wobbled in the holes they’d originally been cemented in, the surrounding material left to wither away through weather or villain attacks.
The flowers were perfectly taken care of. He had the inane urge to crush them beneath his boots.
Bakugou sat on a nearby bench, instead, careful to keep any inch of his skin away from touching the porous wood. He didn’t need some delinquent striking a cigarette the next day and catching fire to the whole park just because of his leftover sweat.
His phone had been buzzing all day. It was on 20% battery when he took it out, scrolling through the notifications without really reading them. Most of his classmates had texted once, with whatever social compulsion they had to check in on him, and a few of his old friends from middle school messaged him on the only public social media profile he had -- an Instagram account with no posts, followers, or profile picture. He’d made it the moment he got his first phone, so he wouldn’t have to give anyone his phone number, and just send them to a blank account he could easily ignore. They were the sort of messages he got after the Sports Festival, from faceless, nameless nobodies trying to leech off his fame. It was the same now; a consolation text, followed by some sort of request to meet one of his teachers, or a hero he’d never even seen face-to-face yet.
Deku texted five times. The notification glared at him like the flashing light of a faulty fire alarm, impossible to ignore, and unceasingly annoying. He didn’t click on it, not even to make the little red bubble go away. He muted the whole app.
He only paid attention to the text from his dad, asking when he’d be home. He glanced at the time, nearly twelve, and told his dad he was going to have an impromptu sleepover at Kirishima’s. He didn’t know what city he was in, but it wouldn’t be enough time to get back home before the last train.
They would drive the distance to pick him up if he asked. They’d scold him for his lack of planning, but they’d show up, anyway, any time of the night.
It was the main reason he didn’t tell them. He didn’t feel like going home, either, but the thought of them worrying at midnight was far worse.
God. Bakugou was sick of people worrying about him.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket after the power reached 10% and turned his head to the sky. With the amount of pollution in the city, not a single star was visible. It was just an empty, dark abyss, hanging low over a plasticky scenic park. Not a cloud in sight, with only a decaying ozone layer to show for it. He shut his eyes and there wasn’t much of a difference.
A branch cracked and his head snapped up. Piercing red eyes darted across the park -- flowerbeds, tree trunks, bushes -- anything, anywhere someone could hide behind. A flash of smoke, blue, too-hot fire, nauseous smelling gas in the thick air, the glint of glass marbles soaring through the sky. A hand reaching out of the darkness. Suffocating, shiny walls crushing down around him, constricting him in the most inhumane way. Too small to fight back for the first time in his life, relying only on the vaguest hopes that someone came for him in the dark. Fingers wrapped around his neck in a silent, unyielding threat, pulling him into the smoke.
Deku’s wrecked body straining to get to him in time. Moving too slow.
Bakugou pressed against his heart, heaving through the tiny, useless breaths he managed to suck in, and dragged himself inch by inch out of the dawning panic. He forced himself to see something other than a forest fire and pinprick pupils ringed by green.
Something huddled in front of a large oleander bush. A little girl, too small to be anything over six years old, crouched on her knees in the mulch and dirt.
Against his better judgement, Bakugou heard himself mutter a bewildered, “What the fuck?”, under his breath. The concerned citizen part of him, a very small percentage of his brain mass, flashed immediately with the thought that a kid shouldn’t be out so late, especially on her own. Shouldn’t be hiding, either.
He looked around, scanning over the other countless benches within the park, the walkways and crumbling cobblestone, searching to no avail for someone else to step in. Bakugou had never been good with kids, even when he was a kid, and he’d much rather haul that problem off to someone a bit more well equipped to deal with it.
There wasn’t any villain to pummel into the ground, and there wasn’t any softer, gentler adult around to take the kid. It was just Bakugou and some runaway girl.
Bakugou stifled a groan with his teeth, pushing himself up from the bench to make his way over to the bush. The girl’s head jerked up, and for a moment, identical carmine eyes stared at each other, lit by only the night sky. Until her head ducked down again, covered by her hands, like a toddler swearing that a monster couldn’t hurt her if she couldn’t see it. Her shoulders shook hard, almost like she was seizing, but not a single sound escaped her mouth. She trembled like she was dying, and sounded like she was already a corpse.
Bakugou’s shadow fell across her, enveloping her whole, even when he ducked down to her level, sat on his haunches. He didn’t reach out to her; didn’t know how she would react, or how to explain to her his explosive sweat, or how his own body would feel touching another human being for the first time since escaping. His hand still buzzed where Kirishima had grabbed him, staticky under his skin, like everything in his body was protesting the contact. Bakugou kept his hands to himself, crossed with his arms, against nearly every rescue packet he’d been given in school. Pages upon pages on how to talk to a kid in a rescue situation, completely useless in real time.
Somehow, he had the feeling she didn’t want to be hugged, either.
“Hey,” Bakugou started, flinching at the volume of his own voice cutting through the quiet. It sounded too rough to be his own, more harsh than he meant it to. He wondered if that was the effect of his screams that night; maybe he’d torn something in his throat. The kid flinched like she’d been slapped. He cleared his throat, and tried again. “Hey, brat. What’s goin’ on? The hell are you hiding for?” As far as he could see, nothing was coming after her. He couldn’t hear anything out of place.
The girl cowered in place, lips pressed in a tight line. But-- she looked at Bakugou, at least, even as she trembled in what he easily recognized as a full body terror. An ivory horn protruded from the side of her forehead, small and sharp, twisted like a tree branch. Her quirk. He didn’t care much about it. Mostly, he was concerned about the sack of a dress she was in, a glorified hospital gown at best, and the thick bandages wrapped around her limbs. Bakugou’s frown deepened.
“What happened to you?” Bakugou murmured.
“Please--” She whispered, hardly a sound at all, and cut off by the clack of her own teeth. Her breath came out in little huffs, like a dam had been opened, but all that came flooding in was a cloud of its construction dust.
Bakugou grimaced. “‘Please’, what? Come on, talk!” The girl stared at him with bright, fearful eyes, mouth firmly shut. A frustrated growl bubbled in the back of his throat. “Fuck is the matter with you?”
“She’s not going to talk.”
Bakugou whirled around in his crouch, arms whipping to his side, fingers tensed and ready to explode. His sweat turned ice cold.
Close, too close, stood the silhouette of a man, blacked out from a nearby street light. Tall, taller than Bakugou was, with fur lining his neck and shoulders, light glinting off of something sharp affixed to his face. The man stepped forward, closing the distance to just a few feet, and something in Bakugou’s mind screamed at him to run. His muscles itched to pull him back. The park was wide open, but he felt like a cornered animal, ready to scratch and bite and run.
And he couldn’t figure out why. The guy was just standing there. No weapon in hand, no tension in his posture, no hostility Bakugou could parse out. He was just a guy.
So why was Bakugou’s heart beating so hard?
“Huh?” Bakugou muttered, as intelligently as he could. The girl shifted behind him, the most noise she’d made since talking. Bakugou moved to place himself more firmly between them. “What d’ya mean?”
The man sighed, beleaguered and long, and stepped out of the shadows. “I apologize; my daughter doesn’t talk much at all. And when she runs off, well,” he ran a gloved hand through his hair, looking off like he truly was an exhausted father stretched thin, “it just makes it that much harder to find her.”
“Daughter, huh?” Bakugou risked a glance behind him. The girl was crunched in on herself, shivering despite the humid air. He knew better than to assume relation or not just based on looks -- the kid looked to have albinism or something, after all -- but that was far from the first alarm. When he looked back, the man, better lit now, had a goddamn fur collared jacket on. A thick, puffy thing, over an expensive looking shirt and pristine white tie. His mask was designed after the bottom half of a plague doctor’s, lined with gold trim and fixed with a rich, dark red leather. His white sneakers were completely spotless.
The kid behind Bakugou didn’t have shoes at all.
“Couldn’t even get her some hand-me-downs?” Bakugou snarked, planting his feet firmer in the ground. It would take the guy some considerable force to make Bakugou move. As far as he knew, he was the only thing between an uncertain fate and a scrawny little girl. The ‘why’s of it all didn’t really matter to him.
The man’s eyebrow twitched, an unconscious muscle spasm, like the vein starting to show in his forehead. Shockingly yellow eyes narrowed down at him.
Bakugou fought off a full body shiver.
The man abruptly tilted his head. “You look familiar,” he mused, and Bakugou became hyper-aware of that sharp gaze flicking across his face, from his eyes to his hair to the still-irritated skin around his wrists. “Have we,” the man paused, sliding his eyes across Bakugou’s face like oil, “met before?”
Ice crept up Bakugou’s spine. He didn’t risk looking away, hardly even blinked. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to run, had switched from a faint buzzing warning to a full on panic, but he was rooted to the ground. Adrenaline pumping through his body, palms slick with enough sweat to blast him halfway across the city in a second. He didn’t move. “Nah,” he muttered, “just have one of those faces, I guess.”
A car honked somewhere far off, outside of the park. The lights lining the walkway buzzed.
The man’s eyes had no light in them. “I guess so,” he acquiesced smoothly. Smooth enough it felt like a threat. He stepped closer. Only a foot or so away. The man brought a hand up and adjusted the glove around it, almost making a show of it, snapping the band around the wrist like a doctor.
The little girl almost sobbed behind Bakugou. He heard her stumble to her feet, gravel and mulch scattering. Bakugou made to move with her, keep himself as a sort of human shield, but she was pushing past him with an urgency he hadn’t known possible. Her bare feet slipped on loose rocks, her shoulders remained hunched up to her ears, and it was like she thought she’d die if she spent another second behind Bakugou. She only came to a stop next to the man. Her head hung limp, defeated, refusing to look back. Her hair was knotted and matted down her back.
Bakugou kind of felt like throwing up.
“Well,” Bird Face said, “we really should be getting going. It’s well past her bedtime.” He leaned away from the girl, like he didn’t want to even risk her touching him. She kept her hands to herself, too, something no kid Bakugou had ever met was even capable of.
Bakugou looked from Bird Face to the girl, and then dropped to one knee. He rested a hand on the girl’s shoulder, explosive sweat be damned, and didn’t move even when she flinched. She turned, at least, and that was all he needed -- to make sure she was seeing him, paying attention. Make sure she knew he was still there. “Hey,” he murmured, just above a whisper, hoping to all hopes that it was quiet enough, “do you want to go with this freak?”
The girl stared at him with wide, shaky eyes, brimming with tears, and with the tiniest movement, shook her head ‘no’.
“Come on,” the man huffed impatiently, and the girl flinched so hard, Bakugou thought she might fall over.
Bakugou stood upright and watched Bird Face walk away, the little girl stumbling after him -- behind, and never at the side. His heartbeat pounded in his ears like cannonfire. His pulse roared in his veins, pumped through with adrenaline, saturating his muscles with too much energy, too much fear.
God, why was he scared? If anything, Bird Face was just a run-of-the-mill child abuser. A coward who preyed on children because they couldn’t fight back. He’d gone against the entire League of Villains, and while that had been nerve-wracking, he hadn’t been scared like this. Scared for himself, not just others, not just Deku and his stupid, battered body coming too close.
His breath came out in violent huffs, forced through grit teeth. His mind whirled. And then he looked at the girl.
If Bakugou was this nervous already, he couldn’t imagine how the girl felt.
Two steps ahead.
He couldn’t use his explosions. He’d be recognized.
Three steps.
He didn’t even know for sure what was going on. The kid might just be playing dress-up, acting out, whatever. The guy could’ve just been awful at socializing.
Four steps.
He couldn’t let it reach five.
Bakugou grabbed a loose brick from the cobblestone path and smashed it into the man’s head.