You remembered being seventeen when they said it, wondering why you had to care about a pregnancy in your teenage years to even begin with. You had blamed misogyny, fetishisation, anything that you knew doctors operated with in the back of their mind, because surviving what you did, learning to walk and talk again at such a tender age did not align with wanting to rock a baby bump anytime soon.

Years later, and only after your last name had been changed to Bakugo as well, when you actually got pregnant, every appointment carried this awful sense of inevitability. Like everyone in the room was waiting for your body to fail some final exam it had already cheated death to pass.

Bedrest.

Monitoring.

Blood pressure scares.

Pain you pretended wasn’t getting worse because you knew the exact look Katsuki got when he was afraid.

What you couldn’t grasp back then—between extensive physios and two abdominal surgeries to remove scar tissue, you totally understood now.

Your gyno had suggested —no, demanded— you give birth via C-section, and at first you had been adamant about pushing through natural labor.

Stubbornness came naturally to you.

Unfortunately, so did denial.

You remembered sitting in that painfully bright office while your doctor pinched the bridge of her nose hard enough to leave marks.

“You are not understanding me,” she’d said slowly. “Your body has already undergone catastrophic trauma. Labor could rupture the remaining scar tissue internally.”

And you, arms crossed over your swollen stomach, had replied, “Women give birth every day.”

The silence afterward had been horrific. Your doctor looked one second away from sedating both you and your husband.

Beside you, Katsuki had gone deathly still. Extremely quiet. The kind of quiet that only happened when fear lodged itself somewhere too deep for shouting to reach.

He’d nearly crushed your fingers with how tight he was holding them when the doctor informed you it would be life-threatening, mostly because you wouldn’t listen.

You remembered finally glancing at him then.

At the dark circles under his eyes from weeks of sleeping lightly beside you in case your blood pressure spiked again.

At the way his jaw stayed clenched so often lately it probably hurt and the sweat gathered in his palms where they wrapped around your hand like if he loosened his grip for even a second, something terrible would happen.

And then he said it.

So quietly it almost hurt more.

“I don’t give a shit about the birth plan.”

The room went still.

Katsuki stared straight ahead when he spoke again, voice rough and frighteningly controlled.

“I don’t care if they cut me open too while they’re at it. I don’t care if your mom cries about the experience or if extras online say natural shit is more meaningful or whatever the fuck.” His grip tightened. “You dyin’ is not an option.”

You’d never heard him sound genuinely scared before. Not during villain attacks. Not during injuries. Not even during the war.

Fear on Katsuki Bakugo looked ugly because he constantly fought it so hard. It came out clipped and sharp-edged, buried beneath irritation and control until the cracks showed anyway.

And suddenly, sitting there in that office, you understood something horrible. He had already watched you almost die once. He had stood beside your hospital bed for endless nights, skipping studying, pushing through his own catastrophic injuries. He had memorized the sound of machines breathing for you. Already lived through the waiting, even when he had been told you wouldn’t make it, because to him, memorizing your face seemed like a potential relic.

The possibility of doing it again—this time while loving you even more than he had at seventeen—was destroying him slowly from the inside out.

His thumb rubbed absently over your knuckles.

A nervous habit. One he only had with you.

“I can live without being a dad,” he muttered finally. “I can’t live without you.”

After that doctor’s appointment Katsuki almost never left your side during the rest of the pregnancy.

Not in an overbearing way.

But after everything your body had already survived, he operated like someone waiting for disaster even during ordinary moments.

He learned medication schedules better than you did. Timed your contractions during false alarms with military precision. Argued with doctors until they stopped sounding dismissive. Rubbed your feet while glaring at you because your blood pressure was climbing again and you still insisted on folding laundry yourself.

He slept lightly beside you every night. One hand always remained somewhere on you. Your stomach. Your hip. Your wrist. Like reassurance worked both ways.

It got worse during the final months; You caught him staring at you sometimes– Before you went to sleep, or while you were reading a book, tucked carefully under a fuzzy blanket in the living room while he was supposed to be cooking. It felt like he was checking if you’re still breathing.

The C-section had already been scheduled. Your doctors barely entertained alternatives anymore after your last scan. Too much scar tissue. Too much risk. Your body simply wasn’t built to endure prolonged labor safely after the war injuries. And at one point you had reluctantly agreed, because you weren’t a seventeen year old stubborn head anymore, pushing through healing processes just so you could join high school with your classesmates anymore. It was simply because you wanted your baby, you wanted to raise your little girl with Katsuki, because you didn’t want to be the reason he’d be alone in this world.

And most importantly, because you didn’t want to imagine a life where Bakugo got to grow old without you.

Everything was planned carefully.

Controlled.

Safe.

And maybe that’s why the universe decided to ruin it.

-----------

The call came at 3:12 in the morning. Katsuki swore the second his phone rang. Instantly alert, though pushing back the wave of annoyance that washed through him.

Hero work trained people into recognizing certain calls before they even answered them.

He sat up beside you immediately, one hand already reaching for the phone while the other touched your thigh absentmindedly, grounding himself before he even spoke.

“What.”

Silence, then, “What do you mean Tokyo?”

You pushed yourself upright slowly against the pillows, still half asleep. The apartment was dark except for the streetlights bleeding through the curtains in pale orange strips.

Katsuki listened for another few seconds before dragging a hand down his face.

“How bad?”

Your stomach tightened uneasily by pure instinct.

Years of being a pro hero taught you how to recognize the atmosphere surrounding emergencies. Even over the phone, urgency carried differently.

Eventually, Katsuki hung up, leaving you silent on the other side of the bed, groggy eyes that could barely open through the thickness of sleep, desperately trying to watch him and every expression he made.

“There’s been an attack in Tokyo,” he muttered. “Evacuation’s fucked. They need extra hands.”

You frowned immediately. “Then go.”

His expression hardened.

“You’re due in two weeks.”

“Katsuki.”

“I’m serious.” he grunts, sheepishly.

You almost smiled despite yourself.

This had become normal lately—him acting like stepping more than ten feet away from you would cause immediate catastrophe.

And you can’t say you hate it. Because it has turned your Katsuki into a clingy thing. You can’t even lie to yourself and say you don’t enjoy the way he’s always touching you— or cuddling up to you.

Now, much like every other day, he shifts his weight, big arms coming to wrap around your sleepy form, dragging you into a big cuddle in the middle of the bed. Your husband nuzzles his nose to the side of your neck before he lets out a sleepy groan.

You have to fight the bulge of his bicep to even move your lips to speak, “You can’t ignore a city-wide villain attack because I’m pregnant.”

“Watch me.” He says, placing a soft kiss to the curve of your neck.

You snort softly. The words vibrate against your skin, low and rough with sleep.

You huff out another laugh despite yourself, trapped comfortably beneath the weight of Katsuki as he all but folds himself over you. Pregnancy had somehow turned one of the most aggressive men alive into something embarrassingly clingy in private.

Not that anybody would ever believe you.

The Number Two Hero, face buried in your neck at three in the morning, refusing to get out of bed because his pregnant wife looked too comfortable.

You shift slightly in his arms, trying not to laugh when he immediately tightens his hold in protest.

“Katsuki,” you mumble, voice muffled against his shoulder as he kisses exposed skin. “Tokyo is literally on fire.”

“Tch. They got other heroes.”

“You are other heroes.”

“That sounds like a them problem.”

Another kiss.

This one slower, softer.

His large hand slides instinctively over the curve of your stomach beneath your shirt, thumb rubbing absent circles there like muscle memory. You feel him pause for half a second when the baby shifts.

Every single time, his expression changed when that happened.

Still wonder.

Still disbelief.

Still that quiet softness he only ever let exist around you.

“You feel okay?” he asks again, sleep-heavy voice quieter this time.

“There it is,” you murmur. “Question number four.”

“Didn’t answer it the first three times.”

“I was falling asleep, but yes, I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Katsuki.”

He finally lifts his head enough to look at you properly.

Messy hair.

Heavy eyes.

Permanent stress line between his brows that had only gotten worse throughout the pregnancy.

You knew exactly why he hovered so much lately. Why he touched you constantly. Why he checked if you were breathing when he thought you were asleep.

The war had carved fear into both of you differently.

You carried yours internally.

Katsuki carried his like a weapon pointed at the universe, constantly painted all over his body in scars that will never fade.

“You’re overthinking again,” you whisper, brushing your fingers lightly along his jaw.

His eyes narrow immediately. “I’m literally always right.”

“You once tried to convince our doctor you could ‘sense’ if my blood pressure was dropping.”

“I was right.” he grunts.

“You were lucky.”

“I have instincts.”

“You have anxiety.”

That finally earns a reluctant snort from him.

“Katsuki, i’ll be fine. I promise.”

For a moment, neither of you move. Then Katsuki, as if you’ve magically convinced him, loosens his grip around you. He bats the sleepiness away from his eyes with a long blink and sighs as he’s getting his body up from the bed.

He gets dressed in his hero suit quickly, efficiently moving through years of practice and emergency tension that never boils down to anything other than anxiety.

The entire time though, he keeps looking back at you.

“You sure you feel okay?”

“Yes.”

“Any pain?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Katsuki, if you ask me one more time, I’m divorcing you before the baby gets here.”

“That’s not funny.”

And there it is again. Fear. Quick and ugly beneath the irritation. Not even hiding itself when his lip pouts out. Katsuki doesn’t appreciate these types of jokes now anymore than he ever did.

You soften immediately. “I’m okay.”

He exhales hard through his nose, his eyes scrunching shut.

Then he crosses the room, crouching carefully in front of you, and presses his forehead against your knee.

The position alone almost breals your heart.

The Number Two Hero.

Explosions in his palms.

Entire cities trusting him to save them.

And here he is, visibly struggling to leave his pregnant wife alone for a few hours.

His hand slides over your stomach gently.

“Call me if anything feels off.”

“I will.” you hum.

“I mean it, even the Dynamite emergency line.”

“I know.”

Another pause. Then, quieter:

“You’ll be okay without me for a bit?”

Something about that question makes your chest ache.

You threaded your fingers through his hair lightly. “Go save Tokyo, hero.”

His mouth twitches reluctantly against your leg. But he kisses your stomach before standing.

Then he kisses you.

Once.

Twice.

A third time like he still wasn’t convinced.

And when he finally leaves, the apartment feels too quiet afterward.

You try sleeping again. You really do.

But something restless lingers under your skin.

Around four am a storm starts outside. Rain taps softly against the windows. The kind of heavy springtime rain that made the city sound far away. Your mind only travels to Katsuki, the way he’s probably too grumpy over the fact he had to have traveled to Tokyo with Kirishima’s sidekick’s teleportation quirk and how anxious he’s going to be if he hasn’t dealt with the attack by the next few hours.

Your mind travels through every possible scenario. Him getting hurt, what the villain even might be on about; Because things have changed in the past few years. Society had slowly stitched itself back together after the war, scar tissue forming over old wounds the same way your body had. Less villains appear, less catastrophes are caused, but the stakes of collateral damage are always high when city-wide attacks happen.

Eventually, you waddle into the kitchen, mostly because pregnancy insomnia has become your own mortal enemy.

A true hero always has one, but apparently for you, it’s your own daughter these days.

You open the fridge, eager to think of something to cook for breakfast and curse slightly under your breath —That’s usually been Katsuki’s job the past few months, to which you’ve never had any objection, secretly liking the way he spoils you rotten.

However, because you still think of yourself as a fierce woman who doesn’t need to be dependent on her husband for food, you settle for making yourself some rice paired with the sides Katsuki has meticulously meal-prepped in separate containers in the fridge.

The fridge is absurdly organized. Every container labeled neatly in Katsuki’s sharp handwriting. Prepared vegetables. Protein portions. Side dishes stacked with aggressive precision. The top shelf entirely dedicated to snacks your doctor recommended because apparently pregnancy had transformed you into someone capable of crying over strawberries at midnight.

Katsuki loves, mostly, through acts of service and you will not deny him of it, even if right now he’s three hours of driving away.

The rice cooker clicks closed softly while rain continues against the windows. and once you turn your back to the counter, the apartment glows dim and warm in the passage of that early morning darkness that slowly seeps into the orange gleams of dawn, though today, it’s through distant cracks in bruised, rainy clouds.

For a little while, things feel strangely normal. Domestic.

Safe.

You lean with your back against the counter while waiting, one hand absentmindedly rubbing over your stomach when the baby shifts again. Your baby faintly kicks where your hand is, and you come to think that you might miss this once she’s born.

Katsuki speaks to her every chance he gets all day long, and she, simply by listening to his voice, turns and kicks inside your stomach even more so than she does when you attempt to do the same. Unfortunately, you’ve already sensed how much of a daddy’s girl she’s going to be

“Baby girl, you’re just like your father,” you mutter tiredly. “Keeping me awake for no reason.”

Another kick answers you immediately.

You snort softly, then pause entirely.

A strange tightness curls low in your abdomen.

You freeze.

“…Ow.”

The sensation isn’t sharp exactly. Just uncomfortable.

Your first instinct is annoyance more than concern. Pregnancy had become an endless cycle of aches lately anyway—back pain, hip pain, breast pain, pressure, soreness. Existing in your own body felt like a full-time job.

You shift your weight carefully against the counter and the pain fades momentarily.

“Okay,” you whisper to yourself.

False alarm, most probably.

Would Katsuki have scolded you for sitting up while the rice cooker works? Yes he definitely would have, however, he’s not here, and you have the freedom to finally exist in this house without having to lay down comfortably for once.

Go figure.

The rice cooker eventually finishes with a soft click.

You busy yourself plating food, deliberately ignoring the lingering unease crawling slowly up your spine. Katsuki’s paranoia had become contagious enough lately without you feeding into it too. Still… Your hand drifts unconsciously toward the kitchen counter when another tight cramp rolls through you. This time though, it’s stronger.

Your breathing stutters.

The plate clinks softly against the marble as you set it down too quickly.

No.

No, no. Fuck—Not now.

Your C-section isn’t for another —what?— eleven days?

You stand completely still, waiting for the sensation to disappear, thinking that this is too unfair, too cliche; the second Katsuki leaves, after you’ve promised him you’d be okay, things simply go downhill.

Thunder rumbles in muted tones from outside, all while the rain mellows down.

And then, when another surge of pain washes down the cold sweat in your sine, warmth suddenly spreads down your thighs.

Your brain doesn’t process it immediately. Not until you look down, at least, and you see water slowly dripping onto the kitchen floor.

Your entire body goes cold.

“Fuck!”

You stare blankly at the small puddle beneath you like if you wait long enough, reality will correct itself.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Your doctors specifically said this wasn’t supposed to happen. And to top that, they had not prepared you for anything like this happening.

You’ve entered your eight month like, a few days ago, and this. is. not. normal!

Panic crashes into you all at once. You grab your phone off the counter with shaking hands, speed dialing Katsuki’s phone, only for the call not to go through.

You try again. Then again. Then once more.

Fuck, maybe that villain attack has seriously jabbed communication signals.

You wonder if Katsuki has realised by now.

“Shit, what do i do,” you breathe shakily, tears stinging unexpectedly at your eyes.

Another contraction hits before you can think further.

This one hard enough to force you forward against the counter with a broken gasp.

Pain wraps viciously around your abdomen.

There’s only one person you can call that will answer for sure— Mitsuki.

---------

Your eyes drag heavily; the upwards path of grogginess until they’re halfway open. Your loose gaze catches blurs of the room you’re in. The light that casts through what looks like a window, white sheets that rest stiff under your hands that lay still next to your body.

It still feels like you’re positively dreaming.

Your hearing is clearer than your vision for what feels like a moment too long. Birds are chirping somewhere distant, traffic burps and crashes outside, but the loudest sound is the constant, steady beep-beep-beep of what looks like a monitor next to you.

For a few more disorienting seconds, your vision refuses to cooperate with you, everything around you reduced to pale blurs and washed-out light.

There’s a dull ache buried deep inside your abdomen, muted enough that it almost feels distant, like your body is keeping it behind glass for now until you’re awake enough to fully process it.

You blink slowly.

The room sharpens little by little around the edges.

Your eyes shift toward it sluggishly, catching sight of an arrangement of balloons and teddy bears beside your bed before your attention drifts elsewhere entirely.

Someone is holding your hand.

The realization reaches you before recognition does.

Warm fingers wrapped tightly around yours, almost stubbornly so, like whoever’s attached to them had been afraid to let go even for a second. Your gaze follows the arm upward slowly, vision still swimming slightly, until it lands on the figure slumped awkwardly in the chair beside your bed.

Blonde hair slightly flattened on one side.

Reading glasses shoved carelessly into the collar of a blouse.

Arms crossed tightly even in sleep.

Mitsuki.

Your brain struggles to understand the image at first. Not because it’s impossible, but because it feels strangely familiar in a way that immediately makes your chest ache. Your body flashes past images behind your eyes. Images of another time, another day, where Katsuki’s mom was younger, wearing an even more concerned expression on her face.

It’s crazy to think that life has brought you in this same position twice already.

The thought drifts through your exhausted mind sluggishly, almost detached, before memory suddenly crashes back hard enough to make your stomach twist.

The puddle under your feet in the kitchen.

The storm outside, muted by the second.

The sharp, tearing pain in your abdomen.

Then— white walls all blur together with a car ride. In the back of your head someone’s still shouting for blood products.

Your breathing catches.

The movement must tug against Mitsuki’s grip because her eyes snap open almost immediately, years of raising Katsuki apparently training her into sleeping lightly during emergencies. For a second she just stares at you, visibly trying to process the fact you’re awake, before something complicated flashes across her face so quickly you almost miss it.

Relief.

Pure, eye-brightening relief.

“Oh thank God,” she breathes, voice rough and cracked around the edges like she hasn’t spoken properly in hours.

You try to answer her, but your throat burns violently the second you inhale too sharply. The only sound that comes out is embarrassingly weak, more exhale than actual word.

Mitsuki is already moving before you can attempt again. “Easy, honey, don’t try talking yet.”

You chuckle at her, your mouth tugging to the side.

Deja-vu.

This time, you don’t ask for your mom.

Her chair scrapes softly against the floor as Mitsuki stands, reaching immediately for the plastic water pitcher beside your bed. Even half-conscious, you notice little things automatically. The wrinkling of her clothes. Smudged mascara gathered faintly beneath her eyes.

Your fingers twitch weakly against the sheets while she carefully presses the straw toward your mouth. The water tastes cold and metallic and overwhelmingly artificial, but you drink anyway because your body feels scraped hollow from the inside out.

The second your throat hurts less, panic rises all over again.

“Kats-Katsuki?”

The name catches painfully in your throat.

Mitsuki exhales through her nose immediately, already anticipating the question before you even finish asking it. There’s something almost fond in the expression that flickers across her face, despite how exhausted she looks.

“He’s alive,” she says dryly. “I finally got a hold of him a while ago and he’s on his way.”

A weak laugh escapes you before you can stop it, quickly interrupted by the ache in your abdomen. The movement sends a sharp soreness pulling through your middle and suddenly you become painfully aware of your body again. Heavy limbs. Tender skin. The awful, empty exhaustion sitting inside your stomach.

“M’baby—”

The words come out slurred and cracked, but Mitsuki understands instantly.

Her expression changes immediately, softening in a way that almost hurts to look at.

“She’s okay.”

Your entire body stills.

“She’s okay,” Mitsuki repeats more firmly this time, squeezing your hand tighter before you can spiral any further. “They’ve got her in NICU because she came early, but she’s breathing on her own. Doctors said her lungs are strong.”

For some reason, that’s the thing that nearly makes you tear up. You think of your baby, all alone, for god knows how many hours smothered by tubes. Wanting to go see her immediately, your hand instinctively drifts downward beneath the blanket before Mitsuki catches your wrist gently.

“Don’t,” she mutters. “You’ll freak yourself out.”

Which means there is something there to freak out about.

Probably bandages.

Maybe stitches. Not like that’s something you haven’t seen on you before.

Your face must betray some of the panic rising inside you because Mitsuki’s grip softens almost immediately afterward.

“You have to wait for your doctor to come check up on you before you do that. We don’t want you ripping your stitches.”

You hum in response.

“The surgery went fine,” she says quieter this time. “You scared the absolute shit out of everybody in the room, but it went fine.”

Everybody.

Your mind immediately conjures up the image of a seventeen year old Katsuki in a hospital waiting room instead of going to school and somehow that feels more horrifying than any surgery itself.

Still, you nod in response to her, your dry lips transforming into a pout that could only compare to one of her son’s. It looks almost ridiculous on your exhausted face, like your body is trying to remember how to be human again and only managing fragments of personality.

“Can we call Katsuki?” you ask, voice rough around the edges. “I wanna tell him I’m okay.”

Mitsuki doesn’t answer immediately.

That alone tightens something in your chest.

She studies you for a second—longer than necessary, like she’s deciding how much truth you can handle in your current state. Her thumb rubs once over your knuckles, grounding, deliberate.

Then she exhales through her nose.

“Of course sweetheart,” she says finally. “Just know he did get a little hurt during the attack. I urged him to go get checked up before commuting.”

“Hurt?”

Mitsuki nods once, lips pressing into a thin, controlled line. “Yeah. Nothing life-threatening. Before you start spiraling.”

It doesn’t stop the instinctive spike of panic anyway.

Your fingers twitch against her hand.

“Yeah,” she presses her lips into a concerned line “But he’ll tell you all about it after he sees you’re alive and well. He went frantic when I told him what happened.” she sighs “I swear you two—no, three now— are bound to give me a heart attack.”

“But he’s on his way, right?” you repeat.

“Yes.”

The word lands heavy, real in a way nothing else has since you woke up.

There’s a pause. A long one at that.

The kind where your body starts catching up to your brain in uneven pieces. Pain in your abdomen, dull and distant. The IV in your arm. The sterile smell that clings to everything. The fact that you are here, in a hospital bed again, and somehow still alive enough to ask questions.

Your daughter exists.

Your daughter is alive.

Katsuki is alive.

That thought should be simple. But it really isn’t.

Because none of it feels simple anymore. Not when you wanted, no, dreamed of having your daughter with Katsuki by your side. You’ve both already missed her first breath, her first cry, possibly even her first feeding.

Maybe you should have talked Katsuki out of going to Tokyo earlier. Hold him in your arms a little longer before he left. Because Mitsuki makes no actual move to pull her phone out to call him, and your paranoia convinces you she’s positively lying right now about him being okay.

Mitsuki shifts slightly in her chair when a loud sob chokes out of your mouth, watching your face like she’s learned how to read the smallest fractures in it over the years. There’s something exhausted behind her eyes too, but it’s the kind of exhaustion that’s been carried too long to complain about.

“You don’t have to hold it together right now,” she says, quieter.

It shouldn’t make anything break further than what it is already. But it does.

Your breath comes out corrupted, broken.

“I’m not—” you start automatically, then stop, because there’s no point lying to her. Not when she’s sitting there holding you like she already knows every version of you that exists. Not when you start to violently sob on the spot.

A beat passes.

Then you whisper, through muffled crying, smaller than before, “I just want to see him and the baby. I need them to be okay.”

Mitsuki’s expression softens in a way that almost hurts to look at.

“You will, sweetheart" she says simply. “Soon.”

Her hand doesn’t leave yours.

“Let’s call Katsuki, okay? Please don’t cry to him on the phone or his heart will combust.”

_________

By the time the door finally opens, the room already feels like it’s been holding its breath too long.

You’ve drifted in and out of that strange hospital haze where time stops behaving like it’s supposed to—light through the blinds shifting without meaning, machines humming steadily beside you like the only thing in the world that still understands how to be consistent. Your doctor passed by a while ago to check up on you and let you know that everything is going fine, despite the unfortunate turn of events. She answered all of your questions about the NICU patiently and informed you that your baby girl is fine. That other for her premature birth, there’s no other reason for her to stay in the NICU.

When Mitsuki was allowed back into the room, she eventually settled into the chair again, though not quite the same way as before. Less slumped now, more alert, like she’d decided exhaustion wasn’t something she was willing to fully submit to yet.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway, quick but controlled, each one placed with intention that doesn’t quite match urgency, but doesn’t fully escape it either.

The door clicks only a few minutes after. It’s soft, almost carefully reluctant.

Though your body reacts before your mind catches up.

And then he’s there.

Katsuki Bakugo. Your husband.

Clean and out of his hero costume.

That’s the first thing your mind registers, oddly enough.

Not the fact that he’s here. Not the fact that he made it back from Tokyo at all. But that he looks like someone who refused to bring the chaos of that city into this room with him. Hair still slightly tousled from travel, but not matted or wild. Skin washed of soot and debris, loose hoodie that somehow feels too big even over his enormous muscular frame, slouchy joggers. Even the sharp edges of him feel temporarily contained, like he forced himself through a reset somewhere between here and wherever they let him clean up. He’s holding an arrangement similar to the one near your bed. Flowers —roses— in orange and pink tones, the cutest teddy bear you’ve ever seen, and the baby hospital bag you two had already made a week ago.

Still, that put together image doesn’t hide everything.

There’s a stiffness in his shoulders that doesn’t belong to rest. A tightness in his jaw that suggests he hasn’t fully stopped moving since the attack ended. And his eyes—those always impossibly red eyes—snap to you immediately and don’t leave.

For a moment, he doesn’t come closer.

Doesn’t speak.

Just stands there in the doorway like the simple fact of you existing in front of him is something his brain has to recalibrate around.

Like maybe he wasn’t sure you still would be.

Then something in him breaks forward.

Not violently. Not like a rush. More like a controlled collapse of restraint, as if every part of him that was holding distance finally gives up at the same time.

He crosses the room in a few long strides, stopping only when he reaches your bedside. Even then, he hesitates—just for a fraction of a second—like he can’t decide what kind of contact won’t feel like too much or too little.

His free hand finds yours anyway.

Warm. Steady. Real. And then he kneels by your bedside, pushing back the very obvious wince of pain that scrunches up his face. His everlasting steadiness is what almost undoes you.

Because it’s not frantic anymore. Not panicked. He’s just here and he’s anchoring himself through you.

His thumb presses once over your knuckles, subtle, almost unconscious, but his grip tightens immediately after like he’s afraid letting go even slightly would make the entire day collapse again.

“Babe! You’re awake,” he says.

Not even a question, but it still carries disbelief under it, buried so deep it almost sounds like irritation instead of relief.

Your throat tightens as you manage a small, rough breath. “Yeah. Hi!”

The sound is enough to shift something in him.

His jaw flexes once, sharp enough that you notice the faint bruise along his cheekbone move with it. He looks like he wants to say something immediate and sharp and defensive, like anger is the only language his body knows how to start with when fear gets too close.

But it doesn’t come out that way.

Instead, he moves to place a kiss on your forehead, before his voice drops.

“You scared the hell outta me.”

It’s quieter than you expect. Less explosive than usual Katsuki. More stripped down than you’re used to hearing from him.

Your fingers curl faintly against his. “I’m sorry,” you murmur instinctively, tears already taking the form of drops at the ends of your eyes..

His reaction is immediate.

“Don’t,” he cuts in, too fast, then forces a breath through his nose like he’s trying to reset himself. “Don’t apologize for that. It’s not your fault.”

Silence settles between you again, heavier now that he’s here to fill it.

His eyes flick over your face properly for the first time, scanning like he’s checking for damage he can’t quite name yet. Not just injury, but absence. Like he’s still half convinced he’s going to look at you wrong and realize this is some delayed aftermath of a nightmare.

Behind him, Mitsuki shifts slightly, watching without interrupting, arms folded in that familiar posture of someone who’s already lived through too many emergencies to overreact to the current one.

Katsuki exhales once, slowly and controlled, but it doesn’t fully settle.

“I got thrown across the city and impaled on this ruin and they wouldn’t let me go until they patched me up,” he mutters, like the entire sequence of events is just an inconvenience in his schedule. “Kept telling me to wait.”

There’s a beat of silence.

It lands wrong in your brain.

Your grip tightens instantly around his hand.

“Impal—” your voice cracks, half exhausted, half horrified, half already furious. “IMPALED, Katsuki?! How can you say that so casually?”

His gaze snaps back to you immediately, like your reaction is the only thing in the room that actually matters.

“Tch,” he clicks his tongue, almost reflexively defensive. “It wasn’t through anything important.”

“That is not comforting!”

Mitsuki makes a sound behind him—something dangerously close to a sigh of long-suffering resignation.

Katsuki barely acknowledges her.

“I said I’m fine,” he continues, like repetition will make it fact. His thumb presses a little harder against your knuckles, grounding himself more than reassuring you. “They fixed it. I came here. End of story. Your water breaking the second I leave you alone is far more important.”

“End of story’?” you echo weakly, staring at him like he’s lost his mind. “You don’t just say you got impaled and then move on like it’s paperwork.”

His eyes narrow slightly, like he’s offended by your tone more than the injury itself.

“It is paperwork.”

“That is not—” you cut off, breath catching as your body reminds you very abruptly that laughing and yelling are both bad ideas right now.

You wince, hand instinctively moving toward your abdomen.

The reaction is immediate.

Katsuki’s entire posture changes. Just instant recalibration.

His grip tightens, but not in panic—more like instinct, like anchoring you before you can drift too far into discomfort.

“Hey,” he says, voice dropping slightly. “Don’t move like that.”

“I’m not the one who got impaled,” you mutter weakly, still trying to recover your breath.

“Yeah, well,” he shoots back immediately, eyes flicking over your face again in that same careful scan, “you’re the one who underwent birth and surgery.”

Katsuki leans in slightly closer to you now, right until his head rests faintly over your chest. His fingers, thick and scarred and worried, shuffle the lightest touch against yours. You stare at the connection; how your palm fits against his as your hands lay flat against each other’s, how Katsuki smoothly moves and caresses the back of your hand, finally, inside the vastness of his.

Then, after he reaches your face to plant chaste kisses everywhere on your lips, he marks the trails of your palm, tenderly, with his pointer finger.

“What did your doctor say?” he asks, voice dropping. “I still haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”

The shift is subtle, but it changes the air completely.

Your chest tightens—not from pain this time, but something softer, heavier.

“She said I’m alright, that I'm in no danger. And our baby is in the NICU,” you say quietly. “She’s stable. Just… monitoring.”

For the first time since he arrived, something like uncertainty actually breaks through his expression.

Not fear exactly. Something more complicated. It finds purchase in tiny specs of his face; in between the dents in the middle of his furrowed eyebrows, the twitching corner of his lip. You’ve known Katsuki long enough to see the mask he’s put on right now, slipping away from him.

“I wanna see her,” he says immediately.

There’s no hesitation in the words. But there is in everything else.

His grip on your hand tightens again, almost imperceptibly. His gaze flicks briefly toward the door, then back to you, like he’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t have a clean answer.

“But,” he adds, quieter, rougher, “if your doctor said she’s small. And early. And I’m not—”

He stops.

His jaw tenses hard.

“I’m not good at… that shit,” he admits reluctantly, like it physically pains him to say. “Not like I'll be able to hold her while she’s in there but, y’get me.”

You blink slowly at him.

“Katsuki,” you murmur.

“Babe, it’s my fault, i should have been here and then this wouldn’t have happe—”

“Do you want to go?” you, voice quieter now. “Or should I go first and— and tell you what it’s like?”

The question lands differently. Careful.

Like you’re trying to give him control over something he himself feels completely unsteady about. Your fingers tighten weakly around his. And Katsuki doesn’t feel like he can do that, honestly. Let you go in there alone. You know him well enough that you know what answer he’s going to give you next”

“I want to see her,” he says softly. “With you.”

“But I'm kinda stitched up,” you laugh, muffling a happy cry that escapes you “you’re gonna have to carry me”

That does it.

Something in his expression shifts—just slightly, but enough. You notice his own eyes tearing up. Like that answer was the only one that would’ve held him together.

______

After a full day of spending a ridiculously long amount of time convincing your doctor that, yes, you can get up —because you’re a hero whos gotten up from way worse— a nurse eventually helps disconnect a few monitors while Mitsuki hovers nearby pretending not to supervise every single thing happening in the room.

You settle for a wheelchair since everyone gets in your case about walking.

Katsuki barely leaves your side during any of it. Even when he steps back to let the nurses adjust you carefully upright, one hand stays anchored somewhere against you—your shoulder, your arm, your waist—like he’s terrified you’ll disappear the second he loses contact.

The hospital robe feels too light against your skin.

Your body feels heavier than concrete.

Every movement pulls strangely through your abdomen, soreness wrapped tightly beneath layers of medication and exhaustion. You would never admit this to your doctor but you don’t fully understand how people survive childbirth and then continue existing like normal afterward. It feels vaguely fake. Like your organs have been rearranged by interns.

“You okay?” Katsuki asks for maybe the fifteenth time in the span of ten minutes.

“No,” you mumble honestly.

He snorts quietly through his nose, crouching slightly beside the wheelchair while the nurse locks the footrests into place.

“Good. Means you’re conscious.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

His hand finds yours again immediately afterward anyway.

The NICU floor is quieter than the rest of the hospital.

The lights are dimmer here, voices lower, footsteps gentler somehow. Everything beyond the secured doors feels carefully contained, like the entire wing exists in a state between fear and hope. Through the windows of nearby rooms, you catch small glimpses of incubators, exhausted parents, nurses moving steadily between machines.

The closer you get, the quieter Katsuki becomes.

Not outwardly.

He still answers the nurses. Still thanks people in his own clipped, awkward way. Still pushes your wheelchair himself despite being told multiple times someone else can do it.

But you feel it.

The way his thumb keeps rubbing absentmindedly against your wrist.

The way his shoulders slowly tense again.

The way his breathing has gotten subtly shallower.

By the time the nurse finally stops outside one of the rooms, Katsuki looks more nervous than you’ve maybe ever seen him in your life.

Which is absurd, considering this is the man who once fought the worst villain in history through half a collapsing city with a broken broken body and a destroyed heart.

The nurse smiles softly at both of you before speaking quietly.

“She’s right over here.”

And suddenly your own heart feels too large for your chest.

The room is warm.

Warmer than the hallway.

Machines hum softly beneath the low lighting, steady little beeps scattered throughout the room like artificial heartbeats. There’s a faint sterile smell beneath everything, but underneath that too—something softer. Powder. Clean blankets. New life.

Your eyes immediately find her.

Tiny.

That’s the first thing your brain can process.

Tiny.

So impossibly tiny it almost doesn’t look real.

She’s bundled carefully inside the incubator, wrapped in a soft hospital blanket with little wires attached delicately against her chest. Her face is scrunched slightly in sleep, tiny mouth parted just enough to show uneven little breaths.

Your hair color paints her teeny strands of hair, save for a few platinum patches.

Not much. But enough.

Your breath catches so hard it hurts.

“Oh my God,” you whisper.

Beside you, Katsuki says absolutely nothing.

You turn your head slightly toward him and nearly break apart at the expression on his face.

His expression is unreadable. Like he’s terrified

Of her and just how small she is.

His eyes don’t leave the incubator for even a second, like he’s trying to memorize every inch of her immediately in case the universe changes its mind and takes it all back.

The tiny rise and fall of her chest. The shape of her nose. The little crease between her brows that already somehow looks familiar.

“That’s…” His voice catches abruptly.

You actually see him swallow around it.

“That’s our baby?”

Something hot burns behind your eyes immediately.

You nod shakily, unable to stop staring at her either.

“Chihiro,” you whisper softly. “Right?”

You and Katsuki had agreed on the name years ago.

Back before marriage.

Back before pregnancy complications and surgeries and after war scars and the terrifying realization that loving someone this much could genuinely ruin you if the world touched them wrong.

Then his hand suddenly tightens painfully around yours, like reality hit him all over again at full force.

His other hand drags hard down his face, covering his mouth and nose.Muffling the sound that escapes him.

Not enough that you completely miss it. Just enough that he can pretend you did.

Your chest aches so badly it feels impossible to contain.

You watch his throat work again before he lets out a shaking breath and steps carefully closer to the incubator, movements slower than you’ve ever seen from him before.

And then your daughter stretches suddenly in her sleep, one tiny hand flexing weakly beneath the dim NICU lights.

Katsuki visibly stops breathing.

His eyes widen just slightly.

Like even that tiny movement was enough to completely destroy whatever composure he had left.

“Yeah, fuck she looks so much like you,” he says quietly, voice cracking so roughly it barely sounds like him at all. “Shit, yeah…”

His fingers twitch helplessly at his side before he finally reaches toward the incubator, hesitant in a way that would feel almost unreal coming from him to people who don’t know him.

“…Chihiro, babe.”

Katsuki Bakugo Masterlist

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