hope the smoke carries my name

\\

As it turns out, to be great is also to be mad.

Iskandar is nothing less than a spectacle, in every facet of his existence. There is no joy without indulgence, no victory without legacy. The only language he knows how to speak is in absolutes; he is to win or not fight at all.

He appears to Waver decorated in lavish red, an imitation of the blood he has spilled, but there is nothing gruesome about this display. The opulence of his battle scars reflects in the gleam of the very blade he uses to fight. It’s beautiful. Mesmerizing.

It’s mad.

“All at once,” he declares, a proud grin stretched across his face. “The only way to defeat them is all at once.”

“That’s insane,” Waver squeaks. His heart is in his throat. Over the past few days, he’s forgotten what it feels like for it to be anywhere else. Being Iskandar’s master is like being on speed. It’s a never-ending adrenaline rush.

He bellows a laugh and it reverberates through Waver’s bones. Everything Iskandar does is bigger, louder, more than anybody else.

He’s mad.

He’s Great.

Alongside the fear pressing down on his lungs, Waver feels a profound sense of purpose. He latches onto his Rider’s chariot as it races through the clouds, all at once terrified and relieved to keep his hesitancy on the ground.

Flying is so much better than running.

It’s so much worse.

To Iskandar, nothing exists until it is mad, overindulgent, and completely reckless in every enchanting sense.

And it’s precisely why he is the King of Conquerors.

\\

To be king is to laugh the loudest, to fight the hardest, to hurt the most. Humble men don’t become Great. The Banquet of Kings makes Waver feel so inconsequential in the infinite universe. His servant is a man brimming with divinity, composed of a million suns.

Having stolen his relic and his place in this war, the Waver he left behind creeps back up on him, reminding him that he is a coward to his core.

His peers…

He pushes it down.

El Melloi…

Buries it deep.

Iskandar…

Tries his damnedest to assert his role as master.

He isn’t fooling anybody.

But he is an alchemist and if there is anything certain in this world, it’s the science of transmutation. His fear will build courage. His doubt will become daring. The humanity he so desperately tried to leave behind will amplify into that of a proper king, so that he can be worthy of the title of master.

Death is indiscriminate. Stolen or not, his place on the battlefield will end in victory or blood.

\\

Rider is a quiver of golden arrows and Waver is his broken bow. He was blessed with the strongest servant. (Or, perhaps more accurately, Rider was cursed) And yet, the farther they make it into the war, the farther from Great that Waver feels.

He pores over books that paint distorted pictures of Iskandar’s legacy. This man, as close to a divine entity as Waver has ever seen in the flesh, exists in a thousand different forms.

A hero.

A villain.

A conqueror.

A king.

But even so, his human flesh could not withstand his steel heart and he was taken from the world in a blaze of fire and blades. Men become legends and dreams become myths.

Ashes to ashes.

Rider shows Waver a map one night, asking Waver to find the two of them. If he looks hard enough, he can see rivers, mountains, cities, and oceans that go on forever. Somewhere amid the chaos, the two of them exist, standing on a street corner, holding a map.

To Waver, Rider is a tower.

To the earth, the stars, the universe, they are both nothing.

Dust to dust.

\\

The only thing that’s a given about chasing ghosts is failure. The Holy Grail is as real to Waver as his pain, taking on its own unique shape inside of his heart. An eternal wish granter. A guerdon for his suffering. Whether or not winning does anything, it means everything. He’ll have survived something as terrible as it is extraordinary.

Is the glory of survival worth dying for?

He isn’t sure.

\\

Waver dreams of an ocean.

The horizon skims the surface, spattering the waves in light.

He tastes salt. A cool breeze lifts a red cape like a victory flag.

When he wakes up, he doesn’t know where this fits into the world he knows. How does he find it? What does he have to do?

Is it real?

Does it even matter?

It’s then that he understands just how alike he and Rider are.

Greatness is an elusive creature only to those who don’t survive. To be great, whether that be through victory or happenstance, is to close your eyes and hear the waves of okeanos crash against the shore.

Light explodes into the last night sky of the war.

Rider grins.

__ 

But first, it hurts.

The grief carves into her with insistence, as if pain is her heart’s method of memorializing the family she lost. None of this is right, nor is it fair to their sacrifice for her to eulogize them with such remorse.

“Good morning, my lady.”

I failed you. I’m so sorry.

“Goodnight, my lady.”

I named wandering spirits gone too soon, only to have them suffer again.

“Good morning, my lady.”

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“Goodnight, my lady.”

How can I save wayward spirits when all I know how to do is let them die?

“Good morning, my lady.”

Again.

“Goodnight, my lady.”

Again. And again. And again.

“Good morning, my lady.”

Sunlight filters in through the windows and she hears the gentle creak of wood bending under footsteps. The days don’t amount to much when they’ve existed infinitely before today, and will exist infinitely after. She will still be Bishamonten as she is now.

She’s a god of fortune tainted by calamity. 

For the first time in weeks, she follows the voice leading her into each new day. She finds liquid-brown eyes and a face etched with worry lines. Her gaze falls to the name branded onto his delicate hand.

Kazu.

“Kazu...ma,” she croaks, the last syllable cursed and haunted. 

She reaches for his hand, tracing the edges of the kanji that illustrates the name she gave him. She closes both of her hands around his. The intimacy of where their skin connects makes her heart race.

“Kazuma,” she says again, the last syllable a precious relic. 

His hands are so warm; he feels alive. She brings them up and presses her lips to his fingertips. Electricity sparks between them. A fire comes to life in her chest, and the flames lick against her bones and ignite her veins.

Kazuma’s chest hitches and his skin flushes a beautiful shade of scarlet. In that moment she remembers he’s so young, at nineteen years old, dead at what should have been the very beginning of his life. The unfairness of it is why she named him, why she vowed to protect him. 

You’re all I need, she thinks. My precious Choki. My second chance.

 __   

Kazu is a gift from her soul to his body. 

Viina is the gift that binds the two together. 

When he gives her this name and she calls him in turn, something feels different. He comes to her in a flash of gold, a rush of warmth, a loyalty so honest that it sinks into her own bones. They intertwine and find purchase on each other’s strength.

         She pulls.

         He steadies.

         They look up and watch the light fall away in a rain of embers. She feels the ground beneath her as if she is spiritually anchored to the earth. A welcoming pull from her spine to the near shore.

         This is peace.

         This is right.

         Choki is no longer a nail piercing her skin, but an elegant cherry blossom earring whispering in her ear. He is brimming with confidence in them both. Their souls come together in a resonance reserved for those who have been hurt the same ways, loved the same amount.

         Bishamonton and her hafuri.

This is how they move forward together.

__

 “I’m sorry, Viina.”

They fall to their knees and his blood is warm against her skin. His name flutters. She winds her fingers into his blood-soaked shirt and pulls him into her, staining him with blight, once again on the verge of losing what is most important to her.

Hundreds of years pass through her like a ghost. So much fire, so much hatred, wasted in chasing after a lie. She should feel angry. At the very least, she should feel betrayed.

She feels Kazuma’s blood on her clothes and his shallow breaths against her skin.

There is no room for anger or regret when her heart is held captive by grief. The Ma Clan, the Ha Clan, the time she spent pursuing Yato with sadistic sadness are gone.

She feels Kazuma’s blood on her clothes.

It’s all gone.

His shallow breaths against her skin.

She falls apart.

 __

And when the dust is settled, they pull each other back together because that’s how they’ve learned to exist. She’s a goddess of war with armor forged in pain. He’s a blessed vessel with a catastrophically human heart. A god is never wrong, but even so, a choice resulting in collateral damage is what she trusts her hafuri to guide her away from. Her humanity exists in her shinki–in her love for them and their innate ability to feel beyond her realm of comprehension. In the ways they’ve known ephemerality and how precious time can be. In how people can perish like seconds–inevitably, irrevocably.

“I’m sorry,” Kazuma says once again. He bows his head, keeping his eyes trained on the name etched onto his hand. “I will never betray your trust again.”

She reaches for the back of his neck and gently brings his forehead to rest against hers. He swallows and flushes. She smiles.

“You’re doing fine,” she says. Her eyes close. “Thank you, Kazuma.”

Love, by its very definition, is devastatingly, beautifully human. It is ambrosia to the soul, ice over a burn, an incentive to fight and a reason for grief. It encompasses what it means to be alive, in the truest sense of the word.

“Sure,” she mused, swinging her long legs back and forth. She glanced up and down my body, then asked, “How are you feeling, by the way?”

“Fine.” I stretched my arms over my head until my shoulder gave a satisfying pop. She wrinkled her nose. “You can barely tell I was fighting for my life just last week. It’s sweet to know you’re concerned, though. You must have missed me terribly.”

Charity snorted. “Is it too late for you to slip back into a coma?”

“Alas. Here I am. Forever and always, baby.”

“Call me baby again and I’ll kick your ass into the lake.”

I laughed and whatever tension may have fallen over us since the end of the war shattered, just like that. I felt my chest fill with warmth. For the first time in days, things felt normal. 

“You didn’t just happen to stumble upon me, though,” she said, more quietly. To her credit, whether it was a light moment or not, she always knew my intentions. 

I followed her eyes to the surface of the lake where I could just make out our silhouettes reflected in the dark water. 

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I admitted.

She leaned back, pressing the heels of her palms into the dock. Her eyes remained fixed on our reflections. “Of course I’m okay. It’s over, right?”

“You don’t have to do that.”

I touched her arm and her gaze met mine. God, those eyes of hers. They were ocean-blue and compelling, like sirens dragging me under. It was part of what made it so easy to trust her, and what made it impossible to lie to her. 

“I get trying not to fall apart in front of Caleb, your uncle, or even our friends,” I said. “But it’s just us right now.” 

She sighed, letting her eyes flutter closed. She nodded once. 

“I think I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to find meaning in everything we did out there,” she said. “And even if I do, a part of me will always be in that asylum, or on the forest floor, or on the other side of Aiden’s knife.” 

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing the goosebumps pebbling her arms. 

“It’s over, but it’ll never be over. Not really,” she said. “I knew that when I signed up for this and I’m trying not to have any regrets, but if you want to hear the truth...this is it.” 

“Do you resent me for it?” 

It was an unspoken question between us since the day I roped her into this mess. But now, past the battlefield and the settled dust, when there was nothing left to anticipate, only reflect upon, I had to know. 

“No,” she said immediately. “If there’s anything I’m sure of, it’s that I don’t regret any part of this that had to do with you.”

“Why?” I asked. 

She gave me a sad smile. “You know why, Ilum.”

My heart leapt in my chest. I was brought back to the morning of the infiltration, when she kissed me in the car, and then the night after, when we fell asleep entangled in each other’s limbs, the other’s desperate kisses still stinging our lips.

Yes, I knew why. I should have hated myself for it. 

But I didn’t. 

I couldn’t when the road to Hell also brought me to her. 

“I know what you mean, when you talk about it all lingering,” I said.

Trying to find the right words with Charity was worthless. The only way we knew how to communicate was by emptying our hearts into each other’s hands. So I didn’t rifle through my brain or think. I gave her what she deserved and what I knew how to give only to her. 

Honesty.

“It’s like when a lost spirit clings to you and you don’t know how to help them cross over,” I went on. “It’s a burden you’re not sure you deserve, but one only you can carry. It’s a personal Hell too unique to explain and you feel like even if they find their way to the other side, a part of their soul will always be with you. I still feel that way about Aiden. Sometimes I wake up and I’m not sure whether it’s me or him inside my head.

“But I’m trying to come back. Every day, I look at Aero, Avril, Hel, Ellard, you, and I remember that this war has taken so fucking much from me and I’ll be damned if it takes anything else.”

Despite herself, she gave me a crooked grin. “You know, a past version of you would have considered that selfish.”

“Maybe I am selfish.” I turned to face her. An inky strand of hair fell in between her eyes and I carefully moved it aside, letting my fingertips graze her jaw. Her breath hitched and her cheeks went a beautiful shade of pink. “I don’t want to waste anymore time. Life is too short.”

She swallowed and studied my face. “What are you saying?”

“I want to kiss you.”

I could feel my face prickling with heat. I’d never felt so vulnerable and confident all at once. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted from a lot of things. I didn’t know where the next phase of my life would take me or whether I’d ever fully recover from the things we experienced.

But Charity? She was the only thing I never had to question. Right here, trapped in her gaze, and grounded by her honesty, I was safe. 

She smiled and suddenly the sunset looked pale. “Well, don’t be a coward.”

So I took her face in my hands and kissed her. She smiled under my lips and leaned into it, wrapping her arms around me, gripping the back of my shirt. 

I thought of our first kiss and how it was one-sided and hasty, and then the night after the infiltration when we kissed to lose ourselves. This time, we took it slow, knowing that for once, we didn’t have to worry about it being the last time. I ran my fingers through her silky hair, savored the rose-petal softness of her lips, and admired the way the curves of her body fit against mine. 

Kissing her like this was like breathing for the very first time. I fell open under her touch and at that moment, I was willing to tell her every secret, give her everything I ever had and show her everything I ever was. 

Maybe I already had.

Maybe that was why this felt so good. 

“You’re beautiful,” I murmured against her mouth. I kissed her again, and again, and again.

When we pulled apart, she was flushed all over and her hair was disheveled. I wanted to kiss her again but instead, I watched the rise and fall of her chest and the way the sunlight shimmered over her skin. Beautiful wasn’t the right word. Right now, she was downright ethereal. 

“I…” She shook her head and giggled. “Sorry...I just...are you sure about this?”

“About…”

“Us,” she clarified, then blushed deeper. “Because I know how I feel.” 

Charity took my hand and wove her fingers through mine. 

“I’m sure about you,” I said. If there was a shred of certainty in the aftermath of all this, it was Charity. 

She leaned back in and left a kiss so soft on my lips it made me shiver. 

The war swallowed the coming years and more of his friends and comrades. Aero grew weary and then completely numb to the sight of their blood. One by one by one, they disappeared and with them a piece of his soul.

Aero found himself once again staring at an empty fireplace with only the faint glow of a table lamp as a blur of light. Floorboards bent and creaked under the weight of somebody’s padding footsteps but the house was otherwise quiet.

“I need to talk to you.”

He blinked and lifted his gaze. Athena Alva, the twenty year old daughter of Carina and Rohan, sat before him on the living room rug. Her long dark hair was piled atop her head in a bun and her eyes were bloodshot. She still wore the same clothes she had the last time he’d seen her. It couldn’t have been more than two, three days.

“Hmm,” he replied.

She ran her hands down her wrinkled shirt, stopping at the threadbare hemline where there were still specs of dried blood.

“You can’t check out,” she said, her eyes downcast. “Now that Mom and Dad are gone, I’m the only one Kithara has left. If something happens to me, you made a promise to my parents that you’d take care of her.”

Kithara.

Right.

Carina and Rohan’s little girl. She was eight years old, much too young to fight in the war but old enough to know that her parents were never coming home.

“Then I suppose you had better be careful out there,” Aero said dryly.

In a swift movement, Athena lunged forward and he felt a hot blow stinging his cheek. He gasped, staring at her. Spunky as she was, Athena had never had the audacity to speak out of turn to her elders, much less raise a hand to them.

“Listen,” she spat. “I don’t care what you’re feeling right now. You may have lost Vanessa, but don’t you dare forget that we loved her too. This war has stolen from us all. You think you have the monopoly on grief?” She shook her head, falling back on her heels. Her gaze was like ice. “You know as well as I do that I’m more likely to die out there than you. If that happens, I need to know that you’ll take care of my sister. That you’ll love her the way she deserves to be loved.”

“Love,” Aero murmured, bringing a hand to his throbbing cheek.

“Tell me that you’ll raise her.” Her voice broke on the last word. “God dammit, Aero, let me go out there and fight for you, knowing it won’t all be in vain. Give me a reason to protect you, to help build a world that she can thrive in.”

“I can’t,” Aero said. When she opened her mouth to speak, Aero continued, “I can’t love her. The moment I do, she’ll become a target.”

“Then protect her,” she said, “because the moment you forsake her, she’s dead anyway.”

Aero pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes shut. It wasn’t fair for a girl so young to have to ask something like this. Athena wouldn’t have come to him like this if she didn’t know her days were numbered. This was her last request, for the only person left that she loved.

Could Aero allow himself to love this child? Was he even deserving after all the blood forever staining his own hands?

Would he have wanted someone to look after Vanessa if the roles were reversed?

“If you won’t do it out of loyalty,” Athena said, “at least do it out of penance. You owe this to my parents, and to Vanessa as well.”

“Love isn’t a penance,” he said finally. He watched the light in her eyes return for a brief second. They were the same dark brown as Vanessa’s. The same as her father’s—his friend.

Aero reached out and took one of her hands. Her palm was calloused from the grip of her sword. Blood and grime still outlined her brittle fingernails. It was a hand too damaged for a girl so young.

***

He became lusterless metal and pierced her with apologies ready on his lips; instead, what came out was guidance. He must have a right to be her eyes and ears, if she was the one who knighted him. A god was never wrong and so by extension, neither was he should she listen to him.

What would have changed had he known what a terrible burden this would become?

He was so young and desperate, only able to see glittering silver and not the fissures hidden beneath.

She was perfect by definition.

She was a god.

She was never wrong.

As long as he followed her, neither was he.

As long as he protected her, neither was he.

As long as he bore the name Choki, he was a divine vessel for her courage, sorrow, and rage.

***

And the silver turned to rust.

He wondered if she’d still let him hold her if she knew whose blood was on his hands.

***

Or maybe he was only as violent as she was reckless. They hid their secrets under terms of endearment and vacant smiles. Kazuma was a way for her to remember the family she let die. Viina was how he convinced them both that he’d evolved from that lusterless nail lancing her skin.

They were both liars.

They both knew it.

But a god is never wrong. He had yet to stain her with the violet betrayal they called blight. He took comfort in the familiar silver of her soul and fire in her eyes that he and only he had learned to recognize for what it was.

She called his name. He came. Resilient and consistent until the day she disappeared and left him behind.

He died all over again.

***

He followed her.

He found her.

She pushed him away.

And he fell

….but this time, there were no silver wings to catch him.

***

A bottomless floor swallowed him whole and he unraveled piece by piece. Viina’s eyes fell shut. It was the first time Kazuma ever took notice that his heart didn’t beat. His name, his skin, the heat of his breath and the burden of his sins were all hers before they were his.

Kazuma.

Choki.

Hafuri.

He was bound. Without her, these words meant nothing. What would remain of him? Did it even matter?

How blessed was a vessel drenched in blood?

He was suited for a god of calamity.

***

Use me.

He could regain some control.

Use me.

He could save her.

Use me.

He could tarnish every purity she ever gave to him. If he betrayed her once, he could do it again. He’d do it as many times as it took.

I DON’T CARE IF I DIE.

For her.

For her.

For her.

For her.

“Come, Rekki!”

~*~

The heat warms Riza Hawkeye’s skin with the discomfort of old enemies forced to reconcile. Her boots are scuffed and faded beyond recognition, but her eyes and the terrain are all too familiar with one another. No amount of kindness will weather the rough killer that is ever-present in her gaze. The healed white sand will forever be stained with invisible blood.

Forever red.

They are two of a kind.

A hand rests on her back. She looks up to see the wielder of her ink weapons. His lips twitch into somewhat of a sad smile, like he understands—of course he does. Beyond this battlefield, the two of them share more than burdens, sins, and ink stains from her back to his hands. Each has mastered the other’s nuances with fluency. Their first language has become each other.

His hand on her back is flesh-warm, white and red gloves no longer needed. He returns to Ishval with new purpose, unrecognizably bare hands, and honest desire. The sun doesn’t intimidate him anymore. These days, he commandeers heat like it’s an art form. He promised her that his flames are no longer weapons and she believes him.

Restoration, they call this mission. Lives cannot be returned, but perhaps they can spin their red legacy into their condemnation and this country’s salvation.

~*~

Night arrived like a plague. Black skies swallowed the corpses and cast shadows over all the blood, cloaking everything they’d done. Shadows traveled all across the desert, leaving no crime unprotected, no devastation uncovered, no stolen soul a path to freedom. Clouds had drawn in, shielding them from the silver of moon and starlight.

Three killers sat by a fire.

Soft oranges shifted across their weary faces and sooty uniforms. Mugs made from chipped, rusted metal sat in their dirt-caked hands. The coffee was lukewarm and bitter, but they downed it anyway. No one spoke.

They’d turned this country red.

Time made it black.

Tomorrow it would be white once more and the cycle would repeat.

Her hands shook around the mug. As a sharpshooter, she was always steady; but after the last bullet was fired, her bones felt heavy and her veins ran cold. It was like waking up from a nightmare.

She would soon come to find that the nightmares of what she’d done would follow her with painstaking, unmitigated loyalty.

Major Mustang stared into the fire. Embers popped in the reflection of his dark eyes. Black like the night. Guarded as the shadows.

She wondered if he had any regrets with how he chose to use her alchemy.

She wondered if fear, grief, and ambition left any room for regrets.

There was so much about being a soldier she still didn’t understand.

~*~

Their first night back after the Promised Day is quieter than expected; it’s still and eerie in a way they’ve come to expect from nights in Ishval. An undercurrent of disquiet lives beneath the sand. It feels like only moments separate them from being swallowed by unrest.

Riza gazes up at the silver-speckled sky. Plumes of smoke no longer hold the light captive. Though it’s far from comfortable, there is peace in the air. The Ishvalan people accepted them with gentleness that Riza will not mistake for forgiveness, but it was kind nevertheless.

These are the people they killed.

This unconditional altruism is what they’d fought against.

If she were still the eighteen-year-old kid fresh out of the Academy, maybe the hypocrisy would have made her sick. But she’d traded that luxury for bloodstained bullets and final judgments she’d never had any right to pass.

She’s joined by General Mustang before she can see him. Her shoulders tense like a reflex when she feels a shift in the dry air; but when he speaks, the frigidity melts.

“Strange, right?” he says. He sits beside her on the steps leading to their lodging place.

She sighs, bringing her forehead to rest on her joined fingertips. They are bathed in silver for the very first time in this desert. She doesn’t think they will ever earn that.

“Yes,” she says. His proximity is like a blanket on a cold night. Beside him, she doesn’t feel as exposed nor disoriented.

“I’m so sorry,” he says after a stretch of silence. His voice is uncharacteristically small—a tone reserved only for her.

She doesn’t need to ask what for. The atmosphere is dredging up memories for him as well. When she looks at the sand, she hears gunshots—rhythmic and insistent. For him, it’s a blast of fire—alchemic secrets entrusted to him.

“We survived for a reason.” She turns to him, taken by the pale silver light touching his hair, his eyelashes, the tip of his nose. But he’s staring down at his open hands; they’re drenched in shadow.

Tentatively, she takes one, holding it up to the light. He slips his fingers into the spaces between hers and warmth pools in the center of her chest.

“There’s still so much to do,” he agrees, keeping his eyes fixed on their joined hands, as if that alone is keeping him centered. “If anyone insists on calling me a hero, I’ll make damn sure it’s for a good reason.”

Heroes. Killers. The gray sea in between. They’ve touched every facet and still don’t know what defines them.

Even though he knows it, she says, “And I’m with you.”

~*~

Her salvation was a spiral of white, red, and gold. She felt it crawling over her back, clawing deep beneath her skin as if trying to wrench her open and devour everything inside. It hurt enough to make her vision go black for a few merciful seconds before tendrils of fire yanked her back into consciousness.

She bit down on an old belt, the bitter taste of leather like sugar in contrast to the smell of burning flesh. White heat. Red pain. Gold freedom.

Just a little longer.

The scream didn’t so much escape her as it tore through the resilience she’d failed to maintain. It hurt and no matter how vehemently she knew she’d forsaken her right to relief after everything she’d done, something in her still begged for it all to stop.

Tongues of gold fire rolled across the array. She couldn’t see past the pain of it, but the relentless way it continued on made one thing clear: the Major—Mr. Mustang—was keeping his promise.

Should she have thanked him for freeing her?

Should she have condemned him for weaponizing these secrets?

The scars that would form on her back forever tied his alchemy to her regrets; in the end, she was the only one to pull the trigger when it was asked of her.

She should have hated him, but when two killers fought with bloodied hands, it became impossible to discern where one ended and the other began.

They were allies in this war and would be allies in trying to rectify it all. That was the only way either one of them would be able to live with the atrocities they committed.

He held her when it was over, though it was very clinical. He touched her gingerly, dressing her wounds when she was too weak to make out details past the dull lamplight that had blurred into a golden haze.

“Not a trace?” she murmured, a current of drowsiness pulling her under. Her eyes fell shut. Shallow breaths filtered through her lungs.

“It’s unreadable,” he replied, his voice gravelly. That was when she realized his hands were trembling. She wondered if they’d been so unsteady while he was burning her.

No, she decided. He has a soldier’s precision.

The aftershocks of what had just transpired seemed to be shaking him, from his hands to the rough weariness in his voice. But the job had been finished.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but the words were too heavy to be confined to this very moment. She had asked for this. He knew very well what it all meant to her. This ran deeper than her skin—it ran six feet underneath hot Ishvalan sand.

~*~

Rectification comes in a cloudless expanse of blue. The sunlight holds the desert in a warm embrace; but heat doesn’t feel so oppressive when it’s met halfway. Riza carries the burden of a thousand sins, each punctuated by a bullet. Nothing she does today will return everything she has taken from this land; however, for as long as there is hope, there is a future.

Yes, that is what they have come here to offer. Redemption is too kind, too naive, for monsters who cover their blood-red skin in clean, blue uniforms. Returning to this desert is more than something as immature as penance and with far less delusion than equivalent exchange.

Riza stands at the Colonel’s side, same as always.

She follows him, same as always.

They work until their muscles fatigue, their voices grow hoarse, they’ve torn themselves wide open and allow nothing to go unseen, ungiven, unapologetic. And the sky, an unobstructed and vibrant blue sea of solace, watches it all.

At the end of the day, they discard professionalism and fall into each other with ease. They allow themselves one selfish moment to be unforgivingly human. Cloudless cerulean eyes have closed for the night, leaving behind a night sky of silver-speckled indigo. They tell themselves it’s okay, for now, to fall apart.

They don’t drink in each other’s anguish. They’re loathe to lose themselves in each other’s skin behind the back of daylight. Instead, they collapse onto the floor, entangled in each other’s limbs, and inhale the intermingling smell of old fire, new sunshine, ever-present gunpowder, and white hot sand.

She doesn’t follow him because she loves him, but because they owed it to each other to end up right here, under the scrutiny of the desert once again.

His arms wind around her and her hair tickles his nose but they’re still not close enough, never close enough. There is no physical equivalent to what they are to each other or the understanding of how they fit into each other’s lives.

“Thank you,” he whispers and leaves a hard kiss on her crown. The only words either of them has left.

Thankfully, they’ve never needed words to communicate.

They both understand that tomorrow will be a new day where they must look into the Ishvalans’ kind red eyes while carrying the burden of everything they’ve stolen from them. But this was never about them—their own future was forsaken at the end of a bullet and the embers of a fire.

“A dorobou wouldn’t have stopped.” His head falls. He pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a heartfelt, “Fuck.”

Eijirou’s head fills with questions but the only one that forms is: “What are you looking for?”

The boy’s hand drops to his side and he screws his eyes shut, furiously shaking his head. He won’t look up, lest he lower his guard. Eijirou understands that well. Trust can’t be given blindly; altruism was a luxury their world lost.

“You looked like…” He drags a weary hand through his hair. “Same shitty dye job.”

Eijirou raises an eyebrow. “Uh—”

“Whatever,” the boy says. He turns on his heel, slinging his rifle across his back. “I made a mistake.”

“H-hey, wait up!” Eijirou yelps, because to a certain degree all trust is blind and maybe he’s just as angry and tired as anyone unlucky enough to have been born into this hell. “You know, we’ll survive longer with two of us, right? I...I mean,” he pauses, turning his words over in his head. “Unless you’re not alone…”

The boy sneers and the venom in his eyes now drips from his voice. “Like hell. I made it this far on my own.”

Eijirou laughs, which makes the boy turn and glower. He’s got big, rotten pride and an attitude to cut through glass, but if he’s survived this long all by himself, there’s got to be a thing or two they can learn from each other.

“S-shut up!” he stammers, visibly thrown off-kilter. “Give me one good reason why I should let your dumb ass tag along!”

Eijirou’s lips curl into a grin. “Well, I’m not much for offense, but.” He brings his fists together with a satisfying thud. “I’m resilient. I’ll be your unbreakable wall, man. A guard who won’t waver.”

“You are so goddamn weird.” He turns back around. Something like disappointment feels heavy in Eijirou’s chest but before he gets the chance to make a move of his own, the boy calls out, “Fine. But get in my way and I’ll kill you.”

***

Time elapses and once they’ve gotten to know each other—in whatever capacity Katsuki will allow it—it may have been days, weeks, or even months. He learns the idiot is named Kirishima Eijirou and he’s sixteen just like him. Katsuki is able to connect his ink black roots and faded red dye job to his loud, vivacious personality. Who else but someone with a desire to stand out would even bother keeping up such an appearance in this wasteland?

Katsuki also learns that there’s an organized chaos to the way they work together. Everything about Kirishima should make Katsuki hate him; he’s chatty, impulsive, optimistic to a fault, way too touchy…

But he’s also quick on his feet.

Clever in the emotional ways Katsuki is not.

He’s rock solid and dependable where Katsuki is turbulent.

Somehow, it just works.

One night, a storm chases them into the dilapidated remains of a drugstore. They rush in, sopping wet, the soles of their boots squeaking against the tile. Broken glass and empty food wrappers litter the floor. Along the walls, there are dark, empty refrigerators and equally vacant shelves.

It isn’t uncommon for looters to gut places like this. If anything, Katsuki is annoyed he hadn’t thought to do it first.

They find a corner clear of debris to rest their aching feet and Kirishima wastes no time in talking Katsuki’s ear off.

Katsuki supposes he doesn’t mind the sound of Kirishima’s voice. It’s a way to fill the silence he’s has grown uncomfortably used to—protection from his own thoughts. What’s more, as long as the idiot stays yapping, it means Katsuki doesn’t have to talk back.

His secrets don’t define him, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to let any asshole into his head. Some things are sacred. For now, his memories are fragmented moments in the back of his mind. They belong to him in the form of nightmares and fantasies that will become all too real the moment he shares them with anybody else.

So he lets Kirishima talk.

Kirishima’s head tilts back against the wall. He shuts his eyes as if lost in a moment long gone.

“I can’t remember anything before the orphanage,” he admits. His voice has taken on a softer tone, uncharacteristic of the boisterous pain in the ass Katsuki’s come to know. “It wasn’t much, you know. Overcrowded, underfunded...the food was awful.” He brings his hands together and starts to wring them out. “There were never enough beds either. We’d play games to decide who’d have to sleep on the floor for the night.” His lips quirk into a crooked grin. “I’d always let the younger kids win. It sounds pretty shit, but it was home. It was all we knew. Some kids, like me, were orphans of war but a lot of them were abandoned. We didn’t have anybody but each other.”

Kirishima rests his forehead on his joined hands. “When dorobous Thieved our caretakers, I was thirteen. Nobody knew what to do. So many of my siblings died. I was scared and desperate.” He takes in a shuddering breath. “I ran away. Like a coward. I didn’t do anything. Didn’t jump into the fray like a real man should.”

Katsuki tries to picture it, a younger, doe-eyed Kirishima, running without purpose. All his life he had nothing—he was running toward nothing—and yet, he stayed on his feet with love in his heart and a will to live.

How could someone so kind survive in such an unforgiving place? Katsuki tries to wrap his head around it. These days, survival is earned only by the most ruthless.

Katsuki isn’t sure whether it’s Kirishima or the world he’d underestimated. Both of their truths cannot coexist.

“Do you ever regret it?” Katsuki asks, mulling the pieces over, studying the nuances of Kirishima and the broken pieces of his sorry life. He wants it to make sense.

“What, surviving?” Kirishima chuckles. “What kind of question is that?”

Katsuki wonders if he’d have the same optimism if his strength amounted to something other than more time in hell.

A grin that’s at once hopeful and sad touches Kirishima’s lips. He punches Katsuki’s shoulder playfully. “Besides, I met you, didn’t I?”

***

The first time Eijirou sees a dorobou die, the shock leaves him reeling. He’s no stranger to death, but something about the way this body—once so omnipotent—hits the floor is horrifyingly human.

Smoke rises from the barrel of Bakugou’s rifle.

Eijirou’s stomach turns at the sight of the bullet nestled between the host’s eyes. A clean shot. From a distance, he might even look peaceful.

As he steps closer, Eijirou studies the details of his face—close-cropped brown hair, patchy stubble on his chin, thick eyebrows and a hooked nose. The veiny black tinge under his eyelids is the only indication that he was ever anything but human.

Who was he before he was Thieved? Whose life did we just take?

Eijirou’s siblings and caretakers, all Thieved or murdered, flash with gruesome clarity in his head. One by one by one.

“Do you think they felt it?” Eijirou whispers. Lead has settled in his bones. His hands curl into fists to keep them from trembling.

Bakugou snorts, slinging his rifle around his back. “Who gives a shit?”

“Not the dorobou,” Eijirou corrects, his voice steadier than he would have given himself credit for. “I mean the man...do people stay conscious when they’re….Thieved? Are they still there? Do they know they’re being kil—”

“You talk too fucking much.” Bakugou’s voice is like ice. “Let’s go. We don’t know if there were more where he came from.”

The way Bakugou withdraws from hard questions isn’t lost on him. It leaves Eijirou wondering what he’s so afraid of and what he’s seen to make him so cold.

More so...why was it so easy for him to pull the trigger?

***

When Kirishima manages to hotwire a pickup truck, Katsuki supposes he could have done worse in finding a partner. It’s in bad shape, with a cracked windshield and rusty paint job—not to mention the fact that it’s ancient—but it isn’t like they can afford to be choosy.

Methodically, he fiddles with a tangle of blue and red wires, tongue poking out between his sharp teeth, and Katsuki can’t help but study the stern wrinkle in between his brows. He is held captive by the movement of Kirishima’s calloused, dirt-caked fingers looping, tying, pulling, working in such a comfortable motion that Katsuki knows he’s done this many times before.

The truck roars to life; Kirishima sits up and grins. A drop of sweat rolls down his neck, pooling in the hollow of his throat. Katsuki drags his eyes away once he realizes he’d been staring.

“You’re not as dumb as you look,” he remarks.

Kirishima laughs, unapologetically loud. It does something strange to Katsuki’s pulse. He shoves him out of the way and settles into the driver’s side, then looks at the dashboard. The gas meter is a hair away from empty. He sighs.

“You wouldn’t happen to know how to siphon gas too, would you?”

As night rolls in, the two decide it’s best to get some much needed rest. They lay a couple of blankets they stole from a looted shop some weeks ago over the truck bed’s hard ridges and then collapse beneath a threadbare quilt they found in the backseat.

Katsuki’s heavy eyes fall closed as cool air fans across his face. The humble chaos of nighttime has always been so strange to him. Daytime can be so quiet—lonely, when your only company is the terrain. But nighttime rings.

Crickets on the outside.

Memories on the inside.

Kirishima’s breathing so steady and calm...protective in its own inexplicable way and shushing Katsuki’s hurricane of thoughts.

He shifts and Katsuki opens his eyes, transfixed by the way the moonlight drips over Kirishima’s face, delicately tracing his features. He follows the soft silver lines from the ends of his hair, down the slope of his nose, over the curve of his lips, enamored by how they shift and change as he moves.

Kirishima turns on his side and Katsuki can’t breathe for a second. They’re close enough that he could count his eyelashes if he wanted to—long, black, and brushing the top of his cheeks when he blinks.

“Can I ask you something?” Kirishima asks, almost whispering.

Katsuki swallows, something heavy settling in his chest. “What is it?”

“You asked me some time ago...if I ever regretted surviving.” Kirishima wets his lips and the crease between his brows returns, like the question is something he’d considered as carefully as he did the wires in their truck. “Do you?”

He exhales, watching the scar on Kirishima’s eyelid appear and disappear as he blinks. He doesn’t know how to answer that. Survival nowadays is limited only to how desperate you are—more so, how lucky. Katsuki has never been fond of games of chance.

At last, he settles with, “I don’t regret not giving up.” Be it due to luck, skill, selfishness, or a combination of it all, Katsuki doesn’t know how to surrender. He’ll stay alive out of spite if he must. What better way is there to get back at a life that took everything away from him?

Kirishima stares and it makes Katsuki feel naked, like his gaze alone can crack through his armor and sink beneath his skin. He wants to turn away but he’s trapped. Kirishima’s eyes are a deep crimson with sunny flecks of gold—embers that don’t stop burning.

Gooseflesh covers Katsuki’s arms.

He tells himself it’s just the chill.

“My mentor.” The words fall from Katsuki’s tongue. Kirishima’s eyes hold him steady like his own private gravity and it makes Katsuki feel safe.

Maybe secrets whispered in the dark aren’t quite as real.

Kirishima moves closer and their knees bump under the blanket. Electricity sparks in the places they touch.

“I…” Katsuki’s mouth feels dry. He clears his throat and tells him, “My parents and I joined the rebellion when I was a kid. We went out on rescue missions, slaying dorobous and bringing civilians back to the safe house we built. My mentor...he was well-known in our town. A hero, really.” What Katsuki doesn’t say is that Toshinori Yagi was practically his father after his own parents were Thieved and then mercy-killed by their own comrades in action.

He feels Kirishima’s fingertips graze his arm, maybe by accident. Katsuki draws in a swift breath.

“What happened to him?” he asks, gentle and undemanding. Maybe the skeletons in Kirishima’s own closet have given him this specific type of empathy. Or maybe he’s just that kind.

“I went out on my own one night,” he says, curling his trembling hands into fists. Anxiety mangles his words and Katsuki needs a moment to recalibrate. This memory—this confession—isn’t supposed to belong to anybody else.

He keeps talking.

“That fucking safe house felt more like a graveyard than a sanctuary,” he grinds out. “It was full of grief-stricken survivors. I had to get away, just for a bit. Every day felt like a goddamn funeral.”

Kirishima says nothing. His eyes are so damn big, like a puppy’s. It at once throws Katsuki and comforts him.

“I got ambushed by dorobous. Like a dumbass I wasn’t armed so the fight seemed pretty hopeless. I kept thinking to myself that I’d rather die than be Thieved, as if I had the luxury of a choice.” Katsuki grasps the blanket with white knuckles, swallowing the knot in his throat. This fucker will not see him cry.

“Toshinori, my mentor, noticed I was gone so he came looking for me. The idiot was recognized immediately. I mean, people called him All Might. He was their worst nightmare…”

Or at least that had been true before his accident. After a close call with a dorobou some years prior, Toshinori was left walking with a cane and almost blind in his left eye. His aim wasn’t what it once was. He could barely hold his own in a fight. He existed as a symbol, a tactical leader, but he hadn’t been on the frontlines in years.

“I wasn’t as interesting to the dorobous anymore and he saved my life at the cost of his own.” His voice was strangled and he cursed himself for being so weak, even now. “They killed him. And I ran away when I should have died by his side.” Beneath his own anger and grief, he knew why he did. Because if Katsuki had died that night, Toshinori’s sacrifice would have been for nothing.

It still felt like a flimsy excuse.

“It was my fault.” It comes out in a broken whisper that didn’t even sound like himself. “If I hadn’t gone out...if I hadn’t been there…” He shakes his head furiously and curses under his breath.

Kirishima touches his arm, running his thumb across his skin. “Hey...what happened after that?” A soft voice. A steady voice.

Katsuki swallows. “I couldn’t face anyone. I took one of his guns from the weapon closet and ran like hell.” As an afterthought, he adds, “The leader of the attack looked like you from the back. It’s the reason I chased you down that first day. Sorry, I guess.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kirishima says.

Katsuki finally averts his eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says again. His fingers stay on Katsuki’s skin. “Look, this world doesn’t really lend itself much to blame. Shit happens and we just have to get through it as best as we can.”

Katsuki turns away from him because suddenly he can’t stand to be touched. He’s surrounded by the ghosts he just set free. It’s all too much.

He hears Kirishima sigh but then the silence feels all too heavy. It empties his mind of the present and leaves too much room for the memories. He comes to a compromise.

“Hey, idiot,” Katsuki says. “Tell me a story.”

Kirishima tenses beside him. He stammers, “Uh, s-sure. Of what?”

“Anything.” He just needs to hear his voice until sleep pulls him under.

And so he does and his gravity returns. When they wake up the next morning, they’re a tangle of limbs.

***

Sunlight beckons them awake and they extricate themselves from each other without words. For the past few weeks, ever since their first night together on the truck bed, every morning has been this way.

Eijirou tucks his pistol into a proper holster now while Bakugou is bent over his knees, lacing up his boots. Once they’re both ready, they share a glance and then hop into the front seats, off again. Sleepy, laconic conversations have become routine for them and each response brings them closer to some semblance of the energy required to survive.

“You reek,” Bakugou says.

“So do you,” Eijirou says.

“Let’s find a shower.”

“But food first.”

“Food first.”

“And coffee.”

A snort. “Good luck finding that.”

“You really do reek, man.”

“You didn’t think so when you clung to me last night.”

Eijirou laughs, tilting his head back against the seat, listening to the rickety hum of their motor. He catches Bakugou’s smirk out of the corner of his eye.

It’s rare to find an abandoned supermarket stocked up, but when they stumble upon one with its front doors intact, Eijirou suggests they give it a look.

Bakugou grunts an affirmative.

Humid air rolls over them as they step inside. The first thing Eijirou notices is the assaulting stench of rancid meat.

“Eugh,” he half-gags. “That’s ripe.”

“Good sign,” says Bakugou. He stalks past Eijirou. “Means there’s still food here. There’s gotta be something salvageable.”

“Should we split up, then? Cover more ground?”

The faster they’re out of here, the better. If this place has yet to be looted, that means it’s only a matter of time.

“Yeah.” Bakugou cocks his rifle, ever-vigilant. “We’ll meet back at the entrance in ten.”

They part ways and Eijirou combs through the aisles, stocking up on whatever non-perishables he can find. A jar of peanut butter. Saltine crackers. Canned goods. His backpack puts on satisfying weight. But the rotting smell only grows more oppressive the closer he moves toward the back.

He tiptoes forward and the stench sends his stomach lurching. When he turns the corner, fear winds through his stomach.

A girl—no, a corpse—lies at his feet. One yellow-tinted, glassy eye stares straight through Eijirou; the other has been eaten by a festival of maggots that have since found a home in her now-hollow skull.

Infected black veins bulge from her ashen, emaciated hands.

Not just a corpse. A discarded host.

Eijirou draws his gun and calls Bakugou’s name.

Katsuki backs into a wall, aiming his rifle at the horde of enemies closing in on him. He’s limited on bullets and would prefer not to waste any on these lowlife dorobous but if he must, then he will. His eyes dart from left to right, searching for an opening.

Kirishima’s voice falls on deaf ears. It wrenches Katsuki’s heart. Is he alright? Did a dorobou find him? He knows Kirishima is more than capable of taking care of himself.

But still...

The one directly in front of Katsuki cocks his head with amusement. Katsuki’s head spins; something about him sets his nerves on end.

“You know…” His voice is deep and gravelly, grating against Katsuki’s ears like nails on a chalkboard. “You remind me of an old friend. It’s that look in your eyes.”

Katsuki’s blood runs cold but he shows no indication. He narrows his eyes and clicks a bullet into its chute.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” he says, though he’s still careful. Right now, his odds aren’t good.

“Aw, kid, don’t you remember me?” He smiles, displaying a row of decaying teeth. “I wonder if All Might would be proud to know you’re still alive.”

Silence.

Eijirou’s heart sinks.

Without thinking, he breaks into a run.

He keeps his gun drawn as his eyes scan the area, desperately searching for a sign of his partner.

He runs.

Leaping over debris and groceries strewn over the floor.

He runs.

As nightmarish what-ifs fill his head to a point of bursting.

He runs, and runs, and runs.

Because if he doesn’t...

His thoughts and better judgment are so wholly monopolized by adrenaline that he isn’t prepared when he’s tackled. He crashes to the floor, gripping his gun to his chest. Cans of food spill out from his backpack and roll straight into the foot of an adjacent shelf.

Eijirou turns over with a gasp, aiming the gun forward. A dorobou with a nest of blonde hair crushes his legs beneath her weight. Her honey-colored eyes are feral with hunger. A web of black veins blooms from her temple.

Her body has already started to give from the infection; once a host can no longer sustain them, they find their next target.

That insurance bullet flashes in his mind.

She’ll kill him. She’ll take him. The gun throbs in Eijirou’s hand like the heartbeats its bullets are meant to collect.

He should kill her.

He should…

A scream tears through his chest and he jams the butt of his gun into her nose. She shrieks as blood runs over her lips. He wrestles her off and leaps to his feet and he doesn’t hesitate to take off again.

Red floods Katsuki’s vision. Toshinori’s alias falls off the dorobou’s tongue like something poisonous. Visceral familiarity carves into Katsuki’s gut and suddenly the pieces jerk into place. Those smug eyes. The bloodlust that would rather kill than Thieve.

A different host, but it’s him.

“You.” Katsuki abandons logic and self-preservation. He lunges at him. “You son of a bitch!”

He’s shoved to the floor by four or five others and his rifle is wrenched from his grip. It clatters to the floor, out of reach.

“I want the body!”

“Shut up! My host has given way. I need it the most.”

“If you damage it beyond repair, none of us will be able to take it!”

A knee jams into his back and Katsuki’s jaw cracks against the tile. Agony explodes through his body. All of his senses but the ones that register pain begin shutting off. White noise spills into his ears and he feels like his skull is about to burst open.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t see.

He can’t speak.

Why the hell did he let his anger get the better of him? Katsuki tries to curse but pain shoots through his spine.

Maybe this is some kind of penance. To die the same way as Toshinori, the way he should have all those years ago.

Even now, thinking of his mentor’s sacrifice, he’s so selfish.

He’d give anything for more time.

More things to learn. More sunrises to see. More...more nights under the stars and long drives in comfortable silence and more warmth. Warmth under a tender gaze, a familiar voice, a soft touch...

...just...more…

The floor grows warm as pins and needles spread across his back. His heartbeat slows, but so does the pain.

Is it over?

It’s so quiet.

And then, a gunshot.

A scream.

A sob.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

A watery voice calls his name, not Bakugou, but Katsuki. It sounds so sweet. Like a lullaby. He wants to hear it again. Warm hands carefully roll him over and take him into their arms.

“Hey.”

It’s so warm.

“Katsuki.”

It’s so safe.

“Godammit, STAY WITH ME!”

A gentle flame flecked with fierce gold embers. It’s so beautiful.

“I took care of them but we need to leave before we’re ambushed by more.”

It’s...

“Katsuki.”

It’s home.

***

And then everything burns white.

Katsuki’s eyes open to what feels like the goddamn sun. Slowly, the stiff gears in his mind begin to turn as shards of reality draw together: the ridges of the truck bed under his body, the throbbing in his head, the smell of grass and gasoline, and the faraway sound of music trickling through static—a radio?

He groans and tries sitting up but the pain knocks him back down. Kirishima is instantly by his side, hands hovering just above Katsuki’s shoulders.

Kirishima.

He takes him in: big doe eyes, razor sharp teeth barely biting down on his bottom lip whenever he’s concentrated or confused, the scar cutting through his eyelid. He’s so soft. Kind. For a dumb moment, Katsuki asks himself how someone like this could possibly fit into a world so cruel.

“The….fuck,” Katsuki says.

Kirishima helps settle him into a sitting position, then gestures sheepishly at Katsuki. “I hope it’s okay. I have, like, the bare minimum of first aid knowledge. They taught us at the orphanage. But, uh, I’ve never properly dressed a stab wound.”

Stab wound?

He glances down at his body and connects the pain with a concentrated area just shy of the small of his back. Threadbare bandages are wound tightly around his torso.

“It’s...fine,” Katsuki manages, still dazed.

Kirishima sits back on his heels and exhales; it looks as if it’s the first time he’s allowed himself to breathe in days. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

His head is still full of fog, but through the haze of pain, confusion, and whatever memory he has from that night in the supermarket, he’s able to realize one thing.

Kirishima saved him.

Kirishima, with his gentle heart and careful hands pulled the trigger again and again, crying Katsuki’s name—desperate. Kirishima who once asked him if human hosts could still feel the fear and agony of being Thieved, and then being killed. He discarded his own empathy to save Katsuki.

Dorobou or not, his hands are forever stained with blood now.

“You,” Katsuki begins, then stops himself. He doesn’t need to rehash that. Not right now. There will be time to talk about it just like there will be time for Katsuki to return the favor. Instead, he sighs. “It had to be you, didn’t it? No other asshole could have gotten us out of that mess alive.”

Kirishima laughs and the remaining tension bleeds out of him. There’s still something different in his eyes—not broken, but less naive. They’re the eyes of someone who just learned that the only way to survive is to be more ruthless than the world you’re in.

But those fire eyes with their sunny gold flecks are still unequivocally Kirishima Eijirou.

“Is there anything you need?” he asks. “I mean, now that you’re awake.” He jabs a thumb in the direction of the front seat. “I can change the radio station, though, it’s either this or polka.”

Katsuki has half a mind to snap at Kirishima for coddling him. He doesn’t, though. Because it’s Kirishima. Because when everything was slowing to a stop, all he could see was scarlet eyes and a starlit smile.

So he doesn’t curse at him, or move away, or listen to the parts of himself telling him he’s a fool for letting anybody this deep into his heart.

He says, “You called me Katsuki.”

Pink blossoms on Kirishima’s cheeks. He lets out a nervous laugh and scratches the back of his head. “Sorry about that. I, uh, things were...I mean, you know. I don’t kn—”

“God, you talk too fucking much,” says Katsuki. His fingers wind through the fabric of Kirishima’s shirtfront and he pulls him in for a kiss. Butterflies explode in his stomach and his heart feels like it’s about to burst out through his ribs and at first, he thinks Kirishima is going to push him away.

But he melts.

His hands cradle Katsuki’s face, calloused thumbs circling his cheeks. His flushed skin, soft lips, and the rhythm of his pulse intoxicates him like a drug. When they pull apart, Kirishima licks his lips, and then laughs.

Katsuki is taken aback. Defensively, he sputters, “What the hell?”

“You’re so cute when you’re smitten,” he replies, then presses a sweet kiss to the side of his mouth. Katsuki’s face burns. “Man, I’m so glad you didn’t kill me that first day.”

He snorts, then narrows his eyes. “Once again, you talk way too damn much.”

Kirishima cocks an eyebrow. “What are you going to do about it?”

They fall back into each other and Katsuki smiles against Eijirou’s mouth, thankful at the very least for one thing: that all of the anguish leading up until now gave him something so good. Maybe they were unfairly born into a world where the odds are stacked against them. But maybe there’s also something to be said about the way they’ve kicked adversity in the ass. Destiny, fate, or whatever brought hellfire to their home, challenged humanity to a fight to the death.

***

A flashy quirk for a boy with bright prospects. That was what everyone told him.

His childhood home was a hurricane—turbulent and dangerous for anyone too weak to withstand it. He dodged lightning with quick wit; he drowned out the thunder by being louder, crueler; he let the rain soak him to the bone until he was indiscernible from the storm.

He fought.

He adapted.

He survived.

His strong quirk was a reward for withstanding the challenges the universe continued to hurl at him. It was what he deserved. It was the weapon he’d learn to wield to raise himself higher, louder, become more dangerous than anyone else could ever be—and nobody would let him forget how he was all the more extraordinary for it.

He drank in every syllable of praise like it was a drug. He was sinking, always sinking, drowning as salt water filled his lungs, waiting for the validation to come to his rescue like a rush of oxygen.

He was an addict, seeking victory and excellence with dangerous fervor.

He was an explosion, tearing through the walls that challenged him.

He was more afraid than he was kind and he bulldozed over anybody too weak to propel him forward. It was the natural order of things. It was the gift the universe had given him and the strike it had condemned the others with.

But the lens through which Katsuki viewed the world was distorted.

***

A delicious ache forms in his arms as his body follows the familiar mechanics of climbing; pain quiets his thoughts of everything else. The effort begins in his core and is bookended by each handhold and foothold. Spring wind peppers soft kisses on his shins and cools the sweat forming on the back of his neck.

It’s quiet.

He was able to discard his hero persona at the bottom of this mountain and drink in the sweet comfort of his new anonymity. Empty blue skies don’t recognize faces, accomplishments, or even mistakes. He doesn’t have to be Katsuki Bakugou or the Explosion Hero under the fleeting, indifferent gaze of nature. All he exists as is another form of organic matter, breathing, living, and one day dying in tandem with the equally indiscriminate trees that surround him.

It’s so extraordinarily, beautifully, quiet.

It’s the only time where glory is too inconsequential to give him pause or relief. Alone, but not lonely. Accompanied by sore muscles and gloves soaked in poison sweat, but protected from the parts of himself that are too afraid of silence to ravage his head.

***

He raised himself higher and higher and higher until his vision was obscured by stark white clouds. The sunlight was unbearably hot, searing through his clothes, through his skin, through his veins, scorching anyone who dared come too close.

It was never enough.

Just a little higher, above the burn.

Just a little higher, stronger than the pain.

Just a little higher…

...and the fall will be sure to kill him.

But from so many worlds above the ground, he had a long, long, long way down. He sunk through sludge, panicked and livid as it filled his body, snuffing out the sunlight in his veins. He fell through his childhood memories, facing off against Deku and flailing wildly in search of purchase on his old venom, because that had always saved him in the past. He fell through opponent after opponent at the Sports Festival, begging for someone to hit him hard enough to make it all stop.

But he continued to fall.

***

A ledge provides sanctuary from his trek. He backs into the rocky wall, tilting his head back as a breeze fans across his cheeks, tousles his hair. This impasse leaves him feeling airy and light the way he might if he were passing through a liminal space. If he drops his guard too far, maybe he’ll be swept away alongside the leaves and loose earth scuttling past his feet.

He wants to keep going. The burn and tension in his muscles beckons him like a drug. If only victory were so tangible, something he could melt on his tongue, inject into his veins, breathe through his lungs, to materialize whatever illusory endpoint continues to hang just out of his reach.  

He’s almost intoxicated by the idea, but he waits. This isn’t like anything in his life, at least not so literally. If he pushes himself too far here, he may falter. If he falls, nothing will be waiting to catch him.

One, two, three...

He breathes.

Four, five, six...

He waits.

Seven, eight, nine...

Gnarled branches, lush green leaves, and the pale blue spaces in between blur together when his gaze relaxes.

Ten.

He blinks, steps forward, and continues on.

Higher.

Higher.

Higher…

***

Kirishima was kind—a boy comprised of something unconditional that all at once tore him open and soothed any subsequent pain. A boy with sunset red eyes holding a wealth of passion. The way Kirishima challenged him should have disoriented Katsuki, even scared him, but that kindness was unique. A novelty void of pity and condescension. There was admiration and respect and an inexplicably humbling daringness.

Being around him was something like friendship, maybe.

They found themselves at a diner on their last night before camp, a mess of textbooks opened between them. Katsuki still wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here, tutoring his kind-of friend to prepare him for whatever hell Aizawa-sensei had in store for him. Somehow, being needed like this drew Katsuki like a moth to fire.

Hours claimed chapters and chapters burned through their attention until they’d worn themselves out and a waitress informed them that the diner would close soon. Once outside, caught by the dim glow of street lamps and the faintest ghost of starlight, Kirishima slung an arm around Katsuki’s shoulders. He tensed for only a moment, then relaxed and scowled.

“Thanks, man!” he said. “I owe you for this.”

Katsuki extricated himself and shoved Kirishima away. “Repay me by actually passing a test for once.”

Kirishima chuckled. He gazed at the sky. “I’ve been worried, you know. About the whole provisional license thing. Ever since Sato and I failed the practical, I’ve been losing sleep. I mean, it’s no secret I’m not all that smart. If I don’t become a hero, what else is there for me?”

Katsuki snorted. “Dumbass.”

Kirishima would become a hero. Those sunset eyes didn’t belong behind a desk. People that shone like him were born to change the world.

“Encouraging,” Kirishima said, but when Katsuki cast a glance in his direction, he saw him smile.

Somehow, between moments of danger, excitement, and even quiet like this, Kirishima learned how to understand the nuances of Katsuki and respond in turn. It made talking to each other effortless. Nothing was hidden behind thinly veiled pride. Here, Katsuki was unapologetically himself.

Still, there was a version of himself he didn’t know how to be that burned in the center of his chest. Vulnerable. Afraid. Weak. It threatened to spill through the tiny cracks Deku, Todoroki, even fucking All Might have managed to pound onto his skin.

He opened his mouth to speak, because if anyone could handle this, maybe it was the one person who knew how to read the truth behind Bakugou’s brutality.

But when Kirishima caught his glance, the words died on his tongue.

***

It took Katsuki too long to learn that needing people didn’t make him weak. Stubborn pride built mountains in between where he stood and where he wanted to be. He was trapped in a horizonless loop where the same struggles challenged him again and again.

But surmounting the insurmountable was what it meant to be a hero.

Ten years ago, he leapt into the air, through dust, smoke, and debris littering a battlefield; and when he grabbed onto his friend’s outstretched hand, Katsuki saw a horizon for the very first time.

Needing people didn’t make him weak. He’d gone a lifetime refusing help as if it would invalidate his success. He’d climbed the same mountain day in and out until he memorized the way the earth would scrape his calloused hands, the ache in his core, his breath catching in his throat every time he neared its peak. But he never reached the proverbial top. He couldn’t on his own. The day he saw his future was the day he was strong enough to depend on someone else.

The view is incredible.

***

He grew heavy from his fifteen year free-fall. Power and control transmuted into delusional anger that held his good sense captive. He was a meteorite, falling, falling, falling.

Why was I the reason for All Might’s end?

And all at once, he hit the ground.

The impact shattered him. Shards of bone scattered through debris. Torrents of blood ran across the asphalt. He was a million mismatched, jagged pieces of a person he once recognized as himself.

But he wasn’t dead.

Broken and hollow, he clambered to his feet. He watched his hero fall apart and then reconstruct—a god, the last gust of smoke blowing across a cracked mirror, and finally the weary remnants of a spectacle of a hero.

He was so small.

He was so breakable.

He was human.

But he wasn’t dead.

A painstaking echo to All Might’s roar, Katsuki would reassemble his broken self and surpass that legacy.

***

Just a little farther…

The end is in his line of sight. He pushes on, grabbing ledge after ledge as if his nerve endings depend on contact with the earth. He can’t feel anything but this—the glory, the anticipation, the pain, and a surge of pride that belongs only to him, for him.

That last stretch is always the hardest; it’s when his aching muscles beg for relief, when the wind whips around him with insistence. He is a song, crescendoing, his buzzing veins and racing heart beating like a drum.

In some ways the beginning is the best part, but in others, it’s this: an extraordinary challenge—Katsuki is anything if not someone who always needs to win.

***

A lance through his chest.

That was all it took to put an end to the Explosion Hero. Two decades of dreaming, training, breaking himself again and again until his bones could no longer remember what it felt like to exist without pain.

It happened so quickly.

He gasped, fell to his knees, collapsed as blackness tugged at the edges of his vision. The ground under him grew so warm, but the rest of him went cold.

“KACCHAN!”

Tendrils of smoke curled around Deku’s blurry form. Tendrils of sleep yanked Katsuki under. The last thing he remembered was Deku’s strangled voice when he dealt their opponent a violent Detroit Smash.

And then he woke up. In a hospital bed, no less.

He wasn’t dead.

Katsuki would later be told it had been several days; Deku had come to visit every single one. It wasn’t surprising to Katsuki that the asshole probably blamed himself for the entire ordeal.

It also wasn’t surprising to Katsuki that the asshole was right by his bedside when he opened his eyes.

“Kacchan?”

Katsuki blinked away the sleep in his eyes. His bones creaked when he moved. A dull ache throbbed in the center of his chest. When he brought his hand to his heart, he noticed the bandages.

He wasn’t dead.

“Deku…” He screwed his eyes shut, breathing out a swear.

“You almost didn’t make it.” Deku’s eyes glistened with tears. If Katsuki had the energy, he’d tell him to stop fucking crying.

Instead he said, “It wasn’t your fault, dumbass.” He closed his eyes, fell back against the headboard. Heaviness settled in his body.

A stretch of silence, and then Deku sighed. “You’re stubborn, Kacchan.”

“Mm,” said Katsuki. He opened his eyes and studied Deku’s face. Weary shadows fell under his eyes. His unkempt hair stood on end. His eyes were as soft as they’d always been, but the years had chipped away all the childish roundness in his face.

He remembered when they were kids, running through the woods before either of them had any idea what their quirks would be. Katsuki was vicious. Izuku was abominably kind. They knew each other so intimately and yet somehow not at all.

Where had the years gone?

When did they get so old?

“Deku,” he started, his voice gravelly. He worried the hem of his sheets, keeping his hands busy in case he started to do something undignifying, like tremble. Their lives were so short. He could have died with a lance through his chest, maybe having been a good hero, but never a good man.

“What is it?” His expression was so honest; open like outstretched arms waiting for a trust fall. Inexorably, irrevocably kind Deku.

“I’m sorry.”

Deku blinked. “For what?”

“Everything.”

Life was so much bigger than something as inconsequential as being ‘the best’, whatever that meant to him, if it meant anything at all. He was given a second chance to be honest. To stop hiding behind his own skin. To believe for the first time that it wasn’t about being better for the sake of being the best.

It was about seizing every day while you still could.

***

The first time Katsuki reached the top of a mountain, he never expected it to be so humbling. Everything alive has its way of ringing so subtly everywhere but here. Everyone grows too accustomed to the way it spills into the cracks of human existence; they don’t realize it was here before them and will survive after them.

It makes Katsuki feel insignificant, but there’s peace in that.

The cool air bites into the earth just as it does to the chilled skin on his arms. He isn’t anyone but a moving piece in an continuous cycle where everything lives, dies, and starts again.

It’s quiet, but it’s deafening.

It accepts him as whoever he is.

He steps forward, the tips of his toes just peeking over the edge, and closes his eyes as the wind ruffles his hair and sunshine warms his cheeks.