Chapter Text
Katsuki had forgotten all about Deku.
It’s been years since Katsuki had been at his grandparents’ house. Everything looked oddly the same yet different in some way. As if the reality of what he is seeing doesn’t quite match up to how his memory tells him things should be.
The house was old, built several generations ago along firmly traditional lines. The wooden corridor running along the edges of the house, the translucent outer panels meant to let light in, elaborately decorated inner walls, low tables, tatami mats.
The place was large — huge even — especially when compared to the tiny apartments in downtown Tokyo but it still looked smaller than Katsuki remembered. He remembered higher ceilings, wider rooms, and a warm kitchen so big he could play pretend heroes in it while his grandmother made mochis.
Katsuki had wandered from room to room feeling as if he was in a stranger’s house, which is not quite true as he had spent every summer of his childhood under this roof.
Once upon a more innocent time, Katsuki had known every nook and cranny of this old house, every hiding place, every creaking floorboard.
No, that wasn’t quite right. There was a locked door that young Katsuki had never been allowed to open. It was just outside his old bedroom, at the far end of the narrow corridor.
It had always been locked. Always.
Katsuki used to keep his ear pressed to the door, cheek flush to the wood, convinced that he could hear something inside. Someone talking. Things moving. Peering through the keyhole gave nothing away, just darkness beyond. Looking under the door revealed the same.
His grandmother came to his room every night to tell him stories and his grandfather sometimes came as well but he had never seen them open the locked door. They barely even glance at it. The door was ignored as if it wasn’t there.
Whenever he asked about it, his grandmother would just cluck her tongue and say ‘none of that, Katsuki. Don’t meddle in things that are not your concern.’
Katsuki was used to the deflection. His grandmother’s stories all had the same cautionary theme: Do not stray off the path. Keep your hands to yourself. Be polite to those you meet. Be wary of undeserved generosity. Do not be deceived by masks. Remember your way home.
His grandmother had been born at a time very different from Katsuki’s and had lived her whole life in this small, quiet village near the edge of an ancient forest. Shrines litter the place — big, impressive ones; small ones the height of your knee; some made of polished stone, some of carved wood — all made to remember those who should not be forgotten.
She tried to give Katsuki a glimpse of what her world had been like, a lifetime ago before the advance of civilization endangered more than just living beings. She spoke to him of youkais — monsters, demons, and spirits all rolled into one. She told him tales of the ayakashi that would lead you astray with beckoning lights, the shape-shifting bakemono, the vengeful mononoke, the sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent but always powerful kitsune.
But Katsuki was a child of skyscrapers and 24 hour convenience stores. He walked on streets lined with man-made lights that turned on before the sun goes down the horizon and never went out until the sun rises again. He lived in a house full of noise, in a city full of living, breathing people.
He had never known true darkness; nights when even the moon sheds no light and the world is silent, but you know deep within your bones that you are not alone.
Katsuki had enjoyed the stories, had loved the amoral viciousness of it the way only a young boy could. But it had never shaped him. Caution was something he threw to the winds and let carry where it may. Katsuki rushed headlong into life, eager to be the best, impatient to leave behind everyone who couldn’t keep up.
It wasn’t that Katsuki was incautious. He wasn’t. He didn’t enter burning buildings or jump off bridges for the hell of it. When he did enter burning buildings or jump off bridges, it was because it was necessary to do so. It was a risk he took in order to win and save lives.
It was one such risk that ended with him back at this old house. There had been an overpowered, mentally unstable villain and an officeful of hostages. There had been other heroes there but Ground Zero had been the closest, the fastest, the most willing to shove personal safety to the sidelines. By the time the dust settled, the villain was down, the hostages were free, and the muscle fibers in Katsuki’s arms were damaged almost beyond repair, the sweat glands almost completely destroyed.
Almost. The ambulance waiting on the wings had a paramedic who could put people and their injuries in stasis and Katsuki was brought to the hospital where surgeons and healing quirks did what could be done to save his arms and his quirk.
Now he needed time to heal. Which brought him to this old house — familiar and strange all at once.
The first day Katsuki arrived, it was too late to do much of anything. His parents had assured him the house still had all its furniture but could not vouch for its state, so Katsuki came prepared. There had been no lights but Katsuki hadn’t been expecting any; the house had been unoccupied for too long and he knew he’d have to do more than just clean. He brought a power bank for his phone and a battery powered lantern. He chose one of the guest rooms and with the lantern set on dim, slept on linens he brought himself.
Katsuki dreamed of things he could no longer remember when he woke up, jumbled memories where everything was larger than they should be and there was someone he couldn’t quite see laughing by his side.
The next day, Katsuki began in earnest to get the house ready for his stay. He took down the storm shutters, pushed the panels wide open and took the futons out to the yard, beating the thin beddings half to death, as if they were villains and heroes allowed to do such things. Armed with a mop and damp rags, Katsuki attacked the floor and every surface he could reach.
There was a pause as Katsuki realized his grandmother must have done laundry by hand, and decided to leave the dusty bed linens in their cupboards in favor of checking the house for modern conveniences he would need if he is to stay here and not go stark, raving mad.
He ate the last of his provisions for lunch — an apple, a bar of home-made granola, some nuts — then left to get more.
He had passed the village yesterday on his way to his grandparents house. It was much the same as he remembered it, perhaps a few more shops than there was before, but essentially unchanged. His grandparents had lived right by the edge of the woods and the village was a good twenty minute walk away, along a winding path bordered by ancient trees. Katsuki wouldn’t have minded the walk but decided to bring his car anyway, foreseeing he would be laden with purchases by the time he was done.
His first stop was at a shop that carried everything that wasn’t edible or postage stamps — from hammers and nails to chopsticks and placemats. It was manned by a pleasant woman a few years younger than Katsuki, a young boy playing by her feet. There was curiosity in her eyes but she had remained polite and professional through out.
Katsuki’s luck didn’t hold in the second shop. The grocery was ran by a married couple Katsuki remembered vaguely, already old back when he used to run around the aisles as a child. The old lady had eyed him with unabashed speculation the moment he came through the door and caught him fair and square when he went to pay for his purchases.
“You’re from the Bakugou place,” the old lady said.
Katsuki gave a quick nod.
“You gonna live there for a while or more people coming over?” she asked, nodding her head at Katsuki’s basket of food, too many for one person for one day.
“Be staying alone for the next few weeks,” Katsuki said, bowing to the inevitable. It was, after all, the only grocery store nearby. “Maybe more. Depends.”
She nodded, not unfriendly, punching items through the scanner.
“Depends on what, young man?”
“On whether I can get a washer. And a microwave. Ref.”
The old lady smiled at that, clearly amused. “Buying appliances wouldn’t do you much good, if the house doesn’t have electricity.”
Katsuki shrugged. “I’ll just have to get that fixed.”
“You do that. You’re Masaru’s boy, aren’t you?” the old lady said, eyeing him speculatively.
“Yes, ma’am,” Katsuki replied, just this side of polite. “Bakugou Katsuki.”
She nodded, satisfied. “You have the look of him.”
That caught Katsuki by surprise. People usually told him he looked like his mother. And he really did; the same color hair, the same shape eyes, the same irascible disposition.
“You are a Bakugou, true enough,” she continued. “It’s about time we had one here again. Masaru shouldn’t have left the old place without a guardian for so long. But then he was never into it, even when he was young.”
Katsuki frowned.
“Did you have problems with trespassers?” he asked. The house didn’t seem like it had been vandalized or broken into.
The old lady seemed surprised. “Trespassers? At the Bakugou place? Goodness me, no. No one around here would dare.”
Something about the conversation rang alarm bells in Katsuki’s head and he hurried back to the house with a faint feeling of trepidation.
Half an hour later, Katsuki was on the phone with his father.
“What do you mean it doesn’t have electricity?? Who the hell doesn’t have electricity in this day and age?!”
He had gone through the house looking for a light switch and could find none. No wall socket. No electrical appliance of any kind.
“Katsuki, I warned you about this. I reminded you the place won’t have electrical power.”
His father did. But Katsuki had presumed the electric company had cut off services — the house having been vacant for so long — not that there was no provision for electricity at all.
“That can’t be right, old man,” Katsuki insisted, “I remember there were lights in the house. I read manga in the evenings for fuck’s sake.”
“Well, there are lanterns all over the house. Your grandmother could activate it with her quirk. You could too. You’re a Bakugou.”
A distant memory of his grandmother touching a sphere of light popped in his head.
Katsuki began to walk back to the house and his father’s voice started to break up into static.
“Fuck this!” Katsuki cursed, walking back to his original post. Phone signal at the house was non-existent.
“— electricity doesn’t work right in that place.”
“Well, I can’t stay here and live in pre-historic age. I’ll have people come in and hook us up,” Katsuki said, more than a little annoyed at the idea of having strangers over making a mess of the house. He had gone here for some peace and quiet, not oversee a renovation.
“Katsuki, no. The house cannot have electricity. Surely you must remember?”
Katsuki hesitated. There was … something. Something his grandmother would tell him when he was younger.
“The house isn’t so bad. It runs on heat triggered by our quirk. Lights. Hot water. There’ll be heat for winter, if you stay that long. Machines work there, Katsuki, as long as they don’t need electricity. I’m surprised you don’t remember.”
Katsuki frowned. “I gotta go. I wanna check the house again. And there’s no fucking signal there.”
Katsuki heard his father laugh. “Yeah, there wouldn’t be. Call back if you decide to cut your stay short. You don’t have to stay there if you really cant stand it.”
He cut the call with a grunt of irritation and all but stomped back towards the house.
With a vague memory as his guide, he stepped into the genkan —already toeing his shoes off — and instead of fumbling for a light switch, touched a panel that was subtly different than the rest of the wall.
Katsuki wasn’t supposed to use his quirk extensively while he was still healing but this wouldn’t require an AP shot. He allowed a small percentage of his power to gather in his palm until the heat turned to sparkles of light. He felt the panel hum — just as a distant memory told him it would — and a lantern in the ceiling glowed with soft light.
“Huh fucker,” he grunted out with satisfaction.
With the house filled with natural light he didn’t really need the lantern on but he couldn’t see a way to turn it off. He figured it would turn off soon enough once the device runs out of whatever power he jumpstarted.
He found the same light source through out the house. The tugging of memory and some applied logic allowed him to heat the water and turn on the ice box — providing a basic form of refrigeration. There was a contraption that ran on pedals that Katsuki presumed tumbled clothes for a wash.
There was no microwave, no TV, and no way to charge his phone and laptop, but he won’t be living in the dark ages.
He doesn’t know how the things worked — the quirk-based technology seemed too advanced for such an old house. He wasn’t sure if any kind of heat source will do, like Todoroki’s fire, but the house has been in his family for generations and it had certainly been made for Bakugous and their quirk.
Katsuki ran a wash for the dusty bed linens, counting the hour or two of pedalling as part of his cardio for the day, and spent what was left of daylight seated on the wooden floor looking out at the now overgrown courtyard. This part of the house used to have a beautiful, tranquil garden, the result of his grandfather’s painstaking work. Katsuki will have tackle it another day.
It was at that moment — just as he was seated there, with his legs stretched out in front of him, his weight on his arms behind him, face tilted upwards, his eyes closed as he allowed the cool autumn breeze to fan his face and ripple through his hair — that Katsuki heard it.
::Kaachan::
Katsuki’s senses went on high alert. What was a pleasant breeze a moment before now seemed ominous, sending a chill down his spine, raising goosebumps on his arms.
Katsuki did a quick check through the house and its perimeter, going full-on hero mode, mind going to his earlier conversation with the old lady about trespassers and the need for someone to guard the old place.
He found no one.
He had been drowsy, pleasantly tired from the day’s exertions, but he hadn’t been asleep. He was sure he heard it. Someone called him.
Kacchan.
That was odd enough in itself. No one had called Katsuki that in years. Even his grandparents had called him Katsuki by the time he left primary school. And these days he mostly answered to Bakugou, or even Ground Zero.
He grabbed his phone and hustled down the path away from the house. When he got a signal, he clicked on Kirishima’s number.
“Heya, Bakubro! How’s your vacation?”
“Anything on the news I should be worried about?” he asked, ignoring Kirishima’s question.
“What do you mean?” Kirishima asked, turning serious as he picked up on Katsuki’s tone.
“I heard someone say my name but didn’t see anyone. It’s probably a prank. Long range ventriloquist quirk. But I figured it could be an emergency. This place has no fucking signal. If the agency tried to contact me, you wouldn’t have reached me. So I thought maybe a messaging quirk?”
“Hmm. Yeah, no. Nothing urgent has come up that would require you specifically. Plus you’re on medical leave, bro. You’re not supposed to be on call,” Kirishima said.
“I know that, Shitty Hair. I was just making sure. Like I said, it’s probably a prank.”
“Why would you assume it’s a prank?”
Katsuki thought of the childish name. “Just a hunch.”
They spent a couple more minutes talking, Kirishima updating Katsuki on things.
“Listen, Bakugou, if the agency needs you, we’d send someone to get you. We know where you are. Just chill and try not to think of work, yeah?” Kirishima said.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Katsuki said by way of goodbye and completely without heat, dropping the call in the middle of Kirishima’s laugh.
Katsuki was alert but not unnerved. He was a top ranked pro hero. He’d faced worse shit than a disembodied voice calling him by a long forgotten name.
He closed the house for the night, ate a light dinner, and prepared for bed.
The night before Katsuki had slept in a random guest room — the room his parents usually slept in when they dropped Katsuki off for the summer. It hadn’t seemed right to sleep in his grandparents’ room and he didn’t feel up to dealing with his childhood bedroom.
He entered it now, his old bedroom. Like the rest of the house it looked familiar but strange. Smaller than in his head.
Katsuki didn’t bother to light the lantern. Moonlight filtered in through one side of the room, bathing the place with molten silver. There was a shelf lining one wall that Katsuki had filled with years of manga tankoubons and a trunk to one side that held his toys.
He picked up an action figure from a low table. His grandparents death had been sudden. Katsuki doesn’t remember much of what happened, not even the funeral. The place had been boarded up and he hadn’t been back since, not even to pack up his old playthings.
::it is you Kacchan::
Katsuki whirled around and could see nothing. The tell-tale coldness on his skin is back, raising goosebumps on his flesh.
He dropped the action figure, needing his hands to be ready in case this wasn’t a prank. In case it was a real threat. His injury had been widely publicized. He wouldn’t put it past villains to try and take him down while they think he’s not at his hundred percent.
::can you hear me::
Katsuki can hear the fucker alright. But the voice was faint, fading at times, like a radio station that was close to but not quite at the right frequency.
::it’s me… Izuku::
::do you … do you remember me at all::
Katsuki frowned. The name didn’t ring any bells.
“Why are you bothering me?” he replied instead.
There was no answer. Katsuki waited for a while but the evening air remained free of sad, lonely voices.
Katsuki has never had any problems falling asleep. Not as a child with a wild imagination, not as an adult with heavy responsibilities on his shoulders. Even when he’s out on a mission and comfort is secondary to safety, he could fall asleep the moment he’s off duty, just propped up against a wall.
But sleep and dreams were different things. Katsuki rarely dreamed. When he did, it always seemed significant somehow, not simply a product of his sleeping subconscious.
Tonight, his dreams were ominous things. Creatures trying to claw their way out. Sad, lonely voices singing hopeful songs about the coming of spring.
Katsuki woke up to find that the song in his dream was real. It was still night and moonlight filled his room.
There was someone singing in the house. Faint. Melancholic.
Katsuki doesn’t find anyone.
The following day was mostly a repeat of the day before.
House cleaning.
A trip to the village to arrange for a way he can charge his phone and laptop. He bought an extra power bank so he could leave one at the grocery for overnight charging, swapping it with the other one the next day. There was no coffee shop to speak of but the owner of the sole izakaya in the village agreed to allow Katsuki to charge his laptop whenever he comes in for a meal.
Cardio. Rehab exercises for his arms. The most basic of quirk training. If there was one authority in the world Katsuki listened to, that would be medical professionals. He would follow their slow but steady regimen to the letter.
A light dinner. Sleep.
Someone singing.
Katsuki found he remembered the songs. The odd thing was that they weren’t sad in his memories.
It was only on his fourth day in the house that he remembered the locked door again.
Katsuki had gone to his old bedroom to look at his manga collection. With no TV, phone or WIFI signal, Katsuki was looking for other forms of entertainment.
He had been amused and just a little bit impressed at his younger self’s taste in reading material. All shounen of course — each one had a protagonist who struggled to do his best in the face of adversity, through self-improvement, sacrifice, and the amazing power of friendship.
Something about the stories triggered a memory — something about heroes and a willing self-sacrifice — and he remembered the door.
Katsuki stepped out into the corridor and stood there contemplating the locked door. The wood was ancient and looked it, made of hard wood and made harder by time. He rapped on it with his knuckles. Solid.
He ran his fingers over the edges, feeling for a crack, a space, something. Anything to tell him what was on the other side.
Just as he did when he was a child, Katsuki placed his ear against the wood. He listened. And just as when he was a boy, he was convinced there was something on the other side. Something alive and moving.
He contemplated the keyhole, traced it with his finger. His father had given him a bunch of keys for the house but it didn’t include the key to this door.
::i would leave that alone::
Katsuki felt his entire body stiffen in reaction. The voice sounded close. Very close.
::doors are locked for a reason::
Katsuki turned around. He was alone in the corridor.