Chapter Text
It's the news being put on that does it, honestly. It's nearly always the news' fault.
Now, class 2-A has been aware that the battle at floating UA was livestreamed with the highest tech the business course could drag up there, displaying the fight of their lives in gruesome deatail. It just became one of those things everybody knows but keeps silent about. Because how exactly do you cope with the fact that a war you had fought and been scarred and nearly died in could be viewed like any other video--reduced to something near a performance for a bit?
You don't, is their answer.
Until.
It's a weekend, but everyone is staying at the dorms. It's Mina who flicks on the television, which immediately cuts to an anchor speaking somberly in front of a greenscreened clip.
A clip of the battle.
"In memoriam of the devastation the..."
The man continues speaking, but he's drowned out by the instant clamor of the class. Tamaki Amajiki is shown on the screen, using his quirk to its fullest potential. Some of them are scrambling to find the remote, turn off the TV. Tenya and Eijirou are trying to usher Katsuki and Izuku away, the former of whom had already frozen, eyes transfixed on the shockingly clear images.
"Katsuki," Eijirou mutters, a tentative hand on his friend's shoulder. "C'mon man, you don't have to watch it. Someone's gonna turn the TV off and we can move on. You don't need to force yourself to dig all that up."
Katsuki makes an odd jolt with his right shoulder, suggesting he was trying to move his limp right arm to shove Eijirou off. The redhead winces at the movement, but pulls his hand away. He glances down for half a second at the shriveled limb before turning away. Their whole class is getting awful good at turning away from things they don't want to see. Is it healthy? Not at all. But they're all in mandated therapy, so...
Katsuki tears his eyes away from the television, finally, to glare at his arm. He's in PT, they think there's a chance of him regaining use of it, but if he doesn't progress soon, an amputation and prosthetic replacement are the next course of action to prevent it from becoming a hindrance. He dreads the day, wondering if this is how Aizawa felt losing half his quirk's power.
And he usually feels selfish after that, because Izuku lost all of it.
And that thought, probably, is what steels his resolve.
Mina stumbles up to him and Izuku, the TV long since silenced and gone dark in his haze, already spewing a half-formed apology.
He shakes his head, an inch away from unresponsive in his slackened face, clouded eyes, and slumped shoulders. "I want to watch the livestream."
The chaos the dorm had descended into shuttered into silence.
"What..?" Kyouka croaks to the left of him. Katsuki understands her trepidation. She had fought All for One with Fumikage--she knew well to fear him. He isn't sure if she's afraid to see him again in the stream or if she's afraid to see the consequences of his wrath, but he empathizes either way.
"You don't have to," he mumbles. He's been quieter since the first war, but now he can't even find the energy to raise his voice above a whisper. This feels too tentative a time.
"Neither do you, Katsuki," Ochako cuts in, a worried crease to her brows. "I don't want to subject myself to reliving my battle. You don't look weak for wanting to cope another way."
He shakes his head again, this time more viciously. Some of the energy returns to his sapped bones. "I need to do this."
And the world is spinning a little bit, so he clasps Izuku's hand tightly in his and fixes his eyes firmly on the floor. "I need this."
It's startling to realize he does. Not only does he need to find some way to rationalize that he died beyond an adrenaline-fueled thanks to Edgeshot for his sacrifice, but he needs to see what happened from an outsider view. It all felt so overwhelming, experiencing it, that he got tunnel vision, a singular focus developed for each painful spark against his skin. He needs to see how the battle went when he was dead, or after All for One obliterated his own body and it was just Izuku against ShigAFO left.
"Okay." It's Izuku's voice. Comforting and mild and the only thing Katsuki ever needs to hear. "We'll watch it together then. I really should catch up on what I missed."
And Katsuki considers arguing, insisting that none of the blame fell on Izuku's shoulders for being dragged away, but he's destroying himself before he can heal too, isn't he? He's trying to be less hypocritical, anyway.
The class sits down. The television is switched back on, but this time the livestream is connected to the screen. It loads to a jarringly crisp scream from Best Jeanist;
"Deku isn't here?"
The boy's eyes grow hollow for a moment. Katsuki squeezes his hand. Green irises flash over to him, and they are okay again.
The frantic shouting proceeds as Katsuki remembers it--they were banking everything in Izuku being there, and Katsuki was helpless to do anything but explain that he had been pulled away.
"We don't have One for All?!" Jeanist continues, frantic. "How did this happen?"
Katsuki is the first to reply, voice strained but no less clear on the tape. "Hell if I know! He was dragged somewhere else!"
It's a bitter thing for the class to register the quality of both audio and video by their ability to read the panic on Amajiki's face.
He glances from the side of his eye, his pupils already only a dot in his anxiety, stuttering as he speaks. "Th-th-this is really bad, right?! Having him here was one of our key assumptions!"
The guilty look returns to Izuku's eyes. Clutching his hand tight enough to cut off circulation doesn't seem to work, so Katsuki chooses instead to lean over to murmur in his ear; "Not your fault, asshole."
Sure, he's trying to let Izuku work shit out on his own time. Doesn't mean he's not about to be the world's most aggressive support system.
Nejire and Mirko speak almost on top of each other. "We gotta let everyone know!" Nejire calls, quickly tailed by Mirko's vicious exclamation.
"Whatever! This party's already started, so let's rumble."
"We just gotta go toe-to-toe with history's deadliest villain ever!"
Silence, silence, silence. The students are quiet as the scene continues to play out before them--a zoom on ShigAFO's face as he, with piercing calm fury and lust for destruction, observes the arena, before dropping down. A krak, krak rips through the television when his quirk tears through a spot on the ground.
BWOOM. ShigAFO is flung into the air with the ground his destruction had touched, a faint 'huh?' picked up. Krmble, the ground groans as he flails up to the electro-magnetic barrier. His muscles visibly lock up, spasming as he forces his hand into a fist.
Jeanist intervenes as soon as he begins to regain that little control. "Oh no you don't! There's a gap in your seams!!"
Katsuki rolls his eyes, scoffing lightly as he sits on the couch, rewatching it all go down from the safety of the dorms. He hadn't really noticed the first time, but could the guy really never let up with the jeans metaphors?!
A few people glance at him oddly, so he verbalizes the thought. There are a few stifled snorts, and he's pretty sure he hears Denki say, "Am I even allowed to laugh..? " and he has to duck his head with a 'tch' to hide the small grin that curls his lips.
Jeanist continues, narrating the function of the barrier. "...Even someone who's superhuman will be helpless, if only for a brief moment."
Easily, looking inhuman, ShigAFO tears himself from Jeanist's hold. His lips move soundlessly, working out a question. "Is it a mechanism to keep my decay from spreading?" he asks, grinning gleefully, eyes devoid of anything. "No matter," he dismisses not a second later. "This scheme will be your ruin, Jeanist."
"We're floating up in the sky, yeah?" he comments casually, flipping back to let Jeanist's cords run and SHWING right against each other, missing him. "The ground here is a precious resource, and you're practically giving it away for free!"
"You needn't worry," Jeanist declares, looking as proud and menacing as a hero of his type can be as he gestures behind him with a thumb--to the direction the camera is coming from, where the whole operation behind the scenes to make UA float were occurring. "We are replete with that particular source."
"Have you truly not figured it out yet, Shigaraki? Is your brain short-circuiting from that shock?"
The comment draws a few more startled laughs from the class, Katsuki and Izuku in particular finding joy in Jeanist's blatant disregard for someone who considered their strength so far above his own.
"This arena...was constructed solely to defeat you. It shall be your coffin in the sky."
The words sink into their skin, a shiver up their spines at the finality of it all, the significance of each syllable knowing the statement rung true. A grave dug by each of their hands--
"It was all made possible by a sixteen-year-old," Jeanist continues to speak.
Hatsume Mei's genius, they recall as Jeanist explains her work with Nedzu to make UA float.
"...The remaining problems were a lack of materials due to the ravaged economy."
A reference to Momo, whom many send furtive glances and nods of thanks to.
"The tight turnaround for the construction."
Credit to the same heroes who had assembled Troy so quickly and expertly, the architects of their refuge.
"...And the prodigious amount of energy...required for the mechanical systems and electro-magnetic barrier."
Denki whoops, turning to give Hanta's raised hand a celebratory slap. "Oh yeah, dude!"
"Great work to all of you behind the scenes there," Mezou says. "Your work might not have been broadcast, but it's very much appreciated."
Momo and Denki both send the boy shining grins.
"Everything we built and worked toward...is powering this tomb of yours."
Jeanist's tone of finality snaps their attention back to the screen.
"Not for honor. Not for glory. No, those of us here making this work...do it to ensure that the world will see tomorrow. We are those...who stand against the doom you bring!!"
A cheer, loud and bright as they haven't had quite the energy to summon until then, rips through the class. It's why they are training to become heroes, the reason they fought in the wars against the Paranormal Liberation Front and risked their lives despite the boos and calls for the fall of hero society by the public. They wish to bring a future to the world, to gift a new sunrise to a world that is lush rather than barren.
Jeanist says it as succinctly as one can say; they stand against the doom ShigAFO wrought, and will stand against any villain who seeks to wreak havoc upon to beauty of the world.
ShigAFO's voice is uncaring as he cuts into the determination that had culminated at the end of Jeanist's speech. "So proud of your toys..." He extends his hand, a vague yet foreboding action. "...but not for long."
He doesn't win. They're all well aware. But the fear--knowing what he was capable of--has everyone sucking in a short breath.
Yet, as he always does--
Katsuki barrels into frame. "Joke's on you!" he calls through a nasty grin. "Or didja forget that crappy game of ours back in Jaku?!"
Katsuki laughs loudly, pretending he hadn't cringed, imagining the world of pain he was about to experience then. All he can think of, despite his front of haughtiness, is he has no idea what's about to happen. I had no idea what was about to happen.
And any idiot could take a look at his current state and tell you the confidence he had gone into that battle with was entirely unwarranted. His class knows something had happened. They don't know what happened. He's sitting there, and Katsuki is starting to not want them to. His eyes are hollow and clouded and his death feels like a private thing, something he needs to keep to himself and cry silent tears over on days where the chronic pain starts to feel like it's happening again, making him doubt Edgeshot's assurance that the ties keeping his organs together won't come undone. When he feels the utter humiliation he had experienced, dragged up as though he was not even worthy of ShigAFO's hand gracing his skin before being swatted away to die like some gnat.
And the thought fills his head as he hears Monoma's voice ring through, and Mirko's question and a response he vaguely recalls giving with panic in his eyes.
And he feels shame. Shame, shame, as ShigAFO's voice echoes hauntingly.
"I used to think you were so cool...you turned out to be quite the letdown...Eraserhead. "
Shame, as he recalls that same voice saying such similar words to him. He was a shame, an awful shame. He hadn't joined the League, he could've been so useful, but his progress was ultimately uninteresting. He was such a letdown, the only worthy part of him his association with Izuku. Did that not ring true? Had his last thought before death not been of how far behind he was, chasing Izuku's back?
Shame
shame
shame.
It rips through his chest, a feeling like the pierce of his heart exploding. It's awful, just like him, the way his guts roil.
Shame.