The air in the hospital room was heavy with the smell of saline and the low, rhythmic hum of the life-support machines, a sound that felt like the ticking of a clock in a room where time had already run out.
Katsuki Bakugo sat propped up against the thin, white pillows. He looked worn out, his once-broad frame whittled down by starvation and the systematic trauma of his captivity. His ash-blonde hair was limp, and his skin was a sickly, translucent shade of gray.
He was shaking, a fine, persistent tremor that rattled the metal guardrails of the bed. Izuku, standing by the door, noticed it immediately, but he chose to attribute it to the chill of the overactive air conditioning. He didn't want to think about the psychological tremors that were likely tearing Katsuki apart from the inside.
Bakugo didn't look up at first. He stared at the bruised skin of his own hands. "What are you doing here, Deku?" his voice was a thin, papery rasp, stripped of its usual explosive heat.
Izuku stepped further into the room, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his hospital gown. He looked at the floor, then at the IV bag dripping slowly into Katsuki's arm. "I don't know," Izuku said softly. "I just... I wanted to see you."
He took a seat in the hard plastic chair by the bed. For a long time, neither of them spoke. The silence was a physical weight, filled with the memories of ten years of shared history and a thousand unsaid words.
Midoriya really didn't know how he wanted this conversation to start, it felt awkward and unnatural. Their last interaction was during exams meant to be important to them both, but instead it ended in him nearly dying and his body being taken over...
He shuddered thinking of the ramifications of that, All Might was still unconscious. And he doesn't even know for how long.
So he tried his best to just focus on now.
"Do you remember the summer we built those sandcastles at the park near the station?" Izuku asked suddenly, his voice distant. "You were so mouthy to your mom that day. She wanted us to stand still for a photo, and you kept making faces and shouting about how a 'King' doesn't pose for pictures. I remember being so terrified for you, thinking she was going to blow up, but you didn't care. You were just... you."
A scowl crossed Bakugo's face, but he remained silent.
"I liked that day," Izuku continued. "It felt like we were actually on the same team. We were going to build a fortress that the tide couldn't touch."
He shifted in his seat, his gaze drifting to the window. "And then some time later there was the fox."
Bakugo's hands tightened on the sheets. He remembered.
"We found it in the woods behind the school," Izuku whispered. "Its leg was snapped, caught in some wire. We were only six. You were the one who suggested we help it. We brought it blankets from my house, and we'd sneak scraps of meat from dinner in our pockets. We went back to that spot every day for two weeks. I thought we were saving it. And it was cool."
Izuku's voice began to tremble. "And then we went to see it on that Friday, and it was gone. We heard those older boys from the middle school talking near the fence, laughing about 'the mutt' they found. We ran to the stream, and... we saw it. Just a bloody, matted ball of fur floating down the water. Its eyes were still open."
"You cried for as long as you knew it," Bakugo muttered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the monitors. "You wouldn't shut up about it."
"It felt natural to cry," Izuku said, a small, sad giggle escaping his throat. "It was a living thing, and it was discarded because someone else thought it was a toy. I didn't notice it then, but when we saw that body in the water, you just... you left. You walked away and didn't look back. I don't even remember how I got home that night. I just remember being alone in the dark by the water."
Izuku finally looked at Bakugo, his emerald eyes hard and clear. "Not long after that, your quirk came in. Everyone started telling you how amazing you were. How you were destined for the top. And that was when it started. The names. The burns. The constant reminder that I was beneath you."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping into a somber, hollow register. "I know now, looking back on it, what I felt. I hated it. I hated the way you treated me like a bug you were trying to grind into the pavement. I hated that someone I had been so close to, someone I shared my dinner with and built fortresses with, could so easily decide that I was waste. That I was a 'useless' thing that didn't deserve to breathe the same air as you."
The silence returned, but this time it was jagged. Izuku was breathing heavily, the years of repressed agony finally bubbling to the surface. Bakugo stared at him, his mouth hanging open slightly, his eyes wide and fractured. He looked at the welts on his own arms, then back at Izuku.
.
.
"Why?" Izuku asked, his voice shaking. "Why did you hate me so much, Bakugo? What did I do that made you want to break every single part of me?"
Bakugo looked away. He stared at the white wall, his jaw working as if he were trying to swallow a stone. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked small. For the first time in his life, Katsuki Bakugo looked utterly, completely defeated.
"I don't know," Bakugo whispered. The words were a broken confession. "I don't know. Everything I felt... everything I thought... I can't find the words for it anymore. So... I don't know."
"I wanted to be heroes together," Izuku said, his voice cracking. "That was the dream. I wanted to stand next to you. But I stopped being able to see that dream because I started seeing your face in my nightmares. I spent my life trying to prove I wasn't what you said I was, but all I did was let you define me."
Bakugo's head hung low. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Izuku didn't move.
"I'm sorry, Izuku," Bakugo repeated, his voice crumbling. "For everything."
Izuku stood up. He looked down at the boy who had been his sun, his rival, and his tormentor. He felt a profound sense of closure, but it wasn't the warm, heroic kind. It was cold. It was final.
"You're sorry, well first, It's Midoriya." Izuku repeated, the words flat and toneless. "Thank you for saying it. But you need to understand something."
He walked toward the door, stopping with his hand on the handle. He didn't look back.
"You are not forgiven," Izuku said.
The words landed like a gavel in the sterile room. Bakugo flinched as if he had been struck.
"I'll see you in class, Bakugo."
___
The walk from Medical Wing Delta to the Class 1-A dorms felt longer than the distance across Yokohama.
Izuku moved with a measured, quiet gait. He wore a clean school uniform, but it felt like a costume, stiff, restrictive, and clean in a way he no longer was. He had been cleared for "reintegration," a clinical word for being thrown back into a life that had moved on without him.
He wanted to get there before the morning bell, before the chaotic crush of his classmates filled the halls. He wanted them to see he was still standing, still breathing, before the performance of "School" began.
How do I even look at them? he wondered. How do I stand in a common room after I disappeared like that?
His thoughts were cut short by the sound of rapid footsteps against the pavement. He looked up, his emerald eyes widening, as a blur of pink and gray rounded the corner of the dormitory path.
"Midoriya!"
Ochaco Uraraka didn't slow down. She slammed into him with the force of a high-speed collision, her arms wrapping around his neck in a grip so tight it threatened to steal his breath. Izuku stumbled back, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air before he tentatively placed them on her shoulders. He felt a sudden, searing heat rise to his cheeks, a flush of blood that felt entirely too human for the "Champion" he had spent the last few days becoming.
"You're back," she whispered into his shoulder, her voice thick and shaking. "You're actually back."
She pulled away just enough to look at him, her hands still gripping his sleeves as if he might dissolve into smoke if she let go. "I was so scared, Midoriya. After what happened to All Might... I thought you were just going to disappear. I thought you'd never come back to us."
Izuku blinked, the sound of his own name, his real name, echoing in his mind. She hadn't called him Deku. There was no "you can do it" spin, no playful nickname born from a scar. She had called him Midoriya. It was a formal, heavy word, and it signalled a shift in the air he hadn't expected.
"I had to come back," Izuku said, his voice a low, steady rasp until he tried to make a silly joke. "I have to finish off the year."
Ochaco's expression shifted, the relief in her eyes hardening into something sharper, something colder. She let go of his sleeves, her gaze dropping for a second before she looked back at him with a visceral intensity.
"I found out," she said. Her voice was a sharp contrast to the morning birdsong. "I know how he treated you, Midoriya. For ten years. I know what Bakugo is."
Izuku froze. A cold prickle of anxiety raced down his spine. He hadn't asked Aizawa how many people knew the details. He had assumed the school would keep the "Black Tag" history private until school started again, privacy was a myth. To have Ochaco, kind, bright Ochaco, look at him with that much pity and anger on his behalf made his skin crawl.
"You should have told me," she said, her voice rising with a simmering, righteous fury. "Or Iida. Or anyone. We were supposed to be heroes, and we were standing right next to a monster every single day. Someone like him... a bully, a person who could say those things to you... he should never have been allowed to step foot in this hero course. He doesn't deserve the uniform."
Izuku stared at her, his throat feeling as though it were filled with dry ash. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to say, "He's coming back, Ochaco. I'm the one who signed the paper. I'm the one who let the monster back into the house."
But the words wouldn't come. He felt a bitter, jagged resentment toward Aizawa and Kuroda. They had made him the judge, the one to grant the permission, but they were the ones who had designed the trap. Now, he was standing in the middle of his friend's loyalty, holding a secret that would shatter the very peace she was celebrating.
"He's been designated a villain by the school," Ochaco continued, her jaw tightening. "The teachers know it now. The world knows it. He's gone, and he's never coming back to 1-A. We can finally be a real class."
Izuku looked at the dorm building, the sun finally cresting the horizon to hit the windows in a blinding, golden flash. He felt sick. He felt like an accomplice.
"I'm glad you're safe, Midoriya," Ochaco said, her voice softening as she reached out to squeeze his hand one last time. "Welcome back. Everything is going to be different now. I promise."
___
"No way."
Shota Aizawa stepped into the room, his yellow sleeping bag absent, replaced by his standard costume. But it wasn't Aizawa that held the room's oxygen captive.
It was the person behind him.
Katsuki Bakugo stepped into the light of the classroom. He looked like a ghost that had been roughly stitched back together. His ash-blonde hair was longer, matted in places, and a thick bandage was wrapped around his head, covering one ear. His right arm was in a sling, and the visible skin on his neck and face was a mosaic of fading bruises and angry, red welts. He didn't roar. He didn't scowl. He stood there, staring at a point on the floor three feet in front of him, his breathing shallow and silent.
Ochaco Uraraka was standing at her desk, her hands gripped so tightly on the edge of the wood that the knuckles were white. Her face, usually a symbol of warmth, was a mask of cold, unadulterated horizontal fury.
"Uraraka, sit down," Aizawa said, his voice a warning gravel.
"No," she said, her voice rising, shaking with the weight of everything she had learned in the last forty-eight hours. "You can't do this. You can't just bring him back here like nothing happened. We saw the footage of the exam, Sensei! He didn't just 'fight' Midoriya, he tried to kill him! He acted like a monster! And after finding out who he really is..."
"You have no say in the administrative roster of this school, Uraraka," Aizawa interrupted, his eyes glowing a faint, tired red. "The decision was made by the Commission and the Principal. Bakugo has been processed. He is a student of this course."
"He's a danger to this course!" Ochaco shouted, her eyes darting to Midoriya, who sat frozen at his desk, staring at Bakugo with a look of profound, unreadable stillness. "He was kidnapped because he was a target! Bringing him back here just puts a bullseye on the rest of us! How are we supposed to focus on being heroes when we're sharing a room with someone who was designated a villain by this very school only yesterday?"
She noticed she was being a little disingenuous. Their class as well as every other hero student has been a target ever since the harvest. But she wanted to get her point across as vivid as she could.
"She has a point, ribbit."
Tsuyu Asui spoke from the second row, her voice calm but carrying a heavy, analytical weight. "The exam... it was hard to watch, Aizawa-sensei. It didn't look like hero training. It looked like a grudge match."
"Grudge match?" Hagakure squeaked, his voice trembling. "He looked like he was trying to commit murder! I'm scared to even sit near him!"
"But he was kidnapped," Kirishima interjected, his voice low and conflicted. He looked at Bakugo, his eyes searching for the friend he thought he knew, but finding only a stranger.
Then surprisingly the voice of Todoroki Shoto spoke up next. "He was kidnapped, yes. And if we just throw him away now, aren't we doing exactly what the villains want? And that could be interpreted as saying that if you don't fit a standard, you're useless?"
"There's a difference between fitting a standard and being malicious, Todoroki-kun," Iida said, his hand hovering over his desk, stiff and uncertain. "The rules of this academy are built on the preservation of life and the fostering of character. If Bakugo-kun's character is fundamentally at odds with those rules... then his presence undermines the very foundation of our education."
The room erupted into a fractured, desperate debate. The air was thick with the scent of old trauma and new fear.
"He's under the Black Tag," Aizawa's voice cut through the noise like a gunshot.
The class went silent. They had heard the whispers of the new sanction, but hearing it confirmed for one of their own was different.
"He is under permanent judicial surveillance," Aizawa continued, his eyes scanning the room. "He has no access to support gear. He has mandated therapy. His quirk use is restricted to authorized training only. He is on a leash so short he can barely breathe. If he slips, once, he is gone. Permanently."
"So he's a prisoner in a uniform," Kaminari muttered, looking at Bakugo with a mixture of pity and dread. "Does that make us his guards?"
"It makes you his classmates," Aizawa said. "And it makes him a student who has been given a singular, final chance to salvage a future he nearly burned to the ground."
Uraraka didn't sit down. She looked at Bakugo, her eyes burning with a righteous, protective fire for the boy sitting three rows away from her. "It's not enough. A tag doesn't change what he did. It doesn't change the years of..."
She stopped, remembering her promise to Midoriya not to delve into the past. She bit her lip, the silence in the room growing heavy and suffocating.
Then, the shadow moved.
Katsuki Bakugo looked up. For the first time since he had entered the room, his gaze left the floor. He didn't look at Uraraka. He didn't look at Aizawa. He looked directly at Midoriya.
His eyes were different. The explosive, arrogant light was gone, replaced by a hollow, flickering ember. He looked at the boy he had spent a decade trying to erase, and then he looked at the rest of the class.
"I don't care," Bakugo said. His voice was a raspy, broken thing, devoid of its usual volume but carrying a weight that made the room feel even colder. "I don't care if you hate me. I don't care if you're scared."
He took a slow, agonizing step toward his old desk, his sling shifting against his chest. He stopped, his hands, scarred and trembling, gripping the back of the chair.
"I know what I did. And I know I don't deserve to be here."
He looked at Aizawa, then back at the class, his jaw tightening with a final, desperate flicker of the boy he used to be. The old pride was still there, but it no longer felt like a weapon.
"But I'm not going to die a villain," Bakugo said, his voice regaining a fraction of its steely edge. "I'm going to take the Tag. I'm going to take the therapy and the rules and the names. I'll do better. I'll be a hero, even if I have to break myself to do it."
He sat down, his movement stiff and pained. He looked at the chalkboard, his profile a silhouette of bruised determination.
"And in the end," Bakugo added, his voice a low, final promise that echoed in the silence of the room, "I'll still be the Number One."