Crossroads (An Evil Deku Fanfic)

Chapter 12: Terrified

(I painted a little fanart for Deku and Kacchan and wanted to include it in this chapter. See  above.)

Katsuki POV:

When I woke up, I was in the infirmary. Everything hurt like hell. My hands, or lack thereof, my leg with the bullet wound, and my heart hurt. Deku had changed a lot. Since when could he shoot guns? When did he get a quirk? Why was he so heartless? He was a totally different person than the kid I grew up with. The kid I grew up with wouldn't even dream of hurting anyone, much less me. Much less chop off my hands, shoot a bullet through my leg, and knock me unconscious. 

What a hell of a reunion. 

I stared up at the ceiling, my vision blurring in and out of focus. I held my arm over my head and saw that there was just a knob where my hand used to be, wrapped in bandages. My other hand was like that too. My teeth clenched together and I closed my eyes tightly. Damn... I fucked up pretty bad, huh?

"Bakugo?" I heard a familiar voice from the other side of the curtain, "It's Kirishima." He knocked on the fabric curtain. Warmth flooded through me. What other idiot would knock on a curtain? (I'm ignoring Pikachu. Like I always do.) "Can I um... enter?"

I sat up and let myself smile for a moment before I resumed my angry face. "Sure."

He pulled the curtain open and walked into my private little curtain space. With a sigh, he sat on the side of my bed and gave me a smile. "You were really manly yesterday, y'know?"

"...shut up."

"Really!" He insisted, "More manly than me, anyway."

"Where were you, by the way? I didn't see you at all when we were fighting." I asked, thinking back to the battle. I saw the entire class when we were fighting, but not Kirishima. Or Glitter Bomb.

His face paled. "I um... retreated. I ran to get the teachers with Aoyama. I feel like such a coward!" He hid his face in his hands and slumped over. "What kind of man leaves a battle to get outside help? What kind of man leaves his friends to fight alone??"

I placed my... wrist(?) on his back and said, "We would have died. We... all probably would have bled to death if you hadn't gone to get the teachers. Narcolepsy was unconscious, thanks to... Deku..." I paused for a second before continuing, "He was unconscious, so he couldn't have helped. We were losing, anyway."

He looked at me with emotion in his eyes. "Are you... thanking me?"

"I'm not fucking thanking you! I'm just saying that because of you, I'm not dead and I'm marginally appreciative!" I insisted, but he gave me a smug look and I muttered, "...which I guess means 'thanks' I dunno..."

He laughed and turned away again, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. "You're doing great for a guy who just lost his hands, has a bullet hole in his leg, and fought a dozen villains!"

"No... just Deku," I sighed. "The only one that mattered was... Deku."

"You knew him... right? That's what you were talking about a week ago, right?" he said.

The blood drained from my face. My heart started to beat more violently, and I couldn't make eye contact. "Shut the fuck up, shitty hair. It doesn't fucking matter. It's not your problem, so butt out." My voice was deep and gravelly. "Just leave. Now." I glared at him angrily.

The redhead silently got off my bed and left without looking away from me. He held his hands up in surrender and backed out of the curtain. I cussed to myself after he was gone. Then, I noticed he'd left a note on the sheets of the bed. I leaned over to see what it said.

In his rough handwriting, it said: 'YOU'RE A MAN AMONGST MEN BAKUBRO! STAY STRONG AND GET BETTER SOON! -KIRISHIMA'

Eijiro POV:

I sighed to myself and looked at the cards I'd made for everyone who was injured. It was the least I could do. I turned to my left and saw Iida, Sero, and Kaminari's room, so I knocked on the door to enter.

When I entered, Kaminari instantly grabbed my shoulders and shouted, "Is it true?! Is Todoroki really DEAD?!" He had tears in his eyes and his hands were trembling, "It can't be true! Right? There's no way!"

Behind him, Iida and Sero were slumped in morose acceptance, but Kaminari was still in denial. He kept blubbering about how it wasn't possible for us to die because we're the main characters and have "plot armor" or something, but I had to stop him.

"It... it is true," I confirmed, "Todoroki... is dead." It pained me to say those words because Todoroki was our friend, our man. 

Kaminari's bruised, black eyes widened and he let go of my shoulders. His hands were trembling as he took a step backward, then stumbled over his own feet and fell to the ground. Tears raced down his face and he started to sniffle, then he started to really cry. His tears fell faster than he could wipe them away, and he was whining, moaning, and sniffling. I knelt down next to him and placed a hand on his head. Kaminari threw his shaking arms around me and wept into my shoulder.

Sero walked over and knelt down with us too. He leaned against Kaminari's back and closed his eyes, holding back tears. Pretty soon, Iida rolled over in his wheelchair and sat near all of us too, sharing the grief. Tears of his own began to fall into his rectangular glasses and his lip quivered.

I sat with them and cried for a while, not knowing what to say. We didn't even know Todoroki for a long time, but it still hurt because we knew him. None of us had ever really watched someone our age die before, not for real. We sat and cried together, terrified out of our wits, yet not knowing what it really was we feared.

Fear is weird. It's like adrenaline, I think, how when you're exhausted and you suddenly get a huge burst of energy at the end of a race and then are really tired afterward. In fear's case: When you're scared, you suddenly get this burst of courage, but later, when you really fathom the situation, you're so scared that you can't stand.

I think we're there.

Katsuki POV:

"Kacchan..."

Izuku's voice suddenly echoed in my room and I practically jumped out of my skin. "Where are you?!" I snapped, suddenly on alert.

He laughed for a second, an eerie, cold, creepy laugh. Then he assured me in a smooth voice, "Don't worry. I can't hurt you. Not physically, anyway. I just thought we should talk for a bit."

"...don't... talk to me," I said, still glancing around the room, "But where the fuck are you?!"

"I'm not anywhere you can see me..." he answered, "... but I can see you. Look at you- bloody, disabled," His voice disappeared, but I heard it right behind my ear when he said, "Quirkless." A shiver spindled up my spine and I whipped around. He wasn't there. The voice floated around me as he continued, "I'm sure you noticed our pattern: taking quirks. Nothing fancy or sophisticated, just a little pain and humiliation. But... then, which one of us is...'Deku' now?"

I opened my mouth but forgot how to speak. I felt cold and my heart was about to jump out of my chest.

"I noticed how you told me not to kill Todoroki yesterday. Do you remember that? Well, I just can't stop thinking about it because you see, Kacchan, you would always tell me to kill myself, so I figured that you simply didn't care who lived and died. Or... is it just that... to you, all quirkless people are useless and don't deserve to share the same planet as people who do have quirks?"

I got scared. He had turned the tables, and now he was going to give me a taste of my own medicine, right? Wrong.

"Well, Kacchan, that's the stupidest philosophy I've ever heard. Why should I kill you for being quirkless?" He laughed, the sound echoing through the room. "Especially when..."  His voice was right behind my ear again as he whispered, "I have a thousand better reasons to kill you."