The Catalyst (Can We Change the World?)

Chapter 12

I love this chapter a lot ngl, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Your comments are always appreciated and I love responding to them.

Check out my tdbkdk fantasy au called "Aether Born (We are Made of Light) that currently had 110k words (ish) if you want!

I appreciated if you're still following along with this story, I love all of you, thank you for your support <3

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Eight days after the festival. And nothing had gotten better. There was a pain in Shoto's chest that he couldn't understand. He laid awake sleepless at night wondering, what if I had done things differently?

There had been moments where Shoto wished, wished more than anything that Katsuki would just say something, do something literally anything to him but there was nothing. Not a single word.

And those night where he laid awake all he could do was picture Katsuki's face. It's not like they had been together and it wasn't like they'd known each other all that long but gods if it didn't feel like it.

No one in Shoto's life had ever made him feel like that before. Free to let out a side of himself where he wasn't necessarily real but it was so much farther from the fake side.

The side that he put on for the world to see- the perfect, soft, quiet one.

The real him was so far from that the real him wouldn't hesitate to speak out and scream about what was wrong in the world. The real him wouldn't hesitate to kill or torture for what he believed in.

And he had, on multiple occasions.

He was nothing like what anyone thought and the only person who had ever seen some kind of that passion was Katsuki. Because it was Katsuki who brought out a different side of the real him.

Not soft but more caring.

Someone who was willing to protect not only his family, the league, but Katsuki as well. And why, he couldn't make it make sense in his head. Because who the hell was willing to kill for someone they'd only known for a month and a half?

Who the hell was that protective about somebody who didn't want him? Not anymore.

And yet Shoto still knew that if someone tried to hurt Katsuki, if someone tried to do anything to him at all that put him in danger, Shoto would take them out.

But Katsuki didn't want him anymore and Shoto didn't want to care. He didn't want to care about what he thought because he was a villain. The real him was a villain that was soft for nobody except for that blonde.

Stupid.

Stupid that he let himself get so attached to the point that even when he tried to pry Katsuki out of his mind some pieces of him stuck.

Like the way Katsuki said his name, not accusing or demanding. He wasn't Shoto the hero or Shoto the villain. He was just Shoto and that was something he'd never felt before.

How could he be expected to forget something like that?

Shoto was trying to let go, let him go, but it didn't help that the scent of metal and sulfur had been getting weaker and was replaced with the leather.

It was the scent of leather that he couldn't figure out. But it was always apparent whenever Shoto was with Denki. Or when he spoke with someone else. Perhaps it was a tamer version of his hate, something less intense than the metal and sulfur. That scared Shoto even more; the thing is, with intense emotions they fade quickly. But the tamer ones are the emotions that stick around the longest.