A Lucky One

22

Kirishima had not been home for eight days.

The group had begun to worry that something tragic might have occured to him - their favorite man. Their poor man. Their kindest man. Even the people who were saved have begun begging the heroes to find him.

"I'm going."

"Denied."

"I'm still going."

"You're injured."

"Eraser, I'm going."

"You're still too weak. You need to recuperate."

"I'm going."

"Pinky... Don't be an idiot."

"You can't stop me."

"Ashido."

"He could be dead and it'll be on my hands." Ashido declared to Eraserhead when she finally had had enough of her already limited patience. Her conscience had been eating her in these eight days, tormenting the last good parts of her soul with the knowledge that she had maybe, once again, sent another comrade to their death. She should not have sent him. She should have just went on the lookout herself. But what's the point of worrying at this point in time? Worrying was not the problem here, it was not doing anything about it that is no good. "I'll repeat. I'm going, and it's final. This time - stop. let me finish. - This time, you can't stop me."

Everyone had witnessed her determination in that short interaction between the two until she left the camp. Eraserhead was not even given the time - nor the right - to respond to her declaration.

Somehow, however, Bakugo had a deafening hunch in the pits of his stomach that Ashido, upon walking out into the shadows of the city night, would not come back alive.

"Wait..." he managed to say.

But when Ashido turned to hear what it was, and heard nothing, her face seemed crushed, as if she had been expecting something from him, waiting, for him to do the right thing, say the right words, and taking that one second of looking into each other's eyes, to see through each other's souls, to check if there was even a hint of something - maybe of friendship, of comraderie, or even care - between them, after all these years of hardship, pain, and loss, that could heal even a small crack of her grief, before she went, and said goodbye.

That night she left without another word, without turning back, until Bakugo had discovered for himself while scouting in an abandoned building two weeks later, the one thing that crushed his heart and opened the grief of his eyes for the world to see - On the wall, was melted in writing:

They wanted to get us, but I made sure they couldn't.

At the end of the sentence, on the period, was a hole. Stuffed inside were two things: Red Riot's red 'R' buckle and Pinky's white mask.

Under that, with one hugging the other, were two melted corpses of nothing but chunks of bones.

She was right...

It was then when Katsuki had understood one very important thing that would stay with him throughout the many years of his life: That he too, yearned for everything he had long lost, and that he had been afraid - despite not knowing - of losing another friend.

...He was dead. But at least it was on her hands.