By late afternoon, the world around them had changed so gradually that neither of them could say exactly when the familiar countryside disappeared.
The forests that had sheltered the road for most of their journey slowly gave way to scattered groves before vanishing altogether, leaving only broad stretches of neglected farmland rolling endlessly across the hills. It wasn't merely that the crops had failed; it was that the land itself seemed to have surrendered. Thick weeds had swallowed the fields whole, creeping over abandoned fences and broken ploughs until nature had almost erased every sign that people had once lived and worked here. Irrigation channels that should have carried fresh mountain water through every acre had collapsed into long, jagged trenches, dry enough that cracks split the earth beneath them like old scars.
No farmers bent over the fields.
No children chased livestock through the grass.
Only crows circled overhead in slow, patient spirals, as though they had inherited the valley long ago.
Katsuki frowned as he looked across the countryside. Even after years of travelling between kingdoms, seeing villages recover from raids and battlefields reclaimed by nature, something about this place unsettled him in a way he couldn't quite explain.
"They're letting perfectly fertile soil die," he muttered.
Izuku didn't answer.
He had grown quieter with every mile.
Since passing the broken windmill nearly an hour earlier, he'd spoken only in short observations, each one softer than the last, as though every familiar landmark stole another piece of his voice. Katsuki noticed the way his fingers tightened around the reins whenever another distant shape appeared on the horizon. His shoulders hadn't tensed from fear—not exactly—but from memory.
Eventually the dirt road widened beneath their horses, revealing patches of old stone buried beneath decades of dust. Once, this had been a proper trade road. Even now, moss-covered cobbles occasionally peeked through the earth, stubborn remnants of the craftsmanship that had connected Midori to neighboring chiefdoms generations ago.
Ahead, thin columns of smoke drifted lazily into the afternoon sky.
Izuku stared at them for a long time.
"...We're almost there."
The words were barely louder than the wind.
Katsuki glanced toward him.
"How much do you remember?"
Izuku smiled faintly, though sadness softened the expression almost immediately.
"Little pieces."
He looked ahead again.
"Mostly feelings."
They crossed beneath an old stone arch that marked the village boundary.
Half of it had collapsed years ago.
The family crest carved into its center had been chipped away so deliberately that only fragments remained, as though someone had wanted to erase the name Midori from history itself.
Izuku slowed his horse.
He wasn't looking at the road anymore.
He was looking through time.
"...There used to be an orchard here."
Katsuki followed his gaze toward an overgrown field where nothing remained except weathered stumps jutting from waist-high grass.
YOU ARE READING
help me / bakudeku omegaverse /
Fantasyizuku, 19, male omega, had always been alone, on the run from anyone and everyone because of the trauma he's experienced before. bakugou, 21, male alpha, is still looking an omega mate. he needs to get one soon too, otherwise his mother will take th...
