sonicspeed3
You were never supposed to end up at U.A. again.
After years of silence and distance, you return with a carefully built mask-polite, capable, and just normal enough to blend in. On the surface, you're just another student training to become a hero. Underneath it, every step forward feels like something you don't deserve.
Bakugou Katsuki notices immediately.
Not because you announce anything. Not because you act differently on purpose. But because something about you doesn't match the version he remembers-the quiet kid who used to appear beside him without warning, who listened more than they spoke, who once looked at the world without fear in their eyes.
Now there's always something held back. Something unfinished.
You go through training, classes, and daily life like nothing is wrong. You smile when expected, answer when spoken to, and never let anything slip too far. But cracks still show-in the way you react under pressure, in the way certain memories seem to catch in your throat before they're spoken, in the silence you carry like it belongs to you.
Bakugou doesn't ask at first.
He just watches.
And Izuku remembers enough to know you were never meant to feel like a stranger.
This is a slow burn built on familiarity that doesn't quite fit anymore. On friendship stretched thin by time, silence, and things left unsaid. On learning what it means to stand beside someone again when neither of you are the same people you were before.
And on the parts of the past that never disappeared-just stayed hidden long enough to feel safe.