Chapter Text
If Katsuki hadn’t known about Uraraka’s plan, he would have lost. Uraraka came at him with all of the ferocity she would become known for. His argument with Tenko was playing in a constant rerun in the back of his head, evaluating what repercussions it all had. Tenko was not Shigaraki, Katsuki knew that without a doubt now and after an outburst like that, the pro-hero would be demanding an explanation.
Katsuki felt a stab of guilt seeing Uraraka fall over in exhaustion, knowing he did not give the fight his all. He knew Izuku would go to Uraraka first, as he always did, then try to find Katsuki to congratulate him before going to fight Todoroki. This time, instead of waiting for Izuku, Katsuki was confronted by Tenko.
The silver-haired pro wore an odd mix of confusion, worry, and apprehension on his face. Katsuki came to a stop in front of him allowing the other to make the first move. They both stood there in silence, neither wanting to be the one that broke the silence. Thankfully neither had to.
Present Mic’s loud voice blasted from a nearby screen, introducing the next competitors, Izuku and Todoroki. “Start talking.” was all Tenko said.
Katsuki looked at Tenko for a moment then sighed, “I think this would be easiest if I start at the beginning.” He looked Tenko right in the eyes and said, “I have been stuck in a time loop for as long as I can remember.”
Tenko stared at Katsuki, waiting to see if the other boy was serious. When he saw he was serious, a new layer of worry came over him. He spoke slowly and clearly to the blond boy standing across from him as if worried one wrong word would set him off again. “Bakugou-kun, I think we need to go speak to a professional about this. We can help you get over whatever it is you have going on. You can trust us.”
Rather than giving a response, Katsuki stared at Tenko. With a sigh, he opened his mouth and started reciting, “What a hit. Things are really heating up. Midoriya lands the first hit of the match. Seems like he’s going all out because he knows he can be healed no matter what. And he’s not feeling the pain because of the adrenaline. Even so, a single healing session won’t be enough for a full recovery. Even if Midoriya wins-”
“Okay, okay, enough!” The way that Katsuki recited those lines, so unemotionally, and most importantly in perfect tandem with Present Mic , convinced Tenko that there was at least something to what Katsuki was saying. Maybe not exactly what the boy had said, but something that made him believe what he was saying.
Quirks worked in mysterious ways at times and it was not outside of the realm of possibility that this was somehow related to his quirk. Highly unlikely, but possible. What Tenko really needed to do now was draw more information out of the kid to see what he thought was happening. “Can you explain more on your ‘time loop’ theory.”
“You don’t believe me.” Tenko could do nothing to respond to the assertion. Katsuki seemed unfazed though and continued with his explanation, “Every time I die, I wake up as a 4-year-old, on the exact same day. I don’t know what caused it, but now we always die the same way.”
“We?”
“Izuku and I.” Before Tenko could question anything, Katsuki was already answering him. “It’s a raid on the League of Villains base that does us in. Izuku goes head to head with All for One and I can never get to him in time. Then I die fighting after. It’s the same every fucking time.”
Katsuki sounds like he was reporting on a story he didn't read, with how little emotion he put into words. If one were talking about their own death, as well as the death of the person you were in love with, you would expect some more passion behind it!
“It doesn’t affect Izuku. He never remembers anything from our past lives. Neither does anyone else. It’s just me.” There was a certain kind of resigned sadness in the boy's eyes then, a kind Tenko had seen only in the eyes of the few heroes that managed to grow old and wrinkled. It was not a look that belonged on the face of a boy less than a fifth of their age.
Tenko nodded slowly, taking all of the information in. “And... how does that relate to you hating me so much… exactly?”
With the first show of emotions since the prep room, Katsuki snorted. “It relates because every single time before now, you were the one leading the charge against the heroes.” Tenko’s eyes widened considerably. “In fact, you’re the one that almost always kills me. And I kill you at the exact same time.”
A pregnant pause then. It was only broken by the huge boom that shook the stadium. Tenko was immediately on guard, scanning the area for a perceived threat. “What was-”
He was interrupted by a long-suffering sigh from Katsuki. He pointed to the screen and there Tenko saw the cause of the sound. A clearing dust cloud showed Todoroki standing in the ring and Izuku flung off to the side like a rag doll. “Come on.” Katsuki started walking to Recovery Girl’s room. “The idiot always beats himself up over this. Going on about how he didn’t make himself known enough.”
Tenko could only gape at the boy, who minutes before he would have assumed had less experience than himself. Contrary to what logic was telling him, he was wrong. “Wait what-, Wait just a goddamn second-” He turned to catch up with the blond. “If what you say is really true, and you know more or less what’s going to happen, how come you didn’t stop Izuku from doing that ?”
“Think I haven’t tried? No matter what I do, the fucker is always as reckless as that. It’s better for my fucking sanity to just leave him. I’ll be there to make sure he doesn’t die before we’re supposed to.”
Tenko would be lying if he said the calm certainty in those words didn’t send chills up his spine.
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Izuku was all smiles when Tenko draped an arm over Katsuki’s shoulder and announced they had started to fix whatever problem Katsuki had with the older pro. Izuku’s friends were just as happy to hear that news, long since tired of the blond’s hair-trigger temper.
As the group talked, there was an unspoken agreement between Katsuki and Tenko to talk after the festival ended. In the back of his mind, Katsuki knew he didn’t confess to Izuku yet and had half a mind to do it at the end of the festival, but he wanted to confess to Izuku with a clear conscious. So, the matter with Tenko took priority.
It was time to fucking end this thing.
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The end came with a talk on the beach Izuku had cleared. The night was cool and the sky clear, leaving the stars unobstructed. The two had drinks they were nersing, mostly for something to hold more than to drink. “So I was a villain, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Do you know how I ended up that way?”
“To be honest, I never gave a flying fucking rat’s ass why. But after a while, I picked up on little things. Best as I can tell, you accidentally killed your old man when your quirk first manifested and your mom threw you out on the street in fear. Then All for One picked you up and that was that.”
“Ah.” Tenko didn’t know what to say to that. He vividly remembered when his quirk manifested. He felt a tingling feeling all over his hands and reached out for his father to sooth it. He barely managed to take his hand off of his father's writ in time to not sever the limb. And if what Katsuki said was true, to keep his father from bleeding out.
Katsuki turned to Tenko and covered his face with his hand. “You always had this weird hand mask thing that you would call ‘father’ all the time and flip the fuck out when anything happened to it.”
Tenko’s face scrunched up in disgust. “That’s so messed up.”
“I know right. And there’s all the other messed up shit too.”
“Is it more stuff about me?”
“About me, actually.”
“Really? What?”
“You know how much of an asshat I was to you at the beginning?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, in my first life, I was exactly like that to Izuku. I became a little shitheel like that after I got my quirk and he was quirkless.”
“No.”
“I was and I regret every second of it. I bullied him for ten years, even told him to kill himself. Even though I’ve never done anything like it since then, I always try to make it up to Izuku.”
“Do you know why you were like that?”
“Of fucking course I know why I was like that. I thought everyone’s quirk tied into their value as a human being, and with Izuku being quirkless, it just made him an easy target. It got really bad when I couldn’t make heads or tails of my feelings for him and started taking it out on him. It took Izuku all but pounding my ass into the pavement to get my head out of my ass. I still can't believe he fell in love with me then.”
“Lovebirds from the start, eh?”
“I guess so. There were also the times when…”
And on and on the conversation went. As the years went by, Katsuki learned to trust Tenko more and more to the point were the only person closer to Katsuki was Izuku himself.
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Today was the day. Their last day in this life. Or so it had been for so long. Tenko knew what this day meant, having been frantic for months trying to find a way to avoid the inevitable. After all this time, there was a small light of hope starting to come through Katsuki’s heart, but he squashed it as soon as it came.
It never did Katsuki any favors to be optimistic this day.
The fight was the same as it always was, a sea of blood and screams. Despite everything, Katsuki always ran frantically to reach Izuku’s side, desperate to at least hear his husband’s final words.
The hero Deku did battle with All for One and his disciple, Dabi aka Todoroki Touya this time. Katsuki never took his eyes off the fight, taking in what he thought was Izuku’s last moments. Izuku charged up his final attack, the all or nothing punch that would be met with a spike through the chest. Then, it happened.
It fucking happened.
Tenko shot out like a bullet at the last moment and decayed the stone spike before it could do more harm to Izuku. To be sure, the hero was gravely injured, but it wasn’t life-threatening. Yet.
Katsuki reached Izuku’s side as he was gasping in pain, trying to staunch the blood flow. All for One lay broken on the floor and a little ways away, Tenko grappled with Dabi, trying to keep him contained.
Somewhat in shock at the fact that the love of his life wasn’t dying in his arms just yet, Katsuki cauterize the wound shut, flinching at the pained yell Izuku gave off as a reaction. Izuku looked up with pained eyes and whispered to Katsuki, “I’ll be okay now. Just go finish off the fight for me okay?”
A new kind of hope and light burst within Katsuki’s soul then. Izuku was alive. Izuku was ALIVE. It was more than he could have ever hoped for. He looked to the fight around him and saw the key players in the League taken down and captured by the heroes, Dabi being the only one left standing. With a roar, Katsuki threw himself into the fight, alongside the one who had almost always been the one he was fighting.
Dabi went down almost too easily under the combined weight of pro-heroes Ground Zero and Gensui. Seeing the head of the League of Villains taken down, with their master dead and gone and knowing without a doubt that Izuku was behind him, breathing and alive sent a feeling of pure euphoria though Katsuki that there was no way he’d ever be able to describe.
It was that last look at Tenko, the face that he had once known as Shigaraki Tomura, the reason why he and Izuku were breathing sent the final shock through Katsuki.
The world faded to black as Katsuki fainted.
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Katsuki woke with a start. He half expected to wake in a child’s body, forced to start the whole maddening process all over again. But instead, he was greeted with the familiar tell tail aches and pains that always followed a villain fight. A look to his left showed and exhausted and bandaged Tenko sleeping with his head in his hands at his bedside.
The silver-haired pro snorted awake as soon as Katsuki made contact with him. “Katsuki!” One look at the blond was enough to get tears pooling in his eyes and a smile to spread across his face. “Oh thank god.” After composing himself, Tenko joked, “Almost thought your whole doom and gloom shit was actually gonna happen. Don’t scare us like that again, you hear?”
Nodding, Katsuki breathed, “I hear you.” He then asked, some trepidation in his voice, “Where’s Izuku?” Tenko pointed to his right side and Katsuki turned to see him. Izuku was unconscious, a mess of bandages and wires, but nevertheless, the steady beating of his heart rang through the hospital room.
It was seeing Izuku; battered, bruised, and bloody, but unquestionably alive on the other side of that horrific battle that finally made reality set in. Katsuki cried then. He sobbed and wailed like he never had before, a culmination of everything he had repressed for so long finally coming out. It was everything he had hoped for at the beginning of this whole mess, far more than he ever expected to get after an unknowable amount of time.
Katsuki finally had his chance to live his life all the way to the end with Izuku. The one chance he had always longed for but never thought he could attain.
One More Chance.