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Is this what failure felt like?
Katsuki Bakugo, the boy who prided himself on winning, could barely pick himself up from the ruined floor. Pain etched throughout his whole body after being thrown like a rag doll. Was this weakness? The fight lasted so damn long, and yet there was no improvement. They were no closer to beating Shigaraki.
His biggest attack could barely reach him.
All that training, all that fighting. Planning, practising, all of it for nothing. He couldn't win. All his strength, all his fight had crumbled under Shigaraki's hand.
He had always been the strongest. His quirk and his raw talent were always something to be adored, something he put countless hours into honing and hardening it into what it was today. He could never fail.
Every morning, he forced himself to rise, to start the day, to be the best. Fighting to win every battle, every challenge and never succumbing to failure.
But as it hit him now, standing in front of him in the shape of Tomura Shigaraki, it was like staring into a cold mirror. Unsettling and almost... quiet. Failure in its ugliest form was staring him down.
Even with Shigaraki tearing through the fellow heroes he trained beside, heroes he would scorn but silently admired, a part of him, a small yet unwelcome part, shivered.
Fear?
Was this fear?
He was Katsuki Bakugo, the boy who could push through anything. The boy who had been kidnapped by the league and didn't let it affect his daily life after, at least to the public eye. He trained and got stronger, so it could never happen again. He wouldn't be able to deal with the guilt if it happened again. He always pushed through. That belief had been unshakable.
But this was different.
"Right."
His body trembled from the force of sitting upright, forcing himself to stay upright. Each breath sent waves of pain through his chest, his face damp from his tears.
The air itself seemed to still, waiting for him to make a choice, to move, to fight. Fighting was the one thing he understood; fighting was like breathing. An instinct honed by experiences and training. Honed by his desire to be the best. To be like All Might.
But for once, instinct wasn't enough.
"Finger... feint..."
His head screamed. He was tired. So damn tired.
But his pride, his ego, it roared loud in his mind, forcing him not to give up. With every move Shigaraki made, the pain in his head got harder and harder to ignore. It was criminal.
The fighting all around him stretched into his mind like a drug. He was supposed to be out there. He was supposed to take him down.
Failure didn't belong to him.
"Right... timing... wraparound... back..."
The mantle of responsibility and his stain of guilt pressed against him. He couldn't fall into the fear, the envy and the small shadow of helplessness that crept at the edges of his mind. He shoved it down.
He couldn't let it breathe.
He would never.
Not while he was still standing.
Not while he was still able to fight.
He was Katsuki Bakugo.
Failure was never an option.
"Take care of the others."
Just like that, it clicked.
It wasn't just about him; it wasn't just about winning. The weight of duty, of his responsibility, settled heavily on his shoulders.
His legs shook as he forced himself to stand, taking step after step towards Shigaraki.
Izuku wasn't here. And he couldn't fight alone. If Katsuki didn't fight now, who would fight alongside him later? The nerd always had a thing for putting himself last. Katsuki needed to be there to make sure he was protected too.
He had a purpose in this war.
It wasn't about getting even anymore.
People were suffering, people were scared.
He was scared.
He tried using his anger to blanket his fears, something he always did. A safe, familiar way to hide how he felt, how guilt ate him from the inside, clawing into him every day.
He couldn't. Not anymore. Not now.
"I have to win... right, Izuku?"
Cluster sent waves upon waves of hurt in is body, all his pores working overtime to keep up with him and his drive to win.
But who was he to complain?
Izuku had experienced that all before, fighting while in pain, taking note of opponents' moves mid-fight and using that to his advantage. Everything he was doing now were things Izuku taught him.
Were things Izuku had already mastered.
He was chasing behind his hero all his life.
Was it a crime to want to chase him forever? Being a hero who cared so much for others, who longed to save others, was it a crime to chase after that?
To chase after him?
Could he ever be enough... like him?
"Hey Izuku...."
"Can I still catch up to you?"
It was weird how rain or water always seemed to follow Katsuki in his deepest moments. Maybe that's why he hated it so much, because it had the calmness he so desperately needed.
Pain still clawed at his body, but it was distant now, like a fading headache hiding behind the explosions in his mind. Everything felt slower and softer, and in that strange yet suspended silence, he could see it all. Every choice, every failure, every moment that led him to this moment.
Praise was something he had always gotten. Praise for his quirk, for his abilities.
Anyone could have gotten that raise if they were born with his quirk, but they didn't. He got that praise. He had that amazing quirk.
People flocked to him like birds.
Parents, teachers, friends.
People loved his quirk.
Izuku saw past that and saw just him. How he wished he had noticed that before. Maybe it wouldn't have been like this.
The river.
One of his earliest memories, one that he wished he could redo and choose another option, because it might have been different. Everything might have changed.
Izuku Midoriya's small hand reached for him back when they were brats. He slapped it away, shoved the boy off, disgusted that he was being recused by a 'quirkless hero wannabe'.
He needed that hand.
Years passed, and he continued to pretend he didn't need that hand. He didn't understand why the moment played in his head during his weakest moments. It was a stain on his memory.
He spent years chasing, training, yelling, and exploding, but it was always there.
If he could go back, he would take that hand. He would have never made that permanent line between them. Their relationship changed because he was feeling so insecure, because, without thinking, Izuku Midoriya climbed down to make sure his friend was okay.
He did something that he would never do. Izuku always had the qualities of a hero. He had always been a hero. It didn't matter if he had a quirk or not; in every universe, in every timeline, Izuku Midoriya would always be a hero.
"Oh... right."
The symbol of peace, All Might, stood in front of him. A golden vestige of him. The man who had seen his arrogance, his rage and even his failures and still inspired him.
He remembered the raw, unshaped anger he had, the one covering his fear from that moment. He was taken by the league of villains because he seemed so villain-like.
It never left.
That guilt.
Destroying the number one hero. It was because of him, all his fault, that All Might had ended up losing his power.
He blamed it on his lack of strength, on the fact that he was kidnapped in the first place for the way he acted. When it first happened, he had stayed awake constantly, replaying everything. He could never let himself forget it.
But All Might never blamed him. Wasn't that heroic in itself?
He listened, he acknowledged, and above all, All Might still continued to guide him. Even though All Might told him that night that he was always going to lose his power, it still haunted Katsuki.
He could have had more time.
And Katsuki wasn't going to let his sacrifice go to waste. He was going to be a proper hero, just like the hero he had admired for years.
"So uh... thinking back to when we finally met... I was pretty much a punk, going through some stuff."
Even if One for All was a cursed power, it was the power that struck hope into so many hearts.
Now that Izuku had it and carried that mantle, he spread hope as the hero he was training to be.
He didn't think twice when it came to putting himself into harm's way if it was to save.
Is that why Izuku saved him all those months ago?
Without thinking, he moved.
Why?
He needed to save.
"And now it looks like I've missed my chance to ask..."
Izuku was always a hero.
It was as factual as the sky being blue on clear summer days, as factual as Aizawa's no-nonsense attitude.
Not even Katsuki's projections of inadequacy or self-loathing could stop him from being the hero he was always destined to be.
Did the apology mean something to Izuku?
They never got to talk about it. Everything had to keep moving. War wouldn't stop for him.
Apologies meant nothing without action, without change. Katsuki would spend his life showing that change because that's what Izuku deserved. His past could never be changed, but he could change the trajectory of his future.
Helping Izuku become a better hero, and his training; that was his atonement, even if Izuku didn't realise. Even if he had to atone for the rest of his life, he would.
It was for Izuku.
It was for All Might.
It was for himself.
It made him better, and damn it, he wanted to be better.
"Man..."
The rain fell on deaf ears.
Almost like a light blanket, covering Katsuki's unmoving body so he could finally rest.
But maybe this was enough. After giving everything he had, his strength, his stubbornness, guilt, and all his pride, he had fought for them.
The rain continued to pour, steady and calm, like applause he could finally believe he had earned.
"I wanted an autograph so bad."