Chapter Text
Bakugou Katsuki dies for the first time when he is five years old.
It's not ostentatious or hero-like, nothing like he expected to go out, just a simple car crash. It's simple, yes, but he doesn't think he'll ever forget the dead look in his mother's eyes as her arms fell limp from where they were holding him protectively. Her spiky blonde hair soaked in crimson, a glass shard from the shattered window impaling her: one through her throat, and the other through her stomach.
He dies from shock, the doctor tells his father and not the seatbelt that suffocated him.
Quick and painless, the doctor tells his father, fingers crossed behind their backs.
The Grim Reaper is exactly like they portray him in the media. Black, tattered cloak, the abyss where a face should be and an indistinguishable seven-foot figure. Long, bony figures are curled around a shiny and well-cared-for scythe.
He remembers the stories his great-grandmother used to tell him when she was still alive before death had claimed her soul like it's about to do to him. Death is patient, she had said, but I'd say he's pretty bored, so you'd do good to give him a good show.
Katsuki leaps in front of his mother's battered soul and snarls like a feral cat, like she's the only thing he's got left to snarl for. He sees his face reflected in the Reaper's scythe, scruffy and bloodied and raw. He braces himself for the mocking laughter, the cruel grin that he can't see but can feel.
Instead, the Grim Reaper sighs and shakes the space where his head should be. "What a terribly young soul," he says sadly, his voice like rattling bones with the echo of a thousand whispered words.
It's not what he expected him to say, but he bares his teeth anyway and plants his feet, his chin raised. "You won't take 'er." His voice shakes and his body trembles, betraying his fear. "Stay away from 'er."
The Reaper looks over his shoulder to his mother's soul before slowly turning back to him. "She's not who I'm after."
The Reaper holds out one bony hand.
Katsuki takes it.
He wakes up with a startled gasp, breathing heavy, and doesn't answer his mother's worried questioning when he clutches her tight, tears dripping down his face.
It takes a few dozen lives for him to be able to look at her without seeing her lifeless eyes and tasting blood in his throat.
It takes eight lives to figure out one of the first things he needs to change.
Midoriya Izuku.
The Reaper (who he's been told to call Grim) stands beside him in the in-between as they watch 14-year-old Midoriya sob over his battered body, and Katsuki thinks that maybe he was wrong, in this at least, all along.
Katsuki falls into a cross-legged position, a hand over his face, age making him weary, even if this is the longest he's ever lived.
"He's a good kid," Grim says, voice flat, but Katsuki can imagine a smile where his mouth should be. He rattles his scythe. "He's favoured by a lot of the higher-ups, human though he may be."
Katsuki isn't surprised. The nerd has always had stupidly good luck, besides the unfortunate circumstances he was born into. "What does that say about me?" Katsuki mutters.
Grim's bones shake with laughter. It's a rather disturbing sight. "It means you're favoured by me, boy."
"I don't see how that's any better," Katsuki snorts.
Grim's bones shake harder. "I am death itself," he says, "I hold life and death in my palms, child. What is anything to me? If I so wished, you'd be in the underworld as my slave right now."
"But I'm not," Katsuki retorts, "And you won't put me there, will you? You say you favour me, yet you make me suffer."
Grim, body floating in the air as usual (there is no such thing as land, or anything, in the in-between), leans back slightly, leg presumably crossed over the other. He gestured to Izuku.
"Who said this was to make you suffer?" Grim says, his bones going still. "You have infinite time to get it right, so go get it right, boy."
Bright light flashes in Katsuki's eyes, and the cycle repeats.
Katsuki falls off of the bridge into the river below, and when Izuku offers him his hand, he takes it, just as he did with Grim nine lives ago when he sealed his fate.
This doesn't feel all that different.
The Sludge Villain Incident is not new, has happened consistently every time he made it past 14, one way or another.
What is new is the broken form of Midoriya Izuku laying at his feet. His mouth is wide open in a silent scream, sludge filling his mouth, eyes the size of dinner plates and glazed over. His leg is bent at an odd angle, uniform scruffy, one mangled hand clutching his in-tact notebook.
The district smells like smoke and blood. It invades Katsuki's nose and lungs and chokes him from the inside out.
Hands are grabbing at him, hands pulling 14-year-old Midoriya Izuku's body away, microphones being shoved in his face, voices whispering soothing things into his ear.
He falls to his knees, turns his head to the sky, hair covering his eyes, opens his mouth, and screams.
Grim stares down at him with sympathy.
Katsuki is curled into a tight ball, hands fisted in his hair, jaw clenched shut, eyes wide and horrified.
In all his nine lives, apart from his very first one, he has always been the first one to die out of all of his important people.
Apparently, that will not always be the case.
His mind starts racing, as suddenly, dozens of possibilities open up to him. This could happen to anyone. His mother his father, his lackeys, Izuku--
"It's luck of the draw," Grim says, somehow softly, "You weren't fast enough."
"I know," Katsuki whispers harshly, voice cracking.
Grim turns to him, bones still and the very semblance of his being thunderous. He does not move, but his scythe shakes in his hand.
"Then what are you doing?" His tone does not change, but the weight of it does, his voice booming in the silence of the in-between. "Get off your knees, boy, spit your blood and go. Take your revenge, and complete whatever you seek out to do."
Katsuki gets to his feet, his limbs shaking and breaths raggard, and for the first time since he died next to his mother, his crimson eyes are alight with renewed determination.
There is conviction there, sharp and endless.
(I am coming for all the monsters that ever touched him, I am coming for all the ones who twisted his stars into shadows, they turned him into a nightmare, so I'm going to be theirs, Katsuki thinks.
For all the people who ever hurt Midoriya Izuku, they'll be shown to the deepest pits of hell.)
The first time he sees Izuku in his tenth life (double digits -- it feels like he only just turned 14) he latches onto him like a limpet.
Izuku stumbles back in shock, not surprising considering he hasn't hugged him like this since they were two, but his arms nevertheless circle his waist and hold him tight.
"Kacchan...?" Izuku says hesitantly, voice high-pitched and innocent. Katsuki tightens his grip and looks up at him with eyes that are redder than usual, a deep scowl on his toddler's face.
"You gotta stay by my side," Katsuki says roughly, "got that, Izuku? You can't leave."
Izuku's eyes widen before his face relaxes and a smile curls his lips. "Of course, Kacchan!" He says, "I wasn't planning on leaving you anyway."
Katsuki smiles back and buries his face in his curly green hair.
It becomes a thing, Katsuki and Izuku. You can't see one without the other. Izuku is still quirkless, that has never changed, but now everyone knows better than to mess with him.
(If they do, Katsuki becomes something straight out of their nightmares.)
Katsuki gets what he wants. Izuku is protected, stays sweet and innocent, has confidence, but he still wants to be a hero.
(He's quirkless-- because they go to the soda shop after school and Katsuki blows the smile villain to fucking bits and pieces.
Izuku is a little terrified by the exchange, but Katsuki justifies it -- the death -- in his mind by saying it's all for Izuku's sake.
He has to become a nightmare for a few minutes -- sharp steel and flashing eyes and teeth -- but it's all worth it.
It will always be worth it.)
So, because Katsuki knows that Izuku is stubborn to a fault and won't give up in this, they compromise on Shiketsu. It's not as attention grabbing, not as much as UA, and Izuku needs that if he wants to be a quirkless hero.
They both pass with flying colours, the Shiketsu entrance exam catering much more to people with non-flashy type quirks than UA, and celebrate with impossibly spicy katsudon and so much ice cream it leaves them sick for weeks.
They meet a loud, tall boy in ownership of a powerful wind quirk that Katsuki butts heads with but makes a great friend and rival out of.
They meet a pretty girl with annoying slang who likes to pull pranks and make them trip over their own feet with her illusions.
There's an uptight upperclassman who Katsuki has to restrain himself from throttling, so dignified and proud that Katsuki has to contain the urge to roll his eyes every time he talks.
They're not bad, could be better, but they become Katsuki's people. Those he holds close to his heart.
(Halfway through his second term, Katsuki stands with blood on his hands and an empty gaze. There's a body against his chest, harsh coughs and violent shivers escaping the body's frame.
In the back of his mind, he can hear Camie's desperate sobs and Inasa's ear-piercing screams.
There's a knife piercing straight through Midoriya Izuku's chest, and Katsuki kind of wishes it was piercing him too.
Instead, another villains blood is added to his hands, and later, after Izuku's ceremony, he takes his own advice from his eighth life and takes a swan dive off the roof.
Inasa and Camie are silent come the day of his funeral.
He couldn't save his best friend.
He couldn't save himself.
He doesn't deserve their tears.)