Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The prosecution’s office is cramped– two floors of a high rise office building jammed full of just barely enough cubicles to house all 132 of Shizuoka’s criminal prosecutors. It is certainly not as luxurious as some of the defense firms that are located just down the street, where even legal assistants get personal offices with actual walls and windows looking out over the city– but the bile that rises in the back of your throat whenever you think about being a defense lawyer means that you have no choice but to deal with your very sad cubicle, lest you go into property law or something equally boring. 

Unsurprisingly, such a small office means that everything travels extremely quickly. You had learned that the hard way when the kettle had been broken in the breakroom and you had tried to microwave your pitiful excuse of a lunch, a cup of instant ramen, completely forgetting to add any water in your haste to finish up and get back to your desk. The ramen had practically been charred black and smoke had begun billowing out of the microwave by the time you’d realized. The entire office smelled of burnt noodles so badly for the remainder of the work week that you had been unwillingly bestowed with the nickname “Scorch”.

The whole event being so memorably annoying to your coworkers combined with it being your first week in an office with so much turnover that nobody bothered to learn each other's names meant that the nickname had been cemented and you still hadn’t managed to escape it. Even years later, you hear your actual name maybe once a week in the office– and to your absolute horror, the story of your transgression and subsequent title has even made its way over to some of the defense lawyers. The feeling of abject despair when you had once opened an email from a defense lawyer only to see that the opening line addressed you by “Scorch” rather than your real name is something you won’t forget.

Unfortunately, you are not only known for your instant ramen wrongdoings. If it was just the Scorch thing, you could handle it; the nickname was occasionally grating, but it didn’t impact your work. What was truly unfortunate was that you had offered one time to take on a difficult file from a coworker. 

Transferring files happened all the time– whether it was discomfort with some details of the case or unfamiliarity with case law relating to the offense, handing over a file or two to another prosecutor was inevitable in this line of work. You couldn’t stand prosecuting stalking offenses– it hit too close to home and your coworkers had always been good about snagging those files from you whenever they found their way onto your caseload. You returned the favor often, quick to consult on or take over a file entirely if one of your fellow junior prosecutors seemed to be particularly struggling.

Your error wasn’t in offering to take a difficult file, you would do that in a heartbeat every time as long as you had capacity. No, your mistake was taking on a file with a very specific difficulty.

Katsuki Bakugou, better known as the number one hero, Dynamight, is a notoriously awful witness. He routinely fails to attend witness prep meetings and regularly threatens not to show up to court, which in itself is not the worst. You had heard from some of the senior prosecutors that back when Endeavor was still working as a hero, he never answered his phone and his assistants weren’t any help in getting a hold of him, either. Dynamight answered his phone at the least, but he typically answered it yelling and swearing before the person on the other end could even open their mouth to continue speaking after introducing themselves as being part of the prosecution’s office. A subpoena showing up on his desk was like a personal insult to him, and his actual conduct in court wasn’t much better from what you had heard floating over the cubicle walls in the office. 

“He called the Justice a shithead the last time I had him as a witness for one of my files. I thought for sure he was going to get hit with a contempt charge.”

“We had six officers in the courtroom because he looked like he was going to leap out of the witness box at any moment and attack the accused.”

“He told defense counsel that he was going to beat the shit out of him.”

At least he showed up, you supposed. There were many heroes and police officers who thought court was beneath them and understandably would much rather be out on patrol rather than sitting for hours outside the courtroom until it was their turn to testify. Multiple distribution wide emails had been sent to the hero agencies and police commission in your time– reminding heroes and officers alike that showing up to court was a legal obligation, and failing to do so could jeopardize the cases they had involvement on and result in the villains they had worked so hard to put behind bars being released. You had very little faith that the heroes that needed those reminders actually bothered to read those emails, but at least the justice department was trying to do something.

A few months into working with Shizuoka’s criminal prosecutions, when your coworkers would still shoot you warning glares every time you got within a few feet of the microwave, you had been in the lunchroom while one of your colleagues was lamenting about how hard of a time she was having dealing with a witness on one of her files. She hadn’t gone into detail, just mentioned that she dreaded calling a specific witness to court and was considering withdrawing the whole file because of how poorly she anticipated the entire thing going– and you, the angel that you had been, hadn’t thought much of it and offered to take it off her hands.

During your first year in law school, an unfortunate amount of your classmates had been complete and utter assholes, constantly trying to one-up and sabotage each other. You hated it at the time, even considered dropping out and taking a gap year– but you pushed through and that year of hell had taught you very well how to handle difficult people, to put it kindly. Dealing with assholes was something you didn’t mind; you had been called every name under the sun and were familiar with the authority you had as a prosecutor to make people listen to you. Witnesses have to show up to court, and you had no problem making it clear to difficult witnesses that you have the authority to issue a warrant for their arrest if they don’t. 

So you had offered to take the file. You hadn’t noticed it at the time, but the prosecutors in the cubicles closest to the lunchroom had all paused in their typing, heads peaking over the edge of the cubicle walls to get a look and see which sorry soul had just signed away any inkling of job satisfaction they had left. Your coworker who had the file wasted absolutely no time and jumped up out of her seat at the lunch table, completely abandoning her lunch in favor of rushing over to her desk to gather up all of the folders and binders for the file. She had dumped the massive stacks of paper on your desk as quickly as she could, before you could realize what you had just signed up for and change your mind.

Looking over the file, you really hadn’t understood what was so difficult about it as you flipped through the pages. It was a routine robbery offense from a villain that was on probation and had previous theft convictions. There was security footage and the theft had been valued at over 700 000 yen– well over the 500 000 yen threshold for the theft to be classified as a severe offense worthy of jail time, especially given the repeat offense. The evidence was so strong that surely whatever difficult witness your coworker had been dealing with wasn’t actually needed.

It was when you had found the witness list, buried in the midst of all the papers, that you had realized. Katsuki Bakugou was halfway down the list, hidden amongst the names of a handful of police officers and a civilian witness who you assumed to be the shop owner. Upon reviewing the security footage, you'd realized precisely why your coworker was dreading going to court for this file.

Dynamight had beaten the shit out of the guy, thrown him through a wall and caused enough destruction to the store that the cost of his damages probably outweighed the total cost of what this guy was trying to steal in the first place. You had cringed as you watched the video, the arguments the defense would almost certainly make about unreasonable force flashing through your mind. There was no way you could avoid calling Dynamight as a witness, because if you wanted any kind of substantial sentence for this villain, you had to prove to the Justice that Dynamight’s force was proportionally appropriate. Otherwise, defense would flaunt the video in front of the Judge and argue for the lowest sentence possible due to misuse of force in the process of the administration of justice.

In the end, the case had never gone to trial. You'd accepted a plea deal from defense that resulted in a pathetically small amount of jail time and some mandatory villain reform programming. Definitely not your proudest moment, but you were lucky to even get a criminal conviction in the first place. After the file had been resolved, your coworker had dropped by your desk to profusely thank you for taking it off her hands, promising to call you by your actual name from now on.

In the end, you never even had to speak with Dynamight in regards to the file. There was no need for any witness preparation or damage control in court since the case had been resolved before trial, and Dynamight’s subpoena for the matter was cancelled. For a moment, you had pondered having a meeting to remind him of his duties to adhere to the use of force guidelines in place for heroes, but you were sure he’d already been chewed out by the commission for his actions. Even if he hadn’t, you highly doubted he’d retain a single word you said to him anyways if you bothered to call.

The real damage was that you became known in the office as being the one willing to take on files where Dynamight was the responding hero. Your coworker had sung your praises across the entire office, talked about how you had been so willing to take on the file and how you had apparently gotten such an "amazing" outcome despite how badly Dynamight’s actions fucked the whole thing up. Before you knew it, you had junior and senior prosecutors coming up to you with files, a smile on their face that you have now seen so many times you immediately know what they are going to ask for before they even open their mouths.

You had no problem being stern when it came to the prosecution of your files; you'd argued with defense lawyers more times than you could count, pushed back against court decisions and been ruthless in cross-examining defense witnesses. You weren’t afraid to tell a police officer or hero that they had to show up or you’d jeopardize their career by issuing a witness warrant. Defense lawyers routinely rolled their eyes in annoyance when you met them in court and told them you were taking over a file. You had even received some very rare praise from some of the more senior prosecutors regarding your unwillingness to roll over when a Justice delivers a decision regarding evidence admissibility that you don't necessarily agree with.

Where you faltered and became a living doormat was in saying no to your coworkers. The junior prosecutors who approached you looked at you with so much hope, clearly way in over their heads; and the senior prosecutors demanded a level of respect that meant you could never decline. So you had said yes to taking each and every file that had Dynamight’s name on the witness list, which unfortunately meant that you took on quite a few files because he was the number one hero and never seemed to take a fucking day off.

Thankfully, a good chunk of the Dynamight files that landed on your desk were ones where the amount of contact required with Dynamight was minimal to none. At this point, Dynamight was so infamous in the office that prosecutor's merely saw his name attached to the file and immediately pawned it off to you as quickly as they could. You were pretty sure that it was the first thing some of your colleagues checked when they were handed a new case; and most of the time, you were able to resolve files with guilty pleas or have other heroes or officers who had been present testify at trial instead. You'd been fortunate enough so far that whenever it seemed Dynamight was going to have to testify, you managed to weasel your way into getting a guilty plea from the accused and subsequently avoiding a trial.

Regardless, you had become well acquainted with Dynamight’s office, particularly his two assistants, who you pitied more than yourself. At least you got paid a decent amount to deal with this, whereas you doubted Dynamight’s assistants were getting compensation anywhere close to what they deserved for dealing with the firecracker of a hero.

You'd fortunately only ever had to deal with Dynamight on the phone. You were sure he had your number saved in his phone as some sort of expletive, because every time you called in regards to a file, he was already angry before you could even get a word in. The sheer number of times you unfortunately had to call him meant that you had become very skilled at talking over his yelling and remaining unfazed in the face of his rage. Of course, he never really listened to you– it was nearly every other phone call that he demanded you talk to your supervisor and have him excluded from ever being subpoenaed again for anything, as if that was even a possibility in the first place.

Sometimes you truly wanted to ask him if he only cared about throwing people through windows and demolishing buildings in the process, because his unwillingness to cooperate at all sure made it seem like he didn’t give a shit about any kind of justice. You never cared enough to ask, partly because he’d never bother to actually respond and would instead probably go off on his own rage fueled tangent and partly because you already knew the answer anyways. Dynamight may be one of the most difficult heroes to work with, but there was certainly no shortage of other arrogant heroes with their heads so far up their asses that they too got offended when the telltale yellow paper of a witness subpoena graced their desk. Heroes were in most ways a blessing– at least to the general public. When it came to criminal prosecutions, a lot of them could really learn to be a tad more cooperative.

With this file, it seems that your lucky streak of not having to face Dynamight’s rage in person is coming to an end. It’s a high profile case on multiple well-known villains involved in an emerging gang known as "Infinition" who have wriggled their way out of criminal convictions multiple times on technicalities. The defense has made it clear to you that this is going to trial, with absolutely no possibility of any resolution short of a complete withdrawal of the charges. A trial has already been booked for the span of nearly two months, and Dynamight is of course the star witness. He had led the raid on the compound and been the one to put the villains in cuffs after surveilling them for weeks and systematically taking down their accomplices. Your prosecution hinges on his testimony, which means that if you want this to go even remotely well, you need to prepare him very thoroughly for court, especially considering his infamous reputation among the Judges.

Considering the complexity of this file and your level of experience, it is truly shocking that it ended up on your desk. You were still a Level 1 prosecutor, a baby lawyer in the eyes of everyone above you in the office. A Level 4 prosecutor had unceremoniously dumped the file on your desk without asking (because who were you to say no?) and left you to fend for yourself. Any other Level 1 getting a file of this significance would be seen as an egregious mistake. Files like these– attempted murder with a restricted firearm, actual murder, hostage taking, kidnapping, and over 100 other similarly serious charges between the three accused– these files universally stay with the top of the top, the 4s and the 5s. You suppose that on the bright side, you should take it as a compliment; surely you must be pretty good at your job if a senior prosecutor was willing to hand a file like this over to you just so they didn't have to deal with Dynamight. Shortly after being given the file and having a very thorough mental breakdown about it, you'd offloaded almost all of your other active files onto other prosecutors, all of whom had taken them with a pitiful expression, practically offering their condolences to you.

You sigh as you pick up your desk phone, dialing the number to Dynamight’s office without even sparing a glance towards the sticky note on the edge of your computer monitor with the phone number written down, a sad face next to it. The line rings twice before somebody answers.

“Ground Zero Hero Agency, how can I help you?” The voice on the other end is chipper, and you immediately recognize it as belonging to one of Dynamight’s two assistants, Shimizu.

“Hi Shimizu-san, how are you doing today?”

“Oh! It’s you,” Shimizu’s voice on the other end changes, and anyone else who hadn’t spoken to her as much as you had wouldn’t notice it, but you can hear the way the dread seems to settle over her when she realizes that it’s you calling and that you're probably going to ask for something that will piss Dynamight off. “How can I help you today?”

“I need to book a witness prep meeting for a trial I’ve got coming up in September,” you answer. There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, like poor Shimizu is imagining how she’s going to work up the nerve to tell Dynamight she’s booked this after everything is all said and done.

“S-September?” she starts. “That’s nearly four months– isn’t that quite far away? I don’t think Dynamight has received any subpoenas for anything in September…”

“Sorry Shimizu-san, this is a big file– I’ve got to get my ducks in a row early,” you respond, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear as you lean back in your chair, staring up at the spackled ceiling tiles above. “Subpoenas normally aren’t delivered until a month before the trial date, but I’ll reach out to the court and see if I can have it delivered earlier. Hopefully that will make Dynamight more likely to comply.”

“Oh, okay,” Shimizu’s voice is more strained, and you can hear the sound of her nails clacking against a keyboard in the background of the call. “Is it just a phone call that you need with him? He’s not in office now, but I can have him call you when he gets back–”

“You know better than me that he won’t do that,” you interrupt. “I need an in-person meeting anyways. Book it for as soon as you can and blame me for it when you have to tell Dynamight. You can tell him I was a hard-ass about it, he shouldn’t have any difficulties believing that.”

Shimizu lets out a nervous laugh. “Uh– okay!” Bless her heart. If you had called and gotten Dynamight’s other assistant, Inoue, you probably would’ve had to do some more convincing to get her to book a meeting so soon. “Does next Monday at 10 work for you? Dynamight is not on patrol until 4 that day.”

“Yes, that works perfectly. Thank you, Shimizu-san,” you respond, making sure to thank her since you’re not entirely confident that she gets any positive feedback at the office. “Please make sure that Bakugou has any notes he has about the file present for the meeting. I will send you information on the file so he knows which one we are meeting about.”

“Notes… okay,” Shimizu answers hesitantly, pausing to perhaps scribble down a reminder on a piece of paper.

The call ends shortly after, leaving you the rest of the day to begin working on a plan for how the hell you are going to make Dynamight work as a witness for this trial. The defense lawyer for the accused is unfortunately very good at his job; you've had him as defense counsel on a few of your files, and he is the exact kind of lawyer that would easily bait Dynamight into anger and slip him up, using his rage-fueled words against him. From all that you have heard from your colleagues, Dynamight is a villain's worst nightmare and a defense lawyer’s dream. He doesn’t think before he speaks, and he is quite possibly the easiest witness in the world to paint as combative and uncooperative in front of a Judge.

The hours pass as you toil over the file, reviewing security footage and witness statements. The amount of evidence means that you have a dozen binders that are each at least three inches thick and stacked full of paper, not to mention the near terabyte of digital evidence scattered across multiple USBs. You try not to focus too closely on the fact that so far, there are distinctly no written statements or notes from Dynamight at all, despite him being the lead hero on the file.

Your desk phone ringing snaps you out of your spiral of worry. You lift your head from the third binder that you’ve gone through today, glancing towards the incessant sound. 

GROUND ZERO HERO AGENCY

Your eyes narrow as you read the caller display, a sense of dread settling in the back of your throat. Shimizu better not be calling back because Dynamight threw a fit about the meeting, though in all likelihood that is probably exactly what happened.

Your hand grasps the phone, hesitating for a moment as you take a breath before picking it up and bringing it to your ear.

“Shizuoka Prosecutions, this is–”

“The hell do you think you are scheduling a meeting without asking me first?!” Dynamight’s enraged voice crackles through the phone, loud enough that you flinch away from the receiver and adjust to hold it an inch or two away from you.

“Dynamight, it’s good to hear from you, too,” you start, your calm voice a stark contrast to the fury you can feel emanating over the line. “There is quite an important trial coming up later this year, and considering that you typically don’t answer when I call you directly, I went through your assistant.”

“Bullshit I don’t answer, you coward!” he snaps back, and you sigh. It’s not even worth bringing up the sheer number of case notes you have on the prosecution’s database that begin with ‘attempted to call pro hero Dynamight…’

“This meeting is very–”

“I don’t give a shit!” he interrupts again. “I am busy and this is bullshit– do you have any idea how many people I have crawling up my ass trying to get a meeting with me? You’re not special, you can wait like the rest of the extras.”

You don’t bother to pause to see if he has anything left to say. Any silence you give him, he will fill with his incessant whining. “It’s my understanding that you would like to see Infinition dismantled, correct? Or am I mistaken?”

“The hell does that have to do with anything? Of course I do, you dumbass."

“The prosecution for the three leading villains of Infinition is what the meeting is about, Dynamight. Your testimony is required, and if you want these people to see jail time, you need to cooperate with me.”

“I don’t have a subpoena for that bullshit yet, call me when I do,” he snaps back, and you can almost hear the way his jaw clenches and his teeth grind together whenever he finishes speaking. How has this guy not had a heart attack yet with how angry everything seems to make him?

“You will be receiving a subpoena, and I need to begin preparing my case early. There can be no delay unless you want to increase the risk of these villains being found not guilty. The earlier we begin preparing, the more we reduce the chances of an acquittal.” You run a hand through your hair before leaning forward, your elbow propped on your desk as your hand rests on your forehead, keeping you upright. “If you are going to refuse to cooperate, I am happy to withdraw all of the charges against the accused. Is that what you would like?”

“Don’t you fucking dare, you–”

“Good. Then it seems we are in agreement,” you interrupt him, glad that he hadn’t caught on to your bullshit threat. “I will see you on Monday, Dynamight.”

You're already hanging up the phone by the time he’s responding, yelling loud enough that you can hear his muffled anger even when the receiver is more than a foot away from your ear now as you return it to its base. You triple check that the call is actually hung up before you mutter a curse under your breath and slump forward in your chair, burying your face in your hands. 

The call wasn’t particularly severe– you’d had much worse calls with Dynamight than this one– but the fact that you'll be meeting him in person in less than a week is making things more complicated. You let out a long breath that you hadn’t known you'd been holding. Should you wear a bulletproof vest to the meeting or something? Would that even work against his explosions? Maybe you can find some old quirk suppressor cuffs in evidence storage?

You cringe away at the shrill sound of the phone ringing again. You don’t bother to look at the display, instead reaching out a hand to blindly push the mute button on your desk phone. You glance up to see a senior prosecutor walking by, making no effort to hide the pitiful glance they’re throwing your way. You open your mouth, wanting to ask for advice on how to handle this nightmare, but that only makes the prosecutor quicken their pace and avert their gaze, disappearing around the corner of a cubicle wall before you can even speak a word.

Holding back a scream, you slump back in your chair. The spackle on the ceiling tiles above seems to swirl as your mind sifts through the case law you have committed to memory, trying to find any loophole you possibly can to see if maybe you can get away with not calling Dynamight as a witness. The media will be all over this file, and if Dynamight crashes and burns in court like he normally does and he takes the entire prosecution down with him, you’ll surely be given a worse nickname than Scorch. Every prosecutor in the office knows that– and that’s why none of them want to touch the file with a ten foot pole, heaven forbid their name pops up in the news next to the headline “prosecution nightmare results in serial villains walking free”.

Suddenly, being a property lawyer doesn’t seem all that bad.

Chapter Text

The rest of the work week is eerily quiet. After Dynamight’s initial call, your desk phone seems not to ring at all– to the point that you nearly put in a ticket with IT because you’re convinced it’s not working. You’re able to wrap up the few minor files that you had laying on your desk before this whole train wreck began, most resolving with guilty pleas. You go to court once for a single day trial only for the accused to plead guilty on the day of in exchange for avoiding a prison sentence, something you’re reluctantly okay with considering that he’s a first time offender. The prosecutors seem to tip-toe around you, like they’re afraid that if they breathe too loud you’ll hone in on them and drag them down to Dynamight Hell with you. It’s not something you are necessarily upset about, especially considering the fact that you have not even made it halfway through the evidence binders scattered across your cubicle for this godforsaken file.

The more you work your way through the evidence, the bigger the pit of dread in your stomach gets. The vast majority of the evidence is circumstantial at best. Sure, there’s solid evidence for some of the charges, but when it comes to any of the substantial charges, these villains are like ghosts. There is nearly an entire binder of evidence that is just pages and pages of text messages– something that would normally make you rejoice, but there are entire conversations where the three accused exclusively converse using what are very clearly code words. Nobody– no matter how much of a dairy enthusiast they may claim to be– talks about getting ice cream this much; not to mention that you’re pretty sure you saw a lactose allergy noted in one of the accused’s medical records. 

Even worse, you are increasingly noticing a very distinct lack of any reports or notes signed by Dynamight. You try to convince yourself that it’s just in the last few binders of evidence– that eventually the magical report with all the concrete evidence you need will suddenly appear and your woes will be vanquished for good. Surely the only reason the Level 4 pawned this onto you was because Dynamight’s name was attached to the file– not also because the majority of the evidence was a heap of garbage, right? You’d like to believe that society hadn’t fallen so far into individualism that someone would do that to their junior, but it’s getting harder to keep yourself convinced with each additional piece of evidence you review. 

When you can’t stand to scrub through another two hours of surveillance footage just to get a glimpse of a blurry car, you turn to researching case law like your life depends on it. You’ve long since abandoned the idea of trying to find a loophole to exclude Dynamight from the proceedings, having instead turned your attention entirely to previous prosecutions of villain leaders and how other prosecutors managed to weave objectively weak evidence together well enough to convince the Justice to convict. The problems were always the same when it came to cases like these; the villains at the top did everything in their power not to get their hands dirty, and when they did, they hid any evidence of doing so exceptionally well. It was easy enough to prosecute the grunts and lackeys— but to go after the people giving the orders was another thing entirely. 

You are the last to leave the office most days this week, and that includes Friday. You have unfortunately fallen into the habit of routinely staying late enough in the office that the motion sensor lights above you turn off because you've been sitting too still for the last half hour, reading the same paragraph of a judicial decision over and over again. The janitors nearly jump out of their skin when they walk by your cubicle, not expecting to see a husk of a person hunched over their desk so late at night.

You are almost sure that a rumor about a ghost haunting the building is circulating through the janitorial and administrative staff, having overheard a gaggle of paralegals whispering amongst themselves about hearing indiscernible mumbling late at night as they’re leaving. There’s a part of you that knows you should be more concerned about your professional image, but with the way the prosecutors all seem to look at you with pity, you’re pretty sure you could bash your head into your keyboard and they would all respond with solemn nods of understanding.

At the very least, you are thankful that it is only a 10 minute walk to get back to your apartment. Though at times it takes nearly double that with the way that you seem to trudge home, your feet dragging against the concrete with an exhaustion you didn’t know was even possible to experience for longer than a few days before dropping dead. 

The office– and your apartment for that matter– is in the middle of downtown Shizuoka, a notoriously sketchy area; and you suppose that you really should have more concern walking home so late at night, but the fact that you probably look like a living corpse while you stumble down the street eases your worries a fair amount. At this point, you are a part of the sketchiness that downtown Shizuoka is known for, not at risk of being its victim.

When you make it home to your apartment on Friday night– or rather, the very early morning hours of Saturday– it takes you four tries to get your key into the lock. You find yourself running on muscle memory, completely missing the keyhole and still turning the handle and pushing your shoulder into the door to try to open it. By the time you succeed in getting the creaky door open and stumble into your apartment, you really hope that none of your neighbors have called the police to report a drunk committing a B&E.

You knew that getting into criminal prosecution meant that you were essentially forfeiting any hopes of a work-life balance– it was certainly not something that you had been naive to. Your professors in law school had constantly said as much, but you truly had not realized that this lack of balance could get any worse than what it already had been. The thought of law-school you sitting in the lecture hall, nodding along as you listened to your professors describe how they wasted away and still determinedly deciding to go into criminal prosecutions brings a scowl to your face.

Dropping your bag to the ground where you stand, you let out a breath and roll your shoulders back in a desperate attempt to get rid of the tension plaguing your entire body. You consider booking a massage, but you’re partially convinced that a masseuse would put one hand on you and immediately run the other way the moment they felt how tightly wound all of your muscles seemed to be. It wasn’t like you had any time for a massage right now, anyways. 

You toss your keys onto the counter as you kick off your boots, no longer bothering to line them up neatly on the nearby shoe rack anymore. The entire apartment seems to be slowly slipping into a mild state of disarray; you can’t remember the last time you did any laundry, and the pile of dishes in your sink seems to be getting higher and higher despite the fact that you are running almost exclusively off of spite and the occasional instant ramen right now. The weekend is meant to be your time to relax– and you had made a very conscious effort not to bring home a single binder or folder with you to try to make sure you could do that– but with the state of your apartment, it seemed you had a different kind of work ahead of you this weekend.

Deciding to worry about it in the morning, you trudge your way to your bedroom. You don’t bother to put on pajamas, discarding your blouse haphazardly on the floor along with your pants and unceremoniously collapsing onto your bed. You barely remember to plug your phone in and set an alarm before promptly passing out.

—

The weekend is where the anxiety begins to set in. The more you realize that your meeting with Dynamight is less than 48 hours away, the more intense the feelings of impending doom building in your stomach seem to get. You can handle him on the phone no problem, but the image of Dynamight vaulting over his desk to throttle you is unfortunately very persistent.

Thankfully, you are a stress cleaner through and through. By Sunday evening, your entire apartment is spotless, and any evidence of an incredibly stressed lawyer wasting away in your home has been completely erased. By the time you are done, you can nearly see your reflection in the tiles of your shower and you're pretty sure your sense of smell has been fried from all of the cleaning chemicals. 

Before bed, you set out your outfit in advance, like a little kid the night before their first day of school or a teenager excited for their first date. You choose a pair of heels that you'd be able to run in and a skirt with enough stretch that it shouldn’t impede your movement too much if you do need to flee. As you toil over what shirt to wear, you are briefly struck with the absurdity of this entire situation, as well as the fact that despite having a reputation bad enough that you are systematically choosing an outfit like you’re about to go to war, this guy is the number one hero.

The realization seems to dull your anxiety and replace it with a determined anger that festers underneath your skin. You curse Dynamight and yourself for making this a much bigger deal than it needs to be. 

You are a lawyer who has dealt with more assholes than you can count. You've gotten threatening letters in the mail from countless accused trying to get you to drop their charges, and you have argued with Judges who could destroy your career with a single complaint. You will not let a man-child of a hero be the thing that gets to you.

Despite the pep talk you attempt to give yourself, the many videos you have seen of Dynamight pummeling villains play in your mind on repeat through the night, and it's a miracle that you get even an hour of sleep.

By the time your alarm goes off in the morning, you are already awake and staring at the ceiling. You get through your usual routine in an hour and then promptly spend the next thirty minutes standing at your front door, willing yourself to step forward and out into the complex’s hallway. You’re only spurred on to finally leave when you've been frozen for so long that you'll be late if you don’t immediately get moving. 

The walk to Dynamight’s office is similar to the walk to your own office. His agency is located just a few blocks down from the prosecution’s office, headquartered in the top floors of a much nicer building than yours with tall windows and modern architecture. As you look up at the building before stepping inside, you bitterly think to yourself that this place probably doesn’t have lead in its pipes. 

The elevator ride up to the top of the building is nearly two minutes long, and the quiet beeps from the elevator when it rises past each floor makes your throat constrict just a tad more every time. When the elevator finally comes to a halt, you do your best to swallow the lump in your throat as you smooth the nonexistent wrinkles out of your skirt and readjust your grip on your briefcase. 

The doors part, revealing the general waiting area for the Ground Zero Hero Agency. 

The waiting room is sanitized and modern, with chairs that look very uncomfortable and a coffee bar stocked with a surprisingly varied selection of brews and teas tucked into the back corner of the room. The area is empty, save for a woman sitting behind the front desk.

You step forward, your heel wobbling beneath you for just a moment before you plant your other foot firmly in front of you and remind yourself that you have been walking in heels for years now. As you approach the front desk, you brush a strand of hair away from your face and take a moment to make sure that the deafening anxiety you are feeling isn’t visible in your expression. When the woman behind the desk looks up from her computer and notices you, you are the first one to offer a gentle smile.

“Good morning,” you start, waiting for the woman to finish typing on her computer before you speak any further. “I’m with Shizuoka Criminal Prosecution’s. I have a meeting with Dynamight for 10.”

A mix of realization and shock seems to wash across the secretary’s face. “You’re– oh!” she cuts herself off, standing to offer you a bow. The sound of her voice makes you realize that this is Shimizu, who looks pretty similar to what you had pictured in your mind. She's just a bit shorter than you, her mannerisms reminiscent of a deer in the headlights. 

“You look different from what I pictured,” Shimizu blurts out, promptly going red in the face when she realizes that she perhaps should’ve kept that comment to herself. “Prettier– I mean,” she clarifies, struggling to look you in the eyes.

You let out a surprised laugh, a more genuine smile spreading across your lips as you thank her. Shimizu seems to short circuit for a moment after you offer your thanks, the two of you standing in a painfully awkward silence. You stare at each other for at least ten seconds before she finally realizes that you’re waiting for her to speak– seeing as you have already said your piece.

“Right– sorry!” she sits back down and turns her attention back to her computer for a moment. “Dynamight stepped out around an hour ago, but he should be back soon, I’m sure.”

It is clear from the hesitance in Shimizu’s voice that she has no idea when Dynamight is actually going to be back. Annoyance flares in your chest– directed wholeheartedly towards Dynamight; and to an extent you welcome the feeling as it seems to smother the anxiety that had been present initially. You can feel your eye twitch against your will as you force the smile on your face not to wane. 

“Are you able to send him a message?” you ask, adjusting your grip on your briefcase. “This meeting is very important.”

Shimizu nods, clacking away on her keyboard with shaking hands. When she is done, she turns her attention back to you, barely able to meet your gaze for a second before she’s busying herself with looking anywhere else. “I– You can take a seat. I will let you know as soon as I hear anything back!”

You nod reluctantly, turning on your heel and striding towards what looks to be the comfiest chair out of the many specimens in the waiting room. It is immediately apparent as soon as you sit down that the chair is still very uncomfortable, and no matter how much you try to adjust how you are positioned, the hard plastic beneath you doesn’t get any more pleasant. You resign yourself to your fate as you pull out your phone, not having much hope in Dynamight seeing much less responding to Shimizu’s message.

The number for Dynamight’s work cell is saved in your phone with an angry face next to his name, and you take a deep breath before you hit the call button. The phone rings and rings until it eventually goes to voicemail, and you are unsurprised to find that Dynamight’s voicemail box is full, so you cannot even leave a message. 

Of course, you hadn’t been expecting an answer anyways. Dynamight never answers on the first call when it comes to you, and so you hit the call button once again.

Surprisingly, he picks up on the third ring. 

“The hell do you want?” his voice blurts over the phone, and you can very clearly hear the sound of explosions in the background intermingled with police sirens.

“We have a meeting scheduled for–” you pause to check the time on your watch. “Seven minutes ago.”

“Thought I told you I wasn’t doing that shit,” Dynamight responds. “Get the hell out of here you extras!” he yells, clearly in the middle of what you assume to be a villain attack. He seems to turn his attention back to the phone when he next speaks. “I’ve got better shit to be doing.”

You hold back a sigh, your grip on the phone tightening. You really didn’t want to pull out the poorly hidden threats again already, but your patience has long since become paper thin when it comes to Dynamight. “If this meeting time does not work, I am happy to contact the commission and they can facilitate something.”

Dynamight’s response is immediate. “Oh fuck off with your threats to get the big wigs involved– you lawyers are all the same. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

The call hangs up before you can even open your mouth to respond, and you finally let out the long sigh you’d been holding in as you lower your hand and stare down at your phone screen. The time is 10:10.

Dynamight walks out of the elevator at 10:27. He’s dressed in his hero attire, covered in soot, dust, and blood from at least one surface level gash on his arm. He doesn’t even bother to spare a glance towards you, striding directly across the waiting area and towards what you assume is his office. Shimizu stands when he walks past her, opening her mouth to begin to speak only for Dynamight to singlehandedly silence her with a glare. The poor assistant shrinks back down, returning to her seat and pinning her eyes back towards her computer screen. 

You rise to your feet, following after him with a renewed determination that you hope can suffocate the dread weighing down on you. You just barely catch up to Dynamight in time, reaching a hand out to stop him from slamming the door to his office shut behind him. By the time you have caught your breath and pushed the door open, he is seated behind his desk, a sneer plastered across his face.

“It’s nice to meet you in person, Dyanmight,” you start. “I’m–”

“I know who you are,” he snaps. His eyes narrow as he looks you up and down, making absolutely no attempt to try to hide that he is doing so. You bristle under his gaze, the only thing keeping your mouth shut being that he seems to be sizing you up, not checking you out. “And don’t call me that bullshit,” he adds offhandedly. “Fuckin’ management chose that name, not me. Bakugou is fine.”

“Got it,” you nod, closing the door behind you as you step forward. Bakugou follows your movements, leaning back in his seat and resting his jaw on the knuckles of his hand, his elbow propped against one of the armrests of his chair. It's hard not to shift under his gaze as you take a seat in the chair across from his desk, carefully placing your bag at your feet. 

You move deliberately and slowly, your movements practiced as you undo the clasps of your briefcase and retrieve a pen and a pad of paper from it. Straightening your back and crossing your legs, you rest the notepad on your knee and lift your eyes to scan the surface of Bakugou’s desk. There is not a single piece of paper to be seen in front of him, and you really hope that’s just because Shimizu forgot to tell him to bring his notes– that or he just didn’t bother to listen to her in the first place. Maybe they’re just all on his computer?

“Do you have the notes and reports you wrote relating to the Infinition matter with you?” you ask, your gaze meeting his. 

His brow twitches as his eyes narrow. The way he looks at you makes you feel like you’re an enemy– which you probably are, at least in his eyes. Your heart hammers against your ribcage despite your best efforts to keep yourself calm. Is this what the villains who go up against him feel like?

“So you’re the one that keeps subpoenaing me for all this bullshit, huh?” Bakugou completely blows by your question, and you quickly begin to realize that the entire meeting is probably going to be like this. 

“Well– I’m just the prosecutor who gets most of your files. Any other prosecutor would subpoena you if they got your files, too,” you answer, your jaw clenching.

He raises an eyebrow. “If they got my files?”

Fuck. You try not to let it show on your face when the realization that you slipped up hits you. 

“I just happen to be the one who gets most of your files, that’s all,” you respond, your mouth suddenly feeling very dry. 

Bakugou hums in response, clearly not buying it in the slightest. The corner of his mouth twitches in amusement as he watches you try not to flush with embarrassment. If he weren’t such an asshole, you’d almost consider suggesting that he look into a career in law with the way he seems to be able to see through people. If you could make a defense witness squirm on the stand like he’s making you right now, your request for a raise last year might’ve actually been approved.

“I thought you’d be an old hag, like most lawyers,” he continues on. His tone is casual but the crimson gaze pinned to you is all-consuming. He watches you carefully for any sort of reaction, shamelessly looking you up and down again. 

You swallow, shifting in your seat. “Did you bring your notes with you, Bakugou?” you push, not letting him divert the conversation any further away from what you’re actually here to talk about. He flinches when you say his name, the movement nearly imperceptible. You try to tell yourself that you’re getting to him as much as he is to you, though you ironically don’t seem to be doing a very good job of convincing yourself of that fact. 

“Shouldn’t you have my notes if I took any?” he avoids your query with a question of his own, tilting his head.

If he took any? The mass of dread in the pit of your stomach seems to double in size. 

“Bakugou,” you start, opening your mouth to continue only for the words to die in your throat. You really don’t want to ask this question, because you’re almost certain that you know the answer; and if he answers how you think he’s going to answer, you are truly and royally fucked. You force the words out before the impending sense of doom washing over you can get any worse. “Did you write any notes or reports for this matter?”

For the first time since the conversation has begun, Bakugou looks away. It is only for a moment, and when his gaze meets yours again, he has a scowl on his face. “I had a broken wrist during the investigation. There was another hero shadowing me on the case– he was the one taking notes for me.”

A flicker of hope ignites in you; was it simply that you had accidentally brushed by these notes in your review of the evidence during your haste to try to find a single report written by Bakugou? The idea that this case may not be as much of a train wreck as you thought it was fills you with a light that you have not seen since this whole thing started.

“I see,” you nod, clicking your pen and bringing its nib to the notepad balanced on your knee as you prepare to begin taking notes. You glance up at Bakugou through your lashes, brows furrowing together when you think a little more about what he just said. “Don’t you heroes have the top healers in the country on speed-dial? What do you mean you had a broken wrist?”

Bakugou scoffs, offended by your simple question. “It’s a long story. Has to do with that asswipe Circulation.”

A soft hum escapes you as you recognize the name; Circulation is one of the three villains on the file at hand. If you had to guess, whatever encounter Bakugou had with Circulation that resulted in this broken wrist must have been what first got him involved in the investigation into Infinition.

You nod and turn your attention back to the hero who was supposedly taking notes on behalf of Bakugou. “What was this hero's name? The one who took notes for you.”

“Cellophane,” he responds. As you write down the name, an eerily heavy silence settles between you two. When you finish writing and look back up at Bakugou, the entire mood of the room seems to have darkened. He looks much more reserved than he had just moments ago– or perhaps reserved isn’t the right word to be using– resigned? Dejected?

You push through the uneasy atmosphere that sticks to you, doing your best to swallow the lump in your throat. “If Cellophane was taking notes on your behalf, you should still have your own copies since you’d have to co-sign on them at the least,” you start. “Do you have those notes with you?”

An emotion akin to disdain flares in Bakugou’s expression as he looks at you. You struggle to maintain eye contact, something feeling very wrong about the way this entire conversation seems to be going.

“Sero never got around to filing them. Any notes he took died with him.”

Hearing Cellophane’s real name makes all of the pieces fall into place. A small pool of ink begins to seep from the tip of your pen and onto the notepad as you go still, your entire body tensing. 

CHARGE #3, FIRST DEGREE MURDER

THE ACCUSED DID CAUSE THE DEATH OF HANTA SERO ON NOVEMBER 3RD, 2XXX, AT OR NEAR SHIZUOKA PREFECTURE AND THEREBY COMMITTED MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE, VIOLATING THE CRIMINAL CODE OF JAPAN. 

The charge flashes in your mind and your heart drops, your fingers curling to dig your nails into the fabric of your skirt as the entire room seems to tilt sideways. For a moment, you feel so sick to your stomach that you think you're going to have to excuse yourself. 

The pen in your hand creaks under the weight of your rapidly tightening grip. What do you even say in a moment like this?

“I–I’m sorry for your loss,” you blurt out, unsurprised when it seems that your words only serve to make Bakugou angrier.

“Fuck off with your sympathy bullshit,” Bakugou sneers, shifting in his chair as his expression curls into pure contempt. “Shouldn’t you know this shit? It’s your goddamn file.”

You swallow, and it’s your turn to feel offended now as Bakugou questions your competence. “There are over one hundred charges between the three villains, and nearly fifty different people were involved in this investigation in some capacity. The evidence I’ve reviewed is all piecemeal right now– it’s written witness reports from involved heroes and officers that help me understand a file best,” you grit your teeth, trying not to stoop to his level of being an asshole. “I still have thousands of pages of evidence to review– forgive me for not having the full picture of what happened quite yet.”

“Whatever– sounds like a load of horseshit to me.”

His fury seems to pass right through you, and your entire world spins as you struggle to keep your breathing even, your attention fixating back onto Cellophane. You’re at the very least familiar enough with the file to know that a hero involved in the investigation, Sero, died just before the final arrests were made– meaning that in all likelihood, there are absolutely no notes pertaining to any of Bakugou’s involvement in the file.

It takes a handful of seconds before you are able to will yourself to speak.

“Are there any notes or reports written by you for this file?” you ask hesitantly. It feels wrong to immediately go back to business, but Bakugou clearly doesn’t want to hear anymore of your condolences.

“I might’ve written a few, but I was pretty busy planning a funeral,” Bakugou snaps, shifting in his seat. His tone is laced with annoyance, though you can tell that he’s using his irritation to mask the discomfort he has with all of the other emotions that are coming up for him right now.

A few. Closing your eyes, you can perfectly envision the entire case collapsing before you. Nevermind your career, you’re now saddled with prosecuting the villains who murdered someone who was clearly close to the number one hero. How had you wound up with this much responsibility? All because a senior prosecutor who likely made triple your salary didn’t want to deal with Dynamight?

Bakugou scowls. “Sero and I worked hard on this case. If you fuck it up, I’ll kill you,” the threat strikes as hollow at best, but it still makes your throat constrict regardless. 

“That’s very clear to me,” you retort, any attempt to maintain professionality slowly leaving you as the true direness of the situation continues to sink in. As much as you had tried to stop it, the mountain of pressure that comes with prosecuting murder files finally starts to suffocate you from the inside out. The heavy burden of this file was something you’d been running from ever since it landed on your desk, knowing that if you faced it head on you’d simply collapse into utter paralysis. This is exactly why files like this stayed with the 4s and the 5s.

You force yourself to meet Bakugou’s gaze once again. As much as you want to fall to the floor and will the ground beneath you to swallow you whole, you can’t do that– not right now, and certainly not in front of Bakugou. “A huge amount of the information I need to prosecute this file was likely in Cellophane’s notes. If this file is to remain viable, you need to cooperate with me,” you speak slowly and carefully, struggling to keep your mind in one place. “You are the only one left who has the information I need.”

It’s just barely noticeable, but you catch the way Bakugou winces at your words. “There were others who worked with us on the case. Use everyone else’s shit– there’s plenty of evidence,” he responds simply, crossing his arms as his eyes narrow into a glare.

“There’s plenty of circumstantial evidence, which won’t get me nearly as far as I need it to. The substantial evidence I need lies with all of the work you did– what you and Cellophane witnessed,” you try to take a deep breath, leaning forward and resting your elbows on your knees as you pinch the bridge of your nose. Your mind runs at a thousand miles a second, trying to figure out how the hell you’re going to salvage this file.

You can still get Bakugou’s evidence in, but the fact that he has no notes on anything means that he’s probably quadrupled the amount of time you’re going to need him on the stand, which is a nightmare in itself. At least with a written report, Bakugou’s anger would have been less overt and easier to brush off. He’ll need to be on the stand for upwards of a week, and the idea of Bakugou being on the stand for a mere couple of hours was enough to make you feel sick to your stomach. 

And then there’s the issue that if you want to have a complete picture of the file and all of its evidence, you will need to get it from Bakugou firsthand. There'll be no reading reports in your comfy desk chair with a cup of coffee and a pair of headphones playing some of your favorite music. You’ll have to painstakingly get all of the information from the hero himself, who will no doubt become impossibly impatient by the third question and be snarky with all of his answers. The complexity of this file meant it was already a nightmare to try to understand on paper, and Bakugou certainly doesn’t seem to be one to describe things very eloquently.

The anticipated plan that you’d concocted of having three simple meetings with Bakugou over the months leading up to the trial vanishes in front of your eyes. This isn’t just about making sure Bakugou can behave in court anymore, it’s now become a much more concerning issue of making sure the file is still viable to begin with. If the defense had noticed the distinct lack of reports from Bakugou in the evidence disclosure– which they almost certainly had– it was no wonder they were so hellbent on going to trial.

You want to scream. 

“Okay,” you breathe, sitting up straight and meeting Bakugou’s eyes once again. You force yourself to be composed, making a promise to yourself that you can collapse later, when you’re in the privacy of your own home. Bakugou regards you with a mixture of annoyance and confusion, his lips curled back into a scowl. “Here’s what’s going to happen: we are going to have weekly meetings from now on–”

Bakugou opens his mouth in protest the moment you say the word “weekly”, sitting up in his chair abruptly. You continue to speak before he can make a sound.

“I need to know all of the evidence inside-out if there’s any hope of putting these assholes in prison, and all of the evidence I need is currently stuck in your head, so we are going to have weekly meetings until I’m confident that you’ve told me every single detail of this file that you can remember.” Your offhanded mention of memory causes another wave of dread to wash over you. Your voice softens when you next speak. “Please tell me you have a good memory.”

Bakugou responds with an exasperated huff. “Course I do.”

His answer gives you a small amount of reprieve from your anxiety, but not much. Everyone says they have a good memory until a lawyer is asking them questions about the tiniest details imaginable.

“Once I’ve gotten all of the information from you, we’re still meeting until I’m confident that you’re not going to jeopardize the entire case the moment I put you on the stand and you open your mouth,” you finish, running a hand through your hair. You hope it doesn’t look like you’re falling apart, because it really feels like you are.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Bakugou sneers. “I’m perfectly fine in court when you assholes make me show up.”

You have to laugh to stop yourself from bursting into tears. “Sure– ok. Just like you take these meetings as seriously as you should.”

Bakugou seems to be sent reeling at your words, clearly offended. “These meetings are always just a load of bullshit– I don’t get why you shitty prosecutors love to meet with the people doing the actual work just so you can shit on them and pretend that you’re better than everyone.”

“Do you want justice for your friend?” you snap in response immediately, the words crashing out of you before you can stop yourself. Bakugou goes eerily still, and you can see the way the rage boils up in him.

His face reddens and his hands clench into fists as he stands abruptly. He slams his hands on his desk, and despite your efforts, you can’t hide the way you flinch away from the movement. The desk shakes hard enough from his actions that a cup of pens on it topples over. 

“Don’t you fucking dare say shit like that, you fucking–”

You stand, taking a step forward and holding Bakugou’s gaze. You place your hands on his desk, directly across from him, leaning in until your face is less than a foot away from his. “More than anything, I want this file to work,” you grit, your nails straining against the wood beneath your palms. ‘Work with me, Bakugou. If we get through this, I promise you that I will never take on one of your files ever again.”

The corner of his lip twitches as he holds your gaze. He’s quiet for a moment– his eyes practically boring a hole through your skull– and you briefly realize that he’s trying to see if you’re going to be the one to look away first. He’s assessing you– seeing if you’re worthy in the slightest of being the one to take on this file.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he finally snarls after a long moment. Your stomach drops, the prospect of having to report him to the commission for refusing to cooperate flashing in your mind. 

Bakugou turns away from you, kicking the chair he had been seated in across the room. It crashes against the wall and you cringe at the loud noise, sparing a glance towards the wall to confirm that it does in fact have a very large dent in it now. “Talk to the extra at the front desk.”

Relief floods through you the moment you process his words. Bakugou doesn’t bother to look at you any further, striding over to a nearby coatrack tucked in the corner of his office and angrily grabbing a jacket perched on one of the hooks. 

“If you try to call me before the next meeting, I’m burning your entire office to the ground– see if you lawyer assholes can take me to court for it if there’s none of you left,” he mutters, pushing past you and slamming the door to his office open. “Now leave me the hell alone.”

He storms out, not bothering to wait for the elevator, instead throwing the door to the stairwell open and disappearing into the dimly lit hallway. You stand in his office for a moment, the adrenaline rapidly fading from your system. You look down at your hands, distantly noticing that they're trembling.

You blink rapidly, fretting with your clothes to keep your hands busy as you try to regulate your breathing. Wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of here, you end up leaving Bakugou’s office before you’re entirely composed.

The conversation at the front desk with Shimizu passes by in a blur. The meek woman is clearly very curious about the bits and pieces of yelling she'd overheard from her vantage point at the front desk, but she is sensible enough to take one look at you and know that now was certainly not an appropriate time to start prying. You blindly wade your way through the motions of booking another meeting, not entirely sure what has even happened until you are in the elevator, the rhythmic beeps as you descend through the floors pulling you out of your daze.

Your notepad is still clutched in your hand. You look down at it, past Cellophane’s name and the pool of ink staining the centre of the lined paper.

Written in your scrambled cursive, near the bottom of the notepad– 

Saturday, 2pm.

Chapter Text

Of all of the days you could've chosen, you'd picked a Saturday. 

The bitter thought repeats over and over in your head as you trudge your way back to the prosecution’s office, your nails digging into the leather handle of your bag. In your dazed stupor, you had somehow managed to choose one of the two days of the week where you’d be meeting with Bakugou for free rather than being paid to deal with his aggressive whinging. You find yourself fuming as you stand in the elevator, the people trapped in the elevator with you sticking as close as they can to the surrounding walls, like you might snap at them should they breathe wrong. When you tear your gaze away from the electronic display on the wall showing what floor the elevator is on, you blink back into reality and briefly wonder why the atmosphere around you is so tense, only to gather that it’s because of you.

Mortified at the realization that a mere 30 minute meeting with Bakugou has turned you into an enraged shell of your former self, you swallow and look down at your feet. The fury you’d been feeling is abruptly replaced by a burning embarrassment in your chest as you scurry off of the elevator the moment it arrives at your floor. 

Despite the deafening swarm of thoughts overwhelming your mind, you don’t fail to notice the way your coworkers react as you walk by– conversations quieting or stopping entirely, heads peaking over cubicle walls. Some of your fellow junior prosecutors flash you nervous smiles when you pass them, scooting away from you an inch at a time. 

You grit your teeth, the cramped layout of the office and its conduciveness to gossip coming back to bite you in the ass once again. News that you had a meeting with Bakugou this morning seems to have already spread across the entire floor– all because you had offhandedly mentioned it to one prosecutor last week.

As you make your way back to your desk– disappearing into your cubicle and away from the eyes of your colleagues– you begin to rethink the idea of a Saturday meeting. If having meetings with Bakugou during the work week meant that you’d have to come back to the office afterwards and be treated as a spectacle every time, maybe it was best to have meetings on weekends. At least then you’d be able to go right back home to the privacy of your apartment to have a breakdown.

You haven’t even managed to log onto your computer before you overhear one of your colleagues talking quite loudly about you and your current predicament. Against your better judgement, you find yourself standing up from your seat and carefully peeking out of your cubicle. 

“Wonder how Scorch’s meeting with Dynamight went,” one of your colleagues mutters, crossing her arms as she leans against the wall. The use of your unfortunate nickname makes you cringe. “I’m surprised she came back in one piece.”

It takes you a moment, but you recognize the woman leading the conversation as Natsumi Ishida, a Level 3 prosecutor who transferred to Shizuoka from a different prefecture around the same time you first started here. She was senior enough that she had a fair amount of say over which files she took on, and her preferred area of practice was in drug trafficking files. You faintly recall that there is a photo pinned to the corkboard in her office where she is posed next to a huge shipment of cocaine that had been seized by police. That was part of the reason why you remembered who she was in the first place– she had been absolutely beaming in that photo, a huge smile plastered across her face. 

The fact that Ishida was the driving force behind the nickname Scorch probably also serves to help your memory, too, you think bitterly.

“I’m surprised she hasn’t resigned or gone on leave by now,” another prosecutor adds, one who you don’t recognize. “That Infinition file is a nightmare from what I’ve heard.”

Ishida hums in agreement. “Yeah, kind of an asshole move from Kawamura to throw that dumpster fire at her.”

Hearing Kawamura’s name leaves a bad taste in your mouth that has you holding back a scowl– the senior prosecutor was the reason why you were in this mess in the first place. Annoyance brews in your chest, both at Kawamura for dumping this file on you without so much as a thank you and at the rest of this godforsaken office for pitying you from a distance instead of offering to help when you were so clearly out of your depth. 

You turn your attention away from the conversation, worried that if you eavesdrop for any longer, someone may notice. Returning to your chair, you rest your elbows on your desk, letting out a long breath and hunching forward. You clasp your hands together in front of you as you bow your head, hoping that if anybody walks by, they'll just assume that you’re praying or something and not on the verge of a breakdown. You swallow, doing your best to hold back the anger lodged in the back of your throat. The meeting with Bakugou replays in your head, followed immediately by the debilitating sense of dread that only seemed to be getting worse with each passing minute. 

You think back to what one of your law professors had told you, back in your first semester when you still had enough energy to go to office hours and didn’t turn in assignments at the last minute. She'd been a prosecutor for nearly thirty years before she retired from the career and began to teach law at your university; looking up her name online yielded hundreds of news articles on the countless murders she'd prosecuted, the vast majority of which were successful. She was practically a celebrity in the world of law, and her office hours were normally so busy that you barely got to ask a single question before she was shuffling you along.

During the winter break, she continued to host office hours unlike most of your other professors, and considering most students were enjoying their time off or cramming for exams, no one but you had bothered to show up that week. You'd asked your typical questions about the course– clarified things you didn’t quite understand and got feedback on your final paper, but just as you were about to leave, you had stopped yourself and sat back down.

You’d asked her how she managed it all– how she knew where to begin when there were dozens of charges and it wasn’t as simple as something like a one-off hit and run. But what you had been most curious about wasn’t her organizational strategy.

“How do you handle the pressure? Isn’t it overwhelming?”

She’d looked at you with a soft smile on her face. “Of course– and it never gets any less intimidating. To be saddled with prosecuting a murder means that you have to be the victim’s voice. They don’t have the opportunity to defend themselves anymore, and the weight of that burden can be debilitating.” She’d leaned back in her chair, thinking for a moment longer before speaking. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this, but what kept me going was my anger.”

“Your anger?”

She nodded. “Being a woman in a career like law meant that nobody ever saw me as being worthy of taking on homicide files. They told me to stick with simple thefts or to look into a career in civil law. I was doubted and criticized at every turn, and the anger I felt was what kept me from collapsing under the pressure. I learned that physical evidence and formal reports can only get you so far, and I slowly figured out what worked best for me– how to break down a file into small pieces and then rebuild it in a way that a judge or jury would understand.”

Her words swirl in your head, and you try desperately to grasp onto them. You take a deep breath, straightening your back and glancing towards the binder placed on your desk. It’s the last binder of evidence that you need to go through for the file, and it looms in front of you menacingly, practically mocking you. Shifting in your chair, you glance down at the binders stacked on the floor, a mess of tabs and sticky notes interspersed among the pages. With each subsequent binder, the sticky notes become less and less frequent, a visual story of your growing despair and rapidly dwindling hope.

You rise to your feet, a renewed determination settling in as you remove the last binder from your desk and replace it with the first. Taking a seat, you flip to the first page and let out a long breath. If you were going to do this, you had to do it right. 

—

The rest of the work week passes by in a blur. You completely restart your assessment of the file, taking meticulous notes and creating a color coded system to mark each piece of evidence, organizing every single page into different categories depending on which charges it was most relevant to. You re-examine the witness list– which has nearly 100 different individuals listed on it– whittling it down as you make your way through all of the evidence. 

The case is still frustratingly difficult to understand, which is mostly due to the glaring lack of any reports from the main heroes assigned– Bakugou and Cellophane. You find yourself staring at seemingly irrelevant pieces of evidence for longer than you should be, trying to work together in your head how something as innocuous as a receipt for a loaf of bread and some juice is at all pertinent to your prosecution of this file.

By Friday, you have gone through all 12 binders of evidence and organized them to near perfection, the binders overflowing with tabs, sticky notes, and folded corners to mark anything important. All that remains untouched is the last third of the final binder. You had gotten through most of it only to falter the moment you made it to a formal document from the medical examiner’s office labelled “AUTOPSY REPORT” in a bold typeface. All you'd read was Sero’s name before you’d slammed the binder shut and decided to move onto reviewing the digital evidence for the file instead. You couldn’t bring yourself to learn the details of Sero’s death through something as detached as an autopsy report– deciding that it was something you’d hear from Bakugou first, when it came time to talk about it.

You spend the late hours of Friday night trying and repeatedly failing to come up with a plan for how to approach your meeting with Bakugou on Saturday. You know exactly what questions you want to ask– what details to collect and what evidence you need to corroborate with Bakugou’s eyewitness account of events– but you have absolutely no idea how to do so. 

The obvious answer is that you need to build rapport; if you want to have any hope at understanding this file, you need to be on good enough terms with Bakugou that getting him to answer your endless array of questions won’t piss him off to the point that he starts refusing to give you details. The problem is that you have no idea how to build rapport with a person who is effectively the living definition of rage. 

You stay so late in the office that one of the cleaners has to very nervously inform you that you need to leave, hurrying away before you can hastily offer an apology. You quickly pack up your things and leave the office, struggling to keep your eyes open as you wait for the elevator to reach the ground floor.

Stepping out of the building and into the cool night air, you welcome the chill that runs through you as you begin your trek home. Your mind wanders aimlessly; in less than twelve hours, you’ll be back at Bakugou’s office and at the mercy of his fury once again. You’re surprised to find that you feel much less nervous this time around, attributing it to the fact that if Bakugou was going to throw you out one of the high-rise windows in his office or launch across the desk to throttle you, he probably wouldn’t have the patience to wait until the second meeting to do so.

The lock on the door to your apartment is frustratingly clunky, and you find yourself cursing under your breath as you jam the key into the keyhole for what must be the twentieth time, jerking it around in the lock with a violence that Bakugou would probably be proud of. For a moment you think that you are going to have to call the emergency maintenance number for your building, but on your last try before you give up, the door finally unlocks, much to your relief. You stumble into your apartment, closing the door behind you and forcing the lock back into place. As you trudge your way to your bedroom, you distantly hope that you won’t wake up to any noise complaints tomorrow after all the cursing and fumbling you'd done.

You manage to change into a set of pajamas and set an alarm for the morning before your exhaustion overtakes you, your head seeming to magnetically find its way to your pillow. Sleep comes surprisingly quickly, something you welcome wholeheartedly.

—

Compared to your last visit to Ground Zero, the waiting area is similarly empty and the chairs are somehow even more uncomfortable than before. It’s Bakugou’s other assistant, Inoue, who is at the front desk today, the woman looking just as exhausted in person as she normally sounds over the phone. She kindly lets you know that Bakugou is taking a call in his office, and that it shouldn’t be too long of a wait. You take a seat in the waiting area without complaint, frankly just glad that Bakugou is actually in the building this time around and not out on the streets blowing things up like he had been previously. 

By some miracle, Bakugou is only five minutes late. You are in the middle of answering an email on your phone when the sound of the door to Bakugou’s office opening draws your attention. He stands in the doorway, a scowl on his face as he looks at you for just a moment before promptly turning and heading back to his desk.

You stand, quickly striding over to Bakugou’s office and shutting the door behind you before you take a seat in the same chair you’d sat in the last time you were here. You spare a glance over to the wall behind Bakugou, noticing that the dent that he’d put in the wall previously is no longer present, patched over well enough that it was as though nothing had ever happened. 

As you are in the middle of distantly wondering how many abuses these walls have faced, Bakugou grunts in annoyance and snaps you out of your thoughts.

“Oi– idiot,” he starts. “You just gonna stare at the walls all day or are we going to have this dumbass meeting? I’ve got things to do, you know.”

You jump at his voice, your face flushing with embarrassment as you swallow, trying to find your train of thought. “My– my apologies,” you stammer out, cursing yourself for the already very poor start to this meeting. “How are you– um–”

Your brain seems to short circuit, but you’ve already begun to ask the question, so there’s no point in backing out now. “How are you doing today?”

Bakugou stares at you with a blank expression, and if you didn’t know better you’d think he was in a state of shock. You want nothing more to curl up and wait to die as you slowly deflate in your chair. The habit of beginning a conversation with simple pleasantries was typically something that didn't fail you, but nothing about your meetings with Bakguou seemed to be typical in the slightest.

The seconds pass, and Bakugou’s expression eventually breaks as he laughs, bitter and sharp, leaving you perplexed. He regards you with an amused look, seeming to thoroughly enjoy watching you make an absolute fool of yourself. Perhaps that’s the way to build rapport with him?

“Just get on with it, nerd,” he mutters, not bothering to entertain your quite pathetic attempt at small talk.

You decide to table the idea of building any sort of positive relationship right now, trying to convince yourself that getting him to laugh– even if it was a mean-spirited laugh– was a win in itself.

“Okay–” you breathe, leaning forward to open your briefcase and retrieve a pen and a pad of paper in an attempt to buy more time to compose yourself. You straighten your back once you’ve found what you were looking for, opting to keep the conversation to the bare bones and just ask the questions you need to get this over with as quickly as you can. “I’d like to start by going over your first interaction with Infinition.”

Bakugou leans back in his chair, keeping his gaze pinned to you. You steel yourself in an attempt not to shift uncomfortably. “I don’t really remember,” he shrugs. “It was a while ago.”

You can feel your heart drop into your stomach, and you plaster a shaky smile on your face in an attempt to hide the panic settling over you. “I– I thought you said you had a good memory?” you blurt, unsure of what else to say. 

A smirk bites at Bakugou’s lips as he seems to relish in your dread. “I’m just fucking with you,” he responds, an air of nonchalance in his words. “I met Circulation first, before anybody knew anything about Infinition.”

Relief floods through you as you force out a nod, your pen scribbling onto the notepad balanced on your knee. You push your anger to the side, reminding yourself that you wouldn’t stoop to his level, even if he was being an asshole right now. “Was this when you broke your wrist?”

He shakes his head. “That was later. This was back when Circulation was just being a shithead.”

“Can you elaborate on that?”

A flash of annoyance sparks across Bakugou’s eyes, a signature scowl settling across his face once again. “Shouldn’t you know this shit?”

“I have an idea of it, yes,” you nod, doing your best to keep your own irritation in check. You were well aware of Circulation’s early crimes– and had even prosecuted them– but you needed to hear it from Bakugou. “I would still like you to explain it fully, if you will.”

Bakugou rolls his eyes, but to your relief, he decides to comply with your request. “Circulation can control the bodily functions of others. He started out with petty mischief shit– making people piss themselves just for the fun of it, getting an entire theatre of people sick so he could have the theatre to himself. The usual shithead stuff.”

You hum in response. “And when was your first interaction with him?”

“I caught him stealing from a convenience store. He’d made the cashier sick and while the cashier was in the washroom vomiting his guts out, I found Circulation with his hand in the register– the fucking idiot,” Bakugou sneers at the memory.

You recognize the offense, Bakugou’s description aiding in your memory. This was one of the first files you’d been handed by a colleague because Bakugou’s name was on it. You distantly remember it resolving with a guilty plea in exchange for a term of probation.

“I arrested him and then the idiot prosecutor let him off with a slap on the wrist,” Bakugou continues on, and from the way he looks at you, it’s clear that he knows that you are the supposed idiot prosecutor in question. 

He pauses and quirks an eyebrow just slightly at you, like he's waiting for your response. You can’t stop yourself from bristling at his words, your grip on your pen tightening. “A Justice would be out of their mind to give jail time for an offense like that, for the record. I would’ve been laughed out of the courtroom if I’d asked for a custodial sentence, especially considering that he pled guilty.”

Bakugou scoffs, the corner of his lip quirking just slightly in response to your indignation. “Sure, whatever.”

Vaguely, you realize that he’s purposefully trying to get you riled up– probably because he finds this whole meeting so boring that he’s looking for any kind of entertainment. With the knowledge that Bakugou is trying to stir shit, you take a breath and do your best to let go of the rising tension in your body.

The conversation continues on– you ask for specific dates and times, pushing for increasingly minute details and letting off when it seems like Bakugou is going to break something if you prod any further. The conversation flows with a surprising steadiness as you work through all of Bakugou’s encounters with Circulation before the villain was known to be affiliated with Infinition. His memory is surprisingly good, or it’s at least better than most of the witnesses you have worked with. Even if he can’t recall something, he’s usually able to provide you with enough background information that you’re satisfied.

“When did you first notice that Circulation had ties to Infinition?” you ask, flipping your notepad to a blank page.

“He started to get smarter with his quirk,” Bakugou answers immediately. “The shithead was never creative– just stuck to the usual stuff, and then it was like something changed overnight. He realized he could control heartbeats, cell division, breathing– all sorts of things. Sero and I– We figured out later that Infinition snuck him into some university level human physiology classes. As long as he understood the function, he could control it.”

“What kind of contact was needed for him to control these things?” you speak, not looking up from your notepad as you continue to hastily write. 

“Depends. The more minor stuff, he could do it as long as he was focused and had line of sight. Something like a heart attack, he needed extended physical contact.”

When Bakugou doesn’t continue on, you look up from your notepad. He’s watching you with an intensity that feels like it’s reserved for villains– his crimson eyes practically glued to you. 

You swallow, briefly forgetting what you were going to say. Using the excuse of needing to write notes, you look away from him and force your gaze back down. “Tell me about this incident with your wrist.”

“We caught him running QEDs with a lackey from Infinition.” You can practically hear the scowl as Bakugou speaks, his voice bitter at the mention of QEDs– Quirk Enhancing Drugs. “The lackey had a quirk that let him link injuries between people. I got my hands on the QEDs they were transporting and the asswipe used his quirk on me and broke his own wrist to get me to drop ‘em. Circulation got the drugs back and managed to get a hand on me. We captured the idiot with the injury link quirk but Circulation got away. I didn’t know what the asshole did until later on.”

“And what was it that Circulation had done to you?”

“The four healers I saw couldn’t do shit to fix my wrist. We eventually put it together that Circulation had done something to slow my body’s healing. Even a fuckin’ papercut took weeks to heal. It was months before whatever the hell he did to me lost its effect, the fucking bastard,” Bakugou sneers.

You open your mouth to ask yet another question, but Bakugou interrupts you. 

“I’m not answering anymore of your shitty questions today,” he grits. At the sound of his chair creaking, you lift your head to see that he’s stood up. He rolls his shoulders back, stretching out his arms as he spares a glance towards the clock on his desk. “I’ve got patrol in 30 minutes– so you can piss off.” 

Looking down at your watch, you realize that it’s been over an hour. The fact that you’ve just barely scratched the surface of the file makes you want to push back, but in the interest of not angering Bakugou anymore than you have to, you reluctantly nod in agreement. You carefully tuck your notepad back into your bag, standing up and watching as Bakugou grabs the jacket that had been hanging off his chair and throws it over his shoulders.

He looks up at you with an annoyed expression. “Did you hear me? You can piss off now.”

You swallow, your grip on the handle of your briefcase tightening. Perhaps the way to building rapport was outside of the meetings he seemed to despise so much, even if it was something as simple as walking out of the building with him. “We’re both leaving, aren’t we? We might as well take the elevator down together.”

Bakugou rolls his eyes at your words, but he doesn’t protest any further, instead pushing past you and opening the door to his office. You trail behind him, sparing Inoue a small wave as you pass by the front desk. 

The elevator feels much smaller with Bakugou’s muscled frame and bulky hero costume standing next to you. You can’t stand the awkward silence any further, so you let out a small breath and start to speak. “Does next Saturday at the same time work for you?”

“Sure, whatever,” he answers flatly, his eye twitching at the mention of yet another meeting. 

The rest of the elevator ride is quiet, save for the small beeps with each passing floor as you both descend. When the elevator arrives at the main floor, Bakugou strides forward without a word, heading towards the exit. You have to walk nearly twice as fast as you normally do to keep up with him, and Bakugou doesn’t even bother to hold the door open for you as he steps outside.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Bakugou,” you blurt out before he can get any farther away from you. As much as you hated to be doing anything but cussing him out, you had to at least try to be cordial with him. 

You half expect him to completely ignore you and keep walking away, but he briefly stops, sparing you a glance over his shoulder. 

“I know you’d rather be doing anything else, and I do appreciate that you are willing to make this work,” you continue on, shifting uncomfortably under Bakugou’s gaze.

He looks at you for a moment longer before he turns to face forward once again and continues walking down the street, not even bothering to respond. You suppose you shouldn’t be surprised by his response, but it still irks you nonetheless.

You scoff under your breath in annoyance, rolling your eyes as you turn to start heading back towards your apartment. Double checking that the crosswalk light is green and the street is clear, you take a step off of the curb and begin to cross the road.

In an instant, something firmly grips the back of your blazer and yanks you back– hard. You cry out, reeling backwards against your will with a sharp gasp. Your hands rise behind you to claw at whatever has grabbed you, a strangled noise escaping your throat. Just as you start to try to turn around so you can see what’s holding you, your eyes widen as a car hurtles past you, just inches away. It’s going well above the speed limit, barely more than a blur and fast enough that you can feel the wind it’s created whipping through you– pulling at your clothes and disheveling your hair.

Your briefcase clatters to the ground as you slam into something behind you. Stuck in a state of shock, your eyes remain pinned to the now empty road, any air you’d had in your lungs completely gone.

You had almost just died. Your legs buckle beneath you as a strangled sound of horror escapes your throat. To your surprise, you don’t collapse to the ground, something firm keeping you upright.

“Be careful! You fuckin’ idiot,” the voice behind you snaps you out of your shock, if only for a moment. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to look before you cross?”

Whatever– or whoever had been holding you forces you to your feet before letting you go. You turn on your heels, stumbling a step away from the person who'd grabbed you as your breath comes in strained gasps. 

You look up to meet Bakugou’s gaze, an annoyed expression painted across his features. Your eyes are impossibly wide, your mouth agape as you struggle to speak. Distantly, you feel your hand rise to grasp a fistful of your blouse, not entirely conscious of the movement. Beneath your hand you feel your heart thrumming violently against your ribcage, beating faster than it ever has before.

“I–” you don’t even know what you’re trying to say.

“You trying to kill yourself so you don’t have to deal with this case or what?” Bakugou cocks an eyebrow, his eyes following the movement of your chest as it rises and falls in uneven wheezes. If you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think that the way his brows are furrowed together is because he’s concerned.

“There weren’t any– it was– green,” you stammer, glancing over your shoulder at the empty street once again. The whole world spins, and you just barely process the tears glossing over your eyes.

“Oi–” Bakugou snaps, and you don't have time to process his voice before a firm hand is grabbing your chin, forcing you to look away from the street and directly up at him. He’s much closer than before– or had he always been that close? You can’t think amidst the very prominent realization that if not for Bakugou, you would be sprawled out dead on the road behind you right now. “Get a hold of yourself, loser,” he grits out, refusing to let go of your chin even when you make a weak attempt at pulling away.

You swallow, blinking rapidly and sucking in a gasp of air. You do your best to breathe through your nose, letting go of your blouse and curling your hands into fists at your sides, the bite of your nails into your palms serving to ground you.

A few seconds pass, your gaze pinned to Bakugou’s as you struggle to regain your composure. When your breathing is no longer made up entirely of short wheezes, Bakugou finally lets go of you, his hand dropping to his side as he takes a step back.

“Christ,” he huffs out with a feigned annoyance, his irritable expression betrayed by the way he attentively watches your every movement.

In an attempt to escape his gaze, you turn and retrieve your briefcase from the ground, your legs shaking beneath you when you crouch down. You’re worried that you won’t be able to stand back up, but with a deep breath, you keep yourself stable enough to straighten your legs and turn to face Bakugou again.

You stare up at him dumbly for a moment, unsure of what to say. “I– thanks for that, I guess,” you blurt out, your mind a mess.

Bakugou scoffs. “Be more careful next time, dumbass,” he responds plainly. He stands across from you for a handful of seconds, his eyes narrowed as he assesses you for just a moment more before he seemingly decides that he's done with the conversation. He turns to begin heading back towards the direction he’d initially been going when you two had parted ways, sparing you from his gaze and any further embarrassment at him seeing you in such a disheveled state.

You grit your teeth together, taking a handful of deep breaths before you work up the courage to move again. As you reorient yourself, you swallow nervously at the realization that you still need to cross the street to get back to your apartment. Hesitantly, you step towards the street crossing once again, the tips of your heels hanging off the curb. Your eyes look back and forth down the street as you try to convince yourself that it’s safe to cross. Maybe you should just find a different route? 

“Oh give me a break,” Bakugou’s voice behind you nearly scares you out of your skin. You jump, a small squeak of surprise escaping your lips against your will as your head snaps to look up at him. What was with this guy and pretending to leave only to come right back? “Get moving,” he grits out, shoving you forward without bothering to look down at you.

You stumble, sucking in a breath as your feet make contact with the road. You nearly freeze, but with a scowl on his face, Bakugou pushes you forward again before your panic can overwhelm you. 

You manage to make it the rest of the way, letting out a breath of relief the moment your shoes meet the sidewalk once again. You brush your hair away from your face and lift your head to thank Bakugou, only to see that he’s already turned around and crossed the street, headed back towards where he’d been originally going. 

With your heart still pounding in your chest, you watch as he slowly grows farther and farther away. 

Chapter Text

By the time you make it back to your apartment, your heartbeat has not eased in its rapid pounding in the slightest. You’re barely able to get the key into the lock of your front door with the way that your hands are trembling, and when you do finally manage to do so, the lock is as noncompliant as it had been last night. By the time you get the door opened and step into your apartment, you barely have a hold on your breathing and the events of your very near-death experience keep replaying over and over in your head.

The crosswalk light had been green. You were sure of that fact– you swear that you had even double checked it was before you started crossing. Of course, that doesn’t mean much on its own; you'd prosecuted plenty of reckless driving offenses where drivers had blown through stop lights or failed to stop for a pedestrian and injured them in an accident– but you had specifically made sure the road was clear before you stepped forward. 

You know that you'd checked– if your elementary school teachers didn’t hammer the “look both ways” phrase into your head enough, the driving related offenses you’d prosecuted certainly had.

So where the hell had that car come from?

—

As much as you try not to think about it, the incident keeps replaying in your head throughout the entire week. You frequently find yourself ghosting your fingers over your chin, thinking back to the way Bakugou had made you look at him until you’d gotten your breathing under control. During your daily walk to work each morning, you are hypervigilant at each crossing, scrambling across as quickly as your heels will permit. 

When it inevitably comes time for your third meeting with Bakugou, you find yourself stuck at the crossing where you’d almost died, your feet glued to the sidewalk beneath you. You stare up at the agency’s building, willing yourself to just cross to no avail. You must stand there for over five minutes before you work up the courage to move, striding quickly across the street and sticking close to a group of teenagers who also happen to be crossing at the same time.

Thankfully, you still get up to the top floor of the building on time, quickly checking in with the front desk before turning to take a seat in the waiting area. While you wait, you answer emails on your phone as the minutes tick by. When nearly twenty minutes have passed, you make a mental note to talk to Bakugou about being on time.

Immersed in your work, you don’t bother to look up from your phone when you hear the sound of a door opening– simply assuming that it’s the door to Bakugou’s office. Just as you begin to tuck your phone in your bag and take a step forward, you are accosted by the sound of a voice that makes your stomach fill with dread.

“Scorch, baby! How have you been?”

You freeze, slowly turning your head towards the sound of the voice as you try to convince yourself that you’re hallucinating. Your fears are unfortunately realized as you look down and see Minoru fucking Mineta prowling towards you with a stupid smile on his face. It's a battle not to let the dread show on your face as you meet his gaze.

Mineta had a similarly infamous reputation in the prosecutor’s office as Bakugou, though the reasons for their reputations could not be more different. Simply put, the excuse of a hero that stood in front of you was a pig. Mineta was notoriously creepy and incredibly unprofessional with female prosecutors, to the point that files where he was the responding hero were almost exclusively given to the male prosecutors now, much to Mineta’s overwhelming disappointment. 

Your own interactions with Mineta had fortunately been limited to one file, however he had certainly left a lasting impression– being the source of the first and only complaint against a hero that you had ever filed with the commission. 

A year or two into your career, you’d been handed an assault file where the victim had specifically requested a female prosecutor be the one to handle her case. You had been more than willing to take on the file, but you had also received an abundance of warnings from your colleagues regarding the assigned hero, Grape Juice. The little you had seen of Grape Juice in the media before you began working as a prosecutor was enough to know that he was generally a scumbag, but you'd not known what you were getting into until you had a meeting with Mineta the week before the trial was set to take place and he’d followed up a very obvious attempt to look up your skirt with a barrage of crude jokes and inappropriate comments about your physique. The interaction had left you uncomfortable, but you’d dealt with your fair share of assholes and creeps by then, doing your best to brush it off for the sake of a smooth trial.

In the end, you'd determined that Mineta’s testimony wasn’t required at trial, and that just using his written reports would be more than enough. Heroes being prepped for court only for the prosecutor to decide down the line that they were not needed to testify was certainly not unusual, and most heroes were simply glad when they got a call from the courts cancelling their subpoena. What was truly reprehensible was that upon being informed of his presence no longer being required, Mineta went on to willingly testify for the defense and against the complainant, spouting all sorts of victim-blaming bullshit on the stand that effectively destroyed any hopes of a guilty verdict. The accused ended up walking free, and you'd barely kept it together in court when Mineta had come up to you after the Justice had delivered their verdict.

A stupid smirk had been on his face as he said “no hard feelings, right Scorch?” and then promptly tried to get your number. Had you not been in the courtroom, you would’ve lost your shit and probably punted him into another stratosphere. Instead, you’d been forced to give him a one word response and hurry off to go speak with the victim for the file. You learned later on that he'd unfortunately found out about your nickname from the defense lawyer on the case, one of the few attorneys outside of the prosecutor's office who knew of your cursed alias.

The distinct memory of you sobbing at your desk over the outcome of the file after court sticks in your mind as you look down at Mineta. You find yourself rapidly abandoning any prospect of being professional in this interaction, and despite the realization, you cannot bring yourself to care in the slightest.

“Mineta,” you grit out, your hands curling into fists at your sides. In your mind, you weigh how worth it beating the shit out of him would be if it meant that Dynamight would be the one to gleefully put you in cuffs after the fact.

“Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot after that whole trial fiasco,” Mineta continues on, and you can feel a rage like nothing you’ve ever experienced before fighting to burst from your chest. “I just said what I thought was true, y’know.”

That pushes you over the edge. Suddenly, any self restraint you'd been feebly clinging to disintegrates before your eyes. “What you did, Mineta–” you start, glaring daggers at him. “Was spout off a bunch of outdated, misogynistic victim-blaming bullshit that ultimately let a criminal walk free.”

Mineta pales at your words, taking a step back when he sees the way that you’re struggling to keep yourself from exploding altogether.

You can’t stop yourself from continuing on. “Quite frankly, you’re very fortunate that my manager didn’t let me go to the media about it,” your voice rises with each word, and you can’t bring yourself to care in the slightest. “If I’d had my way, every news outlet in the country would know about the pervert hero who willingly defended a fellow pervert criminal.”

“Hey– let’s not–” Mineta tries to speak, but you take a step forward and interrupt him immediately.

“Though I suppose I didn’t need to, seeing as the media is well aware that you can’t seem to keep it in your pants. It’s a miracle you still have your hero license, you know?” Fury seeps from you, your skin burning hot. “I have some prosecutor friends who specifically work with the Public Safety Commission– they’d love to take on a case like yours. I’m sure you’re foolish enough that all it would take was seizing your cellphone to make sure you never practiced as a hero again.”

Your words seem to get to him, Mineta's face reddening in a mixture of embarrassment and indignation. “Don’t threaten me!” the puny hero snaps, his lips curling into a snarl. 

“Oh shut it, you pathetic little purple smurf!” you bite back. “I should–”

“Um– Miss?” Shimizu’s timid voice briefly pulls you out of your rage. Your eyes go wide as your head swivels to look at Shimizu, who is standing behind the front desk with a restrained fear. “Dynamight c–can see you now.”

Your stomach drops as you look past Shimizu to see Bakugou standing in the doorway to his office, a blank expression on his face. His eyes are wide, his red gaze flickering between you and Mineta. For a moment, you think you can just barely see the corner of his lip twitch upwards. Pure mortification floods through you as your eyes snap back to Mineta, who is standing light a deer in the headlights. 

You swallow, readjusting your grip on your briefcase and taking a small breath. You think that you should really start doing some damage control right about now– end the confrontation with Mineta as cordially as you can if you want any hope of keeping your job.

Before you can open your mouth to force out a hollow pleasantry, Bakugou speaks.

“Fuck off, Grape Shit.”

Mineta jumps at Bakugou’s voice, stammering out an incomprehensible reply and quickly scurrying towards the elevator without another word.

You stand frozen for a moment, your eyes pinned to Bakugou as he returns your gaze with a neutral expression. You don’t bother saying anything further, snapping out of your anger-fueled stupor and walking as confidently as you can towards Bakugou’s office. You brush past him as he lingers in the doorway, making sure that Mineta is actually leaving before he shuts the door behind him and takes a seat at his desk. 

As you sit down, the realization that you will be completely fucked if Bakugou or Mineta decide to report your outburst has your heart continuing to pound rapidly in your chest even as your fury slowly dissipates. Your thoughts run in circles, trying to come up with any kind of strategy for damage control.

It’s almost as if Bakugou can read your mind. “That shitwad won’t do a damn thing. He knows everything you said was right.”

Relief settles through you as you process Bakguou’s words. You feel your face heat with humiliation as you process the fact that you'd just completely lost your temper in front of Bakugou. What had happened to the calm and collected lawyer you prided yourself as being? You distantly decide to attribute your outburst to spending too much time around the explosive hero.

“Is he– part of your agency?” you tentatively ask, your voice much more docile than it had been in the lobby.

Bakugou looks offended at the fact that you would even ask something like that. “Fuck no,” he spits. “The little shit was here trying to beg for a sidekick gig with Pinky. Thinks just because we all went to high school together it means anyone will look past his shitty behavior.”

You nod, your lips pursing into a thin line as you swallow, not sure what to say next.

“The hell was that out there?” Bakugou cocks an eyebrow at you, a flicker of amusement flashing in his eyes as his lips tug into a soft smirk. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I–” you swallow, slouching just slightly in your seat as embarrassment burns through you. “He just majorly fucked up one of my files,” you answer weakly, the memory of you crying alongside the victim after court painfully replaying in your mind.

“Sounds like it was a lot more than that,” Bakugou tilts his head, eyes narrowing as he studies you. 

“I don’t– that’s not what we’re here to talk about,” you grit, dodging his question. “It’s already–” you glance down at your watch. “Over twenty minutes past our meeting time– we have more important things to discuss.”

For a moment, it looks like Bakugou wants to push further, but at the last second he seems to decide against doing so, much to your relief. 

“Get on with it then,” he scowls, leaning back in his chair and kicking his feet up onto his desk. You hide a wince when his boots make contact with the expensive looking varnish of the desk.

You sigh, mentally preparing yourself for what you’re about to say. “It’s very important that you’re on time for these meetings, Bakugou,” you start. “Unless you want to start having meetings even more frequently than we already are, you have to be on time.”

Bakugou rolls his eyes, scoffing in response. Before he can open his mouth to say anything, you continue on.

“The Infinition investigation went on for months before any major arrests were made, and we've barely just begun to talk about your initial interactions with the organization. Unless you want to start meeting with me on Sundays, too, you need to treat these meetings seriously. Every minute counts.”

“Whatever, sure,” he responds, a disinterested tone in his voice. You do your best not to bristle at his words and resist the urge to continue on with your chastising, learning very quickly that Bakugou seems to mentally check out in response to a lecture of any sorts.

A beat of silence passes before Bakugou speaks again.

"Why did Grape Shit call you Scorch?" he asks, the air of nonchalance in his voice betrayed by the pointed way he looks at you.

You can feel your face heat as you make a note to actually beat the shit out of Mineta if you ever see him again. 

“I am not entertaining that question,” you snap quickly in response. “Let's move on to what this meeting is actually about, please."

Bakugou shakes his head, a sinister grin biting at his lips as he gets the exact reaction he was hoping for. "I don't think so, Scorch. I'm not answering your questions until you answer mine."

Your do your best to hide your rapidly growing irritation, your hands twitching at your sides. You try to remind yourself that the more Bakugou knows this bothers you, the more he’ll push and prod.

“It’s a stupid nickname I got when I first started in the prosecution’s office,” you answer simply, using the excuse of retrieving your notepad from your briefcase to break eye contact momentarily.

Bakugou hums in response to your answer, and for a moment you have hope that he’ll give up this line of inquiry.

“It’s unique,” he comments plainly. “The hell did you do to get a nickname like that?”

Dread washes over you. “It’s really none of your business,” you answer curtly, your jaw clenching tightly shut. 

Bakugou’s feet fall from his desk as he sits up in his chair and leans forward, his piercing red eyes trained on you with the most interest you’ve seen from him so far. “If you want me to answer your bullshit questions then it is my business.”

The silence that falls between you two is tense as you struggle to keep your composure and think of any way out of this situation. You know that he’s going to refuse to budge, and if you try to give some bullshit story, he’ll probably see right through it immediately.

With a resigned despair, you give in, letting out a dejected sigh. “When I first started at the office, I burned my lunch in the microwave and the office smelled like burnt noodles for the rest of the week,” you blurt out quickly, just wanting to get it over with. "That's it. Happy now?"

Bakugou pauses to process your words for a moment before he barks out a genuine laugh, thoroughly enjoying your discomfort. You shoot him a glare, your eye twitching in annoyance. “Can we get to my questions now, please?” you hiss out.

Catching his breath, Bakugou regards you with an amused expression as he shrugs in response to your question. “Sure, whatever you say Scorch.”

—

After the humiliation ritual of explaining your nickname to Bakugou, you manage to get through a fair amount of your questions that you had planned for this meeting in the time that you have left. Bakugou is surprisingly okay at answering your barrage of questions, though he still gets visibly annoyed when you pry for specific details; regardless, things move much smoother overall in comparison to how you had initially anticipated these meetings going.

When it’s time for Bakugou to head off to patrol, you pack up your things and join him in the elevator ride down to the main floor once again. Surprisingly, Bakugou is the one who fills the awkward silence during the descent.

“You gonna remember to look both ways this time?” he grumbles, glancing at you from his peripheral.

You try to swallow your irritation at his words. “I’ll have you know that I did look both ways, asshole,” you bite back, eyes widening in shock when you realize that you'd said that last part out loud.

“Who the hell are you calling an asshole, nerd?” he barks out. “I’m the one who saved your ass!”

“I swear I looked both ways and the road was clear,” you insist with a huff. “The crosswalk light was even green. I have no idea where that car came from.”

You wait for whatever insulting response Bakugou is going to snap back at you with, but it doesn’t come. Tilting your head, you turn to take a closer look at him. His eyebrows are furrowed, his head angled slightly down as he thinks, a pensive expression on his face.

“What?”

Bakugou blinks, shooting a scowl your way as he shakes whatever he’d been thinking about out of his mind. “Nothing. Forget it, nerd.”

For a second, you almost push further, ultimately deciding against it when Bakugou’s gaze on you narrows even further into an intense glare.

The elevator arrives on the main floor and the doors open. This time, you are the one to exit first, making a pointed effort to hold the door open for Bakugou. He rolls his eyes as he walks past you, stepping outside. 

You trail along behind him, steeling yourself as you take a breath before approaching the crosswalk. You assume that Bakugou must be on a different patrol route today, because he waits beside you for the crosswalk light to turn green.

When the crosswalk light illuminates, you make a conscious effort to look both ways before you step forward. Bakugou shifts behind you, moving so that he’s standing on your left side instead of your right. The two of you cross the road without incident, and as you continue to walk forward, it takes you a moment before you realize that Bakugou is no longer beside you.

You stop in your tracks, looking behind you to catch a glimpse of him crossing the street back towards his building and heading off in the same direction that he had last week. Your eyebrows knit together in confusion– surely he hadn’t crossed the road with you just to make sure you got across safely?

Dismissing the idea, you continue on with your walk home.

—

Just as you finish fighting with the lock to your apartment and finally get the door open, your phone buzzes in your pocket. You don’t bother to look at it until after you’ve gotten inside and kicked your shoes off, collapsing on the couch with a long sigh. 

When you finally fish your phone out of your pocket and haphazardly glance at the screen, a pang of confusion runs through you when you see what the notification is for. You sit up and stare at your phone screen more intensely, blinking rapidly.

Bakugou has sent you a text.

Dynamight >:(

Did you make it home?

You click onto the notification, checking the phone number just to make sure that it’s actually Bakugou texting you and not some weird kind of scam. Since when did he care whether you made it home safely or not? The way he looked at you most of the time suggested he couldn’t stand to even be in your presence, much less go out of his way to text you after your meetings.

Struggling to think of an answer to his text, you type out multiple different responses before inevitably deleting them each time. Eventually, you get frustrated enough with the fact that you’re putting so much thought into your response and type out whatever comes to your mind next, quickly deciding that it's good enough to hit send.

You

yeah. it’s only about a fifteen minute walk.

Bakugou reads the message almost immediately, but after a few minutes of waiting, it’s clear that he’s not going to bother with a response. You roll your eyes, turning off your phone and reaching towards the TV remote on your coffee table. 

As you are scrolling through Netflix trying to find something interesting enough to put on, the sound of the handle to your front door jiggling drags you out of your thoughts.

You sit up straight, eyes wide as your attention immediately snaps to your front door. A few seconds pass, the silence nearly deafening; just as you are about to decide that you had misheard something or imagined the noise, you watch in horror as the handle jerks once more.

Standing, you adjust your grip on the TV remote in your hand and begin to approach your front door. With each small step forward, the knot of fear in your chest twists tighter and tighter. You hold your breath, leaning forward just enough to stare out the peephole.

There’s nothing. The hallway outside is completely empty, and you feel a hesitant relief wash over you. You double check that the door is locked correctly, sliding the deadbolt into place just for good measure before you step away. 

You try to tell yourself it was just someone mistaking their apartment for yours. Maybe it was just a maintenance guy who tried to get in only to realize they had the wrong unit number? It had happened once before at one of your previous apartments– you'd walked out of the bathroom after a shower in nothing but a towel and found a very confused maintenance worker trying to figure out what was supposedly wrong with your washing machine. It was frightening at the time, but now it was just a funny story. Surely that’s what happened here, too.

Your mind wanders, conjuring up worse possibilities with each passing second. Receiving threatening letters from an accused sent to your office was one thing– an accused tracking down your address and trying to break in was an entirely different level. You’d never heard of anything like that happening at your office, even to the prosecutors who almost exclusively handled organized crime files. 

To go after a Level 1 prosecutor wouldn’t be worth the hassle or the risk– or at least that’s what you try to tell yourself. You’re sure that the defense lawyers for the Infinition file have already assured their clients that the prosecution’s case will crash and burn. If the villains think they’ll be able to legally get away with their crimes, there’s no point for them to even consider going after the assigned prosecutor. Besides, with the three main villains arrested, Infinition was in shambles right now as it was– barely functioning, even.

Despite your best efforts to reassure yourself that you’re just being paranoid, you still opt to retrieve a knife from your kitchen and tape it to the back of your bed’s headboard.

Better safe than sorry, you suppose.

Chapter Text

It was always broken.

The thought replays over and over in your mind like a prayer as you stare at the broken latch on the bathroom window, a sinking feeling growing in your stomach.

“I’m being paranoid,” you mutter under your breath, stepping forward and trying to jam the latch back into place for what must be the twentieth time. “It was always like this.”

For the next ten minutes, you remain stuck in a cycle of pacing your bathroom, stopping to re-examine the latch, and then subsequently wrestling with it until you get so frustrated that you want to cry. The feeling of your phone buzzing in your pocket is the only reason you don't continue on for longer.

You wipe the sweat off your palms and onto your pants, fishing your phone out of your pocket and glancing at the screen. A scowl settles across your lips the moment you see that it’s a text from Bakugou.

Narrowing your gaze to read the contents of the message, you bring the phone closer to your face. Your eyes widen the moment they skim across the text.

“Motherfucker–”

—

Katsuki Bakugou – 1:10pm

Can’t make the normal meeting time. Reschedule to 6pm.

You – 1:10pm

Do I need to remind you of the importance of our meetings?

I plan my Saturday around these meetings, it’s disrespectful to my time to reschedule less than an hour before.

A scowl settles across Bakugou’s face as he reads your response, his grip on his phone tightening. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he’d somehow let Deku rope him into this stupid gala, he has to deal with you whining about it now, too. 

Bakugou’s eyes briefly flit away from his phone as he makes a lacklustre attempt to observe his surroundings. Kaminari, Kirishima, and Deku are all sitting around the table, currently engrossed in their own mind-numbing conversations that they are somehow deriving enjoyment from. His hands twitch at the thought that he would much rather be fighting for his life out on patrol as opposed to playing nice with the media so Uraraka can rake in the funds for her counselling program. Sure, it was a good cause, but Bakugou would prefer to just throw his own cash at this shit than be forced to be amicable with the press, lest he face the wrath of his PR team should he do anything else.

Turning his attention back to his phone screen, Bakugou feels the irritation lingering under his skin reignite as he rereads your message.

Katsuki Bakugou – 1:12pm

Whatever. Not my fault you’re boring and plan your shit around me.

Take it up with my PR team. I don’t want to be here either. 

He watches with a barely present amusement as the speech bubble indicating that you are typing repeatedly appears and disappears. You and your stupid words.

You – 1:13pm

I am sure you are aware that court responsibilities take precedence over photo ops.

Bakugou rolls his eyes. This type of threat had worked once at the very beginning of his career and then never again as soon as he’d done five minutes of research. He almost admired your nerve in even trying shit like this. His legal obligations began and ended at showing up to court on the date listed on his subpoena. While it was certainly disrespectful not to adhere to meeting times with prosecutors, Bakugou was never one to give a shit about being cordial.

Katsuki Bakugou – 1:13pm

Send me a subpoena for the meeting next time then nerd

I know the law. I don’t have to show up to anything unless that bullshit yellow paper gets delivered to my office.

There you go again– typing and deleting, over and over. He can easily picture the cogs turning in your brain, fighting against your own frustration. He knew that lawyers were sticklers about wording, but you seemed to take it a step further.

You – 1:15pm

There's a chance that I have to disclose our conversations to the defense should they make a request. If you could be more professional in your correspondence, or simply show up to our scheduled meetings, that would be much appreciated.

Oh you’re mad. Bakugou can practically see your anger behind the words on his phone screen. Always one to resort to malicious professionality when you don’t get your way. He can almost perfectly envision the threat of a complaint to the Commission in his future.

Katsuki Bakugou – 1:16pm

6pm. If you want to take me away from the gala raising money for disadvantaged kids, be my guest.

Bakugou hits send with a twisted sort of satisfaction, something stuck between a scowl and an amused smirk painted across his lips as he watches the text bubble appear and disappear a handful of times before it ceases altogether. He stares at the screen for a moment longer, not entirely convinced that you’re done with your protesting.

“Katsuki!” The sound of Kirishima’s sharp voice finally snaps Bakugou out of his thoughts. How long had he been trying to get Bakugou's attention? Bakugou lifts his head, eyes narrowing into a glare as his gaze settles on the red-head. “Jeez– the hell is on your phone to have you hypnotized like that?” 

“Nothing!” he snaps in response, his jaw clenching in annoyance. “Now shut it, shithead.”

“That doesn’t look like nothing,” the sudden noise of Mina’s voice has Bakugou whirling around in his seat to look at her. She’s standing just a few inches behind him, leaned over to look down at his phone. When had she managed to sneak up on him?

She’s got a mischievous smile on her face, and before Bakugou can put the pieces of what she is planning together, Mina is moving at a nearly inhuman speed. By the time he processes what's happening, Mina has already swiped his phone out of his hands with a triumphant grin.

“Oi– give that back!” Bakugou immediately lunges out of his seat towards his phone, grabbing helplessly at the air as Mina expertly avoids him, practically dancing away.

“Who are you texting?” she laughs, an almost hungry look in her eyes as she scrolls through the messages. “Has our brick wall of a hero finally gotten around to dating?” 

“Give it back, dipshit!”

Mina narrows her eyes and slows briefly in her movements as she examines the screen. Bakugou feels his heart drop to his stomach as a sparkle glimmers in her eye and the smile on her face grows impossibly wide.

“Oh my gosh!” she exclaims, spinning on her heel without sparing Bakugou a glance when he crashes towards her once again. “I know this name! Is this who I think it is?”

Kaminari, who had been busy eyeing the waiters chauffeuring food around the gala up until this point, finally tunes into the conversation. “Who?!”

Kirishima is the next to speak up, looking almost as entertained as Mina while he observes the violent dance between the pink hero and Bakugou. “Don’t leave us hanging, Mina!”

They’ve made at least two circles of the table at this point, Bakugou utterly powerless in getting his phone back as Mina seamlessly avoids each and every one of his attempts to rescue the device from her grasp. He really should’ve swallowed his pride and done those ballet lessons when Mina had invited him to join her all those months ago.

“It’s that cutie prosecutor!” she squeals, ducking out of the way of Bakugou’s arms and slipping past him with a renewed excitement. “Y’know– the one who was in charge of that shapeshifter file a bunch of us worked on!”

A faint recognition dons over the group. Deku, who had been quietly observing the spectacle in front of him, nods eagerly when Mina says your name.

“I remember her, she was awesome!” Deku pipes up, his voice only serving to make Bakugou angrier. He holds his chin as he looks down at the table and thinks for a moment, remaining unfazed even when Bakugou slams his shin into the side of Deku’s chair in the process of chasing Mina around the table. “I’ve had her on a few files since then; she always seems to get good outcomes.”

“She’s like a lucky charm,” Mina adds, flashing a peace sign to one of the photographers at the event who had noticed the scramble and promptly redirected his camera towards the group of pro heroes. When Bakugou catches sight of the poor photographer, he stops in his tracks and all it takes is a few sparks from his palm for the man to reluctantly turn and face the main stage once again. “That shapeshifter case was the first time I ever had to testify in court. I was so freaking nervous but she still had like– buckets of faith in me.”

Bakugou feels like a kid again as he stands on one side of the table, directly opposite of Mina. Each time he makes a move in one direction, Mina begins to move in the opposite direction– thoroughly enjoying this awful dance as she cackles through it all. If it weren’t for the fact that Uraraka would have him stoned to death if he tried it, Bakugou would’ve leapt directly over the table a long time ago, fancy silverware be damned.

Kaminari opens his stupid mouth to speak again. “Didn’t she take over the shapeshifter file just before the trial?” he tilts his head. “The first prosecutor was really close to withdrawing the charges altogether, right? Something about not being able to prove identity.”

Kirishima hums in agreement. “Yeah– and then she took the case over and got a conviction! What did that villain get again? It was some kind of jail sentence, right?”

“Can we shut up about this?!” Bakugou barks out, trying to catch his breath as he leans forward and curls his fists into the velvet fabric of the tablecloth. At the sound of his voice, the group shifts their attention back towards Bakugou and what had gotten them onto this topic in the first place.

Mina cocks an eyebrow at Bakugou. “Why are you making that poor prosecutor deal with you anyways?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business.” Bakugou grits out, lunging towards Mina as quickly as he can only for Mina to sidestep him at the last moment. Bakugou nearly goes crashing into a nearby table, just barely managing to reel backwards onto his heels and catch himself.

“I think it’s plenty of my business,” Mina grins wickedly. “I would die for that lady– I have to make sure you’re not torturing her with your poor attitude and grievous lack of manners.” Mina holds his phone up with a twisted grin, facing the screen towards Bakugou and the rest of the table, her other hand perched on her hip. “Sure seems like you’re failing in that aspect.”

Finally, Bakugou manages to get close enough to wrench his phone out of Mina’s hand– though in all likelihood, his success is only because Mina is done reading the messages and no longer has a use in holding the device hostage. Bakugou’s lips part to snarl out an insult only to be interrupted by Kirishima, who seems to have come to an unfortunate realization.

“Wait– is she the prosecutor you’ve been having all those meetings with? For the Infinition file?”

“Asshole! How the hell do you even know about those meetings?!” The words violently tumble from Bakugou before he can think about the fact that he is essentially confirming Kirishima’s theory. Bakugou’s hands twitch as he contemplates how much of Uraraka’s wrath he is willing to face if it means being able to put the red-head in a chokehold until he shuts up. Maybe if he does it quickly enough, the media won’t be able to take pictures?

“Shimizu gave me access to your calendar a few months ago,” Kirishima laughs. “When I’m bored, I like to see what you’re up to. When was the last time you took a vacation day, dude?”

Bakugou can feel the sparks fighting to escape his clenched fists as he all but fumes with annoyance. He looks between Mina and Kirishima, contemplating which hero he wants to throw through a wall more and eventually deciding that Kirishima can go first since he’s within arms reach.

“Wait– she’s the one doing the Infinition case? Isn’t that file a mess?” Mina blurts, pulling Bakugou’s attention away from Kirishima.

“A mess?” Denki quirks an eyebrow.

“Well– from what I understand, there’s a lot of missing evidence because of– uh–” Kirishima trails off, his voice growing more unsure. “Because of what happened…” 

A pointed silence settles across the group, Kirishima’s words a painful reminder of the impossibly empty seat at the table– at every table now. The implication hangs in the air, nearly suffocating. Seconds drag by endlessly slow as the previously easygoing atmosphere seems to go stale with discomfort.

Bakugou swallows the lump in his throat, gritting his teeth together. “Can you all just drop this bullshit already?”

Seeking to break the tension, Deku speaks next. “Isn’t the trial in September? Or at least I think it is… I remember seeing something about it in the news.”

Kirishima nods in agreement, eager to turn the conversation back towards something more lighthearted. “Yeah– what are you doing meeting with her so early?”

“Well our Bakugou here is probably a special case.” Mina, who has somehow managed to once again sneak behind Bakugou, throws an arm around his shoulder and bumps her head against his with a knowing smirk. Bakugou immediately shoves her away with a scowl, half standing in his seat as he gets ready to resume the chase around the table. 

“See what I mean?” Mina gestures towards all of Bakugou, giggling in amusement. “That poor lawyer has to make sure he doesn’t make a fool of himself in front of the judge. You can’t train a dog in one day.”

“You fuckin’ brat! Shut it!” Bakugou demands, shooting daggers in her direction. He opens his mouth to say more, but the conversation is already moving along, the whole group familiar with Bakugou’s usual outbursts.

“It’s interesting that she’s on that file,” Deku continues on, doing that annoying speculation shit that he always does. “I only started seeing her name pop up on things two or three years ago. She’s still relatively new, isn’t she?”

Mina hums in acknowledgement. “I think so. I remember her saying something about still settling into her office when I met her for the shapeshifter trial prep.”

“How’d she get the Infinition file then?” Yet again, Kaminari asks another question. “Shouldn’t a file like that have gone to one of the big wigs?”

“Maybe she took it from a coworker? She could be going for an early promotion– trying to impress the higher ups or something,” Kirishima tilts his head in thought, glancing at Mina from his peripheral as she nods in agreement.

“That’s risky,” Deku mutters, his eyebrows knitting further together as he tries to piece together the pointless mystery. “I mean– it’s certainly a file to get attention, but if things go wrong…”

“Especially with Bakugou being the main hero,” Mina snickers, already looking at the blonde for a reaction.

“Oh fuck you, pink shit,” Bakugou growls, rolling his eyes as he leans back in his chair, running a hand over his face. Could this conversation just end already?

“See what I mean?” Mina juts her thumb in Bakugou’s direction, a smirk on her lips. “Put this guy in front of a judge and he’ll be the one getting convicted, not the villain.”

“You think the prosecutors are disappointed when they see Bakugou on a file?” Kaminari pipes up, a stupid grin on his face.

Mina answers immediately. "Oh, for sure."

“No doubt about it.” Kirishima answers with a somber expression at the same time.

“I’m going to kill each and every one of you,” Bakugou grits out, crossing his arm as he glares at the entire table. “If anyone is going to fuck up the file, it’s going to be that shitty prosecutor, not me.”

A look of near genuine indignation flashes across Mina’s expression. “Don’t talk about my fave like that!” she protests. “I practically cry tears of joy when she emails me. That cutie has never failed me when I’ve had her on one of my files.”

“That’s just cold, Bakubro,” Kaminari adds solemnly, using that god-awful nickname because he knows he can get away with it right now with the amount of gossip-hungry journalists crawling around the event. “She seems pretty good at her job from what I remember.”

“She’s very passionate.” Deku adds, always one to defend the honor of an extra. “I stuck around once at a trial after I finished testifying to watch the villain take the stand. She tore him to shreds– it was kinda intimidating.”

“As she should,” Mina hums, giving a proud nod of approval. “With how afraid some of the other prosecutors seem to be of going to trial, she’s a breath of fresh air.”

“She’s a fucking nuisance,” Bakugou snaps in response, a scowl on his face as he crosses his arms over his chest and leans further back in his chair.

“I bet she just doesn’t put up with your attitude,” Kirishima teases, elbowing Bakugou lightly in the side with a soft smile of amusement. “She’ll grow on you.”

“I’m going to blow this building to pieces with everybody inside,” Bakugou mutters under his breath. “No survivors.”

“Oh, I’m definitely right, aren’t I?”

Mina squeals out a laugh. “Totally.”

—

Somehow, each time you take a seat in the waiting room, the chairs seem to grow more and more uncomfortable. 

You focus on the rigid plastic of the chair beneath you in a feeble attempt to keep the image of the broken window latch out of your head, your knee nervously bouncing with each passing minute. It is 6:15pm, and Bakugou is not even in the building yet. 

Tonight, you’re wearing a loose fitting turtleneck and a pair of jeans that you normally reserve for going out to grab coffee between chores at your apartment– a markedly less professional outfit than what you typically wear. You’d simply decided that if Bakugou couldn’t be professional enough to stick to your set meeting times, then you wouldn’t bother to dress up for the meetings anymore; most of the time he was in his hero costume when you met anyways. The most egregious part of your outfit is the fact that you’re wearing flats instead of your usual heels, the equivalent of a near social suicide in the eyes of some of the older ladies who worked in the prosecution’s office. The outfit had been chosen during what you reluctantly admit to be a fit of rage, and you know that you’d be the talk of the office if word of your attire ever made its way to your coworkers. Sure, the male prosecutors with 30 years of experience could show up to meetings in sandals and a stained button-up without anyone saying a word, but heaven forbid a junior prosecutor dare to be a woman and opt for comfort over pain.

Focusing on your anger to keep yourself from feeling self conscious about your clothing choices, you cross your arms over your chest and tilt your head back, a long side escaping you as you stare up at the spackled ceiling tiles.

Shimizu’s voice startles you, your head swiveling to look towards the timid woman sitting behind the front desk. “Um– Red Riot let me know that he and Dynamight should be here in 5 minutes.”

You nod, mumbling out a soft thank you before confirming the time on your phone. Of course it was Red Riot who’d let Shimizu know what was happening– it was no surprise that Bakugou couldn’t be bothered to think of anyone other than himself. Why would he ever bother to tell his assistant, the person who coordinates his schedule, what his ETA would be?

The minutes pass by slowly, and just as you are about to check the time on your phone for the hundredth time, the distinctive sound of the elevator dinging and the doors sliding open draws your attention. You crane your head to get a glimpse of the elevator, and sure enough, Red Riot and Bakugou filter out of the elevator. They are both dressed in tailored suits that look to be excessively expensive, the fabric expertly highlighting their muscled frames. Bakugou has his suit jacket slung over one of his arms, the top button of his shirt undone.

Of course. The one day you don’t dress up.

Red Riot spots you first, a smile lighting up across his face as he quickly approaches. You stand, stepping forward to meet him halfway with your own gentle smile. 

You’d collaborated with the hero a handful of times on some of your more minor files, and each time he’d been a dream to work with. He was on top of his schedule, easily made time for you, and had absolutely no problem waiting for his turn to testify at court; he was a true gentleman through and through- the polar opposite of Bakugou. He was unfortunately quite easily flustered by defense during cross-examination, but you took what you could get, especially with how often you had to deal with Bakugou.

“Red Riot,” you start. “It’s good to see you.”

“Just Kirishima is fine,” he responds, running a hand through his spiked hair. “Sorry he’s late. We got caught up with the media.” Kirishima juts a finger in the direction of Bakugou, who is standing off to the side with a childish scowl on his face.

“Thanks for getting him here,” you shift slightly closer, lowering your voice in an attempt to make sure that Bakugou doesn’t hear you. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”

Kirishima laughs softly. “He has his charms, I swear.”

You somehow manage to keep what you really want to say to yourself, instead forcing a soft nod. “I should get this meeting started, but it was good to see you. I hope we have some more files together in the future.”

The hero nods, shooting a sideways glance towards Bakugou. “You heard the lady– on with it!”

Before Bakugou can snap out an insult, Kirishima is already hurrying off towards what you assume to be his own office, the sharp teeth of his smile catching against the harsh fluorescent lights above. As the red-head disappears into his office, the atmosphere out in the waiting area is quick to become markedly unbearable.

You turn to fully face Bakugou, doing your best to ignore the way he looks you up and down, just as he'd done during your first meeting– though there is something in the way he looks at you now that is just slightly different compared to before. He is clearly caught off guard by your more casual appearance, a flicker of interest in his eyes that you try to brush off.

“Let’s get this over with,” Bakugou grumbles, tearing his gaze away from you and not bothering to wait for a response before trudging over to his office.

You bustle along after him, softly shutting the office door behind you and retrieving a pen and notepad from your bag before setting it down at your feet. As you sit down in the chair across from his desk, you spare a glance to your watch to confirm the time, a twinge of irritation reigniting in your chest.

“You’re twenty-four minutes late, Bakugou,” you comment dryly, regarding him with an unimpressed expression.

Bakugou lets out an audible groan of annoyance. “Jesus fuck, can we just skip this part? I’m not on patrol tonight, so we have lots of time for your stupid questions.” he huffs in frustration, leaning back in his chair. “I already know I’m supposed to take this seriously or whatever– you don’t have to repeat the same bullshit again and again.”

“If I keep repeating it, are you more likely to be on time for the next meeting if it means you don’t have to hear this same spiel again?” you quirk an eyebrow at him, your fingers drumming against your knee absentmindedly. “That’s about all I have– if you know a better way to motivate yourself to take this seriously, I’m all ears.”

Bakugou scowls, his hands twitching against the armrests of his chair. “Since when did you start getting so bold? Fuckin’ annoying.”

“Since you made it clear that professionalism isn’t something you particularly value,” you shrug, tilting your head as you observe him with a neutral expression. 

“Oh fuck off, nerd.”

A sigh escapes you as you brush a strand of hair away from your face. You swallow, debating in your mind whether you should say what you’re about to. On one hand, you know that if you verbalize what you’re thinking, you are going to royally piss him off– to the point that he may call off the meeting tonight entirely.

On the other hand, he needs to hear it.

Against your better judgement, your lips part.

“People are dead, Bakugou. A close friend of yours isn’t here anymore.”

As expected, rage ignites across Bakugou’s face in an instant, his hands curling into fists. Before he can respond, you continue to speak.

“It’s my responsibility to make sure they get justice. You play a part in that. My case is only as good as my witnesses, and right now, you can’t even show up for these meetings on time. Where does that leave me?”

You watch Bakugou seethe, his jaw clenching and unclenching in an almost rhythmic fashion as his red eyes remain pinned to you. You put all of your focus into remaining still, refusing to shift or squirm under his gaze. The image of him launching across the desk to throttle you feels as though it's becoming more of a sinister premonition with each passing second.

Finally, Bakugou looks away with a harsh scowl. “Just fuckin’ get on with it,” he mutters, his voice softer than you thought it would be.

With a nod, you click the pen in your hand and take a breath. “We last talked about the raid that you and Cellophane did on an Infinition warehouse out near the harbor. Tell me about what happened immediately after you entered the warehouse.”

A handful of seconds pass before Bakugou answers.

“We didn’t find anything, it was a set up. Hamartia had used his quirk to make the building collapse. I used my explosions to keep the rubble away from us and we barely made it out. Fought our way through a dozen Infinition fucks only to turn up empty-handed.”

You hum in response, scribbling down notes as quickly as you can.

“And what is your understanding of Hamartia’s quirk?”

“His quirk is called Fatal Flaw. Works on man-made objects– cars, buildings, almost anything. As long as he can touch it, he can worsen the imperfections of an object until it collapses.”

“Did you see Hamartia at the warehouse?”

“I think Sero caught a–”

The sound of your phone ringing startles you enough that you lose your grip on your pen and it clatters to the floor. You immediately shove your hand into the pocket of your jeans and retrieve the device, sparing a sheepish glance towards a thoroughly unimpressed Bakugou. You are about to reflexively decline the call– your finger hovering over the deny button– when your eyes scan over the caller ID.

SHIZUOKA HOMICIDE UNIT

You feel the air collapse in your lungs as the phone continues to ring. Bakugou must notice the change in your demeanor, because when you glance back up at him, he looks more curious than annoyed. Swallowing, you push yourself to your feet and answer the call, raising the phone to your ear with one hand and wrapping your free arm around your midsection.

“Hello?” your voice doesn’t sound like your own as you walk towards the corner of Bakugou’s office, doing your best to speak softly in an attempt to make sure he can’t eavesdrop. 

“It’s Kobayashi. We’ve got a scene here that we need you for.”

The familiar feeling of your heart knotting up in dread settles over you. You don’t know why you’re surprised– why else would the homicide unit be calling you this late at night?

You spare a glance over your shoulder, not surprised in the slightest when you see Bakugou watching you intently, clearing trying to listen in. “You’re sure?” you ask tentatively, trying to hide the obvious apprehension in your voice.

“Our DNA guy couldn’t find anything, and this is definitely a homicide,” Kobayashi pauses. In your mind, you can picture the detective sparing a glance towards the crime scene before he continues to speak. “It’s fresh– a little less than an hour. Within your threshold.”

“Barely,” you mutter, shifting your weight as you resist the urge to pace the length of the room. 

“You know I wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t necessary.”

A beat of silence passes as you try to resist doing what you know you shouldn’t do. In the end, your efforts are futile.

You sigh, looking down at the floor and pinching the bridge of your nose.

“Send me the address.”

Chapter Text

Det. Kobayashi — 6:32pm

We think TOD was less than 40ish minutes ago. Here’s the address:

You stare down at the text message, a sinking dread flourishing in the pit of your chest. You recognize the address to be in a residential area just on the edge of the city and about as out of the way as possible, a quick check of Google maps confirming your suspicions that the drive will be nearly twenty-five minutes. With the time of death and the fact that Kobayashi is halfway across the city, you feel your anxiety spike. You should just make it in time, but that’s only if you’re able to get out of here as fast as you can and hail a cab without issue. 

Turning to face Bakugou, you hastily tuck your phone into your pocket. “I’ve got to go,” you say simply, already bracing yourself for his reaction. 

There’s a beat of silence, his brows raising a fraction of a centimetre in surprise before anger overtakes his expression entirely and he all but explodes.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Bakugou snarls, a mixture of disbelief and fury plastered across his face. “All that bullshit about taking these meetings seriously and now you’re bailing?” He rises to his feet, stepping out from behind his desk and moving to stand between you and your bag before you can retrieve it from where it sits on the ground.

You let out an exasperated breath, your jaw tensing. You really need to leave. “I don’t have time to talk about this right now,” you assert as firmly as you can manage. “I’ll explain later.” 

“Not good enough, nerd!” he growls, refusing to let you maneuver around him to grab your bag. Each time you try to sidestep him, he moves with you— playing the part of an asshole brick wall perfectly. “What the hell could you possibly be doing that’s more important than this? You don’t have a side gig as some D-list hero, do you?”

The room grows increasingly charged by the minute. You tilt your chin up to look Bakugou directly in the eyes, your impatience flaring. “Just because I’m not a hero doesn’t mean the most important thing in my life is this case, Bakugou,” your voice drips with venom when you say his name. “This is an emergency–”

“Doesn’t seem like an emergency,” he interrupts, a sneer on his face as he steps forward in an attempt to corral you backwards. “You sounded pretty damn calm on the phone.”

Painfully aware of the narrow window of time you’re working within, you feel your frustration bubble out of you before you can stop it. “I don’t have time for your bullshit!” you bite. “The world doesn’t fucking revolve around you– I need to leave!”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from your stuck up ass,” Bakugou scoffs. “Always on my case about being on time just to fucking bail whenever you want. What is it with you lawyers and thinking you’re above everyone else?”

“You think I want to leave right now?!” You step forward, jabbing a finger towards his chest as your face heats with anger. “Jesus fuck, you have no idea–”

“Then enlighten me, shithead!” he snaps, leaning forward to look you directly in the eyes, your faces inches apart. You meet his gaze, resisting the urge to grab the nearest chair and put his reflexes to the test.

“I don’t have the time to do that, you asshole!” you blurt, your heart thrumming against your ribcage. “If you want to know so bad, you’re gonna have to come with me to see the bullshit I’ve got to deal with!”

The words tumble from your lips before you have time to think about what you’re saying, and the moment you see Bakugou’s expression shift, regret floods through your entire body. Fuck! Why did you say that?

“No– I didn’t mean that,” you backpeddle immediately, but the damage is already done. Glancing down at your watch, an irritated huff falls from your lips when you see that you’ve already wasted two minutes arguing with this asshole. “You are not coming with me.”

“Then you’re not leaving this building,” he retorts, pivoting on his heel and taking a wide step to the side so that he’s standing between you and the door.

You can barely think straight, your mind swirling with frustration towards Bakugou and anxiety over the fact that you are rapidly running out of time to be dealing with this. The reality that you simply can’t weasel your way out of this quickly enough descends upon you with a suffocating feeling of doom. You turn and roughly pick up your bag, anger flowing through you faster and faster with each passing moment.  

With no other choice, you give in.

“Then let’s go, asshole,” you glare up at him, seething with pure hatred at the self-centred bastard blocking your path. “If you’re going to invite yourself, you can at least fucking drive.”

—

“Pick up the pace,” you mutter, your knee rapidly bouncing up and down as you sit in the passenger seat and refuse to even look in the general direction of Bakugou. 

“I’m already going twenty over,” he grunts in response, glaring at you from his peripheral. He’s never seen you this agitated before– at least not in the way that you are now. Even when you’d verbally torn Mineta apart, your anger had been almost elegant in the way that it came out of you. Right now, you looked like you were on the verge of a complete collapse.

“I know some asshole defense lawyers that specialize in reckless driving offenses,” you grit, your nails curling into your palms. “I’m sure they’d love to add defending the number one hero to their portfolio.”

Bakugou scoffs, rolling his eyes as he turns his attention back to the GPS. The address you’d given him was for an unassuming home right on the outskirts of the city– even more evidence that whatever “emergency” you had to deal with was actually just a load of bullshit. 

“I’m going as fast as I can, asswipe.”

You huff out an excuse of a laugh at the insult, curling in upon yourself as you rest your elbows on your knees and hunch over, running a hand through your hair. A smile pulls at your lips, but it’s unnatural– almost trembling– like you’re struggling to accept that you’re in this situation at all. 

Bakugou narrows his eyes. He doesn’t like seeing you like this at all, and the realization makes him uneasy. You were such a nuisance that surely he should be rejoicing at the sight of the once prim and proper lawyer devolving into a mess of weak insults and anxiety, but instead, all he can feel is a lump growing in the back of his throat.

“Christ, calm down,” he grumbles. “Whatever the hell is going on, you’re going to be fine.”

“For the record, saying ‘calm down’ has never once in all of history ever made someone calm down,” you grit, an abnormal strain in your voice. “And nothing about this is fine. You invited yourself to this shit and now you’re going to see me–” You abruptly cut off, seemingly deciding not to continue on. Bakuguo just barely hears you mutter a curse under your breath.

The rest of the drive is silent, with Bakugou glancing over at you occasionally to confirm that you’re not about to have a heart attack. When he notices you curling your nails into the fabric of your jeans in an attempt to quell the trembling in your hands, he uncharacteristically chooses not to say anything about it. You check your watch at least once every twenty seconds, growing increasingly impatient and repeatedly unlocking your phone to check your ETA.

By the time Bakugou has turned onto the street where the address is located, you've already unbuckled your seatbelt and sat straight up in your seat, your eyes glued to each passing house with a feverish intensity.

“There–” you blurt, raising your hand to point at something down the street. 

Bakugou follows your gesture, his eyes widening in shock when he sees what you’re pointing at. There are at least ten police cruisers parked along the street, lights flashing rhythmically and overpowering the sunset on the horizon, painting a good portion of the unassuming neighborhood in a dance of red and blue. Nearly a dozen officers linger outside a single house, clearly on edge.

“What the fuck…?” he mumbles under his breath, pulling onto the side of the road and putting the car into park. He looks over to you for an answer, but you’re already opening the door and practically leaping out of the vehicle.

“Don’t follow me!” you snap, not even bothering to look towards him before you’re running.

For a moment, Bakugou thinks he is about to watch you get tackled as you sprint towards the house, completely unfazed by the tense police presence littered across the property. He quickly undoes his seatbelt and steps out of the car, ignoring your request entirely. He cannot let you get arrested until after this stupid trial is over with.

He curses under his breath, struggling to catch up with you. By the time you reach the front yard and duck under the yellow tape boldly labelled “POLICE — DO NOT CROSS”, Bakugou is still a handful of meters away.

When the police usher you towards the front door of the house instead of immediately tackling you to the ground and putting you into cuffs, Bakugou’s strides falter for just a moment. He watches in pure confusion as multiple officers move out of your way when you rush past.

What the ever loving fuck is going on?

Prosecutors don’t go to active crime scenes. Bakugou didn’t care all that much to pay attention to what you prosecutors actually did for a job beyond being really fucking annoying, but he sure as hell knew that not once in his entire career had he ever seen a prosecutor attend a scene. You lawyer nerds wanted pictures and written reports, practically demanding evidence be handed over with a neatly tied bow on top. You shouldn’t be running towards a crime scene, much less being allowed to do so by the police. 

Bakugou picks up the pace once again, managing to catch up to you with a small amount of effort. He only has to shoot a glare towards one of the police officers who dare to take a tentative step towards him for the rest of the fleet to back off. Cowards. He ducks under the police tape cordoning off the front yard of the house, quickly trailing after you.

Without a moment of hesitation, you shove your shoulder against the front door and burst into the house, your chest rising and falling unevenly with each breath. Bakuguo stands just a few feet behind you, his bewilderment with this whole situation growing exponentially the more he takes in what is happening. He opens his mouth to speak– to try to get your attention and demand that you explain what the hell is going on– but nothing comes out.

Waiting in the entryway of the home is a person every hero knows and dreads. Someone that Bakugou had been unfortunate enough to meet.

Detective Kobayashi is one of the lead investigators in the Shizuoka Homicide Unit, specializing almost exclusively in the deaths of heroes. Kobayashi had been there that night— grabbed Bakugou by the shoulders and forced him to hold his gaze, spoken with a stern tone while Bakugou had struggled to stay grounded in reality.

“Your friend is dead. There’s nothing more that you can do.”

Bakugou freezes, his blood running cold at the sight of the weathered old man. He remembers being unable to stop the tears from falling down his face, barely present enough to even register that he was crying in the first place.

“Who can I call for you, kid? I don’t want you alone tonight.”

The image of Sero, collapsed on the ground– so still he was almost unrecognizable. Sero never stopped moving, always had to be doing something– Mina made fun of him for it constantly. Why wasn’t he moving now? Why wasn’t he getting up?

“Get out of here and get some rest. I hope we don’t see each other again.”

The sound of his familiarly gruff voice snaps Bakugou out of his shock, if only for a moment. “Good to see you,” Kobayashi towards you. “Unfortunate that it’s under these circumstances.”

You run a hand through your hair, still catching your breath. “It’s always under these circumstances.” you mutter. 

The detective shrugs in response and hands you something. It takes Bakugou a moment to recognize his offering to be plastic shoe covers— likely to avoid contaminating the scene. You take them without a second thought, quickly moving to tug them over your flats.

Kobayashi glances past you and towards Bakugou, his dull gaze making Bakugou shift uncomfortably. It’s hard to gauge from his expression whether the detective actually remembers him or not. “He joining us?” he quirks an eyebrow at you, nodding his head in Bakugou’s direction. 

As you finish tugging on the shoe covers, you glance over your shoulder at Bakugou, your eyes narrowing into a harsh glare. “We don’t have time to convince him not to,” you grit in response.

With a shrug, Kobayashi pulls out a second set of shoe covers from his pocket and lazily extends them towards Bakugou, who numbly accepts the offering. 

You huff, standing up straight and quickly gathering up your hair to messily tie it back. “Where is the body?”

“Always one to get straight to business,” Kobayashi responds with a dry tone, rocking back on his feet with a feigned nonchalance. 

“Keep talking and you’ll be lucky if I manage to get anything,” you warn.  

Holding up his hands in surrender, Kobayashi turns on his heels and heads off towards what Bakugou assumes to be the living area of the home. Quickly pulling on the shoe covers, Bakugou trails along after you, not bothering to hide the confusion clearly plastered on his face. 

There’s a strange aura around you as you follow Kobayashi through the house— like your anxiety is slowly being suffocated by an ingrained familiarity with the situation at hand. Bakugou briefly glances down at your hands, able to see that they’re lightly trembling even from where he stands. 

As he rounds the corner and looks around to examine his surroundings, the first thing that Bakugou notices is the blood. He sees it before he spots the knife discarded nearby or the shattered glass littered across the ground– before he even sees the body. It’s pooled on the hardwood and soaking into the carpet, splattered across furniture and dripping down the walls; there are even small specks dotted across the ceiling. 

Bakugou shudders. He’s been a hero long enough to know how much blood the human body can hold– but to see it in a mundane environment like this was different. 

The sight of the body makes his stomach turn.

The woman is contorted at an odd angle, sprawled across the ground with a look of terror still etched onto her face. The source of all of the blood is immediately made clear when Bakugou’s eyes land on the jagged laceration across her neck– the gash still weeping crimson. There are defensive wounds scattered across her arms and deep bruises blooming down her legs. Her clothes are torn, one of her socks missing. 

“Jesus fuck,” Bakugou mumbles before he can stop himself, trying to swallow down the bile rising in his throat. No matter how long he worked as a hero, it never got any easier to see death so plainly, especially in circumstances like this– a full blown homicide was entirely different from citizens getting caught in the crossfire.

The worst part is that he recognizes her.

She is– wa–s a rookie sidekick; had even applied to Ground Zero only for Bakugou to turn her away due to a lack of experience and her nerves. If he remembers correctly, Deku ended up hiring her at his agency, and she’d gone on to do sidekick work with Yaoyorozu. He thinks that her quirk was something to do with being able to grow plants from her skin– or maybe it was just plant manipulation in general. Bakugou vaguely recalls being at a media event and listening to Yaoyorozu gush about how excited she was to train her first sidekick. 

He hates that he can’t remember anything more about her— not even her name. 

Bakugou looks away from the body in an attempt to silence his thoughts, glancing towards you to see how you’re handling the grotesque display. His brows furrow together when he sees that you’re more composed than you’d been in the car, looking directly at the scene in front of you with a resigned sort of calmness. 

You step closer to the body, closing your eyes and clasping your hands together before bringing them to your chest and taking a handful of deep breaths. “I’m ready,” you speak abruptly after a moment, a shaky determination painted across your features.

Kobayashi nods, moving away from Bakugou’s side and approaching you. Without a word, he retrieves a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and you hold your hands out in front of you. You’re completely motionless as Kobayashi snaps the cuffs over your wrists, tightening them until they bite into your skin.

What the actual fuck?

“What the hell is going on here?” Bakugou blurts, his eyes searching the scene in front of him to try to find some clue for what this all means. 

“Not now, kid,” Kobayashi says before you can scold Bakugou yourself, a tiredness etched into his words. 

“Don’t call me kid, you old geezer! Tell me what the fuck is going on—“

“Dynamight! Shut it,” the detective reasserts firmly, his tone briefly snapping Bakugou into a stunned silence. 

You turn back towards the body, glancing at Bakugou over your shoulder for just a moment. The look in your eyes seems to taunt him, like you’re saying now do you think this is important?

As you step forward and begin to lower yourself to the ground, Bakugou realizes that a tarp has been laid out right next to the body. You kneel down on the plastic material, an unreadable expression on your face. A person who Bakugou assumes to be another detective from the homicide unit pushes past him, approaching you with careful steps. In her hands, the woman holds a length of fabric that is strikingly similar to Eraserhead’s capture weapon. 

“What the fuck?” Bakugou rasps, his mouth dry.

From your peripheral, you shoot Bakugou a glare. “Not now,” you warn, your words pointed in their delivery. Kobayashi wordlessly returns to standing next to Bakugou’s side, a silent caution not to interfere.

The female detective carefully wraps the capture weapon around your torso a handful of times, ensuring that it’s snugly tied before she takes a few steps back. Kobayashi watches you closely with a solemn expression, drawing out a long breath. You don’t meet his gaze, instead staring down at the body.

Shifting to keep your balance as you hold your cuffed hands out in front of you, you carefully lean forward. Your lips purse into a thin line, palms hovering over the bare wrist of the victim with a barely perceptible tremor. Bakugou realizes that you’re hesitating, a crack in your calm facade just barely visible as you try to psych yourself into doing whatever it is that you’re about to do.

Bakugou half expects Kobayashi to crack some dry one-liner, but the room stays eerily silent. The air is heavy and something about the atmosphere makes Bakugou uneasy in a way that he doesn’t expect. No room with a dead body in it is ever meant to have a good atmosphere, but this is wholly different. It takes him a moment to figure out what he’s feeling, the unsettling knot in his chest tightening when he does.

It feels like whatever is about to happen is something sacred– something he shouldn’t be here to see.

You clench and unclench your hand twice before you gently touch the woman’s wrist.

For a moment, nothing seems to happen. Bakugou finds himself holding his breath until he can’t anymore– finally sucking in a gulp of air and looking towards Kobayashi to try to find any clues pertaining to what the hell is happening right now. He briefly thinks that maybe this is all some elaborate scheme to teach him to mind his own goddamn business.

The moment Bakugou looks away, you collapse. Your body slumps forward, going completely limp as you crumple even further into the ground, your head thudding against the floor with a dull sound. Alarm bells go off in Bakugou’s head, his heart lurching in his chest as his eyes widen in a mixture of surprise and concern. He tries to take a step towards you, but Kobayashi extends an arm across his torso, barring him from approaching any further. Bakugou watches in shock as you remain almost completely still, your chest failing to rise and fall.

“She’s not breathing–” Bakugou blurts, pointing out the obvious. He tries to take another step forward once again only for Kobayashi to firmly grab his shoulder, rooting him in place. Bakugou reels around look at the detective with an incredulous expression. “Asshole! She’s not breathing!”

“Quiet,” Kobayashi grits lowly, his grip tightening.

Bakugou feels his throat constrict as he turns to watch on in horror. Sure, he didn’t like you– but seeing almost anybody like this would be alarming. Why the fuck wasn’t anybody doing anything? 

He watches intently, a powerless frustration blooming in his chest as he looks for any movement whatsoever, just barely managing to notice that your body is spasming every few seconds. He obsessively catalogues every movement, no matter how small– your fingers curling just slightly, your shoulder twitching, your brows knitting together in what almost seems to be an expression of pain. 

Suddenly, you startle awake with a gasp, wrenching yourself upwards and into a seated position. Your eyes are wide open, but before Bakugou can feel any relief, he notices the way that your gaze seems to be clouded over. Like you’re not actually here at all. 

Your chest rises and falls rapidly, bordering on hyperventilation. With a terrified whimper, you jerk away from something that’s not there. The detective controlling the capture weapon tightens the grip of the fabric around your torso, refusing to let you scramble off of the plastic tarp.

“No… no no no!” you cry out– the noise unlike anything he’s ever heard from you before. The fear is so potent in your voice that Bakugou begins to feel sick to his stomach. How can these detectives just stand here and watch whatever the hell is happening right now? “Please– don’t!”

You turn to try to crawl away from whatever it is that you’re seeing, a choked scream tearing its way out of your throat– raw and terrified. The capture weapon tied around you holds you firmly in place, but you don’t seem to be aware of its presence at all, fighting to escape all the same. When you glance over your shoulder, you look almost directly at Bakugou– but it’s clear that you’re seeing right through him. Your eyes are wide in horror, tears already falling down your face as you gasp and struggle against your own breathing in an attempt to scream once again.

The look of fear in your eyes is enough to spur him into action. He jerks out of Kobayashi’s grip, lips curling back into something like a snarl. “Fucking help her—!” Bakugou chokes out, moving to rush to your side.

He only manages to make it a few steps before Kobayashi has grabbed his shoulder once again and wrenched Bakugou backwards, slamming him against the wall. A loud thud echoes through the room as the world momentarily spins, the detective barring an arm across Bakugou’s throat and pinning him in place with a surprising amount of strength.

“If you can’t watch this, then you need to leave,” Kobayashi hisses. “I’ll have you arrested for interfering with an investigation if you try any more bullshit. Do you understand?”

Bakugou doesn’t care to listen to the man, instead craning his head to look towards you. You’re screaming— an unintelligible mix of pleas falling from your lips as you try to escape an invisible threat. 

“You sick fucks!” Bakugou spits, redirecting his attention to Kobayashi only to hurl yet another insult. He pushes back against the detective's grip, trying to wrench himself free. “Help her!” he demands.

“You need to get the hell out of here.” Kobayashi grits, grabbing Bakugou by the front of his shirt and lifting him away from the wall only to begin pushing him towards the exit. 

Bakugou stumbles back, digging his heels into the carpeted floor beneath him as sparks crackle in his palms. “I’ll blow this place to pieces!” he snarls. 

Kobayashi’s gaze pierces right through Bakugou, a glow flickering through his eyes for just a moment. Bakugou recognizes that look, having seen it on TV more times than he could count. 

“Yeah, use your quirk on me, asshole! I’m not fucking lying and you know that!” Another flurry of sparks fall from Bakugou’s palms, a thinly veiled threat. 

At one point in time, Kobayashi had been known as Polygraph— the lie detector hero. Bakugou even remembers having a poster of him on his bedroom wall as a kid. The man that stands before him today is run down— a depressing cocktail of misery and cynicism— but it’s obvious that he still has full control over his quirk and is pointedly aware of the fact that Bakugou’s threat is not empty in the slightest. 

Kobayashi scowls in annoyance. “You can’t interfere,” he insists. “If you want justice for this poor hero, you need to let this happen. Interfering now means that we may have to do this all over again.”

The sneer on Bakugou’s face falters for just a moment as he processes Kobayashi’s words. He looks past the detective once again, his stomach turning at the sight of you begging for your life, trying to back away only to continually be held firmly in place by the capture weapon. Kobayashi turns with Bakugou to watch you, his stern expression faltering.

Bakugou tears his gaze away from you for just a moment, looking helplessly towards Kobayashi. “What the fuck is going on? Tell me!” he demands, teeth gritting together when the detective doesn’t even bother to look at him. “Why the hell are you letting this happen?”

Kobayashi shakes his head, his gaze pinned to you. “Because it has to.” 

“That’s—“ Bakugou starts to protest, but the words die in his throat when another one of your screams cuts through the air.

You’re cowering on the ground, your attempts to breathe nothing more than strained gasps for oxygen. “Please don’t kill me—“ you beg, raising your hands to shield your face as you cry out in pain. “I don’t want to die!”

The pieces begin to fall into place the more this nightmare drags on. You aren’t just some quirkless extra that chose law in an attempt to have more power in a society that routinely left people without quirks to rot.

You’re reliving it.

Midway through trying once again to flee, you wail in agony– a choked noise escaping you as you collapse in on yourself with a pained groan. You fight to flip onto your back, your cuffed hands feebly rising to protect against an attack that is long over. A ragged wheeze tears its way through your chest, followed closely by a scream that sounds more akin to that of a dying animal than a human. Bakugou thinks he’s going to be sick as he watches in a frozen state of shock.

You jerk onto your side, your legs curling towards your chest. You try to grasp at your hair, crying out as you rise up onto your knees in an eerily unnatural way. Your head cranes up towards the ceiling and your fingers curl, helplessly trying to claw at the back of your head– like you’re being grabbed by your hair.

“No– no!” you wail, eyes going impossibly wide as they lock onto a spot on the ceiling. “No– please don’t! Please!” A shudder wracks through your entire body as you desperately try to recoil away from something.

“No! I–” your voice cuts off, a strangled breath falling from your lips before you abruptly crumple to the ground. 

Your body writhes on the ground as low, gurgling groans echo through the room. Listening to your strained breathing rapidly growing weaker by the second, Bakugou thinks of the laceration on the woman’s neck. Your legs kick feebly and your head lolls to the side, your chest spasming and jolting in a crude attempt to breathe. Tears continue to fall from your eyes as you look up at something, your hands lifting just a few inches only to falter and collapse back towards you. 

It isn’t quick in the slightest. The minutes drag on as Bakugou watches your breathing wane and your movements cease one by one. Just when he thinks it’s almost over, you startle with a whimper, using the last of your strength to crane your head back and away from something. 

The detective controlling the capture weapon loosens its hold on you, the fabric going slack around your torso when it’s clear you don’t have anything left in you to try to escape. Kobayashi steps forward, retrieving a bucket that had been placed on the floor near the wall before he slowly approaches. He crouches down next to you, a tense expression on his face while he watches you die.

The sound of your breathing is inhuman, a feeble bid at taking in air. He recognizes the noises– something Deku had once called agonal respirations. The body’s dying breaths. The same sounds that everyone makes when they’ve lost the fight.

And then, your breathing stops altogether. The silence in the room is deafening, your final breath hanging in the air. Bakugou watches as your chest stills and your body goes completely limp, almost melting into the floor beneath you. 

He should’ve listened to you. The thought replays over and over in his mind as he remains unable to look away. He should’ve fucking listened for once in his life. What a violation for him to insist he be present for something like this. Who did he think he was?

Nearly a minute goes by. Bakugou tries to swallow the fear in his chest that maybe you won't wake up from this– reassures himself weakly that despite being a brooding asshole, Kobayashi wouldn’t make you do this unless he knew you’d be okay.

You startle awake without warning– wrenching forward so violently that Bakugou jumps in surprise. A broken gasp lurches through you, your eyes wide and brimming with tears. You struggle to catch your breath, sucking in gulps of air as you fight not to fall into a cycle of hyperventilation. Relief floods through Bakugou at the sight of chest rising and falling.

The moment you start to gag, Kobayashi has the bucket in front of you. You hunch forward, emptying the contents of your stomach as your shoulders shake. When you've finished vomiting, you weakly sit back up, wiping away spit from the corner of your mouth. You glance towards Kobayashi, who meets your gaze with a solemnness that Bakugou has seen before. It isn’t long before you crumble, your features breaking as you begin to cry.

“I know, kid,” Kobayashi hums, remaining crouched down next to you. You slump to the side, your forehead pressing against his shoulder and your jaw clenching tightly shut. For a moment you try to stifle your cries, but you realize quickly that it’s no use.

The sobs that carry through the room are somehow the most haunting part of it all.

—

You bring your knees to your chest, pulling the blanket around your shoulders tighter as you stare out at the street. You distantly think that if it weren’t for the police tape and dozens of officers littering the front yard, the exterior of this house would be as unassuming as any other home on this street. The porch swing you’re sitting on is well-loved, an empty coffee mug discarded on the nearby side table. Kobayashi sits on a folding chair to your left, waiting for you to speak first, as is customary. 

“What was her name?” you ask weakly.

Kobayashi tuts under his breath. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

Always a stickler for rules. If you had the energy, you’d roll your eyes. It wasn’t like you could ever testify in court for this file anyways, but Kobayashi still held out for what he believed to be an inevitable Supreme Court ruling. As he always told you, your evidence needed to be pure in the event that the Supreme Court flips on their view of quirk based evidence in the use of court proceedings; you can’t know any additional details of the case beyond what you see through the victim’s eyes. We have to avoid contaminating your evidence, he'd always tell you.

You suppose that given his quirk, it makes sense for him to hope so fiercely for something that will probably take decades to come to fruition. The courts move slowly, and every ruling in the last fifty years has gone against allowing quirk based evidence into court. The Supreme Justices routinely call it a slippery slope– how are we to prove the reliability of quirks when we do not fully understand them in the first place? Even if you relive the murder or Kobayashi is able to clearly tell when someone is lying, it doesn’t matter; the court wants concrete evidence that holds up without the use of quirks in the first place. All evidence to be used in a court of law should be able to be gathered by a quirkless individual– if we allow anything more, we risk exposing the criminal justice system to prejudice.

Still, Kobayashi waits. You don’t think it’s a change that you’ll see within your lifetime, and you think that deep down, Kobayashi knows that too. The use of a quirk during the commission of a crime was only just classified as an aggravating factor for sentencing last year– and that was after decades of lobbying from victim advocacy organizations across the county. The courts move excruciatingly slow, especially when it comes to something as important as determining the admissibility of evidence.

During your childhood, you remember seeing Kobayashi on TV all the time– rallying for quirk based evidence to be ruled admissible in court. He’d make desperate pleas to the public– I can see their lies! Is that not enough for you people?! But the courts held fast and murderers walked free no matter how much Kobayashi insisted his quirk confirmed their guilt. And so, the two of you are confined to using your quirks for investigative purposes only.

Kobayashi shifts in his seat beside you, lifting a cigarette to his lips and fumbling with his lighter for a moment before he manages to light it. You scrunch your nose at the smell, but you don’t have the energy to say anything about it. Your entire body feels heavy, and you swear you can still feel the blood pooling in your throat every time you swallow.

“Where’s Bakugou?” 

“Think he went on a walk,” Kobayashi mumbles, taking another puff of his cigarette. “I told him to bring the car around after he calms down.”

You huff in a sort of dejected amusement. “We’ll be here all day if we’re waiting for him to calm down.”

There’s a beat of silence. You briefly consider asking Kobayashi for a cigarette, but you don’t bother because you know he’d never give you one. To him, you're still the same wide-eyed fourteen year old that he’d first met all those years ago.

“He was really shaken up.”

You stare down at your wrists, angry bruises already starting to form from where the handcuffs had bitten into your skin. Your body aches more than usual, and deep down you already know the answer to the question you’re about to ask.

“I acted it out this time, didn’t I?”

Kobayashi doesn’t hesitate in his answer– has learned not to try to hide things from you. He gives you a terse nod, confirming your fears. “Been a while since you did that.”

You run a hand down your face, curling in on yourself as embarrassment floods through you. Of course you’d acted it out for the first time in years– and of course Bakugou had been there to see it. Your mind swarms with a dozen different thoughts– mainly how you’re supposed to face him now. How do you have a normal meeting with him after this?

“Tell me what you saw,” Kobayashi prompts gently, trying to keep you distracted from your own humiliation.

You wince as the memory comes back to you all at once, your stomach turning. If you hadn’t already thrown up the little food that you’d eaten today, you’d probably need the bucket again.

“I recognized him,” you say simply. “From the news.”

Kobayashi tries and fails to hide the way he perks up at your words, waiting for you to continue.

“He’s with what’s left of Infinition, has been on warrant for a while,” you start. “He’s the guy with the blood control quirk.”

From beside you, Kobayashi retrieves a small notepad from his coat pocket and begins to take notes. He doesn’t ask any follow-up questions– not yet, simply waiting until you’re ready to continue.

“The victim didn’t know him. She had no idea who he was at all,” you add, watching a car drive very slowly down the street, the driver no doubt trying to figure out what the huge police presence is all about. “The guy seemed to know who she was, so it wasn’t a random attack.”

A short hum rumbles through Kobayashi. “We’re seeing more and more cases like this. I haven’t been this busy since–” he pauses to think. “Since we first met. This was the first body we found quickly enough for it to be within your threshold.”

“I haven’t seen anything about any of this in the press.”

“We’re doing our best to keep it out of the media– don’t want the public to know that sidekicks and low level heroes are dying in their own homes.” Kobayashi grunts in response. 

You look away from the street and towards Kobayashi, who is nearing the end of his cigarette. He hides it well, but you can tell that he’s frustrated by the fact that he hasn’t been able to wrap this case up yet. You can practically see it on his face– he’s wondering how many more people need to die before he can put a stop to this. He looks more haggard than normal, if that were even a possibility for the man.

“Anything else of note about the attack?”

“He had a lot of fun with it,” you say simply, a shudder running through you at the memory of his grinning face towering over you. “Chased her around the house and was laughing the whole time. He could’ve killed her a lot sooner, but he let her fight.” You pause to take a breath, your hand rising to lightly touch the skin of your neck. “Just before she died, he asked her if she was scared enough.”

You try to take a deep breath in an attempt to quell your rising heart rate, reminding yourself that you’re not there– that it didn’t happen to you.

“There was one other thing,” you mumble, eyes fixated on the sun disappearing below the horizon. “When he slashed her throat, he used his quirk to siphon her blood into a container. Must’ve filled at least a dozen vials before he finally left.”

Kobayashi’s brows furrow together. “Did he say anything else?”

You shake your head. “That’s all I’ve got.”

A neutral silence settles between the two of you as Kobayashi finishes writing and then tucks the notepad back into his pocket. You don’t have to look at him to know that he’s watching you, and you can only imagine what you look like. The aftermath of reliving these things was sometimes worse than the act itself. A particularly bad murder could leave you bedridden for days at a time.

“You still doing your lawyer thing?” Kobayashi asks, trying to change the subject to something more casual as he lights another cigarette.

You nod silently in response.

“What’s with the number one following you around?”

“That’s an unfortunate part of my ‘lawyer thing’,” you sigh. “I’m working the Infinition file and he’s the main witness. We were in the middle of a meeting to talk about the case when you called, and he refused to let me leave unless he could come along.”

Kobayashi whistles lowly in a faint amusement. “Sounds like him. He being nice to you at least?”

Your answer is immediate. “Not in the slightest.”

“Sounds about right.”

As if on cue, Bakugou’s car slowly pulls up to the front of the house. A police officer begins to approach the vehicle only to see Bakugou behind the wheel and immediately back off, looking towards Kobayashi for help. Kobayashi waves the officer away, an amused expression on his face.

“This your ride?” he asks. “We can get you a cab if you want.”

You shake your head with a weak scoff. “I’ll be fine.”

Before you try to stand, you swallow and take a deep breath. You push yourself to your feet, gritting your teeth and trying to ignore the way your legs are shaking beneath you. Kobayashi lingers close by, doing his best to look nonchalant as he positions himself to be ready to catch you if needed. 

Your nails dig into the wood of the porch railing as you cautiously make your way down the steps, reminding yourself that the ache in your limbs isn’t real. Despite your efforts to put on a stable front, you all but stumble down the sidewalk, your legs practically numb beneath you. The closer you get to the car, the better you’re able to see Bakugou and the more intense the feeling of dread in your stomach gets. Kobayashi leaves your side only to step forward and open the passenger side door, keeping a hand on your shoulder as you climb inside and take a seat.

The detective lingers a second longer. As much as he’s trying to hide it, it’s clear that he’s worried about you. “You get some rest, alright kid?”

You pull the blanket around your shoulders tighter in an attempt to conceal your shivering. ”I’ll be okay,” you reassure weakly.

There’s a beat of silence as Kobayashi wordlessly looks at you. It’s clear that he’s using his quirk, a barely perceptible twitch of his brow giving him away. 

You know what he sees. Neither one of you says anything about it.

Chapter Text

You watch as Kobayashi returns to the crime scene, heading back towards the house and eventually disappearing inside. The porch swing sways gently with the wind, and you wonder how everything around you can continue on as normal– how the Earth never ceases to turn despite the atrocities that it houses. 

In a week's time, the residents of this neighborhood will be speculating on how the resale value of their homes will be impacted by the murder down the street. The hero who lived a quaint life and had pictures of her pets framed around her house will fade into obscurity. You hold her last memory, and there’s nothing more than you can do with it. You want to scream.

You watch until there’s nothing to watch anymore– your eyes pinned to the exterior of the house in a bid to avoid having to talk with Bakugou about what the hell just happened. The air in the car is charged, something bigger than either of you were ever prepared to deal with hanging awkwardly between your forms. 

How do you move on from this?

Your limbs feel heavy as you sink back in your seat, a halo of a migraine slowly settling around your skull. The image of being covered in your own blood– drowning in it– flashes in your mind against your will. You can’t close your eyes without seeing that woman’s hands desperately trying to push her blood back into her body, her screams devolving into nothing more than wet gurgles. 

It hurts to know that nobody will ever understand her as well as you do now. For a brief moment, you were her. You had her thoughts– cried in agony and died thinking about the fact that you didn’t even get to text your mom– her mom– goodnight before her life was ripped out of her hands with a violence no one should ever face. It’s not the first time you’ve relived a murder like this– in fact, it’s largely par for the course, but the terror is different every time. Nobody experiences fear the same way, and there’s no getting used to it no matter how hard you try.

In a desperate bid to get the sound of that man’s laughter out of your head, you look away from the window and towards Bakugou. He’s pale, his gaze pinned to the steering wheel in front of him as his lips purse into a thin line. You’ve never seen him like this– not in your meetings or on TV. He doesn’t look like a hero; for once, he looks like he’s out of his depth. In any other situation, such a realization would make you beam with a smugness never known to man. Right now, all it makes you feel is even more hopeless than before.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” you blurt, saying anything just for the sake of breaking the near suffocating silence. “I don’t normally act it out.” 

Of course your first instinct is to apologize. You tell yourself that you should be yelling at him, getting in his face and saying see? There are more important things than you in the world; but the reality is that simply witnessing you in that state was likely more than enough of a punishment for his nosiness. Even if you wanted to, there’s no need for you to rub it in or chew him out any further. 

Bakugou’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “What the fuck are you apologizing for?” he grits, his voice softening just slightly when he next speaks. “I was the one who insisted on coming along.”

If the circumstances were different, you’d probably be making a snide comment about being surprised that he’s actually taking responsibility for once. Instead, you just feel like crying. Your body aches with an unimaginable exhaustion that is painfully familiar to you, and the mere act of breathing in and out makes you feel impossibly drained.

You sluggishly raise your hands to brush your hair away from your face, the movement making your sleeves ride up just enough to reveal the splotched bruising encircling your wrists. By the time you realize, Bakugou has already frozen at the sight of the deep purple hues, unable to tear his gaze away from the discoloration. 

Quickly pulling your sleeves back down, you avert your gaze. You’ve always done these things alone– never had anybody except detectives and police officers present to witness your quirk and its debilitating aftermath. The commission had kept you under lock and key– forbid you from talking to anyone about what you were going through apart from their hand-picked psychologists who were more concerned with prying apart the intricacies of your quirk and convincing you to keep going than they were in comforting a teenager who’d died more times than she could count. You spent your childhood telling the few friends you had that the reason you were never at school was because you had an awful immune system. The thought of confessing what was truly going on to them never once passed through your mind, because what can a regular person even do in the face of what you’ve seen? 

The dull hum of the car engine is all that fills the silence between you two as you struggle to think of what to even say in a situation like this. Mercifully, Bakugou is the one to speak next. 

“I’ll drive you home,” he mutters, pulling his phone out of his pocket and moving to open up his GPS app. “Give me your address.”

You sit up abruptly, eyes going wide in alarm before you can even try to hide your panic. The mere mention of going home and rotting in the darkness of your room right now fills you with dread. You’re not ready to step into your apartment and spend the entire night replaying that woman’s death in your mind over and over again– not yet. As much as you try to push down the thought, you’re terrified that once you lay down, you won’t be able to get back up.

“We can go back to your office,” you blurt, swallowing back the phantom sensation of blood pooling in your throat. “You said yourself that you’re not on patrol tonight. We can still have our meeting.” You hope that you don’t sound as desperate as you feel.

Bakugou shifts in his seat to look at you more closely, an expression of utter disbelief on his face. “Are you fucking kidding me? You just died and you want to go back to my office and have a fucking meeting?”

You give a terse nod in response. “Every meeting counts– I’m on a strict time limit with this file and–”

“Oh enough with the bullshit!” he interrupts, his mouth pulling back into a sneer. “Can you forget that you’re a lawyer for one goddamn second? Is that all you are?”

“That’s all I can be right now, Bakugou!” you snap, the words tumbling out of you before you can stop them. You do your best to keep your tears at bay as you meet his gaze, your entire body shaking. “Don’t make me go home and sit with this,” you grit, your voice faltering despite your efforts to control it. “Don’t do that to me.”

Bakugou blinks back at you in a stunned silence, his lips parted just slightly. You slump back in your seat, your body giving way underneath you from the simple exertion of raising your voice. 

“Please,” you add hoarsely, a dull humiliation flaring in your chest.

Bakugou looks like he wants to protest further, but the moment he locks eyes with you, he seems to give in. His features waver for just a second, lips pursing into a thin line as his hands flex. 

“Fine,” he huffs, and your shoulders sag in relief the moment he relents. Bakugou leans back in his seat and runs a hand through his hair, forcing out a deep breath before he next speaks. “But we’re not going back to my office– I hate that fuckin’ place.”

You give him a weak nod, letting out a shaky sigh as he puts the car into drive and pulls away from the curb. You don’t bother to ask where he’s taking you– anywhere is better than going home right now. If you weren’t so exhausted, you’d be laughing at the fact that you actually want Bakugou’s company for once.

You keep your eyes pinned to the house until it disappears from view. The drive is quiet save for the occasional sound of Bakugou’s turning signal and the passing cars. You opt to look out the window, your vision unfocused to the point that you don’t even bother trying to figure out where the two of you are going. You’re not very familiar with this side of the city, anyways. 

You grit your teeth as you feel your legs spasm for the third time in the last five minutes, a bothersome after-effect of using your quirk. Your muscles contract and tense against your will, still stuck in the memory no matter how much you tell yourself over and over again that it’s not your pain to bear and there’s nothing left to run from.

When a particularly uncomfortable convulsion in your shoulder starts, a strained whine of pain escapes you before you can stop it. You feel your face heat with embarrassment, and as much as you don’t want to, you force yourself to look towards Bakugou. He’s momentarily taken his eyes off the road, his brows knit together in what you would think is concern if you didn’t know any better.

“I’m fine,” you reassure through clenched teeth, your hand rising to grip your shoulder in an attempt to keep it still. You distantly think that you might’ve accidentally injured it during your struggle to escape.

He doesn’t seem to believe you, but he still returns his gaze to the road in front of him regardless– albeit with what you think is a twinge of reluctance. “We’re almost there,” he mutters, slowing the car down to turn off of the main road that you’re currently on.

You sit up straight, putting more effort into trying to figure out where the two of you are going to distract yourself from the pain. You blink a handful of times in an attempt to better read the wooden sign on the side of the road as it grows closer.

Elk Grove Regional Park

Bakugou speaks before you can ask any questions. “My mom used to take me here when I was a kid,” he keeps his eyes on the road, the poor lighting in the car hiding the way his face reddens ever so slightly. “There are some decent trails and enough lighting that it’s not a bad spot to visit at night.”

You hum numbly with a shrug, sitting back in your seat as Bakugou drives the car through the bumpy parking lot. He hits exactly one pothole that causes you to hiss in pain before he maneuvers expertly around the rest of them. 

Undoing your seatbelt while Bakugou puts the car in park, you lift your hand to rub at the skin of your forearm, your throat constricting at the memory of the villain indiscriminately slashing at the woman, taking joy in each cry of agony–

“Let’s go.” Bakugou grunts, removing the keys from the ignition and stepping out of the car. You snap out of your thoughts as best as you can, following after him as he heads towards the nearest trail.

Your pace is markedly slower no matter how hard you try to push through the rigid pain in your muscles. Bakugou doesn’t seem to notice the way you’re lagging behind, continuing forward at his usual brisk pace.

“I–” your chest burns hot with shame as you force yourself to say something. Bakugou stops in his strides, turning around to see that you’re a handful of meters away. “It’s not the easiest to walk for me right now,” you admit reluctantly. “Reliving things– like that can be hard on my body.”

Bakugou almost looks embarrassed as he raises a hand to scratch the back of his neck. “There’s a bench just up the trail. We can sit there,” he responds, gesturing vaguely towards the path the two of you are currently following. He examines you carefully from where he stands, his gaze lingering on the way your legs are shaking beneath you as you wrap your arms around your midsection. “Do you need me to carry you…?”

“No!” you blurt out immediately, knowing that he’d absolutely hold it over your head if you ever let him do something like that. “No. Nothing like that. Just– slow down a little?”

He nods, sparing you any further humiliation and opting to look up at the sky as you hobble your way over to him, closing the distance one unsteady step at a time. 

“Light pollution’s not bad out here,” he mumbles under his breath, more to himself than to you.

When you manage to catch up, Bakugou continues heading down the path, although he does so much slower than before. He keeps his eyes to the ground, ensuring that he lines up each of his steps with your own. The trail is decorated with streetlamps, illuminating your surroundings well enough that you don’t feel uneasy being out here after sundown. Connecting each of the lamps is a string of fairy lights, and as you look around, you vaguely wonder why you hadn’t heard of this place until today. It seems well maintained and has the perfect atmosphere for a late night stroll. If you knew how to drive and had a car, you’d probably come back here on your own one day.

Just as Bakugou had claimed, the bench isn’t too far ahead. It sits under a wooden pergola decorated with vines and additional lighting, the seating area bathed in a warm, golden radiance. Bakugou lets you take a seat first before he sits down, keeping a respectable amount of distance between you two.

The bench is positioned across from a small pond, a clearing in the trees allowing you to look out at the calm water. You ignore the ache in your limbs as you pull your legs to your chest, your gaze fixated on a pair of ducks skimming lazily along the surface of the water. Something about the atmosphere seems to bring you a degree of tranquility that you haven’t felt in a long time. 

Bakugou clears his throat from beside you after a handful of minutes, the noise suddenly reminding you of the reason why you’re here in the first place.

“Right,” you murmur, your hands reflexively reaching for your bag to retrieve a pen and paper only to realize that you’d forgotten it in the car. Your tut under your breath– guess you’ll just have to stick to the basics tonight. 

You shift to sit at a slight angle so that you’re able to see Bakugou and still glance over to the ducks without it being obvious that you’re doing so. “I think we were talking about the warehouse raid…” you trail off, trying to recall when exactly Kobayashi’s phone call had interrupted the meeting.

Bakugou gives you an unimpressed look. “Oh fuck off,” he starts, a scowl already forming on his face. “You really aren’t going to talk at all about what happened?”

You swallow, the mere mention of the events of today bringing back that woman’s screams. “I don’t really think there’s much to talk about,” you shrug, doing your best to seem nonchalant about the whole thing. 

“Are you kidding me? You fucking died!” Bakugou pushes, a poorly hidden despondence in his voice. “You weren’t breathing.”

You’re about to open your mouth and continue on with trying to downplay the whole thing when you look closer at Bakugou and notice the way he’s holding himself. His entire body is tense, his jaw clenched tightly shut and his hands flexing restlessly at his sides. He can barely even look at you– something you’d rarely seen him struggle with since your first meeting. 

You realize that maybe he needs to talk about this more than you do.

Letting out a breath, you struggle to think of where to even start. Eventually, you decide that perhaps it’s best to go back to the beginning. Bakugou is a hero after all, as much as he doesn’t act like one; you rationalize that the commission won’t be able to bitch at you for explaining things to him, especially not after he’s seen your quirk in action in the first place.

“My quirk is called Memory Thief,” you start. “I can go digging through another person's memories and take them. I did it all the time by accident when I was a kid– I’d touch someone during a game of tag or something and suddenly they’d have no recollection of their last birthday party– things like that.”

Bakugou finally looks at you, an unreadable expression on his face. You do your best to push down your discomfort with being so open about something that you’d been told throughout your entire life to keep a secret at all costs.

A quirk like this is dangerous. Bad people will want it.

“That doesn’t explain how you made the jump to corpses,” he says dryly.

You roll your eyes before you can stop yourself. “I’m getting there, asshole. Do you want the backstory or not?”

Bakugou scoffs. “Fine, whatever.”

“The commission scouted me when I was fourteen. At the time, they were dealing with a serial killer that was targeting heroes– they had no leads and were desperate enough that they started going through civilian records to try to find somebody with a quirk that could help the investigation.” You can’t remember the last time you talked about this– if ever. “They’d gone through nearly two dozen civilians with no success before expanding their search to include youth.”

The ducks are swimming circles around each other, quacking loud enough that you can just barely hear it from where you’re sitting.

“Some bright mind at the commission theorized that maybe my quirk would work on corpses,” you sigh. “So I took a train down to Hosu, met Kobayashi, and saw my first dead body three days after my fourteenth birthday.”

You wonder vaguely if your life would be any different had you not fallen victim to the commission’s appeals to your conscience. Would you have still gone into law?

“I cried like a baby but they made me touch the body anyways. They thought that I was the best chance they had,” you laugh bitterly. “The first two times, I was only able to get flashes of emotions– I couldn't see anything. I thought that would be it and they’d just ship me back to Musutafu. The commission decided that they’d try my quirk one more time on the next body they found and then they’d call it.”

You remember training with quirk specialists between each crime scene– being made to take and take no matter how afraid you were of taking too much. They insisted that if you got better at stealing memories from the living, you’d surely have more luck with the dead. 

“Kobayashi got lucky and the police found a body less than an hour after the murder,” you swallow, the memory still as clear as it had been on that day. “It turns out that if I can get to a body in under 90 minutes, I can experience a victim’s final memory perfectly.”

Looking away from the ducks, you spare a glance towards Bakugou. He’s actually listening for once, and quite intently at that. You wonder if you’d be able to incentivize him to show up to meetings on time if it meant that you’d tell him more about your past. Detectives were always curious about how you ended up doing this– but you suppose that you never really thought much about how bizarre your circumstances truly were. It was just your life to you– seeing horrific crime scenes and dying over and over was your normal for years.

“How much the body shows me is different every time,” you continue. “The commission guessed that where the memory begins is related to when the victim starts to experience fear. Something to do with an adrenaline spike encoding memories more deeply into the lower parts of the brain,” you shrug. “I don’t know– I never really bothered listening to their theories. I was pretty preoccupied with seeing like three different therapists at once.”

Bakugou hums in acknowledgment as you take a moment to remember where you’d been going with this.

“So– I helped catch the guy and my fate was sealed,” you look down at your hands. “For the next six years, the commission was flying me out across the country or having people with teleportation quirks transport me if I couldn’t get there fast enough by plane. I was barely ever in school– it was a miracle I even graduated.” 

There’s a beat of silence as Bakugou waits for you to continue. There’s so much more to say, but you can’t see a point in continuing. You hated the way the detectives looked at you with so much pity the more they found out about your quirk and how much death you’d witnessed. Bakugou isn’t one to pity in any sense of the word, but what use is there in going into anymore detail anyways? 

“How often are you called for that stuff now?” Bakugou asks, prompting you to lift your gaze away from your palms and look towards him. He’s normally so easy to read– mainly because he’s always angry and that’s a pretty simple emotion to recognize– but it’s hard for you to tell what he’s feeling right now just from looking at him. At the very least, he looks exhausted, and it makes you uneasy to see him like this.

“Rarely,” you answer. “Kobayashi is probably the only detective that’s got my number now and isn’t afraid to call me. The rest are either retired or feel guilty enough not to reach out.”

Bakugou shifts his weight, and you can immediately tell that he wants to ask more. Once you get over the surprise of him actually thinking before he says something, you speak up.

“Just ask whatever it is that you want to ask already,” you urge, tilting your head back to look up at the sky. Bakugou had been right– the light pollution out here isn’t bad at all. “The commission swore me to secrecy because they knew that what they were doing was fucked. I don’t ever get to actually talk with people about this.”

“What changed?” he asks. “Why aren’t you called in anymore?”

You feel your entire body tense, a whirlwind of memories that you’d worked incredibly hard to bury flooding back into your mind. As open as you’re being with him right now, you very quickly decide that this isn’t an avenue that you’re willing to go down.

“I got called to a scene and things went pretty bad– I kind of put my foot down after that,” you respond simply, keeping your response brief. “Started ignoring their calls. The commission eventually got the hint.” 

You don’t have to look at Bakugou to know that he’s keenly aware of the fact that your answer is purposefully vague, but to your surprise, he doesn’t push any further. Instead, he tilts his head back to look up at the stars with you. The silence that lulls between you both is surprisingly comfortable, the sound of crickets chirping and ducks quacking in the distance bringing your heartbeats to a steady equilibrium. You’re not sure how long the two of you sit like that, wordlessly processing whatever the hell today was.

“What’s it like?” he finally asks. “To relive it.”

It’s a question that you’ve gotten many times– mainly from police officers and detectives– yet, you still don’t really know how to answer. How can you possibly put reliving a death that’s not yours into words?

“It’s like it’s happening in real time all over again– like I’m them, if that makes sense. I see it through their eyes,” you respond softly. “I have their thoughts and emotions, their–” You abruptly cut off, but it’s clear what you were going to say. Your hand rises to ghost your fingertips over the skin of your neck.

I have their pain.

“How long are the memories?”

You pause for a moment before answering, your brows knitting together in thought. “For me, it can be anywhere from minutes to hours or– longer. For everyone else that’s watching, it’s usually only a few minutes. I don’t normally act it out, either. From what Kobayashi has told me, I usually just collapse and then twitch on the ground, which like– is still super embarrassing, but I guess it’s for the greater good.”

Bakugou snorts with a faint amusement. “Are you fucking serious?" he tilts his head to look at you, and you do the same. He cocks an eyebrow. “Embarrassing?”

“Completely,” you respond with a firm nod. “I used to make everyone leave the room until Kobayashi told me to get over myself.”

He laughs weakly, running a hand over his face in disbelief. “This is fucking insane,” he breathes. “I thought you were just some quirkless extra.”

“The hell makes you say that?” you bite back with a feigned offense.

“The CRN says you’re quirkless, for one.”

You jolt upwards in surprise, shooting Bakugou an incredulous look. “You looked me up on the fucking CRN?!” Your voice is loud enough that the ducks briefly stop in their quacking, tilting their heads towards where you’re sitting. “That’s a restricted database you idiot! You can get up to four demerits on your hero license for misusing it.” 

The Civilian Records Network is a detailed catalogue of every citizen of Japan– listing personal details, quirks, and any criminal history that a person may have. The application process to gain access is a total bitch to go through, with its use largely being limited to law enforcement and criminal justice purposes. You’re honestly surprised that Bakugou even has access to it– but you suppose that being the number one hero gives him special treatment to a certain degree. You regularly use the CRN at work to check if an accused has any prior convictions, and it was made very clear to you when you first started at the office that any misuse whatsoever would result in an immediate dismissal from your position. You distinctly remember a senior prosecutor being fired because they’d offhandedly looked up their ex-boyfriend on the CRN out of curiosity.

“Yeah, whatever,” Bakugou responds with a nonchalant tone, an amused look on his face. “I’ve only got one demerit right now– I can spare a few more.”

You don’t even bother to point out his flawed logic. “Why the hell would you even look me up on the CRN?” 

“You bitched like someone without a quirk. I was curious,” he shrugs.

A genuine grin grows on Bakugou’s face as he watches you cycle through an array of emotions, completely stunned into silence by the pure audacity staring you in the face.

“I don’t– I don’t know how to feel about this information,” you breathe in disbelief, and before you can process what’s happening, you’re laughing.

Your chest aches with each disjointed inhale, and you can’t bring yourself to care. Something changes in the way Bakugou looks at you as you throw your head back and genuinely laugh for the first time in a long time, but you’re too busy trying to process the absurdity of the situation you’ve landed yourself in to notice. 

At the same time that you realize you’re laughing, you feel tears start to fall down your face. Bakugou seems to notice, too– sitting up in alarm as he opens his mouth before he’s even figured out what to say.

You clumsily wipe away your tears, catching your breath. “Sorry– I just–” you look at him with a shaky smile. “I think I really needed to hear bullshit like that right now.”

Upon confirming that you’re not quite at the precipice of a complete emotional collapse, Bakugou seems to relax some. A short scoff falls from his lips as he leans back against the bench. You half expect him to return his attention to the sky above, but his eyes remain glued to you. If you weren’t so exhausted, you’d probably tell him off for staring.

“You gonna explain why it says that you’re quirkless on the CRN?” he tilts his head.

“Show up to our next meeting on time and I might consider it.”

He pauses. “I have room in my schedule for Monday morning.”

You raise an eyebrow at him. “Are you willingly scheduling an extra meeting with me? You sure you’re okay?”

Bakugou scowls, finally looking away from you and instead settling his attention on the pond ahead. “Fuck off. I take it back,” he grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.

“There’s no such thing as taking something back when it comes to lawyers,” you reply, a smile biting at your lips. “You said it, asshole, gotta follow through now. How does 9am sound?”

He rolls his eyes in a fabricated show of annoyance. “Whatever.”

—

The drive back to your apartment is quiet in a way that you welcome. You keep your head pressed against the window, the cool glass a refreshing feeling compared to the throbbing in your skull. Your limbs feel heavy as you struggle to keep your eyes open, blinking slower with each passing second. You tell yourself that you’ll just rest your eyes for a minute or two, momentarily forfeiting the battle against the exhaustion settling in your bones.

When you next wake, the engine is idling and Bakugou has the car parked on the street across from your apartment. You groggily rub your eyes, sparing a glance at the clock as you sluggishly sit up in your seat. You end up doing a double take, your brows furrowing together when you see the time. It was only supposed to be a thirty minute drive back to your apartment, but at least forty minutes have passed since the two of you left the park.

“How– how long was I asleep?”

Bakugou shrugs, diverting his attention to someone walking across the street the moment you look towards him. “Not long.”

“Sorry about that,” you murmur, leaning down to retrieve your bag from where it sits on the ground at your feet. You inwardly curse yourself for saying sorry yet again today– since when did you roll over and apologize for existing? “Thank you,” you correct.

“Don’t kid yourself,” he grumbles. “Another minute and I would’ve shoved your ass out of the car and drove off.”

Your lip quirks in amusement. “What? Is it past your bedtime?”

“Shut it, dweeb,” he snaps in response, but he doesn’t deny anything either.

“Oh I’m totally right. Are you even crankier than normal if you don’t get your beauty sleep?” you cock an eyebrow at him when he glares at you from his peripheral. 

“Get out of my car,” he mutters simply, his lips curling back into a scowl.

You snicker faintly in amusement, choosing not to push your luck any further and complying with his demand. Your legs still feel weak as you step outside, and you lean against his car for just a moment while you make sure that you’re not going to lose your balance as soon as you let go. 

Crouching down just slightly to peer into the car, you take one last look at Bakugou. He seems to be doing much better than he’d been before– the color having slowly returned to his face. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

Bakugou lets out a huff of irritation. “Yeah. Sure.”

You give him a soft nod, shutting the car door and stepping out onto the street. You take extra care to look both ways before you hurry across the road and towards your apartment, eager to escape the biting cold of the night air.

As you’re scanning your key fob to get into the building, you spare a glance over your shoulder, your brow quirking just slightly in surprise when you see Bakugou’s car is still idling across the street. You wonder if maybe he’s trying to get his GPS set up to navigate him back to his own place.

With a soft beep, the door unlocks and you step into the lobby. As you turn to pull the door shut, you just barely catch sight of Bakugou’s car driving off down the road. 

Despite the cold night, you feel a gentle warmth in your chest.

Chapter Text

The elevator ride up to your floor is as sketchy as always, the strange thuds and sounds of metal grating something that you easily tune out now. With each floor that you ascend past, you can feel yourself unwinding as you become increasingly aware of the silence surrounding you. The migraine throbbing behind your eyes intensifies, your stomach turning in a way that demands attention.

You swallow, stepping out of the elevator when the doors slide open and turning your attention to rifling through your bag in search of your keys as you dawdle down the hallway. The fluorescent lights above seem to be buzzing more strongly than usual tonight, a draft running through the hallway with an eerily human groan that almost echoes. Finally locating your keys, you look up just as you’re walking past the front door to one of the adjacent units to yours. 

You feel your feet stop before your mind catches up to what’s happening, your eyes going wide at the sight in front of you. Somebody is standing outside of your apartment, wearing dark clothes and a baseball cap that’s tilted down to obscure their features. 

Most concerning of all is that they’re trying to look into your apartment through the peephole. 

Sucking in a breath, you freeze in place. Your once sluggish heartbeat pivots to thrum wildly against your ribcage, your nerves reignited with an acute sense of danger. You can barely move, but somehow you manage to take a step backwards. The man tsks under his breath as he pulls away from the peephole and turns his attention towards the welcome mat on the ground outside of your door, crouching down to examine it more closely.

It’s hard to think straight as you continue to slowly back away, the sudden tremor in your hands making it nearly impossible for you to keep a hold on your keys. Do you run? The panic flooding through you is bringing back the phantom sensations in your legs that you’d felt earlier tonight– your body suddenly reminded once again of the death you’d relived just hours prior. If you try to run, your legs might just collapse underneath you instead. You take another slow step back, eyes pinned helplessly to the man just as he is about to lift the corner of the welcome mat. 

The sound of the floor creaking beneath your weight makes your heart drop. 

In an instant, the man’s head snaps to look up and towards you. He’s not someone you recognize– at least not from the news or any of your files. Your grip on your bag tightens as your feet stay rooted in place no matter how hard you try to urge your body to flee. The man’s face cycles through a variety of expressions– shock, contemplation, and a resolute look that scares you– before he finally settles on an uneasy smile. He straightens his legs, turning his body away from the door and taking a step towards you. 

“Evening, miss,” he starts, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “Sorry to scare you.”

You inhale shakily, swallowing as you try to hide the look of alarm on your face. You’ve worked as a prosecutor long enough to know that sometimes fear only these eggs these people on.

“Can– can I help you?” you choke out, your voice unsteady. 

“Yes actually,” the man responds. He shifts to grab something out of his pocket, and the movement spurs you to take another step backwards. He retrieves a plastic card from his pocket, facing it towards you as he holds it up. You’re too far away to see what it is, but it looks like some form of ID. “I’m an intern with the Shizuoka Herald. My boss gave me an assignment to reach out to you for a comment on the case going to trial in September against Infinition's leading villains. You’re the assigned prosecutor, right?”

Something about this feels awfully wrong, but it’s clear that running won’t do you any good. The only problem is that if you can’t run, you’re not sure what the hell to do. Do you play along? This guy knows where you live, and he evidently knows who you are, too. A few seconds pass as you try to figure out what to say, your wide eyes pinned to him the entire time. 

“I’m sorry for all this,” he continues on. “I was supposed to reach out to you much earlier, but I procrastinated and the deadline for me to get back to my boss on this is tomorrow morning. I just want to ask some questions and then I’ll be on my way.”

“I–” you open your mouth to speak, the words dying in your throat as you second guess your response. “I can’t say anything about the case,” you answer as firmly as you can manage. “You’ll need to reach out to the prosecutor’s office for an official comment.”

He frowns, taking another step forward. “I don’t need any details. Just a comment on uh–” he pauses, looking away from you for a moment. “On how long you anticipate the trial going for.”

“You can call the courthouse and get the trial length. All you need to provide is the names of the accused,” you respond. Every journalist should know that. You feebly try to tell yourself that he doesn’t know because he’s an intern and nothing more– a stupid intern who thinks it’s okay to come to your apartment late at night to try to get a statement.

The man’s jaw twitches as his meek expression falters for a fraction of a second. “You’re really not gonna give me anything? My boss is gonna kill me.”

You can feel yourself cracking– struggling to stay upright with the amount of terror coursing through you. You second guess the bad feeling in your stomach– try to rationalize that your fear isn’t yours and that this is nothing more than a mildly unusual situation. “I can’t. I– I just want to go to bed.”

“Fine,” he sighs, tucking the plastic card back into his pocket. “I’ll be on my way then.”

Without another word, he begins to head down the hallway– straight towards you. The sight of him growing closer is enough to urge you to stumble to the side, your shoulder bumping into the wall as you turn to stand parallel to it. You hold your bag tightly, like it would make any difference in a fight should you need to use it as a weapon.

He walks right past you, not bothering to spare you a glance. You crane your head to watch him continue down the hallway, memorizing every aspect of his appearance that you can. He calls the elevator and steps inside a moment later, turning to wave at you with an eerie smile as the doors slide shut.

You’re not sure how long you stand in the hallway before you’re able to move. When your body finally starts to listen to your mind, you gasp out a breath that you hadn’t known you’d been holding and stumble forward, desperately closing the distance between you and your front door. It takes a handful of tries before you’re able to get the key into the door because your hands are shaking so badly, and when you finally manage to do so, the lock is as clunky and uncooperative as usual. You nearly cry with relief when the lock finally clicks out of place and you throw the door open, slamming the door shut behind you as quickly as you can. 

Flipping the lights on, you lock the door once again and jerk the deadbolt into place, whirling around on your heels to frantically examine your surroundings. Your apartment is empty– exactly as it had been when you’d left earlier today. Nothing seems out of place, but you still shudder in dread as you step forward and hesitantly check every room, even going so far as to look behind the shower curtain and in your closet. 

After confirming that you’re alone, you take a deep breath in an attempt to calm your nervous system as you tug your shoes off and make a beeline for your bedroom. You close the door behind you, making sure that it’s locked too before you sit down on the edge of your bed. Your entire body is buzzing with a mix of adrenaline and fear, screaming at you that you’re not safe in the slightest. You grit your teeth and hunch forward as you take your head in your hands, struggling to tease apart what fear is yours and what is simply a memory. It all blurs together– to the point that you have to hold back tears of frustration.

How much of this fear is yours, and how much of it belongs to the dead? The thought of the broken window latch makes you sick to your stomach, but how much of that nausea belongs to the man who died after a villain broke into his home through his bathroom window? Where do you end and the woman killed by a man posing as a delivery driver begin?

You remember listening to a psychologist speak at a conference a few years ago on the psychological effects of trauma. She’d discussed how prolonged trauma fundamentally rewires the brain– teaches survivors to interpret everything as a danger signal and subsequently miss genuine danger cues. You think she’d even used a metaphor of a smoke alarm constantly going off at the smallest of things– when the alarm is constantly being sounded, we don’t know when the house is actually on fire. What she distinctly hadn’t talked about was how to parse apart what is legitimate cause for concern and what is an after-effect of the body trying to survive. 

Are you sitting in a burning house right now? Or has the alarm only gone off because somebody’s lit a candle?

—

You don’t sleep Saturday night, and Sunday is a lost cause too. You refuse to let yourself rest, reading case law until your eyes can barely stay open and then opting to walk around your apartment so you don’t have a chance to doze off. Refusing to close your eyes is largely par for the course in the aftermath of using your quirk, but things have only been intensified after your encounter with the supposed news intern. 

When your alarm goes off on Monday morning, you’re in the middle of writing an email to the Shizuoka Herald.

Subject: News Intern?

Hi there,

Hope you’re all doing well. I had a bit of an odd question, so I hope this is not too strange. On Saturday night, somebody came to my apartment claiming to be an intern with the Shizuoka Herald. They said they were wanting a statement from me on the Infinition file that is going to trial in September.

I didn’t catch his name, unfortunately. Are you able to confirm if this was a legitimate intern with your agency?

Thanks.

You feel like you’re going insane– being systematically whittled down by this godforsaken file, Bakugou, and the recent use of your quirk. The email sits in your drafts as you get ready, blinking rapidly to keep yourself awake while you brush your teeth and go through the rest of your morning routine. 

Everything is coming back. It’s not just that woman’s death that flashes in your mind. You’re vividly remembering deaths from years ago, constantly trying to shake the memories from your head to no avail. It feels like your body is continually flipping between alarm and exhaustion, searching desperately for any sort of confirmation that the fear you’re feeling is warranted. 

Against your better judgement, you send the email just as you’re leaving your apartment. You take the stairs down to the main floor, the mere sight of the elevator bringing back the memory of an old woman collapsed in a pool of her own blood, her body wedged between the doors.

The walk to Bakugou’s agency is largely uneventful save for a cyclist not looking where they’re going and nearly running into you, but you still get to Ground Zero on time. You struggle to keep your eyes open in the elevator, swaying as it drones on through its ascent. When the doors part and you step into the lobby, it’s 8:55. 

You don’t even have to check in with Inoue at the front desk because Bakugou is already leaning in the doorway to his office, his arms crossed over his broad chest. Your eyes widen in surprise at the picture of punctuality before you, prompting an annoyed expression to flash across Bakugou’s face. He doesn’t say anything as you approach, returning to his seat behind his desk just as you’re closing the door behind you.

Sitting down in your usual chair, you go through the motions and retrieve a pen and a notepad from your bag. The pad of paper has multiple sheets that are filled to the brim with questions courtesy of you trying to keep yourself distracted over the weekend and deciding to write them out in advance– by hand.

“Thanks for being on time,” you mumble offhandedly, already anticipating that your words of appreciation are only going to serve to further piss Bakugou off. With how heavy your eyelids feel right now, you can’t bring yourself to care in the slightest.

“Fuck off,” he grumbles. “Tell me why the CRN says that you’re quirkless.”

Understanding washes through you as you recall the conversation you’d had with him at the park, Bakugou’s timeliness today making a lot more sense now. “I’m a protected commission informant,” you answer simply. “My quirk is unlisted on the CRN for my own safety.”

His eyebrow lifts just slightly. “You’ve had people try to hurt you?”

You shake your head. “No, but people who would want to hurt me have tried to figure out who I am in the past,” you respond. “I really get in the way of murder plans and that tends to piss murderers off.”

“Wouldn’t your name be in the police reports?” Bakugou pushes, narrowing his eyes. “If someone was going to use the CRN to try to find you, then they’d also be able to get into the police database.”

“You’re smarter than you look,” you mumble before you can stop yourself, returning Bakugou’s furious sneer with a disinterested look. “My name isn’t listed in police reports. I think I’m just referred to as ‘Memory Quirk User A’.”

“Sounds like a lot of special treatment,” Bakugou grunts in response. “It’d be nice if I could keep my name out of reports so you bastards don’t subpoena me for everything.”

“Guess so. Last I heard, there were five other protected witnesses in the country, so I think you're out of luck there,” you shrug, uncapping your pen and bringing the nib to the paper in front of you. “Can we get to what this meeting is actually about?”

Bakugou rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Let’s get this shit over with.”

You nod, suppressing a yawn as you look down at your notepad. The words on the page blur together, and it takes you a handful of seconds before you’re able to read your first question. You fight against your exhaustion as you lift your head up to look at Bakugou.

“We were talking about the warehouse raid,” you start. “Can you tell me if you saw Hamartia?”

He narrows his eyes at you, but it seems he doesn’t say what’s on his mind quite yet. “I think Sero saw him. He was outside holding the perimeter around the building. Said something about turning the corner and seeing someone touching the outside wall before the entire warehouse collapsed…”

Your pen scribbles against your paper as you nod along.

“Are you listening to me or what?”

The sudden change in Bakugou’s tone snaps you out of your daze. You jolt upright, opening your eyes– not having realized that they were closed in the first place.

“Hm? Yes– you were saying that–” you look down at your notepad for the answer, the pit in your stomach growing when you see that you hadn't been writing any intelligible words down at all, your pen instead drawing vague suggestions of words.

"Did you just fall asleep?" Bakugou scoffs in a makeshift disbelief. "Are you fucking kidding me?”

Your face heats in shame and you open your mouth to fervently deny the accusation, but nothing seems to come out. 

“When was the last time you slept?” he presses, his red gaze piercing right through you. 

Like an embarrassed little kid, you refuse to say anything at all. Your lips purse into a thin line as your grip on your pen tightens.

“Out with it, nerd!” he demands. 

You wince at the tone of his voice, looking down at your hands. “It’s hard to sleep after using my quirk,” you admit reluctantly, opting not to tell Bakugou about your encounter with the ‘intern’ after he’d dropped you off at your apartment. You're half convinced that he'd just call you a paranoid baby if you said anything about it.

A look of recognition flashes over Bakugou’s face as his features just barely soften, like he’d been trying to forget about what happened that night, too. “You idiot,” he sighs. “That’s– what? Over forty-eight hours?”

Shrinking in upon yourself, you respond with a detached shrug. “I went longer than that during finals in law school.”

He scoffs. “Go home, you dweeb. There’s no point to this bullshit meeting if you’re going to be asleep for half of it.”

You shake your head immediately. “If my supervisors found out I went home after our meeting instead of going back to the office, I’d get a bunch of shit for it.”

A beat passes. You can feel Bakugou’s gaze glued to you. 

“Sleep here then.”

Your head snaps upwards to stare at Bakugou with wide eyes and he returns your confused expression with a nonchalant look.

“There’s a couch right there,” he grunts, jerking his head to the side. You follow the gesture to see that there is in fact a couch pressed against the wall to your right. 

As appealing as the proposition is, you decide that you absolutely cannot give in, steeling yourself as you turn your attention back towards Bakugou. “No. I’m fine,” you insist. “Let’s keep going. I’ll be okay.”

He quirks an eyebrow at you, resting his chin on the palm of his hand as he tilts his head. You think for a second that he’s going to protest further.

“Fine,” he says simply instead. “Keep going.”

You nod, looking down at your notes and squinting your eyes to read past your unintelligible scribbles. “You were last talking about Sero being outside of the building… You can continue from there.”

“Sero saw someone touching the building just before it collapsed,” Bakugou starts once again. “The idiot chose to rush back into the warehouse to make sure I was okay instead of going after Hamartia.”

“How do you know it was Hamartia?” you prompt.

“Because who the fuck else in Infinition can destroy a building with a single touch like that?” Bakugou scowls. “The fuck are you asking a stupid question like that for?”

You sigh. “Because Hamartia has a section 430 charge of endangering life, and the first step in proving guilt is proving that it was actually him that did it. The Justice is going to need more than assumption, Bakugou.”

He rolls his eyes. “Sero said it was Hamartia. The bastard was wearing the usual fuck-ass hat that he always does.”

“And can you describe this ‘fuck-ass hat’ for me?”

“You know what it looks like, why the hell are–” Bakugou stops when you give him a pointed look, huffing in annoyance as he sits back in his chair. “It was that stupid black tophat fedora looking thing with the red feather on it. Think he had a mask on too– the one with…”

You’re drifting again, but you’re already too far gone to do anything to stop it. You feel yourself slouch forward just slightly, your eyes fluttering shut after a half a second of resistance. The sound of your pen clattering to the ground snaps you awake with a sharp inhale as you blink rapidly.

Bakugou is staring back at you with an unimpressed look. “Go take a nap, you idiot.”

“I can’t–” you start, but he interrupts you before you can continue.

“Either go to sleep or go back to your stupid office. I’m not dealing with this bullshit,” he grumbles.

“I need to ask these questions– we’re on a schedule here,” you insist weakly.

“Just give them to me,” he scowls, motioning towards your notepad. “I’ll write down my answers.”

“It’s better if I ask them myself– sometimes I need to ask follow-up–”

“Oh give me a break, you loser,” he groans, abruptly standing up from his chair and reaching across the desk to snatch the notepad off of your lap before you can react. “You can ask your follow-up later,” he says as he sits back down, disinterestedly flipping through the pages. 

You want to continue with your protesting, but the exhaustion in your bones is so heavy that you can barely keep your eyes open and your head up, much less formulate a coherent argument. The idea of sleeping in Bakugou’s office is mortifying to you and probably constitutes the violation of some kind of professional boundary, but you suppose that it’s a bit too late for professionalism considering the fact that you’ve called Bakugou an asshole multiple times since meeting him and he’s literally seen you relive a homicide. 

You feel your shoulders sag in defeat. As much as you don’t want to nap in his office, going back to your office is not appealing in the slightest, either. It’d be much worse to fall asleep at your desk than it would be to fall asleep here, you reason feebly.

With a sigh of resignation, you avert your gaze and push yourself to your feet. 

“Not a word of this to anybody,” you grumble, hesitantly approaching the couch. It looks surprisingly comfy– or maybe it just seems that way because you’re so tired that you’d be willing to lay down on concrete if it meant getting some rest.

You glance over your shoulder as you shrug off your blazer, not failing to notice the way Bakugou is looking at you from his peripheral as he pretends to read the notepad in his hands. You bunch up your blazer into a makeshift pillow, tentatively taking a seat on the couch.

A knot tightens in your chest. You want to fight against this more– but even as you look at Bakugou, the room is spinning and your mind is so foggy that you can barely form a complete thought.

“Answer using complete sentences,” you drawl. “And please write legibly."

Bakugou snorts with a feigned irritation. “I don’t think you’re in the position to be making demands right now.”

You roll your eyes, the movement causing them to flutter shut. Unable to bring yourself to open your eyes again, you instead slouch to the side and lay down. You bring your knees towards your chest, curling in upon yourself as you rest one hand underneath your makeshift pillow and pull your other close to your body, your palm resting just below your collarbone to feel the steady reassurance of your own heartbeat. You think that you mumble out a witty response, but you don’t stay awake long enough to hear it.

—

“Fuck you,” you mutter softly.

Bakugou feels his lip twitch upwards. He doesn’t look up from the notepad when he speaks. “That's all you got?”

When a handful of seconds pass by and you don’t say anything in response, he glances towards you. A feeling that he doesn’t let himself think about twists in his chest when he takes in the sight of you curled up on the couch– his couch. He’s a little surprised that you’d fallen asleep so quickly given how mortified you’d been when he first proposed the idea. It’s the first time he’s ever seen you truly relaxed, the tension normally ever present in the way you hold yourself finally gone for once. 

Reluctantly turning his attention back to your notepad, he skims over all ten pages of the questions that you’ve written down. He does his best to guess the meaning of some of the shorthand you’re using, eventually figuring out that the numbers you have listed at the beginning of each new question has to do with what charges the question specifically relates to. He’s bitterly impressed at your level of meticulous organization, a faint amusement washing over him at the sight of your illegible writing at the beginning of the first page. 

As he picks up a pen and grabs a separate sheet of paper to write his answers on, he glances towards you just as you’re in the middle of pulling your knees closer to your chest, a barely perceptible shiver wracking through your body. 

Bakugou frowns just slightly, pausing in his movements to look around his office for a blanket only to come up empty-handed. He considers using his jacket as a sort of blanket for you, but the fact that it's currently covered with a thin layer of dusted rubble and nitroglycerin makes him falter. After a moment of hesitation, he tells himself to stop being so weird about this whole situation and retrieves the garment from the coatrack tucked into the corner of his office. 

He approaches you with an uncharacteristic softness to his footsteps; he really doesn’t think that anything would wake you up right now, but he moves carefully anyway, spending upwards of a minute adjusting his hold on the jacket and making sure that it’s positioned in a way where it’ll lay as nicely as possible on you. He holds his breath as he drapes it over your form, taking a step back and looking at you for longer than he needs to, telling himself that he’s just making sure that if you shift in your sleep, you won’t get any dust on your clothes lest he face your wrath.

When he turns away and returns to his seat, Bakugou sends a message to his assistant instructing her not to let anyone into his office under any circumstances. 

I don’t give a shit if the building is on fire, tell anyone who wants to talk to me right now to fuck off and try again later.

Inoue responds to the message with a thumbs up, and Bakugou gets started on answering your questions. The minutes tick by as he writes in as much detail as he can muster, bitterly thinking that no matter how much he writes, you’ll probably ask him a dozen follow-up questions anyways. You stir occasionally on the couch, distracting Bakugou each time. He can’t help but look at you, telling himself that it’s only in the pursuit of being better able to make fun of you for sleeping in his office later.

Bakugou has just finished answering all of the questions on the sixth page of your notepad when he sees your form shift in his peripheral vision, something about the movement odd in a way that he can’t place. He straightens his back, looking towards you intently as he waits to see if you’ll move again.

A handful of seconds pass in silence before it happens once more. Now that he’s watching you closely, he realizes what’s off about the movement. Your legs are convulsing in the same way that they had during the drive to the park that night. Your chest spasms weakly– almost like you have the hiccups. 

Bakugou’s not sure why he stands up, but he does. He takes a hesitant step forward to better see your face, his lips pressing into a thin line when he sees the way your brows are furrowed together, your features tense. 

You mutter something unintelligible under your breath, a faint trembling fear in your voice, and Bakugou swallows, unsure of what to do. It’s clear that you’re having a nightmare, but he doesn’t know if he should be trying to wake you up from this or not. You’ve gotten barely two hours worth of rest, and he wonders if he should leave you to continue sleeping just so you can regain some more energy, even if it’s not going to be a very pleasant nap.

“No!” you inhale sharply, your voice barely more than a wheeze. 

Bakugou’s stomach turns, and he very quickly decides that he can’t just sit here and watch this happen, reasoning that if you start to scream in your sleep, he’s gonna have a really hard time explaining what the hell happened to everyone else in the office. 

He warily puts his hand on your shoulder, briefly realizing that this is the first time he’s touched you since your near death experience with that car. “Oi– idiot,” he starts. “It’s just a nightmare.”

You don’t react at all to his touch or his voice, instead gritting your teeth as your fingers twitch and curl into your palms. He jostles your shoulder, his hold tightening just slightly. “Wake up.”

Tears begin to fall down your cheeks as a strained whine escapes your throat and a shudder runs through your body. The realization that this nightmare is quickly worsening with each passing second spurs Bakugou into further action as he shifts closer to you.

“Wake up, asshole,” he says firmly, using his free hand to grab your other shoulder. He shakes you– a little more forcefully than he’d intended.

At once, you startle awake with a wheeze, wrenching upwards and grabbing at whatever is closest to you in the midst of your panic. Your hand wraps around his wrist, a panicked look in your eyes.

Bakugou grits his teeth, trying to think of how to best calm you down from this. He blinks, an unsettling wave of malaise overcoming him in an instant.

When he opens his eyes, you’re gone. In fact, he’s not even in his office anymore. He’s standing in a house that’s not his, eyes wide as he stares out the bedroom window. A voice that doesn’t belong to him makes a horrified noise as thin hands extend outwards to frantically try to jam the broken window latch back into place. The lights above suddenly flicker before shutting off entirely, and Bakugou feels a heart violently pounding in his chest. 

He scrambles, trips over feet and tumbles to the ground, wrenches himself upwards and slams the bedroom door shut. Hands shake so violently that he can’t get the lock into place. 

“No no no no…” a voice mumbles over and over again. Hot tears coat his cheeks, his throat constricting with a fear that isn’t his to feel.

Eyes search the room frantically, looking for anywhere to hide. There’s an intrinsic terror in his chest, one that knows that he doesn’t have much time. The sound of a window shattering in a nearby room sends him reeling, and he crashes towards the closet, throwing open the door with a strangled cry before lunging forwards and pulling it closed as quickly as possible.

He sinks to the ground, pushes himself into the corner and wills his body to disappear into the darkness. Hands desperately pull at the clothes hanging above, ripping them down and frantically covering his body. It’s no use, but the terror keeps him going anyway. He presses flush against the floor, holding his breath when it’s clear that there’s not enough time to get it under control. An old t-shirt that hasn’t been worn in years lays across his head, only one eye uncovered. 

This isn’t his memory. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that, but the fear coursing through the blood that’s not his suffocates the realization, replaced only by the stark reality that he’s going to die.

The bedroom door opens.

Chapter Text

The realization that you’ve just given Bakugou a memory makes the world come violently crashing down around you. Your eyes widen in shock and your hand jerks away from his wrist as if you’ve been burned, a feeling of abject horror overcoming you. You watch as his gaze clouds over, his jaw going slack. He sways on his feet for just a moment before he abruptly falls to his knees in front of you with a loud thud, his hands dangling at his sides and his eyes rolling into the back of his head. 

“Fuck– fuck!” you curse, moving reflexively and catching Bakugou as his chin dips towards his chest and he begins to topple forwards. Your hands cup either side of his face as you lift his head and desperately study his features for any signs of consciousness. “Wake up– Wake the fuck up! Please–!” you beg.

A strangled noise of panic escapes from the back of your throat as you let go of his face and shift to grab both of his shoulders, shaking him as hard as you can manage. Your heart pounds wildly in your chest, a wave of pure fear crashing through you. What have you done?! Bakugou careens forward limply, his forehead brushing against your collarbone as his shoulders sag and he seems to deflate more with each passing second.

“Bakugou,” you say, as firmly as you can manage. “Bakugou, wake up.” 

You frantically try to search your mind for the missing memory, wracking through all of the horrific things you’ve relived and searching for any kind of gap to no avail. The reality that you simply hold too much descends on you with a suffocating dread: how are you supposed to find what’s missing in an ocean of memories?

Bakugou lets out a strained noise– something between a whine and a groan as his body goes slack and collapses further against yours. You struggle to stay upright as you hold his weight, jostling him by his shoulders once more in a feeble attempt to snap him out of this. You grit your teeth, looking down at his hands to see that they’re trembling.

“Wake up!” you demand hurriedly, panic coursing through your veins. “Katsuki!”

You don’t know where the memory you’ve given him begins– how long you have until the pain starts and he’s violently convulsing on the ground as he relives a death that’s not his. Hot tears of frustration prick at the corner of your eyes, an overwhelming helplessness seizing your mind and halting your thoughts. How the fuck do you snap him out of this?

Before you can really think about what you’re about to do, you push Bakugou away from you, holding him at arm’s length and raising your free hand. You squeeze your eyes tightly shut and turn your head to the side, slapping him across the face– much harder than you’d originally intended to.

Your eyes snap open as the hollow sound rings through the office, your jaw dropping in shock at the fact that you’d just slapped the number one hero and likely signed your own death warrant in the process. You don’t have time to feel bad about it, though, because Bakugou wrenches awake almost immediately with a violent gasp for air. He reels backwards, and you just barely manage to grab the front of his shirt to keep him from toppling all the way back. His head tilts towards the ceiling as he heaves, his red eyes pinned to the spackled tiles above. 

“Oh thank fuck–” you breathe, one of your hands settling on his shoulder to steady him as the other cups the side of his face. You lean closer, tilting his head down so that you can better study his expression, clinging to the relief that washes through you as the clouded look in his gaze dissipates. “Are you okay?”

Bakugou is silent for a moment as he catches his breath, his chest rising and falling erratically– but moving all the same. “What the fuck?!” he rasps, his voice hoarse and his eyes unfocused. You know what he’s dealing with right now– the jarring transition of being forcefully dragged from one reality into another something that you’re depressingly familiar with.

Your mind rattles through worst case scenarios– cataloguing through every memory you could’ve possibly given him. “What did I show you?” you ask frantically, your grip on his shoulder tightening. “What did you see?”

Bakugou blinks rapidly, his focus sharpening. The first thing he looks at are your hands, his attention blearily flickering from where you’re holding his shoulder to your palm against his cheek, an emotion stuck between surprise and confusion flashing across his face. You follow his gaze, your hands recoiling away from him in an instant as you suck in a breath and looking down at your palms. 

He sways uneasily the moment you let go, and you reflexively try to steady him once again, your arms moving before you can think and faltering halfway through the gesture. Your features break as you shrink away from him, a wave of guilt and mortification sweeping over you.

“What the fuck?” he repeats again, the shock more evident in his voice as he slowly grounds himself further into reality. 

“I can take it back–” you offer in the midst of your panic, your hands hovering in front of you helplessly. How do you fix this? Can you even fix this?

“No!” he snaps. “Just– fuck– don’t touch me right now.” His hand rises to touch his cheek, hovering over the faint red imprint left by your hand as he hisses out a breath. “Did you fucking slap me?”

You feel your face heat in shame. “I didn’t know how else to wake you up. I’m so sorry–” you blurt, your chest spasming erratically as the air in the room starts to become impossibly thin. 

The world seems to spin faster with each strained inhale, your lungs constricting in upon themselves. You struggle to focus on Bakugou, your heart pounding so loudly in your ears that you’re sure this is a heart attack and you’re about to die– you’ve relived one before so you’d know–

“Hey– easy,” Bakugou’s eyes widen just slightly at the sight of your intensifying distress. You plant your hands on your thighs, your nails digging into the fabric of your skirt in search of some sort of stability as you try not to think about the fact that you’re about to have a panic attack in front of this asshole. You hunch forward, a wave of nausea overtaking you. “Look at me,” he says firmly.

You struggle to raise your head to meet his gaze, your shoulders jolting with each strangled wheeze. “I– I can’t breathe–“ you choke out, one of your hands lifting to claw at the collar of your turtleneck. Your nails drag against the skin of your throat, leaving a trail of pain that anchors you further into your panic.

Bakugou’s eyes pierce right through you as he reaches forward and firmly grabs your wrist, pulling it away from where it sits at your neck. You instinctively try to recoil back– terrified of accidentally giving him another memory– but he refuses to budge. Your eyes stay pinned to where his bare skin touches yours, every nerve in your body alight. 

“You’re okay,” he reassures, the steadiness to his voice slowly dragging you out of your spiral. He watches you carefully, a neutral expression on his face as he breathes in with an exaggerated motion, holding his breath and having to glare at you before you get the hint and shakily follow his movements. 

You inhale as deeply as you can manage, your hand twitching in his grip as you keep your eyes pinned to him. After a moment, Bakugou exhales and you follow soon after.

“Keep going,” he orders, and your head is such a mess that you obey without protest. If the circumstances were different, you’d probably be feeling much more bitter at the fact that Bakugou is the one who managed to calm down more quickly in this situation. “Relax– you’re fine.”

You give him an unsure nod, forcing another deep breath even if it feels like your lungs are on fire. When your breathing has evened to an acceptable degree, Bakugou lets go of your wrist and you pull your hand back towards you, rubbing absently at the spot where he’d grabbed you. 

“Tell me what you saw,” you plead, still attempting to search your mind for the missing memory.

Bakugou finally breaks eye contact, looking to the side as he sighs. A beat of silence passes before he speaks. “I– it was in a house. There was a broken window latch and somehow I knew someone was coming. I hid in the bedroom closet.”

The rest of the memory floods back with an intensity that makes your heart stutter as you immediately recognize what he’s referring to. Of all the fucking memories to give him, it had to be that one. Your gaze falls to your lap as you search your mind with a renewed fervor now that you have a starting point, trying to find the gap in your memory and confirm where it ends. Relief washes over you when you find that you can still remember the feeling of hands around your throat followed by unimaginable pain, the memory still yours to bear. 

Your shoulders slump as your panic ebbs– the realization that Bakugou didn’t see anything more than the lead-up a stark comfort. It doesn’t seem that he’d even relived any part of the attack– your memory beginning just as the closet door is pulled off of its hinges.

“What the fuck was that?” he insists once more, snapping you out of your thoughts. “You didn’t say anything about being able to give people memories.”

You shrink in upon yourself in shame, trying and failing to swallow the lump in your throat. “I learned to keep it to myself,” you respond weakly. “Too many people with bad intentions.”

After being scouted, you’d understood early on that you should avoid any mentions of what your quirk could do beyond absorbing memories. Kobayashi knew his limits– never asked for anything more than your own recollection– but the number of officers who had insisted they could handle it and hounded you relentlessly for memories they didn’t understand the gravity of was insurmountable. You’d lost count of how many detectives had approached you with a hungry look in their eyes– tried to convince you to give them the memory under the guise of needing it for “investigative purposes”. Even at a young age, you’d noticed the way they looked at you with a morbid curiosity, speculating amongst each other when they thought you weren’t listening– it’d be interesting to die just once, no strings attached. 

The memories you held were sacred– entrusted to you to remember for as long as you lived. You held onto them with a ferocity that didn’t exist in the other aspects of your life– yelled at officers and threatened to stop complying when the commission’s psychologists pushed for hours on end. To be entrusted with the most vulnerable memory of a person’s life wasn’t something you took lightly, and that fact wasn’t something ill-intentioned people seemed to be able to accept.

You’d given in only once– during your first year of working for the commission– to a junior detective who’d badgered you relentlessly, going so far as to threaten to arrest you for interfering with an investigation if you didn’t comply. You hadn’t known any better at the time, and so you’d complied out of fear, handing over the memory of a man who’d been drowned in his own bathtub. The detective had seized on the ground for nearly ten minutes, and all you’d been able to do was watch in horror. You later learned from Kobayashi that he’d retired from the police force within the month, completely crumbling under the suffocating weight of the memory.

Afterwards, the commission hypothesized that with the right memory and the wrong person, you could gravely incapacitate or even kill somebody– induce minor paralysis or even trigger a heart attack. They’d pushed for you to work with offensive quirk experts– dangled the idea of being a hero in front of you and insistently tried to convince you that you just needed practice. They tried to paint it as a good thing– a way for you to get rid of the memories plaguing your mind so you could keep reliving more. 

The image of the detective convulsing on the ground and choking on his own saliva haunted you for months, to the point that you constantly wore gloves and refused any sort of physical contact. Kobayashi pushed back tirelessly, routinely hid or threw away your gloves at every chance he got until he eventually won out and you convinced yourself that you were in control– that it wouldn’t happen ever again so long as you could help it.

You drag yourself out of your thoughts, glancing towards Bakugou. His brows are furrowed and he’s not looking anywhere in particular, his mind far away. You recognize immediately that he’s thinking about what he saw— what you made him see. 

Your heart twists in your chest. Will it haunt him like it haunts you?

“It doesn’t belong to me, but it’s in my fucking head,” he grits out, running a hand over his face as he forces himself to take a breath. “How the hell do you deal with this feeling?”

“I– I’m so sorry,” you repeat, unable to say anything else.

You can’t help the way you curl in on yourself, a burning guilt coursing through your body. You know what you carry, and nobody deserves to experience what you have. Even if he didn’t relive the attack, he still relived the fear– a fear that wasn’t his to bear. You know how wrong it feels to hold someone else’s terror, the way it forcibly slots itself into places it doesn’t belong.

How had you fucked this all up so bad? You wonder helplessly where things started to go wrong– when the lines blurred and your capabilities vanished.

With the way things are spiraling, you’re not sure that you’ll make it to the end of this in one piece. Bakugou is the main witness for the most important file of your career, and with all that’s happened, you have no idea how you’re going to proceed as if everything is normal. The thought of requesting for the file to be reassigned to another prosecutor crosses your mind, but you quickly abandon the idea. The case is at the very end of the window for prosecution, and any further delays would mean that defense would almost certainly be granted a total withdrawal of the charges on the grounds of the accused not being tried within a reasonable timeframe. There simply isn’t enough time for another prosecutor to take over, and the realization makes your throat constrict with a suffocating dread. Even if it was a possibility, resigning from the file would cement you as a failure in the office– someone who couldn’t live up to the pressure, just as everyone expected.

The unfortunate answer slowly comes to rest in the pit of your stomach. You’re getting too close; weekly meetings are allowing for too many opportunities to blur your professional and ethical standards as a prosecutor, and Bakugou’s personality is too aggravating to resist clashing against. You need to create distance– focus on other aspects of the file and build up a thick wall. He knows too much about you, and it’ll be a miracle if he doesn’t say something on the stand that the defense can use to argue that you have a conflict of interest in prosecuting the file and should be removed. You have to step back now– before it’s too late.

Taking a deep breath, you do what the commission's psychologists taught best and bottle everything up. You feel a part of yourself take a step out of your body as your emotions wane and your heartbeat slows to a dull rhythm. You don’t think about how you hate this– how you haven’t had to detach yourself since you put your foot down and stopped letting the commission ferry you between homicide scenes. The feeling that slowly settles over you is grievously familiar– the same haze you’d spent most of your teenage years trapped in.

You haphazardly spare a glance to your watch, swallowing before you next speak.

“I need to head back to the office,” you mumble weakly, pushing yourself to your feet in an attempt to avoid having to look at Bakugou.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he bites in response, standing to trail after you. “You’re going to give me that shitty memory and then run away?”

You do your best to hide the way you wince at his words, crouching down to retrieve your bag from where it sits on the ground before you force yourself to face him. Your voice is cold as you speak. “What am I supposed to do if you don’t want me to take it back?” 

His eyes narrow into a glare. “I’d expect you not to run like a fucking coward,” he spits, a sneer on his face. “I knew lawyers were pathetic, but I didn’t think you’d be this bad.”

Retrieving your notepad and Bakugou’s scribbled answers from the surface of his desk, you let out a slow breath. You hope he doesn’t notice the way your hands still have a barely present tremble to them. “Sorry to disappoint.”

Bakugou’s eye twitches at your response as he glares at you with a disdain you’d thought was only reserved for villains. “The fuck is wrong with you?” his voice falters at the end of his sentence, just barely noticeable.

You sling your bag over your shoulder, casting your gaze towards the ground. “I’ll email you if I have any follow-up questions,” you intone, approaching the door and swinging it open before Bakugou can protest any further.

Inoue watches from behind the front desk with a thinly veiled curiosity as you hurry past her and towards the elevator. You half expect Bakugou to rush forward and wrench a hand between the elevator doors to keep them from closing– to drag you back into your seat and yell at you until somehow things manage to work themselves out. 

Instead, he observes you from the doorway to his office, an unreadable expression on his face as his hands clench into fists at his sides.

—

Your nails curl into the leather strap of your bag as you briskly make your way towards your cubicle, the tension in your jaw slowly cultivating a pounding headache in the back of your skull. Your colleagues look up from their computers and pause in their conversations when they spot you, but you can’t bring yourself to care right now. 

“I give it till the pre-trial,” one of your coworkers mumbles to another prosecutor as you walk past, unaware that she’s speaking much louder than she thinks she is. You’d laugh if you weren’t in such an awful mood, unsurprised that your colleagues are taking bets on your collapse. To think you’d make it to the pre-trial conference in July was putting a lot more faith in you than you had in yourself right now. You’re not even sure if you’ll make it to the end of June.

Taking a seat at your desk, you set your mind entirely on the Infinition file– everything about it except for Bakugou. Unfortunately, you don’t have the liberty of being able to avoid it entirely, so you opt to obsess over organizing evidence and preparing the file further. You still don’t have a full picture of the investigation, but you’ve got enough of a plan that you can begin laying out the framework for how you want to order the presentation of your evidence. 

Your coworkers mention of the pre-trial conference has the date weighing heavy in your mind as you toil over exhibits and witness lists. You’ve got just under a month and a half to prepare your statement of facts regarding the case and figure out what applications you’ll be making for the trial. You have a vague idea to an extent, but you’ll need to have your arguments solidified for each motion that you’re going to put forward by the time the pre-trial rolls around. Defense is almost certainly going to oppose each and every application you make, and that’s not to mention that they’ll likely be disagreeing with the majority of the facts you’ll be trying to introduce to the court.

The pre-trial is meant to iron out any wrinkles so the actual trial can proceed as smoothly as possible. It’s your opportunity to lay out how you intend to proceed and make your applications beforehand so they don’t interrupt the natural flow of the trial. Most defense lawyers see the benefit in being at least somewhat cooperative and will agree on certain facts of the case at the pre-trial for the sake of not having to go around in circles at trial; they’ll concede on elements of the case that aren’t incriminating and would be easily proven in court– things like their client knowing the victim or perhaps owning a certain type of phone– baseline facts that lessen the work on your part and make the whole of the actual trial much less clunky. 

Here, you anticipate an objection for each fact that you attempt to present. You are so doubtful of the defense agreeing with anything that there’s almost no point in even presenting a statement of facts at the conference, but you’ll prepare one anyway in the unlikely event that the accused's current counsel drops dead and a more merciful lawyer takes things over. One can only hope.

You’re in the middle of planning an application to admit similar fact evidence for Circulation’s lengthy history of misusing his quirk when the dreaded sound of an email notification softly chimes from your computer. You raise your head, looking away from your notepad and scanning your eyes over the subject line. You suppress an annoyed groan when you immediately recognize the court docket number, which has unfortunately been seared into your brain permanently and will probably start haunting your dreams soon. Your fears are confirmed when you see that you’ve been blessed with yet another email from the defense, who has been increasingly hounding you about the smallest things over the past few weeks and labeling all of his emails as “important”. 

Subject: ! 7500235813Q4: WITNESSES ???

How many of the hero witnesses does prosecution intend to call? Need 2 know so we can subpoena everyone else.

Takao Nishida

Sent from my iPhone.

Fighting the urge to bang your head against your desk, you bite back a noise of despair as you reread the email once more. You try to tell yourself that surely he doesn’t mean that he wants to subpoena every hero on the file– but that’s exactly what the message implies and no matter how hard you try, you can’t discern a hidden alternative meaning.

From your count, there are just over twenty-five heroes who had some kind of involvement in the investigation and subsequently landed themselves on the mile long witness list. In your initial assessment of the file, you’d been planning to subpoena a grand total of eight of them, not including Bakugou. If defense intends to call every hero to court, that means you’ll need to meet with them all beforehand to prepare them, and the idea of corralling over two dozen heroes– most of whom are much more interested in taking down villains than they are in answering your emails– makes you want to sink into the floor and disappear forever. 

Maybe you’re being dramatic, but in your time as a prosecutor, the most heroes you’d ever subpoenaed for a single file was a measly five– and even coordinating that had been a nightmare. Setting up meetings with civilian witnesses was hard enough, and that’s nothing compared to having to shove yourself into whatever free time slot a hero has in their schedule after weeks of slowly emailing back and forth because they rarely bothered to answer you much less make room in their schedules for you. The thought of spending your precious time hunting everybody down while you’re already overwhelmed with the file as it is makes your hands curl into fists as you force yourself to take a deep breath.

It’s better for you to subpoena the heroes rather than the defense because that means that you get to ask them questions first at trial, so you guess you’ll be calling all of them to court and pissing off over half of the top fifty in the process. If Bakugou hadn’t already been bitching about you to all of his hero friends, they’re sure going to know about you now. It’s one way to get your name out there, you suppose. 

Resting your elbows on your desk and taking your head into your hands, you blow out a long breath as your shoulders slump. You can tell that the defense is going to try to win this on a technicality if they can’t win it the right way. They’ll grill each of the heroes for any inconsistencies or diversion from what is lawful procedure– which is just great considering that Bakugou’s the main hero and you don’t think he’s ever read a commission hero procedure handbook in his life. 

At the very least, the meetings with all the other heroes should be brief and not nearly as dreadful as the meetings you’ve been having with Bakugou. You may also be able to cut down the amount of time Bakugou will be required on the stand by having other heroes authenticate evidence or provide testimony about certain details of the investigation, but it won’t be by much. You cling onto any potential positive that you can, like it’ll save you at all.

The sound of yet another email notification makes you briefly consider taking a sick day and going home early just so you don’t have to deal with this bullshit anymore, but you begrudgingly lift your head after a moment. You lazily skim your gaze across your computer screen, a resigned expression of despair on your face. The defense couldn’t have put this all into one email?

Your eyes widen when you see that the email isn’t from defense at all– but rather the Shizuoka Herald. Sitting up straight in your chair, you feel your body go rigid as your heartrate spikes. The subject line stares back at you, your hand remaining frozen on your computer mouse and a sinking dread pooling in your stomach. The idea of reading the response makes your chest twist in knots, and for a brief moment you consider trashing it altogether. 

After a beat of hesitation, you click onto the email with an uneasy reluctance.

Subject: RE: News Intern?

Good afternoon,

We have no students interning with us at this time.

Chapter Text

Subject: RE: News Intern?

Good afternoon,

We have no students interning with us at this time.

However, we would be more than happy to set up a time to meet if you would be willing to provide a statement on…

The words on the computer screen blur together as your heart stutters in your chest and your stomach drops. You just barely manage to squeak out a shaky breath, your eyes pinned to the first sentence of the email. Your hand rises to cover your mouth and you lean against the edge of your desk as your entire body is overcome with an abrupt weakness.

A desperate part of your mind tries to come up with a less sinister, alternative explanation for the “intern” almost immediately, just as you had done when the incident initially occurred. You try to tell yourself that maybe he was a stupid university student trying to get a good grade on an assignment or someone from one of those illegitimate “news” accounts on social media hungry for an exclusive comment– anything that isn’t the most logical explanation for what’s actually going on.

The building is on fire– and you can’t help but wonder how long the flames have been festering. Was it since that evening when someone had tried to open your front door? Or was it the broken window latch? How much more has been going on that you’ve simply been too busy to notice?

Have they been inside your apartment?

You want to cry, but you’re frozen with so much shock that you can’t even blink. The world around you spins to a nauseating degree as you try to come up with a plan of what the fuck you’re going to do.

There’s no point in going to the police– you know better than most that the evidence is circumstantial right now and that the police wouldn’t even consider elevating patrols around your apartment much less launching an actual investigation. They’d make the same kinds of excuses that you’re trying to make right now, and until something substantial like a break-in or assault occurs, there’s no point in bothering to file a report. 

But where else do you go? You have nobody in this city– being a junior prosecutor means that your work-life balance is non-existent and you subsequently have no time for maintaining friendships outside of being cordial with your coworkers. There’s no one in your life who you’d be able to confide in without them turning on their heels and running away as fast as they possibly could. Nobody wants to get involved with a possible stalker– especially if said stalker has potential ties to one of the largest villain organizations in the country. 

A resigned terror seizes you with a suffocating grip, your mind running faster than you can keep up with. Even if you made a report and it was taken seriously, the moment Infinition becomes implicated in the investigation is the moment your supervisors take you off of this file; and with no time left for another prosecutor to take over, the entire case would be withdrawn. A part of you thinks that’s exactly what Infinition’s goal is– to scare you enough that you run to the authorities and their leaders walk free on a legal technicality. 

The minutes tick by as your thoughts run around in circles, hitting dead end after dead end. You have absolutely no idea what to do, but the sun is dipping below the horizon and as much as you’d like to, spending the night sleeping under your desk would not go over well with the higher-ups. Your coworkers had been tolerant of your stressful demeanor ever since you were assigned this godforsaken file, but even they had their limits in what was acceptable.

In the midst of your panic and with no conceivable way out of this, you find yourself walking home.

With each step, you curse yourself and wonder what the hell you’re doing. You internally scream at yourself to stop marching towards your very plausible demise, but your heels continue to click softly against the concrete as you push forward anyways. 

You were no stranger to the many ways in which people reacted in situations of extreme stress; you’d seen thousands of different reactions, both in your career and in your work with the Commission. You’d sat in court and listened to defense lawyers tear victims apart in cross-examination, grill them on why they went back to their perpetrators or why they returned home when they could’ve gone anywhere else. Your coworkers had sometimes even expressed their own disbelief with the ways in which victims seemed to act against their own best interests. Even outside of reality, everyone loved to yell at horror movies and rag on the characters' questionable decisions. The typical, expected response of a victim was ingrained deeply into society, and deviations from that schema were automatically met with ridicule.

Why does someone continue on as if their safety isn’t in jeopardy? As reluctant as you were to admit it, you’d thought the same at many points in your life. Why would the victim enter their residence alone after seeing their front door wide open in the middle of the night? Why would someone “allow” themselves to be beckoned into a dark alley by a suspicious figure? 

The reflexive answer most people would give to those questions is that the victims are foolish– that they should’ve known better. People try to claim that they’d respond differently– that they would do the right thing and wouldn’t fall victim so easily. 

The simple reality is that the brain operates incredibly illogically under extreme stress, and nobody ever assumes that tragedy will befall them until it does– violently. Even now as you stumble home, there’s a part of you that thinks this is all just a misunderstanding– that something as fantastical as being stalked by an infamous criminal organization just couldn’t happen to someone as unassuming as you.

More nuanced takes on victim responses often use the metaphor of a frog in boiling water; threats to safety escalate in barely perceivable increments that keep the victim from realizing how dire their circumstances truly are until it’s too late. By the time the victim realizes something is wrong, they’re already boiling alive. It’s an explanation that you often use in court to explain why someone may have gone back to their abuser if the defense is trying to paint the complainant as lacking credibility.

What people often neglect to mention is the concept of tonic immobility. They’ll learn about it in animals– a possum slowing its heart rate and going limp or a fawn collapsing into catatonia amidst the tall grass– but the assumption is that humans have evolved past “playing dead”. An expert witness you’d called for a trial years ago had pushed back against the notion, discussed how repeated trauma shuts down the higher spheres of the brain in times of stress and pushes the victim back into the foundational, evolutionary portions of the mind focused solely on survival.

Maybe you’re just a frog in a pot of water, but as your heart beats steadily and you unlock your front door, you feel more than anything like a rabbit trapped firmly between the jaws of a predator. Your body may be moving, but you’re playing dead– clinging to your usual routine like nothing is amiss because you simply can’t face the reality that something is deeply, deeply wrong. 

—

The week passes by quietly. 

You pay your landlord to change the locks to your front door and put in a maintenance request for the broken window latch in your bathroom. You stay in the office as late as you possibly can, becoming well acquainted with the evening janitorial staff in the process. Rather than sleeping in your bed– which feels far too exposed now– you migrate into the spare bedroom which you’d converted into a home office when you first moved in, piling blankets and pillows into the closet and spending your sleepless nights in the stuffy, cramped darkness. 

You do what you can, which is not much.

If you thought you were tired before, it’s nothing compared to now. The deepset bags underneath your eyes have practically cemented themselves permanently into your skin, and your appetite all but vanishes. You trudge to the office as early as is socially acceptable and isolate yourself in your cubicle, putting headphones in and fervently toiling over the Infinition file for hours on end. You don’t bother to take breaks anymore, keeping your mind as busy as possible in an attempt not to think about your current circumstances.

By the end of the week, you’ve reached out to all twenty-eight involved heroes to inform them of their incoming subpoenas and inquire about setting up a time to meet. Only three have gotten back to you so far, with a reminder set on your calendar to send out another round of emails early next week. 

Throughout it all, you continue to avoid Bakugou. You cancel your usual Saturday meeting with him, sending a document of questions via email instead and telling yourself that Bakugou probably prefers this anyways, considering that he seems to hate your mere existence as it is. Your weekend feels hollow now that you don’t have a meeting to dread, but you opt to fill the emptiness with more preparation. 

The sheer magnitude of the file descends on you with a renewed, suffocating weight– and you routinely find yourself doubting your abilities. When you’re not thinking about case law or how you’re going to get evidence admitted into court, you’re spiraling about your own skills and whether you’ll be able to secure a conviction. You bitterly tell yourself that if Infinition really is stalking you, then that at least means that you’re somewhat of a threat in their eyes– either that or a simple nuisance.

You’re barely present in your own body– wading through a haze of legal procedure for hours on end only to go back home and do the same until you pass out on the closet floor, curled into as tight of a ball as you can manage with a knife at your side. You wake from the smallest of noises and frequently find yourself crying out of frustration. The fact that nothing has occurred since the intern makes you feel as though you’re going insane– to the point that you’re almost begging for something to happen, just to confirm with yourself that your collapse is warranted.

Memories that you spent years burying resurface vividly, plaguing your dreams and fueling your doubts. You wonder how much of your slow destruction is a result of what’s actually happening, and how much of it is because of what you’ve relived. Your mind can only focus on the worst case scenarios; it’s all you’ve ever known.

Ten days since your last meeting with Bakugou, you’re attentively scrubbing through security footage– your face inches away from your computer monitor as you squint your eyes to make out the shapes of two figures slinking down the side of the building– when the sound of something slamming onto the wood of your desk startles you. 

You jolt in your seat as a yelp escapes your throat and your head whips to the source of the sound. Someone has slammed their hand on your desk, your gaze trailing upwards to land on Bakugou. 

“Bakugou?” you blurt, your eyes widening in a mixture of surprise and confusion as you take a deep breath in an attempt to calm the sudden spike in your heartrate. “What the hell?!”

Bakugou looks back at you with a smug expression, amusement flickering across his face. “Didn’t take you to be so jumpy–” he grins. It seems like he wants to say more, but as he examines you more closely, his brows knit together and his demeanour shifts. He leverages his weight against your desk so he can lean closer, and you find yourself instinctively scooting your chair backwards. “The fuck is wrong with you?” he scowls. “You look like you’ve been to war.”

You roll your eyes, carding your hand through your hair as you sigh. “Thanks, Bakugou,” you drawl. “It’s every woman’s dream to hear that.”

He scoffs but doesn’t say anything more, instead turning his attention to your cramped cubicle. “Geez, no wonder you prosecutors are all so bitchy,” he mumbles under his breath. “They’ve got you working in glorified prison cells. Does your desk always look like this?” he motions to the surface of your desk, which is barely visible due to the papers and sticky notes you have scattered all over the place. 

“Well I wasn’t exactly expecting any visitors today,” you bite back in response. 

You’re well aware of what your desk looks like, the pitiful stares you get from your colleagues whenever they walk by telling you more than enough. Normally, you’re much more organized with your cases, but with all that’s going on and the complete trainwreck of a file that you’re dealing with, you’re unfortunately stuck with the organized chaos that only you have an understanding of. 

Bakugou steps around your desk and into your personal space, leaning directly over you to examine the corkboard hung on the wall of your cubicle to your right. 

“What are all of these?” he asks, reaching forward to grab one of the letters pinned to the board.

You feel your face heat as you fight to get any words out. Bakugou’s eyebrows raise as he reads the letter– which you’re pretty sure is the one that repeatedly calls you a pissy bitch among other expletives. 

“Those are– they’re letters I’ve gotten from the accused I’ve prosecuted,” you stammer out. “I’m not very popular with them.”

There are nearly a dozen letters pinned to your corkboard, all messily written and filled with so much rage their mere presence probably poisons the atmosphere of your quaint cubicle. You’d taken to collecting them in the beginning of your career because they brought you a fair amount of amusement and some of your other coworkers did the same. Lately, the sight of them just makes you feel like you’re being mocked. You’ve been meaning to take them down, but haven’t been able to will yourself to do so because in some twisted way it feels like admitting defeat.

“Jesus fuck,” Bakugou whistles lowly as he finishes reading the first letter and drops it back on your desk, leaning forward once again to examine the rest of the crumpled pieces of paper pinned to your corkboard. 

“This one is uh– my favorite,” you say hesitantly, pointing towards the paper in the centre of the board written entirely using cut out letters from magazine scraps. “He really put a lot of time into it. Was pretty creative with the insults, too.”

Bakugou exhales in amusement, putting a hand on the armrest of your chair so that he can get lean in further to read some of the smaller print. He’s close enough that the ends of his unruly blonde hair brush against your face and you can smell him– a mixture of soot and something more earthy. 

You swallow, doing your best to ignore the way your heart stutters in your chest as you lean as far back in your chair as you can. “What are you doing here anyways?” you ask, trying to draw his attention away from the letters. “We don’t have a meeting scheduled for today,” you add, not bothering to mention the fact that his volatile nature means you would never even think to have a meeting at the prosecution’s office. For a moment, you think that maybe he’s here to yell at you because you’ve cancelled this Saturday’s meeting, too. 

Much to your relief, Bakugou straightens his back and takes a step away from you. “I’m not here for you, loser,” he sneers. “I’m meeting with another extra.”

You feel a mild embarrassment wash through you as you nod dumbly. Of course he probably had other files going on, especially considering that you’d offloaded most of your cases to your coworkers upon being handed the Infinition file.

“You’re not the only lawyer I’ve gotta deal with,” he continues, a smug look on his face. “My life doesn’t revolve around your file.”

The realization that Bakugou is parroting things you’ve said to him before back at you replaces any self-consciousness you had originally with a feeling of indignation. You narrow your eyes into a glare, doing your best to keep it together in a feeble bid to maintain your professionalism. You’re well aware of the fact that Bakugou’s mere presence in the office means that anybody nearby has stopped working to listen in on this conversation.

“I hope your meeting goes well,” you say simply, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d almost think that Bakugou looks disappointed– like he’d been hoping for a snarky response.

He rolls his eyes with a huff. “Whatever. Later, nerd,” he grumbles, turning on his heel to step out of your cubicle. 

You watch as he stops in the middle of the aisle, his hands clenching into fists as he does his best not to make it abundantly clear that he has no idea where he’s supposed to be going.

Your lip quirks upwards in a faint amusement. You briefly consider sitting back and watching him bumble around the office like an idiot, but after a handful of seconds, your good nature wins out. “Which prosecutor are you supposed to be meeting with?” you ask casually. 

Bakugou glares at you from over his shoulder. For a moment, you think he’s stubbornly going to refuse to answer. “Ishida,” he responds, a resentful tone to his voice.

“Two rows over, the cubicle closest to the window,” you supply, turning your attention back towards your computer screen just as Bakugou sets off down the aisle and disappears from your peripheral vision. 

As annoying as Bakugou was, and as much as you hated to admit it, your brief interaction with him brings you a faint reprieve from all the catastrophic bullshit overwhelming you– enough that the tension in your shoulders wanes and you breathe a little easier. 

—

You – 3:41pm

Going to have to cancel our meeting for this Saturday, too. I’ll send you some more questions via email. 

Bakugou stares down at the message, his eye twitching as he tries not to lose his mind. A strange mix of anger and something he doesn’t want to name swirls in his chest as his jaw clenches. This is the third week in a row that you’ve cancelled on him, and he’s really starting to get fed up with this bullshit.

“Katsuki?! A little help here?” Kirishima calls over the sound of rubble crashing to the ground, prompting Bakugou to look up from his phone screen just in time to see Kirishima throw a villain through a window and narrowly dodge an attack from another.

With a scowl on his face, he shoves his phone into his pocket and lifts his arm to catch a villain trying to run towards Mina by the collar of his shirt. Bakugou yanks the man back, slamming him into the concrete hard enough that it splinters beneath him and the man is left gasping for air.

“Careful Bakubro!” Kaminari whistles as he walks by, dragging the limp body of a villain he’d electrocuted behind him. It takes everything Bakugou has not to launch an explosion his way in retaliation for continuing to use that god awful nickname. “Wouldn’t want any more demerits on your license!”

“Fuck off!” Bakugou snarls, your message still on his mind as he hoists the villain over his shoulder and follows after Kaminari, towards the villain containment van set up down the street. 

You’re avoiding him, and you’re barely even trying to hide it. Ever since the last meeting, you’ve been off– emailing him like he’s just another hero and refusing to call much less show your face. Even when he’d stopped by your office last week, you’d struggled to make eye contact. You looked like shit too– even more exhausted than was customary. 

“I can’t believe our Dynamight is more interested in his phone than a full scale villain attack,” Mina comments, her voice loud enough that it carries over the enraged yells of the villain she’s currently maneuvering around. 

Bakugou rolls his eyes as he tosses the man into the back of the containment van, turning on his heel and scanning his surroundings to find his next sorry target. “You all need to shut up!”

“It’s because his favorite prosecutor keeps cancelling their meetings,” Kirishima supplies, cackling out a loud laugh as he dodges an explosion from Bakugou. “She’s giving him the cold shoulder.”

“Shut it– spiky!” Bakugou growls. “Stay out of my goddamn business!”

“Stop sharing your calendar with me, then,” Kirishima retorts, a noise of effort escaping him as he wrestles a villain to the ground. “You know how to do that, right?”

Mina gasps, her eyes lighting up at the mere prospect of some good gossip. “So that’s why Bakugou’s been even grumpier than normal lately!” she exclaims. “If you hurt that cutie, I’ll detain you right here with the rest of these guys!”

Kaminari yanks a villain backwards just as the poor man is about to take a full force explosion to the face from Bakugou. “Sending the prosecutors paid to deal with you running– what a ladies man!”

“I’m gonna kill you all!” Bakugou roars, his threats directed more so to his fellow heroes than they are to the villains surrounding them. 

He shouldn’t care that you’re avoiding him– if anything, he should be relieved that he doesn’t have to deal with your nagging– but his mind is plagued with the memory of your smooth palm pressed against his cheek and the look of pure concern on your face as you’d held him upright. He thought that dropping by your cubicle in person to make fun of you would ease things, but now all he can think about is how utterly exhausted you looked, and he’s not supposed to give a shit about you at all in the first place.

Bakugou grits his teeth, rattling off another barrage of explosions to all but disintegrate the rubble falling from the buildings above. 

And what is he supposed to do? Be the one that comes crawling back and demands that things go back to normal? He’s determined not to stoop down to that level– and he’s sure that eventually you’ll ask for another in person meeting, but– fuck– he’s not even supposed to want any in person meetings with you.

You’re nothing but a nuisance– or at least that’s what he’s trying to tell himself, but the feelings that swirl around in his chest are insistent, pulling at his heart and poisoning his thoughts. He shouldn’t give a shit about some stupid lawyer that’s in way over her head– you got yourself into this mess, and you can certainly get yourself out of it. 

He tries to tell himself that you’re not worth the time– that one less meeting in his week is a good thing. Anger festers underneath his skin, his explosions burning much hotter than normal the more he thinks about your stupid face and the way you’re putting everything you have into this file at your own expense. He wonders if you’re eating– if you’re getting enough sleep or if you’re still having nightmares like the one you had in his office.

He wonders if this is tormenting you like it’s tormenting him.

—

Watching the elevator’s electronic display incrementally increase with each passing floor, the only thing you can think is that you really should’ve scheduled this meeting to take place somewhere else. 

When you sent out emails to all of the heroes you’d be subpoenaing, Kirishima was unsurprisingly the first to respond. He was one of the few heroes who always made time for you, answering your emails almost instantly and moving his schedule around to better accommodate yours. In your haste to get a meeting booked and out of the way, you’d completely forgotten that Kirishima is a part of the Ground Zero Hero Agency; he’d even been hesitant when you’d offered to have the meeting at his office, but in your excitement you’d completely missed the uncertainty in his voice and insisted that you’d be more than happy to accommodate a meeting outside of the prosecution’s office to make things easier for him.

All you can do is hope and pray that Bakugou is out of the office– which isn’t asking for much. Considering the sheer number of files he has with the prosecution’s office, Bakugou would have to be on patrol almost constantly to be making as many arrests as he did. You tell yourself that in all likelihood, he is out on the streets, teetering the line between reasonable and excessive force.

As the elevator slowly comes to a stop and the doors slide open, you force yourself to take a deep breath and step forward. You try to reason that even if he is here, you’ll be okay– you have a job to do and as far as you’re concerned, he can take any grievances he may have with you and shove it.

You briskly approach the front desk and catch the attention of Shimizu, who gives you a bright smile when she sees you. Ever since you’d risked your career and absolutely lost it on Mineta, the meek woman had been much friendlier with you during your brief encounters at the front desk.

“Hi there!” she beams. “I’ll let Dynamight know that you’re here right away!”

Alarm flares through your body as you scramble to stop her. “I– I’m actually here to meet with Red Riot!” you respond, your voice louder than intended.

“Oh! Okay,” she nods, turning to her computer to clack away on the keyboard. “You can have a seat while you wait!”

You nod, turning on your heel to head towards the waiting area when the blur of a familiar silhouette in your peripheral stops you. Your body goes rigid, and seeing as it’s too late to pretend you didn’t see him at all, you begrudgingly lift your eyes to meet Bakugou’s gaze.

He’s standing in the doorway to his office, leaned against the frame as he regards you with indecipherable expression. His upper lip twitches like he’s about to scowl, but he holds himself together.

“Bakugou,” you force a curt nod, shifting your weight. 

Bakugou remains silent, his red gaze pinned to you as you struggle to find something else to say to stave off the rapidly developing awkward silence between the two of you. Just as you both open your mouths to say something, Kirishima’s voice rings out.

“Hey! How have you been?”

You immediately look away from Bakugou, thanking whatever merciful god watches over you as you hurry over to Kirishima, plastering a soft smile on your face.

“I’m good!” you answer, hoping that the feigned enthusiasm in your voice is sufficient enough to convince Kirishima. You do your best not to wince as your palm trembles when you extend it to shake Kirishima’s hand. “How are you today?”

“Not too bad,” Kirishima answers, motioning for you to follow him as he sets off down the hall towards what you presume to be his office. You continue on with the small talk, the tension slowly leaving your body the further you get away from Bakugou. 

As you disappear around the corner with Kirishima, the sound of Bakugou’s office door slamming shut rattles through the walls.

—

The meeting with Kirishima goes well, which you had largely expected it to. The hero was incredibly organized, all of his notes for the file laid out on his desk in advance of your arrival. You briefly go over what court will look like– the types of questions he can expect from defense and which pieces of evidence you will be having him authenticate. You’re done within an hour, nothing of particular concern coming up– a stark difference from how your meetings with Bakugou normally go. Kirishima walks you to the elevator and you thankfully don’t run into Bakugou again, your heartbeat refusing to cease in its rapid pounding until the elevator doors slide shut and you can no longer see the door to Bakugou’s office.

You’re in the middle of unlocking the door to your apartment when your phone buzzes in your pocket, the rhythm indicating that someone is calling you. You tut under your breath, briefly abandoning your key in the lock in favor of retrieving the device from your pocket. As much as you wish you could just ignore it, you need to make sure that it’s not a hero calling to set up a meeting with you as there’s no guarantee that they will return your call should you miss theirs.

When you see that it’s Bakugou calling, you briefly consider letting the call go to voicemail like he had so many times with you over the course of your career. You let the line ring for a few more seconds before you finally give in, arguing that you might as well get this over with now.

“Hello?” You say, wedging your phone between your ear and your shoulder to free up your hands. You try to turn your key to unlock the door, but it won’t budge.

“I’m not doing this email bullshit anymore,” Bakugou proclaims on the other end, not even bothering with pleasantries.

“Emails are necessary even for heroes,” you respond, holding back a curse as you fight with the key. What the hell was going on? Ever since you’d had the locks changed, you hadn’t been having to fight with your door anymore to get inside your apartment. “I don’t think that’s something you can escape.”

“You know what I mean, loser,” he grumbles in response. “No more emailing me with your stupid questions. You want your answers, you have to ask me in person.”

You sigh before you can stop yourself– the frustration with the lock distracting you. A part of you had known that Bakugou would inevitably get fed up with writing his answers down, but you had hoped that it would’ve taken him more time to get to that point.

“I’m very busy with other aspects of the file,” you mumble absently, your brows knitting together in concentration as you lean your weight into the door and continue to fumble with the key. “I’ve got to meet with the other heroes–”

“That’s bullshit,” Bakugou interrupts, his voice laced with disdain. “Stop being a coward.”

Finally, the lock clicks out of place and the door swings open. You let out a breath, stepping inside and closing the door behind you.

“Fine. We can try to figure out a time to meet in person,” you relent, crouching down to untie your shoes. “I can probably still make Saturday work–”

The light above flickers on– which you wouldn’t think anything of if it weren’t for the fact that both of your hands are occupied, one holding your phone and the other fighting with your laces. You pause, eyes widening as you look up and away from the ground.

It’s the intern. He’s standing less than a meter away, a sickly smile on his face as he steps away from the light switch on the wall. You freeze, just barely keeping a hold on your phone.

He’s in your apartment.

He’s not alone either, a bulky man whose skin is decorated with scaly patterns standing next to him. You don’t have much of an opportunity to examine the two any further, as your eyes immediately land on the gun that the intern has leveled at you, the barrel aimed directly at your head. 

Your blood runs cold as you straighten your back, your grip on your phone tightening. The gun remains trained on you, following each of your movements.

“Oi– idiot!” Bakugou snarls through the call. You think that he must’ve been talking for quite some time, but you have no recollection of it in the slightest. 

For a moment, you consider screaming for help– but if these two are really with Infinition, then their goals lie solely with freeing their leaders. If you don’t cooperate with them, then the easiest way to end your prosecution is to simply pull the trigger. 

“I–I have to go. I’ll talk to you later– Dynamight,” you stammer out, lowering the phone from your ear and numbly ending the call, the sound of Bakugou’s protests abruptly ending.

The intern nods in approval, stepping forward to lessen the distance between you two as he extends his free hand. A strangled whimper escapes your throat as the cold metal of the gun presses against your forehead, your eyes glued to the man’s finger hovering over the trigger. Your entire body trembles as you give him your phone, the sound of your heart pounding in your ears nearly deafening.

How many times had you relived something like this?

You know how this ends. The thought replays over and over in your mind as the intern beckons you forward, jerking his gun in the direction of your couch as a silent command. Tears roll freely down your face as you stumble forward, your entire body on fire with adrenaline. 

The man with the scales shoves you forward the moment you pass by him, and you just barely manage to catch yourself on the arm of the couch, a startled cry falling from your lips. Your arms shake beneath you, your legs threatening to give out altogether. 

The fear in the pit of your chest is unlike anything you’ve ever felt before, yet simultaneously feels strangely familiar. It’s the same kind of terror that overcomes someone when they know they’re going to die– that there’s nothing they can do but beg for it to be quick. Of all the deaths you’d relived, this type of fear never felt like yours– always felt wrong when it would bubble up in your throat or pull you out of a nightmare screaming. 

You shakily take a seat on the couch. The terror that courses through you feels like it’s always been there– like it’s been buried deep in your body since your very first breath. It belongs– slots against you so perfectly that you think you’re going to be sick. You distantly think that this kind of fear must exist in its own unique form in everyone, lying in wait. 

You can no longer fall back on the reassurance that the terror doesn’t belong to you– that it’s from a memory you simply bear and nothing more.

This fear is yours.