Chapter 1: The Final Spark of Defiance
The villain came at him again with a length of pipe, screaming something Kirishima didn't bother to hear. He planted his feet, hardened his arm to jagged crimson stone, and swung. His fist caught the man square in the jaw with a crack like splitting timber. The pipe clattered loose across the rubble. The villain folded, spun once, and went down flat among the pulverized concrete, out cold before the dust settled around him.
Kirishima exhaled, chest heaving, and turned to check the rest of the sector.
He saw Denki then.
His best friend was pinned to the jagged rebar of a collapsed wall, three meters off the ground, a thick spike of rusted steel punching through the center of his torso and out the back of the yellow-and-black uniform. The conductive patches across his chest were torn and dark with blood that had already soaked through to his sides. His legs hung limp, toes barely scraping a broken slab below. His head lolled forward, bleach-blond hair matted flat, the black lightning streak in it caked with gray dust.
"No." The word came out of Kirishima small and useless. "No, no, no."
He moved before his brain caught up. He scrambled across the debris field, boots skidding on shattered glass and rebar shards, hardened soles splitting a concrete chunk under him as he climbed. His hands were shaking so badly he fumbled the first grip on the wall's broken edge. He hauled himself up anyway, shoulder screaming where a girder had clipped him earlier, and got both arms around Denki's waist.
The steel spike was in the way. It went through his friend like a nail through a doll, and Kirishima's mind kept sliding off that fact the way water slides off glass.
"Denki. Hey. Denki." He wrapped one arm around Denki's back, careful, so careful, of the metal, and gripped his jaw with the other hand. His skin was cool. Not cold yet, but cooling. "I've got you. I've got you, okay? Look at me."
Denki's eyes opened. They were that soft amber gold Kirishima had known since first year, but the light in them was wrong, unfocused, sliding past Kirishima's face to somewhere far behind him. His brow creased slowly, like recognizing his own name took effort.
"Ei...jiro?" His voice was a papery whisper. "What... what happened?"
"You got thrown." Kirishima's throat closed around the words. "You got thrown into the wall, buddy. That's all. I'm gonna get you off this thing and we're gonna get you to Recovery Girl, and she's gonna fix you up, and you're gonna complain about the kiss because you always do, remember? You always complain about the taste."
Denki blinked at him. A thread of blood ran from the corner of his mouth down his chin.
"It tastes like..." He stopped. Swallowed with visible difficulty. "Is that my blood?"
Kirishima's hands were soaked. He hadn't noticed until that second. Warm, sticky, sliding between his fingers, welling up around the entry wound in slow pulses that were coming farther apart than they should.
"That's mine, actually." He forced a grin, all sharp teeth and no conviction. "You know how I bleed everywhere. Hardening cracks, gets messy. Classic Kirishima problem."
Denki's breath hitched. Once, twice, a ragged terrified rhythm, each inhale shorter than the last. His fingers twitched against Kirishima's forearm and then, with a strength that broke something in Kirishima's chest, they closed around it and squeezed.
"Eijiro." Denki's eyes came into focus for one horrible instant, and they were scared, genuinely scared, a sixteen-year-old's fear sitting inside an eighteen-year-old's face. "It hurts. Why does it hurt so much? I can't feel my legs, but it hurts. Is that bad? Eijiro, is that bad?"
"No." The lie came out fast and cracked down the middle. "No, that's normal. Shock does that. Makes you numb, makes it hurt weird. We learn this, man. First aid, second term. You slept through it and I covered for you, remember? So trust me. Trust me, okay?"
"I trust you." Denki said it immediately, without thinking, the way he said everything, and that immediate trust was somehow the worst part. "Okay. I trust you." His grip loosened. Tightened again. "Eijiro, I'm scared."
"I know." Kirishima's vision blurred. He wiped his face against his shoulder, leaving a red smear on his own collar next to the little notched R pin. "I know you are. But I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm the shield, remember? Nothing else gets to you while I'm here. That's the whole deal. That's my whole job."
The spike shifted a centimeter as Denki shivered, and the wet sound it made coming out of his friend's back would live in Kirishima's head forever.
He had no plan. That was the truth of it, the ugly truth he couldn't say out loud. He didn't know if pulling Denki off the rebar would kill him faster. He didn't know if leaving him on it was killing him slower. First aid hadn't covered this. Nothing covered this. His hands hovered over the wound, trembling, and there was nothing in the world he could do with them, and he was the one whose quirk was being unbreakable.
"Denki, hey, stay with me, okay? Eyes on me."
Denki's eyes had started to drift closed. They dragged back open. "I'm so tired."
"I know. Don't sleep yet. Talk to me. Tell me something."
"What do you want me to say?"
"Anything. Tell me about the new game you bought. You didn't shut up about it for a week."
Denki's mouth pulled into something that wanted to be his crooked grin. "You said it was dumb."
"It was dumb."
"You bought it anyway." A whisper of a laugh, and then a wet, awful cough that brought more red up his chin. His whole body seized against Kirishima's arm. "Ah. Ah, Eijiro."
"I've got you. I've got you." Kirishima pulled him closer against his chest, cradling him, one hand cupping the back of his head like that could hold him together. Denki weighed almost nothing now, or maybe Kirishima's arms had gone numb. "I'm here."
"What do I do?" Kirishima's voice cracked apart on the words, and he didn't care, didn't notice, was shouting at Denki's wound and the sky and the dead silence of the ruined sector all at once. "Somebody tell me what to do!"
He looked up. Scanned the skeletal girders, the dust-hazed sky, the broken street below. Nobody. The rest of the class was two blocks north. His phone was in a pouch on his belt and his hands were too bloody and too unsteady to work the screen anyway.
Then he heard the footsteps. Boots hammering across concrete, fast and getting faster.
"Kirishima, you absolute dumbass, what are you doing standing in the open? The drone's down but the second wave could come back any second, get behind cover, are you trying to..." Bakugo came around the corner of a collapsed loading bay mid-shout, palm crackling faintly, expression set in its usual scowl. "Kirishima."
He stopped.
Kirishima watched it happen. Watched Bakugo's crimson eyes snap from him to Denki's slumped body, to the rebar, to the steel going through his chest, to the blood sheeting down the wall beneath it in a long dark rope. The crackle in Bakugo's palm died. His face didn't change so much as drain, the scowl collapsing into something raw and young.
"Dunce Face." It came out almost quiet. Then louder, crossing the rubble in three huge strides: "Kaminari!"
"Bakugo." Kirishima's head snapped up. Relief hit him so hard it nearly buckled him. "Bakugo, thank god, I don't, I can't, he's stuck, the metal's through him and I don't know if I should pull him off, and he's cold, and he's talking but he's going in and out, and I don't know what to do. What do I do?"
"Move over." Bakugo dropped to his knees on the broken slab beside them. His hands were steady. Kirishima would remember later, in the worst hours of his life, that Bakugo's hands were completely steady while his own shook like a man freezing to death. Bakugo pressed two fingers under Denki's jaw, checked his pulse, tore open the soaked uniform at the shoulder to check for other wounds, and did all of it in about four seconds.
"Hey. Kaminari." He tapped Denki's cheek, once, sharp. "Dunce Face. Look at me."
Denki's eyes swam up. "Bakugo." The ghost of the grin again. "You came. You always act mad but you always come."
"Shut up." Bakugo's voice was flat and hard, and underneath the flatness something was grinding. "Save your air. Don't talk."
"He's my friend," Kirishima said. The words tumbled out stupid and urgent. "Bakugo, he's my best friend, you have to help him. You have to help him."
"I'm trying to think." Bakugo's eyes moved over the spike, the angle, the amount of blood on the wall, the pooling on the slab beneath, and Kirishima watched him do the math. Watched him finish it. Watched him decide, visibly decide, not to say the answer out loud where Denki could hear.
"We're pulling him off." Bakugo's jaw set. "The bleeding's slower while it's plugging the hole, but he can't stay up here and he can't get treatment with a two-meter bar of steel through him. We support the wound, keep the bar from moving, and lower him flat. You hold his torso. I hold the back. On three. Kirishima. Kirishima, look at me. You hold his torso, you don't let the bar shift, you don't look at anything except the job. Do you understand me?"
"Yes." Kirishima swallowed the lump in his throat until it nearly choked him. "Yes. Okay. On three."
"One." Bakugo got his shoulder under Denki's back, arms bracing around the steel. "Two."
"Bakugo." Denki's hand found Bakugo's gauntlet, weak as a kitten's. "Hey. I did good, right? Back there. I cleared the civilians out before it came down."
"You did fine." Bakugo didn't look at him. "You did the job. Now let me do mine."
"Three."
They moved together. Kirishima held Denki's torso against his chest, hardened his arms to lock the weight, and Bakugo guided the steel as they slid their friend off the spike in one long, smooth, terrible motion. Denki screamed. It was the only full-volume sound he had left in him, and it tore through the silent sector and echoed off the broken girders and cut off almost immediately as he went limp. The spike came free trailing blood. Kirishima jammed his hardened palm flat against the entry wound, both sides, sealing pressure over cloth and flesh, and they lowered him down onto the slab.
"Where's the medic?" Kirishima craned toward the street. "Bakugo, where's the medic, where's the evac, you had the comm, did you call it in?"
"Evac's eight minutes out. I called it in four minutes ago for the sector." Bakugo stripped off his gauntlet with his teeth and yanked the compression wrap from his own belt, tearing the packaging open with his hands and his teeth and, at one point, his grip strength alone. "Eight minutes."
"Eight minutes." Kirishima laughed, a horrible cracked sound. "Okay. Eight minutes. He just has to hold on for eight minutes. That's nothing. Denki, that's nothing, that's like one round of Mario Kart, that's one level of the dumb game you made me buy."
Denki's eyes were half open. Fixed somewhere near the darkened sky.
"Eijiro."
"Right here. I'm right here, buddy."
"Why's it so quiet?"
Kirishima pressed down harder. The blood kept coming between his fingers, hot and endless, soaking into the wrap Bakugo slapped over the wound, soaking through the wrap, soaking into Kirishima's knees.
Denki's breathing had changed. It had gone shallow and quick, each breath a small fluttering effort, and his lips were gray. His hand was still gripping Kirishima's forearm. The grip hadn't loosened since the wall, like letting go was the one thing he refused to do.
"Hey." Kirishima leaned down close, until Denki's fading focus could find him. "Hey, eyes here. On me. You remember first year? Training camp? You shorted out your whole brain and spent the afternoon drooling and saying hey and yay with your thumbs up, and I carried you back on my shoulders, and you threw up in my hair, and I didn't even care." His voice was breaking on every second word now. "You threw up in my hair and I didn't care, Denki, because you're my best friend, and I would do anything for you, and I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry I wasn't fast enough."
"You were fast." Denki's whisper was almost nothing. Almost breath. "You're always fast, Eijiro. You're the... manliest."
Bakugo's hands stopped moving for half a second. Just half a second. Then he was pressing the second wrap down over the exit wound, jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek.
"Kaminari." His voice came out low, stripped of all its bark. "You did good. You hear me? You were a good friend. To this idiot, and to the rest of those useless extras, and to me, when nobody else had the guts to talk to me like a person. You were a good friend, thank you."
Denki's eyes found him. Something bright and small moved in them. "Bakugo said... something nice." The ghost of a laugh, just air. "Somebody write it down."
"Yeah, yeah." Bakugo's voice cracked and he covered it with volume. "Write it down, it never happened, shut up and breathe."
Kirishima's hands were drenched. He couldn't feel his fingers anymore. He kept pressing anyway, kept talking, a low steady stream of nothing, first-year stories, cafeteria disasters, the time they'd both fallen asleep in study hall and missed the entire afternoon, everything he had, pouring it out over his friend like the words could plug the wound the way his hands couldn't.
"Stay awake, Denki. Stay with me. Please. Please, please, please."
Denki's eyes closed. Opened. Slowly, slowly, like doors in the wind.
Bakugo checked the pulse again. Held his fingers there. Checked his watch. Checked the pulse again, longer this time, and Kirishima watched Bakugo's face and knew, in the part of him that would never heal, that Bakugo already knew the answer and was checking anyway, hoping to be wrong, and Bakugo never hoped, Bakugo calculated, and he was hoping.
"Seven minutes," Kirishima said. "There's seven minutes. He's strong, Bakugo, he's got a stupid strong heart, he stores electricity, he's tough, tell me he's tough."
"Kirishima."
"He's tough, right?"
"Kirishima." Bakugo pulled his hand back from Denki's throat. He sat back on his heels. His fists closed slowly, knuckles whitening, and he looked at the ground, at the broken slab, at anything except Kirishima's face. When he spoke, his voice was scraped raw, all the fury in it gone to ash.
"Denki's dead."
Kirishima stopped pressing. His hands stayed where they were, flat against the soaked wrap, against the still chest underneath it, and he stared at Bakugo. The silence of the ruined sector pressed down on them, vast and total, broken only by the small creak of a girder swaying somewhere in the wind.
"No." He shook his head once. "No, he's right here. Bakugo, he's right here, he was talking, he was talking to us a minute ago, he just needs the evac, seven minutes, you said seven minutes..."
"Kirishima." Bakugo's voice was barely holding. "There's no pulse. There's no breath. Look at him. Look at his color. He's gone."
"He's not." Kirishima's hands began to shake again, worse than before, and he couldn't make them leave Denki's chest. "He's not gone, I'm his best friend, I don't leave him, I don't..." He pulled Denki up into his lap, cradled him against his chest, one hand cupping the back of that dusty blond head. "Hey. Hey, wake up. Denki. Denki, wake up. You said you trusted me. You said it, you said you trust me, so wake up. Wake up and I'll carry you home like I always do. Wake up and throw up in my hair again. Denki. Please. I'm begging you, man. Please."
Denki's head lay against his shoulder. His amber eyes were half open and seeing nothing at all, and his hand had finally, finally let go.
Bakugo got up. Turned his back. His shoulders were rigid and shaking, and he stood there facing the broken girders with his fists clenched at his sides, and for a long moment he didn't make a sound. Then Kirishima heard one, tiny, torn out of him, and understood that Katsuki Bakugo was grieving exactly the way he had lived: alone, silently, refusing to let anyone see.
"He can't be," Kirishima whispered into Denki's hair. "I was supposed to be the shield. That was my whole job. That was the whole point of me."
The sirens came before the lights did. Kirishima heard them first as a thread of sound somewhere behind the broken girders, growing, splitting into two voices, then three. Red and white washed over the rubble. Boots hit the slab, a lot of them, and then a woman in a rescue medic's vest was kneeling beside him with a flashlight and a clipped-on radio.
"Sir, I need to assess the casualty."
Kirishima didn't look up. His hand had found Denki's hair again and stayed there, smoothing down the dusty blond strands in slow, useless passes. "You're late. You're eight minutes late. He waited for you."
The medic pressed two fingers to Denki's throat. Held them there. Held them longer than Kirishima could stand to watch. She lifted the flashlight, ran the beam across those half-open amber eyes, across the gray lips and the still chest and the soaked wraps that had stopped soaking because there was nothing left to soak.
"Time of death, eighteen forty-two." Her voice was gentle and procedural and it cut through Kirishima like glass through cloth. "I'm sorry. We'll need to take him now."
"No." Kirishima's arms locked. Denki shifted against his chest, loose and heavy in a way living bodies never were, and the wrongness of it made something in Kirishima's stomach turn over and die. "No, you can't, he gets cold, he's always cold after he overuses his quirk, you have to keep him warm, I keep him warm."
"Kirishima."
He hadn't heard Bakugo move. Bakugo was crouched in front of him now, back in the dust, and his eyes were red-rimmed and dry and absolutely level. His hand came out and gripped Kirishima's wrist, the one pressed against the wrap, over the wound, over everything.
"Let go."
"He needs me."
"He's gone." Bakugo said it flat, one more time, because somebody had to and it wasn't going to be the medics. "You're not helping him anymore. You're holding him hostage."
"He's mine." Kirishima's voice came out small and feral and he didn't recognize it as his own. "I found him. I got him off the wall. He's my responsibility, he's my best friend, you don't take a best friend away, that's not, nobody gets to..."
He was shaking so hard the words were shattering before they finished. His hardened arms wouldn't soften. He tried to soften them and they wouldn't, his quirk reading his grief as a fight, locking him around Denki like armor around a heart.
Bakugo looked at him for a long moment. Then he leaned in close, close enough that Kirishima could smell the smoke and nitroglycerin on him, and spoke low enough that only Kirishima could hear.
"He trusted you to know when the fight's over. This is the fight being over. Be manly about the last part too."
Kirishima's arms softened. Not because he decided. Because something in the sentence reached the part of him the quirk listened to, and everything went loose and weak all at once, and Denki slid, and Bakugo caught him.
That was how it happened, later, when anyone asked. Bakugo didn't pull Kirishima off so much as pull Denki out of his arms, one smooth motion, transferring the weight to the stretcher the medics had unfolded on the slab. Kirishima's hands closed on empty air and stayed there, curled around the shape of a friend who wasn't in them.
The medics worked around the body with a efficiency that felt like an insult. They zipped the bag to his waist, not his face, some small mercy or some procedure. They lifted. The stretcher's handles creaked. Kirishima's knees stayed on the slab, in the blood that had soaked through his suit and was going tacky now in the night air, and he watched his best friend's feet disappear around the corner of the collapsed loading bay.
Then there was just Bakugo, standing over him, and the ruined sector, and the wind pushing grit across the concrete.
"Get up."
"I can't."
"You can." Bakugo hauled him under the arm, hard, no ceremony, and Kirishima found his feet because his body obeyed Bakugo's voice even when the rest of him had stopped. "You're walking to the transport. You're going to sit down. You're going to let somebody look at your shoulder, because it's torn and you're bleeding and Aizawa will bite my head off if you get infected on top of everything."
"Where are they taking him?"
"Van. Then the morgue, until his parents get there." Bakugo said each word like he was pulling it out of himself with pliers. "His mom's already been called. Aizawa's handling it."
"His mom." Kirishima stopped walking and Bakugo had to drag him to keep moving. "She made him extra food every Sunday. He told everyone it was his grandma's recipe. It was hers. She'd cook it and pack it and he'd pretend he made it, because he wanted people to like him without knowing his mom did the work, he wanted to be enough on his own, he was already enough, Bakugo, he was already..."
"I know." Bakugo's grip on his arm went bruising tight and stayed there, an anchor, an apology. "Keep walking."
They came around the corner of the loading bay and the transport was there, its doors open, interior lights harsh. Two classmates Kirishima couldn't name were sitting inside, and the look on their faces when they saw the stretcher was a thing he would carry next to the wet sound of the rebar forever. Nobody spoke. Somebody pulled a blanket off a bench.
Bakugo put Kirish down on the bench beside the door and crouched in front of him, both hands on Kirishima's knees, the way you brace a piece of equipment so it doesn't slide. His voice was low and stripped.
"Listen to me. They're going to ask you for a report. What you saw, the timeline. You give it short and clean, you don't relive it out loud in front of the extras, you hear me? You tell Aizawa the rest and you tell me whatever's left."
"Why are you being nice to me?"
Bakugo flinched. It was small, a twitch at the corner of his eye, gone in half a second, but Kirishima saw it because Kirishima had spent two years learning to read a face like a map.
"Because you're mine to look after too," Bakugo said, "and I do my job right."
He stood up. Turned toward the stretcher being loaded into the back. And as the doors swung closed over Denki's covered face, Bakugo's hand came up, quick and private, and pressed two fingers to his own collarbone, right where a pulse would be. He held them there for the length of one breath.
Then he dropped his hand, and climbed in after his dead friend, and left the door open for Kirishima.