Chapter 6: Mandatory Therapy
The agency’s fourth-floor counseling suite smelled like artificial lavender and regret. Bakugou stood before the plain wooden door, marked only with a small placard: Dr. Hana Sasaki, Licensed Clinical Psychologist. His palms were dry, a conscious effort. Sweat would mean nerves. Sparks would mean failure before he’d even begun.
He’d shown up at 9:58 AM. Not a second earlier. Punctuality was a control thing.
He opened the door without knocking.
The office was a study in muted, inoffensive tones. Beige carpet, soft grey walls, a large window overlooking a bland courtyard garden. The motivational posters were the worst part. A cartoon cat hanging from a branch. Hang in there! The audacity. He wanted to blast it off the wall.
“You must be Katsuki.” The woman behind the simple oak desk was younger than he’d expected, maybe mid-thirties, with sharp, observant eyes behind stylish glasses. She didn’t smile, just gave a brief, professional nod. “I’m Dr. Hana. Have a seat wherever you like.”
There were two options: a rigid, upright chair that looked like it came from a conference room, and a plush, deep-seated couch that seemed designed to swallow people whole. A test. Obviously. He chose the chair, positioning it at a slight angle so he wasn’t directly opposite her. He sat, back straight, refusing to let the cushion give an inch.
“I’ve reviewed the file from your agency and your homeroom teacher,” she began, her voice calm and even. No notebook, just her hands folded on the desk. “A mandatory suspension pending a psychological evaluation. The stated concern is uncontrolled aggression, risk to property and public image, and…” she glanced at a tablet, “…interpersonal conduct that blurs professional and personal boundaries in a detrimental way.”
Bakugou said nothing. He stared at a point just above her left shoulder, where a faint scuff mark marred the perfect paint.
“You don’t want to be here,” she stated.
“Astute.”
“I don’t particularly care.” She said it without malice. “My job isn’t to be liked. It’s to determine if you’re fit for duty. You can participate in that process, or you can sit in silence for fifty minutes each session until I write a report based solely on your file and your defiance. Which will almost certainly read: Chronic resistance to authority, demonstrates no capacity for introspection or change. Your choice.”
He shifted his gaze to her face. Her expression was neutral, but her eyes were assessing, cutting. He felt like a specimen. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me why a top-ranked pro hero, who by all accounts possesses exceptional tactical control, is suddenly ‘losing control’ so frequently that his mentors are intervening.”
He crossed his arms. “I’ve always had a temper. It’s not new.”
“But the consequences are,” she countered. “You’ve managed this temper to become a celebrated hero. Something has changed. The incident with Midoriya Izuku.”
The name in her clinical tone made his jaw tighten. “That’s private.”
“It became professional the moment it occurred in your workplace and resulted in an injury you tried to conceal.” She leaned forward slightly. “You left a significant bite mark on a fellow hero’s collarbone. Explain the thought process behind that.”
Heat flooded his neck. “There wasn’t a thought process.”
“There’s always a thought process. Even an impulsive one. Was it dominance? Punishment? Possession?”
“It wasn’t—” He cut himself off, hands curling into fists on his knees. The sparks fizzed under his skin, a trapped static charge. “It just happened.”
“Things don’t ‘just happen’ with you, Katsuki. Your entire persona is built on absolute, meticulous control. So either that control is a facade, or this was a deliberate, if subconscious, act. Which is it?”
He felt the chair’s upholstery scratch against his knuckles. He wanted to yell, to blast the condescension off her face. But Aizawa’s warning was a cold loop in his mind. One week. This woman held the pen.
“I don’t know,” he ground out, the admission tasting like ash.
“Okay,” she said, as if he’d passed a small test. She sat back. “Let’s table the present. Tell me about your childhood. Before UA.”
“Why? My childhood was fine.”
“Define ‘fine.’”
“I was strong. I won. I was going to be the best.” The words were automatic, a mantra worn smooth from repetition.
“And the other children? Those less strong?”
He shrugged, a tense roll of his shoulders. “They were extras. Background. That’s how it is.”
“Was Midoriya an ‘extra’?”
The air left the room. Bakugou’s stare turned to ice. “That’s a different subject.”
“It’s the same subject. You’ve known him since childhood. Your dynamic is clearly the core of your current crisis. So. What was he?”
Bakugou looked out the window. A sparrow landed on a barren branch, then flew away. “He was… there. Always. Following. Watching. With these big, stupid, admiring eyes.” The memory was vivid, uncomfortable. “He was weak. Quirkless. A liability.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Annoyed. Obviously.”
“Just annoyed?” Dr. Hana’s voice was a gentle, relentless probe. “A quirkless boy, dogging the steps of the boy with the powerful, ‘winning’ quirk. Unafraid of you. Never leaving you alone. That doesn’t sound like annoyance. It sounds like… a paradox. An exception to the world-order you’d established for yourself.”
He didn’t answer. His heart was beating a hard, slow rhythm against his ribs.
“The file mentions an incident in your early childhood. You pushed him off a riverbank.”
A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. “He fell. It was an accident.”
“That’s not what the witness statements from the time say. They say you told him to take a swan dive off the roof and hope for a quirk in the next life.”
The words, spoken in this sterile, quiet room, were more violent than any explosion. They echoed, ugly and final. He could see the notebook, the crude drawing, the tears on Izuku’s face. The beginning of everything.
“Why did you say that to him?” she asked.
His throat closed. The excuses—he was mocking me, he was patronizing me, he didn’t know his place—withered before they could form. In the silence of the office, they sounded as hollow as he knew they were.
“I was… angry,” he finally said, the word insufficient.
“At him? Or at the fact that his unwavering admiration felt like a demand you couldn’t understand? A demand to be something other than just ‘the best’? To be… kind?”
“I don’t do kindness,” he snarled, the defensiveness roaring back.
“No,” she agreed softly. “You do victory. And you do violence. And for a long time, you likely confused the two. Where did you learn that?”
“I didn’t learn it. It’s just who I am.”
“Bullshit.”
He flinched. She said it calmly, like stating the weather.
“No one is born afraid of vulnerability, Katsuki. It’s taught. Often by people who are equally afraid of it. Your parents—your mother, particularly, according to the file—is quite… forceful.”
“My old hag is strong. She’s tough. She made me tough.”
“There’s a difference between toughness and the inability to express a soft emotion without converting it into fury.” She tilted her head. “When you skinned your knee as a child, what happened?”
The question was so absurd he almost laughed. “You got up. You didn’t cry. Crying was for the weak.”
“And if you were sad? Or scared?”
“You got angry instead. Anger gets things done. Anger wins.”
Dr. Hana was silent for a long moment, letting his own words hang in the air, naked and pathetic. He could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights, the faint tick of a clock.
Bakugou sits stiffly in the too-soft chair, his explosive temper barely contained as Dr. Hana dissects his childhood trauma with surgical precision. 'Your fear of vulnerability isn't anger—it's grief for the boy who never learned to ask for help,' she says, watching his hands twitch toward sparks that don't come.
He looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly, resting on his knees. The sparks were there, just beneath the surface, but they felt wrong here. Impotent. A language this room didn't speak.
“Grief for what?” he muttered, not looking at her.
“For the version of you that was allowed to be scared. To be hurt. To need someone. You buried that boy alive under a mountain of accolades and aggression because you were taught that was the only way to survive. To be loved.” Her voice was quiet, but every word landed with the weight of a verdict. “Now, you have someone in your life who sees the grave. Who hears the knocking from under the dirt. And it terrifies you. Because if he digs that boy up, what happens to the man you built on top of him?”
The image was horrifying. Izuku, with his dirt-stained hands and tear-streaked face, unearthing something small and broken and shameful.
“So you bite him,” she continued. “You push him away. You re-enact the only dynamic you know: strength over weakness. You try to make him scared of you because his fear is simpler, more familiar, than his… compassion. His love. Which you have no framework to understand, let alone accept.”
“I’m not weak,” he whispered, the foundation of his world cracking.
“Acknowledging need isn’t weakness. It’s humanity. Your inability to do so is what’s making you weak. It’s making you a liability. It’s going to cost you your career.” She paused. “It’s going to cost you him. For good.”
The ultimatum from the rooftop slammed back into him, now reframed with this awful, clinical clarity. Build something real. He had no tools. He had a graveyard and a mask.
“What do I do?” The question escaped, quiet and raw, before he could stop it.
Dr. Hana didn’t smile in triumph. Her expression remained steady, professional. “You start by learning a new language. You have five sessions left before my evaluation is due. We can use them to practice.”
“Practice what?”
“Vulnerability.” She picked up a pen. “Sentence one: ‘I feel…’ Go on. Complete it. Anything. Right now.”
He stared at her. His mouth felt glued shut. I feel angry. I feel trapped. I feel like blowing a hole in this wall. But those were old words. They were the only words he had.
He thought of Izuku’s face in the hallway, braced for a storm that didn’t come. The look of confused, fragile hope.
The silence stretched. The clock ticked.
Finally, a strangled, unfamiliar sound pushed past the blockage in his throat.
“I feel… lost.”
The words hung in the lavender-scented air, small and devastating. They didn’t fix anything. They didn’t solve the suspension, or heal the bite mark, or answer Izuku’s impossible demand.
But for the first time in twenty-four years, Katsuki Bakugou had said how he felt without setting something on fire.
Dr. Hana gave a single, slow nod. She didn’t praise him. She just wrote something down.
“Good,” she said. “Now. Let’s talk about what ‘lost’ actually means.”
The session ended at fifty-nine minutes precisely. Dr. Hana’s final words were a simple directive: “Pay attention to the moments between action and reaction. That’s where the choice lives.” Bakugou left the office without a word, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound of finality. The hallway was empty, sterile, and silent.
He walked. His body moved on autopilot, feet carrying him past identical doors, away from the lavender scent and the probing questions. The words echoed, a chaotic drumbeat in his skull. Grief for the boy. Buried alive. A language you don’t know. He passed the elevator and pushed through the door to the stairwell.
The concrete steps were hard, each footfall a jarring impact that traveled up his spine. He took them two at a time, descending without purpose, just movement. The clinical dissection of his life replayed in fragments. You bit him. You try to make him scared. He hit the landing for the second-floor lobby, breath coming in short, sharp gasps that had nothing to do with exertion.
A pressure was building behind his sternum, thick and hot. It wasn’t anger. It was something else, a swelling wave of pure, undiluted sensation with no name and no outlet. He shoved through another door, stumbling into a quiet administrative hallway. The need to be unseen was a physical imperative.
He saw the sign for the men’s room and barreled inside. It was empty, thank god, rows of sinks and stalls under harsh, buzzing lights. He locked the main door behind him, the deadbolt sliding with a heavy, satisfying thunk. Silence, except for the drip of a faucet.
Alone.
He braced his hands on the cold porcelain of the nearest sink, head hanging, and tried to breathe. Out. But the air hitched, catching on the thing in his chest. Grief, she’d called it. The pressure intensified, squeezing his lungs, climbing his throat. A choked sound escaped him, pathetic and wet.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the images came anyway. Izuku on the rooftop, pressing his hand to the bandage. This is what breaking looks like. Izuku in the hallway, braced for a storm. The raw hope in his eyes after a simple, fleeting glance. Then learn.
He had said he felt lost. The admission had felt like pulling his own ribs apart.
A violent tremor wracked his frame, starting deep in his core and radiating outward. His knuckles turned white against the sink. Another sound tore loose, a raw, broken thing that was half-gasp, half-sob. He tried to clamp down, to swallow it, to convert it into the familiar furnace-blast of fury. But there was no purchase. The fury was gone, stripped away, leaving this terrifying, heaving void.
His legs gave out.
He didn’t sink gracefully. He crumpled, his back hitting the tiled wall before he slid down to the cold floor. The sobs came then, uncontrollable and ugly, wrenched from a place he didn’t recognize. They shook him apart, each one a seismic event that left him weaker. He curled forward, forehead pressing against his knees, arms wrapping around his head as if to hold the pieces together.
He cried for the boy on the riverbank, the one he’d told to disappear. He cried for the relentless, lonely climb to the top, for every friend he’d kept at bay with a snarl. He cried for the bite mark, for the fear in Izuku’s eyes that he’d put there, for the terrifying, beautiful hope that he might still be worth saving. He cried because he was twenty-four and had never once simply ached without trying to destroy the source of the pain.
He was barely aware of the noise he was making, a ragged, desperate weeping that echoed off the tiles. Control was a distant memory. This was a collapse.
The lock on the main door jiggled. Then a voice, muffled by the wood. “Hello? Someone locked this?” A fist knocked. “Hey, you okay in there?”
Bakugou froze, his breath hitching into silence. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. He pressed his face harder into his knees, willing himself to vanish.
There was a pause. Then the distinct, gritty sound of hardening skin against metal. The deadbolt, cheap agency hardware, snapped with a sharp crack. The door swung open.
Kirishima stood in the doorway, his hardened hand retreating to normal. “Sorry, man, I really had to go and it was locked, which is weird for the second flo—” His voice died.
His eyes widened, taking in the scene: Bakugou, hero-name Dynamight, ranked in the top five, folded into a shuddering heap on a public bathroom floor, face hidden, shoulders heaving with the aftermath of the storm.
“Bakugou?” The name was a whisper, utterly shocked.
Bakugou didn’t lift his head. He couldn’t. Shame, hot and liquid, poured through him, worse than any anger. He’d been seen. Not in battle, not in triumph, but in this absolute, undignified ruin.
Kirishima stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. He didn’t approach. He just stood there for a long moment, the drip of the faucet the only sound. His usual boisterous energy was completely gone, replaced by a careful, solemn stillness.
“Okay,” Kirishima said softly, more to himself than anyone. He walked over, his steps quiet on the tile. He didn’t crouch, didn’t try to touch. He just slid down the wall to sit beside him, leaving a careful foot of space between them. He leaned his head back against the wall and looked up at the buzzing fluorescent lights.
He said nothing. He just sat there, a solid, silent presence in the space between the broken sobs and the slow, returning silence.
The silence wasn't empty now. It was shared. Bakugou's harsh, ragged breaths echoed off the tiles, but they were met by Kirishima's steady, quiet presence beside him. He didn't fill the space with useless words. He didn't pat his back or offer hollow reassurance. He just occupied the spot on the cold floor, a warm, solid anchor in the storm's aftermath.
Bakugou kept his face buried, the rough fabric of his hero suit scratching his forehead. Each shuddering inhale tasted of salt and disinfectant. The pressure in his chest was a cracked dam, leaving behind a hollow, aching cavity. The therapist’s voice sliced through the haze inside his skull. Grief for the boy. He felt like that boy right now—small, scraped raw, and terrified of the light.
The tears kept coming, but they changed. The violent, body-wracking sobs subsided into a slow, silent leak. He couldn't stop them. He was too tired to try. A hot track carved a path from his eye to his jawline, dripping onto his knee. Then another. He made no sound.
Kirishima shifted slightly, the scuff of his boot against the tile floor loud in the quiet. He still didn't speak.
After a few minutes Bakugous breath calms and his tears slow. Still fall but slowly and silently. Calmer now, he leans against Kirishima in a moment of rare vulnerability. The side of his head touched Kirishima’s shoulder, a slight, tentative weight. He didn't look up. His voice, when it came, was shattered glass, ground down to a coarse whisper.
“I need help Kiri.”
The words hung in the damp air. They didn't sound like his. They felt stolen, ripped from some deep, hidden place that had never seen light.
Kirishima let out a long, slow breath. He didn't turn his head. “I know,” he said, his own voice unusually soft. “I’ve been waiting for you to figure that out.”
“I don’t know how to do any of it.” The admission was easier now, flowing out on the tail end of the exhaustion. “The therapy. The… him. I’m gonna fuck it up. I’m gonna say the wrong thing and he’s gonna leave, or I’m gonna get angry and…” He trailed off, the memory of the bandage stark.
“Probably,” Kirishima said, blunt as always. “You’re gonna fuck up. Maybe a lot. That’s what happens when you learn something new.” He finally tilted his head, resting his temple against Bakugou’s hair. “But you asked for help. That’s step one. So step two is getting off this disgusting floor.”
A weak, wet sound that was almost a laugh hitched in Bakugou’s throat. He didn't move.
“Come on, man. My ass is freezing.” Kirishima nudged him gently, then pushed himself up with a grunt. He stood and offered a hand, not to Bakugou’s arm, but right in front of his downcast face. The gesture was simple. A choice.
Bakugou stared at the calloused palm. He took it. Kirishima pulled him up in one firm motion, his grip unbreakable. Bakugou swayed on his feet, emotionally gutted and physically drained. He avoided looking in the mirror above the sink. He didn't need to see the damage.
“Your session was that bad, huh?” Kirishima asked, leaning back against the sink counter.
“It wasn’t bad.” Bakugou swiped a forearm across his face, a rough, ineffective motion. “It was… accurate. It fucking hurt.”
“Good.” Kirishima crossed his arms. “Means it’s working. What’s the homework?”
Bakugou blinked, his mind still sluggish. “Pay attention to the space between action and reaction. Where the choice is.”
Kirishima nodded slowly, considering. “Sounds smart.” He pushed off the counter. “Okay. First practical lesson. We’re going to get lunch.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t care. You just had your brain deep-cleaned. You need fuel. And we’re not going to the agency cafeteria.”
Bakugou frowned. “Where then?”
“That takoyaki place three blocks over. The one Deku likes.”
The name sent a jolt through him, a fresh wave of anxiety. “No.”
“Yes.” Kirishima’s tone left no room for argument. “You’re not hiding. You’re not sneaking around. You’re going to exist in the same city as him without causing a scene. That’s the baseline, Bakugou. Can you do that?”
It was a challenge, but a quiet one. The choice lived in the space between the instinct to refuse, to explode, and the action. Bakugou felt the old, familiar heat start to rise at the edges of his exhaustion. He clenched his jaw.
He thought of the lost boy. He thought of the grave.
“Yeah,” he grated out. “I can do that.”
“Great.” Kirishima walked to the broken door, examining the snapped lock with a critical eye. “I’m gonna get a bill for this. Worth it.” He pulled the door open and held it, waiting.
Bakugou walked out of the bathroom, his steps feeling unsteady on the solid ground. The hallway seemed brighter, sharper. He was aware of his own face, puffy and exposed. He kept his gaze fixed ahead, following the red spikes of Kirishima’s hair.
They walked through the lobby, past a few sidekicks who did double-takes at the sight of Dynamight looking like he’d gone ten rounds with a villain made of tears. Bakugou ignored them, focusing on the automatic doors, on the sunlight outside.
The spring air was a shock, cool and real against his skin. The city noise was a welcome barrage of sirens, chatter, and traffic—sounds that had nothing to do with him. He breathed it in.
“Three blocks,” Kirishima said, falling into step beside him. “Just walk. That’s it.”
They walked. Bakugou kept his hands shoved in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. Every instinct screamed to move faster, to outpace the vulnerability trailing him like a ghost. He forced himself to match Kirishima’s casual pace. He noticed the cracks in the pavement. The smell of exhaust and grilled meat from a street vendor. The space between action and reaction.
They were a block away when Kirishima’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then slowed. “It’s the group chat. They’re at the place already. Deku, Uraraka, Iida. Just so you know.”
Bakugou stopped walking. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped rhythm. “You set this up.”
“I suggested lunch. They agreed. That’s all.” Kirishima met his gaze, his eyes steady. “This is the choice, man. You walk in, you get food, you exist. You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t even have to look at him. You just have to be in the same room without it being a crisis.”
It felt like a cliff edge. The old script was so easy: storm in, make a scene, leave a mark, run. The new one had no instructions.
He saw the shop’s cheerful red sign at the end of the block. Inside, through the steamy window, he could make out familiar shapes. Green hair. A round face. Glasses.
His feet felt rooted to the concrete.
“You asked for help,” Kirishima murmured, standing beside him. “This is it. This is me helping. You don’t go in there alone.”
Bakugou swallowed. The hollow ache in his chest was still there, but it was filled now with a terrifying, fragile resolve. He gave a single, sharp nod.
He started walking again, each step a conscious decision. He didn’t look at Kirishima. He fixed his eyes on the shop door, a rectangle of warm light in the shaded street. He could hear his own pulse in his ears.
He reached for the handle. The choice lived here, in this second of hesitation. He could still turn around.
He pulled the door open.
The warm, savory smell of frying batter and soy sauce enveloped him. The chatter of the small restaurant dipped for a fraction of a second as the bell above the door jingled. He saw the back of Izuku’s head at a corner booth. Ochaco, facing the door, froze with a takoyaki ball halfway to her mouth, her eyes going wide. Iida adjusted his glasses, his expression shifting into immediate, analytical concern.
Bakugou stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the daylight. He didn't speak. He didn't glare. He just stood there, exposed, letting them see whatever was left on his face.
Then he walked to the counter, away from their booth, and focused on the plastic menu hanging on the wall. His voice was rough, but clear.
“One octopus special. To go.”