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Uraraka pushed herself off of the cracked ground with enough time to see Bakugo going head first into the villain they were fighting with his Howitzer Impact. She felt her legs freeze as she watched Bakugo hit the villain, destroying the buildings around them and Uraraka faintly wondered if all of the civilians had left the area already. She felt the wind faintly brush her hair around, snapping her out of her thoughts and getting her legs to finally work.
Uraraka sprinted to Bakugo, hoping to congratulate him for taking down that pain of a villain. She wanted to jump into his arms and kiss him. She wanted him to twirl them around, without caring that there were news stations filming the fight. She wanted to be held by him again, even if it was only for a moment before the reporters swarmed them like flies on rotting meat, hoping to get an interview first with the pro-heroes.
She watched Bakugo stand up and give her a satisfied smirk, one that said I just knocked that fucker out. Uraraka couldn’t help the tears form in her eyes as she realized that we get to go home together, finally. She felt her legs start to run faster towards him. She would be getting closer to him soon. She would be able to jump into his arms and kiss the life out of him.
Except that he didn’t get any closer. He stayed the same distance from her. Wait. He was actually getting further away. Why was he getting further away? She should be close enough to him that she could say his name and he could prepare for the crushing hug that came after fights like these. She should already be in his arms, not still running towards him without lessening the distance between them.
That’s when she sees the villain getting back up. She sees them grabbing something from the debris. She squints as she tries to make out what it was from this distance, not quiet getting it until she sees it shine against the sun peaking through the clouds of dust. She feels her heart stop and the color drain from her face as her eyes widen in realization. She feels her body wanting to stop, wanting to give up because that’s the metal pole that killed Katsuki, but her body is stuck. She’s stuck running and making no difference in their distance. She’s stuck watching this scene play over again.
She feels her throat burn as she screams for Bakugo to turn around Katsuki! She sees the fear flash across his eyes for a second as he brings his hands up to use his AP Shot Auto Cannon on the villain. She doesn’t feel her legs burn as she pushes herself faster, faster, faster to get to Bakugo in enough time to cancel his gravity. She doesn’t even try to push the thoughts of Bakugo dying out of her head because she knows exactly how this ends but she can’t stop herself from hoping to get there in time. She pushes herself well past her limit as she sees the metal pole being pulled back. She screams for the idiot to move out of the way Katsuki! She running, slowly making her way to the two fighting just as she sees the metal pole go through Bakugo’s chest and back, staying there. Her throat burns even more as she screams at Bakugo for being a god damn idiot! I told you to move!
Everything slows down as she watches Bakugo fall over. She sees the way his hair flows, making her think of all of the times she saw the same thing and thought of how beautiful his hair looked caught in the gentle breezes. His ash blonde hair always looked beautiful to her but the gentle breezes on their patrols during the summer always made her smile fondly and think about running her hands through his bomb-looking hair. But the way his hair looks as it flows in this breeze is anything but beautiful. His hair is dirty from all of the debris and there are specks of blood on the edges that usually cover his face.
Uraraka never saw his face as he got stabbed but she can vividly imagine it. She knew that his eyes would widen in surprise because this damn villain got a hit on me! The next number one hero! She knows that his mouth is open, letting out a choke as he felt the metal go through him and the pain the erupted in his chest. She knew that he felt the exact path of it. How it pushed against his skin before it broke. How it forced its way through his muscles and get stuck on his ribs before the force of it shattered them. How it punctured part of his left lung and part of his heart. How it seemingly glided out of his chest and through his back. How his heart started to pump harder to make up for the sudden blood lose and how his lung started to fill with blood.
Uraraka doesn’t feel her legs as she sprints faster, wishing for Iida’s quirk but knowing that nothing can change. She knows deep in her heart that she couldn’t do anything to save him. She knew that no matter how hard she tried, this would always be the outcome.
Uraraka feels herself teleport to Bakugo’s side, the villain already immobilized, and she doesn’t even care about how it happened. She can hear the way Bakugo struggles to breath and she feels her heart shatter, something that she should be used to by now. She feels her body move to pick him up and try to get him up. She feels herself screaming for a medic to come help Katsuki! He’s losing a lot of blood! She can feel how uneven and shallow his breaths are, and she knows he’ll never make it. She still pushes herself, taking on his whole weight to get him the medics sooner so that they can hopefully save his life, so that the reality she knows just becomes a horrible nightmare. She can feel him shake his head, knowing that he’s telling her that he won’t make it.
“I’ve got you, Bakugo.” She can hear how raw and broken her voice is, how it shook as she tried so hard to keep the tears from falling down her face. “You’ll make it Bakugo. You’ll make it. You have to make it.”
She knows that trying to walk is futile, but she has to try. She has to try to get him to the medics so they can heal him. She has to take a step.
“Ura-raka,” he barely whispers her name and this time, she hears how he chokes on his own blood. His voice sounds so clear to her, even as it sounds so broken and full of regret.
Uraraka looks at him and sees that there’s even more blood than before. She knows that there should be blood on the shirt of his uniform and running down the corner of his mouth. She didn’t think he was bleeding so much that his blood was staining the whole front of his uniform, even with the metal pole still in his chest. She only realizes now as she looks at him that she’s covered in his blood, it slowly getting absorbed by her own uniform and starting to stain her hands. She can feel the nausea settle on her stomach, feeling how the blood is still warm.
Her knees start to shake as she completely takes in his condition. She’s never seen him look so physically broken before and a part of her tells her that this is the end. She wants to collapse in defeat, wanting to curl up into a ball and die. She doesn’t want to live without him.
“It’s okay Bakugo.” She lies and tries to smile, knowing that the smile is a sorry excuse for a sympathetic one instead of being the strong one she always gives. She can barely hear her own voice but knows that whatever strength she was trying to force out was getting stuck in her throat. “I’ll get you to the ambulance and then the doctors will help you. They’ll make sure you live.”
He shakes his head and mouths sit, trying not to strain his body anymore than it already is. Uraraka complies, making sure to be as careful as she can with him. She holds him close. She holds his head to her chest, the way they always sat when he had a night terror. She runs her hand through his hair, feeling how silky it is at the roots and how it has clumped together from the dried blood on his hair. She can faintly smell his shampoo, remembering all of the times she used to do this and press her nose into his hair and inhaling deeply because oh god she loved the way he smelled, and starts to cry. She begs him to stay, to hold on a little longer, to keep his eyes open. She begs him to stay because she can’t lose him. She begs and begs and begs because she doesn’t know what she’ll do without him. She tells him over and over that she loves him, how she knows she’ll never find another like him.
She knows none of this will change anything, but she needs him to know how much she’ll miss him. She knows that she’s just getting all of this out because she wants him to know that he is loved and that she will always love him, even well after he’s gone. She wants him to know how much he means to her because she isn’t sure if she told him enough when he was alive that he was everything she needed and wanted. She just doesn’t want him to die thinking that others didn’t love him or think he was a hero. He needed to know that he was her world and that he will always be a hero, even in death.
She calls him Katsuki when she doesn’t feel him take another breath. She yells at him to breathe dammit! She yells at him to just fucking breathe Katsuki! I can’t lose you!
A part of her realizes that he won’t breathe again and it slowly spreads throughout her entire mind. She feels herself crumble over, cradling his cold body in her arms, and only faintly realizing that all of his blood is cold and has already dried on them both. Her body violently shakes as she cries and sobs in front of everyone.
Uraraka is only pulled out of the shattered remains of her world by a hand on her shoulder. She remembers that this hand was light, but it’s heavy and squeezes her shoulder to grab her attention. She looks up and sees Kirishima is looking down at her, his eyes hidden from her.
“Why didn’t you save him, Uravity?” Kirishima’s voice was cold. She looked up at him confused, wondering what happened to the Kirishima that had tried to keep it together but clung to her when he saw his best friends’ dead body.
“What,” she can barely breathe the word out, trying to dry her eyes and realizing that Bakugo is no longer laying in her lap. She looks down and sees that all that’s left of him is his blood on the pants of her hero costume.
“Kirishima, where’s Katsuki?” She looks up in a panic, only to meet Kaminari standing behind her with his arms crossed over his chest.
“I can’t believe that he defended someone as fragile as you.” Distaste and disappointment dripped from Kaminari’s words, his glare of disgust making Uraraka shrink underneath it.
“I-I tried to save him,” she tried to bargain, looking at her blood-soaked hands, feeling her heart slow its beat.
“Well, you didn’t try hard enough,” Mina’s voice called, not trying to mask her frustration and discontentment at Uraraka.
“What, Mina?” Uraraka looked up, tears running down her face.
“Mina’s right. You didn’t even try to save Bakugo’s life.” Tsuyu’s objective voice called, a finger on her chin in thought and disappointment clear as day on her face.
“I tried Tsu-chan!” Uraraka tried to defend herself but it was getting harder when they were all saying what she thought.
“No you didn’t,” Todoroki’s cold voice was mixed with dissatisfaction. “At least Endeavor can save people. How can you even call yourself a hero if you can’t save the one you love?”
Uraraka looked down at her hands again, seeing how there was more blood collecting on them. She could barely see through her tears now, everyone’s words crushing her will. How could she ever be a hero if she couldn’t save the one person she loved the most? How could she be any better than the wide-eyed students who interned at the different hero agencies?
“I can’t believe you let Kacchan die, Uraraka.”
Uraraka’s head shot up as she looked up at Deku, his back to her and his fist clenched. She could tell that he was disappointed and angry at her beyond the point of explaining it into words. She knew that she had failed them all. She tried to reach out to Deku, her legs stuck to the ground.
“D-Deku,” she sobbed, gasping for air as she realized what he said was true. She had let Bakugo die. She hadn’t done as much as she could have to save him. She didn’t try to perform first-aid on him to stop the bleeding. She didn’t use her quirk on him to make him lighter. She didn’t use her quirk on herself to make her uniform lighter to get there faster. She didn’t do everything she could have to save Bakugo. She barely did anything to try to save him.
Uraraka dropped her head into her hands and sobbed, no longer trying to defend herself. She had no right to anymore. She had failed and nothing would change that. She hadn’t done everything she could have to make sure that Bakugo lived. She wasn’t fast enough to save him. She wasn’t strong enough to carry him. She wasn’t smart enough to use her quirk on them both. She wasn’t enough.
“I’ll never be around someone so weak.”
Uraraka felt her eyes snap open at his voice. She slowly and gingerly looked up, afraid of what he would look like, of what he would say, of how he would react to her.
“Kat-Katsuki.” She couldn’t keep how broken and lost she was from her voice. She couldn’t keep up with her façade anymore. She couldn’t stop the tears from falling and the way her heart felt like it was beating irregularly. She couldn’t stop how hollow she felt anymore.
“I hate weak people.” His voice was so full of hate and malice that she shrank into herself, trying to hide from his back. “I’ll never be with someone as weak as you.”
Uraraka stopped feeling anything, all she could feel was emptiness and nothingness. Oh course he would say that to her. Of course he would be rude and mean to her. It was so like him and she had forgotten that he was like that.
Uraraka woke with gasp, her heart racing and eyes shooting open as she felt weightless, a cold sweat drenching her body.
She looked around and found that she had floated into a corner of their ceiling, something that was happening more frequently. She pushed herself off weakly, trying to get over their bed so that she had something soft to land on that wouldn’t wake the neighbors. She only released herself from her quirk when she knew she was safe to not wake anyone.
Uraraka let out a sigh when she felt the tug of her quirk gone, resting her hands on her knees as she sat on the edge of their bed. She had to get out of here. She couldn’t be in this apartment anymore. She needed fresh air.
Grabbing shoes and her keys, Uraraka left the cursed apartment, locking everything behind her. She made her way up to the roof of the apartment complex, wanting to be high above the city without having to use her quirk and feeling something strong underneath her. She needed something solid underneath her right now because she didn’t have someone to rely on anymore.
Uraraka sat on the edge of the roof, not caring if she fell off the top.
Everything was getting harder. She was having a hard time getting up and an even harder time falling asleep. She didn’t want to think about going back to work, back to where they had been partners and how everything really progressed there. She didn’t want to remember any of that. She wanted him back but knew that he would never come back. She wanted to be held by him after that dream, but she could only feel the cold half of their bed where he used to sleep. She was having a hard time even breathing without him, missing his sweet scent and the way his hair would smell, but she knew she would never be able to smell his sweet scent nor shampoo again without wanting him there.
She just wanted him back. Or to be where he was. Anything to make the memories stop, to make the nightmares to stop. She knew for a fact that she would never take her own life, but sometimes the way reality was, it made that option look so tantalizing. She would get both reactions by sitting up alone on the roof at the witching hours of the night, looking over how the city lights would illuminate the night to make it seem like it was day. She would look down and wonder if anyone was still awake, if anyone was still working, if anyone was walking. She would wonder if she would activate her quirk if she fell, or if she would just accept her fate. Those thoughts were only brought out when she was exhausted and couldn’t sleep, sitting up here with her medications to try to help.
She would never know the answer to those questions though. She knew she could never leave her family and friends behind. And she knew that Bakugo would not stop yelling at her for being so god damn stupid that you got yourself killed Ochako! And him saying quietly after he finished that I shouldn’t have left you.
So she would just spend her sleepless nights up on the roof, letting her thoughts wonder to where they shouldn’t go but never doing anything about her pain other than take her medication just as the labels said.
She could only hope that she could get through this.