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Izuku's legs are wobbling as they land hard on the roof but he ignores it with the ease of years ignoring anxiety.
"Can someone quirkless be a hero like you?" He asks instead, clenching his eyes shut, biting back nausea.
And silence, all encompassing and suffocating, fills the air.
Izuku cracks his eyes open, expecting to see All Might in all his glory, but there's just a silhouette drenched in smoke, getting smaller. And when the smoke clears, there's a skinny man with dull blonde hair and blood dribbling from his mouth.
"Where's All Might?" Izuku asks, and he wants to smack himself because obviously this is just his civilian get-up; no one's ever seen All Might outside of costume after all.
"It's me, kid. And a quirkless can't be a hero. It's too dangerous."
It feels like the slime villian is still in his chest, bubbling up inside his lungs and twisting around his ribs, making it impossible to breathe.
"You'd be better off d, eh, doing something else."
Izuku can see where the words had stuttered on the man's lips, the way his eyes had flicked around and then back to him.
'You'd be better off dead.' He can hear the words echo in his ears in too many voices; his brain hurts, pressed against the inside of his skull while the feeling in his ribs twists tighter, threatening to break them.
Izuku numbly watches the man shuffle towards the door; he waits a moment and then drags his feet to the waist height wall at the edge of the roof.
He rests his arms on the cool cement, staring out at the city beyond, below, and he looks down.
The sidewalk below is dark, shaded with a few trees and the next building over, shorter than the one he's on; Izuku stares.
_
Explosions, familiar and loud, ring through the air, echoing off buildings from just down the block, and Izuku's running down the steps and towards the sounds before he can find a reason not to.
He pushes his way through the crowd quickly, heart pounding, and finds Kaachan engulfed in the same green sludge he'd been in not an hour ago.
His feet move before he can think and he's hurling his book bag at the villain's eyes, clawing frantically at the slime, pulling his classmate's arm to try and dislodge him;
Izuku doesn't quite remember much from after that; All Might showed up for a moment or two, he thinks, and Kaachan had given him a strange look, when the paramedics were looking him over while the heroes on scene scolded Izuku for getting involved.
Izuku just stares at the ground and thinks, the world a dull buzz of noise and light around him.
_
It's late by the time he gets to walking the rest of the way home.
Izuku's just staring at the ground and putting one weary foot in front of the other when he's pulled off the ground and then hurling through the air.
_
Izuku doesn't know how long it takes for him to regain his bearings once he's put down, his brain is not firing at full speeds and he spends a good bit just staring over the side of the building, but he does know there's someone behind him.
He turns his head, expecting to see some villain, maybe a person associated with the sludge guy from earlier, but it's just All Might.
The expression on his face is almost serene; he steps closer and Izuku abruptly realizes he's very close, within arms distance.
A skinny hand shoots out and grabs his hair, twisting the strands into his fist and pulling him upright, onto his toes, with all the strength you'd expect the number one hero to have, despite his current, emaciated form.
Another hand fists itself into the back of his uniform, pulling him off the ground and putting his feet on the edge of the cement barrier.
Izuku barely has a second to realize what's happening before he's pitching forward, scream ripping itself from his throat as he twists uselessly in the air, hands scraping at the wind, searching desperately for a handhold that doesn't
exist.
The world is a swirling rush of darkening blue and black-gold around him; he is just a black and green blur to the world, hurtling at the ground too fast to save.
The impact hurts more than he thought it would, somehow; whitehot and impossibly overwhelming for a few excruciating moments, his last breath rattling through broken ribs and bloodied teeth and then..
And then..
Nothing.
_
Opening his eyes is a concerning feeling, since he doesn't actually feel it.
Before he can begin to parse the last minute of his life, there's a familiar shout.
Izuku turns, almost overbalancing when he can't feel the ground under him.
It's Kaachan; He's running forward, eyes wide, voice hoarse.
Izuku watches Kaachan trip and stumble a few steps, watches his usually so angry friend (?) fall hard on his knees, shaking, eyes stuck on the spot just below Izuku's feet.
Naturally, Izuku looks down.
Immediately, he wishes he hadn't, because that's him.
or, what's left of him, he supposes.
Blood, his brain, is spread in every direction, staining the cement red and brown; Izuku's skin, usually full of life and color, is dull and pale, his dissented chest still as stone, green hair nearly black with all the gore; Izuku almost wishes he could throw up.
Given the retching behind him, Kaachan is giving it his best shot.
There's a soft thump, and Izuku looks again to the kneeling boy to find All Might standing behind him.
__
Bakugou Katsuki is not stupid, nor is he as oblivious to the world around him as some people seem to think he is.
So, when he sees fluttering green hair on top of black clothes leaning over the side of a building, poorly lit with the street lights and surrounding buildings, he stops short.
It can't be Deku, but..
It can't be, because that would mean he'd listened to Katsuki and that-
That can't be. Especially not after earlier.
The green head jerks like someone'd grabbed it, and he's lifted up onto the ledge, knees still straight and even with each other even as their feet come into view on the edge-
a splash of red, unmistakable even after all the time he's spent avoiding the boy wearing them.
Deku, it's definitely him, pitches forward, hands clutching uselessly at the air, scream tearing from his lungs to be carried to Katsuki's ears, and Katsuki's moving but he knows it's already too late.
Something catches his sight even as he continues to run towards the dead boy in the air; blonde hair and familiar musculature even out of his hero costume.
All Might takes off from the roof; the same roof Deku had been pushed from.
Katsuki screams Deku's name as he hits the ground with a sickening crack he'll never be able to forget; desperate to help the boy he'd known his whole life even when he knows he can't.
He calls his name again, running harder; he doesn't even think to use his quirk; it seems too loud, with the only noises being his own heaving breaths and the wind softly rustling the leaves.
His foot catches a crack in the pavement and Katsuki stumbles, his stride stuttering, and he trips again, this time to his knees; there's blood on the cement; Katsuki can't take his eyes off the twisted corpse that had been his friend, years ago.
His stomach rolls harshly.
Something rustles behind him and Katsuki turns to find All Might there in all his glory. The Hero is not smiling.
"My boy, you understand I can't let you tell anyone about this."
Katsuki's heart stutters in his chest, kicking up into terror as the words register in his mind.
Anger quickly overtakes the rising fear, as it usually does, and Katsuki ducks the man's hand on pure luck, scrambling on the ground, he twists to point his hand out on instinct, palm already sparking-
All Might's image blurs, the man moving at terrifying speeds, and Katsuki's wrist is grabbed and redirected before he can register where; his explosion goes off, no time to delay or stop it, and Bakugou Katsuki knows only white-hot splitting, and pain, and then nothing.
_
Katsuki opens his eyes and is immediately frozen in place because that's Deku, standing in front of him;
He's standing upright and his hair is as wild as ever; his body is untwisted and unbloodied as he was that morning and he's staring at something behind Katsuki's feet.
Katsuki turns to look at whatever has him so horrified, feeling numb, and is immediately solidified in the feeling when he sees himself, limp in the number one heroes' hands.
The man scoffs and loosens his grip, and Katsuki's body falls to the ground in a heap.
His face is.. gone.
There's a missing chunk of his head, the size of his own palm. His blonde hair is scorched and burnt black on one side, smoldering like it'll catch again any second.
Katsuki can't breathe; not that he needs to anymore, he's dead on the ground of this half abandoned street corner; he's seeing it himself.
All Might shrinks down into his civilian form and turns away without blinking; Deku steps, floats?, up beside him, looking just as numb as Katsuki feels, and they watch their hero walk away from the murder scene he made like it doesn't exist.
_
The two boys, once friends and now dead together, stand and stare at themselves.
It's just a dream; it has to be some sick, cosmic joke, it has to, but no.
Katsuki tries to poke himself in some desperate attempt to prove it's a dream, but his foot just goes through his dead arm.
He pinches himself instead, nothing. and again, harder, still nothing. and again, hard enough it would draw blood, but there's only an indent in his arm, broken skin, but no blood; it doesn't even hurt.
"..Deku. Tell me this is a dream."
"..I wish I could, Kaachan."
"No.. No! this can't be- I'm going to be the number one hero! I'm going to be a hero like All M-" the words are like ash on his tongue, twisting onto themselves and making him choke.
Izuku, standing next to him, looks somewhere between numb and horrified.
"A-all Might killed us." He whispers hoarsely. "..He's supposed to be a hero." Izuku's eyes burn and there's tears in his eyes but none find the ground; Katsuki's the only one around to see them anyway.
_
They spend days wandering listlessly.
Katsuki is declared a missing person the morning after; those reporting on it lament the potential loss of such a promising quirk.
Izuku is declared missing two days later; no one reports on it.
They run into All Might again maybe a week following their deaths; and, without much thinking about it, they follow him.
For days, they follow him, and they realize something;
He doesn't care.
All Might doesn't have any regret about killing them; he doesn't feel bad. He doesn't care they died, he just cared they'd found out about his quirk, and then his involvement in Izuku's murder.
He's more annoyed than anything; like killing two middle schoolers was a torn seam on a nice shirt and not murder in a situation he created himself.
He goes about attending meetings with the principal of UA for his teaching position, and has lunch with his police- detective friend, goes on patrol, and goes to his empty house to sleep, and doesn't seem the least bit burdened with the fact that he'd killed two teenagers in cold blood.
_
There's not much to do, when you're a ghost.
They can't touch anything other than each other, and that's only if they're thinking about it;
The first time Izuki stepped through Katsuki on accident had been like running through a waterfall in winter for both of them and they agree to avoid it as much as possible following that little incident.
They spend a lot of time talking; mostly about heroes, sometimes about what they think they should do now, a lot a bit about the last few years of their lives, how they've been. This leads to them making a truce with each other, following apologies for bullying and overstepping boundaries from either party.
They still follow All Might, narrating to each other in exaggeratedly snooty voices what the 'oh so perfect number one hero' is doing at that very moment in time.
When they're particularly angry, they tell All Might he's not going to get away with it forever, that they'll find a way to tell people, that they'll get him.
Neither notice his eyes roaming his surroundings a little more intently than he should be. Neither notice how his shoulders tense ever so slightly when they say they'll tell; not then, at least.
But, when they do..
well.
Every plan has a catalyst that throws it into motion; This will be theirs.