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⭒☆⭒
LOG4403 ... DAY 23 OF CYCLE 13 : 1674529200
Mismatched eyes blink open as if they’d just woken from sleep.
Katsuki looks on with some sort of quiet wonder. Before him, Shouto stands a handful of paces beyond his deconstructed CPU, wrapped in a big, comfy sweater and a pair of Katsuki’s joggers that stop a little short at the ankles. His hair is down, cascading like a two-toned waterfall over his shoulders, and he exudes an overall sleepy disposition.
Shouto looks like he would on any other off-day, and Katsuki wonders when he’d had the time to actually make this.
This 7D vision of perfection.
“Katsuki?” Shouto says, eyes blinking over at him suddenly. He looks unsure standing there, almost scared. “I told you to use this if I ever...”
Katsuki keeps silent and stares at him. It’s the only thing keeping him sane—taking in every detail of that beautiful, scarred face. Shouto seems to understand after a moment, realization sparking in his eyes as he shrinks back into himself.
“So, I am, aren't I?” he asks softly. “Gone.”
It takes a minute. It takes a long fucking minute. But Katsuki finally has it in him to croak out: “You won't wake from stasis.” And then, he says, pathetically, “Core is broken.”
Shouto’s thoughts seem to race through his head at the speed of light. His eyes move, travel the room like he’s reading text. It’s a frenzy for Shouto where anyone else would merely seem a little unnerved, and Katsuki wonders if he’s just taking it all in or if it's just his program sifting through the consciousness of a dead man for the right words to say.
Shouto’s eyes flicker to Katsuki again, a look of acceptance smoothing his face.
“You have to tell them,” he says calmly, but Katsuki knows otherwise; he’s panicking. And what’s worse is that it only serves to piss him off. “I know you don’t want to, but you have to. You have to tell my family—”
“I just fucking lost you!”
The room goes silent as Katsuki seethes. It’s been a long time since he’s screamed—since he’s really screamed.
Shouto’s death had taken that from him, too.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Shouto apologizes, and all of Katsuki’s anger is snuffed out like a sand-covered flame. “But you will, won’t you?”
“Yeah,” he answers, teeth clamping together painfully, shoulders falling. “Fuck—yeah. I will.”
He probably should’ve said something a while ago.
But the thing is, he can’t bear to face Rei—or Fuyumi, for that matter. They’d only met once, just after he and Shouto landed on Earth for one final touchdown before their biggest contracted mission yet, and Katsuki had promised them that he’d keep Shouto safe no matter what. That he’d throw himself in front of anything that tried to hurt their son and baby brother.
That there’s nothing getting to Shouto that won’t have to get through Bakugou Katsuki first.
What the fuck is he supposed to say to them now?
“Tomorrow?” Shouto levels, eyes trained on him.
Katsuki sighs through his nose, words lacking any and all bite when he says: “I will when I’m good and fucking ready.”
Shouto nods at that, relenting without another word. Maybe he finds it fair in some way. They’re in blissful ignorance down on Earth, his family. The longer they’re kept in the dark, the less they’ll have to hurt.
“I made this for closure,” Shouto begins at a different angle, finally changing the subject, “but truthfully, I’m afraid for it to come to a close. I made this chip sometime during the Eleventh Cycle because you told me you have one stored in the event of your...” Swallowing, those pretty eyes look away. When he turns his head, his hair picks up wind, and Katsuki can almost smell the strawberry creme shampoo they used to share. “I didn’t want to think about it happening to you—or me—but our work is dangerous. Nothing should be left unsaid.”
Katsuki speaks. It’s so automatic that he doesn’t even register what he’s said, but Shouto laughs lightly, so it must be one of their inside jokes. They have plenty of those; stupid shit that just springs up out of nowhere, lips forming words in muscle memory.
“I know I’m not very good with words.” Shouto blinks a few times, gaze traveling upward. His expression is soft by force, working through the melancholy, but he still manages to smile. “But I thought that, at the very least, you could see my face. I know how much you like it.”
“It’s a stupid face,” Katsuki reminds him.
Shouto smiles even bigger then, with teeth, and he inhales sharp. It’s so hard to deal with. Hard to look at. Katsuki’s vision blurs and he blinks it away, and when Shouto appears in his view once again, he’s still smiling. But it’s small. Tight-lipped and carried by sympathetic eyes.
“You're allowed to forget about me,” he says after a moment.
Katsuki’s heart skips a beat.
“Bullshit,” he growls.
“You are.” Stepping forward until his hips hit the CPU’s command center, Shouto pushes himself into Katsuki’s view. “I used to think selfishly that, if I died, I'd never want you to love someone else...” A jutting bottom lip pulls inward, but that doesn’t stop it from wobbling. “But you'd be lonely, wouldn't you?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Katsuki barks, pointing a finger right at Shouto’s chest. “How could you even say that—would you find someone else if you were me?!”
Clamping his mouth shut, Katsuki grinds his teeth together and hopes they turn to dust on his tongue. He never wanted to have to ask that question—never wanted to see that pitiful, sad looking smile shot at him—and listen to an answer he never wanted to fucking hear.
But then, Shouto changes his mind like he’s changed Katsuki’s life and his entire world since the day they met:
“No,” he answers, voice shaking. “Of course not.”
Katsuki loses his breath in one fell swoop. It falls out of him until nothing’s left but pain. Leaning forward, he braces himself on the edge of the CPU and screws his eyes shut.
Shaking his head, he wishes could bury it right in Shouto’s chest.
“Sho—”
“Katsuki—”
“There is no one in this goddamn universe that could ever replace you,” he says, eyes snapping open and daring Shouto to disagree. “I don’t want to hear you say that ever again.”
Thankfully, Shouto doesn’t disagree, only nods—over and over again without protest.
“That makes me really happy, Katsuki.” Shouto’s voice sounds so soft, it cuts him to the core, and he feels like shit for even taking that kind of tone with him. “It does.”
Katsuki feels broken. Those words are string-tugging and honest, but he’s afraid to think about what they’re coming from—a moving image with Shouto’s face. And that underlying static, just barely audible when he speaks. It echoes in Katsuki’s head with every word, makes him want for things he can’t have anymore.
“I want to save you,” Katsuki says, wanting still, and Shouto’s face falls.
“There's nothing you can do now,” he replies, an echoing reminder. “My body’s cold. I'm not in it anymore.”
“If I could've gotten you out, I could've kept you warm,” Katsuki drives, as if that makes all the difference. “If I'd woken up sooner, you would be.”
“If you hadn't woken up when you did, you'd be just like me,” Shouto argues. “It's better this way.”
“You're gone and I'm still fucking here in this dump—how is that better?!” Huffing through his teeth, Katsuki slams a hand down onto the command board. It’s a half-lie and he and Shouto both know it. He loves this place; it’s just that part of him loves it a lot less without Shouto here with him. That’s obvious—it should be fucking obvious. “Tell me there's a way to fix you.”
“There's only so much I can tell you—so much I can think to say. If my body's stuck in stasis, and the core is broken... Even if you manage to get me out, I'll already be dead.”
Katsuki knows that. Somewhere in the back of his mind, that’s one thing he understands all too well. Once the core broke, Shouto’s fate had been sealed. He’d been frozen over, unable to be regulated. When that pod is opened up again, crystals will form inside of Shouto’s body instantly, severing the cells and breaking his insides to pieces.
There’s no known process to prevent it from happening. It will happen. Katsuki knows that. He just...
“You look so normal,” Katsuki says dismally.
“If the core is broken, like you said, that won't matter,” Shouto repeats. “Cryostasis—”
“You look like you could open your eyes any second.”
“—is irreversible, if that's the case.”
“That day, we all stood there and listened to the verdict,” Katsuki continues like a man possessed, indifferent and unable to stop. “They said your organs shut down since the regulators can no longer function, and that you have no brain activity.” He remembers that moment clearly, and it’s bitter in his fucking mouth. “You passed peacefully in your sleep, and you’ll remain intact until you’re removed from the pod.”
Shouto sighs. “I understand that—”
“No, you fucking don’t.”
“His body’s preserved under ice at this point. We should make funeral preparations.”
“Then tell me,” Shouto pleads gently.
“They’ll take you out of one machine and put you in another. They’ll say a few nice words in front of everyone in the ship and shoot you out into the stars,” Katsuki tells him. “And I won’t even be able to take you home one day because this is home now and there’s only so much goddamn space!” Throwing his arms out, he rages. “If you don’t want that to happen, think of something—you’re the engineer!”
“What do you want me to say?” For a split second, Shouto sounds upset, angry at Katsuki for asking questions he can’t answer. But it turns into something desperate—something heartbreakingly sad. “I don't know everything in this form. I'm only so real.” I have no idea how to console you.
Katsuki deflates. All the wound up muscles in his chest ache and his insides turn to acid at the thought of admitting defeat—the only stage left is acceptance, and fuck all if he’s going to pat his own shoulder and tell himself it’s okay.
“I know,” he admits, still, because he’s actually got no other choice. “I've known it's no use for a long fucking time now.”
Shouto’s eyes light up in surprise. He’s so goddamn beautiful.
“You've replayed this program more than once,” he realizes.
And Katsuki’s fucked because he doesn’t know how he’s ever going to live without him.
“Every goddamn day.”
“For how long? How many days has it been?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Katsuki,” Shouto begins, voice cracking, “you can't do this forever.”
Swallowing thick, Katsuki can feel his eyes welling. He shoves the heel of one of his palms into his left eye, fingers soon kneading into his right as well, until he’s blocked out all sight of Shouto’s weepy face.
“I can do whatever the hell I want.”
“You have to let me go,” Shouto whispers.
“Shut up.”
Funnily enough, Shouto shuts up. Stays goddamn silent. That’s how he wins, that’s how he always fucking wins.
“Say something,” Katsuki demands, dropping his hand at last, because... because he’s given up; because there’s nothing else. Shouto wins again—what a joke.
“What do you want me to say?” Shouto asks, looking defeated. Anguished.
“Say anything.”
He steps forward then, reaching out to touch Katsuki’s hand, and Katsuki flinches away from it despite knowing he wouldn’t have been able to feel it anyway. Shouto pulls back just as burned by his reaction, and he looks like he’s swallowing around a lump in his throat.
It’s such a fucking lie.
“I love you, Katsuki,” Shouto breathes softly.
Katsuki’s eyes are on fire. He doesn’t want to hear it. Not like this.
“I love you,” it comes again. “Since the beginning, I’ve always—”
Shouto shakes his head, face crumbling in his sorrow, and Katsuki chokes on his own tears as they overflow. They spill out over the command dash at the sound of Shouto’s quiet sobs.
“Katsuki, I love—”
Katsuki slams his fist down on the power button, and puts them both to rest.
⭒☆⭒
LOG4404 ... DAY 24 OF CYCLE 13 : 1674592500
“This is Command Pilot, Bakugou Katsuki. We’re going idle.”
Katsuki clicks off the transmission the second he hears Deku’s voice responding in turn.
Leaning back in his seat, he goes silent, staring out at a bunch of flickering lights and buttons but not really seeing any of it. Not even a few months ago, just sitting in this chair everyday used to excite him. Even though he’s routinely voiced the same commands and piloted the same ship for years, it’s always made him feel something—because he’s living a dream.
Katsuki pulls off his headset with a frown. He can’t say the same for this moment. Or the moments he’s spent here for the last twenty-four days.
Everything feels wrong now. He hates it.
Pushing himself out of his chair, Katsuki leaves the cockpit and meanders through the halls, hands shoved into his pockets. It isn’t long, though he wishes it weren’t at all, that Deku meets him halfway to the labs. He stands clear in his path, eyes slightly averted, nervous expression on his round, freckled face.
“Kacchan, you never outed your announcement,” he comments calmly.
Katsuki shrugs. “And?”
“Well, for one, you know you have to. That’s protocol,” Deku reminds him, as if he doesn’t fucking know. “For two... I guess I was just expecting more.”
Katsuki looks away and back, mouth setting into a thin line. He knows what Deku was ‘expecting’, what he was hoping for: a ‘like usual’, a ‘something normal’.
An “Over and out, motherfuckers!”
Well, too bad. Maybe he just didn’t fucking feel like it today—or yesterday, or the day before.
Deku gives him that look. That same, sad, stupid look that just begs for Katsuki to spill all his guts onto the right wing floor. He knows his intentions are good, and deep down, Katsuki appreciates it, for what it’s worth. But right now, it just makes him sick.
“I gotta go. Places to be. Shit to do,” Katsuki says dismissively, moving to walk around him.
“Oh, r-right.” Deku turns as he passes, following a few steps behind until he gathers the courage to say what he’s been wanting to say. “But, Kacchan, before you go to the labs—if you feel like it—maybe we can talk about—”
“Fuck off, Deku,” Katsuki growls, pausing in his step. “It would be in everybody’s best interest if you fucking did.”
There, twice in one go. Hope he’s fucking happy.
Stepping past him, Katsuki continues on his way, the sound of his boots echoing loud off the heavy metal of the ship's floor.
At one point, these walls were bustling with so many operatives that he’d never be able to hear his own footsteps like this. Numbers dwindled after the most recent cryogenics incident; a lot of people forfeited their contracts because deaths caused by technical failures are the last thing anyone wants to have to endure in space. The higher-ups funding this expedition lost their credibility because of it, and it’s going to take one hell of a long time to build that back up.
Katsuki’s hand curls around the chip rattling around in his pocket, gritting his teeth.
As soon as he reaches the labs, he’s faced with yet another obstacle to stomp around.
Ochako stands in the way of the chamber where the cryo pods are, waiting for him like she always does—same time every single day now. Katsuki likes to think she doesn’t have a choice. She’s the only one left in cryonics; it’s her job to be here.
But he knows it’s more than that. It’s worse because she’s doing it out of worry for him.
“Bakugou,” Ochako says, less wobbly than he’s heard her lately. “Do you think you’ll be ready today?”
“Get out of my way.”
She holds the tablet in her arms tightly to her chest, swallowing audibly before steeling herself. “I know you’re taking this hard, but it’s not healthy to continue on—”
Katsuki crowds her up against the chamber door, baring his teeth. “I said get out of my way. Consider it a goddamn order.”
Ochako sighs, face falling despairingly. She doesn’t look scared of him, she never does, just... sad. Sad because they’re all sad—because they’re all so goddamn sad.
The only difference is that she’s moving on. And Katsuki can’t.
Katsuki backs off when she begins shoving forward, letting her walk around him so she can scan open the door. He looks out into the long, narrow hall, taking just a few steps forward before her voice calls out behind him.
“You can’t do this forever!”
Katsuki’s fist slams hard against the wall—a loud, shattering sound ringing for seconds before it disappears. The silence it leaves behind deafens him.
You can’t do this forever.
It feels like a pin-thin shard digging into his chest. A shred of shrapnel lodging deep inside his heart. Those words paint him different colors. They darken every inch of his soul.
“Maybe you and Deku are alright with it, but I’m not,” Katsuki says, not giving much of a fuck as to whether or not she’s still behind him. “I say when it’s time to pull the plug.”
⭒☆⭒
LOG4404 ... DAY 24 OF CYCLE 13 : 1674596700
Sleep. Wake. Eat. Work.
Come here and stare for hours.
The cryo chamber is a line of glass caskets. Katsuki used to think that they were a time machine throwing them straight into the future, way back when. Nothing changes from inside, but the universe still goes about its way all around you. When you wake up, time has passed, but you’re still alive to witness the comings and goings of the galaxy’s endless history.
He doesn’t feel that way anymore.
Katsuki leans forward, forehead pressed to the window of one of the pods.
Shouto’s sleeping face gives him an even better view of his incredible lashes. They, like his two-toned eyes—and brows and hair—are split even in color down the middle. Despite being under ice, his lips remain pink and perfect. His skin pale with just a hint of rosy hue. Katsuki looks at him like it’s the first time instead of the last. Thinks about how much he loves him in all his unique beauty.
If Shouto would just open his eyes...
But he doesn’t. He remains suspended in stasis.
A reanimated corpse with nothing left inside.
Shouto looks the same as the morning he’d entered the pod. Calm and serene as if in sleep. How was Katsuki to know that he’d be woken from his own stasis eight months later in a panic, with everyone he knew staring down at him in despair? Standing there, they surrounded Shouto’s pod, and Katsuki had to throw a fucking fit before anyone would tell him the news.
That first night he’d cried more than he ever had in his life.
Shouto was sleeping, and Katsuki was crying—on his knees, face bruising against the cold glass, hands trying to crush the entire pod in front of him into his arms with the wish that he could hold Shouto one last time.
All he could do was cry until he passed out, wake up, cry again, and think:
What could he have done differently?
Anything.
Nothing.
Before going into stasis, Shouto had been so excited to wake up to someplace new. He’d looked at Katsuki, hair accidentally slapping him in the face as he whirled around, and smiled—closed-lipped and soft as he spoke.
“See you on the other side.”
Katsuki could laugh at those words now.
It only sounds like a pretty promise if you both actually come out on the same fucking side.
Knowing he’s been here long enough, Katsuki backs away, taking one more moment to splay a hand across the window of Shouto’s pod. This is the only kind of hello-goodbye he gets, and it takes all he has not to smash it right in and take back what’s his. Instead, he swallows the urge so hard, the strain of it squeezes tears into his eyes.
Katsuki pulls his hand away, too, and turns toward the hall.
Eijirou’s waiting at the mouth of it.
His eyes look a little wet, and there’s a smile on his stupid, overly-expressive face. Aside from Katsuki, he’s the only other person taking the loss of Shouto painfully hard. He’s down here because he can’t stand it, either; he’s down here because he has to visit Shouto and tell him just as much.
Everyone’s moving on without you.
Eijirou’s a great friend, even if Katsuki never says it. He never asks him to let Shouto go—he never tells him that he can’t do this forever. He’s only ever understanding because he gets it, even if it’s only secondhand.
“Hey, Kats.” Eijirou waves meekly.
Katsuki shakes his head. He loves the guy—he really does—but he can’t hang around him for a pep talk. Not today.
He pushes right past Eijirou, who lets him, and walks away.
On his long trek back to the bunker, Katsuki’s full of maddening thoughts, and they all involve tossing each and every one of his fellow operatives out of the closest airlock. They all have something to say, something they think is comforting and kind and will get him through tough fucking times. He replays memories of himself and Shouto in his head to keep from looking at anyone or anything, hoping the twisted grimace on his face is enough to keep whomever passes him by away:
Their first time meeting, their first argument, their first kiss—it all comes floating back so easily to Katsuki. If he concentrates, if he really thinks about it hard enough, he can almost see Shouto suiting up for a maintenance task, turning only to ask for help.
Katsuki would slide his hand beneath the dual-toned strands of Shouto’s hair and lift it so he could pull the back zipper all the way up. And then he’d brush the flowing waves of it to the side and kiss what little skin of Shouto’s throat is left exposed.
Shouto would turn around in his arms and kiss Katsuki’s face without looking, like an idiot. Those soft lips would land somewhere awkward, like the bridge of his nose or his open eye.
And he’d fucking love it.
It would happen again—it would’ve happened again, if things had turned out differently. Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe if it did turn out differently, Shouto would be the one here and he wouldn’t.
Katsuki derails that train of thought immediately. He doesn't like to play that game. The “it should've been me” game. If it were him in Shouto’s place...
He doesn't want to wish it. It wouldn't fucking change a thing.
Not a damn thing.
Katsuki scans himself into his bunker the second he reaches it, taking a look at the CPU in the center of the room. Shoving a hand inside his pocket, he pulls out Shouto’s chip and walks over to the relay.
If it were him in Shouto’s place...
Katsuki’s hand curls into a fist. He hates being forced to imagine what it would be like if Shouto were here holding his chip instead, stuck in this vicious cycle of grief—unable to let go, unable to live. It’s obvious to him how that would turn out: day twenty-four and Todoroki Shouto is still speaking to the lie that is BKG-K.exe.
Taking one last look at the chip, he throws it across the room, grabbing the first pair of joggers he can find from his top drawer and heading straight for the shower.
⭒☆⭒
LOG4404 ... DAY 24 OF CYCLE 13 : 1674615300
Katsuki sits in silence, rolling it between his fingers.
It had gotten stuck between a couple of pipes and a thin opening in one of the corners of his room, but with a little time, he was able to fish it right out.
The chip slides between his thumb and forefinger. It doesn’t roll perfectly because it’s a sharp-sided rectangle, but Katsuki still does it for the pinch. For the there-and-gone prick that grounds him to reality. Not that it matters all that much. It still exists—the chip still fucking exists.
He’s so goddamn weak.
Letting it flatten against the palm of his hand, Katsuki regards the only thing he has left of Shouto’s with a dismal look. The clothes had to be recycled, and the family photographs are long gone; this little program’s it.
He should get rid of it.
When Katsuki had made his own, he did it without thinking he was ever going to actually die—not until he had to. It never occurred to him what might happen to Shouto if he ever got his hands on it until the moment he’d arrived on the other side of that situation.
He should get rid of it. He shouldn’t torture himself like this. But it’s always the same.
If Katsuki can’t have Shouto the way that he wants, then this is what he’ll have to take. He can’t live his entire life in memories. He needs more—he’ll always need more.
At least this way, Shouto’s voice... It’s almost like he’s here.
Katsuki gets up, mindlessly jamming the chip into the command center’s reader, and boots up the CPU relay with his knuckle shoved into one giant green button. The cylindrical particles coalesce before him slowly and then, all at once, creating the only 7D hologram he could ever care to see.
Shouto materializes just like that.
This time, like every new execution of the program, Shouto won't remember what they talked about yesterday—won’t think back to all the days Katsuki’s watched him float just like this. It’ll be like those prior conversations never even happened because he’s... Because it’s just a program. It can’t remember past the conversation it’s having right then and there.
Looking out into the relay, for the first time in his life, Katsuki accepts his fate.
Those big, mismatched eyes open, and Shouto regards him with a long, quiet look.
“Katsuki, if you're seeing this, that means...”
“Yeah,” Katsuki says. “I know what it means.”