Hey guys. Long time no see. Sorry for not updating the other stories first—I've been dying to post this one. The next update should be Flames of Steel or What a Coincidence, hopefully sometime next week.

Note: This fic is something like a character study to me. Bakugou Katsuki is one of the most intriguing fictional characters I've ever encountered because of all his insecurities and angst behind the angry facade. That, and his frenemy relationship with Izuku.

No pairing (as of now, except from what I can glimpse from canon). Not exactly bromance either. Just friendship, angst, family and hurt/comfort stuff.

Pretty sure there are some wrong medical-related concepts here, so please let me know if you spot it. Pardon my grammar too, as English is not my first language.

Warnings: mentions of gore (just a tiny bit), mentions of character deaths, Deku has a Quirk and, oh, a lot of swearing because Kacchan.

I'll Give You a Second Chance

My Hero Academia fanfiction

Un-betaed

Deku had a Quirk, but nobody knew exactly what it was until he gave Katsuki a second chance to live.

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For one moment, Katsuki forgot who he was.

There was a ringing sound, so loud that it drowned other sounds into silence. His body felt cold, so unlike those times when he was all fired up, secreting nitroglycerin-like sweat to generate his explosions. Everything felt numb and disorienting. Terrifyingly unfamiliar. He opened his mouth to suck in air before inhaling a mouthful of dust.

"Ugh…," he croaked, coughed, and could feel something coppery dripping from his mouth. Katsuki pried his eyelids open. He was greeted with rubble and smoke. "W-wha…?"

What the fuck did just happened, his mind summarised.

Grunting, he heaved himself up. Or attempted to, because for some reason his left elbow failed to cooperate.

He looked down...to see a bloody stump instead of his left arm.

He couldn't comprehend what he was seeing. Panic started setting in before he squashed it ruthlessly. No fucking time to do that, his mind growled. Get to damn safety first.

He couldn't stop the pitiful whimper, though, when he noticed a particularly large debris crushing both of his legs. He couldn't feel the pain, but once the adrenaline was drained it'd be hell.

Fuck.

Okay, think before you lose too much blood or the pain sets in, Katsuki said to himself. I am Bakugou Katsuki, the Pro-Hero Ground Zero, soon to be the number one Hero after beating shitty Deku—

He froze, as a chill ran down his spine.

Deku. Villain. Rescue mission—

"K-Kacchan…?"

Katsuki's head snapped to the right, where the voice originated. His widening red eyes met tired but unyielding green eyes.

"Y-you're alive," Deku wheezed. "T-t-thank goodn-ness. I-I thought...I thought I w-was too l-late…"

Katsuki couldn't respond because fuck, Deku had it so much worse than him.

The green-haired man was lying down on rubble, with more than half of his body being crushed under concrete. Only his battered left arm and the left side of his head was free. There was blood, so much—too much—blood pooling under him and Deku was coughing out more.

"D-Deku…," Katsuki rasped. The pain was setting in. Fuck, it burned, it hurt so fucking much but—"T-the fuck...You...Your body…"

Fucking Deku had the gall to laugh in this bloody fucked up situation.

"W-what a day, huh…?" Deku chuckled amidst coughing up more blood. "W-we were completely t-taken by s-surprise. D-didn't expect t-the V-villain t-to have more...more than o-one Quirk…"

Katsuki gaped at him for a moment before his own body slumped to the rubble where he was leaning on. He had no more energy to even shout at Deku, his mind too busy trying to ignore the pain. If he could get rescued now he could survive, even if most of his limbs were gone. His childhood friend, however…

"Yeah…," he agreed just to distract himself. Because what else could he do? He knew the basics of healing and rescue, but he doubted even Recovery Girl could save a mostly crushed human, let alone him. "W-we fucked up real bad."

There was silence, broken only by the sound of wheezings from both Pro-Heroes. Katsuki couldn't see much of the outside, the rubble only allowing bits of light rays to pass through. There was no sign of rescue attempts, both of them were losing blood fast and Katsuki hated to think that their chance of survival was getting lower as the second ticked by.

"H-hey, Kacchan…," Katsuki glanced sideways. Bile rose up in his throat upon seeing the holder of One for All, the Symbol of Hope, his closest friend, to be reduced to this state. "R-remember that time w-when you f-fell to the c-creek?"

Katsuki nodded, not caring whether Deku could see him properly or not. How could he forget that memory when he thought that the useless, Quirkless Deku was looking down on him—and the guilt inevitably washed over him. It was the catalyst to everything: to his building hatred towards the only person he could call true friend, to his worsening arrogance, to his failure as a decent human being. Katsuki was surprised that he could still become Pro-Hero despite his past faults.

"H-hold on to that, K-Kacchan…," he rasped. Katsuki turned to him with a frown and a flinch. Right, his greatest failure, and Deku was asking him to remember his fucking mistake. But the blond saw a genuine grin on Deku's half-gone face instead, the same kind he'd shown the people that there was still hope so long as he was here. Deku's battered hand reached out towards him and Katsuki understood.

It was just like then, when the wimpy child extended his hand towards him.

Katsuki's right hand moved, to desperately clutch the hand of his most loyal friend. The pain was unimaginable but it'd be the last time he saw him. He couldn't stop the choked sob from leaving his mouth, nor the tears falling from his eyes.

Because, fuck, it hurt. His body hurt, but his heart hurt a lot more. He'd lose Deku because of his weakness again, and this time there was no second chance—

"D-Don't worry," Deku whispered, slowly closing his own teary eye. He squeezed the blond's hand one more time—and Katsuki swore there was a jolt—

"You'll be alright—"

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"Are you alright?"

Katsuki jerked, eyes snapping open, and gasped at the view in front of him.

The hand he was clutching on was suddenly gone, replaced by a tiny hand extended towards him.

The tiny hand which belonged to his tiny dying friend.

Who was not dying, at the moment.

"What the fuck," he couldn't help but blurt out. And why the hell was his voice so high-pitched?!

Deku—because that must be fucking Deku, small and wimpy and weak and so much like the Quirkless young Deku whom he knew—flinched, but his left hand was stubbornly extended. Waiting for Katsuki's own to reach it.

"Y-you okay, Kacchan? Can you stand?"

Katsuki didn't answer him. If he opened his mouth again, he was sure only profanities would come out. Instead, he grabbed the extended hand—with his own fucking tiny but healthy hand no pain what—and Deku, eyes widening in surprise, helped him to stand up.

Katsuki stared at Deku when the tiny green-haired child—who was at the same height as him what the actual flying fuck—dusted the blond's wet clothes and patted his body all over, checking for any injury.

To see this hallucination before dying…"I must've hit my fucking head."

Deku blinked, patted the back of Katsuki's head carefully, before retracting his bloody hand. Like, his literally covered in blood hand—

"Y-your head is bleeding!" Deku squeaked in horror before turning to the group of children who were waiting on the bridge. Since when were they there? "A-ambulance! Call an ambulance!"

For some reason, the children only stared at them before bursting into laughter.

"Kacchan is strong!" one of them snickered. "He doesn't need help, especially from a weak Quirkless like you!"

Before, Katsuki would agree with such a statement. Now, it hurt to hear the nonchalance.

Because young arrogant Katsuki had never tasted defeat or any kind of loss—but Ground Zero had seen and experienced a lot. It had only truly clicked to him then that his so-called goons were never friends with him, merely piggybacking his power and fame, while his only true friend was pushed away due to misunderstandings.

"Y-you blind morons!" Suddenly, mini-Deku shrieked. Katsuki could only gape at the usually timid boy who just blurted out a vulgar word. At, what, five fucking years old. The green-haired child waved his bloody hand at them. "Can't you see this?!"

The children's laughter immediately died down upon spotting the unmistakable red liquid. One of them, probably the dumbest one, snorted, "What? Is that blood?"

Deku growled. "Of fucking course!"

Holy fuck, Katsuki thought numbly. I'd known Deku had it in him, but I've never thought I'd hear him say that at such a young age. He must've corrupted innocent Deku earlier than he'd expected.

Finally, one of the dumb kids noticed Katsuki's dazed state and dialed 119.

Fifteen minutes later, Katsuki was safely tucked in the ambulance, head uncomfortably squashed between support pads. He honestly thought it was unnecessary (it was just a measly scratch, Katsuki knew) but Deku was so fucking adamant that there was something wrong with his head the paramedic had no choice but to be safe than sorry.

And Deku, being the stubborn boy he was, joined them in the ambulance despite the paramedics telling him to just go home.

"W-will he be okay? He slipped, the b-b-blood-he must've hit a sharp rock in the creek—"

"Yes, yes, he's fine, young man," the paramedic assured him exasperatedly. "No need to worry, the doctors will check him up again—"

What a vivid dream, this was.

Katsuki's tense body finally slumped on the hard emergency bed, lulled to sleep by Deku's familiar fretting.

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Katsuki woke up to a familiar white ceiling and the smell of antiseptic.

He sank into the soft pillow, sighing tiredly as memories returned to him. Right, the Villain. The explosion and the collapsing buildings. Deku—

His breath hitched. Fuck, Deku—

Deku, who was fucking mini, and was blinking owlishly at him.

"D-Deku?!" Katsuki blurted out, rubbing his eyes roughly in an attempt to banish this fucking illusion in front of him. Because this was nothing but a hallucination, a product of his traumatised mind, must be the painkiller or something or maybe the Villain's Quirk—

"K-Kacchan," his imagined-mini-Deku stuttered. "You're mumbling. Like, unusually a lot. Are you okay?"

"You, I, where-what the fuck," Katsuki replied intelligently. This hallucination was one of the weirdest fucked up things he'd ever seen in his entire twenty fucking six years of life.

"Uh, you're in the hospital now," kid-Deku replied nervously. The fucker seemed to have returned to his timid self. "You fell to the creek and i-injured your head."

Katsuki blinked. Creek...?

"R-remember that time w-when you f-fell to the c-creek? H-hold on to that, K-Kacchan…"

His eyes widened in disbelief. Don't tell me…

Katsuki heaved—both of his arms were here, intact, so were his legs—and was about to grab Deku's shoulders and demand for answers when the nurse came.

"Oh, you're awake," she said cheerfully. Her voice was annoyingly high-pitched; he wasn't a kid, dammit! "How are you feeling? Your friend has called your parents—your mom will be here soon."

Katsuki stared at the nurse.

"...What are you talking about," he said numbly. Deku must've noticed his uneasiness because he shuffled closer to him. "That can't be right. The old hag is—"

"Katsuki!"

Katsuki's head snapped to the blond-haired young woman who came barrelling into the emergency room.

"Katsuki!" Bakugou Mitsuki stopped in front of his bed, hands hovering uncertainly in front of him. Her eyes scanned his body and after listening to the nurse regarding the extent of his injury, she sighed—before smacking his arm lightly.

"You little punk!" She scolded him. The hand that had smacked him rose again to…

To hug him.

"What were you thinking, bringing your group of friends to the abandoned park? I've told you so many fucking times already that shit place is dangerous! You—"

She froze when his tiny hands clutched at her blouse desperately, and felt the wetness on her sleeve.

"K-Katsuki?" Mitsuki asked worriedly, toning down her voice. "Katsuki, what's wrong? Does it hurt so much?"

Katsuki shook his head sideways but remained tucked in Mitsuki's arms.

He couldn't help it. It had been years since the last time he saw her, let alone embraced her. Katsuki was never an affectionate person, rejecting even his own parents' kindness towards him ever since he hit puberty. It was not unusual for teenagers to enter rebellious phase, yes, but—had he known about what would happen to them...what would happen to his mother as soon as he graduated—

God, he missed her.

"Katsuki? Katsuki—"

"I'm sorry," he mumbled shakily. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I promise I'll do better. I'll be better, stronger! Don't leave me, don't—"

"Sshh, I won't leave you," his mother murmured, rubbing his back soothingly. "I won't leave you. I'm here, son. I'll always be here."

Katsuki continued mumbling fervently, trapped between nightmare and reality, until the doctor was forced to give him sedatives to calm him down. But the stress was getting too much and he finally succumbed to sleep.

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Let me know what you guys think.

Thanks for reading!