I had the saddest worst thought in bed last night about Bakugou and Uraraka both causing deaths with their quirks growing up and them having to /deal/ with that

They both enter UA for different reasons. Uraraka wants to save as many as she can to make up for the life she took.

Bakugou wants to prove he can be better than he assumes everyone thinks he can be.

~

It's the anniversary of the day Uraraka caused the death of a lady who she'd accidentally grabbed the sleeve of, thinking it was her mother. Her quirk, still new and difficult to control,

activated on the woman and sent her up into the air.

She was too high up when Uraraka worked out how to get her down.

That was the day she learned about pressing her fingertips together to deactivate.

It was also the worst day of her entire life.

Present day Uraraka has taken to sitting on the roof, feet dangling over the edge as she watches the city from a distance.

No one ever blamed her.

Not even the victim's family.

They'd been so sad but so forgiving. /Too/ forgiving.

She'd deserved punishment. Prison. Death.

At least, that's what her younger self had determined. A part of her still held onto the need for a comeuppance, but she'd grown up and knew that becoming a hero meant that she could do so much good depsite that awful, terrible bad.

Nevertheless, she cries.

Difference this year is that she's gotten her hands on a bottle of cheap vodka which tastes like poison but does the job at numbing her slowly.

She takes another swig when the door to the roof of Heights Alliance flies open.

"What the hell are you doing up here, Cheeks?"

Uraraka has never told anyone what she did. At least, not people beyond the police when it happened. No, she's kept this bottled up all for herself, all for moments of weakness and anniversaries of murder.

She goes to hide the bottle behind her but she's too slow; he's over her

faster than her drunk brain can keep up with. The bottle is gone from her hands and he's staring between it and her incredulously.
"Drinking alone? On the roof?" He peers closer, narrowing his red eyes. He looks pissed. "...Who hurt you?"

Now, there are many questions that Bakugou Katsuki could have asked when wondering about her predicament.

Why are you on the roof?
Why are you drinking?
What happened?

All questions she could probably have managed easily even given her mental state.

But no.

"Who hurt you?"

That's the one he went with.

And Uraraka's never dealt with the whole "being a murderer" thing drunk before.

So she hasn't ever snorted at anyone's question about it until this very moment.

She snorts. Snatches the bottle. Laughs coldly again after a swig.

"Who hurt me? Oh, the irony."

It's quiet.

But he frowns.

And he takes her alcohol.

She's not best pleased.

"Give it back."
"Irony?" Carefully, he sits down beside her, cradling the bottle to his chest. "What's got your panties in bunch? You're not making any sense."

Uraraka feels her eyes glaze over as she lifts them to the starry sky above.
"Why are you here, Bakugou?"
A moment of silence passes. He shrugs. "I come up here a lot. It's an escape from reality."
"Mmm," she hums, blinking and feeling tears stream down her cheeks. "I get that."

"You're crying."
"I'm drinking myself stupid on the edge of a roof and you're sounding surprised about that."
A few minutes pass between them then. During this time, Bakugou drinks deeply from the bottle before passing it back to her. She simply holds it in her hands, studying

the label.
"What's got you wanting to escape reality, Cheeks?"
His voice is the softest she's heard it in the three years of knowing him and that coupled with the hand on her shoulder is enough to shatter the final strand of composure she has left.

She hunches over, shoulders caving inwards, and sobs.
"Ever hate yourself?" she breathes, throat throbbing with the overwhelming misery quelling inside of her.
"Most days," he replies bluntly, snatching the bottle and glugging back a huge gulp. He curses the taste and sighs.

"We've all got shit to bear. But only certain shit has people drinking themselves stupid on the edge of a roof, crying their eyes out."
She can't help the pathetic laugh that escapes her or the sob that follows.
"True." She wipes her snotty nose on the back of her sleeve.

"But you don't give a fuck about my shit, Bakugou. I know you better than that."
"You don't know anything, girl," he bites back, letting her take the bottle. He brings up his knee and rests his chin on it, staring out to the city just as she is. "I don't give a crap about

everyday troubles you extras whine about, like the other day when you burned some of your hair off on your straighteners. What the fuck ever that tantrum you pulled was is still an absolute joke." Uraraka groans. "But this?" He gestures at her. "Not normal."

She turns her head to look at him properly then. He's dressed in comfy clothes, wearing his over-sized 'Ground Zero' hoodie that Kaminari had made for him as a gift at last Christmas' Secret Santa. He's pale in the moonlight, but his eyes are like red fire, burning into her.

He really is concerned about her.

It's funny, how people grow and change. When you're with them every day, you don't always notice because it all happens so gradually. But sometimes, you step beyond yourself and you get a glimpse of who they are to everyone else. The real them.

The face-value person they present to the world after everything they've learned and everything they've been through. And Bakugou's learned and been through a lot over the past three years. He's become less angry, more understanding and somewhat of a friend to her and others.

....

She's held this in for so long.

They graduate in two weeks. Two weeks of judgement and then she doesn't have to care about him and his thoughts on her ever again.

But god, she's drunk and devastated and she just needs to let it finally rip out of her chest-

"I did a very bad thing when I was younger," she states, keeping his gaze. When his eyebrows lower a fraction, her lip wobbles and she looks away, eyes spilling over with tears.

"So did I."
"I've never...it's never been..." She takes a deep breath but it shakes in her throat. "It was unforgivable."

Suddenly, a hand is clasping her own. She blinks down at it, barely able to see beyond her years so it's just a pale blur at first. She blinks, the tears

fall, and yes, he's holding her hand. She brings her eyes to his and almost chokes when she sees his shining too. His jaw sets.

She clasps his hand right back.

"My quirk," she lets out, closing her eyes. "My quirk made me do it."

She hears him take a sudden breath.

Yeah, he's probably putting the pieces together and he's going to realise a person like her isn't worth his-

She's yanked, pulled against a heaving chest and held so tightly she can barely breathe.

"I'm sorry I asked," he murmured into her hair. "Don't feel like you need to

explain. I...fuck. I get it."

Ah, so he's not got a clue what she's on about. He /gets/ it? No he doesn't. He's holding her with a vice grip.

"You did something bad with your quirk? So did I."

Uraraka feels her skin prickle. Unless....

She can't see his face, but his

voice is struggling, breaking on certain words.
"I fucked up real bad growing up. Did a lot of stupid shit. Lost control a couple times, not focusing. Not being my best. Messed up."
It takes her a while, but finally she shifts in his lap and looks up into his face.

He's not the Bakugou she knows right now, but she highly doubts she's the Uraraka /he/ knows. His eyes her glassy and he looks /broken/.

It's like looking in a mirror.

A vicious, dangerous voice in her head suggests that maybe...maybe he does get her situation. "

"Was what you did...very very bad?" she manages, bringing a hand up to swipe the tears from his eyes. He sniffs, moving his head away from her touch to stare into space.
"The worst. The worst you could do. Fuck, I've never spoken about...I haven't-"
"Me either."

He looks back.

Swears under his breath.

She nods and slides and hand around his neck as he leans forward and rests his forehead against hers.

"Ochako, I don't know if I can do this right now," he hisses through gritted teeth.

She nods.

"I know. I get it." She strokes his skin with her fingernails. "I've been telling myself the same thing for twelve years."

He breaks at this, fingers digging in where they hold her before he grabs the bottle from behind her and drinks for far longer than is safe. He thrusts it

at her.

She too needs some liquid courage, but somehow she doesn't think it's the alochol that's making her brave right now.

The ever-proud, ever-confident boy she's grown to like and care for, the proudest and most confident of all the boys she knows, needs her just as

much as she needs him, it seems. She opened this door inside of him and so she needs to be strong enough to take on whatever monsters have been lurking behind it.

She swallows around grief and pain and self-hatred, and tells him her story.

~

"Wake up," she hears in the distance, calling her from her slumber. She winces at her pounding head as she comes round, blinking in the orange glow of the rising sun.
"We gotta get back to our rooms before people start getting up and noticing we're gone."
She stirs enough to

realise she's pressed against Bakugou, and that they're still on the roof. She's covered by a large, over-sized hoodie.

The arm around her tightens.

She looks at the hand holding her, recalling his story.

It makes her heart lurch.

But something in her heart has changed since yesterday. She doesn't know what yet, because she's so tired, but it feels lighter somehow.

Carefully, she lifts herself up from him and offers a hand to pull him to his feet. They look at one another for a moment before crashing

into one another's arms.

He holds her so tightly.

Shes never squeezed anyone harder.

"Together," he murmurs against the tip of her head, repeating the word they'd said so much the night before.
She nods. "Together."

Yes. Together is how they'll deal with this from now on.

Perhaps that's why her heart feels lighter. He own burden has been shared to another, replaced with his which she can carry with ease because she's so well-practised at carrying her own.

They walk to the door, staring at it with apprehension.

They'd agreed to leave it on the roof, the damage they'd done to themselves and the people they'd lost in the past.

They'd agreed to call or find the other if they failed at that.

They'd agreed, somewhat, that they themselves were not to blame but the quirks were.

Whatever the case, one thing is for certain.

Neither are alone any longer, neither have to hide from everyone.

They learn, over the years, to not blame themselves. But it takes many anniversaries and bottles of cheap vodka on the Heights Alliance roof together to get there.

But they get there.

And they make one hell of a pro hero team for it.

----------- FIN