In Your Shadow [Chapter 16]

[Chapter 15]

Katsuki took his time packing his bag for class. He’d intended to get up early and go to the gym, but when his eyes had cracked open and he’d fumbled for his alarm, he’d quickly decided to snooze it instead. He knew he should feel terrible about it, considering he’d skipped the day prior too, but he just couldn’t muster up the energy for it.

On the bright side, he supposed, he’d have plenty of time in the day, now. He could slip in a workout after classes finished, or at least a stretch or something. Maybe he’d suck it up and do some ballet shit, treat it as an incentive – if he got up early, he got a gym workout; if he didn’t, he had to do ballet.

He tucked his headphones into the front pocket of his backpack, ready to transcribe his notes in class when they started working on their projects, and double-checked the rough timetable he’d thrown together on his train ride the night prior. Deku’s schedules had made a lot of sense, with their weird structure he’d been dealing with, and while his school schedule was much more predictable, he’d decided he liked the idea of having a rough outline of each day, going forward. If nothing else, it would get him into the habit, so when his days weren’t as predictable, he’d already be prepared to handle it.

With a last check through his textbooks to make sure everything was present, he took a deep breath, shouldering his bag and heading out the door.

The dorms had been quiet when he’d arrived the night prior, with most of his classmates already in bed, but now they were alive with mayhem. People ran back and forth between rooms trying to find their stuff for class, idiots realised they had no clean uniform and had to borrow things from their friends, toast burned, eggs burned, rice burned, cereal- yeah, his classmates were not good cooks.

“Bro!” Kirishima yelled, diving at him for a hug that made Katsuki squirm. “You’re here! I didn’t see you last night! Tell me all about it!”

“Your breakfast is burning.”

“Ah! Be right back!”

Katsuki slipped away while Kirishima was distracted, heading toward the door, only sparing a quick nod for Jirou as they both escaped the noise. She fell into step beside him as they headed for class, but didn’t speak, and Katsuki quickly began to relax, losing the tension he’d been holding as he waited for the prying questions.

They were the first to the classroom, but it quickly began to fill up behind them, classmates appearing in excited groups, still sharing all their stories. Katsuki squirmed in his seat, knowing that eventually someone was bound to ask him, and he was going to be forced to admit that he didn’t have any cool stories, that all he’d done was follow around a bunch of sidekicks while Deku was too busy for him. And sure, he’d come to enjoy it and learned a lot, but he knew how his classmates would hear it.

Thankfully, Aizawa arrived before they got to him, and the class finally began to settle down. He didn’t bother to speak over them, just waited for them to quickly silence themselves, then picked up his attendance sheet to tick them all off.

“I know you’re all excited to share your experiences,” he said, as he made his way down the list. “But you need to all demonstrate that you have some self-control in the classroom. You’ll have plenty of time between classes and after school to share your stories. Now, we’re going to start the day with work on your projects we talked about, so I hope you all did some preliminary work over the weekend. If not, now is your chance to do some thinking and some research, to start working. I want everything handed in by Friday, and if you’re late, I may withhold your Work Studies offers until you finish.”

Thankfully, that seemed to get them all focussed in a hurry, and everyone began hauling out their notes while Aizawa continued to talk.

“All the offers are due to me by Friday, so I will hand them out to you then, much like your internship offers. As usual, Work Studies are not a guaranteed position like internships are, so you may choose to decline if you wish, and there is a chance you may not get an offer. Hopefully you’ve all made a good enough impression to get an offer from your internship agency, but as you all know, sometimes there are extenuating circumstances, so don’t take it too personally.”

Katsuki reached for his headphones, but the thought of listening to the recordings just filled him with dread. It felt too soon, like listening to them would make it all too real that it was over, and he wasn’t convinced that it wouldn’t make him emotional to hear those conversations. He knew there were some really good ones, all deep and insightful, but there were also a lot of fun, entertaining ones; ones where he’d been laughing with the sidekicks, or cracking jokes with the patrol leaders, and ones where he was sparring with people, sharing disjointed sentences and ideas between explosions and crashes. So he left his headphones alone, and instead grabbed out the simple folder where he’d kept all his timetables and reports from the internship. For now, he’d settle for jotting down his own thoughts and ideas, and tomorrow he’d get down to business for real.

Some of his classmates were whispering to each other across the aisles, excitedly sharing stories they’d forgotten to tell earlier, or discussing ideas for the project. Some of them, he quickly learned, had interned at the same agencies, and as such, had decided to do joint projects. Aizawa had never specifically outlawed that, Katsuki supposed, but he was glad he’d been alone and didn’t need to turn someone down. The only thing worse than telling a classmate you wanted to work alone, was working with a classmate.

He flipped through his timetables first, scribbling disjointed notes about how much work goes into being a hero, behind the scenes. How dedicated you had to be to the job, to do all the background work and stay on top of your game; how open you had to be to new experiences, to things that might be difficult, but make you a better hero in the long run; and how willing you had to be to work ridiculous hours, or come in outside of your usual hours, when the situation required it. He thought back on Deku’s comment about him being willing to help at a moment’s notice, about how many heroes weren’t willing to do that, and he couldn’t help but wonder how many of his classmates had been with agencies like that, had been sound asleep in bed while their agencies fought villains or did rescue missions, or had shown up well-rested to a morning patrol with their assigned hero, while others they worked with were beat up or in hospital, recovering from a night they needed more help with.

When he was finished with those, he moved on to the patrol reports, taking notes about all the little extra things they did during their patrols – Ephia chatting with the neighbourhood kids and encouraging them to be heroes, Maelstrom and Windrider coming back with bags of trash they’d picked up as they walked the streets, Trax walking young girls and women home when she spotted them alone in the night – and how not every patrol was going to be about beating up villains, how everyone had their own thoughts about a hero’s responsibilities. And they were all right, in some way, even if their right wasn’t the same as someone else’s right.

How was he supposed to define what it meant to be a hero, when not even the heroes could agree on the answer?

─────

When classes were over, Katsuki found himself an empty studio, plugging his phone into the speaker system and finding a dumb playlist of classical music that someone or other had put together and made public on the internet. He set himself up beside one of the wall ladders they used for stretching, picking out a rung at about the right height to hold, and starting the steps that made him feel like an idiot.

He began to relax a little, once he got into a rhythm, feeling the tension and reluctance seep out of him just like usual, as he stretched and pointed and bent and straightened. He lifted to his tiptoes, bringing his feet closer together as he rose, and pivoted to face the other direction, ready to start over on his other side.

Instead, he froze in his tracks, when he found a pink face and dark eyes staring at his every move. He opened his mouth to make excuses, face burning red-hot, but Mina beat him to it, her lips quirking up into a little smile.

“Can I join you?”

Katsuki’s heels hit the floor, and his mouth failed him, moving a little but making no sound come out, like some kind of weird, stunned goldfish. Instead he waved toward another ladder, and Mina kicked off her shoes, smiling softly as she stepped up beside him.

“I used to take dance classes as a kid,” she explained, copying his moves when he started up again. “It got too expensive as I got older, my parents couldn’t keep paying for it, but I joined a club in junior high and that was a lot of fun. It was mostly hip hop though, not ballet and tap like I started with – don’t get me wrong, it was a ton of fun and I still love it, but I’ve missed doing ballet!”

“I’m still new,” Katsuki grumbled.

“Well, if you have any questions, you’re welcome to ask! It’s been a while, but I think I remember the basics, at least!”

Katsuki turned to face the wall, and for a while they continued without speaking, Mina just mimicking Katsuki’s sets that he’d memorised from his classes.

“I don’t remember much,” he continued, when Mina glanced over at him. “Just the things we did every time, and some random bits and pieces in between. I was thinking about finding a video or something to follow.”

“That sounds good,” Mina agreed. “I’m sure there’s a ton of content out there, follow-along classes and stuff. What got you into it, anyway?”

“I’m not,” Katsuki snapped quickly, immediately regretting the tone. “I mean… Deku swears by it, so I kinda got… forced into it.”

“Oh! I didn’t know he danced, that’s cool!”

“I don’t know how much he does, but they have classes in the agency and he encourages everyone to go – I’m pretty sure it’s compulsory for half of them. He says it’s good for flexibility and balance and control and all that, stuff that’s useful as a hero.”

“I agree! I definitely had a leg-up on a lot of people in P.E. classes and stuff, growing up. Like I knew how to use all the different parts of my body, and other kids didn’t. I’m sure that carries over into adulthood, too.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got my tablet in my bag, you wanna find a class video?”

Katsuki didn’t answer, but she went to her bag anyway, digging out an old tablet and starting to search through videos. She found one she liked the look of, and Katsuki shrugged when she showed him for approval, turning off his music to instead hook the tablet up to the speaker system for them.

The video was only half an hour long, but by the end of it Katsuki felt weirdly satisfied. It was like the moment you stood up after a long class or a train ride, finally stretching out and moving again, except it felt like every muscle in his body was feeling that sensation individually, not as a whole unit.

“This was fun,” Mina said, with a soft smile. “Can I join you again?”

“Yeah,” Katsuki agreed readily. “Tomorrow after class?”

“Sounds good!” She grinned, clapping him on the shoulder lightly. “I’ll be looking forward to it all day.”

Katsuki smiled slightly, and together they began the walk back to the dorms, not talking much beyond Mina telling him a few stories, and Katsuki asking two-word questions to let her continue. The peaceful atmosphere quickly dissipatedwhen they stepped through the doors of the dorm building; It wasn’t as loud as the morning had been, but it was still loud as hell, and he cringed when the wall of noise hit him.

“Bakugou!” Kaminari called over their classmates, slapping someone beside him lightly to shut them up. “You haven’t told us any cool stories yet!”

Katsuki pulled a face, but he knew there was no escaping it this time – he was cornered.

“You worked with Deku, you must have the coolest stories!”

“Not really,” he admitted.

“Oh come on, throw us a bone!”

“Deku was busy.” He shrugged, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “I didn’t really spend much time with him personally.”

He felt the pitying looks that turned his way, balling his hands up to keep from lashing out at them for the stupid reaction. He took a deep breath and held it for a while, letting it out slowly, and tried his best to remember all the things he’d talked about with Yutaka. His classmates didn’t know, they hadn’t been there, they didn’t understand. They weren’t trying to be condescending, they were trying to be comforting, even if they were fucking it up royally.

“What about that fight that was on the news?” Uraraka prompted. “That was cool as hell.”

“I didn’t do much. I was asleep when it started.”

“But you got to go fight!”

“Yeah, it was in Trax’s patrol area, so when shit went down they started sending out all the heroes and sidekicks who were in the building as back-up.”

“Oh yeah! I’m so jealous you got to work with Trax!” Mina chimed in, nudging him lightly. “She’s such a bad-ass, I’ve always thought she was so cool. I can’t believe she’s not higher in the charts, it’s so unfair!”

“She’s awesome,” he agreed. “She does a lot of Night Patrols, but Deku let me adjust my schedule to fit them in, once he knew how much I liked working with her.”

“And then Ephia?” Uraraka asked.

“Is that who that was?!” Kaminari asked, jaw dropping. “I didn’t recognise her!”

“Yeah! Miruko told me, when we saw the footage – I’ve heard of her, of course, but I’d never seen her before, and oh my gosh she seems so terrifying?What’s she like?”

“A massive hard-ass.” Katsuki smiled to himself as he said it, despite his best efforts. “But she’s fucking impressive, I’d rather fight Deku than her again.”

“Again?!”

“What? Yeah, I mean we sparred and stuff, I sparred with all the heroes, pretty much.”

“That’s so cool!” Kirishima gushed. “I spent most of my time in meetings and stuff, I didn’t get to spar with the heroes!”

“Oh. I uh, thought that was pretty normal.”

“I learned a lot about the back-end of being a hero!” Kirishima added, ever the optimist. “But I would have loved to spar with people. Well, maybe not Ephia, that quirk looked brutal.”

“She spars quirkless, it’s okay. She’s fucking good though, I could barely land a hit.”

Without even realising he was doing it, Katsuki took a seat on the couch, letting his classmates – his friends – question him all about the heroes he’d worked with and the patrols he’d been on. As he’d gathered in their meetings, Katsuki had been a lot more hands-on than a lot of the interns had been, but he’d never expected them to be just as enthralled by his sparring matches as they were by the big fights people got to have.

Maybe being back with his friends wasn’t so bad after all.

[Chapter 17]