yellopomelo - Tumblr blog

yellopomelo · 3 years ago

Text

i've walked with you, once upon a dream

There's an old saying in the sleepy villages surrounding the crown jewel of the Feuerkönig's sprawling empire — that the Gods will always sing for you, just as long as you were willing to dance yourself to death for them.

At once blessed and cursed with the gift of clairvoyance, you seem to understand that better than most.

♡ — pairings: bakugou katsuki x fem!reader, todoroki shouto x fem!reader

♡ — rating: 18+ [mdni]

♡ — word count: 13.4k [ao3]

♡ — genre: fantasy, heavily inspired by the romantic ballet "giselle" by adolphe adam; bakugou and reader are childhood friends

♡ — warnings: depictions of suicide and allusions to death and murder, heavy angst with a retroactive happy ending, depictions of a heart attack, depictions of drowning, emotional infidelity (on reader and with reader), one instance of animal death (non-descriptive), mentions of alcohol, mentions and usage of weapons (swords, bows, knives), non-descriptive spectrophilia (yes, that is sex with ghosts)

act I. the dream yet to be dreamed

For as long as you can remember, your dreams have always been crafted by the hands of the divine.

Night upon night, as the silver curve of the moon would grow bold against the blanket of darkness draped across the hills and valleys of your homestead, your overtired mind would be guided into slumber by the delicate press of immaterial digits against your temples. Their touch was cold, frigid in a way that only beings from beyond the veil separating the eternal from the transient could be, caressing the sweet contours of your face until your eyelashes would grow heavy with sleep.

And, night upon night, on a maroon backdrop lined with golden thread, yet another frame would be etched into the grad tapestry that made up your otherworldly visions.

Some evenings, the labyrinthine lines weaved into the fabric would make up pictures you couldn’t seem to understand — foreign patterns and lost scripts, familiar faces of your loved ones plastered upon the bodies of beasts, claws and feathers and runes and hymns — all matters that strayed too close to the divine for your mortal head to be able to wrap around.

You’re always left with a pounding headache after these kinds of visions, stretching from the moment you would open your eyes to the time you would close them once more, leaving you to curse each and every deity’s name as you fruitlessly rub at your temples throughout the day.

(Then again, the gift of clairvoyance had to come at a certain price, and history had proven time and time again that the Gods could be steep negotiators.)

Thankfully, visions like these are far and few in between, as most evenings you’re left dreaming of the mundane and familiar, of the taste of warm bread, still soft from the heat of the oven, of benign summer rains and restless winds or, if you’re particularly lucky, the winning number of that week’s lottery.

Tonight’s is one such dream, you decide as you untangle your limbs from sleep-warm sheets, sluggishly making your way towards the writing desk tucked underneath the largest window of your room, intent on writing down the details of your vision before the finer details would become foggy. Your eyes sprint across the dark expanse of lacquered wood until they rest upon the cover of a leatherbound journal — a rich violet, its spine bound with golden and black thread; it’s fairly new, barely twenty entries hidden away between its powdery pages, a parting gift from one of your closest friends, delivered under the burning scrutiny of the Royal Inquisition, before her departure towards the castle.

You try not to let your mind linger on how Kyouka’s gentle lavender perfume is already fading from the parchment as you flip through the pages in search of a blank one, the hand not on the journal reaching out to unscrew the bronze cap off of your favourite quill and dipping it into ink.

The sweet, earthy flavour of roasted chestnuts still coats the roof of your mouth as your pen writes of dried hay ballots being tossed into the open maw of a roaring fire, of the light sheen of sweat coating your hands as they are held tightly by another’s, of the finger-shaped dents in the soft skin of your waist as you’re spun around in circles again and again and again, until your lungs burn and your thighs ache.

The gentle, honeyed warmth of a summer’s sunrise spills over the peaks surrounding the capital of the Feuerreich, just as the tip of the quill curves around the end of your final note regarding your vision — a divine reminder, most likely, of the beginning of the annual harvest festivities that were due to start tonight.

Flustered embarrassment strikes you across the cheek as you think about your unfinished flower wreath, about how you have yet to weave the brightly coloured poppies that Shouto had gifted you the other day.

Your cheeks grow warmer still as his handsome face flashes before your eyes — red hues painting the elegant lines of his cheekbones, mismatched eyes not straying from the chipping bark of the tree that you were resting your back against as he extended the messily cut flowers towards you.

The scandalous intimacy of the action isn’t lost on you — this was something reserved for lovers, for those having already promised their future to one another, something that would certainly make your parents’ lips curl in disappointment if they were to find out that you had allowed, considering you’ve only known the man offering the flowers for a few short months.

Throwing tradition and caution to the wind, you had accepted the bouquet, tucking the red blossoms into the curve of your elbow with a bashful tilt of your lips and a quick, chaste kiss pressed into the marred skin of his cheek before you had rushed home, a promise to see him again at the festival celebrations filling the growing space between you.

You give the halfway filled page in front of you another quick glance, running the smooth edge of your quill over the curve of your lips as you carefully, yet quickly, inspect the text for any lost symbolism. You’re hard pressed to sink your teeth deeper into the simple imagery, satisfied with the conclusion that the Gods’ minds must have also been filled with plans for the harvest festival.

Besides, there’s a feeling of restlessness growing in the hollow of your bones, mind wandering towards images of the precious flower wreath in its completion — white daisies, roses and baby’s breath surrounded by the beautiful red hues of the poppies that Shouto had gifted you. You close the journal with care, gentle fingers dancing across its ornately carved spine one final time before you rise from the table, intent on settling underneath the grand oak at the back of your garden and finishing the preparations for the harvest festival before the sun could reach its peak in the sky.

Your thoughts don't stray from the faint arch of Shouto’s smile as you hurry through each step of your morning routine, switching your sleeping gown with an appropriate tunic and grabbing a chequered blanket from underneath the ironwood frame of your bed. How his long, regal fingers would dig into the elegant curve of your waist as he’d spin you around to the tune of your favourite ballad, how his mismatched eyes would catch the rising flames of the celebratory pyre as it grew towards the sky, how he’d offer to carry you in his strong arms at sunrise, when the petals of the flowers in your wreath would have already shaken and the soles of your feet would be lined with painful blisters.

The rising morning sun caresses the crown of your head as you spread the thick blanket out atop a damp patch of grass, fingers quickly getting to work on weaving the green stems of each poppy into the crown.

You work unbothered for hours on end, delicately placing a red blossom among green leaves or white flowers, only to pluck it out seconds later, dissatisfied with its placement. Even as the chaos of last-minute festival preparations unfurls around you, it seems that your neighbours are far too preoccupied with gathering pumpkins and grapes for their Erntekrone to catch the lovesick glow in your eyes.

Well, all except for one.

“What the fuck’s got you smiling like an idiot, pipsqueak?” An undignified sound forces its way past your lips before your hand can move to cover it up, startled eyes turning to throw a weak glare at the owner of the all too familiar voice.

Bakugou Katsuki — son of the royal seamstress, incredibly skilled swordsman and archer, the closest friend you had kept since childhood, and the biggest thorn in your side as of late.

Leaning against the low stone fence separating your family’s garden from his own, arms crossed and drawn tightly to his chest, he levels you with an unamused stare. You wave him over, annoyance morphing into excitement as you playfully twirl the stem of a poppy between your fingers.

Katsuki was the only one who knew of Shouto’s presence in your life, having run straight to him on the day you had first met the man, frustration bleeding into every word as you shared with him the details of the peculiar encounter. How you had been dreaming of running waters, crumbling stone and the incessant sound of hooves drumming against concrete for the past couple of nights and how that had prompted you to shout after a frantically galloping horse heading stubbornly towards the southern Regnitz bridge, despite the abundance of warning signs placed around the ancient construct. Your alarmed tone had startled the animal into pushing its rider off, leading to said man turning a pair of terribly angry eyes towards you, questioning through gritted teeth whether you thought yourself amusing and if you knew who he was.

Genuine confusion had wiped the offended scowl from his elegant features as the bridge collapsed under the weight of his wildly sprinting horse, the poor animal’s pitiful neighs buried underneath thick slabs of concrete as it drew its last breath. How his bewilderment grew tenfold when you pushed against him with enough fire to match his own, jabbing a finger into his chest and keeping your nose proudly raised as you spit back that you neither knew nor cared about who he was, and that he should be grateful that there was still enough air in his lungs to allow him to scream at you like that.

You could only imagine Katsuki’s surprise when, merely a week later, you would unexpectedly interrupt his daily archery training to gush about how the same man had somehow managed to find you again while you were gathering herbs on the outskirts of the village. How he had greeted you with a clumsily worded apology and a single white lily peeking out of the pocket of his travelling coat — the same flower that would end up tucked on the side of your ear as you made sure not to spare your closest friend any of the details of your chance encounter.

Most important among them being that the mysterious man now had a name — Shouto.

No family name, just Shouto.

One by one, the arrows in Bakugou’s quiver had further strayed from their usually perfect course towards the bullseye, his shoulders growing tense as he listened to you ramble about the walk you had taken across the shores of the Königssee, about the strange beauty of his mismatched eyes, about how great of a listener he actually turned out to be, letting you talk to your heart’s content underneath the gentle shade of the weeping willows.

An arrow had flown completely out of bounds when you brought up your intention of seeing the mysterious man again the following week, sinking into the soft earth on the opposite side of the archery range and breaking you out of your infatuated rambles.

Bakugou never missed.

But Bakugou also never raised his voice at you the way he had done that day

“That’s all it takes for you to throw away all your common fucking sense? Some pretty boy batting his long fucking eyelashes at you?” The words barely made it past the tense cage of his jawline, echoing in the space between your bodies like a sharp slap to your cheek. “Did you forget what happened to your little songbird friend? How they sent the Inquisition to drag her ass to the palace not even one day after people found out she had banshee blood?”

His touch was hot — unbearably so — as he placed his hands on your shoulders, deeply denting the crisp linen of your tunic.

“What do you think will happen once your pretty boy figures out that you’re a fucking clairvoyant, huh? Think the Feuerkönig himself’s gonna make an exception for one little peasant girl, of all people?”

He was steadfast in his onslaught of mockery — naive, gullible, so fucking stupid — all for thinking it wise to place your good faith into the hands of a man who had given you nothing more than his first name.

“Enough,” you remember saying, teeth clenching around a pitiful sob as you pressed an open palm against the dark material of his leather doublet. Your heart burned, and your chest felt tight, as if your ribs had instinctively tightened around the spasming muscle, protecting it from the sharp edge of Bakugou’s words.

Yet still, your own pride burned hotter.

“I won't hear this from you of all people, Bakugou," you uttered, voice crumbling around the familiar syllables of his name.

You hadn’t pushed further, his fingers growing lax against your shoulders enough of a confirmation that the underlying meaning of your words had been clearly understood.

After all, between the two of you, you weren’t the one wielding a broken half of some ancient sword that the Feuerkönig had been coveting long before the two of you were even born, you weren’t the one whose skin had been engraved with dozens of protective — and very much outlawed — runes, you weren’t the one sheltering the last of the dragonfolk in your guest bedroom.

Shrugging his hands off of your shoulders, you had silently made your way through the open gate of the archery range, the blunt edge of your nails leaving deep crescent marks into your palms as the unmistakable sound of wood splintering into a thousand pieces reached your ears.

You hadn’t spoken a word to him since — not when he would shoot an arrow into the wooden frame of your porch each time he would spot you sneaking out under the cover of night to meet up with Shouto, not when you had spotted his mare feeding on the opposite shore of the Königssee while you were out on a solitary stroll one evening, not when he would show up at your doorstep to deliver the clothes his father had altered at your mother’s request, your eyes refusing to meet his as you would shut the heavy door in his face before he had a chance to get even a single word in.

Yet there's something about today, something in the sticky, summer’s end heat, perfumed by falling leaves and freshly pressed grapes, that makes you want to pull back the curtain of silence that you had hung up between the two of you.

He doesn't budge from his spot against the stone fence, wary of the self-satisfied twist of your lips and the wicked glimmer in your eyes. The heavy feeling of dread lining his stomach grows tenfold when you heave a theatrical sigh, rising from your spot on the chequered blanket to make your way towards him, a single red blossom clutched tightly between your fingers.

You lean in close as you talk to him, cautious of the warm autumn wind carrying your secrets to unwanted ears, the bare skin of your elbow barely grazing against his arm as you press your upper body into the cold stone of the fence, and Bakugou finds himself hard pressed to forgive his heart for skipping a beat.

After all, even as you stand before him, the crown of your head a hair’s breadth from his lips and the comforting notes of your familiar perfume sitting heavily on the tip of his tongue, he knows you’re not here for him.

"He bought me flowers, Bakugou — red flowers." And of course you look positively radiant as you tell him that, the apples of your cheeks stretched into the sweetest of smiles as honey drips from your mouth. You don’t push the conversation further — there’s no need to, not when the man at your side is as familiar with the meaning of your divine visions as the dozens of journals you had filled out over the years.

It’s easy for the two of you to slip into this familiar discussion, about the one dream that you've recurrently had for almost as long as the Gods have been meddling with your sleep. The most important scene of the grand tapestry that they had woven into your mind through the years, and the one you hold closest to your heart.

The oneiric collage would always start the same way, with the scent of burning wood wafting gently through the air — autumn, you’d always guess, betrayed by the startling absence of birdsong and the sweet aftertaste of freshly picked grapes coating the roof of your mouth.

A divine hand reaches beyond the dense cover of the fog that blankets your vision, pulling at silver tendrils of moonlight and threading them into the distinctive silhouette of a mortal figure — featureless, except for its towering height and the broad span of its shoulders, easily moving across the barren planes of your subconscious to offer its hand out to you.

There was always a strange sense of familiarity to its fluid grace, to the way it would pull you into the glowing expanse of its chest each time, wrapping a weightless arm around the curve of your back and digging its fingers into the contours of your waist, guiding your steps into perfect squares as the pretend moon above your heads dips into the dark plateau of your mind — a proper waltz, if you’ve ever danced one.

An entire garden blooms from the tips of its fingers, the evergreen stems of recognizable scarlet blossoms trickling down the bend of your spine and tying your body to theirs as a carpet of red petals follow the trail of your steps.

It had to be Shouto — the figure in your dreams. And it had to be tonight, by the familiar warmth of the yearly festival pyre, among the ancient pillars of the ironwood forest, the red petals of the flowers that he had gifted you scattered at your feet as would lead you into a slow waltz.

Except —

“You always dream of red roses, not fucking poppies, you moron.” You roll your eyes at Bakugou’s response — twice over when you hear him kiss his teeth in displeasure — not for the first time thinking it funny how important the smallest details of your dreams would become once he was on the losing side of an argument.

“You’re acting like I never got misleading visions before.” You scoff, fingers twirling the thin stem of the flower faster and faster, the hypnotising rhythm of the red petals a much more welcome sight than the burning judgement behind Bakugou’s crimson stare. “Remember that terrible flood I dreamt about for weeks, that turned out to be only three days of rain?”

The exaggerated downturn of your lips is theatrical, as is the scrunch of your nose, an attempt to keep the conversion light and easy, to placate the anger you can feel slowly stirring to life within him. “You know they like to mess with me sometimes, why would this be any different? They’d have me chase after roses for the rest of my days, then send my lover to me bearing poppies instead.”

The movement of your fingers stops, a gentle hand gingerly laying the delicate blossom on the cold stone of the fence, in the narrow space between your bodies — at once an olive branch and a question. You’re not asking for his approval on the matter, per se, having already made up your mind on Shouto being the one that Gods would have you love until the end of your days, but you’d be lying if you said that Bakugou’s resentment wouldn’t leave a nasty scar across your heart for all your days to come.

Seconds of silence trickle down into minutes, the curve of your smile turning rueful as you watch a storm of undisclosed emotions brew behind the glowing crimson of his eyes, and your blood runs cold with the realisation that, for once, you can’t seem to be able to read him. Can’t place your finger on the hollowness of his silence — not simmering with unspoken anger, not the prelude to an onslaught of heated words, but not comfortable either, nothing like the easy dips in the long conversations you used to have — just empty, as if he had nothing to say to you on the matter, or at all.

Yet there's a slight tremble playing at Bakugou’s lips, something uneasy about the way his fingers curl and uncurl over the strong curve of his biceps, something about the blank porcelain mask that he had drawn over his features that feels uncertain and fragile, almost if he himself wasn't willing to wrap his hands around whatever terrible feeling was rattling around in the space between his ribs.

On any other day, you would've let him sort through his feelings on his own, let whatever bad mood had settled into the pit of his stomach ferment until he could at least throw out a couple of curse words about what had actually bothered him, at which point he would usually seek you out himself to vent about his frustrations.

But something about the weight of the silence between you has you agitated and impatient, and as selfish as it probably was, you couldn’t find it within yourself to give him the time to structure his emotions into something resembling coherence — not today.

“Promise me you’ll at least try to act civil around him, Bakugou, that’s all I ask of you.” Your tone is frail, a wispy little thing that you grow to regret as soon as the words pass through your lips.

“I’ll act however the fuck I please, woman.” There’s a tremble between each of his words, something ugly and sharp and cold, something that not even the gentle kiss of the midday sun against the crown of your head could thaw out.

His frown twists into a snarl, dexterous fingers moving to pick up the blossom before you could pick it up and step backwards, twirling it between his thumb and middle finger just as you had done previously. The heavy weight of his mockery fills the space between your bodies. “When he’s done with you and you realise you’ve been grasping at straws this whole time, don’t come crying to me about it.”

Acid gathers underneath your tongue as you watch his fingers release the poppy, as the delicate petals are mercilessly crushed underneath an exaggerated stomp of his leather boot, as the harsh curve of his lips turns into a taunting smirk, almost as if he was waiting for you to retaliate with equal ferocity, to coat the knife he’d been slowly pushing into your soft heart in poison and gauge his eyes out with it.

In hindsight, you find that the way his expression crumbles when your lips simply curl around a small, exhausted sigh to be much more satisfying than any jab you could have delivered to his pride.

“Don’t worry — I won’t.” You don’t give him time to push the blade deeper into your heart, throwing a strained smile his way and pushing yourself off of the fence to make your way back towards the chequered wool blanket. Shaky fingers resume settling the red flowers into the gaps in your wreath, each placement clumsy and poorly centred as your vision blurs with unshed tears.

You’re not sure how long Bakugou remains standing on the other side of the fence, scarlet gaze trained on the tense line of your shoulders as the pile of flowers spread around you steadily dwindles, watching you fiddle with the alignment of red and white blossoms until you’re satisfied.

The wind carries the deep rasp of his voice to your ears when he finally takes his leave, and you wait for the heavy stomp of his boots to fade before allowing a violet sob to wash over your frame, a storm of tears pouring down on gentle petals scattered across your dress.

“See you at the fucking festival.” As your bleary eyes dance across the red and white hues splayed out in front of you, you find yourself hoping that you won’t.

act II. a kiss of light, a kiss of flame

Among the numerous celebrations marked off in the columns of the Imperial Calendar, the harvest festival had always been your favourite. The pleasant, early autumn breeze caressing your legs as the light material of your skirt flutters around you, the sweet echoes of harps and dulcimers and the arms that wrap securely around your waist as you’re pulled into an endless chain of steps, the delicate kiss of a flame against your skin as you sit near the edge of the bonfire, fiercely competing against Bakugou to see which one of you could name the most constellations or eat more roasted chestnuts — small details in the grand picture of the festivities, but ones that you hold near and dear to your heart nonetheless.

The event is harder to enjoy this year, when your heart is torn between the familiar, comfortable warmth of Bakugou’s presence and the intoxicating promise of Shouto’s gentle hands dipping into the bend of your waist — between your past and your future.

Your steps are heavy as they carry you from stand to stand, from carnival games to handmade jewellery displays, eyes dancing across both cherub cheeks and crow’s feet as you aimlessly search for the familiar curve of a strong jaw — whose exactly, is what your mind hasn’t settled on yet.

Despite the pain caused by his words, you can’t find it in your heart to deny that you would find comfort in Bakugou’s presence, in the way he’d drape a wool blanket over your uncovered shoulders and slip a warm mug of ale between your fingers, an unspoken apology bubbling up into the thin layer of foam spilling over its edges.

The irony of it all has a bitter chuckle scratching at your throat — how all you had been thinking about for that past week had been Shouto’s hands as he would lead you in slow circles around the fire, and how all you could think about now was the embers of Bakugou’s eyes, ones that you haven’t seen burn with anything other than resentment in far too long.

Grabbing a cup of red wine from a vendor, you allow your steps to slowly carry you towards the edge of the grove, where the ancient ironwood grew thick and tall and the people were far and few in between. Dimming rays of sunlight peek at your distressed silhouette through the dense crown of the trees, laying pitiful kisses across the bare skin of your shoulders as your tears dilute the alcohol sloshing in your cup.

The sun dips below the horizon as you remain seated underneath the canopy of wilting leaves, washing the bitterness down with small gulps of sweet wine, eyes trained on the hypnotising circles drawn across the yellowing grass by the playful steps of a dozen young girls. The alcohol dulls your senses, so much that the sway of a travelling coat in the evening wind doesn’t reach your ears until the heavy material is draped over your shoulders.

“I thought you said that the harvest celebrations were supposed to be… fun?” A familiar chuckle follows the question, making you send a half-hearted glare towards the man across from you, the downwards turn of your brow less than intimidating as it peeks out from underneath a sea of red and white flowers.

“What fun is there to be had alone?” The theatrical upturn of your nose is a ruse, of course — anything to keep the fraying ends of your confidence from slipping through your fingers, anything to spare yourself the embarrassment of him finding out that you’ve wasted the evening away licking at the open wounds of your heart. “Not like I can steal a dance from myself, anyway.”

“But I could… if the lady would allow it.” Turning your head slightly towards him, you let your eyes travel up long, elegant fingers, up the broad line of his shoulders, draped in what looked like fine, indigo silk, up until you reach his eyes, mismatched grey and blue expectantly staring you down.

“The lady just might, for a price.” You slot your hand in his, rising from your seated position with as much grace as the alcohol in your bloodstream would allow. Excitement and anxiety run across the curve of your spine as Shouto pulls you into his chest, both hands coming to rest on the small of your back as you sway to the harmonious tune of bard’s tale.

Four perfectly aligned steps, repeated over and over and over again, until precise squares are imprinted into the wilting grass — it’s everything you’ve ever dreamt about and more, and for a split second you think yourself a fool for ever doubting that you’d find happiness anywhere else but between the pillars of Shouto’s strong arms.

“And what might that price be, my lady?” There’s a dip in his tone, something sinful and inviting, his eyes flickering to the bare skin of your shoulders as it peeks out from underneath his dark travelling coat, to the proud column of your throat, to the delicate lines of your cupid’s bow.

An exaggerated cough cuts through the tenderness of the moment, your partner releasing his intimate hold on your body with a speed that leaves you reeling, hands crossing behind his back as if the touch of your skin had burned him.

His delicate features scrunch up in confusion at the intruder, one that you don’t even need to turn around to identify. Venom pools underneath your tongue as Bakugou Katsuki himself steps towards you, and in this moment there’s nothing that you would love more than to spit it in his pretty, ruby eyes, to watch the corrosive acid of your anger burn him from the inside out.

It is only in your detriment that Bakugou knows you too well, knows that if he leaves you any room to do so you’ll talk your way out of his grasp once again — which is why he pushes an empty ale mug into your hands before you even have the chance to open your mouth, his eyes meeting yours for less than a second before they roll back towards Shouto.

“Go refill this for me.” His tone sounds casual, dismissive even — so at odds with the tense line of his jaw, with the way his fingers dig into the metal curve of the mug.

You’re not given the chance to retaliate, the delicate press of Shouto’s fingers against your upper arm anchoring your fury before you could unleash it upon the other man, addressing you calmly even as his eyes wouldn’t stray from Katsuki’s.

“Please also fetch me something to drink, anything you fancy.” You comply, reluctance following your every step as you slowly distance yourself from the range of their staring contest, making your way towards the centre of the grove and ordering two mugs of warm ale from the first vendor that you stumble across.

The old man hurriedly pours out the drinks once he notices how much you’re fidgeting with a stray thread from your coat, the agitation taking root in the middle of your chest spilling out from your eyes as you keep looking back towards the edge of the clearing. You don’t want to think about what, about how they must be talking to each other, about the smoke clouding Bakugou’s vision as he stared Shouto down, about the way his fingers twitched around the loop of his belt, dangerously close to where you knew he would usually carry a silver dagger.

You almost sprint across the clearing once you’re handed the two foam-topped mugs, dodging friends and strangers alike as they try to pull you into the rhythm of a song or dance, mind focused on making it back to the clearing as fast as your legs could carry you.

A cool wave of relief washes over your shoulders once you reach your destination, finding only Shouto waiting for you, hair a tousled mess and pristine blouse littered with finger-shaped wrinkles, but still in one piece.

Thank the Gods above.

You rush to his side, flooding him with alarmed questions that he so masterfully dodges, pressing a cool hand to the small of your back and telling you to breathe, deeply, telling you that he was perfectly fine, and that nothing of consequence had happened, except that “your friend — he doesn’t seem to care for me much.”

The look that crosses your face must have told you that you’re not entirely convinced of this, yet he somehow manages to easily steer you away from the topic of his and Bakugou’s altercation, knocking the mug that you had brought him against your own and leading the conversation with questions about the drink you’ve brought him, about the faint cheers of children breaking through the dense cover of foliage, about the display of fireworks that was planned for later in the night. Despite his typically reserved nature, he’s good at distracting you, making it so easy to lose yourself to the conversation that seemed to flow effortlessly between the two of you, each small sip of your warm drink helping wash down your previous unease.

Your heart feels at peace, basking in the way Shouto’s eyes never stray from yours as you talk, in the way his body leans in closer to yours as the alcohol flows through his bloodstream, in the way his fingers would reach out to pluck each stray petals falling from your wreath out of your hair — his touch is painfully gentle, almost overtly so, as if he was expecting you to fade into smoke beneath his fingertips.

The fragile intimacy of the moment is short lived, however, shattering in the palm of your hands as the brassy echoes of a faraway hunting horn pierce through the easy chatter and music filling the grove — something powerful and distinctive, its resonance alone demanding respect and obedience, something that causes the man at your side to suddenly rise from his seated position, patting the pockets of his dark trousers in a frenzied hurry.

You stand up alongside him, fingers gripping the front of his tunic as you explain with a roll of your eyes that it’s just noise bleeding over from the royal hunting party, scattered throughout the forest in search of boars and deer, a yearly tradition that leaves a sizeable part of your forest razed to the ground and a bitter taste in the mouths of those dwelling in the villages around it.

You understand his apprehension — the royal family was, after all, always followed in its trail by the inquisition, and a peculiar-looking traveller such as Shouto would surely be immediately taken in for questioning, the king’s well-known distaste for the unusual overriding any sense of social grace, even in the midst of a grand celebration such as the harvest festival.

Yet the uneasy look in his mismatched eyes persists even as you explain that the royals would surely not make their way this deep into the forest, would not dare taint their precious lungs breathing the same air as the commoners living around the stone walls of their fortress, and would most likely pass around the edges of the grove before returning to whatever frivolous activities they were wasting the villagers’ hard earned money on.

“I have to go, now” breaks up each of your sentences, leaving you unsure of whether he’s even talking to you or solely to himself, wild eyes shifting through the clearing as the echoes of hooves hitting the dirt steadily grow closer to the edge of the dense tree-line.

Sweet whispers of comfort die on your tongue as a flurry of horses rushes into the clearing, the Imperial banner flying proud and high into the night sky. The royal sigil, etched in a thread of gold across an indigo background glowed softly under the rising flames of the celebratory bonfire. The inquisition’s cavalry rounds the fire twice, scattering the dancing couples and the singing minstrels, their presence sending everyone into a surge of momentum as they hurried to straighten their spine and bow their heads low, ears sharp as they anticipated the harsh trumpets announcing the presence of the one man whose mere name could make your knees shake and your weak heart tremble in fear — the Feuerkönig himself.

Your blood turns to ice as Enji Todoroki’s terribly imposing frame comes into view. It’s not the first time that you see the man in person, having been dragged by your parents to the yearly military parades ever since you were a child, but even so you can’t help the way your body curves in on itself in fear, subconsciously trying to put as much distance as possible between the two of you.

The broad expanse of his chest rises beneath the elegant scarlet of his tunic as he draws a deep breath, a fierce roar rising above the low notes of the trumpets that followed his arrival.

A single word leaves his lips — a name — its syllables ringing across your eardrums like a heavy slap to your cheek.

“SHOUTO!”

Cold fingers overlap yours, quickly untangling them from the silky, indigo material draped over the man whose name was still floating through the evening air, whose usually gentle touch had turned rough and hurried as he made haste in pulling himself from you.

Terrible, bitter realisation slides down your throat and settles heavily into the pit of your stomach as you watch the person you thought to have grown to know intimately over the past couple of months contort himself into something sharp and frigid and awfully familiar — but not from the time spent with him, far from it. The steely, muted tones of his eyes, the regal upturn of his nose, the flawless skin on his right side — features that you have seen elegantly rendered in charcoal or dark ink across newspapers or royal bulletins through the years.

Hell, it was the same profile that would peek out of your coin purse every Wednesday morning as you paid for fresh bread.

Shouto Todoroki — Kronprinz of the Fire Kingdom, the last born son of King Enji Todoroki and next in line for the throne. A boy whose face you had grown up scribbling moustaches and horns onto alongside Katsuki and Kyouka, a man whose legacy and authority you had been raised to fear.

A tired, humourless chuckle passes by your lips as you realise that lying comes much easier to him than you would’ve expected — there’s no waver in his voice as he answers each of his father’s pressing questions, no uncertain blink or misplaced word as he claims to have followed his horse to this very clearing when it had wandered astray during the hunt, only to have lost the track of time as he got roped into easy conversation and easier drinks. Bile rises in your throat when the king’s brow twitches in slight disbelief, your mind flashing with images of your wrists in chains and the sigil of the inquisition tattooed in red ink across your forehead.

The disastrous trail of your thoughts is cut short by the echoes of a dulcet tone, gracefully rising above the deep, gruff voices of the arguing father and son, but losing none of its underlying sense of inborn authority.

It makes your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth.

The elegant silhouette of a woman peeks through the walls raised by the inquisition as they keep a tight formation around the members of the royal family, raven curls spilling over elegant shoulder blades when she leans forward on her white mare, excited eyes taking in the bonfire, the vendors, the carnival games.

“Your majesty, may we linger for a while — the Kronprinz and I? I have never witnessed the way that the harvest is celebrated beyond the gates." There's a charming lilt to her voice — befitting of a foreign princess, you suppose — a certain timbre that creeps underneath the folds of your psyche and sinks its claws into your conscience, something that draws you to her side and compels you to play by her desires.

It lifts the shroud of silence wrapped around the royal party, and even from beyond the shadows you can see how shock washes over Shouto’s face as his father barks a flurry of orders to the vanguard of the inquisition, tasking them with guarding the crown prince and his betrothed as they took part in the commoner’s festivities.

His betrothed.

(Long, steady fingers dig into the elegant lines of her corseted waist as he wordlessly helps her dismount, a well-practised step of a routine that they must have grown into over decades of having known each other.)

His future wife.

(Elegantly manicured nails crease the indigo material of his blouse as her hand, soft and unblemished and untainted by the soil and the sun, dips into the curve of his elbow, the casual touch speaking of an intimacy that went beyond titles and duties, beyond the orchestrated nature of their arrangement.)

Your future queen.

(Easy chatter flows from their lips as unhurried steps carry them from stall to stall, humble merchants breaking their backs in a flurry of complicated, formal bows once they spot the royal couple approaching. She talks, the corners of her lips never faltering from a warm smile as childlike wonder pours from her eyes and hands, and he actually responds, each of her words finding its pair between his, the thread of their conversation never seeming to tangle into ungraceful knots of silence.)

A woman you will never be able to match.

(The bonfire’s rising flames peek through the cracks of the thin terracotta you’ve sculpted your relationship out of, the unglazed ceramic scratching the pads of your fingertips as you run them over the fragile construct. The rotten truth is that it’s worth nothing — nothing to the passage of time that would have crumbled the baked earth into dust, sooner or later, and certainly nothing to him, not when he’s always had his hands wrapped around finely crafted porcelain.)

You turn your back towards the clearing as soon as the shock leaves your bloodstream, keeping to the shadows as hurried steps carry you towards the safe haven of your home, fervently praying to every deity in the damn pantheon that you would make it to your porch without meeting anyone from the festival.

Alas, the Gods take your desperate prayers and spit them out at your feet as you catch sight of a very familiar silhouette leaning against the red wood of your front door, similarly coloured eyes narrowing at the sight of your figure as it stumbles out of the dense treeline. There’s a ghost of a self-satisfied grin playing at his lips, now turned into a concerned frown at the silver rivulets of tears pouring down your cheeks, at the way your shoulders tremble underneath the thick material of the travelling coat still perched atop them.

“Oi, look at me, woman.” His hands instinctively reach out for you, and even through the heavy curtains of tears clouding your vision you still catch the glint of intricately carved bronze, shining in the pale light of the full moon. Thick, scarred fingers wrap around the curved edge of a hunting horn, something elegant and precious in its make and model, something that speaks of status — of royalty.

You grab onto his wrist before he even has the chance to think of pulling away, bringing the instrument into your line of sight for a closer inspection. Bakugou remains uncharacteristically quiet as you twist his palm from side to side, letting your eyes roam over the elaborate design until you spot it — twin roses twisting around one another, their joint petals the resting spot for a crown of flames.

The royal fucking sigil.

“You had to find out, sooner or later.” There’s no spite in his voice as he says it, no fire between the sparse syllables of his brief justification, and for the first time since you’ve known him you find that he can’t quite look you in the eyes as he talks.

And he’s right — of course he is. After all, you were living within a fantasy with a clear expiration date, one that you’ve seen stamped across the numerous banners and bulletins announcing the upcoming royal wedding.

Your heart stutters in your chest, the sharp edges of your ribs digging into the soft tissue as it takes on a thundering rhythm. The contours of the world dull as your vision grows hazier by the second, the echoes of your heartbeat ringing in your ears and drowning out the slew of words leaving Katsuki’s lips. There’s a dense layer of fog clouding your mind, keeping you from understanding anything that the man across from you is trying to tell you, keeping your tongue from wrapping around even the simplest of sentences.

You’re exhausted — have to be, for there was no other reason as to why your knees are buckling in an attempt to keep you upright, why your shoulders were sagging underneath the weight of Shouto’s travelling coat.

You weakly push against Bakugou’s arms, the few remaining scraps of your pride clutched firmly between your teeth as you will yourself not to shatter at his feet. He doesn’t budge from his spot though, not this time, continuing to talk your ear off even as your eyes cross behind closed eyelids, even as you give no indication of having heard even one word of his monologue.

The sour taste of bile coats your tongue, and before you can even realise it your body lurches forward, the entire contents of your stomach spilling at Bakugou’s feet even as his hands shoot out to catch your falling frame. Alarmed fingers grip and twist your body, fanning out the material of the thick coat onto the cold, wet grass and gently laying your limp figure out on top of it. Glassy eyes catch the rubies of his gaze, worry clinging to his long lashes as his mouth moves faster than your fogged consciousness can register — something about a doctor, or a nurse, perhaps? Something about waiting it out, waiting for him?

Oh, ripples like a single teardrop across the still waters of your thoughts. This is how you meet your end.

It’s a terrifyingly quiet thought, almost subdued compared to the aimless rhythm of your heart, drowning out the familiar rasp of Bakugou’s voice. Vowels and consonants bleed into each other as he yells at you not to move from where you’re gracelessly spread across the grass. A large hand presses lightly against your sternum, a single heartbeat rising up to meet his fingertips — it’s a promise, delicate and earnest, and so terribly worthless.

You want to hate him for it, for rushing off to find a doctor or a nurse among the intoxicated masses still caught up in the euphoria of the celebrations, for not staying by your side as the fragile valves of your heart collapsed underneath the heavy weight of heartbreak, for leaving you to draw your last breath cold and alone beneath the silver glare of the round moon.

But you can’t — you never could — and that has to be one of the most bitter ironies of your life — you couldn’t hate him when he used to tug on the ends of your hair, knocking whatever book you were reading out of your hands and dragging you to the archery range to watch him practice until the sun would dip below the horizon, couldn’t hate him even when he left without a word in the dead of night to travel across the known world, only to return with a back full of illegal runes and the last descendant of a dying race attacked to his hip, couldn’t hate him when he revealed the truth of your secret relationship in the most painful and humiliating way.

Your fingers idly run over the golden buttons of Shouto’s coat, counting down your last heartbeats as your body grows colder and stiffer.

Now him — him you could find it in your heart to hate.

The sweet curve of a smile you once thought you would love forever now clogged your arteries, flooding your bloodstream with the poison of his deception, and you can’t help but regret that you would die without knowing why; Why would he decide to plant the seeds of a garden that he was never going to tend to? Why would he carve a spot in your life that he knew he was going to eventually desert? Why would the crown prince, of all people, risk soiling the obviously perfect arrangement he had with his obviously perfect betrothed for the cheap entertainment of poking holes into the weak heart of a simple village girl?

Why, why, why?

Your fingers wrap around the edges of something hiding in one of the inside pockets of his coat, something heavy and sturdy and sharp. Adrenaline courses through your crumbling body as you lift the mysterious object so your bleary eyes can inspect it — a hunting knife, sterling silver and beautifully carved with the royal emblem across its curved edge.

Your heart steadily cools down, the mounting arpeggios of its pulse dwindling down to wispy, broken notes, stark reminders of the quickly fading embers of your life.

Yet you find that your pride still runs hot.

You wouldn’t let Shouto have the last word in your life, wouldn’t allow the roses from your godforsaken dreams to crawl up your windpipe and strangle you — if you had to die, it would be by your hand, and your hand solely.

The twin blossoms engraved into the flat sides of the blade glint mockingly at you beneath the moon’s gaze as you hold the sharp edge over the proud column of your throat. Vivid scarlet coats the flawless curve of the knife as one last humourless chuckle spills from your lips — you supposed you had been right in the end, Shouto had brought you roses, red ones at that, just not in the way you would’ve ever expected it.

The world fizzles out at the edges of your vision, heavy eyelids falling shut once you remove the white and red wreath from the crown of your hair, gently placing the bloody knife atop it. You can feel the flimsy thread of your life being spun around the wrinkly fingers of the Three Fates as they wrap it into a tight knot around the twenty-third notch. The silver glow of the full moon cradles you in its gentle embrace as their golden scrissons run through the thin material, a single snip echoing into the cover of the night.

The last thing you hear before the three Fates wrap your soul with the heartbreakingly short thread of your lifetime is Bakugou’s broken chants of your name, steadily growing closer to where your body lays in a pool of your own blood.

As selfish as you know it is, you pray he burns those damned journals of yours.

act III. i'm yours, divine

Your body was buried quietly the day after you had passed, your loved one’s tear-filled eyes following the macabre glow of the lead casket beneath the silver glare of the full moon as they made their way deeper into the forest towards the unhallowed grounds of your resting place.

Hands heavy with grief lifted your shrouded body from the coffin, delicately placing it atop the blanket of rosemary that had been scattered over the cold soil. Your family and friends sat vigil that night — prayers were read, hymns were sung, and flowers were inlaid among the springs of herb, each scattered petal engraved with a wish for you to find peace in your slumber, for your heart to finally find its place of rest as you would cross beyond the veil.

For thirty days after your burial, the bold curve of the moon remains your sole guardian, watching over you as the flowers laid atop your headstone had slowly crumbled to dust.

The forest turns restless on the night she grows fullest again, heavy silver dripping through the sparse openings of the canopy of leaves that shelters your resting place as the cold wind carries over the howls of wolves and the cries of owls — this was the night in which the veil separating the living from the dead were at their weakest, the night in which your soul could finally ascend, once and for all.

But even in death, rest would not come quite this easily for you.

Silver tendrils of moonlight gaze down upon you as a perversion of life is forcefully breathed into your lungs, as the thread binding together the remnants of your soul is carefully wrapped around the sturdy shaft of a wooden spindle, a woman’s careful touch spinning your soul into a new shape as it’s pulled from beyond the veil.

There’s no light to welcome you as your sleepy eyelids flutter open, no warmth to seep into your cold, stiff limbs, only the darkness of your shroud and the putrid scent of the wet soil packed tightly on top of your body as you scream until your throat turns raw.

Your lungs burn as your eyes open once more, gaze now resting on the elegant curl of the letters that make up your name, engraved into the smooth slab of marble that lays atop the earth underneath which your body had been buried.

Your body lurches forward on its own accord, shaky fingers reaching out to trace the dips and rises of the script, and you can’t help the flinch that rattles your figure when your fingertips pass through the pale stone. You remain hunched over the uneven hump of your grave, immaterial digits tracing over the bare skin of your arms, lifting them towards the sky and choking back an incredulous sob as you realise that you could peek at the stars through the transparency of your skin.

A harmony of thin whispers presses against your eardrums, carried on the wings of the cold, late-autumn winds as the air grows heavy with the cloying scent of honeysuckle and jasmine. There’s a delicate weight digging into the tense line of your shoulders, the feathery touch of a dozen weightless palms pushing your body backwards until you’re resting on your back against the dewy grass.

It’s an odd feeling — the way you could still somewhat make out the pointy edges of each blade of grass as they prickle your skin through the thin layer of the white dress you had been buried in, the way you could still feel the rough texture of the earth underneath you even as your skin dissipated into slim clouds of smoke whenever it would brush against a solid object.

You keep your eyes towards the sky, the radiant tendrils of moonlight bending and twisting around one another until you’re left staring at twin pools of molten silver, carved into the elegant face of a woman in whose lap you suddenly find your body splayed across. Your body jolts upward on reflex, only to be kept in place by the same dozen of hands, their comforting touch now suffocating as you’re chained to your spot within the immaterial columns of her arms.

While the woman’s lips don’t so much as twitch when she addresses you, frozen into an eternally youthful, yet bittersweet smile, the dulcet tones of her voice rattle across your skull. Words dipped in honey rot in the pit of your stomach as she explains the unusual situation you find yourself in, her delicate vocabulary making your teeth grind together in frustration.

She was the one who had summoned your soul from beyond the veil — your withering heart having called out to her, its soft tissue marred by the burning sigil of a man’s betrayal. Neither mortal nor spectre, your spirit now belonged to the Willis, maidens whose love had once been scavenged and deserted. Many had been abandoned at the altar on their wedding days, drawing their last breath beneath the pristine white veil that would later become their shroud, while their lungs collapsed underneath the delicate boning of their gowns.

They had all died of broken hearts, and had subsequently been raised from their graves by the queen of the Willis — Myrtha, her floating voice caressed your ears, steel claws lovingly running over your temples — to haunt the ancient forests of the Fire Kingdom, to rip the soul out of the throat of any man that they might encounter through the night.

Their shadows circle your sprawled out form as they rise towards the starry night sky, each of their stories forever imprinted into your eyelids, the chains of their vengeance tying your post-mortem fate to theirs. The moon breaks throughout the translucence of their skin as their silhouettes repeatedly come together and fall apart, fingers tightly intertwined and feet quickly moving through a familiar sequence of steps — three forward and one back, in a circle that spins on and on and on.

The spectres vanish underneath the blanket of darkness that covers the sky, leaving in a flurry of fluttering white tulle and bone chilling, high-pitched giggles, presumably to scour the forest for the unlucky souls of their next victims. You’re left alone in the small clearing of trees — just you, the glacial glare of the moon, and the slab of marble that marked your resting place.

You rise to a sitting position, casting your eyes across the forest glade — you’ve been buried closer to the edge of the dense forest, rather than within its ironwood heart, ancient oaks and scattered pines framing the trail towards the shores of the Königssee. Your gaze falls towards the stone that has been placed at the head of your grave, for the first time taking note of the vibrant wreath laid upon it — poppies, beautifully woven and twisted between stems of baby’s breath and willow and cypress branches.

A mockery of your death, if you’re ever to see one.

There’s an itch crawling from the middle of your palms towards your fingertips, something vengeful and twisted that makes you want to sink your hands into the wilting scarlet petals and tear at the arrangement until it is nothing more than a ruin at your feet, much like the love than had killed you. Angry, stinging tears pool at the bottom of your lashes as your fingers scatter into thin, grey smoke when you reach for the dried out wreath, the reality of your situation sinking deeply into the hollows of your bones.

A cold zephyr takes pity on you, pulling your trembling form within its gentle embrace and carrying you towards the edge of the forest, the strong trunks of ancient oaks and pines blending into the elegant curves of weeping willows, the wilting grass underneath your bare feet replaced by coarse sand and small, colourful stones — the shores of the Königssee.

You slowly step into the cold water, feeling it phase through your skin as you start a slow crawl around the edge of the lake. Your eyes are drawn to the illuminated contours of the castle, its pristine white towers spearing the clouds that rolled down from the mountains which surrounded the Fire Kingdom’s capital.

The royal wedding must have already passed, judging by the high mast of the flags that lined the towers. Renewed resentment crawls between your ribs as you think about Shouto — how dashing he must have looked in his black and gold tunic, how his mismatched eyes must have lit up as he slid an intricately carved golden band over the long, elegant finger of his betrothed, how his soft lips must have trembled underneath the weight of his vows.

There’s a warm glow coming from the largest chamber in what you know to be the Feuerprinz’s tower. He was probably laying in bed with her right now — easy, intimate chatter keeping them from blowing out the candles and letting their eyes rest. Large, cold hands, the same ones that had so lovingly plucked poppy petals out of your hair on the night of your death, were probably pressed against the rounding curve of her stomach, where she must already be carrying the next royal heir, like the perfect, dutiful wife that you’re certain she is.

You can’t help the bitterness that runs in rivulets over your transparent cheeks, dripping off your chin and breaking against the still surface of the lake without as much as a ripple. The brief stroll around the lake brings you no comfort, its dark waters poisoned by the memories you had created along its shores with Shouto, the hours you used to spend talking underneath the cover of the weeping willows now felt like shards underneath the bare soles of your feet.

You had spent most of your childhood playing around these shores, dodging your chores and sneaking out of your parents’ garden, running as fast as your little legs could carry you in the direction of the lake, where Bakugou would already be waiting for you, cherub cheeks puffed out as he chastised you for being late.

Regret tastes sour on your tongue as you think about him, about how you will never get to see him grow old and grey like you always thought you would. How he would never learn about the complicated wave of emotions that would wash over your frame whenever you would see him — it was your best kept secret, and one that you had always known you would take to your grave.

As much as you had truly fallen in love with Shouto — quickly and unexpectedly, like diving over the edge of a cliff into frozen water, sinking deeply but rising to the surface just as fast — your feelings for Katsuki were something that you had steadily grown into over the years. It was a love that you had not even realised you had been nurturing until it was staring you dead in the eyes, until you figured out that it was his scarlet gaze, and not the hot weather, behind the clamminess of your hands and the warmth of your cheeks.

It was the only secret you’ve ever kept from him. So many years ago, when he had first fled the village under the cover of night to chase the shadow of the green haired magical menace that used to live across from you both, you had realised that you couldn’t possibly shackle him to you with the heavy chains of your selfish feelings. The Gods had crafted him for battle and victory, and it would’ve been incredibly heartless of you, a simple village girl with nothing to her name but strange dreams and a weakened heart, to try to keep him from fulfilling the glory of his destiny.

A series of swift, alarmed tugs at your sleeves pulls you out of the depths of your mind, whispers carried on the wings of a cold zephyr telling you that there was something — someone — disturbing the peace of your grave, removing the wilted poppy wreath from your headstone and carelessly tossing it aside.

You allow your spectral form to once more be carried in the embrace of the gentle wind, your mind flying through different theories about who might visit your resting place at such an hour. Wrath as red as the marrow within your bones blinds you, and as futile as the thought might be, you can’t help but silently hope that it’s Shouto, that it’s his soul you get to claim during your first night as a Willis.

You think about slowly running your teeth over the regal column of his throat, about sinking them into his jugular and watching as his chest heaves underneath the weight of his last breaths — a death matching yours, the splatters of his blood forever staining the elegant curl of your name onto white marble.

You wonder if he’ll bleed blue.

The burning trail of your thoughts dies in your throat when you arrive back at the clearing, vengeance freezing in your veins as your eyes rest on a much more familiar frame.

Bakugou — entangled in a cursed dance with the rest of your Wilis sisters.

His shoulders and arms glow underneath the white linen of his tunic, the myriad of enchanted runes etched into his skin keeping the phantoms from claiming his soul. Regardless, it seemed that the vengeful spirits were not deterred in the slightest by the protective nature of his charms, shackling his hands to theirs by red chains and forcing his legs to keep up with the dizzying rhythm of their dance, a circle that would only stop spinning once his heart had ceased to beat within his chest.

A scream bubbles in your throat at the sight — something shrill and painful, an echo of your heart picking up its pace between your ribs — and it seems that it’s enough to at least give your sisters pause.

You swiftly drop to your knees, bowing your head low in front of Myrtha and praying that your voice doesn’t tremble as you feed her a string of colourful lies — that this was the man whose name had been on your lips as you died, whose lies and deceit had led to your untimely death, that nothing would give you more satisfaction than to see the light fade from his eyes as he met his end at your hands — and your hands alone.

Steel-tipped fingers wrap around your chin, digging into immaterial skin as the queen addresses you. The dulcet notes in her tone are little more than a distant memory, the echo of her voice within your head frigid and firm as she commands you.

“Whatever you do to him, I want him dead by sunrise.”

Your frame crumbles underneath the weight of your deceit once the Willis disappear, the echoes of their shrill cries ringing across the cold autumn air.

You cast a worried glance towards Bakugou, finding his large frame sprawled out onto his back across the grass at the foot of your grave, soft petals the same colour as his eyes scattered around him, the remains of what must have once been a beautiful bouquet of red roses.

Small, cautious steps lead you to him, eyes trained on the hurried rise and fall of his chest — he was exhausted, clearly, but at least he was still alive. You don’t want to think of what would have happened had you arrived even a moment later, don’t want to think of his lifeless form sprawled out grotesquely over the unhallowed ground of your grave.

You’re not given the chance to speak, or even to blink, before the sharp tip of a silver sword is thrust dangerously close to your line of sight, the burning embers of his eyes glaring up as your spectral form hovers over him.

“Tell me,” his words come out heavy and breathy, accentuating the natural rasp of his voice and speaking of the exertion taking its toll on his body, “tell me something only the real you would know.”

Your ghostly fingers follow the sharp edge of his blade until they meet his shoulder, pushing past it to point towards the many scattered petals creating a blood-coloured halo around his head. Lips stretched into a rueful smile, your voice cracking around the syllables of your response as you answer his demand with a question of your own.

“You’ve waited this long to bring me red roses, Katsuki?”

The hand holding the weapon grows lax, lowering the sword into the damp grass while his other arm comes up to cover his eyes, avoiding your gaze as you kneel at his side, a bitter chuckle leaving your lips.

“We’ve both been idiots, haven’t we?”

Ghostly fingers idly play with the yellowing blades of grass near your knee, watching as the appendages fade into wisps of smoke and reconstruct into shadows only seconds after. You only continue once you feel his inquisitive gaze roll towards you, melancholy holding the corners of your lips up in place even as your tone loses its sarcastic lilt.

“I didn’t.. I didn’t want to burden you with my feelings.” A puff of air crawls past your lips — there had to be more elegant ways to put your feelings for him into words, more calculated or poetic sentences, and in a different setting you would’ve been embarrassed by the bluntness of phrasing; but not now — now you’re simply content with letting your heart crawl up your throat and fall directly into his hands, now you just needed him to know.

“I love you.. I think I always have.”

In the deafening silence of the night, you can almost hear the stutter of his heartbeat, the way his lungs compress underneath the weight of your confession.

A hand reaches for yours then, the silver glow of the protective runes returning to his skin as your fingers intertwine — his magic wraps around your spectral form, keeping the smoke that you had expected your fingers to dissipate into at bay long enough to make it seem as though you could truly touch him.

“I think I always will.” He wraps up your confession for you, the rough tone of his voice softening around the syllables of the short sentence, the vermillion of his eyes swimming with more emotions than his tongue could articulate.

Silence hangs heavy in the air between you, the soft puffs of his exhales and the gentle hum of his magic the only noises echoing across the clearing. Your eyes greedily roam over his expression — for once open and vulnerable and unguarded — bathed in the pale glow of the moonlight, stray rose petal clinging to the open collar of his tunic, and all you can find the strength to do is mourn the love that both of you had lost.

He’s so beautiful, has always been, even when his features would twist into the most terrible expressions of anger and his lips would spew horrible, poisonous words — his beauty had never faded in your eyes. It’s something that will haunt you for eternity, you’re certain of it, something that you’ll keep close to your heart even as your soul was doomed to haunt these lands until the hourglass of time would finally break.

You just hope that someday, somewhere, he will find another soul to look at him with as much unbridled love as you once did.

“Get out of the forest, please, before they get the chance to return.” You’re not certain what Myrtha would have in store for you once it would become clear that you had let Bakugou do away with his life and his soul, and truthfully you couldn't even find it within your heart to be scared of the repercussions — all you know is that you need to get him out of here, fast.

Except Bakugou doesn’t seem to agree — in spite of the desperation coating each of your syllables, he doesn’t budge from his spot on the grass, red eyes still trained on the smoke twisting underneath the contours of your fingers.

You repeat the sentence once, twice, before finally pulling your hand from his grasp, two sets of eyes watching as the little grey cloud left in its place was picked up by the cold autumn wind.

“They’ll find me as soon as I start running through the trees.” His eyes bore deeply into yours as he speaks, pressing against each word in a way that makes you understand that you couldn’t change his mind any longer, no matter how much you would try. “If I have to die tonight, it’ll be here — with you, by you.”

You shake your head violently, throat closing around a sob at his implication. You couldn’t do it, and you tell him as much, again and again and again as he tries to lead the silver sword, engraved with the same set of runes that traverse the broad expanse of his shoulders, towards your shaking hands — but you just can’t. Can’t bring yourself to lift the blade to his neck, can’t bring yourself to even think about his warm blood coating the soil of your grave forever.

A single word flashes through your mind, and crawls past your lips before you could even stop it — “The Königssee.”

That finally catches his attention, rising from his spot and scooping your trembling figure into his arms, his skin glowing silver as all of his magic is channelled towards keeping your spectral form tethered to him.

The walk towards the shores of the lake is a short and quiet one, and before you even know it, he’s gently letting you down from his embrace and handing you his silver sword. He loops his fingers through the strings holding his leather trousers together as you run the heavy blade over the front of his tunic, easily cutting through the pale material and pushing it to the ground with the tip of the weapon.

You can’t tear your eyes away as he stands before you, bare and proud, every dip and valley and contour that you had dreamt about for years revealed to you. It awakens something within you — something sweet and bashful and innocent, but relentlessly hungry nonetheless, something that compels you to lurch forward and crash your immaterial lips against his.

They fade into nothingness for a second, until Bakugou awakens from his stupor and grabs your jaw between his large palms. Magic thrums against your translucent skin, keeping you from floating away long enough for him to kiss you properly, to kiss you like he had dreamt of long before he knew how to put the storm of feelings that you caused within him into words.

When he finally sinks into you it’s neither sensual nor romantic — a bastardised version of an intimacy that you will never get to share, betrayed by the transparency of your skin and the smoke that drifts from your body each time his palm drifts higher or lower. It’s unnatural and fruitless, and when you both tumble over the edge of your climax you find that it leaves you feeling even emptier inside, leaves you mourning another chapter of your lives that you didn’t get to experience within this lifetime.

But within the boundaries of your situation, you find that it is enough.

There’s no hesitation in Bakugou’s step as he leaps into the frigid waters of the Königssee, tightly clutching the smoke of your body within his arms as he slowly sinks into its dark depth. His lips are pressed intimately against yours, the life in his lungs exhaled into your mouth, and you feel the scarlet chains of vengeance shackling you to the Wills unravel from your limbs.

In hindsight, you realise that your love for Shouto had always been a selfish one, the manifestation of your ardent desire to see that one damned dream of yours come true — in the end, the weight of your own expectations had doomed you as much as his dishonestly. Through Bakugou’s love you had found freedom, you had found peace — if not in life then at least in death.

Gentle tendrils of sunrise kiss the crown of your head through the murky surface of the lake, your body vanishing into bubbles of air the second that Bakugou’s eyes finally close, his throat giving out underneath the weight of the water in his lungs.

“Creepy fucking lake you’ve got back there, huh?”

The raspy drawl of a man's voice startles you, fingers twitching around the handle of a porcelain mug filled to the brim with dark, unsweetened coffee as your eyes roll towards him. He’d forgone putting on a shirt, layer upon layer of well-earned muscle rippling underneath intricate swirls of black ink and crisscrossed rivulets of passion-filled scratches as he leans against the doorframe to your small kitchenette, crimson gaze taking in the early-morning fog rising over the lake just outside your building.

“Old lady in the apartment below says it’s haunted.” You smirk at the sarcastic puff of air that falls from his parted lips, watching with curious eyes as he pushes himself off the door frame to make his way deeper into the kitchen.

There’s a delicate mantle of grace draped over the broad line of his shoulders — so at odds with the Herculean construct of his build and the barbed lining of his tongue — fluttering around inked arms as he pulls out plates and silverware from your cupboards, setting the table for breakfast as if he had done so a million times before.

You can’t help but find that peculiar — for all intents and purposes, the blond man was a stranger within your home, the kind of one-night stand that you couldn’t imagine would last beyond the dull ache of finger-shaped bruises blooming across your hips.

Yet here he is, toying with the thin, silver thread of intimacy left over from the previous night as he comfortably maps out the restricted space of your kitchen, refilling your cup of coffee and cocking an amused brow at the collection of polaroids stuck to your fridge, taking the time to find your smiling face in every single one of them.

It almost feels invasive how seamlessly he fits into the picture of your quiet morning routine, how each of his mundane actions carries a sense of familiarity that you’ve never felt with another one-time partner before.

“She keeps telling me about how a pair of lovers had drowned together in the lake, a long time ago.” You speak softly, face halfway hidden behind the porcelain rim of the coffee mug, if only to drown out the deafening crescendos of your own heartbeat, ringing violently against your eardrums.

“And that’s why the lake’s haunted?” Bakugou doesn’t turn around as he speaks, his focus still drawn to the two plates resting on the counter, slowly being filled with eggs, fresh vegetables and toast.

“The fog’s supposed to be what’s left of their souls, or something like that.” You shift slightly to face the window, throat closing around a sliver of affection at the domesticity of his actions, sleep-clumped lashes fluttering about wildly as you search for something — anything — to rest your eyes on that is not him.

Your flustered gaze eventually finds an anchor in the slow movement of the early-morning fog, following its lazy trail as it rises around the frozen edges of the lake and languidly crawls towards its centre.

Steady fingers grow cold around the handle of your coffee cup, bare skin puckering with rows of goosebumps even as the scalding liquid sloshes around its porcelain frame. The sharp edge of your vision steadily dulls as the entirety of your focus is pulled towards the heart of the lake, taking in the perfect circles drawn by two stray tendrils of rising mist. It’s eerie, strange and otherworldly — the calculated rhythm behind each rotation, how the cold air pinches and pulls at the fog, sculpting its chaotic silhouette into the familiar angles of a man’s back, into the graceful curves of a woman’s hip.

In all the years you had lived in this house, you had never seen something like this before.

“But that has to be bullshit.” The gravely monotone of Bakugou’s morning rasp tip toes across your eardrums, his voice intimately close and excruciatingly far away all at once. A shiver runs down the curved line of your spine when the soft material of his sweatpants touches your bare skin, knees knocking together as he finally sits down across from you, pushing a full plate between the columns of your elbows.

Your eyes meet his in the glass panels of the kitchen window as he aligns his sight to yours, quizzical red gaze searching for whatever it was that stole the easy flow of conversation from between your parted lips.

You can tell the second his eyes find the strangely twisting shadows by the sudden drop in the temperature in the room, by the way his jaw grows slack around the edge of a sarcastic quip. An uncomfortable pressure fills both of your lungs, tapping gently against your hearts as you follow the ghostly pair around the entire curve of the lake, watching the silhouette of the man dip the woman low before they finally part, a familiarity to their movements that frankly scares you.

“Yeah… bullshit.”

#bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bnha x reader #the.library #read later

330 notes · View notes