Gnawing the Light
Category: BNHA
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Pre-slash
Rating: Teens
Warnings: Implied child abuse, violence
Summary:
When Shouto and Katsuki are both imprisoned by the League, they strike up an unlikely friendship.
Trouble is, Katsuki has no idea he’s talking to an enemy’s son.
(Now with art!)
Gnawing the Light
The bread is harder than usual. Shouto concentrates on working off a bite, trying not to drop any crumbs. Almost misses the clang of the dungeon door opening and the scuff of someone being dragged in.
Exhaustion pulls at his eyelids. He does not lift his head, but he can’t shut off his ears, and does not want to. Amid the unrelenting silence of his cell, any sound is welcome.
“ - ove my boot so far up your ass you’ll be spitting your guts in Tomura’s face when you see him!” a loud, belligerent voice is saying. No answering blow comes. This is odd; Shouto had gotten a clock to the jaw for saying that Atsuhiro looked like he belonged in motley.
The person - man - is deposited in the cell adjacent to Shouto’s, and the door shuts. The vibrations skitter up Shouto’s spine and through his limbs. Shouto has never been talkative, but after four days in confinement with only cockroaches and the occasional rat for company, he can’t help but look forward to an exchange with any not-enemy.
“You’d best sit tight,” comes a voice that Shouto recognises as Jin’s. “Tomura should be here to see you shortly, if work doesn’t hold him up.” Then, in a mutter: “Can’t believe we’ve got both of them here.”
“I still think this is dumb,” says someone else - Kenji, if Shouto is correct.
“Not your choice. Now move your ass, Himiko wants to play cards and you know how she gets if she’s kept waiting.”
Their footsteps grow fainter and the door to the dungeon entry is closed. A slew of curses in at least three different languages emerges from the other cell.
Shouto is already worried for the man - with that attitude, he won’t last long here, so he licks his chapped lips and says, “You should save your energy. You won’t have much left in a couple of days.” His throat hurts. He clears it, gropes for his water cup. There’s still a few drops left. He sips carefully, making sure he has enough for later.
There is an abrupt pause in the litany. “Didn’t know anyone was in the next cell,” comes the moody response, after a moment.
“I’ve been here a few days.”
There is a drawn-out grunt, like the man is sitting down. “Whatever. Don’t talk to me.” His accent is one Shouto has heard from emissaries and merchants from the Dragon Kingdom, but this could mean nothing. Nearer the borders, people’s accents get murky. Fumikage still has one reminiscent of people of the Cedar Kingdom, since he had been brought up so close to it.
Shouto wonders, not for the first time, how Fumikage is doing, and something in his chest squeezes. He does not have many friends, and as a prince he knows that “friends” could turn out to be sycophants or spies or assassins. But there has always been something staunchly upright about Fumikage, right from when they were tottering into adolescence, and when Fumikage had told him carefully, mindful of the gap between their ranks, “I’d like to think that we work well together,” it had sounded like he meant more than that.
“How come?” says Shouto, wanting to think of something else.
The answering silence seems almost sullen. Shouto waits, counting the seconds.
There is a clink of metal, and a quiet, earnest, “Fuck.”
Shouto has already tried wrangling out of his cuffs and overpowering them with his ice. He’s got mauve grooves all around his wrists, along with slowly healing cuts. “You can’t use your Quirk or any other magic. It’s cold iron, it won’t give.” And the chain connecting the cuffs restricts movement - getting to an itch can be a task.
“Shut up,” comes the rasped reply. More jingling, more scuffing. “Just shut up.”
“It would be wise to save your strength.”
“It would be wise to be quiet before I burn your tongue out of your mouth, you damn Firelander.”
Shouto is not certain why the man is so upset with him. “So you are from the Dragon Kingdom?” he ventures, hoping it will serve as an olive branch.
More profuse swearing, more vitriolic than before, though Shouto hadn’t thought that possible. Shouto realises he is not going to get any answers. He goes back to his bread.
***
Sleep does not come easy, despite the dimness of the cell; the only source of light is the small barred window in his door. Shouto keeps wondering if everyone back home isn’t safe and the information is not being passed to him. He tosses and turns, and then hisses when a loose stone jabs at his back.
“What, bed not cushy enough for you, Firelander?”
Shouto frowns as he flicks the stone away. Perhaps he heard wrong. “You have a bed?” he says.
There is a pause. “You don’t?”
“No.” There isn’t even any straw he can lie on. Clearly Shouto is not as valuable a prisoner as this other inmate. Shouto had been told that he would be released when the Fire Kingdom handed over a prisoner, a man known only as Moonfish, who had worked with the League before, as well as a sizeable chunk of land to the south.
They want something else from the man in the next cell, Shouto realises. Something more valuable than land or an unstable murderer. A shudder goes through him. He feels like he is watching a calamity unfold from far away, and he can’t stop it.
“How often they feed you?” demands the man.
Shouto gets the impression the man is used to being obeyed, or at least listened to. He starts to compare him to his father, but then discards the concept; there is a bloodless quality to Enji’s voice that this man’s lacks. “I get bread once a day. Water twice.”
“That’s not...We don’t even treat prisoners on death row that badly in our kingdom.”
Shouto refrains from saying that some prisoners in the Fire Kingdom are not treated much better than he is here.
“The hell did you do to make ‘em so mad?” asks the man.
Nothing. Just the wrong place, wrong time, wrong title, thinks Shouto. “What do they want with you?” he says, to change the subject. It occurs to him, belatedly, that this is a question his father would have asked for intel. He cannot bring himself to care beyond the ramifications that the answer will have for the people of Musutafu. “And how did they even capture you?”
“Woah there, Firelander.” He makes an odd, rough sound. Is that a laugh? “That’s some sensitive information you’re asking for.”
“Sorry,” says Shouto. The man had said “sensitive information” - he’s not a commoner, then. Possibly works at the court, or in the army.
“Ah, whatever. They probably want my dragon. Good fucking luck to them.”
Shouto thinks, His dragon?
And then, His dragon?
The world crumbles to pieces and falls in a heap at his feet. “You’re the Dragon King,” Shouto breathes, with no small amount of wonder. He has only heard accounts of him thus far; unlike King Toshinori of the Cedar Kingdom, Katsuki Bakugou has never made a courtesy call. A seventy-year dispute over a mountainous region in the north-west has left the Fire and Dragon Kingdoms on bitter terms, with many dead and many more angry.
Shouto thinks it should belong to the Dragon Kingdom - most people there are culturally far closer to it- and even if that were not the case, it would be wise to hand it over as a peace offering. The Fire Kingdom has enough fertile, mineral-rich land, and if it would mean less strife, then why not?
But people have been sentenced to the stocks for so much as implying it, so his thoughts remain locked behind his teeth.
The Dragon Kingdom is...unusual. Shouto would read tomes on its history under the guise of “studying tactics”, but really he had just been intrigued. It is not ruled by lineage, but rather by an individual (and public) battle. Families can remain in rule only insofar as their champion is not defeated, and the Bakugou family has remained undefeated for some generations now.
“Congratulations, you get a medal,” comes the reply.
“You said you don’t want to give out sensitive information, but you just confirmed your full name and title.”
“What are you gonna do with it? Tell your friends, ‘I was locked up with Katsuki Bakugou in a dungeon that one time’ at festivals? And these bastards will use my name at some point, I can’t expect it to remain a secret.”
Point taken. “Do you really ride dragons?” Shouto has heard that he does - everyone has - but he had put it down to gossip mongers. The dragons had been hunted to near extinction for their scales and teeth before it was made illegal half a century back. That they would allow humans to go near them now is baffling.
“I ride a dragon, and he has a hell of an attitude, it’s not like I can just make him do what I want.”
Shouto notes the wording - he, not it. Before he can ruminate on that, Katsuki says, “And what do I call you? I can’t keep referring to you as ‘this jackass’ in my head.”
This jackass, Shouto mouths, incredulous. He does not think he has done anything to warrant that title, at least not with Katsuki. He almost slips and blurts Todoroki. And then he realises that Katsuki’s first instinct would be to murder him. “Himura,” he settles on at last. It is his mother’s maiden name, so it is not a whole lie. He might even call it a half truth; he had never wanted to keep his father’s name. Moreover, names across Musutafu tend to overlap, and “Himura” is not uncommon.
“Well, Himura, at the risk of being a little hypocritical, how’d you land yourself here?”
Shouto runs his tongue over his teeth. If he tells Katsuki that they had been ambushed due to faulty intelligence during a patrol along the hills, Katsuki will know, at least, that Shouto is in the army. And perhaps Katsuki can tolerate a Fireland commoner, even a petty merchant, but he’d not take kindly to anyone else. “I’d rather not say,” he settles on. In any case, he does not recall the fine details; he had been separated from his group by falling boulders, and something had collided with his head, and when he woke up he was in this cell.
“Can’t blame you,” says Katsuki, sounding almost good natured. “But that’s real shady.”
A smile tugs at Shouto’s lips. They split, and he tastes copper.
***
Shouto is mentally reciting a two-hundred page poem - boredom means resorting to such means of amusement - when the door to the dungeon opens and voices pepper the air.
“I still don’t think we need all of us here.”
“I’m sorry, were you not briefed on who these two are?”
“They’re in cold iron.”
“Enough,” says a raspy voice. Tomura.
Shouto tenses.
“I apologise for the less-than-ideal lodgings,” says Tomura, in an affable sort of way. He seems to be talking to Katsuki. “We didn’t mean to keep you here this long, but we ran into some trouble with one of our contractors.”
“Get to the point,” snips Katsuki.
“We’re not here to intimidate you.”
There is a jangle of chains. “You’ve got a funny way of showing that.”
Tomura ignores the jibe. “Katsuki Bakugou, Dragon King: would you like to join me?”
Katsuki, to Shouto’s shock, laughs. “Is that it? Stop talking nonsense. I refuse,” he says. He could not have sounded more scornful if he tried.
But Tomura carries on breezily. “Kings are so uptight these days, aren’t they? They’re expected to adhere to certain rules, mete out certain punishments. We want to make the world question this. What is justice? What is a good king?”
“Stop wrapping up your lunacy with fancy words. You don’t really give a shit about that, you just enjoy hurting people and want an excuse.”
“We intend to win our fight. You like winning, don’t you?”
“Not enough to join your merry band of murderers.”
A pause. “Consider it carefully.”
“Please, join us so we can harass and kill people,” Katsuki mocks in a high voice.
Tomura’s sigh is heavy. “Ah, well. Perhaps you’ll change your mind.”
“Gods, you’re really crazy, aren’t you?”
Shouto fully expects Tomura to disintegrate Katsuki’s face, but instead he just leaves, the others following suit.
“Shit,” says Katsuki, hoarse, after a beat.
Shouto wishes he could see him. He has never been good at comforting or reassuring people, but he wants to do something to help. “It’s odd,” he finds himself saying, just because there is nothing else to do. “Why would they assume you would join them? I’ve not heard tell of you having any inclinations towards the League’s philosophy.”
Katsuki laughs. It is abrupt, choked, with a thread of bitterness.
Shouto leaves it.
***
“You got any ideas about how to get out?” says Katsuki, a day later. Or maybe a few hours later.
“No more than you.”
“Maybe we could do a prison break. Y’know, like those notorious tax evaders in the Cedar Kingdom twenty years ago.”
“That’s not a comparison I thought you’d make.”
“I’m serious.”
“I don’t see any tools we could use.”
“I could use a spoon to dig us a tunnel.”
“...That would take years.”
“Better than nothing. You got anyone coming to bust you out, by any chance?”
“...No.” He cannot let on that he is important enough for a rescue mission. His father is probably thinking of a way to get him back, if he hasn’t already sent a party; it is, after all, a sign of weakness to have your strongest son imprisoned by a band of rogues.
When - if - Shouto gets back, he will be in for an earful about disgracing the family. Well, if he can see Fumikage and Yaomomo and his siblings again, and sleep in his own bed, he will take it gladly.
“Cold,” says Katsuki.
Shouto smiles wanly.
Katsuki’s laugh is serrated and unapologetic. “You don’t like your king very much, do you?”
“Treason isn’t a good ingredient to staying alive.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Shouto suppresses a hysterical giggle. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell him how much you dislike him?”
“What, you looking for a reward? He already knows I dislike him.”
“What have you heard about King Enji that makes you feel that way?” He is aware that his father is more feared than respected. But still, most people do not know of his character beyond his efficiency as a king. And he is efficient, whatever Shouto may think of his failings as a father and husband.
“Heard? He wanted to gift me his youngest son as some kind of bartering chip for the disputed area. Didn’t even come and tell me to my face like a man, he just had a stuffy letter sent.” Katsuki scoffs. “Like I’d want his damaged goods.”
Shouto’s lungs have seized up and a haze has filled his vision. He wanted to offer me as a... “Damaged goods?” he manages, quietly. He knows what Katsuki is about to say. He knows, and yet, it does not make it easier to hear.
“His face, Himura. Rumour says half of it’s practically burned off. The gods know how it happened, and I won’t ask you, but if the bastard wanted to flatter me he could have at least offered his daughter, I hear she’s real smart. Or his oldest son, what’s-his-name, Natsume or Natsuo or something,” says Katsuki airily. “I’m not stupid, though - I told him I’d consider it and, fuck, I really am. It wasn’t just his son, he was also offering to build infrastructure like roads and schools, and to relax some heavy taxes. It would mean peace and prosperity for a lot of people.”
Shouto’s hand comes up, subconsciously, to rest over his scar. He has never liked touching it, never liked feeling out the leathery grooves and hard ridges.
Hate is what I see.
“Oi, you fall asleep or something?”
I can’t stand that left side of yours.
Shouto makes a vague sound.
“Anyway, my consorts have yet to decide what to make of it. I won’t give an answer till then.”
Shouto’s brain grinds to a halt. “Consorts?”
“Yeah? Shit, man, you really are from the Fire Kingdom, huh? Snooty little pissbabies. We allow polygamy. It’s normal.”
Shouto has heard of it, but there are no proper records in the palace library. He’s checked. “I thought that was only in some cases?”
“Sure, but it’s not considered weird or anything.”
From slowing down, Shouto’s brain careens into overdrive. Consorts? Had his father known? Had he not cared what Shouto would think of that, what an adjustment it would be for him? (Of course not, his brain supplies.) “So.” His mouth is dry. He swallows, but it doesn’t help. He fumbles for his water cup and ends up dropping it, which doesn’t matter, because it’s empty. He watches it roll across the floor in a languid arc. “When you responded to the letter…”
“I didn’t tell the bastard about my husbands, if that’s what you’re asking. Don’t need to give him another reason to look down his pointy nose at me. I just said I’d give him a decision later.”
Shouto pinches the bridge of his nose. Married to Katsuki Bakugou of the Dragon Kingdom and his husbands. So much for that marriage he and Yaomomo kept joking about. Hey, if I don’t like any of those men my parents throw at me, I’ll just marry you, yeah? she had said, after a sparring session when they were fifteen, and hasn’t stopped saying it since then.
Shouto had thought that marrying Yaomomo wouldn’t have been a terrible prospect. She is sharp as a whip and a powerful conjurer, and he enjoys her company. Compared to his parents’ marriage, it would be idyllic. It could even be fun. They wouldn’t have to ration the lengths of their conversations. They could race their horses at ungodly hours and travel to see the Cedar Kingdom’s thriving pottery and textile markets, and no one would be able to stop them.
She must be worried.
He’s worried about her.
It strikes him that he misses home. He misses the manic glitter in Fuyumi’s eyes when she’s close to finishing a new glassblowing piece. He misses his snatches of conversation with Natsuo in the hallways. He misses Fumikage’s tic of fiddling with his feathers when he is anxious and Yaomomo’s dimple when she smiles. He misses the raggedy black cat that struts around the palace and curls up at his left side in winters.
Somewhere along the way, though he hadn’t realised it before, he’d made a life beyond Enji and the training room. Threadbare and self-contained, but a life nonetheless - and he wants to experience those good parts again.
He wants the good parts to be fuller.
There is a frog in his throat, and he swallows around it.
Katsuki is saying something. Shouto tunes back in. “I’ve never met someone after talking to them for days.” Shouto can hear Katsuki’s grin, sharp and burnished. “You sound like you’ve got really nice hair, all combed and neat.”
“I. What?”
“Y’know. You seem kinda hoity-toity. Well bred.”
Shouto flinches. Once he takes a deep, deep breath and uncurls his fists, he says, “You’re a king, you’re hardly one to talk about people being hoity-toity.” The word tastes foreign in his mouth.
“I’m a king that fights, I don’t get others to do my dirty work for me.”
“My f - The Todorokis fight too.”
“But there’s a lot more strict hierarchy in the Fire Kingdom. I got people waiting on me, but if I don’t treat ‘em well, they’ll just kill me. It’s me against thousands, I don’t stand a chance. Todorokis, though. They could stand in the middle of a town square and shoot somebody and no one would do a damn thing.”
That is inaccurate. There would be a trial, but it would be heavily biased in the Todorokis’ favour. Shouto decides it is simpler to just agree.
“I’m gonna be disappointed if your hair isn’t nice,” Katsuki’s voice seeps languidly through the wall.
Despite everything, Shouto finds himself smiling. Then he sobers. He could hide the truth until they are both free - it would be smarter. Katsuki may not longer want to work with him if he knows who he is. But Shouto has always been a poor liar; candidness comes more naturally to him. And there is a good chance that Katsuki will be even angrier if he finds out after the cold iron has come off their wrists.
He takes a deep breath, steels himself. “I need to tell you some-”
The dungeon door slams open and Shouto jumps.
“The hell?” says Katsuki. “Are you people here to ask me again?”
There is the sound of footsteps, but they stop in front of Shouto’s cell. The key turns with a snick, and the door screeches open. Shouto goes still, pressing his back against the clammy wall. Shuichi stands in the doorway, with an unfamiliar blonde woman rocking on her feet behind him.
“Hey, what are you doing?” comes Katsuki’s voice. There is a wobbling uncertainty to it that Shouto has not heard before.
“Help me with him, would you,” says Shuichi.
“Fuck, no! Keep him out of this, he has nothing to do with this!”
“He’s cute!” squeals the woman. “No one told me he was cute! I’m even more excited now.”
And then Shouto is being hauled to his feet and dragged out, wincing as the light from the torches lances his eyes. His knees pop. He scrabbles for his ice, then for his fire, digs deeper than he ever has before, and comes up empty. When he is yanked up towards the exit, he stumbles and cracks his shin against a stair, but feels nothing.
Shuichi and the woman do not give him any indication of where they are headed as they shove him along. Katsuki’s furious shouts grow fainter with each step they take. Shouto strains to keep hearing them, to cling to some kind of anchor. They dissipate like smoke.
And then, he is thrown somewhere. Windowless room. Bare. Ground scuffing his palms and knees. Drip of water. Smells of sewage and charred flesh. Temperature a tinge lower than the corridor.
When he looks up, there are two pairs of eyes trained on him. At the back of his mind, he registers that he should resent Katsuki, an enemy king - Shouto is in this situation because of him - but he finds that he cannot. Perhaps this is inappropriate; his father might have found it so.
But Katsuki had only given the same answer Shouto would have.
“This won’t be any fun,” grumbles Shuichi. “He can’t even fight.”
The woman claps her hands. “Can I start? Ooh, please can I start?” She leans down, cups his cheek. Runs a cool finger along his jaw.
Shouto does not scare easily. He has been burned, methodically, to see how quickly he would heal. He has been locked in a broom closet for over a day. He has seen his mother’s wide, empty eyes.
He should be standing strong and proud, but his heart is pounding and his legs paralysed. Everything is obscured with a film of fog.
“Himiko, could you at least try to sound less happy about it?” says Shuichi, flicking some dirt from beneath his fingernails.
The woman - Himiko - slips out a knife from her belt, her grin never shrinking. “He’ll look even more handsome with blood.” She sets the tip of the knife against the rim of his scar. Slits the skin just so, tracing an outline. Her eyes are a startling golden yellow, like a cat’s.
Shouto jerks back, but Himiko catches the back of his head and holds him in place.
“Don’t be naughty,” she sing-songs. “Hey, Shuichi, how much can we rough him up?”
“Tomura said no permanent damage to limbs or vital organs. He’s a hostage, after all. Doubt King Enji would appreciate being sent a box of his fingernails, and we could sure use Moonfish back here.”
“So many limitations! But it’s okay, I can work with that. We’ve got all day.”
The knife slides slowly down from Shouto’s face, comes to rest on his clavicle. It hurts less when you take deep breaths, Fuyumi had said as she stitched his wounds when he was eight. It hurts less when you don’t expect it, Natsuo had said when he removed a thorn from Shouto’s finger when he was five. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts, Enji had said when -
“What if he passes out too soon?” grumbles Shuichi.
Himiko places her thumb on Shouto’s lower lip. Presses down. “I won’t let that happen.”
***
Shouto opens his eyes, and he is lying on his side. Where am I?
His body has stopped screaming enough for his brain to form fuzzy words and half-concepts. He turns his head to vomit. There is just bile, and then nothing, and he heaves and shakes, with his hair flopping wildly in his eyes. Once he has collected himself somewhat he spits, and in the watery light he sees flecks of blood in the fluid.
It nearly turns his stomach again.
“Himura?”
Who is Himura? And who is speaking?
“Hey, hey, Himura! Get it together, man! C’mon, asshole, say something. Tell me you’re fucking alive.”
The person is loud. Shouto’s head is about to split open.
More shouts of “Himura”. More pleads for Himura to speak.
Listening takes too much energy. He wants to sleep.
“What did they do to you?”
The voice is...becoming familiar. For some reason, Shouto thinks of dragons. The Dragon King. Katsuki.
“Just tell me you’re alive!”
Shouto gathers every shred of strength left in him and gasps, “Pointless.” It is a mistake - stars burst across his vision.
“Fuck,” Katsuki says. “Okay, you’re - shit. Goddamn, those fucking cowards, those sons of bitches, once I’m out, I’ll - I’ll - ”
He hasn’t thought this through, thinks Shouto muzzily.
“Where does it hurt the most?”
Everywhere.
“You were gone for a long time. Someone came with a fresh cup of water. Drink it, now.”
It’s touching, Katsuki’s concern. Makes Shouto wonder if being bonded to him would be much worse than being chained to his father.
Shouto wishes he could drink the water, if only to soothe Katsuki. His limbs refuse to move.
He closes his eyes, and falls into a fitful sleep. After he wakes, he hangs on the edge of lucidity. He only pecks at his bread. He cannot lift his water cup.
At some point, the next night or the same hour, his door opens and one of the League’s members, a slender man with dark, unkempt hair, ambles in. Shouto looks at him hazily, praying that he is not about to be dragged out for another beating. Apparently Katsuki has a similar anxiety, because he snaps, “What the hell are you doing to him?”
Half the man’s skin is burned to a dull, blackish purple and attached to the rest of his skin with what appear to be staples. He is slouching, but his eyes are sharp, and he stares at Shouto like he’s sizing up a mule and finding it lacking.
Then he crouches down, swipes the water cup, and holds it to Shouto’s lips. Shouto is confused, but after a pause drinks greedily, and then coughs when it goes down the wrong way.
“Take it easy,” the man says. His eyes are a searing, brilliant blue. Shouto gazes at them, frowning. They are familiar in a way he cannot place.
The man just pushes the water cup at him again. He waits till Shouto has finished it, and then leaves.
“The fuck was that?” Katsuki says.
Shouto agrees.
***
The stab wound in Shouto’s shoulder has barely started to scab at the edges when Tomura and the rest of the League pour into the dungeons again.
“Dragon King,” says Tomura, “is your answer the same as before?”
“I’m kind of hoping he says yes,” says Himiko. “I want to play with the cute boy again!”
Please no, thinks Shouto, withering. Himiko had been ecstatic through the whole thing. They’d given him treatment so he wouldn’t get infected and die, but he’s going to have several bones healing crooked. He’d rather live to see it, and he’s not sure he can survive another session like that.
Katsuki’s voice is calm and sure. “I’ll do it.”
“Haah? Really?” bursts out Shuichi.
“Praise be,” someone mutters.
Tomura says genially, “Well, take the cuffs off him. We’re not savages.”
“Take them off?”
“You heard the man. What’s he gonna do, fight the whole lot of us?”
“You do it.”
“Wha - why me?”
“Because I said so. Get on with it.”
There is some disgruntled muttering, and then the creak of Katsuki’s cell door opening.
Atsuhiro says, “I do apologise for our methods. But please understand, we’re not just a mob that enjoys crimes.”
Shouto rolls his eyes so hard he can almost see the inside of his head.
There is a small click, and the clatter of iron cuffs dropping to the ground. Shouto nearly misses the quiet, relieved sigh from Katsuki. He pictures him massaging the circulation back into his wrists.
The silence is fragile and uncomfortable, like dough stretched to translucency.
“Anything to say?” asks Atsuhiro.
Something crackles to life. Shouto is reminded of the beginnings of sparklers on the new year. “Only that you bastards better start praying to every god you know,” Katsuki snarls. He must do something with his Quirk, because there is a blast, and someone shrieks.
“What the hell - ”
“This little shit - “
“Katsuki?” Shouto calls, too alarmed to remember that he should probably be addressing him as “Your Majesty”. (Punishment in the Fire Kingdom: five lashes. The scars still haven’t faded.) He lurches forward and places his hands against his cell door, trying to see through the gaps in the window railings. If it aggravates his injuries, he cannot tell. Shouto is by no means a short man, but even straining on his toes he can barely glimpse the tops of the others’ heads. Is Katsuki really planning on fighting them all at once? Is he insane?
Or is he just that strong?
It turns out that question is irrelevant.
Something explodes and the ground rocks beneath Shouto’s feet. There is a great cacophony of falling stone, like the side of the whole building has been blown in, and Shouto staggers against a wall, his heart in his throat and his ears ringing.
A lot of people are yelling at the same time, and Shouto can’t understand anything.
Something roars. Not animal, certainly not human. It is the kind of sound a mountain might make, engulfing everything in the vicinity and so, so much louder than anything Shouto has ever heard, shuddering through his chest and rattling his teeth. Bits of dust and stones drop from the ceiling.
There is a shout of “Kacchan!” and the thump of hurried footsteps.
Katsuki does not seem surprised, or even fazed. Instead, there is a cutting smugness to him. “Took your sweet time, Izuku. I’d tell you to go after the League, but it seems their human portal is good for escapes.”
“Eijirou and Chiyo are here, too. Hurry, let’s get you out.”
“Not yet. Get that door open. Be careful, there’s someone inside.”
Shouto scrambles back and falls on his ass, and it’s a good thing he does, because the next second there is a horrifying metal screech and the door is ripped clean off its hinges and tossed aside like parchment. A man with wild dark curls and crackles of verdant lightning coiling around his body appears in the doorway. “Are you - ” His eyes widen when they settle on Shouto. “You’re - ”
“Himura!”
The man is shoved out of the way and another one takes his place, his chest heaving. He’s bare to the waist, and wears bead necklaces and a scowl that could burn a hole through steel. Bright tattoos wrap around his brawny arms.
Katsuki.
He sees Shouto and opens his mouth. And then he takes the appearance of someone who’s been unexpectedly struck with a lashing branch, and his jaw goes slack. “Himu - ” His expression shifts, morphing into something dangerously still.
“Kacchan,” says the other man, addressing Katsuki. It is a discordantly soft nickname for someone so abrasive, yet Katsuki wears it like an old cloak. “He’s hurt, we need to get him medical attention.”
That seems to snap Katsuki out of his stupor.
“Medical - ” Sparks are flying from Katsuki’s palms. So that’s his Quirk. “You filthy, lying piece of shit!”
“Kacchan, he’ll die if he doesn’t get help!”
“Did you sit there and laugh to yourself while you hid who you really were, Shouto Todoroki?” He spits the name like it is a curse. “Was it King Enji’s idea to get in my good graces and loosen my tongue?”
Shouto shakes his head. The cell swims in and out of focus. His mouth is dry and numb and clumsy. His pool of words is scattered. “No, that’s - ”
“They’re right about Todorokis being two-faced bastards. No, really, it’s my fault, what the fuck was I thinking, acting like a Firelander could be a friend.” He strides over to Shouto and yanks him up by the front of his tattered tunic. A spasm rips through Shouto. “I should kill you right now.”
Sketch commission by Gardenvinus
“This isn’t how we do things,” the dark-haired man snaps. “Let him go, I’ll deal with him.”
“You weren’t there, Izuku! This little snake cozied up to me and tried to get intel on our kingdom! How would you feel if Eijirou or Ochako or someone else got hurt because of it?”
The man’s (Izuku’s?) expression has hardened into single-minded determination. “I don’t give a shit about how you feel right now. Get off him or I’ll make you.” His knees are bent. Pale green lightning crackles along his forearms again, and his eyes seem lit from within by the same energy.
Katsuki breathes hard for a few moments, pink blotches over his neck and face, baring his teeth. His hand twitches by his side for a weapon that is not there.
Then he straightens, his expression shuttering, and drops Shouto to the ground like a sack of rocks. It jars Shouto’s battered body and a thin, choked-off sound escapes him. “Don’t think you or your family will come out of this unscathed, Todoroki,” Katsuki says lowly, and then steps back.
Shouto only registers snatches of what happens after that, half-images and sounds from far away. Large, green eyes. An old woman’s stern voice. Pain. Shouts of Katsuki! Vermillion tiles that resemble giant scales. Pain. Hands on him, on his chest, on his shoulder, on his legs. Murmurs, clouds. Expanse of deep blue. Bracing wind and raw chill. Mother? More voices, blurred like they are underwater. He’s burning up. Hold him down. Stop the bleeding.
And then, darkness.
Consciousness trickles back slowly, viscous. A vaulted stone ceiling. Tart herbal aroma. Wooden screens. Echo of brisk footsteps. Tall airy windows. Where in the palace do they have rooms like this?
A hand rests on his forehead, and he rasps, “Fuyumi?”
“He’s awake,” says a voice that does not belong to Fuyumi. It does not belong to anyone he knows.
Shouto struggles to open his eyes. Two people are looking down at him. One of them, a woman with grey hair scraped back in a bun, would barely come up to his waist if he stood upright. She helps him sit up and makes him drink water (clean, it’s clean and cool and tastes so good) and begins to check his pulse with firm, wrinkled fingers.
The other is a man around his age who seems a shade familiar, with a dusting of freckles and a smile so earnest it would have put Shouto at ease if he could just remember what he’s trying to...if he could just remember. “Chiyo says they’re going to start you on a liquid diet,” the man says. “I’ll get you some fruit juice; you’d best drink it all.”
“How are you feeling?” asks the woman.
Like I got thrown off the battlements to be mauled by a bear. “Fine.”
“Give me your full name, the year, and the last thing you remember.”
Shouto slurs out the first two. “The last thing I - ” He tries to move his leg, but it is heavy, and when he pulls off the scratchy blanket, he finds a smooth metal band around his ankle. Cold iron.
It comes back in a torrent. The ambush. The cell. The League. The inmate.
Shouto shoots upright and the world whites out.
“Hey, woah,” says the man - Izuku, he’s called Izuku and he’s got lightning in him - placing a large hand on Shouto’s back. Shouto gets the feeling he wouldn’t require his Quirk to pick Shouto up and casually toss him out one of the windows. “You’re not fully recovered yet.”
Shouto can only half digest everything that’s happening. His skull is filled with static. Am I in the Dragon Kingdom? he wonders. And then, Obviously, do you think they’d return you to your home? Shouto rubs his forehead. It does not matter how hospitable they are - he is at their mercy. He may not be in chains, but without his quirk, he cannot escape. Not that he would - that would be a monumentally stupid idea and dissolve two neighbouring kingdoms into diplomatic chaos - but the message is clear.
Forget a lecture about disgracing the family - his father is going to burn the other half of his face, and this time it won’t be an accident. That is, if Shouto isn’t executed out here first.
He has had better months.
“Three broken ribs, fractured cheekbone and nose, stab wounds to the shoulder and thigh, multiple contusions, internal bleeding, dislocated ankle, malnourishment, and dehydration,” the woman is saying, tutting and curling her lip. She has a way about her that makes Shouto feel guilty for being hurt, though not for being tended to. While she palpates his stomach, Izuku disappears and comes back with an earthen cup, which he places on a small round table cluttered with medical equipment by Shouto’s bed.
“I’m sorry you got such a shock,” he says, his smile turning apologetic. “You were in bad shape, back at the Kamino Prison. We decided to bring you to our healers, since our fortress was closer than your base and - ah, before we continue, my name is Izuku Midoriya!” He places a hand on his chest and bows his head - an old-fashioned, formal way of introduction, but it suits him.
“It’s good to meet you,” says Shouto, and is surprised that he means it. It is a bland, inadequate response, but Izuku beams like Shouto’s prepared him a sonnet.
“Rest up. We’ll bring you up to speed after you’ve got some food in you.”
Shouto looks down at his left arm, which is bound to his side to immobilise his wounded shoulder. “I’ll have to stand trial, won’t I?”
Izuku picks up the cup and hands it to Shouto, who clutches it, but does not drink. He avoids Shouto’s gaze. “Don’t think about that now, Your Highness.”
Don’t call me that, thinks Shouto. It seems out of place when he is effectively a prisoner (again), and there is something about Izuku that makes Shouto want to just be fr - want to not be so formal. But Izuku is only being proper. It would not do for Shouto to say, Use my name and get Izuku’s skin flayed off.
He does not have the time to think of a reply. Izuku gives one last, sympathetic smile that does not quite reach his eyes, and leaves. Shouto watches his broad receding back, and then looks down into his cup. His breath creates ripples on the surface of the deep red juice, distorting his reflection. He has the strangest feeling that Izuku had not meant to be there when Shouto woke up.
He puts the cup back on the table.
Part 2
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Pre-slash
Rating: Teens
Warnings: Implied child abuse, violence
Summary:
When Shouto and Katsuki are both imprisoned by the League, they strike up an unlikely friendship.
Trouble is, Katsuki has no idea he’s talking to an enemy’s son.
(Now with art!)
Gnawing the Light
The bread is harder than usual. Shouto concentrates on working off a bite, trying not to drop any crumbs. Almost misses the clang of the dungeon door opening and the scuff of someone being dragged in.
Exhaustion pulls at his eyelids. He does not lift his head, but he can’t shut off his ears, and does not want to. Amid the unrelenting silence of his cell, any sound is welcome.
“ - ove my boot so far up your ass you’ll be spitting your guts in Tomura’s face when you see him!” a loud, belligerent voice is saying. No answering blow comes. This is odd; Shouto had gotten a clock to the jaw for saying that Atsuhiro looked like he belonged in motley.
The person - man - is deposited in the cell adjacent to Shouto’s, and the door shuts. The vibrations skitter up Shouto’s spine and through his limbs. Shouto has never been talkative, but after four days in confinement with only cockroaches and the occasional rat for company, he can’t help but look forward to an exchange with any not-enemy.
“You’d best sit tight,” comes a voice that Shouto recognises as Jin’s. “Tomura should be here to see you shortly, if work doesn’t hold him up.” Then, in a mutter: “Can’t believe we’ve got both of them here.”
“I still think this is dumb,” says someone else - Kenji, if Shouto is correct.
“Not your choice. Now move your ass, Himiko wants to play cards and you know how she gets if she’s kept waiting.”
Their footsteps grow fainter and the door to the dungeon entry is closed. A slew of curses in at least three different languages emerges from the other cell.
Shouto is already worried for the man - with that attitude, he won’t last long here, so he licks his chapped lips and says, “You should save your energy. You won’t have much left in a couple of days.” His throat hurts. He clears it, gropes for his water cup. There’s still a few drops left. He sips carefully, making sure he has enough for later.
There is an abrupt pause in the litany. “Didn’t know anyone was in the next cell,” comes the moody response, after a moment.
“I’ve been here a few days.”
There is a drawn-out grunt, like the man is sitting down. “Whatever. Don’t talk to me.” His accent is one Shouto has heard from emissaries and merchants from the Dragon Kingdom, but this could mean nothing. Nearer the borders, people’s accents get murky. Fumikage still has one reminiscent of people of the Cedar Kingdom, since he had been brought up so close to it.
Shouto wonders, not for the first time, how Fumikage is doing, and something in his chest squeezes. He does not have many friends, and as a prince he knows that “friends” could turn out to be sycophants or spies or assassins. But there has always been something staunchly upright about Fumikage, right from when they were tottering into adolescence, and when Fumikage had told him carefully, mindful of the gap between their ranks, “I’d like to think that we work well together,” it had sounded like he meant more than that.
“How come?” says Shouto, wanting to think of something else.
The answering silence seems almost sullen. Shouto waits, counting the seconds.
There is a clink of metal, and a quiet, earnest, “Fuck.”
Shouto has already tried wrangling out of his cuffs and overpowering them with his ice. He’s got mauve grooves all around his wrists, along with slowly healing cuts. “You can’t use your Quirk or any other magic. It’s cold iron, it won’t give.” And the chain connecting the cuffs restricts movement - getting to an itch can be a task.
“Shut up,” comes the rasped reply. More jingling, more scuffing. “Just shut up.”
“It would be wise to save your strength.”
“It would be wise to be quiet before I burn your tongue out of your mouth, you damn Firelander.”
Shouto is not certain why the man is so upset with him. “So you are from the Dragon Kingdom?” he ventures, hoping it will serve as an olive branch.
More profuse swearing, more vitriolic than before, though Shouto hadn’t thought that possible. Shouto realises he is not going to get any answers. He goes back to his bread.
***
Sleep does not come easy, despite the dimness of the cell; the only source of light is the small barred window in his door. Shouto keeps wondering if everyone back home isn’t safe and the information is not being passed to him. He tosses and turns, and then hisses when a loose stone jabs at his back.
“What, bed not cushy enough for you, Firelander?”
Shouto frowns as he flicks the stone away. Perhaps he heard wrong. “You have a bed?” he says.
There is a pause. “You don’t?”
“No.” There isn’t even any straw he can lie on. Clearly Shouto is not as valuable a prisoner as this other inmate. Shouto had been told that he would be released when the Fire Kingdom handed over a prisoner, a man known only as Moonfish, who had worked with the League before, as well as a sizeable chunk of land to the south.
They want something else from the man in the next cell, Shouto realises. Something more valuable than land or an unstable murderer. A shudder goes through him. He feels like he is watching a calamity unfold from far away, and he can’t stop it.
“How often they feed you?” demands the man.
Shouto gets the impression the man is used to being obeyed, or at least listened to. He starts to compare him to his father, but then discards the concept; there is a bloodless quality to Enji’s voice that this man’s lacks. “I get bread once a day. Water twice.”
“That’s not...We don’t even treat prisoners on death row that badly in our kingdom.”
Shouto refrains from saying that some prisoners in the Fire Kingdom are not treated much better than he is here.
“The hell did you do to make ‘em so mad?” asks the man.
Nothing. Just the wrong place, wrong time, wrong title, thinks Shouto. “What do they want with you?” he says, to change the subject. It occurs to him, belatedly, that this is a question his father would have asked for intel. He cannot bring himself to care beyond the ramifications that the answer will have for the people of Musutafu. “And how did they even capture you?”
“Woah there, Firelander.” He makes an odd, rough sound. Is that a laugh? “That’s some sensitive information you’re asking for.”
“Sorry,” says Shouto. The man had said “sensitive information” - he’s not a commoner, then. Possibly works at the court, or in the army.
“Ah, whatever. They probably want my dragon. Good fucking luck to them.”
Shouto thinks, His dragon?
And then, His dragon?
The world crumbles to pieces and falls in a heap at his feet. “You’re the Dragon King,” Shouto breathes, with no small amount of wonder. He has only heard accounts of him thus far; unlike King Toshinori of the Cedar Kingdom, Katsuki Bakugou has never made a courtesy call. A seventy-year dispute over a mountainous region in the north-west has left the Fire and Dragon Kingdoms on bitter terms, with many dead and many more angry.
Shouto thinks it should belong to the Dragon Kingdom - most people there are culturally far closer to it- and even if that were not the case, it would be wise to hand it over as a peace offering. The Fire Kingdom has enough fertile, mineral-rich land, and if it would mean less strife, then why not?
But people have been sentenced to the stocks for so much as implying it, so his thoughts remain locked behind his teeth.
The Dragon Kingdom is...unusual. Shouto would read tomes on its history under the guise of “studying tactics”, but really he had just been intrigued. It is not ruled by lineage, but rather by an individual (and public) battle. Families can remain in rule only insofar as their champion is not defeated, and the Bakugou family has remained undefeated for some generations now.
“Congratulations, you get a medal,” comes the reply.
“You said you don’t want to give out sensitive information, but you just confirmed your full name and title.”
“What are you gonna do with it? Tell your friends, ‘I was locked up with Katsuki Bakugou in a dungeon that one time’ at festivals? And these bastards will use my name at some point, I can’t expect it to remain a secret.”
Point taken. “Do you really ride dragons?” Shouto has heard that he does - everyone has - but he had put it down to gossip mongers. The dragons had been hunted to near extinction for their scales and teeth before it was made illegal half a century back. That they would allow humans to go near them now is baffling.
“I ride a dragon, and he has a hell of an attitude, it’s not like I can just make him do what I want.”
Shouto notes the wording - he, not it. Before he can ruminate on that, Katsuki says, “And what do I call you? I can’t keep referring to you as ‘this jackass’ in my head.”
This jackass, Shouto mouths, incredulous. He does not think he has done anything to warrant that title, at least not with Katsuki. He almost slips and blurts Todoroki. And then he realises that Katsuki’s first instinct would be to murder him. “Himura,” he settles on at last. It is his mother’s maiden name, so it is not a whole lie. He might even call it a half truth; he had never wanted to keep his father’s name. Moreover, names across Musutafu tend to overlap, and “Himura” is not uncommon.
“Well, Himura, at the risk of being a little hypocritical, how’d you land yourself here?”
Shouto runs his tongue over his teeth. If he tells Katsuki that they had been ambushed due to faulty intelligence during a patrol along the hills, Katsuki will know, at least, that Shouto is in the army. And perhaps Katsuki can tolerate a Fireland commoner, even a petty merchant, but he’d not take kindly to anyone else. “I’d rather not say,” he settles on. In any case, he does not recall the fine details; he had been separated from his group by falling boulders, and something had collided with his head, and when he woke up he was in this cell.
“Can’t blame you,” says Katsuki, sounding almost good natured. “But that’s real shady.”
A smile tugs at Shouto’s lips. They split, and he tastes copper.
***
Shouto is mentally reciting a two-hundred page poem - boredom means resorting to such means of amusement - when the door to the dungeon opens and voices pepper the air.
“I still don’t think we need all of us here.”
“I’m sorry, were you not briefed on who these two are?”
“They’re in cold iron.”
“Enough,” says a raspy voice. Tomura.
Shouto tenses.
“I apologise for the less-than-ideal lodgings,” says Tomura, in an affable sort of way. He seems to be talking to Katsuki. “We didn’t mean to keep you here this long, but we ran into some trouble with one of our contractors.”
“Get to the point,” snips Katsuki.
“We’re not here to intimidate you.”
There is a jangle of chains. “You’ve got a funny way of showing that.”
Tomura ignores the jibe. “Katsuki Bakugou, Dragon King: would you like to join me?”
Katsuki, to Shouto’s shock, laughs. “Is that it? Stop talking nonsense. I refuse,” he says. He could not have sounded more scornful if he tried.
But Tomura carries on breezily. “Kings are so uptight these days, aren’t they? They’re expected to adhere to certain rules, mete out certain punishments. We want to make the world question this. What is justice? What is a good king?”
“Stop wrapping up your lunacy with fancy words. You don’t really give a shit about that, you just enjoy hurting people and want an excuse.”
“We intend to win our fight. You like winning, don’t you?”
“Not enough to join your merry band of murderers.”
A pause. “Consider it carefully.”
“Please, join us so we can harass and kill people,” Katsuki mocks in a high voice.
Tomura’s sigh is heavy. “Ah, well. Perhaps you’ll change your mind.”
“Gods, you’re really crazy, aren’t you?”
Shouto fully expects Tomura to disintegrate Katsuki’s face, but instead he just leaves, the others following suit.
“Shit,” says Katsuki, hoarse, after a beat.
Shouto wishes he could see him. He has never been good at comforting or reassuring people, but he wants to do something to help. “It’s odd,” he finds himself saying, just because there is nothing else to do. “Why would they assume you would join them? I’ve not heard tell of you having any inclinations towards the League’s philosophy.”
Katsuki laughs. It is abrupt, choked, with a thread of bitterness.
Shouto leaves it.
***
“You got any ideas about how to get out?” says Katsuki, a day later. Or maybe a few hours later.
“No more than you.”
“Maybe we could do a prison break. Y’know, like those notorious tax evaders in the Cedar Kingdom twenty years ago.”
“That’s not a comparison I thought you’d make.”
“I’m serious.”
“I don’t see any tools we could use.”
“I could use a spoon to dig us a tunnel.”
“...That would take years.”
“Better than nothing. You got anyone coming to bust you out, by any chance?”
“...No.” He cannot let on that he is important enough for a rescue mission. His father is probably thinking of a way to get him back, if he hasn’t already sent a party; it is, after all, a sign of weakness to have your strongest son imprisoned by a band of rogues.
When - if - Shouto gets back, he will be in for an earful about disgracing the family. Well, if he can see Fumikage and Yaomomo and his siblings again, and sleep in his own bed, he will take it gladly.
“Cold,” says Katsuki.
Shouto smiles wanly.
Katsuki’s laugh is serrated and unapologetic. “You don’t like your king very much, do you?”
“Treason isn’t a good ingredient to staying alive.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
Shouto suppresses a hysterical giggle. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell him how much you dislike him?”
“What, you looking for a reward? He already knows I dislike him.”
“What have you heard about King Enji that makes you feel that way?” He is aware that his father is more feared than respected. But still, most people do not know of his character beyond his efficiency as a king. And he is efficient, whatever Shouto may think of his failings as a father and husband.
“Heard? He wanted to gift me his youngest son as some kind of bartering chip for the disputed area. Didn’t even come and tell me to my face like a man, he just had a stuffy letter sent.” Katsuki scoffs. “Like I’d want his damaged goods.”
Shouto’s lungs have seized up and a haze has filled his vision. He wanted to offer me as a... “Damaged goods?” he manages, quietly. He knows what Katsuki is about to say. He knows, and yet, it does not make it easier to hear.
“His face, Himura. Rumour says half of it’s practically burned off. The gods know how it happened, and I won’t ask you, but if the bastard wanted to flatter me he could have at least offered his daughter, I hear she’s real smart. Or his oldest son, what’s-his-name, Natsume or Natsuo or something,” says Katsuki airily. “I’m not stupid, though - I told him I’d consider it and, fuck, I really am. It wasn’t just his son, he was also offering to build infrastructure like roads and schools, and to relax some heavy taxes. It would mean peace and prosperity for a lot of people.”
Shouto’s hand comes up, subconsciously, to rest over his scar. He has never liked touching it, never liked feeling out the leathery grooves and hard ridges.
Hate is what I see.
“Oi, you fall asleep or something?”
I can’t stand that left side of yours.
Shouto makes a vague sound.
“Anyway, my consorts have yet to decide what to make of it. I won’t give an answer till then.”
Shouto’s brain grinds to a halt. “Consorts?”
“Yeah? Shit, man, you really are from the Fire Kingdom, huh? Snooty little pissbabies. We allow polygamy. It’s normal.”
Shouto has heard of it, but there are no proper records in the palace library. He’s checked. “I thought that was only in some cases?”
“Sure, but it’s not considered weird or anything.”
From slowing down, Shouto’s brain careens into overdrive. Consorts? Had his father known? Had he not cared what Shouto would think of that, what an adjustment it would be for him? (Of course not, his brain supplies.) “So.” His mouth is dry. He swallows, but it doesn’t help. He fumbles for his water cup and ends up dropping it, which doesn’t matter, because it’s empty. He watches it roll across the floor in a languid arc. “When you responded to the letter…”
“I didn’t tell the bastard about my husbands, if that’s what you’re asking. Don’t need to give him another reason to look down his pointy nose at me. I just said I’d give him a decision later.”
Shouto pinches the bridge of his nose. Married to Katsuki Bakugou of the Dragon Kingdom and his husbands. So much for that marriage he and Yaomomo kept joking about. Hey, if I don’t like any of those men my parents throw at me, I’ll just marry you, yeah? she had said, after a sparring session when they were fifteen, and hasn’t stopped saying it since then.
Shouto had thought that marrying Yaomomo wouldn’t have been a terrible prospect. She is sharp as a whip and a powerful conjurer, and he enjoys her company. Compared to his parents’ marriage, it would be idyllic. It could even be fun. They wouldn’t have to ration the lengths of their conversations. They could race their horses at ungodly hours and travel to see the Cedar Kingdom’s thriving pottery and textile markets, and no one would be able to stop them.
She must be worried.
He’s worried about her.
It strikes him that he misses home. He misses the manic glitter in Fuyumi’s eyes when she’s close to finishing a new glassblowing piece. He misses his snatches of conversation with Natsuo in the hallways. He misses Fumikage’s tic of fiddling with his feathers when he is anxious and Yaomomo’s dimple when she smiles. He misses the raggedy black cat that struts around the palace and curls up at his left side in winters.
Somewhere along the way, though he hadn’t realised it before, he’d made a life beyond Enji and the training room. Threadbare and self-contained, but a life nonetheless - and he wants to experience those good parts again.
He wants the good parts to be fuller.
There is a frog in his throat, and he swallows around it.
Katsuki is saying something. Shouto tunes back in. “I’ve never met someone after talking to them for days.” Shouto can hear Katsuki’s grin, sharp and burnished. “You sound like you’ve got really nice hair, all combed and neat.”
“I. What?”
“Y’know. You seem kinda hoity-toity. Well bred.”
Shouto flinches. Once he takes a deep, deep breath and uncurls his fists, he says, “You’re a king, you’re hardly one to talk about people being hoity-toity.” The word tastes foreign in his mouth.
“I’m a king that fights, I don’t get others to do my dirty work for me.”
“My f - The Todorokis fight too.”
“But there’s a lot more strict hierarchy in the Fire Kingdom. I got people waiting on me, but if I don’t treat ‘em well, they’ll just kill me. It’s me against thousands, I don’t stand a chance. Todorokis, though. They could stand in the middle of a town square and shoot somebody and no one would do a damn thing.”
That is inaccurate. There would be a trial, but it would be heavily biased in the Todorokis’ favour. Shouto decides it is simpler to just agree.
“I’m gonna be disappointed if your hair isn’t nice,” Katsuki’s voice seeps languidly through the wall.
Despite everything, Shouto finds himself smiling. Then he sobers. He could hide the truth until they are both free - it would be smarter. Katsuki may not longer want to work with him if he knows who he is. But Shouto has always been a poor liar; candidness comes more naturally to him. And there is a good chance that Katsuki will be even angrier if he finds out after the cold iron has come off their wrists.
He takes a deep breath, steels himself. “I need to tell you some-”
The dungeon door slams open and Shouto jumps.
“The hell?” says Katsuki. “Are you people here to ask me again?”
There is the sound of footsteps, but they stop in front of Shouto’s cell. The key turns with a snick, and the door screeches open. Shouto goes still, pressing his back against the clammy wall. Shuichi stands in the doorway, with an unfamiliar blonde woman rocking on her feet behind him.
“Hey, what are you doing?” comes Katsuki’s voice. There is a wobbling uncertainty to it that Shouto has not heard before.
“Help me with him, would you,” says Shuichi.
“Fuck, no! Keep him out of this, he has nothing to do with this!”
“He’s cute!” squeals the woman. “No one told me he was cute! I’m even more excited now.”
And then Shouto is being hauled to his feet and dragged out, wincing as the light from the torches lances his eyes. His knees pop. He scrabbles for his ice, then for his fire, digs deeper than he ever has before, and comes up empty. When he is yanked up towards the exit, he stumbles and cracks his shin against a stair, but feels nothing.
Shuichi and the woman do not give him any indication of where they are headed as they shove him along. Katsuki’s furious shouts grow fainter with each step they take. Shouto strains to keep hearing them, to cling to some kind of anchor. They dissipate like smoke.
And then, he is thrown somewhere. Windowless room. Bare. Ground scuffing his palms and knees. Drip of water. Smells of sewage and charred flesh. Temperature a tinge lower than the corridor.
When he looks up, there are two pairs of eyes trained on him. At the back of his mind, he registers that he should resent Katsuki, an enemy king - Shouto is in this situation because of him - but he finds that he cannot. Perhaps this is inappropriate; his father might have found it so.
But Katsuki had only given the same answer Shouto would have.
“This won’t be any fun,” grumbles Shuichi. “He can’t even fight.”
The woman claps her hands. “Can I start? Ooh, please can I start?” She leans down, cups his cheek. Runs a cool finger along his jaw.
Shouto does not scare easily. He has been burned, methodically, to see how quickly he would heal. He has been locked in a broom closet for over a day. He has seen his mother’s wide, empty eyes.
He should be standing strong and proud, but his heart is pounding and his legs paralysed. Everything is obscured with a film of fog.
“Himiko, could you at least try to sound less happy about it?” says Shuichi, flicking some dirt from beneath his fingernails.
The woman - Himiko - slips out a knife from her belt, her grin never shrinking. “He’ll look even more handsome with blood.” She sets the tip of the knife against the rim of his scar. Slits the skin just so, tracing an outline. Her eyes are a startling golden yellow, like a cat’s.
Shouto jerks back, but Himiko catches the back of his head and holds him in place.
“Don’t be naughty,” she sing-songs. “Hey, Shuichi, how much can we rough him up?”
“Tomura said no permanent damage to limbs or vital organs. He’s a hostage, after all. Doubt King Enji would appreciate being sent a box of his fingernails, and we could sure use Moonfish back here.”
“So many limitations! But it’s okay, I can work with that. We’ve got all day.”
The knife slides slowly down from Shouto’s face, comes to rest on his clavicle. It hurts less when you take deep breaths, Fuyumi had said as she stitched his wounds when he was eight. It hurts less when you don’t expect it, Natsuo had said when he removed a thorn from Shouto’s finger when he was five. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts, Enji had said when -
“What if he passes out too soon?” grumbles Shuichi.
Himiko places her thumb on Shouto’s lower lip. Presses down. “I won’t let that happen.”
***
Shouto opens his eyes, and he is lying on his side. Where am I?
His body has stopped screaming enough for his brain to form fuzzy words and half-concepts. He turns his head to vomit. There is just bile, and then nothing, and he heaves and shakes, with his hair flopping wildly in his eyes. Once he has collected himself somewhat he spits, and in the watery light he sees flecks of blood in the fluid.
It nearly turns his stomach again.
“Himura?”
Who is Himura? And who is speaking?
“Hey, hey, Himura! Get it together, man! C’mon, asshole, say something. Tell me you’re fucking alive.”
The person is loud. Shouto’s head is about to split open.
More shouts of “Himura”. More pleads for Himura to speak.
Listening takes too much energy. He wants to sleep.
“What did they do to you?”
The voice is...becoming familiar. For some reason, Shouto thinks of dragons. The Dragon King. Katsuki.
“Just tell me you’re alive!”
Shouto gathers every shred of strength left in him and gasps, “Pointless.” It is a mistake - stars burst across his vision.
“Fuck,” Katsuki says. “Okay, you’re - shit. Goddamn, those fucking cowards, those sons of bitches, once I’m out, I’ll - I’ll - ”
He hasn’t thought this through, thinks Shouto muzzily.
“Where does it hurt the most?”
Everywhere.
“You were gone for a long time. Someone came with a fresh cup of water. Drink it, now.”
It’s touching, Katsuki’s concern. Makes Shouto wonder if being bonded to him would be much worse than being chained to his father.
Shouto wishes he could drink the water, if only to soothe Katsuki. His limbs refuse to move.
He closes his eyes, and falls into a fitful sleep. After he wakes, he hangs on the edge of lucidity. He only pecks at his bread. He cannot lift his water cup.
At some point, the next night or the same hour, his door opens and one of the League’s members, a slender man with dark, unkempt hair, ambles in. Shouto looks at him hazily, praying that he is not about to be dragged out for another beating. Apparently Katsuki has a similar anxiety, because he snaps, “What the hell are you doing to him?”
Half the man’s skin is burned to a dull, blackish purple and attached to the rest of his skin with what appear to be staples. He is slouching, but his eyes are sharp, and he stares at Shouto like he’s sizing up a mule and finding it lacking.
Then he crouches down, swipes the water cup, and holds it to Shouto’s lips. Shouto is confused, but after a pause drinks greedily, and then coughs when it goes down the wrong way.
“Take it easy,” the man says. His eyes are a searing, brilliant blue. Shouto gazes at them, frowning. They are familiar in a way he cannot place.
The man just pushes the water cup at him again. He waits till Shouto has finished it, and then leaves.
“The fuck was that?” Katsuki says.
Shouto agrees.
***
The stab wound in Shouto’s shoulder has barely started to scab at the edges when Tomura and the rest of the League pour into the dungeons again.
“Dragon King,” says Tomura, “is your answer the same as before?”
“I’m kind of hoping he says yes,” says Himiko. “I want to play with the cute boy again!”
Please no, thinks Shouto, withering. Himiko had been ecstatic through the whole thing. They’d given him treatment so he wouldn’t get infected and die, but he’s going to have several bones healing crooked. He’d rather live to see it, and he’s not sure he can survive another session like that.
Katsuki’s voice is calm and sure. “I’ll do it.”
“Haah? Really?” bursts out Shuichi.
“Praise be,” someone mutters.
Tomura says genially, “Well, take the cuffs off him. We’re not savages.”
“Take them off?”
“You heard the man. What’s he gonna do, fight the whole lot of us?”
“You do it.”
“Wha - why me?”
“Because I said so. Get on with it.”
There is some disgruntled muttering, and then the creak of Katsuki’s cell door opening.
Atsuhiro says, “I do apologise for our methods. But please understand, we’re not just a mob that enjoys crimes.”
Shouto rolls his eyes so hard he can almost see the inside of his head.
There is a small click, and the clatter of iron cuffs dropping to the ground. Shouto nearly misses the quiet, relieved sigh from Katsuki. He pictures him massaging the circulation back into his wrists.
The silence is fragile and uncomfortable, like dough stretched to translucency.
“Anything to say?” asks Atsuhiro.
Something crackles to life. Shouto is reminded of the beginnings of sparklers on the new year. “Only that you bastards better start praying to every god you know,” Katsuki snarls. He must do something with his Quirk, because there is a blast, and someone shrieks.
“What the hell - ”
“This little shit - “
“Katsuki?” Shouto calls, too alarmed to remember that he should probably be addressing him as “Your Majesty”. (Punishment in the Fire Kingdom: five lashes. The scars still haven’t faded.) He lurches forward and places his hands against his cell door, trying to see through the gaps in the window railings. If it aggravates his injuries, he cannot tell. Shouto is by no means a short man, but even straining on his toes he can barely glimpse the tops of the others’ heads. Is Katsuki really planning on fighting them all at once? Is he insane?
Or is he just that strong?
It turns out that question is irrelevant.
Something explodes and the ground rocks beneath Shouto’s feet. There is a great cacophony of falling stone, like the side of the whole building has been blown in, and Shouto staggers against a wall, his heart in his throat and his ears ringing.
A lot of people are yelling at the same time, and Shouto can’t understand anything.
Something roars. Not animal, certainly not human. It is the kind of sound a mountain might make, engulfing everything in the vicinity and so, so much louder than anything Shouto has ever heard, shuddering through his chest and rattling his teeth. Bits of dust and stones drop from the ceiling.
There is a shout of “Kacchan!” and the thump of hurried footsteps.
Katsuki does not seem surprised, or even fazed. Instead, there is a cutting smugness to him. “Took your sweet time, Izuku. I’d tell you to go after the League, but it seems their human portal is good for escapes.”
“Eijirou and Chiyo are here, too. Hurry, let’s get you out.”
“Not yet. Get that door open. Be careful, there’s someone inside.”
Shouto scrambles back and falls on his ass, and it’s a good thing he does, because the next second there is a horrifying metal screech and the door is ripped clean off its hinges and tossed aside like parchment. A man with wild dark curls and crackles of verdant lightning coiling around his body appears in the doorway. “Are you - ” His eyes widen when they settle on Shouto. “You’re - ”
“Himura!”
The man is shoved out of the way and another one takes his place, his chest heaving. He’s bare to the waist, and wears bead necklaces and a scowl that could burn a hole through steel. Bright tattoos wrap around his brawny arms.
Katsuki.
He sees Shouto and opens his mouth. And then he takes the appearance of someone who’s been unexpectedly struck with a lashing branch, and his jaw goes slack. “Himu - ” His expression shifts, morphing into something dangerously still.
“Kacchan,” says the other man, addressing Katsuki. It is a discordantly soft nickname for someone so abrasive, yet Katsuki wears it like an old cloak. “He’s hurt, we need to get him medical attention.”
That seems to snap Katsuki out of his stupor.
“Medical - ” Sparks are flying from Katsuki’s palms. So that’s his Quirk. “You filthy, lying piece of shit!”
“Kacchan, he’ll die if he doesn’t get help!”
“Did you sit there and laugh to yourself while you hid who you really were, Shouto Todoroki?” He spits the name like it is a curse. “Was it King Enji’s idea to get in my good graces and loosen my tongue?”
Shouto shakes his head. The cell swims in and out of focus. His mouth is dry and numb and clumsy. His pool of words is scattered. “No, that’s - ”
“They’re right about Todorokis being two-faced bastards. No, really, it’s my fault, what the fuck was I thinking, acting like a Firelander could be a friend.” He strides over to Shouto and yanks him up by the front of his tattered tunic. A spasm rips through Shouto. “I should kill you right now.”
Sketch commission by Gardenvinus
“This isn’t how we do things,” the dark-haired man snaps. “Let him go, I’ll deal with him.”
“You weren’t there, Izuku! This little snake cozied up to me and tried to get intel on our kingdom! How would you feel if Eijirou or Ochako or someone else got hurt because of it?”
The man’s (Izuku’s?) expression has hardened into single-minded determination. “I don’t give a shit about how you feel right now. Get off him or I’ll make you.” His knees are bent. Pale green lightning crackles along his forearms again, and his eyes seem lit from within by the same energy.
Katsuki breathes hard for a few moments, pink blotches over his neck and face, baring his teeth. His hand twitches by his side for a weapon that is not there.
Then he straightens, his expression shuttering, and drops Shouto to the ground like a sack of rocks. It jars Shouto’s battered body and a thin, choked-off sound escapes him. “Don’t think you or your family will come out of this unscathed, Todoroki,” Katsuki says lowly, and then steps back.
Shouto only registers snatches of what happens after that, half-images and sounds from far away. Large, green eyes. An old woman’s stern voice. Pain. Shouts of Katsuki! Vermillion tiles that resemble giant scales. Pain. Hands on him, on his chest, on his shoulder, on his legs. Murmurs, clouds. Expanse of deep blue. Bracing wind and raw chill. Mother? More voices, blurred like they are underwater. He’s burning up. Hold him down. Stop the bleeding.
And then, darkness.
Consciousness trickles back slowly, viscous. A vaulted stone ceiling. Tart herbal aroma. Wooden screens. Echo of brisk footsteps. Tall airy windows. Where in the palace do they have rooms like this?
A hand rests on his forehead, and he rasps, “Fuyumi?”
“He’s awake,” says a voice that does not belong to Fuyumi. It does not belong to anyone he knows.
Shouto struggles to open his eyes. Two people are looking down at him. One of them, a woman with grey hair scraped back in a bun, would barely come up to his waist if he stood upright. She helps him sit up and makes him drink water (clean, it’s clean and cool and tastes so good) and begins to check his pulse with firm, wrinkled fingers.
The other is a man around his age who seems a shade familiar, with a dusting of freckles and a smile so earnest it would have put Shouto at ease if he could just remember what he’s trying to...if he could just remember. “Chiyo says they’re going to start you on a liquid diet,” the man says. “I’ll get you some fruit juice; you’d best drink it all.”
“How are you feeling?” asks the woman.
Like I got thrown off the battlements to be mauled by a bear. “Fine.”
“Give me your full name, the year, and the last thing you remember.”
Shouto slurs out the first two. “The last thing I - ” He tries to move his leg, but it is heavy, and when he pulls off the scratchy blanket, he finds a smooth metal band around his ankle. Cold iron.
It comes back in a torrent. The ambush. The cell. The League. The inmate.
Shouto shoots upright and the world whites out.
“Hey, woah,” says the man - Izuku, he’s called Izuku and he’s got lightning in him - placing a large hand on Shouto’s back. Shouto gets the feeling he wouldn’t require his Quirk to pick Shouto up and casually toss him out one of the windows. “You’re not fully recovered yet.”
Shouto can only half digest everything that’s happening. His skull is filled with static. Am I in the Dragon Kingdom? he wonders. And then, Obviously, do you think they’d return you to your home? Shouto rubs his forehead. It does not matter how hospitable they are - he is at their mercy. He may not be in chains, but without his quirk, he cannot escape. Not that he would - that would be a monumentally stupid idea and dissolve two neighbouring kingdoms into diplomatic chaos - but the message is clear.
Forget a lecture about disgracing the family - his father is going to burn the other half of his face, and this time it won’t be an accident. That is, if Shouto isn’t executed out here first.
He has had better months.
“Three broken ribs, fractured cheekbone and nose, stab wounds to the shoulder and thigh, multiple contusions, internal bleeding, dislocated ankle, malnourishment, and dehydration,” the woman is saying, tutting and curling her lip. She has a way about her that makes Shouto feel guilty for being hurt, though not for being tended to. While she palpates his stomach, Izuku disappears and comes back with an earthen cup, which he places on a small round table cluttered with medical equipment by Shouto’s bed.
“I’m sorry you got such a shock,” he says, his smile turning apologetic. “You were in bad shape, back at the Kamino Prison. We decided to bring you to our healers, since our fortress was closer than your base and - ah, before we continue, my name is Izuku Midoriya!” He places a hand on his chest and bows his head - an old-fashioned, formal way of introduction, but it suits him.
“It’s good to meet you,” says Shouto, and is surprised that he means it. It is a bland, inadequate response, but Izuku beams like Shouto’s prepared him a sonnet.
“Rest up. We’ll bring you up to speed after you’ve got some food in you.”
Shouto looks down at his left arm, which is bound to his side to immobilise his wounded shoulder. “I’ll have to stand trial, won’t I?”
Izuku picks up the cup and hands it to Shouto, who clutches it, but does not drink. He avoids Shouto’s gaze. “Don’t think about that now, Your Highness.”
Don’t call me that, thinks Shouto. It seems out of place when he is effectively a prisoner (again), and there is something about Izuku that makes Shouto want to just be fr - want to not be so formal. But Izuku is only being proper. It would not do for Shouto to say, Use my name and get Izuku’s skin flayed off.
He does not have the time to think of a reply. Izuku gives one last, sympathetic smile that does not quite reach his eyes, and leaves. Shouto watches his broad receding back, and then looks down into his cup. His breath creates ripples on the surface of the deep red juice, distorting his reflection. He has the strangest feeling that Izuku had not meant to be there when Shouto woke up.
He puts the cup back on the table.
Part 2