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Shinsou had grown up under constant scrutiny.
“With a quirk like that, he’s bound to…” "You just can't trust someone who could..."
Shinsou had heard it all.
After Bakugou Katsuki, the looks, whispers, doubt: it all multiplied tenfold, along with the pressure to prove them wrong. And so now, standing in front of Katsuki for the first time in years, Shinsou tried to make his case.
“You don’t have to do this, Katsuki,” he said, ragged and desperate. “Your quirk doesn’t define you, it doesn’t make you a villain.”
Katsuki smiled, fingers sparkling like children’s matsuri toys. “No,” Katsuki said, voice as smooth and raspy as a lion’s purr, “my quirk didn’t make me a villain. The world did. And the world deserves every act of vengeance I bring before it.”
“Katsuki, you kill people.”
“No,” Katsuki spit, palms flaring hot. “I kill pigs. I kill filthy, greedy pigs who think they’re safe behind the stacks of money in their titanium vaults. I kill snakes who think children are commodities to buy and sell and market. I kill worms who think the only people worth anything are the people who can pay. I kill the cancer, the rot of society that you heroes are too blind to see. You go wherever your corrupt little commission sends you, and that’s why you’re here instead of actually doing shit to help people. They brainwashed you, Toshi.” His voice was almost sweet. “They feared you so much they made you desperate for their approval, and now you’re terrified to lose it. Too scared to see what’s really going on around you.”
Shinsou had spent his whole life trying to be the hero that no one believed he could be. Katsuki, for so long, had so ardently pursued being a hero that the whole world was ready to see him shine. And yet, everything had shattered at Katsuki’s fall from grace.
Shinsou was the hero who should have been a villain, and Katsuki the villain who should have been a hero.
And yet- Didn’t Shinsou know what was happening? Hadn’t he seen the suffering in the darkest corners of society and been told to look away? How many villains had he had to put away because the cruelness of the world turned them bitter and hard?
Katsuki had never turned his back on what it meant to be a hero. The difference between them was that Katsuki saw people hurting and acted to stop it, while Shinsou was directed like a pawn on a board to protect this and that official, monument, shipment.
Shinsou stopped the villains that made a scene, the ones that caused trouble to the order of things. But what about the villains who hid in the dark? The ones who preyed on innocent people, people who wouldn’t cause a blip on the radar of the rich? Those villains- Those were the ones Katsuki put an end to. The ones Shinsou was powerless to stop.
Katsuki seemed to see the conflict on his face, and he knelt down beside him, a hand running through Shinsou’s hair with infinite gentleness. “You can do what I do,” he said softly, eyes bright. “You can leave it all behind, Toshi.”
“And prove them right?” Shinsou managed, throat dry. “I’ve given… I’ve given everything to this.”
“Who cares?” Katsuki retorted, but it wasn’t mean. “Let them think what they think. We can make a difference, Tosh. A real difference. You can be a real hero.”
“Katsuki, I- I don’t know how- how to leave it behind. My life, my— our friends. Don’t you miss them?” Didn’t you miss me?
Katsuki’s face betrayed him for a moment, flashing with a pain so raw and deep it made Shinsou’s heart twist. Katsuki didn’t answer, not directly.
“It was the choice I had to make. I’m Bakugou Katsuki. I’m victory embodied.” He sounded like it was an impossible burden to bear. “I did it for you. I couldn’t sit by and watch what was happening without doing anything. The world- This world wants to eat you alive. I couldn’t let it do that.” He took a deep breath, and as he let it out, his forehead fell against Shinsou’s. “The people need heroes. They need hope and faith in people around them. But the world- the world needs villains like me.”
“And where do I fall?” Shinsou whispered. He ached, having Katsuki so close again and not knowing whether he would stay. “Do the people need me, or the world?”
Katsuki’s fingers, blazing hot, tightened at the back of Shinsou’s neck like he couldn’t let him go. “Fuck the world, Toshi,” he whispered, raw and bleeding. “I need you.”
(They start a silent revolution. They tear the world apart from the inside out and rebuild it from the ground up. They don’t forgive or forget; they leave that to the people’s heroes.
Someday, when their job is done, they’ll find their friends again, and maybe then they can begin again. But for now, they only need each other.)