Crossing Fates : Book 1 - Escape (BakuDeku)

32 - The Plan

The dragon lay spread-eagled where they had bound him.

Katsuki was chained twice, first with the magical black shackles. The second set was attached in four points to the floor. He stared at the ceiling, thoughts weaving in a serpentine path.

Every few minutes, he would pull at the floor chains. He ignored his bleeding ankles and wrists. He could feel a weakness growing in the chain on his left arm and concentrated on that.

His cell door opened. He turned his head, the serpentine path turning lethal.

A battered, filthy Izuku backed into the room, and Katsuki became sane again.

Katsuki began to shake. He watched Izuku listening at the cracked door for a few moments before pulling the door shut.

Izuku turned around. When the boy caught sight of him, Izuku's shoulders sagged.

"Oh, for crying out loud," Izuku rolled his eyes. "Two sets of manacles? Now I suppose we need two sets of keys. This day keeps getting better and better."

"Come here," Katsuki said. He gave the chain anchoring his left arm an enormous wrench.

The chain groaned but didn't break.

"Come here. Come here."

Izuku cocked his head, his weary gaze becoming very sober. He limped across the cell and collapsed to his knees beside him. "They beat you too," he said. He touched his ribs with a light gentle hand.

Katsuki's shaking increased. Talking to Izuku before the Goblins took him had been easy. He had explained to him with his usual calm ruthlessness how he thought things might go.

Overall, Izuku had seemed to take it well. Katsuki approached the confrontation as he always did, ready and focused to meet any upcoming challenge.

Then that first Goblin had driven his fist into Izuku's stomach... and Katsuki had gone bat-shit crazy.

Every kick, every blow Izuku suffered was like corrosive acid in his veins. Katsuki wanted to howl and rage.

The dragon strained to rip their hearts from their chests while they watched.

He had clung to his self-control by the merest thread, by the realization of how much worse it could get for Izuku if they got the reaction they were searching for out of him.

They hurt Izuku.

They hurt his thief, and that hurt Katsuki inside somewhere, in a place he had never been hurt before.

He had sustained physical injury and pain many times before. It meant little to him.

But this new hurt- he was in shock. Katsuki had never realized just how invincible he had been until it was ripped away from him.

He studied Izuku with a hungry gaze as the boy knelt beside him. The glossiness of his hair was dulled with dirt. His tattered T-shirt was now gray, and the shortened pants were no longer blue. His flawless skin was mottled all over with swollen bruises so deep they were a purple black.

And underneath everything, all of it, was remembering how just before it happened, he had made Izuku cower away from him.

Katsuki had never hated himself before, but he thought he did at that moment.

"Come here, come here," Katsuki whispered.

Izuku's beautiful eyes went from sobered to worried. He leaned over and put his cheek against his. Katsuki turned his face into his skin.

Izuku was murmuring in his ear as his dainty hand stroked the dragon's cheek. Katsuki focused on it.

"I'm sorry. It's all my fault. I can't tell you how sorry I am," Izuku murmured.

"What?" he said. "What are you saying? Stop talking that way. Shut up," he brushed his lips along Izuku's skin, breathed in his presence.

Underneath the dungeon filth and the stink of Goblin, he found Izuku's delicate, indomitable fragrance. Something cramped and injured in his soul expanded again.

"I snarled at you. I didn't mean it."

"Don't be ridiculous; of course you did," Izuku stroked his hair and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

"You cringed from me. Don't ever cringe from me again."

"Bakugo," Izuku said in a sensible voice. "If you turn on me and snarl like a wild animal when I'm not expecting it, I think I might cringe again. Call me a girly girl if you want, but that's just how it is."

"I won't do it again," he whispered.

He was so quiet Izuku almost didn't hear him. Katsuki concentrated all his attention on the featherlight trip Izuku's fingers made across his face until he touched his lips.

Izuku sighed and let more of his weight rest on him. "Locked things can't hold me caged, but that doesn't mean I can pull these blasted manacles open. How the hell am I going to get two sets of keys with Goblins running all over the place?"

The frayed self-control in Izuku's voice sent Katsuki a little bit back into crazy. "You're not," he said.

Izuku lifted his head and scowled at him. Katsuki was relieved to see he hadn't broken down.

"What else are we going to do?" Izuku asked. "We can't just wait around until the Dark Fae King, or the Joker or Riddler or Jack The Ripper, or Jeffrey Dahmer or whoever the hell it is, shows up."

His mind clicked into gear again and became crystal clear. "This is what's happening," he told Izuku. "I have very good hearing. Most of the Goblins have gone to have their evening meal. There are a few guards left in strategic places. I can hear where they are."

"That's handy to know," Izuku said with relief.

"And this is what we're going to do," he told Izuku. "You know how the corridor feels and they took you to the right?"

He nodded.

"If you go straight instead of right, there's some kind of room they use down that way. I think it's a guardroom. I could hear them in there talking about going to supper. There was the sound of metal clanking, which I hope was weapons, and the scrape of chairs, so it's a place where they gather. There's no one there now. I want you to go look for keys that might fit these floor chains or something straight and thin to use as a lock pick. Failing those two, try to grab an axe. Be quick."

"Bakugo," Izuku said, eyeing him in doubt. "I don't know how to pick a lock. I've never had to learn, duh."

"You won't have to. I know how to pick a lock," he said. He had learned to pick locks as soon as locks were invented. He rattled the manacle on his left wrist. "There's a weakness in one of these links. I'm going to break it."

Izuku looked at his arm and his forehead wrinkled. He said with concern, "Your wrist is a mess."

"Don't be such a girly girl," he told him.

Izuku's gaze met his and lit with reluctant laughter.

"It's nothing. You'd better hurry. We don't know how much time we've got while they eat supper."

"Right," Izuku said.

An echo of the pain and rage came back as he watched Izuku struggle to his feet without any of his usual grace and he could do nothing to help him.

He had paid special attention to the ones who had beaten Izuku. There were going to be a lot of dead Goblins before Katsuki was through with this place.

But for now, he turned all his considerable attention on to the weakened chain and yanked.