✓THE SPACE BETWEEN THE STARS|| BakuDeku Au

Chapter Ten: French Girls

Still Don't Know My Name↲
Labrinth

"To make me exist, oh, stranger . . . Still don't know my name . . ."

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Katsuki knew that someone, somewhere truly believed that with time and patience grief would become more tolerable. That with time came the natural process of healing.

But how was he to still grieving the boy he loved; the boy he thought he had lost; the boy who returned; and the boy who had no memory of him. How was he supposed to go on living in the same penthouse with the boy who was his other half; the one who had no recollection of the ups and downs they had gone through throughout their childhood and teenage years; the one who had to live every second of every day not remembering the day they first said  'I love you'. Was there anybody out there who knew how to handle that?

For he had never truly stopped grieving, three, long, and torturous years had passed and no day was better than the last. Now, he was back—and Katsuki could not do anything but feel so selfish, ungrateful even . . . for even now the grieving did not stop. He had him physically, but there was no mental, no emotional.

Because he had forgotten everything.

He had spent countless nights sobbing, screaming, and mourning until his throat grew sore; until he had nothing but the physical pain to rely on rather than dealing with the war he had managed to conjure within his mind. Katsuki had spent one-thousand-nine-hundred-five days without Izuku in his life, without him there to kiss him after a long and dreary day in the recording studio, without him there to resurrect his goofy side when he was stressing over a song deadline. Without him there period.

And yet he was back and that still wasn't enough for him. 

Quickly, he walked out of the guest room—closing the door behind him to give the younger time to unpack and settle in. That's when the guilt hit him.

It came fast and strong, purging his thoughts and emotions with such a prickling sensation festering in the base of his hollow chest. His lower lip begged for release as his teeth skid across it, deftly splitting a small crack which had formed hours earlier, until it bled. Yet he couldn't be bothered by the coppery taste that stained his tongue, for he felt nothing but the bitter selfishness of his actions and notions.

Izuku was back. 

And while he didn't remember, Katsuki could help him remember. He had a chance at a love he never thought would be possible for him to get back, and he was sitting there wallowing in his self-dug hole of pity. How was that fair to Izuku? To the boy he loved, yet at the moment it was clearly unrequited. It wasn't his fault, so why put the younger through the torture of not finding that missing piece of himself—why not just help him? 

Because there was always two things Katsuki Bakugou wanted more than anything he's ever wanted in his life:

For Izuku to be alive.

And for Izuku to be healthy.

His Izuku was back, damn it. Yes, he was not all the way there . . . but there was still hope.

"Uhm, Bakugou? Or—Katsuki?" Izuku's timid voice broke through the patched curtain his mind had sewn. Temporarily filling his lungs with air, giving his heart another moment to beat. "I know it's still really early, and I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to sleep. But is there anything important we have to do today? I know it's only the first day of us . . . well, you know—but I kind of expected televised interviews and podcasts and all that other shit," he chuckled sheepishly.