Ch. 33 Let it Burn

"Wait. Stop. No. Burn... here? Dabi, this is my building. You can't just - "

But he'd already walked away and started giving orders to the other League members who'd arrived, leaving you standing on the sidewalk like he hadn't just told you that he was about to set fire to literally everything.

"Dabi." You ran up and yanked on his jacket to get his attention. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

As he quickly turned back to you, his blue eyes stared at your hand clutching his jacket before meeting your own eyes. You watched Dabi's expression closely, looking for some sign, any sign really, that he was kidding around.

But he was not.

"You are worried about me. I get it," he smirked. Dabi roughly pulled you against him, his other hand sliding down your back and cupping your ass, the heat from his fingers obvious even through the pockets on the back of your pants.

"Like hell I am!" Shoving back against him, you tried unsuccessfully to push his hands away. "You can burn with it for all I care, let go of me."

"Never," he smiled down at you, bringing his face close enough that all he had to do was whisper. "You can hate me all you want, little girl, but at the end of the day, when all of these heroes are dead and gone, I'll still be here. I'll be all you have."

Heroes? Why was he thinking about heroes right now? It didn't matter. His hand was getting hotter by the second and you had to get him off you to go warn people.

Of all the fucking things right now, Dabi looked like he was about to kiss you, but instead you reared back and spit on his face.

You expected... well, you didn't know what you expected. You expected him to let you go, but.... He didn't.

It seemed like there was just a second of initial shock, but then he grinned. Flames danced in his hand and in his eyes, and his voice was low, dangerous.

"You're angry. Good. I'm angry, too. It doesn't matter what you do, y/n. When all of this is done, you will still be mine, and I... I will be your god."

Holy hell he's insane.

"Hey, everyone!" Dabi suddenly shouted. The villains stopped to stare at him, wondering what else he was going to say. Dabi grabbed the back of your neck and held you out in front of him. "This is my girl. If she gets in the way, get her out of there. I'm the only one who gets to burn her."

"Now that sounds like love!" you heard the girl giggle.

"Now go. We have heroes to kill."

At that, the other villains scattered after getting their instructions, the girl villain practically skipping away, all of them apparently totally okay with all of this.

"Heroes don't live here, Dabi. Tell them to stop," you in begged. "You can't.... The whole building? We have to get all of these people out of here."

"Your whole building is full of crooks anyway. Boss man told me to do what I want, and this is what I want."

"Murder? That's what you want? Because that's what's about to happen. All of these people, their homes, their possessions..."

"Oh. Are you worried about your stuff? Don't be. I'll get you new stuff."

"Who cares about that, you lunatic!" you yelled, hitting him in the chest with your fist. Not that it did any good. He didn't even flinch. "There are innocent people living here, Dabi. We need to-"

"We don't need to do anything other than watch it all burn, baby. But I'm not totally heartless. I'll give you a little head start if you want to try to warn people."

"A head start?"

"How about 60 seconds? It's not like you'll get very far," he shrugged. "Go on," he said when you hadn't moved, motioning you away. "I'm counting down..."

This fucker was serious.

Then fine. If 60 seconds was all you had, you had to do your best. What was it that those hero idiots were always shouting? Plus ultra? Yeah, that.

You booked it up the stairs to the first landing faster than you had ever run anything in your life, banging on doors as you raced down the hall, yelling as loud as you could that everyone needed to get out.

A couple people poked their heads out, curious about all the noise while others either weren't home or ignored you.

You didn't blame them. You'd heard and ignored crazier shit yelled down the hall in the middle of the night on a regular basis.

You'd just made it to the second floor landing when you heard a boom above you and felt a wave of hot air sweep down across your face. Fuck. Was Dabi burning things already? Had one minute already passed? There was no way to know.

But you couldn't stop moving, not when you knew your time was running short or already out. Dashing down the hall, you saw your apartment door, doorknob missing and all, but ran past it to bang on more doors. Everything in your apartment was replaceable; people were not.

It was getting hotter by the minute. Looking up, you saw that Dabi was starting with the top floors, fires already blazing on the roof and out the windows of the top apartments. People came rushing down the stairs toward you, and if you didn't move fast, you were going to be trampled underneath them.

Smoke detectors and fire alarms were blaring on every floor as you moved with the mob of people down the stairs, but you hardly heard them over people's shouts and the crack and sizzle of the burning building.

You saw a flash of color and capes zoom by and you never thought you'd say this but thank god heroes were here.

Mere minutes had passed but, by the time you made it down the stairs, heroes were already on the scene, their hero costumes oddly cheerful in contrast to the grim scene in front of you.

You weren't sure where Dabi was, but this didn't seem like the time to talk to heroes about anything, so you ducked around the corner and ran around to the back of the building.

The back half of the building had all but collapsed, and wood and concrete and debris were strewn everywhere. Hearing voices, you climbed on top of the dumpster to see if you could see anyone in the chaos.

And you did, your heart suddenly a thousand times lighter. 

Bakugo was up on the second floor landing, near where you had been when the fire started, not too far from your apartment door. Had he come there to find you?

"Bakugo!" you shouted. But he didn't hear you, his eyes fixed on something else.

You tried to get closer, but concrete debris blocked your way and that's when you saw what he was looking at.

One guy. No, two. No, three. They just all looked the same. 

Oh hell. It's at least one of the guys you saw earlier getting out of the van. These were villains.

You knew that from where he stood on the second floor landing, Bakugo could see the same thing as you.

Three men, all of them wearing similar costumes to one of the villains that had shown up earlier, all of them trying to figure out how to get up and around the crumbled concrete remains of the destroyed building a few feet from you. Heavy steel beams from your building loomed over their heads, threatening to drop at any second. The men looked unarmed, and from what you could tell, at least one was pretty severely injured.

"Hey!" you shouted at Bakugo. "Over there!" You pointed toward the group, hoping Bakugo would see them and help get them out. "They need help!" 

Bakugo would be able to get them out easier than you at this point; he'd be able to jump over there using his blasts and get them free since you had no way to climb over the concrete in front of you.

"Bakugo!" you shouted again.

Finally, he looked at you and grinned, a wide, silly grin you hadn't seen before that stood in sharp contrast to the serious situation. He didn't say a word back, but instead he...

Fired?

What the hell?

Just as you tried to see into his thoughts to figure out what the fuck was going on, because why would you fire on unarmed people, villain or not, the ground seemed to shake underneath you, and you ducked down at the booming sounds of his blasts hitting right where the group stood.

Horrified, you watched as the fire from Bakugo's blast scattered and grew, the whole area quickly destroyed, cement and brick scattering everywhere. He fired directly at the steel beams over their heads; a perfect shot from his hand cut loose the remaining cables, sending it all crashing down on top of the men. 

When you stood up, you saw Bakugo, still standing on the landing. And he was... still smiling?

You tried to reach for his mind, but everything was chaos and then he was gone.

None of it made sense. He'd intentionally shot at them. He'd intentionally caused that beam to fall on them. He'd... 

They were villains, yeah, but they were still people. He could have helped them out and arrested them later.  But instead he'd.... 

You couldn't bring yourself to think it. 

You didn't see any sign of the villains anymore, but maybe if you could get there fast enough, maybe you could help, maybe you could do something. You weren't sure what, but there had to be something.

Fairly certain that the ground had stopped rumbling, you found the dumpster and used it to climb over the concrete. As soon as you landed, you took off toward where the men had been as fast as soon as you could, but the concrete beams had fallen and if they were still there, they were buried under a heavy pile of steel and wood.

"Not so fast," Dabi said, suddenly in front of you.

"Fuck you!"

He pushed you back. "You're not going past me."

"Let me through! There were three guys over there. Three of your guys. Don't you care? They need help!"

"They really don't."

"Damn it, let me through." You tried again pushing past him, but he held you firm. Some of Bakugo's blasts only added to the hellish fire consuming the building, the flames still blazing high over Dabi's shoulder.

"Let's watch it all burn together, baby girl."

Dabi grabbed your shoulders and spun around so that he held you in front of him facing the blaze, forcing you to watch. He held his arms tight across your chest to keep you from moving, the heat from the fire searing your cheeks.

"You saw him do, didn't you?" Dabi asked. "You saw him fire on them? This is what you knew those heroes were like all along, right?"

"Yes. I mean no. No! I can't... I can't believe...why would he... "

"But you saw it?"

"Yes, I saw it! You know I did! But I don't understand why..."

"You don't understand why your hero friends would kill people like that? In cold blood? You know, it's almost like they're as bad as villains."

"He wouldn't," you shook your head violently side to side. "He would save them! Or show them a way out so they could save themselves. Or something. Anything other than this. This doesn't make sense."

"Your precious hero would save villains? No. You know that's not true. We don't deserve to live in their eyes."

"You're wrong. He would never."

But he had, hadn't he? You'd watched as Bakugo fired on those three men who hadn't been able to defend themselves. No, he hadn't just fired... he'd.... killed? 

"Welcome to reality," Dabi rasped in your ear. "Glad you could finally join us, baby."

"Fuck your reality! He isn't like that!"

You shouted at Dabi, but he wasn't the one you were trying to convince.

"He isn't like that," you repeated, this time quieter.

Maybe if you repeated it enough, you'd believe it yourself.