Chapter 43 - Katsuki

Bakugou went to the hospital every day for the next two weeks. At times members of the squad would tag along, other days he'd go alone. He didn't even snap when Todoroki showed up during visiting hours. 

One afternoon Bakugou walked into room 627, only to see your mother sitting beside your stony visage. She had been knitting, deep in a story but stopped at seeing Bakugou.

"Hey punk." She grinned warmly at seeing your boyfriend and returned to the yarn in her hands. Bakugou nearly laughed at the way she addressed him. You clearly got your sass from her.

"I could come back as a different time?" Bakugou started to head back to the door.

"No. Don't be silly. Besides, we've never really gotten a chance to talk." The [h/c] haired woman put her needles down and motioned toward another hard, plastic chair to her left. Bakugou removed his jacket and draped it across the back of the chair. He took a seat and rested his elbows on his knees, eyes cast to the floor, a bit hesitant to speak with your mother.

"How have you been doing?" She grabbed Bakugou's hand, causing him to look up. Her color was better than the last time he'd seen her in her own hospital bed. [l/n] Ana wore thin framed round glasses, giving her face a roundness and youth. Her shoulder length [h/c] hair was clipped back off her face, but some strands still fell in front of her eyes. Bakugou nearly started at how much you looked alike and glanced toward your grey form, melancholy.

"Shitty," he answered instinctively. "Oh... God... sorry." He caught himself.

[y/n] said she'd kill me if I cursed. Fuck. To his relief Ana laughed.

"I'm doing pretty shitty too." They stayed quiet for a long moment, Ana still gripping Bakugou's hand in tender understanding. They both missed you. They both needed some comfort.

"I'm a hero and I don't know how to save her," Bakugou finally said, feeling the words catch in his throat.

"You're putting a lot of pressure on yourself, aren't you?" a kind, motherly tone.

"I was with her. She..." Bakugou motioned toward your form with his free hand, "and I'm still here."

"[y/n] wouldn't want you to feel guilty." Ana watched as Bakugou's eyes grew glassy, fighting tears. He was too proud to cry in front of your mother and dug his fingernails into his own palm to dull the sensation. Ana stood up and walked in front of Bakugou's chair. "I'm going to hug you now." Bakugou stiffened as Ana's arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him toward her. When she didn't break contact, he allowed himself to relax just slightly, accepting the gesture.

"I know you care about her," she breathed into his hair. "And someday soon they're going to find a way to bring her back from this. A medicine, a time-turning quirk, a sound, a smell, a -" Bakugou pushed the woman from him. She took a step back shocked.

"Say that again!" His eyes were dry and wild.

"Say what? Medicine? A sound?" Ana looked puzzled at the frantic boy.

"A sound?!" Bakugou snatched his jacket and shoved his arms into the sleeves.

"Where are you going?"

"I have a new idea. Thank you [l/n]-san." He pushed past your mother, a fresh hope in his crimson eyes and grabbed your statued hands. "I'll be back [y/n]. Don't worry."

Ana watched as the blond boy practically ran out the door, a grateful smile on her face. She rested a soft hand on your stony shoulder.

"You picked a good one [y/n]."

***

The train ride back to campus seemed to last an eternity. Bakugou itched to dig through your notes, confident that he had a new direction. He sprinted into Heights Alliance, taking the stairs three at a time up to your fifth floor dorm room.

The mess of papers and folders were still scattered around the room from the last time he'd gone on an all-nighter. He dropped to the floor and began leafing through the pages. Weeks ago he had organized all the napkins together, followed by the post-its, the notebook papers, and the random scraps.

"No. No. No. No," he mumbled to himself as he turned page after page.

After about fifteen minutes of hunting, he had sorted anything that had to do with sound, frequency, pitch or vibration. Everything came to a single conclusion. The villains would have needed a fail-safe signal in case one of their own was turned to stone. If Bakugou could just determine what the signal was – a radio frequency, a specific note, a series of Morse code – perhaps he could use it on you.

He dug through the non-sound scraps yet again, hunting for some clue on the type of signal. He let out a frustrated scream after another fifteen minutes of nothing, sending an aggravated blast toward the ceiling.

"FUCK!" he shouted as flecks of plaster drifted from the now lightly charred ceiling. Raking his hands through his hair he stood from the floor, kicking the seemingly useless papers to every corner of the room.

He sat on your bed and finding Murder against your pillows clutched the plush cat to his chest, trying to take deep breaths. "I'm so goddamn close. I can fucking feel it. What am I missing?!" he huffed to himself, dropping the cat and cupping his head in his hands. After a few minutes he sighed and lifted his head, taking in the literal bomb-site disaster of a room.

Groaning, he began gathering the papers, reorganizing them into piles. He had to dig under your bed and dresser to find pages he'd kicked too aggressively. He even opened your closet to see if any papers had fluttered under the door. In fact, a post-it had managed to sneak below.

Bakugou grabbed the little blue square from the ground and turned it over. There was only one word in English, written in your blocky handwriting. He didn't need a dictionary to translate it.

Phone.

"You little fucking genius!" Bakugou exhaled, holding the post-it in his hand as if it were gold. He dropped to the floor, quickly flipping through one of the folders which held all the information from the Hermes case. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his mobile.

"Officer Tsukauchi? This is Bakugou Katsuki. Do you still have all the evidence from the Gorgon rescue?"

***

Bakugou arrived at the police station an hour later, Kirishima and Kaminari trailing behind. Bakugou knew how much his best friend had been hurting over the last month but couldn't do anything to ease his misery. And Kaminari had begged to be taken along, also feeling the hole your condition had left on the group. This seemed like the first promising lead they'd had in a long while and Bakugou found he honestly wanted someone to be there with him.

"Ground Zero and Red Riot," Officer Tsukauchi greeted at reception, "...and?" he added looking at Kaminari.

"Kaminari Denki, uh, Chargebolt sir," Kaminari beamed at the officer, excited to use his hero name. Tsukauchi nodded.

"What's this about exactly? I've pulled the evidence box, but we looked through everything after the rescue months ago."

"I need the phone, the phone Cinder pulled off that metal manipulator guy." Kirishima could sense Bakugou's impatience.

"We looked at the phone. The sim card was clean and all the contacts had been wiped remotely," Tsukauchi said.

"I don't care about the contacts. I want to see what else was saved on the phone. Voice memos, notes, reminders, downloaded music." Tsukauchi's brow furrowed at Bakugou's demand but he ushered the boys back to a small room where they could look through the evidence.

Kirishima pulled the phone from its evidence bag. Its cracked screen refracted light onto the walls. He pressed the power button, but nothing happened. "It's dead."

"Charge it Pikachu," Bakugou hissed at Kaminari.

"You could at least say please." Kaminari took the phone from Kirishima's hand as Bakugou tried not to blow a gasket. The sparky blond pulled a power cord from his pocket and placed one end into the phone and the other into his mouth. A charging icon appeared on the fractured screen a moment later.

"Neat trick kid," Tsukauchi remarked from the corner.

"He might as well be useful for something," Bakugou grumbled, his impatience reaching peak levels. If he was right, your salvation could be on this stupid, cracked, mundane piece of technology.

After a minute the phone had enough power to run while charging. Bakugou nearly ripped it from Kaminari's hands and started scrolling through the icons. A feeling of dread ran over him at the thought that he could somehow trigger another stone event with the phone, but the hope, however small, of getting you back pushed him forward.

There was nothing saved in music, nothing saved in notes or reminders. But there was one file in voice memos. He glanced at Kirishima and Kaminari before taking a deep breath and hitting play.

An ear-splitting shrieking sound filled the small room. Bakugou hit the pause button as quickly as possible but his ears still rang for another few seconds.

"What was that?!" Kirishima asked, pulling his hands from his ears.

"Hopefully what we're looking for," Bakugou barely breathed.

"Would you please explain yourself now Ground Zero? Why would we need a recording like that?" Tsukauchi snatched the phone from Bakugou's hand and dropped it back into the evidence bag.

"Whoever programmed the bad tech must have needed a fail-safe in case someone he didn't want turned to stone was turned. This was one of the Hacker's men. The only file left on his phone is of this noise. Maybe..." Bakugou paused, the hope starting to overwhelm him. "Maybe it can fix her."

"You mean them," Tsukauchi corrected.

"Sure them. But I mean her." Bakugou's determined crimson eyes locked with Tsukauchi. The officer nodded, understanding his resolve.

"I'll have IT make copies of the file so we can bring them to the hospital. I know you want to save your friend, but we have to try it on Saito-san first. We owe that poor man." Bakugou scowled at the casual title of your relationship, but nodded nonetheless. As long as he could take the file to you, he didn't care.

***

The three boys rode along in the police car to the hospital. Bakugou's heart was doing back-flips, adrenaline pumping through his veins. If he'd been you, he was sure his whole body would be on fire.

"It's a strong lead man. I'm sure it'll work. You have to calm down a bit though." Kirishima watched as Bakugou's knees bounced anxiously and tiny pops could be heard from his clenched fists.

Officer Tsukauchi ushered the boys inside with his junior partner Tamakawa Sansa, a man with the unfortunate quirk of 'cat' which caused him to have the head of a ginger tabby and the body of a man. Sansa held the phone in its evidence bag, the copies the IT department had made on flash drives in Tsukauchi's pocket.

Without stopping at reception, Bakugou headed toward the elevator to go to the sixth floor. In his time over the last two weeks he'd poked his head into the other 'stone rooms' and knew where Saito-san was located. Kirishima and Kaminari dutifully followed as Tsukauchi and Sansa informed the nurse at the front desk of their intentions.

A doctor and the officers walked into room 621 a few minutes later, the boys already hovering around the stony form of Saito-san.

"Now boys, I don't want you getting your hopes up too high. We've tried a lot of different techniques to reverse the stone over the last few months and as you can see, nothing has worked so far," the elderly doctor said calmly.

"TOO BAD. THEY'RE SKY HIGH. NOW PLAY THE DAMN RECORDING!" The doctor looked a bit taken aback at Bakugou's outburst but still nodded, ushering for Sansa to play the file.

Sansa pulled the phone from the bag and clicked through to the voice memos folder. Kaminari covered his ears in anticipation of the sound. Kirishima joined him. The cat pressed play and the whole room was filled with the god-awful sound, a jumble of high-pitched shrieks paired with a deep base that rattled your bones.

Bakugou didn't care about the noise. He merely stared at Saito-san's form, eyes nearly bugging from his skull trying to identify any slight change.

A crack.

If possible, Bakugou's eyes grew wider as he watched the stony facade chip and flake away from the man's body, revealing pale skin and navy hair. The etched wrinkles of his uniform smoothed, and the fingers wrapped around the walkie-talkie twitched ever so slightly.

It fucking worked!

Bakugou nearly dove at Tsukauchi and shoved his hand into the officer's trench pocket, digging around until his fingers wrapped around one of the flash drives.

"Oi! We don't know what'll happen next!" Tsukauchi shouted over the din, but Bakugou didn't care. He was already out of the room and sprinting down the hall to 627.

***

The door flew open with force as Bakugou careened into the room. There you stood, as you had every day for the last six weeks, frozen in your perfect badass beauty. He shoved the flash drive end into his phone and impatiently waited for the file to load on the screen.

Bakugou didn't even register the horrible sound. His eyes wandered over every inch of your grey features. After what seemed like an eternity, he saw the first crack skate across your shoulder.

He released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Your dark costume peaked through the grey and he smiled. The cracks spread and large sections of stone fell to the ground, revealing your boots, your hood, your hands. They were still black from the smoke you held, and he laughed.

The last thing to break away was the stone covering your face. Your eyes were red. He was almost upset with himself for always imagining them as your normal [e/c], but you had been in the middle of a battle; of course they would be red. As the slab dropped to the floor, you took in your first breath in over a month.

"KATUSKI GET DOWN!" you shouted, your hands ready to release a smokescreen. A terrible noise filled the basement. Was it one of the villain's quirks?

The sound stopped abruptly and he grabbed your hands. Your eyes snapped to his. He wasn't wearing his hero mask. He wasn't wearing his hero suit at all. You broke eye contact and glanced around the fluorescently lit empty room.

What the fuck?

"Katsuki, what happened? Where am I?"