You stared at your bandaged hands. White gauze wrapped around your knuckles, stained faintly pink at the edges. The nurses had redressed them twice already. They kept bleeding through.

Every time you blinked, you saw him fall.

The sound his body made when it hit the ground. The way his chest had gone still. The blood—gods, the blood—soaking through his costume, spreading across the dirt like it meant to swallow him whole.

You hadn't realized you were shaking until a pair of familiar shoes stopped in front of you.

You looked up.

This wasn't the loud, terrifying Mitsuki Bakugo who could make Katsuki shut up with a single look. This was the woman who had known you since you were an infant. The woman whose best friend had raised you beside her own son. She was holding onto one of her children while surgeons fought to save the other.

She knew you had been there. She knew you had seen what no parent ever wanted their child's best friend to witness.