Chapter Text
The start of autumn had always carried a quiet kind of magic. The leaves that once stretched wide and green through the warmth of summer had begun to curl in on themselves, their edges crumpling softly as their colors deepened into shades of amber, rust, and fading gold. When the wind passed through the trees, it no longer felt like the playful breath of summer but something gentler, cooler, as if the season itself were sighing. The breeze moved slowly through the branches, carrying with it the dry whisper of leaves brushing together before drifting down to the ground.
The air felt different now. It held a crispness that made every breath clearer, sharper, and somehow calmer. The sunlight, too, seemed softer, stretching longer across the ground in pale, honey-colored rays that filtered through thinning branches. Everything felt quieter, more thoughtful, as if the world itself was settling into a slower rhythm.
She loved this time of year more than any other. Autumn, she would always say, was an intimate season. It wasn’t loud or overwhelming like summer, nor cold and distant like winter. It was a season of small moments — quiet walks under fading trees, the gentle rustle of fallen leaves underfoot, the calm comfort of cool air brushing against warm skin.
She said it so often that it had become almost a ritual, the way she would pause and smile slightly before explaining it again. To her, autumn felt personal, like the world drawing closer rather than pushing people apart.
Some might have laughed at the way she described it, calling her dramatic or overly sentimental. But he never did. Not once had he thought she sounded foolish.
Instead, he listened every time as if it were the first. He watched the way her eyes softened when the wind moved through the trees, how her voice grew quieter when she spoke about the season she loved so much. And though he never said it aloud, he understood what she meant.
Because standing there beside her, with the cool breeze brushing past them and the leaves slowly falling around their feet, the world really did feel smaller, quieter, and strangely closer — just like she said.
The version of him from high school would have thought she was foolish.
Back then, he would have looked at her with a raised brow, maybe even laughed under his breath at the way she spoke about it. A season was just a season, after all. Autumn would come whether anyone cared about it or not. It arrived the same way every year, slipping quietly between the fading heat of summer and the cold edge of winter. Leaves fell, the air cooled, and life went on. To him, it had always been that simple.
He would have wondered why anyone would hold something so ordinary so close to their heart. Why someone would watch the trees so carefully, waiting for the exact moment the green began to soften into gold. Why someone would stop walking just to listen to the wind rustle through branches that looked the same as they always had.
Back then, he believed things that came back every year were not worth missing. If something was guaranteed to return, what was the point of longing for it? There was no urgency, no risk of losing it forever. It was reliable, predictable—hardly the kind of thing that deserved affection.
So the younger version of him would have thought she was strange for the way her voice softened when she talked about autumn. For the way she would smile faintly at the first cool breeze, as though greeting an old friend she hadn’t seen in years.
He would have thought she was sentimental in the most unnecessary way.
But that version of him had been younger then—less patient with quiet things, less aware of how fragile certain moments could be. He hadn’t yet learned that the reason people treasure something that returns every year isn’t because the season itself might disappear.
It’s because the moments inside it don’t come back the same way twice.
______
It was the end of August.
The kind of late summer that no longer felt entirely like summer at all. The heat still lingered in the afternoons, clinging stubbornly to the pavement and the rooftops, but something in the air had already begun to change. The evenings came a little sooner now. The wind carried a cooler edge, brushing against the skin like a quiet warning that the seasons were shifting again.
Autumn was arriving.
The trees had not fully changed yet, but if someone looked closely enough, they could see it beginning—the faint dulling of green leaves, the occasional yellow edge curling inward, the soft rustle of branches that once stood thick and heavy with summer life. The world was preparing itself for that slow, familiar transformation.
And that meant it had been nearly four months.
Four months since she disappeared.
Four months since the woman who had become the center of his world had vanished as if the earth itself had swallowed her whole.
She wasn’t just someone he loved.
She was the one person Katsuki Bakugou had allowed himself to know completely, and the only person who had ever truly known him in return. Not the explosive hero people saw on television. Not the angry boy he once was in school. Not the stubborn, prideful fighter who pushed everyone away.
She knew all of it.
Every sharp edge of him, every quiet moment, every thought he never spoke out loud. She had learned him piece by piece until it felt like she understood him better than he understood himself.
And still, she stayed.
She was the one he had sworn to pour every piece of his heart into loving. The one who stood beside him without fear when the world called him difficult, when people whispered about his temper or his roughness. She had never flinched from him, never asked him to be someone softer or quieter just to make things easier.
She accepted him exactly as he was.
And she was the one he called his wife.
Even now, the word sat heavy in his chest.
Wife.
It still felt unreal that she was gone.
Everything had happened too quickly, like a story that skipped pages without warning. One moment life had been steady, warm, familiar—and the next it had collapsed into a hollow silence he couldn’t make sense of.
Where had things gone wrong?
He asked himself that question more times than he could count.
Because the earlier years of their marriage had been the happiest time of his life. Not just good—perfect in the quiet, ordinary ways that mattered most.
Mornings had been his favorite.
They would wake up tangled together in the soft mess of blankets, the sunlight barely creeping through the curtains. She would always be warm beside him, half asleep, her hair messy and falling across the pillow. Sometimes she would mumble something incoherent, her voice thick with sleep, and he would roll his eyes like it annoyed him.
But he never moved away.
Instead, he would pull her closer.
There had been laughter too—so much of it.
The kind that filled small grocery store aisles and made strangers glance over in mild confusion. They had a habit of fooling around like idiots while shopping. She would pretend to be a stranger asking for help reaching something on the top shelf, speaking in an exaggerated polite voice while he stared at her like she was insane.
Then he would play along anyway.
“Yeah, yeah, lady. I’ll get it,” he’d mutter, grabbing the item while trying not to laugh.
Sometimes she would bump into him on purpose with the cart. Sometimes he would steal things from her hands just to make her chase him down the aisle. Their voices were too loud, their laughter too unrestrained, and people often gave them looks like they were witnessing two grown adults acting like teenagers.
Neither of them cared.
Then there were the park dates.
Endless ones.
Even after they were married, even after life became busier, he never stopped taking her there. It became a quiet routine between them. The same winding paths, the same benches, the same open fields where the wind moved through the grass in slow waves.
And every single time, he brought her flowers.
Always her favorite ones.
He pretended it was nothing special when he handed them to her, shoving them toward her with that usual irritated expression.
“Take them already.”
But she always knew.
She would smile in that soft way of hers, holding the flowers carefully like they were something precious.
Back then, life had felt steady. Predictable. Safe.
He had believed those days would stretch endlessly ahead of them.
He never imagined there would come a time when the end of August would arrive again—
and she wouldn’t be there to watch autumn begin..
________
Katsuki Bakugou could walk to the flower shop with his eyes closed by now.
The path had become something his body remembered even when his mind wandered somewhere else. Every crack in the pavement, every turn of the street, every crossing light that took too long to change—he knew them all without needing to think. His feet moved on their own, carrying him through the same quiet route day after day.
It had become part of his routine.
His life, lately, had turned into a cycle of habits that existed only to fill the empty hours.
Most mornings started wrong.
He would either wake up far too early, long before the sun fully rose, staring up at the ceiling as silence filled the apartment that once felt alive. Or he would wake up too late, dragged out of a restless sleep by the harsh light spilling through the curtains.
Either way, the bed always felt too large.
Too cold.
He would sit up slowly, rubbing a hand over his face, trying to shake off the exhaustion that never really left him anymore. Sometimes he made coffee. Sometimes he forced himself to cook something simple for breakfast. Eggs. Toast. Anything that required the bare minimum effort.
Half the time, he didn’t even taste it.
The apartment stayed quiet the entire time.
No sleepy voice calling his name from the bedroom.
No footsteps padding across the floor.
No teasing complaint about him burning the toast again.
Just silence.
Then he would get dressed, grab his jacket, and leave.
And like every other day, he would stop by the florist.
The small bell above the door would chime softly when he entered, and the familiar scent of fresh flowers would greet him. The employees recognized him by now. Of course they did.How could they not?He came almost every single day.
Without fail, he would walk to the same section and pick out the same flowers.
Peonies.
Her favorite.
Soft, full blossoms with delicate petals layered over each other like folded silk. Pink ones, usually. Sometimes white when the pink ones ran out.
By now, he wondered if the flowers themselves were laughing at him.
Or maybe pitying him.
Because he had lost count of how many bouquets he had bought over the last four months. The receipts blurred together in his memory. The money didn’t matter anymore. Nothing really did. Just like he had lost count of the sleepless nights.
Nights where he lay awake, staring into the dark, reaching instinctively for the warmth that used to sleep beside him—only to find nothing but cold sheets beneath his hand. Nights where exhaustion pressed down on his body but sleep refused to come. Nights where the silence felt heavier than anything he had ever faced before.
By the time he stepped out of the flower shop that morning, the bouquet of peonies rested in his hand like it always did.
Another one.
Another day.
Another visit.
Katsuki pushed his thoughts away as he approached the hospital.
The building rose in front of him like a silent enemy he was forced to face over and over again. The sterile white walls, the glass doors, the faint scent of disinfectant that always hung in the air the moment he stepped inside.
It was the place he hated the most.
The place he wished he never had to return to.
The place where the woman he loved had spent the last four months lying unconscious in a hospital bed.
The place where he felt like he had already lost his wife.
He walked toward the reception counter like he always did, the bouquet still clutched in his hand. The staff had long since grown used to seeing him.
But today was different.
The moment he approached, several staff members looked up at him—and the expressions on their faces immediately made his chest tighten.
They looked… confused.
Surprised.
Almost startled.
Katsuki frowned slightly, his brows knitting together.
Before he could ask anything, one of the nurses hurried toward him.
“Mr. Bakugou!” she called, her voice urgent. “You’re needed at your wife’s room immediately!” The words barely finished leaving her mouth before Katsuki was already moving.
His body reacted faster than his mind could process. He rushed down the hallway with the nurse beside him, his footsteps echoing against the polished hospital floors.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, his voice rough. His heart had already begun pounding violently in his chest. He tried to steady his breathing, tried to slow the frantic rhythm building inside him.
Something was wrong. He could feel it. This wasn’t normal. Something had happened.
The nurse glanced at him, visibly nervous, before swallowing hard.
“Your wife…” she began carefully. Her voice lowered slightly.
“She’s awake.”
They reached the door to the hospital room just as the words left her mouth.
Katsuki froze.
For a single moment, his heart seemed to stop beating entirely.
Awake?
The word echoed in his mind, unreal and fragile, like something that might shatter if he thought about it too hard.
No. That couldn’t be right.
For four months she hadn’t moved. Four months without opening her eyes. Doctors had spoken in cautious tones, offering hope that never felt certain.
He had imagined this moment countless times. But he had never truly believed it would come.
Not like this.
Not suddenly.
Before he could stop himself, Katsuki shoved the door open and rushed inside.
The room looked the same as always.
The quiet hum of medical machines. The pale curtains. The dim afternoon light filtering through the window.
But something was different.
Someone was sitting up in the hospital bed.
A familiar silhouette.
His breath caught sharply in his throat.
His eyes struggled to believe what they were seeing.
She was right there. Awake. Alive. Sitting up.
The bouquet slipped from his hand, forgotten as it fell to the floor.
“Katsuki moved forward without thinking, crossing the distance in seconds before pulling her into a desperate embrace.
His arms wrapped around her tightly, as if letting go might make her disappear again.
“You win, okay?!” he blurted out, his voice cracking as relief and panic poured out all at once. “Please forgive me, love! I’ll never—”
His rambling stopped abruptly.
Because she had spoken.
Quietly. Softly.
But the words cut through him sharper than any blade.
“Who are you?”