Taxi Cab (Part 4)
— k. bakugo x f!reader angst continuation
part 1 | part 2 | part 3
──── ୨୧ ────
What happens when you stop fighting for the past and allow the present to start over?
There is a specific kind of violence in trying to be a living museum for someone else.
For years, you have been the curator of a history he can no longer access. You have walked him through the gallery of your shared life, pointing at photographs, playing specific songs, and cooking meals that should taste like nostalgia. You search his eyes for a flicker of recognition — a spark that says, “Ah, yes. I know you. I love you.”
But the spark doesn’t come. He looks at you with kindness, perhaps, or confusion, but mostly with the polite distance one gives a stranger.
And eventually, you break.
You stop pointing at the pictures. You stop retelling the stories of how you met in the rain, or that trip to the coast, or the inside jokes that used to make him laugh until he couldn’t breathe. You realize that you cannot surgically implant memories back into a mind that has let them go.
You accept the tragedy: He forgot. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
So, you grieve. You mourn the version of him that knew the map of your soul. You sit in the silence of the room, no longer trying to bridge the gap. You just exist. You let the silence stretch out. You decide that if he is going to be a stranger, you will let him be a stranger.
And you ask yourself the question you have been avoiding since the beginning:
If I stop fighting for him to see me, will I finally be able to see myself?
──── ୨୧ ────
For months, you treated his amnesia like a jammed door — something that just needed enough force, enough love, enough proximity to finally click open. You spent the first weeks after the villain attack in a plastic hospital chair, your hand cramping around his unconscious one, whispering the architecture of your shared life into the antiseptic air. The burnt toast. The agency plans. The way he kissed you in the rain after his provisional license exam, tasting like victory and ozone.
You never left his side.
Not until the doctors gently — pityingly — told you his stress levels were climbing, that he needed a “calm environment” for recovery. They asked you to leave. For his sake.
So you obeyed. You stayed away to help him heal.
And while you were being good, being selfless, being gone — he woke up. He recovered. He met someone else.
He got engaged.
So on the flight to Italy, watching clouds bruise purple beneath the wing, you made a decision that felt like self-amputation: Stop. This mission would be the final test. You would look at Katsuki Bakugo and see him not as the missing half of your soul, but as exactly what he was now.
A coworker. A stranger. Someone’s future husband.
Are some things really meant to be? Or are some things just meant to be finished?
──── ୨୧ ────
The battle in the piazza was a cruel reminder of how biological memory works. Your minds were estranged, but your quirks were still in perfect, devastating symphony.
You moved left; he blasted right. You created a shield; he used it as a springboard. It was a dance you had practiced a thousand times in the training grounds of U.A., a rhythm ingrained in your very marrow. For ten minutes, you were Dynamight and his partner again. The world made sense.
But then the dust settled.
In the old days — in the life that apparently only exists in your head now — he would have been rushing toward you before the smoke even cleared. He would be shoving a water bottle into your hands, his eyes scanning your body for injuries, barking, "You moved too slow on that left flank, idiot. You hurt?"
Today, the silence was deafening.
You stood alone near the fountain, wiping soot from your cheek. Ten feet away, Bakugo had his back to you. He wasn't checking on you. He had his phone pressed to his ear, his shoulders relaxed, his voice dropping into that soft, private register you used to think was exclusive to you.
"Yeah, I'm good," he murmured into the receiver. "It's done. I'll call you properly tonight."
He was calling her.
Shoto stepped toward you, his eyes filled with that quiet concern. He reached out, likely to offer water, or just a steadying hand. Shoto had been your gravity when the world started floating away.
But you stepped back.
"I'm okay, Shoto," you said, your voice firmer than it had been in weeks.
He paused, hand hovering. "You’re bleeding."
"I can patch it," you said. You didn't want to be the broken thing anymore. You didn't want to use Shoto as a crutch, because eventually, crutches get taken away, and you needed to know you could stand on your own legs. You couldn't risk leaning on him and breaking him too.
You walked past them both — past the man who forgot you, and the man who remembered too much for you — and headed toward the villa.
"You did good," you whispered to yourself, clutching your side. "You did good."
──── ୨୧ ────
By evening, the heroes had gathered around a massive fire pit in the villa’s courtyard. The air hung thick with woodsmoke, roasted meat, and pine.
They called it a briefing, but it was really a decompression session.
You came out of your room clutching your notebook.
Bakugo was already there. He was sitting on a log bench, staring into the fire, the orange light dancing on his face. He looked contemplative. Peaceful.
You made a choice.
You didn't sit opposite him, hoping to catch his eye. You didn't sit near him, hoping to catch his scent. You sat beside Matteo, a boisterous Italian hero with a wind quirk, putting Shoto and Bakugo in your peripheral vision.
They ate and swapped war stories. You ate one skewer out of politeness, but your hands were already reaching for the notebook. You opened to a fresh page, graphite pencil solid and real in your palm.
You began to draw.
Lines. Angles. Reception desks. A training room with reinforced floors.
"What is that?" Matteo asked, leaning over with the lack of boundaries common to his culture. He squinted at the sketch. "Architecture?"
You blinked, pulling back from the trance. "Uh… my agency. I’m building my own. Soon."
Matteo’s eyes widened. He clapped a heavy hand on your shoulder, turning to the group. “Ehi! Look at this! The piccola is becoming a Boss! She builds her own agency!"
Conversations died. Heads turned.
“Congrats!” someone called.
“That’s a huge step,” another hero nodded, genuine respect in their voice.
Heat bloomed in your cheeks — not shame. Pride.
A Japanese hero from your unit leaned forward, skewer still in hand. “That’s brave. Real estate’s brutal right now. Where’s it located?”
Your breath caught for a fraction of a second.
The location. The one you and Katsuki had chosen a year ago, standing on that corner eating convenience store pork buns while he pointed at the dilapidated building and said, “That’s it. That’s where we take over the world.”
You swallowed the memory. It didn't belong to him anymore. It was just a building. Just yours.
"It's in the Musutafu district," you said, voice steady. "Near the old rail line. It has good bones. High ceilings."
You didn't look at Bakugo. You kept your eyes on the paper.
"Tell us about the design," Matteo pressed. "It looks modern."
"I want it to be open," you started, and then, something unlocked.
You began to speak, and for the first time in months, you weren't talking about your grief.
You were talking about your passion. You pointed to the sketch, explaining the flow of the lobby, the specific materials you wanted for the gym mats to prevent joint injury, the intake system for civilians during emergencies.
"I don't want it to feel like a fortress," you said, hands moving as you spoke, building something in the air between words. “Hero agencies are usually so cold — all glass and metal and distance. I want this to feel like a sanctuary. When people walk in, I don’t want them intimidated by rank or power. I want them to feel safe.”
Shoto watched you from across the flames. He saw it — the way your spine straightened, the way the fog that had clouded your eyes since the hospital burned away, replaced by sharp, clear light. The ease was back. The authority. The you he’d been mourning.
The circle went quiet, just listening to your voice weave a future out of graphite and air.
You were smiling. Small, but real.
"It sounds incredible," Shoto said softly.
"It will be," you answered. And you believed it.
──── ୨୧ ────
The briefing wound down, the fire turning to embers. You closed your notebook — it was full now, the margins crammed with new ideas from the senior heroes and design tips from Matteo. It felt heavy with promise.
You stood up, dusting off your pants. "I'm turning in. Goodnight, everyone."
You turned to the villa doors.
To get there, you had to walk past him.
Bakugo sat right there, close enough to touch. In the past, his gravity would have bent your trajectory. You would have slowed, hoping he’d reach out and catch your wrist. You would have looked at him, silently begging him to remember the girl who designed that agency for him.
But tonight, your mind was full of floor plans and paint swatches. Your heart was full of a quiet, terrifying kind of hope — not for him, but for yourself.
You walked past Katsuki Bakugo.
You didn't look down. Didn’t pause.
You just walked.
Your room wrapped around you in cool silence. You leaned your head against the door, notebook pressed to your chest. The quiet didn’t feel lonely. It felt like a blank canvas.
Then it hit you — a jolt of clarity so sudden it stole your breath:
You hadn’t checked to see if he was watching you leave.
For months, every step away from him had been performed for an audience of one, hoping he’d look up and remember. Tonight, you’d simply… left. Because you had somewhere to go.
You were starting over.
And for the first time since your world ended, you knew — bone-deep, blood-certain — that it was actually possible.
──── ୨୧ ────
Bakugo’s POV
His body was a traitor.
They cleared the stronghold in under twenty minutes — efficient, brutal, flawless. The kind of operation that would make headlines by morning. And the second the last villain hit the pavement, muscle memory hijacked him.
He didn’t think. Didn’t plan. His hand was already moving, snatching the spare water bottle from his belt. His head whipped left — always left, always her blind spot — ready to bark orders, check for blood, shove hydration at someone who never remembered to drink after using her quirk.
Except no one was there.
She stood ten feet away, wiping soot from her cheek. Not even looking at him.
He froze mid-motion, clutching a plastic bottle like some kind of idiot, his heart jackhammering in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the fight. Why did I do that? Why did his quirk settle when she was in range, like his body recognized a missing piece he didn’t know he’d lost?
His fiancée wasn't a hero. She didn't know the smell of ozone and burnt flesh. She didn't know the specific silence that comes after a detonation. So why, for a split second, did he feel like he was exactly where he belonged?
He shoved the water back into his belt, frustration rising like bile.
She’s just an obsessed ex, his fiancée had told him, fingers cool and certain against his temple. She can’t let go, Katsuki. She’s deluded. Just ignore her.
So why was she the one ignoring him?
──── ୨୧ ────
The migraine struck during the briefing.
It started as a dull throb at the base of his skull, then sharpened into a white-hot spike drilling behind his eyes. Always the same. Anytime he pushed too hard at the “Before” — before the hospital, before the ring, before the clean narrative his fiancee fed him — his brain revolted.
Usually the fiancée fixed it. A touch to his forehead, her quirk humming soft and gold, and the pain would melt into pleasant fog. You’re overthinking, she’d murmur. Just trust my memory. Yours is broken.
But she wasn’t here. And the pain was splitting his skull open.
He was staring at the fire, trying to breathe through it, when he heard a voice.
“I want it to be open. Hero agencies are usually so cold… I want people to feel safe there.”
The pain stopped. Not faded — stopped.
He looked up. Across the fire, she was sketching in a worn notebook, face gilded by firelight. The obsessed ex. The stranger who felt like a ghost he couldn’t stop haunting.
Her voice washed over him, and the noise in his skull cleared for the first time all day.
Then the memory hit.
──── ୨୧ ────
Three years ago. He was sitting on a curb, vibrating with rage because the press had torn him apart for "excessive force." He felt like a monster. And then, a voice cut through the noise. Someone sat next to him. Someone handed him a pork bun and started talking about something mundane — the weather, a stray cat — just to ground him. Just to bring him back.
In his head, the face he saw in that memory was his fiancée’s. It was her blonde hair, her soft smile.
But the voice?
He stared at the woman across the fire.
The voice in the memory — the cadence, the soothing drop in pitch, the specific way she hummed at the end of a sentence — it was her. It was the woman with the notebook.
The audio didn't match the video.
His breath caught. The migraine roared back, vicious and defensive, like his brain was fighting to reject the realization. Stop thinking. Look away. It was your fiancée.
Except his fiancée hated pork buns. And she thought his anger was “scary,” not something to be gentled.
The woman across the fire laughed at something the Italian hero said — genuine and unguarded. His chest caved in. Physical. A grief for something he was somehow holding and losing simultaneously.
──── ୨୧ ────
The briefing ended. She stood.
He couldn’t move. Paralyzed on the bench, waging war inside his own skull.
She walked toward the villa. She had to pass him.
Look at me, he thought, desperate and angry. Look at me and tell me why you feel like a missing limb.
She didn’t. She walked right past him.
She didn't slow down. She didn't glance at his hands. She just walked, eyes forward, carrying her own future in that notebook.
But as she passed, the air shifted.
Clean linen. Custom detergent he hadn’t consciously remembered in years.
The scent bypassed logic, bypassed the migraine’s warnings. It slammed into the animal part of his brain that simply knew:
Mine.
The word was so loud he nearly said it aloud.
She disappeared into the villa. The door clicked shut with a finality that felt like amputation.
His phone buzzed.
Fiancée: How’s the mission? Is your head hurting? Do you need me to call and help you sleep?
His thumb hovered over the screen.
One word — yes — and she’d call. She’d use her voice, her quirk. Smooth the jagged edges. Make the face in the memory match again. Make the pain dissolve into sweet, safe fog, and he could go back to being Dynamight, the man who had everything figured out.
He looked at the door where the woman with the notebook had vanished.
The migraine pounded, screaming warnings, begging him to stop digging.
He slid the phone back into his pocket.
Let it hurt.
He needed to know why the pain felt more real than the cure.
──── ୨୧ ────
a/n: hey guys, sorry for the super late update 😭 I literally had like 5 different versions of part 4 fighting for their lives in my docs… hope you still enjoyed it though. thank you for being patient 💕
