Work Text:
The first student Shouta expels watches a classmate fall off a ledge during training and does nothing.
“Shouta, is it really fair to get rid of her because of one mistake? She just hesitated,” Hizashi says, twirling a pen. Despite how far back he’s leaning in his chair, there’s a furrow in his brow, a slight downward curve to his lips that says he’s bothered about this.
“A moment of hesitation is the difference between a saved civilian and a dead one,” Shouta argues as he signs the form. “She doesn’t have what it takes.”
(Debris falling. His hand, reaching out. A name on his lips. Burning in his eyes that means nothing, because debris doesn’t have a Quirk debris can’t be stopped by Erasure but if he could just move fast enough maybe— )
(He won’t let it happen again.)
The second nearly lops off another student’s head when he loses control of his Quirk.
Nemuri’s here for this one. She leans forward on her desk, that same damn look as Hizashi on her face, propping her head on her chin. “Aren’t we here to teach them control, Shouta? Shouldn’t you give him another chance?”
The pen is nearly out of ink. Shouta pushes it harder, forms more dents than strokes in the paper, but it works. “No.”
(Control—would more control have saved him? If they’d been better, more well trained, could he have—)
Three, four, six, eleven. There’s at least one or two in each class. Nedzu accepts each form with the same grim expression, but he doesn’t question any of Shouta’s choices. He was there, in the aftermath. He knows the consequences of letting kids go into the field unprepared.
Most of the others think Shouta is cold-hearted, ruthless. Vlad tries to appeal a couple of his decisions, even. Nemuri and Hizashi disapprove, he can tell, but they at least understand why.
There are some people who believe the dead will haunt those they left behind in the form of new faces. That eventually, no matter how far behind you think that graveyard is, a ghost will show up in the eyes of someone else, in the way they smile, in the way they move. The dead may be turned to ash but their essence, their hearts, are not.
None of the students Shouta expels have the same eyes as Oboro, but he sees the tombstones in their future all the same, and he won’t be the one to help them get there.
Then there’s Midoriya Izuku.
The second Shouta spots him on the screen during the entrance exam, he feels something in his chest—old wounds, scar tissue, the name that was on the tip of his tongue and died there—shift. He narrows his eyes and watches as this fifteen year-old with a power clearly too big for his body leaps through the air and promptly destroys himself.
That night, on his way home, Shouta buys the biggest bottle of vodka that he can afford, and drinks until the echoes of a falling building are nothing but white noise in his ears.
And because the universe and a certain rat-shaped principal are always, always against Shouta, the kid ends up in his homeroom class. Even as he steps out of his sleeping bag and approaches the podium for the first time this year, he glances at Midoriya and tries to remember where his expulsion forms are. Nemuri had printed out special ones for him that had his signature already on the bottom, mostly as a joke, but they’d come in handy.
Not even a couple of hours later, the kid tries to blow his arm up again. Shouta stops him just in time, but he’s convinced now—Midoriya has to go. Preferably before he does permanent damage to himself.
But then he does something that no student has ever managed to do to Shouta before: surprises him.
Midoriya turns back after throwing the ball, cradling one limp purple finger, and fucking smiles. And really, that should be the final nail in the coffin, because Shouta knows that smile. He’s seen it before, on a boy who rode clouds everywhere and who somehow, had every kid in a ten block radius of UA wrapped around his finger. The eyes are a different color, the face a different shape, but the expression is the same.
That, more than the strategy with the ball, more than the fact that it’s only the first day, more than All Might’s clear favor for the kid—that’s what makes him pause.
( Come on, Shouta. Wisps of light blue. The stripe of white across the bridge of his nose that wrinkles as he grins. Let’s have some fun! )
“This kid,” slips out from behind his teeth like mist, and that’s when he knows he can’t do it.
Half of the original bottle of vodka survived the first round, so when Shouta gets home, he starts the second. Like any other time he thinks too hard about it, he can’t get the imprint of Oboro’s smile off the back of his eyelids.
(His voice echoes in Shouta’s ears as he runs, fights, survives. It gives him hope. Makes him think that maybe, maybe—
And then he sees the body bag. The blood. What makes it sink in, though, what makes him really understand, is how still it is. Oboro is never still; he’s a whirlwind in both Quirk and personality, and when he moves, he always drags Shouta with him.
Shouta stares at the bag, and he prays for it to move, even though the rational part of his brain is saying you saw it, you saw it, you saw it hit him, you know, you knew the whole time, you couldn’t save him—
It doesn’t move.)
Hizashi lets himself in, like he always does, and finds Shouta on the kitchen floor, glass in hand, bottle on the tile next to him. He grabs another glass from the cabinet and then plops down next to him, his un-gelled hair swinging into Shouta’s face. Normally, he’d cough, or playfully shove Hizashi’s face away, or complain even though half the time his own unruly hair ends up doing the same thing. This time, Shouta just brushes it away from him, and wordlessly pours Hizashi a glass.
“You know, you’re usually supposed to drink this in shots,” Hizashi muses, taking a slow sip. “Doesn’t burn as badly, that way.”
Shouta shrugs, shoulders hitting the wood behind him with a dull thud. “Wanted to taste it.”
They drink quietly for a few minutes, each taking their time getting through their portion. In the background, the neighbor’s music throbs, not too loudly, but enough so that Shouta can hear it through the walls. Any other night, he might knock on the wall to get them to turn it down, but it’s better this way, he thinks. A little bit of noise to focus on.
Eventually, Hizashi speaks again. It’s a near whisper, rare for him, something that only comes out when they’re both too weighed down by the shadow of absence to be anything more than ghosts themselves. “I heard you didn’t expel anyone today.”
“That can still change.” It should, he knows. That kid, Midoriya, he’d barely proven himself capable of not completely wrecking his body. He’s the exact kind of student that Shouta had sworn to keep out of harm’s way, the kind that’s too reckless, the kind that will dive for a group of children without hesitation or a plan to keep himself safe. The kind that will inevitably get himself killed.
Hizashi looks at him with that same damn face he always does, with the furrow in his brow and the knowing in his eyes. “Shouta…”
He grabs Hizashi’s glass and fills it again, even though he hadn’t finished. “Drink.”
Giving in with a single shrug of his shoulders, Hizashi lifts the glass up and keeps drinking. Shouta does the same.
It should change. He should do it. He comes close, after hearing what Midoriya did at the USJ, but his own guilt and the heavy amount of painkillers Recovery Girl forces into his hands stops him.
(And this he won’t admit but—the smile makes him stop, too.)
Then the sports festival arrives, and it’s no longer a question of whether it should change but a declaration of it has to change.
There’s a moment, in the aftermath of Midoriya and Todoroki’s fight, when all they can see out of the announcer’s booth is a cloud of dust, and it’s like being ripped out of his body and shoved into his sixteen year-old self, screaming, ears ringing from the crash of the debris, cement coating his tongue. Beside him, Hizashi is just as panicked, practically out of his seat and against the glass as he looks at the arena.
The seconds that pass before the dust clears, and they can see the medics running towards Midoriya’s limp but intact body, are filled with the agonizing beat of you could’ve saved him thrumming against his rib cage.
Shouta is, above all else, a practical man. He knows how to wait, even when he wants nothing more than to burst into the infirmary and ask what, exactly, the fuck that kid was thinking. He holds himself back until the festival is over and another session with Recovery Girl gets him out of his casts. And then he goes to demand answers.
“Aizawa?” Yagi looks genuinely surprised and a little bit scared when he spots Shouta walking towards the table in the staff room where he’s eating lunch. Good. He should be scared. “Is something—”
“Midoriya is your mentee,” Shouta says. He doesn’t sit down, just fixes his intense gaze on the other man and waits.
Yagi swallows. “I know what it might seem like, but I don’t favor any of the students more than the others. Young Midoriya just—”
“Cut the crap.” Yagi blinks. Behind him, Shouta can hear Hizashi and Nemuri, the only other two in the room, shift uncomfortably. “We both know he’s yours.”
“He’s not—” At the stoniness of Shouta’s expression (which he manages to emit even with the bandages still covering his face), Yagi slumps, defeated. “Alright. I’ll admit, I’ve somewhat...taken young Midoriya under my wing.”
“So,” Shouta starts slowly, letting the words drip from his tongue, trying to keep them from becoming knives right away, “in that case, why does he still think it’s okay to try and get himself killed?”
“Hey, hey Aizawa.” Hizashi appears like a flash by his side, desperation oozing from behind his sunny smile. “Maybe we should leave this conversation for later, you dig?”
Yagi straightens in his chair, his jaw setting. Like this, he almost exudes the aura of his hero persona even without the muscle to back it up. Too bad Shouta was never affected by All Might in the first place. “Midoriya wasn’t trying to get himself killed; he was trying to help a classmate. And I’ve talked to him already about—”
“What do you call shattering his arm so badly Recovery Girl had to do surgery on it and getting himself blasted across the stadium when he should’ve just forfeited?” Shouta leans over the table, not slamming his hands against it but it’s a near thing. Hizashi shifts from foot to foot as he glances back and forth between them. “Do you really think that’s the appropriate way to help a classmate?”
“No, which is why I told him he needs to be more careful in the future,” Yagi says, eyes dark, unflinching. “But you must admit, that boy clearly needed the help. Young Midoriya’s methods may have been...extreme, but they came from a place of good intentions.”
Deep down, Shouta knows he’s right. Todoroki did need the help to overcome whatever was keeping him from using both sides of his Quirk. But that’s the thing: it should’ve been Shouta doing that, not a student. Not Midoriya. That was his responsibility, as Todoroki’s teacher, and while Midoriya may have meant well, Shouta knows more than anyone that good intentions are not enough to keep you alive.
“That’s not good enough. He needs to understand that can’t happen again.” Shouta pauses, letting the weight of his words permeate the air. “Or else.”
Yagi’s eyes narrow. “What does that mean, Aizawa?”
“Shouta, maybe—” Hizashi tries again, his laugh quieter, more forced this time, but it doesn’t stop him. Can’t stop him.
“It means if Midoriya continues to show such a disregard for his own safety, I’ll be forced to expel him.”
There’s a long moment in which everything is quiet except for the heavy breath falling out of Shouta’s chest, and then Yagi stands, chair scraping against the floor with a loud shriek. “Since coming to UA, young Midoriya’s shown nothing but heroism in his determination and his actions towards others, and you would ruin his future for that? I’ve heard many call you cruel, Aizawa, but up until now I had no reason to believe them.”
Shouta grits his teeth. “I’m not saying it to be cruel, I’m just—”
“You’re what, punishing a student because he isn’t perfect?”
“I’m trying to do what’s best for him.”
“How is expulsion what’s best for him?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Shouta says. His eyes burn, and if it weren’t for the bone-deep ache still running ever-present beneath his right eye, his Quirk would probably activate. “You think because you’re number one, you can just come in and teach students how to be heroes. But before they’re heroes, these students are children. And I’m not willing to let them go down this road if it’s just going to get them killed.”
Yagi reels back, deflating just a bit. He stares at Shouta, a crease in his brow, as a hand lands on Shouta’s shoulder.
“Shouta,” Nemuri says. Concern is etched into the lines of her face, but there’s something else, too. Something tired, something heavy. “You and I both know expelling Midoriya wouldn’t help.”
He flinches back, shaking off her hand. “If he’s not fit to be a hero, then it’s better—”
“Enough!” She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes one deep inhale before fixing her eyes on him again. With all the weight of a train slamming right into Shouta’s chest, she says, “Not every kid who walks through those gates is going to end up like Oboro.”
Fourteen years later, and it’s still the same—the moment after the blast, the horrified breathlessness that strikes him like a dagger between his ribs, the endless space in which he cannot comprehend what is happening. Behind him, Hizashi hisses, “Nemuri,” but it’s too late. The damage is done.
Without another word, Shouta turns and walks out of the room.
It takes an hour for Hizashi to find him. Sitting on one of the rooftop vents, Shouta watches as, in the distance, his class gets to work training in Ground Beta.
His best friend climbs up and takes a seat next to him. Shouta almost shoots Hizashi a surprised look when he doesn’t complain about the dustiness of the vent or how Shouta’s made him come all the way up here again, but he doesn’t. Instead, just like before, they simply sit, listening to the humming of the vent below.
Hizashi is, as always, the first to break the quiet. “You know, Nemuri always said that cat was the best pet she ever had.”
“It’s the only pet she’s ever had.”
“Still.” Hizashi leans back, looking up at the sky, studying the clouds. “Sometimes I wonder how many more kittens he would’ve saved if he’d—”
“Hizashi.”
“What?” He turns his head towards Shouta. Even behind those tinted sunglasses, Shouta can see the hurt in his eyes. “It’s been fourteen years, Shouta. Can’t we talk about it now? About him? Doesn’t he deserve to be remembered?”
“That’s not—” Shouta shakes his head, biting down on the instinctual ache that rears its head any time he comes up. “That’s not what I mean. I just…”
“I know it hurts. I know. But Shouta, we can’t just—we can’t dance around it forever. We’ve already been doing that for way, way too long.” Sighing, Hizashi sits up, just enough to lean his forehead against Shouta’s shoulder as he says, “Oboro’s gone. He died, and it wasn’t fair, and it—it fucking sucked. But it wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t your fault.”
(The debris falls so fast. In his memories, in his nightmares, it’s always slower, that cloudy stretch of time. But the moment is really just that: a moment. The debris falls like lightning finds its way to the ground, in an inevitably violent embrace, and then Oboro—lucky, unlucky Oboro—is gone.)
The next breath he takes shudders in and out, unsteady. Shouta closes his eyes. “I can’t let it happen again.”
“You didn’t let it happen the first time.”
“Didn’t I?” He opens his eyes again, looking right at Hizashi, who’s sitting completely upright now. “I was right there, ‘Zashi. Right there.”
Warm leather brushes against the bandages over his skin as Hizashi intertwines their fingers. “There was nothing you could’ve done. Being a hero comes with risks. Oboro...he knew that. He chose to go out there anyways because it’s what he wanted to do.”
“We weren’t ready.” For hero work, for fighting, for death—Shouta’s not sure which, or if it’s just all of it.
The smile that forms on Hizashi’s face is a shadow of his usual grin. “Is anyone, really?”
Shouta huffs. “No.” A moment passes, a quiet breeze blowing past both of them, and then: “I’m not going to expel Midoriya.”
“I didn’t think so,” Hizashi hums, giving Shouta’s hand another squeeze.
“But I do need to talk with him. The sports festival...I’m right to be concerned about him.”
“You are. I’m worried about that kid, too. Breaks way too many bones.”
Throwing a sideways glance in Hizashi’s direction, Shouta says, “You tried to stop me, before.”
“Because I didn’t think it was the right time to have that conversation,” he argues. “And I was right. It went incredibly south, incredibly fast. Told you so.”
Another huff, louder this time, but Shouta doesn’t protest. For once, his loud-mouth of a best friend is actually right.
A flash from Ground Beta catches his attention. Smoke—Bakugou, probably, but no alarms have gone off so it’s likely a part of the exercise. Still, he narrows his eyes, searching, because if Bakugou’s fighting then another certain green-haired problem child can’t be far behind. It’s too far to be sure, but he thinks he catches a glimpse of the blue gym clothes Midoriya’s been using in place of a costume.
Hizashi lets out a quiet laugh. “He does remind me a lot of Oboro, you know. It’s that damn smile. Only guy I knew who could walk right into a shitstorm and come out the other side still grinning.”
“I know,” Shouta says, soft and low. “That’s what worries me.”
Their shoulders knock together as Hizashi laughs again. “Don’t get so gloom and doom. Midoriya’s gonna turn out okay, Shouta. He’s got you—and All Might, somehow—in his corner. You’ll guide him in the right direction. I know it.”
That something in his chest—the old wounds, the scar tissue, the name on the tip of his tongue—it doesn’t fade. It’s been there too long for that; he’s grown around it, accommodated for it. But it’s starting to feel a little less like cement debris weighing him down. When he finally speaks, it’s like exhaling for the first time in fourteen years. “I hope so.”
“Aizawa-sensei? You wanted to see me?” Midoriya stands in the doorway of the otherwise empty staff room, wringing his hands. He’s biting his lip, not smiling, but Shouta can still picture it easily.
( You, me, and ‘Zashi, Oboro says, grinning as he wraps one arm around Shouta and waves the other through the air, trails of mist falling from his fingertips. We’ll be heroes—together. )
Shouta closes his eyes and takes one deep breath in, and then lets it out. When he opens them, Midoriya is still there, and for once, for once—there is no tombstone in sight.
“Yes,” he says. “Please come in, Midoriya.”