Chapter Text
You wake up in a hospital bed in fits and starts. You hear, more than see, the vague attempts of nurses trying to get your attention, but you can never stay conscious long enough to respond. Your vision swims the few times you manage to open your eyes. There’s something like a shock of yellow hair by your bed at one point. You think you might have hallucinated it.
When you finally open your eyes all the way, it’s dark. Fragments of pain still wash through your body, despite your injuries being mostly healed, probably by some kind of Quirk. You try to catalogue what little damage remains, only for the memory of what happened to slam back into you.
Tomura. The attack on USJ. The Noumu. Your brother’s hand, flat on your stomach. Eraserhead—Aizawa. He saved you. A hero saved you.
A sudden urgency forces you out of the bed, and you ignore the residual pain altogether. You should check your surroundings, run through all the exits and potential escape routes, but you don’t. You push open the sliding door. The hallway is dim, quiet and empty.
The name tag for your room is only your first name. You check the room on the left. It’s blank. The door to the right of yours is labelled Aizawa Shouta. You slide it open.
The hero that saved you lies in a hospital bed, more bandages than skin. His entire face is obscured, as are his arms. There’s a sickly pallor to what little of his skin is exposed.
You drift closer to him.
He saved you. You owe him. You have to repay him. He’ll be expecting it, won’t he? Why else would he have saved you? It’s the only logical conclusion. He knows what you can do and he saved you so you can be of use.
An uncomfortable guilt that had been lingering in your stomach makes way for a wash of relief. This makes sense. You can work with this. You’re not in some scary, uncharted territory, where heroes are suddenly heroes again. He’s just like Father. He’s better than Father, because so far he hasn’t gotten angry. And even if he does, he won’t have Tomura there to hurt you. You can handle it, whatever happens.
You have to be quick, though. You’ve already taken too long to wake up. If you don’t take his pain soon, he really will get angry. Quickly, you touch your fingers to a small, exposed part of his neck.
Your skull starts to throb, first. It radiates through your head, not unlike the constant pain Father feels. But then it creeps, down through your face and right into the depths of your eyes, sharp and dull, a contradictory ache. You’ve never felt anything like it.
Then your arm starts to throb, the memory of broken bones. You bite your lip, force yourself not to betray the pain you feel with even so much as a frown. You cannot show weakness. You cannot show weakness. You cannot show weakness.
You keep pulling. Your other arm shares the ache of its sibling. Soon, the pain is an unbearable wave across the whole of your body.
Aizawa’s unconscious body sags, just a little, some of the tension leaving. This has to be what he wants, so you keep pulling, keep siphoning his pain and making it yours.
You’re ripped into the past, into a mirage of different memories, when you feel your brother’s Quirk on your elbow. It’s not the echo of pain, but the active, living experience of it. You feel your skin start to peel, break, snap apart, a sunburn delivered with a knife. This isn’t what your Quirk does. You know what injuries from Tomura’s Quirk should feel like, and this isn’t it. This isn’t an aftermath, it’s the source.
It’s not right. And it’s not what you expected. You’re out of practice with keeping your composure. It’s been a year since you last felt your brother’s Quirk, and it startles you so much you pull away. You stumble back, away from the hospital bed, away from Aizawa.
You twist your arm until you can see it—actual, current evidence of Tomura’s Quirk, the exposed muscle of your elbow. But he’s not even in the room. You search it, spin in a circle and confirm it. He’s not here, but you just felt his Quirk.
Suddenly, your feet won’t hold you. You crash onto your knees. You can’t breathe. You try, really, sincerely try, but the air just won’t go in.
Somebody cries your name, and you look up just in time to see Yamada drop a takeaway cup, liquid splashing across the floor. He’s saying something, but you can’t hear over the sound of your own wheezing. You eyes are watering with the pain of it all.
You glance down again, at your elbow, at the physical result of a Quirk that hasn’t been used on you in a year. But it’s there. You’re a kid again, screaming as they teach you lessons. Punish you. Make you be good and quiet.
You clench your eyes shut and try to fold in on yourself. You can feel your whole body shaking with silent, dry sobs. You still can’t breathe.
Yamada, with surprising strength, pulls you halfway into his lap. He’s stroking your hair. Part of you wants to claw your way out of his embrace, but somehow, you end up grabbing fistfuls of his shirt instead.
Dizziness forces you to keep your eyes closed. It hurts. It hurts so much. Your pain, Aizawa’s pain, your brother’s Quirk, the memory of it all. It all feels like one long, visceral nightmare. You stop trying to breathe and try to wake up, instead. Everything goes dark, and the pain goes blissfully silent.
The next time you wake, your head is pounding, and you’re grateful the lights are still out. As you come to, you hear a soft sound and try to look for the source. Your neck creaks a protest at the movement. Your whole body feels like a giant pile of rocks, but you force its cooperation.
Yamada is asleep in the chair beside your bed, his head bowed forward. The sound resolves itself into soft, gentle snores.
You glance down at yourself. Your elbow is bandaged. It wasn’t before. You suddenly feel very, very nauseous. It takes a few, long minutes to get your breathing back under control.
Finally, you start to realise the reality of where you are. Yamada is waiting at your bedside. He’s being lax about it, and you’re not cuffed to the bed, but it can only mean one thing. Grief swells inside you until it crests into a hollow ache.
You expected this, didn’t you? Truthfully, you expected the cuffs.
You watch for a few moments to determine whether or not he’s faking sleep. When you’re satisfied he’s not, you glance around the room. There’s a bag waiting on a chair on the opposite side of the bed. You can see a Post-It, just barely peeking at you from the top. You’re quiet as you shuffle forward, out of the bed. Every time you look back at Yamada, for every inch you move, he’s still just snoring.
You look down at the note.
Sorry, sweetie, Midoriya Inko’s familiar penmanship states, I asked the building manager to let me into your apartment so I could get you a change of clothes. I hope that’s okay. Let me know when you’re awake and Izuku and I can come and get you.
You have to read it several times over for it to sink in. There’s a horrible moment of fear, wondering if Inko searched enough of your apartment to find your stash of Sine’s stuff, the knives under the clothes in the bottom drawer of your dresser, but in the next moment, you shake it off. She would never do that. You have no grounds for genuinely believing that, but somehow, you do. You trust Midoriya Inko enough to know she wouldn’t go through your things.
You can almost picture it, her carefully opening drawers just enough to fish out a few items of clothing, making sure she doesn’t lay eyes on anything private. It’s the kindness of a mother.
Your whole body aches. You feel it in your teeth. There’s a warmth in your eyes, and you have to blink rapidly to stifle the threat of tears, because now is not the time. You can break down later, if you really, really have to.
Quietly, you shuffle out of the hospital gown and into the waiting clothes. It’s a painful battle, getting everything on while being as quiet as you can, lest you wake Yamada. He continues to snore throughout your whole ordeal. You keep a careful eye on him, freezing whenever he so much as twitches, but he doesn’t wake up.
Regular clothes acquired, you take a moment to evaluate the situation. A glance out the window tells you you’re several storeys up, too high for a window exit. Instead, you quietly pad your way over to the door. You shove Inko’s note into a pocket. There’s no reason to keep it, but you do.
You stop on the threshold of the room, sliding the door open slowly and waiting for Yamada to finally open his eyes. To see you leaving, jump up and arrest you.
He doesn’t. You step outside and slide the door closed—and nothing happens. You look both ways in the hall. It’s empty.
You know how to blend in when you need to, how to toe the line between looking like you belong and not being memorable. It’s knowledge that comes in handy as you leave the hospital. Nobody spares you a second glance. You step out into the fresh too-early morning air and take a deep breath. It feels good to just breathe, for a moment, but you don’t take long to get moving.
All things considered, you’re handling yourself perfectly fine, which rules out that you were too injured to be restrained. You can’t figure out why they didn’t cuff you.
You’re cautious about entering Hina’s. She’ll have just opened for the day, and you’ve never come in this early. When the bell above the door jingles your entrance, she looks up from behind the counter.
She gasps when she sees you, and there’s relief in the way she says your name. She doesn’t smile, not at first, not the way she usually would. There’s a pinched coupling of her eyebrows.
She rounds the counter quickly, and you jolt when she rushes to you. You’re gathered in an urgent but gentle hug. You still and tense in her arms. You don’t remember the last time you were hugged. It’s a distant feeling, like suddenly using a language you haven’t practised in a few years.
After a moment, she pulls away, but she keeps her hands on your shoulders and looks you over. ‘Sorry, I’m just so glad to see you’re okay.’
She steps back, giving you some space again. You grit your teeth through the instinct to put even more distance between the two of you.
‘I saw on the news, an attack on Yuuei? I wasn’t sure if it was your class, but I was so worried,’ she says something else, but it’s more murmur than anything, and she sighs heavily as she watches you. ‘Are you okay?’
Fuck, if that isn’t a loaded question. For a moment, you feel like it’ll sweep you right off your feet. You might collapse, right here in the middle of the shop, and never get back up. A feather-light wind could topple you, and you can’t afford that right now.
You inhale once and force a smile. ‘I’m fine, Hina-san. Aizawa-sensei and All Might kept us safe.’ There’s a palpable taste in your mouth, something sour and dry. You still don’t really know what happened after you passed out. All you can assume is that All Might did his thing. Somehow. Even though he was only supposed to have a few minutes left.
You don’t even know if they caught Tomura.
The smile Hina offers you is so warm, so genuine, that you feel guilty for bringing all of your feelings, your conflicts and tension, into the shop. You try to be polite as you skirt past her and grab a single flower from her little reserve. She’s got some sort of orchid there, today.
‘I just… wanted to grab a flower. Nowhere else is open to get any, yet,’ you shift your weight, from one foot to the other and back again.
‘Of course, sweetie. Please, don’t let me keep you!’ She steps aside to give you easier access to the door, but then swivels and grabs something from behind the counter. It’s a little paper bag she foists on you. ‘Take this. I’ll see you soon, okay?’
You hesitate. You’re not sure she will see you soon. You don’t know what’s going to happen when they find you. You just wanted to visit your mother, in case it was the last chance you’d ever get.
Your smile feels brittle, almost painful, when you give it. ‘Thanks, Hina-san.’
You’re out the door before she can say anything else.
If you had lived another life, one where lying wasn’t necessary for your own safety, what would it have been like? To be the kind of person who could be truly honest with people? To make true, genuine friends, and have people who care about you and not just a paper-thin cutout you’ve created to safeguard the rest of you.
You blink hard, once, twice. You can’t be thinking like that, not right now. Not ever. There used to be a little flame inside you that burned for the idea of something better. Father snuffed it out the first time he let Tomura get his hands on you.
Sometimes, the embers flicker, as if there’s a child somewhere lighting matches, dropping them from great heights, and waiting to see if, maybe this time, they’ll ignite something along the way.
But you can’t. You can’t let yourself want, or hope, or dream. Because you know the truth. You know Father exists. And even if one day, somebody manages to bring about his end, Tomura will be there to take his place. There will always be somebody else, and you will always walk a world where your life is constantly threatened. Allowing yourself to wish for anything is, you know from experience, an exercise in futility; a surefire way to have your hopes thoroughly dashed.
You’ve had your hopes toyed with, built up for the sole purpose of being torn down. You refuse to do it to yourself. So you take the wishes, the wanting, the loneliness, the dreams, and you throw them all back, hide them all away. You snuff out the pitiful, tiny flame, just like you always do. It has no place in you, not if you want to stay alive. And staying alive is all there is.
You could run. You could just leave, get out, away from the city. Try to run far enough away, to a place where no one could ever find you. But what is there for you anywhere else? There’s nobody, no place, no memories anywhere else. Your mother’s headstone isn’t anywhere else, Hina’s shop isn’t anywhere else. The Midoriyas aren’t anywhere else. They’d all be better off without you, yet you can’t bring yourself to leave.
There’s nowhere you could go that Father couldn’t find you.
You reach your mother’s grave, kneeling to deposit the single, feeble flower in the little vase. You don’t even want to say anything. What is there to tell her? If there’s any sort of afterlife, she’s seeing it all play out. She already knows how disappointing you’ve become.
You’re tired. So, so tired. You’re worn down and wrung out, a sea sponge left to dry in a summer sun. It feels like the slightest touch could turn you to dust, with or without Tomura’s Quirk.
But what is there to do? You can’t go anywhere else, can’t become somebody different. All you can do is wrap your arms around yourself and try, just try, to stay whole. To be anything at all.
It’s the softest you’ve ever heard his voice, but you recognise Yamada regardless when he softly says your name. You stand and turn, facing the man behind you. He’s not alone. Aizawa is with him, face and arms still bound in bandages. God, he shouldn’t be out of the hospital, should he?
‘Hey,’ Yamada says, softly. He approaches you as if you’re something to be startled, an animal that might bolt on his approach. And honestly, you might. ‘Hina told us where to find you.’
You can’t stand it. His softness, his quiet, so unlike him, does nothing to help how breakable you feel. It doesn’t steady you—it makes you feel even less real, less centred.
You ignore him and look to Aizawa instead. ‘What happens now?’
Aizawa sighs, but it’s something small. You’re used to his world-weary sighs, the ones with an air of melodrama, but this sigh is short, simple.
‘That depends on you,’ he says. You can just make out his eyes through the bandages. They’re sharp, levelled on you. ‘We need to know how much danger you’re in.’
You frown. ‘Danger?’ It comes out in an unintentional scoff. ‘What about the danger I pose? Aren’t you going to arrest me? I brought another knife into Yuuei. I put everybody in danger by joining the fight. I…’ you look away, out over the rows of headstones. ‘I distracted you.’
You feel very small in the silence that follows. It takes everything in you not to look back at them, try to gauge what they’re thinking.
‘In light of yesterday’s events, there won’t be any consequences for you, or for your classmates.’ You turn back to Aizawa, a protest half-formed on your lips, but he continues. ‘I do, however, need to assess your relative safety, given your connection to the villain, Shigaraki Tomura.’
Something in you snaps, some crucial wiring, and you feel completely untethered. They know. How do they know? You run your mind over what you can remember and realise he must have heard you, or maybe he read your lips, when you addressed Tomura.
‘We’re not asking you to tell us everything,’ he says, sharp eyes still trained on you. ‘But we need to know enough to gauge your safety.’
Yamada cuts in, a little too loud, a little too urgent. ‘So we can figure out if you need some extra help to keep you safe, that’s all!’
You take a short, shallow breath and attempt to keep your voice strong when you reply. ‘I’ve lived on my own for a year and nothing has happened. I’m fine.’
Another realisation hits you, then. Aizawa hasn’t realised you’re Sine Nomine. Yesterday wasn’t enough for him to make the connection. If he had, this would surely be a different conversation.
The relief that floods your whole body almost makes you sag visibly, but you keep yourself standing. He doesn’t know.
You try to pull yourself together. Somehow, you’d expected him to have figured it out. Now you know some of your secrets, at least, are safe. You don’t want to say too much, give too much away, based on an assumption of what they may or may not know. You could very easily reveal more than you have to.
’Was Tomura…?’ you trail off.
‘They were unable to apprehend Shigaraki,’ Aizawa confirms.
Well. That clears that up, at least. You’re not exactly surprised. Kurogiri wouldn’t have made it easy to capture them.
Then Aizawa lands another blow.
‘The hospital informed us you have scarring that matches the injury I sustained as a result of Shigaraki's Quirk.’
You close your eyes.
It’s not a question, but there’s an implication in it. He expects some sort of response. If you don’t give one at all, he’ll take whatever he wants from your posture, or your lack of a response altogether.
But you don’t know what to say. You don’t know how to respond with anything that will satisfy him without giving too much of yourself away.
To buy yourself some time, you throw the question back at him. ‘And?’
Yamada has been strangely quiet, but there’s this little sound that comes out of him, now, something soft and utterly dismayed. It makes you feel self-conscious.
Aizawa’s jaw is set in a tight line. You can see the tension even through all the bandages. ‘How much danger are you in now that you’ve interacted with Shigaraki Tomura again?’
You’ve said too much. You told them more than you wanted to, revealing you’ve lived alone for a year. Sure, what Aizawa is saying is an assumption, but it’s a correct one. You hadn’t seen Tomura in a year.
It is a question, though. Will anything change now that you and Tomura have come into contact with one another?
When it comes down to it, you’re still not sure exactly why you’ve been allowed to stay away from Father for so long. You doubt he’s found any other way to consistently manage his pain, but for some reason, he still hasn’t sent someone to get you. He hasn’t come for you himself. He hasn’t tried to summon you back with any sort of communication. He hasn’t done anything.
He must have some kind of plan, some reasoning for not bringing you back, and that means you’re never safe, not fully, not really. But you’re also fairly sure your usefulness to him outweighs anything Tomura might want. Even if he did want to come after you, you don’t think Father would let him. That hasn’t changed, now, has it?
You shake your head. ‘I don’t think my relative safety has changed at all, Aizawa-sensei.’ You try to say it confidently, sternly enough that he will believe it too, but he holds your gaze steady and gives you no indication that he does. So, you give yourself away, just a little more, even if it feels like pulling teeth. ‘I’m still useful to someone Tomura answers to, and that keeps me safe.’ From Tomura, at least. But they don’t need to know that.
The silence lingers for a moment before Yamada breaks it. He looks crestfallen. ‘Useful,’ he says, slowly, ‘because of your Quirk.’
Hizashi understands, suddenly, what happened in the hospital last night. Why their student had inexplicably left their own bed, pushed through their own pain, just to take some of Shouta’s.
He hasn’t been blind to the darker parts of the world. He’s been Shouta’s husband for years now, and a best friend even longer. Even if the things Hizashi has seen himself weren’t enough to convince him of what people are capable of, Shouta’s experiences as an underground hero would have put him well over that edge.
But still, it’s inconceivable to try and stitch together the image of their student, in front of them, and the nightmares he’s had about Shouta’s work and the underbelly of the world. That anybody could take advantage of a child at all is almost too much for him. It’s even worse, though, because it makes sense. He gets it. He can be a crybaby about his own pain, and even his stoic stone-wall of a husband is sometimes laid low by it.
He’s been on the receiving end of wanting to be rid of his own pain. He’s longed to take away his husband’s, on the nights when Shouta tosses listlessly in bed beside him, when Hizashi knows it isn’t just a byproduct of a string of late nights keeping Shouta up.
But to abuse a child because their Quirk can relieve a little pain is just too much. Hizashi knows Shouta has seen more than one of his students through horrible situations, but the truth of it is irreconcilable. Here stands one such student, a student he knows is covered in scars, a student who looks for all the world like talking about this is a mild inconvenience at best.
How long was their Quirk abused? How young were they when it started?
They’re looking at him with something inscrutable in their eyes. He can’t puzzle one emotion from another, and it’s clearly a multi-layered thing. He can’t tell if they’re scared, or surprised, or resigned. Maybe it’s everything, all at once. They open their mouth to say something, but almost immediately close it again. He watches their weight shift from one foot to the other, and he almost wants to apologise. For speaking the truth into air. It made it real for him, and he wonders if it’s been made real for them too, in some way.
Hizashi grits his teeth, struck with the sudden desperation to do something actionable. He doesn’t understand how Shouta does it, how he deals with kids in situations like these without going off the deep end. How does he manage to stay still when he needs to, when all Hizashi wants is to do something? Anything? So many years on, and still he is astounded by his husband’s strength.
He rifles through his pockets until he finds a pen and an old receipt. He doesn’t even bother checking what the receipt was for, just scratches out his number and Shouta’s below it. He thrusts it at their student. ‘Please, call one of us if anything happens. At any time. Shouta barely sleeps anyway, you’ll never be waking him up.’
Shouta makes a gentle sound beside him, something half-assent and half-amused. It lessens the dark cloud Hizashi felt looming over them, just a little. It gives him the slightest peace of mind, and it’ll have to be enough.
He glances at Shouta. He knows his husband must be trying to decide whether or not to push, to ask more questions. But he ran Hizashi through his thinking on their way over.
The priority is earning trust and keeping it. That comes before anything else, because keeping them safe, and eventually, getting them somewhere that safety can be maintained, requires trust. When a kid proves to be a flight risk, and this kid clearly is, given the way they left the hospital—seriously, Hizashi nearly had a heart attack when he woke up—it can all go wrong in an instant. One wrong move, one question that probes just a little too deep, and all the trust evaporates. They’ll run. And then the chance to keep them safe is gone.
These half-truths, these hardly answered questions, will have to be enough. They just have to hope they have enough information to make the best decision possible given the circumstances. And they have to continue building that trust and hope that when the time comes, they’re given the chance to help.
Hizashi trusts his husband implicitly. But putting it into practise, the idea of letting them walk away is terrifying. Shouta said it would be, he did his best to prepare Hizashi for what they were walking into. But it still sets him on edge and goes against every screaming instinct.
You stare down at the scrawl Yamada has left behind, the mess of numbers. You should throw it away, but for now, you tuck it into a pocket and square yourself. If they’re not arresting you, not hauling you off, then you’re done. You feel stripped bare of every defence you’ve carefully, meticulously built up over the last year. You’ve barely told them anything, but you’ve told them so, so much.
‘Is that it?’ you ask, glancing between them.
Aizawa blinks once. ‘In future, don’t use your Quirk on any of the Yuuei staff or students.’
You open your mouth, an automatic protest on your lips, but it falls closed. You can’t find the words for it. You feel shame spiral in your chest. You thought you were doing the right thing. Now everything feels turned inside out. Your Quirk is what you’re good for, isn’t it? How else were you supposed to repay the debt of Aizawa’s rescue?
‘While I appreciate the intent behind it,’ Aizawa says slowly, ‘it is my job as your teacher to protect you. Not the other way around. And I don’t believe you were using it for the right reasons.’ He says it like a challenge, like he’s daring you to argue that he’s wrong.
You try, again, to speak, but still, nothing comes out. In the silence that follows, all you can do is try to parse the meaning behind what he’s saying. You look for something, anything at all, that makes sense, because right now, none of it does. Eventually, all you can do is give up.
You look up, a silent question levelled at Aizawa. He gives you one last, long look, and then nods your dismissal.
You’re only a few steps past them when Yamada speaks again.
‘Is this… your mother’s grave?’
You can’t. You have nothing left to give. But you turn back halfway and say, ‘Yes.’
Yamada scrambles with his pockets again, but he comes up short of whatever he’s looking for. He clearly has an ‘aha!’ moment, though, and he takes off up the row of headstones, skipping a few rows over. After a moment, you lose sight of him.
‘What’s he doing?’ you ask, glancing at Aizawa.
He doesn’t give you an answer, just watches after Yamada with a gentle shake of his head. He looks… tired. Strung out. But he waits for Yamada to return, and something keeps you there, as well.
When he does, he’s holding a small lily triumphantly. He holds it up high, on display, like he’s found a treasure. ‘Oboro wouldn’t mind, right Shouta?’
He leans down and deposits the lily alongside the orchid you’d left. You stare at the flower for a long moment and blink away a faint sensation behind your eyes.
‘Thank you,’ you say. You leave without waiting for a response.
You get to class ahead of everybody else, even after stopping at your apartment to grab your spare uniform. The one you wore yesterday is still at the school, since you’d all changed into your hero costumes before heading to USJ.
You’re situated at your desk before anyone else walks in. Todoroki is the first to arrive after you, and he spares you a once over before he sits at his desk in the row behind you. You wonder what he might say to you if he was less reserved, if you were together on a rooftop somewhere away from prying eyes.
Bakugou arrives next, perpetual scowl firmly in place, and he doesn’t even spare a glance at you or Todoroki before taking his seat.
The next time the door slides open, all hell breaks loose.
Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it feels appropriate given the way Midoriya cries out your name, as if he never expected to see you again, and launches himself at your desk. He nearly topples over it completely, has to plant both hands on it to steady himself. He’s crying actual tears.
You feel vaguely stunned. An irrational part of you wishes you could cry so freely, but you brush it off. You don’t know what to do, so you just stare dumbly at him as he launches into slightly-too-loud rambling.
‘You’re okay! Oh my god, you were so hurt! I was so worried! They said you went to the hospital, and we weren’t allowed to come visit you! Are you sure it’s okay that you’re here already?!’
He finally stops his tirade when Iida—he and a few other members of the class have arrived now, as well—taps him on the head with the side of his hand, like a little karate chop. There’s something strangely fond about the gesture. ‘Midoriya-kun, slow down. They wouldn’t be here if the hospital staff hadn’t cleared it.’
That’s not entirely true, but you’re not about to correct him.
Midoriya’s face lights in a flush and he leans back from your desk. ‘You’re right, Iida-kun!’ He throws a bashful apology your way, scratching the back of his head.
‘I’m okay, Midoriya-san. I’m sorry to have worried you,’ you say, and you can’t help but glance down at your hands. All the attention is way, way too much, especially this early in the morning.
‘You fight very well,’ Asui croaks from somewhere to the side. You glance her way and find her holding one finger to her chin thoughtfully. ‘Though you did get hurt quite badly.’
Iida perks up, at this. ‘Yes! We heard about you fighting the villains! As Class President, I want to thank you on behalf of everyone for your bravery! However, in future, please refrain from putting yourself in danger! You could have made things much worse for Aizawa-sensei and Thirteen-sensei!’
You blink at him. Midoriya—and Uraraka, to your surprise—are ready on his heels to launch into some sort of protest over his admonishment. You don’t even realise what’s happening until you’re already laughing softly into your hand. Everyone around you goes strangely quiet.
Why do you feel so happy all of a sudden? It hits you out of nowhere, and the smile you flash Iida feels more genuine than any smile you can remember ever smiling before.
‘Thank you, Iida-san,’ you say. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
Midoriya is staring at you, mouth slightly open. When he meets your eyes, the smile that lights up his face is blinding. It’s infectious, and your own smile persists.
Is this what it would feel like to have friends?
Despite the reprieve of the moment, you’re still glad when the attention is directed away from you. Kirishima thoroughly redirects it towards the front of the room by crying out. Everyone turns to see the source of his dismay. Aizawa has made an appearance, mummification still fully intact. There are similar cries from around the room, and Iida raises his hand to ask if Aizawa is alright.
As you watch Aizawa, you can’t help but drift back to the conversation a few hours prior. It roils around in your head, and you can still barely make any sense of it, even with some time to think on it.
You tune back in to Aizawa announcing that the Yuuei Sports Festival will be held soon. The class quickly devolves into a discussion about whether or not it’s okay to hold an event like that just after a villain attack.
You rest your chin in your hand as you watch it all play out. It feels strange to be here, when just hours before you’d resigned yourself to being arrested. It doesn’t feel quite real, if you’re honest.
Aizawa explains that the Sports Festival will be the first chance for students to show off their skills to prospective hero agencies. None of it matters to you. You have no intentions of ever actually graduating, and even if you did want to, it’s probably not a good idea to be shown on camera for the entire country to see. Not when you know Father and Tomura will no doubt be watching.
You don’t think it would matter if you did participate, but the prospect of being watched like that, unable to do a thing about it, is deeply unsettling. You’ll happily fly under the radar. You would’ve done it anyway, naturally. Your Quirk doesn’t hold a candle to any of your classmates, and while you could probably outclass them in general skill, that’s not what the Sports Festival is about.
You’ll be perfectly fine cheering them on from the sidelines.
The rest of the day trudges forward. It’s a struggle to keep focused on your classes, between little sleep and so much to think about. Before you know it, the bell rings to signal lunch. Usually, you’d just eat at your desk, bring in your own lunch, but you need to get out of the stuffy classroom, at least for a moment.
Midoriya waves at you when he sees you leave the classroom. He’s with Iida and Uraraka, no doubt on their way to the cafeteria. It’s not the first time he’s tried to rope you into lunch with them. Usually you have no qualms about pretending you didn’t see him, or ignoring him outright. This time, though, almost unbidden, you find yourself walking towards them.
You shouldn’t. Your internal monologue is a flurry of reasons not to—think about the consequences that could come of this, how you’re pretending here, this can only end one way—but after just a few steps, you’re standing awkwardly beside Midoriya, who looks like he just won the lottery.
You don’t think you’re that valuable, but his gratitude fills you with the dull ache of longing anyway. You bite back on the wish that this could be real.
Uraraka beams at you too, not a hint of nerves in her. ‘Are you joining us for lunch today?’
You glance at Iida, one last chance of an out, but he doesn’t look particularly bothered by the prospect, either. You look down and shrug. ‘Sure,’ you say, trying not to sound like you’re pulling teeth for the second time in so many hours.
On the way to the cafeteria, you listen idly as Midoriya asks Uraraka why she wants to become a hero. Uraraka skids to a stop and shoots him a bashful look. She stutters her way through explaining that she wants to become a hero for the money. You’re glad your soft laugh through your nose is mostly covered by Midoriya’s own outburst.
You feel a little out of place as the three of them discuss it. Uraraka opens up about her family, and wanting to help them. You feel envious of the prospect of having somebody to help. You nearly jump three feet in the air when Iida raises his hands and shouts, ‘Bravo!’
He is a very strange person, but he’s not unlikable.
You hear All Might’s laugh before you actually see him, and you take a single step backwards so you’re out of sight when he requests that Midoriya join him for lunch.
It’s yet another reason you shouldn’t get involved too closely with Midoriya. He’s a veritable magnet for All Might, which makes sense given their shared Quirk, but it’s also the very last thing you need.
You feel a little like a third wheel, now that Midoriya is gone, but you persist through lunch with Uraraka and Iida. They do their best to draw you into their conversation. It’s superficial, but surprisingly easy to interact with them. They both seem to pick up on whenever you’re not feeling especially inclined to answer a question they've asked, or provide any input on a topic they bring up, and they don’t push.
Being in the cafeteria is difficult, if only for the sheer amount of noise and people. It makes you itch to be somewhere high, up on the roof, away from the better part of it all.
You’re not sure if it was worth leaving the classroom, but it was almost nice.
Midoriya stops you just before you duck into your apartment. There didn’t seem any reason to avoid walking home with him today, and the trip had been mostly in an amiable silence.
Midoriya stares down at his feet, chewing his lip, mulling something over. You wait for a moment, until the dam of him bursts, and it comes out all at once.
‘I—I just wanted to say I thought it was really brave, the way you fought the villains! You were really cool! You’re going to make a great hero!’
The lying, the pretend of it, should come easy to you by now. It’s been your default setting for so long, but it slips in the face of Midoriya’s genuine earnestness. You feel a pit of guilt in your stomach as you flash him the best smile you can manage. You hope it doesn’t look as much like a grimace as it feels.
‘Thank you, Midoriya-san.’
He throws another carelessly beaming smile your way before he heads inside.
You only make it a few steps into your own apartment before you realise something is wrong. The smell of something ashen, dusty, hangs in the air. Every part of you stands on end as you gently lower your bag to the floor.
It only takes another step for you to realise what it is.
Your apartment is empty. Every piece of furniture, every chair, the table—is dust.
Tomura.
You cut all noise and silently retrieve the ceramic knife you’d stashed in your boot. The events at USJ warranted you start carrying something a little heftier than one of your small glass throwing knives. You’re glad for it, now.
Slowly, you move through your apartment. It’s not a large space, and you can clear the dining and lounge area with just another step. So far, so empty, barring the remains of Tomura’s wrath.
The narrow hallway that leads deeper in is a problem. Two adjacent doors open to the bedroom and the bathroom. You’re not entirely sure how to clear both at once, not without leaving yourself open for an attack from the other direction.
You pause for a long time on the threshold of the hallway. You breath in slow through your mouth and out through your nose, keeping every breath shallow. You’ve never been as patient as you are right now. Maybe it’s because the only safety being jeopardised here is yours. Maybe it’s because you’ve been waiting for something like this. Maybe it’s because you feel lost, stuck between two doorways, imagining Tomura behind each one.
You take a single step forward. You try to get a vantage point on the bedroom by using the bathroom mirror, but it’s no good. Tomura’s dusted that, too.
Your patience runs thin. You have to get this over with. You turn towards the bedroom. You solidify the grip on your knife and spin in one quick, sharp, quiet motion, angling the knife at the approximate height of Tomura’s neck.
He’s not there.
You turn, and you shouldn’t lose your composure yet, but you do, abandoning your silence as you stalk into the bathroom. He’s not there either.
But neither are any of your things. With the apartment clear, you return to your bedroom to properly assess the damage.
It’s pointless. It’s the same as the rest of the apartment. Every piece of furniture is dust, your belongings dust with them. You stare at the place where your dresser used to be. Where you had your knives stashed alongside everything you used for your vigilante work.
You know they’re just things. It shouldn’t matter this much. But as you go through a mental checklist of everything your brother has destroyed, it’s—well, it’s everything. What you had on you is all that’s left; a singular ceramic knife and the bag you cart with you to and from Yuuei.
It’s sentimental. You shouldn’t feel sentimental. You can replace everything. You’re working with limited funds, so it’ll take time, sure, but they were just things.
But your things, your knives, made you feel safe. It’s ridiculous, but they were a part of you, an extension of yourself. Your Quirk can only take you so far, and you barely use it in fights as is. The knives were your safety net. They were your teeth. A few truly good, perfectly fitted ones, you’d taken with you when you escaped Father. The rest, the bulk of your collection, had been carefully cultivated over the year since. They were all weighted to perfection, felt natural in your hands. They were your safety.
You were careless with them. You didn’t keep them as clean as you should, and you neglected sharpening them more times than you’d like to admit. You should have kept them stashed in different places.
But they were yours. They were your independence from Father. Your escape from Tomura.
Your chest hurts. It’s such a sudden, startling, sharp ache, right in the centre of you. You notice it all at once, even though you’re sure it’s been settled between your ribs all along. You fist the front of your uniform and try to take a step forward, try to make yourself move, because everything feels stiff and slim, paralysed. You end up crashing down, knees smarting from the impact with the floorboards.
You can’t breathe, but it’s different from the hospital panic attack earlier. Back then, you felt confused, and scared, and small. Now, you feel empty. You feel devoid. Father’s shadow looms over you, real and unreal all at once. You can’t unclench your fist, still grasping at your clothes.
Midoriya Inko was in this apartment just yesterday. You were here this morning. It was all still here, it was all still normal, it was all still your safe space. You know, you’ve always known you were never really safe. Safety is an illusion, but through this apartment and through your knives and through your vigilantism, you created a bigger illusion, the one that’s kept you standing for the past year.
And now it’s all dust. You can feel it beneath your fingers, one hand bracing you up over the ground. It’s just dust. Your safety is dust. Your life might as well be dust, too.
You don’t think Father ordered Tomura to do this. Senseless destruction has never been the way Father deals with you—his methods are more insidious, thought out. This is the destructive rage of a child. A child who hasn’t been given something he wants. It’s a tantrum.
And now you’re no longer safe from that rage. Everything has been ripped out from under you and you’re left scrabbling at a dusty floor.
All you can think is gone. It’s gone. It’s all gone. It was all for nothing. Father’s hand is around your throat again, and he probably doesn’t even know it.
You’re not sure exactly how long you stay there, breathless on your hands and knees, but it’s long enough the sun goes down and you’re left in pure darkness, still grappling with disbelief. It’s all gone.
You don’t really feel real when you finally push yourself up. It’s like another you is moving, whatever’s left of a carefully cultivated mask—a mask that was just shattered right in front of you. You manage to get just far enough that you can drop down in front of your forgotten school bag.
You rummage through it and try to grab your phone. It takes several attempts to keep hold of it, between your shaking and a persistent blur in your vision.
You grab a leftover takeout receipt and turn it over.
Shouta barely sleeps anyway, you’ll never be waking him up.
You tap in your teacher’s number and let your fingers graze the call button. There’s a part of you, some deeper, idle part of you that roars at you for this. They’re heroes, they’re scum, you know better, they’ll stab you in the back with your last fucking knife. It stalks inside you like a wounded animal, trying to lash out. But you don’t think you could stop yourself, even if you wanted to. Your body might as well be moving on its own.
The phone rings once. The second ring is cut off midway.
‘Aizawa Shouta.’
You try to speak, but all that comes out after a lengthy effort is a sharp outward breath. Faintly, you’re aware of your surprise that the man on the other end of the line doesn’t snap at you. He doesn’t demand to know who this is and why they’re calling at a ridiculous hour—he doesn’t even hang up, outright. There’s a long silence, possibly a minute, maybe even longer, before you can finally manage words.
‘Aizawa-sensei. Something happened.’