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Aizawa Shouta only knows pain and fear that he hasn’t felt since Oboro died as he lays, bleeding out in the USJ.
From his periphery, however, he sees his students: Asui, Mineta, and Midoriya. And the villain, Shigaraki, looms over them, more than ready to reach out his hand and turn them into dust.
He’s stopped, however, by Midoriya pulling out a snowball from behind his back and nailing the villain in the face.
Even as Shouta passed out from the pain as his students transport him away from the fight, his last conscious thought was where the fuck did Midoriya get a snowball?
The complicated answer would take several months to learn.
The world has gotten wilder since Jack Frost became a Guardian of Childhood, but kids are still kids. They love to have some fun, which is true the world over. While quirks are amazing and astonishing, something he could never, ever, ever dream of in his centuries of life until they happened, he still needs to bring forth those smiles.
Maybe he’s been avoiding Burgess since Jamie died, the wound in his heart too great, even though his friend and first believer lived to be an old man and loved by his family. It still hurts to think about it, even if the centuries have calmed things somewhat.
Japan, however, is definitely one of Jack’s go-to destinations, if only because he likes seeing all the heroes. And, well, some kids need a little more fun than others. He’s born witness to all sorts of discrimination that makes his stomach turn, and quirk discrimination is just the latest in the long line of it. Some countries have a bigger problem with it than others and those are the kids that need some fun and joy.
Like right now, he’s kicked up a nice size snowstorm to give the kids a couple of days off school. He’s had fun with them: snowball fights and snowmen, sledding and racing through the various parks throughout the city.
Here, however, is a sight that he hates: a group of kids pelting another boy with green curly hair with ice balls or snowballs with rocks in it.
Jack moves without thinking about it. He conjures a ton of snow to fall on the bullies and sweeps the boy onto a sled and off on an ice path. The kid stares up at Jack with wide eyes.
“I-Is this your quirk?” he calls up.
“Don’t have one,” Jack grins. “But you made have heard of me, I’m Jack Frost! Oh wait, uh, Frost Jack? That’s how you do it.”
And the look of wonder in those green eyes makes the spirit smile.
“Midoriya Izuku!”
And that’s how they met.
It could have been worse for Shouta, all things considered. At the very least, he had no facial damage. Not that he much cared about his appearance, of course, but it could impact his quirk.
However, with both of his arms bandaged, Shouta had plenty of time to think.
And it was the snowball that he kept coming back to. They weren’t anywhere near the zone for snow and ice rescues. Midoriya’s quirk has nothing to do with ice or snow.
So where had that snowball come from?
Shouta hated it when things didn’t make sense.
Jack hasn’t really had a “special” kid ever since Jamie. Or, well, a kid that he liked visiting more than the others. But there’s something about Midoriya that just draws him in. Maybe it’s the sweet excitable nature.
Maybe, it’s the fact that Midoriya, for the most part, is just as unseen as Jack was for all those centuries. Apparently, the moment that someone is labeled quirkless, things really suck for them, especially in countries full of quirked people. This sucks because Midoriya is a really sweet kid, who is passionate about heroes and, after meeting Jack, folklore.
“You can call me Izuku, you know,” Midoriya says about four months into knowing each other. The younger boy stares up a Jack with soulful green eyes. “W-We’re friends, right?”
“Yeah, Izuku,” Jack says, ruffling those green curls. “We’re definitely friends.”
The smile on Izuku’s face cold have rivaled the sun.
The mystery snowball is something that Shouta doesn’t focus on for too long. He has healing to get through, a husband to console, and twenty traumatized teenagers to get through the Sports Festival.
But he keeps an eye on Midoriya after it because he knows what he saw.
And there are things that aren’t adding up.
Sometimes, Midoriya will get distracted and the room will get colder. Other times, he’ll come in pink cheek with frost in his hair, despite it being well into Spring, even the occasional cold snap days aside. The year has been unusually warm.
There’s also a feeling like perhaps the entire classroom is being watched.
“So he’s giving you a quirk?” Jack asks, hanging upside as Izuku finishes his tale. He’s gotten stronger and better at staying around in the warmer months. Between his Guardian duties and just plain getting older as a spirit, he has a handle on things.
“All Might!” Izuku whispers excitedly. “I mean, it’s going to be a lot of training. But I want this.”
“You can be a hero without a quirk,” he insists. “You’d be great at it.”
Izuku flushes and smiles, “Maybe. And maybe it’s an easy way out, but All Might’s quirk? Maybe I can help really change things. Be number one, power and influence, and change the world for the better. You and the Guardians protect the kids and I can set up something so they can be happy adults.”
The thing about Izuku is that he has a heart too big for his body. He wants to be a hero to save everyone. It’s something that Jack knows that the rest of the Guardians share, even if the kids stop believing them, they never stop wanting to make sure they’re all okay. Even when they’re grown up.
“How can I help?” he asks instead. Izuku only grins in response.
The Sports Festival is the next time that weird things happen around Midoriya. Or, well, it’s when Shouta notices the odd things that happen around him.
The easy way he moves around Todoroki’s ice, even in just his bright red sneakers. The way he hangs in the air for a beat or two too long when he goes rocketing to the front at the end of the obstacle course.
The oddest thing, however, happens during Midoriya’s fight with Shinsou Hitoshi from General Education. Brainwashing is a powerful quirk and Shouta hates that the entrance exam is so biased as to not showcase such a talent. Even if the other boy doesn’t win the festival, he plans on seeking him out, getting him into the hero course.
A student doesn’t need to win, just need to be impressive enough to catch someone’s eye. And Shinsou had definitely caught Shouta’s.
But what also catches his eye, however, is Midoriya, who stops.
Interesting.
Shouta ignores Hizashi commenting on the match, when suddenly Midoriya’s head cracks to the side, like someone has slapped him.
What?
But it seems to have snapped Midoriya out of it because the next moment he’s knocking Shinsou out of the ring.
All well and good, but why did the kid act like that?
“You know you don’t have to follow me around,” Izuku tells Jack, looking bemused and nervous all at once. “Don’t you have winter fun to spread around or Guardian business?”
“Done and done,” Jack says, crossing his arms. He gives his best human friend a distinctly unimpressed look. “Besides you got attacked by villains! Actual villains! And you’re still a kid.”
He’s lucky that he was able to get to Izuku in time to get him that snowball at the USJ.
“I’m almost sixteen.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you still fall into a kid category until you’re of legal age,” Jack says stubbornly. “Just because a lot of teenagers stop believing, it doesn’t mean they all do.”
Jamie didn’t, neither did his friends or sister, they believed until their deaths. He knows from Izuku’s bright and determined eyes that he will believe until he goes to that final rest as well.
“I can’t talk you out of this?”
“Nope!” Jack grins eagerly, settling on the top of his staff.
“Alright but if one of my classmates ends up seeing you, then you’re doing the explaining,” Izuku says. He spins a pen in his hand before getting out his notebook. “Now have you seen any interesting heroes recently?”
And that’s that on that.
The next time that Shouta’s mind strays toward Midoriya’s strangeness is after the clusterfuck of Hosu.
He has no idea how Iida’s work study got approved or why it hadn’t crossed his desk, but heads were going to roll. While the three students involved has a thorough dressing down by the police, Shouta was going to do his own check-in with them all along with getting the story.
Iida’s meeting was the quickest as the kid was already beating himself up. Shouta wishes he had known, but he was so focus on his recovery and his own feelings about Tensei’s attack that he didn’t check in with the younger Iida more. He was out of commission for most of the fight due to Stain’s quirk.
“The oddest thing, however, was Midoriya’s reaction to Stain’s aura. He just…it knocked back everyone. But Midoriya stood firm against it.” Iida considers his next words. “He said that he believed that in the fear that Stain brought, but he refused to be cowed by it.”
It was an interesting insight into Midoriya’s personality at the least. No wonder the Hero Killer had declared his student a true hero.
Todoroki, however, had the more puzzling interview.
“There was ice that wasn’t mine there,” his student says in that typical measured way. “I left it out of the report with the police.”
Shouta does not sigh or groan because, despite his good working relationship with a few officers, he tends not to get on best with the police. Underground Heroes, as most would say, were vigilantes with a paycheck. And they were not a hundred percent wrong.
So Shouta breathed in and out, swallowing the reprimand before asking, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Todoroki tilts his head to the side, almost birdlike, “Because it was strange. Midoriya told me there was another person in the alleyway but, in order to see him, I had to believe in them.”
What?
“And, well, I did because I believe in Midoriya. And there was someone there: a boy around our age with an odd-looking staff who was making ice and flying,” Todoroki furrows his eyebrow. “But then my father showed up and the boy was gone.”
What?
“I’m pretty sure you’re ending up on the Naughty List after all that lying you had to do,” Jack says bemused after Aizawa leaves. “I’ll give it to your teacher though. He’s like a dog with a bone.”
“He also wouldn’t believe it,” Izuku’s mouth twists a bit. “Aizawa-sensei is rational to the extreme. And teachers never believe me anyways.”
Adults, Jack knows, have disappointed Izuku in a thousand little tragic ways. His trust in them have been shattered. In that moment, he feels those three hundred years of loneliness, kept isolated and separated from other spirits and the Guardians.
“Maybe a miracle will happen,” Jack says throwing an arm around Izuku’s shoulder.
“I thought hope was the Bunny’s domain.”
“Eh, we can all use a little hope now and then. And maybe, your teacher could get a tiny bit of belief as well? He could have pushed a lot harder. You’re not that great a liar.”
Izuku snorts, “Maybe.”
Well, it’s a start.
Pairing Midoriya and Bakugou for the final exam was a mistake, Shouta sees that now.
He drums his fingers with a frown at the screen. Midoriya goes to work with Bakugou, multiple times. He tries more than Shouta probably would have at that age, he’ll give the kid that. Bakugou punches Midoriya in the face. Something freezes Bakugou’s hands and gauntlets together.
Midoriya makes a break for the gate, outrunning All Might with his Full Cowling technique.
Bakugou, of course, fails the exam due to hitting Midoriya. And wasn’t that a pain and half getting the kid to admit it. The blonde is in some serious shit for the stunt as well. He wanted to kick him to Gen Ed and be done with it, but, unfortunately, the case against Mineta is almost done and the board is breathing down Shouta’s neck after his stunt last year.
Out of the two, Mineta needed to go more than Bakugou in Shouta’s opinion. So, the kid is on the edge and will need to jump through hoops to earn Shouta’s trust back. Anger management classes and summer remedial lessons at the very least of it if Shouta has his way.
But that damn ice again. A boy that can only be seen if you believe, as Todoroki said.
He puts off the headache that is Midoriya and goes to deal with the headache of Bakugou first. The conversation goes about as well as Shouta expects, cursing and muttering. Though, at least, there’s something like a hint of shame when he lays out Bakugou’s own bad actions. It’s his second and last chance either way. And, for the time being, he’s making sure to keep the both of them apart.
At the end of it, Bakugou is flexing his hands and his cheeks are burning red.
And Shouta pushes a little bit.
“Now,” he says quietly. “I’d like an explanation for how your gauntlets got frozen.”
Bakugou eyes him up carefully at that before huffing and crossing his arms.
“I thought he was just Deku’s stupid imaginary friend,” the boy mutters. “It turns out that the fucker was real all along. Or he was always real and I just forgot.”
Shouta leans forward.
“Who?”
“Jack fucking Frost,” the blonde says with a sigh. “He prefers it Westernized.”
It takes some time for Jack to place how Aizawa Shouta looked so familiar to him. He, however, eventually puts it together in the time between the final exams and summer training camp.
It was a few years ago when he was in Japan to spread some winter cheer around. UA was very pretty in the snow, and those students needed some smiles and laughter. Just because you were close to being grown up, doesn’t mean that fun was something you needed to sacrifice.
And the students that were there were enjoying the snow, laughing and running around like little kids once Jack got the fun started with some of his magic snowballs. He saw a group of teenage boys leaving the building together, faces pink in the winter air.
“C’mon Shouta,” a blue haired boy said with a grin. “Live a little. Get a hot chocolate with us.”
The black-haired boy rolled his eyes, but Jack could see that he needed a bit of fun.
Nothing a snowball to the back of the head couldn’t cure, Jack thought.
(And he was right.)
Midoriya sits twisting his fingers nervously as he looks up at Shouta through his fluffy hair.
Shouta stares back at his student.
“I-Is this about the final exam, A-Aizawa-sensei?”
Fuck, kid, Shouta thinks not for the first time. Who the fuck hurt you this badly?
“It is,” he agrees. “And it isn’t. It’s about more than that as well, Midoriya.”
The boy freezes at that. He twists his fingers harder. Shouta sighs, pulls out a fidget toy, and hands it to his student.
“Don’t hurt yourself, Problem Child,” he says gently. “I just need to understand. The ice that follows you around…”
Midoriya shakes his head, “Most adults have a hard t-time believing, s-sensei. It…c-can’t we just s-say it’s a w-weird part of my quirk?”
“No. I mean sure, but I know something is going on, Midoriya. And while I have failed you, I don’t want to keep doing that.”
“Y-You haven’t! You’re th-the nicest homeroom t-teacher I’ve ever had!”
What the fuck teachers has Midoriya been having?
Shouta tables that concerning sentence as there is only one crisis at a time he can handle. He leans back to stare at his student.
“You said most adults.”
Midoriya sighs, “You’re r-really not going to let this go, sensei?”
“No. I can’t, not with what’s going on right now.”
Green eyes track something else in the room and Shouta feels the temperature drop sharply. On the window in his small private office, frost forms creating fractal patterns against the glass. Midoriya looks at Shouta for a long, long moment.
“It’s hard to have faith as you grow up, sensei. Because you think that it’s something for kids, to put your whole heart and trust into something else. But sometimes, sometimes, don’t you just want to believe for the sake of it? Maybe that the world could have a bit of magic in it to make it kind?”
Shouta watches as someone draws on the frost, the image of a cat…
And then the doodle comes to life. Hopping down from the glass of the window and up onto his desk. The image meows and bats at Shouta’s scarf.
A feeling bubbles up in his chest. The feeling he remembers being with Oboro when he was alive, of being with Hizashi and Nemuri now. He laughs softly at the kitten and it explodes into shimmery snow.
And…
“—Bunny is utterly going to slaughter me over revealing myself to an adult like that, Izuku. You know this, right? Okay, maybe not Slaughter I don’t think North or Tooth would do that. But…”
A teenager, maybe a little older than Shouta’s students, sits atop a shepherd’s crook. One of his legs is swinging back and forth, white hair mussed and frowning at Izuku.
“Oh,” Shouta says. “Jack Frost?”
The kid looks over with eyes far older than Shouta would just before jumping down on the ground.
“That’s me,” he agrees simply. “And, well, things are bad, Aizawa. All For One’s not just going after the adults. It’s…bad.”
Shouta stares, looking over at his green-haired student and the white-haired boy(?), wondering what he stumbled into.