Chapter Text
Aizawa wakes up with a headache pounding around his skull. Hizashi is sitting next to him, with a slightly regretful look on his face.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Hizashi’s head snaps up. “Shouta, hey.” He sounds quiet, almost subdued.
Aizawa just tilts his head questioningly.
“I think I might have messed up. Bakugo came by the dorms, and I tried to stop him from leaving.” Aizawa, not wanting to interrupt, nods. “Well, I… Vlad overheard us arguing, and he got in a fight with Bakugo. The police showed up, but Vlad busted some stitches that the kid had. Apparently he got stabbed. No one cared though, and he almost bled out, because it was deemed ‘not that bad’. He was right, we can’t protect him, and I failed him immediately.”
“Where is he now?”
“Stable at the nearest hospital. He’s not conscious yet. They said that they’d call me when he was, and also when he was stable enough to be moved. There’s going to be a trial, and then he’s going to be sentenced. Until then, he’s going to have to stay in the cell at the local police station.”
Aizawa sighs. “Hizashi, we’ve been over this. We weren’t supposed to get involved with Bakugo.”
“I know, but once I saw him, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. It felt like failing all over again. I knew that something bad was going to happen to him. Whether that’s now or later, or three months from now. You didn’t see how bad he looked. When I did, I didn’t want to let go.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.”
Three Months Later
Bakugo settles into his cell at Isengard Penitentiary. It’s his first day here, and everyone already hates him. The guards hate the idea of a traitor, and most of the villains think he’s faking and not a traitor at all. Despite the stupidity of that idea, considering being a traitor has no upsides at this point, almost all of them believe it. Two of the guards have already verbally expressed how much they don’t like him. He acts like he's not listening to them, but it's hard.
Now that he’s alone, he sits on his cot, setting his back against the wall. He closes his eyes, not completely capable of thinking about and processing his situation right now. The trial is over, and it was an easy conviction. Not like Bakugo expected anything else. Despite his bold words, Bakugo hasn’t seen Present Mic since he got arrested. He sits alone for a little while, trying to figure out how he’s going to survive until he can get out of here. It’s only half of an hour into his thinking that someone bangs on the cell door.
“You have a visitor. You’re lucky that they allow pros to visit you, or you wouldn’t be allowed to have any visitors at all,” a voice sneers before the cell door opens.
Bakugo perks up. Due to the strings that have to be pulled for visitation in his cell, he can already assume who it is. He’s immediately proven right as Aizawa steps through the doorway. To his surprise, Shinso walks in behind him. The door is shut and locked behind them.
“What are you guys doing here?”
“Mr. Aizawa decided that we needed to come see you, and it was on our new patrol route, so he let me come with him,” Shinso explains, sitting down on the floor.
Aizawa looks tired like he usually does after patrol, but he’s not dressed like they were on patrol. He’s wearing ripped dark gray jeans and a black sweater. His capture weapon is nowhere to be seen.
“He couldn’t bring it in here with him.” Bakugo nods at Shinso, who seems to be reading his mind.
“How have things been going?” He asks.
Aizawa frowns. “I tried to convince Hizashi to come down here with us, but he hasn’t stopped looking for the league since you got arrested. The class’s grades are good though. Toshi is progressing the fastest.”
“That’s because when you’re doing more basic things, it’s easier to progress,” Shinso mutters.
“Hush, anyway, we don’t have anything on the league of villains yet, but we’re all working on it. Midoriya is losing it with you gone. No one’s there to keep him in check, and he almost threw hands with your mother the other day when she came by the dorms.”
“Why did she come by the dorms?”
“She wanted to check out your room. Claims she knows where you like to hide things in your old room,” Aizawa replies, not looking Bakugo in the eyes.
“Why didn’t you ask why Midoriya wanted to fight your mother?” Shinso asks, not looking up.
“He always wants to fight my mother. When it comes to that old hag, he has no chill. He doesn’t like the way that she talks to me,” Bakugo explains.
“Huh, is that all? Midoriya isn’t the type to pick a fight over how someone is talking to you. You can take care of yourself,” Aizawa says.
“Yeah, but I won’t. I mean, she’s my mother. What am I going to do other than call her names right back. I already do that, and it doesn’t help anything. Anyway, let’s not keep talking about her. She’s making me mad by just existing.”
“Did she show up to your trial?” Shinso asks.
“This is the last question about her that I'll answer, and no. Neither did my dad. How have you been settling in with Mr. Aizawa?”
“Well, the adoption process has been more complicated than it was originally supposed to be, but I think we’re doing well. We’re learning how to work around and with each other in more than a professional teacher-student relationship. I really feel like this is going to turn out well.”
“Have you ever had someone else offer to adopt you?” Bakugo asks curiously.
Shinso frowns at the ground. “No, we never got that far. Usually they figured out that I wasn’t actually quirkless, but a mind controlling monster. So, yeah, that never went over well.”
Bakugo nods. “Well, that makes sense, even though they’re complete idiots.”
Shinso smiles at the floor, then Aizawa clears his throat.
“The point is, we’re getting closer. Hizashi and I even have some leads to chase down later today.” Bakugo hums, clearly unimpressed. “Also, Jeanist is coming by later.”
Bakugo’s head snaps up. “Does he have to?” Bakugo whispers, clearly upset.
“I don’t think I can stop him, but what’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to see him. The reason doesn’t matter, screw off.”
“Alright, that’s fine. Shinso, we should probably go. Bakugo, be careful. Try not to get into more trouble.”
Bakugo doesn’t look up, but he nods slightly. Shinso stands up.
“I’ll see you later, Bakugo.”
They walk back out, and immediately after, Jeanist walks in. It seems like he was waiting on Aizawa and Shinso to leave. Bakugo refuses to look up, keeping his eyes glued to the bed in front of him. The door slams, echoing in the silence.
“Bakugo.” He stubbornly refuses to move. “Bakugo, what is your problem? Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Bakugo lifts his head, meeting Jeanist’s eyes. “Hey, been a while, huh? Almost nine months, right?”
Jeanist, although confused, still nods.
“Why?”
“Oh, I just thought I’d remind myself. How long was it my fault? Six months? I guess that makes up for you not coming to any part of the trial, or my hearings. It was more my fault than yours. In that case, how about you leave, and we don’t see each other for another three months to make up for the rest of it?” Bakugo hisses, venom clear in his tone.
“Bakugo, I was working. You know what I was working on, why are you mad?”
“Why am I mad? That’s a good excuse to some extent, I’ll give you that. Aizawa was working too, and he came to see me every single time that he could. He told me that as important as that is, if I’m mentally destroyed, there isn’t much of a life to go back to anyway. What do you think? Am I too messed up? How about worth saving?”
Jeanist stares at him for a moment before replying,” You’re worth saving no matter what your mental health looks like. That’s the great part about mental health, even though physical health is easier to fix, mental health can still be fixed or managed too. I will help you anyway I can, but I didn’t realize that it would mean that much to you for me to be there.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. What are you doing here?”
“I had to come make sure that you were ok, and that you were going to hold up well.”
“I’ll be fine, but if you guys keep showing up, it’s gonna make people mad.”
“Maybe, but does that mean you want me to stop?”
“Nah, I’ll be alright. I don’t even really know why I said that.”
“Ok, well, just let me know if there’s anything that I can do for you. I have to get back to work. I have a meeting in a few minutes.”
“Ok, have fun.”
Jeanist stands up. He walks back out, glancing at Bakugo repeatedly until the door shuts again. Bakugo sighs, and lays down flat on his back. He sighs again, and covers his eyes with his arm. The next time that someone comes to his cell is to take him to the cafeteria for lunch. Despite the fact that almost everyone is high risk here, the guards still insist on escorting him personally. The guard standing outside looks angry, and roughly grabs Bakugo by the arm as soon as he opens the door.
“Come on.”
His arm stings, and he pulls away quickly. There’s a small red dot on his arm.
“What did you get me with?” Bakugo asks, his vision already blurring.
Bakugo swings at the guard, catching his jaw. This catches the other guard's attention, but Bakugo passes out before any of them get over to him.
He wakes up in the prison’s infirmary. Everything hurts, and his muscles feel like they’re burning. The nurse hovers over him. She's a kind looking woman with graying hair and bright blue eyes.
“Hello, how are you feeling?”
Bakugo blinks sluggishly. “I… what did he get me with?”
“After you hit one of the guards, you had to be tranquilized. You had a bad reaction to the stuff they gave you.”
“Huh,” Bakugo mutters, putting his head back down.
“Just try to lay still. You’ll be fine to go back to your cell in a few hours. You should wait to eat until tomorrow though.”
Bakugo hums noncommittally. She steps back out. The guard in the corner of the room eyes him suspiciously. His right hand is handcuffed to the bed railing. It only takes him a few minutes to decide that he’s not staying here. The infirmary is his best chance of escaping. So, he scans the room. He comes up with a plan quickly. He reaches over to readjust the way that the cuff sits on his wrist. The guard stares hard at him, but he just shrugs innocently.
“Stop that.”
“Or what?” Bakugo replies.
The guard walks over, looming ominously. Bakugo knees him in the gut, and grabs his keys off of his belt. He quickly unlocks his handcuffs before the guard can regain his composure. Bakugo slams the guard’s head into the railing before climbing out of his bed. He retraces his steps back through the prison, knocking out two guards on his way. The alarm starts going off right before he gets to the exit.
'They must have found one of the guard’s bodies,' Bakugo thinks, gritting his teeth.
He uses the first guard’s ID to open the door, and slips out. Instead of leaving the premises, he goes to the edge of the land. Right in front of the fence is a small outpost where the guards used to hang out in between shifts. Aizawa showed it to them when they went on a field trip to learn how the prison works. He climbs inside, and uses his quirk to unseal a hatch on the floor. He flashes back to what Aizawa told them.
“This place hasn’t been used in a little while, but there is something below it. We’re not sure what it is, because no one cares to look. None of the original architects that worked on the prison are still alive. All we know is that whatever it is was closed off for some reason.”
He pulls the hatch up and there’s a ladder underneath. He climbs onto the ladder, which creaks under his weight. He lights his hand up, and melts the hatch closed behind him. He climbs down, down, down, almost thirty feet. By then, his arms and legs are shaking and close to giving out on him. After everything that’s happened in the last few hours, Bakugo is close to passing out.
There’s a musty bunker at the bottom. It looks almost like a bomb shelter. Bakugo takes a closer look around. There are multiple sets of bunks along one wall. There are also all kinds of rations along the adjacent wall. One of the corners is covered in sheets, which means there’s probably a toilet over there. The only weird part is that there are tunnels going in different directions on different walls.
“They must have closed this place off because of the tunnels. It was probably a liability, that was until no one knew about this place. They won’t look for me here. I can wait here like my original plan, or I can see where one of these tunnels lead,” Bakugo muses. He thinks for a moment before shaking his head. “No, I can’t try to follow one of these tunnels. I’ll get lost. I need to stop talking, I sound like I’m losing my mind.”
He laughs. He spends the next few hours sitting on the floor, not actually doing anything. Then he starts looking around the room, going through the very old supplies. While nothing looks usable, there’s a few newspapers scattered around. Bakugo looks at the dates, and they’re from the early two thousands. Bakugo puts them back down, and frowns.
“I have to go, try my luck. There’s no water here.”
He checks to see which direction all of the tunnels are going in. Then he starts off towards the one that goes in the direction of the city. After walking for a while, he starts seeing ladders at different intervals along the tunnel. After he's sure that he has to be under some part of town, he climbs up the next ladder. It leads to another sealed hatch, but this one is behind a dumpster in an alleyway.
'I wonder how far this system covers. Maybe I shouldn't tell anyone about this. It was probably closed off because it's dangerous.'
He heads towards one of the police stations, the one closest to the center of town. That's where his stuff that was considered evidence should be kept. Luckily for him, it's nearing dinnertime. So, he waits until the night staff is alone, and then he climbs in through a back window. The security is pretty lax, so he’s able to grab his stuff, and leave without anyone other than the person that keeps all of the evidence locked up seeing him. All it takes to knock him out is a well placed hit to the back of his neck. He’s in and out in fifteen minutes.
He changes clothes before turning his phone on. From the fact that it wasn’t used in evidence during the trial, Bakugo concludes that the police weren’t able to get past the password protections. He punches in the code, then checks his messages. He’s going to have to get a new phone soon, but he has to make sure that he didn’t miss anything while he was in jail. To his surprise, there are three missed calls from one of his contacts; one of the ones that doesn’t usually call him. He presses to redial the number as he walks towards one of his hideouts near the precinct. Silva, his contact, answers almost immediately.
“I called you two days ago!” she exclaims quietly.
“I was in jail, it could have been a lot worse than two days. What’s up?”
“Jail? You know what? I don’t care. I tried to call you because I got word of a meeting between the LOV and some known drug dealers. I’ll text you the location.”
“Ok, but just know that I’m dumping this phone after getting the information onto another one.”
“Ok, just be in contact with your new phone. Bakugo, you need to be more careful. Even if you got caught and got away once, you probably will not be able to get out of jail again.”
“K, thanks. I’ll talk to you later. If all goes well, it’ll be to tell you that I’m back home.”
“Hopefully. Anyway, I gotta go.”
“K.”
Bakugo hangs up, sighing. He creeps into the apartment he rented before heading back into town.
“I need to change clothes so I can stop slinking around in the shadows, hoping no one sees my bright colored hoodie. That wasn't my wisest move,” he mutters.
He steps into the bathroom, changes clothes, and puts in his blue contact lenses. His roots are already blonde, but he doesn’t bother with that. As soon as he’s done, he opens up his texts. Silva texted him an address and a time, so he gets ready to head there. The meeting isn’t for another two hours, but he’s going to scope out the area. He walks slowly, trying to figure out his game plan. He also needs to think about what he’s going to do once he’s cleared. So, he lets his mind wander while he’s walking. He quickly decides that, if possible, he’s going back to UA. That’s where his life is. Soon, he’s coming up on the address and he knows how he’s going to handle the situation.
It’s another abandoned warehouse. Some villains really like their cliches. After getting there, he takes stock of the security first. There are guards at every entrance, and it looks like both groups decided to bring some of their own people. Despite that, it isn’t hard for Bakugo to make it inside. He slips through one of the windows during the forty five seconds that it’s not within eyesight of either group’s perimeter guard. The only two people inside are Shigaraki and Dabi. Bakugo opens his phone, texts Aizawa to let him know where he is, and then sets his phone to record. He clears his throat. Both of them turn to look at him, bewildered.
“What is he doing here? I thought he went to jail,” Shigaraki hisses.
Bakugo strides closer, but not close enough for Shigaraki to attempt to disintegrate him. Dabi just folds his arms, obviously waiting on instructions. “I did. Although, you’d think you guys would have done a better job of keeping me there, or at least in your base. Although, you guys are kind of stupid.”
“What could you possibly hope to achieve by coming here?” Dabi interjects.
“I want some kind of revenge for you guys wrecking my life. I was gonna be the number one hero and now I’m stuck breaking out of prison.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. It doesn’t matter what we did, because you’ve signed your death warrant by coming here.”
“Really? Have I? That’s fun, better than what I’ve had to deal with recently.”
“Oh, don’t be over dramatic. I was going to keep you and torture you for information on the heroes while they publicly condemned you, but I couldn’t. Not after you overwhelmed this buffoon.” He motions towards Dabi, who still doesn’t move.
“Really? Torture? That’s over the top, even for you.”
“You’re annoying. Dabi, kill him.”
Dabi doesn’t move, just sighs. “No.”
“I said kill him!”
“Nah, I’m not killing some kid just because you don’t like him.”
Bakugo folds his arms. “Looks like you’re going to have to kill me yourself. Oof, that sucks. You should get better underlings.”
“Duly noted,” Shigaraki sneers before lunging towards Bakugo.
Bakugo barely side steps him before the doors to the warehouse slam open. Pro heroes come flooding in. It’s not long before Shigaraki, Dabi, and Bakugo are all taken into custody. Before he’s handcuffed, Bakugo hands Aizawa his phone. Aizawa glances at it confused, until the screen lights up. Then he sees that it’s recording, and he smiles.
“Did you get anything?” he asks as Bakugo gets handcuffed.
“Yeah, you should listen to it, teach. It’s pretty cool. I’d even say that I handled myself pretty well.”
Aizawa smiles softly. “I’d say you did. I’ll see how quickly I can get something done with this.”
Bakugo, for once, doesn’t fight at all. He’s completely relaxed as he’s carted to the station. He stays there for almost fourteen hours in an interrogation room, but no one else even comes in. Honestly, that doesn’t surprise Bakugo, because it’s not like they have any questions. Aizawa is probably the only reason that he isn’t in a cell right now. By the time fourteen hours have passed, Bakugo is getting bored. Aizawa walks in right as he starts tapping rapidly on the table while simultaneously considering taking a nap.
“Hey,” Bakugo greets, immediately perking up.
“The charges have been formally dropped, and the police will reach out with a formal apology letter. I want you to come back to the school with me. We’ll deal with everything else later,” Aizawa says reassuringly.
Bakugo stands up and follows him out. Aizawa’s car is parked near the front of the precinct. The drive back towards the school is quiet. Bakugo just stares out the window. Aizawa doesn’t push the conversation until they get back. He climbs out of the car.
“Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything you want to tell me?”
Bakugo shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good.”
“Alright, well, I’ll call your mother when we get inside.” Bakugo nods his head slowly.
“You’re certain?” Aizawa presses.
Bakugo nods. Aizawa frowns, but leads him inside. He doesn’t grab his phone even as everyone starts mobbing Bakugo. Bakugo throws his hands out as soon as anyone gets close enough.
“Stop! I can’t do this right now. I’m heading to my room.”
Deku frowns heavily as Bakugo rushes off. “Is he going to be alright?”
“Yeah, he’ll need to figure out how to work through his trauma. We’ll help him through that,” Aizawa assures him.