Chapter Text
Shouta stared at Todoroki. He cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair, both hands cupped around his bowl of soba. “Tracker?” he prompted.
Todoroki nodded. “I found it after we moved to the dorms and disabled it. He made me come home the next weekend and replaced it before I left. I don’t think he knows I know about it.”
“Which shoe?” Kan asked, moving to the cabinet where Todoroki’s belongings were stored.
“Left. It’s hidden in the insole.”
Shouta watched as Kan pulled the insole out of the shoe and gently prodded it. He turned it on its side and fumbled with a for a few seconds before shaking a small, silver object out of it. A disc, about the size of a coin, looking incongruously small in Kan’s large hand.
“Is that it?” Shouta asked.
Kan nodded. He was studying it closely, fangs protruding in a feral smile before he looked up to meet Shouta’s eyes. “It’s not just a tracker, Aizawa. It’s a recorder.”
Shouta set his bowl aside and pushed himself up to his feet. “Are you sure?”
“Like a bug?” Kirishima asked. “Is he, like, listening to us right now?”
“No, it records movement,” Kan explained, passing the disc to Shouta. “With the right software, we can see exactly where Todoroki’s been over the last ten days.”
Shouta’s gut curdled at the thought. Endeavor didn’t just want to know where his son was at all times; he wanted to know where he’d been. With this, even without constantly watching his son’s movements, he’d be able to know if Todoroki put a foot out of line.
“Does that help?” Todoroki asked quietly.
“He knew where you were,” Shouta repeated. His eyes focused on Kirishima, but the boy set his jaw and put a protective arm around Todoroki. “He had your exact location the entire time you were missing. He knew….”
Shouta scrubbed a hand through his hair and passed the tracker back to Kan before he could give in to his impulse to crush the damn thing. “Kid…he had us looking for you on the other side of the mountain. He knew where you were, and deliberately sent the search party in the opposite direction.”
He could only guess at Endeavor’s motives. To delay his son’s rescue as punishment for tarnishing his name. To improve his image as a worried father doing his best despite his duties as the number one hero. To keep the volunteers distracted, so Endeavor could rescue his son himself and hide him away in that private clinic he was so fond of.
“Then how did you find me?” Todoroki’s voice broke through Shouta’s thoughts.
He sighed. “I went with my gut. Since your entire class seems incapable of staying out of trouble, I asked myself why you couldn’t make it back home. Present Mic has contacts with news sources all over the country, so he started scanning for anything that had been reported in the area where you went missing. Villain sightings, dangerous animals, natural disasters, you name it. Anything that could keep someone like you from making it home.”
If Todoroki caught the hidden compliment, he didn’t show it. He just nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Did my father…?”
Shouta’s lips thinned. He was almost certain Endeavor had known about the landslide and done nothing. When he didn’t answer, Todoroki’s shoulders sagged a little.
If he’d been any later. If he’d followed Endeavor’s search parameters. If he hadn’t followed his gut.
They might not be here now, and Endeavor’s hold on this kid would be that much tighter.
“Why don’t you guys finish your movie,” Shouta suggested. “We’ve got a few calls to make.”
…
Darkness and heat.
He stumbled along, one leg nearly useless, clawing his way up rocks and mud through the suffocating scent of hellfire.
Sounds and smells pressed in on him, until he only knew the desperation of his flight and the terror of what was behind him.
A bellowing roar split the air as flames illuminated the darkened tunnel around him. Rough rock gave way to smooth stone, and Shouto scrambled to his feet to push himself into a run.
Heat washed over his back as flames licked at his heels. He could hear it…feel it behind him, always behind him. It loomed over him no matter where he went, waiting with a burning hand or bruising grip to force him back into its control.
His feet slipped. A burst of flames to his left had him flinching back, bringing up his own fire to shield himself…but nothing answered. The flames roiled over him. He brought his arms up to shield his face, tried to roll away, but there was nothing but fire on either side.
Something snagged around his waist and he was yanked up and out, away from the flames, whistling through the air and darkness to collide with a solid form.
Aizawa. Eraserhead. Goggles covering his eyes, hair floating as his Quirk silenced the roaring flames behind him.
“Get out of here,” Aizawa ordered, shoving Shouto behind him.
“But—”
“Go!” The capture scarf wrapped around his waist, hurling him through the dark tunnels away from his teacher and the pursuing shadow.
He tumbled, end over end, skinning his hands and knees against the rough rock. He turned back to run down the tunnel, only to slide to a halt at the edge of a chasm.
Everything was fire and shadow. He could barely see the confident form of his teacher, standing face-to-face with the hulking monster that roared out of the darkness beyond him.
Shouto’s pulse pounded in his throat as he tried to scream. The monster was there for him, not for Aizawa. Not his teacher. No one should have to stand between him and the flames.
Everything was burning. The stone melted in waxy rivulets as the flames grew higher and hotter. He knew this flame, knew this heat…knew that Aizawa couldn’t stand it.
“Shouto!”
The cry echoed around him. He longed to cover his ears and cower away from it, find a place to hide. Someplace where fire would never reach. Where he’d never have to burn again.
They were fighting now.
Shouto could only watch in horror as Aizawa’s darted out of the stream of the monster’s flames, hair floating as he canceled its Quirk.
But nothing happened. The fire never died, only grew hotter. A massive hand grabbed Aizawa out of the air, lifting him up to hold him in front of burning blue eyes.
He tried to scream, but his throat was clogged with ash. This was his fault. He’d tried to escape the flames, but his teacher was paying the price.
Somehow Aizawa’s eyes found his across the chasm. His mouth moved, and Shouto heard his voice as clearly as if he’d been standing next to him.
“Run, Shouto.”
He stood on shaking legs. Those monstrous blue eyes had found him, burning coldly above flames that formed a moustache and beard.
“C’mon, kid.”
It tightened its fist around Aizawa with a sickening snap, then dropped him pitilessly into the bottomless chasm between them.
“Shouto!”
The cavern became a blur of blank gray walls and beeping machines. He gasped for breath, tears blinding his eyes, flinching away from the figure leaning over him before his mind could process what he was seeing.
Dark hair and eyes. Scar across the cheekbone. A face usually lax with apathy now tense with worry.
He reached for his teacher with a muffled cry, and Aizawa guided him up enough to press his head against his chest. His heart was beating, surely and steadily, and Shouto clenched his fingers in the man’s baggy sweater and hung on and listened to it.
Aizawa was saying something, but he couldn’t process the words now. One rough hand was gently stroking through the hair on the back of his head, the other curled around his shoulders to hold him up.
“I’m right here, kid,” Aizawa murmured. “You’re okay.”
“You can’t,” he gasped out.
“I’m not leaving.”
“No….” He wanted to push away, but his hands just tightened their grip. “You can’t…can’t fight him.”
Endeavor was too big. Too much. Too strong. Even without his Quirk, without his fire, he was a man of unfathomable power. Shouto’s own dream of surpassing him seemed as fragile as a soap bubble against the wretched fury of Endeavor.
Aizawa had grown still, and Shouto reluctantly let himself be pushed away so the man could look him in the eye. “What do you mean by that?”
He shook his head. He wanted nothing more than to have his teacher hold him again, to tell him it would be okay. But that was a weak, childish thought. He shouldn’t think like that…he couldn’t think like that. He was the son of the number one hero. It was time he took that responsibility seriously.
The man frowned. He pressed his scarred palm to Shouto’s forehead and shook his head. “Fever’s back, kid. No wonder you had a nightmare.”
“Wasn’t a nightmare,” he mumbled. It was the truth. His life. His father’s shadow was long and deep, and he’d never claw his way out of it. Aizawa’s eyes were boring into him, and he met the man’s gaze wearily. “You can’t fight him.”
Aizawa sighed. “You keep saying that.”
“You don’t know what he’s like.” Shouto’s voice broke on the words. “You don’t know what he can do. If you fight him, he’ll…he’ll take you down with him.”
“Please,” he added when the man didn’t answer him for a long time.
“Then I won’t fight him,” Aizawa said simply. Something seemed to break inside of Shouto and he lurched forward, stifling a sob. Aizawa steadied him with an arm around his shoulder and a hand against his chest, and Shouto wanted nothing more than to curl into that touch.
“My goal here is to keep you safe,” the man continued. “I’m not gonna let you get caught in the crossfire just to make sure Endeavor goes down. If you don’t want to fight, we’ll find another way.”
He nodded silently. His father couldn’t be swayed or threatened, and if Aizawa pushed then Endeavor would push back a hundred times stronger. No one would listen to them anyway. He was just a kid, and Endeavor was the new number one hero. Endeavor meant safety and security for the entire nation…Shouto was a rebellious teenager making up lies to cause trouble for his hero father.
“He’s already dug his own grave with this,” Aizawa said. If he’d noticed that Shouto had slumped sideways until he was leaning against the man’s chest, he didn’t say anything. “We just have to make sure he falls in it. Okay?”
He sniffed and nodded again.
They sat in silence in the shadowy hospital room for a while. Aizawa finally stirred to check his watch, letting out a sigh when he saw the time. “You should go back to sleep.”
“I can’t.” The shadows would be waiting. The heat and fire. Everything was always burning.
Aizawa sighed. He knew what that sigh meant…if he didn’t sleep, they wouldn’t use a healing Quirk on him in the morning. He’d be stuck here for another night—Aizawa would be stuck here for another night. He was being selfish.
But he couldn’t. The thought of closing his eyes again brought up memories of fire and darkness, and not all of them from his nightmares. He could still taste the ash, feel the tightness of his skin, feel the roughness where his clothes had been burned away.
“Give me a second, then,” Aizawa said. He released Shouto long enough to drag his chair as close to the bed as he could before settling in it. “There should be a…there we go.” He’d found the controller for the bed, and he lowered it until he and Shouto were sitting more or less at the same height. He then held an arm out, beckoning Shouto closer. “Come on.”
Shouto slid to the edge of the bed and leaned against his teacher as the man wrapped his arm around his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Aizawa’s arm tightened around his shoulders. “It’ll be okay.”
Aizawa didn’t lie to them—well, he did, but not when it really mattered.
It wasn’t much to hold onto, but as they sat in the shadowed silence of the hospital room, Aizawa’s presence almost enough to banish the nightmares out of the back of Shouto’s mind…it was almost enough.
And maybe, before too long, it would be.