Chapter Text
“Tell me more.”
And Shinsou does. He can’t stop himself — he knows he should have gotten sleep last night, and the night before, and the night before that, but if he’s being honest, falling asleep every night has been equivalent to passing out from exhaustion and pain.
This is one of the many things Hitoshi rambles about. The words flow freely once he’s started; the dam has broken, and he’s been building up these entire speeches of resentment for years in his daydreams where he finally tells the police or some other authority about his less-than-wonderful experiences in foster care.
He hadn’t expected for that authority figure to be his favorite hero. He hadn’t dared to expect that.
But deep down, he’d known that Eraserhead, if told these things, would listen. And that was precisely one of the reasons why Hitoshi admired him and other Underground heroes. They didn’t try to put on a facade for the media — they didn’t need to, not when the media rarely if ever at all covered them. They couldn’t rely on reputation to succeed at heroics; if they wanted to gain any civilian’s trust, they had to earn it and prove that they could be trusted.
Today, Eraserhead proves that ten times over when he signs custody transfer papers on the spot after the story is out.
It’s surreal. Naturally, their training is canceled after all this, in favor of getting Hitoshi’s sparse belongings from his former home and getting settled in Eraserhead’s apartment, which he apparently shares with Present Mic, to whom he’s apparently married. Hitoshi didn’t see it coming, although now that he knows, he can definitely see it.
It’s nice. It’s the most normal thing that’s happened to him all day.
“Call me Aizawa,” Eraserhead — no, Aizawa — tells Hitoshi on the car ride back. “I don’t want to be just a hero who happens to have custody of you. I’d like to do a bit better than that.”
The bar is low, Hitoshi thinks first. But at the same time, nobody’s ever made even an attempt to do better.
He doesn’t speak the whole way back, but his heart swells.
They’re the first ones home. The keys jangle loudly as Aizawa finds the correct one and inserts it into the keyhole, and the door creaks ever so slightly as he pushes it open, but once he and Hitoshi step inside, they find that the house is silent.
Seeing as he’s been the one who had to be shut up and muzzled for the majority of his life, Hitoshi quite dislikes silence.
He much prefers the chaos of a hundred deafening voices in a room, because it means that it's more likely that nobody’s looking at him.
(Of course, the loud voice of every set of adoptive parents he’s ever had is very much an exception.)
But this time’s supposed to be different.
This time, apparently, the heroes have finally arrived, karma is finally coming into play, the universe is right again because Shinsou Hitoshi has been dealt a decent hand for the first time in 16 years.
He finds it hard to believe, although over the next few days he does observe that Eraserhead and Present Mic treat him noticeably better than he’s been treated before. It could all be a ploy, though. That wouldn’t surprise him, so he keeps his guard up.
He starts training with Aizawa, properly, with no more interruptions this time. He has a new goal to work toward: getting a capture scarf of his own. Aizawa says it’ll happen when he’s ready, and he may not know what that means, but he does know that he will get there.
He gets to know Class 1-A. They’re not bad, all things considered. They know not to insult his quirk, even without Aizawa telling them so. He’s befriended by Izuku, his opponent from the Sports Festival third round. Izuku is impossibly nice, forgiving, and sunny. Hitoshi has no idea how he does it, but as time goes on and their friendship blooms into something deeper, he starts to think that maybe he’d like to be like Izuku. He wants to spread that kind of joy that he didn’t believe in.
He allows himself to be taken to Hound Dog for afterschool therapy sessions. It’s his first time in therapy — nobody cared enough to take him before — and it’s eye-opening. He makes progress. He’s less scared of tiny little stupid unreasonable things. He discovers his immensely low self-worth, and with Hound Dog’s help, he tries to do better and be kinder to himself. He works on his unhealthy coping mechanisms, beginning to replace many of them with better, more productive habits. But sometimes you have to get worse before you get better.
At least he’s used to Mic-sensei’s volume level from the daily English classes. It’s kind of soothing actually, in a funny contradictory way that makes absolutely no sense because yelling plus house setting usually equals a panic attack for him. Anywhere else, that’ll probably be the case even now, even weeks after he got adopted, even when he’s had more than enough time to get settled and get over himself and stop being so overly dramatic every time some stupid little thing sets him off—
Yeah. The road to improvement isn’t exactly a smooth one.
~~~
One particularly bad day, after an outing where he tries to help but can’t bring himself to step in out of utterly paralyzing fear, he makes a decision back in his room.
He can’t silence the thoughts, but he can silence himself.
It’s a tried and true solution. He’s certainly used to it, and it may not be helping the process that Hound Dog wants him to be making, but in this kind of situation, it’s quite possibly the only thing that’ll work.
Hitoshi cups his shaking hands over his mouth, pressing down, digging in his nails exactly the way that he’s used to his muzzle’s hard edges digging into his cheeks.
Still, a broken sob escapes through the gaps between his fingertips.
And then another.
Before he knows it, he’s gasping for air, drawing in huge heaving breaths that are ugly and ineffective and so, so loud.
Why isn’t it working? Did he get weaker? It used to be fine…
Maybe it’s that now I’m spoiled on love and kindness, and I can’t deal with this kind of thing anymore. Stupid, stupid-
There’s a knock on his door. He freezes, momentarily shocked out of his self-destructive spiral.
“Who- who is it?” he calls out after a moment, trying to keep his voice from quavering.
“It’s, uh, it’s Aizawa, kid.” The familiar gruff voice washes over him soothingly, even as he waits in apprehension for what the hero has to say.
“Yes?”
“Dinner’s ready if you want to join,” comes the reply. “That is, if you’re feeling up to it. Otherwise, I can bring it in here.”
“Please don’t come in.” It slips out before Hitoshi can even think about his words, and he immediately regrets saying them. If you wanted to hide, that was the worst thing you could’ve said. Now he’s going to pry and it’s all your fault and he’ll just be reminded of how weak you are.
Surprisingly, the pushing, the insistence, the aggression never comes. Aizawa’s voice is quiet as he replies:
“That’s fine as well. Why don’t I leave it outside your room, and you can come out to get it yourself? I promise I won’t come in unless you tell me to.”
The easy promise — easy to make, easy to break, thinks a treacherous part of Hitoshi’s mind — nonetheless reassures him.
“That works,” he says curtly. There’s the sound of receding footsteps, and a few moments later, the clinking of silverware on china grows louder as Aizawa returns with what’s presumably his dinner. It’s set down with a light thunk.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Aizawa says, and again his footsteps grow quieter as he backs away, giving Hitoshi his space.
Gratefully, Hitoshi opens the door to grab his meal.
And he’s immediately hit with an overwhelming wave of loneliness and longing. And so he makes a split-second decision. It’s something that he wants for himself.
“Hey, wait,” he calls out, and Aizawa pauses and turns around. “Uh… can you maybe… come back for a moment?”
“...Sure.”
Suddenly, he’s face-to-face with Aizawa, who waits patiently for him to say the first word.
“I’m getting worse.”
Something flickers across Aizawa’s face. Something that looks an awful lot like understanding, not pity.
Hitoshi goes on. “I… I’m trying, and some days it’s better, but other days it’s just so much worse. I don’t know why I can’t just be stronger. It was fine before all of this happened. It was fine when that was my normal.”
Aizawa reaches out slowly, silently, offering a hand, a lifeline, to Hitoshi.
“Why-” he breaks off into a choked sob. “Was it better for me when I was living in that abusive kind of environment? Was it better when they were hurting me every day?” Do I not deserve this, his real question goes unsaid.
“Hitoshi,” Aizawa begins. “You deserve this and so much more. I’m bad with talking about this kind of stuff, but I can tell you for sure that I’ve seen you grow so much in the past weeks. Sometimes you only realize how wrong something was when you’re no longer surrounded by it, and that’s perfectly valid.”
Hitoshi almost wants to cry. “But I’m not better,” he sniffles. “I’m worse.”
“You think you are,” Aizawa corrects him. “But even in moments like this, you’re still thinking with your head, analyzing and taking control of the situation. Progress doesn’t come all at once, and it certainly doesn’t come in a nice steady stream of joy and happiness. Yet even now when you look back at the person you were when you first moved in, wouldn’t you say you’re better than that person?”
Hitoshi nods. “But… today I went to the mall with Midoriya and I saw someone who needed saving. I tried and I still couldn’t help the person, and Midoriya had to do it all for me while I was just dead weight. When will I ever be able to do something of use?”
Aizawa offers a small smile. “Do you know Kirishima?”
Hitoshi bobs his head. Of course he knows Kirishima, with all his bravery and sunshine. He’s just like another Izuku.
“He went through the same predicament before arriving at UA, actually.”
Hitoshi’s eyes widen.
“There was a villain at his middle school. He couldn’t bring himself to step in, but he was encouraged when he saw Ashido do so. Sometimes, it takes time — you see how good a hero Kirishima is today. And you can't see how he used to be, because you have no idea of knowing.”
“But when it comes to yourself, when you look into the mirror, the person you see every day is a little bit stronger than the person you saw the day before,” Aizawa continues. “You gain a little bit with every moment that you live.”
Something clicks. Hitoshi’s beginning to understand.
He may not yet be perfect, or anywhere close. By most standards, he’s barely hanging in there.
But the Hitoshi of today and tomorrow is nothing like the Hitoshi of yesterday. And he knows that.
He’s strong, and he’s got the support and maybe even the family.
He’s going to get there. He’ll beat his inner thoughts eventually and he’ll show the world that they haven’t seen the best of Shinsou Hitoshi just yet.