Chapter Text
Shoji picked up his phone confusedly, the name on the caller ID seeming out of place, despite how close he held its spelling to his heart. Tokoyami Fumikage , the text read. Cautiously optimistic, he hit answer, holding the phone up to his ear.
“Shoji?” that singular voice he had been missing for so long spoke. Shoji leaned back against the wall from where he was sitting on his bed, feeling almost dizzy with happiness.
“Hey,” Shoji said softly. He had imagined this moment, their reconnection after so long apart, quite often, whenever he was lonely or sad or upset. He had never imagined that he’d be this dumbfounded when they finally spoke again.
“It’s my birthday,” Tokoyaim blurted out. “That- That’s how I’m calling you. Dazai pulled some strings in the government as a birthday gift.”
“Dazai?” Shoji asked, preemptively relieved. If Tokoyami was with Dazai, then he was within the safety of Odasaku’s School.
“Yeah,” Tokoyami said. “Yeah, I’m at the school. It’s incredible here… Things finally feel right. I was worried my family might judge me for my quirk, but they don’t even care. They said that if a weretiger could be a detective, then-”
He cut himself off, and Shoji realized that Tokoyami had gotten slightly choked up.
“If a weretiger can be a detective, then a bird man can be our cousin,” Tokoyami said. “I couldn’t tell you why, but some days, I receive less mutantism here in Yokohama than I did back in Japan. It’s hard to hate something when your first instinct is confusion instead of loathing, I guess.”
“I’m happy for you,” Shoji said. “You sound like… like you were meant to go to Yokohama. Everything has worked out, and you’re where you want to be.”
And Shoji was. Happy for Tokoyami, that is. He truly did want him to reconnect with his family and his heritage in the port city. But he was allowed to miss him, too.
“Everything will have worked out when I can see you again,” Tokoyami said almost immediately.
“Everything has worked out for me as long as I can hear your voice,” Shoji said softly, closing his eyes and letting reality be replaced by his lover’s voice.
Aizawa grinned freely, his eyes trailing after the mass of children running past him through the halls. There were maybe twenty or so students, from ages as young as four to their oldest, Aizawa’s former hero student, Tokoyami. Because he had grown up outside of Yokohama, he had had the privilege of a safer childhood, and was thus much older than many Yokohamans ever got to be, unless they were picked up by a gifted organization. Legally, Odasaku’s School counted as a gifted organization, but they had fought hard to make sure that the kids would never have to deal with the childhood trauma one could get when part of an organization like the Port Mafia, or even the Armed Detective Agency.
He had been working with the school, and with Chuuya and Dazai, for the past few months.
When Aizawa had first come to Yokohama, fresh from the siege on UA, he had felt lost, adrift. Especially after Nezu’s death and the slow, drawn-out political end to the war, he had had nothing to live for, no purpose to fill. When Chuuya had offered him a job at Odasaku’s School, he had jumped at the offer, and had never looked back since.
“Mr. President!” one of the louder kids shouted excitedly, bouncing in place as the gaggle of school students waited in the front entry room for Fukuzawa to enter. Fukuzawa smiled down at the loud girl gently, setting down the paper bags he was holding to kneel down and let the kids come up to hug him one at a time.
He was something of a grandfather to the children, always bringing gifts and stories and comfort. Fukuzawa’s detectives all visited often, showing up to teach classes, or just to play with the kids. It was… comfortable. More comfortable than AIzawa ever thought he might feel in a city like Yokohama, raising children than reminded him, however slightly, however tenuously, of Akutagawa Gin.
And then there was the matter of the Hunting Dogs. Aizawa would only have considered himself truly familiar with Tecchou before he came to the school, but now he thought he held amiable relationships with all four of the Hunting Dogs. The Hunting Dogs were one of the reasons they had applied for Odasaku’s School to be registered as a gifted organization, instead of just an orphanage, which it technically was in some aspects.
Instead of going to work at the Agency, the Hunting Dogs were instead assigned to work under Chuuya and Dazai, as security for the schoolchildren. What with the children’s statuses as ability users, it was especially imperative that they had suitable protection. And the Hunting Dogs, no longer employed through the military, found their home with Aizawa and the others in Odasaku’s School for Gifted Children.
It was a happy life. Their children were taught kindness, how to heal and help rather than hurt. They weren’t training to be heroes or detectives or mafiosos. They were learning to be strong, considerate adults.
This time around, Aizawa’s kids wouldn’t be warriors or generals or masterminds. They would be soft and gentle, and they wouldn’t be weak, for he wasn’t that foolish, but they would know when to fight and when to lay down weapons. They would know how to use their quirks, their abilities, but they would know that they were worth more than just their gift.
They’d be spared the childhood the rest of them weren’t, and Aizawa would gladly guide them through said childhood the best he could, he would give them all the knowledge and experience he knew and then some.
He’d tell them that the world was a bigger place than one person would ever know, that there were more facets to the human experience than there were stars in the universe, which is why they must learn from each other, rely on each other. Why they must be kind to each other, for they all carried burdens, burdens that no one else could see or even consider.
He’d tell them that living was a scary thing, but it was also a blessing. Their breaths were miracles and their minds were gifts, more so than the abilities they had been saddled with. Their bodies were constantly growing, their cells were constantly multiplying, and Aizawa made sure to advise them to give thanks to their bodies by treating them well.
Let yourself rest, let yourself eat well and consistently, do all in your power to take care of yourself. When the pain inside becomes so large all you want is to turn it into pain on your outside, remember all that your body has done for you, that it has been your most steadfast friend and your kindest lover. Remember, he’d repeat over and over, as often as he could, that your body is but one among many, that your body was given arms to reach out, that your body was given legs to run into the arms of others. When you can’t take care of yourself, trust others to do so for you.
He’d tell them that he loved them. That they were all his children in his eyes. That whatever they needed, whenever they needed it, he would do all he could to provide. He wanted them to grow strong, yes, tough enough to survive the world they lived in, but he also wanted them to grow up loved. He wanted them to grow up learning how to love others, in all the ways they could.
And among all that he tried to teach them, the kids taught Aizawa, too. They taught him that sometimes, children grew up haunted by invisible ghosts, that the sins that had been done to them clung onto their brain long after they drifted from their conscious thoughts. Aizawa hadn’t known it, but he had grown up like that, too, with his traumatized past trailing limply after him like a well-worn stuffed animal should have.
But ghosts, like most things, faded with time. There was nothing more incredible or awe-inspiring to Aizawa than to see a child slowly come out of their shell, and to move past the phantoms rippling through their bloodstreams and into their future.
They all were given gifts, some more blessing than curse, some more curse than blessing. They all were given gifts, and Aizawa learned that a quirk wasn’t an extension of your body, and it wasn’t even necessarily a weapon. A quirk was what you made of it. When he worked under Nezu, his quirk was what trapped him, what held him down within a toxic environment and an unhealthy lifestyle. He had taken for granted that his quirk was what had gotten him a job, that his quirk had placed him where he was in life, that his quirk was what had allowed him to be used so easily.
But what he hadn’t realized, what working with the Yokohaman ability users, kid and adult alike, had taught him, was that his quirk was just a crutch, a mental roadblock that he had allowed to control his every move for years. So, he let go.
It should have felt like falling. Or like taking off a life vest in the middle of the ocean, or removing an oxygen mask in a falling plane.
It didn’t.
Instead, it felt freeing. He had thought that he would continue some aspect of “hero-work” in Yokohama. That he would consult the police, that he would assist the Armed Detective Agency, even that he might go into government work. But his true purpose all along had always been to teach, and to care for children.
Aizawa shook himself out of his thoughts, a smile still glued on his face. From across the room, a small child held in his arms, Chuuya Nakahara smiled back.