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Shouta sees crumbling skin and flayed muscle and concrete, and wakes.
For a long moment everything is blurred at the edges, and then his vision clears and he’s in a bed, in the infirmary, and right. Right.
With the blinds drawn and the lights out the room is dim and hushed, but his eyes adjust quickly enough and he can see, to his left, another bed with a tiny figure curled up on its side, facing away from him. Their back is crisscrossed with bandages, and in a heap in the chair beside them is a torn, broken spacesuit. Thirteen. Shouta closes his eyes and breathes deep. Okay. Okay.
He turns his head to the right, which hurts more than it should, and finds that there is a tall, stooped scarecrow of a man in the chair beside his bed, which…. no. No, no, no.
All Might can’t be here. If All Might is here, deflated and dejected and looking fucking beaten, if Thirteen is bedridden, if nobody is with the children…Shouta’s chest goes cold. He has to get up. He has to go .
He writhes and wriggles and pushes, and finds that his right arm is wrapped in about a dozen layers of bandages and burning with pain and useless. Fine. He leans on his left instead, which still hurts, and forces himself into a sitting position. The movement rouses All Might, who may actually have been sleeping, and Shouta finds himself looking up into the eyes of a very blond, very concerned skeleton.
“Aizawa...”
“Shut up.” He swings his legs over the right side of the bed. Pain explodes suddenly from his cheekbones, or his jaw, or maybe his eye sockets, and he has to grit his teeth against the nausea that rolls up from his stomach into his throat. He closes his eyes and sees Asui’s face, sees red, sees nothing. He stands. All Might stands, too.
The tiled floor is cool against Shouta’s feet and for a moment he’s fine. He can do this. He holds his burning right arm against his chest and steadies himself with his left and takes a step and the world jerks and fuck .
“Aizawa, please,” says All Might. His arm is around Shouta’s waist, and Shouta’s face is in his shoulder. The room is spinning. Shouta’s knees won’t hold him. Fuck. He tries to push himself away, tries to take a step, but the nausea feels like it’s outside him now, holding him down.
All Might steers him back to the edge of the bed, and sits both of them down. He doesn’t let go of Shouta’s waist. He also doesn’t look at him.
“Fuck,” says Shouta. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees All Might wince.
“You… you were badly injured, Aizawa. I don’t think you should—”
“Fuck you.” It takes a lot of effort to say it; Shouta is bent double now, chin to his chest and shoulders heaving as bile burns the back of his throat. “Why are you here? Where….the kids. What happened?”
He can’t see much but he feels All Might stiffen beside him and no, please no.
“All Might,” he grits out. “ Yagi, where—”
“They’re fine. They’re all...I mean. Midoriya was injured. But he’s home now, he’ll recover. They’ve all gone home. Everyone else is fine.”
Shouta isn’t sure he believes him. Everyone? “Asui,” he says. His right arm twinges, and he sees hands reaching out, and....
“Asui is fine,” says All Might. “Entirely uninjured. She and Mineta helped carry you out of the USJ.”
All Might’s arm is still around him, but Shouta doesn’t feel it. Fine. Everyone is fine…
His shoulders jerk, his throat tightens, a terrible broken sound erupts from him and oh, he’s going to be sick, but no. No. Something is wet, and Shouta realizes, distantly, that his whole face is wrapped in bandages, and that the bandages are soaked, and that he can’t, can’t, can’t stop crying.
***
The next two days pass in a blur of disinfectant and bandages and the faint lavender smell that follows Recovery Girl everywhere she goes. During visiting hours All Might sits beside his bed and seems to accept that Shouta doesn’t have anything to say.
It’s an odd quiet, almost companionable, but Shouta can’t help hearing, over and over again, the boom of All Might’s voice filling the USJ: “I am here.” He can’t help but remember the relief that flooded him in the instant before he passed out. The memory twists in his stomach.
It occurs to Shouta that he should thank him. He doesn’t. He also doesn’t say anything on the second night, when All Might shakes him awake from a dream of beaks and blood and hands and hands and hands.
***
Shouta’s glad when Recovery Girl finally sends him home. His apartment is dark and his bed is big and comfortable and there’s nobody around to hear it when he wakes up screaming.
There’s also no one to notice on the nights when he shudders awake, sweating, thinking of bright, deep-set eyes and long fingers splayed warm on his waist.
***
Principal Nezu doesn’t think he should return to the classroom yet. Neither does Recovery Girl. Shouta does not tell them to go fuck themselves, and he does not tell them that if he has to stay home alone, with nothing to do but imagine his students’ faces being melted off by a whining psychopath, he is likely to jump out a window. He just insists, as politely and as firmly as he can, that he is well enough to teach, thank you, and that, all things considered, it’s the least he can do for the students.
Recovery Girl frowns at that last bit, but doesn’t argue. Shouta turns to leave the staff room and finds All Might standing in the doorway, his eyebrows pinched together. He lifts a hand as Shouta sweeps past him, but doesn’t reach out.
***
The Sports Festival is a surprising blessing. Shouta usually hates the whole media-circus mess of it, but sitting up in the commentator’s booth with an over-enthusiastic Yamada Hizashi is oddly calming. There’s a bit of nostalgia to it—he and Hizashi went through three Sports Festivals of their own together, after all—but more than that it’s just shockingly normal. This is the way the year was supposed go, before the attack on the USJ. These were the only obstacles his kids were supposed to face.
Still, the difference between classes 1a and 1b is unmistakable. There’s something frantic to his students that hadn’t been there before; they run fast, they hit hard, and they don’t hesitate. Shouta’s throat is tight with a confused mix of pride and something cold.
They’re alive he tells himself, as he watches Asui leap out onto a precarious stretch of rope. Alive, as Bakugou and Todoroki claw at each other in the middle of a minefield. Alive, alive, alive, as Midoriya sinks to his knees in the middle of the stadium. They’re learning how to stay alive.
***
Shouta dozes off during the break, and he wakes to find Hizashi crouched next to him, looking thoughtful.
“Nngh?” he asks, uncurling in his seat. His head feels heavy but pleasantly empty.
Hizashi unfolds himself and plops down in his own seat, his movements loose and languid. He puts his feet up on the panel in front of him and stretches his arms out and rolls his neck around and when he finally speaks his voice is airy, light.
“You haven’t been sleeping much, have you?”
Shouta snorts. “When have I ever?”
Hizashi shakes his head, and finally looks at him. His gaze is heavier than his tone. “Less than usual, I mean. Don’t,” he says when Shouta opens his mouth to argue. “It’s obvious, man, you’re dead on your feet. Even All Might can see it. He was askin’ after you, yesterday.”
Shouta snorts again, this time with significantly more venom. “How I sleep is none of All Might’s business. It’s not any of yours, either.”
Hizashi shrugs and starts fiddling with the switches on his broadcasting equipment. Below, the students are starting to file back into the stadium. “Suit yourself, man” he says, adjusting his headphones. “But people do care about you, and you don’t always gotta be an asshole about it.” He smiles fondly, without a trace of bitterness, his head tilted to one side like a bird. Shouta almost smiles back. “Anyway,” says Hizashi, “You could talk to him. If there’s something you need or...I dunno. Just. Something. I think he’d understand.” Hizashi’s voice goes a little soft, a little gentle. “I’d like to think I would understand, too, but he was there .”
He holds Shouta’s gaze in the quiet for a last long moment, and then he flips a switch, and turns all of his attention to the microphone and the stadium below. The Sports Festival is back on.
Shouta’s head doesn’t feel so empty anymore.
He was there . God, he hates Hizashi when he gets all perceptive.
Shouta looks up at the ceiling and hears that echo again, that great booming shout of “I am here!” before everything had gone black. He scans the stands, eyes catching on Asui’s sweep of green hair.
“They helped carry you out,” All Might had said, and a burning shame clenches in his gut. He was there but Shouta had broken, and if All Might hadn’t come…
They’re alive he reminds himself as Midoriya steps into the ring down below. They’re alive.
***
In the end, All Might comes to him.
Actually, All Might finds him passed out on the couch in the teacher’s lounge, surrounded by papers he had been trying to grade. For the second time in too few days Shouta comes awake to a dim, quiet room and a skeletal figure in a chair beside him. Fuck.
The lounge is empty except for the two of them—it’s almost dark out, everyone else must have gone home for the day—and All Might is watching him with a look on his face like he wants to talk and no, nope, Shouta isn’t doing this now. He gathers up his papers, which is hard to do with both arms still so heavily bandaged, and he shoves them in his bag, and he is about to stand and leave when All Might opens his mouth.
“Aizawa,” he says, hesitantly, gently.
Shouta bristles. “All Might. I hope you enjoyed watching me sleep, because I’m leaving.”
All Might flushes, and some distant, bitter part of Shouta is proud. The rest of him is pushing up off the couch and ignoring a plaintive “Aizawa, please wait,” and heading for the door. He just gets his hand on the doorknob before All Might speaks again, low and hoarse.
“You saved their lives.”
Shouta stops. He looks at his hand on the doorknob, looks at the bandages on his hand, and tries to tell himself that the hot, tight feeling coiling up from his gut is anger. He sees shattered concrete and crumbled skin and Asui’s fear-blank face. I broke, he thinks, I broke. How dare you.
In the silence that follows Shouta breathes, harsh and ragged and then slower, slower, slow, as he reigns all of it in, and he’s proud of how flat and empty his voice is when he says, “I seem to remember the Symbol of Peace swooping in to save the day. And right at the last minute, too.”
“I,” says All Might, and then a wet, choking sound cuts him off and Shouta turns around and oh . All Might is bent double, one hand braced on the back of his chair, the other pressed to his mouth. Blood trickles out from between his fingers and down his chin. His face is white as a sheet, and he’s shaking his head no, no, no. Despite himself, Shouta moves away from the door.
“Sit,” Shouta says, because he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to do. “Sit down, All Might, don’t hurt yourself, I…”
All Might sits. He’s still shaking his head. He pulls a handkerchief out of the pocket of his too-large suit jacket and wipes his mouth and then his hand, and then methodically, carefully, he folds it and puts it away. Shouta is still hovering halfway between the chair and the door when All Might finally looks up at him and says “please. Call me Toshinori.”
He obviously misinterprets the look of shock on Shouta’s face because he shakes his head and says “Yagi, then. I know how angry you must be with me, and I understand it, I do. I just.” He looks at his hands, his shoulders hunched and his blond hair drooping around his face. “I wanted to apologize. And I want to help, if I can, because you...I mean...I think…” He catches Shouta’s eyes, sees the way his shoulders tense, and looks away. “Yeah, okay. Mostly, I wanted to apologize.”
Shouta is surprised at how level his voice is when he says “if you hadn’t been there, I would be dead. At least three of my students would be dead. So don't.”
All Might— Yagi —looks at him, eyebrows pinched, and opens his mouth to speak, but Shouta raises his voice. “No, look, I know what you’re going to say and yes , you should have been there from the beginning. You’re an idiot, we both knew that already, you should have saved your strength for the students instead of exhausting it on your way to work. But you...but we...” His voice wavers, but he clenches one fist. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. None of us could. And you came , in the end. You beat them.”
He closes his eyes and tries to push down the sick, hot feeling clawing at his throat. When he opens them again, Yagi is staring at him. His brow is creased. He looks sad. Shouta crosses his arms over his stomach.
“I’m still sorry,” says Yagi.
Shouta curls his lip, curls in on himself. “Fine. Apology accepted. Now can I leave?” It’s a petulant thing to say, and he feels like one of his students, but this is just too much. His right arm is burning again and he doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to talk about it, he can’t, and Yagi is still looking at him with that pinched, sad look, and fuck. Fuck. His breathing goes ragged and he’s seeing red and reaching hands and, and, and—
“Aizawa,” says Yagi, gently, “Aizawa.” There’s a warmth against his side and a hand on his waist. “Sit down. Please.”
Shouta sits. He sinks immediately into the old cushions on the couch. Yagi draws away just enough that they’re not touching anymore, and Shouta has to stop himself from chasing after that warmth. Don’t do this, he tells himself. You’re not a child. His eyes are already wet, though. He tucks his chin into his scarf and lets his hair fall over his face.
“If none of this was my fault, it certainly wasn’t yours,” says Yagi, and his voice is low and hoarse. Shouta sinks further into himself. “I don’t know what it is you’re angry at yourself for, but I know you don’t deserve it. You saved those students’ lives. If you hadn’t been there, if all of those thugs had had free reign to hunt the children down…I shudder to think.”
There’s a long silence, and then Shouta says “my own students had to carry me off the battlefield.” It sticks in his throat. I broke. I broke.
“Aizawa. Look at me. Look at me, ” says Yagi, and his voice is suddenly so hard that Shouta does look. Yagi’s deep-shadowed eyes are blazing, and his lips are pulled back. “Your students had to carry you off the battlefield because you fought to protect them, against multiple opponents and facing a severe Quirk disadvantage, until nearly every bone in your body was broken.”
Shouta cringes back, his arms tight against his chest, broken, broken , but Yagi reaches out and lays one big, gentle hand on his shoulder. “Asui told me what happened. Pinned, beaten, and honestly, probably near death and you still saved her life.”
“Asui—”
“—is fine, as you’ve seen. Thanks to you,” says Yagi, and then he sighs. “But you’re not.”
Shouta looks at his bandaged hands but Yagi shakes his head. “That isn’t what I mean. I trust Recovery Girl to deal with that. But. I don’t think you’re sleeping. Yamada agrees. And I think we all know why.”
Fuck you, Shouta wants to say, but Yagi’s quiet voice is soothing, and so is the heavy warmth of his hand. Shouta leans into it. Something in his throat begins to loosen.
Yagi lifts his hand and then snakes his whole arm behind Shouta, and when Shouta doesn’t tense up or curse at him or run, he lets it curl around him. “We’re both adults,” he says, “and we’re both pro heroes, and we’ve both...we’ve both seen a lot. I know I don’t have to tell you about PTSD.” Aizawa turns his head a little, rests his cheek against Yagi’s bicep and gives a bitter snort. Yagi smiles, crooked and a little wry. “You don’t have to talk to me, it can be anyone, I can recommend a counselor, but...Aizawa, you have to do something. If not for yourself…”
“Then for the students,” says Shouta, eyes closed, face pressed into Yagi’s arm. It should sound like such an empty platitude—think of the children!—but it’s true. An attack like this could happen again, anything could happen, and he needs to be there, he needs to be strong. And right now he’s exhausted, body and mind.
“Yes,” says Yagi, “For the student. But also because, well. I....” He coughs, and embarrassment creeps into his tone. “I mean to say...you’re an admirable hero, Aizawa. And an admirable teacher. And I... as your colleague, I mean...I don’t like to see you like this. I don’t like to see you hurting. So also…”
“For you?” Aizawa opens his eyes and cocks an eyebrow and doesn’t move from where he’s curled into Yagi’s arm. He feels empty, somehow, and loose. The hot, tight-coiled feeling in his throat has eased off and his breathing is slow and even. It dawns on him that they’re alone here, in the dark, talking about their feelings, and that Yagi—All Might!—is blushing, and he starts to laugh. It’s loose-edged and exhausted, and it brings tears to his eyes, and god but it feels good.
“Aizawa?” says Yagi, eyes wide, but Shouta just grins at him and then he’s laughing, too, looking confused but relieved. Shouta curls a little closer to him, and rubs one wet cheek into his arm, and laughs until he’s breathless.
“You’re an idiot,” he says,after they both wind down, “and a terrible teacher. But you aren’t wrong.”
“Aizawa…”
“I probably need professional help,” he says, and drags himself up from the couch. Part of him, he’s a little annoyed to realize, wants to stay curled up in the warmth there. Stop it, he tells himself, but really, that’s a problem for another day. Right now…
“Right now, though, I need sleep.”
Outside the window, it’s entirely dark. Inside, it’s quiet again.
“I can get you the number of a counselor,” says Yagi.
Shouta closes his eyes, and breathes out until he’s empty, and nods.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Thank you, All Might.”
“Please. Call me—”
“Toshinori. Good night.”