Chapter Text
Yagi was nervous. He had been nervous for the past two days, ever since their early morning discussion, shifty and shrinking with apprehension and guilt when he wasn't lost among a cloud of what looked like very unpleasant thoughts. He was noticeably more nervous now, trapped as he was by professional requirements, if not by physical means, alone with Eraserhead outside of Ground Beta, shuffling uselessly in place and constantly casting furtive looks at his surroundings, as if looking for an escape.
Good , thought Shouta vindictively as he kept his gaze focused straight forward, refusing to look at the tall blonde and knowing all too well it would only increase the man's unease. At least he has some self preservation instincts left floating around in that empty head of his.
Shouta had never had a problem admitting that he was a vindictive bastard, at least not in the privacy of his own mind. Lying to oneself, especially about oneself was illogical, after all, and Shouta prided himself on his knowledge of his own flaws and limits.
(He had lied to himself about Midoriya, lied to himself about Bakugou, had explained away his own half-formed suspicions and sense of unease. Shouta also prided himself on not making the same mistake twice.)
Never stating the facts out loud didn't mean his fellow teachers didn't know or notice, of course, as evidenced by their proverbial light tread and carefully-worded, minimized interactions with him over the past few days. Yagi, most of all, had been avoiding him as much as possible, having learned to interpret the Erasure hero's glares well enough by now to know that he was under suspicion for something, and that a follow-up interrog… conversation was going to be had, with or without his consent.
He had been stalling, utilizing all of his meager stealth skills to avoid the overburdened teacher, but had inevitably found himself trapped by the unforgiving schedule. Shouta didn't have much time until the students arrived, but he didn't really need more than a few minutes to make his point. And if Yagi thought that giving him a few days to cool off would do anything to make this ordeal more pleasant, he had another thing coming.
"You knew about Midoriya's quirk." His voice was cold and even, no inflection at all to indicate a question or any trace of emotion, just a blank statement of fact. In the corner of his vision Yagi twitched violently, gangly limbs flailing around in an almost comical manner, trailed by the loose folds of a too-large yellow suit. Shouta let him sputter for a few more moments, generously allowing the other man time to gather his wits.
"Aizawa-kun, I-"
"You knew." Shouta repeated, cutting him off. The big idiot had stayed silent when it mattered most, he could very well shut up for a few more minutes and listen.
Yagi's teeth clicked audibly as his jaw snapped shut, and his head hung forward, whether in acknowledgement or defeat Shouta didn't know or particularly care. He did not speak up again.
"I will assume, for the sake of my sanity and your continued employment and relative health, that you didn't know about Bakugou."
He looked to the side, finally, meeting Yagi's gaze and pinning him down with the full force of his anger. The former symbol of peace took an involuntary step back and then froze, unmoving, not even breathing as far as Shouta could make out.
"Of course, you can feel free to correct me and rot away in jail together with the Aldera staff."
Yagi swallowed shallowly and shook his head slowly, shadowed eyes burning with guilt and so much helpless, bone-deep sadness that Shouta soon looked away, appeased at least on this clause of his long, long list of complaints.
"Regardless, you knew about Midoriya." He repeated for a third time, gaze fixed once more on the entrance from which he expected his problem children to appear any minute now. "You knew about his quirklessness and how long it lasted, and what repercussions that could have had on his mental health. Or at least you should have, since you obviously knew the boy before U.A." Another fleeting, sharp glare, just enough to catch Yagi's panicked expression and half-formed protest that died in his throat as Shouta forged on, unbothered.
"You knew about his quirk, and how late it came in, and how volatile it was. Considering his fighting style from the Sports Festival, I am willing to bet you are the only person who ever gave him any form of counseling on how to use it. Am I wrong."
His tone was still too flat to imply any form of question but Yagi answered regardless, shaking his head once more as he shrank deeper into the oversized yellow atrocity he called a suit, and Shouta wondered idly if he could make the man disappear into it completely, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. Probably, but he expected he would need more time than he had right now, and more energy than he was willing to expend before having to deal with a practical Heroics exercise with his hell spawn of a class for an entire afternoon.
"Now, because you seem to be struggling with the concept, let me explain it to you in simple words. All these facts, which, as I mentioned, you were clearly well aware of, are very important to the boy's continued education and development, both as a hero, and a person in general. You, as a so-called educator, and a person who allegedly cares for Midoriya's well being and future success, failed to share those very important facts with me, the single person in this school who is actually responsible for the kid's safety and education, and thus forced me to operate on extremely incomplete information."
"Moreover," his voice was shaking slightly, now, anger and spite roiling in the pit of his stomach and pressing behind his eyes, uselessly itching for the activation of his quirk, "not only did you not share this information with me, you didn't act on it yourself, didn't even make an attempt at correcting all the mistakes the rest of us made out of ignorance. You let me test him on even grounds with the rest of his class on the very first day, with kids who have had over a decade to master their quirks. You let him keep using his quirk again and again without sending him to a quirk counselor, even when you saw what it did. Goddammit, you saw, you saw that he didn't trust any of us as far as he could throw us, not even you, we had whole meetings about it, and yet you never saw fit to even hint as to why . What the hell were you thinking?!"
Shouta was aware that he was losing his temper, that his control over his quirk was slipping, that the students could arrive at any moment and stumble upon this scene. Right then, he didn't care. He wanted answers, and answers he would get even if it meant that the kids had to lose every last bit of respect they had for the Symbol of Peace. Served the man right. He whirled around, his hair and capture weapon snapping and levitating as Erasure finally activated, and stalked toward the blonde who, ever inappropriately, seemed to finally find his words.
"Aizawa-kun, please, I assure you there is a very good explanation, reasons of utmost importance that-"
" Fuck your reasons." It was barely more than a growl, now, an animalistic sound spurred on by his simmering rage and guilt, by the desire for justice and the helpless, inescapable hatred of humanity's stupidity that the harsh realities of life have never quite managed to beat out of Shouta. He reached the slowly retreating Yagi swiftly, grabbing him by the collar and yanking down until the much taller man was on the same eye level as him.
"Fuck your reasons and fuck your excuses, Yagi. That kid has been hurt enough for a lifetime by people who were supposed to protect him, he doesn't need us fumbling around in the dark and making stupid mistakes because you are too stuck up your own ass to care! And you clearly haven't learned your lesson yet, because you are still hiding something important, it is written all over your goddamn face! How you have managed to keep a state secret for this long I will never know!"
"Aizawa-kun-"
"Shut up!" Shouta snarled, the corner of his mind not consumed by rage or by monitoring their surroundings silently awarding All Might a point for not attempting to break free, at the very least. "Unless you are going to tell me how you knew Midoriya before U.A., or what you know about his quirk that is inevitably going to lead to another clusterfuck, or why the hell it is so destructive and late-"
It hit him like lightning out of a clear sky, swift and inevitable, splitting his emotional turmoil cleanly down the middle and rendering it, as well as everything else, completely irrelevant, everything but the assorted facts and pieces of evidence parading themselves in his suddenly silent brain, finally sorted in the right order and arranged into a neat little logical chain, now that he had said them out loud.
Simple, laughably, terribly, infuriatingly simple, easy and clear as day. Because a quirkless boy with mysterious, by all accounts improbable ties to All Might, with a strange, volatile quirk that appeared so late in his life as to be unheard of, led to one obvious, simple conclusion.
"Tell me." Said Shouta numbly, and there was no heat in his voice anymore, no anger or sarcasm. He couldn't quite tell how loudly he was speaking over the quickening pulse of his heartbeat in his ears, couldn't feel the hand still clutching All Might's collar with a bruising force. "Tell me the quirk isn't from All for One."
Shouta wasn't entirely sure what he was asking for, whether it was an order, a plea, or a dare. He wasn't sure he could stand to receive the answer he was expecting, either, suddenly very aware that he was at the end of his rope, that the last week has ground him down into dust until there was almost nothing left, that he was scarily close to the edge, to crossing it into the land of that which lay past exhaustion, barren and lacking everything but cold indifference and the siren call of sleep.
He watched with a detached resignation as Yagi blinked, startled no doubt by his sudden change in demeanor, and blinked again, as if in slow motion, trying to parse the meaning of his last sentence. A few seconds flowed by in complete silence until he finally got it, at which point there was suddenly a lot of sputtering and hand-waving, one gangly limb nearly clipping Shouta in the temple, and Yagi's voice saying as if from deep under water, "Oh no, no Aizawa-kun! Whatever else you might think in this regard, I guarantee that young Midoriya's quirk wasn't given to him by All for One."
And suddenly Shouta could breathe again, his lungs expanding and letting in oxygen for the first time in what felt like an eternity, as if just remembering what their function in his body was in the first place. Shouta wavered slightly on his feet as relief, tinged still with a healthy amount of suspicion, swept through him like a tidal wave, washing away the numb, resigned fear. He would never admit out loud that he would probably have fallen if not for the grip he still had on Yagi, and he doubted the man himself would dare breathe a word of it to anyone, either.
"I… I can understand your anger, Aizawa-kun. You are completely correct in pointing out that I have made many mistakes to the detriment of young Midoriya, and that I might not have treated him, or you, my colleagues, fairly." He looked down at that, guilt and remorse settling with a visible weight on his thin shoulders. "What you're asking for, however… it is not mine to tell you, not anymore. I will talk to young Midoriya, though, and advise him to share it with you. I can see now that he and you both might benefit from such an arrangement."
Shouta's scowl was rapidly returning, anger and indignation rearing their heads once again, but just then, to Yagi's immense luck, he noticed from the corner of his eye the bright colors of 1A's costumes as they emerged out of the changing rooms, and he instead forced himself to take a deep breath, give Yagi one last glower, and then let go.
"We are not done here." He threatened quietly before turning on his heel and stalking back toward the gates of Ground Beta, already calling out to his class.
"Gather round, problem children. Today's exercise is going to be… interesting."