Archive of Our Own

i.

Shouta knows exactly three things about his mother’s short-lived career as a hero: that she was the best of the best, hated every second of it, and it all ended entirely too soon.

He knows, of course, that this is a biased account of the events. Not that he was alive back then to be able to know for sure, but he tends to take everything that his mother says with a pinch of salt. He’s sure she does the same for him, either way.

Under his bed, there’s a small cardboard box filled with old newspaper cutouts of everytime her hero name was mentioned, but with the name itself scribbled out with black sharpie. The idea that his mother once ever took the time to sit down and do that herself, bit by bit (because he certainly did not) is almost enough to make Shouta crack a smile whenever he thinks about it. Almost.

He rests his head over his arms, leaning against the banister of his window. The Aizawa’s live in a fourth floor apartment just at the edge of downtown, close enough to a richer neighborhood for them to be able to lie about it, and across the street from a vintage music shop, whose owner likes to blast old-timey songs into the street like nobody’s business. Shouta watches the dusk fall over the building through half-lidded eyes, humming quietly to the slow, melancholic tune rising and falling around him. It’s a mild, still day in early Spring, all muted colors and muffled sounds, and despite the uncomfortable position he’s in, Shouta can’t find it in himself to move.

Then, his mother calls for him. It’s like she can feel it. 

And he goes, because of course he does. She’s laying down on the couch, dark hair askew and plastered to her face with sweat, jaw tight with pain but eyes as clear as ever. Shouta moves straight into their small kitchen without even nodding in hello, pouring the orange juice into his mother’s favorite mug—all their cups are either broken, cracked, or piled up in the sink, unwashed—and holds it out to her as she pushes herself into an upright position by her elbows, stopping once or twice to hiss at the stump of her right leg. She takes it with a grateful nod, breathing in through her nose.

“It’s going to rain soon, I gather?” Shouta asks, voice quiet. Mother doesn’t really like to turn on the lights in the living room when she gets like this, because it makes her head hurt, and for some reason, it feels wrong to speak louder than a whisper in the growing gloom they’re in.

Mother nods, eyes screwed shut, and takes a long sip from the mug. Her fingernails scrape against the ceramic, and Shouta does not wince. “Hard as a summer storm,” she sighs, resting a hand against her leg. “Weather has been weird for the past few weeks, hasn’t it?”

Shouta nods, even though Mother isn’t looking at him. “It’s been on the news, I guess. Some villain with a temperature-altering Quirk is on the run. He can make the weather go from normal to either really cold or really hot, and it messes up the condensation of water in the air,” he trails off, voice quieting down to nothing. 

Mother gives him a tight smile. “You’re a smart boy, aren’t you, my Shouta?” Then, before he can answer, she winces, clutching at her stump. “Damned leg.”

He’s heard the words many times. His mother’s bitterness permeates their home, between the peeling wallpapers and half-open cracks of doors late at night, chipping away at everything with each passing day. Sometimes Shouta wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, demand her to get a grip on herself and get over it, because it’s been over fourteen fucking years since the accident, and yet for her, it seems like everything ended then. He has no father to speak of, so it’s plausible enough to assume that Shouta himself is something Mother also got stuck with, before her life stopped in its tracks and he—he isn’t angry about it. He’s not even sad, or resentful, he’s just tired . Because sometimes he wants to wish himself into a different being, or even just be brave enough to go out the door and never come back, but most times, it all just makes his mouth taste sour. 

The wailing of a guitar from the shop across the street grows louder, curling into the edges of the apartment. Between the notes, Shouta hears himself ask, “Do you think you’ll ever forgive yourself for that?”

Mother looks like she stops breathing for a second. The mug freezes halfway to her mouth, and her eyes widen until Shouta can see the white all around them. Then, she snorts. “You think I’m the one to blame for it?”

She gestures at her leg. Shouta just shrugs. “I wouldn’t know,” he says, voice sounding flat even to his own ears. “You never told me about it. But I have to think something of it.”

“Don’t get cheeky with me, now,” Mother says, but she just sounds sad. She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand. “I—there are many things you don’t know about who I used to be, honey. Things I don’t know when I’ll be able to say out loud, but. I’ll tell you when I’m stronger, yeah? Can you trust your mother for that?” She reaches for him, and in spite of himself, Shouta reaches back. Her hand is clammy and calloused against his, but he doesn’t really want to pull away. She squeezes it. “Trust your old mother for at least this, my Shouta. I’ll tell you when I’m stronger.”

Shouta hums in response, and his neck prickles. He isn’t used to a lot of physical contact, and holding his mother’s hand makes him feel like he’s stepping on cracks. Though not necessarily in a bad way, he muses. On the way to school, he goes through a path built over what used to be a terrain of wildflowers, now all covered in concrete and footsteps. But even so; every time he passes by, there seems to be more and more bursts of color, little spurts of life that forced themselves through empty spaces and carved their way towards the sunlight. This kind of feels like that.

(He looked up the flowers, once. It used to be a field of cyclamens, rosy and fragile-looking, but strong enough to break the ground. 

Cyclamens are poisonous. They symbolize sorrow, resignation, and death.

Flower language is stupid, anyway.)

“But you didn’t really answer me,” he nearly whispers, after so long a pause Mother seems to be falling asleep. “I don’t need to know if it’s something you need to forgive yourself for. I want to know if there’s still enough time for something to be forgiven.”

And Mother looks at him. And looks at him, and looks at him, and opens up the most self-deprecating grin Shouta has ever seen. “Look at you, speaking like a gentile,” she says, almost amused. She squeezes his hand once more and then lets it go. “If you must know anything, Shouta, know this: Catholics believe in forgiveness. Jewish people have guilt.”

For years to come, Shouta’s mind will come back to this moment. Son and mother, right in front of each other in a tiny apartment, two commas separating a sentence. He’ll never quite know why he keeps getting stuck on the curve of her smile, or the paleness of her face as she said those words. In his first year at U.A., during a group project about recent Hero history, he’ll come across an article about the downfall of the hero Eclipse—a tragic story, with one too many dead and only one surviving injured. Mother’s face will stare back at him, and Shouta will think, If she was the Eclipse itself, I was probably the thing blocking the Sun.

Shouta grew up amongst tales of fallen heroes and foes. Mother was as good as quirkless by the time he was old enough to understand it, so he only found out what his own quirk is accidentally, at age six, by glaring at the blonde-haired boy with a voice amplifying quirk that had stolen his crayons. The boy had cried for hours on end afterward, no matter how much Shouta apologized, but he perked up as soon as Shouta promised to play with him at recess the next day. Shouta’s eyes didn’t stop itching for a week.

He names his quirk Erasure. And really—was there ever any other way for him to follow?

Shouta becomes a hero for two reasons, and two reasons only.

First, because he’s the kind of person who can’t help himself.

The second one he’s still trying to figure out.

ii.

Shouta gets into U.A. with the highest grade in the written exam in a decade, and absolutely no idea what he’s doing. 

All in all, it’s pretty in character for him. The thing he failed to consider by joining the hero course, however, is that he was going to meet new people, and then be stuck with all of them for the next three years.

“You’re overthinking it,” Hizashi exclaims, which is the quietest he can go when he’s making an effort. Though the U.A. uniform doesn’t leave a lot of space for any individual improvement, Yamada Hizashi is the sort of person you’d end up staring at even if you didn’t mean to, what with his slicked back blonde hair and aviator sunglasses he wears even indoors. Aesthetically, Shouta would hate him on principle, but it’s Hizashi, so he really, really doesn’t.

“You’d think you’re overthinking it is my name, considering how often you say it,” Shouta says, words muffled against the sleeve of his jacket. He’s not trying to curl himself up into a ball and disappear, per se, but it’s a close enough thing. It’s still early enough in the morning that the only other people in the classroom are either fast asleep on their desks or have earbuds plugged in, so no one’s paying attention to them yet, but Shouta’s stomach feels like it’s going up in knots. He’s secretly glad that living just a few streets away from each other meant Shouta had an excuse to suggest he and Hizashi walk together to school, because the mere thought of having to go through the larger-than-life gates of U.A. by himself—both metaphorically and literally—makes Shouta want to throw up.

Hizashi plants his hands on either side of Shouta’s table and shakes it slightly. “Because it might as well be,” he stresses. “Come on, chin up. Look at me. Hey. Hey. Hey. You’re gonna be fine.”

“You can’t know that,” Shouta hisses, and it’s as much of a confession as he ever gets close to. He can nearly feel the edges of his friend soften, because Hizashi is a lot of things—those things being loud, obnoxious, annoyingly upbeat, and a harbinger of chaos—but he also knows Shouta better than anyone else. 

“Yes, I can,” Hizashi says, leaning down on his elbows so he’s at eye-level with Shouta. “You know why? Because you’re here, and I’m here, and we’re both at U.A. It’s been our dream since day one, man! Remember? The good ol’ times back in elementary school, when you wore that All Might onesie under your uniform every day for three weeks until you got caught?”

Shouta snorts. “That was you . Congratulations on just offering everyone here free blackmail, by the way.”

Hizashi smirks, tipping his sunglasses down to wink at him. “Got you to laugh, though, didn’t I?”

Shouta glares at him through the hair falling in his eyes, and Hizashi beams. Shouta makes a face, and glares harder. Hizashi’s smile widens. They keep at it for an embarrassing amount of time, until a new voice says, “Yo, is this seat taken?”

Hizashi moves out of the way, and it takes Shouta a few moments to understand what he’s looking at. The first thing he registers is a poof of white hair, not slicked back like Hizashi’s, but seemingly standing up on its own accord, the color so stark it has a bluish sheen to it. The second thing is that this guy’s nose is definitely broken, and Shouta isn’t sure how a band-aid across its bridge will help with anything at all. The third is that he kind of looks like an overly excited puppy.

“Sorry for interrupting!” The new guy says, voice loud enough to rival Hizashi’s. He bounces a bit on the balls of his feet, waving his hands in a pacifying manner. “It’s just that it’s the first day, you know, so I made a point of arriving earlier than I usually would so I could grab a good place and not have to resign to sit up in the front rows, ‘cause we all know what happens to students who sit on the front rows. But if it is taken, I don’t mind, too!”

Hizashi looks absolutely delighted. Shouta blinks at the guy, slightly dazed. “That,” he says, “was a lot of words.”

The guy actually giggles. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” He starts to reach out his hand for a moment, then seems to think better of it and ends up scratching his neck instead. “Anyways, nice to meet you guys. I’m Shirakumo Oboro and, well. We’re gonna be classmates!”

“I gathered,” Shouta says, but Hizashi cuts him off.

“Don’t mind him,” Hizashi says, extending his hand to Shirakumo, who takes it excitedly. It’s like—looking at sunshine, or something. “I’m the ever exciting Yamada Hizashi, at your service, and the sad bastard performing the gloomy routine next to me is Aizawa Shouta. Yes, he’s usually like this.”

Shirakumo smiles, as though he isn’t sure how to take what Hizashi just said. “Uh, isn’t that a bit mean?”

“It’s not mean if it’s true,” both Hizashi and Shouta say simultaneously, to uproarious laughter from the former and a bone deep sigh from the other.

Shirakumo blinks at them, his hair moving as though caught in a gust of wind, even though they’re indoors. Shouta narrows his eyes at him. Then narrows some more. Then, he feels the tell-tale flash deep in his skin of his own quirk being activated, and Shirakumo’s hair immediately falls over his eyes. The sound he makes is almost enough to make Shouta crack a smile, but instead he just blinks, letting it float up again. “Sorry,” Shouta says, not that sorry at all. “I was testing something.”

“No, no, it’s fine!” Shirakumo assures him, setting his backpack down on the floor and sitting down on the chair in front of him, leaning over the back. “A little warning would’ve been nice, but—anyway. That’s your quirk, then? Negating other people’s quirks?”

Shouta nods. “I call it Erasure,” he says. “Not the most creative name.”

“Aizawa’s cool ,” Hizashi drawls, sitting back down on his own desk on Shouta’s left. “He just sells himself short.”

“I’m not cool . I’m just your only friend.”

“You wound me, Shouta.”

“Good.”

Shirakumo watches them with an amused smile. “You’ve known each other for a while, then?”

Shouta shrugs. Hizashi says, because of course he does, “I was the first person to ever witness his quirk. In kindergarten, he left me unable to speak for hours. Hours , I say.”

Shouta rests his head in his arms again, content enough to hide behind Shirakumo from the people that are slowly starting to trickle into the class. He’s very good at thinking about nothing in particular, so that’s exactly what he does, breathing in and out slowly. It’s a good way to trick people into thinking he’s asleep and therefore should be left alone, but it’s also a great opportunity to just sit there and listen. He hears Hizashi and Shirakumo talking in what seems to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and the nervous chatter of people in every corner of the classroom, wondering to themselves what their homeroom teacher is going to be like, how many classes they’re going to take, how excited they are for this school year to start. 

U.A. is a dream come true for these people. For some reason, it makes Shouta feel scared of being caught in a lie. 

It’s not that he doesn’t want this. Of course he does. He worked hard to get in, and he’s going to work even harder to stay in; as long as he ends up a hero, Shouta figures, he’s at least halfway to okay. 

(He’s alive. He doesn’t know that there’s a better reason.)

He hears Shirakumo call his name, and when he opens one eye to look at him, he realizes Hizashi is gone—roped into conversation with a trio of students with mutation quirks, or maybe just one student with a duplication quirk? It’s hard to tell—so, for the first time, Shouta is eye to eye with Shirakumo Oboro, with no buffer between them.

Shirakumo’s eyes are ridiculously blue. “Yamada is right, you know,” he says, completely unprompted. “Your quirk is really cool.”

Shouta huffs a breath. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” he says, drily, though his neck prickles in embarrassment. “If you want to—be friends , just. Stick around, I guess. That makes us friends.”

“Aw,” Shirakumo coos, beaming. “We are friends! Can I call you Shouta, then?”

“No,” Shouta says.

Shirakumo nods, as if expecting this. “Cool, cool, cool, I get it. We’re friends, but not Yamada-like friends.”

Shouta raises an eyebrow. “Explain,” he says. 

“You know,” Shirakumo says, unhelpfully. “Childhood best friends. You guys are like soulmates, or something.”

“That’s cute,” Shouta says. “You’re a romantic.”

“Not a romantic,” Shirakumo quips, running a hand through his hair. For some reason, droplets of water run through his fingers, leaving the sleeve of his uniform jacket wet. “Just an optimist.”

“Semantics.”

Shirakumo looks at him, long and hard, and then says, “You’re the kind of person who watches a sunset and thinks it only means that another day is over, right?”

Shouta frowns. “Is there anything else a sunset is supposed to mean?”

“Sunsets are beautiful,” Shirakumo says, leaning his head on his open palm, “and, like all beautiful things, it only exists on the verge of its own disappearing. But sunrises are also beautiful, and they’re the complete opposite, and both of those things are true. That’s what I think of when I watch a sunset.”

“And you say you’re not a romantic,” Shouta mutters.

Shirakumo grins. “I think we’re going to be great friends, Aizawa.”

(Shirakumo called Shouta and Hizashi childhood best friends, but failed to consider that they were all kids, still. It’s a common mistake to make.

In years to come, when Shouta—when Eraserhead thinks of his childhood, he sees two faces. A sunset, a sunrise. Their light bleeds into each other, both dead and alive, both past and present.

The best friends from our childhoods are the loves of our lives. They break our hearts in worse ways.)

iii. 

“This,” Shouta says, “is a very bad, no good, absolutely horrible idea.”

Hizashi actually boos him, moving his hands up and down so as to splash more water everywhere, apparently. “Come on,” he whines. “The water’s fine! Don’t you trust us?”

Shirakumo nods, first at Hizashi, and then turning pleading eyes back at Shouta. His drenched hair makes him also look like a puppy that was abandoned in the rain, but as far as things go, Shouta has always been a cat person, so the trick is null and void. “Yeah, Eraserhead ,” Shirakumo says. “Don’t you trust us?”

Shouta pulls his knees closer against his chest and scoots backwards a little. “With my life, yes,” he answers, bluntly. “To have my back during a training exercise. To not deliberately harm me. To keep your word. Not with my phone, personal items, especially but not limited to my house keys, and I absolutely do not trust either of you inside a closed public swimming pool in mid-Winter, which you broke into without telling me you were breaking into.”

There’s a moment of silence in which the only thing he can hear is the splashing of water and the woosh of cold air in his years. Then, Hizashi says, sounding almost sheepish, “Well, when you put it like that .”

Shirakumo makes a motion with his hands, using the small swirling clouds that form between his palms to prop himself up to eye-level with Shouta, who’s slowly but surely inching away from the edge of the pool. “We didn’t technically break into it,” Shirakumo argues. His legs twitch involuntarily, sending water flying everywhere for a moment before he manages to condense them into mist. “My grandma is drinking buddies with the owner, and he owes her a couple dozen favors, so I just asked her, Hey, Nana, can I cash in on one? And she told me to go for it.”

Hizashi whoops, throwing himself back-first into the water once again. “And that, gentlemen, is why Shirakumo’s grandma is the only woman I’ll ever have in my life. You go, hey, what if I commit a felony? And she’s like yeah, that sounds chill. ”

“It explains a lot,” Shouta comments, just to be difficult. Shirakumo’s indignated sputtering makes his lips twitch.

Shouta tilts his head back to the sky, which is pitch-dark and cloudless. They’re close enough to the city center that the light pollution makes it impossible to see any stars. Not that Shouta is used at all to watching the stars on any given day, but the night stretches so wide above them that he feels like it would be appropriate. The cold winter air bites and scratches at his cheeks, and he burrows his face further into his scarf, trying to keep in some warmth and ultimately failing.

“Come on , Eraser,” Shirakumo says, tendrils of mist flowing between his fingers as he lowers himself down into the pool again. “Just take a dive. You don’t even have to stay in! It’s no fun if you just stay up there watching us.”

“You two really ought to stop calling me that out of school grounds,” Shouta says, without any heat. “That name exists to protect my civilian identity. What use is that if you keep using it when I’m not on duty?”

“But it’s cool ,” Hizashi says. His voice echoes a bit on the last word, as it usually does when he gets excited, and he winces before continuing. “It’s your hero name! And you still have trouble answering to it even though we picked them out halfway through the first year, which was forever ago.” At Shouta’s dead eyed stare, he adds, “Okay, it was like eight months ago, whatever, my point still stands.”

“Of course you think Eraserhead is cool, you picked it,” Shouta says. He lets out a deep-suffering sigh, uncurling a bit from his position, and says to the ground beneath him, “And anyways, I can’t swim.”

“Bullshit,” Shirakumo says immediately.

Hizashi hums in thought, finger tapping at his chin. “I don’t know. It could be true. I’ve never seen him swim before.”

“It’s a logical ruse,” Shirakumo says. “Has to be.” 

“Only one way to find out,” Hizashi says. Shouta only has the time to register the mischievous glint in their eyes as Shirakumo and Hizashi look at each other, and the way Shirakumo turns around, wet hair flaring up like a cloud behind him, and something slams into Shouta’s back with a force that leaves him breathless and gagging, sending him toppling forward into the water.

Shouta panics.

The logical part of his brain knows that he’s only inside a pool, which likely isn’t even that deep, and he could probably stand upright in it with no problem. The other part of his brain is flailing in absolute darkness, and his body is feeling heavier and heavier, like he’s moving through molasses; the only thing he feels is cold, a deep-bone chill that settles into his skin like wet cloth, and Shouta is aware that his eyes are closed—and he should keep it that way, the last thing he needs is to add the sting of chlorine to his predicament—and he’s stopped breathing, but for a few too long, terrifying moments, he has no idea which way is up or down. 

His lungs ache inside his chest, and Shouta moves his arms up and down, trying to make himself move, break the surface, but his movements are sluggish and slow. His fingertips feel numb, and he can’t stop thrashing, blind with panic, and he thinks, I can’t remember what I last said to my mother and a person on a sinking ship becomes a life raft no matter how soft their skin and I was never a shore I was only ever drowning and this has always already happened and I’m scared, I’m so scared.

There’s a biting pain somewhere on his face, but Shouta barely registers it. His eyes flutter open for a moment, and he only realizes it because of the sting, because behind and in front of his eyelids everything is the same. He feels his heartbeat in his throat.

Then he’s suddenly being hauled upwards by his arm, and it hurts but it also feels warm, so he lets himself. The water breaks over his head and he damn near sobs with relief, paying no mind to the panicked voices fluttering around him, too busy coughing and breathing and coughing some more.

“What the fuck, what the fuck,” someone is saying, over and over again. Dimly, Shouta recognizes Hizashi’s voice, and his friend sounds scared, which doesn’t really compute in his oxygen-deprived brain. 

“It’s ‘kay, ‘Zashi,” Shouta says, or tries to. Though it comes out as more of a half garbled rasp, he pushes forward, throat raw. He can’t really open his eyes, but he’s pretty sure he’s on solid ground now (when did that happen? Is he losing time?) so he reaches out, trying to grab Hizashi’s hand. “I’m here, ‘s okay.”

Hizashi’s snort can barely be called that, but his hand closes over Shouta’s. He would know that touch anywhere. “You stupid fucking idiot,” Hizashi says, voice shaky. “I didn’t—we thought you were joking , pulling a prank on us, but then you didn’t appear again, and you kept kicking at us when we tried to reach out — God, you’re bleeding! ”

Shouta pries his eyes open. They feel stuffy and bruised, and as he looks up to the night sky, it looks hazy. Hizashi’s face comes into view, half-shadowed and incredibly vulnerable, pupils blown wide. Shirakumo is by Shouta’s other side, pale and clammy, his hair shimmering a nervous blue around his head. One of his hands is squeezing Shouta’s arm with such force he’s pretty sure it’ll bruise.

“Am I,” Shouta rasps, as an afterthought. Hizashi reaches out and presses his fingers against Shouta’s jaw and—yeah, there’s the wound. Ouch. For some reason, he feels a smile stretch into his face. “Battle scars,” he mutters.

That makes Shirakumo look even paler. “Oh no. He’s lost his mind.”

“Not funny,” Hizashi hisses, glaring at Shirakumo. “He could’ve died.”

Shouta snorts, looking skyward. “It is kind of funny, though.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“No near death experience, no opinion,” Shouta says. “Help me sit up.”

They do, and Shouta shakes his head, trying to clear it. Somewhere in the midst of it all, he lost his coat, and the lack of an extra layer doesn’t help stop the shivers running up and down his body, his sweater drenched and clinging to his skin. He touches his jaw lightly, and though his fingers come away bloody, it’s probably just a scratch from the deep end of the pool. 

Hizashi flaps his hands, nervous. “Oh God, we need to get you some dry clothes. You’ll freeze. That hair isn’t going to help you in not catching a cold, Shouta, I know you think it makes you look cool but it’ll be the death of you—”

“I nearly drowned, and you say my hair will be the death of me?” Shouta says without thinking. Hizashi winces, and Shouta does, too. “Sorry. Too soon.”

“Half a decade will be too soon to make that joke, dude,” Shirakumo says, running his fingers through his hair. He leans back, sitting cross legged next to Shouta, and he’s never heard his friend sound so subdued before. It’s almost like he’s ashamed. “I feel like this just shaved off a few years of my life. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Shouta says. “You guys didn’t know.”

“We should have believed you,” Hizashi says, and Shouta nods, because yeah, they should have. “I’m gonna—do you need something? I’m gonna get some towels. I think they might have a first aid kit. Stay put, the two of you. And away from the pool.”

He’s up and moving before either Shirakumo or Shouta can say anything, muttering to himself. Shouta watches him go with exasperated fondness, using his cold-numb hands to wring out some of the water from his hair. It falls down on the ground with a dull splatter. It’s anticlimactic, in a way, for Shouta to be feeling this calm, but he doesn’t have the energy to feel anything beyond a dull sense of okay, so that happened. He places his palms on the rough ground and leans back, breathing deep. 

Shirakumo sits with him in companionable silence, though he hums an upbeat song to himself. It’s a recent development, because usually it’s hard to make Shirakumo sit still at all, and while that is something Shouta would find annoying, he doesn’t mind when it’s him. It’s only been a few weeks since the first month of their work study under His Purple Highness was completed—since they’ve started marketing themselves as a hero duo—and Shouta feels as comfortable with Shirakumo as he does with Hizashi. He trusts him wholeheartedly, irrevocably; he wasn’t lying or being sentimental with what he said earlier. Shouta isn’t an overly emotional person, so he meant every word exactly as he said them. As long as his friends have his back, he’s getting through another day.

Shouta also isn’t stupid. He can practically feel the guilt and shame emanating from the both of them, as cloying as the smell of chlorine in the air, and he’s half a mind to think, That’s my job, not yours. But he says nothing. Shouta just watches the water splash inside the pool, dark except for the places it reflects the streetlights from outside, and enjoys the warmth of the knowledge that he has a friend watching over him.

“Hey, Shouta,” Shirakumo says. “Can I ask you something?”

He shrugs. “Go for it.”

“What does drowning feel like?”

Shouta rubs his fist against the stinging scratch on his jaw, and doesn’t meet Shirakumo’s eyes. “Not everything feels like something else.”

(Shirakumo is killed four months later. The casket they bury is empty, but Shouta won’t figure that out for years to come.

When the dust settles, after Shouta defeats the villain, he doesn’t yet know Shirakumo is dead. He just tries to regain his breath, already feeling the bruises forming in his ribs and knuckles, knees buckling with tiredness. When a child starts to wail in the distance, he should have known it was a foreshadow.

Shouta turns around to beam at his friend, because though he saw him get beaten down, his brain is too tired to catch up with the situation. He turns, and he looks, and he hears Shirakumo’s voice in his ears, tinged with the memory of sharp winter wind and water from a pool. What does drowning feel like?

Like this , Shouta thinks. It feels like this.)

iv.

Shouta’s grandmother was someone who prided herself on her sayings. She never uttered a word without intent; her smile was always a morality lesson; every sentence was said with the assurance that it would probably haunt you for the rest of your days, lurking next to your shadow, until the situation called for you to remember it. 

Words should be weighed, not counted, she’d advise, when someone talked too much.

Shouta would say, I wish I had a cooler quirk, and she’d tsk and answer, Envy makes your eyes crawl out of your head.

Don’t tell me to quiet down!, even though no one would ever dare say that to her. She was the kind of woman who liked to hear herself talk, and always made sense when she did. Jewish people are twenty-eight percent fear, two percent sugar, and seventy percent chutzpah. It’s in my blood.

(Every time All Might’s face popped up on TV, her face would sour and darken, eyes glinting. This man again, she’d mutter. A bad peace is better than a good war, huh? Before turning the volume all the way down.)

By the time Shirakumo dies, the woman has been dead and buried for years. Even so, Shouta thinks he hears her voice more in the months that follow than he did when she was alive. She and Mother didn’t get along all that well, because Grandma thought she was a “sad piece of work,” and Mother thought she was a “crazy old cow,” so Shouta would only ever see his grandmother in family gatherings, once or twice a year. She’d sneak him snacks beneath the table, and lick her fingers before straightening his eyebrows, and complain about the hair he started growing out when he was eleven. 

He misses her a lot. 

Grief is no stranger to him, but Shouta is pretty sure he’s a stranger to it . It doesn’t settle over his skin quite right; it’s been nearly nine months since Shirakumo died, and everyone still looks at him and Hizashi as if expecting them to splinter into tiny little pieces at every moment. Hizashi, Shouta understands; he’s vocal about a lot of things, and his emotions are near the top of the list. It’s safe to say that, if Shouta had to place bets in which one of them would break first, it would be Hizashi. Though, as time passes, he becomes less and less sure of that. They’re graduating in a matter of weeks, now, nearly pro-heroes themselves, and neither of them are little kids anymore. Hizashi can choke back his tears, if he wants. Shouta can bare his teeth and throw himself into the fray.

(After Shirakumo’s funeral, two childhood friends take two different paths back home.

The rain that starts falling as Aizawa takes a sharp turn towards the abandoned terrain with the cyclamens near his house makes him start giggling into his hands, a slightly hysterical tone to the sound. He crouches between the poisonous flowers, and thinks about death, and swimming pools, and sunsets. He tears the sleeve of his dark jacket, a keriah for his friend who believed in beautiful things but not in God, and smiles. 

He’ll be a hero because he can’t help himself. He would have become a hero merely for that smile alone.

Yamada walks back to his house in a haze, head stuffed full of cotton and fists clenched by his sides. He doesn’t make a sound. And he isn’t sad—he’s angry , so angry he feels cold all over, because it isn’t fair, and it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be the three of them against the world. If maybe not forever, just for a little while longer. Eraserhead, Loud Cloud, and Present Mic. They were supposed to become heroes, all of them.

Yamada understands that death comes with the job. He comes from a family of heroes, and by the time he was nine, he’d been to more funerals than kid birthday parties. He’s familiar with it. He’s fine with it. 

Shirakumo Oboro dies a hero, but he also dies a child. Yamada will never forget that.

Inside his room, Yamada pulls back his fist and hits the wall, once, two, three times. The only thing he hurts is his own knuckles, because he’s never actually learned how to throw a proper punch, but it makes something settle in his chest. Because unlike feelings, blood gets realer when you feel it.)

Three weeks before graduation finds Aizawa Shouta beating the living daylights out of a training dummy after school hours.

He’s not technically allowed to be here, but then, he’s not technically allowed to do many things he ends up doing. In the past year, he’s earned enough of his teachers’ respects to be able to get them to turn a blind eye when need be, and right now, the need is definitely being.

One punch and he is not thinking about a blue cloud of hair. Two punches and he’s not hearing the sickening crunch of broken bones. Three, four punches, and he is not hearing that voice in his head telling him that he should have checked again before letting the funeral take place, and he should have been quicker, that he could have pushed him out of the way and saved everyone. Six punches and Shouta is breathing so hard it aches, and Shirakumo’s bubbly voice echoes in his ear, saying, You’ve got what it takes!

He’s sweating, but his hands are cold. He lands a loose fist on the dummy again, not even hard enough to bump it, and bows his head. 

Shouta doesn’t remember the last time he cried—between his quirk making his eyes permanently in need of hydration and the prescribed eye drops, he doesn’t find much need to—but sometimes his chest feels full to the bursting and he curls into himself, covering his face with his hands, the tape scratchy and damp against his skin. 

His neck prickles exactly two seconds before Shouta hears Hizashi say, “You’re doing the thing again,” from behind him. 

Shouta takes his hands off his eyes, but doesn’t lift his head. “I don’t have a thing,” he mumbles, fiddling with the tapes on his fingers.

“Yeah, you do,” Hizashi says. Shouta turns to look at him, and he’s leaning against the opposite wall right next to the entrance of the gym, arms crossed, bag on the ground next to Shouta’s. Though his hair is slicked back and his sunglasses are on as usual, he’s also wearing his gym uniform. Shouta raises an eyebrow at him. “The not-crying thing,” Hizashi continues, stepping forward into the tatami of the training ground. He mimics putting his hands over his eyes, like Shouta was doing. “You do it when you’re overwhelmed or sad or really angry. And when someone catches you doing it, you get embarrassed, so you bite the inside of your cheek.”

Shouta, who was indeed biting the inside of his cheek, stops doing so immediately. “I see you’ve been working on your people reading skills,” he says, clearing his throat. “Figures being loud as fuck wouldn’t give you any edge in being observant, as well.”

Hizashi grins at him. “Don’t pretend you don’t like it when I flirt with you.”

Shouta feels his face grow red, but he keeps his voice as flat as ever. “We are not talking about this right now,” he says, turning back to his practice dummy. “Did you come here to be productive, or to annoy me into next week?”

“You should have never promised to give me a kiss at graduation if I stopped talking for an entire day,” Hazashi says, snapping finger guns at him. “You brought this upon yourself.”

“Keep this up and I’ll use you as the fucking dummy. You’re already halfway there, anyway.”

Hizashi laughs, hands on his hips, mouth stretched open wide. It doesn’t look quite right.

The thing is, Shouta sometimes thinks he knows Hizashi better than he knows himself. He flaps his hands when he’s annoyed, and his quirk makes his voice echo when he gets too enthusiastic about what he’s saying; he isn’t actually that great of a singer, but his amplification makes his voice more distorted than it is, and that annoys him to no reason. He scrunches his nose when deep in thought, and plays with his fingers when he’s embarrassed. A lot of the time, Shouta thinks he’s only trying to fit all his corners into Hizashi’s borders. They are porous, entangled, made up of themselves but also of each other.

So he knows that Hizashi’s sunglasses are only another way to hide his eyes if he’s been crying. 

And he also knows this—he doesn’t need to say anything about it. Because they’re both well aware. Shirakumo’s presence is a constant in the back of their minds, his voice still chattering incessantly in their ears when they get distracted, his blueish flare of hair just in the corner of Shouta’s eye if he looks too fast. Shouta doesn’t know how much he believes in ghosts, but he believes in memories. It’s a Jewish value to be kind to spirits, but Shouta wants to not speak of something dead or divine. He wants Shirakumo to live, if at least like this. He wants him to live, even if that means just carrying his friend with him wherever he goes forever.

His grandmother used to say that as long as a man lives, the entire world is too small for him; after death, his grave is big enough. She might have believed this, but Shouta doesn’t.

He says, “So, Present Mic. Do you really want to graduate without ever learning how to throw a proper punch?”

Hizashi cackles, throwing his head back. “Oh, aren’t you just a mind reader, Eraserhead,” he says, and his face is like the sun. He bends his knees and squares his shoulders into a basic fighting form, one that Shouta can unmake in a matter of seconds. “Come at me. Show us what you’ve got, pro-hero.”

You’ve got what it takes.

And Shouta does.

v.

Aizawa became a hero for two reasons, and two reasons only. 

The first reason is because he couldn’t help himself. The second comes to him unbidden, fifteen years too late and eight weeks into the new school term.

Becoming a teacher wasn’t exactly in his plans, but there’s only so much a hero like him can do to support himself. Considering he went underground straight after graduation and was never part of a hero agency—during his work study as a third year, he had a brief stint at Sir Nighteye’s agency, and though the hero had made it clear that Shouta was welcome back when he became a pro, that wasn’t really what he wanted—, he had to build all of his own connections from scratch. His salary comes from the government, because being a hero is, in fact, a public service, but when Nedzu calls him up one day with the offer, Shouta can’t think of many reasons to refuse.

He isn’t great with kids, but he isn’t terrible with them either. Sure, he’s better with cats. The ones he and Hizashi adopted on their second anniversary are proof enough, without accounting for Shouta’s monthly donations to their local animal rescue center. It can’t be all that different.

When he says so to Hizashi, his husband laughs so hard he cries, while Shouta just watches him with a flat expression on his face.

“Of course you would say something like that,” Hizashi wheezes, wiping a tear from his cheek. They’re in casual clothes, sitting alone together in their living room couch on a day off, and Hizashi’s brown eyes watch him with amusement. “Are you going to spray the kids with water if they behave badly, too?”

“Maybe,” Shouta mutters, turning his gaze back to his laptop. 

Hizashi pats him on the hand. “You, as a teacher,” he sighs. “Sending thoughts and prayers to your future students, dude.”

“We’ve been married for three years now, ‘Zashi,” Shouta says. “You should probably stop calling me dude.”

“I can call you bro .”

“I rescind my statement.”

Shouta doesn’t expect to like teaching as much as he does. He doesn’t expect for other people to like him as a teacher as much as they do, but before he realizes, Nedzu has talked him into agreeing to remain in the position of first year homeroom teacher for another year, and another, and another. It’s not by any means an easy job—he’s training these kids to be heroes, which is arguably the most dangerous profession one can choose in modern day society. He meets brilliant kids every year, kids that shine so brightly it makes his eyes hurt, kids with quirks so powerful it pulls at his skin to erase, when need be.

He quickly gains the reputation of being one of the strictest teachers at U.A. by a considerable margin. Students from other classes watch him warily when he walks by—although, if that’s because of the rumors, or because Shouta consistently looks like he hasn’t slept or brushed his hair in weeks, and will sometimes curl up inside his sleeping bag wherever it best suits him, is anyone’s guess. 

Life is okay. He goes to his job, he fights, he does voluntary work at the rescue center, he takes care of his house plants. He’s married to his best friend in the entire world, and while he’s still a skeptic at heart—he likes loving. He likes being loved.

And then, Class 1-A.

Now, Shouta teaches class 1-A every year. There is no particular reason for this one to hold any particular extra meaning to him, other than being the one he’s currently teaching. On the first day, he does his usual routine of organizing a small group activity so he can properly evaluate the individual quirks of his students, away from the chaos that is the practical entrance exam. As they stream into the courtyard, donned in their gym uniforms, Shouta watches them through half-lidded eyes and mentally recites the names and abilities of each one. Tokoyami Fumikage, Dark Shadow. Bakugo Katsuki, Explosion. Tsuyu Asui, Frog. Uraraka Ochako, Zero Gravity. Yaoyorozu Momo, Creation. Iida Tenya, Engines. Todoroki Shouto, Hot-And-Cold. 

Midoriya Izuku, Superpower.

Shouta would be a liar to deny he’d been ready to expel Midoriya on the first day of school. He knows his reputation precedes him, although maybe not for the things he would rather it did. Yes, he once expelled his entire first year class in the span of a week. No, he did not feel any remorse about doing so. The reason why he didn’t feel guilty over it is where history differs, though. Because they think he did it for being cruel.

Aizawa Shouta is many things. Cruel is not one of them.

He sees a hero’s face in every kid he teaches. He gets to know their idiosyncrasies, and what makes them tick; what riles them up, and what makes them freeze. The line between raising them to be heroes and raising them to be child soldiers is one U.A. toes with on the daily, and Shouta is not keen on slipping up. He’s a merciful man. He believes in second chances, for some people. He’s old beyond his years, and Hizashi loves to remind him, and he bares his teeth instead of smiling.

He’s not sending any child out to die fighting someone else’s battle. That’s the line he’ll never cross.

And the reason Shouta doesn’t expel Midoriya in that moment, when his quirk is erased and his hands are shaking, is a simple one. Because when Shouta lets him try again, using his power, Midoriya breaks his finger, and stands his ground. He lifts his chin, tears gathering in his eyes, and looks at Shouta. He smiles, and says, “Sensei. I’m still able to move.”

Shouta looks at that smile, and his lips twitch. He imagines Midoriya’s eyes a few shades lighter, and thinks, Ah. There he is.

That’s the reason.

And although he lets Midoriya stay because of a ghost, the kid couldn’t possibly be more different from the Shirakumo Shouta remembers. He has a self-sacrificing streak, and more disregard for his own well being in his left pinky than most people should have in their entire bodies. And all that is not even why Shouta starts calling him Problem Child, even in the quiet of his own mind—because Midoriya is all that, and he ranked in the top ten of U.A’s written entrance exam. He’s a natural analyst and strategist, and he understands more about Quirk Theory at fifteen than Shouta himself did when he graduated high school. He earns the respect of all his peers within merely a month of class—that Bakugo kid notwithstanding—, and every time Shouta looks at him, he sees something different.

(Shouta is also not blind. In the years since he became a pro-hero, he’s interacted on a regular basis with Yagi Toshinori, the man, more often than he ever has with All Might, the hero. They might as well be different people; where the hero is so indulgent and idealistic it makes Shouta’s insides squirm, Yagi is a down-to-earth, borderline cynical man with a deadpan humor that has managed to make the ever gloomy Eraserhead crack a smile more than once. Or at least that’s how Kayama tells it.

So when Shouta hears that All Might, the hero, has been hired as a teacher at U.A., he lets out a long suffering sigh and bangs his head against the table.

One day, he’s walking down the school hallway when he spots All Might cornered by a bunch of overexcited second years from Class B, all talking animatedly as he grins his trademark smile—never faltering, though by now Shouta can see how physically taxing it is for him to keep that form.

Walking down in the opposite direction is Midoriya, face stuffed in a book and moving with practiced ease. When he sees the scene, his eyes go wide. All Might immediately meets his gaze, and Shouta mentally raises an eyebrow as he passes by.

The kid mouths to the hero, clear as day, How much time ?

All Might shakes his head minutely. Not long enough.

The Problem Child knows. All Might knows he knows. Shouta stores that information somewhere in his mind, to come back to later.)

In summary, there’s this:

Midoriya Izuku isn’t like anyone else at all.

Shouta smiles to himself, when he’s sure no one in the class is looking at him. The kid’ll be a hero, alright. 

Needless to say, Shouta did not plan on Shinsou Hitoshi. Life doesn’t usually care about Shouta’s plans, be it a quiet night in with his husband (even thinking the words seem to universally trigger a villain attack when he is the only one available), or his promise to never, ever, have kids.

Shouta’s face is still covered with bandages from the injuries he suffered at USJ. He can barely move his lips, let alone open both of his eyes fully, but that does not stop him from putting his hands over the gauze and questioning all of his life choices up until this moment.

“Shouta?” Hizashi asks, quietly. They’re holding a quick intermission at the Sports Festival to clear up the arena after Uraraka and Bakugo’s fight, so the microphones transmitting his and Present Mic’s voice are turned off. “Is everything okay? You’re doing the thing.”

“I am doing the thing,” Shouta says, flat, “because I just had a stupid idea and I think I might go through with it.”

Hizashi giggles at him. “It’s probably not as bad as you think it is,” he says, sounding way too amused. “You know you. Now, look at me. What’s the idea?”

Shouta looks up at Hizashi, keeping his palms still turned upwards near his face, and says, “I am going to adopt Shinsou Hitoshi.”

Hizashi chokes on air.

After a good two minutes of furious spluttering, ever widening eyes and rapidly paling face, Shouta decides to add, “Well, not like that. I mean more like a protégé.”

Hizashi takes a deep breath and looks upwards, as if begging for patience. “You. You could have led with that. Or you could have seriously worded that better.”

“My bad.”

“And anyway—why?” Hizashi asks, color returning to his face. He leans back on his chair, quickly glancing at the clock to see how much time they have before going back on air, before turning his full attention back to Shouta. “I know it’s common for some heroes to take on protegés of their own, but that’s, like, when they already have their sights set on retirement. We both know you won’t retire until someone drags you away to a nursing home, kicking and screaming, and I just never pegged you as the kind of guy who would want that.”

“I contain multitudes,” Shouta says, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks down into the bleachers, even though he’s too far away for the U.A. students to look like anything beyond a blur of blue uniforms. “I just—I don’t know. It sounds stupid to say he feels… familiar.”

“It’s not stupid,” Hizashi stresses, even though Shouta knows he doesn’t get it.

Shouta doesn’t really get it either. He never even considered the idea, not even when thinking about retirement, not even when he nearly died during the attack at USJ. The whole point of becoming an independent underground hero right off the bat was that his legacy would live and die with him, and nothing beyond. 

He remembers seeing Shinsou’s picture when reviewing the results of the practical exam, right before the beginning of the term. It was like looking into a mirror.

Shouta might have never been openly discriminated against for his quirk -- he did that plenty by himself, anyways—but he doesn’t need that to be able to put two and two together. Quirkless society is not an inherently kind society, and every kid born into it can only fall into three categories: potential hero, potential villain, and quirkless.

One of those is implicitly considered worse than the others, and it makes Shouta’s blood boil. But with a Brainwashing quirk, it isn’t hard to see which category Shinsou would have fallen into.

Shouta hums, drumming his fingers on his leg. “I know the kid is in Class 1-C, and that’s way too far from the Hero Course for him to fall under my jurisdiction, but if I bring it up with Nedzu, I might be able to work something out.”

A timer shows up on the screen on the upper left corner of the room, blinking green. They have two minutes before they’re back on air, and Shouta can see Hizashi squaring up his shoulders to get back into character. “Well, you know I’ll support you no matter what,” Hizashi says, pulling on his headset. “The only thing I won’t do is provide for another child. I already have my hands full with Haia and Mr. Furrycheeks.”

“The cat’s name is not Mr. Furrycheeks, no matter how much you pretend it is,” Shouta mumbles, turning back forwards to the arena. Hizashi is no longer paying attention to him.

In one of the upper bleachers, sitting all by himself, is a lonely blur of blue and indigo, staring out into where the next competitors are getting ready.

Shouta swears Shinsou turns his head to meet his eye.

Finding the kid after the festival is over is as easy as pulling teeth. Which means that even though it’s painstakingly slow and painful, Shouta manages to do it as soon as he loses hope.

“Shinsou,” Shouta says. “The buses are leaving in fifteen minutes. If you don’t get there in time, we will leave you behind.”

Shinsou doesn’t startle, which Shouta has to give him points for. He turns back to look at him, eyes half lidded and expression neutral. “Sorry, sensei,” he says. “I lost track of time.”

He’s sitting by himself in an empty hallway of the sports complex, completely hidden away from view between a locked door and a vending machine. Shouta is pretty sure he knows exactly what Shinsou is doing.

Shouta crosses his arms and eyes the kid up and down, from the bruised-like shadows under his eyes, to the hair that looks like it’s been pulled at since the dawn of time, and the carefully blank look he wears on his face. “The only thing you lost is the Sports Festival,” Shouta says. He’s never been known for pulling his punches.

Shinsou barely blinks. “Yes,” he says. Then he frowns a little, just a slight twitch of the eyebrows. “What, are you here to lecture me or something? I know—I know that Midoriya kid is your student, but I promise you I didn’t go easy on him. I have no idea how he managed to break free all on his own.”

Now, that’s interesting. “You think that’s something I should have been considering, when I watched your fight?” Shouta asks. “That you held back?”

Shinsou shrugs. “I know the boundaries of my quirk right now well enough. I can completely control one person at a time, and the only thing that can break the trance is strong enough physical contact.” He clenches his fists by his side a little. “I don’t know how Midoriya managed to do it by himself.”

“We’re not talking about Midoriya,” Shouta says. “You want to make it to the Hero Course, don’t you?”

There’s a flicker of surprise in Shinsou’s eyes, but the neutral look comes back almost immediately. “That’s the goal, yeah. I wanted to be accepted into it right away, but I didn’t get a high enough score in the practical exam—”

Shouta shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “The practical exam is bullshit,” he says. “Being a hero is not a matter of how many robots are worth the right amount of points you can earn within a certain period of time. Not every quirk is made for close range fighting, not every quirk is made for long range fighting, and a bunch of kids thrown into a simulation together and told to break as many things as they can has as much sense as churches have mezuzot .” Shouta clicks his tongue. “None.”

Shinsou stares at him. Then he lets out a choked laugh, presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, and laughs a little more. “So, what?” he asks, after a few moments. “The U.A. is rigged? The approval of all the kids with hero-like quirks ,” he pitches his voice a little higher, making quotation marks with his fingers, “is all null and void? No offense, Eraserhead, but what are you trying to tell me with this? Are you trying to discourage me from joining the hero course?” Shinsou looks up sharply, eyes glinting as they meet Shouta’s. “It won’t work.”

Shouta sighs, and even though he probably shouldn’t, he crouches down until he’s at eye level with the kid. “U.A. isn’t perfect,” he says, honestly. “The only reason I ever even made it into Class A was my score in the written exam, because my quirk,” he points at the place where his eye would be, if not covered in bandages, “did me a fat lot of good against robots, now, didn’t it?” Before Shinsou can comment on that, Shouta continues, “Being a hero is hard. It’s not a field everyone thrives in, and it’s not one where everyone survives in. If you’re really sure this is what you want, and you have what it takes to go through with it, I plan on supporting you in any way I can.”

“But,” Shinsou points out, softly. His eyes are slightly glazed over. “There’s a but .”

“But,” Shouta agrees, “the essences of your quirk and mine are really similar. Extremely useful from a certain distance, and powerful, but the thing about close-distance quirks is that to get close, you need to be able to stand your ground and rely on other abilities. And as of now, you have little to no fighting prowess, or form, or physical talent. You trust too much on your quirk.”

The echo of Hizashi’s voice comes from somewhere on the floor around them, calling forth everyone taking the bus back to U.A. to meet in the foyer in five minutes. Shouta looks upward, and then back at Shinsou, who’s nodding to himself. 

“Okay,” Shinsou says. “That’s actually pretty good advice. I—I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

“No one in your family has a quirk like yours, do they?” Shouta asks.

“I wouldn’t know. I’m a foster kid.”

Shouta dimly remembers reading that in Shinsou's file, and nods once. He stands up, legs protesting from lack of blood flow, and says, “One last thing. Why do you want to be a hero, Shinsou?”

Shinsou frowns again. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I?”

To anyone else’s ears, it would have sounded flippant. His voice has little to no inflection as he says it; it’s neither disrespectful nor particularly polite, and he looks at Shouta through half lidded eyes and that careful blankness, poised and practiced. But Shouta looks at Shinsou Hitoshi, and the first thing he can think is, So there you are.

The second thing he thinks is that as long as the boy has potential like this, he doesn’t really care.

Shouta hums in acknowledgement, turns to leave, and says, “We begin next week.”

He’s already walking away when Shinsou utters a slightly bewildered, “Sensei?”

“Next week,” Shouta repeats, without turning around. “Ground Gamma, after school lets out. Don’t be late.”

He hears Shinsou muttering something that sounds like, “Well, okay, please be just a little bit more cryptic, Eraserhead,” as he turns the corner, and Shouta can’t stop himself. He laughs.

(Just by the windowsill of his living room, where the sunlight hits best, Aizawa grows forget-me-nots.

He isn’t sure whether he picked the flowers because of the name, or because of the color. He just knows that whatever the reason, it would be enough to make Shirakumo crack a smile and drawl, “Aw, so you were thinking about me.”

Aizawa sometimes thinks of the boy he was. Sitting with his back to his mother’s couch as she slept day in and day out, sometimes talking, sometimes not. He remembers the field of cyclamens, and clouds, and beautiful things, and sunrises. He remembers his grandmother’s voice, telling him, Don’t stay here, my boy, broken by the names of flowers. Don’t be sad anymore.

“It’s a Jewish value to be kind to ghosts, you know,” he tells his husband. “Both the living and the dead ones.”

He says it every year, a small smile playing at his lips as he glances at the blue by the window, as if he’s saying it for the first time.

He can’t help himself.)