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Hizashi stared out of the window in the hallway, where the doctors had forced him to retreat to as they checked over Shouta's vitals. It was more likely they needed a break from him than they thought he needed a break himself. Shouta still hadn’t regained consciousness though it had been days since he’d been taken from the battlefield broken and bleeding. The doctors and healers didn’t seem too worried about that fact yet but Hizashi couldn’t stop himself from dwelling on the thought that they might never open again the longer the time stretched out in front of him. He hadn’t realized when they’d parted ways the last time they’d seen each other that it might be the last time he’d see those dark eyes glaring at him in amused frustration. It didn’t seem like it could be a potential new reality that he would have to deal with.
But then neither had the thought that he would never see Nemuri or Oboro again and look where that had gotten him in the end.
He’d been hovering at Shouta’s side since he’d been brought from the makeshift hospital near the scene to the UA campus along with the rest of the students and teachers with injuries that required longtime care. Rather than allow his staff and students to be scattered around the country in various hospitals of varying degrees of competence, Nedzu had pushed for them all to be brought to UA. The Commission had pushed back but Nedzu hadn’t backed down and after throwing around considerable weight and money to gather them all where he could keep a personal eye on them. Most of the main campus had been transformed into a state of the art hospital and Nedzu had bribed and bartered to get as many top medical personnel as he could muster. Hizashi was thankful because UA was as close to home as most of them had these days and he couldn’t imagine Shouta being better off anywhere else.
He watched the tracks of the raindrops as they dripped down the window. Taking deep breaths and trying desperately to hold it together. If he lost it now, that last semblance of control he was holding on to, it would be bad. It would be very bad indeed. So he took deep breaths and counted the raindrops on the windows and pretended for the moments when his oxygen disappeared completely that everything was fine. Everything was normal, nothing had changed, he wasn't facing a complete meltdown along with the rest of Japan.
The sound of metal wheels against tile dragged him back into reality. He closed his eyes as the pain of the situation threatened to overwhelm him. He clutched a sob deep within his chest and kept it there until the danger of it slipping out had passed. The sound of metal echoed from behind him again this time accompanied by the soft swish of a foot. The movements were slow and laborious and Hizashi, just wanting the person to go away so that he could be alone with his concentration again turned to face them.
He probably should not have been as surprised to see Midoriya as he was. The boy was using the pole of his IV, tucked uncomfortably against his shoulder, to keep himself both upright and propel him forward. There was no one else with him and Hizashi had to wonder how the boy had escaped his minders. He knew there were many of them including the boy’s mom and All Might’s detective friend. The boy looked worse than Hizashi had ever seen him but from what he’d heard and witnessed of the battle the boy had just been through it should not come as much of a surprise. His hospital gown did nothing to hide the bandages his body was swathed in. His arms were particularly mummified and Hizashi had heard the whispers the doctors were making when he'd stopped by the rooms the kids had been placed to check in on them before he'd rushed back to Shouta's side.
There was a strong possibility he'd never be able to use either of them again.
Hizashi was hoping they were underestimating the boy who had proven already that he would defy all the odds laid out in front of him. Still being up and walking around when he was not supposed to be would probably not help him in the long run. With a soft sigh, Hizashi ran his hand across his face and forced himself to shift from "grieving friend" mode into "teacher with no life outside of school" mode. It was far harder to achieve than it usually was. The pain and despair were too close to the surface and his control on them far too tenuous. He managed to plaster a painfully tight smile on his face and stepped towards Midoriya stopping him with a hand on his shoulder.
When the boy looked up at him Hizashi realized quickly that his effort to appear unaffected by everything going around him had been wasted energy. The boy's eyes were blown wide and glassy. He wasn't sure if Midoriya was even registering anything around him at all in that. He was leaning heavily against the stand body trembling under the exertion of the movement. There was pain, confusion, and terror etched sharply on his drawn face. Seeing it there, seeing it slashed across a face normally so bright, determined and cheerful almost hurt Hizashi as much as the sight of Shouta's broken body in the hospital bed, almost as much as seeing Nemuri on a table covered with a sheet, almost as much as a gravestone on a rainy day.
Almost.
The boy flinched away from him and cried out in what sounded like agony. Hizashi jerked his hand away thinking it was the pressure of his hand but the boy did it again three more times in rapid succession before seeming to settle for a brief moment. Midoriya's eyes drifted closed and he took a deep breath. Then he took another sliding step forward. He stopped himself from reaching out to touch the boy again as he continued to move forward and instead stepped in front of him to force him to stop.
"Little...Midoriya," he said in a gentle tone, not quite able to find the energy to be as “On” as he probably needed to be in this situation. "Are you supposed to be out of bed?"
"I have...I have..." he trailed off as he flinched again and cried out in pain.
Hizashi fell to his knees and reached out for the shaky hand that reached out to him as the boy flinched a few more times. "You have to what?" he asked because whatever it was it was important enough to drive Midoriya out of the bed he should be in.
"I have...have to find...All Might..."
All Might. For a brief moment, Hizashi wondered why the man wasn't already at Midoriya's side given the obvious way he doated on and mentored the boy but then he remembered that All Might was still in the teacher apartments watching over Eri. He'd been the one given the unenviable task of having to tell her...have to try and explain to her about all of this.
"All Might is with Eri right now," he said gently. "I'm sure he'll come to see you as soon as he can."
"No...." Midoriya said in a pained voice. "I can't wait! I have to...to find him..."
Midoriya’s body seemed to give out from underneath him suddenly and a wail escaped his mouth that sent an icy cold shudder down Hizashi's spine. There was something off-putting and almost other-worldly about the noise. It was that way with Midoriya a lot especially when he used his quirk. Like you were witnessing something that just shouldn't exist. He didn't allow himself to think about it most of the time, it was far too discomforting to think too hard or too about it, and he didn't allow himself to dwell on it now either as he reached out to catch the boy. He was careful to wrap his arms around him in a way that would jostle him the least but he didn't think it was him that was causing the boy to continue to convulse with pain.
"Kiddo, please don't make me do this," he pleaded softly as he felt the boy keep trying to pull himself along even on the ground as tremors wracked his body. "Don't make me hold you while you...you..." he shuddered and trailed off unable to voice the very real fear in his heart as the boy continued to twitch and whimper in his arms. "I can't do that, not today, especially not today..."
"I'm so sorry, Mic, Sir..." the boy murmured stopping his movement and glancing up. There was pure clarity on his broken and battered face for the first time since they’d started speaking. "About...Miss Midnight...I...I wasn't strong enough..."
"You think...you think that this was..." he said sharply as he gaped down at the boy. He'd seen the fight the boy had just barely gone through. He'd watched a replay of the video on his phone before he'd escaped out into the hallway to recover. That this child had had just barely survived himself and yet was still blaming himself. "None of this was your fault!"
"Yes...yes it is..." Midoriya insisted as another convulsion of pain shivered through him. "I'm...I'm the Symbol now. It's my job to keep people safe, my time..."
"You are not a Symbol of anything, you are a child! You are not responsible for any of this not on any imaginable level! You shouldn't even have been out there in the first place much less be expected to stop any of it."
"You don’t understand…. This is all because of me...all of it because I failed to..." Midoriya grimaced and trailed off as he convulsed again and cried out in deep, guttural pain.
"We can talk about this later," Hizashi said roughly though there was no heat behind his words. "I need to get you back to your room and get a doctor to look you over, clearly there's something they missed..."
"This isn't because of my injuries," the boy insisted as he convulsed again. "This is my quirk...my new quirk..."
"New quirk?"
He wanted to question it more than that. He wanted to question every inch of the boy's weird, unnatural quirk that just continued to grow more unnatural and more out of control with every passing second. But the hallway was not the place for it. Especially not when the boy was in so much pain.
"It...I think it tells me when there's danger,” he let out a painfully dry snort of laughter. “Like I really needed any extra help with that!”
To Hizashi that just seemed like a natural reaction to the current situation, not a new quirk but it still wasn't the time to get into it in any great detail. Then Midoriya gave the biggest jerk, cried out in pain, and turned his head to the side, and vomited up blood. He blinked in confusion and drawing horror as visions of All Might echoed through his brain. This was not a good thing. He'd snuck a look at the former number one hero's x-rays after snooping around in Recovery Girl’s office. He now knew more than he ever wanted to about what someone who vomited up blood looked like on the inside. Suddenly his fears of the boy dying in his arms seemed even more real.
"We have to get you back to your doctor,"
"I can't," Izuku panted painfully. "Something is happening, something very bad something is coming...."
"He is Coming!"
Hizashi almost dropped in shock as the kid suddenly seemed to change into an entirely different person right in front of his eyes. For a brief moment, his eyes grew lighter, white-streaked through his hair and his freckles seemed to disappear. Then there was the voice. It was soft, raspy, and definitely NOT the voice of Izuku Midoriya. If there was one thing that Hizashi knew it was voices and that voice belonged to someone that Hizashi had never met before though there was a vaguely familiar echo to it. Like he had heard it somewhere before, maybe from within Midoriya’s voice, hidden deep inside. Then he blinked and whatever had momentarily taken over the boy faded as he slumped against Hizashi's chest.
"What the actual hell, Kid..." he muttered but before he could pry into what had just happened an alarm bell sounded throughout the halls. He felt sheer terror slide through him as Izuku coughed up a second round of blood and tried to struggle to his feet. A business teacher he only barely knew from the yearly staff holiday party raced down the hall and he called out to stop them. "What happened?"
"There's been a prison break at Tartarus..." the teacher hesitated for a moment. "It's all hands on deck they're going to need everyone with a hero license they can get to help with the fallout..."
"Fuck..."
The curse was out of his mouth before he could stop it. The teacher just stared at him blankly and then seemed to remember that they had someplace more important to be and took off down the hall again. Hizashi rubbed tiredly at his face and then glanced down at the kid to discover he was twitching and spasming in his arms. He had no idea what it meant but he wasn't liking the way things were slotting into place.
"I've got to get you back to your room, I have to go help with this..."
"No, please..." the boy pleaded with him and moved slightly to wrap his bandaged arms around Hizashi's arm as if to stop him. "You need to help me, I have to get to All Might."
"I can't, Midoriya, I’m sorry. They're going to need me..."
"All for One is coming."
Hizashi froze and stared down at him with wide eyes as hard, ice-cold terror slid down his spine. He knew who All for One was. Shouta had demanded answers after All Might's last fight against the mad when his kids had forced themselves right into the middle of it and Hizashi had been there for the conversation. And they had both seen what a man who claimed to be working for All for One had turned people, had turned Oboro, into. Shouta was sure there were still things being kept from them and after the little magic trick, Izuku had just performed Hizashi was inclined to believe it.
"Is that reason for all of this?" he demanded softly. “This whole war to break him out?”
"No...yes...I don't know," Izuku said softly. "They're after....they're after me...they're after my quirk."
Hizashi opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again. The Boogie Man of Japan, a man who All Might spoke as his greatest enemy, a man who had come close twice to killing All Might, was after a sixteen-year-old kid? None of this made any sense, none of it felt real, yet it somehow all made perfect sense. This felt like something out of an old novel. But apparently, this was Hizashi's life now. Dealing with shadows and shapeshifters.
"Why are they after your quirk?"
"He wants it back."
"Back?" Hizashi asked sharply.
Many rumors swirled around about All for One. That he could take and give quirks. Certainly, the monsters he'd had the doctor create had more than one quirk at their disposal so at least some of those rumors must be true on some level.
"Shigaraki has a quirk that lets him sense where I am...or sense where my quirk is," Midoriya said quietly.
"Search," Hizashi muttered softly as realization his him and more pieces slotted into place. "Ragdoll's quirk, the one they took from her."
"All for One might have it too, we don't exactly know if he can keep copies of the quirks he gives away or not but either way they'll be able to track me here," Midoriya said with a grimace. "I should have never let them bring me here. I'm putting everyone in danger by being here."
Hizashi wanted to argue against that but he couldn't it was the truth and clearly, Midoriya already knew it. Still, it wasn’t the boy’s fault. He hadn't exactly been in a position to argue with anyone at the time, not in the condition he'd been brought in under.
"I can't stay here, I can't! And neither can All Might, he doesn’t have...." the boy trailed off and grimaced and Hizashi could see the weight of the secrets the boy was carrying written on his face. “If they can’t get me…”
"They’ll go after All Might instead…” Hizashi finished with a frown. He couldn't argue against that logic. All for One had already tried to kill All Might twice and they’d been fighting each other for decades. There was no reason he wouldn’t try again. Especially if they wanted to get Midoriya out into the open where they could get to him.
"I can't let something happen to him," Midoriya pleaded. "My mom is safe, Mr. Nedzu promised me she'd be safe and I have to believe him but All Might is too stubborn to go into hiding if I'm not with him and I can't stay here so...we’ll have to go together. Please, Present Mic Sir, I can't do this by myself."
Hizashi let out a slow, pained sigh. There were so many words bouncing around in his head, so many excuses he could give this boy. He wouldn't even need to try too hard. There was currently a breakout going on at the highest security prison in the country. He was needed there and saying that wouldn't be a lie.
But...he stared down at the boy's wide pleading eyes and knew that wouldn't be the answer he'd give him. Even if it wasn't clear that Midoriya was somehow wrapped up at the very center of everything going on he'd still give him the same answer. This was one of Shouta's students, this was one of his KIDS, this was one of Hizashi's kids.
There was only one choice to be made.
Still, that didn't make the thought of actually going through with it any easier. He'd have to leave every behind to fend for themselves. He'd have to leave Shouta behind without saying goodbye. Shouta wasn't even out of the woods yet, not completely, and even if he did make it through all the surgeries his recovery would be an incredibly hard journey. Hizashi would be leaving him to face that alone. Leaving him to find out about Nemuri from someone else. They still hadn't even dealt fully with the fall out of finding out the truth about Oboro. He turned and stared over at the closed door to Shouta's room. That made his choice even clearer. He knew without a doubt Shouta would already be moving, he wouldn't hesitate to help Midoriya and Hizashi shouldn't either.
"Okay," he says gently, resting his hand against Midoriya's head. "We'll get both of you to somewhere safe."
In his head, he tries to make it only about that. Simply about getting Midoriya to All Might and then getting them both to a safe house somewhere far away from UA. But even as he thinks it. Even as he says it out loud he knows it's not going to be that simple. As his teacher, Midoriya is in his care. Once he leaves this building with the kid it would only be more true. Whatever journey the boy was about to go on Hizashi was going to be by his side for as long as he could.
"Thank you," Midoriya said softly the breath leaving his body in relief.
Hizashi let him relax for just a moment but knew they wouldn't have much time. They had to get out of there before someone noticed Midoriya was missing or before someone else came to push Hizashi into going to help deal with the breakout. The fact that there was no one in the hall already was more than a little bit suspicious. He glanced over to the corner of the ceiling and made eye contact with the camera there. While he didn't think that Nedzu was sitting up there watching them while there was an actual emergency going on that could potentially end up right on their doorstep he did not doubt that the principal had a hand at giving them privacy. He definitely knew more about what was going on with all of this than he'd ever let on to either Shouta or Hizashi.
A few blessed moments of almost quiet passed and then Hizashi forced himself to move. He shifted his weight and slid his arms underneath Midoriya's and moving as carefully as possible got them both up to their feet. The movement jostled the stand and pulled at the IV in the boy's arm causing him to cry out in pain which was followed by another twitch and a more intense moan. With a sigh, Hizashi ran a soothing hand over the spot and peeled back the tape holding it in place.
"Sorry 'bout this, Kiddo," he muttered softly. "This is going to hurt a bit."
Then he gritted his teeth and pulled the IV out. The kid barely flinched and Hizashi didn't know if it was because of the crazy high pain tolerance he'd built up or because he was already in so much pain that a bit more was barely noticeable. Probably some combination of both. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the spare handkerchief he kept there for just such a situation and pressed it against the now bleeding wound. The boy slumped against him again with a hiss of pain. Any hope that he might be able to walk out of the building under his own power disappeared not that Hizashi had thought there’d be much of a chance of that, to begin with.
He moved quickly, adjusting his stance he pulled Midoriya up into his arms gently. Then he adjusted him with as little jostling as he could manage until the boy was tucked securely against his chest. Then he turned and stared at the closed door to Shouta's room.
'Please still be here when I get back, Shou,' he thought to himself.
Then he turned on his heel, took a deep breath, and ran.
* * *
The End