Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The alarm clock on the table buzzed noisily. Hitoshi raised a hand out from within the comfortable cocoon of blankets he’d curled himself into and fumbled with the snooze button for the second time that morning, groaning when he pressed the wrong button and disabled the alarm function. 

Ignoring the everpresent elephant sitting on his chest, Hitoshi yanked his blanket off and dragged himself out of his bed, wincing as his warmed feet met the chilled floorboards. Exhaustion clung to his skin and chipped away at the smile he had forced onto his lips as he passed the full-body mirror beside his bed. 

Shame and disgust warred within him at the realisation that he was still wearing his school uniform from the previous day. He grimaced as he looked down at his uniform, crumpled by movement and creased at the sleeves. At least he’d had the foresight to remove his dirty socks last night. 

Standing in front of the mirror felt weirdly intimate. Uncomfortable. Every imperfection surfaced, feeding the insecurity that tightened around his lungs like a long-bodied snake, hungry and intent on tearing him apart. 

Am I getting worse again? he thought bitterly, meeting his own eyes in the mirror. He bit back a sigh at the ring of dark bruises beneath his eyes that revealed his struggle to both fall asleep and wake up. He steadfastly ignored the bruise on his jaw and right cheekbone. Then again, I can't really get worse if I was never better in the first place.

This realisation was unsatisfying, as with everything else in his bleak life. He was doomed to live a life of averages, false pretences and calculated failures. He was marching towards a certain death that had never felt any closer than in this moment. Unfortunately, that was the most thrilling thing in his sedentary life.

Re-knotting his tie, Hitoshi prepared himself and left his bedroom, school bag in one hand and a handful of wasted opportunities in the other. 

He carefully shut the door behind himself and he scoped out the hallway, listening quietly for the familiar sound of footsteps or the clatter of pots and pans. Relief flooded him as he heard neither.

He only realised how foolish and pre-emptive his relief had been when he stepped into the kitchen and saw his foster mother sitting at the dining table, thumbing through stacks of envelopes and bills. A cigarette was dangling from her fingers, the lit end emanating a lazy trail of smoke that filled the kitchen with the pungent smell of tobacco. 

Hitoshi froze in the doorway as he processed the scene before him. He was torn between either holding his ground or hastily retreating, both acts of defeat in her eyes. 

Ultimately, the choice was made for him as Masako’s cold eyes darted towards him, the frown on her face twisting into a sneer as she pressed the end of the cigarette to her mouth and inhaled, before crushing the end of the butt into an ashtray placed conveniently close to her forearm.

Hitoshi averted his eyes and made to step back, until her voice drowned out the panic and replaced it with fear.

“You’re worth nothing to the government,” she spat, flinging a handful of papers at him. The papers scattered across the grimy linoleum floor, within arm’s reach of him.

Masako’s hands trembled as she plucked another cigarette from a small black carton. She placed it in her mouth and lit the end with a single flick of the sparkwheel. She was a chain smoker through-and-through.

Hitoshi kept his eyes trained on her as he hastily picked up one of the papers off the floor, eager to get his hands on documentation related to his living arrangement. 

As his eyes flickered over the document, the deep well of resentment within his chest grew deeper. He forced his apathetic facial expression to stay in place as he noted the sizeable amount of money that the government was depositing into Masako’s account every fortnight. 

Money that he knew, without even checking, was intended to pay for his food, education, clothes, and other basic material needs.

He swallowed back the anger that rose inside of him as he clenched the paper in his fist, staring fixedly at the fortnightly allowance that Masako was receiving from the government to meet the bare minimum of her requirement as a foster parent.

There was so much money being siphoned off to her, and yet not once had she ever put any of the money towards him or his needs. He was willing to bet, with money that he didn’t have, that every cent of the fostering payment was going towards extra packs of smokes and beer. 

“I should be getting more for having to live with a villain,” Masako muttered hoarsely, taking another drag of the cancer stick in her hand. She looked up at him with revulsion. “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

Hitoshi heeded her demand without objection, grateful for the dismissal so that he could escape her wrath. As he left, he scrunched the paper he’d been clutching into a ball and shoved it in his pocket. 

Tossing his bag over his shoulder, he abandoned his plan to grab a bowl of cereal in favour of heading back to his room. The relief of leaving her oppressive presence was almost enough to drain him of his anger.

Masako would get rid of him soon enough and Hitoshi would be prepared. Like always, he never stood a chance.

Chapter Text

Hitoshi snuck out of the front door after slipping on his worn-out school shoes. After a brisk walk, he found himself on a train headed for U.A. 

He fell into his usual routine - gobbled down a protein bar that tasted like dirt and stale chocolate, took his medicine, and applied a thin layer of concealer to any noticeable bruises on his face (using a compact mirror he stole from the dollar shop), before starting on his English essay. 

He glanced at the digital clock on the wall of the carriage. The red numbers glared back at him: 8.23AM.

He dug his nails into his forearm, trying not to panic at the fact that he was going to be late to homeroom. A quick glance out of the window was enough to confirm his fears. Hitoshi hastily packed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. If he sprinted to U.A. after getting off at the next stop, he could potentially make it to homeroom before it ended.

This is what you get for oversleeping, he thought with frustration. Hitoshi raked his nails down his arm to ward off the panic-induced thought spiral.

By the time he reached homeroom, students were already rushing out. Defeated, he made his way to his first class, in a sour mood because he’d missed homeroom for the first time in a while. 

His muscles burned from the strain of running a greater distance than he was used to. Exhausted and already wishing for the day to end, Hitoshi plugged his earphones in and blended into the crowd of students trailing to their next class.

The day passed quickly in a blur. By the time Hitoshi snapped back into awareness, it was lunch time. 

Steering clear of the cafeteria like the plague (because after the Sports Festival, despite his classmates claiming his quirk was really cool, they started to send him suspicious looks during class before avoiding him altogether, even going out of their way to exclude him from class activities), Hitoshi found himself climbing the wizened tree outside the U.A. building.

He settled on the sturdiest branch he could find, rough bark digging into his back as he leaned against the trunk. He rearranged his backpack to turn it into a makeshift pillow before curling up on the branch to take a nap. 

Out of sight, out of mind. Just how he liked it.

Hitoshi closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves, the chattering of birds perched in the trees, the crackling of twigs under combat boots.

Wait—

Hitoshi cracked a bleary eye open, nearly falling off of the branch. He stared at the man who was standing beneath the tree he’d been napping on, his depthless black eyes narrowed. For a brief moment, Hitoshi thought a homeless stranger had wandered onto U.A. property. Except he recognised the steel-alloy scarf piled around the man’s shoulders, his black shoulder-length hair, and the fatigue that shrouded the man like a winter coat.

Pro Hero Eraserhead - the Hero Course teacher - stood underneath the tree, hands tucked into his pockets lazily, half-lidded eyes staring up at him. 

Hitoshi’s mouth went dry. He felt his pulse start to race as his heart began to thunder. 

He scrambled into a sitting position, mind racing for some kind of excuse. His favourite Pro Hero was right in front of him . He wasn’t prepared, hadn’t expected such a thing to happen . He tried not to let his panic show on his face, forcefully clenching his jaw to stop himself from openly gaping.

But—what if Eraserhead recognised me from the Sports Festival? Did I actually manage to gain his attention? Fuck, fuck, fuck— 

His rapidly spiralling train of thought was cut short by Eraserhead’s flat voice.

“You should be in the cafeteria, kid.”

Any hope he’d harboured of being recognised was crushed by the blank expression on Eraserhead’s face. He didn’t look like he remembered who Hitoshi was. Then again, why would he? He didn’t have a flashy quirk nor a boisterous personality, and he certainly didn’t come from a wealthy family with connections to the Pro Hero industry. Hitoshi wasn’t memorable, not in the slightest.

Sometimes he was certain they’d gotten his quirk wrong. At times, it felt like his real quirk was invisibility because when people looked at him, it always felt like they were looking through him. He had a habit of checking behind himself to see if the people who he assumed were looking at him were actually eyeing someone else.

Then again, Hitoshi had a knack for blending in. Years of being treated like he didn’t exist had taught him the art of inhabiting as little space as possible in order to avoid harm. He forced himself into the corners of rooms, camouflaged himself into the walls, and hid in the shadows of other students. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault but his own that he was too good at shrinking in spaces he didn’t belong in.

Perhaps that was the reason Masako never left a meal out for him - she’d simply forgotten he existed. The thought was sobering.

Hoping for anything better than what he had was stupid, juvenile, naive . He was clinging to a pipe dream. Hope had never gotten him anywhere in life. It was hopeless. 

He was wasting his time - always balanced on the edge of losing it all because he wanted to believe that maybe somewhere out there, someone cared enough to patiently plant themselves in his life and grow on him. Placing all his cards in one hand without a failsafe was a foolish choice, and Hitoshi had never been a risk taker (except for where it mattered).

“Kid?” 

He jerked back to the present, so startled at hearing Eraserhead speak that he slipped off of the branch. In a split second, he was dangling from Eraserhead’s capture scarf. The steel-alloy material dug into his ribs, sending dull waves of pain through his body before the material loosened enough for him to collapse to his knees on the grass.

Hitoshi wished for the ground to swallow him whole as he clumsily pushed himself to his feet, arm instinctively cradling his tender ribs. 

“Fuck,” he cursed, wincing at the pain.

“Language,” Eraserhead said dryly. 

Hitoshi flinched, embarrassed at the terrible first impression he was making to the man who had inspired him to pursue his dreams. Eraserhead crossed his arms and scrutinised him. Hitoshi noticed with faint horror that the man was staring at the arms he’d wrapped around his ribs. “Are you injured?”

He squirmed under the eyes on him, lowering his hands from his ribs to appear nonchalant, despite the pain that rocketed through him. 

“N-No,” he blurted, lying through his teeth. If the doubtful look Eraserhead sent him was any indication that he was a God-awful liar, he chose to ignore it. 

“Sure,” the man drawled, looking tired and severely underpaid. “At least try to look genuine when you lie.” Hitoshi flushed under his scrutiny. “Why aren’t you eating in the cafeteria?”

Because my classmates are scared of me, he thought bitterly. He had enough tact to refrain from voicing this aloud. The school would call it quirk discrimination. But how could it be—considering everyone in his life so far had been content to treat him differently on the basis of his so-called villanous quirk?

Eraserhead raised an eyebrow. Hitoshi was embarrassed to realise that he’d never answered his question. He made sure his face didn’t betray his emotions, relying on his years of practice which made it easy to hide the whirlpool of emotions growing inside of him.

“Um, I prefer it out here,” he admitted, shuffling his feet on the ground, hands playing with a string on the hem of his school blazer. “It’s too noisy in there.”

Black eyes stared at him, emotions Hitoshi could not for the life of him decipher flickering in his eyes briefly. 

“Really?” Eraserhead mused, gaze piercingly intrigued as though Hitoshi were a puzzle he was trying to figure out. Hitoshi ducked his head, hating how transparent he felt. He tugged his sleeves over his trembling hands to hide them. 

Eraserhead sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Yeah?” Hitoshi was confused . This was the weirdest interaction he’d ever had in his life. “Eraserhead-san…?” 

That got the Pro Hero’s undivided attention. Eraserhead looked down at him sharply. “You know my hero name?”

Hitoshi flushed again, stomach filled with bees that clawed at the insides of his chest. Anxiety was a living, thundering presence inside of him. Momentarily, it overshadowed the sad, heavy feeling that had taken shelter in his bones.

“I heard Midoriya call you that once,” Hitoshi lied through gritted teeth, ignoring the guilt that pressed against his trachea. It’s not like he could just admit he had a commissioned poster of Eraserhead stuck to his wall. That was too embarrassing.

Now Eraserhead was going to leave and never approach him again because he was too much. He lied too much, said too little, and chose the easy route for every choice he made. 

Hitoshi was born for villainy. His current deception proved his innate tendency towards disloyalty and isolation. He was simply too much.

Too much, his birth mother had said before she left him at the orphanage in his earliest, and only, memory of her.

Too much.

He cast a furtive glance up at Eraserhead, startled to see the look of exasperation on his face. He readied himself for the harsh rejection he’d expected since their first words had been exchanged, trying to calm his pounding heart with quick, timed breaths. This was the part where his childhood hero walked away because Hitoshi was a liability. 

“...That sounds like him.” Eraserhead sounded a mix between amused and flattered. Hitoshi waited for the other shoe to drop (because there was always another shoe, always another consequence waiting for him, always sonemthing to fear), dreading it unlike anything he’d ever dreaded before. Then, Eraserhead said, “You had lunch yet, kid?” 

Hitoshi was dreaming. He had to be.

That was the only reasonable explanation for whatever was happening. Hitoshi was still at his foster house in the empty bedroom with its scratched walls, breathing in stale air and the musty smell of aged moth balls; stomach growling, hunger pangs jolting him from his sleep, delirious from the pain—imagining this whole thing up because Hitoshi was not lucky enough for the odds to be in his favour for once in his goddamn life. This was a fever-dream, spurred on by sickness and infection. Nothing but a delusion borne from sleep deprivation, malnutrition and emotional exhaustion. Or another symptom entirely: psychosis.

When he found his voice, he rasped, “No, Eraserhead-san.”

Eraserhead turned on his heel and started walking in the direction of the U.A. building. Hitoshi stared at his back, watching him walk off with confusion muddling his brain, until Eraserhead paused at the foot of the stairs, tilting his head back to look at him with an eyebrow raised expectantly. 

He wants me to follow him…?

Hitoshi stumbled over, breathing heavily from the pain radiating through his bruised body. He caught up with Eraserhead, trailing a little behind him so as not to bother him.

“Um, Eraserhead-san…?” 

“Call me Aizawa-sensei, kid.”

Face scrunching up in bemusement, Hitoshi obeyed without question. Rules helped. It was familiar territory and gave him something to latch onto and fall back on in times of crisis. “Eras-- Aizawa-sensei, where are we going?”

The Pro Hero didn’t look at him nor answer him as he continued walking through the halls of U.A., leading Hitoshi to chase after him and maintain stride to keep up. Soon enough, he found them standing outside of Class 1-A. He blinked rapidly, looking up in astonishment at the classroom, although he made sure his face gave nothing away. 

That wasn’t too difficult. He had years of practice hiding his feelings as most of his foster placements were meaner to him when he expressed any sort of emotion. After a few weeks of being placed, he’d mastered schooling his expression into a constant, resting apathy. Even at his happiest, he resisted the urge to smile, letting the blankness wash over him. It was a defense mechanism that ensured his safety. 

The only exception had been him. He’d desired a reaction and did everything he could to elicit one. Hitoshi shuddered and shoved him out of his mind.

“Get in,” Eraserhead - Aizawa, his mind corrected - grumbled, unlocking the door. Hitoshi didn’t need to be told twice, experience having taught him that disobedience often led to more suffering than was worth.

Hitoshi stood inside the empty classroom, uncomfortable in the wide, open space. Aizawa hadn’t instructed him to sit down so he continued to hover near the door, even as the Pro Hero took a seat at his desk, crawling inside a worn, yellow sleeping bag that looked like it’d seen better days. 

Hitoshi tried not to let his stupefaction appear on his face at the teacher’s antics. He’d heard stories in passing about Class 1-A’s mannerisms and odd behaviours, but he’d  never expected to be on the receiving end of it. 

Actually, that’s not true…considering I fought Midoriya at the Sports Festival, he thought idly, remembering the sincere and determined green-haired boy who’d outsmarted him, much to his dismay, and had continued to make (failed) attempts to befriend him since.

Aizawa was zipped up in the obnoxiously yellow sleeping bag, black hair hanging around his face like a constant shadow, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. He looked like a tired caterpillar. Hitoshi swallowed back a nervous laugh, uncertainty swimming in his stomach at the oddity that sat before him.

Minutess passed. Aizawa appeared to be waiting for something that Hitoshi couldn’t figure out. This had to be some sort of test, right? He figured there was something he was missing. There had to be. Why else would the Hero Course homeroom teacher call him to his room?

“Are you going to take a seat or just stand there?”

Hitoshi flushed, unsure whether Aizawa wanted him to sit or stand. From the way he’d phrased it, Hitoshi tentatively assumed that he was directing him to sit down.

He preferred when adults laid out their expectations clearly. When they chose to withhold information and rules it made him feel nervous, as though he were a specimen under a microscope being prodded at every angle. 

He took a seat at the desk closest to the door, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs. This was his only chance. 

“Do you remember me from the Sports Festival?” he asked, lowering his expectations as he eyed a stain on the carpet, careful to keep his tone neutral. He kept his head down, readying himself for rejection. He didn’t want Aizawa to see just how crushed he’d be if his question was met with a confused, blank stare.

“Strawberry or raspberry, Shinsou Hitoshi?” Aizawa said in response.

Stunned, Hitoshi mumbled out his preference despite not knowing what the Pro Hero was referring to. All that mattered, though, was that Aizawa knew of him from the Sports Festival. 

His heart sang, anxiety replaced by a sudden, building anticipation. For what, he had no idea. He hadn’t felt this excited since the morning he’d stepped into U.A. for the first time to complete the entrance exam (and had walked out miserable, full of self-loathing and with bloodied thighs that he’d frantically ripped into on the school bathroom floor after the biased, impractical exam had ended).

Aizawa pulled something out of his desk and tossed it to him. Hitoshi caught it easily, a reflex he took no pride in considering the reason he’d developed such a reliable instinct to flying projectiles. It came from years of having glass bottles thrown at him - or whatever objects his fosters could get their hands on in a quick, violent rage. In middle school, it was heavy textbooks and wadded paper.

The cool plastic in his hand felt nice against his skin. He read the label - strawberry-flavoured jelly pouch. Hitoshi bit back a grin. So this is what Aizawa meant.. 

It wasn’t much. It paled in comparison to the food served in the cafeteria, but it was more than Hitoshi ever imagined receiving from an adult who knew of his quirk. 

A mumbled thanks slipped out of his mouth as he cracked open the sealed cap.  

Aizawa had located his own jelly pouch from somewhere in the desk and was in the process of twisting the cap off to drink it. 

There was a comment on the tip of his tongue but he swallowed it back with a hesitant sip from the jelly pouch, prepared to try only a little in case his stomach turned. He found himself delightfully surprised at the bittersweet flavour, and slightly repulsed by the thick texture. He could definitely see why Aizawa liked it. 

In all honesty, he hadn’t expected to be able to differentiate the flavours. Lately everything had taken to tasting like ash and cardboard in his mouth, and that was only on the days where he had an appetite at all. Food had always been a common enemy to him. Every meal was a battle he was never prepared to win. Yet, today it came easily, despite the nausea that stirred in his stomach and the anxiety that crawled across his skin.

The room fell into relative silence. It was broken by Aizawa as he said, “I assume you want to be a hero.”

Hitoshi nodded his head eagerly in affirmation. He wanted to be a hero more than anything. He had never wanted nor wished for something more deeply.

“Why?” Eraserhead said, his question leaving Hitoshi blind-sided and a little defiant. The loaded question was like a fired bullet taken to the chest.

He wondered if Aizawa knew what that simple question did to him; how it cut him open, scraped out his insides, and made him feel vulnerable and ashamed and so, so desperate. In a perfect world, the answer would come easily to Hitoshi - I want to save people.

But this wasn’t a perfect world. Hitoshi could vividly remember the cold, rainy nights where he had laid in bed, on the ground, under a bridge or on a bench contemplating that exact question. Why did he want to be a hero so desperately that he could see no alternate path in the foreseeable future?

Aizawa didn’t know about his childhood prayers late into the night, pleading for a hero to save him from the monsters under his bed that took the form of his foster parents. 

Aizawa didn’t know that some nights he dreamt Eraserhead would rescue him from the broken homes he’d escaped from time and time again. Aizawa didn’t know that some nights he struggled to sleep because the thought that other kids (like him) were hurting too - labelled villains by the time their quirks appeared - made it difficult for him to close his eyes and turn a blind eye. 

He squeezed the jelly pouch in his hand, watching the plastic twist under his fingers. “I want to prove that even people with a villainous quirk like mine can help others.” He looked up. “That’s okay...right?”

Aizawa looked him dead in the eye. “It’s naive to believe all heroes have pure motivations when most have reached their current position because it started off with personal gain. Spite is a pretty powerful motivator and if that’s what drives you, then so be it,” he said. 

Hitoshi baulked at the response. He hadn’t expected to be taken seriously. This was the first time an adult had made the effort to listen to him and validate his thoughts. 

For the Eraserhead to tell him his motivation was reasonable… Well, Hitoshi would never forget this day, ever.

A spark of hope flickered into existence within his chest. 

“I have to make one thing clear, though,” Aizawa interjected. “You don’t have what it takes to be a hero–.”

Hitoshi jumped up, chair clattering to the floor behind him. Anger flooded his veins and coloured his vision red. The fire that had started in his chest dwindled as the tiny spark of hope was extinguished by a single comment. 

Fists clenched at his sides tight enough to draw blood, he glared at the floor instead of Eraserhead. Masako would have a field trip if she heard about this. His stomach turned violently. The elephant on his chest bellowed, drowning out any and all sound.

“You think I got this far because people believed in me?” Hitoshi heard himself laugh derisively, fury drying out the tears that had sprung to his eyes. “What a load of bullshit. I came this far because I believed in me. You’re not the first person to tell me I can’t be a hero and I can guarantee you won’t be the last. So screw you and your understanding since it’s clear you don’t know shit.”

He grabbed his bag and moved to storm out of the room, self-hatred and revulsion sizzling inside his chest because he’d let his guard down and thought for a second that someone might actually believe in him. He was stupid for thinking it would work out. 

Because his childhood hero had just told him that he couldn’t become a hero.   

Maybe this was the universe’s way of saying that Hitoshi Shinsou didn’t deserve good things; not in the past, not in the present, and certainly not in the future. He would spend the rest of his life working for it but it would be futile. He was Sisyphus, punished by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity - straining for freedom and desperate for relief. Fighting, fighting, fighting. 

“Shinsou, stop.” 

The words made him freeze. Hitoshi didn’t turn to look back, afraid that if did he might just shatter into a million broken pieces. Afraid that he’d be beyond repair. He willed the angry, helpless tears in his eyes to disappear. The best day of his life was quickly turning into his worst one.

“What?” he hissed through gritted teeth, his fingers white-knuckling the straps of his bag. He glared at a small scratch on the wall of the classroom, wishing he was anywhere but here – wishing he were dead.

There was a tired exhale. “You jumped to conclusions, kid. If you hadn’t cut me off, you would have heard me say that you don’t have what it takes to be a hero…yet . Because you have potential and I don’t want to see it go to waste in Gen Ed. With intensive training, you can be a hero, too.”

Hitoshi’s mind went blank. He felt like the epitome of the blue screen of death in human form. 

As if that wasn’t enough to stump him, Aizawa continued, saying, “If you want to be a hero, meet me in Gym Gamma at 3.30PM on Monday for one-on-one training. Be sure to bring your P.E. uniform. Inform your parents that training will finish at 5.30PM should you decide to attend. That will be all.”

Hitoshi sucked in a deep breath and ran. For the first time in his life, it felt like he was running towards something good instead of running from something bad.

Chapter Text

He snuck back into the house at midnight, having spent the rest of the day in the library and then at Dagobah Beach, watching the sun set in hues of orange and molten red. The spare key was hidden in the soil of the potted plant at the front door, where Hitoshi had put it upon realising that Masako didn’t care about whether he’d have to sleep outside if the door was locked. He knew from experience that no matter how loudly he begged to be let in, protected from the biting wind and freezing rain, she would not waver.

The rules in this foster home weren’t too hard to follow. They were pretty familiar to Hitoshi, who had gone through enough placements to know what was and wasn’t acceptable. The only rule his case worker had designated that all his foster parents never disagreed with was that under no circumstances was he to ask a question. 

He wasn’t even allowed to speak. If he did, they would bring out the muzzle - and so far, in all his years in the system, not a single person had come forward and challenged it. It was a hard pill to swallow, that physically restraining him was a line they had no qualms about crossing, but he had a villain’s quirk. It was only natural that people feared him - feared what he could do to them, the things he could make them do. 

Still, Hitoshi found it a little absurd that they thought he had the ability to harm them. He was the kind of person that couldn’t even kill a fly, that spent any and all money he scrounged up on cans of wet food to feed the stray cats in the alleyways, that cried during sappy movies and reported any crime he stumbled upon no matter how minor.

But that didn’t matter. Because he had a villain’s quirk. Because there was a more than likely chance that he would turn to the dark side. It never mattered that Hitoshi dreamt of being a hero - because to those around him, since his quirk manifested, hero work was never in the equation.

Back inside his room, Hitoshi flicked on his phone light and shut the door behind him. Masako had complained many times about how bright his room light was, so now he gave her no reason to storm into his room in the early hours of the morning to rip him a new one. 

Not that she needed one, but it made him feel safer when he erred on the side of quiet caution.

He shoved his school backpack under a shelf sticking out from the wall and curled up on the small bed—if he could even call it that. It was a thrown together bed, two mattresses stacked, a thin blanket covering the top and another for him to slip under on colder nights. In summer, the small room was unbearably stuffy to the point where he didn’t bother coming back, preferring to find a park bench to vacate for the night. 

She’d never bothered to get him a proper bed, claiming that she was still on the fence about approving his application. His case worker didn’t bother to show up to meetings anymore so his long line of foster parents didn’t put effort into their facade - Hitoshi was sure it was because Mr. Ishimoto was expecting to be called in soon about having to transfer him again. 

(Hitoshi wished he had the choice to not show up either.)

His joints and spine were often stiff from sleeping on the board-like mattress with only a thin blanket under him. But he was used to it - used to the muscle stiffness, the constant ache in his bones, the knotted muscles and fatigued flesh, the migraines. He’d learned to live with it and breathe through it. It was familiar - and it helped that most familiar things he had in life often brought him immense pain.

Tonight was fairly warm, and yet he curled up onto his side, knees tucked to his chest, and drew the blanket over his bruised body. He thought about the wildly unexpected day he’d had. He thought of Aizawa, of his strangeness. Of the words he’d never thought anyone—much less his favourite pro hero—would utter in his direction.

You can be a hero, too.

It cycled through his mind, a profoundly powerful statement that left him hoping, confused, yearning and in complete and utter awe. Childish longing sprouted in his chest, clashing with logic. A nostalgic desire he’d spent years suppressing because his objective always felt out of reach - always felt like a dream - not a tangible, present reality that he could grasp with both hands if he reached out hard enough.

It wasn’t even a question of whether he would take Aizawa’s offer to be his private student. That was set in stone the moment the location unravelled from his mouth in Class 1-A.

Aizawa was giving a chance that he wasn’t even sure he deserved. He was giving him a chance that none other in his life had ever offered him - had ever even entertained with him. He was opening a door that Hitoshi had been deceived into believing didn’t exist. 

Because Aizawa, with complete disclosure of his villainous quirk, had looked at him and said those words that nobody in Hitoshi’s life had ever said to him - You can be a hero, too.

And even if he wasn’t sure he really deserved the chance, Hitoshi would cling to this like a gift from the Gods. He would make certain Aizawa never regretted uttering those words.

By the time Monday rolled around, the bruises on Hitoshi’s ribs had turned a sickly yellowish brown colour, fading fast with time. Fortunately, it no longer hurt to move around and lie down; something that would have no doubt been difficult to explain away during training with Aizawa.

Hitoshi was out of the house by eight, excitement coming in short bursts of adrenaline that coaxed him out of bed and onto the first train heading for U.A. It didn’t matter that the elephant on his chest had gotten heavier during the weekend every time Masako glared at him and reminded him about how much of a ‘waste of space’ he was. It didn’t matter, because today was the first time in years that he felt genuinely grateful to be alive. 

(He didn’t realise that the warmth in his chest would be short-lived. If he had known, he wouldn’t have encouraged it to grow, wouldn’t have let the spindly branches dig into his ribcage.)

It was only during his third period that he started to feel a sense of dread, the creeping shadow of doubt eating away at his excitement to train with Aizawa. Familiar insecurities started to surface. 

Because Hitoshi had a knack for disappointing just about everyone who ever knew him - including his birth parents and every foster parent since. 

He was ill-fated when it came to adults. Would Aizawa be any different, or was Hitoshi bound to fail to meet his expectations? Would Aizawa give up on him when he realised that his trainee was a pathetic excuse of a hero-to-be who would never make it in the field? Would he turn away in disgust when Hitoshi was inevitably pushed to reveal his flaws? 

The dread turned into anxiety, broiling in his stomach, butterflies blending his insides and turning his muscles to jelly. Maybe Aizawa forgot about the offer, maybe he wouldn’t show up, maybe he was fooling Hitoshi to put him in his place—

No! Aizawa-sensei isn’t that kind of person. He wouldn’t play a cruel joke like that , he thought, indignant at the audacity he had to think something so rude about someone so honest.

Then again, Hitoshi didn’t know him. Adults very rarely surprised him with how they behaved. 

But surely Aizawa wouldn’t give him hope only to take it away?

“Shinsou, is everything okay?” 

Hitoshi jolted where he was, head slipping out of his hand and hitting the desk. He groaned and rubbed his forehead, feeling a flush of embarrassment rise to his cheeks. Present Mic stood before him, holding a stack of papers with a concerned frown on his face - and Hitoshi distantly realised he was the only person left in the classroom.

“S-sorry,” he stuttered, averting his eyes and gathering up his class materials. 

“Don’t apologise,” Yamada said gently. “I was meaning to have a chat with you, actually. Do you mind if we talk for a few minutes?”

Hitoshi didn’t bother acknowledging the question, it was rhetorical. He didn’t get why Present Mic even bothered asking him if he minded whether they talked right now - considering he had no say in the matter regardless. He didn’t get why people asked questions that didn’t require an answer. Maybe it was because these kinds of questions served as an illusion to maintain a false sense of free will and agency.

He sat back down, head bowed, waiting for Present Mic to say his piece. This was the part where he would give up on Hitoshi. 

Yamada pulled a chair out from a nearby student desk and settled down in it, facing Hitoshi with a kind smile on his face that eased some of the tension out of his shoulders when he glanced up to gauge the atmosphere.

“I wanted to ask if there’s something going on that I can help you with.” At Hitoshi’s puzzled expression, Present Mic continued, saying, “Your grades have been slipping. I’ve noticed that this has been happening for quite some time - submitting incomplete homework late - but I had hoped it was a one-time thing. It’s beginning to become a pattern and I wanted to check in with you and see what we can do to get you back on track.”

Hitoshi felt the skin of his forehead and chin prickle with nerves. He slipped his right hand under his left sleeve and dug his nails into the supple flesh of his wrist, pressing in deep until the anxiety dwindled. The stinging sensation helped him centre himself so he wouldn’t fall into a full-blown panic attack or burst into tears. The elephant shifted.

Present Mic was looking at him with that warm and encouraging smile of his and Hitoshi felt guilty for wasting his time - for making his job harder than it had to be. 

“Sorry,” he repeated, staring at the surface of his desk. He wasn’t sure whether he was dissociating or just numbed out from the stress of everything. All he knew was that the pain in his wrist wasn’t enough despite how hard he pressed. “Just been busy.”

“Is everything okay at home?” Present Mic asked, eyes searching his face for something Hitoshi hoped he didn’t find.

“Yeah, everything’s good,” Hitoshi lied, forcing a smile on his face. He didn’t know how far to push in situations like this - whether they could tell his smile was brittle and artificial. Maybe they did - maybe they just didn’t care. 

Present Mic didn’t look convinced but he let it go. “Is there something else going on that I should know about?”

“Just, um, been overwhelmed, I guess,” he bluffed, struggling to find the words to string together in order to convince his teacher that everything wasn’t falling apart like it was. “Helping out my family and stuff. I’ll- I’ll do better , Yamada-sensei. I swear, this won’t happen again.” 

The desperation must have been painfully obvious on his face and in his voice because Yamada’s expression softened. “Shinsou, I’m not angry. I’m worried about you. As your teacher it’s my duty to support you with anything you have going on. In fact, if you ever need an extension for any classwork, just come see me after class and we can work something out. Alright?”

He nodded his assent, unable to find the words to communicate the level of gratitude and guilt he was feeling. He didn’t know what he was meant to say.

What he did know was that he would never take Yamada up on his offer. If there was one thing the system had taught him, it was to never reveal your weaknesses to an adult with the power to use it against you.

Regardless, it wasn’t like he could even begin to explain the multitude of reasons why his grades were slipping, plunging headfirst off a cliff he’d created himself from broken bones and sleepless nights. Yamada was looking for answers and Hitoshi didn’t know how to give them. 

He couldn’t just say, I can’t get out of bed most days because my brain hates me so doing homework is physically impossible. Or, And on the days when I can get out of bed, my migraines make it hard to focus. Or, Sometimes I’m just so fucking tired that the mere idea of writing an essay is enough to make me want to throw myself off a bridge. Or, I just don’t feel motivated. Sometimes I sit at my desk and spiral into a panic attack at the thought of picking up a pen because I’m scared of realising that I don’t know how to answer the questions on the sheet. He wasn’t sure that would go over well with his unusually cheerful teacher.

Yamada gave him a bright smile and allowed him to leave. 

Chapter Text

Settled in the crook of the tree, Hitoshi rolled his sleeve down and surveyed the damage, surprised to see the red marks had faded. The skin of his wrist was blotchy and irritated but his nails hadn’t pierced the skin nor left much evidence behind. 

The longer he stared at the surface of his skin, the more disgust he felt towards himself. It was messed up. He knew it was messed up and yet he couldn’t stop, couldn’t break the habit no matter how hard he tried. How could someone like him be a hero when he couldn’t even stop hurting himself? 

Sighing, he tugged his sleeve back up and tipped his head back, closing his eyes to the world. There was something peaceful about nature, about leaving the pressures of a twenty-four seven world and entering the land of temporality. Here, Hitoshi could pretend he didn’t exist. Could pretend he didn’t have anything to be anxious about. 

Here, the elephant on his chest fit right in with the butterflies in his belly. He didn’t even notice it.

“You do realise students aren’t permitted to be outside during lunch break, right?” 

Hitoshi’s eyes snapped open. He could feel the blood leave his face as he met Aizawa’s eyes. The teacher was standing beneath the branch, expression revealing nothing about where he stood on the matter. He felt embarrassed about being caught so easily when he’d made sure to scout the area before climbing onto the tree branch.

“Sorry,” he muttered, slipping his bag onto his shoulders and fixing his hair.

“Have you eaten yet?”

Hitoshi stayed quiet.

“That’s what I thought,” Aizawa drawled. “Come on, kid. Let’s go find you something to eat.” He turned to walk and Hitoshi took the cue to follow him this time.

He wondered if Aizawa would believe him if he said he wasn’t hungry. He wondered if he was even allowed to refuse the offer—because the idea of eating anything today weighed heavily on him. The monster that guarded the back of his throat had returned from vacation, and protested at the very thought of food. 

He wasn’t sure if he could stomach another  jelly pouch, though. The texture had been slightly unsettling (the way the thick, viscous liquid filled his mouth, pressed up against his teeth, slid down his throat—)

He bit down on his tongue as his gag reflex kicked in. The most frustrating part about his eating issues was that some days were better, and some days were worse. Today was one of those days where food was too tangible, too filling, too unappealing. Maybe it was his anxiety about training after school that made him sick, or maybe Hitoshi was just screwed up like that.

He wiped his palms on his pants, tucking them under his elbows to hide the tremble as he sped up to catch up to the pro hero.  

Aizawa said nothing as they walked, didn’t even look back at him to see if he was following, and Hitoshi tried not to feel hurt by that. He didn’t owe him anything—much less a conversation. He was already doing more for him than anyone else had. 

And still the fear lingered. The fear that all of this was a prank made in poor taste, that perhaps the person in front of him was not a teacher, but a student with a quirk that allowed them to shapeshift; that this was a premature joke played on him, and when he arrived at Gym Gamma his classmates would step out into the light and condemn him for villainy he had yet to commit.

Soon enough, Hitoshi found himself back inside 1-A’s homeroom. He wordlessly took a seat at the chair pulled up to the teacher’s desk when Aizawa gestured for him to move. The man slouched into the chair and whipped his phone out, sending off a quick text before looking down at Hitoshi.

“What would you like to eat?” he asked. Hitoshi nervously looked away, unable to hold his gaze as he fiddled with his sleeve. 

“Where…?” he said, trailing off awkwardly. Aizawa seemed to understand though, because a smirk tugged at his lips. Where is the food?

“Hizashi owes me a favour.”

Hitoshi was confused about who he was talking about before realising that Yamada’s first name was Hizashi. It sounded familiar because he’d introduced himself on the first day of class. The casual way in which Aizawa said Present Mic’s name made Hitoshi feel awkward, like he wasn’t meant to be here, bothering the teachers at their lunch break.

“So?” Aizawa prodded. “What do you want? Lunch Rush will make anything.”

The pressure of choosing was a familiar one to Hitoshi. He hated the way it made his skin crawl like he’d come inside after a snowstorm. Anxiety nipped at his fingers as he clutched them together in his lap.

“I’m not that hungry,” he mumbled, pressing his hands deeper into his lap, fingers rubbing against the fabric of his pants. The sensation was soothing. 

Aizawa simply raised an eyebrow, the disbelief clear on his face. “Wanna try that again, kid?”

Hitoshi took a deep breath. He held back the urge to snap at the teacher. It wasn’t Aizawa’s fault that he was being stubborn, it wasn’t his fault that Hitoshi hated eating in front of people more than he hated life or death situations. Aizawa didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his anger. 

The problem was that for the last few years, Hitoshi had found it difficult to stop snarking adults. He assumed it was a result of being silenced at home by adults who drove stakes into his spine, unable to talk back no matter how much pain they loaded his heart with. The bullets remained, however, and so when he was outside of his house it was easy to fire them off. A defence mechanism against things that could hurt but weren’t allowed to.

“Fine,” he said sulkily. “I’ll get whatever you’re having.”

Aizawa looked surprised but recovered quickly, his face falling back into a lazy stare that revealed nothing. He studied Hitoshi’s face for a second, then shrugged, dispelling the tension in the air. He tapped something out on his phone and then tucked it away after confirming that he had no allergies. (Hitoshi tried to see where his phone went but he couldn’t find any pockets on the teacher. He filed that in the back of his mind as just another weird thing about Eraserhead—his invisible spaces for storage).

Despite wanting to ask Aizawa what he ordered for them, Hitoshi kept quiet. People liked him better when his mouth was shut. And he desperately wanted his childhood role model to like him, even if he knew that would never happen, not with the horrible impressions he’d most likely left the pro hero with.

It didn’t help that he was still partially convinced this whole thing was a cruel joke. 

His fingers hadn’t stopped trembling. Hitoshi tucked them under his thighs, careful to hide them from the underground hero. He didn’t need Aizawa thinking he was a crazy, anxious kid who could barely keep it together during school.

Even if that’s exactly what you are , he thought to himself self-deprecatingly. A scared loser with big dreams.

And even if Aizawa was an underground hero with more tricks up his sleeve than he could count on two hands, Hitoshi had ten years of experience behind him in evading suspicion about his eating habits around observant adults.

It was stupid to stress over this. He had an advantage that Aizawa certainly didn’t have - certainly couldn’t have.

That advantage was knowledge. Because Hitoshi knew what his issues were while Aizawa didn’t. And because he knew, he could warp the truth. A lie here, a truth there. He would be none the wiser. (It didn’t matter if the guilt of his deceit ate away at him at odd hours of the night, fueling his self-hatred. It didn’t matter that sometimes he looked in the mirror and saw what they all saw—a villain).

At some point in the agonisingly slow wait, Aizawa had pulled out a stack of essays and was marking them in front of him. Hitoshi hated the silence because it made him feel like he was doing something wrong, made him conscious of his every breath, every squeak of the chair against the linoleum floor. Conscious of every sound he made that Aizawa could hear. He wondered if Aizawa could hear his heart beat thumping loudly in his chest, a hammer strike against a nail, the rush of blood through his veins. He didn’t want to be a distraction but he felt like one. 

His existence had always been a distraction—and that universal truth didn’t stop because someone acknowledged him. 

Finally , after what felt like years, the door burst open and Present Mic shouted, “Shouta!” like an overexcited child. He was carrying a plastic bag at his side, filled with what Hitoshi assumed was their food.

He shrunk in the chair, shoulders curled over as he tried to go unseen. Maybe Aizawa hadn’t told Yamada about him and the English teacher would leave without a word in his direction. He still felt guilty for lying to the man earlier, and he wasn’t keen on seeing the voice hero so soon after their talk.

Yamada approached the desk and dumped the plastic bag onto the messy piles of paper, careful not to spill anything everywhere. Aizawa sent him a half-hearted glare and dug into the bag, sliding a container across the table to Hitoshi before grabbing his own. 

“Hey Shinsou!” Yamada chirped loudly, flashing him a grin. Hitoshi muttered a greeting back, unable to muster a more excited reaction.

Aizawa eyed them both. “You know him?” he grunted, tearing his chopsticks apart. 

Yamada’s face brightened. “The little listener is in my English class!” He sounded so proud of that fact that Hitoshi flushed, something warm blooming in his chest. He’d never had a teacher talk about him in such a positive way, especially one that just hours ago had pulled him aside to discuss his poor performance. “Anyway, I gotta run an errand for Nemuri. See ya later.” He flashed them finger guns with a wide smile as he turned to walk off, leaving them alone once again. 

The silence descended again like a weighted blanket. Hitoshi busied himself with prying open the lid of the styrofoam container because he didn’t know where else to look. The smell of soy sauce and soba filled his nose, turning his stomach. He bit down on his tongue as he saw the shiitake and carrots floating within the tray of soba, knowing he couldn’t eat it and dreading the questions that would come if his disgust was noticed.

Even so, he mumbled his gratitude to Aizawa and tore his set of chopsticks apart with shaky hands, digging into the soba and taking his first bite, careful not to accidentally pick up any stray vegetables. He could do this. He could eat the noodles, around the vegetables, avoiding everything that made it hard to breathe. 

He swallowed a few more bites down before the discomfort made itself known, making it hard to continue when his throat closed up and protested any further food. Feeling sick to the stomach, he pushed the soba around in the tray, hesitantly glancing up to see if Aizawa was looking at him; because he couldn’t quite shake the sinking feeling that he was a circus animal being put on display, a bug under a microscope.

But the pro-hero was simply marking student work while eating, eyes flicking between sheets of questions and answers as he read through each page. Hitoshi felt foolish for thinking Aizawa, of all people, would notice him. He had better things to do than stare at him as he ate.

In the end, Hitoshi was the one caught staring as Aizawa lifted his head and met his gaze head-on, left eyebrow raised in a question. “Is there something you wanted to say?” 

Embarrassed to be caught staring so blatantly, Hitoshi ducked his head and averted his gaze, fingers tightening around the chopsticks in his hand. “Just, um… why did you get food for me?” Realising that probably sounded rude, he hastily added, “Not that I don’t appreciate it.”

Aizawa dropped his chopsticks to run his free hand through his hair, and he followed the movement with his eyes, surprised to see the man had finished all of his food. It was a stark contrast to the full meal in front of Hitoshi which would no doubt get the man’s attention, for better or for worse.

“It’s illogical to train on an empty stomach,” he said flatly. 

Having said his part, Aizawa picked up his red marker and returned to marking the essays, seemingly unaware of the relief that filled Hitoshi at his words. In acknowledging the training after-school, it was almost affirmation that this whole thing wasn’t some ruse made up to tear him down. 

The bell rang. Hitoshi picked his bag up and stood. Aizawa said nothing about the barely-touched tray of soba in front of him.

Chapter Text

The bell signalling the end of last period rang, jolting Hitoshi out of his daydream. He grabbed his materials and hurried out of the class, glad to escape the stifling atmosphere of expectations, his heart thrumming in his chest at the prospect of training with Aizawa. Because this was real, this was real, this was real.

It had to be, because if it wasn’t then Hitoshi wasn’t so sure he would ever be the same again. If this was some big joke and he was caught up in the middle and everyone knew except him—then Hitoshi might not make it out whole. Every threat, every taunt, every beating, all of it. Every glare, sneer, accusation; every time someone treated him like a villain, he lost a piece of himself. 

Hitoshi was broken limbs and twisted organs and blank spaces. He was a puzzle that was missing pieces, parts of himself scraped under the fingernails of everyone he’d ever met or even glanced at, a crime scene in everyone’s hands. He was malleable, manipulable, leaving skin and bones and DNA everywhere he went.

People took and took and took . Hitoshi was a life lesson that couldn’t be learnt. A book missing pages, a recipe with no ingredients, a plane without passengers. He was bits and pieces on desert terrain, stretching out for miles, endless sand and drought and storm. 

The more they took, the less he had. He was an unsteady jenga tower and if this was a prank—it would topple him. There was no coming back from something like this, no glue to piece him back together, not when there weren’t enough pieces left in the first place.

Because every night, every morning, every second Hitoshi was stitching himself together, threading cotton string into a zig-zagged pattern that would hold him together; all the flimsy, delicate parts of himself that weren’t gone yet.

This would snap him at the seams.

So with due caution, Hitoshi changed into his gym clothes, nerves sizzling in his body like firecrackers let loose. He wondered if maybe he’d burst into a fiery explosion before he entered the gym and realised . That his life was one big joke after another. 

He left his phone in his locker, praying it was the right choice, that this wasn’t foolish hope but rather a true one. 

Pushing the gym doors open, he ducked his head and entered, silent and attentive. He was on guard, ears catching and dissecting every sound, the wind outside and the muffled chatter and the squeak of his shoes against the floor. Eyes flickering about, into the beams on the ceiling and the shadows in the roof because someone could be up there, watching and waiting to make a move, to tear him apart. 

It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you , he thought to himself when the thought arose that he was overreacting. Better safe than sorry. 

He twisted his foot, prepared to make a run for it when his eyes caught sight of Aizawa standing in the centre of the gym, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Right at him.

Hitoshi gulped, fingers twitching subtly at his sides as he tucked them into the pockets of his gym shorts, shoulders folding in. His breath stuttered in his chest. Aizawa was here, exactly like he said. And Hitoshi had doubted him. Did that make him unworthy? Undeserving? He was an imposter, fooling Aizawa into thinking he was of value to train.

He opened his mouth. After a second thought, he closed it.

Don’t speak unless spoken to. The first unsaid rule. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Hitoshi knew better.

“You’re early,” Aizawa said. He hadn’t moved. Was that a bad sign?

Hitoshi eyed the clock on the far wall, refusing to look at Aizawa. He’d come fifteen minutes early with the intention of scouting the place out, making sure no one could get the drop on him and catch him unaware. 

“Yeah,” he croaked. He stared straight ahead at the wall behind Aizawa.

Aizawa sighed, like he was already done and over it. 

“Good. Let’s run through some warm-ups.”

Hitoshi swallowed down his shock and tried to keep it from his eyes. He didn’t need Aizawa picking up on emotions he’d rather not share. With that, he approached the man warily, standing before him awkwardly.

Aizawa was quiet as they ran through some basic warm-ups. They spent ten minutes on it and Hitoshi ignored the slight burn in his muscles as he copied Aizawa, making sure to copy everything down perfectly. There was no opportunity to mess up, this was it. He couldn’t afford to be anything less than what Aizawa thought he was.

With the warm-ups done, Aizawa started him on running ten laps. They didn’t do anything quirk-related and Hitoshi wasn’t sure whether he was glad because he didn’t have to use it but he also wasn’t sure whether he was frustrated because maybe Aizawa was avoiding it. 

As he ran around the gym, Hitoshi wondered if it was okay for him to be here. He wasn’t exactly hero material. He was a pretty rude person, he didn’t have what it took to be nice in times of crisis. He wasn’t exactly reliable, either, and his quirk was disturbing at best, villainous at worst. 

And…Aizawa would realise that. 

So what did Aizawa see now then? What did he see in Hitoshi that made him believe he could be a hero? Masako, his case worker and every other foster carer who he’d been placed under had all seen something that made Hitoshi unworthy. So what did Aizawa see that was so fundamentally different? 

Regardless, Hitoshi knew that whatever Aizawa had seen wouldn’t last. It never did.

He distantly realised he was on his fourth lap. His legs were burning and his breaths came out short and quick but he continued to run. 

Don’t stop, little lion , a familiar, poisonous voice whispered in his mind. Hitoshi clenched his hands into tight fists as he pushed himself into a fifth lap. Failure is unacceptable.

And he remembered this, as he ran on. A hand on his neck, gripping tightly, clawed nails digging into his flesh as he was tossed to the ground and then forced to his feet. Run. It was a game he liked playing with Hitoshi. A target pressed to his skin, forcing him on out of fear and cold and please don’t and not the room as he chased him around, pushing and pushing him to his limits

His breath was tight, palms bleeding into his nails, heart skyrocketing. Run, little lion, let’s see how far before you break.

“Shinsou!” 

Aizawa’s voice cut into the haze. Hitoshi halted, hands on his knees, breath ragged as he counted in his head, recognising the telltale signs of a panic attack. He closed his eyes tightly, dug his nails into his thighs, locked the voice far, far away. He breathed in, out, every breath like fire in his throat, harsh and burning.

When he looked up, he caught a flash of concern in Aizawa’s eyes before the man carefully masked his face. Hitoshi wasn’t surprised he knew that trick. How to hide everything and force it away. It was one he’d been using since his first foster house.

“Are you alright?” Aizawa asked.

Hitoshi wanted to say, Why are you asking me that? Why do you care? No one else cares, so why do you keep pushing?

Instead, “I’m fine,” came out of his mouth, a blatant lie. 

Aizawa’s gaze was sharp. He’d caught it. There was no way he hadn’t heard the way Hitoshi’s teeth clicked together as he clenched his jaw, the way his breath hitched. He rolled back his shoulders and raised his head, forcing the tension out of his posture.

“I see,” he said finally, and Hitoshi held back the scoff that bubbled in his chest. “Take a five minute break then we’ll talk over the meal plan.” 

Hitoshi released a sigh when he was out of hearing distance and grabbed his drink bottle from where it sat on the bench. He gulped down a few sips of water, easing the burn in his throat and putting out the flame in his chest. He settled down on the ground and leaned back, running through basic breathing exercises despite the way it stung his raw throat. 

He needed to pull himself together. Everything was slipping through the cracks and he couldn’t afford it to . 

After a long stretch of time, the five minutes were up. Hitoshi forced himself to his feet and found Aizawa waiting for him on the opposite side of the gym, arms crossed as he sat patiently on the bench.

“Take a seat.”

Hitoshi followed through on the order. 

“Do you know how many laps you ran?” When Hitoshi shook his head slowly, Aizawa sighed and rubbed his temples. “I told you to run ten laps,” he said dryly, as if that were obvious. “Can you guess how many you ran?”

He was stumped. He tried to think back to how many he ran—it had to be under ten because Aizawa was looking at him like he was suppressing his frustration. He’d done something wrong, enough to warrant this conversation. So then how many did he run? He’d been keeping count, at least he had until...until he heard his voice egging him on. He counted what he could remember, but it had to be under ten, so…

“Uh, eight laps?” he said, staring at his hands as he folded them into fists in his lap. The crescents he’d dug into his palms were stinging under the slight pressure. 

Aizawa’s voice was tight as he said, “ What? No, kid, you ran thirteen laps. Three more than I asked you to. Look, when I give you an instruction I expect you to follow through, nothing more and nothing less. It’s quite impressive, given your...less than spectacular performance at the Sports Festival, but it is unnecessary to push yourself when you are not required to.”

Hitoshi flushed. God, he’d disobeyed Aizawa just like that, without a care. The audacity. It was wrong. Adults didn’t like when he didn’t follow their instructions, and yet he still did it. It didn’t matter that he was distracted, that little lion run played in his head on repeat, drowning out Aizawa’s firm request. 

“I’m sorry, Aizawa-sensei,” he said quietly. 

“I don’t want an apology,” Aizawa said sharply. Hitoshi resisted the flinch that pulled at his limbs. “I need you to know that you should not push yourself if it wears you out. We’ll work on building up your stamina and endurance but if you keep pushing yourself like that, it will only hinder your progress. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sensei,” he said.

He understood. At least, he thought he was beginning to understand. And yet it didn’t make sense because run faster little lion and if you don’t I’ll find you and run until I catch you.

He didn’t understand. Because all his life people had always wanted more. It didn’t matter that most days he had nothing left to give, it didn’t matter that most days he just wished he could be less. He had been the same, always asking for more, pushing Hitoshi on to prove a sick point and to have fun. He let Hitoshi run so he could give chase.

And now because of him Aizawa was going to give up on Hitoshi. He still ruined his life, still ruined everything Hitoshi tried to have. His talons dug into his back and wrapped around his throat and squeezed the back of his neck, nails digging in in in.

Aizawa hummed in approval at his quick response and pulled out a folded paper, handing it to Hitoshi. (Once again, he had no idea where the paper appeared from. The folds of his scarf must have contained a storage system, a million pockets filled with nothing and everything.)

“This is your meal plan. We will adjust it accordingly throughout the week but for now, the expectation is that you eat three meals a day based on nutritional content. You will need plenty of energy for training and that means you need to follow this plan. It’s imperative that you stick to it. Understood?”

Hitoshi skimmed through the sheet. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t. But he had to pretend for now that he could. Later, in the privacy of his room, he could panic. Now, though, he had to act like he could .

“I understand,” he lied, forcing down the horror and nausea that rolled in his stomach. This was a nightmare. 

The pro hero searched his face. “What do you consider your financial status?” he pressed on.

Oh . Aizawa was checking whether he could afford to eat the foods listed down, whether he was financially stable to eat well. It made Hitoshi want to laugh because, according to Masako’s foster payments, he was supposed to be financially stable because of the government.

The problem lay in whether he could access that money. (She probably wouldn’t notice a few bills gone, a few items swiped from the fridge and the cupboard, not if he played it safe and tucked himself into the dark corners of the room.)

So he lied and lied until Aizawa believed he could afford to eat so often, so nutritionally, so easily. He lied until Aizawa believed that he could even eat at all.

What was a few more lies when he’d been lying his whole life? Aizawa never had to know the truth. Hitoshi swore on that.

Because Aizawa had already noticed his jagged edges. It wasn’t necessary for him to see his missing pieces.

Chapter Text

Hitoshi spent the first hour running through drills. It was pretty familiar but his lack of practice put him at a disadvantage that Aizawa was quick to point out as a focal point for their training. (Hitoshi ignored the warmth that filled his chest at the implied future sessions. Hope would do him no good when reality came crashing.)

In the second hour, Aizawa revealed that he would be doing a physical assessment so he could gauge what areas Hitoshi would need training in. 

The pro hero stood in the centre of the gym and dropped into a casual fighting stance, ordering Hitoshi to come at him with everything he had. According to him, they would be sparring. Quirk assessment would come after physical training.

While Hitoshi was excited to spar with Aizawa— Eraserhead —he was also anxious, because he hadn’t practiced in a long time and so whichever way he fought would be rusty. He was going up against a damn pro hero, there was no way he would win. Then did Aizawa want to toy with him? Give him a chance that he wouldn’t be able to take? An opportunity to prove himself that he would ultimately fail in?

Standing in front of his teacher, he forced himself to feel even a tiny bit confident about this because his body was a bag of nerves slamming into itself. He counted his breaths, ignored the migraine building behind his eyes, and analysed Aizawa’s stance to find an opening of some sort, anything he could exploit and use to his advantage. This was familiar.

“You going to come at me?” Aizawa drawled, boredom creeping into his tone as though he were trying to antagonise Hitoshi into a fight. But it didn’t make him angry, not really, it made him feel relief because he was urging him on and instructions were always fair game. 

So Hitoshi leaned into his muscle memory and moved forward, curling his hands into fists and throwing a well-aimed punch at Aizawa. As expected, the man dodged it before it could land, turning on his foot and slamming a hand into the side of Hitoshi’s outstretched arm before he could draw it back. Hitoshi deflected most of the blow with his left forearm and ducked under a fist, heart pounding in his chest as his lungs filled with oxygen.

Exhilarated at the momentum, he barely had time to construct a plan as he traded blows with Aizawa, swiping out his leg to knock the man to the ground, his left fist swinging in for an underhand punch. The pro hero twisted out of the way before it could land, his fist barely grazing his cheek. 

Hitoshi kept moving, never letting the thrill of the fight die. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time, this rush of adrenaline that left him weightless and chased off the monsters under his bed. He threw out a jab here, a duck there, falling into a familiar routine as they sparred. He knew how to do this even if he wouldn’t win.

And yet.

This was different to how he usually fought—with him . While Aizawa’s movements were sharp and graceful, Hitoshi’s were frenzied and unconventional. He threw punches without order, barely making his mark but managing with just the right twist of his body, the right pressure of his foot into the ground as he parried blow after blow, trading his own.

He was getting tired, though. His pace was slowing even as he blocked Aizawa’s fists. He couldn’t avoid a few hits, like when Aizawa slammed his fist into his stomach and knocked the breath out of him. Still, Hitoshi soldiered on because it was all he was taught how to do. Fighting for his life was familiar and he couldn’t lose that, it was the only thing he had left.

There was a desperation to the curl of his fingers now, the desire to prove himself and endure. He couldn’t think, couldn’t remember, all he knew was what was in front of him and what was in front of him wasn’t safe little lion . 

Something unreadable flashed on Aizawa’s face. Hitoshi didn’t catch it but he knew something was wrong when the pro hero moved in for a blow with a finality to it, sweeping his legs out from under him and knocking him to the ground. (Hitoshi knew he could have avoided it but he was distracted by the whisper in his head, the fight fight fight instinct that drummed through him like a hammer.)

Get up. Get up. Get up.

He scrambled to his feet, the pain dizzying as he reached up to touch his face, feeling something wet drip down his chin. Blood painted his hands as he looked down at them. Aizawa was saying something but he couldn’t hear, couldn’t focus over the ringing in his ears, the nausea that swam in his stomach. A migraine pressed at his forehead, tension lining his shoulders. 

Pain is a tool , he repeated like a mantra in his mind. Pain is a tool.

Then there was a cloth being held to his nose, hands directing his own to hold it there. Hitoshi’s vision swam into focus, sharpening with clarity as he breathed past the pain. He’d had worse than a blood nose. 

He was made to sit down with his head forward. The pain ebbed into a dull throb. His hands were shaking as he zeroed in on the bloodied cloth held to his nose. The blood flow came to a stop so he clutched the soiled rag in one hand, the other wandering to his face to prod at his nose. It wasn’t injured, thankfully. 

He looked up. Aizawa was crouched in front of him.

“Do you feel dizzy or sick?” 

He shook his head. Pain is a tool.

“Hm, I don’t think you have a concussion,” Aizawa muttered, eyeing his nose with a frown. “Are you up for a conversation? We have things to discuss in regard to your performance.”

He shrugged and Aizawa took that as an affirmative, moving to sit beside him on the bench. The adrenaline was gone, replaced by exhaustion and a pounding migraine that wouldn’t ease up. The fight must have triggered it. Hitoshi hated that he was weak like that, his body gave up on him easily.

“You didn’t mention you had previous training, kid,” Aizawa said tiredly. Before Hitoshi could deny it, he added, “And don’t bother lying about it, it’s obvious that you have had some kind of experience. The way you fight is more controlled than I had assumed. It’s not professional in terms of technique, in fact it’s more on par with street fighting…so who taught you to fight dirty?”

His heart leapt into his throat. He didn’t want to talk about this. Aizawa wasn’t supposed to know, he wasn’t supposed to know that Hitoshi could fight, had fought. He hadn’t even thought about him picking up on it, didn’t even realise it was so obvious that someone had beaten the training into him, had turned him into a toy for their amusement.

A spark of defensiveness flared in his chest. 

People can’t hurt you if you don’t let them.

“There’s nothing wrong with fighting dirty,” he retorted, averting his eyes and glaring a hole into the ground. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Aizawa sighed before looking at him wearily. “Not the point kid. And it does matter. Because your fighting style is a mix of various forms of martial arts and lethal blows. The way you fight isn’t taught, it’s learned.”

Hitoshi couldn’t help himself as a laugh tickled his throat and then spilled over, turning into full-blown laughter as he gasped at the absurdity of it all. His life really was a big joke if the only thing he learnt from him was dangerous.

“Why- why does that make so much fucking sense?” he gasped, pressing a palm to his mouth to silence the peals of laughter that rang in the gym. (It made sense that the only thing he had taught him, the only thing he had left behind as a legacy were techniques meant to kill, to incapacitate. Never to protect, never to defend. Always to harm. But really, what did Hitoshi expect? That man’s mission in life was to tear him down, never to build him up.)

Aizawa’s lips pulled down at the corners at his hysterical reaction. He wore concern like it belonged on his face when he looked at Hitoshi, but nobody cared, not really. Hitoshi knew that like he knew the rules that kept him here.

“Should I be concerned?” Aizawa said dryly, his tone impassive.

Hitoshi reigned in his laughter and blinked tears from his eyes, unable to stop himself from huffing in amusement. 

“No, sensei,” he reassured, feeling dazed at the revelation that he had taught him dangerous moves. Had used them many times on Hitoshi as punishment as he whispered run , knowing he would inevitably catch him. “Just unexpected is all. Um, I’ve got to go home as well.” 

He glanced at the clock. It was nearing six. While it didn’t matter - because Masako didn’t even care about his presence in the house - it was the only excuse he had to worm his way out of having this conversation.

Aizawa scrutinised him before running a hand down his face with a sigh. “Go get changed. But we will be continuing this conversation at another time.” 

Hitoshi had no reason to doubt that. And so he soldiered on.

The train ride back to his house worsened his migraine. By the time he arrived at the house, his head was spinning and he could barely stand on his own two feet. It took everything he had to locate his heat packs and microwave them. Fortunately, Masako had picked up an evening shift at the bar so she wouldn’t return until midnight. He didn’t think he could handle her ire when his body was rebelling against him, too.

Hitoshi adjusted the heat pack on his neck when it burned his skin, positioning it so that the pack draped around his shoulders, warmth seeping into the sore muscles of his neck. 

Despite the fact that it did nothing to ease the throbbing pain that radiated through his skull, he liked to think it loosened the tension in his neck. With a long sigh, Hitoshi pulled out his English homework and laid it across his desk, trying to decide which task would be the easiest to start off with. He was falling behind and it scared him.

The fear of failure sank into his chest, sharp claws tightening around his lungs, spurring him on to complete the homework even with a body at war with itself. He didn’t want to disappoint Present Mic even more than he had already, even if he had to grit his teeth through the pain and double dose himself on over-the-counter pain medication. His head was foggy with pain and his nose ached but that didn’t matter, because life was just one expectation after another. He had no other choice but to meet them.

Migraines were a common occurrence for him, and he had no doubt that whatever training Aizawa put him through would leave him debilitated for the rest of the day. 

The few doctors he’d had the chance to talk to about it shrugged their shoulders and prescribed medications that never worked. He’d stopped looking for answers when one of the various treatments had reduced both the frequency and severity of the migraines. Sure, it made the heaviness in his limbs multiply and he felt hungry more often than not, but that was a small price to pay for bodily autonomy and awareness.

His doctor had prescribed him a small, white bottle filled with small, white pills that tasted like sweetened chalk The anti-migraine preventative medication, pizotifen, had taken a month to kick in before he really noticed the difference—it had been pleasantly surprising at the beginning, having two migraines a week as opposed to five, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Good things never did.

He’d been on the medication for ten, technically pain-free, months before his migraines returned full-force, resurfacing to wreak havoc on his physical health and turning his daily routine upside down.

Hitoshi was moved into this foster home a month and a half ago, far away from the clinic he usually visited. He avoided contacting his old clinic because his doctor was on leave and a new one would ask questions he couldn’t answer; and Masako denied his requests to visit them, citing that his medical records said nothing about ‘headaches or whatever’ , and therefore concluded that he must have been lying to get attention.

Attention that, she reminded him, she would never give. And so began the silence that snuck into the corner of rooms, that followed Hitoshi everywhere he went, that wrapped around him in a mocking embrace reminiscent of an absent mother’s hug.

He didn’t bother telling her that his case worker had admitted to neglecting to update his medical records, content on merely shoving him off to whichever home would accept him next. 

Never mind that sometimes the places he was sent to were infested with cockroaches, with empty beer bottles, with the markings of a hoarder. Never mind that sometimes his wrist was gripped with enough brute strength to bruise in front of his case worker, and Mr. Ishimoto willingly turned a blind eye, handing the fostering documents to another faceless stranger who’d passed whatever meaningless, useless test they were required to.

Never mind that when he went missing, nobody bothered to question Hitoshi on whether he knew where he went. Never mind that no one said anything about the undocumented trips to the hospital, the broken bones and multicoloured bruises and the fear that followed him everywhere, as he slipped through the cracks of an already-broken system. Never mind that Hitoshi had never been the same after that.

His foster mother’s rules were to be obeyed, though, and so Hitoshi shut his mouth and returned to his room to nurse another migraine that left him curled up on his bedroom floor, limbs pressed to the floorboards awkwardly to distract him from the unbearable pain, light switched off and blinds pulled shut.

He’d filled his prescription a week before he was suddenly moved so he was safe for a while on that front. His medication came in a bottle filled with a three-month supply of tiny white pills, and he had two months worth of meds left. If he skipped a few days, no one had to know. As long as he could stretch it thin without making his migraines worse, then he was all in.

(He tried not to think about how he only had a week’s worth of venlafaxine left. He had a folded prescription of four repeats remaining but it was left useless the minute he realised he had no money left. And now with Aizawa’s meal plan on the table, he had to choose between swiping money for meals or for meds.)

So he didn’t tell Masako about this diagnosis, the one he kept secret, stored away in a box in his backpack, collecting dust. The one that followed him like a ghost, that chased him into the darkness and held him hostage from the light even when he tried to tear off the bindings.

He could deal with an invisible, physical pain. 

He couldn’t deal with a mental one.)

Now, cradling his tender head in his hands, Hitoshi wondered if there existed relief on earth for someone like him. Sometimes ideation crept up on him and whispered into his ear like a best friend. Told him death would be release, would be salvation, would be kind .

On days like this, when pain burrowed its way into his molecular composition and held his cheekbones in an iron grip, Hitoshi found it difficult to ignore the voice in the back of his head that offered solutions that, albeit morbid and graphic, would bring quick relief.

Today’s solution was to stab his eyes with a blunt fork.

Horrified at the thought, Hitoshi rubbed his temples to rid himself of the (strangely alluring) idea and picked up his pen, skimming over the incoherent essay he’d bullshitted his way through. At least he had something to turn in when Present Mic collected homework.

Chapter Text

Contrary to popular belief, the hardest thing Hitoshi had to do every day was drag himself out of bed. 

He could stare criminals down without flinching, could run a lap without breaking a sweat, could stand on the edge of a building and look down without trembling - and yet he couldn’t stop the helpless tears from rolling down the sides of his face when he pried his eyes open in the morning and wished he was dead. 

Every single morning, without fail, he spent hours talking himself into movement, had to coax exhausted limbs out of bed, lift a thin blanket that seemed to weigh tonnes off his skinny form and force his feet to move across cold floorboards that, upon contact with his deadened feet, made him flinch from the chill. 

He blamed his anti-migraine meds for sedating him with an extra dose of exhaustion every night, making it difficult for his already-muddled mind to command his body to move and go through the motions. He’d taken to waking up at 6am every day, because most days it took hours for him to hype himself up enough to roll out of bed. 

Getting up was a chore. It took every ounce of energy he had to open the skin attached to his eyes, took even more just to turn his alarm off. Sometimes when he laid there motionless, he could feel a phantom limb rise off the bed, heeding a desperate command he couldn’t voice; but when he checked to see why his hand felt like static, his arm would still be pressed to the white sheets.

This morning followed a similar routine. He peeled his dry eyes open and rolled onto his back to stare at the white ceiling. Muted sunlight peeked through the drawn blinds, illuminating the room and casting shadows. 

Hitoshi let his mind slip away as he basked in the warmth his blankets offered him. The more he detached from his body, the less real he felt. If he had to feel right now, he wasn’t so sure he would come out unscathed, not when he shifted on the bed and felt the familiar weight of the elephant that sat on his chest, juggling knives pressed against his pale throat.

He let his eyes close. Willed himself to move, to get up, to do something.

Time passed quickly. His alarm went off quietly and he disabled it, returning to his warm cocoon. Soon enough, the hands on the clock inched closer to 8am. Hitoshi didn’t have the energy to glare at the clock so he settled with simply staring it down, barely blinking, eyes stinging. 

Get up , he thought unhappily. Just get the fuck up.

The ticking off the clock grated on his ears, sending a flood of irritation to his chest. He wished he could scream, it felt like the only way in the morning sometimes. His nails dug into his palms.

A thought popped in his head, demanding attention. It crawled down his spine, tickled the back of his ear.

How can you be a hero when you can’t even get out of bed in the morning? his mind whispered acerbically, taunting him with the one goal that kept him going. To be the saviour he was never afforded. He was holding onto heaven and he was hanging by a thread.

His vision blurred. Helpless tears gathered in his eyes, stinging his corneas, lining his lids with silver. Hitoshi curled his hands into fists, willed the moment of weakness to pass, but as always it was here to stay and haunt him. The unwanted tears slid down his temples, leaking from the corners of his eyes, dampening his cheeks and strands of matted, purple hair. He wondered what Aizawa would say if he saw him like this. 

This happened every morning. He was stuck in a cycle that he couldn’t break free from and he hated how powerless he became when the sun rose. It didn’t help that the only reason he pried himself out of bed every day was to feed the stray cat that prowled in the alley near the school. 

(He wouldn’t admit it to it but his desire to be a hero kept him anchored, too. 

And maybe, just maybe, making Aizawa proud, too.)

It took a few more wasted tears before he could haul himself out from under his blanket. Even more before he could get to his feet and follow his daily routine that consisted of crying for a few more minutes, slipping into his school uniform and escaping the house before Masako woke up. She often took late night shifts at the bar which meant she would pass out as soon as she returned. He was lucky for that because it meant she would sleep in the next day and wake up in the afternoon.

Avoiding her in the morning seemed to reduce his chance of developing a migraine - he suspected it was the stress from being treated like shit that triggered his unexplainable pain. When he was anxious, his shoulders tended to tense up and that excess tension contributed to his migraines.

He was about to leave when he caught sight of the meal plan tucked into his blazer pocket. Gulping, he snagged it and unfolded the sheet, peering at the information that he could barely absorb. 

His hands shook as he gripped the paper. His head pounded, breaths coming out shallow the more he read on. This was a nightmare! He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t. Not this. There was no way he could eat any of this. The skin of his face felt itchy and tight. He rubbed it with his nails, trying to get rid of the anxious prickling that hummed at his skin. 

He couldn’t follow this and he couldn't tell Aizawa that he couldn’t follow it, because then he would ask why and Hitoshi didn’t want him to know how weak he was, how pathetic. And if he did tell Aizawa, what could he even do about it? Hitoshi couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t follow any sort of meal plan because he didn’t eat enough to have variety. Nothing he could eat could even be considered nutritious. 

And that meant he was optionless. But as a last resort, it was okay if he just...ate anything, right? He could eat something , that was more than he usually ate anyway considering he rarely even had a meal for breakfast. Carbs provided energy and that’s what Aizawa had said he needed more of. So if he ate a simple breakfast then it would be enough. Right. That sounded correct. He could do that.

The problem was whether he could get his hands on the food. He needed to scope out the kitchen. Masako had never openly said it but he knew the rules—he wasn’t allowed to touch any of her food, obviously, otherwise he would get punished. It was her food, she paid for it and Hitoshi was just a leech. 

He would have to do this quickly and smartly, then. If he did this right, she would never know and he would get away with it.

Determined, Hitoshi clutched his bag in one hand and rounded the corner, passing by her room and pressing his ear against the door. He waited anxiously, listening for any kind of noise. Seconds ticked by. His hand tightened around the strap of the bag.

There ! A light snore. She was sleeping and when he was done, she would still be sleeping, none the wiser.

Backing away, he tiptoed across the hall to the kitchen. It smelled like cigarette smoke and booze. He grimaced and looked over his shoulder, checking twice before creeping over to the counter. 

There was a packet of white toast. He twisted open the plastic tie and grabbed two slices, placing them on a plate and grabbing the margarine in the fridge. He located a butter knife and spread it on the bread before slipping the slices into a small ziplock bag he’d found above the counter.

Usually, Hitoshi would have preferred to eat it toasted but this was the best he could do. He couldn’t leave any evidence, and cooking the bread would make the house smell like toasted bread.

He was about to leave when he saw her wallet on the table, lying near a stack of bills. His stomach turned. Feeling a little daring and driven on by the sudden spike of adrenaline in his veins, he rifled through it for some spare change. There was cash - a lot more than he had thought she would have. In fact, there were hundred dollar bills shoved in her wallet. So much money and yet they were struggling to pay the rent. Where did it all go? Smokes? Booze? Gambling?

He couldn’t bring himself to take any of her cash, though. He wasn’t a thief. ( You’re lying to yourself, little lion. This is all you ever were, when will you accept it? )

Fortunately, there were some coins that he shoved into his pocket. Enough for a cup of coffee and an energy drink from the convenience store and a tin of cat food for Yuki.

He grabbed his packaged food and snuck out of the house after cleaning everything up and returning it to its previous spot. Not a thing was out of place.

Hitoshi caught the train heading towards U.A. and settled into a vacant seat in the back, pulling his backpack into his lap and pulling out his poorly made sandwich. It honestly looked unappealing as he pulled out a slice from the bag and stared at it before attempting to take a bite. 

Before he could get it in his mouth, he froze, and couldn't bring himself to take a bite out of the crust of the bread. His stomach roiled, throat tight as he glared down at the bread like it’d offended him. Because there was no way he was eating that . The dry, brown crust surrounding the bread. He knew instinctively, deep in his bones, that he would choke on it if he tried to swallow it. It was a gut feeling, had him nauseous, the idea of forcing himself to chew that disgusting, repulsive, stale—

He was panicking. Fuck. How the fuck was he meant to eat anything if food caused him literal fear? He could run thirteen laps and hold his own against Aizawa and run little lion, fight and yet—

Food was his weakness. A villain could literally kidnap him and the most effective method of torture would be food. They could threaten him with eating a single onion slice and Hitoshi would break into a million pieces and give away every secret he knew. 

He laughed, a choked, manic sound at the thought of explaining to someone that food was his weakness . Someone shot him a glare. Hitoshi wilted.

He breathed. In, out. In, out.

Then slowly, methodically, he tore away the outer crust from the slices of bread and shoved the crustless slices into his mouth, forcing himself to chew and swallow. It was a slow process, eating, but he managed it with the use of a trick he’d taught himself years ago.

It was like this—Hitoshi imagined a filing cabinet in his mind. Imagined this feeling he had, this anxiety that grew inside him when he ate, was just another label glued onto a file. Shoved all the paper in there, stapled it shut and then put it in the filing cabinet. Repeated the process as many times as it took, as many files and labels as he could. Filed everything away.

Then set it on fire. He pictured the fire blazing, the metal and paper and wood melting under the heat from the flames. Gone, gone, gone. 

 He swallowed down the tasteless bread, ignored the fact that it tasted like cardboard and salt. Filed it away. Gone. 

The train came to a stop. He slipped away. When he came back, he was standing outside a familiar alleyway holding a cup of steaming coffee in one hand and loose change in the other. He tucked it in his pocket, didn’t think about the fact that he barely remembered buying the coffee. Or even walking here.

He hefted his bag on his shoulder and sank down onto a crate next to the dumpster. Sipped his coffee, felt the butter flavour wash down his throat like it was cleansing him. He couldn’t see Yuki yet. He dug through his bag.

The purple and pink cardboard box fit in his hand. He checked to see if anyone was looking and was relieved to see that the alleyway was empty, save for a few people who had their heads down, eyes scanning their phones for the latest news, blind to the world around them as they passed down in the exit of the alleyway.

He carefully pulled out the blister pack lined with two-weeks worth of pills and checked the days, popping the foil of the ‘Tuesday’ tab. The inconspicuous, pink pill that dropped into his palm was quickly swallowed with searing coffee before he shoved everything back into his bag. His throat burned.

Yuki should be here , he thought to himself, wiping his hands on his pants and standing up to look around.

He’d named her Yuki because she was the only good thing in his life. She was his source of joy every morning, and when the world felt heavy on his shoulders, she was the reason he endured. Why he kept moving forward despite the crushing weight of living.

They had both come from broken places—the scars on her ears attested to that, and Hitoshi would do anything to protect her from the cruelty of the world. He would bear the brunt of society’s scorn if he had to. Not like he wasn’t already doing that anyway.

A small grin tugged at his lips as his eyes fell on Yuki. The white cat was curled up on top of the green dumpster, paws stretched away from her chest as she rolled onto her back, enjoying the morning sunshine. 

Hitoshi approached her with a can of tuna in his hand. He opened the can, ripping the metal top off, and placed it onto the dumpster, watching with amusement as she meowed and rolled onto her front, sniffing the air with curiosity. He reached a hand out and watched as she stalked to the appendage, rubbing her cheek against his open palm, an invitation. He stroked her chin, unable to hold back the smile that burst onto his face, tugging at his cheeks and hurting it.

Yuki wagged her tail in the air and nudged his hand once more before heading for the can of food, digging into it with vigour as soon as she had her first taste and deemed it safe. 

Patting her one last time with a murmured goodbye, Hitoshi turned his back to her as he traced his path back to U.A., the weight on his chest easing just a little.

Classes passed by quickly. He spent most of his time in the back of the classroom, head balanced in his palm as he stared out the window and watched the trees rustle in the wind. He briefly entertained the thought that he should pay attention but today his brain refused to cooperate. The coffee helped a bit but the caffeine rush was too short to do anything.

Focusing took more effort than it was worth, in the end. He told himself he would catch up later, even if a part of him knew it was wishful thinking. Later wasn’t guaranteed for people like him who could never be certain about their future. 

No matter how much he tried, he was never able to catch up. It was never enough. He was always running, fighting, going against the grain that pushed back in equal measures. That’s why he ended up losing in the Sports Festival, because he hadn’t tried hard enough.

(It didn’t matter that on the day of the Festival, his head felt as though it were split open, brain matter blended inside his skull. Didn’t matter that the night before Masako had wrapped her hands around his neck and crushed the breath out of him, a ring of bruises around his collarbone like a necklace because he’d asked her if he could eat something. Didn’t matter that every breath was a pain, every word a rasp. U.A. would leave him behind if he stopped to care. So he stopped caring.)

During English class, he ignored Present Mic’s attempts to catch his eye. The teacher probably wanted to discuss his overdue coursework again and Hitoshi wanted to avoid that from happening. He would do anything to evade Yamada-sensei.

Which is why when the bell rang, signalling lunch break, Hitoshi was the first one out of his seat. He was gone before Present Mic had even finished cleaning the blackboard. The guilt that sprouted in his chest was shoved down as he set incomplete homework down on the edge of the teacher’s desk and fled. He had places to be and none of them involved sitting down with Yamada and sinking in the weight of his failures. 

Because yesterday during training, Aizawa had told him to meet him in Class 1-A at the start of lunch to create a training schedule. Hitoshi wouldn’t miss this for the world. He would have another reason to get up in the morning and fight to live another day.

Chapter Text

Hitoshi readjusted the black mask covering the lower half of his face and eyed the people in the bar warily from the corner of his eye, pretending to check his watch as he assessed the level of threat these people posed. 

A quick look was all he needed to know they were dangerous. Every single patron in this bar couldn’t be trusted and had to be armed to the teeth, or at least skilled enough in the usage of their quirk that they would win in a fight with him. 

This was the shady part of Musutafu that people his age weren’t supposed to know about. He had to be careful to look the part so his age wouldn’t be revealed, so when he spoke it wasn’t obvious that he was only fifteen. They would have his head on a stake the minute they knew who he was. Heroes weren’t welcomed here, much less hero hopefuls or students attending hero schools. 

And they would know - they would remember him from the Sports Festival. And if they didn’t, then they would find out soon enough. Information was power here, traded like money, a fortune made of secrets, an empire built on blackmail and brokers.

A glass of whiskey was slid to him. Hitoshi let out a breath he wasn’t even aware he was holding when he saw the watch on the wrist of the person who passed the drink - it was solid gold, images of planets and constellations engraved into the surface, a timeless piece of art that he recognised from past exchanges with the owner of the extravagant watch, Ten.

He said nothing as Ten slid into the chair beside him, wearing a brown overcoat and a wide brimmed hat. Hitoshi couldn’t see their face, like always. They drew a folded piece of paper out of their front pocket and placed it on the bar without a word. Hitoshi forced himself to stay still, fighting the instinctual urge to grab the paper, knowing any sense of urgency would reveal his desperation and that could be used against him.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The hum of conversation in the bar levelled out into quietude, dealings made through hand signs and cheques slid across counters. 

But unlike the others in this establishment, Ten didn’t deal in cash. It’s why Hitoshi had picked them years ago. In the two years he’d been meeting up with Ten, they only ever asked him to make deliveries each time he struck a deal. It was routine now, meeting up every three months on the same day at the same time at a specified location. He still had the untraceable burner phone Ten had given him during their first meeting - they said it was to only be used in emergencies and they would keep him updated. 

Hitoshi suspected that Ten knew his age, that he was a teenager, but they never said a word about it. He knew nothing about them - not their gender, their age nor their quirk. The only thing Hitoshi really knew was that they came highly recommended for their services and business deals. And they never asked for money, presumably because they had already amassed great wealth incomparable to those in the scene.

He waited until the presence beside him disappeared before he grabbed the slip on the table and clutched it tightly in his hand. Hitoshi looked at the clock on the wall—thirty minutes had passed since he’d entered the bar. It was time to leave. The longer he stayed, the more vulnerable he was.

He hopped off the stool and made his way towards the exit, flashing the guard at the front the red stamp on his wrist. He was the kind of exhausted that no amount of sleep could fix. Coming here felt wrong on so many levels, he was a stranger in a sea of criminals. 

It was wrong, it was bad. He knew what he was doing was fucked up. If he were a better person, perhaps he would drop an anonymous tip to the police about this location and have every single person here arrested for money laundering, blackmail, illegal deals and black market exchanges. Who knew how much was really going on in the background - whether in that room quirk traffickers were selling assets, children were being pawned off, exotic animals sold at high rates, information about heroes being swapped for wealth.

Guilt pressed heavy upon him. Each time he came here it felt like he walked out the villain, the accomplice and the victim. He could tell himself he was doing this for the greater good, but he knew it was for his own selfish reasons - there was nothing noble about this sacrifice, nothing inherently well-intended. Just years of shame and disgust and fear.

He thumbed the edge of the paper in his pocket to remind himself why he was risking his spot in U.A. by making deals with the devil. He knew better and yet he couldn’t convince himself out of this precarious position. It was risky and the logical part of his brain whispered that it wasn’t worth it - but another part of him needed to know. He needed certainty, something to cling to down this rocky fall. Or he’d never stop spiralling, the descent would just extend and he would free-fall for all of eternity. He needed this like he needed oxygen, it was the only stable thing in his life

If he was back then Hitoshi needed to be prepared, even if that meant travelling into the shadier parts of the city that not even the cops concerned themselves with, even if that meant turning a blind eye to the suffering of others.

Aizawa had gotten it wrong by no fault of his own. Hitoshi didn’t deserve to be a hero. Not when he was already a villain.

If he were a hero, if he were cut out for it, he would have called the police as soon as he stepped out of the building, would have alerted them to the secret code of the underworld that even they weren’t aware of. He would take a bullet for strangers he wasn’t even sure he was saving.

And yet, as he walked out of the bar with his hood covering his face and white wig secured firmly in place, Hitoshi took a right turn without hesitation and made his way back to his house, regret eating away at his conscience. He’d tricked Aizawa, somehow pulled the wool over his eyes - made him think he had something inside him that screamed hero. 

But he wasn’t a hero. He had known that from the start, had repeated those words to Hitoshi - you will never be a hero, little lion. Don’t fool yourself. Maybe they were destined to meet - maybe they were a match made in heaven. 

It didn’t matter that Aizawa saw something he apparently couldn’t. Because Aizawa also didn’t see this avaricious side of him, the inconsiderate evil that lived inside him and forced him on. And if he had, if he did, then perhaps Hitoshi would never have received his encouragement and support - would instead be serving a lifetime inside Tartarus like he deserved.

Hitoshi sat on his bedroom floor with his back against his door, hands fisted in the front of his shirt and eyes glued to the blank wall in front of him as his mind floated. He couldn’t name the emotion that winded around his windpipe and choked the breath out of him, only knew that it hurt and he would have to sit with the feeling for it to leave. He knew from experience that if he waited, it would ease soon enough. 

The hard part was the waiting, because it came with the knowledge that there was something deeply wrong with him that not even medication could fix, that he was rotting from the inside and this was the proof.

He’d woken up in his bed this morning wishing he could book a last minute flight, crawl onto the first plane and fly to a country with a name he couldn’t pronounce and enough desert that it stretched for miles. He wished he had the money to book a taxi out of Japan because it was dangerous for him to be here. Fear clogged his lungs, this feeling of impending doom and heavy sadness. Like someone had poured sadness into a bowl and now they were holding his head under, forcing him to breathe it in. Waterboarding. Except the person holding him down was himself, his own hand right around the nape of his neck, his own nails digging deep into his flesh and his own eyes watching him flail.

On the outside he was quiet, composed, unmoving; on the inside he was molten lava turned cold, an empty shell stuffed with cotton, a fraudster wearing the skin of a high school student. If they knew, if they all knew, Hitoshi would be expelled. They had no need for damaged goods, they would realise he wasn't made from the same cloth as hero material. Hitoshi was drowning himself and they would see it - Aizawa would see it. That he was one brick away from toppling down. That there was only a long way down.

If he saw Hitoshi huddled in the darkest corner of his room, knees pulled to his chest and hands tangled in his shirt, drying tear tracks on his cheeks - would he wonder why he’d ever believed Hitoshi could become a hero? If he saw him making deals with criminals, would he continue to train him? 

The numbness inside him was painful, it swallowed everything up and spat it out hollowed out. An aching chasm had reopened in his chest and there was not enough anything in this world to fix it. This blackhole inside him took everything he had, and he threw himself headfirst into wishfully planning every aspect of his future in order to fill it up but it kept taking, until all that was left was emptiness. And the emptiness filled the blackhole like it was made for him, like it had been moulded to vacate the gaping hole inside his chest where his heart should’ve been.

His old therapist had told him he was more than this feeling of complete and utter exhaustion. But what if he was empty? What if there was nothing left? 

What if this emptiness, this hurt inside of him, was all he had - all he was? He preferred to never know. It was easier to go through the motions when he pretended none of this existed, when he walked into U.A. like he hadn’t spent the morning crying at the mere idea of getting out of bed and existing.

Ten’s message had been the trigger for this descent. Hitoshi knew that. Information he sought became information he wanted to run from, wished he’d never known. Chasing ghosts into prison cells. Everything blurred into one, big mess. He’d been training with Aizawa for a week now but he hadn’t even been there for it. He couldn’t remember what the man had taught him, couldn’t even remember the damn date. Time had stopped since he’d gone into the underworld.

Ten’s coordinates painted a picture he didn’t want to view when he’d traced them on his phone. 

He was headed for Musutafu and there was nothing Hitoshi could do, nowhere he could run. He’d tried before, and yet here he was, still running, never pausing for even a breath. And they’d dragged him back kicking and screaming, just another note in his file about how troublesome he was, how often he liked to run from his fosters for attention. They never asked, not really. Didn’t care that sometimes the monsters lived in your house, sometimes served you breakfast and drove you to school and hugged you when you cried and made promises that sounded genuine. 

They didn’t care that he’d met one who promised on the first day that he would never hurt him and then drove him into the middle of a forest to play sport - he was the hunted, he was the hunter. Maybe that was when Hitoshi learned to run for the first time.

He was so fucking tired but he went through the motions. Showed up to training early, went through warm-ups that felt foreign and drills that left him sweaty and out of breath, ran laps until his mouth went dry, sparred with Aizawa and pretended not to see the suspicion in his eyes when Hitoshi performed moves that belied years of training.

He wished he could stop running and take a break for once. He yearned for that freedom he’d never been afforded. He knew he didn’t deserve it but he wanted it. He wanted the world to pause for a second so he could breathe for once. But the world didn’t stop spinning just because he was falling apart. Hitoshi was intimately aware of this fact. Time marched forward while he fell behind, trying to catch up but failing to do so.

And he knew . There was no finish line for someone like him, no rest stop, no final race. His life was one continuous race track that looped and looped and looped. He was destined to spend the rest of his pathetic life running from demons that had already caught him, already held him in the palms of their hands.   

He wasn’t allowed to stop. So he tried to eat according to Aizawa’s meal plan and lived as quietly as he could. Stole bread for breakfast, a carrot for snack, tucked Masako’s spare change into his back pocket and splurged on energy drinks and convenience store coffee. He spent Saturday curled up on his bedroom floor, crying because he’d never felt less like himself in his life—hand pressed to his mouth, snot mixing with tears and saliva, fingernails digging into his thigh hard enough to draw blood. 

He was in Hosu. Hitoshi was terrified and exhausted and numb. He was scared of turning corners because he didn’t know what or who was hiding behind them. He was scared of eating food because he didn’t know whether it’d been tampered with. He was scared of breathing because he didn’t know who was listening, waiting in the shadows to snatch him off the streets and drive him into the woods. 

When he was close to giving up, huddled on the floor like this and trembling, he thought of the strangers he hadn’t saved in that bar for this life he lived - and he told himself he would survive for as long as he could for them. Because he’d left them there, their lives traded for wealth in secret codes the police and pro heroes weren’t aware of. The bar was a secret he was privy to and he would save them. 

Just not today. Not like this. 

Chapter Text

What if this is as good as it gets? 

People liked to talk about how things got better, how their situations eventually improved with time, how they came to the realisation that the light at the end of the tunnel was right outside their front door; they’d just been too blinded by their misery to see it but now it was all they could see. 

But what if it didn’t get better? Hitoshi thought about that sometimes. His therapist used to sit there while he scraped his chest clean with his blunt nails and cradled his heart into the palm of his hand, saying here, take this, I can’t carry it anymore . When he was done baring himself open for all the world to poke at his vulnerabilities, when he’d admitted to her that he couldn’t see himself ever recovering, she would watch him patiently, calculatingly; and then sigh heavily. 

“That’s your depression speaking and telling you lies,” she’d say. “You won’t always feel like this.”

He’d bite his tongue, swallow down the disbelieving laugh that rose in his chest. Wouldn’t tell her that this thought had crossed his mind even on the good days, not just the downright tiring ones - the thought that he’d tumble right back into another month of self-hatred and lethargy, and one day he’d end up in a hole he wouldn’t be able to pull himself out of.

As he was sitting against the door on the floor of his bedroom, neck bent uncomfortably and arms twisted awkwardly around his knees, he had the sudden desire to see her again, to sit in that ugly orange chair across from her lime green one and throw his pain at her feet; force her to make sense of it all. 

There’s no light , he’d tell her. Some of us are born without doors that lead out of this hell. Maybe there is no door, no light. Maybe we just get better at lying to everyone that hope exists so they don’t end up like us.

What would she say in response? That’s your depression talking, feeding you lies; your illness taking your autonomy away, weakening your defenses.

He wanted to fold his hands in his lap and say, But what if I am my depression? What if that’s all I ever was - all I’ve ever been? What if this is a truth I can’t outrun, and all this now is simply the denial before acceptance?

Everything was bottled up inside him. He was shelves of glass bottles and mason jars filled to the brim with memories he couldn’t confront, a contained universe within himself, falling and shattering and smashing every time he moved and opened his mouth. 

And before he could ask these questions, she was on highway M-312 unaware that the driver behind her was drunk and out of control. She was killed on impact.

The police never came knocking to inform him of her premature passing. He found out through Mr. Ishimoto, who claimed this was yet another rippling effect of his bad luck. It was implied Hitoshi was the cause. He wondered what the newest addition to his file said, whether his case worker had pasted a yellow sticky note on the most recent page and written in chicken scratch - MURDERER.

He missed her, the awkward silence she would fill for him whenever he was too exhausted to speak, the soft pillow she would offer to him at the start of each session for him to hold onto if he needed, the box of tissues she held out when he burst into tears during a bad episode.

Hitoshi curled up tighter, wound his fingers into his hair like it was the only consolation he could offer himself.

Maybe if they had prepared him for this fall then he could have sewn a parachute from broken dreams and bloodied thighs. Maybe if someone had looked him square in the eyes and said, There is no light , then he could have prepared a candlelight vigil in preparation of the end. Maybe if his therapist had told him, It gets worse , he would have been ready for the way his kneecaps shattered against the earth when he collapsed and met the ground. If the adults had been honest about the magnitude of the suffering he would go through, maybe Hitoshi wouldn’t be so complicated medical history and tearing at the seams.

As he sat there, back aching and limbs cold and tears on his cheeks, he could only think, How do I unlearn hope? 

Because despite his doubts, his cynicism borne from experience - the only reason he was sitting here, alive and breathing, was for the promise of a light he had yet to discover.

It was Sunday morning, the first day he would be training with Aizawa outside of school days. Hitoshi dragged himself out of bed in the early hours of the morning when rays of light peeked through his curtain and washed his face. He tugged on his gym uniform hurriedly, raked his fingers through his messy hair and shoved a can of cat food in his pocket, reminding himself to feed Yuki. 

He crept quietly to the kitchen and put together a small bowl of cereal - yellow cornflakes that looked stale - careful not to handle the packaging roughly in the fear that the sound of crinkling plastic would stir Masako from her deep sleep. He used a little bit of milk, enough to soften the cereal without arousing suspicion in the circumstance that Masako noticed her milk supply was mysteriously dwindling. 

It took him five minutes to chew his way through the cereal and then down his medication. He cleared up all evidence that he’d been there at all, filled up a water bottle using a small, steady stream of water so it wouldn’t be loud, and left the house with a grey hoodie swallowing him up.

On the train to U.A., he flipped the camera of his phone and checked his appearance to see whether he looked as bad as he felt. Needed to make sure none of the depression showed on his face or Aizawa would know something about him was irreparable. 

He was awful at naming all the horrible feelings inside of him, because no word in the whole world could come close to describing exactly how it felt, but he recognised some of them and labelled them like his therapist had taught him. Label and locate.

Sadness made home out of his chest, a pile of rocks and bricks and things that didn’t make sense. Apathy ran down his fingers, rested in the soles of his feet. Anxiety and fear swirled in his stomach, twisted around the muscles in his shoulders.

There was so much inside of him that he couldn’t breathe for a second as he confronted it all at once, saw the result of every foster house and every cruel remark. The missing parts of him were the most prominent and that couldn’t be normal, couldn’t be healthy, right? Then again, nothing in his life was normal. He was literally being hunted like sport by a man who had always promised to find him in the end,  by a man who always found him in the end —

Label and locate. File away. Watch it burn.

He split everything up, sorted them, let them turn into a heap of charred metal, blackened wood and thick, noxious smoke. Compartmentalisation of the mind. She probably didn’t mean this when she taught him how to cope with overwhelming feelings, but he couldn’t think about any of it, not when it would show on his face. Hitoshi needed to lie convincingly to Aizawa’s face. Tell a lie like he meant it, like there wasn’t a knife pressed to his throat by a secret too big for anyone to handle. This was his mess and he was responsible for cleaning it up. Even if it killed him. (Because some secrets were razor-sharp teethed, hungry enough to devour and consume, eager to infect and destroy everything he worked hard to keep. Some secrets were exposed nerves, broken limbs, silver-tongued deviants. Some secrets wanted out.)

Maybe if someone had asked about the training sessions years ago, he would have talked. But their silence made it clear - adults didn’t care as long as it didn’t affect them. The universal truth. The secret was that you turned away, pretended not to see, blocked your ears and clamped your mouth shut. Said nothing about what you’d seen and heard. The secret was that if you didn’t investigate, didn’t become curious, then you were under no obligation to care. 

What did it matter that the same hands that tended to his wounds were the same hands that had created them? Hitoshi knew. It didn’t. It never mattered. If it had, then he wouldn’t be living in a constant state of paralysing fear, afraid of closing his eyes at night, of opening them in the morning. 

When he met up with Aizawa outside of U.A. and the man took one look at him and asked him if he was okay, Hitoshi found the only words he could manage were, “Just tired”, when what he really wanted to say was, I can’t keep living like this. Please help me. 

Chapter Text

His muscles burned as he copied Aizawa’s moves, hands curling into a fist to swing up. Sweat slid down the neck of his gym shirt, soaking the lining. He adjusted his stance when his mentor nudged his arm with his elbow, rearranging his limbs so he could perfect the blow.

“Practice on me,” Aizawa said, backing away slightly and falling into a lazy fighting stance. While his movements screamed open, it was intentionally done to make Hitoshi drop his guard. 

But Hitoshi didn’t fall for it, didn’t assume the weaknesses he spotted in Aizawa’s guard could be exploited—at least, not when they had been purposefully created. It was ingrained into him when he was younger and more vulnerable that often behind the kindest smile hid the sharpest teeth. That had been the first lesson he’d taught him.

Never underestimate your opponent, little lion. That’s how you end up with claws in your back.

He ignored the voice and fell into his fighting stance, body coiled with tension as he took a lunge, fist swinging forward just like Aizawa had shown him. It didn’t meet its mark like he’d expected, given the pro hero had years and years of experience on him. But his form was proper and it showed in the glint of approval in Aizawa’s eyes.

As they sparred toward the end of the training session, Aizawa brought up a conversation he wasn’t prepared to have.

“You never answered my question,” Aizawa said, dodging a fist smoothly. At Hitoshi’s confused expression, he swept his legs out from under him. This time Hitoshi was ready for the fall, arms braced in front of him as he rolled off the ground and pulled himself into a crouch. “About who trained you.”

Hitoshi’s heart jolted in his chest. He pressed his nails into his thigh as he stood up, shoulders bowing inward as if to make himself appear smaller. The material of his gym shorts was too thick for the action so he experienced no relief, no balloon cut free inside of him. 

“That has nothing to do with our training,” he said, forcing his voice to remain calm despite the way his thoughts darkened. He couldn’t show weakness, not in front of the one person whose role demanded perfection, excellence, persistence.

Aizawa tossed him a clean towel. Hitoshi caught it without looking up, eyes glued to the flooring of the gym. There were light scratches on the surface, scuff marks and a scattering of dust. It was different to the places he used to train in - gravel under knees, concrete and tar, wet dirt pressing into the palm of his hands, the heavy boot flat against his back, forcing him down, down, down; a mouthful of dirt and sweat and blood and stomach acid—

He heard a sigh from Aizawa and the thought came quickly, slammed into him with the force of a quirk-powered punch - He’s sick of me already. 

“Do you remember what I told you on Friday?” 

He didn’t. He’d been there physically for the session, but mentally he’d spent the last few days in his room with the floor pressed to his back, a heavy weight pinning him to the ground as he gasped for breath in a world that tried to take it. Hitoshi had perfected the art of pretending to exist. Aizawa hadn’t even realised his sense of self had drifted away into a monochrome world where words didn’t hold weight and slipped through his fingers like water.

He shrugged, felt his cheeks heat up with shame at his incompetence. He didn’t deserve to be trained by Eraserhead. Not when he didn’t treasure the time they had together. 

Aizawa moved. Hitoshi looked up warily. His mentor — Teacher? Trainer? — stood in front of him, arms crossed as he observed him, then clicked his tongue as though disappointed. 

You let everyone down eventually, Hitoshi thought, curling his fingers into the crook of his elbow and digging his nails in until he felt a sting. This is who you are. 

“I’ll reiterate it, seeing as you can’t remember. The person who trained you taught you a style that is deadly for your opponent. As a teacher, this is concerning. Part of our sessions is now focused on unlearning those aspects of your past training, like throwing a non-lethal punch.” Aizawa paused, a hardness in his eyes that conveyed the depth of his disapproval for this method, before continuing, “ Nobody should be teaching teenagers how to fight like that.”

Hitoshi clenched his hand into a fist. The words were on the tip of his tongue, straining to jump out of his mouth. He bit on his tongue, tasted metal as blood flooded his mouth, flesh breaking under the pressure of his canines. He wanted to correct Aizawa: You’ve got it wrong. It wasn’t a person who trained me , it was a monster. You don’t understand , he wanted to shout. These moves are the only reason I survived. The better I got, the less it hurt. 

What slipped out of his mouth was a snarky tumble of words. “Bold of you to assume I was a teenager when I was trained.”

And fuck. He was aiming for placating, comforting - but this was the opposite of reassuring. He’d stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire. He knew he was utterly fucked the moment Aizawa’s eyes darkened with fury for a split second as he reached his own conclusion about what that meant, before concern replaced it. He almost thought he’d imagined the murderous rage in his teacher’s eyes but he knew better.

He updated his mental checklist of fuck-ups.

Make a minor situation worse. Check.

Hitoshi forced out a laugh to diffuse the situation, an attempt to brush off the loaded statement he’d just blurted out. “Ignore that,” he muttered, shoving his hands into the pockets of his gym shorts and shifting on his feet. He wanted to laugh. The audacity of him admitting something that he knew would stoke the fire and then demanding it be forgotten. “It’s not important, Aizawa-sensei.” He could feel the beginnings of a nasty migraine pulsating in his skull, hammering into his temples and the back of his head. 

The taste of blood was better than the taste of regret. Why had he not stuck to that? It had gotten him through countless situations where the truth was a loaded bullet and a lie was his saving grace. 

The timer went off, signalling the end of their session. Hitoshi hoped his relief didn’t show on his face. He wondered when his luck would run out, because the only reason he was able to worm his way out of the ugly truth was the lack of time. One of these days he wouldn’t be saved by the bell, and Aizawa would know . 

He moved to grab his bag, slightly unnerved by Aizawa’s silence. He didn’t have to be, though, because his teacher stopped him from leaving with an arm out to block the exit. Their eyes met.

“Did your previous trainer hurt you?” asked Aizawa quietly. 

Hitoshi wasn’t expecting the question, nor the softness in Aizawa’s voice or  the way his eyebrows creased together in clear concern. His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths as he fought to control his reaction, the panic that reared its head at being called out.

He looked away. Couldn’t hold Aizawa’s steady gaze as he steeled himself for another lie.

“No, of course not,” he said calmly, a tremble starting in the tips of his fingers, migraine hammering into his skull and pressing him down. “I’ll see you tomorrow, sensei.”

As he left the gym, he couldn’t help the feeling that Aizawa had put some of the puzzle pieces together. 

Hitoshi’s second week of training passed with relative ease. The routine that Aizawa had developed for him demanded a lot of his time and attention - so he spent most of his spare time either attempting to catch up on the ever-growing pile of homework in his room or down with a horrible migraine that left him crying in a dark room with a heat pack burning his skin. (Although at this point he’d given up on his education. He was never going to have a head start, so why bother?)

Everything was going well - at least as well as it could be. Ever since Aizawa had asked that loaded question, it was as though an understanding had fallen between them because the pro hero didn’t ask questions he couldn’t answer; Hitoshi took that as a sign that Aizawa had gotten the memo that this was a situation that was more trouble than it was worth. 

The only downside to this newfound shift in their relationship was that Aizawa had taken to watching him attentively when he thought Hitoshi wasn’t looking. He couldn’t really explain this behaviour away, so he just went with it. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, though. Because training was quiet and the house was quiet and Hitoshi’s brain was quiet.

As he waited for the punch line, he ignored the shame that welled up inside of him when Present Mic collected their homework and looked at Hitoshi with disappointment when he failed to produce anything, not even an incomplete, crumpled sheet. He ignored the guilt when he stole Masako’s spare change to refill his prescription at the pharmacy. He ignored the fear that crawled all over his skin when he felt the weight of Aizawa’s narrowed eyes on him. He ignored the self-hatred that choked him every morning, the resentment that had him digging his nails into his wrists.

But he couldn’t ignore the icy jolt of terror that lanced through him when Masako dragged him out of bed by his hair in the early hours of the morning and threw him to the ground, her red heels clacking loudly against the floorboard in an uneven staccato. 

Woken by the sudden pain, Hitoshi rubbed his eyes to clear the sleep out of them and pushed himself to his knees dazedly, cringing at the pain that throbbed in his shin. It had collided with the edge of his cupboard, a purple bruise flowering against his skin. 

Nothing felt real as he took in his surroundings. He was cold and hungry and scared. It felt like someone had doused him in freezing water. He trembled and shuffled back.

He stayed on the ground, confused and dizzied at the harsh awakening, before he pieced the situation together as Masako threw an empty milk carton at him. It bounced off his head, leaving a dull ache behind. He noted that the light in the room had been switched on at some point because everything was blindingly bright. His eyes stung.

“How long?” Masako hissed, anger twisting her lips into a frightening scowl that he’d never seen her wear before. That was bad.

Hitoshi froze at the question, at the evidence thrown at him, hands shaking. His heart picked up pace in his chest as it dawned on him that she knew.

She knew. She knew. She knew—

Panic was a living, breathing, squeezing thing. Hitoshi curled his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. She knew. He was fucked. There was no coming back from this.

“Tell me!” she snapped furiously, riled up by his silence. But he wasn’t allowed to talk. He wasn’t. Talking meant being punished in ways that would crush him and degrade him and take away his voice physically . He wanted to admit to his crime but it would be worse to open his mouth - it always was. He knew Mr. Ishimoto had given her the ugly, black muzzle and she would use it if she had to. They always did. 

So he refused to speak, tears blurring his vision as she grabbed him by his hair again and yanked his head up, their eyes meeting in the middle. His lungs seized at the raw disgust in her eyes. She yelled at him but it was intelligible. His body hurt and she tightened her grip and he watched himself curl up, watched from far away as tears slid down his cheeks and Masako backhanded him across the face, sending him sprawling back. His head hit the ground. He didn’t fight back, not when he’d been taught to take a hit.

Her heel met his stomach. Once. Twice. He doubled over, gasping for breath. He was sobbing now. The pain was a distant thing, pulsating and fierce. She was shouting and cursing in a language he didn’t understand anymore. 

“What did I tell you about touching my shit!” she screamed, face red and lips curled into a snarl. “Thought you could steal from me, could eat my food, could treat this like your home, you villain. Let me remind you that you’re fucking worthless! 

Hitoshi cried as he curled up on the ground, burning cheek pressed to the cool floorboards, an arm nursing his stomach and another over his head, shielding him from anymore attacks. Exhaustion made him float. He stared down at his body. Watched the scene unfold like an audience member until Masako had enough and stormed out of the room, slamming the door with so much force it rattled.

He didn’t move. His limbs refused to cooperate. The glaring light burned his sore eyes. His face was wet. Discomfort washed through him, the pain in his ribs sharp and disorienting.

Hitoshi stayed like that for hours until the alarm clock on his table went off.

(He should have heard the other shoe drop.)

Chapter Text

Hitoshi was no stranger to pain. In fact, sometimes it felt more like a close friend, a reliable companion, something to lean on on the days he felt like he was running on empty. 

But today it was a heavy boulder chained to his ankle, a thousand needles pressed to every inch of his skin, a thick fog that made it hard to breathe and muddled his brain. Today, the throbbing in his cheek and the jolt of pain in both his leg and ribs had his eyes burning with tears. 

Pain lingered in every breath, every gasp, every sniffle. He dragged himself off the floor, slipped his feet into his school shoes and blearily stumbled out of the house, tears blurring his vision as he realised how much he had fucked up. The world was a blur of green and brown and red and yellow and blue. 

Hitoshi swallowed down the lump in his throat, breath hitching wetly. He reached up, pressed the bruise on his cheek harshly, and relished in the numbing pain that spread beneath his fingers. Pain grounded him sometimes. This was no different.

On the bus, he gazed out the window and thought about Masako’s furious expression, the way she’d backhanded him in her anger, the lack of regret in her eyes. He thought of every adult in his life, of the parallels between their behaviour, their treatment of him. How greatly it differed from how they acted towards others. 

It’s me , he thought distantly. There is something unlovable about me. Masako knew from the start. They all did.

The revelation wasn’t as shocking as he expected it to be; maybe because deep-down he always knew that he was hard to love, that such a feat was impossible when it came to someone like him. 

He was tired of this. Hitoshi sank back into the seat and allowed himself to float into his mind. He didn’t want to be here right now. He filed everything away neatly and set it on fire, watched the metal twist and crackle under the hot flames. Let it disappear.

He existed somewhere outside of himself. He was a ghost in a body he no longer recognised - in a body he no longer wanted any part of. He didn’t know how to articulate this feeling inside his chest, this expansive emptiness that had wrapped around his heart like a pair of tight rubber bands around supple flesh. 

His body protested as he exited the bus and walked—away, away, away from this never ending nightmare that his life had always been. There was no solution, no escape; he knew this intimately in the same way he knew that a leather muzzle, if tightened enough, could bruise your jaw and, with sharp teeth, rip into the epidermis of flesh. 

Time slipped by. Hitoshi soldiered on. Inside this white noise he existed within, the world was fuzzy and dull, unable to touch him from behind the glass he had erected as a barrier to protect himself from the sharp sting of a slap, the tightening of a strap around his nose, the cutting of rocks into his knees—

A shoulder slammed into his. Hitoshi surfaced - gasped - and then sank down once more, falling even lower beneath the tide that dragged him down mercilessly. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that he was dissociating; that his brain, to cope with the trauma of Masako’s abuse, had wrapped him in cotton and bubble wrap, had painstakingly built a brick wall to keep the fear out, or else he would drown beneath it. Because he remembered how it had felt - that terrible, terrible panic, the pain, the taste of blood, the familiarity of it all. 

But it was okay because he needed this right now. It was the only thing keeping him from stepping onto a busy highway without looking left and right. 

I don’t exist , he heard himself whisper. But he couldn’t be certain of that, didn’t know whether his mouth had moved, whether he had imagined that it had. (Had he even left his house? Or maybe he was dreaming, maybe he was still curled motionlessly on the wooden floor, bruised and beaten and terrified to lose everything he’s never had.)

Hitoshi drifted. 

His day was a blur of mumbled greetings and half-hearted nods, eyes glued to his desk as he retreated even further into his mind until a response was too much for anyone to ask for. Hitoshi knew he could coax himself out of this bubble he’d trapped himself in - but he didn’t want to. Not yet. Not while the pain was fresh and the thought of existing in the moment made him want to tear his skin to shreds. 

He found himself inside an empty bathroom during lunch time, hands grasping the sides of the sink, staring listlessly at himself in the mirror. His eyes were trained on his crumpled shirt. Everything else blurred away, fading into the background. His head was empty. Thoughts swam like fish in a bowl, looping and slipping out of his grip. He was aware of the pounding in his head, the stiffness in his shoulders, but it couldn’t touch him. Not like this.

Hitoshi stared at the wrinkle in his shirt until his eyes burned. His skin was cold. He’d forgotten that the feeling of nothing was almost worse than anything at all. He felt even lonelier in the blank space he’d become. He was a bruise pressed one-too-many times, an open wound lathered in salt, an exposed bone jutting out of flesh.

Exhaustion weighed him down. Hitoshi wiped his hands on his shirt and sank to the ground, head in his hands. Everything was so painful it was dizzying. His heart hurt. The kind of pain that made you curl up and cry. The kind of pain that made you wish you were dead.

This was all his fault, in the end. If he hadn’t agreed to be trained by Aizawa, if he hadn’t left breadcrumb trails and somehow convinced the man he was worth mentoring, if he hadn’t tried to deceive Masako…if he hadn’t tried so hard to be good enough for him.

His mistakes were written in stone. He’d pay for it for the rest of his life in blood. 

Tears dripped down the fingers cupped around his cheeks. Hitoshi closed his burning eyes, sob catching in his throat. He shouldn’t have stolen Masako’s food, not when the risk had always been high. He was supposed to know better than that! He was supposed to…

It was tiring - living like this, one tightrope after another, every choice a balancing act, every decision one move from toppling down. 

In the days after he’d gone missing and the police had relocated Hitoshi, he’d really believed he’d found freedom. That everything would start looking up for him. How naive. He’d realised later on that freedom was an illusion when you were born in a cage. 

How could he live up to Aizawa’s expectations when every day the bars of the cage shrunk? The meal plan was useless now. He had no access to food, didn’t even know whether he was allowed to return to Masako’s residence tonight or if she’d finally had enough and called Ishimoto. 

His therapist had lied. She’d said it would get better, that people would choose to stay. But they all left. What did that say about him, that people chose to walk away after getting to know him? 

And what did it mean, that the only person who would ever choose to come back was the monster hiding underneath his bed and terrorising him in his sleep? 

Hitoshi was to blame. He put himself in positions where people had to be cruel. Like with Masako. She’d never raised a hand towards him before today. The closest she’d gotten was waking him up at odd hours of the night to yell at him for leaving his light on or making noise. If he’d never touched her food, if he’d never wasted it - everything would have been okay.

Why had he done it? Why had he taken the risk? He couldn’t remember. Was it because Aizawa had believed in him? Was it because he wanted to prove he was worth Aizawa’s time? 

Even now, he wanted to know what Aizawa had seen in him. What had he seen that nobody else in his life had ever seen? What had been enough to convince Aizawa that he had potential? Hitoshi was nothing special. He was less, in fact. He didn’t deserve good things. He didn’t deserve anything at all.

Aizawa would see that soon enough. Maybe he’d even react the same as Masako had.

Hitoshi curled his fingers against his arm and pressed his nails into the fleshy underside of his wrist. The stinging pain brought the world into focus, made the colours sharper and the noises clearer. Present Mic was collecting homework again. 

He dug his fingers in harder and lowered his head, hair falling around his face and hiding the swelling of his cheek. It was obvious that someone had slapped him hard enough to bruise but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. If he tilted his head at just the right angle, it would be obscured. 

He flinched minutely when Present Mic stopped in front of his desk, gold-lined green eyes expectant and eager. 

“Hey little listener, do you have anything for me today?”

Hitoshi hated how every time Present Mic stopped before him, he always asked that same question. It was stupid, futile, to ask when they both knew the outcome. And yet Mic continued to ask that question, as though expecting him to some day produce all of his homework sheets. 

Hitoshi really hated it. He didn’t know why Present Mic continued to believe in him, not when Hitoshi did nothing to deserve it. All he did was offer meaningless platitudes and lie about doing better, being better. 

He never did. He never was.

The worst part was when he shook his head and shrunk a little in his seat, and Present Mic’s expectant eyes would become troubled and disappointed, cloudy with disapproval. Hitoshi wanted to yell at him that it was his own fault for getting his hopes up when he never gave him any reason to. His fault for constructing a false narrative of who Hitoshi was.

Hitoshi held his breath as Present Mic sighed regretfully. “Stay behind when class ends. I need to have a word with you.”

He nodded and slouched in his chair as Present Mic moved on to the next student. He dreaded the talk already. It would follow a similar pattern - attempts to understand Hitoshi’s reasoning, meaningless apologies and his own futile promises to improve. 

The rest of the class passed by quietly. Hitoshi kept his hands under the desk as he raked his nails down his raw wrist, scratching into his skin harshly with blunt nails, taking pleasure in the burning sensation that spread from the tips of his fingers. It was grounding. 

He focused on the pain in his forearm, allowing it to soothe his anxieties. It overshadowed the throbbing in his temples and the pinching of his neck muscles. He hated lying.

As soon as the bell rang, all the students milled out of the room. Hitoshi stayed seated, eyes trained on a pencil marking on his desk. He heard Yamada talk to a student before shutting the door behind them, holding papers in his hands as he pulled up a seat next to Hitoshi.

Hitoshi tugged his sleeve down and bit his lip anxiously. 

“I think we had a talk like this around two weeks ago,” Present Mic said quietly, “At the rate you’re going Shinsou, you’re going to fail English. As your teacher, I want to see you succeed but that won’t happen unless you want that, too.”

Hitoshi felt tears sting his eyes. He was too ashamed to raise his head and look Present Mic in the eyes.

“I think it’s time to get your parents involved,” he said. Hitoshi froze, breath catching in his throat. “We might be able to work something out to best support you in your education. Does that sound alright?”

Yamada was looking at him. Hitoshi needed to say something, anything, but his mouth refused to cooperate. He thought of Masako, of how she’d react to getting a call from his concerned teacher after a long night working late. Would she be angry? Definitely. He knew she would rather get rid of him than have to get involved in his education - Hell, she couldn’t even stand to see him around the house. 

“I don’t have parents,” he found himself saying, head stuffed with cotton and hands fisted on his knees to keep from trembling. “I- I don’t want to stress my new foster m-mom out. It’s only been a few weeks…”

Hitoshi glanced up hesitantly. Present Mic’s eyes were wide with surprise and sympathy, but it melted into understanding. There was warmth in his smile that revealed something deeper - empathy. 

“Is that what’s been bothering you, little listener? I understand the transition can be stressful when you’re adapting to a new environment while juggling school... Hm… How about this? I'd be happy to give you a two week extension for your overdue work and hold off on contacting your guardian. We’ll schedule another meeting in a few weeks to review how you’re going and decide whether we need to get your guardian involved. What are your thoughts on that?”

“Is that...really okay?” he asked, voice small. He raised his head to gauge whether Present Mic was being genuine.

“Of course! In fact—” Yamada paused abruptly, a frown pulling at his lips, eyebrows furrowed together. “Wait...is that a bruise? What happened? Why are you injured?”

Hitoshi ducked down, suddenly scared. The calm that had fallen upon him was gone. In its place was the fear of having all of his secrets laid out, the fear of the foundations crumbling around him after years of hard work keeping it together.

A cover. He needed a cover story. Something bad but not too bad. Something that would make sense, that he wouldn’t need to provide evidence for but could laugh off. Something that would divert their attention away from his foster house and Masako. There were some things that were better kept secret. He was tired of moving between houses - trading one prison cell for another. Life with Masako was as good as it would get.

The words tumbled out, lies spilling out between gritted teeth. “I, um, I got into a fight with an old classmate. We just...had a disagreement. Yeah.”

Present Mic pursed his lips, clearly unhappy with his vague explanation. “That’s a pretty big shiner for a disagreement.” He shook his head as if to clear his brain. “C’mon, I’ll take you to see Recovery Girl and write up a pass for your next class.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled , clutching the strap of his bag as he stood up. What he really wanted to say was, Thank you for giving me more chances even when I don’t deserve it, even when I give you reasons not to.

It didn’t matter that he was hungry, that his ribs ached, that every breath was a battle, that he wanted to crawl in a hole and rot away, that his head hurt so much he wanted to scream, that he was exhausted - because Aizawa and Yamada treated him like they saw something in him that wasn’t inherently evil; like they weren’t dealing with a potential villain, but a potential hero. 

Chapter Text

Spurred on by panic, Hitoshi yanked his gym clothes out of his bag, fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt as he undressed as quickly as he could. He tugged on his U.A. gym clothes haphazardly, shoved his clothes inside his locker, and slipped his gym shoes on. His ribs twinged uncomfortably but he ignored it in favour of speeding up. 

He’d never been late to a training session. This was a first. No doubt Aizawa had been waiting for Hitoshi, expecting his arrival at the time they’d agreed upon. And yet, he was late by thirty minutes. His heart pounded, palpitated, threatened to burst in his chest like a butterfly shedding its cocoon to become something worse, something uglier. 

Fear is an illusion , he told himself, a phrase he’d been taught as part of his training under him. While those weren’t years he looked upon fondly, Hitoshi couldn’t help himself from remembering it, not when it was so deeply ingrained into his sense of self that he felt he was nothing without the rules that held him together.

Still, his hands shook, even with the reminder that this bone-deep terror was merely an illusory emotion designed to impede his potential. Because he was late and he wasn’t supposed to be. He was supposed to be on time. Early . Anything other than late. This was wrong . Deep in his bones, he could feel it. Disobedience wouldn’t be tolerated. It never was. But this—

Fear is an illusion.

He wasn’t allowed to be scared. He’d faced worse, before, without so much as a flinch. Much worse. There was nothing — no punishment — Aizawa could inflict that Hitoshi hadn’t already lived through, learned by. Fear wasn’t something he was allowed to feel, not when he’d been taught to push it aside. The training hadn’t been worthless, had it? All those weeks, those months, living with a monster with a penchant for lessons - Hitoshi had learned, right? That fear made you vulnerable, and vulnerability could cost you your life. (Sometimes he wished he could hold his head down under the fear, let it wash over him in a warm embrace, fold it in his arms as he slept. Sometimes he yearned for it to take his life.)

“Fear is an illusion,” he whispered breathlessly, repeating the mantra like it would save him. He’d done a spectacular job of angering all the authority figures in his life in the last few days, it was the one thing he’d always been good at. But fear was weakness in the face of authority. He wasn’t allowed to be weak. It would give them space to take and take and take, and Hitoshi didn’t have anything left to spare except the well of sadness inside his chest. But that was his, and his alone. 

Pain is a tool. Fear is an illusion. Lessons. He’d learned them. They were carved into his flesh by a practiced hand, etched into every inch of his being in invisible ink. So far, living by these rules had been essential to his survival. He had taught Hitoshi useful things that made him stronger; and it might have been horrible, painful, torturous - but it had to be worth it. 

(It had to be, because if it wasn’t, if none of those lessons helped him in any way, then his whole life he’d been forced to endure pain and blood and torture for no reason other than another human’s amusement. And that couldn’t be true because if all of those hard-earned lessons were useless - then it had been for nothing. 

But his suffering couldn’t have been for nothing. It wasn’t allowed to. Because if it was all for nothing then Hitoshi— 

Then Hitoshi couldn’t live with himself.)

There were more lessons. Of course. But those were the core ones, the ones beaten into him until he was delirious with pain, the ones that sometimes felt like they’d been engraved into his rib bones. Into his skull, into the back of his eyes, so if he ever paused for a moment to think he’d remember it. He was very thorough. 

Messy in execution, meticulous in detail. 

Calm down , Hitoshi thought, digging his nails into his palms. Just breathe. It’s worse if you show fear. It’s always worse.

In for four, out for five, in for seven. Breathe.

He was wasting time. This, he knew, the longer he leaned against the row of lockers, gasping for breath. The longer he took, the worse it would be. But he didn’t want that, didn’t want to go back down to that dark place where the walls closed in and the darkness seemed to move. There were always broken bones, cuts, bruises - those were fine. He could handle that. Not the darkness - the way it clawed at his skin and played tricks on his mind, taunting him, teasing him into slipping up. 

He choked, reached up to fist a hand in his hair, pulled as harshly as he could. Squeezed his eyes against the pain, relished in it. It centred him. He clung to it, the nails wandering to the crook of his elbow, digging into the material of his shirt. Yanked the sleeve down. Dug until it burned and hurt and he couldn’t taste bile.

The panic receded. Became a dull noise in the back of his head, made his head a little less foggy. Hitoshi looked down at his wrist, at the small drops of blood pooling under his nails in crescent moon shapes. There was barely any blood but the sight of it made his stomach turn. He rolled his sleeve down with a trembling hand and fixed his hair.

Fear is an illusion, little lion. 

This time it wasn’t his voice that whispered in his ear.

Hitoshi froze. Whipped his head around to find where that voice had come from, that familiar accent that dripped honeyed poison. He could feel his breath against the back of his neck; it sent a shiver of terror down his spine even as he scanned the room and found no hint of anyone . 

He’s still in Hosu , he thought desperately. Not here. Not yet. 

He was really paranoid, huh? There was no one there. And if there was, it was just the ghosts from his past, coming back to haunt him like they’d always promised. 

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Hitoshi wiped his palms on his shorts and did what he did best - compartmentalise.

Filed everything neatly with the appropriate labels. Placed them inside the filing cabinet. Then came the lighter fluid. The strike of a match. He burned everything until his mind was emptied of the twisting carcass of metal and wood. 

He tucked his hands into the pockets of his shorts to hide the trembling and slipped out of the locker room, hoping he didn’t look as panicked as he’d been earlier. He tightened his mask, made sure his shoulders were loose, without tension. Relaxed the muscles in his face until they didn’t ache. This was easy, it came naturally to him, the shedding of skin to mask the humanity.

Aizawa stood in their corner of the gym, arms folded over his chest and eyes set in a glare. Hitoshi’s breath stuttered in his chest, mask slipping at the anger that he glimpsed simmering beneath the surface of Aizawa’s eyes. Then, he pulled. Tight. Until the mask nearly suffocated him. 

(Because he’d miscalculated how angry Aizawa would be at his impunctuality. Had made the quick assumption that maybe he’d be upset but not enraged. Not like this.)

He approached him hesitantly, forcing himself to move closer despite the fear that spread through his limbs, threatening to paralyse him where he stood. Each step forward was agonising, a sure step towards danger and dirt under his knees, boot against his back, get back up little lion now before I—

The mask dug into his flesh. It was like a muzzle. Hitoshi couldn’t help but find that ironic; in the end, he was the one that held him back, dragged him down, took away his voice.

He paused once he was at a reasonable distance. Two metres. His calculations were precise. This was as safe as it would get. Any further would be a slight, any closer an insult. Was it the same for Aizawa? He couldn’t tell because he wasn’t allowed to look. Kept his eyes glued to the ground, low enough to appear submissive, high enough to look attentive. It had to be perfect, this act, this performance. There would be consequences if it wasn’t. 

He pressed his tongue against his teeth. The silence stretched on. It was heavy, oppressive. Hitoshi resisted the urge to fold his arms, to fidget with the hem of his shirt, to move at all. 

Fear is an illusion , his mind whispered. You know nothing of fear. It exists to hold you back and you will not be held back. You are above it. 

He wanted to close his eyes but he couldn’t blink. Anything could happen in a split second. He held his breath. If only he had a quirk that could make him invisible, intangible. 

There was a buzzing sound. Hitoshi’s eyes burned. He didn’t move an inch. His lungs seized. He stood deathly still. Aizawa’s gaze was heavy.

“Aren’t you going to explain?” 

Hitoshi nearly flinched at the sharp edge in Aizawa’s voice. He resisted, barely , digging his heels into the floor, tensing the muscles in his body. His head hurt and he was tired and he could feel phantom pain rippling in his cheek from the healed bruise. 

“You’re forty minutes late,” Aizawa snapped. “Care to share with the class why you arrived late? I’m sure you had plenty of time to make up a fitting excuse.”

Fear is an illusion. Hitoshi clenched his hands. If you show fear, you lose. You fail. And failure is not an option. Failure will not be tolerated.

Was that even his voice? He didn’t know anymore, just knew that it was true. That he was dead if he bowed under the gaze of that unrelenting stare. He had to face it head long, without flinching, without resisting. 

He swallowed his fear down. Ignored the way it tickled at the back of his throat, dragged taloned claws against his skin like it could sink itself into his soul. But he wouldn’t let it. He’d been trained against it. And even if he knew that was wrong, that little kids shouldn’t fear fear, it was still all he knew. And everyone returned to their roots. 

Aizawa stepped forward. He was a blur of movement. Hitoshi couldn’t move.

He saw the flicker of an arm, anticipated the blow, fell victim to the all-consuming fear that gripped his throat in its bare hands, couldn’t stop the full-body flinch that trembled through him and sent him tumbling into a roll to avoid the collision of curled fist.

Hitoshi raised his arms instinctively to shield his face. His heart was a loud drum beating in his chest, the sound track he would pay consequence to. He could take a leg or a foot to the ribs - that would heal well enough if he left it alone - but he didn’t want to risk brain damage. 

And— he shouldn’t be but he was. 

Terrified, that is.

He held his arms up. Waited for it, the blow, anything. Opened his eyes when nothing came, when the silence started to scare him more than the consequences.

And there . Aizawa was crouched in front of him, hands raised in surrender, eyebrows furrowed and lips twisted into a frown that deepened with suspicion as their eyes met. 

Hitoshi’s breath caught in his throat. Fuck. 

He lowered his arms in shame, curled them around his waist as he held himself. He felt small. Wished he could shrink until he was a speck of dirt to match the way he felt. His breaths came out short, fast, like he was breathing through a straw in a blizzard.

“You back with me, kid?” Aizawa asked quietly. There was no more anger in his voice. In its place, Hitoshi recognised a softer emotion, something that made his chest twinge and made the lump in his throat grow. He wondered where the rage had gone - had he poured it into a jar and stored it inside the fridge for safekeeping to revisit at a later date when it was needed? 

Aizawa was waiting for an answer. He drew his aching knees to his chest and made a noise that he hoped sounded like affirmation. 

There was a creak as Aizawa dropped his hands and moved into a seated position, watching him carefully and cautiously, almost like he was worried he’d frighten Hitoshi if he moved too quickly - which, Hitoshi thought, was a fair assessment, considering he’d just freaked out over his arm moving. Aizawa would definitely get rid of him after this. This was the breaking point. Everybody had one.

There was a sigh. Hitoshi couldn’t help but look at Aizawa. The man looked weary with concern. “Okay,” he said finally, resolutely, huffing out a breath of air. “Shinsou, did you...did you think I was going to hurt you? It’s important that you’re honest with me.”

There was a pained expression that flickered across his face, as though he were physically disturbed by the idea, before it disappeared behind a frown. 

Hitoshi didn’t know how to answer the question. Did he think Aizawa was going to hurt him? Obviously. That much should have been obvious, given he’d literally thrown himself at the ground to avoid any kind of potential attack. Right now, he should’ve been getting beaten for trying to evade punishment - not whatever this was.

But he needed to answer. Because he couldn’t make this any worse for himself. He was too tired for that.

“I- I don’t… Yeah .” he admitted, breathing ragged as he tried to stitch himself together from the ground up. Lying was worse. Besides, he was clearly going to be hit for arriving late, and it would have been fully deserved. What was the pro hero trying to do?

Aizawa dragged a hand over his face. “Why?” 

Hitoshi blinked and felt his eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. “Because… because I was late.”

His teacher squinted at him, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Kid- Shinsou, look at me. Hey, eyes up here.” He snapped his fingers softly to get his attention. Hitoshi hesitantly met his eyes. “I will never hurt you. You have done nothing to deserve that kind of cruelty and I would never, ever put you through that. Do you understand?”

No , he wanted to say. I don’t understand. I don’t believe you. You’re lying. 

That’s what they all say. They never hit me until they do.

Aizawa must have seen it in his eyes because his eyebrows knitted together in worry. “You think I’m lying,” he said. His face was somber. “Because someone... taught you that violence was a valid consequence, a valid response.” There was a heavy pause. Aizawa’s lips thinned, and his voice was thick with muted anger as he practically spat, “It was your previous trainer, wasn’t it?”

Hitoshi ducked his head to stare at the ground. He didn’t want to talk about him and he didn’t want Aizawa to know about it. 

“You deserve an apology,” he said softly. Hitoshi whipped his head up, shocked. “I shouldn’t have behaved like that. It was inappropriate and unprofessional. There’s no excuse for my behaviour. I’m sorry, Shinsou. If I ever make you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, for any reason, please let me know and I’ll change my behaviour.”

“You’re not...angry at me?” Hitoshi asked, incredulous. 

Was he dreaming right now? Things like this didn’t happen. Teachers - adults - didn’t stoop down to his level and apologise . This wasn’t the reaction he expected nor was it what he deserved. Aizawa shouldn’t have been apologising for something that Hitoshi had done, he should have been punishing him for disobeying and flipping his shit!

Aizawa looked him square in the eyes, a tinge of concern veiled behind his calm demeanour. “I’m not angry at you, Shinsou. There is nothing you could do that would make me angry, and there is nothing that you could do that would ever make me hurt you . The only time there is any risk of injury is during sparring, but even then it is relatively harmless. And under no circumstances should you ever feel afraid or worried for your safety.”

“I’m not afraid,” he blurted, digging his nails into his elbows. “I’m not.” 

Fear is an illusion.

Aizawa was watching him carefully now, trying to pick apart his words, find the underlying suggestions. “But it’s okay if you are,” he said slowly, as though testing the waters. “If you were scared, I wouldn’t judge you. It’s a normal reaction when you’re in an unsettling situation.” 

“But I’m not afraid,” he repeated anxiously. Fear was wrong. It was weak. Hitoshi wasn’t weak. “Fear...fear is an illusion,” he mumbled. Why was he saying all this? Why was he telling Aizawa? He wouldn’t understand that there were some things that you needed to stand in front of and show no emotion. That sometimes you had to wear a mask and trap all of the fear so that it wouldn’t leak. So that you could fight without being hindered. So there was nothing for them to use against you.

Pain could only be a tool when fear was an illusion.

“Is that what your old trainer taught you? That fear is an illusion?”

Hitoshi felt his traitorous eyes become wet. He didn’t want to talk about this, about him , about the things that had happened. Aizawa wouldn’t understand what it was like to live under the roof of a monster, what it was like to fight for his survival at every turn. Even now, to have a gun held to his head, a whisper at his back, a reminder that he would never be free. That freedom didn’t exist.

“Can we- can we not talk about this right now?” he pleaded, voice breaking. “Please, Aizawa-sensei, I don’t- I can’t do this.” 

There was a loaded sigh before Aizawa shifted out of his seated position and stood up. “Yeah, of course, kid. We’ll skip training for today because I think we both need to rest. I’ll table this discussion for another time, alright?” 

And he would. Aizawa always kept note of important topics to discuss. He’d proved that last time when he’d questioned Hitoshi about his past training. 

Suddenly, there was a hand held out in front of him. Hitoshi looked at it in confusion before he realised Aizawa was offering to help him up, which struck him as odd considering nobody had ever really done that - offered him a hand . Before he could talk himself out of it, Hitoshi reached out to curl his fingers around Aizawa’s outstretched hand. It was warm and something loosened in his chest at the small act as he was pulled to his feet. 

When his hand was released, he crossed it over his chest protectively. “I’m sorry for being late,” he said hoarsely. “I was talking to my teacher and I- I forgot the time.”

Aizawa’s eyes softened. “Can I touch your shoulder, kid?”

Hitoshi nodded, feeling out of his element. 

Aizawa slowly settled a hand on his left shoulder. Then, he ducked his head down so they were eye-to-eye. Hitoshi’s chest filled with warmth at the action. He felt...safe. “It happens,” he said gently. “I should have expected there would be demands on your time. Thank you for telling me.” He paused. “How about I give you my personal number so you can contact me if you’re ever in a situation where you’ll be late? That way I’ll be prepared and you won’t have to feel pressured to arrive on time.”

“Is that- You would do that?” 

He had to be dreaming. He was going to get the Eraserhead’s personal phone number. He felt a spark of excitement mixed within the anxiety swimming in his stomach. He’d been too busy worrying about him that he’d forgotten Aizawa was the hero that had fostered his desire to be a hero; that Aizawa was the one who had inspired him and then believed in him. Nobody else came close to that.

So when he tucked the slip of paper with a number scrawled on it into his pocket as he left the gym, heading for Dagobah beach, he felt a faint smile tugging at his lips. Because maybe he could trust Aizawa. Maybe this time he could let his guard down without fearing the repercussions. Maybe this time safety would be more than a lie told to keep him coming back. 

Until then, fear had to be an illusion because if it wasn’t, then Hitoshi would have to face the fact that he was fucking terrified. 

There was a message from Ten waiting for him when he returned back to the house at midnight. 

Masako was working the graveyard shift so he had no qualms about making noise as he shoved his mattress to the side and sunk to his knees, fingers digging into a weathered piece of wood, prying the flooring loose. He was glad she was out of the house. It had only been yesterday morning that she’d punished him, so the house wasn’t safe enough yet for him to show his face around her.

He ignored the hunger pang that ripped through his stomach as he placed the broken floorboard to the side. He reached in and, with shaky hands, switched on the burner phone Ten had given him years ago when they’d first met. He tore his lip to shreds between his teeth as he waited for it to power on. Anxiety thrummed under his skin - 

The cell phone flickered to life. There was one unopened email, the sight of it made his stomach turn as he remembered how his last delivery had gone. 

Hitoshi lifted a trembling hand and pressed a button, opening the inbox. The email appeared onscreen. It was from Ten. And there could only be one reason Ten would contact him on the burner.

The Subject line read: D-6, 20XX0515, Client 149, TEN

He had a delivery to make. He had a price to pay. 

Chapter Text

Hitoshi ducked his head down low as he entered a nearby alley, strategically angling his face away from the security cameras he knew were installed at the front of the restaurant across the street. Even if it was pitch black outside, night vision could still capture his features, and he definitely didn’t want that. He tucked his hands into the deep pockets of his military pants, fingering the edge of the sharp knife he’d hidden there.

The familiar touch of the cold metal was a reminder of all the parts of himself that were still sharp, still dangerous, still manipulated. The irony was that the training he’d undergone as a child was the only reason he could make deliveries without a flinch. 

It didn’t mean he liked it - being a tool for the powerful, for the predators. 

That didn’t matter, though, because Hitoshi would always be prey. It didn’t matter how tightly he clung to the pipe dream of heroism in his near-future; because he was destined to a lifetime of strings tugging at his limbs, arms dancing around for entertainment, a puppet played by those with power. 

And yet.

And yet he allowed Aizawa in. Even with every fibre of his being screaming that he was wasting both of their time, Hitoshi couldn’t bring himself to be the one who crushed his own dreams. Sure, his desire to be a hero would never come to fruition, but if he didn’t have his dream then…then what did he really have? 

He would never be a hero but he could pretend. (Like he’d been doing for the past three years, pretending to himself that he could outrun his past, even when everyone knew that was impossible. But he couldn’t face the truth. Not when the lie was super glue, holding him together - all the broken, ugly parts of him that he tried to hide).

He was ripped from his thoughts by the sound of a low whistle. Hitoshi spun around to locate the source of the sound, shoulders relaxing when he saw that it was Rei.

He was wearing his signature white plastic mask with vertical red lines running down the sides. Hitoshi had always assumed he was in his early thirties, partly because of his voice and, though he would never admit it, because of the fact that he had a tendency to think that most henchmen were in their thirties. He couldn’t imagine a younger man in such a role. Maybe he just lacked imagination.

As one of Ten’s henchmen, Rei was his first point of contact when making a delivery. The process was set in motion once he received the email from Ten containing coordinates to a location for his meeting with Rei, as well as the specific day and time of that meeting, where he would receive the item to be delivered.

Hitoshi was kept in the dark about the details of the delivery. He didn’t know what he delivered, nor did he want to know. Because there was a level of complicity in knowing that made his gut twist uncomfortably, made his skin prick with anxiety. Sometimes ignorance was bliss - and in this case, bliss for Hitoshi meant being able to look Aizawa in the eyes without wanting to run.

There were rumours, of course. About the current state of the underworld, about the most desired product in the market. He’d heard things in the wind; whispers about a quirk-erasing drug, whispers about Trigger, whispers about the end of hero society. But they were rumours. 

Still, that was of little comfort to Hitoshi, who knew the weight of rumours - that they always stemmed from some degree of truth. For example, it was clear that there was a new drug in the blackmarket. That was true, it had to be since it wasn’t much of a stretch of his imagination. But whether it had quirk-erasing properties was a question for another day. 

“Boss expects you to handle this without an issue,” Rei said in a gravelly voice. “If you fuck this up, you’re out.”

Hitoshi forced himself not to flinch or show any sign of uneasiness at Rei’s warning. Inside, his stomach was in knots, a lump of fear growing inside his throat, held back by his bated breath. He swallowed it down. There was no time for fear. No need for fear. Not when it was counterproductive and redundant.

Fear is an illusion, he reminded himself. Pressed his thumb to the edge of the blade in his pocket, felt his skin break under the pressure, wet blood pooling on his skin. He leaned into the stinging sensation, allowing it to hold him. And pain is a tool.

“Understood,” he said in a harsh voice, trying to sound a few years older than he was. If they knew he was a high school kid, he was dead. If they knew he was a high school kid attending a hero school, he would wish he was dead. 

Rei eyed him before tossing a small object at him. It came hurtling at him with a startling precision, whipping through the air so quickly he almost lost focus. Hitoshi threw an arm out instinctively, catching the object with his hands before it could hit him square in the face. He squinted at the object in the dark, trying to make out what it was. From what he could tell, it was a cardboard box the size of his hand. There was a note taped to the front and he moved out of the shadows to read it, managing to make out the words.

It was the drop-off location.

Before he could glean a bit more information, he felt Rei’s presence disappear. Hitoshi bit back a sigh and slipped the thin package into the front pocket of his hoodie.

The most nerve wracking part of making deliveries for Ten was that he never knew what to expect. He didn’t know what kind of danger he was walking into every time he did Ten’s bidding. It seemed no one else did, either. They were all in the dark as to their objective. Two years doing Ten’s dirty work in return for information and Hitoshi still had no clue what their goal was in all of this.

He didn’t know if that made everything better or worse.

What he did know was that as long as kept quiet, he would only ever be their delivery boy. Nothing more.

And as always, there was a price to pay for information. Nobody would give information for free out of the goodness of their heart; because altruism didn’t exist. People could never be truly good. That was a lie people told themselves before they went to bed at night and when they woke up in the morning, because if they didn’t believe that good existed, then how could they go on? It was what drove them, encouraged them, motivated them. 

A lie they’d learned from their parents, from their teachers, from the adults in their life. That help will come and trust is everything. It was bullshit. He knew from experience.

And still Hitoshi didn’t know if knowing the truth made him luckier than others. Or maybe he was worse off, because he had no illusion of society untouched by the hands of evil. People thrived off of illusions about the world, about their life, about one another. Without that, perhaps Hitoshi was wilting inside. 

He was spared the lie from the moment his mother had left him on the stairs of the orphanage at four. There, the adults, with their jaded eyes and cruel smiles, had taught him the truth - that everything had a price, and sometimes you had to be willing to risk your soul. People were selfish and only cared long enough to get their pay off. Everything in life was an exchange of actions and consequences and prices to pay. As much as he hated it, he lived by it.

If he wore the muzzle without a fight, they left him alone. If he obeyed their rules, they fed him. If he was quiet, if he was compliant, if he faded into the background - they wouldn’t hurt him. If he played along, he wouldn’t refuse to ease the pain.  If he made deliveries for Ten, they would give him information. If, if, if.

Life was one trade after another. Action and consequence. Hitoshi made those exchanges every day, even as it flayed his soul and made the self-loathing tangible.

Hitoshi yanked his hoodie down lower and slipped out of the alleyway, finding himself ducking through familiar streets as he inched ever so closer to the specified location. There were coordinates below the message, so he popped them into his GPS and took the quickest route.

He checked his phone frequently to make sure he was on the right path, gritting his teeth against the throbbing pain inside his temples as he moved through buildings.

Soon enough, he found himself at what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse sitting on the side of a reserve. The trees outlined by the moonlight in the distance were towering and ominous, swaying in the light breeze. Hitoshi felt eyes on him, then. He spun around, searching the dark with his eyes, sliding the knife up his sleeve in a flash. The razor-edge bit into the flesh of his wrist but he paid it no mind, tense and alert. He had a gut feeling that something was terribly wrong.

There was someone else here. His heart pounded in his chest. Someone was watching him. He was sure of it. Deep in his bones, he knew he wasn’t alone. 

There was movement beside the large, crumbling warehouse. Behind the wall. Hitoshi backed away with his face forward, forcing himself towards the forest despite how resistant he was to the idea of being surrounded by walls of endless trees, of all things. But it would offer him cover and as much as he hated it, he knew that his past training would prove useful. His fear of being caught, or worse, spurred him on.

Never turn your back on an enemy, little lion.

The sound of his voice inside his head had a chill running down his spine. Hitoshi felt his limbs shake with adrenaline and fear, but fear is an illusion, he wasn’t scared he couldn’t be scared he wasn’t allowed to be scared. He clenched his jaw and shoved the thoughts into a folder, labelled it and filed it away. Burned the remains. Needed the strength it afforded him.

Before he knew it, his shoes were digging into soft earth and piles of wet leaves. The shadowy figure of a person drew closer, emerging from behind the warehouse. A twig cracked under Hitoshi’s shoe.

Crack!

A bullet zipped past him, narrowly avoiding his shoulder. 

The shock was enough to send him to his knees, fingers splayed against the dirt, trying to push past his confusion at what had gone wrong. 

(Had he been made? Was this a set-up? No, no, Ten wouldn’t do that. Then, did someone leak information? But how? And why? Or was this just a coincidence?) 

Hitoshi closed his eyes and took a few quick, deep breaths, feeling his heart start to calm and his muscles begin to tense in anticipation. The surprise was gone - replaced by a scary numbness that he’d spent the last few years trying to forget. It drowned out the complete and utter terror that consumed him, spreading like wildfire through his veins. He hated himself for appreciating the comfort it offered him - to be distant, separated from the pain and uncertainty. 

This setting was different yet familiar in a way that made his chest ache. He could hear the wind whistling in his ears, could feel the cold at his fingertips as he pulled himself to his feet and ran, picking his way through the dark instinctively. Could feel the burning in his lungs—the dirt under his knees, fingernails torn as he scrambled for purchase on the ground, a hand around his neck and a boot on his back, get back up little lion—

Hitoshi felt himself slip unwillingly into a role he’d spent the last three years trying to run from—the hunted, the prey.

Chapter Text

hey, it’s been a long, long time. the last time i updated this fic was June 2021. wow.

there are a few things i want to say. i will list them below to make it easy to follow.

1) i was on an extended hiatus but now i’m back! i will be posting chapters regularly again, once a week (or every second week).

2) unfortunately, the reason i’ve returned to this fic is not a very happy one. as you all know, my depression drove me to write this fic. when i felt unbearably sad, i channeled it into writing in the past - this fic was borne from the agony of depression and anxiety.

3) the reason i stopped: since June 2021, my mental health had started to improve. i still suffered from depressive episodes but they were less intense, more manageable, and less frequent. i also started Botox for my migraine attacks, which helped reduce them (only a bit, from 25+ a month to 14-19). things had started to settle down in my life. uni was good. my family was becoming less toxic.

4) the reason i’ve returned: my mum died by suicide on February 10 2023. a little over two months ago, i found her dead from an intentional drug overdose. since then, my life has been a living nightmare. this grief is hell. my past depressive episodes pale in comparison to the horror and shock and dread and devastation face waking up every morning. every night i pray i die in my sleep because this pain is impossible. i can’t function. i want to die but i can’t. because i know the pain it will bring to my loved ones, and if there is one thing i will never do - it’s bring a pain like this into the lives of the people who love me. this pain is unimaginable. especially because of the traumatic flashbacks to finding my mum dead. it breaks my heart.

there’s nothing that helps the pain, the grief. but maybe, just maybe, writing can be the same saviour it had been for me in the past. because i am not only grieving my mum’s death, but the relationship we never had. i am still traumatised by the abuse she put me through growing up. i am still processing the resentment i carried on me for most of my life. i am still coming to terms with the fact that i will never have a proper mother-daughter relationship with her like i always longed for. i am grieving that. just as hitoshi in this fic grieves the absence of love he’s come to feel he doesn’t deserve. just as hitoshi yearns for the adults in his life to see his suffering and give him a warm hug and show him they truly care. that’s all i wanted. a mother - an adult - who cared for me like i needed.

5) i know this is a lot to trauma dump on you. if you’ve made it this far, i’m sorry. i’m sorry for leaving this fic for a long time. i’m sorry for leaving you in the dark. but thank you for sticking around so long. for holding onto hope. that hope is what i need most right now as i navigate the endless black hole that has opened up in my chest. thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

6) i will be updating this fic. expect the next chapter to be updated within the next week. i have hope this is what i need. this fic and this small community of love and support we created together. above all, finding hope in hitoshi’s hope. and finding family in hitoshi’s found family.

thank you if you’ve stuck around this long <3 i missed you all dearly.

Chapter Text

The dark was heavy and oppressive - the smell of earth mixed with last night’s rain clogging his nose. A memory rose to his mind, unbidden, as he picked his way through the forest, trying to escape the barrel of a gun chasing him down. He tasted blood on his tongue, dirt under his fingernails, chest heaving as he clawed clawed clawed at the earth, choking on darkness that seemed to swallow him whole—

Label. File. Burn.

Years of practice training in a forest meant that Hitoshi’s lungs were accustomed to breathing in thin air. It didn’t affect him the way it affected others wandering into a forest for a light jog, because he knew how to regulate his breathing to match his environment. 

As he moved through the dark forest, Hitoshi ran through the mental checklist he’d created when he was younger. It came naturally to him, the thought processes he’d spent years trying to suppress. He felt uncomfortable in his skin, knowing it remembered everything; even the things he’d spent years trying to drown out.

Because even as he navigated his way through the trees, he found himself subconsciously positioning his body in a crouch - knees bent, weight distributed evenly between both feet - in order to move silently. 

As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he was able to make out parts of the forest floor and the moss-covered areas that would be softer to walk upon, unlike the areas filled with dead leaves that would crackle under his shoes and dry twigs that would snap under his weight. He was so used to it that he barely had to think twice before taking a step forward. 

The full moon lit up the forest floor like a search beam, but he kept to the shadows along the trees, swift and steady in his escape.

There was no room for terror, no space for panic, so he forced everything down until fear was nothing but an illusion of the mind, a weakness of the self that could be quashed with a single breath. Hitoshi kept his eyes forward as he slipped between trees, side-stepping logs, tree roots and fallen trunks. He forced himself to focus on the sounds he was hearing, knowing that the more his ears adjusted to his surroundings, the safer he would be. 

Even though he couldn’t hear footsteps or sounds that indicated he was being followed, he continued on. In a situation like this, assumptions could get him killed.

As he trekked through the forest at a quick pace, he struggled to push down the memories that surfaced, refused to remember blood in his mouth, clawed fingers around his throat, nails ripping as he tried to get away from the icy hands of death—

Label. File. Burn.

He couldn’t feel eyes on him anymore. With only a split-second to think, he made the decision to hide in the cover of the trees. With a leap, he caught himself on a sturdy, low-hanging branch and pulled himself up.

Bark dug into the palms of his hands as he hoisted himself up the tree, using the grooves in the trunk to propel his body. He grappled for another branch, climbing higher and higher until he was completely concealed by the thick leaves of the tree. He settled in the crook of the branch he had been standing on, suitcase pressed to his chest and hands clutching the knife he’d brought, feeling wholly unprepared. 

The night would be long. Hitoshi grimly accepted that he’d have to stay in hiding until the sun rose, which would be in a couple hours based on the darkness that encompassed the forest. 

Once the daylight came, he planned to leave the delivery at the assigned safehouse, where he’d leave a message for Ten warning him of the compromised drop-off. There was a process for things like this. 

Hitoshi was confident that the blame wouldn’t fall on his shoulders this time. He’d been careful to avoid being followed. He wasn’t at fault, he’d taken all the necessary precautions — and yet, someone had been lying in wait, gun loaded and ready to fire. 

Hitoshi’s eyes followed every sound and movement in the pitch black. Like a mantra, he repeated in his head, Fear is an illusion. Fear is an illusion. Fear is an illusion. 

He was cold. Hungry. In pain. But he stayed, because someone was hunting him. The question was who. It had to have been someone invested in preventing this delivery from reaching its intended destination. Based on that logic, it had to be either someone within Ten’s inner circle, or a vengeful competitor.  

It was either related to Ten’s business dealings, or Hitoshi’s past was coming back to hunt him down.

His grip on the knife in his hands tightened. The blade cut into his skin, but Hitoshi was so paralyzed by his own train of thought that he barely reacted to the sharp and sudden pain. 

His mind was a mess as he tried to piece everything together. It couldn’t have been him . He was supposed to be in Hosu based on recent intel and historical patterns that indicated he often stayed for several months in one place before moving on. If he’d moved since, Ten would’ve flagged it to Hitoshi. 

Especially as the only reason Hitoshi was doing Ten’s bidding like a well-trained dog was because they’d promised to keep him safe in return. Because they’d passed Hitoshi a glass of whiskey with an assurance that not even pro heroes dared give him - that he’d never step foot into Mustafa.

But what if it is him? his mind whispered conspiratorially. 

Hitoshi’s breath quickened at the thought. His hands shook so badly he nicked his palm on the blade of the knife multiple times, unable to control the full-body trembling that ran through him. The familiar demand to run little lion left him in shambles, overcome by memories that tasted of blood and dirt and being pressed down, down, down. Images of looming cage bars, crowds cheering on in sick delight, his little fingers slick with blood, the threat of violence weighing heavy on his trembling frame, the breaking of bone over and over and over and over again—

Hitoshi closed the fingers of his right hand over the razor-sharp teeth of the knife and yanked , until fire-hot blood soaked through the paper-thin memories. Pain is a tool.

He couldn’t be here. Hitoshi refused to believe it.

Yet, the familiarity of the situation couldn’t be overlooked. Was it truly a coincidence that he’d been running from a person with a gun in the middle of the night in a forest, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a knife in his hand? 

He didn’t know. All he knew was that he either survived tonight or died choking on blood, silent scream on his lips, dragged in by an iron-first grip around his ankle trying.

He made his way to Masako’s house in the early hours of the morning when the sun had risen just enough that the forest floor was illuminated with light. 

After leaving the suitcase at the north-east safehouse with an encrypted letter to Ten about the unknown assailant, he all but ran to UA. He stuck to busy public areas as he made his way to school, eyes instinctively tracking and filing away the face of every person he came across.

Hitoshi could barely feel his gnawing hunger as he slipped through the gates of UA and made his way to his home room. Exhaustion weighed him down like a heavy dumbbell tied to his heels, but the panic far outweighed it. 

Because he didn’t know if he was being followed, and his mind had somehow convinced him into believing that the unknown assailant was him. 

Even if it wasn’t him , maybe it was safer operating under the assumption that it was. Just in case.

Hitoshi shook the thought off, trying to think of something else for a change as he slipped into his seat at the back of the classroom. But it was the only thing his mind dared think about, almost like it was afraid that if he wasn’t vigilant at all times he’d fall into a trap and be caught unawares. 

Not that he could ever be prepared to see him again, but he could prepare himself for the ( inevitable ) possibility. So that if they ever did see each other again, Hitoshi wouldn’t simply freeze in terror and accept his fate.

The next few days were agonizingly slow. Hitoshi figured it was because he was so on edge, spending every second of every minute obsessively locating where everyone else was in relation to him, mapping out every exit in every room, and identifying objects that could be used as a potential weapon if the need ever arose.

It didn’t matter that he was in a school considered one of the safest in Japan, or that there were several armed pro-heroes guarding the school and several heroes-in-training on the grounds. Because Hitoshi knew that if he was involved and on the hunt, then there was no place safe enough in the whole world where he could hide. (Ten’s promise of safety was his last, and only, hope. Or maybe Hitoshi was just desperate enough to believe the underground could protect him from the underground - fighting fire with fire sounded promising, something the pro-heroes wouldn’t understand.)

It didn’t help that all his training sessions had been canceled since Sunday because Aizawa had been pulled last-minute into an important mission with the police. 

To make matters worse, Masako had taken to locking up the pantry and fridge with padlocks, which meant that Hitoshi was only just surviving on the lunch meals UA provided to students free-of-charge. 

This wouldn’t have been an issue if Hitoshi was a normal student—which he wasn’t . The monster guarding his throat made it incredibly difficult for him to even touch the meals offered at UA. He knew he could ask Lunch Rush to modify the meals for him per UA policy, but the idea of admitting that he couldn’t eat most foods was mortifying. Plus, the modifications he needed would be too humiliating to directly ask for. No onions, no tofu, no carrot, no cabbage—

The list was too long. He’d die of embarrassment before he could even get the words out. He also felt like it would be a burden to ask for someone to accommodate him so much. Much less a person he didn’t even know.

All of this was taking a toll on him. He had barely slept a wink in days because of the nightmares of run little lion and the incessant pounding in his head, hadn’t eaten anything more than a measly bowl of rice in the past twenty four hours, and every time someone waved their hand he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from flinching. 

The stress and exhaustion had him feeling physically sick. His joints ached, his eyes burned, and it felt like he was being stabbed in the temples every time he turned his head or took a deep breath. Somehow, the most unbearable part of this whole ordeal was that Ten hadn’t gotten in contact with him since his botched drop-off.

Finally, the weekend rolled around. 

Hitoshi was tempted to text Aizawa to cancel their training but he fought the urge, realizing that it’d raise more flags to cancel than to show his face. Because if he started canceling now, it would draw attention to the fact that something was wrong enough that he needed to cancel. And there was nothing he needed less of right now than attention.

Weak from hunger and fatigue, Hitoshi made his way to the gym where he usually trained with Aizawa. Each step felt like walking on the edge of a ninety-storey building, and he was getting more and more tempted to cancel the lesson the closer he got to the training room. He felt dizzy and sick and nauseous and hollowed out. And it was all of his own doing. 

As soon as he spotted Aizawa, he realized his mistake in not canceling the lesson because once the pro-hero noticed him, his face, which had previously been tired, filled with concern and displeasure.  

“Training is canceled today,” he said after a brief glance at Hitoshi, an inscrutable expression on his face. He sounded upset, but Hitoshi wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t turned up late accidentally, had he? A quick look at the clock on the back wall quelled this fear, but he still wasn’t sure why Aizawa was looking at him with veiled dismay.

“What? Why?” Hitoshi blurted out before clamping his mouth shut in horror, shocked that he’d had the audacity to speak out of line. Do not speak unless permitted. The lack of sleep was making him slip up. He chewed on the inside of his cheek nervously, unsure if he was in trouble or not. 

“You don’t look like you’ve eaten or slept in a while,” Aizawa said bluntly, hands shifting from lying at his sides to resting on his hips.  

Aizawa met his eyes, searching for something Hitoshi wasn’t sure he would find.

“I- I can still train,” Hitoshi stammered anxiously, ignoring his questions after realizing he wouldn’t be able to give honest answers without revealing the immense pressure he was under. His head throbbed. He wanted to cry, suddenly. “I’m fine, really.”

Aizawa shook his head with a sigh. “You and I have very different definitions of ‘fine’,” he muttered. “It’s not about whether you think you can train, it’s about whether I think you’re safe to. And to me it looks like you haven’t been taking care of yourself very well.” He eyed Hitoshi impassively. “Training will be postponed until Wednesday.”

Hitoshi’s stomach sank. The back of his head grew numb, a sure tale sign of an impending panic attack. Curling his hands into fists, he struggled to wrangle the fear back into its cage. Labeled it. Filed it. Watched it burn into a heap of twisted metal scraps. 

He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to make this better. Only knew that if he didn’t get his shit together before Wednesday, Aizawa would give up on him. (Hitoshi would, too).

“Instead of training, we’ll get lunch together today and tomorrow. How does that sound?”

Like a nightmare, Hitoshi wanted to say. If lunch together was the alternative, he’d rather spend the day alone at Dagobah Beach jumping at every sound and shadow, even his own. But Aizawa was looking at him with such an intense gaze that he felt he could do nothing more than nod his head in agreement and utter a soft and weak, “Yeah, ok.”

It’s not like he could admit outright to Aizawa that the idea of eating a meal with him made him so sick with anxiety that he was tempted to turn on his heel and throw himself into oncoming traffic. (Like he’d been fantasizing about earlier this morning when he’d woken up to Masako’s enraged and drunken yelling).

It’s not like he could tell Aizawa that he’d torn his meal plan to shreds in a fit of hopeless rage after Masako stored the only safe food he could eat behind padlocks in the kitchen. 

Instead of voicing any of this, he dug his nails deep into the scabbed knife wound on his palm and prayed to a deity he didn’t believe in that he’d make it through the next few hours — before remembering that Aizawa now had the perfect opportunity to bring up topics he’d been willing to push aside and table in the past.