Chapter Text
It was 9:30 pm and it had just started to become cold and as much as Aizawa Shouta wanted to end his patrol early, he knew he couldn’t. He also knew that he only had one task in this mission; find the child.
Normally Aizawa isn’t in on these types of missions tending to deal with quirk trafficking rings and petty villains sprawled around. However, tonight he was on a drug bust at a house near the poorer parts of Musutafu, not for the apparent person selling the drugs, no, he was looking for the child ( Believe or not he is very good with kids Kan ).
They had Recovery Girl on stand by as well as a few more police littered around, they were hoping to keep this as inconspicuous as possible so it would be easier to catch the criminal. Everything was prepared for, all Aizawa had to do was wait for the signal from the leading hero.
And, as if reading Aizawa’s line of thought, he gets the signal.
It seems that the green haired woman also had plans tonight by the way she was sitting within her living room with a cup of tea and a bag of what was probably the drugs. But, again he’s there to look for the child so he lets the police and other hero do their jobs while he continues to move forward into the apartment.
Luckily the apartment was reasonably small so it didn’t take long to find where she was keeping the child. It was however what he saw that broke his cold hero heart.
The kid had long white wavy hair that reached just below his shoulder blades and curled in a bit, they were wearing a male school uniform that looked burnt along his right shoulder and around the cuffs of his sleeves, their left wrist was swollen and had two tightly looking ropes attached to it that led to a coat hanger where they were tied. However looking into the kids viridian eyes he saw fear, fear no child - no person - should have.
Aizawa sat crossed legged in front of the child to make himself look less threatening when he noticed the kid has fox ears ( most likely a fennec fox if he had to guess ) and nine tails. Two wrapped around his waist and the others moving around him defensively but one always staying close to his neck. He looked akin to a cornered animal and that just breaks Aizawa’s heart even more, because nobody should be put in this position - even villains.
He takes a moment to survey the child one more time before starting to speak.
“I’m Eraserhead, I’m going to get those ropes off you, okay?”
He wants to give the kid a chance to trust him before he does anything so he hopefully wouldn’t panic; fortunately the kid looks up also surveying him before giving a small, jerky nod to the hero. So with permission granted Aizawa immediately gets to work and grabs his knife to cut the rope as close as he dared to go to the kid at the moment. He knew they would have to attempt to cut the rest away but for now he needs to focus on not frightening the child too much.
Understandably the kid immediately jerks his swollen hand away from him and looks at him, he wasn’t sure if it was relief or fear in his eyes anymore. He hopes it’s the former but he just couldn’t be sure. Aizawa decides that he doesn’t want to risk it and moves back to where he was before.
“Do you think you can give me a name to call you, kid?” Aizawa asks softly he didn’t want to scare the kid, the commotion in the living room was loud and probably wasn’t helping.
‘I-Z-U-K-U’ the ki- Izuku signs . He was glad he learnt sign language for his husband or else he might have been in massive trouble if he couldn’t understand him.
“Well, Izuku, would you be okay if I carried you outside to get you checked out,” sensing the rising fear of the poor child he quickly adds “Don’t worry if it helps I can be there with you, if you’d like.” That seemed to calm the kid down again and he sent another, less stiff, nod to the hero in front of him.
Aizawa slowly goes to stand up and pick up the chi- Izuku, Making sure the boy could see his hands the entire time. Izuku was small, Aizawa noticed, he couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven, again fortunately Aizawa was reasonably tall he liked to believe so the child easily sat against his hip. Luck also seemed to be on his side because Izuku latched onto his hero custom like a lifeline however it was also then he noticed that at the bottom the possible teen’s leg had some fresh blood around it; making him glad Izuku didn’t object to being held, he wouldn’t want that injury being even worse.
“I think since you told me your name, I should tell you that my actual name is Aizawa Shouta.” He mentions briefly while the sound slowly dies down in the living room. Once again the kid nods his fluffy white hair bounces along as well, he probably would have smiled if it wasn’t for the current situation.
The shouting coming from the living room was basically gone but he would say it’s safe to assume that some of the police officers were still there, good, he wouldn’t want anything that’s illegal to be stolen from this house. With that in his mind he started to walk out the room he and Izuku was in previously, Aizawa gave a quick nod to the police officers still in the house and quickly made his way to Recovery Girl.
Fortunately Recovery Girl knew sign language as well which will hopefully help calm the on edge child down a bit. Speaking of the on edge child, Aizawa noticed that he had wrapped one of his tails around his wrist and another two around his waist; he wasn’t sure if it was a form of affection or he was trying to protect himself by possibly using Aizawa as a human shield of some sorts but the gesture was appreciated nonetheless. They were finally out of the apartment block by now and making their way to the edge of the road when Izuku held onto his costume tighter with his good hand as well as the tail on his wrist becoming tighter. From the looks of it he was most likely a prisoner in his own home, if you could even call it that.
They finally reached Recovery Girl and it was painfully clear that Izuku wasn’t going to let go of the Underground Hero any time soon, even with Aizawa’s soft murmuring to try and coax the boy onto a compactabile bed Izuku just closed his eyes and shook his head rapidly. Not wanting to scare the child into possibly running away he told Izuku that he could, if he wanted to sit next to him on the makeshift bed if that would help, and luck really must be on Aizawa’s side today because the white-haired child offered another short nod in confirmation. Honestly, that melted Aizawa’s heart a little knowing the boy had put so much trust into him already, not that he’d dare tell anyone that, Aizawa was not soft .
They managed to get Izuku onto the bed finally anyways, although he still had one tail wrapped around Aizawa’s wrist and glancing up like he was scared that the hero would suddenly vanish. He understood why though he was probably terrified right now and wanted some form of comfort and protection, which just so happened to be Aizawa. The Underground hero also noticed that he never got Izuku’s age, he’d just assumed that he was ten or eleven. He should probably do that while Recovery Girl was looking at a police officer who got injured.
“Izuku,” Aizawa waited until the boy gave some kind of indication he was listening before continuing “do you mind telling me how old you are?” he made sure to make it sound like a question to give the boy some sense of control.
‘Thirteen’ Izuku replied the best he would with his hands. The answer made Aizawa a little more upset than he already was because this kid was thirteen and is still so little and it was most likely from malnutrition- However he didn’t show his opinion in the matter and gave a simple nod as he watched Recovery Girl come to them.
It took a while to get everything done because Izuku fell into a panic attack once when Chiyo was checking his reflexes he also flinched whenever she moved too quickly and then tried to get even closer to Aizawa then he already was. After everything Recovery Girl gave the teenager a kiss on his forehead that healed then swollen wrist which undoubtedly made him tired, but it made Chiyo’s work easier as she wrapped his wrist in some compression bandages and checked his leg as well ( which also needed bandages and was already starting to become infected ). She explained that Izuku was also malnourished, which he had already gathered, and had some lingering effects of quirk exhaustion which was a small surprise to the underground hero.
The kid was half asleep on Aizawa when, once again, the underground hero noticed something. Izuku was staring at the stuffed bear they had brought along with them because they weren’t sure how old the boy was because none of the neighbours had told them his age. Aizawa guessed he might not have had toys growing up from just looking at the room the boy was in, he was sleeping on a blow up mattress! So, Aizawa did the most logical thing he could think of at the time.
“Chi- Recovery Girl, do you think you could pass us the bear please?” He questioned in his usual monotone voice. At first she looked confused but when noticing the boy's stare while he was half asleep she nodded and went to get the stuffed animal.
She swiftly came back and handed the bear to Aizawa who immediately gave it to Izuku, his eyes widened a little before taking it and he honestly looked close to tears at that point when he carefully took the bear plushie from him. It obviously meant a lot to the boy the small gesture, which again was a little sad ‘ just how little care did the boy get? ’
He was brought out of his musings by Chiyo harshly tapping on his other arm ( the one not wrapped up in a fox tail ). He looked at her and she had one of her serious faces on. “The police just got off the phone with the boy’s father, he wants nothing to do with the kid” She stated. Aizawa knew that meant the terrified teen would go into the foster system, but the thought of that didn’t sit right with him so he made up his decision right there and then.
“I’ll adopt him.” He almost immediately replied. He knew his husband wouldn’t mind seeing as he had told Aizawa he wanted to adopt a couple of times.
“If you're sure.” was all Recovery Girl said before once again walking off probably telling the police officers that Izuku would be staying with him.
Speaking of staying with him, he should probably tell his husband. So he quickly brought out his phone to send a quick text.
‘How would you feel about adopting?’