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He knew.
Before he opened his eyes-- eye, he supposes-- , before the heart monitor beside his bed registers the frantic uptick, before he even took another assisted breath.
She was gone.
Gone.
Worse than the loss of a limb, and he can say that with painful certainty now, worse than how he can't even breathe without a machine forcing his lungs to function, worse than the soft, keening cries from the chair next to him.
A third of him, a core piece cut out. Burned away, leaving nothing but aching emptiness where there should be a third body. Another pair of hands, gripped tight around his cold, bloodless ones. Another heartbeat, matched as they always are. But. No. Nothing.
There is nothing there.
Aizawa Shouta doesn't open his eyes-- eye, goddamnit. He doesn't want to see the cold, white ceiling. Doesn't want to see Hizashi, trying and failing to cover his tears with his sunglasses. Doesn't want to listen to how the entire school seems to be crying. Midnight, Nemuri, Kayama, was well liked. She, she was a good teacher. She'd accepted the fragile pack bonds of her class, led and taught them well. Laughed and high fived and teased all the bright eyed children like they were her own. Not like him, cold and calculating and having the bonds foisted on him against his will.
He can feel them, over the agony of loss, loss, loss, the utter lack of what should be unquestionable, present and safe. Feel twenty two hearts stuttering alongside his own. They're asleep, except for Mic, either because they needed it, or because Aizawa nearly went feral, brought all of them to the edge of madness, and then over. Over because he was alone.
Or he may as well be.
His students, Toshinori. They were... closer to 'normal' bonds. Under his skin, yes, but only just. The edges of them, of himself and the twenty one others, melded. Melded and grew together. But there was still the separation, still visible seams where "Shouta Aizawa" ended and any of the others began. He could, if needed, rip any of them out. It would leave him bleeding, hurting and aching, but he could. And he could survive.
There was, or there hadn't been, any such divide with Nemuri. She was him. And he was her. And they both were Hizashi, and themselves. All at once. Together, separate, it didn't matter. They were one.
And now they weren't.
There was a chasm inside his soul, broken bleeding bits tearing the foundation of his world up, ripping it to pieces, breaking him when he thought he could never be broken again.
Across the room, and where had they found one large enough to fit all of the hospital beds?, bodies stir. Hearts beat faster, monitors recording the shift, how they're all within a half beat of each other.
"Shouta--" and its Hizashi, the other third of himself. Hizashi's leather clad hand, clenched with desperate strength around his own, and he can't make himself move back, can't grip back. That's okay. Hizashi's strong enough for them both, and it's okay. Even if his painted nails dig furrows into Shouta's hand, brief flashes of discomfort past the medication, he's warm. Solid. Alive and present and safe, and breathing.
"Shou." Breathing, and broken, even the single word sounds like it lost a fight with a particularly nasty cheese grater. Painful. Because Hizashi is hurting too, it's not just Shouta who lost a packmate, who was one third Nerumi. He wasn't broken like Shouta, he could have had a bond where he was still himself. But… Shouta had taken that, stolen away his ability to be singular, taken his best friend and twisted him up with himself and Nerumi. And now Hizashi was hurting. Was giving little shuddering breaths that clearly were a struggle. Trying to speak, and comfort Shouta, the press of a too cool forehead to the back of his palm as he tries to speak again. "Shou. Nerumi, Kayama is. She's--"
He starts crying again. Unable to articulate the death. Like it could be something Shoita doesn't already know, like he's trying to spare them both pain the words will bring. Shouta wishes he wouldn't bother.
He already knows.
They release him.
Him, and the rest of his pack, broken bleeding things, continuously leaking the tears he can't.
He can't look at them. Look at their faces, see their grief, know that if it weren't for him they would be… Better. Not unaffected, Kayama was so good and the lack of her feels like the school has gone dark, cold and empty. But. Better. They'd be able to survive, mourn and move on. And maybe then, maybe if Shouta didn't have to see his agony in their eyes, he could comfort them. Could accept the gentle brushes of skin to skin or allow their hands to pull him to a nest or even tolerate the water they pushed at him, coffee and energy packs conveniently disappearing.
But now, knowing it's his fault, he can't. Won't accept those gestures.
He takes a leave of absence, allows his children to be guided by a different teacher, holes up in his tiny dormitory, locks the door and refuses anyone entry.
Gets drunk more than he should, coils agony and loss around himself like an impenetrable shield.
His pack, his children and Toshinori and Hizashi, try to enter. Try to comfort him and come to his side when the nightmares wake him with the force of his own screams and he can hear Hizashi just outside, sobbing with his back to the door, key ineffective because Shouta changed the lock.
He can't do it. Can't handle it. The empty aching loneliness, the lack of her presence in his soul. Even the silent expectation in every single bond under his skin. They are hurting, when he can't hold his own hurt. Reflecting it, amplifying it, a cacophony of pain everytime he opens his eyes and chasing him into the darkness again. Over and over. Again and again.
There is no rest.
He has…
He's hurting his students, knows his rejection of their pain is too easily read as a rejection of them and… doesn't care. Can't make himself care. Apathy is the only balm to his battered, broken soul, a cooling numbness after shrieking, agonizing pain of his loss. But even it, even beating his demons and thoughts to utter numbness can't hold back that knowledge.
He is prolonging their pain, worsening their suffering and can't make himself care enough to stop it. At least. Not in the way he probably should. He won't open his door, won't open his mind and heart and be swept away with his pack's minds against his own. No.
But…
He is the cause for their suffering. Or at least, exacerbating it, rubbing bitter, stinging acid against a wound. If he were to…
Remove himself…
From the pack, at least. There is nothing to be done about Hizashi, and maybe, selfishly Shouta is relieved by that, the loud blonde man is too integral to himself now to ever be removed, but… the children. The children are like fish hooks, buried deep under his skin. Just his skin though. Just surface level. He could… could rip them out. Could take back his mind, without the constant tug of their worry and pain and sunshine bright care. It'd leave him broken and bleeding, he can still remember the utter, crushing pain that came with pack bonds being snipped off, torn out by their roots, but he could do it. Could save the twenty children and Yagi Toshinori the grief he is drowning in. Could go back to being himself, being not one third a whole, but maybe half.
He tugs, lightly for now, on the bonds. Littering his mind, weak after the month he'd pushed them away, locked himself in darkness and allowed the full weight of his empty soul to drown him, and considers.
One at a time would hurt less, but it'd give warning. Time for the others to come find him, hold on all the tighter to him. And… no. If he was doing this for them, he was going to do it right. All at once.
Spare them, as much as he was able.
Yagi's bond isn't, like he first expected, first feared, obnoxiously cheerful like the man always pretended; but shadowed. Quiet. A restful presence when Shouta first found it, quietly protective and shy. Yagi had always retreated from any contact, any brush of soul to soul, but now…
Now his bond responded to Shouta's curious prodding, twinning up vine like around his mental probe.
It was all the easier then, to gather it up with all the others.
To grasp them as firmly as he could.
<>And yank.
Rip.
Destroy the edges of himself where they lived, pull out his pack without care or gentleness, bleed from the aching, ripped edges of his soul, already tattered and scarred be u on saving. For his students, he could gain another 21 scars, 21 broken bleeding bits of himself that would never heal. For them he could and would.
He doesn't bother attempting silence, screams ripping from his throat as the agony redoubled, splitting his skull from the inside out, still giving broken, wounded whimpers as his door is forcibly removed and he's bundled away.
It doesn't matter. It's done and cannot be undone. He did it.
For his-- For the children in his care.
Two weeks later. And he was back in the classroom, swatting viciously at the soft, creeping tendrils of his-- his students. His former pack when they tentatively attempt to reach out. To connect with him, to pull him from his despair and…
"Like I said. If you're here to form cute little packs, the door's that way."