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Shouta doesn't normally visit victims that he has saved. It's not really conducive to the whole low-profile, underground image that he has worked so hard to cultivate.
The kid that he saved two days ago is a tiny thing, really, apparently a pre-teen but frankly too sharp-boned and big-eyed for that to actually feel logical. Said kid is also covered in scars, trembles and bandages, and has all of zero family left in the world. Shouta isn't someone for pity, but if he was then this kid would probably come pretty damn close to pitiable.
Except, for all of his awful tale, from what the police have been able to put together, he has a sharp gaze, one full of tangled flames and unwavering awareness, blatantly taking in the world around him with something that might, in another time and situation, be brilliance. He sinks back into his pillows whenever somebody comes into the room, not quite a flinch but still something of a drawing away, defensive. He watches how people move, seems to pick up on shifts, on intentions, on every tiny twitch in expression or hands or posture. Shouta takes in the kid as said kid is taking him in, neither of them saying anything as the hero rounds the bed at quite a distance, not wanting to crowd him, to settle by the window, leaning up against the wall, half his attention on the outside world, half on the kid.
"Er- Eraserhead." The single word is a statement, undoubtedly, no matter how smoke-strained it is, how it cracks right down the centre like pressed-upon charcoal.
It's impressive, that the kid knows who he is in the first place, let alone recognises him. Because, yes, it is possible that he might recognise Shouta slightly as a person, because the kid was unconscious when Shouta got to him but he could well have slipped in and out of it in the two minutes he was carried and held, but to know that he's even a hero, rather than a firefighter, then to know his hero name on top of that... It's actually pretty remarkable.
"Correct. Midoriya Izuku, right?" He confirms, trying to go for a more basic introduction, and hoping it will put the kid at a bit of ease. Whether it works, however, doesn't seem that clear yet.
"I, I mean if you're in my room then you should know that." Well, there's still a lot of suspicion there despite Shouta's efforts, undeniably so. He certainly doesn't blame the kid though.
"Fair," he shrugs, perfectly casual,
"I was the hero who got you out."
"Oh. Okay." The kid is still frowning, just a little bit, and Shouta doesn't like it. Not the negativity, nor the idleness of it; it's like the kid is barely feeling anything much at all.
"Also, uhm, please call me Izuku." Oh. Well if the suspected arson needed any confirmation (which, in Shouta's opinion, it didn't much need questioning given the neighbours' comments and the half-absent father's Quirk, but, well, it wouldn't be logical to completely jump to conclusions; however, if the kid is actively avoiding his family name, well, it hardly bodes well, does it-) then Shouta would consider that a fairly damning factor, right there. That being said, there's no point making a big deal out of that right now, not when it's likely to just stress the kid out even more,
"Noted. Feel free to call me Aizawa, kiddo, though obviously don't advertise that please."
The kid hasn't said thank you for the rescue in the first place. Shouta couldn't give less of a fuck about the proprietary of that fact, he isn't in Heroics to be thanked by little kids when their dad burns their house down with all of their family inside, but it's still not the normal reaction from someone being saved who isn't currently in shock. And maybe the kid is just still in some level of shock, and it means nothing. Or maybe he's not really very glad he was saved at all, which is an awful thought for someone so young, but Midoriya Izuku is the only Midoriya left, and he's a battered little thing. (He reminds Shouta, alarmingly, of the sort of kitten he sometimes come across that has been abandoned in some way, and which is simply huddled in an alley or a drain, not even daring to mew for help anymore. Those kittens are never far from death, and they seem to know it. They don't even seem to care.)
"Anyway, kiddo. Wanted to come and see you. See how you were and all that." His casual tone is perhaps a little bit too much so, but either way the kid just narrows his eyes for several seconds, pulling at the mostly-healed burn that stretches along one temple, down to a slightly too sharp cheekbone. It's one of many, but the way it nigh-on spirals and the slight shift of it catches Shouta's eye in particular.
"'m alright."
"I'm glad," the hero offers, very much sincere, even if that blatant fact seems to earn him a widened gaze, that green flashing brighter for even a glimmer of a moment,
"How are you healing up? The doctors and all that treating you well?"
"It's been okay," Izuku replies, shrugging a little. Shouta loathes how that single tiny movement makes the kid wince, subtle though said wince might be.
Damn kid's like a particularly scorched up brick wall.
That's probably a statement made in poor taste, but also Shouta doesn't think it's wrong. No eleven year old that just lost both his parents and his home should by any rights be this blank, not if they're dealing with it in some sort of healthy way. Has this kid even started to process or grieve the shit he's been through yet? Probably not, Shouta thinks. (He should recognise the signs, honestly; he was only a few years older when he did much the same. It took friends to drag him out of much the same sort of shit. He isn't sure this kid has many, judging by the way that the kid has had apparently all of one couple visit him twice.)
"Good. Is there anything you think I could help you with, Izuku, kid?"
"Help me with?" The slightly narrowed eyes are a thing of pure suspicion. They don't quite match the twist of anxious fingers in those too-white bedsheets, nor the contrariness of defiant, set-back shoulders against the timid fuck of his head. The kid is a little knot of contradictions, bundled up in bandages and burns, and Shouta aches for him.
And so there is no thought to how Shouta leans a little further forward, still not quite within reach, and lets his steadiness, his seriousness, show as much as he can,
"Yes. If there's something you need or want that I can do for you, then I would like to." That suspicion doesn't fade at all, however some of the defiance fades in the wake of confusion, honest bewilderment,
"But you already rescued me." Oh. Well, this damn kid. This damn fucking kid. (Shouta wants to wrap him up in blankets and even more bandages and maybe his capture weapon too, then pile some cats on top just for the sake of completeness, in the hope that maybe all of it will just take some of that tension away, will even let the kid be a little bit more emotive, a little bit happier.)
"I did," he acknowledges, given that he can't just kidnap this random child who probably still needs some level of medical attention, to wrap him up in blankets or not,
"But that doesn't mean that you're alright now, and ultimately I want to help people. That includes you. No pity, no payment."
"Oh." Izuku drags in a deep breath, and it shudders less than Shouta was expecting,
"Why?"
"Why?" Shouta checks, wondering what about his intentions might not be obvious at this point.
"Yeh, 'cause you're a hero, right?" Well, that makes a bit more sense.
And it's an easy one to answer, even if the actual answer isn't necessarily simple in and of itself,
"Partially. But it's more than that, kiddo. I want to support people, to help them, and that's just a personal thing. I don't like seeing people hurting, doubly so when they're suffering from things outside of their control. You're clearly managing by yourself, but I still want to make things easier for you if I can." It's honest. A little bit messy, sure, ragged in places and not quite perfectly phrased in others, but it's the absolute truth as Shouta knows it, and thus one he hopes will be blatant to the kid, no matter how distrustful he is right now.
Judging purely by the way that Izuku stares at him for a long few seconds, eyes still that little bit too narrow, before something in him settles, sinks, spirals down into slumped shoulders, still-tangled hands, and what could be the very faint edges of a smile, relieved-aching though it might be, Shouta is getting somewhere.
His trust isn't yet earned completely, of course, but Shouta doesn't mind when the following question comes, not when he's already so obviously started to make some much-needed (much-wanted-) progress:
"How do I know you mean it?" Shouta knows exactly what that question really means (how am I supposed to trust you? what if you break whatever trust I manage to give you?) and he knows just how serious it is. How genuinely he has to answer it,
"I don't think I can guarantee it for you, kid, so I won't pretend that I can. But I can promise you that I'll do my damn best, and make sure you always have a get-out clause should you feel you need it. I'll talk to you, listen to you. Give you options, as best I can."
The words warrant a few long breaths of absolute silence, and there is a more than welcome light in the kid's eyes, no matter how sharp-edged it also is, how analytical.
"In terms of?" There's something far too challenging, far too sceptical, about that question for a child so young. But Shouta thinks that it matches the scars a little too well, even as he finds himself answering without a thought,
"In terms of things like where you go to live, and if you have any issues with doctors or the like, or if you want to learn some self-defence down the line, or really just anything you need an adult for who you can know will be on your side exclusively."
(Shouta... He would consider taking the kid in himself, honestly, if he wasn't twenty five, living alone, and had a frankly stupid schedule with such little regularity. Maybe if he had already finished his teaching degree, if he had been working at UA for a year or three, but right now he would only be bad for the kid, he thinks, no stability and no true assurance. No softness.
He still thinks that he would have liked to be the one to give this battered kid a home.)
"Maybe-" The kid cuts off with a shuddering breath, and Shouta can see the war in his eyes, the agony wrought in not knowing how to trust but seemingly wanting to. So he waits. He waits, he continues to breathe steadily, he does not move, and he gives Izuku time.
It's worth it for Izuku to finally drag in his third deep, mostly-steady breath in a row, and to set his shoulders straight once again,
"Maybe that would be good? Or, uhm, I like the sound of that, but, just, are you sure?" It's more than hesitant. No, the words are literally cracking around the edges, splintering upon a tongue that hardly dares move at all, because the question has to be asked, but the answer might be something that Izuku truly doesn't want to hear. The hero could just-
"I am sure. Absolutely so." Oh.
Izuku wants to accept that at face value, wants to just go along with the apparent kindness, but he isn't sure he can do that, isn't sure how to simply accept this consideration, how to believe it. It just doesn't make sense.
"Even though I'm a Lace?" The man's brows furrow slightly at that, and Izuku could curse himself for the slip-up, but he has something more important to worry about right now.
"A Lace?"
"Quirkless," he explains, short, terse, and uncaring for if it makes the man like him less (better to press now and be unsurprised later, before he gets too invested-),
"I'm a Deku, Aizawa-san. There's a reason my Dad decided to- There's a reason my Dad did that." It's a simple truth, an undeniable one. Izuku knows that it was his own fault, ultimately, that his Dad would do the awful, stupid, nasty things he did. That he would try to kill Izuku and his Mu- It was his fault. He's the Deku after all. And that's what everything ultimately seems to come down to, in the end, inescapable whether one of his toes has been made single-jointed or not.
"You being Quirkless does not affect anything. Not like that at least," Shouta adds on, before his slightly poorly-chosen words can upset the kid (he fears that might be a bit too late, before he even started speaking at that, given the too-blank gaze, the twitch of those thin fingers-),
"It should not be the basis of anyone else's decision unless it is a directly relevant matter, such as ensuring that a school is not discriminatory."
"It was directly relevant to everything, as far as he was concerned," Izuku mutters, blatantly somewhere between resigned and belligerent. It gives Shouta hope and desolation all at once.
This kid is, what, ten, eleven years old? He shouldn't be so fucking disillusioned, so blatantly aware of how so many people will be callous if not outright cruel just because of his Quirk status, of all things.
He can't focus on that right now, however, not when there's still a ducked-head kid in front of him. No, Izuku needs his full and proper attention.
And with that in mind, Shouta lets himself shuffle a tiny bit further closer from his perch, right onto the edge of the seat, just edging into reach but not yet extending a hand, not wanting to push too fast, too hard.
"You're more than your Quirk status. Kid, you fucking survived arson and whatever else shit you've gone through, and that was in spite of people like your father. That takes something that most people couldn't even dream of having." Shouta means every damn word, and he means them viscerally. Midoriya Izuku is fucking remarkable, seemingly half-shattered as he is now, a thing of grief and bleakness and defiance, all scorched around the edges.
Shouta thinks he can see the core of someone who would be a brilliant human. The kid's certainly a fucking survivor, either way, with the potential to grow well past exactly that.
But he'll need help. If Shouta knows anything about discrimination, grief, and generally fucked up things in life, it's that it's almost impossible to deal with alone. Doubly so when someone is young, and more vulnerable, and with less practice in how to deal with this sort of awful shit. And he doubts that just outright saying that the kid probably needs help would go down well, and fair enough, honestly, Shouta would have reacted poorly at that age and still would now, in pretty much all cases.
So, suffice to say, Shouta won't be blurting that out. No, he has to go with alternative options, with whatever will help the kid deal with this best,
"I want to be that adult you can fall back on. I might not have any legal position, but I'm a hero, and I know Nedzu decently well, so that would give me some level of leverage should we need it. I would be on your side, and yours only; I have nothing to gain from working against you, and knowing that you were at least okay, if not outright doing well, would be to my personal preference, so technically I would gain something from supporting you, if you were comfortable with it." He punctuates the words with nothing more than settling a hand, palm-up, just on the very edge of Izuku's bed, a tacit offer that absolutely doesn't have to be accepted but is there all the same. (He knows far too well, remembers, that sometimes the silent things are the best, that the things without words are sometimes the ones that are most palatable, the easiest to accept. And sometimes, they mean the most.)
Somewhere in this combination of offerings, of pledges and hopes and proposals, Shouta has done something right, or has at least not gone too far wrong, because it's enough for Izuku to stare at him, eyes finally truly meeting for longer than a second.
And then Izuku, with a trembling hand, reaches out in return, slipping his hand oh-so delicately atop Shouta's, bandages against calluses, and there is faith in that gesture. Hope.
Shouta intends to live up to every shuddering inch of it.
In years to come, things will change. One of the most major changes, through that time, will be how Izuku goes through three orphanages in two years.
For the original placement, there are too many caretakers who sneer at him at first, then start to snarl at him second, before finally resorting to lashing out at him third, nails digging into wrists, and slaps across the back of the head.
The first time blood is drawn, Izuku waits until night to sneak around the caretakers' quarters to find a phone that he can unlock, and apparently a sleeping face works just as well for unlocking as an awake one, making it easy enough for him to scamper away with the phone, already opening up the woman's actual phone app. He memorised Aizawa's phone a long time ago, and they're not due a visit until late next month, so he barely has to think before he's ringing the man, scurrying to a linen closet that he has hidden in more than once before, knowing that it's unlikely to get used this time of night; even if anyone is sick or makes a mess, it's further away from most of the rooms, so he should be safe for-
"Who is this?"
"Aizawa-"
"Kid, you alright?" Everything comes out in a rush, then. Not even three or four sentences in, Izuku can hear the background sounds of the hero moving, wind rushing. Like he's already-
"I'm already on my way. Are you going to need major medical attention, or will a first kit do?" Oh. Well.
The second orphanage is genuinely fine, for quite a long time. Some of the other kids are awful and see Izuku as easy pickings or something, and it's only the lessons he's been getting from Aizawa in self-defence that stop Izuku from getting completely battered by the older, stronger kids, but he is small, and Quirkless, and one person against up to six, so, sure, he rips some hair out and digs his nails in and manages to kick a few of them in very sensitive places, manages to wriggle out of some holds or dodge some punches, but ultimately he gets overrun every damn time.
And for a long time he doesn't tell Aizawa. It just doesn't seem important. It's not like the caretakers hitting him, these are just other kids, and it happens at school too. (Except there he can't fight back, not unless he wants to be the one who gets punished, who gets detentions and slaps around the back of the head and harsh scolding that have the rest of the class laughing at him-)
But then the entire fucking orphanage gets shut down because there was some very, very dodgy stuff going in with some of the older girls and some of the caretakers, and when that investigation was happening, there was apparently some sort of financial stuff going on too, embezzlement maybe, Izuku didn't really care much, but it was enough to ensure that, between it all, the entire orphanage was shut down. Which means yet another transfer, this time further back into Musutafu.
The third place is okay. By which Izuku means kind of shit, honestly, because he's thirteen and knows, now, what to expect. Doubly so when he's not the only kid from the second orphanage to be transferred here, and oh-so luckily for Izuku that includes the group of kids who are now mostly sixteen but who have yet to grow out of being violent bigots. Then two of them decide to break his arm in three places at the top of stairs that they then push him down, and it's enough. Sure, one of them has a scar down their cheek from him digging his nails in and trying to damn well pull the bastard down with him, but it isn't enough. Not when Aizawa visits him in hospital, and looks at him with that heavy gaze, with words that mirror the promise he made not even three full years earlier, and with that callused hand once more palm-up on the edge of Izuku's bed.
Izuku doesn't really hesitate to accept the hand, this time.
He's been getting sporadic self-defence lessons from the man for just over two years now (between Aizawa's sheer busyness, and Izuku's lack of freedom, they aren't able to meet often, admittedly, certainly not as much as either of them would prefer, but they do what they can, always, and Aizawa never stops trying, never stops doing whatever he can for Izuku-) and he trusts the man more than he doesn't, and certainly more than he does anyone else.
That fact is probably why, when his simple offers comes, Izuku only has to take three deep breaths before he comes to a decision.
"If you're really, really sure it's alright. Like, completely fucking sure."
"Izuku, kid, Problem Child, I am sure." Izuku can't even falter at that before the hero is going on, voice steadier than the earth itself,
"If I'd been more mature, financially stable, and had the time, I would have asked to take you in when we first met. But I wasn't in a position to. With hindsight, I kind of wish I had just tried anyway, but it's a bit too late to say that now."
"Oh."
Aizawa... Aizawa is the only person that has cared about Izuku since he was ten. He's the hero who saved him when his bastard of a Dad decided that he couldn't bear the shame of Izuku and his Mum anymore, as though he hadn't spent years beating them both already, whenever he could be asked to be around-
Aizawa is the best person Izuku has. And he is good. So, so fucking good, because he will teach Izuku where best to shove his elbow against someone's chest to dig into their ribs just right, but he will also do this, sit at Izuku's bedside and offer him a hand because anything else would be too much, and somehow the man understands that. He seems to understand a lot, honestly, things where Izuku was so sure that he was being stupid, yet the hero just picks up on them and eases them without seemingly a thought, an idle comment about how some kids are just fucking stupid, how some people never seem to learn until they've been bashed around the back of the head a few too many times but that he probably shouldn't really be encouraging violence. Yes, he's aware of the irony, but he technically only teaches Izuku self-defence. It's just that self-defence happens to be a bit aggressive and proactive sometimes, is all.
Well, if Izuku had been hesitating over accepting the man's offer of a home, then he certainly isn't now. Because, sure, he's not expecting it to be perfect, and he's more than a little worried that living with him will just drive Aizawa away, but he trusts the man, he thinks. Izuku wants to trust him.
(Their mutual offers, one of a home, one of trust, are more than worth the risk, as it turns out. Because neither of them are perfect, they have miscommunications and make decisions that the other doesn't approve of, but they learn, together and from each other, and they will get better and better over time.
One thing that they never need to learn, however, is how to be good to each other. Shouta will always buy Izuku his favourite snacks, and listen to his issues or even his rambles, and offer him a safe space, whether it's to learn to protect himself or a pile of blankets or simple companionship. And Izuku will do what he can to be a part of a family. He will remind to take a deep breath and ask for Shouta's reasons for things, he will set the table and feed the cats, he will wait up, sometimes, for Shouta to get back, and only get a fond eyeroll in return.
They make the Aizawa flat a home, together. Sure, it's a little jagged in places, but neither of them would change it for anything, not the ashen scars nor the embers of hope. Nor the hearth-warm love that grows between them.
It's their home, ultimately, and it is more than worth the wait.)