Work Text:
Izuku had seen her strength. Her quirk was like his, too strong for her body. It had nearly ripped him apart, that fateful day.
But this? For all his years of dreaming, he never would have imagined such a thing could happen. Even now, he can only stare, stuck in the eye of the storm, as the world slows, fractures, warps.
“Eri,” he breathes. Large, fat tears roll down her cheeks. She grasps her head in her hands, tugging on her silvery locks, screaming at the ground. The shockwave hits him, and his pain melts away. He experiences a mix of pride and horror as it dawns on him: Eri has reversed time itself.
It doesn’t last. Her grip slips, and time hurtles back to where it was, where it should be. The bullet re-embeds itself in his abdomen, and he hunches over in shock, pain, grief. “Run,” he croaks. “Eri, run.”
Blood dribbles down his chin. Is this how he dies? One for All fizzles and burns under his skin, but it is not enough. Eri reaches for him, and he reaches back. Her hand curls into a fist, and her eyes - too young, just a child - burn with fiery determination.
The world begins to melt again. The blood runs up, back down his throat. His skin stretches, his wound seals, his quirk springs to life.
It doesn’t last.
She becomes frantic. Horrified. Izuku can see how it is draining her, trying to keep him alive like this. His words become choked, bloodied. He feels his heart stop, once. Her scream is loudest that time. Her nose begins to bleed. He cannot bring himself to beg, beg for her to let him go.
____
When Hitoshi woke up he knew that something was off. His skin itched, and no matter how hard he scratched, the feeling would never ease. Objects were slightly out of place, the colors of his room were off to the eye.
The clock read ten in the morning, and it was eerily quiet.
Leaving out of his dorm, the halls were eerily quiet. It was unsettling, and after making his way down to the barren kitchen Hitoshi’s gut feeling got worse. Had he missed a class outing?
Walking outside was even more bizarre. The typically lively energy of Yuuei was nothing but dust in the air. The usual early chatter of students both inside and outside their dorms wasn’t even reduced to murmurs.
Wandering the campus of Yuuei, Hitoshi found himself drawn to the faculty building where Aizawa resided.
“If there was anyone who knew what was going on, it was him.”
Hitoshi thought to himself.
Yanking open the door, and stalking down the hall, his ears buzzed. The closer he got to Aizawa’s apartment, the more the pressure in his head began to build… and then it started to hurt . Pushing through, he was able to make it to Aizawa’s apartment.
The door was ajar, and the white noise that battered his ears got louder as he stepped in the apartment.
“Mr. Aizawa?” Hitoshi called.
Every step in the apartment made his head hurt worse. Shoving the door to Mr. Aizawa’s bedroom open, it was to no surprise, empty. With the bed unkempt, and clothes and gear strewn about – it looked as if he was in a rush to leave. Turning around Hitoshi made his way to Eri’s room.
He felt faint approaching the door, his headache reaching a breaking point. Shouldering open the door, Hitoshi fell and could barely keep his eyes open. Before passing out though, it looked as if Eri had been in the room after all.
_____
When Hitoshi woke up he knew that something was off.
His skin was itching again - was his room infested or something? - and he scratched at it for a bit before giving up. He would pick up some cream from Recovery Girl, no big deal.
Then, a second later, he remembered what he had been doing before he passed out and shot up in bed.
“What the shit?” he breathed, grabbing for his phone. The display read ten o’clock in the morning, same as it had the day before. And, just like the day before, the air was still to the point of staleness.
He didn’t bother getting dressed, padding out of his room in his pajamas. He needed to find Aizawa-sensei, or at least a teacher who could explain what was going on. His head pounded, and he rubbed at his temples furiously. He was falling apart, it seemed.
“Hello?” he called as he walked down the hallway, knocking on a dorm room door every so often. “Anyone alive?” His words had an air of genuineness to them; he really didn’t know if anyone was alive. But what could have happened that knocked them all out?
Hitoshi soon gave up on the building and wandered outside. He knew that Aizawa’s apartment was dangerous. He also knew that that was the only place that he was sure someone was present. But that would be his last resort.
He made it all the way to the gates, which were predictably locked tight. He checked the guard house, but it was empty, and he had no idea how to operate the controls. Okay, he thought a little shakily, so I’m trapped in here. That’s fine. That’s no big deal.
His feet started him in the direction of Aizawa’s apartment, and he continued until he was just down the hall from it. His headache worsened, which was a good sign that he was on the right track.
Well, he wouldn’t say a good sign. More like a sign, probably indicating something bad. But something bad was still something.
“Sensei,” he called, not wanting to get any closer. “Are you there?”
Nothing.
He remembered, almost like a jolt, that Eri was in there. “Eri,” he called, and he heard rustling inside. “It’s me, Hitoshi. Are you okay?”
There was more rustling, and then the unmistakable sound of sniffling. “I’m in trouble,” she whispered, and he could only hear her because of how quiet the world around them was.
“What kind of trouble?” he asked, heart pounding. If there was a villain inside with her, somehow causing all of this, then would Hitoshi alone be enough to stop them?
“It’s Zuku,” she wailed. “I can’t help him.”
Midoriya? “Is he there with you?” Hitoshi asked, inching closer. Midoriya might have answers for him that the little girl didn’t. And anyway, whatever help he needed, Hitoshi would be able to provide it a lot better than a six year old.
“Yeah,” she sniffed as he reached the doorway. He peered around the corner, and the smell was almost enough to bowl him over. Blood, metallic and thick enough to choke.
He took a cautious step inside, and at that moment, Eri appeared in front of him.
“You can’t help him!” she sobbed, and her horn was massive. “You can’t help him so you have to go!”
Hitoshi only had a moment to gape at her before he was on the floor, clutching his head as it was violently torn in two. He closed his eyes, screaming, and then-
When Hitoshi woke up-
No, it wasn’t that something was off. It was that everything was off.
This was his… third? No, his second reset. Why was he resetting, and what was wrong with Midoriya?
Okay, Hitoshi, he thought to himself, think about this rationally. What have you seen?
Eri. Each time he’d gotten to the end of the cycle, Hitoshi had seen Eri, always inside Aizawa’s apartment. But where was Aizawa? Why did it hurt to enter the apartment?
It had to be the eye of the storm, but what storm? Hitoshi raked a hand through his hair with a groan. So many questions and no one to answer them, per usual. He was on his own.
“Alright,” Hitoshi said aloud. The words echoed hollowly throughout his room. “Third time’s the charm.”
This time when his head started to ache, Hitoshi was ready for it. He’d dealt with many headaches when his quirk was overused – he could deal with it again now. Midoriya and Eri were in trouble. They couldn’t afford for him to be stopped by something like a headache.
Still, it wasn’t easy. Hitoshi chewed on the insides of his cheek to distract himself from the pain as he made his way further into the faculty dorms. As he walked, his surroundings seemed to grow increasingly… unstable. In the corners of his eyes he spotted walls begin to glitch and fracture, jumping between various states of decomposition. Looking at it head on made the headaches worse, so he did his best not to.
Hitoshi didn’t wait to ask after Eri this time around. The pressure in his head mounted and he knew he was running out of time. Best to hurry, then.
The same overwhelming metallic scent hit Hitoshi hard as he entered the still-wide open apartment door. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find but it couldn’t be anything good.
Taking another step forward, Hitoshi flinched as Eri materialized in front of him. He gripped the wall to keep standing.
“Please,” Eri whimpered. “Please, please, please, pleasepleasePLEASE–”
“It’s– It’s gonna be okay, Eri. I promise,” Hitoshi forced the words through clenched teeth. It felt like someone was driving a screwdriver into his skull. “Take me to Midoriya. I’m here to help.”
“NO!”
The world shuddered around him, and when he next opened his eyes, he was back in his dorm, his entire body aching.
He could still hear her panicked wailing, the force of it shattering through every temporal barrier. Hitoshi made it to Aizawa’s apartment in record time, fighting through the splitting headache and waves of nausea wracking his body. All he could see was that image of her in his mind, her horn engorged and half-glowing.
“Eri,” he said, as firmly as he could, “I need you to take me to Midoriya. Whatever you’re doing, it isn’t helping him. Let me help.”
“I have to… have to save him…”
Blood dripped from her nose. He reached a hand out, and after a moment’s hesitation, she took it.
In the hallway was a collapsed villain, dressed in dark blues and purples. A gun lay discarded at his side, just under a small dent in the wall. Eri rushed past him, dragging Hitoshi along to her bedroom.
“H-help him,” she whimpered, pulling Hitoshi inside.
Aizawa was unconscious, it seemed, his chest rising and falling ever so subtly under the weight of his capture weapon. Midoriya, on the other hand, was a different story. His eyes, brimming with tears, stared at the ceiling, and he shuddered with every breath.
“Eri,” he breathed, voice ragged and pinched. He had a hand clutched to his chest, and underneath, red blossomed, pooled like the morning rain. Eri wailed, and as a fresh wave of nausea rolled over Hitoshi, the red receded, and Midoriya’s breath became lighter.
But something was wrong. As Hitoshi stepped closer, though his pain receded, the overwhelming feeling of wrongness only grew. As Eri struggled and wept behind him, Midoriya spasmed, blood seeping from his wound again.
“Eri, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” he said, kneeling over Midoriya. “I need you to look away now, and when I say so, can you turn off your quirk?”
“I… I don’t know,” she whispered, clutching at her head. A fat glob of blood dripped from her nose to the carpet. She began to sway, grip tightening as she dragged her fingernails down her scalp. “If I do it wrong, Zuku, he, he…!”
“You’re going to do great,” Hitoshi assured her. Beneath him, Midoriya gurgled, blood trickling down his chin. “Just focus, I know you can do this.”
She turned away with a sob. “I’m r-ready,” she hiccuped. As much as it pained him, Hitoshi waited, watching Midoriya intently. He waited until the glossy look in his eyes faded, replaced instantly by fear, panic. He waited until the blood returned to his body, and his hand didn’t shake with pain.
“Now,” he commanded, and after a tense moment of silence, Eri let out the most horrible scream he’s ever heard. It’s as though she were channeling the suffering of every human throughout history into one single moment, experiencing every fear and living every death. As much as he wished to comfort her, he couldn’t.
Midoriya was still in danger, even as the world around them hurtled back into being. Color seemed to return to the sky outside, and sound became less dampened. He could hear Eri’s shuddering breaths, Midoriya’s near-silent whimpering. He pressed into the wound on his chest.
“Eri, do you remember how to call an ambulance?”
“Y-yes,” she croaked. “But I… I can’t…”
Behind him, Hitoshi heard a loud thump. He glanced over his shoulder to find Eri kneeling on the floor, clutching her forehead.
“Wake Aizawa,” he barked. His hands were becoming warm and wet, and Midoriya was looking up at him with such an intense panic in his eyes that he couldn’t bear to meet his gaze. “Just shake him, Eri, get him to wake up.”
It takes a horrifyingly long time to wake Aizawa. In reality, it’s probably less than a minute, but it felt like an eternity, crouched over his dying classmate, praying that he’s doing this right.
“Shinsou,” Aizawa slurred, gently pushing Eri aside to focus on his students. “Shit. Hizashi and Nemuri should be on the way, but I’m going to go call for paramedics. Don’t move, keep doing exactly what you’re doing. Eri, come with me.”
Distantly, he noted that there was only one set of footsteps. When he turned to see if Eri was alright, she was gone, probably carried down the hall in Aizawa’s arms. He hoped she would rest after this.
Midoriya’s eyes suddenly fluttered closed, and Hitoshi pressed down harder, jolting him awake. He spasmed and squeaked, a small droplet of blood rolling down his cheek. “You can’t die this time,” he said through gritted teeth. “You hear me?” Midoriya nodded, clenching his fists over Hitoshi’s hands. “They’re getting help, so you hang in there, damn it!”
“Not… going anywhere.”
Less than five minutes later, paramedics stormed into the room, gently maneuvering Hitoshi away from Midoriya. Someone else placed their hands over the wound, started taking blood pressure, shifted Midoriya onto a stretcher. A hand fell on his back, and he allowed himself to float down the hall, past the unconscious villain who had nearly…
A smaller team waited in the living room, already tending to Aizawa and Eri. He held her, even as they were both checked over for injuries. He only let go when one of the EMTs said she would need to go to the hospital to treak her quirk fatigue, and then he stood to follow.
Only when he saw Hitoshi did he relent, collapsing back onto the couch. Together, they watched Eri disappear out the door, flanked by no less than three Yuuei faculty members. The fact that Aizawa had chosen to stay with him was not something Hitoshi could understand or explain.
“Any injuries?”
He shook his head. The weight of it all began to hit him, fatigue washing over him. He sat next to Aizawa on the couch until one of the paramedics guided him to the sink to wash the blood off his hands.
He stood over the sink for a moment, watching the red fade to pink, and then to nothing. The water ran clear, and he let it wash over his skin, hot and burning.
Behind him, Midoriya is carried out on a stretcher, oxygen mask attached to his face. He gives Hitoshi a little wave and a dopey smile. The paramedics finally usher him and Aizawa out to an ambulance as the police enter the apartment.
They give him a shock blanket, and he falls asleep.