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The sound of Eri’s sobs echoing through their apartment caused Shouta’s heart to clench – not with heartbroken sadness, but in unadulterated fury.
“It’s okay, little listener,” he heard Hizashi say, quiet and comforting. “We’ll be okay.” The unfamiliar cadence of his voice, typically boisterous and excitable no matter the situation, did nothing to calm Eri’s pitiful wails.
“Nii-chan!”
The heartwrenching wail caused Shouta to swallow heavily, forcing a thick mixture of blood and saliva down his throat. He was only slightly surprised to realize that he was biting down on his tongue to try to keep himself together, to keep from going batshit crazy for her sake.
“You sent him on a fucking suicide mission!”
“I’m sorry Aizawa-san, but it had to be done.”
“I know, Eri,” Hizashi murmured, his voice now barely audible from the other room. “I know. We just need to honor his memory, okay, Eri-chan? If we keep him in our thoughts, he’ll feel our love still, and we’ll know that he still loves us, too.”
Shouta squeezed his eyes shut, bringing his fists up to beat against his forehead. He knew he should be in there with them, helping comfort their distressed daughter, he knew that. But he had sent only his husband in after her because he couldn’t face anyone right now.
He couldn't face his husband, who always wore his heart on his sleeve but who was being so strong now, doing everything in his power to hold their daughter and himself up. And right now, Shouta couldn't even face his daughter, who had just been told that she lost one-third of her first real family without knowing why.
And fuck , yeah, maybe they all weren’t officially family on paper yet, outside of the marriage certificate between him and Hizashi, but they were still his fucking family . And a piece of it was now missing, leaving a gaping hole that could never be replaced, all because of the piece of shit world they live in.
“You must understand. He never could have been a real hero, not with such a dangerous villain’s Quirk. Once the Hero Commission learned of how close he was to graduating from the hero course, they gave me orders I had to follow.”
“Why even accept him into UA in the first place? Why not just reject him? Give him the chance to live if you knew, you knew they would do this?”
“He qualified for General Studies, unfortunately. Sending out a false rejection would reflect poorly on the school if it ever came out. We have to be an honest institution, with morals.”
Shouta clenched his jaw even tighter, ignoring his numbing tongue that was at the mercy of his anger, but before he could split it in two, the soft singing voice of his husband began to float through the air. Shouta exhaled sharply through his nose, trying his best to let Hizashi’s crooning envelop him and calm him down.
“P-papa.” Eri’s voice was now just a weak whimper, the soft song seemingly succeeding in relaxing her heaving breaths and previously unrelenting tears.
“We’ll be okay, Eri-chan. It may not feel like it for a long time, but we’ll be okay.”
“Then why allow him to transfer to the Hero Course? You could have told me before I started training him, before I gave him the hope to even try !”
“Here at UA, we want all of our students to succeed and give them the chance to take any path they wish.”
“Even when that path leads to inevitable death?”
“Just because he passed the transfer evaluation to get into the hero course, there was no way of knowing if he was actually cut out for it once he was in it. You know how many students drop out, especially ones with Quirks that aren’t truly suitable for hero work. There was simply no way of knowing it would turn out this way.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
At the call, Shouta eyes shot open and he pried his teeth from his bloody tongue, rubbing it against the roof of his mouth in a feeble attempt to soothe it. He stood up and stumbled toward Eri’s room, trying to keep his breathing under control, trying to push away the flashbacks of the moment he was told.
Eri’s vermillion eyes fell on him as he grasped the doorframe, her cheeks puffy and stained with dried tears, and fresh tears began to fall. Her crying was silent now, and Shouta quickly moved forward to cup her cheek in his hand. “Eri-chan,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her horn, “I’m here. Papa is right, we’ll be okay.”
Eri whimpered, clutching her blanket tighter to her chest. Her lower lip trembled as she tried hard to hold back her pain. The sight of it was unbearable.
Shouta’s eyes fell on a stuffed purple cat toppled onto its side on the floor and his heart ached and seethed. It was one Hitoshi had given Eri shortly after she was rescued, back when she was still just a frightened shell of a little girl. This gift had helped her open up to him more, helped her start to see him as her brother.
Only when he was with Eri did Hotishi let himself truly smile. He let himself get on the floor with her and pretend to be the purple cat or green dinosaur or doll or whatever Eri ordered him to be without hesitation. He was always gentle with her, even when he instinctively put on a cold mask outside in a world that beat him down and told him he wouldn’t amount to anything.
“He would have turned to the other side eventually. You know that the Hero Commission is responsible for identifying people like him and stopping them before they can. Surely you can understand why this was necessary.”
“But I don’t understand, Nedzu. Why kill him? Just leave him alone, let him do something else with his life. Let him work at a fast food restaurant for the rest of his life for all I care. But let him live .”
“You know it can’t work like that, Aizawa-san. Not with his Quirk.”
“What-?”
“Certain Quirks are just too dangerous to be allowed to exist.”
Shouta stepped away from the bed, causing another small whine to escape Eri’s lips, but he quickly returned to her side with the purple cat in his hands. “Why don’t you sleep with him tonight,” Shouta suggested, pulling her blanket back and tucking the stuffed animal in with her.
Eri immediately wrapped her arms around the cat tightly, planting her face in its neck. “‘Toshi-nii,” she whimpered.
Shouta couldn’t stop the shaky breath that escaped him at the sight of his grieving daughter clinging to one of the only remaining pieces of her brother left. Hizashi raised an arm to grasp his shoulder, squeezing gently before pulling him down to rest on the edge of Eri’s bed with him.
“Go to sleep, Eri-chan,” Hizashi said softly then. “It’s late, and I know you’re tired. Tomorrow will be a new day, and we’ll face it together. We'll keep going together. For him. He would want us, he would want you , to keep going.”
“Sing to me, papa,” Eri pleaded, snuggling closer to Shouta’s hip and tightening her hold on her cat.
Shouta started stroking Eri’s hair as Hizashi began another song, resting a hand on Eri’s knee over the blanket. Shouta tried to focus on the lyrics, or the tune, or anything to keep himself out of his own head, but it didn’t help. He couldn’t stop the barrage of memories of his conversation with Nedzu; or the moment he told Hitoshi he would be joining the hero course – violet eyes lit up with life, and the biggest smile Shouta had ever seen come from him filled his whole face ; or every single time he looked away when there was a red flag from the moment he himself began training to be a hero.
Eri seemed to be trying to stay awake to listen, but her bleary blinks began to slow and, by the end of the song, she was snoring softly.
Hizashi leaned down and pressed a kiss to her blue slate hair before getting to his feet. Movements slow, still trapped in his own mind, Shouta mimicked his husband's movements. He barely felt it when Hizashi linked their hands together and gently tugged him out of Eri’s room, shutting the door softly before leading him further away.
Only when they reached the kitchen, the room furthest from Eri’s room, did he let himself fall apart. He let out a hoarse scream, falling to his knees, finally allowing himself to cry out all of the hurt and the anger that consumed him. He grabbed fistfuls of his hair and pulled, rocking forward helplessly as sobs painfully ripped from his throat.
“Shou, baby.” Hizashi’s voice was suddenly right there in his ear, and his arms were suddenly holding him, trying so hard to put him back together. “Shouta, I’m so, so sorry. I-” His words started out strong, but they quickly devolved into blubbering as Shouta felt wetness begin to drop against his skin. Hizashi nuzzled his head into the crook of his neck, and they clung to each other as they mourned the loss of the boy they had quickly taken in and immediately loved like a son.
Once his eyes seemed incapable of producing more teardrops – after far too many minutes for his liking when he should be doing something, something , to try to fix this – Shouta spoke, but drying tears gluing his lips shut made it difficult to have any of his words pass through coherently.
Hizashi pulled away, sniffling and wiping at the dampness on his cheeks. “What was that, baby?”
“I said it’s my fault,” Shouta said clearly this time, voice low and rough from the soreness of his throat.
Hizashi’s eyes widened. “Shouta, how is it your-”
“I sent him to his death, ‘Zashi. His blood is on my hands.”
Hizashi reached out, hooking his fingers around Shouta’s. “Shouta, that’s not true. You know that’s not tr-”
“No, I don’t!” Shouta growled out, ripping his hand away. “I don’t know that because it is true! I should have known they would be too scared of his Quirk once they saw the path he was on. I should have known! I should have foreseen that this is what would happen if I helped him get into the hero course, if I helped him try to follow his goddamn dream!”
“You just wanted him to have the best chance at succeeding in life-”
“He’s not succeeding now, is he? Not when he’s fucking dead !”
Shouta tried not to let the pain that flashed through Hizashi’s eyes affect him or convince him to stop and apologize for the harshness of his words. He needed him to understand, no matter how painful the revelation. “If I had just left him alone-. If he had stayed in General Studies, maybe-maybe this could have been avoided.”
Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true.
“Certain Quirks are just too dangerous to be allowed to exist.”
“But he didn’t want to stay in General Studies, Shouta,” Hizashi cut in boldly, eyes flashing with determination. “And you saw that, and you just wanted to help him. You giving him that chance at being a hero, that’s not something you should regret. Because it was a good thing, a kind thing, to do. And when you go into the hero course, when you decide to be a hero, you know there will always be a risk. He-he must have known the risks when…”
“He was only seventeen, Hizashi!” Shouta all but roared, eyes starting to glow red in his anger. “Seventeen! A kid! Still just a fucking kid!”
"We were all kids when we started out," Hizashi tried.
Shouta wasn't having any of it. "And how fucked up is that? Why are we depending on literal children ? Why are we throwing kids in situations where they could get severely hurt or die before they even have a proper chance to grow up and live? We don’t have to! We really, really don’t.”
“I-” Hizashi shook his head, looking like a fish out of water with the way his mouth gaped as he fumbled for an answer.
“This whole system is fucked up! I know it, and I’ve known it since we were thrown into our first life or death situation when we were just sixteen! And yet I stayed. I stayed and I still decided to be a part of the Hero World, even after learning even more about all of the ways in which our society fucks up our students and heroes alike. After having so many run-ins with death, after seeing so many deaths of my peers and my students, after being responsible for so many deaths….But I was killing bad guys, so it’s fine, right? I’m still a good guy, getting rid of whoever the Commision wants gone.”
“Shouta-”
But Shouta was too riled up now to stop, standing up so he could pace around the kitchen. He just needed to move, get out all the energy that was buzzing inside of him now. “But who even decides what defines being a good guy and a bad guy? The Hero Commision? They treat heroes like their own personal army, and if they don’t follow their every order, they get pushed into an early retirement – and that’s if they’re lucky. As long as they’re compliant, heroes have a chance at popularity and fame, even if they don’t truly care about helping those in need, those who still get ignored in a world full of goddamn heroes. But even worse than that, heroes get the privilege of doing whatever the hell they want behind closed doors, as long as it never sees the light of day. As long as us underground heroes keep quiet when it’s heroes committing the crimes.”
Hizashi was standing now as well, stance wide but uncertain. “Shouta, what are you talking about?”
“Todoroki is being abused at home, you know.” Hizashi’s eyes widened. “I don't know for sure, of course, but I can't even try to find out without being reprimanded for ‘sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.’ Even though I would bet anything that Todoroki needs help, I still can't do anything but try to offer a safe space in the classroom until he comes to me with hard evidence. And even then, do you really think they would do anything to punish the Number One Hero? No, of course not.
“And what’s frustrating is that that’s just one example of hero society failing a student from my own classroom. But every single student at UA, even the ones who aren’t in the hero course, are putting their lives at risk by just being in a place where the Hero Commision can keep an eye on them. They make sure they know about every Quirk that passes through those doors, but do they care enough about the people the Quirks belong to to help them when they really need it? The number of students who graduate with PTSD is despicable. And the number of students who don’t graduate at all because they end up in a casket is even worse.
“Our society is so obsessed with pumping out heroes to fight bad guys, no matter the consequences, but only on the Hero Commission’s terms. They get to decide who does and doesn’t become a hero, and they have all of the hero schools wrapped around their finger, enabling them. And these schools have all of us enabling them . We've been working at UA for years. Years , Hizashi, that we've dedicated our time to helping an institution that would throw any of its students under the bus in a heartbeat for the Commission. And for what? A paycheck? A chance to try to help students learn how not to die in a situation they don’t even need to be in, especially so young? I can’t believe it took the death of my own son to fucking see that-" Shouta pulled fistfuls of his hair, frustrated tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.
“Shouta,” Hizashi finally spoke up, “you’re right that there’s ways in which society could be improved. But Hitoshi’s death…it was an accident-”
The sudden chuckle that Shouta let out in response, dark and humorless, made Hizashi quickly snap his mouth shut. His frow burrowed as he looked over his husband, and Shouta could see the wheels turning in his head.
“Shouta…” Hizashi tried again, speaking slowly now as if he didn’t truly want to know, “it was an accident. Right?”
“You limelight heroes don’t know anything,” Shouta scoffed, leaning against the nearest counter for support and pinching the bridge of his nose.
Hizashi’s eyes narrowed. “ You’re the one who said you didn’t want me to know about everything you’ve learned working as an underground hero. I never pushed you about it, I let myself stay ignorant, because I knew you wanted to protect me from the awful, dirty underbelly of society, things far worse than what the public villains us limelight heroes are used to. I respected that you didn't want me to comfort you outside of just holding you after a bad night because I didn't know how . But if you’re telling me our son’s death wasn’t an accident, Shouta, I need you to tell me why.”
Shouta let out a slow breath, steeling himself for a conversation he never wanted to have with Hizashi, one he never wanted to have with himself. But he couldn't deny it anymore.
“‘Certain Quirks are just too dangerous to be allowed to exist.’ That’s what Nedzu said to me after telling me that our son-.” Shouta stopped himself, swallowing back the overwhelming emotion rising up in him. It did no good to feel so attached now, not right now when all he wanted to do was simmer in pure rage. “That he sent Hitoshi on a goddamn suicide mission!”
"What are you saying?" Hizashi asked, his voice unnaturally quiet.
Shouta's breaths came out ragged as he clenched his fists around the countertop behind him in agitation. He knew he didn't need to spell it out for his husband, but he knew he would still have to for him to truly accept it.
"Do you remember Kurose-kun? They were in class 1-A our third year."
Hizashi tilted his head in confusion at the seemingly random change of topic. "Of course. They died during a mission during their internship. School was canceled for a week after."
"They were murdered, 'Zashi. By the Hero Commission. They can't do much to stop a black hole once it starts, so Kurose-kun was sent on that mission on purpose. Just like Hitoshi was."
Hizashi took a step closer, a hitch starting in his own breathing. "N-no, that c-can't be true," he stuttered out, eyes widening in disbelief.
"You limelight heroes don't know anything," Shouta repeated, but it was more weary than biting this time. "It's not common for there to be a Quirk presented that's so powerful the Hero Commission feels it's uncontainable, but every now and then, there is. And if they can't control it or the person who has it, they don't want it to remain in existence if there's a chance it can turn on them ."
"They killed him," Hizashi realized, fresh tears catching in his throat. "They killed our Hitoshi…"
"Yes," Shouta confirmed, knowing he didn't have to. He could hear the lack of emotion in his voice, and he wished he had the energy to express himself fully, to show that he did care. He cared so damn much. But he just felt so fucking empty. "Nedzu told me himself."
"That rat bastard!" Hizashi wailed, falling to his knees once more and beating against the linoleum underneath his fists. Luckily, Shouta had the common sense to erase his husband's Quirk to keep from waking Eri, knowing the Voice Hero couldn't control himself when he felt this much emotion, the much anger .
Shouta moved forward, back onto the floor to collect Hizashi in his arms. He rocked him gently as the blond heaved in his arms, unsure if he was grateful that he himself didn't seem to have any more tears to spill.
"Oboro?" Hizashi asked tentatively after several minutes of sobs and whimpers and growls filling the kitchen.
"An accident," Shouta murmured gently, running his fingers through Hizashi's hair. He loved his friend dearly, but Oboro's Quirk was far from what the Hero Commission was worried about.
Hizashi let out a small breath of relief, but it was little consolation after what he had just learned about the world they lived in, the governing body that controlled them.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," Shouta began after a deep breath, "but some of the villains we've encountered, they're actually lucky they decided to choose villainy."
Hizashi pulled back, puffy eyes narrowing slightly but allowing Shouta to continue his train of thought.
"At least they're giving the Hero Commission a reason to go after them outside of just existing . Shigaraki, Twice, All Might, even fucking Overhaul…. If they tried to be heroes instead with their Quirks, they would have been killed off long ago. At least this way, they get to live."
"But do they deserve to?" Hizashi hedged. "For what he did to Eri, Overhaul-"
"Didn't Hitoshi deserve to live?"
"Hitoshi wasn't a villain!"
"He was in the eyes of the Hero Commission. Even though he's never done anything, anything bad," Shouta snarled out.
Hizashi didn't respond, but Shouta knew that he was still unsure about agreeing with him. The hint of judgment in his eyes, even though barely there, made Shouta furious. Furious that Hizashi was refusing to see .
“They said his Quirk was too dangerous, ‘Zashi. Not controllable enough. He was becoming too powerful with his Quirk and what he could do with it, and that scared the shit out of the Hero Commission. So they did what they thought they had to to eliminate that fear."
"But that doesn't mean-"
"What about Eri, huh? What happens when she gets older, if they even let her get older? Do you really think they’ll let her live once they finally decide she’s too much of a risk to keep around?”
"No," Hizashi admitted reluctantly, looking down with a furrowing of his brow.
"Then we have to make sure they never get to her. We need to make sure the Commission can never do this to anyone else ever again. No matter what it takes." Shouta stared at his husband, knowing he could feel his piercing gaze, begging him to understand and come to the same conclusion.
Hizashi closed his eyes and took slow, measured breaths. Shouta continued to watch him, suddenly feeling the pit of his stomach falling with fear and disappointment. Was his husband about to say that he disagreed, that he didn't want any part of what Shouta was suggesting? Would he even go as far as to try to turn him in to the Commission for conspiring against them?
But when Hizashi opened his eyes again, they burned with such passion that Shouta felt a sting of hope stir in his chest.
"Shouta, darling," Hizashi crooned, "are you saying we should turn on the Commission? Even if that means turning into villains ourselves?"
Shouta allowed the corner of his mouth to lift up in a smirk. The moment Hizashi first yelled at him to be friends their first year, Shouta had known immediately that he was a good person. Not only was he good, but he was smart, and he could think for himself and decide what "good" even meant.
Shouta felt a flame ignite in his soul at the wild grin Hizashi gave in response, steadily burning larger and hotter with the validation his husband was breathing into him. Because even though the Hero Commission was supposed to be good, if Hizashi now wanted nothing to do with it, then that meant it was far from it.
Shouta had already accepted that he would follow Hizashi to the ends of the earth, but now he knew that he would do the same for him. God , he loved his loudmouth, explosive blond.
He leaned closer, their breath intermingling between them. "To protect our daughter? To protect her the way we should have protected Hotoshi? Yes. I say we do our part to help burn it all to the ground. Show them that they should have killed us when they had the chance. We'll make them pay, Hizashi. For her, and for him."