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Izuku sat on the floor of his mother’s room and pressed his back against the bare wall as tears streamed down his face. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t remember if anyone ever told him what to do if something like this happened. Should he call someone? Who? Probably the police. They’d know what to do.
The boy gasped for breath and buried his head in his hands. He didn’t want to call the police. They’d just make him tell them what happened. They’d want the truth so they could file their reports correctly. Izuku just needed a moment to calm down first.
He tried to do the breathing exercises he and his friends learned in class, but his breath kept hitching and he couldn’t keep his mind away from what was right in front of him.
After several long minutes, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Through blurry tears, he opened his contact list and tried to locate All Might’s number, tapping it immediately (before he could second guess himself) and held the device up to his ear.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
Maybe the man was busy. Or sleeping. Did Izuku really need him?
“Hello?” The grumpy voice of his teacher crackled through his phone’s speaker before he could think of an answer. Izuku bit his lip and sniffed.
Wrong number.
“Sensei-” Izuku tried to say more but choked on a sob instead.
“Midoriya?” Aizawa said, a frown in his voice. “What is it? Are you alright?”
Izuku sucked in a breath and tried again. “I-it’s my mo- mom,” he managed before his breathing got out of control again. Aizawa started speaking, but Izuku couldn’t hear him over his own ragged breaths. The teen pulled the phone away from his ear and tried the breathing exercise again. When he brought the phone back up, he could hear his teacher’s voice saying,
“-talk to me, kid. What about your mom? Is she okay?”
Izuku’s breath hitched once more.
“She’s dead!” his voice broke, but before he could delve into the hopeless sobs that had racked his small frame since he found her however long ago, his teacher said,
“I’m on my way. Stay on the phone, okay? You don’t have to say anything. Just keep breathing. Can you do that for me?”
Izuku nodded and closed his eyes as he did the exercises for the third time. He still couldn’t do it very well. Every time he got close he would remember that his mother’s body was still laying on the bed in front of him and a new wave of the same dreadful emotions would crash into him, forcing every atom of his being to be overcome with grief.
But he kept breathing and, although he couldn’t tell what the man was saying, Aizawa’s voice comforted him. Its smooth steadiness reminded him of his dad, back when he was just a kid, holding him comfortingly when he woke up from the thunderous crash of a lightning storm.
Izuku heard a gentle knock at the door, but he couldn’t bring himself to answer it. Then he heard his teacher sigh and someone started messing with the doorknob.
The door opened. Izuku didn’t move.
Heavy footsteps approached and the boy curled in on himself, letting his phone slip from his grasp and clatter to the floor in the process.
The person entered the room. Izuku sensed their presence as they stood in the doorway for a moment before slowly moving to stand in front of the teen. A warm hand was placed gently on his shoulder and Izuku opened his eyes to see Aizawa kneeling in front of him, a solemn look on the man’s face. Without saying a word, Izuku’s teacher pulled him into his arms, rubbing circles into the teen’s back and letting Izuku cry into his capture weapon, soaking it with his tears.
Izuku lost it after that. His senses refused to focus on anything but Aizawa. He felt the fabric of the man’s clothes against his cheek. Smelled the scent of coffee. Heard Aizawa’s deep voice. And he held onto it all. It was all so unfamiliar, and yet he was comforted by it. Aizawa didn’t shush him or tell him to be quiet. He didn’t try to get Izuku to talk about it. He just . . . held him.
At some point Aizawa moved, or Izuku moved, or maybe they both moved, and Izuku suddenly became aware that he was no longer on the ground, but on a soft cushion with the man right next to him. Still holding him.
Aizawa carded his fingers through Izuku’s hair and hummed what sounded like a lullaby. Izuku pressed himself further into his teacher’s side. A few minutes later, he fell asleep.
He couldn’t know what would happen after that. He couldn’t know that Aizawa called the police for him. That the man took care of the funeral arrangements. That he paid for everything himself. There was no way Izuku could know that, after finding out the kid had no other living relatives, Aizawa was the one who pressured Nedzu into making him a ward of UA, like Eri was. He couldn’t know that Aizawa carefully packed his mother’s belongings and put them in a storage facility to which he planned on giving Izuku the key once he was ready to look through it all.
Izuku couldn’t know any of it. Because Aizawa never told him.