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Shouto’s gotten used to his partial blindness.
Sure, it was difficult at first, and yes, his depth perception is a little fucked-up, but it's not a problem. Not anymore, at least. Adjust, adapt, cope. He’s fine. He’s always been fine. Todoroki Shouto is blind in one eye and somehow, it hasn’t been an issue.
Until now, because the class is—or was—sparring in some random forest clearing, who knows how many miles away from the actual training camp, and Shouto’s managed to get cuts by his eye bad enough to warrant an eyepatch until they can get to medical personnel. His good eye. The one he can actually see out of.
He’s fucked.
Panicked, he scrambles away from Aizawa on the grass until his back hits a tree trunk, where he curls up with his knees to his chest, hands held protectively in front of his face. “No, no, no, wait, I—”, he cuts himself off with a gasp, overwhelmed and scared. He's acting irrationally, he knows, but the fear is so much bigger and—he can’t be in the dark. He has to be able to see, always, or else he’ll have his guard down and that makes him vulnerable. That's not allowed. He'll get hurt. He always gets hurt.
“Hey, kid, calm down. It’s okay, it’s just an eyepatch,” Aizawa says, aiming for reassurance, but it does nothing because that isn’t—that’s not—
Shouto can’t think, can’t breathe, as he feels blood steadily drip down his face, and blood means that he’s here, because Shouto’s always bloody when he’s here. He feels his head fogging up, time and place warping. Is he still sitting on grass, or is that tatami mats? He roughly wipes at his eye before any blood gets in it, earning sounds of protest from Aizawa—Aizawa?—and his hand shakes as it’s taken away in his teacher’s grasp, and all he can think of is blindness and darkness and darkness means danger.
“No, you don’t understand, you don’t—”
“Okay, okay, Shouto, hey,” Aizawa rambles in a nervous attempt to get Shouto’s attention. He drops to his knees in front of him, hands coming up to rest on his shoulders. “Come on, just breathe with me. That’s it, just like that. Talk to me, what is it? Help me understand.”
“I… I won’t be able to see,” he confesses, choking back a sob.
“Todobro, you still have the other eye,” Kirishima interjects, confusion evident in his voice, and Shouto falls short on what to say. It's—he needs to lie. They can't know. It's a weakness. Fucking Shouto, always running into a new goddamn weakness, get up—
Aizawa seems to figure it out. Shit. Something like realisation breaks on his face, eyes fixed on Shouto’s scar. “Oh god, don’t tell me…” he mutters under his breath, before swallowing and redirecting his gaze back to Shouto’s right eye. “Kid, can you see out of your other eye?”
For a moment, Shouto stills. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe, just—freezes. Waits for someone to laugh or snicker or go to swipe at his scarred eye to see if he reacts. Maybe tell him to just get over it already and stand up.
But they don’t. They just fall silent, and it pulls Shouto out of his own head enough to remember—these people aren’t like his father. Shouto's not in the training room. He's far, far away. These are people who take the time to explain references and jokes to him when he doesn’t understand them, and who immediately replaced the traditional tea kettle with an electric one when he had his first panic attack over the whistle, and who don’t push him in training until he pukes his guts up or passes out or can’t get up, broken and beaten, from the floor. They aren’t like him.
He breathes. Aizawa's still watching him, waiting for an answer. He just looks worried. That's all. Only worried.
Cautiously, Shouto shakes his head, watching shock sink into everyone’s expressions.
"Wait, so you can only half-see?" Kaminari exclaims. Shinsou steps on his foot.
“Okay, hell class, quiet!” Aizawa interrupts before Shouto can respond. “We’ll talk about this later, but for now, we really need to patch that eye up, kid. We can’t let the cuts get infected.”
“But I won’t be able to see,” Shouto protests, still desperate, still afraid.
“I know, but listen. I’ll be here the whole time, okay? You’ll hold onto my arm, and we’ll all make sure you get back to camp in one piece. Do you trust me?”
And yes, Shouto thinks automatically, which—is surprising. But he ponders on it for a second and yes, he thinks he trusts Aizawa. His teacher’s never hurt him, not once. He’s helped him calm down after nightmares a few times, he’s been there for more than a few panic attacks, he’s... safe. He’s safe.
Trust is a delicate thing, for Shouto. Trust is something that he keeps locked up, hidden away in some remote part of him where people can’t get to it, because trust is dangerous. It leaves you unguarded. Exposed. Open to attack. He was supposed to be able to trust his father—and look how that turned out. He was supposed to be able to trust doctors—Endeavour always paid them off. He trusted his primary school teachers with bruises and burns and retellings of his gruelling training—but those teachers were always suspiciously removed from school in the days after, until Endeavour got sick of it and took him out of school entirely and shoved him into home-schooling instead. He used to trust, until he learnt not to.
But Aizawa is safe. And he thinks that he can trust him.
Shouto nods, and he holds his breath as Aizawa leans forward to disinfect the cuts again, wincing at the sting. He holds his breath as Aizawa sticks the eyepatch to his skin and he is plunged into almost complete darkness, and he nearly starts panicking all over again, because darkness means danger, but Aizawa takes his hands and lets Shouto dig his nails into his palms to ground himself until he feels calm enough to breathe. This is trust.
The walk back to the camp is clumsy. He continuously trips over roots and runs into people next to him, even though they try to warn him. The darkness is scary, because he still doesn’t know where anything is, doesn’t know where to step, but—it’s not so bad. Aizawa is there the whole time, holding onto his arm, telling him when to slow down, when to turn, when to lift his feet a little higher.
Later, they will deal with this. Shouto will explain how it happened, why it was never on his medical records, how he learnt to protect his left side in battle, why and when and who.
But Aizawa is safe, and for now, Shouto can let himself trust that he’ll get back to camp in one piece.