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“You know, now that I can think about it, the whole mirror allegory is a little on the nose, I think.”
The unfamiliar voice startles Shouta from his daydream, and he drops the ink covered folder in his hands to reach for his capture weapon instead, snapping his gaze up and curling his shoulders forward in a stance that will give him ample opportunity to go on either the offensive or defensive depending on what type of threat he’s dealing with-
He freezes. Swallows. Blinks.
The lights in the classroom are dim, and the sunlight that normally streams in through the windows is nowhere to be seen. It’s nearly pitch-black outside, clearly far later than he typically ever finds himself still in the building, though why he’s here he can’t quite recall.
His students are gone, each and every desk abandoned in favor of their warm, welcoming, safe dorm rooms where they can study and socialize and sleep without the stresses of the world on their shoulders.
Each and every desk, save one, that is.
The desk, or rather, the back of the chair that belongs to student number eighteen. Empty since the beginning of the school year, is currently playing host to a delicate looking young man that Shouta has never before seen in his life.
Something… something about that isn’t right, but he can’t worry about that now. There’s an intruder in the building, his kids could be in danger, he has no idea what this man is up to or capable of.
There’s something holding him back, however. Something nestled right at the base of his skull, the tip of his tongue, his fingertips and toes. Something telling him to wait. To listen. To look.
‘Sensei’
The stranger leans forward a bit, slowly, non-threateningly—though Shouta knows that even the most non-threatening looking individual can house the deadliest abilities—and rests his elbows on his knees. His bare feet are supporting the majority of his weight pressed into the seat as they are, though honestly, Shouta can’t imagine this man has much weight to carry across his lean, borderline sickly-looking frame.
He curls his hands to support his chin. The slight dip in posture causes his thin white hair to drape off his shoulders, curtain-like, giving his already pale skin and almost ghostly appearance in contrast.
“How did you get in here?” Shouta growls, loosening a few more strands of his capture weapon, just in case. Something inside him stirs at the thought, and he’s nearly overwhelmed by the feelings of distrust-hope-frustration-amusement that strike him from nowhere and everywhere all at once. “Who are you?”
Bright green eyes narrow, but not unkindly. Not judgmentally, nor aggressively…
Realizing this does nothing to quell the fear that surges in around him, breathing down his neck like a curious predator with its prey trapped in its razor-sharp jaws, despite its lack of any sort of hunger. For a moment, Shouta feels as though he’s being analyzed, picked apart piece by piece and studied by something he’s incapable of comprehending all together. Something that sets his most primal hindbrain impulses running and screaming.
And then the feeling passes, and the man gives him a gentle smile, “That really is the question here, isn’t it?”
Shouta exhales and continues to meet the man’s gaze, second by second, beat by beat. He lets his thumb rub along the rough, comforting texture of his weapon of choice, “What is that supposed to mean? This isn’t a joke, tell me who you are now.”
The man’s smile twitches downward at the corners as he leans back just enough to stare sadly down at his hands, “This place makes it difficult to tell.”
Another puzzling, vague answer that makes absolutely no sense.
Just as Shouta is about to demand something better, the man continues with a whispered question of his own.
“Why haven’t you used your quirk Aizawa Shouta-Eraserhead-asshole-hero-Sensei-?”
The man’s voice splits into layers on his name, as if there are several people rushing to speak over each other, all at the same time, all in different tones and cadences and volumes that range from disinterest to reverence to shame and everything in between. The sound of it is wholly unnatural, and it all but makes him stumble.
He steadies himself on the desk in front of him.
“What-“ Shouta can do nothing but breathe, and brace himself against his desk as the question itself echoes over and over inside his mind.
Why haven’t you used your quirk?
“That would normally be the first thing you’d do, when faced with an unknown threat, would it not?” The man presses, singular once more, “It’s only logical. You have no idea what our quirk is, and we-“
“Shut up!” Shouta snarls. His eyes catch hold of the manila folder beneath him and all at once everyt h i n g
s n a p s .
His skull feels like it’s caving in on itself all across his forehead, and then it’s suddenly as if an icepick has been brutally forced through his eye socket and violently jarred, leaving nothing behind but a mess of broken bone and brain matter and barely connected sinew.
Blood—hot, slick, red, too much—pours down his face, from hairline to chin, dribbling off his nose and pooling in each wrinkle and crevice.
And his leg. His leg. It’s gone it’s gone it’s gone-
He whines through gritted teeth, eyes practically glued shut as the world around him starts to spin. He can feel tears force their way free from his perpetually dry ducts, cold against his feverish skin as they slide down his face and catch in scruff.
It hurts. It hurts and why hasn’t he passed out, what is happening? This is wrong wrong wrong-
But no. No. It’s not wrong, is it? This is right, as horrific as it may be. This is right. And it. Is. Agony.
He doesn’t want this to be right. Because if this isn’t wrong… if this is right? Then what else is? What else has he been missing all this time?
He can’t breathe.
In his panic he yanks on the capture weapon around his shoulders in some feeble attempt to do something, but as he does so he feels it come away in tatters.
He doesn’t even have to open his eyes to know how it dissipates in a non-existent breeze. He just knows it does.
Everything—the spinning, the pain, the tears, all of it—comes to an abrupt, unexpected stop the moment a hand gently presses against his shoulder.
He startles, and stumbles away, his prosthetic leg—right—catching on the bottom of the desk, but it’s hardly noticeable outside of the muted thud. When he forces his eyes open, and turns to see who’s touched him, there’s no one there.
At least, there’s no one beside him.
A young boy, younger than Shouta has ever seen him as before, sits calmly at desk number eighteen. A messy mop of dark green curls frame chubby, freckled cheeks, a small bandage on his chin suggests the type of clumsy accidental injury all small children endure as they learn to handle their ever-changing bodies and disproportionate limbs.
He’s wearing a bright yellow, All Might themed t-shirt and tan shorts. He must have always favored red, because while not exactly the same shape and style, his tiny little shoes are the same exact shade as the ones he showed up to Shouta’s class in on his very first day.
“Midorya?” Shouta can’t help but whisper. It feels appropriate, in this strange space—wherever he must be. A mockery of his homeroom, late at night, silent and eerie and off.
The boy, Midoriya, because that’s who it has to be—he’d recognize those features anywhere, and if it’s not him, then who could it be?—looks up at him with big, empty, glowing white eyes. There’s an unspeakable type of vastness there that feels unearthly and untethered. It ebbs and flows, swirls and flares out, a maelstrom of hope-confusion-strength-loathing. It’s like looking at a caged supernova, alive and howling and starving, but unable to escape the confines of the gentle little boy that houses it.
Midoriya Izuku holds the power of a dying star within his very soul, and for a brief moment, Shouta can’t help but wonder how it hasn’t already devoured him from the inside out in its desperation to be free for its last moments of existence.
He wonders if this is some sort of trap… but as soon as the thought passes the threshold of his mind, he knows it’s nothing of the sort. There is no trap being set for him by the image of the boy.
This place? This wrongness that feels so far left of normal? Perhaps. But if that’s the case, he and Midoriya are both being held captive, and he needs to find a way for them to escape. Needs to find a way to save Midoriya from whatever it is that’s happening around them.
Shouta sucks in a hesitant breath and holds it. He takes a moment to gather his wits, and then slowly makes his way around the desk and toward the young—too young—visage of his student.
He kneels, and it pains him that this Midoriya is small enough that they still don’t meet quite eye to eye as he does so.
“Hey, Midoriya.” Shouta prompts once more, hoping for some sort of reaction.
And he receives one—just not from the source he’d been aiming for.
“Is that our name?”
He jerks his gaze up so quickly he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s given himself whiplash. His eye—singular, that’s important—widens as he realizes the glass of the window beside Midoriya’s desk is cracked and fragmented. One long, dark red line bisects it from its upper corner to its lower edge, a myriad of smaller fractures that branch haphazardly out from the center.
A small sticky note rests on the windowsill, crumpled and clearly previously used. Dark red ink crosses out the previous lines—a shopping list, perhaps?—and near the bottom in shaky, nearly illegible kanji:
‘Broken. Replace.’
“Like I said before… a little on the nose, I think.”
Shouta tears his gaze away from the note and back up toward the fractured glass. The darkness outside means the lit room surrounding him is reflected much more clearly on its surface.
Midoriya’s reflection is absent, replaced by the profile of the young white-haired man.
Shouta takes a moment to study him. The man in the window is sitting in the same way as the boy beside him, though he appears to be haloed in a faint, white shimmer.
“You’re not Midoriya.” Shouta states, “Whoever-whatever you are… you’re not him.”
The man hums contemplatively, and while he never turns to face Shouta, his expression twists, brows furrowed and lips pressed thin, one hand reaching up to pinch his lower lip as if truly thinking over what Shouta has said.
It’s all frighteningly familiar. It causes something faint to flicker in Shouta’s thoughts, still out of reach, so very small and seemingly insignificant, but something tells him it’s anything but.
When the stranger eventually responds, his voice is once more hauntingly layered with numerous others, “Are you sure?”
That faint flicker grows.
It grows, because despite how difficult it is to filter through all those separate voices, there is one particular tone that stands out. One that he’s heard nearly every day for the last two years.
One that he’d recognize anywhere at this point.
“I-“ Shouta starts, but then hesitates. He’s no longer confident in his answer, because now that he’s singled out Midoriya’s voice within the choir, he can’t help but doubt.
So, after a long moment of silence between him and the shade in the window, Shouta stands. He settles on honesty. “I’m not. But I’d like to help you figure it out, if that’s alright with you?”
The man in the glass turns to face him, a mere reflection no longer. His bright green eyes are wide, as if he hadn’t expected that answer. A small, but warm smile graces his features, and he bows his head in acquiesce.
Shouta startles when small, stubby fingers wrap around his own, and when he glances down, he realizes that this younger version of Midoriya is standing right in front of him, looking up at Shouta expectantly. His face remains stoic and expressionless, the mesmerizing bottomless pools of white light in his eyes a sirens song that threatens to pull him in.
The desks are missing, as is the ghost in the glass. All that remains is Shouta, the boy, and the crumpled note in front of the broken window.
“It hurts.” Midoriya’s voice is so, so small, nearly breathless. It’s not the one he remembers, too young and clumsy to be so, but the familiar inflection he’s come to know is there, “I’m scared.”
“I’m sorry.” Shouta responds, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Instead, he gives the hand in his a soft squeeze, hoping it provides some sort of comfort where his words fail.
“You’re going to help us, right?”
“’I’m going to try.” Shouta promises, “Are you ready?”
Midoriya nods, “Mmhmm!”
Shouta tightens his hold on Midoriya, and steps toward the window. With his free hand, he reaches forward, wrapping red stained fingertips around the edge of the crinkled paper.
And pulls.
It starts with a mirror.
The darkness and rage and fear that surrounds him rips at his skin, his clothes, his hair. It’s a contradiction, an unnatural force of nature, a hurricane that lacks water, but lives off claws and hands and teeth that push and pull and bite and claim.
And he is standing dead center in the eye of it all. In a place that should not exist, but somehow does. And right at this moment… that is important.
Fractured, jagged edges of a broken mirror bite into his palms, digging right through his flesh, slicing tendons and muscle alike. Blood seeps into the cracks, and he can’t bring himself to look down into the shards.
If he looks into the shards, he thinks it means whatever he sees in the reflection will become real. It will be right.
Something tugs on his panteg, above his prosthetic. He clenches his eye tight and shakes his head in denial.
The tugging, though weak, is persistent. It pulls and pulls and pulls-
A vicious wave of unbridled terror cuts through him then. He shudders, and falls to his knees, curling the broken mirror to his chest. It bites into his skin, right through his clothes, carves out its shape into his sternum, transferring its cracks and fissures deep into his heart.
He doesn’t care.
Tiny trembling fingers wrap around his own. They feel almost wispy in this place, airy in a way they shouldn’t be, for all he knows they should feel solid.
Something about their kind, gentle, almost obnoxiously insistent touch manages to grant him just enough courage to open his eye.
A small, translucent boy blanketed in a faint, glittering green glow stands in front of him. It’s hard to tell in this place, but Shouta thinks his hair is dark and curly, and his cheeks are covered in a splattering of tiny little freckles that would make the most complicated game of connect-the-dots the world has ever seen.
His mouth is set in a firm line, and his innocent green eyes flare brightly with a type of fluorescence that catches on the thin trail of tears streaming down his face.
He says no words as his fingers tug at Shouta’s hands, prompting him to lower the mirror.
He can’t.
“You can.” The boy responds, as if Shouta had spoken aloud. “I believe in you, Aizawa Sensei.”
Before he can formulate any sort of response, the storm around them shifts and grows. It surges forth as if joyously cognizant of the damage it was about to cause, to snatch the boy in its shroud of pain and fear and anguish. That soft, effervescent glow that had just seconds before graced his vision is gone, ripped away and consumed by the monster beyond.
“No!”
Something happens then. The storm tears itself apart with a pained cry, leaving behind a fractured, damaged world of darkness that is somehow both tangible and not, a physical calamity of the mind made real.
Shouta lunges forward, angry and confused and spiteful. He ignores the pain that wracks his body, ignores the fear, ignores the cacophony of calling voices from the mists beyond that try to lure him away, call him home into safe warm arms, cradling his mirror with one hand while the other goes to support his weight, “Midoriya!”
Because that’s who that had been, right? Midoriya Izuku. The boy he was sent to this god forsaken place to help. The boy he was meant to save in Yagi’s stead. His student. His problem child.
He remembers.
“No!” Shouta shouts, “Midoriya, I’m here. I’m late, but I’m here! Can you hear me?”
The world around him trembles and breathes, it’s very essence alive and aware. The visible fractals in its existence flicker and shimmer with dark, angry energy that snaps and pops dangerously. Static dances across his skin, clings to his clothes, makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It makes the joint between his metal prosthetic and flesh sting, pins and needles settling into his nerves. The scent of ozone and petrichor fill the air, normally familiar and comforting, but somehow here, in this place it’s become tainted and musty. Rotten.
Shouta breathes, and then winces when a particularly sharp edge on the mirror catches against the skin of his arm.
He stops. Why was he still carrying this damn thing?
He leans back, and slowly peers into its surface, ignoring the terror that wraps its barbed tendrils around his heart, begging him to relent, to retreat, to abandon this place once and for all…
He refuses. If Midoriya can place his faith in him here of all places, who is he to give in?
Each slowly crumbling section of the mirror mocks him with his very own existence.
-A flash of dark blue hair, pale skin, a coffin slowly lowered into the ground. He’ll never feel her touch again. Never hear her voice nagging him to take better care of himself, never receive another text, another kiss, another warm shared breath between the sheets-
-Tanned skin, a white nasal strip to combat the side effects of his quirk. Too much moisture in the air surrounding him, the warmest hugs-‘I believe in you Shouta!’. A collapsed building, blood seeping out from beneath the cornerstones. The last time Shouta saw his face it was amidst a swirling miasma of purple mist and dead, empty yellow eyes. A teenager’s corpse desecrated all because they missed their chance at his own-
-Long blond hair pulled back in messy bun. Red, bloodshot eyes. He looks so, so tired. Waiting at his bedside for too long, too long, too long. ‘Nemuri-‘ ‘Hush, Hizashi.’ Shouta doesn’t want to talk about Nemuri, but Hizashi does. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair. Another person he’s failed, but still clings to like a lost little child, when will he leave?-
-A student, a child under his care, missing from the forest. Dead? Alive? Injured? Half his class incapacitated. The event that leads to the final downfall of the Symbol of Peace-
-A doctor with mad eyes, grinning wildly, bragging about his twisted experiments. Shouta wants to kill him. Shouta thinks he will. Shouta pulls his capture weapon tighter around the mans pudgy fucking neck and listens to him wheeze. It feels good-
Each piece is dark, shameful a part of his story. A small fraction of a whole, missing all the good bits… There is no beginning, middle, and end here, there is only the in betweens, cherry picked scenes that are meant to hurt.
This mirror does not belong here. This mirror shouldn’t exist. Not in this place. This may be a rendition of his mirror, but this isn’t his nightmare.
And with that thought, Shouta flings the mirror to the ground and lets it shatter.
Finally, his mind clears, at least, as much as it is able. He’s here for a reason, and now there is nothing to distract him, nothing to draw him into twisted, off center illusions of his own making.
The world surrounding him reacts. It’s the only way to describe how it howls, as if both in triumph and in rage. The fractures in existence shift and groan, and in the corner of his eye he catches a writhing mass of black and green, swarming and pulsating as it surges from one shard to the next, clinging to the edges of each one it bypasses in a way that should be impossible, but like all things here, in this place, is not.
Another crack forms, and the world reacts to that as well. It shrieks and cries, wallowing in grief and sorrow.
“Midoriya!” He doesn’t expect an answer-
Which is why he jumps when one explodes into existence around him, ‘Is that our name?’
The layered voices are back, each distinct enough on their own, but when spoken as one they blend and merge in a way that’s hard to pick them apart.
‘No-Yes!-I’m here-we’re here-are we Midoriya?-who are we-we are Shigaraki Yoichi!- yes-no!-we have always been-Shimura-let us go-no!-Toshi help us- where is Toshi- we are Toshi-are we Midoriya Izuku-tell us-help us-help him help him help him-‘
“I want to! I want to help, that’s why I’m here. Listen- something happened to you, is happening to you. Yagi he tried-“
‘Toshi-eight-Toshinori where is he-he’s here- we’re here-we are Toshinori-no! Yes!- who are we?-
-and then fainter, far more distinct, ‘All Might?’
“Right, Yagi, er, All Might,” Shouta explains, latching on to that small, childlike wonder that still clings to the name of his favorite hero. “I can’t say I understand how it all works, not exactly… He tried to come himself to help, but… you’re One for All, right? All of you? He’s part of you already. He’s already here, so the part of him that’s outside… it didn’t work, he couldn't get in.”
Another quake shakes this impossibly improbable existence around him, and several panes crack even further. He thinks he sees the flickering figures of several silhouettes, eyes that observe, analyze, tease, glare, questioningly blink at him from all directions.
The mass of darkness gathers more of itself from the world around it, stretches forward, as if reaching out for him before pulling abruptly back, unsure and unsteady, “Midoriya-“
“IS THAT OUR NAME?’
Before Shouta has any time to react, the thing in the shards abandons its hesitance and lunges forward instead, massive and overwhelming. It towers over him as it contorts and twists, a semi-solid amalgamation of limbs and eyes and teeth that slowly begin to take shape. A steel like substance appears to melt out of black, inky flesh, forming a mouth filled with thousands of jagged, twisted points, stretching wide as if to swallow him whole.
Long, tattered ears, almost rabbit like in appearance stretch out from behind its head, while nine sets of eyes line themselves along what can only be called its face, each rolling to pin Shouta under their gaze.
It hunches forward, leaning over him so that clawed, mangled fingers box him in, leaving Shouta no room for escape—as if that were even a possibility at the moment.
Its spine curls, erupting with hundreds of oily black-green tendrils that stretch out and out and out into the darkness beyond to hoist its mass up, like a spider with far, far too many legs, all while the rest of it simply melds into the world beneath them, one in the same as it is.
Shouta feels fear like he’s never felt before. It seeps from this being like a heavy fog, thick and choking and oppressive in nature… It threatens to shut down each and every one of his other senses, until there’s nothing left for him to do but curl into a sniveling ball of despair.
But even amongst all that… there’s something more.
All that fear and sorrow… as invasive as it is…
It’s not his, no matter how much they want him to believe it is.
It’s theirs.
And while it may be hard, while it may feel downright impossible... he has to try and help them.
That’s why he’s here, after all.
So he clears his throat, and when that doesn’t help him regain his voice, he swallows instead.
Then takes a single, shaking step forward.
The being jerks and rattles in warning, bearing down on him further. A cold haze drifts from its form and settles around them both.
He gives it no quarter. “I think… I think part of you is Midoriya Izuku.”
‘Part of us?-we are-no!-Yes-Midoriya Izuku-Help him-Help him-Help him-He’s ours-who are we?-Shigaraki-Nana-Toshi-En-‘
“I came here to help you, but first I had to find you. And now I have.”
‘Help us help us help us-help Izuku-free him-free us-is that our name?-Banjo-First second third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth-‘
“And Midoriya Izuku is the ninth, right?” Aizawa interrupts, and the being recoils in response.
“Ninth ninth ninth ninth-weak-strong-hope-he’s our future-we don’t need him-proved us wrong-not worthy-WRONG-no! yes!-right choice right choice right choice-can’t be a hero with that quirk of yours- liability! Monster-Nomu? No! We are more! We are endless-why do they run away?“
Shouta takes a chance and reaches forward, wrapping his red stained fingers around the edges of the being’s jaw, “Midoriya Izuku is brave, and selfless, and one of the worthiest individuals I have ever had the pleasure of teaching. I was wrong, and the people that ran from you when you were trying to help them? They were wrong too.”
‘Us!-who are we?-what is our name?-Yes-No-Midoriya-Shinomori-Lariat-En En En- Where is Toshi?-Are we Midoriya Izuku?’ The being leans forward once more and crowds into Shouta’s space, ‘Sensei, you are sensei, you are Aizawa, Eraserhead-safe safe safe safe- yes!-no!-trust him-yes! No-he lies he lies he lies-logical ruse-saved us! protected us! teaches us! Loves us! Trust him-“
As the being continues to argue with itself, one of its voices separates, and Shouta swears he feels the phantom sensation of small, child-like fingers wrapping around his own once more. It's faint, but it's there... it has to be. ‘You came?’
“Of course. Always.”
And then from one blink to the next, the world around them groans and shifts once more. Shouta finds himself kneeling in front of a much, much smaller figure.
His student, Midoriya Izuku, or at least a fragment that’s close enough, if not quite wholly himself, sits crumpled over and hugging himself tightly. It's almost as if he’s afraid he’ll break apart at any moment—which, with everything Shouta has seen thus, could be a very real possibility in this place. He’s still vaguely in the shape of the towering being from before, shrouded in that same inky, twisting darkness that tethers him to this slowly crumbling mental world around them, but he's here, at last.
“Can you really help us, sensei?” Mostly Midoriya asks, turning his wide glowing eyes toward him as he reaches out a hand to grasp desperately at Shouta’s sleeve. The tug is strong enough to almost knock him off his feet, but he manages to stay upright. “We’re so confused. Everything is all... jumbled together. We don’t know who we are, and everything hurts so much… we-I- we don’t want to be afraid anymore... but we're sobroken.”
His voice still subtly houses the others within its layers, though thankfully, Midoriya’s is the most prevalent. Shouta knows deep in his heart that this is the best he can hope for at the moment.
So he gently places his own palm on Mostly Midoriya’s, and gives it a bit of a squeeze, “I think so. We're all working on it on the outside, too. One for All… it's nature complicates things quite a bit, but we’re all here with you, and we’re going to do our best. You're irreplaceable, Midoriya, and so I want to help bring you home. That’s why I’m here." He motions with his free hand, “So I really, really need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
Without a single ounce of doubt of hesitation, Midoriya responds. This time, his voice is the only one. “Always.”
Shouta takes a deep breath, steels his nerves, and nods.
“Alright. So, here’s what we think has happened...
...It starts with a mirror.”