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Shouto woke slowly, vaguely aware of the soft rumble of a voice over the hiss of the hospital machinery. He felt warm and drowsy; disconnected from the troubles that awaited him in the waking world. He wanted to fight it, but the voice seemed to be pulling him upward out of unconsciousness. The voice was deep, like his father’s, but infinitely softer. Gentle. The words were a soft rhythm wrapping around his mind, soothing his troubled thoughts and the lingering fears from his nightmares.
They were speaking English, he realized. He was fluent enough to understand most of the words, but they didn’t seem to make sense yet.
“But these ordinary aboveground everyday sort of riddles were tiring for him,” the voice said. “Also they reminded him of days when he had been less lonely and sneaky and nasty, and that put him out of temper. What is more they made him hungry; so this time he tried something a bit more difficult and more unpleasant.”
The voice paused. “Ah, maybe we should skip the next one, young Todoroki,” they said in Japanese. “It might not be appropriate at this moment. I’ll move on to the next passage.
“Unfortunately for Gollum, Bilbo had heard that sort of thing before; and the answer was all round him anyway. ‘Dark!’ he said, without even scratching his head or putting on his thinking cap.”
Shouto shifted a little, still trying to understand the words. The speaker noticed, and he heard a rustle of cloth before a gentle hand landed on his shoulder. “Young Todoroki?”
He slowly forced his eyes open, taking in the sight of the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks of the once-mighty hero. “All Might?” Shouto asked, his voice cracking from disuse.
“I’m here,” All Might said, leaning in to press one hand against Shouto’s forehead, the other holding a battered paperback novel. He leaned into the touch, comforted by the gentleness of the big, calloused palm. “Your temperature seems much improved.”
Had it been that bad? “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” All Might’s voice was gentle, and he let his hand rest on Shouto’s chest while he smiled down at him. “Never apologize for being sick, young Todoroki.”
“I was sick?” He didn’t remember being sick. He remembered the mountain—the hunger and cold and pain—and Aizawa carrying him to safety.
His father roaring his name. The flames coming for him, closer and higher and hotter. Hellfire, too hot for his ice to stop, hot enough to melt his clothes to his skin if he couldn’t dodge it. So hot his skin cracked and bones burned. Consuming everything impure to leave Endeavor’s perfect little weapon behind.
He gradually realized All Might was talking again. He was leaning over the bed, hand still on Shouto’s chest, having a frantic conversation with a shadowed figure on Shouto’s left. A hand reached for him and he flinched back, belatedly realizing he was looking up at his homeroom teacher.
Aizawa leaned closer in to brush a lock of hair away from Shouto’s eye. “Back with us, kid?”
“I left?”
“It’s okay.” Aizawa’s hand didn’t leave his face. “It happens.”
Shouto brought a hand up to cover his face, dislodging Aizawa’s. “I feel so…” his voice trailed off, unable to find words to express himself.
“Fuzzy?” Aizawa offered. That seemed right. Shouto nodded. “It’s from the Quirk inhibitor.”
He frowned. “Inhibitor?”
“It’s just a precaution. You weren’t fully aware when you were brought in, and the doctor was afraid the unfamiliar environment might trigger your fight-or-flight response.”
The words brought Shouto up cold. He stared at his teacher, eyes wide. “Did I…?”
“No.” Aizawa’s voice was firm. “You never lost control. It’s just a precaution.”
He sagged back against the bed again. “What happens now?”
“Now, you recover.” Aizawa sat on the edge of the bed and took one of Shouto’s hands. He almost hated how comforting that simple touch was. “We’ll need to talk about a few things, but the middle of the night isn’t the best time.”
Middle of the night? There was no clock in the room, but now Shouto realized that the sky outside his window was dark. He glanced guiltily at All Might, then Aizawa. “Sorry.”
“I don’t exactly have a normal sleep schedule, young Todoroki,” All Might said. He smiled, and it softened the sunken lines on his face. “I should be thanking you for being such good company on a sleepless night like this.”
“I’m not good company,” he protested. How did Midoriya deal with this man? Even as shrunken and reduced as he was now, something about All Might seemed to fill the room. An overbearing presence, so like Endeavor’s…and yet so different. Where Endeavor filled the room with intimidation and power, All Might was like a beacon of warmth and light. Endeavor drove everything out with the sheer force of his personality…All Might drew everyone toward him with the warmth of his.
“Don’t say that,” All Might replied. He ruffled Shouto’s hair and winked at him. “I’m always happy to spend time with my favorite student.”
Shouto tilted his head. “I thought Midoriya was your favorite student.”
“My favorite student will always be the one who needs me the most,” the former hero said simply. “Tonight, that’s you.”
Something warm blossomed deep in Shouto’s chest and he found himself blinking back tears. The thought of being All Might’s favorite, if only for a few hours….
He didn’t think he’d ever been someone’s favorite before. Not in a way that mattered. Not in a way that didn’t leave him gagging on the training room floor with a boot print burned into his stomach.
“You’re stuck here for a few more days,” Aizawa said, pulling Shouto’s attention back to him. “You got hit harder than we thought, so it’s taking a little while longer to get you back on your feet.”
“What happened?” He remembered dragging himself out of the landslide and trying to splint his leg with ice. His plan had been to crawl until the forest levelled out with the road again, then try to signal for help from a passing vehicle. Then Aizawa found him and carried him out of the forest, while his father….
“Stay with us, kid.” Aizawa’s hand was on the side of his face, his dark gaze boring intensely into Shouto’s mismatched eyes. “You’re safe here.”
He nodded, swallowing hard past the taste of ash in the back of his throat. “What happened?” he asked again.
“Did you get water from the forest stream?”
“I boiled it,” Shouto replied, suddenly desperate for Aizawa to believe him. He’d done everything right; boiling water killed bacteria and parasites, made it safe to drink. “I know how to do that.”
“I know you do.” Aizawa didn’t smile, not like All Might, but something around his eyes seemed softer. “But boiling wouldn’t have helped. The water was contaminated a few weeks ago, thanks to an accident at a factory further up the mountain. They’re cleaning it up, but they’re still finding high traces of heavy metals in the stream.”
He considered Aizawa’s words for a few moments. The water had had a strange taste to it, but he’d assumed that was because of the metal canteen. His father hadn’t taught him anything about avoiding other contaminants, and boiling had always worked before.
“Then there were the acorns.”
“Acorns are edible.” He snapped his mouth shut after his outburst, aware that he’d interrupted his teacher. Aizawa sighed and folded his arms, staring down at him through heavy-lidded eyes.
“Acorns are edible,” Aizawa agreed. “But the amount you had to eat over the last three days left you on the edge of tannin toxicity. Between that and the tainted water, on top of what you were already going through, your body has a lot to recover from. You’ll be here for another day or two so your body can rest, and so the doctors can keep an eye on everything.”
“And my…and Endeavor?”
Aizawa held his gaze until he looked away. “You said you didn’t want to go home.”
He shrugged.
“Kid, I can only do so much if you won’t talk to me. What happened this weekend is enough to get you out of that house temporarily, but I’m not gonna lie to you. We’ve got a fight ahead of us.”
“You said you wouldn’t give up?” He wanted to believe him. Shouto faced Aizawa again, meeting his steady gaze.
“And I won’t,” Aizawa promised.
Shouto still hesitated. He’d never been believed in the past. His tutors, the doctors…they’d all taken his father’s side. Endeavor was a top hero, of course his son would need to be the best. Shouto was a tool, a weapon. His entire life, even from before he was born, had already been planned out for him.
Aizawa sighed. “We can talk in the morning. You need to sleep…and I need coffee. Yagi?”
“Some tea would be nice. Thank you, Aizawa.”
“Can I have coffee?” Shouto asked, looking between his teachers.
Aizawa snorted. “No.” He ruffled Shouto’s hair before standing up. “Kids like you should be drinking milk. I’ll be right back.”
Shouto settled back in the bed after Aizawa left the room. His head was still spinning from everything he’d heard tonight. Did that mean it hadn’t been his fault that he couldn’t avoid the landslide? Because he’d been gradually poisoning himself every time he drank from that stream? So he hadn’t been imagining it after all…his body really had been growing weaker the longer he was on the mountain.
He wasn’t just going soft, no matter what Endeavor said.
All Might shifted in his chair and offered Shouto a beaming smile when he turned to look at him. He didn’t know what to say to the former top hero, until his eyes focused on the book in his hands. “Were you reading that earlier?”
“Ah, yes,” All Might chuckled. “A friend of mine introduced it to me long ago. It’s one of my favorites.”
He passed the paperback over and Shouto took it gently. The cover was glossy green paper, with a crease down the center and the corners curled up and frayed. The spine was creased in several places, and the pages were yellowed with age. There was an illustration on the front of the book, of a round door set in a hill.
“Have you ever read it?” All Might asked.
Shouto shook his head. The Hobbit. He wondered if Midoriya read books like this—though it was hard to imagine his friend owning anything that wasn’t hero-themed.
“Then I guess we should start at the beginning.” All Might gently took the book back, opening the cover and turning a few pages.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat. It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort….”