Chapter Text
The candy in the office sucked ass, and Shouta thinks that might’ve been Shuzenji’s intention.
Once upon a time he popped a pink cube in his mouth and bit into death. It tasted old and sad and it lingered on his tongue even after he spat it into the can, and he had to gargle for ten minutes just to burn the flavor off. He’d bet that if he dug around to the bottom of that glass, he could pull out something that expired the day he was born and has since gone out of mass production. And fucking jackfruit flavored or something.
Maybe it was for nostalgia, and she never switched out the candy because they were all remnants of when she really was a girl. Not that he’d say that to her face.
Or maybe it’s some strategic move on her part to stop kids from dilly dallying in her office. She does hate dilly dalley-ers, after all. She purposely chaps her lips for them.
Except Shouta, she would let him dilly dally. Mostly because she could tell by his face whenever he had to come in here that this was actually more torturous than having to sit through class with a migraine. So maybe she just had a sinister agenda.
Sometimes he’d have to escort a kid with a broken arm in here and watch while they mindlessly unwrapped a hard candy, only for their faces to crumple when another clump of shit got violently shoveled onto their already shitty day.
He’s no guidance counselor or anything, and he never took any college courses in psychology, but even he would think twice about poisoning teenagers. Is that so crazy? Is he Sister Shouta for trying to fight this?
Students here may deserve the occasional sweet release from their heightened miserable existences, especially after something like the sports festival. Like that Kid with the broken leg. Or Kid number 2 with the broken nose. Or Midoriya with the broken everything. Midoriya should be allowed to wake up and taste something other than age and fear and sadness and his own blood in the form of hard candy. If Shuzenji doesn’t have it then fine, Shouta’ll buy it. He’ll buy whatever that boy wants so just wake up, wake up right now, do the weird little scream at the EKG machine and wake up.
“Aizawa.”
“Mm? Yeah,” He straightens up to look at Recovery Girl, his hand slipping off from where he was fiddling with loose threads along the bedsheets, “How is he?”
“Brain damaged.”
Shouta’s heart quieted down to hear her better. “What?”
“Yes, but fortunately it appears he came in that way. You both did.”
He decides to stop looking at her. “You’re not funny.”
“I’m a hoot,” Shuzenji shuffles some more papers out of sight and it’s loud, but not loud enough to completely drown out the constant beeping. “He’s stable. I took care of everything major, no more broken limbs or dislocated shoulders for him, but I’ll need to keep him here for at least a few more hours to take care of the rest without sending him into a coma. So just…” She flicked all five fingers at him, and his own itched to touch the bedsheets again. “…sit tight.”
“Of course, got it.”
“As in sit tight in the announcers booth with Yamada for the remainder of the festival. Not in here.”
Shouta took a break from leveling glares at the machine to shut his eyes, letting the beeps wash over him. Figures she’d stop letting him dilly dally the moment this room became a better alternative to the outside world. Another sinister home run.
“Got it.”
She let the silence hang over them for a few painful seconds, her quiet shuffling climaxing in a final huff when she decided to smack his shoulder with her clipboard.
“Five more minutes,” She said, then smacked him again. How she ever got passed the first round of interviews here is beyond him. “I need to get a copy of his documentation ready for the mother, you can wait here in the meantime.”
“Mm.”
He felt the clipboard on his arm again, just resting instead of striking, egging him on to finally look at her. People’s glasses here were so shiny sometimes he couldn’t see a damn thing behind it, but with a frown as deep as that he guesses he wouldn’t need to.
“Mrs. Midoriya isn’t the only parent you’ll meet with today. I hope you remember that a good lot of them are always tucked away into the crowd somewhere, and none of them like it when their kids lose. So do and say what you need to, but try to avoid Endeavor. You know what he’s like,” At least that’s one confirmed reaction to today’s events, then. He guesses he should’ve seen it coming, who starts screaming at their kid on a televised event, anyway? “Oh, and UA’s updated their catering since last year too, I heard. Sushi bar and shaved ice and such. Do bring one back when you have the chance, I’m partial to taro. As for you, stick to the meats.”
And then she hobbled off, the sound of footsteps and a heavy cane retreating behind the door of her real office, which might be where she kept the good candy.
It was always a little odd these days whenever Shuzenji spoke to someone other than Nezu or a student, or when she’d pack up her briefcase and accompany a few of them on their missions within the safety of the surveillance van. The way she would tut at his condition and critique his daily habits, telling him to eat some protein outside of his wretched diet and stop building up a caffeine tolerance. It was familiar.
He could almost pretend like the chair he was in was another cot, that the EKG was for him, if not a beeping a little faster than his usually did at that age. Fatigue and all. Recovery Girl was getting his medical records, not Midoriya’s. She was treating his migraine, not his broken limbs, because he didn’t let anybody break his limbs that day, he didn’t realize he could afford to. He still had to avoid parents; not because they’d call him a shit teacher or whatever, but because some dirty, underhanded student was now in the same league as their kids. He thinks he even apologized at one point.
He stood up suddenly and did his own shuffling around the office, rearranging her desk and opening and closing drawers- he’d wandered down a dusty memory lane and mindless movement would probably let him wander right back out.
Lost in the forest of cheap black pens within her pencil cup were these pink highlighters, the stocky type that teachers would have him buy back in junior high, the type he’d never use. They seeped through pages like an overflowing bathtub in the overhead apartment, leaving the lingering scent of something saccharine yet just short of bleach— they weren’t a pleasure to have, is all he’s saying. He’s surprised someone as old as her was this adventurous with her stationary and didn’t retreat back to underlining with pencil like the rest of them had by their 20s.
“Did he win?”
Shouta stilled, then stiffly turned towards the curtain that cut him off from the second half of the room, right beside Midoriya. Someone was there this whole time?
“Who?” He answered back unsure.
The curtain was yanked aside. “Him,” The kid said and oh.
Purple haired gen-ed kid with the mouthy mental quirk who’d pissed off half his class and lost to Midoriya. Hiro? Shiro? Shintô? That feels familiar, that definitely aligned somewhere in his mind. He hates when Hizashi doesn’t finish an introduction, give him a second.
“Yeah, he’s about to get his medal.”
The EKG sounded especially loud in the following silence and Shiro’s arm slumped back down when the joke landed, rolling flat onto his back again and staring up at the ceiling. Shouta turned back to her stationary.
“I lost to a loser,” The boy breathed out to him again; his priorities were refreshing. There’s a little more to it than that, though, if Shouta recalled the fight correctly.
“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” He said.
The kid hummed, misinterpreting him completely.
“Yeah, all the sports festival winners are powerhouses who can’t tell left from right. Unbeatable.”
Shouta barked out a laugh suddenly, startled, throwing both of them off their axes. He turned to face the boy again.
“Crap,” The kid breathed out, he had a split lip. Split bridge of his nose. Split everything. And all that after a tumble? Give this kid some bandaids. “You’re not gonna kill me for disrespecting a student, right?”
“He’ll do that himself,” He said, drifting closer just barely, his amusement only growing at the way Shintô’s face dropped.
“No.“
“Yep.”
“Him?“ He whispered, like to even say his name was invoking bad spirits. Bakugo might actually enjoy this kind of reputation, but that’s nothing but an assumption and Shouta, being the grown man that he is, should shut it down before it festers. “I practically renounced him.”
“Then let this be a lesson to stop renouncing your peers.” Especially Bakugo, he would say, if he wasn’t so mature. “Especially not those who only train harder the more people renounce them.”
Bakugo was bad enough to have in the gym after Monoma’s visit, this kid just shoved him off the edge.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He’s not as subtle as he thought, then.
“It’s not, a little extrinsic motivation never hurt anybody, but I’m the one that’s gotta replace all the sandbags he explodes.”
The boy’s eyebrows furrowed, “And you’re the… janitor?”
“Close.” It’s no wonder he doesn’t know, Shouta keeps a low profile in every sense of the word. When Shintô dropped by the classroom he was probably sleeping under the desk.
“…Their teacher.” You say that like it’s a bad thing. “You’re gonna kill me on his behalf?”
“On behalf of myself,” He said, maturely.
The stu- Shinsou. Shinsou’s violet eyes narrowed at the words, not quite yet processing what he even meant. He took in the off-putting, jagged grin that was somehow still plastered on Shouta’s face before running over the rest of him. The scruff on his chin and the sags just about everywhere on his clothes, tossing the features about in his mind and trying to shove the puzzle piece that was his overall character into the typical image of a hero. Suffice to say, it didn’t fit. Finally his expression settled somewhere between disbelief and morbid curiosity.
“Are you… What’s your quirk?” The boy asked.
His smile finally dropped. People really only have one ice breaker these days, don’t they?
“Not telling you.”
“Why not?” Shinsou asked again and there.
It’s subtle, which attests to the boy’s familiarity with his quirk, an admirable trait, but Shouta could still hear the slight shift in his tone when he asked. Not to mention his eyes practically twinkled. A pity, he was almost starting to tolerate him.
He could’ve just ignored him, but this is, what, the second time he’s tried manipulating the mind of a stranger outside of a fighting context? And a teacher, at that. He saw Ojiro after the fight, watched his blank eyes melt into utter confusion- He’s not stupid, and clearly Shinsou isn’t either. The trick he pulled was clever, but a violation of maybe 10 student conduct rules nonetheless. Frankly, he’s a little peeved.
It happened in a second; A sharp coolness behind his eyes, a sudden chill on the back of his bare neck, and Shinsou’s form tensing up and deflating all at once. Quirk knocked right out of him. Counterintuitive, perhaps, to the lesson he was trying to teach, the kid definitely knows what his quirk is now. Still, they stared each other down, but Shouta didn’t feel he was truly being understood yet.
“Because you’ve got a bad habit of brainwashing my students whenever you feel like it.”
The sound of a cane on polished tile snapped them out of it, drawing their attention to the old woman who’s just come shuffling back in. Shuzenji jabs a manilla folder into Shouta’s abdomen and uses it to nudge him towards the door until he takes hold of it himself.
“Now, take it and leave. Before you clog up all the space and there’s no room left for his mother,” She scolds. Then, after a second, “The boy will be fine.”
As much as he hates to say it, her words remind him that the boy was even there in the first place. He might’ve been clinging on to that conversation with Shinsou, he realized, just the slightest bit, just so there’d be something else ticking him off other than the rhythmic beats of the machine.
Midoriya’s fine for now, just as she said, his heart rate the same as it was just moments before, but later? Tomorrow? A few months from now? He was caught between a rock and some jagged ice once the smoke cleared, smoke from the explosion. How can any of them be sure they didn’t just hemorrhage his brain, and it was still in there, lying in wait for the worst time to give him an aneurysm.
He felt like saying all this to Shuzenji, but he’d tested her patience enough, and if Midoriya did have a brain hemorrhage she’s likely the only one in this room who could find out. So he keeps the folder shut even after she hobbles back into her office and leaves them again. He doesn’t think to agonize over it, he forces himself not to.
Shinsou must have needed the reminder as well, swiftly eyeing the other boy’s form while something seemed to shift back into place in his mind. The ragged man in this room wasn’t here to debate with him over the ethics of quirk use, he was here for his student. Aha!
But with Midoriya came the tears in his gym uniform, the swipes of dirt and dust along his cheek, blotches of redness scatted across skin in the areas where Todoroki, one of the actual winners of the sports festival, had briefly lit him aflame.
Shouta had wanted to get around to that eventually, find some balance between not forcing the boy to do something he doesn’t want to while letting him know that 50% of his power meant 50% effectiveness, but this wasn’t what he pictured at all. A sit down, a straightforward talk, not a brawl.
But most importantly, Midoriya came with a reality check: Shinsou had lost. He’d come in with guns— his mouth— blazing, opening fire at every hero student that dared clumsily stumble in his way. Or in Bakugo’s case, exist. And then he’d lost, self-assured grin chattering at the force of it all, the sense knocked right into him. Perhaps it’d faded out again in the past few minutes, but it was standing in the doorway now, waiting for him to meet its eyes.
He had no one to blame but himself, really.
Shinsou kept his eyes down.
And maybe it’s because he’s made too much of a ruckus in the nurse’s office already to just not say anything, or because the kid took a nasty blow to the back when Midoriya judo flipped him and the way he’s lying right now is gonna screw him over later, or because on some level Shouta thinks he gets it, utterly losing and having nothing to blame besides your own body, but he lets himself step beyond the confines of his actual class for just a second.
“Shinsou, right?”
That gets him a look. A big one. Caught off guard and brimming with something—
Pummeled in with a pillow.
Shinsou’s makes a gagging noise like the collision robbed him of his ability to breathe, slightly cringing at the sting, and maybe Shouta should’ve aimed anywhere but the face.
“Elevate your knees,” He says in lieu of an apology, eyeing the way the boy’s legs trembled from poorly hidden strain, “You’re making it worse.”
He doesn’t give Shinsou a chance to respond, slinking back into the hallway with a new objective.
He’d have to check the attendance logs for Mrs. Midoriya and track her down from wherever she might’ve ran off to in the building, all while trying and failing to navigate the nurse’s office that was tucked away somewhere in Nezu’s labyrinth. And if she wasn’t here, but at home, staring at the TV and hearing the cheers go on while her son was crippled somewhere beyond her reach, then he’d shorten the distance, let her rough him up and use his broken body as a bridge— lord knows he deserves it.
Then, hopefully, eventually, she’ll forgive him. Midoriya will heal, All Might will show him blatant favoritism again, and Shinsou will return to gen ed with minor glory for making it as far as he did.
It’s demented, he thinks, hoping the wound on Shinsou’s nose never gets bandaged, hoping that when he goes back from whence he came he’ll have to stay there, if not just so that Shouta will never have to think about him again.
Mrs. Midoriya is a nice woman. Nicer, perhaps, than she should be.
Shouta checked just about every place he could think of; the front gates, the halls, the security cameras spanning every aisle of the arena, keeping an eye out for anyone vaguely resembling the kid, but it was All Might in the end who’d tracked her down. Or, more accurately, who she’d tracked down.
He’d held his phone with both hands, cradled to his ear while muffled shouts leaked through the speaker, berating him even further than he appeared to already be berating himself. It’s always unnatural to see a man of his size in an outfit of that level of saturation cowering in a corner like that- take Endeavor, for instance, that’ll be the day.
It’s as unnatural as it is amusing, though Shouta’s amusement was nonetheless dulled by the revelation that All Might appeared to have shared his personal contact with Midoriya’s mother. He added that to the list of things Nezu won’t take him seriously about and vowed to bring it up later anyway.
“He’s fine. Yes, I know what you saw on TV, but I… Yes, I’m sorry, I realize now that calling you and, and beginning the call by asking you if you were the mother of Young Midoriya could’ve been a tad bit stress-inducing, and for that I… He’s okay, really, I just passed by the nurse’s- No, I went in, and I looked him over and… Sorry? No, I’m afraid I don’t have the specifics of his condition, only that he’s perfectly stable, for the full details you may have to consult Recovery Girl. No, she’s- She’s not a girl, she’s quite old, but not too old, and very experienced, very respected in her field, can heal anyone with a… yeah. Her number…? Her number, yes, let me find her number, her number, her-“
Shouta grabbed the phone before he could talk them both in circles, slipping out the medical report that he’d been tightly gripping the corner of for maybe an hour now. He didn’t want to think about what that meant for how long she’d been calling him.
“Mrs. Midoriya, it’s Aizawa Shouta, I’m your son’s homeroom teacher. He broke a few limbs- some by his own volition, others on direct impact with another student- but he’s all healed now, save for the concussion.” He was looking at the report, going down the lines, but he didn’t really need to. “Recovery Girl wants to keep him for a little while, her quirk requires her to treat him in short intervals, and it’s my recommendation that you let her, but you can pick him up whenever you’d like.”
He thinks of her again while she deliberates in silence; the death grip she must have on the phone, driving herself crazy in her home. He thinks of a mother in that state getting on the highway.
“On second thought, let us bring him to you.”
It’s with every grace of god that they didn’t need to wheel Midoriya into his own home. The lingering effects of the drugs have him jaded when they arrive, blindly following All Might and blinking emptily at his surroundings, but he’s at least well enough to walk.
It unsettles him a bit, how quiet his student had become in the span of a day. He wants to clap in his face, jostle him around, tug on a strand of hair- anything if it gets him talking again. How could he have ever told him to stop before?
He’s passed off to his mother and they stand like dogs at her door for her to come back. When she does, he takes one look at the redness under her eyes and tells her they’ll come by tomorrow, or the next day, whenever she wants. All Might’s face is tight, stressing at the seams with objections unsaid; he doesn’t mention it.
Now after a couple days Shouta waits by the door again, his feet planted firmly in his shoes, ready at the moments notice to get kicked out. He’s an uninvited guest, after all. Twice now.
He waited until the boy was cleared to leave and slipped into the car without a word, leaving it to All Might to either deal with it and get in or walk himself there. Fortunately for the both of them, he never even considered the latter, and he’s all smiles when he takes the wheel, though he was yet to face Midoriya’s mother.
Oddly enough he’s never had to come to a student’s home before, the rare exception among other heroics teachers. He’s had PTC meetings, verbal slap fights with them after festivals, but he’s never drank their coffee. The streak had been an unnatural source of pride for him, though he guesses with the level of publicity Midoriya got breaking his own body, it was only right for him to finally break it.
He thinks it’d only be right for Mic to do the same with Shinsou’s parents, him being the only gen-ed kid in a few years to crack the personal matches, a feat alone even if he did end up losing, though Shouta doesn’t exactly know how to bring that up. He doesn’t know how to explain why, either, and he’s not sure he wants to.
He does know how this goes, though, what the elephant in the room is after a student inevitably gets hurt. It weighs five tons and tramples over furniture and its name is I’m Not Comfortable Leaving My Child In This Kind Of Environment.
Three years ago a girl in another class pulled a submerged car out from a frozen lake, she’d made the water itself shoot up and carry them to safety. They didn’t realize till later that the endless calls for help the car had been making were the result of a small weight pressed against one of its buttons; the family had died long before anyone even knew they were there.
The girl’s parents pulled her out of school for maybe a week, sent Nezu their demands and threatened to sue for damages, and in the end it was settled out of court with the guiding hand of her teacher who’s since retired. She was back the next day and graduated as one of the big three; Japan hasn’t heard from her since.
Shouta remembers bits and pieces from that day in the office, a summary of what the girl’s teacher had told the rest of the staff he’d said to convince her parents to let her stay. A chance to do real good. The potential to be great. Then he said it didn’t matter what he said, because either way they’d stay, but the more they were paid the faster she’d be back.
He repeats it to himself even now. A chance to do real good. The potential to be great. A once in a lifetime opportunity for himself. A disservice to his country if he were to throw it away. The more he regurgitates it over the years the weirder it feels in his mouth, like his lips are two slabs of wood smacking together while a string pulls his posture taut.
Shouta doesn’t recall ever doing such good that Japan would notice his immediate absence if the day came that he got his throat cut in an alley. He’s never felt that kind of potential in himself, and he’s certainly never been told as much.
He knows very little of Midoriya, only how little he values his own body, the immunity he has to the cloud of smoke and ash that appears to follow Bakugo wherever he goes, the sound of his voice. He knows next to nothing and yet he likes him, as out of place as it feels to admit that, he likes who he is and the person Shouta thinks he’ll become. He thinks he’s got a better chance living to become that if his mother made him leave.
It feels a bit wrong of him to think that in the kid’s own home, never more than three feet away from some piece of merchandise, stuck in the shiny orbit of the hero who’s undoubtedly the reason Midoriya applied to UA in the first place. There’s a layer of pixie dust and dreamy sparkles coating about every surface of his apartment. Would he still think this way if it had been Todoroki’s home? Iida’s? Would them having heroes for parents somehow make him—
“Are you leaving?”
Mrs. Midoriya is in front of him suddenly, eying his proximity to the door and staring expectantly. He’d think it was a polite way of telling him to fuck off had it not been for All Might’s eyesore blazer hooked over her hand, her other one outstretched and reaching for his own draped over his bag. All Might had snuck off without him realizing, the benefit of being a third of his former body size, and made himself uncomfortable on their couch.
“Ah, no.” He slips off his shoes but keeps his jacket, and eventually she lets her hand fall.
“You’re Aizawa, right?” She hangs the coat and heads towards the kitchen, leaving it up to him to follow; he does. “You’re his homeroom teacher, the one I spoke with on the-? Well, I guess you did all the speaking. Sorry about that, by the way, not speaking. And for when I…”
When she hung up on him. He ignores this, “Homeroom and heroics.”
“I thought he was those things,” She says, nodding her head vaguely towards the hollow spirit on her couch. It’s the first time Shouta’s heard someone refer to All Might as he, they all usually get the impulse to replace every pronoun with his name, and even he falls victim to it sometimes. He likes the entire Midoriya family, he realizes. “I know I heard you on the speakers with that other one during the… When Katsuki and that sweet girl were fighting.”
Katsuki. He’s a family friend then, or at least one of his parents are. Old classmates. Old friends, even. He can assume at the very least that Bakugo and Midoriya were shoved together as kids, willingly or unwillingly, and by her tone of voice she perhaps isn’t as caught up as she thinks with how that turned out. He slips the detail into his pocket for later.
“But I didn’t realize you were his teacher. I’ve never really met anyone at UA besides All Might, and Mitsuki-“ Bakugo? “it’s not like her son tells her anything, either. I guess we both assumed it was a one man job.”
“Feels like it, sometimes.”
She cracks a smile, partially hidden by the pot of tea she’d been peering into, and Shouta really can’t decide what to make of her. She’s the image of her son, to the extent that he almost doubts the kid got anything from his father at all, but that’s where the predictability ends. She flitters between stern and giving, passive and teasing, and he can’t help but treat her like a ticking bomb.
By the time they make it back to the couch, All Might seems to share that sentiment, staring at the tea like it’s poisoned, and Shouta takes great amusement in personally sliding it to him. Mrs. Midoriya waits for him to take a sip before she grinds him down.
“It’s not-“ She pauses, then reroutes. “What was the boy’s name, the one he fought?”
Which one? His mind supplies, before realizing it’s fairly obvious which boy she meant. He doesn’t answer her, though, only keeping a closer eye on her countdown to detonation.
“T-“
“Why?” He cuts All Might off.
Her face falls almost imperceptibly and he doesn’t feel bad in the slightest, “So I have a name to use.”
“Todoroki.” He relents shortly.
“I’ve seen these sports festivals on TV before, Izuku watches them every year, I know people get hurt. So I just, I want you know that I’m not stupid, I didn’t expect him to come out from that match with Todoroki unharmed.”
Her and stupid don’t go together, stupid and the Midoriya name don’t go together either. He doesn’t say any of this, though, only nods.
“It wouldn’t be stupid regardless,” All Might tries, earnestly testing the waters, “I’m sure every parent-“
The water spits him right back out. “I guess I did have the expectation that my son could fight back.” She’s looking at her tea; too angry to look at them, or not yet angry enough. “I mean don’t those kids usually… Don’t they have something? It’s supposed to be a back and forth kind of thing, not a- a beat down. I thought they knew what they were doing.”
No, he thinks, not at all. None of them know what’s going on, none of them can control their bodies once the crowd starts screaming, they swing blindly at each other until one of them falls. It’s a bit like playing with action figures.
“Match-ups are poor sometimes, that’s true, but I wouldn’t call it a beat down.” Perhaps All Might also has an idea of what might happen if they don’t dispel her concerns. “Midoriya’s quirk is a strong one, he’ll build up a impenetrable defense technique in due time, but for him to go against someone like Todoroki so early in the curriculum-“ He also seems to know just how intense that family is. “-I’d call his current efforts rather impressive.”
Something about All Might’s tone went beyond the normal spectrum of believing in someone. He speaks as if he doesn’t just have faith in Midoriya, he knows his whole future; Shouta both admires and despises him for it. No one but Nighteye can see the future, and even he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on until it happens.
“Impressive,” She parroted into her cup, unreadable all over again. Maybe she couldn’t make up her mind either, whether to praise her son or admit that impressive just wasn’t good enough, not if he still ends up on the ground. “That quirk was the only thing keeping him from—”
“His quirk.” All Might cuts in rather abruptly.
"He doesn’t know how to use his quirk," Shouta says. His mouth is moving faster than his brain, he realizes this, but not quickly enough to stop it. He's tired, forgive him. “I assume it’s some kind of build up and release of power in his limbs that’s giving him the super strength and speed, not unusual, except for the part where it breaks his limbs. He wrecked his entire body in the application process and since then has managed to get it down to just a finger at a time. It's commendable, and simultaneously not enough.”
He wasn’t there to watch the applicants in the arena of robots; he’s never liked joining those viewing parties. He did hear about the boy with gnarly, purple limbs falling from the sky, though, and usually descriptions that mythic can’t be indicative of anything good.
“Mrs. Midoriya, what I’m sure Young Aizawa is trying to-“
“He has potential, quite a lot, and it’s all him," He continues, too far gone to stop now, "He protected himself during the games, not the quirk.” He spat the last word out like he could taste its bitterness, “And he can be trained to fight and protect himself better- he’ll improve you let him. But if you’re expecting us to teach him how to master a quirk- one that he’s apparently made no progress with in the last ten years- over the course of a few weeks, I can’t help you. And I won’t let him in the field like that either, so you might as well cut your losses now.” Potential. He guesses he can’t repeat that later. Shouta sips the tea and swallows slowly as something dawns on him. “Respectfully.”
It has no effect, the damage is already done, and not only is his mother looking at him like he personally beat the shit out of her child, but he’s got All Might burning holes into the side of his face, too. Shouta’s got enough courage to meet one of their eyes, and he’s sure as hell not talking about the mother.
He doesn’t care though, not really. The whole speech he had planned out about the kid’s potential and future salary had gone to shit, but it’s for the better. He knows it is. She’s heard his piece now, and if she’s half the mother he thinks she is, she’ll take it to heart.
She makes up her mind then, blind to All Might’s pleading eyes, placing her cup down and leaning in so she and Shouta are face-to-face. Her quiet rage is much easier to spot from here. Maybe she’ll let Midoriya come in one last time for goodbyes, maybe Shouta will apologize. He’ll miss him, he thinks.
“I remember now. My son wrote a whole page on you in his notes, Eraserhead,” She says, “That’s you, right? The scarf gave it away.”
Fucking what?, he wants to say, glancing down to the capture weapon just barely sticking out from his bag. What he actually does is much less explicit, a simple affirmative nod.
“And you can erase his quirk? Completely?”
Is there such thing as partially? “Temporarily. As long as he doesn’t leave my sight.”
She nods. Then nods again, more firmly, and the storm passes, another soft smile breaking through the clouds.
“Okay. More tea?”
She’s up and at it before Shouta can respond, though if he’s being honest he doesn’t know if he would’ve said anything even if she sat there for another hour, he was too confused. Too out of his fucking depth. He hums and shakes his head whenever the conversation- if you could even call it that, given his total lack of participation- calls for it, he drinks more tea and helps her wash the cups when they’re finished. He’s waiting, just waiting for the other shoe to fall, but it never does. And when they leave, much later into the day than he’d expected, they leave because Shouta has to for his own work, not because she’d sent them packing.
It’s confusing. She’s confusing. She’s disappointing.
All Might turns to him once he pulls over in front of UA’s gates, a grin taking up the entire bottom half of his face. He’d muscled up earlier when a pit-bull barked and scared the shit out of him, and he hasn’t remembered to deflate since. Shouta waits until it gets uncomfortable.
“What?”
He grins impossibly wider and Shouta reaches for the door handle.
“You did it!” He cheers with childlike glee, “Young Midoriya can stay!”
He feels a lot sicker now than he did when he was mouthing off in someone else’s home, because at least he did that one on purpose. But this?
He can’t find the energy to speak, and so he slips out and slams the door shut behind him without a response. Through the teacher’s dorms’ window he could see the car sitting there for a few minutes before pulling out, taking All Might to his agency, or some ugly menswear shop, or wherever it is heroes go.