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Aizawa wasn't quite sure that the bags beneath his eyes would ever fade between the aftereffects of the war and his continued position as the head of the Hell Class.
Nedzu had elected to move up the year’s students with their respective homeroom teachers due to trauma bonds that had formed over the last year. Almost all of the faculty had offered sympathetic glances to the hero course teachers during the meeting. It was clear who the principal had meant the decision to benefit.
He knew it was an overall logical decision to make, but he also needed it on a personal level. Shouta needed to make sure his kids were stable before he passed them on to another teacher. They had seen so much danger together that it was hard to even think about extricating himself from their side. This way, he could help the kids work on the collective trauma bond and also coax them into loosening the emotional hold they had on him.
The war had fucked them all up in different ways, as it was wont to do, but it was especially hard on the poor kids. Kids who should have never been dragged to the frontlines under any circumstances. Even if they had been ready and willing, they should have been better protected.
Instead Shouta had been forced to watch all of them fight through hell itself. He had watched Bakugo die right before his eyes without being able to do anything. He had watched as Midoriya continuously launched himself at the enemy, not even ceasing when his arms were taken from him. Then he had watched as the kids all came together, alongside their peers, beaten and bloody to bring down All For One once and for all.
He had been there to see the tears and exhaustion at the hospital as they waited to see if those with the worst injuries would even survive. He was there now to see those same kids with their new PTSD, nightmares, and anxieties.
Shouta hated how much had been taken from these kids in such a short span of time. The biggest worries they should have been carrying - crushes, festival plans, and new hero moves - were out of reach now. The war had ruined their lives, and he was positive they wouldn’t realize that for themselves until they got a little older and still felt the effects like they had happened a few days previous.
He knew the feeling because his experiences had been similar. His traumas from youth had shaped him into the adult he was. He carried those invisible scars like a physical reminder of what he had survived.
There was no escaping so much damage. They could only learn to cope with it from here on out.
And Shouta hated that with every fucking fiber of his being.
Nedzu had pushed for them to start the next school year despite the ongoing reconstruction efforts. He claimed it would be a benefit for the children if there was a bit of normality to their daily routines. Aizawa wasn't sure they were ready but he also knew they couldn't put this kind of thing off for too long.
Society had to go on, trauma and reparations be damned.
The kids were all beginning to find coping mechanisms. It had been one of the first courses of action Shouta had insisted upon, trauma counseling and mental health wellness classes. Their mandated therapy sessions with the on-campus therapists seemed to be paying off as well.
Although, as usual, there was one that stood out.
Midoriya had changed drastically since he had first arrived to UA. He had been riddled with anxiety and one Shouta had half thought might keep under the radar during his tenure. Then things kept happening to the class that somehow always involved Midoriya. He became Problem Child #1 with a reckless streak that rivaled All Might's, from wrecking his arms to prove a point during the sports festival, to putting himself directly into the line of fire once Shigaraki had tracked him down. There was no end to his selfless behavior and it was to a dangerous level.
When the truth about One For All had come out via letters left to him and the other students of the Hell Class, Shouta had finally felt like some dots had been connected in the mystery that was Izuku Midoriya. The realizations hadn't made him feel any better about the kid's mental health, however.
Izuku's return to UA had been a dark affair. Shouta had only seen things carry on from afar as he acclimated to his both his prothesis and missing eye. But he had heard things secondhand. His heart had dropped to his stomach when he had actually laid eyes on Midoriya. There was something haunted in those green eyes that hadn't been there before, dark and lost in a way Shouta was painfully familiar with. The kid's body language had told a tale of terrible sleep patterns and existing in a state of survival. Being a sanctioned vigilante had changed Midoriya for the worse.
That didn't even begin to cover the final battle itself. Shouta had been ready to cry when he arrived to find the golden child of his class without arms. The horror of that moment, seeing Izuku use his brutalized nubs to push himself up in a vague attempt to keep fighting, was something he wouldn't be able to rid himself of anytime soon.
Shouta had been the one to catch the kid when the adrenaline faded after All For One's defeat. His body had been so still and limp in his grasp that for one terrifying moment, Shouta had believed him dead. (The fact that all of his class had made it out alive was a fact that he reminded himself often.)
For all of those fucked up events, he had known there would be a mountain of trauma for Midoriya to face. Shouta had been hopeful that getting back into routine might help the kid but, from the way he was withdrawing from his classmates and watching everyone with the most gut wrenching guilty expression on his face, it had only furthered his hurts.
So he watched on from afar and waited for an opening. Any chance that he could tell that Midoriya's walls were weakened. Any chance to step in and have the ensuing conversation be productive. He refused to let this kid slip through his fingers. The others were doing their best to heal and cope, but they were so caught up in their own recovery that they had failed to notice the faltering steps of their friend. Shouta was determined to be the one that saw him.
It happened very suddenly one day. They had been taking it easy on classwork, so the classroom was quiet and calm. Or so Aizawa had thought. And then he had laid eyes on the Problem Child.
There had been a kind of false levity to Midoriya's persona since the war was ended. He was consumed with helping his friends and offering his shoulders up for them to cry on. As usual, his need to help others overwhelmed his sense of self aid. He had been pushing himself to be fine when he was far from it.
As Shouta swept his gaze over the kid, he froze. The look in the kid's eyes in that moment was the same he had bore on the battlefield.
Goddammit, was he having a flashback? Panic attack? Dissociative episode?
He abandoned his spot at the front of the room and crouched down by Izuku's side. "Kid? Can you hear me?"
Some of the others perked up from where they were working on things or reading. None of them made a move to get up, however.
Aizawa hated that mental health episodes were the new norm of the classroom. It shouldn't be this way.
Izuku turned to him, but his movements were robotic. There was no focus in his body language. All that was left was the detached and hollow puppet demeanor that didn't suit him at all.
"Okay, Midoriya. Let's go for a walk, hmm?" He tried to keep his tone gentle. There was no need to add stress to an already bad situation.
Izuku let him guide him from the room without a hint of resistance. Fuck. Definitely some kind of episode at work. He might have to ring up Hound Dog if it was too bad.
Shouta settled them on the front steps of the school building, breathing in the fresh air and taking in the peeks of sunlight that crept from behind the fluffy clouds overhead. He glanced sideways at his student and tried to gauge how to approach the silence between them.
It struck him now, looking upon Izuku's stressed out face, that Shouta hadn't seen him cry since the war was ended. He had gotten teary a few times on behalf of his friends but never for himself. How long had he been holding his emotions in? How long had he smothered them down in a desperate attempt to snuff them out altogether?
"Kid..."
Izuku turned empty green eyes on him.
Shouta ached. "You're allowed to grieve too, Problem Child. You've been on the front end of this shit show since the beginning. You're allowed to be tired, you're allowed to weep, you're allowed to be upset about how everything went." He was desperate to see something, anything, flicker in that gaze. He needed some kind of sign that he wasn't too late to help.
Midoriya had been one of the brightest. Shouta would never forgive himself if that light was lost when he had been in arm's reach.
"You're allowed to struggle too, kid. But I won't let you do it alone."
Another moment of silence stretched between them as Izuku appeared to consider his words.
"All that effort," Izuku rasped, "and I still failed. All those sacrifices, all that pain, all that destruction... And I failed. I couldn't save Tenko."
At least he was talking. That was something. "Some people are beyond help," Shouta murmured. "But I know you, kid, I know you gave it your every effort. You did your best. I'm so sorry that it wasn't enough to save him."
There was a flash of heart wrenching devastation on Midoriya's face for all of a second, and then it was swept beneath that stoic mask again.
"I should have tried harder. I saw him. He was right there. If All For One hadn't been so integrated into his body, I could've..." Izuku hunched in on himself. "I c-could have saved him, sensei. I s-saw him! He told me to do my b-best."
God, of course things were worse than they appeared. He remembered Midoriya making a quick mention of the singularity that had dragged him and Shigaraki into a shared mindscape for parts of the battle. He just hadn't considered the ramifications of such a thing. Shouta wanted to flip off the universe for dragging this poor kid through so much.
"And you did just that," he was quick to assure. "You beat All For One, you freed Shig-... Tenko from that bastard's hold. You still ended up saving him, Midoriya, even if it doesn't feel like it."
Izuku crumpled.
The wailing sob that crackled from his lips was haunting. It was the kind of sound Shouta might expect to hear from a delirious soul on the battlefield, two steps from death. It was the kind of sound that erupted from parents learning that their children had passed. It was the kind of sound that echoed and lingered long after the note had come to an end.
To have such a petrifying sound come from a traumatized child? It fucking hurt.
Shouta was quick to wrap his arms around Izuku, patting his back and offering nonsensical words of commiseration. This was a hurt he couldn't soothe with words, nor with all the salves in the world. This was a hurt that he could only try and force a splint on while the wound fixed itself.
The world had failed these kids but he'd be damned before he let them sink into the darkness that surrounded them. He could be their buoy until they learned to navigate the waters for themselves. He'd help them overcome this absolute nightmare and encourage them to seek the joys of life. He couldn't take away the shadows they now dragged behind them, but he could help them overlook all of it.
"You did your best, Midoriya. That's all anyone could ever ask of you."
Izuku choked on more keening cries, overcome in the tsunami of emotion that had swelled up.
Aizawa held him close and ignored the tears that stained his own cheeks.
If he could go back, he'd have never let those kids go anywhere near the frontlines..
They deserved so much better than this.