Work Text:
The second Shouta peels his eyes open, he feels one thing with a certain vehemence—he does not want to get up today.
Bleariness clouding his vision, he stares up at the ceiling. A faint glow cuts into the room through the window, casting a gentle golden hue onto the walls. Shota continues to stare at nothing, and processes all the thoughts he’s having at what’s surely an abhorrent time to be awake.
There’s a toe poking into his calf. His bastardous cat lays atop his foot, purring and asleep. His pajamas are twisting weirdly around his torso. Steadily, Shouta’s uncomfort grows.
Typically, not wanting to be awake to witness any of his day is normal behavior for him—and this remains true. Being knocked out is an infinitely better state to be in than aware, but today’s meant to be different. Today, somehow, needs to be special.
His class graduates today.
This is a thought that brings with it a wave of emotions—none of which Shouta is able to name at the moment. All he knows is that an ache is spreading from his chest to his ribs to his stomach, so distinctly permeating that it begins to burn in his throat.
Shouta sits up. His back cracks with the motion, and with a wince he pulls his foot from underneath Bastard and crosses his leg close. A glance at the clock on the nightstand makes Shouta feel damn near physically ill, because there is no good reason for him to feel any sort of alive at five thirty-two in the morning.
Hizashi is snoring in a quieter fashion than he usually does besides him. Small mercies, Shouta supposes. He puts on his prosthetic leg and heads to the bathroom.
Shouta brushes his teeth in an oddly aggressive manner, attempting to distract himself from thinking about UA or his kids—but his efforts are rendered useless when the memory of an amusing event pops into his head. Ashido and Kaminari keeled over in laughter, describing through their giggles the force with which Bakugou apparently brushed his teeth everyday. Bakugou blasting into the common room, toothbrush brandished like a weapon—
Shouta’s fucked.
He glares at himself in the bathroom mirror. His gaze falls over the scar cutting across his missing eye, then to the one on his cheek. Then, in a truly, truly shocking turn of events, he thinks of his students. Again.
Working at a school like his, with a profession like his, and the desired profession of his students—scars are inevitable. Wishing they weren’t is slightly foolish on his part, not that that’s stopping him. He thinks of Midoriya’s hands, how Shouta watched them go from smooth and bare to eternally calloused and scarred.
He feels a pang in his heart at how the sentiment works in two different manners. Calloused and scarred, on the outside and in a different way on the inside. Shouta figures that one can’t save the world and leave unscathed, but everything about what Midoriya has been through is… unfair seems like the wrong word to describe it, simply because Midoriya himself would choose to do it all over again if even one person could be saved.
Midoriya had burned through the last of One For All’s embers in the middle of a rescue training class. Shouta remembers it with startling clarity—Midoriya had been mid-sprint, trying to save an intentionally falling Kirishima from taking a nose-dive into the water below. His sprint turned into a slow dash, and Kirishima ended up splashing into the water with a yelp.
He’d kept running. He ran all the way into the water, where Kirishima was already beginning to pull himself up from the faux-lake. The rest of the class started looking shifty when Midoriya wasn’t getting up, instead staring down into the water, completely unmoving and drenched.
Shouta realized what was happening three seconds too late. It was Bakugou, in the end, that made the first move—stepping practically all the way into the water and bodily dragging Midoriya out. He shook him once, twice, and then Midoriya was shaking all on his own, body wracking with emotion. When the first sob broke out of him, Shouta clenched his fist and quietly told the rest of them to head back to the classroom.
None of them wanted to go. With one solid glare on Shouta’s end, the begrudgingly headed away—not before both Iida and Uraraka spoke something soft to Midoriya, offering some semblance of comfort through their words and one-armed embraces.
Shouta, not for the first time with this class, struggled to come up with something to say as he walked up to Midoriya and Bakugou. He ended up bringing a hand to Midoriya’s shoulder and guiding the both of them to a place a few feet away from the lake, sitting down on the rocks cross-legged. Midoriya maintained his iron-grip on Bakugou’s wrist as he gradually calmed down, while Bakugou looked somewhere into the distance, sniffling every couple of seconds.
“All Might finished off the embers bashing All For One’s head in,” Midoriya said. He let out a humorless huff. “I didn’t expect it to happen out of nowhere like that.” He closed his eyes and pasted on a smile. “Sorry Sensei, Kacchan. I’m being dramatic.”
Before Shouta could respond, Bakugou clicked his tongue. “Don’t say stupid shit like that. If you took losing the power you wished for your entire life, the Quirk that let you become a hero and win a war—if you took that shit with a fucking chuckle and an ‘oh well’, I’d be the one bashing your head in.”
Shouta recalls feeling overwhelmingly fond at that moment. “Midoriya,” Shouta started, “if anything, you could be destroying things Bakugou style right now and I’d still say that’s an adequate reaction.”
“Oi,” Bakugou complained. Shouta trudged on.
“You were handed your dream. With it, the path you carved will always be yours—but we know. We saw. You worked hard. Only you truly know just how much. You took that Quirk and made it into something only you could have polished. To have that slowly fade into nothing—who in the world can name what you’re going through?
“You do not need permission to grieve that loss. None of us expect you to know exactly where to go from here, what to feel from this moment on. My job is to be your pillar—so lean on me, and your friends, and slowly figure it out.” Shouta gives him the kindest smile he can muster up. “You granted us that privilege, after all. Live, like you let so many people do.”
The way Midoriya and Bakugou looked at him after was enough to make Shouta avoid their gazes. The feelings that rose up in him were similar to when Kirishima announced that he’d follow Eraser Head for the rest of his life, but amplified by a couple thousand.
What Midoriya asked him next had startled him so much that Shouta whipped his head to him quick enough to get dizzy. “Sensei,” he said, his expression carved with that familiar determination. “Let me become a teacher.”
“Let—“
“Haah?” Bakugou exclaimed, and yeah, Shouta related. “You let go of your whole hero schtick that quick, Izuku?”
“What? No!” Midoriya responded. “I’ve had almost a year to think about this! Don’t go making assumptions—“
And from there, their conversation delved too close to incomprehensible with their arguing. Shouta sat there reeling slightly, but got over it quickly and dragged the both of them back to the main building. With a command to get out of their wet clothes, he headed back to his classroom and calmed the rest of the bunch down before dismissing them.
Shouta started writing up a plan that same day, and met with Midoriya the next. Shouta was kind of curious to know what made him choose the teaching path specifically, so he asked. He stopped Midoriya when his rambling got too close to straight-up professing his admiration for Shouta in front of Shouta, but that just led to him doing the same for All Might—which was less of a shocker.
Shouta lets out a heaving sigh, then takes a seat on the edge of the tub. When he was getting his teaching license, a professor lectured about the significance and weight of teaching. Being a teacher and a pro-hero at the same time is not a decision one just stumbles upon, so Shouta didn’t pay too close attention to their reasoning. The significance and weight of teaching was not lost on him.
One thing he remembers the professor saying was that teaching laid out the groundwork for dreams. That all it takes is one good teacher to change a person, or one bad teacher to change a person. The stakes for teaching a hero course is obviously higher—for however long Shouta continues to keep at it, it will always be a single lesson separating life and death. His students have become what Shouta lives for. Who will drill these things into them? Who would have shaped them instead?
Shouta knows that there are so many ways he’s failed them in the last three years. He also knows that they’ve grown right in front of their eyes from experiences an average human could never bear to live through.
He knocks his knuckles against the tub in frustration. How the ever loving hell is he supposed to watch them graduate? Who even let Shouta be their homeroom teacher for three years straight? Shouta vaguely registers that he’s going crazy while standing and opening the cabinet.
When the scissors are in the palm of his hand, his mind quietens.
Yeah, so what if he’s acting like an emo teenage boy after a bad breakup? Why doesn’t someone else try to teach the same group of stupidly loveable kids through all the bullshit and post-war trauma? Wow, he feels uncharacteristically unstable.
When the first chunk of hair falls into the sink, he tells himself two things: anyone would do it, and I should have gone back to sleep.
“What…” Hizashi whispers, “have you done?”
Shouta pouts. “How bad is it?”
Hizashi falls to his knees. “What have you done?”
Shouta joins him on the floor. “I knew I should have woken you up when I saw the time was five thirty.”
His eyes widen even further. “You woke up when?! Holy shit,” Hizashi says in English. “Is the world over? Is that what this is?”
“I sure woke up feeling like it,” Shouta says. He drags a hand through his hair, and his gut genuinely lurches when it falls through his fingers way faster than it usually would. “Fuck.”
Hizashi sighs, then pats his head. “Tell the kids this was your graduation present to them. Now, let me fix it. It looks like you have a bob.”
As Hizashi is cropping the back a bit closer to his neck, Shouta thinks about their reactions and feels mushy all over again.
“If I tell them this is their present, I can guarantee one of them would make a cutting-hair-chopping-leg joke.”
Hizashi chortles. “Just don’t shave today, okay? They seriously might not recognize you.”
Shouta smiles.
Shouta has never seen Eri make this kind of face at him. It’s kind of like she’s doing her very best to swallow down her laughter, but is veering on the edge of I’m about to lose it.
“What,” Shouta demands, despite knowing exactly what. That apparently does it for her, and she’s near tears in about two seconds.
“Oh wow,” she manages. “Wow.” Eri releases a cough and leans against the doorframe of her room for support. Her look of awe feels more like an insult. “I’ve never seen your whole face before, Shouta-san.”
“Tch. Don’t lie. I have my hair up all the time at home,” he mumbles. Eri tilts her head like she’s about to refute, but Shouta cuts her off before that. “Anyway, you ready? We’re leaving now.”
“Mm, basically.” She steps back into her room, beckoning Shouta to follow. “I was about to ask you to do my hair, but I’m kinda scared now…”
“Just sit down,” he groans. Shouta walks over to where he knows she keeps her hair bands, and grabs the small box. “What do you want?”
“Two braids!” she answers immediately. Shouta gets to work, and the three of them head out in fifteen minutes. Shouta usually just wears his costume to these things, but for some reason Hizashi went out and got both of them new suits, so that’s what he’s in instead. He ditched the tie, though. Hizashi has an interesting looking bowtie on. Eri chose her own outfit, a floral dress and a pair of ballet flats to go. Briefly, he thinks of Nemuri—who always went the traditional route and was almost the only one that wore a kimono. UA was far from traditional, so she stood out as much as one would expect. She loved it, though.
The sight that greets them in front of the school has his brows raising slightly. Basically all of 3-A is huddled together—there are a couple of 3-B kids there too. Monoma and Kendo, more specifically. They all look… suspicious, but unfortunately Shouta has known them a little too long. They almost always look like they’re plotting. Frankly, he doesn't want to know what.
“You two go ahead,” Shouta tells Hizashi and Eri. “Get Eri a seat close to the teachers’ rows.”
“Aw, I wanted to record this.”
“Good bye.”
As they leave, Shouta heads over to the group. Unconsciously, he braces himself for disaster—which does come, inevitably.
“Hello, buffoons,” he greets. The first to turn around is Shinsou, and Shouta is a little excited for this one—they don’t look like literal twins anymore, which is a win on Shouta’s part.
“Dammit,” Shinsou spits. “Yaoyorozu, make me a pair of scissors.”
Yaoyorozu turns. “What? Shinsou-san, why do you need…” she trails off, jaw dropping. Instantly, about ten voices are shouting in unison, which has Shouta taking a step back with a wince.
“Sensei?!”
“That is him, right?”
“Wait… Aizawa-sensei’s kind of…”
“All of you shut up,” Shouta demands with a glare. “You guys haven’t graduated yet. I can still expel you.”
“You wouldn’t!” Ashido pipes up. Kaminari is raising his fist in agreement. “You like us too much!” he says.
Shouta pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Are you asking for it, Ashido, Kamina—”
Iida cuts in. “Everyone! Let’s not give sensei any trouble today! We should all start lining up downstairs—also, sensei, you look cool!”
After that, everyone groans but agrees. He sends Ashido off with a warning glare and smacks Shinsou away when he tries to reach for his head. Glancing around the group, his eyes land on Midoriya. Shouta calls him over.
“Yes, sensei?”
“Midoriya,” Shouta huffs. “How have you never learned how to knot a tie? You’re about to get your diploma.”
Midoriya rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Well…”
Shouta rolls his eyes. “I don’t even know how you manage to get it like that, nonetheless get the knot out. Untie it and hand it over.”
As he’s knotting it, Shouta clears his throat as he feels eyes on him. “Um,” Midoriya starts reluctantly. “This… this is a really different look, sensei!” He sticks up two thumbs and nods his head forcefully. Shouta finishes, crossing his arms and stepping back.
“Yeah, yeah,” Shouta mutters. “Go catch up with your classmates.”
“Thank you! Okay!” As Midoriya jogs past him, a thought pops into Shouta’s head.
“Midoriya,” Shouta starts, “you guys are going to behave responsibly in there, right?”
Midoriya slowly, slowly turns his head. He gulps and nods carefully, then proceeds to make a mad dash into the building. Shouta sighs, mentally prepares for what’s to come.
He wants his bed.
Shouta has a number of things that he likes to nitpick about this school, but their graduation ceremony system always annoys him whenever the time comes around. They don’t have one ceremony for the graduating class of the year—they have multiple, each one separated by department. That means the times are always different and staggered, and more pointless money is spent.
They did have a rehearsal, though Shouta highly doubts everything was going to go exactly to plan. While the families go and find their seats, the students have to wait in a separate designated area to walk in with their homeroom teachers as the ceremony begins and they’re introduced. Shouta makes his way into the auditorium first, to see where Hizashi ended up with Eri.
While Shouta does think UA possesses more riches than they know what to do with, one of the positives is that Shouta doesn’t have to do too much prior to the ceremony itself. The sight he’s greeted with is not totally unexpected, but it catches him off-guard anyway—the whole expanse of the area is doused in glittering sunlight from the gigantic windows on the sides. The decorations are intricate and beautiful, more so than they usually are, which is saying something. A lot of it is green and gold, from flowing vines and streamers to a floral arch on the stage.
He finds Eri sitting in a chair the closest to the teachers rows. She’s kicking her feet and looking around in a sparkly manner when Shouta finally walks up to her. “Hey. Where’s Mic?”
“By the flowers,” she says, then points to a seat at the very corner of the ones reserved for teachers. It’s—a spot overflowing with bouquets, crowding all around the seat and onto the floor in front of it. Hizashi is knelt down beside it, an expression on his face that Shouta can’t immediately recognize. It’s solemn, sorrowful—but there is a small smile on his face, and Shouta understands.
Shouta walks up to the area, kneeling down beside Hizashi to take a better look.
On the seat, there’s a single flower arrangement that takes up basically all of the space. Something about it clogs up Shouta’s throat, the purples and greens put together with what was clearly an intense care. There’s a small card positioned in front of it. To our beloved Midnight-sensei, it reads, we will always be brave for you — Class A & B.
A small sniffle sounds from Hizashi, and Shouta doesn’t want to look over. That’s not the only thing that is there—more flowers and gifts pour out all around the seat, from individual students, families, and teachers. “Damn,” Hizashi mumbles. “Isn’t it too early for the waterworks to be going off?”
Shouta offers a small hum in response. “With this bunch,” Shouta begins, “I’d say get your tissues ready.”
Shouta finds his students in their separate area outside the auditorium, where they’re all waiting for everyone to be seated and the ceremony to start. With a glance at his watch, there was still a good fifteen minutes before the small musical arrangement and before Nezu would introduce them in. Shouta’s about to grab their attention, before Bakugou breaks away from the group and shuffles over to Shouta.
Bakugou stands at around Shouta’s height now. Unfortunately, he hasn’t stopped growing—Shouta expects that it’ll be no time before he’ll have to look up at the kid. Bakugou rubs the back of his neck with a hand, looking off to the side awkwardly. Shouta raises his brow.
More violently than Shouta was ready for, Bakugou sticks out his arm. Resting on his palm is a small spray of flowers, a burst of red and yellow petals. Shouta, again, looks at him in confusion.
“I can’t put it on,” Bakugou musters up, gesturing at the corsage. “And those fools are just standing there like ducks gawking at stupid ass flowers. So help,” Bakugou basically demands, before tacking on a please. Shouta bites the inside of his cheek, keeping the growing amusement off his face.
Shouta gently reaches out for the corsage and steps a little closer to him. “Are careful movements still too difficult? It looked like PT was going well,” Shouta comments, beginning to pin the thing to Bakugou’s uniform.
Bakugou huffs. “Nothing’s too difficult,” he mumbles. “It’s just—there’s still a tremble when I try to move too precisely, and I didn’t really feel like pricking myself on the thing.”
Sometimes, Shouta has dreams. The more accurate word would be nightmares—and they were never anything new for Shouta, but they significantly worsened after the war. It got bad enough that Shouta started avoiding naps and took melatonin to send him into a sleep deep enough that the only thing he could do was sleep. Despite all his efforts, he’ll see Bakugou’s dead form laying on the ground, he’ll hear Monoma’s pained shout, he’ll feel the all-consuming pain that overtook him in that moment—that horrifyingly acute sense of failure, all over again.
He looks at Bakugou now, and sees change. There is a new scar and an old sense of determination, one that shifted with the tides of growing up. It went from confident declarations to resolute goals. When he came to Shouta and asked Sensei, a vulnerability in his person that was rarely shown, what can I do for him? Shouta knew that this version of Bakugou, forever crass but fiercely loyal, would continue to grow—for himself, and now for the people he loves.
With a pat to his shoulder, Shouta steps back. “Done,” he says. Bakugou looks down as if to check Shouta’s handiwork, then nods.
“Thanks,” Bakugou says. He stiffens up like he’s about to say something, but clears his throat and turns away slightly instead. Shouta smiles.
“Congratulations, Bakugou.” Bakugou crosses his arms like he’s embarrassed.
“Whatever.”
“I’m proud of you.”
This time, Bakugou actually grimaces. “Ew. Whatever. Your hair’s weird.”
Shouta shakes his head. “Students grow up and lose their sense of respect,” he complains. Bakugou grunts and stomps away. Shouta thinks that’s the end of it, but he’s always wrong about these things. Uraraka glances at where the brooding Bakugou is walking back from, and gasps before smacking Bakugou’s shoulder and dodging the returning swing. Then, she whispers to the others, and now there’s a group heading for Shouta with a conviction on their faces.
Shouta sighs, all life leaving him. Uraraka struts up to him with a megawatt grin, and holds out her own corsage. “Our turn!”
“No.”
“But Sensei,” Kirishima whines, popping out from behind Uraraka. “For some strange reason, all of us lost all of our fine motor skills. You can blame Bakugou!”
“Excuse me? I had a valid reason, you pieces of sh—”
“All of you are being ridiculous. You can pin your own corsages,” Shouta barks, but there really isn’t much resolve in his voice.
In the end, Uraraka somehow maneuvers her corsage into Shouta’s hand, and stands there like Shouta’s the one that’s keeping her. He’s not gonna let this delve into a reflection of each and every student's last three years here, but Shouta can’t do anything about the swell of pride that pulses against his heart—they’re all becoming heroes as true to the word as possible. They already are, have been, and will continue to spread greatness in this ever-changing world.
The events of the last couple years have affected everyone in unique ways. Uraraka, who confided in Shouta once about her story with Himiko Toga, before handing him a stack of papers—papers that contained a deeply impressive, in depth proposal for a newly reformed quirk counseling program directed to the youth. It was so impressive that Shouta offered to help and edit the plan with her, which led to him, Uraraka, and oddly enough, Hawks, collaborating to bring the program to fruition. There’s still an abundance of work to be done before any real action, but it is something—something bound to become an essential part of their society.
The line continues, and it’s basically his whole class that he ends up pinning up. He expected it from the likes of Ashido’s group, who literally begged Shouta to tell them he’s proud of them too—the begging is all for naught, though. He threatened to stop helping all of them if they didn’t shut up, to which Hagakure, not invisible today, gave him a thumbs down.
There are a couple he’s surprised about, like Shoji and Ojiro, or even Yaoyorozu—Iida with the claim that it would be an honor, and Todoroki who he’s come to learn is interestingly two-faced, not in a bad way…just odd. Shinsou stares up at Shouta’s head with an annoyed sneer, which has Shouta shooting back his best shit-eating grin. After that’s all done, he forces them to line up against the wall so they’re ready to walk in literally two minutes. They scramble, but Iida’s as useful as ever, even if he ends up being the last one to get in line.
Shouta’s heart starts beating faster, which he feels is kind of stupid—this is not his first rodeo. Far from it, even. Shouta doesn’t remember feeling like this even with his very first graduating class, only a potent sense of accomplishment. He supposes this is his first time walking the kids out, since he typically sticks with the new batches of first-years for homeroom.
Listening to Nezu’s slightly muffled droning, Shouta glances back at his class. They all seem to be sharing an uncharacteristic moment of silence—no meaningless chatter or laughter just to laugh. Standing in line, a couple of the girls link their hands together to their sides. The looks on their faces are contemplative at best, simply sad at worst. Shouta swallows and releases a quiet, shaky breath. They’re right there. They’re not gone.
“Please welcome classes A and B of the Hero Course!”
Shouta walks. Class A walks in from the right side while Class B enters from the left, led by Sekijiro. There’s a live piano arrangement playing in the background, but Shouta can barely hear it, focusing instead on getting one foot in front of the other.
After all the students take a seat simultaneously with the end of the music, Shouta and Sekijiro both walk up to the stage and bow to the audience as Nezu introduces them very briefly. They take their own seats next to each other, and wait for Nezu to start his final address.
“Looking awfully emotional this time ‘round, Eraser,” Sekijiro whispers to him. Shouta knows damn well none of that is showing on his face, so he simply grins in Sekijiro’s direction.
“And you’re not, Vlad?” Shouta jibes back, because it’s definitely showing on Sekijiro’s face—who has been looking like he’s two seconds away from bursting into tears this whole time. Sekijiro hmphs and turns away with a pout unbefitting of a dude as old as him. Shouta tunes back into whatever Nezu is saying. He almost always gives similar speeches every year, but it seems like even he put in an extra you all are special this time around.
Nezu finishes and Shouta clams up again. “I’m now going to call our students homeroom teachers to the stage—who, for the first time, have been by their sides for three years in a row.” He pauses. “Come on up, Aizawa-kun, Sekijiro-kun.”
They make their way up to the stage. Nezu hops down from where he was standing to reach the microphone and pats Shouta’s leg, passing the both of them to stand off to the side. Sekijiro gives him a nod, and Shouta steps up to the podium.
He clears his throat. “Good morning, everyone,” Shouta begins. He rears back a little when all of his students shout back an enthusiastic reply, waving from the seats like they’re fans. So much for a calm ceremony, huh. Biting back a grin, he clears his throat again with more emphasis, and they’re quiet again.
“A majority of you in the crowd likely know me as Eraserhead, but today I wanted you all to adjust that view of me in your minds to something a little different.” Shifting, he tucks a piece of his hair behind his ear, and tries not to flush when he realizes it’s too short. “In this time that I’m in front of you, I hope you listen to me as Class 3-A’s homeroom teacher and nothing more—why? Well.” Shouta smiles. For a second, he feels like his pride shivers through his teeth, whole and unfettered.
“Kids, listen up, because this won’t happen again.” He pauses, turning the words over in his mouth. They come out so sincere he wants to gag with it. “For as long as I’m breathing, getting to teach you will continue to be the single greatest honor I’ve been bestowed.”
The resounding aww’s from the front he felt coming, and directs his hardest glare towards where a group of his kids sit there with the fakest shows of tears and sobs ever.
“I didn’t come up on stage with a speech ready, and I won’t give one.” He gets a little closer to the microphone and softens his voice so it doesn’t crack with how tight his throat feels. “I can sing praises and come up with as many compliments as I want—nothing I say will be able to truly grasp the sheer strength you’ve built in the last three years. The kindness and bravery I’ve watched you all accumulate at UA will now have the chance to fully show itself off.
“I’m looking forward to when it does, even. The feats you’ve accomplished are already known to so much of the country, but I hope to see each one of you shine at your fullest potential. Your brightness continues to blind me. I’ve had endless chances to be proud of you as my students—so show off. Let me be proud of you as a civilian, as a pro-hero, for the rest of our lives.”
Shouta clears his throat again, it feels awfully dry. He glances at his class and regrets it immediately—they’re all sitting ramrod straight, giving Shouta their full attention as if every word he says holds a secret. The shimmer of tears are present on more of their faces than not. Midoriya is straight up bawling. He swallows. “Ah, well. That being said, if I catch any one of you slacking I will personally find a way to revoke your licenses.” There’s a scattering of laughter. Midoriya cries harder. Shouta swore he let go of that habit.
“I’ll now announce the names of our graduates from Class 3-A.” Shouta barely has to look down at the paper—taking the same attendance for three years straight has branded these names into his memory. The first has changed a little in that time—Aoyama returned to their hero course in the middle of their second year, and everyone welcomed him back. Aoyama stands up with the call of his name and shouts hai, to which Ashido shouts just a bit louder after him.
It becomes an impromptu contest—whoever can shout the loudest as Shouta goes down the list. Not everyone does it, but once it’s Bakugou’s turn they’re straight yelling. Shouta’ll berate them for it later. For now, he tamps down a grin. “Iida Tenya will formally receive the diplomas on behalf of his class.” Iida stands up with such a force that Shouta can hear the ruffling of his uniform from the stage. A little awkwardly, he makes his way up and receives a diploma from Shouta with a bow to him, then three consecutive bows towards the rest of the audience.
After he makes his way down with extremely loud applause from his peers, which they’d one-hundred percent had clarified they shouldn’t do, it’s Sekijiro’s turn. There are tears streaming down his face before he even gets a word out—half of his class giggles while the other half cries with him. Monoma is literally bent over with the force of his sobs, and Shouta has to hold back a smile at the sight.
Because there’s only two classes in the hero course, the diploma distribution part doesn't last an incredibly long time. To elongate the ceremony a little bit, they collectively chose one student to give a speech in front of the crowd. As per usual, Shouta told them the information and promptly snuggled into his sleeping bag while keeping an ear out. This discussion actually happened in the dorms—where all his kids ended up staying a full three years—with Class 3-B in the room with them.
It was led by Iida, who’d taken the liberty to nominate Midoriya. His reasoning didn’t really need to be said aloud, but everyone was essentially in silent agreement. Midoriya, however, had instantly been reduced to a stuttering mess. He’d gotten a lot better with public-speaking, but apparently a graduation speech was far beyond his abilities. Midoriya then voiced his opinion and nominated Iida, the situation oddly similar to their class-rep predicament in their first year.
Todoroki had piped up in support of that, and then everyone else quickly followed. The conversation ended up being fairly quick, leaving Iida red in the face and being very outwardly grateful. Over the next few days, Shouta saw him often ask for other people’s opinions. Weirdly, the person he spoke the most with—as far as Shouta witnessed—was Bakugou, which was, again, weird.
After Class 3-B’s portion finishes, Nezu congratulates everyone once more before introducing Iida to the stage. Iida walks there with more confidence this time, along with what looks like a sheet or two of paper. When he situates himself, he closes his eyes briefly before looking up. A hush falls over the room, and from his seat on the stage Shouta can see that the students are paying rapt attention.
With a breath, Iida begins. “Good morning to all the students, staff, and guests here today at UA!” Nobody bothers interrupting this time, but their responding smiles are so wide Iida seems to stand up taller with them. “As Principal Nezu introduced prior, my name is Iida Tenya, class representative of Class 3-A—and I’ve been asked to give this year's final address.” With a tightening of his tie, he continues.
“I spent a long while mulling over what I would say today. Aizawa-sensei was as vague as he usually is—” Shouta snorts. “—which I respect, of course! It encourages us to think beyond our limits. However, this task seemed more daunting than it should have felt, which had me wondering—why does this feel so important? Why does it feel like such an immense responsibility?
“Constantly, I found myself thinking; how can I make this as special as possible? I need to figure out how to touch the hearts of my classmates, because who is better deserving of a graduation ceremony filled with sincerity than them? After being stuck for days on end, I finally figured it out—I need to make this about ourselves.”
At this, Shouta smiles.
“It is a privilege we are rarely, if ever, granted. To be selfish is a privilege. Each one of us graduating today will be heroes the next minute, the next hour, the next year—as long as our lives will have us. So, to everyone in this auditorium that is not a graduate, here’s my notice. From this point on in my speech, everything is going to be about us—I’m choosing to take this opportunity to speak directly to my classmates, and speak unabashedly to them as I’ve wished to do for so long.” He bends slightly at the waist. “Please grant us this small moment of selfishness.”
Iida rightens himself, and continues—while Shouta slowly loses his fragile grip over his emotions. “To my friends—you all are the best people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Best in every last sense of the word—honorable, strong, and unbelievably kind. To have spent the last three years inspiring one another, pushing each other in the greatest of ways, and forming friendships amidst the unavoidable chaos of our lives—what a three years it’s been.
“I don’t want to lie and say that I wouldn’t change a thing. That would be wrong simply because it’s not the truth—there are lives we wish we could have saved, moments that we wished to stay in forever. That’s the thing, though. Despite it all, we are here, and we are what will define this next generation of heroes. I know it with a sureness I seldom feel—together, we will continue to save, laugh, and live.
“This next part is a little more from Iida Tenya than the previous parts.” Shouta can’t see his face from where he’s seated on the stage, but isn’t completely sure he wants to either. “There is a certain emotion you feel for a person when you put your lives down for something together. It transcends the simplicity of friendship—but what is friendship, if not love?” Iida takes a shuddering breath in, and doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Shouta, resolutely, does not cry.
“We love you, Iida-kun!” Shouta is sure Ashido shouts from below. Iida breathes out a laugh that the microphone picks up. “You stole my line, Ashido-san!” Somehow, Iida’s arms stiffen up even further at his sides. “I love you all!” Someone shouts gross, and the whole class giggles lightly. “I mean it, truly. And before I conclude, I wanted to mention and acknowledge a couple of people specifically.”
“Of the forty-one graduates here today, each one of you have your own unique and infinitely admirable accomplishments and traits. We all agree that if there’s anyone to express our gratitude for, it would be the following person.” He clears his throat. “Midoriya-kun.” There’s a squeak from below the stage. “Of everyone here, you’ve continued to be beyond inspirational to us all. I don’t believe we are presenting any awards today, but if it were up to the classes—and an endless amount of others you’ve saved, you would get one. I have no doubt that your heroics will go far past these years. Please continue to stay beside us!”
Shouta can see Midoriya’s green mop of hair shaking from where he sits, nodding back at Iida. “Okay! For this, I ask Classes A and B to rise from their seats.” Shouta looks around in confusion—this wasn’t planned beforehand. “Sensei’s too!” Iida says directly to himself and Sekijiro. Still confused, Shouta stands begrudgingly. Sekijiro turns to him. “Do you know what this is about?” he whispers.
“I have not a single clue,” Shouta says. Something in his gut is screaming disaster, looking out at his students’ smiling faces. Scanning the crowd, his intuition shifts to absolutely murderous suspicion—between Hagakure and Midoriya, there is one of Shouta’s most headache-inducing students very conveniently missing. Making direct eye-contact with Midoriya, Shouta tilts his head. Midoriya gulps and drags his shifty gaze away from Shouta—who is about to storm off the stage to figure out what the fuck is going on.
Monoma’s distinct presence is also gone from below the stage, and Shouta wonders once again— what the everloving hell is happening?
Iida takes a deep breath in. “This one’s for our teachers.” He pauses. “Ready, and—”
“Thank you very much!”
Shouta’s brain processes this: Bakugou is gone. Monoma is gone. He and Sekijiro are seated towards the left side of the stage, where Shouta is now standing with a full view of the crowd and Iida’s back a few feet away from him. All the kids shout their gratitude, and they really said it with their whole chests because holy shit that was loud—
Out of nowhere—or not, actually—the stage fucking explodes from behind Shouta. Two heads of blond spawn to Shouta’s right, grinning wildly. Iida’s arms are stretched out in front of him as if he’s the orchestrator of this—this event. Bakugou and Monoma continue exploding away to their heart's content, while the kids in the crowd jump up and down in excitement, as if they knew this was happening this whole time.
Shouta, very acutely, wants to kill himself.
➹
Here’s the thing, about teaching—it’s impact is one unbefitting of a single sentence definition. Shouta’s version of it is higher stakes than a math equation, but maybe not higher stakes than analyzing a heart-shaking love poem. Or a poem about ordinaryness, or one about the intricacies of connection.
So, impact—this is how it goes.
After the explosion, Shouta does not feel as immense of a headache coming on as he should have. At the point when all the kids ended up on the decidedly in shattered pieces stage, Jirou had figured her way through the sound system—music started, waiting on no one. It was something nostalgic but hopeful, all of what Shouta wanted to laugh into existence. Because it is allowed; laughter is allowed and needed—Shinsou and Kaminari hooked an arm over his shoulders, left and right respectively. Shinsou made a move to rub his knuckles over Shouta’s scalp, and Shouta promptly shoved him into the remains of their self-made disaster with a bark of amusement.
Impact, and the retrieval of textbooks, Shouta supposes.
“Sensei,” Kaminari pipes up. “I definitely drew in this.” He holds up a modern Japanese history textbook with flair. There’s a gasp from the side.
“Kaminari-kun!” Iida admonishes. “That’s against the rules. Now you’ll have to pay!”
“I’m not paying for jacksh—”
“You know what else is against the rules?” Shouta butts in, arms crossed over his chest where his suit jacket is pointedly missing. “Blowing things up.” The classroom quietens again. All the kids are misplaced, some sitting on desks or leaning against the windows. They all look very not-sorry. “Where are Uraraka and Shouji? I can’t give out your yearbooks until they’re here. Being late to your last homeroom ever isn’t a good look.”
“Ugh! They should be here already. Yao-momo, can you text? My phone’s too deep in my bag.” Ashido proceeds to slide further off her chair, held in place only by Bakugou’s foot resting on the back of it.
“They’re on their way. Actually—”
The front door smacks open. “I told you guys leaving all this in the locker room wasn’t a good idea!” Uraraka squeaks from behind—what looks to be a…designer sleeping bag? Shouji’s arms are longer than they normally are, carrying an absurd amount of gift bags of varying sizes and flower bouquets. It looks like a leprechaun threw up on the two of them, and the rest of the class goes and collects from Shouji.
Shouta heaves a sigh. “What is this all about?”
Iida steps to the front, wielding a small gift bag of his own. “Well, to show our appreciation, of course!”
Shouta directs his most incredulous look at Iida, then the rest of the class, who’s starting to line up behind Iida, peeking past each other's shoulders to gauge Shouta’s reaction. “And the performance at the ceremony wasn’t enough, you thought?” Iida winces. Bakugou snorts.
“Um, think of it as an apology, then!” Iida thrusts out his small bag at Shouta. “You can open this one now. All of us thought of it together!” Shouta moves to grab the bag like it’s the most tedious task in the world, all the while his poor fucking chest expands with fondness. There’s a small box inside of it, like jewelry belongs in it, and Shouta closes his eyes to tamp down all the stupid emotions that rise up in him.
It’s—a ring. It is silver and thin, a small letter A jeweled at the center. Sparkling and precious. Before Shouta can say anything, Midoriya starts. Unable to hold back, as always.
“It’s not as fragile as it looks, Aizawa-sensei, so don’t worry about that! We tested it out ourselves.” Shouta decides against asking what exactly testing it out entails. “There’s a tracker in it so you can find it if you ever lose it, as well as a way to completely conceal it and also a way to send out an SOS to any heroes nearby. We commissioned Hatsume-san to make it for us! Did you know she has a jewelry business on the side? She’s really—”
“Thank you, Midoriya, all of you.” He drags his gaze over all the other things in the room, already tired. “You really didn’t have to. Really.”
“We did, though,” Ashido says, peeking out from beside Iida. Her voice is light, but thick with unsaid words. “We’re Class 3-A. Couldn’t go out without overdoing ourselves now, Sensei!”
Asui pops up on Iida’s other side. She’s holding a pale white flower, which she reaches out and places above Shouta’s ear. Someone coos and another someone pulls out their phone to snap a picture—the room has never felt brighter. Shouta knows it will never feel the same, for its entire presence is bound to change.
➹
Shouta scowls at his computer screen. “Why the hell am I doing work right now?”
“The creation of the curriculum waits for no one, Shouta-kun!” Toshinori—unhelpfully—booms from the desk opposite him. Shouta’s scowl deepens. “Though I suppose you’re not one for the… erm, more traditional side of things.”
Shouta snorts. “Damn right I’m not.” He shoves a strawberry flavored mochi in his mouth, courtesy of Uraraka, who demanded he eat it right this moment or everything will go to waste. It’s not right this moment, but maybe ten minutes after—Shouta received his gifts, distributed yearbooks, and then ran away lest he was asked to sign one.
“How do you think you’re going to transport all of those gifts back home?” Toshinori asks, taking an obnoxiously loud sip of whatever concoction he’s consuming today. Shouta looks at the pile of things behind him, then slowly turns his head to the mountain of gifts surrounding Toshinori. He thinks Nezu might be munching on something amongst that pile, but Shouta can’t be too sure. Toshinori looks at his mountain quizzically. “Ah. I guess we’ll both be tackling this particular issue together.”
“You don’t say,” Shouta mutters, then resumes his scowling. He scowls in peace for about thirteen seconds, before one of those annoying ass robots rolls its way over to Shouta. “Pro-Hero Eraserhead. Your now former class 3-A is causing untasteful chaos on Ground Beta. Please take action immediately,” it drones.
“Oh…my fuck.” Shouta grips the roots of his hair. “Just one moment, dear God. Just one…” he trails off, standing and dragging himself out of the office. Toshinori wishes him good luck. Shouta flips him the bird.
“There is no way you children aren’t doing this to torture and spite me in all the possible ways you can before I very purposefully disappear from your lives,” Shouta gripes, glaring at the group in shock. They’re all in their costumes, for some godforsaken reason, and standing atop one of the buildings. Below, from where Shouta stands, are…clothes?
“You might wanna step away, Eraserhead,” Bakugou growls quite mischievously for a kid of his age. “More shit’s about to blow up!”
“Absolutely it is not,” Shouta responds immediately, wanting to rip his hair out again. How many ways can they test him in one day? Why is Shouta kind of happy about it? “Care to explain exactly what’s going on here?”
“It’s symbolic!” Bakugou shouts. “These are all of our very first costumes, or whatever remains of them. Mister Shouto and I are about to set fucking fire to this thing, so get out of my way!”
Shouta, for all of his groaning and angst-ing about how annoying being an adult is, takes a moment to look—really look—at the lot of them gathered at the edge of some half-assedly built three story building. There’s about two hundred of them in close vicinity, but this one seems taller, weightier. Sero is hanging off the edge while Uraraka floats to his side. They’re all laughing at something Shouta missed.
He recalls Hawks’ outlandish little motto that moment—the desire for heroes to have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. Shouta thinks of that, steps out of the way as per Bakugou’s request (demand), and wishes. Flames curl and fly into the gradually darkening sky, and Shouta hopes he lives long enough to see his kids goof off in a trillion more ways, to see their unabashed smiles a trillion more times, for them to have more time on their hands than they know what to do with.
Laughter ringing in his ears, Shouta smiles and makes to join them.
➹
There is so much—joy. Joy that they made it here. Joy that they’re able to feel joy like this right now, despite it all. Shouta lets himself get dragged into a disaster of a group hug, more a tangle of limbs than anything, and thinks, I’m going to miss them. He thinks it so hard it pangs in his gut—or was that Shinsou’s foot?
Shouta doesn’t know. He’ll miss them.