Chapter Text
UA wakes like a person who fell asleep on a train and misses the stop by three stations. The light is too bright, the sound wrong in shape; everything that should be in place is close but shifted. The gym roofs are tarped. The east courtyard wears a bruise of scorched turf. Someone taped a paper sign over the main noticeboard that says: YOU’RE STILL HERE. THAT COUNTS.
Kendo is the first one standing under it with a pen and a clipboard she stole from the nurse’s station. She does not write names at first; she writes numbers. She says them out loud like she’s anchoring the morning in place.
“One. Two. Three.”
By the time four becomes nineteen, the room has learned to breathe with her. Class 1-B funnels in on the smell of antiseptic and instant miso, all the edges sanded down by exhaustion. Tetsutetsu appears hugging a heating pad like a souvenir. Shiozaki’s braids are frayed. Pony counts quietly in English beside Kendo and switches to Japanese when she hits nine.
“Twenty,” Kendo says, and tips her head toward the doorway. “Where’s—”
“Here,” Sen answers, already halfway inside, shirt slung over one shoulder, hair damp from an aggressively fast shower. He gives Kendo a two-fingered salute and takes the place beside her like a second brace on a broken door. “I’ll call roll. You check the bandage colors.”
They make a rhythm of it. Green means cleared. Yellow means check again after breakfast. Red means sit down right now, do not argue with me, stop trying to be a protagonist.
“Where’s Tsuburaba?” Tetsutetsu asks, because it is statistically likely that if Tsuburaba Kosei is within fifty meters he is talking, laughing, or creating wind to make a dramatic entrance.
Kendo’s mouth tightens. “I sent him to the medbay to get that wrist re-wrapped.”
“He went,” Kaibara says. “He also detoured.”
On cue, a gust comes through the open windows. It smells like cold metal and rain even though the sky is hammered clear. Paper flutters. The taped sign holds.
Tsuburaba Kosei arrives by not arriving; he’s already here, halfway up a ladder in the hallway, tightening a rattling vent with a grin he wears like armor. Bandage on his wrist, sling he is not using, a bruise on his jaw that looks like someone kissed him with a fist.
“Missed you too,” he tells the vent, and spins the wrench until the squeal stops. He tests the airflow with his palm: a little push, a little pull, coaxing the hum into a purr. Then he hops down, wrist winced at, smile brightened anyway. “Good morning! We’re collecting survivors? Put me in the ‘annoyingly alive’ column.”
“Kosei,” Kendo says, which is a name and a thousand instructions.
He rocks on his heels, hands hovering. “Can’t sit. If I sit, I’ll think. If I think, I—” He shrugs. The shrug says it for him.
Sen steps forward. He doesn’t touch Kosei; he stands at the side where a touch could happen if asked. “They need the west hallway checked. You hear the squeak on the door to the music room? It’ll drive Jirou up the wall.”
Kosei breathes out like he’s been tossed a rope. “Music room. Squeak. On it.” His eyes flicker—gratitude, apology, the shape of a joke he chooses not to tell. He’s gone before Kendo can assign him a buddy, a breeze trailing like an exhale.
“Fine,” Kendo mutters, marking him with a yellow that means I’m letting you do this because it is the only thing keeping you from vibrating out of your skin. “Sen, go after him—”
“Already going,” Sen says, and is.
The building is loud with broken quiet: a drip in the ceiling, a rattle in old pipes, the polite cough of a printer trying to remember its job. Kosei moves through it like he’s memorizing a new song—tap a hinge, coax a draft, thumb along the edge of a cracked pane and make the air sit obediently for five minutes more.
He talks to the school the way he talks to everyone he loves: easy, certain, unembarrassed. “You did good,” he tells the stairwell. “You held.” He tests another vent, feeds it a ribbon of pressure, listens for the reply. “I got you.”
Sen watches the way Kosei uses his hands. Not the quirk—though yes, the quirk, the neat feed of air, the gentle pressure like he’s convincing the world to behave—but the way his fingers hover before they commit. The care. The restraint.
“Your wrist,” Sen says, when they pause by the music room door. The squeak is operatic.
“I have a spare,” Kosei lies, wiggling his fingers. “Besides, if I fix three more things, Kendo will stop counting out loud like we’re in a disaster movie and it’s, like, foreshadowing.”
Sen reaches past him and tries the latch. The squeal climbs a register. Kosei winces on instinct and then laughs at himself for wincing. Sen hears the laugh chip in the middle.
“Let me,” Sen says softly.
Kosei’s hand drops. He takes a half step back and tips his chin, an unarmored gesture that means I trust you; don’t look at me while you’re gentle. Sen kneels, leans his ear to the seam, and sends a small vibration through the metal. It sings back, a thin complaint. He adjusts frequency—less force, more hum—and the squeal softens. Kosei breathes with the sound without realizing it, matching it, a metronome in reverse.
“It’s going to stick again after lunch,” Sen says, standing.
“Then I’ll unstick it after lunch,” Kosei replies, bright as a promise.
They stand there a breath too long, doorway framing a room that is mostly intact. Sheet music scattered like snow. A drum with a dent. A single triangle gleaming on its hook as if it won the war.
“Breakfast,” Sen says finally.
“Inventory,” Kosei counters. “Kendo’s running the counts. I’ll run the screws.”
Sen considers him, then nods. “Five minutes. Then breakfast.”
“Seven,” Kosei haggles.
“Six,” Sen says, and Kosei grins because six was the number he wanted.
-
Back in the makeshift commons, Class 1-A drifts in like weather. Midoriya’s eyes are ringed with a lack of sleep the color of old coins; Uraraka is carrying three thermoses and a plate of something that might be pancakes if you squint. Bakugou’s arm is in a sling he’s definitely going to “forget.” Kirishima does the thing where he makes standing look like a hug.
Aizawa arrives last, cup of coffee like a legal document in one hand and the other hand in his pocket. He reads the taped sign. He doesn’t smile, but something in his shoulders changes shape. He murmurs to Vlad King, who murmurs back. Whatever they agree on is not a truce so much as a shared thesis: today we count. tomorrow we teach.
Kendo, midway through a second round, lifts her clipboard. “Twenty-four,” she calls. “Twenty-five.”
“Present,” Monoma says, like a challenge. For once, no one bites. It disarms him. He stands a little smaller and then a little straighter, like he’s learning another way to be seen.
“Twenty-six,” Kendo says, almost surprised as Sen and Kosei slip back in, hair ruffled by the kind of wind that only ever happens indoors when Kosei is nearby.
“Breakfast,” Sen tells Kosei, nudging him toward a seat with a knuckle at the shoulder. The touch is nothing. The touch is everything. Kosei obeys because obedience, today, is an act of care.
“Eat,” Kendo orders, pointing the pen like a weapon that only writes good things. “Then you can fix three more problems and only three. I will assign them. Don’t make me grow another pair of hands just to restrain you.”
Kosei salutes with a plastic spoon. “Yes, captain.”
“Don’t,” Kendo and Vlad say in unison, because they have learned not to feed him titles.
They eat. It is terrible and perfect. The pancakes are rubber and blessed. Someone spills miso; someone else says leave it and then cleans it up anyway. The room levels out around the choreography of small mercies nobody names.
Kosei keeps almost standing up and then catching Sen’s eye and staying put. Sen keeps not touching Kosei and then checking the distance like a medic and a friend. On a different day it would be funny; today it is a prayer with moving parts.
After, when the plates are stacked and the world holds steady for five minutes together, Aizawa clears his throat.
“Classes resume in modified form this afternoon,” he says. There’s a rustle of protest that sounds like leaves deciding whether to fall. “Modified,” he repeats. “You will be where you need to be. If where you need to be is here, be here. If where you need to be is fixing a squeaky hinge so Jirou doesn’t disassociate mid-scale, fix the hinge.”
Kosei blinks. Sen doesn’t smile exactly, but he does the thing with his mouth that Kosei has privately labeled approval: quiet edition.
“Heroism,” Vlad King adds, and the word lands heavy and careful. “Is not only the punch. It’s the after.”
Nobody claps, but heads lift, and shoulders unhook from ears, and when Kendo starts her third count, the numbers sound less like triage and more like roll call.
Later, after Kosei has been physically intercepted by Pony at the thirty-first minute of his promised six and then redirected by Sen with the tactical deployment of a spare onigiri, Kendo will find the clipboard’s back page. In Kosei’s handwriting, sideways, there will be a list:
- Music room door — fixed (for now)
- West hallway vent — purring
- Nurse’s station window — asked it nicely; it agreed
- Tetsutetsu’s heating pad — morale item, do not confiscate
- Sen — ate half his breakfast; remind him to eat the other half
Kendo will circle the last line and write in green: Handled.
For now, the morning chooses to keep being morning. The taped sign flutters, and the tape holds. Somebody starts coffee. Somebody else starts a fight with the toaster and loses. The air hums at a key that feels like the opposite of an alarm.
Kosei stands, finally, because six minutes are over and he has a map in his head of every door that squeaks and every hinge that begs for patience. He glances at Sen.
“Inventory?” he asks.
“Together,” Sen says.
The teachers’ lounge smells like burned coffee and bureaucracy. The clock over the bulletin board reads 06:07, which means it’s been 06:07 for about twenty minutes—no one has had the heart to fix it. The building hums under fluorescent lights; the kind of hum that hides exhaustion under the sound of working electricity.
Vlad King stands with his arms crossed, half a report in one hand, and Bakugou sitting across from him, both of them glaring at the same piece of paper like it insulted them personally. It probably did—it’s the Post-War Class Integration Summary, Part III: Conduct and Morale.
“I don’t need a psychologist to tell me morale’s low,” Vlad says, dropping the sheet. “Half these kids are walking bruises.”
“Bruises heal,” Bakugou replies. “What doesn’t is when you let ’em sit around thinking that’s all they are.”
It’s not said kindly, but Vlad recognizes the sentiment. He rubs his jaw. “So your grand idea is what, throw ’em back in the ring?”
Bakugou leans forward, elbows on his knees. “You teach by doing. They’re heroes, not paperwork. Give ’em a mission—controlled, small. Something where they win.”
Vlad huffs. “You realize you sound exactly like me right now.”
Bakugou pauses, then scowls deeper, like the idea personally offends him. “Don’t say that out loud.”
Across the room, Aizawa looks up from his coffee long enough to deadpan, “Too late.”
Present company includes Cementoss, Recovery Girl, and Midnight’s holographic memorial plaque flickering softly in one corner. The air is thick with old grief and the stubbornness of people who refuse to leave.
Cementoss speaks first. “We can stage a joint exercise. Class 1-A and 1-B, same field. Collaborative rebuild.”
“Rebuild?” Bakugou echoes. “That’s your mission idea? What are they gonna fight—paint peeling?”
“It’s structure,” Cementoss says. “They need to remember what holding ground feels like.”
Vlad hums, low and thoughtful. “If we call it a rebuild, 1-B will treat it like a competition. Kendo will make a chart. That’ll get them moving.”
“And if it’s a competition,” Aizawa adds, “1-A will lose sleep until they win. That’ll get them moving.”
Bakugou’s lips twitch into the faintest curve of satisfaction. “Good. Then make it a competition.”
“That’s not what I—” Aizawa starts, but Bakugou’s already halfway to the door.
Vlad follows, because apparently the thing that will keep him awake today is supervising the teenage embodiment of a grenade. “You realize this means you and I are running it together,” he calls after him.
Bakugou doesn’t look back. “Fine. As long as you don’t make me wear a whistle.”
“Not negotiable.”
Their footsteps echo down the hall, out of sight, out of patience. The door swings shut on a faint breeze that smells like ozone and chalk dust.
Aizawa stares at the empty space they leave behind and says, mostly to the coffee mug, “That’s going to explode.”
“Probably,” Cementoss replies.
“Metaphorically?”
“No.”
-
By mid-morning, the “Reconstruction Drill” has been announced. The entire student body treats it with the solemn gravity of a declaration of war. Kendo’s already assembled color-coded teams, Monoma’s given a speech nobody asked for, and Uraraka’s convinced half of 1-A to start painting motivational slogans.
Bakugou prowls the sidelines like a wolf guarding a kindergarten. Vlad King stands beside him, clipboard in hand.
“You really think this’ll work?” Vlad asks, voice low enough not to carry.
Bakugou watches Kosei Tsuburaba lift a concrete slab with an air tunnel and shout “I got this!” while Sen Kaibara immediately braces it from the other side. “They’re already working. That’s the point.”
The wind shifts, carrying the scent of plaster and sweat. Kosei and Sen argue about physics and lose track of time; Ashido swings by with water bottles; Shiozaki mutters something that might be a prayer or a safety warning. The air hums again, louder this time, alive with motion.
“Y’know,” Vlad says, almost smiling, “you’re not half bad at this.”
Bakugou grunts. “You’re worse at compliments than I am.”
“Probably.”
They watch in silence as two classes full of half-healed kids rebuild a wall no one will ever grade them on.
When the last beam goes up, Vlad calls it. “Lunch break!”
Bakugou yells before he can stop himself, “Don’t blow anything up!”
Every single student turns to stare.
He scowls, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “You know what I mean!”
Sen murmurs something to Kosei that makes him laugh hard enough to lose his balance. The wall stays standing anyway.
Vlad claps Bakugou on the shoulder. “See? Agreement achieved.”
“Don’t say that out loud either,” Bakugou mutters, but he doesn’t move away.
The first-aid room isn’t quiet anymore. It used to be—the sort of soft, antiseptic quiet that made people whisper like guilt. But that was before Jirou decided that silence was overrated.
Now it’s got a rhythm.
Literally.
There’s a speaker in the corner humming a slow bass line, patched together from the remains of her amp and some parts Kaminari “liberated” from the storage closet. The beat is steady, gentle enough not to shake the IV poles, warm enough to remind you that hearts still keep time.
Jirou hums under her breath as she unwraps a fresh roll of gauze. “Okay,” she says, tapping the drum of her earjack against her wrist, “you move, I kick you out.”
Kosei raises an eyebrow from where he’s sitting on the cot, shirt half-unbuttoned, wrist extended like he’s surrendering to a particularly stern nurse. “You threatening me, or motivating me?”
“Both.” She gives him a look over the top of her mask, the universal I’m not your mom but I could be expression. “Hold still, air boy. You keep wiggling like that, I’m gonna tie you to the bed frame.”
“Scandalous,” Sen deadpans from the chair in the corner. He’s peeling the plastic off a pack of disinfectant wipes with the same focus people usually reserve for diffusing bombs.
“Please,” Jirou says without missing a beat, “you two being in the same room is scandalous enough.”
Kosei laughs, and for the first time that day it sounds real—unpracticed, bright. He winces halfway through, not from pain but from remembering that laughing still feels wrong when the world outside is quiet for the wrong reasons.
Jirou notices. She’s good at that.
“Y’know,” she says, ripping the tape with her teeth, “we don’t get extra credit for pretending it doesn’t hurt.”
He doesn’t answer right away. The hum of the speaker fills the pause. Then, quietly: “Yeah, but it helps if I keep busy. Feels like the air’s gonna collapse if I stop.”
Sen looks up from the wipes, eyes soft. “You don’t have to keep it all up at once, Kosei. The world’s allowed to breathe too.”
“Not if I can help it,” Kosei mutters, half a grin returning. “You’ve seen me. I’m basically a one-man HVAC system.”
Jirou snorts. “You’re a walking metaphor for repressing emotions with wind pressure.”
“That too.”
They all laugh again, and this time it sticks.
When the door opens, the next patient is Tokoyami, cradling an armful of bandages that are already half unraveled. “Apologies,” he says, voice solemn as always. “I attempted to assist Shiozaki in tending to the wounded. I fear I became the wounded.”
“You mean she smacked you with her vines again,” Jirou says.
“Metaphorically,” Tokoyami insists.
Sen stands up to help him straighten the rolls; Kosei flexes his newly wrapped wrist experimentally and nods approval. “You’re next in line, dark prince. Welcome to Jirou’s House of Questionable Medical Licensing.”
Jirou flicks him on the forehead. “Shut it. I’ll revoke your patient privileges.”
“Please do,” he says cheerfully, and ducks before she can swing the roll at him.
The noise swells again—laughter, footsteps, someone knocking over a tray and apologizing too many times. Recovery Girl passes by in the hall, peers in, and doesn’t stop them. She knows better. She’s seen too many rooms where the only sound was crying.
Later, when the bandages are used up and the music’s on its last loop, Jirou sits on the floor with her back to the wall, phone in her lap. Sen’s rewrapping his shoulder under her direction; Kosei’s fiddling with a broken harmonica he found in the lost and found.
“You ever think,” Kosei says softly, “we’ll stop treating this like rehearsal?”
Jirou looks at him. “You mean hero work?”
He nods.
Sen ties the last knot on the bandage and exhales. “Maybe it’s always rehearsal. For the next time.”
“Then we’d better sound good when the curtain goes up,” Jirou murmurs, and reaches over to plug her earjack into the speaker.
The next track starts low and hopeful—half lullaby, half anthem. The door stays open, so anyone walking by can hear.
When Vlad King pokes his head in to check on them, he stops mid-sentence. The light hits the white bandages like ribbons of moonlight; the kids are laughing again.
He leaves without saying anything. Just pulls the door mostly closed, letting the song bleed into the hallway.
Kosei, somewhere between drowsy and content, leans his head back. “You think,” he asks lazily, “if we ever open an agency, we could name it after one of your songs?”
Sen hums. “Depends. What would you call it?”
He grins. “The Sound of Holding Together.”
Jirou rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Cheesy.”
“Accurate,” Sen says quietly.
And for a little while longer, the music doesn’t stop.
The first class after the war isn’t called “Homeroom.” The schedule says so, but Aizawa crosses it out on every attendance sheet. He writes:
“Survival Seminar (Mandatory Attendance, Optional Participation).”
The chalkboard smells faintly of ozone and disinfectant—one of Cementoss’s half-finished repairs still hums faintly behind the walls. The desks are mismatched now, half metal, half wood, all a little too close together because they consolidated two rooms into one when the west wing collapsed.
Aizawa stands in front of twenty-three students, two cats (because someone forgot to close the window again), and one faint draft that refuses to quit.
“Good morning,” he says.
No one answers.
He nods once, accepting it as fluent trauma-speak. Then he turns and writes on the board in white chalk, letters uneven from a hand that’s still stiff from bandages:
YOU’RE STILL HERE.
The room stays quiet, but something shifts—like the air remembering how to carry sound.
“That’s the lesson,” he says simply. “You’re here. You’re allowed to be.”
Aizawa has never been one for speeches. He teaches in fragments and lets the silence finish the rest. This morning, the fragments are:
- Survival isn’t a grade.
- Recovery isn’t homework.
- If you need to leave, do it. If you need to stay, do that too.
- Heroism is a group project, whether you like it or not.
He underlines the last one. The chalk squeaks and then breaks cleanly in half. He pockets the piece like a superstition.
From the third row, Midoriya raises his hand halfway. “Sensei, um… does this count for both classes?”
“It counts for everyone,” Aizawa says. “You think I’d hold extra sessions just to make you people feel special?”
Someone—probably Kaminari—snorts. The sound is small, but it’s enough. The class exhales.
When Vlad King enters with 1-B ten minutes later, Aizawa gestures him in without preamble. Desks scrape. Kids murmur greetings that are half hellos, half inventory checks: “You okay?” “Did you eat?” “Still alive?”
“Joint session,” Vlad announces, setting his clipboard on the podium. “Topic: rebuilding routines.”
Monoma mutters, “Finally, a topic I can fail spectacularly at.”
Kendo elbows him, not gently. “You’re participating.”
“Voluntarily,” Vlad corrects.
Aizawa’s mouth twitches. “We’re discussing what to do after the mission ends. How to return without pretending nothing happened.”
He draws a circle on the board and writes HERO in the center. Around it, he starts listing words the students call out:
- “Courage.”
- “Kindness.”
- “Fear.”
- “Anger.”
- “Trying again.”
- “Not dying.”
Kosei, from the back, raises his hand just enough to be seen. “Can I add something?”
Aizawa nods.
Kosei writes, in block letters big enough to see across the room: REPAIR.
He caps the marker with a click that echoes.
“Because,” he says, glancing sideways at Sen, “if it’s broken, it means it was worth using.”
The class goes quiet again—not heavy quiet, just full.
Shiozaki whispers an amen. Tetsutetsu murmurs “hell yeah.” Kendo doesn’t even scold him.
Aizawa lets them talk for a while, just listens. The topics wander—grief, duty, friendship, snacks. Vlad eventually draws a bracket labeled Lunch Discussion and everyone pretends that counts as homework.
When the clock hits noon, Aizawa caps the marker, rubs chalk off his fingers, and says:
“I don’t expect you to be fine. I expect you to keep showing up until you are.”
He looks at the sentence on the board again—You’re still here—and underlines it twice.
“Class dismissed.”
The scraping of chairs sounds like applause to no one in particular.
After they file out, Kosei lingers by the doorway, pretending to fix a crooked poster. Sen waits with him, of course.
“You think he means it?” Kosei asks quietly.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
Sen looks at the board again, at the words chalked unevenly but certain. “Yeah,” he says. “I think he does.”
Aizawa, half-listening from his desk, doesn’t interrupt. He just adds one more line beneath the sentence before leaving the room for coffee:
KEEP BEING HERE.
When Vlad checks the room later, he leaves it untouched. The words stay overnight, smudged by the wind from an open window that someone—Kosei, probably—will remember to close in the morning.