Work Text:
"Aiz…sensei?!"
…
"…zawa-sensei?!"
…
"Sensei!"
Shouta knew what it felt like to wake up with a concussion. The way everything filtered through gradually and then all at once, the sudden overwhelm of consciousness catching back up, the soul-deep ache in your head that felt like it would never go away. He'd been an underground hero long enough to have plenty of experience.
That was why he knew, before he'd even opened his eyes, that he had a concussion. Great.
"Sensei!" The voice that had roused him called again, and despite not recognizing it immediately, some instinctive pull told him get up, right now, move, danger—
His students were in danger—
He tried to sit up, but something was pinning him to the ground. He grunted, trying to move his free arm to shove it off, but something was pressing on his shoulder and he couldn't angle it. His kids were in danger, he didn't have time—
"Sensei, stop! I've almost got you!" Uraraka. That was Uraraka's voice. He forced his eyes open, but was met with near pitch-black. "Uraraka?" He stopped immediately to cough, wheezing for breath in the dusty air. "What happened?" He tried to keep his voice calm and steady for her, but there was still an alarm blaring in his gut telling him that his class was in trouble.
"Just—just hang on, I've almost got you out!" She called again, and he could hear the unmasked panic in her voice, the franticness she spoke with. He closed his eyes and focused on his other senses instead of asking again.
Hearing — a vague rumbling and shifting, Uraraka's sharp breathing and the faint twinkle of her Quirk, but not much else. It was too quiet; smell — not much either, it was too dusty to make out anything over that; and touch — the ground below him was rough and uneven. There were sharp objects under his back and a layer of dust and grit over the surface his hands could feel. The texture made him think of stone. The objects pinning down his body were jagged and uneven. There were more than he'd initially thought, making him picture a pile rather than a solid slab.
Kind of like—
"Uraraka," he said, keeping his voice even and remaining very still. "Are we trapped under rubble?"
No answer. The sound of her Quirk was closer now. Well, that answers that.
Just like Oboro— Cutting that off right there.
It burned him to do nothing but lie there and wait, but he couldn't really move with the debris pinning him down, and doing anything to destabilize the very precarious situation they were in would be highly illogical. Uraraka was competent and strong, she would dig him out and they'd find a way out together. She would dig him out. He would not die down here like Oboro.
A thought struck him. "Is anyone else under here?" He asked, unable to quite mask the urgency in his voice. He was a Pro Hero and an adult, he'd be fine for a while longer. If she needed to be digging out her classmates— if any of his students were trapped under the rubble—
"No, it was—it was just us." She said after a long moment, her voice sounding wet. A beam of light appeared above him, cutting through the darkness. "I see you! I'm almost there!"
A soft pink glow surrounded a few of the rocks he could now see. Starting from the top, she systematically floated and removed debris from the pile around him. Anytime it started to shake, she was there, slapping a piece before it could fall and destabilize the rest. They were actual rocks, so they weren't under a building like he'd thought. Despite the situation, that knowledge made him breathe a little easier. But still, how much weight was she lifting?
Before long, she had him mostly uncovered. When it was clear enough for her to lean over and see him, worry flared in his chest before he could tamp it down.
One of her headpieces was broken, the other cracked with its flashlight feature enabled. Blood dripped down the side of her face from a cut on her forehead, and she was shaking as she reached for more rocks. "Uraraka, stop." He found himself saying, unable to watch her push herself anymore now that he'd seen the state she was in. "There has to be another way—"
"I've almost got you, it's just a little bit more. I can handle it, sensei." The lighting was difficult, but he could just make out the shaky grin she was putting on for him, a shadow of her usual beaming smile. She started floating off the last of the rocks still directly on top of him, and he couldn't stop her. He couldn't cancel her Quirk, he had no idea how many rocks she had floating or what kind of damage they would cause; it might even bring the rest of the unstable structure crashing down on top of them.
She took a deep breath and floated the largest one pinning down his torso. He could instantly breathe better, but his first breath was sharpened in concern as she immediately turned to the side and dry heaved. She didn't have anything left to bring up, leading him to connect the dots that she'd already vomited several times. If she continued putting this kind of strain on her body, it wouldn't end well.
He pushed off the last few rocks himself, now that he could move his arms and they weren't necessary to hold the larger ones up. He tried to crawl over to her side, but was stopped by a burst of agonizing fire lancing up his left leg. He failed to hold back the grunt of pain.
"Aizawa-sensei?" Her flashlight beam turned to his leg and he had to suppress a wince.
Feeling it was bad, but being able to see it was worse. The fabric around his shin was shredded, and amid torn skin and blood he could see the white of bone fragments. It was a bad break.
He shoved thoughts of his career and recovery aside. They needed to survive this before he started worrying about what would come after.
"I'll handle it after we get out of here," he said to her unspoken question, tearing off a portion of his sleeve that was already hanging by a thread and wrapping it around the worst of the open wound. He would've preferred a clean bandage, but infection was also a Future Shouta problem. He gritted his teeth through the pain; Uraraka was worried enough, he didn't need to put any more stress on her while she was doing so much. Her Quirk was quite possibly the only reason they weren't both dead right now. "Do you know how to get out?"
After a moment, she tore her gaze away from his leg. "There's a clearer area over here. It's closer to the outside too, I think." She said, crawling back the way she came. Shouta attempted to follow, but he was down a leg. "Um, do you… need me to float you?" She looked queasy at just the thought, but was already reaching out. He gently caught her wrist before she could touch him. "Save your strength. You've done enough." He told her, and in the light of the beam he could see her eyes watering.
She led him out of the shallow tunnel she'd dug to reach him. It was only a few feet, but she must've had to move countless rocks to make it stable. They reached a slightly more open pocket of the cave; still small enough he could barely sit up straight, but with more room to maneuver. He looked at the walls — some of the rocks were placed with deliberation, and he realized she was still using her Quirk on them to shore up the edges for stability.
In front of him, she stumbled and careened to the side. "Uraraka!" He exclaimed, lunging forward to stop her head from hitting the ground. It wouldn't have been from a great height, since they were on their hands and knees, but he already suspected she had a concussion and further damage would only make it worse. He barely felt his leg protest, not when her head was lolling to the side and her eyes were shut.
He sat back and pulled her into his arms, bad leg stretched out to the side. "Uraraka, answer me." He commanded in his no-nonsense teacher voice, the one that all his kids knew better than to ignore.
Her eyes opened. "I-I'm okay, sensei…" She groaned out weakly, trying to sit up. She slumped back down after barely a second, her eyelashes fluttering.
How much of this was her injuries and how much was Quirk exhaustion? He had no idea how many rocks she'd lifted, and judging by how out of it she was, he didn't think she knew either. He knew his students; with a concussion on top of her standard determination, she would've had a one-track mind, focused on saving him and nothing else.
And now that he was 'saved', she was collapsing.
"Stay awake, Uraraka. No sleeping." He ordered, shaking her very gently. She whined but complied, forcing her eyes open. "Tell me what happened." He said, to keep her talking and to fill the gap in his memory. It was on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn't quite recall how they got into this situation. A red flag for the severity of his concussion, but he could worry about that later, when he and his student were out of immediate danger.
"…You… don't remember?" Her brow creased in worry. He ignored the irrational urge to smooth it back out. "No. Mission report." He commanded. They'd gone over situation and mission reports in heroics, though he'd hoped they wouldn't be in a position to use them for real for a while. The universe and all the villains in Japan seemed to have it out for his kids students.
"We were fighting. Not the League, other villains. They… interrupted our mountain training." She started, and the pieces clicked in his mind. The memories that had been blocked by his concussion rushed back.
"This isn't part of the exercise! Use your Quirks, protect each other!" He hated saying those words, and he hated how many times he'd had to. His students, to their credit, switched gears on a dime and immediately formed positions they'd practiced in class; he wanted to shout from the rooftops about how proud he was and scream at the world that forced their experience on them.
Midoriya, Bakugo, Todoroki, and Tokoyami, as the heaviest hitters, were split up to ensure each of the large group was fighting at least one of them. The more specialized Quirks grouped up with complementary partners and attacked together, mixing and matching powers as they went. The villains were clearly not expecting such an organized and thorough response — his kids were fighting like Pros, not first year hero students.
He was so proud, and so resentful.
It was all going… well, as well as a real villain attack could. His students were holding their own and he was fighting alongside them (something he shouldn't have been doing until their second year work studies at least—). Several of the villains were incapacitated, though that just seemed to anger the rest of them into attacking more aggressively.
It all went to shit when he heard a yell. He'd heard a lot of shouts, sneered insults and banter (and of course Midoriya, having full conversations with his opponents in between earth-rocking kicks), warnings to classmates, but this one was different in a way that sent a jolt zipping down his spine.
"Cheeks! Behind you!" It was Bakugo. Maybe that was why the unmasked worry in the voice set Shouta so on edge, sent him whirling around, searching the battlefield for Uraraka.
He spotted her just in time to see her turning, lashing out before she even saw the threat because his students trusted each other with their lives, but she just wasn't quite fast enough. All she could do was try to block. The villain behind her only landed one blow, but with a Quirk like kinetic energy and momentum manipulation, one blow was all he needed to send her hurtling through the air towards one of the cliff walls in the distance.
Bakugo was mid-exchange with one of the stronger villains, he couldn't break away, had barely shouted the warning. Shouta moved.
His capture scarf whipped out, wrapping around his student. With the Quirk-powered momentum and force she was moving with, he was immediately pulled along with her instead of slowing her down, but he managed to reel them together so he could wrap himself around her and grab onto anything he could to slow them down.
As he tried and failed to latch onto anything, Uraraka, half-conscious, reached out and floated them both, impact with the wall only a few seconds away. A pink glow overtook them as her Quirk counteracted the effects of the other physics-manipulation Quirk, reducing their velocity slowly, but maybe just enough to save their lives.
Removing their gravity, one of the other forces slowing them down, was a risky move, but the only one they had left. He had a brief second to feel pride in her quick thinking and brace them both for impact before they hit the wall.
He felt it cave in under their combined force, heard a cracking louder than any thunder, felt the world shift around him.
Luck, adrenaline, and a tolerance for injuries were all that allowed him to remain conscious for a moment more before the shock and pain hit, just long enough to realize he'd lost hold of his student before the sky fell on them.
"I removed our gravity, right before the impact… tried to counter the Quirk before we hit… 'm sorry it didn't work… 'm sorry you're trapped 'cause of me…" He blinked, the concussion making him process a little slower. He'd returned from the brief flash of memories to Uraraka apologizing, when her actions were quite likely the only reason they'd survived.
He needed another second to parse that one out.
"You have nothing to apologize for, Uraraka." He finally said, pushing aside his swirling thoughts and focusing on what mattered; ensuring she knew that she did everything right, and sometimes the bad stuff still happened anyway. That unfairness was why heroes existed.
"But—"
"Nothing." He repeated firmly. He gave into the urge and placed a hand on her cheek, deciding he'd claim it was the concussion later if she thought to question it. "Your quick thinking is what slowed us down enough to survive the impact. You saved our lives," he continued, and her eyes widened. A stray tear rolled down her cheek, rewetting the dried blood, reminding him that this was not really the time or place for a conversation.
But depending on how long they'd been trapped, the fight should be over soon or already, meaning his students would come looking for them shortly. Hell, after what that villain had done, he wouldn't be surprised if Midoriya had snapped and gone near-Overhaul levels on them all, and Bakugo would've been right behind him.
The idea of his students fighting real villains without him lit a fire under his skin, made him itch with the need to stand between them and all threats, detest this hero society that was putting children on the front lines of their wars. But he knew that his class was strong, he trusted their training and he trusted them. They would be alright without him this time; busted up like this, his place was here, with his injured student in his arms making sure she knew she did a damn good job, that she was a hero.
Even if she shouldn't have had to be.
"That's once." He said, forming a list. "You also freed yourself and dug me out of the rubble. That's twice. And you’re keeping us safe right now by using your Quirk to hold up the rocks. So that’s three times you've saved both our lives." Hizashi would accuse him of being a 'massive softie' if he was here, but it was really just illogical to allow Uraraka to continue feeling guilty for something she didn't do. He wasn't soft, he was just being a good teacher. Teenagers needed positive reinforcement every once in a while.
"But… but I—" He didn't activate his Quirk, but his glare didn't need it. Her lip trembled and her eyes watered before she took a deep breath and forced herself to smile, closer to her normal wide grin than before. "Okay. Thank you, sensei." He grunted in response.
"Y'know… you're not as mean as you want us to think you are." Her voice was softer, breathing more labored. That had to be the concussion talking, because all of his students knew better than to make such a claim to his face. "Don't think I won't still expel you." He threatened with no conviction, his hand trembling against her cheek.
"Mm… sure you will." She agreed in a whisper, her head resting on his shoulder and eyes sliding shut. Like she was just falling asleep. No.
"Uraraka! Stay awake!" His voice had less of an effect. She fought to get her eyes half open, blinking blearily at him as she did her best to follow his directions. The sheer trust she had in him, all of his kids had in him, staggered him sometimes.
Okay, now how could he keep her awake—
"Tell me… a story?" She sounded all of five years old, with more weariness than any child should ever have.
"Only if you stay awake to hear it." He found himself agreeing without a thought, unable to deny her. "Mkay." She sighed, resting against him but dutifully keeping her eyes open, waiting to be regaled.
Great, now he just had to think of a story. A story. He knew stories. None of his underground heroics stories, something lighter. A fairytale. He knew fairytales, right? He had to know one fairytale. C'mon, Shouta, think—
Her eyes started to slip shut again and he blurted out the first thing he thought of.
"Did you know I'm married?"
She immediately perked back up; she wasn't as bad as Ashido and Hagakure, but he'd heard her giggling over romances between classmates and seen her hovering conspicuously nearby while they needled him about his love life. He'd figured that would grab her attention.
"…Really?" She asked, and he moved his hand from her cheek to pull out the ring he always wore on a chain around his neck. "Yeah. Six years." He took her hand and gently lowered it into her open palm, allowing her to inspect it. It wasn't anything fancy, just a polished silver band, but there was an engraving on the inside.
She squinted, trying to read it. "What does it say?" She finally asked. Shouta didn't need to look, knew the curves of the kanji better than the back of his hand. "In sound or silence."
She made a weak cooing sound. "That's… really sweet."
"Yeah." He said, his eyes stinging as he remembered the day his husband gave it to him, the best day of his life. He blinked the dust out of his eyes and refocused on his present situation. He'd see Hizashi soon enough.
"Who is it?" She looked up at him, blinking in a way that told him she was desperately fighting her eyes' attempts to close. His grip on her hand tightened. "You can't guess?" He asked instead of answering, trying to engage her, keep her thinking, keep her awake, but she just shook her head slightly, staring up at him exhaustedly.
"Yamada Hizashi." He told her, and he could practically see the wheels turning in her brain as she tried to recall the name. "…Present Mic? Our English teacher?" She finally gasped, her jaw dropping.
"Yeah, that's him. We went to UA together, started dating in our third year. I didn't want to get married right out of high school while we were just starting out as heroes, so we waited a few years. It was a fall wedding." He couldn't keep the fondness from his voice. Sue him, he liked his husband.
"You're… in love." She giggled, a strained, breathy sound that was awful to hear and music to his ears. "Tell anyone and you're expelled." He glared down at her with even less heat then before. "Don't worry, your secret's… safe with me, sensei…" She smiled at him, holding out her pinky finger. "Promise."
It was just the concussion. That was why he couldn't swallow, and why he locked his pinky around hers. "Good. The hell class would riot if I had to expel any of you, and that's way more trouble than I want to deal with." He grumbled. She nodded against his shoulder.
"Yeah… I would… too…" He realized a moment too late that her eyes had closed again.
"Dammit! Uraraka, wake up! Answer me!" He shook her, patted her cheek, but she wouldn't rouse.
"Wake up! Stay with me! Ochako!" He barely registered the usage of her first name, too swept up in his panic. He knew she wasn't dead, the rubble her Quirk was affecting was still floating, but that didn't ease the tension he felt as he checked for a pulse.
He exhaled in relief; it was still there. Weaker and slower than he liked, but still there. She was still breathing and her heart was still beating. He hadn't lost a kid yet.
He didn't know how long he sat there, holding her in his arms, counting her breaths, heart lowering into his stomach the slower they got. Long enough that he was starting to mentally prepare himself to shelter her when her Quirk started to fail, to perform CPR when her body finally gave out under the invisible strain of Quirk exhaustion and her injuries.
Long enough that he was trying to figure a way to get them out himself, because he refused to allow another student to be killed by debris, to sit here and watch as his kid died in his arms.
Before he reached the point of trying to dig them out with his bare hands, he heard the rocks shifting. For one terrifying moment, he thought they were going to come crashing down, but voices soon followed. Familiar voices. His kids had found them.
"Over here!"
"Jeez, this is bad. You don't think—"
"Shut up! It's Aizawa-sensei and Uraraka, they're fine."
The rubble shuddered as some of the nearer rocks began to shift. Shouta curled over her head.
"Hey, uh… Are rocks supposed to do that?"
"Do what— woah, that's crazy!"
"You idiots, that's Cheeks's Quirk! That means she's still alive, so be more fucking careful!"
Bakugo's voice came closer. And louder. "Yo, teach, can you hear us?!"
Shouta winced as the sound echoed through the debris and aggravated his headache. He coughed before responding. "I'd have to be dead not to hear you, Bakugo."
"Aizawa-sensei!"
"That was him! They're both alive!"
"Dig faster, he doesn't sound good!"
"Hurry up, you—"
"Get out of the way, Kacchan." Midoriya's voice, with a seriousness he'd only heard during villain fights, told Bakugo what to do in a way he'd also only heard in real combat. It was almost as surprising as the lack of explosions or shouting that followed, indicating that Bakugo had actually listened.
They must both be more worried than he'd thought. He would've been a little concerned for the state the villains responsible were in if he wasn't holding his dying badly injured student tight to his chest.
"Hang on, sensei!" Midoriya called. Shouta bit his lip and pushed himself backward with his good leg, dragging his bad leg with him. After how long it had been lying there, it had started to go numb, but the movement reawakened every nerve ending and made his hands shake from the pain. He kept himself curled around Uraraka. His leg might've hurt, but any further harm coming to his student was not an option.
A few seconds later, he could see the dark tendrils of Blackwhip snaking through cracks in the rocks. Shouta wasn't sure how Midoriya knew exactly where to wrap around them — some combination of a gadget made by Yaoyorozu and a creative application of his classmates' Quirks, if he had to guess — but he managed it well. Further tendrils, more than Shouta knew he could make, spread along the ceiling and walls in a spiderweb pattern to support them.
Then, the wall between them and the outside was ripped away.
The sudden brightness was overwhelming with his eyes adjusted to the dim flashlight and concussion. He blinked hard, seeing figures darting into the cave, rushing to his side. He ignored the instinctive urge to hold tighter to Uraraka and passed her to the one with explosion pins in his hair; he couldn't get out while carrying her, not with his leg.
Shoulders pushed beneath each of his arms and he was mostly carried out, his good foot taking a step whenever he could get it under him. He was set down against the base of a nearby tree. His eyes adjusted to the light just in time to see Midoriya drop to his knees, releasing Blackwhip as everyone made it out of the cave. The debris he'd been holding up crashed down with a booming roar and Shouta winced; he and Uraraka had almost been under that.
"Probable concussion, no broken limbs, sprained wrist and ankle…" He heard Yaoyorozu begin to list off injuries and turned to see Uraraka laid out on the ground, a few of her classmates hovering over her while more turned to him to do the same.
"Quirk exhaustion," he interrupted her. He didn't like doing it unless necessary, it had taken her so long to gain any kind of confidence, but with Uraraka's condition worsening they were on a short time limit. "I don't know how much weight she lifted in there, but it was too much. Release her Quirk, now." He directed. Midoriya, perched by her side, looked at her with a mixture of awe and concern on his face — now you know how it feels, problem child — and reached out. He took her hands in his, taking extra care with the one with the sprained wrist, and pressed her fingertips together. "Release," he said softly, in the same way she always does it.
A loud crashing came from inside the already collapsed rubble. Uraraka's body jerked as her Quirk stopped its continuous strain before falling still again.
Shouta leaned his head back against the tree, heaving a sigh of relief. She wasn't out of the woods yet, but now she could finally expend her energy on healing. His students fussed over him as well and he answered their questions the best he could. Finally, when he could hear the medevac helicopter nearby, he snapped his fingers, interrupting more worried chatter. "Hey. All of you, I'm alright. We're going to go to the hospital. You handled yourselves well in this situation, and it's over now." He spoke with a little more gentleness than he'd usually give them, but he was concussed, that was all.
He had a moment of peace before they finished processing and feeling reassured.
"Aw, Aizawa-senseiii!"
A dramatic sniffle. "You really do care!"
"Guys, he said it! He loves us!"
"Are we sure he's not dying?"
"Hey, don't put that energy into the universe! We love you too, sensei!"
"That—" *sob* "That was so manly, Aizawa-sensei!"
"Can all of you quit crying?!"
"Be nice, Kacchan! Thank you, sensei, that means a lot to us!" Rivers of tears. He should've known better than to say anything emotional within a mile of Midoriya.
"Quick, guys! All together!"
Then all of them, as a class: "THANK YOU, SENSEI!"
"I'll still expel all of you." No he wouldn't. They were damn hellions, but they were his hellions.