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Shouta is overwhelmed suddenly by a sickening wave of deja vu.
His hands are beginning to ache when he spots a hint of blood smeared on the side of a large chunk of rubble. The streak of red widens as it approaches the stone’s great underbelly, where it is ultimately swallowed by shadow. It is, so far, the only hint of life he has seen in this sea of destruction and despite the adrenaline, the fear, and especially despite the hope, he hesitates.
This will be different, he tells himself. This time will be different.
“I found something,” he calls, kneeling carefully, planting his hands on the side of the stone. It might have been part of a wall, once; a twist of rebar sticks out like a spindly half-melted bone. His stomach sinks as he picks up, amidst the smoke and dust, the tangy scent of copper.
Uraraka appears at his side with a gasp. Bakugou arrives seconds later, just as she presses her fingertips to the edge of the stone. Wordlessly he grabs it and shoves it aside before Shouta has the chance to do so himself. The next instant, his heart catches in his throat.
“No,” says Bakugou. It’s the quietest Shouta has ever heard him before. “No. No.”
Mechanically, without needing to think about it, Shouta reaches down to check for a pulse —
But his hands hover just over the body, unsure where to go. It is difficult to make out much of anything — a finger here, a tuft of hair there —
Uraraka turns and vomits. Bakugou is frozen, unspeaking. Shouta hears his heart hammering in his throat. He wills himself to wake from this nightmare, but with every breath he takes the truth settles further in, heavy and unforgiving.
He turns his face to the sky and tries desperately to blink back his tears.
He wakes wrapped in darkness that seems to press him down flat. His body aches worse than ever before, each piece of him thrumming with pain in complete unison.
There is a voice, distant, muffled by the bandages that wind around every inch of him. He strains to listen, but it is impossible to make out any individual words.
Slowly, though, recognition begins dawning. He knows this person, somehow, though his mind refuses to remember.
Hours pass in limbo, floating and yet weighed down. The voice comes and goes, often joined by another — this one, too, he recognizes, distantly, but it is even harder to place and he finds himself wondering if perhaps he is only fooling himself into remembering it.
Gently, and after much time has passed, the bandages are peeled away, and he blinks into the darkness, straining to make out shapes amidst the shadows. He hears mechanical hissing, pumping, the unmistakable tone of a heart monitor picking up as he glances around, unable to move any other part of his body.
“…conscious, and awfully healthy for a dead boy, although…”
Dead?
Izuku flexes his fingers, toes. His whole body is cold — but he cannot be dead. He can’t be.
“…vision, but that can be fixed…”
He tries to recall what he was last doing, where he last was. Memory returns in bits and pieces, fragmented and unreliable. Kacchan flying through the air, a chain of weightless civilians trailing behind him. Uraraka, dancing between falling debris, catching stray bodies and pulling them from the path of destruction.
Destruction on par with Kamino. He remembers — no, but, how did it begin? Shigaraki? All For One?
No, he tells himself. All For One is in Tartarus. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been.
“…rapid cell growth, but they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, not without…”
But that voice.
“…what you must. I expect that…”
He knows that voice.
“Of course. I’ll try to keep…”
It can’t be.
“…well. I will be there soon…”
It can’t be.
“…will be done, Master.”
It can’t be.
“…as long as it is returned to me.”
It is.
Class is suspended for —
A week? Two weeks? He doesn't remember. Shouta cannot possibly make himself think of work, not now. Maybe not ever again.
This is — after all these years — the first time this has happened. He had thought — all of his methods —
He was supposed to keep them safe. That was his one and only job. To keep them all safe.
What else was he there for?
Shouta is there when they bring in Midoriya Inko for a DNA test. There was little point in trying to get her to identify the body, but she had asked to see it anyway, her face already wet with tears.
He thinks to himself how cruel, how unnecessary this is, and yet he knows that sometimes you must subject yourself to a momentary cruelty in order to avoid a lifetime of your imagination running wild. He knows intimately what she must see when she closes her eyes, what visions and voices must keep her up at night. He cannot bring himself to tell her that he understands because for all their shared nightmares, for all their shared pains, he has only lost a student. This woman has lost her son.
Yagi accompanies her into the cold whitewashed room where they are keeping Midoriya’s body while Shouta stays selfishly in the hall, and for as long as he lives he will never forget the scream that tears its way from her throat.
He isn’t sure when he begins to unravel, only that there comes a point at which he is no longer strong enough to hold together the splintered pieces of himself.
There are others here, in the dark, eager to interpose themselves between him and the great pulling force that threatens each day to break him apart in new and terrible ways. When his grip begins to fail, as it inevitably does, he feels them reach out to hold him together, urging him to save his strength for the fight to come.
But this is the only fight he knows, maybe the only fight he will ever know. What came before is lost in the shadows, falling through the cracks that yawn wide between life and death. The only thing that remains certain is that he must survive. He must fight.
Even as he is taken apart day by day and pieced together night by night, he holds on to this. He holds on.
Hizashi finds him in a dive bar on the other side of the city, knuckles bruised and bloody and pressed against the cool side of what must be his eighth drink.
There was a time where he would have hopped onto the open barstool next to him, where they might have drowned their sorrows in something equally strong and bitter. Instead he leans against the bar and loudly clears his throat. “You look like you've had enough.”
“Hardly.”
Shouta is sure he’s not just talking about drinks. He must have passed the unconscious man slumped outside the bar on his way in, his face bruised in what should be a familiar pattern. Or then, maybe not. Shouta had called the police to come pick him up, though he had implied he himself would be elsewhere by the time they arrived.
“Shou,” Hizashi says, planting one hand on the bar, “I'm taking you home.”
Shouta takes a long drink. His glass is empty when he slams it on the hardwood, save for the ice that clinks against the sides. He looks up at Hizashi through half-lidded eyes and curls one hand into a fist next to the glass.
“Make me,” he grits out, knuckles aching for another round.
“Don’t make me do this.”
“I’m not making you do anything.”
With the distinct affect of a man defeated, Hizashi lets out a loud sigh and slips onto the stool next to Shouta. “We’re all taking this hard. You’re not the only one who…”
Shouta uncurls his fist, shifting his wrist to press his knuckles to the glass again. Hizashi presses his eyes shut, apparently at a loss for words; this is rare enough that it grabs Shouta’s attention, even as his mind struggles to hold onto anything that isn’t the sting of condensation against raw flesh.
“You’re not the only one who’s hurting,” he settles on, opening his eyes to glance at Shouta.
“I fucking know that,” he spits out. Immediately he can tell that it was the wrong thing to say, but Hizashi only presses his lips in a tight, half-smile that doesn’t nearly reach his eyes.
“I think you’ve had enough,” he says, again. “Shouta. Please. Let’s just go home.”
From his pocket he takes a wad of cash and sets it on the counter, greatly overestimating how many drinks Shouta has actually had. Affronted, bitterness coiling tight in his chest, Shouta rises and walks — does not stumble — out the door.
But the cracks remain large, and it doesn’t take long for doubt to creep its way in. He is sure this is by design, and yet that does not make it any easier to resist.
He asks himself, between screaming, between bleeding, between gasping for air and begging for mercy, how long this will go on. How long will it take for someone, anyone, to find him? To bring him home?
It is the thing he imagines most at night, when he is in too much pain to sleep, when he finds himself searching for any strength he has left. He imagines All Might, Eraserhead, Kacchan and Uraraka and Todoroki and Iida and —
Everyone. Anyone. He’s really not picky.
But then, maybe there’s no one left. Maybe they are all dead, like him; or worse, maybe they are alive and well and they simply do not care that he is not.
It doesn’t matter.
Either way, he is alone.
All Might is late to the funeral.
Shouta finds him half-dressed in the hallway outside of Midoriya’s room, slumped against the open doorframe with his face buried in his hands.
The room is dark, and has remained largely untouched over the past several weeks. The sole exception is the myriad cards, notes, and letters plastered on the outside of the door, or in some cases slipped into the room through the gap between the door and the carpet. Other than that, it is a time capsule, slowly gathering dust.
Yagi hasn’t quite stepped over the threshold into the room proper. At his feet lie several folded letters and a few small dried flowers that Shouta recognizes from around campus, though there are some he cannot place in their browned, shriveled state.
Slowly Yagi crouches down to pick one up, twirling it idly between his fingers. It crumbles to pieces, scattering on the floor like the dust that has begun to gather where the walls meet the floor, in the folds and creases on the bedsheets, on the tops of books and half-written homework assignments that will never be turned in now.
“All Might —”
“Just start without me,” Yagi says. His voice is lower, taking that somber tone he first adopted on the night the body was found. He, like the flowers, like the dust, looks as though a gentle breeze might tear him apart and send him tumbling into some unseen crevice from which he might never again emerge.
He rises, and when he lifts an arm to wipe at his face Shouta grabs him — gently, but firmly — and pulls him into the hall.
The light catches the tracks on his cheeks, but only casts darker shadows over his eyes. Shouta stares at him, a lump in his throat. Yagi’s skin is cold against his, and prickled with goosebumps. He watches Shouta expectantly, waiting for a lecture.
He should know what to say, he thinks, distantly, but it still feels like he is watching all of this happen to someone else. Everything has spiraled so far from his control that the notion of controlling himself, or that he should continue behaving rationally, seems laughable.
And yet.
“You should be there,” he says, finally. He swallows. “He would want you to be there.”
Yagi’s eyebrows twitch up and then pull down hard. He reaches across with his free hand to grab at Shouta’s wrist. “You have no idea what —”
“Don’t,” says Shouta. “Don’t make this about you.” Yagi’s eyes widen. “You were — special to him. And he to you. Don’t — Don’t deny him this.”
Yagi’s grip on his wrist loosens, his fingers falling away listlessly. Shouta lets go of his arm and watches it return slowly to his side. “It’s not right,” he says. “It — It isn’t fair.”
“No,” Shouta says softly. “It never is.”
And then he asks himself —
Why?
Why should he have to wait?
Why should he have to endure, why should he have to be strong, why should he have to survive what is clearly meant to tear him to pieces?
There is no answer, not from within, not from without.
So he waits. He waits for the doctor to grow complacent. He waits for him to believe that all the fight has drained out of him. He waits for the day he does not hear the lock click shut on the door.
And when the pain fades to its usual full-body ache, he reaches in and grabs the ruined, twisted pieces of himself. And he wills himself to move, despite the shackles, the splintered bones, the sore and strained muscles.
It is the fight of his life. But he does not fight for himself, nor by himself. He fights for the hands that rise to carry him, for the hands that never came, even for the hands that dragged him down into this hell in the first place.
The weeks, months, maybe years of torture only taught his mind how to disconnect from his body, and so he keeps fighting even as he is cut down, again and again and again. He keeps fighting even as blood drips from his lips, even as his legs go numb and stiff beneath him. He keeps fighting. He keeps fighting.
Please, he repeats: Let me win.
He tears his way through the darkness, and though he breaks himself in the process it does not slow him down, because now it finally, finally means something.
Blood splatters behind him, drips down his skin from wounds that seem never to close, and he walks on broken legs toward the rising sun.
“Please,” says the detective, voice crackling from Yagi’s broken phone.
It’s hard to read the man’s expression these days, but —
Shouta thinks it looks like hope.
“We’ll be there,” Yagi says. He hangs up and puts his face in his hands.
“‘We?’” Shouta asks, quirking an eyebrow. Yagi nods.
“Please,” he says, voice muffled as it slips through his fingers, “do not make me go alone.”
In the weeks since the funeral, Yagi has been slowly waking again, like a flower finally blooming after the frost has lifted. He has been distant, yes, but slowly he has been closing that gap, drifting back into place.
Wordlessly Shouta stands, reaching out a hand for Yagi to take. For a moment he remains on the couch, hands pressed to his face, but when he finishes gathering himself he looks up and then tentatively takes Shouta’s hand, letting Shouta pull him to his feet.
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” Shouta says. He knows that Yagi is older, and has likely faced just as much if not more loss in his long career. Surely, he should know how this kind of thing works.
But he also knows that Midoriya was like a son to him, and if there is even a glimmer of hope, Yagi will have no other choice than to latch on with both hands, even if that means strangling it to death.
“I know,” says Yagi. “I… I think, on the way… I have something I should tell you.”
He waits until they are in a car, one of the fastest UA has on hand, to continue. Shouta isn’t really sure what to expect, though he has to admit that, for the first time in weeks, he is hesitantly curious.
Yagi seems hesitant to speak, at first, and must preface his thoughts with a warning. “This is all meant to be kept secret. And it’s not all my secret to share.”
Keeping his eyes on the road, Shouta nods. “Continue.”
“You won’t share this with anyone?”
“It really depends,” he says. “But I can do my best.”
It seems that’s good enough for Yagi, because he takes a deep breath and begins to speak in a low, conspiratorial tone. “I don’t think Midoriya is dead. And before you say anything, I should tell you that I have good reason to believe this.”
“Oh?” he asks, hopefully managing to keep his tone conversational.
“It has to do with my quirk. Or, I should say, our quirk. It’s called One For All, and it is the counterpart to All For One — that is, it can be passed down from one user to another, similar to the way All For One can transfer quirks. Many years ago, my master passed it to me, and just before Midoriya took the entrance exam, I passed it to him.”
Shouta blinks. He grips the wheel, trying hard not to drift out of his lane. “You gave him a quirk,” he repeats. Next to him, Yagi nods.
“It’s why he was so self-destructive at the beginning of the year,” he says, as if this explains everything. “His body was not used to the power yet, but over time he has improved greatly —”
“Stop,” says Shouta.
“— and recently, I’ve been able to… I don’t really know how to say it, but — I’ve been able to feel him, as though —”
“Please stop.”
“— he’s still out there, somewhere. And I thought I was deluding myself at first, but —”
“Stop it,” he shouts. The car goes silent. Shouta’s fingers dig into the shiny black leather of the steering wheel. He forces himself to let out a long, slow breath. Yagi is completely still beside him, and he cannot make himself glance over to read the expression on his face.
Part of him hopes Yagi will start yelling at him, but — no. He says nothing, and Shouta must force himself to pick the right words out of the silence.
“You can let yourself believe whatever you like,” he says, low. “And for your sake, I hope…” He swallows hard. “I can only hope you’re right. But I will not hear it. Not now.”
“Aizawa…”
“I would give anything,” he says, knuckles white against the wheel, “to prove you right. Anything. But I can’t listen to this. Please.”
The rest of the drive passes by in silence.
He stumbles down the street, adrenaline fading; with each step his body grows heavier, stooping lower and lower as gravity and exhaustion beat down on him in tandem.
It’s impossible to say how long he has been walking, or even where he’s going — just that every step carries him a little farther from that place, which is unequivocally a good thing.
At some point he loses his balance and comes to sprawled against the side of a building, curled tight and small. He spots bloodstains on the ground, but they are mostly dried now. He tries to push to his feet but his body protests, depleted.
So he collapses there, breathing heavily. His mind is still foggy, and growing foggier still. He tries to recall why he’s here, who he was looking for — or was it that someone was looking for him?
The occasional shadow passed over him as the afternoon settles in and people start walking home from school, from work. He shrinks further into the dark, pressing himself tight against the wall and trying desperately not to be seen. Someone will be looking for him, someone by whom he cannot afford to let himself be found.
He has to get to UA. To All Might. To safety.
But his body is so heavy. His fingers buzz and then go cold, stiff. He lets his eyes drift shut, tucking his head close to his chest.
He blinks away tears. They catch in his lashes and then fall, swallowed by the dark concrete. His lungs stutter as a shiver wracks his body. He thinks, suddenly —
But it’s okay. The terror passes through him, unable to touch him. He lets his head loll and feels his temple press against the cold ground. Some part of him still wants to fight, to survive, but there is nothing left.
At least he’s free. That has to count for something, in the end.
Tsukauchi seems much more receptive to Yagi’s crackpot theories than Shouta. Yagi tells him, as they make their way through toward the security firm, about the supposed connection that he has felt the past few weeks. He is careful not to look directly at Shouta as he speaks, perhaps afraid that Shouta will snap at him again.
When they get inside, a nervous looking man in a suit is waiting, and he actually breaks into a visible sweat when he notices All Might walking through the door. It takes Tsukauchi a moment to coax anything comprehensible out of him, but finally he seems to snap back to himself, remembering why he had called a detective here in the first place.
He leads them to a back office full of screens, and loads up a camera feed on one of them, grainy and slightly discolored. It shows what looks like the back entrance to some building, located in a small alleyway; there are a few empty pallets, a trash bag just out of frame, but mostly it seems rather innocuous. According to the time stamp in the corner, the footage was recorded just a few hours ago.
“I only recognized him from that Sports Festival thing,” he says, adjusting his collar as the video begins to play. “I mean, I know he’s supposed to be, um, well, dead, but…”
Someone passes by the edge of the frame, casting a long shadow into the alleyway. Though lacking detail, it is almost certainly Midoriya Izuku who stumbles into frame a moment later, shirtless, arms wrapped around himself, covered in dried and fresh blood. He sways for a moment, then presses his back to the building, almost perfectly facing the camera, and slowly slides down, leaving a long streak of red on the wall behind him.
The man leans down to press a button on the keyboard, and the video speeds up for a moment, showing Midoriya — or someone who looks remarkably similar — leaning there against the wall for hours. In fast forward he slumps down further, curls into himself, scoots further into the alleyway.
He pauses the footage there, with Midoriya collapsed on the ground, eyes shut, face lax. Shouta stares, trying to comprehend.
“Where was this taken?” Yagi asks.
“It’s just outside the Akahashi Hero Support firm. They’re on the edge of the Kansai region, in Mie. I can, uh, give you the address, if —”
“No need,” says Shouta. He turns to leave, trusting that Yagi and Tsukauchi will follow. The nervous man stammers out a goodbye, which Tsukauchi is kind enough to return, and which Yagi and Shouta are far too focused to acknowledge.
Shouta barely waits for Tsukauchi to climb in the backseat before he pulls into the road, completely focused for the first time in weeks.
He drives like an absolute maniac, hearing both Yagi and Tsukauchi swearing at him as he races across the city. It falls on deaf ears, though; eventually Yagi resorts to silently gripping his seatbelt. Shouta can’t see well enough into the backseat to see if Tsukauchi is doing something similar.
What should be a nearly two hour drive ends just over forty minutes later with Shouta taking up two marked spots on the side of the street, front tire veering slightly into the road. He barely remembers to pull the keys from the ignition and almost gets hit by oncoming traffic as he pulls himself out of the car on stiff legs.
“Which direction?” Yagi asks, slamming the passenger door shut. Tsukauchi is speaking to someone on the phone, but he points to the left, and Shouta runs, barrelling through the thin crowd. Yagi is close on his heels, coughing into his elbow as he runs.
He sees a dark brown stain on the pavement, then another. He follows them down the street until he spots a familiar looking alleyway. There is another splotch of dried blood at its maw, widening as it leads further in. The scene is so sickeningly familiar, but —
But when he rounds the corner, there he is.
He’s so thin. So small. At first Shouta isn’t even sure that he’s breathing, and his heart drops — surely, surely he did not come all this way, after all this time, just to be a few hours or even minutes late —
But then Midoriya shudders as the breeze wafts into the alleyway, digging his nails into his arms in his sleep.
Shouta kneels carefully and plants one hand on Midoriya’s shoulder and the other against his neck. His skin is cold to the touch, but it is not the coldness of death, not yet. His pulse is weak and thready, but it is there, actually there beneath Shouta’s fingers.
Yagi comes up behind him, out of breath, and the scent of copper thickens. “Is he…?”
“Call an ambulance,” Shouta says, “right now.”
His eyes trace the path of scars up Midoriya’s fingers, his arms, all across his torso. There are plenty of new marks, many of them barely healed, a few still actively, if sluggishly, bleeding. He swallows.
“Where have you been?” he asks quietly, eyeing the dirtied hospital gown tied around the kid’s waist. There is a story here, and not a kind one.
He will hear it when Midoriya wakes, he’s sure. There are so many questions, and hopefully there will be just as many answers. But even if there is no explanation for any of this, Shouta will be grateful, eternally, for this little miracle.
Shouta presses his body close to his student’s, warding off the cold, and waits.