Work Text:
Aizawa stood at the window nursing a strong cup of coffee. In the long stretch between his teacher's accommodation and Heights Alliance, fresh snow covered the sidewalks and greens. Sweeper bots would be out later to salt the paths, and later still Class A would make their way into the main building for the day's lessons.
For now it was quiet. Untouched.
Aizawa didn't startle when he felt a small body brush past his knee, but he did drop one hand onto Eri's head as she passed, gently smoothing down her hair.
With both hands, she clutched the windowsill, peering out into the snow around a yawn. Then, carefully, she breathed onto the glass and raised one finger to draw a smiley face.
A careful, quiet step to the left, the process repeated, and a top-heavy heart was left in the condensation.
Panel after panel, Eri leaned close and left something behind: a smiling sun, a smiling cat, a smiling Midoriya and an unsmiling Bakugou beside him. Aizawa was familiar enough by now with Eri's drawing habits to recognize them: dotted freckles and spiky hair, respectively. Aizawa's own portrait appeared a moment later, a characteristic swirl around his neck and a small shape that was probably the principal popping out of it.
Aizawa stepped forward and breathed on the panel above his own portrait, dragging the tip of his finger through the condensation until Eri could clearly see a little girl with long, wavy hair and a very small horn pointing up to the sky. Aizawa drew her smiling, pleased to spy the same expression on her face when his gaze flicked downward.
"Did you want to go play in the snow?" he asked her.
"No," Eri murmured, shaking her head. She peered up at Aizawa with her large, unblinking eyes, doing her best to telepathically inform him she'd like to be lifted.
Obediently, Aizawa set his coffee on the windowsill and hefted her into his arms. He hadn't quite convinced her yet that she could ask for the things she wanted- that she could merely lift her arms in the air and he'd be powerless to tell her no. As it was, Aizawa dedicated himself to understanding the nuance in her wide and shining eyes.
Eri clutched onto the collar of Aizawa's shirt, gentle, always gentle, and began breathing on the unbranded window glass now available to her, fogging it up.
"Can you draw a cat?" she whispered.
"Of course," Aizawa whispered back, shifting her small weight into one arm and reaching out to draw a cat with the other- the same familiar shape that dotted the margins of his own notebooks, growing up.
"That's Ears," Eri said, pointing to Aizawa's finished picture, the cat's ears quite large in proportion to the rest of its face.
"And that's Whiskers," she continued, pointing to her own cat and the long, long lines that made up its nose.
"They're friends," she informed Aizawa simply.
"They met in the snow and Ears took Whiskers home and made her all better."
Aizawa pressed his cheek gently- always gently- to the crown of Eri's head, eyes slipping shut. He ran his knuckles up and down her spine, the snow and the cooling coffee and the classes still to come all forgotten, for a moment, in favor of the warm press of Eri's small cheek against his shoulder.
"I think Whiskers makes Ears all better, too," he whispered.
"Really?" she asked, her hope stronger than her disbelief, growing braver by the day.
"Really," he promised.
In a minute, Aizawa will carry her into the kitchen and start breakfast. He'll place a kiss to the crown of her head and notice, in a week's time, that she does the same with all of the many stuffed animals she owns. She'll start to ask him about his life, and he'll tell her a story about three young heroes who wanted to change the world, and how it's okay to miss people when they're gone. How it's important to cherish the people we still have with us and know that there are many people in this world who will love us that we've yet to meet.
But for now, he hums a song Oboro had loved when they were teenagers as he draws pictures in the window with the gentle little girl placed so suddenly in his care.
There will be time for the rest.