Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

ONE

The rough wood of the park bench dug into his back. The planks were uneven and splintered, and he was sure that when he got up there would be little barbs of splinters needling into the back of his shirt but it was still better than laying on the dirty ground. The late afternoon sun peaked through the foliage around him, making the inside of his closed eyelids glow red.

Aizawa grunted, trying to shift on the bench so his face was more completely tucked into the shadow of the overgrown tree above him without cheese grating his clothing on the old, unfinished wood. He had little success and settled on throwing an arm over his eyes and burying his nose in the crook of his elbow.

Expectations and deadlines overwhelmed his mind, and the stress and pressure of transferring into the hero course and the following consequences left his body sore and energy drained.

His eyes burned from quirk use. He felt as though sand had been blasted into his propped open eyelids, and he wished that he could just pluck them out, drop them in a jar of water, and deal with them later. The overgrown cockatoo of a classmate who sat next to him held the majority of the blame for his current state. The blond’s headache-inducing voice quirk made it easy to pretend that the red, swollen eyes and deepening eyebags were just due to quirk overuse and proximity.

No one thought to wonder if there were any other reasons the recalcitrant teen had showed up to class with painfully red-rimmed eyes and a bone-deep exhaustion. And Aizawa didn’t have to spend any unnecessary time, energy, or money hiding the aftermath of last week’s disaster. He wasn’t sure if he should be grateful for his obnoxious desk neighbor and the blue-haired kid’s constant harassing, or default to cursing his parents and wishing he’d never been born.

As he lay on the abandoned park bench, one that he’d found the other day that had been reclaimed by the park’s unmanaged greenery and hidden from view or use, he settled on a mix of both. The loathing he felt for himself and his DNA donors festered in his chest and behind his eyes. If he thought too much about it, let himself linger on the scathing accusations and smashed glass, he could feel his throat start to constrict and salty tears sting the corners of his eyes.

So instead, he stuffed it down with the rest of his shitty life and squeezed his eyes shut tighter, and begged his brain for sleep.

Although, of course, he couldn’t let himself sleep too deeply. No, it was never that simple.

Aizawa teetered on a knife’s edge, never sleeping well enough to sink into suffocating, mind-rending nightmares that left him waking with a start and gasping through panic attacks. Still trying to sleep enough to numb his looping thoughts of self-hatred and the niggling urge to walk quickly into the nearest oncoming traffic. Or off a bridge. Off the roof. Off a chair with a belt around his neck. At this point, he wasn’t feeling picky.

Just tired.

So tired.  

The world around him fuzzed as he floated just out of consciousness. He let his mind drift in the blanketed nothing of a mind worked past exhaustion. Until the sensation of something brushing his face snapped his mind back into his body.

He didn’t flinch. He knew better than that. With his eyes still closed and his face forced into relaxation he tried to keep his breathing slow and steady and listen to what was happening around him.

There was rustling. Clothes against a bag, shoes in the leaves on the ground. A small voice murmured almost imperceptibly as the whirr of an opened zipper ripped through the evening’s quiet. More rustling. Papers and rattling, maybe pencils or stationary? Was it another student? What were they trying to do?

Anxiety was starting to climb up his throat as he waited. He heard the clink of a metal tin opening and paper tearing before that touch was back. Aizawa tried to peer through his lashes at the person in front of him as something cool and sticky was secured to his cheek. Immediate relief nearly made him flinch harder than any anticipated pain as the bruise from where he’d been backhanded was soothed by the compress.

In front of him. Shadowed slightly by the overhanging branches and his own fluffy, unkempt hair, was a child.

Aizawa’s eyes slid open the rest of the way as the kid turned back around to tuck the tin of first aid supplies back into his garish yellow backpack. The short thing was dressed in a gaudy All Might t-shirt that has certainly seen better days. One of the sleeves had been ripped at the hem and the graphic on the front was slightly stained by something dark that clearly hadn’t been washed out properly.

Overgrown green curls hung over his large green eyes and his cheeks were flushed and round with baby fat. The kid was tiny. Shorter than Aizawa realized people ever started out and thin, the t-shirt hanging slightly off his shoulders. His tongue stuck out of his mouth slightly as he focused intently on reorganizing his bag and zipping it back up. He was turned away from Aizawa and didn’t seem to notice as the hero student slowly pushed himself up into a seated position behind the kid.

The toddler-looking thing, Aizawa was terrible with kids and even worse with differentiating them, attempted to quietly slide the bag onto his back and sneak away from the bench and out of the bushes in the horrifically loud way that only kids managed when trying to be subtle. Branches cracked noisily under clunky-looking red shoes and the kid actually tripped and faceplanted into a small stump, bashing his forehead on the rotting wood and yelping.

Quickly, the kid scrambled onto his butt, glancing over his shoulder with wide eyes to see if he’d woken the supposedly sleeping teen behind him. His green eyes were watering threateningly as a small, red lump started to swell above his left brow. Aizawa met the kid’s frantic gaze with a tiredly quirked eyebrow and his typical resting glower.

The logical response any wandering fetus would have should they find themselves with the misfortune of looking at him, a grouchy teen who looked like sleep deprivation grew legs, and walked into a barfight, would be to run away. Or maybe burst into tears. Possibly both.

In a fantastic display of a complete lack of any logic or self-preservation, the child beamed toothily up at him with all the brightness and excitement of the literal sun. The actual sun setting behind the child lit up his bush of hair in a red and orange halo. Aizawa squinted before looking away.

 “H-hiya mister!” the child bounced up to his feet, practically vibrating with excitement. “Mommy says, she saids that it’s not nice to d-dust…di…dee-stub,” He stuttered, parroting a clearly unfamiliar word, “Sleeping people. That means to bother!” He informed the student cheerfully, grinning as though he were imparting some particularly important information.

“S’cause everyone likes naps.” The child stated, nodding seriously.

Aizawa just stared blankly at the little gremlin thing, agreeing completely with its mother and wishing it had followed its own advice.

The child didn’t seem bothered by the lack of response, bounding closer with his backpack bouncing noisily against his back. “BUT!” and he paused as though to build suspense, “You’ve gots an ouchie. And-and that means you needed help!”

Chubby fingers clenching into two small fists the child planted firmly on his bony hips as he puffed his chest out and smiled widely.

“Hero’s always help people! And I’m gonna be the BEST hero, just like All Might!” The kid’s posture wilted slightly and he scuffed his red shoe in the dirt. “Even though Kacchan says that I can’t.” And damn if that statement didn’t hit Aizawa just a little bit too close to home.

The kid changed emotions fast enough to make Aizawa’s already throbbing head spin and he straightened, planting his clunky red shoes determinedly on the ground. “But I’m gonna show him. I’m NOT useless.”

The kid looked so proud of himself as he posed, head ducked slightly underneath the low hanging limbs of the tree overhead and his clothing tattered and dirty.

Aizawa pitied the kid’s parents. It must take so much energy to deal with him all of the time.

As he watched the bouncing child in front of him, Aizawa wondered if he’d ever been so small and cheerful. He couldn’t imagine it. He certainly didn’t remember it. He was pretty sure he just popped into existence sour-faced and jaded and skipped the boundless energy and optimism part of childhood.

The little green creature was still posing, waiting expectantly for… something. With considerable mental effort, given his interrupted nap and mounting migraine, Aizawa muttered out a response.

“…Okay, kid.”
The wide green eyes that had been peering up at him nearly squinted shut with the force of the child’s smile. It was like Aizawa had just single-handedly given him everything he’d ever dreamed of, served up on a shiny silver platter, instead of grumbling out a half-hearted response.

If he had been able to get a full night’s sleep and wasn’t running on physical, mental, and emotional fumes, he might have felt bad for how standoffish he was towards the kid. He was sure the blond guy who sat next to him in school would have been squealing loud enough to flatten the city at the kid’s big green eyes and sincere positivity. It was nothing personal, though. Aizawa was just too tired for this.

The kid blinked, and took a couple of toddling steps closer to Aizawa, leaning into his space. A small, chubby hand pointed a bitten fingernail at Aizawa’s cheek and Aizawa absently scratched at the cooling pad’s adhesive.

The kid froze for a second, and Aizawa could practically watch the wheels turning behind those big green eyes. Then the kid jumped, his smile widening impossibly as he gestured wildly between the patch on Aizawa’s cheek and the egg-shaped lump on the kid’s forehead.

“We match!” The kid was stupidly excited for someone who had just taken a pretty good hit to the head. Maybe that was why? Shit, can kids get concussions? Aren’t their skulls squishy or something? God, did Aizawa have to worry about this kid’s squishy skull?

“…Yeah. Sure.” The monotone drawl didn’t seem to dull the kid’s mood as he bounced in place and Aizawa groaned softly, running a hand through greasy black hair before sitting up straighter to catch the kid’s attention. “Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to talk to strangers?”

The little kid furrowed his brow dramatically as he chewed on his thumbnail, thinking seriously for a second. Then, something must have clicked in that mushy brain of his because his face snapped up to meet Aizawa’s tired gaze with a glowing smile that showed off his missing tooth.

“Yup!”

Aizawa blinked, already feeling a new headache building behind his eyes.

“Kid, I’m a stranger.”

The child’s brow furrowed again, and quiet muttering filled the pensive pause. Aizawa half-heartedly listened, his eyes starting to ache as he watched through half-lowered lids. He was pretty sure he heard a couple quiet, ‘But, boo-boo,’s argued in a pouty voice that the kid countered himself with, ‘momma said…’.

Just as Aizawa was starting to fear that the kid’s brain might explode from the difficult conundrum, green eyes snapped up to his and Aizawa found himself on the receiving end of another blinding smile.

“My name is Izuku Midoriya and-and I am four and a halfs years old!” he cheered, holding out four fingers and grinning like he’d just solved a great mystery. “And now you know that, so no more stranger!”

“That’s… that’s really not how it works…” Aizawa huffed, but it also wasn’t his joy to try and teach the tiny human bouncing in front of him. If his parents were going to let him wander parks at dusk, then he wasn’t too surprised at the child’s lack of reason. Speaking of which, “Where are your parents?”

For the first time in their exhausting exchange, because Aizawa wouldn’t call whatever this was a conversation, the kid’s shoulders drooped. “Mommy is sleeping. And, and I never had a daddy. Mommy told me that he is in Am… Ameki… Am-er-ee-ka, but Kacchan said she’s lying.” The kid didn’t let his mood last long, though, and grabbed his backpack straps with both hands as he spun around and started to march out of the bushes. “Anyway, BYE!”

The little kid waddled away as fast as his stubby legs and too-large shoes would carry him, and Aizawa flopped back onto his splintery bench. His head hurt and his eyes were dry. But the patch on his cheek was cool and relaxing and he found himself drifting off into a light, blessedly dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

TWO

The second time Aizawa found the strange green child, he was once again hiding on his bench under the tree.

Aizawa cradled his arm to his chest, trying to not let it move. With each breath and slight twitch, the fabric of his school uniform dragged over his forearm and pulled at the tender skin and small, weeping wounds. His legs were pulled up onto the bench where he sat, huddled, and trying to make himself as small as possible.

Everything was too much.

His classmates were too loud, too nosy, too stupidly privileged. Their pretty, powerful quirks floated them through life with compliments and encouragement.

Aizawa’s stomach growled, and he curled into himself further, squeezing his dry eyes shut against the late afternoon sun and the bright, shifting colors around him that made his aching vision swim. The smell of cigarette smoke on his clothes made his stomach roil and his throat threatened to close shut. The anxiety building in his chest with each reeking breath of air set him on edge, making him feel like a feral, cornered animal as he huddled over his injuries and tried to stay awake.

But exhaustion blanketed him, pulling at his eyelids and limbs, making him slow and clumsy. He was already bruised and battered from training, mentally stretched thin from fighting to stay afloat in his classes, and completely drained of energy. The nights were starting to get cooler as fall crept closer to winter and the first weeks of the school year stretched into months. His bench, still as rotted and splintered as when he first found it, was unsteady, and the gaps between the planks allowed for the chilly air to waft up against his skin.

Sleep had evaded him. Even on the days that he could calm his mind enough, when his exhaustion was heavy enough to weigh down his anxiety, the sleep he would manage to scrape together outside was fitful at best and frequently interrupted by passing people and cars. There was constant noise and never a guarantee of safety.

Never being able to let down his guard had started to peel away at his sanity, and he could feel himself cracking. His resolve was crumbling, as he struggled to keep his eyes open in the warmth of the classroom, and the only thing that held him together was spite. His signature rationality had been chased away.

With his head bowed forward as he curled into himself on the bench, he wasn’t able to immediately see who crashed through the bushes and hopped up on the bench next to him.

But he could see, from where his head was tucked between his knees, the stubby little legs swinging out into the air, bulky red shoes standing out against the dirt and plant debris.

His eyes trailed up the kid as he lifted his head, and Aizawa observed (more out of habit than interest) that the kid’s graphic t-shirt and pants were even more soiled than before. The right sleeve of the shirt was blackened, and it looked stiff and ready to crumble at the first sideways glance.

The kid pulled his yellow backpack off and set it onto his lap with a concerningly heavy thud. Aizawa watched through half-lidded eyes as the kid zipped open the back and riffled past several well-worn notebooks to dig through the bottom of the bag. With a pleased sound, the kid pulled back out the first aid tin Aizawa had heard the day before, as well as a fistful of various snacks. Wordlessly, the kid dumped the snacks on the bench between them and heaved his heavy bag to the ground.

The tin opens with a pop, revealing a vaguely lunchbox-sized container absolutely stuffed to the brim with every possible type of first aid supplies. Aizawa should probably be very concerned that the 4-year-old just casually carries something like this around. Just from his passing glance, Aizawa can see medical shears, an instant icepack, a plethora of bandages, burn creams, burn dressings, butterfly bandages, and alcohol swabs. There was more buried underneath.

The child sets the open tin down on his lap and spins to face the hero student, folding his legs up into a crisscross position so he can sit sideways on the old wooden bench.

“Hi again!” the child cheers, smiling brightly up at the teen’s curled-up form. Aizawa looks down at him disbelievingly.

“…Hey, kid.” The little movement he made to look down at the child agitated his wrist and Aizawa wasn’t able to stop the pained hiss from leaving his lips.

The kid nods at him, his brows pinched with far too much understanding for someone so little. To Aizawa’s mute surprise, the expression isn’t pitying or belittling. Though maybe kids his age just haven’t learned those emotions yet. Kids were creepy, sticky little mysteries.

“Gimmi.” The green-haired boy stretched his hands forward, making grabby motions at Aizawa’s injured wrist.

“No.” Aizawa replied flatly, not wanting to even think about moving it, let alone letting some grubby little, short thing anywhere near his arm.

The kid pouted, low lip jutting out almost cartoonishly. “You’re hurt again. Gimmi!” His demands tapered off into a high-pitched whine that made Aizawa want to find a hole to bury his head in.

“I don’t need your help, kid. Go find somewhere else to play doctor.”

Aizawa had the feeling that if the kid was standing up, he would have stomped his foot.

“I’m not playing!” damn kids and their shrill little voices. “You’re hurt again. Heroes help people when they’re hurt! I promise I’ll be super-duper gentle, I’m really good at it. Mommy doesn’t even notice when I’m hurt anymore!”

Well, that’s not concerning at all.

Aizawa slowly pulled his arm away from where it was cradled to his chest and set it down on his lap with his wrist up and facing the child. The gremlin’s voice was more painful than the tender skin stuck to his sleeve and maybe if he let the kid spit on it or whatever kids do, he’d go away and Aizawa could finally go to sleep.

The gesture was met with another blinding smile and the kid reached forward to slowly fold up Aizawa’s shirt sleeve. At the first bit of resistance, where the fluid seeping from the wound had crusted to the fabric, the kid dropped his hands and turned quickly to dig through the ugly yellow bag at his feet. He popped back up with a battered metal water bottle in his hand, the old All Might stickers curling away from the dented shell.  

With his brain as sleep-deprived and foggy as it was, it didn’t occur to Aizawa what the kid was doing as he unscrewed the cap and held the bottle over his arm, which the kid had moved so it was outstretched over the dirt past the bench.

“Hey, what the—” The kid upended the bottle, lukewarm water soaking his arm and sleeve and making the burns sting.

Aizawa reached out with his other hand to snatch up the bottle but to his shock and surprise the kid slapped his hand away.

“Nuh-uh. I’m helping.” The kid’s tongue was sticking out slightly from between his lips as he focused on the water trickling down Aizawa’s arm and dripping off his fingers. “Mommy says to sit on your hands when you can’t keep them still. You should try that.”

Aizawa stopped himself before he laughed incredulously, but it was a near thing.

When the kid dragged Aizawa’s dripping arm back to the bench and rested it on his lap, the fabric didn’t pull at the wound. The hero student braced for pain and ripping skin as the child started to fold up the sleeve again, but there was only the general discomfort of damp cotton dragging over blisters and open wounds.

The kid stopped when the folded fabric reached the crook of Aizawa’s elbow, leaving the mess of his inner arm exposed to air and on display for both of them to see.

It was nauseating. Aizawa hadn’t actually looked at it since it happened earlier that day. Too busy getting kicked to the curb again by his useless sperm donor, gathering up the singed papers of the assignment he had left in his old room and gone back for from where they’d been tossed next to him in the street, and then wandering numbly through the back alleys of Musutafu to focus too much on the state of his arm.

The two of them stared for a quiet moment as they both assessed his skin.

His forearm was a mess of little, round burns. All of his skin was red and irritated, but around the blisters was especially warm. Black ash was crusted into the blisters from where the cigarette butt had been ground into his skin. Some of them had torn as he’d been tossed around or been walking, and the exposed skin was weeping blood and clear fluid. Some of them looked a little more purple than red. One looked concerningly green.

A normal kid might have screamed. Or cried. Or expressed any various kind of disgust and fear. Once again, Aizawa was presented with a reason he really should be concerned about this kid.

The kid looked at his arm with a numb kind of understanding that made the child look years too old. A soft sigh made the bubbly child’s shoulders droop, just for a second, before he forced his face into a smile and looked up at the teen in front of him.

“It’s going to be okay. ‘cause I am here!” The number one hero’s catchphrase sounded so different coming from those little lips. Less like the awe-inspiring statement that was meant to both comfort civilians and strike fear into the hearts of villains around the world. More like the kind of thing that someone has said over and over again in their head in order to try and convince themselves it was true. More like a plea.

The kid riffled through his tin of supplies he shouldn’t have and pulled out a small tub of burn cream, some alcohol wipes, non-adherent dressings, and some Wild Wild Pussy cat-themed medical tape. Four (and a half) year olds shouldn’t know what type of gauze burns need. Hell, Aizawa was 15 and he shouldn’t have to know either.

The kid dragged the alcohol over his burns with softly murmured apologies, and carefully wiped the ash out of the tender skin. The tin of burn cream he opened was nearly empty, and that made Aizawa’s stomach sink. He didn’t know if it was bad to hope this kid just made a habit of giving first aid to strangers or not. Neither option was good.

The gauze was applied gently to his burns and secured in place with the rescue-hero team’s printed faces. Crumpling the wrappers up and stuffing them into his back along with the now-closed tin, the kid finished his ‘helping’ by blowing Aizawa’s arm a dramatic kiss.

“All better!” the green thing cheered, pulling his legs up to his chest to mimic Aizawa’s huddled posture.

The movement made the kid’s sleeve shift slightly, and Aizawa could now see the matching tape securing gauze to the reddened skin of the kid’s upper arm—underneath the singed fabric.

“Thanks.” Aizawa muttered, nausea and hunger clashing violently with the sickening feeling building in his chest.

“’Welcome!” The kid’s responding smile was the dullest one Aizawa had seen yet.

Aizawa poked at the tape on his wrist and then gestured to the kid’s upper arm, feeling a bit lightheaded. His mouth was dry, and it took a moment for him to form the words. “…We match again.”

The kid glanced between the two of them, at Aizawa’s bandaged wrist, and then up at his cheek where the bruise had faded to a small smear of yellow.

His smile still wasn’t back to its 100-watt blinding cheer, but it did show off his missing front tooth and made his eyes squint happily.

“Yeah! We do!” The kid picked at the tape on his arm, peeling up a small section and then smoothing it back down. “You’ll feel better soon! That’s my favorite cream. It makes everything better.” The kid nodded sincerely, but it did nothing to help with Aizawa’s growing concern.

The kid didn’t notice, just reaching down to the pile of snacks between them and shoving what looked like a juice pouch into Aizawa’s hands. “Mommy says that you have to eat lots to grow big and strong. And mommy knows everything!” The kid paused, looking the hero student up and down with a little bit of confusion, and maybe some envy. “You’re already really really tall… so maybe you don’t need to grow up anymore, but it still helps the ouchie!”

Aizawa huffed, the corner of his mouth just barely lifting up with a slight smirk as the kid smiled up at him.

“Your mom sounds pretty smart.” Shouta’s voice was soft and a little gravelly from lack of use.

The kid’s smile softened from its usual glow to something proud and warm. “Yeah. My mommy is the smartest person ever. She’s a nurse, so she helps people all of the time, just like a hero!”

Maybe Aizawa could pretend that’s where the kid’s knowledge of first aid came from.

“That’s awesome kid.” Shouta chewed on the inside of his cheek a bit, questions teetering on the tip of his tongue but not used to prying. Dithering was illogical, the kid would either answer or he wouldn’t, and there was no point in beating around the bush, so Aizawa took a short breath and spat out the question before he could think better of it.

“Kid—”

“Izuku.” The green-haired child said more firmly than he would expect from a four-year-old. Then he pouted slightly. “I told you my name before! You didn’t forget it already, did you?”

Aizawa rolled his eyes but didn’t refute the kid. He wasn’t exactly in the best headspace when the child found him last week. Freshly kicked out of his home and stressed about sleeping on the streets on top of balancing his new admittance to the hero course.

“Izuku.” And the kid beamed. “Where is your mom right now?”

The kid’s shoulders slumped, and he twisted his fingers together, speaking into his lap.

“She’s sleeping right now. She works really hard at the hospital and comes home super tired. So, she’s napping.” The kid fidgeted a bit more before he took a deep breath and straightened, turning to look at Shouta with a quivering smile. “But it's okay. She works really, really hard for me and everyone, so it’s okay that I don’t see her much. I know that she loves me.”

Aizawa frowned but didn’t push, not exactly someone experienced with comforting anyone, let alone a kid.

Aizawa looked down at the crinkling plastic in his hand with some hesitance, scanning over the label. It was a melon juice-flavored nutrition pouch, which was the kind of marketing label that made Aizawa think that there probably wasn’t a drop of real melon in the whole thing, or they’d have just called it ‘juice’. The child pawed through the snacks and grabbed a little baggie of fruit snacks before settling down on the bench and flopping his head over, so it rested against Aizawa’s arm.

The teen stiffened, barely breathing as he processed the easy contact and contented hum coming from the child as it tore open the aluminum package and picked through the gummies to find the one shaped like All Might.

Aizawa didn’t remember the last time he’d had such causal contact with another person. His parents were horrible, and their touches were sharp and painful. The students in his middle school avoided him like his quirk might be permanent, though it didn’t stop their harsh words and disdainful glares. The blond idiot in his class pestered him with constant chatter but seemed to know better than to touch him. For all his friendly bravado, even that cockatoo knew better than to touch someone with a villain’s quirk.

Aizawa had long since come to terms with that fact of life. The itch under his skin, the craving he had harbored since he was a child for warmth and comfort, had been a constant presence. Something he had to learn to ignore even as the itch grew to a scratch and then a burning pain that made him feel like he was dying.

For the first time in as long as he could remember that itch was gone.

The little kid’s fluffy green curls were matted slightly at the back of his head. The untamable mess tickled Aizawa’s shoulder and he wondered absently if it was as soft as it looked. The warmth of the kid’s face and breath against his sleeve sunk into Aizawa’s bones and soothed something cracked and jagged deep within his chest.

The kid seemed content to work his way through the various snacks he’d pulled from his back, creeping a bit closer to the hero student and curling up against him. The kid didn’t say anything, and neither did Shouta. There was an unspoken agreement between them, as Aizawa cracked open the pouch and sipped on the alarmingly sweet puree. The twisting hunger in his stomach settled, and after he finished the pouch quickly, the kid passed him another.

They sat there until the snacks were gone and the sun was starting to set again. Aizawa’s arm really did feel better, the cream numbing the pain and leaving the irritated skin slightly cool and tingly. His stomach was sated, and the day’s ordeal finally succeeded in weighing down his eyelids.

A small, barely conscious part of his brain felt the warmth of the kid leaving his side and mourned the loss. The rest of his brain was already asleep, his body slumped back against the prickly old wood, and his head tucked limply against his chest.

Chapter Text

THREE

It was another couple of weeks before Izuku and Shouta met up at their bench again.

Aizawa wasn’t exactly sure at what point the bench had become theirs, let alone his.

Four weeks of homelessness must have loosened some screws somewhere in his brain. Some base urge from the animal part of him that a space that was his even though he had nothing except the clothes on his back and the homework in his bag. At least the school had washing machines and showers in the locker room to use during physical ed, or he would have probably been caught by now and thrown out of the school on his ass.

It was the first time that the kid had found Shouta with an obviously new injury.

He was sore, sure. Hero training was brutal—especially with a mental quirk like his. Aizawa had a lot to make up for, so much catching up to do and his professors made it aggressively clear. His bones were sore, and his arms felt like noodles. It was hard trying to find a fighting style that would make up for his innate disadvantage.

Aizawa, however, couldn’t say the same for the kid.

Izuku limped through the bushes that walled the bench away from prying eyes. He approached the hero student quietly, slumping onto the bench to Aizawa’s right and wincing as his leg touched the wood. Aizawa could see a messy row of stitches holding together a clean tear in the kid’s pants on the upper thigh. the black fabric hid any possible stains. The red shoe on the same side was dirtier than usual, more scuffed and muddied on the top of the shoe than the other one.

Izuku’s green hair was even more matted than the last time he’d seen him. The mess of knots on the back of his head started to encroach on the top and sides. It looked uncomfortable, and the kid tried to gently scratch around it as he shrugged his bag off and shifted on the bench seat.

A small, shriveled part of Aizawa’s consciousness squirmed just as uncomfortably at the state of the kid. The little child buried in his heart saw too much of himself in the poorly hidden limp and hand-sewn pants. But the rest of him, hardened by years of existing in the world that treated this kid so poorly, and jaded by the innumerable number of adults that had failed him, kept his mouth shut about the obvious wounds. There was nothing he could do to help the kid, not with the state of his life. The kid knew first aid, he had a home. It was better than most.

“Hey, Problem child.” Aizawa greeted, turning to face the little thing and smirking as the kid pouted slightly.

“Izuku! My name is Izuku!”

“Oh, right. That’s what it was.” Shouta said dryly, feigning ignorance. The kid’s lower lip jutted out even more dramatically.

“It’s not that hard of a name to remember.” The kid muttered, pulling slightly at a loose string in his sleeve. Aizawa shrugged and leaned back, tilting his head to look at the light bleeding through the canopy of leaves.

“I dunno, you’ve never asked for my name. How can I remember your name when you don’t know mine? That’s hardly fair.”

The kid’s bright green eyes grew impossibly wide, and blushed, looking flustered.

“Y-you wanna tell me your name?” the kid looked up at Shouta like he held the entire world. Aizawa shifted uncomfortably on the bench, not used to such sincere admiration being pointed in his direction. “B-but, but you’re a hero student right? Y-your uniform… it's from UA, right? That’s where All Might went to s-school. Y-you’re so cool!”

Shouta snorted, looking down at the kid as the green thing seemed to swing between hope and hesitance.

“Whatever, kid. You’ve helped me out more than once, that was pretty cool too. ‘Sides it’s illogical for you to not know my name at this point, especially when I know yours.”

The kid perked up. “You do remember my name! I knew it!”

Aizawa reached out and ruffled the kid’s fluffy green hair, avoiding where the mat likely pulled on his scalp and ignored the way his stomach dropped at the kid’s slight flinch away. It’s not like he could help the thing, he had to remind himself, stuffing down the rising nausea. The world is harsh and unforgiving, even to children. A homeless teen with a villain’s quirk can’t exactly do anything to fix it.

“Yeah, yeah, Izuku. Surely you didn’t think a hero student would have such a poor memory.” Aizawa leaned back against the bench, ignoring the constant burn of his dry eyes and the slight headache building in his head from creeping hunger. The muscles in his back protested against the movement but he enjoyed watching as the kid grew increasingly flustered and tried to explain away Aizawa’s teasing accusation.

“Okay, breathe kid. You’re fine. My name is Aizawa Shouta.” The teen interrupted once the kid looked red enough in the face that he was risking spontaneous combustion.

The kid froze and didn’t even seem to be breathing. He silently mouthed Aizawa’s name and didn’t meet Shouta’s eyes.

“A-aizawa-san?” the green child whispered, just barely audible above the rustling of leaves around them. Shouta leaned a bit closer, ignoring the way his body strained.

“Yeah, kid?”   

“D-Do, do you… A-Are we… C-can we be friends?” The kid spoke so softly, and he was wringing his hands together almost violently. It looked like he was trying to pull his own fingers off. Aizawa swallowed, a truly illogical series of emotions rising in his throat.

He ignored them, and leaned back on the bench, giving the kid space. “Sure. We can be friends.”

To Aizawa’s honest shock and utter horror, Izuku burst into tears.

Large, fat tears rolled down the child’s cheeks as the child’s thin shoulders shook. The kid hiccupped, wiping the tears away roughly as Aizawa stared down at him at a complete loss for words.

What just happened? Was it something he had done? God, the kid was crying so loud, what if someone came and thought he’d hurt the kid. Aizawa simultaneously wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out and stuff the kid’s head into a sack or something to make it stop crying. God, he did not know how to deal with kids.

Hesitantly, because the green-haired boy looked wet and kind of sticky from the tears and snot running down his face behind his hands, Aizawa reached out to stiffly pat the kid on the head.

The tears didn’t stop, but the kid sniffled and looked up at the teen beside him with a wobbly smile that did nothing except confuse the hero student even further.

“Y-y-you…” another heavy sniffle and dragged his already soaked sleeves across damp cheeks. “D-do you really? Are we friends? Y-you p-promise?”

Do all kids react like this to friendship? Maybe it was a blessing that everyone ignored Shouta in elementary school. He didn’t think that even his past self would have had the energy to deal with this kind of outburst.

“That’s what I said, didn’t I? I would gain nothing from lying about that. It would be illogical.”

“I’m sorry…” the kid sniffled, and the quiet apology hurt a little more than it should have. “It’s just, I haven’t had any friends in so long. I’m really happy. Really, really happy.” The kid wiped off his face with a tissue he pulled from his pants pocket and beamed up at him with watery eyes and a bright red nose.

Aizawa shrugged uncomfortably and looked away from the kid, the bone-deep ache from muscles he didn’t even know he had dragged him down into a slouch.

A moment of silence passed between them, broken only by the swish of the kid’s swinging feet and the occasional wet sniffle.

“A-aizawa-san?”

Shouta didn’t move from where he slumped, head resting back against the bench and tired eyes closed. “Yeah, kid?”

“W-what’s it like being a h-hero student?”

Aizawa hummed, trying to pull a coherent answer from his tired mind.

“Noisy.” The teen muttered, and the kid next to him giggled. “Everyone is loud, but there’s this one kid especially who has a voice quirk. He keeps dragging me around to his table at lunch, and partners with me during projects and he is so loud, all the time.” Aizawa huffed, and he was pretty sure if he focused for a moment, he’d be able to pick out Yamada’s voice from whatever prefecture his family lived in.

“It’s so much effort.” He sighed, slouching into himself further and feeling the strain of overused muscles as he shifted. “I have a mental quirk, and it doesn’t do me much good in a fight, so I have to rely on skills outside of it. It's frustrating.” He bemoaned more to himself than the kid eagerly feeding off his every word. “Every other student in the hero course got in through the entrance exam, so they all think with their quirks and muscles and not much else. It’s all brute force and no forethought. They’re all so illogical.”

The kid next to him was practically vibrating.

“I-if you d-didn’t get in through the entrance exam, how did you get into the hero course?”

Aizawa looked down at Izuku, his wide, hopeful eyes and the startling intelligence he saw in the bright green gaze.

“I got in through a loophole. If you place first in the sports festival, then you can transfer in if there’s an open spot. I got lucky.” The last part was said in a somewhat bitter grumble.

Izuku didn’t seem to catch the tone. “Oh my gosh! I saw you at the festival! Mommy and I watch it every year!” The kid lurched forward, and for a second Aizawa worried that the kid was going to fling himself off the bench, but instead, he reached for his bag and practically ripped out a notebook.

The kid flipped quickly through several pages before settling on one in particular. Spread out on two pages was a scribbled mess of crayon and pencil. There was a messy stick figure drawing colored in with the UA school colors. His stringy black hair had been scribbled down over the drawing’s face, and the only clearly defined feature was a cartoonish frown.

“Your quirk is SO cool! What’s it called? It's quirk canceling right? From eye contact? You said it’s a mental quirk, that’s so cool. Does it have any drawbacks? Your eyes seemed to get a little red after a while, but I couldn’t tell anything else from the videos! Does it work on everyone? You didn’t fight any mutation quirks; can you cancel those too? Can…” The kid’s overexcited rambling devolved into incoherent muttering as the kid fumbled around his bag for a pencil and started to write some more things down in handwriting so bad it was practically illegible.

Aizawa pitied the kid’s teachers whenever he had to start school. Aizawa couldn’t understand any of the kid’s scribbles.

“Kid, breathe.” Aizawa interrupted when it seemed like the green-haired boy had slipped into some parallel universe where oxygen wasn’t necessary.

Izuku took in a huge, gasping breath and shook himself out of his thoughts, looking up at Aizawa with a little bit of fear in his furrowed brows and huddled posture.

“S-sorry…” the kid whispered, pulling his shoulders up to his ears and ducking to hide an embarrassed flush. “I know I get a little carried away sometimes…”

Aizawa nudged his knee into the kid’s leg, which succeeded in pulling the kid’s eyes back up to meet his.

“Don’t worry about it. Your thought process is interesting, though you should work on slowing down so the people around you can understand. There's no point in asking questions you won’t get answers to because you don’t let people think. It’s a waste of energy.”

The kid’s embarrassed flush grew to a bright red glow that obscured his smattering of freckles. He squeaked out an unintelligible response and looked back down at the pencil and notebook on his lap.

“My quirk is called Erasure. I can stop someone from using their quirk so long as I am looking at them, but if I blink, they get their quirk back until I am looking at them again.”

The kid was practically vibrating as he added more illegible scribbles to his page. “And-and mutant quirks? What about those? If you look at someone with an animal mutation do those animal traits go away?”

Aizawa huffed, shaking his head. “Nope, if their quirk gives them enhanced vision or hearing along with the physical mutations then they lose those added features, but their physical appearance, any additional limbs, or muscle groups remain.”

The kid nodded seriously, flipping to another page and still writing furiously. “I guessed that! Mommy didn’t understand why I was so sad you didn’t face any mutant quirks in the festival.”

Aizawa snorted. “What, did you want me to fail? I’ve had to work my as—butt off in the hero course to keep up with my classmates with physical quirks, and if I’m not able to use my quirk to surprise them then they still wipe the floor with me. It's like trying to fight completely quirkless.” Aizawa slumped, running his hand anxiously through his hair.

The kid stilled, his pen freezing mid-character on the page and the pencil drooping slightly in his grip.

“Y-yeah… because quirkless people are useless, huh…” Izuku’s voice was heartbreakingly soft when he spoke, barely a whisper above the ambient noise of the afternoon park and the city around them. Aizawa stiffened, looking down at the scarily blank expression on the kid’s face.

“Hey, that’s not what I said. I just meant that it is hard. I’m still going to do it, I made it into the hero course I’m not going to stop now. I just have to work harder than everyone else. It's not fair, but nothing has been fair my whole life.”

The kid blinked but didn’t meet Aizawa’s eyes. Aizawa leaned down to force his face into Izuku’s line of sight.

“What’s going on in that busy head of yours?” he asked, poking the kid in the forehead.

Izuku looked away, tracing the leaves in a bush to Aizawa’s right. “I-its nothing.”

“Oh, sure just don’t tell me then.” The teen huffed, resting his elbows on his knees.

Tentatively, the kid turned towards him, twisting his fingers painfully. Aizawa met Izuku’s teary green eyes and couldn’t help but feel exhausted for him. So many emotions in so little time. Gross.

“i-it’s just… d-do, do you think a quirkless person could be a hero?”

The kid’s shoulders were drawn up to his ears, and his hands were trembling, fingers wrapped so tightly around the pencil that his knuckles were white.

Aizawa hummed, leaning back a bit to give the kid space.

“It would be hypocritical of me to say no. Given how my quirk works, and the fact that I need to find a way to rely mainly on quirkless fighting. That being said, my quirk does level the playing field quite a bit in most situations. I have an element of surprise that a quirkless person would be missing.” Aizawa rolled the question around in his brain, taking time to make sure his answer was sincere and honest since it looked like it mattered a lot to the kid.

“I’m still not strong enough to be a hero, right now. I’m kinda stuck. I need something else, that’ll help me in ways that my quirk can’t. I just can’t figure that out!” he huffed, his annoyance from the last few weeks of hero classes and sparring with his classmates bubbling to the surface. “If I had some way to manipulate the environment around me, or increase my mobility, or something, then I would feel a lot more confident in my prospects as a hero.” The teen looked back down at the child seated next to him, who was watching with wide green eyes as he spoke. “If a quirkless person could find something like that, something to give them an advantage, just like how quirks are a tool and advantage for everyone else, then yeah. I think so.”

Aizawa nodded confidently, and back to Izuku.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw that the kid was crying again.

He wasn’t making any noise, but his wide eyes were spilling over with large, fat tears, and the kid kept scrubbing them away to try and keep them from soaking through his notebook. Despite the tears, the kid’s face was split open by his wobbly smile.

“Y-you really think so?” Izuku asked as he sniffled noisily. Grossed out by all of the fluids, Aizawa leaned away slightly, but he still nodded.

“It is illogical to give people false hope. It is a waste of everyone’s time and energy. Granted, it would be difficult, and I wouldn’t have the first clue as to how since im already stumped on how I’m supposed to do it. But yeah. Maybe.” Aizawa shrugged and watched curiously as the somewhat damp child eagerly flipped to a dog-eared section of the notebook on his lap.

The kid seemed to hesitate for a moment, clutching the book closely to his chest and glancing up at Aizawa through his ratty mess of green hair, before he flipped it around and flung it at the hero student.

“I-I have some ideas! And-and maybe, if they h-help you then they would work for me too! B-because I wanna be a hero, but… but I don’t have a quirk. And—and no one has ever believed me before, until you…” the kid trailed off into his now familiar mumbling, but Aizawa ignored it in favor of reading through the scrawled notes in front of him.

The section marked out was several pages long. It was filled with notes about different heroes’ fighting styles, mainly those who fight quirkless and use their quirks in more creative ways. With every hero’s quirk, there was a colorfully scrawled idea for a support item that would be able to mimic the quirk. The margins were filled with ideas on different materials the items could be made out of, and how useful they would be depending on the different design options.

One, in particular, was highlighted with at least three different colors of ink, little exclamation points dotted around it in pink crayon, and the writing itself written out carefully enough that Aizawa didn’t have to strain his eyes to read it.

Above it was a small-time hero. The quirk itself was just used for mobility, their hair was long and fortified by their genetic adaptation so they could control it and use it for navigation.

The kid had outlined a potential support item that functioned similarly. A long length of fabric that was controlled with nanotechnology, made from reinforced metal alloy threads, and could be used to grapple, toss, and contain. Some of the larger words were misspelled, scratched out, and re-written, as though the kid had had to go and look up the spelling, but to Aizawa’s amazement, the idea itself was function and frankly nothing short of genius.

The hero student looked back at the sniffling child next to him, who seemed to be hesitantly watching Aizawa for a negative reaction, his trembling arms braced next to him on the bench.

“Kid… this is amazing. Where did you learn this stuff?”

Izuku blinked up at him owlishly, before devolving into a heavily stuttering mess. “O-oh! I-um, I-its not t-that great, or anything. Its j-just a b-bunch of ideas,” his fingers were starting to turn purple from the anxious twisting, “I-I know they’re kinda dumb, and i-im not that smart, but I figured, maybe, you’d be able to use something…?”

Aizawa shook his head, long greasy strands of black hair falling into his eyes.

“Nah, Izuku,” and this kid jumped when he used his name, “This is incredible. I don’t understand how you learned half this shi-stuff.”

An embarrassed flush had crept up the kid’s neck and started to fill in the spaces around his freckles.

“O-oh! Um, m-my dad was a s-support item maker b-before he left us… Mommy left h-his office alone, s-so all of his books and diagrams are s-still there. I-I read them, sometimes, when I miss him. Or when I’m bored…”

Aizawa ran a hand through his hair, flipping through a few more pages of proposed support items and theories. Some of them were incredibly impractical, obviously created by the mind of a young child, but some of them, like the scarf idea, might just work. He flipped back the scarf, looking at the highlighted function of maneuverability and capture. That was exactly what he needed to fill in the gaps in his skills. Aizawa shook his head, feeling slightly dazed.

“Kid, this might just work. If I had this…” he trailed off, the future he’d been working towards, the endlessly uphill battle he’d been losing his whole life, suddenly seemed just within reach.

The kid leaned over to read the item that he’d settled on and beamed up at him. “I love that one! It’s my favorite. I think it would make you look really cool too! Like a super mummy!” The kid giggled, showing off his missing tooth and Aizawa couldn’t do anything except shake his head again.

This kid had such endless optimism.

It was baffling.

And oddly endearing.

The rest of the afternoon passed by as the kid walked Aizawa through each page of his notebook, and then the next, and then the next. As the sun set and the kid stood, packing his books away and shouldering his bag to leave the bench and their little corner of the park, Aizawa almost felt like smiling.

He wasn’t surprised when the following day the little green-haired boy joined him on his bench, creeping slowly closer as each day passed and their afternoons grew colder. Fall settled into the greenery around them over the next few days, the leaves turning vibrant yellows and reds that made the kid’s hair practically grow in contrast.

They were two kids. Sure, Aizawa was a teenager, a hero student, and had been through more than enough shit to be considered an adult. The teachers who would talk to him always commented on how ‘mature’ he was. That’s adult-speak for quiet and traumatized.

But the two of them, on that bench, were just two kids against the world.

Chapter Text

FOUR

Aizawa’s hands were cold.

Maybe that had something to do with the puddle they were sitting in.

Maybe it was the air. The world around him seemed to smother his body like a blanket of ice, pins and needles creeping up his fingers and toes and weighing down his limbs.

Shouta blinked, and the small twitch of movement sent spikes of pain shooting through his brain and bouncing down his spine.

He couldn’t see.

Or maybe it was dark?

He thought that maybe he could remember it being dark.

Something about a dim, cold alley. Rough hands dragging him deeper and tossing him to the ground.

It felt like he could still feel the blows landing in his stomach and rattling his brain.

The feeling of his head bouncing off the brick wall it had been smashed into was replayed with each cotton-stuffed throb.

Huh.

He’d been smashed into a wall?

Weird, he didn’t remember that.

But his head hurt.

And his hands were cold.

Why were his hands so cold?

The puddle beneath him was growing sticky, the metallic smell mixing with the dirt and piss of the back-alley stench and making his stomach churn uneasily.

Or maybe that was the head injury.

He had a head injury.

How did that happen?

He couldn’t breathe. His nose burned, each twitch of his face making the fire in his nerves burn brighter. He gulped down air through his drooling mouth, unable to breathe through the blood that clotted his nostrils.

Aizawa tried to sit up, forcing his hands underneath his body and ignoring the slippery, congealed pool beneath him. His tingling hands slid out from under him as his arms buckled and his head landed heavily on the gravel-strewn concrete beneath him.

The impact sent stars blinking throughout his vision. He could feel the white-hot sparks burying themselves in his brain and skittering down his nerve endings to settle in his fingers.

He was so cold.

He was shivering.

Why did his head hurt?

He thinks he might have screamed. When his head hit the floor.

He felt his mouth open, and distantly he heard the sound, but it was like he was miles away and he was just barely listening to the noise carried on the wind. Certainly not like that heart-shattering scream and pitiable moan had fallen from his own lips.

Especially since his lips were trembling with how hard his jaw was chattering.

He must be cold.

Or maybe that was just the puddle beneath him.

He really should get up off the ground. The puddle under his fingers was sticky and smelled like copper and memories of being beaten by his dad. Huh, he didn’t usually think about that.

That’s not why he was here, right? He was older now, he thinks.

At least he should be. His body was bigger, with long legs and lanky arms strewn messily on the ground, thin wrists, and protruding collarbones probably making the blood dripping off his chin even more concerning.

From where he collapsed on the ground, Shouta lifted a trembling hand to his face, wiping off the drip of red from where it was dangling.

He was bleeding.

Did he hit his head?

Maybe that was why it hurt.

That would make sense.

Aizawa lurched onto his side, fingers scrambling to pull his long, string hair out of his face just in time for him to sit up unsteadily on his elbows, twist to the side, and vomit. The bile mixed with the taste of metal on his tongue and burned the split in his lip.  His shoulders shook slightly as he heaved again.

The string of spit dangling from his lips as he fought against another crashing wave of nausea was bright red, and more blood dripped past his lips.

That wasn’t good.

The vomit, which should have been mainly bile and fluid considering his basically nonexistent diet the last couple of days, was marbled with an alarmingly bright red.

Where was he bleeding from?

Propped up on his elbows he could see the pool of blood congealing on the ground where his head had been resting.

Was he bleeding internally too? His bile-ripe tongue found a bloodied socket in his gums, a missing tooth possibly emptied out with his vomit, maybe spat out somewhere in the alley when his head had taken the blow. The hole was weeping iron-soured blood into his mouth and more pink-foamed spit drooled from his lips, joining the crusted tracks of blood that had run down from the split in his scalp.

When had that happened?

His head hurt so bad. Each heartbeat throbbed behind his eyes, making his skull feel several sizes too small. It felt as though he’d been stuffed into the wrong body, and the overflow was leaking down his dirty stained shirt as more blood leaked from his mouth.

Why was he on the floor?

It was cold, and sticky, and smelled like piss.

Aizawa tried to squint through the darkness to look around for his bag or his phone, but turning his head felt like trying to peel off his own skin. A numb, tingling hand patted through his pockets and found nothing. No bad, no phone, no wallet.

Who was he going to call anyway? His parents?

His father would likely be delighted to see what had become of his villain of a son.

He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had looked him in the eyes.

His eyes stung.

Like they’d been filled full of sand and then flushed clean with bleach.

His head throbbed and he reached up to cradle it with his hands, but the movement jarred his head and his aching nose. He squinted through the darkness, one eye beginning to swell shut. Once his hands were close enough to make out through the darkness, he froze.

They were stained with blood. It was crusted into his sleeve cuff, dirtying his uniform. It looked like he’d practically swam in it, the entirety of his palms coated and starting to crust dry.

Where did the blood come from?

Why was he so cold?

Everything was spinning.

Shouta couldn’t tell if the narrowing darkness in his vision was from the icy night air around him or his vision blacking out.

He thought that maybe he could hear something.

A high-pitched voice, warbled and worried.

Muttering and something tugging on his sleeve, little hands ghosting over his face and brushing his hair out of his eyes.

But he was so dizzy. And his head hurt.

Why did his head hurt?

Aizawa floated for a while.

The darkness was cold.

Small glimpses of light flashed through the murky blackness he was swimming in, a pinprick at the end of a tunnel.

Occasionally, sensations would creep past the numb fog that coated him like a weighted, clingy cloud.

Spikes of pain in his head, dull aches in his stomach. Light fingers brushed over his skin and the alarming sting of something wet was rubbed over his wound.

He was shaking.

But not the small, uncontrolled tremble that left his hands feeling like they were vibrating, and like all of his thoughts were slipping through his fingers.

No. it was a firm shake in his shoulders. Little hands gripped him almost painfully, small fingers digging through his school uniform jacket and pinching slightly as he was shaken. The motion rocked his head against the ground and as the pinprick of light opened up into the dimly lit alleyway he’d glimpsed before, the pounding headache and roiling nausea returned as well.

“—awa! Ai—can you—Zawa! Please, I can’t—eyes!”

The shaking was still rattling his brain and Aizawa felt a groan spill from his lips. The hazy green blur came closer, and the shaking stopped.

Shouta blinked, and only one eye responded. That explained why everything was so blurry. His right eye was swollen shut, and the pain radiating from his nose only explained things further.

In the dim moonlight, Aizawa could still make out Izuku’s tears. The kid was blubbering, heavy droplets cascading down his face like a running faucet. The kid was going to cry himself dry.

Another wave of nausea tore through him and Aizawa lurched to the side to avoid the kid crouched in front of him. The empty stomach bile landed on a pile of crumpled paper packaging. the force of his heaving made his head throb angrily against the bandages wrapped around his face.

His shaking hand came up to wipe off his mouth and brushed against another plaster taped over his nose and came away greasy from the healing cream applied to the gravel scrapes on his cheek.

God, he was still so cold.

His head pounded with his heartbeat loud enough to drown out the shrill voice trying to get his attention.

Oh.

That was probably the kid.

Shouta squeezed his eyes shut, lifting himself up onto his forearms and pushing himself into a seated position leaning against the alley wall. The wall was sticky. The back of his shirt clung to the crumbling brick. It smelled like blood.

The noise around him grew louder, more urgent.

Right the kid.

“—zawa? Aizawa?” the kid’s voice was shaking and he could hear the wet sniffles in between each shuddering breath.

Shouta swallowed thickly, the copper and bile lingering on his tongue doing nothing for his nausea.

“Heya, Problem child.” His voice sounded broken. Like he’d challenged that blond cockatoo to a screaming competition and lost several times over. He felt like it too. God, his head hurt.

Aizawa fought against the pounding in his head to hear too-quiet gasps and muttered relief from the kid in front of him.

“T-there was s-so much blood… I d-didn’t know if you were gonna wake up… y-you were sleeping,” the kid gasped a shaking breath, thick with tears. “Y-you were sleeping and, and I thought you weren’t gonna wake up.”

Shouta squinted through his one good eye, fighting against his impaired depth perception to ruffle the kid’s hair. He didn’t notice the blood crusted on his palm until it was too late, staining the fluffy green strands and sticking to the kid in clumps.

“I’m awake now. It's,” he groaned as the pounding in his head grew, but he swallowed again and tried to moisten his cotton-filled mouth and cracked lips, “It's okay now. Thanks for patching me up, kid.”

Izuku sniffled. “You weren’t at the bench.” The kid was pouting, and that was so much better than the terror that had been painted across his face when Aizawa first opened his eyes. “And then I heard you yelling, and I-I ran over here as fast as i-I could.” Another wet sniff. More tears fell from swollen green eyes.

“You did good, kid.” He was slurring slightly. That was probably worrying.

“And, and I ran out of Band-Aids before I could finish helping you, which wasn’t very responsible of me, and I forgot the wipes that are good for cleaning up blood, and now you’re a mess and I-I can’t help, and—" the kid was breathing too fast, his thoughts and worries spilling from his lips in a jumble of anxiety that would have made Aizawa’s head spin if it the world around him wasn’t already dancing.

“That’s okay, kid.” He tried to reason, but his words sounded really far away, and he was either speaking really slowly or too quietly because the kid just kept going.

“—but I have more at home! So, you can come home with me, and I can finish helping you, my mommy won’t mind so long as we don’t wake her up. I promise!” Izuku gasped, lungs heaving for air that had been ignored during his spiral. “You’ll come home with me, right? Please, so I can help you? You need help and I need to help you!”

Wide, panicked eyes brimming with unshed tears looked at him beseechingly as the kid caught his breath, hands shaking almost as much as Aizawa’s were as he twisted at the hem of his shirt.

Aizawa’s head hurt too much to try and understand what the kid was saying. He knew from the frantic tone that the kid was worried and panicking, but the words themselves slid through his brain like sand through mesh and he couldn’t grab anything long enough to pull together any meaning.

He didn’t really care what he was agreeing to, his head was stuffed with cotton and he had to focus on breathing through his mouth to avoid the pain in his nose. But he did hear the frantic question in the kid’s tone and nodded his assent.

He has just a moment to appreciate the wobbly smile the kid gives him before the green-haired boy pulls on his arm.

The whole world tilts as he was yanked forward and he fumbled to catch his balance as the kid kept tugging insistently at his hand.

Aizawa’s vision doubles, the kid’s green hair weaving in and out of black dots and bright splotches as he stands on shaky legs and teeters in the direction the kid is tugging. The pounding in his head echoes in his ears and his hearing fills with a sound like rushing water as he stumbles, squints through his good eye, and tries to correct his balance.

Shouta is practically delirious with pain by the time little hands help lean him against a rough textured wall. He had no idea where he was, how long they’d been walking, or how he’d gotten here.

There was a kid.

He knew that.

His head hurt.

He couldn’t forget that if he tried.

He couldn’t breathe through his nose or see through one of his eyes and the stiff feeling of bandages swathed around his head and plastered on his face and arms was too noticeable to forget.

His hands had stopped shaking.

Which was interesting, he thought absently, because he couldn’t remember why he had been cold.

He felt like he was burning, and beads of sweat gathered on his brow and on his lip as he gasped in air against the wall.

The kid was kneeling, peeling back something on the floor, a carpet or mat? And picked something up. It flashed gold in the light over the door, which seared his eyes and made the pounding in his head impossibly worse.

If breathing wasn’t already more painful than he could bear, Aizawa would have laughed at how utterly cliché hiding a spare key under a mat was. Maybe when his head was clearer, he’d warn the kid about how predictable it was.

When he could remember why his head hurt.

And where he was.

Little hands, covered in red that was dried and flaking off too pale skin, peeled Aizawa off the wall and pulled him through the apartment door.

They didn’t stop to take off their shoes in the genkan, the kid too preoccupied with lifting as much of Shouta’s weight as his shaky little legs could manage to help get the hero student up the small step and over to the couch.

It was already draped with a ratty hero-themes blanket. If Aizawa were able to see more clearly, maybe if the lights inside were on, he’d have noticed the rust-colored spots that didn’t match the blanket’s design, and wondered why such an ugly old blanket was being used to cover furniture, but he wasn’t able to see or think and could just barely keep breathing. So, it would be a mystery left for another day.

Izuku helped Aizawa lay down, pillowing his head on a wadded-up jacket pulled from somewhere Aizawa couldn’t see.

Shouta’s hair was slicked to his face with blood and sweat and his breaths were coming in quick, short gulps.

There was a buzzing coming from somewhere, though maybe that was just his ears ringing. His head still throbbed painfully, his skull feeling too small for his brain like a tight metal band had been seared around his forehead and burned into his skin—shrinking and constricting as it cooled.

The blur of green a little part of Aizawa’s brain identified as Izuku dipped out of view and Aizawa couldn’t gather enough energy to lift his head and follow. So, he gave into the heavy pull of his eyelids and the fever exhaustion and slipped into a fitful sleep.

Something cold was placed on his forehead. He was shivering again.

Quietly murmured words slip past his comprehension as his eyes flutter, and he sank deeper into unconsciousness.

The crinkle of plastic drew his attention from the murky darkness behind his eyes as something icy was pressed to his nose. The weight made the radiating pain behind his eyes and down his cheek worse, and he jerked his head, trying to dislodge the thing without having to lift his leaden arms. Something held it in place, and slowly the cold seeped into the swollen tissue around his nose and eye and he relaxed back into the darkness.

Something wet was pressed to his lips. His tongue darted out from between cracked lips to revel in the moisture as a glass filled with water was slowly lifted to his mouth. He opened his mouth greedily, gulping down the cold liquid and letting it wash away the sour taste in his mouth. Something small and round was pressed to his mouth, and the little hand he knew was offering it trembled slightly. He opened his mouth again, accepting the pills and another gulp of water before sinking back into sleep.

The wet cloth on his head was swapped out for a new one, and the hands that reapplied cream to his cheek and re-dressed his head wound were no longer shaking. Aizawa was present for just long enough to wonder if that was a good or bad thing for the kid before his weak hold on consciousness slipped and he was dunked back under.

There was heavy pressure on his side. It wasn’t the feeling of a collapsed lung; he knew what that felt like. This was like something was laying on him. Too heavy to be an alley cat, too light to be a person. He tried to blink his eyes open and found them dry and crusty. His head still pounded but he could see straight and wasn’t cold anymore.

He slowly turned his head to see what the pressure on his chest was.

It was the kid.

Izuku had curled up on the couch next to him, hands limply clutching a water bottle and thing of painkillers, his head flopped onto Aizawa’s chest as though the kid had fallen asleep accidentally and slumped over.

Aizawa shifted, bones creaking in protest, and pulled his arm out from under the kid and the blanket wrapped around them both to help lower the kid into a more comfortable position and onto his lap. The kid groaned and furrowed his brow but didn’t wake.

Shouta might have smiled if he weren’t in so much pain.

They sank back to sleep curled up together on the couch.

Aizawa felt like he’d been run over repeatedly by a bus. He probably looked like it too. He had no doubt that his eye and nose had bruised impressively, and the gauze wrapped around his head and tangled in his greasy hair really added to the walking dead aesthetic.

His head still pounded like there was someone trying to climb out his ears and his vision swam slightly, but at least the dark apartment didn’t burn his eyes like he knew the outside would.

He sat up and waited for the world to stop spinning.

The buzzing noise was still there, though maybe that was just permanent tinnitus.

The kid was curled up on the couch next to him, one hand holding tightly to the hem of his shirt and the other clinging to an All Might doll that had really seen better days.

Aizawa sighed, his nose still stuffed up and making breathing almost too much effort to bother, and stood, shrugging off the blanket and laying it over the kid, tucking it around his stick-thin arms and fuzzy-socked feet.

He only saw double for a moment, and if he tried hard enough, he could walk about as straight as a drunken man.

Good enough, he supposed.

He didn’t have his bag, or his wallet, or his phone. He wasn’t even sure how long he’d spent, drifting in and out of a fever-fueled sleep on the kid’s couch. If the kid’s mom had come home from her hospital shift, he certainly didn’t remember. Maybe she was working a double and spent the night at the hospital. He vaguely remembered seeing something about that on some TV show back when he still lived at his donor’s place.

Or maybe Izuku’s habit of caring for injured homeless people was a lot worse than he thought. He really ought to give the kid a sterner stranger-danger talk.

But that was an issue for a different Shouta. One without a head injury. And who could walk far enough to reach his shoes without relying on the wall for balance.

Right now, this Shouta had to go to school. He hoped that his teachers hadn’t expelled him for whatever number of unexcused absences he’d accumulated. Or maybe they’d called his parents, and they told the school he’d died. Or defected and become a villain like they always knew he would.

It really didn’t matter.

Brain-damaged Aizawa didn’t have enough energy to think about that. He was too busy focusing on walking, one foot in front of the other, out the genkan and Izuku’s front door. He allowed himself one quick glance back into the darkened apartment to look at the kid’s soft, sleep-heavy breathing and fluffy green curls tucked into the gaudy hero blanket. The movement made his vision swim, but he already felt like he’d been stuck into a centrifuge and had been scrambled like an egg so it didn’t make much of a difference as he trudged out the door and walked shakily down the stairs.

At least the apartment was next to their park, and their park was only a few minutes walk away from school.

He could make it there, probably.

Though he might get in trouble for ruining his uniform.

Chapter Text

FIVE

Shouta sat on the splintered wood of their bench, running the tips of his fingers over the rusted metal bolds and rotting planks absently as he stared out at the leaf-bare bushes and trees.

It had been a little while since he’d come here.

It wasn’t as though he were avoiding it.

He wasn’t.

He had no reason to, it would be illogical.

It was just that, after the alley incident, his school had become somewhat more aware of his living situation. Evidently, getting mugged and beaten half to death in an alleyway on your way to sleep on a bench in a park, and then going missing for two days while a five-year-old nursed you through both a fever and concussion did that kind of thing.

He was now a ‘ward of UA’ and under the rat-faced (and bodied, and rat-everything-elsed) principle’s custody and subject to the most amount of supervision that he’d experienced in his entire life.

It didn’t leave much time to hang out with strange green-haired children in the park.

He definitely didn’t feel uncomfortable with how much help the kid had given him, and the idea of seeing the kid again after being found in such a state, after being such a failure of a hero student (when the kid had looked up to him so much) definitely didn’t make him want to vomit.

That wasn’t the case.

But the alley incident also wasn’t why he was here.

No, because his life was just so great. A real treat, honestly. Nothing but sunshine and rainbows.

And dust and rubble and blood and screaming.

.

.

.

After he came back from the kid’s apartment and his unexpected absence from school, the blond guy and his blue-haired friend had been even more annoying than usual. They’d smothered him with concern and attention and insisted on dragging him everywhere. Eating lunches together, partnering together for projects, training together once he’d been cleared for physical activity again.

He didn’t mean to get attached.

Just like he didn’t mean to get attached to the watery-eyed toddler he met at this bench.

But they all seemed to grow on him.

And it all ended terribly.

And it was always his fault.

He had his first day of internship yesterday. He and Oboro had interned with the same rescue agency. Oboro wanted to practice lifting objects and people with his clouds, and Aizawa needed a practical application to explore the uses of his newly finished capture scarf.

The first version of his scarf had been mint green, which reminded him of fluffy green hair and wide green eyes, but had been horribly impractical for the kind of stealthy heroic Shouta was aiming for. His new one, which hung limply around his neck, was white. Still a bit too eye-catching in his opinion, but the eager little voice that had called him a ‘super-mummy’ had cheered in the back of his mind and he decided to leave it for now.

It was stained, just a little bit now. The end was slightly brown from a rust-colored stain that wouldn’t come out no matter how much he washed it.

It had been a normal patrol. Perfectly average. Oboro had been smiling and cracking jokes over their comms and Aizawa had been steadfastly ignoring him. Their usual dynamic. And then everything had so literally crashed down around him.

And all he could hear was that voice over the radio, cheering him on. And the bloody pool around the chunk of fallen concrete and the look on everyone’s face as he screamed and screamed and screamed.

A sliver of wood caught his wandering fingers and drew Aizawa out of his thoughts. He looked down at the bead of blood on his finger somewhat absently, watching as it grew before finally trailing down his finger and pooling at his wrist. The droplet crept across a reddened slit on his wrist that was irritated from movement, the edges of the cut puckered and pulling apart. It was fine. That one had been shallow.

He kept washing his hands, the night afterward. No matter how much he scrubbed or how hot the water was he still felt like he had Oboro’s blood on his hands. His skin was raw and cracked from the heat, fingertips starting to prune, but he kept scrubbing manically until Nezu had sent someone into his cell of a room at UA to drag him away.

They had to sedate him. The aftereffects of the drugs still weighed down on his system, making his eyelids heavy and his brain slow. It felt like there was a couple of seconds lag from when he told his eyes to move or tried to lift up his hand, and when his body actually responded. The sleep it had forced him into had been suffocating and when he’d dreamed of blood pooling under concrete and dust in his lungs he’d been unable to move. He just lay there, silently in the dark of his room, and wished that he could scream.

Maybe that was why the rat had let him off campus.

Maybe the bastard was just curious if Aizawa would come back. He was sure that it would be a relief, for the principal to be able to focus his resources on students who hadn’t failed as miserably as he had. To replace his spot in the hero course with someone who wouldn’t push away his fr—push away others when they needed support.

A yellowed leaf drifted down from the tree overhead, one of the few stragglers left as winter sank its teeth into the plants around them. The edges were black and crumbling and settled down at Aizawa’s feet. The color made him nauseous. It reminded him too much of a person he couldn’t face right now. Or ever.

God, he’d failed everyone.

He’d let himself feel too much. He’d gotten too attached. This was what happened when he let himself hope that things could get better. He’d been greedy, eating three meals a day, sleeping In a warm bed at night, letting himself relax around his—those idiots.

This was what happened.

His nails pressed painfully into his palms and he let himself bask in the pain. The tight grip of his fist tugged at his wrists and they stung, a burning feeling that crept down his nerves.

This was what happened.

He wasn’t even sure why he was here. It had been so long, surely the kid wouldn’t still come here. Even if he did, what would he say? Could he look into those wide, hopeful eyes that raved about heroes and gushed over his quirk and tell the kid that he was a murderer? About the blood on his hands?

About the people he failed?

Aizawa would have gotten up and left, maybe gone back to school, maybe walked until he found a ledge to walk off, but his limbs were so heavy and slow. His mind was foggy and his breaths were slow. His head felt several pounds too heavy and it took all of his concentration to keep it upright and from lolling to the side like a puppet with its strings cut.

So, he sat there, eyes open and unseeing, as the sun sank lower on the horizon through the barren branches of the tree.

He barely noticed the kid when he sat down next to him on the bench.

His clunky red shoes snuck up on him silently through the crunchy leaves and dry twigs that littered the ground. Or maybe he was farther gone than he’d realized.

That gaudy yellow bag settled down softly on the bench on the other side of the kid and Aizawa felt bile creep up his throat with the guilt he kept trying to stuff back down.

There was some faint rustling, the kid pawing through his bag and then zipping the bag shut before more silence.

The kid slowly leaned over, settling his head down against Aizawa’s arm. And he waited.

No kid should know how much he needed that quiet.

The wind whistled through the branches overhead and the occasional car drove by, tired bouncing over a speed bump that bordered the crosswalk. The kid’s breath was soft against his sleeve and for once he didn’t move. There was no fidgeting. No restlessness or energy that made the kid’s body vibrate or legs swing out into the air. A crow cawed from somewhere neither of them could see.

The bile in his throat hardened into a lump that burned, emotions piling up like dirt over his grave. His head was still so foggy, everything moved too slowly, and nothing felt right.

The world felt so irredeemably broken without Oboro. It was like missing the sun. Nothing could grow—the world stopped spinning. The planets were scattered in disarray. The world was ending, but cars still drove by, and birds flew overhead, and the wind brushed over the back of his neck with a chill that sank down into his bones.

“I…” his voice caught in his throat, crackly from disuse. “I lost someone.”

He couldn’t say his name out loud. Wouldn’t let the universe know that Oboro was dead. If he never said it, never heard it, if he pretended like that grave had someone else’s name then maybe he’d come to school tomorrow and find that fluffy head of blue hair sitting in front of him as though nothing had changed.

The kid beside him hummed quietly, little hands reaching out and grabbing one of his. The pudgy fingers played with his, gliding over his calluses and counting the scars.

Aizawa noticed that the kid’s nails were chewed down to nothing and saw that the cuticles were red and picked at. There was nothing he could do.

“It was my fault. I shouldn’t have left him. If I had been there he wouldn’t be—he would still be here.” His eyes burned and he screwed them shut. He hadn’t let himself cry. Hadn’t feel like he had the right when the tears of everyone who knew and loved Oboro were all because of him. “He’s gone and it’s all my fault.”

The words settled into his soul like a curse. It weighed him down more heavily than the sedatives his body sluggishly fought to burn off. It hurt worse than any cigarette pressed to his skin or razor blade on his wrists. They would stay there, haunting him, until the day he’d die and get to face Oboro and hear the boy’s words condemn him to hell where he belonged.

The kid’s hand tightened around one of his fingers, drawing Aizawa’s attention down.

Slowly, Izuku rolled his sleeve up, one hand holding Aizawa’s down while the other folded the fabric and gently exposed the angry slits that decorated his forearm like red-wrapped wire.

His finger was released as Izuku reached for an object in his lap and Aizawa knew from the metallic click that it was the boy’s now infamous first aid tin.

Careful little fingers ghosted over the bandages inside, purposefully picking out the characters he wanted to use to cover up Aizawa’s mauled skin. He had half a mind to jerk his hand away, to get up and leave before the kid could waste anything more on him.

But his body was so heavy, and he was so tired.

So, he stayed and watched.

Izuku moved methodically, dragging stinging alcohol over the wounds, spreading cream on the bandage, and then applying the plaster to his skin. The boy was careful to choose Band-Aids the right length so that the adhesive didn’t touch the slits.

After his left arm had been sufficiently coated with Band-Aids, the kid reached over for Aizawa’s other arm. He let him, watching with a muted curiosity as the kid barely reacted to the, albeit fewer, collection of cuts on his other arm. It was harder to do left-handed, and his hand always twitched from the cuts that dug into his nerves on his left side which made It harder to hold the razor.

Unlike the hero plasters that decorated his left, Izuku pawed through the tin until he found the colored ones. He stacked them side by side. One green, one black, one blue, one yellow. A coincidence, surely. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

After Izuku finished, they sat in silence for a while—just staring down at Aizawa’s wrists. Shouta wondered if Izuku understood what they meant. How could he? He was just a kid, almost five years old, and better at first aid than some pros. Treated Aizawa with more understanding than some nurses. Looked at his wrists with the kind of empathy that Aizawa never wanted to see on any other person’s face.

Aizawa glanced down past the kid to his red shoes. There was a hole in the toe and the treads were worn painfully thin. The red was almost brown now, so dirty and charred. But red, nonetheless. A signature color that Aizawa had grown to understand the significance of after one nauseating lesson in school that discussed the ‘Quirkless epidemic’.

He had scoffed at the lesson title, which made kids like Izuku sound like a disease, before sitting in numb horror as the class unfolded and the students learned that the problem wasn’t the quirklessness, but rather the statistics surrounding them. One picture on the PowerPoint had hit harder than the others.

It had been a set of painfully familiar red shoes, lined up neatly at the barrier fence on a bridge. A note had been tucked underneath them, the photogram catching it as it fluttered in a dramatic breeze. The sun setting over the water cast the ripples below in glaring red light that made it look as though they were peering out into an ocean of blood.

And Aizawa figured that maybe Izuku did understand.

The kid pulled a juice pouch from the bag to his side as he put away the tin, shoving it into Aizawa’s cold hands with a softly spoken apology about it being his last one, so it was the only flavor he had.

Aizawa took it, and cracked open the twist top, sipping the melon-flavored meal replacement absently as he watched the kid try and gather up the words he wanted to speak.

“It really hurts when people leave.” The kid sniffled finally, fingers twisting together as he spoke in hushed tones. Aizawa felt his heart break a little more, for the two of them sitting there on the bench in mutual grief and understanding. “It was my fault t-that daddy left. Mommy won’t ever say it, but it's true. Kacchan isn’t my friend anymore, but he’s still around and he’s mean, and that almost hurts more. I don’t know why they left,” another wet sniffle, “But I know it was my fault.”

Tears pattered down onto the kid’s hands, which were clasped tightly together on his lap. Aizawa ran his fingers lightly over the Band-Aids on his arms, before reading over and tugging the kid a little closer. His shoulders were shaking a little, and Aizawa couldn’t quite tell if it was from the cold or the tears.

“I’m sorry you can’t see your friend again.”

Aizawa’s vision blurred, and he chose to blame it on the drugs still working through his system as he opened his mouth and croaked out, “Me too, kid. Me too.”

They stayed there together until the sunset. Tears fell and shoulders shook, and if Aizawa found his walls crumbling down around the kid cradled in his lap, no one was there to see it happen.

They separated as the sky drew dark and the kid sluggishly pulled himself to his feet, wiping his eyes and muttering apologies as he excused himself to go home.

Aizawa wandered back to campus with one weight traded for another.

Chapter Text

+1

The frigid winter air spun through the branches above him, the rustling noise sounding like the shifting of clothes or the writhing of snakes as the breeze ghosted through his hair and pulled at his scarf. Aizawa shuddered, burying his face a little deeper into his capture scarf and his hands further into his pockets. He made a mental note to have the support department add something to his costume to keep his hands warmer. They were shaking slightly in the cold and that would make it difficult for him to handle his scarf properly.

The stiff black fabric of his hero costume was thick and warm but the air around him seemed to leech warmth away from the world around it like a vacuum. The sun was setting but the colors that crested on the horizon were dull and faded, just like the frost-bleached leaves and barren twigs and branches that left their once-secluded bench exposed to the rest of the park.

It had been a few hours. Aizawa was sore from sitting still for so long and the uneven wood behind him dug painfully into his back. The sky was turning dark and, in the distance, Shouta noticed the streetlights flicker on. Something equally cold and dismal settled into the pit of his stomach like a stone.

The kid didn’t show up.

Aizawa curled further into himself, telling his sleep-deprived brain that he would just wait a little longer. The cold left his joints stiff, his head foggy, and his eyelids heavy. The kid always showed up when he was here. That’s why he hadn’t visited in a little while. (he wasn’t avoiding it, he wasn’t. he’d just been busy. Training harder and trying to be better to make up for his failure as a hero student so early on. He needed to be stronger.)

The kid would be ecstatic, Aizawa could imagine him practically vibrating off the splintered wooden bench with excitement as he pestered the tired hero student for more details about the suit that the kid himself had helped design.

And Shouta wouldn’t care. He would repeat himself in a monotone drawl, reciting the details of his costume and leaving out some specifics so that the kid would be able to chime in. the little thing’s joyful muttering had grown on the teen. He would never admit it of course, but it had.

Aizawa let his eyes rest against the dry chill around him and his head thudded dully against the back of the bench. He’d just wait another couple of minutes. The kid would be here.

Aizawa was awoken to shaking. The world around him was icy and dark and there was no light except the dull circle of the moon above him and the distantly flickering streetlights. His neck twinged painfully as he jolted upright, upset from the uncomfortable position he’d left it to fall into. The prickly wood beneath him was familiar, though the way it was trembling underneath him was strange.

He looked around for the source of the shaking, wondering dully in his sleep-addled state if the kid had shown up late and tried to wake him up. But the bench was empty and so was the park. A thin layer of frost crusted the yellowed grass around him and sparkled over the gently swaying branched overhead. Confused and disoriented, Aizawa looked down at himself, dressed strangely in a black jumpsuit and white scarf, with strangely familiar yellow goggles looped around his neck.

The outfit scratched at his brain, looking painfully like something he should recognize, but he knew where he was. He was on his bench, the one he’d met the kid at. He was sleeping and he was cold which made sense since he was homeless.

The yellow of the goggles flashed in the moonlight and jarred something out of his brain. Clarity settled over him and he lurched to his feet—unsteady on legs that were dancing with pins and needles.

He wasn’t homeless anymore; he hadn’t been for a while. He knew what he was wearing, it was his hero costume. He was a hero student, and he was out here at their bench because—his hands were shaking. His shoulders wracked with a violent shiver that had his head spinning. No one had shaken him awake; he was trembling because of the cold. The kid wasn’t here.

Aizawa’s head snapped up from where he’d zoned out, staring down at his shaking hands. He turned quickly in a circle, an uneasy feeling twisting in his chest (coated with a thin layer of hurt that Aizawa refused to acknowledge). The kid wasn’t here. Shouta was here at their bench because he’d been waiting for the kid to show up, he’d been so excited to see Aizawa’s ‘super-mummy costume’. The kid had never missed one of their meetups like this before.

Another shiver crawled down his spine and Aizawa adjusted his scarf, wrapping it more tightly around him to try and preserve what little warmth he had left. His fingers felt numb and clumsy as he shoved them back into his pockets and started his trudge back to UA.

It was probably fine. The kid’s mom must have come home from the hospital shift early, he tried to convince himself, smothering the aching concern he felt bubbling in his stomach. He left the park and watched the shadows that the streetlights cast down the alleyways as he passed them.

She must have decided to make him dinner, and the kid lost track of time regaling the woman with his overly enthusiastic stories about heroes and villains.

He turned a corner, passing a convenience store with a flickering overhead light. It was bright inside, and the neon open sign in the window faded between different shades of green. One of them looked just like that kid’s hair when the sun was passing through it and that was probably what drew Aizawa’s attention.

The kid was fine, he huffed to himself as he ducked inside the store, buying himself a cheap and likely disgusting to-go cup of coffee, cradling it in his hands for the warmth and not caring about the taste.

Stepping back outside was jarring. His skin felt almost feverish and flushed as the blood rushed to the surface while he’d been sheltered inside. It made the cold out of the shop so much more painful. A sharp breeze cut across his skin, twisting through the air and down the alleyway behind the shop. Aizawa shivered again, watching as the ice-cold wind fluttered through discarded newspapers and garbage, fluffing up a mop of all too familiar green that was curled up against the dumpster.

Aizawa’s eyes almost glazed past it, refusing to believe what he had seen. It was nothing, the light was playing tricks on him. Some cruel joke cast on the alleyway by the orange streetlamps and the fog of his breath that hung in the air.

But when he forced his eyes back down the alleyway the matted head of green was still there. He wasn’t able to see from this distance, he was even moving. As Shouta’s breath picked up, panic building in his chest, the cloud of fog that twisted in the night air around his scarf thickened, though he couldn’t see any white puffs leaving the kid’s painfully blue lips.

The cup of coffee slipped from Aizawa’s fingers, and it splattered across the ground, steaming slightly until the frozen ground beneath him sucked away the last little bits of warmth. The dark brown liquid glinted like blood in the dim streetlight.

He felt his heart fall with it, thudding through his body and shattering on the dirty concrete below.

“Izuku? Kid, what are you doing out? It's freezing!” Aizawa rushed forward, crouching in front of the little kid huddled next to a garbage bin in the alley.

The kid’s teeth were chattering, and his shoulders—so thin, barely more than bone draped in threadbare fabric—were shaking violently. The kid’s head lolled forward, flopping limply onto Shouta’s chest. Aizawa felt his heart rate spike and a nauseating guilt spilled out of his chest and threatened to choke him.

“Izuku? Izuku? Kid!” the hero student shook the child again, and again the kid's head lolled around bonelessly.

“Fuck!” he swore, scooping the kid up into his arms and shifting his capture scarf so it covered the kid’s exposed arms and shuddering chest. Shallow little breaths gasped out from between his chattering teeth and Aizawa tucked the kid as close as he could to himself.

He wished he could get him warm, but Aizawa was freezing too. The metal alloy of his scarf gave some insulation to the fabric, an unintended but welcome side effect, but it couldn’t do much when they were both so cold.

Aizawa stood and started to sprint in the direction he’d been avoiding for the last month.

Dim and flickering streetlights blurred past, casting eerie shadows over the storefronts and alleyways. Aizawa skidded around a corner, nearly toppling over as his shoes hit a patch of black ice. He held the kid tightly to his chest and fought for balance before taking off at another dead run.

Not soon enough, a familiar park crept into view.

As his long legs carried them past the place he had once started to think of as something like a home, Aizawa felt nauseous, wondering how many afternoons crept into dark, cold evenings like these where Izuku had waited for him on their bench as Aizawa worked himself into the ground.

He had been so stupid. So selfish.

Avoiding the kid because he didn’t feel like the hero those little green eyes saw. Because he couldn’t face the kid after that night that he found him, after Oboro, after he failed so miserably. Because the kid’s bright smile reminded him too much of his blue-haired friend’s smile and made something inside him break again and again.

 He held the shaking child in his arms as he ran, gasping down the frigid winter night air, and thought through all of the warm smiles and kindness Izuku had given him, all of the ways that he’d saved Aizawa without knowing. And he felt like he was dying again. Like that day he failed Oboro. Like this was all his fault.

“Hey, we’re almost there. Don’t worry. You’re safe. We’ll get you warm.” He muttered a never-ending stream of meaningless comfort to the frozen boy in his arms as he took the staircase up to the apartment three steps at a time.

It was late, and he was probably making so much noise, but he couldn’t care. All that mattered was the child in his arms.

How had this even happened? Why was the kid out this late?

Aizawa let the bitter thought he’d had to force down every time he saw Izuku rise to the surface of his looping thoughts. Where the hell was the Problem Child’s mother? How could someone who raised this ray of sunshine, whom Izuku spoke of so highly, let this happen? Let him get this thin? Let him wander out in the cold?

It made no sense. Nothing about this made any sense and Aizawa hated that.

Izuku was light enough that despite their long run and all of the stairs, Aizawa’s arms weren’t tired. He kept looking down into his arms to make sure the kid was still there. He felt like nothing.

Aizawa skidded to a stop in front of the kid’s apartment door and kicked the welcome mat out of the way, bending down precariously to scoop up the poorly hidden key that he’d forgotten to tell the kid to move.

He would have time for that later, when the kid was up and talking, and Shouta had had the chance to speak his mind to the kid’s mother (with Izuku well out of earshot).

He flung the door open and recoiled at the smell. The apartment reeked. His eyes watered slightly, but he could see the pile of trash bags likely too heavy for the little kid to haul outside from the door, so ducked his face into his capture scarf and rushed inside.

He settled the kid down on the couch, still draped in the stained hero blanket, and pulled it around the kid. He looked around frantically to try and find something else to swaddle the kid in, but the inside of the apartment was so dark. Not a single appliance light blinked, there was no hum from the fridge. The only light came from the left-open door and hallway outside.

Aizawa fumbled his way through the messy apartment to the light switch on the wall nearest to him, but when he flicked it up the lights stayed off.

Aizawa felt his throat tighten slightly at the implications but flicked it again. On and off, like maybe if he tried hard enough the electricity would turn back on. It didn’t.

His heart pounding loudly in his head, Aizawa pulled a flashlight off his utility belt and quickly swept the room. There was a basket of blankets next to the TV stand and he grabbed them, upending the basket on the couch and pulling the kid onto his own lap.

The little boy was still shivering and floppy and wrong, so he curled his arms and legs around the kid, rubbing the boy’s shoulders and drowning them both in blankets.

It took too long. Panic still flooded his mind, making his heart race fast enough that it was nearly beating out of his chest. But slowly, the kid thawed out. The shivering stopped and his breathing evened out. The furrow to his brow smoothed out as Izuku squirmed slightly under the weight of the blankets, pulling himself closer to Aizawa’s chest.

Aizawa let himself relax just slightly when the kid sighed groggily and tipped his head up to look at him. The green eyes were still slightly glassy, and the kid’s voice was painfully soft.

“Z-zawa?” the kid muttered, sounding tired and confused.

Aizawa pulled the kid closer, cradling the too-thin frame on his lap as they both sank further into the mound of blankets. “Yeah, kid. I’m here. You’re okay.”

The kid sniffled and shivered, but nodded into Aizawa’s chest, letting his head fall back down.

“O-oh, okay.” There was another sniffle as the kid nuzzled into Aizawa’s scarf. “So warm…” Izuku hummed as he drifted back to sleep. His breaths slowed back down but they were deep and relaxed and nothing like the slow, shallow gasps of a frozen kid.

Shouta’s heart squeezed painfully as he let himself relax with the kid. His adrenaline high crashed down around him and he tucked the boy under his chin and let himself drift off with him. They were both warm and safe and it would be okay. He’d make sure of it.

A harsh beam of morning light glared through Aizawa’s eyelids, painting the backs of his lids red. Aizawa groaned, his legs were numb and tingling and there was something heavy on his chest that stopped him from sitting up.

The soft cushions beneath him were familiar, as was the weight, and he cracked his eyes open to find two little green ones looking up at him sleepily.

“Morning, kid.” Aizawa groaned, reaching up and ruffling the kid’s matted hair.

The kid looked confused, eyebrows pulled down into a furrow and his lips moving nearly silently as he muttered to himself.

“Feeling any better?” Last night's events faded into his mind as he stretched, careful not to dislodge the kid curled up on his lap under a mountain of blankets.

He made the mistake of breathing in sharply and fought back a gag as the smell assaulted him. It was like something was rotten, and it permeated everything inside the apartment. Not even the blankets wrapped around them had escaped. Biting down on the urge to gag again, Aizawa made a conscious effort to breathe shallowly through his mouth instead of his nose—though he could still practically taste the awful smell on his tongue.

“Yeah…” the kid sighed and Aizawa looked down at him with concern.

“Izuku,” and the kid looked back up at him apprehensively, “What were you doing outside so late? You were freezing cold! You could have gotten sick or hurt.”

The kid shuffled anxiously, little hands reaching up to wind themselves into his hair and pull harshly.

Aizawa slowly moved his hands over the kid’s, stopping him from ripping out the mats at the roots.

The kid was muttering something, but it was too quiet and fast for Aizawa to understand. He huffed and tried to catch the kid’s eye. Izuku had looked away and his eyes were flicking around the messy apartment, refusing to look back at the teen.

“I was worried, but I’m not upset at you. You can tell me.” Aizawa spoke in his typical flat tone, but the kid seemed to relax just a little, though his shoulders were still hunched up to his ears.

The kid spoke a little louder, though it was still a barely audible whisper.

“I… I was hungry…”

Aizawa froze and looked down at the wrists he still held in his hands. They were boney and thin, and the kid’s skin was papery and dry.

He swallowed down the lump in his throat to try and keep his bubbling anger out of his voice. “Is that why you were by the dumpster?”

The kid nodded shakily and Aizawa’s heart clenched.

“Does your mom not feed you?”

That was obviously the wrong thing to say because tears welled up in the kid’s green eyes and he started to shake.

“Izuku,” Aizawa said softly, but the boy still flinched slightly. “Your parent is supposed to feed you. Has she been getting you food?”

The kid started to sob, and as he blubbered, tears spilling off his cheeks and soaking through Aizawa’s shirt, the little boy shook his head.

“S-she used to. S-she w-would always buy me snacks and, and make me dinner, but she’s been sleeping so much, and the f-food ran out and I was j-just s-so hungry—” the kid broke down into inconsolable sobs.

Aizawa sat there with the kid on his lap, stiff and uncomfortable but unwilling to move or do anything that might upset the kid further. Damnit, there was a reason he was going into underground heroics. He was terrible at this comforting shit. The kid kept crying and the festering anger and resentment that had been growing since Aizawa found the kid last night filled his blood and threatened to burst.

But he couldn’t move, because the kid was clinging to him, little hands buried into his capture scarf and holding on to him like he was the last person in the whole world.

So, he swallowed down his anger and his guilt and stiffly wrapped his arms back around the boy and held him while he cried.

The sun had shifted in the window by the time the kid had calmed down. He was still sniffling softly, but he’d run out of tears and stopped shaking.

The kid slid off Aizawa’s lap and disappeared into the bathroom for a while, leaving Aizawa startled, alarmed, and slightly damp on the stained couch. When the kid reappeared, the hair around his face was dripping and the tear tracks had been washed away, though the kid still shifted anxiously as he climbed back up onto the couch and sat down next to Aizawa.

They sat in silence for a moment before Aizawa found the right way to phrase what he needed to say. He hated the situation that Izuku was in, but he also hated the idea of any of the possible solutions. Izuku was a quirkless kid. The foster care system would chuck him somewhere that would break him even worse than he was now. There's a good chance the kid would end up back on the streets.

He wished he could leave Izuku here, but this apartment reeked, and the kid was starving and freezing in alleyways trying to get food, so this clearly wasn’t working. He needed help like Shouta had needed help, and Aizawa wished so painfully he could have cried that he could help the kid as much as Izuku had helped him over the last two months.

He wanted to whisk the child away from here and give him to a family who would love him, but he also knew that realistically, this kid was bound for a group home and a dead-end life.

Aizawa’s throat tightened, and the bone-deep distrust of adults and the welfare system that had ignored his own abuse screamed at him as he realized what he had to do. Nothing was fair. Nothing was ever fair.  

“Izuku, you need an adult to take care of you. Your mom hasn’t been taking care of you properly. You should be getting food.” The kid opened his mouth and looked like he was going to argue, but Aizawa kept talking.

“Do you know where your mom is? When was the last time she came home?”

The kid sniffled again, looking up at Aizawa through damp lashes and watery eyes. “S-she’s in her room. She’s sleeping.  She m-must have had a really tiring day.” He gestured limply towards a closed door nearby.

The anger from last night rose again in his stomach. What kind of parent sleeps the day away while her kid goes out at night in the middle of the winter to look for food? This situation made no sense, and it was driving Aizawa crazy.

“Okay, kid. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You are gonna go to your room and get changed. I’m going to go have a conversation with your mom. Sound good?”

The kid shook his head violently, lurching forward and latching onto Aizawa’s shirt.

“NO! y-you can’t! She d-doesn’t like it when she’s woken up. She won’t like it…” the kid trailed off as his breathing sped up and Aizawa wrapped his hands over the kid’s gently.

“Izuku, it doesn’t matter if your mom doesn’t like to be woken up, you need someone to take care of you.”

The kid shook his head again, now vibrating anxiously. “No, no, no, no. it's fine. I’m a big boy, I can take care of myself. It’s fine. I’m fine.” He was muttering, still trembling as he insisted.

Aizawa spoke softly, looking the kid straight into his eyes.

“I know that, kid. You did a really good job on your own. You took care of yourself, and you helped me. You’re my hero, you know that?”

The kid’s muttering stopped as he froze, staring up at Aizawa with wide, awestruck eyes.

“R-really?”

Aizawa nodded, trying to twist his face into an honest-looking smile that wouldn’t terrify the already anxious kid.

“Yeah. But I’m the hero student, so it’s my turn to help you, okay? Does that make sense? Will you let me help you?”

Aizawa waited while Izuku thought it through, until the kid nodded cautiously and slid off the couch.

“You go get changed, I’ll talk to your mom and meet you back here, okay?”

The kid nodded again before running off down the hallway.

Aizawa sighed in relief before turning to face the door off the side of the living room that the kid had previously identified as his mom’s. The soft fondness he felt for the kid solidified into something heavy and cold as he let his anger surface over his carefully schooled expression.

The kid wasn’t here to get freaked out, and hopefully, the kid’s room was far enough away that Aizawa could have some strong words with whatever bitch of a woman would neglect someone like Izuku. With any luck, the glowing red eyes and angrily writhing capture scarf around his neck would be enough to scare the woman straight.

He strode over in a few long, heavy steps and threw open the bedroom door.

The smell hit him like a physical wall.

As soon as the door swung open it was like he’d been tossed into a room full of rotten meat on a warm day. It was rank and pungent and clung to his nose hairs so even as he gagged and ducked his head into his capture scarf the smell followed. It was like rotting eggs and ammonia and the sickly-sweet smell of old garbage.

Then he noticed the flies. Piles of them, dead and dry lay crumbling along the crack at the bottom of the door and the ledge of the bedroom window.

He knew before he looked, a haunting fact that slid into place in his mind as though he’d always known the truth. Like he’d figured it out, had carved its place into his head and forgotten it. Managed to push it away and not acknowledge it.

There was a body on the bed.

Or there had been. At some point.

The blanket draped over the bed sagged in places it shouldn’t. No person—or body—was that thin. A red-brown stain had soaked through the blanket—the mottled, molding pool bleeding the outline of a person through the sheets.

A hand stuck out above the sheet, resting on the pillow next to all too familiar green hair that hid her face from view.

The red-stained bone caught the light that crept past the drawn curtains, and Aizawa spun around, stomach in his throat and eyes wide as he slammed the door shut.

His ears were ringing, and he couldn’t get the picture out of his brain. The way the fabric outlined the dip of each of her ribs, the smell, oh god he would never be able to forget that smell.

Aizawa’s knees buckled, and he sank to the ground outside the closed bedroom door dry heaving over the carpeted floor. Saliva filled his mouth as his head spun and bile rose in his throat.

The smell still clung to him. It leaked out into the rest of the apartment. Everything smelled like rot. How long had she been there? How long had Izuku been living with a corpse?!

A tiny hand reached out for him and Izuku, small and almost as skeletal as his mother rotting on the bed, climbed into his lap. He wondered if the kid could smell it on him--if he knew what was inside that room. If he knew why—

The kid sniffled softly and Aizawa latched onto him, cradling him to his chest and burying the side of the kid’s face into his capture scarf. The one Izuku had helped him design, all of those late afternoons on the bench.

Izuku clung back, holding onto him just as tightly as painfully silent tears rolled down his cheeks.

“…She wouldn’t wake up, Zawa.” The kid’s voice was so quiet. Shouta’s heartbeat in his ears nearly drowned it out.

“Mommy doesn’t like it when I bother her when she’s napping.” Another soft sniffle, and more tears soaking through his shirt.

“I tried to wait for her to wake up, I was really patient. She likes it when I’m patient.”

“Oh, kid,” Aizawa whispered, wrapping his arms around the boy impossibly tighter.

“B-but, but she didn’t wake up. Why won’t she wake up?” red-rimmed eyes met his and Aizawa couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe, let alone find the words to explain or soothe the broken kid sitting in front of him.

“W-why won’t she wake up? I-I need her. She’s my mommy, I need her to wake up.” The kid hiccupped, and his tears fell faster, little sobs shaking his thin shoulders. “She’s my mommy.” A noisy sniffle, another sob. “I need my mommy. I-I need, sniff, I need my mommy. Why won’t she wake up?”

He didn’t know how to answer. His mouth tasted like vomit, and he was drowning in the smell. He tried to blink away the image of what he saw behind the door, but it was burned behind his eyes.

Apologies died on his lips. he couldn’t croak out the words. Izuku’s voice spun in his head, ‘I tried to wake her up, why won't she wake up?’ and his throat burned and he wanted to scream but he couldn’t make a single sound.

“It really hurts when people leave…” Aizawa whispered into Izuku’s hair as he cradled the boy in his arms, quoting back the comfort the kid had given him after Oboro’s death. “I-I’m sorry you can’t see her anymore.”

That seemed to be more than enough to explain it to the kid.

He accepted it numbly, nodding against Aizawa’s chest and staring up at him with a numbness that Aizawa understood far too well.

“M-me too…” the kid whispered back hoarsely as he clung to Aizawa even tighter.

At that moment, nothing was okay. Their scars lined up and they understood the others’ hurt, but it felt like nothing was ever going to be okay again.

When Aizawa returned to UA, it was with a quiet green-haired kid in his arms.

The hero student was pulled aside by the staff and bombarded with questions, but neither kid spoke. They just clung to each other as though they wouldn’t survive being separated. Nezu saw the way they held each other, and the fire in his student’s eyes when one of the teachers tried to pull the kid away, and recognized the nearly animalistic claim the student and child had to each other.

So, as the indulgent guardian and principal that he was, he let the little green thing stay. It wasn’t as though the police or child services were terribly concerned about what happened to a little quirkless boy anyway.

Their loss, truly. Because Nezu watched the way the child saw the world with brilliantly analytical eyes, and listened to his muttering with a fascination that was rarely drawn about by little humans and their petty thoughts.

The two boys flourished together, well fed of course, and protected by the staff in ways no adults had stood up for them before. And in years to come they’d change the world.