Chapter Text
“I AM hE… HerE-HeRe… HERE!... nope, no… Maybe this one… I aM HeRe… AM.. I Here-… I AM HERE!”
Aizawa merely grunted in response and regretted getting his apprentice the Artificial Vocal Cords for the thousandth time in a row that night, which was a record.
Shinsou hid his mischievous smirk behind the vocal device, secretly enjoying every second of seeing his mentor’s I-don’t-wanna-hear-that-number-one-hero’s-stupid-catch-phrase-more-than-I-already-do-on-the-daily-but-I’ll-shove-my-hands-in-my-pockets-and-hide-my-face-behind-my-capture-weapon-and-continue-walking-nonchalantly-because-it’s-logical-to-let-Shinsou-learn-how-to-use-the-vocal-cords face.
“I AM HERE!” Aha! Shinsou finally found All Might-sensei’s voice. “IT’S FINE NOW, YOU KNOW WHY, AIZAWA-SHONEN?” Shinsou asked with All Might’s voice.
“Because I remembered why I didn’t accept interns.” Aizawa grunted mostly to himself, as he massaged his eyes tiredly.
They had just finished a short patrol, with Shinsou acting as Aizawa’s intern, and were now heading back to UA’s dorms. Aizawa had accepted to let Shinsou shadow him after he rejected the boy three times.
But apparently, to Aizawa’s utmost horror, Yamada and Nemuri weren’t the only ones who could out-stubborn him.
Shinsou switched the settings of his vocal cord to a new voice. Despite the playful atmosphere, Shinsou’s face was the same dead-fish poker face as it always was; a perfect imitation of his mentor’s own expression. “Yo! That’s not a Plus Ultra mentality at all, Aizawa-sensei!” Yamada-sensei’s voice bloomed into the narrow alley they were trespassing through.
“If you’re still this energetic after all that running around, then maybe I should give you a few extra laps once we’re back.” Aizawa threatened with the same gruff voice, but Shinsou knew his sensei was not joking. It was actually very Aizawa-like to make him run laps for his smart mouth after a three-hour patrol.
The threat sent a chilling thrill down Shinsou’s spine, only making his smirk grow wilder. Any other authority figure would have already shut Shinsou’s sass down with a long, excruciating lecture to make sure being sarcastic with his teacher never crossed his mind again, but Aizawa couldn’t care less about being respected. He would allow it, especially since it would help Shinsou gain self-esteem with talking and getting a response out of people.
Shinsou switched to another voice, trying to keep the grin out of his voice just to nail the imitation. “It’s not logical to punish my aspiring student after such an excellent display of professional heroics. You did such a great job, Shinsou. In fact, you did so great that it’s more rational to set aside my unreasonable fear of favoritism and buy my apprentice a well-deserved coffee—”
Aizawa abruptly stopped in his tracks, and Shinsou accidentally bumped into him without really meaning to.
Shinsou blinked at Aizawa’s unmoving body, quickly switching his persona device off. “Sensei?” he asked, a bit confused.
“You can walk the rest of the way on your own.” Aizawa’s flat voice stated, but it was colder than usual. Shinsou’s stomach sank to the bottom of his feet. Had he gone too far? Did he cross a line? Did Aizawa finally reach his limit and was now done with Shinsou’s shit? Fuck—maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned the word favoritism. He knew Aizawa-sensei was dead-set on being fair.
It took a second for Shinsou to collect himself. There was a twinge of pain in his chest, a distant feeling of betrayal after believing that out of all the people in this world, Aizawa would be the last to want him to stop talking. “I’m sorry, sensei. I didn’t mean to cross a boundary.” Shinsou said, shifting his weight from one foot to another.
“When I give you an order, I expect it to be followed without any arguments,” Aizawa said, firm and final. Aizawa had only accepted to let Shinsou come along with him under one strict condition: to follow his orders no matter what. But they weren’t patrolling anymore.
Something wasn’t adding up.
Shinsou couldn’t see Aizawa’s face. He always walked half a step behind Aizawa, and now his mentor’s back was to him, waiting for Shinsou to walk ahead and leave.
Shinsou looked around, trying to assess the situation, trying to find the source of Aizawa’s sudden change in behavior. “What’s wrong, sensei?” he asked quietly, his hands slowly lifting toward his capture weapon on instinct.
Aizawa turned around and faced him, and the gaze made Shinsou’s breath hitch. Aizawa’s eyes were dark, firm, and determined as he said his next words in a no-nonsense tone. “Now, Shinsou.”
Aizawa jerked his chin toward the exit of the alley ahead of them. Shinsou’s wild eyes surveyed the path over Aizawa’s shoulder for a millisecond before darting back to Aizawa’s. Then he did something neither he nor Aizawa imagined he would do.
He shook his head, refusing to follow Aizawa’s clear order.
He opened his mouth to tell his mentor he wasn’t going to leave, no matter what unseen danger was making Aizawa act so strangely, but Aizawa beat him to it. “If you’re not back in UA in ten minutes, I will be terminating your training for good.”
Shinsou almost flinched. He felt his heart doing something weird as ice spread through his body.
Why.
Aizawa knew. He knew what training meant to Shinsou. Training under Aizawa-sensei wasn’t just a simple workout for him—it was all Shinsou had. It was his everything; the reason he woke up every morning to go to the school he once despised for crushing his dream. It was his singular ray of hope, the one and only string that still connected him to his dream of becoming a hero.
And Aizawa knew that. He knew.
That was what made Shinsou realize.
The danger looming over their heads was great enough to force Aizawa to his last resort. To something he knew Shinsou wouldn’t argue with.
“Yes, sensei,” Shinsou said dazedly as he started walking. He passed Aizawa and didn’t even look back as he moved toward the exit at the end of the narrow alley, as though walking under the influence of his own quirk.
He bit down on his lip and pretended like he didn’t care. He walked as though nothing was wrong. As though nothing had happened.
He had so much to say. He had so much to ask.
Please, sensei. Please let me fight with you.
But he knew he wouldn’t stop. He knew he wouldn’t look back. He knew he wouldn’t say those words out loud, despite how they were clawing at his throat, begging to be voiced.
Because even though he was comfortable enough with Aizawa-sensei to be more sarcastic with him than with any other teacher in his life, Shinsou would never be disrespectful to the man he owed so much.
One thing Shinsou realized very early on after getting to know Aizawa-sensei, was that the man didn’t care about formalities or honorifics.
That much was obvious from how much effort Aizawa put into correcting Bakugou’s language.
Which was zero.
No, respect had a different meaning when it came to Aizawa. And it was to listen to him. To do what he said.
There wasn’t a single occasion where Shinsou had tried to argue his way out of Aizawa’s instructions. If Aizawa told him to follow a specific diet, Shinsou would follow the exact plan. If Aizawa told him to do a hundred pushups, Shinsou would be on his hands and feet before Aizawa’s sentence was even finished. If he told him to fight, Shinsou would fight. If he told him to spar, he would spar.
If he told him to flee.
…he would flee.
It was Shinsou’s own decision. Shinsou decided to put his full and absolute trust in Aizawa the day the man gave him what no other hero ever had: a second chance.
And so, if Aizawa told him to run,
He would run.
Shinsou walked a bit more, moving toward more populated areas. He put his training into practice and disappeared into the crowd, losing any possible pursuer on his tracks. When the opportunity presented itself, he slipped out of the crowd and broke into a sprint.
*******
Aizawa watched as Shinsou’s figure disappeared when he rounded the corner. Aizawa let out an soundless sigh of relief, which would look like nothing more than an exhale to any prying eyes. Shinsou was a problem child, no question, but nowhere near Midoriya level. Aizawa wasn’t sure if he could have gotten that troublemaker out of his way that easily.
Aizawa took his barred yellow goggles from around his neck and set them over his eyes. “I suppose I should thank you for letting him go.” Aizawa’s sentence was carried on a heavy sigh as he turned to face the presence that was hiding silently in the shadows, perfectly concealed beside the dumpsters.
Aizawa wasn’t sure why the figure had allowed it. Why let the intern go. But Aizawa was grateful nonetheless. It meant the person’s business was with him, with enough integrity not to involve his student, and that was all Aizawa would ask for.
It was purely thanks to his instincts that Aizawa even noticed the ambusher’s presence. Academics be damned—not that he would ever say that anywhere near Kaminari or Ashido—but Aizawa didn’t need a textbook confirmation or a methodological analysis to know how dangerous the figure was.
A hunter. Aizawa had no doubt.
The figure emerged from the corner, slowly appearing from the shadows. He stopped one step short of the line of light the moon was casting into the alley from over the adjacent wall, allowing Aizawa to make out the outline of their body, but not their face.
They were shorter than Aizawa had expected, but that was beside the point. What was the point, however, were the eyes. They were shining wild and focused, unsettling slit pupils at their center—even though the rest of the hunter’s face was still dark and unrecognizable.
Aizawa buried his hand in his capture weapon, waiting for the villain to make the first move. One second, they were both frozen still, eyes locked on each other, breathing lightly in synchrony. Next—
The figure darted.
Aizawa activated Erasure and sent his weapon flying toward the advancing attacker. They dodged the flying fabric with practiced ease and ran toward Aizawa. Fast. Faster than any opponent Aizawa had faced in a long time.
Shit.
The speed wasn’t from a quirk, or Erasure would have already nullified it. Aizawa assumed they weren’t using a quirk, since nothing had changed.
They were just that fast.
Aizawa sent the capture weapon again, but the fabric wrapped around thin air as the hunter ducked down and slid along the ground, closing the remaining gap between them in the blink of an eye.
Aizawa pulled out his tanto almost at the same time the hunter drew his katana. The man swung the katana at Aizawa in the same move as he unsheathed his red-bladed weapon, cutting through the air with the skill of a trained swordsman.
Aizawa deflected the blade with the tempered steel of his own, but he had to jump back as the long katana out-sized his tanto. In the next swing that followed immediately after, however, the red blade grazed his cheek and cut through a few strands of hair as it passed by Aizawa’s face. Aizawa merged the retreat into a follow-up attack, spinning on his heel and counterattacking with a kick powered by his heavy black boots.
From there, they engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Aizawa was more experienced, more tactical, more methodological.
The villain was faster, more juvenile, more reckless.
But they were both trained. That much was obvious.
Aizawa proceeded with successive dodges and attacks, luring the assassin into the false illusion that he wasn’t going to use his scarf in close combat. And in a moment of vulnerability, when that false sense of security was well established, Aizawa sent his scarf forward and wrapped it around the attacker’s dominant arm, immobilizing the katana. With one hand bound tightly around the scarf, the Erasure Hero pulled the swordsman close, and at the same time, with his other hand, he swung his less commonly used weapon and slashed the black mask covering his opponent’s face.
There was no warning before it happened.
As if caught in a sudden hurricane, Aizawa’s vision filled with a blur of flying red—sharp pieces rushing toward the attacker from all directions, like shattered fragments of iron drawn by a powerful magnetic field.
Aizawa activated Erasure, knowing full well the phenomenon could only be caused by a quirk. But as his glowing eyes opened to erase, his vision was blocked by his own capture weapon wrapping around his eyes, moved by two of the same flying red objects.
Aizawa felt it before he heard it: a strong current of air circulating in the narrow space, splashing across his face and jumpsuit. Only then did he hear its cause. The alley filled with the unmistakable sound of beating wings, holding the assassin’s short body floating midair, based on Aizawa’s auditory input. The force of the gust lifted dust and small debris, slapping them against Aizawa’s covered face along with the rancid odor of rotting garbage.
Aizawa came to a halt a few steps away, his fingers wrapped around his traitorous scarf that was now acting as a solid blindfold, as he listened to the flapping sound that was far too recognizable to ignore, setting off a few dozen alarms in his head all at once.
“Aren’t you supposed to be posing in front of cameras right now…” Aizawa hooked a finger into his capture weapon and yanked it down, freeing his face. He looked up to lock eyes with the one and only Number Two Hero. “Hawks.”
*******
One thing Aizawa could confidently rely on to never change about the whole coming to experience was that it was never peaceful. Whether it was waking up in a hospital with enough morphine running through his veins to knock out a young healthy elephant, jolting awake to a particular obnoxious blonde shouting his name, or, in some more entertaining occasions, opening his eyes just to realize he was blindfolded and surrounded by villains—it was never peaceful.
This time wasn’t any different either, but there was something new about it. Something that nagged at Aizawa somewhere in his sluggish brain, urging him to gain consciousness faster.
Worry.
Some important realization that left the Eraser–my-heart-is-carved-out-of-stone–Head hero afraid for something. Or many things. Or someone. Or some people.
It was the muffled voices in his head that first greeted him—broken, indistinct fragments of words that sounded as though they were being spoken in a hurricane far away from him. Like waking up from a restless night filled with endless nightmares, only to hear the echoes of the last one still ringing in his ears.
He could hear fighting. He remembered red. He remembered disappointment. Confusion. Anger.
A bitter, distant feeling of betrayal.
He could hear pieces of words he exchanged, some questions that were answered with nothing but silence.
He remembered his eyes beginning to sting, forced open in a waiting game he was far too familiar with.
He remembered being pushed to his limits; his opponent too fast for him, poking at his oldest of fears: the fear of being one step behind. Fear of not being fast enough. Not enough to catch a student mid-fall. Not quick enough to snatch a civilian from beneath a collapsing building. Not fast enough to erase a destructive quirk before it erupted.
And when he had finally wrapped his attacker in the capture weapon, pinning both wings and limbs to the torso tightly enough to knock the air out of the lungs, it was the confident and slightly disappointed voice that instilled the icy anticipation of losing in him before it actually happened.
“Don’t feel bad about it, Eraser. I’m just a bad match for you.” The first complete sentence that shaped itself over the static noise of his sedated mind was also the last one he had heard before losing consciousness. “After all, being the fastest means all I need is the blink of an eye.”
And it always came down to that, didn’t it?
The blink of an eye.
It didn’t matter if he would rather go blind than blink, if he was ready to endure the worst of the pain and dryness. Once control of his eyelids switched from voluntary to involuntary—his body programmed to survive over the course of evolution despite the human’s rather self-destructive tendencies—he would blink even if he begged his eyelids not to.
Which was probably exactly what had happened, if being unconscious rather than in a police station handing over the captured villain was any indication.
He had blinked, and that was when the sharp pain had shot through his back, even though he had reactivated his quirk right after. And something about the attacker targeting his back felt ironic at the time—something about the backstabbing being more than just figurative.
He could make out his mixed feelings better than the exact train of thought leading to them. He could sense the silhouettes of rampaging emotions dancing inside his throbbing skull, the most prominent of them all being worry.
Or so Aizawa would call it, when he didn’t want to use the word fear.
Fear. Vivid, touchable fear. Fear that something bad would happen if he didn’t act, if he couldn’t stop it.
Something about an unrepairable damage to the system as they knew it. Something about the threat of a hidden danger that everyone but Aizawa was ignorant of.
And all that worry and fear sank down into a single word. A name. The last thing that bounced through Aizawa’s mind before it all went black.
Toko “…yami.” Aizawa rasped, the first thing he uttered hoarsely after finally gaining some semblance of consciousness. He didn’t actually mean to say that out loud, but try explaining that to his disoriented, foggy mind.
“Yummy?” A rough, raspy voice echoed, slightly taken aback but mostly amused by what the hero’s first word after waking up turned out to be. The same icy presence snorted, and if it wasn’t just one of those post-anesthesia tricks his mind was playing, Aizawa was certain he could smell burned flesh from their direction. “Don’t tell me you’re actually into this stuff, Eraserhead.”
Aizawa’s first instinct, even before opening his eyes, was to move his hands. He needed to get a sense of his body position. And that was when he heard it, confirmed with a slightly delayed sensory input of cold metal around his wrists: chains—which immediately made it clear what the man meant by this stuff.
“Should I add the cherry on top, then? Make you enjoy this even more?” the rough voice asked, the threat in it as clear as the rasps in his seemingly ruined voice. The man brought a hand close to Aizawa’s face, and hungry flames erupted into existence, consuming oxygen gleefully and clawing invading heat toward Aizawa’s cheek. Aizawa’s sluggish reflexes cost him a few black strands, which burned with a sizzling sound and left behind a sulfurous smell.
Aizawa flinched back and opened his aching eyes, activating his quirk. The jerky movement made the chains rattle as his back heat something, making Aizawa realize he was seated on a metallic chair, along with the fact that his legs were chained as well. The sudden movement was rewarded with a wave of vertigo, his vision bleaching into a harsh white once opened to the moderately bright room.
Aizawa caught a glimpse of blue flames vanishing into thin air before he was forced to close his eyes again, unless he wanted his head to spin straight back into another blackout.
“What’s the matter, Eraser…” the same person spoke, one who had a name in Aizawa’s mental registry—Dabi. He lit his hand again, closing it predatory-slow toward Aizawa’s face. “Don’t tell me the warm greeting isn’t up to your standards.”
This time, when Aizawa opened his eyes, he managed to keep them open in a hard glare, his eyes glowing red, hair lifting as the three overlapping copies of the villain’s face slowly merged into focus.
It wasn’t long after that when he felt the sharp edge of a blade press to the side of his neck. “Easy,” came the light warning from the man standing to Dabi’s left, whom Aizawa had yet to acknowledge.
Aizawa shifted his glowing gaze from the burned face without deactivating Erasure and let it fall first on the primary long feather resting threateningly over his carotid artery, then dragged it up along its sharp edge to the gloved hand holding it loosely but professionally, and finally to the face it belonged to.
At least it confirmed that the memory-slash-nightmare still playing behind his eyes was indeed a memory and not a nightmare.
Hawks. The Number Two Hero. Standing side by side with Dabi—a member of the League of Villains—like it was the most naturally occurring pairing of the century, with nothing fundamentally wrong about it.
Hawks pressed the tip of his sharpened primary feather closer to Aizawa’s neck, one touch away from breaking skin. “Don’t make me look bad after being the one arguing that blindfolds were outdated and lame, Eraser,” the winged man said, his voice light and easy, with no sign of shame or regret.
It wasn’t like Aizawa could focus properly with all the dark spots blocking his vision and the room still spinning, but he kept his quirk activated long enough to prove a point—that he had no intention of listening to the words of an apparent traitor—and only deactivated Erasure when he could no longer hold it.
A few seconds passed in silence as Aizawa kept his eyes trained on the face of the nation’s top hero, and then back at Dabi, while surveying the room from the periphery of his vision and assessing his situation. Once he confirmed that he was indeed buried deep in a shitty predicament of the highest quality the universe had to offer, he slumped back against his uncomfortable seat and closed his eyes, since the view in front of him had nothing even remotely pleasant to offer.
“I remember you to be more of a fighter, Eraser,” Dabi taunted, boredom lacing his voice, seemingly disappointed that he wasn’t getting a desperate hero thrashing and panicking at his mercy, and that Aizawa had resigned himself after taking one look and deciding he was already done with it all.
“And I remember the opposite about you when I was dislocating your shoulder and stomping down on your double,” Aizawa said, memories of the summer camp flashing through his mind. His voice came out like that of someone utterly unfamiliar with the concept of water—or any other throat-smoothing liquid—which rose the question of how long exactly he’d been unconscious.
“My double,” Dabi repeated, emphasizing it as if it was a very important fact they should all take note of. “Did you fill him in beforehand?” he asked, pointing the accusatory finger toward Hawks after realizing he wasn’t getting the reaction he wanted from Aizawa. Even with his eyes closed, Aizawa could hear the cold distrust and the narrowed eyes.
“No.” Hawks dismissed easily, accustomed to that distrust radiating his way. “Eraserhead is known to be a levelheaded hero. I did exactly as you told me.” Hawks explained like he was reporting back on his latest hero operation.
Aizawa felt turquoise eyes on him again. “Then maybe we should have given him something more unsettling than my face,” the villain murmured, almost to himself.
“So~,” Hawks began, easing his way into changing the topic. Aizawa didn’t miss how his signature hero smile had been missing the entire time. “When will it be?”
“When will what be,” Dabi sneered, something like annoyance creeping into his otherwise bored voice.
“When will you introduce me to the boss,” Hawks said, seeming this close to adding a duh at the end of that sentence, but then he had thought better of it at the very last second. The former hero mirrored Dabi’s annoyance, but in a more collected manner.
Aizawa opened his eyes, gaze fixed on the tiles across the room, but kept the other two men in the periphery of his sight. He summoned all his attention to the present, pushing past the dizziness he still felt from the anesthetic Hawks had injected into his back when he had blinked in that alley.
“When the time comes,” Dabi grunted without missing a beat.
“Which was now, I supposed.”
“Don’t expect me to trust the Number Two Hero overnight, bird.”
“Overnight.” Hawks repeated with an offended scoff as his bushy eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You asked for a loyalty test twice, and I nailed both of them on the head.” His hand came up to vaguely point toward where Aizawa was sitting. “I thought we were way over the night, Dabi.”
“The Number One crisped my High-End Nomu into street dust and no one ended up dying. I don’t exactly call that nailing it, hero.” Dabi kept his eyes on Aizawa even as he spoke to Hawks, like he knew his already-close-to-snapping temper couldn’t handle Hawks’ face in addition to his annoying voice.
Aizawa remembered the Fukuoka incident. He remembered rushing to the dorms to find Todoroki the moment he saw the broadcast showing Endeavor and Hawks fighting an intelligent Nomu.
So that was Hawks’ doing.
Aizawa realized it with a renewed rush of the worry he had felt back in the alley, but he schooled his expression fully and tightly, not allowing a single muscle to twitch and accidentally rattle the chains. He stayed still, blending into the background, gathering as much information as he could to figure out at least part of what the hell was going on.
“You wanted a no-damaged-goods labeled delivery, and here he is in the flesh.” Aizawa tried not to react to being called a delivery good, nor did he let himself dwell on the fact that he was being used as a loyalty test. Instead, he took a quick mental note that Hawks had been specifically instructed to bring him in unharmed.
“I said alive, and that wasn’t even my brilliant idea,” Dabi clarified groggily. He shoved his scarred hands into his long coat’s pockets and turned his body away from Hawks without moving his legs from where they were planted, as though he wanted to escape the boring exchange but didn’t have the right excuse just yet.
There was a moment when the Cremation villain froze, invisible gears turning in his head, and Aizawa felt the exact instant something clicked.
Dabi turned back slowly to face Hawks—which he seemed to be avoiding up until then—and even took an extra step forward, invading Hawks’ space just enough to thicken the atmosphere. “But I do have one,” he murmured to the winged he—to Hawks, a mischievous glint shining in his otherwise bored, half-lidded eyes.
Hawks studied Dabi’s eyes for a moment, not long enough to get a full read—just enough to recognize the no-good-news nature of them. He finally relented with a dramatic sigh and grabbed part of his brown hero jacket, holding it out to Dabi to show something Aizawa couldn’t see. “Will it get me rid of these?”
Dabi smirked, still a bit too close. “What, the birdie doesn’t like his little companion bugs?”
And with that, Aizawa realized what the thing on Hawks’ jacket was. A surveillance device. And if he had to guess, there was more than just one planted on him.
They really didn’t trust him yet, did they? Or were the devices meant for spying purposes?
“C’mon, man.” Hawks’ lips curved into a playful smirk, a hint of his juvenile hero persona showing for the first time since they’d met in the alley. “I can’t even remember the last time I had diarrhea with complete peace of mind.”
Dabi rolled his eyes and stepped back, probably cursing himself for thinking Hawks was capable of staying serious for more than five minutes. He scratched the dead skin on his jaw close to one of the staples and weighed his options. It took a few second until the villain decided, “I might consider it.”
Dabi didn’t let his hand fall back into his pocket. Instead, he circled Hawks slowly—as all his movements seemed to be—and trusted his long-burnt fingers into Hawks’ massive wing casually, brushing the red feathers in a way that struck Aizawa as both intimidating and too intimate.
Hawks’ expression hardened into something impenetrable as he stayed perfectly still, letting Dabi do as he pleased. To Aizawa, however—who had become an expert at seeing through impassive faces—Hawks looked distinctly uncomfortable with the fingers touching his wings.
Aizawa didn’t know much about Hawks’ quirk, but he knew two things for certain: first, Hawks could make his feathers as sharp as blades, meaning he could easily cut Dabi’s hand if he wished; and second, his feathers were vulnerable to fire—something revealed after the Nomu incident in Fukuoka, when the Number Two Hero was left with nothing but baby feathers after Endeavor’s flames burned the rest away. Meaning Dabi could reduce that massive cluster of feathers to ash if he chose to.
“But that completely depends on your performance,” Dabi added, now standing directly behind Hawks.
Hawks angled his head back to shoot a halfhearted glare at the Cremation villain. “What do you want, Dabi?”
The hand withdrew from the red feathers, and Dabi’s eyes sharpened in their turquoise haze. “Beat him.”
Oh.
Aizawa had regrets.
He had made a grave, strategic mistake.
And he was already regretting it deeply.
He had left his sleeping bag at UA.