Archive of Our Own

come to me now (and relive the past)

It is Gran Torino who calls All Might, and it is All Might who tells Aizawa about the Stain Incident.

“I thought you should know,” the Pro Hero tells his coworker. Blood speckles his lips, as it often does in his diminished form, and the taste of electricity is in the air. Rain batters at the windows of the staff lounge, and lightning lances from the boiling clouds, thunder rumbling in contrary reply a few seconds later.

“Thank you,” Aizawa Shouta says. He is staring at All Might without seeing him, his mind spinning, thoughts shattering against each other in haphazard array. He can’t think, can’t concentrate, can’t comprehend what All Might has said—can’t do anything but stare at the wall through All Might’s head, hands clenched into fists in his lap.

“Aizawa,” All Might says, and his voice is stern. “Eraserhead.”

Aizawa blinks—and he feels his Quirk deactivate. He had not even realized he had activated it. All Might offers him a shaky half-grin, then reaches across the table to grip his shoulder. All Might squeezes, and for half a second Aizawa feels reassured.

“I know how you’re feeling,” All Might says. “Trust me. I feel the same way: helpless, anxious, angry.”

Aizawa narrows his eyes at the foremost hero in the world. “Just what does Midoriya mean to you?” he asks. It is a question he has asked before—but All Might has never given him an answer.

He supposes he shouldn’t have expected an answer this time either, Aizawa reasons when All Might stands abruptly, body rippling out into its full, heroic size. All Might smiles, brilliant and blinding, and laughs.

“He is my student!” he exclaims, “just as he is yours.” Then he turns on his heel and strides out of the staff lounge, leaving Aizawa alone with his thoughts.

The journey to Hosu takes longer than Aizawa expected. The train reroutes twice, and he is forced to switch trains twice more before he arrives at the Hosu station. When at last he steps onto the platform, however, it is to the smell of smoke still hanging in the air, and to the blare of police whistles and shouts.

He threads his way through the crowd, skirting women holding children, men holding briefcases, children holding stuffed animals to their chests. He is, for once, not dressed in his hero outfit, but in jeans and a plain, grey shirt. His capture weapon, however, is still looped around his neck in the parody of the ever-popular scarf; he hopes no one will recognize it for what it is—though he doubts they will. As an Underground Hero he is rarely, if ever, in the spotlight, and there are very few people who know how to use the kind of capture weapon he utilizes.

With his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a laptop bag slung over one shoulder, his head ducked, and his hair hanging in front of his face, Aizawa hopes that he will blend in with the rest of the crowd—will be nothing more than another citizen aggressively trying to go about his business in the wake of the attack the night before. The subtlety is most likely unnecessary—but Aizawa has not lived as long as he has as an Underground Hero by being careless. He does not know who all is still watching, whether heroes or villains, and he doesn’t want anyone to know he is here.

The city is trashed. Streets are cordoned off every few blocks: red and yellow police tape stretch between orange cones; striped barriers section sidewalks from roads; police officers stand on street corners with whistles, batons, and weapons holstered on their hips. Aizawa sees multiple canine patrols, the dogs on high alert with hackles raised and lips pulled back from fangs, their handlers struggling to keep them under control. They do not, Aizawa supposes, like the scent—or even the memory of the scent—of the nomu.

Buildings are broken, sidewalks are cracked, and char marks litter the concrete and asphalt—Endeavor’s doing, Aizawa assumes. Two of the nomu bodies have already been removed from the public eye, taken to some underground lab deep in the mountains, where they can be dissected and studied—but, Aizawa sees as he walks the city, one has been left where it was embedded in the streets.

He is at the juncture between two residential side streets when he sees the partially dismembered nomu protruding from the ground ten yards away, hidden behind two walls: one of plastic and tape, and one of human flesh. Dogs bark, men shout, and the crack of asphalt smacks through the air with all the alacrity of a gunshot.

Curiosity rises in his chest, choking his lungs and swallowing his heart. It pricks at him, gnaws at him, needles him until his feet move of their own accord toward the dead enemy. A hole has been blasted through its chest, one of its arms has been shredded from its body, and the visible brain is charred black and ashy. It is, quite clearly, dead.

Still, as Aizawa walks towards it, his boots scuffing pebbles and blasted chunks of concrete out of his way, he swears, for just a moment, that he sees the nomu move: a twitch of its fingers, a twitch of its beady eyes, a twitch of its skin.

Adrenaline slams through Aizawa’s body like a knife through flesh, electrifying and enthralling and illuminating. He is moving before he realizes what his body is doing, lunging and reaching for his capture weapon before he can tell himself what he is seeing is not real. The “scarf” comes away in his hands, unspooling around the goggles he always wears around his neck—just in case—and his hair lifts as his Quirk activates.

“Stand back!”

The voice cracks through the adrenaline flooding his blood with fire, through the glass on Aizawa’s eyes, through the fearpanicdesperation pounding in time with his heart. Aizawa sees the wall of police, sees the dogs and the batons and the guns, sees the dead nomu at their feet—and twists his body in on itself, sending himself tucking and rolling onto the ground in a desperate abortion of his attack. He comes up on his knees, one hand propped against the asphalt, his capture weapon falling uselessly to the ground and the red glow leaving his eyes.

“What was that?” he hears one of the police officers mutter, accompanied by an equally confused, “Who is that?”

He straightens, flicking his capture weapon back around his neck, already fishing in his pocket for his wallet.

“My apologies,” he says stiffly, flipping his wallet open and showing the nearest officer his hero’s license. “I thought I saw movement in the nomu.”

The officer’s eyebrows raise. The officer is a young woman, with dark hair and vibrant green eyes that are too bright to be natural. They flick across his license, taking in his hero name—and her eyebrows rise further still.

“Eraserhead,” she says, and it is loud enough for the others to hear her. Aizawa might imagine it, but he thinks, for an instant at least, that a sigh of relief shuffles through the gathered officers.

He hates that the police in a city he has never worked in know his name—hates that anyone knows his name—but after the USJ Incident, he knows his name and face were plastered across every news station for days. It will be years before he will be able to go back undercover as he once could; his face, and his name, are now too well-known in conjunction with UA and the Incident, as he thinks of it still.

Still, though, notoriety may have its perks, he realizes as the officers move aside to allow him closer to the nomu body. It means they do not hinder him, or even speak out when he kneels beside the corpse and reaches out to touch its cold, dead flesh. It means no one questions him, even when his breath quickens in his chest, and his eyes narrow, and his heart pounds, his eyes flickering red, red, red for one heartbeat, then another heartbeat, then another. It means they allow him to leave without demands for answers, or asking him to accompany them to the station.

And if he smells blood in the air, tastes copper in his mouth, and sees the world filtered crimson as he walks away, he says nothing—and neither do they.

He eats dinner in a small, out-of-the-way café in a relatively untouched part of the city. He sits alone in the corner, nursing a water with lemon and a cold sandwich, wishing the drink was stronger and the food was warmer. He watches the pedestrians walk past the large windows that fill one full wall of the café, and watches his fellow diners. They are all oblivious—all unaware of the dangers that Aizawa knows lurks in their midst.

The nomu were defeated, yes, and the Hero Killer detained. But the fact that there were three more nomu than Aizawa had thought there were, the fact that the League of Villains was purportedly behind the nomu attack, and that they were also working with Stain all pointed to something very dark and very ominous—even if Aizawa could not put together all of the disparate puzzle pieces just yet.

More than that, though, there was evil in every gathering of humanity. From cutthroats to robbers to worse, Aizawa had seen the darkest dredges of the human soul, and he knew just how far a person could fall—even a seemingly innocent and good-hearted person. There was evil buried in every heart, darkness in every mind. It was only a matter of unlocking it, of watering it, of tending it and letting it grow. Any one of these people could become the next Stain, the next member of the League of Villains, the next one he would have to take down to—

To what? To protect the human race? The notion of good versus evil? The peace of society?

Somehow, none of those things felt particularly right.

Fear, crashing through his chest, echoing between his ribs, sparking against his skull. Anger, threading through his fingertips, igniting in his lungs, pooling in his mouth. Determination, steeling his bones, strengthening his resolve, tearing through his terror.

He could hear his students behind him, 13 hurriedly reassuring them. He could hear the villains below him, laughing raucously and jeering at him, at them, at 13. He could hear the thrum of his own blood in his veins, the breath in his lungs, the beat of his heart in his chest.

He was so, so alive.

Then: pain.

Splinters of bone, and fragments of thought, and droplets of blood. His own voice tearing at his throat as he screamed, screamed, screamed. The taste of copper, of iron, of death in his mouth. The coursing heat of blood, blood, blood on his face, on his arms, in his chest and stomach and mouth.

“You really are so cool, Eraserhead!”

They’re all going to die. They’re all going to die. They’re all going to—

“Sir?”

Aizawa blinks, looks up and to his right, sees the waitress who had been serving him standing at his elbow. She is small, with frizzy, dark hair and dark eyes, a worried frown stamped on her lips and her brow. She is holding the tablet with his check, a stylus in her other hand, her apron an off-white. The air is cold against Aizawa’s skin, the hum of the air conditioning accenting the chatter of the patrons, the clang of pots and pans echoing from the kitchen. The chair is real and solid beneath him, the table’s surface cool under his palm and fingers. The smell of grease and old food and cleaner is stark in his nose, snapping his thoughts away from the artificial smell of recycled air, of long-standing chlorinated water, of man-made mountains.

“Sir,” the waitress says again, then asks, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Aizawa. His elbow throbs. His arms twinge. The scar beneath his eye prickles.

“Do I know you?” the waitress asks.

“I doubt it,” Aizawa lies.

“Hm,” says the waitress. Then she shrugs, and offers him the check. “Thanks for coming in,” she says, and then disappears back into the kitchen.

Aizawa pays, then stands and leaves without a glance back. If anyone stares at him—at the scar on his face, at the capture weapon around his neck, at the dark hair that falls into his eyes—he does not care.

At least, that’s what he tells himself.

He is halfway to the hotel he chose to stay at while in Hosu when he sees him: a tall, broad-shouldered figure cast in shadow by the flames dripping from shoulders and face. Endeavor walks down the street without glancing to either side, his stride purposeful and his footsteps certain, confident that no one will stop or hinder him while he wears his glare.

Aizawa quickens his pace, pulling abreast of the Spotlight Pro, and then falls into step beside him.

“Hello, Endeavor,” he says casually.

Endeavor stops abruptly, whirling with eyes narrowing. He takes in Aizawa’s face, the scar beneath his eye, the capture weapon looped around his neck.

“Eraserhead,” he growls, folding his arms across his chest. “What are you doing here?”

Aizawa shrugs. “I could ask you the same thing,” he says blithely.

“I am here doing hero work,” Endeavor bites out. “I cannot say the same for you.”

Aizawa squints and cants his head to one side, as if he is considering his next words—as if he is considering the man standing before him. The truth is, he already knows what he is going to say, and where he wants this conversation to go; he only wants the façade of stumbling blindly down a dark alleyway in the middle of the night.

“And why is that, Endeavor?” he asks. “Can the Pro who fought the nomu first not take an interest in their continued existence?”

Endeavor frowns. “You nearly died the time you fought them,” he says pointedly. “I wouldn’t think you’d be so keen on repeating the experience.”

“Ah, but the nomu are dead, are they not?” Aizawa points out. “You killed them all, didn’t you?”

Endeavor hesitates. Aizawa waits.

“What do you know?” Endeavor asks, instead of answering Aizawa’s question.

“Only a little,” Aizawa lies.

“Hm,” says Endeavor. Then, “Walk with me.”

He turns and begins down the street again, heading toward the intersection at the end of the road. Aizawa falls in step beside him, shoving his hands into his pockets. He hopes, futilely he suspects, that no one will notice him in Endeavor’s shadow.

“The nomu attacked unexpectedly,” Endeavor says, “and it seems as if they were in league with the Hero Killer.”

“Hmm,” hums Aizawa. “So is that why you were in Hosu City when the nomu attacked? Because of the Hero Killer?”

Endeavor shoots a look down at Aizawa, who keeps his face blank.

“Yes,” says Endeavor. “I was hunting the Hero Killer.”

“And you found him,” Aizawa says. “According to the paper I read this morning—”

“Yes,” says Endeavor brusquely, cutting him off. “I found him, after disposing of the nomu, and defeated him as well.”

“I see,” says Aizawa thoughtfully. He had not truly expected Endeavor to tell him the truth—not without him revealing that he already knew who had really taken down the Hero Killer. To do so would be dangerous, to both Endeavor and to Aizawa’s students. Still, it answers a question Aizawa had wondered about Todoroki’s father.

“So why are you really here, Eraserhead?” Endeavor asks, when Aizawa makes no move to say anything else, but also makes no move to leave Endeavor’s side.

“I told you,” says Aizawa. “I was curious about the nom—”

“I’m not so sure that’s it,” Endeavor cuts in.

“Oh?” Aizawa asks, the faintest hint of a grin curling his lips. “Then why am I here?”

“You’re here to open old wounds.”

Aizawa raises his eyebrows a fraction of an inch. “What old wounds do you speak of?” he asks.

“That scar on your face, for one,” Endeavor says bluntly. “I would think that the one who nearly died when facing the nomu would be less inclined to rush back to face the instrument of his downfall.”

Aizawa grins properly now. “How can the nomu have been my downfall when I am still standing, and it is not?” he asks.

“How indeed,” Endeavor says. He is silent for one step, two, before saying, “Or perhaps you are here for a completely different reason. Perhaps you are here to check on your students.”

Aizawa misses a step, catches himself, walks on. He had not thought that Endeavor would be so intuitive, and he hopes Endeavor did not see his reaction to his words. If he did, however, Endeavor makes no comment on it, and he does not look at him as they reach the corner of the street and the crosswalk there, and at last come to a halt.

“And why do you think I’d be here for that?” Aizawa asks, lacing his voice with just a drop of derision.

Endeavor finally turns and looks at Aizawa properly once more. His expression is stern, his face half bathed in light cast by his flames, half in shadow cast by the angles of his cheekbones, his brow, his chin.

“You fought 50 villains for your students,” Endeavor says, once more crossing his arms over his chest. “You fought 50 villains for your students, and though you did not win—you did not lose, either. It takes a great deal of fortitude—and a great deal of purpose—to achieve something like that.”

Aizawa smiles bitterly. “It depends on your definition of losing, I suppose.” It is more than he meant to betray, though he does not think Endeavor will realize what he has just said. Not, at least, the full implications of it.

“You are still standing,” Endeavor says, echoing what Aizawa had said but a moment before, “and they are not.”

“That’s true,” Aizawa says. He turns, cants his head to one side, looks Endeavor in the eye. “What do you want, Endeavor?”

“I want you to stay away from my son,” Endeavor says.

Aizawa smiles, bitter and broad, and asks, “And how am I supposed to do that, Endeavor? He is in my class, after all.”

“You know what I mean,” Endeavor growls.

“No,” Aizawa replies with a sharp edge of steel at the corners of the word. “I don’t.” He pauses for just a second, a breath, a heartbeat, and then he asks, dangerously soft, “Are you threatening me, Todoroki?”

Endeavor looks as though he’s been slapped in the face with an old dueling glove. “How dare you—” he starts to say, only for Aizawa to activate his quirk. Endeavor’s flames vanish from his face, leaving him looking suddenly pale and small. He twitches, takes half a step back as if Aizawa had slapped him again, looks around at the small group of onlookers that has gathered since they began their conversation.

“I don’t take well or kindly to threats,” Aizawa says softly, eyes glaring red. “Especially when they are threats that involve my students.”

Endeavor glares in return, takes a step back forward. “And what are you to your students?” he sneers, pitching his voice low. “Their father?”

Aizawa blinks and turns away. Endeavor’s fires flicker back into existence.

“I’m their homeroom teacher,” Aizawa says simply. He hesitates, then turns back to Endeavor and says with a carefully controlled smile, “And I daresay that’s a little more than what you can say.”

With that, he strides away, pushing his way through the gathering of onlookers. They give way before him, startled and almost-afraid—almost-afraid of the man who could silence Endeavor, the Number 2 Hero; almost-afraid of the man who could extinguish Endeavor’s flames. Their eyes follow him, and their shoulders turn to face him, as he threads his way through the crowd. He ducks his head as phone cameras click, and he wonders if he did the right thing by challenging Endeavor out in the open as he did.

Too late for regrets now, he thinks, and tucking his hands into his pockets, he leaves the crowd behind.

Aizawa spends the night in a run-down hotel in the middle of the city, some two blocks away from Hosu’s hospital. He doesn’t touch the lumpy bed, instead electing to sit at the pitted and stained table with his laptop, which glows blue against the darkness permeating the room. Aizawa leaves the lights off, but a sharp, yellow glow sneaks in through the cracks in the curtains, lining the thinly carpeted floor with footprints of light. The chair is squeaky and flat and even more uncomfortable than he assumes the bed would be, but Aizawa ignores the discomfort, instead slumping over the table with his chin resting on his folded hands, his elbows splayed out, his mouth flattened into a thin line.

He reads article after article about the Stain Incident, but none of them line up with what Aizawa knows to be the truth. Each paints a different picture—of Endeavor the hero, of Endeavor the villain—but few of them mention the students involved, and none of them, of course, give the students the credit for Stain’s capture. By the time the glow of a grey sunrise begins to creep through the yellow footprints on the floor, Aizawa’s eyes are gritty and tired, and all he wants is to lay down and go to sleep.

He doesn’t. Instead, he closes his laptop, packs it away, changes his shirt and loops his capture scarf around his neck, and leaves the room, locking it behind him.

Aizawa walks the two blocks to the hospital through a fine, misty rain, shoulders slouched and hair dripping. He walks in through the sliding double doors, hands shoved deep into his pockets, and meanders his way up to the main desk situated on the far end of the main foyer.

“Hi there,” the nearest woman behind the desk says, looking up at Aizawa. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to get some information on a few of your patients,” Aizawa says.

The woman frowns. “I’m sorry, sir,” she says, sounding put out, “but I’m afraid I can’t give any patient information to you, unless you are a direct relative or have jurisdictional relevance, such as being a pro hero involved in an on-going investigation.”

Aizawa looks at her, then says, “Lucky for me, I am a pro hero, and this has to do with my jurisdiction.” He pulls his wallet out of his pocket, flips it open, and shows the woman his hero license. “I’m running a tangential investigation into the Stain Incident, and I would like information on the three students who encountered him.”

“Ah,” says the woman, and after inspecting his hero license for a few seconds, nods and turns toward her computer. She taps on her keyboard for a few seconds, then says, “What information do you need?”

“What injuries did they sustain?”

“I don’t have access to that information.”

“Then get me someone who does.”

The woman sighs, taps on her keyboard for another few seconds, then she looks up at Aizawa and says, “I’ll have a nurse come and speak with you. If you’d like to take a seat in the waiting room, they’ll be out shortly.”

Aizawa turns and slouches over to the waiting chairs and takes a seat. He folds his hands in his lap and leans back against the back of the hard-cushioned chair, eyes half-closed and half-hidden behind his hair. He thinks while he waits—thinks of Todoroki, of Iida, of Midoriya. He thinks of revenge, and of pain begat by losing someone loved, and of the wrath and fury birthed by heartache. He thinks of Ingenium, and of a boy named Loud Cloud, and of his three students facing an unspeakable evil in a dark alley, alone.

The door into the back of the hospital opens, and a nurse walks out, looks around, calls, “Eraserhead?”

Aizawa stands and makes his way over to her, hands once more shoved into his pockets. She looks him up and down, then turns and leads the way out of the waiting room.

She takes him to a small office off of the main hallway, and gestures for Aizawa to sit in one of the small, plastic chairs situated across from the desk. He does so, and she brings up the computer sitting on the desk, accessing a set of files in the database.

“Their injuries were relatively minor, all things considered,” she says. “The worst was Iida Tenya, who suffered reparable nerve damage in his hands.”

A shot of ice arcs down Aizawa’s spine. “Nerve damage?” he asks.

“Yes,” says the nurse. She peers at him over the keyboard, then repeats, “It is reparable.”

Aizawa nods, and asks only, “What of Todoroki and Midoriya.”

The nurse tells him about their other, more minor injuries, Aizawa listening intently, and then asks if Aizawa has any other questions.

“What room are they in?” Aizawa asks.

“Room 213,” the nurse says, and closes her files.

“Thanks,” Aizawa says, and stands.

He slouches out of the office, hands once more in his pockets, feeling the nurse’s eyes on his back. He knows what she’s thinking—or, at least, what she’s likely thinking: surprise that he, of all people, is a pro hero, along with wariness and uncertainty about whether or not she just broke any laws by giving him the information she had. Lucky for her he was a pro hero—and one who was used to skirting around the edges of proprietary law, and thus knew what he could and couldn’t get away with.

Aizawa takes the elevator up to the second floor, then counts the doors on his way down the hallway. He reaches 213, and there he hesitates, waits, stops dead still, one hand half-raised as if to reach for the handle.

They don’t want you, a quiet, snide voice whispers in his mind. If they’d wanted you, they would have asked for you, not left it to All Might to tell you what truly happened.

Aizawa’s hand drops to his side.

The door cracks open.

Aizawa spins and turns on his heel, strides away from room 213. He hears footsteps shuffle out of the room behind him, hears a confused exclamation, hears someone call out after him, “Hello? Did you want something?” It is Todoroki.

Aizawa keeps walking, and hopes he is far enough away already that Todoroki does not recognize his capture scarf.

“Who was that?” Midoriya asks as Todoroki reenters the room, looking perplexed. His brow is furrowed, his lips flattened into a thin line.

“I don’t know,” Todoroki says. He hesitates, considering, then says, “But it looked like Mr. Aizawa.”

“Mr. Aizawa?” Iida repeats.

Todoroki nods.

Iida looks thoughtful.

“Why didn’t he come in?” Midoriya wonders. “Is he angry with us for going up against Stain ourselves? But if he was, wouldn’t he have come in to lecture us? Then again, perhaps he is waiting until we are back at school to give us the lecture—”

“Why would he care?” Todoroki asks, cutting Midoriya’s rambling off. “I mean, sure, he’s our teacher, but would he really come all the way out to Hosu City for us?”

“He did fight 50 villains for us,” Iida points out softly.

That kills the conversation. It is hard for any of them to talk about the USJ Incident, even now.

Finally, though, Midoriya says, “We could always ask him when we get back.”

“If he had a reason for not coming into the room—which I assume he does, because he never does anything without having a reason,” Iida says, “then he won’t tell us the truth.”

“How can you be certain?” Midoriya asks.

Iida smiles, but it is not a happy expression. “I know Mr. Aizawa,” he says.

“Don’t we all?” Todoroki asks.

But Iida shakes his head. “I’ve known him since I was a kid,” he admits to them softly.

“What?” Midoriya asks, shocked. “You mean to say—”

“My brother, Tensei, is good friends with him,” Iida confesses.

“Oh,” says Todoroki.

“Yeah,” says Iida. He shrugs then, and settles his shaking hands into his lap. “I’m not surprised he didn’t come in,” he says, but no matter how hard the other two press him, Iida refuses to explain his statement.

Aizawa walks back to his hotel room lost in thought and half-lost in direction.

I wasn’t there for them, he thinks. They needed me, and I wasn’t there.

He hates Stain, he realizes. Hates Stain, and hates the nomu, and hates the League of Villains.

Most of all, though, he hates himself.

I wasn’t there. He grimaces. Even if I had been, though, would I have made a difference?

He thinks of air chlorinated with standing water, thinks of recycled air, thinks of man-made mountains and man-made flames. He remembers the sound and feel of bones shattering in his arms, remembers the taste of blood in his mouth, remembers the crunch of his face impacting concrete not once, not twice, but three times.

What had he done then, but almost die in front of Midoriya, Asui, and Mineta? Nothing. He had accomplished nothing but traumatizing the very students he’d tried so hard to protect.

What good was he, then, if he couldn’t even protect his students from the villains they weren’t yet ready to face? What was he, but a failure?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

He reaches the hotel, climbs the stairs to his room, unlocks his door and steps inside. He looks at the bed. Turns away.

Instead, he goes to the bathroom, turns the shower on. He waits for the water to heat up to unbearably hot, then sheds his clothes like a second skin and steps under the spray. He lets the scalding water wash over his body, lets it burn his self-loathing into his bones with ribbons of red skin. He washes his hair with hotel shampoo—just another way of hating himself—and scrubs his arms and legs and torso until his skin stings from the abrasive washcloth.

He finishes, steps out of the shower, towels himself dry. He brushes his hair, uses the blow-dryer, changes into fresh clothes.

He has one more thing to do in Hosu, and then he can go home.

“He’s asleep, but you can come in.”

Aizawa steps into the sterile hospital room after the nurse, who closes the door behind him. She hovers close by as Aizawa pulls a chair up to Iida Tensei’s bedside, then turns and leaves after he sits.

Aizawa settles his masked face in his hands and, for a long time, simply sits there, head buried and eyes closed. Finally, though, he lifts his head and looks at Tensei, still asleep, and says, “You’d be proud of him, Tensei. Angry, probably, but proud.”

He sighs, settles back into his uncomfortable chair, and stares at Tensei. “I don’t even know if you’re going to be given the true story,” he admits softly. “But I hope they do tell you the truth. Even I wasn’t supposed to know, but thankfully All Might ignores rules as often as he ignores his own health, which is to say “he doesn’t care about them at all”.

“He did it, though, Tensei—him and two of his classmates. They avenged you. And I can’t say I’m glad about that, but God, I wish I’d been able to avenge Oboro. I wish there’d been some way for me to avenge him—some way to put the past in the past, and move on. I hope—I hope Tenya was able to do that with this. I hope…” He takes a deep breath, and shakes his head. “And now I’m rambling,” he curses softly.

Tensei stirs, opens his eyes. He turns his head, looks at Aizawa, and crooks a small smile. Aizawa can see it in his eyes.

“Shouta,” Tensei rasps. “So you did come to see me.”

“Hizashi and Nemuri send their love,” Aizawa says. “They’re sorry they can’t get away to come see you themselves. My kids are currently in the middle of internships, so I had some free time.”

“Right,” Tensei says. “How—how’s Tenya?”

Aizawa sighs. “He’s gonna be okay,” he tells Tensei.

“Going to be?” Tensei asks. He looks away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t—”

“No one did,” Aizawa says, cutting him off. “No one blames you either, Tensei.”

“Except me,” Tensei admits bitterly, softly.

Aizawa sighs again. “Except you,” he accedes. “You’re going to have to let this go someday, though,” he says.

“I passed my name on to Tenya,” Tensei says, instead of answering Aizawa’s statement. “I wanted him to be Ingenium.”

Aizawa grimaces, the pieces slotting into place. “I guess that makes more sense now,” he says aloud.

“What?” Tensei asks with a frown.

“Nothing,” Aizawa says with a flap of his hand.

“What?” Tensei asks again.

“They chose their hero names last week,” Aizawa says dismissively. “I was half-asleep for most of it.”

Tensei rolls his eyes. “Right,” he scoffs. He knows better than to think that Aizawa is anything but constantly aware of what is going on around him, no matter if he is feigning sleep or actually asleep. He hesitates then, and then asks, “Is everything okay, Shouta?”

“Yeah,” says Aizawa. “Why?”

Tensei looks at him suspiciously. “I’ve known you a long time,” he says. “I think I know when something is bothering you.”

“Reparable nerve damage.”

“I’m fine,” Aizawa says.

Tensei shakes his head against his pillow. “Look,” he says, and he sounds both tired and weak. “Whenever you say that, you aren’t fine.”

Aizawa rolls his eyes. “This isn’t about me,” he almost snaps. “I came to visit you, who is the one in the hospital for serious injuries.”

Tensei snorts. “Don’t tell me you’re about to start pitying me too.”

“Pity?” Aizawa asks. “When have you known me to ever pity anyone?”

“Fair point,” Tensei replies. “I’m just…tired.”

Aizawa thinks of bandages swathing his body from head to waist, thinks of casts around his arms, things of stitches beneath his eye. “I know,” he says, and the almost-teasing lilt is gone from his voice, leaving it heavy and dry. “It gets better.”

Tensei looks at him, sees the grim knowledge in his eyes and in the cant of his lips. He smiles. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Aizawa says. “Now get some rest. You need your strength.” He stands, and Tensei settles back against his pillows. “I’ll see you later,” Aizawa says, and with that, he leaves the hospital room, and his friend lying in the bed behind him.

“Did you get what you were looking for?” Hizashi asks him.

They are sitting at dinner in some fancy restaurant that his friend had wanted to try, cocktails at their elbows and seafood pasta in front of them. Aizawa picks at his noodles, swirling them around the bowl through the sauce, and tries not to think too hard.

“Yes,” he lies.

Hizashi laughs. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“No, I’m not,” Aizawa retorts.

“You are to me,” Hizashi says.

Aizawa rolls his eyes.

Hizashi is quiet for a moment, then he asks, “How’s Tensei?”

“He’s fine,” Aizawa grunts.

Hizashi sighs. “What aren’t you telling me?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Aizawa lies again.

Hizashi puts his fork and spoon down, leans forward over his plate. “You can’t keep holding this in forever,” he tells Aizawa.

“What’s that?”’

“Everything,” Hizashi says, waving a hand through the air to punctuate his point.

“Illuminating,” Aizawa grumbles.

Hizashi smiles. “I know,” he says, and sits back in his chair. “My point stands, though.”

Aizawa shakes his head. “I can,” he says.

“No—”

“Then I will.”

“That’s not how it works,” Hizashi points out.

“It is if I try hard enough.”

Hizashi sighs again, picks up his fork and stabs at his pasta. “Whenever you’re ready to face your problems,” he says, lifting a bite of food toward his mouth, “I’ll be there.”

They finish the rest of the meal in silence.