Chapter Text
Aizawa Shouta has been a hero for a long time now.
It hurts to think of it like that, because, really, thirty isn’t that old. Eleven years isn’t that long to be in the same career in the grand scheme of things either, it’s not even half of his lifetime. But, well, with a career like heroics, underground heroics at that, every day worked made a difference to someone.
Sure, nowadays, it doesn’t make too much of a difference. With All Might being the number one hero for almost longer than Aizawa had even been a hero, there was a consistency to a civilian’s day to day life that Aizawa never grew up with. This certainty, this arrogance, that civilians had that everything would be okay because there was a hero on every street corner, that there would always be All Might to save the day, is something he sees every day now. He sees it from the children he teaches during the day to the people he saves during the night. There’s a naivety about them that shows that people have gotten far too comfortable with the stability that the modern day heroes have offered them.
There was nothing wrong with it, per say. Some would even say that it was preferable to the constant fear that everyone lived in almost two decades ago. But Aizawa liked to think logically, and logic dictated that nothing would last forever, especially something like this. They needed to be prepared for a day that everything that All Might created and stood for crumbled from the bottom up. One day, everything would fall and Aizawa couldn’t help but worry that no one would be prepared to deal with the fall out.
Nevertheless, every day counted when your job was to save people. No two days were the same, each coming along with their own stresses, their own worries, their own cases and a mountain of paperwork to go with. Every single day he saves someone new, someone he’s never met before and will never meet again, and no two situations he saves them from are truly the same. Similar, maybe, but there was so much difference between them all that, while he may have gotten used to punching a mugger, gotten used to being mistaken as a vigilante by civilians and new police officers alike, he was far too experienced with familiar to make the rookie mistake that was thinking that one day would be the same as the last.
Because, out of everything that could a hero like him killed, routine was the one that could only be learned through experience. Routine tells the villain where you're going, and when you're going to be there. If it didn’t get yourself killed, then it was going to get a civilian killed in your place.
It’s these thought that echo in his mind as he takes a new route with the groceries each week. He’s sure that Zashi would poke fun at him if he knew. Kind, teasing words to hide the concern that still shows on his face about Shouta’s chronic paranoia and how badly it affects his day to day life. The present Shouta would always bush off his concerns and say that it pays to be cautious.
Future Shouta, however, will point towards the kid who sits in the middle row window seat in his homeroom class, and say that, if a routine is what gets a hero killed, then it’s the lack of one that can save someone’s life.
He spots him as he turns into an unused but clean alleyway, their bright green hair catching his eye against the light blue of the skies, almost begging for his attention as soon as they’re spotted.
The roof isn’t the highest in the area, meaning that Aizawa is able to drop his groceries and scale up the building almost instantly, his heart racing in his chest as he uses his scarf to get him higher up faster. He’s on a time crunch here, but stealth is preferred over speed; he doesn’t want to spook the kid into jumping or even accidentally falling.
His steps are silent when he finally gets to the rooftop, his scarf ready to launch forward at a moment’s notice. His breath is light despite his instincts to shout out to the person standing on the edge. This isn’t his first jumper, not when he works in the dead of night in the more poverty ridden parts of town, but this is certainly the youngest he’s ever seen them.
He’s in a middle school uniform, which is burned and soaked in a liquid that for sure couldn't be water. His feet are shoeless, but a quick glance away shoes that the missing footwear have been placed next to a bright yellow backpack. Bright red shoes that surely must have gone against the school dress code, which tickles his mind into thinking that the kid must have some sort of mutation with his feet that allowed him to wear them without consequences. Another look at the kid’s feet, however, gives him nothing, leaving him to wonder what, exactly, was up with the bright red shoes.
“kid?” he asks, his voice calmer than he felt, quieter than he wanted, but the kid hears him nevertheless. He has a minimal reaction to this voice, almost like he expected someone to show up after him. Either way, it causes him to get a grip onto the roof, and that’s enough to give Eraserhead some hope.
“Hello?” the kid replies, his voice almost too quiet to be heard over the traffic a street over, but the kid has Eraserhead’s full attention. There was no way that he was going to miss anything.
“What are you doing up here?” he asks when the kid turns around to look at him. He takes in each of the kid’s freckles that speckled his cheeks, how dull but bloodshot his eyes were, how he tilts his head in a way that could only be practiced, so that his hair covers his face and makes the already hard job of reading someone’s emotions almost impossible.
“I-” Eraserhead hates the hesitation clear in the kid’s voice, but he doesn’t say anything, letting the kid make the next move. “you’ve probably heard it all before.” There was something almost lyrical to the words, as if Eraserhead is missing the background music that supposed to go along with such a line. The words aren’t new to him, told to him many times by people in the same position, but he ignores the familiarity of the words and how they pull at his heart.
“I’m still going to listen to what you have to say,” he says, and it’s the right thing to say, because the kid finally talks.
For someone so small, so young, he carries a heavy story on his shoulders. The kid story starts when he’s four and he’s diagnosed as ‘quirkless’ (and oh, oh, doesn’t that bright up some memories?), and how that leads on to abandonment by family, to bullying from his peers, to dreams being crushed by hero idols (unnamed for now, but another look is thrown to the bright red shoes and the yellow backpack next to it, and despite the fact that it’s beginning to get too dark to see such things, he can still make out two small holes at the top of his bag, where two All Might hair spikes are supposed to be).
Eraserhead nods when he’s supposed to, even when he doesn’t agree with the words that the kid was coming out with. No kid was useless, no kid deserved to be pushed so far that he was on the edge of a roof, ready to fall- ready to finally take his life into his own hands and jump. No matter how much he wants to argue with the kid, he says nothing, and merely listens.
Why does it hurt so much for him to come to the realisation that, just doing the bare minimum and listening to the kid seem to work? It’s obvious that each word uttered by the kid hurts himself to say as much as it hurts him to hear, but Eraserhead doesn’t even have to say anything reassuring to make it known that he’s still listening. All he has to do is make it obvious that he’s nodding along and it’s enough.
“Do you think you can move away from the edge?” Eraserhead finally says when it’s clear that the kid has run out of things to say, and the kid nods in mute agreement. It’s clear that the kid has finally realised where they were, if their glance down towards the ground as he stands, and the sudden paling of his face, was anything to say.
And its then that Eraserhead realises that he’s made a fatal mistake.
Because the kid was finally processing where he was, and it seemed that the entire time he was in some sort of state of dissociation, whether that be from the head injury he had received during the villain attack that he suffered from earlier that day (and, really, Eraserhead was going to at least grill the hero that had performed that rescues, because the kid clearly has a concussion, if not some sort of lung injury from having sewage slime of all things shoved down his throat) or as a way to protect himself mentally from the day that the kid’s had. Either way, it clearly causes the kid’s head to spin, which in turn causes panic.
Eraserhead reaches out to steady him.
For years o come, he will think about this exact moment and question everything. He will wonder what he did wrong here. What did he do that make him look like a threat, to make him look more dangerous than falling off a roof?
Eraser- Aizawa will know that it’s not his fault, not really. He will know this through logic. He will know through being told by Hizashi during harder nights. He will kn ow by being told by the kid who sits in the middle row window seat of his homeroom class.
But those reassurances will come in the future, long after the moment. It will do nothing to stop him watching what happens in slow motion.
Because the kid takes a single step back.
And.
He.
Falls.
Aizawa Shouta, to this day, isn't sure what about this scene sticks with him more.
Is it the look on the kid's face? The one that was filled with shock -asn't supposed to end like this the kid was supposed to get his happy ending what happened to happy endi-, the small amount of betrayal that he hoped that the kid didn't mean -he's supposed to be a hero, he's supposed to save people not lead them to their deaths what has he don- or the way that, once everything processed in his mind and he realised what was happening, the look of acceptance that overrides everything, leaving Shouta with a smile he was certain could rival All Might's -no no no how can the kid know that he was going to die and use his last moments to reassure him when he's the one who needs the help the mos-
Is it the silence that fills the world around them? Was it the way that not even a breath left the kid's breath on his way down? Aizawa remembers the first time he falls -omeone caught him Oboro caught him why didn't he catch them he was meant to catch them it was his tur- and he remembers the way that his screams strain his eardrums for day, and yet, nothing from the kid. Nothing from the kid except for the fact that he will remember the sound of the kid's body hitting the concrete below long after he's six feet under himself.
Aizawa Shouta has been a hero for a long time now.
It hurts to think of it like that, because, really, there's no length of time that will ever get you used to death. Each and every death in the eleven years and longer of his career will weigh heavy on his heart and be etched into his mind long after it is all over. No two deaths are the same, each of them bringing pain that he didn't think he had the heart to experience anymore.
Every single day was supposed to count when your job meant to be saving people.
But sometimes, accidents happened, and no matter what you do, the other person couldn't be saved. It's a lesson he tries to teach his students, the ones that survive that long in his class to even get the lesson, without them having to experience it first-hand.
But some lessons, like the one that played out in front of him, are supposed to be revised once in a while. They're supposed to be retaught, drilled into your mind so that you could never, ever, forget.
It's a mix of morbid curiosity and a sadistic need for self-punishment that leads him to leaning over the edge of the building to stare down at the corpse that should be there. There's an inherent need for self-punishment he knows as he goes over to stare at the edge, as well as the question as to if the kid is still smiling while even in death. Did he close his eyes in time to make it seem like he had simply fallen asleep covered in blood? Are his limbs broken beyond repair, in such a way that it could have never been mistaken for a living person, or are they twisted in a way that, once Shouta seems him, he can pretend in one part of his mind that the kid is alive and waiting for him to go down?
He's ready for it all. Ready for the nightmares that will come after today. Ready to phone Zashi with apologies on the edge of his tongue while thoughts of what should have been haunt his time for years to come. No two days are the same when you're a hero, and people dying to your failures is something that Shouta is far too aware of, but today, that was all on him.
So, he looks over the edge.
And there's no one there.
There's blood, so much blood, too much blood. He looks down and sees a death scene, something that he's aware that he's far too familiar with. But in the middle of the blood should have been the corpse of a quirkless boy he failed to save and there was nothi-
He goes towards the ground, jumping from wall to wall in an almost too reckless way, in far too much of a rush to care about something as trivial as hurting himself when he doesn't know what happened.
But being closer to the scene doesn't answer any questions. There's no body in the alleyway. There's absolutely no sign that the kid had even fell except for the puddle of blood. There’s not even anything that could have fallen out of the kids’ pocket when he hit the ground, and he knows he hit the ground he heard him hit the groun-
There was a lot of blood in the alleyway.
Shouta never really knew how much blood was in the human body, let alone how much there should be in a fourteen-year-old who was on the smaller side, but he was sure that there was too much on the ground. Too much on the ground for the kid to have lived at the very least. And yet, he strains his eyes for a second before giving in and turning on his torch on his phone, there are handprints and footprints all over the walls and by the entrance of the alleyway, all the right size for the kid who fell.
It was as if he just came back to life. As if he just ‘walked off’ falling off a building.
“Kid!” he yells, but he’s not surprised to hear nothing back.
The possibility of a kidnapping comes to mind, but he shakes it off quickly. Doubtful. There wasn’t anyone else in the area as far as he knew and there’s no way that someone would be able to kidnap a body the instant it hit the ground without him noticing, and even if he didn’t notice, what about the bloody prints that littered the dark alley.
He rushes out the alley to the empty street, yelling out once more for the kid, but there’s no one in sight to respond to him, let alone some kid covered in blood. The tracks stop just out of the alley, giving an indication of which direction the kid was heading but it was clear that the blood on the kid’s feet had dried up.
His phone light is still on as he decides to go back to the roof again to see if the kid at least came back for his things, but he’s not surprised to see the bright red shoes and yellow back still there, as if taunting his return. Teasing him for losing a suicidal kid, a kid who was supposed to be quirkless and yet seemed to be able to survive falling off a buildi-
He puts his phone to the side, in a way that allows him to still see what he’s supposed to be doing, as he opens the bag with shaking hands. This was probably an invasion of privacy of some kind, but he didn’t know what else to do at this point. Like the boy’s clothes, it was socked with the sewage slime, but the rest of the contents seemed pretty protected. The first thing he pulls out is a notebook, with chicken scratch writing on the front. It’s hard to make out the word in the low lighting, the ink having ran at some point and the damp paper making it harder still to see what it contained.
He goes to put it down, hoping that there’s something else inside the bag that could let him know what he was dealing with -ybe he did have a quirk the whole time and was lying about being quirkle- no, no one would lie about not having a quirk, not in this day and ag- but something falls out of the pages. A lot of somethings.
He picks up his phone to have a closer look at what fell out, and his mouth goes dry at the sight of several pressed spiderlilies piled on his lap.
It had been a part of the kid’s story. About how he corrects the gifts given by his class each day, and how he spends lunch hidden away from everyone instead of eating food, taking the time to preserve each flower placed on his desk each morning. The kid’s eyes had looked distant when he admits that he always feels bad for the number of flowers he’s given, and how he mourns flowers that had to die to taunt him.
And here they all were, in a pile on Shouta’s lap rather than in the kid’s possession. The kid was missing after having fallen off a roof, probably because of a quirk that no one seemed to know he had and maybe it was a misdiagnosis but that seems strange as doctors usually double check to make sure they’re not quirkless and isn’t quirklessness a medical thing rather than invisible quirks where they just don’t know what someone’s quirk i-
Oh.
His phone was ringing.
He should probably answer it.
"SHOUTA!" The sudden sound causes him to bring the phone away from his ears in shock, not used to sound at all when the last thing he heard was a body hitting the ground far too fas- bones crunching under the pressure of hitting concrete at terminal veloci- skin not being able to contain everything and ripping under the forc-
"Shouta babe? Hey, I need you to say something? Please tell me what’s wrong, do you need me to come pick you up? What happened babe, please-" Shouta isn't sure what his partner is saying to him, but the voice is enough to show that he's safe, or he will be safe soon. He doesn't know what happened, he doesn't know what to do, but Zashi will. Hizashi always knows what to do, it was like a second quirk he had. Shouta always loved him for it. For how openly emotional he was, and how he’s always able to come up with a plan on the fly, no questions asked.
"'Zachi?" Hearing the sound of his own broken voice is what alerts him to the fact that he's crying, and looking down at the ruined paper and the pressed flowers that fell out of them,
"Shou, where are you? Don't move, I'm gonna track your phone so we can deal with this, okay? Everything's going to be okay my love, I promise," Shouta says thing though, because he's going through the ruined notebook, and he thanks his luckiest stars that the kid thought to put his name on the inside cover as well as the front, because this time he can read the kanji clearly.
Hero Analysis for the future. Volume #13. By Midorya Izuku.