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Chapter Text

With an echoing plink of metal on metal, a bloodstained bullet drops into a small tray. Izuku sucks in a few rapid, shallow breaths, and with shaking hands he drops the tweezers he had pried the bullet free with. Those same shaking hands are pressed against the wound that begins to gush, as blood had wasted no time filling in the space where the bullet had been lodged so deeply in his flesh. 

But at least the bullet is out now.

"I don't need medical attention," Izuku had said, in the aftermath of his earth-shaking fight with Overhaul. "Eri rewound all my injuries."

He had only been partially lying. 

Because Eri did rewind all of his injuries – the ones he did to himself with One for All. But her quirk didn't dare to touch the bullet between his ribs, nor the hole left behind by the lucky shot. 

In any other circumstance, Izuku would be fascinated. He'd be diving for his notebook with fervor, pencil in hand, to study why Eri's quirk seems to repel itself. Is it a natural immunity for her own protection, so she can't rewind herself? Was it because of something new Overhaul introduced to the mixture when crafting the bullets? 

Izuku wishes he could indulge in those questions, but his mind is too overwhelmed with pain to think. 

Still, he has a secret to keep. Everyone saw him using his quirk, but no one had seen him get shot. No one knew that his quirk should have been destroyed, wound back to nothing, and he isn’t going to let anyone know.  

So he had refused the paramedics, and watched from the sidelines as heroes were loaded into ambulances, and yakuza loaded into police cars. When Aizawa-sensei offered to drive him to the hospital so they could be there for Eri, Nighteye, and Mirio, Izuku accepted. 

The entire time, no one noticed how he held a carefully folded piece of Mirio's cape to his side. Pinning it there with his elbow. 

At least, he hopes no one noticed. 

Now, Izuku stares at the bullet, unable to drag his eyes away. The edges of his vision dim steadily, until everything is gray and hazy. 

The body of the bullet is heavy and cylindrical, like any other bullet, but one end of it tapers into a syringe-like tip. That hollow point had pierced him like a javelin, slicing through Izuku's skin and muscles so easily, like they were tissue paper.

He reaches blindly with one hand for the first aid kit he had laid out beforehand, biting back a whine when the change in pressure shoots a bolt of hot pain through his side. Quickly, he replaces the remaining hand with a square pad of gauze, and tapes it down as tightly as he can with his trembling, numb fingers. After that, he rolls bandages around his torso, overlapping layer on layer, until there's nothing but a thick swath of white stretching from his belly button to the top of his chest. 

At first, the amount of bandages seems excessive, even to him. But then Izuku watches with a numb, distant kind of horror as they slowly begin to pinken, his blood already leaking through and staining the white.

Izuku bites his lip, and forces his eyes away, only for them to land on an even worse sight. There's still blood everywhere. Covering his hands, smeared across his stomach and his legs, all over the bullet in the tray, in stark streaks that stand out on the white porcelain of the sink. Red red red. 

Robotically, letting auto-pilot guide his hands, Izuku wets a rag and starts cleaning it all up. His mind strains towards dissociation, desperately trying to detach from the situation and let Izuku drift through the tasks. But every movement tugs on the wound, keeping him terribly aware with pinches of pain.

When his breathing gets heavier, he pauses, turning to grab the sink edge and hang his head down between his shoulders for just a moment of rest. With light, probing touches, he feels out the bandages. 

His hand comes back with a fresh new coating of red. When he looks down, the bandages are more than just pink.  

He probably needs stitches.

Izuku’s vision glazes over, begins to blur. When he blinks, his eyelashes stick wetly together.

Deku is now the name of a hero who possesses an incredible quirk, who can go toe to toe with monstrous villains with a smile, and come out the other side with a little girl safe in his arms. 

But in this quiet slice of time, with only himself to see, Izuku lets himself go back to being just Deku, the small and weak little quirkless boy who felt nothing but fear and loneliness for so long. He had been doing so well at keeping that fear and loneliness away from him, but it is impossible to hold those feelings back now. The weight of them crushes him, and he curls in on himself, collapsing down like a wilting flower beneath an uncaring heel. 

Never in his life did he ever think he would really get shot. Of course it had been one of many dangerous possibilities he had to accept the moment his dream of being a hero suddenly was within reach as a reality, but the experience still had been a lot different than he ever imagined it would be. There had been no explosion of pain, no flaming burst of fire and hot quicksilver flooding his veins. There had just been the dull feeling of being punched in the side, with no more power than one of Bakugou’s fists at the height of his bullying career, but then the pain gained over time. It grew with each breath; a throbbing, hot ache that gnawed viciously at his insides, becoming more intense for each second the bullet remained buried inside him. 

He’d been so scared when he heard that gun go off, and had been terrified when he realized he had been the one hit. 

Not for his life, but for One for All. 

The terror for his life had taken its time getting to him, but it has its claws in him now, and is set on consuming him whole. 

“It hurts,” Izuku whispers to no one, voice thin and choked. Letting the words out makes it all feel real, and the tears he’d been holding back finally break the dam and roll down his cheeks. Wrapping his own arms around himself as he trembles in the storm of his despair is as close as he’ll be able to get to comfort right now. “It hurts, it hurts.” 

He doesn’t want to have to do this alone. He’s so tired of having to push through pain alone. It’s something he’s been doing all his life, but can’t he, just once, have someone to hold him up when he stumbles? 

Just once. That’s all he’s asking for. 

But he can’t let anyone know he was shot and didn’t lose his quirk. He can’t. 

Not even All Might, but for a different reason than keeping his secret intact. Izuku doesn’t want to think about what expression the man might make if Izuku were to tell him he hadn’t been able to dodge a quirk destroying bullet. One for All, a quirk with a two hundred year long legacy, could have vanished in an instant, all because Izuku didn’t move when it mattered.

But his incredible quirk had done the impossible. Somehow, it held on. One for All had refused to let that bullet unravel it from Izuku’s DNA.  

That doesn’t change the fact that All Might can never know how close Izuku came to losing the treasure that the hero had entrusted him with. Izuku would die from shame. That cuts Recovery Girl out too; she’d most certainly tell All Might when Izuku comes to her with something as extreme as a bullet wound.  

He takes one more moment for himself, one more moment to press his forehead to his knees and breathe through the ache in his side and heart. Then, he tries to pull himself back together, reassemble his parts into something vaguely Deku The Hero shaped. 

It’s hard. It’s so hard. 

But he manages it. 

He reaches for the thin needle and spool of thread in his first aid kit – just in case, he had told himself when he first packed them in. Just in case. – and slowly begins to undo his bandages. The wet rag he had been using to clean up is repurposed and dabbed over his side to pick up some of the blood and make it easier to see his wound, but it still leaves sticky red imprints of the cloth fibers on his skin. Izuku hates the sight.

He wonders if he'll ever be free of this stain on his body. The bullet wound will most certainly leave a scar; a small round starburst of discolored, puckered skin. But will he ever be able to fully wash away the red? 

Izuku decides to not think about it. Not right now. 

He sets the rag in the sink and turns to the needle, and puts all his focus in trying to thread it. “Come on,” Izuku whispers to himself, as he squints and his pale fingers slip and shake. Each fumble has him swearing quietly under his breath, and it takes him too long and too many attempts to finally pull the thread through the eye.

Pulling the needle through his skin is another matter entirely. 

Izuku doesn’t think he will ever be able to describe what the experience was like. At the first prick his mind finally manages to disconnect from everything, breaking away from his body with a quiet snap like a fracturing of soft earth. He watches from afar, like a ghost, while someone who is him and yet also isn’t him stitches the wound closed with sluggish, clumsy motions. 

It’s such a wide wound though. Too wide to sew completely shut. Izuku does his best, and ties the knot when he deems the stitches to be as good as they’re going to get. 

He redoes his bandages, and shoves the bloodied ones as deep down into the trash bin as he can. It’s times like these – where he has to treat an injury on his own – that make him glad the dorms have individual bathrooms. UA had truly spared no expense in making the accommodations as comfortable and fitting for their students as they could be. 

For Izuku, it means he can shut the door on the half-cleaned mess and stumble right to his bed. 

But he doesn’t even make it the entire way there. He’s almost across the room when his knees buckle suddenly, legs failing him just before he reaches the bed. 

“Ah, ouch,” Izuku gasps. He barely manages to catch himself on the mattress, and slumps against the side. All the adrenaline that has been keeping him moving since he returned to UA is… gone. Just gone. So quickly abandoning him.

“Just one more step,” Izuku tells himself, eyes clenched shut. “Just get up on your bed. Don’t need to… to get under the covers or anything. Just on the bed.” 

When he opens his eyes, the bed’s height now seems so mountainous. 

A pitiful whine tries to escape his throat, but Izuku snatches it from the air and shoves it back inside of himself. 

“Get up, Izuku,” he says, gritting his teeth as he fists the comforter and drags himself up with only his strength. “Get up.” 

He manages to stand again, then his momentary burst of strength abandons him too. He tips over like a falling tree, exhausted mind and body surrendering at last to the darkness behind his eyelids and its warm embrace. 

Izuku is unconscious before his head hits the pillow. 

Figuring out exactly how to hide everything from his classmates and teachers can be future Izuku’s problem.

Chapter Text

He has to pry his eyes open as if with a crowbar when he next wakes, to the sound of his alarm letting him know in All Might’s enthusiastic booming voice that it’s time to get up. 

Dried tears that must have escaped him in his sleep have glued his lids shut, and Izuku groans as he rubs the crust away with the side of his fist. 

Just that simple movement reminds him of his wound, when the motion of his arm yanks on it. 

With a hiss, Izuku freezes. He levers himself up, and pushes until he’s sitting on the edge of his bed with his feet on the floor. Then, he groggily lifts the edge of his shirt and examines the bandages. 

The bandage doesn’t look… too bad. There’s a disquieting dark shadow lurking beneath the layers of gauze, but blood hasn’t soaked completely through like it did before. Maybe the stitches are actually helping? 

Izuku doesn’t want to undo all his hard work from the night before just to check. He’ll let them be Schrodinger’s stitches for a little while; they’re both holding him together and not until the next time he exposes them to the light. 

He desperately wants to shower before he gets on his uniform and steels himself for class, but he knows that would be a disaster. So instead he shrugs his way through the humiliation of just wiping his face down with soap and brushing through his hair so it doesn’t look too gross. Then, he struggles into his uniform.

The smile he gives himself in the mirror is more a grimace, a desperate baring of teeth, but as long as there isn’t any visible blood, Izuku will take it. 

He just has to remind himself that he’s fought through worse pain. He’s turned his bones to soup before and kept soldiering on. Surviving the uncomfortable pain of a gunshot wound for a few days until it starts to heal will be easy. 

He's proud of himself when he makes it to class without staggering at all. Sure he's moving slowly, but what matters is that he's here now, sitting down at his desk behind Bakugou and waiting for Aizawa-sensei to come in and start the day. 

Izuku finds himself sinking down the longer he waits. The sounds of his classmates entering the room and their idle chatting become a misty blur of background noise. He refuses to let himself close his eyes, sure he’ll fall asleep if he does, so he sits there with his gaze fixed on his desk and just lets the room move around him, like a stream flows around a stone. 

A gentle hand on his shoulder brings him back, and Izuku blinks up into Uraraka’s warm brown eyes. 

They’re soft and sad when she says, “Hey Deku, I’m guessing you didn’t sleep too well last night either?” 

Izuku’s attention drifts to the bandage stuck to Uraraka’s cheek, and the dark blue smudges beneath her eyes. He gives her a pale smile of sympathy. “Yeah, my mind was racing too much.”  

“Mine too,” Uraraka says quietly. 

She doesn’t need to explain why she didn’t sleep well. Izuku remembers watching her climb up out of the hole in the street with Nighteye’s weightless form in her arms. Remembers how the ambulance didn’t let her in when they took him away. Remembers the blood that had coated her costume, swallowing soft pinks and clean whites without any mercy. 

It’s a harsh reminder that he isn’t the only one being haunted by a stain he feels he can’t scrub out. 

Was that really only yesterday?

“If you need someone to talk to, I’m–”

His offer is cut off by Uraraka beginning to giggle. She hides the sound behind her hand, but the damage is already done. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Deku, it’s just, I came over here to tell you that.” 

Izuku blinks at her, and then he can’t help but chuckle as well.  

“You can come to me for anything, Deku,” Uraraka says earnestly. “I’m sure Tsu and Kirishima as well.” 

Izuku subtly drops his hand down and lets his arm rest in his lap, hand hovering over his side. 

Is he just imagining the heat coming from the wound that he can already feel through his shirt? He has to be. 

“I know. I’m so glad I have you guys.” 

Sure enough, Tsuyu and Kirishima extend similar offers at other points in the day, and Kirishima even ends up giving him a tearful hug. 

Izuku’s side screams when Kirishima squeezes him, and Izuku narrowly keeps himself from doing the same. He has always admired how Kirishima never seems afraid to express his emotions or show his care and concern for others, but he finds himself wishing his friend was just a little less physical when doing so. 

As long as you can get through this first day, then everything will be fine, Izuku tells himself, while he’s leaning over a sink in the boy’s bathroom of the General Education wing of the school. It’s a bit far from the Hero Course’s rooms, and took an agonizing trek to get to, but no one from his class will accidentally walk in on him here. He’s free to check himself over and take a breather in peace.

He hadn’t undone the bandages, just lightly pressed on his side to make sure the stitches hadn’t popped when Kirishima had thrown his arms around him. They still seem to be holding, which is all Izuku cares about. It’s all he can care about right now. Any more than that, and he doesn’t know if he’d be able to keep moving forward.  

Classes are fine. Classes are manageable. All Izuku has to do is sit there, and hold himself as still as he can, and take just enough notes to show that he’s functioning. If he keeps his breathing short and shallow, it won’t hurt as much. He can worry about how he’ll survive training later, but right now Aizawa has given him, Uraraka, Tsuyu, and Kirishima blanket permission to sit out as many Heroics classes as it takes for the dust to settle in their minds and hearts, and Izuku hates it, but he’s already planning on taking full advantage of such an offer. At least until he’s healed enough that he won’t start bleeding out when he so much as powers up One for All. 

He forces himself to think of the bandage on Uraraka’s cheek, to think of the way Kirishima’s arms are still wrapped so tightly despite being tended to by a healer after his skin had been shattered during the raid, to think of the exhausted downwards curve of Tsuyu’s back. 

If they can make it through the day, so can he.

Just this first day, and every day after. 

On day two he feels worse. He undoes the bandages, gently dabs the wound clean with a wet rag, wraps himself back up, and presses on. 

Then day three he feels even worse. 

Izuku refuses to undo the bandages this time, feeling petulant and stubborn when he looks at himself in the mirror. He sees a haggard mess, who has been wasting too many bandages. All he does is run his fingers over the white gauze, and feel the slight pressure send buzzing ripples through his sensitive skin.

Day four still isn’t any better. 

Izuku almost wants to cry. He’s sure people have begun to notice by now that he isn’t well. A permanent red flush took up residence on his face at some point during the night between day three and four, and if that wasn’t a big enough tip off, his walking speed has slowed considerably. 

It just hurts so much to move, hurts so much to breathe. 

He still sits on the side of the gym during training, taking notes on his classmates rather than fighting alongside them. Even though Uraraka, Tsuyu, and Kirishima have all rejoined already. 

Shinsou has transferred into their class now, so Izuku needs to update the notes he has on his friend’s quirk usage in battle. And Todoroki has a new technique that he’s been crafting during his remedial lessons, so it’s crucial Izuku takes down notes on that. 

His heart is cracking in his chest bit by bit with every concerned glance a classmate throws his way, and every day, Aizawa stands idly beside him, watching the class with him, and says quietly, “Not ready yet, huh?” 

Izuku never answers. He lets Aizawa think whatever he wants to think, and buries his nose in his notebook. He’s always been good at that. 

Day five is when it all falls apart. 

It doesn’t feel fair that it happens when he’s actually feeling happy. 

He gets to see Eri that morning. He and Toogata-senpai talk to her for hours just helping her learn things about herself, about how she can be someone now that she’s free. She even sits in Izuku’s lap and plays idly with his crooked hands, while Aizawa watches over them all from the corner. Izuku thinks that he hides the fact that he has a fever burning under his skin flawlessly. 

But then he returns to the dorms, and a few of his classmates are in the communal kitchen, already laughing about something. 

Izuku had been stupid to join them. Stupid to think he could have any kind of happiness after his near week of non-stop tension and pain. But no, instead he thinks to himself I’ll be fine and he walks towards the group of his friends. 

He can’t remember now what was said that made him laugh. 

All he remembers is being unable to hold his laughter in, unable to hide it. What began as a small chuckle built into a full body laugh, with Izuku throwing his head back and gasping for air through his first real smile in what felt like forever. 

Then he feels the stitches pop.

They burst like an explosion against his skin, and his laugh transforms all too quickly into a cry of pain. Izuku snaps forwards and curls in on himself out of reflex, clutching at his side as flames lick mercilessly through him and tear up his insides. 

Distantly, Izuku can hear people calling his name, but water rushes in his ears, drowning them out. 

He presses his hands to his side, and feels something awful beneath his palms. 

He feels something squish. 

When was the last time I changed the bandages? Izuku wonders, head spinning. When was the last time I forced myself to look?

Days ago, is the answer. 

People are still trying to talk to him, and someone touches him unexpectedly. Izuku throws himself backwards, away from the hands that reach out to him from the crowding group of his friends. They’re all just colorful blurs to him right now, in the vague shapes of humans.  

They’re too close, and Izuku can’t breathe. 

Everything becomes a blur after that, as he finds himself moving, running, breathing harshly through the pain. 

He scrambles into his bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind him. He’s not thinking about the worried friends he left behind downstairs, not thinking about what they must be saying about him now that he’s gone. His mind is fixed on the wet feeling of blood beneath fabric, the sticky scrape of bandages and something more against his skin. Frantically, Izuku rips his blazer off, and nearly cries out at the sight of red soaking through his crisp white uniform shirt. 

Buttons are undone quickly, and then he peels back the shirt from the soiled bandages.

Those too are peeled away, with hesitant touches and shallow gasps, until at last the bullet wound is revealed. 

Izuku’s face goes white. 

It… doesn’t look good.

With his heart in his throat, Izuku pokes carefully at the tender and inflamed skin that radiates out from the wound in a circle of angry red. His terrible attempt at stitching it closed has backfired, as gross fluids and sickly looking tissue push through the gaps and stick to the threads.

It’s impossible to deny that the wound has become infected. 

“Okay, breathe, breathe,” Izuku instructs himself. “What do you need to do to clean this?” 

He has cleaned so many burns and scrapes over the years, but none were ever very deep. None ever festered like this. 

“You need to unstitch it,” he says, after a few moments of thought. “And clean it with water first. Then. Something to disinfect it. Then you can restitch it.” 

Izuku nods to himself, and takes a deep, steadying breath. He has a plan now. He has a plan. 

But the first light touch of the stitches turns his world white with pain, and he gets lost in its overwhelming agony. 

He comes back to himself on the floor, eyes rolled to the ceiling and fingers twitching. 

There are cracks in the ceiling. Faint ones. Probably where the paint was forced to dry too quickly in UA’s rush to build the dorms. Huh. Izuku has never noticed them before. 

Slowly, Izuku drags his eyes away from the web-like cracks, and looks back at his side. 

The wound pulses, angry and agitated now from Izuku’s attempt to touch it. He should have heeded the bright, warning red and just left it alone. But he didn’t, and he still can’t. 

Izuku levers himself up on his arms, carefully. Once he’s sitting up, he pushes himself across the floor, until his back is propped against the wall. Then he strips his right arm of the compression sleeve he always wears and folds it up. 

He hesitates as he’s lifting it, hesitates as he’s shoving it into his mouth. 

But he needs something to bite down on. Something to muffle his screams.

When he touches the stitches again, he doesn’t let the pain knock him over as easily as it did the first time. It surges like a furious wave and crashes into him ruthlessly, but the folded compression sleeve swallows his screams as a black hole swallows light, and he keeps his hand steady as he snaps one of the stitches and begins to pull the threads free from his skin. 

It’s not a delicate process. He doesn’t take his time. Izuku yanks the threads out viciously, desperately, scratching and pulling and screaming one long continuous scream the entire time. 

Restitching after he cleans it will be nearly impossible with how much damage he’s done to the edge of the wound now. But maybe that’s for the best. Maybe he needs to let it breathe. 

Sudden knocking on his bathroom door has him snapping his head up. 

“Deku? Are you in there?” Uraraka’s voice calls through the wood. 

Izuku groans, clenching his eyes shut and pressing the back of his head firmly against the wall. He’d forgotten to close his bedroom door all the way, hadn’t he? He’d left it unlocked and open, for just anyone to waltz in. 

He spits out his compression sleeve, and tries to keep his voice as steady as he can manage when he replies. “Y-Yeah, I’m in here.”

Beneath the door, Izuku can see the shadow of Uraraka’s feet as she shifts from side to side. “Are you alright? You left kind of suddenly and have been up here for a while…” 

Izuku looks down at his side, and lifts his fingers slightly to take a peek at the blood underneath. He swallows heavily at the gross mess. “I-I’m fine!” 

A pause. 

“... Are you sure? If you’re sick I can get Aizawa-sensei–”

Izuku tries to stand in a rush, and nearly falls against the door. He catches himself on the sink edge with a heavy slam of his palms against the porcelain. “Don’t get Aizawa-sensei!” 

He can already picture the way Aizawa-sensei’s mouth will move, when he sees what a failure Izuku is and then slowly forms the words that will end Izuku’s entire world; You’re expelled.

“I’m f-fine, really!” 

“You don’t sound fine!” Uraraka pushes back, voice thin with worry. “You sound really sick, Deku, and did you fall just now?” 

“No!” 

There’s a distant mutter of someone else arriving; more of his friends. His wonderful, caring, nosy friends. Izuku can hear Uraraka talking to them in hushed words that he can’t make out, relaying the situation. 

Then someone tries the bathroom door handle.

Izuku watches in horror as the handle on his side jiggles, the lock keeping it jammed in place. 

“Midoriya,” comes Todoroki’s voice. “Can you let us in?” 

“No,” Izuku rasps. 

Then his mind goes blank. 

He realizes a moment later, as he drifts and his hand moves against his will towards the door handle, what has happened. Slowly, he undoes the lock, and then Shinsou, wearing his new voice-changing mask that was just made for him this week, steps into the small space. 

“Oh my god…” 

Please, I’m fine! Izuku screams desperately in his mind, as he watches his friends’ reactions from afar. Don’t look! I have it handled!

They can’t hear him. They don’t listen. 

All they see is the red, red, red. 

Uraraka leaves the room in a desperate run, while Shinsou rips his mask from his face in a fit of emotion. He goes to set it on the sink, but rears back when he sees the bloodstains, old and new. 

Shinsou settles the mask back around his neck instead, before turning to Izuku. 

“Sit down, Midoriya, it’s alright,” he begins, commanding Izuku down to the floor with gentle words and even gentler touches, like he’s corralling a hurt, feral animal. Butterfly-light taps to Izuku’s shoulders, with hands that tremble and shake, betraying how shocked and concerned Shinsou is. 

Izuku feels his legs fold beneath him as he sits down, but even under Shinsou’s control, he can’t hold himself up. His weakened body lists to the side, slumping down on itself like the slow collapse of a sandcastle.

A hand touches Izuku’s clammy forehead. There’s a beat. Then Shinsou says, in a shaky attempt at humor. “Well, this is the opposite of good.” 

Izuku would laugh, if he could. Opposite of good is… an understatement. 

He never wanted anyone to know. 

“Uraraka is getting Aizawa-sensei,” Shinsou says. Then, he hesitates. “I… I don’t know if I should let you out of my control yet. You could hurt yourself.”

‘Even more’ goes unsaid. You could hurt yourself even more. 

With nothing really for Shinsou to do aside from keeping Izuku there, they slip into an odd state of limbo. Tap water still drips from the sink in single drops, a soft but steady plonk, plonk, plonk in the background as they wait for Uraraka to return with Aizawa. 

A warm haze settles over him, and Izuku slowly begins to drift while Shinsou talks without giving orders just to fill the silence. He’s just holding Izuku’s mind in his hands, keeping him safe.

That is, until he abruptly drops the quirk, jarring Izuku back to awareness too quickly for him to keep up. His mind slams back into its own shell, rattling around the inside of his skull with the force of the impact, and he groans as his body immediately drops forward. 

“Midoriya!” 

Someone catches him, but Izuku isn’t sure who. There are too many people, too many things happening all at once. 

Then he hears Aizawa’s voice, calm and firm. “Everybody out.” 

“But, Aizawa-sensei–”

“Everybody. Out.” 

Izuku is passed to someone else, someone new. With large, worn hands and a broad chest for Izuku to lean against. 

“Midoriya, what is this?” Aizawa says, and the fever must be making Izuku delirious, because the man almost sounds panicked. Almost sounds afraid. But... Aizawa-sensei can’t be afraid, he’s never afraid. “That’s not true, your insane class scares me all the damn time. Now please, I need to know, why didn’t you tell anyone?” 

A hand that isn't his own presses down over the infected bullet hole. A high pitched keen squeezes through Izuku’s teeth, and he scrunches his eyes shut as he fights back the nausea that the pain brings with it.

“Couldn’t let anyone know,” he chokes out miserably. 

“Couldn’t let anyone know what?” 

“That it hit me. That it hit me and didn’t work.” 

Aizawa stares blankly for a moment, not comprehending, but the moment it clicks he sucks in a tight breath. 

“... It was one of the quirk destroying bullets?” He asks slowly, as if he doesn't want to ask at all. As if he fears the answer. 

Izuku’s Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps, swallowing the tears and spit clogging up his throat. “Mhm,” is the only sound he can bring himself to make. 

“And it didn’t work?” 

He shakes his head.

“... Do you know why it didn’t work?” 

Izuku hesitates, but that’s answer enough. 

Aizawa swears softly under his breath. He buries his face in a hand for a moment, shoulders shuddering oddly. When he returns his gaze to Izuku, there’s something pleading barely hidden behind the unyielding darkness of his eyes. “Tell me, right now.”

“Can’t,” Izuku whispers. 

“This is a secret you’d die for, Midoriya,” Aizawa hisses. “You didn’t tell anyone you’d been shot and I–” he falters. “I need to know if this is something that’s putting you in harm’s way. I need to know so I can help you.”

Izuku’s heart cries out with longing, and reaches for Aizawa. Isn’t this what Izuku wanted? For someone to help him, just once? 

He opens his mouth, so tempted to let every truth pour out, but what comes out unfortunately isn’t any kind of explanation. 

What comes out is an oddly calm, “Aizawa-sensei, I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to pass out now.” 

And then, after meeting his teacher’s wide worried eyes, Izuku does. 

Chapter Text

Shouta knows it isn’t customary for a child’s homeroom teacher to be sitting at their hospital bedside, waiting for them to wake up, but right now he frankly couldn’t care less about what is customary and what isn’t. If anyone tries to get him to leave, they’re going to be glared right out of the room. 

He isn’t going to move. Not an inch. Not until Midoriya wakes up. 

To think that after the raid on the Shie Hassaikai, Shouta had been grateful that none of his students were hurt too terribly. Kirishima’s arms needed to be looked at by a doctor with a healing quirk, and Uraraka and Tsuyu were exhausted down to their bones, but he hadn’t lost any of them. Despite his failure to protect them, all four of them were alive. 

He hadn’t even questioned it when he heard that Midoriya hadn’t needed any treatment. His relief had been too great to be shaken. 

Shouta curses himself for that now – for letting Midoriya slip through his fingers, his pain unnoticed.

It’s been days since the raid.

Long enough for there to be plenty of opportunities for someone to help Midoriya. 

Long enough that Shouta should have seen and done something before it got to this point. 

“But you’re not the type of kid who lets others know when you’re hurting, are you?” Shouta mumbles, as he watches Midoriya’s peaceful, unconscious form. Midoriya’s chest rises and falls in deep, even breaths. “No, you’re the kind of kid who is far too good at keeping secrets. If you don’t want anyone to know you’re in pain, then they won’t.” 

Midoriya breathes quietly. In. Out. In. Out.

Shouta drops his head down, to rest his forehead on his interlocked fingers, digging them into his skull, and his elbows into his knees. “... Damnit.” 

He still should have seen it. 

It shouldn’t have taken an infection that nearly progressed too far for Midoriya to get the help he needed. 

His students shouldn’t have been the ones to find their friend in a blood-splattered bathroom, too weak to hold himself up after tearing his own infected stitches out like a wild animal. 

And what was Midoriya’s reasoning for why he didn't reach out for help?

I couldn’t let anyone know. That it hit me. That it hit me and didn’t work. 

Shouta still doesn’t have a clue. 

So that’s why he sits here, waiting. 

He loses track of reality so easily, and truthfully has no clue how much time has passed by the time Midoriya first begins to stir. When the first traces of motion draw Shouta’s attention back into the present, the light from the window has moved across the wall to the other side of the room, and his neck creaks with a stiffness he hadn’t felt settling in. 

Shouta ignores the ache, and leans forward in his seat to get closer to the waking boy in front of him. “Midoriya?” 

A soft, low moan answers him, and then green eyes, still fever-bright, blink open slowly. 

But it’s obvious that Midoriya still isn’t awake, not really. His eyes slide with a liquid laziness around the room, never focusing on any one thing. Shouta sits there in silence, holding his worry at bay until Midoriya is actually aware. 

“Where…?” Midoriya rasps. 

“Musutafu General. Your condition had deteriorated too far for Recovery Girl to do much on her own.” 

Midoriya tilts his head so their eyes can meet, and then he freezes, as if just registering who is at his bedside.

Before Midoriya can get too lost inside his head, Shouta reaches for the bottle of water a nurse had left on the bedside table. “Here,” he says, and holds it out towards the boy. 

Midoriya stares at the bottle of water as if it’s some alien thing he’s never encountered before. He doesn’t move to take it. Nor does he move to say anything. 

Shouta can only hold his arm out for so long before it becomes embarrassing. He sighs, and pulls the water back to himself and sets it down to the side again. “Midoriya… What the hell happened?” 

“It’s… a long story,” Midoriya mutters uselessly, turning his face towards his lap. He should know that Shouta won’t let this go for a reason as simple and vague as that. 

Sure enough, the boy looks all too resigned when Shouta pats the arms of the cumbersome chair that he hasn’t moved from. The message is clear; he’s here to stay. “Good thing I have time,” he says. Then he raises an eyebrow, and gestures to the I.V. line leading away from Midoriya’s arm, and the hospital bed he sits in. “And so do you, since you’re stuck actually having to rest and aren’t being discharged until tomorrow.”

Midoriya clenches his fists in the sheets over his lap, and presses his lips together tightly. 

Shouta waits for a long moment. When it becomes clear that Midoriya isn’t going to be talking, he sighs heavily. “Midoriya, what did I do to lose your trust?” 

Midoriya visibly jolts in place. He looks at Shouta with wide eyes. “What? N-Nothing!” 

“I must have done something,” Shouta insists. “For you to feel like you couldn’t come to me with an injury like this.” 

Midoriya frowns. “It’s… It’s nothing to do with trust. It’s– My reason– It’s just something that I can’t talk about.” 

“Is there anyone you can talk about it with?” Shouta asks. 

Midoriya opens his mouth, as if he has a response ready and waiting on his tongue, but then… Then, to Shouta’s horror, he pulls himself back, pulls the answer back inside. 

Shouta is already shaking his head before Midoriya has begun to shake his own. 

“No, nope, not acceptable,” he says firmly, hiding his fear and concern behind a thin layer of stern authority. “This is non-negotiable now, you tell me why you didn’t report that you’d gotten shot, or I pull you from the Hero Course.” 

For a moment, Midoriya looks at him with the most heartbreakingly devastated expression Shouta thinks he’s ever seen. Despair and grief mix together in a terrible cocktail of misty eyes and hitching shoulders, but as Shouta watches, resignation slowly moves across Midoriya’s face, and steals it all away. 

Midoriya shuts down piece by piece, until Shouta is staring into flat, dead eyes. Not a spark of light to be seen. 

“Okay,” Midoriya whispers, voice fragile and small. “Pull me from the Hero Course.” 

What.

All sound is sucked from the room, leaving Shouta with only a high pitched note ringing in his ears. 

Midoriya Izuku, arguably the most heroic student he has, basically just laid his head down on the chopping block after being told to. He isn’t even trying to keep fighting.

He said “Okay,” and has now presented his neck for Shouta to drop the axe on. 

“No,” Shouta chokes out. 

Midoriya blinks at him, visibly surprised. 

He’s surprised you aren’t expelling him. Shouta’s thoughts hiss. Why did you ever think your students would trust you, with a threat like that over their heads?

Shouta pushes that aside. 

“No, Midoriya, I’m not going to pull you from the Hero Course.” 

Midoriya’s brow furrows with genuine confusion, and Shouta traps a scream deep inside his ribcage. “But you just said–”

“I know,” Shouta cuts him off, too quickly, too harshly, and Midoriya flinches. So Shouta forces a deep breath, and dials his emotions back to something calmer. “I know what I said.” 

He stops there, not quite sure how to proceed now that his trump card has been dismissed. 

Midoriya, watching him warily, slowly admits, “I thought you’d be angrier.”

“I am angry, but not at you,” Shouta says. “I’m angry at myself.”

“This isn’t your fault, Aizawa-sensei,” Midoriya says. “... I’d tell you if I could.”

Shouta groans. They’re going in circles. “Then why don’t you? I’m worried about you, you foolish problem child. Can’t you see that?” 

From the shock on Midoriya’s face, no, he can't. 

“Midoriya, so many people care about you, your friends, your mother, All Might – yes, even I care about you. Don’t you think hiding something like this, making yourself sick and refusing to get help, and then not telling anyone why you did it, would worry those people?” 

Midoriya’s eyes go glassy. “I– I didn’t want to worry anyone,” he stammers brokenly.

You did. Shouta thinks, but stops himself from saying. Midoriya doesn’t need to hear it out loud. He knows. 

Shouta doesn’t know what possesses him, but carefully, as if reaching out to one of the stray cats he sometimes encounters on his patrols, he reaches out for Midoriya’s hand. He takes it, grimacing at the way the I.V. line taped to the back of it comes along and drags across the bed sheets. Midoriya lets him, but he bites down on his lip and is visibly holding back tears now. 

“Why did the quirk erasing bullet not work, Midoriya?” Shouta asks, one last time. 

Midoriya tries to stay strong, Shouta can see it. 

But Shouta also sees a boy who has been strong for far too long. 

Midoriya folds in on himself, not crying yet, just gasping for now, and brings his other hand over to grab tightly onto Shouta’s wrist. “Sensei, please, I can’t–” Midoriya’s grip tightens, nails digging into Shouta’s skin. Shouta endures it.

“Let me help you, Midoriya,” Shouta says, giving Midoriya’s hand a slight squeeze. “Please.”  

Midoriya’s collapse is slow, but Shouta watches every stage of it. The way Midoriya’s resolve shatters like brittle glass, how his expression – his entire body – can no longer withstand the pressure he has been holding, and he falls to pieces.

Shouta is just glad he’s here this time to catch those pieces. On impulse he leans forward, and Midoriya falls against him without any kind of prompting. So weak and small, so tired and world-worn, Shouta can't help but wrap his arms around this boy to support him, so that he won't have to carry the world on his own anymore. 

No matter what Midoriya tells him, no matter what secrets are revealed, he’s going to make sure he stays here.