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Earthquakes weren’t uncommon in Japan. The country laid directly on a fault line, after all. School children are taught what to do in these natural disaster scenarios, taught to brace yourself against a doorframe or a sturdy table, to protect your head from falling debris. Hero’s are taught even farther than that, they’re taught how to support an injured person's neck, how to use your words calmly and patiently. How to coach a person through their untimely death.
Most people in Japan will, at some point in their life, live through a minor earthquake. This is a basic fact of life, nothing special about it. This is even more so in the era of quirks, with supervillains using their resources, it’s not uncommon to be put through a quirk induced quake.
Aizawa was with Shinsou when it happened. They were at Ground Beta, and when the first bump through the ground jolted Aizawa out of Shinsou’s mind control, neither were fazed. A minor earthquake was nothing to fret over, not in this age of sturdy, quirk built buildings. They were at UA, a natural disaster was the least of their worries with the LoV attacking every other week. Regardless, however, they both paused their movements, bracing themselves on the ground for the following shockwaves. As the seconds stretched between the first bump and what they were expecting, Shinsou scrunched his face up.
“Aizawa-Sensei, shouldn’t it have hit by now?”
Aizawa suddenly froze, his face paling several shades. “Get cover now , it’s not a minor-“
Neither one of them had the time to duck to a covered spot before it happened. Instead of the few minor shocks they had anticipated, it was a violent storm, the earth rolling underneath their feet in terrifying waves like an angry ocean. Shinsou’s balance gave and he flew to the side, his head bouncing off the concrete floor. The last thing he saw before his vision blacked out was Aizawa, ducking towards him with his mouth open in a wide ‘O’ and his eyes more scared than he’s ever seen them.
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Shinsou woke up with a fuzzy head, his vision blurring and spinning around him in circles. The ground underneath him was wet, and everything was pitch black, the only light being a small sliver of sunlight peeking out through a crack in the top of the rubble. They must have been buried underneath Ground Beta during the earthquake…
A wave of pain hit his head as he thought and he let out a low whine in his throat. Shuffling somewhere to his right caught his attention, and he was suddenly struck with the memory that he wasn’t alone.
“‘Z-Zawa-S’ns’i…” He groaned, his voice shuddering in his chest. Something wasn’t right. The liquid soaking the ground seeped up through his clothes and was tacky under his hand, and he had a sinking suspicion that it wasn’t water from a busted pipe. His lungs shuddered as he tried to inhale a deep breath, only getting dust in return. He hacked, his ribs contracting painfully around him, and suddenly his awareness snapped back to him like a rubber band.
Shifting behind him was Aizawa, who had moved so that he was directly behind him. Aizawa hasn’t spoken yet, but Shinsou could hear his ragged breaths as he cradled Shinsou’s head on his thigh, gently protecting his neck from the awkward position it had been in. His hand rested hesitantly on his cheek, gently petting away some of the blood streaked down his face.
“‘Zawa… Aizawa.” He grunted, his voice getting more desperate as the seconds stretched on with no answer.
They were trapped in a small pile of rubble, large slabs of concrete blocking them in on all sides. The ground had a large crack splitting through it, one side lifted slightly higher than the other. It was just large enough for Aizawa to sit up in, but Shinsou couldn’t tell how long it was because of the terrifying numbness in the lower half of his body.
“Aizawa, I can’t feel my legs. Please say something, Sensei .” He hissed out. The dust floating through the air tickled his nose and made his lungs burn, but he desperately tried not to cough. The pressure and odd stabbing feeling on the left side of his ribs was terrifying, he didn’t want to cough and make anything worse.
“I’m here.” Aizawa finally said, his voice rougher than usual from the dust. “I’m here, you’re okay.”
“Aizawa,” he started, his voice crumbling.
“Shhh,” Aizawa soothed carefully, his hand moving to pet the clumps of hair stuck to his forehead away from his eyes. It was uncomfortably sticky. “Don’t be too loud, I don’t know how stable this pocket is. Just hang on, okay, someone will be coming soon.”
Shinsou took another shuddering breath and forced himself to focus on what was happening. Losing his grip wouldn’t help anything, he had to be rational . His left lung hurt with a piercing pain he had never felt before, but a sinking feeling in his gut told him it wasn’t pretty. His breath rattled with every inhale. His head spun, even with his eyes closed, and there was a steady stream of blood creeping down his hairline. He couldn’t tell what was happening with his lower body, but the complete numb feeling was just as incriminating as any pain would be.
He took another breath, the rattling noise echoing in their small chamber. Aizawa was stiff, his hand combing through Shinsou’s blood matted hair calmly despite the situation. Or maybe because of the situation…
Shinsou wasn’t stupid.
“I’m not going to make it,” he murmured. Aizawa stiffened even further underneath him, but again didn’t say anything as Shinsou continued on. “Punctured lung, head injury, and I can’t feel anything below my waist. It will take hours for them to find us, the only people who knew we were here are Nedzu and Yamada-Sensei.”
Aizawa’s breath shuttered. “No, you probably won’t.” He said, his voice steady even past the emotion crawling past his throat.
Shinsou hummed quietly, a tear slipping down his cheek. If you had told him he would die when he was younger, or even just a few months ago, he wouldn’t have cared much. He would say it was because it was inevitable, of course he’ll die eventually, but really, he just didn’t care about living. He wouldn’t say he was suicidal, he was just so tired all the time. If it was his time, he wouldn’t fight it.
In the past few months, however, he found something worth living for. He found friends who gave two shits about him, he moved into the dorms and out of that shitty foster home. He started training for his lifelong dream with his childhood hero, met an adult that actually wanted him to do well and cared about him, even if he showed it in hellish training regimes and clipped praises.
He wasn’t sure if he was ready to die. Not when he was just starting to live. He’s been alive for fifteen years, but in the last three months, he’s felt more alive than he has his entire childhood combined. It hasn’t been for lack of trying of course, he just hadn’t met the right people.
He thought he was going to get three years of this. He would have moved into class 1-A after Mineta’s expulsion, (something he knew they were working towards and was creeping closer by the day,) and lived with the best friends he’s ever had. He would get to experience what a family was like, maybe have his first kiss or first boyfriend by a certain green haired boy. He would be an underground hero and save people just like him, save others because nobody ever saved him.
Aizawa’s voice broke through his thoughts. “You know, me and Yamada are married.” He murmured, his voice quiet but still too loud with the rushing in his ears and the pulsing pain in his head.
“You are?” Shinsou asked, surprised. “That’s one hell of a pair.”
Aizawa snorted quietly. “Yeah, we are. We met in the sports festival in our first year. I failed the entrance exam too, I wasn’t pulled into the hero course until my second year. He wouldn’t leave me alone, and before you knew it, we were dating. He filled a part of me I didn’t know was missing.”
Shinsou stayed silent. Maybe he would have found that person someday. The sunshine that lit up his dark personality, who would drag him out of bed on the bad days and kiss away his tears at night. Maybe he had been right in front of him, holding his broken hand out with a peace offering he had never received before. Reaching out to save him from something he didn't know he could be saved from.
“One time,” Aizawa continued, “In our second year, before we were dating, he was trying to court me. I didn’t even know what courting fucking was, so I just thought he was being creepy until our other friend told me what he was doing. I laughed at him about it for years. Who tries to court someone nowadays? He said it was romantic and I don’t have any class, but I think he was just too scared to tell me to my face. It must have worked though, I’ll give him some credit there.”
Shinsou coughed out a small laugh. Aizawa huffed lightly at the memory, and they fell into another silence. This time however, Shinsou spoke up.
“I think I like Midoriya,” he rasped. The dust was clogging his eyes, ears, and throat, and it burned in a way that was starting to drown out the pulsing pain in his head. “He’s someone I’ve never seen before. He tried to save me when I thought nobody would ever look twice at me.”
Aizawa huffed in amusement again. “The problem child. I swear, that boy has a cult following. If it means anything to you, I think he likes you too. I try to avoid class drama for my own sanity, but when some of the girls were grilling him for who he liked, he said it was a boy from Gen Ed who was working to be in the hero course. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know any other 1-C students so close to the hero course.”
Shinsou snorted. Then laughed quietly, and before he knew it, he was near hysterics. His lung pulsed and his chest ached something awful, but it was one of the funniest things he’s ever heard.
Aizawa smoothed his hair back and encouraged him to take deep, slow breaths. He wasn’t laughing. Shinsou felt tears bubble up behind his eyes, and the laughter tapered off into sobs. “I’m never going to be able to tell him.” He whispered between his cries. Aizawa just shushed him and gently stroked his hair in a parental affection he hadn’t experienced before him.
“It’ll be alright,” he murmured lowly. “The pain will stop, and we’ll see you again. Who knows, at the rate that kid is going it’ll be sooner than later.”
Shinsou felt grief flood his broken body in waves, akin to the earthquake that put them there. His very being was shaking apart, and the only thing keeping him from shattering was the hand gently curled around his head.
“I’m not ready to die.” He whispered, his words shaking desperately. “I just started to live. I just found people who cared, I just started to have hope that it be okay.”
“You’re alright,” Aizawa soothed gently. His voice, which until now had remained remarkably steady, was wavering and watery. “I’ll be with you the whole time.”
Aizawa gently shifted him so his head was further in his lap, his nose buried against his thigh. Shinsou whimpered and gripped his pants legs desperately, clinging to him as if he could make everything better again. He was a hero, and heroes were supposed to help, to save. He was his hero, the person who got him through some of the roughest nights in his childhood without even knowing he did it. He saved him without ever meeting him, and now he would never get to tell him that.
“What would your hero name be?” Aizawa asked, his voice dripping with a foreign emotion. Shinsou couldn’t identify it, but if he didn’t know any better he would say it was grief.
(He didn’t know better. He never did until it was too late.)
Shinsou hummed quietly, thinking. “The Control Hero: Mindjack,” he said after a moment. His voice was quiet, rough from dust and blood loss.
Aizawa hummed in response. “You’ll be a great underground hero, Hitoshi.”
Shinsou felt his eyes slipping shut. They were so heavy it felt like lead weights. The pain radiating from his head and chest were easing up, fading into the back of his mind.
“Not as good as you,” he whispered. Something wet hit his forehead.
“No,” Aizawa agreed. “You’ll be even better.”
Shinsou’s mind felt waterlogged and slow. It was almost like falling asleep, he noted faintly. And he was so, so tired.
He hoped Aizawa would be okay when they dig him out. It’s sad he can’t say goodbye to anybody.
——————————————————————————————————
When the rescue team reached the pair, Shinsou had long been cold. Aizawa sat hunched over his body, dead silent and unresponsive to everybody. Whenever someone tried to touch him, he just snarled at them, curling closer around Shinsou’s broken body. It took them a few minutes to think to call his husband. He was the only person to break through to him, and they were able to bring him to the medical wing, where the others who were injured were being treated by a very frazzled Recovery Girl. He made it out with nothing but a shattered hand and a few deep lacerations, both of which would cause chronic pain, but would be able to “heal fully”. He thought they were full of shit. He’ll never be healed after this.
Aizawa, two weeks after the incident, pulled Midoriya aside after class. He was a shell of his former self, blank and quiet in class, only taking the barest notes and ignoring his friends' concern. They had a long, grief filled conversation, but Midoriya walked out of it feeling lighter than he had since before the earthquake. It wasn’t alright, not by a long shot, but it would get there someday.
Overall, three people died and a few dozen were injured. The main building remained largely unaffected, the only buildings that had been in danger of collapsing being the older training buildings, abused from frequent use. The other two students were two Gen Ed students from second year. A shrine dedicated to the three was set up outside of the Gen Ed wing.
When someone asked Aizawa who his favorite hero was, he used to respond with “Present Mic” just to see his husband get flustered. Nowadays, whenever someone asks him his favorite hero, he gets quiet and responds with a nostalgic “Mindjack.” Nobody dares ask him who Mindjack is as he wanders off to get fresh air.
(Half-finished adoption papers live in the bottom part of Aizawa’s desk drawer. He never gets rid of them. He never forgets.)