Chapter 1 - Dark Lavender
Once, right after Oboro had died, Aizawa’s homeroom teacher had pulled him aside and told him one of the hardest lessons to learn as a hero is that you can’t save everyone. (Amongst other things, because the man's goal had been to steer him away from the self-destructive path he had been careening towards at full speed ever since that particular work study, and he’d even sort of succeeded.)
(But that’s besides the point.)
Now fully cemented into his hero and teaching career, he can confidently say that he thinks that’s bullshit. Only children who are still too young to have lost hope in the world believe that everyone can be saved. Whether in a moral, or physical sense.
Sometimes you’re just too slow. Sometimes you’re just not strong enough.
‘And sometimes,’ he thinks distantly as the flash of red and blue police lights shines against blood seeped concrete, ‘you encounter someone who doesn’t want to be saved.’
“Eraser,” his eyes feel like lead, but he brings them up to meet Naomasa’s concerned gaze. “You alright?”
Alright? Unbidden, his eyes drift back to body on the ground, broken and twisted and being covered by a thick, white sheet.
He can still feel the phantom sensation of their quirk, unable to do anything the moment he’d made eye contact, paralyzed as they tipped over the edge, not able to move until after thin wisps of purple hair had already disappeared from sight, until after he’d heard their body hitting the concrete below with a horrible, sickening, splat.
He is not alright.
“They had some kind of paralytic quirk. I was frozen the moment I made eye contact,” his voice doesn’t warble, his breathing doesn’t change. To anyone outside of a very select few he likely appears totally unaffected.
Except he’s staring at the body the same way he’s seen students do in the past, unable to look away as the realization that this is neither the most gruesome nor the last dead body he will ever see wiggles its way into his brain.
“They looked like they were on the younger side of their teen years,”
There’s a quiet hiss of breath, and then Naomasa steps forward, casually blocking his vision as he pretends to write something down.
“You should go to the ER, make sure there aren’t any lingering effects,” he looks up, concern poorly hidden in a small frown and furrowed brows. “I can drive you, take your statement afterwards if you’re feeling up to it.”
Aizawa hums, closes his eyes for a little longer than strictly necessary.
“I still have two hours left of my patrol,”
Naomasa frowns, waits.
Aizawa stares, unblinking, blank.
“Shouta…”
“...Fine, but I’m walking,”
He knows that it'd be illogical and stupid and dangerous to try and do any kind of active hero work right now, so he won’t, or at least won’t go looking for any.
He just needs a minute. A bit of fresh air and a moment away from one of the few people who knows how to read him. A moment where he can let it rage across his face without having to worry about who’s watching. (Because even if he would trust Naomasa with his life and maybe even the lives of his students if it came down to it, vulnerability is hard, and emotionally taxing. He doesn’t have the energy, the willpower, for that right now.)
He sighs as he walks, fiddling with a bit of lint or dirt or something similar in his pocket as his hands clench and unclench. School starts in two days, the smart thing to do would be to take tomorrow off and book a session with his therapist.
Well, he can definitely manage one of those things.
Naomasa is waiting for him in the parking lot when he arrives. Leaning against the door of their car with a quiet frown.
“Are you actually going in?”
“Not tonight, I’ll set an appointment with a specialist after we know what their quirk actually was,”
“I’ll hold you to that,”
They climb into the car, Aizawa leans back with a sigh and closes his eyes as Naomasa turns on the radio.
“Shouta,”
“Naomasa,”
“Are you alright?”
This time it isn’t Detective Tsukauchi asking Earserhead, it’s Naomasa asking Shouta.
The question weighs heavier and yet hangs lighter for it.
Quietly, he fiddles with the silver ring hung on a chain under his shirt, feeling the ever so slightly raised edges of the three gems set into metal through the fabric as it twists in his fingers.
“No,”
They stop at a red light as it begins to rain. Naomasa doesn’t say anything, just reaches over and intertwines their hands, his own ring gleaming in the fragmented light of the stoplights.
Aizawa tips his head back and rests, the rest of the ride spent in comfortable silence as the pair listen to the midnight segment of Put Your Hands Up Radio.
Almost everyone knows on some level that you can’t save everyone. That part is easy.
The hardest lesson to learn is how to mourn that which you do not feel entitled to grieve. How to move on from catastrophic, life-ending failure.
It’s a lesson Aizawa is well versed in helping others through, his co-workers (friends), his students on rare, horrible occasions that he hates with a burning passion.
But he can’t help but feel like it’s one he never quite managed to figure out for himself.