Chapter 7 - Snaps
Aizawa had not had a moment’s peace for the rest of the day.
He could acknowledge that he was more… tense then usual, more irritable maybe. He knew he was riding on a razor’s edge of paranoia and anxiety, swinging from dissociation to panic attacks to borderline flashbacks with barely a moment's rest. But that was how he’d lived in highschool, back when his anxiety had been at its worst. He could, he would, manage for a few days.
He had a point somewhere in there didn’t he?
Oh yeah.
Point was, he was still perfectly capable of rationally deciding that the entirety of his class was to be expelled, transferred, a bit of both honestly.
Nedzu had agreed that the students he’d found attacking their classmates were to be expelled.
(Attacking, attacking. Like they hadn’t almost killed three of their classmates, like he hadn’t turned the corner, sprinting at that point because the screaming had morphed into words, into begging, crying children- hadn’t turned that corner to find an all out brawl.)
Nedzu had wanted him to push the kids who wanted to transfer out, try and convince them to stay.
He’d refused.
They had dropped it without much of a fight.
(More likely a token effort to try and appease the Commission when they came snooping later. They would be furious about this.)
However Nedzu had not agreed with his assessment that the bystanders ought to be transferred out as well.
“I granted you the power of ‘expulsion’ so that you could give your students a “taste of death,” as you put it. Surely this qualifies? I know you don’t expect first years to know how to properly diffuse a situation, their inaction, while not ideal, can be excused by virtue of their inexperience.”
“Not that,”
“Then what?”
It had been the look in their eyes.
Some of them had been interested, watching things like it was a sporting match, entertainment.
He wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the ones who was just watching that had really incited the brawl.
The others, the others who had hid, or stayed frozen, and watched as their peers had nearly been murdered right in front of them…
They had been broken.
He had seen that look before, knew that they would need to take time to put themselves back together before he could even begin to think about them under the stress of hero training.
He sighed.
“Look at them, Nedzu. Better yet, go talk to them, or have Inui talk to them,”
Nedzu had suggested that the lingering effects of Dominant Gaze, (because of course they knew, well meaning they may be, Nedzu had never really understood the concept of privacy or secrets all that well.), might be impairing his judgment. Making him hasty.
Aizawa had set the cup he was holding down, hard, to avoid throwing it through the window. He’d had to take a moment to breathe and get his quirk under control. (He’d never erased Nedzu’s quirk, never wanted to try, never wanted to see what would happen. How illogical, they ought to know, ought to find out in a controlled, safe environment. He never brought it up. Neither did Nedzu.)
Nedzu had waited until he opened his eyes before apologizing, sort of, in their own way. Nodding their head in concession and pouring him more tea before quietly continuing.
“Inui will assess them,”
A compromise, it’d do for now.
Then there was the uproar, the chaos, that had followed Nedzu’s cheery announcement.
The first day de-briefing, happening far later than it normally should, running longer than it normally would have.
The questions about how he was doing, well meaning and normally a little appreciated, not that he’d ever admit it.
He could feel himself coming closer to snapping with every “are you ok?” Which really wasn’t fair to his friends, (family even, cobbled together that they were).
It was just grating.
(He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to explain it all, it wouldn’t matter- it would- he’d be mostly back to normal in a week. It was fine.)
Zashi had taken one look at him and grabbed his arm before bulldozing his way out of U.A. cheerfully calling out a ‘code murderface’, in lieu of a proper goodbye.
He scowled. Zashi laughed and pushed him towards the car.
They stopped at a supermarket on their way home, apparently they were out of snap peas.
(Zashi ate those things at a frankly terrifying rate, by now none of the cashiers at the market closest to their home even blinked when they bought nothing but about a dozen bags of the things.)