Foils
Set some time in season 02. Not Season 03 canon.
Shiraishi's mind wanders to a certain someone.
Shiraishi sits at the fellowship's designated desks outside the HCU, paperwork abundant in front of her. She's not paying attention to it though, instead busy with her hands as she twirls a pen the way Aizawa often did when he was deep in thought. No, she hadn't picked up the habit - she simply wanted to try putting herself in his shoes. Unfamiliar shoes, but they were shoes she thought about often. Although to be perfectly honest, she was initially thinking about the fellowship - thinking about the way they worked together, thinking about their synergy. But then her thoughts narrowed, focusing on Aizawa. And her. On her and Aizawa. About their synergy, about their teamwork.
About how they were good foils to each other.
It was a thought that had taken its time to brew, an inkling lingering in the back of her mind. She wasn't sure when she realised its presence because it wasn't a sudden discovery, no. It was a slow epiphany, from day after day and night shift after night shift with him. A quiet acknowledgment, one she came to accept with each interaction, each exchange of words and beliefs. She came to note that indeed, they were opposites but they also complemented each other well.
Perhaps the start of it all was that time in the elevator when she asked him what he felt as he amputated a teenager's arm on scene. It was jarring, for someone to be able to make such a decision so confidently, for someone to be so vastly different from her. But as the days pass and as she comes to understand him more, she realises just how well they made up for each together.
For one, she was someone who expressed too much and him too little. His feelings were locked tightly under impassiveness and hers were on her sleeve for the world to see. He was also someone confident in his strides, taking leaps and bounds despite the risks while she took smaller ones, cautious of the thin ice beneath her feet that was the fragility of human life. He cared not how the world saw him, but her? Her every action was to please, to be the model doctor, the model human.
And that was simply the tip of the iceberg, the things off the top of her head. She could go on, keep listing off their differences - like how he hadn't known his father and was on bad terms when they did get to know each other, while she became a doctor because she idolised hers - but then there would be no end to it you see?
But foils, she thinks, foils at its most basic definition were characters who simply emphasized the qualities of another. They didn't necessarily spur each other on, didn't necessarily feel this familiar. She felt like they were more than that. They were characters who not only complement each other, but blended and merged and support, who taught and learned from the other until they become a different person, until they became each other.
The way she became confident in her own decisions, forging ahead without stopping as she treats her patients, the way Aizawa hesitated as he thinks about feelings - both his own and his patients'? The way Aizawa began to care about the people around him, about the fellowship.
What do you call them?
Rivals?
... Soulmates?
The thought causes her to drop the twirling pen in her hand, and she feels the creeping heat up her neck. With a startle she banishes the thought to the recesses of her mind, and finally plunges into the looming paperwork in front of her.
Aizawa of course, takes notice.
A/N: Do people still write this? hahaha
It's been years since I last wrote/uploaded anything but here's a drabble I wrote after binge watching season 1 and 2 back in February this year :")
I finally have a reason to upload it with S3! lolol