A missing-scene vignette/drabble I wrote, which was originally supposed to be longer but in the end I figured it was okay like this. Maybe someday there'll be a part 2, or an extended version. Canon-compliant. Set during the Workplace Experience arc in chapter 56, after Stain "collapses".
When the police arrive a bare few minutes later to pull Stain away with the paramedics on their heels, checking injuries, it's then that the tension of the air seems to break at last and the world rushes in, constricting their chests and filling their minds with static. Todoroki and Iida nearly fall over themselves as they stand and rush to Midoriya's side, skirting around the noumu's corpse and lingering cops to the boy who hasn't moved from his spot on the ground except to sit up. He shakes slightly with each breath, hunched in on himself with one arm absently cradling the other and his unseeing eyes focusing on the concrete in front of him. Worried about him like this, they can almost pretend they're not trembling just as hard.
"Midoriya, are you alright?" Iida asks, urgently looking him over - the green suit is miraculously undamaged, despite the claws that had pulled him from the ground. Todoroki crouches and offers Midoriya his good arm, and it isn't hard to miss the way he too checks to make sure Midoriya's injuries aren't worse. They both receive a shaky smile in return.
"Y-yeah. Don't worry, Iida. I'm fine, somehow…" He takes a deep breath and let's it out slowly, deflating as though it's taken a burden with it. "Thanks, Todoroki." Midoriya grabs on and Todoroki pulls him up. He leans heavily on his friend as he stands, keeping weight off his injured leg, and despite the condition of his own arms Iida slides up on his right to offer his support as well. Midoriya puts one hand on Todoroki's shoulder and slowly, gently, curls his other arm around Iida's waist, ignoring the twinge it gives him when he does. It's like this, carefully wrapped around each other and Midoriya using both of them as crutches, that they hobble towards the ambulances, bloody and damaged but whole and together.
The paramedics meet them halfway. They usher Midoriya onto a stretcher and check on their injuries, pushing them away from what had been ground zero. None of the medics on site have a healing quirk, so they're left with getting treated the old-fashioned way. Iida's armor gets replaced with bandages and a temporary sling, to keep his arms immobile until they can assess the damage; Midoriya takes his costume off and folds it aside so they can properly wrap his arm and leg; Todoroki gets butterfly closures with his dressings and is told to keep his arm still and elevated before all three are moved to separate ambulances. They meet each other's eyes for a moment, hesitant, but they don't argue when they're led away.
It's a quiet ride, thick with the tension of things barely passed and heavy with the creeping exhaustion from the fight. Iida keeps his eyes open through a mix of the flashing pain in his arms and shoulder and sheer willpower, but his thoughts start to drift to Stain, then the noumu, and to the rage that had bubbled in his veins and swirled in his mind (not unlike the exhaustion that fills him now) that has since faded into something less than even ashes and embers. There is a flash of steel and fabric before his eyes, a vision of his brother lying immobile, the wide broken grin and the manic eyes behind bandages, a knife (no, two knives) in one arm and a sword in his shoulder, the ringing ache of his jaw and the swirl of the alley when his helmet had gone flying. Midoriya and Todoroki (his classmates, his friends) showing up out of nowhere one after the other while he'd stared death in the face, a fire on one side and a fist in the other, soaring up into the air as ice swells from beneath their feet, being swept away by harsh claws and blades digging into not-burning skin and tearing black fabric just below the knee, both of them put in danger and spilling blood because of him because of me-
He stops at that, takes a deep breath, reminds himself of Todoroki's words - "Pull yourself together, you're the class president," he'd said, a mixed message meant to console and bring to mind the promise of who he wanted (who he swore) to become - and gently pushes the memories and thoughts away. He lets the wailing of sirens and the gentle shake and rattle of the ambulance filter back into his world and drown out the feelings (of panic, of desperation, of vengeance, of fear) until they're as distant as the scene they took place in.
When Iida looks up, the nurse only smiles softly at him, silent and understanding.