After his brawl with Stain in a back-alley in Hosu, Izuku was well acquainted with the sound of a blade passing through flesh. He'd been stabbed twice in that fight, as had Iida and Todoroki. It was noise he didn't particularly enjoy, a sort of quiet rasp as it entered the flesh followed by a wet sucking sound as the blade was extracted. It was typically accompanied by a scream, or at least a gasp of pain.
So when Izuku turned his head and saw that the woman brawling with Aizawa (Darkstar, Toga had called her, before giggling at something she was too out-of-it to explain) had jammed a sword through her own stomach, he was disturbed a touch by how quiet she had been. Then he saw the familiar grey strands of Aizawa's capture-tool wrapped around her neck and torso and the sagging dark shape at her back and his eyes went wide.
And then he heard that sound, the nauseating sound of a blade being pulled from flesh, and he saw his teacher collapse into a puddle of his own blood with a dull thud. His whole body stiffened up, and much to his regret fear overtook the righteous anger billowing inside him, like cold water dumped on hot metal. He swallowed back a scream.
Aizawa-Sensei was down.
Izuku had only seen some of the fight between the strange woman apparently named Darkstar and his teacher, but he had seen enough. She had impaled herself on her own sword just to get at Aizawa. She was insane. Now she was staggering towards him with that bloodied blade still glistening with her and Aizawa's combined gore. Izuku touched a hand to Toga's forehead, murmuring a command to stay where she was, before rising to his feet.
Darkstar still approached, a maddened grin spread wide across her face. There was a glow to her cheeks, a warmth and joy that told him all he needed to know. She was insane, clearly, but she was excited by her own madness. She had injured, possibly even killed Aizawa, and now she was happier than she had ever been. The idea of this woman… no, this monster taking such pleasure in hurting somebody precious to him…
Izuku felt that heat and pressure building inside again. One For All surged into being, only to fizzle out when she took another step. Fifteen metres then, that was her radius. Wide enough to be imposing, yet manageable. He didn't need One For All to beat her down then. He raised a single finger and pointed it at her, before lowering his stance and bracing to charge. He would surge low, strike at the leg first and knock her down. Stomp the sword out of her hand. Finish it with a kick to the head for a knockout. Or a killing blow. At this point he didn't really care to restrain himself. These monsters had taken his children, tried to murder his teacher, killed who knew how many others.
Her smile widened when she saw the look on his face, that single sword rising to point back at him. Izuku took a breath, and charged for vengeance.
Black and purple filled his vision, his stomach lurched and he came to a screeching halt when he saw Kurogiri and Shigaraki standing some fifteen feet away, Kurogiri looming tall over a tiny bundle while Shigaraki…
Izuku's eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. Shigaraki had another tiny shape in his grasp, holding it by what looked like strings coming from its back. It was a baby, clearly, with a tuft of curly green hair atop its head. The strings weren't strings; they were like fleshy tendrils, eight of them, coming from it's back in pairs all along it's shoulder blades. They were as thick as pencils, and wrapped around Shigaraki's wrist and fingers. The baby was crying, a soft and pathetic sound, and Izuku felt his heart clench in his chest with an aching like he'd never felt before.
Shigaraki bounced the baby a little, moving his arm up and down. That twisted grin was back on his face, and Izuku knew exactly why. Kurogiri was standing over one child, laid on the floor like so much refuse. Shigaraki had the other.
And there was nothing Izuku could do about it.
"Deku..." Shigaraki's voice cracked, but not from fear. He sounded like he was fighting the need to burst into hideous laughter, the grin on his face stretching even wider. "Take off that mask. I want to see your face when I turn your little girl to dust!"
Something in Izuku cracked. He could feel it, a barrier or restraint of some sort simply giving way under the strain of all his pent up fury. Some detached part of his mind that was yet to succumb to this savage anger wondered if this was how Bakugo felt in the midst of one of his rages, this surging heat in his chest and throat that burnt its way through his veins and set his blood to boiling. Then it wondered if this was why his oldest friend was so fond of fighting; if that was the only way to relieve himself of this sensation, Izuku couldn't blame him.
One For All flared again, and Izuku could feel a bizarre burning in one of his wrists, his left. He didn't know the sensation, but it felt like what he imagined having something wriggling around just under your skin felt like, a sort of itching and ticklish sensation. He could feel his eyes afire, those jagged lines of power One For All branded him with glowing brighter, brighter, brighter still as the aura of green lightning turned into a sort of cloak, long lines of emerald light falling around him, the scent of burning and ozone filling the air.
He was sheathed in power, the atmosphere rippling with his fury. One For All was a Quirk that increased in strength with each bearer. This was something he and All Might had figured out quite quickly. It was possible, distinctly so, that Izuku's true one-hundred percent would surpass All Might's by an order of magnitude. If that was true, Izuku realized now, then Shigaraki was not a man for whom there was any hopeful future.
Or, his mind continued, any future at all.
"Put her down." Izuku spoke, and his voice was amplified to boom all through the warehouse, One For All enhancing even his vocal cords. "Gently. Step back. Or I will break you."
Behind him, the ongoing sounds of Bakugo and Dabi's contest came to a halt. Outside, Snipe's gunfire faded, as did all other sounds in the warehouse. Shigaraki stared at Izuku. Izuku stared at Shigaraki. For a long moment that seemed to stretch out into infinity, in the eye of the storm that had been long brewing in that warehouse, there was quiet.
And in that quiet, something stirred.
Cold.
It was cold now.
Shouta Aizawa knew he was dying. He couldn't feel his legs, and the pain in his stomach was so bad it had actually come full circle and become dull and distant, a meaningless throbbing in some far-flung corner of his body. His eyes were watering, the left still blinded by gore. His scarf was a tangled mess on the floor around him. What little vision he had left was darkening. What little movement he could manage seemed hopeless, his arms twitching and his head turning a little to the side. Then he saw it. No. Them.
The children. Shigaraki was holding one, the girl, by those tendrils growing from her back like she was a toy on a string. The other was on the floor, still swaddled in those white blankets that were stained black by the filth all over the floor of the warehouse. Aizawa snarled, hands reaching for the last weapon he had available to him. It was a long shot, literally, and he wasn't even sure he had the air left in his lungs to use it.
But the collapsible blowpipe pre-loaded with a high-powered tranquilizer dart he had added to his belt for emergencies like this... it was there. He unfolded it, straightened it, all with trembling hands that were going numb. He brought it up to his face, and sighted the distance with his single eye. Sixty feet distant, but Shigaraki was completely still, shouting something he couldn't hear. Izuku was a fountain of green lightning in the middle of the warehouse floor, but he wasn't in the way of Aizawa's shot.
He aimed for the head; the dart would drop, and slam right into the villain's throat. Plenty of important arteries there to convey the poison through his body. Aizawa pulled his head back, pulling a deep, shuddering breath into his lungs, forcing himself to keep it slow and clean.
Then he raised the flared end of the pipe to his lips, and expelled that breath in a short, sharp burst.
The dart flew, the black plastic fletching and dulled metal body making it almost impossible to see in the gloomy evening. He watched it fly though, his one eye tracking its path through the air. He was going to die soon. That wasn't okay. Not yet. He had to save them first. The kids, his problem child's problem children. The fact that he smiled at that made him feel a little better; it was probably an ugly smile, bloodstained and weak. Nothing Ishizu would find attractive.
The dart flew straight and true and then it sank into an abyss of darkness as Kurogiri opened a portal and Aizawa's breath escaped his lungs in a wet, bubbling groan of exasperation before he reached for one of his throwing daggers. He'd only used three on Twice outside, the fourth would still...
A foot crashed down on his wrist, pinning it to the ground, and his breath was stolen from him by the shock as something cracked painfully.
"I'm quite afraid that can't be allowed to happen, Eraserhead." the dramatic flair in the hushed voice, the leather boot, the way it twisted a little before he saw a black pant leg with a tapered end enter his line of sight... "You cannot interfere any further. Attempting to interfere at all was quite unsporting, as a matter of fact."
"Problem... child..." Aizawa groaned, before his other hand, which had been reaching for his last holdout weapon, drove his boot-knife into Mr. Compress' leg just above the ankle, the blade biting deep into the tender flesh and muscle there. There was a spurt of blood.
Compress screamed, loud and horrible, and to Aizawa it was as if the sound was underwater. He forced himself to crawl forward, pulling on Compress to haul his body forwards using what little strength remained in his arms. His legs weren't moving when he told them to. Spinal injury. If he survived, he'd be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He coughed up blood and called it a laugh at the thought of Hizashi having to push him around so he could yell at his students. At least he hadn't lost his eyes. Without them he'd be…
Well, useless wasn't the best word, but it was a good one.
Compress was an awful fighter but he made a decent ladder with which to climb the floor. Climb the floor. Aizawa was on the brink of death, wasn't he? He was quite certain now. Hizashi would have laughed at that one. Roku would have just chuckled. Nemuri would have been more confused than anything. Shouta Aizawa making a surreal joke? Impossible. But then again, he was dying. He was pretty sure he was entitled to one last bad joke. Also his first bad joke.
There was a lot of blood on the ground. The vast majority of it was his. Aizawa felt it all over his hand as it went down, searching, and snatched from his hip his last throwing dagger. Eight inches of smoothly curved steel, the handle fitting very nicely in his grip. He had never carried quite so many blades before, but this was a special circumstance. Technically speaking it was numerous special circumstances, all stacked on top of one another. This was a rescue operation, contended by a group of particularly deadly villains, and the targets for the actual rescue were his student's newborn twin children and his rapist.
And now said student was falling to the ground unconscious.
Oh.
Aizawa's vision was darkening, but he could see with his solitary eye remaining to him the tiny black shape embedded in the side of Izuku's neck. His brain sluggishly took another moment to discern what exactly that shape was, before he saw the fletching and the smooth plastic and it all clicked.
He was only five feet away from Izuku when the boy collapsed. He hit the ground with a heavy thud, the light of his Quirk fading into nothing when he made impact. Shigaraki was walking closer now, still holding Izuku's little girl by those tendrils, and Aizawa went completely still.
"Be wary, Tomura Shigaraki." Kurogiri's voice called out in that resonant rumble Aizawa has first heard at the USJ, what seemed like an eternity ago. "Eraserhead is still alive."
"Yeah, I'll get to him…" Shigaraki growled. "But first I want to make sure Deku's actually out."
Shigaraki's foot slammed into Izuku's head with enough force to turn the boy's neck, and Aizawa felt a new strength surge into his body. Just enough, perhaps, to stop this. Shigaraki brought one hand down, the only hand he had free, and his eyes focused completely on Izuku. Aizawa used that new strength and surged into motion.
His legs weren't working, but his arms still functioned to an extent. Enough to throw himself forwards and tackle Shigaraki from the ground, that last throwing knife digging into his right shoulder. Shigaraki's eyes went wide and a shriek of pain escaped his chapped lips but Aizawa had already released the knife and reached out, catching the baby and cradling her close to his chest as he twisted and hit the ground. It hurt, a surge of terrible pain lancing up his back, but he could feel the little girl in his arms move a little, her crying coming to a halt, and quickly he tucked her in close to his chest.
Behind him, Bakugo was moving. He could hear it, multiple explosions propelling the blonde forwards and over a still-reeling Shigaraki's head. Kurogiri seemed to brace, but Katsuki let out a screamed out two words and raised a hand and the world went white for all involved.
When everything faded back into sight, Aizawa saw that Bakugo had the second child wrapped up in his arms and was running away, back towards the door. A single eye tracked to the doorway itself, in which loomed the cloaked figure of Tokoyami, ragged and torn but still standing tall, Dark Shadow filling the space around him with the writhing shape of a raging void. Bakugo shouted something and Dark Shadow surged into motion, Class 1-A's angriest student passing off the baby to the clawed hands of Tokoyami's Quirk before whirling around.
Aizawa could see Shigaraki and Kurogiri, the latter forming a black portal underneath Izuku into which the unconscious boy sank with dreadful certainty. Aizawa's single eye flashed, slowing the portal's formation, and for a split second the billowing purple and black smoke that formed Kurogiri's body evaporated and he saw something that may have once been human but now looked twisted and half molten, with no mouth or nose to speak off and a heavy metal collar around his neck and shoulders. Then the smoke began to billow again, Bakugo's hand reached out for Izuku…
And Bakugo screamed with rage and desperation as Izuku's unconscious form fell into the portal, Shigaraki backstepping into the dark as well with one last cackling laugh. Aizawa saw Ishizu disappear, dragging Toga by the hair and still limping, and for a split second she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him in that stomach-churning way, cold and ruthless and utterly unapologetic. Then she too was gone, and Kurogiri vanished right before Bakugo's explosion eradicated the ground upon which he had been standing.
Bakugo stood in the warehouse with nothing but the bleeding corpse-to-be of his home room teacher for company, shoulders heaving and hands trembling. He turned, slowly, and dropped to his knees in what couldn't be defeat because this was Katsuki Bakugo, and 'defeat' was a hateful slur to his ears. Then he looked up.
Aizawa wasn't sure which was worse; the pain in his stomach and spine and all throughout his broken form...
Or the sight of Katsuki Bakugou experiencing anguish for quite possibly the first time.
Behind him, a shoe scuffed the cement before something dark and powerful wrapped him up to begin pulling him away. Dark Shadow, of course; Tokoyami was shouting at it, at him, at Bakugo and seemingly everything else, his usual detached nature torn away by Izuku's taking. But all that was far away and out of sight for Aizawa, whose breath was coming slower and slower, whose solitary remaining eye was starting to droop.
He could see her, sitting there on a white bench with hands demurely folded in her lap, wearing the same green vest and dark red skirt she had been wearing that night. To her left was a bright light like a door in the air, and to her left an image of what little his eye could still see playing live as he was dragged away by Dark Shadow. Her own large, expressive eyes searched his own as he stood before her in a field of blank, empty nothing, where she had waited for months now. She saw the grief, the regret, the guilt and the shame, and she smiled.
"You did everything you could," she told him. "And more besides. Izuku is strong. He'll find a way."
He took a hesitant step forward. His legs were working again. Somehow. Another step, knees trembling, the muscles turning to soup as his body threatened to collapse. He was uninjured, spine without any damage and stomach patched clean shut. He felt better than he had in years, and worse than he had ever felt before. She stood, and though her head barely reached his chest still she took him and pulled him close in warm, loving arms. He collapsed into her, clutching at her and wondering how it was his eyes didn't feel dry for the first time in a very long time.
"He had such a good teacher, after all." Inko Midoriya reassured him.
Ah, he realized. That explained it. He was crying.
He did that for a time, simply holding her and being held and letting himself feel, truly feel, after what felt like an age of forcing himself to not do exactly that. His body shook, and he realized she was crying too and together they were making quite a mess of each other's clothing. Then, finally, he felt the last of his tears leave him, and he straightened up. He looked down at her, and she looked up at him, and then blinked.
"I've been waiting." she explained, looking down at the white of the ground beneath them. "I… I didn't want to go alone. That seemed selfish, and Izuku still needed me, and…"
"It's okay." he murmured. "We can go together."
"My hero," she said back, and the words made him feel something warm and pleasant inside.
Shouta Aizawa straightened himself up a little more, losing his slouch for once, before turning toward the light to their side. He extended a hand and she took it in her own, warm and soft and gentle. She sniffled a little, looking back over her shoulder, and he did the same. Behind them the last fading image of Tokoyami, Bakugo and Todoroki... no, of Fumikage, Katsuki and Shouto over his broken form was present, and he closed his eyes.
"I'm proud of you all." he whispered, and he knew his bloodied lips were sounding the words out as well, as the phantom sensation of all that pain from before filled him for a moment. "Remember that."
And he turned away, with the woman he was not allowed to love in life holding his hand, and walked into the light with her by his side.
And so ended the story of Shouta Aizawa.
As always, proofread and edited with assistance from Unsettling-A.I.R, who is very sorry. As am I.