A/N: A DADZAWA HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN HIS NATIVE HABITAT. LOOK AT HIM NURTURING HIS CHILD!

Tuesday morning dawned bright and clear.

Shoto slapped his palm down on his vibrating phone, once, then twice, when it continued vibrating and letting off its obnoxious chiming.

Twenty-seconds, counted down, to let himself accept that morning had come, and there was nothing he could do about it; flip the blankets; face-teeth-toilet-mirror check; throw on sweat pants and t-shirt; and Shoto was out the door.

The sun rose early now that the cold had passed, and Shoto did his warm-up stretches while the dim light of dawn filtered through the thick curtains of maple, peach, plum and cherry tree leaves, all lined up in neat little rows around the property.

Shoto checked his phone as he popped in his earbuds and kicked one sneakered-shoe against the ground: 5:10 AM. He had until 6:30 AM to run, shower, eat and dress before the driver would be bowing him into the backseat of the car, so if he calculated thirty-minutes for all the morning necessities, that left him forty-minutes to run 5km.

Plenty of time. Shoto stretched one last time, fought down a yawn, and headed out the side-gate. The door opened before he could so much as touch it, and he looked up at the security camera pointed at his face and gave a perfunctory nod. Then he settled into a light jog, classical piano solos streaming peacefully into his ears, and headed down towards the river.

Today's route (staggered throughout the month so as to avoid being predictable, for security reasons) took him straight down by the river and along the cycling path. If he asked nicely, and did 'well' during training for the week, Father could usually be persuaded to let him jog around the neighborhood, though he was almost always required to bring supervision. If he had behaved throughout the week and picked a good time to request this particular run by the river, Father would usually say yes, and would even let him go without a bodyguard.

Today was… not one of those days.

Shoto listened to Tchaikovsky and very carefully didn't look at the man a few meters behind him—the man who was keeping pace with him on a bicycle, and who was very subtly tapping on his earpiece and whispering into his wrist every five minutes.

So subtle. No, really, so very subtle.

The sun was beginning to set the sky ablaze with golden light, and Shoto looked down to avoid the glare, telling himself that, really, he'd practically asked for this.

If he'd just done as Father had wanted, as Endeavor had wanted, he might be running through back-alleys right now, jumping over fences and walls and casually losing his shadow half-way through (they usually 'let' him, if Father was in a good mood that day). If he'd just used his fire against Bakugo, if he hadn't let his hand drop… he could have won the Sports Festival, no questions asked. He would have taken the first step in the incredibly detailed and regimented future the Number Two Hero had planned for him... and wouldn't be here, running at five-thirty in the morning, with a bodyguard behind him and another one up the road watching his every move.

A very earnestly fast-walking lady passed him by going in the opposite direction, her middle-aged face set in stern lines of concentration, and Shoto dropped down to fiddle with his shoelace until she had passed. The near-silent screech of brakes a little ways behind him made him roll his eyes, annoyed. The whole point of leaving the house to jog was to have a little bit of freaking privacy, but that obviously wasn't going to be possible so long as Father was keeping him on such a tight leash. He could easily have completed his running quota on the treadmill instead, if this was the alternative.

Shoto watched a car that had been 'inconspicuously' following him since the house turn on its blinkers and settle in to wait, and scowled darkly, completely fed up.

This was ridiculous. He was better off going to school early and getting permission to use one of the training facilities…

Shoto slowly stood, his mind planning and discarding ways to phrase the question in a hundred different scenarios, his mood—which had been ready to plummet—suddenly jumping up three levels higher.

Now there was an idea.

For now, Shoto figured he might as well put the bodyguards (and their very large salaries) to good use. He skipped his way over to the fence that separated the running path from the road, and jumped over said-fence. As he jumped, he heard a curse behind him, and smirked as he wondered how the guards were going to explain this little mess.

(He immediately felt bad afterwards, and shouted over the fence that he was just planning to hitch a ride back to the estate. Being angry was one thing; taking out your anger on someone who hadn't done anything to deserve it was just plain unheroic.)

Shower-clothes-food later, and Shoto was handing his extra tray to Saito-san and preparing to leave.

(When Father had him on a tight leash, easy morning breakfasts of Fuck You milk-less cereal disappeared with alacrity.)

He waved goodbye to Fuyumi, closed the door on Father's, "If you have any desire to go running at all tomorrow, Shoto, I suggest you—" and slipped into his shoes and out the door.

The car ride he spent dozing, his late night and subsequent nightmares giving him less than two or three solid hours of sleep; the nightmares he hadn't been able to help, but thoughts of his visit to see his mother, and the coming conversation that he had been dreading for the whole two days, had swirled about his head, making even the thought of sleep impossible.

Visiting Mom had been...

"Fuyu-nee?" Shoto called quietly, tapping on the open door to her room. Fuyumi looked up, blinking at him from behind her reading glasses.

"Yes, Shoto? Do you need something?"

"I was wondering…" Shoto trailed off, not sure how to word what he wanted to say or even if he wanted to say them at all. He clenched his hands into fists, his feet poised to leave, and something in Fuyumi's face softened.

She slipped a bookmark into her page and closed her book, turning her spinning chair to face him and give him her full attention. "Whatever you want or need, just ask, and I'll do my best to help you, if I can."

Shoto chewed on his lip, then breathed deeply, and decided. "Can you tell me the address to the… hospital? I… would like to. Go. Today, if I can."

Hey eyes had slowly widened throughout his speech, and by the end of the sentence, they were as wide as saucers; but to her credit, she only nodded slowly, eyes still wide, and gave him the address without further question.

Some days, Shoto loved his sister so strongly and fiercely it took his breath away.

A half-an-hour later saw Shoto, slowly making his way down familiar and increasingly unfamiliar streets, his mind playing old reels of memory on a constant, unceasing loop:

Down that street, Mom held his hand and sang rhymes with him as they traced pavement lines with their feet; there, at that corner, Mom crouched down with him under an umbrella, and used her raincoat to cover a soaking wet puppy in a cardboard box; right here, a car had swerved dangerously close as they walked, and Shoto had herded Mom safely against the wall, feeling proud when she praised his strength and courage, after; here, Shoto tripped while running and skinned his knee, so together with Toya-nii and Natsu-nii, Mom cast a special magic that made all the ouchies go away.

Shoto traced these memories with his eyes until the pictures playing in his mind no longer matched his surroundings, and then the old memories rewound, and started all over again, this time with a few special additions he had been attempting to ignore.

"I can't take it any more… Every day, the children to grow to look more like him. That boy, Shoto… that child's left side, sometimes I just can't bear to look at it…"

Through familiar streets then unfamiliar ones, a train ride and another walk, Shoto walked and walked and walked, until suddenly, he had no more time to waver.

A large building had come into sight. A slow stream of people and cars moved out of it, but very few moved to go in. Shoto stared up at the front of it, rocking back and forth on his heels before the opened gates, and wondered.

He hadn't been to see her, since the accident; his anger at Endeavor (and his fear at what the man would do if he found Shoto visiting Mom) had played a large part in keeping him away. The other part—the one that even now quailed at the thought of stepping through those doors—feared that she would take one look at his face, and the screaming would start… but this time, it wouldn't be Shoto who was screaming.

He hadn't wanted to force her to acknowledge the existence of something that caused her so much pain, so he had stayed away. But Shoto took a moment, right there, to close his eyes and remember why he had come all this way. He closed his eyes, and he pictured it:

He would enter the room. Mom would be there, waiting for him. They would sit, and hold hands like they used to, and talk.

Shoto would say: It's just me, mom. You don't have to be scared, because my quirk belongs to me, and I would rather die than hurt you with it. I am not him. I'm sorry if I made you sad, and I'm sorry if I scared you. Do you forgive me?

And Mom would say: I'm sorry I hurt you, too. And I forgive you.

Shoto would say: I'm going to become a hero.

And she would say: I know you will.

And they would hold hands, and talk about puppies in the rain; and about All Might, about UA, and about friends and fire and ice and wishing on rainbows; and everything would be just like it used to. Together, they would cast off the heavy yolk about their necks, engraved with the name 'Endeavor', and they would destroy it into such tiny little pieces that those pieces would pass entirely from memory itself.

Shoto walked through the gate, as quickly as he could; through reception, up staircases and through an elevator that required the passkey on his visitor's badge; through a hall, around a corner, past a group of orderlies on break.

Then, he stood before a door.

He looked at the sign beside the door. It read, simply, "Todoroki". An innocuous name on an unremarkable, standard hospital door. To Shoto, it seemed like an iron gate had been slammed over it, keeping the handle of the door miles and miles out of reach.

He shook the feeling off and reached a hand out anyway, slowly sliding it open.

In the light of the fading afternoon sun, Shoto saw:

Long white hair, blowing gently in the breeze from the open window. A hospital bed, and sitting on it, a thin, emaciated form in a plain hospital gown. A face, half-turned towards him, turning completely at the sound of the door opening. Gray eyes, widening as they took in what they were seeing.

"Hey, Mom," Shoto said quietly, into the breathless silence of the room. "Been a while."

A smile, brighter than the rays of the setting sun shining across her folded hands, slowly turned up the corners of her mouth.)

Visiting Mom had been good. Hard. Incredible.

Shoto ran his finger up and down the safety-belt idly, his eyes half shut, but his mind's eye captured in that perfect moment that he wished could have lasted forever.

It had been hard, but it had been worth it, and Shoto couldn't wait to do it again.

He stayed there, peacefully floating, until the car rolled into UA's carpark and the engine shuddered to a stop.

The driver opened the door for him, and Shoto kept his mouth shut, mindful of the way he had caused enough trouble for the staff for one day, and raised a hand in farewell as he was bowed on his way.

The last fleeting memories of peace fled half-way to the 1-A classrooms, and Shoto had to stop before the large doors and take a deep breath, reminding himself that Sensei just wanted to talk and it wasn't like he was going to walk into an interrogation… and besides, Sensei had said after school, so getting all worked up about it now was rather pointless, wasn't it? Right. Yes.

So Shoto opened the door on the first day back from the Sports Festival, and navigated his way to his desk at the back of the room. His classmates greeted him as he put his things away, and he exchanged quiet small talk about his weekend with Tokoyami ("Please call me Tokoyami. Dark Shadow finds you very interesting," Crow Boy said, still and solemn in a way Shoto found himself instantly liking) as they waited for the bell to ring. Sensei arrived, Iida called them all to stand for the morning greetings, and Shoto sat back down to listen to the homeroom announcements for the day.

It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, and Shoto couldn't wait for it to be over and done with.

Shoto blinked, and Midnight-sensei was there, helping them choose their Hero Names ("'Shoto'?" she read off of his dry-erase board, sticking her hip out and leaning forward to squint at it. "You sure about that?" Shoto nodded mechanically, his mind's eye already occupied with dreading the fast-approaching future, and Midnight-sensei shrugged easily. "Fair enough. All right, who's up next—"). Blink, and it was English with Mic-sensei. Blink, Math. Blink, Lunch, blink, Hero Training, blink, and the bell was ringing. When Sensei called him up to his desk, his classmates all moving smoothly around him on their way out the door, Shoto felt that no time had passed at all.

"Sit," Sensei told him. "I'll be with you in a minute."

Shoto pulled out the chair nearest to Sensei's desk (whose was this again? Hagakure's?) and sat down carefully.

The weather was in that strange in-between of summer and spring: too cold for air conditioning, but too hot to simply shut themselves into a room with no circulating air. The windows had been slung open as a compromise, and the afternoon light lit the dancing dust particles in sections, cut up by the shadows cast by window frames and closed shutters, across the entirety of the left-hand side of the classroom. Shoto caught snatches of voices, laughter and running feet from students on their way out of the large UA gates, and rather spitefully hoped someone tripped and fell on their face.

Maybe then, he would have someone to share his annoyance and repressed anxiety with; because no matter how earnestly he had wished it, this scheduled appointment had still arrived after hours of lessons that had passed by in the blink of an eye.

There was a rustling on Sensei's desk as he sorted and checked through a few papers, and Shoto waited with barely-contained restlessness for him to finish. Finally, he placed the papers into a folder with a snap that had a sort of finality to it, and Shoto's stomach sank as Aizawa-sensei placed it neatly on his desk and looked up at him.

It was time, then.

"So," Sensei began, "where did we leave off our last conversation?"

No, 'how was your weekend', or, 'how have you been settling in?'. Shoto appreciated the part of Sensei that abhorred wasting his breath, even as he resented it in this current instance, because he had been hoping to have some time to gather his thoughts.

Of course, not-answering wasn't an acceptable response, and he had been thinking about this particular one long enough that the answer came easily: "You asked me about the purpose of teachers."

"I did. And you gave me an answer." Was that a statement of fact, or a prompt to tell him what he had said? Shoto cautiously scanned his teacher's unreadable face, and took a stab at the right answer.

"I... said. That. Teachers are there to help us learn self-discipline and. Ensure that we... we don't fall short of our goals?" He finished with a question, hoping Sensei would pick up the rest of the sentence, but only received the same unreadable look and an encouraging nod in reply.

Conversations with this man were proving to be a lot like pulling teeth. Shoto wracked his brain a little desperately, wondering what exactly Sensei was looking for, and clenched his jaw when he failed to find it. He jiggled his left leg a little under the table, restless, and after another minute, he gave up.

It was the end of the school day, the rest of his classmates had left (though again, Midoriya had lingered, giving him a questioning look, but at his nod, had simply waved and closed the door behind him), and even though he didn't have the end of the Sports Festival as an excuse, Shoto was... tired. He was really just... so tired.

"I don't know what you want from me, Aizawa-sensei," Shoto said—in a way that gave him a deja-vu of their last talk—with careful blankness. He placed his right hand on top of the desk and pressed hard into it, until the tips of his fingers turned white. He imagined covering it in a thin layer of ice, slowly, like the layers of a powdery snowfall; he imagined his hand, then the desk, then the rest of him being covered in layer upon layer upon layer; until the only thing left was a misshapen, unremarkable glacier, with no sign that he had ever been there at all.

"I told you my understanding of a teacher's function, as well as my personal beliefs as to their purpose. I tried my best to..." Shoto ran his tongue over the lines of his teeth, then gently hit down, hoping to impress into his unhelpful tongue some useful insights into how to impart what he needed to say. "I don't know what you want me to tell you."

A sudden, loud exhalation of breath made Shoto tilt his head at Sensei, wondering what had prompted it. A few seconds later, he was rewarded when Sensei admitted, "You know, maybe I'm not being fair." Shoto lifted his head, surprised, thinking that that was a phrase he couldn't remember passing an adult's lips in his presence before. "I think I've been working under the assumption that you have at least some idea of—well, no, never mind that. Like you said yourself, a teacher's function is to teach; I want to lead you to the answer, not tell it to you straight out, do you understand?" Shoto nodded, because that did make sense, even if he found it a little hard. "That being said, I don't think I've been simplifying things enough, for which I apologize. Let me ask you a few questions, then, and together we'll work to find the answer. I need you to look at me while we talk about this, Todoroki, so I can see that you understand."

An apology and being told he was right, in one day. Shoto sat straighter, his shoulders going back and his hands falling into his lap as he made deliberate eye contact with the man who had, so far, not once failed to show Shoto respect as a person; the least Shoto could do would be to respond in kind. Aizawa-sensei nodded approvingly, then surprised Shoto by getting out of his chair and moving to the front of his larger desk, where he proceeded to lean his weight against the edge, his hands going to brace himself at his sides.

Blinking up at him, Shoto stilled his limbs against the desire to lean back, and sat straighter still.

If Sensei felt the need to add physical closeness to emphasize the gravity of whatever he was going to say, then Shoto would do his best to listen and understand.

"You said a teacher exists to instill boundaries, rules, and discipline," Sensei told him, dark eyes quiet and solemn, "and to, quote: 'Beat that knowledge back into us, in whatever shape or form they find necessary to make it stick.'"

Shoto swallowed and felt eye-contact, already difficult, become that much harder. Had he actually said that? To his pro-hero homeroom teacher? Anxiety began to creep up the back of his neck. No wonder Sensei was taking this so seriously; even tired and spaced-out, Shoto should have known better than to say something so dangerous—even if it was, essentially, true, in all the ways that mattered.

"You weren't wrong, not entirely," he said evenly, and Shoto's eyebrows rose.

...He wasn't?

"We are here to instill boundaries, and impose rules and discipline where necessary, yes; but now I'm going to ask you something related to that, all right? Okay. If I were to draw a line in the sand and say: Cross over this, and you'll be in trouble—what reason do you think I would have for saying that?"

This wasn't a set-up for a vicious smack-down. Shoto told himself this, and replied hesitantly: "So I know… what not to do?"

Sensei nodded, and Shoto's shoulders dropped a fraction. "Good, yes. And knowing what you can do, how far you can go before you'll be in trouble, how does that make you feel?"

This stopped him short. How… did it make him feel?

"I…"

When he hesitated for too long, Sensei tilted his head and encouraged, "Compare an experience you've had where you didn't know what the boundaries were, and tell me how the two events felt different."

Hundreds of different events popped up into his mind, all at once, and Shoto let his eyes drift to the window, unseeing this time, as he attempted to sort through them:

Father, becoming angry at him for speaking too loudly and forbidding him from eating with his siblings. Endeavor, furious that he didn't complete the homework he didn't have due for another week, and subsequently taking it out on him at training. Endeavor, flying into a rage because Shoto didn't memorize the offensive takedown he had supposedly been told he needed to learn—

Sensei, telling them every time, without fail, what he expected of them, and what the consequences would be if they failed; Sensei, with his tendency to erase harsh punishments with the excuse of a logical ruse, but who never turned around and issued more punishment than he had threatened.

It was like a lightbulb turning on in his head. Shoto turned his head towards Sensei, meeting his eyes with his own round ones, and the words nearly burst off his tongue in his surprise. "I didn't feel safe! I… that is, what I mean is, that I didn't feel safe when I didn't know what I was being punished for, or what I might potentially be punished for."

"So part of the purpose of rules and boundaries is…?" Sensei prompted patiently, his arms folding over his chest as he looked at Shoto, quietly observing.

"To—oh." The words fell off of lips numbed by the overwhelming realization that had come with all the pieces falling together at last, and Shoto felt his mouth stay hanging open after he had said them. Suddenly feeling incredibly vulnerable, he snapped his mouth shut and couldn't resist putting a hand over his eyes, as if he could erase the strangely humiliating understanding in his teacher's face.

"…To make me feel safe," Shoto finished in a whisper, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut behind his hand.

"To make you feel safe," he heard Sensei respond quietly. "You're a bright kid, Todoroki, and I knew you only needed a little help to make it to this point. So I'm going to ask you again, and I want you to answer me this time:

"What, in your mind, is the purpose of a teacher?"

Shoto thought about teachers, and thought about why someone might want to make another person safe; he thought about love, and family, and siblings and parents and friends, and the children who would grow up to be and have all of those things. Then he dropped his hand from his eyes (blinking at the sudden change in lighting) and looked at his own teacher.

"A teacher's purpose is to teach, and to help create a learning environment where their pupils feel… safe," he added at the end, rather lamely, but the rest he had said with as much certainty as he could muster. Something… inarticulable, traveled from the tips of his toes up through the roots of his hair, giving him goosebumps all along his arms.

Sensei gave him a firm nod in answer, and Shoto relaxed back into his seat, incredibly relieved to have gotten it right.

"One last question, then we're done, all right?"

They weren't finished? Slightly dismayed, Shoto nodded determinedly anyway, and looked up at Sensei from behind the safety of his red and white bangs.

After a pause to make sure he had Shoto's full attention, Aizawa-sensei said, each word slow and deliberate: "If part of a teacher's purpose is to make you feel safe, then when I ask you questions— about things like your life, you quirk, or even just about you…" he paused, and ducked his head down slightly to fully meet Shoto's eyes as he finished, "…what do you think I'm doing that for?"

…Oh.

The goosebumps came again, bringing with them a full-body shudder he couldn't have hidden if he'd tried.

"So that you can… help." Shoto looked at Sensei with wide, helpless eyes after he had said it, feeling he must have gotten it right (Sensei had dropped more than a handful of hints, after all) but desperately needing some sort of affirmation—

A warm hand dropped on his head, and all the thoughts within it scattered instantly.

"Good work, kid, you did real good," Aizawa-sensei said, unmistakable warmth in his voice, and smiled. It made his normally dull, cold eyes flush with color and life, and Shoto felt his breath catch to feel the full force of it. Sensei patted Shoto's hair, once, then twice, before he dropped his hands back to rest against the lip of his desk. His throat becoming strangely thick, Shoto dropped his eyes and did his best to swallow it down, relieved that Sensei was pleased with him and glad that he had gotten it right.

"I'm here to help, kid, and if there ever, ever comes a time when you need help, now you know that you can come to me, or All Might, or Ectoplasm, or Present Mic or any of your teachers, and they will help you because…?"

"Because that's their job," Shoto answered instantly. "Because that's a large part of what being a teacher is about."

Sensei stood up, and taking it for the signal that they had finished, Shoto stood as well, and hitched his bag over his shoulder. But before he could bow and say his goodbyes, Sensei's hand caught his shoulder.

(He had a large hand: Shoto could feel it, could feel the heat sinking down from Sensei's large palm on his shoulder and the fingers that nearly touched his shoulder blade, and was amazed to realize that they didn't feel like burning.)

"There are other reasons than that, kid, but those reasons I want you to think about on your own. If you feel you've found the answer, come to me, any time. You got it?"

The words sank into his chest, and lingered like the weight of a comforting blanket. Shoto nodded up at his bandaged, perpetually tired or angry, bedraggled teacher, and felt more at peace than he could remember being around another adult in a long, long time.

"Get out of here then, kid, and get home safe."

And Shoto went.