Something There
. . .
"Please can we visit Aizawa-sensei and Higurashi-sensei!" Midoriya begged the hospital attendant, the lady sighed and finally relented letting the class go to their room. She warned them to not disturb other patients and to be respectful, they agreed and Lida guided them to the room.
"Senseis?" Midoriya quietly questioned, he slowly entered the room first, with his classmates peering over his shoulders. He immediately spotted Aizawa, one of his eyes was bandaged and his arm in a sling, he was eating some food that looked less than palatable, when their eyes connected.
"Oh? You came?" Aizawa spoke, not phased by his students compassion.
"You're okay!" They came rushing in surrounding their teacher with praise and good wishes, being quite loud, to which Aizawa admonished.
"Be quiet, kids. Kagome is sleeping." He whispered, he glanced to the curtain that was pulled nearly completely around the sleeping woman. The class fell into silence, remembering how she received CPR. The way she laid there so quietly, breathing lightly with an oxygen mask and a thin white sheet covering her. She looked peacefully close to death, and it left the class with a chill.
"Is she okay?" Uraraka questioned quietly, holding her breath until Aizawa nodded.
"She needs to rest and regenerate her energy since she overused her quirk." He grunted eyeing the woman. He known her for over a year and this was the first time he'd seen her use it like that.
Aizawa knew about her quirk, or so he thought. He originally was lead to believe by Principal Nezu and Recovery Girl that she was just a healer.
But no healer had the ability to do what she did. She had created barriers and manipulated a soul. It sent a chill down his spine at the memory of the Nomu's screams.
"What is her quirk exactly?" Bakugo questioned. "I thought she was just some fucking nurse with a healing quirk, but she did things that a healing quirk can't." He gruffly spoke, glaring at his teachers. He wasn't a fan of not knowing things.
Everyone knew about their lovely nurse and her healing ability. Everyone basically adored her with her optimism and comfort that she gave. She tended to be a surrogate mother to any student, and a shoulder to cry on with her fellow teachers who needed it.
Her quirk soothed and healed… or so they thought.
"Kagome's quirk is life force-bending; she has the ability to bend her own and other's life force, she can she can use it to heal or create mana for barriers." Aizawa answered. Repeating what Nezu had told him when he awoke with the same questions. He recalled the conversation he had that morning with that rodent and the old woman
0 0 0
"What the actual fuck is she capable of, Nezu?!"
"Now Aizawa, please calm down." He smiled tightly at the bandaged man, as he hopped into the chair next to the bed. "I will explain it all for you. But first we should enlightening you to a bit of context."
Aizawa glared at him, while Recovery Girl only looked tiredly between the two before explaining.
"Kagome is a dear friend of mines granddaughter. I've known her since she was a baby. Unfortunately in her teenage years she suffered a lot of trauma from many incidents involving her quirk."
Nezu had a glint in his eyes that told Aizawa he knew every detail of these incidents.
"As such the trauma has lead to her not using her quirk to its full potential. Instead she prefers to heal, which is less taxing on her and requires less energy reserves. I offered her the position of interning under me so she could get back on her feet and hopefully we could get her back to her prime." Recovery Girl sighed deeply.
"As you witnessed yourself she is still in the midst of training her body to her prime." Nezu chirped. "Now he ability is what we call a Vestigial Quirk. A quirk that is in its most basic and rudimentary form, otherwise more commonly referred to as an unevolved, unmutated version or just a primal quirk."
"Wait, are you saying her quirk isn't even a quirk? That it somehow predates quirks?" Aizawa questioned, his voice gruff.
"Yes." Recovery Girl answers. "Kagome's family line is descended from powerful priest and priestesses who have been revered for hundreds of years for their spiritual abilities."
"I'm sure your aware of the fairytales surrounding how quirks came into society." Nezu chimes in.
"Yeah I know the stories. How the demon fell in love with the human, creating the abomination known as half demons, hundreds years go by and we have a small part of demon genes in us that have mutated to become quirks." He recited, of course he knew the stories, everyone in Japan is told them as children.
"It's said that quirks had been a dormant ability in the majority of the population until their first appearance over a 100 years ago, but there has been speculation that these abilities have been around much longer." Nezu glanced to the sleeping Kagome.
"Kagome's quirk is proof of it. Her family is one of just a handful that has had either primarily quirkiness individuals or Vestigial Quirk that is unlike what we see in modern society. Her ability has been written about for centuries, in what we call our fairytales." Nezu happily explains.
"So what? Is she just some sort of experiment to you then? A case study?" Aizawa shot back.
"While I have thoroughly enjoyed studying her quirk, she was willing to do so to aid in her recovery." Nezu quips, his paws on his knees as he idly swings his short legs in his chair.
"Kagome's quirk is very powerful, and we know you understand the gravity of knowing this information." The furry principal spoke softly, but Aizawa was no fool, he knew a threat when he heard one.
But what struck him was the fact her quirk was so untamed that she had been traumatised. He felt guilty that his first thought when he awoke was not gratitude but fear for her abilities.
Aizawa looked over at her. Kagome had saved his life and preserved his ability to use his quirk.
He would have to thank her when she awoke.
0 0 0
"But what we saw… was different. The Nomu it…" Todoroki trailed off, unable to describe what they all witnessed. The Nomu was crippled by what she did. Aizawa glanced to the sleeping woman.
"She can touch people's soul, she can heal you or she can mince your soul apparently. What she did was incapacitate the creature, as you kids saw physical attacks were useless, so her quirk was technically ideal for the situation." He explained, sitting up more, he tried to ease their worries by making it a teachable moment.
"Kagome is a unique and kind person." Aizawa admitted. "Her quirk's fuel is her own life force ad in using it she drains it, it can leave her very ill and can even stop her heart, her quirk use has always been at the cost of herself. And she has been restraining herself at the request of Recovery Girl and Principal Nezu." He paused.
"What she did nearly killed her."
The class was silent, staring at their teacher incredulously. Such a sweet and kind person, nearly died.
"If it weren't for her healing me as well, I would have suffered more drawbacks to my own quirks usage. And that Nomu…" Aizawa gritted. He had never seen her touch another persons soul before.
Aizawa had heard from All Might about what how her quirk felt. He had allowed her to touch his soul out of curiosity. He described the experience as if he was floating and the safest, warmest blanket was touching all of his skin, that a tranquil feeling of peace filled his mind and it was as if understood what it meant to be alive and content.
But what Kagome did to the Nomu, made his flesh crawl. As she reported herself, she destroyed the fragments of whatever soul it had leaving it with nothing.
The absence of a soul had caused it's body to shut down and attack itself. She had basically annihilated its soul and without it the creature had nothing, its own brain didn't even show any activity on scans.
Aizawa had reported that before, it had intention and even desires, wanting to follow orders and willingness to participate in violence. But without a soul it left its body to try to regain a consciousness that didn't exist any more.
As such the seizures were violent, as its brain searched for something that did not exist, and it recently showed signs of a breakdown in communication between nerves and muscles. Basically it's own body didn't recognised itself and started to attack its own cells.
The police told him about its debilitating medical state, and that the Nomu had gone into respiratory failure three times.
Hence the epilepsy and myasthenia gravis, ever since Kagome… Aizawa couldn't fully comprehend it himself.
The students didn't need to know the extent to which their nurse could cripple someone, they needed a reminder that she was still her.
He was a hero and a teacher, it was his job to make his students feel okay.
"I know it's scary to see us like this. But I'm recovering well. Kagome is an amazing person and she will recover too."
"Huh… have you f-finally gone soft for me… Shota?"
Aizawa instantly looked to his left, hope blooming at the recognition of a tired yet soft voice, instead of a sleeping woman he found an exhausted Kagome, awake and smiling. He let out a tense breath he didn't realise he had been holding.
"HIGURASHI-SENSEI!"
Aizawa cursed as his entire class leaped to her bed side. Just when he thought his day couldn't get any worse.
While she avidly assured his students that she was going to be okay, his black eyes had searched for hers, and they connected with her blue.
She looked at him fondly, her eyes sparkled with life and her cheeks glowed. Her smile lost its tenseness once she saw he was okay. Even after experiencing cardiac arrest and fighting several villains, she still for some reason was prioritising his wellbeing over her own.
As she proceeded to dote on his students, he couldn't help but slightly smile at the scene they made. Like a mother hen with her chicks, she attended to each one, doting on each equally. The sweet motherly tenderness overtook her, and for Shota Aizawa it was an alluring sight.
From the sharp electric pink eyes who struck villains down, to her warm blue that drew his students to her like a moth to a flame.
And yet she kept glancing at him as if looking for assurance. To which he gave, with his small smile and nods but every little shy look of hers was stealing a piece of him.
He realised silently that he never noticed that Kagome looked at him that way before.
Kagome was seeing a different man in the bed beside her. Granted he was covered in bandages, but during the battle Aizawa laid his life down to save his students. It was a different side that she rarely ever so that showed his kindness, instead of his hard and scary exterior he wore religiously around campus.
She realised that maybe there was something sweet, and almost kind about Aizawa. Though he had been mean, coarse and unrefined to his students and even her.
It reminded her of a certain pair of dog demon brothers, who chased the world away with rudeness and sneers. But deep down they were loving beings who had been at the mercy of a cruel world.
She looked at him as his watched his students talk with her with that soft yet small smile.
He almost looked like a proud father and… husband.
Kagome desperately chased those intrusive thoughts away. She chastised herself mentally, blaming the loss of her own father figure for her romanticism of him.
But as she busied herself speaking with his students, happy to hear no-one suffered severe injuries besides herself and him.
Shota Aizawa continued to openly stare at her, amazement clear on his face.
She teased Bakugo and cuddled his students, her smile so bright and warm, his heart skipped and just like that… he realised he too saw her differently than before.
Kagome Higurashi.
UA's resident nurse and mother figure to his students.
His coworker and friend.
Perhaps… something more.
Aizawa Shota cursed himself, as he recognised what was happening.
There's something between them that wasn't there before.
. . .
A/N: yes this was inspired by the something there song from beauty and the beast hah
But yeh screaming crying throwing up at their realisation that they might have feelings cus they are adults and dont dance around it they just feel it and they fucking know nothing like the opposite of a slow burn to make me feel giddy
and yes this chapter is double the size of the others idc it just happened and I didnt want to seperate it into two so sue me :)