Trigger Warnings:

-graphic depictions of torture (in italics; starts at "the pain")

-mention of torture

-mention of scarring

Over the next couple weeks, Izuku and Aizawa developed a routine. In the mornings, after eating (two trays of food and some bottles of water were slipped under their door twice a day), the two would stretch and review information. Aizawa had long since given up learning Izuku's complex code, so they communicated through Japanese Sign Language, which Izuku had learnt before his capture in preparation for his hero career. Aizawa already knew it because his husband was Deaf, so it worked out rather well.

They would discuss anything they had learnt so far, Izuku giving Aizawa as much information as possible since he had been there longer. They would devise plans, ways to exploit weaknesses in the people they had encountered. Detailed maps of the facility (the parts they had been taken, at least) had been drawn, hidden under the mattress as a basic precaution. After discussing and scheming, they would begin sparring. Aizawa had shown Izuku some basic moves, focusing on practicality over brute force; how to take a punch, how to fall correctly, how to block properly, and the likes. Now that Izuku was finally in better health, he was able to catch on fairly quickly. He was eager to learn, and took to fighting like a sponge to water.

Aizawa also taught Izuku some stealth tactics: how to walk without being detected, how to hide one's breathing, how to lie with a straight face. Izuku had more trouble with these, as his anxiety made concentrating difficult, but he got the hang of it eventually. They would spend as much time training together as they could, interrupted every so often by a guard taking Aizawa (it was only ever Aizawa now) to another examination. Aizawa would come back bruised, battered, and slightly scarred, but nothing too horrible. Izuku speculated that the Doctor had to run less… "tests" because Aizawa had a quirk. Aizawa's eyes only darkened at the thought of what his kid had been put through.

At night, after tiring themselves out from sparring and training and scheming, the pair would eat dinner and talk. Izuku usually held most of the conversation, as he was naturally more sociable than Aizawa, but the hero would chip in when appropriate. Mainly with a joke or two; ever since Izuku came back about a month ago, covered in bloody bandages and without the familiar light in his eyes, Aizawa had made it his personal mission to get the kid to laugh at least once a day. It gave him something to focus on, and it ensured that Izuku didn't get completely lost in the darkness that threatened to swallow him. Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic, but seeing Izuku laugh lightened the load on Aizawa's heart significantly.

Izuku, however, seemed to have a personal mission of his own. Every night without fail, he would comb through Aizawa's hair with his hands and put it into a braid of some sorts, chattering about heroes or some random species of bird as he did so. This strange act of intimacy came shortly after Izuku's interaction with Overhaul. Waking up from nightmares screaming every night drew Izuku closer to Aizawa. At first, the man was hesitant to help; he honestly didn't know how to. But Izuku's tear streaked face moved him into action, and the boy was in his arms in an instant. He would hold him until the sobbing stopped, cradling him in his arms like a small child even though the boy was almost a teenager (barely). Izuku would find himself running his hands through Aizawa's long dark hair without realizing at first, and embarrassingly curl into a ball with his face covered when he realized what he had been doing. Aizawa only chuckled, and dropped the kid's hand back on his head with a soft sigh.

"If it helps you calm down, you can touch my hair, problem child. I don't mind."

His voice was always soft as he spoke, not wanting to startle Izuku after a nightmare. That was when their tradition began. Any time Izuku had a nightmare, Aizawa would hold him in his arms until he calmed down, and they would sit on the bottom bunk of the bed together, talking in hushed tones as Izuku braided Aizawa's hair with shaky hands. Aizawa would be lying if he said it wasn't nice. He had never let anyone touch his hair before, besides 'Zashi's occasional tussle, and it was… odd, to say the least. Pleasantly so. It was grounding in the sense that he could feel Izuku's fingers on his scalp, was close enough to hear the boy's heartbeat and slightly uneven breathing. Confirmation that Izuku was alive and breathing and there was always comforting to Aizawa. It helped quell his paranoia, his deep-rooted fear that had been planted when the kid had been dumped back into the cell, barely breathing and so unbearably cold. Aizawa still didn't know what had happened to Izuku; every time he tried to bring it up, Izuku would start to panic, tears welling up in green eyes full of fear, nothing but pure fear, and Aizawa couldn't bring himself to push the kid any more than that, so he dropped it. He was sure that it was important and needed to be discussed, but it could wait.

So that was how they spent their days. Scheming, training, talking; constantly soaking up each other's presence, forming a bond only a fool would try to break.

It was comfortable, and almost domestic in a sense. They were still in a literal prison cell. Aizawa still desperately missed his husband and his job and his cats. Izuku missed… well, Izuku didn't have a very good life even before getting kidnapped, so he didn't miss very much, but he missed the school's librarian (who always gave him cookies and let him hide in her office when he was being chased), and the sun, and his analysis notebooks.

They both had days where getting out of bed seemed impossible and escaping seemed like a faraway dream. They both got quiet sometimes, pausing to think about what was happening in the outside world right now, how much they were missing, if anyone was missing them. Aizawa wondered if his husband was looking for him, or if he thought he was dead. The thought of Hizashi mourning his death made him feel like his heart had withered away somewhere.

Izuku wondered whether Kacchan (Katsuki, Izuku scorned himself mentally; They weren't friends, and they hadn't been for years) even cared about his disappearance. He wondered if his mom had noticed that he was gone, or if she had put in a missing child's report. He was sure she hadn't. He didn't know how to feel about that.

But when all of that was put aside, Izuku and Aizawa managed to find comfort in each other. Izuku's constant mumblings and tangents warmed Aizawa's heart (even if he would never admit it), and Izuku found himself at peace in the underground hero's quiet and steady presence. The past month was honestly not horrible.

It should have been a warning; there's always calm before a storm.

When Izuku awoke, it was to sore muscles and an aching body. This wasn't unusual, since Aizawa had been pushing him harder in training, but it wasn't very pleasant.

The boy sighed, pushing himself up into a sitting position on his bed to begin the day. He looked over to the right, ready to tease Aizawa about his inevitable bedhead, but the man wasn't there. That immediately was a red flag in Izuku's mind. Aizawa was always on his right when he woke up. The man stubbornly refused to sleep on the top bunk, muttering something about 'constant vigilance', and so moved the flimsy mattress to sit between Izuku and the metal door.

Now, though, the mattress was empty.

Izuku quickly scrambled out of bed, looking frantically around the room for any sign of the underground hero. None. There were no places to hide in the cell.

Aizawa was gone. Taken.

Izuku's gut clenched tightly, piercing anxiety working its way through his body. He began to breathe harder and faster; the room was starting to lose focus. He screwed his eyes shut and fixed his attention on controlling his breathing, just like 'Zawa had taught him. In for five seconds, hold it for six seconds, out for seven seconds.

He repeated this process until his breathing had finally steadied; it took much longer than usual because of his increasing panic. But right now wasn't the time for panicking, Izuku reminded himself. He needed to think.

Aizawa was gone, taken somewhere, and Izuku didn't know where he was. That alone wasn't completely unusual; the Doctor had been taking Aizawa for more visits lately and returning him later and later. What was unusual was when they did this. Aizawa was taken while Izuku was asleep. That had never happened before. Immediately, questions began swarming Izuku's mind.

Why when Izuku was asleep? How did they take him without waking Izuku up? Surely the noise would have been enough to wake him, so did they drug him to keep him asleep? Why was this time different? Did the time that they took him hold any significance, or was it just random? Was this some type of psychological torture for Izuku? Were they torturing Aizawa?

Izuku had begun muttering while trying to sort through his thoughts, the sound filling the quiet room as he paced back and forth.

Why had the Doctor been so focused on Aizawa recently? Sure, they already had done plenty of testing on Izuku, but he hadn't been taken for an examination since his meeting with Overhaul. There had to be a reason. Were they doing the same thing to Aizawa that they had done to Izuku? He hoped not. His mind kept drifting back to the peculiarity of the situation. Why did they take Aizawa when they did? The Doctor was seemingly always here, so it wasn't an issue with his schedule at least. So why the odd timing?

Or the better question: who's time were they operating on now?

The thought stopped Izuku in his tracks. Of course. He knew why. He didn't want it to be true, but it was the only thing that made any fragment of sense in this twisted situation.

Aizawa was going to meet Overhaul. And Izuku needed to do something; quick.

When Shouta Aizawa opened his eyes, he immediately noticed that he wasn't where he was supposed to be.

Instead of lying on a flimsy mattress on the ground of his cell, he was strapped to a metal chair. Or, a table. It was more like a sheet of metal, almost like the planks used by knife throwers for their volunteers in those old American T.V. shows 'Zashi always made him watch. His arms and legs were strapped down against his body with thick leather bands, a similar one pinning down his waist, his torso, and his head. Whoever had taken him were being incredibly thorough.

He wasn't in the Doctor's usual office. Looking around the shockingly all-white room, he found no one else present. There were, however, desks in neat rows across the room from him, covered in computers, scattered notes, lab equipment, and so on. The room smelled of antiseptic, like it had been cleaned recently. It was unsettlingly quiet, the only noise being the faint whirring of machinery. Aizawa tried to wiggle his arms and legs to see how tightly he was really stuck, and he barely budged an inch. Shit. He could feel the beginning of a headache coming on.

He wondered how they even got him here; he didn't remember being taken. He would have put up a fight, especially since, if his last memory proved correct, the kid was asleep. He was never taken when the kid was sleeping. Nor would he ever leave the kid without trying to wake him up first; he wouldn't let him wake up to an empty room. Aizawa shivered at the thought of how Izuku was probably reacting right now. He remembered the feeling of waking up and Izuku being gone, not returning for hours. It was horrible. He could only hope to be reunited with him soon, for both of their sakes.

Aizawa was pulled out of his musings by several high-pitched beeping noises and a resounding metallic sounding 'click', followed by the thick metal door at the far side of the room opening. Obviously high security, he noteed. Odd. Why so protective? What is so important that it needs to be kept under such heavy-duty locks?

His answer to such questions walked through the door. Suddenly, everything made sense. Why Izuku had been so frightened after returning to the cell a month ago, why he was so terrified he couldn't even talk about what they had done to him. Why he had been covered from head to toe in new, still-healing scars, too thin and precise to have been made by hand. Like he had been torn apart from the inside out with a quirk and shoved back together again.

And the reality of the situation he was in hit him like a sack of bricks.

Because in walked Kai Chisaki, better known as Overhaul, the leader of the Eight Precepts of Death. Aizawa had been investigating the man for years because of his involvement with the Yakuza, an organized crime syndicate. Overhaul was actually the name of his quirk; he could disassemble anything he touches and put it back together again. He was a suspect in dozens of murder cases and had charges ranging from manslaughter to arson to serial kidnapping. Other than his quirk, a list of charges, and some witness' descriptions, the police force had next to no information on him. But the descriptions the witnesses provided were always the same. Green jacket with purple fur, and a giant bird-beak plague mask. He was an eccentric figure; one you couldn't mistake. Aizawa had never met the man before, but he knew from the second he locked eyes with him that this really was Overhaul. His eyes were those of a killer, and Aizawa's instincts were screaming at him to run far, far away. His instincts were never wrong.

The man entered the room slowly, his gaze fixed on Aizawa. His eyes were full of… disapproval? Malice? Aizawa wasn't sure, but whatever it was, it wasn't good. His cold aura washed over the room like a winter chill, and Aizawa had never missed the warm comfort of his capture weapon more than he did right now.

Hiding the traces of fear and discomfort, Aizawa returned Overhaul's glare with one of his own, full of quiet and cold calculation. He could feel himself slip into his underground mode, any and all emotion replaced with heightened observation and logic-based assessments. He didn't have the luxury of feeling anything right now. As much as he wanted to scream at the bastard for hurting Izuku, he needed to keep a cool head and gain the upper hand if at all possible.

"Overhaul, how shit to finally meet you. You look like even more of a scumbag than I was expecting." Aizawa's flat tone gave nothing away, and his slack expression could be taken as one of dismissal. It was something he had mastered while training to be a hero; a smart mouth and disinterested attitude really pissed villains off. And the angrier someone was, the more likely they were to make a mistake. That, and it showed that Aizawa wasn't scared of his opponent (even if he was).

"Shouta Aizawa, the displeasure is all mine. I've been waiting to meet you for months, but sadly my schedule has been quite busy."

He regarded the hero with disgust obvious on his face. Overhaul really disliked the man. He was dirty. Gross, vile, disgusting, filthy. He normally would have the subject scrubbed down thoroughly before experimentation because he absolutely despised touching grime, but he didn't have the luxury this time. He had made a breakthrough in his research after pouring over his most recent findings, and he needed to follow it up; quickly.

"Hmm, I would apologize for not being worth your time, but I really don't give a shit. If anything, you're wasting my time. I could be having a very pleasant nap right now if it weren't for you, bird fucker." Aizawa smirked slightly, hoping his arrogance was enough to cover up the fact that he was sweating bullets.

Overhaul curled his lip in disgust under his mask. The man's nonchalance was annoying. "Such a filthy mouth. Soon, this world will be clean of filth. You're going to help us achieve that."

Aizawa narrowed his eyes, shifting as much as he could in his restraints. "Talk as much as you want about filth; you're no cleaner than I am."

At that, Overhaul's look of disgust turned into that of cold detachment. "You're right about that. Filth is unfortunately unavoidable for quirked individuals." Suddenly, Overhaul's disposition changed. A light entered his eyes, an almost crazed look that made Aizawa's hair stand on end. He didn't like where this was going.

"But those without quirks are pure. You know, I've only had the pleasure of meeting one quirkless individual in all my days. Quirklessness is so rare now, and finding people close to our facilities had been quite a challenge. But then young Izuku showed up on our radar and it was as if the heavens had opened."

Aizawa grit his teeth. The way the bastard was talking about Izuku made him angry. Like he hadn't tortured the kid to an inch of his life.

Overhaul noticed the slight change in Aizawa's demeanor. It wasn't very noticeable to the untrained eye, but this was Overhaul's work, his life: picking people apart. It made his chest bubble with satisfaction at the fact that he was finally getting under his skin. He wondered how long it would take to break the mask he was wearing. It was time to find out.

"Ah, yes, Izuku truly is the solution to all of our problems. He was much nicer to be around than you are, that much is certain. You know, the child has an air of purity I've never seen before in another human being. It honestly shocked me. I was about to begin the experiment when he made eye contact with me for the first time. It was like my heart had stopped."

Aizawa's eye was twitching now, his breathing speeding up. It was like the incident in the Doctor's office all over again. Rage was bubbling in his stomach, aching to be released. But Overhaul wasn't finished.

"His eyes were so scared. Hell, he was trembling. Like a pathetic little animal. But you know what I saw behind the fear and the terror, Eraserhead?" Overhaul paused, tilting his head slightly as he stared at the underground hero, sick amusement evident in his eyes. "I saw innocence. Purity. Beauty. For the first time in my life, I didn't see filth. That moment was true bliss. But do you know what was even better?"

Aizawa clenched his fists tightly. If he weren't tied down, he would have jumped that bastard ages ago. He wanted him to stop talking.

Overhaul began walking closer to Aizawa. He stood about two feet away from him, far too close for his liking. The man spoke in a whisper now, his voice and eyes tinted with sadistic delight.

"Even better were his screams when I ripped his body apart, over and over again. Oh, they were beautiful. Like an angel singing to me from Heaven. Even his blood was clean and pure."

Aizawa lurched forward in his restraints, trying to get to Overhaul, a growl escaping his throat, his face darkened with anger.

"Shut the fuck up."

At this, Overhaul laughed. It was an ugly sound, almost like a shrieking pelican. It didn't suit the man. "So, the cold-hearted Eraserhead has a soft spot for the quirkless child? How peculiar. Although, I don't blame you. Izuku is quite fascinating. His genetic makeup is fundamentally different from you and I's. It made putting him back together quite the challenge. How is he doing, by the way? Is he still in shock? Dying will do that to a person, especially a child. I hope I didn't break him too badly; I need him intact for my research."

Overhaul was taking immense satisfaction in chipping away at Eraserhead's calm and collected façade. Watching the man in front of him break apart slowly without even having to use his quirk was truly one of life's few pleasures.

Aizawa had to fight to keep himself from breaking down entirely. He knew what Overhaul was trying- hell, succeeding- to do. Hearing about how Izuku was tortured, how he had been killed, was ripping Shouta apart.

"You touch him again and I'll rip you to shreds with my bare hands." Aizawa's voice was cold and threatening. To any normal person, the threat would have them shaking in their boots. Unfortunately, Overhaul was far from normal.

"And how do you plan on doing that, hm? You couldn't hurt me even if you wanted to, Eraserhead. You're defenseless. Weak. I've already hurt your precious boy. I killed him. Again, and again, and again. You know, he was conscious the entire time. Since I was remaking his brain constantly, he didn't have the ability to pass out. All he could feel was pain, I'm sure. Every one of his nerves were being made fresh, immensely sensitive to every little touch. Imagine how it felt to be ripped apart like that. Well, I suppose you won't have to imagine very soon. I'm getting tired of talking."

Aizawa's head swam and his gut clenched uncomfortably. Guilt and shame filled his system. All of his anger was subdued, replaced with a feeling of suffocating helplessness. Overhaul was right. He couldn't do anything. He could only watch. Watch, as Izuku was hurt again and again. Watch, as the light in his kid's eyes faded with every passing day. Watch, as the Doctor performed his relentless 'examinations'.

Watch, as Overhaul reached forward with an ungloved hand, and ripped Shouta apart.

The pain he felt was indescribable. The nerves in his body were on fire, and everything was shrouded in a haze of agony that would have Shouta screaming if he could. Honestly, Shouta didn't even know if he had a throat right now. He couldn't feel it, that much was certain. All he could feel was cold and hot and aching, like someone was ripping his muscle fibers apart one by one and tearing his skin and bones into threads.

All he wanted was the pain to stop. He wanted to cry out, wanted to scream in agony, but he couldn't and that was almost the worst part. He was just existing, thrown into a realm in between Hell and Earth. It was like he was in purgatory, forced to suffer for all eternity, bearing the sins of his mortal flesh. It was more than torture. This was divine punishment. It had to be. How else could a mere mortal inflict such unbearable pain?

If Shouta had been able to pay attention to his surroundings at the present time, he would have heard the heavy metal door swing open, followed by frantic footsteps and hushed conversation. He would have heard Overhaul growl in annoyance, would have seen the trembling of the poor soul who had to deliver bad news to the terrifying man.

Instead, Shouta only felt the pain stop. It was a moment of pure bliss, one he didn't have time to relish in before his brain shut down and he was swept into unconsciousness.

--

"Sir, I'm sorry to disrupt you, but there's been a… disturbance."

Overhaul growled as he turned away from his work to face the man who had disrupted him. A simple figure in a white lab coat, utterly forgettable and unimportant. Someone who held no worth to Overhaul.

"What could be so important to warrant such an interruption." Overhaul's voice rang out, cold and harsh in the now quiet room. It wasn't a question - it was a demand. He didn't like people wasting his time. The scientist gulped, visibly nervous.

"Well, sir, It's the boy. He's engaged in a standoff with the Doctor and won't back down until Eraserhead is returned to the cell."

Overhaul fixed the man with a glare that had him trembling. His cold, dark eyes seemed to dwell on something for a moment before making up his mind. "Well then. Get Eraserhead cleaned and bandaged properly. I'll have to pay the child a visit myself."

The scientist swallowed thickly, too scared to speak, and nodded furiously before leaving to find another set of hands to help with his work.

Overhaul stood in his place for a moment before looking back at the hero. Eraserhead was now covered in blood, thin wounds swirling their way around the entirety of his body. It was a disgusting sight.

But now wasn't the time. He had a child to visit.