It was Eri first.
She, in all her frightened, childish elegance, was never someone Shouta could look away from. Never someone he could forget. Never someone he could stop visiting in the hospital, day after day, just to sit in silence by her bedside, staring at the TV that played reruns of boring, boring children's shows. Never someone he could answer too harshly when she asked, meek and curious and scared, "What's going to happen to me?"
She'd been in the hospital for four weeks, mostly due to her health, in tatters, partly due to her psychological trauma, extensive, and partly due to the fact that she had had nowhere to go. Shouta opened his mouth and didn't know what to say. He spoke anyway.
"You're going to stay here until your physical and psychological wellbeing are confirmed, and likely from there to a foster home." His tone was neutral. Level. Unwavering. Unkind. "Before that, though, it's likely you'll have to learn how to properly utilize and control your quirk. You'll have help." As Eri looked at him with her wide, wide eyes, he wished he knew how to speak softly. How to sound like, even if the world splintered and shattered and crashed around them, he'd still be there, protecting her. Unwavering, but kind. Eri just looked down at her lap.
They sat in silence, uncomfortable. Shouta itched, wishing and hoping and grasping for the right words to say to instill in her some confidence, some hope. When he left that afternoon, he felt useless. He wanted to offer her something, anything, other than his own face and voice. Neutral and cold and unkind, as always.
He came back the next day, as always.
"I want to help Eri learn to use her quirk," Shouta said.
Tsukauchi blinked in surprise when he was interrupted. Shouta tensed, immediate regret burning in his throat at realizing he'd cut Tsukauchi off in the middle of a sentence. It didn't show on his face; neutral and cold and unkind.
Tsukauchi smiled warmly. "I'm glad," he said. "Eri needs direction, and considering the nature of your quirk, you're probably the best equipped to help her. Do you have time for this in your schedule, what with being both a teacher and an active hero?" Shouta nodded stiffly. The corners of Tsukachi's eyes crinkled with the width of his grin.
Everyone involved in the yakuza case had been called to discuss loose ends; the search for members that had not been present or had gotten away during the raid, the research on the League's involvement, and—most importantly, in Shouta's eyes—Eri's future.
"Any objections?" Tsukauchi asked, looking around at the room at large. None came. Some muttered their assent to Shouta's proposal. "Then she's all yours. We'll see that you'll be provided a space to practice." Shouta's expression remained still. Inside, he glowed.
It wasn't much. A room with white walls and white floors and white ceilings, the only splashes of color the beige of a few uncomfortable chairs and a table along the wall. It'd been cleared out for quirk use. Shouta glowered at the room's blinding uniformity. Neither of them needed this much empty space. This much bleakness.
Eri took one look at the place and clenched her fist where it held on carefully to Shouta's sleeve. She brought a curled hand to her chin, drawing in on herself, wary. Shouta looked down at her feeble form, shrouded in a slightly-too-big hospital gown. He sighed and led her in gently.
They didn't get anywhere that day.
The next time they used the room, Shouta brought a couple things beforehand. First was a bead maze he'd snagged from the waiting room downstairs, set gently on the table. Next was a poster for some kid's movie he didn't know, something colorful and gentle to be tacked on the wall. Then were the flowers.
Pots and pots of flowers, of all colors and varieties, beautiful and lively. They helped lessen the blinding white of the room, just a bit. But they wouldn't stay. They were for practical use, to help Eri get a grasp on her power by letting her use it on an organism of no consequence. Looking back on it, Shouta thought that maybe he should've gotten a different kind of plant. Maybe making flowers disappear would be too sad.
But, at the very least, when he brought her in this time, her fist didn't hold onto his sleeve so hard it shook. And instead of being led inside, she stepped in of her own accord.
As it turned out, watching flowers age backwards wasn't very sad at all. Most of the time they retreated into their seeds before Shouta could get a good look. And when Eri, worn out, rewound them a little slower, he could see it wasn't the same as when a flower withered. Instead, it just looked like it was going to sleep; petals closing and stem slowly winding downward, disappearing into the soil.
But she still couldn't control it. She was a child, and traumatized, and a few decorations could only do so much.
He went every day. It became as much a part of his life as teaching and hero work was.
Shouta had always been a person that thrived on routine. He relished in the ability to know exactly how each day would go, and took comfort in the stretches of time between villainous disruptions. There, he had the leisure of knowing what to expect. Visiting Eri had, at first, been something that made him itch—a disruption to routine that left him feeling restless, out of control. Now, though, missing her at the hospital even for one day was what unsettled him.
"Eri," Shouta said one Thursday afternoon as a thought occurred to him. She looked up at him, eyes wide and innocent, from where she sat on the floor, her hand hovering reluctantly over a black-eyed susan. They were about halfway through the day's session and had thus far seen little results.
"Yes?" she said, scooting back from the plant a bit.
"Do you know how to tell time?" She scrunched up her nose, clearly confused, and shook her head.
"Time?" she asked softly. Shouta fought against sucking in a sharp breath.
"You know the sun sets at night and it gets dark," he started, slowly. Eri nodded. "Time is like the measure of the distance between each sunset. It's something that helps us know when to do things or when to go places." Maybe, because she didn't understand time, she couldn't comprehend her quirk's function, he thought. Just by touching something, she could rewind its lifetime to before it even existed in little more than an instant. But because she didn't know how to gauge how much she was rewinding, she couldn't stop herself from rewinding it until it was gone.
Eri blinked, and Shouta cringed internally. Maybe that was a bit much to spew out all at once, in such a monotone voice. Neutral, cold, unkind.
But then her face set into something like determination and she asked "Can you explain more?" and Shouta couldn't regret dumping all those words on her at all.
Eri was a tactile learner. Time was difficult. So Shouta did his best.
He sat with her and put a stopwatch in between them and let it run until it hit one minute.
"That was a minute of time. A minute is equal to sixty seconds." He reset the stopwatch and clicked the button before almost immediately stopping it again. "That was a second."
"Small," Eri murmured. Shouta's lips twitched with the urge to smile.
"Yes," he agreed, and asked if she understood. She hesitated before nodding, and Shouta figured that was enough for now.
He sat with her and watched an episode of TV and explained to her that it was thirty minutes long. She nodded slowly, examining the rolling credits as if they held the answers to comprehending the nature of time.
He taught her to play go fish, played with her for a while, and at the end of it told her that they'd been fishing for an hour.
He took her hand and walked with her as she led him to a vending machine down the hall and when they got back, explained to her it had taken roughly five minutes.
And when she seemed confused over some discrepancies one day, he explained to her that the passage of time is more accurately measured through events than our own perception—because "time flies when you're having fun" and "a watched pot never boils." Shouta watched her brow furrow in confusion and helped guide her where he could, but ultimately, time was difficult to explain. Difficult to comprehend. Difficult.
The first time Eri rewound a flower effectively was when she'd practiced on a wilting bouquet gifted to her by the problem child. Unlike the flowers Shouta used for her training, they'd been let alone at her bedside as they lived and rotted. The flowers Shouta brought in were always static, always pristine, always gone in their seeds in the same day. These had laid untouched where Eri could watch them progress from vibrant to browning, lush to shriveled. These flowers were ones whose timelines Eri could wrap her head around.
She had not done it under Shouta's supervision. She'd explained it to him after the fact; how she'd been looking around the room and her eyes alighted on those flowers, a testimony to Midoriya's kind nature and thoughtfulness. She regretted their short life. She wanted to make them better. So, remembering that Midoriya had brought the flowers last Wednesday, about five days ago, and remembering that each new day coincided with each new sunrise, she reached out and brushed her fingers against the withered petals and gripped its time and rewound.
And when Shouta opened the door to her room that day, he found her sitting straight-backed in her hospital bed, bouquet of seemingly fresh-plucked flowers clutched tightly in her grasp, a look of awe and incredulity in her eyes that he'd never seen before. And then she turned to him and her mouth stretched wide in a smile—a pitiful imitation of a smile, but a smile—and he cast aside his judgement and let himself smile gently back at her, let himself briskly walk forward and lean in and place a careful hand on her clothed shoulder and squeeze reassuringly, because she did it. She did it.
He couldn't be more proud.
Eri underwent quirk evaluation in a heavily controlled environment with organic matter that she could work with without fear of harm. Shouta pulled strings enough to allow her examination to involve plants and flowers she'd lived with for a while in the hospital, to make it easier. He helped explain that, because of what happened, sometimes she'd activate it without meaning to. That sometimes she couldn't control it at all. He helped argue that she was a child, and traumatized, and here is where his neutral-cold-unkind came in handy—no one wanted to argue with him when he said you can't keep her cooped up forever.
The experts evaluating Eri agreed to his reasoning and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He didn't know why it relieved him so—certainly they wouldn't do anything too extreme in any circumstance. What could they do to keep her from coming into contact with others that wouldn't violate her rights? Gently suggest she move to the barren countryside? Shouta scoffed to himself, earning a sidelong look from one of the men.
Their verdict: she held enough control to be released from constant supervision of quirk use. She would have to submit to evaluation later in life, to gauge if her level of control grew on track, allowing room to account for her trauma. Once she'd undergone some last tests to see how her body fared after being harvested for years upon years, and a psychologist deemed her fit to be released from the hospital, she'd be released to the foster system unless someone stepped forward to legally adopt her. And Shouta was proud of her. So very proud. But the thought of her slipping away from him just like that, to some unknown, unnamed family that might very well be as cruel as Chisaki Kai was, was something he was afraid of considering.
Shouta stayed a little late with Eri that day, pondering it.
"Hizashi," Shouta said softly from where he'd curled himself into the corner of their couch, one of their cats curled in his lap. Hizashi stood in the kitchen, listening to some loud pop song, hips swaying and a cold glass of some bubbling soda in his hands. It was a miracle he heard Shouta over the music.
"Yeah?" He turned around, gentle smile playing on his lips, ice clinking in his glass as he moved. Seeing Shouta's pensive expression, he turned the music down a bit and left the kitchen behind to settle into the cushions himself.
"Eri." Shouta started slowly, his mouth moving without sound, trying to form the words he wanted to say. "I don't want her to go into the foster system. I still want to keep an eye on her." Hizashi took a moment to process his words. A grin crept onto his face, and Shouta raised an eyebrow, but he just shook his head.
"So, what do you want to do about it?" he asked, posing the question in a tone that suggested he knew exactly what Shouta was trying to say.
"I was thinking we could adopt her," Shouta said stiffly, quickly, the words tumbling out and his eyes lowering. He wasn't sure how Hizashi would take it; Shouta knew he loved kids and they'd talked before about the prospect of eventual adoption but they'd only been married for a few years and were still settling into their newer, larger apartment and Eri wasn't eventual, she was now.
"Shouta," Hizashi said gently, resting his free hand lightly on Shouta's ankle where it extended toward him, jerking him out of his stream of uncertain thoughts. "You talk about that kid all the time. I know you're fond of her, and just hearing about her makes me like her, too. I'm more than happy to be able to watch over my own students and I'd be overjoyed to be able to watch over Eri as you do. If you want her in our life, if you think you're ready for that commitment, then I do too."
And Shouta couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief, just as big and perhaps bigger than the one he'd released when he realized that Eri would be just fine concerning the use of her quirk.
It was scary, in a way. This wasn't just some aimless desire to protect. Now, Shouta had a goal, a tangible future to grasp onto where Eri would not just be a hospital patient and a student, but a child. His child. A permanent staple in his life. It was scary. But it was hopeful. And he wanted it.
"I want to adopt her," he said with finality. Hizashi's grin stretched wide. Shouta thought that he'd like to see Eri smile like that.
"Then we will."
"Eri," Shouta began, a week after he'd spoken with Hizashi. "You know that you're going to have to stay somewhere after you're discharged from the hospital."
"Yes," she murmured, playing with the hem of her hospital gown. He paused for a moment before continuing.
"I'd like for you to stay with me." His words were stiff. Awkward. Neutralcoldunkind. And yet, Eri looked up at him with this shining hope in her eyes that made him feel like maybe she understood what he was trying to convey. Maybe she wanted it. He went on. "It would be permanent; you'd be adopted by me and my husband, and you'd live with us until you're an adult. But you can say no, or ask for some time before you make your decision. If you don't live with us, you'll likely be put into the foster system."
Eri gaped for a moment, her mouth open and forming words with no sound attached. Then she shut it and simply nodded her head vigorously. Shouta quirked his brow in question, and she clarified. "I want to live with you," she said, and Shouta was left breathless with relief. With thank god she wants this too.
When Eri met Hizashi for the first time, he was out of costume and his hair was down, falling in waves over his shoulders and down his back. Eri was captivated by it, and Shouta watched in amusement as she beckoned him down to her level. He bent over and his hair hung in the air between them. Eri reached out to touch it, and gasped when she felt its silkiness. Shouta could echo her sentiment; he'd never understood how it stayed so healthy when he put so much product in it on such a regular basis. But the thought was overshadowed by the overwhelming gratitude he felt towards Hizashi when he didn't flinch away from her touch, even as the strands she held so delicately began slowly retreating inward.
A new environment, Shouta thinks to himself. It's not unreasonable that she wouldn't have perfect control. It's impressive enough that she's rewinding him so slowly.
He's reminding himself that this is progress. This is progress.
Hizashi pulled back only when Eri did, moving to sit down with her and make light conversation in as quiet a voice he could manage. She seemed taken aback somewhat by his exuberance, especially compared to Shouta's demeanor, but she eventually relaxed into it and they got on like old friends. Shouta let his smile grace his lips as he watched. He thought that this was a routine he could get used to. His husband and Eri. His husband and his… daughter.
His daughter.
It held a nice ring to it.