Aizawa paced back and forth in Nedzu's office, occasionally pausing to take a sip of tea, reading reports as he walked. Eraserhead had never been one for sitting still when he was upset, and these days he was upset all the time. The principal sighed, taking another sip of his own tea. It had gone cold. He couldn't find it in himself to care, though. Cold tea fit his cold heart well.

"Just keeps getting worse," Aizawa muttered, "no matter what we do, and with Midoriya still missing... I just don't know anymore Nedzu. We can't keep doing this." The hero visibly considered throwing the documents in his hand down on the floor, then sighed and set them carefully on the principal's overloaded desk, pushing some folders and maps aside to make room..

Oh how Nedzu would love to make his friend feel better. How he would love to impart some good news. How he longed to hide the miserable truth... but it would do no good. Refusing to speak a truth would not make it a falsehood. "Midoriya is dead, Aizawa."

"You don't know that," the teacher snarled.

"Yes I do," the principal replied, pulling the relevant documents out of his desk and holding them out for the teacher to inspect. "The officials taking over the from HPSC managers discovered the deception quickly and informed me of the fate of my student. Midoriya did not have a "nervous breakdown requiring immediate inpatient treatment" and then vanish from the psychiatric hospital. I never believed that, and neither did you." Everyone had assumed the student had been sent to a black site somewhere. The HPSC had done it with False Flag, after all. "He was taken from the Gunga Mountain field by HPSC agents, illegally interrogated, and incarcerated in Angband." Aizawa stared at the transfer forms, blinking again and again as if he couldn't believe it. "You knew he was dead," Nedzu said, eyes closed so he would not have to see his friend's expression. "You knew every bit as much as I did. The uncertainty allowed us to cling to hope for a time, but that time is over."

"The PLF raided Angband but there were survivors."

"A handful of political prisoners from Angband did survive and escape across the lines to rejoin the Democratic forces. With one exception, however, all of them were from Cell Block 8, where the warden in command decided to violate policy and ordered guards to release prisoners when it became clear that the PLF advance could not be stopped. Although only three of the survivors rejoined us--and who can blame those who chose to flee the country of disappear into civilian roles after what was done to them--it is believed that all of the fourteen political prisoners held in Cell Block 8 survived. A short-range teleporter incarcerated by the HPSC in Cell Block 5 also managed to escape after tricking the PLF into removing his quirk cuffs prior to interrogating him about his loyalties. His testimony indicates that the PLF marched at least a hundred prisoners out into the dark and killed them upon determining that they were enemies of the cause. The PLF confirmed identities and loyalties with truth quirks, and even if that had not been the case... Midoriya was well known to their leadership."

"We don't know--"

"We will never know," Nedzu interrupted, eyes still closed. "The chances of his body ever being recovered are negligible," if it even existed given that Shigaraki had reportedly been a party to the mass executions, "but if he had survived, Aizawa... do you not think he would be back by now?"

Eraserhead crossed his arms. "Maybe he was angry enough with the HPSC and with us, with me," he winced guiltily, "to vanish, maybe just into the civilian population or maybe out of the country. He could do it."

"Aizawa. Sometimes you have to look at the facts and accept that the overwhelmingly more probable explanation is correct."

Eraserhead was the one to close his eyes now, even as Nedzu opened his. "I don't want to, don't you get it? I can't... how can you take it so easily?"

"Do you think I am unaffected?" Nedzu scoffed. "Just because I do not express my emotions in the same way as you, you assume I do not feel." Whatever species Nedzu belonged to, it was not one of those which could cry. "Midoriya was my favorite. Of all of them, he was the one whose future prospects most excited me. I could not wait to see what he would become. The world is duller and colder for his absence. Regardless, neither my pain nor my fury can change facts. The same is true of your emotions. Denial helps nobody." The principal sighed, smoothing his ears with his claws, then his whiskers as well. "I apologize," he said, much calmer. "The war has been no kinder to me than to you." And there was so much more to lose, so much more he would lose. The war would not end until both sides were rung out and raw, choked in misery and horror. That was always how these sorts of civil wars went. The fighting wouldn't end until nobody had the mental or physical resources to continue.

"I'm going to kill Shigaraki someday," Aizawa promised. "And put his head on a pike."

"Aizawa... this is not a healthy reaction..."

"Neither is this god damned war."

"I know." Nedzu took another sip of tea.

Aizawa stared at the papers some more, trying to find a loophole with the same fervor as a dying man would search for a way to steal his soul back from the devil. "I'm going to have to tell my class," he said hoarsely. "And his mother."

"Let me do it," Nedzu shook his head. "They deserve to hear it from me, and you do not deserve the responsibility of reading such painful words to your students."

"Alright. Tomorrow?"

"Today. The news will not improve with time," in the much the same way as rancid meat.