Izuku sighed as he felt a considerable amount of his energy leave him in a pulse that travelled from his chest to his left forearm and was expelled into the air around him, leaving him feeling drained as the skin that had been torn from him earlier healed over. He watched his forearm stitch itself back together under the effects of Recovery Girl's Quirk and sighed as the pain subsided. When his skin had grown over his injuries completely, Izuku shook his arm out and stretched it in a few different directions, finding that it no longer hurt at all. Looking at it, he almost couldn't tell that he'd been injured at all, apart from an near-imperceptible splotch of skin that was half a shade lighter than the rest where he'd been Decimated.
"Thanks," he said to Recovery Girl, who scoffed at him in reply.
"Don't get comfortable with it. I don't want to keep seeing you here. Got it?" she barked out.
"Yes, ma'am," Izuku mumbled, sighing. He wasn't too thrilled about how often he'd needed to be healed lately, but he wasn't exactly in control of it for the most part. He'd just have to be even more careful, even though it frustrated him that they implied he ought to control uncontrollable circumstances just because of his Quirk. He knew they didn't mean that, but it felt a little too personal sometimes to tell.
Izuku turned to the other people in the room. Uraraka sat beside him, holding his other, gloved hand as she looked at his formerly injured limb with her worried gaze. Aizawa and Vlad King—homeroom teacher of Class-1B—stood on opposite sides of Monoma, who had watched the process of Izuku's healing with vacant eyes. It was kind of satisfying to see a jerk be humbled like that, but seeing the despondent look on his face, Izuku found himself feeling bad for Monoma, oddly enough. He was too familiar with the pain in Monoma's eyes to feel any differently. That was why he'd asked for this conversation to happen in front of him and Uraraka. He locked eyes with Monoma as Aizawa and Vlad continued their debate.
"I think there's definitely a case to be made for manslaughter," Aizawa said with a frown.
"On the other hand, he deliberately ignored instruction and explanation, and that risked someone's death," Vlad said. He was the angriest in the room, his eyes alight with the fire of a hero, a teacher, whose student had screwed up royally. "Murder may be on the table."
"No, he lacked the guilty mind. By the book, it would've been manslaughter. He didn't intend to kill anyone, but his recklessness would've gotten Uraraka killed. You're letting your emotions cloud your judgement," Aizawa explained.
"It's a bit rich of you to say anyone's too harsh on students," Vlad laughed.
"I agree, but we have to look at this logically. Monoma's getting punished either way, Vlad, so we have to look at this objectively. I know you're mad, but you need to calm down," Aizawa shot back. Vlad took a few breaths, staring daggers at the back of Monoma's head, but kept quiet. "The first thing we need to figure out is if Midoriya and Uraraka even want to pursue charges."
The adults turned to Izuku, who was still meeting Monoma's eyes steadily. He was trying to search the blond boy's expression for whatever he could find, but he already knew his answer. Izuku put on a smile and laughed airily.
"Unless being an idiot is a crime, I don't think so," he said in a falsely casual tone, making Vlad and Monoma snap out of their respective states and stare at him as if he were speaking gibberish.
"Yeah, same here," Uraraka said in the same kind of dismissive tone of voice.
"What do you mean?" Vlad asked, while Monoma just stared at them with his jaw dropped low.
"I'm not interested in holding a grudge. I don't have the energy to spare today," Izuku said as he slipped on his other glove.
Monoma made a small noise, like he had begun saying something but cut himself off before a coherent word had even formed out of the shrill sound. He clenched his fists and looked to be fighting something in him that wanted to lash out. He was almost shaking as he closed his eyes and stood there, tension rippling through his body as everyone watched in shocked silence. After a moment, he overcame whatever was holding him back and pointed at Uraraka as he glared at her with a heat in his eyes.
"And you? Are you going to just let me get away with this, too?" Monoma almost yelled in what looked like a mix of confused anger and shock.
"Yeah," Uraraka said. Everyone gave her their attention, including Izuku, who didn't know what she would say. He knew she'd be likely to let Monoma off the hook, just because she wasn't the type to get hung up on a negative thing, but he didn't know her reasoning for this. She'd been seriously in danger of Decimation, and Izuku was shocked at how she was handling that near-death experience. Finally, she took the cue to elaborate. "I'm not gonna ruin your life because you got too excited and did something stupid."
"How are you so calm about it, though? You should be yelling and screaming at me! Tell me I deserve what's coming to me!" Monoma said, turning to look at Izuku as his voice rose in volume and pitch. He had the ghost of that cocky smile, except now he seemed to be enjoying himself much less than he had on the field, before everything had happened.
"You're kind of a jerk," Izuku said with a small, smug smile. "You're cocky and arrogant. To be honest, so am I, and I feel kind of responsible for what happened, to an extent."
"Explain," Aizawa ordered with a glare.
"We've spoken before, and I kind of played into his whole issue with our class. Even today, I riled him up and I thought it was funny, at least until he mimicked my Quirk. I didn't think it'd hurt anybody. Clearly, I was wrong," Izuku said, shaking out his left arm unconsciously.
"Alright," Aizawa sighed heavily. "If you're willing to share responsibility, you'll just get detention with me after class every day for the next month." As he saw Izuku's mouth open to speak, he added, "For poking the bear." This made Izuku quiet down and accept what he'd asked for.
"And you'll be getting a black mark on your record. I think that's fair," Vlad said, still looking as though a fire could erupt from the sheer heat of the glare he sent at Monoma.
"You can sit through a few lectures on keeping your cool in combat, too," Aizawa chimed in, leaning against the wall as the conversation wound down.
Vlad King pulled Monoma out of the room after that, with the remark that he doesn't get to watch the rest of the festival as an early start on his punishment, and will be treated to the sight of Vlad doing the paperwork for an incident report while he's still required to be on school property for the day. That left Aizawa to meet Izuku's eyes with an intense expression on his face, barely visible through the thick black hair that he let fall over his face. Izuku felt a spike of nervousness cause his heart to start hammering in his chest, and squeezed Uraraka's hand to give himself an anchor to stop himself from floating off in a panic at what his teacher had to say.
"You said you'd have it under control," Aizawa sighed out.
"I did," Izuku nodded.
"You said nobody would get hurt," Aizawa said with a growing, sharp edge to his voice as he pushed himself up the wall and took a step closer to Izuku.
"I did," Izuku repeated.
"And what happened?" Aizawa asked.
"Someone got hurt," Izuku said lamely, letting his head hang. "Does it matter that it was me?"
"No. You weren't aware of your surroundings, and your Quirk was used to hurt someone. There's a loophole, but the result is the same as if you'd done it yourself," Aizawa replied. He kept his hardened gaze on Izuku for a few moments more, before turning it on Uraraka, who tensed up as well, though less so than Izuku himself. "I expected you to be up in arms about this whole thing. Why'd you let him off the hook?"
"I said what I meant. I don't want to ruin Monoma's life because he made a dumb mistake. It wouldn't feel right," Uraraka said, shifting uncomfortably under Aizawa's scrutinous eyes.
"A dumb mistake that could've killed you. Even if the Quirks Monoma can use are weaker than their originals, that doesn't matter when talking about the kind of Quirk that Decimation is. One touch and you would've been very seriously maimed, possibly forever. If he had managed to touch you for any extended period, there would've been no saving you. You're okay with that?" Aizawa said.
"Honestly, I don't really care all that much," Uraraka said. Izuku looked over at her and looked for any kind of tell on her face of what she was thinking, but couldn't find anything. He very briefly studied her face, the light in her eyes and the tension in her jaw, and realised that she was squeezing his hand much tighter than he had squeezed hers, and wondered what she could possibly be thinking.
"I almost died before I'd learned the names of all my classmates. After the USJ, I've kinda realised that we're always gonna be at risk of getting hurt, or worse. It's a hero's job to push past a morbid truth and make a wish for peace into reality, right? Monoma wants that too, even if he has a weird way of showing it. Why should I be able to keep him from getting what he wants, when it's gonna be my job to make things better for everyone? It doesn't matter if I don't like him, because I'm gonna save people I disagree with someday. It's not my job to punish people I don't like. That's what villains do. I'm never gonna be like that, so I'm okay to live and let live," she said, steely resolve radiating from the expression on her face as she met Aizawa's nerve wracking glare. Izuku openly gawked at her, wondering how long she'd been holding onto that. He wanted to say something, but he didn't know what to say after something like that.
"Fine. I'm needed elsewhere, so do whatever. The third event of the festival begins in …" Aizawa checked the clock on the wall, "… forty-five minutes, so make sure you're down on the field by then."
At that, Aizawa left. As he walked out the door, he shot Izuku another look, which he took to be a reminder that he did have detention for a month like he'd said. Izuku felt the tension drain from his body as another minor wave of lethargy washed over him. He guessed it was an aftereffect of Recovery Girl's Quirk, and sighed in relief as he was able to relax. Looking over at Uraraka, a similar picture was painted by her slumped shoulders and hanging head, and he couldn't help but smile as he realised that he was probably never going to stop finding new ways to admire her. He'd respected her attitude towards being a hero when they'd met and first started getting to know each other, but the real fire under it all had only begun emerging recently, after the USJ had shaken everyone up. Now, he felt like she could be a true force to be reckoned with, instead of the cutesy rescue hero he'd envisioned at first. He felt bad about underestimating her back then, as he'd kind of reduced her to her image and judged her based off that, as well as the surface level comments she made, but after the conversations about their beliefs concerning heroes and what they hold in their hearts, Izuku believed that Uraraka could do whatever she put her mind to.
As the thought popped up in his mind unprompted, Izuku considered it, and came to the conclusion that she was better than him, at least in that regard, as Uraraka's passion was helping people, but Izuku's reasons for being a hero weren't so noble. He was basically a hero out of spite, and so did that make him a bad person? Maybe not, since he still wanted to help people, but then the question was if he was truly fuelling himself off of spite and the desire to prove people wrong, like he'd always said, or if some of Uraraka's 'save everyone' mentality had rubbed off on him, because being around her definitely did make him want to share in that goal. It was like his worries melted away when they were together, and he felt like he could focus on the good things, instead of drowning among the negatives of life. Maybe he was just a social leech that way, or maybe he actually was an optimist buried beneath a lifetime of tragedy and misery. Izuku felt like he'd been having this debate with himself for years at this point, and since he didn't really have time to work that out at that very moment, it had to be solved at another time.
"Alright, you two, it's going to get busy for me, so I need my space to be clear!" Recovery Girl shouted, breaking them out of their thoughts.
Izuku and Uraraka looked at each other and hastily collected themselves to leave. Izuku pulled on the new shirt he'd been given due to his old one being torn up, and followed Uraraka out the door, shutting it behind him as he exited the room. The two of them started down the hall towards the lunchroom, eager to get a meal in before the third and final round of the sports festival began. He had a lot of thoughts about that, but there was something much more pressing for him at the moment, and so he looked over at Uraraka as they walked, getting her attention.
"Are you really okay with what happened?" he asked, getting a smile from her at the question.
"Of course! Are you?" she shot back, likely seeing right through to the exact reason he was asking with ease.
"No. It doesn't feel right that Monoma sneaking up on me meant that you were put in danger," Izuku said. He frowned as he spoke, something hot and shameful coiling around his heart.
"Well, don't worry about it!" Uraraka said, putting a hand on his shoulder and, as always, leaving her little finger lifted away from him. It did make him feel a little better to have that contact, but he was still upset over what he'd let happen back there on the field. "You can't control what other people do. They make their choices and you make yours, and then whatever happens, happens. It's not your fault that Monoma couldn't keep his cool! I don't think it was even really his fault. That's why I let him off the hook. That's why you've gotta let yourself off the hook. Don't be so quick to blame yourself for things that would've happened anyway, 'cause you'll just end up stuck in your own head, and you know how we feel about that."
Izuku felt his face warm up as Uraraka met his eyes with a knowing look in her eyes, and he had to avert his own eyes to avoid getting even more flustered as she simply banished away all his worries about Monoma like it was nothing. He took a moment to appreciate the warm hand on his shoulder as he wondered what he'd done to get someone like her interested in him, as a stranger would've thought that Izuku's pessimism would've driven away someone so cheerful and bright, but there they were, walking side by side and smiling at each other in the kind of entranced way that movies and television often portrayed. Izuku let himself relax and forget about all those negative thoughts and feelings, and hone in on the warmth he found in the way her eyes shone as they peered into his own. He smiled and reached up to take Uraraka's hand in his pulling it off his shoulder, as much as he wanted to stay in that moment a little longer, and allowed their intertwined hands to dangle as they walked toward the lunchroom. Izuku would be more than happy if they never got there, though, as he was entirely content to simply wander the halls with Uraraka, hand in hand with her, until it was time for the third event of the festival to begin.
However, that was not how their lunch period was spent. Instead, after a few minutes of walking through the halls and openly taking each other in as they turned corners nearly at random, Izuku and Uraraka came upon a roadblock, an obstacle so jarring that Izuku almost let out a groan at how inconvenient this specific problem was to deal with right now, when all he wanted was to be alone with his favourite person. The problem stared them down as the two of them turned a corner, its mismatched eyes glaring at Izuku as he realised who was there and glared back. Shoto Todoroki stood in the middle of the hall, meaning that if they wanted to simply walk past him, Izuku and Uraraka would have to separate, the thought of which made Izuku's chest grow tight in irritation. What did he want now? Hadn't he learned not to mess with Izuku by now, since he'd shown a complete willingness to retaliate in the cavalry battle? Izuku didn't get what the hell Todoroki wanted. That would no longer be a problem, however, as Todoroki spoke and revealed his motivation to intrude on Izuku and Uraraka's moment of peace in the chaos of the festival.
"You've made a mistake, Izuku Midoriya."