Chapter Text
It was Midoriya's fourth day in the hospital.
Following the Stain Incident, the kids were brought to the ER, checked over and brought into surgery if they needed it. They gave the students a talk, the police visited them and explained the story they were selling from here on out. The teens recovered. Shoto Todoroki was released on the first day, returning to the internship with Endeavour, Tenya Iida stayed for three days of healing, and was then discharged into the care of his family in the evening for the rest of the week.
Izuku Midoriya was only supposed to stay for two days.
He had no major injuries that weren't fixed quickly and he didn't need the extra recovery time. But at this hospital, it was a requirement for minors to be picked up by their legal guardians, even if their teacher was present and fully willing to drive the student home.
Midoriya's fourth day was starting, and even with routine calls from the hospital, his guardian — Inko Midoriya — was not answering.
They had tried everything. They had tried to call from the teen's phone at first, directly following the incident, still sitting in the speeding ambulance. Shouta had been sitting across from his student when he did so. He knew the younger Midoriya really had tried and called exactly three times. Every single time it went to voicemail after not even five seconds. And then when Shouta offered to call, Midoriya had strictly refused to hand his phone or his mother's number over, insisting that she was probably just busy at the hospital with her job and was declining his calls because of that.
Back then he had left it at that, shrugging it off for the moment, but noting the defensive behaviour as suspicious. Most kids would do anything to be reunited with their parents after such a high-stress situation.
But he let it go for now.
Parents could be busy. Kids could be weird in their thinking. After years of teaching he knew that. Maybe the kid was just really set on not bothering his mother, and Inko Midorya really did just need to come home first, who knows.
Alas, come next morning, she still wouldn't answer.
Now, instead of at least ringing for a few seconds and then being declined, it went straight to voicemail. Even when attempting to reach her over the hospital phone. As if her phone was shut off for the time being.
The entire time Shouta stayed.
On the second day when the administration admitted they couldn’t reach anyone, on the third day when that stayed the same, but the kid wrote a message to his mother and started checking his phone every 15 minutes. He lingered past the visiting hours, after Tenya Iida was picked up, sleeping in a chair in a corner of Midoriya’s room.
And he stayed for the fourth day, when all continued like the days before, the messages remained unread and the nurses started shooting each other concerned glances.
Occasionally he would also argue with the administration of the hero ward.
“Anywhere else I could take him home with the expressed consent of his parent.”
“I apologize sir, but I’m afraid we do not allow that here.”
“And what do we do if his guardian does not respond at all?”
The lady behind the administration desk huffs. They have been through this argument like five times already in the past 48 hours. “We notify the police or heroes to pick him up and bring him home.”
“I am a hero affiliated with the police. I could take him home.”
They glared at each other over the reception desk, each knowing that this arguing will take them nowhere. Her next words would be that Shouta was also his homeroom teacher, and couldn’t take Izuku home, since that was his primary relationship with him and nothing else mattered as far as this hospital’s administration was concerned. The school had no legal claim over Midoriya.
He pushed off the counter between them and sighed. He had other things planned for this morning too.
For example, getting himself coffee, a tea for the kid, another coffee for himself, and having a serious talk with Midoriya in precisely that order.
He headed for the hospital’s cafeteria.
There was a knock on the door to room 13 of the hero wing of the hospital.
Izuku stirred from his endless staring out the window and called a quiet ‘come in’. And as expected, it was Aizawa-Sensei, who pushed open the door carrying two to-go cups and a cat-faced cupcake. His lip twitched upward at the sight of his gloomy teacher carrying such a cute sweet.
The teacher dropped into the seat opposite of him, as had become routine by yesterday afternoon and nudged one of the paper cups and the cupcake towards him. Izuku thanked him, grabbing the cup and tasting the hot liquid.
It was jasmine tea.
His mom used to make that tea when he was younger, to console him after she’d left him alone too long. How fitting. Izuku hummed at how familiar the whole situation seemed.
Aizawa nursed his coffee across from him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw him watching Izuku. He himself had turned back to the window, watching the passersby, the way families seemed to flock together in happiness or misery and how kids would cling to their parents in delight.
He only felt slightly jealous. He had long since given up hoping for the comfort that a family could bring for himself.
“Anything interesting that you’re seeing?”
Izuku shook his head as a response, still staring out the window.
It was quiet in the room. So quiet he could actually hear every silent breath the hero next to him took. Therefore, he heard the moment his teacher took a deeper inhale, before beginning to speak once again.
“I wanted to ask you about your home situation.”
And Izuku froze. That was a first. His mouth clamped up and he moved to stare at Eraserhead. He nodded numbly, signaling the hero to go on.
“First, I would like to let you know that nothing will leave this room, unless either you want that, or I deem it necessary for your safety, alright?”
Was this his chance? No one ever had taken him seriously. They had taken one look at Inko Midoriya, hard-working single parent Inko, and had deemed her an angel. No one ever took poor quirkless Deku seriously. After all, it was just attention he was after, right?
But maybe now it would be different. His circumstances were different. Aizawa-Sensei was different. He had been kind where other teachers hadn't been, had patiently spoken to him where others would have snapped, had stayed with his students at the hospital for three days without ever leaving for home, had stayed even longer to keep an eye on him.
For once, he felt watched out for. Even if that was just the job of Aizawa-Sensei.
“When was the last time you spoke to your mother, Midoriya?“
But what if he was not different?
What if he now told this and it would all be for nothing? He wants to be ward of UA, and he knows that's possible, because he looked through all of their release paperwork, trying to find a way out. After all, if he could not be loved, and he has long since forgotten what it was like to love his parent in return, what use was it staying there, when he could be even closer to school?
But he was getting ahead of himself. He was always told he blew problems out of proportion, like when kids would ‘joke’ with him and he would come crying about bullying. His teachers never took him seriously. Maybe living with Inko Midoriya wasn’t as bad as he thought it was? Some kids had it worse, after all. Even if he was suffering.
He pondered the question and then responded, “Over the phone, or face to face?”
Across from him, Aizawa-Sensei simply breathed. He took a sip of his coffee and then also turned his head to look out the window. “Tell me about both.”
Izuku picked up his phone from the table and scrolled through to the days before the Stain incident. “We called the last time… the evening before internships began.” He shut off his phone and laid it face down on the table, looking at Aizawa briefly and then mirroring him and looking out the window again. Instead of looking outside though, he looked at his reflection.
His image in the sunny window was faint, but he could still see the outline of his eyes, his hair, the colour of them. For a brief moment he imagined how the lines of his hair washed away, turning long and flat in the reflection. His mother stared back at him with an unseeing gaze from the glass. What did Aizawa understand by face to face? Did he really mean that literally? Or just when the last time they spoke to each other in real life? Would it count when she called him for dinner from the other room, only for him to find the kitchen deserted when he arrived?
Would Aizawa even care?
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aizawa turn towards him, and knew he had taken too long to answer. Instinctively he raised his hand towards his eyes, wiping underneath his eyes. Huh. At some point tears had spilled over. But he really shouldn’t be all that surprised, as this happened every single time he thought about the absence of his mother. He had just learned to ignore the tears and the emotions causing them, with how often they would come.
He looked at his reflection, hoping to see his mother again, but was met with his own tear-stricken face.
“The last time I actually saw her was…” He racked his brain, only to come up short. “... I don’t know. Must’ve been two or three weeks ago? … Maybe longer. But she’s almost always home,” after a short moment he added, “I think.” With a small grimace.
Aizawa nodded and Izuku wondered if this was all for nothing. Maybe this was normal for UA students. Maybe nothing will happen because this was expected of a single mother having a UA student in her care. Maybe many parents were overwhelmed by their children going to such a school, and simply… Couldn’t look them in the face anymore. Maybe. Maybe what he was experiencing would be counted as nothing out of the ordinary.
He saw his teacher open his mouth and focused again on the present instead of the ‘maybe’s.
“Has this happened before?”
No. No, he was never left to his own devices at the hospital, left behind while she disappeared and refused to pick him up. Well —- the second part, yes. She never picked him from school when he was injured, be it either from Aldera or UA. Actually leave out the injured. The only time in the past five years she had ever picked him up was after the USJ when the presence and identification of a guardian was needed to get him home. He knew she wanted to keep up the façade of a caring mother, to risk nothing that could take him from her. Why? He didn’t know. Because the entire ride to their house was silent, until they passed the threshold to the apartment and she told him she “wants a break from all his trouble”.
At the edge of his vision Aizawa-Sensei leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
“You’re mumbling.”
Izuku flinched, “Right — s-sorry Sensei–”
“I didn’t mean it in a negative way. It was just a statement.”
Izuku’s throat felt dry and he moved his chair a bit closer to the window, sipping his tea. The sunlight fell on his hands and warmed them, where otherwise they felt so cold.
“Do you feel safe at home?”
Izuku swallowed his tea, doing his best not to choke. Was this really his chance? Would someone finally believe him? …But what would come beyond? “And what if I don’t?”
He watched his teacher cross his arms in front of him and breathe deeply, the sunlight falling into his raven hair and reflecting off his eyes as he watched the people outside together with him. Finally, after a pause his teacher answered,
“UA can help. If you do not want help, we can provide stability that you otherwise would not have,” Which was still help, but just disguised as a confusing sentence to appeal in case he was under the impression that he didn’t need aiding, “You don’t have to be alone in this.”
And that… hit a bit too close to home. Because that’s what he was, right? Alone.
Did he feel safe at home? He didn’t know. Sometimes.
It was safe in the way a crime scene was safe when you found it — deserted, quiet, the killer long since fled. But there could always be something around the corner, while you waited for the police to arrive, the same way he always waited for his mother to explode on him, just waiting until he could leave again, without being painted a troublemaker.
It was home in the same way a café was when you were craving coffee — just right in the moment, but in the end, that place was only a temporary roof over your head and no one really knew you.
He was alone, and at that admission tears welled up in his eyes again. He wiped at them with the sleeve of his shirt, the fabric scratching the skin around them.
And began talking.
Shouta closed the door softly behind him, trying not to disturb the teenager in the room with the tear stained cheeks, staring longingly out the window, watching — as he suspected — the families outside the building.
He had a call to make, and an administrative lady to argue with.
He fished out his work phone, pressed a speed dial and lifted the phone to his ear. The call picked up on the third ring, as it always does, while he was already walking quickly down the hall.
“Nedzu, Principal of–”
Shouta cut him off. “How fast can we transfer Midoriya Izuku into protective care of UA quietly and start an investigation based on signs of neglect?”
Nedzu was quiet on the other side for a moment, with only the clacking of keys in the background. The sound stilled. “Consider it done in five minutes, Aizawa. The paperwork will be sent to your phone immediately.”
The principal hung up.
Aizawa breathed a sigh of relief. When Nedzu wanted something to move, it moved. And fast.
He leaned against the wall opposite of the administrative desk and watched heroes and their families walk around, doctors bustling by, nurses rushing with IV packets and wheelchairs.
The lady behind the desk glowered at him again.