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Shouta is aware of how fast things can turn bad. USJ had gone from a training exercise to a desperate struggle to preserve 20 lives in a matter of seconds.
So, he isn’t exactly surprised when he wakes from unconsciousness chained to a wall, still-blurred vision scanning the room—some kind of basement, two masked men, Midoriya chained up on the same wall. That suggests a lack of knowledge, that maybe they’d expected Shouta to be alone and grabbed the kid as a bonus, because chains aren’t exactly—
As if he’s brought it into being with the thought, power crackles along his student’s arms and the chains holding Midoriya break with an oddly-muted crack. Midoriya jumps to his feet, spinning the momentum straight into a kick that launches one of the men across the room. The other, instead of backing away from the 16-year-old explosion of power they’ve clearly vastly underestimated, steps in closer, and Shouta activates Erasure with a lurch of panic in his gut.
Then, everything goes oddly still. Midoriya and the captor still on his feet just stand there, at an angle where Shouta can’t see what’s happened to make them stop. The man takes one step back, and still Midoriya just stands there, suspended, angled too far away for Shouta to be able to see his expression.
What he can see is the man in the corner starting to recover from the blow, dragging himself up—then stopping with pure panic in his eyes when he sees Midoriya. He bolts for the stairs, the other man backs up another step, and finally Shouta can see the knife embedded in his student’s abdomen.
When things go bad, it happens fast. So fast it feels like time is slipping away, like he’s moving in slow motion compared to the rest of the world. Both men are bolting now, clearly in over their heads, leaving Shouta still chained up with a kid with a stab wound.
“Call for help!” Shouta yells after them, venom mixing with pure panic.
He activates Erasure even though neither of them seem to be using quirks to escape, just trying to have any impact at all, take something away from them. If this is remorse, it’s worse than useless. Corrupt enough that cut holes in one of his kids, cowardly enough to run without letting them out first.
Midoriya turns to face him, eyes wide. “Midoriya,” Shouta says, pieces clicking into place in his mind: his primary obstacle is a set of chains, and his only asset is a student who’s just proved he can break them without an issue. If only he weren’t hurt, bleeding and confused. “It’s going to be okay. You just have to—no, don’t.” Shouta interrupts himself as he sees one of Midoriya’s hands hover in the air by the knife. “Don’t take it out. It’s slowing the bleeding.”
Midoriya obeys all too easily, face unmarred by pain—just blank shock, and a hint of helplessness that looks strange on a student who so rarely asks for help with anything.
“It’s going to be okay,” Shouta says again. “If you can break the chains, I can get you out of here and we can find help.”
“Okay,” Midoriya says, voice choked and oddly young. He takes one step towards Shouta before collapsing, finally crying out as he goes, but thankfully the angle of his fall takes him close enough to Shouta.
“Alright,” Shouta says, trying to keep the anguish out of his voice. If time is going slowly for him, he can only imagine how it feels for Midoriya, drifting in that timeless haze of shock and agony. He needs to be clear and calm. He wants to believe one of those terrified men called an ambulance, but he’s lived too long to have faith in that kind of mercy. Clear, calm and fast.
Shouta wraps his hands around Midoriya’s, moves them to the chains on the wall and tries to help him get a grip. “Just one push, okay?” Shouta says. “Then we’ll get out of here.”
Midoriya shuts his eyes, and for an awful moment Shouta thinks he’s losing him—then his quirk comes to life, haltingly, the bright patterns on his skin skipping and lurching as if afraid. Usually, Midoriya’s control is such that his quirk seems to become active through his whole body at once, but now the glow starts at his chest and spirals out erratically—then it reaches his abdomen and he yelps, the light blinking out, hands falling to press down around the knife.
“Alright, alright,” Shouta murmurs. There’s blood spreading through the kid’s T-shirt. He’s taking short, stuttering breaths.
“Sorry,” Midoriya mumbles.
“Stay with me, kid,” Shouta says, taking his hand again. The chains clink as he moves and god, Shouta would give every second he has left just to break that metal. “Try again.”
Midoriya obediently, painstakingly calls on his quirk again and gives a hard shove at the place where the chains meet the wall, but that little bit of movement causes him to let out a breathless scream and fall back. Shouta has to reach out his chained arms just to keep him from collapsing all the way down onto his back. Instantly, his hands are warm and wet; there’s blood at Midoriya’s back, too.
This can’t be happening. His student can’t be about to die because of a few inches of metal. This bright, gentle kid can’t be about to die in his arms.
“It—it hurts,” Midoriya murmurs, leaning on him. “I can—I can feel the knife moving.”
“I know, I know,” Shouta says. “But we need to get you help. It’s either you make it up the stairs—”
Midoriya gives a panicked groan, shaking his head frantically.
“Or you break the chains and I carry you out. You can do this. I promise you can do this.”
Midoriya nods, tears gathering in his eyes, but several panicked breaths later and he hasn’t moved.
“Take a breath,” Shouta insists, quiet but firm, “then try again. Try to concentrate your quirk just where you need it.”
“It’s…it’s called One For All,” Midoriya says, tipping back a little in Shouta’s clumsy hold. “All Might gave it to me.”
Time slips away again, or something like it. There’s blood on the shackles on Shouta’s wrists. They look at each other, and even through the pain Midoriya seems to be searching his face for something.
“I wanted to tell you,” he adds, then slips back a little further and yelps in pain. Shouta is holding him up as best he can, but it still takes abdominal muscles to hold yourself in that kind of position—and every contraction of those muscles risks jostling the blade.
He can’t die like this. He just can’t.
“Midoriya, please,” Shouta says. He doesn’t think his voice holds steady. Shouta has seen victims of stab wounds before, has been the victim of stab wounds before, and so he can’t avoid the knowledge that these minutes of coherency are numbered. As sure as up is up and down is down, soon enough shock and blood loss will render Midoriya unable to listen to what he’s saying, let alone use his quirk. If he hasn’t broken the chains by then—and if neither of those monsters called for an ambulance… “Please, kid. There isn’t anything else I can do. It has to be you, and it has to be now.”
“S-sorry,” Midoriya says, shutting his eyes for another heartstopping moment. He opens them and there’s a shred of his old determination shining there. “Sorry I caused you so much trouble.”
He moves his hands and before Shouta can register what he’s going to do, he’s clutching the hilt of the knife and pulling it out, activating his quirk in the next second and shoving forward to punch at the root of the chains. Finally, finally, they break, and Shouta is gathering Midoriya up in his arms and trying to put pressure on the wound at the same time, sprinting for the stairs.
“You did it, you did it, I’ve got you,” Shouta mutters, barely aware of his own words, and as he reaches the top of the stairs he hears the distant sound of sirens.
Hours later, in the grey light and never-quite-quiet of the hospital Shouta has refused to leave, he sits side by side with a silent Yagi, letting Inko Midoriya have some privacy with her son even if the doctors don’t think he’ll be waking up any time soon.
Shouta has had a lot of time to think, and mostly hasn’t done so. He won’t really be able to think until he sees his student alive, moving, talking again.
What few thoughts he has managed are shards of memory. A student who works harder than anyone, but came into high school with hardly any control over his quirk, the foundation most aspiring heroes start from. And Yagi, hiding off to the side, watching over his class’s first training session. Like he had a personal stake.
Shouta doesn’t pry into students’ lives for the sake of it. He and Nedzu have disagreed a couple of times over the level of surveillance UA should aim for when it comes to students, especially now that the dorm system had been implemented. But he can’t help a kid he doesn’t understand. He can’t help Midoriya recover from anaesthesia any faster, but he can try and understand the missing piece connecting Midoriya to Yagi.
“So,” Shouta says, voice flat. “One For All.”
Yagi sits up straighter. “He told you?”
“He was scared,” Shouta says. He was dying, he doesn’t say, because he isn’t, he didn’t.
“It’s…his story to tell, now,” Yagi says, and there’s a discomfort there that almost makes Shouta smile.
“Sure,” he says. “Delay the inevitable.” Shouta shakes his head. “That kid’s braver than you.”
“I know,” Yagi says simply, and a quick scan of his expression shows Shouta that he isn’t joking.
Shouta thinks they’re done, but Yagi turns to face him, solemn and sincere. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you for getting him out of there alive.”
Shouta gives a short nod. “He did it himself.”
Yagi smiles. “You should get used to being thanked. I’m sure young Midoriya will be very grateful when he wakes up.”
“Delaying the inevitable,” Shouta murmurs, slumping back in his chair, letting his eyes fall shut, trying not to see echoes of the night’s horrors reflected in the dark.