Chapter Text
He had been in the dark room for a long time.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been put in the dark room, but he thought it might have been the longest. His dad was really mad when he saw him last, when he had disappointed him again.
Sometimes, sometimes, there would be the sliver of light coming from the door to his room. It was nothing more than a thin, weak beam from the slot where his family passed him food. The moment he adjusted to it, his eyes squinting at the beautiful light slicing through the darkness, it would be gone. The light would disappear with a clatter as the metal slot slammed shut and his meal was dropped onto the floor.
Once, a while ago, he had waited next to that slot, waited for the light to shine in, and the moment it did, he reached with his covered hands, eyes shut tight against the sharp, wonderful light. He fit a tiny hand into that small sliver of an opening out of his room, and reached—
And the harsh metal of the grate slammed down on him.
Even now, his wrist still ached from where it had been caught in the slot of his door, only slightly cushioned by the fabric of his mitts. He decided then that the light wasn’t worth reaching for and resigned himself to darkness.
It wasn’t pitch black after all. There was enough light diffusing from somewhere that he could see the vague outlines of his meals and his bed. If he squinted really hard, he could just about see the shapes he drew with his crayons onto the floor below him.
And at least the dark room wasn’t like the white room. He hated the white room. The white room meant tests and training, and it always ended with his dad getting disappointed and then getting angry. Then, after the white room and after the shouting, he was thrown in the dark room.
His dad was always angry when he didn’t use his Quirk like he was supposed to.
His Quirk was bad. He didn’t want to use it, he didn’t like using it, and he knew if he told his dad what it could actually do then he’d make him use it. And then things would get so much worse. So instead, he pretended, and he waited in the dark room.
One day, he would be able to leave. He knew there were heroes out there. He heard his dad and the others talk about them sometimes. They were afraid of the heroes! Because the heroes stopped the bad people like his dad! He just had to wait until the bad person they stopped was his dad. Then he could leave.
For now, though, he’d wait in the dark and eat his food and draw happy pictures on the stone beneath him. He would ignore the aching, awful pain in his hands and the ache in his belly. He could wait. Soon the door would open, and his dad would be waiting there for him, and it would all repeat itself over again. But one day he’ll be able to leave, and he won’t have to be afraid of his dad anymore.
So Izuku waited, and the door did open.
And this time it wasn’t his dad standing there.
The last thing Aizawa Shouta expected to find in the villain hideout was a goddamn child.
A small, malnourished, injured child with haunted green eyes that stared blankly at the pro hero illuminated by the light pouring from the open door behind him.
The room—the cell—housing the child was absurdly small. No windows. The only door was the locked, steel-reinforced behemoth Shouta had just charged through. A bare mattress laid in the corner, covered with a single threadbare sheet and a pile of musty rags—clothes?—folded at the foot of it. A metal toilet was embedded in the far wall. The center of the concrete floor was scribbled with nonsensical shapes, likely caused by the crayons strewn haphazardly across the room.
The child himself was huddled fearfully in a corner. He was so, so small, just a kid. Maybe five? But hard to tell with how little meat there was on his bones. Too young to be faced with the horrors Shouta was sure he had seen here. His curly hair was dark and matted, covering the tops of those wide, green eyes that stared at Shouta without seeming to actually see him. When the door first burst open, those eyes had blinked harshly, as if unused to anything other than perpetual darkness. His hands, covered entirely by some kind of thick fabric, pulled tightly on his knobby knees as the child hunched further into himself, attempting to disappear into the shadows of the room entirely.
Silently wishing that it had been Hizashi who had found the kid instead—loud, vibrant, cheerful Hizashi who could make just about anyone smile—Shouta resigned himself to dealing with the problem at hand. He sat down in the room’s entryway, knowing that crowding a scared child could have similar repercussions as cornering an injured animal. The child watched him steadily, waiting for a strike that will never come—never from Shouta, at least.
Slowly, so that every movement was telegraphed, Shouta reached for the comm nestled into his ear and pulled it out, extinguishing the annoying shouts of triumph from the other heroes in the raid and the stringent orders of policemen concerned about protocol. This room concluded his sweep of the building’s basement, confirming that no other villains were hiding away in the lair. The chatter would only distract him, after all. The others could figure out semantics without his input for the moment, while he focused on a child who has likely experienced too much too young.
“You can relax, kid,” Shouta stated bluntly, only barely remembering to soften his voice from his typical stern cadence. Even then, it came out more gruff than soothing, but it was about as good as Shouta could do at the end of a year-long recon mission and on just three cups of coffee today—one of them decaf, thanks to Hizashi’s worried mother-henning. “You’re safe now.”
Doubtfully, the kid’s eyes flickered quickly over Shouta’s shoulder.
“Look, kid, we don’t have all day.” Shouta felt his comms buzzing incessantly from where it dangled by its wire near his arm. Soon, his radio silence wouldn’t be chalked up to his charming, antisocial personality and would instead lead to cause for concern. He needed to get the kid and get out. “I’m a pro-hero, you can trust me.”
Suddenly, a light flicked on across the kid’s face, and something like excitement passed over his eyes as he scanned Shouta, from unkempt hair falling across his face to capture weapon wrapped loosely around his neck to the bulky black boots on his feet. The boy’s body uncurled as if released from a spring. “Eraserhead!” he whispered gleefully.
At first, Shouta was impressed that the child recognized him, before realizing that it was likely not a good thing that a child held prisoner by villains knew who you were. Shouta was good at staying under the radar, so someone must have been actively looking for him.
But that problem would have to be dealt with later.
“I am Eraserhead,” he confirmed. “Aizawa Shouta. Do you have a name I can call you?”
The kid fidgeted, grasping his hands together and wringing them the best he could with the thick fabric encasing them. Now that he was more relaxed, Shouta could get a closer look at the ensemble the kid was fitted with. Whoever dressed him was likely hoping to cover as much skin as possible, with a dirty hoodie and jeans. The socks on his feet and what looked like oven mitts on his hands were tightly duct taped to the cuffs of the pants and hoodie respectively, ensuring that they couldn’t be pulled off.
Likely a volatile, touch-based Quirk they were hoping to avoid, Shouta catalogued to himself.
The kid shuffled, drawing Shouta’s attention back to that pale, young face. “I can leave?”
“Yes,” Shouta agreed, and the child immediately began to stand on wobbly legs. “We can leave together. It would be faster for me to carry you.”
“You can’t touch me,” he said, surer than any other words that had left his mouth so far, only for him to immediately backtrack with a wince. “Please, don’t touch me.”
Watching as the child steadied himself against the wall, legs threatening to give out under his own weight, Shouta scoffed. “As if I’d let you walk out of here like that on your own, kid. What about over your clothes? As soon as we’re out, I’ll put you down.”
And the kid stared at him again, scanning him top to bottom, and Shouta knew that this was a child who had been hurt over and over again and didn’t know what it was to be helped, but he’d be damned if he let this kid walk out of here with no one to steady him. So as soon as the kid nodded, albeit hesitantly, Shouta got to his feet and slowly, gently, lifted the boy into his arms. His thin legs wrapped around Shouta’s waist as Shouta hefted him so they were chest to chest, and the kid could wrap his own arms around Shouta’s shoulders.
“Close your eyes, kid,” Shouta commanded softly as they made their way down the hallway, past the limp bodies of villains and lower lackeys that had resided at the base. Idly, he wondered if the kid had seen things objectively worse than the deceased bodies of those that had tortured him, but he hoped that he closed his eyes anyway. No need to add onto trauma unnecessarily.
As he reached the stairs leading back to the ground floor, he remembered the ignored earpiece still hanging over his shoulder and popped it back into his ear. “Eraser,” he checked in, heedless of the likely unnecessary conversation he was interrupting. “Basement cleared out. All targets incapacitated. Coming out now with civilian.”
He ignored the confusion brought upon by the mention of a civilian, since he was already reaching the door leading back to the street, where he knew a slew of cops, medics, and pro-heroes would be waiting. The kid, who had been completely still and silent for their walk away from his cell, suddenly twisted in Shouta’s grip, eyes widening as they neared the exit. Without straying his gaze from the door, he murmured, “Izuku.”
“What?” Shouta asked, surprised that the kid said anything without prompting.
“My name’s Izuku.” Then, as they pushed through the doors into the bright lights of police and ambulance sirens, he said, “Thank you.”
Izuku was taken from his grip almost immediately by the medics waiting on the street. He grasped tightly to Shouta’s capture weapon, though, during the transfer, so Shouta begrudgingly let him hold onto it as he reassured him everything would be fine so long as he let the doctors look him over. “I’ll be back for it later, kid,” he promised, waiting until Izuku relaxed in the backseat of the ambulance before he trudged toward Detective Tsukauchi.
Shouta found both Hizashi and Tsukauchi in the center of the chaos, in a heated discussion next to a cop car. Surprisingly, Hizashi managed to keep his voice down, and it wasn’t until Shouta approached that he was able to overhear their conversation. Unsurprisingly, it was centered on the unexpected minor found in the middle of a high-priority villain hideout.
“Eraser,” Hizashi greeted.
“Mic.”
Always hero names on the field; never let anyone sniff out personal connections to be used as weaknesses.
Tsukauchi simply nodded his head. “While I’m sure you’d love nothing more than to go home after a long night, Eraser, the presence of an unidentified minor… complicates things a bit. If you wouldn’t mind coming to the station with me, I can take your statement and we can figure out where to go from here.” The detective was always straight to business when it mattered, no time wasted on empty pleasantries. Shouta appreciated it.
Ignoring Hizashi’s wailing lament of a late night, Shouta agreed easily to Tsukauchi’s request. “I assume you’ll be questioning the kid as well?”
“We’ll have to.” Tsukauchi at least sounded reluctant to ask a likely traumatized child to rehash the circumstances of his trauma, but it couldn’t be avoided.
“I’ll go to the station with him then, assuming his med-eval checks out, of course. He has my capture weapon.” He ignored Hizashi’s quirked eyebrow—the capture weapon was a weapon after all and wasn’t something he trusted with just anybody—and moved on. “Problem children aside, did you at least get what you needed from tonight?”
The detective sighed. Not a good sign. “The higher-ups disappeared at the first sign of trouble, which was largely expected, but still disappointing that our countermeasures were insufficient. They disappeared in a dark mist. Some kind of warping Quirk, obviously, although we don’t know who was responsible for it. They could have been offsite for all we know. We did manage to capture some persons of interest, however, and the discovery of the child at least provides the potential for information, although it might be redundant with what we already know.”
Hizashi frowned. “Please tell me you aren’t planning to use a traumatized child as an informant for an extremely dangerous ring of villains.”
“I don’t much like the idea myself,” Tsukauchi admitted, “but if that is the best option to get what we need then it must be done.”
Sensing that Hizashi wouldn’t let this go down easily, Shouta nudged their shoulders together. “Your job is done for the night, Mic. Go home, get some rest. I can send you an update after the briefing.”
“Let me know how the kiddo’s doing too.”
Shouta nodded, and with a final push to get him moving, Hizashi disappeared into the crowd of emergency vehicles with an exhausted, yet somehow still overenthusiastic, wave. Once he was gone, Shouta and Tsukauchi headed to the ambulances.
Izuku lay across a gurney, drowning in the length of the capture weapon before Shouta reached to gently untangle it from him. His eyes were closed and his breathing steady, prompting an explanation from one of the two medics cutting through the fabric taped around his wrists. “He grew quite agitated when we attempted to check him over. Kiyoko-san was able to subdue him with her Quirk—”
“If an individual is tired enough, I can lull them to sleep with a lullaby of sorts.”
“—so we can remove his bindings. The indication of an unknown, touch-based Quirk does make things more difficult, however, since the majority of our healing Quirks rely on touch as well and using them now could pose a potential risk. We can still provide any necessary treatment through other means; it is just more complicated.”
“How long will he be asleep?”
“Indeterminate,” the medic with the sleep Quirk answered. “My Quirk forces the target to sleep until they can be considered ‘well-rested,’ which unfortunately is too subjective of a measure to accurately predict. Judging by the state he is in though, it will be at least twelve hours, likely longer. We can inform you when the patients wakes so you can take his statement, detective.”
“He’ll be taken to Musutafu General, correct?” Shouta confirmed. At the medics’ nods, he pulled a card and a pen from one of the many pockets in his jumpsuit and flipped it over to write on the back. “His name is Izuku. That is all the information I was able to ascertain from him, so for now, please list me as his medical contact until we find someone more suitable. This is the information you will need to reach me.” He passed the card to the first medic. “I will come by during visiting hours tomorrow.”
“Understood.”
The medics bustled around the gurney. They finally freed Izuku’s hands from the thick mitts, and Shouta only barely caught a glimpse of gnarled, crooked fingers before they finished strapping the child safely to the gurney and loaded him into the ambulance.
“I can provide my statement now, detective. Quicker I do this, the quicker I get home to rest, and it seems like it’ll be a long day tomorrow too,” Shouta grunted as they watched the ambulance drive away.
“If you’ll come with me to the station, I’ll even make you a coffee for the trouble.”
“Please do.”
“I cannot believe you just let me sleep on the couch, Shou! My back’s gonna be outta wack for ages!”
Shouta hid his smile behind the rim of his coffee cup. “I wouldn’t dare disturb you. You looked like you needed the rest.”
When Shouta had finally shuffled into his apartment earlier that morning, his husband had been splayed uncomfortably across the living room’s short love seat. Hizashi often attempted to stay up for Shouta’s return from late night patrols and missions, although he usually succumbed to his own sleep cycle quickly. Last night, he hadn’t even washed the hair gel from his tall updo, and despite all attempts to wrangle it into a high bun this morning, blonde strands still shot out at odd angles across his scalp.
It was quite comical, in Shouta’s opinion, even if it did lead to Hizashi halfheartedly grumbling about his poor decisions in life partners as they walked through the hallways of the hospital. Izuku was in the Victim’s Ward, a highly secure wing of the hospital meant for patients involved in villain attacks who still may be potential targets. Even after a year of long nights of recon and meeting with sketchy informants for this mission, Shouta still wasn’t entirely sure of the details surrounding the true intentions of the group of villains he had helped raid last night, with most of that information being classified from everyone aside for All Might and likely Tsukauchi as the lead detective. Yet even he knew that the group would be unhappy to find their prisoner in the hands of heroes and might decide to do something about it.
Hence the need for security guards dutifully lining the hospital hallways, eyes lingering on the out-of-costume pros walking past. When they reached Izuku’s room, Shouta was required to scan both his hero ID and fingerprint for the door to unlock, Hizashi doing the same behind him.
A small, prone, pale body rested on the hospital bed before them. In just a thin hospital gown, Shouta could see the full extent of the child’s physical trauma. For a brief moment, he allowed himself to be relieved by the lack of open wounds and fresh injuries, before focusing himself to look at the harm that has healed over. Izuku’s limbs were thin and frail, the bones of his wrists visible through his skin. Neat thin scars lined every inch of visible skin, too methodical in length and placement to be anything but purposeful, maybe even medical in purpose.
And his hands. The joints bent at odd, unnatural angles. Even in sleep, his fingers curled stiffly toward his palms, reminiscent of the talons of a bird of prey.
Hizashi hissed from beside him, pulling up a set of chairs to sit a comfortable distance from the bed. “Oh, poor kiddo. What did they do to you?”
Shouta almost didn’t want to know.
They didn’t wait long beside Izuku’s hospital bed before a grey-haired doctor bustled in holding a clipboard stacked with papers. After a brief minute wasted on pleasantries, the doctor recited what could be learned from Izuku’s medical analysis.
The patient was six years old.
No noticeable physical mutations indicating what his Quirk might be.
Touching the patient with gloves, or any other barrier, did not produce any noticeable Quirk effect. Direct skin contact had not been attempted
The patient was malnourished and dehydrated. An IV and special diet would be implemented to curb any lasting effects, but future issues caused by this were still a possibility.
All present injuries had long since healed, likely naturally rather than aided by Quirk.
The scars were caused by incisions and were of varying age. Some appear to have been healed for years, while others as recently as weeks ago.
No wounds seemed to have caused anything more serious than artificial damage, and even seemed to largely avoid the areas of major arteries and organs.
“The damage done to his hands is probably the most concerning,” the doctor continued, eyes only glancing up briefly from his clipboard as he talked. “There is evidence of several fractures to his metacarpals and phalanges, largely focused across his first and second fingers, which never healed properly. This is the same for both hands. He also has greenstick fractures on both the ulna and radius of his left wrist, more recent than the breaks in his fingers. It is likely that he currently has extremely limited movement and dexterity in his hands. We do have staff onsite with a Quirk which can realign his fingers into proper position, but it requires skin contact and will have to wait until we know the risks involved with his Quirk.
“This also doesn’t even begin to mention the possibility of psychological issues these circumstances might cause in a child so young. The mind of a child is incredibly malleable, after all, but that also means that there is the possibility for healing, even if it takes serious effort from those in his life from this point forward. A child psychologist will be offered through the hospital once he is awake and stable to better understand his mental state and the best methods of healing from this point forward.
“I understand you are not the patient’s legal guardian, but rather the pro-hero that found him after his ordeal. When it is determined whose care he’ll be entering, I will discuss his future needs for care with them. For now, I am happy to answer any questions you might have.”
Shouta had plenty of questions, particularly concerning what kind of twisted individuals could cause such misery on a vulnerable child, but that was illogical to ask a doctor who wouldn’t know any more than Shouta did. Beside him, Hizashi was just gazing forlornly at Izuku, looking as if he wanted to grasp at those clawed hands and only just refraining from invading the child’s personal space. “That’s all we need for now. Thank you, doctor.”
“Of course.” Finally looking up from his clipboard, which he hooked to the foot of Izuku’s bed, he frowned at the child sleeping before him. “There are terrible injustices in this world. I’m very glad that you got to him when you did, Eraserhead. I just hope that it was soon enough to reverse any damage that has been done.”
“It’s my job,” Shouta said simply, because it was, regardless of whether he shared the doctor’s grateful sentiments.
Hizashi scoffed fondly.
“Well, I’m glad just the same,” the doctor continued as he moved to the door. “He’s expected to wake up by this evening, and if you two happen to be here when he does, please press the call button to let us know. A few nurses will likely be in and out, just to check in on him throughout the day, but there’s not much else we can do except keep him comfortable until we know the details of his Quirk.”
“Thank you!” Hizashi called as the door shut behind him, volume just a little too loud to be appropriate for a hospital setting. He didn’t use his quirk, though, so perhaps he was attempting to dampen it.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, shoulders pressed together in some semblance of comfort as they simply watched the child breathe. At some point, Hizashi yanked out his hearing aids and rested his head on Shouta’s shoulder, but his gaze still never wavered.
“Does he have ID?” he signed after a moment, a little sloppily from his angle.
Grumbling, because his idiot husband knew Shouta couldn’t visibly respond when Hizashi wasn’t looking at him, Shouta jostled him until they were both sitting straight. Still, their knees slotted together, neither of them refusing the comfort of physical contact.
“Tsukauchi is looking,” Shouta responded, using the sign for true to denote Tsukauchi’s name. They’ve worked with the detective enough times to warrant the sign name. “He has nothing now.”
Hizashi grimaced. “Where will the kid go? If he has no one?”
At this, Shouta shrugged. It wasn’t particularly uncommon for children to be orphaned as the result of villain attacks, usually being placed in orphanages or foster homes. In Izuku’s case, however, he would likely need to be put in some form of protective custody, although Shouta isn’t sure what exactly that would entail for the child. “Maybe WP. But he might have family, people looking for him. We don’t know.”
“He’s so small,” Hizashi murmured out loud.
Shouta could only nod.
They both saw a lot of despicable shit as heroes, Shouta arguably more so if only because underground heroics often entailed breaking up the seedier aspects of crime. But cases involving children were always hard to come to terms with. He’d come across a few trafficking rings, the occasional serial killer that targeted children, and those cases still sometimes caused him to lose sleep at night. But for all these cases he’d worked before, the ringleaders were nothing more than lowly, disgusting criminals. Their work was sloppy and their overall impact on society at large was small.
In comparison, Izuku’s case was odd. Shouta had never heard of actual, bona fide villains taking interest in a singular child, especially not for extended periods of time. While he still needed to pester Tsukauchi for the full story on why this group of villains is such a concern, he knew enough to conclude that whatever it was, it was serious. Involving a child in what was undoubtedly a methodical organization of serious villains was extremely illogical.
Unless he was somehow of use to them.
Shouta rubbed his temples tiredly, ignoring Hizashi’s gentle, “you’re thinking too hard, darling,” as he pulled out his phone. He was going to get his answers one way or another, and since Tsukauchi would be the simplest way, it would only be polite to warn the detective beforehand.