Chapter 43

Toshinori wakes up in a cold sweat, again.

He grasps at the fading flashes of troubled dreams, snatches of words and voices that slip from his grasp like fine sand. He keeps his eyes closed and his breathing slow, fighting to stay in that hazy limbo between sleep and reality, in an attempt to carry thoughts from one world to another, but it comes to nothing in the end. Toshinori opens his eyes to a pounding heart, a tired mind, and no more answers than he ever had before.

Transferring his life from one place to another was done almost thoughtlessly; his place of residence is less a home and more a place to keep things and sleep occasionally, and his private room in the new Heights Alliance dormitory serves those purposes just as well. The fact that he's having trouble sleeping has nothing to do with where he happens to be; something tells him these fears and worries would follow him from the dubious comfort of home to the ends of the earth.

The only thing that sticks with him is a voice—because that voice was not from a dream, but was very very real.

You believe yourself the savior of the world, when you failed to save someone who should have been so close to you—Shigaraki Tomura, born Shimura Tenko.

Toshinori shuts his eyes, curls up on his side as if he can ward off the memory.

What would your precious Nana say, if she knew that you had failed her own grandson?

(He can't. Can't escape the memory, can't demand answers from a dead man, can't even hear the frantic whisper so close to his ear, not your fault, Toshi, never your fault.)

Izuku wakes up warm.

He wakes up pleasantly drowsy, which happens rarely. Usually he wakes up feeling like death warmed over, or feeling wired and restless—nothing in between. Waking up in the morning is rarely comfortable, and yet here he is now, curled up warm with his cheek pressed against—

Something rises and falls under his arm, and Izuku's eyelids drag open.

Ah. Right.

There's only one pillow, and Izuku has apparently foregone using it in favor of mashing his face against Todoroki's shoulder instead. He has an arm thrown loosely over his friend's torso, rising and falling slightly as Todoroki breathes.

Before Izuku can gather his thoughts back into organized sets, Todoroki stirs, his steady breathing shifts, and suddenly Izuku isn't the only one awake anymore.

It's… disconcerting, almost. A lot of things make perfect sense in the wee hours of the morning, only to turn out odd and strange and confusing once the sun rises and common sense returns.

For example—he knows, logically, that Todoroki was the one who held his door open, didn't protest when Izuku took the silent invitation, and then literally invited him into bed. They may not have exchanged a single spoken word, but it all felt very clear and straightforward at the time. All the clutter in his head and the uncertainty that came with being awake at ass o'clock in the morning pointed to a clear course of action, and Izuku had taken it.

But now it's morning. Now it's all gone, the darkness and the fear and the nightmares that still felt semi-real, but Izuku's still here, lying in Todoroki's bed and using him as a pillow while they both wonder where they stand now.

At least, Izuku's wondering. He can't say for sure what Todoroki feels at the moment.

A stab of unreasonable panic has him sitting up, disentangling himself from Todoroki as carefully as possible. Embarrassment runs through him, thick and sticky and uncomfortably warm, and the split-second view he has of Todoroki's face only makes it worse, because Todoroki looks every bit as awkward and embarrassed about this whole thing as Izuku feels.

He'd rather not endure an uncomfortable silence, nor force Todoroki to ask him to leave, rather not have to hear it and be unable to answer back. So instead, he signs a quick thanks for letting me stay that he's sure Todoroki doesn't even catch, and makes a hurried exit. Thankfully there's no one out in the hall and his own door is all of two steps to the right, so Izuku ducks in and tries to settle his nerves in the solitude of his own room.

He realizes, rather belatedly, that he left his cat.

Training kick-starts that very morning. They have quite a bit of lost time to make up, considering that training camp got cut down to all of three days. (Izuku wonders if the three subsequent days he spent locked in a hellhole will make a difference. He didn't get much combat practice in; he mostly just ran around, talked to ghosts, and cried a lot.) The provisional license exam is coming up—if they pass, it will mark their next step toward becoming heroes. It's only a glorified learner's permit, and they'll still be restricted in what they can do, but it will authorize them to take action against villains in the future, without the threat of legal consequences.

Izuku grinds his teeth as Aizawa-sensei tells them all of this. He sees the back of Uraraka's head whenever he faces forward, and if he glances to the right he can see Kirishima two seats down. He has to turn a bit further to see Iida, Todoroki, and Yaoyorozu.

They came so close to getting expelled after coming to help him—he thinks. He only really has Aizawa's word to go on that, and the man does have a history of fibbing to make a point or motivate them. But it could have happened. It would have made sense for it to happen. It wouldn't have been fair, but it wouldn't have been out of nowhere, either.

He hopes they all pass. Then, if there's a next time, maybe they won't have to risk their futures for the sake of saving lives.

Then he hears what the order of business for the day is supposed to be, and Izuku takes a deep breath and lets it out in what sounds suspiciously like a sigh.

Uraraka twists around in her seat—in Bakugou's old seat—and her face is lit with a blinding grin. "Special moves!" she whisper-shouts at him. "I've been brainstorming lately—how about you, Deku?"

He shrugs. He has Full Cowl, but that's not a special move so much as a way for him to use One For All safely at all. He's imitated All-Might's signature smash moves, but he hasn't been able to manage any of them without breaking bones, and… well…

He's not All-Might, is he? All For One was twisted, manipulative, and evil, but he wasn't quite wrong about everything. All-Might is All-Might, and it's up to Izuku to learn from him but not to be him.

Their teachers are going all out for this; Izuku never expected anything different, but it's extra-clear when they reach the training ground for today. Besides Aizawa-sensei, they're joined by Midnight, Cementoss, and Ectoplasm. While Aizawa and Midnight instruct them one-on-one, Cementoss tailors the environment to their individual needs, and Ectoplasm spawns dozens of clones to use as training dummies. Explosions fill the air—Bakugou's already getting started.

He's got a head start already, Izuku knows—he's been making up moves since his quirk first came in, and he's already got several ready that just need improvement. Everyone else is dispersing, talking to Cementoss for requests, asking Aizawa for help, or going off to do their own thing. Uraraka's already airborne, looking determined but slightly green.

Eventually, the only one still standing near him is Rei.

"Near" is a relative term, of course. Her attention is turned outward, watching his classmates train their quirks and figure out new applications, and Izuku finds himself watching her, too.

His hands flutter at his sides, finger-spelling along with his rapid-fire thoughts. He has two options, the way he sees things: either keep developing his use of One For All the way he was before the villains showed up, and hope something comes of it eventually, or try to think of something new. Something he hasn't quite tried before. There's an obvious solution to his problem, of course. If he wants to be someone who isn't All-Might, someone who isn't even all that much like All-Might, then the best place to start is the part of himself that All-Might doesn't have, and has never had.

It all comes back to his first quirk.

"Having trouble?"

Izuku jumps, half-turns in midair, and catches himself so he can properly face All-Might. There's a split-second moment of alarm when he sees that he's surrounded by students in his true form, not his hero form, but—

Oh. Right.

His mentor smiles at him. "Did I sneak up on you, just now? I don't think that's ever happened before."

Izuku manages to smile back, but he's not sure it's completely convincing. All-Might looks… upright. He's standing upright and seems to have no problem doing so, but…

He's injured still. Bandages cover his forehead, his arms—one of which is in a sling—and at least part of his chest, judging by the edge of white peeking out from beneath the loose collar of his shirt. Izuku is used to seeing him in this form, but for the first time, All-Might looks so breakable to him. There are extra shadows beneath his eyes that Izuku knows he's never seen before, and now that he's looking at All-Might properly, he can tell that there isn't much behind the smile.

Are you okay to be out here? he starts to ask, but over All-Might's shoulder, Nana shakes her head at him.

"Let him help, kiddo," she says. "He needs the distraction. And I'm pretty sure that you don't not need the help."

I was distracted, Izuku says instead. I'm trying to work out what I want to do.

All-Might nods. "Just remember—" He hesitates, and his lips go pale when he presses them together for a moment. "Don't—you know not to copy me. Right?"

His voice goes soft when he says that, his face troubled, and Izuku tries not to wince. It's uncomfortably close to what they've both heard from All For One. But it's not wrong, in fact it's the rightest thing either of them know at this point. They haven't even had the chance to talk about it—what All For One said and did, what Izuku saw, how he feels about escaping his grasp, how either of them feel now that he's dead.

I know, Izuku says, before it can get more awkward. But it's harder to figure it out when I only know what not to be, and not what I'm supposed to be. He activates Full Cowl, feels the power course through him—not all of it, but enough, and that's the frustrating part. He has what he needs. He just doesn't know what to do with it yet.

"It's not an easy answer," All-Might says. "And unfortunately, it's not one that can be fed to you. Because what you're supposed to be is you, and at the end of the day, no one else can tell you what that means—oh dear."

He turns as something falls out of his back pocket. While he's looking away, Izuku takes the opportunity to shoot a glare at Rei for slipping it out in the first place, the little menace. All-Might heaves a sigh and looks as if he's about to try and stoop to retrieve it, in spite of his injuries.

Relaxing his power, Izuku darts in and picks it up before he can strain himself. It's a book, and Izuku sees the cover before he can think better of it.

Teaching for Dummies.

All-Might looks terribly embarrassed, and it's a lot easier to grin at him when he looks like that. Izuku holds the book out, then shoots a quick sidelong glare at Rei when she tries to grab it and snoop. He feels the book tug in his grasp, and pushes it into All-Might's hands before Rei can try to steal it back.

Rei's hand is so close to All-Might's, pale but solid-looking to his eyes, that for a split second Izuku's heart clenches when her fingers nearly brush against his.

Full Cowl is back before Izuku even registers activating it.

There's—that's something. He's not just making it up, it's not just in his head, that's something and maybe it can become even more. Maybe…

"Young Midoriya?" His attention snaps back to All-Might. His teacher is looking at him closely.

Sorry. Have an idea. I'm gonna go test it.

All-Might smiles again, and moves on to speak with Jirou. Another explosion rocks the facility, and Izuku can hear him raising his voice to be heard. Izuku considers signaling Nana, but she doesn't know sign that well and it would take too long and draw too much attention to try to communicate with her. He'll stick with Rei for now.

Taking her hand, he leads her to another part of the training ground where cement columns provide some cover, far enough away from the others that he's not worried about being overheard. He activates Full Cowl, glances at his teachers to make sure they aren't watching and won't think he's sneaking off to slack, and turns to Rei.

I want to try something, he says. And I need your help to do it. She stands a little straighter, eager and interested, and Izuku takes a deep breath and settles his thoughts.

It had been a wild, chaotic moment. He hadn't thought much of it, not when it was happening and not now—it had just happened, and there hadn't been time, and after everything was over he'd been too focused on knitting his mind back into something resembling order and reason. He'd been running on pure instinct at the time, and couldn't have worked out if it was something concrete or just a vague feeling in the heat of the moment.

The dead had been everywhere, countless souls crowded around him, reaching out for him as they pushed him toward freedom. And in that moment, some part of him had reached back.

Tell me if this… I don't know, feels bad, he says uncertainly. Rei nods, and Izuku reaches for her.

It's hard to recreate that feeling, here in a controlled environment instead of a screaming battlefield in the middle of the city. But Izuku does his best, taking Rei's cold hand, reaching inside of himself, and pushing.

Her form flickers, hair writhing, and she shoots up off the ground and sends concrete dust wafting up. Alarmed, Izuku lets go, but she seems okay. A little dazed, maybe, but not unhappy.

You okay? Izuku asks.

Fine, she says blinking. Feels funny. Sort of… buzzy.

She floats back as she answers, and hits the closest cement column.

As in, she actually hits it. It stops her.

Rei blinks. Izuku blinks.

Slowly, she turns around and puts her hand to it. She can still phase through it like a mirage, like she always does, but it's not automatic. She can touch it, too.

Rei looks upward. On top of the column, maybe ten feet off the ground, is a chunk of cement about half again as big as her head. It's probably rubble blown this way by Bakugou's quirk, and it's far bigger than anything Izuku has ever seen a ghost be able to move.

In a blur of black and white, Rei flits up to the top of the column, and gives the cement chunk a hard shove. As Izuku watches, the chunk goes tumbling off the top of the column, and lands with a scrape and a thud on the ground near where Izuku stands.

Izuku gapes. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, he'd seen a broken TV nearly fall on All-Might's head. But that had been a heavy and unstable mass, balanced in an already precarious position on a rickety stack of garbage. It had been dislodged, not pushed, and the culprit had been a very upset, very volatile poltergeist.

Rei rejoins him, passing mistlike through the column on her way down. I think it's gone now, she says. Whatever it was. Can we do that again?

Ochako has a pretty good vantage point, ten feet off the ground. Her stomach is protesting vehemently, but it's taking her considerably longer to puke than it used to, so she counts it as progress.

The edges of her vision are beginning to blur when she sees a familiar little figure in black and white, just within her peripherals. But when she turns her head, all she sees is Deku standing in the middle distance, quirk activated.

She releases her quirk to give herself a break, and sighs with relief when the vertigo eases.

A month or so earlier, she might have convinced herself that nausea was making her see things, but now—

Well. Now she knows better.

The first day of end-of-summer boot camp runs long and hard. It's hardly the worst training Shouto has ever experienced, but it's considerably more intense than the usual school training, and it leaves most of the class worn out. For his part, Shouto only feels comfortably tired by the time they're released back to the dorms, and he only becomes aware of how bad it is for the others when he and Iida walk into the common room and find their classmates sprawled out on the couches, looking half-dead.

Iida's booming voice reaches every corner of the room. "That was an excellent day of training! Remember to go to bed earlmmfff!" A couch cushion nails him in the face, followed by furious shushing from Uraraka, Kirishima, and Asui.

"Pipe down, Iida!" Uraraka whisper-shouts, and it's easy to see the reason—Midoriya is slumped against her side, apparently fast asleep.

"Oh!" Iida lowers his voice as well, which is quite a feat for Iida. "My apologies! Though—perhaps it would be better for him to return to his room? We may all be tired, but a little rowdiness is par for course in our class, and he might appreciate being able to sleep without being disturbed."

Uraraka gives him a positively wounded look, and Shouto can kind of understand why. Moving Midoriya means waking him up first, and he looks peaceful enough that it feels wrong to do so.

"Nope! Too late!" Another stage whisper comes from Kaminari, wandering over with a marking pen twirling in his hand.

Uraraka's wounded expression turns venomous.

Kaminari grins with pure mischief on his face. "Hey, if he didn't want to get pranked then he shouldn't have fallen asleep down here, am I right?"

"He's not wrong," Asui says dryly, and disregards the glare that Uraraka throws at her. "Just don't wake him up, Kaminari-chan."

"'Course not, wouldn't dream of it." Kaminari crouches down so he can reach Midoriya's face with a steadier hand, and he must not sense the impending death close by. That's his own fault—Shouto is much farther away, and even he can see the murder in Uraraka's eyes.

"Kaminari," he says, about to warn him, right before main lamp flickers and goes out. It doesn't exactly plunge the room into darkness, but the change from well-lit to dim is jarring enough.

Kaminari pauses, the pen dangerously close to Midoriya's sleeping face, and glances around. "Aw, c'mon, what gives?"

"It's an electrical light," Kirishima points out. "Why don't you take a look at it?"

Kaminari snorts, but stands up anyway, the pen slipping from his fingers as he turns away. "Whoops, hang on—oh come on, where'd my pen go? Uraraka, did you kick it under the sofa?"

"No—uh. Yeah, I did." Uraraka levels another glare at him. "You're not getting it back, and I'm telling Momo not to make you another one."

Kaminari rolls his eyes and goes to check the light. He's only a step away from it when it flickers back on, as bright and steady as if nothing happened. "Oh, boo, I lost a pen for nothing."

"Karma," Asui says, and it's echoed raggedly by most of the others. Iida pulls Kaminari aside for a stage-whispered lecture on being considerate to classmates during their off hours, and Shouto moves to find his own seat. He's not quite tired enough to go to bed yet, and he doesn't mind the company.

Uraraka catches him by the wrist as he shuffles past her. "Hey, Todoroki, I'm glad you finally got here," she says in a hushed voice. "Switch with me, I have to go to the bathroom."

"What?" Shouto says, but doesn't fight her when she manhandles him into her spot and transfers Midoriya's limp, slightly-drooling head from her shoulder to his. Uraraka springs to her feet with a sigh of relief.

"You're a lifesaver," she tells him, and rushes off to the first-floor bathrooms.

Midoriya barely moves through the entire exchange, not that Shouto blames him—he spent at least the second half of the day just on quirk-strengthening exercises, so it's no wonder he's tired. Shouto's tired, too—his muscles ache, and his whole body aches in that peculiar way it always does when he strains his limits when using his quirk. But it's easy to sit on the soft couch, to angle himself into a comfortable surface for Midoriya to sleep on, to regulate his quirk to a pleasant level of warmth. It's easy.

He has no idea why it's so easy to offer comfort, when he's spent his whole life being denied it, but that's a train of thought that he's not quite prepared to have while surrounded by quietly rowdy classmates who tend to joke in the face of sincerity. Maybe he'll ask his mother about it, the next time he sees her. It seems like something she'd know about.

Eventually, they all drag themselves upstairs and into bed. Shouto's sorry to see Midoriya wake up, but Midoriya himself barely seems to notice as he limps his way up to the second floor. The only time he shows signs of wakefulness is when he fights the others' attempts to herd him into the elevator, so Shouto resigns himself to helping drag him up the stairs instead. He leaves Midoriya at his bedroom door, and that's the last Shouto sees of him for the rest of the evening.

This time, when Shouto wakes up with the sensation of fingers slipping from his grasp, he's alone. He can't turn his head and reassure himself, because there's no one else in the room with him. Logically he should know that Midoriya's right next door, alive and well and probably too tired to deal with this nonsense, but it's hard to have a grasp on logic when you've just woken up in a literal cold sweat in the middle of the night.

His room is a double-edged sword. The familiarity is calming, tatami flooring and the softness of a futon and comforter, but at the same time familiarity brings memories, not all of them pleasant. He sleeps well on a futon with tatami mats underneath him because that's all he's ever known, but he's known them at the same time as he's known other, far less pleasant things.

Shouto blinks, and finds himself standing in front of Midoriya's door.

He doesn't want a walk and a drink of water. He knows what he wants, he knows what will help, but…

He hesitates. Of course he does. He's had bad dreams before. He's carried himself through bad nights. He can do it because he's always done it, because he never had a choice, because asking for help got him shouted at or worse, so why is it so easy to do it now?

He stands there for a good few minutes before the door opens, Midoriya's tired face peers out, and Shouto feels positively wretched.

It must show on his face, going by the fact that Midoriya doesn't shut the door on him. Instead, he opens it wider. Midoriya stands to the side, and the invitation is as clear as it was when Shouto offered the same.

It's dark—too dark to see All-Might's face in the posters on the wall. Midoriya's already shuffling back toward his bed, shifting Mika to one side, when Shouto halts in the middle of the room.

He's sleepy and miserable, but not so much that he's forgotten the awkwardness of the previous morning. He remembers, and he's not eager to repeat ittomorrow.

"Is this okay?" Speaking feels wrong, and Shouto doesn't know why. Is it the darkness? The late hour? The fact that Midoriya can't answer back the same way? "I didn't mind. But if you—I mean. I don't want to bother you. You don't have to—

Midoriya turns back to him and sighs audibly. He sounds put upon.

Not with his presence, Shouto realizes. Just with the questions. The hesitation. His classmate signs something, but it's dark and Shouto is still a beginner. He catches the sign for 'sleep' but no more.

Midoriya sighs again, and for a single vague instant, Shouto feels as if he's being nudged forward.

He hasn't slept in a bed since his last hospital stay. He hasn't slept in a real bed since… ever. It's softer than his futon but not as soft as he expected. Sleeping so high off the ground is something he'll never quite get used to. But Midoriya is there, and Midoriya has this odd knack for making things easy, for making complicated things a great deal simpler, and for quieting the thoughts in his head until Shouto knows what to do.

Shouto falls asleep, and stays asleep, and it's easy.

Things fall into a routine for the rest of the week. During the day, Izuku trains both of his quirks. With One For All alone, he pushes the limits of his endurance, fighting to bring up his maximum percentage without causing injury. He spars with his classmates, with Ectoplasm's clones, with anyone who isn't Bakugou. A hairline fracture in his wrist sends him first to Recovery Girl and then to the Support Department, where eager-eyed Hatsume Mei listens to his requests and modifies his costume to have proper support for his arms.

Rei helps with the other half of his training, and eventually so do Tensei and Nana and Narita and even Hino. Izuku fills notebook pages with observations and scribbled theories. He's empowering the dead, both with his presence alone and with an active use of his own power. He's not sure how it happens, yet, or how to make it stronger. He wishes there were someone he could ask.

(There could be, he reminds himself whenever All-Might is near.)

At night, he sleeps as much as he can. He doesn't go to Todoroki for every nightmare. Sometimes they aren't bad, sometimes they're the old nightmares of past ghosts and closet doors, and he can suffer through those without bothering anyone else. He only dreams about Kamino a few times—when he does, it sends him to the room next door, heart in his throat as he crawls into Todoroki's bed and fights back his terror with firm, solid reality. The next morning, they wake up and don't talk about it.

They probably should. Hino says they should, and even Rei keeps giving him disapproving looks whenever he flees back to his own room. But Shouto's sign is barely passable outside of fingerspelling, and this isn't a discussion to have over text—is what Izuku tells himself, when he puts it off yet again.

The nights he spends by himself are probably obvious to the others. They're too polite to say anything, even when he nods off during the day, even though he only ever does that on other people—he dozes on Kirishima's shoulder over breakfast one morning, and that's sort of what takes it from an amusing novelty to an actual Thing.

It's a quiet, easy transition. Izuku weathers gentle teasing from Kaminari and Sero and a few of the others. For some reason they only get really insufferable when it's Todoroki's shoulder he nods off on, but he's never quite awake enough to try analyzing that.

He doesn't see why it's so funny, anyway. It's just easiest to shut his brain up when he's around Todoroki. Being around him is comfortable. It's safe in a way that Izuku never quite feels on his own. They're good friends, and that's part of being good friends, isn't it?

Gradually, as days pass and he spends more time training and surrounding himself with friends, it starts to feel less and less like he has a padlock on his tongue.

Shouto wakes up to Mika trying to wash his hair. There's no pillow under his head, because Midoriya seems to have stolen it at some point during the night, and he raises his head with a soft groan at the crick in his neck. It's a tiny noise, but still enough to wake his friend. Midoriya stirs and snuffles quietly on his left, and Mika leaves off grooming Shouto's hair to sit on his head.

Midoriya groans at this, and the sound is thunderous—both because the room is silent, and because it's technically the first time Shouto has heard his voice in weeks. It's not even words, but it's still good to hear.

His friend sits up with a yawn, spills Mika to the floor, and untangles himself from the covers before getting to his feet. Reluctantly, Shouto rubs sleep out of his eyes and follows.

There's something weirdly endearing about Midoriya when he's just woken up. Shouto remembers once describing him as equal parts chatty, cheerful, creepy, and vicious, and early morning Midoriya is none of those things. He's quiet, and was quiet even back during training camp before everything went wrong, he's good-natured but not excessively cheery, and it's impossible for anyone to look creepy or vicious with outrageous bedhead and pillow creases on their face.

Thanks, Midoriya says, and Todoroki may be not be well-versed in sign yet, but he's seen that one enough to recognize it easily. It's what Izuku always says, when they do this. In fact, it's all he says.

Shouto only hopes they can gather the nerve to say more, once Midoriya's voice comes back.

A cold spot between his shoulders becomes a tickle up his spine, and Shouto rubs the back of his neck to ward off the feeling of goosebumps. He must be letting his quirk loose in his sleep again, because his room feels draftier than normal some mornings. He hopes Midoriya doesn't notice; would he even bring it up if he did?

Without further fuss, Midoriya opens the door to return to his own room, only to startle as soon as he steps outside. Hearing his sharp intake of breath, Shouto pokes his head out into the hallway.

Aoyama stands just outside his own door, hair mussed from sleep, wrapped in a robe that's just a bit too fancy for a high school dormitory. He stares at them, wide-eyed with surprise, before his face breaks out in a wide grin.

"Ohoho, my goodness," Aoyama chuckles, lifting his hand to his mouth so that it looks as if he's trying to hide it, without actually hiding anything at all. "Only a week in? You two certainly didn't waste any time. Though, don't let me interrupt anything!" With a broad wink, he strides off down the hallway to the stairs, leaving Shouto wondering what any of that was supposed to mean.

Oh, well. Aoyama's always been theatrical and odd.

Shouto gets down to the common room before Midoriya does, though about half the rest of the class beats him there. Iida's there, of course, as well as Yaoyorozu, Bakugou, Aoyama, Shouji, Tokoyami, Satou, Asui, and Ashido. The latter catches sight of him first, and shows her teeth in a grin.

"Morning, Todoroki! Didja sleep well?"

Shouto blinks, vaguely surprised. "Yes?" Ashido's friendly and outgoing enough that being addressed by her isn't that big of a deal, but Shouto isn't usually a target for her relentless good cheer.

The grin on Ashido's face becomes teasing. "Really, now. How well?"

"Like a rock." Shouto moves into the kitchen. Someone's already put coffee on, and he pours himself a cup. He's going to need it, if Ashido's decided to be extra friendly today.

"So, then you wouldn't be able to tell us anything… interesting?" Ashido asks. Shouto is about to ask her to get to the point when Asui chimes in.

"Mina-chan's trying to fish for gossip," she says. "You can ignore her if you want, it's none of her business."

Ashido's over-exaggerated pout gets a chuckle from Yaoyorozu and Aoyama, which Iida quickly drowns out. "Ms. Tsuyu is absolutely correct!" he says sternly. "It is none of our business, and Todoroki is not obligated to answer anyone's questions, and neither is Mi—neither is anyone else, provided they are being responsible about this." He shoots a quick, sidelong glance at Shouto, then concludes, "What consenting parties do behind closed doors is no one's business but their own."

Bakugou chokes on a mouthful of coffee and slams his mug down on the counter so hard it's a miracle it doesn't break. "Nope!" he bursts out. "Fuck this. Fuck all of you. Fuck everything." With that, he storms out. Iida sighs heavily and goes to clean out the abandoned mug.

Shouto searches the rest of his classmate's faces for some kind of explanation as to what's going on, but no one's looking at him, and they're all desperately trying to look innocent. Midoriya comes trotting out to the kitchen only a minute later, and it only seems to make things worse. Ashido doesn't try to wheedle answers out of him, but she does sit at the table and look ready to explode.

It's too early for this.

Once Izuku manages to duck out of the main room and out of sight, he signs so forcefully that he nearly whacks himself in the face. They think we're WHAT?

Instead of answering, Rei doubles up and laughs so hard that the lights in the common room flicker.

Izuku leaps over a sweeping kick from Iida. It's a close thing; Iida doesn't use Recipro Burst to make it, but his quirk makes him wicked fast all the same. He follows up with a second kick that nearly knocks Izuku off balance, and in the blink of an eye Iida has him on the defensive. It takes the upper limits of Full Cowl just to stay ahead of each blow, and Izuku focuses his power and pushes at those limits as far as he dares. He springs back onto a cement platform to gain some distance, but Iida doesn't let him stay far away for long.

Sparring with Iida is good for this kind of exercise. He's the only one in class who's faster than Izuku is with Full Cowl, and his costume is mostly tough armor, so there's some room for error.

It also helps that Izuku has barely ever sparred with him before, so Iida keeps him on his toes.

He's different from Todoroki, that's for sure—though maybe that's because he knows Todoroki's fighting style forwards and backwards, so any variation stands out. But Todoroki's best with ranged fighting, and that shows through even in hand-to-hand. He dodges mostly, keeps his opponents at a distance before getting in close to take them down as quickly as possible, with a well-practiced throw or blows aimed at pressure points.

Iida avoids close quarters too, but only because he mostly attacks with devastatingly powerful kicks, and he needs space for that. At first glance, his fighting style seems entirely unique to someone with his quirk, but the longer they spar, the more Izuku sees.

That's another advantage to sparring with Iida; Izuku's learning a lot. Having Tensei close by to call out encouragement and advice doesn't hurt.

(Except it does hurt, but for different reasons.)

In a split second, Izuku sees an opening, and lunges for it. It's far from perfect, being his first try, but he still manages to catch Iida by surprise with one of his own kicks, replicated with Full Cowl instead of Engine.

It's not lost on his friend. Iida takes the hit and stumbles back, and even though his face is hidden by his helmet, Izuku hears him laugh.

"You got it!" He holds up his hand, and the two of them pause for a breather. "I'll have to be more careful doing special moves around you. You have a good eye, Midoriya."

Izuku signs a thank you, and Iida answers with an inexpert but still understandable you're welcome.

"He's right," Tensei remarks. Rei's already off on her own, imitating some of the high kicks that Iida was performing. "You have a good head for analysis. And, if you get the chance, could you tell him he favors his right a little too much? It makes his moves that much easier to predict."

Izuku nods, without thinking, and then freezes when he sees Iida watching him.

It's so easy to forget that his secret isn't a secret from everyone anymore. That there are two people in his class who won't write him off if they see him doing something odd.

A deafening explosion and crack saves him from whatever might have come next. At the top of one of Cementoss's high platforms, Bakugou is sharpening new techniques with his explosions. The whole class is pretty spread out. Ojiro is on another platform with a few others, apparently giving an impromptu martial arts tutorial. Others, like Uraraka, are working on quirk endurance. Still others are experimenting; Izuku can't quite tell from this distance exactly what Tokoyami is doing with Dark Shadow, but it sure does look interesting.

At ground level, their teachers pick their way through the students, offering instruction and guidance wherever it's needed.

"It seems All-Might is here as well," Iida remarks. "Is it wise for him to be here, do you think? This area is hardly safe, what with all the volatile quirks nearby."

Izuku looks at him, shocked and a bit confused.

"I know," Iida sighs. "He's All-Might, and it seems absurd to worry about his safety, but still. Things are different now, and he… he just isn't the same as what he once was. Not physically, at least. I know his heart hasn't changed, and he's still the same person and the same teacher we've known, but… but now he's…"

Izuku opens his mouth to reply, but he can't figure out how to put the words in order. Iida isn't wrong, not completely, but—but All-Might hasn't changed, not as much as everyone thinks. All-Might was already like this, already weakened and frail beneath his bluster and the fumes of One For All. In the difficult months leading up to the entrance exam, Izuku trained under him in this form just as much as he did under his hero form.

He's about to try to find a way to drag the words out of himself when another explosion resounds from Bakugou's platform. It's followed by cracking, and then the rough scrape of broken concrete before Bakugou's voice rings out.

"Get clear, it's coming down!"

A massive chunk of concrete, dislodged by Bakugou's latest attack, tips off the edge of the platform and goes tumbling to the ground below. Full Cowl is out before Izuku looks to the spot beneath it and sees All-Might standing there.

He's far away—too far away to outrun gravity. But One For All hums within him, and there's a presence at his side and a hand in his, small and cold and familiar.

"Go, Rei," he hisses, and pushes a thread of his power out of himself and into her.

She flies, and no one else sees— how she shoots through the air like an arrow from a bow, and cannons into the falling concrete in midair. It's almost as big as Izuku is, but Rei hits it hard enough to shift its trajectory, so that it crashes down on empty ground. All-Might stumbles back, startled but unharmed.

Rei perches on top of the chunk of concrete, now cracked from the impact, and grins like a pale little jack o' lantern.

The others check on him, fuss over him, scold him gently for carelessness, but Toshinori barely hears them.

All he hears is Aizawa's words, Back again, All-Might? Don't overdo it, you're still injured and it might not be safe. All he hears is Bakugou shouting from the top of the platform, Be more careful, All-Might!

His hands shake, both the one hanging at his side and the one hanging in the sling. No one's told him that in a while, no one's meant it like that—who would say something like that to All-Might, of all people? Who would ever worry over All-Might's safety, in the face of something so silly as a little falling debris?

Is this what I am now? Someone who has to be protected by others?

Now, of all times, when I've only just realized a failure?

How am I supposed to fix it when I can't protect even myself?

How am I supposed to make it up to her when I am this?