Chapter Text
“All Might has apprehended All for One and the seven villains remaining on-site in Kamino. They are being transferred to Tartarus for processing. Shirakumo has been located with the villain known as Kurogiri, unconscious, at UA high school and is currently being transferred to Musutafu General Hospital. His condition is stable. Kurogiri is in protective custody. All heroes and other personnel report to their team leaders for further instruction.”
Shouta bursts through the hospital doors for the second time in forty-eight hours. Just the day before, he had promised Midoriya Inko that he would bring her son back. But Shouta had failed. Izuku had had to save himself.
(“You’re the only one!” Oboro had told him. “You’re the only one that can protect them!”
But Shouta hadn’t. He hadn’t protected Izuku or Oboro all those years ago. They were alone, and Shouta could do nothing.)
Nezu said, over the radio, that Izuku’s condition is stable, but Shouta’s nerves still boil despite the measly reassurance. It takes conscious effort to keep his hands from quivering at his sides as he hastily walks through the hospital, Hitoshi hurrying silently beside him.
Shouta isn’t sure if either of them have breathed since they passed through the hospital doors. “Stable” is open to interpretation, after all. They know, at least, that Izuku is alive. Izuku is not dying. But is he hurt?
(What happened to him when Shouta wasn’t there? Just how badly has Shouta failed this time?)
In the hands of Shigaraki, Hitoshi was strapped into a tight a muzzle that marked bruises and resurfaced painful memories, but Shouta had found him. He had held his son tight on the roof of a crumbling building and soothed his thumb over the marks imbedded into his cheeks. Hitoshi had been hurt, yes, but Shouta has saved him from the hands of villains before, so many years ago in that foster home, and Shouta saved him again now. This time, just like the time before, Hitoshi will recover.
But Shouta did not save Izuku. No one did. Alone, Izuku managed to claw his freedom from the grip of All for One, and he apparently dragged a hostage with him. He appeared miraculously on the roof of UA to only the watchful eyes of the campus’s many security cameras. Was he conscious, when the heroes finally reached him? Or did fall to darkness with only the chilling company of a villain beside him? Shouta didn’t know.
Izuku was alone, in his fearful capture and his courageous escape.
And he is alone, now, when Shouta and Hitoshi finally turn the corner to the hall leading to his hospital room. Midoriya Inko leans against the wall across from Izuku’s door, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.
Izuku is alone, until Hitoshi sprints down the hall, without casting Inko even a glance, and throws the door open. He disappears inside, and Inko stares blankly into the room through the brief opening. When the door shuts again, her gaze flits to Shouta.
He watches as she glances back to the closed door, and then back to him. Slowly, she shakes her head and heaves herself from the wall. Shouta thinks, briefly, that she is going to scold him—for breaking her promise, for failing another one of her sons like he had Oboro.
Instead, she walks past him and disappears around the bend of the hallway.
Midoriya Inko walks away, and Shouta follows Hitoshi to Izuku.
The tile floor of the room is coated in a cold layer of thin fog, rolling lethargically from the bed pressed against the far wall. Hitoshi has already pulled a hospital chair to the bedside, both hands lost in the sea of mist covering the sheets. His body curls inward, shoulders hunched protectively as he murmurs quiet reassurances.
The door closes softly behind Shouta, and Izuku lifts his head from where it’s tucked against Hitoshi’s.
“Hi, Sensei.”
And Izuku smiles. It’s a little wobbly, a little unsure, but it is so strikingly Shirakumo that Shouta nearly falls to the floor.
He is so lucky to still have a Shirakumo to smile at him.
It’s not Oboro’s smile, because Oboro is gone from Shouta’s own shortcomings. But Izuku is not Oboro, and he had not faltered even though Shouta has failed him all the same.
He sinks into a low bow.
“Izuku.” Despite the many times he had mentally rehearsed this, Shouta still needs to concentrate on forcing the words through his leaden throat. Not because he does not mean them, but the contrary. The weight of their sheer sincerity threatens to choke him.
“I cannot express how deeply sorry I am for not being there for you. Not only at the camp, when I was incapable of protecting you from villains, but in the time after as well. The fact that neither I nor any of my associates were able to locate you or coordinate your escape is frankly unacceptable. Not only should you have not needed to orchestrate your own rescue without the help of professionals, but a rescue should not have been necessary in the first place, because I never should have let you be taken. Had I done my job , you wouldn’t have ever been in any danger, but I was not enough to protect you. I failed. I failed Oboro, too, but this time I intended to do better—"
“Sensei.”
Shouta’s mouth clamps shut.
The fog lapping gently at his ankles feels colder, stiffer, than it had just seconds before. When Shouta finally looks up from his bow, Izuku’s feeble smile has disappeared entirely as he gnaws on his lower lip. Beside him, Hitoshi looks like he wants to reach out to stop him but settles for nudging his shoulder with their intertwined hands instead.
Izuku takes a breath. “Oboro’s alive. He’s... He was Kurogiri.”
Shouta’s world shudders. He has dreamt those words too many times for them to be true. He’s sleepwalked through alternate worlds where he’d been told that, and he’d rushed to Oboro’s side to kiss him like he always should have had the courage to do. He’s imagined himself graduating with both of his best friends beside him. He’s watched himself grow older with that blinding smile setting him alight and felt complete in a way he never could have otherwise.
And every morning, he wakes up in harsh and painful reality.
This is how he knows he could not have heard Izuku correctly.
(He’d only ever imagined that voice from the rubble, years ago. Oboro has since the moment that the building fell around him.)
But Hitoshi falters, as if struck, and asks “The warp villain?” and Izuku nods, and Shouta realizes that he did hear him correctly after all.
Oboro is alive.
“I don’t—The villains did something with him, with his body and his—his mind, to turn him into... that,” Izuku heaves. Shouta pictures Kurogiri—Oboro—watching apathetically as children’s lives were threatened, as Izuku’s life was threatened, as Shouta’s life was threatened. That would never have been the Oboro that Shouta knows. “It wasn’t him. Not—Not really. But I talked to him and begged him to help me, and that was Oboro. It was Oboro who helped me escape and took me to the roof. He’s still there. He’s alive.”
Knees trembling, Shouta falls heavily into the open chair beside Izuku.
“What—”
“I don’t know,” Izuku huffs. Beneath the layer of fog, his free hand twists tightly into the fabric of his sheets, so tightly that his knuckles turn white. Hitoshi untangles him gently, pressing so his fingers lay flat between his palms. “They tried to—to—”
He flounders, choking on a quiet sob.
“Me too. They tried to change me too.
“Whatever they did to Oboro... it wasn’t enough. The doctor said that too much of Oboro was still in there, but with me, I’d be perfect. He did something to my Quirk, and now it’s this, and he almost—He almost did it. I would’ve been gone, and I don’t think I could’ve come back like Oboro did. I would’ve been a monster—”
Hitoshi relinquishes his grip on Izuku’s hands to cup his cheeks instead, burying his fingers in the rolls of fog falling from his eyes. “Shhhh, you got out! You’re okay, Izuku, you’re okay.”
Hesitantly, Shouta places his hand on Izuku’s head. “You did good, Problem Child. You did so good. I wasn’t—I couldn’t help, not like I should have as your teacher, and you might feel that I have no right to say this, but I’m proud of you. And so glad that you are here now, safe.”
“Sensei,” Izuku warbles, sniffling, “you did help me. Even if you weren’t there, I knew you were looking for me, and you were trying. You’re my teacher, and a great hero, so I just did what you would have done. And it worked. You guided me. I don’t think I could’ve done that, gotten out, if you weren’t there for me, Sensei. Thank you.”
(“...the only one...”)
The air hisses from Shouta’s lungs, and he nods disjointedly. He doesn’t much trust his words right now, so he repeats “You did good, kid.” He ruffles his hand gently through Izuku’s curls and nearly chokes when Izuku tilts his head more firmly into the touch.
The soft, feathery weight of fog sliding through his fingers is achingly familiar from years long passed, and for the first time in years, he lets his thoughts firmly settle on Oboro and the fantasy of reuniting with him.
A fantasy that has somehow, miraculously, shifted toward reality.
A ruckus rises from the hallway outside. Threatening, barely restrained explosions frame a desperate voice declaring, “Out of my way, extras! We’re here to see my fucking brother, so move it!”
Izuku laughs softly, wiping the wispy tears from his cheeks. At his side, Hitoshi reaches for his hand, still wrapped in thick fog, and squeezes it tightly. Shouta lets his hand fall from his student’s hair to settle on his shoulder and squeezes firmly.
Shirakumo Izuku was never truly alone, and he never will be.
The next day, Shouta returns to the hospital with Hizashi and Hitoshi in tow. Not specifically to visit Izuku, although he intends to do so after the appointment. Instead, the elevator rides past the patient recovery rooms to the treatment centers, and an old doctor leads him and his followers to the physical therapy wing.
While Shouta had fully expected Hizashi’s company at his appointment—Hizashi hasn’t seemed to want to be alone much after being told the news about Oboro, having even spent the night on Shouta’s couch the day before—he had not expected Hitoshi’s. Shouta thought Hitoshi would detour to Izuku’s room during the therapy session and is admittedly surprised to see him sit in an armchair alongside Hizashi, apparently content to watch Shouta flounder through his exercises.
The following hours of repeatedly bending his knee to test range of motion, stretching it against a resistance band, and other inane exercises are not how Shouta wishes his son would see him, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever regret the decision that led him here. It may have been illogical for Shouta to join the recovery mission—unnecessary even, his subconscious spits bitterly—but he’d allow a chronically lame knee if it meant he could personally pull Hitoshi from the villains and remove that terrible muzzle himself. If it meant even attempting to keep his silent promise to Izuku, that he’d protect him better than he did Oboro.
So Shouta lets Hitoshi watch him struggle through simple exercises and refuses to let his frown slip into a grimace.
Shouta would never regret a decision made to protect those he loves, no matter how illogical, and he needs Hitoshi to know that.
After, when Shouta’s leg aches dully in the familiar pain of healing, Hizashi slips away, and Shouta and Hitoshi head to the patient recovery floor. The appointment had dwindled into late evening, and it’s well past visiting hours, but there are special perks that come with being a pro-hero constantly in and out of the hospital. Nobody bats an eye when they slip down the hallway to Izuku’s room.
Hitoshi, eager to see his not-boyfriend-but-almost-boyfriend, strides a little ways ahead of Shouta. He throws the door open and promptly stalls in the doorway. Shouta manages to stop just before crashing into him and peers into the doorway around Hitoshi’s head, dreading what complication might be lying on the other side.
(he’s dead, he’s dead, you left him alone again, and now izuku’s dead)
Izuku, still safe and still alive, sits upright in his hospital bed. Catching sight of his visitors, he smiles and waves gleefully, but Shouta can see the subtle tightness at the corner of his ticked lips. Exhaustion, or even a more general weariness weighs down his grin.
Beside him, Yagi Toshinori sits in a flimsy plastic chair, skeletal and pale. He looks sick, Shouta thinks, which should be expected after... recent events. UA staff had been told at this morning’s debrief that Yagi had been admitted to this hospital. According to Nezu, he hasn’t been able to assume his larger Quirked form since his defeat of All for One.
It was likely nothing less than a miracle that kept All Might’s Quirk from failing him at Kamino. Yagi must have clung to One for All by the skin of his fingers to have lasted so long, waiting for All for One to be in chains and the cameras to turn away before allowing his Quirk to rest.
Shouta wonders if he even has any of One for All left to offer Izuku, and if that has anything to do with his presence at his injured student’s bedside so long after official visiting hours.
Yagi stutters and rises hurriedly from his seat. “Ahem, I— I should be going, then.” He nods once to Shouta and his group, and then dips into a bow low enough that his bangs brush Izuku’s sheets through the fog. “Rest well, Shirakumo, and know that, should you ever change your mind, the offer will remain open for you. I wish you an efficient recovery.”
He turns, woodenly, and both Shouta and Hitoshi silently step aside to allow his exit. Yagi is halted mid-step, though, by a timid voice calling from the hospital bed.
“Yagi-san.”
Yagi twists his head, thick eyebrows raised into his hairline.
“Yagi-san, if you ever wish for some company... I won’t be discharged for at least another few days. Not until I can get my Quirk under control again.” He taps thoughtfully on the IV tube feeding water and electrolytes into his vein. “And you, uh, know where to find me.”
A smile, miniscule compared to the signature grin of All Might but just as bright, flits over Yagi’s face. “Thank you, Young Shirakumo. I will keep that in mind.”
And he disappears down the hallway.
Immediately, Shouta cocks his head, silently interrogating Izuku even as he assumes his established position in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Hitoshi is much less nuanced and darts to Izuku so quickly that he crashes clumsily into the bed as he crawls to tuck Izuku into his side.
“Did he want something?”
Izuku nods, pressing his teeth into his bottom lip, and stares a little emptily at the now closed door to his room.
An Izuku lost in thought is familiar to Shouta, and he taps his pointer finger twice against Izuku’s forehead to bring him back to the present. The skin there is a little cold, and a little clammy from being tucked beneath the flickering curls of fog, but Shouta notices that Izuku’s control of his Quirk seems to be somewhat tighter today, with only smaller rivulets of mist falling from his clasped hands.
Izuku jolts, eyes refocusing on Shouta, and Hitoshi presses an almost imperceptible kiss where his nose is pressed in the fog of hair.
“Sorry,” Izuku apologizes, unnecessarily in Shouta’s opinion, but it’s a habit yet to be broken.
“All Might?” Shouta prompts.
“Oh. I turned it down.”
An invisible tension disperses from the room. Shouta finally releases a breath he feels he’s been holding for months as he sinks minutely into his chair. The choice to accept One for All had been Izuku’s, and only Izuku’s, but Shouta had still semi-privately believed there was a correct decision. Miraculously, Izuku resisted the fantastical temptation of power that Shouta feared would inevitably cost his mind, soul, and life.
To hear that Izuku made the rational, safe choice for once... Shouta is relieved.
Hitoshi is, too, as he tugs Izuku’s hands into his and leans forward to say, “You don’t need it,” with all the gravitas he can muster.
Izuku knocks their shoulders together. He glances at Shouta. “I know. I’ll be a good hero without it, I think.”
Shouta rolls his eyes. “We still need to work on that confidence, Problem Child. You’ll be a great hero by the time I’m done with you.”
Izuku beams, a blush creeping beneath his freckles, and he ducks his gaze to his lap. The fog pooled there writhes and, after a moment, disperses entirely.
A small part of Shouta worries, secretly, that Izuku’s Quirk will never be the same, not after the doctor tried to twist his DNA into the abstract monstrosity of a Nomu’s. It is almost inevitable that Fog has been permanently scarred by Izuku’s time spent as a lab rat. This new version of his Quirk is something strange and mutated, feral and untamed. Immeasurably stronger and all-around unfamiliar compared to the Quirk Izuku has cultivated since childhood. Now, Izuku struggles to direct the fog into obedience and shape it as skillfully as before. When his attention slips, he fails to even contain the moisture within himself and deteriorates as uncontrolled fog falls to the floor in sheets around him.
A larger part of Shouta, though, wholeheartedly trusts that Izuku will adapt like he’s always proved to before. He’ll learn the new facets of this Quirk and find a way to use them for his own advantage. After all, he managed an amazing feat when he faced the League, creating a fog cloud large enough to obscure the entire warehouse and still pay enough attention to sense every movement within the mist. Compared to Izuku’s performance in class before, he wasn’t capable of anything of that scale, and judging by Izuku’s meager control over his Quirk now, it had likely only been adrenaline and desperation that allowed him to do it then.
Still, Izuku has proven that he can use his Quirk as it is now, and he can use it well. He only needs to learn to be able to call on Fog voluntarily without relying on the pressure of another deadly situation. If only because Izuku will never be in such a helpless situation like that again, as far as Shouta is concerned.
Izuku is already learning, already practicing, and already improving. He’ll undoubtedly reach the same level of incredible control that he had before and become the hero he is destined to be.
And Shouta will be there to guide him until he does.
“You’re doing better,” Hitoshi murmurs, watching the fog in the room wane until only a few wisps dusted the tile.
Shouta nodded in silent agreement, but still fixed Izuku with a stern look. “Don’t overdo anything, Problem Child. Just focus on not dehydrating yourself, and we’ll work on everything else once you get back to UA, got it?”
Izuku doesn’t respond, rolling a ball of mist between his palms. This time, Shouta doesn’t knock him out of his thoughts and simply waits for him to gather himself.
“They want me to visit him—Oboro—once I’m released.”
Shouta stiffens. There are a lot of questions to follow that statement, especially considering Shouta hasn’t been given any recent information on Oboro-slash-Kurogiri’s wellbeing or whereabouts. Izuku doesn’t immediately explain, though, and just continues to fiddle absently with the fog rolling through his fingers, thinking. Shouta and Hitoshi share a glance to confirm their agreement that, for this, they’ll wait as long as Izuku needs.
“He’s here, in the hospital. There’s a special ward, in the basement, for injured villains, and they have him there for now. Sedated. They aren’t sure what state he’ll be in when he wakes up, or who he’ll even be, but they think that since I was able to get through to him before, having family there when they bring him back might be helpful. They asked my mom, I guess, but she... She said she couldn’t see him like that, so now there’s just me.
“I was wondering, Sensei—I already asked, and the detective and the doctors said it would be fine—but I was hoping you might go with me? To see him?”
Izuku won’t meet Shouta’s eyes. He sits in his hospital bed, quiet and timid with tears of mist running down his face, and Shouta realizes that Izuku expects to be rejected. He expects to face the resurrected ghost of his brother alone, after his mother turned away from her sons.
Of course, seeing Oboro again will be inevitably painful. Shouta’s denied himself to even imagine something like this for years, and now it has been presented to him as a warped version of his greatest fantasy. For all anyone knows, Oboro regaining himself once was nothing more than a fluke, and now they will be left with nothing but a monster wearing his face.
But Shouta has already promised that Izuku won’t be alone again, and he certainly won’t be leaving him alone with something like this. Not when Izuku has even more to lose than Shouta does.
“Of course I will,” Shouta promises. “But don’t push your recovery, Problem Child. Let yourself heal, take as much time as you need to, and then we’ll face Oboro together.”
Shortly after, Shouta leaves Hitoshi and Izuku a moment alone under the guise of finding more tasteless hospital coffee. He should call Hizashi, too, to update him on Izuku and Oboro and how Shouta feels a breath away from teetering over the edge of a cliff he cannot see.
But he finds Yagi in the cafeteria and his immediate priorities shift.
He is sifting through a tray of bland-colored food, a stark white hospital wrist band dangling loosely from his thin wrist. Sunken eyes find Shouta’s, and he nods to the empty seats of the table. Shouta sits at the bench across from him.
Yagi tells him, “He said no.”
“I heard. Will you accept his choice?”
Yagi sighs and sets down his fork, staring blankly at his hardly-touched food. “I am disappointed, of course, but that decision is his. However, the decision for a worthy successor was mine, and I made my mind up long ago. I won’t retract my offer, nor will I extend One for All to anyone else. A Quirk like this belongs only in the hands of someone exceptionally special... If it is not him, then it is nobody. It’ll remain in my possession until he chooses to accept it, or the Quirk will simply die with me. I know no one else worthy of holding this power other than Shirakumo Izuku.
“With or without it, he will be the next Symbol of Peace.”
It takes Izuku four days to control fog well enough that he’s not constantly on the edge of dehydration. When Shouta meets him outside the hospital the day after his discharge, fog still pools in a shallow puddle around his feet, but its density is much more sparse than the overflow had been days before. It no longer rolls from Izuku’s hand in thick waves and instead follows like a long cloak trailing behind his every step.
As expected, Izuku waits alone, but his head shoots up and he smiles, albeit feebly, at Shouta’s approach.
“Thank you for coming, Sensei.”
“Of course.”
Shouta sets a hand on Izuku’s shoulder and allows himself the comfort of squeezing it just once, feeling the solid flesh of his student beneath his palm despite Izuku’s appearance that a strong wind would blow him away. His skin is pale and ghostly, and he is eyeing the opposite end of the street like he wishes he could run, but Izuku is here despite that.
They are about to be face-to-face with someone Shouta thought he would never see again. Someone Izuku never thought he would ever get the privilege to meet.
Oboro.
“Are you ready, Problem Child?”
Izuku exhaled slowly, releasing only small wisps of fog to curl along his breath. His fingers tighten around the strap of his bulging backpack. “Yeah, let’s go.”
Shouta lets Izuku set their pace and follows just a half step behind. He winds through the hospital hallways and stairwells with only slight hesitation. Shouta would bet money that he had memorized the path to the criminal-treatment ward in the late hours of the night when his anxiety kept him from rest. Shouta would have done the same.
To ease the echoes of their solemn footsteps, Shouta asks, “What’s in the bag?”
The responding blush brings some needed color to Izuku’s face. “Just, uh, some things I thought might help...”
Shouta lifts an eyebrow inquisitively, and Izuku stops to swing his backpack in front of him and unzip it. Inside, Shouta sees the leather binding of some worn books with the glossy corners of loose photos peeking through the pages, and shoved in the bottom of the pack, a bundle of achingly familiar brown fabric.
Shouta is silent for a moment too long, perhaps, staring at the visible square of jacket, and Izuku slowly tugs the zipper shut. “I thought maybe these would remind him of, well, you know, who he was? It’s just the old scrapbooks I found at my mom’s a long time ago, and his old jacket, too.”
“Smart idea.” Shouta nudges Izuku gently, and they continue down the stairs. They’re close now, and it’ll do them no good to stall. “Did you bring any pictures of yourself?”
Izuku chews his lip but ultimately nods. “Yeah, I did. I don’t wanna assume that he’ll want to look at them, really, but I have a few. Just in case.”
Shouta knows without any doubts that Oboro will want to see them. Even if there is only a tiny remnant of the Oboro that Shouta once knew hidden in Kurogiri’s body, he’ll ache to know that he missed fifteen formative, important years of his baby brother’s life. Photos won’t be enough to remedy the despair of being nothing more than a stranger—or worse, a villain—to Izuku, and he’d be desperate to reconnect with him.
Shouta doesn’t say this out loud, though. He doesn’t know what awaits them in that hospital room, if there will be any inkling of Oboro to forge the brotherly relationship that he and Izuku both deserve.
He refuses to give Izuku undue hope.
The stairs eventually lead them to a heavy metal door. Shouta presses the buzzer on the wall, and they are quickly let in and ushered through a security screening more reminiscent of a prison rather than a hospital. Shouta watches as they rifle through Izuku’s bag for any paraphernalia. When they finish, Izuku hugs the bag tightly to his chest as they follow a guard down the hallway.
Either side of them are large windows, likely paned with one-way glass, that open into empty hospital rooms. Further down the hall, presumably where rooms are occupied, guards are posted outside each door. Their guide stops them at an earlier door, spaced fairly distant from the rest of the rooms, and a doctor greets them. She explains that Kurogiri—Oboro—has been sedated since being brought to the hospital, and they’ll be incrementally lowering the sedative dosage so that he slowly comes back to consciousness over a twenty or thirty minute interval. The hospital has no means of counteracting a Quirk as versatile as Warp aside from strapping Kurogiri to the bed to prevent his own escape, so Shouta and Izuku will be trusted with preventing any portals from opening themselves.
Izuku doesn’t seem to pay much attention to the doctor as he stares through the observation window that Shouta has been resolutely avoiding. He fears that he might not have the strength to follow Izuku in if he looks now and doesn’t like what he sees, and he can’t risk it.
Finally, when the doctor realizes that her medical jargon is too much for their anxious minds, she presses a long code into the door’s keypad and holds it open.
Izuku enters first, but Shouta is no more than a step behind. They go in together.
And there is Oboro.
Shouta hasn’t seen Oboro for over a decade, but he’s thought of him every day since his disappearance.
Shouta hasn’t seen Oboro for over a decade, but he has seen his brother, and he has seen Oboro every day in Izuku’s smile.
Shouta hasn’t seen Oboro for over a decade, and he never let himself imagine seeing him again, but now Shirakumo Oboro lays only two feet from Shouta, and he is alive.
He is taller than he had been, when they were kids, and his face is gaunt with features sunken. Sharp corners of bone push against the pale skin of his joints, and his breaths rattle shakily through his oxygen mask. The mist of his hair, once a vibrant neon blue, has faded into the sullen grey of clouds before rain and rests flatly against the damp fabric of the pillow. Trickles of fog, faded that same soft grey, roll from beneath his eyelids to fall across his cheeks.
This is Oboro now, Shouta realizes. A sleeping statue of muted colors blurred by the hazy fog surrounding him. But he is here all the same, fingers twitching minutely in his sleep, and Shouta and Izuku can only accept what they can get.
The two of them sit on the cold tile, sinking into the grey mist steadily mixing with Izuku’s eerie green. From his pack, Izuku pulls out the scrapbooks one-by-one and places them neatly before him. Shouta sees that he reaches for the jacket, too, but pulls away just as his fingers brush the fabric. He leaves it in the bag for now.
Telegraphing his movements in case Izuku decides to stop him, Shouta reaches for the closest scrapbook. Izuku watches him, but says nothing, so Shouta tugs it so it sits between them and flips it open.
For the next few minutes, they are silent as they look at the photos. The book is dated the year that Izuku was born. It was the same year that Oboro disappeared—died.
The very first page is a picture taken in a hospital room. Their mother is only partially visible laying in the bed out of frame. In the center, face ruddy with a blush and clouds of tears brimming his eyes, Oboro smiles gleefully. He holds a doe-eyed, potato-shaped baby so that their cheeks press together so forcefully that the baby’s lips quirk into a lopsided grin of its own.
Both Shouta and Izuku stare at the picture, running their fingers absentmindedly over the faces of the brothers trapped in the past, and then they flip the page.
This scrapbook of Oboro’s final year abruptly ends not even half way through, going from a photo of Oboro grinning in his hero jacket to nothing more than empty pages. Shouta sighs and moves to tuck the book away, when a thin stack of loose photos slips from between the remaining pages and scatters to disappear beneath the fog.
Shouta helps Izuku gather them, moving slowly enough to observe the photos for himself. They’re all of Izuku and Bakugou Katsuki, aging drastically between them. There is one of them as toddlers, hands outstretched above them sparking small explosions and dripping thin fog. In another, elementary Izuku hugs Katsuki close, and their proud grins are short a few teeth. There are a couple of them from middle school, judging by their uniforms, and another of the two of them holding copies of their acceptance letters from UA.
The most recent, from what Shouta can see, must have been taken probably only days before the summer camp. Both boys are dressed in their hero outfits and posing dramatically. Bakugou’s smirk can be described as nothing other than feral, one clawed hand held in front of him so his palm faces the sky. The large explosion blooming from his glove is enough to illuminate their faces in a stark orange light. Izuku’s smile, while still somewhat shy, is one of the largest Shouta has seen from him. Both of his arms are flexed in a way Shouta finds comical, so that the line of his biceps shows through the thick sleeves of his jacket, and a wall of fog floats behind them as a greenish back-drop.
The patch declaring his hero identity as Loud Cloud is visible enough to be read even from the distance of the picture.
Izuku hesitates when he slips this photo back between the pages of the scrapbook and bites his lip. His eyes seem to catch on that bright patch, same as Shouta, before he finally tucks it away. Silently, they move to the next book, dated a year earlier than the last one, and continue to move backwards in time as they wait.
They don’t wait much longer.
Steadily, the beeping of the heart monitor increases its pace, and when Shouta recognizes the tempo of an average resting heart rate, he gently lifts Izuku’s hands from the open pages to close the scrapbook. Izuku, who looks up at Shouta with hesitant eyes, takes the hint easily enough. He sits back and tucks his trembling hands into his lap.
They watch as sporadic twitching of cloud-laden fingers grows to shifting of the head and shoulders to crinkling of the nose and downturn of the mouth.
Finally, Oboro opens his eyes.
For a flash of a moment, his irises are covered by the yellow haze. But then Izuku, rising slowly from his seat on the floor, calls “Oboro?” and Kurogiri recedes. What’s left is a soft grey, the same shade as the misty shock of hair, that stares blearily at Izuku hovering awkwardly at the side of the bed.
“Oboro?” Izuku repeats. “Do you remember—Do you know who you are?”
Oboro only squints.
A cold claw chokes at Shouta’s throat. This body in front of him, it is only a ghost. A remnant of a friend he has lost long ago. Even now, Shouta doesn’t know if he will ever come back.
Gingerly, Izuku places his hand atop Oboro’s. “Do you know who I am? Do you remember, Oboro?”
“Izuku?”
If Shouta were standing, he thinks he would have collapsed. The voice is quiet and raspy like a whisper, but he knows that voice. He’s heard it boisterous and gentle and even sad. He’s heard it murmuring soft words against his cheek. He’s heard it calling his name, hoarse and muffled by the rubble of a falling building.
(“Shouta!”)
He staggers to his feet. By the bed, Izuku nods vigorously and wipes the fog pouring from his eyes with his free hand. His other Oboro has shifted to grip tightly between his own bony fingers.
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me, Oboro. I’m Izuku. And I brought a—"
“Shouta?”
Those eyes of frosted glass focus on him, and Shouta realizes that there is a shade of blue in there after all.
Shouta breaks through the ice in his veins. “Oboro.”
He steps closer, aching to be near, to touch, but he is hesitant to encroach on what should be Izuku’s moment, his impossible reunion with a dead brother.
But Izuku smiles, tearful yet so content, and Shouta lets himself into their space. He wishes to hold Oboro, to sit on the bed beside him and press their sides together to feel every inch of solid, present flesh, but now is not the time. He settles for dropping a hand to Oboro’s shoulder and stands near enough to Izuku that the kid instinctively rests against him.
Oboro flicks his gaze carefully over their features. Occasionally, his eyes would lose their focus, covered again by a glossy sheen, before he reigned it back with a furrowed brow.
“How long?”
“Fourteen years,” Shouta answers. Oboro blinks at him slowly, and Shouta wonders how much he himself has really changed over the years. His hair is still unkempt and shaggy, his eyes still sunken into dark circles. He is taller, sure, and his chin is covered with stubble that he didn’t have at sixteen, but Shouta is surely more recognizable than Oboro is now.
But Oboro’s gaze swings slowly, tiredly, to Izuku and stays there, and Shouta realizes that of all of them, Izuku has grown the most.
The last time Oboro had seen Izuku—probably with a kiss and hug good-bye before he left, smiling, for the internship that would mean his doom—his brother was a baby. An infant who cried and giggled and couldn’t yet babble Oboro’s name.
The brother standing here now is not that infant. He is grown, a teenager by most standards and an adult by the standards of those who know what he’s been through. With age, his features have taken a familiar shape, and his Quirk has shown itself, and the combination has distinguished him to be a Shirakumo through-and-through.
To Oboro, his baby brother has jumped forward in time without even a meager glimpse of the stages in-between.
Shouta squeezes Oboro’s shoulder, as comfortingly as he is able, and does not release the pressure when he speaks.
“You’re...”
“I’m Shirakumo Izuku. Your brother,” Izuku croaks. He’s still futilely wiping the fog from his eyes, but every time it is replaced by a fresh torrent of tears. “I turn sixteen next week. July 15 th .”
Oboro nods. He seems dazed as he looks at Izuku and lifts his quivering hand, with Izuku’s still clasped in it, to brush the freckles of his brother’s cheek. “Fourteen years,” he murmurs, then repeats, “Fourteen...”
A haze covers his eyes again, and Shouta jerks forward when it doesn’t clear right away, until he sees the dam of mist building along his bottom lid.
Looking back on it, Shouta doesn’t think he’d ever seen Oboro cry. Not happy, bright, optimistic Oboro who smiled even as a building collapsed atop him.
But he cries now, a gaunt mirror reflection of Izuku’s silent tears in front of him. The resemblance is undeniable.
“Your brother is a problem child if I’ve ever seen one,” Shouta says, hoping to staunch the tears before they suffocate from the climbing humidity. “Beat everyone else’s score in the entrance exam by short circuiting a ten-story robot for no good reason.”
“I couldn’t just leave Ochako there!”
“Like I said: a problem child.”
Oboro croaks, “You... UA?”
Izuku flinches, steadied only by Shouta’s support. “You don’t remember what I said, back at the base?”
“Base?”
Izuku glances to Shouta, and Shouta shakes his head. If Oboro doesn’t remember the base, or the League, or the ordeal leading to his loss of autonomy, then now would not be the time to remind him. Shouta has seen cases similar to this before, where heroes lose their time spent in torturous conditions, and the memories never seem to truly be absent for long. When these memories return, they do not do so quietly, and the trauma follows its victim like a plague.
Shouta knows that Oboro’s situation is different in so many fundamental ways that this may not be the same case, and if he never remembers Shigaraki or All for One or Kurogiri, then that might be a rare blessing of the universe... but from Shouta’s experience, pain and torture always manage to haunt their host in some way. It is just the way of the world.
For now, though, Oboro deserves this peace of forgetfulness. They’ll cross the bridge of inevitable questions when they get to it.
“I’m a UA first-year,” Izuku explains, accepting Shouta’s cue to skip over he and Oboro’s actual first meeting for now. “Class 1-A. Aizawa-sensei is my homeroom teacher.”
Oboro shifts his gaze to Shouta, evidently still lagging but expression otherwise unreadable, before returning to watch Izuku reverently.
“I’m sure he’d like to see pictures as proof, Problem Child,” Shouta guides, and Izuku hurries to dig through the stack of scrapbooks and memorabilia left at the foot of the bed.
“Thank you.”
Shouta jerks back around. Oboro’s words were so quiet that Shouta questions whether they were inexplicably for him, or just a deferential exhale to the universe. Oboro’s face is still slack, either from drugs or exhaustion, and his voice too raspy to decipher much tone, but he looks at Shouta steadily, gaze unmoving, until Izuku pops back up from the floor.
The gratitude must have just been murmured into space, Shouta decides. Oboro is so relieved to be reunited with his little brother that he could no longer keep it to himself.
Even if it were to have been meant for Shouta, there would no reason. What would Oboro have to thank him for after all these years?
(“You’re the only one who can save him.”)
“I have some photos, um, of me and Kacchan over the years,” Izuku says, stealing away Oboro’s attention once again. “But I brought you something else, too. I thought you might want it back.”
Reverently, Izuku passes Oboro his jacket. Oboro stares, for just a moment, and runs a finger over the worn patch over the breast.
“Your hero name. What is it?”
Izuku beams. His smile is only vaguely shadowed by melancholy and thoughts of ‘What if?’, and Shouta is proud. There is much for him to look forward to. There is much for all of them to look forward to, now that they do not need to be anchored by the past.
“I’m Loud Cloud.”
Shouta and Izuku sit on the edge of the bed, cushioned by a blanket of soft fog, across from Oboro, and they move forward together.