Chapter Text
“And if you worked at U.A.—”
“I already said no,” Shota responds. “If applying is a prerequisite for you to take me to Recovery Girl, I’ll wait to heal naturally.”
“Oh, come on,” Kayama whines. “I’m just having a bit of fun.”
Shota would shrug, but his shoulders are still too sore for that. Most of him is too sore. Being in U.A. is making it worse, probably. He barely remembers these hallways, but he can see Shirakumo’s corpse at the end of every one.
“Hey, by the way, why did I only find out about you getting kidnapped two days after you escaped?” Kayama asks. He can hear her perfectly well, but he doesn’t reply. It’s probably rhetorical.
He’s staring at the end of the corridor. He’s looking at an image burned into his mind.
“Does your emergency contact know me and Yamada exist?”
She steers him around a corner when it becomes clear he won’t move by himself.
“You have an emergency contact, right?”
“Sure,” Shota’s voice says.
He’s still there.
“You don’t have an emergency contact,” Kayama apparently decides.
“I have…” he waves the arm he can in the air. “People. In the police.”
“Friends?”
“People.”
Shota moves forward first, instead of Kayama leading him. Now that they’ve gotten closer, the turns to Recovery Girl’s office are like muscle memory.
“So when I ask you about your friends you’re in a rush.”
“I’m too busy for friends,” he replies.
“Coworkers you’re friendly with.”
“I work best alone.”
They’re outside Recovery Girl’s door now. Kayama looks sad. That’s her problem. He moves to push open the door.
“I just… really think working here would be good for you.” The door is locked, so he knocks. “We’d all be at U.A. again, the three of us.”
Shota freezes. “The three of us,” he repeats.
He feels… small inside himself. But the parts of himself he can feel are tensing with rage. “The three of us,” he says again, stuck on repeat.
Recovery Girl opens the door, just as he manages to make his mouth say something. “I’m never going to work here, if that’s the only reason I can get healed, then I’ll go now.”
“You’re my friend, idiot,” Kayama says. Her voice is quieter than usual. It’s weird. “You’re my friend, and you got kidnapped, and hurt, and you’ve got no one.”
Shota just… looks at her. At the reflection of Shirakumo’s corpse in her eyes. And he doesn’t say anything.
“What did you get into this time?” Recovery Girl interrupts. Shota sits on the bed. Now he doesn’t have to think of a response to Kayama. There’s a part of him that doesn’t want to break it to her. The same part of him that still answers her calls, decided to come down to U.A.. The same part of him that texted her and Yamada, two days out, because he needed somebody to know.
Illogical.
“I didn’t ‘get into’ anything,” he replies. “Broken arm. Back and shoulders got kind of messed up, but they might just be stiff. A couple head injuries but no concussion. Got strangled once. Injected with… something, waiting on a blood test. Generally beaten up,” he lists. In the corner of his eye, he sees Kayama look away. Recovery Girl takes it in stride. She was his favourite of the staff when he was still a student. They didn’t agree on everything, or most things, but she was no-nonsense. It was refreshing to have someone else who talked plainly. Who didn’t flinch.
Maybe it’s professional detachment.
“I’ll heal the arm and maybe the back first. Your neck doesn’t look bad, does it hurt to breathe?”
“Not anymore. Sometimes swallowing hurts.”
They go through a list of questions until she’s satisfied. He lies down in preparation for her to use her quirk. Before she does, he sees Kayama over him. For a second, his heart rate picks up.
“It was like pulling teeth but… I’m glad you came, Aizawa.”
Recovery Girl kisses him on the cheek. He can feel exhaustion start to overwhelm him.
“Why?” he mumbles.
“We’re friends. I want you to be okay.”
Maybe that part of him falls asleep first. “That’s illogical,” he slurs, half asleep. “I’m going to die.”
When he wakes up, both of them are here.
He doesn’t have the energy for this.
Shota tries to prop himself up on his now-unbroken arm, but falls back down almost instantly. Shoulders haven’t been healed yet.
“RECOVERY GIRL!” Yamada shouts. “HE’S AWAKE!”
He’s not even using his quirk, so Shota can’t shut him up.
Yamada smiles brightly at him. He opens his mouth to speak, but Recovery Girl whacks him with her cane. “Both of you, out. This is private.”
Yamada pouts. “Okay, see ya, Energy Saver!”
Shota watches them go. Very deliberately doesn’t feel any way about it.
“I have to ask you a few questions,” Recovery Girl begins. “Have you had any suicidal ideation in the past few weeks?”
Shota grits his teeth. It’s either homeless or suicide risk. “I’m not suicidal. Can we skip this?”
“You have to answer the questions.”
“No. Obviously. If I wanted to kill myself, I would just slit my throat at home and not waste anyone’s time,” he snaps. “Can you just… finish healing me? I have work to do. I really don’t want to sit through whatever psychological assessment.”
Recovery Girl sighs. “Fine. But your friends are worried about you.”
Shota turns his head to look at his arm. It’s his arm, bloody and bruised and broken, speckled with flecks of crumbled concrete.
“They’re always like that.”
He spends three days at U.A., three days in the place he never wanted to see again. He doesn’t have anything against the place, not really, not the place at least. Just the memories it holds. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but if any place is haunted, then it’s U.A. He can’t be the only one seeing Shirakumo’s ghost in everything.
He runs into a student getting a twisted ankle fixed and stops dead, because it’s him for a second. The corpse of his best friend sitting on a chair in the main room of Recovery Girl’s office. And then it’s a teenage girl, looking at him weird.
Once he’s healed enough and can walk more than a couple steps without feeling like he’s about to collapse, he leaves. It’s the middle of the night, but there’s a train running. And this way, no one tries to say goodbye.