I'm Still Here

Shoto knew that Aizawa-sensei probably has talked to him about it already. The police did. Maybe Bakugou too? The two of them had some kind of strange relationship of almost friendship or something.

Still, he had sought out Shoto.

He tried to drown out the strange feeling of satisfaction at that.

"Do you know when sometimes ..." Izuku started, his voice was almost absent. Shoto looked at him closely. "You think about the things that could have happened?"

He frowned at that, nodding slowly, even if not, he was not sure what he was talking about.

The green eyes finally looked at him and Shoto noticed that they were red. Izuku had cried, he was sure. Not that it was absurd, he was always crying, but this time there was something different. Something very wrong.

"Everything ... everything that could have been different. If I had made another decision, turned around another corner. Maybe there's another me out there, in another universe, living the life I should have lived, you know? "

"Midoriya, you're not making much sense."

He heard a laugh at that, the other boy hugging his knees to his chest.

"Yeah, you're right." His voice was small. "I'm just thinking. "

Shoto made a sound of understanding, intrigued by the whole situation.

"I think I better go."

Shoto almost nodded in agreement but paused. There was a strange feeling in his chest that said that if he let Izuku out that door, he wouldn't see him anymore.

It was irrational, but the fear was there.

"You can stay if you want." He offered very quickly and received an expression of relief in response. He knew there that he did the right thing, even without understanding what was happening.

The two organized themselves while pulling another futon for Midoriya, perhaps closer to his than it should be, but they were friends.

Izuku was his friend. And he wanted his friend to be fine. Izuku was afraid of being alone at the moment, for some reason.

The two lay in silence and after a while, Shoto reached out to him in the dark, who immediately grabbed his hand. It felt right.

He was drifting off to sleep when he heard a whisper, close to his ear, so low that he wondered if he had heard it:

"I'm still here."

..................................................................................

Shoto woke up in the infirmary. He felt confused and had a terrible headache.

Recovery Girl made an exasperated sound with her tongue, emerging from somewhere when he tried to get up.

She left for a while after checking him out, ignoring his questions about how he got there. The last thing he remembered was sleeping on his futon, holding Izuku's hand.

Aizawa-sensei appeared in the company of the heroine, a stoic expression on his face.

"What happened?"

His brow furrowed in concern.

"Do you not remember?"

He denied it, feeling intrigued. His head still hurt, but he didn't want to go back to sleep at the moment, not without understanding what was going on.

"You had an accident during training yesterday and hit your head. You spent the night in the infirmary. "

And with that, he started to lecture him on security. Shoto had lost control of his quirk and knocked a wall over himself. It was a little embarrassing. And strange, he had not lost control of his quirk since he had started using both sides of it. When he questioned this, Aizawa-sensei looked at him strangely, as if he had said something wrong.