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“So, will you do it?”
Shouta looked at the kids before him – really looked. Midoriya was the only one with a hopeful expression. Shinsou’s was carefully blank in a way no ten-year-old should be capable of. The two Todoroki’s were looking at him with blatant mistrust, while Toga watched him sharply.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, leaning up against the damp alley wall. “This is crazy, kid. You have to know that. You’re a bunch of runaways asking for backup from a pro hero with complete amnesty for this and a vow of silence?”
Midoriya only nodded, eyes still hopeful but face resolute. “We can’t do it without your quirk.” He scrubbed at budding tears, looking at the empty space behind Shouta’s shoulder. “We’d finally be free.”
Shouta pulled at his hair roughly, tangles tugging sharply on his scalp. He crouched done, eye level with Midoriya. The kid was so small yet so heart-stoppingly brave and filled with so much kindness it was a wonder he hadn’t burst. It was no wonder he’d attracted the other runaways. He bit his lip hard enough to taste metal before letting out a harsh sigh. “If I agree to this, you let me help you. All of you.”
The elder Todoroki moved to speak but Shouta held up his hand to quiet him down. To his surprise; it worked. “If I do this, we get you into foster homes. I contact family –“ he didn’t miss the way they all froze at that. “- and we’ll see if it’s safe to have you put back with them.” They all loosened slightly. “We get you into school and off the streets and –“ His traitorous voice left him for a moment. He wouldn’t cry. He couldn't. “We get you off the streets and I don’t have to identify you in the morgue when you pickpocket the wrong villain.”
The younger Todoroki looked at him with what could have been a spark of hope. “You won’t let dad hurt Touya and me?” Shouta nodded.
“He won’t touch a hair on your heads. Your father may be number one but we have Nezu on our said. Power means nothing in the face of the smartest thing in Japan, promise.”
Midoriya smiled. It was a wobbly little thing, like he hadn’t had reason to in a very long time. He held out his pale hand, already so thin and laced with countless fine scars. “Deal?”
Shouta took it in his own. The boy’s fingers were freezing. “Deal.”
From his place in the wings, Shouta wouldn’t help but contemplate how small Midoriya looked in the mess of pipes and machinery. Only a child and he’d already seen more action than most pro heroes. All Shouta knew, all the child had told him, was that the scarred man half-hidden behind medical equipment was the reason Midoriya was so scared. Why he ran. Why he refused to go home. He knew with a certainty born of years on the job that the man was a villain. No civilian hid, scarred and twisted, in the bowels of the city hunting children too kind for their own good.
Still.
Still.
Midoriya had briefed him in hushed whispers about the man’s quirk, his empire, glancing nervously around them the whole time, voice never rising above the slightest whisper. It didn’t take long to figure out why. The older Todoroki and cornered him, the burns that licked his cheeks stretching uncomfortably as he’d snarled at him. “If you drop your quirk, he’s dead.” The ‘and you’ll be soon to follow’ was unsaid but heavily implied in the unnatural heat in the boy’s hands. Shouta had only nodded.
He was starting to regret not asking what they’d come here to do.
Midoriya crept closer, bare feet silent against the ground. Toe to heel, letting it roll gently, breaths shallow and slow. He’d warned the kid about the time limit of his quirk and he seemed to have taken it to heart, getting heart-stoppingly close to the sleeping villain before raising his hand to signal Shouta. Shouta flared his quirk, praying the kid would be fast enough.
He wasn’t expecting the villain to jolt when his quirk took hold. He wasn’t the kid to slip by his side in a silent lunge, whole body wracked with tremors.
He wasn’t expecting the knife in Midoriya’s hand.
Without hesitation he plunged the knife into the man’s neck. Shouta heard the wet crunch from his vantage point as it ripped through the cartilage of his throat. He saw the villain jerk, blood pulsing bright and red from the wound, a sick gurgling noise echoing through the bunker as blood filled his lungs. Shouta watched because he couldn’t look away.
The man laying there had no face.
Midoriya gagged but he didn’t stop, tearing the knife to the side with more strength than his small frame seemed able to hold, a brief smattering of sparks seeming to skitter and die across his arm. The blood was flowing freely now, hot iron reaching Shouta even at this distance. The man wheezed, arms twitching by his side as he tried to reach his attacker.
Midoriya drew the knife back, before working the sharp blade again and again or the throat of the man until Shouta could see cream white of bone, could hear the dull rasp of the knife as it slid wetly through the meat of what had been the man’s neck.
Midoriya angled the knife downwards, plunging it towards the space between the vertebrae with a shuddering sob. He worked the knife backwards and forwards, it’s the meaty crackle of making Shota sick. With a final twist of the knife, the head fell back, held to the rest of the body by only an inch of meat and skin.
Shouta was at Midoriya’s side before he knew it. Up close the scent was worse, heavy with iron and the sharp smell of bile, all underlaid by the smell of disinfectant. His own hands wrapped around Midoriya’s much smaller ones, prying the knife out of slippery hands. A distant part of his brain noted that even under all the blood, the kid’s fingers were still deathly cold.
He opened his mouth to speak, so say something – to yell, to scream, to cry, to beg – he didn’t know. Midoriya flinched away from his drawn breath and that simple action knocked all of the fight out of Shouta right then and there.
“Let's go, problem child.”
“Is he dead?” Midoriya voice was so quiet, filled with horror and guilt and the faintest touch of hope and as much as Shouta wanted to be angry about how he’d been used all he could feel was relief knowing the kid was finally free.
“He’s-“ Midoriya shook his head.
“I need you to check. Please” The last word was little more than a sob. Shouta sighed, still keeping one hand wrapped around Midoriya’s. He turned to the body, pressing his fingers gently against the side of the rapidly cooling wrist.
Nothing.
More so comfort himself now, he pressed an ear against the man’s still chest, wincing slightly at the lukewarm blood on his cheek.
Nothing. Not a pulse nor rattling breath. Silent and still as the grave.
“He’s dead. He’s gone.” With that Midoriya let out a haunting laugh that quickly devolved into body-shaking sobs that looked almost painful. Shouta scooped the kid up into his arms, gently pressing his face into the crook of his neck as he slipped out of the bunker, Midoriya still sobbing violently against him, tiny, bloodstained hands fisted in the dark cloth of his costume.
“You’re free, kid. He can’t hurt you any more.”