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Hitoshi stares down at the vocal modulator in his hands, anxiety churning. He shouldn't have taken it with him in the first place. It's against UA policy for hero course students to take their support items off campus. And yet here he is, vocal modulator in hand, nowhere near UA.
He can practically hear his social workers voice now, exhausted and bitter.
Can't you just follow a single rule?
Always an accident waiting to happen. A delinquent. A villain in the making.
Hitoshi swallows, running his fingers over the pitch dial. He's grateful for it now though, even if he did have to break a rule.
He doesn't feel much like a villain right now. Doesn't really feel like a hero either. He feels old. feels world weary and hardened, like some kind of sick sixteen year old war veteran. Except the only thing he's ever really survived is himself.
He feels too old to be doing this.
Hitoshi's eyes sting and he blinks, letting the tears fall. His expression stays blank, eyes half lidded. There's no one to see him, no one to put up an indifferent front for. No one to embarrass himself in front of, at least. He doesn't sob, doesn't exhaust himself screaming about what is and isn't fair.
He just sits in his closet, and cries.
Hitoshi grips his vocal modulator tighter. He traces over the notches, the nicks and grooves that make it distinctly his. He remembers drawing up the blueprints with Yamada. Remembers how excited he had been to help, how strangely happy he'd been about it all.
‘Ay now that's a clever boy! Adding a little sound to your style is always a smash hit!’
Clever. He called Hitoshi clever. It was an admittedly nice change of pace, if a little weird. The closest anyone usually ever got to that sort of compliment was manipulative. Little comments about how suspicious it was when he cried as a kid. How attention seeking he was.
Hitoshi numbly brings the modulator up to his face. His shoulders lose just a bit of tension as it fits itself seamlessly into the shape of his jawline. The latches and hooks lock automatically and he exhales slowly. He wipes his eyes, staring off into the slats of his closet door. A void gnaws at his chest, patient and unending.
Familiar.
He reaches a shaking hand up, turning the pitch dial high. He hums slightly, testing. No, that's not it. Slightly lower, a resonant sound with a high note throughline. Yeah that's. He blinks. Yeah that's gotta be it.
Hitoshi opens his mouth, hesitates briefly. This is so embarrassing. But he shakes his head and soldiers on, squeezing his arms around himself and closing his eyes really really tight.
The words come easily, he's heard them a thousand times before.
“There's my little listener!”
A small smile tugs at his mouth without his permission. He doesn't admit it much, but the nickname is nice. It's a mouthful and a little clunky, but the way Yamada says it makes it sound natural. He makes it sound special.
“What's got you so broody today, kiddo?”
Hitoshi doesn't dare respond to his own words. He's not that pathetic. but they are nice to hear. He thinks Yamada would say it kind of like that. He would try lighten the mood, bring some levity to a terrible situation. He would probably get Hitoshi to laugh at a dumb joke, some pun or an attempt to entice him into conversation with juicy gossip about one of the other teachers.
“Take it easy, yeah? You're doing amazing yo!”
He huffs, the ghost of a laugh. Yeah yeah, Yamada would definitely say it like that. He's said it before, Hitoshi thinks vaguely. His head hurts and his eyes burn but he could maybe believe that. That Yamada thinks he's amazing. He definitely thinks he should take more breaks and relax, at least. He's miles and miles away from the other hero course kids and somehow Yamada still finds it in himself to hound Hitoshi over stupid stuff like taking it easy. From anyone else the words would be irritating. They're not.
Sometimes he’ll even tell stories about when he went to UA to distract him. Little funny moments where he got in trouble or messed up in training as a kid.
Yamada talks a lot about how Hitoshi reminds him of. um.
He squeezes his arms around himself tighter. He shouldn't be doing this. It's childish. Humiliating, even.
He's going to be a hero someday. In the next year or two, if everything goes to plan. He'll be Underground, fighting the worst villains the world has to offer. Traffickers and rapists and murderers. The kind of people the public never has to hear about.
Heroes aren't supposed to be scared. Heroes don't get to be scared. A single moment of hesitation on the field could mean the end of your life, or worse, a civilian’s.
But he's not on the battlefield, is he? Not literally anyway.
Not yet.
Hitoshi presses his forehead to the wall, greasy purple bangs falling into his eyes. The closet is humid and gross. There's nowhere else to go.
Maybe he can be scared just this once. Just for right now, he can be small and scared and not feel bad about it. and then he can be brave later. Yeah. Yeah he can do that. He can be big and strong tomorrow.
Hitoshi gathers his strength and lifts his fingers to the pitch dial again. He turns it lower and lower, guides the volume down, adds a rocky chord to the baritone he's created. He hums, testing.
That's it.
Hitoshi brings his arms down again, wraps one around his stomach. Hesitantly brings his other hand up to his cheek, cradling it with his palm. He holds himself firmly but not harshly. Steady enough to support but not enough to be suffocating. Just enough to know that he could step away if he wanted. He wipes away a tear with his thumb and shuts his eyes super duper tight.
Then, he speaks.
“Hitoshi?”
His shoulders lose the rest of their tension immediately, melting in exhaustion and relief at the sound of Aizawa's voice. He always knows what to do. Always knows how to fix things. Aizawa has to have the most insane secondary quirk on the planet, the superhuman ability to make Hitoshi trust him. He isn't sure when it happened. But somewhere along the line, Aizawa stopped being his teacher and started to become a pillar of support and safety in his life.
Maybe it was all the comfortable dinners at his apartment. Maybe it was the security and consistency of their training sessions together. Or maybe hitoshi is just lonely enough to get attached to the first adult to give him any amount of positive attention. Who knows.
But Aizawa is the only person who ever says his name. Says it without the implicit lingering tone of obligation or irritation. He just says it like it's important, like Hitoshi's important.
“I want to help you, kid. I can't do that if I don't know what's wrong.”
Aizawa says it like that a lot. He doesn't tend to ask a lot of leading rhetorical questions or lay on thick meaningless compliments. He's blunt, almost to a fault. But he's never lied, not in any way that matters. Aizawa knows Hitoshi usually isn't honest about how he's doing. No one's ever really asked and actually wanted to hear a genuine answer from him before, so he's a little out of practice, sue him.
Hitoshi also doesn't really feel like ruining the only good thing he has going for himself by being a greedy little parasite, so. He usually says he's tired. Which is true. but never the whole truth. So Aizawa doesn't always ask. He knows hitoshi better than that. and isn't that crazy? The concept of someone knowing him. Aizawa knows him. Knows that he can't always say what's wrong. Doesn't know how to and doesn't really want to.
So instead, Aizawa just says what he's thinking. He wants to help Hitoshi. He wants to know what's wrong so that he can fix it. It's simple. and if anyone else were to say that to him, Hitoshi would probably tell them to mind their own damn business.
It would also probably sound harsh, coming from anyone else. Annoyed. At all the times Hitoshi refuses to be helped. but it never really is. Aizawa is pretty patient with him. God only knows how, Hitoshi knows something about him makes even the most composed adults lose their temper. But not Aizawa, not once.
Hitoshi doesn't respond to the voice, obviously. He probably wouldn't say very much to the real Aizawa either. But there's no one else here right now. So he allows himself to imagine what it would be like, to tell him the truth. How he would react to the reality of his home life.
He thinks Aizawa wouldn't really be horrified or anything. He sees terrible stuff on patrol all the time. So Hitoshi's traumatic backstory probably wouldn't really be much to write home about. But he would look sad, Hitoshi thinks. In that small way he does when he watches wispy morning clouds for a little too long. He'd get that worried furrow to his brow. He'd definitely put a hand on his shoulder. Aizawa isn't that great with words so you can tell he tries to make up for it in other ways. It's pretty cool of him.
Hitoshi moves his hand away from his face, shifts it down to his shoulder. He squeezes firmly, grounding.
“I’ve got you, I'll take care of it from here. You did extremely well, given the circumstances.”
Hitoshi smiles. He wouldn't tell him that everything's going to be okay because he wouldn't really be able to guarantee anything like that. He likes that about him. How honest he tries to be.
Aizawa would know what to do right now. Wouldn't be stuck in this damn closet in the first place. The tears fall harder now and he has to take a shuddering breath in, sniffing harshly through his nose. He coughs a little on the next breath out.
“Focus on your breathing kid. In for four, out for four. There we go, that's it.”
Hitoshi breathes. His legs are starting to lose feeling in them, pins and needles shooting up and down. His ass hurts from where he's been curled up against the hardwood floor. He wonders how long he's been here. If anyone's noticed. if anyone's going to notice. Aizawa might.
He's hungry.
Hitoshi curls up tighter, wrapping both arms around his stomach now. A sob finally punches itself out of his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he can.
“I'm so proud of you, Hitoshi.”