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Aizawa, exhausted as he was, didn’t realize anything was wrong until he passed Hizashi in their kitchen, tiredly mumbled a quiet “love you,” and watched his husband nearly have a stroke. To be fair, that means it only took Aizawa about thirty seconds after waking up to realize something was up, but it still wasn’t the ideal way of making that discovery. Hizashi, face flushed, sputtered about something Aizawa couldn’t make out, and for a brief moment Aizawa wondered if the man was drunk.
“Wh-what?!” Hizashi finally managed.
Aizawa stared back, unimpressed. “What?”
Hizashi looked aghast. “What do you mean, ‘love you?’”
Aizawa blinked. “I’ve said ‘love you’ every day since we’ve been married. What’s so-”
He stopped mid-sentence. He was pretty sure Hizashi was actually having a stroke this time.
Aizawa liked to think that he handled the revelation that he’s apparently fourteen years in the past pretty well, all things considered. And he had to hand it to Hizashi, too- in between all the blushing, concerns that Aizawa might have actually lost it, and subsequent shock when Aizawa revealed things that he really shouldn’t know, the man accepted the idea of time travel pretty quickly. Honestly, he was more shocked at the fact he and Aizawa were married in the future rather than the fact that Aizawa was from the future. Apparently, the whiplash between three years of nursing a seemingly unrequited crush and said crush casually professing their love for you was pretty jarring.
Given that, Aizawa decided that it might be best to wait a bit before mentioning that the two of them had adopted a kid together, lest he really hospitalize Hizashi. Even so, his kid hadn’t left his mind since the moment he realized he was in the past.
Hitoshi should have just had his second birthday a few weeks ago. Despite years of constant investigation, Aizawa had never found a single damn lead on Hitoshi’s child-soldier ring other than the weird leaf his kid sometimes doodled, which meant that he had never been able to determine when exactly it had gotten its hooks into Hitoshi, but he knows it must have been young. Very young. And while there’s no way that they could have started training a kid barely two years old, it wasn’t impossible that newborns wouldn’t be targeted. It might be hard to win over a toddler’ loyalty from their parents, but if the child had been taken young and raised in that environment…
If Aizawa was really stuck in the past, then he needed to find his kid immediately .
The next week was a flurry of activity as the repercussions of time travel were dealt with. Psychiatric tests, truth-detecting quirks, conversations with work, HPSC agents, various quirk-experts and even a theoretical physicist Nedzu was apparently friends with eventually came to the conclusion that, whatever had happened to Aizawa-whether it was an incredibly powerful quirk or the cosmos' idea of a prank- was likely permanent.
Aizawa could have wasted time crying or denying or raging over the life he had lost, but he had always been logical. And, as much as he mourned the loss of what he’d known, he was also aware that he had the opportunity to make this life better for the people he cared about.
And he had no intention of wasting it.
Aizawa double-checked the address he had scribbled down, before taking a steadying breath and scaling the few grimy steps up to the residence’s front door. On the inhale, he prayed he wasn’t too late, and on the exhale, he imagined the creative ways he’d take revenge on the couple living here if he was.
He knocked.
A few moments passed, and Aizawa was about to knock again when he heard a lock unlatch. The door opened to reveal one Yoichi Shinsou, looking supremely unhappy about something. Perhaps having to deal with the stranger at the door. Given his performance as a parent the last time around, Aizawa couldn’t find it in himself to overly mind bothering the man.
“What do you want?” Yoichi growled, and Aizawa felt a sharp fear that wasn’t his creep up the back of his spine.
Aizawa activated his quirk, stepping past Yoichi into the apartment as the unnatural intimidation lifted. “Where is Shinsou Hitoshi?” he questioned, eyes scanning the empty room.
“Hey!” Yoichi shouted, grabbing at Aizawa’s arm angrily. “Who do you think you are, barging in here like-”
The man abruptly shut up as he found himself pinned against the wall, one arm twisted behind him painfully. He cried out.
“I am a fully licensed hero, conducting an investigation into alleged child abuse. Do not attempt to grab me again. ” Aizawa abruptly let go of Yoichi’s arm, and the man quickly whirled around to face him, fear in his eyes. Aizawa had a brief flash of regret- he was a hero, and here he was intimidating civilians- but at the thought of Hitoshi’s wellbeing, he quashed the emotion and asked again. “Where is your family? Where is Hitoshi?”
Yoichi numbly pointed to a closed door on the opposite side of the room, eyes wide as he mumbled something about Kasumi being out. Aizawa wasted no time, crossing the room in long strides and opening the indicated door to reveal a small bedroom. Hitoshi, only a few months older than two years, stared at him from where he was sitting on the bed, eyes somewhere between dead and quietly curious. Frighteningly aware for his age. Needles littered the dresser just a few feet from him, and any doubt Aizawa had had about his admittedly impulsive decision to come down here vanished.
Aizawa had never quite known how Hitoshi had grown up before the orphanage, but the snippets he could put together indicated neglect at best and active abuse at worst. Aizawa hated that his son had had to deal with that for the first years of his life, but the selfish part of him was currently grateful for the Shinsous’ negligence of their child. The openly unsafe environment gave Aizawa the legal grounds to remove Hitoshi from the premises immediately.
“Come on, Hitoshi,” Aizawa said gently, walking across the room to scoop the child up. “We’re going to head out now.”
Hitoshi had no response, and didn’t resist as Aizawa picked him up, only continuing to stare at the hero blankly.
Aizawa brought Hitoshi back out into the main room, where Yoichi was leaning against the far wall warily. “I found your son surrounded by open needles, and he clearly hasn’t been eating properly,” Aizawa stated authoritatively. “I’m removing him from your possession.”
Yoichi nodded, still holding his arm. “Are Kasumi and I being charged?”
Aizawa fought down his flash of anger at the man’s priorities.
Hitoshi was still silent.
As much as Aizawa wanted his son back, he didn’t want to steal a child from his parents, either. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. At the first threat of legal action, the Shinsous had practically begged to offload their kid in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
It was disgusting, but it certainly made the whole process much easier for Aizawa. Now he only had to sell Hizashi on the idea of adopting a child. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too hard. Hizashi had agreed to date Aizawa almost the moment that Aizawa hadn’t simply lost his mind and that they really were married in the future, so adopting a child probably wasn’t too far beyond that.
Apparently, adopting a child was a little more extreme than dating.
“Shota,” Hizashi said calmly as he walked in the front door one night. “There is a child in our house.”
Aizawa looked up from where he was sitting on the couch next to a sleeping toddler. “There is,” he agreed. “This is Hitoshi, the boy we adopted. Will adopt. You know what I mean.”
A complicated look passed over Hizashi’s face, before it settled in a pained grimace. “Shota. I think we need to talk.”
Apparently, going from having a crush on your roommate and best friend of nearly twenty years to dating said crush was a smaller leap than adopting a child with said person with no notice. Bless Hizashi’s soul, after a three hour conversation and the promise for further discussion in the morning, the man had agreed to go along with Aizawa on this for now, but he had a lot to say about Aizawa acting on future knowledge involving others before talking to them- “to me, Shota”- first.
Aizawa understood it on an intellectual level, and was perfectly willing to promise Hizashi that nothing like it would happen again. He was only glad that Hizashi had made Aizawa promise after Hizashi had agreed to give Hitoshi a chance, because Aizawa knew that no amount of logic would convince him not to re-adopt his son.
Days passed, becoming weeks and then months, and things in the Aizawa-Yamada household slowly began to approach something approaching normal. Aizawa’s romantic relationship with Hizashi frankly hadn’t been too different from when they had merely been best friends, so that was an easy adjustment for the both of them. Hizashi getting used to having a kid in the house took a bit longer, but…
“Aren’t you the smartest little toddler I’ve ever met? Shota, Hitoshi figured out all the child locks in the kitchen, he’s so smart! And so cute, and- wait no there are knives in there that’s why we locked it-! ”
Things were coming along well.
Within a few months Hizashi was telling all their coworkers how he had the best kid in the world, trying to set up playdates with the kids and siblings of all of their friends, and was generally settling into being the proudest parent in the world. In turn, Aizawa got to see a side of Hitoshi that he never had in the future- one that seemed genuinely, unabashedly happy.
Hitoshi was still incredibly quiet- whether that was his natural disposition or a result of his biological parents’ parenting, Aizawa wasn’t sure- but he’d smile, and engage, and occasionally even laugh in an unguarded way that Aizawa had never had the pleasure of seeing in his future.
Months went by, and by the day things in Aizawa’s life settled in closer and closer to perfection. He still had no leads on the child-soldier ring, and villains still committed crime, and he still had way too little sleep, but overall, things were good.
Life was good.
“Shota!” Hizashi called from the dining room one day, months later. “Hitoshi got a 100 on his math quiz! Come look!”
“Of course he did.” Aizawa replied blandly, but he couldn’t deny the swell of pride he felt rising up in his chest. Hitoshi was a genius, he knew, and he would have been more shocked if he hadn’t gotten a one hundred. Nonetheless, he finished making his coffee and went out to where Hizashi was sitting to admire his kid’s handiwork.
“Did you know they’re teaching elementary schoolers algebra now?” Hizashi cried, pointing to a question near the bottom of the page as he handed it to Aizawa. “ I don’t even know algebra!”
Aizawa snorted. “There’s a reason you’re an English teacher.” He flipped the page to continue reading through the questions. “Maybe if you had actually paid attention-” Aizawa trailed off suddenly, staring at the bottom corner of the page in shock. Dread settled over him, and Aizawa felt that wonderful feeling of peace and contentment he’d gotten used to over the past year drain away all at once.
“Hm?” Hizashi prompted. Aizawa didn’t notice.
That’s impossible, he thought numbly, even though clearly it wasn’t. He didn’t understand how it could be possible, though. He’d changed things. He’d protected Hitoshi this time. Or, he’d thought he had. An ugly feeling washed over him- fear, anger, and a terrible feeling of loss and failure, all wrapped into one.
“Shota?” Hizashi asked, staring conceredly at his husband’s sudden silence. “Is something wrong?”
“The drawing,” Aizawa mumbled numbly, eyes staring out at nothing as his thoughts raced. Had he been too late? Did they track down Hitoshi later, for some reason? How did Aizawa miss it? “At the bottom of the page.”
Hizashi grabbed the paper out of his hands and held it close, eyes roaming over it intently. “I don’t get it,” he said after a moment, before turning to his husband, confused. “It just looks like a leaf.”
And indeed it was. A spiraled leaf design that Shota hadn’t seen since he woke up in the past half a decade ago, and one that chilled his heart.
Aizawa had failed. Somehow, they’d managed to get Hitoshi when he wasn’t looking.
Again.