You Run and Run to Catch Up with the Sun(but it's sinking)

four

A/N: hi! just a few things before this chapter starts. i realized as i continued writing this fic that some things from the first chapter wouldn't work as well as i previously thought. because of that, i went back and edited a few things.

1.) timing !! instead of izuku time-traveling to right before the final exams arc with all might & bakugou, i'm making it so that he time travels to right after the kamino ward arc, right before the provisional licensing exams.

2.) aizawa knows about one for all. i decided that this would be the best course of action for this fic. i wrote it in but never quite specified how he knows & on ao3, someone pointed it out in the comments. to clear it up(i hate confusing my readers ahhh), in this fic, aizawa was there for fight between bakugou & midoriya. thus, learning about one for all through that. that may be mentioned in the future, it may not, but just keep it in mind as you read!

3.) midoriya had physical changes !! i went back and wrote that in because i wasn't quite sure what kind of time travel i wanted for him. i always knew it wasn't the shared conscious kind of time travel where he transfers into his future selves body but i still wasn't sure so i never wrote it in. however, now i know lol so i went back and just wrote some of that.

okay i think that's all?? maybe?

enjoy!

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For all the years Shouta has been teaching, he's never had to deal with a situation quite this severe. Even with all the villain attacks that this year's class 1-A has suffered through, nothing compares to this. There is truly nothing more deadly, more scary than a person— a kid no less— who has lost the will to live.

Izuku lies pliant in his arms, cheeks damp and head tucked against Shouta's chest. His kicking and screaming had ceased about twenty minutes ago, and now they just sit here, on the top of U.A's roof.

He's curled in on himself, and Shouta feels his heart break because he's just so small. Shouta's arms fit all the way around Izuku's figure, and now that the black-haired man gets a good look, he can clearly see the physical changes within the boy. He's more petite than before, his hard-worked for build replaced with skinny limbs. He did seem a bit shorter as well, and he looked... younger. With baby cheeks, sunken in and dotted with freckles, and dark bags that hang below his student's eyes, the boy is the of an anomaly: young yet so, so old. This isn't the same boy who saved Kouta from a terrifying villain, no this is a boy who is exhausted and tired from this world.

Albeit the kid falling asleep five minutes ago, Shouta knows that even in his slumber, Midoriya Izuku cries. He cries for the loss of the child within him, long forgotten years and years ago; he cries for the hatred that envelops himself; he cries for the boy who once idolized heroes; he cries for himself, rather than others.

And Shouta, for the first time in twenty years—since Oboro— cries with him. He cries for the boy who felt so utterly useless, so worthless that he thought the world would be better off without him; he cries for the fact that Shouta, as his teacher, hadn't even realized just how much his student was struggling; he cries for the boy because he's sure that Izuku has never had this— a person to cry with and for him in understanding and empathy rather than in pity.

The first tear fell when Izuku stumbled into his arms after being tugged onto the roof. His student screamed and thrashed in his own arms, pleading to Shouta to just let him die. Shouta had never felt what he had in that very moment, but now he knows what is: pain. It's raw agony clawing at him to know that Izuku, the boy who always seemed to smile brightly, is so brittle and broken from society's faults.