Shoto Todoroki Oneshots

Our Lasts

TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of abuse

THEMES: fluff, slight angst

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Shoto felt like time was moving too fast. 

He could remember how the days all blurred into one during the war in their first year. How he learned and discovered so much about himself and those around him in second year, how he had harnessed blue fire and helped his mother move into her own apartment near Fuyumi's house. Now, it felt like his third and final year at UA was coming to an end before it had even begun. 

Since they would all be graduating as heroes and joining top agencies, they spent most of their time doing work studies or internships with various heroes in order to get offers once they left high school. Alongside the more intense than ever school work, he didn't get to spend as much time with his friends as he wished. 

And now, in their final term of school, he couldn't join a single conversation without listening to someone talk about their future plans, what cities they hoped to work in and what heroes they wanted to become sidekicks for; some even wanted to start their own agencies or become underground heroes, which Shoto thought was pretty cool. 

But these conversations made him sad as well as happy for and proud of his classmates. UA was the place he made his first friends, found his family in a group of diverse and talented and funny people, and found somewhere he could call a home where he was loved and supported and safe. The teachers who had been there for him in the middle of the night when he could barely hold himself together, the teachers who were at his bedside at the hospital giving reports about his family. Everyone at this school had changed his life in ways he was eternally grateful for. So... was it wrong to never want to leave?

His friends always seemed so excited talking about the future, but for Shoto it was daunting. His whole life he had been told what he would become, how he should talk and act. He always knew he would become a hero and one day take over his father's agency, so these things weren't as novel as they would be for his friends. Sure, he was excited to go out and start saving people, to care for those who needed his kindness and to carve out a place for himself in the world that was formed entirely from his own strength and skill. Yet at the same time he didn't want to lose what he had gained here.

The weeks came and went with these worries constantly in his mind, and soon there was only a month left of their school days. They were all in class on a sunny Monday morning when Aizawa announced their final individual assignment of the year. The students were required to complete a project like this at the end of every school year that counted for 20% of their final grade. It was an important project that even those who disliked school spent many hours dedicated to.

"For your final assignment, your teachers have decided to give you free range of topic choice. It has to be a full essay with research, references and analytical conclusions as usual, but you're free to research any topic of your choosing. However, it has to be personally related to you, based on interests or personal experiences or future plans. The deadline is in 3 weeks, giving your teachers enough time to grade them before your graduation."

This sent a wave of excitement around the class. Usually they were given a topic, let that be hero laws or historical events to produce case studies on, so to have free range was new to them. Aizawa let them spend the rest of the day deciding on their topics and planning out their research areas. Shoto spent a long time lost in his thoughts, thinking about what he wanted to know more about and subjects that were close to his heart. It took a long while before he put his pen down to his blank notebook and filled it with a mind map full of notes and ideas.

It was as if once he started he couldn't stop, not until every empty space on his paper was full of his handwriting. Arrows went here and there, big headings surrounded by smaller subtitles for sub-topics to research into, all coming together in the middle for his research topic. He let out a long breath as he looked over his work, nodding as he clenched his shaking his hands. This certainly was important to him... he could do this.