Chapter Text
Aizawa didn’t see a villain when he looked at the young man across the battlefield. He didn’t see a villain when that man’s eyes widened looking at one of his students that had just been injured and in the strike path of another hero’s attack. He didn’t see a villain when that man tore across the field avoiding heroes that tried to grab at him and keep him from his goal. He didn’t see a villain when that man covered his young student as hellfire shot above them both.
No, he didn’t see a villain.
He saw someone filled with panic and fear not for himself but for someone he wanted to protect. Someone he was terrified that someone else was about to go through something that he had already gone through. He saw a man, a young man not much older than the kids he called his students if he would have hazard a guess, willing to die to protect someone. Even if that someone was being trained to take in and handle a so-called villain like himself.
No, he didn’t see a villain. This was the first glance of an older brother who cared, this was the first glance at someone who could be a hero if they were only just given the chance to try.
Aizawa watched his students rally around the fallen man that protected one of their own. With the fall of the blue flame user, the other main members of the League quickly abandoned the other lowly villains to the clutches of the heroes. Though he did note that two of them, Twice and Toga if he wasn’t mistaken, were not happy to leave their fallen friend behind.
He sat on a branch of a nearby tree watching what his kids did, taking note of how Bakugou was almost gentle in removing himself from under the man and how the others checked over him and Dabi both with careful hands. Hizashi stood just below him, at the base of the tree watching as intently, his eyes flicking between their kids and the other heroes. “Should we go to them?” he heard his husband ask as they both saw how the other heroes were beginning to get agitated at being denied access to the man they thought was a villain once they had finished wrangling in the others. At least the heroes seemed to know that even just one of their kids was strong enough to hold them all off, let alone six of them.
“No. They have it more than handled. Plus, it looks like he’s waking up.” He replied jutting his chin back towards their kids.
At his words, they both watched how Dabi stumbled up getting caught around the waist by Kirishima, watching how he stiffens for a moment before slowly relaxing in the teen's hold once realizing he wasn’t in danger. The black-haired villain looked around him in open confusion as the kids talked to him. Too low and too far away for the heroes near them, let alone Aizawa and Mic further away, to hear. Aizawa shifted himself as he watched the blue flame user pull out a phone from his pocket to type something quickly on it before he spoke to the kids again. Each of the kids slowly formed a line in front of him as the purple and black portal opened up right behind Dabi.
When Dabi half turned to the portal Aizawa saw it again, abet still covered in heavy confusion, that worry as he looked between the kids and the heroes nearby. Blue eyes turned away from the heroes and somehow found his own further away and he could just barely see how the other swallowed thickly under his gaze. Aizawa gave the slightest of smirks before giving him a nod and turning his attention to the heroes watching them closely as Dabi finally stepped through the portal.
The resulting uproar when the portal closed was headache-inducing.
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Walking into his class the next week to those who had been at the fight and those who didn’t in the middle of an argument should not have been something he was surprised by but somehow he still was. No one besides Jirou, Shoji, and only slightly surprising Shinsou, noticed his entrance but none made a move to alert the others of their class. He leaned against the door frame watching with quiet interest.
“SHUT IT GLASSES YOU WEREN’T FUCKING THERE!” Bakugou, loud as ever, screamed at the other teen hand raised with harmless sparks of his quirk flying.
“Bakugou has a point you know. Plus, that IS my brother. I’m not mistaking that fact as you are saying I might.” Todoroki spoke in a quieter, but more cutting, tone than the blond.
“You didn’t see how fast he ran to cover Kacchan guys!” Midoriya’s voice seemed to plead with the others in the class to listen to them. A hand out grabbing the side of the blond teen's uniform jacket.
“Guys, he was even worried to leave us with the heroes.” Kaminari reasoned eyes jumping to each of his classmates.
“Yeah, it was real manly. I mean Endeavor didn’t even care that he nearly hurt Bakubro.” Kirishima spoke body turned towards the class but eyes half towards Bakugou as if he expected the other to attack Iida.
“Killed him, you mean. That attack would have killed him if it had landed. It was the same attack he uses on the Nomu.” Uraraka corrected the red-haired teen looking just as tense as if she would also attack if Bakugou made that move.
“He’s a VILLAIN!”
Aizawa felt his lip pull into a frown before he cleared his throat loudly as he walked to the front podium not looking as they each scrambled to get to their seats before he reached it. He briefly looked at his lesson plan for the day before he looked back up at his class. He could still feel the slight rift that was between some of them and he sighed putting the lesson away before giving his class his full attention. “Alright, I suppose we should discuss the events of the last battle with the league as it seems to be necessary. Those of you that were there I want to stand up and say your side of things. Say it like it is a spoken report for an agency, you should remember how to do those, if not I will give my own first to give you an idea of how I want you to speak. Bakugou I want you to go last.” He addressed the class until the last bit, looking at the blond teen getting a glare and a nod in response. “After everyone has given their report the rest of the class can raise their hand and ask questions or give their opinions. Is that agreeable?” he asked looking between everyone and waiting for them all to nod.
The underground hero while not used to giving verbal reports, outside of the rare occurrences that he had to give to the police, still kept up on how they were supposed to be done for this exact reason. As a teaching tool so that his students weren’t blindsided should they have to give one themselves. As he spoke he went from being dispatched to fighting the lower league members and apprehending them to having heard Midoriya’s yell of Bakugou’s nickname, seeing the teen stumble from being stabbed, to watching how Dabi rushed across the field to cover the blond from Endeavor’s ‘Jet Burn’, how the main league members left soon after Dabi’s fall, before finally how he and Present Mic had watched the events play out leading up from Dabi’s awakening to his departure through the portal.
And so it went each of them giving their own report of the fight, their own point of view of how Dabi ran to Bakugou to protect him, how he acted towards them when he awoke to them around him before leaving. He kept Denki on task stopping him from getting distracted on a waylaid thought in the report, he reminded Kirishima to not use the word manly, Ochako did hers nearly perfectly, and Todoroki’s was much of the same spoken in a falsely bored tone up until he said Dabi was his brother with evidence supporting the statement and his eyes cut to Iida across the room in a glare, Midoriya had to be reminded to keep it short as verbal reports were not as in-depth as a written one.
When it was time for Bakugou the whole class had their eyes on the blond teen and Aizawa momentarily wondered if he would curse in his report or not. He watched the blond give out a heavy sigh as he stood up stuffing his hands into his pants pocket before giving him his default glare. “Under the watch of Endeavor, heroes Shouto, Deku, and I was on our predetermined patrol route. At just before seventeen hundred in the evening our coms reported sightings of the League two and a half clicks northeast of where we had been at the time. The Endeavor agency dispatched us to the scene with Endeavor arriving shortly after us. Endeavor ordered us three to fight and apprehend the lower-level villains while leaving the main group of the League to the Pros. I had personally taken down four low villains when one with a perception quirk making the brain of those he wanted not to be able to perceive him came from the left of me and stabbed me with a knife in my lower abdomen. That villain took off afterward leaving me to bleed out from the wound. While in a daze of pain and trying to figure out what had happened because of the quirk I did not notice that I was in the strike path of Pro Hero Endeavor’s Jet Burn attack. It is of my own opinion that Endeavor either did not notice I was there or did not care.” Barely contained anger flashed in those red eyes and he looked away for a moment to the board behind him. They all waited for the blond to rain in his anger to finish his report. “At the same moment I realized that I was within the path someone forced me onto the ground and used their own body to cover mine as the flames erupted above us. From the position, I could see one of their hands and noticed the skin graphing associated with S-ranked Villain Dabi and began to struggle to get up as the flames continued overhead. At that point, Dabi curled further over me and forced my head down with his other hand telling me to stop moving and that if his, Endeavor’s, flames touched me I would die.” The blond took a breath before continuing, looking straight at Aizawa like they were the only two in the room and not in front of the whole class. “He was not wrong in that assumption. With how my quirk works the nitroglycerin-like substance that makes up my sweat would have ignited likely killing me along with any who were closest to me; hero and villain alike. He prevented that from happening. Dabi passed out from wounds sustained from the attack coupled with his own already less-than-ideal health. Once the flames had stopped, the rest of my classmates in 1-A quickly finished their own fights to rush to us, helping me check my own injuries and Dabi’s afterward. Dabi was not out for long, two minutes tops if I had to guess, when he woke he staggered up and stumbled. Hero Red Riot caught him and steadied him, at which Dabi seemed to tense before relaxing. He was initially confused and surprised by our actions in deciding to protect him. He expressed concern for my health and then over leaving us with the Pros that were increasingly showing aggression at how 1-A was preventing them from gaining access to him. After assuring him that we would be alight he messaged villain Kurogiri his exact coordinates for pick up. After he left Endeavor flew into a rage like that of a toddler.” Bakugou quickly sat back down and slouched into his chair leaning his head back onto Midoriya’s desk.
“Right,” Aizawa spoke bringing everyone’s attention back to himself and off the explosive teen who was allowing Midoriya to run a hand through his hair. He supposed he might have to figure that out at some point but now was not the time. “Who has questions or something to say?”
At the end of the class period, he could easily say that his class was still divided in how they should feel about the situation. They were grateful for what Dabi had done to save Bakugou but many of them could not decide if that waved any other wrongdoing he had done before. Even when none of them could distinctly say for sure if he had done any of them, the students that is, harm before or not. Bakugou loudly insisted the kidnapping didn’t count since the blue flame user made sure he ate and drank water the whole time he had been held there. Aoyama even said he was without a doubt sure that while at the training camp, Dabi had spotted him in the forest and left him alone on purpose. While Todoroki seemed mostly uncomfortable with how some of the class pressed for answers on his brother and how he ended up as a villain, saying that Touya’s training was similar to his own except that he had been deemed a failure by Endeavor when Shouto’s quirk came in.
As it was he didn’t blame any of them for how they felt. Dabi was considered a villain. One who had committed murders and stolen many things. One that had tried to even kill him in the past, though that was a clone as Mina and Kirishima helpfully reminded him. But he stands by his own judgment of the other man. There was potential there. It just needed to be coaxed out.
“Let me let you all out with this bit of insight. In the Underground, we work with vigilantes and occasionally other villains to take down other bigger villains. Limelight heroes do not do it that often, if at all, but those of us in the underground have to. Despite what the commission wants everyone to believe vigilantes are not bad, some of them only want to help but for whatever reason were unable to go to a hero school or could not obtain their license. And villains? Not all of them are bad either. Some were dealt a bad hand in life and are only trying to survive. Obviously, this does not go for all vigilantes or villains but that is where it is up to you to figure out what steps you need or want to proceed with. The world is not just black and white. There are many shades of grey between the two and sometimes you have to find where in that grey you are comfortable working.” Aizawa said yawning as he moved to the door, he needed a nap. “Right, I’m going to go take a nap. Your next teacher will be here shortly; I’ll see you all in heroics.”