Aizawa Shouta is tired.

He's tired of life, of the ringing in his head and the pinpricks of fear in his ears. Tired of watching his best friend die every time he closes his eyes because he wasn't good enough, fast enough, strong enough, smart enough―

Aizawa Shouta is tired, but he cannot sleep. It's a trilling that keeps his eyelids from falling to slumber, a low hum raised a pitch above white noise. Droning static that pulls at him mind until he blinks with one eye to both and fades between sleep and wariness. He is nothing but muscle barely stringing onto cracked bones and restlessness.

(Hizashi says he has an unhealthy addiction to coffee―Shouta says he's just allergic to sleep, he doesn't have patience for their on-again-off-again relationship.)

There's a sort of twisting in his stomach, as though something terrible is going to happen.

Foreboding, maybe. But he's had this every second of every day since he was nothing but a child. Since he turned five (one year late) and everyone was scared of his quirk. Aizawa Shouta has lived his life in a constant war, with himself, with others. His teachers were as fearful as the students.

(He watches as the stars disappear as the sky dilutes from dark to light. Watching the sunrise over the sea of buildings had become a habit.)

There's a stinging in his lungs; smoke curls around him and he wants to fall back. Fall back to sleeping on benches, fall back to high school junior high, fall back to smoking to curb the stress, not knowing how early he was going to die, that he shouldn't weaken himself that much more. He wants to go back―maybe to a time when his father hadn't known about the joys of alcohol and his mother didn't know the feeling of metal in her abdomen.

(Red red red, spurting out like ketchup, it makes him sick. Marring the pavement in splotches that reeked. He's never liked ketchup.)

Aizawa is tired, so, so tired. Watching the sun peak out from over the horizon and streaks of sheen discolor his cheeks.

_

It's cold outside, chills wrack up his spine and choke his lungs―he loves it. Clouds wrap around the sky, his hands are deep in his tattered pockets. His blue eyes wander, his fake-inky-black hair reaches out to the midnight sun. It glows white, the stars around it shining with a dulled brilliance, smothered by smoking, whisped away by the mouth of factory fumes.

His lungs burn with cyan embers and frozen sparks, he is wheezing on smog and his own breath. It's pitiful enough that he wants to set himself alight once more. Watching as his skin falls apart, unraveling like white bandages after training.

He is running, his feet slap the broken concrete of the slums, there was someone chasing after him and he needed to get out. Screaming (he remembers his father screaming like that) echoes around him and he sprints for safety. The footsteps faded ages ago, but he knows not to let his guard down.

A boy with white hair and no jacket slumps outside an alleyway he's standing at the lip of. His eyes are half-lidded, sliver irises shining in starlight, his fingertips are likely numb―he looks familiar, like the reminisce of a mothers smile and a brothers tears (or a sister's worst fears and muffled nightmares). Natsuo-lookalike stares at his pitiful form for one second before speaking.

"Do you have anywhere to go?"

He shakes his head shamefully. Fire stirs in his lungs, bracing on his arms, itching on his spine, testing his resolve. (Fingers lingering on a place―he wants to scratch himself until he's a puddle of red and broken bones, carved in hellfire and forged in darkness.)

"'S alright, come with me."

Natsuo-lookalike shows him somewhere safe. Somewhere like Mom, because Mom was like a dream―and his house was a nightmare.

_

There is a itching on his skin.

An almost-burning that he'd thought he'd gotten used to when he was a child-but-not―when he'd learned that he was atop the world, sitting on a crown of fire with wings made of wax, because he is better. He's an emperor amongst men, and he'll blow the head off anyone who says otherwise; his ego wouldn't let them live. (And Katsuki is nothing if not a server to the ego and pride that usurps his soul, stealing his humanity. Every ounce of humility his child-hands can hold. Tearing apart the inkling of remorse, regret, sobriety that rest heavily on his black heart.)

Burning and trembling until it stings and aches―a string pulling at his heart and a choking under his skin. To destroy, he wants to be free, so he let's himself go in rage. Shitty Hair takes the brunt of it. It's only because he's so much like―like someone he knew, once. Before he stopped being a friend and started being a monster trapped under human skin, singeing freckled flesh and ruining hopeful eyes.

(Destroying everything he touches, he's no Hero. He's a God-turned-monster, long fallen from grace, tumbling with mortals, unaware he is powerless. One day he will regret it, but the others―the gods he'd known before he'd tripped down the stairway of ethereal holiness play favorites with him. They tell him that he is one of them. Katsuki.. Katsuki's pride, his ego, his fear-- doesn't let him deny that.)

If he dies one day―he knows he will. That deep down he isn't immortal, infallible; that some dark, deep, part of him feels guilty. An apology dies on his tongue and chokes down the ugly words until they disappear in his throat. He wants to say them, but he answers only to his pride, and his pride does not allow it. The adrenaline that replaces his heart thumps recklessly and his ears grate with static. How could someone who could have been his best friend, once upon a splattered dream, have been the opposite if him?

Class is the same as it was in Aldera; except (Deku-- Izuku--) Midoriya isn't a few desks away. Muttering does not exist and it feels wrong. Like a part of his godly being has been stripped from him. As though falling from the heavens wasn't punishment enough.

(The wrong time, the wrong place. But he was both of them; some twisted version of Fate―cruel. He ruled over the others, making them dance when he pleased.)

(He'd never meant to take it that far, now that he could see he wasn't a god or anything even close to that. All Might was his teacher, and he had a long way to go before he could put a tooth to Aizawa-sensei, who fought quirkless.)

There's something in him that almost wishes Aizawa-sensei would erase his quirk. Maybe then the itching would go away.