Chapter Text
A full day of touring the Academy leads to dinner at one of the more formal restaurants on the premises, the kind with reservations and well-dressed patrons hovering around lavender mage lights.
Shouto walks in first and moves towards the back without an introduction, and the other three follow closely behind. He leads them to a private room with slowly swirling clouds on the ceiling and a large wooden table currently occupied by no one.
“I’m surprised we’re not having dinner with your family,” Katsuki says.
“We will tomorrow,” Shouto says.
“They’re, umm, giving us some space,” Izuku says, managing to keep his promise not to reveal too much information to Eijirou. “So we can catch up.”
Katsuki nods in understanding. This is about him and Izuku, not state business. The Todoroki family wouldn’t have much to say here.
He looks at Shouto.
Well, not all of them.
He’ll probably give him an earful the second he gets the chance, but so far, Shouto seems… distracted enough to put it off.
Katsuki can’t decide if this is going to be annoying or amusing, but he hasn’t seen Eijirou so entertained in months. He glances at Izuku, who seems more interested in his own hands than anything else, and Katsuki’s eyes trace over the webbing of scars that cover them. They’ll have to talk about that at some point.
Trays of food are brought in by five different servers, and they’re placed onto the table for the four of them to share. On the plates is an arrangement of different fruits, cheeses, thin salted meats, and flaking bread, all meant to be washed down with a large pitcher of Elven wine.
The servers leave them, shutting the door behind themselves, and Eijirou’s eyes dart over the table nervously. “Is this dinner?”
“Just the first part,” Shouto says. “But there will be plenty of food brought to us, I promise. You won’t go hungry.”
Katsuki raises an eyebrow. He’s never known Shouto to be the type of person to talk to a stranger when he doesn’t have to, let alone host them. Izuku nudges him, and when Katsuki looks at him, he sees his knowing smile.
Gods.
He would whisper a complaint, but Eijirou would hear it so he takes a piece of melon instead. Izuku shoves a grape into his cheek with an amused smile, and Katsuki rolls his eyes.
“Oh, this is nice,” Eijirou says in delight. “They’re like snacks.”
“Yes, it’s just like that,” Shouto says, and they might as well be the only two people in the world. At this rate, those two will be the ones who go back to get married, and Katsuki will fuck off to the dragonlands by himself for a few years.
Katsuki sits back with a sign, and Izuku nudges him again. This time he nudges him back.
A few minutes later, a server comes and removes two of the empty plates and arranges the rest on the table so that there’s a clear gap for more. He leaves again to call back the others, who walk in with heavy trays billowing with steam. Eijirou’s eyes widen at the procession, and Katsuki hears Izuku stifle a giggle next to him.
The new dishes are large shallow bowls filled with different sauces and stews with mountains of bread to eat them with. Shouto shows Eijirou how to gather the meat with one hand and pour on the sauces with the other. He seems quite entertained by getting to use his claws so much, and Shouto seems just as pleased to watch him.
Katsuki breaks off a piece of bread and scoops up a bite of chicken in a thick green sauce and slips it into his mouth. Everything here is cooked in unfamiliar spices and herbs only the elves can grow, but Eijirou loves food (specifically meat) enough that he adapts to it all well. It probably doesn’t hurt that Shouto is giving him his undivided attention, but that’s neither here nor there.
He wishes he had the taste for the food here. It’s delicious, and he can appreciate how much work goes into every meal, but he can only eat so much of it before the flavors start to overwhelm him. But Izuku seems to enjoy it quite well. He wonders how he’ll adjust when he brings him home.
The food they grew up with is simple yet hearty, but if Katsuki’s memory isn’t failing him, he does know that Izuku loves the hand pies. He used to teeter around the castle grounds with one in each hand, and it’s always been a fond memory—of the few of them he can come up with from when they were young.
But the gap between then and now isn’t as barren as it may seem. They’ve seen each other a few times a year consistently since he returned from the dragonlands. He and his parents sail here while Eijirou returns to his family, which is why he can consider himself a friend to Shouto these days, but those visits were always so chaperoned that they seemed fleeting at best.
But even with those visits, he never noticed how… different Izuku is.
He knew he’d grown up at some point. He knew he was taller, but not by much. He knew his hair had grown wilder and more unruly, and he’d finally caught up with his own eyes and smile, but like this, close and next to mage light without the long banquet tables or the curious eyes of his parents on them, he can finally look at him.
He has more freckles than Katsuki can possibly count on his cheeks and over his nose, a nose that’s sloped and small like a rabbit’s. His hands are scarred strangely like they’ve been ripped and burned. Katsuki knows that wielding magic is hard for a human, but he never imagined it could be agonizing to use. Izuku came here to learn how to fight so they could one day marry, and his hands are proof of his tenacity.
He hasn’t given up on him.
Or maybe he just wants to be a mage, and that’s reason enough to endure the pain.
Izuku looks at him with a warm smile with nothing artificial or postured poisoning it. It’s genuine happiness, and Katsuki knows that it has everything to do with Eijirou and Shouto and nothing to do with him. Shouto is his dearest friend, who is currently enamored with someone for the first time since they’ve known him, and Eijirou is a charming and lovable dragon who could smile away a storm.
And yet Katsuki has made him cry more than anyone else ever could, and his existence has been more painful to him than any of his scars were.
“Try this,” he says. He tears off a piece of bread and piles it with some of the salted meat and a piece of cheese, and then he spoons over a little bit of red sauce and then a little bit of the white. “It’s my favorite.”
“Are you going to feed me like they are?” Katsuki asks at Eijirou’s expense, but he’s too preoccupied to notice.
“It would probably make less of a mess if I did,” he says sheepishly. Katsuki raises an eyebrow like he’s skeptical before he leans towards him, parting his lips as an invitation, and Izuku glances at his mouth with a flush before taking his aim.
And he fucking misses.
Katsuki is able to bite the food out of the air before Izuku can drop it in his lap, but it does nothing to prevent the heavy smear of sauce across his lips and part of his cheek.
Izuku bursts into a fit of giggles he can barely conceal. “Oh no, I’m so sorry!”
“No, you’re not,” Katsuki accuses, and Izuku laughs at him harder. He swipes a glob of sauce off of his mouth and smears it over Izuku’s cheek and nose in revenge.
Izuku gasps. “Your Highness.”
“Oh don’t you call me that,” he says, earning a delighted giggle. Katsuki squints at him, flicks some of the sauce off of his freckled cheek, and sucks it off his finger.
“Let me show you something else.”
“No.”
Izuku immediately erupts into a fit of laughter, mischievous glee lighting up his face like a lantern in the dark, and Katsuki pops a piece of cheese in his mouth in amusement. Joy looks good on him.
The freedom to be a little shit with him looks better.
They spent an entire day together without supervision, and Izuku is this happy while Katsuki isn’t having to suppress his own emotions or reactions to make that possible.
Huh.
Who would’ve thought?
Dessert is brought to them soon with another bottle of wine, and Eijirou’s gasp is enough to take Katsuki’s attention off of Izuku.
“It’s cold!”
Shouto smiles at him as he spoons a bit of this—cold stuff—into his mouth. Katsuki can never remember the name of it, but it might as well be a mound of snow you can eat covered in fruit, syrup, and thick cream.
“Don’t take a big bite,” Izuku warns. “You’ll get a nasty headache.”
Eijirou looks between them in concern. “Is it poisoned?”
Katsuki takes a bite of his own to prove that it isn't and crunches the tiny snow crystals with his teeth. “It’s safe. Just cold.”
He washes it down with a mouthful of wine, and he catches Izuku staring at him, wordless and unreadable.
“Why isn’t the food at home this much fun?” Eijirou says.
“I’m telling dad you said that.”
“No!”
After everyone is fed, Shouto discreetly pays for their meal, and he walks as a shadow at Izuku’s side as they guide Katsuki and Eijirou to their rooms. It’s not customary to linger, but for a moment he wonders if Izuku will follow them and spend the night with a friend he’s obviously longed for.
Are they friends now?
Shouto’s curiosity tugs at him, but he knows better than to ask them directly. If one of them lies or tells a painful truth, it will break the other.
After they say their good nights, Shouto follows Izuku back to his room because they’ll need to talk about today and what the future holds. Izuku doesn’t ask or protest, and when they step inside his room, mage lights awaken and illuminate mounds and mounds of scrolls and notes. It’s a cluttered mess, but it reminds Shouto of Izuku’s mind, and he can’t help but smile at it.
He takes a seat on the edge of the bed and waits for him to join him. Izuku sits with a deep sigh.
“You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to,” Shouto says, and Izuku turns to him. He meant to wait a little longer, but he supposes now must be the right time to intervene. “We will give you sanctuary here. No one can make you leave without my parents’ permission, and you are a son to my father as much as I am.”
“It’s my birthright, Shouto,” he says. “It’s not just his. My family comes from kings too. The prophecy was written for both of us.”
“I know that, but that is the will of your gods. They have no reach here.”
Izuku offers him a smile, but there’s a hint of sadness behind it. “I want to go. Your people have been so kind to me, but I feel like if I stay here, I will have abandoned mine. Asking Katsuki to rule alone would be unfair. He shouldn’t have to.”
“But you will have to marry him.”
“Yes.”
“Izuku…”
“I want to,” he says. “I’ve been in love with him my entire life, and I came all this way so I could become strong enough to marry him. I can’t fight the way he does, but I’m ready.”
Shouto nods. Izuku is ready.
But he didn’t bring here to make him worthy of marriage.
Izuku smiles at him because he knows that.
“You’re a good friend,” he says, taking Shouto’s hand.
“I like Katsuki,” he says. “But it will be hard for me to forget how things were, and if you go back to that–.”
“I won’t,” he says. “Things are different now.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He came, Shouto,” he says. “No one made him. It would be one thing if he was dragged all this way, but he came for me alone, and I’m– am I being stupid?”
“No,” Shouto says.
“Are you being honest with me?”
“Elves can’t lie.”
“No, but you’re clever with your words,” Izuku says, and the corner of Shouto’s mouth twitches.
“I do not think you’re being stupid, but if you go there and change your mind, it will be much harder for me to bring you back here without starting a war, and I don’t think my parents would be very happy with me if I did that.”
He would, though. He would scorch the earth in every direction for Izuku, but he doesn’t say so.
“If I change my mind, Katsuki would get me on the ship himself,” he says. “There would be no war. We would be married to satisfy our gods, and then I would never see him again.”
Shouto nods in agreement. “Yes, I suppose that would be a plausible outcome.”
“But I do love him, Shouto. I always have.”
“I know.”
“Do you–,” he says with a pause. “Do you think he could ever learn to love me back?”
Shouto smiles at him as kindly as he can, his best impersonation of Fuyumi at her best because Izuku deserves it. “I think that it would be very hard for him not to.”
“He didn’t like me very much when we were children,” he admits.
“You were much shorter then.”
Izuku laughs and swats at him. “Hey!”
Shouto chuckles softly, and Izuku rests his head on his shoulder.
“You’re ruthless,” he says fondly, and Shouto closes his eyes as an ache in his chest grows like the air in the room is pressing down on him.
“I want you to be happy,” Shouto says.
“I will be.”
“And Katsuki is one of my dearest friends.”
“I know that,” Izuku says.
“But you are my family.”
“That means that one day, he’ll be your family too,” he says and gives his hand a squeeze. “Thank you for looking out for me.”
“Of course.”
“Be nice to him.”
“He is the one who set the precedent,” Shouto says. “I am simply playing along.”
“Just don’t become hostile,” he says. “I can’t take it if you two fight. I know you love him, and he loves you too, and you both enjoy antagonizing each other, but this is going to be really hard for me. I can handle the teasing, but if you fight–. Just, you don’t need to worry about me anymore, not when it comes to him, okay? I promise. Today was better than I ever could have dreamed of, and he–. He looked at me like–.”
His voice trails off, and Shouto raises an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Like he did when we were young,” he says. “Before I was old enough for anyone to notice that I couldn’t lift a sword or run to the top of a hill. He and I were like one soul. We shared everything. We even bathed together. We slept in the same bed. They said I cried if he didn’t hold my hand, and he screamed when he couldn’t find me. We were–. Our gods are never wrong. Even before I was old enough to understand, Katsuki has always been the other piece of my heart, and today it felt like I finally got it back because he wanted me to have it.”
Shouto nods with an unfamiliar sting in his eyes. Elves can’t lie, but humans can, but he knows that Izuku isn’t.
But if Katsuki is deceiving him as part of his succession, Izuku’s heart will shatter irreparably. Not even the strongest healers they have here will save him, and Shouto’s friendship will no longer be enough. If Izuku chooses to risk himself like this, it will be his end.
But it’s not Shouto’s decision to make. Katsuki is his friend too, and he will have to trust him. The mistakes of children should always be forgiven, even when they’re painful. That is his people’s way.
But Shouto will not let his guard down until he’s sure that Izuku will be taken care of, even if he’ll have to remind himself to be optimistic the entire time.
“I’m sorry,” Shouto says. “I will be nice.”
“Thank you.”
This is what Izuku wants, or at least it is tonight.
“I saw you, you know,” Shouto says, and Izuku looks at him curiously. “Feeding him. Making him happy.”
Izuku blushes and turns away. “I’m surprised you were able to look away from Eijirou long enough to notice.”
Shouto chokes defenselessly, and Izuku laughs.
He will miss that sound.
“I will miss you, Izuku.”
“Oh gods,” he wails and drops his head in his hands in a sudden cry. “I’m so sorry.”
“Do not be sorry for this,” Shouto says. “I’m proud of you. You should always do what you want to.”
Izuku turns towards him and wraps his arms around his neck, and Shouto holds him close as his collar is soaked with tears. He will miss this too more than he can bear to think about.
He knew that one day Izuku would leave, but he isn’t sure he thought the day would ever really come. A small part of him thought that Izuku would grow old here in these libraries where he’s always blossomed, but no, Izuku has made his choice.
And then Izuku laughs through the sob, and Shouto blinks away his thoughts.
“What is it?”
“This is the second time I’ve done this today,” he says. “It really must be a special occasion.”
“I don’t remember another time.”
“It was with Katsuki when we were alone.”
“He held you?” Shouto asks.
“Yes, for a long time,” he laughs. “I didn’t know he could stay still for so long, but he did, and he was really nice about it.”
When finally Izuku sits up, Shouto sees that he’s smiling. He’s relieved but also a little sad in a way he doesn’t understand.
But that is a thought for another time.
“Tell me about your day together.”
Izuku talks for hours.
Izuku approaches Eijirou and Katsuki after breakfast while Shouto works elsewhere in the Academy. He’s been tasked with keeping them busy, which is a little daunting for more reasons than one.
Shouto advised him that Eijirou would be happy enough to spend the day with Tuna, and Izuku is sure Katsuki would be fine there too, but today his motivations are a little selfish.
Eijirou waves at him, smiling from ear to ear, and Katsuki approaches indifferently, which is much nicer to see than disdain.
“Good morning, little one!”
“Good morning, Eijirou,” Izuku says before bowing slightly towards Katsuki out of respect. “Good morning.”
Katsuki nods a greeting, and Izuku bites back a smile.
“I’m in charge of the tour today,” he says, and Eijirou makes a surprised face.
“We didn’t see everything yesterday?”
“Well, we did,” Izuku says, shrinking himself as much as possible. “We saw all of the important places…”
Katsuki raises an eyebrow. “Izuku…”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Izuku.”
“Yes?”
Eijirou looks between them both, and Izuku bites back his shame. Yes, he knows he’s being a very bad mage right now, but his intentions are noble, he swears.
Katsuki’s eyes burn into him, and Izuku bites his lip.
Well.
“Oh, he wants something from us,” Eijirou says, quite pleased with the realization to Izuku’s relief before he turns to Katsuki with a frown. “You don’t have your armor.”
“He doesn’t want us to fight something for him,” he says with a hint of amusement that belies the furrow to his brow.
“I know this isn’t what you came here for, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for all of us here, and I think I would drive myself insane if I didn’t at least try to take it, but would you be comfortable helping me with some translations? It won’t be hard, I swear. I just need to make a list of important words so we can parse the rest of the texts. Ummm, from dragons.”
“Oh!” Eijirou says. “You want me to show you how to read?”
“Yes, please,” he says. “It would be quite helpful.”
Eijirou’s smile is as genuine as it is blinding, and Izuku’s body hums all the way to the tips of his fingers. He’s never met a dragon before, but if they’re all like Eijirou, they must be the source of all the warmth in the entire world. Katsuki tuts and walks past him towards the buildings.
“Where are you going?” Eijirou asks as he bolts after him, leaving Izuku in the dust. Izuku laughs as he trudges after them, hoisting his robes up so he doesn’t trip and not at all minding the burn in his lungs. He’ll have to get used to that again, but he won’t let it become a problem.
Katsuki leads them to the library Izuku brought him to yesterday, and he isn’t sure if his racing pulse is from the brisk walk or from the fact that he remembered where it is and what it’s for.
He sits down in one of the chairs at the table and gives the wood a solid rap with his knuckles for Eijirou to join him, and Izuku wastes no time at all retrieving an armful of texts written in draconic runes with all of his previous notes in the margins.
He’s allowed to write on them though. Shouto gave him permission.
He lays out several pieces of parchment, an ink pot, and two quills, and he’s so excited about this opportunity that he has to physically spread his fingers out of fists. Eijirou looks at him expectantly, and Izuku glances at Katsuki for a moment before he takes his seat.
He grabs one of the quills and carefully draws a rune at the top of an unmarked page, adds the elven script next to it, and then writes the word dragon in his own language.
“How do you say this,” Izuku says and points at the page, and Eijirou reads the rune aloud, his tongue flicking past his teeth in a way Izuku tries to imitate with no success.
He repeats the word, and Eijirou smiles at him. “Good job! You said it great.”
“Oh thank you,” Izuku beams, but then Eijirou turns the page towards him, dips a fingers into the ink pot, and scratches out the rune again two more times below it with the tip of his claw, and it takes Izuku a moment to notice the differences.
“This means…. Dragon who speaks? And this one means dragon who doesn’t. I don’t know if it matters for you though.”
“Oh no, it does! We never considered your records would include mentions of both, but of course they would. Do speaking and non-speaking dragons live together?”
Eijirou frowns in thought and then shakes his head. “No, we’re usually at war.”
“War?”
“Yeah, the non-speaking ones,” he says and taps the third rune with a clean finger before he speaks a new word for Izuku to scribble down phonetically in Common (he may have to ask Enji and Rei for the appropriate way to convey it in Elven later, so he adds a small star next to it). “They don’t believe that we should be friends? With humans. And elves, now, I suppose.”
“They want us to be enemies,” Izuku says.
“No, they want you to be food,” he says, and Izuku blinks up at him in surprise. “I would not eat a human.”
“Liar,” Katsuki says under his breath.
“Emergencies happen.”
Izuku laughs, delighted. “That is understandable, maybe.”
“The speaking dragons,” he says and points to the other run. “My people. We don’t believe we’re different from humans. Well, we are different, but we’re not.”
“But dragons are reclusive, yes?”
“Yes, but,” he says and then he thinks for a moment. “We don’t join your fights, and we don’t live in your cities, but we trade together, and we can bond with humans if we want to. The Unspeaking wouldn’t do that. They would want me to kill Katsuki if I was one of them.”
“For being a prince?”
“For climbing on my back,” he says, and Katsuki shifts in his seat like the truth of it is uncomfortable. They must have bonded, and if that’s taboo to some dragons, it must be important to others.
“Fascinating,” Izuku says, and then he refers to one of his scrolls, keeping himself on track. “It looks like all the runes here are the same, but I will make a note to look for the differences so that we know we’re reading about two different groups of people. “Oh! This passage! It has both!”
He turns the page to Eijirou, and Eijirou smears a swipe of ink on his nose as he reads it and thinks about how he should say it for Izuku’s ears.
“It says the Unspeaking One, Kai, made a pact with the Voice Below the Mountain to create a plague against the humans, who he saw as weak, but a Speaking One named Mirai had a vision of one thousand dragons flying over a land as flat as dragon scales and saw the great rise of all dragons with many Walking Ones with them as brothers. Mirai and Kai fought for two futures. Mirai fell, but not before he tore Kai’s wings, leaving him flightless and no longer worthy of his people. The Unspeaking retreated, leaving the great dragon mountains to us, who will call this place our home until Mirai’s future calls us away.”
Izuku gasps in awe. “Wow.”
“I’ve never heard of this,” Eijirou says with a frown before turning to Katsuki. “Have you?”
“The fuck would I know about dragon history? I’m more concerned with you having a pact giving plague bringer living beneath your mountain.”
“Maybe it’s just a story,” Izuku offers. “We believe these are histories, but that’s because we can only assume so. There’s a chance that this is all fictional. Do dragons tell tales?”
“Yes, we have tails.”
“Tales,” Katsuki says. “Bedtime stories. Making shit up around the fire to entertain yourselves.”
“Oh, yes, we do do that,” Eijirou says.
Izuku frowns, and he tries not to be disappointed.
“You’ve got other books, don’t you,” Katsuki says, and Izuku nods. “Try one of those.”
Izuku grabs another tome at flips it open with a determined nod. “Okay. So we know what these three runes mean, and this one comes up a lot too. What does it say?”
“Mountain,” Eijirou says confidently, and Izuku is only a little ashamed that he didn’t already know that.
But this is good. It’s like a puzzle, and you have to put all of the big pieces together before you can work on the little ones. He knows that.
“And this one?”
“Ahhhh, in Dragon it’s close to hatching? But in your language you would use it in many ways, I think.”
“Like what?”
“The egg, the egg when it cracks, the day the egg cracks, and the young dragon inside it, I think? There could be more.”
“Got it,” Izuku nods as he writes them all down. “It’s a word that describes the birth process for dragons from the beginning.”
“Probably,” Eijirou says, and Katsuki tuts a laugh. Izuku finds himself smiling.
He spends more time learning about dragon births, mating, and egg imbuements than he ever imagined he would, but it’s all so fascinating. If Eijirou ever wanted to mate with someone who wasn’t a dragon, they could both transfer a bit of their essences to an egg and have a child that way. Even Katsuki didn’t seem to know that, and Eijirou only flushes a little as he explains it.
They had this information here the entire time and no one knew? Elves are so enamored with births and stars, he imagines this will be a glorious discovery that could lead to so much more knowledge than Izuku ever expected to gain from these texts.
He makes sure to write out his every thought and theory so that when he leaves, the next scholar will be able to pick up where he left off, and he bites back a smile as he signs his name in both Common and Elven at the bottom, along with the date for the records. This is so exciting.
He looks up to them both to share in this moment of elation, but he finds them both staring back at him blankly, and his face drops.
“Oh gods, I’m so sorry,” Izuku says. “This is really boring, isn’t it?”
“No,” they both say at the same time in a way that Izuku isn’t sure he believes, and his cheeks burn in embarrassment.
Eijirou sits up and dips his claw in the ink again before he draws a rune next to Izuku’s name. “This one’s important.”
“What is it?”
“It’s you,” he beams, and Izuku’s face lights up.
“Oh!”
Katsuki leans across the table to look at it before he snorts.
“What?” Izuku asks.
“It says ‘shrub’.”
“Oh,” he says, his face and shoulders dropping. “Wait. You can read this?”
“Of course I can,” Katsuki says.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“Because you didn’t ask me,” he says pointedly.
Izuku looks at Eijirou, entirely apologetic. “Oh gods, Eijirou, I’m so sorry. I completely wasted your time.”
“You did not waste my time,” he says, adding the word Izuku just learned means shrub at the end to address him. Katsuki throws his head back and cackles.
The door creaks loudly as someone pushes it open, and the three of them turn to see who it is. Shouto pauses, not used to the sudden onslaught of attention.
“Hello,” Eijirou says, and he uses another word that Izuku doesn’t know to address Shouto.
Katsuki exhales like he’s annoyed and pulls Izuku’s notes to his side of the table, grabs the other quill, and writes the rune and the word in Common without the Elven equivalent, since he likely wouldn’t know it.
He pushes it back with a challenging quirk of his brow as if to say see?, and Izuku glances at it to see what it says.
Kitty.
He looks up at Eijirou and Shouto, who are once again immediately preoccupied with each other, and he covers his mouth before he can laugh.
“He’s not wrong,” he says quietly.
“He’s not about you either,” Katsuki says, and Izuku swiftly kicks him beneath the table. “I’m your king, mage.”
“Not yet,” he whispers.
Katsuki kicks him back.
They spend several days together like this.
Shouto regrets that he can’t be with them the entire time, but he has responsibilities here that he would have to regulate to someone else, which doesn’t seem appropriate for the circumstances.
And as far as he’s aware, there haven’t been any incidents. He’s asked several trusted members of the Academy to look after Izuku and report back if he’s ever treated unfairly, yelled at, or harmed in any way, but so far, Izuku has been treated with nothing but kindness and affection from both of their guests.
It makes working away from them so much easier knowing that.
Today, though, Shouto decides to be a little bold. There are places within the Academy that are forbidden to outsiders, and this is one of them. Katsuki particularly shouldn’t be here as the future sovereign of a different nation, but Izuku was brought here long ago without regard for their shared status.
In fact, Izuku would be the real threat here, as magic is his interest, but Shouto trusts him with his life and so does his family.
The Guiding Hall is theirs for the day.
Shouto leads them into a large room shaped like a dome with thousands of drawers carved into the walls. Each drawer is locked with a different key hidden somewhere else, and Shouto will never speak of their contents to anyone.
At the center of the room is a device that is also meant to be kept secret, but for this group, he happily breaks a rule. They’re no threat, and it would be impossible to use it maliciously in only a few hours. It’s a large table that stretches twenty feet in length, and it glows with soft and bright arcane energy, the same shade as one of his eyes.
“This is a map of our country,” Shouto says as the other three approach. “The lines that cross it represent the ley lines beneath the ground and the flow of magic from the different Fonts we’ve discovered all the way back to here, as was demonstrated when you first arrived.”
“Wow,” Eijirou says, and he holds a hand above the light to test the energy. “What are these little dots for?”
“People,” Shouto says. “Every person alive is a small source. Life is magic, but we do not harvest it.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t,” Katsuki mutters, and Izuku elbows him.
“You’re just as capable of cutting off my head with your sword,” Shouto says, unbothered. “Siphoning a person is unethical.”
“And Raising one isn’t?”
Izuku pales, but no one says anything else about it.
“So you can see everyone who comes here?” Eijirou asks.
“Yes, we cannot be invaded, but no one has been foolish enough to try for a thousand years.”
Eijirou holds his hand over the Academy, which burns the brightest. “It’s so cold.”
“That’s an interesting observation,” Shouto says with mild amusement. “I will work in here today. Feel free to look around, play with the map, or find somewhere else to entertain yourselves. You have access to everywhere that Izuku does, and you don’t need my permission to come and go as you please.”
“We’re fine here,” Izuku says. “Right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine here,” Eijirou says, and Katsuki nods.
“Then I will work quickly,” Shouto says before crossing the room away from them.
Shouto takes a key off of his belt, and he unlocks one of the boxes before checking the contents. A small crystal blinks sadly inside the case, and he rubs a finger down it until it glows brightly again, giving it a small fraction of his magic before he returns it to the wall for safe keeping.
He walks around the room to another, and when he opens it, he finds that it’s dead. He swallows and crushes it in his hand until it dissolves into a fine dust. It will need to be replaced, but Shouto will worry about that tomorrow.
A great deal of magic is being used, and it’s not coming from within these walls.
It’s unnerving.
The door opens, and a mage in silver robes rushes in with a cautious glance towards the others.
“They’re fine,” Shouto says.
He nods and approaches him, pulling him to the side before he lowers his voice. “There’s been a disruption at one of the northern ley lines.”
“Is the Font dead?”
“Damaged, Third Prince,” he whispers, and Shouto exhales in relief. “We can still sense it, but if the line isn’t repaired–.”
“It will rupture,” he says with a nod. “Yes, I’m aware. I’ll take care of it.”
He bows and turns to leave before glancing at the guests again. Eijirou waves him goodbye, but Katsuki and Izuku both tense like they know something’s wrong.
“I need to leave the city for a bit today,” Shouto says. “One of the ley lines was damaged at the source and needs to be repaired before it becomes a problem. There’s no need to worry.”
“I’ll go with you,” Izuku says.
“I don’t want to pull you away from your guests.”
“This is a two person job,” he says. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself doing it alone.”
Shouto doesn’t mention that when Izuku leaves, he’ll be doing it alone for the rest of his life, so it would benefit him to practice while he has the chance.
But that doesn’t mean he wants to.
“We’re going with you,” Katsuki says, taking Shouto by complete surprise. “Four is better than one.”
A comfortable happiness spreads through him that he isn’t used to, and he reaches for it before it can slip out of his fingers. So maybe he is a fool, but he is a fool who likes being with his friends.
“It will probably be boring,” Shouto warns.
“Not with good company,” Eijirou says with a smile Shouto isn’t sure he could ever say no to.
“Why not?” Izuku says with a shrug. “They won’t disturb anything, and we’ll both work better if we’re not worried about hurrying back.”
Shouto nods in acceptance. He has a point there.
“We should leave immediately.”