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Shouta never wanted to believe that one of his students could be a traitor. Logically, he was fully aware of and looking out for the possibility, he had to be, for the sake of the rest of his Hellspawn, but to be slapped in the face with Aoyama's betrayal over phone, the knowledge that his kids have only just all been reunited making it impossibly worse...
Shouta is angry.
It's both as simple as that, and far more complicated. Because, despite everything that he sees and knows of this cruel, disgusting world they live in, he knows there is light in it too. Knows that there is reprieve, and blessings, and rainbows in even the darkest skies. But here, in a war against monsters, there is no good or bad, no right or wrong, only trying to survive. Only doing what they can for each other.
So, yes, Shouta is utterly furious, more than, because these children, his children, are heroes, and Aoyama has made terrible, awful decisions, but he had little actual choice in those decisions (Shouta knows, all too well, from bitter and bloody experience, that life and death and safety are rarely choices; no, they are only one bad option or another, someone else getting hurt or you getting hurt, which is no choice at all, even more so for a child, a little boy who barely knows himself or the world, or a teenager who was brought up with such vast shadows over his shoulders-) and it might have condemned them all.
Shouta wants Aoyama to be able to... not repent, because he hasn't truly committed a sin, not in Shouta's eyes, but to be able to assuage the guilt that the kid himself is clearly feeling. (He looks ready to be torn apart by it, even through thick glass and banded restraints, desolate-)
So he presses that Aoyama can, if nothing else, trust the class. Trust him. Yes, they need Aoyama, they're putting him at risk with this plan, and Shouta doesn't honestly like that, but if the kid doesn't do something to counteract the effects of his own actions, under duress or not, then neither society nor Aoyama himself will be able to accept him at the end of this all.
(Shouta refuses to even contemplate that not all of his class may survive this war. It's illogical of him, but if he doesn't allow himself this tiny bit of denial then he may well not even be able to keep himself together enough to survive himself. Things... things have been difficult already, very difficult, because sitting in a hospital bed whilst his Hellspawn fight for each other and their lives and the entirety of Japan has been tearing him apart, piece by piece, nightmare and scar and fear by moment-day-week. Shouta needs to do more. But, right now, all he can is to try to help the single one of his kids that he can reach, and at least it's the one who, directly, needs him the most right now.)
It hurts to see Aoyama crying. This teen is one who is usually flamboyant and bright and bubbly, who has undoubtedly shown homesickness or insecurities, but is overall a very vibrant part of the class. (Every single member of this class is integral, by now. Shouta- Fuck, Shouta loves these kids. He just wants them to be okay and together, no matter how hard that might be. How unlikely, even.)
But Shouta has no time to mourn his kids' innocence, not yet, so he focuses on his conversation with Aoyama, with making sure the teen understands both the gravity of the situation and the hope that is still here, the chances he still has.
Shouta has taught 1-A for a long time already. He knows them inside-out, although clearly not well enough (he hasn't had the chance to have the full conversations that he wants with them, hasn't had time to deal with everything that they are, to help them through more than their immediate problems, and he loathes that more with every passing incident-), and he knows, he is sure, their truest selves. The core of them.
(He had never doubted that Aoyama was scared. For all of his brilliance, the kid has always been hesitant when it came to a lot of heroism; yet, despite his fear, he had forged onwards, had kept up with his class, had kept on fighting, kept on trying. And he had succeeded through it. Now here they are.
It reminds Shouta far, far too much of staring through similar glass at the shadow-shrouded form of what was once his best friend, twisted and corrupted by a villain too cruel to comprehend. It's heart-breakingly similar, and Shouta hates the world.)
No matter how unfair it all is though, he trusts Aoyama will help them all. He trusts his class to make sure Aoyama survives it. So Shouta, whether logically or illogically, will have genuine hope for the fate of his Hellspawn, and will do his best to support them through it all. Every single one of them. Heavens knows his kids deserve it.
Is it so bad to want them to be happy?
