Sorry, this will be the only chapter this week. I wrote Izuku's Birthday Oneshot (which you should read if you want to) which took a while so I didn't have the time or motivation to write. 

*Izuku's POV*

The day after we visited the graveyard, I had my first therapy session after the entire kidnapping experience. After the attack on the USJ, all of the students in my class had all been required to go to a minimum of 5 sessions of therapy. After those 5 sessions, we weren't obligated to keep attending, provided our therapist said that we were ok, but a majority of my class kept going. Ochako had told me it was nice to get everything off of her chest and not have to keep everything bottled up. Even if I had wanted to stop going to the therapy sessions, I wasn't allowed to. After what had happened to me in my early childhood and the fact that I still had to attend therapy and I had a psychiatrist. I had made a fuss about it at first, but after a while, I learned to accept the fact that I needed help. After the whole training camp incident, there was no question about it. Every student in the hero course in UA was required to go to therapy sessions at least once a month. Some people, such as myself, Kacchan, Shoto, Iida, Tokoyami and Shinso, had to go more frequently. Normally once a week. I wasn't 100% sure why the others had to go as frequently as me. 

I could guess why Kacchan had to. The boy somehow had both an inferiority complex and a superiority complex at the same time. Plus he had clear anger issues. Add on the trauma he ( and every member of the first year hero course) had faced and you get why he needed some extra counselling. 

Shoto obviously needed it for his childhood issues. I think he had nightmares as well, but I couldn't be sure since he never shared them with me and I rarely slept in the same room as him. I could always tell that he'd had a nightmare though. He was always a bit quieter after he'd had one. He had a vacant look in his eyes the next day and he appeared to be more tired. 

As I said, I can't be sure why some people needed extra therapy. With some people, I can only give my best guess, and Iida is one of those people. I think Iida needed extra therapy because he was traumatized by the Stain incident. Every time it was brought up, he would flinch away slightly, get a really guilty look on his face and close off for a few minutes. He blamed himself for getting Kacchan, Shoto and I hurt. Other than that and the obvious trauma that the entire class shared, I didn't know what else Iida needed extra therapy for. Though I wasn't going to question it or look too deeply into it, it wasn't really my business. 

I know for certain that Tokoyami required quirk therapy. The entire class knew and Tokoyami didn't seem to mind that we knew. On top of training Dark Shadow in school hours, Tokoyami got specialist help from a quirk therapist. Since Dark Shadow was sentient, it was harder to control them and UA thought it would be a good idea to get Tokoyami help so that he could be more in touch with his quirk and accept Dark Shadow as a part of himself. Of course, Tokoyami had also nearly been kidnapped, so he was bound to have a bit of trauma from that as well. 

Shinso was a complete mystery to me. I didn't know a lot about him. He was my friend even though he had explicitly stated he had no interest in making any. He had once told me when the subject of therapy had somehow been brought up, that he had been attending therapy for quite a few years. It intrigued me, but it was not my place to ask about it.

"Are you ready?" Dad asked me as he pushed me towards the opaque glass door of my therapist's office. (I was really conflicted on whether Izu should be seeing a therapist or a psychiatrist. So now he's seeing both but he's visiting his therapist in this chapter. Does that make sense? I don't know. It's a fictional piece of writing so I guess you'll just have to accept it.) I nodded my head and took a deep breath to prepare myself. 

"Hello, Izuku, how are you feeling today?" my therapist, Aoi Natsu, asked in a gentle voice as I manoeuvred myself out of my wheelchair and onto the sofa. It was a lot more comfortable. "I'm doing ok right now, but the other night I wasn't doing too well." I replied honestly. After months of seeing Aoi-san, I had come to accept the fact that it was best to just talk to her. There was no point in hiding my emotions. Aoi-san nodded and handed me my notebook and pencils, I smiled at her in thanks and looked down at the book as she started talking. "Would you like to tell me why you feel as though the other night wasn't good?" Natsu asked. I nodded as I began to trace careful shapes onto the paper, "Well the other night, Shoto had to carry me up the stairs since I obviously couldn't get up them in my own. I got angry with him for taking away my independence. We got into our first fight. We're over it now though, we spoke about it yesterday morning and he said he understood. Last night I had a really bad dream. I took my medicine as Ihro-san told me to, but it didn't help. I think it is because I was upset when I went to bed." I explained to Aoi-san. By the time I had stopped speaking, I had the outline of a tall woman's body on my paper. I didn't see Aoi-san's reaction since my eyes were glued to my paper, but I could hear the scribble of her pen against the pad of paper in her lap. 

"Would you mind explaining this dream to me, Izuku? It may help you if you can get it off of your chest. I was told by your dad that it was bad enough for you to vomit quite excessively." Natsu-san said, steepling her fingers as she gazed upon me with her striking blue eyes. It seemed quite fitting that she should have blue eyes. "Well, it started off with me just zooming past loads of my memories. They were mostly memories of... him. I could feel the pain from each memory. Then the memories stopped and I was just surrounded by darkness and left alone with my own thoughts. It wasn't a very pleasant feeling. After a while, the darkness receded and I was in the bar..." my voice caught in my throat at the mention of the bar. Memories, both real and from my dreams, whizzed through my head. "Ok, keep drawing Izuku. It'll help you" Aoi-san's voice broke through my haze. I nodded and looked down at my paper, I recognised what I was drawing and felt a small smile lift the corners of my lips. I felt the urge to finish the piece of art, no matter how many times I drew her. 

"So... I was in the bar that the League's hideout was in. Nobody was with me at first. The room was covered in blood though. It was on the walls, ceiling, bar, bar stools. Everywhere. I was holding a bloody knife in my hand my hands were so covered in blood that they were sticky. After I had looked around the room, I had this urge to look in front of me. I looked and... and..." I trailed off, gaze fixing on a faraway point. The world faded around me and only white noise accompanied me. It took a moment, but I was brought back to reality when Natsu-san's voice broke through my daze once again. She gave me a comforting smile, wordlessly persuading me to go on. I swallowed my fears and inhibitions before hesitantly continuing. I knew it was best if I told someone about my dream, it would get it off of my chest. "There was a body in front of me. It was Shoto's. He was really disfigured and I had this gut feeling that I had done it to him. I had hurt him. It made me sick looking at him. Then Hisashi came in. He told me I had done it and that I was just like him. It was awful. He kept repeating how I was exactly like him and how he had expected me to do it." I whispered as I shaded her face and added in details such as her freckles and the mole above her right eyebrow. I heard Aoi-san's pen on her paper, writing notes rapidly as I began to speak again.

"I told him that I wasn't like him so he started hitting me. I got so angry. I think I played into his hands because I attacked him. He was happy at first. Happy I was acting on my anger. But I didn't stop. He begged me to. I didn't listen though. I remember thinking that I shouldn't show him mercy since he showed me none. I think I shifted in my dream, to a wolf maybe. I ate him. I'm certain of that. Then I killed myself and woke up." I croaked through my closing throat. I quickly drank some water to soothe my sore throat. I didn't look up at Aoi, I resolutely kept my eyes on my drawing, continuing to add details. "Thank you for telling me, Izuku. I know it's hard to speak about these things. What happened when you woke up?" Aoi-san asked. 

"When I woke up, I felt really sick so I crawled to the bathroom and threw up. Then I realised I was already covered in puke so I had a shower to get it off of my body I couldn't sleep in my bed since it was covered in vomit so I went to Shoto's room. He let me sleep in his bed." I blushed slightly after sharing that detail. There was nothing particularly scandalous about sharing a bed with Shoto. I had slept in the same bed as Kacchan and Kyoka before. Aoi-san nodded her head and wrote something down. "Well Izuku, I think you did the right thing. I think if you had stayed in your own you may have hyper fixated and made the situation worse. Now, what else would you like to talk about?".

By the end of the session, I had gotten everything off of my chest and felt a lot better. My drawing was finished and I was extremely proud of it. "Drawing your mother again? She was a very beautiful woman." Aoi-san smiled sweetly at me, looking down at the drawing in her hand. "We visited her grave yesterday. It was nice." I whispered gently. "In terms of your nightmare, it makes sense why you had that dream. The setting of the bar points to your kidnapping. Your argument with your boyfriend caused you to imagine you hurting him and it seems as though in your dream you got revenge on Hisashi but it cost you your own life. I'll speak with Ihro-san about getting you some stronger medicine. I'll be passing these notes along to him, so expect to talk about everything with him, ok?" Aoi-san asked. I nodded my head.

After I came out of my therapy session, I wheeled myself across campus. I took in the beautiful scenery and allowed the warm summer breeze to wash over me. Every time I came out of a therapy session, it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Natsu-san was so kind and did a lot to make me comfortable. She let me draw whilst I was speaking and made the room smell like home. Fresh linen, my mother's perfume, Dad's cologne (which he only ever used for special occasions), freshly baked biscuits and oranges. It was Aoi-san's quirk. Scent Memory. She could pull a memory or feeling from someone's mind and produce a scent which could be associated with that memory. It was a pretty cool quirk to me. Then again, most quirks were pretty cool to me.

I arrived back at Height's Alliance and pulled my chair in next to Shoto. It seemed as if the entire class was in the living room watching a film. I felt Shoto's hand slip into my own, a sense of calm washed over me. I could get used to how mellow I felt at that moment, but of course, I'm Izuku Aizawa-Midoriya and bad luck followed me like a bad smell. 

I'm not sure if I wrote the therapy scene correctly. I've only ever been to play therapy and I doubt a 15-year-old boy would be attending play therapy so I couldn't exactly write that. If anyone has any pointers on how to improve scenes like this in the future, then any help would be appreciated. I sort of named the therapist after a song I really like at the moment by a Japanese band called Mrs Green Apple.

Anyway, thank you for reading chapter 13 of Phenomenon and I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are.