Curate, connect, and discover
Fic idea
Post-Shirakumo's death where Aizawa and Yamada have not had the best communication, often relying the other to fill in the gaps (which they are both pretty good at but that still doesn't substitute actual emotional release). That is, until they both get hit with a quirk where they swap nightmares for a night and get to dream the others' greatest fear. Yamada has Aizawa's nightmare and, as he suspects, it revolves around the incident that killed Shirakumo. But much to his surprise it isn't Shirakumo that's getting crushed by a building. No. It's Yamada, current Yamada as in they are currently in their 20s, being crushed by a building and Aizawa being unable to save him. The rest of the dream is Aizawa just frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Even when people tell him what to do, he's still frozen. Yamada realizes that Aizawa hates himself for not saving Shirakumo, but his greatest fear is it happening again and him not having grown enough to stop it from taking Yamada. Aizawa's greatest fear is outliving Yamada.
Meanwhile, Aizawa dreams Yamada's greatest fear, which is how he finds himself starring at his own grave, as well as Kayama's and Shirakumo's. But that's not what sticks out to him. What it's really disturbing is that the entire world is on mute. It's not what he expected from a Yamada-dream. He'd always expected them to he loud and colorful. Even a nightmare might at least have a bug or two. But Yamada's nightmare is dull, mundane, and disturbingly silent as he does the most normal things (radiostation, coffee, patrol). Theres not even background noise. But in the end, instead heading home, he heads back to the graves and sits in front of them. Complete silence. Aizawa realizes that Yamada expects to outlive all of his friends, but his greatest fear is the empty feeling he'll inevitable stuck with when they're gone.