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It starts like this: on the sixth day, God created Man.
God created Man, shaped him from blood and flesh and bone and put stars in his cold, staring eyes, and He admired His creation, as small and insignificant as it was, because it was a distraction from the war raging around Him, the galaxies ripping themselves apart, His beloved angels crashing from the Heavens with broken wings and shattered halos.
God gave Adam the Garden, and God gave Adam the world, but it wasn’t enough. It is never enough. Having everything and wanting more is called greed. The Bible teaches that greed is a sin, that one should give themselves to the people that they love and the people that they hate and the people that they’ve never met, should pour their heart and soul into their work, their words.
Having everything and wanting more is called greed, and it is the worst sin of all.
From the moment that he took his first breath, Adam never stopped wishing for more. God granted his wishes, of course - Adam was His newest creation, and He loved him in the way that a father loved a child. Adam was His child. His pet. His toy. And so, when Adam asked for something, God indulged him. God listened. God smiled down at Adam, and Adam was too young and stupid to know that His attention was something beautiful to have, something deadly.
I want that, Adam said. I want that. I want that. I want that.
One day, though, he asked for too much. Faster than he could blink, the gates of Eden slammed closed in his face. He was locked out and shunned, and his Father’s voice boomed down from everywhere, nowhere, deafening.
At first, Adam couldn’t believe it. It was just a mistake, he pleaded, but God was unforgiving. Next, Adam grew angry. You’re abandoning your son over an apple? No answer came, and Adam fell to his knees. It won’t happen again, he promised, and, when he was met with silence, he lapsed into muteness and wouldn’t speak no matter how much Eve prodded him to. And, finally, Adam nodded. I understand, he said, and stood up. He brushed himself off and took Eve’s hand in his own. I understand, Father.
Adam walked away from the only home that he had ever known, and he never once looked back.
The moral of this story is this: all it takes is one mistake. One stupid, stupid mistake. Ignorance. Disobedience. That’s what got Adam locked out of the Garden of Eden. That, and greed. It's an inherent part of human nature, to always long for more, to always look for the next mountain to climb. Having everything and wanting more is called greed. Remember. God gave His children the Earth and the stars and the moon, and yet humanity remains grounded, buried in their sins in the same way that Adam buried his rib beneath the roots of a tree.
Remember.
A coffin.
Ash in the air.
A gravestone.
Dust on his tongue.
Beside him, his mother whispers, God commanded Abraham to strike down his son. In some versions of the story, Isaac willingly laid himself down on the altar. He bowed his head and welcomed the blade, and Shouto wonders, now, what it would be like to be that selfless.
What would it feel like, to love someone so much that you would welcome death as long as it was by their hands?
Throughout the funeral, Shouto doesn’t shed a single tear. His father is holding onto, and Shouto is so small that the man’s fingers overlap around his wrist like a shackle. Once the ceremony is over, sinfully short, his father looks down at him and asks, “How do you feel, Shouto?”
Shouto watches tears roll down his mother’s cheeks and wonders what it would be like to be able to cry so freely. He wonders about a lot of things, but he never asks the questions out loud - there is no time for simple curiosity, no time for games, not when he is training to be a hero.
“I don’t know,” Shouto says. He looks up at his father, at the bright flames that hurt his eyes, at the twisted set of his mouth, and he wonders why he always feels so cold when he’s standing next to the man. “I’m not - I’m not sad.”
His father smiles. “Good. Your brother was a failure. He won’t be missed.”
You have passed my test well.
The words are unspoken, but they ring clear all the same.
As they walk away from Touya’s grave, the hollow pit in Shouto’s chest burns with frost.
God has a tendency to destroy. It must’ve been hard to resist flooding the world in those few weeks that Noah was finishing his ark.
A finger on the trigger, waiting.
Waiting.
“Again,” his father says.
Shouto spits the blood out of his mouth, and he, as always, gets back to his feet.
The kettle screams.
Gentle hands wrap bandages around one side of his face. Shouto sits still on the examination table, back straight and breaths steady, and wonders if this is what it feels like to die.
Nobody will ever love him like God does. Nobody will ever take care of him like He does. That’s why He hurts him, Our Father, Who art in Heaven. He does it to make him stronger, to make him better.
Shouto prays to Him every night, lips moving soundlessly. His mother may be gone, whisked away to somewhere incomprehensible, unreachable, but her teachings remain.
Hallowed be Thy name.
Shouto prays to Him every night, even though he wonders, sometimes, if He even cares.
Shouto has a nightmare.
That fact in and of itself isn’t anything special, seeing as he gets them several times a week, but what sets this one apart from the others is that he can’t wake himself up no matter how hard he tries.
There is something - someone? - standing in front of him. It's human-shaped, almost, save for the fact that it looms so far above him that he has to crane his neck to see the featureless oval that vaguely resembles a head.
A voice booms down on him from everywhere. Nowhere. It's deafening. “What are you afraid of?” There is no mouth on the thing before him but the words seem to come from one anyways, and, as the thing speaks, red appears on its torso, its arms.
“You’re bleeding,” Shouto says, calm and collected.
“You are mistaken.”
“Is it not your blood?” It's a question, and Shouto automatically draws back, mouth snapping shut.
The thing tilts its head. “Do you really think I’d hurt anyone?” It doesn’t bend down, not exactly - it's more like it folds at the knees, hits the ground in front of him. Shouto tries to back up, but he can’t. He’s pinned in place. “Do you really think I’d do that to somebody, after all the kindness I’ve shown you?” The oval of its face becomes sharper, more defined, as its voice grows deeper.
It sends shivers down Shouto’s spine, and he finds himself saying, “No, no, I don’t, I’m sorry.”
“Why would you think that of me, Shouto? Have I ever done anything like that?” The red on its arms drips down its skin, which is slowly changing color, turning from blinding white to tan.
“No, you -”
“So why would you ask that? Do you hate me, Shouto, after all I’ve done for you?” It cups Shouto’s face in its palms and he notices that its hands are tacky with blood. The face gains more definition, and he finds himself staring into two freezing eyes. “Don’t you get it, Shouto?”
Scalding water pours down, choking him, burning, melting him like candle wax until he is nothing more than a gleaming white skull, shining perfection and waiting to be rebuilt.
“You’re my Adam, Shouto. My masterpiece.”
Shouto’s breaths are ragged, harsh. They scrape the inside of his throat and sear into his lungs like a brand. He gasps out, “And what does that make you?” He means for it to be biting and bitter, but it comes out more sincerely curious than he would have liked.
“Well,” his Father says, and laughs. “I suppose that makes me God.”
He grabs Shouto by the throat and slams His knuckles into his face. He tells him stories of His past, of His failures and mistakes, and says that He wants Shouto to be better than him.
Shouto sneers and says, “That’ll be easy.”
His Father snaps his arm like He’d snap a villain’s neck, and Shouto bites his tongue until it bleeds.
A girl in Shouto’s Literature class stands up on the first day of middle school and reads the words chalked in English on the board at the front of the room. “Hell is other people,” she says. Her voice is soft and lilting, almost musical, and as she sits back down, her eyes catch on Shouto’s.
Shouto quickly looks away.
He hadn’t even realized that he’d been staring.
There is a gun in his Father’s dresser drawer. Shouto isn’t supposed to know about it but he does anyways, and sometimes when his Father isn’t there he sneaks into His room and takes it out and holds it in his hands. He pretends to shoot his Father through the head, muzzle pointed at His pillow. He turns it on himself and watches his reflection in the mirror.
In the end, though, he always puts it back.
Suicide is a sin, after all.
Half a week into the school year, Shouto throws the first punch. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why. The other boy’s words are blended together in his mind, meaningless now that the moment has passed, but they strike a chord deep inside of him. Like the thinnest string on a violin, something in his heart screams, and before he knows it his classmate is laid out on the floor, clutching at his nose and crying. Shouto only gets a split lip, so, all things considered, he’s the one who wins.
The girl from before is the one who pulls him away from the scene. She grabs Shouto’s hands and he doesn’t pull away, and she leads him down the halls, and she dabs at his face with a wipe when the actual nurse rushes out to treat the boy that Shouto fought. She introduces herself as Yaoyorozu Momo and apologizes when he winces at the sting of rubbing alcohol.
The girl asks, “What did he say?”
The girl asks, “Did you hit him first?”
The girl asks, “What’s your name?”
Shouto shrugs, and shrugs, and shrugs.
Before the end of the month, Shouto’s middle school has banned him from taking martial arts as an elective.
Yaoyorozu won’t leave him alone.
She walks at his side whenever she can, waves to him across the cafeteria, and picks him as her partner every time in gym class. When he snaps at her, asks her why she even bothers, she gives him a smile that makes him feel fragile and delicate and one wrong move away from shattering. “No one deserves to be lonely,” she says.
“I’m not lonely.”
And she just raises her eyebrows at him, like she knows that he’s lying.
His name is Todoroki Shouto.
He tells it to Yaoyorozu, and she nods, says that she already knew that. Not that she’d been stalking him or anything, of course. It's just that he was very recognizable.
“I wish I wasn’t,” Shouto says. “I wish that nobody knew who I was.”
She frowns at him and tilts back in her chair, the front legs leaving the floor. Staring at the ceiling, she says, “But aren’t you going to be a hero? Follow in your father’s footsteps?”
“Where has that kind of thinking ever gotten us?” he asks. It reads rhetorical, as it should, but he can’t help the plea in his voice that makes his words breathe, Where will that kind of thinking get me?
Yaoyorozu gives him an odd, odd look, but doesn’t bring the subject up again.
“So, what seems to be the problem?” The principal smiles at Shouto’s teacher without looking at Shouto himself, and Shouto crosses his arms over his chest. “As far as I know, Todoroki hasn’t had any disciplinary issues recently, Takenaka-sensei.”
Takenaka-sensei’s hand tightens on Shouto’s shoulder, and she launches into a spiel, a line of concerns that have plagued her since the first day of school. She holds fast to Shouto even as she continues to speak about him like he’s not even there. He’s never there.
“He’s far too angry for a normal child,” Takenaka-sensei insists.
The principal nods and nods and watches him. Shouto doesn’t watch her back. He’s not there.
“And he’ll usually ignore everyone who tries to talk to him. I’ll call his name and I know he can hear me, but he won’t answer. He’ll barely look me in the eye. Todoroki. Hey, Todoroki, look at me, please.” When Shouto doesn’t speak, Takenaka-sensei huffs in irritation. “See?”
The principal nods and nods and says that she does. Then, when Shouto’s teacher pauses to draw a breath, she asks, “And what are you expecting me to do about it?”
“Talk to him or - or something.”
“Or something.” The principal sounds vaguely amused. She stands up and comes around her desk, crouches in front of Shouto. His hands are gripping the sides of the chair so tightly that his knuckles are white, and he vehemently avoids meeting her prying, probing gaze. She clicks her tongue like she’s scolding an unruly dog and takes his face into her hands. “Todoroki,” she says, and Shouto’s breaths are halted, jerky. The principal and teacher either don’t notice or don’t care. “Todoroki, if you don’t listen to Takenaka-sensei, I’ll have no choice but to call your father. Do you understand?”
Shouto stares at her, silent.
“Do you understand?”
“See, I told you he was too angry to be normal,” Takenada-sensei gripes, but the principal hushes her and looks back at Shouto.
“Todoroki,” she says. “I asked you a question, and I expect a response. If I don’t get one in the next five seconds, I will have a talk with your father.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” The principal straightens up, smooths her palms down the front of her shirt. She smiles at Takenaka-sensei. “See? He’ll talk if you threaten to bring Todoroki-san into it.”
Her tone implies, He’ll do anything if you threaten to bring Todoroki-san into it, and it's true.
He hates himself for being so weak.
The principal calls the home phone even though Shouto followed her directions, and the blow that his Father delivers to his head makes it impossible to walk straight for the next two days.
After that, Shouto takes the gun from his Father’s drawer, and this time he doesn’t put it back.
No one notices.
Life goes on.
Shouto is drowning.
The tiles under his feet are cold, and the water in his ears muffles even the tiniest of sounds. Down here, everything is quiet. There are no loud voices or angry hands or bloody noses. There is nothing. He is nothing. He should go back to the surface, but he’s tired. He’s tired. He’s so tired.
One of his classmates has to drag him out of the pool, but he doesn’t give them a chance to try mouth-to-mouth. He gags and chokes and curses in their face and pretends that he isn’t almost crying. The other kids don’t know what to make of it other than Todoroki Shouto can’t swim, but Yaoyorozu refuses to move more than a few steps away from his side for a week afterwards. She clings to his arm and he lets her and she takes that as an invitation to ask and ask and ask a never-ending stream of questions.
Are you okay, Todoroki?
Shouto?
Do you want me to call you Shouto?
Are you okay, Shouto?
I’m always here to help you, Shouto, you know that, right?
Shouto?
Shouto?
Are you listening to me, Shouto?
What are you thinking, Shouto?
What were you thinking, Shouto?
Are you stupid, Shouto?
Do you want to die, Shouto?
Why did you get into the pool, Shouto, if you knew you couldn’t swim?
Why did you get into the pool, Shouto?
Why did you get into the pool?
In the end, she only stops when Shouto kisses her. He kisses her, and she kisses him, and it feels wrong and it feels right and it feels like something splintering inside of him, something priceless, irreparable. When Yaoyorozu pulls back, she doesn’t even look fazed. “I know you did that just to make me stop talking,” she says, and her hands slide down his arms, anchor around his wrists. “I know you don’t like me like that.”
Shouto frowns, but he doesn’t leave. Not yet. “If you knew, why did you kiss me back?”
The smile she gives him is unlike any smile he’s ever seen. It's small and it's soft and it's impossibly sad. “That is the question, isn’t it?”
In another world, Shouto would have gotten himself to say something - an apology, maybe - but in this world all he does is shoulder his backpack and walk away.
Hell is other people.
Other people are Hell.
Hell is a girl named Yaoyorozu Momo, who seems to have made it her personal mission to make Shouto feel like he’s important to someone other than his Father. Hell is Takenaka-sensei, who is malicious without meaning to be and has Todoroki Enji on speed dial. Hell is Shouto’s mother. Hell is Shouto’s brothers. Hell is Shouto’s sister.
There is no one more Hellish, however, than the boy that Shouto comes face-to-face with on the very first day of high school. He doesn’t say much at all to Shouto, nothing except, “Move,” when Shouto accidently blocks his way into the classroom, but Shouto’s fists still twitch at his sides.
Later, Yaoyorozu catches him staring at the back of the boy’s head. She leans over and says, “That’s Bakugou Katsuki.”
“Oh,” Shouto responds, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t tear his eyes away.
When he gets home and takes his shoes off, when he slams the door to the training room open so hard that it shudders in its frame, his Father looks up. He says, sounding almost proud, “Someone’s angry.”
“I’m not,” Shouto snaps, and he doesn’t say that he has found a rage that burns colder than the fire his Father has gifted him, because that, above all else, would be sacrilege.
Why did you get into the pool, Shouto?
There are times when it seems like he is still drowning. It doesn’t feel half as bad as it probably should.
Why did you get into the pool?
It ends like this: Shouto is about to leave the Garden of Eden.
If anger can be righteous, does that mean that rage is something holy? It boils in his chest, unrepentant sin, burning and bright and divine.
“Don't do this,” his Father says, and for the first time ever, He looks almost scared.
“Put the gun down,” He says.
Sucide may be a sin, but Shouto has been begging for forgiveness for his entire life. There’s only so many times that someone can be beaten down before they get the hint that God doesn’t want them on Earth. There’s only so many times that someone can die before it sticks.
There is cool metal on his forehead, and he thinks that this is maybe how he was supposed to go out all along.
“You aren’t my God,” Shouto says, and laughs and laughs and laughs. “There’s nothing holy here.”