Work Text:
“Touya?” his mother asks when he breezes past the kitchen, the front door clicking shut behind him. “Is that you?”
He doesn’t say anything, but she seems to find an answer in his silence, because she hurries out and takes his arm, fingers unintentionally digging into the burns that he’s kept hidden under the sleeves of his blazer all day. He bites back a protest, a flinch of pain - it doesn’t even really hurt, he tells himself. It's the unexpectedness of it, is all.
His mother asks, still holding on, “I made some cookies with Natsuo earlier, do you want some?”
“No, thanks.”
Her face falls. “But you forgot to take the lunch I packed for you, and I know you don’t like the school food. You must be hungry, right? I can make you something to eat. Nitsuke? You like nitsuke, don’t you?”
Touya shrugs. “I’m not really hungry, Mom,” he says, and starts forward again. She doesn’t let go of him, keeps walking beside him, and his temper flares. He wrenches his arm out of her grasp. “Leave me alone.”
He shoulders his bag and storms up the stairs, and she finally seems to take a hint because she doesn’t follow.
But she watches him.
He can feel her eyes burning into his back, cold as anything.
He almost makes it to his room before he gets interrupted again, this time by an only slightly more tolerable presence - Fuyumi, grabbing hold of the back of his jacket.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says, just to see the way she narrows her eyes at him. He waits for her petulant, I’m not a kid!, but it doesn’t come. Huh. She must’ve had a bad day at school or something, because her protests to the nickname had been one of the only constants about her since he started using it.
She says, almost accusatory, “Touya.”
He says, mimicking her tone, “Fuyumi.” He bats her hand away and steps into his room, waiting for her to follow before he shuts the door. He sits down at his desk so that she can sprawl across his bed, legs kicked up against the headboard. He spins around slightly in his chair, focuses on her. “What’s up?”
She doesn’t answer right away, just keeps staring at him like she’s never seen him before, and, just as he’s about to ask if she’s okay, she says, “You should leave.”
Touya’s eyebrows shoot up without his permission.
What the fuck does he mean, he should leave? Where does she want him to go, the kitchen? With their mother? No way. He can’t help the anger he feels when he’s around her, wild and unbridled and just barely controlled, smoking through his fingers and making his words hot and sharp and bitter. He feels so pissed when he’s around her, but she’s his mother and he doesn’t want to hurt her, and so it's best to avoid being near her at all.
“This is my room, Fuyumi,” he says, slowly, utterly confused.
She makes a frustrated noise, waves her hands in the air like she’s trying to explain something that she can’t find the words for. “Not, like, leave your room,” she says, sits up and looks at him with those eyes that were so light when she was born, those eyes that have settled into the gray of storm clouds rolling in overhead, dark and promising vengeance. “You should leave here. The house.”
… What.
“You want me to… run away?” Touya asks. She nods, and his heart drops even as he looks at her with fond amusement, grinning in a way that only she and her ridiculous antics can make him. “Hate to break it to you, kiddo, but there’s no way in Hell you’re getting rid of me that easily.”
She grips the sheets in her fists, wrinkling them. “I don’t want you to leave,” she huffs, avoiding looking at him like she thinks that she’ll lose momentum if she so much as makes eye contact, “but you should.”
Touya spins a pen between his fingers, still smiling slightly when he asks, “And why is that?”
“You were crying last night,” Fuyumi says, and the pen clatters to the desk. Before he can question how the fuck she heard that and why she was awake so late in the first place, she continues, “And I was thinking that, y’know, Dad only ever hurts you, right?” She swallows, cringing slightly at her own phrasing. “So if you… if you left, it's not like he would do anything to me or Natsuo or Mom. We’d be safe, and so would you, and so you should leave before he hurts you more.”
Touya doesn’t speak for a moment, feeling her words like a physical blow. It punches him in the chest, forces the air from his lungs, and all he can do is stare at her as he processes what she’s just said.
She heard him last night.
She heard him even though he was trying so hard to be careful, to not wake anyone up, to bandage his wounds and stitch his cuts in a way that wouldn’t disturb his family.
She heard him, and now she wants him to leave. To run away like a kicked dog, tail low and head down, abandon her and Natsuo so that he could have a slim chance of… what? Of living on the streets? Of barely scraping by? He’s twelve, there’s no way in Hell that anybody sane would be willing to hire him - he’d last a few days, tops, before he was forced to return.
The prodigal son, coming home.
Finally, carefully, he says, “It's not that simple, Fuyumi. Besides, I don’t want to leave.”
Her head snaps up and she gapes at him, eyes wide. “But you - you -” Her voice is wobbly, and Touya looks closer and realizes that she’s almost crying. Great. Because making his baby sister cry is definitely the way to become a hero. “You were bleeding and there was - there was blood, on the, the floor, and - you had burns, and you were bleeding, Touya, what if you die?”
Touya forces a laugh, light-hearted. “Don’t be dramatic, Fuyumi,” he says. “I’m not going to die.” Then, before he can stop himself, “Heroes never die.”
It's a phrase that his father has repeated enough times that he can taste it in the air during their training sessions, potent as ash on his tongue.
Heroes never die, heroes never get to die, because it's not a luxury that they’re allowed. They always have to keep fighting, breathing, standing victorious for just another day as death lurks in the background, waiting, watching, sometimes drawing near but never close enough to touch.
It's one of the facts of life.
Grass is green, his name is Todoroki Touya, and heroes never die.
Fuyumi scrubs an arm across her eyes, wiping away her tears. Touya’s attempts at reassurance don’t seem to have worked. If anything, they’ve made her even more distressed. “He hurts you,” she says, and her voice rings hollow. “He hurts you and he hurts you and he’s never going to stop.”
Touya takes a breath, blows it out. Leaning back in his chair, he stares up at the ceiling, at the glow stars still pasted there as a reminder of better times. Not good times, necessarily, but better. Anything, he thinks, would be better than this.
He’s never going to stop.
“... Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
Dinner is quiet. They’re all here, which is unusual, and so nobody is speaking. Touya, never very talkative on a good day, adamantly refuses to be the one to break the silence. Fuyumi stares down at her plate and doesn’t make a sound, tear tracks still dried on her cheeks. Even Natsuo is quiet, poking at his food with the pair of plastic training chopsticks wedged in his small fist, eyes darting periodically over to where their father is sitting at the head of the table.
Touya doesn’t know how to feel about that, the fact that their father is so frequently absent from his siblings’ lives that his baby brother hardly even recognizes the man - on one hand, he’s grateful, willing to bask in the relief that they won’t have to go through the same shit that he does, but, on the other hand, it pisses him off to no end. His siblings deserve better than this, to be treated like they’re invisible. For fuck’s sake, Natsuo is four. He’s practically a baby. He’s a fucking baby, and their father is acting like he’s just an annoyance, something unthinking and unfeeling.
It's fucking unfair.
Touya puts his cup down a little hard and curses internally when the noise draws his father’s attention to him.
“Ah, Touya,” he says, voice as deadly and liquid smooth as kerosene ready to ignite, “how was your day?”
“It was fine.” He swallows down a bite of fish - his mother made nitsuke for dinner, seemingly determined that he eat the dish, one way or another - and glances warily up at his father, gauging his reaction. “I got all the questions right on my math test.”
“Good. Keeping your grades up is important if you want to get into Yuuei.”
That’s what every conversation ends up going. Yuuei. The pride of Musutafu, the stomping ground of future heroes, the school that Touya himself is expected to attend, willingly and happily, in just a few short years. He’ll be honed to perfection, showcased to the world, wrapped in plastic and smiling under the eyes of his teachers, his classmates, the entirety of Japan, relegated as a weapon and advertised as a savior.
Right.
His father, having apparently taken Touya’s lack of response as a sign that the four-sentence conversation was over, goes back to eating.
Touya seethes and glares at his food.
There’s a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye and he looks towards it, sees Fuyumi staring at their father with the most dejected expression on her face, the slump of her shoulders speaking volumes about her disappointment even though she doesn’t open her mouth.
It's like this every time.
Their father asks Touya about his day, then proceeds to ignore the fact that he has two other children, both of which are now capable of holding conversations. Every fucking time. It's expected, routine, but today is different in the fact that Fuyumi’s words are still ringing in Touya’s ears. His blood is boiling and there’s something pacing inside of his chest, borderline feral, resentful and spiteful and hostile, acerbic.
Fuck this, he thinks, and says, loud, “I’m not your only kid, you know.”
And everything freezes, like someone just hit pause. Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. There’s only anger simmering deep in his stomach and gasoline in his veins, flowing fast and dangerous and racing for his heart.
Then, calmly, his father says, “Yes, Touya.” He looks up and the glint in his eyes is cold, the way that a deep burn is cold, freezing, the heat of it leaving marks where it sinks down below Touya’s skin. “I’m aware.”
He should stop.
He should shut up.
He should back down.
There’s a million things that he should do, but, in the end, Touya does none of them. He meets his father’s gaze and says, the words hissed between his teeth, “Then act like it.”
Silence. There’s nothing but silence, thick and heavy. It fills the room and steals the breath from Touya’s lungs, making him dizzy, disoriented. Did he just say that? He can’t believe he just said that. Is he stupid? He’s so, so fucking stupid, what is wrong with him -
His father stands, and Touya has to tilt his head back to look at him. The man looms so far above him that he blocks out the light, warped and distorted by the way that Touya’s entire fucking body is going numb with shock and fear and horror. He looks like the monster in a nightmare. He looks like a villain.
“Touya,” he says, in that same calm, steady voice, and the only sign of his irritation is the way that his lip curls, ever so slightly, as he stares down at him. “Meet me in the training room.”
Touya swallows, panic slurring his thoughts together. He realizes that his metal chopsticks are warping in his hand and he hurriedly drops them. The sound of them hitting the table is enough to jar him into answering, “But it's a school night. I have school tomorrow.”
Pleasantly, his father says, “I don’t remember asking.”
Touya glances helplessly around the table. Fuyumi has her hands over her ears and her legs curled up to her chest, her eyes squeezed shut, and Natsuo is watching the scene unfold with a look of abject terror on his face that should not be possible for someone as young as him. His attention snaps to his mother when she clears her throat and says, “Enji, dear, maybe you should -”
“Shut up.”
It's said casually, carelessly, which is probably why it makes Touya so pissed. He’s on his feet before he can stop himself, staring at his father, fists clenched at his sides, saying, “Don’t talk to her like that.” His voice rising, yelling, “You don’t get to talk to her like that!”
He’s almost sick with the mixed waves of anger and fear pulsing through his body, and his breaths are coming in quick, jerky rasps, the way they do after he runs a mile, runs two, runs three, but nothing has even happened yet.
Nothing has even happened, but he still feels like he’s suffocating.
He opens his mouth to do something - plead his case, maybe, or gasp for more air - but then his father is storming around the table, and Touya’s arm is in his hand, and the unhealed burns under his sleeve are being rubbed raw in a way that makes him cry out.
His father drags him out of the dining room and down the hall, walking so fast that Touya can’t even keep his footing. When Touya tries to yank away, his father’s grip just tightens and tightens and tightens until he can feel the bones creak together, then snap.
Touya screams.
The sound is cut off sharply when his father yanks open the door to the training room and throws him inside, sending him skidding across the floor. He scrambles up, cradling his arm to his chest, stumbling back with every step his father takes towards him. He realizes that that’s a mistake only when he gets crowded against the wall. His father closes one hand around his jaw and forces him to look up, to make eye contact, and Touya’s breaths turn even more shallow, scathing, as he sees his father’s expression. He looks fucking murderous. What was Touya thinking, provoking him like that? Anything that happens now is just his own fucking fault.
“You do not,” his father says, and his fingers dig so painfully into Touya’s face that Touya feels his legs give out, “get to talk to me like that. Understood?”
Hating this, hating himself, Touya nods.
Shouldn’t he fight back?
Shouldn’t he hold out for as long as he can?
He’s the one who started it, so why is he so afraid to deal with the consequences?
Why is he so pathetic?
His father lets go, and Touya crumples to the floor, heart pounding so fast that his chest aches with it. He feels like he’s about to throw up. Every muscle in his body is tense with anticipation, and his eyes are locked on his father, who is now turning on his heel and heading for the center of the room, discarding parts of his hero outfit - his gauntlets, the communicator clipped to his belt - even as he walks.
“Well, boy?” he says, and looks at Touya. “Stand up.”
And so he does.
He staggers into the kitchen later that night, shaking so hard that he can’t see straight, clothes stinking of smoke, and the first thing he does is yank open the cabinet. Food, he thinks. I need food. Stuff that will last, that won’t go bad, that will survive being carried around in a bag for God knows how long.
He hurts you and he hurts you and he’s never going to stop.
Yeah.
He knows.
He hesitates, though, fingers hovering over a box of crackers. If he leaves, he’ll be leaving his family to fend for themselves. There’s no telling what his father will do if he’s gone. Will he turn his anger onto his other children, the ones who are more helpless than Touya has ever been, will ever be, or will it fizzle out completely until he’s nothing but a shell?
Touya fervently hopes that it’d be the latter, but, really, there’s no way to be sure.
He imagines Fuyumi with burns on her arms and Natsuo with bruises on his face and feels so physically sick that the world spins. He grabs the counter to steady himself, head hung low, blood dripping a steady line down his chin from his badly torn lip, the mark of a heavier-than-usual blow.
His wrist screams with pain, but even that is drowned out by the way his entire body is on the verge of collapse.
Bullshit, he thinks. This is bullshit.
He doesn’t want to flinch every time one of his classmates brushes a little too close, doesn’t want to have to keep restocking the first-aid kit in his room, doesn’t want to hurt so much that he’s forgotten what it feels like to not be in constant agony.
He can’t do this anymore.
He can’t.
He wipes furiously at the tears forming in his eyes and yanks down the crackers. Fuck this, fuck his father. He’s leaving. He can find somewhere better than this, better than a father who hits him until he’s bruised and burned and bleeding red and then leaves him on the ground, shaking, vision turning black.
He slams the cabinet shut and stomps up the stairs.
He’s almost to his room when, like fucking déjà vu, a door creaks open as he walks past it.
Despite himself, Touya stops.
Natsuo peers up at him, wide eyes glinting in the darkness, his hair sticking up all over the place like the feathers of a baby bird.
He must’ve been asleep.
Shit.
Touya must’ve woken him up.
They stare at each other for a long, long moment, silent, and then Natsuo says, “You’re bleeding.” And one hand leaves the frame of the door to reach up, like he wants to touch the wound. “Are you okay?”
Touya grits his teeth and looks past his little brother, into his room. The walls are a light, light blue - he knows this because he helped paint them himself - and there’s a lit lamp on the nightstand that casts long shadows across the floor. He swallows, says, “Go back to sleep, Natsuo.”
Natsuo’s eyes narrow at him, irritated. “You were stomping.” His hand drops back down to his side, hangs there, limp. “Did Dad do that?”
“Do what?”
“Hurt you.”
Touya pauses, stares down at him. He must be quiet for a moment too long, because Natsou huffs, crosses his arms. “Don’t lie to me,” he says. “I’m not a baby.”
Touya can’t help it - he smiles, split lip stinging sharply with the motion. “Right,” he says. “Of course you’re not.” He crouches down so that they’re eye level, says, amused, “You’re a big boy, aren’t you?”
Natsuo practically preens. “Of course I am,” he says, like he’s stating a fact.
Touya raises a hand and ruffles Natsuo’s hair. “Of course,” he agrees, and stands back up. “And you’re very brave.”
Natsuo’s smile glints white. “Well, you are, too! You were all like, Don’t talk to her like that!, and it was so cool.” He nods, satisfied with his assessment, and says, “I want to be just like you.”
“Oh, really.” Touya suddenly feels inexplicably sad. “I’d rather you stay the way you are.”
“But you’re better. You have this super great Quirk and everyone loves you.” Natsuo juts his chin up, stubborn, and states in a way that leaves no room for any argument, “I’m going to be like you.”
… Great, Touya wants to say. Angry and bitter and pissed at the world. What he actually says, though, is, “Sure you are.” He reaches down to flick Natsuo lightly on the forehead and nods towards the bed. “Go back to sleep, Natsuo.”
Natsuo opens his mouth like he wants to argue, but then he just groans. “Fine.” He goes to close the door between them, hesitates. “Good night.”
“Good night.” When Natsuo still doesn’t move, waiting, Touya raises an eyebrow. “Can I help you?”
Natsuo looks at the ground. “I made some cookies with Mom,” he says. “While you were at school.” He glances back up at Touya, hopeful, and asks, “Did you eat one? Mom said you liked that kind.”
“Not yet,” Touya says, and, when Natsuo’s face falls, he hurriedly adds, “But I’ll eat one in the morning, okay? I promise.”
Natsuo nods, once, sharp, and closes the door, leaving Touya alone in the hallway to curse his own stupidity. I’ll eat one in the morning. Right, because that was exactly the kind of thing that one ate before running away, a fucking cookie. He stalks into his room and throws the box of crackers onto his desk, uncaring when it sends a couple pens and pencils clattering to the floor. He rakes his hands through his hair.
This is stupid.
He’s stupid.
His entire life is just one fucked moment after the other, never-ending, relentless, and that’s exactly why he’s trying to get away, but then he thinks of Natsuo, his expression open and trusting, and that, for some reason, just punches the fight right out of him. His baby brother. His little baby brother. And Fuyumi, so caring and concerned.
How could he leave that?
What kind of monster is he, to even consider abandoning them?
And so, instead of packing a bag, instead of slipping on his shoes and going downstairs and locking the door behind him, disappearing before the rest of the house had a chance to wake up, Touya simply changes his clothes and falls into bed, staring up at the ceiling.
… There’s always tomorrow.