Chapter Text
Rei Himura had been warned about the storm. The weatherperson first warned her. It was one of those chillier summer days. Gray snow clouds comforted Rei. But these rain clouds depressed her.
She had been so idle lately in the house. She didn’t want to miss the family trip but she didn’t want to spread her cold. She could also take good care of herself at home, she had to convince her kids. She has plenty to do: chores, television, books, friends to call, and finishing that painting. She had emergency numbers of housekeepers and cleaners if chores overwhelmed her. She had the phone number of friends, companions from her hospitalization days to chat with. She even had the numbers of Keigo Takami (and other Heroes who offered their assistance), pinned next to the photo of Natsuo and Kaori bouncing their sprightly little one.
Rei had started a new novel. It was gifted by a friend, Ren, who stayed with her during her residency at the hospital. Wishing you much happiness, Rei Himura, was the note scrawled in the book. Rei’s friends were probably proud that the could write that, Rei Himura. Rei also was sadly made aware that Ren had recently re-checked into the hospital after yet another breakdown, an update that she learned from another ex-fellow resident Kay. ("The lucky part is that her second husband is very supportive and Ren has been active with the programs" was Kay's report.)
Rei hated that the sniffles faded a day after Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Natsuo's wife and child left. She wondered if she could have mustered the strength to go. It was perhaps a miracle she persuaded them to enjoy the tropical weather (she prefers cold, but she can enjoy heat) without her. She did have a slight cough but the snivels have all but faded. She was planning to take a substitute trip of some sort. She hoped that Shouto, who was on an abroad business trip with his Midoriya friend, could go too.
Rei had flipped a page when a mechanical buzz blared downstairs. It signified that someone entered the gate.
She thought, had she lost track of the days? Her family must be home from the trip. She felt startled yet relieved. She wanted to sweep her grandson into her arms and smother his hair and mouse-ears with kisses. Though she had coffee and phone calls with her friends, it was a particularly lonely day for her. She had no grandchild in her arms to play with.
Like a creature, her feet flew her to the window where she could look down, her eyes eager to see her little snow-haired grandson in Natsuo's or his mother's arms.
But when she looked out the window, she could see the sprig of red. A looming hulk was stepping toward the front door. That detective coat. The flash of red. The silver of a prosthetic hand. The blue from the collar-
Enji. The muscle memory in her body quivered down from her spine to her toes. She doesn't need him here.
As she often had done successfully in the past years, she tried to think of the Enji that changed his ways. She had seen and heard the proof this kinder Enji existed already. This Enji also went to therapy (something that was forbidden for traditionalists and something that was even shameful to Rei to fully speak about to her kids, not even when he started it during his early Number One Era). And he quite recently attended monthly therapy with Fuyumi at the latter's behest (because it can take eons for a child, even a father’s favorite, to process and express what he had stolen from her childhood). It doesn’t dissolve the monster he left in her head, but it helped reinforce that he had long dropped those violent cycles. She had long accepted that man planted fears that could last until the day she’s cremated. It’s his fault. It’s also her responsibility. (“Granted, it’s his fault you have this responsibility in the first place,” Natsuo told her. A support group friend said this too.)
But what was her husband—former husband, but her brain still flicked to calling him husband— doing here? Her fingers froze at the window pane. At the Todoroki house he never entered? Yes, he made occasional visits outside (with her consent and often when Natsuo was absent). Sometimes he was delivering paperwork to Shouto. On a few occasions, he also delivered a book for Fuyumi (he really urged Fuyumi to be a literature professor in the past). Though since the birth of his grandchild, he really was no longer as welcomed in even the front yard.
Her eyes fell on the package tucked under his arm. Now she had a partial answer for his presence.
She craned her neck. She could see Enji kneel down. But he lingered there, mid-kneel. The package still in his arm. He stood. Was he going to ring the doorbell? He had the gate key but no house key (because it was a sanctuary, a reparational work that he shouldn't desecrate with any of his historical ashes) then turned a corner. He was walking behind the house, into the yard.
Rei found herself dashing to the other side of the house, down the stairs, to the other window. She peeped through the curtain. From the angle, she could see him, on the engawa under the roof. He placed the package down. She saw him nod. She surmised he saw this as a more suitable area to protect the package from the rain. There was no sound from him but she could just hear him grunt in approval (in their early years, he grunted when she gave him tea).
He probably finished his task. He stood up. Then he paused. She twitched. Had he spied her or sensed her presence? He was a ProHero so he had to be aware of his surroundings (then again, he had a habit of shutting out distractions, like little Natsuo jumping up and down with his arms up).
He simply turned his head toward the back yard, the lawn, the outdoor furniture, the recently built swing for her grandson, the bluebell flowers (that she planted herself). She could discern him shutting his eyes.
Then she watched as his prosthetic arm grasp a patio chair, and placed it on the lawn. And sat there. He seemed oversized for such a chair.
Rei could not tear her gray eyes away. What was he doing? It was as if he acted like this was his property. Yes, Enji built this place (she had been mixed about the idea of the new house, for she wanted a “trial of stability” in the old house, but ultimately after caretaking for him for months, she also had to move into the new house for Shouto and Natsuo), but this was not his. Something in Rei boiled up.
But it was Enji at his most harmless, even if she wished sometimes he was back in the wheelchair and he hadn't regained ambulatory motion. She observed as he tilted his head up at the gray skies. He leaned back, like he had reclined into a perpetual sigh.
Suddenly, within a thunder, the sky sprinkled. She expected him to shift. Rain is Endeavor’s weakness. She had seen the way he trudged home, stripped off his boots, in absolute steam, heating away the rainwater on his costume, burning up over yet another All Might triumph.
But this Enji sat as still as a boulder on the lawn.
The skies gave a roar. It poured. It spilled onto the backyard. It poured onto Enji, his coat darkening, Yet he didn’t move. It was like he could melt, blended in with the gray and the rainwater dampening the sullen earth. Although ambulatory, that didn't mean he was less tired. The sky gave another roar and the rain slanted with the wind. Enji turned grayer with rainwater.
Rei wanted him gone so her body wouldn’t be so stiff. Enji delivered his package. He should leave. But her mind remembered Natsuo and Touya playing in the rain for too long, and she remembered clapping her hands for them to come inside. Those boys kept stealing seconds more to pass the ball to each other. She almost let them have those precious seconds because it meant more time for them to be kids, for Touya to play, for Touya to see something beyond a dashed Hero dream.
Her hand was twitching on the door knob.
Suddenly, when her head formulated a decision, the knob clacked and the storm billowed into the house and soaked Rei’s blood and bones.