Chapter Text
"My name is Touya Todoroki. I'm your older brother."
For a moment, Shouto's brain just stopped working.
"That's not possible." He whispered. Shouto stared at him, scraped over his outline, the hair, the ridiculous spotted apron. He could see the shrine in his head, could see the little portrait, the flickering candles.
"You're dead." It fell out of his mouth, and suddenly he couldn't bear to look at him anymore. Something like panic was clawing up his chest, and Shouto wildly scanned the room. It's all the same shape, even similar furniture-- but the shrine isn't--?
"Yeah? Well your face isn't supposed to be half burned off!" Touya barked, dragging his hands through his hair. Rounding on him, Touya shoved a finger in his face and everything was abruptly very quiet.
"Who did that to you?"
Shouto swallowed, breathing suddenly very difficult. He knew in his bones that no matter what he said, it was going to be the wrong answer. Shouto was immobile, practically quirkless. If this was truly Touya Todoroki-- He made a tight fist with his right hand and relaxed it rhythmically, trying to work the feeling back into his fingertips.
"My leg is numb." He said finally, dully.
Touya looked down at it. Pulled and twisted the rag in his hands.
"Fine." He said shakily, and pushed the heels of his palms from his temples to his hairline, as if pushing the thoughts back into his head.
"I'll be right back, okay?" Touya looked earnestly at Shouto, pinning him with a worried glare. "Don't go anywhere."
Shouto just stared, feeling insane. Feeling ridiculous. He spread his arms. "I can't?"
A flash of relief softened Touya's features. Then he hurried away.
Fuck. Shouto barely remembered what Touya even looked like. He could vividly recall the searing feeling of watching his siblings play while Enji dragged him off for training, Touya among them. But Touya's face is particularly fuzzy in his mind. His cleanest memory of him is of the little portrait on the shrine.
There had always been such a distance between him and the rest of his family. If it wasn't Enji physically removing him to obsessively beat the strength of a hero into him, it was his siblings resentment for Shouto igniting that obsession. As she got older, Fuyumi did her best to care for everyone, nurture the tattered ends of family ties into something more stable, but. Even she-- Shouto could tell. It was like he took Enji away from them. Like it was his fault for-- for making Enji like this.
He had no idea. Maybe it was.
When Touya came stalking back into the room with a very familiar tea kettle, Shouto's heart barely stuttered. He just stared as the hot water melted soft grooves into the ice block. Touya knelt, pouring it down in careful waves.
"Where is mom?" It came out dull, barely a question at all. Touya looked up at him, wary, then flicked his eyes back down like he was trying not to stare.
"Out. Running errands. We were supposed to get dinner started." He bit out.
A plume of steam caught Shouto's face, making him shiver. He watched the bow in Touya's back, the tense line in his shoulders, the baby hair trailing up his neck. He felt urgently sick, scared Touya'll turn around, scared he'll grab him and--
Shouto swallowed, his stomach cramping down on nothing.
"You can stop," His voice caught, so he cleared his throat. "It's thin enough for me to break out of and not damage anything." Touya grunted and backed away, tucking the kettle into his elbow. Shouto twisted his foot and shattered the fine layer of ice. He stomped his numb foot to shake the rest loose, then stumbled toward the bed to sit before the pins and needles made it unbearable. He'd just pulled off his boot and rolled up the damp pantleg when Touya plopped down on the bed right beside him.
Shouto doesn't flinch, but fresh ice crisped the air between them, cracking audibly all the way up his right side. He sighed, breath frigid and visible. A half-guilty half-bewildered expression crept onto Touya's face, and he scoots a little further away, crossing his arms tighter around the kettle.
'I've got to be dreaming.'
He grabbed fistfulls of his right sleeve, crunching up the ice so it melted faster. He shivered, not trusting he had enough control of his quirk to warm himself back over. His next controlled breath is less starkly white.
'There's no way this is actually happening, that I-- what? Fell into an alternate universe where Touya's not dead? What kind of overpowered villain--'
Touya shoved a wadded up blanket at him, pulled from the corner of his bed. He cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. "So. Tell me what happened." He stared at the wall. Shouto pulled the blanket over his shoulders, closed it around himself with a fist. "Why do you think I'm dead?"
Shouto's stomach turned, and he felt a familiar weight settled in the pit of it. He couldn't talk about that. So he shrugged instead, and rolled his unfeeling ankle in little circles.
"Why is my scar a surprise to you? My career? I've had them both my whole life," He dug his knuckles into the numb flesh, wishing he could use his quirk to speed the process along. "I have no idea who you're expecting to see when you look at me. It's obvious our memories are completely different."
Touya slouched forward, tugging on an apron strap. Shouto's mouth pinched as the feeling in his leg started to come back. He dug his knuckles in deeper.
"...different, huh?" Touya mumbled to himself.
Shouto's eyes crossed as a phone was shoved under his nose. The screen was annoyingly dim. He fumbled with it one-handed, squinting and flicking the brightness up.
Its... Its a picture of himself. Of Todoroki Shouto. He's waving a certificate around and grinning wildly, dorky and full of teeth. His face is smooth. Blemish-free. Shouto's brow wrinkled as he shook his head, his mind numbing over with the implications of such a picture. He thumbed the edge of the phone.
"My little brother wants to be some kind of quirk historian. Analyst. Something like that. He's got a knack for finding connections between people. And their quirks, obviously." Touya crossed his arms. "Incredibly boring if you ask me. He spends way too much time in the library. I can barely wrap my head around it, with how many times his ideas twist an turn on themselves. But his teachers seem to like it so. What do I know?"
Shouto pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, glassy eyes fixed to the little screen.
"He's happy. That's all that matters, right?" Touya side-eyed him.
Without even really thinking about it, Shouto swiped right on the screen and there's Natsuo's in tiny blue reading glasses, flipping him off. Swiped right again, and there's Shouto shoving a textbook against Natsuo's face, directing an exaggerated look of disgust towards the camera. Swiped again, and Touya's smirking from the top of Natsuo's shoulders, a blurry selfie while Natsuo grabs for the phone. Swiped right again, and there's Fuyumi and.
Mom.
She's there too. Chopping vegetables. Smiling so easily. Fuyumi's bent over the counter. She looked close to passing out she's laughing so hard. Her whole face was blotchy and red, and Mom was giggling into the radish she's had on the cutting board. Shouto zoomed in on her. The tiny crows feet settled high on her cheeks were the only indication of her age.
Her eyes were so bright and young.
The timestamp reads 6 days ago.
Shouto curled harder into himself. His whole chest was tight. He'd never felt such a blistering sorrow before, burning his gut, up his heart, through his lungs. It hurt worse than when his mother was sent away. He felt robbed.
'I didn't know it could be like this. I didn't know--'
Shouto swiped through picture after picture after picture. They started to blur together. Moments of mundane happiness, of comfort-- seeing his family in his house acting so different-- seeing himself so comfortable, so domestic--
He wanted it so badly it hurt. It burned him up inside.
Shouto held the phone back out and dropped it in Touya's lap. He pushed his bangs back and looked at the ceiling. Pretended he wasn't shaking. "So you're the sentimental type, huh?"
Touya frowned, flicked off his phone and shoved it back in his pocket.
"How old are you?"
Shouto leaned all the way back on the bed, crossing the blanket tighter to his chest.
"...I'll be 17 in a few months."
"Mm."
Touya leaned against the headboard, scooting even further from Shouto, crossing his legs. Shouto heard his head thunk against the wall. He cleared his throat, and the air felt weirdly charged.
"You became a hero because of Dad, right?"
"Yeah."
"What was he like?"
The question landed funny. He sounded... off. Vulnerable. It made Shouto hyperaware of how quiet the whole house was. The air conditioner clicked on and Shouto tried to avoid the million nasty memories that bubbled up through the soft hum. He looked over at Touya, a little bitterly.
"You don't know?"
Touya smiled for the first time since Shouto fell into his bedroom. It fell short of his eyes. A chill skittered down Shouto's spine, a thread of that nausea returning.
"He's comatose. Happened shortly after you were conceived."
"Oh."
"You never knew him."
"Oh." Shouto's gaze jumped back to his lap. He tried to imagine the mighty Enji Todoroki dwarfed by a hospital bed, by starched white sheets and heart monitors. He tried to imagine him stuck there for the better part of 16 years.
He can't. It just made him think of his mother. How alone she'd been.
"Mom forbade us from pursuing Hero Work after his accident," He sighed, and folded his arms behind his head. "I really hated her for it for a long time, but I think I get it now." Touya looked at him again, face almost grimacing around a smile that's too raw with honesty. "I think she was afraid I'd follow his footsteps right into the bed next to him."
Shouto swallowed around the lump forming in his throat and dodged Touya's eyes again. He thought of the shrine. He thought of the battle he left behind, of Midorya, and Bakugou, and Enji's booming voice. Of the villain. It suddenly occurred to him that if Touya's Shouto isn't here anymore, in the room he appeared in--
"So tell me, what was he like--"
"I need to get back--"
They trailed off in unison.
Shouto sucked on his teeth. "Home." He finished.
Touya frowned. His shoulder jerked oddly as he crossed his arms.
"You are home."
"Shouto's not. Your Shouto's not."
Touya jutted his chin forward. "What are you implying? Where would he even be?"
Shouto pushed himself up on his elbows, an edge of panic settling in as he thought of just how much time had been wasted. A dozen different scenarios flashed through his mind, but one thing was constant. He couldn't stop seeing that picture of himself in his head-- that easy simple joy wearing Shouto's face. Protectiveness burned hot in his chest.
"Where do you think?" He gestured at himself with a spike of annoyance. Touya stared vacantly. His eyes bulged when he re-registered Shouto's battered hero suit.
"Oh shit--"
Shouto sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. "We need to figure out how this happened, and we need to send me back." He stomped his prickling leg a few times as Touya practically jumped off the bed and grabbed the door.
"Since there's no computers we should start at the library--" Shouto started, sidestepping the arc of the door Touya yanked open. They're crowding into the halls of Shouto's home, --exactly the same and yet unnervingly different-- when the sound of keys rattling in the front door stopped them both cold.
Shouto looked to Touya with wide eyes, and Touya looked right back, just as panicked.
"Mom." He mouthed.