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Chapter Text

What is Todoroki Shouto? 

To answer, one needs to ponder, for Todoroki Shouto is many things. 

He is the crown prince, the heir of his father's Nation. He is an anomaly, the weapon of his father's ambition. He is a firebender. He is a waterbender. 

What he is not, however, is the Avatar.

He knows this. His father knows this. The Fire Nation—Endeavor’s Nation—knows this. The whole world knows that Todoroki Shouto is impossible. To bend two elements is to defy nature. 

(The rumor has it the Fire Lord Endeavor made a pact with the spirits; the rumor has it Shouto’s birth costed his mother her sanity, and her heart.)

Todoroki Shouto is not someone—something—that is supposed to exist. 

(Sometimes Shouto wishes he doesn’t.)

(However, he is quick to learn that to wish is a privilege he does not have.)

He is a curse. He is a miracle. He is a boy. He is a weapon. He is a rumor. He is the proof that Endeavor’s Nation will, ultimately, rule above all. 

Shouto’s life is a paradox, and it isn’t even his.

"You will be the Avatar's downfall," his father tells him. His father is the brightest thing Shouto ever seen—he blinds him so. Shouto never could look at him in the eye. "You will bring the Avatar's demise."

(What is Todoroki Shouto?)

I

The first time Shouto encounters the Avatar, he thinks, he isn’t something I’m supposed to kill.

The boy before him is the Avatar. The boy is something Shouto is supposed to kill. He is a hero, a savior, a miracle, the successor of All Might, wielder of One for All—everything that Shouto is not. 

“Who are you?” the boy asks him, eyes green and spilling, mouth quivering. The boy is afraid. Afraid of me, Shouto thinks. It shouldn’t surprise him, really. Everyone is afraid of Shouto, even his mother. Even the Avatar. 

After all the trainings his father beat into him—this is what he is supposed to face? This is what he was made for? The Avatar is a boy, possibly his age, perhaps younger; skin littered in scars and freckles. He looks slight, small. Fragile. And yet the boy—the Avatar, Shouto reminds himself, not a boy—does not cower. His hands tremble so, yet he holds them in fists. His feet shake, yet still he stands. His eyes water, yet they hold Shouto’s gaze with startling intensity. 

Underneath the cold, distantly, something twists in Shouto’s chest. Shouto’s fire falters. 

(And then Shouto thinks about the rabbit his father handed him one summer, years ago. He thinks about its small frame, its quivering heartbeat. Its brown, soft fur. He thinks about his father’s voice, the coldest thing in his life: kill it, Shouto.)

Shouto thinks: he isn’t something I’m supposed to kill.

Shouto answers: “I am your downfall.”

It should have been an easy kill. The boy—the Avatar—is seemingly only capable to dodge his attacks, to run and run and run. His bending is clumsy, awkward, all over the place; he bends like a toddler, like he isn’t used to bending at all. In face of Shouto, who learned to bend before he learned to walk, killing him should be as easy as killing a rabbit. 

Later, Shouto learns that underestimating the boy was a mistake.

He learns this later, when he is struck with the realization that he has been tricked a tad too late. He learns this later, when he is swimming in cold south pole water as he watches the boy flies away on a flying bison (which, the last time he checked, is supposed to be extinct) with his two aides. 

He learns this later, when his father’s fist sends him hurtling across the throne room.

(“He outsmarted me,” Shouto confesses, mouth threatening to quiver, eyes threatening to spill, and his father’s hand swings.)

He learns this later, when his father’s cold, cold voice tells him that he is not to return unless he brings the Avatar’s head with him. 

“This is what I made you for,” Endeavor tells him, after bruising Shouto’s ribs into blooming purple. At least nothing broke. “This is why you exist.”

(What his father means: if Shouto cannot do this, there is no reason for Shouto to be alive. )

Shouto answers: “yes, Father.”

Endeavor lowers himself to his throne, his anger simmering down. Over the years, Shouto learns to read his father’s mood through gestures. After all, Endeavor doesn’t speak to Shouto as much as he beats him. He either commands or burns. 

“What are you, Shouto?”

Shouto answers, just like how he was taught, over and over and over: “I am the Avatar’s downfall. I will bring the Avatar’s demise.”

Endeavor hums, satisfied of his son’s compliance, of this masterpiece he has created, this weapon he owns. Todoroki Shouto, his most wonderful work, his magnum opus. Endeavor orders, “get out of my sight.”

Just like how he was taught, Shouto obeys. 

II

Shouto is intelligent. He is efficient, effective. He is the best of the best, a skilled navigator, a reverent scholar. He mastered waterbending at 11 (he has always been better at waterbending), and firebending at 13. At the age of 16, He has already beaten his father’s commander and two lieutenants—who are foolish enough to insult him—in Agni Kai, only with fire. A true prodigy.

(He never lost. Not once. Not when his father is watching from his throne.)

If it were not for his failure in executing the Avatar a month ago, he would be his father’s admiral as of now. Therefore, when he finds the Avatar within the waters near the Earth Kingdom territory the next month, he ponders what took him so long.

“Fuck y-you,” the airbender spits at him. Literally. Shouto sidesteps and watches her saliva drops to the ground. 

“Ochako!” 

Ah. There he is. Shouto recognizes the green bush of hair, the gold tan of skin.

“Deku!” the airbender cries, struggles against the ice encasing her up to her neck. She is shivering, and her struggle is … well, it’s obviously futile. 

“Shut up,” Shouto says. He tells the Avatar, “don’t move or I’ll burn her face off.” 

The Avatar stares at him in horror; even the spirited airbender seems to be afraid. They believe him. Shouto knows that threat would work; the horrid burnt mark over his left eye always does the trick. People believe you will hurt others when you have the scar to prove it. Shouto finds it funny. Shouto supposes his sense of humor is odd, but he has no one to hear his jokes anyway. 

“What do you want?” the Avatar’s voice, just like their encounter before, trembles. But Shouto finds that, within a month, he has changed. He doesn’t look as small, or as fragile; soft, still, but Shouto can see the lines of muscle that wasn’t there before. He has new scars, and his freckles has increased, it seems, in number. His hair—

Unnecessary details, Shouto chastises himself. Kill him.

“You,” Shouto says. “I want you.”

Seconds pass. And then The Avatar goes completely red with—anger? fear? Shouto cannot recognize the fumbling, steaming expression on his face. The Avatar is seemingly speechless, his mouth opening and closing several times.

(The airbender girl mutters under her breath, “what the hell,” softly enough no one hears her.)

“Don’t l-listen to him, Deku!” 

Shouto’s left hand burst into fire. He steps closer to the girl. “I told you to shut up.”

The girl is afraid. The girl holds Shouto gaze—she is afraid, but Shouto can see the resolve in her eyes. Shouto recognizes that look; he saw it in the Avatar’s eyes a month ago.

“Do i-it,” she says, her voice trembling from the cold.

Shouto’s freezes, genuinely surprised. Then, insulted. He narrows his eyes into slits. “Don’t think I won’t do it,” he says, his voice lowering into a snarl. 

“Ochako, what—?”

“Then d-do it!” the girl snarls back, ignoring the Avatar’s panicked shouts. 

Shouto’s fire falters. 

Do it, he tells himself. But he won’t. He knows he won’t. And it must be shown on his face, because the girl’s expression lights into an understanding. Shouto's fire diminish completely, his left hand trembles. 

“This is foolish,” he says, and he ignores the way his voice breaks. He faces the Avatar. “Surrender yourself and I will leave her be.”

“D-Deku, don’t—“

The airbender’s speech is cut off to a gasp as the ice grows, frosting over her cheeks. “Waste more time,” Shouto says, “and she will die of hypothermia within minutes.”

Shouto expects more fight. More hesitation, at the very least. But the Avatar answers in a heartbeat. “Take me with you,” he says. There is that sensation again—of Shouto’s chest twisting itself into something he doesn’t understand.

Unnecessary. Ignore it.

Shouto nods to his men. They seize the Avatar and restrain his hands, his legs, his mouth. He does not fight back. “Knock him out,” Shouto orders. The airbender watches helplessly as one of Shouto’s soldiers strike the Avatar. The Avatar’s head lols back, limp like a doll’s. Shouto watches as they bring him to the ship. 

Shouto releases the girl. She falls to the ground, wet and trembling all over, her skin near blue. She wouldn’t be able to move, or to speak, for a while. 

Shouto has the Avatar. He can return home, now. He just has to kill him.

He feels very, very cold. 

“I have to do it,” he doesn’t think she can hear him, but he says it anyway. “I will do it.”

True to his word, he leaves her be.

Sometimes, Shouto wonders what would happen if he were the Avatar. Would his father use him still, as a living weapon? Would he be the eventual ruler of the New World, the one his father envisions? Would his father kill him?

Would his father love him?

It is pathetic, he knows. It is more pathetic even, that he never had the guts to ask. 

(The last time Shouto asked something of his father was also the last time he saw his mother.)

His father loves him, of course. Shouto knows this. His father loves him like one loves riches, or fame, or power. Shouto is precious, valuable—he is gold, meld and burnt, beaten and polished into glimmering perfection. He understands this. The best of the best. He is the one to kill the Avatar, the one to break the cycle. The one to ruin nature and bring the world into a fiery oblivion. He is his father’s executioner, his father's creation, an impossibility brought to life.

The Avatar is before him, chained and still. Waiting to be slaughtered.

How will he do it? Burn him? Freeze him? But, however incompetent his bending seems to be, he is still the Avatar. Perhaps attempting to murder him with elemental attacks will be counterproductive. 

Bring his head to me. You will not return unless you bring his head to me.

Shouto unsheathes his sword. 

The Avatar’s eyes flutter open. Dark lashes, then hazy shades of trees. He shakes his head, his curls shaking as he does—they’ve grown, Shouto thinks, wilder now, like spring leaves—and then he sees Shouto. 

“Oh,” the Avatar says. “Oh.”

Do it, Shouto thinks. Do it now. Do it, and he will return home. And he will become his father’s right hand. And then—then—

Then, what?

“Why?” his voice is tiny, shaking, small. 

Shouto stares. 

The Avatar stares back, nervous, and doubtlessly scared shitless—but he stares back, still. Even now, this startles Shouto, this … this bravery. This fearlessness, in spite of imminent death. The Avatar continues, voice steadying if a little, a valiant effort. 

“Why do you want me dead so badly?”

Unnecessary. Ignore it.

Shut up, replies a voice at the back of Shouto’s head. Shut the fuck up. This voice, Shouto faintly realizes, sounds more like his own and less like Endeavor’s.

Shouto thinks of an answer. Before he can come up with one, though, the Avatar just rambles. 

“I mean. I know why. Kind of, uh, I know the—the Fire Lord wants me dead, so he can rule the world and everything, but why. I don’t think I’m much of a threat for him, anyway, considering he killed the Avatar before me, I don’t think it will take much from him to do it again, right? I figured it would have something to do with his pride and dominance and everything—what I’m saying is—wait,” the Avatar takes a breath. “Sorry, I’m rambling—um,” and then the Avatar opens his mouth and closes it again, seemingly confused at himself for apologizing, considering Shouto is holding a very sharp sword that will possibly cut his head off the next minute.

“I don’t know,” Shouto says.

The Avatar looks at him, eyes round and surprised. He probably thinks Shouto can’t form any coherent sentences other than death threats.

“What?”

“I don’t. I,” Shouto frowns, and stops. 

“Are you going to kill me?”

Shouto stares at him, deadpan. What a foolish question, he thinks. Yes, he is. Of course he will. 

“You are the Avatar, and I will be the one to kill you,” Shouto says. Say a word too many times, and it will lose its meaning. These are the words that Shouto repeat over and over again, the mantra he chants when he rocks himself to sleep after a day of exhaustion in his father’s hands. I am your downfall. I am your downfall. I am your downfall. 

The Avatar looks at him, thoughtful. 

(No one ever looks at Shouto like that. Like Shouto has something worth saying, like Shouto is a person. His chest twists painfully. He ignores it.)

“That’s not what I asked,” the Avatar says, slowly, as if speaking to a child. He probably thinks Shouto is dense, a killing machine of the Fire Lord’s. A mere brute force. Then the Avatar says, “you are Shouto, are you not?”

What are you, Shouto?

“I am the Avatar’s downfall,” Shouto says, each words wrung out of him like torn flesh. “I will bring the Avatar’s demise,” he can feel his temperature rapidly fluctuating, his left side warring with his right. Shouto’s sword is sizzling, and his breath frosting. Do it, his head screams. Do it. Do it. Do it now.

Shouto gives in. “I will bring the Avatar’s head to my father.”

Seconds later, Shouto’s ship overturned, water filling in in waves. Out of balance, Shouto’s head hits steel wall and black dots start filling in his vision. He vaguely remembers water. Drowning. Cold. Warmth. An arm around his waist. Spring leaves. Golden skin. Shouto. Shouto— 

When he comes to, his ship is a wreck and the Avatar is gone. 

III

“Prince Shouto, please — ”

“Momo.”

This silences Momo quickly, but Shouto can see disapproval on her face. 

“I will not hear more of this,” Shouto says with finality. “We are heading to—“ Shouto pauses. “Home.”

“Your Highness,” Momo, the brave girl, continues. “Forgive my impertinence, but I do not think—“

Shouto gives her a furious glare. “Will you go against me, Momo?”

Momo bites her lip, and then looks down. “No, my Lord.”

“Do you think me incompetent? Do you think me incapable as the captain of this ship?”

Her voice is clear, honest, faithful. “No, my Lord.”

“Then spare me the bullshit.”

Shouto has no use for sugar coating soldiers, nor blabbering crew. If his men have something to say, then they must, truthfully.

The silence lasts a few seconds. “I am your personal guard, my Lord,” Momo begins, carefully picking her words. “Your safety is what I live for. However, within the walls of the Fire Lord,” Momo pauses. “I am afraid I might be unable to do my job properly.” 

Shouto isn’t sure what to say. Shouto isn’t sure why he feels — why he feels.

“Nonsense,” Shouto says, back turned against his guard. Momo is holding back tears. He will spare her the shame. “You are the best there is. Nobler than any.”

“I understand, my Lord,” Momo answers, and Shouto ignores the way her voice breaks. Momo has always been fond of him, ever since they were kids. Shouto wonders why she decided to throw her future away—it would be a bright future, he knows it, for Momo is of nobility, is strong and amazing and beautiful—to protect the cursed crown prince. To protect a living weapon.

“Leave,” Shouto says, as gently as he can—which is not much at all. Shouto does not know gentle.

“Yes, Prince Shouto.”

Shouto looks to the sea. Beyond the horizon: the Fire Nation.

Shouto is wrong. His father does not blind him; the Avatar does. The brightest thing Shouto has ever seen. 

Shouto can feel it—the raw power, tumbling in rapid waves, like light. Shouto is strong, Shouto’s father even more so, but this—this kind of power is nothing mortal, nothing like violence. This kind of power is holy. 

The temple shines. The solstice breaks. Shouto sees emerald, sees stars made freckles. Spring leaves, golden in the sun. The Avatar—

Shouto wonders how he could possibly kill pure light. 

“You failed,” Endeavor says. It is a statement, spit and fury. Shouto tries his very best not to throw up. His sight is red from blood. 

“You failed three times. And you dare to come back. You dare to defy me.”

Swallowing bile and blood, Shouto says, “forgive me, my Lord.”

“I will burn your other eye,” his father says. “And then you will be truly useless. Are you useless, Shouto?”

It is a miracle he can still speak. 

“No, Father.”

“Prove it. His head, or your eye.”

His father won’t do it. His father won’t do it. He is his father’s masterpiece, his most wonderful work, he is his father’s gold, polished to perfection, beaten and burnt and beaten and burnt—

“Don’t think I won’t do it,” Endeavor says, his voice lowering into a snarl.

He will, Shouto thinks. I know he will.

“What are you, Shouto?”

Shouto answers. Always. 

(Do not speak. Do not fight back. This is how you survive.) 

Leaving the throne room, Shouto throws up blood.

Chapter Text

“We will leave now,” Shouto announces, and he puts his mask on. Behind him, Momo, Denki and Mashirao follow suit, putting their own. 

It is near midnight. They leave, four shadows along the palace walls. Shouto found the secret pathway out of the palace when he was seven.

“Prince,” Denki says, “I’ll bring the bag, you don’t need to—“

Shouto sighs. Even after years of doing this, Denki still does this, everytime. “I can carry my weight just fine. You know what to call me out here, Denki.”

“Right. Sorry, Pri—uh, Shouta.”

Mashirao hits the back of Denki’s head. Denki yelps. “Really, Denki? If I had a copper coin every time you did this, I’d be richer than the Prince.”

“Please do not mention the Prince’s name so carelessly,” Momo says irritably. Her eyes, sharp as hawk’s, survey their surroundings. “Don’t you remember the last time we almost got caught? I nearly had a heart attack.”

“Well, it was obviously Denki’s fault that time, too—“

“What! Why me?!”

“You insolent, you were the one who electrocuted that thug—“

“Dude, he was about to stab me—“

“Silence,” Shouto hushes, and they obey. “Goddammit, you three.”

“Sorry,” they whisper in perfect unison. “Shouta.”

Shouto leads the way. They have five tracks they go over to go to the city's slums, and randomize it everytime. Shouto can’t do this too often, for it would raise suspicion.

Luckily, the Fire Nation does not really give a shit of what happens outside the royal city. The good part of it, anyway. Fire Nation is build on greed, and gold. The rest is forgotten.

They skirt quickly, along the city’s edge, traveling in quick shadows. Less than fifteen minutes, they arrive at the city’s slums.

“We will split, the usual. Momo, you go north. Denki, west. Mashirao, east. No bending.”

“But what if someone tries to stab— ”

“No.”

The moon is high in the sky. It will be full moon in two days. 

Shouto checks his surrounding. It is empty, but not exactly quiet. Shouto can hear noises, yelling, children and women crying. It’s cold out here, and it smells filthy; this is where the city dumps its waste. Tents are build from ragged cloth, no doubt will do no good when the rainy season comes. Heaps of trash are used as walls. This place is home for the homeless.

Shouto goes south and begins his rounds. 

His bag is filled with leftover food from the castle—the castle always has tons of leftovers—bread, fruits. Some thrown out fabric. It is not much. Shouto has never been able to do much. 

He comes, door to door (not exactly doors, just flaps of tents, clothing hastily thrown to become a makeshift entrance), giving away something at each house. It does not take a lot of time; he will finish in half an hour.  

“Don’t move.”

Shouto turns. A knife is pointed at him. 

It is a girl. Young, perhaps twelve. Maybe younger. Her clothing is made out of a rice bag. Her hair a messy heap, and her face is bruised. Scarred everywhere, scratches left untreated. She is looking at Shouto with fear and ferocity. The knife trembles in her grip. 

This happened more often before. The people here, holding Shouto and his aides at knife point, trying for more food. Soon, they learned that Shouto is not to be triffled with, and the attempts of robbery stopped. The last time it happened, Denki electrocuted someone and nearly gave their identity away with his bending. Luckily, there were not many people. Like now. It’s always empty, like a dead man land.

“D-don’t move.”

Shouto does not move. He waits, silent.

“Give me—give me everything you have. Or I’ll kill you.”

“No,” Shouto answers immediately. 

She hesitates—a short, fleeting moment, but Shouto sees it—and then she howls, pushing her weight to her knife, to Shouto. Shouto takes the knife from her easily, and she falls to the ground due to her own momentum. Shouto contemplates to throw the knife away, but he decides against it. She is still at the ground when he gives it to her, handle first. 

The girl swallows.

“You need it more than I do,” Shouto tells her.

She takes it. She does not try to stab Shouto after that. 

“Where do you sleep?”

She looks at him, hard, but then she points to the south. Shouto hums. He says nothing, finishing his round. She follows him as he moves, door to door. Giving what he has. The girl is shivering in the night air. Her bones are prominent, and her belly is potruding. Malnourished. Shouto takes off his coat and offers it to her without words. She takes it in a heartbeat. Shouto does not think her shameless; he thinks her smart. Here, pride will not help you survive. It will not keep you alive, nor feed your stomach.

When they get to the corner of the street, she points to a tent. Shouto follows her. 

Underneath it, there is a woman, covered in leaves, paper, rags. Shouto smells rot. Her arms are visible, and they are swollen with rashes. 

“Mother,” the girl says. “Mother, I’ve brought food.”

The woman does not move. Shouto does not think she is breathing.

“She is ill,” the girl explains, as she ruffles through Shouto’s bag. She brings out a loaf of bread, a handful of grapes. She shifts forward to the tent, brushing her mother’s hair to see her face. Just like her arms, her face too, are covered in blue green rashes, swollen like a watermelon. 

The mother’s eyes are open, but they are unseeing.

“Mother?” the girl asks, her voice brittle and small. The girl is smart. She knows her mother is dead. 

She crumples in to herself and cries; it’s ugly, it’s shaking shoulders, trashing body. She does not have many tears—dehydrated, perhaps. Her screams compensate for her lack of tears.

Shouto does not speak. He puts down some fruits, some clothing. He gives what he has. And then he leaves. 

The girl’s sobs follow him to the night.

Foolish, a voice tells him—it sounds like his father’s. It sounds like his own. You think you can save them. You think you can be anything other than a weapon. 

Remember what you are.

They are silent when they return. Shouto does not say anything. His aides know enough not to ask. When they arrive inside the castle’s walls, Shouto turns to them. He regards them, each of them—they are his most trusted, his best warriors. They devote their lives to his.

“We will leave at dawn for the Avatar,” he tells them. Always curt, the way he speaks to them. He tells them what is needed, and he tells them coldly, and they obey. “Rest for now.”

They kneel. “Yes, Prince Shouto,” they say, hard and fond. 

IV

Shouto is close. Shouto is very close.

The Avatar’s bending has improved. It is not perfect, it does not rival Shouto’s, but it is strong. In only a couple of months, the Avatar’s improvement is commendable. Astounding, even. 

Shouto remembers the solstice. The fight in the Avatar’s temple. He is no match for you, a voice tells him. You were made for this. 

Shouto is close. He can win. The Avatar is intelligent, but so is Shouto, and Shouto has learned not to underestimate the boy. I was made for this. And yet—and yet— 

The ground quakes, and the Avatar slips from the impact of his own bending. He falls, and Shouto brings his arm forward. Ice slithers with it, holding the Avatar to the ground. The Avatar grits his teeth, and combusts to fire, freeing himself. The Avatar yells in pain.

His hands are burnt from his own fire. Amateur mistake, Shouto thinks, eyeing the Avatar. Despite his improvement in other bendings, the Avatar’s firebending is quite shit. 

“Why?” the Avatar snarls, and he sends wind to Shouto’s way. Shouto dodges, but barely—a stray debris grazes his cheek sharply. Shouto does not bother to check for blood. “Why are you doing this?”

Why do you want to kill me so badly?

Shouto glares. He will not let the Avatar distract him, not again. “I will not speak to a dead man,” Shouto combusts into flames.

The Avatar counters with ice. Smoke rises to the sky.

“You will answer me,” the Avatar insists, and he roars as he brings the earth to life.  

They are not equal. Not in strength. Shouto is stronger, they both know this, and yet still—the Avatar does not fall back. Won’t fall back.

“You are stronger than me,” the Avatar says. “You can end this fight!”

The Avatar keeps talking. Goading him, he knows. Trying to trigger Shouto, watching his responses. Waiting until Shouto loses composure, for him to slip, and make a mistake. Shouto clenches his jaw.

“Are you holding back?”

Deep in the pit of his chest, anger swells. Do not fall for it, Shouto grits his teeth. Do not speak to him.

The truth is: Shouto is not ice cold. He knows that it is what the Fire Nation calls him; the cold prince. The name is fueled by fear, but as the prince of the Fire Nation, it is also a whispered insult. A cruel joke.

It means: Shouto does not have a heart. It means: Shouto does not belong there. 

But they are wrong. Shouto’s anger flares quickly, if one knows where to prod. What to say. Shouto’s temper is not unlike an oil slicked wick.

(Not unlike his father’s.)

Shouto exhales; steam vapors to the air. He feels his skin sizzling, he feels his skin going numb from the cold. Do not speak to him. Do not.

“Is that it?” the Avatar snaps, And he is angry, Shouto sees it for the first time, how fury looks on the Avatar’s face. His cheeks are red with wrath, his freckles stark against his blush. His eyes bright, as always. “Look at you. You could’ve finished this fight a long time ago. You could’ve even killed me the first time we—the first time we met,” the Avatar finishes with a seethe. “I’m tired of you showing up—“

“Shut up.”

“—trying to kill me all the time, and doing a half-assed job at it. Do you even want to kill me?”

Shouto’s eyes scrunches from glaring so hard, his teeth bared in a snarl. The Avatar is spewing fucking nonsense. What does he know? Why won’t he just—die?

Kill him. Do it, Shouto.

“You don’t know anything,” Shouto growls, and he claws into the ground. The ground turns to ice with his beckoning, towering to the sky in sharp, jagged chrystals. Silence. 

He’s dead, a small voice in Shouto’s head says, small and empty. And then—

“I was right, wasn’t I?” 

There is ringing in Shouto’s head. It sounds like a whistling kettle. Like a bomb, whirring, waiting to detonate.

The Avatar rises, his right arm bloody and wrecked in his hold, but he stands tall, eyes fixed on Shouto. Burning. “You aren’t even trying hard enough to kill me.”

Shouto’s left side is in flames. “My Father—“

“I know the Fire Lord wants me dead!” the Avatar’s eyes are brighter than fire. Radiant. His chest rises and falls rapidly. “I know that. But do you?”

Shouto thinks of the rabbit. Thinks of whistling kettle. Thinks of moonlight. Thinks of, I will burn your other eye. Thinks, I was made for this. 

The Avatar says, “you are not your father, are you?”

Shouto—Shouto’s flames died. 

Shouto can’t move. His chest feels like it’s closing in itself, his heartbeat is loud, pulsating in his ears. He feels unbearably hot. He feels unbearably cold. He is — Shouto is—I am—

What is he?

“Deku!” 

The Avatar’s flying bison hovers above them. The Avatar’s aides have increased in number, it seems. 

“What the fuck, Deku, come the fuck up here!”

“Is that—is that the fire prince?”

He’s running away, a voice tells him. Stop him, you fucking mongrel. I raised you myself, you useless, ungrateful thing. Did you forget, already? Did you forget what you are—

Shouto can’t. He watches, teeth biting into his lips, his breathing labored as they come in steams, as the Avatar climbed onto his bison and fled. Shouto can’t, as he falls into himself, his chest roaring, skin breaking. He is losing control, he is burning, he is freezing. It takes him everything not to scream. It takes him everything not to burn, burn, burn. He can’t. Shouto is an open wound.

When Shouto opens his eyes, the world is a blur. A collection of sensations. Shouto is burning. Shouto is freezing. His vision is null, and he feels blind all over again. He hears whistling kettle. He can’t breathe. His body feels—broken. Shaking, shuddering. He feels like a broken glass. And the world is just … colors. Dull voices. Hazy, and wet, and hot. 

A face comes to view—Momo? Mashirao? 

“— nce Shouto—“

“— avatar—deavor —“

“— high fever—“

Someone is speaking. A lot of people are speaking. He can’t hear them; their voices are loud, and yet so far away, as if he is underwater. And it’s there, at the back of his mind—the whistling kettle.

Gods, he can’t breathe. 

What’s happening to me, he wants to say, but he barely manages a groan. 

Something touches his forehead. It feels cold. Soothing. It feels wonderful. It feels like something he had known, once — a long, long time ago. Something he had forgotten. Something Shouto had lost.

Shouto thinks, Mother. 

“Shouto,” Endeavor says. “My son.”

“Father,” sweat pools on his brows. His hands, Shouto finds, are trembling, barely holding his body in his prostrate. “Forgive me.”

“You were lucky to be born.”

“Forgive me,” Shouto repeats. His voice but a croak. A pitiful whisper, a beg.

“You are my masterpiece. My son,” his father says. “Are you not?”

Shouto barely holds his sobs. He will not cry. He will not cry, not in front of his aides. Not in front of his father.

His father blazes. His father is firelight.

“Answer me.”

“Yes," Shouto's voice cracks. "Yes, Father.”

Endeavor rises from his throne. Each step he takes towards him reverberates in Shouto’s head. Shouto feels nauseous. His throat feels like acid. Every nerves in his body tells him: run. Please, run, oh god—

But he can’t. He never could. 

Do not speak. Do not fight back. This is how you survive.

His father is inescapable.

“Raise your head, Shouto.”

Shouto obeys. He will not cry.

The hit comes. Shouto knew it was coming, but when the slap lashes and the hot white pain sears across his cheek, it still hurts. Every time. 

The sick thing is, it’s grounding. It doesn’t feel good, it’s everything that Shouto fears—but there is a nasty part in Shouto, a part that he is ashamed of. A part that feels relieved. The pain grounds him, the pain reminds him of—of what he is. Every hit he takes from his father, every burnt marks he bear, they remind him, over and over again. Of his life. His home.

This is home. This is all Shouto has ever known. 

Shouto’s head is buzzing. A whimper comes loose from his lips. His head has turned sideway from the force of the slap, so he tilts them back to face his father. His father hates it when Shouto averts his eyes like a coward. When he hits Shouto, he wants to make sure Shouto is looking at him in the eye. Face your fear, his father told him. Look at it in the eye. 

Endeavor’s eyes are like glacier. Hollow. Ice. 

“I love you, Shouto,” his father says, his voice completely and utterly empty. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Shouto answers.

His father raises his hand. Flame blazes over it, blue, like his eyes. Like Shouto’s left eye.

“I do this,” his father tells him. “Because I love you. Do you understand?”

He will not cry—and yet, the tears come.

“Yes, Father,” Shouto says. 

“I will burn your other eye,” Endeavor says.

Tears trickle down his cheek, to his chin. “Yes, Father.”

Shouto feels the heat. Shouto hears the screaming.

But the fire never touches him.

“Momo?” Shouto calls, breathless.

Momo is in front of him, burning. Crying. She stood in his father’s fire, Shouto realizes with a start. She stood in the way of his father’s fire, she—

She protected me, Shouto thinks.

“Momo,” Shouto says, again, before the shock wears off, the fear takes in and he puts out the fire with his ice, with trembling hands. “Momo—Momo.” 

She is crying, shaking in Shouto’s embrace, gasping for breath. The fire has gotten her back; her armors are completely burnt off, revealing the ugly, red gash on her skin. Shouto’s hands are shaking so hard, his tremor is visible, his hold on Momo slipping off as he calls to his waterbending. His ice comes, glazing over the red, red, red skin as Momo howls in pain. 

“Insolent.” 

Shouto raises his head, meets his father’s eyes fearfully. They seem—amused. “At least you finally know how to use your subordinates properly,” Endeavor sneers. “You were always too soft on them.”

“Don’t punish her,” Shouto chokes. “Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything—please—”

“You are mine,” his father says. “Of course you will.”

You think you can save them?

His father’s eyes are blinding. Shouto is an open wound, at his father’s feet. A prince who cannot protect his own aides. Shouto is—

You think you can be anything other than a weapon?

“Remember what you are,” his father says.

Shouto waits until Momo has fallen asleep. And then he waits some more. 

“It will leave a scar,” the healer had murmured. But Momo could not hear her; she was out of it, driven out of her mind by the pain. Momo is a strong fighter, stubborn too, but Endeavor’s fire is terror. Shouto should know.

His father expects him to marry her. Momo is highborn, and she is a skilled warrior—the whole nation, perhaps, expects them to marry; they take Momo’s loyalty of him as something of a romantic nature. But Shouto knows it is not the case. Momo loves him, that much is true. Momo, just like Denki and Mashirao, loves him in a hard way. Like a soldier. Momo does not desire him as a lover—like the rest of Shouto’s men, she desires him as a ruler. Their adoration to him is noble. 

(They see something in Shouto, something no one sees in the Fire Lord. But Shouto does not know this yet. Shouto cannot see it, for he has never seen it in anyone.)

Shouto wants to break then and there, because he — he does not deserve this. He does not deserve these brave soldiers under him. He does not deserve these people to fight for his life. He does not deserve to kill the Avatar, who looks at death in the eye, fearless. He does not deserve it; not him, not Shouto, who has been a coward his whole life.

“Prince Shouto.”

Mashirao. “Rise,” Shouto says, and he sounds pathetic, even to himself. “You need not kneel, Mashirao. Not now.”

“I will, still, my Lord,” Mashirao says. It might sound insubordinate to any other royalties, but Shouto has made it very clear that his soldiers will tell him honesty, and only honestly. “You are the only one I kneel for.”

Shouto closes his eyes, and wills himself not to break. “What is it?”

“You should rest, my Lord,” Mashirao says, something near soft, as softly a soldier can afford. “You’ve been here for hours. I will take the watch for Lady Yaoyorozu.”

Shouto does not move. He knows he is being irrational. Weak, he thinks to himself in disgust. You are showing weakness. Frail. Emotional.

Shut up.

Not here. He can’t break, yet. Not in front of his soldiers. Never in front of his soldiers. 

Shouto stands up.

“There is no need,” Shouto makes a leave to the door. “She is safe, here.”

Within the walls of the Fire Lord, Momo had said. I am afraid I might be unable to do my job properly.

How ironic—how pitiful, that the soldier is braver than her lord. Braver than he had ever been.

“Yes, my Lord.”

V

The room is devoid of anything but the Avatar, feet and arms chained to poles. He is looking at Shouto, wary.

“Who are you?”

What are you, Shouto? 

Shouto does not answer. He brandishes his swords, raising them overhead. The Avatar flinches, shaking—

Shouto cuts the chains with a swing of his sword.

Shouto jerks his shoulder, his mask staring at the Avatar in its frozen, blue painted glare. Come. 

The Avatar hesitates—and then, he walks behind Shouto, obedient. Shouto walks silently between the fallen guards. The Avatar follows him. At least the Avatar has the mind not to speak, waiting for Shouto’s instructions in silence. 

Chattering and taps echo in the hallway. Soldiers. Shouto freezes. Four people. No, six. 

“Six people,” the Avatar whispers to warn him, needlessly. Shouto appreciates it, though. Shouto nods, kicks open an airway on the ceiling near them and crawls in. The Avatar follows. 

They hear chaos as the soldiers find their fallen comrades, Shouto’s handiworks. 

They captured the Avatar, Mashirao had told him.

Where is he?

Pohuai Stronghold.

What will you do, my Lord? Denki had asked.

Pohuai Stronghold is one of the four Fire Nation’s fortress in the west of the Earth Kingdom. Shouto memorized their rooms and sewer pathways when he was eleven, including the map of the fortress’ ventilation pathways. Shouto keeps his path in the airway with ease. The Avatar is following behind. 

I will do what I must, Shouto had answered.

Soon, they are out in a balcony. The castle is in panic, horns blown and soldiers running. The Avatar has escaped. 

It is not easy work to smuggle the Avatar. Shouto finds him too eyecatching, what with his green curls (Shouto knows he doesn’t really have the right to say that, though, considering his own appearance), and brown skin. Shouto had a plan of having the Avatar wears a soldier uniform, but they simply have no time. There is no choice but to make their escape with violence.

 The Avatar seems to understand, brows pinching, eyes calculating as he looks out the balcony to the crowd below. “We have to fight our way out,” the Avatar says. 

Shouto gestures to the Avatar to run. The Avatar, again, understands. For once, Shouto is glad for the Avatar’s sharp wit.

“Are you saying you will distract them?”

Shouto nods.

“No offense,” the Avatar says weakly, “but I think I would be a better distra—wait!“

Without hesitation, Shouto jumps off the balcony. 

He does not use bending—it will give his identity away. Rolling onto the ground, Shouto wields his swords. He sees the Avatar running to the gate, by the rooftops, agile and light. He seems to be floating in the air.

“Blue spirit!” someone says, and all eyes are on him. “Intruder!” another says, and Shouto fights.

“Close the gates!”

Shouto is awfully skilled with swords (his father made sure of that), but without his bending, fighting against dozens prove to be tricky.

You have to get away, Shouto tells himself. Someone manages to get a hit on his shoulder—it burns with pain, but Shouto does not scream; he has had practice with that. If he finds out what you’ve done—

I will burn your other eye. Then you will be truly useless.

Shouto takes a hit to the torso. He rolls away, on the defense. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck— the soldiers are closing in. He sees men, dozens of them, coming. Reinforcements. Shouto glances at the wall. Can he scale them?

“Duck!”

Shouto ducks. A strong gust of wind flies overhead, sending the soldiers hurling. The Avatar stands in front of Shouto, arms raised, as if protecting him. Shouto is dumbfounded by the scene. He had come back, to save Shouto.

He takes it back. The Avatar is stupid. Through his mask, Shouto glares at the Avatar’s back.

“Take my hand,” the Avatar tells him, holding his hand out. 

Shouto stares.

“Hurry!”

Shouto takes it. The Avatar yanks, and then—and then he is on the Avatar’s back, as the Avatar scales the wall and flies. Shouto is flying. 

The world is a blur, night sky, lights, wind. Stars. Shouto's hair flies around him, and he hears the shoutings, the horns, as they grew further and further away. Shouto can only focus on his hands, holding onto the Avatar’s back. The Avatar underneath him, warm and sturdy.

By some goddamn miracle, they are out. They’ve escaped.

Shouto thinks: this is impossible. Shouto thinks: well, he is the Avatar.

Something hit Shouto’s head, and Shouto, he—he can’t think. The world disappears. Someone has shut off the lights.

Shouto dreams of whistling kettle. He dreams of his mother. Shouto tells her, I’m sorry.

(Shouto can’t, for the life of him, remember his mother’s face without wanting to vomit. In his dreams, though, she looks beautiful. Her hair is moonlight. Her voice, summer rain.)

She tells him, I’m sorry, too. The kettle whistles.

Shouto’s world turns into hot, blistering darkness, and it hurts. It burns. It burns, and it hurts, and he can’t breathe, and why can’t he see? Why can’t he see anything? 

Mom, Shouto says, why can’t I see—? He can’t see his mother’s face. What does she look like? He can’t remember.

Shouto, his mother sobs, Shouto—

“Shouto! Prince Shouto!”

Shouto’s eyes open, and he gasps for air. 

The sky is dark, littered with stars. He can breathe. Shouto’s lungs burn, as if he had run miles. Above him, the Avatar stares at him, face pale and anxious. When he sees Shouto is conscious, his face significantly releases, giving away tension. He looks relieved.

“Get away,” Shouto says, his voice hoarse, and it lacks bite. He sounds pathetic, defenseless. 

The Avatar moves away. Shouto watches as the Avatar walks hurriedly behind and sits on the trunk of a tree, right across of him. A good three meters apart. Shouto curses, and tries to calm his breathing.

The air is cold. How long has he been out?

Shouto touches his head. Something had hit him. His hand comes away clean, no blood. 

“You were hit by an arrow,” the Avatar informs him, ever the helpful. “It hit your mask, though, so I think you are only mildly concussed.”

His mask.

Shouto is not wearing his mask. 

The Avatar squirms, his eyes shifting to the ground. Shouto follows his gaze. There, the mask lays, broken. It’s blue paint glint under the stars. The Avatar had called him by his name.

“Fuck,” Shouto says, and lays back to the ground. It’s uncomfortable, and the pebbles are sharp pinpricks under him, but fuck it. He is fucked.

“No one saw you. They don’t—they don’t know who you are,” the Avatar says, his voice assuring, yet unsure of itself. 

No one except me. 

The words are unsaid, but they both hear it. Shouto takes a deep breath. 

“How long was I out?”

“Not long. We just—um. We just got here. I was about to, you know,” the Avatar gestures at his shoulder.

So that’s why Shouto has been feeling fucked. He inspects his shoulder carefully. It’s dislocated. An arrow jut out of his thigh—when did that happen?—and Shouto curses again. It’s frozen by the punctured skin (“I froze it to stop the bleeding,” the Avatar says in a small voice, as if afraid Shouto will lash at him for stopping his bleeding), but it’s not deep, and it missed any vital spots. Pure luck. Shouto sighs.

Well, he did know this was a stupid, batshit idea.

(And he did it. He really fucking did it. Shouto shoves the electric excitement, the absolute fear down into his guts.)

“Why did you … why did you do it?”

Shouto looks at him. The Avatar looks back. He looks older, somehow. Jaw stronger, eyes vivid. 

Shouto’s stare hardens. “I will be the one to kill the Avatar,” Shouto tells him. “I will be the one to bring the Avatar’s head to my father. Not them.”

It is true. It is why he does it. It is true, and yet, Shouto can’t shake the lead weighing down his chest, the ringing in his ears.

The Avatar does not stop looking. Shouto cannot bear it—cannot bear being looked like—like someone rather than something. Shouto looks away.

“Is that why you save me? So you can kill me yourself?”

Shouto sighs again, this time irritably, holding a wince as he checks his shoulder. “I am the Avatar’s downfall,” he simply says, and he flinches at how sick he sounds. Sick of the words, sick of himself. 

“I have a name, you know,” the Avatar says, after several seconds of silence. Shouto sees the line of his mouth quirking into a tiny, wobbly smile. 

(Shouto refuses to look at him. Shouto pretends his dislocated shoulder is the most interesting thing he has ever seen.)

“It gets kind of tiring getting called the Avatar all the time,” the Avatar continues, unabashed by Shouto's unresponsive nature. “I’m not just the Avatar, I mean. I’m me, too.”

And something about that—something about that tugs at Shouto’s chest.

Shouto thinks he can understand. 

Unncecessary.

Shouto pretends he does not hear him. Shouto lifts his left arm and rotates his hand behind his head slowly.

“Wait,” the Avatar makes a movement as if he is going to stand. “What are you—?”

Shouto reaches for his right shoulder, and his dislocated shoulder pops back into place. Shouto grunts. The Avatar flinches. 

Shouto sighs (again), and he hates how tired it is. How worn out (do not show weakness, his father told him, and Shouto tries to ignore that fucking voice). He touches his left shoulder with his right hand, and a thin layer of ice frosts over it in swirling patterns, giving his pain reprieve. Shouto closes his eyes, allowing himself a moment of cold relief. 

The Avatar’s gaze is heavy on him, but he refuses to spare him a glance. He is determined to pretend that the Avatar is not there. He is determined to pretend that he did not just save the Avatar’s life, that killing the Avatar—at least for this moment—is something he doesn’t want to do. 

The Avatar keeps staring though, and he is opening his mouth and closing it several times, worrying his lips. After a while, it gets annoying (Shouto might be glancing at him discreetly).

“Say it,” Shouto grunts. So much for pretending. “Whatever it is you want to say. Stop staring at me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” the Avatar mumbles, sounding embarrassed, dropping his gaze. But then, he says, “it’s pretty,” and his voice reminds Shouto of Momo. Clear, sincere. 

“What?” the question is out before he can help it. Shouto glares at the ground.

The Avatar seems surprised that he is responding at all, like a normal person, probably. It takes him a while to reciprocate. “Your, um. Your bending. It’s pretty.” 

Shouto glares harder at the ground. And then he laughs. 

It’s short, it’s hoarse, and it might not be as bitter as Shouto might think, but it’s there.

(He can’t help it. He’s got an odd sense of humor.)

“If my father hears the Avatar call my bending pretty,” Shouto says, “he will strangle me.”  

And then Shouto relapses back to brooding silence, goes to fix his wounds. To his surprise, though, the Avatar is watching him like—like what, Shouto does not want to think about. Shouto does not like to treat himself in front of others—does not enjoy looking bare and wounded. But he is too tired to find another place to seek privacy. He is going to kill the Avatar after this, anyway.

(Shouto pretends that he is.)

Shouto looks at the arrow dug into his thigh. It’s not deep—which is, again, luck—so he figures it will do fine. He sighs for the umpteenth time, and bites down to his fabric of his right sleeve. Shouto melts the ice away and takes the arrow out in one swift moment. “Fuck,” Shouto curses again. 

“Let me help you.” 

Shouto tenses—and he feels cold, suddenly,and not from his ice. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snaps to the Avatar, his voice ice, eyes fire. You dare to pity me? You dare to think me weak? I’ll kill you right here and now.

But the Avatar does not budge. He looks to Shouto’s eyes. They are ablaze. Determined.

For the first time since he freed him, Shouto truly looks at the Avatar. He looks—well, exhausted, but none the worse for wear, only light grazes here and there. 

You protected him, a voice tells him in his head, accusing, acid. But another voice, another voice, tells him this: you protected him. And it sounds awed. It sounds — content, astonished. Astonished that he can protect, for once, and not hurt. Astonished that Shouto is something other than a thing that inflicts pain.

Shouto glares harder. The Avatar, still, does not budge.

“Let me help you,” the Avatar repeats, stubborn. “I can—I can help. If you let me,” he adds, “please. You’ve helped me. Let’s make it even.”

No, Shouto says in his head. No, fuck off. The words are on the tip of his tongue, yet he does not give voice to them. 

“Let me do it, and we’ll pretend none of this ever happenned,” the Avatar tells him again, and Shouto hates how smart that persuasion is. The Avatar seems to know this, as he looks near content at whatever change is apparent on Shouto’s face.

“Do anything funny and I’ll kill you,” Shouto says as a permission, and the Avatar beams. 

“Thank you,” he says, as if helping Shouto is something to be thankful of.

The Avatar is stupid. 

The Avatar moves forward, slow, as if encountering a scared animal. Shouto scowls. He kneels in front of Shouto, and Shouto blanches at their close proximity. Shouto blanches at how—how his freckles are scattered accross his nose, seemingly in millions. Stars-made. 

Unnecessary details. Kill him.

Shouto glares to the ground again.

“May—May I?” the Avatar hands hover above his wound. Shouto shivers, unprepared by the inevitability of touch.

“Just do it,” grits Shouto. 

“Okay,” the Avatar says, softly, and touches the ground. The Avatar closes his eyes, and Shouto can’t help but wonder at how calm he looks, how transient. How open. As if Shouto is not going to slit his neck at any given moment. 

“Let me borrow from you,” the Avatar whispers, and Shouto feels the earth shuddering under him, feels the earth letting out a sigh. Water appears from the ground, and trickles to his hands, defying gravity. The Avatar smiles, honest and grateful. “Thank you.”

He lifts his hands in a cup, water glowing inside them. Shouto watches he bring them over to his wound, watches how the water shimmers on his skin. It feels soothing, and Shouto closes his eyes, relishing in the sensation. 

Then it’s gone—and so is the pain.

Shouto looks at the Avatar. Stars-made, a miracle brought to life. “You can heal,” he says, wonder in his voice, more a statement than a question.

“Ah—yeah, I, uh,” the Avatar ducks his head, embarrassed, his curls bouncing lightly as he does so. 

Of course, Shouto thinks. It makes sense. Someone so bright—so good. Of course he heals. Of course he has this gift of—of tenderness. 

This is what I’m supposed to kill, Shouto realizes. I am his downfall. And suddenly the words no longer feel so empty, anymore, no longer feel as hollow. Suddenly they are heavy, and cold, like everything in Shouto’s life. Suddenly they are choking his lungs.

“Your face,” the Avatar says, worry in his voice, snapping Shouto out of his thoughts. The Avatar reaches for Shouto’s face—with a start, Shouto realizes he is referring to the nasty, blooming bruise on his left cheek. His father’s handimade. “It’s—”

“Don’t touch me,” Shouto growls, and the Avatar pulls his hand back. He looks surprised, afraid. Shouto hates it. Shouto hates how he looks. 

Shouto stands. Startled, the Avatar yelps and falls to his butt.

Shouto takes his broken mask and sword. He permits himself a last glance at the Avatar. The Avatar is confused, lost—as if disappointed that Shouto is leaving. 

Ridiculous. 

“This never happened,” Shouto says coldly. And then Shouto leaves, disappears into the night, and he runs, runs, runs, runs.

His father will strangle him. Shouto laughs in death’s face. 

“The Avatar escaped,” Endeavor repeats. The room’s temperature is rising rapidly, and yet Shouto feels very, very cold.

The soldier is shaking, cowering. “Yes, my Lord.”

“Aided by a single intruder.”

The floor made a pitiful sound when the soldier grovels even deeper, scraping his head against it. “Yes, my Lord.”

The room flashes red. The soldier screams, clawing at himself, on fire. The guards come without cue, dragging the lit soldier out of the throne room. The door closes, and all is but still.

Endeavor does not usually lash out childishly—he is cruel, but prideful. He does not lash out his fire, his power, on lowly foot soldiers. But Endeavor is not a patient man. The council know this—if they don’t, they would not be in one piece for so long—and so they wait in silence, complying to their emperor’s current nasty mood.

“I was so close,” Endeavor breathes fire. “So close to annihilate the fucking Avatar.”

The heat is unbearable. Shouto stares ahead, face carefully blank. He does not allow himself to move a muscle. 

“It is you, isn’t it, Shouto?”

Shouto’s heart stops.

“It really is you, after all. You will be the one to kill him, in the end,” his father says, and Shouto nearly throws up right there. “It is your fate. Not anyone else’s. ”

“Yes, Father,” he says blankly.

“What will we do?” one of the generals speak up. 

“Will we change plans?”

“Now that the Avatar is free—“

“He will surely aide the Northern Tribe — “

“I will not change plans,” Endeavor says. The table turns silent once more. 

“And we have the upper hand, don’t we?” another general chimes. “Our plan is massacre.”

“Yes,” Endeavor smiles, feral. “We will kill the moon spirit.”

This time, the table errupts in words. 

“With the moon spirit gone, the waterbenders will lose their bending.”

“They will hold no chance against us.”

"A genocide."

“They will be destroyed.”

“Forgive my impudence, my Lord,” a general speaks, a brave soul. “But I do not think it is wise to go against the Avatar and to triffle with the spirits.”

Shouto closes his eyes. 

“Do you fear the Avatar, so, Takahito?” his father says. 

“My Lord,” the general answers weakly, “I—“

“Do you fear the spirits,” his father sneers, “or do you fear me?”

This is a cruel question. Admitting that one fears Endeavor, that one fears another man, is the same as dishonoring one’s self. However, to say that one does not fear Endeavor is to insult the Fire Lord. Takahito knows this. Poor man’s jaw clenches, eyes wild. 

“Forgive me, my Lord,” Takahito finally says, “I serve you only. Not the Avatar, not the spirits. Not anyone.”

Good answer. Shouto lets out a slow breath. 

“The Avatar is a boy,” Endeavor continues, as if Takahito never spoke. “Any man fearing a mere child, and such things as spirits, does not deserve to call himself a firebender, much less a fucking general.”

The table bristles. Some aroused by the arrogance, empowered. But some insulted, some ashamed—yet they dare not show it. 

Endeavor rules from fear.

“The spirits are killable. They are not immortal. We are no less from them, no, not us. Not the Fire Nation,” Endeavor’s eyes gleam in the firelight, like a mad man, like a king. “We are gods. Even the spirits have no chance against gods. We will rule. We will burn the moon.”

Endeavor rules from mortal pride, from the lust of violence.

The men, drunk from pride, whispers agreement. Eyes blinded. They are gods, they think. They can do anything. They can burn anything. They can burn the moon, if they wish to.

Fire is consumption. Fire is rebirth, fire is gold and fire is power.

Here, Endeavor is god. 

“Shouto,” Endeavor says. “You will go to the Spirit Oasis, and you will kill the moon spirit. Do you understand?”

Shouto thinks of his mother.

She has moonlight hair. She shines, in his dreams, like the moon. 

(Shouto can’t remember her face. He can’t. Not without breaking.)

The Fire Lord married the princess of the Northern Tribe.

She is blessed, he heard the servants gossip, the soldiers whisper. Talks behind closed doors. The Queen is blessed by the moon.

After all, it is why the Fire Lord married her. A royal marriage.

He wanted the moon’s power.  He wanted the moon spirit’s blood in his children.

She is beautiful. Shame that she went mad.

Will she ever return?

Shouto does not miss a beat. “Yes, Father.”

Endeavor smiles. It is teeth. Charcoal. “You will be the prince who made the moon bleed.”

“The fleet will leave tomorrow, and you will not come with me.”

His aides bristle. They stare at him, hard, but none make a sound.

“And if — if my name is tarnished,” Shouto says. “You will leave. You will not make yourself in danger. You will not defend my name.”

They gaze harden, jaws clench. But still, they keep silent.

“Speak your mind,” Shouto commands.

Denki speaks with no hesitation, his voice crystal clear, “we will wait for you, my Lord,” he kneels. And together, they all kneel before him, proud, unmoving. Warriors. Something tugs in Shouto’s chest, something burns.

“Rise,” Shouto commands. They obey. 

“I will return to you as the Fire Lord,” Shouto says. “This is an oath I have taken. Will you wait for me?”

“Yes, my Lord,” they answer. Their voices hard, and fond. 

VI

The Spirit Oasis is beautiful. 

The lone waterbender defending it has put up a commendable fight, courageous even surrounded by Fire Nation’s soldiers. Even in face of the Fire Lord himself. But against Shouto, her bravery is nothing. 

Shouto breathes. The Spirit Oasis is in an eternal springtime, truly an oasis amidst the cold walls of the Northern Tribe. In the pond, two fishes circle in an enthralling, rhythmic dance. The spirits. Shouto walks.

The grass is soft lush underneath his feet. The water is warm. 

“Do it, Shouto.”

The moon spirit quivers in his hands. 

“Kill it,” Endeavor says, cold as ever.

I am the Avatar’s downfall. I am your weapon. I am your creation.

And yet.

“I can’t,” Shouto whispers. “I can’t.”

Shouto’s world is still, as if it’s holding its breath.

“Todoroki Shouto,” his father sounds like boiling water. Like whistling kettle. Like a promise of years and years of burnt marks, of open wound. “Will you go against me?”

(“No,” the waterbender whimpers, weak, unable to do anything but watch as she is held by his father’s soldiers. “Please.”)

Just like how he was taught, Shouto obeys.

The moon spirit writhes in the fire—Shouto’s fire—and dies. The moon becomes red. Shouto’s world becomes red.

There is that ringing again in his ears—Shouto feels—

Shouto feels a rough, large hand on his shoulder. It is his father’s. He has memorized his father’s hands long, long ago. The curves of it, the harshness of it. The heat of it. His father tells him, “well done. You will be celebrated, my son. Moonslayer.”

The waterbender sobs. 

Moments pass. The clouds shift, the moon is hanging, a corpse in the sky. His father has left, long gone—off to lead his army, off to destroy the northern water tribe, off to celebrate their victory—and yet, Shouto cannot move. He has done something very, very terrible. Shouto knows this. He has just killed something holy. Touched something no human must. He has propelled a massacre, defile nature. 

Look at you. You weapon. You open wound. You dared to think you can save them—

I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. 

—you dared to think you are not your father. 

“Tsuyu!” the Avatar. He stumbles into the garden, his voice full of horror. “What happened?”

Shouto does not bother to look, to move. His fingers are limp around the moon spirit’s form.

“The moon spirit is gone,” the waterbender answers. “It’s — it’s over.”

It’s over. It truly is over. His father has won. Shouto has won.

“No, it is not,” the Avatar says, and his voice is desperate, shaking. Shouto hates it. “It is not. There must be a way.”

“Prince Shouto.” the waterbender says, and Shouto nearly does not notice as she kneels in front of him. Her hand is touching the moon spirit, dead in Shouto’s palms. Her face is solemn, devastated, but not unkind. “You carry the blessing of the moon spirit, from your mother’s blood. You carry the moon’s life force in you.”

The moon spirit whom he just killed. Burnt to death. You weapon.

“Yes,” Shouto says, and even to himself he sounds void, like he isn’t a person. He sounds hollow, lost. “I do."

I was a stillborn, Shouto, his mother had said. A long, long time ago. I was given life, by the moon.

The moon lives within you, too.

The waterbender looks at him, and she looks—sad, very sad, and yet she looks as if she still has hope. Shouto wonders how it would feel like, to have hope. “You only have half of it, but it might just do. It might—it might give us a chance.”

Shouto stares at her, and then he understands. 

“You regret it, don’t you?” she insists, but not forcefully. “You did not wish to kill it.”

She is right, immensely, but Shouto does not reply. Shouto looks to the creature in his hands, and it seems to shift into something else. A rabbit. A moon spirit. The Avatar. 

“It is your choice, Prince Shouto,” the waterbender lowers herself to the ground, and bow. Shouto watches her tears fall into the grass, glimmering red under the bloodied moon. Shouto’s chest wrenches. “However. I beg of you. Please.”

Shouto puts the dead moon spirit into the water. It floats to the surface, lifeless. He stands, and takes a trembling step towards the pond— 

Something yanks him back. Too out of it to react, Shouto can only look at whoever it is in surprise.

It is the Avatar. His hold is tight on Shouto’s wrist, and the look on his eyes is of horror and—something. Something hard, and pained. “Wait,” the Avatar says, out of gritted teeth. His eyes blown wide, conflicted. “If you do this, you will die.”

If he does this, he will die. Shouto knows that.

Shouto has fear. Shouto fears his father, but death? And a death so contrite, a death of sacrifice? It almost seems too good, for someone—something like him, to die in such a sacred way. To die for a good cause. 

Giving his life to the moon, becoming martyred. 

“There must be another way,” the Avatar says, and Shouto thought he couldn’t sound more desperate. “There has to be.”

But the Avatar does not understand. For something like Shouto, it seems unfit. Shouto does not deserve a death so kind. Shouto does not deserve to save lives. 

For someone like Shouto, this kind of death is a privilege.

Shouto thinks to himself: are you a fucking idiot? And then he thinks, I deserve this. And then he thinks, please. Let me have this. Let me finish this.

Before Shouto can give voice to his thoughts, though, someone calls his name: “Shouto!”

Shouto turns, and then his world holds its breath once more. Shouto wonders if he is dreaming. 

(Her hair is moonlight, her voice, summer rain.)

The Avatar releases his hold, but Shouto does not notice. Behind him, the waterbender and the Avatar grovel to the ground. “Princess,” the Waterbender says, but Shouto cannot hear it. To Shouto, at this moment, nothing matters. His world shuts down, and he only has eyes for his mother.

His mother, who is standing in the middle of the Spirit Oasis. 

Shouto does not know when, but his knees gave. He has fallen to the ground, clawing at the ground. Distantly, he feels himself shaking. “I’m sorry,” he hears himself whisper. He sounds like he was seven again, trembling before his mother. “I’m so sorry.”

Will she ever return?

I don't think so. She is banished, after what she did to the Prince. The Lord had her sent back to her tribe.

Poor boy.

His mother comes to him, slowly. Her hair looks like comet in the moonlight, shining red. She looks like she is dreaming — looking at Shouto like he isn’t real, like he is a dream thing. She is close, now, and she looks older than he remembers. Paler.

(Shouto remembers.)

But she is real. She is very, very real.

“Shouto,” she whispers back. “Shouto.” 

She reaches a hand to his face and Shouto flinches, hard, as if in pain, as if to hide half his face — half of his father, from her sight. Unsightly, Shouto thinks to himself. Unsightly. You are unsightly.

“I’m sorry,” Shouto chokes, and when he dares to look, his mother's face is inches from his — she is kneeling to meet him. She is crying, tears in rivulets, gleaming red like blood; hanging from moonlight lashes like bloody pearls. She reaches her hands again, and Shouto cannot bear it. He lets her touch him. He lets her hold him.

“It’s going to be okay, Shouto,” she says, and she kisses him, on his left cheek. And then on his forehead. And then on his hair. Her tears are warm on Shouto’s brows. Her hands are cold, but sure, firm on his hair, despite Shouto's rejection. Despite everything.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

She kisses him for the last time, right on his scar. And then she smiles, and it is wonderful. Moonlit. She whispers, and she sounds as if she is saying the truest thing in the world. “You are so, so beautiful,” she tells him, mouth pressing to his forehead, shaking. “My son. My Shouto. I love you.”

Shouto wants to speak, he wants to hug her, kiss her, apologize, cry—he wants to say everything he never dared to give voice to, all the regrets, all the anger, all the love and all the forgiveness. He wants to tell her, I love you too, always. Even after you left. Even after all these years. Even after everything. 

But Shouto’s tongue is lead in his mouth, and his arms limp in his mother’s embrace. His lungs never felt so full. A sob wrecks his whole body. He is a child again, at this moment, held by his mother. He is a son.

He hasn't been one for so long.

And then she lets him go. She stands, and Shouto watches as she steps into the pond, and then the pond becomes a pool of moonburst. She shines. Blinding white. Shouto wonders why everyone he loves blind him so.

The light dissipates. Shouto retrieves his mother’s body. His mother’s hair, black as a moonless night against her pale, pale skin. Underneath her, the moon spirit glimmers to life. In the sky, the moon returns, silver and lovely. 

Shouto brushes his fingers across her cheek. She is real, she is real. Her face is serene. She is warm still, but she is not breathing. She is dead.

The moon spirit laps at Shouto’s feet, quiet and forgiving.

Shouto buries his face into his mother’s hair and screams.

The Fire Nation retreats. Endeavor is a volatile, cackling fury made man. The ship seems to cower underneath him, as it drifts away from the Northern Tribe. The soldiers are silent with fear. 

"Shouto," Endeavor roars. "You will be punished." 

Shouto has been a coward his whole life, but not now. Not now. 

“I do not obey you,” Shouto says. “I do not take orders from you.”

Shouto is afraid. Shouto is always afraid. The fear has never seemed to leave him. It's constant, permanent, burnt to his skin like a scar.

But not now.

“What did you say?”

“I do not obey you,” Shouto repeats, and he is trembling. He  wills himself to look at Endeavor in the eye, for once in his life, and Shouto sees nothing. Nothing but fire, nothing but bottomless greed. There is no father in those eyes. Only a smoldering violence.

Shouto says it again. “I do not take orders from you.”

Endeavor stands, and his body is a pillar of flames. Sweltering starlight. Around him, the ship catches fire, the world catches fire. “You seem to forget, Shouto. I have been too soft on you,” Endeavor says, and his voice reverberates with power. Like a god's, it is cold, and empty. “I have been far too lenient. You disrespect my kindness.”

There is it again, that nasty part in Shouto. The one waiting for the hit, for the burn. The one singing the whistling kettle. The one begging to just give in. Take the pain. Do not speak. Do not fight back. This is how you survive.

This is your home.  This is all you’ve ever known. 

“Remember that I made you. You are my son.”

I love you, his mother said. My son. My Shouto.

I love you, his father said. I do this because I love you. 

And Shouto remembers. Barely, but he remembers.

This — this is not love.

“I am not your son,” Shouto says. “I am not you.”

Endeavor laughs. It’s cruel, it’s furious. It’s void of anything. Endeavor tells him, “I will burn you to nothing.”

Endeavor is blinding, now, flames licking his skin, wrapping around him like a suit, he is a star fire. He will burn Shouto to nothing, Shouto believes it, but at least — at least —

“I am not yours,” Shouto says. His voice is true, loud, and clear. Brave, in its cowardiness. Fearlessness in spite of imminent death. Shouto looks at death in the eye. “Not anymore.”

Endeavor’s eyes are pure fury, as he burns.

Shouto’s vision is alight, and then —

Seawater floods the ship in a miniscule tsunami, washing everything away. The iron of the ship’s floors cracks and towers to the sky, a barrier between Endeavor and Shouto. A flying bison growls in the sky, and Shouto is suddenly looking at the Avatar. 

The Avatar looks back. He is holding out his hand. 

“Take my hand,” he tells Shouto. There is that look again — that brave, blinding look. That devastating determination. For the first time in Shouto’s life, something outshines his father. 

Shouto takes his hand. 

And once more, he is flying.

“This is a shit fucking idea, Deku!”

“Shh—he can hear you!“

“Katsuki, you are being quite crude at the moment—“

“Dude—“

“Kacchan, please— “

“I don’t fucking care if he hears me!“

“Katsuki, he just lost his,“ the waterbender’s voice lowers into a sad whisper. “He’s just lost his mother.”

The boy with blond hair scowls. “It’s his fault, anyway,” he says, and receives five glares from his companions. “Tch. Whatever.”

Somehow, Shouto has thought that riding on a flying bison would be much faster. But it’s a slow, lazy shift through the clouds. And it’s much more crowded. The Avatar’s little band has grown considerably.

The Avatar and his team (save for the explosive boy) glance at him in a scared, apologetic kind of way, as if expecting Shouto to start a fire at any moment. But Shouto stays dormant. He does not — does not care. It’s not like the blond boy is wrong. It’s not like words can hurt him more than the truth.

The blond boy does not say anything else, and the bickering gradually stops, reverting into an awkward silence. 

Shouto does not mind. He does not want to speak. He isn’t sure if he wants to do anything at all. 

“U-um, do you want some water?”

The Avatar. Shouto barely gives him a glance. He shakes his head. 

“Oh. Okay. Well, if you change your mind, uh—it’s. You can ask. I mean,” the Avatar clears his throat nervously. “Prince Shouto.”

You are my son.

“Don’t call me that,” Shouto says, immediately. He holds the Avatar’s gaze for a second before looking away. “I’m not—I’m not a prince. Not anymore.”

Not anymore. Shouto is now a traitor to his father’s nation, Shouto realizess with faint wonder. For the first time in his life, he is not the crown prince. He is not his father’s weapon. He is not … whatever he was before. 

He is just Shouto.

The Avatar’s voice softens. Less nervous. He says, “Okay, Shouto.”

“Your name,” Shouto mutters.

“What?”

“Your name,” Shouto repeats, louder this time. He turns to look at him. “You told me you had a name.”

The Avatar smiles. “Izuku,” he says. “My name is Izuku. Nice to meet you, Shouto.”

Izuku. Izuku.

The sky surrounds him, and Shouto closes his eyes. 

Shouto dreams of spring. He dreams of the sun. And Shouto dares to wish, for the first time in forever. He dares to hope.

He dreams of golden green leaves, and he wishes he does not wake. 

Chapter Text

Shouto partitions himself. Like a corpse. Sections of meat, a dead sort of topography over the body. That’s what Shouto is: the brisket and the flank and the shank. Cured meat. His father’s hand: the butcher’s knife. And of course, his home: the fire. This is non-disputable, non-negotiable. It’s the condition of his Being. 

Shouto was born as an it.

He has siblings. He never met them, never saw them (there is a memory, so fleeting and so transient that he doubts it’s real: strands of silver-red hair behind pillars, stilted falsetto laughter and tiny footsteps, oh-so-familiar obsidian eyes peeking in keyholes, fractals of snowflakes climbing up the wall like secret messages, droplets dripping down like dulcet tones) but he knows they exist. 

Like the way he knows dragons existed, once, before his father and his father’s father killed them all.

Shouto was separated from—no, Shouto was picked from his siblings because he is perfect. That’s why Shouto is an it and not a he —because people have no way of being perfect. They can’t be. People can’t be perfected. 

Weapons are a different story.

Shouto understands why his father treats him the way he does. There was once a time where he did not understand, he is sure, even though those times are hazy to him more than anything. Days after days after days of the same routine, the same mapped over bruises, the same sweltering matchstick air, the same clots of red, red blood. Sometimes Shouto wonders if he was just born this way, like one day he just materialized out of his mother’s womb bearing the scar and the fire and the ice with partition marks all over his body and no ownership over his own hands. 

He understands why his father loves him like that. His father loves him like that because it’s his right to love him like that. It’s ownership is what it is. 

Shouto is branded, after all, all over.

His skin is proof. He thinks in the right light, at a certain angle, you could see it all over him like fine layers of dust on glass: handprints and serrated flesh. The ache beneath the mangled rib cage. The memory of his love, imprinted, burnt into him, onto him. Burnt and beaten. Like a piece of fine blade, sharp because it remembers all the violence it bore for the sake of its edge. 

He loves him like that because he owns him. 

It’s simple, really, like when you love a flower so much that you pluck it from its bush. It’s the same kind of love.

Shouto understands. 

His father’s love isn’t wrong, considering what he is loving. Considering what is being Loved. 

(It’s simply just that Shouto is wrong.)

It’s an explanation that he could accept. It’s a state of being that he could live in.

This is all Shouto has ever known.

(Or is it?)

Of course. He doesn’t remember anything else.

(Does he?)

He doesn’t.

He didn’t. He didn’t remember anything else.

(If only it was true.

If only he never saw the moon.)

VII

Shouto is not unfamiliar with traveling. Far from it.

The title of Crown Prince is not equal to a life of luxury. Perhaps it once was, or perhaps it still is, in another place. But the Fire Nation did not achieve what it has by spoiled negligence nor indiscipline. That sort of methodical, cultivated ruthlessness that Fire Nation masters so well is not without sharpening. It is not without principles.

Greed and gold and meat. Riches. They were plenty, within no less than an arm’s length for those of high blood and titles. Shouto has spent his time from his father’s side watching generals and aristocrats sway to the most exquisite rice wine in silver-threaded silk. Golden melons, whale meat. Ruby grapes the size of a baby’s fist. Luxury paid in blood and sweat and tears.

(Not their blood, sweat, nor tears, of course.)

His father never indulged. Shouto used to wonder why until he came to a certain age, and to an understanding of the hunger in his father’s empty eyes. This petty, shallow, fleeting sort of opulence is not what his father wants. It is not even worth his time.

The Fire Lord brandished his weapon with pride. His father brought him to travel often as a child before Shouto was deemed old enough (thirteen) to take his own troops. Shouto was eight the first time he was taken on a mission. The destination was an Earth Kingdom colony, south-west of the Great Divide, across the Crescent Island. It was the first time Shouto saw the sea, as big and as vast as the sky. The size of it never-ending, bigger than anything Shouto has ever seen. Miles and miles of nothing but water on the horizon. It was the first time Shouto thought of the word infinite. 

It was the first time Shouto burnt a village with his own hands.

It is not a lifetime of gold or wine or silken robes that his father wants. It is not even a lifetime of leisure. There is a reason why Endeavor is empty— infinitely empty. 

Shouto does not think of that time often, but the memory is vivid in his mind without his consent. The first understanding, real understanding he has of what pain means. What destruction is truly capable of. Because the weight of pain isn’t truly felt when you are the one who bears it; you truly understand it only when you are the one who wields it. 

Shouto never understands pain more than when he is the one causing that pain.  

Kill it, Shouto.

Shouto is a tool. An it. But it does not mean he can’t think. 

He knows what this is: an obsession. A gift, from his father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father. A sickness of ever-consuming, infinite greed. Avarice so hot and so insatiable that it burned everything else away. 

Fire is consumption. Fire is rebirth, fire is gold and fire is power.

Kill it, or are you weak?

The weight of pain is heavy, cloying, like honey. Lingering, blood-sweet, like honey. The weight of holding down a thing in your palm and knowing despite all the life it has breathed, despite all the days it has persisted in being, in existing, it does not matter. Shouto can simply unmake it all. 

This is the power that pain holds. The power that he holds.

His father’s legacy is nothing but fire and bottomless greed. An absolute consuming need to be the absolute. The desire to unmake the entire world and remake it anew in their mirror, burnish it by the matchsticks of their fingertips. God-yearn. To be the first and the last. The best. 

And Shouto has inherited that fire. He was born out of that fire. He was made to kill god.

Shouto understands why his father is so empty. There is a particular hollowness in a man that will never have what he yearns for.

So Shouto is not unfamiliar with traveling. He was taught to navigate terrains of places he has never even stepped on like it’s beaten to the palm of his hands. He was taught how to survive without food and water for weeks on end. He was taught the map of the stars, the taste of the north-wind. How to burn away rashes and how to pick one’s fruits in the wild. How to kill a wild bear whose territory you invade. How to command fear from the people whose village you burn.

It is all commandeered in him, like a machine. Programmed. Constructed.

Find the Avatar, he was told. Live your destiny, he was told. Kill your destiny. 

And he obeyed. Roam lands and seas and skies he did. Take and destroy and burn he did. He obeyed, and he kept obeying—except for the last part.

He has tailed the Avatar for a year. The first time, finding him was easy. The second time just as so. The third time, not quite. Until somewhere along the line—

(Shouto wonders if it was also his incompetence. If he hadn’t meant it enough.)

—he realized that the Avatar was smarter than he’d thought.

Izuku was smarter than he’d thought.

Shouto should not pay too much attention to civilians when they are not part of his objectives. Aside from his night escapades and his missions, Shouto has never had much of a chance to do so. All his life, Shouto was brought up amongst soldiers. A military life, with commanders and generals and admirals. War consultants. Mercenaries, on occasions. 

The only people of his age that he knows are either the Palace servants or soldiers. Fire Nation drafts children from the age of fifteen; peasant children to ones of aristocracy, such as Momo. 

Shouto knows a civilian when he sees one. If the servants avoid him and his men revere him, the civilians fear him.

That’s what the Avatar’s companions are. A bunch of ragtag civilians. 

Even with his intels, how the Avatar acquired such companions seems random. Bound by fate. An Airbender here, a mechanic there, a flying bison there. None of them are soldiers—fighters, yes, but not soldiers. Shouto would know.

From this distance, it’s even more blatantly obvious. They must be the same age as the Avatar. Children. Teenagers, at best, with raw, unpolished bending and uncoordinated movements. Novice tactical planning. And certainly no resources.

Knobby knees, scrappy bruises, dirt under the fingernails, dirt all over. Rough, torn-up cotton fabric clothes. Round-cheeked. Wide-eyed. 

(Freckles. Stars-made.)

They are just kids. 

Those kids do not let him walk at the back. They disperse around him like river-water round boulders, except in this case they act like the boulder is a ticking bomb ready to detonate at the slightest provocation.

Shouto feels their stares, hot and sharp at the back of his neck, like singed pinpricks. They are the same everywhere. The stares, that is. It does not change. Fear, resentment, morbid curiosity. The kind of stare one would wear when one sees a wild animal where it shouldn’t be. The don’t look too much or you’ll get bitten kind.  

It isn’t hard to ignore. And Shouto does not care enough to feel uncomfortable. 

They whisper among themselves, voice low enough so that Shouto knows they don’t want him to hear. Shouto certainly does not care enough to try.

And then Izuku walks right up to him.

Shouto does not flinch, although he can’t help the way his heart clenches, his knuckles pale. He can’t help the way he is aware of Izuku’s every move. Every breath that he takes, every shift of his clothes, the ever-closing distance between the two of them—he is aware of them all, all of them, painstakingly.

Shouto stares right ahead, not looking into the Avatar directly. He tells himself it is because it’s unnecessary, not because he is a coward. 

“Here,” Izuku says (his voice so close to Shouto’s ear, too close) handing him a water satchel. 

(It is still odd addressing him as Izuku in his head, and not The Avatar, or The Thing That Should Be Killed, or His Reason to Live, or His Destiny.)

Shouto stares at the satchel, and then at Izuku’s companions, who are in return staring at Shouto with the same amount of friendliness, which is none.

Shouto is not particularly thirsty, or hungry. Even if he is, he does not feel the need to indulge. The area they are in after they landed was once a greenery, but the trees have been burnt off, leaving an almost tundra-like ecosystem. The air is hot and there is very little shade if any. But Shouto is a firebender; and he has survived from malnutrition and dehydration before. He  has survived a lifetime of cloying heat. He could more than handle this.

Shouto wrenches his gaze from the tundra and turns to look at him in the eye. He pretends it does not hurt. “It is fine,” Shouto says curtly, and does not elaborate. The implication is clear enough. You do not need to spare some for me and I do not need your aide. After all, he does not expect them to treat him like an ally by the blink of an eye. He has tried to kill them. And he has almost succeeded. Most of the time.

Izuku chews on his lip. For a moment, Shouto thinks it is the end of it, but then, “I insist,” Izuku says. “We have to walk the rest through because Small Might can’t carry too many people for long. We still have plenty of water, and, um, I know bending water doesn’t taste good.” 

His eyes. Wide. Bright. Shouto cannot stare at them a moment longer.

He takes the satchel (tries to ignore how close their skin is to touching) and ties it to the band of his waist with quick fingers. He watches from underneath his eyelashes as Izuku gives him a relieved smile, as if Shouto just did him a favour and not the other way around. 

Shouto does not know what made him relent. Maybe he just does not care enough.

Izuku does not leave his side after. They walk together, not exactly side by side, but not exactly not either. Shouto pretends like it doesn’t matter.

He does not touch the water. 

The group’s destination, as it turns out, is the abandoned Northern Air Temple. It is a strategically good choice: fairly hidden, within a manageable distance to a local village by land and less than a week’s worth of travel to Ba Sing Se. It’s the best location they could pick nearest to the Northern Water Tribe, Shouto supposes. The structures are crumbling apart, though liveable. It’s certainly not something the Fire Soldiers would find them any moment soon.

Not now that his father has eyes on another matter.

The area is now plentier in greenery, surrounded by some woods. Wild plants slither up the high walls of the temple. Its current and only occupants before them all.

Shouto stands aside, farther away from the group. The group and Shouto are divided by an invisible line in the empty, ancient dome of the temple. The way they hold themselves, the stance that they take—they are preparing for a battle against him. 

The Avatar himself—Izuku—is in the middle between the two, looking for all the world confused. Like he doesn't even know where to begin.

Personally, Shouto is not sure if he cares.

“Well,” one of Izuku’s companions, one that Shouto has never seen before, clears his throat. His face is young, bespectacled. There is an air of nobility in the way he carries himself and his clothes are a better quality above the rest. He is taller than the rest of the group, along with a mature build. “Now that we … er. I suppose an introduction is apt..”

“An introduction?”

The blond boy. The one with crackling fire-fists and the perpetually sneering mouth. “What is this, a fucking summer camp ? I’m telling you, Deku, this is a shit fucking idea! I can’t keep playing along with this shit. Did you all forget that this—” he gestures to Shouto as one would a rash “—this fascist stalker right here chased us around the fucking earth, chased you—” with this, he points to Izuku “—around the fucking earth? What is wrong with you? For all we could know, he’s a spy, or insane—or he’s here to kill us all off. Which,” he whirls back to Shouto, jabbing a fiery finger at his direction. “I won’t fucking let you, you royal fuck—”

“Kacchan,” Izuku says, low, like a warning. A reprimand. 

“—and oh, have I mentioned that he’s a fucking war criminal? And you,” he does not come forward to attack Shouto, but he might as well have, from the way his fingers twitch with the need to burn, the way he looks at him. He jeers at Shouto in a mix of contempt and disgust. “You. What the fuck are you acting like a pussy all of a sudden for? Huh? You tried to kill us once a week and now you’re just following us acting like some—acting like some fucking lost kid. What, did you get a moral enlightenment?” Those eyes narrow into cruel slits. “Did you expect us to throw a welcome party? To just accept that you don’t have any other motives? Because to me it just looks like you had a fight with daddy dearest —“

“Enough!” Izuku’s voice is sharp, cutting. He has a hand on the shoulder of his companion, knuckles white and gripping. Shouto has seen this expression on him before: anger. His mouth set in a hard line. The way his freckles strain with the rigid line of his jaw. “Kacchan, enough. ”

But the blond boy (Kacchan) isn’t finished. “Here we go again!” He shrugs the hand off roughly, sparks fly off the movement dangerously and he does not give a damn. “You were always too fucking soft—“

As the commotion explodes and the group is reduced to bickering, Shouto slips away.

(If only he never saw the moon.

If only he never felt her fingers cupping the side of his jaw (his left side) with something so sweet he feels the loss of it like an ache reverberating in the marrow of his bones. If only he never felt the petal-soft warmth of skin of hair of palm so gentle it ruins him to the heart. If only she never taught him the language of tenderness, the only language with a color: silver, and a scent: rainwater when it kisses the earth.)

“You are pretty hard to track down, huh.”

Shouto does not reply. He did not wander that far away; just far enough that he could not hear all that noise. 

It’s starting, in a way. The noise of a battle, Shouto is well attuned to. But a bunch of teenagers arguing with cracking voices were new. Terribly and uncomfortably so. He did not know what to make of it.

And you don’t care, he reminds himself. 

“Your companion is right,” Shouto says in lieu of a response. His voice is clear of any inflection, any mirror of judgement. It’s merely practical. A fact.

Behind him, Izuku steps from the shadows of the trees. “Kacchan is a little—well, that’s the kind of guy he is. He’s just a bit protective, sometimes. And … I don’t agree with him.”

There is a way in which the Avatar—Izuku—speaks to him. The soft timbre of his voice. The openness that acts like an invitation. No one ever addressed Shouto like that before, like he is a person to be reasoned with. 

It’s a novelty. It’s vulnerable. It’s dangerous.

Shouto turns, looking at him in the eye. The day has started to darken, dusk bleeding in the horizon. The air has started to chill. 

Izuku meets his eyes head-on. Fearless. There is a sureness in the line of his body, the way his jaw is set. A growing confidence, so far from the scared little boy he was just a year ago. He has grown yet again, Shouto thinks. And Shouto has stayed the same. “I don’t understand why,” he says. 

And as much as he keeps his composure, the words feel too close to a confession. He can’t bring himself to elaborate. I don’t understand why you brought me. I don’t understand why you hadn’t left me. I don’t understand why you saved me.

Izuku stays silent for a moment, as if considering his cut off words. And then he says, quietly, “must there be a reason?” 

When Shouto does not answer, he continues, “even if there were, it’s … it’s probably the same reason as..” for a moment, he stops. The line of confidence wavers, like how water ripples. There is a slight tremble of hesitation in his voice as he finishes, ”..the same reason as why you took my hand.”

(If only Shouto wasn’t loved once. If only he wasn’t loved, truly loved, the kind that bathes you with seawater, the kind that you know exists and lives and shines upon you even though you can’t see it sometimes. The kind of love that doesn’t care what you are or why you are, only that you are. The kind of love that as long as you are, it will shine still in the darkest, blackest of night. The unconditional kind.

If only Shouto never knew the moon. 

If he never knew the moon, this bleeding, bruising, hot-white open wound kind of love would be enough. If he never knew the moon, he wouldn’t be in so much pain all the time. He would be fine with being in so much pain all the time.

If only he never knew what he had lost. If only he never knew what he would never get back.)

“What’s up with that look? Food not fancy enough for you?”

The blond (Katsuki, he’s been told) sneers at him, and yelps when the redhead beside him elbows him in the rib. “Enough, will you,” he chides, and then glances at Shouto with what he supposes was meant to be apologetic, but comes off more wary than anything.

(The redhead had introduced himself previously. “I’m Eijiro, Earthbender. We never um, met before. I mean, we sort of did, but at that time I was basically running away from you so I don’t think you remember me..” he trailed off. “ Anyway. Nice to. Finally meet you ... I guess?” he paused. “That was so bad,” he turned to the boy that has called himself Tenya. “Can I have a do-over?”)

Shouto eats in silence. He has taken a seat some distance apart from the group, away from where the light of the fire camp could reach him, half-shaded in the dark of the night. The nearest person next to him is the Waterbender. The same Waterbender that he encountered in the garden. The same one that said you regret it, don’t you? You did not wish to kill it.  

It does not matter, Shouto reminds himself, reminds his jumping heart, the hollow at the base of his spine. It does not matter. You don’t care.

Unlike the others, there is something else in the way she talks. An odd softness in her voice that Shouto isn’t sure what to make of. We’ve met, but I never properly introduced myself, she had said. She looked at him head-on, like how Izuku did, with wide, unwavering eyes. You may call me Tsuyu.

It took him a while to figure out what it is that made her different, the way she addressed him. She isn’t afraid of him, just like Izuku. He could tell. They aren’t afraid of him.

The Airbender, Ochako, still glares at him time to time. Shouto understands that better. She is currently in a heated discussion with Izuku, far in a distance that Shouto can’t possibly hear them. He knows what they are talking about though.

Shouto ducks his head, staring at his food. He still isn’t hungry. There is no meat in the curry, only pieces of mushroom and soft boiled potatoes. The portion of rice is very little. But he’s surprised they even have rice at all. They are rationing, he supposes, as they are technically convicts, still. Shouto would know. He’s the pursuer, after all. 

Was.

Is he now a convict too, then?

“Oh, sorry, is our peasant salt and pepper doesn’t fit Your Highness’ taste bud ? Sorry we don’t have shark fin soup ! Sorry we don’t have. Fucking. Gold-plated king crab, or whatever the fuck you royal fucks eat, you royal fuck —”

“Cut it off, dude.”

(He didn’t remember.)

(Until now.)

(But it doesn’t matter, because sometimes love isn’t strong enough. 

Sometimes love isn’t the cure. Sometimes love isn’t the answer; sometimes it’s the gasoline in the fire, the boiling water in the kettle.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you love or are loved because all things die anyway.)

“Where do you think you’re going?” 

After dinner, the Airbender approaches him with folded arms. Ochako. Her gaze is steady. Wary, but appraising. From this distance, it’s apparent how much shorter she is to him, but it does not seem to deter her staring down at him. “You think you get to eat and then go off somewhere contemplating all your mistakes in a dramatic show of woe? This isn’t a charity.”

“No need to put on an act, Ochako-chan,” Tsuyu says archly, patting her hand on Ochako’s shoulder for a moment as she passes them both.

“Shut up, Tsuyu,” Ochako says, her cheeks a shade redder than before. When flustered, she looks much softer, more genuine. When she turns back to Shouto, the softness hardens to flint. “Well? Did you think you could just tag along without earning your keep?”

The moon is a waning gibbous tonight, and will be for the next five days until the light diminishes to last quarter. 

Did you know, Shouto, that rabbits came from the moon?  

Shouto used to fear that one day he would forget about his mother completely. He could not bear to look in the mirror, but if he could, he would ponder which part of him are hers. If he resembled her in any way at all. If his father could see her when he looks at him, the way she saw his father when she looked at him.

(A wishful thinking at best, a foolish one at worst. His father would never see anything in Shouto other than a weapon.)

Memories are a fickle thing. Ink blots. Spilled drain. Shouto’s childhood was all about routine. Discipline. Get up. Fight. Go down only when you’ve shattered your bones clean. Childhood was burst-splinter nails. Childhood was never lasting a week without a cut lip. Childhood was either eat or no dinner for you unless or eat, EAT, or would you rather starve. Childhood was bloody teeth splatter to the ground like marbles. Shouto has always had a good kinetic memory.

Did you know, Shouto, that rabbits came from the moon?

So many things he must have forgotten. Just slips through the trellises of his mind. So many things he could have forgotten. 

One day, the Old Man of The Moon came down to earth...

It’s funny how memories just come back to you. No warning. A piece of gold buried in the graveyard dirt. Much too good to be true. Much too late to be good.

The night air is cold, biting against his skin. Shouto does not bother to kindle a fire. The trees shudder and the leaves weep as chill wind whistles through. They are only a few miles from the sea; he tastes salt as he licks his lips. 

The woods around him shift along with waning moonlight, and the starlight—the north sky is generous with stars. The Fire Nation Capital is down west, where stars are dimmer, if any. The city lights swallow them shut.

“Can’t sleep?”

Shouto flinches. Below him, the … Izuku is looking up at him from underneath the tree. The branches hinder the light from finding his figure, but Shouto recognizes the hints of wild hair, the shape of his mouth.

Izuku walks around silently, and makes a soft noise as he stops beside the tall pile of firewood at the base of the tree. “Did Ochako ask you to get these?” He can’t see Izuku’s face from this angle, but he can hear the frown in his voice. “You really didn’t have to, we still have plenty..”

Shouto lands to the ground silently with ease. The dark hides most of Izuku’s face, but a glimmer of moonlight hits his left eye like crystalline. The corner of his lips, the line of his shoulder. The harsh silhouette whets the soft line of his jaw into something sharper, more vivid. The way dreams are vivid, sometimes. 

Shouto wonders what he himself looks like, like this, in the dark. Maybe like a sheathed knife.

“I hope she didn’t scold you too much,” he says, soft, always so soft. “It’ll take some time for her to … well, to trust you, but I promise she is the kindest person I’ve ever met. She’s just a bit … on edge. But she’s really nice, I promise—”

“I understand.”

Izuku blinks with surprise. As if he didn’t expect Shouto to respond. 

Shouto looks away. Somewhere, an owl hoots. The trees weep, weep. “I could have killed her,” Shouto says. Practical. “I could have killed you.”

The clouds shift. The dark engulfs the both of them, smothering, for a moment. But the shape of Izuku’s mouth is unmistakable, the crinkle in his eyes, the everythingness about him that is seemingly inescapable to Shouto. 

Izuku smiles. “But you didn’t,” he says. Soft. Always so soft.

There is a thing akin to shame, twisting down to his gut, that has festered since he took that hand. Since he walked with them.

I am not yours, Shouto had told his father. Not anymore.

But what good is a weapon without its owner? What good is a knife that cannot cut?

Other than to be burnt again, chrome blood hot-white through the fire into the mould.  

Unmade. Bled dead.

He is useless.

(No one keeps a wilted flower.)

Shut up, the voice in his head says. He isn’t sure if it’s his or his father’s or if there is any difference that matters between the two. You think you have the right for pity ? No. Not even self-pity.

Suddenly, Shouto is struck with deep, birdling shame. We will wait for you, they had said. We will wait for you, my Lord.

He has made a promise to his men, one that he very well intends to keep. Shouto has no time to break apart. No time for some adolescent existential crisis. And he certainly has no time to mourn.

He has to make a decision.

“No,” Shouto says, it feels like swallowing needles down his throat. It feels like stepping on the edge of the mouth of a crater, like facing a raised hand. “I did not.” 

And now he has to pay for it.

“So it’s true. The Mighty Fire Prince himself has decided to join our merry little band.”

Shouto has seen the girl before, another one of the Avatar’s companions. An Earthbender; a highly capable one, Shouto had noted in the past. The best to ever exist, even. She leans against the doorframe, easy and lithe. Her voice is smooth, dripping with something like sarcasm. “Well, how are we feeling this fine evening, Your Highness?”

“I’m not a Prince anymore,” Shouto says, curt, half-automatic.

“So I’ve been told,” she says. “Damn. I really thought they were fucking with me.”

After a moment of silence in which Shouto does not choose to respond, she straightens herself with small annoyance, a hand on a hip. “ So ? Are you going to introduce yourself or what?”

Shouto looks up, meeting her eyes. The color is a stark contrast with her dark hair, milk-white. Blind since birth. They crinkle with humor. Unseeing and sharp with confidence.

“My name is Shouto,” says Shouto.

“Nice to meet you, Shouto,” she drawls, “you may call me Kyouka.”

He should have guessed. The Avatar’s band has grown much more than he had thought. A proof of his lack of due diligence in his time as their pursuer, he supposes. 

“This is Hitoshi, and Hitoshi, this is—”

“Prince Stalker Himself,” Hitoshi says. He is tall, his gait limber and lazy, with a messy head of shocking purple.  “As I live and breathe. Fantastic. Did you also win him over by the power of love and friendship, Izuku?” 

Katsuki scoffs. 

“No—not exactly. Anyway,” Izuku cringes, at himself more than anything. The tips of his ears are reddening rapidly. “Yeah. Now that we’ve more or less regrouped, I think we need to revise the plan ..”

“Hold on,” Ochako says. She steps in front of them, eyes sharp on Shouto. “Are we really discussing this? In front of him?”

Izuku sighs. “Ochako..”

“Listen, Deku,” she sounds more exasperated than angry. “You want to adopt one more villain—fine. The Crown Prince Murder Machine being said villain—stupid, but fine. Discussing our plan of thwarting Endeavor, father and Emperor of the aforementioned Crown Prince’s nation in front of him?” Ochako then makes a series of exasperated gestures with her hands. “Just no.”

“Round Face is right,” says Katsuki. Ochako looks at him. “Ochako is right,” Katsuki corrects himself.

Ochako takes a deep breath. “Deku, I know that you—for whatever, incomprehensible reason—I know that you trust him. And you know we trust you with our lives. But whatever it is that you see in him?” her gaze is hard, piercing in Shouto’s own. “He has to earn it from us.”

“I hate to be discourteous, but Ochako is right,” says Tenya. He looks almost apologetic. “Although Princ—er, Shouto has not made any move against us … neither has he proved himself to be an ally of ours.”

“I second that,” Eijirou chimes in, though near reluctantly. His mouth twists in something that isn’t quite a smile. “Sorry, but ... whose side are you on, really?”

Both Izuku and Tsuyu stay silent, as if waiting for his answer. Truthfully, Shouto has expected this to come sooner. Far sooner. 

Shouto clenches his fist. Unclenches. His palm is rough, mottled with burn scars, just like the rest of him. Shouto looks up to stare at the Avatar—at them all, in the eye.

Shouto holds a rank in Fire Nation’s Eastern Navy as a Commander. He has his own troops. He is not unfamiliar with public speaking. And yet, staring at this—this group of ragtag teenagers, these children, he finds an unfamiliar sensation, a surprising uneasiness in the pit of his gut. Just like everything else in his life, he resolutely ignores it.

Well, now. Where to even begin? 

“The Fire Lord made me for the Avatar,” Shouto begins, very evenly, and rather straightforwardly. Voice empty. Practical. “The only reason I was alive is to kill the Avatar.”

The tension in the air rises, coils sharp and tight like a python. Shouto gives no regard to that—after all, what he says is only true. He continues.

“But I do not belong to the Fire Lord anymore,” he says. I don’t know what I am anymore. “I am not his anymore,” he repeats, to assure himself, to convince himself. I don’t know what I am anymore.

A useless thing. A knife that can’t cut. 

His fist clenches. He has made his decision. He has a promise to keep and no time to break down. “I will help you kill my father.”

(Kill. So easy to say. So easy to do.)

“He isn’t lying,” Kyouka’s voice cuts through the silence like a whip. She sounds thoughtful, near somber. All traces of sarcasm lost. “He is telling the truth.”

“So..” Eijirou shifts in his seat. “Now what..?”

Katsuki clicks his tongue impatiently. “Dammit, he’s said his piece, hasn’t he?” he barks. “So what’s the verdict, Ochako?”

There is something about her, Shouto thinks, that reminds him of Momo. It’s hard to pinpoint what it is. “I will go along with what Deku thinks is right,” she says. “But if you make one step backwards..” she walks up to him. Maybe it’s the conviction in her eyes. The absolute loyalty. 

From this distance, the height difference between the both of them is obvious, but it does not seem to deter her from staring him down. “If you make one slip up,” she continues. “Give me one reason to think you might hurt Deku … know that any of us here are willing to kill for him.”

“You better believe it,” Hitoshi says from the back. “His friendship-bending is incredible.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Katsuki cuts in. “So what’s the plan, Deku?”

“Right,” Izuku says. He seems distraught, a little flustered. “The plan. Well, I can’t take the Fire Lord as I currently am, obviously, and I still..” he cringes. “I still can’t get the hang of firebending.”

“I still don’t get why you don’t just teach him,” Hitoshi comments off-handedly.

Katsuki flinches. “Shut up,” he says. “I—I’ve fucking tried. Okay? It can’t be me. It has to be someone else.”

It isn’t the first time the topic has been brought to light. Hitoshi shrugs, not pushing it further. 

“No offense,” Kyouka says, lazily stretching over a large boulder that she’s somehow made look comfortable, “but your earthbending could use some work too.”

“Right,” Izuku looks pained. “Yeah, so I need more time..”

“Forgive me if this sounds as if I am … prioritizing my own interest,” Tenya says quietly, “but I believe if we want the invasion to work, we need to find my brother … and the rest of our group, of course.”

“I second that,” says Hitoshi. “We need Aizawa-sensei back with us.”

“Just say your dad,” Eijirou says with a knowing smile-grin.

Hitoshi throws some dust at Eijirou, which Eijriou easily bends away with an easy laugh. “He is not my dad,” Hitoshi says.

“Back to the topic please,” Ochako reminds them, but not unkindly. “I agree that we need more manpower along with their guidance. But finding their whereabouts is the issue; after the Northern Tribe, they’ve seen our faces, haven’t they?”

“I mean, we’ve always been convicts, after all..”

“I think finding their whereabouts should be easier now,” Tsuyu says. It’s the first time she joins in the conversation since it begins. She is looking at Shouto in the eye with that same head-on clarity. “After all, we now have Shouto with us.”

Just like that, eyes are back on Shouto again.

“That’s what you’ve been thinking, isn’t it, Izuku?” Tsuyu says again, glancing sideways to the person in question. The eyes momentarily flicker back to Izuku, who has been silent for a while.

“Yes,” Izuku admits. He chews on his lips. Must be a nervous tick. “Shouto, do you know where Endeavor might keep war prisoners?”

Eyes back on Shouto. Singed pinpricks on his skin. Shouto clenches his fist, unclenches. “You are talking about your troops who were taken in the conquest of Ba Sing Se.”

The group looks at him, and then at each other, as if they didn’t expect Shouto to cooperate. They probably did not.

“That’s right,” Izuku says slowly. “Iida Tensei, Aizawa Shouta, Usagiyama Rumi … are any of these names familiar to you? Or perhaps their code names..”

“Yes,” Shouto says curtly. Ingenium, Eraserhead, Rabbit. All are prominent figures in the Resistance. 

The group bristles, clearly engrossed in the matter. “Well?” Hitoshi pushes, urgently. “Do you know where they are?”

Shouto does not hold any privilege in handling prisoners. He frowns slightly. “My best guess is that they were taken to the Boiling Rock.”

“The Boiling Rock? I think I’ve heard of this..” Izuku mutters.

“Are they … safe?” Tenya asks, anxiously.

Shouto’s mouth flattens into a thin line. Safe is one way of putting it. “It is the highest security prison in the Fire Nation. It is known for zero successful escape attempts in all of its years of operation.”

Izuku looks deep in thought. “What kind of place is it?” 

“It’s on an island,” says Shouto. “In the middle of a boiling lake. It’s inescapable.”

Katsuki scoffs. “We’ll see about that. Where is this place?”

“It’s in the middle of a volcano between here and the Fire Nation. You..” Shouto pauses. “ We actually flew right past it on the way here.”

“There we have it,” Hitoshi throws his hands in the air. “So what the hell are we waiting for?”

“We can’t rush this,” Kyouka deadpans. “You heard him. Zero successful attempts and whatnot. We gotta plan this.”

“Kyouka is right,” Izuku mutters, walking around thoughtlessly. He’s biting his thumb. Another nervous tick. “In and out … maybe get a map … more info … how many people … contact Mei..”

“Right, this is all exciting and all, but don’t forget the other matter. Your shit bending.”

“Hey,” Eijirou says, offended on Izuku’s behalf. “Don’t be so rough. He is pretty good already. His earthbending is better than mine now.”

Izuku perks up, touched. “Eijirou-kun..”

“Yeah, but it’s not better than mine,” Kyouka says, bluntly. “And, he might be good at the other elements, but his firebending is definitely shit.”

Ochako sighs. “So the plan is to get Izuku master firebending and to bust out our allies from a Fire Nation prison..”

“Which is in the middle of a volcano,” Eijirou adds helpfully.

“That’s the gist of it, yes,” Izuku nods. He looks a little pale. “So, our priority right now is our allies.”

“Right,” Ochako says. “After we wait for the Sozin’s Comet to pass—”

“You can’t,” says Shouto.

All heads turn to Shouto, more surprised than anything else. It’s the first time he has said anything first without being asked. Katsuki and Ochako look almost offended.

“Can’t … wait for the comet of which firebenders get a tenfold power boost … to pass?” Eijirou inquires. “Uh. Sure we can?”

“The whole point of fighting the Fire Lord before the comet is to prevent him from winning the war,” Tenya says. “But now that we’ve lost the capital, well … the point is moot.”

So they don’t know, Shouto realizes, with a pang in his chest. Of course. Why would they?

Shouto’s knuckles pale as his nails dig into his palm. “On the day of the Sozin’s Comet the Fire Lord plans to raze the Earth Kingdom to the ground,” he tells them.

A beat passes where he watches the horror grow on their faces as the information sinks in.

“What the fuck?” Kyouka says. Her voice shakes slightly with contained fury. “But they already conquered Ba Sing Se. Why the hell would they launch another attack?”

They don’t understand. They don’t understand what kind of … they don’t understand his father. Not like he does. Shouto answers, his voice emptier than before. “Because they haven’t conquered the people’s hope.”

A beat passes. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Katsuki seethes, even though he knows exactly what that means.

“The Earthbender rebellions have prevented the Fire Nation from achieving total victory in the Earth Kingdom,” Shouto phrases, word for word, like he is reading from a textbook. “When the Comet last came, my father’s father used it to nearly—”

“Wipe out all of the water tribe,” Tsuyu finishes. She sounds hollow.

Shouto nods stiffly. “Yes. And my father..” he trails, the word a razor blade in his throat.

The Comet will endow us the strength and power of one-hundred suns, Endeavor said. Do you understand what that means, Shouto?

“The Fire Lord knows that your people are strong and proud,” voice even, he tells himself. Voice even, empty, practical. “He will use the Comet’s power to completely end the Earth Kingdom.”

Silence. Then, “of course,” Izuku says softly to no one in particular. He is more than a little pale now; he looks like he is going to be sick. “Of course. How could I miss that—of course.”

Eijirou shakes his head, eyes hazy. “But that’s—that’s fucked up. That’s completely … that’s just heartless.”

“The comet is only a month away,” Ochako says quietly. “No, less than that..”

“Twenty days, to be precise,” Tenya says it calmly, but his fingers tremble as they touch the rim of his glasses. “We only have twenty days.”

“That’s..” Eijirou doesn’t need to finish the sentence. That’s impossible. They fall into a suffocating silence before Hitoshi clicks his tongue sharply.

“What the hell? Get a fucking grip!” his anger sounds like ice. “Why are you guys acting like it’s the end of the goddamn world? Not fucking yet. We still have twenty days and we better get our ass moving.”

“Hitoshi is right,” Izuku says, suddenly. The paleness in his palor makes his freckles stand out more prominently, but his eyes are bright. Focused, determined. “We still have time. But this means a change in priority. I have to find a firebender teacher—”

“You already have one here.”

“I’ve told you,” says Katsuki, irk in his voice. “It can’t be me—”

“I’m not talking about you,” says Tsuyu calmly. 

Katsuki closes his mouth shut. All eyes are back on Shouto. 

Shouto freezes.

“Oh,” Izuku says like it’s punched out of him. His eyes are as wide as saucers with the realization, as if it completely escaped his mind. 

Shouto feels the weight of their stares like it’s hammered down to him. Branded hot.

And then It comes with no warning. 

He’s felt It before. The unbearable cold. The unbearable heat. Like his skin is sizzling in too many places, pulled too tight, spread too thin. The sudden sensation of his chest collapsing in itself. 

He knows what this is. “No,” he says, finally managed to drag the word out of his mouth like a corpse, a chunk of meat bitten out of a roadkill. 

“What?” someone says, but Shouto’s vision is escaping him. And god, he knows what this is, he doesn’t know why it’s happening now of all times but he knows what this is—and he knows he needs to get out of here, now, so he turns to leave but someone drags him back, someone is dragging him back by his shirt—

“What the hell do you mean no ?” 

“Katsuki!”

“Kacchan, let him go—”

“I meant no,” Shouto’s teeth are clenching so hard he hears them crack. “No. I won’t. I—”

“You never had any goddamn issue using your fire to hurt him before, so why don’t you—”

“Stop it!”

“No,” Shouto tries to take a breath, tries to get more air in his lungs. Tries to keep it under wrap. Tries to keep it under control.

Vulnerable. Weak. Look at you —“Shut up,” Shouto says. He doesn’t know to whom.

“Listen you half and half fuck, the world is going to end—”

“So why don’t you do it?” Shouto seethes, anger and fury and ugliness seeping into the timbre of his voice, the most emotion he has ever shown ever since he has joined this little band of the Avatar, and Katsuki lets him go like it burns and Shouto feels like he can breathe again, if a little.

He knows he isn’t going to last longer than this, he has to leave, leave, leave, so he turns and—

Someone takes his arm in an iron grip. Shouto jerks roughly. His vision clears, for a moment, and it’s still the fucking Katsuki boy. 

A distant, faltering part of Shouto notices that there is something else in the way he looks at Shouto now, something other than anger. Another set of renewed intensity. “Hey, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Katsuki says. There is a difference in his voice. Less rough, but no less intense. If Shouto were more lucid, he would recognize it as confusion . “You’re burning up like hell —”

Shouto snatches his arm back like his life depends on it. His skin feels raw. Behind Katsuki, Izuku is staring at him with wide eyes, his own arms half-wrangling his friend. Shouto didn’t even notice him approaching.

“Shouto..” Izuku says, carefully. Halting. Soft. Always so fucking soft. “Are you alright?” he moves as if he wants to touch him, like he is some helpless fainting maiden.

There is something about the look in Izuku’s eyes.

Shouto feels sick to the stomach. To the bone. 

(He does not deserve pity.)

Shouto blinks sweat out of his eyes. Or perhaps tears. “Get the fuck off me,” he tells them all, and then he leaves.

He’s made a mistake, after all. 

(He shouldn’t have taken that hand.)

(Shouto has no time to break apart.)

(Why did he take that hand?)

His shoulders shake with the cold, flinch with the heat, and everything in between. The beating of his heart a thunderclap in his ears. He is more open wound than boy. 

He has no time for this. No time to. The shudder that wrecks his body feels so childish. A child’s cry, is what it is: the full-body earthquake that shakes as he tries to gain breath, and anything, anything, like his body is too small to contain all of the destruction and the fire, and the ice. Hot and cold. His face, melting, his body too, dripping down to the earth, stripped bare. And his hands. Gods, his hands.

(Why?)

His hands—he tries to steady them as they crumble apart, they’re so hot, scorching, boiling, so bright. Molten atoms. Trembling, jagged stars, fuming and smoking and he smells like oil, like charcoal, like rust. His hands, so heavy, heavy and burning with the weight of the dead rabbit in his hands. The dead moon spirit. The dead mother. 

You regret it, don’t you, said the Waterbender. You did not wish to kill it.

Shouto puts his hands together and burns them. 

The pain is familiar. Almost sobering. Just almost.

He gasps, blinking water off his eyes, trying to make sense of the bird of a heart violent in his chest like thunderclaps. His hands still shake, but at least they are not blinding anymore—no, no more, his palm raw red and scorched, skin splintering. The pain is an anchor. The punishment. 

It’s grounding. The clarity that flows through his mind, seeping in ever-so-slowly, relieves him. It reminds him of what he is, doesn’t it?

(So what is he?)

He doesn’t know how long he lays there, on the ground in the middle of fucking nowhere a traitor to the Fire Nation a useless, cast-away ex-prince looking up at the sky, sea-salt and blood on his tongue where he bit his lip open from the pain he inflicted on himself. His cheeks are wet from having cried from whatever outburst of insanity-tantrum, the Unnamed It that had come upon him like a fussy, spoiled child.

That is fine.

His hands hurt like hell. That is also fine.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He looks up to see Izuku staring at him with horror. 

“You—” Izuku surges forward with no warning, taking Shouto’s hands almost roughly to himself. “Did you just—why would you hurt yourself like that—”

If he were in any saner condition, he would’ve taken them back, flinch, or even push the boy away. As of now, though, he can do nothing but stare.

“Why would you do that—oh, Shouto, why..”

Oh, Shouto. Something about how his name sounds, out of Izuku’s mouth. Oh, Shouto. He’s never heard that before—that timbre in the shape of his name, something dear, like his name is a fragile thing. Shouto stares.

A finger traces the edges of the burn on his skin. Izuku’s finger. His hands, Shouto notes—Izuku’s hands—are trembling. Shouto stares. Izuku’s skin is several shades darker than his own, sun-tanned. The roughness of his palm, above Shouto’s own. The heat—and this heat, how rare, for someone like Shouto: human warmth. The texture of his fingertips; soft and fierce.

And then the water comes—beckoned from the earth itself, all encompassing Shouto's pain—just like what happened at the Pohuai Stronghold. The water shimmers, above the rawness of Shouto’s hands. 

Shimmers, like moonlight. 

The pain is gone within seconds. Shouto looks up, and meets Izuku’s eyes on his own: soft and fierce. “Shouto,” he says again, barely above a whisper. Something dear. Something fragile.

The night wind around them. The moon above, silent. The world holds its breath—and Shouto can feel nothing but Izuku’s gaze and Izuku’s hands and something so dear, so familiar unfurling under his ribcage. Something he’d lost. Something he thought he’d lost.

And what could he do? What could he do? 

(Why did he take that hand?)

His hands, held between Izuku’s own. Held softly, fiercely—as if it’s a precious thing. As if Shouto is a precious thing.

“Don’t do that again,” Izuku says, softly. Fiercely. “Never hurt yourself ever again.”

And then Shouto thinks: oh. 

Oh. 

So that’s why.

How arrogant. How foolish.

For a fleeting, fragile moment, Shouto thinks he almost remembers.