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Locked up, naked with socks
He whistles in the corner, a predator placed in a songbird’s cage and only playing its part, humming discordantly to the empty concrete structure around him. He’s alone in the base, just bones rattling at walls, just a human form and blood and gristle, just pain kept within this coffin.
He is bare in this solitude, his ruined skin is no barrier for the creatures in his mind. They are not intimidated by him, by the pain they cause. They only seek to kill him and strip meat from bone and leave him barren and desecrated.
He whistles in the corner, and plucks at the staples in his skin, runs fingers over unfeeling flesh that has quite a similarity to any corpse he’d leave behind.
I love the smell of gasoline~
He whistles in the corner, and waits for inspiration to strike. Waits for the others to return.
Waits.
I'm watching the phone ring
His hands tremble over the last 9 , over the last necessary number. He should call. It’s the responsible thing to do, to pick up the phone and try again to end his nightmare.
He knows what will happen though. He’ll say ‘help, my father beats me and my brother, and I think he’s going to kill my family’ and they will say ‘what address’ and he will give them it, and they will admonish him for trying to trick them, and that the true resident of that address would have a very stern talking to with him if he tried to defraud his good name again.
If they do listen, they will arrive at the residence and be swayed away by glimpses into their life, all plastic doll smiles and covered bruises and burn scars. If they listen, it is worse than if they ignored him, and there are more injuries to cover, more pain he has experimented with.
His finger hits the 9 , one last desperate time, and he lifts it to his ear. It rings once.
“119, what’s your emergency?”
He swallows bile and opens his mouth and speaks, again.
It's making me angry
If there is one saving grace, it is his sister. She is like him, to some extent, but with far less destructive capability. She is built for fire, but only makes ice. She gravitates toward thick sweaters and sunlit spots, places to find warmth, while he is often found in front of a fan a dark, low corner.
She takes his hands, all painful and red, and numbs them for him, shivering even under all of her layers.
She is his saving grace. She was, at least.
She has been hurt too many times, wrist grabbed and forced away, her siblings harmed when she could not be. She is better suited for flames than even their father, but she is so vulnerable when it comes to them, to watching their skin blister under his grip. They have been hurt for every time she tried to help them, and so she shuns them.
Now she is afraid to talk, afraid to open her mouth and speak truth to a world that has wronged her so horribly. She is afraid to run ice over their skin, to hold them close and whisper words of apology in their ears.
He could kill his father, just for that.
It's making me mad
Some days, he is hyper aware of the fact that he is going insane. He is aware of the giggles, senseless and cold, that burst from his chest when faced with himself in the mirror.
He hates the face he sees in the mirror with a mindless passion, all burning eyes and burnt skin and flaming hair and infinite pain. Hates the brokenness and the similarity, the half-human half-formed monstrosity in the looking glass.
He is going insane. It’s making his reasons for not committing homicide seem a bit too fragile.
Maxed out, minimum wage
There isn’t any real pay for villain work. If anything, they’re a loosely formed work union with very violent and illegal group activities. They are commissioned by the criminal underworld like esteemed artists among the elite, painting in blood and ashes and fear.
They get a cut for pulling off a heist. They get a cut for doing a hit. They get a cut to leave a cut on society, an open, gaping wound cracking at the edges and birthing more monsters. There is money to be found, but it is buried deep, six feet under the ground. So they grab their shovels and they grave rob what they can and take all of the dirty money they can find.
He isn’t paid much, but the feeling of blood on his fingertips is worth it.
My brain is a time bomb
Tick. Tick. Boom.
The bank goes down in flames.
He set the fuse, he gave the distraction, and he carries the duffle bag in the back of the van.
The others will be hungry for the money, will rip it from his corpse if they have to.
They are away from the bank, far away and-
Tick. Tick. Boom.
The van goes up in flames.
He leaves with the spoils of war. Most of it will go under his youngest brother’s name.
I'm saying goodbye, mom
He waits outside the hospital room sometimes, where his mother sits and contemplates the sins she has been made to commit. He never goes in, never dares to, afraid of what she might see even with all of the changes he has wrought.
She sings, sometimes, voice as clear and powerful as the crystalline ice she makes. Little songs, things she must have heard on a radio or old showtunes, or anything at all to fill the silence in her rooms. He hums along, voice rasping and quiet and shivering from his burnt throat in puffs of ashy notes, too distant and soft to be heard by her.
He does not get to say goodbye to her. She did not get to say goodbye to him.
After all, she never got to attend his funeral.
I'll see you again
His brother stands at the opposite side of the battlefield, eyes wide and unknowing as the rest of his Squad disappear through the portals. For one second, looking him in the eyes and seeing only fear- it almost brings him to his knees, almost makes him want to say ‘hey it’s okay, big brother Touya’s here’-
But he can’t. Because there is a line in the sand between them, there is villainy and heroics keeping them apart.
Then the idiot by his side starts speaking, and there is an even more horrified expression on his brother’s face, and then-
All hell breaks loose. A beam tears off the idiot’s mask, and he releases the marbles instinctively. There’s a mad rush, and he has a split second to decide between the two, to decide who he will face off against, he has one moment to decide.
little brother...
And in that moment, he is not Touya, he is Dabi.
i’m sorry.
He takes victory from Shoto’s grasp.
“How sad.”
Yes. Yes it is. A damn modern tragedy.
Striking a pose
There are a few family photos in the house. Of the few that exist, there is only one that has real smiles in it, with only his mother, his father, and his oldest sibling still as a toddler, not old enough for a quirk to present. They are smiling.
Every other picture has painted dolls, blank faced children and stone-faced adults, with pasted smiles over dead-eyed features.
He hates all of them.
Smiling in photos without any reason
The first time he is arrested, he laughs in the back of the cop car, scarred wrists with dead nerves itching with phantom pain. The one time someone responds to a 119 call involving him, and it’s to report him for tagging up an alleyway in the district he lives in, full of pompous assholes who never had to get their hands dirty in their life.
He smiles in his mugshot, wild and crazed, and the slight burns at the corner of his mouth split open in tandem with those under his eyes..
He has a copy of the picture, him with eyes that are alive for the first time, smiling with reckless abandon, crying and spitting blood with the sheer joy.
With people that I'll never know
Honestly, the fake names can get out of hand some days. Some idiot with high dreams and a low IQ will walk into the bar and declare themself ‘Shadowkiller’ and everyone has to look them apathetically in the eye and introduce themselves with their own shitty monikers before going back to their drinks. In all likelihood, ‘Shadowkiller’ or whatever probably won’t see the sunset, given Tomura’s ugly ass costume, his quick temper, and the general mocking demeanor of anyone who has the balls to go against hero society.
Toga terrifies him, mostly because she keeps using her actual name at crime scenes, keeps giving herself an internal clock, a time limit on her life span and her freedom. She has no name but her own, just says whatever she wants and smiles with sharp fangs and fear.
He would never assume to know any of them, even below their monikers and in the dark of a midnight drunken rant after a raid. They all have demons, all have devils over their shoulders that dug deep claws into their skins and started inhabiting their body, all have fears and pains and horrors that give them the strength to run, the weakness to kill, and the minds to keep up the cycle of sin and depravity.
He’s not even sure he knows himself anymore.
I'm out of control, live in a fictional prose
There is something oddly poetic about standing here, with his father’s face half destroyed in the same way he destroyed their whole family, all bloodied and coated in the ash he made, painful and bright and red and horrible.
He killed for this. He killed for it, and it’s almost worth it. Almost worth it to see the confusion on his father’s face, the lack of recognition, to think good, good and know that he has succeeded in avoiding being his father.
The flames around him rise higher in response.
What a grand comedy, huh, Endeavor?
I took an oath, it's killing me though
“Promise me, Touya,” his mother whispered, a month before hell came, cold hands gentle against his skin in the dark, “promise me you’ll protect your siblings.”
He nodded. They never shook hands, he never said yes, but it was the implication of the thing that mattered, the oath that he broke with palms wreathed in flame, with blistered skin and snarls in the night, with a forest burning down.
He cannot find it in himself to be remorseful. He killed that part of himself long, long ago.
'Cause I don't believe in the things that I do
He hates being a villain. He hates being the bad guy, being the one that hurts others, that kills others, that leaves burns on their skin and rage in their hearts. He hates it as much as he hates his father, as much as he hates himself, hates the agony he brings.
(he loves it too, he just refuses to acknowledge that much)
His quirk is called Cremation.
It is called that because, much like his decisions, it is eating him alive slowly.
And now my favorite color is blue
He looked in the mirror as a child and thought I don’t match . Red hair with blue eyes.
Pale, unmarked skin.
Just like his father, without the flames.
He stuck his tongue out at his reflection and went to go play with Natsuo.
And now my favorite color is blue
He held out his hand, trembling in the air and desperately tried for the hundredth time, concentrating and hoping and praying and-
It burns .
It hurts like- like hell itself is crawling onto his skin, is coming up from his bones to kill the world.
He screams, and the flames in his hands burn blue.
And now my favorite-
Shoto manifests ice first, a sheet of frost extending from his right side, the same vivid blue as Touya’s fire. For one second, Touya is relieved, breathes hard and laughs because he can save Shoto from it-
And then the next day a wild phoenix flare orange burst of flame comes from his left.
He wishes that the blue just remained.
Roped up, rat in a cage
He twirls a chain between his scarred fingers, thick and heavy and ash gray. The rest of it has been used to tie up the unconscious idiots who tried to kill him, looped together and forced onto the wooden support column of the warehouse. Pallets have been broken up with the ax by his feet and pile up in wooden scraps below where they hang.
He waits for them to wake up, to look him in the eye as he destroys them with flames the color of the sky, bright and horrifying and terrible. They will burn as witches, and they will scream like rats, all dark and dirty vermin.
He waits, and the chain spins through the air in soothing circles.
I'm having a breakdown
He has had enough. Enough of this world, enough of this life, enough of this family, enough of this pain. He has seen too much, lived through far too much in this short life he has been cursed with.
He has had enough. He will not let anyone else in his family live through the rest of the agony he has been forced to endure.
Shoto is in the hospital still, his mother is stuck as long as his father is alive, and his siblings are cowering in the far corner of the training room, watching in mute horror as he stands and burns himself alive, hands locked on his father’s forearms, staring at him, surrounded by blue, eyes burning like coals and blood in his throat, on his skin, nothing but broken skin and burning bones and so much pain .
He dies there. Not when he wakes up two days later in an alleyway, choking on ash, not when he abandons Touya for scars and metal staples and fear.
He dies, and it’s glorious.
Drinking at a playground, tequila for one
Toga rubs her cheek up against his upper arm. It’s a bit too much for his senses honestly, with the lack of any meaningful touch for the past decade or so, but he’ll endure it. Toga doesn’t have many willing people that will let her use them as her home base, people that take her seriously but still let her indulge in contact. He wouldn’t call himself her scratching post; she has those elsewhere, to cut with her knives and smiles. He is something else to her. He just doesn’t know what to call it.
She clambers up on the bar stool next to him, tucking her knees up and dragging her oversized sweater over them to make her a cloth triangle with a serial killer’s head on top. Her hair is loose again, hair ties lost somewhere in the dirtied alleyways of whatever district she opted to hunt prey in tonight. Her nails are unpainted but tinged red at the base, jagged ended and bit to shreds, clicking arryhthmically against the bar counter. She pouts at the world, but beneath the careful act of defiance and naivete there is a hollow eyed expression.
She is an open book with a story too horrid to tell, chin held lofty, back curved subtly in a way that betrays her anxiety. Kurogiri slides her a drink, and Dabi does not care to check if it’s alcohol. She is a child, wears her school uniform like a badge, and he is afraid for her as much as he is afraid of her. He could not stop her if she chose to drink, so there is no use in trying.
Quietly and slowly, he slips off of his stool and comes to stand behind Toga, digging into his pocket and coming back out with another pair of hair ties. She nurses her drink as he does her hair in two high buns, childish and innocent at odds with the dried blood stuck to her nail beds and splashed against the back of her neck.
She rubs her face against the tips of his fingertips once, though. Her own quiet version of a thank you, once all of her walls go down.
Too short, walk in the streets, I'm hating my haircut
He wears a hoodie he found in a dumpster and steals down the street frantically, burnt skin begging for relief and sparking with every drag of fabric against them. He is still noticeably a child, too short for someone to not question seeing a boy with open burns on his face and neck and arms walking down the street.
He sticks to the shadows, stays in the background, and walks into the first promising store he can find. He grabs what he can from the shelves, things in boxes small enough that no one notices the way they fit into his pockets, hands flashing out in quick movements, unblemished fingertips scanning the item before his open, still slightly bloodied, palm closes around it and whips it back in a movement too fast for the few others in the store to notice.
He leaves quickly, almost like he was never there, and collapses in the closest alley he can find, taking what he can find out of his pockets.
Gauze. Burn cream. A chocolate bar. A thing of chapstick he doubts he’ll ever be able to use. Weak painkillers.
A packet of staples.
Black hair dye.
It is time for Touya to be destroyed, once and for all.
You say that you're here, but-
He watches the TV with bated breath with his siblings and mother, watching the news declare that the Number One had saved the day again, cutting to footage replayed throughout the report, the moment he burst in and yelled-
“IT’S FINE NOW! WHY? BECAUSE I AM HERE!”
God, does he wish that it’s true. It’s never fine, not anymore. One more broken promise, one more broken oath. It’s not like it matters anymore, anyway.
After all, what’s a drop of a crushed dream in a bucket of blood?
You live on the Sun
What a bright idol his father is. What a symbol of victory he is, with his flames and his brightness and his ego and his damn scowl and his punches and his bruises and his cuts and his pain and his lies.
What an absolutely perfect model for the children.
What a pillar of society.
What a paragon.
Your father is the number two, you’re just looking for attention. There’s no way he could hurt his own kids.
Your father is the number two, just tell him about your problems with other kids.
Your father is powerful-
Your father is amazing-
Your father-
His father is a bastard.
Burning a kite
There is no tradition left, once he leaves. There are no rites to follow, no ancestors to acknowledge. The day he burned himself from the family tree in a burst of flame was the day he lost his past, after all.
He sits on the grassy hill of a park they used to fly kites through and sends darts of flame up at those flying today. It’s a petty move, so very childish and idiotic, but he doesn’t care.
The children out there might not know pain, but he can at least teach them disappointment.
I'm at a funeral, nothing unusual
His mourners wear black and do not cry for him. There is no true ceremony about his death- his family seems to think that he was consumed by his own flames, burnt to ash in his personal inferno.
For all he knows, they are right. All he knows is the cool, dark embrace of an alleyway and the agonizing heat of fresh burns bubbled up from his toxic bones. Maybe he has died. It would be fitting, probably, to be the risen corpse of his family’s sins.
His funeral is generally unemotional, kept private and within the family and his father’s closest coworkers. Endeavor is a private man, after all.
He doesn’t stick around to see whatever work around they found for having no body to cremate and a pile of ashes on the ground.
As he leaves, he flexes his hand, and a puff of smoke swirls above his palm. He gives himself a kaimyo , gives himself a name, the thing that killed him, that laid his spirit to rest the first time and gives him a purpose in this.
Dabi .
Baby, I do what I like
He walks into the store with no mask covering his face, nothing to hide his identity, not one single thing that betrays himself within, and makes a beeline for one portion of the store.
Every step, every shaking off of ash from his shoulders, every echo of gray soot left in his wake, his smile grows a little bit more, and the blue sparks by his fingertips becomes just that slightest margin more prominent.
Wall to wall, Endeavor branded merchandise stares back out at him, all orange flames and aggressive slogans, all of the training and pain packaged for the public in a palatable form.
This is what he’s wanted for so long, and now he can get it. Now it can be his.
Blue rushes out, and the display goes up in flames the color of the sky.
Looking to fight, smoking a blunt and a pipe
Scarred knuckles tap a rough pattern against the ruined brick of the building’s facade. By all rights, he shouldn’t be here, it’s a different villain’s territory, and he’s particularly protective of his streets and his customers. Just being here could be a death sentence.
He’s always looked forward to his sentencing. It’s rather hard to prosecute a dead man, though.
He drops his cigarette butt to the ground and grinds it under his heel, pulling another from the pack and lighting it with his pinky finger. Above him, as the drag sings through his lungs, inhaling his own smoke, there is a bird call.
Dabi smiles, and holds his cigarette in his left hand as he blows out the smoke.
His right hand ignites.
Finally.
He’d wondered when the villain would find him.
Taking a bite, worm in the apple
He speaks poison some days, when nothing feels like it matters anymore. Speaks pain in an intimate way that others have a tendency to fear, even more than when he places a hand on their cheek and lets his bones burn again.
He is venom, deep within. Darkness and fire and rippled scars like the ocean rising up- the wine dark sea of destroyed flesh, metal forced through skin to hold him upright, to hold him, this Frankenstein’s phoenix, together.
“Let it burn,” he can say, and those who hear raise lighters to the sky and set the clouds ablaze.
He wants the sky to come crashing down.
It’s high time for the apocalypse.
I knew it would happen, 'cause honey the vermin survive
The first thing he registers is the pain. Aching and deep and coming up from the cold embers of his bones. The second thing he registers is how cold he feels, how his skin is hot and flushed but he feels so empty and frigid, drained and dead.
The third thing he registers is that the bricks are rough against his back, against his open wounds.
He shudders into consciousness, eyes opening and glowing like the sparks of his own flame, underscored by weeping red crusted purple at the edges, burns against his cheeks, burns against his arms, burns against his neck, against his lips, against his chin, against his ankles, against his soul, branding sin into him.
He should not be alive. He tried to kill his father, he wanted to kill his father, and he burned with all of his intent, he put all of his hope into it, out every piece of himself into it, and swore to himself that he would die killing his own personal devil.
Nevertheless, he is awake in a dark alley with open skin weeping in a way that he can’t bring himself to, so damn cold and empty.
(he is a corpse)
(he did not survive)
Swerve to the side, been driving all night
He starts a car fire in the same district he used to tag up ritualistically every year on the week around his birthday, torching one of the fancy cars that rich idiots leave parked on the street in a haze of blue, waiting on a roof and watch heroes take the fire down.
One year, he does it in front of the Todoroki Residence and watches as his siblings coordinate to take it down with ice. He waits up all night until dawn kisses the sky and the police presence investigating the fire would start to notice him, waiting perched on a rooftop, and then he leaves to sleep in the alley he woke up in those years ago.
A tribute to himself. A burning mess dragged to the doorstep, unwanted and unloved.
I'm thinking of changing my name,
“What’s your name?” Shigaraki asks.
He has a few options really, a few pseudonyms he’s taken over the years that he could throw in their faces and then walk away. He could reclaim himself before he died, bring his own corpse to face his father and really throw it in his face.
But, no. He is dead, a spirit walking in the form of his own corpse.
“I’m currently going by Dabi.”
Maybe some day he’ll go by something worse.
thinking of wrecking a home
He regrets some days. He sits and feels lonely and his skin starts to itch, wanting the ice cold contact of his family, wanting the frigid love they give him.
Cold love was better than flames, after all.
He stole the love, though. He stole it from himself, left in the ash-filled night and awoke in an alleyway, the echo of it deep within. He destroyed their love in sapphire light and redeemed pain, in his last few shreds of determination, in a kamikaze suicide of the highest order.
His sister stays within the house, silent and still. His big brother left as soon as he could. His little brother still suffers under their father’s touch. His mother is held prisoner in her kingdom of white sheets and antiseptic, with bustling subjects in snow-pale coats. His father is still an idol.
He regrets some days, that he won’t ever see them happy.
'Cause loving and hating are one and the same
Hawks is a fucking idiot. Pro Hero Number Two now, the same position his father had occupied for so damn long, and he is nothing like Endeavor. He’s all cold sarcasm and feigned wide-eyed innocence, all lazy, hollow bones and red wings that hide the blood on his hands. What an absolute dumbass.
He’s trying to run a con job on an entire organization of villains, and his one contact point is the villain that knows the most about what Pro Hero society means. Hawks makes a compelling argument some days, and there is a viciousness to some of his statements that proves he is not entirely lying. He believes in some of the things he claims, in some of the things he reviles- he hates the government that trained him to be a Hero, hates that it was all he could ever be taught.
It’s fantastic sometimes, what can be discovered by pasting a mask over one’s features.
He keeps a feather he finds on the ground after Hawks leaves. There’s no point to it, to keep the razor sharp, blood-hued artifact, but he does. He doesn’t know why, but he keeps it.
He hates Hawks. He does.
He doesn’t know why that feels more difficult to believe, but it does.
It does.
And I'm feeling like everyone's feeling alone
He takes the subway in summer. He doesn’t wear many layers, he prefers the cold, but he wears gloves and a jacket and a hat and a medical mask and a scarf and everything he needs to to cover up his scars, to cover up his face. He is not going to a crime scene, after all, he doesn’t want infamy for this particular deed. He might garner some looks, but nothing compared to the police presence he would get otherwise.
He exits the car when his gut tells him to, and looks for the closest, tallest building. He takes the stairs, slowly tucking the extra pieces of his attire in his jacket pockets as he approaches the roof access, and opens the door with a gust of summer wind, blessedly cold.
His jacket goes to one side of the door, and he cuts his feet over the concrete and to the edge of the roof, sitting down where his feet can dangle over the many stories to the ground, hands holding himself steady against the wind that gusts against the scars on his arms.
It’s a cold imitation of his family, quite literally. It’s nothing compared to Fuyumi’s frost, to his mother’s touch, but it will do.
He is so fucking lonely.
He hums, broken and tunelessly, muttering intermittently when the song requires it.
“What are you singing?”
He doesn’t startle off the roof, but the sleeve of his shirt starts to smoke at the abrupt burst of flame that erupts from his arm, cutting through the temporary cold. Hawks perches on top of the roof access, red wings held close in case Dabi’s flames lanced across the distance between the two of them. There’s nothing but birdlike curiosity tilting his head to the left, innocence and bitter knowledge.
“None of your business,” Dabi responds softly, not bothering to work up any anger.
The damn idiot hops off of the roof access and skirts over to the same ledge Dabi has his legs swinging off of, anchoring his wings into the concrete and joining him, blond, feathered hair gusting in the wind. He takes his gloves off, and the jacket too, bare-armed like Dabi and tilting his head up like Icarus to the sun.
They sit together for a long while, both too stubborn to move, and eventually Dabi’s tired brain just tunes out his presence. Eventually his self-restraint gets a bit iffy. Eventually, he feels lonely again, and begins to hum again.
Happy death day to me
Happy death day to me
Happy death day to-
Touya should be his next word, but, quite suddenly, he is aware again of Hawks’ presence by his side, suddenly straight backed and alert, and the dead name swallows up into his throat.
Very carefully, Hawks reaches out and skims to back of Dabi’s scarred knuckles, not from the fire but from punching brick walls and idiots with resilient quirks, as if to check that he was still there. Then very carefully, he covers Dabi’s hand with his palm and squeezes lightly with his fingers.
Hawks’ hands are cold.
I'm just looking for something to soften the blow
There is nothing to shield himself on the training room floor, that is the point. If he can’t control his own quirk, then what’s the point? If he can’t use his quirk to make a shield, he is useless. If he has to rely on his environment, he is useless.
His father’s fist, wreathed in orange, descends.
And Touya is useless.
A second inside of the truth
He is a lie, in and of himself, one dirty trick to pull. He is a mask of scars, a ghost in a human shell, a creature within the bounds of human flesh with bones scorched and cold and skin boiling with his own rage.
There is no truth, at a point, when it comes to him. He is Dabi, because he killed himself, he is not Touya, because he never existed. Which part of him is the ghost, is that dead phantom? Is it the one walking the earth, a haunting specter of his father’s misdeeds, or is it the one that lived, because he felt pain, because the nerves under his skin wasn’t decimated by his own bad decisions.
He is half-dead and half-alive, half-skin and half-scar, half brother and half enemy. He is half of a human being, a half-living creature with no soul left.
There is no truth but this:
He died that day in his father’s arms, trying his damn best to burn him alive.
He died that day, yet he still walks among the living.
I don't see red 'cause
Red is a heroic color. Not always, there are exceptions, there are villains that take on scarlet like it was meant to be theirs, and there are countless heroes without a lick of red on their costumes, but red is the color of heroes. It is a cruel color, and for that, it represents the justice they exact, represents something larger than just themself.
All Might wears it proudly, red as the blood he sheds. Hawks has wings the same color, bright and bold and terrifying, haloing him in cruel crimson blades. They both represent something to those they save, something bigger than their skin, something larger than themselves that spills through reality, all in that shade of red.
Stain wore red, too. A violent color around his neck, cold and cruel and vivid in every way, whipping through the sky and tasting the air like a snake’s tongue, all justice and morals and something digging claws into the earth and sky and refusing to be budged, some terrifying beast snarling out and roaring a challenge to the one man Dabi could never touch.
Red is a lovely color, but Dabi can never wear it.
He is meant to die quietly after all.
Just a ghost, back to hell.
Now my favorite color is blue
The trees wither beneath his touch, ash and heat warping the air around him as the treetops go up in smoke, as his prey begins to run, as the hunters throughout the forest ready themselves to kill the deer herded their way. It’s much easier to stop thinking of the students as human beings. Much easier to kill them.
If they are not human, if they are merely prey, then maybe they will be like Touya. Maybe they will find themselves in an alleyway, cold and desperate and dead yet alive.
Maybe they will burn like he did.
The martyrs will survive, after all. In the end, only the sacrificial lambs will leave, with knives between their teeth and blood on their wool.
But for now, he must smoke them out.
And now my favorite color is blue
His fire is never orange. As hard as tries, the brilliant blue of his own flames, the electrifying shade that courses in his veins, never gets any closer to his father’s. He wants it to - maybe then it will stop burning him as it does - but it stays the same.
Soot hunts him, cutting over his clothing in black streaks, coating under his eyes like a raccoon, dusting his hair dark. Fuyumi will hand him a washcloth on the good days, when she can fight against herself and break her shell for those precious few moments.
Now, when he looks in the mirror, there is dust over his shoulders and under his eyes, the burned threads of clothing dripping from his limbs like cobwebs, his skin splotched irritated red and pale emptiness.
Now, when he looks in the mirror, and his hand alights with flame, he does not see his father.
He sees a dead man.
And now my favorite color is blue
Blue is a cold color. It is not beautiful and representative in the same way as red, it is the deep and fathomless ocean, the uncaring expanse of the sky. Red is an internal color, to wear it so open is like wearing your heart on your sleeve, carrying your ideals with you. Blue is an external color. To make it with trembling hands is like a copy of the most constant of constants, made badly, a mask to hide behind, a facade of silk and pointlessness.
He is a force of nature, as constant as the sky and the ocean. He is not blood, he bled himself dry long ago. He is the cloudless heat of the sun bearing from cerulean heights, the uncaringness of the tides smashing against the rocks and killing them slowly.
He is so damn cold.
And now my favorite color is blue
He watches the Sports Festival from a storefront window, hood pulled over his eyes to prevent anyone from becoming alarmed by the staples and scars that make up his face. He hasn’t done any big crime he’s ever been caught for, he’s hardly wanted, but people still fear him instinctively, once they see his face.
His little brother is so bright, sending blue scattering out from his fingertips in waves of ice, sprinting through the obstacle race with calculated abandon, leaving behind frigid waves that Dabi’s skin itches in want with. He protects his team in the second round, waves of frost almost perceivable through the screen, such a beautiful icy shade.
In the third round there is an iceberg, high and reaching, and Dabi’s fingertips twitch, seeking relief, seeking the ice, knowing he will find none. The green-haired boy keeps dancing around his little brother, yelling things too indistinct to be caught by the camera, body getting slowly mangled by his quirk in a way that makes Dabi’s scars itch with phantom pain.
The boy screams something, and there is tension in the air, bright and desperate, sinking into his throat and blocking up his air-
Then Shoto’s left side lights up.
In the camera, it is not orange or yellow that’s the most prominent feature, not the blue of the ice melting beneath Shoto’s feet.
It’s the red, and the smile on his face.
And now my favorite color is blue
He burns himself alive some nights. He wakes up fine, no new marks, no new scars, just the feeling of his empty bones and the inescapable cold. The cold is not the same as ice. The cold is just a hollow lack of warmth, there is nothing soothing about it. He burns himself alive and wakes breathing ash, with rough brick beneath his back and aching skin.
He wakes up as a fresh corpse, in the aftermath of his own destruction, his own cremation, lovingly forgotten by anyone who ever thought they loved him. He burned himself from living memory, burned himself from the fabric of reality with a fistful of cobalt flames.
He burns himself alive some nights.
Those are the better nights.