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“You can’t carry all the groceries in at once!”
“Just watch me!”
Fuyumi rolled her eyes and turned away from the sight of Natsuo struggling to bundle all the bags into his arms. “If you break the eggs, you’re the one that has to go back and get another carton.” Taking her own reasonable amount of bags, she entered the house her father had constructed for them.
She loved the new house. Unlike the house she grew up in, there was no pervading sense of dread, no feeling of having to walk on eggshells, no oppressive sorrow. It gave her hope for the remnants of her family, hope that things might be healed in time.
She fumbled for the light switch, the main room darkened as the evening sun no longer shone through the windows. When she finally flipped the switch, the groceries in her hands crashed to the floor.
She knew him. She had caught a brief glimpse of him on TV, and both Shouto and Endeavor had described such a man in the attacks they had endured. He was most definitely a villain, perhaps associated with the League.
He was sitting on her couch.
A javelin of ice crystallized in her hand before she was even aware of it. If life with Endeavor had taught her anything, it was self-preservation.
“What are you doing in my house?” she yelled, raising the javelin.
The villain—Dabi, maybe?—looked at her with eyes like blue coals, but his expression was neither hateful nor malicious. Through the scars and stitches, he looked sad.
He rose from the couch and Fuyumi took a wary step back, poising the javelin threateningly.
“Relax—” the man started.
“Take another step and I’ll run you through,” Fuyumi snarled, unable to keep her voice from trembling.
The man raised his hands placatingly. “It’s okay.”
“I know who you are,” she hissed. “You tried to kill my father. Have you come here to try and kill him again?”
The man stayed still, a frown making his staples glint in the light. He looked sorrowful, and the expression unnerved Fuyumi for some reason she could not place.
Then he whispered, “Yumi, please.”
The memory hit her with the speed of a bullet train.
“I’m going to see Shouto,” Touya said, looking around to ensure their father was nowhere within earshot.
Fear made Fuyumi lurch forward, grabbing her brother’s hand before he could move. “You can’t! If father finds you with him he’ll—”
“I know.” Touya’s face was firm, his eyes full of blue flame. “But I know Shouto is hurting. We have to help him, because that scumbag won’t.
“Don’t,” Fuyumi begged. He hadn’t been caught yet, but a terrible dread loomed over her as she considered what might happen.
“Yumi, please.” His hand squeezed hers gently, his warmth and her coolness balancing each other out as they always had. “You’re always talking about how you want to help people. Who are we if we can’t help our own brother?”
Fuyumi knew he was right, but her feet felt rooted to the spot by the terror of her father.
“You can’t be afraid of him forever.” The flame in Touya’s eyes flared with defiance, his face set in a grim determination that made him look far older than his thirteen years. “I’m not afraid of him anymore. If you’re afraid, he has power over you.”
Fuyumi shuddered at the thought of her father’s control.
“Don’t be afraid for Shouto’s sake.”
She met his burning gaze, her eyes like chips of ice. “I’ll go with you.”
From that day forward, she feared her father no more.
The ice javelin dropped to the floor, shattering into a thousand crystalline shards.
She saw it now.
She saw the black hair and terrible scars, so unfamiliar and strange. But she also saw the eyes that remained the same, bright and burning and gentle upon her.
A part of her was disbelieving, but she could not deny what she saw in front of her.
It was him.
“You—you‘re—”
“Hey, sis.” Todoroki Touya offered her a sad smile. “It’s been a while.”
Fuyumi’s legs were moving before she was aware of it, carrying her towards her twin brother. Touya saw her coming, but before he could react, catch her in his arms, pain exploded in his cheek, his head whipping sharply to one side.
Natsuo ran into the house just in time to see his sister slap a member of the League of Villains across the face with all her might.
The room was dead silent for a moment, then Todoroki Fuyumi exploded.
“Todoroki Touya, I hate you!” she screamed. “I mourned you for years! I cried for you night after night! It took me forever to accept you were gone, and you’ve been alive this whole time?”
Both brothers stood in shock as their gentle, level-headed sister raged with a temper comparable to their father.
“Why didn’t you tell someone? Why did you run away?” Her voice cracked. “Why did you leave me?”
The pain in Touya’s cheek was little compared to the guilt that stabbed his chest. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Yumi.”
Fuyumi’s enraged countenance crumbled into tears, her knees giving. Touya caught her as she buried her face in her hands and wept openly.
Natsuo stared, scared and mystified as his sister sobbed in the arms of the man who had sought to kill their father. Part of him wanted to grab his sister and run, another part compelled him to stay still. The longer he looked at the man’s face, the more he saw things he knew.
“Touya?” he breathed.
The man looked up at him and flashed him a small smile. “Hey, Natsu.”
Then they were all on the floor, weeping and clinging to each other for dear life. Touya’s eyes burned, his body trying to make tears but unable to even as his own sadness overwhelmed him.
“Why did you leave us?” Fuyumi asked at last, her voice small and full of tears as she leaned against his chest.
“It was the path I chose,” Touya murmured, his tone laced with a gentleness reserved for his only sibling. “I never wanted to leave you, but I felt I had to.”
“I’m sorry I slapped you.” Fuyumi gingerly touched his still-smarting cheek. “I was just so angry I…”
“You have ever right to be,” he told her.
Her eyes drifted over his scars. As a child he had burned himself almost every time he used his fire thanks to inheriting their mother’s ice-based constitution, but nothing had ever amounted to such deep scarring such as this, and it hurt her to even look at his skin.
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
“Not usually, only when I pull my stitches.”
Natsuo’s hand, cool and soothing, touched the dead skin on his arm. “What…what happened?”
He told them everything, from his attempt to burn their father and his subsequent death and rebirth as Dabi, to the years spent searching for a worthwhile cause. When he got to the part about the League, Fuyumi looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes.
“You’re actually part of the League?” she whispered.
The fear and horror in her voice pained him. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate Endeavor and what he did to us all. He’s a false hero, and the League seeks to take down people like him.”
“That’s why you tried to kill him,” Natsuo murmured.
“He’s why I chose this path. He’s why I had to leave. I was too angry. I felt if you all saw me like this, it would just make things worse on top of everything else.”
“You’re still my brother,” Fuyumi said firmly.
Once again Touya was overwhelmed by the length of his family’s forgiveness. He had expected them to be just as angry and jaded as he was if not more so, condemning him as a villain, but so far what he had received was the opposite.
For the first time, he was truly thankful for his mother’s insistence on forgiveness. Without it, he would likely be unable to show his face to his family again.
“I know you’re angry, but please don’t kill him,” Fuyumi continued. “He’s trying to change his ways. He’s trying to be better.”
Both Touya and Natsuo let out a derisive snort.
“How can you say that when he’s here?” Natsuo cried, sitting up and gesturing to Touya. “Because of Endeavor he’s suffered!”
“He’s not dead,” Fuyumi retorted. “You’ve been blaming dad for his death all this time, but now he’s alive!”
“It was just as bad,” Natsuo snarled.
Fuyumi fell silent, looking as though she might cry again. Touya tightened his grip on her.
“He’s trying to change his ways?” He shot Natsuo a questioning look.
Natsuo frowned. “He says he regrets everything he did and is trying to atone for it. He even built this,”—he gestured at walls around them—“so we could have a place to live in and a place for Mom when she gets out of the hospital.”
Touya glanced at the house they sat in. He had wondered why Shouto had offered him a new address, thinking that Fuyumi and Natsuo had gotten fed up with living with him and finally moved out. The house looked quite nice, but the bitterness in Touya wanted to immediately condemn Endeavor and write it off merely as a shallow attempt at buying their forgiveness. However, the part about their mother made him pause.
“Mom’s getting out of the hospital?” he asked.
Natsuo nodded, his frown giving way to a hopeful smile. “Yeah. Shouto’s been trying to petition to get her out, and Endeavor has agreed. She can stay here—she doesn’t even have to see him.”
Begrudgingly, a part of him admitted that the old man had changed a little. From what he knew before, letting their mother out of the hospital was never going to happen. She was a liability, someone he couldn’t totally beat in silence about the shady dealings behind doors.
“She didn’t tell me that,” he said.
Natsuo raised an eyebrow. “You went to see her?”
“Shouto convinced me I should come see you all.”
“Shouto?” Fuyumi twisted around in his arms, fixing him with a frosty glare. “When did you see Shouto?”
Touya sighed and launched into his explanation about his previous feelings towards his youngest sibling and how wrong his conceptions had been, leading to the reconciliation of their relationship.
“So you saw Shouto for the first time three weeks ago?” she asked.
“Yeah—” Touya’s reply was cut off when she shoved him backwards, sending him toppling back onto the carpet.
“Why didn’t you come see us sooner?” she snarled, standing to her feet.
“You’re the ones that scared me the most.” Though he said it with a grin, it was true.
Fuyumi tried to keep an angry countenance, but was unable to in the warmth of her brother’s smile. “I still can’t believe this is real.”
Touya reached out and snagged her hand, pulling her to the floor with a squeal. “Shouto and Mom said the same thing.”
Natsuo flopped down on his other side. “It doesn’t feel real. You’re alive, but you’re…”
“…a villain?” Touya finished.
“Are you going to leave the League?” Fuyumi asked.
Touya sighed as he was faced with the question that had plagued him since his revelation to Shouto. “I…I don’t know. I want to keep hating him.”
“Please. You’re better than this.”
“I’ve killed people, Yumi,” he murmured, dropping his gaze to the floor.
“I forgive you,” she said without hesitation. “I was angry at him for a long time when you…when you disappeared, but I had to move on.”
“Even I had to move on a little,” Natsuo offered. “I haven’t forgiven him, not really, but I will tolerate him if necessary.”
“Aren’t you letting him have power over you?”
Touya looked at his sister sharply. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“No, but you’re bent on hating him, letting it control the course of your life,” she replied gently. “What you told me about not letting him have power over us always stuck with me, and now you need to remember it.”
Touya fell silent, at war with himself.
“You wouldn’t come see us if you didn’t think you could move on,” Natsuo said. “You came to see us because you want to change.”
“I…I never meant to be a villain,” Touya whispered, staring at his half-ruined hands, “but I was so angry that I didn’t see any other way. Once I started down that path I couldn’t stop. I want to change, but…but…”
Fuyumi’s small hand embraced his. “You can abandon this path, Touya. If I can forgive dad, I most certainly can forgive you.”
Natsuo threw an arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Let us help you.”
Touya inhaled shakily. Once he turned away from villainy, he could never return to the thing that had shaped his life for the past decade.
But was that such a bad thing when he had his family?
“Alright.” He nodded, holding back a sob. “Help me, please.”
They spoke together long into the night.
It was still up in the air as to whether Endeavor would ever come to know his eldest was alive and the truth of his identity. There was much that went with that revelation, and none of them felt confident in knowing what his reaction might be. Touya was not fully convinced of Endeavor’s supposed changes, and neither was Natsuo. Even Fuyumi was not completely assured, though she held out hope that things may one day be fully righted, and Touya’s reappearance only furthered that hope.
As for the crimes committed, they were Dabi’s doing, not Touya’s. If it ever came up, they would enlist the help of Endeavor’s lawyers, who were notorious for their abilities at getting people out of trouble. A part of Touya felt guilty for evading jail time, but he was realizing ten years without his family was a terrible punishment, self-inflicted though it was.
His scars could be fixed by doctors specializing in the treatment of fixing Quirk-related injuries, removing the injuries that would mark him as Dabi, and the thought of having unblemished skin again amazed him.
“Stay the night,” Fuyumi said, checking her phone. It was almost one.
“I can’t,” Touya said.
“Please, we have an extra room. You think you’re gonna sleep in some dumpster once you’re officially back in this family?”
Touya huffed indignantly but argued no more. They said their goodnights and after hugging both of them three times he made his way to the spare room. It was mostly bare, having only a bed, a bedside table and a chest of drawers, waiting for the customization of the room’s next occupant, most likely Mom.
The bed wasn’t anything special, but compared to all the places Touya had slept in the past decade, it was heavenly. As soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out like a light.
He awoke to the sound of a door opening slowly. For a moment, he didn’t recognize where he was. It was dark, and somebody was trying to sneak into the room he was in. Heat flared in his fingers.
He must have shifted enough to be noticed, because a familiar voice spoke: “It’s just us.”
Oh, right. Fuyumi. His siblings. It was a strange feeling to be in the same house as them again after so long living with the League.
He rolled over, catching sight of Fuyumi and Natsuo’s silhouettes in the doorway. “What’s the matter?”
Both his siblings shuffled further into the room.
“I had to make sure it wasn’t a dream,” Natsuo said quietly. “I had to make sure you were really here.”
“Me too,” Fuyumi agreed.
Touya arched a tired eyebrow despite the dark. “Well, I’m here.”
No one moved.
“You can go back to bed.”
“Can we…stay with you?” Fuyumi asked quietly, hopefully.
“Really?” Touya barked a laugh. “Don’t you think we’re a little too old for that?”
Natsuo’s shadow fidgeted. “Yeah, but…”
Touya was already scooting over to the far side of the bed. “Just get in here before I change my mind.”
Both his siblings dove for the bed. It was a hilariously tight squeeze, Fuyumi curled up with her head resting on his shoulder and Natsuo half-on half-off his torso, his legs taking up the remainder of the bedspace.
The only thing missing was Shouto, Touya mused. As he held his siblings close, he realized just how much he had changed over the course of a few weeks.
Dabi was no more. Touya truly lived.
Fuyumi and Natsuo’s breaths slowed as they fell asleep, and Touya felt sleep pulling on him as well. As his eyes drifted shut, his lips moved silently, forming the old words that had started him on the path of change, of leaving anger and hatred behind:
“May my heart beat with courage…”