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Fuyumi quails at the base of the stairs, tears streaking down her cheeks and fingers twisting into the fold of her petticoats, wondering if she dares to pass by the room where Todoroki Enji is venting his rage. Her father is still bellowing and breaking things in Touya’s room, the sound of his sword hacking into furniture a reverberating, terrifying reminder of his wrath. Wrath that could no longer be expressed against the brother that room belonged to.
But as her eyes dart back to the crackling fire at the far end of the hall, and the blank square above the mantle, her decision is made. On light, stockinged feet, she gathers up her skirts and sprints past the room, her eyes glued only on the edges of the canvas already beginning to wilt in the hearth.
The white silk gloves clothing her hands offer no protection as she thrusts them into the fire, but she doesn’t care as she yanks the flaming portrait from the ashes, beating frantically at the tongues of flames trying to devour the last evidence of her family.
To her dismay, the portrait is beyond recovery. At least, as far as her brother is concerned. Touya’s visage has been completely eradicated - only a smear of red hair and his stiff, Western-style boots remaining of him. Soon to be the only thing remaining of him, if her father’s rampage continues.
Tears blur her eyes, partially from the pain stinging her hands, but moreso from the ache in her heart. Her blistered fingers trace the charred outline of where her brother had once stood next to Natsuo in the family portrait, trying to imagine his smiling face.
But Touya had never been a smiling face in the portrait, had he? Closing her eyes, all she can bring to mind is a sad blue gaze, hollowed out by living under the same roof as their father. It’s an easy memory to conjure, though. After all, her mother, seated only inches from the burnt visage of Touya, bears the same quiet devastation carved into her own face.
Fuyumi’s throat aches, but a sound behind her has her shoving her grief deep into the well of her soul. With clumsy, raw fingers, she rolls the portrait up and stuffs it into the folds between her hoop and her petticoat, out of sight.
And not a moment too soon. Her father enters the room in high temper, sweat dampening his cravat and his shirtsleeves rolled up. The muscles of his forearms bunch under the skin as his fingers flex, as if he would like nothing more than to be wringing something in fury.
But Touya isn’t around for you to hurt anymore, Fuyumi thinks desperately, schooling her features to show no guilt or fear. No emotion at all - not in the face of her father’s rage.
Blue eyes so like her brother’s flick to the fire. “It is destroyed then?”
Fuyumi, without so much as a pause, nods. “I was simply sweeping the ashes back into the hearth, father.” Her fingers clench around her ruined gloves, tucked behind her back.
Satisfied, Enji strides back out of the room, his booted feet thudding against the hardwood. Fuyumi flees out the side door, taking the servant’s staircase back up to her room.
It isn’t until she is inside, with the door closed and the key turned in the lock, that she pulls the portrait out once more, unfurling it across the floor.
Her brother is still gone. As gone as he is in real life, having run away before dawn broke, leaving their father's training room a smoldering ruin as his final goodbye. But despite the pain his departure caused, Fuyumi understands why he left, and she makes herself a promise.
We will find you, Touya. And we will bring you home, she swears. When it is safe, we will be a family once more.
----
A TRAGIC DEATH! FOUL PLAY AFOOT?
ADMIRAL TODOROKI’S ELDEST SON KILLED IN BIZARRE BLAZE
----
Two years later
Aizawa Shouta hardly thinks his presence is necessary at the jailhouse so early in the morning. However, his partner had sent a runner for him, demanding that he attend, and that was something Hizashi rarely did, knowing Shouta’s late night schedule.
Ergo, it must be important.
It doesn’t stop Shouta from pulling his pocket watch from his waistcoat with a forlorn sigh. Portable watches were one of the more convenient things brought over by the Westerners and their “Victorian Age”, but not in times such as these, when all they did was serve to remind Shouta of how precious few hours of sleep he’d gotten.
It must be important, he reminds himself as he enters the interrogation room.
Inside, a bizarre picture meets his eyes. A teenager with blazing red hair and what looks like burn scars across his face is glaring daggers at Hizashi, chin jutting out in stubborn refusal.
Refusal of… a handkerchief, evidently. To wipe the blood dripping from his nose.
“What’s going on here?” Shouta asks, voice gravelly in the cold morning air. It isn’t even light out yet, and the flickering of the oil lamps on the desk cause the scars on the boy’s face to appear almost skull-like. It’s disconcerting, especially before tea.
“We caught this boy breaking into one of the admiralty branch offices,” Hizashi reports, far too cheerily, given the time. “Or rather, burning into it. Won’t tell us why, however.”
“Name?” he asks, trying to shake the feeling that the boy looks eerily familiar.
“Won’t tell us that, either,” Hizashi says. “Rather tight-lipped, this one. And the only thing to his missing-name is this little pouch of dust.” He shakes a bundle sitting on the table for emphasis.
Shouta frowns. Then scowls outright when there’s a commotion from the doorway and Sgt. Iida Tensei steps inside. The officer rubs the back of his head sheepishly.
“Sirs, I am very sorry to bother you, but Admiral Todoroki told me to fetch you at once.”
It’s only because Shouta is looking directly at the boy that he sees his entire body go rigid with fear. His scowl deepens.
“We will be right there, Iida,” he says, mind churning, wondering why Todoroki was pulling them away from the case. Wondering at the boy’s reaction.
They lock the door behind them and go to meet the furious and highly on-edge admiral, who insists upon accompanying them to see their captive, despite it being police business and not military.
But upon returning to the room, they find it empty and drafty - with the small window’s iron edges melted clear off and the empty powder pouch laying across the sill along with the broken oil lamp.
And what few drops remain of the fuel, burn blue.
----
FIERY ESCAPE! YOUNG DELINQUENT OUTWITS POLICE
ADMIRALTY STATES ITS INTEREST IN THE CASE
----
Six years later
Natsuo might have ignored the rumors spreading across campus if not for the familiar chord they struck. After all, as a student of the human mind, he knew that rumormongering was often a way to fight off boredom or anxiety from exams, and he’d never given sensationalized articles much credit after their years of praising his father’s many feats while ignoring the monstrosities he committed in the name of war and progress.
But when whispers reach his ears about a Blue Arsonist , who is targeting government buildings and yakuza syndicates without descrimination, his interest is piqued. Enough so that he stops to pick up the local newspaper reporting the incident before returning to his dormitory.
BLUE ARSONIST RAIDS GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL’S HOME
DOCUMENTS STOLEN
...while no culprit has been discovered, locals report a man with dark hair and multiple scars disappearing into the docks east of Tokyo Bay. Further analysis determined that copper and potassium salt were present in the chemical fires that burned blue last Tuesday night. Local apothecaries are being investigated as potential suppliers to this arsonist’s apparent signature…
Is this you, Touya? He wonders as he scans the article, looking for the tells he’s identified since his brother’s disappearance.
The thought has him drawing out his evidence box from its place under his bed. Inside are newspaper clippings detailing a teenager with red hair who’d escaped the police after burning into a government building. Handwritten accounts of a young man who torched a yakuza hideout to the ground after it’d been discovered that they were marketing drugs.
The old family portrait that Fuyumi had passed to him, when their father nearly found it.
Throat dry, Natsuo unfurls the old canvas, careful of the flaking paint. It would be many more years before he could look at it, he thinks, and not feel fury boiling in his veins.
Enji stands proud and cold in the back - domineering over his brood - while Rei sits upon the sofa next to a young Fuyumi. Their mother’s face is blank and distant, though the hand that she rests on little Shouto’s shoulder is gentle enough. She’d always been soft and frail. Too yielding to offer her children the protection they needed at the time. A sheet of ice against Enji’s battle axe.
Next to Shouto, Natsuo sees himself, eight years younger and cutting his eyes up to his older brother, Touya. Seeking him out.
The irony makes Natsuo snort. Very little has changed, after all these years. He’s still searching; extending every ounce of influence he possesses to find the brother who disappeared that foggy morning so many years ago.
He would have to want to be found for this to work, Natsuo thinks bitterly, before his eyes track back to his mother.
Natsuo hasn’t given up on his brother. But he is a realist, and he has other family members to help. Proving that Rei was wrongfully imprisoned on false insanity charges was something tangible . Something he could strive for.
It does not stop him from clipping the arsonist article from the newspaper and drafting a letter to his friend at the Admiralty. Perhaps Takami might be able to shed some light on the incident. It was always worth a shot.
----
One year later
Lieutenant Takami Keigo holds himself with shoulders back and expression set - at perfect attention for a soldier in the presence of his superior, who is pacing his office in a right state of agitation. Curious, Keigo wonders what could get Admiral Todoroki so riled up about this case.
It was a small fire at a Mental Institution, he thinks. There wasn’t even anyone injured, only some files stolen. Surely this is not a matter for the Admiralty?
But Admiral Todoroki is set on making it their business, even if he will not say why.
Still, the thought niggles at Keigo throughout the day as he goes through the motions of investigation. However, it isn’t until he runs into Detective Aizawa and his Junior Detective, Todoroki Shouto, at the scene of the crime that a memory stirs up. One of Natsuo, Shouto’s brother, sending him an inquiry about a small fire. A fire that had burned blue.
Surreptitiously, Keigo reviews the folio he’d received on the case, and sure enough: this fire had the same distinct color as the one from a year ago. Which picks at another memory, back from when he sold papers on street corners as a child. There had been a reported house fire - one where experimental military armaments were rumored to be involved, but never confirmed. Hadn’t Admiral Todoroki been entangled in that case too…?
Curiouser and curiouser, he thinks.
“Aizawa, Todoroki,” he greets with a bright smile. “Fancy meeting you here. I assume you received Admiral Todoroki’s message that we were taking over this case?”
The detective and his partner wear matching, nonplussed expressions. Keigo shrugs, unwilling to belabor the point, and falls into step with them.
“So,” he says, “What have you got so far?”
“Speculations,” Aizawa answers shortly, but his eyes are calculating, watching Keigo for something - perhaps a sign? Keigo smiles blandly, stuffing his hands into his slacks pockets.
Surprisingly, it’s Shouto who pipes up first. “You work with my father. It’s none of his business.”
Tell me how you really feel, Keigo thinks with a grin. “He’d rather make it his business. But I have noticed he seems rather affected by this, and if I were a betting man, I would say it has to do with the case your brother brought to me.”
Shouto’s eyes narrow, and he asks sharply, “What do you know about Touya?”
Bushy eyebrows raise, and Keigo’s smile becomes rather fixed.
Touya? I was referring to Natsuo.
“Shouto,” Aizawa says warningly, placing a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Remind me to teach you the art of subtlety.”
The young man looks abashed, but Keigo is far too curious to let it end there. Instead, he proffers up his folio like a carrot on a stick. “How about this, gentlemen - I show you my cards if you show me yours?” The two share another inscrutable look. Then Aizawa nods toward a nearby pub and begins walking that direction, indicating this will be a lengthy conversation.
Keigo follows behind, wondering who Touya is, and what he has to do with the burning cases.
----
BLUE ARSONIST - VIGILANTE?
DOCUMENTS FOUND IN ASYLUM FIRE INDICATE CORRUPTION IN THE ADMIRALTY
----
One month later
Even with everything in place, Shouto finds himself nervous at the meeting about to take place. Between himself and Detective Aizawa in the police, Lieutenant Takami at the Admiralty, Natsuo on the Board of Mental Health Associates, and Fuyumi monitoring their father and visiting their mother, they have a case. There is only one piece missing, at this point.
“I hear you’ve been looking for me, little detective.”
The voice appears to come from thin air, with how thick the fog is on the docks of Tokyo Bay. Shouto strains his eyes in the dim light of the gas lamps, trying to catch a glimpse of the man he’d come to meet. The man he’d seen Fuyumi mourn, his father curse, and Natsuo follow to the ends of the earth. Shouto barely remembers Touya himself, but the impact he’d had on their family had been undeniable, and the trail he’d left behind had been nothing short of mystifying until a few short weeks ago.
“I have,” he answers back as he catches sight of a figure moving in the fog. A lean man, dressed in a long coat. “We have a proposition for you.”
The figure stills momentarily, before approaching once more, his visage finally clarifying out of the mist. Swathed in dark clothing and burns, gaslights glinting off his pierced face to the point where it looks like fireflies are embedded in his cheeks. This gaunt, terrifying man… this villain is his brother?
“Do you, now?” The man says, voice rasping in the darkness. “And what could I possibly offer to an officer of the law?”
“Freedom,” Shouto says shortly. “For our mother.”
Touya stops dead in his tracks, blue eyes narrow and intense, burning into Shouto’s own .
“So you knew?”
“The blue fires were a rather distinct calling card, Touya,” Shouto says wryly. “Especially with father’s predilection toward burning buildings during the war. When he began to worry, it was only a matter of putting the pieces together. And you have the final one - proof of her false imprisonment.”
Touya cracks a smile at that. “And I suppose you have the clout to make him pay for it?”
Shouto nods, a smile of his own tugging at his lips. “We’ve collected a rather influential party to see this through.” He steps closer to his estranged brother, noting how his posture tenses and his eyes become wary. With the injuries he’d sustained and the way he’d been living for so many years, Shouto can’t find it in himself to blame him. “You don’t have to do this alone anymore, Touya.”
He extends a hand, wondering if Touya will take it, and watching as his brother’s expression goes through a range of emotions - from grief to anger to determination. A scarred and stapled hand grasps his own firmly.
“Together, huh?” He asks, voice rough. Shouto grips his hand firmly, a promise in physical form.
“Together.”
----
ADMIRAL TODOROKI DISGRACED OVER UNLAWFUL IMPRISONMENT OF WIFE
TODOROKI FAMILY REUNITED IN THE WAKE OF TYRANNY
----
Two months later
In a house in the countryside, Touya examines the carefully folded article, running light fingers over the black and white photo where Todoroki Rei stands, surrounded by all four of her children. Each one of them, including himself, smiling happily at the camera, finally together again.