Chapter Text
Shouto bent to place his shoes at the entrance of the new family house. Surprisingly, Endeavour had kept his word, giving Fuyumi a chequebook without a budget to find a suitable place and settle in. Fuyumi and Natsuo had taken the responsibility to find a new home where the four of them could make happy memories together. Seeing as Shouto had restricted leave from UA, he didn’t take much part in the process. Still, his siblings had asked for his opinion in every step. They picked a small place at a midway point between Natsuo’s university and Fuyumi’s work with easy access to a Metro stop with a direct line to UA. The house was in sharp contrast to the traditional Todoroki estate. This new modern home stood tall and bright potential, whereas the estate encompassed a wide area and haunted by dark memories. Each member had their own room, but they weren’t separated or isolated like they once had been. It was nice, Shouto thought.
Quietly Shouto made his way to the spare bedroom, where he could hear Natsuo laughing and Fuyumi talking. He still didn’t quite understand why the extra bedroom held such importance for Fuyumi and Natsuo. They had turned away from nicer houses with a fifth room, but they had insisted. Once such a rare sound that Shouto could count on his hands the number of he heard happy voices growing up. Now, slowly the sound of joy was becoming familiar.
“Remember this one? He was so green I thought he would throw up all over the bastard.”
“And instead, he—Shouto come in!” Fuymi’s flushed face and watery eyes greeted him.
Natsuo waved him over to where they were sitting around a small box that Shouto didn’t recognize. Carefully with all the skill of a cat that had been shooed away one too many times, Shouto sat next to his brother. Not that Natsuo had ever been anything but welcoming and encouraging towards Shouto.
“What are you doing?”
“We found a box of pictures when unpacking Touya’s belongings,” Fuyumi answered, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. A motion Shouto knew was also meant to hide the wiping away of tears.
Shouto nodded. Logical, this would both cause laughter and tears. It seemed to be a constant whenever the subject of Touya came up. Shouto barely remembered the elusive figure, warm hands, a gentle voice, and Endeavour’s comparison that Shouto’s fire quirk never got as hot as Touya’s ever had.
“We decided to move his things into the spare bedroom. This was his dream, you know? It didn’t seem fair that we leave him alone in that house.” Natsuo supplied.
“No, I didn’t know,” The mood in the room crashed at Shouto’s words. Guilt gripped him at Natsuo’s new angry silence and drip of sad tears from Fuyumi. Belatedly he realized it was not the right thing to say. Not to Fuyumi, who lost her big brother and Natsuo his best friend. But Shouto really didn’t know anything about their eldest brother. To Shouto, he had just lost a stranger he never had a chance to know.
“It’s all the old man’s fault. He’s the reason you never got to know Touya, the reason-” Natsuo’ rage was cut by Fuyumi placing a gentle hand on his knee.
“Natsuo, please don’t. He’s trying to fix things, and fighting over the past won’t fix things.” Fuyumi looked adoringly down at the picture in her other hand before passing it to Shouto to look at.
Using only his right hand, Shouto delicately took the photo from her handling the picture as the precious treasure it was. Living proof that Touya Todoroki existed. Shouto didn’t realize there were any photos of his brother that survived Endeavour’s purge. The limited belongs, being the one mercy Endeavour showed the memory of his first son, but anything with Touya’s face had met a similarly fiery end. Shouto looked down and, for the first time in ten years, saw his brother’s face.
A young boy with wild red hair, dressed in a formal suit and looking vaguely green, stared back from a decade-old photograph.
Shouto was not going to lie. It was rather anticlimactic. It was hard to form emotions around someone that you knew so little of.
“I thought his hair was white?”
Natsuo grinned, wrapping an arm around Shouto’s shoulder; his anger vanished. “It was. It turned white about two years after that photo.”
Fuyumi smiled at the lost look Shouto had no doubt he was making. “Remember the transition phase.”
“Oh ya, I hope we have a photo, that was hilarious” Natsuo let out a loud barking laugh. “Anyways, Shouto, before you came in, we were laughing at the story behind that picture.”
“You see,” Fuyumi picked up telling the story from the beginning, nudging her way closer on his left, “Dad took Touya to one of the hero awards.”
“He hated those things.” Natsuo interrupted with a sour look. “The old man used to force him to go, in order to show off the next great hero ‘Endeavour’s heir’”.
“Will you let me tell the story?” His brother motioned a sealed lip gesture, and Fuyumi continued, “anyways. They had to drive back from the ceremony, but Touya used to get terribly carsick anytime he had to sit in a car for more than five minutes. And that night, the driver took a wrong, and it ended taking them two hours to get back.”
“The old man was so mad, and Touya didn’t make things better.”
Fuyumi laughed. “No, he certainly didn’t but to be fair he wasn’t in the greatest of moods either. Poor Touya, the dinner was ocean themed.”
“He hated fish,” Natsuo added, and Shouto nodded. A warm feeling grew in his chest as Fuyumi continued the story.
“You see, mom wanted to take a picture of him all dressed up. She hadn’t gotten a chance before the event because Natsuo was being fussy. So Touya gets out of the car, and Mom pulls him inside to take the picture. And immediately after-”
“He pukes directly into an ugly expensive vase Endeavour was given by some hero for his wedding. Touya just absolutely hurles all the seafood dinner into the vase.”
Natsuo lost himself to a fit of laughter, Fuyumi joined him with her own quiet, somewhat watery, laugh. Shouto could feel his own tiny smile slip out. This was the first time Shouto felt genuinely free and connected to his brother and sister. Was this what life could be like as a family?
Calming himself, Natsuo spoke again, “Touya panics and does the worst possible thing. Can you guess what he does?”
Shouto shook his head, smiling at the pure joy of the moment. Shouto had never seen Natsuo so animated. He honestly had no idea.
“He used his quirk to try to burn away the evidence. Vase and all. But it turns out-” Natsuo stopped being able to contain another fit of wild glee.
“It turns out the vase was so expensive because it was made out of a rare fireproof material. All Touya succeeded in doing was making an even bigger mess. Mom couldn't clean it, and we eventually threw it away.”
"Mom laughed afterwards, and thanked Touya for giving her an excuse to get rid of the thing."
To the shock of everyone in the room, a soft chuckle escaped from Shouto, and Shouto joined in the laughter of his siblings. No one mentioned the consequences that Touya must have faced, and if they could ignore the lingering sorrow then the story was just about a normal kid who did something silly. Not a family ghost.
Touya, what was he like? Who was he? Shouto craved to hear more about this person so important to Fuyumi, Mom and Natsuo. To get a small taste of what it might have been like to have a second older brother.
Fuyumi was the first to regain control, face pink and heated. Beside her, Natsuo continued to wheeze before running out of air and drifting into peaceful silence. Graciously, Fuyumi gathered the photo, placing it back in the box, safe from any accidental wrinkles. Shouto peered inside the tiny red box of memories. There lay several more photos. Reaching in, Shouto took a random picture and looked up at Fuyumi and Natsuo.
“Will you tell me more?