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It’s Dabi’s thirty-sixth day in Tartarus when the mind-numbing monotony of his captivity is interrupted by a visitor.
A guard asks him if he wants to see them, and Dabi’s bored enough to consent. Whatever hero crawled here to interrogate him about the League can provide a little entertainment to his otherwise bleak day. If not for the meals signaling the passing of time, everything would feel like a blur. The personnel doesn't make small talk, and Dabi would’ve already burned his way out of his straitjacket if not for the three guns constantly aimed at him, following his every movement.
He doesn’t even glance up while one armored wall of his cell lifts to show his visitor. With time, he’s learned that’s the best way to make the interrogations last longer. All heroes like to be watched in the face while they cast their moral judgement onto their victims. Staring down at criminals makes them feel appropriately self-important—an invaluable skill on the job of a pillar of justice.
It’s not until he hears a soft, teary gasp that he does look up—and barely refrains from flinching. Todoroki Rei stares back at him from the other side of the glass.
It’s Dabi’s thirty-sixth day in Tartarus when his mother escapes her own prison to visit him.
Once the surprise subsides, apathy gets the best of him again, shrouding him in its familiar comfort. He finds that he doesn’t feel anything at all. Maybe the part of him that cared broke when he snapped. Maybe he even expected her visit. Already bored again, his heavy-lidded gaze follows her as she gingerly approaches the chair laid out for police interviews. She sits on it stiffly, her back straight and her eyes watery. Like a kid at the principal’s office. Dabi would almost laugh, if his stomach didn’t feel like it was knotting on itself.
Time feels suspended as they mutely stare at each other. She looks at him as if he’s a ghost. He supposes he is.
“Touya…” she whispers thickly, breaking the tense silence.
Her hand reaches out before she seems to realize what she’s doing. It freezes mid-air, her gaze catching the chilling, impersonal reflection on the glass before she can touch the surface. It’s a good thing she did, or an alarm would’ve blared through the thick prison walls.
Dabi distantly wonders if the shrill sound would’ve startled her into a panic. Once, it would’ve been enough to.
Comparing her to the woman in his memories is startling. In his mind’s eye, she’s significantly taller. He was always tilting his head up defiantly at her, demanding answers she couldn’t provide. That woman was jumpier, too; when she did meet his gaze, she looked down at him, looked down on him, her eyes full of unbearable, humiliating sadness—scared of his anger like she was scared of his father’s.
Even now, a muscle in Dabi’s jaw twitches when her eyes dart momentarily to the floor to avoid his, falling into old habits. It’s a reflex, that much is clear; he makes her self-conscious. Always has. But he can see now that what makes her flinch is not the state he’s in, but the accusations she can read clear as day on his face.
You made me into this. You and dad both did.
He thinks she might know that, too. There’s no trace of the mistiness he remembers in her gaze, not anymore, but the way she covers her mouth against another half-spilled sob is familiar in ways he refuses to acknowledge.
“Mom. What a surprise.”
He wonders if she’s disappointed in him still. Todoroki Rei was the first person to see the monster, once prodigy, lurking beneath the rejection. The monster he fully embraced now. Does she feel vindicated for calling it ten years before Dabi’s actual fall? Maybe she regrets that his evil hasn’t been enough to cancel out his father’s.
He wonders if she’s here to find absolution.
As if to confirm that, her breath hitches at the sound of his voice, or maybe at the lack of warmth of his greeting.
Dabi regrets agreeing to this visit. He feels like ants are crawling under his skin, inside his seams, filling him with restless energy. The feeling of walking on eggshells around her hasn’t changed in all these years, and he hates how a single glance from her can bring everything he buried back to the surface. He still can’t look at her without remembering how much her absence hurt. Without seeing how his father has broken her, too.
He can’t cradle the sparse happy memories of a loving mother, either—not when they come with the reminder of the powerlessness to change his fate, reflected in her own. They’ve always been too alike. Certain fragilities are hereditary, and he’s always known that his mother’s side was the one that posed the biggest threat to his goal. The one that made him vulnerable to failure. Ice is brittle, ephemeral. It cracks and melts easily, so easily. It’s nothing like fire.
“I’ll admit, I didn’t expect you to cave in and visit before Endeavor.” He stubbornly stares at a spot of dirt on the wall. He means to sound apathetic, disinterested, but the remark comes out more like a weary murmur.
“Touya,” she whispers again, her voice wobbly, and this time it sounds like a plea. Not like she’s on the verge of slipping, but like he’s the one who’s fallen off a cliff, and she’s pointlessly holding out a hand from way up. Out of reach.
There’s always been a rift between them, gaping and gurgling and impossible to stitch shut, like an open wound. It stretches wider with every second Dabi refuses to hold her gaze.
“Touya,” his mother repeats, this time more firmly. “Would you look at me? Please?”
Dabi’s eyes sting, and the familiar pain serves to anchor him in the present. To remind him of the boy who died ten years ago. He wonders if she’s mourning the son she’s lost, now that she’s seeing with her own eyes what he has become. If she came here to make amends to that boy, or if she’s finally ready to bury him.
Either way, she’s looking for closure. For forgiveness.
“Why did you come here?” He has nothing to offer her if not more pain. His existence isn’t a kind one. It has never been.
The rift between them grows wider, bloodier.
Dabi’s used to scars that can’t heal, but for the first time, when he looks into his mother’s eyes, he thinks he sees the gaping abyss reflected in them. They don’t glaze over anymore, Dabi notes. They remain lucid. Sharp. Forged by a fire that she only imagined, but that still burned her.
Todoroki Rei’s body might not be a battlefield, but her mind is. They’re alike in that regard, too.
“I saw you on the TV broadcast. The things you said about me, about our life—I had to see it with my own eyes.” Her chin wobbles minutely. “I had to see you."
Why now, Dabi almost shoots back. You never cared enough, before.
He bites his tongue hard against the urge. He won’t lose his temper. Not again. It’s not her answer he’s waited for all these years.
He takes a moment to recompose himself. So far, nothing of what she said comes as a surprise. It still doesn’t explain what she wants from him, though. He isn’t naive enough to think she might wish to take a villain back like a prodigal son. She couldn’t even if she wanted. She’s a civilian, and he’s a permanent guest here. The bare prison walls don’t make for great family pictures. It’s a wonder how she even got to visit in the first place.
“Why?” Dabi stresses.
“I wasn’t a good mother to you,” she mumbles, her hands folding in her lap. It’s her turn to avoid his stare, and her shoulders hunch a little, her whole figure shrinking with it. “You’re hurting. You have been for a long time, and it’s my fault. I wasn’t there for you.”
Dabi doesn’t say anything. What is there even to say? ‘You’re right, but it’s not your fault he fucked you up too’?
He doesn’t know what she expects out of him.
It doesn’t matter that she’s sorry for what he became, because he isn’t. He’d do everything again, however many times as needed. Hero society had to see what kinds of rot hides behind masks of justice, the cancer that festers on people’s naive goodwill. Dabi’s only a product of it. The only one who dared speak about it, the only one challenging the corrupted status quo.
He did what had to be done. He’s seen first-hand what happens to those stupid enough to believe in compliance. He died. And for what? Blindly trusting in personal responsibility hasn’t stopped a monster from rising to the top. The system enabled him, blind to his true colors. Even now that the truth is out there, people still resist it, clinging to a comforting lie. It helps them forget about the unforgivable sins of the heroes they have trusted to keep them safe for decades. The heroes they still entrust their futures and their wellbeing to. Dabi’s seen it in the disdainful eyes of every hero who came to visit him since his capture. He read it in the stiffness of their cloaked backs.
Apologies are nice but overrated. They won’t change the past, they’ll only temporarily soothe wounds. If being sorry for what happened had been enough to make up for it, maybe Dabi could’ve trusted his father’s word for his atonement. Unfortunately, reality isn’t that nice, is it? Why else would the Bastard have yet to show up to confront him? To admit to his own rotten conscience? Endeavor, just like the society he represents, has always been exceptional at dodging responsibility.
The same might not be true of Dabi’s mother, but her guilt doesn’t change the facts. It doesn’t make up for the childhood he’s lost. She’s not the person Dabi wants to own up to it. And yet—and yet a part of him resents her for being here, for being better than he ever gave her credit for. For still giving a shit about him, despite how much he tried to pretend he didn’t give a shit about her, or the family he left behind.
Not thinking of her was much easier.
“You don’t want my apologies,” his mother says abruptly, filling his silence. “I understand. I didn’t dare hope you would be happy to see me.”
A shadow falls over her face, and she ducks her head for a moment, before steeling herself once again. She tucks a lock of her long white hair behind her ear. Dabi recognizes it as one of her nervous tells.
“Then stop apologizing,” Dabi says simply. She holds his gaze, as if unsure of how to read him, so he adds. “There’s not much to do here ‘nyway. You’re as good a distraction as any.”
It’s an olive branch, and Dabi hates himself for extending it. He should’ve let her believe he hated her. And yet, despite the part of him that tells him that would’ve been the kinder option, the lines under her eyes tell a different tale.
So does the way a weight seems to lift from her shoulders at his words. Her expression clears, and her skin regains some color. Her eyes fill with tears again, but this time, it looks like they’re out of relief instead of shame.
“It is so good to see you,” she chokes out. “You’ve grown so much. You look so—” she cuts herself off with another sob, a hand lifting to cover her mouth. Tears stream down her face, but she never once looks away, as if committing the sight of him to memory. “I missed so much of your life. I—”
Dabi wouldn’t exactly call it life. He’s been surviving from sketchy job to sketchy job, hiding in the sidelines, biding his time for all these years. There isn’t much of a story to tell. Only a tragic ending, followed by an abruptly violent, cathartic epilogue.
The boy she’s searching for doesn’t exist anymore, but she’s still looking for him in between the lines of his acknowledgements page. Perhaps it’s cruel to let her think she can still find him.
“What is it? Just say it,” he prods when she only bites her bottom lip, silent.
His mother fidgets with her hands. “I know I’m in no place to ask, but I hoped—I hoped I could learn more about you.”
That same hope blossoms in her eyes, and Dabi’s surprised by the realization that it’s the first time she’s seen her look anything other than nervous or scared.
It shouldn’t make a difference.
“About your life w-without me,” she continues. “If you want. I could come visit again.”
Dabi’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline as stunned silence stretches between them.
He was wrong, he realizes. It’s not absolution, what she came here for.
It’s healing.
His stomach knots, and his heart picks up its pace enough for the heart monitor connected to his chair to buzz with interest. It’s a somber reminder. This is a maximum security jail, not a picnic table. There are guns waiting to shoot his brains out if he so much as sneezes, and isn’t it ironic? Hero society runs a high-stakes game, but only when it comes to villains. It’s never as kind to the people on the other side. And maybe that’s what makes him agree. Spite. The will to always contradict expectations, the urge to prove everyone and everything wrong, to deny their control over him. Maybe it’s boredom.
It’s definitely not the fact that the gaping wound between them has been bleeding for too long. Admitting to that would be risky. Stupid. Compromising. Dabi will get out of this place sooner or later. Dead or alive, cause going up in a fire of his own creation has always been his greatest skill. Allowing her to be near his radius when he inevitably does would be a pointless gamble. A cruel selfishness. She would have to mourn him twice.
He resolutely doesn’t consider how not letting her know about the epilogue of his story was crueler. But even he can see now that freeing herself from her prison can’t be enough for her, if he doesn’t escape his. And Dabi is many things—callous, inept, monstrous. But he isn’t a jailer like his father.
He doesn’t recognize his voice when he finally answers. “It’s whatever. Do it or don’t, I don’t care.”
A guard interrupts them to tell them visiting hours are over, but before she’s urged out, Dabi thinks he sees her smile.
The first stitch is as simple as that.