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Dabi is a monster and maybe he always was. Maybe he was destined to fail, to become someone who hurt and never helped and maybe he just didn’t try hard enough. Sometimes he finds it ironic that the reason he stays alive is because of his father, the person who killed him, killed parts of people he loves and yet he lives for him. Lives to destroy him, to spite him. And if he destroys the world on the way then so be it. The world is already hell so what is it if he makes it a little worse.
Dabi doesn’t know when exactly he became a criminal, maybe when he stole that first thing, or when he used his quirk to heat him up, or when he killed that first person. He remembers so well when he killed that first person, it was in an alleyway and the person he killed was mugging someone else and he remembers how he sent a blast of fire so hot and concentrated that it burned them into ash and he remembers how the victim of the mugging just looked on. He might have saved that random person but he wasn’t a good person so he grabbed the wallet that had fallen to the floor and he ran. He had by now killed so many other people that he thinks he’s lost count. Their faces and their scream melded together to make a monster that haunts his dreams and sometimes he even thinks he hears his siblings voices screaming out for help.
He can hear Shouto’s screams from his room, they echo through the walls and they feel like they are surrounding him.
“Please, please. Please stop father.” He knows that he is too weak to get up, too tired, too burnt. So he just listens to his brother scream.
Dabi thinks about the families of the people he’s killed all the time, he thinks about how they must feel how they must grieve and how they must cry. He wonders how his family felt and grieved and cried when he died. He wonders if anyone has ever asked his father if he ever thinks of the family of the people he has killed. He wonders if any hero has thought of the family of the people they have killed, the criminals they have killed. Dabi is a criminal, he is a monster, but he also has a family even if he might be dead to them.
He knows that he is dead to Shouto, he saw him at the training camp. A hero student just like his father would have wanted, he contemplates putting poor little Shouto Todoroki out of his misery right then and there. He doesn’t because he doesn’t think that he could really do it. But he thinks about it, wonders if his brother sometimes wants to be dead, he certainly does. But the most important thing was that the Shouto didn’t recognize him, he doesn’t blame him for that, it had been so long since he had seen his longer brother, that he barely recognized him, if it wasn’t for that scar and that hair he wouldn’t recognize him at all. He finds it funny how all fire users in the Todoroki family have scars, scars that they can’t possibly hide, scars that come from maybe the worst moments in their lives.
There is a scream coming from the kitchen and he bolts up from bed and he runs.
“Stop, stop.” He hears Shouto scream, he runs in fully prepared to see his father in the kitchen but what he finds will haunt him forever.
“Mom, what are you doing.” He sees the kettle on the floor and he sees his mother hand over Shouto's eyes and he sees Shouto screaming and crying and he stops because it makes no sense. While he has stopped out of shock his father comes into the room and the whole thing blows up from there. His father dragged his mother out of the room and he ran to Shouto.
“Please, please.” shouto is begging and he looks back at the doorway to the kitchen and he sees his sister.
“Yumi go call an ambulance.” She runs out of the room and he just sits on the floor of the kitchen with his little brother in his lap.
“It’s going to be ok.” Shouto just cries with one hand covering his eye.
So many memories haunt Dabi, so many and they meld together into creation that is his worst dreams. All his worst moments, all the moments he wishes he could go back and change, all the times that he was hurt and all the times that he hurt someone else. He drinks and drinks at night just so he won’t see the creature that he has created in his dreams. The alcohol numbs his brain to the point where he can barely think and yet he can think so clearly. At some point in the night he’ll black out from the drink and he’ll wake up the next morning with a hangover, but the memories won’t haunt him. He knows that the alcohol and the smoking and the drugs are slowly killing him but he knows that he is going to die anyways and he has been doing them for ages why stop now.
He is standing outside of a store and he is waiting for someone to walk up. A guy walks up to the store and he jumps in front of him.
“What do you want, kid.” The man clearly doesn’t want to deal with him but he looks down at him.
“Buy me a pack of cigarettes and i’ll give you $20.” He holds up the twenty dollar bill he had stolen from his father’s wallet and he stares at the man.
“You want me to buy you a pack of cigarettes.” The man just stares back at him.
“Yes.” He stares back at the man. The man laughs and goes inside when he comes back out he gives Touya a pack of cigarettes, takes the $20 dollars from Touya’s hands and he walks away.
Touya takes one of the cigarettes out of the box and he lights it with his finger. He puts it to his lips and he blows in and he coughs but he does it again. It feels kinda soothing but just like the cuts of his thighs it only soothes for a second.
Dabi misses his family; he knows that he might not ever see them again. He knows that he probably doesn’t deserve to see them again. He has made bad choices and he has done bad things. He knows that he is a bad person, a person so consumed by their anger that they lose themself. He watched the U.A sports festival and he watched his little brother be consumed by anger and he wondered if Shouto too will lose himself to the anger and be so consumed in anger and the thought of destroying their father that in the end he destroys himself.
Then it was Shouto's fight against that Midoriya kid. He watched as Midoriya destroyed himself fighting Shouto and he knew that Shouto wouldn’t be consumed by the anger because he had that kid standing there screaming things that no one but they can hear. He wondered if he had had a person like that kid where he would be right now. If he had someone scream at him to not be consumed by the anger he wonders what he would be doing and he wonders if at Shouto’s age he deserved to have someone help him, if he deserved for someone to care.
He wonders if the rest of his siblings somewhere are watching the same fight watching it all go down and he wonders what they think. Some days Dabi will stay up and he’ll wonder if they knew, what they would think of him, how they would feel. Dabi almost feels bad about the fact that he is going to tell the world that he is alive before his family that his family will get no warning they will just have to learn the same way everyone else does that he is alive. He wonders if he just walked into that house and told them would they believe him. He hopes they would, he knows that he doesn’t deserve for them to love him and he doesn’t deserve their forgiveness for leaving but he hopes that they would believe him, if only because they are family.
“I don’t know what’s happening, Touya. what are we supposed to do?” They were in a hospital waiting room and Fuyumi was freaking out.
“You need to calm down Yumi, you need to breathe.” Touya was also freaking out but he had to stay calm for Fuyumi.
“I can’t breathe Touya, I don’t know what to do.” Both Fuyumi and Touya had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.
“It’s going to be okay Yumi, we’re going to be okay.” Touya didn’t really know if they were going to be okay but he had to help Fuyumi calm down.
“How can you say that, Touya we have no idea what we’re doing.” Touya smiled at her as big as he could muster.
“I know it will be okay because we’re a family and as long as we stick together we’ll be ok because that's how families work.
The League of Villains isn’t his family. They are a means to an end, if he didn’t need them he would have nothing to do with them. He doesn’t want to take over the world. All he wants to do is destroy Endeavor and hero society and if their goals line up in some ways then why shouldn’t he help them. He doesn't mind being around most of them and he has to admit that they have grown as a team even if he is barely part of that team. He knows that he has a soft spot for Toga. Maybe she reminds him of his siblings and maybe she reminds him of himself. She wants the right things but maybe she’s on the wrong path. But it’s not up to him to put her on the right path, that’s not his job. He can tell her stories and he can be reminded of his sibling and of himself but he is not her keeper he doesn’t make her choice and even if he wishes that she would make different ones he can’t change her decisions.
“Why are you in the League, Dabi?” He is standing outside in the alley smoking and Toga is standing next to him.
“What?” He didn’t understand why she wanted to know.
“Why are you a villain.” Toga looks over at him and he just thinks.
“I’m a villain because no one ever helped me. What about you?” When he ask the question he doesn’t turn to her he just keeps smoking
“I want to make things better for people like me.” He thinks about her answer and he wonders if she is savable, he isn’t but but she might be.
He hopes that if the heroes catch them that they at least try to help Toga. Toga just wants a place where she can exist in peace and live how she wants to live. Maybe she can learn how to be a working member of society. He can think of lots of ways that her quirk could be useful and if society had welcomed her she could have done a lot. That's the answer to so many of these people's problems, if society had just welcomed them then they could have done a lot, they could have helped people but now they just hurt people.
Dabi was hurting people mindlessly until he found out about Stain. Stain’s ideals made sense; they gave him a purpose, even if he twisted Stain’s ideals to fit his own agenda he still believed in the basics. Heroes are corrupt. All people are corrupt in some ways by society's standards but heroes use their positions to cover up their corruption. They are not seen as corrupt; they are held up to a light that will never be met.
His father will never not be corrupt until he meets the consequences to his actions, until his corruption is exposed for all to see and for all to judge that is why he isn’t angry that he didn’t kill his father. He doesn’t want his father dead at least not yet. He wants to watch his father fall apart, wants to destroy everything he has built up and watch his father face as his world collapses. He wants his father to recognize him to see the monster he has created and grapple with the fact that it is his fault and only his. Watch as people turn against him as more and more evidence against him comes out as more and more corruption is exposed. He knows that exposing his father will hurt a lot people, people that he cares about, but at this point what does it matter.
Dabi might be a monster but he knows who made him and he will destroy his father if it is the last thing he does. Maybe that is his destiny, to kill his creator as all great monsters do. And maybe he’ll die in the process. And maybe he deserves that.