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At first, Shouto thinks it's just a coincidence. There’s millions of people in just Tokyo, let alone Japan in its entirety— the likelihood that someone has an ice quirk is high. There’s a little part of his brain that screams at him though, that little gut instinct that has helped him dodge bullets and saved him more times than he can count.
And he watches as the figure who has saved him from an errant blow crouches beside him, and eyes the bloody gash along his side. Shouto can’t see their eyes, nothing visible from behind the silvered visor that obscures their vision, but the set of their shoulders is tense.
Their hands flash in the low dawn light, and Shouto can barely follow along. He knows sign, he’s worked alongside Bakugou for three years now and he can hardly not be at least semi-fluent when Bakugou spends half his time hurling signed insults at him.
NO . DANGER. WOUND.
Shouto’s brain scrambles to decipher the hand signs, and the figure gets increasingly more frustrated with their movements. There are sirens in the air— and realisation slots into place. They are a vigilante, and the police are only streets away.
He shoots the figure a shaky thumbs up, because he’s hardly got the energy to chase them right now and Shouto really has no huge disagreements against vigilantism. He hears heroes complaining at meetings about their approval ratings dropping from lack of crime to boost them, vigilantes taking their opportunities for success.
Shouto thinks that if they are being beaten to the punch by vigilantes, maybe they should give up their licences.
He also has a somewhat healthy hatred for the heroes in the industry who only picked the showy battles, chased the cameras— he thinks it’s despicable that they aren’t there to help, like they are paid to do.
So Shouto lets the vigilante slip away, and says nothing of them in the police report.
But there is ice laying in the alleyway, and it is not Shouto’s.
⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅
It’s not the last time he sees them— he encounters them almost scarily frequently. They never speak, never lower the visor so Shouto can see their eyes but Shouto notices enough to know that they are a woman.
And from the way she lurches away from blows like she had barely seen them coming, Shouto knows she has no formal training.
And dammit it all, Shouto cares about the people around him now. It’s mostly Izuku’s fault, he usually complains to Fuyumi, but Shouto knows his husband is the best thing to ever have happened to him. Izuku has shown Shouto a world of light, of loving beyond words, beyond the silent halls of his childhood.
So the next time he sees the vigilante on a rooftop, he doesn’t leave. Shouto usually stays away from the vigilantes in his sector, if he can help it— it gives both them and him a modicum of plausible deniability within the law.
But tonight, he stays and the vigilante stays rooted in place. Shouto can’t blame them— he’s not in the top ten yet, but he’s not far away from it.
“I’ve heard people call you Wraith— is that the name you go by?” Shouto breaks the ice, so to speak— but it could be literal, because the air around them is freezing in the presence of not one but two ice quirks.
There’s a hand gesture, barely caught in the light of the setting sun.
AFFIRMATIVE.
Shouto doesn’t smile, but he knows his face softens. “You don’t know how to fight, Wraith.” He says, as blunt as ever.
Wraith’s shoulders twitch, and their hands fly into motion.
DO . KNOW. FIGHT. EMPHASIS.
Shouto does laugh a little at that, shoulders shaking. “A little bit, yes— or you’d never have survived this long. But you’re overly reliant on your quirk— ice is a volatile, versatile quirk but it won’t save you when there’s a knife in your belly— trust me, I know.”
Wraith’s body flinches at the mention of Shouto’s intensely public, terrifying near-death moment from earlier that year— Shouto very carefully tucks that information away for later.
DON’T. NEED.
Shouto sighs. “You do need to know how to fight— I protect everyone in my sector, and I make sure they stay safe. That includes you.”
White gloved hands move in the darkness. DON’T. LIVE. HERE. She finished with a wide arcing sign, to indicate she means his sector and not the building they are perched on.
“Then why are you here, if this isn’t your home?” Shouto asks, somewhat curious. Most vigilantes patrolled their home areas, the places they knew and loved.
IMPORTANT.
Shouto sighs at the non-answer, and rolls his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. You are going to learn how to fight— and it’s best to learn before you end up in a knife fight.”
Shouto thinks it’s a testament to the trust he has placed in him as a hero that Wraith does let him teach her. She’s slow… but she can duck under a fist like she’s been doing it her entire life, and it makes something ache in Shouto’s chest.
That’s a muscle memory, starkly apparent.
Shouto leaves her there on the rooftop when a call comes in— and he feels her eyes on his back, as he disappears into the city’s darkened streets.
⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅
Shouto’s not the most socially observant person, and he knows that’s saying something… but there’s something wrong with Fuyumi.
For one— she hasn’t sent him any funny stories from the school. Shouto hasn’t told her, but they are the highlight of his week sometimes, a reminder of the good things in the world when Shouto is washing the blood of someone he failed off of his hands. He likes to know there are happy, smiling, loved children out there and her weekly updates always remind him of that.
But they don’t come anymore— in fact, Shouto hasn’t heard from his sister in almost a fortnight and it is wrong . She’s usually in contact constantly, trying to get them all to communicate, to just sit down and talk — she’s long since given up on trying to get Shouto and Natsuo to sit down with their father, but she usually harasses them into at least a weekly dinner meetup.
But Natsuo hasn’t seen her either.
So Shouto does the next, most logical step and shows up on her doorstep the next day he has off from work. There’s an unfamiliar pair of boots at the door— heavy duty hiking books, wet like they’ve been scrubbed down recently and very different from Fuyumi’s usual ballet flats.
Shouto wonders if she’s got a new girlfriend, but dismisses the thought seconds later. Fuyumi would have never stopped talking about a new girlfriend—
He’s cut from his thoughts when Fuyumi opens up her door, dressed in her pyjamas at one pm in the afternoon— and there’s the unmistakable plum-navy-yellow mix of a black eye dominating half of her face.
Shouto steps inside, and shuts the door firmly behind him. The handle is coated with a thick layer of ice, and Fuyumi stares him down as she lets him pass.
Shouto’s not really sure what he’s meant to do with the mess of fury in his chest, the writhing turbulence of his stomach. He thinks of the boots, and something drops even further into his stomach— he thinks maybe Izuku was right, when he had urged him to check on his sister.
“Are you alone right now?”
Fuyumi does something very… un-Fuyumi-like, and shoves past Shouto to get to the kitchen. “Go away, Shouto. I’m not doing this today.”
Shouto very firmly stays put, and after a long tense second of eye contact, Fuyumi lights the gas on the stovetop with a sharp click. Shouto flinches, just a little at the sound— he’s glad his sister is facing away from him. There’s something… angry about the way she roots around for a second tea cup, frustration in the sharp ceramic clink of the cups as she places them none-too-gently on the wooden bench top.
Shouto feels like he is looking at a stranger wearing his sister’s face, as she stares at the kettle as it begins to heat. Shouto spends long moments categorising how many dishes are in the sink, how many forks. Fuyumi is definitely living alone.
But she’s staring at him, in the moment where it whistles and Shouto can’t hide his reaction to it. Fuyumi blinks, something like grief showing through her anger and she reaches to turn it off with a panicked haste. She doesn’t apologise, just pours the water into the cups and waits for them to steep.
They stand in silence while the tea brews, and again in silence as they move to sit in the cramped lounge room. Fuyumi sips her tea, Shouto stares into the sepia liquid and wonders why tea makes his mind think of Izuku. It’s earthy, dark— Oolong, he thinks, as he takes the first sip and hums at the taste.
“So.” Says Fuyumi, the word echoing in the silence. “Why are you here now?”
“Aren’t I allowed to check on my sister anymore? You stopped texting, and I show up to you looking like you lost a fight.” The thought strikes him like a sledgehammer to the face, and he pauses. “You didn’t get in a fight… Did you?”
Fuyumi’s spoon clinks against the mug, and she doesn’t answer him. There’s a tension in her shoulders, as they rise up closer and closer to her neck— something angry. “Considering neither you nor Natsuo give a shit about staying together as a family— no, Shouto, you aren't allowed to just barge in on me.”
Shouto winces, and stares back down into his own mug. “That’s not fair, Fu—“
Tea splashes over the sides of her mug and across the coffee table as Fuyumi abruptly slams her drink down on the glass top. “You want to talk about fair , Shouto?”
She stares down at the spilled tea with something like rage in the set of her mouth, a heated poison that slinks around the lips. “What’s not fair , Shouto, is that I have spent my entire life being your mother, because mum wasn't there! What’s not fair, is that nobody ever remembers that I am missing the only person who ever protected me, that Touya is gone and nobody will say it! What’s not fair is that I’ve tried to hold together a family that is doing it’s damned best to fall apart on purpose, and the minute I go you all trail in like you fucking cared in the first place! ”
Shouto’s mouth is dry, but Fuyumi isn’t done, one accusative finger jabbed in his direction.
“What isn’t fair , Shouto, is that you have taken up my entire life and nobody gave a shit— least of all you . I’m done with doing what everyone wants
from me— you got your happy ending, now let me have mine!”
The tea beside Fuyumi’s hands is freezing, in the lichtenberg, fern-like patterns her frost forms. Shouto stares at it, and sets his own tea cup down with hands that shake.
Fuyumi is breathing heavily, like she’s running on pure adrenaline: her eyes are wide, and wet with tears. Shouto feels so very cold, and so very young at this moment.
Because Fuyumi is right— she’s the closest thing he’s ever had to a mother through most of his life and it wasn’t fair. Shouto folds his hands into his lap to hide how they shake and tremble, but his entire body is humming like a live wire, seconds from an electrical fire.
Shouto realises he is crying the same moment Fuyumi does, when it drips into the sub-zero cradle his hands form in his lap. There is a wild, frenetic grief in Fuyumi’s eyes as she reaches for his hands— but Shouto will give her what she asks for.
He stands before she can reach him, her fingers left midair and bereft.
Shouto feels moments from cracking, splitting into pieces and he doesn’t want to be here anymore. So he leaves the bag of ice cream at the door in a pile, and the mochi he knows his sister adores, and hopes she will find them before the treats melt.
⋅•✧────── ☾ ──────✧•⋅
Fuyumi wants to say she is a good person, somewhere underneath the weight of her mistakes and the pain she has caused so many people.
But she watches something shatter in her younger brother’s eyes, a tiny fragile hope that Shouto has always looked at her with. And Fuyumi knows what it is, and why it breaks.
Fuyumi knows she has been the only reliable member of their family, the only stability Shouto has ever had in the tumult their life has always been. Their father is too much, their mother is absent and Natsuo leaves the moment he is able to.
And Touya… Touya is dead, gone and nobody ever says his name because their father wouldn’t allow it. Fuyumi misses her brother, misses the feeling of someone protecting her .
So Fuyumi watches the last speck of childish, hopeful trust shatter in her younger brother’s eyes, and knows she has done enough to keep him safe, distant.
But she cries when she finds the bag of ice cream and mochi lying at the front door. There’s a coupon, for the ice cream shop next to the school she used to work at— and Fuyumi traces her name scrawled on the back of it, and the tiny little cat face Shouto has put next to it.
And when Fuyumi pulls on her white gloves, and her silvered visor falls over her vision, she steps out into the gathering dark of the night and breathes in the smell of gasoline and downtown pollution. It is cool, summer is fading into autumn and Fuyumi cannot wait for winter in the city: it makes her fast, deadly .
And like she does every night, Wraith sets off for the Chiba sector and she does what she has always done— she keeps her little brother safe.