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Shouto didn’t know how to process the news. It- it made sense , and he knew that if his damn father hadn’t kept them apart as much as kids he would have figured it out himself. A lot of things would have been different, he supposed, without his father.
He didn’t know how to tell Fuyumi and Natsuo the truth, and after a seemingly endless meal together, he finally forced the words through the hurricane in his mind, and past his lips.
“Touya is alive,”
His words were met with silence, a sudden stilling of movement across his periphery. He knew if Midoriya were here, he’d do a much better job - he was just so much better at the emotional things.
“What?” Fuyumi asked from over Natsuo’s shoulder, after a long stretch of silence, both of of them staring at him.
“I can’t tell you much about the situation, but the hero Hawks has been gathering intel from the League of Villains recently,” he said, staring at his hands folded on the table in front of him, unable to meet their eyes. “The villain, Dabi? He has a fire quirk, have you seen him on the news?”
He risked a glance upwards. Fuyumi’s hand was over her mouth, as if she was trying to physically hold back her reaction, whilst Natsuo’s face still held the empty shock of when his brother’s name was mentioned.
“The- the man with the scars?” Fuyumi’s voice broke, failing her on the last word. Shouto could barely remember Touya, his connection with his siblings being only really allowed to form after he died, and with him being so young at the time. But they were brothers , and Shouto could recognise him well enough beyond the burned voice, the burned skin, the burned everything .
He couldn’t stop thinking of the summer camp. The way Dabi had looked him in the eye, just feet away, an easy grin on his face and Bakugou trapped between his fingers. The way he said “How sad for you, Todoroki Shouto.” Before disappearing into nothingness.
“Does Endeavour know?” Natsuo asked. It was something they never spoke about between them, calling their father by his Hero name. They just all did it. It gave them a distance from him that Shouto, at least, appreciated immensely.
“Yes,” Shouto replied. “But he wasn’t the one to pass the information on to me. Hawks told me himself. I haven’t seen Endeavour since I heard.”
“But you’re interning with him-” Natsuo said.
“I know. He’s left the three of us to his sidekicks,”
The silence swept back over them, and Shouto desperately wished Fuyumi hadn’t already cleaned the dishes so he could give himself something to do.
Natsuo eventually crumpled, head landing in his arms on the table, shoulders shaking. Fuyumi started sobbing, only halfway back to the table from the kitchen after stopping. Shouto stared at the thin layer of frost creeping up his right forearm from his fingertips, and felt the humming of heat from his left. They balanced each other, in a nerve-numbing kind of way.
“How is he sure? How can Hawks be so sure that it’s him?” Natsuo demanded, words muffled.
“Because it is him,” Shouto began, starting to doubt how his siblings might feel about his lack of emotional reaction. “I’ve-” He stopped, his throat closing up on him. He cleared it, and started again. “I’ve seen him before, Natsu, a few times. Looking back, of course it was him.”
Fuyumi’s sobs shuddered, her face buried in her palms. Shouto stood, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder to lead her to sit.
“He knew me. In retrospect, it would have been strange for him to have not, but he-” Shouto paused, pressing his elbow to his head so as to bury ice cold fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. “He knew my name. He knew me.”
Eventually, the tears subsided, leaving Natsuo with red eyes and fuyumi with an entire pink splotched face. Shouto just had heavy eyelids.
“What do we do now? What can we do?” Fuyumi asked, eyes searching.
“I don’t know.”
When it came to telling others, Shouto was even less sure. How was he meant to tell people of his problems when they didn’t experience them? Midoriya would surely have something to say about that particular line of thinking, but unfortunately, Midoriya couldn’t read his thoughts.
When they returned to school, he had to deal with Bakugou complaining about Endeavour’s absence during their internship.
“I’m sure he had a good reason, Kacchan. He is the number one hero, after all, and-”
“He shouldn’t have bothered with us if he was going to just ditch us with his shitty sidekicks! I didn’t learn fucking anything!”
Shouto knew that was a gross exaggeration, had seen Bakugo’s progress with his own eyes, but was far from debating that point with him. “No, Midoriya is right, Bakugou. He was-”
He cut himself off, unsure of what to follow that up with, which seemed to annoy Bakugou even further. “He was what, half and half? Your shitty old man up to things only you’re allowed to know, huh?”
He didn’t bother replying.
He had just woken up from a nightmare, shaking, still replaying it in his mind. He had watched Endeavor hoist Fuyumi up by her throat, the same way he used to do to Shouto. Fuyumi was young again, the small, unattainable warmth Shouto used to long for through windows overlooking the courtyard. “Try. Harder.” His father had said through gritted teeth, throwing his sister to the ground at his feet. He could see the bruises that had formed around her throat, the same as the ones he used to have to twist and turn to see in the mirror.
When his sobs reached his ears, they sounded just how they did back then, when he was always alone outside of training with his father. Always in the dark. When he looked back up again, it was to the scarred, patchwork face of- of his brother. “How sad for you, Todoroki Shouto.” Just as he had tried to scramble away from the engulfing blue flames, he sat up in bed, choking from smoke that wasn’t real, the name on his lips one that he hadn’t allowed to exist in his mind for a decade.
He had found himself outside of Midoriya’s room, but refused to knock. It was late, or rather early, and Midoriya’s sleep pattern was already a cause for concern, according to Iida. He continued down to the ground floor to get some water.
He ended up on the couch, a third glass of water forgotten on the coffee table, staring into space.
What should he do now? What could he do now?
Time wasn’t a concept easily grasped by Shouto after waking up from a nightmare and, after both an impossible stretch of time and a fraction of a moment, the sky outside the long windows in the common room started to lighten.
And, with the sunrise, came the return of Eraserhead.
Shouto found it vaguely concerning that he didn’t notice him enter, when they all know for a fact that Aizawa usually made a habit of making noise when he returned (it was for ease of mind. Whether or not it woke anyone up, villains wouldn’t make such clumsy noises when entering the building. They’d either come in silently or forcefully).
His staring into space was interrupted by the feeling of a dip in the sofa as another body sits on the other end. His teacher, still in his hero costume, gave him undivided attention. “Up for talking?”
Shouto didn’t know how to respond. Was it technically classified information? He’d already told civilians. Did he even want Aizawa to know? How would it alter future interactions?
He stayed silent.
The man sighed imperceptibly, barely more than a regular exhale of air, and stood. “What’s your favourite tea?”
“Momo’s spiced one,”
He moved to the kitchen, flipped on the under-cabinet light, and filled the kettle. They both waited for it to heat, and Shouto carefully listened as Aizawa poured two cups of tea and then drained the rest of the hot water down the sink.
He returned with two cups of the spiced tea. “I thought I’d try it,”
Shouto smiled, barely, and watched the steam rise from his cup from where it sat in front of him on the coffee table.
Aizawa didn’t press for answers. He didn’t watch Shouto. He sipped his tea, hummed, and leaned back into the armchair he sat in. Which might have been what spurred him to speak.
“My brother is alive.”
Aizawa’s attention was immediately drawn back to him. He didn’t place his mug back on the table, just cradled it in his lap, and sat up.
“Your brother?”
Shouto hummed. “I barely knew him, he supposedly died when I was little. Hawks, he- he’s infiltrating the league right now, he texted me-” Aizawa leant over, offering to take the mug from his shaking hands. He let him take it.
“It makes so much sense , looking back. I can’t even hide in denial, which is what I suppose my father is doing. I haven’t seen him since he presumably found out. He’s trying to ignore it.”
“He’s a villain, then?” Aizawa’s voice was perfectly measured, but didn’t come across as if he was treading glass. He was very good at talking to fragile teenagers, a year and a half into their careers at UA.
He stared into his tea again. Both heat and cold make steam - he heats up water, it steams, he freezes it, it steams. Maybe he was the steam. The common product of fire and ice. What was Touya?
“I-” Shouto’s voice was hoarse, as it often was. Too many hours awake without using it. “Dabi.”
Aizawa stiffened, minutely, taking in the situation Shouto had found himself in. He was surprised he managed to say it, frankly, after his brain seized the words behind his throat following him managing to choke them out to his siblings.
“Shit,” Was Aizawa’s eloquent response.
Shouto laughed. It was small, barely there at all, but he laughed. “Yeah. Yeah, shit,” they lapsed back into quiet.
“How’d a hug go down, over there?” Aizawa asked, not yet moving, offering without expecting. Shouto found himself nodding, and so he carefully returned his mug to the table, and eased onto the sofa next to him with a sigh.
Shouto wrapped his arms around his teacher’s ribs, and shoved his face into his capture scarf, as his eyes finally welled up. He sighed, shakily. Aizawa smelled like fresh night air and laundry detergent. It was welcome, especially compared to how stuffy the air seemed to be.
Shouto was unbearably grateful. Here sat an adult, a pro, a teacher- someone with all the answers, who offered none. Just comfort. It was okay for Shouto to not have the solution if this man didn’t have it.
“It’ll be okay, kid.” Aizawa said, arms around him, cheek pressed to the side of his head. “One way or another, It’ll be okay."