Chapter Text
Dabi's not sure what prompted him to take a walk, but seeing this opportunity laid out before him, he's glad he did.
"Ah. Little Todoroki Shouto. Daddy will be cross with you, being out in the villain ridden streets so late." He says, mockery dripping from his words.
The kid freezes, almost still as death; Dabi's lips stretch into a smirk that pulls his staples, but he doesn't care.
Shouto's head turns slowly to look over his shoulder; his eyes catch the light just this side of wrong and an involuntary shiver runs down Dabi's spine like lightning, making his hair stick up on end.
"..Touya?" He asks, and Dabi's smile almost cracks because he sounds so small.
He sounds four years old, laying in a puddle of his own puke and half melted ice, tears blurring his vison and trembling limbs too weak to stand.
Dabi tries to shake the feeling off, but it sticks like glue to the back of his ribs, curling itself up into a ball deep in the pit of his stomach.
"I'm Dabi." He says, because he is; Todoroki Touya is dead; Endeavor killed him, for all he didn't leave a body.
"You're Touya. I've been looking for you, you know." Shouto says idly, as though this is a normal conversation to be having.
"Say that name again and you'll be dead."
Shouto blinks slowly, like a cat, and tilts his head to one side confusedly the way he had as a tiny kid; his brow wrinkles like Fuyumi's, but the slight pout is all Natsuo.
Shouto turns to fully face Dabi and something is very abruptly, obviously wrong with the image.
"Dead?" Shouto asks, stepping forward-
His feet, bare and yet utterly undamaged despite the rough ground and cold night air, don't touch the ground.
"A little late for that, don't you think?" He asks, stepping, gliding, forwards again, and Dabi's heart stutters in his chest.
"No, but-"
"I've been dead for months, Touya."
"It's Dabi."
Blue flame comes to his hand and wraps itself around Shouto's wrist before he can think about it.
It's gone the next second but the damage is already done; Dabi waits for the scream, the flinch; waits to see bubbling, cracked, charred skin -
Shouto's hand is the same as it was before; He wriggles his fingers curiously, staring at them like they hold the answers to the universe.
His uniform isn't even singed-
"I told you, Touya. I'm dead." Shouto blinks slow again, eyes flicking up and down Dabi's, Touya's, burnt face.
"How?" Dabi croaks out; it feels like the world has dropped out from under him; the once-solid ground is mushy under his swaying feet, his skin is crawling and his staples itch where they hold him together, like they might pop at any second and he'll just fall apart at the seams.
One of his hands makes a half aborted motion to take Shouto's, who holds his out obligingly; he's now close enough that Dabi could reach up and brush his bangs back from his face the way they all used to when he was younger; back when he was all cold little hands and curious eyes and soft-voiced questions.
Little Sho's hands had always been cold, no matter how much he tried to warm them up, it was always cold fingers and palms; Dabi used to hold his hands to warm him up when mom.. couldn't.
Shouto's eyes meet his, the same blue and brown they've always been; lit up the way he remembers them being when he had something interesting in front of him.
It's like he's looking for something, Dabi thinks; maybe he's just trying to find the brother he'd never got to really meet.
"Endeavor did it, but really it's All Might's fault." Shouto says, breaking the silence between them, looking down at where their hands are joined. He rubs a thumb over dabi's fingers, other hand coming to flip them over and fiddle with them they way he had years ago.
"..All Might?" Dabi asks, mildly incredulous.
Shouto's eyes are sharp when they meet his again, "like we always said; a high ranked hero isn't the mark of a good person. I'm not the only one; not even the first, and he didn't even directly kill me, that was all Endeavor."
"so, how..?"
Shouto's gaze drops back to their tangled fingers.
"I told." Dabi's hand tightens, flame flaring hot under his skin, behind his eyelids. "It was getting unbearable, after the attack; he was getting worse, so I told All Might. I thought he'd help.."
Shouto laughs, dark and bitter, and Dabi's chest hurts; Shouto shouldn't know how to laugh like that.
"I should have known better."
"I shouldn't have left." The words are like glass in his throat, cutting viciously through his cheeks, leaving him bleeding and burning from the inside out all over again; he can almost taste flint and copper on his teeth-
"No." Shouto's voice is sharp, and his hands tighten around Dabi's.
His eyes all but glow as he leans in too close, all sharp intensity and determination.
"You were a child and you were almost killed; if you'd come back, he would have gone and killed you the whole way." He takes a deep breath and blinks and looks back down at their joined hands.
"Yumi and Natsu got out." He says softly. "And you did too, and i'm gone in every way but one."
He smiles wryly and Dani wonders to himself where he learned to do that;
"So in the end, we all made it out.." Shouto is quiet for a moment, hesitating.
Dabi waits patiently; he's gotten this far, what's a few minutes more?
"They know." Shouto says softly, barely a whisper; like he's scared someone might hear.
"Yumi and Natsu. They know and they want to tell, but they don't know who." He continues, tapping a formless pattern into Dabi's wrist.
"..you want us to tell?" Dabi asks, and Shouto nods resolutely.
"First it was cause they never found you; I wanted them to find me, find both of us, drag everything back to light, but.. you're alive." The sticky ball in his stomach tugs hard at Dabi's ribs; Shouto looks so little, eyes wide in awe that the brother he thought was dead is actually just horrendously burn-scarred instead; "That makes you a witness; first hand accounts.." Shouto's lips flick up into a smile. "They're hard to come by. People can see you. They'll believe you; you and Yumi and Natsu."
Shouto leans in close, -too close for comfort really, Dabi would be able to feel his breath if he was breathing but he's not, Shouto's dead.-
"They'll believe you. and Yumi and Natsu can be there instead of me, and he'll finally get what's coming to him; and you'll all be free. for real."
"What about all might, though? He's a big part of this too. At least for you." Dabi asks.
He needs to know; his brother's murderer doesn't get to live alive and unburdened.
Shouto's smile is sharp, and his eyes gleam in some way that reminds Dabi faintly of himself;
"Leave that to me and my freinds."
"..friends?"
Nothing changes about Shouto but suddenly there's something.. more, about the way he's existing.
The air around him shimmers and Dabi gets the faint impression of glowing eyes and bright, sharp smiles, two on either of Shouto's sides.
"Oh." He breathes out as the splintering cold in his spine dissipates with the vague impressions; faint laughter reaches his ears and he can't help but wonder which of the four others is laughing.
Dabi should be scared, maybe, but he can only feel proud that his brother had found people to help him.
Shouto shrugs.
"I told you I wasn't the first. Or the last, for that matter. All Might's a bastard and he's getting what's coming to him; we're making sure of that."
The laughter comes again, louder this time, and layered with different voices. Shouto's lips tick up in a small smile and he glances to his left and right, at his laughing friends that Dabi can't see and can only barely hear.
"You're the ones better suited to take Endeavor, though." Shouto says, drifting closer again.
Dabi knows well the glint in his eyes; the want for revenge, the desire to drag Endeavor through the mud by his stupid flaming hair and toss him into the grave he dug himself, too deep to climb out of.
"It's much more satisfying when it's personal, you know? We've got All Might covered, but you can scare Endeavor worse than the rest of them ever could." He nods to the not-quire-empty-air at his side.
"..You want to see him scared, Sho?" Dabi asks. He has to ask. The little brother he'd known had only ever been scared; he's never been vengeful.
But it looks good on him; the smile suits his face.
"I want him to feel the way we did." Shouto says simply. "I want him to feel like he's dying; I want him to burn from the inside out, like he's drowning on solid ground, like he's lost the battle and in doing so failed the war; I want him to be scared to look me in the face, to fear what I could do; I want him to know that he is dying; I want him to know it's us doing it, and I want to see him dead."
Shouto's head tilts and his sharp eyes, his pointed smile, bleed onto Dabi's face.
"He deserves to know what it's like." Dabi says agreeably.
Now they just have to get Fuyumi and Natsuo to help them.