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Time, mystical time
Cuttin' me open, then healin' me fine
Were there clues I didn't see?
And isn't it just so pretty to think
All along there was some
Invisible string
Tying you to me?
1.
Touya Todoroki is six years old when he and his mother is out shopping in the part of town his Father doesn't like them going to. His mother always tells him they have the best produce and farmers markets here though, and Touya's silence can be bought with two scoops of the ice cream from the old ice cream truck at the market, so it works out.
Touya has a habit of wandering off in supermarkets, and today is no different. He sees some big bins of hero plushes, and naturally he has to investigate.
He pretends that it doesn't bother him when he sees multiple All Might plushes find new owners while nobody looks twice at the Endeavor ones as he stands quietly observing, partly hidden behind a shelf of cereal, but his pride is a little hurt.
Before he has too much time to think about it, however, his mother finds him and reminds him that he has ice cream to get to, and the unfairness of the plushes are quickly forgotten.
That is until Touya is helping his mom bag their groceries, and he spots something as red as his own hair out of the corner of his eye, making him whip his head around to get a better look.
The red isn't hair, however, but feathers, feathers attached to small wings, whom again are attached to a small boy. Touya's chest burns with pride as he realizes the winged boy is carrying an Endeavor plush with stars in his strange, golden eyes, holding the toy as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
That same night, as Touya is fast asleep back in his house, on the right side of town, a small boy with small, red wings is whispering to his new plush friend about how strange it was that he saw a boy with the brightest red hair and electric blue eyes that matches the plush itself in town today.
2.
Keigo Takami is seven years old when he and his mother are all alone in the world. The police and Endeavor himself took his father away.
Endeavor.
He was real.
And he had freed Keigo and his mom from his big, loud and violent dad.
So why wasn't his mom happier?
Keigo tries his best to listen as his mother tells him how has to go steal them some food, but it's hard to listen well with so many people and sounds around. Keigo's eyes, ears and wings aren't used to this many sensory distractions.
And wasn't stealing what got his dad put in prison, anyway?
Keigo's wings shiver strangely, alerting him that someone is watching them, and he turns his head quickly to find out who it could be.
His eyes meets those of a young girl, probably around his own age, with white hair with little red specks in it and glasses neatly placed on her face. Keigo just blinks, unsure of what to do, but the girl smiles at him, and looks like she's about to say something, when her mom, who Keigo hadn't even noticed, gently pulls her along.
The girl turns back to wave at him, but before Keigo can wave back, some strange men in black suits crowd him and his mother, and his attention is once again shifting, not realizing his life is being changed forever in this exact moment.
That same night, young Fuyumi Todoroki tells her older brother about the strange bird-boy she saw in town that day, and how men in black suits suddenly came to take him and his mother away, in the middle of everything.
Touya wishes that someone would come and take him away, too.
3.
Touya is fourteen years old when he's blindly running trough the streets away from his home.
No, not his home, not anymore.
A house, yes, but no home.
His bare feet slaps loudly against the uneven asphalt ground, hot, angry tears are clouding his vision, and his ears are ringing with pain and confusion, and all he knows is that he cannot look back.
Touya barley spots the small alley almost hidden behind a dumpster and a advertisement sign outside a small store, and without giving it a second thought he turns the corner and sprints into the dark alley, finding comfort in the cool shadows.
He runs until he finds a spot between two big dumpsters, finally coming to a halt, gasping for his breath, sinking slowly down to the ground, shaking legs no longer able to hold him up.
He places his arms on his knees and rests his head on top of them, trying to calm himself down.
A small voice coming from outside his hiding spot halts the process of calming down though, and Touya whips his head up, looking defensive around.
The voice quietly tells him that he's okay, the owner of the voice isn't going to come any closer.
The voice sounds like it belongs to a boy, maybe a little younger than Touya himself, and Touya shakily asks whoever it is to please leave him alone.
The owner of the voice doesn't do that, but he doesn't come closer, either.
The voice asks if Touya is okay, if he needs help, and Touya declines, hoping this will finally get the person to leave.
It doesn't.
The two boys continues their quiet, hushed conversation on each side of the dumpster in the dark alley, as Touya finds himself whispering about his life as a failed creation, the other boy quietly listens, and when Touya is done speaking, it's so quiet he almost thinks the boy left without him realizing.
But then the voice is back, quiet but determined, telling Touya that he is not a waste, that he can probably do good things, because you never know how life is going to change in just a moment. When the stranger asks for his name, Touya gives it without a second thought, but before he can get a name back, the voice tells him to be quiet, and Touya hears someone coming running.
A harsh voice tells the other boy that he can't just dissapear like that, doesn't he know how much trouble he could make for this man, and the boy quietly apologizes, saying he thought someone was in trouble.
The last thing Touya hears of the boy is how he's being dragged along by the angry man, and the names he calls the kind, quiet boy that makes Touya's hands shake in anger.
But he knows better than to interfere, so he quietly exists the other side of the alley and makes his way back home, where nobody even noticed that he had been away in the first place.
That night Touya decides that the quiet boy from the alley was right, that he could do good things, that he might not be a total failure.
Touya decides to go back to Sekoto Peak the next day to continue his training on his own.
Keigo is lying in his own bed in the bare, white room he lives in at the Commission headquarters, unable to sleep because he is thinking about Touya, the boy from the alley.
He hopes he said the right things, and that maybe, somehow, they can meet again, maybe even be friends.
4.
Hawks is twenty-three years old when he wakes up in the hospital with his wings missing, a large part of his body and his throat badly burned, and with a horrible, heavy feeling in his heart.
He barley registers the nurses, doctors, Best Jeanist, any of the people trying to talk to him, their voices are all being drowned out by a single other voice, repeating the same two words over and over again.
Touya Todoroki.
Touya.
Todoroki.
Touya Todoroki.
Hawks isn't sure which part of the name that threw him off the most.
Touya, the quiet boy with the painful flames in his body he had talked to in the alley all those years ago, but never stopped thinking about.
Todoroki.
Endeavor, Shoto.
Fire quirks.
Dabi.
It all made such terrible sense, but simultaneously didn't make any sense at all.
Hawks knows it's not all a big coincidence.
He knows Endeavor had a son that died at fourteen.
A son that died in a training accident involving fire.
He also knew Dabi had always had something familiar about him. Something hidden behind the cold, distant veil over his electric blue eyes.
Something eerily familiar, yet so foreign.
An anger he had seen and heard hints of before, both from the boy in the alley and the Number 1 Hero.
But also a different side, a more timid, thoughtful one, one he recognized in the shaking voice behind the dumpster, and from the quiet, but determined Shoto.
Hawks has no idea where to go next.
The nights following his and Hawks big showdown, Dabi still can't find total peace with the whole situation.
He had expected a big reaction from the so-called hero, but he hadn't been prepared for the way Hawks had seemed to lose all the fighting spirit he had left as the words hit him.
Dabi tells himself that the only reason he is this upset about this is because it's a riddle he can't quite seem to figure out, but sometimes, in the darkest parts on the night, he feels like there is something else, something monumental, that he can't begin to get the grasp on, and it leaves him with an unease he cannot shake, no matter how hard he tries.
5.
Touya is twenty-five years old, and he is still fighting himself every single day.
Every single morning he wakes up and has to fight off the thoughts that are screaming at him for being here.
He closes his eyes and covers his ears, trying to push away the voices telling him that accepting help is the same as admitting defeat.
That going along with the program is betraying every single principle he has held onto the last ten years.
But then he takes a deep breath, and another one, and another one. And then he opens his eyes, removes his hands from his ears, slowly, shakily, and he looks at the things he keeps on his nightstand.
The photos and letters. The newspapers. He takes a few more deep breaths.
And then he starts his day.
The days in the facility all feels similar, almost to the point of blending into each other, and Touya still isn't sure how he feels about it.
His therapist tells him it's a part of the program, to regain a sense of routine and to be re-introduced to the concept of a normal day to day life.
Touya thinks it's hard to regain something he never had to begin with.
So, in stead of working on regaining things he never had, Touya starts focusing on introducing himself to what life suddenly has the potential to be.
He still isn't capable to see too far into the future, to plan for things more than a month away, to imagine life as something unlimited and filled with potential.
He is told this is natural, but it's also frustrating.
Another thing Touya is trying to get accustomed too, is having people seeking him out of their own, free will. He is surprised every time a member of his family shows up.
He still cannot fully meet their eyes.
Except, ironically, for Shoto's.
Somehow the straight forward, strange boy that is his younger brother brings him some form of comfort. Maybe it's because they never had a relationship to begin with, so there's not much unsaid like with Fuyumi, Natsuo and his Mother.
Maybe it's the fact that he knows Shoto says exactly what he thinks, no matter what, so he never has to wonder if there's any hidden agenda.
No matter what it is, Touya appreciates it. He hopes he finds the words to express it some day.
Another person who keeps showing up here without Touya fully grasping why, is Hawks.
No, not Hawks; Keigo. His name is Keigo.
It suits him, Touya thinks, and he sees how it makes the other mans mask fall more and more, the less he is addressed to as his alias.
His job title, the fake persona.
That's another strangely comforting thing, the fact that they have a lot of the same work to do, the two of them. They both have parts of themselves they considered to be dead, that suddenly are staring to show themselves again, parts of themselves they have to get to know all over again.
One of the days he and Keigo are sitting outside in the gardens talking about some meaningless gossip about the staff at the facility, Touya notices that Keigo isn't half as interested as he usually is, and he finally gets the winged hero to spill what's on his mind.
When Keigo looks him right in the eyes and asks if he remembers the day in the dark alley behind the dumpsters in his home town, Touya's mind goes absolutely blank.
And then it clicks.
The little boy with the bright red wings and Endeavor plush. The strange bird kid Fuyumi saw getting taken away by men in suits. The quiet voice in the alley that day, almost eleven years ago. The way Keigo had reacted to his name the ay of their fight.
It cannot be possible, there is no way.
But it is.
Because even if Keigo had no idea that Touya actually knew of him before the other way around, the look on his face tells Touya everything he needs to know.
Neither of them knows how to react, but somehow, a piece that had been missing between them for a long time snaps into place with a startling preciseness.
They hug for the first time ever when Keigo leaves that day.
The next times he visits, they hold hands.
When Keigo finally asks if he can kiss him the day Touya is being discharged from the facility, Touya thinks that Shoto will never let him hear the end of this.
Touya Todoroki was never one for believing in shit like the universe, faith or destiny or whatever. He still isn't, mostly.
But that doesn't stop him from thinking how he and Keigo had been pulled together by some unseen force, all this time.