Chapter Text
“Well something we could try would be age regression,” she says, like it’s not the most horrific thing in the world, “which could be beneficial for the two of you and potentially the whole family if you’d wish to expand it that far.”
They both blinked from their brightly colored chairs. Yellow. The whole office had yellow accents everywhere, practically blinding them. Shouto looked to the ground, then to his father, and then back to their therapist. His brain was piecing together the implications of those words that lit his left ear a flame. His father looked just as perplexed.
Ugh. He knew family therapy was a bad idea. Any mediator attempting to come between his father and himself to repair their relationship was already comedic at best. Even when Fuyumi tried to get them to talk, it was a disaster. But inviting a complete stranger into the mix?
That felt like admitting something. It made the heavy pit weighing in Shouto’s stomach drop another few inches.
“Age regression?” Enji coughed into his fist.
“Well, age regression is the act of allowing your headspace to regress to that befitting a child’s mind or younger. In this case, it would be for Shouto. It’s evident that a lot of the stress in your relationship stems from abuse Shouto suffered as a child that carried into his early teens.” She says it calmly, placating almost.
Enji stiffened at those words even having the audacity to look ashamed. There was something about the way they were blatantly ignoring him that made Shouto want to explode. He pushed down the urge to bare his teeth at the adults like some wild animal. There was something about these sessions that seemed to be bringing out the worst in him. This instinctual urge to just fight. When he and his father first started opening up to each other during these sessions, Shouto seemed to unlock a new layer to his temper. One that made him more aggressive to not just his father but more authority figures in his life. Fuyumi let it slide whenever she visited, and his father pretended not to notice all together.
The past few sessions his anger had been stemming towards the therapist. He’d started undermining her when given the chance.
Now that he was getting a taste of his own medicine, which he was willing to admit that he was, he felt his anger flare anew. He felt like he wasn’t even being talked to, like he truly was just a kid meant to wait for his father to listen and respond for him. He wasn’t a child anymore! Clearly. How the woman in front of him even let the thought of him being willing to do something like that was insane in his eyes. He wasn’t little anymore. He wouldn’t be ever again.
The pit in his stomach grew heavier.
“With age regression, Shouto would be putting himself back into a very vulnerable state of being.”
Which is why he won’t do it, he thinks angrily. Why should he have to put himself out there like that? He wanted to interrupt the soft spoken woman. Doctor Asa, he can hear Fuyumi’s voice in his head scolding him for not treating her name with the proper respect. In his defense, he didn’t think his father would entertain this idea of family counseling for that long, yet here they were five weekly sessions later.
“If Shouto can embrace this headspace, he’d have the mind of whatever age he regresses too. Sometimes it’s the age of when he last felt safe so before his toddler years, or it might be the age of trauma so he could even hold the thoughts befitting those of elementary school age. Or he might not be able to at all. It’s completely situational and it might not work for either of you but it could be something to test.” She spoke so plainly about it all. Like this was normal.
Shouto wouldn’t let it be normal.
He saw Enji nodding attentively from the corner of his eye and he couldn’t practically feel the blood leaving his body as he paled. There was no way his father was actually even considering this right?
“With him being in this regressed mindset it’s often that those who practice this method have a caregiver of sorts. Sometimes their parents or a trusted friend will step in to fulfill these roles. So Enji,” her face softened, “you’d have the chance to take care of little Shouto. To attempt to try and regain the trust of his inner child. But failing would mean losing it all again. It’s not something to take lightly.”
Shouto felt heat spreading to his face. Let his father take care of him again like he was some snot nosed brat? Oh wow, he really needed to stop hanging around Bakugou so much. Minus the phrasing, Shouto couldn’t help but still feel the same sentiment. Done were the days he relied on his dad. He was fifteen years old and he was doing just fine at UA all by himself. He got this far by his own hard work. He was learning more and more about the world by his own adventures.
He’d be damned if he lost that. There was a part of him that refused to be worried though. Enji had taught him independence. He was sure by now his father was having the same thoughts he was about the whole idea. There was no way he wasn’t! He must be in agreeance that the very thought of treating him like a baby was unbearable.
Enji was simply humoring her.
That was it.
“To have that chance again, to embrace my son the way I should have is all I’ve wanted since I’ve come to realize my mistakes. To heal what I can, what do you recommend we do to achieve this?”
Or maybe he was just completely wrong and underestimated the stupidity of his own father.
“You’re not seriously entertaining this are you?” Shouto snapped. He whipped around to stare at his father.
“Shouto-“ Enji started.
“No! I’m not doing it! Father, this is- It’s- it’s-“ he was so frustrated he couldn’t even make out the words but eventually his mind settled on, “You don’t get to make up for what you did to me!”
Enji turned to him fully and tried to rest his large hands on his shoulders, but Shouto batted him away.
“Shouto, please,” his father casted worried eyes towards the woman, “get ahold of yourself and let’s talk-”
“Oh am I embarrassing you, now?” Judging by the heat flooding his father’s face he was correct.
“How do you think I feel? I won’t be treated like a child! I won’t, I won't, I won't!” If he were standing he’d have probably stomped his foot, which would have proved his rant null and void.
“Shouto!” A firm yet gentle voice snapped him out of his rage induced fit. Chest heaving slightly, he tore his eyes away from his father.
He glared at the woman but felt some of his anger ebb away as he refocused his attention on her. Her stare was so understanding and soft. Like it was just fine for those kinds of outburst to happen. Like it was all going to be okay.
Maybe that’s why he hated coming here.
He didn’t want to be okay. He didn’t want kind and soft stares, ones that made his inside feel like they were flipping in his stomach. He was angry. He had been cheated out of a normal childhood. He’d been cheated out of having his own life. Fifteen years of being everything he had no hope of being, and she wanted to act like things were going to be okay? When everyone knew that Shouto Todoroki and his entire family were the exact opposite of whatever this woman was envisioning in her head. It was laughable.
He would never be okay.
“Shouto, honey, please sit and face me.”
He thought of melting his bright yellow chair into a plastic tar, but ultimately decided against it, and stood just to plop himself down with his arms crossed, openly glaring at her. Part of him scoffed at how childish that must have looked to the two adults, the other smaller, angrier part of himself felt pride in it.
“Now, I know you might have felt left out when your dad and I were just talking. I want you to know I was going to let you talk right after. I simply wanted to guide your father into understanding, before you and I would chat about it. I would’ve given you the same talk to help you understand more of your role as well. When that was finished I was going to open the floor for a peaceful discussion.”
He knew he was pouting at the light scolding. For some reason it stung so much more than it normally did.
“Shouto, please look at me.”
The words were so softly spoken he had no choice but to obey.
“If you’re comfortable with it. Can we talk about the way you responded to your father?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek and nodded, dropping his eyes to the yellow shag rug under his feet.
“Why did our conversations make you respond the way you did? Can you walk me through how you were feeling?”
Ugh. He moved from chewing on his cheek to his lip.
“You weren’t including me. You were talking like I wasn’t here.”
She wrote something down. Part of him wanted to demand to see what it said, the other wanted this meeting to be over already. They still had thirty minutes left though.
“It didn’t feel good to have us adults not acknowledge you, did it?”
He hated the way she said adults, even if that’s what he’d been calling them. He was big too.
“It wasn’t fair.” He was mumbling, toeing at a piece of lint caught in the rug.
“I’m sure it seemed that way. It’s hard to wait your turn sometimes. Especially when you have lots to say.”
He nodded, eyes finally drawing up the front of her desk. She had yellow chicken stickers decorating the front. They were the only part of this room he liked. It reminded him of the stickers Mina used to decorate her folders and notebooks.
“It is. I-I didn’t mean to yell…”
“I know you didn’t, Shouto. Your father knows too. Sometimes we have really big feelings and they just build and build until we can’t keep them in. You’ve been feeling that a lot here lately, haven’t you?”
Acknowledgment levitated that heavy stone in the pit of his stomach. The odd relief it brought made warmth rush his face and his eyes sting. Yes he had. So many big feelings bubbling up, especially being housebound and not even with his siblings. Ever since the war ended everyone insisted he go to his father’s to be safe. He didn’t wanna stay with his Dad. Stuck in that insufferable house with both Enji and, it made his blood boil to even think the name, Dabi. He wanted to be in the new house, where Natsuo and Fuyumi and his mother now lived. He wanted to burrow into the soft covers of his futon in his new room that was painted a light blue and smelled like Fuyumi’s cooking.
He had nightmares every time he closed his eyes, his father was insufferable, he missed his siblings, he hated the way his mom was finally allowed home two weeks ago and he couldn’t even see her.
Most of all he missed his friends. The thought of them conjured a feeling so bad it made him curl into bed in the middle of the day until he could breathe without the threat of tears.
“It’s, it’s not fair,” he gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might crack.
“No it’s not. Not for you to be carrying around all these emotions. I’ve been noticing these ever since our second session and we started talking about the beginning of your training. That’s where you said it all really began which makes it extremely sensitive to address.”
He nodded, ignoring the way his leg was starting to shake. Sensitive. He’d always been sensitive according to his father. Of course he won’t say it now, not to his face but Shouto was well trained to know what his father was thinking. Even now, without having to look he knew the mantra circling his father’s very thoughts.
Sensitive, weak, small.
“It’s scary, I bet, to be vulnerable after everything that’s happened. You’ve been proven one too many times that you simply can’t talk about it, and I can’t blame you for being defensive about actively stepping into the past.”
She straightened some papers on her desk and set them aside. She laid both her hands face up, no longer staring at him as she spoke. It made it worse somehow to hear the words he’d been too afraid to confront from such an earnest position from someone who genuinely wanted to right the wrongs.
“Being so openly dismissed by people you thought you could trust, it hurts us in a way that makes us want to build walls. It makes you want to push away those who care so you don’t have to face that heartbreak if they doubt you like others have. You don’t want people to know about your childhood, it’s easier to bury those memories down then to relive them all over again. When that happens, you set apart this side of yourself.”
Next to him, his father’s chin was to his chest, eyes closed as if he were sleeping. Feigning passive behavior to cover the real thoughts he felt. Shouto wanted to throw himself to the ground and scream, but her melodic words kept him grounded, enough for those impulsive thoughts to stay thoughts for the time being.
“This part of yourself can be a number of things. It could be emotions and being apathetic to hide your moods, things you used to enjoy before times of trauma, and sometimes it’s our whole identities. We push this version of ourselves down in order to protect them and put on a new face. We change in order to survive, but that part of ourselves that we buried is still there and we are still protecting this version of who we were. We don’t want to have to go through that again. You’ve been protecting that part of you for so long, Shouto.”
“I can handle it,” he doesn’t know where the words are coming from but they fly out before he can stop them, “I can handle it. I’m better now. Nobody else should have too. It’s a-“
The word died on his tongue, eradicated by the tightening in his throat.
“I’m not weak!”
He ignored the way his voice cracked.
“That part of yourself, Shouto, when you reach out to it, what does it sound like?”
The heels of his palm dig hard into his eyes as the sting behind them makes his nose burn. He only managed to shake his head at her, but when she didn’t make a move to respond, the words in the back of his throat clawed their way out. He didn’t want to say it.
That voice was desperate, naive, so lost and it wandered his mind like a ghost in a graveyard. It was a pest to be ignored. It had too. If it got its way they would just get hurt all over again, but here it was again pushing past all rational thought.
“It’s so small,” and he hated himself for the way he had to reel back a sob, “it’s so weak.”
“That’s because it is. Shouto, that’s your inner child. The child you used to be. You’ve been keeping it protected behind walls, and you’ve never had the chance to talk about him before. It was too much of a risk too. Now that it’s out in the open, it’s scary to talk about him when all you want to do is take care of him.”
He's crying. He’s actually crying in useless family therapy and in front of the chicken stickers no less.
“Shouto. You’ve done such a good job taking care of him. You did everything you could for him and you should take great pride in that .”
The flood waters broke and he began to bawl. To hear it, to hear the truth that he didn’t even know but lived within him, it felt like something had been lifted off his shoulders.
“He’s so small!” He cried into his hands, and didn’t try to fight the large hand that settled on his back.
“He is. He’s very small, and he’s fragile too I bet. You want to just keep him safe, but maybe hiding him isn’t the way anymore. He’s upset too, just like you are. I think for you to start to heal with your father, with all that’s happened, you need to let him out. This inner child hasn't been able to process all he’s been through. For him to grow and for you to heal, you have to let him feel his pain.”
He almost can’t hear her over his sobs, but the words pierce his heart and run ice through his veins.
“It shouldn’t have been in the first place, but it’s not your responsibility to take care of him anymore Shouto, you have someone who wants to love him. Someone who also wants to protect him. It’s time for him to feel that affection. For you to be loved.”
Everything shatters and crashes. His chest swirled with a mix of emotion and that pit split in his stomach.
He wailed into the palms of his hands.
His dad wants him. His dad loves him.
His dad wants to take care of him.
Weak, weak, weak.
He whipped his head up to look at his father, tears and snot making their way down his chin. The unspoken request was granted as his father left his chair to wrap a big arm around him.
“I’m here. It’s okay, now, for you to let it go,” there’s hesitation in his voice, “To let him go. I’ll be there when you’re ready.”
With the attention of his father and the soothing presence of Doctor Asa, eventually his cries died down to sniffles. He groaned weakly, resting his face in his hands. Loyal to his word, his father didn’t leave his side even when he calmed down.
“That was very good, Shouto. That was so important to let out, I want you to know that. I’m proud of you and if you’re done for the day, we can leave things her,” she passed tissues to Enji who dabbed at his cheeks, “but if you think that it’s possible to continue, we can have that discussion. It might be something you and your father can attempt before our next session.”
He sniffled, his father dabbing the tissue just under his chin. Briefly they met eyes, staring at each other with overwhelming uncertainty. Then his dad’s fiery eyes melted into something warm and overwhelmed him with the feeling of home.
In a moment of spontaneous trust, Shouto leaned into the arm still wrapped around him. He turned his attention fully to the woman, heart beating faster than a bird’s wings in his chest.
The shakey nod seemed to lift the pit from his stomach entirely, until he was just empty once more.