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Enji has been planning his death since he retired.
It's the logical thing to do, the next step in a greater plan. Enji has accomplished what was necessary; Japan is safe. Touya is receiving care in incarceration. The family he created and let burn in his endeavor (ha. ha ha.) is doing well without him in it. The HSPC has been torn down and the future, such as it is, looks bright. The young heroes who carried the war on their backs finally have the space to heal and grow, with a deeper understanding of what being a hero means than Enji ever managed in his long career.
So he retired. There wasn't as much fanfare as when All Might was forced to step down but honestly after Touya's public broadcast it's pretty much a miracle that Enji doesn't have to deal with a mob on the way out. Sure, they appreciate that he kept order and managed the forces of good as long as was necessary. Sure, they appreciate that he took the hits and kept getting up.
That doesn't mean they have forgotten, or ever will.
That's fine. That's the legacy he created with his obsession and pain, his own greed and pride. If any thought is spared for foolish Endeavor, let it be about how he burned too hot and too long and destroyed everything around him. Maybe there will be a footnote about how he helped save the world, but he sort of hopes not. He wants that ink to be dedicated to Shouto, and Izuku, and even that loudmouth with the exploding hands.
So.
It's time for Endeavor to do what he does best- to burn, one final, glorious time.
There is nothing left for Enji now. He has associates but no friends and he isn't particularly looking forward to years spent alone drinking whiskey in his self-imposed tomb of an estate. Enji makes a plan.
He's had his papers in order for almost four years now, everything set up for Fuyumi's daughter and Natsuo's incoming child, though if Natsuo accepts a dead man's money it will be a miracle. He hasn't taken a call from Enji since the war ended. Shouto too will be looked after, and so will Rei. The agency's already in Burnin's capable hands, ready and waiting for Shouto to decide what to do with it. Take it for his own? Sell it? Demolish it in an explosion of fire and ice?
Enji's a little sad he won't be around to see it, but Shouto probably wouldn't want him there anyway.
Enji picks his spot with care and over a period of weeks, he burns a perfect circle into the barren ground, cooking the clay in the soil. This will help keep the fire contained. He cuts down tree branches and digs a ditch, all the basic fire safety he had learned and had in turn taught Touya and later Shouto.
Fat lot of good it had done, but.
Very spilled milk.
In the end he thinks he has a nice setup. He leaves no note. If he's done his job right, no one will know he's gone until Fuyumi's unanswered calls finally bring someone out. Perhaps they will find his spot, if the wind hasn't already carried his ashes away. Perhaps they won't. One last tickle for the true crime weirdoes in his alarming fanbase, he supposes.
On the day Enji chooses to die it is beautiful. A cool spring morning, with just a slight breeze. He can smell flowers on the wind.
He takes a moment- one last moment- to listen to the sounds of the world around him. He never appreciated them before.
Then Enji Todoroki pulls hellflame into his chest, and he ignites.
-
Enji wakes up in his circle. The clothes he had been wearing were gray soot on his very naked, very much alive body. He remembers the fire, the way he had compacted it close and tight, a prominence burn from his ribcage to his groin. He remembers feeling his eyes begin to bubble and then-
Then-
What happened?
He stumbles back down the hill into the estate, which is precisely as he left it. When he makes it to his bathroom, he stares at his own reflection.
The creases between his eyebrows- from years of frowning, years of heat- they're smoother. So are the edges of his now iconic nomu-induced scar.
Does he have fewer gray hairs than he had this morning?
He makes a phone call.
-
There are good and bad times to find out about surprise midlife quirk developments.
This is a bad time.
“…what?”
The doctor taps his chart. “It seems that- exposure to heat of that nature, for that long- it…well. There’s no other word for it. It rejuvenated your cells. Not a complete cellular breakdown but- this is fascinating, Endeavor. We need more tests.”
Todoroki Enji- Flame Hero Endeavor- stares at the doctor like she has two heads. She has noted the changes he had called her about, and a few more besides. She'd been the one to point out that his nose was no longer slightly crooked, despite being broken multiple times. It's as if three or four years have just...disappeared.
“I..burned myself into youth?” Enji asks stupidly.
“That seems to be the case, yes- I assume you…didn’t know about this?”
“No,” he says, and it’s the way he says it. Any other man like Endeavor- a former Pro Hero, a man of action- would be borderline ecstatic at the idea that he could use his quirk to fight the ravages of time.
But Enji sounds bleak. Blown out. Hollow.
And she has to ask.
“Endeavor…why were you burning so hot?”
"Testing out new flameproof materials for the estate," he lies smoothly and she lets him because he's a hero, if a tarnished one.
"Let me take a few more blood samples," she says.
-
Okay.
So fire…is out.
Ha ha.
Damn it.
He’d been hoping to make it clean- leave no body anyone had to deal with. Ashes, maybe. Something someone could sweep into a box and get buried with no fanfare. Enji hadn't wanted to make his family deal with his presence anymore, living or otherwise, but that doesn't seem possible now. If burning does- whatever the hell that was- then he can't rely on it.
Pills it is!
He does the math and the reading and wipes his computer afterwards. He can almost hear Natsuo scolding him about proper internet etiquette like he hadn’t been around for the dot com boom, hadn’t been one of the earliest adopters of the tech. He could code rings around his secondborn. Hell he even knows what a meme is. Used to send them to Hawks sometimes, just to hear him sputter and swear and giggle.
It takes a little time to get all that Enji needs, since buying in bulk would throw flags. Still, eventually he’s got bottles and he’s got whiskey. He'll start with water, just to make sure he gets the amount he needs, but one should live a little when they're dying.
Enji decides on the couch in one of the disused sitting rooms, where he can slump off onto the floor and be hidden from the door.
He starts with a wry toast towards the door on the opposite side of the hall, where Touya’s shrine remains. He knows he should take it down, that Touya is alive and well in a ward so deep it will be a miracle if he ever sees the sun again but at least someone is listening, cleaning up Endeavor's mess.
Still. A part of Touya did die. So it remains.
“Soon,” he promises his little boy, and he takes the first pill.
-
A portion of the Todoroki estate is in smoking ruin and Enji is sitting on the back of an emergency response vehicle. The firefighters are mainly looking for ember chunks now. He was told he'd been found naked on the floor beside a couch on fire, everything around him melted and destroyed.
That included the pill bottles, by sheer dumb luck, but not the whiskey. No, that had been within reach. Enji can see the headlines now.
“Todoroki, your house is on fire.”
“I’ve noticed, Miruko.” He has no idea what she was doing in his neighborhood. He doesn't ask, she doesn't tell.
“Do you have any clothes on?”
Enji pulls his blanket around a little tighter just in case she gets any ideas. “No.” They hadn't let him go back in, despite the fact that he is more flameproof than their entire crew.
“…I mean looks like retirement’s treating you good! You look younger. Maybe it’s the lack of stress- did you get work done on your scar? It seems lighter.”
"...lighter?"
"Yeah." Miruko pulls a compact out of a pocket somewhere on her uniform and pops it open. "Take a look, Flame Daddy."
He is never going to forgive Hawks for that one.
Enji leans in and examines his reflection. More smooth skin where wrinkles should have been. A scar that is starting to look more like a beauty mark.
“…SON OF A-"
The back end of the response vehicle- bumpers, doors, the whole shebang- doesn't make it.
But at least someone finally gets him a goddamn pair of pants.
-
“Dad, you lit the HOUSE on fire. I really do think you should stay with me and Kazuma for a little while.”
“That’s not necessary, Fuyumi.”
"Not NECESSARY? Dad! You nearly burned down Touya's room!"
"I'm not proud of it."
"They're saying you were drunk!"
"Alcohol might have been a deciding factor..." Enji says, scrolling down the page on his phone. Damn it if he could only get his hands on quirk cancelling bullets he KNOWS they have some stashed away in a lab.
Then he'd have to talk to Brand New Heroic Oversight Coordinator Wing Hero Hawks and he can't.
He can't.
“Dad. Please, please come over this weekend. Botan would love to see you.”
Enji thinks of his grandbaby. So perfectly round, with her dad's green eyes and her mom's hair.
“..I’ll think about it, Fuyumi. Okay?”
“Okay. Bye dad.”
He hangs up, eyes the choices. Minimal- but any one would get the job done. All he needs is one good shot at close range. Maybe if he starts with his brain his entirely unnecessary increasingly annoying quirk won’t activate.
Third time’s the charm, right?
-
Of all the people Aizawa Shouta expects to find on his front step at two in the morning it is not retired pro hero Todoroki Enji, looking younger than he should and holding the crushed remains of a handgun. He appears to be dressed in sweatpants he stole off someone’s laundry line and smells faintly of smoke. There is dried blood at the edges of his mouth.
“I will pay you any amount of money to take my quirk long enough for me to die,” Enji says. “Right now. You want every credit card I have? It’s yours. You want the cars? You can have them. The insurance policies on the cars? My wristwatch collection? An entire cat shelters' worth of felines? My possibly undead firstborn son? Fine. Just help me get this DONE.”
Aizawa takes a deep breath.
“Why don’t you come on in, Endeavor,” he says.
-
"You've tried..how many times?"
Enji frowns, loudly. "This was attempt number three."
Aizawa takes a deep drink of coffee. Across the table Yamada Hizashi, his hair flatter than a dead heart monitor, stares.
"-and it just keeps happening! Every time I don't die. instead I wake up and I'm YOUNGER by a few years. They're running tests." He tugs his hair in one hand, exasperated. "I am not this bad at inflicting bodily harm. I am a PROFESSIONAL at it, I can cite three forums and a whole discord server about my capacity for harm. Since it cannot be me it must be my quirk, so if you could please-"
"Todoroki," Yamada whispers, "Why? Why are you trying to kill yourself?"
Enji blinks.
"Isn't that obvious?"
Aizawa shoots his partner a look before Yamada can build up a head of steam. "Not to us, it's not. Could you lay out your reasoning?"
"I'm a terrible man who no longer serves a societal purpose with no meaning or anything to look forward to?" Enji says, confused. "I mean...it's done. The system's changed, I retired. Rei and the others are doing alright, the agency functions without me, and half this country wants me dead anyway. I don't see the harm in obliging them."
"Did you hear that, Shouta," Yamada says, eyes wide. "He doesn't see the harm in it."
"Endeavor," Aizawa says, "you- made your mistakes-"
"publicly broadcast ones, yes," Enji says testily and the air smells briefly of smoke.
"Yes," Aizawa acknowledges, "but you have also done your best to atone for them. More than a lot of other men who had your same power. I understand feeling adrift without pro-hero work, but that doesn't mean you need to end your life."
Ah, Enji can see where this is going.
"It's not a case of being depressed, Eraser," he says, "it's just logical."
"Logical?" Yamada squeaks.
Enji nods. "Yes. If I'm gone, Shouto no longer has anything to think about regarding how my conduct will affect his. I'm the last number one using the old system, so we get rid of the dregs of that. It makes room. I don't mind making room."
Yamada makes a noise that is almost a screech and if he'd put his quirk into it Enji's sure glass would have broken but instead Aizawa says, "I follow your logic but I disagree."
"Why?"
"You're a wellspring of information, Endeavor. You're one of the longest serving pro heroes, and until the day you retired you ran patrols every day. That's knowledge the new generations will need- not just Todoroki-kun and his friends but those who come after him. It would be selfish to drain all that way."
"Besides," Yamada says, seemingly having recovered, "every time you...try... you wind up rewound just a little bit more, right? What happens if you go too far?"
"It would take a long time," Enji points out. "I don't know the limits of this- development."
"You said a few years come off each time you- expire," Aizawa says slowly. "Endeavor. How old are you?"
"Sixty three, what does-" Enji pauses.
Aziawa watches him. One of their cats- a cream colored girl with jewel eyes- comes sauntering in. Examining the company around the little table she struts her way to a food bowl and begins eating, uncaring for their petty concerns.
When Enji doesn't speak Aizawa says, "Are you sure this is a new development?"
-
Is it?
Enji makes a list of his all time biggest fights, the brawls that got him front page news and plenty of youtube views. The High End is on the list but Enji knows he didn't die in that fight- Hawks would have noticed. Hawks would have said something.
And he wouldn't have this delightful skidmark.
Yamada examines the list- written on their tabby cat stationary in Enji's practiced hand- and whistles, ignoring Aizawa's censuring look. "you got punched a LOT, Endeavor," he says.
"Work hazard," Enji grunts, looking the list over. Maybe that one? No. What about- no.
He taps one. "A building fell on me."
He remembers the crushing weight, the rebar in his leg. The thought of how pathetic it would be for someone to tell Rei he'd been crushed by cement like an ant.
Everyone had been talking about that fight for days afterwards. What footage remains is grainy but Aizawa brings it up. There's nothing for long moments, the villain with his rock hands quirk turning to escape from the crowd.
Then.
Light.
A pillar of fire, only as wide as a man, no inferno but a beacon. Endeavor comes roaring up from the hole his quirk has made and the rest of the fight is over quickly. Of course he wouldn't notice, he was wearing his hero costume and that is as fireproof as fireproof can be. If he were at home, say, taking pills, or in the backyard making sure the bullet wouldn't outpace a tree to lodge in, well.
"Shit." Enji whispers.
"Hey, Endeavor," Yamada says weakly, "I don't think you can die."
-
Is it just him?
No one- not his father, not his grandfather, no one else has ever written anything about it. Enji spends a solid week hunting through every scrap of paper in the estate searching for a line or a mention and comes up with fuck all.
Does Touya have this?
Does Shouto?
If they do, if Touya hadn't been in a coma- if he'd just DIED- would he have-
Enji needs air.
"Why me?" he asks the pavement, the passing cars, the long winding sidewalk up to the local shrine.
"Why me?" he asks the kami there as he makes his prayers.
"Why me?" he demands of the surrounding trees, the setting sun.
"WHY ME?!" he screams as he burns in his courtyard that night.
He burns, and he burns, and he burns until he lays limp in a scorchmark that was tile once.
Just something else he's managed to destroy.
-
The thing is Enji knows what he's doing is wrong.
He's done a lot of wrong things, though, in his life. There are blogs about them now. Sometimes he finds himself reading them just to refresh his memory. No matter how he justifies it, no matter what logic he tries to apply the facts are the facts: something is wrong.
It doesn't take a genius to know that making three attempts on one's own life is a cry for help but Enji does not deserve help. Help is for good men. Help is for people who don't push their sons to self destruction, or let their wives (ex, ex wives) fall into mania. Help is for someone Fuyumi could trust. Help is for the man delicate little Botan, only a year old, thinks her grandfather is.
Help is for people who didn't let themselves be swallowed whole by Endeavor and then burn the world to keep him fed.
Enji does not deserve help.
But there is one person who he knows, without a doubt, will give it.
He scrolls through his phone and hits dial.
-I am here!-
Enji closes his eyes and swallows the final dregs of his pride.
"Help," he whispers, and begins to cry.
-
Toshinori Yagi does help.
He helps Enji clean up. He helps make tea. He listens.
He touches Enji's hand and says, smile as kind as it was the first time Enji had seen and hated him, "Let me make some calls."
They start the therapy with teleconferencing, because the idea of being seen entering a therapist's office makes Enji flame up. He's not proud of that.
(turns out it is a case of being depressed. And anxious. And riddled with years of PTSD. Who knew!)
(Enji. Enji knew.)
Calling Yagi sort of inevitably brings in Aizawa and Yamada. Occasionally they have Eri, doing homework at the kitchen island, or Shinsou when he's off patrol. Suddenly there are people in the estate. It's weird.
Enji can't decide if it's good.
It is something, though.
-
The doctor comes back with all sorts of charts and numbers and yes, yes it seems like this is A Thing, quantified by points and platelets and other important medical words.
Which means Enji has to tell someone about it.
Well. One someone.
He sends Shouto a text, praying that like every time before he is either left on read or a demand is made on a credit card. A car. Something. Be selfish, Shouto, be selfish, be-
I'll come by tonight.
Fuck.
-
Enji is not as sneaky as he thinks he is and Miruko is a blabbermouth.
At least this is what he gathers when his son sits, arms crossed and unimpressed, and asks, "What did you do?"
Enji says, because honesty is the best policy now, "didn't fucking die."
Which leads to all sorts of interesting places.
None of them are pleasant.
In the end, Shouto hugs him.
It's the first hug he's gotten in- he doesn't know.
"Get your blood tested," he whispers into his son's hair.
"I will," Shouto promises, and lets go.
-
Enji notices the first feathers as the summer winds into the fall. Aizawa has all but bullied him into looking into a part time position at UA as a lecturer, specifically on strategy and tactics.
They're red as rubies and scattered across his lawn.
Enji looks at them for a long moment. At one point he'd thought he'd never see them again. He remembers writhing pain, careful finger combing. An almost.
Feathers are as combustible as he is not, but he leaves them be.
-
The feathers show up in the house and that is a step too far, because one is outside the door of his office, his office where he has his therapy appointments. He picks that one up and squeezes it.
"Don't you dare," he says, and lets it fall. It twitches.
Message received.
-
Tsunagu comes with Yagi on card night. He has an armful of denim and a scolding ready.
"He misses you."
"He knows where I live."
"You know where he lives."
"Did he ask you to do this?"
"No, I simply recognize a perfect pair when I see them."
Enji accepts the gift of jeans because it's safer than the alternative and doesn't speak on the topic again.
-
The thing about fire is it burns.
An obvious statement but one that Enji keeps coming back to. He burns, and when he burns he hurts- himself, others. Mostly others. His whole life has been spent burning other people and letting them carry the brunt of that damage, and now when he is faced with continuing to fix it he collapses because what is a consequence? he does not know her.
(Hawks would be proud of that one.)
Therapy helps. Proper meds help. Aizawa's cat pictures help. Yamada occasionally calling him from the radio booth just so he can grumble helps.
People help.
One person would help more than the others. His feathers keep showing up and Enji watches them, just more things he has burned.
Hawks- Keigo- should be busy. He's the new face of the Commission now, determined to see it turned to greater things. He does interviews with bags under his eyes that he claims are prada and Enji never misses one. He watches those beautiful wings flex and wishes that Keigo would stop wasting them on him.
He can almost hear the man now. "Waste? You helped bring 'em back, Number One! They're our babies!"
Ridiculous. Some cream applied in a tight car on a bumpy road. Some gentle preening. Too-small hands in his in the dark while they wait on a stakeout that could be worthless or could be worth everything.
Enji gathers up the feathers, strokes them gently. He knows he isn't imagining how they quiver.
"Let me do this for myself," he says to them. Then, quieter, "let me do this for you."
-
It has been one year, three days, and five hours since Enij Todoroki's first suicide attempt when some idiot at the bank near Aizawa's house tries it.
Enji stares at him. Stares. The other patrons are on the floor and the guy is looking at him like he has three heads.
"Didn't you hear me? I said-"
"Oh." Enji says. "Oh you really don't- wow."
This is weird.
"Don't what?" the knife is waved in a way that might be menacing. Maybe. To a toddler. Of course he seems to be sprouting knives which is inconvenient.
"Okay." Enji says. "This might as well happen."
He lights up.
There is a moment of recognition, and then panic, and then a knife.
To the face.
Someone screams. Enji doesn't hear it complete- probably because he's dead at the time.
For maybe twenty seconds.
And then the police outside and the heroes who have been waiting to negotiate get to watch the roof of the place be blown off by a pillar of fire and Enji Todoroki- now in flameproof boxer briefs because a man has to accept his lot in life- stands back up.
Does he still have his scar? He hopes so.
"Surprise, motherfucker," he says, and punches the robber through the door.
It still feels great. Worth every bit of paperwork he has to fill out for heroing without a license.
-
Enji is looking over the UA teacher's guidebook that night and ignoring Yagi's rambling story about Midoriya's latest misadventures on patrol when the front doorbell rings.
"I'll get it," Fuyumi says, passing Botan off to Kazuma, and then.
Then.
There is a sound. It's like the low angry warble of a startled bird, something with talons as long as human fingers that doesn't appreciate the intrusion. In the same moment there is a shuffling of feathers, and Enij doesn't need to be looking at them to know that beautiful red wings have just fluffed in aggression.
"Hello, Hawks!" Fuyumi says fearlessly.
"Where. Is. He."
"In the kitchen," she replies, like a traitor.
Enji takes a deep breath and Yagi wordlessly pushes his whiskey a little closer. He downs it and stands up.
"How do I look?" he asks.
"Like a man about to face his maker," Yagi says. "Brave face, Endeavor. Plus Ultra."
"I hate you so much."
"No you don't."
-
"you were dead, Enji. You went down like a sack of wet cement and then- and then-"
"Yeah, about that," Enji says but he doesn't actually get to say much more because the Heroic Oversight Coordinator Wing Hero Hawks is stuck to him like a burr.
"Stop wasting feathers on me," he mutters.
"Stop thinking it's wasteful," Keigo snaps back. "You aren't wasteful."
Enji almost believes him.
When the small hands around him start roaming Enji says, "Fuyumi. Kazuma. All Might."
"Fuck 'em," Keigo says. "And fuck you if you think I'm leaving ever again."
"That commute would be murder."
"No death jokes from you!"
Enji relents.
-
One year and a day to Enji's last suicide attempt, he sits with Rei in a park.
They watch the ducks placidly swim by. There will be a party soon and they're both expected.
"I would ask why you didn't call me," she says, "but."
"you didn't need that," Enji says. It's true. Rei's only emotional labors should be her own.
"I'm sorry you felt so alone," she says. "you aren't."
"I know."
"...can I tell you something?"
"Sure."
"I can just imagine how frustrated you were after the second time. It's not really funny, but it sort of is."
"Miruko saw me in a security blanket."
Rei giggles.
"And then she blabbed to Keigo," Enji mutters. Rei's giggles turn into all out laughter.
"The great and mighty Endeavor," she laughs, "brought low by a bunny."
"That bunny could kick my head off," Enji protests, but he's smiling. It's good, to be able to smile like this. To be able to feel.
"Enji?"
"Yeah?"
Rei pats his hand.
"Someday, it really will all be okay. It won't be perfect, but it will be okay." She looks up at the soft sky. "We tried."
"Some of us better than others," Enji points out.
"Yes. But whatever happens, I'm glad you're still here."
Enji says, "Thank you." and he means it.
-
When Enji walks into his classroom for the first time, he can palpably feel the disappointment at how utterly banal he looks.
He stands at the front. He looks every student in the eye or eye adjacent appendage. He waits until the tension has reached its fullest boiling point.
Then he crosses his arms and bursts into flame.
The kids cheer.
It's not quite the same as punching a robber through a bank door but damn if it doesn't do the trick.
-
Enji Todoroki is not, by and large, a perfect man.
His sins are varied, the red in his ledger vast. He has a son who won't talk to him, a son who wants him dead, and a son who has only just gotten around to accepting that his interns will pester him endlessly with questions about 'Todoroki-sensei'.
Enji still gets into scuffles with villains who make the mistake of attempting crimes around a guy who only 'sort of' looks like Endeavor and his boyfriend has to fine him for each and every one, but that's fair. Enji's got a lot of money and a lot of time.
Yamada had been wrong, he will eventually die. At least this was the conclusion; a natural death, old age or sickness, something gentler than the kind of violence he used to mistake for belonging. A fire slowly and warmly going out, instead of being doused mid-flare.
Whatever he leaves behind will be stronger for his burning.
At least, he really hopes so.