Chapter Text
Waking up has to be the second biggest betrayal of his life. His eyes are slow to open, but the world filters back in against his will nevertheless. He groans, or, well, he tries to. Air escapes his lungs, accompanied by a bit of a wheeze and a bit of a rattle, but that’s about as close as he imagines he’ll get.
His last memories were euphoric ones, fully surrendering to the mad flame inside of him, burning up without a care in the world, lunging for his smugly perfect little brother, the only lingering regret being that Endeavor wasn’t there to see him do it.
He does hate the fact that he can’t quite remember if he took Shouto down with him or not.
One way or another he’s awake now, having gone nowhere at all. Still clinging to life for some unknowable reason in a windowless room that’s slowly resolving into clarity, surrounded by monitors that beep. His vision is blurry, gummy, like there’s been tape or some kind of adhesive stuck over his eyelids until recently. There’s a chill that lingers inside him, some sensory memory of a bone-deep cold, but he can’t bring the full image of it to bear.
He can’t even raise his arms without effort, frankly, and effort barely gets him any movement at all.
He’s not sure how long it’s been, only that he’s certain he’s lost time yet again.
Last time it was three years.
At least this time he’s fairly sure that he hasn’t slept through puberty. Lots of very strange surprises that time. That thought has him resolved to not check himself below the belt for a while; the burns were extensive the first time he was consumed by his own fire, and he’s not super excited to find out how bad they are this time around.
For now, getting out of bed is his only priority. The first step is moving, though.
Wiggle your big toe.
He remembers watching an old Tarantino movie when he was younger, far younger than was appropriate for the content—not that anyone had been watching him closely enough to do anything about it. The Bride had had a mission: wrongs to right, people to kill, scores to settle. He does too. It’s a similar kind of single minded spite that keeps him going. Her revenge spree started much the same, lying atrophied and weak, willing her body to move.
The theme song of a half-familiar cartoon plays on the TV on the other side of the room.
It takes some subtle shifting to register the oxygen mask pressing on his face. There’s next to no viable skin left to afford him the sensation of fine touch, so it’s just the pressure, the slight tugging, that gives it away. He feels so heavy, like the bed—a real bed, not a dingy couch in an abandoned mansion, nor a secret bunker full of fellow terrorists—is trying to swallow him down into it, and as heavy as he feels, he knows he’s actually physically much lighter. Has to be. All the muscle he’d painstakingly forced onto his naturally slight frame in preparation for war is gone. He’s gaunt: atrophied muscle, rotting skin and brittle bones, scar tissue and little more.
Oh well.
Gotta start somewhere.
Wiggle your big toe.
He tries a few more times, and manages a dry, rasping huff of a laugh when he eventually accomplishes it.
“Good, that’s good, Touya,” says an achingly familiar voice. He jolts. Flinches. Whatever.
How had he not noticed him before?
How the hell did he miss a massive, muscle-bound man perched at the edge of his bed?
It’s got to be the meds. His father (the one he feels so much for, indescribable, intense, ugly, brilliant things—his magnetic North—the only direction he knows how to run in) is right here with him, staring off to the right somewhere, probably watching the door so that they aren’t interrupted.
He’s here.
Surprise (and a brief, exhilarating wave of euphoria) gives way to old anger. “Oh. Praise. Been a long time since I heard anything like that,” he spits.
Endeavor’s head falls a fraction. “I know. I know, son, and I’m so sorry for it.” He sounds sincere, at least, but it’s not like he’s turning to acknowledge him. Dabi can see the high arc of his cheekbone, the hard immovable angle of his jaw. Red eyelashes. He’s searching for the superheated blue of his eyes, the ones that match his own so exactly.
They elude him.
It’s maddening.
His skinny, bandaged arm can’t rise far enough to reach Endeavor, even to pull on the hem of his shirt. “Can’t even look me in the eye while you apologize?”
Even at this, Endeavor won’t look at him. “…I can’t yet. And I’m sorry for that, too.”
“Even after everything?! Why, huh? Did I hurt your little golden puppet? Did I kill him, Daddy?” He feels the corners of his mouth split a little, sharp like paper cuts as his grin widens of its own accord. A smile has always been his default. Even when he’s dying inside. “That’s gotta be enough! How the fuck isn’t that enough for you!?” He laughs again, but that turns into a barking cough that rattles his chest.
Endeavor doesn’t answer him right away, only hangs his big square head and sighs heavily.
“I wanted more for you, Touya. So much more.”
He scoffs at that, rage surging in his gut. “You took all that ‘more’ away from me, you narcissistic fuck. You know that, right? You took everything away from me and kept right on going like I’d never even happened.” The heat is starting to rise within him, but it’s sluggish. Just the dull ache of his organs protesting the increase in his core temperature, a little smoke curling from his scarred mouth as he speaks. Nothing more than that, as if the raging inferno inside of him is held back by a powerful dam.
He’d burn everything to the ground if he could, but not even the oxygen pumping into the stupid mask ignites.
“I’ll carry that shame forever. You deserved better from me.”
His jaw starts to ache, stiff and raw where he’s been sewn back together yet again. “It just took thirty-plus bodies and two wars to get you to admit it, huh.”
There’s a slow, pained sigh. That indomitable voice wavers. Softens. “I said it to your altar every day. Every morning, and every night. If I’d have known you were there… Touya, I’d have done everything so differently. I don’t have that chance anymore, son, but you do. I know you’ll understand in time.”
He studies his bandaged hands for a moment. The IVs snaking beneath the wrappings trying to keep his destroyed body going for some indiscernible reason. What he now recognizes as quirk-suppressing cuffs around his wrists, keeping the fire at bay. “It’s been more than a decade, old man. Clearly I don’t understand shit, so why don’t you spell it out for me.”
The presence beside him shifts, and when he looks back at his father, he’s nowhere to be found.
He blinks.
Did he just black out? Did he lose time?
What the fuck just—?
“Wheewww—God, you still smell like a biohazard bin in the summer sun.”
Not the voice he expected to hear. It’s plenty familiar though, same as the feather-light cadence of this smarmy fuck’s steps. “Sooo specific,” Dabi hisses, trying and failing to find the strength to sit up.
“Regrettably, I’ve memorized your particular reek.” Hawks steps into the room. He looks a little worse for wear than usual. His costume’s different, all black with a few accents of gold. That fluffy brown flight suit is absent, pared down to something sleeker, though as a result it makes him look very small. His hair is cropped much shorter, and there’s a dusting of blond stubble all over his jaw, well short of a true beard but thicker than a five o’clock shadow. He looks like he’s aged ten years.
A scar wraps around his jaw where no hair grows. Dabi notes it with a lingering hint of satisfaction, and the full, blood-red wings at his back which he notes with some distaste.
“Oh? Does it keep you up at night, shitbird?”
Eyes the iciest shade of gold he’s ever seen narrow, slit-like pupils pulling tight, calculating. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Nice wings you got there.”
The appendages in question flinch, drawing closer to his body on reflex. Hawks used to be a better liar than this, Dabi thinks. Never used to let his tells slip through so easily. “Yeah, no thanks to you,” Hawks bites back. “Anyway. You’re awake. Great. We need to get going.”
He scoffs. “‘Going?”
“Yep.” Hawks pops the ‘p’ noisily, somehow cramming a boatload of contempt into a single exaggerated noise. The blond asshole jerks a thumb at the corner, where there’s an oxygen tank and wheelchair with an IV pole attached. “Nurse took your catheter and shit-bag out already, so it’s just a matter of wheeling you out.”
“The fuck makes you think I’m going anywhere with you?” He must not be in a prison facility, then. There’d be much more fanfare and drama over a discharge, he figures.
But who in their right mind would leave him in a regular hospital?
“Yeah, you really don’t get much say in this,” Hawks mutters, striding toward him with a level of confidence he would never have had if not for the quirk suppressors keeping his flames in check. “None, in fact.”
He shifts himself over in the bed, all in all moving maybe about a centimetre away from Hawks. “I’m not doing shit with you until the old man gets his ass back here.”
Hawks looks like he’s been slapped for a second, then his expression darkens. It’s kind of gratifying, pulling genuine emotion out of such a well-programmed liar. It’s not anger twisting his features, though. Not exactly. “…What are you talking about?” It’s whispered, soft, like he’s trying to mask a break in his voice.
Dabi squints. “He run away again? Is he outside listening at the door like the fucking coward he is?” He raises his voice a bit just in case, but there’s no shadow beneath the crack of the door. No movement, no presence.
“He… you mean Enj—Endeavor?” His voice is carefully flat now. Measured, even though it shakes. Just a bit. Too much.
Dabi’s eyes narrow. “I’ve only got the one fuckup of a father.”
Hawks gives him another long look, but then something closes off behind his eyes, and he doesn’t say any more about it.
“We need to get you out of here,” he says instead. “Now.” His watch chimes and he looks at his wrist with a grim expression. “Right now.”
Just then, an awful harsh sound blares from the TV. The channel cuts from the cartoon to the news.
EVACUATION NOTICE blasts across the screen.
“CODE BLACK” is announced loudly over the hospital PA system at the same time. “CODE BLACK; ALL STAFF: BEGIN EVACUATION PROTOCOLS.”
IWATE PREFECTURE—EVACUATE IF POSSIBLE, OTHERWISE SHELTER IN PLACE IMMEDIATELY, the TV marquee flashes. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
“I already said that I’m not going to go with you just because you’re telling me to,” Dabi drawls. If there’s, what, a natural disaster coming, he thinks he’ll take his chances. It can’t be a tsunami; they’re too far inland. Can’t be an earthquake—would’ve happened already.
“EVACUATE ALL UNITS IMMEDIATELY. ENTROPY IS INBOUND. REPEAT. ENTROPY IS INBOUND.”
For a hero used to death and disaster, Hawks looks a good deal more nervous than he should, Dabi thinks.
The urgent moan of air-raid sirens becomes audible through the thick walls of the hospital. He feels a distant rumbling that’s getting more intense by the moment. Panicked screams pick up inside the building. He sees a nurse pass by the open door, dropping her clipboard and running blindly.
“Who or what’s Entropy?” He yawns with a clicking, unsteady jaw, affecting nonchalance though he can’t help but be on the alert. He’s not sure the League nor the Liberation Army ever got this level of fanfare, even at their peak. The word entropy sounds vaguely… science-y, he supposes, but he’s an unwitting middle school dropout, so what the fuck does he know?
Hawks yanks down the rail at the side of his bed and unclips his IV roughly. “Come on, you smelly pile of shit. You’ve been asleep a year and a half. You’ve missed a lot and I don’t have the time to talk to you about it.”
Sleepyhead’s awake~! Good mooorning, Sleepyhead!
A year and a half. Shit.
Rather than deign to touch him, Hawks uses his feathers to lift him off the bed. Dabi keeps his eyes on the TV’s emergency broadcast as he’s passively tugged toward the wheelchair. Hawks’ feathers are gentler on him than Hawks was himself, at least. Onscreen, there’s a top-down view of the outskirts of the city from a news helicopter. The terrain below is a hellscape, boiling and melting, houses buckling. It looks like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, almost, nothing but rampant destruction. The image shakes here and there with pressure waves from explosions. The leading edge of the inferno is advancing, sharpening to a point, rock cracking and buckling ahead of a fiery wave.
Something about the villain’s quirk makes the back of Dabi’s neck prickle. The camera feed wavers. There’s the telltale shimmer of heat distortion rising from a powerful source. He knows a thing or two about that from Skeptic’s endless griping that his flames had fucked up a critical shot.
“Who the hell is this?” He’s genuinely curious. The destruction pattern isn’t Shigaraki’s, and he knows heat quirks better than almost anyone.
The image cuts to a ground-level view. The cameraman is running. The image is shaky, the anchor looking terrified, panting, abandoning her heels to sprint barefoot for her life. There are panicked tears in her eyes—whenever the picture of her is steady enough to show it. A building buckles behind her, a massive multilevel, collapsing right onto the street.
She screams.
The sunlight suffers for the debris, filtering through in shifting beams. It lends an ethereal quality to the image, like a shot from a disaster movie where there should be some slow-motion sequence with a lone boy soprano singing something indecipherable. Then the roar of destruction shatters that almost-beautiful moment. Both Dabi and Hawks freeze for a moment as they realize that the camera is capturing human bodies as they tumble out of the damaged buildings. That the impacts they’re hearing are a mix of falling debris and the wet smack of human flesh meeting pavement. Screams are resonating over the incessant rumbling.
“Get—everyone needs to get clear of the city,” the anchor half-wails, mascara trailing down her cheeks in dark streaks. “The military deployment has been overrun; nothing has stopped him–every hospital, every home, run! There is no help coming.”
Onscreen, there are flashes of white light, brighter than the sun. Another building crumbles and the camera falls, buried in rubble and going dark. The reporter’s voice cuts out abruptly.
The feed cuts back to the helicopter. Dabi can see the wave of destruction sharpening even further, now a tight vee converging on a larger building. One that has a giant “H” helipad on the roof.
There’s a rumbling that shakes him down to his bones, and it grows by the second.
Here it is, then.
There’s a heavy bang and the groan of twisting metal. The hospital shudders violently enough to make Hawks stumble and his feathers falter.
“Sounds like they might need a hero out there or something,” Dabi drawls as he’s shoved roughly into the wheelchair. For all his post-coma sluggishness, though, he is on high alert at this point.
Hawks glares at him, but the venom is tempered by distraction and anxiety. “Yeah. Well, we’re in short fucking supply these days.”
He keeps expecting to see Endeavor arrive on the scene. That’s probably where he went off to, after all. The newsfeed has cut out by now however, so there’s no way to know. Hawks is behind him, dumping an IV bag, a blanket, and a bottle of pills into his lap.
“Let’s go,” Hawks says tersely.
“I bet you’re moving me on his orders, aren’t you? You’ve always been his little lackey bitch.”
He’s struck, hard, up the backside of his head. Petty. He turns slowly to look at the scarred-up wing hero, a bit incredulous. Hawks has never looked more disgusted with him. It’s almost impressive. “I swear to fuck if it were up to me I’d slit your throat here and now. Save Entropy the trouble,” he snarls. Hawks exhales explosively, clearly trying to check his emotions, situating himself behind Dabi’s wheelchair. “Hang onto your shit. We’re running for it.”
And with that, they’re off.
Dabi doesn’t recognize the world he’s wheeled out into at all. There’s carnage everywhere, the scenes from the news broadcast now transposed into his immediate reality. A child covered in dust wanders alone, bleeding from a wound on her head, staring off into the middle distance. It’s sheer panic, a constant drumming of footsteps, the distorted whine of broken alarms. Screams. Prayers.
Brilliant sun and cool autumn air slice through the destroyed interior walls of the hospital’s hallways.
Through a break in the smoke, he thinks he might see the shadow of Mount Iwate rising above the dust-choked, crumbling skyline. It is Morioka, then. They’re way up in northeastern Honshu. Why?
Dabi’s wheelchair skips and bumps over the cracked floor. The wheels seize and struggle over fallen debris and he weakly grips the arm-rests for stability, trying to keep the bundle in his lap stable with his forearms as they swerve.
Hawks is as nimble as ever, even on his feet, doing what he can with his feathers to scoop people out of danger and shield them from the ceiling as it starts to collapse. All the while he’s sprinting hard, audibly panting as he pushes him down the hall in the cheap hospital wheelchair, dodging crumbling walls and cracks that grow in the ground. Dabi is rocked side to side as they swerve about, probably disrupting grafts and stitches as he’s jostled, but he doesn’t exactly have much say in the matter.
Hawks curses again as an orange glow rises behind them, reflecting off the bank of elevators ahead. Dabi can feel the heat blooming, even with his skin so dulled to the sensation. It all happens in what seems like an instant. Ahead of them two red feathers dart into the seam between two closed elevator doors and rip them open wide. The shaft is empty but for some cables, the elevator car on some other floor and the electricity long dead.
“Hang on to your shit,” Hawks repeats, quick and sharp, and before Dabi can say anything about it, his chair is shoved forward straight into the elevator shaft with such force that he crashes into the far wall. And just like that he’s falling, still stupidly clutching to the blanket, pills, and fluids. The chair slips free of him and begins to fall separately. Time slows down some, just enough for him to contemplate the ridiculousness of being woken up for all of a half-hour before getting thrown to his death. Just enough to spin in midair and see Hawks leaping into the elevator shaft little above him, wings tucked tightly into a dive, barely clearing the open doors before flames jet into the space he’d just occupied, snapping cables and superheating the walls until they glow red.
It’s stifling, hard to breathe in the milliseconds of freefall as the fire rips all the oxygen out of the space, but Hawks is, admittedly, a master technician at high speeds, and Dabi realizes quickly that he shouldn’t have had any doubts. They fall maybe seven or eight floors with sparks and burning debris raining down behind them, but Hawks has already pulled another door open ahead of them, slamming his feathers (none-too-kindly) into Dabi and the falling chair, pushing the lot of them out of the death-trap and into an underground parking lot.
It’s a bit of a sloppy landing, and Dabi cries out involuntarily as the momentum unceremoniously rolls him across the asphalt and something wrenches in his shoulder.
The elevator itself crashes to the ground a split second later, and the building groans again. Feathers hoist him up quickly, whilst others fold the wheelchair up and gather everything he’s dropped.
“Motherfuck,” he groans, but it’s cut off on a gasp as a fat crack snakes its way up one of the nearby support pillars. The hell is this hospital made of? Paper?
Hawks isn’t even looking at him at this point, wings flared wide and beating hard enough that Dabi squints against the gale he generates. He’s beelining for the garage’s exit, dragging Dabi and everything else behind him within his wake vortex with his feathers, and it isn’t more than two seconds, really, before the whole structure collapses behind them, buckling in on itself with a final roar.
Dabi tumbles through the air, squinting against the dust and debris scratching into his eyes. He’s helpless right now against the feathers dragging him along like he weighs nothing, so his mind is able to work double time. Why is this villain aiming for a hospital, and how did it suddenly become worth the number two hero’s while to save the life of the same villain who maimed him—in particular, since hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians just died behind them? Obviously the two are connected. And this Entropy person having a heat quirk on top of all that? Too convenient.
Maybe Endeavor had charged them with his protection or some such shit. He probably would, honestly.
‘Save Entropy the trouble’, Hawks had said.
He smirks a little despite the high-stress situation. All of this, for little ol’ him?
Endeavor must be getting slow. This casualty count is so far beyond his standard. Dabi hopes he’s really fucking upset about it.
The destruction stalls, though, like a wave breaking against a sea wall. Ambulances are whisking people away frantically, scattered bits of law enforcement urging people to clear the immediate area quickly. Hawks whisks them past a street choked with evacuees, low to the ground amidst billowing clouds of dust, and then keeps moving them two blocks over and around a side alley.
There’s a sports car waiting there with a lanky man dressed in head-to-toe denim waiting tensely beside it.
This is even stranger; Best Jeanist on the scene and making no moves to assist with the very active disaster underway. He could’ve helped; Dabi’s intimately familiar with his ability to manipulate reinforced steel cables with his quirk. Could’ve prevented at least a few crush injuries, right? A couple of fatalities?
Jeanist’s hair is less than immaculate, and now that he’s hovering right next to it, Dabi can see the scrapes and dents all over the exterior of what had to have been an insanely expensive car. It’s all very off-brand. Shit, even the denim’s a dark wash, a deep indigo with panels of black.
“You made it,” is all the Number Three says, his lone visible green eye looking Dabi over like he’s a particularly offensive turd.
He manages to pull his near-insensate fingers together to flip Jeanist off. That earns him an irritated sigh.
“Barely,” Hawks mutters, “but yeah.”
They stuff the wheelchair and oxygen, blanket, fluid, and pills into the back seat and unceremoniously push Dabi in after them. He hears Hawks gag not-so-subtly as he buckles him in. The giraffe-necked weirdo definitely cringes as his bandages leak a little onto the (denim) upholstery.
He’s glad they’re uncomfortable. He just smirks. Smelling a bit ripe has always helped him keep undesirables at arm’s length. People can handle unfriendly most times, but they really balk at stinky.
Another powerful boom comes from the disaster site, ricocheting off the building walls in an echo akin to thunder. Sounds like Entropy couldn’t find what they were looking for.
“Let’s go go go,” Hawks hisses tersely, shedding the bulk of his feathers and all but leaping into the front passenger seat. His wings bristle and tense, but he makes no move to lift off again.
Jeanist slides his long body into the driver’s seat and flicks on the ignition. “Can you fly ahead to scout, Hawks?” He gets the car moving anyhow, slithering through back streets to avoid the gridlocked traffic for as long as he can. The car’s top peels back and exposes them to the open air, probably both to clear out offensive odours and to give them more sightlines.
Hawks makes a negative sound. “Not at this range, man. If he sees me, I’m dead. He could blast me out of the sky. Nearly has a few times, remember?” Hawks is even short with his hero colleague. Interesting.
“...Yes. I remember,” Jeanist sighs. He grips the wheel a little tighter.
Dabi’s very interested in who this villain is. Who’s got these heroes so spooked. And this new guy’s got a heat quirk, of all things. Is coming after him. Where the hell is—
“You’re just leaving the old man to take this guy on himself? You’ve got a lot of faith in a number one who got there by default.” He rasps out a mean chuckle, but he’s still scanning the sky for that telltale blue and orange streak wreathed in flames. He can’t help it. Never could. He’s always been compelled to watch.
Just watch me.
The brakes squeal for half a second, rocking all three of them in their seats before Best Jeanist catches himself and revs up again. “What—“ the denim hero glances over at Hawks, who’s sitting tense and miserable, a pained grimace etched onto his face as he blinks rapidly. “Hawks, just tell him.” Jeanist’s tone is strangely soft. Careful. “He’s still his family, and what’s done is done.”
They catch a highway onramp and accelerate as they go, heading westbound through the downtown core.
The wind is rushing so fast that Dabi only sees Hawks’ lips move in profile at first. He bites through a few brief syllables that Dabi doesn’t hear.
“What!?” He demands.
Hawks whirls on him then, a frustrated blend of anger and pain as he snarls, “He’s dead, you colossal asshole. Enji Todoroki is dead.”
The words land hard and heavy.
Something inside Dabi grinds to a terrible, final halt.
He can’t speak for a moment.
For more than a moment.
That’s not… possible.
From their vantage point on the elevated highway, they all can see when the hospital's remaining structure explodes outward in a blast of pure heat that even Dabi's destroyed body can feel. He turns as best as his stiff skin and bandages will allow, watching as the dust cloud rises into the sky, and flames consume the area they just left behind.
The scale of the damage is immense; there’s a vast burning wedge carved into the city now, all of it converging on the hospital.
Dabi can’t process it.
Nothing makes sense.
“The fuck he is. He was just—“ Denial tumbles out of him first. What the hell is this? It’s a weak excuse for a lie, worse than usual from Hawks. Endeavor was just there in the room, refusing to look at him like always, just out of reach like always. He could feel the weight of him sinking into the edge of the hospital bed. If his skin could’ve picked up on it he knows he might’ve felt his heat, that milder warmth that never burned quite as hot as he did. “He’s not.”
Jeanist keeps his eyes on the road, but his bearing wilts a little. Hawks is bristling, feathers so dense and sharp that they catch the daylight the way a knife’s blade might, hard lines and very sharp edges. He’s glaring at Dabi like he’d love nothing more than to kill him, but holding himself back like he knows it wouldn’t solve anything.
All this time, all these years, he was planning to take his time with Endeavor after he finally freed Shouto from his miserable existence. Make him see, one last time before his body gave out, that he had always been the stronger son. That he’d gotten it right the first time, and there’d been no need to keep trying, to keep chasing perfection.
But—
“He’s been dead for a year and a half, just as long as you’ve been asleep,” Hawks barrels on, louder, like the words are tumbling out of him now that he’s started. Dabi stares at him, not sure why he sounds this pained. This bitter. “What? You should be happy. You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“Hawks,” Jeanist warns.
Dabi doesn’t reply. He can’t. It’s been years since he’s been able to feel very much of anything, but despite that an indescribable ache is coming over him. He hates it. A smile that tests the strength of whatever’s been done to patch up his jaw threatens to take over his face. He’s beaming, but he’s so far from happy it isn’t funny. It’s the smile that calls upon a purging fire to burn it all away. Death’s rictus, the grin of a skull burnt bare.
Hawks turns around with a disgusted huff and settles back into the passenger seat. He pulls his dark collar up and doesn’t speak again.
His father’s dead. His grin aches, hurts his face. He can’t find the words to respond.
He can scarcely find enough air to breathe.
He isn’t sure there are words for this.
He turns to look out the window instead, brain feeling like it’s stuffed full of cotton.
They’re blasting through the downtown area at breakneck speed, ignoring the lights and swerving expertly around the other cars. The traffic is thick and only getting thicker. The roads are getting congested with cars, bikes, and foot-traffic. Air raid sirens are going off all around them. People are running with their belongings clutched in their arms. Their kids. Their pets.
Hawks and Jeanist and his father aside, he hasn’t seen any sign of another hero this whole time.
There’s a huge screen in a major intersection they’re entering that’s broadcasting the live feed of the hospital. The traffic is slowed to a crawl, horns honking desperately here where the buildings are at their tallest. People are rubbernecking, too, staring at the screen, listening as the broadcast plays louder than the cacophony of panic below.
This is big enough to bring him out of his stupor over the news of Endeavor’s death. Dabi gives the screen his full attention as a pile of rubble closer to the camera buckles. There’s a sign of life among the broken remains of the hospital.
Things are still and quiet for a moment, but then a slab of concrete moves, and the camera catches a pale hand, a right hand, fingertips discoloured an ugly bluish black, bleeding what looks like frost and ice into the concrete, ice that forces its way into the cracks and crumbles it instantly. Dabi’s eyes are fixed on the screen as a tall figure emerges from the destroyed building, columns of ice shoving wire and brick and concrete aside with ease. There’s a heavy hood shrouding the person’s face, a dark sleeveless vest that extends down to their feet, a broad, masculine set to their shoulders. Entropy is pristine, untouched by even the dust around him. Ice and fire, Dabi’s brain repeats over and over. Ice and fucking fire.
“There’s a gap in the cars over there—try that side street,” Hawks hisses. The car swerves. Dabi keeps watching. He can’t look away.
It can’t be.
Entropy’s hood blows back, caught up in the wind of destruction.
Ash, sparks and ice crystals follow. Red and white hair tangles in the haphazard breeze.
It is.
“No fucking way,” Dabi wheezes. He cranes his neck to keep his eyes fixed on the screen whilst Jeanist stomps on the gas pedal and the engine roars.
“The bridges are gonna close. We can’t get trapped in here with him; it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. C’mon, BJ, push it—“ Hawks says tersely. There’s fear in his voice.
“Keep your seams together, Hawks; I’m doing everything I can.” Jeanist throws his sports car into a more aggressive gear.
Dabi isn’t paying any attention.
His baby brother is there onscreen, staring straight into the camera, face utterly devoid of emotion. “You should’ve stayed asleep, Touya-nii,” he says, monotonous and calm as his voice echoes from the loudspeakers. It’s almost as if his mismatched eyes are looking right at him through the screen. “Would’ve been easier on you.” The image wavers, static glitching over Shouto’s features, before a wall of flame causes the electronics to fail. The feed cuts out.