Chapter Text
Sunday, August 19 - eight days after Kamino Ward
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“—Still, I’m surprised you’re actually asking for our help! Our little Kei, finally growing up—”
Swatting their best friend (soon to be ex-best-friend if she keeps this up), Kei tunes out the rest of Tora’s dramatic gesturing in favor of hoisting a bundle of books bound with cord in one hand and balancing a box on their shoulder with the other. Down the entry hall of their brand-new apartment — ink still drying on the lease, because gods help them if some bastard had snatched up one of the only decent places off-campus — the sounds of Naomi and Miyako bickering echo in the yet-empty rooms. Micah’s helping unload new furniture from the delivery truck down by the street, Shiichan’s spinning in circles with Saki perched on her shoulders, and Kei’s uncle watches the whole thing with a bemused expression.
Their other uncle, that is. Not Uncle Shōta, who’s stuck up to his eyeballs in work stuff getting his whole class moved onto campus — which is technically where Kei should be, if not for the veritable shitton of extenuating circumstances on their shoulders. Case in point — their other uncle, who stands by the little gate at the front of the complex and scratches at one of the nasty scars on his face even though he’s definitely not supposed to. Their other uncle who’d been dead for fourteen years.
… Sometimes, Kei really misses when getting poisoned by Hideaki in grade school was the weirdest thing that happened to them.
Inside the apartment, they drop the books and box just inside the bedroom they’ll be sharing with their little sister, and duck back out to the kitchen to prevent Miyako from giving their classmate a concussion. “You guys do realize Uncle barely remembers how to cook, right? It’s kind of pointless to care whether or not he can use portals inside the cupboards.”
“It’s the principle of the thing!” Miyako argues hotly, wavy hair threatening to burst into uncontrollable frizz as she gestures at the plain wooden doors on the built-in cabinets. “I’m just saying, if I could take them down and do some tinkering—”
“And I’m saying,” Arms crossed firmly across his chest, Naomi leans against the counter and drawls back in a tone that couldn’t be more clearly asking for a fight, “that he doesn’t want to use his quirk right now, so we shouldn’t destroy Kei’s new apartment just for some wrench-head with big ideas.”
Before Miyako can invent a new definition of ‘wrench-head’, Kei shoots her a very tired look. “Why don’t you go try to stop your girlfriend from throwing out her back competing with Micah? I’ve already got one convalescent on my hands.”
“She’s your soulmate, why don’t you do it?”
Rolling their eyes at the playful tone — it’s a familiar, old banter, something to show that Miyako’s not really trying to argue — Kei waves her off and waits until she’s disappeared down the hall to turn back to Naomi, who suddenly appears very fascinated with the dishwasher. Which would be fair if they didn’t know he was specifically avoiding their eyes. “… Does Uncle really feel that way? About using his quirk?”
The horn in Naomi’s forehead shimmers, just as pale and eerie as his mother’s eyes whenever she peers into someone’s fate. “I mean, wouldn’t you? It’s not really his quirk, what it used to be.”
Kei winces at the reminder. That their uncle, barely remembered outside of fuzzy memories from a happier time and a faded picture on Dad’s mantle, spent the last fourteen years after his death being turned into— into something else, someone else, someone changed and controlled by a monster. That even though he’s back now, thanks to nothing less than a miracle… he’s still not the same as he was before the villain attack that took him from them.
Outside, Saki shrieks with laughter, and Uncle Oboro laughs with her. A part of Kei wonders how much Dad and Uncle Shōta have told him, about everything that happened after he died — after all, Kei was just a toddler then, and Saki not even born yet, let alone rescued and adopted. So much time has passed.
A hand falls to rest on their shoulder, light and mindful, and Naomi gestures back to the door. “I’ve gotta leave soon, I promised to go see Wide Horizons with Takumi—”
“One last summer date?” Kei can’t help but tease, since that’s better than grimacing. Naomi winces, fidgeting with one of the piercings studding his earlobes instead of gracing them with a response — they can’t blame him, not when Takumi asked them out for the third time this year just two days ago, staunchly refusing to take ‘no’ and ‘I’m not a girl’ for answers. To be honest, Kei doesn’t really get what Naomi sees in the guy, but it’s not like they’re in any position to judge when their first real crush is currently outside coercing her girlfriend into making Saki and Uncle Oboro matching cat-ear headbands. Not when, just like Kei’s, Naomi’s soulmate doesn’t love him back.
After a few moments of exceedingly uncomfortable silence, Naomi shakes his head. “Anyways, Tōgata said he’ll come help later, since I guess Nighteye’s sending him over with paperwork or something.”
“A never-ending stream of my most muscular classmates, what a way to start this all off.”
He laughs, and Kei manages a smile as they dodge around a parade of floating boxes suspended by Tora’s quirk-strings to get back out the door. Micah’s got just about all of the furniture out of the truck, waiting in a tidy line to be marched inside — yet another reason Kei’s still counting their blessings on this place, ground-level apartments are always a lucky find — and Shiichan unloads the last box from Dad’s old hatchback as Kei jogs down the steps. Her ears twitch, making Saki giggle. “That’s everything, then! Want me to bring it inside?”
Kei will never understand how they got this lucky, to have so many nice classmates. “That would be amazing. Just put it all in the main room, there’s a few boxes in the corner — gotta keep the entry clear.”
“Totally!” Reaching up, she tugs at Saki’s foot until Kei’s sister leans down, hands holding onto fistfuls of Shiichan’s mane. “Ready for missions, Agent Snowcub?”
“Ready!”
Over their shoulder, Kei calls, “Watch out for the doorframe!”, before turning back to the driver-side window where Dad’s leaning out with a wistful expression. Better get this out of the way, then. “We’ve got it from here. You’ve got a shift tonight, right?”
He sighs, twisting his keys in the ignition until the car engine purrs awake. “I do. I’m sorry, Bug, if I could stay longer, help you get settled…”
“It’s fine, it’s not like it would be any different with the dorms.”
“Speaking of which,” Leaning further out the window, he calls to the assorted teenagers along the sidewalk and apartment entrance, “Any of you kids want a ride back to school? I know it’s not far, but they mentioned a curfew…”
Expression sheepish, Tora lets go of Miyako’s hand and waves. “I should probably head home, if it’s not too out of the way.” Since, of course, she has an even stricter curfew than Kei’s classmates — an unavoidable part of the vigilante retraining program she’ll be completing in just a few months. Sometimes Kei wonders if she regrets it — but she’s never complained, and probably never will.
(Sometimes, a particularly bitter part of Kei thinks Dad probably would have preferred to have a daughter like her, instead of one like Kei.)
Naomi also takes Dad up on the offer — not for curfew, but to make it to the theater in time to meet his friend — and Shiichan regretfully sets Saki down and begins making her way in the other direction, to where her own younger sisters are waiting after their summer swim lessons. It’s not like Kei won’t see them ever again — school starts soon, the second-to-last term they’ll ever have at U.A. — but something feels oddly final about watching them leave one-by-one, as though this really is a new stage of their life. It should have been graduation next March, but…
Nope, All Might had to go out in a blaze of fire in August instead, and Kei’s uncle had to come back from the dead in need of somewhere to stay. And only sheer, dumb luck would have it that Kei was both a full-fledged Pro in all but official post-graduation license, and already seeking an exemption to the new dormitory mandate on account of their sister.
As Micah and Miyako began heaving the new sofa up to the door, along with the help of a quick hand-truck formed from Miyako’s quirk, Kei picks Saki up and walks over to said uncle. “Sorry, I know this is kind of messy.”
“No, no, I should be the one apologizing!” Uncle Oboro waves a hand with far too much energy, uneven scars marring his fingers. Crushed under rubble, they’d said, every report that Kei used to read when Dad was asleep. “I really am sorry to be imposing like this, it’s just— Shō and Zashi and Nemuri have to live on campus, and I… uh, I probably shouldn’t be around those kids yet.”
“Probably not.” Someone else might try to deny it, but Kei’s always taken pride in being pragmatic. Realistic. “And you’re family, you’re not imposing.”
He raises a wry eyebrow, clearly not believing the statement and even more clearly patiently restraining himself from further protest. It’s a far cry from the energetic boy in the photos and videos Dad kept after all those years, bright-haired and wide-smiled. Or the fledgling hero student in the photo Uncle Shōta has saved as his phone background, hovering on a cloud behind little proto-Eraserhead and proto-Midnight, looking like aviator Sun Wukong in all his glory. In a way, Kei figures darkly, that version of Shirakumo Oboro is still dead.
Against their shoulder, Saki yawns, and squirms into a more comfortable position. Once Micah and Miyako get the couch inside, she’ll be able to lay down and take a nap — it’s been a long day, after all. Then Kei will bully Uncle Oboro into sitting down as well, since he’s still on medical watch, and they’ll move furniture and boxes until Mirio arrives with whatever demonic filing monstrosity his mentor’s come up with this time.
Under their shirt, the soulmarks on their arms itch, and they resist the urge to scratch. Damn things have been more unstable this summer than in the last five years combined, always fading in and out, scarring at the edges and then mending only to disappear for days at a time.
Whatever Kei’s soulmate — the one that isn’t Tora, the one that can’t seem to decide between hate and love — is up to, they really hope they figure it out soon.
More complications are the last thing they need.
Which, of course, is when their phone rings. Adjusting Saki’s weight onto their shoulder more fully, Kei fishes their phone out and holds it up to their ear, not bothering to look at the number before answering. “Hello, Akane speaking.”
“You’re the kid with the bike, right?” On the other end, an unfamiliar — or at least, barely-remembered — voice rasps, low and rough. “I fucking hate that I’m doing this, feels like it’s gonna blow up in my damn face, but… shit, some help would be pretty fucking nice right now.”
… Note to self. Never offer grungy-ass fuckers hand cream ever again.
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Akane Kei was born with normal soulmarks.
Soulmarks, plural, because when Kei — then still Hoshiko — came into the world with a healthy wail, clearly-defined flowers already bloomed along their forearms, vibrant orange-reds spotted with hints of sun-gold. The last flowers came in along their shoulders after half a year, faint pink smears like fledgling wings. Older and younger, at least two, quite possibly three. Not impossible, but certainly unusual.
To Akane Hikaru, who himself only had one soulmark in the form of red tulips twining around his left bicep, the flowers painted across his infant daughter’s skin had seemed like a sign of either good fortune, or ill. After all, multiple soulmates meant multiple extremely powerful connections, meant that many more people having an influence and foothold in his child’s life that he couldn’t foresee or protect from. But then again, it might also be that many more people to love her and care for her, and surely that was all Hikaru could ask for? And when his young cousin’s soulmate began developing a second mark two years later, it meant Hikaru could reassure Oboro that no, a second soulmate didn’t mean that Aizawa-kun would love him any less.
Then Oboro had died, and Hikaru found he couldn’t find it in himself to care about soulmarks any longer.
So for the next fifteen years, he remained oblivious to the strange behavior Kei’s soulmarks began to exhibit. They would vanish and reappear at random, always in the same places and formations, just there one day and gone the next — only the cherry blossoms dusted across their shoulders were exempt. Sometimes, flashes of blue would poke from between the narrower petals, and others they would be once more consumed by scarlet. By the time Kei finally manifested their quirk, at the age of eight, the flowers on their forearms had begun scarring around the edges. Never fully, never enough to mean what all scars meant — just enough to burn like ants scratching under their skin.
Akane Kei may have been born with normal soulmarks, but they didn’t stay normal for long.
Meeting Chisō Tora on their first day at U.A. High School, seeing the soft pink blossoms like lace across her skin during their third P.E. class — it had felt like a light of clarity on their muddled, reluctant life. Here was a soulmate who had never become complicated, or strange, who simply existed. It was easy for Kei to fall a bit in love.
Of course, that couldn’t last. In the time it took for Kei’s birthday to become Tora’s, they had met their soulmate, fought with their soulmate, fought against their soulmate, and turned her in in cuffs. Because nothing could be simple and easy.
After that summer, Kei stopped caring about soulmarks too.
---
Dabi is not freaking out.
Sure, they’ve been squatting in alleyways for a week and stealing shit to eat, but that ain’t anything new — he spent time on the streets before, he knows the tricks. It does suck that he doesn’t dare go find any of his old haunts, in case the cops have tracked them down and put eyes and shit up on the place. Risk and rewards… and if he were by himself, he’d say fuck the risk, a roof over his head would be worth it.
Unfortunately, he’s pretty sure Tomura’s worth easily twice whatever’s on his head, and the guy clearly has no damn idea how to hide for shit. Which would be bad enough by itself, but then he had to go and get sick.
Not the standard, garden-variety sniffling and congestion and headache-y type of sick that used to plague Fuyumi before she learned to control her Quirk fully. Not even the nasty stomach virus sort of sick that once kept Natsuo out of school for a week straight, that Dabi had buried himself in training to avoid at all costs. (That has been after dear old dad tossed him aside, like so much leftover garbage. A defective model. Dabi had refused to let it stop him, of course, and they all knew how that went).
No, this isn’t a cold or bug. Dabi just woke up yesterday morning feeling heat against his skin that wasn’t old scar tissue burning, and turned over to find Tomura already feverish enough for delirium. Which even Dabi knows is not something that just goes away, not for sorry sods like them.
He gives it a day, glaring at anyone who seems inclined to bother them, before caving and pickpocketing a phone. Not like he has many options — there’s the doc who treated Shōto’s eye, but Dabi’s pretty sure he was a pediatrician and wouldn’t help someone Tomura’s age. The old lady with the cats is long-dead, even though he still has her number memorized. Dad’s off the table for too many reasons to count. Toga… Dabi’s not even sure she has a cell phone, though a part of him wonders why the hell she wouldn’t. Seems too quintessentially teenager for her to not— but either way, she’d be no help either.
So, against all his better instincts and every hint of personal preference, he dials the number Tomura insisted on scribbling down, and waits for the total stranger on the other end to speak.
“Hello, Akane speaking.”
“You’re the kid with the bike, right?” Can’t hurt to check, in case Tomura remembered wrong. “I fucking hate that I’m doing this, feels like it’s gonna blow up in my damn face, but…” Running his finger through hair that feels almost disgustingly tacky, Dabi glances back at where his unfortunate companion is curled up in the meager coolness of the alleyway shadows, “Shit, some help would be pretty fucking nice right now. My, uh— the guy who’s with me, he’s sick or something.”
The voice on the other end mutters something under their breath, clearly not for him to hear, before responding. “What kind of sick? I’m not a doctor.”
“Dunno. Fever, I think. Look, do you know anywhere I can get us off the street?” Grimacing, Dabi wonders how long he’ll have before someone comes looking for the phone. “Meds would be great, but I just— shit, we’re sitting ducks out here like this.”
“And hospitals are out?” Not giving him a chance to reply, the other end sighs heavily. “I’m gonna regret this, but you can bring him to my place. Just— if you can wait till after dark, I’ve got people over right now.” And more people seeing them is the last thing Dabi wants — fuck, it’s nice hearing a pragmatic voice for once. Not that he wants to get stuck trusting this random-ass hand cream stranger, but at least they’re not picking over his words like some assholes. “I just moved so it won’t be fancy, but I should have a couch or futon by then.”
Against his better instincts — which scream about gift horses and their bite strength — Dabi nods. “Deal. Gimme the address, it’ll take us a while to get there anyways.”
They rattle off a street and apartment number, and Dabi uses the phone’s browser application to pull up a map — in incognito, he’s not an idiot — and find a route. The place is closer to U.A. than he’d like, but maybe that’ll mean less active cop presence. And if nothing else, fewer other underworld denizens to recognize and rat them out on the way.
As he closes the app and runs over the street names in his mind, hand cream weird eyes speaks up. “Listen, I gotta go. When you get here— you know that really old comedy bit, shave and a haircut?” Unfortunately, yes. “Use that. See you later.”
And then they hang up. Blunt, much?
Still better than nothing, though, so he erases the call from the phone’s history and sets it under a nearby bench before ducking back into the alley to hoist Tomura to his feet. Handyman— er, ex-handyman, fuck Dabi needs to think of some more shitty nicknames— groans as Dabi pulls him upright, swaying dangerously and grabbing onto his coat with both hands. It’s a good fuckin thing they got some tape over his pinky fingers yesterday, when Dabi realized what was up, because getting disintegrated by accident in the middle of a dizzy spell would really be the most humiliating way to go out. Only way Dabi plans to end up as ash is 1. in an inferno, and 2. taking Endeavor with him, so— tape.
Blinking in the sudden light as they exit the alley, Tomura winces and rubs at his eyes. “Where—?”
“Hand cream’s place.” Fuck, why did all this shit have to go down over summer vacation? At least if it had been during a school term, there’d be fewer fucking people out on the streets — as is, Dabi thinks he might give himself a headache, switching his attention from their surroundings to Tomura so frequently. “Be fucking stupid if you went and died out here, after all that.”
Tomura shakes his head, words slurring together. “Y’rface is stupid… why d’you care, ‘nyways?” He shoves pathetically at Dabi’s shoulder, which only really succeeds in making the both of them stumble like a pair of drunks. “Y’don’t care ‘bout me, ‘bout Sen— Sensei, ‘bout Hana…”
There is no wage in the world high enough to be worth dealing with this, but Dabi still feels like he should be getting paid for it. “Yeah, well, your Sensei sounded like a grade-A trashbag, and I still don’t fucking know who ‘Hana’ is, but I’m not gonna be a dick and leave you like some wet rat in a gutter.” Not that he isn’t tempted to, but— look, Dabi may be living solely for the sake of fatal, fiery revenge against his worthless sack of shit father, but he hasn’t gotten this far by just being a full-on jackass. (Bitterly, he wonders if it’s that last bit of his humanity, stubbornly clinging on inside whatever revenant force keeps him standing. Curse him for being a sentimental bastard).
Once again, Tomura wobbles out of balance, and Dabi wonders if being close to him is making the fever worse. Wouldn’t be impossible. All the more reason for them to get the fuck out of here, and somewhere where he might be able to actually stay more than a few feet away from Mr. Delirious. Who promptly goes back to his mumbling, apparently drained of the energy to argue.
It really is a sorry fucking sight. When Dabi joined up with the League, Tomura was almost frightening — a pathetic manchild throwing tantrums and whining to his sensei, but frightening nonetheless in his unhinged lust for violence. And now?
… Well, now it’s probably better that he’s not any of those things, even if it’s fucking weird.
Getting halfway across the city takes a lot longer with Tomura than without, and Dabi has to drag them into the cover of alleys and well-forested parks more than once when he starts to overheat. At one point, he ventures out on his own to find a vending machine with plain bottled water, running on the vaguest memory of how Mom always had to remind him to drink when he was sick. Recollection, he decides as he forces coins into the janky machine, is a double-edged fucking beast— he hasn’t thought this much about Mom in years.
He’d been fever-prone as a kid, thanks to the quirk burning too hot for his body to keep up. Dehydrated in the time it took to snap his fingers, laid out with ice packs and Mom’s cool hands on his cheeks practically every other week. As he’d gotten older, the fevers had gotten less frequent, just like Mom got less attentive.
(By the time he’d burned up on that mountain, Dabi had been treating his own fevers for several years. It wasn’t that he blamed Shouto for that, too, but… damn, even as a grown-ass adult, it still stung.)
Once he gets at least a bit of the (admittedly lukewarm) water into Tomura, off they go again, accompanied by the light turning closer and closer to orange-gold as the sun begins to finally sink down at the horizon. About fucking time, honestly. They track and backtrack through increasingly residential streets, the houses getting nicer and the alleys fewer and further between, as Dabi cross-checks street names and tries to keep Tomura from saying anything incriminating. He refuses to let their escape go to fucking waste just because this asshole can’t keep his mouth shut.
It really is glaringly obvious, how much All for One coddled Tomura. Did a ton of fucked-up shit too, of course — if he were feeling generous, Dabi might even say it was worse than Endeavor — but coddled him, too. Tomura has no sense of secrecy, or how to hide — how to actually live as a villain, outside of his safe little bar and league.
It’s fucking sad. Just goes to show that the bastard didn’t really expect Tomura to ever live outside of his reach.
After what feels like centuries, Dabi finally catches sight of a sign with the apartment complex name, and nearly falls over in a sudden wave of relief. Stupid and risky and idiotic this may be, but he really fucking hates staying on the streets, and the promise — hell, even the thought — of actually getting to get under a roof again… well, if he still had functioning tear ducts, he might tear up.
The place, as he half-drags Tomura up the steps with wary glances back and forth, is almost disgustingly nice. Not like most of the big housing developments in the downtown areas, with their safety-regulation bland-ass concrete and utter lack of personality — there’s a small yard outside the lined-up front doors, and a sickeningly cute little pathway up from the sidewalk with bushes of some sort on either side. There are three levels to the building, with external stairs climbing up the sides, but the number Dabi’s been repeating to himself is on the ground level. Small fucking miracles, since he might actually give up if he had to get Tomura up those fucking stairs.
He knocks on the door — shave-and-a-haircut — and waits.
After a minute, footsteps sound on the other side, and the lock disengages — several times, must have extras on the inside — before the door swings open, and Dabi meets a pair of very surprised, very mismatched eyes.
… What the fuck.
“How—”
“You know what, fuck it.” It has been a long fucking day and Dabi is out of patience. “Look, he’s fucking sick and I’m not dealing with that on the streets. You have a couch he can crash on until this shit passes?”
Kurogiri — now lacking both the ‘kuro’ and ‘kiri’, which means Dabi has no clue what to call him —stares at the two of them for a very long moment, the yellow glow from his still-solid left eye flickering uneasily as he opens his mouth. Before he can say anything, more footsteps scuff the floor and a shorter figure appears behind him, glowing oddly in the dim interior lighting. Their eyes, that weird yellow-on-black combination, glance from no-longer-Kurogiri to Dabi and back, and they sigh.
“So I guess you guys know each other?”
Are they fucking serious.
Not-Kurogiri turns very, very slowly to his— what, new roommate? “Kei, you could get in real trouble for this. They’re—”
“Two very down-on-their-luck guys who needed some help and definitely have nothing to do with the League of Villains,” They— Kei, apparently— state with a slow, intentional tone, “Isn’t that right? I’ve got a futon set up in the living room, come on. Uncle, could you make sure Saki’s in bed?”
Dabi gapes at not-Kurogiri. Uncle? Holy shit, as though this couldn’t get weirder.
With a very long sigh, not-Kurogiri steps quietly aside and ducks back down the hall, leaving hand cream— uh, Kei— to lead Dabi and pretty-much-passed-out Tomura inside, locking the door in three different places behind them. Seems paranoid, but they are housing an ex-villain— three of them, now, apparently. They pause as Dabi crouches in the genkan to tug off his shoes and Tomura’s, eyes glowing as their face twists into an unreadable expression. Dabi assumed the glow was part of whatever made Kurogiri— well, Kurogiri— but maybe it’s a family thing, if they’re related. Holy shit, not-Kurogiri has an actual family.
Once everyone’s shoes are all nice and lined up and tidy enough to make Dabi sick, Kei beckons them down the short hall to a set of traditional sliding doors that open onto… well, it’s probably supposed to be a living room, but it’s dead fucking bare except for a sofa, the futon on the floor, and the pile of boxes threatening to topple over in one corner. Just moved, huh?
As Kei pulls back the well-worn comforter so Dabi can unceremoniously dump Tomura onto the futon, he catches sight of a scar on their temple and abruptly realizes where he recognizes them from. “You’re the little shit who caught Control.”
A hero student.
Not even just a hero student— a third-year, practically a full-grown bastard. Control hadn’t even been on the streets for a year when the fuckers came and locked her up. And now they—
“I saved her life.” With a dispassionate tone, Kei drops the blanket back over Tomura, kneeling down to press the back of one hand against his forehead — like they’re not a hero, and he’s not a villain, and what the fuck is going on today — and frown. “I’ll go get some antibiotics. The shower’s down at the end of the hall, if you want— just don’t wake my sister, or I’ll be forced to arrest you.”
It’s said in such a deadpan that Dabi almost doesn’t process the words. “Are— is that a fucking joke?”
Standing, Kei rolls their eyes. “Congrats, Todoroki, you have a sense of humor after all. Once you don’t stink, you and Uncle are going to explain exactly what happened while I was in Yokohama, and then we’re all going the fuck to sleep. Deal?”
… Fuck it, Dabi doesn’t have the energy to care. Everything else he’d built up since that mountainside has come crashing down around his shoulders this summer, why shouldn’t this last piece of his identity go the same way? “Fine.”
“Good. Now, seriously, shower. Down the hall. Please go.”