Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Touya mulled over his schedule for the upcoming weekend. 

He’d get back to the apartment in about 30 minutes and have time to cook dinner before Hawks got back. A big dinner as well - his boyfriend texted him an hour ago to inform him he’d skipped lunch again.

He’d need to collect Natsuo from volleyball practise tonight - his (not so) little brother was finishing late and Fuyumi was too busy catching up with marking her students’ tests to pick him up. 

What else? 
He’d be working Saturday, so that was all he had to do tomorrow. 

And Sunday - Sunday was date night with Hawks - the first time they’d been able to plan one in a while with how busy they were. 

They’d start off at that restaurant his mother recommended. Then they’d go to some bar Touya found near the pier - it looked a little seedy but hey, they were both pro heroes. That was aside from the point anyway - the point is that it was near the pier. Hawks loved flying over the water for some reason.

And then, of course, Touya would propose to him. 

Not that he’d told anyone that, not even his mom. 

He was debating doing it in mid-air while flying in Hawks’ arms. Hawks may drop him. And then dive into the water to save him. And then they’d both end up swimming back to the pier, drenched and choking but… engaged, hopefully.

Touya was snapped out of his daydream by someone shoulder-checking him hard. Startled, he was pushed to the side but regained his balance - while the person who ran into him was sprawled on the ground from the collision. 

… She was just a teenager, Touya registered. By the way she looked up at him with an apology and started running again, he doubted she meant any harm. She then bumped into another person and fell to the ground again, clutching her head. 

Touya frowned and stepped forward to - he didn’t know - stop her? Ask what was going on? Help her, at the very least.

Later, when he'd look back on the following series of events, the whole thing would be a blur. It all happened way too fast.

A man came running from behind him, calling the girl a thief. The girl attempted to get up, but then clutched her head and yelled. The man approached her, and Touya didn’t like the look on his face. He was there in an instant, telling the man to calm down - the girl got up and reached towards the man in a move that looked like a hand-based attack - and she may have been a thief but Touya knew things would be easier for her if she didn’t attack -
So Touya reached out to knock her wrist, assuming her quirk, whatever it is, would be activated by her palm alone. 

Such a quick, thoughtless action.

The next thing he felt was pain.

A suffocating pain, like being forced into a space he didn’t fit into, being manipulated and warped in odd, uncomfortable ways – he almost screamed.
But after a split second, the pain receded, and he was standing exactly where he had been before.

The girl was gone, though. His hand clutched air. 
The man was gone too. The people walking down the street had somehow switched places. One gave him a double-take after looking up from their phone, apologised, then walked around him as if they hadn’t seen him there a second ago.

Touya’s heart skipped a beat and he started to feel dread pool in his stomach. He knew immediately that it was a quirk. Time lapse, perhaps? 
No. He checked his phone – it was barely two minutes since he checked how long he’d have to cook dinner. 

... He had no other ideas. Even when he started walking again, quicker than usual, hands in his pockets, he struggled to process what had just happened through a vague fog of panic. 

After a few minutes of walking along familiar streets with nothing out of the ordinary, though, he began to convince himself that everything was ok. He’d tell Hawkes what happened, maybe head down to the police station for observation.  

That was when the first clue that something was horribly wrong appeared right in front of him in the shape of a large, flashy billboard.

He stood in front of it for what felt like hours, staring, processing.

It was a billboard showing the number one hero. 
… which was supposed to be All-Might. Unless something had suddenly happened to All-Might within the last hour since Touya had checked the news, it should still be All-Might.

And even if something had happened to All-Might, it would be Hawkes up there, as the current number two hero.

But up there, staring back at him in a static image, was a man who had been sentenced for domestic abuse and put in prison years ago. 

His father. 

The number one hero: Endeavor. 

That-
That wasn’t right. 
It was a joke, right? One in poor taste, but a joke nonetheless.

Touya glanced around to see if anyone noticed the insanity, if anyone was laughing. Nobody was. People glanced at the billboard, sure, but then they carried on with their lives.

He even saw a child clutching an Endeavor plushie – just like the one Hawkes carried around as a kid.

He stared at the billboard once again, wide-eyed, feeling the hysterical urge to scream in the middle of the street.

… Wherever this was, it wasn’t home.

Touya ended up sitting on a bench watching the snow, hood up despite not really needing a shield against the cold, registering that he was too late to pick up Natsuo.

His car wasn’t parked where he left it.
And why would it be? The world had gone crazy. 

After everything – calling phone numbers that either didn’t exist here or were answered by strangers – his building key not working – the curtains of his apartment, which he could see from the outside, being a different colour – seeing his father’s face on adverts and in shop windows -

His last resort was walking to Natsuo’s volleyball practise, but then it became too late, so now he was here. On this bench. Maybe if he slept there that night, he’d wake up in his own bed at home and everything would be normal again.
Hawks would forgive him for disappearing for the night, probably. Natsuo wouldn’t be angry about having to walk home because he was Natsuo and not a snarky asshole like Touya - but god, Natsu’s teammate had just been attacked by a villain and that made Touya worry.
Natsuo may have Endeavor’s build, but he wasn’t a hero. As far as Touya knew, he never even wanted to be one. He wasn’t made to fight.

A man walked past the bench, and Touya’s heart clenched because it looked just like his little brother. Right down to the lack of warm clothing in freezing weather - his volleyball hoodie with the number 17 on it, and - 

Wait.

“Natsuo!” He shouted, getting up and walking fast towards the figure that was maybe a little too hunched over to actually be Natsuo, now he thought about it -

But then the figure turned around, and Touya breathed a sigh of relief.

“Natsu, thank fuck.” He breathed, approaching him. “Listen - something’s wrong, and my car wasn’t where I thought it was gonna be, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to pick you up, but, I just - something really weird is happening and I don’t know what’s going on-”

Touya trailed off.
Natsuo had never looked at him like that. 
Wide eyes, hunched over, avoiding eye contact…

“Do-” Natsuo stuttered, “Do you need help from a hero or something? I know my dad is - you know - but I don’t think I can help. Sorry.”

Touya stared. 

“I have a phone if you need to call someone?” Natsuo continued awkwardly. “It’s kinda cold out so, you know. I’ll try to help if I can but again, I’m not like my dad. Call me Todoroki, ok? Are you in my lectures or something?” 

“...I’ve tried calling you.” Touya said slowly, knowing that neither of them were on the same page, but not knowing what else to say. “I tried calling you, and mom, and Fuyumi, and Hawks, and even my boss, but - anybody who actually picked up wasn’t them.”

Touya took a deep, shaky breath and looked up at Natsuo, who appeared to be pretty uncomfortable. He’d even taken a step back. 

“Natsuo. Fuck - it’s me. I’m your brother. How can you-”

Touya pulled down his hood and watched for any reaction.

He got one.

Natsuo took another step back, frowning as he searched Touya’s face. His frown deepened, then turned into something that wrenched on Touya’s heart. Like watching a tragedy play out before your very eyes.

“You - you look like-”
To Touya's horror, Natsuo’s wet eyes glinted in the dim light of the nearby streetlamp.

“What the fuck kind of reaction is that?” Touya whispered. “What, did I fucking die, or something?”

He immediately slammed his mouth shut when Natsuo flinched, and then just stood there, silent, blinking his eyes hard.

… Maybe he was supposed to be dead.
It would explain a lot, he thought hysterically.
Fuck.
But – it wouldn’t explain everything, right? Besides, how would that explain Endeavor getting the number one hero spot, or everyone spontaneously deleting their numbers or-

… Was he even in his own version of reality?

“Where the fuck am I?” He muttered to nobody in particular. “What did that quirk do?”

Natsuo took a step forwards.
His voice came out firm, despite the catch in his throat.
“You can’t be. You can’t because he died when he was ten.”

Touya was sure, in hindsight, that there was a better way he could’ve responded to that.

In his panicked state, however, he lifted his hand and activated his quirk. Blue fire licked his fingers, illuminating their faces and melting the snow that had clung to his jacket sleeve. It was supposed to be for identification. Proof that he was here, and very much alive. 

And for his effort, Natsuo retracted his step forward, gaping between the fire and Touya’s face. Touya hastily put the fire out and raised his hands in surrender. It tore him apart that Natsuo would ever react to him like that, like he was being threatened.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to - listen, Natsu, I’m your brother and I would never hurt you, ok? I think I’m-”

Touya mulled over how to word his explanation of what was happening when he himself didn’t even know. 
“I believe you. I think – the Natsuo I know – he’s had me around his whole life. I don’t think you’re him. Earlier a girl used her quirk on me, ok? I think I was sent here - and I’m a version of – and I didn’t-”

Didn’t die, he couldn’t finish. 
He saw understanding spark in Natsuo’s eyes, though. That was a start.

“Endeavor was arrested for domestic abuse. He never made it to number one hero.” He said softly, reaffirming his own reality. “I was supposed to pick you up from volleyball practise tonight - you’re the best guard your university has had in years, and you’re on your way to making it to nationals, right? Fuyumi usually picks you up but she’s busy marking tests tonight.”

He didn’t know if he should keep going. Natsuo was watching him, his eyes still wet, and he looked just about as cold as Touya felt. 

Then it hit him.

If the Touya in this universe was dead then -

Natsuo’s brother had died.

He’d suffered a tragedy that Touya had no comprehension of. Touya didn’t even want to begin to think about what he would do if…
And now here Touya was, bringing that all up to the forefront.

“Natsuo, I’m so sorry. I just – I don’t know what’s happening and - I was supposed to be there for you - this must be so difficult for you.”

Touya watched as Natsuo’s tears finally fell. 

“Touya?” Natsuo whispered tentatively. 

Touya nodded, not knowing what to say or do. If he was right and this is some other timeline or universe then… this Natsuo was a stranger. Right?
But as he continued to stare at his little brother, he corrected himself. This Natsuo was his little brother in his mannerisms, his voice, his kindness when he thought Touya was a stranger… 

Natsuo still looked a bit frozen.
Touya lay a hand on his arm and pulled him gently towards the bench, where they both sat down, snow catching in their hair.

“Take some time. This is a lot.” Touya said, mouth dry, running his hands through his hair.

The tense silence gave him some time to think. There must be a way home. He’d already hurt Natsuo so much just by being here - why hadn’t he just gone to the damn police station or something? Would they have even helped him or just called him crazy? 
What came next? How would he even begin to find a way back to his own timeline? He supposed he could find the girl somehow - this universe’s version of her. That could work. If he could just stall around that area for a while, he could bump into her at some point, and he was pretty sure he would recognise her in a crowd-

“You look like mom.” Natsuo said, voice cracking, interrupting his train of thought. 

“What?” Touya responded, lifting his head from his hands.

“When I pictured you. Older. You always looked like dad. But you look a lot more like mom. I recognise her in you.” 

“…I get that a lot.” Touya said quietly.

He briefly wondered where his timeline split from this one, but he didn’t think Natsuo was up for that debate. 

“I’m calling Fuyumi. I think this counts as an emergency. She’ll know what to do.” Natsuo said, sounding unsure. 

Touya watched the snow alone as Natsuo spoke on the phone a small distance away from him. He thought he heard Natsuo telling Fuyumi to brace herself, but the rest was lost over the harsh wind.

Great. Another little sibling to traumatise. Touya thought he may just start tearing his hair out when this version of Fuyumi started crying just from looking at him.

They waited until a car’s headlights approached in the distance.

“I’ll - uhh - explain. Stay here, ok?” Natsuo said before approaching the car.

Touya pulled his hood up and continued watching the snow.
He wasn’t left waiting for long.

When Fuyumi appeared before him, it took a whole two seconds to register it was her, and not mom. It – it was how she held herself. How she looked at him curiously and calmly as she walked to stand right in front of him.
He stood up too, and she wasted no time in reaching up to pull his hood down. 

Touya couldn’t get over how… motherly the action was. She looked so composed despite her wide eyes. He waited for her to start crying, or even for her to demand an explanation, but instead she carefully put her hands on his shoulders and brought him down into a warm hug. 

He hugged her back, glad for something to hold onto, and sunk into her. He realised in that moment how much tension he’d been holding in his body. 

“Touya. You must be so scared.” She whispered, moving a hand to the back of his head. 
…He felt like he was ten years old again, being hugged by mom after having a nightmare.
The realisation hit him like a punch to the stomach: Fuyumi grew up as the oldest sibling here. She’d spent the majority of her life without him around to watch out for her. With Endeavor still free to do as he pleased.  

But that didn’t explain why she was acting like… like mom…

“Hi, ‘yumi.” He said softly. 

She hugged him tighter, and then let go to study his face. 
She was crying, of course she was, but her tears didn’t make Touya uncomfortable like he thought they would. 

“Let’s get you home, ok? It’s late - I don’t have work tomorrow so let’s go to sleep and figure out how to get you… back to your real home in the morning.” 

Touya nodded tiredly, his throat too tight to respond, and both him and Natsuo followed Fuyumi into her car. 

“Natsuo-bro?”

“Oh, hey, Hawkes-bro.” Natsuo’s cheerful voice came from the phone, “Was just about to call you.”

Hawkes laughed.
“Your game ran late, then? Thought so. Listen, can you tell Touya to pick up food on the way back? I’m starving here, and he’s got his phone off or something-”

“Oh. Uh. He didn’t pick me up in the end. I figured, you know, he’s been busy recently, and it started snowing and I like walking in the snow-”

“Wait, what?” Hawkes stopped him. “He didn’t pick you up?”

“Nah. It’s fine, though, honestly, the walk’s only 30 minutes.”

Hawkes frowned. Getting home late was one thing but…
Touya had been very insistent on giving Natsuo lifts since his teammate got attacked walking home after practise.

He quickly checked the bedroom to see if Touya was taking a nap or something, but it was cold and empty, like the rest of the apartment.

“Did he call to say he was at work, or something?” Hawkes asked Natsuo, pulling the covers up just to make sure.

“No. You said he had his phone switched off, right?”

Hawkes stood in silence in his apartment, trying to think it through. He was almost certain Touya got off work at a normal time today. He always had his phone on him. He always called if their plans had changed, especially when it came to his siblings...

“This is really out of character for him, isn’t it?” Natsuo observed aloud, the cheer gone from his voice.

Hawkes noticed his chest feeling a little tighter and breathed deeply to ease it. There had to be some kind of innocent explanation - there always was.

“I’m gonna call Mahou to see if he’s still at work or something. He probably is. You know what covert ops can be like.” He said, hoping it came across as calm.

“Yeah. I’ll call mom to see if he dropped by. Keep me updated?”

They said their goodbyes, and Hawkes took a few seconds to even out his breathing before picking up his phone again.

Chapter Text

Touya went to sleep and woke up in the house where all his nightmares used to take place. 

The previous night, he’d argued with Fuyumi to the point of shouting that he couldn’t believe she was still living here, and he wouldn’t allow her to go back.

Natsuo, of all people, had explained timidly that Fuyumi wasn’t actually in danger. The Endeavor here, despite still being an asshole, would apparently never hurt her, or any of them (these days, at least).

Touya wanted to call bullshit, because if his version of Endeavor was capable of trying to hurt Fuyumi, then he was capable of it here, too. He held his tongue, though. He could see that he was scaring them a little.
Plus, Endeavor was away on a mission on the other side of Japan and wouldn’t be back home for at least a week. That gave them some time to get Touya home before they came face to face.

Unfortunately, last night’s discussion had then gotten onto the subject of mom.
The mom in this timeline didn’t have a house for them to go to.
Because she was an inpatient at a psychiatric hospital, is all they told him. 

“How long?” He’d asked. 
Then he'd thought again about how the Fuyumi here was so much like mom, and knew in his bones that this was something that would have happened when they were much younger. Too young. 

He didn’t ask any more questions after that.

He woke up in the guest room, at least, so it wasn’t like he was in his old room. His old room was shrine now, anyway.

… He didn’t want to think too hard about it.

He shuddered and got up to brush his teeth. It was early enough on a Saturday that none of his siblings were up - even if they weren’t really his siblings, it brought him comfort that at least some things were comfortably familiar about this timeline. 

He started cooking breakfast for everyone because that, too, was familiar. 

Natsuo was the first to come down. Predictable. 

Touya raised an eyebrow at how comfortable he looked compared to yesterday, though. He was even sporting a small smile.

“Whatcha cookin’?” He asked, voice tired but teetering on cheerful. 

Touya glanced back at the stove.
“Miso and rice. Sit down, it’ll be done in a bit.” 

“Oh, sweet, you’re making it for everyone?” 

Touya scoffed. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Cut me some slack, man.” Natsuo said, going to sit down at the table nearby, “It’s not like I’m used to my brother cooking for me.” 

Natsuo sounded like he was trying so hard to make light of it all, but it cracked towards the end. 
Touya wanted to try, too. 

“What, Shouto never cooks for you?” 

That earned a startled laugh from Natsuo, and even though Touya wasn’t sure what was so funny, he felt the tension bleed out of his shoulders just a little. 

“Wait, you’re serious? Does Shouto - your Shouto - actually know how to cook?” Natsuo asked. 

“… He’s not hopeless?” Touya answered fairly. 

Natsuo laughed again, at which point Fuyumi came in. 

“Touya’s making breakfast for us. Take a seat.” Natsuo informed her, giddiness in his voice.  

She blinked behind her glasses and took in the scene very much like Natsuo had earlier. 

“It’s nearly ready.” Touya said, “Can one of you go wake up Shouto?” 

He was met with silence, and for a split second he felt like his chest was caving in on itself at the thought of - of his baby brother not surviving Endeavor, either. But – his siblings looked more confused than anything else. 

“What, did nobody tell him what was going on after I crashed for the night?” He asked.

“He’s at the UA dorms. He doesn’t live here anymore.” Fuyumi informed him with a question in her voice.

Touya raised his eyebrows, and then turned around to finish off breakfast. 
“Huh. Well, there’s an extra portion in case anyone wants seconds, then.” He said. 

He tried not to let himself think about the fact that Fuyumi was in this house alone most of the time. 

“That’s pretty interesting.” Fuyumi said as he started putting plates on the table. “There are so many differences between our timelines. So are the League of Villains not active in yours?” 

“Huh?” Touya said dumbly as he started to eat. “They’re in my timeline - they attacked Shouto’s class twice. What does that have to do with dorms?”

“Shouto and his class aren’t safe without the dorms because of the League of Villains.” Fuyumi explained, frowning.

Touya scoffed. 
“What, those clowns? They got outsmarted by a bunch of kids. Two times. Couldn’t put a finger on Shouto even if they tried.” 

“Oh.” Natsuo said, eyes wide. “So they didn’t kidnap Shouto’s classmate in your timeline?” 

Touya’s hand froze on its way to his mouth. 
“They… what?”

“Bakugou’s fine! They got him back!” Fuyumi interjected. “Natsuo, stop being so blunt! It’s a lot to take in!” 

“The League of Villains took Katsuki - Bakugou? And - yeah, ok, that definitely explains why Shouto’s class are in dorms. I can process it, Fuyumi.” Touya said calmly. “But, like, All Might is their teacher here too, right? Who would mess with him?” 

Natsuo and Fuyumi shared a look. Then Fuyumi sighed, and Natsuo explained why literally anyone could actually stand to mess with All Might himself in this timeline. 

And - didn’t that mean that the All Might in his own timeline was the same? 

“Do you want to see Shouto?” Fuyumi asked tentatively as she and Natsuo helped him clean up. 

“Of course. You guys are the only thing here that’s familiar. Question is whether he’d like to see me. I guess he - uhh - never really got to know me – the other me - here?” Touya said, with difficulty. 

Fuyumi nodded without even wincing.
Touya had to admire her for that.

“Shouto has some pretty high up hero connections, too.” Natsuo said as Touya grabbed a towel to start drying the dishes.

“…Ok? And?”

“Bro, you need to get back home, right? You need all the help you can get.” Natsuo explained with a shrug. “I’ve watched detective shows. I know having hero connections is your best shot at reversing whatever this is.” 

Touya stared at him for a couple seconds, and then dropped his unfocused gaze downwards. 
This whole experience was so surreal – he felt like he should’ve already come up with a solid plan to get back home by himself. He didn’t want to involve Shouto in his problems. He was busy enough with school.
He checked the time, and realised that his boss would be wondering where he was at this point. That’s if Natsuo and Hawks hadn’t already raised the alarm about him being missing. 

Oh, god. Hawks. 
Where would he be in this timeline? A hero, without a doubt. A commission hero, most likely. 

“You got any ideas? Plans?” Fuyumi asked suddenly, snapping him out of a semi-panic. 

“Nothing other than finding the girl who sent me here. Her counterpart in this timeline, that is.” 

“Is she a villain?” Natsuo asked. 

“Barely.” Touya huffed. “I think I just spooked her, is all. I should know better.” 

“Oh? Are you - are you a hero?” Natsuo asked tentatively. 

Touya finished the last of the drying and went to sit back at the table, Natsuo following while Fuyumi excused herself to call Shouto.

“I have a hero license, so sort of? It’s a long story.” Touya started. “I didn’t like the flashiness of conventional heroism. Underground heroism didn’t pay enough, and I needed money quick to help support mom and you guys. So I’m in the covert ops department. Kind of like detective work with quirks.”

Natsuo’s eyes were positively sparkling.
“That sounds so cool! It’s so…  you as well.” He chuckled to himself, “I bet you made Endeavor eat his words.” 

“Ehh.” Touya drawled, waving his hand. “I don’t think I could’ve changed his mind about me even if I’d tried, to be honest. Not much he can say about me now from behind bars, though.” 

Natsuo frowned slightly, then sighed, his features smoothing out. 
“Whatever. It’s just - cool. To meet you and get to know you like this. You know?” 

Touya grinned, reigning in the urge to ruffle his not-so little brother’s hair.
“You’ve recovered well from the shock I gave you yesterday.”

“Well. Fuyumi and I talked after you went to sleep, is all.” Natsuo said slowly, quietly, like he was telling a secret. “And we - we couldn’t really help him. Our Touya back then. I know we were just kids but-”

“Jeez Natsu, yes, exactly, you were kids. None of that was ever your responsibility.” Touya chided him. 

Natsuo shrugged, unperturbed. 
“I know, I know. It’s just - we have an opportunity to help you out now. It’s just - it’s nice to see you… older. We agreed to do whatever we could for you - and for our Touya as well.” 

Touya couldn’t help it. He had to take several deep breaths before he could speak. 

“Thanks.” He said eventually, making eye contact with Natsuo. “And for the record - I’m glad you and Fuyumi were the first people I found. You’re different but you’re still my siblings, yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Natsuo said, his eyes misty and his smile comforting and familiar as ever. 

“Huh. Fuyumi is calling me.” Shouto muttered, picking up his phone.

Something exploded to his left.
“Tell her to wait!” Bakugou growled, holding the other controller. “I’m not pausing the damn game, Half’n’half!”

“Oh! Oh! I’ll take over, Todoroki! Lemme beat his ass again!” Kaminari yelled from the other side of the common room, zooming over. 

Shouto handed over the controller with a quick thanks as Bakugou began screaming at Kaminari. 
“Hi, Fuyumi.” He said, accepting the call.

“Shouto - hi - are those your classmates in the background?” Fuyumi asked, her voice weird in a way Shouto couldn’t put his finger on. 

“Yes, sorry, they’re loud. Why did you call?” 

Fuyumi must’ve noticed his tone.
“Nothing bad, I promise but - uh. You’ll need to brace yourself, ok? Maybe go to your room and we can talk for a bit?” 

Izuku was shooting him curious glances at this point, so he pointedly shrugged back and headed up to his room. 

“Ok. I’m here. Did something happen?”

“It’s going to sound… unlikely and not really within the confines of what is possible. But bear with me, ok?” 

Shouto brought the phone away from his face to stare at it. Fuyumi sounded… energetic, he decided. But he couldn’t tell if it was in a good or bad way. 

He put the phone back to his ear.
“Ok?” 

Fuyumi took a deep breath. 
“Yesterday, Natsuo bumped into a version of Touya from another timeline. He was sent to our timeline by a quirk. He’s in our kitchen right now.”

Shouto took the phone away from his face to stare at it again, frowning as if it was the phone’s fault Fuyumi just said something crazy.

“A Touya that didn’t die?” He clarified, once he was done. 

“Yes.”

“And - it’s him? Not some villain pretending to be him?” Shouto asked. 

“Natsuo says he has Touya’s quirk. And-”

Fuyumi paused for what felt like a minute. 
“He looks a lot like mum.” She continued steadily. “And he acts like a big brother. I haven’t doubted he’s Touya - a different Touya - since I laid eyes on him.” 

“… Can I check?”

It earned some laughter from Fuyumi, but he wasn’t sure why that was so funny. 

“I was going to ask you if you wanted to meet him. You - you didn’t really have a chance to - you know. Get to know our Touya.”

There was silence over the phone as Shouto struggled to remember everything he could about Touya. It was, honestly, mostly just a picture of a boy with blue eyes and white hair on top of a shrine. 

“He’s nice. You should come.” Fuyumi broke the silence. 

“Is today OK?” Shouto found himself asking. “Maybe after I see mom?” 

“Of course. Pick up dessert on the way, ok? We can all have dinner together.” 
Her voice bunched up, like it contained so much happiness she was struggling not to let too much of it out at once. 

“Ok.” Shouto replied, and then hung up. 

He was glad Fuyumi had told him to go to his room, where he could be alone. His classmates did keep telling him it was creepy when he sat still, staring into space for too long.

Mahou stared at the desktop screen in Tsukauchi’s office, replaying the footage again and again, from the moment Touya entered the frame to the moment he disappeared into thin air.

“Can we get any more angles on this?” She asked.

“We’ve appealed for any photos or videos taken in the area at the time but that’s the only CCTV footage we have.” Tsukauchi sighed.

Mahou pushed her lips together.
“And the girl?”

“Locals say she frequents the area. Shoplifts sometimes. Had a few warnings but she’s never been arrested. Should be able to track her down soon.”

Mahou tore her eyes from the screen and rubbed at them, hard. She then glanced through the small window on the office door. Every ten seconds, Hawks would walk past, pacing.

He’d already scrutinised the footage, against everyone’s recommendations.

She shared a significant look with Tsukauchi, and then went back to staring at the CCTV footage as hard as she could.

Chapter Text

After informing Touya that Shouto would be here for dinner, Fuyumi confessed that she had some marking to do, left over from the previous night. Natsuo added that he had an essay due on Monday, so he could work on that here, too.

They all ended up working on their own thing around the dinner table – with Touya on his phone googling everything he didn’t want to grill his siblings about.

He looked up the top hero list first, updated a couple weeks ago - and there was Hawks’ name, as expected. The number 2 hero. The rest of it was much the same as his world, except for a picture of his father’s face glaring up at him from the number one position.

And what had happened to All-Might, exactly? He looked that up, too - dubbed the ‘Kamino’ incident. The League of Villains had some extra members in this timeline as well, it seemed - named Twice and Dabi.
He scrolled down and saw a related article on whether Hawks would stay in the top ten hero ranking after his most recent fight, and rolled his eyes before scrolling past the obvious click bait.

He searched for Mahou, his boss, but she was a ghost on the internet in his own timeline. He wasn’t surprised when nothing showed up for her name. Could he even use his own hero connections if they wouldn’t know who he was? He doubted it... but he may try. It may be a start.

He stopped to rub his eyes and glanced around the table at his siblings, focused on their work. He searched “Endeavor child abuse” and it got no matches other than vague ones about Endeavor’s hero work.
He then searched for their names - this Natsuo was pretty much in the same position in the college volleyball league as his Natsuo, which was great.
This Fuyumi had won a teaching award recently -  they’d gone out for dinner as a family to celebrate that for his Fuyumi. He wondered what this Fuyumi did to celebrate.
This timeline’s Shouto came second instead of first in the UA sports festival, which was a surprise-

But then he saw a picture of Shouto, his baby brother, standing on the podium.

Later, he’d be glad he was seeing it now rather than later, in person.

His breath stuttered as he stared.

“Touya?” Fuyumi asked nervously.

He attempted to compose himself.
He knew what it was like for people to react weirdly to his own scars. The staring, the pity, whatever. Asking how he got them, which would probably be fine if the story was something other than “my dad caused it.”. There was a reason he wore long sleeves.

But - Shouto had one his face. You couldn’t cover that up. It must’ve been so painful. Over his eye, as well.

As fury bubbled up inside him, he had to consciously remind himself to turn down the heat building in his hands.

“Oh.” Natsu said softly, tilting the screen of the phone in his direction, eyes wide with realisation, “Your Shouto wouldn’t have the scar, would he?”

“It’s probably not what you’re thinking.” Fuyumi said calmly, resting a cool hand on his arm. “It wasn’t dad. It was an accident when he was 6.”

Touya swallowed, knowing Fuyumi wouldn’t lie to him. He worked on drawing the last dredges of heat from his hands.
“Is his sight affected?” He asked, voice rough, putting his phone down on the other side of the table. A small part of him felt defeated after seeing that.

“He has a bit of tunnel vision and blurriness in that eye, but he told me it doesn’t really bother him anymore.” Fuyumi said.

A deep breath was all it took for Touya to feel equilibrated again.

“I’m going to make some lunch.” He said quickly. “I’ll let you guys know when it’s ready.”

By the time dinner came around, Touya had gotten over himself. He insisted on doing all the cooking because what else was he gonna do? Sit quietly and overthink about what was going on in his own timeline? No thanks.

They heard Shouto arrive just as he finished and Touya had to resist the urge to pull the hood of Natsuo’s lent hoodie over his head.

The only thing this other, scarred Shouto did once they first make eye contact was stare at him indifferently.

Touya tried a smile.
“Hey, Shouto.”

“Your hair is supposed to be white.” Shouto replied.

Well.
It was better than crying, but it still wasn’t what he was expecting.

Touya glanced at Fuyumi and Natsuo for help but they were too busy having some kind of nonverbal conversation between themselves.

Was that true, though? Was that just another difference in the timelines? Was the Touya in this world born with white hair like mom’s?

Plus, who opened with that upon meeting their dead brother? He almost laughed to himself. This Shouto had about as much social awareness as his.

“It’s nice to see you too, bud.” Touya snarked back, not unkindly. “It may be just my timeline, but I’ve always had red hair.”

“Shouto, you probably don’t remember.” Fuyumi said, finally having ended whatever was going on between her and Natsuo. “Touya was born with red hair and it turned white later on.”

Both Touya and Shouto frowned, and he was about to ask why but-

“Probably from stre-”

“Natsuo!” Fuyumi chided, interrupting him.

Natsuo held his hands up as they went towards the table to sit down.
“Sorry, sorry - yes, Shouto, Touya had - has - naturally red hair.”

Touya decided to let it go. Fuyumi’s stern teacher voice was scary.

Shouto, apparently deciding to do the same, turned to stare at Touya, his expression blank but eyes calculating.
He hadn’t started eating with the rest of them yet.

“Shouto.” Fuyumi said, noticing, “Can you save the interrogation for after dinner?”

Touya couldn’t help it. This was kind of funny.
“Interrogation?” He asked, grinning.

“He thinks-”

“Are you really Touya?” Shouto demanded, speaking over his sister.

Fuyumi put her face in her hands and Touya snorted.
“Yep.” He said without missing a beat.

“Prove it.”

Touya turned to Natsuo.
“You saw my quirk, right?”

“Yeah. Same as our Touya’s, can confirm.”

Shouto narrowed his eyes.
“It’s illegal for civilians to use their quirks without exceptional circumstances.”

“Good thing I’m not a civilian, then. I have a hero licence.”

“So prove it.”

Touya was already reaching into his jeans pocket for his wallet. He handed over the hero licence and waited patiently as Shouto scrutinised it.

“You’re taking too long, I wanna see it.” Natsuo whined after a long silence, yanking the card from Shouto’s grasp.
Shouto frowned at the empty space between his hands where the card once was.

“Still need convincing, huh?” Touya mused.

“Anyone could fake one of those.” Shouto argued. “How do we know you’re not a villain trying to use our emotions against us?”

Shouto was starting to let emotion creep into his voice, and Touya sighed.

He had an idea.
His own Shouto brought it up once - something Touya was surprised he remembered at such a young age. Would this Shouto remember it too?
It was a shot in the dark, because he had no clue where their timelines had diverged.

He stared at the table as he spoke.

“I remember the first piece of advice I gave you, while we still lived in this house.” Touya started, slightly uncomfortable that Fuyumi and Natsuo would have to hear this, too. “Your quirk had just manifested. Endeavor - he. Uh. You were scared. So was I. And I told you that you have to stand up to people like him.”

Touya finally looked up to see whether Shouto had any reaction, and he did - wide eyes, staring right back at him. It was the most emotive and unguarded he’d been since he got here.

Shouto suddenly looked away, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
“Oh.” He said quietly, frowning. “I think I do remember you with red hair.”

Touya hummed in response, and Natsuo handed Touya his licence back.

“So you believe him?” Fuyumi prodded.

Shouto swallowed and nodded.
“Yes. Sorry.” Then, without missing a beat, “What is your quirk?”

…Shouto didn’t even know his quirk?

He really didn’t know him at all, did he?
Touya swallowed down the lump in his throat.

“Blue fire.” Touya said, easily demonstrating with one finger, before putting it out. “But I’m built to be resistant to the cold like mom. Need support equipment for work, which lets me use more fire so I don’t-” burn myself up

He almost finished, but his throat constricted when he saw Natsuo’s jaw clench, Fuyumi flinch, and Shouto downright frown at him.

Fuck.
He didn’t want to think about how he died as a child in this timeline.
Evidently nobody else did either.

He scrambled for something else to talk about, fast.

“It’s really not important.” He said quickly. “Natsuo, you have a game this time next week, right?”

Natsuo startled, but Touya could see the fog clear his eyes as he started to think.

“Oh - uh. Yeah.”

“Cool. If I haven’t figured out a way home by then, I’ll come see you play.” Touya said, grinning at the small consistency between timelines.

“Oh - yeah. That would be great.” Natsuo grinned back. “I mean, you don’t have to-“

Touya rolled his eyes.
“I’m gonna go either way. Fuyumi, Shouto, you wanna join? And mom - if she’s allowed… day trips?”

Natsuo and Shouto looked like they were trying not to wince at that.
Luckily, this version of Fuyumi was disturbingly composed.

“Mom can’t leave the facility, no. And I’ve already put my name down to visit her at - it’s 2pm next Saturday, right, Natsuo? But Shouto can go with you?”

Shouto stared at her, then Natsuo.

“I’ve never been?” He said unsurely.

“You’ve never been to see Natsuo play?” Touya clarified, because, what the fuck?
And then he had to knock some sense into himself again, because he knew Endeavor wouldn’t have let them be normal fucking brothers.

“Again, you don’t have to if you don’t want to-” Natsuo started awkwardly.

Fuck that.
“Me and Shouto will be there.” Touya said in his best big brother, don’t mess with me, voice.

“Ok.” Shouto agreed, looking mildly alarmed.

Fuck it, Touya decided.

He ruffled Shouto’s hair, specifically in the way he knew Shouto would hate because he’d have to spend 20 minutes defining the colour split again. Shouto spluttered hilariously and batted him away, and Touya couldn’t help laughing.

“Why would you do that?” Shouto demanded, grabbing his hair indignantly.

“Because it pisses you off.” Touya laughed, and he saw Natsuo cracking a grin, too.

Fuyumi conveniently hid her face as she reached into her bag to pull out a comb to hand to Shouto. He grabbed it from her hand like a disgruntled toddler and Touya and Natsuo made eye contact, then burst out laughing.

The Shouto from Touya’s timeline had expertly dodged him for years now. This was going to be fun.

Mari sat silently in the interrogation room, staring into space as they kept asking her questions.

She’d thought she was in here for stealing that stupid novelty keychain. A waste of an interrogation room for petty theft, but she knew police officers got bored sometimes and just liked to shout at minor offenders.

But then they’d told her she was in here for making someone disappear.

… That didn’t make any sense.

Nobody had ever gone looking for the people she made disappear. They were all low-lives anyway – people who’d tried to attack her on the streets at night after finding where she hid her sleeping bag. Her quirk was great self-defence. It made people like that just stop existing.

All disgusting low-lives, every single one of them… except for her mom.

Her mother was the first person she made disappear after her quirk first manifested at the late age of 7. It was an accident, but she was gone. Just like that.

Nobody had ever gone looking for her mom, so she’d decided then and there that her quirk must erase the memory of the people as well. Otherwise, why did nobody go looking for her mom? She had been Mari’s whole world, even if she hadn’t had a lot, and acted weird at times. Mari loved her. Other people would have loved her too, right?

Right?

Yet here the police were, asking her what she’d done to the red-haired man. They said his family wanted him back.

Mari couldn’t think about that. There wasn’t space for it in her brain.

If her quirk didn’t erase the memory of the people as well, then why had nobody gone looking for her mom, like they were looking for the red-haired man?

She couldn’t speak, and the police officers eventually gave up and left.

Then the number two hero came in - she recognised him instantly, the civilian clothing did nothing to disguise his wings, and she started to feel scared.

He stood at the other side of the table with no trace of his trademark smile. His hands were balled into fists.

“Will you speak to me?” He asked.

She nodded slowly.

He took a seat.
“You made Touya Todoroki disappear. We want to know what you did to him.”

Oh. Todoroki. That name was familiar. She’d missed that earlier. Probably explained the hero involvement. And why they were searching for him, and not her mother.
She decided to just get this over with and answer honestly to the best of her ability. Her quirk wasn’t dangerous, and it had been an accident. She’d resigned herself to some jail time, maybe.

“I don’t know where I sent him. He’s gone and I can’t get him back.”

Hawks blinked and leaned forwards.
“You sent him somewhere. Ok. Another country? Time?”

Mari internally recalled a conversation with a stranger she’d had a while back, and dragged up some old theories about her quirk.
“No. Neither.” She said clearly. “I sent him somewhere we’ll never be able to reach him. It's irreversible. My quirk can’t bring him back.”

Hawks’s eyes darted between hers as she spoke.
She hadn’t realised that Hawks was trying to act composed and professional until he wasn’t. His breathing started to shake, and so did his hands. Mari became increasingly more aware that she was missing something very, very important.

Hawks filled her in.
“Please. He’s… He’s my best friend.”

Something in his voice, and an agonizing sensation of slow-building guilt made tears prick at Mari’s own eyes, but she blinked them away.

She sat there silently, knowing she couldn’t change her answer. She could speculate, give him false hope, because this time did feel different from all the other times, but that would be… cruel.

There was no getting Touya Todoroki back.

Hawks was eventually taken from the room, and Mari resumed staring into space, feeling significantly colder than before.

Shouto stayed relatively quiet for the rest of the evening, sneaking paranoid glances at Touya.

Touya ignored it. If Shouto wanted to finally get the chance to be the annoying snot-nosed little brother, Touya would let him.

With his hair still a little uneven, Shouto eventually left with a teacher escort, which was weird, and the rest of them started getting ready for bed soon after.

Touya wanted to be selfish. He really did. He wanted to ruffle Natsuo’s hair and ask if he was dating the same girl here. He wanted to grab Fuyumi’s hand, drag her back downstairs and ask her all about the Hawks of this universe.

A small part of him wanted to indulge in thinking about home - thinking about what he’d do when he got back. But that would spiral into thinking about what was happening there right now, and whether that ‘when’ was closer to an ‘if’, and…

He couldn’t keep lying in the dark like this.
It was 3am and he’d run out of distractions - so he instead put on Natsuo’s hoodie, with the hood yanked up, and tiptoed downstairs to make some coffee. Or tea. Just something to keep his hands busy.

There was a silhouette against the light of the open fridge when he opened the kitchen door, and he paused in the middle of reaching for the light switch.

The figure slowly turned towards him and froze.
He knew by the frame that it wasn’t Fuyumi or Natsuo. Definitely not Endeavor either. 

He had no clue who this could be. A thief, maybe? A hungry one, judging by the piles of snacks in their arms.

“Uh.” He said into the dark room, “Hello?”

Touya’s next distinct thought was that this was no ordinary civilian. Because they moved too fast. They moved like they’d done thousands of drills to improve their speed, like Touya had to do in high school. They moved like they’d done an internship with fucking Iidaten. They moved like -

He couldn’t finish that thought because, after dropping all the stuff in their arms, they went straight for the kitchen knives, and now they were coming straight at him-

Years of working with covert ops prompted him to grab their wrist and squeeze as they tried to stab his face, and he attempted to twist their arm behind their back. They dropped the knife and hooked a leg around his leg and - fuck - he wasn’t prepped for a goddamn fight – he was actually caught off-guard as he fell with them on top of him.

At this angle, some of the light from the open fridge caught on their face.
… Eyes with a distinctive black border, open wide with pupils just pinpricks enveloped by gold… oh god-

Touya instinctively put his hands up, which in hindsight, was stupid, because their - his hands went straight for Touya’s fucking throat.

Touya grabbed at them so he could gasp-
“Hawks. Hawks. What the fuck are you-”

He was sure it was him. It was Hawks. His build, his eyes, his fighting style but…

This Hawks… didn’t have wings?

Hawks (probably Hawks?) slowly relaxed his hands at Touya’s outburst, and Touya just lay there, waiting.

Hawks was breathing like there nothing but adrenaline going through his veins. He must’ve come back from a really intense job or something, to get that spooked.

Slowly, cautiously, the weight left Touya, and the light turned on, leaving him squinting, now sitting on the floor.

“Oh.” Hawks said.

And, fuck. It was him. 

“Oh. My god I’m-” Hawks looked towards the knife on the floor, and back at Touya, no recognition in his stricken eyes. “I’m so sorry, I - I thought you were someone else.”

Touya stared.

It was so, so weird seeing Hawks without his wings. This must’ve been another difference in the timelines, like how Touya had white hair here. He wondered what quirk Hawks had here.

Hawks offered him a hand, so he took it, and ended up just standing there, staring at Hawks some more.

Hawks was staring at him too, and Touya was glad it was with an expression he didn’t recognise. It hurt less. Reminded him less of his Hawks, probably looking for him right now.

“Who are you?” Hawks finally broke the silence.

“Right. Sorry.” Touya said, rummaging his brain for a cover story - he came up with cover stories for a living but he had no experience lying to Hawks’ face. “I’m Natsuo’s friend. We were working on a project - you know, for our pre-med course, and uh - I’m crashing in the spare room. But I couldn’t sleep.”

Hawks nodded.
Touya couldn’t read him at all, and just had to assume he’d bought it.

“What are you doing here?” He asked Hawks.

Hawks smiled at him weirdly but, well, it was better than nothing?
“Endeavor is a work friend.”

Touya nodded and look at the fridge, which has started beeping from being left open.
“Right.”

“And-” Hawks continued, walking away to shut the fridge, “His kids are cool. Fuyumi said I can take whatever I want, and she makes me breakfast when I’m still here before she goes off to work.”

Touya felt a huge weight lift off his shoulders as Hawks spoke.

Maybe…
Hawks - the Hawks here maybe wasn’t as lonely as Touya feared he’d be.

He cleared his throat a little before he spoke.
“Natsuo’s a good friend.” He said, and Hawks grinned at him.

“Yeah, I don’t see him around much but I hear about him through Fuyumi. And I’ve worked with Shouto a few times, too.”

Touya went to help Hawks pick up the stuff he dropped, and spotted that it was all gross ready-made junk. He rolled his eyes. Another consistency in the timelines.

“Listen, I was gonna cook a midnight snack for myself.” He lied. “I’ll make enough for both of us, easy.”

Hawks didn’t answer for a few seconds, but then turned to face Touya with yet another weird smile.
“Yeah, sure! Thanks!”

Touya shrugged away the sense of unease that settled over him as he headed towards the stove. Hawks hovered two meters away from him, watching him cook.

This Hawks was a stranger, he had to remind himself.
But… this Hawks found the Todorokis. Just like he had in his timeline. It was a piece of information Touya wanted to hold onto and never let go. Maybe Hawks being close to the Todorokis was just an inevitability in all universes. It was oddly comforting.

“So… you’re friends with Fuyumi?” Touya asked.

Hawks snorted.
“I don’t know if she’d consider me a friend over an annoying freeloader.”

“That doesn’t sound like Fuyumi.” Touya said, frowning.

“I mean, I am an annoying freeloader, but yeah, you’re right. She’s too nice.”

Touya hummed in agreement and continued cooking.

“She has big sister energy, you know? Even though she’s the same age as me.” Hawks continued happily.

Touya glanced at him, and was surprised that his smile looked… actually genuine now. It reminded him painfully of his Hawks, so he looked away.

“It’s actually been nice coming to the Todoroki household since, you know…” Hawks gestured to something behind him, and Touya didn’t know, but he nodded anyway.

“I mean, I’ve been breaking in occasionally during the night for years ever since I learned where Endeavor lives, but it’s like a weekly thing now. Natsuo called me ‘Hawks-bro’ the last time he saw me, and I can’t tell if he was joking or not. And Fuyumi offered me the spare room.”

Touya smiled at the stove, something painfully happy bubbling in his chest.
“Wow.” He said. “That must be nice.”

“It’s weird.” Hawks said. “But also, I would die for them.”

Touya barked out a laugh, then remembered his siblings were trying to sleep upstairs. They were heavy sleepers but, still. Best let them rest.

He was done making something quick, simple, and healthy at this point, so he and Hawks ended up sitting at the table with their late night snacks.

Touya noticed how Hawks watched him chew and swallow the food before he started eating himself, and it made him stop and contemplate the situation.

He subtly watched Hawks. How he sat. How he moved. There was a tenseness to it, still. Like he wasn’t completely convinced he was safe. And if Hawks was still capable of smiling genuinely, why were all his smiles directed towards Touya weird?

… He probably didn’t fully believe Touya’s backstory, maybe…

Oh.
Oh.

Touya was disgusted by how sloppy he’d been. Mahou would be so disappointed.
“A pre-med student civilian wouldn’t be able to disarm a pro hero, huh?” 

Hawks blinked at him, which was the only indication of his surprise.
“Yeah. You’ve had training. That's obvious.”

“You know I lied.” Touya sighed.

“Yep. I’m still trying to figure out if you’re hostile.” Hawks said with a shrug, and then casually took the kitchen knife from earlier out of his sleeve, laying it on the table in front of him.

Touya paled, and then, bizarrely, laughed. He’d been so distracted, he hadn’t even noticed Hawks pick it up.
God, this was strange. He had to keep reminding himself that this Hawks was a stranger who had never met him, didn’t know him. Was waiting for the opportunity to stab him, probably.

… Yet if this Hawks loved Touya’s siblings, then that was enough. The decision was an easy one.

“It’s probably not what you think. Hear me out?” Touya asked calmly.

“I’m listening.” Hawks said without missing a beat.

Well. Where was the best place to start?
“Have you ever.. uh.. explored the house?”

Hawks raised an eyebrow, then nodded.

“The room. Second on the right after you go up the stairs.” Touya said, picturing his old room, now a shrine to this timeline’s version of him. “You ever been in there?”

Hawks nodded grimly.
“Endeavor’s first kid. I asked Fuyumi about it once and kind of wish I didn’t.”

“Right.” Touya said, slowly pulling down his hood to show Hawks the colour. “I’m - kind of - him. I’m Touya Todoroki, but from another timeline.”

Hawks watched, golden eyes wide and searching, probably noting his resemblance to Endeavor.

“It was a quirk. I was just sent here, and I bumped into Natsuo and - it’s a mess. Everything here is different. I need to figure out how to get home.” Touya bowed his head and dragged his fingers against his scalp. “Oh, and don’t bother vetting me. Shouto already did. I can show you my hero licence if you want.”

He looked up after Hawks remained silent for some time.

“Why are you telling me this?” Hawks asked then, like he knew there was some significance to Touya’s honesty aside from his subtle threat of the knife on the table.

He was right. There was.

“In my timeline, you found us, too.” Touya told him. “Fuyumi’s like your sister, you helped me look after Shouto when he was a toddler, Natsuo calls you Hawks-bro. And - you’re uh. The other version of you is my best friend.”

Touya was going to pretend his voice didn’t crack while saying that.

Hawks had dropped whatever it was that made Touya feel weird earlier – which probably meant that he believed him. The hair must’ve helped.

The face he was making now belongs to Hawks. Touya’s Hawks. Touya looked away.

“You know, I think I actually believe you.” Hawks said quietly.

Touya scrambled for information that could erase any doubt.

“You used to live in a tower block right? Apartment 15C? I mean, if the timeline didn’t diverge before then-”

“Yes. Yeah, that - that was-”
Fuck, Hawks was starting to look a little overwhelmed.

“Sorry.” Touya said gently. “In my timeline I lived in 17C, is all. Our balconies were close.”

“Right.” 

Touya let him pause to digest it all.

“You said you were a hero?” 

Touya dug up his hero license and handed it to Hawks, who scrutinised it much like Shouto did.

“Your hero name is Blue Phoenix?” He asked, face blank.

Touya snorted and shrugged.
“Blue fire quirk. Teachers at Shiketsu really thought I was gonna be a flashy hero, but I ended up in covert ops. Oh – hey – that reminds me, you would’ve done a stint in covert ops, right? With the commission?”

Hawks handed him back his hero license and nodded, his face still blank. Touya didn’t want to think too hard about why Hawks was so good at the whole showing no emotion thing.

“You would’ve worked with Mahou then, right?” Touya pressed.

Hawks’ eyes gained some light at the mention of her name.
“Oh, yeah. I remember her. She was nice.”

Touya grinned at the thought of Hawks calling Mahou ‘nice’. Oh, she’d hate that.
“You’re still in contact with her, right? Or have some way of getting into contact?” Touya asked quickly, mentally building a plan to drag this universe’s Mahou into helping him get back home. If he managed to convince her of his identity, that was. If anyone could help him, it would be her.

But then, Hawks said, in a voice that was way too casual, too void of feeling, the words:
“She died.”

Then he blinked, face falling as if realising the weight of what he just said.

“… Sorry.” He tagged on.

“Oh.” Was all Touya could say in response.

Mahou had died in this timeline?
He found himself having to battle the grief building up inside him. This wasn’t his timeline. He would see Mahou again, alive and happy. Once he got home. He just had to get home.

“Hey, Todoroki?” Hawks spoke, and if his aim was to startle Touya out of his downwards spiral, then it worked. Hawks calling him Todoroki was, somehow, one of the biggest shocks to the system he’d experience since coming here.

Or maybe he was already just too shaken up already.

“The picture on the shrine.” Hawks continued, “It – uh – the hair?”

“Oh, right,” Touya ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, Shouto brought that up as well. It must just be a random difference between the timelines, you know? The Touya here had white hair, apparently.”

Hawks nodded in understanding, and Touya glanced at the empty space where his wings should be.

“And you - you have a different quirk here. That’s really weird.” Touya pointed out, deciding to clear the table to hide how his hands were shaking a little. “What do you have here, like, a speed quirk or something?”

He turned towards the sink to wash the dishes, but Hawks stayed silent.

Touya eventually turned back towards him.

Hawks’s expression was unreadable again.

Touya frowned.
“Um, ok?” He said slowly. “Keep your secrets, then?”

Hawks took a deep breath, and then adopted that weird smile again.
“Yeah. That’s so weird.”

Touya paused.
He slowly reached over to turn off the tap and face Hawks completely.

Something… was so off about this.

He stared at Hawks, watching, for the first time, as his expression cracked.

“Hawks?” He whispered. “Where-”
Touya’s mind went back to that article he saw - the one he thought was click bait. About whether Hawks would stay in the top ten after a recent fight.
He thought about how light Hawks was on his feet. About why he had that agility – it was directly linked to the bird part of his quirk. Hollow bones. That was why he was so fast.

And he - earlier Hawks had gestured towards something behind him - implying -

Touya couldn’t breathe, but he somehow managed to speak. At least he thought he did. All he heard was white noise.
“Hawks, where are your wings?”

Hawks suddenly made a face so vulnerable and broken, Touya didn’t need any further confirmation.

It – it was too much.
It was too much.

It was so much that there was no way this could real. It had to be an elaborate nightmare, designed to torture him.

He was in the hall before he knew it, and he could vaguely smell burning. His arms hurt. He kept thinking, there must be a door somewhere - there must be a way out - he needed to get out -

He heard his name called from behind him - Hawks’ voice-

He turned around and it was Hawks but - the nightmare version of him. No wings, in so much pain, looking at him like he didn’t even recognise Touya - like he was scared of him - his Hawks had never looked at him like that.

The air around him felt so thin and the unbearable pain around his arms had spread to his chest. He had no intention of stopping it, because at least pain was something that actually made sense.

Then he felt himself being pushed - through a doorway into a white room - he tripped over something that went up to his knees and -

Sense came back to him in the form of cold water suddenly running over his head. It was a shock. Everything stopped - his thoughts, the unbearable pain surrounding him – it was a relief to just sit there, breathing, thinking of nothing and feeling nothing but the cold water.

He closed his eyes.

.

.

.

Then, when he was ready to think again, he opened them and looked towards the person who must’ve pushed him in here.

Hawks looked so fucking awkward, draping a drenched but burnt tea towel over the edge of the kitchen sink. Touya was so lightheaded, he almost wanted to laugh.

But then he saw bandages he didn’t see before, peeking just above the top of Hawks’s collar on his back.

It still hurt so bad.

“Sorry.” Touya said, voice shaking. “You can turn the water off now.”

Hawks gave him a wide-eyed look, and after brief deliberation, reached up to turn the shower off.

Touya just sat there in his drenched clothes, his sleeves nothing but burnt tatters. He’d have to apply burn cream to his arms, but he’d had worse.
“Thanks. For - uh - stopping me.”

Hawks shrugged.
“You must be really close to him.”

Touya knew ‘him’ meant the other Hawks.
“Yeah.” He croaked. “It’s - it’s everyone. Everyone is different. Everyone is hurting. Or – or dead. Everyone I love.”

Hawks sighed and sat on the edge of the bath, facing away from Touya.
“If it makes you feel any better… I haven’t actually said this out loud yet-” Hawks admitted, running his hands through his hair, which Touya recognised as a nervous gesture, “Losing my wings was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“…What?” Touya whispered. “How?”

“The commission don’t want me anymore.” Hawks said matter-of-factly. “Which I thought would suck but… I’m free, I guess. It’s kind of nice.”

Touya couldn’t tell how much of this Hawks was spinning just to make him feel better. At the same time, in a really sad way… it made sense.

This Hawks didn’t have Touya’s mom around to fight for him about what the commission made him do. And Mahou wasn’t around, either. Nobody to protect Hawks from the inside.
The thought made him feel sick.

“But you love being a hero.” Touya said, and he could tell from how Hawks’s shoulders raised that he was right. “You wouldn’t be Hawks if you weren’t born to be a hero.”

“It’s so freaky that you actually know me.” Hawks said, chuckling slightly. “Did the other version of me ask you to call me by my hero name or something?”

“…I can call you Takami instead if you want?” Touya asked delicately. He found himself preferring that, actually. A way to separate this man from the one he loved and desperately missed back home.

“Uh. Yeah, if you want.” Hawks, no, Takami said, with the perfect amount of nonchalance that Touya had no hope of telling if he felt strongly about it either way.

Touya smiled to himself.
“You’ve still got what it takes to be a hero, you know. If you want to be.”  

Takami turned to face him with a sceptical expression.

“What?” Touya said. “I’m covert ops. I use my brain more than my quirk. And - and support equipment. Hm.”

Touya’s thoughts went off on a tangent. His phone was still on his bedside table – Honda, his equipment mechanic’s number could still be the same here. He wondered where she was in this timeline.

“I’m surprised we didn’t wake up your siblings.” Takami said, distracting him. “We weren't exactly quiet.”

“Oh, they’re heavy sleepers.” Touya said, waving his hand dismissively - but then he spotted something on the ceiling.

A smoke alarm.

Wait-

He grabbed the sides of the bath with hands that were still shaking slightly to push himself up to a standing position. He then activated his quirk - much more controlled than a few minutes ago - right under the smoke alarm above him.

“What are you-”

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Touya muttered to himself.

Silence. Total silence.

Without any preamble he dragged himself out of the bathroom and put a fiery hand under the hallway smoke alarm.

“Fucking asshole.” he growled, going from room to room, checking the smoke alarms, none of which fucking worked.

He was about to go into another room and then stopped just as he’d turned the knob.

No. He still wasn’t ready to see his old room.
He’d also realised at this point that he had a shadow.

“Why don’t any of them work?” Takami asked, frowning.

He knew he shouldn’t tell him.
But also - fuck that.

Touya shoved his hands in his pockets.
“You - the other version of you - got so angry when I refused to tell you, so, fuck it. I don’t know how much you worship the number one hero in this timeline, but he’s an asshole. He’s an abusive piece of shit. He probably disabled these because - lucky for him - he’s fucking immune to fire, ignoring the fact that two of his own children aren’t.”

He resisted the urge to kick the door as he said it.

“I’m going to fucking kill him if I see him.” He growled, and he probably shouldn’t have said that in front of a pro hero but whatever. He’d always had a nasty temper, just like Endeavor.

Touya passed Takami on his way downstairs.
Takami just stood there. To his credit, he didn’t even flinch. Just looked thoughtful. And tired.

“What, are you not surprised?” Touya asked.

“I don’t think anything can surprise me anymore.” Takami admitted with a shrug.

Yeah, Touya supposed. In the world Takami grew up in, corruption was around every corner. It was all he’d ever known, probably. There was no innocence.

“I’ll drop off some new ones, ok?” Takami said eventually.

“What?”

“New smoke alarms. Keep yourself busy by installing them.” Takami explained, promptly making his way towards the front door.

“I’ll get them myself. I’m their – sort of - big brother, I might as well.” Touya argued.

Takami turned towards him, hand halfway towards the door, and frowned.
“… You should rest. Stay inside.”

Touya raised an eyebrow.
“What the fuck? Don’t treat me like a civilian.”

“Trust me. You trust your Hawks, right? I’ll get the smoke alarms. You have other things to worry about, right?”

There was an odd intensity to Takami’s voice, and even though Touya wasn’t sure whether or not he trusted him, he found himself grudgingly nodding anyway.

“Thank you.” Takami said, turning away to open the door.
It was still snowing outside. Takami wasn’t wearing anything warm.

“Hey, Takami?” Touya called, catching him just as he stepped outside the door. “Take a coat?”

Takami just looked at him, and then, bizarrely, laughed. He left the house without even glancing at the abundance of coats hanging to the side.

Touya stood there for a few more moments, debating whether he should follow him outside to force Takami into a coat. He decided, with a wince, that he should instead see whether the burn cream was kept in the same place he remembered from his childhood.

Hitoshi found Shouto staring pathetically at an empty mug in the dorm kitchen with the lights off, and sighed.

It wasn’t the first time, but it was still pretty rare for Shouto to be his insomniac buddy for the night. It was never for a fun reason, either.

“All right?” Hitoshi asked, going for the seat opposite him.

Shouto made a half-hearted attempt at a noise that was not a yes or a no, but he did look up from his mug.

… His hair was messy, Hitoshi noticed at once. Messy. Ruffled. The split was uneven, with red going into the white and white going into the red. He’d never seen that outside of intense training.

Hitoshi decided that yes, he was officially worried.
He elected to let Shouto sit in silence for a while. That usually got him talking, if he wanted to.

“I need to talk to Izuku.” Shouto said eventually.

Hitoshi nodded. That sounded about right.
“It’s not a school night. If it’s that bad, I don’t think he’d mind if you woke him up.”

“But he told me he doesn’t want me to talk about my conspiracy theories anymore.” Shouto said glumly.

“He said that? To you?” Hitoshi asked incredulously, raising an eyebrow. “With those exact words?”

“Well, no.”

“What did he actually say?”

“You should really stop forming conspiracy theories about people’s families, Shouto. It’s rude.” Shouto quoted.

Hitoshi snorted.
Izuku must’ve been pretty angry to snap at Shouto, of all people, like that.

But-
“So does it concern him and All-Might again?” Hitoshi prodded.

Shouto shook his head.

“What about me and Aizawa-sensei?”

“Oh. Izuku told you.”

“Of course he told me. It was really funny. But this isn’t about that, right?”

“No.” Shouto confirmed.

“So whose family does it concern?” Hitoshi asked.

“I-“ Shouto stared back down at his mug. “I think Dabi is my dead brother.”

Hitoshi became vaguely aware that the kitchen tap was dripping in the minutes it took to process that.
He was pretty sure it was minutes, anyway.

“I’m gonna go wake up Izuku.” He said eventually, standing up.

Chapter Text

Touya’s Sunday morning thoughts were a series of convoluted roundabouts with hastily barricaded exits.

The first roundabout had him wondering what was going on in his own timeline right now.

Like, was Shouto able to focus in school right now? Was it affecting his internship? Would he get distracted while in a fight – STOP.

How was his mother dealing with his disappearance? What if she, like the version of his mother in this timeline, couldn’t handle it – STOP. Not going there either.

… But what about Hawkes? Hawkes was alone so much as a child, he hated being alone – STOP. STOP. STOP.

The second roundabout had him worrying about this timeline, the third roundabout had him circling back to the first roundabout, this time with the added bonus of wondering what would happen if he never went back, then back to the second roundabout, thinking about what he would do if he had to stay here, misplaced for the rest of his life –

STOP

STOP

STOP

He found himself pacing the guest room, thinking about what he could do right now to stop his ruminating.

He called Honda on a whim – she miraculously still had the same mobile number in this timeline. Not that gave him the time of day, of course. By the time he got over his surprise and tried to explain everything, she told him to fuck off and subsequently blocked his number. Same thing happened when he tried again on Fuyumi’s phone.

He didn’t know why he'd expected any different. When he first met the Honda from his timeline, she’d been convinced he was sent there to make fun of and sabotage her. 

But if anyone could help Takami, well, she was the best hero support equipment engineer he knew. He’d have to get her to listen somehow. Preferably without harassing her.

Touya hugged Natsuo as he left to go to volleyball practise. Fuyumi was out running errands all day. 

Then, when he began pacing the kitchen in his empty childhood house, he realised that unless Takami came back with the new smoke alarms within the next hour or so, he would probably think himself into another breakdown.

So that afternoon, he stepped out to go shopping. He was slightly familiar with the area from vague memories and found a hardware store with relative ease. While searching the aisles, he mentally counted all the rooms in the house, picked out the most sturdy smoke alarm model and brought a bunch of them to the counter. 

And then his card declined. 

Because this was a different timeline.

Turns out that the main side-effect to refusing to think too hard about a dire situation is that you forget the damn basics and become the stupidest person to exist ever. He’d never wanted to sink into the floor so bad in his life.

While leaving empty-handed, he lamented again over how damn disappointed Mahou would be over his lack of forethought. Hawks would find it funny, though. Maybe not Takami.

He sighed and decided that his next errand would be to scout out the place where the girl used her quirk on him, just in case she frequented the same place in both timelines. It was a long walk and getting dark, but in the late afternoon the highstreet was still buzzing with most of the shops still open.

He walked from end to end several times, eyeing any individual with a similar height and build to the girl.
As he drew up his memories of her, he started thinking about the series of events before she’d used her quirk on him. She’d been in pain, and panicking. Touya wondered, with some clarity, whether someone had been using a quirk on her at the time to hurt her. Most likely the man chasing her.
Touya knew he was sent here by accident. He was angry at the situation, but wasn’t sure he could even find it in himself to feel anger towards her. He just hoped her counterpart would be the type of person to help him-

He then, out of the corner of his eye, caught a glimpse of something that set him on high alert.

He knew what an undercover cop looked like. The shoes were a dead giveaway, and he was pretty certain he’d spotted a glimpse of this person several times now, at both ends of the highstreet.

… Why? Was it suspicious to be walking up and down the high street? Maybe it was his piercings, or something stupid like that, and the cop was bored?

Instinct told him not to get cornered inside a shop, so he instead sat down on a nearby bench and glanced at his phone. The way an innocent, completely not guilty person would do. If he opened the directions app, maybe they’d think he was lost.
He sat there for 5 minutes, mentally mapping out an escape route if they tried to follow him. The undercover cop wasn’t in his line of vision but if they were worth their pay cheque, they’d be waiting somewhere behind him. Or they’d rightfully decide he wasn’t doing any harm, which he wasn’t.

Touya finally stood up and started walking at a relaxed pace. Down one alleyway, where he noted but ignored the slight sound of footsteps behind him. Onto another main street, where he battled with crowds walking in the opposite direction. A left. Another left, still at a leisurely pace and then down into an underpass.

When Touya was fairly sure anyone following him would be stuck in the crowd of people going down the underpass, he swapped into the stream of people going in the other direction and left. He then continued at a leisurely pace in case of any CCTV cameras. 

He no longer heard steps behind him when he entered another alleyway, so he took some time to breathe and think. Did that even happen or was he being paranoid? The adrenaline crash he was experiencing suggested the former – that he was being followed, for whatever reason.

After a few minutes, he realised he didn’t recognise his surroundings, so he ended up wandering the streets trying to find something he recognised.

... He did, eventually.

The pier.
The pier where he was supposed to propose to Hawks.
Tonight. 

He should’ve been at dinner with him right now, a ring in his pocket and no doubt he’d get to spend the rest of his life with the man he loved, his best friend.

The longer he stood there, the colder he felt, his limbs locking, unable to turn away and go back to his childhood home.
He didn’t want to think any more about how lost he was. Admitting he was scared out of his mind wouldn’t help, not now. 

So what could he do? In front of the pier was the seedy-looking bar he was going to bring Hawkes to. His cold limbs begrudgingly unlocked and allowed him to walk forwards.

The immediate stench of alcohol was a welcome distraction as Touya walked into the bar, wrinkling his nose.

…Wow. Was he really thinking of bringing Hawkes here? It was gross. It was a strangely comforting realisation that there was one upside to being lost in a different timeline – at least Touya wasn’t going to propose to Hawkes immediately after bringing him into the grossest bar he’d ever witnessed.

Touya would change his plans for when he got back. 
If he got back.
God fucking damnit-

“You gonna buy a drink or what?” The barman barked at him. 

Touya startled and looked at the range of liqueurs across from him. He recognised one – the one that had been shoved into his hand at a house party his classmates had practically dragged him to.

It was the only time he’d ever gotten drunk.

... His classmates knew never to put alcohol into his hands after that.

Touya could only apologise, and thank the gods that none of his family (including Hawkes) had seen him like that.

Alcohol apparently dissolved whatever mental barrier Touya had set up to prevent himself from turning into his own father. An aggressive, angry monster. He hated that it still existed inside him, buried deep down. 

Hawks was a fun drunk, Fuyumi was a giggly drunk, and Touya was always the designated driver because he refused to become the angry drunk.

Never again.

… But Hawkes and Touya’s family weren’t here now, were they?

He had to face it eventually – there was a possibility he’d never see them again. There really was. That may become his reality. 

So who was he holding back for?

He’d never admit it aloud but… he also remembered how few thoughts he had that one time he was drunk. How freeing it was to just let go for once. Touya would give anything to make his brain shut up, just for a few hours. 

It was so weak. 
He was allowed to be weak. 

“Can I start a tab?” He asked.

Spinner checked his watch. He reckoned he could probably squeeze in a few extra minutes of patrolling and still get back to the base in time.
Shigaraki had threatened to disintegrate him if he got back later than he said he would, but whatever, he did that every time and all Shigaraki ever did was mutter some curses and slam his bedroom door behind him. 

Besides - he saw smoke two alleyways away. Always some vigilante work to be done when you saw smoke in the distance. 
He jumped between buildings and climbed down the wall in the next alley, peeking around the corner to see what was going on-

Then abandoned all stealth when he saw that the fire was blue. 

Unmistakably blue, lighting up the entire alleyway, lining a silhouette that could only belong to someone who should’ve been in their fucking hideout right now. 

For fucks sake, what the fuck was Dabi thinking? 

Spinner ran up just as whoever got their asses burnt ran screaming out of the alleyway. 

“Yeah - yeah you better - fuck off!” Dabi yelled at them, slurring his words, and Spinner was so dumbfounded he debated just turning around and leaving Dabi in his own mess. 

Fuck, he couldn’t. 
Dabi was kind of useful sometimes. 

“Dabi.” He said, then louder, “Dabi, what the fuck are you doing?” 

The fire died down, but not before Spinner caught a glance of Dabi -

Dabi… with smooth skin. And - is his hair - 

“What the fuck?” He demanded, marching the rest of the way up to his comrade. “Dabi, are you wearing… makeup? Can makeup even do that? And why is your hair red?” 

He grabbed Dabi’s - shirt? (since when did Dabi not wear that edgy long jacket?) - and pushed him against the alleyway wall. 

“Get - get off-” Dabi slurred, swiping pathetically at Spinner’s claws. 

“Oh my god. You’re drunk?” Spinner spluttered, “Dabi, you’re supposed to be at the hideout, we don’t have the time or resources for you to be fucking around like this!” 

“I’m not Dabi- you-”

Spinner started to feel Dabi’s warning heat and quickly let go, but he didn’t step back. 

He stared at the figure against the wall and - god, Spinner was a vigilante, he’d seen so much worse, but somehow nothing had ever prepared him for this sight. 

It was so… pathetic. 

Spinner sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. 
“Ok. Ok, I’m taking you back to the hideout, but no more fire, and you must go straight to your room without talking or Shigaraki will kill you. I mean, actually kill you. Do you understand?” 

Dabi just looked at him, squinting. 
“You’re-” he hiccupped. “You’re from the fucking league. The lizard-”

Spinner saw red and punched him before he could finish. 

“Ow.” Dabi said, drawing sluggish fire to his hands. “Fuck you.” 

“No, fuck you.” Spinner spat, before taking a few deep breaths.

Dabi was out of his fucking mind, calling him that. This must’ve been why nobody had ever seen Dabi drink a drop of alcohol despite their hideout for the best part of a year being a bar.

… Spinner decided he really should get him back to the hideout.

“Ok, no more talking. Are you coming back to the hideout or not?” 

Dabi just glared at him - and - that couldn’t be makeup. Prosthetic skin? Was that even a thing? It looked so real.

“Dabi.” Spinner said, a final warning. 

“It’s Touya – dumbass. No.” Dabi said, eyes slightly unfocused. “Todoroki to you - I’m not - fucking Dabi - or whatever.”

Spinner stared at him. 
“Todoroki?” He repeated slowly. 

“Fuck Endeavour.” Dabi grumbled, and Spinner had to steady him as he nearly fell over. “He can go die. And - and that fucking girl too-”

Spinner listened as carefully as he could as Dabi muttered some stuff about timelines and getting back home. 
He then frowned and reached out towards Dabi’s face - the side of it that wasn’t swollen - and touched the skin. 

It was… skin. 
Normal, unburnt skin. 

Spinner stepped back, realising too late he was supporting Dabi’s weight as the drunk asshole sunk to the floor.

No - not Dabi. 

He looked, smelt, sounded the same, but…
The name Todoroki somehow explained so fucking much.

Spinner reached down to help not-Dabi stand on his feet again, and they stared at each other for a bit. 

“What did you say about timelines?” Spinner asked him, mind going a mile a minute. Quirks really were getting out of hand these days. Now they had to deal with other timelines?

“I said - this isn’t my fucking timeline.” Not-Dabi suddenly sounded hysterical, despite his slurred words, “I’m - I’m just dead here. Touya Todoroki is fucking dead.” 

Spinner dropped him again, and he fell against the wall unceremoniously. A vague memory of the only ‘joke’ Dabi had ever made surfaced in his mind. It was strange at the time because Dabi never tried to be funny. It made Twice cry at the time.
The joke was about how he’d faked his own death.

“Fuck.” Spinner said.

“Fuck you.” Not-Dabi agreed blearily from the floor. 

This had way too many implications, too many unknowns. Not that he wanted to take the word of a guy so drunk he could barely say his own name… But Dabi, the Dabi back at his base, must have had some kind of reason for wanting to kill Endeavor so bad. There must be some reason he hadn’t been able to move past it. 

…So Dabi’s real name was Touya Todoroki?
By the looks of him, he was Endeavor’s son or something. Same eyes. Why had Spinner never noticed Dabi’s eyes were Endeavor’s eyes?

Oh, wow, Dabi was actually gonna maim Spinner if he mentioned this to him. Fuck. What if he accidentally called him Touya one day? Or worse, Todoroki?

What if Dabi asked what he’d done with this drunken double of him, and Spinner confessed that he’d just… left him here unharmed? 

The thought made him freeze.
He slowly reached for his sword. 

Nobody was around – it was late enough that even the nearby bar had closed for the night. 

Spinner crouched down and pushed not-Dabi’s back to the wall with one claw, holding a blade to his throat with another. 

He wasn’t even conscious. 
The bastard had passed out. 

Spinner needed to protect his comrade’s identity. If this man spoke to anyone, literally any hero who had so much as glanced at the League of Villains, they’d figure it out in a heartbeat. 

He couldn’t leave him here. 
He had to kill him.
Just an easy slit to the throat and not-Dabi’s pockets would no doubt be emptied by morning, his body buried as some unnamed John Doe. 

Spinner had killed loads of people. It was hardly new to him. Killing was easy - skin was so easy to cut through, especially when people didn’t have hard scales like his. 

It happened so fast. 

Usually. 

So why - why had Spinner been holding this damn sword to not-Dabi’s throat for minutes, frozen? 

Spinner ducked into the hideout, still reeling.
He was late, but that was ok. He was gonna die anyway, and Shigaraki’s disintegration would probably be faster and less painful than being burned alive. 

It wasn’t Shigaraki waiting for him.

“Hey asshole.” Dabi - the actual sober Dabi - drawled from the dark entryway. “Consider yourself lucky I convinced Shigaraki to take a fucking nap. If you’re back late again I’ll make you regret it.”

He pushed off the wall and stalked towards his room, and Spinner took a moment to look at the stars, perhaps for the last time. 

“I need to talk to you about something.” He said, stopping Dabi. 

Dabi whistled. 
“Something’s got you rattled. Should I wake up everyone else?” 

“No.” Spinner said. “And if you decide to kill me, I plan on going down fighting. Just so you know.” 

Dabi tilted his head lazily. Spinner shuddered at how predatory the small action was.
“Speak.”

Spinner just about resisted the urge to rest a hand on his sword.
“I saw someone familiar on my patrol tonight. Drunk out of his mind, using his quirk out in the open like an idiot. When I confronted him, he said he’s from a different timeline - sent here by a quirk, I think. He also said he’s dead here, in this timeline. And his name is Todoroki.”

Spinner watched for any expression change as he finished,
“Touya Todoroki.” 

Dabi stared, unblinking. 
He stood there for a long time, moving only to catch and stare at the card Spinner decided to throw over after a long silence. 

“His hero license. I broke his phone as well.” Spinner reported.

“… Using his quirk out in the open?” Dabi clarified, eventually, something building in his voice that made Spinner reach for his sword on instinct. 

“Your quirk. I thought it was you, but - wow - I didn’t think you could reach those levels of stupid.” 

Dabi was finally starting to look livid – there was smoke coming from his breath - but he nodded in agreement. 
“There’s a reason I don’t fucking drink.” 

Spinner flinched when Dabi suddenly moved to sit down on a collapsed piece of rubble in the centre of the hideout, hunched in a brooding position. 

“What, so he just told you his name?”

“Yeah. He didn’t even recognise the name Dabi.” Spinner said, and cautiously continued, “So what, are you gonna try to silence me now?” 

Dabi glared at him.
“I’m still deciding.” 

“Great.” Spinner muttered. “Take your time.” 

“Did he say anything about Endeavor?” Dabi asked, a threat in his voice, just daring Spinner to voice the connection between them. 

“He said ‘fuck Endeavor’ which, well, helped me to connect some dots.” Spinner pushed, raising an eyebrow.

Instead of going into a rage, this instead just piqued Dabi’s interest. He even grinned. Spinner clutched his sword tighter. 

“So, what?” Spinner asked. “Are you gonna try to kill me now that I know? I also didn’t kill him, even though I could have, so other people are gonna connect the dots, too.”

“No, that’s good.” Dabi said, his grin still crazed and wide. “That’s great. He must’ve killed Endeavor already. He must be from a timeline where Endeavor is dead. I would’ve killed you for killing him.” 

Spinner stared at him, and nodded. Endeavor had to die, it’s what Stain would’ve wanted. 
“But your identity-”

“What about it? Everyone wants to kill their father. Plus, the truth would break the system, with the correct timing.” Dabi then sighed and ran a scarred hand through his hair. “He’s messed up the timing, though.”

“… Right.” Spinner said.

“Take your hand off your sword, asshole, you’re making me nervous.” 

“Are you sure you’re not gonna kill me in my sleep?” 

Dabi glared at him and stood up to stalk off to his room. 
“If you ever call me by that name, even accidentally, I’ll fry out your vocal cords. While you’re awake. So no, I’m not gonna kill you in your sleep.”

Spinner waited in silence for a long time after Dabi walked out. 

He then thanked the stars that he’d somehow survived, and went the fuck to bed.

Chapter Text

Touya had never felt this stupid in his life. 

What would Hawks say? God, what would his mother say? 

It took him until the early afternoon on Monday to get back to Endeavor’s house, with only the clothes on his back, because he got fucking mugged before waking up in that alley. 

He had no recollection of anything past his third drink. 

Stupid, 
Stupid,
Stupid -

He banged his head on the front door with every iteration of the word, because he didn’t even have fucking keys, Fuyumi was at work, and he deserved the debilitating pain in his head for being so fucking stupid last night. 

So so, so stupid-

The door opened, interrupting his head-banging, to his mild surprise. 

“…Touya?” Fuyumi whispered.

Touya squinted at her, confirmed she was indeed home on a Monday for some reason, and then lowered his head. He couldn’t even look her in the eye. 
“I fucked up.” He informed her. “I don’t drink. I never drink. But I went out drinking because I’m-”

He was interrupted by a hug, and he kind of wished she hadn’t because he was unsteady on his feet and probably smelled like the alleyway he blacked out in. 

When she let go shortly after, he tried to bring a hand up to his hair to cover his bruised cheek, but she just huffed and batted his hand away.

“First things first, you need first aid. And – are those burns on your arms?” Fuyumi chastised him, leading him into the kitchen.

Touya winced.
“Sorry.” He said, again feeling like a small child in his little sister’s presence.

“Hm. And painkillers, too.” Fuyumi muttered, ignoring Touya’s pathetic apology.

As she dabbed his face with antiseptic wipes and ignored Touya’s insistence he take a shower before she did anything else, his eye caught on the spread of mangas on the kitchen tables.

… He recognised them.
His Fuyumi had the same ones. Which wouldn’t be anything of note, they were the same person after all, but… his Fuyumi only ever turned to those specific series when she was having a bad day. When she was having a really bad, crying, something awful happened day.

… Fuyumi was home on a school day.

“What’s wrong?” Touya asked as Fuyumi applied burn cream to his arms.
“Huh? Nothing.” Fuyumi said, barely sparing him a glance.

Touya wrapped a hand around her wrist and waited for her to look at him. She finally did, one eyebrow up, and Touya took a few moments to search her face.

He spotted nothing.

… She was good at this. Much too good at this.

“Fuyumi. Those are your sad mangas. Something’s wrong.” Touya said softly.

She glanced towards the table, then went back to applying the burn cream, slightly less gently than before.  

“That’s not fair.” She said eventually, her voice finally cracking. “You know me but I don’t know you. That’s not fair.”

Touya was at a loss for what to say as Fuyumi’s eyes reddened, but she looked more angry than sad. Was she angry at him? For disappearing?

… Oh. Fuck.
The realisation hit him suddenly and he felt even more awful than before.
He’d exacerbated some trauma again, hadn’t he? He briefly wondered whether the Touya in this timeline had even gotten a chance to say goodbye. If Fuyumi had waited for him.

“Sorry.” Touya said lamely.

Fuyumi scoffed.
“No. It’s not – ugh.” She closed the burn cream and held her face in her hands for a few seconds, squeezing at her eyes like she was attempting to force the tears back in. “I was just being… selfish. And stupid.”

“It’s ok, ‘Yumi-”

“It’s really not.” She interrupted, looking him in the eye. “You hate it here. You’re in pain. I know you are. Going home would be the best thing that ever happened to you. I want you to go home, Touya, I do. And here I am, crying like an idiot at the thought of you disappearing again-”

Touya bundled the alternate version of his little sister up in a hug and let her cry into his shoulder.

“I’d try to say goodbye.” He said after a few minutes.
Because what else could he say? He’d fucked up so much. Whoever let the Touya of this timeline die fucked up even worse.

“It’s ok if you can’t.” Fuyumi responded sadly.

“You’re gonna be ok. Without me here. When I go home. You know that, right?”

He felt Fuyumi nod.

“I mean it.” Touya tried again. “You’ve - you’re thriving in a situation I couldn’t even survive. You get that, right? And without mom or dad around – ‘Yumi - you must’ve raised yourself. Kept everything together by yourself.”

“We had nannies. Never had to worry about money or food.”

“It’s not the same, Fuyumi.” Touya said firmly. “You’ve single-handedly maintained a home for Natsuo and Shouto. And I don’t mean this house - I mean, you’re their home, you know? That’s – that’s a lot to put on a child’s shoulders.”

Touya loosened his arms and made sure to maintain eye contact with her when he continued.
“It’s not right. It’s unfair that it’s all been put on you. But it was and you’re still standing, and for that reason I know you’ll be ok when I go home. All of you are going to be fine.”

He watched as Fuyumi took a deep breath, her eyes wide and vulnerable.

“I just feel like I’m so weak. All the time.” She said quietly.

“You’re not.” Touya stated simply, squeezing her shoulders. “And if my Fuyumi has a fraction of what you have, then I know things will be ok back home as well.”

Fuyumi opened the door to Touya and Hawks’ apartment.

The last time she’d been here, Hawks had greeted her with a hug, almost lifting her off the ground because he’d been in a good mood that day. Touya had been cooking in the kitchen and immediately called her name to ask her to help stir something on the stove. Dinner at their apartment was always warm. Welcoming.

This time, nobody greeted her. The lights were all off. The heating hadn’t been put on in days.

The ache in her chest expanded as she stood in the doorway but she pushed through it. She was the only one who could bear to be here right now, with Hawks desperately following leads to find Touya and Mom struggling to even keep it together for the sake of Shouto.

Fuyumi was here to collect some of Hawks’ clothes and pick up food for him, because otherwise he would forget to eat and look after himself. If she didn’t do it, then nobody else would.

And if she didn’t step up now, and Touya came back to find his family completely broken and not taking care of themselves, Fuyumi would be so disappointed in herself.

With one final deep breath, she steeled her nerves and went to work.  

The next morning, Touya woke up with a clearer head and a plan to take out his piercings before he went scouting again around the area where he'd disappeared.

Then, just as he was seeing Fuyumi off for work (hugging her for an extra second or two, of course), he noticed the bag of new fire alarms sitting in the hallway that hadn’t been there the day before.

… And decided that he should improve the house’s security after spending the day installing them. Scouting the area could wait until later, he supposed. After all, it wasn’t like he had any actual leads.

He started with the hallway fire alarm and activated his quirk under it, only for it to nearly deafen him.

Good.

Moving onto the rest of the house, he realised he’d forgotten they all used to have their own rooms. Massive rooms, as well. Shouto’s room was cold and unlived in, as expected. Natsuo’s room looked like a guest room, and Touya stole an old iPod he saw left on the table. He smirked when he saw that this Natsuo had a similar music taste to him, or at least used to.

Fuyumi’s room was full of books, including what looked like first editions of some of her favourites. His Fuyumi would’ve killed for those. The thought made him grin. This Fuyumi was at least taking advantage of growing up rich.

He considered leaving Endeavor’s room alone just to spite him but hey, Touya may have been an asshole but he wasn’t a monster.

Endeavor’s room looked pretty unlived in, too.

When he finally got to the last room, he had to pause to take a deep breath. He couldn’t avoid this room. People burn incense at shrines. Aside from the kitchen and Endeavor himself, that was the biggest fire hazard in this household.

So he went in and made himself look at it, pausing the music blaring from Natsuo’s headphones.

True to Shouto’s word, he saw a picture of himself - no, the other Touya. Who he could’ve been. White hair, sad eyes.

Touya didn’t try to prevent his eyes from misting up now that he was alone.
As weird as this all was, at the core of it all, he was just standing at the shrine of a dead child. A child with the potential to live a happy life, and be loved.

Touya stood there as living proof of that. The one who got lucky.

He internally paid his respects before moving on, dragging the ladder into the centre of the room under the fire alarm.

He put the music back up to full volume and found himself humming along. It took him a few minutes to blink the tears out of his eyes and dismantle the current alarm, and then he realised he’d grabbed the wrong screwdriver for installation.

He climbed back down the ladder, turned around and -

Endeavor was in the doorway.

Endeavor was in the doorway.

Touya froze, entirely by instinct.

His first desperate thought was that there was a window right behind him. It may take him a few seconds to unlock, but it was an escape route.

His second thought furiously berated him for still being scared of Endeavor – He was an adult! He was a hero! He was supposed to be past this!

He was past it.

He was done letting this man make him feel scared a whole decade ago.

Touya forced himself to unfreeze and reminded himself why he was in this room to begin with.

“The fire alarms don’t work.” He spat at the alternate version of his father.

Endeavor had the nerve to remain frozen, blocking the doorway (the only way out), staring at Touya. He resembled a large animal caught in headlights, in civilian clothing, his fire nowhere to be seen, and a massive gash down his face, exactly where Shouto had his scar.

… he didn’t have that scar on the billboard.

Touya cleared his throat.
“Are you listening to me? You have a fucking fire quirk and none of the fire alarms in your house work. They either haven’t been tested in a decade, or you disabled them.”

Endeavor swallowed. His eyes darted to the shrine and back.
“I don’t - I don’t understand-”

“One of your not-fireproof kids still lives here permanently, you asshole! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Endeavor took a step forward and Touya - curse his instincts - took a step back and quickly glanced at the window.

Endeavor hastily retracted his step, but did not leave the doorway.
“Tell me what is going on. Now.” 

Something about the way his voice shook made Touya bite back a retort that he didn’t deserve an explanation.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” Endeavor added, slowly.

Touya took a second to process that, and how weird it was to hear it said so sincerely in that voice.
In that moment, he just didn’t know what to do. What to think. He was somehow closer to the window than he was before and he didn’t remember moving.

His version of Endeavor would’ve attacked him on the spot, or at least made some snide comment about how fucking cowardly he was acting. That, at least, would have been familiar. Predictable.

This Endeavor - Touya had no fucking clue how to process the way he was looking at him.

“Touya?” Endeavor asked incredulously, his voice hitching.

“I’m not - I’m not your Touya.” Touya told him awkwardly. “I’m Touya from a different timeline. I’m-”

He trailed off as Endeavor started staring hard at him, taking in every inch of his appearance.

“How did you survive the fire?” Endeavor asked.

The question felt like a punch to the gut. Touya didn’t want to know what that meant. A creeping horror at the implications threatened to overwhelm him.

“Mom left you when I was eight. She took us all with her. That’s how I survived.” Touya replied.

And then it all came back to him - why she left Endeavor in the first place. What happened to the version of their family that stayed with him. Fuck - Endeavor’s kicked puppy act didn’t fucking exonerate him from everything that had happened!

“You’re in jail for domestic abuse in my timeline.” Touya told the man who now had tears in his eyes. “And you evidently don’t even care about the safety of your family here.”

“Right.” Endeavor said quietly. “You’re right.”

Touya stayed silent after that, because again, he didn’t know how to deal with this version of Endeavor. He didn’t feel the need to keep glancing at the window because… somehow his instincts were content that this Endeavor was not a danger to him. He didn’t need to escape for safety (though the longer he watched Endeavor cry, the more he thought he’d need to escape after all, just due to awkwardness alone).

“As soon as Rei gets out of the hospital,” Endeavor spoke, voice thick, “I’ll give them a house and leave them be. I know I’ve failed them. I can only try to make things less difficult now.”

“That’s - uh.” Touya struggled, “That’s - yeah. Better.”

Endeavor looked up from the floor and studied Touya again. He’d stopped crying, and his eyes looked sharper than before.
“So you’re - how did you get here?” He asked.

“A quirk.”

“On purpose? Did you want to-”

“Fuck no, I didn’t come here on purpose.” Touya snapped. “It was an accident. I want to go home, but the one person I would’ve gone to for help - Mahou - is dead here and I didn’t exactly get around to asking Takami - uh - Hawks for help-”

“Then tell me how I can help.” Endeavor said.

Touya eyed him warily.

Endeavor sighed, and continued speaking in a voice gentler than Touya thought he was capable of. Like he was speaking to a cornered animal.
“I won’t come here or try to talk to you again, Touya. I can contact you through other means. Tell me the circumstances of how you got here and I’ll help in any way I can. It’s the least I can do.”

… Touya knew for a fact that his Endeavor had never spoken to anyone like that. Not even for the cameras. Something profound had happened here, in this timeline, to change this man so much. Beyond recognition, even.

So he accepted help. He relayed, in detail, what happened the night he was ripped out of his own timeline.

Endeavor listened like a detective receiving a briefing on a case.

And when Touya was finished, Endeavor nodded and turned to leave.

He stopped just out of the doorway, like he wanted to say one last thing to Touya, but then he evidently decided against it and walked down the stairs and out of the house.

Touya heard the front door shut, and remained still, frowning into space, for a bit. His brain was foggy, thoughts coming slowly, but he still needed to fix the fire alarm. That was what he was doing before… that happened. The correct screwdriver was still on the floor somewhere.

Whilst looking for it, his eyes accidentally landed on the picture of the white-haired child on top of the shrine, and the realisation came to him with a wave of nausea.

This Endeavor… loved Touya.

Loved him like a father was supposed to love his child.
Loved him like he should have loved him while he was still alive.

Loved him in a way Touya had craved all his life, against his will, to be loved by his own father.

Is that what it was? The thing that caused the profound change? Did – did Touya have to die to be loved? For Endeavor to realise how badly he’d actually fucked up everything?

Touya scoffed at the thought. Because even now, his own Endeavor would never change this much. It was too late for him. Too late for this timeline’s Endeavor as well, in a lot of ways, but…

Touya wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Something inside him ached, but it was negligible compared to the ache of not being able to go home.

He took a deep breath and looked away from the shrine.

Fuyumi would be home soon, and he still had one fire alarm left to fix.

Izuku’s teachers would be so, so angry if they knew he was doing this. It was wrong and against the law and usually when he did stuff like this he didn’t have enough time to think clearly before it was over.

His mom would be so disappointed, too. But with that thought came the memory of the last time he’d seen her, holding Shouto’s mother’s cold hands with her warm ones, promising emptily that Touya would be found.

It was Shouto who’d asked him to do this.
He supposed he would have done it anyway, regardless of his feelings for Shouto. After all, Touya had been like a big brother to him growing up, too.

He snuck out of Officer Tsukauchi’s office, keys in hand, and walked as quietly as he could when he saw Kacchan gesturing for him to hurry up.

It was the middle of the night, but they still had some staff in the police station to dodge.

They made their way to the holding cells without being caught and immediately started looking for a girl with the description Shouto had given him.

It didn’t take long. Most of the holding cells were deserted for the night, and there she was, alone and awake, staring at the wall.

Izuku’s heart hurt looking at her for a multitude of reasons. But he swallowed it down and tried to keep his voice soft.

“Mari Watanabe?”

She sighed, not even looking at him.

Kacchan scoffed at her silence and tried to shove past Izuku, no doubt to try to intimidate her, but Izuku shoved right back and ploughed on.

“I’m Midoriya. Uh – Izuku Midoriya. I. Um-”

“Are you another hero?” She asked wearily.

“No. Well. Maybe in the future? I’m a hero student. We both are.”

Watanabe scoffed.
“Figures.”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Kacchan demanded from behind Izuku.

“It means” Watanabe said tiredly, rubbing her eyes, “That Todoroki was loved by a lot of important people. I get it. It doesn’t change anything. You should leave - I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to be here.”  

Kacchan shoved past Izuku before he could stop him.
“Listen here – this is what’s going to happen. You see this fucking nerd?” he gestured towards Izuku, “He has not stopped talking about useless fucking quirks since he learned to talk. Fucking pain in my ass. His boyfriend decided to throw him at you because he thinks the sun shines out of the nerd’s ass-”

“Kacchan!”

“-and he’s magically gonna fix your stupid fucking quirk and get Touya back. So you’re gonna tell us about your quirk. Now.”

“Ha.” Watanabe said humourlessly, glaring at Kacchan. “You think you'll understand my quirk better than me? Me, who’s had to deal with it my entire life?”

“Other perspectives are always helpful – and if I wasn’t a hero I would have wanted to be a quirk councillor!” Izuku said placatingly. “I really want to help, if I can.”

Watanabe squinted at him, and then shrugged.
“That’s nice. But if I could bring someone back, I would have already. I would have found a way. Trust me.”

Izuku pushed his lips together and frowned, wondering if he should push or just leave her be. She did sound genuinely upset and sincere. But – he had to keep trying. For Shouto and Touya. For everyone else too. He just didn’t know how to make her co-operate.

This ambush was starting to feel… unheroic.

“You must be bored out of your fucking mind here.” Kacchan said, leaning against the wall. “Saw some books in the waiting area. Can sneak you some if you agree to just tell us what the fuck your quirk is. It’s not difficult.”

“I’ve already told you people what my quirk is. Todoroki is alive somewhere, but he’s gone.” Watanabe had gone back to rubbing her eyes. “Don’t make me say it again.”

“But it could help me to analyse it if you tell me how it feels? What the conditions are as well, and also how you know he didn’t just disappear into thin air. It’s usually about the seemingly useless details – we do it all the time in class when we’re making new moves – you make a small observation and then use a metaphor to visualise it and you can change the way your quirk works altogether!”
Izuku then had to pause for breath, because he wasn’t sure he’d taken one during the entirely of that spiel.

Watanabe just glared at him, and Izuku was suddenly vary thankful none of the girls in his class ever glared at him like that. He almost apologised but then-

“Ok.” She said. “The puzzles. In the waiting room. Strategy games, jigsaws, cards would do.”

Izuku glanced at Kacchan and gestured for him to go do as she asked.

“Oh, fuck you. Why do I have to do it? I’m the one who suggested it.”

“Shouto didn’t even ask you to come, Kacchan. You invited yourself.”

Izuku could see how Kacchan held himself back from physically attacking him, and felt proud. His childhood friend had come so far.
Kacchan left, not without grumbling something about sucking face with half’n’half, and Izuku was left alone with Watanabe.

He made himself comfortable on the floor next to her, the cell bars separating them.

“On your police report it said you thought you were being arrested for stealing a keyring with a small Rubix cube on it.” Izuku said, to fill the silence. “You like puzzles?”

“I thought we were going to talk about my quirk?”

“Well, actually, there’s research into how personalities and hobbies are sometimes affected by quirks. Or the other way around. Of course, then you get people with, uh, so-called villainous quirks, who are actually really decent and nice people, so that research can sometimes be worded wrong to make it seem like people are inevitably bad if they have a bad quirk - and that’s totally not relevant either. Sorry, Watanabe.”

Watanabe, to his surprise, actually looked amused. Probably laughing at him.

“Your point?” she asked tiredly.

“Oh – uh – you liking puzzles could totally be related to your quirk, is all.”

“… my quirk that makes people disappear if I touch them?”

“Well, what’s your favourite kind of puzzle?”

Watanabe rolled her eyes and glanced at the door to her cell. Her lips turned up at the sides.
“Picking locks.”

“Oh- um-”

Before Izuku could find a way to ask if she was messing with him, Kacchan came back, still grumbling.

“Alright. You get a choice between chess with some missing pieces, some stupid baby board game, and a jigsaw puzzle of – and I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this – half’n’half’s asshole old man. I’m exploding it as soon as you’re done with it. Go nuts.”
He promptly shoved the offending boxes through the cell bars and sat down opposite Izuku, facing Watanabe.

Izuku took one look at Watanabe’s disappointed face and frowned at Kacchan.
“That’s all you could find?”

“I had to dig up that stuff, you ungrateful little shit.”

Instead of arguing back, Izuku watched Watanabe count the chess pieces.

A few minutes later, she was playing against Izuku, both starting with equally incomplete sets. And, to Izuku’s delight, she was good at it. He started to relax, especially with Kacchan announcing he would keep watch, and he noticed the tension leaving Watanabe, too.

… she really couldn’t have been much older than him, he realised now that he was getting a chance to actually watch her.

“Eyes on the board, hero. I made my last move 5 minutes ago.” She said, looking up from the jigsaw puzzle next to her, which she was working on while she waited between moves.

Izuku startled and quickly moved his knight.

He decided to ask his first question.
“So. Uh. How do you know that your quirk sends people somewhere?”

“I don’t. Not really. It’s a theory more than anything else.” Watanabe said, then quickly added, “But I feel like I would know if I was just… killing people.”

She moved her queen on the board and Izuku sighed. She’d noticed his strategy.

“And your theory is based on…” He prodded, eyeing the board.

“Well – here’s the thing. I don’t think it’s very believable.”

“Just fucking tell us already, woman. Damn. Fucking cryptid wannabe.” Kacchan muttered loudly, and Izuku almost threw a pawn at him.

“Fine. Two random fucking strangers have approached me over the last few years, ok? Never met them before that, but they knew me. They said I used my quirk on them and they were sent to – well. Here. From another place.”

“From where?” Izuku asked, forgetting about the chess board.

Watanabe looked between him and Kacchan unsurely.

“Different… timelines? Parallel universes? Similar enough to our universe that they were born but different enough that… well.” She paused. “I ran the fuck away from one of them but the other one said the version of her in this universe had a really different life to her… and that she’d died a few years ago.”

“Oh.” Izuku said slowly, suspending his disbelief. “So – so Touya… and Wata-”

“I’m just saying what happened to me.” Watanabe interrupted, going back to her jigsaw puzzle. “You can choose to believe me or not.”

“…I was just about to say, Watanabe, that’s a really powerful quirk.” Izuku said, sitting up straighter.

Kacchan snorted across from him.
“Fuckn’ scary quirk, more like.”

“Kacchan!”

“No, he’s right.” Watanabe conceded readily.

“But – but if you exist in these parallel universes – then Touya can find you! Right? If you exist there, too? You’d – she’d send him back, right?” Izuku exclaimed.

“And, while we’re talking about this, you should go find those other people you messed with and send them back, too.” Kacchan added.

Izuku’s eyes widened.
“Yes! That, too! We really should-”

“I’m gonna stop you there.” Watanabe said. “And I’m going to tell you exactly why I didn’t immediately try to send them back, and also why I didn’t tell Hawks shit about any of this.”

Both boys looked at her, stunned.

Not that she was looking at them. She continued with her puzzle as she spoke.

“They… thanked me. The two strangers. They said I’d sent them from a world where things were really bad for them to a world where they were… valued, I guess. Loved. They thanked me. They didn’t ask to go back.”

She paused while they digested that.

“If Todoroki is anything like them, then he wouldn’t want to come back. Don’t you think?” She said quietly, wrapping an arm around her legs.

“No.” Izuku said. “No, he’d want to come back. You said it yourself, he’s loved here-”

“And I loved my mom.” Watanabe interrupted him harshly. “I loved her, and she hasn’t made her way back. You think it’s easy knowing it’s probably because she’s happier where she is now? That it’s probably because she doesn’t want to come back?”

Izuku stared at her, wide-eyed, shocked.
And then tears started to blur his eyesight.

For the first time in years, he thought of his father. He hadn’t seen or heard from the man since he was 5 years old. An old wound. Something he and his mother never talked about. Something Watanabe had to live with every day of her life.

Still. Touya wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that to everyone.

“Deku.” Kacchan said, “Don’t stop. More questions.”

Izuku wiped away his tears to look at his friend, and saw the worry in his expression poorly hidden away behind gritty determination.

“D-Don’t worry, Kacchan. I’m not giving up. I’m just – um – sad.” He turned to Watanabe. “I’m so sorry about your mom. How old were you?”

Watanabe’s shoulders lowered.

“Seven. I didn’t mean to.”

“Who the fuck means to do that shit as a kid?” Kacchan growled. “This is pointless. Just because your Mom’s a deadbeat doesn’t mean Touya is. So the question is, would you send him the fuck back if he found you in another universe?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Watanabe threw back. “I don’t know what I’m like in other universes. Maybe I’d slap him and run away just to taunt him, huh?”

Izuku put his hands up and spoke up before Kacchan could explode back.
“I think – what he means is, would you be able to? Send someone back to their old universe?”

Watanabe seemed to stop and consider it. Meanwhile, she turned completely towards her jigsaw puzzle, seeing how Izuku wasn’t really playing chess anymore.

“Honestly? I don’t know. Never tried. For all I know I’d just send him into another universe, not his original one.”

Izuku watched her put another piece in place, completing Endeavor’s left arm.
“What does your quirk feel like?”

“It… it doesn’t feel… malicious?”

“Yeah, of course.” Izuku said, nodding. “I mean - I found that comparing my quirk to an egg in a microwave helped me to understand it better. Too much and I’d explode, you know? Can you think of anything like that?”

Watanabe slotted the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle into place.

“Huh.” She said, contemplative.

“What?” Izuku prompted, leaning towards the puzzle she was staring at.

“It feels like slotting the last piece of the puzzle in. My quirk. If that… if that makes sense?”

Izuku’s eyes widened as a light bulb flashed in his head.
“It does! You said – that woman who approached you – she was dead here? This universe’s version of her?”

“Oh. Wow. Yeah.” Watanabe stared at him, eyes similarly wide, “They’re puzzle pieces. I complete the puzzles where they’re missing. That’s it, that’s-”

Izuku let her drift off as he thought. There was still a chance. So Touya had been sent somewhere where his alternate version had died? But now this universe was like a puzzle with a missing piece, so an alternate Watanabe should be able to send Touya back here. This could work. There was hope.

“Hey – uh. I forgot your names, sorry, but. Something else.” Watanabe said, lifting up the box the puzzle pieces had some in. “I didn’t know how to explain it before, because I didn’t know why but… when I used my quirk on Todoroki, it felt different. In a bad way.”

“What do you mean?” Kacchan asked lowly.

Watanabe found a random spare piece in the box and Izuku, to his embarrassment, instantly recognised it – it came from a special edition All-Might jigsaw puzzle. Somewhere out there, another box was missing the piece.

Watanabe then removed a piece from the completed Endeavor puzzle, placed the All-Might piece in the empty space, and then punched it in with her fist. The fit was awkward. Ill-fitting. It clearly didn’t belong there.

“Like this.” Watanabe said, staring down at the puzzle. “Using my quirk on him felt like this. And I don’t know why.”

Izuku also stared at the puzzle.
He reached through the cell bars, hooked his thumbnail under the ill-fitting piece, and flicked it up. The puzzle piece popped out, not easily but without much of a struggle either.

Kacchan promptly pulled his arm out of the cell, grumbling about how fucking naïve he was, but Izuku was too busy staring at Watanabe, asking his question silently.

“Fuck – footsteps. Someone’s coming, Deku, we gotta go.” Kacchan said, dragging him up.

Watanabe just nodded.
“I’ll try.”

And with that, Izuku and Kacchan made a hasty escape, only alerting one or two police officers of their intrusion – officers who unfortunately recognised them as they ran past them.

… Izuku’s teachers were going to be so furious. Almost as furious as Kacchan was that he hadn’t gotten a chance to destroy the Endeavor jigsaw puzzle.

Chapter Text

A couple sit on the edge of the pier to watch the stars together. They notice the silhouette of a man with large wings flying in the moonlight, reappearing every so often as if searching. They wonder why Hawks would be working so late into the night.

-

It has been 4 days since Touya Todoroki went missing.

-

An underground hero, a rookie working alone for the first time, spots Hawks on the edge of a building, staring into space, his wings drooped in a way that seems to pull painfully on his upper back. She knows why. Word spreads fast in her line of work. When Hawks hasn’t so much as twitched after 20 minutes, even when it starts raining, the underground hero moves on silently to finish her patrol of the area.

-

It has been 5 days since Touya Todoroki went missing.

-

“Do you think he’s safe?” Hawks asks.

Fuyumi wraps a blanket around his wings, sits next to him and wraps the other end of the blanket around herself.

“Of course. It’s Touya.” She responds quietly.

Hawks rests his head against her shoulder.

“I’m scared” He says.

They fall asleep on the couch, and wake up with their blanket rearranged and Fuyumi’s mom smiling tiredly at them. The smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

-

It has been 6 days since Touya Todoroki went missing.

-

“You’re in purgatory.” Natsuo’s girlfriend tells him, hugging him tightly. “Your brother may or may not come back. You may be in purgatory forever, never ascending to heaven and never descending to hell. Some say this waiting, never knowing, is worse than hell. I promise you, you’re allowed to fall apart a little.”

-

It has been a week since Touya Todoroki went missing.

Natsuo’s team won the match, and the crowd around Touya and Shouto inevitably went wild.

Shouto seemed a little overwhelmed by the noise and jostling so Touya, after grinning and waving down at Natsuo, led Shouto away from the stands, near the team changing rooms so they could catch Natsuo later.

“Had fun?” He asked.

“Yes.” Shouto responded, straightfaced as always. “Are sporting events always so intense?”

“Oh, you should see when it gets closer to the finals. A fight broke out once and Natsuo accidentally punched someone in the face. It was great.”

Shouto snorted, lips pulling up a fraction. Then he frowned.
“Natsuo… wouldn’t punch anyone in the face on purpose, would he?”

It’s not a revelation Touya’s timeline’s Shouto would’ve had. Not at this age. Not this late. But hey, it was a start.

“Nah. You and me, we punch faces for a living. Fuyumi could punch a face under the right circumstances. Natsuo will yell and expertly chew you out if he’s angry but he’d never use all that brawn to physically hurt anyone. It’s not in his nature.”

Shouto simply nodded.
Then he asked, completely out of the blue,
“Are we all the same in your timeline?”

Touya’s eyes, against his will, focused for a split second on Shouto’s scar as he thought of how to answer that. If Shouto caught that, he didn’t say anything.

He didn’t seem to mind that he would have to wait for an answer.

Touya could write a thesis on the differences in this timeline. One of the biggest ones he’d noticed today? Natsuo’s teammate, who had been attacked in his own timeline and too injured to play, was up and healthy and playing right alongside Natsuo today in this timeline.

And when he discretely searched his name up during intermission?

… It had been the Endeavor in this timeline who had rescued him.

Touya knew in that moment that it would be beyond unhealthy to overthink this, to blame himself for all the people who had gotten hurt in his timeline due to Endeavor’s absence as a hero. It didn’t stop him from wondering, though. Was his experience of childhood abuse worth one less hero in the world?

Which, again. Unhealthy.

But in a way, the revelation was also a relief. This may have been a bad timeline for him. But for other people, this was the good timeline. There were still plenty of things here to live and fight for, he supposed. It wasn’t hell.

So, to answer Shouto’s question, he thought of one of the things that made him happy about this timeline.

“Fuyumi says your best friend is Midoriya.”

“Yes. Why are you smiling like that?”

“Because it was inevitable.”

“What does that mean?”

“Inevitable, definition: a situation that was unavoidable and certain-.”

“I know what it means.” Shouto interrupted irritably, while Touya laughed at him. “I meant-”

“I know what you meant, squirt. He’s my Shouto’s best friend, too. Childhood friends. You met later in this timeline but you’re still friends. Inevitably.”

Shouto’s eyes were wide.
“Childhood friends?”

“Since they were six.” Touya confirmed, eyes going a little unfocused as he decided to continue; “Same with Hawks, actually. I heard he sneaks into the house to bother Fuyumi sometimes. He’s an inevitable friend of the Todorokis too.”

Shouto’s face was carefully blank when Touya turned to look back at him. Touya internally made a joke about how Shouto had used up his daily quota for making facial expressions (which he immediately chastised himself for, because that was just cruel and Touya’s brain should stop being a dick), but then noticed… something off about Shouto’s expression. Like it wasn’t just his naturally blank face. Like he was actually putting effort into keeping it blank.

But before he could ask, or prod him on what was wrong, Natsuo approached them with a fast jog, phone in hand.

“Fuyumi just called – Touya – uh, Shouto, maybe you should weigh in on this, too. Mom’s having a lucid day. Fuyumi told her everything. She wants to meet you, Touya.”

Touya ignored how the implications of the words ‘lucid day’ widened the pit in his stomach.

“Oh. Cool. When?” He asked.

“Fuyumi managed to pull some strings and extend visitation for an hour, so, like, if you set off now you’ll get some time. Fuyumi seems to think it’s a good idea.” Natsuo said, directing the last bit mainly towards Shouto.

... Touya also ignored the multiple questions he had as to why Shouto seemed to be the expert on whether Touya should see this timeline’s version of his mom.

Shouto side-eyed Touya out of his scarred eye briefly before responding.
“I think it should be fine.”

Natsuo nodded, apparently satisfied.
“And you, Touya?”

“As in, do I want to meet her?” Touya asked. “Of course. She said she wants to meet me, right?”

“She’s in a psychiatric hospital. Your mom isn’t.” Shouto said bluntly. “She’ll be different.”

Touya looked between his brothers.
“Is… is there something I should know about? Before I go to see her?”

Natsuo carded his hands through his hair in a nervous gesture.
“It would be an issue if you looked like Endeavor, I think. That’s all. But you don’t, not really.”

Shouto apparently had nothing to add to that.

It made sense, Touya supposed. This version of his mom tolerated spousal abuse for a lot longer than his did.

And her child. Damn it, her child died. Anyone would have a breakdown if they had to deal with all of that.

If she wanted to meet him, he couldn’t deny her. She was still a version of his mom.

… he really missed her.

“Tell Fuyumi I’m on my way.”

Touya felt severely underdressed and ratty as soon as he stepped into the high-end, clearly outrageously expensive psychiatric hospital. Another indication that his family in this timeline were rich rich. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.

All too fast, he was being led to the ward that held this timeline’s version of his mother – Fuyumi met him outside the room with a smile, said she’d wait outside for him in case he needed anything, and promptly pushed him inside.

His mom looked up at him from a standard hospital bed. She was thinner, more drained-looking than his own mother. That was ok. He’d been expecting that. He was relieved to see she didn’t seem out of it or drugged up – she had a spark in her eye that was synonymous with her strength, her intelligence.

She was studying him too, her face calm.

She smiled at him softly, and before he knew it, Touya had collapsed onto the chair next to her bed and taken one of her hands.

“Look at you.” She whispered, “You’re so tall and handsome, Touya. Fuyumi says you’ve done very well for yourself.”

Touya fought against a blush and squeezed her hand. Something about being here felt… dangerous.

No. Not dangerous. Just.
He felt vulnerable.

This version of his mom just watched him, and her smile faded.

“Are you ok, Touya?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Touya said, his voice tight.

She reached over and took his hand in both of hers and eyed him steadily. The longer she held his gaze, the more aware he became of the pressure in his chest – and how close it was to bursting.

“Touya.” She said, “I held you in my arms when you were born. You were so small, slightly premature. That was the same in both of our timelines. I know when you are lost. I know that your mother is worried sick, and I know that you are terrified.”

As she spoke, Touya felt like layer after layer was being removed from his skin, and he was letting it happen, even if it hurt. His vision became blurry, but that didn’t matter because his face was then being pressed into her shoulder.

He wrapped an arm around her and held her as he shook.

… It all came out quietly. Everything he’d wrapped up, all the stress and worry and terror. It all left his body in quiet sobs, unheard by anyone outside the hospital room. It must’ve been a few minutes before he actually started feeling embarrassed at how much he had needed this.

“Sorry”. He said once he’d found his voice, still buried in her shoulder.

“Nonsense.” She said, running a hand over his hair. “This is a mother’s job. She’s not here and I am not her, but you are still Touya. Every version of you is, to me.”

… god he loved his mom. Every version of her, too.

“I was going to propose. To my boyfriend.” He blurted. He didn’t know why her, or why now. He just needed to say it.

He left her embrace but she kept a hand on his arm, her eyes telling him to continue.

“I hid the ring. I didn’t tell anyone. It was going to be a surprise. We were going to celebrate it as a family.”

She eyed him wistfully.
“Who’s the lucky man?”

“Oh – uh. Hawks. Don’t mention that to Fuyumi, though. I met the Hawks in this timeline and he’d probably be weirded out. You would like him, though.”

She took his hand again.
“You must go home, Touya. You need to.”

He smiled ruefully at her.
“I know. I’m trying. Natsuo suggested using hero connections and – mom?”

It was like a sudden moment of detachment. One second the spark in her eye was there, the next second it was gone. Her hand became slack in his.

“Mom, are you ok?”

No response. Her eyes were focused somewhat on the wall in front of her.

Touya suddenly remembered the word ‘lucid’ that Natsuo had used earlier, and abruptly stood up to fetch Fuyumi.

“Don’t worry about it, Touya.” Fuyumi comforted him after notifying a nearby doctor. “Mom sometimes shuts down - dissociates - towards the end of visits. The doctors here are helping her with it. It’s getting better. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

The calmness with which Fuyumi tackled all the shit in her life, again, astounded Touya.

He couldn’t pretend that visiting this version of his mom hadn’t shaken something inside him on a fundamental level.

He left the hospital feeling stronger, though. A little bit lighter. Like he could keep going a bit longer.

Touya stared at the coats next to the front door of Endeavor’s house and thought about the last time he’d scoped the area where he switched timelines.

In the blurry aftermath of his idiotic venture into alcohol abuse, the reason why he’d ended up near the pier in the first place hadn’t been on the forefront of his mind.

Had an undercover cop really been following him?

His instincts weren’t usually wrong about these things, so maybe. Maybe not.

Either way, he was going to make another attempt. He’d go crazy waiting around if he didn’t at least try.

He sorted through the coats, trying to find one that would fit him (Touya wasn’t even small, yet all of Natsuo’s coats were comically big on him, damn it), when he heard footsteps approaching from the kitchen.

Fuyumi was at work, Natsuo at college, so it could only be one other person.

“Takami. Hey.”

Said man rounded the corner and raised his eyebrows.
“Hey, Todoroki. You’re about to leave?”

Touya looked back towards the coats and suddenly remembered that the last thing Takami had asked of him was to stay inside. For no apparent reason.

“Uhh-”

“Again?” Takami added pointedly, and Touya looked up at him sharply.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I went to see Natsuo’s volleyball game the other day.” Touya snarked. “Sorry for not asking your permission, I guess?”

Takami huffed, unimpressed.
“You and I both know I’m not talking about that.”

Touya was momentarily stunned by how easy it was to separate Takami from his own Hawks, just by that attitude alone.

“You and I both know I have a hero license and experience in covert ops and I am perfectly capable of investigating this shit by myself.” Touya retorted, then stopped when he realised- “And what – are you stalking me now? Or did that undercover cop actually make a report on some dude minding his own damn business?”

Takami’s eyes widened, just a fraction.

“What?” Touya asked just as Takami managed to chase the evidence of surprise off his face.

He then watched as Takami’s face broke out into that weird smile of his, his hands raising in a surrendering gesture.

“Whatever, what’s done is done.” Takami announced cheerfully. “I’m just here because Endeavor gave me an address to pass onto you. He said you mentioned me? Figured I could accompany you there, report back to him if it’s a dud. Sound good?”

Touya’s line of questioning abruptly left his mind as he listened. He knew what Takami was doing, of course he did, distractions and misdirection were his thing, but a lead was a lead. Even if it had come from Endeavor.

“Did he say whose address it was?”

“Nope.” Takami replied helpfully.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

Nobody recognised Takami on the public transport they took. Not without his wings, and with his hood obscuring most of his face. For some reason, he’d made Touya do the same. Even when Touya snarked about the possibility of getting followed by another undercover cop (to which Takami didn’t react, just kept walking).

They ended up in a quiet neighbourhood with trees on every corner, leafless from the cold weather. Touya followed Takami, who eventually nodded towards the door of one of the houses.

They knocked. As they waited, Takami lowered his hood. Touya copied him.

The woman who answered stood there, her eyes darting between them. Touya expected Takami to say something – anything – but he seemed to be content with just watching the woman. Touya rolled his eyes and went to speak, to introduce himself, but then the woman spoke.

“Oh.” She said, her gaze finally settling on Touya as she spoke directly to him, understanding dawning on her face, “You’re here to speak about Mari. My daughter.”

Touya, in that moment, saw the resemblance. He’d only had the girl within his sight for a few seconds, but he’d replayed it in his head hundreds of times. The girl who sent him here had black eyes – this woman had purple, but the downturned shape was the same. They both had the same jet black hair – same face shape as well, he was pretty sure.

And – if a version of the girl existed in several timelines, it was evident he was not the only one who had been taken from his own timeline and sent to this one. There had to have been others.

“I think so.” He answered, dazed.

The woman smiled, eyes wrinkling at the corners.
“I’m Yue Watanabe. Come in. Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll make some tea.”

They followed her into her home, and Touya instantly spotted a photo on the wall of the very girl who had sent him here. She was grinning toothily at whoever had taken the photo – just a normal care-free child. A stark contrast to how Touya had seen her in his own timeline. Then again, he was pretty sure this photo had been taken years ago.

“That’s her, then?” Takami asked from beside him.

“Yeah.” Touya breathed. “Yeah that’s her. We’ve found her… and…”

And he could find his way home now.

Wait. Not now. It was school hours. He was pretty sure she was still young enough to go to school. He’d have to wait.

Plus-

“I need to say goodbye.” He blurted. “To my family. Uh- in this timeline. I should say bye before I go.”

He looked towards Takami, only to see him studying other things in the room. He picked a chip off a shelf and examined it – Touya saw it was a five years sober chip. The mementos they gave out at AA meetings to the people who had been successful in quitting their addictions.

Prying into that stuff suddenly felt too intrusive for Touya’s liking, so he instead eyed the puzzle collection in the room. They were mostly jigsaws. Must’ve been an old hobby. A layer of dust coated most of the boxes.

“There’s no guarantee she can send you home, you know.” Takami said, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, duh. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, trust me. She can send me to another timeline. If it’s not the right one, I’ll just find her again and keep searching.”

Takami squinted at him.
“Seriously? You know that could take literally forever, right?”

“Yes.” Touya answered shortly, looking Takami in the eye.

This was his only plan. At this point it may take so much longer – he’d already accepted that – but that was ok. It would all be worth it, to get home. He could do it.

“You want to go back?” Mari’s mother asked suddenly, startling them both.

She stood in the doorway, tea pot in hand, eyebrows raised.

Touya made panicked eye contact with Takami before stepping in to explain.

“Look – I’m not angry at your daughter. Uh – the version of her from my timeline. I swear. She used her quirk on me by accident. And I know it’s technically illegal for civilians to use their quirks so it’s a big ask-”

“No-” she put the tea pot on the table but made no attempt to pour it, and continued speaking quickly, “No, I mean – nobody’s ever asked to go back. They always come to thank her. Nobody’s ever asked for her to send them back to their original timelines.”

Touya frowned.
“Oh.”

Mari’s mother started wringing her hands.
“I’m so sorry.”

Touya watched as tears started building in her eyes, and felt his stomach drop to the floor.

“My daughter died in a villain attack nearly three years ago.”

The trip back to Endeavor’s house was a blur of cotton in Touya’s ears and the taste of blood in his mouth that wouldn’t go away.

For some reason, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if her shrine looked similar to his. Maybe he should have asked to see it, to pay his respects. He was sure all the others did that.

The door shut behind him.

Takami looked pretty concerned. It was an honest expression, for once.

“I’m stuck here.” Touya said, “Aren’t I?”

“I don’t know.”

Touya wasn’t sure what answer he wanted, but it wasn’t that.

Abruptly, he wondered where Endeavor kept his alcohol.

His mind then wandered to the sobriety chip in Watanabe’s house.

He refused. He would not try to numb this. If she could stay sober through her daughter’s death, then he could do this sober as well.

With a shudder, has back slid down the door. He saw the blurry outline of Takami join him on the ground and abruptly wiped his eyes.

“It’s not over yet.” Takami said weakly, and Touya laughed without humour.

“Pfft. Yeah. Guess I gotta just – try to live with it. Get a new job or something. Fuck.”
Touya hit the back of his head against the door to stop himself from thinking too much. The crash of it all would inevitably come. Most likely tonight.

“I mean it. Call it a hunch.” Takami insisted.

Touya wiped his eyes again and focused on Takami, still looking earnestly concerned.

He really was like Touya’s Hawks sometimes.

“Why are you here?” He asked.

“Um.” Takami said slowly, frowning, “Should I leave?”

Touya snorted.
“For fuck’s sake, Takami, I meant, like - why are you helping me? You don’t know me. We were never friends here.”

Takami’s expression fell as he spoke.

Then, abruptly, he stood up, rolling his eyes.

Touya frowned and went over what he’d said to garner such an unimpressed reaction. He went to speak, but was interrupted by Takami’s laughter. The same bizarre laughter as when Touya had told him to take a coat the last time they met.

“Wow, Todoroki. You’re very transparent, you know that?” He said in a mock cheerful voice, dusting himself off.

“Um.” Touya said. “What?”

“You want me to say, ‘it’s because that’s what heroes do!’, don’t you? Bet that’s what your Hawks would say. And I’m not Hawks if I’m not a hero, right?”

“Wait-”

“Or,” Hawks continued, his eyes taking on a wilder quality Touya had never seen before, “you want me to say, ‘But we are friends now!’, because you’ve just realised you’ll probably never see your better version of Hawks again and you reckon I’ll make a half-decent replacement-”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Touya yelled, suddenly on his feet, flames licking at his fingers.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Todoroki?” Hawks asked back, laughing slightly, “What kind of answer were you expecting?”

Touya threw his hands up, focusing on smothering his flames.
“I don’t know! Something honest?”

“Ha! You want honest?” Takami said mockingly, “I didn’t get into heroism because it’s the right thing to do - I got into it because the commission made me. They made me do all sorts of things I bet your version of Hawks has never had to do. But now that the commission don’t want me anymore? Well, fuck, what will motivate me to even get out of bed in the morning? This, apparently. I’m here because I literally have nothing else to do, Todoroki. Is that the answer you wanted?”

Nausea coiled in Touya’s stomach as he gaped at Takami’s outburst.

“Takami – that – that wasn’t your fault-”

“Maybe not. But do you know what was my fault?”

“No – you don’t have to-”

“Losing my wings. All because I killed some villain. The commission didn’t even tell me to kill him. I had him restrained and subdued and ready to take in alive but I still did. In cold blood. That was all me. And his friend – understandably – wanted revenge, and I don’t blame him.”

Touya swallowed and remained silent. Whatever expression was showing on his face, Takami seemed satisfied with it.

His eyes softened, though.
“For what it’s worth, Todoroki… I’m sorry you’re stuck here. And I have nothing else to do so I’m going to keep looking into it.”

Touya nodded mutely.
He wanted to tell Takami – something. That he still didn’t see him as the monster he was making himself out to be. That he appreciated the help, even if it wasn’t some grand heroic gesture.

He didn’t know how to word it in a way that wouldn’t sound patronising.

He still had to strangle the urge to tell Takami to take a coat when he left without another word.

Chapter Text

Fuyumi realised something was very wrong when she began walking on eggshells around Touya.

It was something she only ever did when her father would announce his return with a loud slam of the front door on his particularly bad days. It hadn’t happened in a while – dad had mellowed out a little recently – but it was a behavioural habit ingrained in her.

Stay out of sight.

When in the same room, look busy.

Make as little noise as possible.

Mediate, deescalate, and if all else fails, take Natsuo by the hand out of the back door into the garden and stay there for as long as they could.

…It’d been a while since she’d had to do that. Since she’d felt this way at all.

And once she realised she’d fallen back on those old habits (sans taking her college-aged brother to a safer place), it took several minutes of staring at her bedroom ceiling to puzzle it out in her head.

First of all, she could never mention this to Touya.

Second of all, logically, Touya would never snap at her for making noise or being present. Nothing about his behaviour posed a threat to her at all. He’d just been… quieter recently. More distant. Sadder.

Which was completely understandable, considering his circumstances.

And she’d just… subconsciously gone back to old coping mechanisms for back when she didn’t understand what was happening or what would happen next. 

She hadn’t even thought to ask why he’d been acting different for the past few days. Just carried on as usual, trying to ignore the situation.

She was such a bad sister.

She decided then and there, it was time for her to actively step in for once in her life. Even if every bone in her body told her not to – told her that it would it was no use trying, all she’d do is make Touya angry, she was made for mediation, not resolution – she had to.

This Touya had to know he wasn’t alone in this.

Shouto looked uncertainly at the stove, trying to figure out what the weird symbols next to the dials meant, and then contemplated just using his quirk on the frying pan instead and hoping for the best.

“Todoroki, it’s fine, honest. You don’t have to cook. There’s bound to be cereal in one of these cupboards, right?” Midoriya called nervously from the kitchen table. “There are so many cupboards here!”

“No, this is my fault.” Shouto responded, squaring his shoulders as he gingerly turned a knob on the stove. “I didn’t tell Fuyumi I was coming today. I told you she or Touya would cook breakfast for us, but she’s gone out, and he’s not up yet, so I’m going to cook.”

“I don’t think you know how to use that. Why is it clicking like that?”

“I don’t know. It smells like gas?”

Midoriya got up from his seat.
“Todoroki! Turn it off!”

Shouto, instead, used his quirk to send a small flame towards the hissing sound, and watched as the flames immediately spread to a circle of controlled mini-fires around one of the rings on the stove.

“That wasn’t so hard.” Shouto said, smiling to himself.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how you’re supposed to do that.” Midoriya argued. “Most people don’t have fire quirks.”

“Hm.” Shouto said as he tested the strength of an eggshell on the side of the pan. “Fuyumi probably does it that way as well.”

“She has a fire quirk?”

The egg Shouto was holding smashed half into the pan, half out. He considered that a decent first attempt and reached for another one.  

“Sparks.” He corrected.

“She makes sparks?”

Shouto felt one corner of his lips pull up at the tell-tale lift in Midoriya’s tone.
“Yes. From her hands.”

“That’s so cool! Are the sparks on her skin or can she throw them at something? If they’re on her skin she’d have to have some kind of fire resistance.”

Shouto shook his head.
“She throws the sparks. I think her skin is more like my mothers’ - more resistant to the cold.”

He tried to be more careful with the second egg, but his concentration broke when he heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He watched as the majority of this egg ended up falling directly into the fire, just as a red blotch appeared out of the corner of his eye.

“Shouto?” Touya said, his voice rougher than the last time Shouto had heard it. “Why are you - I thought Natsuo said you weren’t allowed near the stove.”

Shouto glanced at him, then did a double-take.

Luckily, he’d had enough practise around his friends by now to know you shouldn’t blurt out the first observation you have about someone. Especially if it’s not a compliment.

Touya looked… bad. Like he hadn’t been sleeping or taking care of himself properly in the few days since Shouto had seen him. Those once-bright eyes were blinking slowly at him, taking in the scene. There was an absence about them.

Suddenly, Shouto was worried.

Even Dabi’s eyes hadn’t looked like that, and he’d clearly been further off the deep end than this Touya.

A second later, Touya seemed to pull himself together enough to process the smell probably seeping into the kitchen walls at this point.

“Fucks sake Shouto, do us all a favour and drag me out of bed next time to at least supervise this shit.” Touya growled as he stomped up to the stove, first turning off the fire and then yanking the pan out of Shouto’s hand. “Better yet, make yourself some fucking cereal, dumbass.”

Shouto’s shoulders relaxed significantly when Touya then let out a tired bark of laughter while surveying the damage. He’d learned by now that Touya just spoke like that sometimes, like he was angry, but he wasn’t really. ‘All bark and no bite’, as Fuyumi had put it.
That was one way to tell Touya and Dabi apart, he supposed.

“Do you at least know how to clean?” Touya asked, shooting him an exasperated look.

The warmth was back in his eyes.

Shouto nodded.
“If I clean, will you cook us breakfast?” He asked, gesturing to Midoriya, still stood at the kitchen table, watching them with wide eyes.

Touya quirked an eyebrow and turned around.
“Oh.” He said, “Hey, Izuku.”

Then, after a second of realisation, pinching the bridge of his nose, he continued,
“Ah. Shit. Different timeline. Midoriya. Sorry. Shouto, please tell me you explained-”

“He knows. I told him.”

Touya sighed and turned back towards Midoriya to give him an actual polite greeting, as if he hadn’t just called Shouto a dumbass a minute ago.

Midoriya stuttered though a greeting back.

Meanwhile, Shouto picked up what he thought was likely to be soap, and got to work.

Throughout breakfast, Touya was being asked so many questions, he didn’t have time to wallow in his own misery. It was kind of nice.

Midoriya warmed to him quickly enough once he figured out Touya wasn’t gonna give him shit over the in-depth questions about his quirk. Besides, Touya had been asked all these questions before. He even went into a little detail about the self-immolating side-effect of his quirk, seeing how Shouto didn’t seem to be uncomfortable with him talking about it. It was mostly in the context of his support equipment, anyway.

And then Shouto started asking more demanding questions. Like, what were the league of villains like in his timeline? What, in detail, happened when they attacked his Shouto’s training camp?

And, bizarrely, with Touya’s expertise in covert ops, what would he have done differently if he’d been leading the league of villains in attacking the training camp?

“What kind of question is that?” Touya asked through laughter, “Am I being interrogated again?”

“No.” Shouto said, straight-faced.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” Midoriya added. “I don’t think you would have done it in the first place, anyway.”

Touya snorted.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, kid. Appreciate it.”

“I didn’t insinuate that you would.” Shouto sulked.

Touya glanced over them and sighed.
“I guess the league of villains are more of a joke in my timeline than they are in yours. You just want to be prepared for the real deal, right?”

Shouto shrugged just as they heard a thump coming from the walk-in pantry connected to the kitchen.

Touya’s first instinct was to be on high alert, and he could see from the reaction of the two heroes-in-training that their instinct was the same.

But – there was really only one person it could be.

He tsked and put his hands on Shouto and Midoriya’s shoulders so that they would sit the fuck down again.

“Takami?” He called tiredly.

Takami opened the pantry door and walked into the kitchen with a casual greeting, as if he hadn’t just broken in their house again.

“You know, now that I know you’re breaking in from the pantry, I’m going to board up whatever hole you’re crawling in from.”

“Oh no. Wooden boards. If only the commission had trained me to get past some wooden boards installed by an amateur.” Takami drawled as he headed straight to the stove to help himself to breakfast leftovers.

Shouto and Midoriya didn’t seem to question Takami breaking in. Maybe Fuyumi had told them it was a regular occurrence.

Their shoulders were still tense when he removed this hands, though.

Touya rubbed his eyes. He didn’t really want to deal with Takami. Not after what he’d said the last time they talked.

After a few seconds, he heard the scrape of a chair as Takami joined them at the table.

There was a moment of silence before he said,
“Ah. You both figured it out, didn’t you? Should’ve expected that.”

… What?

Touya removed his palms from his eyes to frown at him, and then glance at Shouto and Midoriya. The latter two looked at Takami like he’d just slapped them.

Touya slowly lowered his hands to the table.

He looked between them all again.

“Figured out what?” He asked, despite innately knowing from the way the mood had shattered that nobody would be answering him anytime soon.

“He’s… He’s not like-” Shouto started, his body visibly tensing.

“Relax.” Takami said, sounding decently earnest. “I know. It’s all good. But I think it’s time I told him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Midoriya interjected, throwing an apologetic look at Touya.

Touya chose to stay silent while they talked about him as if he wasn’t in the same fucking room.

“Oh, definitely not. But I think it’s the key to getting him back to his own timeline.”

At that, Touya’s head snapped up.

“What?” He said quietly.

Takami eyed him for a second, then turned back to the two boys.
“All right. Back to your dorms, kids. Time for the adults to talk.”

Touya felt like asking the boys to leave was more for his sake than theirs.

The thought scared him.

He’d been preparing himself to ruffle Shouto’s hair at least once before he left, just to piss him off again, but the strange gravity in the room prevented it.
The two boys left, not without giving him weird looks, and Takami waited until the front door had shut before he turned back to Touya.

“You’re not gonna like what I have to say.” Takami said, sitting across from him.

“Yeah. Gathered.” Touya said, throat dry. “Then again, I don’t really like anything you’ve had to say. Cut the dramatics and get to it, Takami.”

Takami just snorted at him.
“And skip the apology I had prepared for what I said the last time I saw you?”

Touya snorted right back, returning Takami’s barely-there grin.
“Please.”

Takami promptly dug into his pocket and gave Touya a photograph.

It took a few seconds to understand what he was seeing.

Touya had dyed his hair black before, a couple years back. Non-permanent, of course. He’d worn a coat like that, and someone had painted burnt patches on his skin as part of a costume.
It was a blurry photo of him, his teeth bared at the camera, some dregs of blue flame at his hands.

“How did you get this?” He asked.

Takami paused before answering.

“I tracked down and interviewed the people who had been sent to this timeline by the Watanabe girl. All the ones I could find, anyway.”

“One of them gave you this?” Touya guessed, holding up the picture. “They came from my timeline, or something?”

“No. Todoroki, all of them had been sent to a timeline where they had died. Every single one of them.” Takami said. “That’s what makes your case different from the rest. Something went wrong with her quirk.”

Touya knew exactly what Takami was insinuating. But – that didn’t really make any sense. Touya had a shrine and a grieving family as proof.

“Touya died over a decade ago.” He said.

“He didn’t.” Takami countered, inclining his head towards the photo in Touya’s hand.

“This – this is a picture of me in a costume when I was in high school.”

Takami raised his eyebrows for a split-second.
“How would I have gotten a picture of you in high school?” He countered patiently. “Todoroki, I’ve known since I met you that the version of you in this timeline is alive. Your brother and his friend know as well. We just didn’t know who he was, before.”

Touya ran a hand through his hair, trying to process it all.

“Ok.” He said. “Ok, first of all, if I died and then somehow came back to life, or just never died in the first place, then why the fuck would I let my siblings and my mom just think I was dead? Why would I just leave them here?”

“We’re not talking about you here. The other Touya Todoroki is his own person.”

“Second of all,” Touya ploughed on, holding up the photo “If this isn’t me, then what - what the fuck happened to this guy?”

Takami looked pretty sad.
“I don’t know what happened to him. But I can tell you that I am 100% sure that is Touya Todoroki.”

At that exact moment, Touya’s eyes landed on a burn scar peaking just above the shirt sleeve on his wrist.

… Touya had burnt himself so many times with his own quirk back when he still trained with Endeavor. The Touya in this timeline had probably trained with him for a few more years.

He knew the truth about the version of himself in this timeline. How he’d died. He’d known it all along. He’d just refused to let it form an entire thought.
He now had to acknowledge it.
His own quirk had killed him.

Or…

Maybe it had just left some scars.

Touya stared at the picture with a new dawning horror.

Then-

“Watanabe’s quirk felt – like it was squeezing me into a place I don’t belong. It hurt. Is this-”

“It was painless for everyone else.” Takami said.

Touya looked up at Takami and then back down to the picture.

It wasn’t him.
It really wasn’t him.
It was the other Touya, alive breathing along with everyone else.

A second later, he’d slammed the picture onto the table.
“What the fuck does he think he’s doing?” He seethed. “His family think he’s dead.”

Before Takami could answer, Touya realised something else didn’t make sense.
“Why didn’t you or Shouto say something the moment you knew?”

Takami’s eyes were steely.
“That,” He said, gesturing at the photo, “Is the villain named Dabi.”

Dabi.

Touya had heard that name. Or read it.

The lack of recognition must have shown on his face.

“He’s in the League of Villains.”

Oh.
He’d read that name, weeks ago.

It was like the missing piece of a puzzle finally falling into place.

Why Takami had attacked him on sight.

Why Shouto had been quiet after seeing his quirk.

Why he’d been tailed by an undercover cop.

Why Takami had been insistent on him not showing his face outside this house.

And – and the questions Shouto and Midoriya had been asking earlier-

“No.”

“Todoroki, I’m sorry-”

“No. If that’s Touya Todoroki, then he doesn’t remember. Something must have happened to him to make him forget. He wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. Being a villain, whatever, fucking fine, I guess, but he wouldn’t put Shouto in the line of fire like that. Not if he knew who he was.”

Takami didn’t react to his raised voice. He just sat there, surveying.
“Okay.” He said evenly.
It sounded more placating than believing.

Touya was breathing heavily. It was a process he was intimately familiar with now to draw the heat away from his hands.

So.
He now knew there was a version of himself out there who put his little brother in mortal peril. Who kidnapped one of his classmates right in front of him. Who had left him here, in this house, to go through everything alone.

“Why is everything so fucked up here?” he asked with a humourless laugh.

Takami shrugged, resting his head on his hand.
“Seems like everyone else was sent to their good timelines. Maybe when the quirk fucked up, it sent you to your bad one. That, or it got confused because you were already in your good timeline.”

Touya pressed his palms over his eyes again. He thought about his family, Hawks, his friends, his job, how when he spoke out about Endeavor, people actually listened. Something was done about it.
How many abuse victims could say that?
“You know,” He said, “I think I was. And this’ll get me back there, how?”

“It’s more of a lead than a resolute solution.”

“It’s a shitty lead.”

“You’re welcome.”

Touya sighed, his shoulders falling.
“Thank you, Takami. Especially since – fuck – you must have fought Dabi at some point if you recognised me. A new fucked up discovery about this timeline to add to the pile. Thanks for helping me anyway.”

Takami’s fake smile was back.
“Thanks for being so pitiful that you make me look like an emotionally healthy paragon by comparison.”

Touya rolled his eyes. He’s not sure why Takami would think he’d find that funny.

Keigo found himself wishing Todoroki had not just blindly accepted that this was the bad timeline.

Like, fine, the Keigo in the other timeline still had his wings. Could still fly. Was probably happier, on the whole. But - he had to live with a sanitised version of Dabi who didn’t appear to have any sense of humour at all.

Dabi would have laughed at that. Punched him on the arm, maybe.
Keigo lived for those punches.

At least Todoroki was right about one thing – this timeline was fucked up.

Keigo was pretty sure he shouldn’t be wistfully missing the man who had burnt off his wings. Shouldn’t be wanting to back to him, the only thing holding him back being the fact that Dabi wouldn’t want to see him. Not after what he did.

Whilst mentally putting that on the highest shelf in his brain, he explained the game plan to Todoroki; get a contact on the league of villains case, and then enquire into Dabi’s potential capture.

The sound of the front door opening signalled Fuyumi’s return from her morning errands.

“And that’s my cue to leave.” Keigo said, standing up and continuing to talk on his way to the pantry. “As soon as we find out any info on Dabi’s current whereabouts, we can move forward with the lead. Until then, sit tight. Take up a hobby. Shave, maybe.”

“Fuck you.” Todoroki replied gratefully, already on his way to greet his sister.

Keigo was already opening the door to the pantry when he heard a muffled-

“Hey, ‘Yumi. Need help with the bags?”

Followed by-

“Touya. I need – put the bags down, we’ll deal with them in a bit. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. You’re depressed. I know why, of course I do, but – something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it? You don’t have the support system here that you do in the other timeline but – I’m here. I’m listening. I just – wanted you to know that.”

Keigo didn’t know why he stood there and continued to listen. Probably because Touya Todoroki had just agreed that this was the bad timeline despite Fuyumi Todoroki still existing here.

“I feel like I haven’t really been present and here for you lately, but I’m here to tell you now that I am.” Fuyumi finished.

Keigo quietly shuffled closer to the hallway, still out of sight.
There was a few moments of silence between the siblings, during which Keigo assumed Todoroki was trying to come up with an excuse to tell his civilian school teacher little sister.

Instead, to Keigo’s surprise, he told the truth.

“The last lead went cold a few days ago. We found the girl who used her quirk on me – this timeline’s version of her – but she’d died a few years ago. Spent the last few days thinking I wouldn’t get home.”

“Do that again.”

“Do what?”

“You – when you ran your hand through your hair-” Fuyumi finished with a gasp.

A beat of silence

“What?” Todoroki asked.

“Touya. You – you can’t stay here. You can’t. Please tell me you won’t stop trying.”

“I won’t – we just found another lead – ‘Yumi what’s wrong?”

“White roots.” Fuyumi uttered, voice haunted and breaking. “A patch of it, near the back of your head. Touya, it was a warning sign we all missed when our Touya – when he-”

She broke off.
Cleared her throat.
Her voice came back steady.

“His hair turned white during his last few months. It was – we think – a stress thing. A sign things were getting too much for him.”

Keigo remembered one morning after waking up beside Dabi. He’d seen it – just the smallest hint caught by his bird-like eyes. White roots. By the time Dabi left the bathroom that morning, the roots were gone and he stunk of hair dye.

“Fuyumi.” Todoroki said. “I need to tell you something. About your Touya.”

Keigo blinked to himself.
He shook his head.
Surely, Todoroki wouldn’t…

“I just found out. You deserve to know-”

“Todoroki.” Keigo raised his voice as he turned the corner, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Todoroki startled and then had the nerve to shoot an exasperated look at Fuyumi.

“Helping Fuyumi with the bags?” He snarked.

“Hi Hawks.” Fuyumi greeted, frowning between him and her brother.

“Hi.” Keigo said back stiffly, “Nice to see you, as always. Not that it’s a flaw in your character or anything, but you are a civilian. And it sounded like you were about to be told something confidential and highly classified.”
Keigo shot a glare at Todoroki.

Todoroki scowled right back at him, apparently baffled by simple logic.
“Takami, what the fuck? It involves her, and-”

“Another thing!” Keigo cut him off, “Stop shouting my civilian name from the rooftops! It’s classified!”

It was bad enough when Todoroki had blurted it out earlier in front of the hero students, but this was going too far. His name was his. Nobody was supposed to know it, let alone use it. It grated every time it left Todoroki’s mouth. But, hey, at least he’d been desensitised to the point of not fucking murdering people over it by now.

Fuck, why hadn’t he just told Todoroki to keep his civilian name out of his mouth?

Todoroki let go of the bags to put his hands up in a mock surrender.

“Fine. Hawks. I’m going to tell Fuyumi the truth because, first of all, she-”

“I don’t care. You’ll only cause damage if you tell her.”

“The damage is already done, Hawks. I’m not going to lie to my sister.”

“She’s not your sister.” Keigo pointed out.

“Maybe not.” Todoroki scoffed, “Funnily enough, she’s someone else’s sister, though-”

Keigo made a move forward to make him shut up, but had to stop when Fuyumi stepped between them and put a hand on his chest.

She stared them both into silence.

“Please do not make me step in between two people with hero licenses ever again.” She said, voice sterner than anything he ever would have expected from her.

… And it worked. Keigo took one look at himself and stepped back. He’d lost his temper. Todoroki had gotten under his skin.

“Touya,” Fuyumi continued, “My brother is dead. Whatever you found out about him can wait. What I want to hear right now is how you will get home.”

“’Yumi, that’s the thing-”

“Hawks.” Fuyumi spoke, voice carrying strongly over her brothers’, “If Touya wants to tell me something, then I will listen. I will sign an NDA if need be. If you think I will be damaged by the information and you are just trying to protect me, then I appreciate the sentiment. But I am an adult and I will not stand here and be treated like a child.”

Keigo let his shoulders drop. He saw a proud grin form on Todoroki’s face.

“Listen to her, Hawks.” Todoroki said, “If you felt like I could handle the truth, then she can, too.”

So, they told her the truth.

Fuyumi cleared her throat – the first noise she made since she found out.
“So you think that confronting your doppelganger will be the catalyst to expel you from this timeline.”

“Uhh-”

“Bad idea, Fuyumi. Very bad idea.” Takami said.

“How else is he going to get home?” Fuyumi argued.

“Wait, wait, let’s – slow down.” Touya interjected. “Fuyumi, now’s the time to tell us whether or not you are having a hard time processing this.”

Fuyumi, with a deep breath, took off her glasses to rub her eyes.

“I… thought I couldn’t help him anymore. Because he was dead. I guess I still don’t think I can. I don’t know what to do with this information. But I’m glad I know. I’m happy he’s alive. I’m terrified that the situation is not salvageable.” Fuyumi confessed, putting her glasses back on. “It probably makes me a terrible person. Despite everything he’s done, I would still welcome him home. He will always have a home if he wants it.”

“He may come home one day just to burn it down.”

Touya nearly spat his drink out at Takami’s blunt statement.
“Taka- Hawks-”

“Even then.” Fuyumi said, looking up at them, eyes steely. “Even then. I don’t know what that says about my self-preservation instincts.”

“Fuyumi, listen to me. If you see Dabi, you run. Todoroki, back me up.”

“He’d come back to burn the house down.” Touya agreed. “But he wouldn’t burn the house down with Fuyumi still inside.”

“You also said he wouldn’t put his little brother in danger, but he did.” Takami argued, speaking slowly and seriously, stressing every word. “Todoroki, at Watanabe’s house you said you were willing to go through hundreds of other timelines to find the right one. You have to be just as patient with this lead. You can’t search for him, or project your morals onto him, or welcome him home with open arms, because there is a very real possibility that he will try to kill you. Do I make myself clear?”

Touya, for once, didn’t have a rebuttal.

“Yeah.” He said, knowing that everything Takami said was true, that doing anything rash would be stupid, but also knowing that he’d never felt desperation like this before.

Like a half-dead moth drawn to a flame.

“Crystal.”

Touya spent the night googling “Doppelganger” on one of Natsuo’s old laptops.

Trust Fuyumi, the literature nerd, to jump to the conclusion that coming face to face with himself would get him home.

The superstition was that if another person saw your doppelganger when they knew you were elsewhere, it would be followed by a strike of tragedy.
If you yourself met your own doppelganger, one of you would die.

Or, as Fuyumi said, be expelled from this timeline.

Surely, the universe would realise its mistake if the two of them were in the same space?

And, if not, Touya could probably take a lanky, half-trained version of himself in a fight.

Halfway through the night, he ripped a sheet of paper out of a notebook, wrote ‘Takami’ on the back, then flipped it over to write a message.

He wrote everything he knew about his boss, Mahou. How she’d been treated as someone who grew up in the commission. How she’d been used, forced to do things she didn’t want to do, thought herself irredeemable.
How she’d ended up in covert ops with the aim to change things from the inside, to make sure what had happened to her never happened to anyone else. She was going to claw her way to the top, making trusted allies along the way, putting knowledge of all the things she’d done in their hands so she could be taken down in a heartbeat if she ever became corrupted.

She’d made it, in his timeline.
And here, she’d died trying.

Takami, he wrote, here is your new reason to get out of bed in the morning. Find out what happened to her. Use the information to either continue her legacy or bring the commission to its knees. I think you are the only one left who can.

He left a p.s., too.
It was a set of contact details and a comment; You’re not above using support equipment.

The next morning, he made up his mind, cleaned himself up, and went downstairs to make breakfast for Fuyumi. When she finally stumbled downstairs (he understood, he didn’t sleep much, either), she took one look at him and just knew.

“If it doesn’t work, you know you can come back.” She said, voice thick. “We’ll figure it out, find another way.”

He hugged her and didn’t let go for a few minutes.

“Goodbye, ‘Yumi. It’s been a privilege knowing you.”

She grinned and wiped away tears as they broke apart.
“I wish we could write to each other, where you’re going.”

He smiled back and ruffled her hair.

“Tell Natsuo and Shouto I say bye, too. Keep having family dinners together, ok?”

And with that, he was off.

Last night, he’d also googled Honda’s name.

She was one of the best support equipment mechanics he’d ever met. If she wasn’t in covert ops in this timeline, she should have been famous. The first result on google.

Instead, he’d found her name on a footnote of acknowledgements on a cooling system manual. He’d researched the company involved; it was small, pretty mediocre and they worked out of a dingy warehouse on the edge of town.

The warehouse looked even worse than it did online. Half the letters in the company logo plastered on the building had long since fallen off.

When he made his way inside, it was immediately clear they didn’t even have security. Or proper ventilation. Eventually someone decked out in heavy-duty protective clothing stopped him to ask if he was lost, and then directed him towards Honda’s workshop with a smirk.

Well. At least she had her own space.

When he opened the door with her name on it, he couldn’t hold back his grin. Cosplay costumes lined the room. Her working bench was as chaotic as ever, spanners and random assorted cogs strewn out around the room.
It looked like an exact replica of the workshop he’d been directed into during his first year of high school.

And if he knew Honda, there would be a trip wire waiting for him if he dared actually enter the room.

“Honda?” He called. “I swear I wasn’t sent here as a joke. Not here to sabotage anything. Just want to talk.”

“You don’t have to yell.” Came a voice from just two meters away.

Touya grinned harder as Honda came into view in a scattering of reflected light.

“Nice.” Touya commented. He didn’t think his Honda had worked out that trick yet.

“Eh. So far only works if I stand very still.” She said nonchalantly. She folded her arms over her chest and tapped her fingers on her arm. “What do you want?”

“I want to get you out of this dump.” Touya said, jumping right to the chase. “I want to know if you can build and maintain a set of wings for Hawks.”

“You’re funny.” She said without missing a beat. “Come, step into my office, tell me all about this job offer, then.”

Touya snorted.
“Disable your trip wire first.”

“They warned you about the trip wire? That’s nice of them.”

“Nobody warned me about anything.” Touya said, leaning against the door frame. “You’ve had a trip wire in your workshop since the second week of high school when someone decided to vandalise your latest cosplay.”

“Hm.” Honda mused. “You must’ve been a pretty forgettable Shiketsu student if I don’t recognise you.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to recognise me.”

Touya took a deep breath.
“My name is Touya Todoroki.” He ignored Honda’s raised eyebrows. “I won’t blame you for being sceptical, but, here’s the thing. This isn’t my timeline. In my timeline, you were my mechanic at Shiketsu. I approached you with a volatile quirk and – you keep liquid nitrogen on hand, for some reason. Figured out a solution right there, no sweat. The Honda in my timeline is my colleague and friend. And I know you can do so much better than this.”

Honda frowned at him, as if trying to work out a puzzle. Her arms were still crossed, trip wire still active, wherever it was.

“I have all day.” Touya said. “And I have Endeavor’s emergency credit card. Are you going to hear me out, or what?”

That night, he ended up in the alleyway next to the bar where he’d blacked out and gotten mugged.

His next task settled into his bones, familiar and comforting.
He could almost pretend he was on a job as a covert ops agent, masquerading as a ‘shady character’ in a dangerous area so he could meet with an equally shady informant or scope out a suspicious building.

His hood was up (did he ever pay off that tab in the bar? He doubted it) and he’d even bought a pack of cigarettes to look the part.

He spent the last few hours of the night feeling like he was finally doing something, asking the lurkers if he could borrow their lighter, asking if they knew the area, if it was usually this quiet. No, he didn’t want to buy their drugs, especially not at those prices. A huff of laugher as he acknowledged their test, as if he’d tested people that way, too. He was out of that business now, anyway. What business was he in? Waste management. Another shared laugh between two people with their hoods up and hands in their pockets.

Then he got their names, and told them to call him Touya, all while lighting a cigarette with blue fire from the tip of his finger.

And if Dabi didn’t hear about him through the grapevine and find him first, he made sure to memorise the names of those people he’d talked to – the ones who’d seemed the most angry with the world.
Maybe, one day, they could be his in.

Or, he’d move on to another prefecture.
As long as it took.

Night eventually turned into the creeping early hours of the morning.
It was quieter, still dark outside. Near freezing, but no longer snowing.

Touya spent these hours sat on the edge of the pier, listening to the soft current, occasionally accompanied by footsteps behind him. One or two people stopped, asked for a lighter, and he added them to his mental list, but it was solitary for the most part.

More calming than the spare bedroom in Endeavor’s house had ever been.

A new pair of footsteps approached and Touya kept his body language relaxed as they sidled up a few meters away from him, mirroring the way his legs dangled over the side of the pier.

Mari sat up, suddenly wide awake.

Something in her chest felt wrong.

They didn’t turn to face Touya. Only looked out towards the water surrounded by pitch black.

Out of the corner of his eye, Touya saw them take something thin and rectangular out of their pocket and fling it towards him.

He caught it.

Then stayed silent as he stared at it, just about making out the details in the flickering of a nearby streetlight.

… It was very possible he’d already messed up.

It was strange how calm he felt about it, though.

“You were the one who mugged me?” He asked evenly, looking up from his newly returned hero license.

“Nope. Colleague.” A rough, flat voice responded.

“So, what. You’re just here to return it out of the good of your own heart?” Touya spat. If this turned into a fight, then he’d fight.
So much for staying undercover in this prefecture.

His hooded companion shrugged.
“I came to kill you if you were walking around drunk again. But, you’re sober, so I guess we can talk.”

And then they turned to face him.

Touya suddenly understood those stories he’d read about Doppelgangers. The slimy, twisting feeling of dread made him freeze as he examined his own features, marred by scars, staples, malnutrition.
His own eyes stared back at him.
That was him.

It was wrong.

This was shortly followed by a bittersweet taste in his mouth. He focused on that.

“It’s rude to stare.” Dabi told him, with no indication of whether he was unimpressed or amused.

“I didn’t think it would work so fast.” Touya blurted back.

This made Dabi grin, and Touya felt a bit lightheaded, seeing the way the staples on his cheeks pulled on his skin in a way that could only be painful.
“Ah. So it was intentional.”

Touya looked back at the soft waves and waited. He’d been next to the version of himself in this timeline for at least two minutes now.

If a cosmic force was going to extract him from this universe for being an obvious anomaly, it seemed to be taking its time.

“So. What do you want, Touya Todoroki?” Dabi asked.

His own name came off his tongue in a mocking way, but it made Touya frown for a different reason.

“Do you remember?” He asked.

“Debatable. What is it I’m supposed to remember?” Dabi drawled back.

“That you’re Touya.” Touya said quietly, looking back at him. “That you have a family.”

Dabi was no longer grinning at him. For a split second, Touya thought about all the people who refused to make eye contact with him, and how Hawks said it was because they found him intimidating.

“First you stare at me like I’m some kind of freak, and then you accuse me of having brain damage. I’m starting to get offended.”

Good thing Touya refused to be intimidated by himself.

“Offending you is the least of my worries.” He snapped. “What I need you to tell me is that when you attacked that training camp full of kids, you weren’t aware that one of them was your little brother.”

Dabi’s eyes widened at Touya’s outburst.
And then, his face split into an even wider grin than before, and he started laughing. His whole body shook with it. He had to grab onto the safety railing for dear life, he was laughing so hard. The rough, grating sound of it drowned out the lull of the waves.

Touya watched this, knowing at this point that he should get up and leave.
But it was like watching a train wreck. It would be painted on the insides of his eyelids for weeks, but he couldn’t look away.

“Ha.” Dabi said eventually, wiping blood off his face as he calmed down. “You made me pop a staple.”

“What the fuck.” Is all Touya could think to say in response.

“What, is Shouto not training to be a hero in your timeline?”

Well. That confirmed it. Dabi remembered. He knew who he was.
Touya suddenly felt unbalanced, like someone had just kicked away a crutch he’d been using to walk.

“He is.” He said, voice not sounding like his own, “But that doesn’t-”

“Holy shit.” Dabi exclaimed gleefully, “Are you gonna be like this every time he goes out to fight in the real world?”

Touya stared at him in horror.
“This isn’t – Shouto was attacked by his big brother! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Dabi had the nerve to laugh in his face again.

He then opened his eyes, apparently took in Touya’s expression, and actually made an attempt to stop.
“Oh, wow. You’re serious.”

Touya shrugged back at him helplessly. He couldn’t articulate just how much he didn’t understand what was so funny.

“Look,” Dabi said flippantly, “There was barely a scratch on him. I even said hi. Not that he recognised me. He’s fine. None of us even considered killing his classmate, if that’s what you’re crying about.”

Touya knew there were several points of that explanation he should have stayed angry about.
But… it just deflated out of him at those words. ‘Not that he recognised me’.

He went back to staying at the water lapping at the edge of the pier.

“I don’t know what happened to you.” He said eventually, meaning to continue that thought, but stopping himself to just leave it as a statement.

He thought about asking why Dabi didn’t go home, but the answer was obvious, now he paused to think about it.
But – his siblings. Dabi should have gone back for them alone. It was his job, like it had always been Touya’s job to look out for them.

But, again. He just didn’t know what had happened to Dabi.

“Did Shouto tell you, then? About me?” Dabi asked abruptly. “Do they all know I lived?”

Touya swallowed.
He fought down the urge to tell Dabi that Fuyumi would welcome him home. He’d promised not to put Fuyumi in between two heroes ever again. He couldn’t send a villain her way.

“It was Hawks.” He said instead. “He tried to stab me the first time he met me. Guess I have you to thank for that.”

Dabi was silent for a long time.
Touya started to consider just leaving again. He’d long since torn his eyes from the train wreck by now. Obviously this universe wasn’t interested in getting rid of its anomaly just yet. He’d have to go back to brainstorming how to get it to notice him.  

Touya was halfway into a standing position when Dabi finally broke the silence.

“I should kill you for saying that.” He said softly, no trace of the amusement that had been there before. “But I don’t think he told you.”

“Told me what?” Touya asked, now stood up but standing very still, almost bracing himself.

Dabi looked up at him, considering him for a moment.

“Do you know who Twice is?”

Touya frowned, the vague memory coming back to him.
“League of villains member, right?”

“Jin Bubaigawara.” Dabi said.

It took a second or two to understand why Dabi had said that name.

“Jin?” Touya uttered, “Jin’s a villain in this timeline?”

Dabi started standing up while Touya wrapped his head around it.

“But – he’s not – he’s nicer than literally any of my colleagues. A villain? Jin had a rough start but – he just needed help. With his quirk-”

“I know.” Dabi said.
And then, after a pause, “Hawks killed him.”

Dabi stood at eye-level with Touya, and Touya could recognise fresh grief like the back of his hand, after spending so long with his siblings in this timeline.

It all clicked into place, all at once.

How Takami had described his murder of a villain, followed by the loss of his wings by the villain’s friends hands.

By Dabi’s hands.

And Dabi was him.

In a way, Dabi’s decisions were his own.

He was aware this revelation should make him feel sick. He was only one timeline away from brutalising a different version of the man he loved. His best friend.

A few days ago, knowing he’d been the one to hurt Takami would have broken him.

But Touya knew himself. Knew he’d do a lot worse if one of his loved ones was murdered right in front of him.

It didn’t surprise him. Or even scare him.

He stared at Dabi and, behind all those scars, finally saw himself.

“I’m sorry.” Touya said. He meant it.

The night shift police officer frowned blearily at the noise originating from the long-term holding cells. Voices overlapped, getting louder as they reached him like a bad game of Chinese whisper.

“-at’s wrong with-”

“Shit, she needs med-”

“-an we get some help, here?”

He abruptly got up and wearily listened to the closest inmate trying to get his attention.

“Apparently there’s a girl further down.” She said. “She’s, like, posessed, or something? Heard something about a nose bleed. Sounded bad.”

The police officer decided to call for backup and medical staff before investigating further.

“I need your help.” Dabi said in response.

It had been a long time since he’d asked for anyone’s help. He couldn’t remember the last time, actually. Maybe he did have brain damage.

That thought aside, he watched for his double’s response. Touya just frowned, like he was calculating all the possibilities of Dabi’s request. Dabi almost wanted to wait for him to talk first, watch him squirm, hear what he thought Dabi would ask for.

It was glaringly obvious, wasn’t it?

“I need to know how you killed Endeavor.” He filled him in, fighting back the urge to roll his eyes.

Touya’s eyes widened and he frowned further.
“Endeavor’s alive.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Dabi shot back. “The Endeavor in your timeline, obviously. We both know you wouldn’t look like that if he was still around.”

Touya looked a bit lost for words and Dabi groaned. Fucking heroes, pretending like they didn’t go around killing whoever the fuck they wanted. It was exhausting.

“Oh my god. I’m not gonna snitch. I just need some pointers. He’s fucking difficult to kill.”

“What makes you think I killed him?” Touya asked quietly.

Dabi stared at him, not wanting to believe this was genuine confusion. It was an act. Of course Touya had killed his Endeavor. There was at least one version of himself who wasn’t a scarred mess, who hadn’t let Endeavor win. That thought alone had put Dabi in a good mood for weeks.

But as the seconds ticked away, Dabi’s hopes and dreams deflated into nothing.
“You’re being serious again.” He observed. “You’re telling me someone else killed him in your timeline?”

Touya didn’t immediately deny it.

…How disappointing.
Would Touya even know how Endeavor had been killed?

If not, Dabi didn’t really know if there would be any use for him. Maybe Spinner should have just killed him in that alleyway.

Maybe Dabi should finish the job.

“Mom got us out of his house.” Touya said, interrupting Dabi’s thoughts. “Then Endeavor got locked up for what he did to us. To me. He’s still there. He’s not dead, but he’s rotting.”

Dabi recalculated his assessment as he took in Touya’s explanation.

It was a relief to hear the anger in his voice. The vindictiveness. The lack of overt judgement over Dabi’s ambition.

Despite not killing Endeavor, it was clear this Touya wasn’t a lost cause. He had potential.

And, clearly, he still had a job to do.

With a sigh, Dabi eyed his double, planning his next move.
This was why he never bothered to ask for help anymore. In the end, he was always the one who had to take action and do all the heavy lifting.

He waited for Touya to blink.

And then he moved.

Mari screamed and pictured the hero student who had come the visit her. The way he had jammed his thumb under the anomalous puzzle piece and flicked it out with very little resistance.

It had looked so easy.

Touya tried to block the attack, but only succeeded in knocking it slightly off-course. His ribs took the blow, and he flared his quirk to push his assailant back, forgetting exactly who he was fighting.

A fist came again, right through his wall of flame, hitting right on target, because of course Dabi would know his stomach was his weak point. Of course he would. Touya should have been prepared for that.

But he wasn’t.

He tried not to crumple, tried to will his lungs to take in air, but before he knew it, he was flat on his back, being held down by steaming hands on both of his wrists.

Dabi breathed heavily above him, gaze manic, struggling to keep Touya down.

Touya blinked and – his heart pounded and his body lost all its strength, all its fight when he opened his eyes again.
It was Endeavor above him.
Glaring at him, echoing voice telling him he’s weak, all while his arms burn and burn and burn-

He flinched when a drop of blood hit his face. Another blink and Endeavor was gone, Dabi’s face above him yet again. Blood was still dripping from where he’d lost a staple.

For a few seconds, Touya breathed through the terror mixed with relief that Endeavor wasn’t here. He was no longer a helpless child trapped in that home.

… Dabi’s hands stayed on Touya’s wrists, but he wasn’t using his quirk.
Neither was Touya.

So he waited.

“You’ve forgotten.” Dabi said after a few seconds of staring. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like to still live in the same world as him.”

Touya almost laughed at him.
“I really haven’t.”

“People break out of prison all the time, Touya Todoroki.” Dabi seethed. “You think he won’t come straight for you and your family when he does? You think you could ever survive and have everything you want in a world where he is still alive?”

Touya didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t even want to consider it a valid possibility.

A blistering heat started building in Dabi’s hands. Touya realised that whatever Dabi had seen in his expression had been the incorrect response.

Fuck, that hurt.

“Stop it! Fuck - You’re just hurting both of us!” Touya yelled, trying again to wrench his hands out of Dabi’s grip.

“Only one of us still has nerve endings, Touya.”

Touya swore loudly as the hands around his wrists started burning. Struggling wasn’t helping, he was trapped, held down, still hallucinating Endeavor’s voice in his ears.

Dabi continued to speak over him.

“Do you remember, Touya? Do you remember what it felt like, when he wouldn’t let you stop? If you remembered, you wouldn’t let him live. You know you can’t live freely in a world where he is still alive-”

Touya stopped listening as adrenaline flooded his veins.
It dulled the pain, only enough to allow Touya to think.

The first thing he accepted was that he couldn’t fight his way out of this one. Dabi had taken advantage of his weak point, and knew all of his weaknesses.

Touya couldn’t move his body. Not with Endeavor appearing in front of him every second blink. Couldn’t physically fight back.

But, he knew that not all of his own weaknesses were physical.
He could only hope it wouldn’t backfire.

“People say I resemble mom, you know.” Touya said, cutting Dabi off. “Natsuo – your Natsuo – it was one of the first things he said to me.”

Dabi just laughed.
“You think that’ll make me stop?”

“Every time I blink, I’m not seeing you, Dabi.” Touya continued calmly. “I’m seeing him. I’m seeing Endeavor. And it’s not because you’re making me remember. As if I could forget.”

Touya watched as Dabi frowned, and delivered the final blow, his voice breaking as he told Dabi exactly what he was seeing.

“It’s because you’re the spitting image of Endeavor, Dabi. You’re just like him. You think I’m not fighting back because I’m complacent? I’m can’t make myself fight back because it never fucking worked against him. At least in my timeline there’s only one of him. In this timeline, even if you kill him, there will still be one left. And it will be you.”

Dabi’s chest shuddered through his next breath as if he had taken a physical blow.

The fire died down either side of Touya, but he kept his eyes on Dabi, staring him down.

He no longer saw Endeavor.
He still meant every word of it.

“You really want to die, don’t you?” Dabi said.

Touya couldn’t hear the water over the white noise in his ears as a trail of smoke left Dabi’s mouth. Dabi leaned in close, backing Touya’s head into the hard wood of the pier.

“I just want to go home.” Touya replied.

In an instant, the hands on his wrists let go, and the weight left his body.
Something thumped onto the wood.

“Ouch.” Dabi said, still above him. “What the fuck?”

Touya frowned and looked at his wrists, only to see Dabi’s hands go right through them, the fire he’d just called up not even acknowledging Touya’s arms.
As if he were a ghost.

Then, he felt a pull.
He saw himself turn even more opaque.

“Think about what I said.” Dabi blurted, apparently understanding what the fuck was going on. “You’ll never be safe. None of them will. You have to-”

Another sharp tug.

Touya blinked, and Dabi was gone.

His body was solid, still on the edge of the pier.

He was alone.

“Tell Hawks.” Mari groaned, batting away whatever the medical staff were trying to put on her. “Someone – someone, please tell Hawks.”

“Stay still, Watanabe-”

“Tell him what?” A police officer spoke over the medical staff, much to their obvious annoyance.

“I got him back.” Mari announced to the room, smiling despite the taste of blood in her mouth. “I got Touya Todoroki back.”

Chapter Text

The call came in when Hawks was mid-air, patrolling at an ungodly hour.

“You awake?” Detective Naomasa’s voice came through his intercom.

“Not for much longer.” Hawks replied honestly. “You need me somewhere?”
The point of these nightly patrols was to exhaust himself to the point where he couldn’t put off sleep anymore. The biting cold also made his wings stiff – he could only fly for so long in weather like this. He’d already decided to start heading towards Rei’s place so he could collapse into a bed.

“Police are on their way to the scene now. Someone called the emergency number from a pay phone near the pier, first asking if Touya Todoroki was a missing person, and then claiming to be him.”

At the sound of his boyfriend’s name, Hawks’ heart leapt to his throat, immediately followed by his stomach dropping.

“Prank call?” was Hawks’ first thought. He didn’t bother changing his direction.

“There was also an incident just now at the station. Mari Watanabe reportedly refused medical treatment for internal bleeding until the message was passed onto the detectives in charge of Touya’s case. She claims to have brought him back.”

Hawks closed his wings. He landed on a nearby rooftop, jarring his ankles in the process. He was too tired to think about landing properly, let alone parse through all the loopholes, all the ways this could be a con to get his hopes up.

He cleared his throat.
“She – she said she couldn’t. The timing-”

“Checks out. It’s unlikely Watanabe managed to set this up, or had the motivation to.”

Silence.

And then rushing wind filled Hawks’ ears as he jumped from the building, already seeing water on the horizon. His wings opened fluidly, as if they hadn’t been frozen stiff a few seconds ago.

“I can keep you updated-”

“I’m on my way.” Hawks said.

Touya’s hands were shaking as he leaned against the outside of the phone box.

He slowly slid into a seated position, willing himself not to pass out.
All he had were some burns. He refused to hold up his arms to inspect them. They didn’t hurt that bad. Endeavor’s voice was still in his head; a bit of pain was no excuse to be so light-headed. He had to be the trained hero he was and stay alert.

After all, he wasn’t certain Hawks would be awake at this hour to come before the emergency services. Touya had to be awake and functional if the police arrived first.

He tilted his head up and watched the sky anyway.

It was dark.

Hawks scanned the pier as soon as it came into view, first looking for figures, and then giving up on that because even with his quirk-enhanced vision he couldn’t see with enough detail. At first glance, every coil of rope, every trash bin, even the buoys in the water started to look like people. Like they could be Touya.

As he flew closer and closer, he instead began scanning for boxes that could be payphones.

He then saw movement.

The light source was dim, coming from inside a box near the edge of the pier. Against it, Hawks saw a dark figure sluggishly rise to its full height.

Hawks flattened his wings.

He dove towards it.

It could be anyone, he reminded himself.

But it wasn’t.

Because as he got closer, his eyes picked up on more details – familiar shapes, a familiar posture – a nearby broken street lamp flashed on and then off again, and for a split second, Hawks saw what he needed to see.

The blue flash of Touya’s wide eyes, looking right at him. His shock of red hair.

Hawks hadn’t been able to look at pictures of his own boyfriend in weeks.
Seeing him, in that split second, opened up a dam in Hawks’ chest. All that existed between them now was a few meters of air, though Hawks was sure he would have given into his instinct to destroy anything that would have otherwise separated him from Touya.

As it was, all he had to do was tilt his wings and open his arms.

Later on, he would be unsure whether his feet touched the floor before or after he had finally wrapped his arms around Touya’s torso and pressed his face into his neck.

Either way, they both miraculously stayed standing.

Hawks, after a second, felt Touya’s face press into his hair.
Heard him breathing.
Felt his pulse, rapid, even though his body seemed to sink into Hawks’ embrace.

Hawks breathed, too. And with it came a choking in his throat as relief overwhelmed him.
During the last few weeks of biting winter weather, he’d forgotten how warm Touya was.

“Hawks. I’m home.” He heard Touya whisper.

Hawks laughed wetly against his neck. He was aware he had Touya in a bit of a death grip, and he’d have to let go soon. To bring him home. He didn’t want to just yet, though. In that moment, all he wanted to do was hold Touya for a bit longer. He wanted Touya to hold him back, just for a little bit. Why wasn’t he, already?

He loosened one of his arms to grab for Touya’s hand in the dark.

He registered, a split second too late, that Touya, despite his cold resistance, was shaking like a leaf. His hand brushed up against Touya’s arm. Touya flinched violently.

“Fuck! Don’t-” Touya hissed, stumbling back “Don’t – my arms-”

On Hawks’ next sharp breath in, he finally smelt it.

Burned flesh.

“Hawks?”

“I got him, Naomasa. It’s Touya. He’s injured. We’re flying now. Is the burns unit at the University hospital any good?”

“… Musutafu General is better.”

“Okay. Thanks. Can you call Rei to let her know?”

“Of course. Focus on getting Touya help, and leave the rest to me.”

Touya woke up, but he didn’t really feel like he was awake. Gravity was at least twice as heavy as usual and the air felt like syrup.

It wasn’t bad. It was actually kind of comfortable.

His head turned through the syrupy air as he took in his sterile surroundings. A drip was connected to his arm. There was a window. Fuyumi, watching his movements, reached out to hold his hand and whispered his name.

He couldn’t recall which one she was.

“Which Fuyumi are you?” He asked.

Her face did something complicated before she answered, “You’re home, Touya. You’re safe.”

Touya hummed in response.
“Why is everything so fuzzy?” He asked his sister.

“You’re on strong pain medication. Your arms got injured.” She answered calmly.

Touya brought his arms up to look at them, tugging on the IV. They were wrapped in something clear, and whatever was underneath was very red. Verging on purple, even.

It looked awful.

It didn’t hurt.

“The other me,” He told Fuyumi, “Is an asshole.”

The spike of irritation he had for Dabi exhausted him, so he gave in to the gravity and closed his eyes again.

Mari had a strange sense on déjà vu when she woke up to someone making themselves comfortable against the bars of her detention cell.

She idly wondered whether it would be the green-haired kid, back to look at her with those stupid kind eyes and ask more questions about her quirk.
Instead, the eyes staring back at her were blue.
She recognised him in an instant.

“My court date is literally tomorrow.” She told him. Touya Todoroki. Centre of the infamous Endeavor child abuse scandal and best friend of Hawks, apparently. “You couldn’t wait a couple more hours to tell me how absolutely guilty I am?”

Todoroki, for some reason, just snorted at that.
… He didn’t look angry, or bothered. Or like he was looking for revenge.

“It was an accident.” He said simply.

Mari frowned and examined him for – there it was. Bandages poking out from under his long sleeves.

She sighed, looking away.
“They told me they had to take you straight to the ICU when you got back. My lawyer said you’ve chosen not to press charges for grievous bodily harm, which, like, thanks, I guess, but that’s not gonna help all the other people I’ve used my quirk on.”

Todoroki took a few seconds to respond.
“Do you not know what your quirk does?”

“I know that I make people disappear. I know that rich-looking strangers sometimes thank me for no fucking reason. One of them tried to explain, actually – a parallel universe? I send people to a place where their own fucking grave exists? I don’t know.” Mari paused for breath. No point hiding all of this from someone who already knew what she did to people. “I know that I had to bring you back because it felt like a fucking black hole was forming inside me. I know that, even though I’ve tried to open up the same black hole for my mom, it never fucking works. And, she’s probably – I don’t know – getting hurt the same way you got hurt and I can’t bring her back like I brought you back-”

“Watanabe-”

“Oh great, you know my name! Fucking fantastic-”

“I met your mom.” Todoroki said.

Mari blinked at him.
His eyes looked so intense. And sad.

“In the parallel universe you sent me to, I met your mom.” He repeated, his voice quiet and gentle. “Not the one you knew, but another version of her. She invited me in like she was expecting me and told me that people came to her home regularly to thank you – alternate versions of you – for sending them to that universe. Nobody was getting hurt. Nobody – until me – went to her house to ask to be sent back.”

“She has a house?” Mari asked incredulously before she could think twice about it.
Her own mom couldn’t hold down a job, let alone own a house.
Not that it was all her fault, or that Mari loved her any less for it. Her mom was just sick. She’d just needed help, before Mari made her disappear.

She idly wondered how the alternate version of herself was doing, having a mom who wasn’t sick.

“Yeah. She was nice.” Todoroki said slowly. “I met another version of my mom, too.”

“Was she nice?” Mari asked uncertainly. Her eyes drifted back down to Todoroki’s bandaged arms.

“Yes.” He said, running a hand through his hair. Mari spotted a white patch of hair as he did so, near the back of his head. “She told me that she was my mom regardless of which universe I was from. Because – something about – she held me when I was born. She said that -”
Todoroki sighed.
“Fuck. She explained it better. She was – she was still my mom, in a way. And I was her son.”

Mari wasn’t sure why he was telling her this, but she supposed it had something to do with guilt-tripping her a little. Evidently he despised her for separating him from his family like that.

They sat in silence for a bit.

“Go on, then. Tell me what my quirk does.” She said, resigned. “Why could you come back but my mom can’t, Todoroki?”

Todoroki looked at her with an expression that almost looked pained. Or guilty.
“I – I don’t really know. But the version of me in the parallel universe – it’s not like I got to ask him-”

“Wait, what? He was alive?” Mari interrupted him, shuddering when he nodded at her. “But that’s – that’s wrong. Two souls in one universe - that’s not supposed to happen!”

Todoroki shrugged, looking deeply disturbed. Mari watched as his right hand drifted to and gripped his left wrist where the bandages were poking out.
“I think he may have died. When he was a kid. You don’t fucking survive that kind of-” he shook his head, “Never mind. I don’t know what happened to him. He was alive. I spoke to him. He was an asshole.”

“He was a paradox.” Mari breathed. “You were both a paradox. Two jigsaw pieces taking up the same space. No fucking wonder-”
She shuddered again. She’d described the pain she felt as a black hole, not knowing how accurate that was.

“Your quirk probably didn’t get the memo.” Todoroki quipped after she’d been silent for a while.

Mari shook her head. It was possible. But another possibility was…
“Or my quirk wasn’t made for people who already exist in their completed puzzle.”

Todoroki had so many people who loved him. Who’d looked for him. Who’d cried for him. By using her quirk on him, she’d taken a piece from a puzzle that had already been completed and jammed it somewhere else.

Her mom… hadn’t had any of that. She’d only had Mari to cry for her.

It hurt, but Mari knew she couldn’t be a complete puzzle all by herself. Not enough for her mom to want to stay.

At least she’d done something… nice for her mom. At least she’d maybe helped, in the end.

… It still hurt.
And, fuck. Saying the words aloud had broken something inside her.
She hid her face as a tear slid down her cheek.

“A lot of things were different, where you sent me.” Todoroki said.

Mari didn’t look at him. She wished he would just leave her to cry by herself.

“It was a shock to the system. If you have any bank cards here, they won’t work there. Which, like fucking obviously, but I had to learn that the hard way. All-Might is retired. The league of villains have some extra members and aren’t as much of a joke – something to look out for. Endeavor is the number one hero, but I talked to him-”

“Yes, I get it!” Mari snapped, cringing at how her voice cracked. “I wronged you! I sent you to a horrible place, and, holy fuck, I sent you to a place where you had to face your trashbag of a father, and, I get it! I’m guilty! I feel guilt! Fuck off and let me wallow in it and tell the court all you want tomorrow, ok?”

“Fuck.” Todoroki said. “I’m not trying to rub it in, I swear. I just-”

Mari turned and glared at him.
“What?”

“The version of you is dead there, Watanabe.”

It took a few seconds for Mari to get it.

“Oh.” She said. “You think I should use my quirk on myself.”

Todoroki just nodded.

Mari shook her head.
“I can’t just show up as a replacement.”

“Not a replacement.” Todoroki insisted. “You’re just a version of yourself without a mom, Watanabe. She’s a version of your mom, without a daughter, who knows exactly how her daughter’s quirk works and still opens her door to everyone who visits. Maybe it’s not just to welcome the strangers that got sent there by your quirk.”

Mari stared at him, and then at her hands.

Did a world out there even exist where she could be the missing puzzle piece?

Here she was, days away from going to prison. She had no family. No friends. No life to go back to.

…Wouldn’t it be lovely, to be welcomed home by a mother who had waited for her? Who would love her regardless of the universe she came from?

A fantasy, surely.

“I – I don’t know if that would even work. On myself.” She stuttered.

Slowly, she began to lower her palm to her own arm.

“Wait.” Todoroki said suddenly, bringing her movement to a halt. “If you end up in the universe where I was-”

“Where All-Might is retired for some reason and Endeavor is number one?” Mari asked with a frown.

Todoroki nodded, sporting a small, slightly sad smile.

“Could you pass on a message for me?”

Spinner was in the middle of losing a card game with Dabi when Shigaraki stormed into the hideout and stopped abruptly at the sight of them.

“Huh.” Shigaraki said, eyeing Dabi. “You are here.”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Dabi drawled, putting down his next card with a mean grin.

Spinner groaned and picked up more cards in response, resisting the urge to just hack the table in half and be done with it.

“Just got intel that Endeavor’s house is burning down.” Shigaraki mused, joining them at the table. “You’re a pyromaniac. You hate Endeavor. Basic logic and inference. You playing Uno?”

Spinner nearly dropped his cards.
Slowly, he looked up.

Dabi’s entire body had stilled unnaturally.

Spinner stayed still, too. Tried to guess what may be going on in Dabi’s head before he mis-stepped and got charred as a result.

Endeavor was (secretly) Dabi’s dad.
Dabi wanted to kill him.
Dabi hadn’t set Endeavor’s house (his childhood home?) on fire because he’d been here playing Uno with Spinner for the last few hours.
Maybe he was jealous? He wanted to burn it down?

It's not like that would achieve his goal of killing Endeavor.
Sure, it was the middle of the night, but it's not like Endeavor ever really slept in his own home. They had enough basic intel on him to know that.

So Dabi had intense feelings about his empty childhood home (?) burning down?

No – wait.

Endeavor had other kids, didn’t he? Other than the one in UA.

“If you wanted to burn it down, you should’a got there first.” Shigaraki stated, now also eyeing Dabi bewilderedly.

Dabi’s jaw twitched. The cards in his hand started to smoke. Shigaraki frowned and opened his mouth to say something (probably snarky), so Spinner knew he had to try to diffuse the situation, fast.

“It takes 20 minutes to burn though a standard door.” He blurted.

Shigaraki turned and looked at him as if he’d just spoken complete gibberish. Spinner continued staring at Dabi, gauging his reaction.

Dabi dropped his cards and looked up, expression blank.
“It’s the smoke inhalation that kills people first.” He said bleakly.

Spinner raised his eyebrows.
Looks like he was right, then. There was at least one person in that house that Dabi had no ambition to see dead.

“Smoke alarms, dude.” He reminded Dabi gently. “They would have woken up and – I don’t know – escaped or at least opened a window.”

Shigaraki, wisely, opted to remain silent. But he was listening.

Dabi still looked… blank.
He swallowed.
“Endeavor disabled the smoke alarms when I was 7.”

Spinner opened his mouth.
Closed it.
That… didn’t sound good.

That was when Dabi started laughing.

… Scratch that. Maybe Dabi did want someone else to die. It was difficult to tell.

Both Spinner and Shigaraki leapt up from their seats when the table abruptly set on fire. Shigaraki swore and quickly disintegrated it before the fire spread, and they both backed away, watching their comrade go into hysterics.

Through the smoke, Spinner could see blood starting to leak from Dabi’s eyes.

“Spinner?” Shigaraki prompted, evidently waiting for some kind of explanation, but Spinner shook his head and turned back to Dabi.

Making a decision, he went to go grab his swords.
“We don’t even know yet if anyone died. I’m heading out – I’ll see what’s going on-”

“No.” Dabi said, stopping mid-laugh.
He grinned at them, bloody tears still tracking down his face.

“If my sister is dead,” He continued, “Endeavor will not fight back. He’ll be weak.  He might even let me kill him.”

And with that, Dabi wiped his face, only succeeding in smearing blood across it, and started stalking towards the exit. His shoulders were set.

“Wait.” Shigaraki ordered.

Dabi stopped.

Spinner tore his eyes from Dabi’s back to glance at Shigaraki. He no longer looked confused. More contemplative.

He took a few seconds to speak, evidently knowing this was not a time to demand answers. Also knowing there was no stopping Dabi from what was most likely going to be a suicide mission.

“Make sure he dies.” Shigaraki eventually said. “The world will never know why he had to die if you die as well.”

Dabi nodded.
Then left.

Keigo surveyed the trees, bushes, houses, all the possible vantage points surrounding the burning wreckage.

There was a cluster of trees in a neighbouring garden that would provide ample cover while still being able to view the house and the emergency vehicles surrounding it.
Keigo, patting down where he kept his hidden knife, found a place on a high-up branch and waited.

A little after the final support on the house had completely collapsed, sending a large plume of smoke and ash into the air, Keigo finally saw a figure slip into the cover of the trees, watching the scene intently.

And despite knowing this would happen, mentally preparing himself for it, waiting in that very spot and anticipating this, seeing Dabi in person after so long still made something in his chest ache unbearably.

He allowed himself a full ten seconds to breathe calmly and stare and pretend that this was just another job with the league, with Twice and his wings right behind him.  

Then, he looked up and sighed. He knew that Dabi could see Endeavor, but not Fuyumi from where he was standing.

Time to diffuse a bomb.

“Fuyumi’s in the ambulance with a broken ankle.” He said, and watched as Dabi flinched and turned towards his voice. “She had to jump out a window but she’ll be fine. Natsuo wasn’t in the house.”

Keigo watched his reaction closely.
From what he could tell, Dabi didn’t seem surprised at Keigo’s mention of his siblings. His shoulders fell a little, but he still looked ready for a fight. Downright murderous. As always.

Keigo had to wrestle down the spark of fondness he felt at the sight.

“Keigo Takami.” Dabi drawled slowly, smoke coming from his mouth. “I didn’t take you for suicidal, but why else would you announce your presence while surrounded by flammable material?”

The slight tendrils of fire coming from Dabi’s arms illuminated him. Keigo could see the blood smeared all over his face, originating from his eyes. Meaning he’d been crying.

It made Keigo feel awful. As soon as he heard that Endeavor’s house was burning down, he’d blamed Dabi. Pictured him laughing as he did it, ignoring Fuyumi’s cries for help.

And then a firefighter had told him it was an electrical fault in an unfortunate place near the stairs. A small fire that spread fast in the middle of the night. It was random. Happens all the time.

Of course Dabi had cried at the thought of his sister dying.

Keigo watched as Dabi approached the tree he was in, building up fire in his hand.

“Would you really kill the guy who saved your sister’s life?” Keigo asked. “Those fire alarms didn’t replace themselves, you know. Fuyumi only got out because they woke her up in time.”

Dabi paused. His head tilted as he considered Keigo, still leisurely sitting on the branch.

“You think that will stop me from killing you?” He asked.

Keigo shrugged.
“Not particularly.”

Dabi barked out a laugh at that.
“You know me so well.”

But before Dabi could re-ignite his hand, Keigo asked him a question. Something that had been bothering him for a while, but not something he could really ask anyone else.

“Why haven’t the commission killed me yet?”

Dabi’s grin slowly dropped as he contemplated the question.

“Think about it.” Keigo continued. “The commission dropped me and just… let me roam around as I please. They don’t control me anymore. Didn’t even make me sign an NDA. I know about their cover-ups. All their dirty little secrets. And I bet I could find more if I bothered to look. So why am I still alive? They’ve conveniently offed people for knowing less.”

Dabi looked blank as he shook his head.
“I ain’t fucking falling for this again. You’re alive because you still work for them.”

Keigo ignored that and stared at him dead-on.
“I’m alive because they created Hawks and I accidentally played the part too well. Because even they believe I’m too much of a hero to seek vengeance for what they did to me.”

That made Dabi snort.
“Don’t flatter yourself. Anyone can see you fucking hate every second of it.”

An intense, crushing feeling of longing filled Keigo’s chest.
Not anyone, he wanted to say. Just you.

“I didn’t expect you to believe me.” He said instead, resting against a branch behind him. “That’s ok. I’m working on my own stuff. And you know that if you start a fire here, you’ll just attract attention and get apprehended. Don’t you have stuff to do, too, Touya Todoroki?”

It was extremely gratifying to see Dabi flinch and glare at him murderously upon hearing own name. Keigo dared to smiled back.

Something flickered in Dabi’s eyes that looked a little too vulnerable for it to be anything other than a trick of the light.
He left abruptly without even sparing one more glance back at his smouldering childhood house.

… He hadn’t even questioned how Keigo knew who he was.

Keigo stared at the empty space where Dabi had been, and wondered if that meant he’d met the other universes’ version of himself. He idly wondered about the latter’s fate. If he had ever made it home to his own version of Keigo.

Whatever. Todoroki had chosen his path, against Keigo’s recommendations. Keigo had more important things to think about now.

It happened in late summer that year.

Keigo had just flown for the first time in months, in the privacy of Honda’s newly built workshop. The wings were beautiful. Honda had said once she worked out a couple kinks and they were fully functional, she’d give them a red finish.

Keigo could finally see his plans falling into place.

The commission only had a few weeks left, at most, before they crumbled. And they had no idea.

While waiting for Honda to finish, Keigo decided to visit Fuyumi at her mom’s new place, purchased by Endeavor only a month ago. Fuyumi had told him to visit any time, and that there was a spare bed for him if he ever needed it. As always.

It was his first time visiting.

And as he approached, he realised that he’d been in this neighbourhood once before.  

Meeting Dabi’s squeaky clean twin from another universe still sometimes felt like a fever dream in Keigo’s memory. Probably because he hadn’t been doing all that great mentally back then.
But he remembered now – how he’d brought Todoroki to one of these houses to potentially find this universes’ version of the girl who’d sent him here.

They’d left empty-handed with Todoroki looking shell-shocked the entire journey back, because she was long dead.

What number was it again?

Keigo stopped outside what he was pretty sure was the house. He wondered whether he should go in, but opted against it. For all he knew, Todoroki had been murdered months ago by the league of villains. He doubted the girl’s mother would appreciate that update.

Then the front door opened. And the girl that Keigo knew to be dead, looking slightly older than the pictures he’d seen, stepped outside and started walking purposefully towards him.

Before he could even try to come up with an explanation, she started speaking at him, as if rushing to get it all out.

She started with an explanation that was wasn’t some rabid fan, she just needed Hawks to pass on a message. Because he knew the Todorokis and she’d tried sending them a letter but their house burnt down, and then she’d tried stalking Natsuo but nearly got caught by campus security so she hadn’t been able to pass on the message.

The message being that Touya Todoroki had gotten home safe and sound, and wanted to let his siblings and mom know that everything was going to be ok.

In both universes.

At the end of the road, the commission crumbles, but it doesn’t go down without a fight.

Preceding this fight, documents are leaked. Hawks had been part of an experimental procedure to programme a kill-on-sight reflex at the sound of his own birth name. After all, anyone who knew his name evidently had access to things they shouldn’t have access to, and must be eliminated immediately.

The next time Dabi sees Keigo, he still sees a traitor. But it’s different now. He can finally see beyond the betrayal.
Keigo still sees Dabi’s murderous grief, still feels the loss of his wings as if it happened yesterday. But he forgave Dabi a long time ago.

It doesn’t heal everything. They both know they can’t go back.

They still fight together.

And at the climax of the fight, despite being on the winning side, they both find themselves bleeding out on the battlefield, side by side.

Their last conversation is calm.

They close their eyes thinking about the other universe, where they are best friends, they are safe, and nothing is complicated.