Chapter Text
Izuku learns he can see youkai the afternoon after his first day of school.
Kacchan's mom picks them up from the playground, pulling at Kacchan's ear before he can get in another shove. They drive back to Izuku's single-story house, then the Bakugous double back to their home a few blocks closer to the village center.
Izuku lives fifteen meters away from the Todoroki forest and an hour's drive from his mom's workplace at Shizuoka University. Her red hatchback car pulls into the driveway a few minutes after the Bakugous drop him off. She ruffles his hair, then hurries to start making dinner.
"I'm gonna go play now!" Izuku announces as he sprints to the backyard.
"Don't go into the forest!" His mom warns.
"I won't!" Then he does. Everyone knows that the Todoroki forest is only dangerous after sunset, and there's still at least three more hours of daylight. Still, Izuku makes sure to not wander too far into the woods. He amuses himself with collecting rocks and poking sticks into the ground until he hears a sharp whine.
What was that?
Izuku heads towards the noise, dragging his largest stick behind him so he won't get lost. After a few wrong turns, he finds the source.
A small fox, half red and half white, lies at the base of an old maple tree. It lets out a high-pitched keen, matching the noise Izuku had heard earlier.
The fox's left eye is enveloped in a harsh, festering burn.
A twig snaps under Izuku's next footstep. The fox raises its head and growls weakly. Izuku flinches, but he forces himself to take another step closer. "It's okay, I'm a friend."
The fox growls again, but doesn't move from its tree until Izuku is just a few steps away. Izuku crouches down and offers out his hand, like how his mom showed him when he first met the neighbor's dog.
The fox darts forward and bites him.
Izuku screams, then cries a little (or maybe a lot) before collecting himself. Somewhere during the scuffle, the fox had started to run away, but it collapses with a yelp after a few steps.
Izuku sniffs and wipes away tears with his uninjured hand. "I'm not going to hurt you." Izuku lifts the hem of his shirt into a makeshift pouch. "I just want to help you get better."
The fox gives him a wary look, then stumbles into Izuku's shirt. Izuku scoops the creature up gently, making sure the burn isn't jostled, then follows his tracks back to the house.
"Mom!" Izuku yells while trampling through the back door. "Mom, help him, he's hurt, I don't know what to do-"
His mother startles from washing vegetables at the kitchen sink, splashing water all over the counter. She turns to him, alarmed, then heaves a labored sigh. "Izuku, don't scare me like that," she chides.
"But his eye is hurt, he's-"
"I'm sorry I can't play with you and your imaginary friend right now, Izuku. Dinner isn't going to cook itself!" At Izuku's distraught expression, she softens and crouches to face him eye-to-eye. "We can play make-believe after bathtime, okay?"
Izuku doesn't understand why she can't see the fox in his arms. In any case, asking his mom to take them to the vet is clearly out of the question.
He brings the fox to his room and settles it onto the carpeted floor. The burn looks like it hurts a lot, but Izuku doesn't know how to make it better. He's also afraid of getting bitten again. He decides to put his All Might plushie next to the sleeping fox, because All Might always makes him feel better. Then he tiptoes to the bathroom and applies band-aids to the teeth marks on his hand.
After dinner, Izuku sneaks some leftover salmon and a few apple slices to his room. The fox's unburned eye opens when he closes the door, but it otherwise doesn't move. Izuku sets the plate down, and after he sits on the other side of the floor, the fox snaps up all of the salmon and one of the apple slices.
"Do you want any more?" Izuku almost drops the plate when the fox shakes its head.
"C-Can you understand me?" The fox nods. "But how?!" No response.
"Can you talk?" After a pause, the fox shakes its head. "But you can understand me, and Mom can't see you... you're not a normal fox, right?" The fox barks once, then curls up to go back to sleep.
His mom's told him the bedtime stories, village legends about the kitsune living in the Todoroki forest. They say that, if you enter the forest after sunset, the kitsune will trap you there; if it's the night of the winter solstice, they'll eat you for dinner. True, the fox had bitten Izuku's hand, but it hadn't tried to eat him. And the kitsune are supposed to be the protectors of the forest, keeping away more dangerous spirits.
Izuku is almost afraid to believe that the fox sleeping by the door is actually a powerful youkai. It doesn't look that powerful now, but maybe that's because it's hurt.
When Izuku wakes up for school the next day, the fox is nowhere to be seen. Eventually, the only proof of the incident is the bite mark scarred into his right hand.
After eleven long years, Shouto finally challenges his father to his domain.
His father is still much stronger than him, so Shouto has to be cunning. During the first few weeks of winter, he sneaks a slow-acting poison into his father's daily tea. The youkai who had sold the poison to him said that it wasn't fatal, just noxious enough to weaken his father's fox-fire and sap at his strength. With enough small doses, he shouldn't even notice the effect.
The day before the winter solstice, Shouto announces his challenge.
His father scoffs. "I was wondering when you would."
The night of the solstice, Shouto has until sunrise to either kill his father or force him to surrender.
The battle is ruthless and blindingly fast. Both kitsune shift seamlessly between their human and vulpine forms, alternating blasts of magic with sharp teeth and claws. Throughout the fight, Shouto only uses the elemental magic from his right side. His mother hails from a family of powerful ice mages, but his mother is also half-human. It's only thanks to the weeks of poisoning that Shouto keeps pace with his father.
During a lull in the violence, his father spits up blood. "You've done something to me," his father snarls.
"So what if I have?" Shouto retorts, clutching the set of slashes in his side. "The challenge never said it had to be a fair fight."
Eventually, Shouto prevails, trapping his father up to his neck in ice. The poison has snuffed most of his fire, and their skirmish has extinguished the rest.
"Surrender your domain, Todoroki Enji."
"And what if I refuse?"
Shouto says coolly, "Then I shall end your life, and then I shall end my own. Your legacy will stop dead in its tracks."
His father growls, then closes his eyes. "I surrender." His declaration sinks heavily into the wood.
Shouto staggers back, overwhelmed by the fervent response of thousands and thousands of trees. He has always been a close friend to them, but now he hears their soothing whispers, feels the steadfastness of their roots and trunks, smells their excitement at a new master. He is the forest, and the forest is his.
And now, for his first decree.
"As keeper of this domain, I banish you from these sacred grounds. So long as I am guardian of this land, you shall not step foot upon it. Begone, Enji."
His father snarls, but Shouto's word is now law. Blue flames engulf the larger man, and he is sent to lands unknown.
As soon as his father vanishes, Shouto feels the curse on him lift. As the domain’s keeper, he is still restricted to the limits of the Todoroki domain, but his father's curse no longer confines him to the depths of the forest. Hundreds of years ago, the Todoroki forest stretched over the entire northern tip of Shizuoka prefecture. Even though earthy soil and dense woods have been replaced by pavement and human dwellings, the land still belongs to him.
Shouto limps back to the place where he last sought refuge, before his father had cursed him to never return. He crosses from the forest to the human's residence without meeting any resistance. Then his body falls into the snow.
Izuku is up late, fueled by three hours of sleep and three cups of coffee. College entrance exams are in less than a month. To put it lightly, he's incredibly stressed.
As he pores over a near-endless pile of notes, a harsh wind causes the tree branch near his bedroom to tap at the window. After the third set of taps, Izuku gives up on studying and goes up to the window, wondering if there's any way to stop the noise.
He pauses to watch the heavy snowfall that's been coming down since sunset. He'll probably have to trek through a foot of snow to get to school tomorrow, and he'll definitely have to help his mom shovel out her car. Despite this, Izuku can't help but admire the pristine blanket of snow over the backyard.
Except- it's not completely pristine. Near the edge of the forest, a dark smudge interrupts the sheet of snow. Something deep in Izuku's gut tells him to investigate. He bundles himself up in his winter coat and snow boots, then opens the back door. As he fights through the sleet, he feels like an idiot, hiking through his backyard at two in the morning.
Izuku curses when he sees what the smudge actually is. It's not a smudge, it's a person. Red and white hair triggers an almost-forgotten memory. Fluffy ears and a half-frozen tail confirm what he'd always suspected.
"Kitsune-san! Kitsune-san!" The youkai's body is ice-cold, dressed only in a summery, light blue yukata. Izuku immediately sheds his coat to drape it around the other's shoulders. He starts to drag the kitsune back to the house; his stomach clenches when he sees the trail of red left in their wake.
Izuku sets the fox spirit onto the kitchen linoleum, then towels off his arms and legs. Izuku's coat is soaked through with snowmelt, but the yukata is almost completely dry. The only exception is the blood seeping into it from three harsh slashes by the kitsune's left flank. Izuku presses down on the wound; the kitsune grimaces and moans at the pressure, but doesn't wake. His body is scattered with other scratches and burns, but nothing else seems life-threatening, besides the potential for hypothermia.
Izuku finds a roll of medical tape in the medicine cabinet, which he uses to affix a folded bathroom towel to the kitsune's side. Once secured, Izuku brings the fox spirit to his room. He shifts the kitsune onto the futon, then covers him with all of the blankets he can find. He has no idea how to explain the bloodstains in the bedding to his mother tomorrow.
The kitsune is unconscious, but his breathing is regular. All he can do now is wait and hope for the best.
Hysterically, Izuku decides he might as well study.
Shouto wakes, piled under an absurd amount of blankets, to a human nose-deep in a book and whispering historical dates under his breath. He shifts under the covers, then cries out at the pain in his side.
Vibrant, verdant eyes meet his. "Kitsune-san!" He shout-whispers.
Shouto has to stifle a laugh. "It's Shouto," he offers. "Todoroki Shouto."
"T-Todoroki? Like the forest?"
Shouto nods. "It was my family name, passed down from my father. But now it is my own name, for I am now the keeper of the Todoroki forest."
"Does that mean that before, the Todoroki forest used to belong to your father?"
"Yes," Shouto closes his eyes. "I challenged him to his domain. I just barely succeeded."
"So your injuries are from fighting your father..." Shouto nods. "But why did you have to fight him for it? Wouldn't you have inherited the land from him, eventually?"
"My father is a purebred kitsune, and I am part human. I would die long before he saw the effects of old age. Besides that, he put a curse on me that kept me caged in his forest. This was the only way I could break the curse and escape."
Shouto lifts himself into a sitting position, which is hell on his side, but he wants to meet the human at eye level to say this. "Thank you for saving my life, Izuku."
Izuku squeaks, then tries to turn it into a cough. "You remember me?" He asks.
"Of course. Our meeting was the last time I got to leave the forest, before I was cursed. Do you... remember me?"
"Of course," Izuku echoes. "That was the first time I had ever seen a youkai, and I don't think I could ever forget that. Also, um, you bit me. So that definitely left an impression."
Izuku doesn't cast attention to it, but Shouto still finds the scar on his hand. He blushes. "I apologize. I was frightened, and disoriented."
"It's all right. If anything, I'm glad it helped me remember you."
There's a beat of silence. Shouto asks, "What were you reading, earlier?"
Izuku tells him about the upcoming entrance exams, the subjects he loves studying, and what his life has been like for the past eleven years. It's been just as long since Shouto's spoken to anyone, besides terse exchanges with his father and the occasional wandering spirit. He drinks in the conversation.
However, at some point, Shouto realizes this is a mistake. Any association he makes with Izuku will only put him in danger. He has only one short year before another youkai can challenge him for his domain, on the next winter solstice. Word will quickly spread of the Todoroki's change in power and his father's banishment. It would be cruel of him to put Izuku in harm's way.
He shouldn't have given Izuku his name, his true name. He shouldn't have come here at all.
Throat tight, Shouto interrupts Izuku by cupping a hand to his cheek. "You really are too kind for your own good, Izuku."
Shouto kisses him gently, sweetly, deceitfully. Through the kiss, he casts a charm to make Izuku forget the past night's events, as well as their childhood encounter. Then, a mild spell to encourage him to sleep.
Shouto tucks Izuku into the futon, then casts a few more spells to clean up the evidence of his visit throughout the house. He presses one last kiss to the scar on Izuku's hand, then returns to the forest.
The next morning, Izuku cries to his mom about how he can't remember anything he studied the night before. His mom tells him to stop pulling all-nighters; the sleep deprivation can't be good for his memory.