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He can see both Shoto and his father from where he’s standing on the back of Gigantomachia.
They’re both tiny. Dabi can’t see them well but he can still see Endeavor’s face, tired and beaten, and he feels a tiny sense of pride about it. The fact that Endeavor is just a man and it means Dabi can take him down like anybody else.
He feels so much bigger from up here and it gives him a sense of security, almost, knowing that if he were stood up close to Endeavor he would completely dwarf him. If neither of them had quirks, their fight would be a very short one, because compared to him, Dabi is just- small.
That, Dabi thinks, was a very bad thought to have.
It brings back memories.
His father has always been bigger than him. Taller and stronger and more than him. Dabi can’t stop thinking of it now and he tries not to dwell on the fact that underneath everything he is scared. He’s really, really scared.
Endeavor is just a man but with his status and his power and his backup he could hurt Dabi, could easily hurt him.
He’s already hurt me, Touya whispers in the back of Dabi’s mind.
“Shit,” Dabi grunts under his breath. “Not now.”
He says it just to himself because he can’t do this now, can’t deal with the distraught ghost of his own past when he’s about to destroy his father. He can’t have anything happen right this moment that could jeopardise this reveal because this is his life and he’s nothing without it. There’s no point to him without it.
Endeavor looks up at Gigantomachia and Dabi knows that he can’t see him, but a troubled, hurting part of his soul still yearns for it.
Dad is looking for me, Touya interrupts, and-
And then-
And then the air suddenly smells like burn cream and the bathroom of his childhood home and the same detergent his clothes used to be washed with when he was twelve.
And it’s- he’s-
Touya is sitting on the closed lid of the toilet and his father is in the room with him, and-
Dabi shakes his head because he can’t fall into his memories now, they’re in the middle of a war and he can’t afford to let something this stupid be his downfall. He’s not there. He isn’t there. He’s outside and he’s twenty-four years old and he’s not Touya, he hasn’t been in a very long time.
He’s going to destroy Endeavor.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Enji chastises the young Touya softly, kneeling in front of him and inspecting the burns on his arms.
All of the breath is knocked out of Dabi’s chest. This can’t be happening now, he’s had flashbacks before but he has always been alone and he can’t do it - especially not in front of his dad - he’ll be sent straight to Tartarus if he’s incapacitated, the heroes would be easily able to get him if he’s vulnerable.
Dad already thinks I’m weak, Touya’s little voice says in the back of his mind.
Dabi makes a horrible, pained noise and clutches his head, pulls at his hair in hopes it’ll get the oncoming breakdown to stop, praying that whatever is about to happen doesn’t.
Shigaraki had told him once, not unkindly, that he was fucked in the head. And Dabi hadn’t been mad, because it came from a place of understanding (and probably self-recognition), and he had also been right.
“I’m not there,” Dabi says, only to himself, his voice ragged and genuinely terrified. “I’m not, I’m- shit-”
“You’re going to get really hurt, one of these days,” his father chides him, uncapping the lid of the burn cream (which is, by now, almost empty). “I need you to stop.”
Dabi shuts his eyes and clutches his head and screams and it still doesn’t stop. He’s in the bathroom of his childhood home with his father and everything smells of the horrible cream and his clothes are mucky with ash and his dad, his dad is there.
His dad is there.
“But I can take it,” Touya protests, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the ointment.
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” Enji snaps, and then corrects his voice to something quieter. It’s often like that with him, not realising his cruelty until it’s too late. “Stop trying to be a hero, Touya. Your body can’t take it.”
With a petulant frown, Touya slumps back against the wall and his burned arms slip out of his father’s sight. He’s sure Shoto could take it. He’s sure his father would care if Shoto was training every day and making improvements.
But no, it’s Touya. And he doesn’t want Touya to train.
(What was he even born for, then?)
“That’s bullshit,” Touya huffs.
“Touya,” Enji scolds, pulling him firmly by his hands to sit back upright. Touya’s not sure whether it hurts or not.
They sit in silence, and Enji is rubbing the burn cream on the angry, reddened parts of his flesh, and Touya’s skin hurts, and he doesn’t remember what love feels like.
Enji’s thumb digs a little too hard into his arm, pressing into his charred skin (Touya doesn’t know if it’s an accident) and he winces. Yes, his quirk causes him pain, causes him these burns and blisters that need to be treated every other day, but he can take it because all he’s ever learned how to do is to take it.
The touch returns to being gentle, like nothing ever happened.
“You have to stop doing this,” his father says again, voice bordering on unkind, and he doesn’t even look up when he speaks to him.
Look at me, Touya begs internally. I’m right here. Please.
Instead, Enji looks at the burns on his arms, at the medicine he has to buy so Touya’s skin won’t burn beyond repair. Instead Enji looks at the very marks Touya bears that prove he’s a failure and his body can’t do what it’s supposed to, his body is weak.
“I’m getting better, you know,” Touya says back with a hint of passive aggression - because Enji would know that, had he been paying attention to Touya, watching him train when he asked, even just once. “I will surpass him. One day.”
His father just scoffs like that’s not both Touya’s and his own dream. It’s not a joke, Touya wants to cry. He can do what his dad wanted him to if he’ll only give him time, if he’ll only look at him, look at him-
Enji had been the one to instill that dream in him, so Touya doesn’t understand why he thinks he can’t do it anymore, why he’s ignoring him; Touya doesn’t understand why he was born if he can’t fulfil his only purpose.
“You won’t surpass him if you’re dead.”
“I’m getting stronger,” Touya butts back, desperate to be listened to properly.
“You’re getting hurt,” his father says and his hand tightens around Touya’s arm- Touya’s burned arm when he says it.
It stings. His father’s hands are warm anyway but now they’re searing hot against the branded redness of his skin and it hurts, it hurts so badly - but Touya’s face doesn’t even move because surely his dad didn’t mean it and if love comes with hurt, then so be it, because Touya craves love so badly.
He can take it. Life is only hurt and pain but he can take it and he silently cries for his dad to look at him, to look how quietly he can bear it.
And he’s sure that his dad doesn’t mean to hurt him. He’s sure.
His arm burns with the forceful grip and he tries not to shake or breathe or blink and he wants him to let go because it hurts but he doesn’t want him to let go because he wants to prove how good he is and Touya, Touya-
Touya doesn’t know what he wants.
He thinks he might cry.
Surely Enji had held him gently, once. Not like this, not the bruising strength he’s using right now (which Touya’s sure isn’t on purpose), not like when he forcibly lifts Touya’s shirt to see the burns he’s inflicted on himself, not like when he has to physically drag him away from the training room. But maybe when he was smaller.
Maybe before his quirk came in, he thinks. Maybe when he was a baby.
Touya’s seen the pictures. He knows he was a small baby. His mother tells him he could fit in just the palm of his father’s hand, he was so tiny. Touya thinks of his father holding him as a baby and wonders if he knew he would turn out like this. He wonders if he’d take it all back, had he known Touya would turn out like this.
He could fit in the palm of his hand. Now, Enji’s hand fits around Touya’s entire arm and the pain of it is excruciating - and Touya’s now much bigger than a tiny baby but compared to his dad he’s still so terribly terribly small.
He thinks of how tiny he was when he was young and he has no idea how his father used to treat him with such care and then one day he just… stopped.
Touya isn’t the little baby who can fit in the palm of his father’s hand anymore. Instead he’s messy and broken and his quirk isn’t right for his body and he’s a failure and he wonders if Enji had any idea, looking at the tiny boy in his hand, that he was going to turn out to be a failure.
There was a moment that Touya was truly, purely loved without any pain for the last time, and he didn’t even know it.
He’s loved. Touya knows he’s loved, knows it in the way he has to fight for it, knows it in the way he’s ecstatic when he earns it, knows it in the way his father grips his seared arm tightly in his fist.
It hurts but it’s love. Touya is sure it’s love.
Enji lets go.
Touya breathes.
I’m sorry I was such a failure, he wants to cry.
“I’ve been working on a new move,” he says instead.
Enji just shakes his head and puts more cream onto his fingers so he can start on Touya’s other arm, which is possibly more burnt than the first.
It’s there, inside of him. The desire to be both everything and nothing all at once. The desire to use his quirk powerfully and without pain and the desire to never use it again in his life because why is it so unfair?
The urge to act out so his dad looks at him, loves him, along with the urge to make himself as small as possible so nobody looks at him, ever. The yearning to be loved by his father, but also the yearning to be hated because then his anger would be so much easier.
His father loves him but he loves him wrong. And Touya is certain that it would be so much easier and so much less painful if Enji hated him, rather than stopping him training and keeping him at arm’s length for ‘Touya’s own good’. It would be so much less painful because he knows that his dad loves him and it gives him hope and that makes it hurt so much more when Touya knows he hasn’t earned it.
It’s not clean-cut and it’s not just black and white and Touya’s only twelve and everything is so confusing that it physically hurts. It’s the reason that his stomach aches sometimes when he’s lying in bed at night because he’s so terrified of everything, of being loved and being hated, and nothing makes any sense to him.
There’s a girl in Touya’s class at school who brags that her father makes her lunch in the shape of hearts and takes her out for ice cream after school. And Touya knows that that is love. Touya knows that that girl doesn’t have to wonder if her father loves her because it’s just obvious, and she’s never even had to think about it.
Just man up and hate me, Touya wants to scream. It would be so much easier if you hated me.
“We could go up to Sekoto Peak tomorrow, and I could show you,” Touya suggests. “I know you have the day off.”
“Not tomorrow,” Enji says, almost bored, and doesn’t offer an explanation.
It’s such a contrast to the way he gently holds Touya’s hand, trying to soothe the burns.
Except Enji’s hands are too big and rough with calluses and so it’s not gentle, the way he touches him. He’s trying to be but he still isn’t and Touya feels sick with it because he knows that he’ll never be loved properly, not in the way that girl in his class is loved.
His father prevents him from training for his own safety because he loves him, he attempts to fix Touya’s burns because he loves him. But all of those things hurt and Touya knows that Enji won’t ever make him a heart-shaped lunch or take him for ice cream after school.
He’s twelve. Maybe it’s childish to want those things. But he craves it so badly that he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Often, he wishes that love didn’t have to come with hurt, but every day he wakes up and it’s still the same. Touya takes the hurt and buries it deep inside of him and tries hopelessly to pretend like he’s normal.
His father’s soft touches hurt and Touya aches to pretend that they don’t.
He pretends that he’s not a failure and that he’s good and his life isn’t a mistake - that his quirk does suit his body and he can use it and he’s not a failure and he can surpass All Might and make his Dad proud and, and-
And he stares down at the burns on his arms, grotesque and ugly and now covered in burn cream that’s meant to get them to heal quicker, and he knows that they’re just proof of his failure. That every second his father spends looking at them solidifies in his mind that Touya is wrong and weak and unworthy.
That Touya can never be a hero. Can never live up to his expectations.
I can take all of this hurt if it means I’m loved, Touya wants to cry. I can take it. I can.
He watches his father put the lid back onto the medicinal cream and clean the remnants of what’s left on his hands in the sink. With an upset sort of resignation, Touya braces himself for what he’s certain is coming - he’s going to finish that and then he’s going to leave.
He’s prepared himself for it. But what he didn’t prepare himself for is his Dad walking back over to him and hugging him.
Touya-
Touya doesn’t know what to do.
He feels so held and so warm and he’s forgotten how to hug back and he’s so overwhelmed with it all and his arm still hurt and he, he’s-
Touya melts into the hug and he wants to fucking scream.
And his father doesn’t know any of that. To him, it’s just a hug.
Enji cups the back of his head and softly strokes the snow white hair that’s there instead of crimson red, like his own. He cradles his head like Touya is still his baby and not a failure and like the past seven years never happened; like Touya never got his quirk and they’re just a normal family and he loves him, properly loves him.
I hate you, Touya sobs in his head. I hate you I hate you I hate-
With a shuddering gasp, he bursts into tears and grips his father back as tight as his arms will let him, not caring about the pain he’s causing himself or the burn cream that’s rubbing off on the back of Enji’s shirt even though he spent so long applying it or the fact that he’s probably going to make his skin worse than it already was by not caring about how rough he’s being with it.
He doesn’t care. His dad is hugging him and quietly patting his back and Touya couldn’t give one shit about how much pain the burns on his arms are causing him.
He’s broken. His dad hugs him and Touya is so wholeheartedly aware of how he’s broken.
Touya has no idea who he is without pain. What’s the point of him, he thinks as Enji holds him, except to suffer? Except to suffer in order to be loved?
I can hurt. I can still do what I was made for, please, Dad, I was your everything, I’m more than just a failure-
“I love you,” Touya chokes through a sob, gasping into his shirt.
Enji pulls back and wipes the tears from his cheeks with hands that are too harsh but Touya accepts it nonetheless; Touya craves it, yearns for the touch even though it’s sharp and unforgiving. He feels the calluses on Enji’s fingers wipe away his tears and he takes it, hides it deep in his heart.
“Don’t cry, Touya,” he says in that horribly gruff voice. “I love you too.”
And then the possibility that Touya expected comes.
His father leaves.
Touya tries to memorise the feeling of that paternal warmth touching his face because he doesn’t remember the last time he felt it and he doesn’t know when- if- he’ll ever feel it again.
He watches his father’s figure get smaller and smaller down the hallway through the open bathroom door. His eyelashes are still wet with tears, clumped together and sticky, and that strange, aching pain in his stomach comes back with a vengeance.
His father said I love you but didn’t even bother to wait until Touya was finished crying.
Come back, he doesn’t say even though his mind is shrieking it. Please come back to me, I wasn’t finished, I still want love, I still need it, I still-
He just shakes as he’s sitting there and his burns still hurt and suddenly he’s crying again, his breathing quick and panicked, hands trembling and Dad Dad come back please I need you to look at me I can’t-
The sound of footsteps disappear and Touya knows he’s not coming back. Because why would he?
There’s a reflection of a shattered, ruined boy in the mirror when Touya looks, his white hair messy from pulling at it and his blue eyes, although red from crying, are the perfect impression of his father’s.
I love you, his mind screeches like a faulty radio, static buzzing in and out and playing on repeat: I love you, I hate you so much, please look at me, look at me, Dad, look at me-
Dabi comes back to himself and he’s shaking.
He has no idea how much time has passed.
There are no burns on his arms anymore and no medicinal cream, either. Just thick, rough plains of indigo, and if his father gripped his arm that tightly now, then he wouldn’t be able to feel it.
He touches his face and it comes away bloody.
Does Dad- does Enji- does Endeavor know that’s how he cries now? Would he recognise his son crying, now he’s even more ruined than before?
Touya was a troubled, broken forest fire of a boy. Touya is gone now. Touya was made for hurt and nothing else, was confused by his own existence and the terrible, violent love he received.
Touya is dead. Touya is dead and he’s never coming back.
I can see Dad, a small voice calls out in the back of his head. Dad’s down there.
Dabi shakes his head and tries to rid himself of the quiet and unloved little being; even though shaking his head hadn’t worked earlier he still does it because he needs to try. He makes a horrible, anguished noise because it doesn’t work this time either and there’s still that strange, dull pressure between his temples, like his head is too full of something.
It’s full of Touya, Touya and his pain and his suffering and his overwhelming love and hatred. Like Touya is another presence entirely and takes up far too much space inside of him, like they’re separate entities that can’t exist simultaneously.
Who is Dabi kidding? There’s no him without Touya. There’s always been Touya, and Touya will always be there as long as his father is there too. Touya was a messy little shell of a boy and his fragments still live on in Dabi, no matter how much he wishes for the opposite.
He’s still not looking at me, says the weak, feeble voice, bordering on distressed.
Dabi can still smell the burn cream and feel the gross stickiness on his arms and can still feel his father’s hold, his attempt at being gentle, his hand resting over his ivory hair and his fingers meanly grasping his arm-
I wonder if he’d ever hold me again, Touya says, almost a hiccup.
Dabi holds his fractured mind with two trembling hands and still tries to pretend like he isn’t a failure - he wipes his bloody tears away with his own hands, uncaring of how he almost pulls his staples out with how strongly he presses, because this has to be perfect.
He climbs over Gigantomachia, coming into view of his father and his brother, already battered and exhausted from the war.
He’s going to ruin Endeavor’s life.