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The city burns, burns along with Tenya’s heart.
Tensei’s hair has grown since they shaved it for the surgery. That’s the first thing Tenya discerns, maybe because he’s afraid to look lower. Tiny spikes of blue stick out in every direction.
Tenya kind of wants to touch it, so he does.
A little noise pokes at Tenya’s ears. He looks down.
Tensei’s hand clasps his, no longer big enough to swallow it up, just the right size to fit his fingers in the spaces between Tenya’s.
“Hey, little brother,” whispers Tensei. His eyes sparkle.
“Hey, Tensei,” Tenya answers.
Tensei reaches out and runs fingers over the buzzed hair along Tenya’s nape. He pulls until they meet over the hospital bed, forehead to forehead.
Tenya breaks the surface and breathes.
A tear drips down Tenya’s nose. It plops onto the page. Tenya wipes at it with his thumb, but it only blooms along the print.
Something claws its way down into his belly. It stings and drags. Tenya has never been very good at naming his emotions, but he knows he doesn’t like this one. It tugs at him late in the night, when it’s nothing but him and the books and the stream of jagged thoughts in his head, and early in the day, when he’s amongst peers who never second-guess, even with high-school applications right around the corner.
Two sharp knocks meet the door. It swings open before Tenya can open his mouth.
“Tenya,” Mom calls.
Tenya flips the page. Picks up a highlighter. “I’m just going to finish this chapter.”
“Go to sleep.”
There’s a familiar quality to her voice. They’ve replayed this conversation a hundred times over.
“Tenya.”
She doesn’t say anything else. Nothing like, ‘you can afford a B once in a while,’ or ‘this won’t help you more than sleep will,’ or ‘you’re enough.’
They’ve been through this before. Worn it down to the bone.
“I’ll take a nap after school.”
Mom is statue-still, hand on the door and eyes on Tenya. Then, she steps back and shuts the door.
Tenya’s throat is parched. He swallows, and swallows again. He pushes aside the Chemistry book. He wishes he could bring it all back—just pluck the words right out of the air. He aches for the arguments. When thoughts were laid out as they are, every emotion spilt across the floor. He doesn’t like these wispy words that hide so much behind them. He’s never been very good at naming his emotions.
Tenya stands on the welcome mat, arm in a sling, and watches the door open to his mother’s tear-stained face.
“Mom,” he starts, then stops. He’s opened his mouth before he decided what to say.
She turns around and leaves him in the doorway.
Tenya wants to chase after her, but he’s tired out. The anger he carried around for weeks has dissolved, and he has nothing left to hold him down.
“I know, I know it comes with the job,” comes Mom’s thick voice. Tenya makes himself move. She’s standing in the kitchen, staring straight ahead. “I know what I signed up for when I married a Pro. But that doesn’t mean you can—”
She sobs, then. It comes from deep within her and rips itself up like an eruption. Tenya feels hot and cold all over.
“You’re an asshole,” she tells him, in that raw voice. “I can’t believe you’re out there acting like your brother is dead while he’s doing hours and hours of PT just to come home.”
Something sticks in Tenya’s throat.
“So he can’t go to work anymore, so what?”
That strikes the fire in him. “Don’t say so what like it’s just a job—!”
Mom slams her hands against the counter and yells, “It is! It’s just a damn job!”
“It’s a family legacy!” Tenya yells back. His fingers aren’t trembling anymore; they’re clenched in tight fists.
Mom’s eyes gather storms. “Then fuck the legacy! If it blinds you to who you are, who your brother is, then…”
She takes a deep breath, and Tenya steals it to his advantage. He asserts, “My brother is a hero.” He is sure in this truth.
“That’s not all who he is,” she spits, voice lanced with fury and despair. “He’s a person first. He’s a person who tried his best—who’s still trying his best! So don’t you dare discredit that just because he can’t walk again.”
“I’m not discrediting, I’m acknowledging his accomplishments and impact—”
“You’re blinded by them!” she screams. Tenya is shocked still. “You were out there avenging a memory! An idea! All you see is what he does for other people. All anyone sees! What about him? What about my son?!”
She’s thumping a hand against her chest; it echoes, hollow. Her grief permeates the air, turns it thick and cloying, and before he knows it, Tenya finds himself crying.
“What about you?! I sit and wait and watch you both come home with dull eyes.” A rattling breath. A piercing stare. “Ingenium is gone. Your brother is still here.”
Tenya doesn’t see it at the time, caught up in the rush of approval and all the glory of a bright future, but Mom stares into her bowl of rice and does not smile.
The walls are white and blank and freezing. He watches Todoroki and Midoriya murmur amongst each other, and feels something leave him that’s been hot and curdling ever since he got that phone call. All of it, it vibrates out and away from him. Tenya tries to wrap his mind around it—that he’s lucky enough to have friends who would face fire and blood to protect him. From killers. From himself.
He’d let the anger fall like curtains over his eyes. He brushed off his friends. He ran from them, and they came chasing after him still.
He’s almost glad for the damage to his arm. It carries some of the guilt for him.
When Tenya decides to become a Pro Hero, it’s at the dinner table. He stares long and hard at the cut of Tensei’s profile. Then he announces it with a determined smile, and merry laughter erupts.
“Well, of course!” Dad says, grin wide. “Our little boy, carrying on the legacy.”
Grandpa dips his head, eyes twinkling. Grandma reaches across and pinches Tenya’s cheek.
Tensei claps him on the back. Tells him he’s proud.
Tenya—he’s going to do it. He’s going to kill this man who ripped realities apart and dulled Tensei’s eyes and stilled Tensei’s legs. He knows it in his bones. The Hero Killer rips the sword into Tenya’s muscles. It does nothing to stop the rush of the boiling blood in his veins. Not even death can face him now.
He thinks of Tensei, with his forest of tubes and wires; Tensei, who is the reason Tenya has ever wanted to be a Hero; Tensei, who he’s doing this for; Tensei, and what they’ll tell him about his little brother. That Tenya ran into one end of an alley and never came out the other. That Tenya abandoned a city on fire just to reenact revenge. That Tenya still dared to call himself a hero. That Tenya came after the man who took Tensei’s legs, just to give him his little brother as well.
His shoulder burns. He tastes salt. He thinks of Tensei, and his career and all of the people he’s saved, and all of the people he will never save, and he cries out. Anger heaves hot in his chest and steam rises up his throat. He wants to gut the man like he’s gutted three dozen Pro Heroes. He wants to flay him and take his arms, his legs, his tongue. He wants Tensei to never have lost Ingenium. He wants the world to never have lost Ingenium. He wants to never have lost his big brother.
He screams, and it comes out angry and terrified and desperate, and Stain laughs.
“There we go,” Tensei says. He gently pats Tenya’s bandaged foot, then gives it a kiss.
Tenya screws up his face. “Ewwww, Tensei! That’s my foot. You’ll get germs in your mouth.”
Tensei grins. “But you feel better now, don’t you?”
Tenya has long since stopped believing that kisses can magic away cuts and bruises, but he still nods, because he does. Tensei always makes him feel better.
Tenya swings his feet against the kitchen counter while Tensei cleans up the remains of the mug that slipped from Tenya’s sleepy hold.
Plastic knocks against plastic. Bristles brush the tiles.
“Alright, I cleaned it up as best I could. I’d rather not wake everyone in the middle of the night, so I’ll get up early to vacuum.” A warm hand ruffles his hair. Tenya leans into it. “Just remember not to step in here until then, okay?”
Half the words bounce off of Tenya. Now that everything’s quieted down, the tiredness has creeped back in. He’s too busy trying not to tip over and fall asleep.
Cold touches Tenya’s hand.
“Here.” Tensei holds up a glass of water. “Off to bed, now,” he softly says.
Tenya whispers a thanks and slips down the hall.
(Tensei wakes up to an alert from his agency and a pristine kitchen.)
Tenya thought he understood. Villains, justice, power, the natural order of the world. He came up in a family of Pro Heroes. He’s a legacy child. With promise of future strength held together with nothing but will and hope, he survived an attack by the League of Villains. He’s done his duty as class representative—as a friend and as a hero—and brought back help for his classmates.
He might as well throw away his fifteen years, because none of it has prepared him for the sight of Ingenium laid up in bed, hooked to ten-odd machines, eyes dim as dusk.
It pulls the breath from him, caves his lungs in as surely as his own Recpiro Burst kick to the chest.
Tenya hasn’t understood anything, anything at all.
The tears well up and drip down. He tries to wipe them away, stem the flow, but his hand smashes into his glasses and smudges his vision away. He gasps against the misery that takes root in his chest.
Glass is strewn across the kitchen floor. His foot stings something fierce, but Tensei is holding it between gentle fingers, so Tenya knows it’s going to be okay.
“Deep breaths, deep breaths,” Tensei says, “remember?”
Tenya does. He remembers those quiet hours in the garden, stream trickling, counting breaths and thinking about warmth and all the good things.
It’s his favorite time of the week. Tensei first took him to that spot between the bushes after he saw Tenya struggle to breathe when his cup went missing from the cupboard. Mom had gifted it to him two Christmases ago, wrapped in metallic blue paper. She said she commissioned it from a family friend. At the time, Tenya had just taken a vehement interest in birds—ducks in particular. He’s moved on since, but it remains his favorite thing to hold. The cup is grass green. Little ducks trot along the circumference.
Circumference. People think it’s a big word for Tenya to know, ‘at his small age’. Tensei doesn’t think so. Tensei doesn’t think anything is bigger than Tenya. He gives him thick books and lets him listen to the news and answers all his questions with a seriousness that most adults don’t take with him.
When he’s with Tensei, Tenya feels like he can take on the world.
Tenya runs like reprieve. He runs like running is the only thing worth anything. He runs like everything else is in-betweens. He runs like he holds his breath every time he isn’t. Like he’s underwater till the moment he kicks off the ground. He runs like it’s a thousand battles every day to slowly place one foot in front of the other, to not seize every opportunity to race against time and win.
And he wins. Because he’s made for it. Because it’s coiled in his DNA. Because it’s in his blood. He’s an Iida.
It grips him in a vice. The cupboards are blown open and their glassware is scattered along every surface. It’s gone, and he can’t picture next morning without it.
Just the thought of it sends his body into another round of shudders and half-breaths. The walls are far-off and the floor is like open sea. He can’t grasp at anything. His fingers clench around air and something that should be there.
Then, something is there. It’s not the right shape, but it’s warm as it swallows up his hand, and just as familiar.
“What’s going on?” Gentle words, gentler eyes.
It’s Tensei. Of course it’s Tensei. He’s larger than life, silhouetted like a mountain against the horizon.
“Come on,” says Tensei. “Whatever it is, we can fix it together, okay?”
Warmth spills down his shoulders and across his back. It takes a moment for Tenya to recognize it for Tensei’s hands. Slowly, he presses his forehead to his big brother’s shoulder.
“My cup,” murmurs Tenya.
Tensei sits back on his haunches. “Alright. Maybe you left it on a table, or it fell and rolled under something. We’ll look for it, room by room. Sound good?”
Maybe this is how it feels to be trapped in a fire, to be amid the rubble of your own house, to be under the hands of violence, and to see a streak of brilliant blue.
On the morning of the Sports Festival, Tenya tracks the digital clock atop his nightstand until it hits 5:44:59.75, then he’s off.
When most people think of Iida Tenya, often the first word that comes to mind is ‘stiff’. He binds himself up with rules and regulations. His movements are tight, controlled, every gesture a burst of energy overflowing. A machine cranking, coiling, cracking.
He’s stiff until he isn’t. Then, Tenya runs.